Monthly Archives: May 2013

Cinema and Television, Politics

Girl Rising

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Beltane                                                                         Early Growth Moon

Kate and I went to see Girl Rising at the Stone Arch Cinema in St. Anthony Main.  This movie shows vignettes from the lives of several girls in very different circumstances.  A bonded servant in Nepal, a young girl in Haiti’s earthquake ravaged city of Port Au Prince, a young radio announcer from Sierra Leone’s Freetown, a Peruvian miner’s daughter transformed by poetry, a Calcutta street child who loved to draw, an Egyptian 12-year old who had been raped and a Afghan yearning for education.

The stories are poignant.  The girl who was a kamlari (first on the left in the bottom row) in Nepal, a form of bonded servitude illegal since 2000, but still widely practiced, for example, wrote songs about her experience, then organized other kamlaris who had been freed to visit homes where kamlaris were held.  They rode their on bicycles, then sang her songs, coming back again and again.

The Haitian loved school and before the earthquake her mother could afford it.  After the earthquake she could not.  Wadley, (second from the right on the top) the girl, found her old school teacher teaching in another school.  Told to leave because she had not paid, Wadley refused, saying she would come back the next day and the next day and the next day.  The teacher accepted her.

The cinema was full of young girls, some from girl scouts, some from parochial schools and at least one Muslim mother with her two daughters, Somali or Ethiopian.  We saw these three later after the movie at Pracna.  The two girls were laughing and playing in the hall while their mother prayed in a carpeted office front, head down, hands out toward Mecca.

This is not a great movie, but it is a powerful one and it got my attention about the plight of girls in the developing world.  They are the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable.

Health

PT

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Beltane                                                                     Early Growth Moon

Spent some time in PT this afternoon, trying to get my shoulder and neck to calm down.  Physical therapist an interesting guy, a Brit, a “Lancastersire man” who moved to Australia, then New Zealand, then here.  54.  Very keen observer.

He’ll help me.  Already have some relief.

Otherwise the morning got eaten up by the CD monster.  Turn the dial, insert disc, write memo, repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat.

Tonight, Girl Rising at the Stone Arch Cinema.

Garden, Great Work, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Roots

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Beltane                                                                                  Early Growth Moon

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
Simone Weil

 

 

Not surprising this is an unrecognized need because for most people for most of human history being other than rooted was not an option.  You were born within the sound of a church bell or a muezzin or a farm dinner bell and never got beyond them.

(Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Muezzin Calling from the Top of a Minaret the Faithful to Prayer (1879)

It is only as the world has begun to urbanize that we have had to consider our roots, or the lack of them.  In the US only 5% of the population lived in cities in 1800, but 50% did by 1920.  80% do now.  This trend is global.  In 2008 for the first time in history over 50% of the world’s population live in cities.  Interestingly one website on urbanization made this point, since no more than 100% of a population can live in cities, urbanization will come to a foreseeable end.

It is, though, this great hollowing of rural areas that underlines our need for roots just at the point when we realize we no longer have them.  Or, rather, it is this realization that makes the need for roots evident.

Let’s stick to the vegetative metaphor.  Roots say where we are planted, where we have pushed organs for receiving nourishment deep into the soil, even into the subsoil of the place where we live.  Yes, you might want to talk about relationships and regular shops and schools and sports teams, yes, those things are part of a broad understanding of the metaphor, but I’m wanting to stay closer to the plant.

(I worked in this factory when I was in high school, 1968.  Johns-Manville)

If we eat local food, our bodies themselves become literally one with the earth in a particular locale.  Knowing where we are, not only in terms of street names and legalities, but also in terms of trees, food crops, fish, game, local meats, birds, flowers, grasses, even the so-called weeds is also part of having roots.  Embracing the weather, the local changes, as in part defining who you are, that’s having roots.

It is, I think, these things that disorient us the most when we move away from our home.  We think it’s the people or the customs or the new boulevards and highways, but in a deeper place, in the place where you know you are, it’s the Indian paintbrush that no longer shows up, the alligator not waiting in the pond,  the summer that fades too soon or lasts too long, these things make us not only feel disconnected from the place where we are; they are in fact the evidence of our disconnection.

(fall harvest, 2011, Andover)

If we have roots, we usually don’t know it; if we’re missing them, well…

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Music, Third Phase

Technology Is My Friend

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Beltane                                                                      Early Growth Moon

Repeat after me:  technology is our friend.  Again.  Technology is our friend.

A month or so ago I bought a 300 CD carousel player.  This dates me in so many ways.  In the first place to enter memos (we’ll talk about those in a moment) you can use a keyboard, but it’s not a usb connection rather it is the old male/female pin receptor.  Fortunately, in my ever increasing museum of used computing equipment I had one.  Score!

What that means is that I input a memo about each disk using the keyboard rather than the dial and point method necessary without it.  That would have found me tossing the discs in the thing.  Anyhow so I decide to put a memo for each disc because otherwise how could I know what it is?

Well, that means developing a system.   We have a faux Dewey Decimal CD storage piece that has 4 rows across and 6 down of small wooden boxes that hold anywhere from 12 to 15 or so CD’s.  So we named the rows A, B, C, and D.  That means that each CD has to have a box number, so A1 puts the CD case in the upper left hand corner box.  We’re keeping the cases for the liner notes.  But, wait, there’s more.  Each CD has to have its own number in the box so the first CD is A11 then the name of the CD in very short hand.

Another wrinkle develops with multiple sets of which we have many.  For example, we have a 25 CD set of the complete works of Chopin.   In this case, we’re now into the 3rd box, the number was for one disc, A316D24.  The D24 meaning D24 in the Chopin set.  In order to enter this data two buttons on the carousel player have to be punched, then the text entered, then saved.  300 times.  I’m up to 60 right now and have already begun chewing on my foot so I can escape the trap.

Now to the charming reality that this dates me.  First of all, who buys CD’s anymore?  I mean physical objects that store your music and take up space in your house?  What?  Second, you mean you have to manually enter the information about the music?  Why can’t the file just put it up like it does on my I-phone, I-pad, I-pod?  That’s way easier.  Not nearly so much work.  In fact, no work at all.

That’s the frictionless world most digital natives inhabit.  Their idea of a record collection weighs about 5 ounces and has ear buds.  If you want to listen to at home, you just drop it in a receptacle that links your device to your home speaker system.  Easy peasy.

Kate and I, however, inhabit the stubbornly physical recent past.  Which means we were born before this millennium for sure and far back in the 20th century, too.  This is probably the last time we will try to organize our music because if we decide to do it again, I’ll flee to the 20th century in my time machine.  I carry it right here on my belt.

Memories, US History

A 50’s Boyhood

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

As summer tries to take root, bringing heat to this winterspringsummerfall season we’ve
been having, Memorial Day arrives.  In my school days Memorial Day meant school was over until Labor Day.  The grandkids in Colorado go into June and start up again mid-August.

I recall those long summer breaks perhaps better than the school years they punctuated, especially at the elementary ages, grades 1-5.  They were hours upon end of baseball, bike riding, playing kick the can, hanging out at the field, a special place that could become a fort, a trench, a hideout, a bunker, an overnight camping spot.  This was kid world, immersed in the boiling mass of kids my age or so that lived on Monroe Street between 1952 and 1958-9.

To a young boy in Indiana this was the 50’s, the Atomic Age now lionized in Mad Men and  shops filled with retro furniture, plastic chairs with metal legs, formica tables, aluminum tumblrs, boomerang shaped end tables, blond furniture, poodle skirts and fancy aprons for high-heel clad cooks.

This was not our 50’s.  Our 50’s had sandlots, trips to the forbidden pit, the subtle ranking inevitable among groups of children, the magical evenings as dusk fell, bats swooped and we each found a hiding place behind an arbor vitae, an enclosed porch, a dark shadow beside a garage, waiting for the tag that would make us out or finding a chance for momentary glory when we could streak out, run like the wind and kick the tin can clattery clat clanging down the street.

Yes, we had homes and parents and bedrooms and breakfast but those were way stations, filling stations and kiddie hotels, holding us only until we could go out.  “I’m going out,” was a phrase common on our lips.

We knew the limits to our wandering which meant we could have, from time to time, the  experience of venturing beyond them, back to the old gravel pit now filled with water where instant drowning awaited–we imagined our sad funerals and weeping parents, or off into a far neighborhood, perhaps as far as downtown if we had pop bottles we had collected from the trash.

That all lay before us as Memorial Day came, with the legionnaire color squad straining and sweating in those uniforms that fit so well back in their service days, the band playing patriotic music and a few floats with a queen or two doing the wave.  Dogs barked.  Clouds rode high in the blue sky and war was in the past, something to remember.

 

 

Art and Culture, Writing

Racing

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

A holiday weekend, chilly and gray, some rain.  It has reminded me, all day today, of another Indy race day, sometime around 1957 or 1958 when it was rainy and cold on Monroe Street in Alexandria, Indiana.  Nobody else wanted to listen to the race, so I went outside, crawled in our 1957 Ford, turned the radio on and followed the race.  Nothing in my memory about who won, what the race was like, but I recall feeling perfect in the car, in the rain, alone with the commentary.

(like this except it had white detailing)

I’m beginning to think I may push myself too hard.  Ha, you say.  Finally.  Well, it hasn’t really occurred to me, but when I took that day last week and read poetry, it gave me a feeling of luxury, of relaxation.  When I mentioned this thought to Kate, she said, “Uh-huh.”  We both push ourselves, Kate and me, in different arenas of our life.  Kate wants to get practical tasks done:  laundry, weeding, cooking, paying the bills.  I want to get a book written, Ovid translated, art ingested, faith reimagined.

Here’s the interesting twist on this for me.  I want to get things done, too.  That is, words per day, verses per day, a painting or sculpture analyzed, a specific concept mastered–like the work I did on the numinous over last three weeks.  Or, writing this blog.  In this way, I have a trail of bread crumbs, I guess, a path that can show I’ve been up to something.

(Yue_Minjun-Execution)   [It occurred to me as I wrote this entry that execution has two starkly different meanings but that they might be related.]

Oddly, this does not include reading, except for very focused reading in service of a particular project.  Oh, I read plenty, at night, after the work day is done, but I don’t have time in my schedule for serious reading like the works on Ovid I’ve collected, or poetry, or that biography on Edward Hopper.  Strange, really, since I consider myself a reading partisan, working the trenches to keep the Philistines well away.

Somehow, I imagine, all this will result in a changed schedule for me, what it will look like I don’t know, although I’m going to keep the morning for writing.  That’s my good time.

Notice, however, as I just did, that this does not include the sabbath, a day of rest or a week of rest or a month of rest.  Our trip around South America had as one of its chief merits an enforced laziness, especially during our days at sea.  Watching the ocean go by.  I never sit around and watch the ocean go by.

Memories, Sport

Indy 500

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Beltane                                                                             Early Growth Moon

Cord cutters.  That’s Kate and me.  We signed off Comcast cable a year plus ago and haven’t missed it.  We do have Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Premier which keep movies and certain TV shows available, but at times we want to watch them, not according to schedules and with none of the hardware of Tivo.

Except for today.  The Indy 500.  Sometimes I watch it; sometimes I don’t.  Today Kate suggested we go to a sports bar since we couldn’t get it here.  We did that.  And it was fun.  We watched about 80 laps at Tanner’s, had breakfast/lunch and headed back around 12:00, 12:15.

I came downstairs and discovered that I could follow the remaining laps  with four screens on my computer, each one with the on-screen camera feed of a key driver.  I finished watching Ed Carpenter (Naptown boy, 21, finished 10th after winning the pole), Helio Castroneves (3 time winner who finished in the top five), Hunter-Reay (who lead most of the last laps, but lost out in a heart breaker, losing the lead between two yellow flags, the last one up through the end of the race) and Marco Andretti (of the storied Andretti clan, who, after 90 plus starts have won only once).

It was a compelling way to watch the race with the standings running across the top like ticker tape.  That’s what I did with the last three hours.  Now for a nap.

Art and Culture, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story

An Ancient Memorial Day

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Beltane                                                                      Early Growth Moon

Once in a while.  Once in a very great while.  Tonight was one of the times.  An Iliad, a one person, Stephen Yoakam, long time Guthrie actor, show.  This was a play that distilled the Iliad’s core story, Achilles’ rage and its consequences, especially the death of Patroclus and Achilles killing of Hecto and Hector’s humiliation, then spun the story into contemporary cloth, going back and forth between the age of heroes and age of road rage.

In fact, the play compares Achilles’ rage to road rage, a visceral always with us ultimate anger that can transform men into killers.

And the story line with its compelling contemporary moments are good, but Yoakam was better.  He gave these words flesh.  In a bravura performance extending almost two hours Yoakam never leaves the stage, barely pauses in his dialogue with nothing but stagecraft to help him shift scenes, characters, times.  His body language and use of his arms were a masters class in non-verbal acting.

This was in the Dowling Studio, the replacement for the old Guthrie lab theater where Kate and I saw several good performances.  The Dowling space is even more intimate, fewer seats and closer to the stage.

Here though is what put this whole evening over the top.  It’s Memorial Day weekend.  In the age of heroes the hope of immortality lay in the words of the poet.  The  Iliad and the Odyssey are both Memorial Day poems for ancient warriors and their stories.  Both give testimony to the gritty horrors of war, describing with often gruesome detail, say, a spear entering below the jaw and piercing through the soft palate into the brain and to the remarkable men who lived and died in these wars.

 

Garden, Holidays, Sport

Help.

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Beltane                                                               Early Growth Moon

Kate has found a garden and landscape helper for us.  Javier does tree, gardening and landscaping with his brother.  They are very reasonable in their pricing.  If he works out, and I’m sure he will, a large part of the burden of maintaining our grounds will lift and Kate and I can concentrated on growing vegetables, fruit and flowers.  What we love doing.

For example, I planted 9 tomato plants and 6 pepper plants this morning, with three egg plants waiting for the removal of the ash in our vegetable garden. (part of the work Javier has agreed to do.)  We’ll probably put in a few more tomato plants with the added sunlight the vegetable garden will have sans ash.

It’s Memorial Day weekend though I have trouble conceiving Memorial Day as any day other than May 30th.  Growing up the Indianapolis 500 always ran right after Memorial Day and that was May 31st.  It was the 1968 Uniform Holiday Act that created all the Monday holidays and their resulting three day weekends.  That’s no way to run a holiday.  Holidays are about tradition, not long weekends.

Anyhow the race is tomorrow.

Aging, GeekWorld, Third Phase

Third Phase: Robots

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Beltane                                                                                   Early Growth Moon

Frank and Me is an engaging movie with a quick plot twist at the end that caught me napping, but the intriguing question raised is Frank’s relationship with the robot his son gives him to care for him.

Like most technophiles robots have been on my mind for a long time. Forbidden Planet came out, for example, in 1959 when I was 12.  I read I Robot before that. At the time they seemed much more science fiction, probably only science fiction.  In fact, it is very difficult to convey today the gap between many of those things we saw as science fiction and any reality we ever expected to experience.  Space ships?  With humans aboard?  Moon landing?  Video phone calls?  Robots?  Come on.

As a child of that era and a science fiction oriented one at that, imagine my delight when we land roving robots on Mars.  Mars!  Or, a human made machine leaves the solar system.  The Oort Cloud!  Calling my brother in Saudi Arabia and my sister in Singapore, with moving pictures and both of them on the screen with me at the same time.  Get outta here.

When it comes to the question of how much care we can offer the elderly through robots, I’m jumping up and down.  Let me at’em.  I don’t want to plan robberies with one like Frank did, but I can easily imagine a relationship with a robot.

Some people, Frank Langella, lead actor in Frank and Me among them, think those kind of relationships should be with humans.  A recent Wired article suggested that a fuzzy robot sold now as a companion for Alzheimer’s patients may work too well.  People talk to it.  They bemoan the relationship people might have with the robot.

Why?  I mean, it’s not like we’re going to send people robots and then say, “Now, you have your robot.  Let’s not ever hear from you again.”  No, the robots will be part of a care-giving strategy.  Perhaps they’ll do household tasks and some particular care-giving like medication administration.  Perhaps they’ll be dialogical, with a capacity for learning and different accents.

We pay home health care aides around $20,000 a year.  And there are fewer and fewer signing up for the jobs.  It’s not hard to see why.  This trend has accelerated just as the number of elders in our culture will increase enormously.  I’m glad the Minnesota legislature voted to let child care workers and home health care workers organize.  If they can get better pay, benefits and training, we’ll have more people wanting the work.

But my sense is that even if that sort of improvement changes their lot somewhat, it will still not be enough to meet the needs of people who. like myself, want to age in place.  We can do it, but most of us will need help of some kind.

(Hector, a mobile assistive robot and smart home interface for the elderly.  forbes magazine)

It seems to me that a joint work force of robots and better paid home health care aides is a big step toward solving the problem of affordable care for the rapidly increasing elderly population. And I will welcome it.

I think back to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.  He suggested we were moving toward a High Tech, High Touch society.  That is, the more technologically sophisticated we become, in the same proportion we become eager for human contact, need human contact.

Those who write about the elderly and robots always seem to paint things as either/or.  Either we increase the number of in home health care workers or we use robots.  No, we’ll do both.  And we’ll love it.

I want mine for my 70th birthday.