What I've been working on
It's been a long time since I've posted. The reason is mostly just because I haven't had anything to say, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I'll tell you what I've been up to.
All my programming activities over the years (with, I suppose, some exceptions at my various jobs) have had to do with things that interest me personally. For example, when I decided to learn the then new language and programming environment called C# and .NET, I settled upon a "photo database" as my first project. I would store photographs in a database, then access them via a web (or standalone) application. Each photograph could be tagged (I don't know that the word was used that way then) with such information as who is pictured, location, date, etc. I had great fun learning C# and .NET via this means, and although I do not still use the application, it worked. I was delighted to see Flickr come into being a couple years later. It proved that I'm not the only one with such interests.
My fairly recent plunge back into photo digitizing (=scanning) brought me even more pictures to show "the world." In particular, I digitized a set of photographs taken during a trip to Japan in the 1970s. Nearly all the folks pictured are dead now, but I realized that my 91-year-old aunt knows who all of them were, and how they were related. It was time to go into action to get that knowledge while it is still available.
A couple other things have always bothered me about showing pictures on the web. For one thing, I want the pictures to be as large as whatever monitor I have available. But when you design a web site, you can seldom disregard the fact that other folks have different-sized monitors than you. It really irks me now to look at sites I made some years ago when I thought that I had to limit the size of the site to 1024 pixels wide. My current monitor has 1920 pixels, but I'm stuck with pictures that are often only about 800 pixels wide (and less tall).
A difference in the way I sometimes like to display an image also interests me. Sometimes, I want to treat a photograph like a work of art. Not great art, of course (they're my pictures, after all), but I have done several different experiments using color and texture, and I'd like to have a kind of "factory" to let me do such things without the amount of time it currently takes. Over the years, I've seen several aspects of this process that could be automated.
So, a bunch of things came together, and I began to create a new system for displaying "illustrated text" or "described pictures" or whatever you want to call a set of photographs with accompanying text. I came to see that an overall page or two having the majority of text with "thumbnail" images in their proper places satisfies my purpose, as long as I also have the option of showing the pictures on an individual basis, with whatever artistic effects I then want to use.
As I set about programming what needed to be done, I encountered some terrific stuff. Most impressive has been Jaimie Treworgy's ImageMapster. You can see some of the things it has been used for, on his web site. For me, I am using it to provide a link from a "body" in a photograph to information about that person. So, you're looking at a picture, and you ask: "Who is that?" and you just move your mouse over the person, and a little tag pops up to tell you. And that's not all. As currently configured, you can place an entire page over the picture (letting it show through a bit), to tell you all sorts of things about that person. My current project within this suite of applications is to provide a family tree that shows where that person fits within a family structure that just might be yours, too.
I'd like to show you what I've come up with but have to wait a bit. I've promised the long suffering family members of this particular family that I'll leave this information for their personal use. Now, all I need to do is to create some fake family data to illustrate my applications. But I might even get around to doing my own family, which has some good "edge cases." I'm even anxious to get Mick Jagger into a family tree. Easy, in my case, because I'm claiming that I've created the first politically correct family tree system. Marriage is noted but not used. Men can marry men, women women, whatever. We don't care. All I need to know is who was the baby momma and who was the baby daddy. I don't even need to know who the daddy was (mirroring real life), but if you know, put it in there. There's always room for Mick.
A big disappointment stems from my failure to create a perfect "engine." I imagined a single page that would be used over and over to show all the pictures of any set. But due at least to my failures in skill, as well as the possibility that it can't even be done, I'm currently facing the likelihood that I'll have to create web pages for each picture, at least for any picture containing people for whom I'm offering identification.
And in fact this kind of programming is more difficult than I had imagined. Still, it's what the world is doing right now, so I don't feel that the time I spend working on these things is a waste of it.
But I'd sure like to get back to digitizing!
--Michael Broschat, 14 December 2011
This year's vacation
I had the pleasure of venturing up north again this year. Had a merry time in such states as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maine. If you're up to it, I serve the abbreviated version up here: Michael's 2011 vacation.
Michael Broschat, 31 October 2011
What determines a good picture?
Context. What is context? Relevance to a goal.
As a consequence of all this photo scanning I've been doing lately, I'm also building a web site for some family pictures. I have a stack of photos for each category, but I find myself choosing from among them. In doing so, I'm trying to be aware of what is driving the choice process and it's interesting.
As a life-long photographer, I used to think it was pretty easy determining a good picture: you looked at it, then made your judgment. Wiser people probably train themselves to look for particular things, but I just go by "impression," "emotion," whatever it is that makes you like something. I know now that this is the Pure Context. One picture—is it good? Outside of a gallery, we don't often run into the Pure Context.
I want to say that if a picture is aesthetically good, I'll use it no matter what. Wrong. In this particular case, I have eight pictures of my former wife. Now, she's a beautiful woman and all eight pictures are great. But choosing all eight automatically weights the collection in a direction it has no call to go. It's the documentary of a trip, and those particular pictures could have been taken anywhere (and were, countless times again). In fact, they have no place in this project at all, except that they were taken at its beginning. And I like them. So, I start off with one of me and one of her. Seven pictures discarded, each one worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.
There's another important factor already part of this context but sometimes hard to notice: time. If I had taken those pictures last week, they would have an entirely different value for me. But they're 40 years old, and most of the people in them are dead. Suddenly, it matters very little how good they are aesthetically. What is more important is their place in a narrative: how did they fit into my life and whatever it is that I seek to display?
I've finished picture selection for the first part of the trip. Before I started this process, I saw all the pictures as relevant. As I worked through the arrangement and selection, I felt all sorts of selection factors working. I'm putting them up to three in a row across a page, and I think in one case I rejected a photo because it was wide and the other two were also wide. I didn't want three wides (landscape versus portrait) together, and all illustrated some particular point so the "extra" wide one couldn't just be placed elsewhere.
On a previous web site I discuss a discovery I made while doing it. I was sorting out an absolute mess of photos, so thankful that the numbers on the negatives at least told me the order in which they were shot. It was like a riot in a classroom. No one picture had any particular aesthetic value. But all of a sudden, it came together. I saw that the pictures were taken during a science demonstration led by one of the students. Every picture showed something having to do with that demonstration, and only that fact gave them any meaning. Years and years ago, I had selected a picture or two from those school pictures as aesthetically pleasing—good photographs the way I always thought good photographs should be: standing alone. Doing them all as a collection, where batches of them joined to illustrate some point did not diminish the value of those few that excelled aesthetically, but it certainly gave value to those that seemed not have any.
My former wife was just telling me about a photograph someone had discovered of a great-grandfather. Probably the only picture in existence. I don't have to see it to know its value. All the time, we read of photographs of famous people found in trunks or yard sales. Whether they're aesthetically pleasing doesn't even come up.
I recently digitized a roll I took more than 30 years ago of classmates at a party. There were a couple nice looking people among us, and at an earlier time their presence might have made the photograph "valuable." But at this distance in time, all those pictures were valuable, and all are candidates for inclusion in some meaningful collection. That not all would be chosen would then depend upon such factors as discussed above: are there eight shots of the same beautiful woman? Choose one, and let's get on with it.
When you're grouping things, you have a goal, whether or not it's consciously realized. You bounce each choice ("Does it belong?") against that goal, and the way it bounces back determines your choice. And it brings a little significance along with it, something most of us could use.
Michael Broschat, 21 Oct 2011
reDiscoverying the Ahns
I went to see the Ahn Trio, last night. It was interesting for a number of reasons. Let me count the ways.
First, I quite enjoyed the music. I had a seat near the back of the Wolf Trap Barns concert venue (it's really too small to call a 'hall'), and because the floor is not inclined, shut my eyes more or less the entire show as I wasn't going to be seeing much of the performers. In a newspaper interview, Angella described the group with a three-adjective phrase, only one of which was 'classical'. That fits. Although it's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't like classical music enjoying the Ahn Trio, it is equally impossible to imagine that everyone liking classical music would like the Ahns. They mix popular music into their offerings, but the transformation still favors the classical, and it is difficult for me to imagine many young folks who usually listen only to the original popular music liking this stuff. I have all their CDs, but don't often listen to them. That's why I am surprised how much I enjoyed listening last night.
Judging from what little I have discovered about them, the Ahns keep their personal lives pretty close to hand, so it was fun as I waited in the lobby to see one of the twins come out and greet her mother. The embrace suggested that they hadn't seen each other for at least a couple days, which meant that mom hadn't been involved in the White House state dinner. You see, the trio had been invited to perform after the state dinner for the South Korean president, and that event had occurred the previous evening. Here's a picture. It is very easy to learn the guests at such a function. I found listings in news services all over the world. Each of the girls was allowed a guest, and two were male. The one female guest wasn't an Ahn, so I think mom didn't get invited. But she became something of a celebrity last night. During the first half of the concert, a few folks found out she was mom to the girls, and she had a little group around her during intermission.
Speaking of groups, the audience was, perhaps, telling. It was distinctly older than my usual concerts (which are already old enough), and I got the feeling that some tickets had been handed out to old folks homes. Or it might just have been that older folks are the primary subscribers to the Discovery Series, of which this performance was one. Listening to the conversations around me, it was clear everyone was at least retired if not yet elderly. What a contrast that was with the first time i saw the Ahns. It was a large hall (George Mason's great arts facility), and the large crowed included many Koreans. My impression at that time was that many Korean young folks had come to see the trio but without their parents. The girls (due in part to their glamorousness) had obviously achieved a kind of pop star status with those kids. But last night there were only about a half-dozen mom/daughter combos, with perhaps two Korean dads included in a couple larger family groups. Another sign of the failing economy is my guess, but it's also true that the trio might no longer have quite the status they might have earlier. After all, I once calculated that even the youngest has to be 40.
Anyway, it was an even more enjoyable evening than I had expected. And I almost didn't get there.
I knew that Highway 66 has total restrictions on commuting traffic. Most highways have a lane or two for commuting, but 66 is dedicated to it during commute hours. So, I waited until just after six to leave my area. My calendar had recorded that the concert was at 7:30.
As I neared the entrace to 66, many signs told me that I would be arrested, perhaps decapitated, if I were to get on 66 without a second person in the car. I chickened out as I neared the junction and, instead, took the off-ramp to my area of work. I had my top down, and looked for someone to ask about commuting rules for 66, but no one seemed appropriate, and I parked in front of my office building. Surely, the ban on solo driving would end soon? "Hey, nice car!" said a passing female. It was Monique, who obviously works much later than do I. Lucky me, because Monique knew all the rules for 66 commuting, and I had to wait until 6:30. She even told me how to get on the freeway from that point. On my own, I would have ended up going back in the opposite direction.
So, with Monique's help I got onto 66. I remembered from the map that I would go in a northerly direction toward Wolf Trap, and that at that point of leaving 66, the highway would have a different name. My first chance came with the exit for 495. No, that's not what I want, I thought. But it was. Just because there was no sign about Wolf Trap doesn't mean the road doesn't go there. I therefore stayed on 66 until I panicked, and got off at Vienna (which I know is where Wolf Trap is). But how to get from the southern edge of Vienna to Wolf Trap was quite another problem. I tried entering the name in my GPS navigator but only came up with the Wolf Trap Nursery, etc. With the top down, though, it was easy to ask folks on those occasions where there were folks around. I'm watching the clock all the time, of course.
After a mile or two just going by instinct, I drove into a parking lot and asked a couple. "Well, it's a little complicated but you can do it." One of the complications was that it was dark by now. I was told to go for awhile, then turn left onto Beulah, and follow the signs. I tried that, but couldn't see most street signs due to the competing commercial lighting (this is a commercially dense area, and it was the end of the day's commute). In other words, there were plenty of lights but none on the street signs. In desperation, I made a left, drove into another parking lot and asked the Korean proprietess. She didn't know about Wolf Trap, but when I mentioned that someone had said to go along Beulah, she said, "Well, this is Beulah." But the clock was racing me, and I began to get comfortable with the possibility that I would be going home without attending the concert. But, time to give it a little more effort.
I never did see any signs on Beulah. But I stopped a jogger and asked whether I had a chance. He envisioned a couple difficult intersections to manage (in terms of how to get through them onto the correct street), but gave excellent directions, and by following them strictly and not allowing myself to deviate one bit, I ended up looking at The Barns at Wolf Trap 20 yards from the last turn he described. Oh, my gosh. Would I have time to use the bathroom? We'll see.
I entered to a rather sparse crowd, I thought. I went to the bar and ordered a cup of coffee. "Say, doesn't this concert start at 7:30?" "No, sir. It's at 8." But it was certainly an exciting trip.
[written 15 October 2011]
Upon listening to some old CDs
I've just listened to the last of my set of Kronos Quartet CDs. This being one of the first I obtained, I was struck once again by the fact that I was in on the beginning of what became a "big deal." The first of these (but not chronologically) was my involvement with what became Starbucks (described elsewhere), but this one goes back to my earliest days in Seattle.
Shira and I lived in the north end of Seattle, when we first arrived there. Our first apartment (fall of 1973) was around 165th (the city border is at 145th), and our first house was at 148th. From either the apartment or, later, the house, we would set out walking at the end of what passed for a working day (I was a student) and either visit a grocery store or, perhaps, the library at 175th. In the beginning, this was a very modest building, but probably in 1974 the library was completely rebuilt into a two-story community structure where books were on the ground floor and community activities somewhere on the second. It was a glorious space.
King County is a notoriously liberal area (its congressmen and senators have to die in office), and it had (has?) a very generous program to encourage the arts. I think it was called "1% for the Arts," referring to the amount of tax income dedicated to promoting art. As part of that program, one would often find some sort of artistic endeavor going on in the library building. One evening, we strolled in to find signs indicating that a string quartet would be playing on the second floor. All were welcome and, of course, it was free. Shira decided to stay downstairs with the books, but I—always mindful of the great love my friend Ed Robinson has for string quartets—strode determinedly upstairs to improve my mind. For free.
There were no more than five people in the audience, and three had come with the quartet. That left me and a somewhat out-of-place looking Hispanic gentleman who looked as if the library acted as something of a refuge for him. We heard a couple traditional string quartets, then the Hispanic gentleman offered a suggestion: "Hey, do you guys know 'Roll Over, Beethoven'?"
The story usually ends at that point, because I tell it to folks who know who the Kronos Quartet is. I see from Wikipedia that David Harrington formed a quartet called Kronos in 1973, probably a year before this event, and then moved to San Francisco in 1978. Their first recording was issued in 1982, but the recording that made them famous didn't appear for a few years after that—"Purple Haze," a very modernistic rendering of Jimi Hendrix's famous theme.
So, the point of this story is that the key to the success of Kronos was offered to them more than ten years before they took the hint, and by a guy who might well have been attending his first (and last) classical concert.
An additional stimulus for writing all this down is that I just bought a ticket to the next performance in town of the Ahn Trio, a group of Korean-American women who are both sisters and also classical musicians. Like Kronos, they started out playing traditional string trios (a classical trio comprises a piano, violin, and cello). They were hardly alone in this, although the audience for such things is only slightly larger than the number of musicians who play them. Their big break came, I'm guessing, when they were picked by People magazine as among the 50 most beautiful people in the world. The Gallery at their web site shows something of the evolution of their look. So, what does looks have to do with classical music? It gets your attention. It draws your attention away from others, or it draws your attention, period. I'm sure I went to see them, the first time, just for that reason, although I do have some background in classical music.
They're very good, but so what. That first time I saw them, it was clear that many in the audience were there solely for their looks, and most of that audience was female. The people who showed up for that concert were largely of Korean extraction (not rare in my area), and although they themselves probably had little interest in classical music, they were much interested in pop stars, and that is what the Ahn sisters had become for their community. Good for them.
Like Kronos, Ahn Trio turned to modern music when their new pop image took off. They are still very serious classical musicians, but their concerts (and recordings) are as likely to include arrangements of, say, Riders in the Sky (original by The Doors) as something by Beethoven. I'm not at all convinced (looking at the audiences of the concerts I've attended) that this has been successful in drawing younger people. By and large, young people just don't care for this sort of thing at all.
But how many have to—for Kronos and the Ahns to make a living? The world of classical music has always been a stimulus for world unity, perhaps following in the steps of the first world unifier—royalty. )
[written 10 September 2011]
From the scanning workshop
Every now and again, I get involved in some personal project that eats me and my time alive. The current one (showing no signs of ending) is a re-visit to the project of scanning my existing photographs. I want to explain what that means, both for anyone reading this and also to remind myself later on.
I often forget that "scanning a photograph" means something very different to other people. To me, it simply means scanning negatives or slides. For most people, it means scanning paper photographs. But essentially, 'scanning' means 'digitizing'—converting a physical object into a virtual (or digital) one. Ultimately, I have the need to do both kinds of scanning, but my collection of physical photographs is small, and are mostly from other people. For the photographs I have taken over my life, I have seldom kept anything but the original negative or slide.
I have two film scanners. My current project reminded of several things about this equipment.
One, a film scanner is a device dedicated to scanning film or slides. It cannot scan paper photographs. However, many modern flatbed scanners (the kind you would use to scan paper photographs) have attachments to also scan negatives and slides. I revisited this subject during the current project, but my research corresponded with my experiments of a year or so ago: for the "archival" work I am doing, flatbed scanners are completely unacceptable. In the previous scanning project, I was making digital versions of photographs for inclusion in a university library collection. Some of the negatives are medium format, and I decided to re-do those negatives using the flatbed scanner after making the formal scans with one of my film scanners. I spent a couple days on this, but the results were completely unacceptable. Both with resolution and with exposure, the resulting images were distinctly poor in quality. I use a fine HP 8300 scanner with a rather elaborate set of negative/slide carriers built for that scanner.
Two, it helps to match the scanner design to the nature of the film being scanned. By this, I simply mean that if you are only doing 35mm film, stick to a scanner built just for that size. If you have a scanner for medium format (as I do), use it only for medium format, even though it also scans 35mm. The larger machine is by its nature "clunkier," and when you're doing batch scanning (to whatever extent this is possible), the smoother the better.
Three, for the most part, all this equipment is obsolete, no longer manufactured, and devoid of most support. The change from film to digital was really rather sudden, and the only equipment manufacturers left are, interestingly, small companies that did not exist ten years ago (or so it seems to me). My equipment was purchased, in fact, in the previous decade, and although by Nikon and Minolta, neither company offers film scanners anymore. I had some money a few years ago, and was interested in the Nikon version of a medium format scanner (the 9000 model, and primarily because the interface was USB). I waited for it to be re-stocked at any store I could find. I'm still waiting, but the money's gone!
In the old days, the "performance" interface was SCSI. That has disappeared so quickly, few modern computer people have even heard of it. My Minolta scanner requires that interface technology. Fortunately, I kept a SCSI controller in my peripherals collection, and to begin the current project, I rebuilt an existing computer into a dedicated scanning machine. Gosh, this was really a wise choice. In the past, I would adapt my current workstation to accomplish the task, but then have to put everything away when that computer was needed for normal activity. Now, this SCSI-based computer (which of course also provides USB connections) does nothing but wait for me to use it. Of course, it sits on what other people call a "dining room table," but that's of no use to me, so let's call it a "scanning table." See it here.
I might mention here that because a slightly earlier project had been building a computer dedicated to hosting Windows Home Server, the output of my scanning activity is automatically backed up to that server each night.
The initial frustration so many people have encountered is that the software originally included with your film scanner no longer works on whatever system you're now using. Although that is not technically true for me at the moment (with the dedicated computer built to host this activity), I had some time ago discovered VueScan, a dedicated scanning application built to handle any scanner in the world (in contrast to manufacturer applications, which are customized for the equipment they sell). Even Nikon recommends that modern users use VueScan instead of their own Nikon Scan application (which is no longer supported).
There is one other commercial scanning application—SilverFast, but I have not needed to evaluate this.
Various experiments have led me to choose the following configuration for my scans. I scan to "archival" quality, using the TIFF file format. On VueScan, archival quality automatically makes use of the maximum resolution of which the scanner is capable. Because of the nature of TIFF, this yields massive file sizes (and is more or less useless for web use, my only goal), so I run the Batch command of IrfanView (an image viewer discovered years ago that continues to maintain its very high standards) to convert my day's work into the PNG format, which like TIFF is lossless. I store the results as PNG, then convert to JPEG on a just-in-time basis. In other words, when I want to actually use an image (put it on my web site), I convert the PNG original to JPEG. There are technical reasons for this we won't get into.
VueScan also offers a batch mode that processes a film strip (typically, six frames) in one or two steps. You wouldn't do this if you are scanning film for "professional" use (advertising, archiving, whatever) but for my purposes it is perfect. I can get up and do something else for a few minutes while the strip is being processed.
I want to show you a miracle. Take a look at this picture, which is absolutely typical of all my color photos in that it is ruined by mold. See the mold in the sky (it is everywhere, but in the sky is easiest to see)? Now, look at this version. Because this scanner has an infrared light source (in addition to the RGB type), and because VueScan supports use of that infraed light source to find mold, dirt, scratches, whatever, the application can delete the bad stuff, replacing it with good stuff, and the miracle is the photo you see before you.
Another kind of mold is evident in this picture. It is a fairly even scattering of a small object. I think of it as more insidious than that other kind, because the other kind can be dealt with in PhotoShop (to varying degrees). This kind defeats any reasonable attempt to cover it over. The version after correction by VueScan is here.
Once all the hardward and software technical issues are resolved, the results are just plain fun. I had the tremendous learning experience some years ago of creating a web site from some old negatives, and sometime after that, of creating another site to commemorate the life of my mother. Both experiences taught me much about the nature of these collections and what you can do with them. One of the biggest lessons I learned was to ask living persons about old pictures as soon as possible. I had gotten through only a few old pictures before my mother died. Then, my best source for photo identification was gone.
During my current project, I digitized a few hundred images from the time my former wife and I lived on Okinawa during my Air Force enlistment in the early 1970s. Fortunately, I have been able to ask her about this and that. One of the more amazing facts that came out of these conversations was that we lived in two different places during that 2.5-year period. I only recall one. But by examining details in the various photographs, I could easily see ample evidence for this and several other facts I have forgotten. This isn't yet an Alzheimer phenomenon, and we've discussed possible reasons. For example, she notes that she lived in these places nearly 24 hours a day, whereas I had a job away from our residence (and in a very disruptive schedule—four days on day shift, four days on swing shift, and four days on night shift, interrupted at any time by 19-hour flights). Anyway, it is actually fun to rediscover all these things, and to do so by examining these old photographs and playing detective.
Written 17 Oct 2011
All over now—Chinese Culture Month
As I listen to a collection of French art songs, I feel moved to complete my review of the recent Chinese culture events at Kennedy Center. No, I don't get the connection either, but let's go with it.
Last night was the Beijing Theater company's production of Top Restaurant, which I had assumed referred to the modern trend of fashionable restaurants in Beijing (a friend had deep-fried scorpian there a couple years ago). But, no, it was a fairly modern play but set at more or less the same time as Teahouse, which I saw here by the same company six years ago.
I left at intermission.
Was it bad? Not in the least. But I sat there realizing that I was relying almost exclusively on the subtitles projected at the sides of the stage, and it just wasn't any fun. Of course, there was the occasional phrase that I could even say, myself, but in general it was just a chore. My big thrill was just—again—seeing so many of my people gathered in one place, having chosen—for a variety of reasons—to make their homes in the United States. I felt the usual sense of pride, as I reflected on this, but then it struck me that you could see the same phenomenon in Beijing. In other words, if (as actually happened) Arthur Miller staged Death of a Salesman in Beijing, much of the audience would have been American (or, at least, English speaking). There are that many Americans living in China today. When I was in Hong Kong a few years ago, my friend Rich (at State Department) told me that 50,000 Americans were known to be living and working in Hong Kong. The enormity of that expatriate community didn't really hit me until I came back from that trip, as I realized that although I had met a few foreigners while visiting, most were not Americans. So I had not even seen 1% of the American community there.
My current area of residence might as well be renamed: "Washington, DC alias Moscow," there are so many Russians here. And we won't even begin to talk about the other countries of the world, many of which appear to have emigrated to the United States en masse.
Let me include now reviews of two earlier events that were part of the China Culture Month at Kennedy Center. I sent these descriptions to a few friends in email, and here they are for posterity.
[written 21 September 2011]
It seems to warrant a note.
I attended the first of three events in the China Culture Month at Kennedy Center, last night. It was, I had thought, a xiangsheng performance (like Abbott & Costello), but it was more open to the audience than those guys were. In fact, there were several impromptu segments that usually involved the audience. In theory, the two male performers were dogs who traveled into Beijing (or any city, I guess) and reported on what they saw. On reflection, I can't imagine why they were dogs; they certainly did not carry that pretense very far.
In my review of a Chinese culture event some years ago, I noted that the performance was probably intended for "Americans," but that the audience was mostly Chinese. If so, now they know better, and the performers knew they were talking to their countrymen who probably carry a different passport now. After all, although subtitled (when possible), the performance was in Chinese, and required a level of fluency of a native speaker (I enjoyed myself, anyway).
I still find myself stunned by this transformation--of what: US society or Chinese society? Around 1980, Shira and I were teaching an English class to the very first Chinese to be allowed to travel from Mao's China. By 2011 there are so many of those Chinese (there are really several kinds of Chinese or any other immigrant) that you can't count them anymore.
For the most part, the audience comprised Chinese who are here via the educational route. They came over as graduate students (or as spouses thereof) and are continuing their lives here. A small group of elderly ladies (much younger than I but not xiaojie) sat in front of me, but they might have been parents of immigrant younger folks. They didn't seem all that amused by the performance, which was certainly by their children's generation and, probably, for it. There were a couple themes throughout the "play" that clearly referenced the early lives in China of the audience. One involved ducklings and the other referenced songs (the audience would laugh or groan at the various triggers to their memories).
For me, a thrill came from just glancing over the audience. Average age was probably late 20s and mostly female (typical for cultural events of any type). Chinese are very proud of their hair, and this glance showed a sea of lustrous black hair, only occasionally bound up in a pony tail. Despite my fantasies, Chinese as a people are no more or less attractive than any other people, but there were several winners of the population's gene pool in attendance, and I noticed that when the two boys who were the performers stole purses from the audience, said purses had belonged to the more attractive among those front row seats (and whose owners had to go up on stage after the show to retrieve their bags). Guys--the same the world over.
[written 24 September 2011]
Talk about fantasies. An entire stage full of Chinese ballerinas.
Even in my reduced state, I weigh as much as the whole lot of them together. Of course, I'm kidding. Each is only 20-30 pounds less than the average Chinese woman. Normally, that would make them invisible, but they are wearing costumes. When they flutter around, you can tell where the body is. Probably.
There were three ballets, tonight. I went for the first one--The Red Detachment of Women. The second was the standard Western classic Swan Lake. And the show finished with the grand Yellow River.
I can't believe how much I enjoyed Red Detachment. I've been to several dance performances in my life, and after each I promise myself: "Never again." I remember the most recent. It was probably excellent, but to me everyone was just up there twirling and swirling to no purpose at all. In Red Detachment, we were being told a story. The Americans in the audience thought it was funny (it isn't), and probably the younger Chinese felt a bit embarrassed, it seeming rather militaristic. But we older Chinese saw it for what it is--the covers of several years of China Reconstructs coming off the page and onto the stage. Absolutely glorious.
Zhu Yan is, evidently, the prima ballerina of the troupe, and she was exquisite. Even I could tell. The other two ballets were more traditional, and I didn't care for them as much.
The night before, I had watched a favorite Japanese film: Hula Girls. I love to watch hula, and there are about 3-4 not-to-be-missed scenes of hula dancing spliced into the usual Asian melodrama. A movie like that (and hula in general), a guy could watch while drinking a beer or two. Red Detachment was like that. With Swan Lake, you switch to champagne, and with Yellow River you're deep into gaoliang.
A hundred people is a large group to bring over for a dance production, but we know Chinese don't do these international things by half measure.
So, I've seen Red Detachment, and I was wrong in an earlier prediction where I guessed this might be the last time anyone would perform it. Red Detachment will live forever. It might only play in China, but although the adversaries might have changed, the message is clear: we can accomplish miracles by working together. And when led by the example of a beautiful ballerina.
[posted 2 October 2011]
Getting in touch with one's red roots
It's China culture month at Kennedy Center, beginning later in September. This happened last in 2005 (when I have some write-ups in the old blog).
Although I've sworn I would not attend another dance program, I found the existence of a performance of The Red Detachment of Women just too interesting to let go.
I signed up for a xiangsheng performance a few days before this, and tickets weren't exactly flying out the door, but I see that the theater is filling quickly now for all performances, and this mirrors what happened six years ago. Then, I had second row tickets for a play, but three performances ended up selling out.
It will be fun to be again with a few thousand of my people. It's been too long...
28 August 2011Not such a good night, Irene
Time for another eye-witness report. Hurricane Irene, this time.
It was much worse than I expected. I thought the fairly light rain and gusting winds we saw most of yesterday (Saturday) was it. No. It didn't hit our area until about 10pm. I was in bed reading. Read for another half-hour, then tried for sleep. Gave up about 1, and took up the Kindle again. Put it down at 2:30, and tossed and turned for at least another hour (I saw 3:30 on the clock).
All told, the force of the storm was with us for at least five hours. When I stayed on Okinawa for a typhoon back in my Air Force career, the storm lasted little more than a half-hour. Here, it wasn't a constant wind, as happens when a typhoon is passing through, but the gusts built for, say, 30 seconds, then burst upon your building. This went on for hour after hour.
I heard some yells this morning (I'm writing this about 7am), so someone must have lost something, but there is no evident damage to the many cars parked below my balcony. We still have plenty of wind but the rain appears to have stopped. I see that my large plastic bin (bought some years ago to handle the second and subsequent floods in my apartment) has added nearly two feet of water, but of course that's not an accurate rain gauge.
With such an experience in my very protected semi-urban area, there must be much damage in our area. The Internet news concentrates on NYC, which is being hit as I write this. I'll walk the Mt Vernon Trail, today, so we'll see what the Potomac did. Electrical power sputtered three times before I went to bed, but there's no evidence it ever went off in my area.
28 August 2011I walked the Mt Vernon Trail, this afternoon, and damage wasn't bad at all. We've had worse from less serious storms. But there was a moment of "group dynamics" that I want to remember.
This fallen tree (actually, just a large branch) blocked the entire path, as you can see. People ride their bicycles and walk around such phenomena but it would be nice if it weren't so obstructive. I had investigated it on the way "down" on my walk, but decided it was impossible to move alone.
On the way back, a bicyclist had stopped and was investigating. "Do you think we could move this?" he asked me. "No," I replied after testing it again. "Maybe ten folks could do it?" he asked rhetorically.
We cleared away some of the foliage not specifically involved with this huge branch, and in that short period of time, another 3, 4, or 5 folks stopped to see if they could help. They could, and within five minutes we had picked up the branch and laid it against the trail for crews to cut up and remove at some later date.
What was so wonderful about this experience was the way it happened. It needed a couple things. It needed a leader. That was the role played by the bicyclist I met on the way back. And it needed a commitment by some folks before others would join in (I'm very familiar with this phenomenon). Once all those factors were in place, the group used its considerable strength, and resolved the situation.
No one knew anyone else. I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I don't even know what anyone looked like. We just did what needed to be done and then disbanded. A rather marvelous principle, I think, and it felt terribly satisfying to have been part of it.
Earthquake news
I've put together a couple words and pictures regarding our earthquake today, so if you care to take a look, please do.
23 August 2011Blogus Interruptus
Well, a blog is back up, even if it isn't the one we're used to. Something happened about a month ago during which not only did the web server fail, but so did the router that gives me my Internet signal. And last night I discovered that the domain controller (which is not used with this blog but is a part of the network) also fails to run. My guess is that some weather event caused all this, and due to a bunch of problems (diagnosing the router being amongst the more difficult ones), it is taking a while to get everything back into some kind of useful shape.
All data appears to have been recovered but an added complication is that I had actually intended to swap servers. Now, of course, I have no choice. And I had to partially strip the new server (as part of the router diagnosis), and I'm not sure how quickly that will all go together.
Last weekend, I spent at a SharePoint conference here in the Washington, DC area, and I'm not available this weekend, either. Goodness, it could be a bit before this site looks anything like it did before.
One good piece of news is that I also took a few days to study for the COMP TIA Security+ exam. Folks who don't work in the IT world and, especially, the government sector might not recognize that certification, but it's necessary for such jobs as the one I had before my current one. So, why did I just get the certificate now? Too long a story, but it's over and I'm glad. It's a lifetime certificate, so that's the end of that study path.
I am completely recovered from the prostate surgery. Have been doing my normal daily exercise program for more than a month now.
The weather has been incredibly good this August, something of a payback for one of the hottest Julys on record. I have not had the air conditioning on all month. And signs multiply that summer is nearing its normal end.
I'll post the occasional note in this format, until the normal blog gets back into place. Take care...
15 August 2011