9-30-2010 0725 Addis Ababa. And beyond that, I am not sure. In an apartment with bare walls and individual rooms labeled with large Roman letters. I am "B". Polished large format polished stone pavers, flat plaster walls. But worked into it are at least the segments of roman columns,complete with capitals..but no pediments. Did I get that right? Its quite elegant, and of course, unloved and unlived in, as most transient places are. So I will love it.
Lufthansa Business Class is definitely another world, including the strange breadbasket like pods that enclose the adjustable seats and the video monitor assemblage. I think I finally figured out how to stop the seat controls from bullying me into strange positions of its own choosing. And saw an amazing French version of 'Ocean'...all of the best footages of the diving gannets, the feeding humpbacks, but also of the slaughter of porpoises and sharks, and details of how who eats whom int he smaller worlds of cuttlefishes and mantis shrimps. It wasnt until we were landing that there was any view. Ethiopia from the first air view was very green, and well tended, but without the lights and highway activity of the first world. The airport no longer has the submachine guns it did in the 70's, when we tried to visit on our trip home from Dar es Salaam. Sala had just read Moorhead's books, and wanted to follow the Nile home to the Mediterranean,
And later today I will research the origins of the Blue Nile, where to find Lucy A. Afarensis, and perhaps even do some work.
And more about both the ancient and modern history of this extraordinary country.
Impressions gleaned from night arrivals. The smell of wood fires. Gentle temperatures. Double handed shakes. Smiling faces. People who all look like Ethiopians. Like Sala. Not being sure about the water. Being pretty sure about no to the lettuce. A begger with no legs. Three varieties of peanut butter to choose from. Nice to see Kevin, meet Bob.
This should really be a day of listening. Of reflection. Of remembering how delicate first encounters really are.
I know that what I have to offer is worth having. That the methods of teaching I have learned really are a good way of communicating the kind of professional attitudes that most people would like their health provider to have, and that most nations would like their health workforce to have. And I suspect that most of them are so culture bound that I cannot even begin to understand the extent of the problem. And so as usual the only way in is to listen. And of course, watch, smell, taste, and even, cautiously, feel.
Thats why the Ahmaric handshake, with one hand, but with the left gently restraining the reaching right, is quite nice.
Ah, what an amazing world.
Dehna hun.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Ethiopia 2010 Day 1, Frankfurt
9-29-2010 Business Lounge, Frankfurt am Mainz, Germany 0705 local time, O dark Hundred back in Woods Hole.
I feel incredibly privileged, to be retracing how it all happened. In heading down the Mainz, the Rhur, The Rhone, The Rhine, or for that matter the Vistula, the Volga, or the Indus, crossing the Middle East and then heading up the confluent Nile to Khartoum, where the White goes West towards Lake Victoria, and the Blue heads into Ethiopia and the Rift Valley, I will be going home. Last I heard, the DNA was confirming the legends and the bones. Lucy and her kind were our Grands, and as we stumbled off through that genetically narrow neck of land called the Horn of Africa, we were beginning this great adventure that I have been privileged to be part of. Yes, my brothers and sisters, we were all there, we can’t escape it. I know, the ‘it’ I am referring to, that we are all experiencing, some kind of irresponsible cartoon archetypal theatre of male longings, of testosterone driven lustings for impossible feats of strength. Piles of heads in Samothrace. Heaps of bodies in Judea. Widowed, raped and otherwise abused better halfs left to die in the dust. And its also cuneiform alphabets, hospitals with sanitary facilities in Arabia when Europeans were blood letting in pest houses. Its also Shackleton’s Boat Journey, its Hilary and Tenzing, its that woman with the camel and the dog crossing the Outback. It’s the great adventure to save all beings, to leap into the middle of the blaze of pain and suffering and by enduring, transcend it. It’s the worldly buddhas, the prophets, the true saints, the buffoons and jongleurs. It’s this massive experiment in diversity and divinity that we are all born into, and die out of. Yes, privileged is the right word, but with my brain feeling a little scratchy after this overnight Eastward flight, I am very thankful for the Business Class Lufthansa lounge with its plug ins (but bring your two prong adapter), its hot milk on demand, and its relative quiet.
I hope you have all experienced swimming in a phosphorescent sea. ‘D’you fancy a swim?’ said Ian, as the blueberry pie and icecream dessert was finishing up at Ellies house. Ian lives in London, and is generally up for anything. ‘I’ve been swimming three times today, but not at night’, he went on, ‘do you reckon there’s any of that phosphorescence left?’
Fair question. The waters of Vineyard Sound And Buzzards Bay off Woods Hole clear rapidly this time of year, and most of what turns it murky in the summer is animals like noctiluca gonyalax, (little green blobs) or mneniopsis (1-2 inch blue green blobs); in reglar English; phosphorescence. Exactly what the survival advantage of lighting up when you are disturbed might be isn’t totally clear to me, but it’s gotta be there. With fireflies, it’s definitely sex, but compared to these guys, fireflies are Einsteins. Their light organ, studied by among others our late next door neighbors Elizabeth and John Buck and by my first biology teacher, Jim Case, runs on a integrated chemical process involving a special protein, luciferin, and an enzyme that produces the chemical change that emits photons…aka light. The little oceanic guys, the ones that Ian is hoping to encounter as we head for the beach, use a completely different mechanism. Calcium, that stuff we have so much of in bones, and so little of in the reactive cells of the softer parts of the body, is the trigger. When special membrane bound proteins that are sensitive to movement let it enter, the calcium activates conformation changes in a protein called aequorin that spin off the protons, producing a (usually) blueish light. What the Nobel prize last year was awarded for, however, was not this first part, but for an embellishment; Flourescent Green Protein ( FGP). Turns out that many oceanic phosphorescers enhance their emissions by having a protein that, when activated by the aequorin process light, converts the light to a slightly different wavelength, producing all kinds of color variations. Well, once you got a protein you can decode and identify the gene. And once you got a gene, you can add it to a convenient virus and transfect it into pretty much any cell you like. Green glowing mice. Red glowing presynaptic sympathetic neurons. A whole nervous system in full living function mapped out by these added color tags. Look for it in the coming years, as it helps unravel the causalities that, eventually, will crack the big causality of them all. Yes my friends, I am talking about CONCIOUSNESS…what Walter famously defined to me as “Something that I have, and I hope you do, too!” . So far, like a persistently evasive Theorem of Fermat, any attempt to make a causal link between brain and mind has fallen onto one of the pits of despond or horns of dilemma that lurk in these philosophical realms.
The path to the beach was dimly visible, winding through low brush under a scattering of trees. We crossed the clunky wooden bridge across the decorative pond that’s been made of a natural vernal pothole, originally sculpted out by the melting ice of a Laurentian glacier that visited the cape ..what…10,000 years ago? That’s chicken feed, of course, compared to the 3 million years of Ethiopian History. (OK, ‘Lucy’ is about 3.5 million, H. Sapiens was ubiquitous in central Africa by 150,000, and the big move out took place about 70,000 ago…) As the ice retreated, Vineyard Sound must have been a dry plain between the high ground of Cape Cod and Marthas Vineyard. Later, with the melting, we have today’s beach. Crossing the sand, the moon was dimly visible behind clouds. It was mid high tide…not so far to walk on the rocks. Shucked off clothes, aware but only just of our nudity, we crinkled over the knobbly rocks, and half stumbled half dove in. OMG!!! A little bit like those space movies where the stars come at you. A little bit like fireworks. But these guys are exploding wetly, noiselessly, into greens and yellows and blues right against your cornea…you feel the faint hit as you might feel the tension of a spider web across your morning walk. Take a breath, dive down, reach out in front and marvel at your hands and arms lit up in fire, visually tingling in contact of all those little dinoflagelates. And just to avoid being boring, there are the blobs of jellyfish, their light blooping into a big shuddering response, their feel completely tactile and long enough to have a real feel of night. The watertemperature was just on the edge of cold…keep moving. Deep enough so that to find the bottom I had to dive hard, and when I did find it was lovely mushly grainy sand. Not a single shark, barracuda, or Thing That Goes Bump In The Night to be felt , or seen…but the possibility adds to the intensity of the experience. Just waves and waves of light, every movement delineated, choreographed really, by all the bioluminescent bugglets. Good thought, IAN, think I, drying off on the beach, cold, but truly lit up by the experience. And so off to bed. With the doglet Fuji gradually dragging more and more covers down her way, until Sala and I are clinging together and she is happily sweltering down near our feel. And so up in the morning, and a thousand tasks later, to the airport and into the sky. And so last night, curled up in my sleeping pod in Business Class on Lufthansa, I could reach out, again, and touch the fire.
Oh Kevin, how wonderful Business upgrades, and how terrible the thought of the inevitable future returns to economy class. The epic battle with the controls for my sleeping couch, the agonizing decisions over the three possible starters, entrees, and deserts, to say nothing of wines and coffees, and the watching of Fabulous Fox on my very own video machine…it was all part of the privilege that comes with money. How easily my loyalties are purchased. If we all have a price, I’ve found mind.
So, why Ethiopia? Because Kevin decided, several years ago, that it would be a good thing to help people developing medical education curricula in Africa with an understanding that we thought we had arrived at; Inquiry Directed learning processes are a better way to develop an effective health workforce that will really understand at many levels the enormous public health challenge, and have the tools, on many levels, to both combat the AIDS + tB that is scourging its away around the highway communities of North Africa right now, and to lay a solid groundwork to mitigate the horrendous famines that will otherwise be the sure result of global climate change.
No, Inquiry Directed Learning cannot undo global climate change. But the processes that are integral to IDL, particularly student centered, problem based, small group process, are so effective at both helping students learn the nuts and bolts, but also to learn the curriculum of ethics, communications, professionalism, diversity, and public health that until recently were generally denoted as the ‘hidden curriculum’, and were expected to be learned from sullen sleepy junior residents or time bound attendings.
So that’s what our little team is going to Addis Ababa to engage. Can a country that needs health workers at all levels think big enough to devote resources to a massive training and retraining of medical personell in a whole new way of thinking of themselves in relation to their society? Hmmm…
Before I plunge into that, however,I want to return to my familiar theme of domestic bliss. As in; how to achieve domestic bliss. Its becoming more and more obvious. Like, in neon lights. Like written on the board in Times Square. Like right in front of your face. Like love the one you’re with. Ready? OK, its simple. When Sala asks me a question, I should just answer the damm question, rather than doing all the other artful and brutal things I do to take over, reinterpret, mis-hear, ignore, or lazily do all of the above.
So. I will be reflecting on this newly learned truth, and looking forward to applying it on this trip, and, eventually, with Sala.
And now, the sun is finally rising over Frankfurt, the rain has passed, and its time to stagger over for another coffee and face the fact that my connection to Addis still doesn’t leave for 3 hours.
Wiedersehen
Alan,
I feel incredibly privileged, to be retracing how it all happened. In heading down the Mainz, the Rhur, The Rhone, The Rhine, or for that matter the Vistula, the Volga, or the Indus, crossing the Middle East and then heading up the confluent Nile to Khartoum, where the White goes West towards Lake Victoria, and the Blue heads into Ethiopia and the Rift Valley, I will be going home. Last I heard, the DNA was confirming the legends and the bones. Lucy and her kind were our Grands, and as we stumbled off through that genetically narrow neck of land called the Horn of Africa, we were beginning this great adventure that I have been privileged to be part of. Yes, my brothers and sisters, we were all there, we can’t escape it. I know, the ‘it’ I am referring to, that we are all experiencing, some kind of irresponsible cartoon archetypal theatre of male longings, of testosterone driven lustings for impossible feats of strength. Piles of heads in Samothrace. Heaps of bodies in Judea. Widowed, raped and otherwise abused better halfs left to die in the dust. And its also cuneiform alphabets, hospitals with sanitary facilities in Arabia when Europeans were blood letting in pest houses. Its also Shackleton’s Boat Journey, its Hilary and Tenzing, its that woman with the camel and the dog crossing the Outback. It’s the great adventure to save all beings, to leap into the middle of the blaze of pain and suffering and by enduring, transcend it. It’s the worldly buddhas, the prophets, the true saints, the buffoons and jongleurs. It’s this massive experiment in diversity and divinity that we are all born into, and die out of. Yes, privileged is the right word, but with my brain feeling a little scratchy after this overnight Eastward flight, I am very thankful for the Business Class Lufthansa lounge with its plug ins (but bring your two prong adapter), its hot milk on demand, and its relative quiet.
I hope you have all experienced swimming in a phosphorescent sea. ‘D’you fancy a swim?’ said Ian, as the blueberry pie and icecream dessert was finishing up at Ellies house. Ian lives in London, and is generally up for anything. ‘I’ve been swimming three times today, but not at night’, he went on, ‘do you reckon there’s any of that phosphorescence left?’
Fair question. The waters of Vineyard Sound And Buzzards Bay off Woods Hole clear rapidly this time of year, and most of what turns it murky in the summer is animals like noctiluca gonyalax, (little green blobs) or mneniopsis (1-2 inch blue green blobs); in reglar English; phosphorescence. Exactly what the survival advantage of lighting up when you are disturbed might be isn’t totally clear to me, but it’s gotta be there. With fireflies, it’s definitely sex, but compared to these guys, fireflies are Einsteins. Their light organ, studied by among others our late next door neighbors Elizabeth and John Buck and by my first biology teacher, Jim Case, runs on a integrated chemical process involving a special protein, luciferin, and an enzyme that produces the chemical change that emits photons…aka light. The little oceanic guys, the ones that Ian is hoping to encounter as we head for the beach, use a completely different mechanism. Calcium, that stuff we have so much of in bones, and so little of in the reactive cells of the softer parts of the body, is the trigger. When special membrane bound proteins that are sensitive to movement let it enter, the calcium activates conformation changes in a protein called aequorin that spin off the protons, producing a (usually) blueish light. What the Nobel prize last year was awarded for, however, was not this first part, but for an embellishment; Flourescent Green Protein ( FGP). Turns out that many oceanic phosphorescers enhance their emissions by having a protein that, when activated by the aequorin process light, converts the light to a slightly different wavelength, producing all kinds of color variations. Well, once you got a protein you can decode and identify the gene. And once you got a gene, you can add it to a convenient virus and transfect it into pretty much any cell you like. Green glowing mice. Red glowing presynaptic sympathetic neurons. A whole nervous system in full living function mapped out by these added color tags. Look for it in the coming years, as it helps unravel the causalities that, eventually, will crack the big causality of them all. Yes my friends, I am talking about CONCIOUSNESS…what Walter famously defined to me as “Something that I have, and I hope you do, too!” . So far, like a persistently evasive Theorem of Fermat, any attempt to make a causal link between brain and mind has fallen onto one of the pits of despond or horns of dilemma that lurk in these philosophical realms.
The path to the beach was dimly visible, winding through low brush under a scattering of trees. We crossed the clunky wooden bridge across the decorative pond that’s been made of a natural vernal pothole, originally sculpted out by the melting ice of a Laurentian glacier that visited the cape ..what…10,000 years ago? That’s chicken feed, of course, compared to the 3 million years of Ethiopian History. (OK, ‘Lucy’ is about 3.5 million, H. Sapiens was ubiquitous in central Africa by 150,000, and the big move out took place about 70,000 ago…) As the ice retreated, Vineyard Sound must have been a dry plain between the high ground of Cape Cod and Marthas Vineyard. Later, with the melting, we have today’s beach. Crossing the sand, the moon was dimly visible behind clouds. It was mid high tide…not so far to walk on the rocks. Shucked off clothes, aware but only just of our nudity, we crinkled over the knobbly rocks, and half stumbled half dove in. OMG!!! A little bit like those space movies where the stars come at you. A little bit like fireworks. But these guys are exploding wetly, noiselessly, into greens and yellows and blues right against your cornea…you feel the faint hit as you might feel the tension of a spider web across your morning walk. Take a breath, dive down, reach out in front and marvel at your hands and arms lit up in fire, visually tingling in contact of all those little dinoflagelates. And just to avoid being boring, there are the blobs of jellyfish, their light blooping into a big shuddering response, their feel completely tactile and long enough to have a real feel of night. The watertemperature was just on the edge of cold…keep moving. Deep enough so that to find the bottom I had to dive hard, and when I did find it was lovely mushly grainy sand. Not a single shark, barracuda, or Thing That Goes Bump In The Night to be felt , or seen…but the possibility adds to the intensity of the experience. Just waves and waves of light, every movement delineated, choreographed really, by all the bioluminescent bugglets. Good thought, IAN, think I, drying off on the beach, cold, but truly lit up by the experience. And so off to bed. With the doglet Fuji gradually dragging more and more covers down her way, until Sala and I are clinging together and she is happily sweltering down near our feel. And so up in the morning, and a thousand tasks later, to the airport and into the sky. And so last night, curled up in my sleeping pod in Business Class on Lufthansa, I could reach out, again, and touch the fire.
Oh Kevin, how wonderful Business upgrades, and how terrible the thought of the inevitable future returns to economy class. The epic battle with the controls for my sleeping couch, the agonizing decisions over the three possible starters, entrees, and deserts, to say nothing of wines and coffees, and the watching of Fabulous Fox on my very own video machine…it was all part of the privilege that comes with money. How easily my loyalties are purchased. If we all have a price, I’ve found mind.
So, why Ethiopia? Because Kevin decided, several years ago, that it would be a good thing to help people developing medical education curricula in Africa with an understanding that we thought we had arrived at; Inquiry Directed learning processes are a better way to develop an effective health workforce that will really understand at many levels the enormous public health challenge, and have the tools, on many levels, to both combat the AIDS + tB that is scourging its away around the highway communities of North Africa right now, and to lay a solid groundwork to mitigate the horrendous famines that will otherwise be the sure result of global climate change.
No, Inquiry Directed Learning cannot undo global climate change. But the processes that are integral to IDL, particularly student centered, problem based, small group process, are so effective at both helping students learn the nuts and bolts, but also to learn the curriculum of ethics, communications, professionalism, diversity, and public health that until recently were generally denoted as the ‘hidden curriculum’, and were expected to be learned from sullen sleepy junior residents or time bound attendings.
So that’s what our little team is going to Addis Ababa to engage. Can a country that needs health workers at all levels think big enough to devote resources to a massive training and retraining of medical personell in a whole new way of thinking of themselves in relation to their society? Hmmm…
Before I plunge into that, however,I want to return to my familiar theme of domestic bliss. As in; how to achieve domestic bliss. Its becoming more and more obvious. Like, in neon lights. Like written on the board in Times Square. Like right in front of your face. Like love the one you’re with. Ready? OK, its simple. When Sala asks me a question, I should just answer the damm question, rather than doing all the other artful and brutal things I do to take over, reinterpret, mis-hear, ignore, or lazily do all of the above.
So. I will be reflecting on this newly learned truth, and looking forward to applying it on this trip, and, eventually, with Sala.
And now, the sun is finally rising over Frankfurt, the rain has passed, and its time to stagger over for another coffee and face the fact that my connection to Addis still doesn’t leave for 3 hours.
Wiedersehen
Alan,
Monday, September 20, 2010
London 2010 (NOT) Day 16
9-19-10 1130 Green House Woods Hole MA USA Well, the sun is shining brightly. Earlier the little dog found her own small patch, and was sitting in it, blinking and digesting the pieces of bacon she had scrounged from the waffle breakfasters. Jun Won, recognizing a deficit in the house (she who also recognized we needed a string hammock) sent a waffle maker, with all the latest in electronic controls beeps and safeguards, that I still managed to get stuck to somehow. But only briefly. It`s really quite wonderful.
This after a morning kayak from John's boathouse, in its new cleaned out state. It`s quite wonderful to roll back the door, after walking down the long stringer of boards that leads across the stretch of salt water marsh that lies between the road and the boathouse. The sun is shining noisly into the open seaward end of the structure, which is made post and beam style to support the weight of the system that used to hoist the motorboat that the boathouse was originally designed for. It was a water balance system, where you pump water into a ballast tank that then provides the power to hoist up hte boat. Now its floored over 3/4 of the way out, and the floor is clear of all projects or materials. Two kayaks on a rack against the wall, and lots of light. The swallows have all fledged or fallen to their deaths, and are out in the world, eating insects as fast as they can to store up for the trip south. I was in a cloud of them out along the bike bath yesterday, soaring and dipping, computing three dimensional trajectories with an ease that makes you really respect what a cerebellum is capable of. Because its the ocean, I always get geared up with spray skirt and PFD. I guess I would forgo it on a lake, but for moving water, it seems the respectful thing to do. At 6:30 the sun is bright on the water, and its absolutely flat calm, a flood tide. There are cormorants diving silently all around, and scrambling out of the way when they surface within my alarm radius. The terns have flown off to winter quarters, I guess. Ospreys too; I miss their peeping cries/ And I saw my first Eider ducks of the year, the winter mussel eater who will eventually be living in large shoals of birds out in the Hole.
I came East around Devils Foot and squirted through the current at the end and came up to where the main current sweeps around the point where this years ospreys fledged in the straggly snaggly stick nest built on the navigation marker overhead. No warning peeps anymore, and I punched out into the current, and then ferried across Middle Ledge and spun into the eddy on the Eastern end of Pine Island (the last pines were washed out to sea in the 1938 hurricane). There were two guys anchored in a boat 'chunking'...fishing by cutting chunks of bait and letting them stream out in the current...and one caught a good sized bluefish as I hung there, looking at the brightness of it all. 'Damm,another Bluefish', was all he said. This kind of brightness, meaning low humidity and no pollution, happens in the fall..you can see water towers across Buzzards Bay in Rhode Island, and on the Vineyard near Tashmoo. And the rocks, looking like whales swimming in the current, are more visible, as the plankton count diminishes. Swung back into the current and ferried back and forth across the channel, feeling good to use those push/pull muscles after mostly walking and pushing elevator buttons in London. And then bouncing across the current back into the gutter between Devils Foot and Pensance, and swirling downcurrent back to the boathouse. And swimming...the water just cold enough to let you know times are achanging.
A nice reentry after the London trip. Now it's later, the 6 hp Tohatsu motor that pushed me all the way back against a 25 mph wind has been cleaned in freshwater and ready for a long winters nap, and Fuji is wondering if there isn't time for just one more walk.
Yesterday Sala announced she wanted to go for a slow uncomplicated boat ride. It started uncomplicatedly enoough, although the George B was judged to be way too messy. The boat, all 14 feet of her open self is now tied up on a line as part of the MBL boat club. So we coiled an anchor rope, and generally spiffed her up. The automatic bilge pump leaves a few inches in the bottom. I planned to sluice those out by running the boat at speed for a few moments outside in the harbor. Out there, I cracked open the and the boat started slapping ..banging really..on the small waves in the harbor. I must have remembered at some neuronic/synaptic level that Sala doesnt like that effect of speed, but what else was I thinking...my own agenda, of course, trying to get the rain water out. Sala asked me to slow down, and I was slow to respond. I was oogling the brightness I suppose, and also had to look around to check on other traffic. That meant she asked again, way to rapidly, I thought, and with more urgency. That, of course made me not want to respond at all...Why?...or more to the point, what was I thinking. I had good reason for going fast, and there was no danger. It was just her damm prefference for no pounding. But in truth, she had asked for the boat trip, and there was no reason to go fast. , How come I didnt just listen, and respond? How come, quite contrarily, I felt resentful? Well, I did slow down, but was still feeling that when we got around the Eastern end of the island, past our three lobster pots bobbing on the bright smooth flooding tide, (yes, and I had forgotten the bait to re-bait them after two weeks sitting unbaited) . So I guess I this was not actually the right time to try a cooperative behavior like landing a heavy skiff on an ocean beach with a swell running. I thought I was calm and expansive enough, as I explained that I wanted to try to drop an anchor, and then let us back to just touch the beach. Of course this involved details of ropes and pullings that I wasnt able to adequately explain to sala. I did manage to get Sala off the boat and onto the beach, but I had given her a tangled rope, and it wasn't clear what needed to be done. So now I am shouting, the boat is scraping, the waves are breaking, and the anchor was too light to really catch firmly. So the boat kept dragging and beaching itself. Exactly the kind of thrashing around that upsets Sala. Exactly what she hadn't wanted.
Later, safely off the beach and on the way into Lackeys Bay to go hrough the gutter into Hadleys Harbor, I cut the motor and we talked it out. After all was said, the important item is intent. If my intent is really to try to accomplish the objective that Sala has asked for, things usually turn out ok. If, instead, I feel free to modify it, and my intent becomes accmplishing the slightly off target objectives that I have re-set, they generally dont. Exactly how I can get from ' slow uncomplicated boat ride' to 'turn up the throttle', or 'try to beach a boat using a new anchor'....well, as you have just heard, it happens. And another thing Sala points out, subtle but very important. Wanting to have a slow uncomplicated ride' ONCE doesnt mean that I ALWAYS have to go slow, or NEVER can land on that beach, but just to really try, if we are actualizing her plan, to have the intent to do that, not something else.
And so, the London trip is over, and who knows that was the most important learning.
Next, Ethiopia? Why not.
alan
This after a morning kayak from John's boathouse, in its new cleaned out state. It`s quite wonderful to roll back the door, after walking down the long stringer of boards that leads across the stretch of salt water marsh that lies between the road and the boathouse. The sun is shining noisly into the open seaward end of the structure, which is made post and beam style to support the weight of the system that used to hoist the motorboat that the boathouse was originally designed for. It was a water balance system, where you pump water into a ballast tank that then provides the power to hoist up hte boat. Now its floored over 3/4 of the way out, and the floor is clear of all projects or materials. Two kayaks on a rack against the wall, and lots of light. The swallows have all fledged or fallen to their deaths, and are out in the world, eating insects as fast as they can to store up for the trip south. I was in a cloud of them out along the bike bath yesterday, soaring and dipping, computing three dimensional trajectories with an ease that makes you really respect what a cerebellum is capable of. Because its the ocean, I always get geared up with spray skirt and PFD. I guess I would forgo it on a lake, but for moving water, it seems the respectful thing to do. At 6:30 the sun is bright on the water, and its absolutely flat calm, a flood tide. There are cormorants diving silently all around, and scrambling out of the way when they surface within my alarm radius. The terns have flown off to winter quarters, I guess. Ospreys too; I miss their peeping cries/ And I saw my first Eider ducks of the year, the winter mussel eater who will eventually be living in large shoals of birds out in the Hole.
I came East around Devils Foot and squirted through the current at the end and came up to where the main current sweeps around the point where this years ospreys fledged in the straggly snaggly stick nest built on the navigation marker overhead. No warning peeps anymore, and I punched out into the current, and then ferried across Middle Ledge and spun into the eddy on the Eastern end of Pine Island (the last pines were washed out to sea in the 1938 hurricane). There were two guys anchored in a boat 'chunking'...fishing by cutting chunks of bait and letting them stream out in the current...and one caught a good sized bluefish as I hung there, looking at the brightness of it all. 'Damm,another Bluefish', was all he said. This kind of brightness, meaning low humidity and no pollution, happens in the fall..you can see water towers across Buzzards Bay in Rhode Island, and on the Vineyard near Tashmoo. And the rocks, looking like whales swimming in the current, are more visible, as the plankton count diminishes. Swung back into the current and ferried back and forth across the channel, feeling good to use those push/pull muscles after mostly walking and pushing elevator buttons in London. And then bouncing across the current back into the gutter between Devils Foot and Pensance, and swirling downcurrent back to the boathouse. And swimming...the water just cold enough to let you know times are achanging.
A nice reentry after the London trip. Now it's later, the 6 hp Tohatsu motor that pushed me all the way back against a 25 mph wind has been cleaned in freshwater and ready for a long winters nap, and Fuji is wondering if there isn't time for just one more walk.
Yesterday Sala announced she wanted to go for a slow uncomplicated boat ride. It started uncomplicatedly enoough, although the George B was judged to be way too messy. The boat, all 14 feet of her open self is now tied up on a line as part of the MBL boat club. So we coiled an anchor rope, and generally spiffed her up. The automatic bilge pump leaves a few inches in the bottom. I planned to sluice those out by running the boat at speed for a few moments outside in the harbor. Out there, I cracked open the and the boat started slapping ..banging really..on the small waves in the harbor. I must have remembered at some neuronic/synaptic level that Sala doesnt like that effect of speed, but what else was I thinking...my own agenda, of course, trying to get the rain water out. Sala asked me to slow down, and I was slow to respond. I was oogling the brightness I suppose, and also had to look around to check on other traffic. That meant she asked again, way to rapidly, I thought, and with more urgency. That, of course made me not want to respond at all...Why?...or more to the point, what was I thinking. I had good reason for going fast, and there was no danger. It was just her damm prefference for no pounding. But in truth, she had asked for the boat trip, and there was no reason to go fast. , How come I didnt just listen, and respond? How come, quite contrarily, I felt resentful? Well, I did slow down, but was still feeling that when we got around the Eastern end of the island, past our three lobster pots bobbing on the bright smooth flooding tide, (yes, and I had forgotten the bait to re-bait them after two weeks sitting unbaited) . So I guess I this was not actually the right time to try a cooperative behavior like landing a heavy skiff on an ocean beach with a swell running. I thought I was calm and expansive enough, as I explained that I wanted to try to drop an anchor, and then let us back to just touch the beach. Of course this involved details of ropes and pullings that I wasnt able to adequately explain to sala. I did manage to get Sala off the boat and onto the beach, but I had given her a tangled rope, and it wasn't clear what needed to be done. So now I am shouting, the boat is scraping, the waves are breaking, and the anchor was too light to really catch firmly. So the boat kept dragging and beaching itself. Exactly the kind of thrashing around that upsets Sala. Exactly what she hadn't wanted.
Later, safely off the beach and on the way into Lackeys Bay to go hrough the gutter into Hadleys Harbor, I cut the motor and we talked it out. After all was said, the important item is intent. If my intent is really to try to accomplish the objective that Sala has asked for, things usually turn out ok. If, instead, I feel free to modify it, and my intent becomes accmplishing the slightly off target objectives that I have re-set, they generally dont. Exactly how I can get from ' slow uncomplicated boat ride' to 'turn up the throttle', or 'try to beach a boat using a new anchor'....well, as you have just heard, it happens. And another thing Sala points out, subtle but very important. Wanting to have a slow uncomplicated ride' ONCE doesnt mean that I ALWAYS have to go slow, or NEVER can land on that beach, but just to really try, if we are actualizing her plan, to have the intent to do that, not something else.
And so, the London trip is over, and who knows that was the most important learning.
Next, Ethiopia? Why not.
alan
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
London 2010 Day 13
9-16-2010 0410 Baker Street Internet
Even at this hour, a good amount of traffic. And people walking, always people walking. But for the first time I am really hearing the clack of the keys, a sign that the ambient noise is somewhat more like 10 decibels over whats healthy, not 1000.
The reason; the usual. Early plane, and the only public transport £16.50 is from Paddington, but there are night busses, and so i have time to write a last note before heading down there.
So, on to the National Portrait Gallery, and specifically the BP Portrait contest. Particularly poignant for us Gulf lovers in this particular year, but its worth remembering that as part of this crypto feudal oligarchy of corporations that we are allowing to happen, the same forces that cause disasters also generate enough money to sponsor portrait contests.
And after nearly two weeks of touristing, I am able to be a little more selective about museums. It feels a little like hunger...nice to feel you can choose within a bountiful set of options, rather than having to see everything.
One of my favorites was a very large canvas of a very small boy wearing an orange suit, who had, according to the legend, asked his painter father to paint him as large as possible. Another was a largely monocrome profile of a boy home from his first day at school and watching TV...somehow suggesting the whole process of internalization that lies ahead for him.
It was a great show to take along one of t hose '..but i know what i like' friends who are always insisting that they would just like to know if that artist CAN even draw...every one of the entries was clearly done by someone who can draw.
And there were a lot of realists...even almost surrealists...in terms of detail, even to the trompe l'oiele details. Which I generaly like.
All in all, well worth while, and another reason to come back to Leicester Square...which has been paved over for walking, and cleaned up generally. Its impossible doing regular theatre hours, unless you are longing for a times square experience without the traffic, but during mid-day, its great.
Plus the sun, the light, and just enough pidgeons to make you not feel sorry for them.
So otherwise was a walking day, quiet day, day of reflections.
And now, its time to get my proverbial down the proverbial.
take care
alan
Even at this hour, a good amount of traffic. And people walking, always people walking. But for the first time I am really hearing the clack of the keys, a sign that the ambient noise is somewhat more like 10 decibels over whats healthy, not 1000.
The reason; the usual. Early plane, and the only public transport £16.50 is from Paddington, but there are night busses, and so i have time to write a last note before heading down there.
So, on to the National Portrait Gallery, and specifically the BP Portrait contest. Particularly poignant for us Gulf lovers in this particular year, but its worth remembering that as part of this crypto feudal oligarchy of corporations that we are allowing to happen, the same forces that cause disasters also generate enough money to sponsor portrait contests.
And after nearly two weeks of touristing, I am able to be a little more selective about museums. It feels a little like hunger...nice to feel you can choose within a bountiful set of options, rather than having to see everything.
One of my favorites was a very large canvas of a very small boy wearing an orange suit, who had, according to the legend, asked his painter father to paint him as large as possible. Another was a largely monocrome profile of a boy home from his first day at school and watching TV...somehow suggesting the whole process of internalization that lies ahead for him.
It was a great show to take along one of t hose '..but i know what i like' friends who are always insisting that they would just like to know if that artist CAN even draw...every one of the entries was clearly done by someone who can draw.
And there were a lot of realists...even almost surrealists...in terms of detail, even to the trompe l'oiele details. Which I generaly like.
All in all, well worth while, and another reason to come back to Leicester Square...which has been paved over for walking, and cleaned up generally. Its impossible doing regular theatre hours, unless you are longing for a times square experience without the traffic, but during mid-day, its great.
Plus the sun, the light, and just enough pidgeons to make you not feel sorry for them.
So otherwise was a walking day, quiet day, day of reflections.
And now, its time to get my proverbial down the proverbial.
take care
alan
London 2010 Day 12
London 2010 Day 12 0725 Baker St Internet Cafe.
Feeling a little triste this morning, since its the last one of these assignations with the world via Baker Street I will be making for at least some time. Writing in an internet cafe has its own tones and colors, its own smells and touches. Particularly reminded of that because of yesterdays trip to the Wellcome Building and exhibit, on Euston just opposite the station. One of the many exhibits in the genre of art in relation to medicine was a 5 piece item by Mary Cattrell illustrating the 5 senses. To make it, she worked with fMRI people to get an image of what activation of that sense produced in the way of a proton wobble signal in the brain, then used that information in a fast prototype machine that carves in 3D the series of scans..., then or at some point tinted the otherwise transparent 3D model of brain activation slightly brownish, and finally potted the whole in a block of transparent plastic. Each block is about a foot cube; they are standing on little plinths. I have included a photo of 'smell'. Of course the first thing you notice in comparing the 5 is how much 'deeper' smell reaches, and now little it has to do with the prefrontal or frontal areas. Also, what an add-on vision really is...sitting way back there by itself, and so fragily connected to the outside world. Great art, perhaps not. But most interesting for us senseaholics.
And that was only one of the miracles and marvels on display. The current Wellcome special exhibit is 'Skin', which I had hoped might include a live tattoo gallery, but didn't. In fact, I guess they figure the tattoo and other 'body art' has too much exposure. (Tattoo, from 'tattau' in Samoa, as borrowed by sailors in the 17th century. Also 'moko', the Maori chiseling and inking of skin, and irizume to create horimono (Japan). Not to get into scarification and some of the extravagant piercing going on these days. Otzi the iceman has more than 50 simple tattooed marks, and it probably dates back at least 10,000 years in Japan)
But even without much body art, or any horrors of the Nazi era, its a pretty great exhibit. There were lots of students in there, sketching away, and some good movies intended for education about skin disease. And then there is one movie showing on a big screen that thankfully either does not have an explanation, or hides it away. It's basically closeups of bursting furuncles...thats right Virginia, pus bumps..and has got to be one of the most disturbing bits of film I have ever seen...luckily, most of the people walking by seemed to have no idea of what was going on, so it clearly requires context to be fully yuck. As it was, the teens had some trouble with the vaginas and penises; the entrance is clearly marked as 'includes graphic views of human body' or something like that.
The Wellcome as a whole is smallish and very do-able. It also has a very noisy but open and interesting cafe on the way to a great bookstore. I finally had a chance to read a little about the woman I knew as 'Helen Lane' but whose actual name is Henrietta Lacks. As you probably know, due to this and other recent publications, HeLa cell lines, grown from her cancer samples, were the first successful 'immortal' cell lines...able to sustain themselves in culture medium indefinitely. And as you probably also know or can guess, HL herself was poor, black, and died, leaving a family who are still poor and angry about the biological rip off. And this all happened as I was entering high school, not in some other century. If the list of white collar on black collar crimes were laid end to end, it would probably stretch at least as far as the Middle Passage.
The Wellcome is also a block away from the NE edge of University College London, my old college. And so I spent some time maundring around. Ate in the UCLU cafe, which I can't recommend except for those desparate for student company. That's next to the Bloomsbury theatre, which is UCL's . And right next to it, I discovered two newly named buildings, The Bernard Katz and the Andrew Huxley buildings...both housing biotech initiatives, both my mentors. Talk about realizing how old you have become. BK was my post-doctoral advisor..and Andrew was probably the most charismatically intelligent physiologist I ever met...at least insofar as his understanding of analytical mathematical solutions to physiological problems...and , lucky me, I met them both before the Nobel Prize they shared with Alan Hodgkin (Rick and Bertil studied with him) for an incredibly elegant explanatory model for how nerves manage to transmit information at 100 meters/second without any wires. As a historical note, I don't even try to teach the model to medical students anymore.
I walked on around Gordon Square, where I studied the Locke and all them Empiricists with a bunch of very bright and articulate philosophy students who raised my feelings of inadequacy to levels that even the study of Marx never did . And then North down Malet Place to see the various museums at UCL, all of which were closed for one reason or another. So ended up with the dependable Jeremy Bentham, sitting, as usual, in his special glass case in the central rooms of the college. His preserved head is no longer at his feet,however. After it was captured in a prank by Kings, it's been removed to safer keeping.
And if you haven't revisited Bentham's thinking about human society, it's well worth doing. They now have a timeline on the wall beside the case holding his padded and dressed skeleton (as per his wishes, his body was dissected for the edification of science shortly after his death, and the display is per his written wishes). Turns out he spent most of his later life consulting with various governments, trying to get his 'greatest good of the greatest number' principles incorporated into their emerging constitutions. Simon Bolivar must have been one of his greatest disappointments...and we all know something about the trouble that has come in South America as a result of the directions that The Liberator actually took.
As if that wasnt enough, I sat around the courtyard, re-experiencing some of the emotions I felt in 1960 when I arrived on my Junior Year Abroad experience. And eventually turned up at Fencing society, and was paired up with Paul. Its about the same, physically, but a lot less busy, as activity has shifted to the newer buildings. Still, the Slade School of Art squats across on the North side, and there is a Beadles hut at the entrance, as there ought to be. The medical school, which used to be in a red sandstone monstrosity across the street has largely shifted to the Royal Free site further north. And the hospital is in a completely new building.
The walk to the British Museum, even on a grey day, is still pretty enjoyable. You go by the ULU building, another nice cafe, and then RADA on the right, Birkbeck on the left, Tropical Diseases all around. The little enclosed park on the West side of Malet near the museum is still without its metal pickets...taken off during WW II for the iron and never replaced. And the tour busses lie panting under the plane trees on the Montague side of the building, waiting for their babies to come back to mama.
I spent time in Sanchi and Mathura, worshipping Yakshi's and Tara's. And Jade, there is a special corridor show devoted to Chinese Jade. Some of the pig-dragon split rings have just the right distribution of weight and curvature, just the right tension between ends and beginnings. And then time in meso america, since there are unfortunately much better examples of the carvings than are left in any of the sites where they were actually used, in Oaxaca. I've attached one example of a lintel; check out the huipil on the kneeling consort (who's abrading her tongue in a blood sacrifice, just in case you think your marriage is onerous), you huipilista's!!
Well, it's coming time for your last encounter with Suzuki Roshi, for this trip anyway.
"Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up. If your mind is always busy, there will be no time to build, and you will not be successful, particularly if you work too hard on it."
Suzuki Roshi p 58. 'Right Attitude' in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.
'And so it goes'
Kurt Vonnegut, passim
Aloha
Alan
Feeling a little triste this morning, since its the last one of these assignations with the world via Baker Street I will be making for at least some time. Writing in an internet cafe has its own tones and colors, its own smells and touches. Particularly reminded of that because of yesterdays trip to the Wellcome Building and exhibit, on Euston just opposite the station. One of the many exhibits in the genre of art in relation to medicine was a 5 piece item by Mary Cattrell illustrating the 5 senses. To make it, she worked with fMRI people to get an image of what activation of that sense produced in the way of a proton wobble signal in the brain, then used that information in a fast prototype machine that carves in 3D the series of scans..., then or at some point tinted the otherwise transparent 3D model of brain activation slightly brownish, and finally potted the whole in a block of transparent plastic. Each block is about a foot cube; they are standing on little plinths. I have included a photo of 'smell'. Of course the first thing you notice in comparing the 5 is how much 'deeper' smell reaches, and now little it has to do with the prefrontal or frontal areas. Also, what an add-on vision really is...sitting way back there by itself, and so fragily connected to the outside world. Great art, perhaps not. But most interesting for us senseaholics.
And that was only one of the miracles and marvels on display. The current Wellcome special exhibit is 'Skin', which I had hoped might include a live tattoo gallery, but didn't. In fact, I guess they figure the tattoo and other 'body art' has too much exposure. (Tattoo, from 'tattau' in Samoa, as borrowed by sailors in the 17th century. Also 'moko', the Maori chiseling and inking of skin, and irizume to create horimono (Japan). Not to get into scarification and some of the extravagant piercing going on these days. Otzi the iceman has more than 50 simple tattooed marks, and it probably dates back at least 10,000 years in Japan)
But even without much body art, or any horrors of the Nazi era, its a pretty great exhibit. There were lots of students in there, sketching away, and some good movies intended for education about skin disease. And then there is one movie showing on a big screen that thankfully either does not have an explanation, or hides it away. It's basically closeups of bursting furuncles...thats right Virginia, pus bumps..and has got to be one of the most disturbing bits of film I have ever seen...luckily, most of the people walking by seemed to have no idea of what was going on, so it clearly requires context to be fully yuck. As it was, the teens had some trouble with the vaginas and penises; the entrance is clearly marked as 'includes graphic views of human body' or something like that.
The Wellcome as a whole is smallish and very do-able. It also has a very noisy but open and interesting cafe on the way to a great bookstore. I finally had a chance to read a little about the woman I knew as 'Helen Lane' but whose actual name is Henrietta Lacks. As you probably know, due to this and other recent publications, HeLa cell lines, grown from her cancer samples, were the first successful 'immortal' cell lines...able to sustain themselves in culture medium indefinitely. And as you probably also know or can guess, HL herself was poor, black, and died, leaving a family who are still poor and angry about the biological rip off. And this all happened as I was entering high school, not in some other century. If the list of white collar on black collar crimes were laid end to end, it would probably stretch at least as far as the Middle Passage.
The Wellcome is also a block away from the NE edge of University College London, my old college. And so I spent some time maundring around. Ate in the UCLU cafe, which I can't recommend except for those desparate for student company. That's next to the Bloomsbury theatre, which is UCL's . And right next to it, I discovered two newly named buildings, The Bernard Katz and the Andrew Huxley buildings...both housing biotech initiatives, both my mentors. Talk about realizing how old you have become. BK was my post-doctoral advisor..and Andrew was probably the most charismatically intelligent physiologist I ever met...at least insofar as his understanding of analytical mathematical solutions to physiological problems...and , lucky me, I met them both before the Nobel Prize they shared with Alan Hodgkin (Rick and Bertil studied with him) for an incredibly elegant explanatory model for how nerves manage to transmit information at 100 meters/second without any wires. As a historical note, I don't even try to teach the model to medical students anymore.
I walked on around Gordon Square, where I studied the Locke and all them Empiricists with a bunch of very bright and articulate philosophy students who raised my feelings of inadequacy to levels that even the study of Marx never did . And then North down Malet Place to see the various museums at UCL, all of which were closed for one reason or another. So ended up with the dependable Jeremy Bentham, sitting, as usual, in his special glass case in the central rooms of the college. His preserved head is no longer at his feet,however. After it was captured in a prank by Kings, it's been removed to safer keeping.
And if you haven't revisited Bentham's thinking about human society, it's well worth doing. They now have a timeline on the wall beside the case holding his padded and dressed skeleton (as per his wishes, his body was dissected for the edification of science shortly after his death, and the display is per his written wishes). Turns out he spent most of his later life consulting with various governments, trying to get his 'greatest good of the greatest number' principles incorporated into their emerging constitutions. Simon Bolivar must have been one of his greatest disappointments...and we all know something about the trouble that has come in South America as a result of the directions that The Liberator actually took.
As if that wasnt enough, I sat around the courtyard, re-experiencing some of the emotions I felt in 1960 when I arrived on my Junior Year Abroad experience. And eventually turned up at Fencing society, and was paired up with Paul. Its about the same, physically, but a lot less busy, as activity has shifted to the newer buildings. Still, the Slade School of Art squats across on the North side, and there is a Beadles hut at the entrance, as there ought to be. The medical school, which used to be in a red sandstone monstrosity across the street has largely shifted to the Royal Free site further north. And the hospital is in a completely new building.
The walk to the British Museum, even on a grey day, is still pretty enjoyable. You go by the ULU building, another nice cafe, and then RADA on the right, Birkbeck on the left, Tropical Diseases all around. The little enclosed park on the West side of Malet near the museum is still without its metal pickets...taken off during WW II for the iron and never replaced. And the tour busses lie panting under the plane trees on the Montague side of the building, waiting for their babies to come back to mama.
I spent time in Sanchi and Mathura, worshipping Yakshi's and Tara's. And Jade, there is a special corridor show devoted to Chinese Jade. Some of the pig-dragon split rings have just the right distribution of weight and curvature, just the right tension between ends and beginnings. And then time in meso america, since there are unfortunately much better examples of the carvings than are left in any of the sites where they were actually used, in Oaxaca. I've attached one example of a lintel; check out the huipil on the kneeling consort (who's abrading her tongue in a blood sacrifice, just in case you think your marriage is onerous), you huipilista's!!
Well, it's coming time for your last encounter with Suzuki Roshi, for this trip anyway.
"Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up. If your mind is always busy, there will be no time to build, and you will not be successful, particularly if you work too hard on it."
Suzuki Roshi p 58. 'Right Attitude' in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.
'And so it goes'
Kurt Vonnegut, passim
Aloha
Alan
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
London 2010 Day 11
9-14-2010 0800 Baker Street Internet.
So, yesterday was a return; The British Museum and The Science Museum.
A kind of victory, on my part, to break through the 'not enough time' barrier that usually means I dont get back to things I want to. I bought my anti sniffle medication, took my Wellness formula, and otherwise girded up my metaphorical loins and went out touristing.
Noticed at both museums exhibit cards referencing damage in the Blitz.
"10 May 1941
At around 11pm, air raid sirens were heard across the city and the first explosions occurred. Another assault was launched claiming 1,486 lives and destroying 11,000 houses. More than 500 aircraft dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs that changed the face of the capital. Almost all the major stations were damaged as were 14 hospitals. The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and Waterloo station were also hit. "
(From 'The Independent' Website)
The London Blitz, from the German 'Blitzkrieg', one of those words that are coppiced* out of several others, is being...well, not celebrated but ...noted these days because it's generally regarded as having started on Sept 6 1940. So it was relatively late in the long hellish process that the British Museum was damaged. There's even more reference to such damage at the Science Museum...a number of fossil exhibits are replicas made, luckily, before the originals were bombed.
Its a reminder, along with 911, Dresden, and for that matter Baghdad, that if you make enough decisions based on trying to force someone to do something, you will end up with hellish loss of life and even, yes, property. And then there is Gaza.
Walking around the museums yesterday, I found several exhibit cards that referenced damages, but there is little apparent now, as in all of London. That wasn't the case in 1954..most of Petticoat Lane market was held in front of bombed out sites, with the walls of the remaining houses held up by wooden groins and buttresses. And even in the the late 60's, there were still many sites with significant trees growing through rubble..Pretty much all reconstructed now. And with house prices well over £2 million in places like Notting Hill Gate and almost that in the East End, who would expect one scrap of usable and unoccupied open ground?
The self assigned mission yesterday (yes we do love to have missions don't we?) was to view evidence of Mary Anning's fossil collecting, as in the historical novel 'Remarkable Creatures' (and it turns out, a number of other historical books). The exhibits in the fossil hall at the Natural History museum do not have specific attributions, although there is a nice large illustrated reference to her contributions. But in the exhibit on the 19th century in the British Museum there is one of her icthyosaur skulls..you have to search it out in the cabinet underneath...and so I attach a photo of that. Satisfying, those 'mission accomplished' moments.
I received some great cyberdialogue on Norwich...so I will without permission quote this from Joan. who shares notes on the subject of the rather massive but still fluted columns of Norwich Cathederal. She had been to a talk on 'Neuroarchitecture'..and doesn't note the lecturer's name:
"One example (of many) is the slender shafts of pillars (massed together in one big one for strength) in the Early English period of Gothic... . These differ from the single thick French Gothic. He asks us to consider the kinds of trees people saw in each country. In England, often many small trunks grew from a main trunk which had been "coppiced"*. Eng. had smaller trees. These massed slender shafts are seen in Wells, Exeter, Lichfield, Salisbury. (I went on to take photos of coppiced trees and arrow pointed ironwork (English archers used long arrows -- the French used fire and firearms early on -- he connects it to the Flamboyant style.... We must combine the “period eye” with the “place eye” and consider what developed neurologically... "
I'm attracted to this last particularly because one of my students has been working with the idea of 'place' in her effort to better analyse what factors contribute to whether a physician will choose a rural environment for work. The idea that a sense of place develops from visual exposure is great...but what about the smell of cathederals, or the taste of Toad in the hole across from Canterbury after a night in the Youth Hostel.
Anayway...the museums were as always amazing, and full of people projecting lexemes with the speed of sound. I met a long term friend for a walk and talk, and then went home to minister to the remains of my cold.
And last but not least:
" You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone. Forget what you have in your mind and just listen to what he says. To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will undersand what he says. But if you have some idea to compare with what he says, you will not hear everything; your undrstanding will be one sided; that is not naturalness. When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. "
Suzuki Roshi page 109, 'Naturalness' in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.
Aloha, alan
*Ok, so perhaps its a misappropriation to use 'coppice' as a verb to describe the German practice of assimilating many smallerwords into a larger one...I think the right terminology would be 'compound lexeme'..although I like 'zusammenfassung' better....
AS
So, yesterday was a return; The British Museum and The Science Museum.
A kind of victory, on my part, to break through the 'not enough time' barrier that usually means I dont get back to things I want to. I bought my anti sniffle medication, took my Wellness formula, and otherwise girded up my metaphorical loins and went out touristing.
Noticed at both museums exhibit cards referencing damage in the Blitz.
"10 May 1941
At around 11pm, air raid sirens were heard across the city and the first explosions occurred. Another assault was launched claiming 1,486 lives and destroying 11,000 houses. More than 500 aircraft dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs that changed the face of the capital. Almost all the major stations were damaged as were 14 hospitals. The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and Waterloo station were also hit. "
(From 'The Independent' Website)
The London Blitz, from the German 'Blitzkrieg', one of those words that are coppiced* out of several others, is being...well, not celebrated but ...noted these days because it's generally regarded as having started on Sept 6 1940. So it was relatively late in the long hellish process that the British Museum was damaged. There's even more reference to such damage at the Science Museum...a number of fossil exhibits are replicas made, luckily, before the originals were bombed.
Its a reminder, along with 911, Dresden, and for that matter Baghdad, that if you make enough decisions based on trying to force someone to do something, you will end up with hellish loss of life and even, yes, property. And then there is Gaza.
Walking around the museums yesterday, I found several exhibit cards that referenced damages, but there is little apparent now, as in all of London. That wasn't the case in 1954..most of Petticoat Lane market was held in front of bombed out sites, with the walls of the remaining houses held up by wooden groins and buttresses. And even in the the late 60's, there were still many sites with significant trees growing through rubble..Pretty much all reconstructed now. And with house prices well over £2 million in places like Notting Hill Gate and almost that in the East End, who would expect one scrap of usable and unoccupied open ground?
The self assigned mission yesterday (yes we do love to have missions don't we?) was to view evidence of Mary Anning's fossil collecting, as in the historical novel 'Remarkable Creatures' (and it turns out, a number of other historical books). The exhibits in the fossil hall at the Natural History museum do not have specific attributions, although there is a nice large illustrated reference to her contributions. But in the exhibit on the 19th century in the British Museum there is one of her icthyosaur skulls..you have to search it out in the cabinet underneath...and so I attach a photo of that. Satisfying, those 'mission accomplished' moments.
I received some great cyberdialogue on Norwich...so I will without permission quote this from Joan. who shares notes on the subject of the rather massive but still fluted columns of Norwich Cathederal. She had been to a talk on 'Neuroarchitecture'..and doesn't note the lecturer's name:
"One example (of many) is the slender shafts of pillars (massed together in one big one for strength) in the Early English period of Gothic... . These differ from the single thick French Gothic. He asks us to consider the kinds of trees people saw in each country. In England, often many small trunks grew from a main trunk which had been "coppiced"*. Eng. had smaller trees. These massed slender shafts are seen in Wells, Exeter, Lichfield, Salisbury. (I went on to take photos of coppiced trees and arrow pointed ironwork (English archers used long arrows -- the French used fire and firearms early on -- he connects it to the Flamboyant style.... We must combine the “period eye” with the “place eye” and consider what developed neurologically... "
I'm attracted to this last particularly because one of my students has been working with the idea of 'place' in her effort to better analyse what factors contribute to whether a physician will choose a rural environment for work. The idea that a sense of place develops from visual exposure is great...but what about the smell of cathederals, or the taste of Toad in the hole across from Canterbury after a night in the Youth Hostel.
Anayway...the museums were as always amazing, and full of people projecting lexemes with the speed of sound. I met a long term friend for a walk and talk, and then went home to minister to the remains of my cold.
And last but not least:
" You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone. Forget what you have in your mind and just listen to what he says. To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will undersand what he says. But if you have some idea to compare with what he says, you will not hear everything; your undrstanding will be one sided; that is not naturalness. When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. "
Suzuki Roshi page 109, 'Naturalness' in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.
Aloha, alan
*Ok, so perhaps its a misappropriation to use 'coppice' as a verb to describe the German practice of assimilating many smallerwords into a larger one...I think the right terminology would be 'compound lexeme'..although I like 'zusammenfassung' better....
AS
Sunday, September 12, 2010
London 2010 Day 9?
9-12-101440 Baker Street Internet Cafe, W1. Yes, and you may well wonder what the heck am i doing writing in a mildly uninteresting internet cafe when its a brilliant sunny day with blue skies and growly traffic and double decker red busses and young people speaking many languages..in general, all the paraphanalia for a perfect London Sunday? Why not at Spitalfields, or Reagents Park, or even out with Sala to the 'dedicated scarf room' at Liberty House on Reagents Street?
Cause I'm sick. Well, a little sick anyway, snurfly and such like, and I figured that if I didnt rush out into the world like I do most of the days of my life, it might help me get better so I could rush out into the world on all of the three days I have left. Sala's time is running rapidly; she leaves tomorrow for WH via New York, which, due to some plan now forgotten, she has a return ticket to. This means she has two hours to get to the Port Authority from Kennedy. Ive suggested she call Jun Won in advance in case she gets stuck in NY for the night.
So I've been spending the day basking in the sun on various benches, walking a little in various parks (Paddington Gardens being the primo discovery of this trip) and reading Pauls books on the origins of the Tarot.
And also reading Suzuki roshi.
For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (1905 - 1971)
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Also, I can't resist attaching two pictures. One from Norwich Cathedral, just so you'll give us the right references when we publish our as yet unwritten book 'Traveling Two by Two over Fifty'. I am working on the chapter about bowel function again. Its the right thing to do when you are feeling a little sick.
The other is from the forecourt of the pub on the corner of Baker and Marlybone. That's just because some of you, like me, enjoy looking at Sala. She did not authorize this publication, of course.
Portobello Road yesterday was good. Talked to a number of sellers, mostly selling costume jewelery, and most not happy about the state of their business. The antique dealers are not happy about encroachments by people selling souveniers, and the people at the Northern end of the market are not happy about the antique dealers,who they say swoop down like predators in the early morning to carry off their best stuff and sell it for more at the South end. Still, they have a fairly philosophical take on the whole matter. Many have one or more day jobs, or had such in the past, or have a partner or family member who does. The antique guys almost all go to several markets, some as many as 5. So even though I found no major discoveries, it was well worth while. And also good was the multiplicity of apparent ethnicities who were both buying and selling. Very differnt than my first memories there.
And I had some time to think more about feedback, formative assessment, corrections, busibodying, whatever form it comes in.
The hardest for me is the relatively unstructured but disruptive version of reflection* in action that is produced in me when Sala says 'why dont you put the backpack up on the shelf over the seats' Its a simple enough question, and yet I often have a bad reaction. Sometimes its just too fast...as in her corrections to the speed I'm driving at. I mean to soon after I have started doing something. In the teaching context, this is similar, I think, to the tutor in a small group enquiry directed process who wants to make corrections in either content or process when group has not really had time to process w hat its doing. What I try to suggest to new tutors is to wait 10 minutes whenever they feel they just must intervene to correct a wrong direction. Most times, the group will correct on their own.
Sometimes its just that I don't want to hear it from Sala...or by inference, from someone close to me. That's the one that is helped by what some people call the 'feedback sandwich'. A slice of some nice observation followed by a challenging observation, and sandwiched up in a final slice of encouragement. But that takes time.
In a larger sense, of course, I feel, I know perhaps, that most feedback,expecially challenging stuff, comes from compassion, rather than any less helpful emotion. And compassion, so many believe, comes from curiosity. The alternative to a too fast or seemingly unkind feedback Sala; an uninterested Sala who was incurious about my behaviors, is definitely not what I want.
And all of this seems to generalize to the situations I think about for assessment of the progress of students working in small groups. Whether or not you believe that it's a good idea to assess the groups behavior in any way other than work product (and I tend to think it's not that useful, particularly after the session) you will probably recall that you didn't get enough formative feedback in your own professional education. Thats why I've tried to work on methods that separate formative (to help you change) and summative (to see if you have changed to achieve some standard) feedbacks, so that the teacher/tutor/mentor who provides th e formative feedback is NOT also wearing the hat of the summative examiner.
Well, thats the kind of stuff that comes up when I have a day of composting instead of blooming. Hopefully will be back out in the London streets tomorrow.
And take care,y'all.
Cause I'm sick. Well, a little sick anyway, snurfly and such like, and I figured that if I didnt rush out into the world like I do most of the days of my life, it might help me get better so I could rush out into the world on all of the three days I have left. Sala's time is running rapidly; she leaves tomorrow for WH via New York, which, due to some plan now forgotten, she has a return ticket to. This means she has two hours to get to the Port Authority from Kennedy. Ive suggested she call Jun Won in advance in case she gets stuck in NY for the night.
So I've been spending the day basking in the sun on various benches, walking a little in various parks (Paddington Gardens being the primo discovery of this trip) and reading Pauls books on the origins of the Tarot.
And also reading Suzuki roshi.
For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (1905 - 1971)
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Also, I can't resist attaching two pictures. One from Norwich Cathedral, just so you'll give us the right references when we publish our as yet unwritten book 'Traveling Two by Two over Fifty'. I am working on the chapter about bowel function again. Its the right thing to do when you are feeling a little sick.
The other is from the forecourt of the pub on the corner of Baker and Marlybone. That's just because some of you, like me, enjoy looking at Sala. She did not authorize this publication, of course.
Portobello Road yesterday was good. Talked to a number of sellers, mostly selling costume jewelery, and most not happy about the state of their business. The antique dealers are not happy about encroachments by people selling souveniers, and the people at the Northern end of the market are not happy about the antique dealers,who they say swoop down like predators in the early morning to carry off their best stuff and sell it for more at the South end. Still, they have a fairly philosophical take on the whole matter. Many have one or more day jobs, or had such in the past, or have a partner or family member who does. The antique guys almost all go to several markets, some as many as 5. So even though I found no major discoveries, it was well worth while. And also good was the multiplicity of apparent ethnicities who were both buying and selling. Very differnt than my first memories there.
And I had some time to think more about feedback, formative assessment, corrections, busibodying, whatever form it comes in.
The hardest for me is the relatively unstructured but disruptive version of reflection* in action that is produced in me when Sala says 'why dont you put the backpack up on the shelf over the seats' Its a simple enough question, and yet I often have a bad reaction. Sometimes its just too fast...as in her corrections to the speed I'm driving at. I mean to soon after I have started doing something. In the teaching context, this is similar, I think, to the tutor in a small group enquiry directed process who wants to make corrections in either content or process when group has not really had time to process w hat its doing. What I try to suggest to new tutors is to wait 10 minutes whenever they feel they just must intervene to correct a wrong direction. Most times, the group will correct on their own.
Sometimes its just that I don't want to hear it from Sala...or by inference, from someone close to me. That's the one that is helped by what some people call the 'feedback sandwich'. A slice of some nice observation followed by a challenging observation, and sandwiched up in a final slice of encouragement. But that takes time.
In a larger sense, of course, I feel, I know perhaps, that most feedback,expecially challenging stuff, comes from compassion, rather than any less helpful emotion. And compassion, so many believe, comes from curiosity. The alternative to a too fast or seemingly unkind feedback Sala; an uninterested Sala who was incurious about my behaviors, is definitely not what I want.
And all of this seems to generalize to the situations I think about for assessment of the progress of students working in small groups. Whether or not you believe that it's a good idea to assess the groups behavior in any way other than work product (and I tend to think it's not that useful, particularly after the session) you will probably recall that you didn't get enough formative feedback in your own professional education. Thats why I've tried to work on methods that separate formative (to help you change) and summative (to see if you have changed to achieve some standard) feedbacks, so that the teacher/tutor/mentor who provides th e formative feedback is NOT also wearing the hat of the summative examiner.
Well, thats the kind of stuff that comes up when I have a day of composting instead of blooming. Hopefully will be back out in the London streets tomorrow.
And take care,y'all.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
London 2010: Norwich day 1
9-11-10. 1620 Baker Street Internet. Back from Norwich, and a trip back to Portobello Road. Today was just soaking in the flavor of the crowds, of the stalls, of the real antiques, and the wannabe antiques and the nowayinhell antiques. Sunny. Milling crowds all the way from Notting Hill. And the food, so delicious, although I didnt actually eat any, just cruised the smells of the choriso stew, and the look of the bruchetta chibatta slices crunching into young mouths. The old mouths are mostly eating safer stuff, i suppose.
Actually, its not quite true i had no objective. I'd decided to try to find some inexpensive brooches with jewels in them, since its the one piece of jewlery I've ever been able to wear, on the lapel of a jacket. Its always good to have an objective. And there were some very nice stuff. Wouldnt it be great if I could say that at the bottom of a rummage bin i would a piece of genuine gold...but no, what i found were nice pieces of pot metal coated with yellow stuff...and maybe one actual gold plate piece. Plus im not really good with gold, whereas i used to think I could tell silver. Hah! The coating on the brass of a quite nice pin I bought for sala is definitely on the rub, and we both thought that one was what the dealer said it was. Or did she? Maybe she let us tell her it was. 'Summer silver' perhaps, as in the useage of the phrase written on the underside of the drawbridge in Woods Hole, so it appears to taunt the tourists; 'Summer People, some are not'.
We took the 0930 from Liverpool Station to Norwich to stay with Caroline and John.
They live in a couldn'tbeanywhereelseintheworld red brick common wall row house a stiff walk from downtown Norwich. But although it may be a small city, Norwich qualifies as a REAL city because it has a Cathedral, and a Norman cathedral at that. Plus a market place thats at least 1000 years old. So from 11:35 on (the train was 10 minutes late due to 'congestion') we were fully dipped, immersed actually, it the culture of Norwich. John said there were about 50 churches of various kinds (including at least one synagogue, an understated presence across from the Catholic cathedral sized church) and we went buy a bunch of them in our walk to town. Remember, those quaint narrow windy streets in the pictures are these days filled with cars hurtling by at amazingly fast rates of speed. Luckily, Norwich does still have some of those 'look left' signs without which I would be in hospital by now. Theres a pedestrianized shopping section, and C and J have lived here long enough to know most twistings and turnings, and the walk down led to at least 5conversations with friends. All quite upscale. The Cathedral is surrounded by buildings that are rented as private residences, although some at least are still church property. And of course there is a school worked into the whole scheme. John has in the past done the work to put on a show in the cathedral so he's knowledgeable about various of the little chapels, and the details of the vaulted ceiling. This is a great big heavy church. The support columns are huge things, apparently faced with stone from Normandy, and filled with flint rubble...'and probably a few priests' John says. A special touch is a labryinth inthe yard of the cloister, and the capstones of the vaulted ceilings are all carved in deep relief and painted...beasties, faces, whole scenes from biblical history, and some that look just plain animistic. That done, we hung out in a pub (yes I am trying various english beers, and re-developing a taste for it) then walked along the river to a opening show of a local sculptor. A little too archtectural to thrill my artistic soul, but great technical ceramic work. It was in a cave like space in the basement of an old building, and way too low ceilinged for me. Then we marched briskly back through town to a local Priory now privately owned and used as a music space, to hear a all man string quartet, playing strongly and beautifully and thus helping us to stay awake as well as to enjoy. After, ended up talking to a local doc and a plant geneticist researcher now at Cambridge about plans, soon to come out in a white paper, to put GP's more directly in control of the funding for primary care. There are strong doubts about this...suspicions that it amounts to another cut in funding...sounds familiar. Too bad, because in the past the english system,unlike ours, actually allocated funds to develop rural practices and to get students out into them...would hate to see that accidentally cut.
After all the culture, we came back home to kegeree and salad..all delicious. And a good nights sleep.
More tomorrow, now its time for a beer at the local and dinner somewhere.
best
alan
Actually, its not quite true i had no objective. I'd decided to try to find some inexpensive brooches with jewels in them, since its the one piece of jewlery I've ever been able to wear, on the lapel of a jacket. Its always good to have an objective. And there were some very nice stuff. Wouldnt it be great if I could say that at the bottom of a rummage bin i would a piece of genuine gold...but no, what i found were nice pieces of pot metal coated with yellow stuff...and maybe one actual gold plate piece. Plus im not really good with gold, whereas i used to think I could tell silver. Hah! The coating on the brass of a quite nice pin I bought for sala is definitely on the rub, and we both thought that one was what the dealer said it was. Or did she? Maybe she let us tell her it was. 'Summer silver' perhaps, as in the useage of the phrase written on the underside of the drawbridge in Woods Hole, so it appears to taunt the tourists; 'Summer People, some are not'.
We took the 0930 from Liverpool Station to Norwich to stay with Caroline and John.
They live in a couldn'tbeanywhereelseintheworld red brick common wall row house a stiff walk from downtown Norwich. But although it may be a small city, Norwich qualifies as a REAL city because it has a Cathedral, and a Norman cathedral at that. Plus a market place thats at least 1000 years old. So from 11:35 on (the train was 10 minutes late due to 'congestion') we were fully dipped, immersed actually, it the culture of Norwich. John said there were about 50 churches of various kinds (including at least one synagogue, an understated presence across from the Catholic cathedral sized church) and we went buy a bunch of them in our walk to town. Remember, those quaint narrow windy streets in the pictures are these days filled with cars hurtling by at amazingly fast rates of speed. Luckily, Norwich does still have some of those 'look left' signs without which I would be in hospital by now. Theres a pedestrianized shopping section, and C and J have lived here long enough to know most twistings and turnings, and the walk down led to at least 5conversations with friends. All quite upscale. The Cathedral is surrounded by buildings that are rented as private residences, although some at least are still church property. And of course there is a school worked into the whole scheme. John has in the past done the work to put on a show in the cathedral so he's knowledgeable about various of the little chapels, and the details of the vaulted ceiling. This is a great big heavy church. The support columns are huge things, apparently faced with stone from Normandy, and filled with flint rubble...'and probably a few priests' John says. A special touch is a labryinth inthe yard of the cloister, and the capstones of the vaulted ceilings are all carved in deep relief and painted...beasties, faces, whole scenes from biblical history, and some that look just plain animistic. That done, we hung out in a pub (yes I am trying various english beers, and re-developing a taste for it) then walked along the river to a opening show of a local sculptor. A little too archtectural to thrill my artistic soul, but great technical ceramic work. It was in a cave like space in the basement of an old building, and way too low ceilinged for me. Then we marched briskly back through town to a local Priory now privately owned and used as a music space, to hear a all man string quartet, playing strongly and beautifully and thus helping us to stay awake as well as to enjoy. After, ended up talking to a local doc and a plant geneticist researcher now at Cambridge about plans, soon to come out in a white paper, to put GP's more directly in control of the funding for primary care. There are strong doubts about this...suspicions that it amounts to another cut in funding...sounds familiar. Too bad, because in the past the english system,unlike ours, actually allocated funds to develop rural practices and to get students out into them...would hate to see that accidentally cut.
After all the culture, we came back home to kegeree and salad..all delicious. And a good nights sleep.
More tomorrow, now its time for a beer at the local and dinner somewhere.
best
alan
Thursday, September 9, 2010
London 2010, Day 6-7
9-10-10 0630 Baker Street Internet. Well, this 'cafe'lost its server yesterday, but this morning, rumbly traffic, flickering blue minllights and allit was backup in business. Its efficiently set up, but has never been very used, perhaps emblematic ofthe times..most people dont actually do much writing on the internet, and most now have handheld gadgets. Although the number of people reading papers on the Tube still greatly outweighs the number hunching over electronic thumb pianos. At least here, Nintendo is making an effort to seduce people into its £130 gaming board with adult items like whodunit games and even books...seems like a kind of oldish smallish screen to me, but who knows that will work in the market.
today is Friday, and off to Norwich and a visit to Caroline. Wednesday we used the reopened Tube to head down to Mansion House early...fluffy white clouds, blue skies, and a beautiful walk across Millenium Footbridge opposite Tate Modern, with the tide streaming wildly up the Thames, gravelly banklets along the walls disappearing under the lick of each new running wave. They apparently conduct London walks to do some mudlarking, and there are serious diggers who come out for very low tides. I love the feel of the polish flint pebbles i've found, but trying to make a London necklace used up about one $7 drill per pebble, so i stopped trying. Perhaps setting in silver....
The Tate Modern, of course, is home to the Turbine Hall, which I feel would be a perfect venue for a very very large set of three mobiles. Ideally each would be found objects, like cars and other fossil fuel consuming objects circling on one, objects from the natural resource world on another, and objects relating to war in another...but i'm unsure about the strength of carbon fibers...and the cost of course. Far cheaper to do three mobiles of translucent panels and use projected images to create the identities. Also probably safer..people might have problems walking under a suspended car, although the main exhibit in the Tate Britain are two fighter planes...one suspended nose a few inches off the floor...and I think that there are bearings that are pretty safe that I could use. In the meantime, just now, the Turbine Hall is a huge space, too large to echo, with an incline that tempts running. And a small apparently chinese british child was doing a lot of that..His shrieks of joy loud in the pretty quiet place.
And how was the art? Hmm. Not as noteworthy as the Hall, from my perspective.
We had lunch in the cafe...very good, but notup tothe english pot pie we had in the V&A cafeteria...the highpoint of London eating so far for me. Its large enough so we pretty much share most meals.
It looked like rain when we split up, and i moved on by Tate to Tate boat to the Tate Britain. Its much smaller than i remember, the steps and all. Hours spent there with Paul years ago, he probably because he had to for his study program, I because Susie had loved to go there, and i had gone with, beginning back in the mid fifties. I h ad a mission...to renew viewing of Sargents portraits, having just come from the seascape show. They are still exceptionally wonderfully luminous...the people he portrayed must have fallen in love with the image. Except, of course, for Madame X...I have to learn more about the whole story, but without knowing that, just looking at the sharpened profile, and the anatomically correct but visually difficult image of her right arm skewed around to rest on the edge of the table, and at t he conventions of the times, makes you wonder how someone who seemed to be as careful about his career could have worked through several studies and submitted the final very unconventional image.
Hanging nose down in the central gallery of the Tate Britain is a Jaguar Jet. In the next room, grounded into the floor nose down is a Harrier jet. It give me hope for a flying junk mobile.
It was raining toads and frogs, so back down to the cafe for tea, and then a walk to the bus on Vauxhall and a ride home. We stayed in Weds night; I made a delicious chicken and mushrooms.
Yesterday the internet wasnt working.
We tubed to Holland Park, andemerged into another fluffy cloud morning. Walked down the high street to Clarendon and turned right. More small shops, and eating places with tables and chairs on t he walk, which were never there in the day. There is a small greengrocers on Clarendon, but its not the place sala used to shop at. And the three story single block of flats we lived in is torn down, replaced by a plain brick apartment block. The corner of Ladbroke Road still feels the same, though. The Triumph Roadster that we bought for £300 on the Kensington High Street just down from the Registory hall where we were married 44 years ago needed a lot of work, most of it done right there on the corner.
Up Holland Park to Notting Hill, and some time in the now permanent places selling high end tschotskies from far away places. Sala got a cast brass paint pot from South Asia. Then it was time to take the tube to Archway,and find abus up Highgate Hill to Southgrove and a visit with Jenner, my junior prom date years ago in Minneapolis. Actually, known since Sidney Pratt School in Prospect Park..so when it comes right down to it, one of my older friends.
I won't wax lyrically on and on about how a friendship thats managed to endure over t his amount time feels...you already know. But its a subject that is worth exploring in more detail, to try to discover what the actual structure of the feeling might be. Not at all the same as intimacy..Sala's teacher has said that as you become closer to a person, the intimacy must become more structured, and I think thats right...Jenner and I dont have a structured intimacy. And part of it is sharing...memories and impressions...because we spend a lot of time doing that when we meet...very infrequently. Shes kept up with other friends from that era as well..and at least with Marj says she has moved on to the present. And then,too, Jenner has always been a kind of muse for me...definitely something to work on.
We had lunch as a threesome...her husband was working. Sala left to go shopping, and eventually i mused my way across the highstreet and past my old school. Present day pupils in the grey flannel suits that we wore as uniforms were around. The main buildings were quite recognizeable. Caning was still part of the feedback program at that time...pehaps i am glad i experienced that era , altough at th e time it was quite a shock.
And so down the hill, internetting as I went, and back to Windsor Mansions in time to go out again to see, with Sala, The Railway Children, staged in a theatre that incorporates a railway track in Waterloo Station. But more on that later, its time to get a full english breakfast and catch the train.
regards
alan
today is Friday, and off to Norwich and a visit to Caroline. Wednesday we used the reopened Tube to head down to Mansion House early...fluffy white clouds, blue skies, and a beautiful walk across Millenium Footbridge opposite Tate Modern, with the tide streaming wildly up the Thames, gravelly banklets along the walls disappearing under the lick of each new running wave. They apparently conduct London walks to do some mudlarking, and there are serious diggers who come out for very low tides. I love the feel of the polish flint pebbles i've found, but trying to make a London necklace used up about one $7 drill per pebble, so i stopped trying. Perhaps setting in silver....
The Tate Modern, of course, is home to the Turbine Hall, which I feel would be a perfect venue for a very very large set of three mobiles. Ideally each would be found objects, like cars and other fossil fuel consuming objects circling on one, objects from the natural resource world on another, and objects relating to war in another...but i'm unsure about the strength of carbon fibers...and the cost of course. Far cheaper to do three mobiles of translucent panels and use projected images to create the identities. Also probably safer..people might have problems walking under a suspended car, although the main exhibit in the Tate Britain are two fighter planes...one suspended nose a few inches off the floor...and I think that there are bearings that are pretty safe that I could use. In the meantime, just now, the Turbine Hall is a huge space, too large to echo, with an incline that tempts running. And a small apparently chinese british child was doing a lot of that..His shrieks of joy loud in the pretty quiet place.
And how was the art? Hmm. Not as noteworthy as the Hall, from my perspective.
We had lunch in the cafe...very good, but notup tothe english pot pie we had in the V&A cafeteria...the highpoint of London eating so far for me. Its large enough so we pretty much share most meals.
It looked like rain when we split up, and i moved on by Tate to Tate boat to the Tate Britain. Its much smaller than i remember, the steps and all. Hours spent there with Paul years ago, he probably because he had to for his study program, I because Susie had loved to go there, and i had gone with, beginning back in the mid fifties. I h ad a mission...to renew viewing of Sargents portraits, having just come from the seascape show. They are still exceptionally wonderfully luminous...the people he portrayed must have fallen in love with the image. Except, of course, for Madame X...I have to learn more about the whole story, but without knowing that, just looking at the sharpened profile, and the anatomically correct but visually difficult image of her right arm skewed around to rest on the edge of the table, and at t he conventions of the times, makes you wonder how someone who seemed to be as careful about his career could have worked through several studies and submitted the final very unconventional image.
Hanging nose down in the central gallery of the Tate Britain is a Jaguar Jet. In the next room, grounded into the floor nose down is a Harrier jet. It give me hope for a flying junk mobile.
It was raining toads and frogs, so back down to the cafe for tea, and then a walk to the bus on Vauxhall and a ride home. We stayed in Weds night; I made a delicious chicken and mushrooms.
Yesterday the internet wasnt working.
We tubed to Holland Park, andemerged into another fluffy cloud morning. Walked down the high street to Clarendon and turned right. More small shops, and eating places with tables and chairs on t he walk, which were never there in the day. There is a small greengrocers on Clarendon, but its not the place sala used to shop at. And the three story single block of flats we lived in is torn down, replaced by a plain brick apartment block. The corner of Ladbroke Road still feels the same, though. The Triumph Roadster that we bought for £300 on the Kensington High Street just down from the Registory hall where we were married 44 years ago needed a lot of work, most of it done right there on the corner.
Up Holland Park to Notting Hill, and some time in the now permanent places selling high end tschotskies from far away places. Sala got a cast brass paint pot from South Asia. Then it was time to take the tube to Archway,and find abus up Highgate Hill to Southgrove and a visit with Jenner, my junior prom date years ago in Minneapolis. Actually, known since Sidney Pratt School in Prospect Park..so when it comes right down to it, one of my older friends.
I won't wax lyrically on and on about how a friendship thats managed to endure over t his amount time feels...you already know. But its a subject that is worth exploring in more detail, to try to discover what the actual structure of the feeling might be. Not at all the same as intimacy..Sala's teacher has said that as you become closer to a person, the intimacy must become more structured, and I think thats right...Jenner and I dont have a structured intimacy. And part of it is sharing...memories and impressions...because we spend a lot of time doing that when we meet...very infrequently. Shes kept up with other friends from that era as well..and at least with Marj says she has moved on to the present. And then,too, Jenner has always been a kind of muse for me...definitely something to work on.
We had lunch as a threesome...her husband was working. Sala left to go shopping, and eventually i mused my way across the highstreet and past my old school. Present day pupils in the grey flannel suits that we wore as uniforms were around. The main buildings were quite recognizeable. Caning was still part of the feedback program at that time...pehaps i am glad i experienced that era , altough at th e time it was quite a shock.
And so down the hill, internetting as I went, and back to Windsor Mansions in time to go out again to see, with Sala, The Railway Children, staged in a theatre that incorporates a railway track in Waterloo Station. But more on that later, its time to get a full english breakfast and catch the train.
regards
alan
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
London 2010 Day 6
9-8-10 Internet Cafe, Baker St, W1 Ah, this is more like it. A grey sky, but the Tube is running. It was a trip walking with the pack yesterday...crawling traffic, so walking was actually fastish. Particularly the St Giles area, where they are making some kind of huge new transport mecca for the 2012 Olympics, I am told. Its unrecognizable from Foyles on up to Tottenham Court Road, and the whole of Oxford strees seems to be barely two lanes. So yesterday, with the Tube strike, it was really mobbed. I found myself whistling as I marched along with the throng...bankers with their coats under their arms, moms and nannies with prams, and a bunch of bicyclists wobbling along on the Barclay rental scheme. Actually, the Barclay bikes weren't in that much demand, it seemed tome. And I witnessed one of the issues i've wondered about in such a lockup based scheme without humans...what to do when you want to leave a bike and allt he lockup docking stations are occupied? Seems like an idea opportunity to combine high tech and social welfare by hiring entry levels to staff a lockup...but I havent dont the numbers, and it rarely works out for social welfare on numbers alone.
So traffic if roaring by. By the way,t he discrete hooting and klaxon of emergency vehicles you may remember have been replaced by the noisiest systems ever...they have it all, flashing blue lights, wailing sirens, hoots AND klaxon noises...all generated by chips that can be on the smallest official motorcycle. But most police are still un armed, and Sala says they look cute in their little kevlar vests and bowlers.
We set off for the Tate's via bus and river taxi...and of course did none of the above. Bus to Marble Arch went well, but the first 3 busses from there didnt even stop they were so mobbed. So we walked into Mayfair, coming by chance on Grovesnor Square, which now has a statue of Ike standing in the middle of what used to be a perfectly good street in front of the American Embassy. The embassy itself is temptingly low slung compared to others around it...i remember trying to calculate how big a RC aircraft it would take to crashland a diversionary device on top of it, during the time we were protesting the Vietnam War. Now they make people cue outside to go through security...no wonder we are so loved.
Further along it rained a few felines and canids, and we had predictably chosen not to bring anti rain gear. But it was a passing sh ower, island weather, and from then on the day was fine...even sun later. We turned in at the Academy of Art, and had breakfast at the restaurant there...sala loved her croissant and the poppyseed lemon muffin was among the best i;ve eaten, so even without the Sargent and the Ocean exhibit, there was no mistake. And the exhibit was great, if you fancy waves, boats, beaches and/or John S Sargent's painting. Apparently the family travelled continuously, and his sketches of rigging on board the steam and sail boats that Cunard was running at the time are amazing. So, too, the finished products submitted to various formal salon competitions...my favorite being the wake of the boat during a storm; the ship is caught int he moment of coming up the backside of a large following sea, so we can see the tumult of the ocean , the bubbly wake of the boat under propeller power, and almost feel the ensuing slide, dip, and then vertiginous lift as the huge mid ocean storm swell catches the entire boat and hurls it forward into the next trough. And he is so very specific; another oil painting catches the vertical 'pop' of white water when the bow wave of a powered vessel slaps against the face of an oncoming wind wave. Also exhibited, the sketches, studies, and final products of oyster fisherwomen onthe beach in Concale Brittany. And he was, I think, about 20 atthe time.
We wandered out into a newly dry and sunlit courtyard, which y ou will recall has one of those modern fountains...this one with colums of water a few feet high gouting up out of granite, with a really well camoflaged 'french' type drain system containing the outflow before it goes too far, but after it spreads appealingly across the rather rough granite blocks. Just after Sala wandered quietly through, a pink clad female child disovered the assemblage, and actually embraced one of the insubstantial bubbly pillars in her ecstatic joy.
We turned left down Picadilly, and continued. Lured off course by a courtyard of stalls, and I bought a Buffon hand colored print of a Great Back Back Gull for probably what the entire book once cost..and a beached whale for John. We soldiered on, so yes there is a picture of Sala with cupid, which I cant resist attaching. Lunch was at Yo Sushi...for a sushi fix...and found it edible and efficient as a way to drop £15 on not much protein. Eastward, make Eastward, and we were finally rounding the corner of Haymarket, and scooted into the eddy created between the Sainsbury Wing and the National Gallery proper. Why struggle to cross a river when a paradise of art is right there on your side? For the next several hours, we learned about Fakes and Mistakes...a show on how paintings are fixed, faked, fooled with and generally not always what you think they are. Then we went to inspect the one (1) Vermeer and wallowed in so many views of virgins and dragons that I lost count. Thats when you know its time...when the virgin and the dragon are merging into one incredible optical experience. It was time...we split up...Sala to Liberty House, and myself to walk back to Baker street by way of Foyles (they had just gotten the graphic novel of Heart of Darkness, which I wanted, and did not have Pitchblack, the great graphic short novel by Youme Landowne, so i made as much fuss as i could about the need to stock it). And then, the march home, accompanied, it seemed, by half of London.
We took the newly reopened Tube (the Bakerloo at least was open) to Kilburn Park, and then walked up the Kilburn High Road past mostly halal food shops and among black and brown faces to theTriangle Theatre. This is an area that we looked for lodgings in back in 1867, and ultimately did not look further because it felt mostly white at the time. The Triangle; What a good idea, a venue with two cinemas, a alive theatre , and a large cafe. A part of it is named James Baldwin workspace, but wasnt tenented or explained. But the next feature is a series of and by afghan performers and culture...and they have a big kid outreach...perhaps approaching Destiny Arts in Oakland, my favorite cultural success. It was Tiny Kushner, which we had not seen at the Berkeley Rep, and this production was directed by Berkeley's own Tony Taccone. I thought the sketches were quite brilliant...waiting for the 189 on the High Street afterwards . Sala said she wanted something a bit more in theatre...but you ( and I) will have to wait to find out just what that might be.
Today...again th e Tates. Rain expected, but the Tubes are running!"
best Alan
So traffic if roaring by. By the way,t he discrete hooting and klaxon of emergency vehicles you may remember have been replaced by the noisiest systems ever...they have it all, flashing blue lights, wailing sirens, hoots AND klaxon noises...all generated by chips that can be on the smallest official motorcycle. But most police are still un armed, and Sala says they look cute in their little kevlar vests and bowlers.
We set off for the Tate's via bus and river taxi...and of course did none of the above. Bus to Marble Arch went well, but the first 3 busses from there didnt even stop they were so mobbed. So we walked into Mayfair, coming by chance on Grovesnor Square, which now has a statue of Ike standing in the middle of what used to be a perfectly good street in front of the American Embassy. The embassy itself is temptingly low slung compared to others around it...i remember trying to calculate how big a RC aircraft it would take to crashland a diversionary device on top of it, during the time we were protesting the Vietnam War. Now they make people cue outside to go through security...no wonder we are so loved.
Further along it rained a few felines and canids, and we had predictably chosen not to bring anti rain gear. But it was a passing sh ower, island weather, and from then on the day was fine...even sun later. We turned in at the Academy of Art, and had breakfast at the restaurant there...sala loved her croissant and the poppyseed lemon muffin was among the best i;ve eaten, so even without the Sargent and the Ocean exhibit, there was no mistake. And the exhibit was great, if you fancy waves, boats, beaches and/or John S Sargent's painting. Apparently the family travelled continuously, and his sketches of rigging on board the steam and sail boats that Cunard was running at the time are amazing. So, too, the finished products submitted to various formal salon competitions...my favorite being the wake of the boat during a storm; the ship is caught int he moment of coming up the backside of a large following sea, so we can see the tumult of the ocean , the bubbly wake of the boat under propeller power, and almost feel the ensuing slide, dip, and then vertiginous lift as the huge mid ocean storm swell catches the entire boat and hurls it forward into the next trough. And he is so very specific; another oil painting catches the vertical 'pop' of white water when the bow wave of a powered vessel slaps against the face of an oncoming wind wave. Also exhibited, the sketches, studies, and final products of oyster fisherwomen onthe beach in Concale Brittany. And he was, I think, about 20 atthe time.
We wandered out into a newly dry and sunlit courtyard, which y ou will recall has one of those modern fountains...this one with colums of water a few feet high gouting up out of granite, with a really well camoflaged 'french' type drain system containing the outflow before it goes too far, but after it spreads appealingly across the rather rough granite blocks. Just after Sala wandered quietly through, a pink clad female child disovered the assemblage, and actually embraced one of the insubstantial bubbly pillars in her ecstatic joy.
We turned left down Picadilly, and continued. Lured off course by a courtyard of stalls, and I bought a Buffon hand colored print of a Great Back Back Gull for probably what the entire book once cost..and a beached whale for John. We soldiered on, so yes there is a picture of Sala with cupid, which I cant resist attaching. Lunch was at Yo Sushi...for a sushi fix...and found it edible and efficient as a way to drop £15 on not much protein. Eastward, make Eastward, and we were finally rounding the corner of Haymarket, and scooted into the eddy created between the Sainsbury Wing and the National Gallery proper. Why struggle to cross a river when a paradise of art is right there on your side? For the next several hours, we learned about Fakes and Mistakes...a show on how paintings are fixed, faked, fooled with and generally not always what you think they are. Then we went to inspect the one (1) Vermeer and wallowed in so many views of virgins and dragons that I lost count. Thats when you know its time...when the virgin and the dragon are merging into one incredible optical experience. It was time...we split up...Sala to Liberty House, and myself to walk back to Baker street by way of Foyles (they had just gotten the graphic novel of Heart of Darkness, which I wanted, and did not have Pitchblack, the great graphic short novel by Youme Landowne, so i made as much fuss as i could about the need to stock it). And then, the march home, accompanied, it seemed, by half of London.
We took the newly reopened Tube (the Bakerloo at least was open) to Kilburn Park, and then walked up the Kilburn High Road past mostly halal food shops and among black and brown faces to theTriangle Theatre. This is an area that we looked for lodgings in back in 1867, and ultimately did not look further because it felt mostly white at the time. The Triangle; What a good idea, a venue with two cinemas, a alive theatre , and a large cafe. A part of it is named James Baldwin workspace, but wasnt tenented or explained. But the next feature is a series of and by afghan performers and culture...and they have a big kid outreach...perhaps approaching Destiny Arts in Oakland, my favorite cultural success. It was Tiny Kushner, which we had not seen at the Berkeley Rep, and this production was directed by Berkeley's own Tony Taccone. I thought the sketches were quite brilliant...waiting for the 189 on the High Street afterwards . Sala said she wanted something a bit more in theatre...but you ( and I) will have to wait to find out just what that might be.
Today...again th e Tates. Rain expected, but the Tubes are running!"
best Alan
Monday, September 6, 2010
London 2010 Day 4
9-6-10 Windsor Mansions W1.
Well, we are back at the Internet Cafe on the Marlybone Road, and Sala has just made contact with Caroline in Norwich, hooray hooray. Caroline left her indelible impression on us both when we lived at Ladbroke Road and Clarendon in 1968, just maried, just pregnant, just about everything. And in those days she was with Michael, who taught me a lot about ego and plaster casting. Viva Caroline!
We did the Jewish History of London walk yesterday (www.walks.com), based on advice from Charlotte to check into the London Walks, and it was most informative. This particular walk started at 10\;30 from Tower Hill tube station, which now has a overlook that lets you view most of the towers of the Tower of London, as well as bits of The City. Yesterday the Lord Mayor of London had organi\zed a bicycle ride to publicise biking, which happened at politically opportune moment when the Tube is about to exper4ience a 24 hr strike beginning 5 pm today. So there were teens doing wheelies, couples with babies in trailers, singles on every kind of bike you can imagine and littlekids in pink helmets stopping abruptly in the middle of it all as they rode a circuit, protected by barrriers and event coordinators. Our guide, for the price of $6 for seniors, walked with us to see the roman wall, the site of the first synagogue, and down the street from that, along jewery street in fact, the present Sephardic synagogue, the oldest surviving religious structure in London. It was designed a tthe same time as Wren et al were rebuilding after the fire, and was required by edict to be hidden. As you perhaps know or can imagine, just as the original Venetian Ghetto was the result of antisemitism balanced by greed, the situation of jewery in London was equally complex.The only assurance was that levies and taxes would be imposed by whomsover hapend to be in control, and that as long as there was money and commerce, jews would be allowed to exist in some state or other. So we heard in more detail about the transmigration of Sephardim from Portugal/Spain to Amsterdam (see The Coffee Trader by David Liss) and the ultimate negotiated agreement that let many come to London, initially to East End, and eventually to Maida Vale. Later the Askenaz began arriving from Europe, and we saw the Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor and learned how such later arrivals were received by the jewish community, and entered the process of back breaking work that would eventually buy them a ticket to New York. And I learned a lot more about the namesake of my one time workplace in NYC, Montefiore hospital...Mr Montefiore having been a member of the minyan, and whose seat is preserved with a velvet rope.
We had tapas in the very upscale Spittlefields market hall, and then split up for separate times. Actually, Sala had gone out of the tapas bar and said she would meet me right outside. The tab was slow coming, and painful only by ordinary standards £35, or close to $50. But Sala was nowhere to be seen, and after checking the nearby stores, i irritably called her cell phone...getting a message. At about that point, she emerged from one of the stores that i thought i had checked, but i was annoyed that i'd been the one who had paid, and sat there waiting, and why wasnt she waiting obediently? Clearly time for some solo exploration, and so we agreed, and i set off to Liverpool Station. In the early 60's, this was just a station, but now its a paradise of enterprise and consuming opportunities, as are most of the London stations. (My favorite so far is Marylebone, which is still at ground level, and has only a few cafes and a pub..plus i like the red stone architecture). The circle line wasnt running, creating a lot of milling and confusion in many languages. My jacket created enough of a disguise so that I was asked for directions, and sent at least one person off in what was probably the wrong direction. The central line was runnning fine to Tottenham Court Road, but emerging there was very disorienting. The old building blocks that used to surround St Giles are mostly cleared away, so I had no idea which direction to take to either Foyles or the British Museum. But the signs are clear and simple, and the coin and antiquity enterprise crouching across Russell from the British Museum is comfortingly the same. As were the sitters on the steps, the listeners to the guides, and the general ebb and flow of peopletides up and down the main entrance.
I dont remember the tenor of the donation sign...did it always say sternly 'Give $5£4 ' without any please? In any case, once inside I admired again the decision to enclose/enshrine the reading room in a kind of jewel case of modernity...little kiosks selling souvenir cards and reproduction of egyptian cats all round.. According to Sean, our guide for the Jewish tour, its the same architect who did the 'circumcised gherkin' tower down in the City. In any case, you can still duck across the area enclosing the reading room and pass directly through to the Rosetta Stone. Where i shot some more footage for my yet to be memorable video of 'Translation', which is to be entirely footage of people looking at the stone, taken from behind it. Then I waded through several pools of dynastic and attic art, and, yes of course, walked around the Parthenon frieze.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
OK, enough for now. Time to go join Sala at the local starbucks and then off to South Kensington and, among the old and great, the Saatchi.
saludos
alan
Well, we are back at the Internet Cafe on the Marlybone Road, and Sala has just made contact with Caroline in Norwich, hooray hooray. Caroline left her indelible impression on us both when we lived at Ladbroke Road and Clarendon in 1968, just maried, just pregnant, just about everything. And in those days she was with Michael, who taught me a lot about ego and plaster casting. Viva Caroline!
We did the Jewish History of London walk yesterday (www.walks.com), based on advice from Charlotte to check into the London Walks, and it was most informative. This particular walk started at 10\;30 from Tower Hill tube station, which now has a overlook that lets you view most of the towers of the Tower of London, as well as bits of The City. Yesterday the Lord Mayor of London had organi\zed a bicycle ride to publicise biking, which happened at politically opportune moment when the Tube is about to exper4ience a 24 hr strike beginning 5 pm today. So there were teens doing wheelies, couples with babies in trailers, singles on every kind of bike you can imagine and littlekids in pink helmets stopping abruptly in the middle of it all as they rode a circuit, protected by barrriers and event coordinators. Our guide, for the price of $6 for seniors, walked with us to see the roman wall, the site of the first synagogue, and down the street from that, along jewery street in fact, the present Sephardic synagogue, the oldest surviving religious structure in London. It was designed a tthe same time as Wren et al were rebuilding after the fire, and was required by edict to be hidden. As you perhaps know or can imagine, just as the original Venetian Ghetto was the result of antisemitism balanced by greed, the situation of jewery in London was equally complex.The only assurance was that levies and taxes would be imposed by whomsover hapend to be in control, and that as long as there was money and commerce, jews would be allowed to exist in some state or other. So we heard in more detail about the transmigration of Sephardim from Portugal/Spain to Amsterdam (see The Coffee Trader by David Liss) and the ultimate negotiated agreement that let many come to London, initially to East End, and eventually to Maida Vale. Later the Askenaz began arriving from Europe, and we saw the Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor and learned how such later arrivals were received by the jewish community, and entered the process of back breaking work that would eventually buy them a ticket to New York. And I learned a lot more about the namesake of my one time workplace in NYC, Montefiore hospital...Mr Montefiore having been a member of the minyan, and whose seat is preserved with a velvet rope.
We had tapas in the very upscale Spittlefields market hall, and then split up for separate times. Actually, Sala had gone out of the tapas bar and said she would meet me right outside. The tab was slow coming, and painful only by ordinary standards £35, or close to $50. But Sala was nowhere to be seen, and after checking the nearby stores, i irritably called her cell phone...getting a message. At about that point, she emerged from one of the stores that i thought i had checked, but i was annoyed that i'd been the one who had paid, and sat there waiting, and why wasnt she waiting obediently? Clearly time for some solo exploration, and so we agreed, and i set off to Liverpool Station. In the early 60's, this was just a station, but now its a paradise of enterprise and consuming opportunities, as are most of the London stations. (My favorite so far is Marylebone, which is still at ground level, and has only a few cafes and a pub..plus i like the red stone architecture). The circle line wasnt running, creating a lot of milling and confusion in many languages. My jacket created enough of a disguise so that I was asked for directions, and sent at least one person off in what was probably the wrong direction. The central line was runnning fine to Tottenham Court Road, but emerging there was very disorienting. The old building blocks that used to surround St Giles are mostly cleared away, so I had no idea which direction to take to either Foyles or the British Museum. But the signs are clear and simple, and the coin and antiquity enterprise crouching across Russell from the British Museum is comfortingly the same. As were the sitters on the steps, the listeners to the guides, and the general ebb and flow of peopletides up and down the main entrance.
I dont remember the tenor of the donation sign...did it always say sternly 'Give $5£4 ' without any please? In any case, once inside I admired again the decision to enclose/enshrine the reading room in a kind of jewel case of modernity...little kiosks selling souvenir cards and reproduction of egyptian cats all round.. According to Sean, our guide for the Jewish tour, its the same architect who did the 'circumcised gherkin' tower down in the City. In any case, you can still duck across the area enclosing the reading room and pass directly through to the Rosetta Stone. Where i shot some more footage for my yet to be memorable video of 'Translation', which is to be entirely footage of people looking at the stone, taken from behind it. Then I waded through several pools of dynastic and attic art, and, yes of course, walked around the Parthenon frieze.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
OK, enough for now. Time to go join Sala at the local starbucks and then off to South Kensington and, among the old and great, the Saatchi.
saludos
alan
Sunday, September 5, 2010
London England Day 3
9-5-2010 Windsor Mansions W1 Well, you may ask where did days 1 and 2 go, and all I can say is whiz bang whoopty do!! That is, here we are in London.
Just back from a walking tour of Jewish origins in the City, which turned out to cross the Petticoat Lane market and end in Spittlesfield, in the midst of what used to be jack the ripper home turf, and was about as dangerous when i first ventured out to petticoat lane in t he 50s, but now is, as so much of our accessible planet, yupped and tapased and bruchettad and long lines for the cash machines...and of course, also wonderful. Learned that the Synagogue here was Montefiores home temple, and more about the Sephardim of Maida Vale...and as an acculturation pot, its certainly the equal of hells kitchen, or the lower east side in ny. Just thrashed around for half an hour sourcing theatre tickets, and looks like well be seeing at least something.#
And managed to sneak by the Great Portland St and a quick replay of Lord Elgins thieving booty, and to continue my epic video series of faces viewing the Rosetta Stone.
Our pied a terre courtesy of Paul and Bill is quite amazingly comfortable and central and thank you thnak you. Much nicer than any hotel or B and B could be.
\yesterday spent much of the day at Portobello market, buying little, seeing and feeling a lot. The streams of humanity were my overwhelming impression, brought into a common place but unlike airline crowds, or even subway crowds, most of these people were there for some different but well defined purpose. Like the local woman, properly dressed for Sharia purposes, wrestling her shopping cart out of the basement flat near Ladbroke Grove tube station (there is a 24 hr strike coming). I guess i would have to say the predominant language in the street was Spanish, with English being a second, and perhaps Italian French and German tied for third. And of course, unlike the crowd headed into The City of a weekday morning, peoples idea of dress for a Saturday Street market differ wildly...literally one eye showing to more of a tattoo than one really might want to see (well, not me; that was just a comment i heard, i always want to see).
There was complaints from the older stall holders in the upper (antique) part of Portobello...according to several of them, the prices asked for properties along the Road are too high for antiques, and so are bought by people who are part of some food selling scheme or some outlet...and as a result the spaces for real antiques are less and less. Susie would be very unhappy. She loves Portobello...and since i remember filling in for someone who sold in the market, I feel indignantly defensive as well. But lots of great stuff was still there, and we found me a nice jumper (remember thats a sweater) and a mildly noisy tweed jacket, since I had traveled light to avoid checking baggage.
Theyve moved the Welcome foundation medical collection out of the main British Museum and to an annex apparently near Euston Square...will search for that tomorrow. And a week of at least partially rainy weather lies ahead...so just as well we didnt plan to live out in Reagents Park after all.
I am re-re reading Zen Mind Beginner Mind, and will leave you with this, from Suzuki Roshi
"To Cook, or to fix some food, is not preparation, according to Dogen; it is practice. To cook is not just to preparee food for somone or for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. \you should allow yourself plenty of time; you should work on it with nothing in your mind, and without expecting anything. You shouold just cook!" (ZMBM p 53:Single Minded Way.
And so dear friends, far from perfectly in practice
aloha
alan
Just back from a walking tour of Jewish origins in the City, which turned out to cross the Petticoat Lane market and end in Spittlesfield, in the midst of what used to be jack the ripper home turf, and was about as dangerous when i first ventured out to petticoat lane in t he 50s, but now is, as so much of our accessible planet, yupped and tapased and bruchettad and long lines for the cash machines...and of course, also wonderful. Learned that the Synagogue here was Montefiores home temple, and more about the Sephardim of Maida Vale...and as an acculturation pot, its certainly the equal of hells kitchen, or the lower east side in ny. Just thrashed around for half an hour sourcing theatre tickets, and looks like well be seeing at least something.#
And managed to sneak by the Great Portland St and a quick replay of Lord Elgins thieving booty, and to continue my epic video series of faces viewing the Rosetta Stone.
Our pied a terre courtesy of Paul and Bill is quite amazingly comfortable and central and thank you thnak you. Much nicer than any hotel or B and B could be.
\yesterday spent much of the day at Portobello market, buying little, seeing and feeling a lot. The streams of humanity were my overwhelming impression, brought into a common place but unlike airline crowds, or even subway crowds, most of these people were there for some different but well defined purpose. Like the local woman, properly dressed for Sharia purposes, wrestling her shopping cart out of the basement flat near Ladbroke Grove tube station (there is a 24 hr strike coming). I guess i would have to say the predominant language in the street was Spanish, with English being a second, and perhaps Italian French and German tied for third. And of course, unlike the crowd headed into The City of a weekday morning, peoples idea of dress for a Saturday Street market differ wildly...literally one eye showing to more of a tattoo than one really might want to see (well, not me; that was just a comment i heard, i always want to see).
There was complaints from the older stall holders in the upper (antique) part of Portobello...according to several of them, the prices asked for properties along the Road are too high for antiques, and so are bought by people who are part of some food selling scheme or some outlet...and as a result the spaces for real antiques are less and less. Susie would be very unhappy. She loves Portobello...and since i remember filling in for someone who sold in the market, I feel indignantly defensive as well. But lots of great stuff was still there, and we found me a nice jumper (remember thats a sweater) and a mildly noisy tweed jacket, since I had traveled light to avoid checking baggage.
Theyve moved the Welcome foundation medical collection out of the main British Museum and to an annex apparently near Euston Square...will search for that tomorrow. And a week of at least partially rainy weather lies ahead...so just as well we didnt plan to live out in Reagents Park after all.
I am re-re reading Zen Mind Beginner Mind, and will leave you with this, from Suzuki Roshi
"To Cook, or to fix some food, is not preparation, according to Dogen; it is practice. To cook is not just to preparee food for somone or for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. \you should allow yourself plenty of time; you should work on it with nothing in your mind, and without expecting anything. You shouold just cook!" (ZMBM p 53:Single Minded Way.
And so dear friends, far from perfectly in practice
aloha
alan
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Eastward, Make Eastward 2010
9-2-1010 0830 Green House. Last minutes thrashing around, the end of summer as we know it. Take down the sign that says 'Many Kids Drive Slow' with appropirate ambiguous english usage. Cover the functional bikes and leave the disfunctioinal out to molder a bit more. Put some ropes over the Susie P where she squats tubbily on her trailer, safe from Hurricane Earl who is set to spin by at 135 mph plus just outside Nantucket sometime on Saturday. The George B is in Eel Pond, and probably will be OK. The rowing skiff is on the beach, and I will ask Steve to check on it, as well. And me...well, I will be in England.
London to be exact, Windsor Mansions, Luxborough St, off the Marylebone Road, to be even more precise. Thank you Paul. I've got my 4 cannot be replaced keys ready to go, and will be arriving sometime early tomorrow am.
We will be back, Sala who is now in Devon silently retreating, and my own noisy self, but not till middle of September. We will miss the great quiet...the noiseless wonderfully complex absence of sound that descends on Woods Hole after Labor Day.
This is one of the true harbingers of fall...along with the first t shirt too little cold wind coming around the curve on Gardiner Road, the first falling leaves, the first smell of smoke, the first school bus lumbering along its appointed route.
So..more soon from London, and a time to finish the recounting of the travels of Fuji the little dog laughing who ran away with the spoon, and Alan, yr fthfl svnt.
Fuji, by the way, has moved in with Anne and her two cats...a chapter yet to be written.
London to be exact, Windsor Mansions, Luxborough St, off the Marylebone Road, to be even more precise. Thank you Paul. I've got my 4 cannot be replaced keys ready to go, and will be arriving sometime early tomorrow am.
We will be back, Sala who is now in Devon silently retreating, and my own noisy self, but not till middle of September. We will miss the great quiet...the noiseless wonderfully complex absence of sound that descends on Woods Hole after Labor Day.
This is one of the true harbingers of fall...along with the first t shirt too little cold wind coming around the curve on Gardiner Road, the first falling leaves, the first smell of smoke, the first school bus lumbering along its appointed route.
So..more soon from London, and a time to finish the recounting of the travels of Fuji the little dog laughing who ran away with the spoon, and Alan, yr fthfl svnt.
Fuji, by the way, has moved in with Anne and her two cats...a chapter yet to be written.
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