Mahagonny

We went to the LA Opera last night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion last night with Ginny to see a Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weil opera - The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. (Pronounced Maha - Go - Knee, emphasis on the Go) In some imaginary language that means spider web. This was an 1930 opera about three scoundrels who start a town somewhere in the US. They're stranded in the desert somewhere, which made me think it was in the West, but then there is a hurricane (sometimes referred to as a typhoon) and they are near Pensacola.... It was an interesting evening. We heard a talk with the conductor James Conlon before hand. That was helpful. The set was very simple and effective sand colored. The intent of the town is to offer food, sex, drink, and fights to men who come back from hunting for gold. "It's easier to get gold from the men, than from the river." But the first four men were actually coming back from cutting lumber for "seven years in Alaska, seven freezing years" a line that was repeated over and over. And a key character was named Alaska Wolf Joe. Think about it. We're watching a play in LA written by German Jews between the WWs - and somehow there we are back to Alaska.

It was written, if I understood the preshow lecture right, as a Marxist critique of the social and political conditions as the Nazi's were coming into power. And it was Conlon felt it had relevance today as well. There was discussion about why it was being offered in English (so it is accessible to American audiences as it was to German audiences) and about staging and styling that would have the feel for contemporary audiences that it had for 1930 Germans. I wonder what Brecht and Weil would have thought about the lavish concert hall and ticket prices (from $35 to $250.)

I'm not an opera regular. I love the set and staging, but it seemed rather heavy handed to me. I had a good time, the whole experiance was interestig (I haven't been in the Dorothy Chandler for 30 years.)

You can enlarge the picture and you should be able to read the words. I'm still ruminating on the ethics of taking and posting pictures of public performances. I'll do a piece on that one day.

Anchorage ---- LA

We left Anchorage about 1am after being deiced - it was around 30 degrees Fahrenheit and we'd had snow and freezing rain.


Then off to Santa Monica beac with Ginny.

Archive dates

My archives were all messed up - 2007 was 2006, February was January, etc. So I checked in Blogger help and others had the same problem. Astroguy wrote:

I found it was a date setting problem. We went into daylight saving
and I didn't change the timezone setting in the dashboard. When I
changed it from +8GMT to +9GMT everything started working properly. I
think it was a conflict between my PCs time settings and bloggers.

So I went into my settings and moved from Alaska time to Pacific Coast Time.

Bingo, the archives are working right. But now I want to see what time it says this post is. I'll check, and then edit in the answer about whether I'm still on Alaska time.

Back from checking. My post time is now an hour off. What if I change it back? Will the archives still work? Let's see. Be right back.

Back once more. When I changed it back to Alaska time, the archive dates were screwed up again. So now I'm in Pacific Coast time. All my post times are an hour ahead. I guess that is less important than the archives being screwed up.

Galloping Toward Equinox

As you can see, we're gaining Five and a half minutes of daylight each day. But what is misleading is the 8 hours of daylight. That is really the time between sunrise and sunset. But twilight gets longer and longer as you go north. The picture was taken at 6:36pm on February 7, looking West. Sunset that day was officially at 5:24, so there was still some light in the western sky over an hour later. I remember being in Hawaii with the kids. We were watching the sunset, and I had to point out, that it would be dark in 10 or 15 minutes because that's what happens when you are further south.

DATE Sunrise Sunset Daylight Daylight gained
Feb 5, 2007 9:10 AM 5:18 PM 8h 08m 08s + 5m 26s
Feb 6, 2007 9:07 AM 5:21 PM 8h 13m 36s + 5m 28s
Feb 7, 2007 9:05 AM 5:24 PM 8h 19m 06s + 5m 29s
Feb 8, 2007 9:02 AM 5:26 PM 8h 24m 38s + 5m 31s
Feb 9, 2007 8:59 AM 5:29 PM 8h 30m 11s + 5m 33s
Feb 10, 2007 8:56 AM 5:32 PM 8h 35m 45s + 5m 33s

Of course, if it is cloudy, that long twilight is severely curtailed. Today it won't last nearly so long. Here are a couple of pictures of downtown Anchorage I took dropping something off for a friend who works on the 12th floor.




That's the new Convention Center going up. Boy, this is about as grim a picture of Anchorage as you can get. Not even a trace of the Chugach Mountains in the background.






And on the left you can see northwest out over the Inlet. That's where one the infamous bridges wants to be. Not exaxtly a bridge to nowhere.

Nicholas and the Last King of Scotland

I was disappointed.

This is the evil version of The King and I. Foreigner in King's service tells his story. Except in this movie, Nicholas sees the good in his evil king, while Anna saw the flaws in her nobe king. And Nicholas and the King don't sing to each other. s.

What we saw of the King was a man switching back and forth from charming to evil. We have no clue why. We don't know much more about the reasons for Amin's rise to power, the relationships between Africa and the Colonial West.

I'm not sure that all the praise for Forrest Whitaker is warranted. It seemed to me to be great mimickry more than great acting. While we saw the charm and the horror of Amin, we don't really know who he is. Perhaps this is something a psychiatrist would have to tell us, something beyond an actor.

Why do we need the foreigner to tell the story? At least in Hotel Rwanda we saw the horror from the eyes of other, more noble African. But in other Africa films I've mentioned - Blood Diamonds, Constant Gardner and Babel whites were the entre into Africa. Perhaps this was less problematic because these whites were an integral part of the story and because the movies showed us the bigger picture of how the West was involved in Africa's problems. Or maybe I was lulled. In this case, the white foreigner is totally unnecessary to the main show - Idi Amin. He seems to be there because someone thinks that Western audiences can't relate to Africa without a white guide. (I realize that this is how Giles Foden, the author of the novel this is based on, wrote it. And as someone who spent years in Africa with his parents, that is how he would see things.) But we should see more movies about Africa where whites play a less prominent role.

Tim Young Memorial

My daughter was in town for the weekend to attend the memorial for Tim Young, one of her teachers at Steller Secondary School here in Anchorage. I went with her. I knew him, but not well. The principal of the school read a poem he'd written about Tim, about how he was wise and foolish, pushing the edge, unreasonable and remarkable, etc. It ended, "I hired him, I fired him, I
admired him." Andrea, in the video, read a message that Chris had sent.




Various former students said that they are living lives today, because of what Tim taught them about life. Several said that when they talk to friends Outside (of Alaska) about Tim and what they learned in class, the reaction is, "You learned about that in high school?!" Monica said, when I talk to people they sometimes say, "How do you know all those different things?" and she realized that she learned them in Tim's classes. From labor organizing to Hindu philosophy. She said she was surprised when she visited Carenegie Mellon University to find out how much money Carnegie had donated. "Tim only told us how he exploited his workers and how ruthless a capitalist he was. But he also said, that I'm telling you things you won't hear other places. You can fill in the other details yourselves." Charles, a close friend since high school, talked about Tim's illness and a little about his life and death in India.

For more click here or here.

If Branding is Good for Cities, Why Not for Kids?

Two front page stories in the Anchorage Daily News Friday got me to thinking. First this one about finding stolen goods from a MySpace picture.

Picture of stolen cross may be on MySpace
Man who tried to pawn goods stolen from church posted photo with crosses
By MEGAN HOLLAND
Anchorage Daily News

Published: February 2, 2007
Last Modified: February 2, 2007 at 09:40 AM

The Rev. Bob Young of Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Eagle River didn't expect to see his processional cross again after it was stolen from his church in the middle of the night more than two weeks ago.
Then he was directed to a MySpace.com Web page, where a bare-chested teenager posed with a handgun among drifting marijuana bongs. In his other hand, the youth held a cross that Father Bob instantly recognized. When the priest looked closer, he saw the boy also was wearing a cross necklace he wore while leading Sunday mass. [Click here for the rest of the story go to]


Then this story about the branding of Anchorage with a new logo.

'Big Wild Life' marketing brand gets cool reception
FIRST REACTION: It's a shock for some, a positive step forward for others.
By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News

Published: February 2, 2007
Last Modified: February 2, 2007 at 09:47 AM

Stoked. Puzzled. Mouthy.
That's the range of reactions this week to Anchorage's new marketing brand: "Big Wild Life."
On the Internet and over the airwaves, residents critiqued and questioned the slogan as soon as it was unveiled Wednesday.
"Instead of spending money on a new, really bad slogan, why not make use of the award winning 'Wild About Anchorage' slogan of years past?" wrote one visitor to a heated dissection of the brand on the Daily News Web site. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Others defended the brand, saying the marketing campaign has barely started and it'll get more popular as it sinks in. {for more click here.


People complain about how kids package themselves on MySpace, how they wear strange clothes, tattoos, and pierce parts of their bodies. But if cities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to 'brand' themselves, to package their image to 'sell' themselves, then why shouldn't the kids think it is perfectly all right to brand themselves?

Of course the branding zealots, like my Jehovah Witness visitor yesterday, believe so wholeheartedly in their mission, that they don't even question it. Or did they know they were selling Anchorage snake oil and they're sniggering at the idea that they got $200,000 for putting three words together "Big Wild Life"? And, of course, the people who spent the money have to believe in the product they got. But at least the posts to the website seem to indicate that most of the public wasn't taken in.

Why I Live Here Series

Walking to the office on a sunny warm (mid 40s) February 2.


.......... Dinner with friends at the Tofu House Korean Restaurant.

Jehovah's Witness

Jim was at the door about 10am this morning to share the good word with me.

Pamyua at Bear Tooth

Late night Thursday dancing. Not our normal routine, but I'd won the tickets last week, and I first saw Pamyua ten or more years at the Native Students Services - where they performed. Then they were two brothers, Stephen and Philip Blanchett, Yupik-African/Americans who were singing traditional Yupik songs with an African-American something. Now they are four plus folks, including a singer from Greenland and they've won the Record of the Year at the 2003 Native American Music Awards and performed at the Grammy Awards. Tonight they played for the home crowd.




This was just a teaser. You can see more video linked at their website.
Even though we were carded as we came in, we were clearly in the oldest 1% of this crowd and it was nice we had Sunny and Lisa there as our link to the mostly 20s and 30s crowd. I got a couple of pictures and video before everyone moved down to the dance area. It was a mellow group, lots of single women and single men. I like the Anchorage scene - no pretention, no one terribly preoccupied with how they looked, just having a good time. The dance floor filled up quickly and the four of us were also up and moving to the music.