1. I've finished compiling the index to this book. I'd burble about the process, but I've done that before and you're not already caught up on where I started.
2. Article on what Playboy thought was hip back in 1953. Before its self-declared suave bachelor seduced a woman, he'd invite her up for "a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." And I thought, how terminally unhip am I? I don't like Picasso (for painters active in 1953, try me on Wyeth or Magritte), I've never read Nietzsche who sounds repulsive (I don't read much philosophy, and the only canonical modern philosophers I've read extensively in are Bertrand Russell and John Stuart Mill), and I basically don't do jazz. I do classical, of course, and had I been around in 1953 with the level of knowledge of that era's music I have today, I would have named the three greatest living composers as Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and Shostakovich, a list which would have earned me looks of withering condescension by the cognoscenti of the time. But wait 30 or 40 years and I would have been vindicated, as their reputations all rebounded.
3. Here's a challenging quiz I did pretty well at: Can you identify these world cities from their street plans alone?
4. Article about airline mergers, focusing on the difficulty of retraining agents from the merged airline on the acquirer's computer systems. And I thought, I've been there. Throughout my career as a library cataloger, every couple of years I had to learn a new program as I'd go to a new employer or my old one would switch vendors or the vendor would make a massive upgrade. All these programs dealt with exactly the same kind of data with the same coding - the equivalent of "find this passenger an aisle seat" in the airline biz - but they all handled it completely differently and made the user jump through entirely different sets of hoops.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Monday, September 28, 2015
concert review: Fremont Symphony
The last time I reviewed the Fremont Symphony, I got heavily bruised in comments from people who did not share my judgment that the conductor did an adequate job. Well, that conductor is gone, and Fremont is down to a series of guests this year, so I hope they're satisfied.
What drew both me and my editor to Saturday's concert was the alluring program. Chen Yi! (a much under-rated woman composer) Takemitsu, the great Japanese mystic! (Not as much to my taste as, say, Messiaen or Pärt, but still ...) Francis Poulenc's Organ Concerto: now there's an unusual and neglected 20C masterpiece for you.
The newly-reduced word count didn't leave me space to say much about any of them, and I'm slightly amazed that the editors let pass my reference to the "chugga-chugga rhythms" in Karl Jenkins' Palladio. You're probably unfamiliar with that title, but you may still know the piece, as it's the source of the music in this commercial. (chorus: oh, that one!)
To my distress, I was rather tired out during this concert: short on sleep and not having been able to get much of a nap beforehand. It affects my receptivity to the music. It also affected something else: staying in my seat during intermission and attempting to get a few winks in, I was suddenly interrupted by a screechy voice saying, "Are you trying to take a nap?" This proved to belong to a middle-aged woman in an expensive dress with lots of jewelry and perfume, who'd sat down next to me to pose this query. She must have been part of the local gentry, as among the few equally well-dressed people standing in the aisle watching this I recognized the president of the symphony association.
I was not too tired to think up the reply, "If that was the case, then why did you interrupt it?" She semi-apologized but didn't answer the question, and while blabbering caressed my face in what she probably thought was a motherly way. I swatted her hand off. Had I been less tired, she might have gotten a lot more of a response. Grrrr. I haven't seen such pure rudeness from gentry since the last time I read Jane Austen.
Also unmentioned by me in the review, but more pleasant to hear, were a group of students who took turns playing bits of violin solos - a chunk of the solo part of the Mendelssohn concerto, that sort of thing - in the atrium before the concert.
And I've got to either find somewhere decent to eat dinner near the Fremont Hub before concerts in those parts, or else go down to Irvington or Milpitas, where there are better places.
What drew both me and my editor to Saturday's concert was the alluring program. Chen Yi! (a much under-rated woman composer) Takemitsu, the great Japanese mystic! (Not as much to my taste as, say, Messiaen or Pärt, but still ...) Francis Poulenc's Organ Concerto: now there's an unusual and neglected 20C masterpiece for you.
The newly-reduced word count didn't leave me space to say much about any of them, and I'm slightly amazed that the editors let pass my reference to the "chugga-chugga rhythms" in Karl Jenkins' Palladio. You're probably unfamiliar with that title, but you may still know the piece, as it's the source of the music in this commercial. (chorus: oh, that one!)
To my distress, I was rather tired out during this concert: short on sleep and not having been able to get much of a nap beforehand. It affects my receptivity to the music. It also affected something else: staying in my seat during intermission and attempting to get a few winks in, I was suddenly interrupted by a screechy voice saying, "Are you trying to take a nap?" This proved to belong to a middle-aged woman in an expensive dress with lots of jewelry and perfume, who'd sat down next to me to pose this query. She must have been part of the local gentry, as among the few equally well-dressed people standing in the aisle watching this I recognized the president of the symphony association.
I was not too tired to think up the reply, "If that was the case, then why did you interrupt it?" She semi-apologized but didn't answer the question, and while blabbering caressed my face in what she probably thought was a motherly way. I swatted her hand off. Had I been less tired, she might have gotten a lot more of a response. Grrrr. I haven't seen such pure rudeness from gentry since the last time I read Jane Austen.
Also unmentioned by me in the review, but more pleasant to hear, were a group of students who took turns playing bits of violin solos - a chunk of the solo part of the Mendelssohn concerto, that sort of thing - in the atrium before the concert.
And I've got to either find somewhere decent to eat dinner near the Fremont Hub before concerts in those parts, or else go down to Irvington or Milpitas, where there are better places.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
food in Niagara-by-the-Lake
Great topic when facing Yom Kippur, eh?
Niagara-by-the-Lake, located just downstream from the Falls, is a small town with a Shaw Festival, and consequently has all the characteristics of a boutique theatre town. Its one main street is lined with gift shops and restaurants, mostly plenty upscale. One restaurant is actually called the Epicurian.
Many of the gift shops are food-oriented. There are shops that sell exotic olive oils and spices in bottles. The one I visited wrapped the bottles up plenty well without being asked, which was convenient for putting them in my suitcase prior to plane travel. There are shops that sell candy. One had about 15 flavors of Turkish delight in jars, far more flavors than the Turkish delight specialty shop in Seattle's Pike Place ever has, though they didn't have its specialty of rose-flavored. One kind of candy common in Canada (I also found some in a mall in Windsor) that I've never seen in the US is blueberry-flavored chocolate bars. I bought one to take home for B.
I also bought for B. some exotic coffee from the shop that sells coffees and teas. When I asked if the packages were beans or ground, they said beans and offered to grind it, but then they asked me what kind of coffee-maker I have. I don't know. B. drinks the coffee; I know nothing about the stuff. I've had shops grind coffee for me before without interrogating me about coffee-makers. We got through that OK.
We had lunch in the Olde Angel Inn, spelled that way. This is the kind of olde Englishe pubbe that's so authenticke that I doubt you could find anything like it in England. It's not just the weathered-wood decor and the photos of the royal family on the wall, it's the greasy fries (this is Canada, so they don't call them "chips") and the insistence on serving peas and carrots with everything. I ordered sausage rolls, as an appetizer so they wouldn't inflict me with peas and carrots, and ate them gloomily (they were rather tasteless) while thinking of the sausage-roll conspiracy in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Grand Duke which left the conspirators sick of sausage rolls. The chicken and rice soup tasted canned. My brother liked the unusual offering of chicken-and-peach pie, though.
And that place was supposed to be good. For dinner we picked Bistro 61, named for its street number, because the menu looked promising. There I had bouillabaisse, to make up for the starchy lunch. It was mostly mussels and possibly not any clams, though there were clam shells, plus two prawns and some salmon. Once I removed all the shells it wasn't a very large bowl of soup, but they were good mussels and the broth was spicy and memorable, and there was much less grit than this dish often has. So it wasn't bad, and the service was fast and excellent: a notable plus when you have a curtain time.
Some of these places take US cash at varying exchange rates, but I had loaded up with Canadian cash at an ATM and used a credit card freely.
Niagara-by-the-Lake, located just downstream from the Falls, is a small town with a Shaw Festival, and consequently has all the characteristics of a boutique theatre town. Its one main street is lined with gift shops and restaurants, mostly plenty upscale. One restaurant is actually called the Epicurian.
Many of the gift shops are food-oriented. There are shops that sell exotic olive oils and spices in bottles. The one I visited wrapped the bottles up plenty well without being asked, which was convenient for putting them in my suitcase prior to plane travel. There are shops that sell candy. One had about 15 flavors of Turkish delight in jars, far more flavors than the Turkish delight specialty shop in Seattle's Pike Place ever has, though they didn't have its specialty of rose-flavored. One kind of candy common in Canada (I also found some in a mall in Windsor) that I've never seen in the US is blueberry-flavored chocolate bars. I bought one to take home for B.
I also bought for B. some exotic coffee from the shop that sells coffees and teas. When I asked if the packages were beans or ground, they said beans and offered to grind it, but then they asked me what kind of coffee-maker I have. I don't know. B. drinks the coffee; I know nothing about the stuff. I've had shops grind coffee for me before without interrogating me about coffee-makers. We got through that OK.
We had lunch in the Olde Angel Inn, spelled that way. This is the kind of olde Englishe pubbe that's so authenticke that I doubt you could find anything like it in England. It's not just the weathered-wood decor and the photos of the royal family on the wall, it's the greasy fries (this is Canada, so they don't call them "chips") and the insistence on serving peas and carrots with everything. I ordered sausage rolls, as an appetizer so they wouldn't inflict me with peas and carrots, and ate them gloomily (they were rather tasteless) while thinking of the sausage-roll conspiracy in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Grand Duke which left the conspirators sick of sausage rolls. The chicken and rice soup tasted canned. My brother liked the unusual offering of chicken-and-peach pie, though.
And that place was supposed to be good. For dinner we picked Bistro 61, named for its street number, because the menu looked promising. There I had bouillabaisse, to make up for the starchy lunch. It was mostly mussels and possibly not any clams, though there were clam shells, plus two prawns and some salmon. Once I removed all the shells it wasn't a very large bowl of soup, but they were good mussels and the broth was spicy and memorable, and there was much less grit than this dish often has. So it wasn't bad, and the service was fast and excellent: a notable plus when you have a curtain time.
Some of these places take US cash at varying exchange rates, but I had loaded up with Canadian cash at an ATM and used a credit card freely.
home again
14 hours in 4 airports and the consequent airplanes, much of it crammed in next to a man who denied that he'd been jiggling his leg when I asked him not to, but stopped anyway, was not the ideal way to travel 2600 miles, but it wasn't the original plan.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
pshaw festival
Location: at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Attended: two plays by the sainted GBS.
Pygmalion, unfortunately, fell victim to the kind of pyggish director who believes in updating plays to make them "relevant". This long-standing disease in productions of Shakespeare (and opera) has now infected Shaw. Oh dear. On the belief that this is a play about class-rising aspiration, and the fact that class gradients are stronger in the UK today than a century ago when the play was written, it was given a contemporary setting. But that's not really the theme of the play, and there are too many century-old assumptions and manners of behavior built into the plot to make this work. For instance, an alarming number of references to physical violence have a disturbingly different resonance today that was not addressed. On top of which were picky issues like the opening scene in which Freddy runs around in the rain looking for a taxi. If this is today, why doesn't he just use Uber?
Some aspects worked better. Eliza was played by an actress of South Asian ancestry, which is the ethnicity she would have today, although she still spoke in cockney, or, rather, the best imitation of it that the actress (born in Kenya, raised in Ottawa) could manage. In the famous scene in which Eliza, asked if she will walk home, replies, "Not bloody likely; I'm going home in a taxi," for "bloody" was substituted a stronger expletive that still has the power to shock, and that was one piece of successful updating.
A production of the somewhat less well-known You Never Can Tell was staged in a conventional but imaginative manner. Like Mrs. Warren's Profession, which it somewhat resembles, it's one of Shaw's more amusing earlier plays. It's hard to describe briefly exactly what it's about, but one thing it's about is a woman so horrified by her former marriage that she has never informed her now-grown children of who their father is or anything about him. Then they run into him accidentally: hilarity and much Shavian dialogue ensue. At one point, one character says, "No, I will speak. I have been silent for nearly thirty seconds," which I consider the perfectly encapsulating Shaw line.
The acting and (insofar, in the case of Pygmalion, that it stuck to the play) directing were adequate but mostly not inspiring. It was all fast, but it could have been tighter and sparklier. Special points to Patrick McManus for playing the grouchy and obstreperous Higgins in Pygmalion in the evening, immediately after playing the even grouchier and more obstreperous father in You Never Can Tell in the afternoon.
The theatres here are strung out along the town's one main street, which is otherwise filled with a modest number of varyingly pretentious restaurants and a vast number of upscale and indulgent gift shops. Weather in September is cool and threatening, but without much actual rain.
Pygmalion, unfortunately, fell victim to the kind of pyggish director who believes in updating plays to make them "relevant". This long-standing disease in productions of Shakespeare (and opera) has now infected Shaw. Oh dear. On the belief that this is a play about class-rising aspiration, and the fact that class gradients are stronger in the UK today than a century ago when the play was written, it was given a contemporary setting. But that's not really the theme of the play, and there are too many century-old assumptions and manners of behavior built into the plot to make this work. For instance, an alarming number of references to physical violence have a disturbingly different resonance today that was not addressed. On top of which were picky issues like the opening scene in which Freddy runs around in the rain looking for a taxi. If this is today, why doesn't he just use Uber?
Some aspects worked better. Eliza was played by an actress of South Asian ancestry, which is the ethnicity she would have today, although she still spoke in cockney, or, rather, the best imitation of it that the actress (born in Kenya, raised in Ottawa) could manage. In the famous scene in which Eliza, asked if she will walk home, replies, "Not bloody likely; I'm going home in a taxi," for "bloody" was substituted a stronger expletive that still has the power to shock, and that was one piece of successful updating.
A production of the somewhat less well-known You Never Can Tell was staged in a conventional but imaginative manner. Like Mrs. Warren's Profession, which it somewhat resembles, it's one of Shaw's more amusing earlier plays. It's hard to describe briefly exactly what it's about, but one thing it's about is a woman so horrified by her former marriage that she has never informed her now-grown children of who their father is or anything about him. Then they run into him accidentally: hilarity and much Shavian dialogue ensue. At one point, one character says, "No, I will speak. I have been silent for nearly thirty seconds," which I consider the perfectly encapsulating Shaw line.
The acting and (insofar, in the case of Pygmalion, that it stuck to the play) directing were adequate but mostly not inspiring. It was all fast, but it could have been tighter and sparklier. Special points to Patrick McManus for playing the grouchy and obstreperous Higgins in Pygmalion in the evening, immediately after playing the even grouchier and more obstreperous father in You Never Can Tell in the afternoon.
The theatres here are strung out along the town's one main street, which is otherwise filled with a modest number of varyingly pretentious restaurants and a vast number of upscale and indulgent gift shops. Weather in September is cool and threatening, but without much actual rain.
report from the road
Ontario is very large. Even the little fiddly bit at the bottom of the map is very large.
Friday, September 18, 2015
I am pleased to announce
that there will soon be two merit awards established in my mother's name at her alma mater, the University of Michigan: one in the History Department for best undergraduate scholarly paper, and one at the Michigan Daily for achievement in copy-editing.
And I and my brother have gotten to find out what it's like to be big-time - well, rather small-time, actually - academic donors. They bought us lunch, and their interest in these 65-year-old effects - I brought along a photo of my mother as an undergrad being editorial in the Daily offices, and the original of her magnum opus in B.A. scholarship, a thesis on the Boer War - seemed genuine.
And money has changed hands, and when it's earned enough interest in the Endowment Fund, next year, we will be on.
And I and my brother have gotten to find out what it's like to be big-time - well, rather small-time, actually - academic donors. They bought us lunch, and their interest in these 65-year-old effects - I brought along a photo of my mother as an undergrad being editorial in the Daily offices, and the original of her magnum opus in B.A. scholarship, a thesis on the Boer War - seemed genuine.
And money has changed hands, and when it's earned enough interest in the Endowment Fund, next year, we will be on.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
major minor
(no, not a music post)
Reading John Major's memoirs to pass the time, I'm reminded that my biggest hurdle in reading about this period in British politics is Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont. I find it almost impossible to remember both their names at once ("ok, there was another Chancellor of the Exchequer whose initials were also N.L.: now what was his name?") or, when I do see a reference to one of them, remembering which one he is. If I'd ever seen them on tv or anything, I might have less difficulty.
Major seems weirdly proud of having missed most of the warning signals leading to Thatcher's downfall.
Reading John Major's memoirs to pass the time, I'm reminded that my biggest hurdle in reading about this period in British politics is Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont. I find it almost impossible to remember both their names at once ("ok, there was another Chancellor of the Exchequer whose initials were also N.L.: now what was his name?") or, when I do see a reference to one of them, remembering which one he is. If I'd ever seen them on tv or anything, I might have less difficulty.
Major seems weirdly proud of having missed most of the warning signals leading to Thatcher's downfall.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
literary observations
1. B. was watching Under the Dome on tv. I wandered in as a woman was addressing a cadre (they were all lined up like one) outdoors. I said, "If they're under a dome, why is her hair waving in the breeze?"
2. Our book discussion topic was Maplecroft by Cherie Priest. Lizzie Borden battles Cthulhu: now that's a great concept. Unfortunately that didn't make it a good book. (Insofar as that, it reminded me of Babylon-5: great concept, lousy execution.) It was compelling reading: that I didn't get very far into it was solely due to lack of time. But I wasn't enjoying it. (Insofar as that, it reminded me of Stephen King: compelling storyteller, gawdawful stylist.) The narrators all sound alike - it's a bad sign when I have to keep flipping back to the start of the chapter to remember who's talking - and what they sound like is nothing like any 1890s narrator I've ever read before. (Or like Lovecraft, the other suggestion.) And not only do they keep behaving inexplicably, because the plot requires them to, they're baffled at their own inexplicable behavior.
Interestingly, hardly anyone else at the meeting liked it much either, and my impressions from the first part of the book were confirmed by those who'd made it to the end. The mysteries never get explained, I was told: either you get the references to Miskatonic University and such, in which case the overheated vague descriptions are just annoying, or else you don't, in which case it's just baffling. Authors trying for the mysteriously numinous is no good if they don't know how to do it.
2. Our book discussion topic was Maplecroft by Cherie Priest. Lizzie Borden battles Cthulhu: now that's a great concept. Unfortunately that didn't make it a good book. (Insofar as that, it reminded me of Babylon-5: great concept, lousy execution.) It was compelling reading: that I didn't get very far into it was solely due to lack of time. But I wasn't enjoying it. (Insofar as that, it reminded me of Stephen King: compelling storyteller, gawdawful stylist.) The narrators all sound alike - it's a bad sign when I have to keep flipping back to the start of the chapter to remember who's talking - and what they sound like is nothing like any 1890s narrator I've ever read before. (Or like Lovecraft, the other suggestion.) And not only do they keep behaving inexplicably, because the plot requires them to, they're baffled at their own inexplicable behavior.
Interestingly, hardly anyone else at the meeting liked it much either, and my impressions from the first part of the book were confirmed by those who'd made it to the end. The mysteries never get explained, I was told: either you get the references to Miskatonic University and such, in which case the overheated vague descriptions are just annoying, or else you don't, in which case it's just baffling. Authors trying for the mysteriously numinous is no good if they don't know how to do it.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Colbert on 9/10: two footnotes
I watched clips from the show on YouTube, and two things of interest came up.
Everybody has been talking about that extraordinary conversation between Colbert and Biden about personal grief and faith, but I want to bring up something else. At the beginning of the second segment, Colbert asked Biden about the Vice Presidency. And Biden said, "There is no inherent power in the Vice Presidency. ... It is directly a reflection of your relationship with the President." This is the same point Biden made back in the debate with Palin when he was first running, and it is exactly right. Biden knew personally every Vice President going back to Hubert Humphrey, and he understands the office. He understands it better than Dick Cheney, who postulated a monstrous and absurd theory that the VP was exempt from any oversight. Biden understands it better than Palin, who wondered publicly what the VP does all day: she should have asked McCain, who could have told her what he'd have her do. Biden understands it better than the fools who told Palin to look in the Constitution, where it says the VP presides over the Senate. That today is an occasional ceremonial job, and not a day-to-day duty. The Vice President is the President's only staff member who can't be summarily fired, and consequently is either the President's most trusted adviser, as most recent VPs have been, or else he is nothing, which VPs used to be and is the reason the office became the subject of jokes.
The other item of interest was the interview with Travis Kalanick of Uber. Kalanick defended Uber from the charge of destroying the taxi industry on the grounds that it's better for drivers because they don't have to pay to rent their cab (cabbies have to do that? news to me), they can use their own cars (as if they didn't have to pay for those, too), they can set their own hours instead of being stuck to a shift (although cabbies in Donald Westlake novels can always clock off), and that they can make more money (though studies have claimed that they don't). But then Colbert, in specific response to this claim that Uber is good for the drivers, asked about the prospect of self-driving cars: how does it help drivers if you replace them with robots? And Kalanick said that driverless cars are coming anyway, and a tech company shouldn't try to "resist the future" or it'll go the way of taxis. Well, you can say that, though it's also an arguable point. But if you do say that, then you reveal that you have no interest in benefiting the drivers: anything they get is just largesse, crumbs for the birds falling from your sandwich. The drivers are your useful tools, and as soon as they're no longer useful you'll drop them without a care, because you shouldn't "resist the future," a future in which only a few wealthy people will be able to take Uber rides because nobody else will have a job and be able to afford it. And that is why Travis Kalanick, whether he knows it or not, is a reversion to a 19th-century robber baron.
Everybody has been talking about that extraordinary conversation between Colbert and Biden about personal grief and faith, but I want to bring up something else. At the beginning of the second segment, Colbert asked Biden about the Vice Presidency. And Biden said, "There is no inherent power in the Vice Presidency. ... It is directly a reflection of your relationship with the President." This is the same point Biden made back in the debate with Palin when he was first running, and it is exactly right. Biden knew personally every Vice President going back to Hubert Humphrey, and he understands the office. He understands it better than Dick Cheney, who postulated a monstrous and absurd theory that the VP was exempt from any oversight. Biden understands it better than Palin, who wondered publicly what the VP does all day: she should have asked McCain, who could have told her what he'd have her do. Biden understands it better than the fools who told Palin to look in the Constitution, where it says the VP presides over the Senate. That today is an occasional ceremonial job, and not a day-to-day duty. The Vice President is the President's only staff member who can't be summarily fired, and consequently is either the President's most trusted adviser, as most recent VPs have been, or else he is nothing, which VPs used to be and is the reason the office became the subject of jokes.
The other item of interest was the interview with Travis Kalanick of Uber. Kalanick defended Uber from the charge of destroying the taxi industry on the grounds that it's better for drivers because they don't have to pay to rent their cab (cabbies have to do that? news to me), they can use their own cars (as if they didn't have to pay for those, too), they can set their own hours instead of being stuck to a shift (although cabbies in Donald Westlake novels can always clock off), and that they can make more money (though studies have claimed that they don't). But then Colbert, in specific response to this claim that Uber is good for the drivers, asked about the prospect of self-driving cars: how does it help drivers if you replace them with robots? And Kalanick said that driverless cars are coming anyway, and a tech company shouldn't try to "resist the future" or it'll go the way of taxis. Well, you can say that, though it's also an arguable point. But if you do say that, then you reveal that you have no interest in benefiting the drivers: anything they get is just largesse, crumbs for the birds falling from your sandwich. The drivers are your useful tools, and as soon as they're no longer useful you'll drop them without a care, because you shouldn't "resist the future," a future in which only a few wealthy people will be able to take Uber rides because nobody else will have a job and be able to afford it. And that is why Travis Kalanick, whether he knows it or not, is a reversion to a 19th-century robber baron.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)