Last Saturday, the Utah GOP held a convention. Conventioneers booed the state’s governor, Spencer Cox (a Republican, of course). Commenting on the booing, the governor said several things, including this: “Maybe you hate that I don’t hate enough.” That is the opening theme of my Impromptus today — which is headed “The joy of hate, &c.” There are some interesting stories in there, I think. Speaking of stories: I also address Governor Noem and Cricket (her late dog), among other topics, big and small.

Give it a whirl, here.

In a column last Friday, I addressed student activism — not a fan. To be honest, I’m not a fan of student activism I may like, if you know what I mean. I think colleges ought to be for learning and growing. Activism, and politics generally, can wait. There are decades for that.

Among our readers is a glorious southern lady, who writes,

Dear Jay,

One of my pet peeves for many years now has been the attitude that young people somehow possess special wisdom. I get why kids would think so — at 16, I thought of myself as an “adult,” with all sorts of understanding and wisdom. (Spoiler: It wasn’t true.) What puzzles me is why mature adults would think so. Actually, it gets me hot and bothered. What, after all, do these kids really know?

Raising my kids, I tried to immunize them against this frankly arrogant attitude by telling them that being smart and being wise are not the same thing. Knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. I told them that wisdom takes experience, and experience takes time. A wise person takes his accumulated experiences and accumulated knowledge and evaluates these things. A wise person tests his assumptions against observed reality. All of this takes time, and it takes humility …

Yes. Even when I was young, I resented the assumption of adults that young people had special wisdom or idealism. “These knuckleheads?” I thought. (I would not have used the relatively polite word “knuckleheads.”)

I think I liked my grandparents’ friends best. And then my parents’ friends. And my peers least of all. (That was a conservative in the making, no question about it.) I thought there was a sad decline — especially morally. But you know what kind of talked me out of this? Showed me out of it? My experience working at golf courses.

Plenty of the old people cheated and lied and the rest. I was shocked. “Hey!” I wanted to say. “That’s what people my age do, not what you’re supposed to do!”

Here is what I think now (and long have): There are ignorant, obnoxious young people and ignorant, obnoxious old people. There are mature young people and mature old people. I could go on, but this is a big topic, and I want to mention something about music.

“Why?” you say. You’ll see.

In my “New York Chronicle,” published in the current issue of The New Criterion, I touch on Klaus Mäkelä, the 28-year-old conducting sensation. He is the music director of the orchestra in Paris. Soon, he will be the music director of the orchestras in Amsterdam and Chicago, both. Why? Have those organizations lost their minds?

Nope.

I will quote from my chronicle:

In 2009, I interviewed [Lorin] Maazel, as he was winding up his tenure at the New York Philharmonic. One of the things we discussed was age and conductors. Maazel had been a hotshot young conductor; now he was an old conductor. Indeed, he had been a boy conductor. At eleven, he conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra on the radio. Byron Janis, the pianist, died a few weeks ago, at the age of ninety-five. His obituary in The New York Times noted that, when he was fifteen, he played Rachmaninoff ’s Concerto No. 2 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. “Lorin Maazel, who was then fourteen, conducted.”

Advancing years don’t necessarily help a conductor, Maazel told me. It depends on whether a conductor is capable of growing. There are conductors who are dull when they are young, he said, and they stay dull as they age. Other conductors are vital and savvy when they are young, and perhaps more so when they are older. It all depends, said Maazel.

Right now, Klaus Mäkelä is not merely promising. He is a real conductor …

Yes. Anyway, I have gone on long enough, in this lil’ post. My thanks to all readers and correspondents. Again, my Impromptus today is here.