Campaign notes

Here are just a few of the more interesting discussions in blogs that I have found on what is currently happening in the presidential race, now that Obama has come out ahead in more primaries:

Derrick Ashong, who turns out to be an extremely smart and progressive musician (and part of the group Soulfege) is interviewed by a rather rude reporter about why he supports Obama. The reporter keeps cutting him off and pushing him for specifics, Derrick answers every question with a smile and a well-informed analysis. By the end of the conversation, the two are shaking hands.
UPDATE: Derrick responds to the enormous attention his interview got on YouTube.

MN Blue helps us understand what happened on Super Tuesday in a small town in the Iron Range of MN, an area one could call "middle America" in its mix of socially conservative economically liberal voters, influenced as much by personal relationships as by issues.

Al Giordano, publisher on Latin America from Narco News, blogs on the presidential race at The Field. Here's a post on foreign coverage of the race. The world is very invested in the outcome of our election, which will have a huge impact on the economy, the war, and the direction of environmental policies, among other issues.

Citizen Orange (via Nezua) analyzes the candidates from the perspective of analysts on both sides of immigration reform issues, both pro and con.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula is critical of the religiosity of Obama's speeches, but explains why he'll vote for him anyway.

The awesome Pam Spaulding helps us understand why the mainstream media pundits have it all wrong about what's happening in the race.

At Slaves of Academe, we find the usual beautiful writing and deep thinking about the politics of race and gender in the campaigns.

And what about John McCain? These two videos about the cost of the Iraq war and McCain's unwavering support of it remind us what is at stake in a Democratic victory in November:

Best chocolate cake EVAR

This is the best chocolate cake. We make it for every birthday and our guests fight over it. We have to make two. My mother used to sell cupcakes made with this recipe in her restaurant. It's easy enough to make so that even I can make it. When you add the boiling water at the end, it makes the batter look funny, but don't worry, it comes out rich and moist. The frosting is also great, but you can use whatever kind of frosting you like best.
Note to bakers in Spain: I have no idea what they call cake flour or confectioners sugar, but try to find the equivalent. I'm sure it exists.


Colorado Cache Chocolate Fudge Cake
Preheat over to 375 degrees

3 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 cup butter
2 1/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1 cup sour cream
1 cup boiling water

Melt the chocolate (best in a double boiler) and let cool. Sift flour, baking soda and salt together. Beat butter until soft. Add brown sugar and eggs, and beat until fluffy. Beat in vanilla and add cooled chocolate. Stir in dry ingredients, alternating with sour cream, beating well with a wooden spoon. Stir in boiling water. Pour into greased and floured 9" pans. Bake 25 minutes or until tests done (toothpick inserted in center comes out clean). Cool on baking rack.

Chocolate Butter Frosting

fills and frosts 2 8"-9" layers or a 13"x 9" cake

1/3 cup soft butter, room temperature
2 oz. unsalted unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 1/2 t. vanilla
about 2T milk.

Mix thoroughly the butter and cooled chocolate. Blend in sugar. Stir in vanilla and milk. Beat until frosting is smooth and spreadable.

For mocha butter: blend in 1 1/2 t. powdered instant coffee with sugar.

For cocoa butter: substitute 1/3 cup cocoa for the chocolate (never tried this one)

Woot!

Wow! a quarter of a million people showed up at caucuses last night in Minnesota. The prediction in the MN Daily was "Seventy thousand Minnesotans are expected to turn out for the DFL caucuses and 50,000 for the Republican caucuses." But in fact, it was more like around 200,000 DFLers and about 60,000 Republicans, according to MPR. Let's look at that number again: estimate 70,00o, actual turnout, over 200,000. This is in a state with a population about about four and a half million overall. The estimate is that 1 in 10 eligible voters came out, stood in lines, and cast a vote. One can be distrustful of politics as usual, but this is not business as usual! For the blow-by-blow national analysis of the whole shebang, Al Giordano at The Field (publisher of Narco News bulletin from Latin America) is both entertaining and accurate in his analysis.

As I was driving home from work yesterday, on my way to my precinct caucus, I could hear folks calling in to the public radio station about the lines, traffic, people leaving their cars by the side of the road to walk the rest of the way so their votes would be counted. The turnout of students on campus was HUGE. Both Clinton and Obama made visits to the Twin Cities over the weekend, and the viral ads had their effect, but the big story everywhere today is how people in every single county, not just the metro area, and of many different backgrounds spoke about being inspired to show up and vote by Obama's candidacy. In fact, David Brauer tells a great story about one of the Obama after parties, with some gentle mockery, but recognition that the "hopemongers" are not sitting at home:

So here's the lasting image from Barack Obama's Minnesota victory party: you stumble into Trocadero's, a downtown Minneapolis nightspot nearly as snazzy as the Illinois senator, and you notice very few people on what is usually a dance floor. The delirious masses, as it turns out, are all crammed on stage, backs turned, gazing up reverently at the big screen, swaying and singing to will.i.am's viral "Yes We Can" video.

In my precinct, the vote was 4 to 1 Obama, but then my precinct has the highest percentage of registered Democrats in the state, and tends to run very progressive candidates (Rep. Keith Ellison, state Rep. Hornstein, State Sen Scott Dibble). One important effect of greater voter turnout for the presidential race is that it spills over to the other candidates. We have an important Senate race going on. If DFL turnout at a CAUCUS (not even a primary) is almost 4 times higher than expected, in a state that usually has high turnout, then this will definitely have an effect on who the party endorses in more than one race. In fact, the undecided super-delegates, elected officials who have not yet endorsed anybody, are starting to say things like Tim Walz:

First-term congressman Tim Walz today endorsed Barack Obama's presidential bid.
In a release, Walz later said "Last night at the Democratic caucuses, the voters of southern Minnesota overwhelmingly supported Senator Barack Obama and his hopeful vision for positive change. As a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, I will honor their decision and support Senator Obama."

Whether Obama wins the nomination or not, we are done with the DNC catering to white men's supposed centrist views as the strategy for electoral success. Done.

Note to self: Mingus!

The Late Night Music Club is one of my favorite features over at one of that extremely useful political blog,Crooks and Liars. I go to C & L because the wonderful John Amato started posting video and audio of political stuff, in part as a way to keep the record straight. If someone claimed they'd never said something, he just pulled out the tape from the archive and posted it. C & L has gone on to become more than an archive, and I find it a great source of information. It has also attracted some great blogging partners, including Howie Klein, a DJ, record producer and label founder who was hugely active in the Bay Area scene in the late seventies and eighties when I was living there. He continues to work as a free speech/anti-censorship at his own blog Down with Tyranny! (which I'm not linking too now because something on it keeps freezing my browser).
Anyway, Howie tells stories of the musicians he's known, and last night, as an antidote to all the political ruckus, he posted a wonderful clip of Charles Mingus, one of my very favorite musicians ever. I need to acquire more Mingus music for my Ipod.

Caucus!

The caucuses in MN are part of "Super Tuesday" and I plan to attend the DFL (Democratic Farm-Labor) caucus in my precinct. I'm sure I'll see some of my neighbors there; in fact, I'm sure it will be packed. Because I am a certified nerd, I have been doing my homework on the positions of the Obama and Clinton at the site On the issues. It has extensive documentation of candidate statements and positions on the issues that the site has selected. Local races, not just national ones, are covered.

Naturally, I have also been looking at blogs, news sites, and YouTube mashup videos to dig up more info. Heh Heh.

wikimindmap

I stumbled across a tool called wikimindmap. I can search any version of wikipedia (by language) for a topic, and then display it along with all of its hyperlinks in this spidery kind of shape. If you click on one of the links, it moves it to the center (that is, it takes you to that topic, just as it would if you clicked on the link in the text of the wikipedia article). What this allows one to do is view a topic and its links only, in a non-linear, non-article format; I suppose one might like it as a form of skimming.

It's also a reminder that our interface is quite often a text that looks like the page of a book, but that the hypertext is a web of links, not a linear path from beginning to end. I don't know if I'll actually use this tool, but it's fun to play with. What I really should explore is one of the mindmapping tools, like Mind42 that are out there, many for free.

trip to Ireland: a note

By aggressively enforcing a steep tax on plastic bags, Ireland has almost eliminated their use. People use cloth bags, and it's not a big deal. but it took an aggressive Minister for the Environment who threatened to tax paper bags as well.
By the way, who speaks Irish ? The kids.

"Sweded": the new/old fan-film

I browse fimoculous* because Rex Sorgat collects all the year's end lists, and let's me know what latest pop culture trends are a-happenin'. This bit caught my eye: Michel Gondry (a director I like) has "sweded" the trailer of his new film Be Kind, Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. The idea is that that when two video stores clerks find that all their VHS tapes have accidentally been erased, they decide to remake the films. The lo-fi (low-tech, not quite DIY) results prove to be a hit with the customers.

But what is "sweded", you wonder? It's a word Jack Black's character uses to explain to his impatient customers why have to wait for the movies: they were "custom-made, Sweded" or, made in Sweden ("it's a far away and expensive country"). As part of the promotion for the movie, but also because Gondry's having fun with his fans, the website for the movie explains how to "swede" and posts YouTube clips. Now if you type sweded into YouTube you come up with the enthusiastic homemade versions of favorite movies that fans are posting as "sweded" versions ("hey, you mean we've been sweding since last year? sweet!"). The word "craptastic" is often used in association with these fan-made mash-ups, but in a good way.
This sweded LOTR features a great Gandalf voice and a few sly Harry Potter touches.


And now, because of following all the links about sweding, I found another fun pop culture blogger, this time in Ireland, at Monscooch.



*"What is this? A fimoculous is a micro-organism that consumes its own waste for sustenance. Fimoculli are therefore a self-perpetuating ecology. A mono-parasite, a homo-symbiosis, Fimoculous.com devours the filth expunged on the mediascape. (Oh, and it aggregates my life.)"

Read Bleak House by RSS feed!

I googled Literature 2.0 and found this post by Jakob Korab about a web site called Daily Lit that makes it possible for you to read books by email. You sign up for the RSS feed, and you get the book delivered to you in installments. Since Bleak House is in the public domain, I can read it for free. If I can spend five minutes looking a Cute Overload everday, I can spend five minutes reading some Dickens, no?

Tempting, tempting!

ETA: You can also read both parts of El Quijote in Spanish

Two elections

The landscape of the U.S. presidential election campaign is becoming less populated as candidates drop out: Kucinich was the one whose proposals most closely match my views (impeach now!) but I never expected him to gain major popular support; Giuliani is a fascistic creep, and I'm so glad he has dropped out; but John Edwards? I'm sorry he's gone. He had detailed proposals on health care, campaigned on issues of poverty, which need to be talked about but are getting lost in the "horse race" style of coverage we are subjected to. I thought his campaign pushed the others to be less evasive. The comment thread on the Crooks and Liar announcement (one of my favorite blogs for reporting on the political ins and outs) gives a sample of reactions among more lefty political junkies. Nezua from the Unapolagetic Mexican posts the text of an endorsment of Obama by the Mexican-AMerican Political Association (MAPA) that lists many of the concerns that we want to see addressed by the candidates, but that are seldom talked about in public in meaningful way.

I'm afraid we are in for several months of extremely irritating he said/she said bickering, in part because of the internal party struggles over delegates and the primary process, which most people don't understand, and which the press declines to explain adequately. But a lot of folks are fired up, so I refuse to be cynical.

There are other elections coming up: Spain will hold elections in March, and it's hard to predict which parties will come out on top. Since the system often requires that the major party make an alliance with a smaller one in order to govern, it's not just a question of winner takes all, but also how the smaller parties use the big ones to their strategic advantage.
eCuaderno.com's JL Oriheula has put up this link to a page on the General Elections in Spain, if you are interested in taking a break from the Hillary/Obama/McCain fest. This link presents the resources for citizens to not only follow the campaign, but interact with the democratic process online, what they are calling "ciberdemocracia", through all the Web 2.0 resources including flikr, google, youtube, social networking, etc. I am particularly interested in how many political figures are writing their own blogs, not just putting up sites run by a campaign.

Johnny Weir

St Paul hosted the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship event this past weekend. I have always enjoyed watching skating, and during the 2006 Olympics I especially noted the American skater Johnny Weir when he performed a routine called The Swan. He didn't start ice-skating until he was 12, but in a few years became three-time national champion and world competitor. He is known for his sheer talent, and his artistic, graceful and musical skating. Instead of just hustling around between big jumps, he includes lots of difficulty in all aspects of skating, as well as a level of style and fabulousness that is more commonly associated with the women skaters. This routine, Fallen Angels was something he and a pair of other Olympic skaters put together for the Tour of Champions--a program for three dancers that doesn't involve a furry costume!
He had a rough period, and decided to change coaches and focus on the next Olympics. He has been criticized for a lack of discipline and athleticism (which to some meant he needed to butch it up a little). This weekend, he won the short program and he and his main rival Evan Lycasek tied for total overall points, but because Evan won the long program (by a fraction of a point!), Weir came in second. He skated conservatively in some ways, but attempted the quad (the holy grail of men's skating!), and his fans adore him no matter what. He speaks some Japanese and Russian. He has matured in the last few years, and seemed to be genuinely centered and strong in both his programs this weekend.
ETA: great Johnny Weir-Mika mashup "Any Other World"

What is this "blogging" thing of which you speak?

I have failed miserably in my attempts to get my family to read or comment on my blog, even though I started it to share pictures and news with them and have BEGGED them to comment! Yoohoo! Mom? Sis? Daughter? Guys? Help me out here, give me a comment! Delurk already!

If you want to know more about the whole blogging phenomenon, Sarah Boxer has a great review at the New York Times Review of Books, with a list of several new books about blogs and blogging, and some choice quotes from bloggers. She gives a good explanation of what a blog is, what kinds of things make it fun, and what it can do that other kinds of writing can't. Of course there is much more to say on the matter, which is why all those people are writing all those books.
My favorite quotation is from Twisty, blogger at I Blame the Patriarchy, the first blog I started to read regularly and the blogger who inspired me to buy a digital camera so I could take pictures of food. Alas, Twisty seems to have lost interest in blogging, much to the sadness and dismay of her commentariat, who miss her compelling story of cancer treatment, her photos of food, her articulate and funny rants about radical feminism, and the bumptious community of commenters. Yeah, not everybody liked her, but I found her to be a consistently entertaining and articulate voice. She also had a reading club moment when she got a lot of people to read Shulamith Firestone (at their request) together. But she has more or less stopped posting, without formally announcing she's ending the blog. This happens. Blogging can be something people do for years, and then they decide, for good reasons (it's taking too much time, they got that book contract, they don't feel the urge any more) to stop. But quite often you can still read them in the archives.

Historian tells of being assaulted by Atlanta police for jaywalking

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is an Oxford don, a historian who holds the Principe de Asturias Chair at Tufts University and author of 19 books, who is respected around the world for his work. I happen to have assigned one of his articles for my students to read this week.

While attending a History conference in Atlanta, he crossed the street, on his way from one conference hotel to the other across the street, along with crowds of other conference participants. Apparently, the off-duty policeman who had been hired by the Hilton to direct people to the crosswalk was tired of being ignored by snotty history professors.

I'm posting the three parts of his interview on YouTube because he is a wonderful storyteller. Part 1 tells of his grievous offense (jaywalking and talking back)and how he was assaulted by the police and arrested before the horrified eyes of the other history professors crossing the road.

Part 2 tells of the eight hours he spent in the Atlanta detention center, his hearing before the judge on criminal charges, and his fears that this would affection his residence status:

Part 3 is where he reflects on the experience and utters the Spanish curse "Pleitos tengas y los ganes" to explain why he decided not to sue the city of Atlanta.

What is Web 2.0?

I'll be participating in a symposium on the impact of emerging digital technologies and social networking tools on politics, the arts, journalism, business and education. Here is some of my homework:

Un documental en castellano:


"The Machine is Using Us" is a very famous visual only presentation by Prof. Michael Wesch at Kansas State University. He shares his collective experiences in the classroom at mediatedcultures.net

This is hot.

Video remix of Aretha Franklin's Rock Steady.

C2003 Rock Steady (Tribal Mix) FlashFlood Ent.

Learning Japanese, again.

When I was 5,my father (a doctor in the Army at the time) was stationed in Japan. We lived there for four years, on an army base called Sagamihara. Everything on the base was done to minimize culture shock to those moving in and out, so we (as children) were very cut off from Japanese society. My father did learn to speak Japanese, and my mother did study Japanese arts, and we went on vacations and traveled, but for some reason my parents didn't decide to have us learn Japanese then. When we got back to the States, I was able to begin studying Japanese in high school, and later started taking classes while I was in graduate school. Unfortunately, I also had to satisfy a Latin requirement, and stopped taking Japanese to finish my degree. I've forgotten most of what I learned, but with my daughter's interest in anime and manga, and with a friend's experiences and knowledge of the language, I've been starting to remember.

The web is great for language learning. Here is a page I found that tells you what words are used for family members, or kinship terms. There are different words depending on whether you are talking about your own family (address terms) or someone else's (reference terms). Takasugu Shinji has a site for teaching yourself Japanese and there are also podcasts on ITunes.

Back to winter

Today the snow is squeaking when we walk, it's so dry. *queek queek queek* This Canadian podcast answers the question of why it makes that sound, after an obnoxious intro. Gotta love those Canadian O sounds!

My buddy Leo is so happy that I am back. Ana and Jose took great care of him, giving him lots of attention. There is a veritable shag rug of fur everywhere, but my Dyson Animal Hair vacuum will make short work of it--once I get a chance to use it! Maybe I should try this?

I taught my first two classes today, after correcting, printing and photocopying the syllabus for each one. I filled two grocery bags with junk mail from home and work. So much paper!

The car's battery was dead, but AAA jumped me and I got home fine last night. But it was dead again this morning, not a surprise really, so tomorrow I'll get it replaced. I took the express bus to campus, and I think I'll be taking the bus a lot more from now on. It stops a block away, takes about the same time as driving, but lets me off about a fifteen minute walk from my office. I can use the exercise--or rather my friend Mr. Belly could use it.

Leaving Cork

I return to Minneapolis today, accompanied by my new friend Mr. Belly. Four weeks of holiday feasting will do that to you. I enjoyed every minute of it. It's about 4:45 Am and I'm about to wait for a shuttle to the airport. Then it's Cork city-Amsterday, wait wait wait wait, then Amsterdam Minneapolis. Somewhere in the air I will live those seven hours difference in time zone, so even though I return ths evening, I'm rather sure my eyes will be spinning in my head. I must ransom my car from airport parking (a story, that one) and return to salute my furry friend, whose fur will have been deposited in a fine layer over every surface in my house.
Tomorrow is teaching day, so vaccuuming will probably have to wait. The conference was a total blast. I had such a good time, and feel refreshed and inspired.At the last minute I was able to join some folks on a little excursion to Blarney Castle, set in lovely grounds, and semi-ruined. yes, I kissed the Blarney Stone, not that I needed to, but hey. It was surprisingly scary! But I also saw snowdrops, daffodils, and azaleas, along with a huge Cedar tree. I cannot wait to return to Ireland. Our hosts Nuala and Jane were fantastic. I have eaten enough scones to last a lifetime.

On the road

My last night in Zaragoza. Tomorrow I'll take the train to Madrid and spend the night with some lovely friends who will be kind enough to help me get to the airport on time the next day.
I'll hang out in the Amsterdam airport for a few hours, then I'm off to Cork City, Ireland for four days, two of them for a conference. I am so thrilled to be visiting Ireland for the first time. It's had such a large place in my imagination all my life since my father's family is Irish, even though I never really knew them well.

Then it's back to Minneapolis, the snow, and a house that will surely be coated with a deep layer of cat hair.

1st anniversary and work

Today is Blas and Loren's first wedding anniversary! We will celebrate with some friends tonight. So I am working hard to finish up some projects before the dinner

I'm trying out a new (to me) web-based Course Management System (CMS) called Moodle. It is supported by the University, but is available for free more widely, and in many languages. One of the virtues of such a CMS is that I can give students access to articles, videos, and other material in a way that does not violate the Fair Use terms of copyright (because the site is only open to the participants). This means I can include more than books and article, and also that I can point students toward resources for research that exist online.

I decided to use Moodle instead of a previous type of CMS called WebVista because the interface (the instructions to the students, etc) can be set up in Spanish, not just English. It also has more tools of the type I am interested in; in addition to a discussion forum, for example, each student can also have a private blog, that I can view but other students cannot, that can serve as a journal. This way students can post to the forum and read each other's ideas, but also keep a journal of the type I used to have turn in in paper form. I've found that a journal with weekly entries is a great way to see if the students are doing the work I've assigned because they have to engage with it in order to write about it. The open discussion gives students a chance to talk to each other, in Spanish, outside of class but about class topics; they can use it to prepare for the discussion, develop ideas they'll use in their writing, and learn from each other's experiences and expertise, not just from me. Moodle also allows one to set up writing workshops where students can do peer review, form groups so students can work together online and develop multimedia projects that they can post for others (podcasts, powerpoint, video, text documents, images).

I'm trying to keep my sites simple and clean, since this is the first time I'm using them, and not load on to many bells and whistles. I don't want to create busywork for students, and I also need to be able to manage this effectively.

I've spent the last two days racing to put the finishing touches on the site because I now have to finish writing this paper for the conference I'm going to in Ireland (yay!) and all of this has to be done by Monday night because I'll be on the road until the night before classes start. I know there will be things to tweak on the sites, but they are more or less done, or done enough for now.

I'm working of finishing the paper, but I think I need to take a break, take a walk, or my brain will stop working.

Arcade Fire

I just fell in love with Arcade Fire's first CD, Funeral. Here's Arcade Fire performing Wake Up, with David Bowie. A French site I just discovered called La Blogotheque posts a film of Arcade Fire in Paris doing a "Takeaway Show" with one clip of a performance in an elevator!

Finally, you must play with their interactive video of the song Neon Bible. Go ahead, try it!

mmmm, bacon!

Keeping up with the primaries back in the U.S. while in Spain is one way to avoid doing class prep for next semester. But enough procrastination! I have to do some work today. But first, a bit I stole from dooce about one of our favorite foods. My daughter and I share a love of bacon.

Taj Mahal "Fishin' Blues"

John Lennon and his 40 favorite songs

Via Kottke's year-end round-up, I discovered a marvelous site called SmashingTelly which I immediately put in my Inspiration set of links. It gathers free, legally available television and video, often full-length documentaries. I just watched this wonderful documentary called John Lennon's jukebox. Here's the description:

"A few years back, a portable jukebox that had once belonged to John Lennon, in the 60’s was discovered. On it were Lennon’s hand written labels for his favorite 40 songs. This documentary is about those songs. Perfect."

There are bits of an interview with Lennon where he talks about specific licks or vocal bits he studied, imitated, used in his songs. There are snippets of the songs themselves, but the best part is the appearance of the musicians and songwriters talking about making the music, about the Beatles, about the influences of American R and B on the Beatles, about each other and their music. Lieber and Stoller make an appearance and have a lot of say on the matter. Be-Bop-a-Lula, Little Richard, the Isley Brothers: "they wanted to be US! they wanted to be like us." Not just black musicians--also West Texas harmonica player Delbert McClinton, Dylan, Donovan,
The musicians don't just talk about Lennon, they talk about each other, how they borrowed, changed, remade each other's sounds. Originally produced for PBS,
John Lennon's Jukebox also has a page with more on the songs, musicians and the scene.
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Pictures of the Cabalgata de reyes

In looking around for information on the Three Kings parade we saw last night, I stumbled across this marvelous blog, Aragón, where Celedonio García, a teacher, historian, and author of many books about a variety of subjects having to do with the popular traditions of Aragón, has posted his marvelous pictures of the parade. Since I forgot to bring my camera, you can go here to see pictures of the floats, the jugglers, the costumes. Unfortunately, the three kings do not appear, but I'll see if I can dig up some pictures from parades gone past.

Roscón de reyes

Thanks, Kitty, for this information on Twelfth Night, or Epiphany.

Here and there

A year ago in Minneapolis I took this picture of the berries next door. I love this color.

Here in Zaragoza the weather is ideal for the cabalgata de los reyes--the Three Kings parade. Yesterday we were visiting friends near a shopping mall, and saw the kids lined up to sit on the laps of the kings, all the last minute shoppers out looking for presents.I'm afraid I'm not able to do any more gift shopping--I'm shopped out. But the sales start this week, so it's not too late.

We will visit our next door neighbors, the lovely Marta and Chesús, bring them banana bread and give them some tea I brought from home. Chesús will tell me all about Ireland--he has a blog called Innisfree where I'm studying up.

I'm missing my kitty, but I know that Ana and José are taking good care of him!

Pauline Viardot

Pauline Viardot was the daughter of the most famous tenor in Paris, Manuel García. Her sister, María Malibran, was a huge opera star, who died at the age of 28 after a fall from a horse. Pauline, whose piano teacher was none other than Franz Liszt, was told by her mother that she was to sing instead of becoming a concert pianist, so she did. She became one of the most famous opera singers of the 19th century, moving Charles Dickens to tears. She married young, a man twenty years older than she was, who managed her career in her opera roles. After meeting Ivan Turgenev in Moscow, she was loved by him for the rest of her life. She was close friends with Georges Sand, Chopin, and other artists and musicians. Her husband and Turgenev both died the same year, and she lived until 1910, having become a teacher, passing down the method of her father. Marilyn Horne is among the many singers who continue to study the García method.

Horne was the narrator of Pauline's story for the concert "Pauline Viardot and Friends" at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. My mother and I went, and were thrilled. We both have great memories of having seen Marilyn Horne sing in Orlando Furioso by Vivaldi. The singers? Fredericka von Stade (I got to see her with Kiri Te Kanawa in the Marriage of Figaro!) Vladimir Chernov, Melody Moore. He was so expressive, with such a warm tone (reminding me a little of Tito Gobbi in some moments, but not quite as metallic). He had such interpretive expressiveness, especially in the Russian songs Viardot composed.
Moore was absolutely fabulous, inspiring prolonged ovations and sincere exclamations of praise from the veteran singers.

Viardot was a composer, whose work has been overlooked, but who is enjoying a revival now, in part due to efforts such as this. Here is Cecilia Bartolli singing Viardot's Havannaise (habañera), and a live performance: 

Link round-up

Some of the links on my blogroll are to places where I read good writing, keep in touch with friends, or get inspired in some way. And some are windows on worlds I'm interested in knowing more about because they do lots of link round-ups and turn me on to new stuff. Here are a few samples from today:

Anil Dash called my attention to response to a question about changing your mind. Note to self: remember to breathe!

I learn how a real music geek works in this post up at Apophenia. I marvel! I'm all happy that I finally figured out podcasts on my iPod!

Folks at MNSpeak turned me on to Brew52, tasting a local MN beer every week in 2008. Sounds like fun to me.

Lot's of lists at the end of the year. I like this on on Jason Kottke's blog, not least because he includes the car-sliding video.

Dialectology

I am not so good at recognizing the finer details of regional accents, but I find it fascinating. I absolutely loved the PBS series The Story of English. I didn't become a linguist because although I think it's fun and interesting, linguists need to be patient and precise, and those are not my strong points.

Since I didn't grow up in any one place, and heard many accents during my life, I never had the local accent. When we lived in El Paso, until I was five, I my mother would get exasperated when we would say "shigger" for sugar, and how we were made to marvel when Mrs. Heygood asked us "ha minny pinnies in a dahm? Tin!" In Japan, of course, the folks in the army who spoke English were from all over, and no one accent dominated. In San Francisco, where I went to Jr High and High School, a lot of people I knew spoke English accents from all over the world, not just all over the country. I do remember being told by someone who was actually born in SF that it was to be pronounced 'Samp'ncisco', not San Francico.

When I moved from California to Minnesota, I discovered that I HAD an accent because people would squint and say, "you're not from around here, are ya?" I know I've picked up some Minnesota sounds over the years, of the Praire Home companion variety. When I first took my baby girl to Spain, a graduate student from Madrid said, "Don't let her pick up the accent!" I had no idea what he was talking about, but when I asked around, I discovered that the regional accent of Aragón is sometimes used on TV in Spain to represent characters who are "country bumpkins." There IS a strong regional accent, sometimes affectionately called "maño" that I cannot imitate at all. (OJO: para mis lectores aragoneses, distingo entre el aragonés como lengua y el variante del castellanos que se llama "maño". Este es un tema que merece su propio post!)

Ron Sullivan over at Toad in the Hole posted a great clip where some out-of-towners are learning the finer points of the Scranton,PA speech patterns. As a language instructor, I truly appreciate the scenes of classroom dynamic.

Movies 2007

List of movies/TV DVDs I saw in 2007 (in reverse chronological order because I copied them from a link list I made with links to imdb that I'm too lazy to redo here). Obviously, Netflix made this quantity possible, but I saw a fair number of first run films and a few art house films (at the Walker and MSPFF). This list does not include the times another member of the household popped in a Miyazaki DVD we own for the twentieth time.

I started keeping this list before there was a widget, and I haven't figured out how to just copy the html directly from Blogger. Yet.

1. No Direction Home-Part 1
2. Juno
3. Zodiac
4. Wilde
5. Dan in Real Life
6. Serenity
7. Annie Lennox Live in the Park
8. Firefly
9. The Darjeeling Limited
10. Into the Wild
11. Roxanne
12. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
13. Across the Universe
14. Spirited Away
15. 3:10 to Yuma
16. Eastern Promises
17. Death at a Funeral
18. The Seventh Seal
19. Silver City
20. Becoming Jane
21. Stardust
22. Little Miss Sunshine
23. Hairspray
24. The Bourne Ulitmatum
25. Sunshine
26. César et Rosalie
27. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
28. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
29. Banlieue 13
30. Evening
31. X Files-Season One
32. Gilmore Girls-Season One
33. Girl with the Pearl Earring
34. You Kill Me
35. Bringing Out the Dead
36. Papurika
37. Once
38. Scotland PA
39. Zero Effect
40. Waitress
41. POTC: At World's End
42. Shrek III
43. Don Giovanni (Joseph Losey)
44. Shallow Grave
45. Red Road
46. La Doublure
47. Trainspotting
48. Spiderman III
49. MirrorMask
50. Sunday Bloody Sunday
51. A.I. (repeat)
52. Lagaan
53. Real Women Have Curves
54. The Wind that Shakes the Barley
55. Ferry Tales
56. No Direction Home
57. Infamous
58. Citizen Ruth
59. The Singing Detective
60. The Lives of Others
61. Capote
62. Elmer Gantry
63. Election
64. Music and Lyrics
65. Amazing Grace
66. In Order Not To Be Here
67. Genghis Blues
68. Zidane: A 21st centuryportrait
69. How Little We Know of our Neighbors
70. Breaking and Entering
71. It's Not My Memory of It
72. Stander
73. The Departed
74. Akeelah and the Bee
75. Spellbound
76. The Spirit of the Beehive
77. Children of Men
78. Dreamgirls
79. The Queen
80. El laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth
81. The Company of Wolves
82. Syriana
83. Volver
84. A.I.

my heart

Thinking of my all loved ones this New Year's Eve--I wish we could be together more often!

corazon

What's in the fridge before Christmas dinner in Zaragoza

There is a site called "What's in my fridge" that has pictures of exactly that: the contents of people's refrigerators, all over the world. Here is what was in the fridge before dinner was made for Nochebuena, Christmas Eve. On the left in back are the long razor clams, under them the crabs, then the langostinos and little clams on top of the mussels.

For the fruit salad, I cut up pineapple, oranges, apples, persimmons and a pomegranate, then added some orange juice and mosto.

Navidad

We've made the journey so many times, but there's always a wrinkle. This time it was the taxi that never came. We were waiting at my garage at work, where I could leave the car for free while I'm away, safe from being towed during "snow emergencies" (I just love that phrase). But the cab we called didn't come, and didn't come, and then it turned out to have arrived at the wrong address way across town. In order to make our flight, I drove to the airport and left the car in the rather expensive parking lot. But them's the breaks; we made it in time, there were no delays, even though flights were being canceled left and right due to storms in the rest of the country, and our transfer in Amsterdam went smoothly. It's just a long long trip. I had either seen or didn't want to see all the films on the personal video player, so I read a novel by Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net. I had read it when it first came out in 1988, when it was science fiction. Now, so many of the things he has predicted have come true (he makes his living as a "futurist" now) that it was extremely interesting to read it again.

Here in Zaragoza we had a lovely dinner last night, and everyone is gathering again for the midday meal. After the King's yearly speech at 9, it was time to eat. Quique outdid himself with the shellfish and fish: little sea snails steamed with a bay leaf, mussels, baby eels, giant prawns called langostinos, razor clams, and fish called lubina cooked in rock salt with potatoes and tomato. Everything was absolutely fresh, perfectly cooked, lightly seasoned so you could taste the different flavors of the seafood. The composed salad was a work of art. Of course there were also little aperitivos, and Florencio made sure we all cleaned our plates. We set the bowl of fruit on the table, but just looked at it and went straight to the turrón. In addition to the traditional almond nougat, there were various kind with chocolate, coconut, nuts. Rubén made a dessert with lemon sorbet and champagne put in a blender.

Today we will have more little canapés, little crabs called nécoras a fish/seafood broth, roasted squash, duck, a big fruit salad.

Everything is so expensive--the cost of living keeps going up here so fast. The joke making the rounds is that one of the agricultural ministers made a remark at an event promoting rabbit producers about how Spaniards should have rabbit as an alternative to more expensive dishes this Christmas.

This immediately became transformed into "Let them eat rabbit!"

and now everyone is making jokes about it.

Felices fiestas

Leaving winter behind...
Well, we are off to Zaragoza for the holidays. If we're lucky, we'll get one of those planes that has the personal movie screen and we can watch movies until our eyes boil over on the flight to Amsterdam. Then a quick hop to Madrid, with the hope that our bags make the flight with us. This time, instead of the metro-train-cab thing, we will be met by Blas and Loren who will drive us the 3 hours or so over the mountains, arriving just in time for Nochebuena and dinner for the family--Blas's parents, his brother Florencio and Angela, his sister Carmen and Quique and their children Alba and Ruben. I will be able to kick back while all the serious cooks in the family do their magic. Quique is the more adventerous chef, and he often handles the fancy composed salad and the seafood/shellfish. Florencio is great with meat, and Primi (Rosemary's yaya) always has some delicious caldo for Daniel's finicky stomach. There will be turrón, champagne, and probably some Christmas end-of-the-year special on TV. All this is just a warm-up for New Year's Eve, of course, and then there will be Reyes on Jan 6. I will smile, wash lots of dishes, and exclaim about how delicious everything is. My kind of holiday.

On a pain scale of 1-10, in which 10 is passing out, this was a 9

I"m too lazy to mess around with the template code to get the picture to line up in the header banner, but I decided to make a change.

Yesterday was my visit to the radiologist for the cortisone injection into the shoulder joint. Because I am allergic to iodides, and the tracing fluid has iodine in it, they decided to do the injection "by feel." They used the X-ray machine to locate the spot, drew an X, and then gave me a numbing agent. Then the doctor inserted the surgical needle. It hurt like hell, so he pulled it out and tried again. This time, he slipped it in the right spot, and pushed in the lidocaine and the meds. It's not a pleasant feeling, and they warned me that the joint capsule might hurt later because of the extra fluid, but we were all happy it seemed to work out, and that I didn't break out in hives or have an allergic attack.

I had to bring a driver, but I felt fine for the several hours afterward. Then the lidocaine wore off and I spent the rest of the evening in the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced in my life: worse than when I broke my foot, worse that the appendicitis, worse than childbirth (at least what I remember of it, because that memory of pain has faded, no doubt due to the intrathecal morphine I got at the end). I felt as if my entire arm and side were exploding with pain. No position made a difference. I could move it, but every move was agony. Since I had gone with some friends to see Sweeny Todd, I couldn't tell how much of my pain was physical and how much was psychic at having to watch Johnny Depp slit several throats in bloody close-up while singing about Joanna! Yikes. Talk about a nightmare. I love me some Tim Burton, but the throat-cutting was way beyond my gore tolerance level.

Once I got home, I called the after-hours nurse line to make sure that I wasn't having an allergic reaction (no problems breathing, no rash), took four aspirin and four sleeping pills and went to bed with an ice-pack. This morning, the agony is gone, it just hurts in a more normal way, as if I sprained something. They told me that I would have some discomfort, but they freakin' lied. They should have said, "Here, take this Vicodin, curl up in bed and be prepared for your entire right side to feel as if it is on fire." I'm still pissed that they didn't give me any pain-killers, but the worst is over. Now I have to see if the result is that I can increase my mobility by keeping up with my physical therapy routine. I refuse to think that this was a mistake, YET, but I have to wonder if he hit a nerve the first time he inserted the needle.

"Medieval Faire" in Portalrubio!

In the village of my daughter's ancestors, in Portalrubio, the community association sponsored a "feria medieval" this fall. It was like a mini Renaissance fesitval, with artisans, people in dress-up, activities for kids. The difference is that the village was really around in medieval times, and in many ways it probably hasn't changed that much. If you go to this link, scrolldown and click on the video!

More about frozen shoulder

Arrgh! the last push of the semester is always such a challenge! Although I have read the rough draft of all thirty senior projects in the last two weeks, I must reread them because they are often quite improved. I also promised I'd write comments for those who want them, and this time most of them want them. Then I have to find a balance between my good wishes for the nice folks who finished their degrees and my irritation at those who made the same mistakes I exhorted them not to make, didn't follow instructions, or in some other way got up my nose. I've found that I can manage to read two or three in a row, and then I must do something else. This week that something else has been going to a daily health appointment, physical therapy, the orthopedist, etc, to see how far I've come with my shoulder recovery.

The good news is that I have much more range of motion and less pain. The bad news is I still only have about half my range of motion, and a lot of pain. It's definitely frozen shoulder, or adhesive capsulitis, and I am scheduled to have a second cortisone injection in a few days, this time into a part of the joint that is harder to reach, so I have to go to radiology and find someone to drive me home (probably due to anaesthesia). Because I showed such marked improvement after the first injection, I'm very hopeful that this one will also make my recovery faster. I'm trying hard not to get down about the slowness of the process, which is just the nature of the recovery for this particular problem. It has been almost a year and a half since I started having these shoulder problems, and I miss dancing, biking, and being able to move my arms without pain. But I also just spoke to may sister who has rheumatoid arthritis, and is facing the choice of taking a very toxic medication if she wants to be able to walk very well, so I'm comparatively fortunate. My hope is that the time between the semesters will give me a break from some of the stress of work so I can rest up.

Poking around on the internet, I've learned that frozen shoulder, as oppose to rotator cuff impingement which was my earlier diagnosis, affects primarily women between the ages of 40-60, is often associated with diabetes (but all my blood work is normal), and is often of unknown cause. Of course! But it's likely that contracture, in part aggravated by subscapular trigger points, is a big part of it. In other words, I suspect that the underlying condition that causes the symptoms of fibromyalgia is a contributor, since the trigger points seem to be the result of contractures in locations other than the shoulder joint.

Memory Lane

Part 1/6

Part 2/6

Part 3/6

Part 4/6

Part 5/6

Part 6/6

Siouxsie and the Banshees

How the University Works--the big picture for the AFSCME strike

How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation is a book and a blog by Marc Bousquet. He brings a class analysis to the business of higher education as a workplace. He is also the editor of The Politics of Information, an e-book you can download and read at altx e-books
Here's the blurb for How the University Works, published by NYU Press:

This is the seamy underbelly of higher education — a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates all work long hours for fast-food wages.

Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses.

Burdened by debt, millions of undergraduates work multiple part-time jobs but quit before they earn a degree.

Meanwhile college presidents and basketball coaches rake in millions, even at schools where fewer than half of students are able to earn a degree in six years.

Assessing the costs of the corporate university at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of higher education.

I love Minnesota!

It is sunny and zero degrees Fahrenheit this morning. Time to break out the BIG coat the one that is like wearing a sleeping bag, and the big ugly knee high Sorrel boots i bought when I first moved here and didn't have a car. And the special mittens. I'm so glad I got the oil changed, the car checked out and washed yesterday. It will warm up to the toasty twenties in a few days, but the high today will probably be ten degrees.

I know this means a big storm somewhere else, and folks are having a hard time, but that purple bulge of cold air coming down from the North Pole is over our part of the weather map for a few days, so Minnesotans will all be smiling and there will be some "you think THIS is cold. Why I remember..." weather talk. Hey, they're doing it on the radio right now! The coldest time of the year is usually in January.

After about five years of relatively mild winters, now we are having some real cold before the holidays. Why, I remember that time I was taking the bus (no car) and got on the wrong bus and had to walk about a half a mile back to campus and it was -11. I wept bitter tears and they froze.

Oh yeah, just in case you forgot? we don't like your kind.

Just in case I'd forgotten what it was like to work in a hostile, women-hating, homophobic, racist climate, some kind soul saw fit to remind me by anonymously leaving me two photocopied hostile, women-hating, homophobic, racist articles, decrying the "corruption" of universities by women, gays, black people and leftists. This is not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. It's not random, because nobody else got them. I guess some people see me as very powerful, much more powerful than I actually think I am. Maybe I'm doing something right.

Dude is zany

The very first video I saw on the internet was Ze Frank's How to Dance Properly. I was a faithful viewer of the Ze Frank show. Alas, that project is over. But you can still watch episodes in the archives.
Inspired, no doubt, by Ze, are some of the most viewed videos on YouTube.
Evolution of Dance is one of the most viewed videos:



and we also like How to dance at a rave.

Merry mayhem with Beckett

Last night, the skies were clear and the temperatures went below zero. It was that kind of cold evening when your cheeks start to go numb. We went out because we were joining a crowd of fellow lovers of the work of Samuel Beckett for Beckett 101, an event in honor of the 101st anniversary of his birth. When I taught French many years ago, we used En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) as the first literary text the students read at the end of their second year. I think I taught it three times. Later I read one of his novels, Molloy, for a class, and became enamored of it as well. This was during a time when I was immersed in the works of high modernism, and Beckett appealed to me, although I never became a fanatic.

The Beckett fans, or "Beckett Heads" as Maria called us, were out in force last night. There was Guinness, Jameson's, beer and wine, dried fruit and nuts, cheese and bread (challah because it was Friday night), clementines and apples, dates and figs, and a giant sheet cake from the local grocery store with chocolate frosting and "I can't go on, I must go on" written on it. Our meeting place was one of those odd corners on campus that I had never seen before: a very old fashioned reading room of the type one sometimes discovers in odd nooks on campus, a wood-paneled room with round tables, study nooks, and a grand staircase leading up to a book gallery that ran around the upper level Large portraits of the doners looked down on the crowd. I think there must have been 60-70 people there, many of them students, others professors, and a few teenage kids who'd been kind enough to accompany their parents and participate in the readings (the Russian kids were the most Beckettian in their dress and demeanor!)

We began with a mass reading of the first scene of Waiting from Godot, with one half of the room taking the part of Vladimir and the other half Estragon. This got us warmed up for the main attraction, readings in 17 or 18 different languages. My dear friend Maria had sent out a call, and there were people who had volunteered to read the first or last scenes from Godot, passages from Watt, Krapp's Last Tape, and the last passage of The Unnamable in various languages. We proceeded in more-or-less alphabetical order: Bulgarian, Chinese and Japanese (alternating lines), Danish, English, Finnish, French, French and Latin, German, Greek (ancient) Hungarian, Irish and Korean, Mongolian, Papua New Guinea Talkpidgen, Russian, Spanish (us!), Swedish and Norwegian, Turkish and Urdu. I think I remembered all of them! Some people had done their own translations, as none existed in their language; a few people had memorized their parts, some acted out scenes while others just read. I had never heard several of these languages spoken before, and it was thrilling. Because many of us knew the texts intimately, and because we had all read one of them together, we could recognized and follow along with the shape of the text.
We ended with a mass reading of the end of the Unnameable, which was hilarious--some read along with the loudest voice, others read to themselves in their own rhythms, a few formed little groups that ended earlier or later than the group. Someone recorded the whole thing, and took picture--I hope to get to see them!

We had a few props--a branch for "the tree" that is part of the opening of Godot, a bowler hat that evoked the Chaplin/French clochard characters, even a tape deck for the two performers who did bits from Krapp's Last Tape. One reader had directed Godot in China, another was an actor who had performed in a version of Godot.

I was happy that my daughter was willing to come, and willing to stand up with me and read a scene in Spanish. We bought the souvenir T-shirt that has "I can't go on, I will go on" because she enjoyed the energy, the glorious sounds of all these languages, the enthusiasm and charm of each of the readers, and the chocolate cake.

"I had to get that anagram flame fiery!"

Featured on CitizenTube, the YouTube politics vlog
.
"If you anagram Presidential Campaign Diaries, it will spell out...."

ROFLMAO!

The collective imaginary: some anecdotes and scholarly events

This Halloween, my daughter and several friends continued their tradition of coming up with a group theme for trick or treating. The group is much bigger now, and included older and younger kids, so their efforts to decide by consensus were interesting to observe. They finally settled on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and picked their roles, came up with costumes, and gathered to get ready together at the friends' house that has become Halloween central. The book, and both movie versions were deemed acceptable sources of inspiration, and several kids had fun with the Ooompa Loompa possibilities. There was a Charlie and a Willy Wonka, and a few minor characters that the public might not have recognized, but that the kids knew very well. It was extraordinary to watch their process of coming to an agreement about the theme: first there were phone calls, email, and playdate consultations to brainstorm, then they all called a meeting to which their parents brought them. We, the parents, drank wine, yakked, and walked in and out of the living room, but basically stayed out of the way as they sat around and negotiated. When there was an impasse, smaller groups would split off and run upstairs to the attic to caucus. The objective was to figure out which shared literary and film combinations they all knew and could relate to: they'd already done Harry Potter and A Midsummer Night's Dream in previous years, to great success. This year's choices included Alice in Wonderland or Miyazaki anime films. The littler kids didn't know the Miyazaki stuff well enough to get excited about it, and one girl objected violently to Alice in Wonderland because in the book, there was a disparaging remark about pigs, and she likes pigs. Since they were operating by consensus and not a majority vote, she was able to stymie them for quite a while. Those who objected to Charlie (I can't remember why) finally gave in.

On Halloween, once they had all put on their costumes, we tried to take a group picture, but it proved difficult because someone had pulled up the YouTube Dan Meth video "Internet People," and all the kids were watching it and singing along. It combines a very catchy song with animated versions of some of the most popular or famous video clips of the last few years; (Leonardo Golden redid it with real clips). ALL the kids knew the song, and obviously got at least some if not all of the references it makes to popular videos or memes that circulate on the Internet. It struck me as they were singing along that their collective costuming and their participation in the YouTube imaginary were not that different, but what was noticeable was that the parents could "get" the themes they were coming up with for costumes, but only one or two of us were able to get the references in the video clip. I was able to catch a lot of them mainly because I've been making a conscious effort over the last two years to ride this wave so that I know what the kids are talking about (and I include my students in this group). Besides, I've always been a pop culture junkie, and now this has turned into a scholarly interest; my next conference presentation will be about the way Mexican writers and artists are using digital media, blogging, etc, to do more or less what my kid and here friends are doing: work together on a theme, create new performances together that reference wider cultural phenomenon, negotiate them, play with them, and then meet up in real life to share them with others.

The scholarly version of this Halloween "conference" is the upcoming ROFLCon, organized by a group of folks, some of whom are affiliated with the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and coming in April. They are trying to get all the folks associated with widespread memes and viral videos to attend. One of their posts turned me on to this compilation song We Didn't Start the Viral which, like Internet People, registers the Jokes-in-common that are one phenomenon of our new collective imaginary.


ETA: This video is funny, but the comments are all about chocolate rain!

Blade Runner 25 years later

I've been on a kick with trying to remember those "sea change" moments or the pre-digital era. I have been reading science fiction since I was a lonely nerdly junior high school kid. The extrapolation of existing scientific or political or anthropological frameworks to imagine alternative worlds has always held as much fascination to me as the reimagination of the past. I remember the whole "cyberpunk" moment, as well as other shifts in the cultural imagination that were registered by science fiction and fantasy writers.

Wired has an interview with Ridley Scott about his definitive final director's cut of Blade Runner. Ultimate fan site BRmoviec.om has every detail about all the versions of the film, the Philip K. Dick story that inspired it.

Visually, Scott, along with writer William Gibson, cite Moebius (french artist Jean Girard) as a major visual influence.

Byrne/Eno

Crooks and Liars, one of my daily stops on the blogroll, features a Late Night Music club, with regular contributions from Howie Klein (super influential founder of 415 records, music producer, DJ, music chronicler,and blog host of Down with Tyranny!). He posted a cut from Brian Eno and David Byrne's 1981 collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. This album was absolutely ground-breaking in its use of sampling, in the pre-digital era, especially in its use of sounds produced with objects and voices found on the radio. Like many others, I played it over and over: it was hypnotic, rhythmic, like tuning in to the radio late at night and hearing several stations at once. It's right up there with Eno's Another Green World as one of my favorite musical events of all time.

In 2006, Byrne and Eno released a new version of the record, with added tracks. The also have put up a site where the entire album and assoicated videos, interviews and press are all available through a Creative Commons license for download, remixing, and sharing. What generosity!

flarf flarf flarf spimes

Do not read or listen if you are easily offended. No, really, I mean it.


intentionally bad poetry + ludicrous obscenity + the Internets= flarf

The Double-Tongued Dictionary has an entry on flarf.


Gary Sullivan (no, not that Gary Sullivan)tells us about flarf in Jacket Magazine.

Listen to the MPR podcast about flarf

Charles Bernstein, poet and scholar, teaches about flarf.

BoingBoing posts about flarf.

Science fiction writer and for real prescient dude Bruce Sterling discovers flarf.

He is the guy who thought up SPIMES.

On alienation and faculty life

In his blog "Reality Check"John Lombardi, one of the academic bloggers who writes regularly for Inside Higher Ed, has an extremely smart piece called Deconstructing Faculty Work on the major changes that have occurred in academic life and the ways the institutions are measuring our "productivity." He shows how the life of the tenured professor has been reconceived around the metrics of the faculty activity report, and how this has changed relationship between tenured faculty and non-tenured, or contingent, faculty. I think he is absolutely right about how this change is redefining our entire enterprise, affecting the way we teach, the way we conduct research, and how the institution is forcing us to comply. What he doesn't mention is the toll this taking on the mental and physical health of people who have made a lifetime commitment to the academic life under an older model, one which we internalized in order to achieve success in a highly competitive and insecure world.
Yesterday I had an argument with colleagues about how the College was dictating the content and standards of our first year language courses, how the fear of bad student evaluations has warped the way our non-tenured track faculty teach, and the impact this has had on the quality of the preparation of our students.
If the College wants us to dumb down our language courses so the non-majors who are only taking the language to satisfy their language requirements don't get mad, if our third-year students are being taught by instructors who are afraid to hold them to higher standards because they'll get dinged on evaluations, and if our faculty are so unaware of this dynamic that they think they can redesign the curriculum AS IF our students were of the same quality as our aspirational peers (those institutions where we got our degrees) then the experience of teaching our under-prepared students is going to be extremely frustrating.
I highly recommend reading it to understand the disconnect between what most of us were trained to expect and what our jobs really are. We will either take this change into account as we plan our curriculum and think about our work, or we will be buffeted by these winds.

For the institutions, however, the deconstruction of faculty work offered a great incentive to reduce their commitment to an inflexible work force of tenured faculty and increase their investment in short-term, highly efficient faculty dedicated to specific purposes for specific periods of time and whose productivity and performance could be reliably maintained. The argument about whether it’s better to have part-time or full-time contingent faculty is surely important, but it may obscure the remarkable transformation of much academic commitment from an investment in a person who produces many products over a lifetime to the investment in specific products that ensure the competitive position of the employing institution.

Muffin is a star!

Muffin is our guinea pig in Zaragoza. She (we think she is a she) is much plumper than she was before she spent several months being cared for by Daniel, a friend from school. Apparently, she was very well fed, because now she says "mweep mweep mweep!" every time someone opens the fridge. If you look closely, you can see her little guinea pig toes.

Two laughs a day, guaranteed

I can has cheezburger? and Cute Overload

Saludos zaragozanos

They don't have Thanksgiving in Spain, but we got a message from there just the same. Alas, the store was out of brussel sprouts! But it was full of happy people, humming and anticipating their wonderful meals. So I've made a side dish of chard, mushrooms, with raisins and pine nuts instead, along with my mother's fresh cranberry sauce. If my daughter doesn't stop sneaking tastes of the cranberries, there won't be enough to take to the potluck!

Here is the voice I remember when I'm in the kitchen, because my mother and I always watched Julia Child.

Brussel sprouts

The dish I've been asked to bring to the Thanksgiving potluck is Brussel Sprouts, one of my favorites, and one we always prepared in my family.
I can't decide if I want to use this recipe by Deborah Madison, as recommended on The Splendid Table, which does not have chestnuts, or this one, from Domino magazine, in which the brussel sprouts are roasted instead of boiled. Either way, I'll be off to the market to buy enough to serve twenty people (that's a lot of sprouts!). When I was a kid, it was my job to cut the X in the chestnuts and then peel them after they were roasted. It can be a tedious job, which is why I'm not sure if I'll do it, but oh, do I love them!

Do you have a dish that must appear on your Thanksgiving table? corn pudding is another one we always used to make.

La grande bouffe

My dear friend and sister in epicurean delight treated me to the meal of a lifetime for my 50th birthday (which I will be celebrating until the end of the month). Thank you, thank you!

La Belle Vie, Chef's tasting menu

(little gougere to start, and a sweet fresh scallop for an amuse-guele)

Blue Prawn Ravioli with
Fennel, Tomato and Pernod (just one raviolo, but the prawn was fresh and perfect)

Sautéed Branzino with White Asparagus,
Jerusalem Artichokes and Trout Roe

Pan-Roasted Poussin with Polenta Fondue
Buttercup Squash and Wild Mushrooms

Three Preparations of Rabbit with
Porcini Mushrooms and Balsamic Vinegar

Grilled Lamb Ribeye with Truffled
Turnip Greens and Garnet Yams

Seckel Pear Tart with
Barkham Blue Ice Cream
and Caramelized Onion

Concord Grape Granita
with Goat’s Milk Blancmange

Olive Oil Cake with Heirloom
Apples and Apple Sherbet

Teeny tiny portions, each perfectly prepared.

Otra vez Frida

Judy Arginteau has a great piece in MinnPost about the Frida Kahlo show at the Walker and the Georgia O'Keeffe show at the MIA. I've seen the O'Keeffe show twice now, and I went to the opening night party for the Frida show. I even got to see her art, in spite of the crush of people.

Here are some more fragments of film with Frida and Diego:

A clip from the 1983 film Frida: naturaleza viva, which I still haven't seen:

and one of many photo-homenajes, this one with music by Lila Downs: