The walking, talking, governing refutation of the notion that there are no second acts in American lives is on a roll in California. “I’ve never been more excited,” Gov. Jerry Brown says, “and this is my 11th year on the job.”
Brown, 74, has ample reason for excitement. After a calamitous recession (inland California was the epicenter of the subprime quake) and nearly a decade of record deficits and legislative gridlock, Brown has come up with a budget that will put the Golden State into surplus territory without requiring further cuts. In November, voters approved Brown’s ballot measure, Proposition 30, which raised taxes on the wealthy and stabilized state finances to the point that Standard & Poor’s upgraded California’s credit rating last week. The new revenue has gone chiefly to schools and universities, though Brown wants to change K-12 funding so that money flows disproportionately to those districts with more impoverished and Spanish-speaking children.
Allowing a governor to make additional cuts to a final state budget is a fairly new development in California and governors have taken to it with verve. For the rest of the state, however, the response is, generally, “What? I thought the whole thing was over!”
These codas are not, however, unusual. Over the centuries, in several venues, end-of-the-piece additions have caused audiences who had already breathed a sigh of contented (or not) relief, believing a work to be beautifully, or thankfully, over, to snap to attention at the start-up of one more reprise, act, movement or chapter.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, sometimes known as the Pastoral Symphony, for example, is one of those pieces that jolts the unwary applauder in the audience by going on for five, instead of the usual four, movements. It’s embarrassing to burst into applause only to find out there’s a coda and you’re making noise all alone.
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