My Time to Waste

This is my guitar:

I bought it in 1974.  If memory serves, it cost in the vicinity of $300.   So that conservatively comes out to at least 25 minutes of playing for each penny spent (figuring an hour a day playing on average).  Reasonably well spent money.

This is my can of guitar polish:

I bought it in 1974.   I don’t remember what I paid for it.

Yesterday I put new strings on the guitar and I took the opportunity to polish it up a bit.  Judging by the feel of the can of polish, I think it must be close to half empty.  So I only have a 35 year supply of guitar polish on hand.

I can not believe I did not think of this a couple of days ago.

My senior year at Indiana University (1977), I managed a job as a part time supervisor in the MRC/LLC dorm cafeteria.   There were a few less than kind things that could be said of me back then (and to this day?), but the pertinent info for this story is that I was a bit of a fascist in so far as that means I did not yet understand that rules were meant to be broken.

I was a hard ass, always trying to enforce every rule at all times.  It is not beyond the pale that students were making fun of me behind my back (I don’t think they were, but it’s possible).

Of course, the students, being college students, pretty much never heard of a rule that they didn’t think existed so to be broken.

In spite of that set up, my memory of that job is not dominated by conflict between me and everyone else.  In fact, I only remember a couple of times that things got out of hand.  Once was when some students were attempting to smuggle food out of the cafeteria to eat on the ride home.  In my memory, one student attempted to toss a bag of food over my head to another student waiting outside the dining hall.  I intercepted the bag, but the activity led to the door (a beautiful old wooden door) sustaining some damage.

I do not remember what led to the second incident.  I remember a couple of students on the other side of the counter and I was becoming exasperated with whatever the situation was.  After some “discussion”, I finally said “You people!”, meaning “students.”  The problem was the students I was talking too were African-American.

They understandably reacted a bit negatively to my statement and asked what I meant by it.  I responded “Students.”  One of them started accusing me of bringing race into the discussion and I promptly replied that I was not the first one to bring up race.  Apparently my sincerity shined through because they let it go pretty quickly (more quickly than I deserved…I may have been sincere, but it was still stupid of me).

I’m just happy that for talking stupidly I did not have to pay the penalty of having to drink a Bud Light.  Gaaa!

I forget what it was Debby and I were doing in that part of Indiana earlier this summer when we happened upon Wilson Farm Market.  Well, we were driving around to see what we might see when we happened upon the market.  I simply do not remember why we were in that part of the state.

Anyways.  We stopped at the market and looked around, Debby looking for fresh fruits and vegetables and I, seeing food in jars started looking for the jams.

I bought one jar of Red Raspberry Jam with No Granulated Sugars Added.  It has only five grams of sugar and the ingrediant list shows red raspberries (always nice to see the fruit come in first!), white grape concentrate, pectin,  and water.  And it cost $4.99 for 18 ounces!

And the next time we are down that way, I’ll buy more.  Excellent jam.  Not at all too sweet.  The bulk of the jam consisted of bits of raspberry still intact and had a good flavor of red raspberries.  If you like red raspberries, I don’t know how you would not like this jam.

The only nit I would pick is the amount of water added.  Not that the product is thin particularly, but I think it could be thicker than it was.

Wilson Farms raspberry jam label

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kris Kristofferson sings

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

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

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

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

Cell phone usage by drivers increased 50 percent, from 4 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in 2002.

Driver distraction contributes to about 25 percent of all police-reported traffic crashes.

Cell phone use is growing as a distraction while driving.

What’s missing?

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

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

But it isn’t the cell phone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet…

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

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

Unless it was the racial slur….

Hat tip to The New Republic