LIbrary of Congress Webcasts
In my latest NASA Earth-and-Space-Science-Education newsletter I was reminded that NASA and the Library of Congress sponsor an interesting lecture series at the LoC, featuring scientists from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (in nearby Greenbelt, Maryland). I haven't yet made it for a live presentation but I was happy to see that all of the presentations are webcast–after a time, at least–so we can all enjoy them.
The excerpt below is from that newsletter dated 31 March 2008. (Newsletter information, archives, subscribe, etc., is here.)
Do notice that the webcast archives start in 2001 and evidently include many other interesting talks in addition to the NASA folk, so there's lots to pique everyone's interest.
NASA PRESENTATION SERIES AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Library of Congress continue a series of free public presentations by top NASA scientists on current science topics. All programs will be held from 11:30-12:30 in the Mary Pickford Theater, James Madison Building, Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Webcasts will be available at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/events/events.html#cybercasts (note: the Webcasts are typically not available for at least a couple of months after the event). For more information, go to: http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/events/events.html.
Upcoming programs are:
–April 8, Anne Douglass and Jeannie Allen, Gardening for Ozone Air Quality.
–May 6, Tom Sever, Avoiding the Fate of the Mayans.
–June 4, Peter Hildebrand, Earth's Water Cycle in a Changing Climate
–Sept.10, Jim Smith, Space-Based Ornithology: on the Wings of Migration and Biophysics.
–Oct. 21, Jeff Morrisette, Invasive Species in the United States
Shooting the Gordian Gun
Sometimes recently the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning the District of Columbia's hand-gun control laws. Swirling about this event were many arguments, many familiar arguments, about Constitutional Rights and whether the Second Amendment of said document guarantees the freedom to bear arms only in the context of a defensive militia, or in any circumstance whatsoever, or somewhere in between. Such scholastic arguments seem to be deeply satisfying to some people, but I prefer to avoid them myself.
But, in a recent moment of inspiration, I believe I found the answer that will untie the Gordian Second-Amendment Knot and satisfy those in favor of gun control laws, those not in favor of gun control laws, and Constitutional (so called) strict constructionists all at the same time.
Namely
There shall be no laws made in the US that restrict the right of the people to bear arms that were available when the US Constitution was written.
Thus, while ruling out automatic and semi-automatic weapons, rifles, revolvers, shotguns, and Saturday-night specials, it does allow law-abiding citizens the right to flint-lock pistols, blunderbusses, and muskets–but with no rifling in the barrel please, since that was invented about 1800.
In: All, Current Events, Eureka!
Paul on Roach on Sex
I have previous read the two available books by Mary Roach, Stiff and Spook, and rather enjoyed them, for the most part. Roach is a sort of gonzo journalist-science writer who likes to take odd topics and see how science deals with them. Stiff is subtitled "The Curious Life of Cadavers", and Spook is subtitled "Science Tackles the Afterlife", so I think you probably get the picture.
Anyway, I was interested to read a review in the New York Times (reference below) of her new book, called The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W.Norton & Co., 2008). Evidently she's writing about how science gets on with sex research. Judging from what the reviewer writes, the new opus continues the style established in the first two books, which should make for reasonably fun reading.
All of that was prelude that really has nothing to do with this post, though, whose purpose is merely to quote this paragraph from the review, which I found amusing:
Perhaps it’s petty to criticize a writer for being too curious, but occasionally Roach’s enthusiasm runneth over. In a book best described as lightly organized, Roach’s promiscuous use of footnotes occasionally becomes distracting. Yes, learning how an erection can be compared to nasal congestion is interesting, but not in the middle of major penis surgery. Yes, it is possibly of interest that the name Dorcus was once trendy enough to bestow on a popular embroidery magazine, but need that interrupt a discussion of “rectal electroejaculators”?
[Pamela Paul, "Sexual Advances", New York Times, 30 March 2008.]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book
"Peter Grimes"
I had seen a large opera performed live only once before; some years ago Isaac and I went to Baltimore for a dress rehearsal of Strauss' "Elektra". It was a good experience, but it seemed much smaller than when Bill and I went to see "Peter Grimes" at the Metropolitan Opera House on 11 March 2008. That was a big experience.
Of the choices I had for seeing an opera at the Met, I'm quite happy that I chose to see "Peter Grimes". As I told my seat companions, it was written at a time in music history that is familiar to me, and I thought it was a work most likely to be performed in a style that would suit it and suit my taste at the same time. I was not disappointed in this expectation–although a number of critics clearly were, as we shall see.
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Anthony Dean Griffey as Peter Grimes; photo copyright © 2008 by Ken Howard (source) |
Benjamin Britten wrote "Peter Grimes" to a libretto by Montague Slater, which was loosely based on a part of a poem by George Crabbe. The opera premiered in 1945 with Britten's partner Peter Pears in the title role. The action takes place in a prologue and three acts. (The Met's synopsis of the plot is good, and the page has links to other information related to the opera, including the cast list.)
The Met Opera House is a voluminous building, with seemingly an endless series of balconies and boxes; my seat was in the second balcony up from the orchestra level, a vantage point I found advantageous. The proscenium arch is an amazing 50 feet high. When we arrived there was no curtain, just the enormous facade of the set only slightly set back from the arch, filling the opening of the stage, leaving a relatively small space before it extended somewhat by the narrow apron.
The facade was imposing. It was covered in blue-grey clapboards, evoking the image of sea-side cottages long weathered by salt spray. To me it looked like a flattened-perspective image of the entire fishing village where the opera is set, as though in a photograph taken with a long, telephoto lens. In the face of this facade were a number of doors that would open now and then to reveal characters in the drama. At times the facade moved upstage and similar volumes moved in from the sides to create enclosed spaces that might represent the village pub or the interior of Grimes' cottage.
Our first impression was of the obvious: the set was meant to evoke the claustrophobic society of the Borough, the anonymous name of the sea-side village. But not only did it evoke the metaphor of the drama, it created feelings of restless anxiety in the audience as the drama progressed. Oddly, critics of the stage set all mention the sense of small-town, paranoiac claustrophobia it represents symbolically, but they largely seem to think they were immune to its effects in eliciting a visceral response from the audience to that claustrophobic representation. I thought the set was brilliant; others seemed put off by its psychological intimacy and emotional realism.
For some years now my feeling about much of Britten's music is that I'd like to like it more than I actually do. Fortunately, I have no reservations about my enthusiasm for his music in "Peter Grimes". It had some of the most amazing musical moments and I thought they suited the drama exceedingly well. It was really the first time that I'd seen and heard an opera where I felt that the music and the drama were truly integrated.
Often Britten accomplished this by having the music on stage curiously detached from what was happening in the orchestra pit; layers of music that gave us simultaneous insights about what one character was thinking, what the villagers were thinking at the same time, and what was really going to happen when they collided. As the program notes commented, to anyone who has heard the "Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes", a suite of orchestral excerpts, much of the musical material will sound familiar, but all that material takes on dramatic roles of amazing depth when heard as part of the opera.
There were amazing effects at times, too. Act I ended in a startling way, at full momentum from everything that came before. Grimes is in the village pub with the rest of the village. His new apprentice has arrived. He puts his arm around the youngster and says "Come boy, I'll take you home". As he goes out the door, the chorus huffs "Home! If you call that home!", the timpani punctuate the phrase with two loud strokes and–boom! boom!–the act is over, leaving the audience clutching their chairs to keep from falling off. I heard gasps of shock.
Nothing, though, was so chilling as near the end of Act III when Grimes is being hounded by the villagers, now a mob enraged at him for no good reason but convinced he is a murderer. They mill about on stage in some musical chaos that gradually resolves itself into a fortissimo tutti with the crowd shouting "Peter Grimes!"–"Peter Grimes!"–"Grimes!"–"Grimes!" The spaces of absolute silence that fell in between those shouts were bone chilling and blood curdling; I shiver just from the memory. There was no coughing or candy-wrapper disturbances from the audience during that moment.
Well, it's clear now that I have become an enthusiast, as least for this one opera, and this one production. And, what's the point of seeing a major production like this if not for the pleasure of talking endlessly about it? Of course, one then rushes to find reviews in order to 1) talk more about it; and 2) see whether the reviewers were right (agreed with me) or wrong (obviously dolts with no musical or dramatic sense whatsoever).
So, here are some of the reviews, perhaps with a little commentary by your humble Grimesophile.
Peter G. Davis wrote a sort of preview of the production in the New York Times ("In Pursuit of Britten’s Hated Outsider", 24 February 2008). He provides some nice history–this is the Met's third production since 1948–and useful character analysis. How nice, too, that he didn't even mention the set (although there is a very dramatic photograph)!
“Peter Grimes,” most would agree, is opera’s classic study of the isolated, misunderstood, rejected individual: a man who is feared, even hated, because he is different and doesn’t fit in. It’s a recurrent theme in Britten’s operas, but he never explored it with quite the explicitness and precision that he does in “Peter Grimes,” nor within a social environment so startlingly realistic.
He points out that we don't know why Grimes is so reviled by his fishing community. This may be what makes the opera so strong: each viewer is free to imagine the reason for their hatred. But the strategy works well because it is the hatred itself that is the focus of the drama and not its cause.
Davis asks the question, "Who was Peter Grimes?" The theme of social alienation is easy to project onto Benjamin Britten, a famously closeted homosexual, but that's too facile and not very compelling. This paragraph captures the mood of "Peter Grimes", and the music of Britten, very nicely:
No, Britten was hardly Peter Grimes, although he had full knowledge of the darker side of the society he lived in and the darker side of his own nature, and he wrote it all into his music. Leonard Bernstein once remarked that a piece by Britten may often seem decorative, positive and charming until you really hear it. Then “you become aware of something very dark,” he added. “There are gears that are grinding and not quite meshing, and they make a great pain.”
Alex Ross in the New Yorker ("Gale Force", 17 March 2008) wrote that "It’s a handsome-looking show, though it’s studiously, perhaps excessively, grim." On the whole, Ross seemed–better than many critics–to accept the symbolic expressionism of the stage set as appropriate to the psychology of the work. Here he points up some of its strong points, compared to a more realistic set of fishing nets and funny hats:
Still, “Grimes” profits from being seen without the usual quaint clutter. You come face to face with the opera’s darkest elements: not just the much analyzed psychology of Grimes, who may or may not be guilty of abusing his apprentices, but also the psychology of the crowd, which lustily passes judgment on the fisherman without having heard the evidence. And those walled sets serve as a superb sounding board for the chorus, which gave the performance of the night.
As he notes, Griffey's Grimes was undoubtedly different from the earlier interpretation of John Vickers at the Met, but it's still a great performance in its own right. Some of Ross' most interesting comments come at the end of his review where he wonders what it is with New Yorker's that they just won't come out to see "Peter Grimes" in the same numbers that they will for sell-out favorites.
For some more background, you might want to read Ross' blog entry where he excerpted from the article about Benjamin Britten in his book (The Rest Is Noise).
Justin Davidson for New York Magazine ("Inglese, Per Favore?") discusses Grimes in an essay about operas in English. He seemed to enjoy this production more than many of his dyspeptic colleagues, for many of the same reasons I enjoyed it.
Bruce Hodges provided a thorough review for MusicWeb International ("Britten: Peter Grimes (new production premiere)"), which also contains some outstanding photographs (credited to Ken Howard) of the set, of Anthony Dean Griffey as Peter Grimes, and of Patricia Racette as Ellen Orford. I think his discussion of the set and its undeniable psychological impact on the audience is quite accurate. More so than some of the other critics, Hodges seems to be describing the same opera that I saw. (There does, by the way, seem to be some confusion about the "catwalk" he mentions as part of the stage set seen at the end of the opera; other writers seems to indicate that it may only have been seen by the opening-night audience.)
Anthony Tommasini wrote the review for the New York Times ("The Outsider in Their Midst: Britten’s Tale of the Haunted Misfit", 1 March 2008). He liked the cast, thought the performances strong, commended Mr. Griffey's portrayal, commended Donald Runnicles' directing, commended the singing of the chorus, (all correct so far) and (predictably) hated the stage set. I suspect he blames the set for the feeling, in his words, "That the impact of Mr. Doyle’s production was not fully compelling is hard to explain, since many elements seemed so right." I find it odd that he can say
Still, after a while it becomes tiresome to look at that huge, dark set. It is a relief when the staging opens up now and then, as the creaking wall recedes to evoke public squares and scenes at a tavern.
and not realize that such a feeling was the intent. Perhaps he feels that the ideal opera staging would describe a dark, psychological abyss at the same time that it provides light, sparkling, digestible staging. I'm trying to imagine "Peter Grimes" as bel canto.
Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle ("Review: Runnicles energizes Met's 'Grimes'", 17 March 2008) seems to be another of those who had some indigestion about the stage set, although he rightly praised the musical performances. However, I have to wonder what he was listening to when he wrote "Worst of all, [stage director] Doyle's sooty, hampered vision – an awkward transplant from the Victorian London of 'Sweeney Todd' – is at odds with the sparkling, expansive splendors of Britten's score." He makes it sound as though the musical depictions of the sea were some sort of log-flume ride at an amusement park! These musical invocations were not that of sparkling, expansive splendors but rather of an unforgiving, unrelentingly powerful force of nature. On the whole I think he was expecting to see the earlier Met production and was disappointed to be given something new and unfamiliar.
Some additional reviews that I found interesting to read, including their various, more or less obsessive complaints about the set:
- Charles T. Downey, "Ionarts at Large: Peter Grimes at the Met", 26 March 2008. He is one who mentions that mysteriously vanishing end-of-opera set that I never saw.
- Kevin Filipski, for TimesSquare.com ("Peter Grimes"), undated. He also thought the stage set unattractive.
- Anne Midgette, for the Washington Post ("A Grim Outcome for 'Grimes' at The Met", 1 March 2008). She wrote: "Doyle's approach is about paring away embellishment and finding a work's core. This yields a "Grimes" as dark as Alban Berg's "Wozzeck": intense, grim and determinedly unrelieved." I thought this was an accomplishment; she disagreed. She was nice to the performers but she, too, didn't see the opera she was hoping to see.
- The unattributed Associated Press review in the International Herald Tribune ("Something fishy: New staging of Benjamin Britten's 'Peter Grimes' at Met") I found surprisingly positive. Its remarks that "'Grimes' is a dark work, with themes of ostracism and vengeance, and undertones of child abuse and homophobia", hence a tough sell to audiences (they noted the empty seats at the productions) and "Yet, the tale of the iconoclast fisherman is the most powerful opera written since World War II, and Griffey's fascinating performance should not be missed" were right on target. While briefly describing the stage set, the reviewer managed to avoid fretting about it.
In: All, Music & Art, Personal Notebook
Bjørn Jørgensen: Arctic Photo
A recent story from Science@NASA ("Spring is Aurora Season", 20 March 2008) told an interesting story about how the aurora borealis seems to be more active near the equinoxes. The apparent reason has to do with "magnetic tubes" whose creation is favored when the Earth's magnetic poles have the alignment relative to the Sun that they exhibit around the equinoxes.
Fine. Very interesting. But who could possibly pay attention to that when this was the image illustrating the article?
This stunning photograph (reduced to fit in this column better) was taken on 1 March 2008 in Tomso, Norway by photographer Bjørn Jørgensen.
His website is called "Arctic Photo" (direct to the English version).
Now, go ahead and give me one good reason why you would not want to click over to his site and see the beautiful photographs of the aurora borealis, not to mention sections like "The Sun at Night", "Traditional Boatbuilding", and "North Norway Winter" in his portfolio?
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art
Huler's Defining the Wind
Back in the days when we roamed at video stores looking for something that might pique my interest, my attention would invariably be drawn to any movie that reviewers blurbed as–and publicists dared print on the package–"quirky". So, when my eyes landed on Scott Huler's Defining the Wind : The Beaufort Scale, and How a Nineteenth-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry (New York : Crown Publishers, 2004, 290 pages), it looked guaranteed to be quirky. I grabbed it.
As I expected I enjoyed it. What I hadn't expected was to enjoy it quite so much as I did. The subject is indeed odd, the style idiosyncratic, the topics covered diverse and wide-ranging, but in Huler's hands it all adds up to a delightful and informative adventure of research and discovery that the author shares vividly with the reader in an unexpectedly intimate way.
Huler is not a scientist but his approach to discovering and understanding the times and circumstances surrounding the creation of Beaufort's Scale is remarkably scientific; he is aware of this and seems to ascribe it to an awakening of a high-definition awareness of the natural world that resulted from spending so much time contemplating the Beaufort Scale. All this makes the book itself a thing of high scienticity; reading it is to hone one's intuition about how science actually works.
In fact, the book is akin to what the author came to call a Beaufort Moment: "A Beaufort moment is any moment where instead of merely passing through my surroundings I notice them, notice them in a way that engenders understanding. [p. 242]" I loved this realization that he described late in the book, the summation of his experience as it transcended a mere research project:
And that is what I finally figured out the Beaufort Scale was trying to tell me. The Beaufort Scale is about paying attention. It's about noticing whether smoke rises vertically or drifts, whether it's the leaves shaking or the whole branches, whether your umbrella turns inside out or just rattles around some. More, it's about taking note of those details, filing them away, in memory or, as the Manual of Scientific Enquiry would have it, in the notebook you'd never leave the house without (along, of course, with your pencil and your map and compass). It's about being able to express what you've seen simply and clearly, in as few words as possible, so that others can share it. It's about the good of sharing that knowledge, of everyone paying attention so that, together, we can all learn as much as possible.
The Beaufort Scale is a manual, a guide for living. It's like a cross between the Boy Scout Handbook and the Old Farmer's Almanac: a bunch of cool information that you'll never be sorry you have, and a general policy of being prepared to deal with it: to notice that information and share it for the good of everybody involved. It's a philosophy of attentiveness, a religion based on observation: an entire ethos in 110 words. One hundred ten words, that is, and four centuries of backstory. [pp. 237—238]
If, by the way, you need to see a version of the Scale to see what he refers to by the "110 words", this version from the [UK] Meteorological Office comes the closest to Huler's original inspiration. (After you've read the book you'll appreciate the futility of trying to define the Beaufort Scale.) Personally, I think my favorite phrase is "umbrellas used with difficulty" (which is, therefore, how I know that the stormy afternoon when I arrived in New York City a few weeks ago was accompanied by Beaufort Scale 6 winds of roughly 25-30 mph).
It's a book I can recommend most heartily to non-scientists and scientists alike; everyone is certain to find plenty to stimulate their thoughts and refine their perceptions of the natural world.
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Lienhard's Inventing Modern
When I went recently on my cultural trip to New York with Bill, I traveled with a couple of books: reading for the train trip and for those quiet moments at the hotel. One of the books I took was John H. Lienhard's Inventing Modern : Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003. 292+ix pages). Fortunately I started reading first thing on the train, and I made sure there were enough quiet moments at the hotel for me to finish the book in a couple of days. What a page turner! My book note is here.
Lienhard observes that in the early part of the 20th Century there was a feeling of Modern. It was something more than just modern, more than just new technology or new science–there was some indefinable spirit of adventure, feeling of invention, and optimistic attitude that seemed to dominate American culture. Naturally, given something indefinable like Modern, Lienhard set out to define it.
Lienhard, Anderson Professor of Technology and Culture, Emeritus, at the University of Houston was there for much of the Modern adventure, and his first-hand experiences adds heft to his discussion of the ideas, technology, and cultural currents of the time that met up in Modern.
I had previously read his book How Invention Begins, which impressed me very much, so I was excited to start on this one and I wasn't disappointed. I did think that Invention had more profound insights on offer, but that doesn't mean that Inventing Modern was an intellectual lightweight, although its tone was much more personal and somewhat more casual. They are both eminently readable and thoughtful and stimulating, but likely to stimulate different trains of thought.
I admit that there was an extra little frisson from reading about the nearby Empire State Building, which we could see from the street in front of our hotel, and the Chrysler Building, which we could see from the Brooklyn Bridge and which we visited one day. I'm certain however, that readers can enjoy the book without being in Manhattan to read it.
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Panning a Popular-Science Book
Recently I read the book The Story of Measurement, by Andrew Robinson (London : Thames & Hudson, 2007, 224 pages). It's a coffee-table sized book filled with lovely color illustrations and short digestible articles on all manner of topics related to measurement that I was hoping to find interesting.
Interesting enough they were, but they were also peppered with inaccuracies, inconsistencies, misleading word choices, and enough other little sins of omissions, faulty analogies, and not-quite-right explanations that the quality of the entire text is thrown into question. Although these may have been a matter of only a few words here and there–how much trouble can that cause?–the fall-out can be out of all proportion if the reader is left with inaccurate notions about scientific concepts or, worse, she believes she now understands a concept but has in fact been given a faulty understanding.
It's a shame because this could have been a fun, attractive, and informative book if only the publisher had seen the value of having an editor with scientific understanding provide editorial assistance.
And, while I'm on the subject, I should point out that there's still plenty of time to read some books for the Science-Book Challenge 2008.
Ellen Tops Oprah
You know, I just thought this was kind-of in the feel-good category of high-visibility, lesbian-and-gay news; I don't even have any smart remarks to add.
The poll by Web site AOL Television asked readers which daytime TV host made their day and Ellen, who opens "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" by dancing with her audience, trounced Oprah with 46 percent of the vote, while Oprah only won 19 percent.
When asked which daytime host made the ideal dinner guest, again it was Ellen, with 47 percent of respondents saying they would rather dine with her, compared to 14 percent for Oprah, long considered the queen of daytime TV with "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
(source)
Beard of the Week XXXIV: Medieval Cloisters
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This week's beard belongs to Saint Peter Martyr, also known as Peter of Verona. Peter (1205–1252) became a Dominican Friar at the age of 16, apparently received into the order by Dominic himself. He was murdered on a road near Milan, Italy, by being first struck on the head with an ax then stabbed through the heart with a knife. (Giovanni Bellini's painting "The Murder of St. Peter the Martyr" is a suitably gruesome representation.) Thus, his iconographic representation tends to be on the violent side, as in this list describing his representations (source):
- Dominican holding a knife
- Dominican in a forest being stabbed
- Dominican with a gash across his head
- Dominican with a knife in his shoulder
- Dominican with a knife splitting his head
- Dominican with a large knife in his head
- Dominican with his finger on his lips
- Dominican with the Virgin and four female saints appearing to him
- Dominican writing "credo in unum deum" in the dust as he dies man with a knife in his head and a sword in his breast
As another representation, consider this statue, from a 16th-century Dominican church in Oaxaca, Mexico, showing Peter with the ax stuck in his head. This stained glass representation maintains the ax-in-head iconography, but is a little less graphic.
By comparison, the image at right is a relatively placid representation. He does seem to display the gash across his head, and he is holding a palm leaf, another common indicator. This is a work in marble by Giovanni di Balduccio known as "Relief with Saint Peter Martyr and Three Donors", created c. 1340. It currently belongs to the Metropolitan (New York) Museum of Art, in the Cloisters Collection. It is a moderately sized piece, 80 x 86 centimeters, originally part of a triptych. (The collection photograph was my source for the images at right; follow the link for a much larger version.)
When Bill and I were recently in New York we took a morning and visited The Cloisters, which was quite a treat. Located at the northernmost edge of Manhattan (the view southward of the George Washington Bridge was quite lovely), we followed directions and took the A train from 23rd street uptown to the 190th-street station. Some helpful, if slightly odd, young men helped us find the appropriate exit, which required using the elevators.* From there, we took a pleasant walk further north through Fort Tryon park, in which the museum sits.
It's an unusual museum to be sure. As the official site describes it,
The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there.
There are at least four cloisters in the assemblage, several medieval halls, three chapels, and a small crypt. As mentioned, most of the museum's architectural elements are authentically medieval. Of particular note, we thought, each of the cloisters featured some fine examples of small columns around their perimeters. They reminded us so much of our visit to the cloisters of San Giovanni in Laterano (Basilica of St. John Lateran), in Rome. (I photographed the cloisters and columns here: one, two, three, and four.)
We added The Cloisters to our list of things to see because, when Bill originally asked me what kind of museums I'd prefer to see, I told him that my primary interests were modern art and medieval art. Even disallowing the building, itself a museum of medieval art and architecture, the collection on display at The Cloisters was magnificent and delightfully manageable. We spent perhaps 2 or 3 hours and felt like we'd managed a good examination of the collection without exhausting ourselves–nor feeling left wanting more.
By far the most famous part of the collection is "The Unicorn Tapestries", a series of large tapestries, displayed in one room, depicting a unicorn hunt. The most famous of these is "The Unicorn in Captivity", that familiar image of the unicorn trapped in a small, circular corral. Without a doubt they were lovely, and they drew crowds, but we found other treasures more to our taste.
In the lower level, in a series of rooms called "the Treasury", were the most precious and delicate parts of the collection. Here there were some beautiful pages from illuminated manuscripts protected from the light, goblets and altarware made of gold, silver, and adorned with gemstones, and similar pieces.
In a few spots throughout the building were various depictions, mostly carvings in wood, of Madonna-with-Child images. Some were surprisingly detached, while one we thought had a most remarkable expression on the virgin's face. We tend to think of Medieval art as backward, or undeveloped, or technically immature, but in fact it is none of these. Viewing this collection one comes to understand that there was technical mastery aplenty but that the Medieval artists saw the world differently.
But perhaps the most memorable piece for me was this relief of "Saint Peter Martyr and Three Donors"–and not just because I admired Peter's beard! It's a beautifully executed work, certainly, and I was surprised that a piece from this period would show such distinctly recognizable faces. In times and places not too distant from this work, faces tended to be more generic representations, but these faces all look like real, living, specific people.
I was also interested to see that the donors are represented, if you will, at life size, at least compared to Peter. We are quite used to seeing works from the period showing less important people (i.e., the donors of an apse mosaic compared to the saints depicted) shown as smaller than the main images as befits their status. I wondered whether this more democratic approach to sizing the personages was intended to tell us about Peter's humanity, or some similar message. Of course, there may have been no symbolic meaning at all. I was also amused to see that the artist included the hats of the donors, all doffed and lying on the ground at their knees.
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* One of the odd young men earnestly explained that one of the elevators only went up, and one only went down, but he'd see to it that we got the correct one.
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art
Judy Shepard on Kern's Poison
You may remember mention of Sally Kern, the homophobic state representative from Oklahoma who likes to think that gay people are worse than terrorists, and who likes to tell everyone about it. You may also remember that she feels she is being censored because her hateful nonsense is being heard by so many people–a curious idea about censorship, indeed.
Judy Shepard provides some antidote to Kern's poison. Here is an excerpt:
One of the oddest responses of people who agree with her has been that we are trying to restrict her freedom of speech. In reality, the Victory Fund gave her a megaphone. If she’s that proud of her speech, she must be thrilled that more than 1 million people have listened to it.
No, the question isn’t whether she has a right to spew hateful rhetoric. The question is whether she ought to.
My son died nearly ten years ago at the hands of people whose hatred changed many lives that day. It hardened hearts and brought others to their knees. It shook a nation and enraged millions. At that time, I knew there was a window of opportunity that I could use Matthew’s story and my voice in replacing hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance. Through the Matthew Shepard Foundation, we are reaching young people who are at risk of being poisoned by the dark ideas of people like Sally Kern.
I don’t know why Sally Kern is proud of comparing gay people to cancer or terrorism, but count me as someone who’s listening now to people like her. She may be free to say people like my son are a threat to America, but when she does she puts other mothers’ sons in danger. I pray she doesn’t say it anymore.
["Judy Shepard: Sally Kern’s free speech", GayPolitics.com, 24 March 2008; links in original.]
(Seen at Towleroad.)
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Subprime Lesson #1
Q. Why did the US lending institutions lend money to people who couldn't pay it back?
A. Because the people who could pay it back didn't need a loan. … No use lending to them … they've already got plenty of money.
["Clarke and Dawe: the comic duo you can bank on", Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 14 March 2008.]
In: All, Current Events, Laughing Matters
Viral Censorship
Oklahoma has a state representative named Sally Kern who is a homophobe. This will surprise no one.
Kern believes that gay people are a bigger threat to American society than terrorism, that it spreads (join hands and sing "We Are A Cancer"), that we are infiltrating the government, that we want to destroy the country, etc., etc., etc. She worries about our recruiting young children, and she repeats the silly idea that "no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than, you know, a few decades. . .". (Can anyone tell me what this is suppose to refer to?) None of this is a big surprise, either, although it is pretty stupid.
She made these remarks to a group of a dozen and a half like-minded people. To Kern's surprise her remarks were recorded and posted to YouTube, where they has been listened to by tens of thousands of people and generated a remarkable amount of publicity, video responses, statements, discussion, and disapprobation. Not surprisingly many people think Kern is a homophobic bigot and have said so. (I won't link to Kern's remarks, but Pam's House Blend has lots of details on the story.)
Now, here's the punchline.
Kern and her supporters seem to feel that all this publicity and widespread attention garnered by her remarks amounts to an attempt at censorship on the part of the militant homosexual lobby.
I suppose marketers might label it viral censorship. What a concept!
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
I Dream of Bowling
Before I forget, I wanted to note down the unusual, slightly disquieting dream that I had early this morning.
I was making a long-distance trip by car–from where or to where I don't know–when I decided to take a break. I decided to go bowling. [?]
I paid my money, chose a bowling ball, and put on bowling shoes. I walked along the lanes, which were arranged in a circle for some reason, pin end towards the center.
All of the lanes were occupied. Few were occupied by people bowling; most were occupied by people sitting in the lanes at tables eating their lunch or doing paperwork. [!]
I was irritated, but not over much, that I would not be able to bowl. I went back to the front desk, explained that all the lanes were occupied, and that I would therefore like a refund of my $2 fee. [A remarkably small fee for sure, but it seemed quite normal in the dream.]
My money was refunded without argument. I said goodbye and left the bowling alley, heading towards my car to continue my trip.
My dreams are usually of the sort where I am required to get from point A to point B within a certain short time and as I try to make my way an endless array of bizarre obstacles appear to thwart my progress; physically the feeling is one of trying to walk through a swimming pool filled with something viscous, like molasses. If there is a message there it's not too hard to figure out even without Freud's help–if I even believed in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (which I read years ago and found amusing but wholly unscientific and unbelievable).
However, I feel somewhat confounded by this odd image of not being able to bowl.
14 Sins and Nothing Gay
I was catching up on some blog reading and delighted when BoingBoing ("Vatican comes up with a new list of Seven Sins") alerted me that the Vatican has released a list of seven "social sins", apparently augmenting the seven "cardinal sins" (otherwise famous as the "deadly sins") noted down by Pope Gregory I in the sixth century.
You recall the earlier list:
1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Gluttony
4. Lust
5. Anger
6. Greed
7. Sloth
Here is the new list:
1. "Bioethical" violations such as birth control
2. "Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
I'm disappointed. I've looked and looked and I still don't see homosexuality listed. Perhaps if one could consider it a "bioethical violation"….
(By the way, for the count in the title I decided to include Christianity's "Ten Commandments", none of which are directed precisely at gay people, except perhaps that bit about coveting one's neighbor's wife, if one happens to be a lesbian, which could be a problem. Also a possible problem: coveting one's neighbor's male or female slave, although that may be technically taken care of by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, at least here in the US. I always figured that if the Big Guy were all that concerned about us gay folk he could have at least mentioned us in the Big Ten.)
(It's another Biblical argument in favor of marriage equality for gay people, really. The commandment about coveting makes it clear that only male people can be neighbors, and the list of things not to be coveted are all property: wife, oxen, slaves of either type, or any other property of one's neighbor. These days, though, we don't like to think of wives as property so we've reconstrued that bit to refer to one's neighbor's spouse. Therefore, if the neighbor happened to be married to a man then we gay folk would be drawn under the 10-commandment umbrella and prohibited from coveting our neighbor's husband. Wow. Fortunately it says nothing about the guy next door to our neighbor.)
"Ombra mai fu"
A little while ago on the radio we heard the "Largo" from Handel's opera "Xerxes", the all-instrumental arrangement of the opening aria of the opera, called "Ombra Mai Fu" ("Never has there been a shade"). It's a love song sung by the main character to the tree under which he sits, enjoying its shade. The idea is silly but the music is beautiful; fortunately, it's usually sung in its original Italian.
Listening to countertenor Andreas Scholl sing "Ombra mai fu" may be the most beautiful musical experience I know. Scholl (about; Andreas Scholl Society) has for some years been my favorite countertenor, possibly ever since I first heard him sing this aria. His voice thrills me with its purity of tone, its expressivity, and its very well-controlled vibrato.
He has recorded this aria several times. Here is one performance:
I don't think it helps particularly to know the words, but here they are (source):
Ombra mai fu
di vegetabile,
cara ed amabile,
soave più.Never was there made
a shade of a plant
dear and loving,
or more gentle.
Now, Scholl is not the only countertenor working today, and there are several who are very good. If it were not for Scholl, American David Daniels would be my top favorite countertenor rather than a very close second. Daniels, too, has an outstanding voice and he has been making a name for himself performing heroic roles in Baroque operas.
There is no harm in comparison. Hear how beautifully, yet differently from Scholl, Daniel's performs "Ombra mai fu":
Anthropologists Agree: No "Traditional" Marriage
A week or two ago, one of those ridiculous "defense of traditional marriage" organizations issued some statement claiming that anthropologists all agree that marriage is a male/female thing only. (You can find more details in Jim Burroway's post at Box Turtle Bulletin, referenced in the note below.) This is, of course, false on a number of counts.
In response, the American Anthropological Association released a letter repudiating that claim in the strongest terms. This letter deserves wider circulation, so I am reproducing the entire letter* here.
Dear Sir:
My name is Damon Dozier, and I am the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Director of Public Affairs. In this capacity, I am responsible for the Association's full range of government relations, media relations, and international affairs programs. Founded in 1902, the AAA—11,000 members strong—is the world's largest organization of men and women interested in anthropology. Its purposes are to encourage research, promote the public understanding of anthropology, and foster the use of anthropological information in addressing human problems.
I write to address the gross misrepresentation of the position of the anthropological community on gay marriage in your March 3, 2008 Citizen Link press release, “Anthropologists Agree on Traditional Definition of Marriage.” In the release, Glenn Stanton, an employee of your organization who does not identify himself as an anthropologist, asserts that “a family is a unit that draws from the two types of humanity, male and female.”
In point of fact, the AAA Executive Board issued in 2004, the following statement in response to President Bush’s proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage:
The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
I am alarmed and dismayed at this example of irresponsible journalism and deliberate misrepresentation of the anthropological community. In the future it is my hope that your organization will accurately and honestly convey and communicate the views and interests of the AAA, its 11,000 members, and the social science community at large.
Damon Dozier
Director of Public Affairs
American Anthropological Association
2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 600
Arlington, VA 22201
703.528.1902
———-
* From "Anthropologists Defend Their Position on Marriage and the Family", AAA Public Affairs Blog, 7 March 2008; the letter was released with additional information at the link given. I first saw the statement described at Box Turtle Bulletin, "Now An Entire Association of Anthropologists Disagrees With Stanton", which also has additional details about the matter.
==========
[Update a few hours later]
Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has been keeping track of some interesting details in this matter, if you'd care to see how the "defense of traditional marriage" group not specified above has wriggled in response to the AAA's rebuke:
…and Then There Were Three
We've heard by now, with excitement, about the election of the Democratic physicist Bill Foster, in special election, to take over the long-corrupt seat of Denny Hastert, but I was also excited to hear the news about the election of the Democratic physicist Bill Foster, etc. Here's how fellow physicist Bob Park talks about it in this week's What's New (dated 14 March 2008):
PHYSICS BLOC: FERMILAB PHYSICIST WINS HASTERT SEAT.
Tuesday, on his first day in office, Bill Foster (D-IL) cast the deciding vote to prevent tabling a Congressional ethics bill that would create an outside panel to investigate ethics complaints against House members. He will have to run again in November, but Foster’s victory in a special election on Saturday to fill the seat vacated by the resignation of Dennis Hastert looked pretty convincing. Hastert had represented the vermilion 14th District for 20 scandal-filled years. Foster’s PhD in physics is from Harvard (1984) and he had been at Fermilab for 22 years. Prominent scientists contributed both time and money to Foster’s campaign, and he becomes the third PhD physicist serving in the House. He campaigned against the Iraq War and called for research on alternative energy.
For those who wonder, the other two physicists are Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Vern Ehlers (R-WI). There are, alas, no physicists in the Senate.
I note with interest that Congressman Dr. Foster got his degree in the same year that I obtained mine. Perhaps it's time I consider public service.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Taking in Some Culture
Culture, culture, culture. I'm back from my whirlwind tour of Manhattan, New York. Parts of it, at least. Our friend Bill, a reader of this blog, some months ago had planned one of his opera trips to that city and he ended up with a bigger hotel room than he'd planned. Thus came the invitation for your humble blogger to join him for a few days of concentrated culture.
I was there from Saturday until yesterday, Wednesday afternoon. Travel by train between Washington, DC and Manhattan was remarkably civilized. It's been quite a number of years since I'd traveled by train in this country. Most of my train experience in the last few years–subways aside–was in Italy.
Our guesthouse was the Colonial House Inn, in Chelsea. It was comfortable, idiosyncratic, and conveniently located for us. The house is decorated with paintings by the former owner, Mel Cheren–not such a good idea in this case although it did contribute some personality. The house also has the distinction (and the plaque to prove it) of being the first permanent home of the Gay Men's Health Crisis. Nearby there were several restaurants that suited our taste on various days of our stay. The nearest subway stop was just around the corner and a block down the street.
Saturday was cold and rainy and windy, so we didn't manage much culture, except for Bill's going to the opera in the evening (Verdi's "Otello", at the Met). I suppose I had a little local culture since I made dinner out of two slices (of pizza, of course). I was in the mood for anchovies. "Have you got anything with anchovies?" I asked. My helpful pizza purveyor: "You want anchovies, I'll put anchovies on this slice right here!" He did. I don't think I've ever had so many anchovies on a single slice of pizza before. Yumm.
Sunday we went to the Whitney Museum of American Art. This was good and bad. The bad part was that they were in the midst of their "Whitney Biennial", a sort of invitational in which they asked 81 working artists to contribute pieces. The assembly rather resembled a flea market in which each artist had some booth space to fill as he or she saw fit. I looked at it all and laughed in a deprecating manner at most of it. I decided this was how we could tell we are old farts, laughing at contemporary art. The artists seemed so earnest, but their emphasis seemed to be on their "statements" about what their pieces were about, rather than invoking any sort of aesthetic response through the piece itself. Luckily for the artists, the Whitney provided the audio guide free; unluckily, it was too tedious to listen to after the first dozen or so.
The redeeming good at the Whitney was a small exhibit called "Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth's Late Paintings of Lancaster". This alone was worth the price of admission. Ken Johnson reviewed the show in the New York Times ("A Watercolorist Who Turned His Hand to Oils of Heroic Vision") and captured its spirit pretty well, calling the exhibit "gorgeous" and "tightly focused". Gorgeous without question, it was tightly focused because it occupied only two rooms on the hard-to-find mezzanine off the fifth floor. Here were just a few paintings, moderately sized oil paintings of factories and industrial-scapes in Lancaster (Pennsylvania), in a style that merges art deco and hints of cubism into something splendid. (And, I suspect Mr. Johnson gets the message right when he interprets all the phallic images in Demuth's paintings as the artist having some fun at his critic's expense.) Demuth (1883–1935) was a painter I've admired for some time, so I was very excited at the chance to see these paintings in person. It was quite a treat.
Bill went to see and hear "King Arthur" by Henry Purcell (NYTimes review), a presentation at the New York City Opera. I spent some more time at the Whitney checking that I hadn't missed something good in the Biennial show, went back to say goodbye to the Demuth paintings, and then headed off for some more distinctively New York culture: a hot dog lunch in Central Park.
It was a cool afternoon with an occasional breeze, but the sun was out and so it was comfortable to sit in the park for awhile and watch people and their dogs walk by. After a suitable interval, I met Bill at the Metropolitan Museum and we returned home for a brief rest.
That evening we had dinner at the Lasagna Ristorante, just down the street on 8th Avenue at 20th street. It was a very lively place and my food was excellent; I had a Caesar salad and the Chicken Arrabiato. The prices were surprisingly moderate, too. If you stop in, say hi to our waiter, Craig, who was cute, charming, and very good at his job.
Monday morning we started out with a quick trip downtown to see the Brooklyn Bridge, which still is quite something to see. (I'll have more to say about it in the future, I suspect, when I finally finish reading David McCullough's book on the subject.) We strolled out onto the bridge as far as the tower (Manhattan side) and looked around at the skyline. We had a lovely, if somewhat distant view, of the Chrysler Building. We also decided that the tall building near the bottom of the bridge approach must be the Woolworth Building, so we walked to it to be sure and, to be sure, there was discrete lettering over the door that said "Woolworth Building". I don't think I had realized just how much high-gothic filigree it had on it, but it was very pleasant to admire for awhile.
After that it obviously was time to head uptown and look for the Chrysler Building (photo source). We took the subway to Grand Central Station and looked at its great hall whose proportions I found quite appealing, then we went out the 42nd-street exit. Naturally I felt like tap-dancing, but forbearance triumphed.
It took us a bit to find the Chrysler Building–tall buildings are harder to spot when one is standing next to them–and we admired it for some time from the outside. (Three pages about the Chrysler Building: one, two, three; more photos, including some of the lobby) Such fabulous Art Deco design makes my heart beat faster for sure. Bill was clever enough to suggest going into the lobby, which turned out to be surprisingly intimate for such an imposing structure. The ceiling was low and covered with a mural (painted on canvas, as it turned out). The lamps, sconces, elevator doors, air-vent grilles–everything was most deliciously designed, streamlined and shiny.
We strolled through Rockefeller Center then had some lunch at a deli behind Radio City Music Hall. Finally headed off in the direction of the MOMA, which was our ultimate destination for the day. Along the way we made a brief visit to St. Thomas' Fifth Avenue, an Episcopal church.
Fortunately, the Museum of Modern Art was not having a Biennial exhibition, so we got to enjoy a good chunk of their permanent collection, which is all Modern art that is more familiar to me and which I quite enjoy seeing. It's always a delight to see all those paintings that are so familiar, but only from reproductions in books. I was particularly surprised by Picasso's "Three Musicians"–I never realized it was so large! (BTW, the color in the online MOMA reproduction is horrible. This Wikipedia photograph is more true to my impression of the colors.)
There was here also a special exhibition that made the trip worthwhile: "Lucian Freud: The Painter's Etchings". Freud is a fabulous portrait artist (even if his portraits are sometimes on the disturbing side). This show looked at his many etchings, which weren't familiar to me at all. They were very interesting, and comparisons were made to some of his paintings as they hung nearby, giving us the chance to see the paintings and remark on the different ways he treated his subjects in the different media. It added some breadth to my appreciation of Freud's body of work.
That evening I had a quiet evening reading while Bill went to see "Tristan und Isolde" at the Met. It was the opening night for this production. Unfortunately, the expected Tristan, Ben Heppner, was unable to perform and it seems that John MacMaster was not quite up to taking his place. (Admittedly there are very few tenors fully capable of stepping into the role at the last minute.) Yesterday morning we read a review in the New York Times that expressed similar sentiments.
Tuesday had a pretty focused agenda: The Cloisters. We took trains way uptown and finally got there after a pleasant walk through Fort Tryon park, where it's located. The Cloisters houses the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum. I'll talk more about it in the next Beard of the Week feature–watch this space!
We noticed that The Cloisters is serviced by the M4 bus, so we determined to take it back downtown after we finished. At least, we thought we'd go a ways then change to a train after some lunch, because the trip back to Chelsea would have take about 2.5 hours according to the posted schedule.
We got off the bus at 112th street and Broadway for two reasons: hunger overwhelmed us, and it was the cross-street where we could visit the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. First, we ate lunch at Tom's Restaurant (nice photo–apparently made famous by appearing in the "Seinfeld" television show; the Seinfeld connection did not escape us given the amount of Seinfeld paraphernalia on the walls). I had an eggplant hero, which hit the spot.
We spent some time at St. John the Divine. Most of the nave was closed off because of restoration work being done following a major fire in 2001, although it was still evident that the building was huge. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed the ambulatory around the apse and we stopped in at all of the Corona Chapels (so called since they form a sort of "crown" around the east end of the church) and wandered through the choir and chancel. Bill, who played the organ there once, finally located the door that one went through to climb up to the loft where the organ console was.
Then we made our way back home, because it was time for a brief rest before we both headed out together to that evening's Met performance of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes". That was quite an exciting event (NYTimes review), so I think I'll write about it in another entry, lest this summary totally burst its bounds.
I should mention that we had lunch on Wednesday just before heading off for our train at the Moonstruck Diner, in Chelsea just a block away from our guesthouse. It provided an entirely authentic diner experience, probably because it has been an authentic diner for years although it's more recently remodeled. We noted it down as a place that could be another regular eating spot for the next time we stay in Chelsea.
In: All, Music & Art, Personal Notebook
Instant Fuel Efficiency
Detroit loves ethanol because it can use it to inflate fuel-efficiency ratings on their cars artificially. The mammoth Chevy Suburban, produced as a flex-fuel vehicle capable of burning both ethanol and gasoline, magically boosted its fuel efficiency to 29 miles per gallon from 15, since under federal rules only a vehicle’s gasoline consumption need be factored into the equation.
[William Grimes, "Heard the One About the Farmer’s Ethanol?", New York Times, 7 March 2008; reviewing Gusher of Lies, by Robert Bryce.]