China and Taiwan -- talk about a long term view of the world!

In an article in the economist- Economist.com | China and Taiwan: - it was written:
"He supports the idea of an interim agreement lasting 30-50 years whereby Taiwan would agree not to declare formal independence in exchange for a pledge by China not to attack. Neither China nor Mr Chen has explicitly rejected this, so far at least."

WOW! Deals in the USA often do not survive the next Evening News!

Kupishok: For Eternal Memory

A video of the day that we spent in the home town of Hilda's grandparents has been placed in the National Center for Jewish film. For details, see
Kupishok: For Eternal Memory
Some of the stills in the movie were taken from my pictures. A subset of the pictures from my trip is on my website.

Many more of the pictures are here

Blah and Goodness

Last Thursday we saw a blah performance at the Chicago Symphony. What could have been an exciting evening turned out to be lackluster performances of Stravinsky's Petrushka and the Rachmaninov 2nd Symphony. Maybe it was the Conductor (Valery Gergiev from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg) -- maybe we were not in a receptive mood -- but we came out feeling blah. We had high hopes based on a thrilling performance of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet that we managed to see in St. Petersburg last July. In retrospect, that was silly. Just because Gergiev uses the same hall does not imply anything. Duh!

OTOH, on Sunday we saw Silk at the Goodman Theatre, by Alessandro Baricco, directed by Mary Zimmerman. Magical goodness.