fauxklore: (storyteller doll)
This is the more general catch-up entry. Yeah, I know.

Celebrity Death Watch: Bob Hoskins was an actor. So was Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who people of my generation will associate with The FBI. I want, however, to highlight Al Feldstein, the editor of MAD, a magazine that was a significant influence on my childhood. My father bought it, allegedly for my brother and me, but we noticed that the fold-in was always done by the time we got it. I understand that there is a game of 43-man squamish going on right now in his memory.

Yiddish Poetry Game: I like Yiddish (though I speak little of it) and like poetry, so I thought this special event put on by the Jewish Study Center would be fun. And it was. The idea is that everyone got two cards with poetry cues and two cards with Yiddish words (with English definitions). You matched a word to a cue and offered that up as something for people to use as a rule in writing a poem. For example, my combination led to "an acrostic on the word shtetl." Then everybody had time to write a poem using at least three of the rules. The results were interesting and I could definitely see playing this again. (Note that one can, of course, play the poetry game just in English.)

Business Trip: After getting back from Northlands, I had to leave for a business trip to Los Angeles early the next morning. There was the obligatory jog across ORD when my first flight was delayed and I had less than 15 minutes to make my connection. But things worked out okay. The design review I was there for was successful for the most part, but exhausting. The highlight of the trip was getting to see an aircraft assembly line, which had nothing to do with the actual purpose of being there. But, I suppose, it’s a lot tougher to show off software development.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival: I always swear I will not spend money at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which is the largest fiber festival in the Eastern United States. (Think of it as a cross between a county fair and the world’s largest yarn store.) And, inevitably, there is irresistible temptation. In this case, it was the Tsock Tsarina Shark Week sock kit. It will be challenging, given my history with sock knitting, otherwise known as failing to complete a pair of socks . But some day I will master these.

Rose Valley Storytelling House Concert: After leaving the sheep and alpaca and rabbits (oh, my!), I drove to Philadelphia to go to a storytelling house concert at the home of Megan Hicks and Jack Abgott. It was an excellent evening. Kitty Hailey told amusing stories about her experiences as a private investigator. Robin Bady did an excerpt from her anti-bullying story, "Every Day is Basil Houpis Day," which left me wanting to hear the rest of the story. And Tom Stamp performed a mix of unusual literary stories. There was a great mix of types of material and the audience was responsive and engaged (and mingled well before the show, during intermission, and afterwards). It was definitely worth dealing with I-95. (Note, however, that I stayed up that way overnight. I’m not quite crazy enough to drive up and back the same day.)

Three Penny Opera: I drove back from Philadelphia on Sunday morning so I could see Three Penny Opera at Signature Theatre in the afternoon. Setting the story in the present day was an interesting decision – and not entirely effective, in my opinion. For example, having people snapping cell phone photos of Macheath on the gallows is mildly amusing but doesn’t really add to anything. The performances were more effective. Nastascia Diaz was excellent as Jenny. I also want to note Erin Driscoll as Polly Peachum. I was less enthralled by Mitchell Jarvis as Macheath, though I suspect that has more to do with the character’s inherent smarminess than with his performance per se. All in all, I’d say the production is not entirely successful, but I am not sure anybody could do this show in an entirely satisfying way.

Michael Reno Harrell: Storyteller and folk musician Michael Reno Harrell was passing through town last night and Ellouise Schoettler was offering a house concert featuring him. There was a small group, so it ended up being a "sit around the kitchen table and swap stories" type of evening instead. That was still a good time.

A Brief Note on Why Women Should Run Everything: I had a meeting today. It ran from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with no break. Only a man would schedule things that way.
fauxklore: (Default)
I am, as usual, absurdly busy. I know this is a self-inflicted wound, but it does make writing here a low priority.

Celebrity Death Watch: Anne McCaffrey wrote a series of fantasy novels involving a place called Pern. There are dragons involved. I've actually never read her stuff, but I know several people who are big fans.

Prague: I went to Prague over Thanksgiving weekend. My brief run-down is:

  • The lie flat business class seat is one of the greatest inventions of our times. However, the business class lounges at FRA are absurdly overcrowded. As in standing room only at times.
  • Figuring out the bus and metro from PRG to my hotel was reasonably easy. The Prague metro is clean and efficient.
  • I spent Thursday meandering through part of Old Town (the highlight of which is the Astronomical Clock) and doing a more thorough tour of the Jewish Quarter. I was somewhat surprised by the architecture of the Old-New Synagogue, as I think of fan vaulting as a rather Christian thing. The golem may still be buried somewhere there. Highlight of the Jewish quarter is the old cemetery.
  • Met up with two people from flyertalk for drinks at the Four Seasons. Beer there costs about 3-4 times as much as in less rarified atmospheres. I went out to dinner with one of them. No turkey was on offer, so I settled for duck for Thanksgiving.
  • I toured Prague Castle on Friday. I did the short tour ticket, which gets you into the Cathedral of St. Vitus, St. George's Church, the Palace, and the Golden Lane. Highlight is Land Rolls in the Palace. I also bought a marionette in a shop on the Golden Lane.
  • I also went to the Toy Museum, just outside the Castle. The Barbie collection is particularly impressive.
  • Then I walked down to the Lesser Town (Mala Strana), stopped at a cafe, went to the Church of St. Nicholas, and meandered a bit.
  • Walking back to the Old Town over the Charles Bridge led to a bit of trauma. I was a little ways onto the bridge, when a woman started screaming. I looked down to see what had happened - and saw a body on the pavement below. My assumption is that this was a suicide. Very disturbing.
  • I took a ghost tour on Friday night. The guide tried to hard to sound spooky and, overall, the tour was so-so. It was also bloody cold out.
  • I took a tour to Kutna Hora on Saturday. The highlight was the Bone Church, which is simply bizarre.
  • After coming back, I meandered around the New Town. The architecture of the Jerusalem Synagogue is also, um, notable. The word "garish" comes to mind. Walking back to the Old Town, I was impressed by the Municipal Building. I also stopped in the Tyn Church to see the grave of Tycho Brahe.
  • Overall, it was a good trip. I saw enough to feel satisfied, though I could always use one more day.
  • Flight from PRG to FRA was fine. FRA is still the second worst airport in Europe (behind CDG). Flight from FRA to IAD was on old configuration 777, which has crappy seats. My footrest was broken, so I got a skykit (compensation certificate, which gets you a choice of either additional frequent flyer miles or a discount on a future flight). Home again, home again, jiggety jig.


Work: I have now rewritten various parts of a briefing for Friday at least 736 times. Please let this week be over.

Endangered Languages: Since the subject is one of my minor obsessions, I went to a lecture on endangered languages at the Smithsonian last night. The first speaker, an anthropologist studying Zuni, was poor, reading from her notes and not engaging with the audience at all. The second speaker, a linguist working on the Zapotec family, provided something of a crash course in field linguistics, which was a lot better. SHe also spoke interestingly about different ways of describing spatial relationships. The final speaker was a man working on revitalizing the language of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. He was very engaging, especially in his comments about how heritage languages evolve to include concepts the ancestors would not have known about. All in all, it was a good program.

Fabric of Survival: Before the lecture, I had time to check out this exhibit of the art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz. The exhibit is a series of fabric collages (with embroidery) depicting the life of a Holocaust survivor. The pieces are remarkably detailed and well worth seeing.
fauxklore: (Default)
I normally post entries early in the morning, but I have been in a "getting organized" mood (not that you'd know it from my lack of progress on the chaos that is my den). And I seem to be too tired to write on the nights when I am not too busy. So I am actually using a work break to catch up here, instead of my usual chit chatting.

Crafts: The crocheted coral reef exhibit is opening this weekend. I am hoping to get over to the Museum of Natural History on Sunday morning, before the meeting for volunteers at the upcoming Science Festival on the mall. But what I wanted to mention now was one of the other satellite reefs that I found interesting. It was made by inmates of a women's prison in Indiana.

Celebrity death watch: I should mention the opera singer, Joan Sutherland, but the most recent celebrity death was of Carla Cohen, co-founder of Politics and Prose, an excellent independent bookstore in northwest Washington, D.C. She had been in poor health for a while (and the shop is for sale partly because of that). Until reading her obituary, I had not realized that one of her brothers is Mark Furstenberg, owner of the well-regarded sandwich shop, Bread Line (as well as Marvelous Market, which I am less impressed with).

Amazing Race: Sunday night's episode came down to two things - luck with taxis and attention to detail. The Princeton boys did well (despite taking way too long to find Ghana on the map) because they actually read the clue for the construction materials challenge. And they were the only team who actually found the decoder key for what should have been the easier challenge.

I was annoyed at tattooed guy for his meanness to his girlfriend, though he did apologize when she had the asthma attack. I have also concluded that the doctors won't last much longer, given that they were the only team who had trouble finding the marked path to the pit stop.

Notes to myself: Does anybody have any idea what the possible significance of "303/357" might be and why I wrote it in my planner a couple of weeks ago? Or why I wrote "3200-11" a couple of days later? (Lest you think all of my notes to myself are cryptic and/or useless, I am reasonably sure that one string of letters and numbers was a temporary web password for a site I forgot my password to and had called to get reset. And I actually know that "Elstar" is a type of apple, about which more later.)

Yoga: There is a Baptist minister who has been getting skewered in the press for saying that yoga is un-Christian. I don't see the big deal. It isn't any secret that yoga has spiritual practices associated with it and it should not be surprising that those might be incompatible with other religious traditions. (By the way, I know of at least a couple of synagogues that have special yoga classes that have been designed to avoid some of the practices that are un-Jewish.)

Apples: The farmer's market has been full of apples for the past several weeks. The Elstar apples definitely had an unusual flavor, which is why I made a note about them. They were fine for a change of snacking pace, but I will stick to the Rome and (especially) Cortland apples for the most part. Were I ever going to bake a pie, they have a good supply of Northern Spy, which are the definitive pie apple as far as I am concerned.

Speaking of baking: I baked a chocolate cake for a colleague's 50th birthday. Basically, I used a recipe from Hershey's web site, substituting brown sugar for half the granulated sugar (because I ran out of granulated sugar) and tossing in a bag of chocolate chips for good measure. My ambitions are limited, however, and I used boughten frosting. It was a success and I will use that cake recipe again.

Words: Does anybody else use "boughten" to mean "store bought" or is that something I picked up somewhere obscure?

Endangered languages: I went to hear K. David Harrison's talk at National Geographic on Tuesday night. I picked up a copy of his book, The Last Speakers while I was there. He was an entertaining and informative lecturer and played clips of several speakers of endangered languages. The funniest part involved a love song from a tribe in Papua New Guinea. The lyrics were along the lines of "Your village is swampy and has death adders. I don't want to live there. Come and live in my village where there are no death adders."

I think that brings me up to date.
fauxklore: (Default)
Last night was the Washington Shakespeare Company's fundraiser, By Any Other Name: Shakespeare in the Original Klingon. This is a theatre company that has staged a nude production of the Scottish play, so doing something strange to get attention is not exactly a new thing for them. But, actually, there's a more direct link from WSC to Klingon. Their board president, Marc Okrand, is the linguist who developed the Klingon language, starting with Star Trek III: The Wrath of Khan. (There were a few lines of Klingon in the first movie, but James Doohan made up gibberish, without a linguistic structure.)

I'm not really a huge Star Trek fan, having pretty much ignored everything after the original series and the first couple of movies. (I did go to one Star Trek convention, back when I was in high school. But I also went to a John Denver concert back when I was in high school. Let's just say my tastes have changed.) Nor am I a big Shakespeare fan. I appreciate his role in English literature and it's not like I actively avoid Shakespeare plays, but I tend to spend my entertainment money primarily on musicals.

So why did I go to this event? It struck me as something that would get a lot of buzz and was strange enough to be amusing. One of my friends asked me if I understood Klingon. My reply was that I don't understand Shakespeare in English either. I was still reassured that they were doing the scenes in both languages.

The evening started with a few speeches from the theatre leadership, followed by Marc Okrand talking about Klingon. He was entertaining, particularly in his descriptions of how the language changed as a result of mistakes the actors made. (That became harder to do after he published a Klingon dictionary.) He also mentioned the joke that was really behind the whole evening. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a character quotes Hamlet. Spock identifies the quote and a Klingon chancellor says, "you have not really experienced Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon." So part of the premise of the performance was that the English was mistranslated.

The first scene was from Hamlet - the duel between Hamlet and Laertes. The Klingon cast did part of the scene, followed by the English cast doing the same part of the scene, until they were interrupted by a Klingon actor pointing out the "mistranslation." This would have worked better for me if it were more fully staged, with costumes and swords. As it was, it looked and felt amateurish - silliness for the sake of silliness. And why did the Klingon Gertrude suddenly speak in English in her final lines?

The second scene, from Much Ado About Nothing worked better for me and was, I thought, the best of the evening. The scene between Benedick and Beatrice, which ends with her asking him to kill Claudio, was done first in English - with men playing both roles. Jay Hardee mugged it up nicely as Beatrice. The scene was then repeated in Klingon, with translators doing the translation of each line into English after it was spoken. The differences in the languages were highlighted well this way and the humor of the concept was effective.

The final scene was from Julius Caesar and involved a soliloquy by Cassius, done first in Klingon, then in English. The real appeal of this was that the English version was performed by George Takei (Sulu from the original series, if anybody doesn't know). He has a strong voice (and classical training - he studied at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon) and did a fine job.

The evening ended with a Q&A. (Well, if you paid another hundred bucks, there was an after-party at the Hotel Palomar. I didn't attend that.) The only question I'll bother to mention is one to Marc Okrand. When asked if there are jokes in Klingon, he told the punchline of one. Exactly two people in the audience laughed.

All in all, I'd say they did a good job of making the excerpts tolerable to people who don't understand Klingon, but this was still just a publicity stunt at heart. It was effective at that - bringing in more than 65% of the revenue that they got from ticket sales last season and getting mention in all of the local media. It was also filmed by the BBC for a series on language, by the way, so you may get the opportunity to see at least part of it.

The ticket came with a pass for the season (4 tickets for their other shows), by the way, so it will also help in audience development. Overall, I suppose that means it was a success.
fauxklore: (Default)
I like gong away for my birthday. With it coming on or around Labor Day weekend, it's convenient to go away for a few days. I've also been trying to fill in some gaps in which European countries I've been in. Combine that with summer z-fares on United (discounted business class fares which are surprisingly little more than coach, though heavily restricted) and I figured that spending my birthday in Monaco would be a nice splurge.

So I took Friday off from work and flew Thursday night to Frankfurt, then on to Nice. I do like those rear-facing lie-flat business class seats on the 767. I also had a particularly amiable seatmate. Even the crew were friendly, asking about my crocheting. (I was working on finishing a piece of coral for the Smithsonian project.) Unfortunately, one arrives at Frankfurt, which is the second most annoying airport in Europe. (Charles de Gaulle in Paris is worse. I'm the odd person who doesn't much mind Heathrow.) Fortunately, I could escape to the business class lounge which is still annoyingly crowded.

Not only are there still no ATMs in the secure area, the ATM on the floor where one enters the B-gate concourse has switched to the chip system, making it unusable with American bank cards. I could have gone searching the rest of the terminal, I suppose, but I prefer just to kvetch about it. My flight to Nice was delayed about a half hour and Lufthansa's business class on this sort of short haul flight is nothing to write home about, but we made it there with no problems. And there was a usable ATM, so I got some euros, bought a bus ticket to Monaco and was on my way. (The train is more scenic, but one has to first take a bus to the train station, so it is less convenient and saves no time.) I had no trouble finding my hotel and settled in, showered, and was ready for a stroll around town.

My main walk on Friday afternoon was just around the Place du Casino and the surrounding gardens, which are lovely. There are several ornate buildings, including a few historic (and incredibly expensive) hotels. Monte Carlo is designed largely to separate people from money, so one sees, for example, the Lamborghini and Jaguar dealerships, various jewelry stores, Prada, etc., but not things like a drugstore or a hardware store. The Casino is amazingly ornate and palatial, but not actually lively, unless things pick up much after 10 at night. Remembering all of those novels in which people met their ruin playing chemin de fer (i.e. baccarat) in Monte Carlo, I stuck to video poker and low limit slots and ended up 50 euros ahead on the evening. (Some of that time was in the casino at the Cafe de Paris, which is slightly livelier, but feels shabby by comparison.) I also had dinner along the way at an unpretentious Italian restaurant.

I spent Saturday touring Monaco Ville, i.e. the older part of the city. I took a bus up (a good deal at 1 euro) and toured the Prince's palace, including seeing the changing of the guard. This is less elaborate than many similar ceremonies, but there is nothing disappointing about the palace itself. (Prince Albert II is, alas, engaged, so I won't be moving in.) I also saw the cathedral and the Oceanographic Museum. The museum part of the latter was not really very interesting to me, but the aquarium downstairs was nice. From the standpoint of eating and shopping, both Monaco Ville and the lower areas (La Condamine and Fontveille) are actually better than Monte Carlo.

Saturday night, I checked out the other two casinos (the one in the Monte Carlo Beach Hotel and the Sun Casino attached to the Fairmont). The latter was the liveliest and also had the unique feature of roulette machines. In short, it took me until a bit after 11 p.m. to lose my liimit. Apparently, birthdays do not exempt one from the laws of probability.

I took the bus back to Nice on Sunday and spent the afternoon doing a hop-on/hop-off bus tour of the city. Some people may mock these, but I find them a convenient way to get a good overview in a reasonable amount of time and I've taken these tours in various places in Europe. The main thing I wanted to see was the Chagall Museum and it was definitely worth a look. The other really impressive thing was the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas, the largest Russian Orthodox church outside of Russia. There is a long-standing Russian community in the area, and one often sees signs in Russian in Nice. One also sees some signs in Nissart, the local Latin dialect, which was in widespread use before the French took over in 1860. (Prior to that, Nice was effectively Italian, except that Italy did not exist as a unified country. One of the nicer places in Nice is the Place Garibaldi, for example, so you can see where their sympathies lie.) Apparently, Nissart is undergoing something of a revival nowadays and is even being taught in schools, despite having been suppressed by the French for many years.

There were no issues getting home and, in fact, I got upgraded to first class on the Frankfurt to Washington leg. Overall, it was a good trip and worth the exhaustion of a brief (but splurgy!) three days in Europe.
fauxklore: (Default)
The Washington Post had a brief obituary today of Marie Smith Jones. The significance is that she was the last native speaker of the Alaksan Eyak language.

One day historians will look back at the crimes of colonialism and, I believe, will find the death of languages to be high up on the list. At the same time, final speakers carry some complicity since they made the decision not to pass the languages on to their children and grand-children.

My parents were quite deliberate about not speaking Yiddish to us, for example. My mother has some regrets regarding this, but she also remembers the humiliation of not knowing English when she started school. I like to think it is possible to raise truly bilingual children, but those were less enlightened times.

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