tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81432603561242930592024-03-12T19:45:32.296-07:00Lucubration of the man from UtzComments on a wide variety of subjects from the widow of the "Mad Genius"the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-20598365026130089362015-06-28T14:54:00.000-07:002015-06-28T14:56:01.312-07:00Time, like an ever-rolling stream<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;">
<i><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Time, like an ever-rolling stream,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">bears all our years away;</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">they fly, forgotten, as a dream</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">dies at the opening day.</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">It has always been the case for me that I was an outsider, introspective, and introverted. Even as a young child I didn’t fit into any expected sort of friendships with other boys. My close friendships were with girls, and a few cousins, but my interactions with the boys in the neighborhood were traumatic. I was bullied, ambushed and beaten, ridiculed. I was different- a queer. This term was heard by me, and I’m pretty sure meant by them in its denotation, something odd or strange. While it was said with malice I am fairly certain that the sexual meaning was not present, at least not consciously. I am certain of that because the issue of sexual preference simply wasn’t spoken of during the the early 50’s in suburban Rhode Island, or perhaps anywhere except some very sophisticated urban centers. I was certainly aware that I was “different” but my differentness was attributed to my interest in Art. I would read rather than play ball. I wasn’t wanted by the boys, was afraid of them, and they certainly made every effort to exclude me. I went off to art lessons and took long solitary bike rides</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">There was much to be afraid of in those days. In addition to the bullies there were larger threats. The Providence Journal often published maps showing where we should go in case of nuclear attack, evacuation routes, maps with rings radiating out from Providence showing what kind of destruction would occur in each zone if an “A” bomb was dropped on the city. We had drills in grammar school, were taught how to get under our desks quickly. When they were building Interstate 95 through the city they built bomb shelters into the abutments, we were given assignments for which one to go to. There were training sessions on how to build a makeshift shelter if one heard the siren go off, lists of canned foods to stock up on.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">In junior high I had a “girlfriend.” There were actually two, and in both cases the friend part was much more prominent that the girl part, and they both moved on to situations where the girl part had a higher priority.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">During High School, in the mid 60’s one started to see, in the national press, articles that mentioned sexual preference. The Kinsey reports had precipitated comment and every once in a while Time Magazine, or Life magazine would make some reference. Prior to that time any sense I might have had about my own sexual interests left me feeling more than queer, they led to feelings of total isolation. Such tendencies were, to my knowledge, unique to myself. I wasn’t becoming something, there was no “thing” to become. I was weird, strange beyond strange. In my senior year I made a very inept attempt to “end it all.” I jumped out of a tree into a brook; from a rather low branch, into a shallow brook that I was quite accustom to wade across, so there wasn’t any danger. The point was made, however, and I was sent off to see Dr. Gunnar Nirk.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">It is with great gratitude that I relate what Dr. Nirk had to say. He told me that some boys like boys, some boys liked girls. It is no big deal. It’s normal. Try one each, he said, see what you like best and just stick with that, it’s perfectly fine!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">I entered R.I.S.D. in the fall of 1967, and it was there that I finally acted on Dr.Nirk’s advice- at least the boy part, which was so fine I never conducted the second half of the experiment.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">At that time bars, “Gay Bars,” and certain public parks were the only places gay people could meet and socialize. In downtown Providence there was the “Fife’n Drum.” One could dance there, except when the police came in- one would be arrested for dancing with another man. The bartender in the first room had a switch that would kill the music in the third room. When the music went off everyone stood around innocently, when the police left the music resumed, the dancing resumed, until the next visit. At closing time police cruisers would follow people to their cars, harass them, and stop them for petty violations. In the early 70’s, after college, I met a man with whom I wanted to live, so we started looking for an apartment. There was a local law that made it illegal for a landlord to lease an apartment to two unrelated men. We ended up in New York for a year or so, and when we returned rented in the next town over.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Things were manageable in the 70’s. I have been partnered for most of my life, and even in the seventies and eighties found living as an out, partnered gay man to be reasonably easy. I am what someone once referred to as a “serial monogamist.” Looking back there has been quite a series, and one of the things I’ve been thinking about this week is that in an environment where marriage was not an option, there are certain difficulties in testing a partner’s intentions and willingness to make commitments.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">The seventies were a fun and creative time, but as we moved into the eighties strange rumors started. Gay men were dying. Was it a conspiracy, a new cancer? At first we heard this reported in the gay press, but then, here in Boston, shortly after I moved here, people started dying in conspicuous numbers. A new retrovirus was discovered, was it real or was it bogus? Did this virus really cause the disease or was it a red herring. I was member of The Metropolitan Heath Club at that time, and people were falling in such numbers that we actually developed phone trees to check on people if they didn’t come to the gym at their usual time. I know one man who was a member of a “Social” club that had 50 members, he was the only one still living. It is hard to convey the fear and grief of that time. One controversy was whether one should get tested once the test was developed, what did that record leave one vulnerable to? Even looking at the statistics doesn’t convey the sense of devastation. When the numbers are averaged over the state, or the country the impact is watered down, but the reality is that the deaths were focused on urban neighborhoods like the South End, and in the neighborhoods the impact was dramatic.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">I have the idea that it was during this time that the process that led to Friday’s Supreme Court Ruling was started. During this period the members of the gay community became visible to their families and straight friends. They were outed by their sickness. Rock Hudson is the most well know, but in many families, many companies, many societies gayness could no longer be viewed as “other” as relatives, friends and coworkers starting dying of this plague. It was suddenly clear that we were everywhere and in every family. The other aspect of this is that the gay community as a community dealt with this problem on the most serious level. “The boys in band” quickly gave way to health workers, gay doctors and researchers, social activists, hospice workers and fundraisers. They all got into high gear and worked hard. Suddenly society was taking us seriously and dealing with our presence amongst them. There was considerable respect and sympathy earned by the way the community responded to the crisis.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">The AIDS epidemic is not only a story about medical hardship, but also a story about personal, political, and financial hardship. It was common during those times for committed partners to be barred from hospitals where their lovers were dying; to be excluded from decision making, even from funerals and memorial services. Even in cases where a will was in place surviving spouses were deprived of inheritance. Cohabiting spouses had no protection. I know of survivors who were put out of homes owned jointly when their spouse died and an aggressive and disapproving family inherited the partner’s share. This was especially egregious when the survivor was also sick and unable to defend himself.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">We see much talk of love and romance in the recent discussion of marriage, but the real substance is in these problems of protection and the attitudes about relationships between same sex couples. I had for many years a relationship with a man, we lived together, shared an office, I had, or thought I had, a close and loving relationship with his mother, and certainly took care of her when she had need. One time there was a discussion of wills, and his mother was shocked that I would expect any interest in his property what ever. She could see no basis for such an interest. We were not married (we didn’t have that option at that time.) When Aramis died, his mother received his ashes. She followed his wish and scattered them on the ocean, but she did it without including me. In itself that was not the most significant, nor the worst thing I had to deal with just then, but it does show her attitude toward our relationship. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">I bring these things up because beyond the love, and the romance, being married is different from being unmarried, both in the eyes of the law and in terms of the dignity and seriousness with which family and society view a relationship.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">So, once again on the outside, I watch, and truly rejoice in all the celebrations that are taking place this weekend. This place outside has become familiar to me. One of the relationships I mentioned earlier ended in 1992. We had been together for some time, during the worst of the epidemic. During that time I had experienced the crisis from a seemingly safe place in a committed relationship. But during Pride, 1992, I was single, and looked at things from a far more more vulnerable perspective. That year the post parade party was on the Common and as I entered I was struck with the stark realization that almost every one there was either 10 years older, or 10 years younger than I. The vast majority of my cohort, people who were my friends, were missing. And we were the postwar baby boom, men born between 1945 and 1955.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">I am still here to tell the tale. My life as a sexually aware and active man spans the time from before Stonewall, through the AIDS Crisis, to the national acceptance of same sex marriage. It has been a long and flowing stream of time, and as joyful as this weekend is for me it is weighted by the memory of all the people who perished waiting for it to come.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">I have truly lived in interesting times. </span></div>
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the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-83803420192854975752014-11-29T06:51:00.000-08:002014-11-29T06:51:03.491-08:00Good Cop, Bad Cop?<br />
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Another report, this morning in the Boston Globe, Mike Brown and Darren Wilson; whose hands were where, what will we ever know, have the facts now been lost irretrievably, and what about that Police Chief in Milwaukee who responded to criticism with a comment placing police violence against the black population in the context of Black on Black violence?</div>
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I must say right up front that I am appalled that a few people with whom I am "friends" on Facebook have posted comments in support of his position. I hope they will read this and at least consider what I have to say.</div>
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Of all the distressing discourse that we as the American people are currently engaged in, one the most racist comments I have heard is the proposition that the black community is not concerned, outraged, and acting on this question of Black on Black violence. The very term is racist. We are told all about the fact that 80% of black murders are perpetrated by other blacks. Yet we know that the vast majority of murders in any group involve perpetrators and victims within a community. If the percentage of murders in the black community committed by blacks is 80%, then what is the percentage in white communities? Ar least as high, probably higher, but we talk of "Black on Black" violence as though it were some sort of phenomenon peculiar to the black community, that is a racist idea, contrary to all facts. Talk about white on white violence, and compare the two, before being so indignant, if there is a difference, which I doubt, odds are "white on white" violence is worse.</div>
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Further, for white people to assume that the black community is not concerned and working on its own problems with violence only shows how out of touch with the black community white people are. It is racism of the worse sort to make the unknowing assumption that the leaders and members of the black community are not working hard with the paltry resources that society allows them to stem this problem. They are, and rather than being vigilantes like the KKK, they work within the justice system and rely on the police to be their allies.</div>
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Hence the outrage when the justice system and the police betray their trust.</div>
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If we accept that Darren Willson's testimony to the grand jury which has recently been released is truthful, despite the contractions it contains, we still know the following: he acknowledges that he perceived the large black man as being intimidating; he acknowledges that he knowingly entered into confrontation over a petty crime (jay walking or cigarillos, makes no difference) with lethal force as his only defense; that he knowingly placed himself in a position in which the use of his gun was likely.</div>
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This is bad policing, and arguments about what happened once the situation escalated simply distract from the point that what ought to have happened was that Willson should have conveyed his observation to dispatch, followed from a distance, and awaited instruction and back up. Instead he precipited a life threatening confrontation. He behaved like the worst kind of anger driven, prejudiced, power hungry dictator. These are the people that the black community has been looking to to help them address their problems with violence, and that is why they are are outraged.</div>
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One further thought: of 100 black people murdered, 80 are murdered by other blacks. This is the figure being bruited about right now. White police officers kill 1, or 10, or all the remaining 20, what ever the number it it is at most 20%, so why not focus on the larger number, the 80% rather than being outraged about the smaller number? I believe that was Captain Flynn's point, which a surprising number of people support.</div>
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Notice what happened in that equation- the murder of one black person by a police officer was made equivalent to the murder of a black person by a black criminal. The individual murders are made to carry the same significance. In other words, this equation makes the policeman a criminal. Think on that for a bit.</div>
the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-19465754545490448232013-09-06T08:06:00.002-07:002013-09-06T08:06:45.719-07:00Exploring the border between painting and photography #3<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d9ead3;">"Look for one thing, find another"</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d9ead3;">This oft repeated proverb poked up again this week. I was rummaging through my commonplace books looking for a reference to a book I read some time ago, and I came upon this statement written during August 2008, while I was working on the images in the current show. Isn't it frustrating when one crafts many words to express a concept, then discovers that the work was already done, and probably more clearly and concisely, than recent efforts. So I will share it. Then we will look at a picture of some pixels!</span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d0e0e3;">Beauty is an elusive concept; at least understanding what is meant by the word "beauty" can be very elusive. The term is most often used to denote a strange and undisciplined amalgam of associations, remembrances, aspirations, and evidence of the investment of effort. But these are all external to the object or the place- external to the subject if you will. The subject then becomes a rack upon which this veil of subjectivity is hung.</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d0e0e3;">But the subject has also it's own beauty. The beauty of pattern and light, energy, color and texture which is its own, which is it's own and is available for our pleasure if we have the courage to look at, and appreciate, that which is before us; to see it in its own intense and individual beauty, rather than only seeing its resemblance to, or difference from our preconceptions.</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d0e0e3;">In this series of images I share with you the hours of my days in the month of August. from the most prosaic to the most splendid places that I pass through. Watch what beauty the sky and the light give, even to the alley behind my home. It is a precious gift, the light and sounds and air of our days, and a fleeting one that you or I could be severed from in an instant. I challenge you to treasure every hour of every one of your days- here I make mine a gift to you.</span></i></div>
the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-59905450301154152502013-08-31T07:10:00.000-07:002013-08-31T07:10:47.042-07:00Exploring the border between painting and Photography, cont.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP0dvMpq7G0ucFN0VPWy1RzuD_rFXYa6qSZCLKZ2cslWeBL6F3rZ-yaU7XzBnPffyOnI-OYJvD3rJXPf_kSs3wvh5Vg_5PfmewPNZBQW9NOGgFp2yBfhEtPPEh_R84woGofvflrbyejthO/s1600/a1010The+alley+of+elmThumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP0dvMpq7G0ucFN0VPWy1RzuD_rFXYa6qSZCLKZ2cslWeBL6F3rZ-yaU7XzBnPffyOnI-OYJvD3rJXPf_kSs3wvh5Vg_5PfmewPNZBQW9NOGgFp2yBfhEtPPEh_R84woGofvflrbyejthO/s320/a1010The+alley+of+elmThumb.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Two things intrigued me about this world: the digital camera could record information in very low light levels, information that could then be expanded in photoshop, and also, the images themselves were immediately available in multiples to be compounded in ways that allowed for shifts in point of view that greatly expanded the information that could be put into a single image. I started taking pictures under increasingly dark condition- often the image would not be discernible, and then processing them in photoshop to bring an image out of the darkness. I likened this to Raku, you wouldn't really know what would happen and you had to work with what started to develop. For the first time in my life as an artist I was producing abstract images, and using photography to do so.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">I also did a series of portraits of friends who came to visit. I kept the light low, and the camera I was using at the time produced rather blurry images that I would then draw detail into. When I paint a figure I usually keep the mass rather vague, and then, at the end of the process I would add a few careful highlights and a few defined lines to make the form "pop." I found myself doing this in photoshop, and it worked. On one of these I was having trouble with the color, and I started playing with layers of solid color, maybe I could do a duo tone and forget the color problem, and one layer that I tried was an earth green, I adjust the transparency, and suddenly I had what traditional painting calls "optical grays." I was stunned! The tricks of image making that I had learned by years of study of old master paintings worked perfectly well in photoshop. I was using the newest digital technology to created my very old fashioned paintings!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">"What old fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart," Like Paul in "Dombey and Sons" by Dickens, I was wondering with a palpitating heart what was old or new fashioned as I was playing with this new technology, channeling Dürer and Velasquez while taking color channels apart and applying gradient maps in photoshop! As dark as the first half of the first decade of the new millennium was for me personally I am firmly convinced that the wonder and excitement of this new way of expressing myself is what got me through.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">I produced a series of abstractions, a series of totally abstracted figures and portraits (hats off to some very patient friends) and when I started to be able to walk about again some interesting landscapes that are very obviously manipulated. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In 2008 I was doing a lot of landscape images. I was walking a lot at that time, and would use the parks around Boston, particularly the Fenway, Muddy river and Arnold Arboretum as raw material for rather pastoral images. They were a vehicle for developing my interest in way of constructing images in what I was starting to think of as "irritating the eye." The process of seeing is extremely complex, and is not a reading by the brain of a static image. Our brain is constantly interpolating information from our roving eyes and constructing a surprisingly dynamic image of this constantly changing information. I recommend the work of Semir Zeki, Oliver Sacks, and Dr. Land as a source for this. If you look closely at an eighteenth century steel engraving- completely representational images, and also at certain newspaper pages where the color plates are just slightly off register, you will see how the two dimensional images we process are often composed of nothing but interference patterns. This in fact was one of Dr. Lands great experiments, he used a black and a red transparency to project a full color image. We interpret color not by reading a light frequency but by interpolating between two frequencies.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">To me this is all pretty interesting stuff, and experiments in the color channels of my images was what I was mainly focused on, the result being these pretty pastoral images with (I hope) a kind of dynamic vibration that makes them live. I don't intend the viewer to be conscious of the trick, only to be affected by the result.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In fact what I was doing was taking a picture, then editing the image to conform to what I thought of as beautiful- out with those telephone poles- and then doing my processing on the image of this fictional beautiful place. One of the questions I asked in the previous post contains a challenge. The alley behind the house I live in always seems magical to me. Walking through it is always wonderful, beautiful, but it contains all sorts of trash cans and hanging wires. I could- indeed I have, taken pictures in the alley and use photoshop to edit out all those offensive things, but could I put the beauty I experience in an image without removing them? To make the question more specific, could I make a beautiful image of this alley I love so much, rather than creating a fiction about a beautiful place and then making an image of the fiction?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">That became my challenge in August of 2008. How I responded to that Challenge is the series of images contained in "A portrait of August." This at least is the formal challenge. There were others as well.</span></div>
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<br />the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-33186537997999973432013-08-15T09:31:00.000-07:002013-08-15T09:31:45.898-07:00Exploring the border between painting and photography.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Question from Jason Evans, photographer, Brighton: "What's the difference between a photographer who makes art, and an artist who makes photographs?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">William Eggleston's answer:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">"Not sure there is any difference."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">This is taken from an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/genius-in-colour-why-william-eggleston-is-the-worlds-greatest-photographer-8577202.html">interview</a> with the "godfather" of color photography, William Eggleston in the Independent Newspaper (UK) with Michael Glover.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">Many thanks to my friends at the <a href="http://www.monroegallery.com/">Munroe Gallery of Photography</a> for bringing this to my attention.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">A few weeks ago I was asked to supply a short bio for the RI state house, where one of my paintings hangs, and when I described what I am doing now I felt a little at a loss- well, I guess I'm exploring the border between painting and photography was all I could think of to make sense of what I'm doing. Perhaps that popped into my head because I was very engaged in preparing the one man show at the <a href="http://education.bcae.org/bcae_art_gallery.html">BCAE</a> which is now open. So, I've been thinking about that, and in conjunction with the show I propose to share some of those thoughts.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">Here is another question: when we use the term "Photograph" what are we referring to? I think most people would refer to the process that was developed in the 19th century, but that process only dealt with the fixing of images on paper- or copper- in some permanent way. The camera had been around since ancient times. During the renaissance, developments in lens technology made the "camera obscura" available as an artist tool. Indeed, the only permanent result that the use of these technologies produced was the work of draftsmen and artist who used them as an aid in producing drawing and painting.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">In the nineteenth century a method of fixing the images on paper was developed, and for the first time a document of the light from the lens could exist without the intermediary of a draftsman, a separate technology was born, which would evolve into a separate art form as well as being an independent recording mechanism that could represent its own version of an assumed truth.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">But artists did continue to use the camera as an reference in their work, at first as blatantly as they had formerly, then somewhat seruptitiously as photography gained recognition as an independent art form, and finally apologetically.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">In the world of figurative art today the standard position is that one should not paint from photographs for the following two reasons: first, why imitate in paint what has already been stated by the photographer, second, there should not be an intermediary between the artist and their subject. It is also sometimes stated that the quality of a drawing is diminished by copying from photographs. This is accepted as true, despite the fact that many artists, including myself, have and do use photographs for reference, and there are hundreds of years behind this practice. It needs to be stated that using a photograph for reference, as a memory jog, is different from simply copying a photograph, and when I, and others who I respect, use this method it is as an adjunct to actual observation, and usually involves photos taken during sittings. But not always, I once did a posthumous portrait using a shoe box full of old photos to assemble the image- and that worked out pretty well.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">These thoughts were part of my rather testy relationship with photography before the tables got turned and the other side of this question put to William Eggleston came into focus. Using photography as a reference tool for painting and drawing was seemingly clear cut, but suppose by some science fiction it became possible to reverse the equation, and use about 45 years worth of painting and drawing experience as reference material for photographs. I don't mean simply experience in recognizing a good composition, but actual color manipulation, decisions about scale and composition and lighting. I relate this in a very personal sense- there are great differences between images recorded by the eye and the hand in traditional art versus images recorded by film upon exposure to light passing through a lens; but there are also great similarities and common judgments. I am relating here my own exploration of process.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">In the mid 1990's I was sharing an office with a graphic designer. I had studied calligraphy in High school and college, and that lead to typography. This was a side intreats but as often happens with people in the arts these side passions can often be turned to practical-i.e. bill paying use. So, while I had done lots of illustration and been sometimes involved in the production of type, this partnership was a new involvement, at a different level. This was a time of dynamic change in technologies, and many of these changes had not as yet reached our desktops. Most of the images for client presentations were printed for us by "service bureaus" who would take our digital files and print them on high quality photo paper. The state of the art was the "Iris" print, and we were very accustom to calling for them and having "Bike Messengers" (remember them?) deliver them to our office.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">One day, a mistake was made. The prints were on matt paper. This was entirely new, to us at least. These prints were absolutely beautiful. It was also during this time that some galleries started talking about a new form of print making: giclée. Because I had some experience with photoshop and Macpaint I was able to recognize that these were images being created on computer programs, and when the matt Iris images appeared I recognized the technology being used to produce them. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">The term Giclée has an interesting if short history. It is presently used too often to designate a photograph of a work of art created in traditional media which is being printed by the new digital process, but at the time I am referring to, in the galleries that I was acquainted with, the term was being used for images that were original digital creations. This is a real distinction, and it is not a new one. Let me illustrate by talking about fine art prints in general. Suppose a particular etching, or lithograph, is reproduced in a book. The print, i.e. the original art, is photographed, and the photograph is printed on a printing press. What is the difference? To answer in a traditional manner- this answer is presently being examined by many avant guard artists, but it is still valid to say that the intentions of the artist, the method of expression, is integrated with the technology of the printing mechanism, the nature of the line in the case of an etching, that the artist made the line on the plate, that a certain number were printed, and those prints represent the primary intent and the limit of publication dictated by the artist. They are works of art. At first, and still at times, this process applied in the case of digital art. The digital image is constructed in a particular manner, and an artist can manipulate it in ways that reflect the inner logic of the process. The digital image is the "Original"and prints from it can be considered to be unique works of art, particularly if the artist retains control of the image, even more if the artist controls the printing, as Jack Duganne was doing at Nash Editions when he coined the term "Giclée." Let me put a fine point on this- the etching is a linear process, the image is built up lines which hold ink and are transfered to paper. The inner logic of a digital process is points, pixels. when an etching is is photographed and then printed as a "Giclée" the material process is at odds with the conceptual process by which it was originally conceived.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3;">All this was swimming around in head in the late 90's and the first years of the new millennium. When my path veered into the world of sickness, and I had to curtail my professional engagements I started playing with my digital camera. I also started playing with photoshop. There were long stretches when even going outside was an effort, and some of the medications I was put on made me very light sensitive, but the compulsion to make images remained strong, and photoshop could be explored very comfortably at my desk or even in bed, as the day demanded. A further complication arose, I developed "peripheral neuropathy," which really complicated holding a pencil, or a brush. This caused a major shift of focus to the camera as a recording device; as a digital camera obscura.</span></div>
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the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-18644344975887860592013-02-10T09:55:00.001-08:002013-02-10T10:01:45.925-08:00I Once Was Blind....Today at Emmanuel we had a very special service. As once before after a blizzard, a small group of us sat in the chancel, making for a very intimate and intense experience, and as on that pervious occasion I was moved to tears by one of the hymns, in this case "Amazing Grace," which brought to my mind a piece I wrote some years ago, <a href="http://www.lucubrationofthemanfromutz.blogspot.com/2009/07/kingfishers10-conundrum.html">and which I shared here once before</a>. The epigraph, from the hymn text, was a starting point. Now I look back from much further in time than I expected to reach, and can say that the third verse is where my tears really started flowing: <i>Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. T'was Grace that brought me safe safe thus far...and grace will lead me home.</i><br />
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<br />the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-85517726258125622552011-12-27T14:02:00.000-08:002011-12-27T14:51:11.131-08:00Grey Craig, entering the landscape<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNvr4aP7z_fnkkJ3cMeyWL6wQ0jB1yuu3rUMdHYmQmd2qYRfI38e3YMv-xC6bUayYYkfvMkYDtcy3jn63TWyq9gfVpr2ka_bMMdH9-aL15Mu0vFwkLRKl_sXF_XhJb2_MtTdcuxyLSp9WY/s1600/GreyCraigEnt1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNvr4aP7z_fnkkJ3cMeyWL6wQ0jB1yuu3rUMdHYmQmd2qYRfI38e3YMv-xC6bUayYYkfvMkYDtcy3jn63TWyq9gfVpr2ka_bMMdH9-aL15Mu0vFwkLRKl_sXF_XhJb2_MtTdcuxyLSp9WY/s400/GreyCraigEnt1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690934163916549330" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FN4BXUgTUtsXst5k33_g5zGTPpfoy3r9mVEzVK39AIcuGSTdn_UUibar5UhoC89NZz7xW4q5nIHzMb8QJ65s3BFfcE_KbHiea2p4RDPWzouq7Y82uCJfjvVV5btNKYQS23AxjrzSSQmt/s1600/GreyCraigEnt2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FN4BXUgTUtsXst5k33_g5zGTPpfoy3r9mVEzVK39AIcuGSTdn_UUibar5UhoC89NZz7xW4q5nIHzMb8QJ65s3BFfcE_KbHiea2p4RDPWzouq7Y82uCJfjvVV5btNKYQS23AxjrzSSQmt/s400/GreyCraigEnt2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690934046388615922" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhvzLp2FswwVy0AyJ-KujSCsFBeDV-gsCVgWAxt3COVtWHXXknIYs8vhkw_qoLGfaacZpNC9-fEKI0quh-KGNqf-4Z7enc6EeuAZkNlI28j5h_7y66E4KM7CWtJzS8ko3KoKBQ94xb50r/s1600/GreyCraigEnt3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuhvzLp2FswwVy0AyJ-KujSCsFBeDV-gsCVgWAxt3COVtWHXXknIYs8vhkw_qoLGfaacZpNC9-fEKI0quh-KGNqf-4Z7enc6EeuAZkNlI28j5h_7y66E4KM7CWtJzS8ko3KoKBQ94xb50r/s400/GreyCraigEnt3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690933889435567474" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsQN8dxjUTCHCw-tMxMmwNhTQeYOE1xHcE0kcuYeKNjQ4nJI25NspKK3I9tQVUba6g1XnMBA9xYOZDlISFEyCMOy-JvggUVgJdRVSLaj5svwoGanXM0dn1-k-lPfPx86BrDMPGp6J0Mla/s1600/GreyCraigEnt4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsQN8dxjUTCHCw-tMxMmwNhTQeYOE1xHcE0kcuYeKNjQ4nJI25NspKK3I9tQVUba6g1XnMBA9xYOZDlISFEyCMOy-JvggUVgJdRVSLaj5svwoGanXM0dn1-k-lPfPx86BrDMPGp6J0Mla/s400/GreyCraigEnt4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690933700037192706" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_cGDZtWnV0cDxez1WbxY_Z7NDKBfF2nUt_a3VK_d8KwAWYchWe5r8MlkLyg0-x1Ty-rTE4itR8-qFMlu2XrrKNUsuKnus_nN6i5KLuoFqfdop6YtKjfrjWq4q9_41ZT33LFwfnWS6HRnp/s1600/GreyCraigEnt.5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_cGDZtWnV0cDxez1WbxY_Z7NDKBfF2nUt_a3VK_d8KwAWYchWe5r8MlkLyg0-x1Ty-rTE4itR8-qFMlu2XrrKNUsuKnus_nN6i5KLuoFqfdop6YtKjfrjWq4q9_41ZT33LFwfnWS6HRnp/s400/GreyCraigEnt.5.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690933506445208754" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVu09WGegz2d-8QZkx2LWdaxB5tsKUplsIScMcKi9VvMsGqlH5Wdblwujd2zyzeT8gh49i6Nfc6RQJM6Vm-MzEBo7tFXCDRr03UWs_0ztEILHZkXB5fGIbHAn4DTN3Nb4xtuPLKk6jbuy/s1600/Arch_3-29.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 306px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVu09WGegz2d-8QZkx2LWdaxB5tsKUplsIScMcKi9VvMsGqlH5Wdblwujd2zyzeT8gh49i6Nfc6RQJM6Vm-MzEBo7tFXCDRr03UWs_0ztEILHZkXB5fGIbHAn4DTN3Nb4xtuPLKk6jbuy/s400/Arch_3-29.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690933394445761362" /></a><div><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">While Grey Craig has not been the sole focus of my work as a professional designer during 2011 it certainly has been an overwhelming one. This description of the site and my involvement with it will give me an opportunity to explain what it is I do in this odd practice I have, it will be a good and useful exercise for me. When people ask "what I do" I am often at a loss. I don't fit very neatly into any category. The standard answer is that I am an "Interior Designer" which is a useful but suspicious phrase. My academic background was in painting and education. My thesis for the education program at the National College of Art in Dublin, Ireland was the development of a course focused on the history of the Irish craftsmen who built Georgian Dublin. At the time, the late 1960's, the average Irish person considered the 18th century culture of Ireland to be a manifestation of English domination. While there is validity to that view, it is also the case that Irish culture at the time had a very distinct personality, and people creating the material culture were Irish and expressed their distinct Irishness through their art. I was trying, with some success, to document and promulgate this understanding. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">My mentor at the time was a man who was in the business of saving the interiors from buildings being demolished so that they could be conserved. In working with him I learned how to dismantle these buildings. Note that one can not simply tear these things out of a building, a great deal of detective work is involved. One must reconstruct the process of construction- find the last peg put in and take it out first. I little expected that this training would be enormously useful to my later career, but it turns out to be the case. The term "interior designer" seems a little off the mark to me because what I do very often involves a great deal of research, both of history and of my clients needs, a great deal of detective work, a certain amout of drawing, sometimes more, sometimes less, a sense of structure and systems, and all this not only inside but often outside as well. At Grey Craig I have been able to exercise all these skills. This is a good opportunity to explain them.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">Grey Craig, spelt various ways, has a particularly interesting history. I recommend a book called "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Newport-Villas-Revival-Styles-1885-1935/dp/0393732703">Newport Villas</a>" by Michael Kathryns for a well researched relation of it. As Mr. Kathryns states the property came into being when Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont and Cornelius Vanderbuilt along with others purchased 100 acres in Middletown, overlooking Sachusetts (Second) Beach and Paradise Rock. This was a farming area, and the property eventually became a model, or "gentleman's" farm under Belmont's ownership. Belmont sold to J. Mitchell Clark who built the first house. <a href="http://www.vintagedesigns.com/architecture/gothic/castle/gc/">You can read it's history here</a>. This is the area that Newland Archer rides through in Edith Warton's "The Age of Innocence" the horse farm being used as his alibi when he visits Ellen in Portsmouth. John LaFarge lived on the other side of Paradise Avenue, and it remains a rural, agricultural area. <a href="http://www.normanbirdsanctuary.org/">The Norman Bird Sanctuary</a> borders the property, and despite having being divided, the original estate has been preserved through the foresight of the Grey Craig owners association.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">The house was sold to J. Lawrence Mott III in 1917, but was destroyed by fire in 1919. In the mid 1920's the property was sold to Michael Murray Van Beuren and his wife Mary L. Archbold, whose father was one of the founders of Standard Oil.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I must acknowledge that I become very impatient when I am reading about a building because I am interested in the building and all I get is the trials and tribulations of the very rich. I include the "social" part of the history here because it actually will be useful in understanding some facets of this site as a design statement. I will now add two more names. The Van Beurens built the existing house, I should say houses, there are, I think 5, functioning as separate residences and their architect was a man I am ashamed to say I had never heard of: Harrie T. Lindeberg. I have, over the last year developed a rather intimate relationship with Mr. Lindeberg, or at least with his work, and the more I learn the more respect I have for him, and for this building. Let me say, that like most truly great designers he knew when to get out of the way. Never was this more apparent to me than the day before Thanksgiving when my sister and I were guests at the house for cocktails, sitting by the fire in the enormous living room, in this enormous and beautiful house which was yet warm and comfortable and imitate. I can not pay Mr. lindeberg and the his clients any greater compliment than the comfort and family intimacy that this staggering house affords.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I love stories, and there is a story about Lord Kitchener being driven past the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. He asked, rather surprised, where did that building come from? He had never noticed it before, but now, there it was huge and beautiful! His companion told him that it had been built by Christopher Wren 200 years before, how had he not noticed it going past as frequently as he did? Kitchener responded that architect must have been a true gentleman. Amusing story, but the fact is that Wren knew how to get out of the way. Lindeberg did also.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">The other name I want to share with you is Ferruccio Vitale. He designed the landscape at Grey Craig. Like Lindeberg, he is not exactly a household name, despite being one of the most import landscape architects in the history of American landscape architecture. He is often compared with the Olmstead brothers, his contemporaries and to some extent main competition, however Vitale was very involved in the formation of the profession of landscape architecture, developing awards and postgraduate education for landscape architects, including the Landscape Architecture prize of the American Academy in Rome and the Foundation for Architecture and Landscape Architecture. His work includes the planning of the National Mall in Washington, The site of the National Gallery of Art, parts of Longwood Gardens, and of course Grey Craig. I have not been able to trace any documentation for his work at Grey Craig and would be very grateful for information. There is now a very fine <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ferruccio-Vitale-Landscape-Architect-Country/dp/1568982909">monograph on Vitale</a>, by R.Terry Schnadelbach. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">It happens that the Grey Craig is almost exactly contemporary with Emmanuel Church's Leslie Lindsey Chapel. It has been most interesting to for me to come to this project after the intense research done on the restoration of the altar screen at Lindsey Chapel. On the one hand the structural and systems issues are very similar, in some cases identical, on the other, it is clear that Lindeberg and Vitale, Allens and Collins with Ninian Comper, were thinking about the tradition of western architecture and it's continuing relevance to modern life in a way that was new and intelligent. It is easy to get tied into the romance of luxury, the nostalgia for history, a jaded view of ones own time that leads to a deadening desire for things as they were in the past. That is not what was happening with these buildings from the early 20th century. Understanding their modernity requires a knowledge of the tradition, and that is a vantage point from which they are seldom viewed. In addition to "style" the engineering of these buildings is remarkable. It is to me rather ironic that if one takes the rhetoric of the International School and applies it to these buildings they hold up very well. Yes, Grey Craig is a big grand house, built for big grand people, but the engineers house, and the gate house, both equally beautiful and rather modest in size both function as family houses equally well. Form does follow function here, structure is rigorously expressed, the systems and engineering were state of the art. This is the surprise of these buildings.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">So in March I found myself in the position of having to advise my client While he struggled with structural problems, reversing years of neglect of the roof and drainage systems, the need to make changes to parts of the landscape and to paint and furnish the interior working with and advising his wife. The first step was understanding. It is clear that the VanBeurens were intelligent and sensitive people. No other sort would have spent such vast sums in such subtle ways, and fortunately my clients are intelligent and sensitive people who appreciate and are willing to support a rather thoughtful process. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I have never worked at this scale before, and I have no staff. Fortunately the client's wife was eager to be involved in the gritty details- in fact she handled all the paperwork which was daunting, and many of the structural and mechanical issues were urgent. Despite the pressures we all read, researched and came to understand this wonderful and subtle place. I should add that my client had been following the trials and tribulations of this building for 30 years, and had tried to buy it twice before. Their love for it was the prime motivating factor, and the house has worked a spell over everyone involved. It has been pure pleasure from the start.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><b>The approach to Grey Craig.</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">The house and landscape are a unified experience. Lindeberg and Vitale work together on this and the result is so right and so subtle that it is easy to take it entirely for granted. I have learned over the years of looking, learning, and practicing, that beauty and harmony never "just happen" and the greatest and most unified experience of place is usually the result of great discipline, and its success turns on small and subtle points. I am showing you a sequence of photographs that depict the experience of approaching this place. They start at the inner gate, beside the gate house from which one proceeds down the drive through woods and meadow, finally around a bend one sees the front of the house and then the entrance arch comes into view. The experience is pastoral and quite. The trees are magnificent. At one point there is a marshy place to the left that in spring is carpeted with primroses, to the right one can glimpse an open area beyond the trees, then to left again is an orchard, then on the right the front of the house with a background of trees and an open lawn. The single most important element of this is what you can't see, the water. These pictures were taken in March and May. Also, ignore the dragon lamps on the gate posts, the originals are in the basemet and will be replaced.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">In Japan, or maybe it was China, I no longer have my books and notebooks so I can not find the correct citation, there was a garden built by a very wise philosopher, built on the edge of the sea. Perhaps someone can remind me of the source of this. The story is that when people came to visit they were amazed that he had built hedges and walls to block out the very beautiful view, but when the reached the tea house, and only when they sat down, was the view revealed through a carefully placed opening in a hedge; only after gaining the location of repose was the view revealed in all its beauty. This story appears in many works on landscape design, and I am tempted to think that it is not a coincidence that Vitale and Lindeberg did the same thing at Grey Craig. It is also an instance of how well they worked together. When going through the gate, and along the drive, and into the arch the view, which is amazing, is deliberately screened. One enters the house in a very dark and compressed vestibule which is inside the arch, this gives onto an entrance corridor which runs into the main section of the house past an enclosed courtyard, then into the stair hall, then the center hallway, both of which look to the back of the house. One then enters the main reception rooms and it is only then, after this long and complex series of views and spaces that the view down the lawn past the rocks and over the beach to the ocean is revealed. The view is held until the last minute as a complete surprise, and one feels like one has entered a different world, a magical world. It is a total tour de force, and depends on having the discipline to deny one of the East Coast's most expensive views when the visitor enters the property.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">When I first looked at the plan of the house I could not make head nor tail of this entrance sequence. It seemed odd, and round about to have the entrance in a side wing, to have a small inner courtyard right beside it, why not drive up to center of the house? It is only in experiencing the way the house and the landscape interact with the location that one can understand this master stroke.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">It is said that the arch is built on the location of the entrance arch of the previous house. The old foundations are indeed down there, I saw them one day crawling through the foundations tracing some wetness that was creeping into the walls. It is also said that the previous house was built of stone from the site, and that also appears to be true of the present house, which makes it fit in the setting in a most remarkable way. The grey outcroppings of Pudding Stone are everywhere and the walls blend right into them, accented by sandstone from Ohio, and that massive red clay roof.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">This may seem like an awful lot of space to give to an aspect of this project that I had nothing to do with, but I am very committed to that idea that good design can proceed only from a very delicate understanding of the site. Further, when working with a creation of considerable worth it is important to come to an understanding of the original designers intentions; to get inside their head, to use a phrase. I have had to make a rather large intervention in this landscape, which I will talk about later, and so I feel that understanding, research and appreciation are required if one is to proceed responsibly.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">These are my own photographs. On the website of <a href="http://www.windigodesign.com/Residential/GrayCraig.html">Windigo Architects</a>, who did some renovations some years ago there is a very nice wide angle photo that shows the relationship of the entrance arch to the main body of the building very nicely.</p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000ee;"><u><br /></u></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000ee;"><u><br /></u></span></div><br /></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-22138835105903325202011-12-26T10:39:00.000-08:002011-12-27T09:21:35.215-08:00Where I've Been!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm7hQYjVlQVJX-bacOizqfOqbfCtoUIAOn_QMb4EqVPZS2hL22VvoXVW8ALpngTd82HYuF9Om4kU8_51q-d7K7JbuW4uaeZvWwcENT8qdptLgYmg-44buPuKnwygqLb3PmUqRZBKdM0yzJ/s1600/draw0374.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm7hQYjVlQVJX-bacOizqfOqbfCtoUIAOn_QMb4EqVPZS2hL22VvoXVW8ALpngTd82HYuF9Om4kU8_51q-d7K7JbuW4uaeZvWwcENT8qdptLgYmg-44buPuKnwygqLb3PmUqRZBKdM0yzJ/s400/draw0374.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690511136725804642" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfUBhS12RlyWi6TXmD21ro3uFNIV5o35swJguJdD2q9wAlnvS8_wSJNayOSkHXCx8H7TDCK3xY0HeDSuaJbqkDooPCmFLrGXjTY5sJbN85KytW0nxs_wRqzJAjMIxvV6-ZN93e6xhjUP_F/s1600/bottle%252C+tem+with+rutile.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfUBhS12RlyWi6TXmD21ro3uFNIV5o35swJguJdD2q9wAlnvS8_wSJNayOSkHXCx8H7TDCK3xY0HeDSuaJbqkDooPCmFLrGXjTY5sJbN85KytW0nxs_wRqzJAjMIxvV6-ZN93e6xhjUP_F/s400/bottle%252C+tem+with+rutile.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690509901056893938" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nyZmP1aOCb5kaPf-uFS3gOudEHZRmKt-aAgQZuRTrDcdMtqoIaXbaUtiVgnMXpIHOkTNm6B8sZOIMjAGUmUL-MONowQLXeDU-1SsBzCRnYyXLXAo7rhBYT0vqa9K16rHMHkoS2c1pSK-/s1600/south+elevation.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nyZmP1aOCb5kaPf-uFS3gOudEHZRmKt-aAgQZuRTrDcdMtqoIaXbaUtiVgnMXpIHOkTNm6B8sZOIMjAGUmUL-MONowQLXeDU-1SsBzCRnYyXLXAo7rhBYT0vqa9K16rHMHkoS2c1pSK-/s400/south+elevation.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690509553434173682" /></a><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">These pictures are referred to below, and in reverse order. I can never seem to get pictures into the body of my posts- oh, well!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I am looking at a lovely Christmas card from my dear cousin Sara of "Word Medicine," and in her very sweet message she chides me for not being in touch, either here or directly; "where are you?" she asks; as well she might! She has brought to my attention that my last post was in May! So I am going to take the time to update this blog, family, friends, and followers, with some comments on this strange and wonderful year that I have had. There are a number of headings to each of which I will devote a post, but here is a brief overview of those headings.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I cast my thoughts back to the caroling party at the home of my dear friends the Mygatts last December which Dr Funk and I attended,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84LWoHo1LZI"> and which you can see here!</a> I had made my pledge to Emmanuel for 2011 and was fretting a bit over whether I would be able to meet the obligation. Dr Funk very generously offered to cover it, and so we became involved in a discussion about how the obligation of the pledge forces me to push out of the complacency of sickness and engage in life and my profession. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">My retirement arrangement pays my bills, such as they are. On the one hand, this gives me a great deal of peace, and in fact allows for significant healing, stress being the great enemy of "T cells." On the other hand, however, it presents the danger that complacency might erode the engagement in life that I have found equally important to my own healing. My observation is that, at least for me, my body tends to respond to the need for activity that my mind and interest places on it. Sometimes it protests, sometimes the virus demands acknowledgement, but in general I find enthusiasm and interest, challenges even, can produce a productive détente amongst body, mind, spirit, and sickness!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">So I challenge myself with the pledge I make to Emmanuel. It took some conversation that night to bring Dr. Funk to understand why I could not accept her kind offer, and to undo the arrangement I discovered she had made with our Rector, and I entered 2011 feeling a little apprehensive about what the year had in store for me. Not all that different from the way I feel right now, having repeated my pledge for 2012. I have the ability to feel this way simultaneously with the ability to chuckle over last years apprehension in retrospect. Strange beings, we!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">Here we go:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">In November of 2009 I made a post about a building I had designed <a href="http://www.lucubrationofthemanfromutz.blogspot.com/2009/11/as-i-was-saying-to-ben-affleck.html">that had been used as set for a scene in a movie.</a> This was very exciting! but in 2011 the same client turned up another, rather different movie association. Those who follow popular culture more closely than I might be aware of the trials and tribulations of Nicholas Cage. He had a house in Newport RI which he sold this past march. The buyer was my client for whom I had designed the building shown in that post. He had been speaking about this deal for some time, and had shown me pictures of the house- being one of the "Newport Mansions" it is shown in various big expensive books. It is actually in Middletown, overlooking 2nd beach. I would chuckle to myself when he would talk about it, never dreaming this would actually happen. Well, it did, last March, and he told me he wanted me to work on it, but I would need to give it all my attention for a few months. What a quandary I was in! I couldn't let it pass, but I had serious doubts about my health holding up. The result of all this is that 2011 brought me the most exciting and satisfying job I have ever had. Much of the time I've been stretched to the max, but it has been amazing and wonderful! there is a picture above.</p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">Here is a little secret. I don't talk about neuropathy very much, for the same reason Beethoven didn't talk about deafness, what would my clients think if they knew I couldn't hold a pencil for more than 5 minutes? It has been one of the great burdens of my HIV difficulties (and, by the way, makes typing very difficult.) The physical therapy people at Beth Isreal gave me kneading exercises some years ago. They seemed rather silly and boring and I kept thinking I should be kneading bread or clay. Thinking, but not acting until my friends at <a href="http://www.puckergallery.com/">Pucker Gallery</a> organized a beginners ceramics class at <a href="http://www.mudflat.org/">Mudflat Studios</a>. I signed up, and have since then been working rather diligently and have started to produce some ware that I don't mind showing people: the tall bottle above is a sample.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">Now, with all this going so well, I've been thinking about my difficulties holding a pencil. Saying to myself that while I might not be able to draw in the same way that I once did, with a little courage I could probably find a new way to draw, that I should get back to it, finding a way around my difficulties. I was discussing this one day with a friend at Mudflat, who suggested some search terms to find groups of people in the area who get together to draw from the model. I searched and found "<a href="http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Figurative-Art-Center/">The Boston Figurative Arts Center</a>" in September. I have been holding pencils a paint brushes ever since. A photo of one of my new drawings is posted right at the top of this.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">And Emmanuel? About mid year the vestry asked for an update, what had the building commission accomplished and what remained to be done, on out 150 year old building that had suffered from years of neglect. While there is still a lot of costly work to be done, it turns out that when written down on paper the accomplishments of my cohorts and myself are rather considerable, surprising actually, to no one more than myself. I am rather proud!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">Oh, and the pledge? No problem, not only was I able to exceed it, I've also been able to distribute some funds in other places as well. It actually feels kind of luxurious, being able to support the groups and activities one cares about. It has really seemed like the more I do for the church and other organizations the more I am able to do. What I've been saying about all this is that it is enough to cause one to doubt one's agnosticism!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I will acknowledge that all this wonderful activity has really strained me to the max. I do still get lots of exercise on my bicycle, but most days when I get in I can barely make some food, never mind cleaning or dishes or blog posts or emails. I hope you will all forgive that!</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><br /></p><p></p></div><div><br /></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-16903711511938872862011-05-20T06:42:00.000-07:002011-05-20T06:54:55.575-07:00Rapture"sigh"<div><br /></div><div>This will be short.</div><div><br /></div><div>Judgement day is every day.</div><div>There are two columns, what you have given, </div><div>And what you have taken away,</div><div>Keep them balanced and you'll be OK.</div><div><br /></div><div>The thing about "Rapture" is that it is available, and constant. It's like a train always rushing past us and we only have to jump on. Of course doing that requires an acknowledgment of how temporary, how insignificant, the things that keep us in one place really are. I include such things as Bible thumping, orthodoxies, personal preferences, and particularly the feeling that we have things figured out.</div><div><br /></div><div>"There is nothing to fear, but fear itself"</div><div><br /></div><div>Have a really great day tomorrow!</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-77585964682872735782011-04-02T10:45:00.000-07:002011-04-02T12:20:09.028-07:00On The Road to Damascus<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face">All nature is but art unknown to thee;</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face">All chance, direction thou cans’t not see;</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face">All discord, harmony not understood;</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face">All partial evil, universal good;</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face">And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face">One truth is clear, ‘whatever is, is right’</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville Old Face; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville"><i>Alexander Pope</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Baskerville; min-height: 14.0px"><i></i><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">My Lenten activity this year has been to join our Rector, Pam Werntz, and a group of Emmanuelites, as we call ourselves, in the study of Paul's epistle to the Romans. It was this or give up chocolate, so the choice was easy. I am very wary of Paul. His writings seem to me to be in many ways damaging, yet in many ways beautiful; they are very inconsistent, their meanings often conflicting, and he therefore is, to me, annoying. I have been doing background reading, books about Paul and books about the Bible. I read A.N.Wilson's "Paul, The Mind of The Apostle," which presents an interesting, complicated character, a provocative promoter and business man, in contention with just about everyone and also achieving really great passages of Poetic insight.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Verdana">"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">We sit around a table in the Emmanuel room, enjoying food and one another's company, discussing what Paul meant here or there, the critic, perhaps I should say skeptic, in me thinking- sometimes saying- look at these words, don't they mean what they say? And if they don't, if it takes 1,900 years of modification and explanation to arrive at the meaning then is it really Paul we are speaking about or some convenient construct to which we choose to attach ancient authority?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px">At one point I blurted out "the guy's a crank!" to which Pam suggested that perhaps I was projecting. Touché, no doubt I am, projecting myself, my expectations, frustrations and concerns. And worst, "no worst there is none!" I fell into exactly the trap which frustrates me most in Paul, and in life in general: I made a statement poorly explained and open to exactly opposite interpretation from what I intended. I will expand about it here.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">This particular outburst of mine was triggered by one of my friend's statement that the world is seriously wrong, and Paul was addressing that. I exclaimed that the world is exactly what it is supposed to be, and it is our job to deal with it constructively. Allow me to give this a context. The proposition is that the first person sinned in disobedience, condemning the human race to the darkness of evil, from which it is necessary to be "Saved," this, either as a group- by the sacrifice of Christ- or individually, saved either through "Grace," by which can be meant a number of complicated concepts, or through "Works," which are defined variously. Actually Pam makes sense of this, but I am pretty sure it is Pam and not Paul in whom the sense resides.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">Some time ago I started to think very carefully about the quote from Pope that I have at the head of this entry. The line that was a real stumbling block for me was "All partial evil, universal good" sometimes Pope is as bad as Paul; whatever could he mean by that? The subject of evil in the world is prominent in any discussion of the nature of God and the subject of evil in the individual seems to be the motor of Christian religion- what is it that is meant by this word evil?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px">I think that one reason I am attracted to Pope is that I have found that it is easier to understand the world and my fellow man if I avoid words that denote abstract notions of evaluation. This is because of the eternally fascinating conundrum that when we speak these words we assume in our listener a complete understanding of concepts whose definitions are in fact very subjective, vague, at best culturally defined often individually defined, and circular. One of my favorites is "perfect" which means without flaw; perfectly clear until you start a discussion of what constitutes a flaw, which inevitably becomes an extremely subjective question. There is a very important aspect of the Japanese aesthetic that an object without any flaws would be very undesirable- not "perfect" perhaps. Evil, in the OED has many interesting meanings, but the entry starts with this:</p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"In Old English, as in all the other early Germanic langs. exc. Scandinavian, this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike, or disparagement. In mod. colloquial English it is little used, such currency as it has being due to literary influence. In quite familiar speech the adj. is commonly superseded by </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">bad</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">; the n. is somewhat more frequent, but chiefly in the widest senses, the more specific senses being expressed by other words, as </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">harm</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">injury</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">misfortune</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">disease</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, etc."</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 11.0px Georgia; color: #333333; min-height: 12.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">One of our company spoke of insects. When she was a child she thought of them as being bad because they bit her- "why would God make anything so bad?" As an adult she sees how her limited understanding of the world as whole determined the formation of her question. It is a very simple example of a very human tendency, to view a thing as bad because it bites me. The first definition of "evil" in the OED is:</p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CCCCCC;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Bad in a positive sense."</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia; color: #333333; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">So, the insects are evil. They do harm to me; pollination not withstanding.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">When one thinks of the recent tsunami this gets very complicated. I would not be surprised at all to find that some people's faith is shaken by such a disaster. I asked myself about it, but really, those villages and power plants were built very consciously in low lying areas, in full knowledge of their vulnerability, for reasons of economic convenience; for reasons of the flesh as Paul might determine. Earthquakes and tsunamis are not new, and the disaster a result more of men's greed and laziness than an act of God.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px">In 1968 I moved to Ireland, moved from my secure upper middle class suburb, to attend the National College of Art, and I ended up living outside of Dublin in the countryside. I rented a room in a "County Council Cottage"- rural poor housing, with a friend and was immersed in a society in which meat was seen on the table perhaps once a week, children never had new shoes or clothes, and drinking water was a ten minute walk away. The woman I was renting from had never been more than five miles from this cottage, in which she had been born, claimed never to have had all her clothes off at the same time- with no plumbing bathing was always from a basin, and with no heat the incentive to not disrobe was strong. These folks were well off among their peers, after all, they had an extra room and were renting it for cash, so they didn't have to reuse the tea leaves as often as otherwise. This all seemed very romantic to me, but I acknowledge that I had a return ticket to the US so I wasn't trapped in it as they were, nevertheless I realized something rather surprising. All the hardship didn't seem to affect anyone's happiness. The profile of personalities in the community was pretty much the same as at home. Some were lazy, some were energetic. Some were religious some were "ferocious anti-clericals" and most importantly, as I got to know the community at large I was surprised to find that compared to my affluent, white, upper middle class hometown, about the same percentage were content and happy and the same percentage were discontent and unhappy. The same turned out to be true for me, my level of happiness was not affected, going from a warm well fed home with showers and laundry, to potatoes, reused tea and warm water on rare occasions. I found the same to be true when I was in Bulgaria under the Communists. I found the same to be true of my fellows during the period when I was held in jail during 2006, and I wouldn't be surprised to find amongst those folks sheltered in halls and gymnasiums in Japan, once the shock had passed, that the happiness that an individual has in relationship to their society reasserts itself and is not much determined in the long term by the externals of circumstance. As I say in the right hand column, happiness is something we do, not something we find.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">So what is bad? What is evil? I once read a definition of evil as being that which runs counter to the aims of society. A good definition, because it points up the subjectivity of the word. That Pastor in Florida has staged a trial and shown that Islam is evil. Of course much of Islam feels that Christianity is evil. The difficulty is that by definition both are correct, because in both cases the other is counter to the aims of the particular society, and that is how we determine evil.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">We are all children of the same God however. At least that is my belief. It has been much discussed, even in the ancient days in which Judaism was forming, whether "monotheism" means there is only one God, or that only one God among several would be worshiped, but I believe, and I think most Christian, Jews, and Muslims agree, that there is only one God. It then follows that any act of sincere worship is directed to that God, and would it not then follow that in calling other religious groups evil we are projecting our very human prejudices into a much larger sphere? "Verily, Verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in our own likeness, of our own bad passions" as Dickens says in Little Dorrit.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">Such is the problem with words of evaluation, and in this is rooted the basic meaning of my statement about the world being the way it is supposed to be. The word bad, or evil, implies an inherent quality; I think it is fair to say that that is how we tend to use it. So a distinction must be made in our discourse, whether we mean, when we say "the world is bad, is badly wrong," that we don't like the way things are going, or whether we mean that the world is inherently bad, structurally evil. The range of meanings could be anything from "I really don't like the way people are wearing their hair this year" to "the nature of creation is so badly damaged, the human soul so destructive, that our own actions are to no account." Whether Paul, whoever he was, was intentionally saying the later I think that that is the meaning that is often taken away from his writings, and I find it disrespectful to the creator.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">When I say "the world is just what it is supposed to be" what am I saying? That it is inherently good? Good is just as slippery a word as bad, just as subjective.Things are what they are. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">There is an interesting design exercise: to take a thing, or a color perhaps, that one dislikes, and base a design on it. When given to a group of students what results is often their very best work. It seems ironic, but the activity is to look beyond one's prejudices and preferences, one's comforts, and see the potential that any thing has to offer. There are no bad things. Some things offer one advantage, some another. Some may be useful to me, some may be useful to that crow I see hopping around outside my window. I don't think a whole lot of worms, but it seems to like them.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">The world has many uncomfortable corners. It has certainly been no bed of roses for me, viewed one way; but no, it has been a very challenging, interesting, and at the end of the day, satisfying place to me, that's viewed another way. All facets of creation are linked in the most amazingly complex chain, and even the bad, the evil if you will, are links in that chain, sometimes are in fact the golden links in the chain. The world is just what it is supposed to be because there isn't any other way for it to be. This is my revelation, my incident on the road to Damascus, if you will. It came to me in an equally dramatic way (though after reading Oliver Sacks I start to wonder if it was actually Migraine-no matter.)</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo">In Job, chapter 38, The Lord asks "Where wast thou... when the morning stars sang together and all sons of God shouted for joy?...Have you entered the places where the snow is kept? Have you seen the storerooms for the hail?" I come to believe that it is the greatest part of faith to accept not just that we don't understand, but that we can't understand; to trust that which isn't understood. That which is seen as evil is the partial evil Pope is referring to, and it is a link in the chain of universal good. That what we see as bad and what we see as good are in that dark glass, and we often can't distinguish them. That in that dark glass is our understanding of ourselves, of others and the world at large; and the only badness, or goodness, is contained in our acceptance of our own responsibility to love all of this world and all of it's creatures of the dust.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Bembo; min-height: 17.0px"><br /></p>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-5882091901394269562011-01-24T09:23:00.000-08:002011-01-24T10:00:18.283-08:00How many keys?I am reading Bill Bryson's (or bill bryson, as he is described on the cover) "the mother tongue, english and how it got that way." Often, it happens that you are fully justified in castigating my careless capitalization, but in this case I am simply transcribing from the book cover. It was loaned to me by Dr. Funk. The subject interests me, and I find it delightful. It is a veritable mine of the sort of odd, erroneous or internally contradictory statements that I particularly enjoy.<div><br /></div><div>"One of the persons to think to do so was, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, J.R.R.Tolkien, later to become famous as the author of the Hobbit trilogy."(capitalization his)</div><div><br /></div><div>He is discussing the study of dialects. I suppose the superficial reader might miss Tolkien's interest in Linguistics. It is perfectly possible to assume that he was merely reporting those languages, not inventing them. It is rather surprising though, that he missed the fact that "The Hobbit" isn't a part of the trilogy, and that if you include it you have four books rather than three.</div><div><br /></div><div>but it seems that math can be a problem, as witness;</div><div><br /></div><div>"The Japanese have now managed to get around the pictographic problem by using a keyboard employing katakana syllables which are converted on the screen into kanji characters, rather as if we were to write "twenty percent" by striking 3 keys- "20," "per," "cent"- and then seeing on the screen one symbol: "20%."</div><div><br /></div><div>How is it that I had to use 4 keys to get that 20%, I'm counting the shift of course, and, not counting the quote marks, 14 were needed for "twenty percent"</div><div><br /></div><div>It is obvious that Mr. bryson's typing has become totally unconscious (I assume the Mr. should be capitalized, no?) There is, however a larger and subtle issue that over the years has become a great concern to me. I say this often, that it would seem that the public has become so passive that you can basically tell them anything and they won't challenge you. Amusing enough in this context, and I am enjoying the book, and I hope Mr. bryson will take my carping in good sport and not mind so much his poor math being pointed out. But in the political arena this passivity is being used to persuade the public into any unthinking position that certain politicians want them to take, and there it is dangerous.</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-2629165906229764072011-01-17T12:06:00.000-08:002011-01-17T12:32:45.563-08:00Dr Wright's Cat<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Today is Martin Luther King Day. It just occurred to me that that fact adds some interest to a number of currents that seem to be swirling around me, and impels me to leave aside the "work" I should be doing for my clients and make some observations.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These currents, that are combining into a force, let's see: there is the violence, waste and sickness of the attack on Congresswoman Giffords, and the attention it has brought to the level of hate and aggressive speech in our public discourse. Also, a friend of mine is working very hard to address the habitual denigration of female doctors in our medical system, and has this morning sent me quite a lot material about the cases she is interested in. She also looks at sex trafficking- in New York, yes, it's an established fact! My client and dear friend who spends the winter in Florida has sent a copy of a sermon she heard recently, it deals with Kurt Cobain's suicide and his personal pain which resulted from the anger and violence in his parents marriage. At church yesterday I was given a copy of "The New Yorker," which contains a very nice article on "</span><a href="http://www.blueheronchoir.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Blue Heron</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">" and contains a picture of some our friends, but I opened it carelessly this morning and found the pages just ahead are filled with discussion, some rather graphic, of Stieg Larsson's novels, their violence, and ability to hold the public's attention despite their rather poor writing.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I went on line to make sure I had the correct spelling for Congresswoman Giffords, and found an ABC news report about her, not bad in itself actually, sandwiched between a very long advertisement for Macy's "million dollar" makeover- change your appearance and change your life, and followed by someone bring on pretty little critters (I'm not making this up.) I think, actually, that those conjunctions pretty much sum up both the way this world looks to me and what I think is wrong in it.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As my readers have probably surmised I have been having a time of "writer's block," and I feel rather negligent, and in fact have made some poor attempt to keep up with posting. I feel especially negligent at not having related the very satisfactory resolution of my "</span><a href="http://lucubrationofthemanfromutz.blogspot.com/2010/05/best-wishes-to-dr-choi.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">post Dr. Choi</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">" medical team, particularly as that as yet unposted piece sits unfinished here on "Sam." Sam is my hard drive, named for the cantankerous cat who spent 18 years with me, my longest domestic relationship as it turned out. So here is the upshot of that: I was assigned to Joe Wright, whose NPR posts over the last 6 years or so were a consolation to my fears of this dread disease I live with. As my Primary is </span><a href="http://www.rafaelcampo.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rafael Campo</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I come to feel like my health care has become a writer's workshop! </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am jumping around, I know, but if you will continue to jump with me you will perhaps discover that there is a place I intend to land.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The friend I mentioned above, who is concerned with women in the medical field, is kind enough to include me often in her Boston Symphony Orchestra season subscription. Last Fall, James Levine conducted Mahler's Fifth Symphony. I find Mahler emotionally exhausting, and in this symphony the 4th movement, the "Adagietto," speaks especially strongly to me now. By "now" I mean in this "post disease," "post acceptance of finality" existence that I lead, what I call my "afterlife." I told my friend that this movement is what I would identify as representing my personal "near death" experience, and I can't help wondering if there wasn't a good deal of James Levine's own medical struggle contained in his powerful and delicate reading. If it is the case that there is any purpose or intentionality in our fates, and if I look for the purpose in mine, then I wonder if I am perhaps left here to tell you all that the experience of transition from this life is like that movement, rapturous, warm and full of love.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But the "Adagietto" is not the last movement, neither of the symphony, nor of my life. It is followed by the cheerful "Rondo-finale." The odd thing is, well, odd to you I suppose, that it was that movement that I had trouble with. There was pain in moving from the quiet resolve of the 4th back to the cheerful life of the fifth. A distance felt, as though life is being watched from afar, and the joy and the dancing filled with pathos, this is just how I feel in this phase of my life. I expect people to think it somehow ungrateful of me not to rejoice in having overcome, if that's what I've done, AIDS and it's attendant problems, the personal and material loss I've experienced, but I've been teased with an experience of the end, and it was glorious, and so I wait.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In composing my "unposted" post about Dr. Wright I went to his blog to collect a link and found this very </span><a href="http://hemodynamics.blogspot.com/2010/08/mammals-brief-moment-of-sorrow.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">beautiful statement about loss</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">. I feel just like Dr. Wrights cat, looking through the glass, perplexed and vacant.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And so to get back to the beginning of all this I want to tell you what I see.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I see us all tending to cause pain to our fellows and the world; often to our gain, but as often with no gain in mind at all. A woman promoted and honored by her colleagues only brings them and their department credit. Keeping people down and excluding them only prevents the accretion of good. The man who pays and exploits for sex degrades himself more than he degrades the person he exploits. He denies himself human fulfillment and erodes his own sense of self. Those who focus on their desires will always be disappointed, and not because their desire can not be achieved, but because, as Dr. Johnson said 250 years ago, our wishes are vain and false. Those who pay money for, and reward, the creation of violent fiction harden themselves and condone violence in our society. Those who seek their own benefit without taking care of the world they live in make a fortress for themselves and will live under siege.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These lessons have been presented to us repeatedly. It doesn't take a great sage, although it does take a certain amount of courage, to grapple with them. It also takes a willingness to live with a concept and deal with it over time, a capacity that our society seems to be losing rather quickly.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I wonder in particular about the situations where pain is caused for no reason. I have been subjected to those actions in the past, and I observe them around me continually. Dr Johnson would say that they are where real evil lies. I don't know about evil, we always use that term for the things we don't approve of, I prefer the word destructive. Whether we are good or evil, I think we all know when we are building up and when we are tearing down. As a society I think we should be talking more about why destruction is so "salable" as entertainment, why we look so strongly at the differences between us and ignore the similarities. When we criticize is it to be helpful or just to show off, when we deny others their rights, or proper credit for their accomplishments could it be because we have no confidence in our own? And when society strikes out at good people, and we protest and complain, do we ask ourselves what change we can make in ourselves that will give us the right to our own complaints.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Finally I ask what we suppose we add to the value of our own lives or our society by depriving others and oppressing them? The discussion is often cast in terms of the rights and hardship of the oppressed. From this side of things I have to say that I really can't see what the oppressors are gaining. It seems like yet another case of the emperor's clothes: that in the end the oppressors are denying themselves the skill, support, and benefit of those they oppress, whether spouses, coworkers, nations or races. It's just stupid.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-45837210612278231812011-01-15T14:47:00.000-08:002011-01-15T14:53:02.498-08:00Snow<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKs_Z8JjjbQdY6fr6r-CsUPUgjUrFWrXkNpIYY8OXY6zU-8fIHYznEvAAZRbVpXmkfN2hWTvy-xuDDgYXGHv11e-0X-VkYDexo6YhGcldLVZrJivo8rCn6BRPbHi5wWGNX-TLUEmVHhejR/s1600/top+of+bussey.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 397px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKs_Z8JjjbQdY6fr6r-CsUPUgjUrFWrXkNpIYY8OXY6zU-8fIHYznEvAAZRbVpXmkfN2hWTvy-xuDDgYXGHv11e-0X-VkYDexo6YhGcldLVZrJivo8rCn6BRPbHi5wWGNX-TLUEmVHhejR/s400/top+of+bussey.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562548363676542530" /></a><br /><div>People are talking a lot about the snow we've had. As I've said many times before this world is beautiful in all it's guises. This evening I took a long walk, but didn't have a tripod so I couldn't catch that magical time when the street lights are reflecting off the white ground as the sky darkens to a haze of mother of pearl. This is from the Arnold Arboretum last weekend.</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-45484742516517810982011-01-13T18:04:00.000-08:002011-01-13T18:09:19.929-08:00May you live in interesting times<div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; ">Violent language pervades our culture: "no, I'm going up, would ya hit 6 for me?" Even in elevators, I suppose people would be shocked if the friendly person actually drove his fist into the button panel but the language has become so much a convention that it requires some attention to use "press" in this context, despite it being the appropriate word.</div><div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; "><br /></div><div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; ">I've just come from the opening of the new Yawkey Center at Dana Farber. My tour group was waiting for the elevator, one opened at the other end of the bank and another group scooped it. "We could fight them" a bright young man said, (yuk, yuk!) As we entered our own car I said to him "we mustn't use aggressive words in public discourse anymore," trying to be equally jocular. "What did he say?" the woman with him whispered. "I guess something about my language," he replied, perplexed.</div><div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; "><br /></div><div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; ">How he could have missed my point I don't know, but he seemed to. If there is an explanation I think it is that this language, and the mindset that produces it, is so accepted that it doesn't register anymore. Watch television (if you can,) even the commercials are violent. American have constructed such an artificial society that they mostly live in isolation from consequences and thus don't have to understand the real meaning of their language, their attitudes or their politics. The ultimate example of this disconnect is in Sarah Palin's claim to be the victim, to be the subject of "blood liable." </div><div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; "><br /></div><div style="font-family: JansonText; font-size: medium; ">We live in very interesting times</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-84072536908059785562010-11-03T06:34:00.000-07:002010-11-03T07:35:28.180-07:00What Does Several mean?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">This morning, I allowed myself to be distracted from the election reports by this interesting <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/dining/03chocolate.html?pagewanted=1&nl&emc=a210">article in the New York Times</a>. It concerns chocolate. As I am Dr. Funk's assistant in her very important research into the neurology of Metro Boston restaurants I thought it important to keep up with the chocolate market. The report is interesting, and became more so when I discovered one of my favorite things in it- not as favorite as <a href="http://www.burdickchocolate.com/stores-and-cafes-drink-menu.asp">Madagascan Hot Chocolate at Burdick's</a> in Cambridge, but close: yet another internally contradictory statement presented to the American public with a rather suave non-concern. I quote:</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">Tcho’s creators beg to differ. The company, which sold its first chocolate in 2009, is privately held and will not reveal its revenue, except to say that sales have already reached into the millions over the last several years, according to Ms. Metcalfe, Tcho’s president. “By 2012 we hope to be profitable,” she said."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">Let me review my counting skills: 2009, 2010! I only get one year there, so is this the answer to that perplexing question, how many is several? In the New York Times just one?</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">It may seem that this is a rather trivial thing to spark a blog post after all this time, and especially on the morning that election results are coming in, but isn't unreasoned acceptance of clearly questionable statements a dangerous component of our "volatile electorate" as we are called elsewhere in this mornings reports. Edmund Carpenter's phantom is still giving us lots of blows, and we are still taking them complacently.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">Do read the article though, whatever Tcho's interpretation of the word "several," they do encourage fair trade and organic cultivation, and gives it's farmers Apple computers, so we now they are "right thinking people." Their chocolate may be good also- more research is required.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">One modification of the "Favorite" cited above is that while Dr. Funk and I together go to Burdick's for Madagascar, I singly have been falling into addiction to <a href="http://www.clearflourbread.com/">Clear Flour bread's</a>"Bouchons." I happen to know that they use <a href="http://www.scharffenberger.com/">Scharffen Berger</a>, which isn't mentioned in the NYTimes article. I have been a customer of Clear Flour since the early 80's and I have to say that the quality of the product continues to amaze me. These little "Bouchons" are a case in point- the first one was interesting, the second time I said (to myself) "Hmm, these are rather good" the third time they seemed very good, then I started thinking "what is Christy doing here?" gradually the appreciation of these little chocolate pastries has expanded into a full fledged compulsion. That's how I define really quality and interest. Not completely revealed at first, a little mysterious, a growing fascination.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCC99;">Would we could experience the same with our leaders before we vote them out of office. Well, here is reassurance- we have Clear Flour, <a href="http://flourbakery.com/">Flour</a>, and <a href="http://sofrabakery.com/">Sofra</a>, and Barney Frank won his election, so perhaps there is hope!</span></span></span></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-24284731104539299742010-06-19T05:33:00.000-07:002010-06-19T05:57:55.393-07:00Renewing an old hobby:<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Collecting conundrums.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It is such a short time after my previous post, and yet I have come upon a real topper in an article in today's Boston Globe concerning the <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/06/19/judge_scolds_prosecutors_in_ex_border_security_officials_case/?page=2">Homeland Security employee</a> who has been convicted of a felony for employing an illegal immigrant.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Here is a quote from the article:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 21px; font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">She secretly tape-recorded Henderson advising her not to leave the country or she would be deported.</span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This is presented as evidence that Henderson, the Homeland Security employee, was encouraging Bettincourt, the Brazilian cleaning lady, to remain in the country illegally. I'm not making this up- there it is in the newspaper. I guess it's sort of like "you can't fire me because I quit." That is, unless the reach of Homeland Security now extends to deportation from other countries. Would she be deported back to the US? </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Judge is looking for a sense of proportion, for which I laud him.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We are told Bettincourt is now in the country legally. Therein lies a tale, I'm sure.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have another statement ripe with internal contradiction to add to my collection of public utterances that prove, once again, that Edmund Carpenter was right about the force of the media.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And finally, the now legal cleaning lady will lose her employer. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cheers!</span></span></span></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-53073961041457834842010-06-17T06:44:00.000-07:002010-06-17T09:06:59.551-07:00Stonewall to Gay Marriage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNSm7l8WpaETJ-vZRzXoKYsgCXX_qTXPm2wODB9iec63wmQbVYaU1-FMukmo8jmdjHYI33VSnzq9hnhOkWKjeSnvYz-ouz_Rs7Hlbjfy5gu5Ms8kpFsmfZCa47-S_vZglk6DmoI_EgIX8/s1600/IMG_0132.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNSm7l8WpaETJ-vZRzXoKYsgCXX_qTXPm2wODB9iec63wmQbVYaU1-FMukmo8jmdjHYI33VSnzq9hnhOkWKjeSnvYz-ouz_Rs7Hlbjfy5gu5Ms8kpFsmfZCa47-S_vZglk6DmoI_EgIX8/s400/IMG_0132.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483738495085647650" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Pride Week," or as a certain friend of mine refers to it, "the Gay High Holy Days" is now over. Emotionally it's been a little tough on me. I start out with a photo of the official flag raising at City Hall, and it ended with the very unlikely circumstance of your humble servant giving a gay historical tour of Boston's South End called "Stonewall to Gay Marriage, a Long Road Through the South End. Today, I see in the New York Times, that the </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/us/17prop.html?th&emc=th"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">final arguments in the marriage trial</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> in California have been presented, so there is a nice arrangement of events.</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Folks who knew the "Mad Genius" through his </span></span><a href="http://lucubrations.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Lucubrations"</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> don't know that he worked at City Hall for a while, so finding myself there for the flag raising was peculiar; my head fairly buzzed with his caustic comments, not the least because I was there at the behest of my friends at "</span></span><a href="http://www.ethocare.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ethos</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">," and Boston's community of elder LGBT's (I hope I haven't left anyone out of the acronym.) It would seem that I am now officially part of that community which he didn't survive to join with me.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I marched in the Parade with </span></span><a href="http://www.emmanuelboston.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Emmanuel Church</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, and I will confess that I marched in my first Pride Parade, bare chested with my honey of long ago, with a little more ease than I did "Coming out" as this staunch Episcopalian which I've been lately- of course I worked out a lot then, and the church is much different now; and then there was the joyfully bizarre gathering on City Hall Plaza at the completion of the parade, now filled with booths for break away Catholics complete with tonsure, leather men, drag queens, corporate sponsors, doggie gift sellers, and politicians. I have been avoiding these gatherings since "The Mad Genius" passed. I have an almost surreal feeling of watching the proceedings from somewhere beyond the grave. I say this all the time but it is starkly true- almost everyone is either 10 years younger, or 10 years older than I. Of those with whom I was even acquainted during the 80's only 2 or 3 are seen around. I keep a mental tally of men I hear of in Boston who about 60- the present number is 9. When you consider that the year of my birth, 1948, was the crest of the baby boom, that we should be the largest, not the smallest, segment of the population, the devastation of AIDS becomes apparent. As I wandered around the festivities I felt like a "stranger from a strange land."</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I don't need to tell you about my walk through the South End because one of the new friends who joined us has reported on it already, and very well, here, </span></span><a href="http://www.diffuse5.com/2010/06/news-necessities-bostons-hidden-gay-history/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">at Diffuse5</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. I encourage you to explore her blog.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So on to this report in the New York Times which has graced the cyberworld this morning. As usual, I have some questions. I realize that these may be more about the report than about the arguments reported upon, which I am not about to read in transcript,there are limits to my political enthusiasm!</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Here are my questions, the quotations from the NYT report are in italics:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;">“The marital relationship is fundamental to the existence and survival of the race,” said the defense’s leading lawyer, Charles J. Cooper. “Without the marital relationship, your honor, society would come to an end.”</span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This line of argument against Gay marriage has always confused me. Yes, this is the lawyer defending Prop. 8. It is as though extending marriage to Gay couples will remove it from world of straight couples, once gay people can marry there won't be any more babies. All the straight people in the world will suddenly revert to Hippies who feel it is unconscionable to bring children into the world, I guess. Or another explanation, which I feel seriously may be the case, has to do with latent homosexual feelings. this is particularly conspicuous in the case of religious leaders: making sexual relations between men OK will threaten sexual relationships between men and women (when we speak of procreation we are speaking of sex after all.) In what set of circumstances could this be true? Only if men are much more attractive sexually than women, right? So when you hear this argument, doesn't it make you wonder about the inclinations of the speaker?</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 22px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:15px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;">At one point, Judge Walker wondered at Mr. Cooper’s logic. “Do people get married to benefit the community?” he asked. “When one enters into a marriage, you don’t say, ‘Oh boy, I’m going to benefit society!’ ”</span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">Here, my liberal friends will have to excuse a sardonic comment. I have always thought it strange that the homophobic community would be against gay marriage rather than insistent upon it. Gay people are bad, right? And really at their worst when they are running around the streets at night, looking for sex and having fun dancing to loud music. Get them off the streets and confined to the restrictions of marriage like decent people! Let them model themselves on us and benefit society! I suppose that the danger of this line of reasoning would be that straight people would have to stay in their marriages, raise their kids responsibly, do good for the community, and work to reverse the divorce laws. Odd that these "procreation as a standard" folks are not so active in that area.....</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 15px; font-family:georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif;font-size:10px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.467em; font-size:1.5em;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;">Judge Walker also asked why the state’s domestic partnership law, which affords most of the same rights as marriage, was not “sufficient accommodation” for the rights of gay people. Mr. Olson countered that marriage was a unique institution and more significant than domestic partnerships.</span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.467em; font-size:1.5em;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;">“It means something completely different,” Mr. Olson said.</span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.467em; font-size:1.5em;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;">Arguments in the trial began in early January, and included two weeks of evidence and testimony by plaintiffs and experts on marriage, sociology and political science.</span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.467em; font-size:1.5em;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;">The defense offered much more limited testimony, with two witnesses arguing, among other points, that same-sex marriage damages traditional marriage as an institution and that special judicial protections are unnecessary for gay people.</span></i></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have very conflicted feeling about the issue of "Gay Marriage" verses "Domestic Partnership," but will also acknowledge that my ambivalence is self interested: had the community in Massachusetts accepted domestic partnership rather than holding out for marriage "The Mad Genius" and I would have had some protections, and I would have been able to claim his assets when he died. Because of this personal cost I have always been skeptical that the price of "Marriage" was worth the delayed protection that the fight resulted in. I am now coming to see the wisdom of it however.</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The quote above contains another oddity. I must say that I am continually amazed at the obvious lack of logic in statements that are made in the media- and also in court. California was mandated by the Court to apply the marriage laws equally to all people, not only to heterosexual people. This mandate was reversed by Proposition 8, and that reversal is being defended by Mr. Cooper who is saying that it would be a special judicial protection to apply the law equally to gay people, and that that is unnecessary; that applying the law to one section of society is routine, but applying it to another is unnecessarily special!</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This appeal to the myopic view of a self-centered and fearful majority is exactly what our constitution is meant to protect us from.</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">and finally, back to the parade!</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFCCFF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">One problem with marching is that you only get to see what is just in front and just in back of you. I did get to see, however, a couple in a pedicab carrying a sign that read "55 years together, 6 years married." Here is another of my long standing observations about the validity of gay relationships. Consider that in our society all the legal, social, financial, and religious institutions have historically reinforced, supported, even demanded heterosexual marriage, yet the divorce rate is high and examples of happiness rare. And in times past, the times this couple established themselves during, gay people in relationships have suffered legal prosecution rather than protection, were ostracized by society at large and often their families as well, received no financial advantage or religious support, yet have managed to maintain a meaningful relationship. It is rare assuredly, as rare as the fifty-fifth anniversary of a straight couple, and who can say that it is of any less value to society.</span></span></span></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-4046559706509196922010-06-10T04:51:00.000-07:002010-06-10T05:57:57.869-07:00A Few Controversial Statements....This post is inspired by Joan Vennochi's <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/10/will_beck_and_limbaugh_be_next/">comments</a> in today's globe regarding Helen Thomas's statement that the Jews of Israel should go back to Germany and Poland. Ms. Vennochi's comments, equating Helen Thomas with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh et al seem to me to be poorly developed. It is interesting to read the many comments. Most of them would be amusing if they didn't expose such disturbingly poor reasoning on the part of the American public, but a few bring important points to the discussion, not least the difference between Thomas's position and voice as a serious reporter compared to the the position of outrageous talk show hosts who are, it is suggested, entertainers. Technically this is a valid point and might have been considered, but whether it obtains in the mind of the general public is a question- I will once again refer to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Snow_Carpenter">"Oh what a blow that phantom gave me."</a><div><br /></div><div>There are many difficulties involved in this discussion, not the least being coming to an understanding of the difference between being "anti-zionist" and "anti-semitic." I know Jews who are not Zionists, and by the way the Arabs are Semitic people. A subtext read in Thomas's statement, I suppose, is that returning to Germany or Poland would be a return to pogroms and death camps, which inference I think the Germans and Poles of today might resent, and by the way, wasn't America included in Thomas's original statement? And while reading the comments Obama's oil spilling in the gulf came up- I thought the oil was British, obviously connected with Balfour, I'm really surprised the commentators missed that, and I also learned that the Jews are right wing, I always thought they were left wing. The world is becoming so confusing to me, it must be my age, just as it must be Helen Thomas's age, which is great, and her career long. Perhaps, in the impatience of age, perhaps not quite at her best, she has slipped a little. We will all , at least the fortunate amongst us will get to that place in life, and having gotten there will think that the world might extend a little consideration, but alas, Dryden was right...</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;</i></div><div><i>Yet fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;</i></div><div><i>Trust on and think tomorrow will repay:</i></div><div><i>Tomorrow's falser than the former day;</i></div><div><i>Lies worse; and while it says we will be blest</i></div><div><i>With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.</i></div><div><i>Strange cozenage! None would live past years again,</i></div><div><i>Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;</i></div><div><i>And from the dregs of life, think to receive</i></div><div><i>What the first sprightly running could not give.</i></div><div><i>I'm tired with waiting for this Chymick gold,</i></div><div><i>Which fools us young, and beggars us when old."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>You cast your bread upon the water, as the good book says, when you jump to criticize the indiscretions of our seniors.</div><div><br /></div><div>But still, that situation in the Mid-East is very confusing and distressing, so I want to share the opinon of a woman I once worked for with you. My first job out of college, where I minored in stained glass, was working for Durand Studios in New York City repairing stained glass. obviously this caused the team I was on to spend much time in religious establishments, I have many stories to tell! We were working in a Mid-manhattan Synagogue on this occasion. The Synagogues and temples were always the most hospitable and generous places to work- a marked contrast to the RC churches which wouldn't let come inside to eat our lunches. It was a cold rainy December day in 1972, and the woman who staffed the placed was busy making sure we had what we needed and were comfortable. "The Weather- you're working in this weather- we should be in Miami... You think it's warm in Miami? even in Miami it's cold!" She thought a lot about Miami it seems. During lunch we were chatting about the news which contained much distress from Israel just then. She threw up her hands and said "Oy! They should have given us Miami, then we wouldn't have all this trouble!" I still chuckle every time I tell this story.</div><div><br /></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-24861608636023798162010-06-04T06:39:00.000-07:002010-06-04T07:47:25.836-07:00Warning: Journalist may pose health risksOn my igoogle home page I have a feed from Scientific American, which included this morning an item entitled <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=warning-new-doctors-may-pose-health-10-06-04">"Warning: New Doctors May Pose Health Risk."</a> it is a jaunty little essay that reports on a statistic which indicates that there are more mistakes made in hospitals regarding medications during July that any other month, and it implies that this is because July is the month when freshly minted doctors hit the ward. The survey does not seemed to include any statistics on freshly inebriated barbecuers. <div><br /></div><div>I will leave it to Dr. Funk to opine whether this is a causal relationship or not- she lurks amongst the anonymous followers here. I'm sure we will have an amusing diner talking about the incidents of barbecue burns and fish hook wounds, to say nothing of firecrackers during July 4th weekend, or the difficulties in obtaining accurate information on a person's medication from a sober patient, never mind one who has spent the day at the beach drinking "be-ahs" (excuse the dialect, just couldn't help myself.)</div><div><br /></div><div>What concerns me is the idea that all doctors would have started their career with the seasoned knowledge of an experienced clinician. Obviously we all hope that at the end of that ambulance ride we will be put in the hands of the particular hospitals most experienced doctor. I doubt that would do us much good if the venerable doctor had been work 24 hours a day for the last 20 years and so some of us will have to accept he might be at home asleep- or even at the beach himself- when we are delivered to the emergency room.</div><div><br /></div><div>This report, I acknowledge I haven't read the study itself, doesn't mention emergency rooms. I think they must be the scene of the errors, however, because if your doctor has admitted you he will be monitoring your case. That is if you have chosen your doctor well, and that my friends, is your own responsibility. And if you are in the hospital and you don't enquire about what they are administering to you, and question if it is different than what you are accustom to, why that is also your own responsibility.</div><div><br /></div><div>My problem with this jaunty little report in Scientific American is actually a responsibility issue. In it's largest sense, the "it takes a village" sense it has to do with our responsibility as a society to foster the quality of the young professionals. I am often reminded of an essay by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/books/07perenyi.html">Eleanor Perenyi</a> in her book "Green Thoughts." It is titled "Partly Cloudy" and comments on our attitude toward weather. This is a garden book, and she talks of gardeners who complain about rainy days, and then goes into a rather detailed description of what the world and our gardens would be like if we never had to have another rainy day. You may anticipate one of my pet themes here- rainy days are beautiful. It seems a very unfortunate thing to me that people will ignore both the misty pastel colors and vital supplies of the one element that we can't survive without that rainy days bring us. So too with the influx of young doctors, who will become deeply experienced doctors and who, by the way come, in the lack of experience, with the most up to date knowledge, fresh in their minds and right at their finger tips. You, we, are lucky to have them.</div><div><br /></div><div>So here is my own report on new doctors.</div><div><br /></div><div>My primary care doctor (I just can't use the acronym PCP, it sounds too much like a toxic chemical) went on Sabbatical last year so I had my check up with one of the "New Doctors" who was covering for him. As you know, I spend a lot of time with doctors, each has his specialty and interest, the older ones have, yes, experience. What I was having was an unsteadiness in balance- I was having to use a cane. At the time I was being treated with interferon, and every one was looking at that as the source of all ills, but this "new doctor," Dr. Petty, took about 5 seconds to question my B12 levels. Surprise, low B12 can cause all sorts of problems with your nervous system, which become permanent if not attended to. No surprise, my B12 levels were in the basement and in a very quick and easy fix Dr. Petty got rid of the cane.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I say, rejoice if you get one of the New Doctors, and if you don't know what your medications should be you'd better learn. It takes two to tango. </div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-82333350959738091982010-05-12T10:14:00.001-07:002010-05-12T10:15:46.515-07:00Best wishes to Dr. Choi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmxbWTKcVr26gMBWqSxv7rUedobEY0HnC9ocqKY5jgDIbufNYkdSyQzmhUq9xt2icseYBAWE8SXb-39RBKLRXZmnv9BSZuBx_3EbgINSk87XEmzRDYiznFr2JCpzRsFzeLQqg5hwWyk2j3/s1600/geeseandturtles.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmxbWTKcVr26gMBWqSxv7rUedobEY0HnC9ocqKY5jgDIbufNYkdSyQzmhUq9xt2icseYBAWE8SXb-39RBKLRXZmnv9BSZuBx_3EbgINSk87XEmzRDYiznFr2JCpzRsFzeLQqg5hwWyk2j3/s400/geeseandturtles.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5470433450090507218" /></a><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">In January of 2009 I made a post called "The Patient Patient" which I dedicated to Elisa Choi, M.D. at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr Choi is, or unfortunately I now must say was, my infectious disease doctor. The past tense is because I was notified yesterday that she has left the Practice at Health Care Associates, and I will be reassigned. This is very distressing to me, but my primary care physician, the poet and doctor Rafael Campo who originally put me under Dr. Choi's care is still my primary care physician and will, I am sure, make an excellent choice in reassigning me.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">And yet there is a great sadness in this for me. It has been a huge comfort for me that Dr.Choi has been in my court over the last six years and so I would like to take a moment to give tribute to her.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I have made some allusion to the time in 2004 when Tufts medical insurance dropped me and I was left without HIV meds- ok, that's a comment about "Death Committees," any one who thinks they aren't present in private insurance really needs a reality check. I was without my HIV meds for a few months as a result. These were the months following the death of "The Mad Genius," a time of fear and despair. The result of this was a rather complicated and confusing case of medication resistance that surfaced when Dr. Campo and the social workers at Beth Israel managed to get me medications again. It was at this point that Dr. Campo sent me to Dr. Choi whose specialty this is.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">Dr. Choi guided me through the process of identifying the medication problems and she found a new "cocktail" that eventually brought the virus under control. She also identified a host of other problems- in particular damage to my bone marrow that AZT had caused and she got me back on the road to feeling like I had some future after all. All this time my liver enzymes were way out of normal range, and the easy explanation was that it must be my HIV meds, given that I consistently tested negative for Hepatitis C- that great passenger in HIV infection. Dr. Choi was never content to take the obvious cause without proof, and it is really this that I most respect her for. She is a great scientist and wants an exactly defined cause before she rests with any diagnosis. After many, many, tests she insisted on a Hep C viral test, in spite of the negative antibody test, and found that I was indeed carrying a lot of Hep C virus. "If I can beat HIV I can beat Hep C! Don't worry." She actually said that to me once. Further exploration revealed that I was losing other Hepatitis antibody's as well.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">I can not explain the importance that my relationship with her has had for me without being so personal about my health. I have seen her every two months for 6 years now, and relied on her to get me through some very scary problems. But there is also another connection that has developed.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo">In 2007 Dr. Choi had a child. One isn't necessarily aware of pregnancy with male doctors but you know with your female doctors. I really wanted to do something personal- for me that means giving some of my art work- to mark the occasion, but juvenile isn't really my thing. I walk to my appointments at the BI through the Fenway and I had the idea of taking photographs of the ducks and geese, thinking a kid might enjoy them. The image here is one of the results. It has ended up being a large and very successful series of prints, and each one of them has a little thought of Dr. Choi and her family attached to it. I offer her my greatest respect and best wishes for the future!</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Bembo"><br /></p>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-9934638863908935262010-05-11T16:05:00.000-07:002010-05-11T16:09:51.433-07:00Oh JoyI have discovered that yet another fascinating Emmanuel Church person is writing a blog. You will find it over there on the right in my blog list- "The Crooked Line." Look through it, it is very worth reading!the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-88024825624188113772010-05-04T05:52:00.000-07:002010-05-04T11:20:56.289-07:00Your Tax Dollars at WorkI was walking through Boston Common yesterday. We are having "Marine Days" here in Boston and the first sign I saw of the activity on the common was trio of smartly dressed officers walking up the path that runs parallel to Beacon Street. They were walking toward the State House. They nodded very politely. Then, as I proceeded down the slope I noticed a group of soldiers wearing fatigues and carrying rifles darting in an out of the trees. We will assume that the rifles were not loaded. The open field of the common was off to the left and as it became visible I saw tents and heavy equipment, vehicles and helicopters, all surrounded with metal railings and with very polite and well washed marines allowing the public to to clamber through them. Here are some <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gallery/osprey_coptor_boston_common/">pictures</a> from this morning's globe. The engineer in me became fascinated. I actually walked through one of them. The engineer in me sometimes feels like my evil genius.<div><br /></div><div>My route took me through the Public Garden. It has been truly spectacular this spring. Two weeks ago we had some warm weather that brought out all the flowers and then it turned cold so they have persisted. It has been a huge flower arrangement that has been sitting for weeks in the refrigerator of the early spring weather of New England.</div><div><br /></div><div>Next I headed for Copley Square. The Marines were there as well. They had 4 machine guns set up around the large fountain where the skate boarders practice all winter while it is empty. It's still empty, but only one skate boarder was there in the cross fire of the machine guns. He looked very brave, but then there were no marines actually manning the machine guns at the time. They still looked very threatening though. And there was a large, I think it's called a mortar? I didn't stop to ask, a very large gun about 12 feet high, which they had pointed at the Boston Public Library. I can't imagine what these people are thinking about. I'm sure this is all meant to gain good will and show us how our tax dollars are spent, but pointing machine guns at skateboarders and artillery at the BPL is a little to ominous, dare I say prophetic, to be comfortable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is another article from this mornings Globe- "<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/05/04/travesty_of_justice/">Travesty of Justice</a>" by Kevin Cullen. I recommend to you that you read it carefully. Be mindful that in describing the actions of the FBI and the Court system he is discussing the same entity which enforces it's will with the Marines who are flexing their muscles for us all in our fair "City on a Hill." Then go look at those gun emplacements on Copley Square.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh! By the way, did you hear that the BU class of 40 years ago will finally have a graduation ceremony. Those of you who remember will know that they never graduated because of the National Guard killing 4 students at a war protest at Kent State University. Those of you who don't can read about it <a href="http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2010/05/03/bu_invites_class_of_kent_state_year/">here</a>. BU has invited all the members of that year's class to join in this year's graduation, so they will finally have a ceremony. I add this as a reminder to those who think that it can't happen here. Think about Kent State in 1970 while enjoying "Marine Week".</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-58147739384568868082010-04-21T06:45:00.000-07:002010-04-21T07:28:02.658-07:00Bicycles, accidents and policeHere is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/nyregion/21about.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura1">a story</a> from the NY Times regarding a confrontation between a bicyclist and a police officer. While you are drawing your own conclusions I'll tell you a story.<div><br /></div><div>On September 30th 2004, about 4 pm, I was riding my bicycle on Massachusetts Avenue from my home in Dorchester, that is I was heading into town. I had only just started riding again after the summer during which I was struggling with medication resistance and the damage that AZT had done to my bone marrow. It felt good. After months of thinking that life was over I was starting feel like there was a future and strength would return. I was exercising, I was out in the free air, I was also fairly weak still and being quite cautious. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am a long time bike rider- I started riding racing bikes in 1964, and I always rode fast. I discovered in high school that the guys who bullied me started to back off when I started to pass them on the long straight road that lead to the High School. They were in cars, I was on my bike. My philosophy of bike riding is that the cars can't hit you if you are going faster than they are.</div><div><br /></div><div>But on that day in 2004 I discovered a flaw in that reasoning. Mass Ave, as we call it, gets a little complicated in the area where the food markets, Melnea Cass Bldv. and the exit from the central artery all converge. there is a huge detour around the fire department buildings, unexpected one way changes and very odd traffic patterns. In my hay day this would have been a signal to sprint- and perhaps if I had things would have been different, but I was cautious. There is a sidewalk on the left hand side, and I slowed down, got on the sidewalk, and was proceeding cautiously. As I was crossing Gerard Street, quite properly in the cross walk, a car came full speed down Mass Ave, turned into Gerard Street, and plowed into me. So much for being cautious. These are my memories: I remember flying through the air, thinking an expletive about not being able to "get out of this;" I remember coming to in the ambulance, I called my brother, I am told, and remember the EMT saying the car was doing 30 mph when it hit me; I remember having my clothes cut off and then a doctor apologizing profusely about how long I was in the Emergency Room. I assured her it was my quickest trip to an ER ever, I had no idea that it was midnight and I had been there for 6 hours. That's it, no memory of anything else.</div><div><br /></div><div>Weeks later, when I went to get the police report, thinking of a nice law suit, I discovered that the officer, of whom I have no memory, entered a report saying that the car had been parked and that I ran into it, and in addition that I had been belligerent toward him. No explanation of how it happened that the front and rear wheels of my bicycle had been bent sideways, or of how the hood and windshield of the car had been damaged. I say nothing about how an unconscious person expressed his belligerence.</div><div><br /></div><div>So that is what I have to say about bicycles and the police!</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-3851294206543942842010-04-21T05:34:00.000-07:002010-04-21T05:54:32.024-07:00Watch this!Here is a link to <a href="http://www.boston.com/video/viral_page/?/services/player/bcpid19067533001&bctid=76996577001">a film about Kevin Bright teaching blind students</a> at Perkins School for the Blind to use a video camera. It is a "Must Watch!"<div><br /></div><div>I am reminded, by one of the incidents in this short clip, of an exchange I witnessed, I should really say overheard, in the locker room of the Metropolitan Health Club many years ago. I should mention for the benefit of those who live in the real world that the Metropolitan Health Club was Boston's first avowedly gay gym. There was a blind fellow who worked out there and was quite popular, and he was chatting with another fellow while they were changing. I was in the next row of lockers but recognized the voices. </div><div><br /></div><div>Our blind friend ask what the other had done over the weekend, to which he responded quite readily that he had gone out on a "blind date." By the time he finished the statement, however, he realized that he had probably transgressed all sorts of codes, manners and PC standards, and so without taking a breath started profuse apologies for making this thoughtless statement to one who was actually blind.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No, no, it's fine, I use the term myself" said our very secure and grounded friend. But what followed was, to the ears of an eavesdropper, a foolish and continued insistence on the part of the sighted fellow that he was in error, while all the time the blind fellow was consoling and reassuring him. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have learned how often it happens that it falls the lot of an assumed victim of affliction to take care of his comforters. I encourage you to watch the video!</div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8143260356124293059.post-30469067122844112092010-04-20T16:01:00.000-07:002010-04-20T16:19:37.626-07:00Speaking of rain<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAK6TEeTPq004g-x6r8NtS5U60H4QyfEpoKE1nFxbdgLKTpUwJMKxnWcBJVJEefLXp37U-BE1w3Q7rvDOUSca6YAasY-tSIpPm878d3XHlE9qANx4QV21LAG1-g3SveMdzyqAjOx2x7uCQ/s1600/rain+2010.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAK6TEeTPq004g-x6r8NtS5U60H4QyfEpoKE1nFxbdgLKTpUwJMKxnWcBJVJEefLXp37U-BE1w3Q7rvDOUSca6YAasY-tSIpPm878d3XHlE9qANx4QV21LAG1-g3SveMdzyqAjOx2x7uCQ/s400/rain+2010.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462360178339286882" /></a><br />I posted a photo last year- see Rain- which I had taken in response to a various comments I had heard at Emmanuel about our being in a bleak time of year. As it happens last year, at the end of March, we were also having a good bit of wet weather. While that photo made my point about color I was always dissatisfied with it. My Canon camera was new, and I eventually replaced the lens. This year on the same date we were having similar weather so I returned to the location, this is the result. The location is the Longwood stop on the green line. This is taken from the bridge over the Muddy River which brings on from Beth Israel via Winsor School, a route I travel all too frequently.<div><br /></div>the man from Utzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07562877650585442678noreply@blogger.com1