Circus Wagons and Silent Movie: Overture Center 10th Anniversary events, Saturday, September 27, 2014

The event that especially interested me was the free showing of a Harold Lloyd movie, Hot Water, in the Capitol Theater. It has some funny moments but is definitely not as good as his more famous movies. Because it was free, I was surprised and disappointed that most seats in the balcony, where I sat, were empty. Opened in 1928, the theater is one of the few silent movie theaters left that has its original organ to accompany movies.

Capitol Theater, Overture Center; Madison, Wisconsin. September 27, 2014. Organ being played prior to show.

The theater was kept and renovated as part of the Overture Center, which has a much larger hall within the complex. I attended one of the first concerts in the Overture Hall--Dave Brubeck--but I disliked the "European seating" design in the balconies without aisles. The older Capitol Theater, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with its palace look.

Barnum and London Cage Wagon, 1883--along State Street, Madison, WI

For the anniversary of the entire center, a circus theme was chosen--I suppose because of the proximity of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. About a dozen circus wagons from the museum were placed on streets surrounding the Overture Center. According to signs posted near each wagon, most of the wagons are over 100 years old. They included ones for caged animals, music calliopes (one of them was playing while I walked by), bands, and selling tickets. The band wagons reminded me of Dr. Seuss books.

One reason that I post this information is in case someone is considering moving to Madison, such as to teach at UW. In recent years, the sociology department has lost prominent professors through retirement, better salaries elsewhere, or family reasons. Some prospective professors and grad students maybe have the misconception of a boring Midwest, so they prefer one of the coasts. [I'd forgotten to post this after I created it this past fall.]

Circus calliope wagon

Circus steam calliope

Willy Street Fair 2014

This year's Willy Street Parade had the usual components--the Bubble Mobile, the Wacky Wheeler, and stilt walkers--but not as many drummers. As I've done in the past, I tried to encourage some Chinese students to come along, but the ones I talked to had to get some homework done. The parade always starts at 11 am on the Sunday of the Willy Street Fair, a neighborhood festival held over a September weekend on Madison's Williamson Street. A September 1998 article in the Chicago Tribune, "Willy Street Fair a Hip Dose Of Madison," explains, although the article leaves out that the fair is also on Saturday.

 

The Bubble Mobile especially makes me feel as if I'm in a Dr. Seuss story. As thousands of small soap bubbles float up from the converted instruments, Jim Wildeman stands in the back turning out huge bubbles. The parade route was much more crowded than appears to be in my photos. I picked times and spots to get good views.

 

Here's the inside of the convertible at the end of the parade.

 

My other favorite is the Wacky Wheeler. Afterwards I talked with  "Melvin" as he was packing up. He got the idea from watching a performance that used a German wheel (see this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_gymnastics  ) and converted a wheel used to roll out cable for electric companies. Besides the Willy Street Parade, he takes part in about 70 parades in the US.

One of the reasons that I like to attend Madison's neighborhood fairs is to talk with people at the tables set up by organizations. This year's Willy Street Fair included Planned Parenthood, the Madison Blues Society, HI-Madison, WORT (the community radio station), Mothers Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the  John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and Friends of Aztalan State Park. Live music stages sat at a few spots next to the street, and many food and craft vendors lined its length.

Growing Chamomile

At my grandmother's I grew chamomile flowers along the edge of the garden, and I'd pick some of the flower heads every few days for tea. I prefer other kinds of teas, but I like the variety from drinking chamomile tea. In Madison I've grown just a little. In this photo the flowers grew in small open spaces within the strawberries.  Germination of the seeds at my grandmother's was very good, but I sometimes can't get chamomile to grow well in my community garden plot in Madison.

More from the Christmas ornament house

The owner of a house at the corner of Walton Place and Spaight Street, in Madison's Marquette Neighborhood, keeps Christmas ornaments year-long on a small tree in the front yard.  This is a clearer view of them in the tree. Whenever I attend the neighborhood's Waterfront Festival held every June, I make a point to walk by this home, whose owner usually holds a small yard sale. But I didn't go this year. Photo from June 8, 2013.

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

Antietam and Shepherdstown

Earlier in August I visited the Antietam Battlefield in Maryland and ate lunch at Blue Moon Cafe, an interesting restaurant in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, which is not far across the Potomac River from the battlefield.

Burnside's Bridge across Antietam Creek. The bluff where Confederates shot at
oncoming Union soldiers towers over the bridge in the upper right of my photo

Shepherdstown, West Virginia

A tiny stream runs through the courtyard of the Blue Moon Cafe, a hippy-like restaurant with a 1960s-early 70s atmosphere that offers many vegetarian options. I tried the Apple-acian sandwich (slice of baked Granny Smith apple, brie cheese, red onion, and dijon mustard on ciabatta bread). I liked the taste and trying something new to me--a sandwich with an apple slice.

Across the street from the restaurant is the Little House on the Shepherd University campus. Built in the late 1920s at a scale suitable for small children, it was closed while I was there.

Little House on Shepherd University campus. Total height of ten feet.
I wish that I had taken a picture through a window of the furnished interior.

"I'm not a weed!": Public Libraries and Gardening--Arlington (Virginia) Public Library

Near the entrance of the Arlington Central Library, which I often visited when I lived in the city, is the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC) Plot Against Hunger Vegetable Garden. Besides growing food to help those in need, this kind of plot can educate patrons and encourage them to grow vegetables.

Example planting and info card in the plot--
Purslane used to grow in my community garden plot. (Purslane is just below and behind the sign, not in the foreground.)


                                                   

While there, I saw mothers with their children pause to talk about what was growing. The garden was built along the side of the library that patrons pass on their way to and from parking.  By the way--despite how grocery stores and some food processors label, sweet potatoes and yams are not the same.  What is labeled as a yam in the US is nearly always a sweet potato.
                                                                                 

Bumper sticker philosophy observed

While riding the bus yesterday morning, I saw this bumper sticker:

"It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."

Christmas Ornament House

On the weekend of June 10-11, I attended some of the Marquette Waterside Festival, which is held at a narrow park along Lake Monona. Scheduled for Saturday were mainly international or ethnic music acts. These especially interested me because I like both kinds, but I preferred hearing the sitar act that was scheduled. Food and beer vendors help fund these neighborhood festivals, and some organizations set up booths, such as on protecting WI riverways, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and WORT (the community radio station). What most attracted my attention were UW astrobiologists, with microscopes to look at tiny meteorite particles that they explain you can find at home. They also handed out cards on life forms that live in extreme conditions on Earth.

One of the nearby houses has a tree with year-long Christmas ornaments. When I first saw this, I asked the owner about the weather breaking the ornaments, but she said the main problem was squirrels knocking down the balls and even chewing them, especially red balls. Below is a 3D photo of one of the ornaments.

In-house training/Stuff on my garden plot: Cincinnati Market Radishes
Since my last posting on here, I've been busy wrapping up the end of the semester and then taking training classes through Madison Area Technical College. At the Tech Academy, I learned how to run the Telepresence classroom that I'll use for one section this fall, and at the week-long Learning Academy, I took a class on educational evaluation as part of the certification requirements for WI technical college instructors. At these classes, I especially like meeting teachers from other departments/programs and picking up teaching ideas from them.

Cincinnati Market Radishes

In my plot at the Sheboygan Community Garden, I'm trying a less common radish called Cincinnati Market, which is dark red and long like a typical carrot. According to the Seed Savers Exchange catalog description, the length can be about 6 inches; however, mine tend to be shorter--about three to five inches. Mine also taste a little hotter or spicier than typical radishes rather than mild. That could be because of our warm spell earlier this month. I actually don't like radishes that much unless they're really mild. [In the future I'll say more about other less common things I'm growing.]

Last Saturday at the Dane County Farmers' Market, I came across a vendor selling radishes that looked similar, but she called them by a Japanese name. So I decided to do some research and found that old seed catalogs scanned into Google books often listed Cincinnati Market radish along with many other long radishes.



Diameter about one cm and under, but some

are around one inch (2.5 cm) in the top part. 

Some sources say that another name for Cincinnati Market radish was Glass Radish because of brittleness. Mine aren't anywhere near brittle--in fact,I don't understand how a radish could be brittle like glass. [See this entry in Maule's Seed Catalog (1902), which says that they're hard to distinguish from Long Scarlet radishes.]

One of the best sources of info on this I've found so far are books on gardening by Adolph Kruhm published around WW I.  In his Home Vegetable Gardening from A to Z, Kruhm (1918) discusses in relatively great detail when to grow various kinds of radishes. According to him, the White Icicle radish could "be considered the greatest all-around general purpose radish in cultivation"(p. 194), so I might try them. [Kruhm's introduction starts with this claim: "April 15, 1917, will go down as one of the most momentous days in American history. quite apart from the fact that it marked our entrance into the World War" (p. v). His Home Vegetable Gardening (1914), maybe an earlier version of the A to Z book, gives less detailed advice but has a table of contents with links.]
Added on June 18:

Authentic Chinese food--an example 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (stir-fried tomatoes and eggs)
The only food critic to win a Pulitzer, Jonathan Gold of the LA Weekly, delivered a lecture last night titled "Authenticity, Culture, and the Korean Taco" as part of the Humanities Without Boundaries series of UW. During the last half, Gold used his cell phone as a miniature teleprompter to read some of his talk. The best part was in Q and A, such as when he was asked about the worst meal he'd ever eaten.

The issue of whether a dish is authentic reminds me of one of the most common dishes in Chinese homes--tomato and eggs.  In my experience, this can be a main or side dish at any meal, but I've yet to notice it at a typical Chinese restaurant in the US.

Whenever I taught oral English, one of my assignments was to ask students to describe how to cook a dish, and I think that the majority chose tomato and eggs. It basically entails cooking scrambled eggs in some vegetable oil-- sort of into an omelet but then cut into pieces with a spatula. You then cook the tomatoes--either diced (my preference) or in wedges--usually with green onion or scallion and maybe some ginger, although this could overpower the other flavors. Finish by mixing together the cooked eggs and tomatoes. Salt is almost always added at some point, and a little bit of sugar is OK, although not so common.

By the way, another common dish I've had in Chinese homes was uncooked sliced tomatoes with sugar sprinkled on top.

Many of the online recipes seem to call for too many tomatoes, even one for every egg; however, I--and most of the Chinese I've talked to about this--use one regular-size tomato with two or three eggs.

A lot of variations
1. mix with noodles or even rice
2. with garlic (I think that green onions are much more commonly used.)
http://www.beijingmadeeasy.com/chinese-recipes/egg-and-tomato-chinese-recipe

3. with some sugar
http://appetiteforchina.com/recipes/stir-fried-tomato-eggs

4. close to what I describe
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/tour/food/chinese-cooking/scrambled-eggs-tomato.htm

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Stir-Fried-Egg-and-Tomato-352835

Videos
This one has too many variations from the norm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRfLNGE2YUo [I think her tomato wedges are too big and she cooks this longer than necessary. Adding chicken flavoring is definitely not typical. I don't push the spatula so much while the tomatoes cook, and mine is not so wet or juicy. Pushing the cooked eggs to the side of the pan while cooking the tomatoes, as she does it, is fine rather than emptying them into a bowl.

At the end she mentions dipping bread into the juices. I think that this would only be good with the very dry mantou (steamed buns) that are common in northern China.]

Some thoughts about the anti-budget repair bill protests in Madison in February and March
"Are we preaching to the choir?" was an important question asked at a March 3 panel discussion held at the Orpheum Theater on media coverage of the Madison protests. But the panel failed to examine this issue carefully, and even one on it suggested that the majority has become the choir, making it a non-issue. 

I had too much to say about those events, so I ended up not posting anything on here for about two months. Another thing is that I had a bad cough from a cold at the end of February through spring break that disrupted my sleep.

Attending a talk on primates while worrying about the WI governor's attack on state employee unions
Friday evening I was torn between watching a Cinematheque showing of a documentary on the Nuremberg trials and attending a talk by a primate researcher. The film was a restoration of a US government documentary made in the 1940s that wasn't allowed to be shown in the US. I figured that I could see it in the future on DVD, so I chose the talk by Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist at Iowa State.[For more info see this article:http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-04/chimps-with-spears/roach-text.html]

The chimpanzees she studies in the savanna-woodlands of Senegal face an environment very different from the chimps in more heavily forested central Africa, such as in the Congo. She got in the news for discovering that the Senegal chimps sometimes sharpen with their teeth the ends of branches to use as spears to kill small monkeys. The chimps poke the spears into the holes of tree trunks where monkeys hide. Before this it was thought that only humans make such a tool.

For my intro soc classes, I sometimes show a Nova documentary on the first day called "The Last Great Ape," which is on bonobos but includes an interesting comparison to chimps. The main point is that bonobos are more empathetic and much less violent than chimps. Some of the proposed causes are genetics, the male dominance in chimp culture versus female dominance of bonobos, the use of sex among bonobos as a calming mechanism, and the competition over resources that chimps face with gorillas north of the Congo River. In the past comparisons of humans with primates would mainly be with chimps, but maybe we can better understand ourselves by also learning more about bonobos.

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.

Saving students money when assigning textbooks
For the two intro sociology classes that I'm teaching this semester, I've again assigned a reader edited by James Henslin Down to Earth Sociology: Introductory Readings. 14th Edition. The list price is $23 but online sources, such as Amazon, sell it these days for under $17. Most of the readings are abridged research articles and selections from books. It's good for students to read actual research findings rather than very short summaries of them in regular textbooks. Another advantage is that it's an easy-to-carry paperback.

One chapter that I especially like using for teaching is Devah Pager's audit study in Milwaukee on young men--two white and two black--applying for jobs. The men submitted the same information on education and job experience but rotated by week on how they answered criminal record questions. The complete article in the American Journal of Sociology, "The Mark of a Criminal Record," is at her Princeton website. For a quick summary of the findings, see the graph on page 958. [edited on September 18, 2014: Devah now teaches at Harvard, so the new site for the article is  http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pager/files/pager_ajs.pdf ]

This semester I'm experimenting with using as a supplement a free online textbook that was posted on Flat World Knowledge near the end of last semester: Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World, Brief Edition by Steve Barkan. Typical hardback intro soc textbooks cost over $80 or even over $100, so I hope that sites like this one do well.

Breakfast at the Farmers' Market/Only 11% of Americans eat recommended amount of fruits and vegetables
This morning I ate breakfast at the Dane County Farmers' Market. Because the winter market is held indoors at the senior center, which has a kitchen by the lobby, local chefs--assisted by volunteers from local non-profits--are invited to prepare meals using ingredients mainly supplied by vendors. This week the chef, from the Mermaid Café, supervised East High School students taking part in a "Chef in the Classroom" project.

A meal usually costs $7.50--about three cereal boxes on sale--so I hesitate to eat breakfast away from home. But today's menu was an interesting change. Along with fruit juice were "pan-fried trout; country ham with grits and red-eye gravy; corn bread with plum preserves; fresh salad with mixed greens, also including micro greens, pea shoots, and spinach served with a warm bacon dressing and crumbled feta cheese." I try to avoid eating food from animals, except for milk products, fish, and eggs, but the local vendors use more humane methods to raise animals and the thin ham portion was smaller than my palm.

Eating at the winter farmers' market sometimes inspires me to eat greens in the morning. When my grandmother was living in her own home until last year, I sometimes picked greens,such as Swiss chard and beet greens, from the garden I'd planted and cook them together for breakfast.

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

1/15/2003 This is the birthday of my blog. I decided to try it because of a news story that I just read about blog sites being blocked in China.