University of Alaska Anchorage Confucius Institute Opening Celebration

Thursday night I walked over to the Wendy Williamson Auditorium at UAA to see the performances celebrating the opening of the Confucius Institute. I've been busy with a number of things today - including computer problems following the installation of Snow Leopard which I think may now finally be over - so I had trouble getting the video completed. [Update Oct. 3 - see this later post for what the Snow Leopard problem was for me. Doesn't mean it will work for you, but it seems to have solved my problem.]

I'll try to do another post or two - one on Confucius and one on Confucius Institutes - but in the meantime here's a glimpse of the celebration. There were entertainers from Anchorage, other parts of the US, and some brought over from China.

This really did have a Chinese feel to it. I was particularly interested in seeing the 'change of face' act. This is a particularly Chinese art form handed down from generation to generation. There's a great film about such an artist who is looking for an apprentice to teach his art to. And as part of the Opening Week celebration, the Confucius Institute will show the movie Saturday night. This is an amazing skill and Thursday night was the first time I saw it in person. It's at the end of the video.




The following is what UAA's website had about Thursday's show (there's a bit of all of the acts on the video)

A Celebration of Chinese Performing Arts

Thursday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m. at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium

• Dr. J.D. Zhang, Sichuan Opera “Change of Face” artist and master of traditional Chinese magic [top picture]
  
• Guoming Sun, Asia International Martial Arts Champion performing double Chain-whip and Drunk Sword [right]
  
• Weiguang Dang, Famous Chinese Baritone
• Dr. Yuxiang Wu, Classical Chinese Flute
• There will be choral singers, dancers and other performances by members of the Alaska Chinese Association.

There was also some formal stuff. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences [left] spoke as did the director of the Institute and the the Vice Consul General from the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco [picture above.]

All the events are free. Friday night there was a talk on "Overcoming the Global Economic Crisis: The Chinese Gamble" which I missed because our (originally from Taiwan) guests got back from their trip to Kennecott Mine this evening.

Here's the Saturday schedule from the Institute website. I expect this too will be pretty genuine and worth attending. And it should be good for kids and it's free. This is not your every day fare, the Chinese government is using these Institutes to put a good face forward in the world, so this is probably as close to being in China as it gets at a public event in Alaska.

Chinese Adventure: A carnival of
activities, games, performances and prizes

Saturday, Sept. 12, Noon to 4 p.m. at the UAA Student Union on the 1st Floor [parking is free on Saturdays, and if you don't know where the student union is, this is a good time to go looking for it (it's on Providence between Providence Hospital and Lake Otis) next to the sports center].

Come witness and participate in traditional dance and martial arts performances, calligraphy, paper cutting and folding, Chinese games and more. These opportunities made possible with assistance from the Alaska Chinese Association and the UAA Chinese Language Club.

And then in the evening the movie I mentioned above. This is a really interesting movie and if I recall right, appropriate for kids. [Let me amend this thought. It's probably good for mature kids about 12 or over. It probably has subtitles, but if you are one of those anti-subtitles people, try not to pass that prejudice on to your kids. It helps them improve their reading and gives access to many great films.] One of the key characters is the kid who is being trained. The Fine Arts Building is on the far east side of the campus. The street that comes out of the Providence Hospital onto Providence Dr. goes right into campus there. Turn right at the first corner.

Film Presentation: The King of Masks (1999)
Sunday, Sept. 13, 6:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Building 150
Directed by Wu Tian-Ming, The King of Masks is set in 1930s Sichuan Province and tells the tale of an aging master of the traditional Sichuan Opera art of Change of Face, rapid mask changes to display the emotions of varied players, and his quest to find a protégé to carry on his art. This is a simple, moving and well-acted film starring Zhang Zhigang and Xu Zhu.

Confucius Institute

The University of Alaska Anchorage has had its proposal for a Confucius Institute accepted for the first round. Now they have to submit a revised proposal to get it funded. Germany has the Goethe Institutes and France has the Alliance Francais, and the US sponsors libraries and other programs through their embassies to promote the understanding of their languages and cultures. Japan also has some programs. And now China is getting into the game too, though they seem to be going about it a little differently. The others, as I understand it, are direct arms of their respective governments. The Confucius Institutes are being set up and run through foreign partners - usually Universities. There are already a number in the US and other parts of the world. The Chinese government will sponsor one or two Chinese language teachers from a Chinese University (UAA is partnered here with Changchung Normal University) who will work on various projects. The basic areas we are looking at are University language teaching, community outreach into the public and private sector (such as workshops on Chinese culture and doing business in China), and the Anchorage School District, which has a proposal to create a Chinese immersion school (there already is one for Japanese, Spanish, and Russian.) If the funding comes through, the Chinese government, through the Confucius Institute organization, will be supporting Chinese language and cultural programs in Anchorage. As the US state closest to China, this is could be a good start for us.

Chinese Week At UAA - Food, Movies, And Other Treats

The Confucius Institute at UAA is sponsoring a Chinese culture week.  There's food, movies, and other activities. 

This is a heads up for next week.  It looks like everything is free.  I'll have to check if they have free parking passes for events too. 

I'll try to find out more about the movies - there are three short films - the poster they sent me is a little hard to read.  

Click to enlarge and focus

The Confucius Institute is the Chinese version of things like the American Libraries abroad or the German Goethe Institute, used to spread Chinese culture around the world.  The Confucius Institutes are connected with universities.  There have been some reports that they are part of the Chinese espionage system.  Whether that's true or not, these events are available and past events that I've attended were pretty good to excellent. 


I'm at LAX waiting for my plane out of the heat and back to decent weather. 

Chinese Opera Comes to Anchorage

The first time I saw Chinese Opera was sometime in 1967 or 1968. I was teaching English at the Boys High School in Kamphaengphet, Thailand and the Chinese community had hired a group from Singapore to perform for some special occasion. There was a trailer that converted into a stage that was set up in a public area in town. The folding chairs were set out for the members of the Chinese community who sponsored the opera. The rest of the town could stand behind the chairs and watch. In a small town like that I got to visit backstage and meet with the actors. [I started this on Saturday and turned the house upside down trying to find some pictures of that first encounter with Chinese opera. In vain. But when I find them one day, I'll post them. This picture here is from UAA's website.]

Chinese opera is like asparagus. It's an acquired taste that requires small samples over time. I've had various opportunities over the years, to see bits and pieces of Chinese opera. Several more times in Thailand. Then when we lived in Hong Kong for a year, at the night market there were always small groups of actors/singers who would perform a scene or two on the street.


In China, Chinese opera was on television every night and once when I was there for a conference they took us to a performance for tourists. It was interesting because they explained things in English and they only showed short scenes. I'm sure the tourist agencies had discovered that most tourists couldn't last through too much Chinese opera. Besides the fact that it is all in a foreign language, the screechy singing and scratchy sounds of the stringed instruments, well, that's the part that takes getting used to.

Now it's a relatively familiar sound that brings back good memories.But I'm confident that at this performance they will give short glimpses of different operas with English explanations so that it should be easier for novices to understand what is happening.

So, come Tuesday, November 3, 2009

UAA's Wendy Williamson Auditorium
7pm (doors open at 6:30) Free!

Well, nothing is free. This is offered by the Confucius Institute at UAA. As I've said in an earlier post, this is sponsored by the Chinese government to promote Chinese language and culture around the world. And people speculate less savory agendas, but no more, I'm sure, than the US and other governments promote with their cultural outreach into other countries. If the Confucius Institute is merely a cultural exchange or a branch of the Chinese takeover of the world*, your taking this opportunity won't have much of an impact on their agenda, but you'll get to experience an art form that has been around for a thousand years or more. [*I'm mostly joking. Even if the worst fears about Confucius Institutes as outposts to monitor overseas Chinese is true, they will play only the tiniest role in China's increasingly important role in the world. And if you take the threat seriously, consider this an opportunity to get to know your enemy.]

The UAA website has a detailed description of the scenes they will be playing so I encourage you to visit that, even print out some of the descriptions before you go. If you take kids, and by all means do, letting them act out the scenes before you go would be great preparation. Let them watch some Chinese Opera videos on line (there are two below). The makeup and the costumes will be spectacular. I think kids can relate to the music better than adults who already have formed notions of what proper music is.

The first video looks like a Chinese television show about modern kids who are studying Chinese Opera. It's all in Chinese, but it shows practicing, putting on makeup, some performances. I think kids can relate to other kids even if it isn't in English. If they don't like this one, find another one and let them dance to the music and play one or two of the scenes described on the UAA website. They'll be a lot more interested when they see the real thing.






From the Illuminated Lantern, a site that reviews Asian movies, I've excerpted this description of the form of Chinese opera, but the whole piece, which is a description of the historic forms of Chinese opera is well worth a peek.

Although there are many different regional styles, they all share many similarities. Each have the same four role types: the female, the male, the painted-face, and the clown. Performances consist of singing, poetry, music, dance, and gesture. Emphasis is on costume and makeup rather than props or scenery. The operas often tell the same stories, though with various regional differences, such as alternate endings or additional characters. The information described within this article will, unless otherwise noted, pertain to Peking Opera specifically, and the regional operas more generally.

We can see four roles here in this description of one of the pieces to be presented Tuesday (from the UAA website.)

Autumn River 京剧《秋江》片段

This story happened during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Scholar Pan Bizheng is staying with his aunt at a Taoist temple when he falls in love with the Taoist nun Chen Miaochang. His aunt finds out and forces him to leave his love behind and go to Beijing to take the imperial examination. When Chen Miaochang learns that Pan is leaving, she runs to the bank of the Autumn River and hires an old fisherman to follow him. The two meet on the road, travel to Beijing and get married.
The role of Chen Miaochang is played by Hua Shan.

Clearly Scholar Pan is the male role and Taoist nun Chen is the female role. I'm guessing the old fisherman is the clown and that leaves the aunt as the painted face, but I'm just guessing.

Don't miss this. Bring the kids. Sit as close as you can or bring binoculars. And since it's free, if you tire quickly, you can leave without feeling you've lost your money. And you'll forever be able to say you've seen Chinese Opera live, and if you're lucky, you'll get hooked.

If you've never heard it before, it is a bit of a shock to Western ears, so check out this video of Teochew dialect opera (the kind I first heard in Thailand) so it will be a bit familiar when you come Tuesday night. This is from yeohts8192289 at Veoh, he's from Penang, Malaysia.

Is The Pen/Brush Mightier Than The Keyboard?

Weekend Edition Sunday had an interview with author Philip Hensher and his love of the pen.  He wrote out his book, The Last Art of Handwriting, in longhand and talked about the intimacy people have with their writing instruments.

As I listened to the interview I was reminded of last week's lecture/class with Chinese calligraphist Harrison Xinshi Tu  at UAA presented by the Confucius Institute.     He too talked about the importance, in China, of four items:

the brush
the paper
the ink
the chop

You can see them all in the video below.  As he draws an artistic character and signs it and applies the chop. 

He pointed out they'd been used for 6000 years and still today calligraphy is done with the same materials as then. 






After going through the four elements needed, he then showed us the evolution of Chinese characters by drawing half a dozen or so and showing them changing over the years millennia.

The first three you should be able to figure out.  Basic parts of nature.  So is the fourth.  Stop and think about it a bit.  Actually, you shouldn't think, just relax and let it come to you.

OK, did you get the sun?  And if you didn't get the moon, it's probably hopeless.  Then mountains.  Then river.  Then man.  That's hard, but he's looking to the left with an arm hanging down  The last one is tree.  As Mr. Tu explained, the bottom half is the roots and the top half, the branches.  This row was what characters looked like 5,000-6,000 years ago.  About when the world started according to some of our science challenged fellow citizens.   Next is the chart after he completed it.  You can see how the characters got modified.  The second-to-the-last row are modern, simplified characters - the kind they use in China today.  Below that are the artistic versions of the characters. 

So going across, we have the sun, the moon, mountain, river (actually the modern character is the one for water), man, tree, sheep and fish.    On the far right top are two trees - a forest.  In the box on the right are two hands, which together mean friend.  the character in the lower right is 'you' (pronounced 'yo') or friend.

After he made the chart, he took it down and showed us how to make the six main strokes in Chinese characters.  Then we got a paper with the strokes and how to make them and some paper, a brush, and ink.

And then we made the basic strokes.

Here's one of my classmates from the Confucius Institute (at UAA) Chinese class, practicing the basic strokes.


So, between the two events - the NPR interview with Philip Hensher and the Calligraphy demonstration, I've been thinking about how the keyboard has taken me away from the pen.  There is something more satisfying about holding a pen and not just writing, but consciously creating the letters, beautifully, on the page.  The pen as an extension of my finger, flowing out words.  Words that spill my thoughts onto the paper.

But some of that happens at the keyboard, but my physical connection to the shape and size and heaviness or lightness of the line is gone.  The clues about who I am that Kensher says the handwriting leaves, that personal touch, is missing.  Every letter is so ruthlessly perfect.

Of course, like with most things, the answer, if there is an answer, is to find some balance, and nowadays, for many of us, we are far too heavily tilted to the keyboard.  Maybe I should hand write out some posts, take pictures, and post them.  But images are not readable online to those who can't see well and have to use software that converts the writing to voice. 

There's a part of me that never takes anything for granted.  Perhaps it's the legacy of my parents' world in Germany collapsing and having to flee to the US.  Everything but what  they were able to take with them was gone.  In any case, there's always this part of me that assumes all I have could disappear.  If a Sandy happened to me, it wouldn't be totally unexpected.  And so part of me has never totally trusted all the miracles of the electronic age.  When the electricity goes off, it's the tools of our ancestors that will get us through.  I have no confidence that my grandchildren will ever see this blog unless I make hard copies of it.  And then the video and links will be gone, but something will be left.

And there are others that are concerned about the lost skill of writing.  The SAT's have    added a handwritten essay.  From a 2005 Seattle Times article, 

An estimated 300,000 high-school students across the nation took the new SAT yesterday for the first time. The College Board revised the exam after being faced with the threat of major institutions dropping it as a requirement. The most sweeping change is a new writing section — 35 minutes of multiple-choice questions and the 25-minute essay.

The reverberations were felt yesterday on the third floor of the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, as well. More than 50 Puget Sound-area grade-school teachers were learning how to teach their students handwriting, a skill that some may have thought the computer keyboard rendered obsolete. Some elementary schools no longer teach cursive.

"They stopped training teachers how to teach handwriting in most colleges and universities about 25 years ago," said Jan Olsen, an occupational therapist who developed a handwriting curriculum a decade ago. "But instead of putting something reasonable in place, they just dropped it," she said.

A 2010 NY Times article says, though that only 15% of students choose the handwritten essay.  One professor is quoted:

Richard S. Christen, a professor of education at the University of Portland in Oregon, said, practically, cursive can easily be replaced with printed handwriting or word processing. But he worries that students will lose an artistic skill.

“These kids are losing time where they create beauty every day,” Professor Christen said. “But it’s hard for me to make a practical argument for it. I’m not one who’s mourning it because of that; I’m mourning the beauty, the aesthetics.”

 And when you look at the calligraphy video, you'll see Mr. Tu quickly drawing an artistic character.




 All the electronic devices are fine, IF we don't lose our connection to nature and the natural tools that humans have always used and the skills to use them.  Have you hand written a letter lately?   

Studying Chinese in 2012 is a Lot Easier than It Was In 2003

Last night was our last session of the UAA Confucius Institute's community Chinese class until spring.  The teacher, Teng Fei, has been terrific, pushing us more than is comfortable, but not too much more.  Most important is that the two Confucius Institute teachers we've had used a great teaching method - lots of oral repetition, good grammar drills, and almost no English in class.

I'd say that this is pretty elementary stuff - a dialogue about people going to someone's birthday party.
A:  Wang Peng, what are you doing now?
B:  I'm reading.
A:  Today is Gao Xiao Yin's birthday.  This evening we're  going to have a dance party at her place.  Can you come?

But elementary in Chinese is relatively advanced in a lot of other languages.  You've got the tones to learn (what tones are) (hearing the tones)  and more than that, you've got to memorize each character.  Counting through the back of the book's glossary it looks like there's about 350 characters that we're supposed to know now.

How much could you say if you only knew 350 words of English?  [Here's a list of the 300 most common English words to give you an idea of both how much it is and how limited it is.]  Actually, speaking Chinese with just 350 words is probably easier than English because there is no conjugation of verbs for present, past, and future tense.  Some of that gets conveyed with words like today, next week, etc.  And there are some words you stick into the sentence that shows it's happened already or it's happening now.  (The character 呢 at the end of line one of the dialogue in the photo is supposed to show that she's asking about what he's doing right now.  Or you could just say "right now" instead.) So you don't have to fuss with I am, I was, I will be, etc.

But, there's always the characters.  And while there are some basic repeated parts of the characters - radicals - there's no real phonetic way to know how to pronounce each character.  You have to memorize each one.  But, knowing the radicals and their meaning can help in that task.

There is so much more online help today than there was in the past.  Chinese dictionaries are ingenious, but also painfully slow to use.  If you were looking up a character you had two options:


Option 1.  Stroke count.
a.  count the strokes in the character;
b.  then in the front of the dictionary there is a list of characters starting with one stroke, two stroke, three stroke, etc.  If the character you want to look up has five strokes, you go to the five stroke characters.  They're listed in stroke order (there's a set of rules for which stroke comes first, second, etc.)  Or you can just go down the list until you find the one you are looking for. 
c.  find the character you are looking for
d1.  in some dictionaries it then has a page number to go to
d2.  in other dictionaries it has the pinyin (phonetic alphabet) and then you can look it up alphabetically in that dictionary.



On the right is a page from a Chinese dictionary.  First you have one stroke characters.  One is a horizontal line 一 and two is two horizontal
lines 二。You can see there are only two one stroke characters listed and you can find them on pages 1037 and 1049.  Then there are more two stroke characters.  The first stroke in a character is the horizontal line stroke (if there is one).  There are four such two stroke characters listed.  Then the characters that start with the second stroke - the vertical line.  Just one listed, on page 60.  Then a diagonal stroke to the left.  These are just the two stroke characters.  Imagine trying to see the 10 stroke characters.  I often needed a magnifying glass.

As you can imagine, this took a while.  New students don't always count the strokes right.  Then you you have to go through long lists of characters to find the one you are looking for. (There are a lot more three, four, five and more stroke characters than one and two stroke characters.)



Option 2.  Radical
This is similar, but instead of starting with the number of strokes, you start with the main radical in the character, then go down the list of all the characters with that radical.  This assumes you can figure out the radical.

I spent more time thumbing through the dictionary to find the characters in the past attempts to study Chinese than learning the characters.

But now you can look up characters online.  Yellowbridge.com let's you find the character
a.  by writing the English
b.  writing the word in pinyin (the phonetic alphabet)
c.  writing the Chinese character - yes the have a little box (you would click the brush on the real page) where you can make the strokes with your cursor.  But you have to be close enough that the computer can figure out some characters it thinks you made, then you have to pick out your character from the list it gives you.  But that's true of each of these. 

Screenshot from Yellowbridge.comhttp://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

And once you get the character you can listen to the pronunciation, see the etymology, see examples of other words that use the character.  Yellowbridge even has an online flashcard system that uses the vocabulary lists from the most used Chinese textbooks identified by each lesson.  So I could pick my book and chapter and do the flashcards online.  Here you can see the flashcards for the chapter we worked on today in class - this is just the vocabulary for the second dialogue of the chapter.

ArchChinese, which I found looking for the stroke order rules above, also looks like a lot of help.  It says it's been put together by Chinese teachers for K-12 and university student in the US.

So, things are much easier now.  And there are lots of different websites that offer great help.  And there are lots of YouTube videos so you can listen to the sounds.  But none of that substitutes for memorizing the characters and learning the dialogues and the grammar patterns, in writing and orally, which use very different parts of the brain.  It just makes it a little easier.

So, since last night was the last class until the spring, I thought I would recover that part of my life spent preparing each week for Chinese class.  But no.  We got homework to keep us busy until we start again, which, fortunately is not until late February.  (This is a community class, not a credit class.)  But much of what we need to do is review all the vocabulary, dialogues, and grammar that we've covered so far.  But we're also supposed to look ahead to the next six chapters (to the end of this book.)

But, I have to say, while my Chinese is very rudimentary, I am finding myself thinking in the patterns we've been learning and the vocabulary seems to be sticking a little better than in the past.  I think I've laid down enough tracks in my brain that this time it's working. 

How To Live Your Life And Blog Too

I early on learned that if I blogged what I was doing, I could find time to do all the things I want to do and keep the blog alive.  Writing about things forced me to think about them more, do some research about them, and generally learn a lot more.  And all that helped me remember things.

But blogging seems to be taking a lot more time away these days.  Partly my standards for myself have gotten higher and I spend more time documenting and cleaning up.  Partly, though, I'm involved in more things, plus things show up to interrupt me - lots of things around the house that need attention, etc.

Some things I'm reluctant to burden you with, but we are taking a Chinese class through the UAA Confucius Institute and if I'm going to keep up, I'm going to have to do some sharing here.

I've studied Chinese on and off since about 1989 when I taught in Hong Kong for a year and we took a once a week Cantonese class so we could talk to the vendors in the markets  and things like that.  Then I got involved with a research project in Beijing and decided I needed to study Mandarin just to get a little more sense of what was going on around me.  (Having spent a year as an undergraduate in Germany, I was able to get my German good enough to keep up with my classes and to discover how liberating it was to be able to escape my native language.  Nothing wrong with English, but your language limits you in subtle and not so subtle ways.  [Go here for a post on color in different languages and a link to a post on whether language affects how you think.]

There were a couple of years of serious study.  Then I was distracted by other things for about ten years before getting serious again.  And that lapsed and I spent time in Thailand reviving my old Peace Corps Thai and seemingly painting over the brain cells that stored Chinese words.

I came to believe, through my experiences, that if you ever get to the point where you can speak a language pretty fluently, without thinking about translating from your own language at all, but actually thinking and even dreaming in the other language, then you basically have it for life.  You'll lose a lot of vocabulary if you stop, but most of the stuff you really knew is buried in there and will come back.  Often when you speak, words just pop out of your mouth, that you couldn't have retrieved if you'd have been asked, say,  "What's the Thai word for butterfly?"    That's been the case for German and for Thai for me.  They're there and I just need to get my brain to shift to them and those brain cells slowly start to warm up and get where I can communicate - not like a native - but effectively enough.

But I never got to that point in Chinese.  And so my return visits have been painful exercises of trying to revive weak braincells and creating new ones to replace the ones that have simply died.  Chinese is also harder than German or Thai.

I thought German was hard after junior high Spanish.  The grammar has all sorts of twists and turns to trip you up, but it does use a Latin based alphabet, and there is an enormous overlap between English and German words - swim and schwimmem, house and haus, speak and sprechen, etc.

Thai added a totally new alphabet, few shared words (ie Pepsi) and, even more daunting, tones.  We have tones in English - but they are related to whole sentences, such as questions ending higher pitched than statements.  In Thai, the tones go with the individual syllables and it's better to get the sounds of the consonants and vowels a little off than to mess up the tones if you want someone to understand you.

Chinese has tones like Thai, though slightly different ones, but the killer part of Chinese is that there's no alphabet.  With a phonetic alphabet, you can figure out words you've never seen before.  But not with characters.  Each character represents a word.  Yes, they have created a Western style alphabet - pinyin - but that's to help people struggling to learn the characters.  And yes, the characters aren't all completely unique.  They share different elements that are in other characters, but you do have to remember each character   individually.  And that's been my biggest problem - keeping the characters straight.  Writing them without checking is, for the most part, a futile exercise if you don't do it for several years. 

But it's coming back easier this time.  In part because I went further along in the past and we are going back to almost beginning.  I recognize more characters and after being like the deer in the headlights the first night, my Chinese brain cells are coming back to life.

And the teachers at the Confucius Institute are terrific.  That's partly because they use what I think is the right method for teaching a foreign language, very similar to how the Peace Corps taught us Thai and taught us how to teach English.  Lots of oral repetition and good progression in a class session from the sounds to the vocabulary to the sentences each building on the other.  Here's an example of some of the vocabulary I'm carrying around.  These are from lesson 6 - there were 31 characters in one list, 12 in a second one, and 22 supplementary words.

Character	English	pinyin
给	to; for	gěi
打电话	to make a phone call	dǎ diàn huà
话	speech; talk words	huà
喂	(on phone) Hello, Hey	wèi；wéi
哪	which	nǎ
上午	morning	shàngwǔ

HTML Tables

I've got to run.  I've got a book club meeting tonight and some errands to run and maybe I can get a little time at Powerline Pass before the book club which is meeting on the hillside.

Way Too Busy With AQR, Press Club, Confucius Institute, and More Redistricting Stuff

Wednesday night I went to the 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Alaska Quarterly Review.  The new volume includes a remembrance of the two stellar photojournalists who died in Libya Tim Hetherington, and Chris Hondros almost exactly one year ago.  Anchorage raised photographer Benjamin Spatz coordinated the collection of photos representing With Liberty and Justice for All from 68 outstanding photographers who knew the two men.  At the event at the Anchorage Museum were two of the photographers who submitted photos, original Good Morning America host Dave Hartman and two time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Barbara Davidson.  This event deserves a longer post of its own, but it's late and so I'm just putting up these two photos of Hartman and Davidson with the photos they submitted.  You can get a copy of the 30th Anniversary issue of the AQR - truly a nationally and internationally recognized literary journal published right here in Anchorage - here.  Or try some local bookstores. Or a good out of state bookstore.  They sold all the copies they brought Wednesday night. 

Then Thursday I went to the radio day of the Alaska Press Club.  I finally decided I should join this organization and go to their conference so I could learn something about what I'm doing here and how to do it better.

Not sure how much I'll improve, but it won't be from lack of great discussion from masters of radio.  OK, I don't do radio, but much of the wisdom imparted can easily be adapted to video.  It was good timing for me because I've been thinking about my rather raw style and why I think it's appropriate here.  While I'm not backing off, I did get some good ideas to at least modify my ideas and maybe improve my technique.

Neal Conan

First there was Jason LeRose from NPR West.






And then came Neal Conan.  It was quite eerie when he opened his mouth and this voice floated out - a voice I know so well from Talk of the Nation and other shows he's done on NPR.  And now it was attached, so to speak, to an actual physical human being.   I'll post more about this later, but just want to explain why I've been so busy.


I'll get back to this.  But I was a bit confused and went to hear Howard Weaver in the bookstore.  It turns out he'll be there at 4pm on Friday.  But Thursday there was a talk by Chinese Fulbright Scholar Wei Jaijiang on A Contrastive Study of Chinese and English Emotional Metaphors.  I have to go to bed now, it's after 2am and there is more Press Club starting about 9am.  So I won't get into details of the talk.  But I got to meet the director of the Confucius Institute and the instructors and I may have committed myself to try to pick up on where I left off in Chinese.  There's quite a bit in my brain, but it has a great deal of difficulty getting out of my brain via my tongue these days.  Possibly I can dislodge some of that vocabulary and syntax, not to mention the characters.

I just want you to know I'm not goofing off here.   Oh yes, the Redistricting Board put up the responses to their latest submission.  I only barely opened one and haven't had time to read it yet.  Here are the documents:

OBJECTIONS 
Fairbanks North Star Borough
Aleutians East Borough
City of Petersburg
Calista Corporation
Bristol Bay Native Corporation
RIGHTS Coalition
Riley Plaintiffs

RESPONSE
Alaska Redistricting Board

Here's what's scheduled tomorrow at the press club:

9 – 10:15 a.m.
Telling stories through photography
 Barbara Davidson will discuss long-form photo storytelling and ways to use narrative and storytelling in shorter-form daily journalism. Rasmuson Hall 101

Carolyn Ryan critique
Carolyn Ryan, metro editor at the New York Times, critiques stories written on deadline. Three works will be reviewed. Stories with multi-media components will be given priority. Rasmuson Hall 111

One-on-one coaching (radio)
With NPR’s Jason DeRose, APRN’s Lori Townsend and Annie Feidt, CoastAlaska’s Ed Schoenfeld, UAA’s Elizabeth Arnold and others. Rasmuson Hall 316

10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Covering religion
The nuts and bolts of covering religious issues and institutions, from sex-abuse scandals to denominational conflicts to involvement in local politics. With Jason DeRose, NPR Western Bureau chief and former religion reporting instructor at DePaul University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He also holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Rasmuson Hall 101
Personal photojournalism u u Richard Murphy, long-time photo editor at the Anchorage Daily News and Atwood Chair at UAA, will show recent work made with an iPhone and talk about what he’s discovered about the tool in a reprise of his popular lecture

“Professional photojournalism to personal photojournalism or how my cell phone set me free.” Rasmuson Hall 111
Polling the pollsters: It’s all in the numbers
We’ve all seen pre-election numbers, approval surveys and other statistics offering public opinion information. But where do they come from and how do they work? How can two polls sometimes offer such different results? Get the lowdown on polling and information research— and find out how to best use these numbers in your reporting — at this panel featuring some of Alaska’s top specialists: Jean Craciun is CEO of Craciun Research, where she helps businesses and organizations deal with changing environments and reforming industry sectors. David L. Dittman (Dittman Research and Communications Corporation) is widely recognized as Alaska’s senior public opinion analyst. Ivan Moore, Ivan Moore Research, is a public opinion pollster based in Anchorage who works with both Democratic and Republican candidates. Moderated by UAF Journalism Professor Lynne Lott. Rasmuson Hall 316

1:15 – 2:30 p.m.
Covering the military from the home front
Kimberly Dozier shares the lessons she learned the hard way when covering the military – how to learn how troops see the world, and the media, how to win their trust – and most importantly, represent both them and the U.S. public in reporting that pulls no punches. Rasmuson Hall 101

Simple videos for websites

Shooting and editing simple videos that can be easily used on media websites. This session is for reporters with limited background in video production. With Ted S. Warren, Associated Press. Rasmuson Hall 111

Notebook to page u KTUU’s Jason Lamb, ADN’s Kyle Hopkins and APRN’s Annie Feidt share tips and tricks for writing accurate, compelling stories quickly. Moderated by Julia O’Malley. Rasmuson 316

Sorry the formatting got messed up, but I really have to go to bed or I'll sleep through all this.

Would Confucius Have Cut The Education Budget?

As Alaska's legislature is busy cutting the state education budget and trying to use what public money is left to give to private schools through vouchers, it might be a good time to get a bigger perspective on this.  The University of Alaska Anchorage Philosophy Department with an assist from the campus Confucius Institute is putting on a conference titled "Living Ethically in the Global World." 

The conference is pretty wide ranging and open to the public.  On the first night, there will be a community panel at East High School.   This was planned before the Governor, in his Orwellian way, declared this the "Year of Education."  I'm not sure the question in the title will be answered, but the recipient of the 2013 Confucian Prize will be on the East High panel.  So you can ask him if he doesn't address the issue in the panel.

“The Priorities and Ethics of Educating” Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Community Panel at East High School Auditorium Panel: Andy Josephson, UAA Graduate and Alaska State Representative (It appears that Rep. Josephson's legislative duties will keep him in Juneau.) Roger Ames, 2013 Confucian Prize Recipient; Maria Williams, Director of Alaska Native Studies at UAA; Ed McLain, UAA College of Education Respondent: Francisco Miranda, UAA Department of Languages

This is actually both the Ninth Annual UAA Undergraduate Philosophy Conference and the UAA Ethics Center's Inaugural Convocation.

Here are some of the paper titles I pulled out of the program:

“Drawing from the Same Well:  Eastern Thought in Christian Ethics” “Yup’ik Culture is also Confucian” “Role Ethics in the Yijing” “Human Rights and Daoism: An Alternative Chinese Perspective” "Confucian Role Ethics for Women: A Response to Roger T. Ames’ Vocabulary” “The Impossible Junzi and Global Ethics” “Eastern Tones:  What Can Contemporary Acoustics Learn from Yin-Yang?” “Taking Responsibility: Toward a Sixth Confucian Relationship (with Notes from my Life as a Dean in China)” “Confucian Revivalism and Its Role in Chinese Society and Education”

You can find the exact times and locations for each of these in the program embedded below.

And here are the Universities that will be represented (in addition to UAA):

Prospect College and Taigu College (Chongqin and Shanxi Province, PRC) Renmin University (Beijing, PRC) Northeast Normal University Belmont University (Nashville, Tennessee) University of California Santa Cruz Loyola Marymount University University of San Diego (California) Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Yongin, Korea) University of Wales (Great Britain) University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Central Washington University University of San Diego (California) Adrian College

I'd note that the UAA  Department of Public Administration has had a long going relationship with the public administration program at Renmin (People's) University in Beijing and I taught there in 2004. 

I checked and all the panels are open to the public at no charge. Fortunately, we'll be back in Anchorage.   Here's the full program:

Living Ethically in the Global World

And I'd urge people to get off the internet merry-go-round and take a few moments to think about the title of this conference: Acting Ethically in a Global World. What are some of the topics you would explore under that heading? Talk about it over dinner with your parents.

Kids Enjoy Chinese Cultural Fair in Anchorage

Yesterday afternoon I invited the daughters of friends to go to the Chinese Fair at UAA put on by the Confucius Institute. In the end, their parents came too. I was a little underwhelmed after the quality of Thursday night's performance. But even though the Student Union hadn't been transformed visually into a Chinese village fair, it turned out that the activities were good ones that got the kids and the adults involved.



Each table had some aspect of Chinese culture. This one was called Chinese toys and this was a game where you had to use chopsticks to move tiny beans from cup to cup.





This kid was really getting into the chance to learn some Chinese calligraphy. You can see the character for river (the three vertical lines) and below the character for mountain.





There was also origami - I didn't think to ask about the Chinese claim to what I thought was a Japanese artform.




There were also people who would write people's names on these tags using Chinese characters.













I was hoping to add something about Confucius Institutes in general but if I'm going to get this up, I'll have to leave that part for later. They are sponsored by the Chinese government through the Ministry of Education and they are a way for China to promote Chinese language and culture. There has been some criticism that this is a means of Chinese propaganda and even espionage. But I think the same claims can and have been made for Western organizations that do the same thing. One particular issue with universities is the extent to which the funding agreements give control to the Chinese over curriculum of regular university classes on language and China. One way universities have dealt with this is not by having the CI within academic units - such as the language department or other departments which might cover aspects of Chinese politics, history, etc. in their courses. My understanding of how this works at UAA is that the CI is NOT housed in an academic department, such as Languages, but separately with International Programs which has taken the place of the old American Russian Center.

The benefits, if this works out as hoped, will be extra resources to improve opportunities to study Chinese language in the Anchorage School System and the university and help for the business community that want to tap Chinese markets and resources. If this is going to be more than a symbolic presence, I suspect there will need to be more resources and a clearer focus on a few things that can be done well.

That's actually the gist of what I had to say. Perhaps I'll get up a post with more details another time.

Ignite

I met Dean Franklin when I took a picture of his (I assumed) wife and daughter at the Peking Opera presentation by the Confucius Institute last November.  He told me about Ignite - a program he's working on that gets community people talking about things they're passionate about.  I was interested, but as it turned out, it's happening the day after we leave for Juneau.  But he emailed me some information about it and I can certainly encourage you to go and send me your report so I can post it.  (Luckily, I didn't delete my junk file tonight, cause that's where the email was. )  It's another free Anchorage event that promises to be worth more than a lot of stuff you have to pay for.  


The next Ignite Anchorage conference will be held at the
Snow Goose Theater one week from tonight, on Thursday, January 14th at 7pm.

We've got some great speakers lined up to give some fascinating presentations:

• Nils Andreassen "Vibrant Democracy"
• Cindy Baldwin "How Toastmasters Can Help YOU Be a Better Communicator and Leader"
• Marian Call "The Art and Science of Songwriting"
• Cindy Franklin "The Best Job You’ll Ever Have"
• Sarah Hurst "Transforming Alaska History into a Play and Graphic
  Novel"
• Karen Keller "Off the Shelf"
• Karl LeRay "What the @!#%$! Do Those Motorcycle Hand Signals
  Mean?"
• Bob Nicoll "There is Power in the Clarity of Your
  Articulation"
• Aliza Sherman "I Survived Winter in Tok, Alaska"

We are also holding a food and fund drive for Food Bank of Alaska at this event. We are asking all attendees to bring a donation of food or a monetary donation to help Food Bank of Alaska restock their warehouse for the new year. Food Bank of Alaska is typically running low on food and funds in January due to their generous contributions to our fellow
Alaskans over the holidays. If you are bringing a donation of food, please see Food Bank of Alaska's shopping list to find out what they need. If you plan to make a monetary donation, please bring a check made out to "Food Bank of Alaska".


If you haven't already done so, register to attend now (click that big red button just below). It's free, it will be fun and you'll be supporting a good cause.

Blogging Is Like Fishing

It's been a year now that I've been blogging. What Do I Know now I didn't know then? Lots. Some thoughts:

1. Blogging is like fishing

I started blogging to just see what it was all about. I really didn't care who read it, and I'm reasonably pleased that those who do stop and comment have been civil (I know that's sounds like an invitation to the uncivil, but it seems they aren't reading it, or it's too boring for them to even respond.) But I noticed early on that I started looking at the "Viewed Profile" numbers. Then someone suggested I put up site-meter. That is addictive - not just seeing how many hits I get, but where they are all from. And until I got site-meter, I had no idea how much information I left at other websites. Unlike fishing, even posts I've dropped into the water months ago can get hits today.

2. Hits

I was averaging anywhere from 3 to 10 hits per day -with spikes into the 20s - before July. Up til then, the biggest days came from my posts on automaticwashers.org trying to get help fixing my Maytag. But in July I blogged a local trial of a politician tried (and convicted) of extortion, bribery, and money laundering. That got me links on the local newspaper's website and several other sites and my hits zoomed up - 30, 45, on up to 150 and then slowly back down. But some of those folks have stayed and I'm in the 20s regularly now. This week's Sicko review got linked to a major Italian movie site and was translated into German on another site. Then there are the "unknown" referrals. Some, like my mom, are regulars. But I wonder how others found my site. One commenter said her search engine alerted her that my site had mentioned one of her flagged terms: 'prophy-paste.'

3. What are people searching for?

Major topics have been the Tom Anderson Trial, Carnival Cruise lines, Alaska Airport Railroad Depot. I like the idea that people trying to figure out how to get from the airport to their cruise get to read about how the cruiselines are ripping everyone off. A few hits for "Viddler v. Youtube." Then there are my favorites who searh for the exotic. Who are the people (three or four altogether) who have searched for awazdo? (I did some posts on trucks in India with pictures of their "Please Honk" signs. Then I discovered awazdo meant "give me horn" in Hindi (Maharashtri?) and posted on that. ) I guess other people have the same bizarre curiosity I have. People also have searched for names of people (ordinary people) I've posted about. And then there are the people whose searches get them to me, but only because the words appear scattered in different posts, but nothing I have is relevant to them. Someone the other day from New Jersey got here googling, "i live in a condo above a smoker and the smell comes in what can i do to get rid of it." That got him to my April archive that began with a post on the Confucius Institute. But five or six posts down was
"What is it about smokers?" Did he read down that far? Who knows?

4. Searching and Finding
I still haven't figured out exactly why search engines give the results they do. Sometimes they give the archive - like with the smoker - and then the person has to find it on the page. Sometimes they give my latest posts and then they have to search the blog. Sometimes they give the exact post they were looking for. I haven't studied it enough to figure out if there is a pattern - whether the word is in the post, title, or labels. I originally thought the labels were a good idea so people could search my blog by topics so I wanted to limit it to a few general categories. But I've been slipping in more specific things lately.

5. Google Hits and Technorati Rankings

Technorati seems to be focused on how many other people link to you and how high their rankings are. I've moved up from Zero to 1, then 2, and eventually up to 9 this week. (The Italian movie blog was ranked around 3200 to give you a sense.) So I'm a slight bump in the blogosphere. On the other hand, Google must be impacted by how often you post. I've been posting once or more a day on average and as I check the site-meter to see how people got to me, I've been on page one of Google fairly often.

6. New features

I started with just text. Buying my Canon Powershot changed everything. I was soon adding photos. And then video. First YouTube, then I found Viddler. And now Blogger has an upload, but it didn't work yesterday. That may have to do with the bugs in iMovie08. Fortunately, it left iMovie06 on my computer. (There was no '07, but the blog wags are calling iMovie08, iMovie07.) And Jamfest made posting audio easy. You can even download directly from websites to Jamfest. And Blogger added polls, but I'm not sure how I would use them. They seem like toys on most blogs. And I probably don't have enough readers anyway.

7. Comments.

I discovered early, accidentally, that leaving comments on other posts, often brings a visit from that blogger, and even a comment. I do wander to other blogs now and then, though I'm cruising Alaska blogs more than the 'next blog' button. I'm not even sure how I got to Mirksome Bogle. Mirk has become a regular commenter here. Visually, our sites are totally different, but our content has some overlaps - photos of nature, quirky photos, punnish, and eclecticity.

Those are some things that pop into mind musing on my blogging.

"Facing Human Vulnerability in a Dangerous World"

I'd love to do an in depth post on this, probably starting with something about how human behavior and moral dilemmas and the debates about what is the right ethical path has been hotly and insightfully debated for over 2000 years.   Professor Aaron Stalnaker is going to be here tomorrow (Wednesday March 18) to talk about what ancient Chinese philosophers said about the same kinds of issues we face today.   I'd like to write about how easy it is for us to think that people living today are so much smarter than those who lived in the distant past.  But that there were people living then who whose abilities to think through complex human issues were as powerful as anyone alive today. 

But I've got lots of other things to do and this talk is tomorrow evening, so I'll just send this on for people who might wish to gain some perspective on our current ethical debates. 

Here's the official announcement: 

Confucius Institute invites you and your family to join our next academic Lecture, to be held in the UAA/APU Consortium Library, Lewis E. Haines Meeting Room, Room 307, on Wednesday, March 18, from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

 

“Facing Human Vulnerability in a Dangerous World: 

Two Chinese Responses.”

 

This lecture will address Mengzi’s (and perhaps Xunzi’s) defense of ritual as an appropriate response to human desires and aspirations, given our nature and the nature of the world as a whole; and then turn to Zhuangzi’s criticism of received ritual forms, in favor of a more radical acceptance of unstoppable change.  

Our speaker Dr. Aaron Stalnaker is a distinguished scholar and philosopher. He is an associate professor of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. He is a core faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies, serves as the Dean of Graduate Studies, and has made tremendous contribution to the Department of Religious Studies in building its strong academics. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Stanford, and obtained his PhD from Brown. He is an expert in ethics and philosophy of religion, giving serious attention to both Chinese and Western theories and practices.

He is the author of Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine (Georgetown University Press, 2006), a comparative study of different models of moral and religious personal formation. He recently co-edited Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He has lectured at many leading universities, including Harvard Divinity School, Princeton University, University of Michigan, Georgetown University, etc.

And for those who want to do a little homework first, here's an excerpt from a review of Stalnaker's book Overcoming Our Evil:

Having made these points about Stalnaker's interpretation and analysis of Xunzi's theory of self-transformation, let me turn to a lingering concern about the overarching goal of comparative analyses. Stalnaker makes a very strong case for needing forms of spiritual exercises to accomplish self-transformation toward better, moral forms of life. Furthermore, he, like I, wants to be able to retrieve some of these practices for contemporary purposes, to be used to transform lives today. Yet our desire to retrieve these spiritual exercises must confront the problem of whether or not they can be divorced from their conceptual and cultural context and still remain effective practices for self-transformation. Stalnaker believes it may be possible to retrieve some practices once we untangle the complex web of relations between the context and the practices themselves, the kind of work he undertakes in this book. 

 I picked this paragraph because it raises questions about the extent to which the ancient Chinese practices are applicable, as I suggested above.  

Events like this are just one of the many benefits of having a good university in our city. 

Odds and Ends

I've got a backlog of things I want to post.  Here's a preview of what I'm hoping to get up:

Election night I was an observer when they brought the voting machines and materials to election headquarters.  I've got pictures and some video plus comments on how things went.  Generally it seems well organized, but there are lots of places where unscrupulous people could mess with the system if they wanted to.

The Citizens Climate Lobby had its monthly meeting Saturday and heard from Dr Wendy Hill on the health consequences of global climate change.  Then on Thursday I went with CCL Anchorage coordinator Jim Thrall to meet with the news manager and meteorologists at Channel 11 to discuss how they cover climate change issues on the air.  We also had an Alaska climate expert from Fairbanks there by phone.

Chinese class continues to consume lots of time.  I do want to write about some of this.  Particularly how much easier it is to study Chinese in 2012 than it was in just 2003.  Take a look at Yellowbridge.com to see part of the reason. 

I've gotten a new page up on top here for the 2012 Anchorage International Film Festival.  It's a guide to the festival including links to some old posts - FAQ's for the festival and Film Festival for Skeptics.

And Sitemeter is down again.  Not a good sign.  Something is going wrong there and the comments on my recent post about Sitemeter do show that people aren't very tolerant of problems.  It would help if Sitemeter would reach out and let people know what's happening.  They have their users' email addresses.  I'm starting to check with Google Analytics, but I really don't like their layout compared to Sitemeter.  Someone recommended StatCounter in the comments and that looks good.

Oh yeah, I was at UAA earlier this week and was reminded of all the things going on there - particularly speakers who are available to the public.  Here are some posters - two are already over and two are still coming.










Sorry, this one is over already, but I thought I'd put it up anyway.  Same with the next one.

Sorry, this one is a little small (it's just an 8X11 sheet) but it hints at why it's good to have universities around and people researching different options that can help create new energy options and jobs.

Click any of them to enlarge them a little.

This one is coming a week from Monday.  This is through the Confucius Institute at UAA and our Chinese teacher said he's a really great calligrapher.  

And this one is this coming Monday.  Fallows is one of our (the USA) best journalists.  (The link goes to his Atlantic Monthly blog which is very entertaining and this latest post raises similar thoughts to the ones I raised about the Fiscal Cliff.)  He spent a lot of time in Japan and wrote very insightful articles for the Atlantic.  He's also spent time more recently in China.  I have a book club meeting Monday so I'm going to miss this, but it should be outstanding and it's free to the public (free parking too.) 

Deborah Fallows is here too and they will both be at   the UAA bookstore on Monday at noon.




There was one more that I forgot:

Other things I probably won't post about:

Met with some of my new UAA faculty group over lunch and we'll meet again next week with two faculty union reps.

The Alaskan Apple User Group met Wednesday night.

Reviewing a paper for an academic journal.

Trying to help a few people connect with the right people to get out of their jams.

And there are always the clutter wars here at home, though I've generally neglected them lately.  I did clear this morning's snow from the driveway and sidewalk.  And I'm a little sore from taking a spill on the bike this afternoon.  I guess mountain tires aren't enough.  I need to get studs.



UPDATE:  Thanks to reader DH for the editing help.  Sometimes I do get tired and lazy.