We in the information industry are shocked - shocked! - and outraged - outraged!! - at the revelation that U.S. military officials have been planting articles in Iraqi newspapers by paying - paying!!! - journalists to print the Pentagon's version of events.
The best part is the chagrin expressed by one Iraqi publisher, who, had he known he was selling editorial space to the U.S. Army, would have "charged much, much more."
Meanwhile, the diplomatic member of this long-running good cop/bad cop show, the State Department, trains Iraqis in media ethics and "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." On the other side of the foreign policy street, something called the "Information Operations Task Force" in Baghdad has taken over an Iraqi newspaper and radio station in order to channel its own brand of information in the burgeoning media of the occupied country. Anyone calling themselves the information operations task force must really, really want to be taken seriously. I mean they could have called it the Spin Office, or the Ministry of Lies, or Pravda.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Monday, November 28, 2005
Randomness Rules
My usual spot, Susan's on Main Street, was closed, so I ended up at Starbucks for coffee and eavesdropping. Starbucks now occupies the building that used to be Brady's Cafe, a funky old campus institution that lost its lease at the corner of Main and Lincoln across from front campus of Northeast Swingstate University, to the chagrin of a small but loyal following going back to the sixties. Now it's unrecognizable, all modern, characterless, sterile, and full of customers. I'm drinking my "holiday blend" which the smiling clerk said was a dark-roast, but it just tastes like coffee to me, in a paper to-go cup just in case I need to make a break for it and finish it on the road.
I dropped my daughter at her dorm, then did a quick workout in the lowering darkness on top of a wooded knoll off Loop Road, and now I need caffeine before driving back to Americus and my everyday life. After a holiday weekend of extended and sometimes intense conversation with my sister JoJo and nephew Bubba, I will now indulge in the fine art of random dialog writing, a kind of out-sourcing in prose for those times when you think you have nothing to say. It's a game of chance, something like Draw the Weirdo (aka Exquisite Corpse).
The five of us - Gven, JoJo, Bubba, Helga, and I - played a game of Draw the Weirdo Thursday night. We've been playing it at family gatherings ever since the kids were big enough to hold a pencil: everybody draw a head, fold it over and pass to the next person, draw a torso, fold it over and pass, draw the legs and fold, etc., until each drawing has come full-circle with a cartoonish body created by five different hands. The results are invariably funny, sometimes startlingly weird, arresting, random.
The two young men at the table next to me, both dark and heavily bearded, are difficult to transcribe because they are speaking Russian or some other eastern or southern Slavic language as they consult a book and make notes on a legal pad.
Three girls in Roosevelt High School letter jackets talk animatedly at the next table: "I didn't know their birthdays were on the same day..."
Two tall, blond women talk quietly with a young Indian man at the table across from me, and I finally discern a slight accent, German or Czech, maybe Polish or one of the Baltic republics. They have the high forehead and fair skin of the Scandinavian Slavs: "No no...I don't do that kind of thing. I did it, but...so sick. I owe them twenty dollars. Lobby and objective premises. Money and, I can get them for you (laughs). Apple cider should be cold, not hot. When I first came to America..."
Two loud people walk in: "When he was here, we went to a Chinese restaurant, getting married to just somebody's friend? I need to like talk it out with someone, and we initial dinner and comes back out and like what's up, and she's like oh god, it's like it's too bad, and I walked away and my sister saw what's happening and then my dad like walks away and goes like don't talk. It was so random, oh I've never, no cuz I know but this was in Baltimore for a year and a half and I was leaving the next day, he drove an Audi and my friend's cousin, did I tell you this story, I went to my friend's wedding..."
I finished my coffee and left, headed down the interstate, and found a local radio station, which is always unpredictable. On the way up, we had heard Romanian dances played by a Hungarian string quartet, an Irish-American interviewing a high school DJ looking for a good communications school, and a Slovak-American show from Cleveland with a Slovak-speaking DJ spinning what sounded to my untrained ear like polka music.
On the way back, I heard the tail end of a John Lennon tribute compiled by someone in Albuquerque in anticipation of the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death on December 8, 1980, part "Where were you then?" retrospective and part Lennon songs and quotes, mostly from the post-Beatles, Plastic Ono Band years. (For the record, Gven and I were sitting at the kitchen table of our Oberlin apartment eating breakfast and listening to WOBC.)
Coincidentally we had listened to a lot of Beatles songs Wednesday night. Bubba asked about the order in which several albums came out, so we listened to Abbey Road, Sargeant Pepper, and half of the White Album. When it warmed up on Saturday, we all strolled over to Lesser's for ice cream and across the street to Sour Records for another trip down memory lane in the used CD racks. For an infrequent music buyer like me, one never knows what one will find, and I was pleasantly surprised by the selection of records I could recognize.
JoJo bought a live LP that Peter, Paul and Mary recorded in 1964 at the height of the folk revival. JoJo doesn't have a turntable anymore, so she ostensibly got it for us to play when she comes to visit. She doesn't know what became of all her albums, and she had all of PP&M's and probably knew all the words, as well as sharing the political stance of those three bohemians gone mainstream. I also listened to those records over and over, back when JoJo was 17 and I was 13, and they introduced me to Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and political folk music in general. That part wasn't so random.
I dropped my daughter at her dorm, then did a quick workout in the lowering darkness on top of a wooded knoll off Loop Road, and now I need caffeine before driving back to Americus and my everyday life. After a holiday weekend of extended and sometimes intense conversation with my sister JoJo and nephew Bubba, I will now indulge in the fine art of random dialog writing, a kind of out-sourcing in prose for those times when you think you have nothing to say. It's a game of chance, something like Draw the Weirdo (aka Exquisite Corpse).
The five of us - Gven, JoJo, Bubba, Helga, and I - played a game of Draw the Weirdo Thursday night. We've been playing it at family gatherings ever since the kids were big enough to hold a pencil: everybody draw a head, fold it over and pass to the next person, draw a torso, fold it over and pass, draw the legs and fold, etc., until each drawing has come full-circle with a cartoonish body created by five different hands. The results are invariably funny, sometimes startlingly weird, arresting, random.
The two young men at the table next to me, both dark and heavily bearded, are difficult to transcribe because they are speaking Russian or some other eastern or southern Slavic language as they consult a book and make notes on a legal pad.
Three girls in Roosevelt High School letter jackets talk animatedly at the next table: "I didn't know their birthdays were on the same day..."
Two tall, blond women talk quietly with a young Indian man at the table across from me, and I finally discern a slight accent, German or Czech, maybe Polish or one of the Baltic republics. They have the high forehead and fair skin of the Scandinavian Slavs: "No no...I don't do that kind of thing. I did it, but...so sick. I owe them twenty dollars. Lobby and objective premises. Money and, I can get them for you (laughs). Apple cider should be cold, not hot. When I first came to America..."
Two loud people walk in: "When he was here, we went to a Chinese restaurant, getting married to just somebody's friend? I need to like talk it out with someone, and we initial dinner and comes back out and like what's up, and she's like oh god, it's like it's too bad, and I walked away and my sister saw what's happening and then my dad like walks away and goes like don't talk. It was so random, oh I've never, no cuz I know but this was in Baltimore for a year and a half and I was leaving the next day, he drove an Audi and my friend's cousin, did I tell you this story, I went to my friend's wedding..."
I finished my coffee and left, headed down the interstate, and found a local radio station, which is always unpredictable. On the way up, we had heard Romanian dances played by a Hungarian string quartet, an Irish-American interviewing a high school DJ looking for a good communications school, and a Slovak-American show from Cleveland with a Slovak-speaking DJ spinning what sounded to my untrained ear like polka music.
On the way back, I heard the tail end of a John Lennon tribute compiled by someone in Albuquerque in anticipation of the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death on December 8, 1980, part "Where were you then?" retrospective and part Lennon songs and quotes, mostly from the post-Beatles, Plastic Ono Band years. (For the record, Gven and I were sitting at the kitchen table of our Oberlin apartment eating breakfast and listening to WOBC.)
Coincidentally we had listened to a lot of Beatles songs Wednesday night. Bubba asked about the order in which several albums came out, so we listened to Abbey Road, Sargeant Pepper, and half of the White Album. When it warmed up on Saturday, we all strolled over to Lesser's for ice cream and across the street to Sour Records for another trip down memory lane in the used CD racks. For an infrequent music buyer like me, one never knows what one will find, and I was pleasantly surprised by the selection of records I could recognize.
JoJo bought a live LP that Peter, Paul and Mary recorded in 1964 at the height of the folk revival. JoJo doesn't have a turntable anymore, so she ostensibly got it for us to play when she comes to visit. She doesn't know what became of all her albums, and she had all of PP&M's and probably knew all the words, as well as sharing the political stance of those three bohemians gone mainstream. I also listened to those records over and over, back when JoJo was 17 and I was 13, and they introduced me to Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and political folk music in general. That part wasn't so random.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Pie Profiling
It's high time you gave some serious thought to pie.
I mean beyond the obvious "What's your favorite kind?" or "What was your mother's specialty?" Turns out there is deep-dish meaning to be found in one's pie behavior, pie expectations, pie values. So naturally some educated upper-crust boomer has written a book about it and gotten her 5-minute spiel on NPR.
According to Anne Dimock, it's all about men (as pie-eaters), women (as pie-makers), and power. "It's a power that comes from quiet observation and deep knowledge about your competition." Oh please.
She has catalogued the kinds of men "worth making another pie for" after identifying a man she wanted more attention from and making pies "to test him." Some men "regard pie as an entitlement." At their worst, they "will take your pie, and you, for granted," but at their best, they "know why yours is better than anybody else's and why only yours will do." This kind of cleverness reminds me of George Carlin's substituting the word fuck for every use of kill in a TV show. Here we can just substitute ass for every reference to pie and understand where's she's coming from.
It gets worse. Men shall be judged according to where they place their arms after eating pie, how large or small their bites are, where they begin to eat the slice, whether and how they ask for a second slice, and (drum-roll) whether they dig out the filling (LIAR!!). Indeed, and you probably saw this coming, "Pie is a window to a man's soul." Come to think of it, I bet foreign-policy decisions are being made over dessert all the time at white house state dinners.
Gosh, I feel so darn empowered now, I think I'll take notes on each of my Thanksgiving dinner companions. I'll deconstruct my wife's approach to mashed potatoes, my sister's handling of cranberry sauce, my daughter's decision making regarding stuffing, and the whole ideology of white meat vs. dark meat. Maybe I could get a grant to study it. Meanwhile, somebody refill my wine glass.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I mean beyond the obvious "What's your favorite kind?" or "What was your mother's specialty?" Turns out there is deep-dish meaning to be found in one's pie behavior, pie expectations, pie values. So naturally some educated upper-crust boomer has written a book about it and gotten her 5-minute spiel on NPR.
According to Anne Dimock, it's all about men (as pie-eaters), women (as pie-makers), and power. "It's a power that comes from quiet observation and deep knowledge about your competition." Oh please.
She has catalogued the kinds of men "worth making another pie for" after identifying a man she wanted more attention from and making pies "to test him." Some men "regard pie as an entitlement." At their worst, they "will take your pie, and you, for granted," but at their best, they "know why yours is better than anybody else's and why only yours will do." This kind of cleverness reminds me of George Carlin's substituting the word fuck for every use of kill in a TV show. Here we can just substitute ass for every reference to pie and understand where's she's coming from.
It gets worse. Men shall be judged according to where they place their arms after eating pie, how large or small their bites are, where they begin to eat the slice, whether and how they ask for a second slice, and (drum-roll) whether they dig out the filling (LIAR!!). Indeed, and you probably saw this coming, "Pie is a window to a man's soul." Come to think of it, I bet foreign-policy decisions are being made over dessert all the time at white house state dinners.
Gosh, I feel so darn empowered now, I think I'll take notes on each of my Thanksgiving dinner companions. I'll deconstruct my wife's approach to mashed potatoes, my sister's handling of cranberry sauce, my daughter's decision making regarding stuffing, and the whole ideology of white meat vs. dark meat. Maybe I could get a grant to study it. Meanwhile, somebody refill my wine glass.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Monday, November 21, 2005
On verbocentrism
Language has its uses. I am among those who largely eat, sleep, and breathe the stuff. So when I rage against the traps and limitations inherent in reducing life (as we know it) in the real world (as we know it) to its verbal explanations, I'm counting myself among the afflicted. So I'm here to admit that I have a problem, to acknowledge that I am powerless to overcome this problem on my own, and to begin the process of recovery. My name is Sven and I'm verbocentric.
I've been running into a lot of situations where someone else (not me!) complains about a discrepancy between their theory/belief/postulate/assumption/definition of x and an observable phenomenon y. The common reaction is that there must be something terribly wrong with y because it doesn't match x, the major premise being, of course, that x is true. "I'm surprised that you'd have that reaction because you're (leftist/male/counterculture/educated/white person)." Like my every attitude and behavior ought to follow from whatever category I've been slotted into.
I'm not sure what a technical philosopher would call this, but it reminds me of debates between rationalists and empiricists, positivists and pragmatists, or the early and the later Wittgenstein. Whatever, I don't want to go there, and chances are you don't want to either. What irritates me is the expectation that any explanation of the facts could be final.
Words can, at best, define other words. They don't define the things and events that other words attempt to describe, explain, compare, etc. The elusive people, places, things, and events are more slippery than that, so on a good day human descriptions in language can only come close.
My gifted spouse Gven Golly, who by the way was born on Norwegian Independence Day, or Sittende May [pronounced SIT-uhn-da MY, or May 17, for you non-Norwegian speakers], exemplifies the opposite human type, let's call it spatiocentric. She is not afflicted with verbocentrism and thus provides me with a daily antidote in the form of nonlinear, nonlogical, nonrational thinking, which can be expressed verbally but does not attempt to reduce the world to what's in a sentence. Which most of the time drives me crazy and once in a while solves a sticky problem.
Yesterday, for example, we were in the middle of a decidely nonverbal task, connecting the woodstove to the chimney. Gven and Jessi had moved the iron stove out of the den to tile the floor, and now that the tile is finished (thanks to crafty Gven and her crafty son), it's time to make the stove functional again, and that requires a nice, tight stovepipe. It took the two of us a long time to find a way to position the stove under the chimney while fitting two sections of stovepipe snug between the stove (on floor) and chimney (in ceiling/roof). This involved sliding the stove across the nice, new tiles on a piece of (nonstick, nonscratch) felt, then deadlifting the stove, two legs at a time, onto bricks so the pipe would not leave gaps. We finally got it connected, but it took some doing and revealed a bit of flawed logic in my own engineering skill, for which the polite term would be developmentally delayed.
Long story short, we puzzled over how to fit a certain length of pipe into both stove below and chimney above. My ideas all came in the form of abstract, if-then statements, like a mechanical drawing of an actual object or plays drawn up on a blackboard. Her ideas were not as linear, logical, or precise, and not based on the Pythagorean theorem, but lo and behold, some of them worked. Her proposed solutions to the mechanical problems posed by solid objects in a finite space defied any explanation either one of us could conjure up. But sure enough, some of them brought solid metal object together in ways that my rational calculations said would not, could not, work. The stove is in place, just in time for cold weather. Don't ask me how or why.
I've been running into a lot of situations where someone else (not me!) complains about a discrepancy between their theory/belief/postulate/assumption/definition of x and an observable phenomenon y. The common reaction is that there must be something terribly wrong with y because it doesn't match x, the major premise being, of course, that x is true. "I'm surprised that you'd have that reaction because you're (leftist/male/counterculture/educated/white person)." Like my every attitude and behavior ought to follow from whatever category I've been slotted into.
I'm not sure what a technical philosopher would call this, but it reminds me of debates between rationalists and empiricists, positivists and pragmatists, or the early and the later Wittgenstein. Whatever, I don't want to go there, and chances are you don't want to either. What irritates me is the expectation that any explanation of the facts could be final.
Words can, at best, define other words. They don't define the things and events that other words attempt to describe, explain, compare, etc. The elusive people, places, things, and events are more slippery than that, so on a good day human descriptions in language can only come close.
My gifted spouse Gven Golly, who by the way was born on Norwegian Independence Day, or Sittende May [pronounced SIT-uhn-da MY, or May 17, for you non-Norwegian speakers], exemplifies the opposite human type, let's call it spatiocentric. She is not afflicted with verbocentrism and thus provides me with a daily antidote in the form of nonlinear, nonlogical, nonrational thinking, which can be expressed verbally but does not attempt to reduce the world to what's in a sentence. Which most of the time drives me crazy and once in a while solves a sticky problem.
Yesterday, for example, we were in the middle of a decidely nonverbal task, connecting the woodstove to the chimney. Gven and Jessi had moved the iron stove out of the den to tile the floor, and now that the tile is finished (thanks to crafty Gven and her crafty son), it's time to make the stove functional again, and that requires a nice, tight stovepipe. It took the two of us a long time to find a way to position the stove under the chimney while fitting two sections of stovepipe snug between the stove (on floor) and chimney (in ceiling/roof). This involved sliding the stove across the nice, new tiles on a piece of (nonstick, nonscratch) felt, then deadlifting the stove, two legs at a time, onto bricks so the pipe would not leave gaps. We finally got it connected, but it took some doing and revealed a bit of flawed logic in my own engineering skill, for which the polite term would be developmentally delayed.
Long story short, we puzzled over how to fit a certain length of pipe into both stove below and chimney above. My ideas all came in the form of abstract, if-then statements, like a mechanical drawing of an actual object or plays drawn up on a blackboard. Her ideas were not as linear, logical, or precise, and not based on the Pythagorean theorem, but lo and behold, some of them worked. Her proposed solutions to the mechanical problems posed by solid objects in a finite space defied any explanation either one of us could conjure up. But sure enough, some of them brought solid metal object together in ways that my rational calculations said would not, could not, work. The stove is in place, just in time for cold weather. Don't ask me how or why.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Outside
Disclaimer: There's nothing new here. You've heard or read this before, and if you persevere and read on, you will not learn anything you didn't know before. Your mother probably told you every day of your pre-adult life to go outside and play. I am here to salute her wisdom. So stop reading and go outside!
It's Sunday around midday, and I'm taking a walk after church out by Alumni Creek Lake where Plumbline Road ends at a trailhead that leads directly down to the water. It's a sunny, windy fall day, and I welcome the quiet as I trudge down the short trail to the shore, just beginning to unwind from my own mixed reactions to my own social existence.
Reaching the tiny beach of round rocks, sandy mud, and thousands of shells the size of fingernails, I followed the shoreline around to a little inlet where I meet another male human about my age wearing waders and a backpack, carrying a fishing pole, fit as a fiddle and smiling. He says nice day, I say beautiful, how are the fish? He says if I catch one, it'll just be icing on the cake, and he strides across the mud and stones to make another cast in the lake. He clearly isn't there to accomplish anything in particular, and fishing is just an excuse to be outside for a while. He sure isn't there to talk to me, nor I to him, so we happily go our separate ways. I found a sunny spot out of the wind at the edge of the woods and did a long qigong form facing the water, and it worked like a charm.
Meaning what, exactly? It stretched my hamstrings and lower back, of course, reconnected my head and arms to my shoulders (I hate it when they fall off), and opened up the hip joints that tend to get tight as a drum. Physical stuff like that. Just spending half an hour standing in one place - especially a place in the woods facing the water - clears my head of some of the accumulated junk that's been trapped inside while I've been trapped inside four walls and a roof. I don't meditate in the bogus sense of "think about nothing" because a thousand images and problems race across the liquid crystal display screen of my mind's eye while I'm lifting qi up and pouring qi down. Afterward my mixed reactions don't seem quite so dire, and the same images and problems float in a more balanced perspective. I really don't know how it works, but it has something to do with getting outside.
More often than not as I drive to church on Sunday, I wonder what's the point of even going. An hour later, more often than not, those questions are answered well enough to reinforce the habit of showing up. For example, a young couple brought their baby girl for a child dedication - like a baptism for anabaptists. We had a simple bread communion, which I appreciate in its concreteness; we break bread together. Without fail, Rev. Susan provides a nugget of information, interpretation, call it "spin" if you like, that makes a difference in my day and week.
I'm told that the people we traditionally call "the Pilgrims" (note the cap P, as if they held the franchise on pilgrimage) were a band of Protestant (ditto) Separatists (ditto) from England via Holland who were blown off course and landed on Cape Cod by accident, so they pretty much had to make the best of it. I'm also told that about half of the folks on the fabled seed of democracy called the Mayflower were a cohesive group (the 'saints') who really chose to make a community together; the other half (the 'strangers') booked the voyage expediently to make a new start for their own reasons and had little or no commitment to the goals of the core group. Even the 'saints' had one core principle in common - separatism! - so they mostly wanted to be left alone, too. Hence the need for the famous Compact written onboard ship prior to landing on the fabled Plymouth Rock (evoking images of the apostle Peter, solid foundations, lasting institutions, and trustworthy insurance policies).
I found it helpful to know that this struggling band of separatists had very little holding them together, and in fact had little desire to be a tightly knit community. And while I appreciate the opportunity to attend, and I usually have a nice conversation or two, I was not compelled to join in the convivial silent auction/bake sale afterward. I had to get outside.
It's Sunday around midday, and I'm taking a walk after church out by Alumni Creek Lake where Plumbline Road ends at a trailhead that leads directly down to the water. It's a sunny, windy fall day, and I welcome the quiet as I trudge down the short trail to the shore, just beginning to unwind from my own mixed reactions to my own social existence.
Reaching the tiny beach of round rocks, sandy mud, and thousands of shells the size of fingernails, I followed the shoreline around to a little inlet where I meet another male human about my age wearing waders and a backpack, carrying a fishing pole, fit as a fiddle and smiling. He says nice day, I say beautiful, how are the fish? He says if I catch one, it'll just be icing on the cake, and he strides across the mud and stones to make another cast in the lake. He clearly isn't there to accomplish anything in particular, and fishing is just an excuse to be outside for a while. He sure isn't there to talk to me, nor I to him, so we happily go our separate ways. I found a sunny spot out of the wind at the edge of the woods and did a long qigong form facing the water, and it worked like a charm.
Meaning what, exactly? It stretched my hamstrings and lower back, of course, reconnected my head and arms to my shoulders (I hate it when they fall off), and opened up the hip joints that tend to get tight as a drum. Physical stuff like that. Just spending half an hour standing in one place - especially a place in the woods facing the water - clears my head of some of the accumulated junk that's been trapped inside while I've been trapped inside four walls and a roof. I don't meditate in the bogus sense of "think about nothing" because a thousand images and problems race across the liquid crystal display screen of my mind's eye while I'm lifting qi up and pouring qi down. Afterward my mixed reactions don't seem quite so dire, and the same images and problems float in a more balanced perspective. I really don't know how it works, but it has something to do with getting outside.
More often than not as I drive to church on Sunday, I wonder what's the point of even going. An hour later, more often than not, those questions are answered well enough to reinforce the habit of showing up. For example, a young couple brought their baby girl for a child dedication - like a baptism for anabaptists. We had a simple bread communion, which I appreciate in its concreteness; we break bread together. Without fail, Rev. Susan provides a nugget of information, interpretation, call it "spin" if you like, that makes a difference in my day and week.
I'm told that the people we traditionally call "the Pilgrims" (note the cap P, as if they held the franchise on pilgrimage) were a band of Protestant (ditto) Separatists (ditto) from England via Holland who were blown off course and landed on Cape Cod by accident, so they pretty much had to make the best of it. I'm also told that about half of the folks on the fabled seed of democracy called the Mayflower were a cohesive group (the 'saints') who really chose to make a community together; the other half (the 'strangers') booked the voyage expediently to make a new start for their own reasons and had little or no commitment to the goals of the core group. Even the 'saints' had one core principle in common - separatism! - so they mostly wanted to be left alone, too. Hence the need for the famous Compact written onboard ship prior to landing on the fabled Plymouth Rock (evoking images of the apostle Peter, solid foundations, lasting institutions, and trustworthy insurance policies).
I found it helpful to know that this struggling band of separatists had very little holding them together, and in fact had little desire to be a tightly knit community. And while I appreciate the opportunity to attend, and I usually have a nice conversation or two, I was not compelled to join in the convivial silent auction/bake sale afterward. I had to get outside.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Fifty-two weeks but who's counting
This week marks my first anniversary as a blogger. That's 98 posts by my unofficial count, not including this one. Yeah, yeah, big deal, says the outside world, I just feel I should mark the day somehow.
With lots of encouragement (I get by with a little help from my friends), I started slowly, with three posts the first month and five each of the next three months. I had in mind making one post per week. After talking to Mr. Gutman, an early mentor, something opened up, and out came seven posts in March. Then I backslid to three in April and four in May, came back with seven in June, and went nuts with twelve in July, eleven in August, thirteen in September, and fourteen in October. The numbers seem to indicate that I'm getting into it.
The increase in quantity says nothing about quality, of course, but I'm enjoying putting fingers to keyboard, if only as a test of what odd contents of consciousness surface during this lap around the sun. It would be a better, more random, more valid test if I wrote every day, as the serious bloggers do, then there would be a more complete record of the minutiae occupying my brain while other people are doing important work. But who wants that? Or I could compartmentalize by subject and produce a separate blogs on politics, family, gardening, the arts, religion - no, I don't think so - there aren't enough categories and there's too much overlap in my interdisciplinary (jumbled) liberal arts (pseudointellectual) mind.
A couple of observations might be worth making. My low level of technical savvy is apparent in the long, slow learning curve by which I've added elements to my blog. Pictures finally appeared, but not frequently, and lately there have been more links, but still no jazzy audio or video posts. Primarily a verbal learner, Professor Gardner. As my encouraging friends and co-workers have pointed out, the wordsmithing craft of it is at least half the point, as I painstakingly revise and edit paragraphs about topics like a movie, a dream, the weather, or what I had for supper. Really earthshaking stuff, kind of like the sophomore creative writing major who really wants to write but has nothing much to say. Portrait of the artist as an old dog. Definitely a late-bloomer, Professor Piaget.
With lots of encouragement (I get by with a little help from my friends), I started slowly, with three posts the first month and five each of the next three months. I had in mind making one post per week. After talking to Mr. Gutman, an early mentor, something opened up, and out came seven posts in March. Then I backslid to three in April and four in May, came back with seven in June, and went nuts with twelve in July, eleven in August, thirteen in September, and fourteen in October. The numbers seem to indicate that I'm getting into it.
The increase in quantity says nothing about quality, of course, but I'm enjoying putting fingers to keyboard, if only as a test of what odd contents of consciousness surface during this lap around the sun. It would be a better, more random, more valid test if I wrote every day, as the serious bloggers do, then there would be a more complete record of the minutiae occupying my brain while other people are doing important work. But who wants that? Or I could compartmentalize by subject and produce a separate blogs on politics, family, gardening, the arts, religion - no, I don't think so - there aren't enough categories and there's too much overlap in my interdisciplinary (jumbled) liberal arts (pseudointellectual) mind.
A couple of observations might be worth making. My low level of technical savvy is apparent in the long, slow learning curve by which I've added elements to my blog. Pictures finally appeared, but not frequently, and lately there have been more links, but still no jazzy audio or video posts. Primarily a verbal learner, Professor Gardner. As my encouraging friends and co-workers have pointed out, the wordsmithing craft of it is at least half the point, as I painstakingly revise and edit paragraphs about topics like a movie, a dream, the weather, or what I had for supper. Really earthshaking stuff, kind of like the sophomore creative writing major who really wants to write but has nothing much to say. Portrait of the artist as an old dog. Definitely a late-bloomer, Professor Piaget.
Is it the full moon or what?
Everyone around me seems to be having stronger than normal reactions to the things that are happening around them - not that that's a bad thing - and the weather is changing abruptly from mild indian summer to harsh early winter, which is the nature of fall in central swingstate, after all. It seems like people are feeling especially vulnerable, money being tight, families feeling the pressure, and holidays coming on.
I had an unusually vivid dream last night. Maybe it's the full moon tugging on astral auras, pulling the hopes and fears and anxieties out of everydayness. Or it could be the extra salsa I put in the black bean soup. Freudians, have a field day.
I'm in a big gym, with pickup basketball games going on right and left. I find a special ball on the floor among all the regular balls, and it practically calls out to me with its intense (blue) color, so I pick it up. A tall female player, whom I recognize from somewhere as a really talented athlete, walks up and tells me that's the ball she likes to use, so we start to play. Dribbling up the court, I say, "half-court?" but she says, "full-court," and I say "okay" but stop dribbling, so I have nowhere to go, so I shoot from half-court, and the ball, amazingly, goes in. Before we can continue playing, however, the special ball rolls out the door, and when I go after it, the door closes behind me, locking me out. I wait, and momentarily some guys come out the door, and as I start to go in they question whether I should be allowed in the gym, and whatever it was I said or did, they decided to let me back in.
The scene shifts to a car repair shop where a mechanic is finishing some work on my truck. I drive to a second shop to have the oil changed, but the second mechanic sees something lying on top of the hood, left there by the first mechanic, so he says, "This is from (first repair shop), so it will take two hours." I say "okay" and take two books from the truck to read while I'm waiting. Outside the second shop is a sunny hillside where a group of kids from a prep school are involved in a scavenger hunt, intently checking their lists of items and scouring the hillside to find them. A few of their parents are talking, clustered off to the side by their parked minivans.
My personal coach says its my second chakra expressing its need for the illusion of control. I say it's the full moon.
I had an unusually vivid dream last night. Maybe it's the full moon tugging on astral auras, pulling the hopes and fears and anxieties out of everydayness. Or it could be the extra salsa I put in the black bean soup. Freudians, have a field day.
I'm in a big gym, with pickup basketball games going on right and left. I find a special ball on the floor among all the regular balls, and it practically calls out to me with its intense (blue) color, so I pick it up. A tall female player, whom I recognize from somewhere as a really talented athlete, walks up and tells me that's the ball she likes to use, so we start to play. Dribbling up the court, I say, "half-court?" but she says, "full-court," and I say "okay" but stop dribbling, so I have nowhere to go, so I shoot from half-court, and the ball, amazingly, goes in. Before we can continue playing, however, the special ball rolls out the door, and when I go after it, the door closes behind me, locking me out. I wait, and momentarily some guys come out the door, and as I start to go in they question whether I should be allowed in the gym, and whatever it was I said or did, they decided to let me back in.
The scene shifts to a car repair shop where a mechanic is finishing some work on my truck. I drive to a second shop to have the oil changed, but the second mechanic sees something lying on top of the hood, left there by the first mechanic, so he says, "This is from (first repair shop), so it will take two hours." I say "okay" and take two books from the truck to read while I'm waiting. Outside the second shop is a sunny hillside where a group of kids from a prep school are involved in a scavenger hunt, intently checking their lists of items and scouring the hillside to find them. A few of their parents are talking, clustered off to the side by their parked minivans.
My personal coach says its my second chakra expressing its need for the illusion of control. I say it's the full moon.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Zizek!
Christian Moerk's 12 column-inches in Sunday's New York Times got my attention: "The World's Most Unlikely Movie Star" turns out to be a Slovenian critical theorist whose "musings on postmodernism and popular culture - rich in deeply spun allusions to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch - are inspired by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan." Oh my, how very rich, how deeply spun.
Turns out an intern at Verso Books, which distributes his books, made a film of Slavoj Zizek's 2003-2004 speaking tour, and it's being shown in festivals in Toronto, New York, and "several national dates" (Wexner Center, pay attention). "This is propaganda for nerds," according to Andra Taylor, the filmmaker. "I think it's fantastic to reveal the structures of ideology and challenge people. It's a public service." Call me a dilettante, call me a dabbler, call me a poser, but I had to know more!
So I googled a bibliography of his books at the site of something called The European Graduate School, located in Saas-Fee, Wallis; New York; and Dresden. (Where the heck is Saas-Fee, you ask? It's a little town in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border; Wallis [or Valais] is the canton. Social studies really is fun.) But dig the titles: Organs Without Bodies; Contingency, Hegemony, Universality; and my personal favorite, Enjoy Your Symptom!
A clip from the film "Zizek," as he responds to a question about belief, contains a line attributed to the physicist Niels Bohr: "No, I don't believe in it, but I'm told that it works even if you don't believe in it." You can also view the trailer there and treat yourself to another nugget to chew on: "Philosophy doesn't ask 'Is this true?' Philosophy asks, 'What do you mean when you say this is true?'" If you'll excuse me, I have to go to a style guide meeting, where a group of editors will sit around a table and argue which words should or should not be used, based on how other sources did or didn't use them. It's all quite pragmatic. Kolkata means something, not because it's right or true but because it means something to someone.
If all this seems dry as dust to you, okay, just pass it by. On the other hand, if this kind of discourse on discourse is your meat and potatoes, your rice and beans, your bread and butter, well dig in. This interview, for example, entitled "The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other," might be old news, coming shortly after 9/11, but there are some radical ideas there about tolerance and multiculturalism, for example:
I guess what appeals to me about this kind of thinking is that it breaks out of the 'right-wing vs. left-wing' cliche of telling opposing versions of the same tired story, putting most of us to sleep. Now I think I'll go home and read a spy novel.
Turns out an intern at Verso Books, which distributes his books, made a film of Slavoj Zizek's 2003-2004 speaking tour, and it's being shown in festivals in Toronto, New York, and "several national dates" (Wexner Center, pay attention). "This is propaganda for nerds," according to Andra Taylor, the filmmaker. "I think it's fantastic to reveal the structures of ideology and challenge people. It's a public service." Call me a dilettante, call me a dabbler, call me a poser, but I had to know more!
So I googled a bibliography of his books at the site of something called The European Graduate School, located in Saas-Fee, Wallis; New York; and Dresden. (Where the heck is Saas-Fee, you ask? It's a little town in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border; Wallis [or Valais] is the canton. Social studies really is fun.) But dig the titles: Organs Without Bodies; Contingency, Hegemony, Universality; and my personal favorite, Enjoy Your Symptom!
A clip from the film "Zizek," as he responds to a question about belief, contains a line attributed to the physicist Niels Bohr: "No, I don't believe in it, but I'm told that it works even if you don't believe in it." You can also view the trailer there and treat yourself to another nugget to chew on: "Philosophy doesn't ask 'Is this true?' Philosophy asks, 'What do you mean when you say this is true?'" If you'll excuse me, I have to go to a style guide meeting, where a group of editors will sit around a table and argue which words should or should not be used, based on how other sources did or didn't use them. It's all quite pragmatic. Kolkata means something, not because it's right or true but because it means something to someone.
If all this seems dry as dust to you, okay, just pass it by. On the other hand, if this kind of discourse on discourse is your meat and potatoes, your rice and beans, your bread and butter, well dig in. This interview, for example, entitled "The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other," might be old news, coming shortly after 9/11, but there are some radical ideas there about tolerance and multiculturalism, for example:
Today's racism is precisely this racism of cultural difference. It no longer says: 'I am more than you.' It says: 'I want my culture, you can have yours.' Today, every right-winger says just that. These people can be very postmodern. They acknowledge that there is no natural tradition, that every culture is artificially constructed. In France, for example, you have a neo-fascist right that refers to the deconstructionists, saying: 'Yes, the lesson of deconstructionism against universalism is that there are only particular identities. So, if blacks can have their culture, why should we not have ours?'
I guess what appeals to me about this kind of thinking is that it breaks out of the 'right-wing vs. left-wing' cliche of telling opposing versions of the same tired story, putting most of us to sleep. Now I think I'll go home and read a spy novel.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Gustav MacKenzie Surratt-Duncanson
b. April 1 (?), 1991, d. November 10, 2005.
Our cat Gus died Thursday night. I came home from work while there was still a little bit of light to rake leaves, and while changing clothes I heard an alarming little cough-like wheeze from somewhere in the bedroom. I looked everywhere I could think of - under the bed, behind books and shoes, on shelves, in other rooms, even outside in the yard - but couldn't find him. Isabel and Dali, the other cat and the dog, were present and accounted for but no help. I asked Izzy several times, "Where's your brother?" but got no reply.
Gven came home after her classes, and we both searched the house again, no luck. We ate supper, read, watched TV, walked Dali, and kept wondering where Gus was hiding. The poor guy has been sick for some time - heart murmur, thyroid condition - and has lost a lot of weight in the past year. Lately he's been losing his balance, walking unsteadily, and falling off tables without his usual aplomb. So we all saw it coming.
Finally around midnight Gven found him, curled up inside a wardrobe-type suitcase that was hanging in the back of her closet, quite dead. We laid him on a tee-shirt and talked about what to do next. He was limp and lifeless but not yet cold or rigid. I put my hand on him for a long time, and began to feel my own pulse, a strange sensation, but no, no miracles today. Dali hovered behind Gven, looking very concerned. Isabel stayed away for quite a while, seemingly oblivious, and finally sauntered over, sniffed around the corner of the room by the closet, and quickly walked right by with no outward response. Gven thought maybe she wasn't even acknowledging the body on the floor because his essence wasn't there anymore. Hard to tell.
We decided to bury him in the garden, and I found a wicker basket about his size. Since it was a cool evening, we put him in the closed garage overnight. Tonight or tomorrow I will dig a hole with the brand-new Sears Craftsman long-handled spade that has never been used. I just got it in exchange for the old shovel that had recently broken from hard use. There's a nice spot under a couple of smallish evergreens, and we'll place a little plaque there. First we have to tell Helga, which won't be easy. Gus was always her cat.
Gus and Isabel came to us as littermates from my running partner (see MacKenzie's Laws, Archives April 2005) and his family's family of cats. Funny, I hadn't seen the MacKenzies for years, then ran into his daughter at the coop Wednesday night, long time no see. We got Gus and Izzy as kittens on Helga's seventh birthday when we lived in Grandview. They were both longhaired little furballs and completely adorable. They moved with us to Alabama later that year, then back to Clintonville a year later, then to another house in Clintonville where we actually stayed put for ten years, and finally to Northeasterville, where Gus will remain.
Our cat Gus died Thursday night. I came home from work while there was still a little bit of light to rake leaves, and while changing clothes I heard an alarming little cough-like wheeze from somewhere in the bedroom. I looked everywhere I could think of - under the bed, behind books and shoes, on shelves, in other rooms, even outside in the yard - but couldn't find him. Isabel and Dali, the other cat and the dog, were present and accounted for but no help. I asked Izzy several times, "Where's your brother?" but got no reply.
Gven came home after her classes, and we both searched the house again, no luck. We ate supper, read, watched TV, walked Dali, and kept wondering where Gus was hiding. The poor guy has been sick for some time - heart murmur, thyroid condition - and has lost a lot of weight in the past year. Lately he's been losing his balance, walking unsteadily, and falling off tables without his usual aplomb. So we all saw it coming.
Finally around midnight Gven found him, curled up inside a wardrobe-type suitcase that was hanging in the back of her closet, quite dead. We laid him on a tee-shirt and talked about what to do next. He was limp and lifeless but not yet cold or rigid. I put my hand on him for a long time, and began to feel my own pulse, a strange sensation, but no, no miracles today. Dali hovered behind Gven, looking very concerned. Isabel stayed away for quite a while, seemingly oblivious, and finally sauntered over, sniffed around the corner of the room by the closet, and quickly walked right by with no outward response. Gven thought maybe she wasn't even acknowledging the body on the floor because his essence wasn't there anymore. Hard to tell.
We decided to bury him in the garden, and I found a wicker basket about his size. Since it was a cool evening, we put him in the closed garage overnight. Tonight or tomorrow I will dig a hole with the brand-new Sears Craftsman long-handled spade that has never been used. I just got it in exchange for the old shovel that had recently broken from hard use. There's a nice spot under a couple of smallish evergreens, and we'll place a little plaque there. First we have to tell Helga, which won't be easy. Gus was always her cat.
Gus and Isabel came to us as littermates from my running partner (see MacKenzie's Laws, Archives April 2005) and his family's family of cats. Funny, I hadn't seen the MacKenzies for years, then ran into his daughter at the coop Wednesday night, long time no see. We got Gus and Izzy as kittens on Helga's seventh birthday when we lived in Grandview. They were both longhaired little furballs and completely adorable. They moved with us to Alabama later that year, then back to Clintonville a year later, then to another house in Clintonville where we actually stayed put for ten years, and finally to Northeasterville, where Gus will remain.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
On bullshit
Harry G. Frankfurt's new book from Princton U. Press, On Bullshit, "explores why there is so much bullshit, what bullshit is exactly, and what functions bullshit serves," according to the introduction. In my field (educational publishing) these are salient questions with important consequences. That and a perverse curiosity about the subject piqued my interest when my sister sent me the book on CD.
"The phenomenon is so vast and amorphous," according to the author, and his treatment of it so refreshingly straightforward. It's a serious, but not TOO serious, analysis, and I had to laugh at times. You might find yourself thinking of people you know as he describes some of the types and traits of bullshitters. The quick little book doesn't disappoint. Thanks, Jo Jo.
Like the older and more genteel term humbug, which is explained by Max Black in his book The Prevalence of Humbug, bullshit misrepresents something but falls short of outright lying. Frankfurt cites public relations, advertising, and politics as realms of tireless and careful attention to bullshit. He uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussion of nonsense to shed light on the nature of bullshit as involving a kind of laxity toward what is true or can be know to be true. This leads to the conclusion that the essence of bullshit has to do not with a speaker's intent to deceive but with the speaker's lack of concern with the truth at all.
The OED, which apparently has plenty of material on the subject, cites a poem by Ezra Pound about using biblical passages to make a point, wherein Pound demands more from a speaker than empty talk, in effect calling their bluff. Frankfurt concludes that the bullshitter, like the fake and the phoney, engages in a relatively benign inauthenticity rather than the more offensive lie. The craft of lying is more specific and bound to truth-value than the wide-ranging art of bullshit. Liars and truth-tellers are playing on opposite sides in the same rule-bound game, while the bullshitter plays a different game altogether, free of those constraints.
Other synonyms (readers, please add more):
nonsense, bunkum, humbug, misrepresentation, insincerity, trivia, hot air, caca, quackery, balderdash, hocum, drivel, imposture, claptrap...
Why is there so much bullshit now? Maybe because there is more communication now, and the proportion of bullshit is unchanged. Frankfort goes into a short discussion of the corollary issues of skepticism and whether objective truths are knowable, ending with proposition that all a person can do is know and express how they feel. In that case, sincerity replaces truth as the standard of utterances, to which the author replies, "Sincerity is bullshit."
"The phenomenon is so vast and amorphous," according to the author, and his treatment of it so refreshingly straightforward. It's a serious, but not TOO serious, analysis, and I had to laugh at times. You might find yourself thinking of people you know as he describes some of the types and traits of bullshitters. The quick little book doesn't disappoint. Thanks, Jo Jo.
Like the older and more genteel term humbug, which is explained by Max Black in his book The Prevalence of Humbug, bullshit misrepresents something but falls short of outright lying. Frankfurt cites public relations, advertising, and politics as realms of tireless and careful attention to bullshit. He uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussion of nonsense to shed light on the nature of bullshit as involving a kind of laxity toward what is true or can be know to be true. This leads to the conclusion that the essence of bullshit has to do not with a speaker's intent to deceive but with the speaker's lack of concern with the truth at all.
The OED, which apparently has plenty of material on the subject, cites a poem by Ezra Pound about using biblical passages to make a point, wherein Pound demands more from a speaker than empty talk, in effect calling their bluff. Frankfurt concludes that the bullshitter, like the fake and the phoney, engages in a relatively benign inauthenticity rather than the more offensive lie. The craft of lying is more specific and bound to truth-value than the wide-ranging art of bullshit. Liars and truth-tellers are playing on opposite sides in the same rule-bound game, while the bullshitter plays a different game altogether, free of those constraints.
Other synonyms (readers, please add more):
nonsense, bunkum, humbug, misrepresentation, insincerity, trivia, hot air, caca, quackery, balderdash, hocum, drivel, imposture, claptrap...
Why is there so much bullshit now? Maybe because there is more communication now, and the proportion of bullshit is unchanged. Frankfort goes into a short discussion of the corollary issues of skepticism and whether objective truths are knowable, ending with proposition that all a person can do is know and express how they feel. In that case, sincerity replaces truth as the standard of utterances, to which the author replies, "Sincerity is bullshit."
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
London calling
My little girl is going to London and Paris during winter break from school. She's confirmed on her flights from Cleveland/Hopkins to New York/Kennedy and Kennedy to London/Heathrow the day after Christmas. Ten days later, it's Heathrow to Washington/Dulles, and Dulles back to Hopkins. Oh my.
It's the contents of that sandwich of plane trips, of course, that will be the real adventure. It's just that right now, the eTicket is what makes it real compared to the tentative plans and speculative what-ifs leading up to it. Confirmed flights mean she's in the art history group from Northeast Swingstate University (NESU) and enrolled in the tour. A rough itinerary:
December 27 - arrive London, orientation, general tour & National Gallery
28 - British Museum, ancient, agrican/Mexican and bookstores ('agrican'?)
29 - National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum
30 - British Museum, medieval, National Gallery and theatre
31 - Salisbury, Stonehenge, cathedral/churches
January 1 - Tate modern, Wallace collection
2 - to Paris via Eurostar and optional evening tour
3 - Louvre, free time
4 - Musee d'Orsay, Notre Dame, architectural, evening to london
A few details remain to be worked out, like a passport, and Helga's rapid-fire mind is probably busy listing things to do in the next few weeks. But if we could just maintain our focus for a little while longer on research and writing art history, Picasso, the art of Central Africa, elementary French, intro to glassworking, and metals I, then all will be well when it's time for the trip.
It's the contents of that sandwich of plane trips, of course, that will be the real adventure. It's just that right now, the eTicket is what makes it real compared to the tentative plans and speculative what-ifs leading up to it. Confirmed flights mean she's in the art history group from Northeast Swingstate University (NESU) and enrolled in the tour. A rough itinerary:
December 27 - arrive London, orientation, general tour & National Gallery
28 - British Museum, ancient, agrican/Mexican and bookstores ('agrican'?)
29 - National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum
30 - British Museum, medieval, National Gallery and theatre
31 - Salisbury, Stonehenge, cathedral/churches
January 1 - Tate modern, Wallace collection
2 - to Paris via Eurostar and optional evening tour
3 - Louvre, free time
4 - Musee d'Orsay, Notre Dame, architectural, evening to london
A few details remain to be worked out, like a passport, and Helga's rapid-fire mind is probably busy listing things to do in the next few weeks. But if we could just maintain our focus for a little while longer on research and writing art history, Picasso, the art of Central Africa, elementary French, intro to glassworking, and metals I, then all will be well when it's time for the trip.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture
It's a cute line from a cute movie about a dysfunctional family with a catalog of relationship issues, all of which are tidily resolved in just under two hours. Something about "Heart" in the title. But I still like that line because it addresses the incommensurability of different art forms, which I find interesting because it lets me use one of my favorite words [IN kum EN sur uh BIL uh tee]. But it can also be frustrating, because sometimes those experiences that I would most like to communicate are the most difficult to put into language. Know what I mean?
I don't read many music reviews. Besides the generation gaps, culture gaps, and education gaps separating me from most rock, classical, jazz, you name the genre, critics, it is rare indeed to read a music review that succeeds in conveying something about the music that engages but doesn't gag me. I prefer to listen to the music, thank you, with or without an understanding of its theoretical, historical, or social context. My loss I guess. Dance reviews are similar. I see an article in the Sunday Times and think I'll read it, but it's written in dancecriticese, so I get as far as the second paragraph and turn the page. Visual art, forget it, I don't speak ze lingeau, capiche?
Theater and movies, on the other hand, like poetry and fiction, history and philosophy, I can read ABOUT because, duh, the work in question, like the review, is in, duh, language. It's not that I have any "training" in theater, movies, poetry, fiction, or history, and I'm therefore schooled in the special discourse of the discipline. I don't and I'm not. I don't speak theaterese or filmese or poetrese or literaturese or historish, and when I'm around those people at the party, I'm either observing them as an anthropologist observes the social habits of an exotic band of islanders or I'm crossing the room to talk to the jocks.
Am I belaboring the obvious? Yes. Am I betraying the fact that I personally am more of a "word person" than a musically or spatially intelligent person, in the jargon of Howard Gardner, whom I happen to like and respect because he writes well about those boundaries? Yes. Am I realizing, for the umpteenth time, that my vain attempts at a liberal arts education have not made me into a renaissance man? Sad but true.
Part of the difficulty, I'm sure, is my lack of education in the arts. I haven't studied art, so I don't have much of a vocabulary in which to discuss visual arts. I haven't studied music, so I am similarly handicapped in discussing any period or style of music. My name is Sven and I'm illiterate. (Hi Sven) In both cases, I can have an emotional response, but I can't articulate what caused it or where it fits in the larger scheme of things visual or musical. Maybe there's a 12-step program for people with my problem, but I don't speak their language either.
On the other hand, I have studied writing a little, so I am better equipped to write or talk about it, alright in a kind of a limited way for an off night, and I have studied movement and sport, so I have a vocabulary that's commensurable with it. In short, I guess it's all about me. Or you. Us.
There's a drum circle that meets the first Monday of the month at Central Swingstate Percussion on High Street across from Graceland. Last night there was a nice little group, maybe eight people, that got some hot rhythms going, let me tell you. And I would tell you if I could. You'd have to be there to hear the rhythm move around the circle, pull someone in, build in volume and intensity, change a little here and there, accents coming and going, and eventually come down again, get real quiet, and disappear. One of the proprietors of the shop was giving a tiny bit of instruction to help us novice hand drummers, but 99 percent of it is experiential, whatever that means. You grab a drum, sit down, listen, try your hand, pick up on something, see where it goes and go with it. What can I say?
I don't read many music reviews. Besides the generation gaps, culture gaps, and education gaps separating me from most rock, classical, jazz, you name the genre, critics, it is rare indeed to read a music review that succeeds in conveying something about the music that engages but doesn't gag me. I prefer to listen to the music, thank you, with or without an understanding of its theoretical, historical, or social context. My loss I guess. Dance reviews are similar. I see an article in the Sunday Times and think I'll read it, but it's written in dancecriticese, so I get as far as the second paragraph and turn the page. Visual art, forget it, I don't speak ze lingeau, capiche?
Theater and movies, on the other hand, like poetry and fiction, history and philosophy, I can read ABOUT because, duh, the work in question, like the review, is in, duh, language. It's not that I have any "training" in theater, movies, poetry, fiction, or history, and I'm therefore schooled in the special discourse of the discipline. I don't and I'm not. I don't speak theaterese or filmese or poetrese or literaturese or historish, and when I'm around those people at the party, I'm either observing them as an anthropologist observes the social habits of an exotic band of islanders or I'm crossing the room to talk to the jocks.
Am I belaboring the obvious? Yes. Am I betraying the fact that I personally am more of a "word person" than a musically or spatially intelligent person, in the jargon of Howard Gardner, whom I happen to like and respect because he writes well about those boundaries? Yes. Am I realizing, for the umpteenth time, that my vain attempts at a liberal arts education have not made me into a renaissance man? Sad but true.
Part of the difficulty, I'm sure, is my lack of education in the arts. I haven't studied art, so I don't have much of a vocabulary in which to discuss visual arts. I haven't studied music, so I am similarly handicapped in discussing any period or style of music. My name is Sven and I'm illiterate. (Hi Sven) In both cases, I can have an emotional response, but I can't articulate what caused it or where it fits in the larger scheme of things visual or musical. Maybe there's a 12-step program for people with my problem, but I don't speak their language either.
On the other hand, I have studied writing a little, so I am better equipped to write or talk about it, alright in a kind of a limited way for an off night, and I have studied movement and sport, so I have a vocabulary that's commensurable with it. In short, I guess it's all about me. Or you. Us.
There's a drum circle that meets the first Monday of the month at Central Swingstate Percussion on High Street across from Graceland. Last night there was a nice little group, maybe eight people, that got some hot rhythms going, let me tell you. And I would tell you if I could. You'd have to be there to hear the rhythm move around the circle, pull someone in, build in volume and intensity, change a little here and there, accents coming and going, and eventually come down again, get real quiet, and disappear. One of the proprietors of the shop was giving a tiny bit of instruction to help us novice hand drummers, but 99 percent of it is experiential, whatever that means. You grab a drum, sit down, listen, try your hand, pick up on something, see where it goes and go with it. What can I say?
Monday, November 07, 2005
Bittersweet
Jessi Golly is on his way to Tucson for the next leg of his epic journey across America. His friend Kiley is expecting him Wednesday. Get on the bus, Gus, don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.
There were only minor complications. To use the October 20 ticket, he had to check in at the Greyhound station and pay $10 to have it changed for departure November 7. No problem. Sometimes you get inconsistent information from different people at 1-800-houndog. This bus stops in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, El Paso, and Phoenix instead of Dayton, Nashville, Dallas, and El Paso, six of one half dozen of the other. Arrival in Tucson is about the same time early Wednesday morning.
A good place for people-watching, the bus station. All sizes, shapes, colors, ages; arrivals, departures, transients. There are a million stories in the naked city. They announced the arrival at gate 14, and Jessi got in line with his backpack. Big hug. "It was good to have you home for a while. Have a good trip. Be careful; you know what you're doing." Handshake. Turn and walk out to Fourth Street, go east on Town, return a DVD at the library, go north on Grant, hit the interstate to the office, go to work as usual.
The soundtrack? WCBE played a rock version of a Hindu chant, then a very up-tempo thing called "Night Train" about lunch in Shanghai, sticky rice, business travelers, Westerners on holiday, and if it stays on schedule there will be breakfast in Bangkok. Jessi's journey will be slightly less exotic than that, but some of us can romanticize anything.
Sunday he went to see a family friend in Clintonville (see Your Worst Nightmare, August 15) and came back with a couple of good photos of a young man who went to war. Later another friend came over to our house and stayed for supper. We had a batch of bread in the oven and a cauldron of spicy bean soup in the crock pot. Gven and I were tired and ready for a black and tan after grouting the floor of the den, the dark green ceramic tile floor that Gven and Jessi laid last week. It looks great, by the way. It was pleasant to sit in the dining room and eat a meal with the bright and animated Aura and Jessi, who have know each other since fourth grade and are still fast friends.
Saturday Gven did a yoga workshop at Picturesque College with her friend Jody. It was a near-perfect day outside, so Jess and I took the canoe out on Hoover Reservoir. It's a simple matter to hoist the canoe from its sawhorses and tie it on top of the truck, drive a couple of miles to the southwestern edge of Northeasterville, push off from the muddy bank, and paddle around for an hour and a half. Well worth taking a break from yard work and other chores to get out on the water, listen to the geese, watch the blue heron, talk a little, but mainly just float and paddle on a partly cloudy Indian Summer day that defies description. Then we hauled the canoe out of the water and back to its sawhorses, and we climbed up on the roof to sweep leaves and clean gutters.
Pretty mundane stuff, but as I said, some people can romanticize anything. Let's see, he's probably crossing the Mississippi right about now.
There were only minor complications. To use the October 20 ticket, he had to check in at the Greyhound station and pay $10 to have it changed for departure November 7. No problem. Sometimes you get inconsistent information from different people at 1-800-houndog. This bus stops in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, El Paso, and Phoenix instead of Dayton, Nashville, Dallas, and El Paso, six of one half dozen of the other. Arrival in Tucson is about the same time early Wednesday morning.
A good place for people-watching, the bus station. All sizes, shapes, colors, ages; arrivals, departures, transients. There are a million stories in the naked city. They announced the arrival at gate 14, and Jessi got in line with his backpack. Big hug. "It was good to have you home for a while. Have a good trip. Be careful; you know what you're doing." Handshake. Turn and walk out to Fourth Street, go east on Town, return a DVD at the library, go north on Grant, hit the interstate to the office, go to work as usual.
The soundtrack? WCBE played a rock version of a Hindu chant, then a very up-tempo thing called "Night Train" about lunch in Shanghai, sticky rice, business travelers, Westerners on holiday, and if it stays on schedule there will be breakfast in Bangkok. Jessi's journey will be slightly less exotic than that, but some of us can romanticize anything.
Sunday he went to see a family friend in Clintonville (see Your Worst Nightmare, August 15) and came back with a couple of good photos of a young man who went to war. Later another friend came over to our house and stayed for supper. We had a batch of bread in the oven and a cauldron of spicy bean soup in the crock pot. Gven and I were tired and ready for a black and tan after grouting the floor of the den, the dark green ceramic tile floor that Gven and Jessi laid last week. It looks great, by the way. It was pleasant to sit in the dining room and eat a meal with the bright and animated Aura and Jessi, who have know each other since fourth grade and are still fast friends.
Saturday Gven did a yoga workshop at Picturesque College with her friend Jody. It was a near-perfect day outside, so Jess and I took the canoe out on Hoover Reservoir. It's a simple matter to hoist the canoe from its sawhorses and tie it on top of the truck, drive a couple of miles to the southwestern edge of Northeasterville, push off from the muddy bank, and paddle around for an hour and a half. Well worth taking a break from yard work and other chores to get out on the water, listen to the geese, watch the blue heron, talk a little, but mainly just float and paddle on a partly cloudy Indian Summer day that defies description. Then we hauled the canoe out of the water and back to its sawhorses, and we climbed up on the roof to sweep leaves and clean gutters.
Pretty mundane stuff, but as I said, some people can romanticize anything. Let's see, he's probably crossing the Mississippi right about now.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Good night and good luck
The movie was a little disappointing, or was it the rest of the evening, it's hard to tell. No review is objective, and who would want an object's analysis of another object anyway? I'm not sure what I was expecting, having watched another Clooney vehicle, "Ocean's 11," a few nights earlier, but this one didn't quite deliver.
I appreciate the distress call Clooney et al are sending and the period re-creation of circa 1953. Black and white film works well for this picture of cramped smoke-filled rooms in the masculine domain of the TV news business in its heyday. I appreciate the symbolic omnipresence of cigarettes in that world - smoke-screens, smoke and mirrors, smoke signals, where there's smoke there's fire - and the body language of men in suits lighting up next to their Underwood typewriters and big microphones.
I get the storyline of compromises built on compromises in the big-time game of journalism qua entertainment qua advertising, and I understand the self-preservation through self-censorship that occurs within the battle against censorship. Pick your battles, etc. And anyone with a pulse will get the unstated parallel with the media 50 years later, still tip-toeing around a ruthless crusade of lies and insinuations against civil liberties and those who have the cojones to exercise them. Murrow does not come across as an optimist. Good night and good luck indeed.
Somehow I failed to suspend disbelief and feel like it was Murrow I was watching and not David Strathairn, an actor I respect from his many John Sayles movies (Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, Matewan, Brother from Another Planet, etc.). Frank Langella was excellent as CBS boss William Paley, the tallest guy in the best suit. George Clooney and Robert Downey, Jr., gave confincing portrayals of square-jawed pretty faces in gray flannel suits. Joseph McCarthy gave a superb performance as himself. I'd like to see the same movie made by John Sayles with a tenth of the money, but that would be a John Sayles film, rather than an imitation of one.
The green tea and berry pie at the Radio Cafe were tasty, but the waitperson behind the glass case was so loud I couldn't hear myself think. Maybe that's her way of telling us to go away, it's closing time. And it wasn't her fault the ensuing conversation was amorphous and my two companions and I had trouble understanding one another's critique of public education. It was probably my fault for trying to steer the conversation in that direction. So I drove home wallowing in the inability of three otherwise articulate people to communicate beyond the anecdotal retelling of their personal histories. When I was in fourth grade, blah blah blah. Oh yeah, well when I was in sixth grade, blah blah blah. Yes, but when I was in eleventh grade, blah blah blah. Maybe the movie had more of an effect than I give it credit for, since the title sums up my attitude at the end of the evening.
I appreciate the distress call Clooney et al are sending and the period re-creation of circa 1953. Black and white film works well for this picture of cramped smoke-filled rooms in the masculine domain of the TV news business in its heyday. I appreciate the symbolic omnipresence of cigarettes in that world - smoke-screens, smoke and mirrors, smoke signals, where there's smoke there's fire - and the body language of men in suits lighting up next to their Underwood typewriters and big microphones.
I get the storyline of compromises built on compromises in the big-time game of journalism qua entertainment qua advertising, and I understand the self-preservation through self-censorship that occurs within the battle against censorship. Pick your battles, etc. And anyone with a pulse will get the unstated parallel with the media 50 years later, still tip-toeing around a ruthless crusade of lies and insinuations against civil liberties and those who have the cojones to exercise them. Murrow does not come across as an optimist. Good night and good luck indeed.
Somehow I failed to suspend disbelief and feel like it was Murrow I was watching and not David Strathairn, an actor I respect from his many John Sayles movies (Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, Matewan, Brother from Another Planet, etc.). Frank Langella was excellent as CBS boss William Paley, the tallest guy in the best suit. George Clooney and Robert Downey, Jr., gave confincing portrayals of square-jawed pretty faces in gray flannel suits. Joseph McCarthy gave a superb performance as himself. I'd like to see the same movie made by John Sayles with a tenth of the money, but that would be a John Sayles film, rather than an imitation of one.
The green tea and berry pie at the Radio Cafe were tasty, but the waitperson behind the glass case was so loud I couldn't hear myself think. Maybe that's her way of telling us to go away, it's closing time. And it wasn't her fault the ensuing conversation was amorphous and my two companions and I had trouble understanding one another's critique of public education. It was probably my fault for trying to steer the conversation in that direction. So I drove home wallowing in the inability of three otherwise articulate people to communicate beyond the anecdotal retelling of their personal histories. When I was in fourth grade, blah blah blah. Oh yeah, well when I was in sixth grade, blah blah blah. Yes, but when I was in eleventh grade, blah blah blah. Maybe the movie had more of an effect than I give it credit for, since the title sums up my attitude at the end of the evening.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Don't you hit me with that cosmic debris!
(With thanks to Frank Z.)
Being a collection of random junk found floating through the somatosphere during the last 48 hours or so.
1. The meteors I've been seeing on my nightly walk with the family dog, Dali Golly, apparently are visible to folks on the Continent too. Some of them have had a little different reaction, however, taking them for UFOs instead of making a wish, as I did. But the Germans are always ahead of the curve (or I'm always behind it). So, what do you make of it, Scully? "These people are obviously delusional, Mulder."
2. While drifting in or out of twilight sleep the other night, I had the following very brief dream: I'm standing on a beach, walking slowly toward the water, and there are several other people standing to my right and left. I don't see their faces and can't recognize them, only their half-lit, shadowy figures moving even slower than I am.
Both Gven's relatives and mine have talked about a beach reunion in 2006; am I anticipating that?
3. Another, longer dream last night: I'm at a party at my old friend Hank's parents' large, rambling suburban house in Michigan. His dad is actively circulating from room to room, talking with everyone and making us all feel welcome. I don't recall seeing Hank himself at the party, although his presence was somehow evident. I don't recall other individuals either, but there were lots of people there. The space was long and open, uncrowded enough for people to flow freely from room to room, and the adjoining rooms were a step or two up or down on both ends of the one I was in. There was plenty of food and drink set out on low tables, which Hank's dad kept inviting us to have and enjoy. I woke up with the old pop song "Friday on my Mind" by the Easy Beats (thank you, Lulu and Kevin) on my mind.
Hank and I spent a lot of time together in the mid-seventies, then we went our separate ways, him to Purdue and then the Navy, me to Oberlin and other adventures. I haven't seen him since the early nineties, when we both had little kids. Now we send each other Christmas cards about our families growing up; maybe something is telling me to get in touch.
4. The mother and daughter duo in my Thursday night beginning taiji class seemed to enjoy the last meeting of the quarter. As usual, a full roster of students in September dwindled as the weeks went by, and by week seven they were the only ones left. We practiced Basic Movement and clarified a couple of their questions about the mechanics of shifting the weight and turning the torso in order to fully focus on doing one thing at a time. Then we tried out the first few moves of a form they hadn't done before to give them a sense of what it's like at the next level. The mom said she's going to do the Basic class again, and the daughter is going to think about it.
That's the way it goes. Last summer there were three very enthusiastic, purposeful, inquisitive women, around my age or older, in the Saturday morning class that met outside in the park. At the time they were all anxious to start up again in the fall, and I haven't seen them since. A youngish man who practiced diligently all spring quarter disappeared during the summer, then resurfaced this fall. You never know.
Being a collection of random junk found floating through the somatosphere during the last 48 hours or so.
1. The meteors I've been seeing on my nightly walk with the family dog, Dali Golly, apparently are visible to folks on the Continent too. Some of them have had a little different reaction, however, taking them for UFOs instead of making a wish, as I did. But the Germans are always ahead of the curve (or I'm always behind it). So, what do you make of it, Scully? "These people are obviously delusional, Mulder."
2. While drifting in or out of twilight sleep the other night, I had the following very brief dream: I'm standing on a beach, walking slowly toward the water, and there are several other people standing to my right and left. I don't see their faces and can't recognize them, only their half-lit, shadowy figures moving even slower than I am.
Both Gven's relatives and mine have talked about a beach reunion in 2006; am I anticipating that?
3. Another, longer dream last night: I'm at a party at my old friend Hank's parents' large, rambling suburban house in Michigan. His dad is actively circulating from room to room, talking with everyone and making us all feel welcome. I don't recall seeing Hank himself at the party, although his presence was somehow evident. I don't recall other individuals either, but there were lots of people there. The space was long and open, uncrowded enough for people to flow freely from room to room, and the adjoining rooms were a step or two up or down on both ends of the one I was in. There was plenty of food and drink set out on low tables, which Hank's dad kept inviting us to have and enjoy. I woke up with the old pop song "Friday on my Mind" by the Easy Beats (thank you, Lulu and Kevin) on my mind.
Hank and I spent a lot of time together in the mid-seventies, then we went our separate ways, him to Purdue and then the Navy, me to Oberlin and other adventures. I haven't seen him since the early nineties, when we both had little kids. Now we send each other Christmas cards about our families growing up; maybe something is telling me to get in touch.
4. The mother and daughter duo in my Thursday night beginning taiji class seemed to enjoy the last meeting of the quarter. As usual, a full roster of students in September dwindled as the weeks went by, and by week seven they were the only ones left. We practiced Basic Movement and clarified a couple of their questions about the mechanics of shifting the weight and turning the torso in order to fully focus on doing one thing at a time. Then we tried out the first few moves of a form they hadn't done before to give them a sense of what it's like at the next level. The mom said she's going to do the Basic class again, and the daughter is going to think about it.
That's the way it goes. Last summer there were three very enthusiastic, purposeful, inquisitive women, around my age or older, in the Saturday morning class that met outside in the park. At the time they were all anxious to start up again in the fall, and I haven't seen them since. A youngish man who practiced diligently all spring quarter disappeared during the summer, then resurfaced this fall. You never know.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
meteors
I saw another shooting star last night, the second one in three nights. It streaked in an arc across the southern sky just like the one Monday nighat. This time I was standing in the back yard after suppere, checking in with the garden. It's kind of neat to witness something like that, out of the dark blue, as it were.
Is there a well-known meteor shower happening now? I'm not in the habit of checking on current events in the sky, although I read somewhere that Mars and Venus are both visible right after sunset. I should listen to Block and Bird on "Earth and Sky" on the radio.
So I looked at Earth and Sky online, and they list the major annual meteor showers, of which there are two around this time of year:
Those don't sound like what I saw, Agent Mulder, but I know I saw something. "This man is obviously delusional," Scully added tersely. I'll be out there again tonight to see what I can see. Any naturalistic (or other) explanations?
Is there a well-known meteor shower happening now? I'm not in the habit of checking on current events in the sky, although I read somewhere that Mars and Venus are both visible right after sunset. I should listen to Block and Bird on "Earth and Sky" on the radio.
So I looked at Earth and Sky online, and they list the major annual meteor showers, of which there are two around this time of year:
October 21, Orionids. This is a modest shower but one that performs consistently. Its ZHR at maximum is 25, and with the radiant rising conveniently around 10 o'clock, meteors can be seen all night. Orionid meteors are zippy and faint, so if there is a Moon in the sky, you may as well pass on this one. You need a dark sky and dedicated vigilance.
November 5, Taurids. The Taurids is one of the humblest of the annual showers with a ZHR at maximum of only 10. And yet, I recall one early morning observing session with my telescope when I unintentionally stumbled upon an active display of meteors issuing from a region near the Pleiades, the shower's radiant. In one hour I counted a dozen or so meteors. These meteors are generally slow and fairly bright, and produce the occasional fireball.
Those don't sound like what I saw, Agent Mulder, but I know I saw something. "This man is obviously delusional," Scully added tersely. I'll be out there again tonight to see what I can see. Any naturalistic (or other) explanations?
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