MontlakeBlog

And now a great artist!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:02:38 GMT

Larry, the crazy guy who drives the bus that takes me to work every day, had what he called a brilliant idea last week. We (ie, the riders) would draw pictures of old Larry, and fax them into the bus office, where bus company officials would judge same and declare winners.

Unlike you, I cannot draw AT ALL. But I like Larry, and I was certain that no one would enter this contest. So, I took a picture of him one day when I was getting on the bus, and played with it in Photoshop Elements. You might not know that most photo editing applications have buttons and commands that can convert your ordinary pictures into Great Art. I even saw an Impressionist tool, several years ago, but it doesn't appear on any of my editing applications now.

Anyway, I made it into a sketch. Faxing wouldn't allow color, so that made the most sense.

And, of course, I won. Has Photoshop ever lost? My only "drawing" in more than sixty years of life, and I win first prize. There were five other entries, by the way, all "real."

E-reading, the phenomenon

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:41:44 GMT

Unless you're interested in the ebook business, you might not be aware that there's a war going on, with lots of battles. A recent one pits Amazon against major book publishers.

That battle has the Amazon principle of $10 a digital copy against the publisher's desire to set their own pricing. One thing that struck me is that I have paid $15 for more than one book that fits in the supposed $10 category, which suggests that publishers have always had the right to set a price, but then there might be details and changes of which I am not aware.

I never gave this much thought before, but the fight has got me thinking about it. I think that Amazon's position was probably declared to make the ebook experience as attractive as possible. After all, until Kindle there was no ebook experience (practically speaking). I would say that a typical new "best seller" sort of book is marked at $25 by the publisher, sells at $16-17 at major book stores, and then appears on Kindle for $10. It all seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Amazon's point is probably that it costs "nothing" to produce an ebook, so why bring its price up into the printed book realm? The problem with that stance is that we're not in an ebook world yet. The ebook version of a book is still a side-line. The publisher is printing a good number of copies of physical books, so the savings that he would see if he did NOT (and only made ebooks available) isn't happening. And, as several publishers have argued, their role is more than just printing a book. They edit and advertise, to name just a couple functions of which they've reminded us.

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Winter, 10 Feb 2010

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:49:18 GMT

I haven't written of our winter storms here in the Washington, DC area. This is not North Dakota (where I lived through sixth grade), but a few times in the past couple weeks you might find that hard to prove.

As I write this, we're finally seeing the "little" storm that was supposed to start yesterday. It's a "blowing snow" storm, what we North Dakotans would call a 'blizzard'. There is, in fact, little snow falling on the ground, but it's moving east in the air somehow. I guess it will fall somewhere.

I'm off work again today, even though I don't directly work for the government (which has been shut down since last week). When I first got here, the tendency to shut the city down over apparently minor weather events seemed pretty silly to me, but having lived here more than ten years, I hold that the density of the population here simply argues for keeping as many cars off the roads as possible during these bad times.

It's annoying to be shut in for so long, but I got out on Monday when I went to work (we were sent home), stopping in a store on the way back. And as the owner of the world's largest private collection of DVDs, I'm not having any trouble finding things to do.

In fact, I just made a movie. I set the camera in my window, let it run for five minutes or so, and then used Windows Movie Maker to add a bit of music. Getting the equipment set up was the only hard part. Creating the movie took only about five minutes. Unfortunately, the resulting size of the finished 3-minute product is greater than the size of an individual file allowed on SkyDrive, so I used one of my video utilities to greatly compress the result (the picture suffers the most). It isn't Antonioni, but you get the idea.

Take a look at what I'm seeing out my window [more]

Winter at Colonial Williamsburg

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:41:50 GMT

It is a sometimes-realized dream to go to Colonial Williamsburg during the winter. I think that I came to this understanding after experiencing the place during the summer (it's hot and humid in this part of the country, and if anyone's going to Williamsburg, they're probably doing it at this time), plus the fact that I like cold weather. I'd like to say that I make it each year but I don't.

Part of the dream is to hit it on a day when it snows. One of the few folks sharing my inn this time noted that she has been going to Williamsburg 2-3 times a year (from West Virginia) since 1974 and had never encountered snow. Until this time.

I was ill prepared for this trip. I've been living with flu (and, perhaps, pneumonia) for a few weeks now, and the week before I left (on a Friday) I felt I had to work a full day because I had the opportunity for a week's worth of very rare training. The result of this was not only did I not get the rest I needed but didn't have the energy to plan anything. But I lucked into a couple good choices, anyway.

Snow was predicted for that weekend even before I left. I pondered for days whether to rent a car (my usual mode of Williamsburg transportation) or take the train. As the certainty of snow increased, I leaned toward the train. My only hesitation had been that I've traveled there via train twice before, and it is boring. It would be one thing if it took the scheduled three hours, but the five hours of this trip is more typical. On the plus side, if airplanes could be as comfortable as Business Class on an Amtrak train, then the airlines would go out of business. You can almost make a seat into a bed, and still not disturb the person sitting in back of you!

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Recovering from flu, 2010

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 06:07:02 GMT

A friend at work responded, when I reported that I wouldn't be going in that day—again, that she remembered I'd had the flu about a year ago. I think I was still claiming that I have just a cold, at that time, and I really thought so. On Thursday, I became very aware it wasn't a cold, and Friday and Saturday were miserable days with all the true respiratory flu symptoms.

This morning, I went looking for any blog entries about having the flu a year ago and, sure enough, there are a couple. I'm simply amazed at the difference in symptoms.

As you can read, in that earlier incident the symptoms were all dramatically apparent, both coming and going. This time, nothing of the sort. I'd convinced myself I had a cold, only taking off the time from work because I had it available. By Friday, I couldn't have gone to work, anyway. And the whole fever thing was different. Last year, it was dramatic and constant until it broke. This year, it came and went as it felt like, sometimes not staying for more than a couple minutes. Now, on Sunday, I feel pretty good but not perfect, and will spend the day with guiltless entertainment.

You see, when you're sick, you have few obligations. If you're conscious enough to read or watch a screen, then you can choose whatever you want. For sure, I didn't have the power of concentration that any of my several subjects of study would have required, so I pigged out on pure couch-fare. Here are some of the things I encountered.

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The title of my next book

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:46:12 GMT

My bus driver and I got to talking about taxes, this morning, trading stories about our encounters with the IRS and other financial woes.

"If we don't watch it," I said, "we're going to be out on the street together."

"Yeah," he said. "Standing in the same soup line. You watching my back, I yours. Two spoons, please, and one big bowl."

Now, he's a recording engineer

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:43:57 GMT

I have written of my first encounter with the writing of Lord Dunsany, an experience that is now forty years ago. When I took up reading his work again (after a couple decades), I realized that one problem with a modern appreciation of his writing is that it requires a somewhat "slower" reading than I think we're currently used to. Much of his work is simply prose poetry. As Neil Gaiman has written about Dunsany's work: "So trust the book. Trust the poetry and the strangeness, and the magic of the ink, and drink it slowly." When I began this blog, I played with a couple ways to slow down our reading, and provided links to the experiments:

Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives the Dawn
Charon
Flying to Mars
How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant in Otford-Under-the-Wold

At some point at least ten years ago, I had another idea. If his work was available in audio form, the slowing of its perception could be dictated by the reader. I remember contacting an audio production engineer who was a friend of a friend. "Well, just record on to your computer," he suggested when he'd heard the very modest goals I had. Good idea, I thought, and cheap! So I obtained some sort of microphone and gave it a shot.

In those days, you plugged a microphone into your computer sound card. It must be do-able, but I spent more than a couple years playing with this technique, and I remember that the only sound I ever recorded was a horribly distorted rumble after turning the various volume controls WAY UP. At least it was something.

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It's snowing!

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:25:41 GMT

I went looking through my blog for snow stories, as I sit here occasionally looking out the window on what will be the snow storm of the century here in the Washington, DC area. Now, of course we're only a few years into the century, but it sounds good to say so.

The story I was looking for isn't there (and so I'll write it, although I know I have already—somewhere), but I did come across a gorgeous poem I quoted a couple years ago. Even if you don't like poetry, give this one a try.

In just the few times I've scanned the view outside my window, I've seen:
- Some workers from southern climes paid to clear our sidewalk. They began just as the snow storm began in earnest, and although they did a fine job, by the time they had finished the sidewalk on this side of the building, it was nearly covered again. I haven't seen them since.
- Someone across the street evidently felt he just had to go somewhere, and spent about a half-hour digging his car out from the drifts around it.
- On a more alarming note, my neighborhood is home to a few wheelchair-bound folks who have whichever of the diseases makes you unable to speak or walk or do much of anything but control a lever on your wheelchair that makes you go forward, left, right, and, I presume, backward. By the time I looked out the window, one of them had ventured beyond the covering of his apartment building, and was stuck in deep snow just feet away from said building. Four or five guys had gathered with a couple shovels, and were digging out a way for him to get back but, oh my god, what was he trying to do?

About 25 years ago, Shira and I were living in our Aloha St house in Seattle, having recently left our 8th Ave NE house, then occupied by Shira's brother and sister-in-law. I see now via Bing Maps that the distance is 8.5 miles.

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Connections--they're not just James Burke anymore

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:14:39 GMT

It must have been last weekend that I was surfing, looking for a theme to research. Something made me think of the Sheridan family. Here's how I came to know of them.

When I got back from Ireland in the fall of 2001, I was high on Irish, and I soon noticed that a film festival at Kennedy Center was featuring European films, two or three of which were Irish. I went to see them. The star of both was a young performer making his first films—Cillian Murphy. The one that really knocked me out was called Disco Pigs. Wow. Murphy and Elaine Cassidy were stupendous, but it was the film that was so dramatically unusual.

In trying to get a copy, I chanced upon the play script for the two person club routine (by Enda Walsh) that someone had seen and thought might make a good film. I bought it. It is nearly incomprehensible. Written in city of Cork dialect (and, evidently, intended for performance only there), it is almost impossible to see a connection with the film. But the film script was also done by Walsh, so the vision was secure. And the film was made by first-time director Kirsten Sheridan. It was done as a true indie, filmed in Dublin wherever they could find some space, probably for just a few thousand dollars.

In researching Ms Sheridan, I noticed that her dad ('da', in the brogue) is Jim Sheridan, a somewhat known film maker about my age. So, it was in the family.

It took forever to get a copy of Disco Pigs, finally buying one from London (and having to convert my equipment to all-world in the process—thanks!). Eventually, it was released in the US, and I sent my UK copy to an Irish correspondent who knew of Cillian Murphy.

Then, in 2002 Sheridan released his made-in-America film—In America—to rave reviews, and he and his daughters (co-writers) were nominated for that year's Academy Award for screen writing.

You might know Sheridan, too, as the director of the well reviewed film Brothers [more]

Romeo and the school girls

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:00:54 GMT

I was telling this story last night at a party, and as it is one of my favorites, I expected to see that I have already entered it in this blog. Nope, so here it is.

A couple years ago, Folger did a production of Romeo & Juliet. It got a fair amount of publicity just because it used actors more or less the ages depicted in the play, which means actors quite a bit younger than we're used to seeing.

My subscription was for such and such a night, but when a friend showed up from out of town, I asked him whether he'd like to see it during his stay (before my subscription). Sure, so we went.

It was good, and the use of "kids" in the parts was quite effective, at least because they were good actors. The staging added a couple of what I'll call "dirty jokes" to the production, accomplished through gesture or pantomime, and greatly reflective of the level of amusement in which youngsters see sexual matters.

About a week later, I walked past the Library of Congress on my way to Folger for my subscription performance, and I was stunned to see a couple school buses disgorging kids, evidently on their way to attend that night's production. Oh, no, my heart sank. Folger only holds a couple hundred people, and it looked as if a quarter of them would be school girls. It was a good thing I had already seen the production, because I didn't know how quiet the kids would be.

Not quiet at all, actually. They got into the play so early that the actors somehow managed to double the number of dirty jokes, each more appreciated than the previous. The fellow playing Mercutio—Romeo's best friend—was a particularly outgoing and handsome young man, and the audience girls fell madly in love with him. It was much like seeing the crowd watching The Beatles in that marvelous film A Hard Day's Night. Mercutio dies before the play's end, and you should have heard the scream go up— "No!!!!"

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Tony does it again!

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:24:36 GMT

I didn't know tonight's Concert Opera selection—Gounod's Faust (ca 1860), although it was one of the operas most often performed during the 20th century. Not sure where I was.

But I knew it was "old," so didn't have much hope for it. I was certain the performance would be top notch—they always have been, and that would be good enough.

And, true, the tragedy of the story is that the babe gets knocked up and everyone sings (beautifully!) that's she's bad. Yawn. She's not in the least bad, and it happens all the time.

But this one's good. It features the devil (in a great part), the usual heroic tenors, and a couple babes (one playing a guy). The music was wonderful and the singers—oh, my gosh, they're good. I won't mention any of them (I doubt they're well known), but you can look at their web site.

Anthony Walker is certainly building a terrific reputation, and I've written of him before. Let's add one more kudo—I was marveling at the supratitles, at how modern they were, and several times this was really effective, and I see in the program that Mr Walker did those, too!

He's going to go traveling a bit during the year, so catch him if you can. I'm tempted for the Butterfly in Santa Fe in July. We'll see.

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Foreign Babes in Beijing

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:15:08 GMT

"You are welcome to come back to China forever."

So speaks the customs official to Rachel DeWoskin as she leaves China after five years. Echoes of the wondrously beautiful "We will fight no more forever" attributed to Chief Joseph, the expression ends a delightful book (Foreign Babes in Beijing) that has been around for a few years now. If I had not seen Ms DeWoskin at a talk recently, I never would have taken the book seriously enough to read it, and I hope I can make amends by this review.

She went to China after graduation from college, unsure (as are so many) what she should be doing with her life. Her father was an academic associated with the Chinese language (even I knew of him), so she had had much experience of China all her life. It was a good time to arrive (early 1990s), as China was welcoming attention from the West. She would experience the best of times and the worst of times, as the year before she left NATO/American planes bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The reaction to this was amazingly similar to the Chinese reaction in Taibei to the establishment of relations between the US government and mainland China, which I witnessed in the winter of 1978. Both had seriously orchestrated riots, with great passionate outburts from the average Chinese. Both situations were dangerous for Americans to be on the street, but Rachel and her friends joined Chinese friends at a restaurant to argue over the incident. Among those Chinese friends was the "father of Chinese rock and roll," Cui Jian, whose concert at Seattle's Folklife Festival had electrified me a few years earlier.

The title, incidentally, was not her own creation. It was the name of a soap opera (more or less) in which she starred as the wild babe (in contrast to the sweet blonde, played by a German, by the way) who stole a heroic young man away from his model Chinese wife.

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Update on the Kindle

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:19:44 GMT

I've had my Kindle for two years now. It even has a new name: 'Classic', due to the introduction of a newer model this year. Browsing through my Manage My Kindle section on Amazon, I see that I have purchased about 75 books during that time (and have read all but a half-dozen).

One type of book that is important to me is the technical book common to the computer industry in which I work. I've bought dozens of these over the past ten years or so. It did not seem to me, as I became used to my Kindle, that such a book would do well as an ebook. Certainly, Kindle books often have lots of formatting problems, and we're just talking about paragraphs!

But I wanted to see for myself, and bought a techie book last year. It wasn't as bad as I had feared but neither was it good enough to do again.

Subsequently, Amazon introduced its DX model, which has a screen nearly 10 inches diagonally, and this is the first model that should be considered for anything requiring formatting.

The other day, Amazon introduced a PC application to read Kindle books. I yawned. As more than one reviewer has said, who wants to read books on a computer? But I got to thinking about whether this application would solve the formatting problem, and because one of its purposes seems to be to host Kindle books already purchased for that device, it was easy enough for me to test. The practicality of the test is enhanced by the fact that I have a Tablet PC, which can therefore rotate its screen to be page-like. I installed the Amazon applicaton on that machine, opened my techie book, took a screenshot, and then re-did the process on the Kindle Classic. You can see the results. The Kindle picture is a photograph, because you can't do screenshots.

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She wasn't Marco Polo, but...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:00:24 GMT

I was to meet some friends at Union Station (a huge train station at the heart of Washington, DC), and got there about a half hour before our target time. I moved out of the noisy semi-enclosed space to an area fully outdoors, because it was a lovely evening. There was plenty to watch, as it was commute time, and hundreds of people were either going in or out of the station on their ways home.

An attractive young woman stopped a few feet in front of me, and placed her bag on the raised flower bed similar to the one I was leaning against. I had just been marveling at how nearly EVERYONE spends most of her time staring at her phone (even more than talking on it, although there was no shortage of that phenomenon), and had progressed to wondering what we used to do before the cell phone had become ubiquitous. The young woman stood in profile, and then found her own phone in her bag, and began her conversation. She was not speaking English, and I presumed it was Spanish, but then I saw her gesturing dramatically and forcefully with her left hand and arm, and I listened more closely. Yup—Italian. I then watched more closely and was rewarded with quite a show for the next half-hour. I sincerely resolved to walk up to her and offer to hold the phone up to ear her so that she could use her right hand and arm, too. After all, the poor person at the other end of the line was only getting half of this conversation.

But I didn't. She was still going 45 minutes later as we walked off to dinner.

The evening's event was a casual session with James Fallows, Orville Schell, and Rachel DeWoskin about modern China. DC is having some sort of fairly quiet emphasis on China these days, and this was just one of several similar events I've heard of. Folger (our location) is holding an exhibition of materials reflecting the earliest contact of the West with China, and especially of China's influence on early England.

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Familiarity breeds content

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:13:41 GMT

I just returned from my occasional breakfast at a local Marriott (oh, you don't have several in your neighborhood?). I've been going there for ten years now, and some of the folks who work there have worked there that long or longer. They're all foreigners, although in this town that means they're indistinguishable from anyone else.

In the course of entering, being seated, and (usually) fetching my meal from the buffet, I'll often encounter a half-dozen or more of these folks, and they always greet me and welcome me back. They actually mean it. Yes, the fact that I am a good and consistent tipper is well known among them but considering how little any one of them might realize from said tip, the fact that I'm not a jerk (at least, in their presence) is probably the greater points-earning trait.

I suspect that most people like being recognized. I am not consciously among them. Sometimes, it's not even convenient. For example, when I worked in this neighborhood, I would visit one of the Starbucks (oh, you don't have several in your neighborhood?) at least once a day. It got so that by the time I reached the counter, my quad-tall Americano would be waiting for me. You see, they would see me on the sidewalk on my way in, and begin the barista process. Well, although I can always drink the quad-tall Americano, every now and again I want something different. I went through a phase a few years ago where Starbucks sold a coffee drink made with a good shot of orange flavor. Evidently, I was the only one who ordered it, as it hasn't been available for a long time. I had to go to a different Starbucks to get it—one where they didn't know me (as well).

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A lot of art, all at once

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:23:45 GMT

My usual subscribed performance of the Folger Shakespeare Theatre was on Wednesday evening. But about a week ago I got an offer for a good price on a ticket to National Opera's production of Ariadne auf Naxos, an opera I had only seen once, fifteen or more years ago. Normally, price doesn't determine whether I attend one of these things, but I did three symphonies in October, and it was time to throttle back. I couldn't let the nice price go, and bought a Thursday ticket for the Richard Strauss piece.

Wednesday's Much Ado about Nothing was a huge surprise. The description I'd read suggested something of a hip-hop version set in the modern day, but although it was certainly a multi-cultural production, everything about it worked and worked magnificently. And it's actually a good play. Clearly a comedy, there's also some serious stuff and a great deal of real hurt. While Shakepeare's comedy parts are often skits entirely separate from the rest of the play, we were getting the Dogberry sheriff exhibiting his silliness in the same moments as Hero's heart (and ours) is being broken, stamped on, and ground into the dust of ages.

I have a Branagh filmed version of this play, but I don't recall it being this much fun.

It appeared that about half the black actors are from Jamaica or some similar place. I suppose they might have been affecting the accent but I didn't feel that way, and there was no reason to. There was a softness and goodness about all the folks (but one) represented by these characters that was truly moving.

So, I had about five hours of sleep, went to work, and then that evening attended the performance of Ariadne [more]

Online with the world

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:09:03 GMT

I just had an interesting experience. Browsing through my bookmarks last weekend, I saw that an impressive SharePoint blogger would be doing an online training session today. It was to be live, so one had to be present at the proper time. After thinking about it a bit and its price ($130), I decided to give it a try, and took the afternoon off. I knew that at work I would be interrupted so much the "class" would be worthless.

I got in a bit late, so I evidently missed a certain configuration point, but I was able to view and listen to the instruction without difficulty. At one point, the moderator asked everyone to announce his or her location and time of day, and I present that here:

San Jose CA 10:10 am
Seattle - 10:00 am
Chicago -- 12:00 Noon
Anchorage, Alaska, 9am
Tampa FL 1 pm
Lebanon, MO 12:08pm
New York City 1:08pm
Shanghai 2 am
Green Bay WI 12:08pm
Minneapolis, MN - 12:08pm
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 10:08am
Cambridge MA 1:09pm
Yokosuka,Japan 3:08am
Washington DC 1:08 pm
Dayton Ohio 12:08pm

The instructor (French) was in Shanghai, China (in the middle of the night), and one user was at an Air Force base in Japan, but the rest appear to have been Americans somewhere within the US.

The means of communication was through WebEx, which is a computer sharing environment many folks will have experienced at work or wherever. Microsoft uses something similar to conduct their technical support of my machine, although in this case I was only contacting another machine (they didn't come to me).

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The Best and Brightest

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:19:46 GMT

As a Vietnam veteran of sorts—and a reader—I've had some but not an inordinate amount of interest in reading what others have written about that war. The most impressive book so far has been Harold Moore's We Were Soldiers Once...and Young [don't see the movie], an account by a participant in the Ia Drang battle. Moore's book—bolstered by research and interviews with Vietnamese as well as the normal American research and interviews you would expect—tells the tale of the battle as it was fought. The reasons for fighting have no part in the account, and its value is its authenticity. The simple fact is, whether you want to be in a war or not, the minute you find yourself in one, you can either choose to die right away or attempt to live. Attempting to live usually involves attempting to take the lives of others (identified as "the enemy"). Most soldiers discover the value of being with others in the same boat, and many actions are taken because of group dynamics.

But the questions of why we went to Vietnam were big questions in my day, and in 1972 David Halberstam published his The Best and Brightest, a study of how the war had come to be, and the many factors involved in its escalation. I spent that year and most of the next flying over or around North Vietnam, and I recently decided to read Halberstam's book to see why I was there.

The book, by the way, was one more reminder that the war was considered "over," by the time I reached the area (mid 1971). I certainly did not know that until recently, but the judgment is made because the ground war had been more or less stopped. Evidently, we decided to just continue the air war, and that's what I saw.

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Playing to the peanut gallery

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:57:23 GMT

I am in no way an actor (other than what any person needs to do to get through a day), but I had one minor role during a high school play. I'm reminded of that by today's A Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor.

. [Moss Hart's] best-known play, You Can't Take It With You (1936), is about the eccentric Sycamore family, whose home is full of snakes, ballet dancers, Russian Royalty, candy, and fireworks, and what happens when Alice, the most ordinary daughter of the family, brings her fiancé home to meet everybody. More than 70 years after its release, it is still one of the most popular plays for amateur productions. In 2004 alone, it was produced by more than 500 amateur theaters.

I never saw the play I was in, of course—I was in it. But I've seen it at least once on stage since then, and I have a copy of the wonderful film by Frank Capra, which extended the play in translating it to film. It's a fun play, and there's a lot going on in it, so I suppose that is what fuels its popularity.

I was reminded of plays in the middle of last night. I (and probably dozens or hundreds of my neighbors) was awakened by a woman Speaking Very Loudly on the street as she took that moment to let her boyfriend/husband know just how much he had hurt her at some party from which they were then leaving. I couldn't help admiring her as an actress, thinking how impressive such a performance would be on a real stage. I'm not implying that she was making anything up, but it's the passion and power of what she was expressing that every actor attempts in that role when she gets the chance.

What did interest me, though, was the fact that the script was not very good. Here it was a real emotional outburst where all words would have come from the broken heart, but too many of them were poor choices and detracted from the effect of her outburst. Amazing to realize that even real people can use a Moss Hart...

More on the concert circuit

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:39:39 GMT

As I left Kennedy Center yesterday evening (after a late afternoon concert), I realized that it is possible I could see "all" the top classical performers of my day, before I leave this town (in whatever way that happens). It helps, of course, that no two people would agree on who is on that list.

Yesterday's concert was by Murray Perahia, an American pianist of whom I've heard good things. He was wonderful (but they all are, by the time they get to perform on that stage), and my seat wasn't more than ten feet away from the Steinway. In fact, I was distinctly hearing a stereo effect, where bass notes seemed on one side and treble on the other. Impossible, but there it was. Don't know how the other 3,000 people felt, but I was in heaven.

He played the old guys, and we loved it. Bach (Partitas), Beethoven (a late sonata), Schumann (some children's music), and Chopin (primarily mazurkas). The Beethoven was by far the best, having a complexity fitting the master. I'm coming to Bach late in life, having early declared any music earlier than Beethoven not worth listening to (especially Mozart). Schumann can do much better than yesterday's selection. And Chopin is, well, Chopin. No complexity, just loud, lush, melodic overload of Romantic emotion. Certainly, the way you want to end a concert.

I like to buy whatever the artist is selling at these concerts, so picked up Perahia's second (of two) releases of the Bach Partitas. The piano will never sound like it did yesterday, but I'll get by...

How the world has changed

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:49:42 GMT

The famous computer programmer Charles Petzold is spending much of 2009 researching and writing on cultural aspects of the year 1859. Why? That was the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, 150 years ago.

I think 1859 might be regarded as one of these unduly significant years. At first it seems unpromising, being relatively free of screaming front-page headlines. Perhaps the most famous event of 1859 was John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and his subsequent execution. The 1859 event with the greatest long-term impact might very well be the beginning of the American petroleum industry with a commercial well in Pennsylvania.

But 1859 weighs heavy in history in quite a different way: with the publication of a number of profoundly influential books, mostly in England.

What number of profoundly influential books am I talking about precisely? Well, if you want to be picky about it, just two: On Liberty and Origin of Species, and I don’t think anyone would deny how these books both heralded and shaped the modern age.

He gets to that John Brown raid in his most recent article. It is a fine exposition of the state of feeling in the United States just before the Civil War. Indeed, he shows how Brown's action (and, perhaps, reaction) was a direct cause for that war.

In this improbable life that has brought me to live in the American East Coast, I have visited Harper's Ferry a couple times, and although still a sleepy little town, it's an interesting visit with a fine presentation of the historical event. An early blog entry leads to some photographs of the area.

Incidentally, a fine but underrated Ang Lee film that depicts some of the "free state" controversy Petzold mentions is [more]

The 2009 Kennedy Center Honors

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:50:58 GMT
Anyone can go to the Kennedy Center here in Washington, DC, of course. Just buy a ticket. But you can also become a member, something intended for folks who live here. Smithsonian does the same thing. As a result, you get notice throughout the year of things going on, perhaps a bit earlier than public notice.

I'm pretty sure that I've been notified of Kennedy Center Honors, in years past. I've not been moved to act upon such an invitation, both because it seems a bit too formal for me, and presumably isn't actually a performance. You'll know better than I, because the show gets broadcast about a month later on PBS.

But the other evening I had taken my monthly newsletter to dinner, and I opened to an article on this year's honorees. Oh, my goodness. Each one is someone at the top of my list of favorite performers. I quickly looked to see what I'd have to do to get a ticket, but the answer was already printed in the newsletter: "Sold Out." Oh, really.

There has seemed to be a political element in these selections, but of course that's only my opinion. If so, it's working on the right side this year. Bruce Springsteen—who should have had this honor long before several of those already chosen—has worked hard for Democratic candidates for at least eight years, and had the honor of opening (and closing) the Lincoln Memorial concert to honor Barack Obama, president-elect, that I had the very great pleasure of attending. Along with a half-million of my closest friends.

I'm genuinely sorry to be missing this event, but that won't stop me from being proud of what my town sometimes does for my country...

The Nobel Peace Prize

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:18:57 GMT
I heard the news about Obama this morning as I was leaving for work. Like everyone—including our president—I was stunned. I like the man, but he really hasn't done anything yet.

Then it hit me. There's something very important on his desk at the moment, and it's been there long enough to have affected the five men who make the decision about the prize. He has been asked to extend and enlarge the war in Afghanistan. Only the generals want that (oh, and hard-line conservatives, of course), and the American public is increasingly against it. What to do.

Of course, I'm much affected by the fact that I am reading David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, a book detailing how the United States got involved in the Vietnam war, a war—like that of Afghanistan—that almost everyone agreed couldn't be won. It's a very depressing read but I'm soldiering on.

Can a puzzled winner of one of the world's most prestigious honors turn from that honor and escalate the war, as Johnson did after Kennedy's assassination? We'll see.

A hundred--maybe a thousand--violins

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:06:41 GMT
If there is a Symphony 101, it could well be represented by tonight's National Symphony Orchestra program.

I went to hear Brahms' First Piano Concerto, perhaps for the first time live (but I seemed to know it well enough to accompany the pianist). But the real surprise was the first piece: Bohuslav Martinu: Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca. Although I had never heard of this guy, he's well represented in the current recording catalog, so you probably know him. Fairly modern (our piece was from the early 1950s), the modern touches are still very much within a tonal framework, and as far away from Beethoven and Brahms as it was, I loved it.

Which paved the way for a Tchaikovsky piece I forget. Lots of noise, lots of fun.

The Brahms was played by a German who played with about three days notice, the scheduled performer having contracted the flu. Markus Groh played this gorgeous piece wonderfully, but I think the reason we leaped to our hind feet at its conclusion was as much for Johannes as for Markus. At such times, I think of Andrew Ratshin's "20th Century Man," only for me it's "19th Century Man." There is classical music from the 20th century I like (Richard Strauss comes to mind), but my heart is rooted in the second half of the 19th century. Oh, my gosh.

There was a good crowd tonight, and the weekend performances are always better attended. A good sign for live classical music, at least in my neighborhood...

Kindle 1 battery

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:07:08 GMT
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that my Kindle 1 battery just failed. I'm a great believer in these things, but I still remember the disappointment when the first battery failed. I, at least, tend to feel that a battery should either be infinitely rechargable or give some gradual indication that it is failing to hold its charge. Based upon my experience and reading of various user comments (isn't the Internet wonderful), the Kindle batteries just fail—out of the blue. Seems to me I've had my Kindle for two years. That means each battery has lasted a year, which is pretty good compared to some of the stories I've seen.

At $20 for each replacement, that would appear to imply an annual (at least) charge on top of the purchase price.

I'm wondering whether the problem is not the size of the battery. Although its dimensions are not tiny, it is extremely thin, and just how much chemical mass can you put into one of these to hold a charge? And isn't this a limitation in the reduction of device sizes? Of course, one great factor in determining battery usage is the current necessary for the device. I suppose that the less it needs, the easier it is to reduce the size of the storage device.

This time, I ordered two replacement batteries. I'll put one in the freezer against the inevitable day that Kindle again fails to revive after a charge...