Faces

I have always been amazed at how easy it is to see a face in what is real­ly a ran­dom “pat­tern”. Clouds, tree bark, weird tex­tile prints are just a few exam­ples of where a “face” can be found.

Back in the mid-sev­en­ties, when I was attend­ing Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty, an artist vis­it­ed cam­pus. (Well, prob­a­bly a few artists over the years I was there, but I was only aware of one). I do not remem­ber his name, but I do remem­ber watch­ing him do his thing in the hall­way of the stu­dent union.

He had a table set up dis­play­ing a col­lec­tion of recent draw­ings. They were very small, maybe three inch­es square and there was prob­a­bly fifty of them. All but three or four were faces.

His schtick at the time was tak­ing a small piece of paper, lay­ing a cou­ple of con­te pen­cils on the paper, plac­ing anoth­er sheet of paper on top, press­ing his hand on the stack and rotat­ing his hand. This result­ed in some ran­dom marks on the paper. Then he would look at the ran­dom marks, see a pic­ture and add a line, some def­i­n­i­tion, etc. to bring the pic­ture out.

One can see why so much of his work turned out to be faces.

He did a demon­stra­tion while a group of stu­dents watched. He stacked up his paper and con­te, rubbed it with his hand, and pre­sent­ed us with the raw “draw­ing”. I clear­ly saw a small stone cot­tage with a gar­den in front and a stone wall in front of the gar­den with a gate on the right and a path to the cot­tage door. He asked the opin­ion of the attrac­tive girl stand­ing next to me who saw, sur­prise, sur­prise, a face!

Today Alt­house linked to Acci­den­tal Mys­ter­ies which has a post about a French artist who makes faces out of toi­let paper tubes. I find them more impres­sive than the artist I saw at IU thir­ty some years ago, even if too many of them look like a George Bush.

Last Chance Harvey

Deb­by and I rent­ed Last Chance Har­vey this evening. The movie is about two peo­ple who share the abil­i­ty to be in a room full of peo­ple and still be alone.

Har­vey, well played by Dustin Hoff­man, finds him­self with noth­ing to lose and finds in that cir­cum­stance the con­fi­dence to pur­sue a beau­ti­ful woman.

Emma Thomp­son is won­der­ful as Kate Walk­er, the object of Har­vey’s pur­suit. This is the first time I’ve real­ly seen Thomp­son (I’ve seen bits and pieces of Pri­ma­ry Col­ors, but noth­ing else with her in it).

Gen­er­al­ly well put togeth­er movie. I noticed a cou­ple of unusal shots, one of which I don’t think worked all that well (at the first kiss). Now and then the sound­track was ter­rif­ic and at one point I thought the theme was get­ting over­played a bit. There is a nice sub­plot with Kate’s moth­er con­cerned about her new neigh­bor, a Pole who “bar-b-ques” a lot.

A sweet movie that keeps its feet on the ground. There is no sex. There is no implied sex. There are no soar­ing vio­lins as the two peo­ple final­ly know they are in love and man­age to get togeth­er despite all the odds. There is just two peo­ple who decide to give it go and spend some time together.

My enjoy­ment of this movie was enhanced by my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Hoff­man’s char­ac­ter. I have always had the tal­ent of being able to be alone in a room full of peo­ple. And I man­aged to woo Deb­by (my wife) because I was at a point where there was lit­tle left to lose. It is a lot eas­i­er to be con­fi­dent in such a situation.

Obama Spoke Stupidly

I don’t blame Oba­ma for what he said. For a very long time, to be black in Amer­i­ca was to be a tar­get for law enforce­ment (and I’m sure it still is occa­sion­al­ly at least).

But it is also true that for a very long time in Amer­i­ca (and, I sus­pect, any­where on the plan­et earth), even a white per­son can get him or her self arrest­ed for doing noth­ing more than argu­ing with a police officer.

Oba­ma admit­ted he did not have the facts and still offered up an opin­ion which was based on the past his­to­ry between police and African-Amer­i­cans. Oba­ma spoke stupidly.

Josh Mar­shall at TPM Media has an excel­lent post up about the posi­tion a police offi­cer is in every time he or she responds to a call. I rec­om­mend it.

Its Nice To Learn That Evrybodys So Concerned About My Health.

Kris Kristof­fer­son sings

Well, they final­ly came and told me they was a gonna set me free
And Id be leav­in town if I knew what was good for me
I said, its nice to learn that evry­bodys so con­cerned about my health.

The Repub­li­can’s con­cern over health care reform reminds me of that song. To be clear, the Repub­li­cans pri­ma­ry goal here is to have noth­ing done. One need look no fur­ther than the years 2003 through 2007. In those years the Repub­li­cans had majori­ties in both hous­es of con­gress and the pres­i­den­cy. Did they do any­thing about health care? No. It is not like the health care prob­lems that we have just appeared in the last two years.

Any Repub­li­can dis­cus­sion about “doing it right” and “going slow” real­ly just means pre­vent­ing any­thing from happening.

Accident By Cell Phone

The Nation­al High­way Traf­fic Safe­ty Admin­is­tra­tion gath­ered hun­dreds of pages of research and warn­ings about the haz­ards of dri­vers using cell phones…The find­ings included:

What’s miss­ing?

An increase in the num­ber of acci­dents. That’s what is missing.

25 per­cent of acci­dents are a result of dri­ver dis­trac­tion. Cell phone use while dri­ving has increased 50 per­cent. So cell phone use is increas­ing­ly cit­ed as the cause of the accident.

But it isn’t the cell phone.

The acci­dent is caused by the dis­tract­ed dri­ver. If the dri­ver did not have the phone to be dis­tract­ed by, then he or she would find some­thing else. All the laws pro­hibit­ing cell phone use while dri­ving will do noth­ing to cut down the num­ber of accidents.

Translating Shakespeare to English?

Over at The New Repub­lic are duel­ing columns on the sub­ject of whether or not Shake­speare should be, effec­tive­ly, trans­lat­ed into mod­ern eng­lish. The pro argu­ment is deliv­ered by John McWhort­er and the con by Antoni Cimoli­no.

In the first place, this is a sil­ly dis­agree­ment. It is not like the orig­i­nal Shak­s­peare plays will be lost to future gen­er­a­tions if some­one rewrites them into mod­ern eng­lish (I own four com­plete Shake­spear­es myself!) So if some­one wants to make the attempt then best of luck to them. If some­one actu­al­ly man­ages a rewrite that is up to (or near­ly so) Shake­speare’s orig­i­nal, then that strikes me as a big win. And if they fail, then no loss. Just con­tem­plat­ing this is a good reminder of what one might be miss­ing when­ev­er read­ing a trans­lat­ed text. 

It hap­pens that I’ve been read­ing a lot of Shake­speare late­ly. I’ve read nine plays and in the mid­dle of num­ber ten. I start­ed by read­ing from The Yale Shake­speare edi­tion because each play is its own vol­ume so there is no heavy book to haul around. But for some rea­son, my The Yale Shake­speare does not include the three parts of Hen­ry VI and Richard III. So when I got to Hen­ry VI the choice pre­sent­ed itself of read­ing from The River­side Shake­speare or from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Great Books edition.

The River­side is in one vol­ume with lots of notes and intro­duc­to­ry mate­r­i­al mak­ing it a large heavy book. The U of C edi­tion is in two vol­umes and no notes with just one page of biog­ra­phy mak­ing it a much eas­i­er book to han­dle. So I went with con­ve­nience over notes.

I dis­cov­ered almost imme­di­ate­ly that read­ing Shake­speare with­out the notes is more enjoy­able and, to my mind, more com­pre­hen­si­ble. Yes, I’m sure it helps that I took a cou­ple of Shake­speare class­es in col­lege (30 years ago!) and that I had just read sev­er­al plays with the notes before read­ing with­out the notes, but when I read Mr. Cimoli­no arti­cle in defense of the orig­i­nal plays it made a lot of sense. He points out that a tal­ent­ed actor will deliv­er the lines in such a way as to con­vey their mean­ing. I have found that read­ing straight through with­out stop­ping to look at a foot­note has a sim­i­lar effect.

Some­times I have had to read a giv­en speech or con­ver­sa­tion twice to under­stand it and I am cer­tain that there is plen­ty that I am miss­ing. I look for­ward to reread­ing the plays some­day to under­stand more.

The argu­ment in The New Repub­lic has more to do with the plays as per­formed than as read. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a per­for­mance of a Shake­speare play. I do remem­ber attend­ing an Eliz­a­bethan play and hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time fol­low­ing what was going on so I can sym­pa­thize with those who might pre­fer a trans­la­tion. But I felt that my lack of under­stand­ing had as much to do with not under­stand­ing what the actors actu­al­ly said as much as not under­stand­ing the mean­ing. So I also sym­pa­thize with the notion that com­pe­tent actors might make the mate­r­i­al more accessable.

And there is always the idea of read­ing the play before watch­ing the performance.

So, rewrite if you want, but like any trans­la­tion, it will nev­er be as good as the original.



What’s In My Interest?

I had the impres­sion sev­er­al days ago that momen­tum for health care reform slowed down some while Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was over­seas. A lot of the news in the past cou­ple of days has been that reform will only get done if the Pres­i­dent is active­ly work­ing to push it through congress.

I was also under the impres­sion that most Repub­li­cans would pre­fer that health care not pass.

And yet…

He [for­mer Sen­a­tor Zell Miller] drew more applause from the most­ly Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors …when he said Oba­ma need­ed to spend more time in Wash­ing­ton and less time trav­el­ing abroad. “Our globe-trot­ting pres­i­dent needs to stop and take a break and quit gal­li­vant­i­ng around,” Miller said, adding that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel needs to put “Goril­la Glue” on his chair to keep him in the Oval Office.

Ignor­ing the pos­si­ble racial slur here, I don’t under­stand the applause. If the Repub­li­cans want health reform to fail, then I would think they would not want the Pres­i­dent glued to his chair in the oval office, but would pre­fer him fly­ing around the globe.

Unless it was the racial slur.…

Hat tip to The New Republic

Late Show Music Choice

While I typed up the last post, David Let­ter­man was on the TV in the back­ground. My atten­tion was drawn when I heard the band play­ing If You Want to Be Hap­py, a Jim­my Soul hit from 1963.

The band was play­ing in David’s guest, Kather­ine Hei­gl, whom I have nev­er heard of, but from what I saw on Let­ter­man, I don’t think any­one would call her ugly. The lyrics of If You Want to Be Hap­py include: “If you want to be hap­py for the rest of your life, nev­er make a pret­ty woman your wife, so from my per­son­al point of view, get an ugly girl to mar­ry you” So the beau­ti­ful actress is played in with a song about the virtues of mar­ry­ing an ugly girl. Ms Hei­gl did not com­ment on the music and I won­der if she’s ever heard the song.

It turns out that Ms Hei­gl is on Let­ter­man to pro­mote the movie The Ugly Truth (the clip did not look promis­ing). Did the fact that the word “ugly” is in the title of the movie jus­ti­fy the song choice?

This is a great song that I’ve always loved. Mem­o­ry tells me that my old­est sis­ter loved the song (although she is (and was) beau­ti­ful!). But it seems an odd choice to play in a guest on a late night talk show.

Sunday Drive to Wine

Yes­ter­day, Deb­by and I took a Sun­day dri­ve to check out a cou­ple of Indi­ana winer­ies. Vis­it­ing winer­ies is one of our favorite things to do. I have only recent­ly devel­oped a taste for wine and I cer­tain­ly lack the vocab­u­lary to dis­cuss wine, but why should that stop me?

We start­ed out at Wil­son Wines “in” Mod­oc, Indi­ana. I say “in” because I did not see any towns in the vicin­i­ty of the win­ery. The win­ery does not look like much as one dri­ves past an assort­ment of out­build­ings to get to the win­ery, which most­ly looks like just anoth­er out­build­ing. A friend­ly, polite but not over­ly talk­a­tive gen­tle­man showed us the wine list: eight whites, three reds, and sev­en fruit and non tra­di­tion­al wines.

We tast­ed five wines. We liked the Sey­val Blanc (dry white), the Autumn White (semi-dry) and the Marechal Foch (semi-sweet). Well, I liked the first two and Deb­by liked the last two. If you like those kinds of wine, I can’t believe you would not like these.

The Amer­i­can Ries­ling was OK. I have had a few ries­lings that I thought were OK, but this one did­n’t quite do it for me. Deb­by liked it bet­ter than I.

We also tast­ed the Indi­an Trail Red (dry). It had quite a strong fla­vor (lots of tan­nins we were told) and was not to our taste.

I lack the vocab­u­lary and I have a lim­it­ed palette, but we’ve been to a lot of winer­ies over the past few years and Wil­son Wines are as good as any oth­ers we’ve had. It is a bit out of the way, but worth the trip. We bought two bot­tles, the Autumn White and the Marechal Foch.

Then we went to Madi­son Coun­ty Win­ery at 10942 S. 400 East, Markleville, Indi­ana (again, not real­ly in the town). This win­ery opened for busi­ness just over six months ago (Jan­u­ary 9, 2009). The tast­ing room in an out­build­ing at Wil­son Wines is fan­cy next to the tast­ing room in a mobile home at Madi­son Coun­ty Win­ery. But facil­i­ties take mon­ey and he’s just start­ing out. The web site is not all that impres­sive, either.

I believe that we dealt with the pro­pri­a­tor, Eric Hens­ley. He is friend­ly and pas­sion­ate about the win­ery. The selec­tions are lim­it­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the dry side, but he plans to add more wines over time. We tried a (dry? semi dry?) Mead. We found it inter­est­ing, but not quite to our taste (being a mead, we did­n’t expect to like it). We also tried a sem-sweet red that was a blend of two grapes (I think one of them was nia­gara grapes). It was inter­est­ing also. Maybe a bit too sweet for me. Both had what I think were dis­tinc­tive flavors.

If you are look­ing for wines that are not just anoth­er white or red, this may be worth the trip for you. Deb­by and I look for­ward to the day when his selec­tion is wider and we can get back there.

The Judgment of Pigeons

Ear­li­er this month Freako­momics post­ed a pic of a car cov­ered in bird drop­pings and linked to a study that found that pigeons can be taught to dif­fer­en­ti­ate “good” paint­ings from “bad”.

This brought to mind a time when I was sub­ject­ed to the judge­ment of a bird.

My par­ents had a cot­tage on Magi­cian Lake in Michi­gan and so a fair amount of time in the sum­mer was spent up there. As cot­tages go, it was nice, but it was a cot­tage. Many of the “cot­tages” on the lake looked more like a pri­ma­ry res­i­dence (though few were), but ours was a nice cot­tage with a short pier and a cou­ple of row boats.

I remem­ber sev­er­al of us, my sib­lings and myself and per­haps a guest or two, were in the front yard more or less gath­ered around the table singing. I don’t know what we were singing, but singing we were. We were not in the habit of singing all the time, but with enough reg­u­lar­i­ty that any one time did not seem out of the ordinary.

I loved to sing, though I sus­pect I was not so good at it (I still love to sing and I’m sure I’m bet­ter now than I was then, but how much that says.…). At any rate, the song end­ed on a long dra­mat­ic note and I tipped my head back and real­ly belt­ed it out. And in the mid­dle of that note, a bird in the tree above judged me to not be such a good singer.

With laser pre­ci­sion the drop­ping found its way through the small gap between the top of my glass­es and my eye­brow and hit me square in the eye.

I knew imme­di­ate­ly what had hap­pened. I flung my glass­es off and ran the few feet to the lake and pret­ty much dunked my face into the water sev­er­al times. I don’t remem­ber much else about it.

I assume that every­one got a good laugh at my expense. Geez, I hope so. What a waste of mate­r­i­al if no one laughed at that!

At least it did­n’t plop right into my wide open mouth.