a song

"Far Off, Close By" (1968) by Willis Conover and Alec Wilder:

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/wilderworld/episodes/2006-12-16T22_55_54-08_00 (2 min 15 sec)

I first heard this song in China while listening to a VOA special on Willis Conover. 

Labor Day Weekends

This Labor Day weekend, it's been raining a lot. Ever since I was a kid I've associated this weekend in the year with watching the muscular dystrophy telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis while it's raining. I've rarely watched television during this century. The main times were when visiting my grandmother since she often watched it. I liked watching with her some of the telethon because it was similar to the variety shows common on broadcast television before the spread of cable.

Another thing I associate with Labor Day is the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie after I saw it again while I was visiting home during my first semester in college. I especially think of when Gene Wilder sings "Pure Imagination" and the meaning of the lyrics. Writing this has given me the idea to play in my sociology classes a clip of Wilder singing the song and asking my students for their thoughts. The song is maybe too personal for me, so I have to think about whether to try.

Below is "Round Falls"--Dam on Jones Falls river in Baltimore, near the Jones Falls Trail where it follows Falls Road. Location is 2948 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211. The small trail down to this spot should be improved to make it safer and more accessible. I took this picture in July and include it here because I like the effect of the light rays into this spot.

Some thoughts about illusions

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." Tom near the beginning of "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams.

on bike path in Madison, Wisconsin, along Old Middleton Road (The first word is Life.)
I wonder what led someone to write this.

When re-watching online today a scene from "Come Back, Little Sheba," I found out that Shirley Booth played the mother, Amanda, in a CBS Playhouse version of "The Glass Menagerie" in 1966. The video was thought to have been lost; however, the unedited video was recently discovered and pieced together to replicate what was originally broadcast. Hal Holbrook played Tom (the son) and Laura (the daughter) was played by Barbara Loden. This was finally re-broadcast exactly fifty years later by TCM on December 8, 2016. 

 Baltimore, lawn in Roland Park neighborhood. I liked the colors of the leaves.

I didn't have time to watch the full version I found online, so I skipped to the part that especially affects me, when Laura learns about the "gentleman caller's" prior commitment. Loden's reaction of pain was visible to the audience but hidden from her mother and brother as she kept her back to them. In what might still be my favorite version, Karen Allen seemed to conceal her feelings more. As I jumped to some other scenes, I realized that maybe I want to wait to watch this with someone else to talk about it. I used to think about that kind of thing more often in the past, of waiting not to do something because I don't want to do it alone. For some reason I had once set aside a documentary by Errol Morris for that even though it wasn't especially meaningful to me. When I finally watched it because UW was screening many of his films, it was very painful for me to realize I was watching alone and I was glad that the theater was dark. 

Many things come to my mind about what the Tom character, who was probably based on Williams, says about illusions.  In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,  Dr. Bessel van der Kolk quotes this favorably: "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves" (Dr. Elvin Semrad [former supervisor at Massachusetts Mental Health Center] 2014: 11). But at other times he says that a way to deal with trauma is through imagination. I forget how he reconciles those two ideas. I think I've often used day dreaming of the future as a way to get by, but the dangers are not to take enough action and to fool myself. 

Another thing I'm reminded of is when I returned home from my freshman year in college during the Labor Day weekend and watched some of "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" again on some television station.  The Willy Wonka character doesn't seem to completely believe it when he sings "Pure Imagination"--"If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it."

Baltimore, outside stores along Hartford Road. They were closed, so I couldn't ask anyone about the chalk. 

Braided Rugs

I hope it's not too late for me to realize that I would like to be back in Gettysburg at this time of year while it's raining. I'm thinking now of visiting my grandparents near the end of a May and I was picked up at the Frederick bus station by my grandmother, a cousin, and a great uncle called Uncle Dump--the memory of finally returning to Gettysburg after being away for awhile as we turned up the Emmitsburg Road and then stopped at the old Visitors Center, where I browsed books. The warmth of my grandparents' home with the circular and oval braided rugs and a smell that I can't bring back. Sliced deli meats wrapped in white paper in their refrigerator fascinated me then because we almost never got that kind of thing where I grew up. The braided rugs also fascinated me when I was a little kid and we still lived in Pennsylvania. I used to try to roll marbles along the grooves, but it was the alternating colors--natural colors: browns, tans, greens, cream--that attracted me. I'm now reminded to look for one of these for my apartment in Baltimore.

I'd planned to be back in Gettysburg this week to attend a talk by an advocate against child sexual abuse and see my grandmother. But I've had to stay in Madison to catch up on grading and to sort through what to take to Baltimore. By not attending I feel that I've let her down and lost a chance. So I tried to make up for it by contacting on Thursday more people in the area to encourage them to attend. The rain and temperatures in the 50s yesterday were about the same as that time.

The rain in April and May also reminds me of walking back in the rain from a showing of the Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the National Gallery of Art. I wonder if my sadness then came from an unconscious awareness of something somewhat like it about to happen to me. And then the rain as I drove through Connecticut back from doing research one April in Boston. That's when a jazz piano work I've liked since I was in Kansas, Peace Piece by Bill Evans, took on the painful reminder feeling it now has for me.

Hidden/Open Treasures

Book Escape, Light Street near Montgomery Street,
Baltimore (the store occupies both of these)

I finally got around to visiting a used book store in Baltimore that I'd planned to browse last year--Book Escape. My main goal was to see if they have any books I could use to study for the Maryland bar exam; however, as I thought would be the case, they didn't have any. I was surprised to find that behind the facade of the store, which combines two storefronts, is a small courtyard or atrium surrounded by the two buildings. I asked the book seller whether he knew anything about the background of this atrium or how common this kind of thing is in Baltimore, but he didn't know.

This reminds of Chinese courtyard houses that hide a courtyard filled with trees and maybe a small pond behind grey, often windowless, walls. Most of the courtyard houses in Beijing had to be divided up for multiple families who then erected small kitchens in the middle spaces. The courtyard of this bookstore is tiny, though, just enough to allow more windows in the houses.

Book Escape, one side of courtyard, toward front of the store

Book Escape, right side of store, through window to courtyard

Book Escape, left side of store, door to courtyard

I wonder about the relationship between this kind of hidden spot and the Do Ho Suh exhibit in my March 14, 2017, post. Even as a lot of us get revealed online, much is still hidden. But even what is open few care to glance at. It's like the experiment the Washington Post ran with violinist Joshua Bell in 2007: "Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out."  By Gene Weingarten April 8, 2007.

"It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen?" Only one person revealed that she recognized Bell. "In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look." Here's a sped-up video of what happened: "Stop and Hear the Music." [2 min 36 sec]

Many people's lives seem to be like that as they hope to be noticed, not necessarily by many but enough to be cared for by at least one person. Everyday events and scenes are like Bell's performance, too. One of the key findings in the research by John and Julie Gottman on marriages is that happy couples are vastly more likely to respond to a partner's bid for connection or attention. (Short summary: "An Introduction to Emotional Bids and Trust." Longer Wisconsin Public Radio, "To the Best of Our Knowledge" interview: "Calculus of Love." [12 min 26 sec]

As I was leaving a student flute recital at the Peabody Conservatory, I was reminded of this research when I saw this.

Washington Monument in Baltimore (first major memorial to George Washington,
completed in 1829) More info at Mount Vernon Place Conservancy website

Madison's Annual International Festival, Overture Center--February 21, 2015

Around this time every year is the International Festival at the Overture Center, with free performances of music and dance from throughout the world, mainly locally based groups from or inspired by such places as Ghana, Bulgaria, Mali, Brazil, Russia, China, and Mexico. The festival begins with two guys playing long alphorns in the lobby. This year I managed to hear them after I'd made quick visits to the nearby library and the winter farmers' market. Some local organizations sell ethnic foods that I think cost too much, around $8 for small platefuls. I tried what was labeled as Caribbean taco, which wasn't so good because of the poor quality tortilla, and then a cup of cannoli cake.

One of my favorite things to do at the festival is to talk with representatives of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Madison at their table. I like to ask about their experiences and then pick up literature to share with my students.

I only attended two major performances this year: the UW Russian Folk Orchestra and most of the acts put on by the Madison Chinese Cultural Association. The Russian music was beautiful, especially one piece with a flute soloist. The Chinese acts began with a group of guzheng musicians accompanied by an erhu and (I think) a dizi. While looking over the list of types of  music, I now wish that I'd stuck around longer or returned to hear more. [The schedule of performances is available through the Festival's web page.]

UW Russian Folk Orchestra, Madison's International Festival, February 21, 2015 in the Overture Hall

An advantage of living in Madison is to see and hear different kinds of musical instruments being played. Every spring the UW Javanese Gamelan Ensemble performs for free on campus. Soon after Christmas the Madison Marimba Quartet also performs for free, but I missed the most recent show.

Madison Opera in the Park

Yesterday, I attended the free Opera in the Park by the Madison Opera. Every July it's held on the gentle slope of a hill in  Garner Park, which is about a 40-minute walk from my place. More than 10,000 usually attend to listen to preview selections from operas in the upcoming season and some Broadway songs. The atmosphere of this event is nice with the large numbers of families and couples relaxing on the lawn.

I'm sitting near the top of the hill.
This picture doesn't show well the thousands of people on the slope below.

Review of the show: http://host.madison.com/entertainment/arts_and_theatre/on-a-grand-night-for-singing-mezzo-wallis-giunta-steals/article_b3f3538b-f6a1-55c6-8f18-fefddf793a21.html

Bumper Stickers/Eating Jiaozi for Chinese New Year/Music at the Union
"Imagine Whirled Peas"--seen on bumper sticker on car parked near Madison's State Street while I was walking from local library to Memorial Library. [Chinese might want to email me if they can't figure out the message. It's a pun on another bumper sticker.]

I've probably seen this one before, but today it reminds me of a teaching idea of Jack Bowen, a high school teacher in the SF Bay area--asking students to record bumper stickers to discuss the philosophy of the message. Maybe I'll try that with my students. [I first heard of his book, If You Can Read This: The Philosophy of Bumper Stickers, from WPR--http://www.wpr.org/book/100530a.cfm He's interviewed for the third segment.]

Monday is the fifth day of the Chinese new year. Because I'll be busy tomorrow, I made some jiaozi for lunch using pre-made jiaozi wrappers and then finely chopped for the filling Chinese cabbage, green onion, and spinach along with some shredded carrot and one scrambled egg. The typical filling uses ground pork often mixed with Chinese cabbage and maybe some other vegetable. The custom is to eat jiaozi on new year's eve around midnight, the first day, and the fifth day (often leading to people eating jiaozi during the days in between). Another big day for eating jiaozi was the first day of winter. On the 15th day of the new year--called the Lantern Festival in English but yuanxiao jie [ 元宵节] in most of China--the custom is to eat glutinous rice balls--called yuanxiao--that have various kinds of sweet fillings. In about a week, I'll describe how to make them.

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.]