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.