Meandering

Charles Dickens starts David Copperfield with a description of the hero's birth*.  He immediately gets distracted into a discussion of the neighborhood women's forecasts about his life.  Then he briefly gets back to his birth mentioning that he was born with a caul and then goes off again suggesting that people believed cauls prevented drowning,  and that the woman who bought his caul died in bed at age 92.

I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast that she never had been on the water in her life except upon a bridge and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and other who had the presumption to go "meandering" about the world.  It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences tea, perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice.  She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, "Let us have no meandering."

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

We're only at page 2 of David Copperfield at this point and more than half of what Dickens has written so far is 'meandering' from the story of his birth.  Which I take as a signal that most of the book will be meandering.


I was struck by this note on meandering because I'm sure that some people might accuse me of meandering on this blog.  But I'm persuaded that the only true stories are told through meandering along all the side paths of the main story.  Otherwise, you have knowledge of just one path, but not about the woods through which it, dare I say, meanders.

You may notice this post comes after a post on haiku.  In hindsight, I would say the post was NOT about haiku, as I hinted at in the last three lines.  Rather it was about the structure of haiku and not the art of haiku.  I realized that as I was doing it - having checked a site on haiku and realizing I was focused on the form and leaving out the essence.  So I was both flattered and chagrined to have the haiku artist whom I mentioned in passing suggest where I might learn more about the art of haiku.  Michael Dylan Welch's link to Becoming a Haiku Poet beautifully distinguishes between what I wrote about - three lines of 17 syllables - and haiku.

He tells us that haiku is about capturing a mood using objective images, about being subtle, indirect.  And I was merely using the structure to force myself to get to the essence of a thought, to NOT meander.

Haiku, if I understand Welch, has a special purpose. It's about conveying a feeling.  It's not about summarizing an argument.  Thank you Michael for being gentle on me and for writing so well about haiku.  Using three lines of 17 syllables does not make a haiku. 

That said, using 17 syllables in three lines now and then to force oneself to distill the point of one's argument isn't a bad idea.  But a 17 syllable (and for those of you who didn't take the time to read Welch's post, let me say that he says that one shouldn't sacrifice natural English to stick to 17 syllables)  synopsis of a more complex tangle of thoughts is something like a bumper sticker aphorism.  It works for people who already think the way you do.  But it frustrates if not infuriates those who think differently.

Meandering, wandering here and there through the woods, NOT sticking to the main path that goes from the parking lot to the peak, is how you get to know those woods.  Through Dickens' meandering  readers get more than a plot.  They get all the blood and muscles and fat.  They get the smell of perfume mixed with sweat, the texture of the underwear, and color and style of the outerwear.  Not just the bare bones. 

A good poem, a good haiku, evokes a feeling the reader has experienced through imagery the reader knows.  Possibly a great haiku can transport readers beyond their personal experiences. A good essay evokes an understanding of an issue the reader hadn't already understood, through synthesizing points the reader hadn't yet organized or articulated in this particular pattern.

I think.   Though, of course, I'm mindful that ultimately feeling trumps reason.  So the effective essay needs also to connect to the readers' feelings. 



*Actually, Dickens starts by questioning whether David will even be the hero.  ["Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life . . . these pages must show."]

Booker T in Anchorage

We enjoyed the concert at UAA Sunday night.  It began with the sound vibrating my body.  I think I could have heard it from home.  But then it settled down to more manageable volumes (or I lost enough hearing that it sounded more manageable) and several times I really got into the music.  But I wouldn't pretend to be a music critic.  I can only give my very untrained ear's opinion.  So here are some pictures instead.  Note:  there was no flash photography allowed (and I usually don't like flash anyway) and no recording of any sort.  So we adjust.

Guitarist Vernon “Ice” Black

Why Do Haiku?

Haiku Structure

The first line five beats

The second line seven beats

The third five again.

The Basics

One two three four five

One two three four five six sev

One two three four five

Why Do Haiku?

Haiku forces me

To eliminate all but

The bare essentials.

Haiku Content

Japanese haiku

Has reference to seasons at

End of the second line.

About Rules

In English Haiku

Rules need not be so strict, read

Michael Dylan Welch

Bad Haiku

After reading Welch

I almost hit the delete

Sorry Mister Welch.

[Update June 15:  The next post follows up on this one.] 

All the Kings Horses. . .

President Obama:

The bottom line is this: Every decision we make is based on a single criterion -– what’s going to best protect and make whole the people and the ecosystems of the Gulf.

How do you make whole the people who were killed?  How do you make whole the people whose businesses have been devastated?    How do you make whole an ecosystem whose whole food chain has been thrown horribly out of whack?

You don't.  Once it's broken you can't repair it.  This is not like fixing a car after a wreck by putting on a new fender.  Either the President is making glib promises or he doesn't yet realize the enormity of what has happened.

Smokers Are Different - How About a Deposit on Butts?

Background:  I once picked up trash for a couple of hours downtown with a group.  By far the most numerous item that we picked up was cigarette butts.  Nothing came close.  

 So, today I was coming home from Costco - haven't figured out how to carry a Costco load on the bike yet - and I was stopped at Airport Heights behind this car.  Then she pushed a cigarette out the window.  She didn't text me first so I don't have it on video.  But  below, if you look carefully you can see the butt beside the car.

She had moved up a little bit by this time.

A little larger.  

So on the way home I debated whether it was ok to post her license plate.  Well, sure, it's legal, but is it the right thing to do?  I learned before that plates aren't up on the web and that you can't look them up without a legal reason.  And I messed up one number.  So I was pretty comfortable with it.  She'll know.  And her friends and neighbors will know.  (That is if any of them ever see this post which is also highly unlikely.) 

And, of course, I checked on the web.  I found thesmokingsection, a pro-smoking website, that says it's ok to criticize smokers who litter:

This is a cultural phenomenon. It was once acceptable to throw butts on the ground under the theory they would degenerate quickly. While debatable in the old days, that notion should have gone out as quickly as filters came in. Unfortunately it didn't. Considerate smokers don't litter. Those who do deserve criticism as much as any other litterer.

I also looked to see if others had noticed that so much of the litter around is cigarette butts. 



Cigarettelitter an anti-cigarette litter site, says yes!

"It is estimated that 40% of the litter in the Borough is smoking related, be it wrappers, cartons or cigarette ends."
-- [Gedling Borough Council, England]

-- "Each year more than 1 billion pieces of litter will accumulate on Texas highways. Of those, 13 percent are cigarette butts. That means 130 million butts will be tossed out in Texas alone this year."
--Texas Department of Transportation

 Whyquit.comhttp://whyquit.com/whyquit/A_Butts.html explains what these butts do to the environment:

Are cigarette butts litter?  Absolutely!  But unlike paper products they're not biodegradable.  Nearly all cigarette filters are composed of a bundle of 12,000 plastic-like cellulose acetate fibers. Cellulose acetate is photodegradable but not bio-degradable. It can take years, in some cases up to fifteen, for ultraviolet light to cause fibers to decay into a plastic powder that can't be seen.  As they do their deadly cargo is released.
The nicotine trapped inside 200 used filters is likely sufficient to kill a 160 pound adult human - 50 to 60 milligrams.  Imagine a month without rain followed by a brief thunderstorm that washes 500,000 nicotine laden canoes - enough to kill 2,500 humans - into area creeks and streams.  Aquatic life at the bottom of the food chain can pay a deadly price. But so can fish who mistake butts for food or birds who use them for nesting material.  Nicotine isn't the only villain as trapped tars and toxic gases leach into waterways too.

And they estimate there's a lot of them out there.

What we do know is that worldwide 5.6 trillion filtered cigarettes are smoked annually, with an estimated 1.7 billion pounds of cigarette butt litter. Here in the U.S., more than 1.35 trillion cigarettes were manufactured in 2007, of which 360 billion were smoked here. Look closely at the ground at any intersection.  They're everywhere!

Even Phillip Morris says it's a BIG problem:

We recognize that cigarette butt litter is a significant contributor to litter in our environment. As the leading manufacturer and marketer of cigarettes in the United States, we are helping reduce cigarette butt litter.

Based on the results of Ocean Conservancy's 2009 Annual International Coastal Cleanup, more cigarette butts were collected than any other type of litter and cigarette butts accounted for almost one-third of all items collected.

So why do cigarette smokers do this?  Well, first, let's assume a good portion of cigarette smokers don't.  But what about the ones that do?

After vainly wandering through the internet, I finally got to a source I'd seen referenced by others over and over again - Keep America Beautiful (KAB.)  They seem to be the main anti-litter organization.  Here's what their website says:

Why do people litter?  Here’s what KAB’s 2009 Littering Behavior in America research found:

• Personal choice.  Individual behavior—or choosing to litter—means litter on the ground.  Nearly one in five, or 17% of all disposals observed in public spaces were littering, while 83% disposed of litter properly.  And 81% of littering was intentional, e.g., flicking, flinging, or dropping.  On the other hand, individuals who hold the belief that littering is wrong, and consequently feel a personal obligation not to litter, are less likely to do so. 
  
• Litter begets litter.  Individuals are much more likely to litter into a littered environment.  And once there, it attracts more litter.  By contrast, a clean community discourages littering and improves overall community quality of life.  Availability and proximity to trash and recycling receptacles also impact whether someone chooses to litter. 
  
• It’s “not my responsibility”.  Some people feel no sense of ownership for parks, walkways, beaches, and other public spaces. They believe someone else will pick up after them; that it’s not their responsibility. 

They choose to do so.  Not real helpful. I still don't know what causes that 17% to litter.  "It's not my responsibility" starts to get to it.  It's what's in their head.  Some people have no social conscious at all.  Wikipedia says that people with anti-social personality disorder make up about 4% (3% male; 1% female) of the population.  

[Anti-social personality disorder] is characterized by at least 3 of the following:

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.
2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.
4. Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
5. Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
6. Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.
7. Persistent irritability.

These people definitely aren't going to change.  So that leaves about 13% to explain.

Do smokers have characteristics that would make them more likely to litter?  They comprise about 20% of the population.   The Massachusetts Department of Public Health Department   says about their state's smokers:

Smoking rates are highest among low socio-economic groups, people with no health insurance, people with disabilities, and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.

The rate for the public overall in Massachusetts was below the national average - only 16% - and people without health insurance were more than twice as likely to smoke!  Presumably these are people who do not get health insurance through work and are not on the mandatory state health plan for people otherwise not covered. 

So smokers overall are less educated, have less money, and less access to medical care than the population in general.  And presumably they're likely to be people who aren't coping too well in modern society to start with.  The fact that they smoke despite that stats that say how unhealthy it is means they see the world differently than most others. 

The key issue seems to be inside people's heads.  The lady in the car in front of me presumably had an ashtray in her car, but chose to throw the butt out the window.  This leads me to my solution for most social problems - parenting education.  Catching people before they become parents and perhaps helping the young learn to plan to have kids when they are most prepared to raise them well.   And working with people who are pregnant so that they understand ways to raise kids in ways that increase their likelihood to cope well with society.  Changing adults just doesn't work in most cases unless they want to be changed.



There was one more option I found that may holds some promise:

--> BUTTsOUT Personal Ashtrays- 100 Pack

View Details

Your Price: $300.00

This is a personal butt holder. We saw one of these being used by a Japanese traveler in Laos. He carried it in his pocket. But as I said, the lady in the car in front of me had an ashtray in her car, so just having one of these, even if cigarette peddlars gave them out free (the ad above is for 100, so it would be $3 a piece and if you buy 1000 it was $1.60 each) it probably wouldn't make much difference.

Unless...we required a deposit on butts like some places do on bottles. In fact, a homeless person could get get rich picking up butts given that there are so many of them. It works for other kinds of litter and everything I've read says that cigarette butts are the most frequent piece of litter.

Well, I haven't seen any better suggestions.  


[There's lots more to be said here.  One very different way of understanding the mind set of smokers - and we shouldn't lump them all together because they clearly smoke for different reasons - is to read what smokers say about why they smoke.  Here's a piece on a cigar-lovers' site that talks about the joys of academics who smoke cigars.  Some of it is clearly an identity issue and some of it is a bonding issue.]

What Do Americans Call Rapeseed?

I noticed the rapeseed fields as we first came over land - probably Holland then Germany - after flying over the Atlantic and we saw bright yellow rapeseed fields three weeks later when we flew from Berlin to Paris. And we kept seeing rapeseed fields from the train and from the car when we were outside of the big cities - but not even that far outside of Berlin or London.  While I kind of like the bright yellow, our British friend found the bright yellow fields much too garish.

So I wanted to find out what was going on with all the rapeseed.  It turns out rapeseed is also known as Canola and it is also used as a  biofuel which explains why there is so much of it planted in northern Europe.  From an interesting story in sciencecareers about a Polish researcher:

Rapeseed has increased in importance in Europe and China as demand for biofuel has risen. In 2000, Polish farmers harvested about 450,000 hectares of rapeseed; in 2009 they brought in more than 810,000 hectares. Planted in the fall as a winter cover crop, rapeseed flowers in the early spring. But the molds that cause oilseed stem canker -- Leptosphaeria maculans and L. biglobosa -- attack in the fall, so there's a long gap between the time fungicides need to be sprayed and when the crop matures.

Below are some more excerpts from some different websites plus a few more pictures I took on the trip.


From  Soyatech:

Brassica napus Linnaeus—known as rapeseed, rape, oilseed rape, and in some cultivars, Canola—is a bright yellow flowering member of the Brassicacea family (mustard or cabbage family). It is a mustard crop grown primarily for its seed which yields about forty percent oil and a high-protein animal feed.

Seed Type and Common Varieties
Since 1991, virtually all rapeseed production in the European Union has shifted to rapeseed 00 (double zero), with low content of erucic acid and low content of glucosinolates. The production of rapeseed in the European Union is still “conventional”, that is does not contain GMO. [genetically modified organism]

History

Worldwide Rapeseed Production (million metric tons)

1950s	3.5
1965	5.2
1975	8.8
1985	19.2
1995	34.2
2006	47.0

From Fediol The European Union Oil and Proteinmeal Industry:

Rapeseed oil and meal

As the oil content of rapeseed is around 40%, the processing is made in two steps: pre-pressing plus solvent extraction, or only by pressing. The rapeseed meal is an important protein source in compound feed for cattle, pigs and poultry.

Rapeseed oil contains 98% of tri-esters of fatty acids and 2% of sterols and tocopherols. It has a uniquely low content of saturated fatty acids and a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids, offering a good balance of fatty acids: 60% oleic, 20% linoleic, 10% alphalinoleic. It is also a rich source of Omega 3 and Omega 6 linolenic acids.

The low erucic variety is widely used for applications such as salad dressing, margarines and sauces. The high erucic variety is used in a range of technical purposes, for example bio-degradable lubricating oil as an alternative to mineral oil based lubricants. The use of rapeseed oil methyl esters as a substitute for diesel fuel takes large volumes of rapeseed oil.

Rapeseed meal, with only 37% protein content can hardly substitute soymeal in animal feeding. They represent 7% of the vegetable meals consumed in Europe and can enter feed ratios in the proportion of maximum 15% for chickens and 20% for porks and milk cows.

The situation for rapeseed oil in the EU is in equilibrium with a production and consumption of 5.5 million tonnes. The EU production of rapeseed meal rises 7.6 million tonnes.

[Charts from Fediol.]

You can see from the charts that the EU is the largest single producer of rapeseed, which explains why we saw so much of it.  And the winter crop blooms in early spring when we were there - April and May. 

Indexmundi lists only one top company: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM.)  The price in US dollars per metric ton was down in May 2010 to 864 from a January high of 929. 

ADM was the company featured in the movie The Informant for international price fixing.  The film, according to Ira Glass, in the 2009 rebroadcast of the show originally broadcast in 2000,  was inspired by the original 2000 broadcast.  This is a really good, but also chilling show.  You can listen to it here.  Definitely worth it to get a glimpse of international price fixing and how the FBI works.  There's also a book by Kurt Eichenwald who speaks to Ira Glass on this show. 

The show documents the FBI investigation of international price fixing of lysine.  I don't know for sure whether rapeseed is used to make lysine, but the

Proceedings of the World Conference on Oilseed Technology says . 

Comparisons of amino acids as percentages of the protein (NX6.25) in oil meal show that soybean is the richest in lysine (6.2%), closely followed by rapeseed (canola) (6.0%) and sunflower (3.0%).

So I'd think there was a good chance that rapeseed might have been part of all this.

I should also mention that ConAgra whose campus we walked through in Omaha is mentioned on the tape as one of the customers of ADM that was getting ripped off by ADM by the price fixing.

KWHL's Outrageous "Cash for Tlingets" and Tim Wise to the Rescue

[Patience, Tim Wise comes in at the end.]

I learned when teaching 6th grade that giving attention to bad behavior simply increased that behavior.  My teachers had modeled a technique of putting 'bad' students' names on the board for later punishment.  Rather than focus on the students who were unruly, I found it was a much better strategy to spotlight the one or two kids who were doing what they were supposed to do and put their names on board for later rewards.

So I hesitate to even mention the Cash for Tlingits segment on KWHL.  But sometimes you have to deal with things.   One can argue, as I'm sure Bob and Mark would, that it was just humor and to lighten up.

If all were equal and we didn't have a history of discrimination against Alaska Natives, and if their cultures hadn't been devastated first by Russian seal hunters and then by American missionaries who brought germs along with bibles, the former killing many bodies and the latter killing Native cultures, then it might be reasonable to see this as simple joking among equals.  [Did you make it through that long complicated sentence alive?]  But as long as all the statistics show Alaska Native cultures doing far less well than the white immigrants into their land, things aren't equal, and it isn't funny to those being made fun of.

It's never funny when people in power make jokes about people out of power.  Now, all that said, there is obviously an audience for this sort of humor.   White males, Protestant white males in fact,  have traditionally held the vast majority of positions of power in this country - and still do.  But despite this obvious fact (look at all the presidents before Obama, and all the governorships, all the legislatures, and all the heads of corporations) individual white males don't necessarily feel that powerful.  Individual white males may not be able to develop meaningful relationships with women.  Maybe they aren't doing well at work, or if they are in a good position, they may not be able to make their organizations work as others expect.  Their kids may not listen to them.  Their wives have minds of their own.  It's rough.  Maybe they can't even find a job.

So when women and non-whites say white males have all the power, it doesn't ring true to many who personally don't feel very powerful.

But clearly, given their historic monopoly of positions of power in the US, they must have something going for them.  Either white men are just inherently superior to non-white men and to women OR they have fewer obstacles to overcome than the others.  I lean  toward the latter explanation.  Some people talk about this as 'white privilege' whether it's enshrined in law - like Jim Crow laws or regulations that made minority neighborhoods ineligible for housing loans - or prejudicial custom, like white and male only private clubs and colleges. 

When my daughter at age 8 declared she was biking to her friend Heidi's house via the bike trail to near downtown, I had an aha moment.  As a supporter of equal rights for women, why was I hesitating to approve her independence when I would have let my son make that trip at that age?  Then I thought about all the other things I felt free to do that my wife didn't feel so free to do.  We simply know that men are safer than women in our society.  I felt no fear working in my office at UAA late at night, but women faculty didn't feel such security.  With good reason.  One faculty member I knew was raped in her office at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.

These are the extra obstacles to 'success' that women (in general) have that men (in general) don't.  I emphasize "in general" because a man weighing 300 pounds might face obstacles that a normal weight woman of equal qualifications might not face.

We can take the obstacles into other areas as well.  Women are expected to look and dress better then men.  To succeed in some professional and social settings they are expected to wear a dress, heels, and makeup, and have their hair 'done.'  Men aren't held to the same high standards.  Men can change their shirt and tie but wear the same suit for a week.  Women can't wear the same dress for a week.  All these, individually minor, activities add up to give women more obstacles, more things they have to do or think about on the way to success than men.  [Update 3:30pm:  Here's an excellent video I found when I was retrieving the Tim Wise video -  below - that beautifully (pun intended) illustrates how women are set up against an impossible beauty standard by the media.]

I can make the same argument for non-whites.   (And yes, there are advantages that women have in some situations.  But historically they have been minor compared to the extra obstacles.)

But people, including white men, quite naturally, want to believe that whatever success they have achieved, they've done on their own, with no special advantages.

But, slowly, laws have been changed to remove some of those obstacles and women and non-whites have, in many cases, taken advantage and have worked hard.  When I retired I was already seeing more women than men in my graduate classes, and that shift is apparently the norm in universities around the country.  And something I hadn't expected to see in my lifetime - a bi-racial president - is now leader of the United States.

And so it is quite understandable that some white males may look at these changes and see their positions in the world as threatened.  Their privileges are slowly  eroding.  Privileges many have never realized they had.  So it actually looks like they are being punished, when it's only the American ideal of equality becoming more widespread.  They have to work harder to keep what they have.  Like everyone else always had to do.

Most of us construct narratives about how the world works in which we are the hero.  If we are well off, our narratives explain how hard we worked to get here and how benevolent we are to others.   Tony Hayward's narrative was revealed when he said, "I just want my life back."  This was understood by many as, "This damn oil spill is interrupting my life of wealth and privilege and the rest of you just don't understand how inconvenient that is."

If we aren't well off, our narratives explain the forces that have deprived us of our due.  The economy wiped out my 401K.  This year's graduates are facing the worst job market since the depression.  Immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans.  We have lots of narratives.

(I once heard about a study that claimed that when men were successful they had narratives that gave them personal credit for that success, but when they had failures, their narratives blamed them on other forces.  It said that women tended to do the opposite - take credit for their failures and not for their successes.  If anyone knows of this research, please leave a comment or email me where I can find it.)

Anyway, all this leads to the point that there is a reason that Bob and Mark have an audience for this sort of racist routine.  Ranting and raving about how awful such people are doesn't make them go away.  I suspect that much of the energy of the Tea Party movement is anger of people feeling their place in the world is being taken away from them.  Some of this is about economics, some of it is about race.

A small organization I belong to - Healing Racism in Anchorage  (HRA) - is sponsoring a trip to Anchorage in September by Tim Wise who has an extremely good narrative on racism in the United States.  I want to alert people that he's coming.  At this point HRA is raising money to help pay for the events in September.  You can find out more information at our website.  Here's the page to join and make a contribution to HRA to help pay for the Tim Wise events in September. 

You can also show your support by becoming a friend of Healing Racism in Anchorage on Facebook.

Here's a Challengingmedia video of Tim Wise:

Hessler's River Town

River Town has been on my to read list a long time.  When my book club scheduled it, I was in luck.  Except we were heading out of town.  So I bought a copy in Washington DC and started reading it on the flight to Berlin.  I sent a version of this post to the club the day they met.   So the post assumes a bit that you've read the book.

As a former Peace Corps volunteer who taught English at the high school level in Thailand for two years and then supervised elementary school English teachers for another year, and as a college professor who taught graduate students for a semester in Beijing, I'm enjoying the book immensely.

Most everything he writes rings true to my experiences.  I did get to the point where I could hold meaningful conversations in Thai and he describes well the agonies and pleasures of getting there in Chinese.  And I have struggled with Chinese and not gotten anywhere near where he got.

In Thailand, working with the elementary school teachers, I found that in essays in English they would open up and tell heart wrenching stories they would never tell you out loud in Thai.  I didn't have the same issues with ideology in Thailand.

In Beijing my students were equally hard working and amazingly respectful and appreciative.  In my case, the students had elected to take a class with a foreign professor and we (the students and I) loved the surprising interactions we had together.  Ideology here raised its head over Tibet and Taiwan, but while I know I had students who were Party members in class - the head of the student public administration party group wrote a paper on Power about her power and how she used it as student party chair - I never felt constrained about what I could talk about, though, of course I breached those topics carefully.  But Taiwan and Tibet were the two topics I found that students had only one perspective.  I did have a Tibetan student who over dinner talked with me and several other students about how she had been forced to leave Tibet to go to school and what that meant to her culturally.  A conversation she'd never had with those students before. 

I didn't find, in China (or Thailand) the reticence or hostility Hessler mentions.  It's true, in Thailand, kids would shout "Farang" (foreigner) sometimes when I went by, but it was more like someone shouting "Look, a moose."  In Beijing, I had as a good friend and patron, the assistant dean of the school of public administration (we've known each other over 20 years and he's stayed with us in Anchorage for two weeks with his family) so that may have given me some protection.  Also, I was teaching grad students in Beijing about six years later than Hessler, at a time of more openness and in the center of the universe, rather than in a far off town that had no foreigners.

One small example of what was fun with the book, was his mention of Da Shan the Canadian who is so fluent in Chinese. If I were with you on Monday, I'd bring a CD of one of his Chinese lessons (every day 15 minutes) so you can see why Hessler says he wouldn't want to be Da Shan.  But he certainly is known to every Chinese and completely unknown in his home Canada. 

And train rides...the crowds trying to get tickets, the crowds in the train, the ramen noodles.

I do think that once in a while he summed things up a bit too neatly.  I think that's a danger all writers have trying to move on to the next topic.  A temptation to close off the last paragraph and move on.  Sort of like newscasters giving a finishing line which has some conclusion or assessment which they really have no basis for saying.  He may be accurate, but may not. 

This is a really good book.  My copy had a section at the end with a biography and I found it telling that Hessler had had a summer doing ethnography in an Iowa town.  A great preparation for his life in China.

On the way home a friend had a copy of the New Yorker with an article Hessler wrote coming back to the US after about 15 years in China.  He does to the US what he did to China.

Freshly Baked Bread

I finally baked the first loaves of breads since we got back. The bakeries in Germany were incredible. Beautiful loaves of wonderful fresh breads.


  Many had lots of seeds on the crusts. In Juneau we didn't have our bread maker so I made breads from scratch. I like that and I learned I could leave dough in the fridge overnight. A useful trick to know.




But here I can do the first round of kneading and rising in the bread maker, set it so it will be ready when I get up in the morning, and then do the second round of kneading by hand. That also let me add seeds to the crust. Mine tend to fall off. But this time I wet the dough and pressed the seeds into the dough before sticking it into the oven.


A friend is coming over for lunch today and to help me set up a new website.  It's good to have incentives to get me to do something like bake the bread.  And now I have to clean up a bit. 

Seeing Things Differently - The Bean (Cloud) at Millenium Park in Chicago

The most basic theme of this blog is how do we know what we know?  I try to look at things from a different angle or make connections among seemingly disparate topics or otherwise question conventional wisdom.  I'm not always that successful.       

But this video seemed to fit into this.  I already did a post on the Bean (officially it seems to be the Cloud [Gate - thanks Anon], but my friends called it the bean), but those were all still pictures.  When I was there I walked under it with my video going.  It's pretty lame video technically, but it gives you a bit more sense of the sculpture which distorts the world we as we know it and caused me to think about things a bit differently.