We saw Julius Ceasar at the Lyric. Awesome!

I am way behind in posting my quick takes on what we have seen. Problem is that we had to reschedule a lot of stuff that that we should have seen while we were travelling. Life gets in the way of posting.
We saw an outstanding production of the opera Julius Ceasar by Handel - on December 1! Not only was the experience engrossing, we found street parking near the Opera. As can be seen the performance was in anachronistic dress, but it worked. A clear twofer!

Two Days with Two Grandchildren

This raises a variation on the old test question: If two grandchildren can wear out two grandparents with two cameras in two days, how long will it take for three grandchildren to wear out one grandparent with no cameras?
We took Julia and Abigail downtown for two days (Jacob would have come as well, except for a bout of stomach 'flu.) We had a busy two days - Spertus Institute, the park, Chinese dinner, and the Field museum. I amused myself by switching the D300 with the Tokina 16-50mm to P mode with Auto ISO and firing away. The combination is great up to ISO3200. Don't worry - if you don't know what that means, you also don't care. For those who care, the Raw images were processed in Lightroom with default Noise Reduction. I did mess with other parameters, obviously. This small set is edited down from about 170 originals - the rest are only for the family:-) A few are G9 - obvious from the aspect ratio.

Its been cold and snowy in Chicago

I went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens last week during a brief respite from the cold and snow.

S. Africa's Liberation Movement Demands Accountability - washingtonpost.com

S. Africa's Liberation Movement Demands Accountability - washingtonpost.com
This Washington Post report confirms to me my decision to emigrate from South Africa in 1976 - even if my forecast for the future of SA was partially incorrect. Actually my decision was made many years earlier - ultimate timing was dependent on affordability and the Vietnam war - I did no want to be sent to fight a no-win war soon after moving my family to the USA which was the fate of new legal immigrants.

Many knowledgeable people, hearing "1976" and "emigrate" and "South Africa" think that the uprising of 1976 precipitated our departure from South Africa. In fact, when the rioting started, Hilda and I were already in the USA interviewing with the folk that would ultimately bring us to Poughkeepsie. We received a message from Johannesburg, saying "Don't worry, the children are OK".
We did not know what it was that we were not supposed to be worrying about, so of course we went into panic mode. Something bad had happened, we thought, but it could be worse.
In South Africa at that time (only two years since the availability of television), it was assumed that all issues related to unrest or politics were inventions of the foreign press - so of course, we would know about what was happening even before the South African press reported it.

The primary reason I wanted to come to leave South Africa was the conviction that if I did not leave, my children would do so. I wanted to live near my children and the prospect of relocating in my later years did not appeal to me. The other reason was that I worked in computer systems technology - South Africa was far removed from the center of this activity. I did not want to live as a colonial all my life.

My perspective on the political future of South Africa was wrong. I foresaw a government like that of Mugabe in Zambia. By this I mean, quoting from Wikipedia:

"The Mugabe administration has been criticised around the world for corruption, suppression of political opposition, mishandling of land reform, economic mismanagement, and deteriorating human rights"

The government of South Africa has been way better than my expectation (apart from its idiotic view of AIDS). On the other hand I did not expect the level of apolitical criminal violence.

In hindsight I should have seen it coming. A short time before we left SA, our maid's boyfriend arrived at our house, with a stab wound in his side. We put him in our car and rushed him to the nearest hospital. ("Why not call 911" I hear my American friends say. Because I wanted to get him to hospital immediately, not sometime that week.) As we arrived at the emergency room curbside a hospital lifted his upper lip and looked at his gum. She said "Its too late". We went inside and after a wait the ER technician came out and told us he was dead. He had been killed for his jacket.

Criminal violence of this type is the order of the day in South Africa. My white ex-compatriots continue to live privileged economic lives, and make inordinate amounts of money, while living in beautiful houses surrounded by high walls and electrified barbed wire fences, while they and the less fortunate continue to be killed or robbed simply because they have something that that others want.

I understand, now, why this has happened. A generation or more more of Black South Africans missed years of schooling and are unemployed and unemployable. To survive, they rob, steal from, and kill the more fortunate. The policies of the government offer them no hope. Violence for them is the only means of survival.

So - I know now that I was right to move to the USA. The USA has been kind to me and my children. We all live in the same city. We feel safe. What more can be asked?

My solution for South Africa? I have none. Historically every redistribution of wealth and power anywhere has been accompanied by horrendous events - and the outcomes have been awful for many of the participants - on both sides.

Nelson Mandela has been an incredibly effective leader and has held the country somewhat together. What happens next I can neither prescribe nor foresee.

Its been snowing in Chicago!

Our Deck

The city - Lakeview

I attended a watercolor class(3)

The last three posts are my attempts from the last sessions I went to.

I attended a watercolor class,,,(2)

I attended a watercolor class...(1)

The underside of the web

This is what my link to the outside world looked like yesterday. All my phone lines and therefore DSL lines were killed by a backhoe. My trusty T-Mobile MDA provided enough connectivity for email and basic web browsing. I discovered that both Amazon and Ebay have phone-optimized interfaces - so now I can buy anything from anywhere. Cool, but dangerous.

Its not my fault - I am paying attention

Marked Brain Changes Afflict Even Senior Citizens Who Have Escaped Alzheimer's Disease
ScienceDaily (2007-11-07) -- Our brains, unlike the skin covering our bodies, do not wrinkle and sag as we age. But new studies show that our brains do change structurally and functionally in ways that may underlie the memory and thinking impairments that can limit independence and quality of life for senior citizens. Neuroscientists have recently discovered that the region of the brain that stores episodic memories -- those for specific events and their context -- was less engaged in older people, particularly those who have a common variant of a particular gene. Researchers also have determined that senior citizens who suspect that their sense of direction is declining are astute observers of a newly discovered age-related mental change.

Big Chunk Of The Universe Is Missing -- Again

ScienceDaily (2007-11-05) reports:

Not only has a large chunk of the universe thought to have been found in 2002 apparently gone missing again but it is taking some friends with it, according to new research. The new calculations might leave the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter than previously calculated. The same group that found what was theorized to be a significant fraction of the "missing mass" that binds together the universe has discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of "warm" gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons.

... and I think it is odd how often I lose my keys!

I have taken the plunge and joined Facebook

Hearing all the buzz about Facebook, I have belatedly joined it to see if its social networking can be used and useful and fun for someone like me who is way beyond the age of the target audience. If you don't know what it is, go here to check it out.

Another first wave of the future - Eye-Fi � Home

Eye-Fi � Home

Geopolitics of the Middle East

This fascinating map shows who controlled the Middle East over the last 5,000 years.

A pyramid scheme chain letter that is not bogus

I received a letter with the following text

"It really does only take a minute.
A favor to ask, it only takes a minute....
* I * * *Y
Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on 'donating a mammogram' for free (pink window in the middle).
This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors /advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.
Here's the web site! Pass it along to people you know.
The Breast Cancer Site"
AGAIN, PLEASE TELL 10 FRIENDS TO TELL 10 TODAY "

Being the good skeptic that I am, I immediately suspected a hoax - a social virus - so off I went to check it. Turns out it is true - see The Breast Cancer Site - Click to Donate Free Mammograms - Netlore Archive

So, visit the site and tell your friends!

Gymnastics, Photography and Paranoia

Yesterday I went to watch (and of course photograph) Abigail at her gymnastics class. The gym area had several signs up prohibiting entry to non-gymnasts, so I was photographing through the glass. Her instructor noticed me and invited me in. I sat down out of the way of the participants for a while, taking several shots. An officious lady arrived and informed me that photography in the gym area was prohibited. I protested. She insisted. This being private property, of of course had to comply. However, I cannot understand why officious people in so many places take action against photographers.

We went to Michigan City for a week with the family

We went to Michigan City for a week with the family. Of course, Michigan City is in Indiana, not Michigan. It is also a place for a Hawaii like vacation 60 miles from chicago. Weird.
This is what sunsets look like - the Chicago skyline from a straight line distance of about 40 miles.

I have moved my website to .mac and my blog to blogspot

Please let me know if something stops working. All went smoothly, I think. The biggest glitch was when I discovered that .mac does not accept FTP connections. The switch from a black background to white is intentional.

Downtown at last

After a week of dealing with the Social Security Administration and the IRS, we spent a great day downtown. Click on the picture to see a slideshow.

Master Class

We walked down to Ravinia to observe a Master Class at the Steans Institute for Young Artists.
It was a very interesting experience. The young artists were all, by normal human standards, outstanding musicians. They have won many competitions and appeared as soloists with major orchestras.
The class instructor demolished them (without malice). They are very brave to play a piece in front of an audience of a hundred people, and then have a very competent musician demolish their playing, including their posture, and their facial expression, and their technique, bar by bar, while the audience watched. It takes a lot of character to reach to top rungs of the music profession.
In the organizations in which I worked I was never given a performance appraisal in front of hundreds of my family and co-workers as well as total total strangers.

I've moved to SmugMug

After battling Flickr's format for a long time, I decided to consolidate my pictures on SmugMug. Moving the pictures across seemed to be a daunting task - until I found SmuggLr. This neat little tool copied all my pictures from Flickr to Smugmug in one fell swoop.
Now, all I need to do is find something that will move my Pbase pictures across, fix all links from my blogs to images on Flickr and Pbase, and clean up my home page. Don't hold your breath.

I went to a Workshop last week

01-Class Pics.jpg
Originally uploaded by chmoss

Last week I participated in a photographic workshop - "A Day In Our Life ." The workshop focussed on documentary photography, and was lead by B.D. Colen. I had a great time doing nothing but thinking, talking, and doing photography for a week.
Our main project was to find and document a day in the life of a family or individual in the local area - this put me way out of my comfort zone - I am not used to approaching total strangers and photographing them for a day, close up! I did do it, and the result of my day's work shooting 850 pictures and another half days work editing them down to 20 for the final story is now posted here.
As a side story, I took pictures of the class itself.

My first pencil drawing

I starting drawing lessons last week. I have not drawn anything since maybe 3rd grade. At the first class we were tasked to draw a skeleton in charcoal. Not my favorite subject. Yesterday our task was a pencil drawing of a face. This is supposed to be Jacob!

Surreal Israel

Originally uploaded by chmoss

I looked over my Israel trip pictures and noticed many of them had a surreal air - so I have selected a set that I call Surreal Israel

Israel trip record

We went to Israel in April - and it took me this long to finish editing my pictures. Click on the image above for the whole spiel.

Last night we attended the first performance of August:Osage County

We have a preview subscription at Steppenwolf. I enjoy the preview series for a few reasons:

• I do not need to have my opinions informed by professional critical reactions
• The actors are really up - the play's success depends on their reviews
• As a bonus, it costs less!

August:Osage County by Tracy Letts had only one flaw - I was not prepared for a 3 1/2 hour performance (including two intermissions). For the rest, it was a fine experience. The plot was well crafted, the dialog both believable and powerful, believable casting and performances well suited to the play.

This was one of those experiences that really made feel the privilege of living in Chicago, the greatest English language theater city in the world. Despite its length, and the unattractiveness of the protagonists, I and my family were engrossed. When we found out the length of the play, were all tempted to leave at the second intermission. We did not do so.

Last year we had a subscription at the Goodman Theater. I wanted to switch because I did not enjoy the plays that much - they were professional, polished, etc, etc - but never engaged me. Also, on a more basic level - I like the restaurants around Steppenwolf better. So far, we have won on both counts.

Last week we saw the Puppetmaster of Lodz at Writer's Theater - memorable performance, great theme, script needs work.

My First Drawing Lesson

My First Drawing Lesson
Originally uploaded by chmoss

So, today I started drawing lessons, courtesy of a gift certificate Hilda bought for me at a charity auction. Our first assignment - draw this skeleton. Hmmm,,,

The first bird I saw on our new(ish) bird feeder

The first bird I saw on our new(ish) bird feeder
Originally uploaded by chmoss

This the first bird I saw on our new, patented, squirrel-proof bird feeder - after about a month of adjusting and waiting!

Couples?

Couples?
Originally uploaded by chmoss

I have been busy with what people call "Life" so I have not been posting many pictures lately. I must do more to integrate "Life" with "Photography".

A 1950's lens in 2007

Abigail
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

My 35mm Summilux is off to Leica for 6-bit coding, so I am using a Canon 35mm f3.2 that was built in the early 1950s. Still looks very nice to me.

The Leica Freedom Train - A Journey to Freedom

A short video about the efforts of the E. Leitz Co. to help their Jewish employees.

Abigail in the park

abi 2x2
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

Abigail and I visited a park yesterday. We both had fun.

Jacob Reads Torah for the first time

Reading
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

My grandson, Jacob Bokor, read Torah at the Monday morning service at his school. This was his first time reading Torah as part of the service. He used ahis new "Yad" that we bought for him on our recent trip to Israel (Pics will be up soon).
We were all very proud of his performance.

Hopeful in Haifa

Our day began with a thunderstorm - a cloudburst, really. We set off North from Haifa to visit Acre (Acco), Rosh ha-Nikra, and a friend on the kibbutz Gesher ha-Ziv. We made only one wrong turn on the way.
I guess intelligent life without a GPS may actually be sustainable - but that is still an unproven hypothesis.
When we returned to Haifa we set off down the main drag of Carmel to find a kosher restaurant that served meat dishes. When we reached the end of apparent civilization and restaurants without finding anything other than coffee shops and fast food joints, mostly not kosher, we were, to put it mildly, surprised. We asked a doorman/guard at a hotel where we could find such a restaurant , and he directed us to an Argentinean steak house a short way off the main drag. There we had a very fine kosher steak meal, the size of which we justified by the few miles we walked to locate it and the subsequent walk home. The waitress informed us that they were the only kosher meat restaurant in Haifa. I suspect that this may have been a slight exaggeration, but close to true. Thus was shattered our illusion that eating kosher anywhere in Israel would be easy. It turns out that Haifa is just about the most secular of Israeli cities, and Carmel is the most secular area of Haifa.
Tomorrow morning we drive to Jerusalem, where there are more kosher restaurants.
This blog may pause for a while - we are going to a wedding tomorrow night, and I will need to find another wireless network access point for my phone

Digital Data Damnation

So, tonight I dumped the contents of my 2GB SD card containing two days shooting to my Epson 2000 - or at least I tried to do so. After about half the card was transferred, I got a disk full message. I checked the space available. Plenty. Pop the card back in the M8 and find that a couple of images are corrupt. Delete them. Try to copy again. Same thing - disk full. Try to copy a few at a time. Some give the same error message. Fortunately, most copy successfully. None of the lost images were very important.
Lesson learned. Use smaller cards and save to the hard drive more often. I have 2 1GB cards with me. I will stick with them for the rest of the trip.
I have used Compact Flash cards for several years with no problem - now I get a failure of an SD card within three weeks. I hope that this is not an omen.

We are in Israel

We arrived in Israel Thursday April 6 after a flight that was uneventful, except for a moment after we checked in when Delta agent demonstrated his concern for customers by jumping over the counter and beating up a passeger who groused a little too much about a late flight.
We spent a couple of days in Herzliya with my old friend Peter, and are now in Haifa with Hilda's family.
It is wonderful to be travelling without touring. We are just hanging out with friends and family - no serious sightseeing yet.
My new Leica M8 digital camera is behaving wondefully, despite my misgivings about travelling with a new camera.
I am posting this from my mobile phone - I have not remembered how to upload pictures to the blog from the phone. I forgot to research it before I left. I will try to find out.

Spring in Highland Park arrived, and nobody noticed

Originally uploaded by chmoss.

Spring arrived - I went out to get some pictures of people in spring in Highland Park. Everybody else stayed indoors, almost, The high was 79F - not enough to get peple outside. Very wierd.

More thoughts to live by

This has been widely posted, so I do not know how to properly attribute it - but I find it very funny and worth repeating. If it violates a copyright, please let me know.

• Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
• Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
• If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
• If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
• Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either; just leave me the heck alone.
• It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper that's the time to do it.
• Don't be irreplaceable; if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
• Give a man the fire and you'll keep him warm for one day. Set the man on fire -- and you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life.
• No one is listening until you make a mistake.
• Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.
• It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
• It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
• Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.
• Good judgement comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.
• There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
• Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your mouth is moving.
• Never miss a good chance to shut up.
• Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Severely edited subset of my pictures from India

Chinese nets

I have selected a few of my favorite pictures from our trip to India and put them up here on Flickr

Pictures from India

At last I have finished culling the pictures I took last December in India. Click on the image to see all of them.

We visited Poughkeepsie and Tenafly last week

Poughkeepsie was cold - below zero Fahrenheit. We visited our dear, old friend Brenda who had a massive stroke in January. Her recovery will be a long slow process. She has not regained her speech. It is very sad to see her in this state - she was a very active, vital person, now reduced to a vegetative state.

Digital Domesday Book lasts 15 years, not 1000

The "showcase for Britain's electronic prowess" - the Digital Domesday Book - has proven itself to be just that. Its is now unreadable, reported the Observer
in a recent article.
So, to preserve your records for posterity, you can:

• Print them using pigment based inks on your digital printer

or

• Put them up on a website and hope that a web archive project crawls your site. You can ask them to do so, and access the result with the Wayback Machine.

Molasses

I have had no time to edit/post any more India photos :( but I am still working on them. Watch this space ). It is amazing to me how much the details of running a life impede on time spent on hobbies. In retirement I thought that I would not need to manage my time efficiently. I would have at least 12 hours a day extra to do whatever I wished. Ha!
So, I have started organizing myself along the lines suggested by the "Getting things done" cult. So far, I feel much better. I have lots of lists of things I need to do. I do many of them every day. However, the harder I work at the lists, the behinder I get.
But...having lists of all things that I have not done is very liberating. I don't worry about them any more - except for taxes, and the market, and...

More pictures from India

I am slowly getting my India pictures posted online. This latest set is from the eleventh day AC (After Chicago), which corresponds to the 2nd day WB (With Bags).

I can't make Blogger show a picture now, so I will go with this text link.

This is the set from Agra

Propinquity - someone wants to bring the term into more general use

I am listening to a podcast by Dr. Karen Stephenson - she wants to get the word propinquity into more general use. Seems like a good idea to me. Propinquity is the foundation of functional mailing lists and internet groups.
Propinquity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

D-Wave Demonstrates First Quantum Computer: Practical Uses

This minor announcement may be equivalent of the first computer in 1837.
D-Wave Demonstrates First Quantum Computer: Practical Uses

The Build-a-War Workshop

At last the obvious has been officially discovered. Now it is time to throw them in jail. See The Build-a-War Workshop.

"The inspector general did not recommend criminal charges against Mr. Feith because Mr. Rumsfeld or his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, approved their subordinate’s “inappropriate” operations. The renegade intelligence buff said he was relieved."

But how about charges against Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney?

Microsoft Office 2007

Today I attended the launch event in Chicago for Microsoft Office 2007. Not very exciting. Very proprietary and server based. Their technology seems to have stood still for several years. Web based applications will do to Microsoft what Microsoft did to IBM.
This blog entry is being prepared as I wait for a train. They run every hour - I missed the last one by 5 minutes!

Back from India

We toured India for three weeks in December - hence the long break in posting. It is impossible for me to comprehend such a vast and diverse country in a three weeks - three years would be too short. The population of India is over three times that of the USA, The country about 1/3 the size of the USA.
Travelers from time immemorial have not hesitated to form opinions based on a short visit so I will conform to precedent.
I observed and felt:

• Tremendous diversity at all levels - like walking on a strange planet in a scene from the movie "Starwars"
  
• Huge disparities of wealth
• Spirituality in all aspects of life
• Public filth, personal cleanliness
  
• I was seeing the world as was 5,000 years ago
  

We visited Delhi, Jaipur, Ranthambore, Agra, Varanasi, Cochin, and Mumbai - and many points in between - we drove a lot. We did not see the high tech area in Bangalore.

My pictures are slowly being posted at:
http://clive.smugmug.com/Travel/274602