Chinese street food that I wish could be found in the US
During this time of year in northern China, I sometimes was able to buy roasted sweet potatoes sold on the street by vendors using steel barrels to cook them. Most of my China photos are out east, so here is a link to a photo showing a barrel with sweet potatoes. The burnt skins don't look that appetizing, but the insides are cooked well enough and nice to eat while walking in cool weather with others: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajax/3824172/

Go Big Read and A Sand County Almanac?
Yesterday, I nominated Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, first published in 1949, to be the book for next year's Go Big Read, UW's version of the all-campus/community/common book read. In the first year, 2009, the book was Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and this fall it was Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

the Leopold "shack," north of Baraboo, WI, along the Wisconsin River 

[This stereophoto reveals some of the problems with using my cheap camera. One is that the mirrors sometimes create a reflection in the picture--in this case, on the birdhouse in the left image and a little bit on the top center of both images.]

I have some mixed feelings about my nomination. It's a cliche to associate the university and the state with  A Sand County Almanac because he was a UW professor and the "almanac" section focuses on what can happen during a calendar year at "the shack," just north of Baraboo and along the Wisconsin River. Another thing is that many here have probably already read the book. However, Go Big Read seems tailored to undergrads, particularly freshmen, most of whom haven't read it.

The biggest reasons in favor of this selection are that this could be the last chance to enable many people to hear first-hand from the author's surviving children--Nina Leopold Bradley (b. 1917) and Estella Leopold (b. 1927)--about their lives at the shack, their father, and his ideas.

Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address/Dedication Day in G-burg
By far my favorite reciter of the Gettysburg Address is G-burg resident and Lincoln portrayer Jim Getty because of his conversational style. Others too often are overly dramatic, but his interpretations have never bored me during Memorial Day or Dedication Day/Remembrance Day ceremonies. This page includes audio of readings by him and others: Johnny Cash (accompanied by guitar), Jeff Daniels, Colin Powell, Sam Waterston, and W. F. Hooley (in a scratchy 1898 recording): http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gettysburgaddress.htm

[Remembrance Day is a Saturday near November 19 during which Civil War re-enactors march down Baltimore Street to the National Battlefield Park. Re-enactors representing both sides usually go to the low stone wall/fence in the Pickett's Charge area to shake hands, as did Civil War veterans at re-unions.]

Feeling resigned about passenger rail
I recently signed a Facebook petition to the newly elected Republican governor and legislature of Wisconsin to keep the rail line project between Madison and Milwaukee, but I'd be pleasantly amazed if they heed any arguments to change their position. This time last year I read a lot on passenger rail and sometimes used maps and reports found on state government web sites to imagine passenger rail lines going beyond current proposals.

In Search of Mayonnaise
While I was teaching in Jinan, Shandong Province, I got the idea one late spring day to make with my students some potato salad as part of an American-style meal. Since I didn't want to risk using raw eggs to make mayonnaise from scratch, which I'd never done anyway, I recruited a student to help me explore the city of over 1 million to find some in a store.

Sometimes during my years teaching in China, I'd go on such food expeditions with some of my students and Chinese colleagues. This was to give them some idea of food typically eaten in the US. In Zhengzhou, for example, a student once reported seeing peanut butter in a downtown department store. Although I normally ate Chinese food, I think that I was actually excited by that news, so a few of us went there after class. The peanut butter was in jars similar to what's found in the US, but I discovered that the jar I'd bought was flavored with hot pepper. I'd not noticed the small stamp in Chinese on the label indicating that it was hot. Then on, I was sure to request the sweet kind.

At each store in Jinan, we usually had trouble trying to describe mayonnaise, for the translation in the dictionary wasn't a common term, at least back then, and I was the only one who had ever eaten any. Each time the store clerk eventually said, "沒有."
[For those who don't know Chinese, go to this page for a translation and click on the word on the left side with a little arrow next to it for the audio clip: http://mandarin.about.com/od/dailymandarin/a/meiyou.htm]

Silent Movie at the Capitol Theater
One of my favorite activities in Madison is watching a silent movie at the Capitol Theater in a series called Duck Soup Cinema. Built in the late 1920s, the theater still has the original Grand Barton organ system designed for silent movies. Before the movie, some local variety acts perform for about 45 minutes, and after intermission, the hosts pull a few raffle tickets to award local prizes. The acts this past Saturday were a folk music duo, the UW ballroom dance group, and a juggler who used the diabolo, derived from what is sometimes called a Chinese yo-yo. [In Beijing the rapidly moving Chinese yo-yo (響簧 xiǎng huáng or 抖空竹 dǒukōngzhú ) makes a whistling sound that can add to the atmosphere of old Beijing hutongs. See also http://hua.umf.maine.edu/China/ModernBeijing/pages/286_ChineseYoyo.html.] For a few years, three movies were scheduled during a season, but now they're back to two, and a ticket costs $7. At the start of this decade, the price was $1. The hosts mix in silly jokes--some so stupid that they're often funny--that are based on changing light bulbs and people going into bars.

The movie was Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality, which has a lot of funny scenes as well as some good stunts by Keaton. An usher told me during intermission, though, that only about 400 showed up for the matinee and about 700 were at the evening show. Because I now teach also on Saturday mornings and I bought some vegetables at the last farmers' market of the season at the Square, I couldn't make the matinee as I had hoped. After the show, I had the chance to talk to the person in charge to suggest an act for the next Duck Soup Cinema, another Keaton movie, Three Ages, to be shown on February 26.

I wish that more people would take advantage of Duck Soup Cinema because it's a great opportunity to enjoy good laughs in a large, original silent movie theater, see skillful stunts, and listen to the live organ. Over the years, I've taken advantage of the wide-ranging video/DVD collection at the local libraries, and one type I've sometimes tried are silent movies. Here's a list that gives me some good ideas: http://www.silentera.com/info/top100.html I'd rank Safety Last, by Harold Lloyd, much higher than #19 for the laughs.

Thinking about growing vegetables
This summer I missed not being able to grow some of my own food, so I hope that I can get a plot in a community garden next spring. It would be great for growing cheap greens. During one winter break in Gettysburg, I was able to pick from the snow some Swiss chard that was still fresh. And it would be easy to pig out eating peas directly from their pods while still in the garden. [The stereophotos I took of the site/sight in Madison turned out poorly, so maybe I'll return there before the weather gets worse and just take a digital photo.]

My election official training was Thursday afternoon at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and I arrived early to walk around while listening to the news on my mp3 player/radio. It made me think of two things--Zizhuyuan (Purple Bamboo Park, in Beijing) and the vegetable gardens I've grown for my grandmother. Because writing about Zizhuyuan now would take up too much space, I'll I just say something about growing vegetables.

This is my third day in a row posting on here. So, after these two topics, I'll probably wait until I post some 3-D photos that I hope turned out OK of an interesting site/sight in Madison.

Improving knowledge about First Amendment content
In this morning's state news on WPR was a story on how two candidates for the state legislature at a debate couldn't list all of the rights protected by the First Amendment. Because my intro to soc and contemporary American society classes cover political sociology, a couple of years ago I decided to force my students to learn some basic civics information for exams. One question has asked them to list three out of the five freedoms covered by the First Amendment, but this news story has led me to decide that I'll now ask my students to list all of them. For my previous comments on this topic, see the fourth paragraph of my March 8, 2006, entry at Livejournal:  http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/2006/03/08/

More on cheaper or free textbooks
At this morning's opening assembly for my school's convocation (Madison Area Technical College's version of in-house training), two students gave a presentation asking teachers here to sign-up for the rental textbook program, which they also discussed at the August convocation. They ended with an alternative that I had discussed with them in August, free open textbook programs. See, for example,  http://www.opentextbook.org/ and http://www.studentpirgs.org/open-textbooks/catalog

Watching films and Errol Morris
This evening's talk by Errol Morris, the director, was among the best I've heard at the Union Theater, and I was glad that I could tell him that at the reception. After talking for about 20 minutes, mainly on his time at UW as a history major, he opened it up to questions, which lasted for about one hour. It was a good way for audience members to ask about various films and for him to then provide interesting and often humorous background info. Because The Thin Blue Line is one of the options for my documentary assignment, I mentioned the lecture to my criminology students, but during the talk I regretted not more strongly encouraging people to go. I'll be sure to be there early for the showing of his recent film Friday afternoon at the contemporary art museum, at which he'll also be present.

While at UW, Morris often watched on his own films in the historical library collection. This reminds me of my time at Kansas going to the union to watch movies, such as The Seventh Seal, The Bicycle Thief, and The 400 Blows. I once told someone that I was going to the movie so as to study, and I wonder if he thought I was joking. I wasn't.

This evening Morris said that a great interest of his is the inner mystery of people, of others as well as oneself. Films, like novels, can sometimes offer insights into life's meaning, even when the characters lead lives different from mine. The first movie that comes to my mind that hits home, though, I'm reluctant to say much about--the John Malkovich/Joanne Woodward/Karen Allen version of The Glass Menagerie. One scene in particular reminds me of my own experiences.

Since it's really a play, I wonder about classifying The Glass Menagerie as a movie. The version I mention is much better, I think, than the one with Katharine Hepburn. Anyway, it has one of the best movie lines--"Time is the longest distance between two places." One message of this is regret about past actions and inactions. I've been thinking about how I've sometimes let my fear of re-experiencing something like The Glass Menagerie scene and other painful moments to influence me at times, especially in recent months. This is one of the values of films--to help us reflect on our inner selves and those of others. But meeting people in person should remain the main way that we accomplish this. One reason that I enjoyed this evening's talk and the reception was seeing Morris' cheerful and inquisitive disposition.

"Grasshoppers" at this year's Wisconsin Book Festival, Sept. 29-Oct. 3
My favorite part of the Wisconsin Book Festival this year was when I saw two women on each side of a little girl, maybe just under kindergarten age, as they walked on the sidewalk and then the bicycle path in the Atwood neighborhood. While holding her hands, they sometimes ran and raised her about a foot or two off the ground to fly through the air a short distance. She was so happy.

I'd gone to the Barrymore Theatre for the Friday Night Festival of Fiction readings to pick up my free ticket. With about an hour to go, I was walking to nearby sites taking part in the Fall Gallery Night, which was scheduled that same evening. What was also nice about the art night was that I was able to tell one photographer how much I liked her photo of a beach with some interesting cloud formations, and she was able to tell me about the location and the way she took it.

This year's festival wasn't as interesting for me as previous years'. That evening, the reading I liked most was by Lan Samantha Chang, the director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, using a selection from a novel about a poetry class. At one point, the teacher in the story tells a student that her poem is one reason why people don't read poetry these days. Later on, I thought about this cruel statement, and maybe I'd have to agree that a lot of today's poetry in the US fails to grab me--the long, T. S. Eliot-ish poems can especially test my patience. An exception that's a very good idea are short poems by students posted in some Madison buses above seats along with the ads.

I've been thinking about authors I'd like to hear at next year's festival. Of course, a lot depends on what has just come out, but many authors at the festivals are invited because of their established work. I'd enjoy hearing Billy Collins again; he read at the Union Theater a few years ago. And I think that Mary Oliver would be interesting. Earlier this year, Anne Strainchamps on WPR quoted from one of Oliver's poems, leading me to borrow a couple of her books from the library. I was reminded of Oliver while recently listening to a zencast.org talk, so I decided to read her again. [Some of her poems are posted at this site: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/online_poems.htm ]

"The Summer Day," probably a favorite of many, describes her meeting a grasshopper in the fields and ends with this question: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" That's why seeing those two women and the girl made an impression on me.

Willy Street Fair (in stereophotos)
During the warm months, some Madison neighborhoods in and near the isthmus hold fairs, usually with lots of free music. A few years ago a fair invited Canned Heat, one of the acts at Woodstock, and some of the original band members performed. Because I've been away from Madison the previous two summers, this year I tried to attend at least part of each fair. I especially like to talk with people at booths and tables. At the Atwood Neighborhood Fair, for example, parking garage attendants--concerned that the city might replace them with machines--ran a table. Parking garages are called "ramps" in WI, which I find a little strange. Even the attendants didn't know why WI uses this word rather than parking garage.

The Orton Park Fair has one of the most interesting events--evening performances by Cycropia Aerial Dance http://www.cycropia.org/index.htm. They tied ropes from the limbs of a giant oak in the middle of the park and up and down the ropes performed dances that are hard for me to describe in this space.

By far my favorite event is the Willy Street Fair parade, held at 11 am on the Sunday of the fair. Regular features are a convertible converted into a Dr. Seuss-like contraption from which an old instrument and a man send out soap bubbles.



And there's the Wacky Wheeler--similar to a hamster wheel--that a man rides down the street, often blowing a whistle. http://www.wackywheeler.com/

Costumed figures on stilts are also regulars. My favorite one-time participants were librarians pushing carts filled with books in 2003, the first year that I made the parade. When I saw this interesting idea, I knew that the parade was special. [Stereophotos taken at Willy Street Fair, September 26, 2010. My simple camera didn't align the film that well this time, so the right-side images take up more of the frames. Because of the lack of light, faster film speed, and distance, the 3-D effect of these pictures is just so-so. This is the site from where I got my camera and the viewer: http://www.3dstereo.com/ ]

Example WPR story to assign when teaching: David Foster Wallace and running out of batteries for the tape player
My sinus headache from allergies lasted most of last night, so I didn't wake up until around 9am today. I missed being able to watch the triathlon swimming portion at the Monona Terrace, which I've done maybe twice before, but was able to catch this morning's To the Best of Our Knowledge topic on David Foster Wallace.

The last segment includes an interview of his sister that says a lot about life. Thought-provoking stories similar to this would be good for my students to hear, but I'm not sure where to plug it into an intro to sociology syllabus or assignment.
http://www.ttbook.org/book/david-foster-wallace

Maybe I should create a topic that maybe never appears in an intro syllabus--how we deal with crises in our lives. This segment goes beyond that, such as how everyday interactions between people can be so important to us. I feel that when shopping for food, waiting for a bus, etc. as I see others talking to or holding their kids or just being with someone else. The sister's description of a long car trip with her brother is a good example.

Textbook costs
Too many textbooks cost about as much as I pay for food each month. In some fields, teachers have few, if any, alternatives, but I don't think that's the case in the social sciences. A lot of useful outside materials are freely available online. For criminology I can assign, among many things, short DOJ reports and public radio audio clips.

This semester I've assigned two required books: Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman’s Harrowing Quest for Justice and Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. Because Cry Rape is about a Madison case written by an area reporter, more than 30 copies are in the local libraries. Last semester, my students talked for around one hour about the book without my saying much, except to choose sometimes who would talk next. Besides the crime of rape, it covers the perspective of victims and police mistakes, such as tunnel-vision and overgeneralization. But I worried that my students got too negative of an angle on the police, so this semester I've also chosen Cop in the Hood, by a sociologist who joined the Baltimore police. Much of the book is his take on illegal drugs, so the book serves more than one purpose. Students must also pick from a list a third book to borrow from the library to learn about a topic that interests them.

When I taught research methods at UW-Madison, I was able to assign an older edition that the bookstore sold for $15-20. The small improvements in the newest edition were definitely not worth the more than $80. I got this idea from a UW professor, and I wish that others would try it so that books are used more while they still are in OK shape and students can save money. Online textbooks might be a relatively inexpensive path, but the main response to outrageous prices is for teachers to force textbook writers to use cheaper publishers or even create their own textbooks. If I'd had access to the Web in China, I could have edited my own casebook for contract law using public domain court opinions. Why more law professors don't do this disappoints me, especially given their enormous salaries.

Recalling an Anne Waldman Reading in Lawrence, Kansas
My LiveJournal entry on Arlene Sardine, March 10, 2006, includes an Amazon criticism of the book--that it is as if someone were to write a book for children on Elmer and the embalming process. http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/ This reminds me of what the poet Anne Waldman said at a reading in Lawrence, Kansas. She had once read a comment by a male critic that women poets are really just writing about their periods. This ticked her off, but then Waldman thought about it and decided that it was actually a good idea, that she would write her own poem on having a period. She read "Crack in the World," which was hilarious.

Burroughs, Ginsburg, Codrescu, and others also gave readings that evening; I think that Waldman was second best to Burroughs. Here's a link to "Crack in the World"--it's the first four minutes of the first file. Hearing the poem live was much, much better, though:
Internet Archive--Naropa University, Waldman reading

For a couple of years, I lived just a few blocks from Burroughs. We even shopped at the same grocery store. But I never tried to talk to him because I wanted to respect his privacy. The free Internet Archive includes some readings, talks, and interviews by Burroughs.

Meteors and Rainbows
Friday began with my seeing about 30 meteors of the Perseid meteor shower between 1:15am and 3:15am. Near the end the day, after 7:30pm, I was able to see two rainbows, one of them rather vivid and arching across from the isthmus to the south side. The other was just a faint leg above the other.

This past week, I had been looking forward to watching meteors, but the lighting around where I live is very bright. So I walked to the edge of a golf course near me where trees blocked some of the light. Maybe I could have seen more if I had not taken a short nap near midnight, but the best thing would have been to drive outside of the city.

I was lucky to see the rainbows from the Union Terrace as I took a short break from being a volunteer for the 25th anniversary show of Whad'Ya Know, which played at the Union Theater from 8 to 10pm. At the time I felt a little down, so the rainbows and a group of toddlers jumping up and down at the sight while shouting "Two rainbows! Two rainbows!" cheered me up. Because rain had poured much of the day, few people were on the Terrace as the rain ended. Some of them were excited to take pictures with their digital cameras, but I had brought just my stereo camera with me to take pictures of the stage. When I develop the film, I hope that I'll have a good enough photo of the rainbows to post on here.

As I walked home, though, I reminded myself that it's best for people to create their own rainbows in their lives, to see them in people and everyday experiences, and not just wait for the few lucky times that real ones appear.

Internet radio and music variety
Over the past year, I've mainly listened to public radio programs, such as on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio, and have only sometimes tried music new to me, mainly through CDs from the library with songs I'd heard in movies.

It had slipped my mind that earlier this century I had tried at least one free internet radio site that claims to match one's taste. http://www.last.fm/seems sort of familiar, but sites like this have probably changed a lot since 2005 or 6. At that time, I was mostly interested in 1960s garage bands so as to learn about songs different from what's usually played on the radio. I've been using last.fm for about one month to listen to alternative/independent music and some jazz. At first I listed some classical composers and classic rock musicians among my favorites, but I quickly got tired of symphonies popping up and rock songs I've heard too often.

I want to listen to more contemporary Chinese music but haven't gotten around to it yet. If you have some suggestions, please email me in case the comments option doesn't work for you. [I think that last.fm can't be used if you are in China.]

Worrying about groceries
I’ve had mixed feelings about posting the following story because it feels like a kind of boasting; however, I think that people who know me would be disappointed if I didn’t tell them about this short encounter.

One evening in fall 1996, while I was living in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, I was carrying a heavy paper bag of groceries and, in my backpack, a gallon of milk and other heavy items as I walked back to the apartment. Along 53rd Street some guy was handing out fliers. He said he was running for the state senate, so I decided to stop and talk with him--in part so as inform myself before voting but also because I felt alone in Chicago. Most people don't pay attention to such candidates, so another reason that I stopped is because I felt sorry for him.

With my arms wrapped around the grocery bag, I skimmed through his flier and noticed that he had been the president of the Harvard Law Review. I began talking with him about my experiences teaching law in China, such as that I used the ideas from Plain English for Lawyers, and about how I was from Kansas and had attended law school there so as not to go into debt. Otherwise, I would have been unable to teach in China while earning less than $300/month and having to pay back loans. He was one of the few people after my return who was interested in talking with me about China. After we had talked about various topics, I said that I'd definitely vote for him and that I was giving back the flier to save him some money. My bag was getting heavy--I didn’t want to risk putting it on the ground out of fear that it would tear--and I had to put some things in the refrigerator.

But, as I was leaving, Obama said, "Wait, I'd like to talk to you about something!" I replied that I had to put some groceries in the refrigerator and that my bag was getting heavy. As I walked further away, he shouted to me that he wanted to talk to me about something, and I repeated what I had said about my groceries. I think that Obama one more time yelled that he wanted to talk to me about something.

I want to emphasize here that it never crossed my mind that Obama was being impolite for pressing me; my impression was that he was a nice guy, but I was puzzled over why he didn’t seem to process what I'd said. Later on, I realized how stupid it was of me not to wait another minute or two.

Before the 2008 Wisconsin primary, over 15 thousand people showed up for the Obama campaign rally in the Kohl Center at UW-Madison. I just managed to get a seat, and as I looked at the crowd, I sometimes laughed to myself about once feeling sorry for how few people were paying attention to Obama. Throughout the campaign, I kept wondering what he so urgently wanted to talk to me about in 1996. It was about a year later that the reason came to me, but I think it's best that I not post anything about it in this blog.

Blocked in China

Some people I know in China can't access this blog ever since I've re-started on here, but they can open my old one: http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/ I'll see if I can find a solution because I think that I prefer this site to Livejournal.

Re-Starting This Blog/Recalling My 2003 Return to China

My last posting on here was in January 2003. I forgot I had even started this blog until earlier this evening when I was trying to use Google's blogging service. I discovered that someone had already taken chuckditzler.blogspot, was disappointed, and then figured out that I was the one. I don't think I tried to check this blog when I went to China in summer 2003.

It was just after SARS had been declared over, so I was able to take advantage of a relatively cheap fair--about $700 roundtrip between Chicago and Beijing. Going there was direct on United for about 12 hours; coming back included a four-hour layover at Narita in Tokyo--not enough time for me to take the chance to leave the airport to see something of Japan yet enough to get bored. I've been to Japan about a dozen times and still haven't been outside of the airport.

Returning to Beijing after five years away was a reverse culture shock, for it had felt like home while I taught there in the 90s. Many intersections that I was familiar with had been completely transformed by the destruction and new buildings. At least I was satisfied by the new Wangfujing, more openness, and better mass transit. But it was sad to see so much of old Beijing being torn down, and the traffic was horrible at times. When I was first in China, I sometimes walked by the Third Ring Road when there was almost no traffic. Even Changan Blvd often had little traffic around noon. I was so happy, though, to be able to eat foods I'd missed for five years, to browse in bookstores, and just walk again in the city.

I wish that the Internet had been bigger in China while I was teaching there so that I had email addresses of my students. Some have been able to track me down. That's easier for them because too many Chinese names are the same.

In 2006 I posted some entries at http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/ . I'm thinking about moving to Google's site.

Chuck