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January 2, 2012

Diving in the Galapagos Islands

Sally at Darwin's Arch, Galapagos

On Christmas day, we did our third day of scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands, some 600 miles west of the coast of Ecuador, at the foot of Darwin’s Arch. There was a strong current, and so we spent most of the fifty-minute dive clinging to barnacle-covered rocks. There were many patrolling hammerhead sharks, as well as a couple of large Galapagos sharks. We saw many large sea turtles and fine spotted moray eels. There were hundreds of small colorful tropical fish, such as Moorish idols, king angelfish, trumpetfish razor surgeonfish, Guineafowl puffers, barberfish and parrotfish, as well as huge schools of creolefish. It was fantastic!

After the dive, we hoisted ourselves over the side of the inflatable dingy (or panga) and returned to the mother ship, the Galapagos Aggressor II. It was Sally’s hundredth dive. The crew presented her with a certificate, and our fellow divers gave her congratulations and hugs.

The Galapagos Aggressor II

From the boat, we watched hundreds of flying boobies (large sea birds that resemble gulls with webbed feet) (Nazcas, red-footeds, and a few blue-footeds), frigate birds, swallow-tailed gulls, and storm petrols. Groups of dolphins came by periodically. Later that day, we did some snorkeling a few yards off of Darwin Island. The dolphins weren’t very interested in us, although I swam briefly with a group of six. We had better luck with a group of sea lions, who were curious about us, and came close by doing flips and loops.

Sally and a curious juvenile boobie (red footed, I think)

Darwin, like all of the islands we visited during the week, was the remains of a volcano that originated four or five million years ago — a mere babe in geological terms. It was mostly gray rock wall rising sharply several hundred feet to a plateau on top. It was very stark, but also thrumming with bird and sea life. We saw no other humans. It felt like the earth was brand new. The creativity and resourcefulness of nature was awe inspiring.

On the panga

During the trip, I finished reading The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker. Pinker’s theseis is that human violence has declined dramatically over the course of history, and he explores the possible reasons for this. The book covers a lot of territory (all of human history) using a lot of tools (history, philosophy, statistics, biology, psychology), and still manages to be surprisingly lively and readable. Part of the book examines the increase in the last century of concerns for animal welfare — the sense that mindless cruelty to animals is unacceptable, and the suffering of animals is a moral concern. As with most violence, we’re ordinarily concerned with (and overgeneralize from) the violence and cruelty we observe, and tend to ignore examples of kindness and decency. It was cheering to learn of a trend toward greater respect for animal rights, and to consider that the trend could continue.

In our group of 11 divers, Sally and I were the only ones who did not dive with cameras. They were a cheerful, intelligent, and sociable group of folks, and all significantly more experienced at diving than we were. I’d taken the view that I’d prefer to look hard at what was in front of me without the distraction and intermediation of a camera, but especially after viewing some of their pictures, I was a little sorry that I didn’t get pictures of some of the amazing, strange, and beautiful things we saw under water. Perhaps next time. Here are some other above-water pictures from our trip.

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December 4, 2011

How to change the world

At my early yoga class on Thursday, Sandy, the teacher, postulated that everything we do has ripple effects, first on our selves, and then on others. She suggested, as I understood it, that our yoga practice ia not purely personal. Our large, calming breaths lead to other good things for our bodies, which lead to other good things for others. Thus one person can change the world, at least a bit.

It’s hard to know if this is true, but it doesn’t seem completely crazy. There is no doubt that yoga has improved my levels of consciousness and happiness. And it’s possible that this has some small effect on others. And their attitudes affect others, and so on and on. I do not see this as a complete solution to anything, but it seems fairly clear that the human race, or even my little circle, has not come close to its carrying capacity for happiness, so the effort couldn’t do any harm.

In another effort to work for positive change, on Friday I flew to DC for the day and met with a group of folks at the Google offices to discuss possible approaches to future patent reform. The deep disconnect between the patent system as it was originally conceived and the way it sometimes works today to undermine innovation gets me worked up. Software innovation has very little to do with our patent system, which at times actually undermines such innovation.

It was good to brainstorm with some smart people with similar-but-not-identical perspectives. Anyhow, our ad hoc group made some progress in getting focused on possible areas for more work (e.g. damages apportionment, written description and enablement), and possible methodologies (e.g. a wiki), and agreed to keep working.

Changing the legal system, whether through better regulatory and court decisions or future legislation, even a little, is a daunting undertaking. I think the pro-reform forces have the better arguments, but better ideas do not always carry the day, as the recent legislative battles on patent reform demonstrated. Good policy reform arguments lose all the time, for all kinds of reasons, including self-interest, certainly, but also ignorance and inertia. It takes a lot of energy, commitment, and organization over the long term to achieve change. The first thing to do is not give up, and keep on thinking, and keep on communicating.

Speaking of change, I recommend the movie Amazing Grace (2006) about the ending of the British slave trade. Great Britain, a hugely powerful, successful country, the economy of which rested in significant part on slavery, decided in 1807 by act of Parliament to end slave trading. The change was in significant part due to the efforts of a relatively small group of abolutionists, including MP William Wilberforce. It took them some 25 years.

For more inspiration, on the trip to DC I reread some of Last Call by Daniel Okrent, a history of Prohibition. We all know that Prohibition (banning the sale of intoxicating beverages) was a disastrous policy, right? But we don’t all know, or at least I didn’t, how it came to be a cause, and then a Constitutional amendment. It’s a complicated story. There were many cross-currents and otherwise-unconnected groups that opposed alcoholic beverages in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including such disparate groups as religious revivalists, women’s rights advocates, advocates for the poor, anti-Semites (which disliked the successful Jewish distillers), and anti-Germans (which targeted the successful German beer brewers). These folks worked for decades to organize and change the United States from a hard-drinking country to an abstimonious one. And by gum, they changed the Constitution.

Unfortunately, they didn’t foresee that this would form the breeding ground for organized crime, violence, and massive corruption, among other problems. It made ordinary citizens who desired nothing more than a drink into law breakers, thereby undermining respect for the law more generally. As horribly wrong as the Prohibition forces were, I respect the idealism of some of them, and admire their pluck and persistence. The leaders who built popular support and those who organized legislative change could teach us a few things.

We, of course, wouldn’t do anything as silly as Prohibition, would we? Ha-ha! The NY Times yesterday had an interesting story entitled (somewhat confusingly) Police Officers Find That Dissent on Drug Laws May Come With a Price. In brief, a border patrol agent was dismissed for saying to another agent that if marijuana were legalized, the drug-related violence at the border would cease. It turns out that an outfit call Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) supports this perspective, and includes 145 judges, prosecutors, and police offices, as well as an email list of 48,000.

These are courageous people. As one police officer said, “We all know the drug war is a bad joke. . . . But we also know that you’ll never get promoted if you’re seen as soft on drugs.” The very existence of LEAP suggests that the possibility of a more sane approach to regulating now-illegal drugs may be getting closer.

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November 29, 2011

Thanksgiving in Nassau with sharks and Proust

Gabe, Jocelyn, reef shark, Rob, and Sally

For Thanksgiving we went down to Nassau, Bahamas, and did some scuba diving with sharks. I was looking forward to some time with Sally, Gabe, and Jocelyn, and also to the palm trees, beaches, and beautiful turquoise water. But we chose the destination in large part because of the abundance of reef sharks.

For those with long exposure to anti-shark hysteria (Jaws, cheesy nature channel specials), this probably sounds crazy. In fact, people do these dives safely every day. For me, there was some element of facing down an irrational inner fear, but the bigger driver was curiosity and a desire to experience a particularly beautiful force of nature.

We stayed at the Sheraton on Cable Beach, a large hotel with a white sandy beach, lots of curvaceous pools with waterfalls, palms, and plenty of deck chairs. The staff seemed friendly, though slightly shy. Restaurant service both in the hotel and elsewhere was surprisingly slow (except for Luciano’s, where the food and service were both excellent). One bummer: the food was much more expensive than I expected — about three times the price of equivalent meals at home. There was a casino, which we walked through, and where no one looked like an extra for Bond film. I tried, unsuccessfully, to comprehend why these people couldn’t find something more fun to do than just throw away their money.

Sheraton Hotel, Nassau, Bahamas -- our view

But there is no accounting for taste, and no explaining some of the strange things people like to do. Which brings me back to the sharks. Humans kill around 100 million of them a year (a substantial number of those by torture — cutting off fins for shark fin soup and leaving the fish to drown), whereas unprovoked sharks around the world account for around four human deaths a year. Of those exceedingly rare deaths, the perpetrators are only four of the 360 species (great white, oceanic whitetip, bull, and tiger). It is simply a myth that sharks are mindless killing machines. Some species are highly social and demonstrate problem solving skills, curiosity, and play.

Some species of modern sharks reached their current form about 100 million years ago, in the age of dinosaurs. Species come and go (for mammals, the average species lasts about a million years), but the sharks have remained. The basic, gorgeous design has clearly stood the test of time.

We dove with Stuart Cove’s dive operation, which was generally well run with cheerful young dive leaders and staff. Sally and I did ten dives and all. Gabe and Jocelyn were not certified divers, but after refreshing on their skills with a resort course, they came with us on four dives with an instructor, a smart, well-travelled (including a stint diving in Mozambique, which she recommended highly), and good-humored young Englishwoman named Ruth.

Gabe and Jocelyn at the start of a shark dive

The climax of our diving was Thanksgiving day, when we did an area called Runway Wall, where Sally and I swam at about 70 feet (with G and S shallower) along a wall that goes down to a depth of 5,000 feet. Beside us, in front of us, and behind us were reef sharks. I counted 15. At times they swam quite close (inches), coming up on us from behind, or heading straight for us. We also got to within a few feet of a large sea turtle (probably a loggerhead), and saw a few Atlantic spadefish, a spotted drum, a spotted moray eel, and a Goliath grouper, along with many smaller fish.

After a surface interval, we descended again and sat in a circle in a sandy area. One of the staff, Rich, had donned a chain mail body suit, hood, and gloves, and brought down a cage with chum. The sharks increased in number (perhaps 20-25 showed up), and began swimming faster and closer to the cage. Rich would take a thin metal pole, spear a steak-size piece of chum, and whip it upward quickly, and the closest shark would instantly bite and swallow it. Rich would position himself in front of each diver and do some feeding while the staff took photos and videos.

I had mixed feelings about feeding sharks (or any wild animal), out of concern that it might lead to dependency or otherwise disrupt the ecosystem. I also wasn’t crazy about the emphasis on photography. But in the end I put those ideas to one side and was simply overwhelmed by the experience: about 50 minutes of a close encounter with prehistory. The distance between us got down to zero (I was bumped a few times). After a few minutes, I began to distinguish individual differences among the sharks. One had a mouth that gaped on one side, another had a fish hook in his back. They would swim in lazy circles, and then suddenly accelerate toward the food, sometimes colliding. All told, I was deeply moved by their power, grace, and beauty.

We did not dive on our last day before flying home to decrease the risk of decompression illness. We spent much of the day lounging on the beach or by one of the pools reading our various books. It was windy, sometimes cloudy, but sometimes sunny. It was lovely to see our kids reading for hours. I used to worry that they’d end up as hopeless TV addicts. But they didn’t!

I began rereading Swan’s Way, this time in a translation by Lydia Davis. Many years ago, I read the entirety of Remembrance of Things Past, and have from time to time returned to sections of it, but the length of the work is daunting in these frantic times. I found the Davis translation much more graceful and lively than the Moncrieff and Kilmartin. It may be that accumulating more life experience makes the book itself better. In any event, I was struck once again by the strange hypnotic beauty of the prose.

For the first time, I saw how the apparently casual, improvised sound of the early part of the book includes a lot of delicate prefiguring of people and events that will gradually come into sharp focus. There is so much richness in the book. It makes us realize how rich our own lives can be in perception and feeling, and makes us want to use our memories and our eyes, ears, noses, touch, and taste buds better. But it is not a self-help book; there’s something magical about it. I had the odd, strong feeling as I was reading that the book was my own consciousness coming into being. Of course, it’s only a novel — or is it?

More shark photos:

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October 16, 2011

Opera, cocaine, yoga, fighting the power, and soccer

I seriously considered driving down to South Carolina this weekend to drive Clara on the Carolina Motorsports track, but decided the trip would probably create more stress than it would relieve. I needed to get some work done this weekend, and wanted to do some other fun things and take a few deep breaths.

On Friday evening Sally and I had dinner downtown at Buku, which had added some tasty and interesting vegetarian options, and went to the NC Opera’s production of Carmen. Carmen was first performed in 1875 shortly before Bizet died at age 36, and its first performance was a failure. Although it is full of wonderful melodies, it isn’t too hard to imagine why audiences initially had trouble with it. It celebrates freedom over responsibility, and its uninhibited sensuality is even today a little shocking.

When I saw the Metropolitan Opera’s production in New York last Thanksgiving, I was intoxicated. Elina Garanca as Carmen was sensational: beautiful in every way, and very sexy. The production was edgy, beginning with an initial scene that did more than casually suggest a gang rape by soldiers of Micaela. The acting was as good as the singing, and the settings were spectacular. My brain’s pleasure centers went into overdrive — dopamine city. Great opera is unquestionably better than cocaine. A possible solution to the drug/drug war problem: provide music and opera education (it is an acquired taste, and education is necessary), and great opera for everyone.

I gave some money recently to the NC Opera, because I really do want the art to survive and thrive, and I’m happy we have at least some live opera here in Raleigh. And I enjoyed Carmen on Friday night. As Carmen, Leann Sandel-Pantaleo sang beautifully, as did the other principals. The orchestra under the baton of Timothy Myers sounded good. But Carmen is more than just music. As drama, the production was flaccid. Instead of threats of violence and passion, we had too much sweetness. There’s not much to say about the sets; there wasn’t much to them. But it was still better than cocaine.

I got some deep breathing in at a Vinyasa yoga class with Yvonne at Blue Lotus on Saturday morning. Her 1.5 hour classes are always different, with a varying playlist of eastern plus western pop music and variations on classical poses. But they are always intense. I’ve learned that I need to take along some water and a towel, because I will be sweating. At times I’ve felt something close to desperation as to whether something uncomfortable is beyond endurance. But there are moments of sweet transcendence. And I always feel great afterwards. It isn’t just a physical thing. My mind feels more peaceful.

In the afternoon I took Diane (Sally’s mom) to North Hills to see the Metropolitan Opera’s simulcast of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. It occurred to me that this might be too much cocaine for one weekend, but I wanted to see the new Met production. Seeing the HD simulcast isn’t the same as being at the Met in person, but seeing the live production has more electricity than seeing the same thing when rebroadcast. We learned at the beginning that people were watching in theatres all over the world, including, for the first time, Russia. It was good to share the experience with people in the theatre and around the globe.

In the production, there are 70 are so performers on stage, probably an equivalent number in the orchestra, and dozens behind the scenes. All performing difficult feats — walking a highwire without a net. It seems impossible that mere mortals could pull this off. But they did. It was stupendous. Anna Netrebko as the doomed bride of Henry VIII is compelling and heartbreaking. A great musician and a great actor. Yes, she needs to drop some weight. But I forgot that during the performance. It was truly intoxicating. Some of us in the theatre had to clap, even though she couldn’t hear us.

After I dropped Diane off, I drove by the old state capitol building and saw a couple of hundred people doing the Raleigh version of the Occupy Wall Street protest. I learned from the newspaper that 19 of them later got arrested for staying past their permitted time. Public protesting has always been problematic for me, because I can’t completely endorse any bumper-sticker-size slogan, and although I realize simplification can be politically useful and even necessary, it still bothers me.

But I’m glad that there are people who like demonstrations, and are prepared to make some public statements. The greed, ignorance, and indifference of the economic and political elites in the face of the long and continuing crisis in the economy should not be accepted calmly. Instead of going to jail, the worst malefactors of the economic meltdown are still earning multi-million dollar bonuses. Instead of instituting dramatic new regulatory structures, our politicians are doing nothing, or worse, promoting more deregulation. We’re on the edge of an economic cliff, and our leaders aren’t leading. We should be mad about these things, and gravely concerned about other existential threats (global warming, overpopulation, and nuclear weapons among them). And after we blow off some steam, we should get organized and work for change. Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street movement will spark something new.

Saturday night we went out to Cary for some minor league soccer. Our team, the Carolina Railhawks, had to beat the Minnesota Stars by 2 goals to advance in the playoffs. It was a beautiful, mild evening, and there was a large crowd out for the game. The Railhawks came from behind to win the initial game 4-3 — not enough to close out the series. They then played two 15 minute periods, which ended without further scoring. So the series was decided by a shootout. We lost 6-4. It was sort of a painful ending to a good season.

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September 24, 2011

Hitting balls at the country club and watching chimney swifts

On Friday one of my Red Hat colleagues took some pictures of me for our website. In recent years I’ve got over some of the awkward self-consciousness of being peered into by a camera, though it is still slightly embarrassing. Anyhow, here is one of the pictures.

After work, I went over to Raleigh Country Club to practice at the driving range. I became a member at RCC a few weeks back. This is primarily a wonderful thing for which I am deeply grateful, but at the same time I have some cognitive dissonance. I do not come from a country club background. As a kid, I had friends who belonged and ones who didn’t, and didn’t see any systematic differences. But at some point I formed a view of country clubs as islands of unearned privilege, and of country clubbers as shallow, selfish snobs — people whose main political driver was paying less in taxes. Over time, I’ve known plenty of people who put the lie to that stereotype, but I still had trouble picturing myself wanting to join (to paraphrase Groucho Marx) any club that would have me as a member.

What changed? The most important thing was a deepening appreciation of golf. And the golf course at RCC is special. It’s the last course of Donald Ross, the legendary Scottish designer. The land rises and falls in a pleasing rhythm, with lakes and streams and bunkers, and mature trees, bushes, and flowers. It is beautiful, and also quite challenging. And it is less than 10 minutes from my apartment.

The staff has been really welcoming and friendly, as have most of the members. I really enjoy hitting balls on the driving range. When I hit a bad one, I just tee up another. I am playing with the concept that a more beautiful swing makes a more beautiful ball flight, and some of mine are flying well. But every now and again, I have an anxious moment when I feel out-of-place, and wonder if someone is about to quietly ask me to leave.

After hitting my quota at the range, I drove downtown and met Sally at the corner of Salisbury and Hargett Streets. She’d seen a story in the News and Observer about chimney swifts roosting in the Oddfellows Building there. We climbed the stairs of a parking garage across the street and looked upward.

Shortly before 7:00 pm, we saw the first few swifts appear from the northwest, and then there were more. Ultimately there were hundreds and hundreds, swarms of chimney swifts. They fluttered and veered, catching insects and making a high-pitched chatter. It was amazing. There was a kestrel that perched on the logo sign at the top of the Wachovia Building and occasionally swooped down, but the flock would counterattack. We’d hoped to see the swifts go down the Oddfellows Building chimney, but did not have a good angle to view the chimney. Finally it got dark, and we walked a couple of blocks to Dos Taquitos for dinner.

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August 14, 2011

Post-Enlightenment thinking and Michelle Bachmann

Is there any question that science, logic, and reason are excellent tools for problem solving? OK, these systems aren’t perfect, and they don’t apply to every problem. But can any thoughtful person fail to recognize their power to transform civilization and improve lives?

The answer is yes. Some people rely primarily on myth and magic as thought systems. But I normally think of these people as a not-very-significant minority. It may be, though, that that minority is getting more significant.

A column in the NY Times today by Neal Gabler posits that we live in a post-Enlightenment society that has gone backward intellectually to a method that does not employ rational thought. Gabler takes this as settled, and argues that it’s even worse: that we are moving into a post-idea world, where thinking is simply no longer done. Instead, we exchange undigested facts. As evidence, he cites social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

I’m not persuaded that social media is killing ideas, or even that the post-Enlightenment has arrived. But anti-rationalism is alive and well. Exhibit A: Michelle Bachmann. Yesterday Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll. In this week’s New Yorker, Ryan Lizza discusses the ideas that shaped her thinking.

Bachmann comes out of a tradition that believes the Bible is the literal, infallible, and unerring word of God. She claims to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and believes that he controls her life. She’s also been influenced by various fundamentalist thinkers who have some disturbing notions, including a revisionist view of slavery that holds that it was not all that bad.

It strikes me as implausible that Bachmann could be a serious contender for the presidency, but her style of thinking is having an impact on public policy. It’s hard to understand how the Tea Partiers could refuse to discuss the issue of tax rates, and be prepared to insist on this point at the cost of economic catastrophe. But if you believe that your ideas are coming directly from God, how could you question them? Why would you care to listen to opposing views? Why would you consider compromise? Thus usually harmless nonsensical beliefs become dangerous.

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July 21, 2011

Celebrating a wedding and a birthday

Sally and I went to Virginia Beach last weekend for the wedding of my niece Lauren. We were looking forward to seeing my siblings and their families, but there was also a slight feeling of dread. We were from a different tribe from most of this community, which is largely evangelical Christian Republican. We always wonder how we’ll deal with our deep differences, but we always finesse it. Despite our different political and other beliefs, there are a lot of things we have in common, and we focus on those.

I used to find weddings (except for mine) slightly strange, but as the years go by, I find them more and more moving. Young people bravely pressing into the unknown, full of hope and optimism, full of love. Lauren was a beautiful bride, and bouncing with excitement. Dustin, her betrothed, seemed sweet and committed. The ceremony contained various religious elements which meant nothing to me, but the uniting of these young people meant much. And afterwards, I loved seeing all their friends dancing and having fun.

After the wedding, my brother Paul took us out on the Chesapeake in his 30 foot power boat. I took the helm for an hour or so, and found that keeping on course in choppy water was more work than I thought. It was sufficiently rough that there was some seasickness, and we aborted the longer journey we’d planned. But we found a group of at least a dozen dolphins, and got close to watch them play. We also cruised through the inlets and looked at the impressive homes and boats, and had some wine.

Lauren’s wedding day was also my 56th birthday. I don’t like making a big production out of birthdays, and was happy to have something to celebrate other than getting older. But over the weekend, I found myself thinking about this milestone, and how different it was from what I would have imagined. From the vantage point of Lauren (23 years old), I’d have assumed this would be a time of painful decline. But far from it. I feel full of life, full of passion, full of curiosity. There are so many things that I’ve just begun! So much beauty! So many possibilities!

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March 19, 2011

A bird walk

It’s spring in Raleigh. The redbuds, forsythia, and pear trees are blooming, and the hardwoods are budding. With sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s, I had a powerful yen to get outside yesterday, but stayed hunkered down in my office dealing with a series of conference calls. But today is Saturday! I celebrated with a walk in the woods at Swift Creek Bluffs.

I haven’t been birding for a while, even before the winter doldrums, and had almost forgotten how pleasant it can be at sunrise on a beautiful day. The cardinals were particularly vocal this morning, perhaps still working out their spring pairings. Most of the birds I saw and heard were typical NC residents, but I was happy to get a good view of a magnificent Pileated woodpecker. I got some of the rust off my binocular skills in preparation for the arrival of the spring migratory birds.

But leaving aside the birds, it was good being out in the woods, walking along the path by the creek. It was enlivening but also peaceful.

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February 6, 2011

Piano lesson

One door closes, and another one opens. My piano teacher for the last four years, Randy Love, left for a sabbatical in China last month. Our piano lessons, at intervals of once a month or so, have taken me a long way along the path of the great western piano music tradition. The tradition is based on written texts, but much of it is unwritten, transmitted from teacher to student. Randy has transmitted much, and been an excellent master and a good friend.

During that time, I’ve enjoyed gaining fluency at the keyboard, but I don’t view increased technical mastery as the most valuable accomplishment. Much more important, and also much harder to express, is a change in the experience of the music. “Music is feeling, not sound,” according to Wallace Stevens (in Peter Quince at the Clavier). Stevens was on to something, although music is, obviously, sound. There’s a type of emotional energy stored in written musical texts and released and renewed with each performance. And there are many levels to that emotional experience.

So I went in search of a new master, and found myself yesterday at the music building at N.C. State in the studio of Olga Kleiankina. She’s a Russian with degrees from schools in Moldova and Romania, a masters from Bowling Green and a doctorate from University of Michigan, and joined the NCSU faculty last years as head of the piano program. She’s got an impressive amount of performance experience, and is an active concert artist. She was friendly but focussed. Straight away, she invited me to try out her two pianos, and after playing a bit of Chopin on each, I settled on the Mason and Hamlin over the Yamaha. Then she asked me what I’d brought to play for her. I played the first half of Chopin’s nocturne in D flat, Op. 27, No. 2, one of Chopin’s most beautiful, lyrical pieces, very like an operatic aria, with a broad emotional range. I played it rather well, with real feeling, I thought.

Olga was polite, but wasted no time with compliments. She said she could help me with my technique, and plunged in. It was quite bracing. We worked hard on weight transfer, activating the back and arm and relaxing the wrist. She showed me different ways of positioning the fingers on the keys for different sounds. She also talked about the shape of the gestures of the hand as it related to the flow of the music. She demonstrated this in various ways, including taking my hand and guiding it. I’ve usually thought of the physical aspect of piano playing as supporting but separate from the musical part, but Olga seemed to view the two as unified. Beautiful movements make beautiful sounds. She also demonstrated a level of attention to detail that was inspiring, and daunting.

At the end of the lesson, I felt like I could be at the foot of a new mountain. There’s a long way to go to reconfigure my playing along the dimension Olga pointed to. It will be challenging, and maybe transformative.

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January 30, 2011

So long, Krispy Kreme, and hello health

It was bittersweet to learn last week that the Krispy Kreme store in downtown Raleigh was closing due to lack of business. When a business fails, individuals suffer hardships. As a downtown Raleigh resident, I’m particularly eager to see businesses here succeed.

And Krispy Kreme and I go way back. As a boy I was a patron of the first Krispy Kreme store, in Winston-Salem. There you could sit at the counter and eat hot glazed doughnuts while watching more fresh ones coming off the conveyer belt. It was one of the few places in town open 24 hours. After finishing my paper route at 5:30 a.m., I’d sometimes stop in there for a delicious sugary treat. It was also a favorite late night spot for teenage munchie runs. Good times.

But in recent years I’ve come to associate Krispy Kreme doughnuts and similar sweet products with less cheerful things, like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and death. The products are more like cigarettes than food. The nutritional content is minimal, and the high sugar and fat content are unhealthy. This is not exactly big news. In a sense, everyone knows that too much fat and sugar are bad for you. But it continues to be a difficult fact for people to face and do something about. That much is obvious from our obesity epidemic.

We’ve made slow but meaningful progress in the last 50 years addressing the deadly public health effects of smoking. We’ve substantially reduced smoking rates, and therefore smoking deaths. The basic facts about smoking and cancer are now common knowledge, as a result of government requirements for warnings on cigarette labeling and restrictions on cigarette advertising. We have not done anything like this with risky sweet food products that kill people.

If anything, we’ve headed in the opposite direction. Information about nutrition is obscured by industry and federal agencies. Our government transfers our tax dollars to agribusinesses as large subsidies for production of excess corn, which is processed into high fructose corn syrup and added to many common food items. Thus healthy unprocessed food seems unusual and, by comparison, expensive. Thousands of advertisements have convinced us that sweet, fatty food products produce good feelings of love and fun.

Sure, it’s possible to get sound nutrition information and it’s possible to eat in a healthy way, but our culture makes it quite challenging. People who make a point of trying to avoid unhealthy food are viewed with puzzlement and sometimes anger. It’s no fun being ridiculed as a food nut. It’s easier to go along with the crowd.

Lifetime Fitness gym recently published an article by Pilar Gerasimo titled “Being Healthy is a Revolutionary Act,” That’s putting it too strongly, but it is certainly an act that defies settled conventions. The related web site does a good job of putting in bumper-sticker form some home truths about health and nutrition. http://revolutionaryact.com/ The first home truth gets down to business: “The Way We are Live Is Crazy,” based on our rates of obesity and chronic illness. But, it says, we can change.

Maybe so. If Krispy Kreme is doing less business, it probably isn’t because their doughnuts don’t taste good. They taste too good! It’s possible that more people are facing the fact that we can’t go on eating like this.

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