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October 6, 2013

An eye update, and a very musical weekend

It was quite a musical weekend, with three concerts, but before I get to that, for those kind souls following my eye surgery saga, a brief update: my one week postop checkup was last Tuesday. While Dr. M was away speaking at a conference, I got examined up by Dr. S, one of his fellows. I did substantially better on the chart test, seeing part of three rows (up from zero the previous week). But things were still very foggy. Dr. S detected corneal edema, which sometimes happens after surgery, and likely would clear up in a few weeks. From what he could see of the retina, he thought it was doing OK.

Friday evening was mild and clear, and we sat outside for dinner at Buku. Their pad thai may be the best in town In any case, it was delicious. I tried the flight of three wines from Naples, which were worth trying. For dessert we got two spoons and one apple tart with cinnamon ice cream, which was a treat, then walked three blocks to hear the N.C. Symphony.

It was our first symphony concert of this season, and I was looking forward to it. The highlight of the evening was Ravel’s Rhapsodie Espagnol, a piece with rich colors and textures that featured sectional solos from most subgroups of the orchestra. The sound was fantastic. I was particularly struck by the warmth and vibrancy of the strings, which made me think of the famous Philadelphia sound. Conductor Grant Llewelleyn always looks great, but at times he’s struck me as too rhythmically literal and rigid. Not last night – there was a lot of rhythm flexibility as well as high energy. It was a brilliant performance worthy of a great ensemble.

Also featured on the program was a young Korean pianist named Joyce Wang, who played Cesar Frank’s Symphonic Variations and Manuel De Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain. I liked the de Falla, and I really liked her. She was unquestionably a real musician — sensitive, imaginative, and willing to take risks. And she had a spectacular silver shimmering gown, which fit her nicely.

Does it matter how a pianist looks? I’d like to think that the sound is ultimately what matters, but a recent short piece in the Economist points strongly the other way. Experts and musical amateurs tried to rank the three top finishers in a piano competition based on either sound alone or video alone. With sound alone, the amateurs didn’t get close to agreeing with the original judges – but neither did the experts. With video, both amateurs and experts came much closer to the actual results, and agreed together. This suggests that showmanship is a big part of what we enjoy about a musical performance, and how we distinguish one player from another.

On Saturday night Diane, my mother-in-law, and I went to the N.C. Opera’s new production of Mozart/da Ponte’s Cosi Fan Tutte. I’d enjoyed listening to it on my iPad during my morning workouts, but had never seen it. It was a really good show! The set was classically elegant, and the period costumes almost sumptuous. English subtitles were projected above the stage. The six principles were all musically and comically gifted. And Mozart’s music is sublime. So much melody, so natural but so inventive and surprising!

The plot device is oddly dissonant to a non-eighteenth-century audience: it is a comedy on the theme of women’s (but not men’s) inconstancy in love. There are moments that seem harshly cynical and misogynistic. But the meta message is more cheerful: human attraction is unquenchable, touching, and also at times very funny.

On Sunday afternoon Sally and I went to a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet, which played Mozart, Shostakovich, and Dvorak. They were four intense young men in dark suits and ties, and they were excellent. This is really a world-class ensemble, with a brilliant first violinist. I

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September 9, 2013

Diving out of Wrightsville — the good, the bad, and the ugly

We had a dive trip this weekend out of Wrightsville Beach with Aquatic Safaris. We were scheduled to go to two wrecks on Saturday afternoon, the Hyde and Markham, but rough seas prevented that. Plan B was the Liberty Ship, which sits just three miles offshore. Things were bumpy with some current, and I found my heart rate and breathing increasing as I went down the anchor line. There were still a few leftover thoughts of my near death experience of a few weeks back.

Visibility was quite bad – perhaps 5-10 feet. We followed a line laid out by the mate. There wasn’t much we could see besides the line. It was nice to be diving again, but this was not pleasant diving. The second dive was similar. There were several divers taking a wreck diving course who laid out lines, and we got their lines confused with the mate’s line at one point. We finally figured it out and made it back to the anchor line and the boat.

Saturday night we stayed in Wilmington with Sally’s sister, Anne, and went to Cichetti, an Italian restaurant. We had a nice meal and a lively conversation. We discussed Shakespeare’s concept of evil, Greek playwrights, and youthful experimenting with psychedelics and pot.

We also talked some about slavery, which I’ve been reading about in a new history of the pre-civil war and civil war period called Ecstatic Nation by Brenda Wineappple. The book brings vivid life to the 1850s when there were slave states and free states, and it was by no means clear which would ultimately prevail. It require real imagination to understand the pro-slavery viewpoint. Wineapple is certainly not pro-slavery, but she gives a sense of the incredible intensity and complexity of the struggle.

Early Sunday morning the skies were clear and calm, and the seas were calm as well. We left the marina about 7:30 a.m. and made it to the wreck of the John D. Gill in about an hour and half. The Gill was a tanker sunk by a German u-boat in WWII. Visibility was pretty good – perhap 50 feet. We saw several barracuda and thousands of small silvery fish, and we also spotted two large flounder.

For the last dive, we went to the Hyde, a wreck that still look like a ship, though with lots of things growing on it and lots of fish around it. Visibility was less good – maybe 30-40 feet – but the wreck itself was interesting, and we could see thousands of little fish, along with many barracuda. One sand tiger shark passed close by.

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September 2, 2013

A New York reunion, including some U.S. Open tennis

Our view looking southeast from the Ganesvoort

Jocelyn just became an official New Yorker, having found and furnished an apartment in Brooklyn and gotten hired for an entry-level position producing ebooks for McMillan. Hurray! For a long Labor Day weekend, we went up to see her. Gabe flew out from Telluride, and the four of us convened at Ganesvoort Hotel on 9th Avenue and 13th Street.

The meatpacking district was a lot grittier when we lived in New York in the early 80s. Now there’s hardly any grit, but there are lots of beautiful people. While we had drinks on the sidewalk in front of the Ganesvoort, we observed many young women with long hair and very high heels. Black is the color of the moment. We had a lively dinner at Luna in Little Italy.

On Friday, Sally, Gabe and I took the subway to Flushing Meadows, Queens and spent the day watching some of the U.S. Open. Our grounds pass entitled us to go everywhere except Arthur Ashe stadium, and there was plenty to see. At one point we saw Federer practicing next to Nadal, while a few courts down number four Ferrer was working up a sweat. Nadal’s ground strokes were really powerful — to the point of scariness.

We saw Tommy Haas play well and win a match against Yen-Hsun Lu. We also saw part of a good match between Jelena Jankovic and Kurumi Nara, both of whom were strong. Jankovic barely won. The other highlight was a doubles match between the world’s top ranked team of Errani and Vini and Hingis and Hantuchova. Martina Hingis is attempting a comeback, and she looked credible, but the Italians were too much for her team.

On Saturday we took a walk on the High Line, an elevated rail line along the west side that’s been converted into a pedestrian walkway. It’s become a tourist attraction, which meant it was crowded, but still fun to see some new perspectives on the city. We had lunch in a Korean restaurant on 32d street, where every other business seems to be a Korean restaurant. That evening we celebrated Jocelyn’s new job with a dinner at Raoul’s, which was excellent.

On Sunday we walked through the Village and SoHo in the morning before Gabe and Jocelyn woke up. We found a lovely little community garden called LaGuardia Corner Gardens.

In the afternoon we took the subway out to Brooklyn and walked through Williamsburg to the waterfront. Then we walked over to Jocelyn’s place in Green Point. These areas have become quite hip and lively. We were all happy to see Jocelyn on her way.

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July 3, 2013

My eye outlook, a tuba reminiscence, and enjoying some Mendelssohn and Wagner

I saw Dr. Mruthyunjaya for an eye checkup last week,and the news was basically good. The eye test results were mixed — with my injured left eye I couldn’t see any letters on the chart, but I could tell how many fingers the PA held up.

By now I’m thoroughly acclimated to the check routine — getting pressure tested, dilated, photographed, and poked, prodded, and peered into. I used to think of the eye as sort of a delicate thing, but now not so much. Anyhow, after giving me a thorough going over, Dr. M. said those words I longed to hear: “I like what I’m seeing.” My retinal scarring had not gotten substantially worse. My cataract was larger, but he says that’s relatively easy to address. We’ll likely do the surgery in September. I’m optimistic that I’ll be seeing better.

Sally and I drove over to Greensboro on Friday for the opening concert of the Eastern Music Festival. We had dinner with friends beforehand at the Green Valley Grill, where we enjoyed their potato leek soup and cauliflower steak. I talked about being a student musician at EMF as a rising high school senior, when I played the tuba in the student orchestra.

Why the tuba? I remember Mr. Shelton, my first band teacher, asking if any of the trumpet players wanted to switch to tuba, because the band needed one. I liked the look of the big horn, and liked the idea of doing something others didn’t. Other ideas came later: the tuba as a unique voice, as bass French horn, as brass cello. But the start was mainly out of curiosity. It seemed like it might be fun. Which it was.

Getting back to the Guilford College campus brought back happy memories of friends and wonderful music. The concert was the first event of the EMF season by the faculty orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz. The first work of the evening was by Schwarz, and featured a choir of boy sopranos. They looked like normal goofy boys, and sounded completely gorgeous.

The highlight was Joshua Bell performing the Mendelssohn violin concerto. It’is a brilliant, gorgeous piece, and Bell was fantastic. Within the first few notes, it was clear that he was a master musician, and he’d considered many possibilities for every note. Along with the logic was a lot of passion and excitement. He played a solo encore that seemed to be variations on Yankee Doodle Dandy in the style of Paganini. The double stops and harmonics were amazing!

The last work of the evening was excerpts from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, including Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, Siegfried’s Funeral March, and Brunhilde’s Immolation. This is amazing music, elemental in its force. The soft parts were a bit tentative, but the loud parts were thrilling!

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June 16, 2013

My walk to work, seeing Before Midnight, and eating at Dos Taquitos

Now that we’ve moved our offices into Red Hat Tower, I’m within walking distance of work. How sweet it is! Last week I went carless three times. If I focus on moving along, I can make it in seventeen minutes. On a warm, humid day, that leaves me in a bit of a lather. On Thursday, I went a little slower, and took some pictures with my trusty Canon point-and-shoot, which are above and below in the order they were taken.

On Saturday we went to the Rialto to see Before Midnight. I loved the two predecessor pictures, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, both of which were romantic but also smart. Along with My Dinner with Andre, these movies prove that great conversations can be art. In both earlier movies, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy were astonishing in their seeming naturalness, and with great chemistry.

In the new movie, they return as the same characters, but middle-aged, and firmly a couple, with children of their own. Instead of gauzy romantic possibilities, they have frustrations and disappointments with life and each other, and anger. But they’re still talking. Boy can they talk! I really liked the movie.

There’s a little conversational strand early in the film about the nature of the self that could have been inspired by The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood, which I’ve been re-reading. Hood works hard to deconstruct the conventional view of an unchanging self with conscious thought at the center. The characters briefly take notice of the force of this argument, but then do what we all usually do, which is plunge into a narrative.

After the movie, we had dinner at Dos Taquitos on Glenwood. We’d tried to get in twice before, but both times the place was packed and the waits were long. The third time was a charm, although even at 9:00 we still had to wait half an hour. It was lively, with busy, colorful decor and lots of noise, and the food was just fine. I think the secret of their popularity is: it’s relatively inexpensive. And their margaritas have some kick.

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June 9, 2013

Is it 1984, with the NSA as Big Brother, or will Watson come to the rescue? Plus notes on a birthday, an anniversary, a soccer game, and an opera documentary

What to make of the federal government’s massive program for gathering telephone and social media data? My first reaction was fear and horror. Is 1984 finally here? Is the Fourth Amendment a quaint artifact of a bygone era? Of course, we don’t actually know very much about the program, which is still classified. Is it like Big Brother, or more like the airport security services of the TSA, which inconvenience millions and accomplishes little?

As for the TSA, no doubt it’s supposed to make us feel more secure about flying, but for me the predominant emotion is frustration, with additional notes of anger and humiliation when my property and person are touched by uniformed strangers. And we’re afraid that if we complain, we may get put on the do not fly list and subjected to even more frustration and humiliation. Dear NSA analyst, if you’re reading this, I swear I’m not going to cause any mayhem – please please don’t put me on the do not fly list.

I’m kidding, of course (no I’m not – I want to stay off that list). I seriously doubt humans look at more than an infinitesimal fraction of this data, which is sufficiently massive as to defy all hope of human comprehension. It may be that this is why the program continues to exist: it’s become so big and complicated that no one can understand it. The computer doing the heavy lifting has almost certainly surpassed its minders in the complex skills at the core of this program. So who can reasonably make a judgment as to whether it’s a useful or safe project. The computer?

I realize this sounds a bit science fictiony, but if it isn’t already true, it probably will be soon. Remember, IBM’s Watson didn’t just win at Jeopardy, he or it trounced the strongest human players to ever have played the game. The Times reported this morning that the NSA and CIA have been testing Watson for intelligence purposes the last couple of years. He’s already way better at quickly analyzing massive amounts of data than any human ever will be, and he’s likely getting smarter and smarter.

In some ways this is comforting. I greatly doubt that Watson or his peers in artificial intelligence mean us any harm. Good AI is, at least so far, not complicated by the emotions that drive human behavior, including those that make us behave badly. Watson is not greedy, or prejudiced, or power mad. Once he gets this security thing well in hand, maybe he can take on more governmental responsibility. Could this be the way out of partisan gridlock? Watson for president?

Speaking of technological transformations, I recommend an essay in today’s NY Times by Jaron Lanier called Fixing the Digital Economy. Lanier is wrestling with an issue I’ve also written about: what happens to the economy (i.e. us) as human labor is increasingly replaced by robots and AI? He suggests that the source of both increasing decentralization of power and increasing disparities in wealth is computing power, and that the most powerful players are the ones with the most server power. I think he’s wrong to emphasize giant computers as primary sources of wealth, but he’s thrown out some provocative ideas. Here’s one: let’s revamp the economy so that those who take your digital data pay you for it. We could set up market in which Google, Facebook, the NSA and other data miners send out quarterly checks to all of us who provide the data.

Speaking of data and devices, Sally had a birthday this week, and I got her an iPad mini. She was thrilled! I got it at the Apple store at the Crabtree Valley Mall, which as usual was packed, and where I had a completely satisfactory buying experience. My salesman was knowledgeable and funny in a dry way. There are things to dislike about Apple as an organization, but they are really good at customer service. And their devices are designed with emphasis on a pleasant, intuitive human-machine interface, so non-specialists can enjoy them.

We also had our 31st anniversary this week, and celebrated with a fancy dinner at St. Jacques. The restaurant sits in a common strip mall, but inside it manages to convey the joie de vivre of fine French cuisine. I love that they have a special vegetarian menu. It took a little too long to get a visit from the sommelier, but eventually he gave us his full attention. A true and expressive Frenchman, he dissuaded us from getting the chardonnay that we additionally asked about, and with a dramatic explanation of the food flavors and wine flavors at issue persuaded us to try a sauvignon blanc. It worked beautifully. We savored every bite and sip.

On Saturday night we went out to Cary to see a soccer game – the Carolina Railhawks played the Tampa Bay Rowdies. It was a clear, mild evening. We took along a couple of veggie subs at Jersey Mike’s, because last year we’d learned there wasn’t much in the way of healthful nourishment at the soccer stadium. But we were pleased to see they had improved their beer selection since last year. The field looked green and immaculate. We had good seats near centerfield on row G, and had a pleasant picnic there.

The teams came into the game tied for the lead in the league and seemed well matched. I thought the Railhawks seemed sharper and less thuggish than last year. There were moments of skill and excitement, but no scoring until the 87th minute, when Tampa Bay took advantage of a defensive let down to put in a goal. When time expired there was an additional four minutes. During that time, the Railhawks proceeded to score, and then score again. We won!

One of the Railhawks, Brian Ackley, is an old friend of Jocelyn’s going all the way back to middle school. We’d texted Jocelyn that we were going to the game, who’d texted Brian, and so he was prepared when we hailed him after the game and had a word. He’d played the last part of the game and had almost scored on a header. He’s a fine athlete and warm human being, and it was nice to see him.

Brian victorious (the Railhawk on the right)

When we got home, we watched a fine short documentary on HBO On Demand about Renee Fleming doing a master class for four aspiring young opera singers. The basic format, as with all master classes, is for a student to perform in front of other students and the master, and then receive criticism from the master. Here the students were all thrilled to have the opportunity to sing for Fleming, who is unquestionably one of our greatest singers. She was warm, generous, and a great listener. She gave some very specific advice on producing good vocal sounds, and spoke frankly about things like pre-concert nervousness. She gives a window into how difficult it is to be a great singer, but at the same time how wonderful.

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May 13, 2013

Our dive trip to Cozumel

Sally and I just got back from a week of scuba diving in Cozumel, Mexico. As a friend recently noted, we like adventure vacations. If you do, too, you would probably like Cozumel. The diving was great, and the above-water scene was lively, too.

Cozumel is a warm and enterprising place. Most of the real beauty, for me, is in the reefs, but I also really liked the people. The Mexicans I met are mostly cheerful and good humored, but also polite and dignified. They worked hard to help us along our way.

The business of Cozumel is tourism, and there are many layers to this business, from high end hotels to street hawkers. A stroll through the main part of town takes you past many gold and silver jewelry shops, clothing shops, crafts establishments, restaurants, and shops selling Cuban cigars. Most of these shops have a person who will try to persuade you to look inside, some of whom are aggressive and insistent. It’s a bit annoying if you’re not interested in the goods, but the beautiful blue water fronting the main street makes up for any inconvenience.

I’d been planning to use more of my Spanish, which is still a work in progress, but had little occasion to. The sales and service people of Cozumel have highly developed antennae for spotting los norteamericanos, and encourage expenditures by using English, which ranged from adequate to impressive. A couple of waiters gently corrected my usage mistakes, which I appreciated, and I think they appreciated my making some effort with their language, but it was clearly not required.

Our hotel was the Casa Mexicana, a mod-looking place on the water in the center of town. Our rooms was attractive and comfortable, with a balcony overlooking the courtyard restaurant where we ate very satisfying breakfasts. The lobby was on the second floor with a pool and deck chairs overlooking the water. Lots of restaurants were within walking distance, though we took a taxi to our favorite, Casa Mission. The hotel was only a few steps from the shop of the folks who took us diving, Aqua Safari, and the boat dock was just across the street.

Our boats usually had about fifteen divers. These included our group of six organized by our friend Dan out of Down Under Surf and Scuba. We did two dives in the morning, and after returning to the dock, we either ate quickly and went out for an afternoon dive, or on two days relaxed and then went out again at 7:00 for a night dive. The boat rides to the dive sites were generally one to 1.5 hours. Our guides were experienced, and showed us many interesting places and creatures. Early May seemed a good time to be there – sunny, breezy, and not un-Godly hot.

Our dive environments fell into three main groups: coral walls that went much deeper than we could dive, coral patches separated by sandy areas, and large coral structures shaped like pillars, boulders, mesas, and canyons, which made me think of southwest Utah. There were dozens of species of live coral. Some were vivid colors (purple, orange, green, yellow, red), and we also saw the famous black coral. Their shapes and textures were fantastically varied, including ones that looked like cactuses, pillars, antlers, brains, and various vegetables.

Cozumel is famous for drift diving, meaning a trip that goes where the strong current takes you. This can be exhilarating, but is also challenging at times. In the strongest current, there is no easy way to stop or reverse course, and it can feel by moments like Lost in Space. This requires alertness to avoid collisions with people or coral, and limits the chances to take photographs or look at things with deliberation. There were dive sites with little current, though, which were calm and sweet.

And of course, there were thousands of fish and other creatures. We’ve been trying to improve our identification skills, with the useful reference works on reef fish, creatures, and coral by Paul Humann and Ned Deloach. Sally was prepared to ID a green sea turtle, of which we saw only one, though we saw several hawksbills. She also introduced me to the whitenosed pipefish and various seahorses.

There was no shortage of bizarre looking creatures, including the porcupine fish, splendid toadfish, flying gurnard, smooth trunkfish, trumpetfish, honeycomb cowish, scrawled firefish, and queen triggerfish. We saw southern stingrays, as well as yellow rays and a Caribbean torpedo ray, and spotted and green moray eels. There were also large spiny lobsters and crabs. On a night dive I saw two octopuses that transformed themselves into objects of varying shapes and colors. It was fantastic!

One species we we pleased not to see many of was the lion fish. These invasive predators reproduce quickly, have no resident enemies, and consume voraciously. They’re now common in the northern Caribbean. Our main guide, Miguel, said that the dive guides in Cozumel had been authorized to kill them, and the numbers have been substantially reduced in the most dived areas of the south coast over the lat three years.

We also saw some big and medium creatures: nurse sharks, black groupers, barracuda, giant parrotfish, jacks, grunts, and snappers. I particularly adore the queen angelfish, and saw many, as well as French and gray angelfish. And there were untold numbers of colorful smaller tropicals – durgons, tangs, grunts, surgeon fish, butterflyfish, chromis, wrasse, and many others. The profusion of life is amazing, still!

My camera strobe worked fine on day one and two, but then the supporting arm’s joint broke, and so my photographs after that were mostly by natural life. This was disappointing, because there are things that just can’t be captured without a strobe, but I liked some of the images I got. The pictures here are all mine, except the first, the one immediatelhy above, and the ones below of Sally and me, which were taken by Pete, a professional. (Yes, I realize his look a lot better than mine. My excuse is he had better equipment, though also probably more talent.)

The morning before our flight home, we rented a jet ski and sported about for a half hour. The machine, a Yamaha, seemed very powerful. The water was choppy, and I never quite managed to take the machine to full throttle, as it jumped and bucked. Sally rode behind me, and proclaimed herself thoroughly shaken and glad to still be alive when we were done. But note, she never complained or requested that we slow down. That’s my gal!

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April 7, 2013

Educational opportunities

Jocelyn doesn’t use the phone for talking too much anymore, at least to her dad, but she called this week to tell me she was admitted to the Columbia University publishing program. She was thrilled, relieved, and ready to start a new chapter: life in New York City. Her boss at the apres ski bar in Telluride agreed to buy her aging Nissan Altima, and she asked me to figure out the legalities. I said I’d be happy to do so.

Whatever doubts I may have about job prospects in the publishing business, I’m keeping to myself for the time being. It’s wonderful to see Jocelyn, so smart and talented, moving forward and exploring. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all go to New York and be students again?

As a matter of fact, one of the great things about my job is that I get to talk to and learn from really interesting and gifted people. This week I had lunch with Jamie Boyle, professor of law at Duke and one of the most clear-eyed scholars of intellectual property law. His last book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, explains with clarity and force some of the enormous problems with our patent and copyright systems, including how IP law can hinder innovation and creativity. He really is a brilliant guy, and a delightful conversationalist.

We ate at the Washington Duke Inn, which has a cozy clubby feel, and talked about some of the usual things, like sports and food, but also about his leading role in producing the Hargreaves Commission report, which advocated an evidence-based approach to IP protection. We discussed the possibilities for patent reform in Congress and the courts. We also talked about some of the hyper conservative activity in the N.C. legislature, and the N.C. constitutional amendment against gay marriage. We agreed that this right-wing crowd has gone beyond being embarrassing and is hurting the reputation and economy of our state. I also got to see his new car, a sporty and beautiful Jaguar XK.

In other education news, the NY Times reported this week that EdX, the online education consortium, has developed software that automatically grades students’ essays. Its new software is, it says, not perfect but about as reliable as human graders, and gives almost instant feedback to the student. This could be a game changer in education at all levels, potentially helping students with instant feedback, and also potentially eliminating a lot of teaching jobs. Will the net of it be better education at lower cost? And/or will it be another nail in the coffin of the traditional university, without a satisfactory replacement on the horizon?

David Brooks wrote a good column this week about online education and the role of the university. He proposed regarding the mission of higher education as having a technical knowledge part and a practical part. Technical knowledge is about things like formulas and facts, and practical knowledge is about skills that can’t be written down and memorized. Online outfits like EdX and Coursera can cover the technical part, but at least so far aren’t as effective at the practical part. We seem to need human-to-human interaction to learn some things.

Three Sparrows and a Cup, by Byron Gin

At any rate, the human touch is a pleasant thing. On Friday Sally and I went out to First Friday, downtown Raleigh’s monthly art and food celebration. We stopped in the Adam Cave Gallery, where we’d bought a painting some months back, and met the painter, Byron Gin. His current show, titled Aviary, continues the theme of the work we bought, with abstract elements, rough textures, and birds. Byron was a pleasant, soft-spoken guy, who seemed happy to discuss how he made his paintings. We remembered the painting we bought, and it was good to be able to tell him how it had brought as daily joy. Among other things, we learned that we shared an interest in bird feeders and photography.

For dinner, we tried without success to get into Bida Manda (wait time 1.75 hours), Centro (wait time 1.5 hours), and noted crammed dining rooms or lines out the door at Caffe Luna, Remedy Diner, and Sitti. It’s good to see our restaurants doing a brisk business, but when you’re hungry, you’re hungry. We finally got a table at Gravy, an Italian place, and had a pleasant meal including a Tuscan Chianti.

On Saturday, we went over to Durham to take in some of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The festival is an annual event that this year featured more than 100 documentaries, 7 different screens, and hundreds of cinephiles, which we somehow had never managed to get to in years past. The afternoon was sunny, and there was a happy energy to the crowd, an eclectic mix that reminded me of Oberlin (where the film club screened classic films once a week) and upper west side New York. The films we saw were all sold out, as were several others we couldn’t get tickets for.

Our favorites were a double bill by featured film maker Jennifer Yu: The Guide and Breathing Lessons. The first was about a park in Mozambique and a young man whose big dream was to be a tour guide. It explored serious environmental issues with a light touch. It featured E.O. Wilson, who at 82 was still charmingly fascinated by ants and other small creatures. Breathing Lessons was about Mark O’Brien, a writer who was paralyzed by polio as a child and spent most of the rest of his life in an iron lung. He seemed very honest about living with an extreme disability. Yu was in attendance, and after each film answered questions from the audience. She seemed really smart and likeable.

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March 17, 2013

More eye surgery, healthy habits, a gay marriage revelation, a new veggie restaurant, and the shame of the processed food industry

This week I had eye surgery to repair the effects of scar tissue from my previous eye surgery, with the understanding that there would probably be more surgery needed in future. And so in the space of a few weeks I’ve gone from an adult in remarkably good health with no history of hospitalization to a fairly experienced consumer of modern American medicine. There are, of course, some negatives, such as worry, fear, and pain, but I’m trying to stay positive. It’s a learning experience.

Most of my healthcare team at the Duke Eye Center, including nurses, orderlies, anesthesiologists, and doctors were surprisingly cheerful and supportive. The anesthesia was designed to keep me partially conscious, which it did, and so I was able to listen to the conversations of the team and the music they listened to (vintage rock, unfortunately). I was instructed to let them know if things hurt, and I did speak up a couple of times when it got fairly intense.

The operation involved removing scar tissue from my left retina and eye wall and reattaching the retina to the wall. It was an extremely delicate procedure and took about three hours. When Dr. Mruthyunjaya checked me the next day, he was pleased with the initial results, but noted that it would be some months before we’ll know how much vision I’ll have with that eye. At some point I’ll need cataract surgery as well. But that day I was able to see the top couple of lines of the eye chart, which was an enormous improvement from last check, when I couldn’t make out any letters at all.

Healthy Habits

I was banned from all strenuous exercise for at least a couple of weeks and possibly more. I’m not sure Dr. Mruthyunjaya appreciated that this was a fairly harsh sentence for a person like me, with a big exercise habit. Getting to the gym or other physical activity most every morning is something I just do. It makes me feel better for the rest of the day and is part of the long-term plan of staying healthy and happy. But I don’t think about the pluses and minuses at 5:15 a.m., which would be way too much work. It’s taken a long time to get to the point where exercise is almost automatic, and does not feel like dreary work. I don’t want to lose the habit.

With this partly in view, I decided to recommence my computer programming studies during the newly freed up early morning. I signed up with Codeacademy for their free online Python course. It should keep me in the habit of getting up early. So far, it’s been interesting and mostly fun, though also frustrating at occasional junctures when I get stuck. I’m thinking of it as a lot like learning Spanish: an exercise that at a minumum serves to stimulate the brain in a healthy way, and could turn into a skill that could come in handy.

Gay Marriage Switcheroo

Speaking of brains, in the news this week was a report that Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, had decided to switch from an opponent to a backer of gay marriage. His reason? His son came out as gay. I had two reactions to this:

1. good
and
2. you’ve got to be kidding me!

As to 1, I’m happy that Senator Portman has seen the light, and come to view gay people as entitled to the same civil rights as everyone else. But as to 2, coming to this view really shouldn’t depend on having a gay child!

All of us place special weight on the welfare of our loved ones, but that isn’t a very reliable starting place for broader moral reasoning or policy making. Otherwise, those with healthy families would have no concern for the less abled, and those in a majority race would ignore the rights of minorities. This would be a morality with severe myopia. I wonder how much conservative family values blather is accounted for by such myopia.

I don’t mean to be too hard on Senator Portman, who must surely possess more-than-usual courage to take issue with the conventional and rabid views of his party. We could all benefit from exercising our empathy muscles. Here’s a suggestion: what if we all spent five minutes a day imagining that a specific human in a group we generally dislike is our dearly beloved child? Our imaginations could extend the diameter of our circle of caring and feeling. This would be a good thing. I’ll go first, and try to think loving thoughts about a rightwing fringe Republican.

Trying a New Vegetarian Restaurant

Last night Sally and I tried Fiction Kitchen, Raleigh’s new vegetarian restaurant on Dawson Street. It was full when we got there, with a wait time of 45 minutes, which would exceed our usual supply of patience, but we found a place to stand near the bar and had some Chardonnay. The vibe was hip-funky, similar to Poole’s, but with a younger, edgier crowd — think tatoos, grad students, gays and lesbians, interracial couples, and even a few babies. Oh, and one middle-aged guy with a strangely red left eye swollen half-shut. The place hummed with the sound of many conversations.

The food was creative, with an emphasis on local seasonal ingredients. For appetizers, we had the wintery spring rolls with spicy peanut sauce and seasonal fritters, which had NC apples, spices, and bourbon-agave. We split two entrees, the sweet potato sushi rolls with sashimi tofu and braised tempeh with pesto grits. Every bite was tasty.

Shameful Goings on in the Processed Food Industry

It was really cheering to see a new vegetarian business in Raleigh doing so well. As regular readers know, I’m a big proponent of healthy, ethical eating, which is another habit that’s good for humans, and also fun. But there are powerful forces promoting unhealthy food. For evidence, see an op ed piece in today’s NY Times, by Michael Mudd, a former honcho with Kraft Foods, titled How to Force Ethics on the Food Industry.

As a former insider, Mudd seems credible when he characterizes the business of large food processors as “enticing people to consume more and more high-margin, low-nutrition branded products.” He describes how “relentless efforts were made to increase the number of ‘eating occasions’ people indulged in and the amount of food they consumed at each.”

According to Mudd, “Even as awareness grew of the health consequences of obesity, the industry continued to emphasize cheap and often unhealthful ingredients that maximized taste, shelf life and profits. More egregious, it aggressively promoted larger portion sizes, one of the few ways left to increase overall consumption in an otherwise slow-growth market.”

Mudd also describes the food industry’s clever PR efforts to deflect attention and regulation, such as attributing the obesity epidemic to other factors. There are, of course, multiple factors, but none with the same despicable level of conscious intent. At the same time, they contend they are giving the victims “what they want.” These wants, of course, are the product of advertising and food engineering. (There was a very interesting piece in the Times magazine by Michael Moss a couple of weeks ago on the dark art of synthesizing junk foods that are almost irresistible.)

For solutions, Mudd proposes federal and state taxes on sugared beverages and snacks that undermine health, which would generate funds for education programs and subsidize healthy foods for low-income people. He also recommends mandatory federal guidelines for marketing foods to children and better food labeling. This makes sense.

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March 9, 2013

An eye exam, a veggie burger, and a new ballet

It was a busy week at work, with many new issues popping up as I tried to address the existing backlog. I also made a visit to the Duke Eye Center for an exam in preparation for my eye surgery next week. My ophthalmologist, Dr. Prithvi Mruthyunjaya, seems both brilliant and humane, but his patients have to spend an awfully long time in the waiting room. This was also true of Drs. Denny and Casey. Is this a retinological tradition? Are damaged retina patients more-than-usually patient? Dr. M. described my prognosis as “guarded.” At a number of levels, I felt not so great.

On Friday Sally and I did dinner and a ballet. For dinner, we made our first visit to Chuck’s, a new place on Wilmington Street that features in gourmet hamburgers. We quit eating cows many years ago, and so initially assumed Chuck’s was not for us, but then were told on good authority that they made the best veggie burger in town. It was, in fact, really good. It had flavor and pleasing, chewy consistency. And it didn’t fall to pieces.

The Carolina Ballet led off with a new work called A Street Symphony by Zalman Raffael. It was set to hip hop music, which, as almost everyone knows, is music emphasizing pulsing polyrhythms and rhyming gritty lyrics, and deemphasizing melody and harmony. I developed a taste for hip hop a few years back, when I found the Sirius radio hip hop channels, and found it to be good music for driving a sports car. I liked the raw immediacy and experimental transgressiveness. It is also, of course, good dancing music, but hip hop dancing seems worlds away from the ballet tradition.

Combining radically different movement vocabularies could be a banal experiment or a disaster, but Raffael succeeded brilliantly. His work Rhapsody in Blue, presented earlier this season, was soundly designed and had some marvelous flashes, but seemed more the work of a skilled apprentice than a master. With A Street Symphony, he has arrived, with a strong sense of architecture and humor.

The work is made up of seven songs, with the dancers arrayed in solos, couples, and ensembles. The set and costumes are minimalist, with the women wearing gauzy tutus of various colors pulled above their tights. In the beginning, the pounding rhythm is unsettling, and the first piece, Clockwork, uses a robotics theme that is fairly familiar. But Alicia Fabry’s replicant is both energized and vulnerable, with limbs shooting about at amazing speeds and a startled doe-eyed gaze.

I also really liked Jan Burkhard and Yevgeny Shlapko in Best of Me. Jan is a dancer with an sensual quality, and here she was fearless. Classical dance walks a fine line with respect to sex: it candidly reveals dancers’ bodies and deals with intimate subject matter, but almost never references the act itself, and is careful not to push the red button. But hip hop is sexy, and Jan embraced it. So did Eugene, who had a rangey freedom that recalled the hood.

Lindsay Purrington was really touching and beautiful in Cry Me a River. She did various transformations, including a streetwise tough and a Swan Lake swan. At one point her tutu started to fall to pieces, which added an unplanned degree of tension to the performance, but she dealt with the issue with grace, eventually ditching the thing stage right, and strutting boldly forward. Adam Crawford Chavis lifted her magnificently overhead.

This was unquestionably ballet, with pointe shoes and the traditional vocabulary, but augmented with exciting movements from urban street culture. The most successful dancers seemed to personalize their roles, though some stuck close to the familiar classical lines. For one, Margaret Severin-Hansen, who is a fantastic classical technician, was sharp and intriguing, but seemed to me to hold back a bit from the street. On the other hand, I thought Sokvannara Sar, Nikolai Smirnov, and Cecilia Ilieusiu all found interesting individual ways of combining the upmarket and downmarket.

Anyhow, I really liked A Street Symphony, and also Robert Weiss’s new work Idyll, set to Richard Wagner’s lovely Siegfried Idyll. It featured three couples and flowing lines. I was looking forward to The Rite of Spring, but it came after the second intermission, and I was just too tired to take it all in. Sally thought it too was wonderful.

It’s time to subscribe to next year’s ballet season. We’ve been going on Friday nights for fourteen years and have excellent front-center orchestra seats, but I think we’ll switch to Saturdays. On Fridays I often find myself tired after a busy week that includes 5:30 a.m. workouts, and not always able to hang in there intently for a full evening of beautiful performances. Our NC Symphony subscription has been on Saturdays, and so we’ll have to manage some conflicts, but it seems worth it.

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