Julia's Dance Recital

Julia (on the left) danced at a Charity event. Click on the picture for a few more images.

Chicago's Rapid Warm-Up - from 0 to 60 degrees F in eighty hours

Who said Chicago is cold in winter?

From my favorite weatherman:

WGN Weather Center Blog: Chicago's Rapid Warm-Up

Happy New Year

I found this patriotic mailbox near my daughters house. Looks appropriate as a greeting card.

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

Interesting analysis of Apple vs Microsoft

This discussion by Daniel Eran is worth reading.

Full disclosure - I used an Apple II in the early 1980s, (as a portable would you believe - I schlepped it on planes in a large plywood box), an Apple III in 1982/83, Macs all the way to 1990 -- and hated them all.
I now own Apple stock, my wife's machine is an iMAC bought by me, and my next system (pun intended) will most likely be an Intel based MAC. The performance of the MAC was shackled by its poor price/performance before it switched to Intel chips, and the OS sucked before they moved to the Mach kernel/neXt based based, 64 bit Operating System. Now that I can use Parallels to run my old apps, I am switching - as soon as the next Mac Pro is available.

The elections came and went...

I did my bit, and the counters get the correct answer - even though the Senate count was a bit of a cliffhanger. Now let's see what happens in two years.

The elections are coming...

TV news has become so opinionated and paradoxically content free that comedians are taking over as the most credible source of news. I discovered long ago that simply stating truths in the simplest possible language causes people to laugh. I built a successful (at least successful enough for me) career on this phenomenon. I made recommendations, people laughed, then went away and did what I said, never knowing why they did it. It just felt good to them.

Honesty always feels good, if a little funny.

The good humor induced by honesty could explain the lack of humor exuded by our current administration. They are not honest - and dishonesty is never funny.

The Daily Show exploits the humor in unadulterated truth; so do many of the late night talk shows. Click here to see Barack Obama (who is smart and funny and truthful) on the Daily Show. It is a six minute video.

Unfortunately the American voting public has not valued smarts, humor, or honesty in recent elections. Similarly, many democracies elect leaders with none of these qualities. Simply because a majority in a geographic region vote for a leader does not guaranty that the elected leader will have any laudable qualities.

Fall in Chicago

Botanic Gardens - but click on the picture to get the real fall in Chicago.

Not your father's colonoscopy | CRAVE : The CNET Gadget Blog

Everybody my age should appreciate this device.
Not your father's colonoscopy | CRAVE : The CNET Gadget Blog

It gets weirder

Before attending the CSO concert this evening, we went to the rehearsal in the morning and the pre-concert lecture. Both were very interesting; however, I learned more about the story behind the music than is good for anybody's mental health.
The concert included works by Dvorák and Janacek. Both of them continued this weeks Chicago tradition of psychopathic stories about psychopathic characters. I commented on "The Pillowman" and "Salome" earlier this week.

The Dvorák piece (The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109) tells of a young king who falls in love with a girl. She is murdered and dismembered by her stepmother who sends her own daughter off to marry the king. The girl's feet, hands, and eyes are later sent along to the king’s castle. An old man finds the rest of her remains and undertakes a makeover process that involves a golden spinning wheel. After much mucking around, the king races to the forest where he finds the original girl alive and well after the makeover! "Although the King has the murderers torn apart by wolves, Dvořák’s ending is uncomplicated and unequivocally happy." In summary this is how Phillip Huscher (the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) describes the work. Honest. I could not make this up.

"Jenůfa is Janáček's tragic tale of repression, infanticide, and redemption" says the teaser on the CSO website. No kidding. We saw act II (no redemption yet). Here, the step-mother kills her daughter's illegitimate child who was fathered by her nephew whose older brother slashed the daughter's face because he was in love with her and he did not want his brother to be married to her while she was beautiful. As a reward, the step-mother offers the daughter to the slashing brother as a bride.

What has gotten into the producers of Chicago art this week? Halloween, maybe?

Talking about wierd art...

... tonight we went to the new Chicago Lyric Opera performance of "Salome" by Richard Strauss. Last Sunday we saw "The Pillowman" by Martin McDonagh at the Steppenwolf Theatre.

First things first, the Pillowman was billed as a "dark comedy". It is much more dark than comedy. The plot is a tad implausible - but not really. It explores the mind of the psychopath (all the characters are indeed psychopaths) and as a result it appears to be implausible - but that is what psychopathic minds are - they see the implausible as plausible. "The Pillowman" draws one into the minds of psychopaths and treats them as if they are almost normal, but a little odd.

I often said (when I was gainfully employed) that I did not know what I thought until I wrote it down. This blog entry is a prime example of that. I started off intending the slam "The Pillowman" as an over the top piece of writing that delivered neither insight nor amusement. By writing what I thought, I discovered that it did indeed deliver insight - but its amusement quotient is, to me, still fairly low. So, if you want insight with minimal amusement, go see "The Pillowman." Be warned - the writer is a poor editor - the work runs for 2 1/2 hours - way too long.

"Salome" is, of course, a classic. It is also a tad tedious. Some of the music is, well, musical. Much of it sounds like Strauss trying to be Wagner, but never reaching the gut emotional impact that Wagner delivers. The "Dance of the Seven Veils" for me always raises the memory of Peter Sellers and "The Dance of the Seven Army Surplus Blankets." This sort of dilutes the emotional impact of the moment. The Dilbert book "Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy" also came to mind all to often. Despite being based on Oscar Wilde's play, Salome delivered no insights to me. I am a big time fan of Oscar Wilde's works, but the mix of Germanic music and Irish wit just does not work. Mercifully, it was over in 105 minutes with no intermission.

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day
WOW is all I can say. Congratulations and best wishes to
Scott Adams

I was rained on today...

... which is not unusual - but what was unusual is that I was walking down my favorite trail (cell phone picture below)...

... listening to recent Podcasts. iTunes has a weekly podcast covering new music that they have added to their site. I listen to it to keep in touch with current pop music. Rod Stewart has made a recording of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Have You Ever Seen the Rain". As the chorus started, I felt the first drop of water on my face. Very odd.

Bio: First Memories

My Memory:
I am on a balcony overlooking a beach. A large warplane flies overhead, very noisily, very close. It makes me cry. With an open mouth I create a large blob of chocolate on my mother's white blouse. My mother is upset about the blob.

Factual Background:
I was born in a seaside town in the Cape Province, South Africa. I lived in that town for the first four years of my life, which was during the period now (2006) known as the "Second World War". Hopefully, it will become known as the "Last World War". This note obfuscates the name of the town to delay identity thieves.

I recently visited the town, and the view agrees with my childhood memory. I have never discussed this memory with my mother, so it not a memory that has been reinforced by repetition.

Bio: Preface - Autobiography

It has occurred to me that I have reached an age at which a memoir should be published. It has also occurred to me that nobody really wants to read my memoir, and that I am very unlikely to find a publisher that would pay me for a memoir. So I must publish it on a low cost forum - like here :-)

I shall begin publishing little bits of my memories here. My only justification for doing so is that I wish my ancestors had left me something that let me understand what they thought. These comments may be of little value now - but to future historians digging through internet archives they may provide some glimmer of what people (a person, plus whatever comments this blog attracts, if any) thought. They may also be interesting to my descendents.

The event that prompted me to start this was a radio show (or podcast - I forget which) on the topic of writing. The comment (obvious in retrospect) was that the best way to write 300,000 words was 1,000 words at a time.

I have no word count target - I just want to write what I remember. I do not want the only recorded memory of my life to be an inscription on a gravestone and a large volume of corporate and governmental records. Maybe nobody will read my account - but it will give me satisfaction.

To ease my future editing, I will prefix each memoir item with the characters "Bio:" followed by a possible chapter title. I do not expect chapter titles to gel for a while, so I feel free to change the entries over time.

Comments are solicited, welcomed, but may not be acted upon. These are my memoirs, after all.

Who needs a digital camera, anyhow?

I have recently added a Nikon Coolscan V to my scanner collection. I have been using a Konica-Minolta DiMage Scan Dual IV which I bought a while ago because it was cheaper than the Nikon. What a mistake that was. The DiMage works well enough, but the Nikon is way superior for my way of working. Three major advantages:

• Digital ICE removes dust automagically
• No need to mount slides and film strips in a holder. Just pop them in the front of the box.
• Digital ICE removes dust automagically
• The scans look way better than the DiMage when running on auto-everything. I prefer to work this way, and fix things in Photoshop afterwards. The Nikon scans need very little correction compared to the DiMage
• Did I mention digital ICE removes dust and scratches?

There are three kinds of mathematicians in this world:

1. Those who can count.
2. Those who cannot count.

Leica M6 + Nikon Coolscan V = Leica M8 - $4500

Iphigénie - Staged on a set made for Philip Glass

Last night we saw Iphigenie en Tauride by Gluck at the Lyric Operaa Theatre in Chicago. The performance was brilliantly staged and visually stunning, despite (or, more correctly, because of) the stark simplicity of the set and the costumes. Black and white, broken only by skin tones. The production made brilliant use of lighting and shadows to transform the three panes of blackboard panels into a larger than life son et lumiere show emphasising and punctuating the stage action.
A great start to the new season.

Abigail

Abigail
Originally uploaded by chmoss.

Abigail and her dolls.

Millenium Park skyline

Why I love Chicago

PEW (Picture Every Whenever)

This is the first in a new series I am starting to get myself over the photography blahs - you know - when you look at all your pictures and the best emotion they ever elicit is "Blah". They will have no titles, and no justification, other than I took it, I posted it.

Greece Travel Album

Some of our pictures from Greece are here

Back from Greece - and we went to the Circus

We are back from our visit to Greece - pics will be up soon. We took Jacob and Julia to the Shanghai Circus - remarkable gymnasts and trapeze artists, no animals.

Abigail had her Third Birthday

Abigail turned three and is very happy to have done so. Click on the link to see pictures of the party.

A Johannesburg blog

This blog shows photographs of the side of Johannesburg that is not usually presented in the travel pages, or seen by tourists. Note that these images are not taken in the bad slums - they are images of what used to be middle class living areas. I lived in Yeoville for several years as a child, and our first apartments after we married were in the same area.

Zen Thoughts to live by

• 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 pretty much leave me the hell alone.
• The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.
• It’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbors’ newspaper, that’s the time to do it.
• Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
• Always remember that you’re unique. Just like everyone else.
• Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
• If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
• 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.
• If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
• 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 you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
• Some days you’re the bug; some days you’re the windshield.
• Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
• The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
• A closed mouth gathers no foot.
• Duct tape is like ‘The Force’. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
• There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
• Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are moving.
• Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
• Never miss a good chance to shut up.
• Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Mr and Mrs Magoo drive to Boston

So, on the last Tuesday in June we set off for Boston by car for a family Batmitzvah. We had planned to sleep in downtown Chicago overnight to avoid the morning rush-hour traffic. As we left our driveway at about 3 pm, both Mr and Mrs M. Simultaneously realized that we could get a head start on the trip by driving right though Chicago and sleeping somewhere in Ohio. This we did, after struggling though the evening rush hour traffic out of Chicago.

The next morning we set off bright and early. We stopped for an awful breakfast/lunch in some nameless and characterless decaying industrial city. This was unusual - we almost always can identify great little places to eat. It may have been an omen.
I do most of the driving, keeping Mrs. M in reserve for my drowsy time. I was getting tired, so she took over shortly after lunch.

We were tootling (its a word - look it up) along the New York State Thruway (sic) listening to a set of lectures on tape about ancient Greek History when suddenly traffic came to an almost screeching halt near Syracuse, New York. It took about 30 minutes to get to the off ramp to discover what was the problem. The Thruway was closed from Syracuse to Schenectady (about 120 miles) due to flooding. An inquiry at the toll booth confirmed that US 20 which runs almost parallel to the Thruway was also impassable. "Go South" we were advised, so we set off down I-81. Soon we came upon a sign that said that I-81 was closed from Exit 4 to the Pennsylvania border, and closed in Pennsylvania all the way to Wilkes-Barre (pronounced very oddly as Wilksbury).

No problem. Mr and Mrs M. headed up I-88 in the hope that we could get to rejoin the Thruway near Albany. About 32 miles in, near a town called Sidney, we came to yet another closure. The local gendarme directing traffic was not very helpful about where we should head. "Find a motel and sleep until its over" was his best advice. "The road ahead is washed away and two truckers died trying to get through".
Hmmm. Sidney - we have friends there - oops, that's in Australia, and its spelled differently. We were not that lost. A quick consult with a map gave us hope that we could go back down I-88 and take New York State Route 17 to I-84. SR-17 had to be open because it went though the mountains past Catskill State Park, where we used to camp in the summer. Nothing to flood there. I-84 became a magnet - we had used it many times before.

It was about this time that Mrs. M. called our oldest daughter and was given the comforting thought that we sounded like Mr and Mrs Magoo bumbling around the USA. This sympathetic comment came from a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who specialized in Geriatric Care.
Anyhow, we retreated back down I-88 to SR-17, and found that it too was closed, with no passable bypasses around the closure.
Undeterred, we headed back down I-81 trying to get to I-84. We found that the previously closed section was now open and we took I-84 to Newburgh and tried to find a hotel. More hmmm -- hotels were a tad full - 200,000 people had been evacuated from Wilkes-Barre and Port Jervis, and some of them had opted for hotels rather than the public spaces that the authorities suggested.

We finally ended up in Fishkill, New York at 11pm.
All in all, our trip was only about 200 miles and 5 hours longer than it should have been - but time passes slowly for the Magoos.

Cell Phones Make Drivers as Bad as Drunks

LiveScience.com - Cell Phones Make Drivers as Bad as Drunks

Hands-free or not, drinking is less dangeraous than talking while driving.

As Abe Lincoln said: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"

Its a dog's life

This is what happens when you take a Havanese for a walk in wet grass. Bernie is Karen's dog. 

Just for all who think Chicago is aways cold and windy

This was snapped a couple of days ago less than a mile from "The Loop", Chicago's downtown shopping and financial district. 

Father’s Day Gift Guide: Recommendations and Tips for the Best Presents

Just in case anyone needs to know:
ConsumerReports.org - Father’s Day Gift Guide: Recommendations and Tips for the Best Presents

Julia's dance recital

Julia (on right) worked hard to rehearse for her studio's annual recital. The rest of the snaps are here.

Seminordnilap

This is my entry for this Monday's Streetphoto forum bi-weekly Salon. The theme for this fortnight is "Seminordnilap". Sort of like palindromes, but backwards.
Other pics I considered entering are here, together with a better definition of the concept.

Jacob discovers that a camera is a chick magnet (or maybe not)

Yesterday I went to meet my grandson Jacob's class at a farm that allows city kids to meet farm animals up close and personal. When we arrived, he asked me if I had brought his camera with (I gave him one of my "obsolete" digitals a few weeks ago, and he is not yet accustomed to taking it everywhere). I said I had not, and he asked plaintively if I had one of mine that he could use. I cheerfully surrendered a Fuji F11, remembering how much I had enjoyed taking snaps when I was eight (using a Kodak Box Brownie).
I have posted all of his pics here. He did a much better job than I at capturing the spirit of the day.

A new alternative fuel?

Yesterday we pumped up our bicycle wheels and took advantage of the glorious spring weather by riding to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. At the garden I ate a bowl of oatmeal with milk, butter and sugar - cost $1.50 for about an 8 oz serving. Our total riding distance was about 11 miles. So, we got about 11 miles per bowl, which is equivalent to 176 miles per gallon of oatmeal.
This sounds great on the surface - but a gallon of oatmeal would cost $24.00.
A better measure would be cost per mile - the result is:
Oatmeal+Bicycle: $0.136
Gas +Automobile: $0.143
This is a wash - but oatmeal has less impact on the environment, so it wins overall.

Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

My daughter Karen (on the right) and her friend Wendy.
We are very proud of Karen and Wendy. This weekend they took part in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Karen raised over three thousand dollars for breast cancer research and treatment. A heartfelt thank you goes to all who contributed to this total.
Karen walked a marathon and a half - 39 miles - over a two day period with her friend Wendy and over three thousand fellow walkers. In all they raised over eight million dollars.
Wendy's mother succumbed to breast cancer fourteen years ago.
Karen's donor page is here if you would like to make a donation.
For more pictures, click here or on the image on the left.

Stratford, Ontario

We visited Stratford, Ontario. Three days. Four swans. Four plays. Coriolanus, Much Ado about Nothing, London Assurance, The Glass Menagerie.
I preferred the swans.