Stationary Nomad: Journeys in Visual Culture

The City of Shiva -- Varanasi, India

2011-08-07T10:17:00.001-07:00

One of the most memorable experiences while I was in India in July was our visit to Varanasi, the sacred city of Shiva, the most holy of all the Hindu pilgrimage centers (tirthas) in India. I did not really know what to expect, though I knew it would be full of pilgrims as well as devout Hindus wanting to spend their remaining days in the city from which moksha is guaranteed (but only if you die there). I knew about the ghats, or stepped platforms and terraces, along the Ganges –some used for devotion, others for the mundane tasks like laundering clothes. Bathing can occur in either context – sacred or mundane.

The trip began in a jarringly memorable way: as we were boarding our plane, two coffins were sitting on the tarmac, waiting to be loaded into the cargo hold. Devout Hindus on their way to be cremated at the place where Lord Shiva would ferry their souls across the river to the great beyond. I realized that their grieving relatives would most likely be on the same flight with us. Having come to India almost directly from my grandmother's memorial service, I was all the more attuned to death and grieving. My grandmother was with me on that trip to India, in the way that people keep telling me she is always with me, in spirit. I kept wanting to share with her my experiences and impressions, and then realizing I couldn't.

I was not surprised to find in Varanasi extreme contrasts with New Delhi. Varanasi is one of the oldest cities in India, and Delhi, while several centuries old, is also probably the most modern city as well. Delhi’s airport is only one year old, and road-building seems to have kept pace with the boom in population and in automobiles (unlike Hyderabad, for example, where traffic is a total nightmare).

Varanasi is intense – old, dirty, with narrow winding streets thronged with market stalls; the crush of pilgrims and tourists making their way to and from the ghats; religious fervor and fervent hawkers; pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws and automobiles all competing for space; very loud music! All of one’s senses are assaulted, between the fragrant aroma of flowers and the odor of cow dung, the loud music, the visual cacophony of colors and textures, foods both tempting and repellant. The heat, the humidity, the mud, and – once you get to the Ganges – the water (I stepped in up to my ankles) – it all overwhelms. Varanasi is like India itself – intense, larger than life, sometimes too much to handle, but somehow captivating.

We were there during a special month devoted to Shiva; in the lunar calendar it occurs only once every three years (or once every 32.5 months, according to Wikipedia). Pilgrims -- almost all of them young men, dressed entirely in orange -- travel on foot to Varanasi to gather water from the Ganges in small pots, and then to travel on foot to other Shiva temples located throughout the country to pour the sacred water on the Shiva lingam. In these photos you can see the decorated poles used by pilgrims to carry the Ganges water:

According to Subhadra Sen Gupta, Kashi may have been a Dravidian center of worship before the arrival of the Aryans in the subcontinent. The cult of Shiva dates to before the Aryans’ arrival, and Kashi is believed to be Shiva’s sacred city. Remains of a city wall dating back to the 9th century B.C. have been found on the northern edge of the city.

The city is known by many names:

1. Kashi (or Kashika, or Kashi Kshetra for the region of Kashi) is the name used in the oldest literary reference, the epic Mahabharata; it means “the Luminous,” or “the City of Light.” This is where Shiva’s jyotirlingam first appeared, a column of light that symbolized Shiva’s presence.

2. Varanasi – the city lies between two streams, the Varana (to the north) and the Asi (to the south); together they make the name Varanasi.

3. Benares – a mis-hearing of the word Varanasi

4. Anandavana – “Shiva’s forest of bliss”

5. Anandakanana – “Shiva’s garden of happiness”

6. Rudravasa – the abode of Rudra (because one of the aspects of Shiva is as the Vedic god Rudra)

7. Mahashmashana – the Great Cremation Ground

8. Avimukta: the Never-Forsaken, or the city never forsaken by Lord Shiva

There are some 80 ghats in Kashi, built mostly from red sandstone. The five most sacred ghats are the Asi, Kedar, Dasaswamedha, Panchganga, and the Manikarnika. (Some pilgrims prefer the Adi Keshava ghat to the Kedar ghat.) These are said to possess the most spiritual power and sanctity. The only ghat we visited was the Dasaswamedha Ghat, where the virtuous King Divodasa was forced by the gods to perform the horse sacrifice, or ashwamedha yajna, not just one but ten times. In the Vedic religion, the horse sacrifice was the most elaborate and auspicious ritual, and was performed only by kings because it required so much wealth. Divodasa performed his ten horse sacrifices here at this ghat, which thus became the most auspicious of all the ghats. Bathing here at this ghat brings you all the blessings of the ten horse sacrifices.

The Ganga Aarti is performed at the Dasaswamedha Ghat every morning and every night; this is a worship ceremony (puja) in honor of the goddess Ganga Ma (Mother Ganges):

Our group got to watch the evening ceremony while seated in a boat on the Ganges. Several priests performed it in unison, circling fire, water vessels, incense, bells, and the other gifts made to the goddess. The ceremony signifies waking up the goddess in the morning, and putting her to bed at night. For the devout Hindu, the river IS the goddess, the living and energetic form of the divine; as we watched the puja being performed, we floated atop her divine presence, occupying the space between worshipers and worshiped.

Early on Sunday morning a small group of us went back to the ghat and in pursuit of the main Shiva temple in the city, the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Not only are you not allowed to bring a camera into the temple, but you aren’t even allowed to bring a camera anywhere near the temple. There were two security checkpoints leading up to the temple, and I took a photo of this sign at the first security checkpoint saying that cameras are not allowed (plus I got yelled at for taking this photo as I walked past!):

Foreigners are generally not allowed to enter the temple, either, so not surprisingly we did not get in. I was able to look into the two doors leading into and out of the temple, and could only see that it was really crowded with worshipers. We could see the tops of towers rising above the wall (at the point where we had already left our cameras behind). I stood in line hoping to get in, and came temptingly close, but an argument in line right in front of me slowed things down to a halt and I had to leave.

I’m not sure why foreigners are not allowed, but a couple of explanations occur. According to one of the leaders of our group, the Brahmins (priests) do not want non-Hindus in the temple, and are very adamant about it. For them this is the holiest of the holies, so that attitude is not surprising. A second explanation offered by an historian in the group is that Kashi is witness to quite a lot of communal violence, so in order to preserve security they are quite strict about controlling who visits important sacred sites.

Our final visit was to the cremation grounds, the “burning ghat,” where there were, indeed, a few cremation fires still burning. A yard filled with enormous piles of wood stood next to it; they performed about 100 cremations every day, so lots of wood was needed:

The photo of the cremation grounds was also not allowed, “for privacy,” but I couldn’t resist taking one picture:

The fires were attended only by the workers whose job was to take all the ashes into the Ganges after the cremation was over. One of them invited me to walk closer to one of the fires, and the heat was really intense. He pointed out where the skull was still burning, and explained that after burning for two hours, they would smash the skull so that the soul could escape; then the fire would be allowed to burn for another hour, so that the cremation was complete. (I thought of my grandmother, whose body was cremated in January -- the Indian method is so much more visible and hence more tangible.) During roughly 24 hours spent in and around Varanasi, we saw numerous cars and trucks traveling with dead bodies, wrapped in shrouds, attached to the roof -- bringing them to be cremated here.

In my yoga practice, my teacher / guru, Sienna, talks about feeling cosmic vibrations, and reverberating with the universe. The sacred sound "OM" is supposed to help you get in touch with it, but even during practice -- even during shavasana, corpse pose -- one should be able to contact this place that's latent in consciousness. In Varanasi, this feeling came upon me, it snuck up on me unawares. After spending about two hours on foot exploring the oldest and most important areas of this sacred city, my body was shaking involuntarily, microscopically. It was as if every atom of my being was suffused with the energy of Lord Shiva. Maybe it was from the close proximity to death, beginning with the coffins at the Delhi airport and culminating in the corpse burning a few feet away from me. Maybe it was the cumulative energy of religious faith taken to its most extreme form. Maybe it was the opportunity, at last, to see a side of India that had eluded me in my visits to modernized cities -- Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi. I am still struggling to understand why I felt how I did.

I would have needed to sit for several hours in contemplation to absorb everything I had seen. The experience left me speechless, and I'm still trying to make sense of the emotional intensity I felt on that gray morning on the banks of the Ganges.

Sources:
Diana L. Eck, Banaras City of Light (New York: Columbia U.P., 1999).
Subhadra Sen Gupta, Tirtha: Holy Pilgrim Centres of the Hindus (Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2001).

Eulogy for My Grandmother

2011-07-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, June 18, 2011, one day after what would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday, we celebrated her life with an event at the Woodstock Community Center. It was a very special day, with music, readings, and spoken tributes. One of her friends, who is a former professional opera singer, led us all in singing Happy Birthday. Some Native American musicians played music (Mescal was interested in Native American culture her entire life). Family members played "The Ashokan Farewell" and other instrumental arrangements. A New Orleans-style jazz band, called the Saints of Swing, began the event with a rousing musical procession, and after all the speeches were over they led a procession of guests down to The Colony for the reception.

New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey was the first speaker, and his tribute to her was very thoughtful and engaging. Mescal had been a political activist for the last four decades of her life -- she even served one term on the Woodstock Town Council in the early 1980s. She meant a lot to a lot of people, and really made her mark on the community.

The Woodstock Town Council decided to name the Woodstock Community Center after my grandmother because of the instrumental role she had played in acquiring the building for the community while she was on the council. She would have been proud but also embarrassed by the generous gesture in her honor.

Six months after her death, in January 2011, I still miss her all the time. Below is the text of my own comments delivered at the memorial event:

Hello, I’m Mescal’s granddaughter, Beth. I knew Mescal for 46 years – almost 47. I learned so much from my grandmother. I have so many wonderful memories of Mescal, but I will try to keep my remarks brief. Mescal was born in a world without television, or cell phones; the radio and the telephone were not used nearly as much as they are today. There were movie theaters in the world, but not in the rural community where she grew up. She had a fairly solitary childhood; except for her sister and cousins, there were no other children close by, except for the summer boarders at her grandparents’ boarding house. She read a lot, and was very close to her father, Fred Toms, and to her maternal grandfather, Mathias Burgher. Even at age 99, she would talk fondly of both of them, and her memories of her childhood were as vivid as if they had happened yesterday. She always told us stories of growing up in that far-off distant world, trying to teach us modern kids what it was like to live without electricity, or indoor plumbing; and to give us an appreciation for how hard her grandmother had worked to do things we take for granted, like doing laundry.

Despite – or maybe because of – growing up in this small community, Mescal was curious about the rest of the world. When I was around 15 or 16 years old she took me to the Tibetan Buddhist monastery for a kirtan – a ceremony of meditation and chanting. Afterwards we stayed to have a meal with the monks. It was a simple evening, really, but to me it meant and still means a lot. It was an experience of learning about people whose views and beliefs were different from ours, through the very simple act of watching and learning and absorbing the moment. It was an experience of accepting and respecting them, without judging their beliefs, AND of being accepted and respected by them. Mescal didn’t take me there as some kind of pedagogical exercise, or at least I didn’t experience it that way. Instead it was something that SHE wanted to do, and she was generous enough to include me. She went because she was curious, and I was curious too. I’ve always loved her curiosity and her sense of adventure. And it made me feel really good to be included in her life and the activities that she cared about. I often didn’t feel like her granddaughter; I felt like her friend.

Another important memory for me was that, as a young teenager, I was often brought along with my grandmother as she delivered Meals on Wheels. Mescal was one of the founders of this organization in the Woodstock area, and she worked hard as one of the volunteers who brought hot, healthy meals to shut-ins. I would accompany her to the kitchen in the Dutch Reformed Church where I met the people who prepared the meals. As we made our rounds, I met the people who received the meals. As a young person growing up, I only knew of my grandmother as someone who cared very much about helping other people. She believed in serving others, and she taught me this by her example.

She always wrote letters to the newspapers, and letters to her elected representatives, about the social issues that concerned her the most, both locally and nationally. She didn’t just talk about the issues she cared about, she acted on them.

Throughout my life, Mescal was an inspiration to me, and a role model. I was always SO proud of her, and proud to be related to such a remarkable lady. The letters she wrote to me were so interesting and impassioned that I would share them with my friends – her thoughts on universal health care, and other political issues. She was outspoken, opinionated, and passionate about the causes she believed in. She was also quite frank and open when talking about her political views, her religious views, and even sexuality and the body. She didn’t refrain from talking about a subject for fear of embarrassment or of offending someone. More than anything else, she wanted to have lively conversations and exchanges with people about things and ideas that really MATTERED.

Most of all she wanted to make the world a better place. When I was staying with her here in Woodstock last summer I noticed she was wearing a pair of pants that had lots of holes and tears in them; I wanted to buy her a new pair, but she wouldn’t let me. I wanted to sew up the seams where they were coming apart, but she said no, “it doesn’t matter.” What was important to her was instead giving the money to some organization that needed it because of all the good work they did in helping people. She didn’t believe in spending money on herself needlessly.

I want to stop and acknowledge, too, the unfailing support of her children and their spouses and partners, which helped facilitate Mescal’s generosity in the world. She was so grateful for your love and devotion. You always made sure she was taken care of, and that she had what she needed. She felt that she was not a good mother, and I believe it was very humbling for her to experience the love and generosity from you all that she didn’t feel she deserved. Through this, I think, she experienced grace, and she was always, in my view, living in a state of gratitude.

I always wanted to be just like my grandmother. Sometimes I think I am like her, at least personality-wise – with all of her flaws – but at other times I realize I don’t even come close to the generosity and the unselfishness that were so key to who she was. But I will keep trying to learn from her example. And when I am 99, I will still remember her like it was yesterday.

Mescal Hornbeck

2011-07-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

My dearly beloved grandmother, Mescal Hornbeck, died on January 19, 2011, at the age of 99-1/2. I was very close to her, and her death was a major loss for me. I had seen her only about three weeks before she died, and she was in good health. Her death (from congestive heart failure) came as a shock to me, because somewhere in the back of my mind I really believed she would live forever. I was fortunate to spend two months with her in the summer of 2010, along with my son, Eli, and to have seen her frequently during 2010. I miss her so much.

One gesture of mourning that I made was to cut off my hair after she died. Sometimes Hindus shave their heads in mourning for a close family member, such as a parent or spouse. I did not go quite that far, but did cut it pretty short, as short as I could stand to. After not having cut it at all for 5 years, this was a radical change.

What was the point of cutting of my hair? It was a number of things. For one, it represents for me the major loss of one of the most important people in my life. For another, it represents my transformation. I can no longer in any way think of myself as a child, because I have no more living grandparents. At age 47, of course, and being a parent, I stopped being a child quite a long time ago, but something about having that amazing matriarch -- the wizened elder, the sage --made me feel like I was in some sense still sitting at her feet, at least figuratively. Now I am one generation older; the elders in my family are my parents and their generation.

I do feel that 47 is fairly old, but my grandmother was still more than twice my age. Therefore she was always right -- though she would listen to other people's point of view, at least most of the time. She was cantankerous and difficult to get along with sometimes, but she was also an amazing individual who made quite a contribution to the world.

We held a "celebration of her life" on June 18, in Woodstock, New York, where she had lived for the past 40 years. It was the day after what would have been her 100th birthday. This was a remarkable experience for me, and I will be reflecting on it for quite some time. Maybe some of my reflections will make it onto this blog, but most of them will remain private. Grieving is not really something you can do publicly, I have found.

The Song of the Thirteen-Year Cicadas

2011-06-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

A Poem for Valerie on Her Birthday

“Why don’t we do it in the road?”

My bicycle tire

Passes an inch

From a two-headed cicada,

As my son calls it.

Are they the rabbits of the insect world?

Multiplying by the billions,

Engaging in a month-long orgy

Of cicada love.

Then, fulfilling their destinies, they die.

Or are they the cows of the insect world,

Large, slow, gentle creatures,

Grazing for thirteen years,

On tree roots,

Providing food to fatten the moles?

Then, emerging, they are like babies,

No worldly experience to prepare them

To defend themselves from hungry birds.

Or curious humans.

Or hungry humans.

Cicada ice cream, emergence cookies,

Cicada pizza, spicy cicada stir fry,

Pesto cicada pasta,

Cicada-portobella quiche,

“El Chirper” tacos.

“They’re high in protein,” people say,

As if our normal diet were somehow deficient.

It’s best to gather the newly emerged “tenerals,”

They’re the softest.

Don’t eat the legs and wings.

Like dogs, they have

A thirteen-year life span;

One year for a human

Is like seven years for a cicada.

And they have well developed hearing.

I think of them more like teenagers, though,

At age thirteen they are just discovering the world

And other cicadas.

It’s a month-long frenzy; the droning hum we hear

Is the mating call of amorous males.

“I can’t get enough of your love,” he sings,

Determined to find a receptive female,

Coyly flicking her wings.

He defends against male interlopers

Through acoustic jamming.

They are so caught up in their teenage hormones –

Their relentless need for the love embrace –

That they are oblivious to

The brevity of

Their remaining days.

If these were seventeen-year cicadas

Would they be drinking and driving?

Begging to borrow the car keys?

“Even going so slowly you can’t fly without bumping into things;

Why on earth would I let you drive my car?”

I tend them like sheep,

Rescuing them from the car windshield,

The asphalt pavement,

The screened-in porch

Where they would be doomed.

Fly, cicadas! Mate!

Find your love!

Lay your eggs in safe places,

So we can enjoy your song again

In thirteen years.

by Elizabeth Hornbeck, 6/4/11

My Grandmother at Age 17

2011-04-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

My beloved grandmother, Mescal Elizabeth Toms Hornbeck, died on January 19 at the age of 99. I have spent that past week (my spring break) at her house in Woodstock, New York, taking stock of the estate -- going through books, photographing the furnishings, and thinking about the disposal of her belongings. She had a lot of them, but she also has a lot of kids (4) and grandkids (7) and even great-grandchildren (2). Among the books I discovered her 1928 senior class high school yearbook, the Maroon, from Kingston High School (New York). Here's what the text says:

Mescal B. Toms [this is a typo, her middle initial was E.]
11 Lucas Avenue
Prospect: Elmira College.
Career: A.A., 1, 2, 3, 4; Interclass athletics, 1, 2, 3, 4; Captain hockey, 1; Captain baseball, 1; Prisma, 3, 4; President Prisma, 4; Hi-Y Auxiliary, 4; Mary Lyon, 4; Varsity debating team, 4; Bankers' Council, 2; Literary Editor MAROON.

Do you remember the Heritage of the Desert, in which Mescal plays so prominent a part? It wasn't our Mescal, but we are sure that she could have played the part to perfection. Both she and Bebe are dark, vivacious , and full of fun. Mescal acts well the part of an efficient executive too, for under her administration Prisma has enjoyed one of the most prosperous years since its organization.

Also printed in her senior class yearbook was this poem she wrote:

A Hermit

“For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,

His few books or his beads, or maple dish,

Or do his gray hairs any violence.”

–- Milton

A hermit sits in meditative bliss,

His thoughts removed from common things like this.

His mind is on the infinite

And spurns the signs of human fellowship.

His books, his beads, his weeds, and maple dish,

The only tokens of his lost kinship

With us, his fellow mortals here below.

But scorn him not! With noble strength and aim

He left this world of sordid sin and gain

To seek for wisdom and for Wisdom’s Source.

--Mescal E. Toms

On Gravity, Magnets, Science and God

2010-07-27T08:30:00.001-07:00

The man in this photo is carrying a sign that says, “Magnets – How the *?*! do they work???” One of my colleagues, Jenny Rice, posted this found image on Facebook. A high school science teacher might remark that if he’d paid attention in high school science classes he’d understand how they work. I’m not so sure about that; I mean, a recent article in the New York Times talks about a noted physicist who is debunking gravity, a fundamental concept that everyone learned about in school. Personally I always thought the explanation of gravity was rather suspect.

Now I’m not one of those humanities folks who have no understanding or aptitude for science. I did pay attention in science classes, and in fact had 5 years of AP science during my 4 years in high school. On the other hand, that was almost 30 years ago. I can’t explain how magnets work, though I remember that it had something to do with positive and negative charges and the subatomic particles that create them.

What I remember about gravity was that Newton explained it as an “attraction between bodies” – e.g., the planet Earth and its moon. The Earth exerts a “pull” on the moon, which keeps the moon in its orbit. That theory suggests that EVERY body or mass has some degree of that “pull,” and I just don’t buy it. It sounds an awful lot like magnetism, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, the concept of gravity is a convenient term to explain our experience of the world – we ARE earthbound, things DO fall down rather than up. I will, no doubt, tell my son that the reason things fall down is “gravity,” just as many people explain things to their children as “God made it that way.”

My Endorsement for Tracy Greever-Rice, 4th Ward City Council Candidate

2010-03-26T21:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent the last month or so volunteering on my friend’s city council campaign, and I’d like to share with you, my friends, my endorsement of Tracy Greever-Rice for the 4th Ward seat on the Columbia City Council. I’m not endorsing Tracy because she’s my friend, though indeed I feel very lucky to have her friendship. Rather, I’m endorsing her because she is an incredibly impressive candidate – knowledgeable, experienced, smart, dependable, hard-working, and – most importantly – her values and her vision for the city are ones I embrace whole-heartedly.

I attended a mayoral debate last Monday, an event hosted by the Missourian newspaper, and couldn’t help thinking that Tracy could debate circles around all of the mayoral candidates. I didn’t get to stay for the Fourth Ward debate, but I’ve seen Tracy in action, and I’ve seen video footage of a forum for the four candidates, as well as video clips of the other candidates put up online by the Missourian. My overall impression is that Tracy is more knowledgeable than anyone else about the details, intricacies and complexities of city government and public policy.

Here’s one example: In the mayoral debate, candidates were asked about whether under the current and future economic constraints, Columbia should continue to fund social services. I had heard Tracy address the same question the previous day, and she pointed out that the money that the city spends on social services is used to leverage funding from state and national sources, and without the city’s allocation, we would not have access to the outside funding that provides three or four times as much funding, ultimately, for the city’s most vulnerable members.

The depth and breadth of Tracy’s grasp of complex questions have impressed just about everyone who has met her. Her knowledge is in large part a function of her educational and professional background. She has a PhD in rural sociology, and is the Associate Director for Community and Economic Development-related initiatives at OSEDA (the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis at the University of Missouri). In this capacity, Tracy has worked with dozens of communities throughout the state of Missouri, including Columbia. She has analyzed the data on funding of social services, which is why she knows so much about it. The local Chamber of Commerce often call Tracy’s office (including Tracy herself) to get needed information about the city. (I think it’s utterly ridiculous that the Chamber endorsed a candidate, Daryl Dudley, who has none of the sorts of skills that Tracy brings to the table.)

Although I have described Tracy as a progressive, Tracy makes a point of saying that she takes seriously her responsibility (should she be elected) to represent and work for ALL members of the community. Although one of her opponents is running on the claim of being able to facilitate communication and help people on different sides of an issue to reach agreement, I am confident that Tracy has all of these skills too. She has served on the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission as well as other boards and commissions, all of which require the ability to communicate and work well with others. She is highly professional, respectful of others and able to command their respect. She is a kind, understanding, and empathetic person, which I think goes a long way towards being able to work with people whose viewpoints are different from hers.

This election is critical to Columbia's future, because the city council will soon begin work on a new long-range comprehensive land use plan for the city, the impact of which will be felt for the next 10 or 20 years. It's important to elect a council that will stand up for the welfare of all members of the community, with council members who understand the complexities of public policy and its impacts on people.

What I want to say to all of my friends who are voters in Columbia’s 4th ward is this: to vote for anyone other than Tracy would be a mistake; and if Tracy does not win this election on April 6, it would be a real loss for the city of Columbia. It would be a lost opportunity to have a council member who brings to the table an incredible skill set, and a vast background in the kind of community involvement that will make for a highly effective council member. This is an issue of fundamental importance to us all; the election is not a popularity contest, it's about real issues and will have profound and lasting effects on what happens in our community. You owe it to us all to vote for the most qualified candidate for the job.

Tracy has been endorsed by the Sierra Club.

I was interviewed for and quoted in this Profile on Tracy for the Columbia Daily Tribune.

Update, March 28, 2010:

Tracy has just picked up another endorsement, this one from the Boone County Smart Growth Coalition.

Hiding Behind Anonymity

2010-03-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

In earlier times, such as 18th-century England, political censorship forced many writers to publish anonymously for fear of imprisonment. In the absence of freedom of speech, anyone who spoke out against the government was taking a dangerous risk, as were their publishers. Well, today, “Anonymous” is making a come-back, but for the most part these are not courageous political activists and revolutionaries. Anonymous comments have become the stock-in-trade of the ignorant, petty, and just plain vicious – people who are ashamed to be associated with their own stupid or hateful comments.

All you have to do is read the “Comments” section online on your local newspaper, on blogs, or other websites. I never worried too much about this until recently, when I was targeted through this blog by a couple of losers who are unwilling to own up to their own comments by using their real names.

Initially they were just taunting me for a comment I made at a film screening; these comments were posted on my February 27 blog post on “True/False Film Festival 2010.” I responded to their comments in my March 2 post on the film Colony (“Why I Didn’t Like Colony”), and received more negative comments which are posted there.

But what is not visible on my blog is additional comments that I received from “partoftheprecipitate” and “doublewordscore.” After those obnoxious comments that got posted, I had to take the unprecedented (for me) step of moderating comments. I received two more messages from “doublewordscore” and one from “partoftheprecipitate,” all highly insulting, and attacking my work as an educator.

Now this harassment wouldn’t be so alarming if, A, the cyber-attacks hadn’t continued over a period of several days rather than just a one-off incident; and, B, if these people weren’t hiding their identities. Someone suggested to me they were former students of mine. As far as I’m concerned this is no trivial matter. You really have to wonder about the psychological and emotional stability of someone who carries a grudge against a professor years after having taken a class in which the student got a grade he or she didn’t like. Given all the violence on college, university and high school campuses, from Columbine to Virginia Tech, our so-called “ivory tower” is anything but.

When folks are leaving anonymous comments on websites, it’s impossible for readers to know if they are just idiots blowing off steam, or if there’s actually a violent intent. Here’s an example: a wonderful woman, whom I knew personally, was murdered by her ex-husband over Thanksgiving; her two teen-age daughters and her grandmother were also slain by this misogynistic lunatic.

The husband / murderer, Kraig Kahler, was fired from his job with the City of Columbia in September, less than three months before he killed four members of his family. You should read the comments that were posted on the Columbia Daily Tribune’s website when the story of his firing was published – but you’d better have a strong stomach. The vast majority of comments are verbally abusive to his wife and overly sympathetic to husband, seeing him as persecuted. Comments degenerated into wild and unfounded speculation about Karen Kahler’s character and behavior – comments posted by people who never even met her. Here are some examples:

Someone named “taylor100” wrote,

“Yes, we are still ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room due to the censorship our our comments. Let's see, she was well taken care of, had three great well adjusted kids, happily married for 25 years, and then she decides to try something new. Yes, this whole situation has been brought on due to her selfishness.

“Mr. Kahler was trying to save the marriage and the family and now they are all going to suffer for years to come. Eventually the truth will come out and everyone will understand. I will probably be censored again just like RationalThought.”

Then “detoito” responded with this:

“You spend your whole life building this career, and your angry wife claims you touched her against her will (Her words, not mine), and you are fired. It is going to be hard enough for Mr. Kahler to find anything in his field of expertise as it is, but to add being fired to the list would make it next to impossible.

“I think he chose the lesser of two evils.”

Someone named “crighton” wrote:

“Oh and by the way, the original arrest was just a setup. She was playing hardball with her attorney so she could get the most out of the divorce. Happens all of the time to good people.

Then there’s “fay_mccollom” who wrote:

“it was a bearhug and not a 'hit'. Its women like her that lose credibility for all true victims.”

All told there were 70 reader comments on this article (about a dozen of which were actually deleted by Tribune staff for being over-the-top offensive), the majority of them supporting Kraig – the eventual mass-murderer. Rumors I’ve heard (and suggested in the Tribune’s Comments section) suggest that Kraig himself was the author of many of those comments bashing his wife. After the murders happened, the Tribune reported on Kraig’s internet stalking of his wife.

I wonder, if people leaving comments on the Tribune’s page were required to give their real names, would there be even one-tenth of the irresponsible posting that we see nowadays?

Final True/False Report

2010-03-02T04:58:00.000-08:00

Let me begin by saying this is my one hundredth blog post. That's #100, yippee! There should be some kind of celebration; it will be a long time before I reach the next big milestone. I started my blog with the 2008 True/False Film Festival, so it's appropriate to be discussing the 2010 Festival at #100.

The Festival was great this year. After sitting through 13 films, I can report one more poultry slaughter (a turkey, in Those Who Remain) and a sheep slaughter (On the Other Side of Life). Combine that with the 16 bear paws (four bears worth) found in a Chinese dumpster (Disorder), and the two chicken slaughters I reported earlier, and the animals didn’t fare too well in this year’s documentary film selections.

But it was a great weekend. I packed in as much as I could, yet there is still a long list of films that my friends raved about that I didn’t get a chance to see. At a debriefing with friends on Sunday night, about 20 people talked about their two top films from the festival, and there was a wide variety of opinion. Here are the ones I missed but want to see:

The Red Chapel (dir. Mads Brügger, 87 min.), about two Korean-Danish comedians visiting North Korea, got rave reviews from everyone who saw it.

Holy Wars (dir. Stephen Marshall, 81 min.) followed a Muslim extremist and a Christian extremist in their proselytizing efforts; the filmmaker set up a debate between them, and the outcome was remarkable.

GasLand (dir. Josh Fox, 86 min.) – everyone who saw this film said it was unbelievable and disturbing; one of my students said she cried through half of it. It’s about natural gas, Halliburton, and groundwater pollution.

Cowboys in India (dir. Simon Chambers, 78 min.), the plot of which I still haven’t figured out, sounds great and got lots of thumbs up.

The Mirror (dir. David Christensen, 85 min.) is set in the Italian Alps and explores the attempts by a small-town mayor to build a giant mirror to bring sunlight to his village. Some monkish Germans are also involved.

My husband liked Circo (dir. Aaron Schock, 78 min.) a lot, which was one of two Mexican circus films, the other being The Tightrope (dir. Núria Ibáñez, 80 min.) (which neither of us saw).

Waste Land (dir. Lucy Walker, 98 min.) is about artist Vik Muniz, whose art uses trash from the Rio de Janeiro landfill. People loved it.

Clearly, the True/False Film Festival needs to be about two days longer if a person's going to get to see everything they're interested in seeing.

Why I Didn't Like Colony

2010-03-02T04:57:00.000-08:00

Colony, dir. Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell

When my friend’s son leaned over to me and sternly warned me “Colony is bad, don’t see it,” I should have known something was up; but earlier that day a colleague had told me he thought it was good. I decided to take my chances and judge for myself. After all, I’m interested in and concerned about Colony Collapse Disorder, a thus-far unexplained phenomenon in which whole colonies of bees are dying and/or disappearing. I heard about this on NPR a couple years ago. It’s very alarming, because for one thing noone knows why it’s happening, and for another thing – most importantly – if there are no bees, there’s no food, right?

Directors Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell add to that another big concern: the demise of the beekeepers – small, independent business owners whose livelihoods are being devastated by the loss of their colonies. Let me add, too, that I’m a big fan of documentaries about American agriculture, like Food Inc. and King Corn (see my post on King Corn on August 20, 2008). Early on in my viewing of Colony I was feeling confident about this being another film in that vein; beautiful cinematography of golden fields and gray-green almond trees; authoritative-sounding “experts,” and a concern for public interest all seemed to be at the heart of this film. But then things began to go terribly wrong...

You see, it’s not just a film about bees and beekeepers and Colony Collapse Disorder. The film’s “split personality,” as I would call it, takes us on an intimate exploration of family dynamics among the Seppi family, new to the beekeeping business, whose economic situation seems very dire. But these directors, Gunn and McDonnell, focus a great deal of attention on the religious beliefs of this family, in a way that I found quite puzzling. Were they holding up the Seppis to be admired? to be ridiculed? I really don’t think the film made that clear, which is why I asked McDonnell in the Q&A “how do you position yourself with regard to the religious aspect of the film?" and "What do the Ten Commandments have to do with beekeeping?”

Let me explain what I mean. Colony begins with a clip from an old documentary on bee colonies, which describes the colonies as perfectly operating systems in which “there is no individualism,” and “the state controls everything.” The colony operates as one brain, this old film tells us; it is ruthless. Bees practice population control based on environmental conditions. The colony is completely efficient. The voice-over narration goes on and one, inviting comparison to human societies in which humans don’t look very successful after all.

Then we meet the Seppi family, beginning with the two sons, a pair of entrepreneurial young men who lead the family’s farming and beekeeping efforts. They are by far the youngest beekeepers in this industry, and their involvement is promising to those who recognize that the beekeepers are sort of a dying breed. (The average age of beekeepers is around 60 years old, according to McDonnell.) So far, so good, they totally have my support.

But then we meet the rest of the family, and learn (primarily from the mother) about how the parents have structured their family and have decided to pour all of their resources into this business for the benefit of the two sons’ beekeeping operation. All of the kids – there are seven of them, from what I could tell – have to work in the beekeeping business; and in the film it becomes apparent that the family is organized like a hive. All nine people in the family have to work towards this same goal. At their head is the real “queen bee,” Mom, who habitually berates her eldest son for his poor decisions and poor financial acumen. She beats him up (figuratively) with verbal attacks like “how are you going to support your wife and your kids?” (a frequent harangue). The son is like 19 or 20 years old, mind you, and is not even married, let alone with kids.

At the source of the family’s dysfunction is a religious mania which loosely passes as Christianity, but it’s no Christian sect that I’m familiar with. It advocates an extreme form of patriarchy, in which the interests and the futures of the female children are neglected, and women have no place in public life at all (except to go to church. The mom is always telling her son how to negotiate with the farmers, but when he says to her, “Why don’t YOU tell them?” she replies “That’s not my job, that’s your job.” As if only men are supposed to transact business? I don’t get it.

One of the daughters is interviewed, and she tells us, “I didn’t really want to be a beekeeper, but ‘honor thy father,’ right? If it’s what Dad wants to do, I should go along with it to honor him.” When the same girl describes bee society she explains that it’s a matriarchy, “but they couldn’t do it without the males. Feminists need to be reminded of that.” Poor child, I suspect she’s never even met a feminist; and she’s incapable of seeing that the patriarchy in which she lives (through no fault of her own) does not have her interests at heart.

Their religion lulls them into a certain naivete, too; at one mealtime prayer, one of the daughters asks God “to give John Boy a business education this year.” God doesn’t give a business education, business schools give a business education. And after a tough telephone negotiation over price, the young man indignantly exclaims, “and he’s a Christian!,” as if he expects Christians somehow to behave differently with regard to their economic interests than other people do.

Somehow I suspect that the filmmakers have set these people up to look like a freak show; but when I asked McDonnell about that, he of course completely disavowed anything but admiration and respect for the Seppis. Predictably, he proudly asserted that “these people deserve to have their story told!,” but he did not answer my question, “what do the Ten Commandments have to do with beekeeping?” (At a certain point in the film we see a video lecture on the Ten Commandments play on the television while John Boy is asleep on the sofa. What I gather from the Q&A is that McDonnell and Gunn did set up that scene, which was part of a videotape they found at the Seppis’ church; it didn't belong to the Seppis and wasn’t their normal viewing material.)

At this point in reading my blog post, can you still remember what the film ostensibly set out to do? Colony Collapse Disorder? The expert talking heads? I can barely remember it myself, I’m so wearied by slogging through the Seppis’ religious ideology. This is the problem with the film: these two halves don’t really work well together, in my opinion. I signed up to see a documentary about bees, not a documentary about religious fanatics. And further, if I HAD signed up to see a documentary about religious fanatics like the Seppis, there are a lot more questions I would have, that the filmmakers failed to address, such as what planet are they from, anyway? What cult do they belong to? And what kind of future do they envision for their daughters, the ones who seem to be completely neglected in this whole family enterprise? The parents lose $20,000 per year on the business, so why don’t they use that money to send John Boy and the other kids to college instead?

My question to the director was not well received by the audience, who seemed to expect the festival’s usual worshipful attitude towards visiting directors. When I left the theater, I overheard a young woman talking about me, complaining to her friends about “this woman”; so I went and talked to her. She was outraged – indignant – about my question to the director. She said that just because the film was badly edited was no reason for me to be angry. So I asked her, “what do the Ten Commandments have to do with beekeeping?” and she said “probably nothing,” but that I shouldn’t have to asked the director a question like that “in front of the whole documentary audience.” I admit that my comments went on a little too long, but I never said I was angry, I said I was “uncomfortable.” I also find it somewhat amusing that young people in Missouri (the age of our students) are themselves so embarrassed by any kind of conflict or public disagreement that they “feel sorry” for the director! Like I said to this young woman, “he can handle it.” People don’t become film directors and put their work “out there” if they can’t handle criticism from one measly film viewer.

Then there was a comment on my blog from an anonymous individual, as follows:

Word on the street is that one of your questions at a post-movie debriefing made Twitter: http://twitter.com/doowttam/status/9755188050

If you're reluctant to click through, I'll ctrl+v it:

"Why would you film them? I don't like them. You must like them." Worst question I've heard at a q&a. Have you never seen a doc film?

Since the item reported on Twitter has nothing to do with my actual question, and the person who posted it on my blog evidently wasn’t even present at the screening (probably doesn’t even know which film it was!), I can only conclude that Twitter is the last refuge of people unable to listen, think, or analyze information. (Other evidence further suggests it’s also the last refuge of people unable to spell or to write.) There’s no point in expecting they will read my side of the story, because this blog post probably exceeds their attention span capabilities.

True/False Films from China and Mexico

2010-03-02T04:16:00.000-08:00

Disorder, dir. Huang Weikai, China, 66 min.

Another one of my favorite films from this year’s festival was the Chinese film Disorder. Director Huang Weikai weaves together 26 “little stories,” themselves the works of amateur videographers, which Weikai collected during 2007 and 2008. Together they provide a glimpse of everyday life in China’s overcrowded cities. The initial montage combines films shot at night, and the second part of the film (the majority of it) are scenes shot in the daytime. All were shot in grainy black-and-white digital media, and all capture the chaos to which the film’s title refers.

In the Q&A following the film, the director talked about China’s rapid urban growth at the expense of the environment, and “all the ridiculous things that are happening,” which the film captures. He said that Chinese viewers of the film find its images very familiar, because “these are things that happen in everyday life that you see all around you” – scenes like an abandoned baby, which the camera spends a great deal of time on, but whom none of the bystanders pick up and rescue from its surroundings, which are covered with litter. The baby is regarded as so much trash – a human being abandoned in a throw-away world.

Not much less disturbing is the man lying in the middle of a busy road at night, while the driver and passenger of a car that ostensibly hit him alternately berate him and offer him money to leave. They insist his “injuries” are an act, that they didn’t hit him, and that they’ve seen this scam before. We don’t know the truth – the camera didn’t capture the initial incident – and like the crowd that eventually gathers, we have to decide whom to believe. For an American viewer, the driver seems callous and heartless; but in the later montage we see an apparently homeless man wandering through traffic, as if waiting to get hit by a car so he can, perhaps, extort money from some unfortunate driver.

Human interaction with nature (such as it is) – with the river, with animals – struck me as odd and jarring much of the time. The spectacle of a truckload of pigs that have escaped onto a highway, with truckers and police trying to capture them and reload them, would surely create a major traffic disturbance anywhere in the world. Bear paws in a dumpster, a pangolin in a cage, are both quite puzzling. A man trying to fish in a sewage ditch seems to have a futile task, but eventually he does catch some fish. The poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation have created extremely dire circumstances for many, like the people whose entire neighborhood (both houses and streets) has flooded because of poor drainage, so that they have to walk down the street in knee-deep water. A crocodile has been found in the city, and it attracts a large crowd as men capture and remove it; it attracts much more attention than the abandoned infant.

Many scenes represent interactions with the police; initially the police seem like a benign, though often ineffective, force; they feed the homeless man who’s been wandering on the highway, they advocate for better treatment for the pigs; they try to negotiate a fair resolution to a dispute over money. But at the end of the film we see a demonstration of police brutality towards an individual, which leads to a near-riot as onlookers get involved and object to the police’s actions. What amazed me the most was the courage of those bystanders willing to get involved, which must be especially difficult under an authoritarian regime. Add to that the courage of the amateur videographers to capture these events on film; and the courage of Huang Weikai to put his name to it and take it around China to film festivals and universities.

Like It Felt Like a Kiss, Disorder involved some pretty amazing film editing work. If anything, Disorder is even more experimental and avant-garde than It Felt Like a Kiss because there is no overarching narrative – no voice-over and no subtitles – to tie it together. The audience has no help from the director in making sense of this seemingly random “found footage.”

Last Train Home, dir. Lixin Fan, China, 87 min.

Also from China, Last Train Home focuses on the economic desperation of families separated by the parents’ need to earn money working in urban factories, while their children stay home in the country with their grandmother. I missed the first half hour of this film, so I’m not in a position to write a review of it, but what I did see was pretty amazing. The train ride home is a nightmarish ordeal, in which seemingly hundreds of thousands of people crowd into a train station where they wait for days to board the train. The children of these poor uneducated workers suffer emotionally from the absence of their parents, and the parents suffer too, but are willing to sacrifice so much so that their children can have a better life. Yet the parents’ constant pressure takes its toll on the children; the older one rebels and quits school; the younger one brings home his school report and the parents say “Fifth in the class? That’s not good enough; last year you were third.”

Those Who Remain, dir. Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman, Mexico, 96 min.

Poverty’s devastating effect on families is also seen in Those Who Remain, a sweet and poignant film about the families left behind by husbands and fathers who leave Mexico to work in the United States, often for years at a time. The film interweaves the stories of 11 families from all over Mexico. Some men have benefitted substantially from their economic gains, while others have paid with their lives. But in nearly all cases, the fathers’ absences leave the children very sad. We get to know these families, all of whom the filmmakers treat with compassion and respect. The film takes its time, and as American viewers we see a very different aspect of Mexican culture that undermines all the anti-immigrant rhetoric that we are unfortunately bombarded with in our own political climate.

My Favorite True/False Films

2010-03-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

It Felt Like a Kiss, dir. Adam Curtis, 67 min.

Adam Curtis, whose earlier True/False Film Festival entry was The Power of Nightmares (2005), this time has brought a film he describes as much more experimental than his usual style: It Felt Like a Kiss is a frenetic, hour-long nonstop montage of historical footage, pop music, and social, cultural and political critique of America and its role in the world in the 1950s and ‘60s. Rock Hudson and Doris Day frame this story of America’s national psychosis: at home, misogyny, domestic violence, homophobia; abroad, CIA-sponsored coups, the effects of which have been felt most strongly decades later. Curtis’ premise is that every day, thousands of events happen to thousands of people; at the time they may appear meaningless, but later we tell the stories. History looks very different in retrospect.

The film has no voice-over narration; instead there are some (very crucial) subtitles, but the images mainly stand on their own. Curtis uses the montage technique to great effect, with radical juxtapositions: shocking footage of a child receiving electroshock therapy, followed by footage of Andy Warhol joking with a cameraman. The child receiving electroshock was one of the most horrific images I’ve seen in a film – it’s practically like watching a snuff film. The idea that parents would subject their child to such treatment – which was prescribed to him as a cure for “homosexual feelings” – is unimaginable. That American society was so barbaric as to permit this treatment is tragic. This is part of the meaning behind Rock Hudson appearing so prominently in the film, à la Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (the queer reading of Rock). We are then told that Lou Reed, future lead singer of the Velvet Undergrounds, received electroshock therapy at age 17 for just such a “sickness;” he reported that it left him unable to feel empathy.

Here’s another shocking secret about American culture: the title of Curtis’ film is taken from the title of a song by Carole King, which was written about her babysitter Eva who was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend. “He hit me…and it felt like a kiss.” The song is about domestic violence as an expression of love. Eva became “Little Eva” and had her own hit song, “The Locomotion.” And Tina Turner wanted to have a hit song so she could have a solo career and escape being beaten by her husband. The film is interspersed with scenes from the Miss America pageant, cosmetics ads, a woman talking about “sex appeal,” women reacting to simulated violence, and repeated imagery of a little girl (4 or 5 years old) strutting back and forth as if practicing for a beauty pageant while Mom smiles on (and Dad is presumably behind the camera).

The Manson family, Richard Nixon, and Enos the Chimp – the first chimp to orbit the earth – are all tied in as well. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys admitted to hearing “loud shrieking screams” in his head, which he could only drown out by writing happy songs; and Nixon admitted to seeking psycho therapy to treat “feelings of doom.” The director of CIA’s covert operations went mad and killed himself. All the stigma against mental illness and those who seek help was, perhaps, a contributing factor in America’s insane foreign policy of the Vietnam years. I felt a great deal of empathy for Nixon, believe it or not, as I watched this film.

All this montage is held together with an upbeat soundtrack of rock, folk, and pop music, including songs from Motown, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground, Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison, the Beach Boys, and Peggy Lee. As strange as the song "It Felt Like a Kiss" is, Peggy Lee's song "Is That All There Is?" is even more bizarre; it captures the extreme psychological detachment of this period "right before the hippies came in," as Curtis likes to say. This was one of my favorite films at this year’s True/False Film Festival, and I liked it so much that I watched it twice. But don’t look for this film to get distributed; Curtis made is as part of an enormous art installation that was put on in Manchester, England, where it was at the center of an interactive art exhibition / “experience” that sounds pretty wild. (Curtis described it to the audience before each screening here in Columbia.) The installation belonged to the genre he calls “immersive theater.” He also said that he made the film “for his own amusement,” and I heard that he has not sought permission to use any of the music. It’s a shame, but this probably won’t be shown much in the U.S.; in fact, this festival appearance was the first time it’s been shown outside of Manchester.

And Everything Is Going Fine, dir. Steven Soderbergh, 89 min.

My favorite film at the festival was And Everything Is Going Fine, the documentary about monologist and actor Spalding Gray, who committed suicide in January 2004, two years after a serious car accident left him in a state of permanent physical and mental pain. According to his wife, Kathy Russo, he had attempted suicide 8 times in those two years. The film does not focus on the tragedy of his life’s end, but rather on the brilliant life and career of this amazing individual.

If you are a Spalding Gray fan, you have to see this film; it’s amazing. We see Spalding Gray “up close and personal,” as they say, telling us the story of his life, in his own words and in his own inimitable style. The film combines clips from his performances as well as interviews conducted for the film. We learn about this shy, awkward kid, middle son of a loving but repressed family, and the mother’s tragic struggle with mental illness. For that reason the film resonated for me with It Felt Like a Kiss; the tragedy of our culture’s inability to understand and care for depression and mental illness has had such tragic effects. For Spalding Gray, this meant he spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of his mother’s emotional detachment and suicide; we see his obsession with suicide in these interviews. Gray made a career based on revealing and exploring his own neuroses, which he succeeds in making compelling to others, primarily through his humor.

For me, And Everything Is Going Fine also resonated with other films at the festival, particularly Enemies of the People, the Cambodian documentary about the genocide of 1975-1979, because Gray acted in the film The Killing Fields (dir. Roland Joffe, 1984), and in one of his monologues, Swimming to Cambodia (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1987), Gray described his experiences making the film.

True/False Film Festival 2010

2010-02-27T22:43:00.000-08:00

It’s here again, the 7th annual True/False Festival of documentary filmmaking, which is surely the highlight of life in Columbia, Missouri. It may be the one event that draws people from out of town and out of state who are NOT Mizzou alumni coming to watch a football game. Every year I think about how I should try to convince my out-of-town friends to come next time, but then I never remember to do so; so if you’re reading this blog entry, consider yourself invited for 2011.

The first two films I saw in the festival included scenes of chickens being slaughtered – first in Cambodia, and then in Iraq. Coincidence? I have now sat through nine films so far, and there haven’t been any more chicken slaughters. Tomorrow I’m going to see four more films, and I’ll let you know what happens.

Enemies of the People, dir. Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin, 93 min.

One common theme among documentary films is heroism. Filmmakers choose a heroic subject – or are themselves heroic – and reveal to us over an hour and a half or two hours what this person has done that is extraordinary. The first such film I saw was Enemies of the People, which documented the one-man peace-and-reconciliation program that Thet Sambath has undertaken in Cambodia. Sambath, a Cambodian journalist, has devoted some 10 years of his life to finding the killers from Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. His own father died in the Killing Fields; his mother was then forced to marry a Khmer Rouge soldier, and his brother was taken away by them and never seen again. Sambath befriended these men, gained their trust by treating them with respect, and elicited their stories in their own words. He poured all his weekends and all his resources into this project; at one point he said, “my wife has no money for food this week because it’s all going into the project.”

Sambath became friends with Nuon Chea, the top surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge; Pol Pot was known as “Brother Number One,” and Nuon Chea as “Brother Number Two.” From this man, as well as from Communist party members at the bottom of the chain of authority, the audience gets confessions, expressions of remorse, and apologies. It is very moving.

Rob Lemkin is a British journalist who went to Cambodia to cover the U.N. trial of Nuon Chea; he discovered Sambath and his project, and became involved in it himself. The crowd on Thursday night gave Sambath a standing ovation for the important work he’s been conducting. Enemies of the People is the True/Life Fund Film for this year’s True/False Film Festival, meaning that the festival collects money from festival-goers to donate to the subject of the film.

My Country, My Country, dir. Laura Poitras, 90 min.

The next film on my festival agenda was My Country, My Country, the 2007 film directed by Laura Poitras, winner of this year’s True Vision Award from the True/False gang. Her new film, The Oath, I got to see on Saturday night, but on Friday I got to go to the much more intimate screening of the first film in her trilogy about “America after 9/11.” My Country, My Country is set in Baghdad and chronicles the life of Dr. Riyadh and his family in the time leading up to the January 2005 Iraqi elections (two years after the U.S. invasion). As Poitras describes it, the film is about “civilians paying the price for the United States occupation.” But Dr. Riyadh is not just an ordinary person; he’s a medical doctor who volunteers at a free clinic, and he was on the ballot in those elections.

Laura Poitras herself is also a hero in my eyes. She was an embedded reporter in Iraq, but spent a lot of time “unembedded,” outside the American “Green Zone” following the story of Dr. Riyadh. She lived at the Riyadh’s home, and became close to the family – Mrs. Riyadh and their six children – and was able to film intimate family life.

I loved this film. It’s too bad there was only one screening at the festival, because more people should have seen it, but the festival’s focus is on showing new documentaries. Each year, the festival shows one older film by the winner of the True Vision Award in addition to that person’s new work.

The Oath, dir. Laura Poitras, 95 min.

Unlike My Country, My Country, the second film in Poitras’ trilogy, The Oath, does not feature a hero, but rather one of America’s enemies. Abu Jandal is the former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, now living in Yemen with his family and driving a taxi. He recruited his brother in-law to join Al Qaeda, and his brother in-law spent seven years in Guatanamo Bay prison, after Abu Jandal named him in FBI interrogation conducted at the Yemeni prison where Abu Jandal was imprisoned for two years on suspicion of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole.

Poitras said she set out to make a film about Guantanamo, but this film is shot primarily in Yemen. It is an exceptional film – as Poitras said in the Q&A, we are living in complicated times, and we need to have more complex conversations. In The Oath, Poitras really does a remarkable job of recording this man’s vast knowledge of the Al Qaeda operation as well as his thoughts on terrorism – which he rejects. He says he does not believe in taking innocent life, and did not participate in any terrorist operations, though he clearly sympathizes with their political views. In Yemen’s prison system, Abu Jandal participated in a program called The Dialogue Project, which was intended to reprogram Islamic jihadist. Using dialogue and talking about the Koran, workers in The Dialogue Project convince these men – apparently successfully – that violent political acts committed in the name of religion are, in fact, NOT condoned under Islam. I was surprised to learn that Yemen has such a program. In fact, the program helps these men find jobs after prison, and they gave Abu Jandal the money he needed to buy a taxi.

The film also followed the trial of Abu Jandal’s brother in-law, who won a landmark Supreme Court case, and who was eventually returned to Yemen. He refused to be interviewed for the film, and we never meet him, but we do meet his heroic attorney, and it is good to see the efforts of some Americans to preserve justice in a period in history when there’s so much injustice. Now I’m eager for Laura Poitras’ next film; if it's as good at My Country, My Country and The Oath, we're going to learn a lot from it.

Battle Between Lent and Mardi Gras

2010-02-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

The battle between Carême (Lent) and Mardi Gras (from a 17th-century print).
Source: Larousse Gastronomique, 1961

I found a copy of the Larousse Gastronomique at my grandmother's house in Woodstock when I was visiting last month, and she generously gave it to me. I am in love with this book! My favorite genre of books (one of them, anyway) is books pertaining to food, which includes cookbooks and reference books on the subject. The Larousse Gastronomique is one of the most wide-ranging encyclopedias on food, food history, and food preparation ever published. I love it because reading about food is really reading about culture. Imagine 20 encyclopedia pages on "Offal" -- every type of "variety meats" and how to prepare them.

Since Mardi Gras is almost upon us, I bring you this entry on Lent from the Larousse Gastronomique:

Forty days fast imposed by the Catholic religion, from Ash Wednesday till Easter. This period of fasting in the early Church had excellent physical effects by imposing on the digestive system, worn out by gastronomic excess during the winter season, a salutary rest.

Brillat-Savarin tells us that towards the middle of the eighteenth century the normal regime in bourgeois families consisted of four meals:

Breakfast, taking place before nine in the morning, consisting of bread, cheese, fruit, sometimes a pâté or cold meat. (The habit of drinking coffee had not yet penetrated into provincial life.)

Dinner, which took place between twelve and one, with soup, the boiled meat of the pot-au-feu, with vegetable accompaniments according to the season.

Around four o'clock there was a light meal enjoyed as a rule by the ladies of the household and the children.

Supper was at eight o'clock, with entree, roast, side dishes, salad and dessert.

During Lent breakfast was suppressed, meat was excluded from the menu at dinner, and in the evening supper was replaced by a meal which contained no eggs, butter, or anything of a live nature.

The real test of culinary art was, according to this genial gastronome, to create a rigorously apostolic meal which had all the appearance of an excellent supper.

Little by little, the Church relaxed its original severity and permitted the use of butter and eggs and, later, the flesh of 'cold-blooded' animals, such as fish and, still later, certain aquatic game considered to be cold-blooded , such as the spoon-bill, scoter-duck, moorhen, coot, teal, water-rail, curlew, heron, godwit and sand-piper.

A Lenten meal could also include an impressive list of sumptuous removes, entrees, and roasts.

Understood in these terms the Lenten diet does not differ from normal diet, from the health point of view.

Kiss Me and Smile For Me

2009-11-29T23:11:00.000-08:00

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary died on September 16, 2009, at the age of 72. She was born in 1936 in Louisville, Kentucky, which is also my hometown. Driving home from Louisville today after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with my family, we listened to a Peter, Paul and Mary "greatest hits" tape, and the song "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" brought back some memories. "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" was the first pop song I remember hearing and loving, and wanting to hear over and over, and learning the words so I could sing along. Surely I must have heard other songs on the radio (remember "If you want it, here it is, come and get it" - my brother and I kept asking my mom what "it" was), but 40 years later this one still stands out as my "first."

Peter, Paul and Mary's version of "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" (written by John Denver) became a radio hit in 1969; that was the year my parents divorced. I didn't realize until much later that the song's blend of heartache, remorse, and desire resonated with me because of my own loss.

My parents' divorce was the end of my childhood. I was five years old when they split up, maybe six, I don't remember exactly. I remember my life before the divorce in idealized terms - I know it wasn't a happy time for my parents, but for me it was the happiest time of my life, when I had no problems, no cares. My family was my universe, and when it fell apart, I knew real pain for the first time in my life.

Mary Travers gave a voice to my pain and longing. If the divorce was the end of my childhood, then pop music was the beginning of my adulthood. I'm not sure that was a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I love pop music - it's fun, and it can create beauty out of the banal or even the ugly. At the same time, though, it provides formulas. For me, this formula meant that a romantic relationship (preferably heterosexual, definitely monogamous) defined the ultimate terms of love, desire, and loss. Never mind that it was my parents' divorce that created my tragedy; finding a husband became the prescription to cure it. (Or at least, finding a boyfriend.) To make myself perfectly clear, I don't feel that this is a positive benefit of pop music; it may even be harmful. But I still love "Leavin' on a Jet Plane."

I don't mean to make too much out of this. One song is not going to have that much influence on anyone's life, it's part of a much larger and much more complex culture. It's just funny to me, when I hear that song, to think back on my 6-year-old self (in 1970) and my 4-year-old brother being so moved by it at such a young age that it could almost make us cry. Where did that impulse come from? It had to come from something outside the music -- the emotional devastation of having our family broken apart. When I say pop music was the beginning of adulthood for me, I guess what I mean is the ability to find some hidden meaning to a song.

My four-year-old son still thinks that "Bungle in the Jungle" is just about animals; I hope it stays that way for a long time.

Now the time has come to leave you,
One more time, let me kiss you,
Then close your eyes, I'll be on my way...

University of Missouri Homecoming Weekend

2009-10-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

"Great! They have MU Snuggies! Let's get some!"

"Uh, what are Snuggies?"

"Does it matter? They have MU logos on them, that's all that matters!"

Happy Homecoming Weekend, Columbia!

(I will be out of town this weekend, thank goodness!)

More Complaints about "Living in Misery"

2009-08-19T04:45:00.000-07:00

I have a bone to pick with the blog entitled “Living in Misery.” For those who don’t live in Columbia, Missouri, the blog’s name refers to that lovely town (technically it’s a city) that I have called home for the past six years. (My husband has lived here for 11 years, so I’ve been acquainted with it for that long myself.) In case you don’t get the joke, “Misery” is a pun on “Missouri.” (Original, no? No.) Columbia is locally referred to as COMO for short.

I’ve written about this before, beginning in March 2008 and with a couple of follow-up posts in May (May 5 and May 9). I received lots of positive comments on those posts (via Facebook and verbally as well as on this blog) from folks in Columbia who are also annoyed by the blog’s persistent negativism. My position is that Columbia is a pretty darn good community in which to live. It’s not perfect, but no place is perfect. (Though if you read the “Living in Misery” blog you’d be told that Columbus, Ohio, IS perfect – it sounds like some sort of utopia, where there are no stupid politicians, no bad drivers, no evil police officers, no stupid people who don't know how to spell. I won’t dare to challenge THOSE sacred beliefs.)

Since I’ve given plenty of reasons in the past why I think COMO is a good place to live, I won’t recapitulate them here. Instead, I will point out the things that annoy me about the "Living in Misery" blog. Chiefly, there is something seriously wrong with his logic, which goes something like this:

A) Columbia, Missouri, sucks because there’s nothing good here.
B) Columbia, Missouri, sucks because there’s something great here but the local people are clueless and unable or unwilling to appreciate it.
C) Columbia, Missouri, sucks because there is something really great here, but I can’t get access to it because it’s so popular and everyone wants it.

Examples:

A) First, the name of the blog implies “Columbia, Missouri, sucks because there’s nothing good here.” That attitude pervades the blog, even when he’s trying to say something nice about Columbia. Like this sentence from March 2008: “Since moving to COMO, we have struggled to find a place that made it just a little less miserable. The new Ragtag/Uprise/Ninth Street Video complex has done that for us.”

B) In his end-of-the-year post on “Best of 2008: Homegrown in COMO,” he asserts that “most COMO-ians don’t know what they’ve got” (actually the quote comes from a Facebook exchange about the post, but same author). The quote illustrates my pet peeve about the blog, which is the supposition that, really, most of the rest of us are ignoramuses. As if noone knew about the RagTag and Sparky’s before he came to town and enlightened us. His bloggings and rants are a subterfuge, because in fact HE is the one who believes “Walmart owns this town. Literally.” Those of us who thought all along that Columbia is a great place (and who didn't shop at Walmart) were evidently oblivious to Walmart’s dominance. NOW, it turns out, we were oblivious to the great local, non-corporate businesses. But I’m glad to see that the author has finally come around to my point of view.

C) In another "Living in Misery" post, he was complaining about how hard it was to get tickets to the True/False Film Festival screenings, even as a pass-holder. I'm afraid I can't provide a link to that post, I haven't been able to locate it on his blog. (He's a very prolific blogger and there are way too many posts for me to go back through all of them!) But he compared it to his experience in Columbus, Ohio, when a new Trader Joe's opened and very few people knew about it, so shopping there was a pleasant experience. Then the word got out, and in a matter of months it was mobbed (like all the other TJ's in the country!), so shopping there meant battling crowds in the parking lot and in the aisles. He likened the True/False Film Festival to that experience -- it's so popular now that even us longtime supporters can't get tickets to the films we want to see.

Here's my second major point: he does not always know whereof he speaks. In one of our exhanges in May 2008, he complained (on my blog) that "the gay community is rather invisible. We were here for several weeks before we saw any signs of a LGBT community. The only gay bars in town are nowhere near the supposedly progressive downtown." But in June 2009, he posted an essay called "The Gay of COMO," in which he reversed his previous position, writing the following:

"It's hard to believe that R and I moved here nearly four years ago. One of the things we felt was absent was the gay scene. There was (and still is) no gay bar downtown. No stores flew rainbow flags. We couldn't find the gay community anywhere. The place from which we came - Columbus, OH - is a gay mecca of sorts. So, this was a bit of culture shock for us.

"Then, R walked into Main Squeeze and things began to become clearer. I joined the Prism board. New friends came out to us and invited us to SoCo. The world regained its balance.

"There is a strong gay community in this town. Support it."

There's something to be said for being open-minded and willing to admit when you were wrong. But there's also something to be said for reserving judgment, and maybe waiting more than A WEEK to get to know a place before you pass judgment on it and declare yourself an ardent and vocal detractor of it.

Ian McEwan

2009-07-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

I came late to Ian McEwan’s writing, but I finally have to admit that I’m a big fan. I’ve just read my third McEwan novel – I devoured it in about 24 hours – the short, concisely plotted Amsterdam (1998), and have been filled with admiration for McEwan’s ingenuity at creating the perfect blend of satire, surprise, and keen observation of the human psyche. Previously I read Enduring Love (1997) and Atonement (2001), and have found all his novels equally compelling.

It’s also rather breathtaking to consider how many of his novels have been translated into film – Atonement, Enduring Love, The Comfort of Strangers, and The Cement Garden – in addition to his authorship of original screenplays (The Good Son and others). Taken together, his novels and screenplays represent a world that is, to use my friend Amy’s word, unnerving. In some – The Comfort of Strangers comes to mind immediately – “unnerving” is an understatement.

On reading Enduring Love last month I recognized what is not exactly a formula for McEwan’s novel, but may be more accurately described as a trope, or a technique for developing the plot: he throws together a group of people (mostly strangers), subjects them to an intense emotional experience, and then explores what happens to them (as individuals and in relationship to each other) as a result of the traumatic incident. He devotes lavish attention to setting up the situation, the emotional crucible, which is most fully developed in Atonement: the climactic event – the rape of a visiting young cousin – is preceded by the description of one day’s events which takes up practically the first half of this novel. In Enduring Love, the first chapter was described by one critic as the best first chapter of any novel he’d ever read.

The characters McEwan throws together are either complete strangers or a mix of strangers and intimates. In The Comfort of Strangers they are two couples; in Amsterdam they are four men whose connection is that they all loved the same woman (the glamorous Molly, whom we never meet – the story begins with her funeral). Two are best friends, but all four are rivals.

McEwan explores consequences, the effects of events upon individuals’ emotional and psychological states. He’s interested in perceptions: the differences among different people’s perceptions of an event, the subjectivity (and hence unreliability) of perceptions, and the way our perceptions color our responses and reactions. Perception may be unreliable and sometimes completely wrong, but we are trapped within our own perceptual boundaries; perception is all we have for understanding our world, our relationships, our lives.

Another common feature of McEwan’s novels is that they always end up being about something completely different from what the reader initially thinks they’re going to be about. By the end of the novel, the main character is doing something that would have been wholly unthinkable at the beginning of the novel, yet McEwan takes them (and us) there in a convincing manner.

McEwan is interested in the darker sides of the human psyche. Sometimes this takes the form of extreme sexual perversity, but more often it’s an exploration of jealousy, obsession, delusions of grandeur, rationalization, selfishness, malice. He presents moral and ethical dilemmas, and his characters’ failure to act nobly. My, how they rationalize their behavior! Only in Atonement does the main character display remorse over her action and its dire, irreversible consequences.

As it happens, one of my first posts on this blog was a review of Atonement; here I will say a few words about the other two McEwan novels I’ve read recently:

Enduring Love

This novel is about something called “de Clérambault’s syndrome,” or erotomania, and includes as an appendix an article on the syndrome published in the British Review of Psychiatry. It’s very well researched, and in fact is based on the true story described in BRP. Initially I thought it might turn out to be like the film Notes on a Scandal (based on the novel What Was She Thinking? By Zoe Heller), with an unreliable narrator, but it wasn’t at all.

Coincidentally, erotomania is the subject of the French film He Loves Me…He Loves Me Not, starring Audrey Tautou, which is one of my favorite films. (See my review of He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not elsewhere on this blog.)

Amsterdam

This is the shortest and funniest of the three McEwan novels I’ve read, and it won the Booker Prize in 1998. It’s a work of biting satire in which McEwan ridicules politicians, journalists, and bohemian artsy types. The rivalry among four men involved with one woman reminded me too of The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel about four men, three of whom are involved (successively) with one woman. The Fountainhead is not a work of satire by any means – it’s more like an allegory of capitalism in which each of the men represents a different political ideology. Like Amsterdam, The Fountainhead’s cast of characters includes a publisher and an artist (the architect Howard Roarke). Other than that, Amsterdam and The Fountainhead have nothing in common; Ayn Rand has virtually no sense of humor, but she does write a compelling tale.

"Rambling" - a poem by Mescal Hornbeck

2009-07-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

(This poem was written by my grandmother, Mescal Hornbeck, who turned 98 last month. Mescal is an active writer of poetry, essays, and letters to the editor of the local papers. She lives in Woodstock, New York. When I asked her if I could publish this poem on my blog, she agreed, and commented on what a funny word "blog" is. Then she said "I'd rather be blogged than flogged!")

Rambling

If God created the universe
Who created God?
If the world BEGAN with those
Wee microscopic elements
Where did they come from?
Must we know
What and where the things
We see came to be?
Pain and futility
Are what we’ll get
And little joy if
We can’t be content
Just to be, feel, and see.
Aha, I know
Where God came from!!!
Because man has always
Thought that there just has to be
A cause for everything
He believed there had to be
A cause for you and me.
And so man invented God.
In Man’s own image
Invented he Him.
Unable to see that
Some things that be are
Quite inexplicable
For instance, do you really know
What makes the things
We do happen?
Can you possibly explain
What invisible force
Causes a man and woman
To Suddenly feel a strong
Magnetic pulling together?
And this does happen to
Any couple of people.
And none can say they just know
When the two happen to be
The same gender it is
Because they decided it
It should be that way,
As if their minds
Made the decision.
Not believing some things are mysteries.

Don Giovanni at the Komische Oper in Berlin

2009-07-10T05:12:00.001-07:00

On Monday night I had the pleasure of attending the most unusual opera production I’ve ever seen: Don Giovanni at Berlin’s Komische Oper. Berlin is famous for experimental opera productions, and this is the first one I’ve been to. I was blown away.

As a disclaimer, let me say that I have never written an opera review before. I’m no expert on opera, but I do enjoy the medium, and Don Giovanni is my favorite opera of all. This was my fourth time to see Don Giovanni, which is one of the few operas I’ve seen more than once (and the only one I’ve seen more than twice). I used to listen to it all the time on CD, back when I lived in Southern California and spent a LOT of time in my car. In other words, I know this opera extremely well, which is why I feel qualified to write about it. At least, that is, I know the version with the Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte; I can even sing along with some of the arias. If you are not so familiar with the plot of Don Giovanni, you can go to this Wikipedia link to read a synopsis of the plot.

I realize that saying Don Giovanni is your favorite opera is sort of like saying the Mona Lisa is your favorite painting; noone can really question its excellence, but it’s not a very unique or original preference, either. Mozart is my favorite composer – also not an original preference at all, but by no means universal. My mother’s favorite opera composer is Puccini, but I find his stuff too melodramatic. One thing I like about Mozart’s operas is the humor. But above all, I love the music.

The Berlin Don Giovanni was not like any other production I’ve seen. Even though it used Mozart’s music, it had a different libretto which gave the plot a significantly different nuance – enough to really question the moral implications of the plot as it’s been traditionally understood.

Most importantly, the singing was fabulous. Carsten Sabrowski as Leporello was magnificent; in fact, all of the cast were fantastic. Dietrich Henschel as Don Giovanni brought an amazing amount of energy to the stage. The women were fantastic too, especially Erika Roos (Donna Anna) and Elisabeth Starzinger (Donna Elvira). I loved every minute of it.

Where do I begin to describe this production? I think a list might be the best approach:

1. The Berlin production was not sung in Italian, much to my initial dismay. It was sung in German, and this was the first occasion on which I really, really wished I could understand German. The German text was written by Bettina Bartz and Werner Hintze.

2. This was NOT a period piece. Most opera productions I’ve seen use period costumes (18th century in Mozart’s case) and at least minimal furniture and props to resemble rooms, streets, etc. Here the costumes were all late-20th-century suits and dresses, and there were hardly any sets at all. Most of the characters wore black or varying shades of gray, except for Don Giovanni, who wore all white with a saffron-yellow cape. He was also barefoot. The suits, I guess, were supposed to make the characters resemble mobsters; there were also a lot of guns. The characters all had sunglasses too.

3. There was a giant revolving stage, with two sort of triangular “walls” that moved constantly to obscure and reveal different scenes and characters. Above was an enormous circular contraption with all the lights, which moved; I can’t really describe it, but I took some photos with my cell phone that give you an idea of how big this thing was and how it worked. It reminded me of the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

(Note on the photos: many of these – the good ones, where you can see the performers close up – are photos from the program; others are from my cell phone, and I’m sure you can tell which ones those are, i.e., the small and poor-quality photos.)

4. There was an interesting and unconventional framing device, in which three actors appeared onstage during the overture. These were NOT part of the opera’s singing cast, and their performance was done completely in pantomime. Their scene was the only part of the opera with period costumes. First there were just two actors: a boy (the young Mozart) seated at the harpsichord and banging silently away on it; and the tyrannical father standing over him at his lesson. Their interaction begins before the overture begins; then the father suddenly turns on the boy very aggressively, and that’s when the overture begins with its super-dramatic opening chords. The boy then throws open the harpsichord case, and a woman in a white sleeping gown, her head wrapped in a white turban, emerges from the instrument as if from a coffin and protectively takes the boy away from his violent father.

Critics have often remarked that the unforgiving character of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, whose role in the opera is to punish the wayward young man, represented Mozart’s father; but this is the first time I’ve actually seen Don Giovanni staged in such a way as to foreground that Freudian reading.

5. The opera’s opening scene is quite dramatic – while Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello is standing guard, Don Giovanni himself (better known by his Spanish name, Don Juan) is seducing Donna Anna.

According to Mozart and Da Ponte, Don Giovanni is pretending to be her fiancé, Don Ottavio, and since it’s a dark room she supposedly can’t tell the difference. When Donna Anna discovers that it’s not Don Ottavio, she shouts (i.e., sings), and her father, the Commendatore, comes to her rescue. As he defends his daughter’s honor in a sword fight with the intruder and would-be rapist, he is killed by Don Giovanni, thus setting in motion the revenge plot in which Donna Anna and Don Ottavio pursue her father’s murderer.

In the Berlin production, however, Donna Anna clearly KNOWS this is not Don Ottavio, yet she is sleeping with the seducer anyway. And the father, rather than trying to kill Don Giovanni, is about to beat his daughter with his cane. Don Giovanni kills him in order to protect Donna Anna. Thus the moral implications of the original plot are turned on their heads – Don Giovanni is not such a cad, Donna Anna is not so pure, and the Commendatore isn’t such a great guy either.

Really, this makes a lot more sense; I’ve always wondered about the strict moral tone of the original opera – its judgmental and moralistic aspects have always seemed incongruous with Mozart’s own personality and his life.

6. There’s a lot of skin in this production of Don Giovanni. And a lot of stripping. In fact, taking clothes off, then putting clothes back on so you can later take them off again, is one of the main onstange activities after singing. Clothes are the primary props in this staging of the opera.

Left: Donna Elvira in a black lace teddy

This version of Don Giovanni is, overall, much more sensual than any traditional opera. The sexuality that is at the core of the Don Juan story is made much more explicit and more believable in this production. In fact, Da Ponte’s “wedding party” is, in the Berlin production, an orgy. There’s even a pole for pole-dancing in the Don’s living room.

Don Giovanni himself, played/sung by Dietrich Henschel, exudes a writhing sexuality and animal magnetism that the women in the story can’t resist. His appeal is necessary for a legendary seducer who has, according to the so-called “Catalogue Aria,” bedded 2065 women (plus a few more by the end of the opera).

Above: At the wedding party / orgy, Masetto (the bridegroom) is being dressed in a black bra by Leporello.

Below: Don Giovanni coming between the bride and groom (Zerlina and Masetto).

7. Then there are the guns. In the second act, the performance takes a major departure from tradition; five characters get shot, beginning with Masetto (the bridegroom). His bride, Zerlina, sings her love song to his corpse. In traditional stagings of the opera, it always seemed a bit awkward to have Masetto on stage being sung to, not singing anything himself, and serving as a living prop in Zerlina’s performance. In this production, his role is a whole lot easier – lying there dead while she sings to him. It makes sense, in a way; if he’s not actually doing anything or singing anything, he might as well be dead, right?

In another dramatic departure, Don Ottavio is singing his climactic aria when Donna Anna shoots him in the back. (In this production she never really seems to like him very much anyway.) He doesn’t fall down, he just stops singing and launches into a lengthy spoken monologue. Unfortunately it was in German, so I had no idea what he was going on about; I’m sure it shed some light onto the strange interpretation of the opera that we were witnessing. Then he finishes singing the aria.

Need I point out that there are no guns in the Mozart / Da Ponte version of Don Giovanni? Especially not handguns. And these characters – Masetto, Zerlina, Leporello, and Don Ottavio – do NOT get killed in the original opera. (I know there was a fifth one, but now can’t recall which character it was.)

8. And THEN, all those characters who got shot and killed REAPPEAR onstage to perform their roles. But it’s not as if nothing had happened. In fact, when Don Giovanni brings the Commendatore home (somehow not realizing it’s a ghost sent to punish him), the rest of the cast (including the large chorus) reappear onstage wearing light gray suits; instead of Don Giovanni being pulled down into hell, he is dressed in light gray suit by the rest of the cast, who, we can safely assume, are themselves dead and residing in the underworld to which Don Giovanni is being brought.

ALL of the cast are in that underworld of punishment – Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, etc. etc. It’s not just Don Giovanni who is condemned for his crimes, his sins, and punished; it seems that everyone is in for some share of blame. But it also seems more like a party than a punishment. Donna Elvira pulls a camera out of her backpack and takes photos of people posing with Don Giovanni and each other.

It’s all a bit crazy. But then, isn’t opera already a bit crazy? I think Mozart himself would have approved of this production.

Cast:

Musical Director -- Kimbo Ishii-Eto
Don Giovanni -- Dietrich Henschel
Donna Anna -- Erika Roos
Don Ottavio -- Adrian Strooper
Il Commendatore -- Hans-Peter Scheidegger
Donna Elvira -- Elisabeth Starzinger
Leporello -- Carsten Sabrowski
Masetto -- Ingo Witzke
Zerlina -- Olivia Vermeulen

Left: Don Giovanni in - what? - opera underwear? I didn't know there was such a thing.

Final Note: I attended Don Giovanni with our friend John Evelev who was visiting from Missouri. I have to thank my wonderful husband who made the whole evening possible, because he stayed home with our son because we couldn't get a babysitter. He even paid for my ticket!

Living in a Windmill

2009-07-09T16:28:00.001-07:00

During our week in Brittany, we drove numerous times along the coast between Cancale and about halfway to Mont-St.-Michel before heading away from the coast towards our tiny village of Bazouge-la-Perouse, east of Combourg. On this rocky, windy coastline were countless windmills, or I should say former windmills, most of which had been successfully transformed into houses or other useful purposes. According to our guidebook, The Rough Guide to Brittany and Normandy, a century ago Brittany had five thousand working windmills. That's right, five thousand. So it's not surprising that some of them have survived into the age of nuclear power in France and have been refunctioned.

It makes complete sense that these buildings should continue to have a useful life. I mean, they are solidly built stone structures that could endure indefinitely. It's nice to see that they haven't been allowed to turn into ruins (though I do like ruins).

Driving past them day after day I began to appreciate the myriad ways in which they had been transformed. Most simply have had a conical roof applied to them, as below:

In this photo notice the miniature windmill standing in front of the house. It's not a mailbox, just a lawn ornament of a sort: [ha ha! as if the French would have anything so tacky as a lawn ornament!]

Other windmills have had rooms added onto them; here you can see the addition in the rear:

This one is my favorite: made to look really grand (for a former windmill), it has symmetrical exterior staircases on either side of the enlarged entryway; an enormous addition on one side; and even a balustrade around the roof so to create another level of usable space:

Now if only I could figure out how to get invited inside one of these fantastic structures...

Roches Sculptées (Sculpted Rocks) in Brittany

2009-07-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

Why do people make art? With so many kinds of art having been produced for practically all of human history and prehistory, there clearly have been a variety of reasons to explain the evidently universal human urge towards creative expression. I’m always intrigued by these sort of crackpot artists who work in relative isolation for years or even decades to realize a vision that is neither financially profitable nor tied in with the artistic trends and movements of the day; I think of Simon Rodia with his Watts Towers, or Harvey Fite with his Opus 40. (I use the word “crackpot” as a term of endearment, not in any pejorative sense.) The most recent example I’ve found is the site known as Roches Sculptées (Sculpted Rocks) on the north coast of Brittany.

The three of us spent a week in Brittany in April, but I haven’t had the opportunity until now to blog about our experiences there. So in a way this is sort of a “backblog,” since we were there three months ago, but better late than never.

The Sculpted Rocks are located just inside the eastern end of St.-Malo’s city limits as you’re driving east towards Pointe du Grouin and Cancale. The Breton coast is famously austere, rocky, and forbidding; the views both of the coast and from the coast are breathtakingly sublime. It's not like it needs any human intervention to be of interest; however, the sculpting of the existing landscape could actually be the only kind of artistic intervention that belongs in such an environment.

According to The Rough Guide to Brittany and Normandy,

“The hermit priest Abbé Fouré spent 25 years, from the 1870s onwards, carving these jumbled boulders into the forms of dragons, giants and assorted sea monsters. Perched on a rocky promontory high above the water line, they’re quite weathered now, and not all compelling in themselves, but with the town well out of sight this makes an appealing spot to stop and admire the coastline.”

Dodo Love

2009-07-09T02:02:00.001-07:00

Dodos are making a big comeback. I'm not talking about attempts to clone or to breed an extinct species; but I am noticing that they play a big role in the public imagination. Their images are everywhere. According to Wikipedia, it has been extinct since the mid- to late-17th century. They were also popular in the Victorian period, as suggested by the Dodo being a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I love dodos; I guess that makes me a big dodohead. What other animal is so patently ridiculous-looking, so awkward, so improbable? A close relative of the modern pigeon, the dodo weighed up to 50 pounds! Thank goodness pigeons don't take after them in that respect. However, our image of the dodo as a fat clumsy bird are based on those specimens that became obese in captivity because they were overfed; in the wild, scientists think they were probably not as rolly-polly.

Dodos lived exclusively on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. Their extinction came about as a result of European exploration -- not just from hunting, but from destruction of habitat and the introduction of non-native predatory animals.

Above: Museum of Natural History, Berlin (part of the exhibit on taxidermy)

Above: Eli's drawing of a dodo bird, February 16, 2009

Above: Dodo drawing at the "Dodo Manege" carousel in Paris

Above: Dodo on the "Dodo Manege" carousel of extinct animals in Paris at the Jardin des Plantes (see my blog entry about the carousel)

Above: Drawing of a dodo by Roelandt Savery, 1626

Above: The Dodo in the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland

Below: Edward Lear's drawing of the Dodo for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Church of Saint Jean-Baptiste de Belleville, Paris

2009-06-26T04:22:00.000-07:00

As an architectural historian I am, of course, interested in buildings. Additionally, though, I’m intrigued by the representations of buildings in architecture and art, which occur more frequently in medieval times than in other periods. (See my blog entry on the Church of St. Denis in Paris.) One delightful small Gothic church in Paris is the Church of Saint Jean-Baptiste de Belleville, which is in the area of Paris known as Belleville. More on Belleville later – first the church.

According to one architectural historian, “From 1050 to 1350, more stone was quarried and moved in France than at any time in ancient Egypt” (Erlande-Brandenberg, Cathedrals and Castles: Building in the Middle Ages, p. 33). And it’s true – wherever you go in France, including all around the city of Paris, you will see countless versions of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, executed on every imaginable scale from the monumental cathedrals to the small parish churches. (The Church of Saint Jean-Baptiste de Belleville is quite a bit later than 1350, though I don’t know exactly when it was built.)

What struck me most about Saint Jean-Baptiste is this amazing representation of the church within one of the church’s own tympana. (The tympanum is the semi-circular area above a church door, which is nearly always filled in with architectural sculpture.) Here you can see the saint, John the Baptist, standing in front of the church that bears his name. He’s barefoot, an iconographic indication that it is in fact John the Baptist; to the right are two figures who look to me like a bishop and the Virgin Mary. The church in this image is an exact representation of the building, with its two pointed towers in front. Two angels fill the sky on either side of the church.

Belleville

This church serves the diocese of Belleville, which is an interesting community in itself. There are many parts of Paris that feel like a village; Montmartre is only the most famous, which many people might know only from the film Amalie. Belleville is also like a village, and the Church of Saint Jean-Baptiste sits on a beautiful little square looking out over the neighborhood pastry shops and restaurants. It’s a nice place to walk around, which I know from the experience of having lived here for 4 months in 1996 and again for about 6 weeks in 1999. (My Parisian friend lives in Belleville.)

A historic marker tells us that “Between 1815 and 1859, this community of 3,000 souls metamorphosed into a city of 70,000 inhabitants, making it the third-largest city in France, before being annexed in 1860 into the capital.” Baron Haussmann, who redesigned Paris under Napoleon III and in the process wreaked havoc on its populace, split Belleville into two parts, so it now constitutes the 19th AND the 20th arrondissements in Paris. This split was a deliberate political move intended to “divide and conquer,” so to speak; Belleville had an enormous population of working-class folks who might have been too powerful had they remained an intact political (voting) unit.

Belleville still retains much of its working-class character, despite pastry shops selling some of the gorgeous 5 € confections for which Paris is famous. (Personally I find them too beautiful to eat – and usually not as tasty as they are wonderful to look at. I prefer the simple 2 € chocolate éclair.) Belleville is still home to a lot of immigrants, chiefly Arabs and Chinese. Since my previous visit 10 years ago, though, Belleville is starting to get a bit gentrified; my friend calls it “bobo” – bourgeois bohemian – which is apt. On top of all those identities – working-class, immigrant, bobo – coming to Belleville feels almost like being in the country, because of the vast Parc de Butte-Chaumont. Belleville does not have the enormous crowds of tourists one finds in the Marais or the Latin Quarter; there’s more peace and quiet here. (The drawback to that is the long commute to the center of the city if you have to visit libraries and archives.) Still, I love Belleville, and couldn’t imagine a trip to Paris without spending time here.

The Church of St. Denis, Paris

2009-06-25T15:19:00.001-07:00

One Saturday morning in Paris I finally made my way to the Church of St. Denis, THE VERY FIRST GOTHIC CHURCH IN THE WORLD. I have been teaching this building in my architectural history classes for the past six years, so it was about time I actually saw it in person. I was fortunate to visit on a very sunny morning, allowing me to appreciate the beautiful stained glass and to see the interior filled with light. (If you visit a Gothic church on a cloudy or rainy day it is not quite as impressive.)

For the story of the birth of Gothic architecture I can recommend a book called The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral by Robert A. Scott. This book makes clear the religious, philosophical, military, political, diplomatic, and other ideological factors that motivated the creation of the Gothic style of architecture by Abbot Suger – head of the monastery at Saint Denis – in the 12th century. This was a very important church, as the kings and queens of France were buried here for centuries.

I knew all about the architecture, having taught it for so long, but one new thing I discovered was an icon painting of the saint, which intrigued me because it included representations of architecture in the two upper corners.

Saint Denis – the patron saint of Paris – was a bishop of Paris in the third century who was martyred around 250 A.D. on the hill of Montmartre, the highest point in the city. The Wikipedia entry provides a succinct narrative of his story:

“Denis, having menaced the pagan priests by his many conversions, was executed by beheading on the highest hill in Paris (now Montmartre), which was likely to have been a druidic holy place. The martyrdom of Denis and his companions gave it its current name, which in Old French means ‘mountain of martyrs.’ According to the Golden Legend, after his head was chopped off, Denis picked it up and walked two miles, preaching a sermon the entire way. The site where he stopped preaching and actually died was made into a small shrine that developed into the Saint Denis Basilica, which became the burial place for the kings of France. Another account has his corpse being thrown in the Seine, but recovered and buried later that night by his converts.”

The Saint Denis legend, then, connects him with two points in Paris: Montmartre, where now stands the 19th-century Church of Sacre-Coeur, and the town of Saint Denis (now a Parisian suburb), where stands the church that bears his name. In this icon painting of the saint, notice two buildings in the two upper corners: Sacre-Couer and Saint-Denis. This panel intrigued me because it points out the significance of medieval church architecture not just as a gathering place for religious worship, but as an actual symbol of the person to whom it is dedicated. The depiction of these two structures is a shorthand way of communicating to worshippers the story of the saint’s martyrdom – and I have to admit I find it more tasteful than the usual iconographic representations of the saint carrying his own head!

One of the three tympana on the West Portal shows Denis and his three companions being led to their execution; behind the three chained prisoners you can see the city of Paris represented by a fortified city wall. Notice the non-naturalistic scale that allows buildings to be shown in contexts like these; I really admire the creativity of medieval sculptors.

Le Mémorial de la Shoah (Holocaust Memorial), Paris

2009-06-23T00:26:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday my French friend’s mother – my hostess for lunch – asked me directly, “Are you Jew?” – sending her children and her granddaughter into a fluster of embarrassment. (Their excuse: she’s 85 years old.) Madame Cohen’s English is quite good, though of course “Are you Jewish?” might be the preferred idiomatic phrasing. When I answered “no,” she seemed a little disappointed and turned back silently to the photos she’d been looking at. After a minute or two I piped up, “but my husband is Jewish!” as if to redeem myself in her eyes, and received a smile and a cluck of approval. [She was already a bit suspicious that an American might be carrying the swine flu virus into her home; my assurances that I’d been in Europe for the past five months didn’t seem to dissuade her.]

Madame Cohen and her late husband both were Egyptian Jews; they left Egypt in 1950 when, according to my friend / her daughter, “it was clear there was no future for Jews in Egypt.” Soon afterwards the Jews remaining in Egypt were expelled. The plight of European Jews during World War II was not their personal story, but like Jews everywhere, the long history of persecution, eviction, and marginalization suffered in so many countries is one they share.

Documenting the story of the French Jews during World War II, the Shoah Memorial in Paris’ Marais district is a tribute to the 76,000 French Jews who were deported from France between 1942 and 1944. It was opened to the public in January 2005; this was my first time to see it. (Prior to 2005 it existed as a Holocaust documentation center, but was not open to the public.) In the same vein as the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Shoah Memorial has a wall (actually walls) engraved with the names of the 76,000 French Jewish deportees, as well as a detailed exhibition of the history of the Holocaust. (To quote the literature: the word “Holocaust” is commonly used in Anglo-Saxon countries, whereas the Hebrew word “Shoah,” which means “catastrophe,” is used in France.) There is also a crypt – a symbolic tomb – containing ashes of victims collected from the extermination camps, with an eternal flame in the center. It’s a very somber, meditative space.

The Wall of Names lists the year of birth of each deportee; what’s especially poignant is the fact that so many of them were children, many quite young children at that. As the mother of a child who is more than one-quarter Jewish (my husband being five-eighths Jewish), I am quite conscious that their fates could have been ours had we been born in a different time and place. One room in the memorial displays 2,700 photographs of French Jewish children who were deported.

France (or Paris, at any rate) has been quite active in remembering and commemorating its victims of Nazi persecution. Also new in Paris since I lived there ten years ago are memorial plaques posted around the town, particularly in the Marais district, where most of the Jews lived. Here are three I found:

“A la memoire des 112 habitants de cette maison dont 40 petits enfants déportés et morts dans les camps allemands en 1942.” (“To the memory of the 112 inhabitants of this building, among them 40 small children, who were deported and died in the German camps in 1942.”)

“A la mémoire des élèves de cette ancienne école primaire supérieure de jeunes filles deportees de 1942 à 1944 parce qe’elles étaient nées juives, victimes innocentes de la barbarie nazie avec la complicité active du gouvernement de Vichy. Elles furent exterminées dans les camps de la mort. (4 juin 2005 – NE LES OUBLIONS JAMAIS)” (“To the memory of the students of this old primary school for young girls, deported from 1942 to 1944 because they were born Jewish, innocent victims of the Nazi barbarism with the complicity of the Vichy government. They were exterminated in the death camps. Erected June 4, 2005 – never forget them.”)

“Arrètés par la police du gouvernement de Vichy, complice de l’occupant nazi, plus de 11000 enfants furent déportés de France de 1942 à 1944 et assassins à Auschwitz parce qu’ils étaient nés juifs. Plus de 500 enfants vivaient dans le 4ème arrondissement, parmi eux les élèves de cette école. (Le 15 décembre 2001 – NE LES OUBLIONS JAMAIS)” (“Arrested by the police of the Vichy government, the accomplice of the Nazi occupiers, more than 11,000 children were deported from France from 1942 to 1944 and assassinated at Auschwitz because they were born Jewish. More than 500 children lived in the 4th arrondissement, among them the students of this school. Erected December 15, 2001 – never forget them.”) (The 4th arrondissement, of course, comprises the Marais.)

I’m not sure these memorial plaques are directly connected with the Shoah Memorial, but both the plaques and the Shoah Memorial reflect an even greater consciousness about the persecution of French Jews than I noticed when I lived in Paris ten years ago. This is a level of consciousness – and of consciousness-raising – that is not so much in evidence in Germany, where I’ve spent the past five months. Of course Berlin does have major memorials and museums, but t not so many minor ones that one encounters them in one’s daily life. In the former East Germany / East Berlin, most of the memorials I’ve seen from that era commemorate the persecution of Communists by the Nazis.

Anti-Semitism, like bigotry and racism, do exist in the United States, but it’s hard (for me at any rate) to imagine the complete sense of marginality and “otherness” with which non-Jews in Europe regarded Jews prior to World War II. Even after World War II, some countries denied citizenship to Jews born within their borders. In my own experience, I am not Jewish but I have a first cousin who is Jewish (through her mother); my grandmother has a first cousin whose children are Jewish (through their father). Noone in my Gentile family has ever felt themselves different from the Jewish members of the family. Because I grew up in a provincial and very segregated place, though, I grew up with little exposure to Judaism, and I thought of it as just as another religion that a person might choose to follow, like Catholicism or any of the Protestant sects. It was not until I went to college, at Northwestern University, that I made a number of Jewish friends and became more aware of Judaism as an identity that went much deeper than simply religious persuasion.

One further feature of the Shoah Memorial is the Wall of the Righteous (inaugurated June 2006) on the exterior of the building, along the so-called Allée des Justes. It is engraved with the names of the non-Jewish men and women who risked their lives in France to rescue persecuted Jews. According to the website, “Each year the award of the Righteous among the Nations is granted by the Memorial Museum of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. 21,310 Righteous among the Nations have been recognized thus far worldwide, including 2,693 in France.” One can’t help hoping that in their situation, we would have risen to that level of heroism – and hoping as well we never find ourselves in such a situation.

The “Dodo Manège” in Paris

2009-06-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

Where else but Paris can a kid ride on an extinct beast? On the “Dodo Manège” carousel in Paris’ Jardin des Plantes they can ride on not only a dodo or a triceratops, but also a horned turtle (tortue à cornes), a glyptodon, a thylacine, or a sivatherium. There are also a few non-extinct animals (panda, elephant, ostrich, gorilla) on this carousel concerned with the evolution of species.

I love it because not only is it a unique carousel, but it cleverly fits in thematically with the rest of the Jardin des Plantes. The Jardin des Plantes is home to several related institutions: the Museum of Natural History, the Grand Galerie of Evolution, the Museum of Geology, a botanic garden, and the Paris zoo, originally the royal menagerie.

We were here in April en route to Brittany from Berlin – the overnight train terminated in Paris, and originated in Paris on our way home – so we spent one afternoon at the zoo, and that was when we discovered the carousel. Two months later I am back in Paris for research, and had to revisit this unique attraction.

The carousel of extinct species is educational as well as fun. From it I learned about the thylacine – also called the Tasmanian wolf – the last large carnivorous marsupial in Australia. “It is a remarkable example of extermination by man.” The last known individual lived in a zoo in Hobart (capital of the Australian island state of Tasmania) until 1936.

Then there’s the sivatherium, an animal related to the elan and the giraffe. It had two pairs of horns, and a long nose that seems to have been the beginnings of a trunk. It lived in the forests and savannahs of India, and was represented in a Sumerian bronze figurine and drawings found in the Sahara. It was hunted by Paleolithic man, and became extinct less than 10,000 years ago.

The carousel is beautifully painted with a jungle scene and 12 individual vignettes (around its top) showing some fascinating animals like lemurs, pangolins, and armadillos, as well as scenes from the Jardin des Plantes itself. The Jardin des Plantes, and especially this carousel, are now among my favorite places in Paris.

One scene on the carousel depicts the actual statue a few hundred meters away of Buffon, noted French naturalist and once director of the Jardin des Plantes (when it was still the Jardin du Roi). Buffon sits facing the Grand Galerie de l'Evolution (though on the carousel painting he seems to be facing away from it!)

Spain Journal, Part II

2009-06-03T21:05:00.001-07:00

Written at 37,000 feet, en route from Madrid to Berlin.

Our two weeks in Spain are over; here are some random observations:

1. There are no black olives in Spain, only green olives. They are tasty.

2. Sevilla rhymes with sangria. Both put me in a good mood.

3. One of the great things about grocery stores in Spain is gazpacho in a box; we went through a lot of it. Another thing I like about Spanish grocery stores is sangria in a box.

4. The Madrid subway system is plagued by pickpockets. We rode the Metro on six separate occasions, and had pickpocket attempts on two of those occasions. My mom caught a would-be pickpocket with his hand in her purse on our first day in Spain, getting from the airport to our hotel. Another day there were two pickpockets – young women working together – one had her hand in my purse (after unzipping it!) and the other had her hand in my mom’s purse! Unbelievable. This was the second time my mom was targeted on the Metro. (All attempts were unsuccessful, by the way.)

One could argue that that’s just typical for big cities – that Madrid is subject to the problems that all big cities share. However, I lived in Chicago for two and a half years (plus three and a half years in Evanston), and was pickpocketed twice, though I rode public transportation every day. Compare that with nine days in Madrid. I have lived in Berlin for four months now, and have experienced NO pickpocket attempts. Based on my experiences, I would insist that Madrid has more of a problem than other cities its size.

5. The residents of Madrid – I believe they’re called Madrillenos – have a disturbing lack of concern for people around them, which seems to be rooted in fear. For one thing, when we had these pickpocket attempts, both times we shouted at the pickpockets as they quickly escaped our wrath by hopping off the train. No one around us batted an eyelash; noone said anything to the perpetrators. There was a distinct attitude of not wanting to get involved. I don’t know if it was based on apathy, fear, or disregard or disdain for tourists. My mom’s theory is that they think if the pickpockets target the tourists, they’ll leave the locals alone. I don’t mean to generalize – there was one occasion when I was standing on the Metro with my 4-year-old in my arms (and he’s getting pretty heavy!); noone offered me a seat, but a young woman who was also standing addressed the folks who were sitting to give a seat to “la señora.” Someone did; I was really touched by her efforts on my behalf.

Then there was our apartment building (we rented an apartment in Madrid for 8 days). The other residents of the building were very closed, and even if we said “Hola” to them, they would say nothing. They would quickly unlock their doors, looking over their shoulders, and getting behind the locked door as quickly as possible. (Our door, by the way, had quite a formidable lock.) I actually noticed this wherever we went in Spain – bars on ALL the windows and doors – though outside of Madrid people were a lot more relaxed and friendly.

6. For a country with lots and lots of tourists, the Spanish in general speak surprisingly little English. Now I’m not arguing that they should speak English – I do think it’s more incumbent on us as tourists to learn their language than vice versa – but it’s still quite noticeable compared with other European countries like Germany or Italy. My theory is this: since there are so many Spanish speakers worldwide, Spaniards feel less of a need to learn another language, sort of like Anglophones. (Americans and possibly Brits are also pretty bad about learning foreign languages.) Spanish arrogance about their language is possibly as marked as English-speakers’ arrogance about their language. In Italy, on the other hand, there’s a recognition that since there are so few Italian speakers in the world (relatively speaking), they have to learn foreign languages or they won’t be able to communicate with people outside their own small country.

7. I enjoyed being in Spain less than most other countries I’ve travelled in: Italy, Mexico, Greece, Turkey, France, England, Germany, India. The Spanish really do not seem to like tourists. By the end of our trip we were pleasantly surprised whenever we would meet a Spanish person who was nice to us. After a rough encounter with a Spanish salesperson in Madrid, I was a helped by a very nice salesclerk at the Madrid train station, and when I told him he was nicer than most of the people I’d dealt with at the train station, he remarked rather dryly, “It’s because I’m not Spanish.” It turned out he was from Argentina; he did not have a high opinion of Spaniards either.

8. We went to Toledo on our last day in Spain, and had a very good experience there: nice shopkeeper, nice bus driver, nice waiter, nice policeman. We were very happy, plus Toledo is quite picturesque, so it left us with a good impression of Spain. Toledo is in the mountains, so the climate is nicer (like El Escorial); visually it reminded me of the Italian hill towns in Tuscany and Umbria much moreso than anywhere else in Spain. (Granada is also in the mountains, but more of a tourist trap than Toledo.)

9. I would definitely go back to Spain, but would avoid Madrid (though I’d like to see more of the Madrid museums). This basically gives support to the obvious principle that being a tourist in a smaller city or town is easier than in a large city.

Architects Stop Traffic in Madrid

2009-05-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

On Friday, May 29, a demonstration by a few hundred architects and architecture students stopped traffic in central Madrid when they protested outside the offices of Spain's Ministry of Education on the Calle de Alcala, in the center of the city. Of course, this made any kind of vehicular travel impossible, but I didn't mind the inconvenience so much since it was in the cause of architecture.

I haven't found any information on Associated Press -- my Spanish is pretty terrible, so I need an English-language report -- but it seems as though the Education Minister is devaluing their degree. They seem to be demanding a professional organization of some kind.

At the bottom of this banner it says "Crisis + Devaluation of the Profession = Unemployment!!" (referring to the global economic crisis, of course):

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure, but I will update this post when I get more information. In the meantime, good luck to all those Spanish architects!

Spanish Signs and Spanglish

2009-05-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

Spain Journal

2009-05-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

Friday, May 22

On our third night in Sevilla – Ascension Day – my husband and I found ourselves sitting in a small plaza (a plazuela) drinking wine and listening to a local band playing British rock and pop songs of the 50s and 60s – in English. They started with The Who (“The Kids Are Alright”) and moved on from there to Monkees, Beatles, Byrds, and similar standards. The scene was great for people-watching, and made me glad I had found us an apartment outside of the tourist core of the city, in a neighborhood on the other side of the Guadalquiver river called Triana. As far as we could tell the crowd was all locals; it was a very family-oriented scene, with a couple dozen kids (of all ages) running around and playing with each other in the midst of the adults partying and drinking. The Spanish kids were up past 11 p.m.; our little guy had already been asleep for a couple hours, and was being babysat by my mom in the apartment.

On the stage behind the band was a large cross decorated with white tissue-paper flowers for Ascension Day. N. observed that from looking at the stage you’d think it was a Christian rock band. The second act was a singer from Mexico with a large embroidered black hat; he was singing along to the accompaniment of a tape. He spoke Spanish really fast, a lot faster than the Spanish people talk. We felt a bit nostalgic, and a common bond as fellow Norte Americanos. We have a running joke that every Mexican song has the word “corazón” (“heart”) in it, and this guy sang about his corazón right away. (I have to admit, as much as I am enjoying Spain, I like Mexico better.)

The third act was a duo of Spaniards singing flamenco music and playing guitar; every song had the word Triana in it (“our” neighborhood in Sevilla). By this point we still hadn’t finished our bottle of wine, but were ready to go home anyway. It was a bit chilly, as we have discovered Spain can be in the evenings. We only had to walk about three blocks back to the apartment through very narrow streets. We had stumbled onto this celebration completely by accident, just by following our ears, and it felt like a real find.

Saturday, May 23

(Photo: Plaza de España in Seville, built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition and recently restored)

The Triana neighborhood continues to treat us well. We had dinner at a tapas restaurant just a couple blocks from our apartment, which was one of the best meals we’ve had in Spain. The appetizer – a specialty of the house – was slices of grilled eggplant topped with a somewhat sweet red sauce that tasted like a puréed roasted red pepper; and some kind of yummy cheese on top. Then tapas-sized portions of three kinds of fish, followed by a veggie course. The latter course included a dish called salmorejo, a spread that is indeed pinkish in color (like salmon) but is reminiscent of hummus or some sort of ground legumes (but consisting mainly of tomatoes – roasted? – and bread crumbs to thicken it) with lots of olive oil and other delightful flavors. (Olive oil has been a major component of most dishes we’ve eaten in Spain.)

Because it was the Ascension Day weekend, we happened into a religious procession on our walk to dinner around 9 p.m. – a large coffin-like “float” with an empty cross on top of it, followed by a brass-and-percussion band playing some rather dirge-like music. My mom and my son both had to cover their ears, they said it was too loud for them. We had to wait for the procession to pass before we could cross the street to go to dinner. The “float” was funny because it was being carried by about 20 people, but you couldn’t see the people (except for their feet), they were hidden by the cloths draped from the bottom of the float. Then after dinner there was another such procession, apparently sponsored by a different church.

Now here’s the funny thing about these religious processions – you always hear about them happening in heavily Catholic countries, and about tourists flocking to see them at the proper times of the year. But what I noticed in Seville was that the town does not come to a stop so that everyone can take part; instead, it’s as if the vast majority of the populace takes no notice. A block away, on the major artery through the neighborhood, the buses were still running, people were still walking along carrying their parcels and heading to their destinations; traffic was still heavy. Granted, these were tiny processions we witnessed, but it gave me a different perspective on the phenomenon.

Monday, May 25

This was our day to see the Alhambra! While touring the Nasrid Palace, which is the gorgeous Islamic architectural heart of the entire site, I discovered that the American author Washington Irving had actually gotten to LIVE there. What a privilege. It turns out that in addition to being the first American novelist to acquire an international reputation, he was also a diplomat (ambassador, maybe?) to Spain. Here he wrote Tales of the Alhambra; I bought a copy, maybe someday I'll get a chance to read it. In the meantime, here are some photos:

Tuesday, May 26

We are on a train to Madrid, having spent time in Sevilla, Córdoba, and Granada. Sevilla was my favorite place, and I’m dying to go back. My husband’s favorite place was Córdoba, which was just a day trip from Sevilla, and was a beautiful, quiet city. What I liked most about it – besides the AMAZING mosque-turned-cathedral, which was my main reason for going to Córdoba – was the Roman legacy, which I knew nothing about ahead of time. My mom’s favorite place was Granada, in part because of the cooler climate there. And the Alhambra, of course, impressed the heck out of all of us.

My son’s favorite part of Spain so far has been the zoo in Córdoba, but once we go to the zoo in Madrid I think he’ll decide he likes it better – it’s much larger. A few days ago he said, “I’m going to go to every zoo in the world before I die.” He’s on track to do it, too; this year he’s been to two zoos in Berlin (multiple times each) and zoos in Dresden and Hamburg.

One thing I can’t relate to in Spanish culture is the bullfighting obsession. Bullfighters are the rock stars of Spain, the sex symbols featured in posters on the street. They have great costumes; it’s all about spectacle and pageantry. But I just feel sorry for the bulls. Notice how the bullfighter's cape looks a lot like a cardinal's cape (which is also all about spectacle).

Thursday, May 28

Yesterday we helped my son get one step closer to his goal of seeing all the zoos in the world. We spent the whole day at the Madrid zoo (without my husband, who left for Berlin yesterday morning). It was a fantastic and memorable visit; we got to see a dolphin show, which was the first one my son has ever been to. I think they had 8 or 9 dolphins performing. It was accompanied by very loud Spanish pop music, and hundreds of Spanish school children clapping along. We also got to see a sea lion show, also a lot of fun.

Weirdly the zoo was full of large groups, mostly local kids (around junior high age or younger) on school field trips. Whoever thought 50 kids crowding to look at one animal was a good idea must have been crazy. These crowds were a bit unpleasant, but they moved quickly so it wasn’t too hard to avoid them; and by the afternoon they were mostly gone.

Today we went to the Prado Museum, which blew my mind. This was one of my top two reasons for coming to Spain (the other being the Alhambra), and I’d been wanting to see the Prado for years and years and years. I mostly was awed by the Goya rooms and the Titian rooms; didn’t get to see Velasquez yet, but WILL go back for more. A single room of 18th-century French portraiture was pretty cool too (no postcards available).

Das Sovietische Ehrenmal (Soviet monument) in Treptower Park, Berlin

2009-05-09T14:18:00.001-07:00

Completed in 1949, the Soviet monument in Treptower Park, Berlin, was the largest Soviet World War II monument in the world -- both within and outside of the Soviet Union -- until 1967, when a larger one was constructed in Volgograd, Russia. Located in the former East Berlin, the Soviet monument draws huge crowds of Russian tourists; we spent the afternoon there today, and every conversation I overheard was in Russian. Flowers left in tribute to the dead are everywhere, fresh ones, revealing the importance this monument has for so many people.

May 8, 1945, marked the end of the Second World War and is celebrated in Europe as Victory in Europe Day. In the former East Germany it was celebrated as Tag der Befreihung (Day of Liberation). The fact that we visited the memorial on the weekend of this momentous anniversary was purely coincidental, and serendipitous.

The memorial honors the Soviet liberation of Berlin. Its monumentality seems over the top, but is appropriate considering the number of graves it represents. 5,000 Russian soldiers who died in the liberation are buried under the 5 lawns that lie between the two red granite walls (symbolizing flags lowered in mourning) and the 38-foot-high statue of a Russian soldier, with a German child in one arm, trampling the swastika symbol of the Third Reich underfoot and under sword.

On the approach to the monument is the statue representing Mother Homeland, sculpted from a single 50-ton granite rock. White granite is used to create the cylindrical mausoleum that serves as the base of the statue, as well as 14 massive symbolic sarcophagi; this Swedish granite had been stored by the Nazis to be used to construct a triumphal arch in Moscow. (Talk about counting your chickens...)

The sarcophagi are media for Social Realist relief sculpture representing Germans, oppressed by Fascism, and Russians, their heroic saviors. Quotes by Stalin are engraved at the ends of the sarchophagi.

“Our ideology, anchored in our soil, of equal rights of all races and nations, the ideology of friendship among peoples, has achieved total victory over the Hitler-Fascist ideology of bestial nationalism and racial hatred.” – Joseph Stalin

(Hopefully further comment on my part about the irony of Stalin's statement -- who killed or exiled as many people as the Nazis did -- is unnecessary, propaganda being instantly recognizable to most people.)

"Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central Los Angeles" (film review) at the Black International Film Festival, Berlin

2009-05-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

"Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central Los Angeles”

Tonight we had a little taste of Los Angeles in Berlin, at the 24th Black International Cinema, Berlin, 2009 film festival. The documentary film “Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central Los Angeles” celebrates the cultural boom time of the 1990s in this small village in the South Central heart of L.A. Here’s the official description of the film:

“In April 1992, Richard Fulton, a formerly homeless man who had been living on Los Angeles’ skid row, opened Fifth Street Dick’s coffeehouse in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood of Leimert Park.

“A few days later, the 1992 Los Angeles riots broke out. For five days and five nights, a group of dedicated merchants and artists stood guard to protect their village from the fires that raged through the streets of South Central Los Angeles.

“Richard’s coffeehouse soon became a gathering spot for the community, and ultimately sparked a remarkable underground renaissance of African American art and culture. Leimert Park became a stopover for world-class jazz musicians who might drop in to jam until 3 or 4 in the morning. The sidewalks overflowed with people of all ages and races, absorbing the jazz, hip-hop, blues and spoken-word poetry performed in the park and various music venues.

“Told through the powerful words, art and music of the community, this film articulates and celebrates the profound struggles and deep spirit of the extraordinary artists and musicians who transformed a few blocks of modest storefronts into a vibrant and inspiring cultural oasis. Intimate and compelling, “Leimert Park” is also a universal tale of the struggles and triumphs of artists everywhere and of the power and importance of art and music in our lives.”

The film is based largely on interviews conducted in 1998, when the Leimert Park Village was at its height. I like the use of the word “renaissance” in this description, because the cultural blossoming of Leimert Park in the 1990s reminded me (on a smaller scale) of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. I will be teaching an Honors College course on the Harlem Renaissance this fall in the Art History Department, so that era has been on my mind a lot lately.

Director Jeannette Lindsay explores the range of artistic projects that flourished in Leimert Park in the 1990s: painting, music, dance, poetry, and film, all made by African-Americans, had a vibrant home and a supportive community. Legendary jazz musicians like Horace Tapscott (leader of the Pan African People’s Arkestra) and Billy Higgins (legendary drummer) were a regular part of this scene; both are now deceased.

Richard Fulton, seen extensively in interview footage, was such a charismatic, warm, and funny person. He describes how he, as a homeless man, created this coffee shop which became a real anchor to the community. One of the funniest lines was when he described how/why his project made him happy; it combines “my three favorite things to do: A, sit on my ass; B, drink coffee; and C, listen to jazz.”

His coffee house opened just a few days before the infamous L.A. riots broke out after the verdict was read in the Rodney King trial. He said that some of the first cups of coffee he served were to the National Guardsmen.

I remember those days; the L.A. riots were probably the most surreal days that I experienced during my 14 years living in L.A. County. I was in downtown L.A. at the theater (an interracial version of “Richard II”) when the riots began, and had to drive home on surface streets because the freeways had all been shut down; the curfews and the run on the grocery stores and video stores as people prepared for the lock-down; the smell of smoke from all the fires filled the air as far west as Santa Monica, where I lived; the National Guard occupying Venice Beach, so you couldn’t walk or skate there at any time of day (which gave the local crazy – one of many – lots of material for loud public rants).

In the aftermath of the riots, all kinds of local, state, and national politicians and dignitaries rushed in to survey the damage and assure the residents that it would be rebuilt, would be better than before, and that the politicians wouldn’t turn their backs on the community like they had done after the Watts riots of the 1960s. Being politicians, they didn’t keep their promises; for years afterwards, the anniversary of the 1992 riots brought journalistic analyses of how the community was being neglected, detailing stories of how banks wouldn’t lend money, there were no grocery stores, and so on.

“Leimert Park” gives evidence to the contrary, showing us in loving detail a community that rose from the ashes of the 1992 riots. This is one case where, the film claims, the riots were the catalyst for the community to join together in creating something meaningful and positive, even transformational. Former gang members becoming poets.

That was all in the first hour. The last 30 minutes dealt with the community’s demise at the hands of politicians and commercial interests for the “redevelopment” of Leimert Park. Inevitably they ruined it, driving out the people who had made the community what it was through rents almost quadrupling overnight.

The film could be stronger – its narrative style does not, in my view, adequately foreground the historical status of the Leimert Park cultural renaissance. (“Historical” as in “it does not exist any more.”) The story about Leimert Park’s redevelopment and commercialization seem to be tacked on at the end, after an hour of what seems to be a complete, fully developed story in itself, the demise of which is never even hinted at in that first hour. Who is behind this redevelopment? It doesn’t even tell us who was the mayor at the time, or how the city council member representing Leimert Park responded to this redevelopment.

I suppose the film can’t be all things to all people. It does a much better job of telling us about the art, the poetry, and the music than about issues of urban development and gentrification.

(I like this image because it was hanging on the podium in front of where the Leimert Park poets stood to read their poems to the assembled audience.)

The 24th Black International Cinema film festival, Berlin, 2009

This was a quirky little film festival that seemed to have more sponsors than audience members. (There were no more than 20 people at the film we attended.) It’s almost like a little Mom-and-Pop film festival, except that it’s incredibly well funded, with support from the Commissioner for Integration of the Templehof-Schöneberg borough of Berlin and the German Commission for UNESCO among its many sponsors. Admission to all films was free, and tonight – the first night of the festival – this included a free buffet of very tasty Caribbean food catered by Ya-Man Caribbean Soul Food of Berlin (in the Tiergarten neighborhood).

The Mom-and-Pop feel of the film festival is reflected in the program, about 50 pages long; no fewer than 6 of these pages are devoted to photos of the husband-and-wife organizers, their two kids, and even their family going back generations! I kid you not. Inside the front cover is a full-color collage of three photos – one shows President Barack Obama, and right next to Obama is a photo of their son, dressed nicely and holding a basketball in the manner of senior class photos for the high school yearbook.

Another irony was the presence at the opening ceremony of a dignitary from the Embassy of the United States of America, Berlin; the embassy may not have been aware beforehand of this image printed in the film program on the page listing their supporters and affiliations:

Joe Louis and Fidel Castro, 1959

But the organizers did put together an impressive program of films from around the world, with emphasis on films from the U.S., Germany, Iran, and India. Several other African and European nations are represented with a single film, as well as Haiti. Most are documentary films, but some are narrative, and some are experimental shorts.

The projection left a lot to be desired. The top of the screen image was cut off, enough to be really annoying; and the sound synchronization was off.

I would love to see as many of these films as I could, but unfortunately that won’t be possible. The venue is clear on the other side of the city and takes an hour to get there; tonight’s film started 90 minutes after the time that was advertised on the website, which is a real inconvenience when you have a babysitter at home with your child. Given those factors, plus the fact that all the films are in the evening and weekend when child care is an issue, I will have to miss out on this great opportunity. Oh, well, that’s life in the big city.

"The Christian and War" - a response

2009-05-06T05:56:00.001-07:00

Four months ago a Facebook "Friend" (actually someone from high school whom I never knew very well to begin with and haven't seen in almost 30 years - he graduated two years before I did) solicited my opinion on an essay called "The Christian and War." The essay was written by Stan Warford, a professor of computer science at Pepperdine University, and delivered in September 2008 at something called the "Red Letter Christians Convocation Series" at Pepperdine University (which, don't forget, is a religiously affiliated university). You can read his essay by clicking here.

In the essay Professor Warford outlines the unequivocal anti-war position which is at the heart of Christianity, then he presents an historical account of how Christian leaders have succeeded in rationalizing and justifying war and Christians' partipation in it. If I'm understanding his essay correctly, he is advising fellow Christians not to participate in or to condone war, including the defense industry; he is exposing and rejecting any and all attempts by Christians to legitimate war.

Bradley, you asked me what I thought of his essay, and I couldn't agree more with the points he makes, i.e., that according to Christ's teachings, war is wrong under any circumstances. (Granted, some wars are easier to defend than others, as per the "just war" theory he describes.) What I really have a problem with is the end of the essay, where he explains that he worked in the defense industry for many years until he saw the light, began to develop a conscience, and decided to quit the war business. My response, then, is "What took him so long?!"

Here's a quote from the essay:

"Allow me to conclude my presentation on a personal note. I have a confession to make. At one point in my professional career I was an aerospace engineer with a company whose revenue was derived entirely from government contracts from NASA and the Pentagon. I have always been fascinated with mathematics, physics, and technology and in my youth did not pay much attention to the ethical implications of my work. While I worked on civilian projects like the Viking mission to Mars and the Space Shuttle, I also worked on military projects. Some of my work is in the Minuteman ballistic missile deployed in silos across the United States, and some is in the Polaris missile deployed in nuclear submarines around the world.

"My regret is the number of years it took for my conscience to evolve to the point where I could no longer participate in warfare projects. One reason I resigned from my position and came to Pepperdine was the desire to influence students like you. My hope is that this talk will prompt you to consider the nature of war in light of the teachings of Jesus. Perhaps my experience will influence someone in this audience so that the years of your youth will not be spent as a proponent of war, which you will later grow to regret."

So he's sort of like the Ancient Mariner, I guess, walking around with an albatross around his neck and warning others not to be like him. (I'm sure there's an apt Biblical character who could be referenced, but I'm not that up on Bible stories.)

His own professional experience, like the history of Christianity that he traces in his essay, points out the core problem with Christianity: it often fails to represent a morally righteous position, it frequently puts itself at the service of government and authority-figures, and it does not encourage people to have what Professor Warford might call a highly evolved conscience. Instead, it encourages people NOT to think for themselves, and to do what church leaders tell them to do, even if it's in direct contradiction to what's in the Bible.

I'm not at all surprised that Professor Warford worked for the military-industrial complex all those years while calling himself a Christian; that sort of hypocrisy is endemic to Christianity, at least in the United States (which is the only culture I'm familiar enough with to judge). Look at all the so-called Christians who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 even though he had led our country into a disastrous war based on out-and-out lies. Too many Christians are willing to let their preachers, their political party, or other folks in positions of authority tell them what to think -- to do the thinking for them. (Remember how the Protestant Reformation was about having people read the Bible for themselves, instead of having the clergy interpret it for them?)

In my view, which Professor Warford points out in his essay, the downfall of Christianity came in the fourth century when Constantine adopted the sign of the cross. Christianity was coopted by the state, and still is. Ever since that time, many Christians -- especially those in authority -- have used their positions to advocate for the status quo, to bolster whatever political regime was in power, and basically not to rock the boat.

The story of someone close to me -- whom I won't identify out of respect for his privacy -- is just as strange to me as Professor Warford's flip-flop. This person went to college with no real religious beliefs, but sometime during the third year was converted by a rather conservative group of campus Christians; they got him to do all kinds of bizarre things, like going to shopping malls so he could accost complete strangers and try to convert them. [I was actually with him once on a bus in Chicago; we were getting off the bus, and he suddenly ran after some poor guy who had gotten off at the same stop, to "witness to him about Christ." When I asked him why, he said that the Holy Spirit had "moved" him to do it. The guy he had approached didn't speak any English.] About a year after this conversion to a right-wing branch of Christianity, this person was recruited by the U.S. Navy -- he was a Physics major, and he signed up for the Nuclear Navy. It wasn't until several years later that he decided he was a conscientious objector, and filed for an honorable discharge from the service. The point of this story is, if Christianity were what it should be, then a fervent new convert wouldn't be signing up for the military in the first place! Would he? I mean, it seems like a no-brainer to me. He should have been a conscientious objector BEFORE he signed up for the Navy, right? I mean, he was a born-again Christian before he joined the Navy.

MY personal position, to be clear, is that I am a former Christian - a member of the United Methodist Church, first in Evanston, Illinois, and then in Santa Monica, California. I was very interested in Christianity and spirituality for several years. I started to become disenchanted with the church for a variety of reasons, but the main reason I dissociated myself from it (passively, not actively) was the political and religious climate of the United States as it evolved during the 1990s. The so-called "Religious Right" so hijacked public discourse about religion and politics that it became impossible to call oneself a Christian without having people assume the worst - that you're pro-war, you hate gays, and you are just generally intolerant and humorless. To be fair, most of the Christians I know are very tolerant, even compassionate; generous and charitable; respectful of other faiths; concerned about social justice; and many of them are even anti-war.

My problem is with the kind of Christians you see on TV: the Sarah Palins and the Cynthia Davises of the world, and worst of all, the George W. Bushes of the world. These folks make Christianity look like the worst catastrophe that ever struck humankind. Sarah Palin believes that an Alaskan oil pipeline is "God's will;" she urges folks at her church to pray for the pipeline because "God's will has to be done." Also the Iraq War - that's right, "God's plan." See the Sarah Palin Church Videos on YouTube.

In my view, religion and politics should be kept completely separate, but as long as people are using the "Christian" label to get themselves elected to the White House, they should at least understand what Christ represented. Those people give Christianity a bad name.

Posted July 11, 2009

Happy May Day!

2009-05-06T05:44:00.001-07:00

We missed the Socialist demonstration in Berlin because we were in Hamburg over the weekend. At least they're keeping their message up to date:

From the Miscommunication Department

2009-05-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Spotted on the side of a delivery van in Hamburg, GERMANY, on May 3, 2009:

Um, don't they mean Afro-German??

Architectural History and Architects; Financial Crisis at Mizzou

2009-05-06T00:17:00.000-07:00

My Story Begins in Los Angeles and Tivoli, Italy, in 1993:

In the Spring of 1993 I heard a lecture by the architect Robert Mangurian, delivered at the J. Paul Getty Museum, back when there WAS only one J. Paul Getty Museum and it was in Malibu. His talk was on Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli; more to the point, it was about the work that he and his partner, Mary-Ann Ray (in Studio Works Architects), had been conducting at Hadrian’s Villa for the past eight years, with M.Arch students from SCI-Arc (the Southern California School of Architecture) where they both taught.

Robert said that he and Mary-Ann felt strongly that every architect should “adopt” a building – in this case a vast complex of buildings – as a sort of unofficial caretaker; that architects had a duty to maintain and preserve the great buildings of the past, the buildings that are inspirations to all architects. This kind of advice, given to an audience consisting largely of architecture students, was a message that I think was unique coming from a high-profile professional architect.

Hadrian’s Villa is an amazing complex of buildings, I could write tons on it – in fact I wrote my masters thesis on it – but that’s not my intention in this blog post. I had the great privilege of joining Robert and Mary-Ann and their students in the work on Hadrian’s Villa for two months in 1993, learning a great deal not only about Hadrian’s Villa but also about architectural culture, from almost a sociological point of view. But that’s not the point of this essay either. Instead I want to write about the importance of architectural history to architects, based on my own first-hand observations of the Hadrian’s Villa project.

That project entailed measuring and drawing plans for all structures built for Hadrian in the early second century at Tivoli, and surveying the site as a whole. This project took many, many years – ten or twelve, though I don’t know exactly how many. Another salient feature of Robert’s talk was the tension between the work of the architect and the work of archaeologists, as each profession approaches such an undertaking very differently. Robert told me that the archaeologists didn’t like him and didn’t approve of his and Mary-Ann’s methods. Based on my limited first-hand experiences with archaeologists (I have worked on three digs), I am not surprised; some of them can be quite territorial about their field, not to mention their specific findings.

What Robert and Mary-Ann were doing at Tivoli was more akin to the work of amateur archaeologists, who flourished long before archaeology became institutionalized as a profession and an academic discipline (and we all know that becoming a profession and a discipline means you have to lay exclusive claim to a field). Ever since the early 15th century, with the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi, architects have been making the pilgrimage to Rome to study, measure, and draw the architecture of the ancient Romans. The 16th-century architect Pirro Ligorio, who partly designed the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, had done excavations at Hadrian’s Villa and was, in fact, the “Superintendant of Ancient Monuments” under two popes.

Architecture Students and Architectural History:

While performing an internet search recently I ran across a website called DesignCommunity.com, a forum for discussing architecture. On Jan. 3, 2009, this question was posted by an architecture student: “Hi, I'm a new architecture student. I wonder why we need to study architecture history. Can somebody kindly explain how important it is to a [sic] architecture student?”

Of course it’s hard to read the tone of this message, but I think most architects and architectural historians familiar with architectural education would recognize in it the attitude found among some students who seem not to understand -- and hence not to care about -- the architectural history classes they are required to take; in my teaching of architectural history at the University of Missouri, I have had many students over the years question the necessity of any class that asks them to learn architectural history rather than teaching them to create their own designs. As if knowledge and practice are not intimately connected.

In contrast, the architecture grad students I got to know while working on the Hadrian’s Villa project shared Robert and Mary-Ann’s passion for architectural history. Conversations about the Villa ranged from the serious (“why do these two walls meet at an angle that is slightly less than 90 degrees?”) to the whimsical (“where would Hadrian have put his darkroom?”).

What would I say to this anonymous student on DesignCommunity.com? I would say that architects, more than any other group of people in the world, have a need to understand the myriad ways in which architecture has responded to the needs, desires, hopes, and fears of its creators, its patrons, and its users – including the ways a particular building’s response has been able to change over time. Architects need to understand that buildings can express power and privilege, or community, home, and inclusivity, and the whole gamut of ideals and ideologies. They need to understand how buildings have sheltered, comforted, inspired, propagandized to, and, yes, even oppressed their intended and unintended audiences. Designers need to think about all those aspects when they make their own buildings, or interiors: how does architecture speak to people? Who are their audiences, and what happens when they have conflicting needs?

Architectural History Shot Down by MU Architectural Studies Department, 2009:

In March 2009, the faculty of the Architectural Studies Department at the University of Missouri decided to discontinue one of its two architectural history courses that are required for all undergraduate majors. The course they are cancelling is Architectural Studies 4410, “the History of the Designed Environment to 1750” (beginning with ancient Egypt), which has the daunting task of covering 4,000 years of architecture, interior design, furniture, city planning, and landscape architecture. (Ironically it is still a requirement for students, it just isn’t going to be taught any more.) Having taught that course for six years running – every Fall semester from 2003 through 2008 – I admit I have a vested interest in its being offered. But the course’s being cancelled – not just this Fall but permanently – is a greater disservice to the students than to anyone else. This was a very bad decision by the faculty, and one that will have negative repercussions for hundreds of Architectural Studies students.

Students in Architectural Studies have two potential career paths. Many of them plan to be architects, and many of them go on to graduate school to pursue their Masters of Architecture degree. The others plan to be interior designers, and with a Bachelors degree in Architectural Studies, they are qualified to work in that field without further schooling, because the department is accredited by the Council on Interior Design Education (CIDA).

The Interior Design accreditation depends in part on students taking a full year of architectural history. Architecture schools also expect students entering graduate programs to have studied architectural history. But it doesn’t take a panel of experts or a graduate admissions board to apprehend the importance of learning about design history to future designers. These students, whether they plan to be architects or interior designers, will be contributing to culture; as one of my colleagues (not in the Architectural Studies department) has commented to me, how can they make culture if they don’t know about culture?

This decision by the department demonstrates that its faculty does not really value history as much as their own professional accreditation board thinks they should. The message this sends to their own students is also clear – that the students don’t really need to value history either. Such a message is one that many students are all too eager to accept, because the course is challenging. The class covers such a broad time frame, and such a wide range of topics, that students must work hard to master these many historical periods. It is a 4000-level class, an upper-division course intended for students in their 3rd or 4th year, so the level of difficulty is consistent with the expectations we have of advanced undergraduates; it is hard, but not too hard for the outstanding students that the University of Missouri and the Architectural Studies Department pride themselves on.

The chief reason cited for the course’s being cancelled is budget cuts. The current economic crisis seems to have triggered a budget crisis in the College of Human Environmental Sciences (HES), where Architectural Studies is housed. This strikes me as odd, since the president of the University himself has stated in emails to all faculty and staff that positions would NOT be cut. Deans in the College of Art and Sciences have also not cut faculty or staff. Ironically the College of HES, in order to save money, has decided not to re-hire non-tenure-track and adjunct faculty, who teach courses for a ridiculously low amount of money, in order to protect the jobs of tenure-track faculty who get paid at least three times as much to teach the same classes. It doesn’t make economic sense to me.

The secondary reason cited for the course’s being cancelled is to encourage students to go on the department’s European trip for two weeks in May. If they go on this trip, focusing on one or two countries (Spain in 2008, Italy in 2009, and other destinations in previous years), and if they write a paper, they can substitute that for the 16-week, 3-credit-hour course. At a time when many families are struggling just to send their kids to college, the department thinks students should spend a few thousand dollars to travel for two weeks with 35 classmates and a professor (whose trip is fully paid for by the students, although they might not realize this). Believe me, I’m all for students traveling and studying abroad. But for the same amount of money, with a backpack and a Eurail ticket, a student could spend two entire months in Europe travelling on their own; they would see a lot more, but wouldn’t get college credit for it. Going on the departmental trip means they get to spend two weeks with their classmates from the University of Missouri, and they get to see a lot of architecture; they never have to navigate a foreign city on their own, or overcome a language barrier, or encounter a foreign culture in a meaningful way. They remain insulated from the foreign culture by travelling as part of a large group of Americans (one kind of travel I do not recommend to anyone except retirees!).

The Architectural Studies Department bolsters the number of students signing up for the trip by telling them that if they go, they won’t have to take 4410 – a challenging upper-division architectural history course lasting an entire semester. This has been the case all along, even when 4410 was being offered. I am all for travel, believe me – travel has been one of the most important experiences in my own life and in my education as an art / architectural historian. But I strongly believe as well that a comprehensive study of history, taking in many different cultures, is essential. Two weeks in Europe is not really an adequate substitute.

Not to sound too cynical, but I might as well point out that the substitution of two weeks travelling in Europoe for 16 weeks learning about architectural history inside and out encourages students (those who can afford it) to buy their way out of a tough requirement. The faculty are saying look, you won't have to take this difficult architectural history course if your parents will pay for you to travel with us in Europe for two weeks. It is the most transparent example of catering to the "student-as-customer" mentality that so plagues the modern public university. No wonder those students who can't afford the trip to Europe resent having to take a challenging course that some of their fellow students get to opt out of.

Does This Make Financial Sense?

For those students who can’t afford the luxury of the departmental trip to Europe, the Architectural Studies Department will allow them to substitute a course from the Art History department to satisfy the requirement – since Architectural Studies won’t even offer the course they require their own students to take. That’s more money that goes to the Art History Department and the College of Arts and Sciences rather than to Architectural Studies and the College of Human Environmental Sciences. Go figure.

“To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.” – Daniel Libeskind

“...history is essential for architecture, because the architect, who must now deal with everything urban, will therefore always be dealing with historical problems -- with the past and, a function of the past, with the future. So the architect should be regarded as a kind of physical historian, because he constructs relationships across time: civilization in fact. And since civilization is based largely upon the capacity of human beings to remember, the architect builds visible history...” -- Vincent Scully, 1969

War Detritus

2009-05-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

Found in the Elbe River in Hamburg:

The theory behind this particular artifact is that during the war, a bomb hit an office building, and the heat fused the contents of a box of paper clips. It somehow made its way into the river, where it collected sediment that made it much heavier. Decades later it was found by a friend of my husband's cousins in Hamburg, in whose home it now resides.

Random Thoughts from Berlin

2009-04-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Things I Don’t Like About Europe:

(This is not a commentary on Germany per se, but is based on time spent in Germany, France, Italy, and England over the past 20 years.)

1. dog poop everywhere (on the sidewalks, in parks) – this is especially bad in Paris and Berlin. Generally I try to avoid saying I “hate” stuff, but this I really do hate. Why can't people just pick up after their dogs? And in the park? Next to the playground??

2. no clothes driers (you have to hang stuff up all around the apartment) (some people have driers, most do not)

3. no public drinking fountains, and at restaurants they don’t even give you free water to drink

4. pay toilets (but at least they usually have an attendant in them and are clean and well supplied)

Things I Like About Europe:

Pretty much everything else.

Seen / Scene in Berlin Recently:

(These two incidents happened when our friends were visiting from Geneva and we were spending a lot more time hanging around various parts of the city that we don’t normally frequent.)

1. At the Hackescher Markt: a man walks by wearing lion slippers over his shoes. He stops for a moment next to the building, removes the lion slippers, and places them on the ground. Then he walks away, leaving his lion slippers behind. Why was he wearing the lion slippers? Why did he leave them on the sidewalk outside the Hackescher Markt? I guess we’ll never know.

2. In Kreuzberg, walking along the canal: A woman is walking towards us in a slightly bizarre and weather-inappropriate outfit, I can’t describe it (I wasn’t paying close attention), but at the time I thought it was remarkably unflattering. Something like a very short formless dress and a formless jacket over it. But strangest of all, she was carrying a trumpet in her left hand. Not a trumpet case with an instrument inside it, just a trumpet. Not playing it, just carrying it.

This is one thing I love about living in a big city – the unexpected, the diverse, the spontaneous. After 6 years in Columbia, Missouri – even longer than that for my husband – we wanted to spend some time in a city again and experience that for a while. Hence we are in Berlin for 6 months, and those 6 months are passing all too quickly.

Sad Tourist

2009-04-26T15:03:00.001-07:00

Seen on April 23, 2009, outside the Pergamon Museum:

We're glad we weren't on this tour bus, but we can't imagine who would sign up for it.

Pergamon Museum, Berlin

2009-04-23T23:38:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to me!

This is where I spent my 45th birthday -- the Pergamon Museum. Fourteen years after visiting Pergamon in Turkey, I finally got to Berlin to see the giant altar -- an entire building, really -- that the Germans removed from its site and reconstructed here. The whole museum is named after it.

In fairness, one can't really say that the Germans "stole" it; they acquired it from the Ottoman Turks by an agreement (presumably a cash transaction). Still, it's pretty depressing to go all the way to Pergamon and find an big empty foundation slab where the Great Altar of Zeus is supposed to be. (Pergamon's well worth a visit even with the altar's absence, if you find yourself in Turkey.)

It was the same in Greece with the Parthenon statues (the "Elgin marbles," named after the man who "acquired" them), except that Greece is no longer part of the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Greek state wants the Elgin marbles back. (I would love to see that happen, but it's much less likely than the fall of the Berlin wall was.)

The Pergamon altar -- known as the Great Altar of Zeus -- is dedicated to all the Olympian gods; the enormous frieze surrounding the podium depicts the epic battle between the Olympian gods and the Titans (giants). Worshippers would climb this monumental staircase, and enter through the colonnades at the top to find the altar itself, surrounded by a portico and open to the sky.

The Germans -- who were heavily into classical archaeology and helped turn it into a discipline and a profession instead of just an amateur pursuit -- did much of the exploration of the Greek Hellenistic and Roman sites in Turkey and elsewhere. This museum in Berlin also has a very impressive gate structure from Miletus.

When you get to the top of the staircase, you pass through the double colonnade into a courtyard containing the actual altar. That court is surrounded by friezes representing the myth of Telephos, son of Hercules – one of many Greek myths. It’s about fate, seduction, attempted infanticide, intervention of the gods, incest barely averted – all the elements that make Greek mythology so compelling.

The Pergamon Museum does a good job of explaining the significance of both friezes for the kings of Pergamon, who used the stories to legitimize and reinforce their own right to rule.

"Dude, don't eat my head!"

Drink Beer, Not Wine

2009-04-23T13:21:00.001-07:00

Seen from a bus in Dresden:

This is the decorative front gable of a tavern. It shows a knight on horseback; on one side a pageboy of some sort kneels, offering him a glass of wine. On the other, a burgher-type man has handed the knight a glass of beer. The knight hoists the beer glass aloft, as if toasting us before he imbibes. The clear message: drink beer, not wine.

Subtler messages: beer is German, and beer is associated with the burgher class (middle to upper middle class). Is this a rejection of the upper classes (the aristocracy implied by the pageboy). Is it a rejection of French culture? (The pageboy's garb looks vaguely French to me.) I don't know -- but I was so intrigued by it that I got off the bus to take a picture.

Yenidze Cigarette Factory, Dresden

2009-04-23T02:04:00.000-07:00

This photo, taken from the streetcar, shows a famous Dresden landmark -- the Yenidze Cigarette Factory, built 1908-1909. Its style emulates a mosque with its "minaret" and a bulbous, pointed dome. This is an example of "orientalism" in architecture -- deliberately exotic, and turning Middle Eastern culture into a stereotype.

The Schloss Pillnitz, outside Dresden

2009-04-23T01:02:00.000-07:00

Ten kilometers (about 6 miles) east of Dresden is the Schloss Pillnitz, which was the summer palace of the Saxon monarchs, located in the little village of Pillnitz.

The Schloss sits directly on the Elbe, with vast grounds surrounding it, landscaped both in the formal French style and, in one corner, in the English landscape garden style.

The “English garden” included a small circular temple which was a copy of Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome – the English were very much the conduit for Italian Renaissance architecture throughout Europe, because of the popularity of their gardens and garden follies. The “English garden” was enthusiastically adopted in places like Germany and France, where the “French garden” (i.e., the formal garden) was the dominant type.

The grounds of the Schloss Pillnitz boast a camillia that is over 200 years old and 13.2 meters high. It was brought from Japan in 1776.

A flood in 2002 was the biggest one since 1845. The palace's location on the Elbe River makes it particularly susceptible to such disasters:

(Newspaper photo is courtesy of my husband's cousin Gero, who took us on the Dresden excursion.)

Dresden

2009-04-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

April 2-5, 2009

After two months in Berlin and our day-to-day activities (working, taking our son to and from school, etc.) we began an intense period of tourism, starting with a four-day visit to Saxony (eastern Germany near the Czech Republic) with visits to Dresden, Dessau, and Wörlitz. The city of Dresden was the seat of government of the Saxon kings in the 18th century, when they built lavish palaces and churches, and amassed impressive collections of art objects and curiosities.

Dresden is an amazing city, and definitely worth a visit. It clusters along both sides of the Elbe River, and the city preserves a wide green belt along both banks of the river for miles in each direction. We were in Dresden on a gorgeous, warm spring weekend, and these banks were filled with sunbathers and picnickers. It is rare to see so much prime real estate being left open for public enjoyment, and not grossly privatized and overdeveloped. The public transportation in Dresden is great, making it a very easy place to visit.

Our current six-month sojourn in Germany has been a real learning experience for me, because in the past I have been much more interested in Italy and the Mediterranean, France, and England (in that order). I had only spent 24 hours in Germany before this year, with a one-day visit to Stuttgart (in 1996) to see the 1927 housing exhibition called the Weissenhofsiedlung. (I also spent a week in Vienna in 1998, which was my main exposure to German-speaking culture before now.)

Dresden gave me a delightful introduction to the German Baroque, which was the architectural style favored by European monarchs in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the center of the Old City in Dresden is the palace of the Saxon princes and a number of other structures, the most impressive of which is called the Zwinger, built in an ostentatious and bombastic High Baroque style (which personally I find very appealing). Formerly a royal structure, the Zwinger now houses several museums, including the impressive Old Masters gallery, home of Raphael’s famous “Sistine Madonna.”

Of course Dresden was horribly destroyed in the Second World War. Tens of thousands of civilians perished in the Allied bombing of the city, an attack which took place after Germany’s defeat was imminent. (Civilian casualties have been estimated at anywhere between 25,000 and 250,000, according to Wikipedia.) The destruction of Dresden is widely regarded as a war crime, the subject of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (based on Vonnegut’s own experiences as an American prisoner of war in Dresden).

Overlaying the Baroque history of Dresden and its World War II trauma is the long period of DDR rule – the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic, or GDR, in English) – otherwise known as East Germany. The East Germans built tons and tons of ugly, enormous apartment houses and public buildings, the most banal kind of architecture imaginable. The East German government did not see fit to rebuild the city’s main cathedral, called the Frauenkirche (the Church of Our Lady).

Much of historic Dresden was rebuilt in the 1990s, after the reunification of Germany in 1989; it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although the rebuilt Frauenkirche incorporates as many stones as possible from the 18th-century one (they appear much darker than the new stones), the vast majority of it is from new materials.

Dresden also boasts much contemporary architecture, like this Deconstructivist fire escape.

By the way, the Frauenkirche was NOT destroyed directly by the bombing of Dresden; it collapsed later as the result of a chain reaction. Many Germans sought shelter inside the church during the bombing and they survived, the church did not collapse on top of them.

The Socialist government of the DDR was not very interested in restoring monuments from the feudal past or from the Church. However, they DID restore the Zwinger, which like the Frauenkirche is largely rebuilt from new materials. The Zwinger was and is a beloved Dresden landmark. A commemorative plaque on the Zwinger declares, “This masterpiece of Baroque art was destroyed by the Anglo-American terror attack of February 13, 1945.” It goes on to say that it was “lovingly reconstructed” by the DDR and the power of the workers. Its reconstruction was finished in 1964.

Besides this plaque, there is very little else in the city that commemorates or even mentions the widespread destruction of Dresden at the end of the war. History has a very strange status in Dresden – all the historical Baroque structures are reconstructions of the past two decades, while the great horror of the war that was experienced by so many in Dresden is almost completely erased. It’s a little strange.

Modern Ruins

Shown below: ruin of the "Orangerie." It's completely derelict, and this seems to be the only piece of the building that still remains; it's just down the road from the Zwinger. The old archaeologist in me couldn't resist investigating it, but I still haven't found out anything else about it.

Europe's Mistletoe Epidemic

2009-04-20T03:11:00.001-07:00

"I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus,
Underneath the mistletoe last night..."

Who would've thought that mistletoe was actually such a nefarious character, after all the fond Yuletide traditions and carols? I had heard it before -- that mistletoe's an insidious parasite that chokes trees and kills them -- but never really believed it. Now I've seen it for myself. In Saxony (southeast Germany) it's everywhere, hanging from trees in these spherical clumps like some kind of Dr. Seuss invention.

What's more surprising is that we saw mistletoe clumps all over Brittany too -- the north coast of France. It's quite widespread in two such disparate places. We certainly don't see it in Berlin, and I've never noticed it anywhere else until now. I'm surprised the USDA allows mistletoe to be sold all over the US at Christmas time, they should be concerned about the plant's incredible ability to spread itself far and wide. But then again, I always thought that stuff they sell in little plastic bags had to be fake...

Aerial Rotating House

2009-04-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog know that I am prone to posting somewhat random images from time to time, though usually they are related to art or architecture. This one is "Today's featured picture" on Wikipedia.

What is it? Here's the Wikipedia caption:

"Maison tournante aérienne" (aerial rotating house). One of Robida's drawings for his book Le Vingtième Siècle; a nineteenth century conception of life in the twentieth century. Ink over graphite underdrawing, c. 1883, digitally restored.

The artist is one Albert Robida, French, 1848-1926. I'm grateful to Wikipedia because without this pic of the day I never would have heard of this dude. He sounds really cool -- and this image reflects that fin-de-siecle tendency towards utopian imaginings of the future. But I'm afraid there is no such person as Albert Robida, just one of Wikipedia's elaborate April Fool's Day jokes.

(But it's a cool picture anyway.)