Monday, December 26, 2005

And Then It Was Night

From "Parting the Waters", describing the
Hoover/FBI opportunism following the JFK assassination:

"... From the standpoint of personal injury to King, Robert Kennedy did perhaps his greatest disservice by remaining a caretaker Attorney General for another ten months, when the FBI ran unchecked.
"The Bureau wasted no time describing its target as "King's unholy alliance with the Communist Party, USA," and King as as "an unprincipled opportunistic individual." Sullivan summoned Agent Nichols and others to Washington for a nine hour war council, the result of which was a six point plan to "expose King as an immoral opportunist who is not a sincere person but is exploiting the racial situation for personal gain." All the top officials signed a ringing declaration of resolve laced with four of the usual pledges to proceed "without embarrassment ot the Bureau." The underlying hostility did not make the officials that unusual among Americans of their station. Nor was it unusual that an odd man such as Hoover would run aground in his obsession with normalcy. Race, like power, blinds before it corrupts, and Hoover saw not a shred of merit in either King or Levison. Most unforgivable was that a nation founded on Madisonian principles allowed secret police powers to accrue over fourty years, until real and imagined heresies alike could be punished by methods less open to correction than the Salem witch trials. The hidden spectacle owas the more grotesque because King and Levison both in fact were the rarest heroes of freedom, but the undercover state persecution would have violated democratic principles even if they had been common thieves."



Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Neeta Detta

I had a yoga class with Neeta Detta on Monday.
She's a teriffic teacher, and has an awesome
practice. Best downdog I've ever seen. We spent
10 minutes in wheel preps on the chair (ug) and over an hour in urdvha dhanurasana (ouch).
She had some great insights. I grip my neck in back bends, often leading to headaches. She helped with that. She also emphasized the difference between lifting only from your sternum and lifting with your entire side ribs. The latter felt much better.
We spent a lot of time talking about the internal rotation of the thighs, and outer rotation of the heels. Oh, and in the first pose,
supta virasana, she helped us get our pelvis
more aligned by pushing the butt flesh toward
the knees. Ooo, and I did the headstand version of wheel for the first time. It was an awesome class. I'm sore.



Friday, December 16, 2005

General Order No. 11

Check out General Grant's "General Order No. 11"
This was to expel all the Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. Thankfully, this order was immediately repealed by Lincoln, with characteristic eloquence:

Lincoln expressed surprise that Grant had issued such a command and stated his conviction that “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad.” He drew no distinction between Jew and Gentile, the president said, and would allow no American to be wronged because of his religious affiliation.

Grant later won the presidency, partly by winning the Jewish vote.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou came to Carnegie Music Hall last week.
She was the most inspiring and engaging speaker I've
ever heard in person. She sang, recited poetry, told
stories of hope, made us laugh. It was truly
wonderful.

She stressed the need to read the early Black American
poets. She read this one from Paul Laurence Dunbar,
one of her heros:

Sympathy

I know what the caged bird feels.
Ah me, when the sun is bright on the upland slopes,
when the wind blows soft through the springing grass
and the river floats like a sheet of glass,
when the first bird sings and the first bud ops,
and the faint perfume from its chalice steals.
I know what the caged bird feels.

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
till its blood is red on the cruel bars,
for he must fly back to his perch and cling
when he fain would be on the bow aswing.
And the blood still throbs in the old, old scars
and they pulse again with a keener sting.
I know why he beats his wing.

I know why the caged bird sings.
Ah, me, when its wings are bruised and its bosom sore.
It beats its bars and would be free.
It's not a carol of joy or glee,
but a prayer that it sends from its heart's deep core,
a plea that upward to heaven it flings.
I know why the caged bird sings.


The theme of the evening was, "A Rainbow in the Clouds".
This was not to be interpreted as sun breaking through the
clouds, making a rainbow, but a rainbow being a part of the
cloud itself. I believe she got this image from an early
black poet, though I've forgotten who.

She told the story of her uncle Willie, who was a
small convenient store owner at the turn of the century.
He was blind in one eye, and a cripple. He taught
(forced) her to learn her times tables, and stressed
learning in general. She and her brother had
to hide him from the police when they went on
black bashing rampages. Many years later, she
was heading back to the small town of Arkansas
where he lived, to attend his funeral. She was
greeted at the airport by the mayor of Little Rock.
He expressed how the state had lost such a great
man in Willie. She looked at him, somewhat dumbfounded.
It turned out that Willie had taught him to read and
instilled the same love of learning he had gifted to
Maya. In a kind of just irony, he gave her a full police
escort from Little Rock to the town where the funeral was
being held. In town, she met a lawyer who was taking care
of the legal aspect of the funeral. He also was taught by
Willie, and was not only a lawyer, but a member of the state
legislature. It was a profound example of the difference a
person can make. A rainbow in the clouds.

Thank you Maya.




Monday, November 07, 2005

BWV 106

I sang in a Bach cantata concert yesterday. It was great.
We had a baroque orchestra which was really fabulous. There
were two amazing recorder players (yes, I know, it's hard to
believe a recorder can sound amazing, but you'll have to
take my word for it). One was on faculty at Oberlin, and
knows Richard. We did 182, which is really nice, but the
most wonderful part was 106. He was 22
years old, and wrote one of the great works of western
music. 18 minutes of pure bliss. The opening sinfonia is
basically a recorder duet. If you just listen to the
recording it's hard to tell what's going on, but they're
actually dovetailing all over the place. Really beautiful
writing. Like splitting one line between two people and
weaving it together in this awesome way. It is exquisite.
There's one movement where there's a beautiful bass solo.
Everything is going nicely, and then the alto section enters
with a counter theme. Just the alto section. It's
unexpected... and totally earth shattering. The last
movement, the choir is singing "It is an eternal law. Human,
you must die!" Intense, slow, heavy, etc. Then, out of
nowhere, a single soprano sings high above everyone else,
with this birdlike voice, "Jesus, come". Other worldly,
ethereal beauty.

I hate to give any ammunition to the misguided "intelligent
design" folks, but if they pointed to Johann Sebastian
instead of their other feeble arguments, I might nod my head
in nonplussed agreement...

"Now there is music from which a man can learn something." -- Mozart

"Not Brook (Ger. "Bach") but Ocean should be his name." -- Beethoven

"Playing and studying Bach convinces us that we are all numskulls." -- Schumann

"Study Bach: there you will find everything." -- Brahms

Friday, November 04, 2005

A Moment of Innocence, Dearly Paid For

I just read this marvelous account of the first day in
Montgomery, after the Supreme Court ruling was issued and
finally reached Alabama. December 20, 1956... not 50 years ago.


"King, in his suit and dress hat, followed by Fred Gray,
Abernathy, Glenn Smiley, and a flock of cameramen and
reporters, boarded a city bus before dawn the next morning.
'We are glad to have you,' the bus driver said politely as
he rumbled off down the street. Photographers on board took
pictures of King sitting next to Smiley near the front of
the bus. The integrated group achieved a convivial banter
with the driver, who went so far as to make an unscheduled
stop to pick up Reverend Graetz. Summoned outside by the
bus horn, Graetz was treated to the sight of Smiley leaning
casually out the front door of a city bus. "What time do
you want me for dinner tonight?" Smiley shouted grandly, as
though he had transformed toe bus into a personal
limousine. Graetz joined King and all those on the bus in
laughter. It was a moment of innocence, dearly paid for."

On the facing page, someone shoots at King's house with a shotgun.
Five pages later, his house is bombed. Again.



Saturday, October 29, 2005

Giving Blood

I give blood every couple of months. Normally I take a
book with me, as watching the bag fill up gets old after a
few seconds. This time I brought Parting the Waters. It's
kind of obnoxiously large, advertising to the world "Look at
me! Look how smart I am for reading such an obnoxiously large book!"
But, nevertheless, I brought it. The young woman who was
stabbing me with the needle looked at me like I was crazy.
"You're reading that?" I just nodded and said it's a really
interesting history of the Civil Rights Movement. Her eyes
got bright, and she related a fascinating story of how she
and her high school history teacher went on an organized
"Civil Rights Tour" all throughout the South. She was in
King's home and churches, his hotel in Memphis where he was
assassinated. She met Rosa Parks (!) and was in Ebenezer
church when MLK's wife was in the basement in a meeting (but
they didn't get to meet.) She told of the memorials she'd
seen along the way, really beautiful stuff. I'd like to
go on the tour this summer with my mom. She doesn't know
about it yet though, and she doesn't read my blog, so I'll
have to tell her eventually.

My dad has a bunch of great
stories from the era. One about a public swimming pool in
Florida that was forced to be segregated. The local
government chose to fill in the pool with dirt rather than
to allow blacks to swim in it. This world is crazy... but
hey, if they're sending high school girls from Pittsburgh on
Civil Rights tours, maybe we're going somewhere.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to give blood for an entire
year after being in India this winter. Malaria. The woman
explained the disease this way, "Imagine a really bad
flu... times 10. This is a mild case." Yikes!

Rosa Parks passed away this week.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

MLK

This week's service at church
was about the Civil Rights Movement. A number of Dr. King's
speeches were read aloud. I realized I'd never heard many
of them read aloud before. What an amazing gift he gave us
all. It was a good impetus to start Parting the Waters
which Robbie recommended while we were surfing through the
street book vendors on 31st Ave in Astoria.
Here is a comprehensive website with the
text and sound clips of many of the speeches.

I was thinking during the service how he was only a four years
younger than my father. My dad was born in 1925, King in 1929.
I wondered at the unbelievably sad state of our country in 1960,
not 50 years ago. (I'm aware there is still much to feel sorrow for...)
What an awesome example of the potential impact on the world
of a single person. I was speechless the entire time.

I also realized that I've never had a close black friend.
For goodness sake, I lived in Harlem for an entire year.
I suppose that even I live a life of de facto segregation.
I can't name a single black person in the cs department at
cmu. I've never had a black professor, or teacher of any
kind. What gives? How is it that I can make it 29 years
without a single black friend or mentor? We (I) have far
to travel.




At the "I Have a Dream" speech.




The hotel where he was assissinated.


Saturday, October 15, 2005

Uniontown Grappling Tournament

I competed in the Uniontown Grappling Tournament today.
It was a fun tournament. I decided to wear a gi for the
first match and got totally destroyed in about 20 seconds.
Lost to a back mount choke. The guy was a really quick
wrestler. I was standing one second and he was on my back
on the ground in the next. I did learn my lesson, however.
I won my next match and then decided the gi should come off.
I put another wrestler guy in the guard right away and won
with a triangle choke. Next was a wrestler who beat Randy
earlier in the day. It felt very good making him tap with
an arm bar. I got Zander with a flying arm bar, and then
put up a good fight against the best grappler there, but lost
to an arm-bar after about 3 minutes.

I learned quick to get wrestlers in the guard as fast as
possible. They're just too good at takedowns and
guillotine's. So it was a good learning day. Good to get
soundly beaten once in awhile.

I believe that today is my last jiu jitsu tournament.
It might be my last jiu jitsu period. I've watched so many
people get hurt recently. Our teacher Andrew got his ankle
popped in a stupid ankle lock on Thursday. Randy threw a
guy on his head twice in the same match this afternoon and
he was icing his neck afterwards. Injury stories from the
guys I met today abounded. The worst one being a torn
groin muscle. (ug...)

Moreover, I've hurt two people lately and it feels like
shit. There's this cool guy in the CMU club named Jimmy who
I outweigh by 30 lbs, and I hurt his elbow during our club
tournament. In Judo class last night I was grappling with
this 18 year old kid and, while trying to break his grip,
re-hurt his opposite shoulder which was damaged a few years
ago in a bad fall during a tournament. These two were
particularly disturbing to me for many reasons. One, both
of these people were not as strong or experienced as me.
Two, I was fighting like my life depended on it. I was in
literally no danger, but still some animal nature in me made
me go all out. This is one of the things I've always loved
about Brazilian jiu jitsu, the fact that you can train at
your hardest and feel relatively safe. But I'm only now
learning to tamper that killer instinct with awareness of my
opponent's abilities, strengths and weaknesses. My ego is
so bent on winning, that I easily forget that I can go easy
with these people. At any rate, I'm personally responsible
for causing two really nice people considerable pain.

Granted, I could learn from these experiences, and work
slower and with more awareness with my partners. But I
think this reflection has led me to abandon grappling.
For I have another physical outlet, yoga, that truly heals
people.

My friend Fumei was visiting CMU for a job talk for a couple
days, so she stayed with me. We went running one morning in
Frick Park, and we both complained of having sore knees
afterwards. (Lots of hills...) I did some yoga stuff
with her, (roll behind the knees, forward bend standing on
the blanket rolled up in a sticky mat) and she felt better.
She wondered aloud why more runners don't know about these
stretches. Iyengar yoga is just not well enough known.
It felt so good to help her feel better. Far better than
all the egoic satisfaction I get from winning judo matches.

I thought to myself today, while one of the doctors
at the tournament was working with a grappler that had hurt
pulled a back muscle, how easy it is to hurt people, and how
much knowledge, persistence and care is required to heal
someone. For example, my yoga teacher Sara works with
Parkinson patients. She spends hours experimenting with
ways to get into the person's body and mind, in order to
make their lives easier, less painful, and happier.
It takes about a second to break someone's bone.

Despite all the somewhat negative picture I've painted, I
love grappling. I enjoy doing yoga much less. But there is
a path there which is admirable and noble, and takes all
one's concentration and energy. I don't see such a path
with martial arts. It's more of a selfish pleasure.

I've been thinking about this quote from Albert Schweitzer a
lot lately:

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I
know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are
those who will have sought and found how to serve."

I asked my teammates on the drive home why they grapple.
Jimmy lost 45 pounds doing it. Awesome, no?
Randy just loves fighting. Zander cited the zone feeling
you get when everything is working in a match.

I like it because it's unbelievably sophisticated and
complex. Beautiful, in fact. It can be like an art form.
I love working out at my limit, and the feeling of
exhaustion after a workout. I enjoy the comraderie, and the
learning. But I ask myself, "to what end?".
Of course, there doesn't have to be an end. But my free
time is so short at present, and I'm getting older so
quickly, that it is no longer enough for me to just like and
appreciate something. It's hard to explain, but that's how
I feel. I feel like I must start making sacrifices to be
the kind of person I want to be. I think I've found out
how to serve.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Dean Lerner

There was a great workshop at Yoga on Centre
this weekend. A big Iyengar teacher named Dean Lerner
from State College, PA. We had two pranayama classes, and 4
asana classes, for a total of 11 yoga-hours. The classes
were great, despite my congenital inflexibility. Like
Sara predicted, my body felt great (if tired) after the
weekend.

He told the following story about how he got into Iyengar
yoga. He became very ill traveling in India. While
recovering, he bought Iyengar's
Light on Yoga
because it had poses for kidney
problems. He returned to his home in Arkansas, where he
proceeded to practice from the book. After some discomfort
and confusion, he decided to write to Iyengar himself. The
letter went something like this:

"Dear Mr. Iyengar,
I bought your book, and am enjoying learning yoga. I have
a few questions however. I cannot do the poses like you do.
Some of them are uncomfortable..."
(pause for laughter)
He proceeded to ask specific questions about the poses.

He received a letter 3 weeks later from India. Its
contents:

"Dear Mr. Lerner,
I am not concerned with your comfort. I am concerned
with the precision with which you execute the poses..."
He proceeded to answer some of the questions and point him
to some of his students in the US.

I love that! "I'm not concerned with your comfort..."
If you do Iyengar yoga, this is, uh, evident.

If you're ever in State College, check him out!


Jonathan Safron Foer

I heard two great authors speak in Pittsburgh in the last
month. Salmon Rushdie came a few weeks ago, and I saw
Jonathan Safron Foer last night. I read his beautiful book
Everything is Illuminated while I was in Finland at the
beginning of my trip this summer. I heard him speak once
before, in a Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side. This
was a much different venue. There, there were at most 30
people. There were hundreds in the audience last night.

Like Salmon Rushdie, he seems like a guy you'd love to
have as a friend. He's funny, charming, and candid.
He handles questions thoughtfully and with valuable insight, and is humorously
frank in his story telling. He mostly talked about writing
last night. One thing he mentioned on was the lack of
importance placed on the imagination in society. How people
trust or value Dan Rather more highly than someone like
Phillip Roth. This was especially appropriate considering
this is "banned book month" in the public library system
here.

He also told how his first book came to be. He was a
philosophy major at Princeton, where he wrote much of the
book. Upon graduation he held a series of odd jobs, one
including Tony the Tiger at a cancer walk. He spent a year
and a half as a secretary and even wrote an article about
prostate health for a men's magazine. A friend convinced
him to find an agent, so he went to Barnes and Noble, picked
up books that he liked, and saw who the authors thanked.
"To Sybil, the world's best agent", etc. Out of 8 letters,
only one agent took him on. The first five publishers
rejected his book. They wrote what he dubbed "what I know
now as a typical literary rejection".

"Dear Jonathan, you have undoubtedly written a work of
enduring genius. However... no thank you..."

He spoke about how it was difficult for him to write, and
that he hated doing it. (I think he was half joking.)
One audience member asked the question, "You mentioned that
you write about things that trouble you. After you write
about them, do they stop bothering you?"

After some thought, he answered that writing helped him to
become more close or intimate with whatever that pain or
sorrow happened to be. In this way he developed his own
relationship with it, and it allowed him to go on. Not that
he wasn't bothered anymore, but that he had come to some new
or different understanding of it.

One of the things he loved about writing was that you
could really let loose. He mentioned that he'd never left a
conversation satisfied. There was always something he meant
to say, or wished he hadn't said, or said it right, but the
person clearly didn't register the same sentiment. With
writing, he could change history, and not have to regret
using the wrong words. This was an interesting comment. He
considered reading his own work aloud strange for the same
reason. One important thing about writing is that it can
force you to slow down, or speed up, or read a passage a
second time. In an aural experience, those things are all
lost. Thus, literature will never be as popular as music or
movies, for you can have a passive movie or music
experience, but not so with books. He also used the image
of a tree being shown in a film, compared to on paper. In a
film, everyone is seeing the same tree. When read, the word
"tree" conjures different images in everyone. We are all
complicit in the creation of a work of literature.

After suppressing my bubbling jealousy (he's almost exactly
my age) I glanced at the sky, saying thank you that JSF
became a writer, and can share his unique insight with me,
with us all. Indeed, a work of enduring genius...





Sunday, October 09, 2005

Construction Junction

There's a wonderful store in Pittsburgh called
Construction Junction. It's a nonprofit building supply store
that gets its materials from destruction sites and
landfills. They keep tons of "waste" out of landfills and
make things with it. Or rather, you make things with
it. Last night there was even an art show featuring art made with these recycled materials. Some of it was really
good. (To my eternal regret, I forgot my camera.) One
that made me laugh was some metal electrical device that,
when looked at in the right way, looked just like an African
mask. They added a porcelain body and had a caption coming
from its mouth. Really funny. There was also a creative
device made with old bike materials. Roughly, you pull a
bike brake lever, some marbles come flying out of a can onto
a bike wheel equipped with little grooves to catch the
marbles. This made the wheel spin and it popped a hub onto
a pipe which rolled down etc. etc. etc. until finally
a bike light got switched on. The kids were in awe!
Speaking of children, there was also a craft workshop making
collages with glue and recycled small ceramic tile. They
made all sorts of pictures. I just think this kind of
effort is so beautiful and necessary. Thank you
Construction Junction and Salvo Arts!

In lieu of pictures of the event, here is some art from the
Walker in Minneapolis where I
had a long layover last week.






Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Yoga

Yoga is not about stretching. The poses seem to be a series
of sophisticated tools to find out all the places one might
be holding tension. (With over 650 muscles in the human
body, there are many places to examine!) The yogi's task is
to release that tension. This is why yoga is not
stretching. For one may stretch in any frame of mind, but
tightness is a symptom of a lack of awareness. To release
tension requires the mind to become consciously aware of the
tension and to struggle to release it. This is primarily an
inner journey, and secondarily a physical one.

In defense of stretching, it clearly has measurable physical
benefits. These are not lost on the yogi. When a yogi
engages in physical exercise, afterwards he physically needs
to stretch the muscles to aid in the removal of waste
products like lactic acid. Clearly the yogi reaps these
benefits. But moreover, the heightened awareness gained by
yoga practice makes releasing the tension in these exercised
muscles easier, deeper and more thorough.

It seems that popular yoga practice of vinyasa is really an
extremely advanced practice, perhaps the height of asana.
Vinyasa seems to take the sophisticated postures of static
yoga and merge them with movement, thus incorporating asana
into everyday action. At a higher form, making movement
itself an art, like dance. But, while it is difficult to
imagine being fully aware of one's body in a particular
asana, how much greater must be one's awareness to be fully
aware while moving between asanas? This is a stage of
advancement unimaginable to me at this time, though is a
noble and beautiful goal.



Sunday, September 11, 2005

Versailles

I've been increasingly involved in the community of the
Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh.
I went to a lovely picnic there after service this morning,
and spoke with many of the members. One in particular told
me a wonderful story, which I relate here.

It was toward the end of the picnic, and I was looking for
a friend to say my goodbyes. I was standing around looking
lost, when an older man in a green T-shirt approached me.
He had a name tag reading John McCarthy, I believe. I
happened to be writing my name down to sign up for a
name tag, so he observed my last name. He started telling me
of his family in Ireland.


I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I was hesitant to get into this
discussion in the first place. There was a particularly
attractive young woman I was eager to speak with before I
left, and I was mostly listening out of politeness at
first. But what followed was one of the best stories I've
heard first hand in my life.


John's grandfather was basically
kicked out of the house (off the farm, actually) in Ireland
for marrying a Scottish woman. They emigrated to the US
and ended up outside Pittsburgh. His grandfather worked
as a plasterer and his mother did laundry for the wealthy
steel magnates in the mansions nearby their more meager
home. His father, the eldest of 4 boys, upon graduation
from elementary school, faced the (parent's) choice of
attending high school or going to work at Kaufmann's, a
department store. His mother told everyone that John Sr.
was going to graduate from high school, get an office job,
and help put the rest of his brothers through college!

After college, John Sr. was drafted into the army to
fight in WWI. He was such a good student in school,
however, that they pulled him off the front lines to be a
stenographer for the officers. He served this position
throughout the war. At the end, ready to go home to his
family in Pittsburgh, an officer approached him asking if he
would remain in the army a few more months. "Why?", he
asked. "We would like you to come to href="http://history.acusd.edu/gen/text/versaillestreaty/vercontents.html"> Versailles and record
the meetings that will be taking place there. He became
an official stenographer for Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau,
Orlando and Lloyd George. He remembered Wilson vehemently
objecting to the one-sidedness of the treaty, counseling
compassion instead of revenge. He suggested, in John's
presence, that there would be another war if such a
"treaty" were enforced on the Germans. Indeed.

Walking out of the meeting room, I spotted the following
framed quote from Albert Schweitzer:

"The only ones among you who will be really happy are those
who will have sought and found how to serve."

It is a wonderful place.





An awesome falafel place in Berlin




A great book I read while travelling. In English of course.
I thought it was funny to see it in German.





The new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

Friday, September 09, 2005

This American Life

My life has been decidedly enriched by the radio show
This American Life.
It's basically a hodgepodge of stories from around the
country, usually on a theme given for the week,
eg. babysitting. It can be profound, ridiculous,
insightful. It is always touching, and consistently leaves
me smiling. Different kinds of smiles, but smiling always.

If you've never heard the show, check out the "Our
favorites" section. "Notes on Camp", "Act V" and
"Babysitting" are all phenomenal. So touching and

PS: I get a "Daily Ray of Hope" email from the Sierra Club.
One the other day was cute:

"The journal Mountain Gazette claims that it is printed on
paper "biodegradable with soy ink so environmentally benign
that, instead of recycling it, you can just pour milk on it
and eat it. The fiber content is guaranteed high."


My next few blogs will have pictures from my time in Europe last month.
This is Berlin at night.


Sunday, July 10, 2005

Nelson's Ledges

Nelson Ledges

I just got back from the most strange camping experience
I've ever had. Rachel invited me and Katie, along with 8
other friends. Eliza was in town, as she was driving
cross-country with her brother who just graduated from some
school in Florida. I met her in Seattle. We went salsa
dancing after I saw Deborah Voight in Lohengrin at Seattle
Opera. There were a ton of fun people, and the weekend was
fantastic. Nelson's Ledges , however, was a mix of wonder
and disaster. There was horrendously loud music playing
until (I'm not exaggerating) about 5AM. It was like some
kind of huge party in the woods. We were unprepared for
this, as it was advertised as "family camping". We managed
to have a good time nonetheless, playing scrabble, smoking a
huge hookah, listening to the other Sean play guitar and
sing, and reading from Bloom's book of children's stories.
As if to make up for all the drunk, high, rude people,
however, nature offered us a marvelous lake (a filled in
quarry) and some truly strange geology. Check out the
pictures.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Alexandra Nechita

I was recently reminded of an experience I had walking
around Boston a few years ago. I was on Newbury Street,
shopping with a friend of mine. Well, I wasn't shopping,
but she was. Thus, I thought myself totally justified in
stepping into a little art gallery for a breath of fresh
air, so to speak. I immediately noticed very large
canvases, something like Picasso (one of his myriad styles
anyway) but vibrantly colorful and intriguing. I asked the
owner about them. They were painted by a young artist named
Alexandra Nechita .
She was 12 at the time of the painting. I think she's 18
or so now. Wonderful...






Saturday, June 25, 2005

Erin McNulty

I just found out a daughter of my first music teacher,
Vivian McNulty, is a dancer in the San Francisco Ballet.
This has to be one of the most difficult jobs to get of
any profession. An
article
from our town paper, when she
landed the apprenticeship (before she got into the main
company).
The SF Ballet Roster
. What an unbelievable
achievement. Congratulations Erin!

Saturday, June 04, 2005

Thoreau has a blog

A blog worth reading...

http://blogthoreau.blogspot.com/

Friday, June 03, 2005

Sousa

I live in a building with elevator music. Heavy, classical
elevator music. Often it's kind of cool to hear Stravinsky
(I heard Rite of Spring last week) and Beethoven (9th
symphony?!) et al. But this morning at 9:00 I was forced to
travel 5 floors to the sounds of a Sousa march. This was
too much. I tried with all my might to ignore the
oppressive brass (and *@%^ing piccolo), but my mental and
concentrative powers were not up to the task. I burst out
the door as from death himself. I think I'm going to take
the stairs more often...

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Abi

I got Abi Tapia's
new cd in the mail today. She's a fantastic
singer/songwriter in Austin. I saw her live in Pittsburgh
last year. She's the cousin of a friend of mine here. I
love her story... She decided she wanted to be a musician
about halfway through college. She picked up a guitar, took
a few lessons, and started writing. A couple years later she
released her first (real) CD, and this is the second.
Go the website and listen to Calamine Lotion and Hand Over Your Heart.
Fantastic lyrics! It's so humbling to be privileged enough to study
music for umpteen years with tons of expensive lessons etc
and have someone like Abi come along, pick up a guitar, and
show you what it really is to be a musician. Humbling, but
wonderful just the same...

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Vixens, and Ceremonial Running Shoes

Wow... an entire month without adding to my blog. I have
an excuse! I was working like a maniac on the final draft
of a paper for
CADE-20
in Tallinn, Estonia. I was then in Banff for
a math conference,

Densest Packing of Spheres
. Tom Hales and Sam Furguson
were both there. I met
Noam Elkies .
While all his
mathematical, musical and chess accomplishments were
astonishing, my favorite trick was when
and he showed me how he could whistle and hum at the same
time... different voices of Bach fugues!.

Now I'm back in Pittsburgh, for about 10 days. I'm off
to Yellowstone with Barnaby and then home with my family for
a week. Why does the summer feel like it's almost over?
It's not even June.

I spent the last couple days putting my neglected cd
collection in my computer. I found a bunch of stuff I
hadn't heard for years that I forgot I love (the Bernstein
Mahler set), and some
things I owned but never listened to. One of these
is Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. Amazing little
opera! This discovery alone repaid my work tenfold.

Here's an IM conversation I had recently. It made
me laugh.

"Do you have tennis/running shoes?"
"ummmm, yes but no"
"huh"
"i do but...they're more symbolic than anything"
"We could go running... with your symbolic running shoes"
"we could, but we will not. They're ceremonial"