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January 30, 2006

Group effort

Working together as team with no “I” in sight these four blurbs make up a single post. Let us applaud their selflessness.

• I received an e-mail today congratulating Ascent Stage on being a rare Googlewhack, a search result wherein two terms exist only on that page. My whackedness? Jabberwockys and biosphere. Not jabberwocky singular, mind you; that returns lots of results. But the plural plus biopshere is all mine, baby.
• Coming home from Sunday dinner at my sister’s last night I spotted a Macintosh G4 sitting, crying really, in the middle of our alley. As my wife recounted to me later — I blacked out a bit in excitement — I swerved into our garage nailing a few lawn chairs and boxes, jumped out of the car without shutting the engine off, and neglected the children in their seats to save the lonely tower. It has no video output and something in it shakes around, but everything is where it should be: HD, memory, chip, etc. It is almost certainly hot as it has Property Control bar code on it, but if I found it in the alley it’s mine right? I mean, this is the law of the street. The alleydwellers who pilfer our trash are part of our ecosystem. We don’t call them thieves. How do I get this thing repaired without getting thrown in jail?
• As I have a Marco Polo-esque (perhaps Alexander-esque?) series of travels coming up I have ripped a bunch of DVD’s to my laptop hard drive. Really this was a series of tests on the Mac and PC to see what’s the best way to do it en masse. The short answer is that it is a !@*&load harder to do than MP3’s. Sony, for instance, renowned for being reasonable in their anti-copying efforts, load their DVD’s up with blank dummy cells that throw most rippers for a loop. This is surmountable, but only after hours of corrupt ripping and a healthy dose of cussing.
• I’ve begun blogging internally inside IBM. Like I need another timesuck, but hey I gotta tell some people the stuff I can’t tell the loyal readers of Ascent Stage (yet)!

Posted at 7:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Notes

January 29, 2006

Spring Fest

Chinese around the world today welcome the Year of the Dog during Lunar New Year festivities. By some accounts the transit of people inside the PRC to see loved ones for the long holiday is the largest migration of people on the planet. If the density of human bodies in airports and rail stations when it isn’t Chinese New Year is any indication, these accounts are to be believed.

I’ll be in China frequently this year with dispatches posted here accordingly. Here’s hoping Year 4703 is a prosperous and happy one!

Posted at 4:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China

January 28, 2006

Six words, seven heros, twenty years

“Challenger, you are go for throttle-up.”

January 28, 1986

Posted at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Space

January 27, 2006

≠ Constantinople

I’m headed to Istanbul for work next week. My first time there. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has visited and not been bowled over by the place. Having travelled extensively in Europe and moderately in the Middle East and being a lover of nearly everything Mediterranean I am more than a little excited. I’m still trolling for tips on things to do. I’ll have an entire day to myself and I plan to make the most of it. For one, I’ll be searching for an authentic Turkish bath house — a task made a little easier because of some tips I received at the Turkish consulate today.

And there you have a key difference between the Turkish consulate and its Egyptian and Chinese counterparts. The Egyptian consulate (at least in Chicago) verily prints money from travellers with their bizarre fee structure and impersonal, single bank teller-like operation. The Chinese consulate, in contrast, is massive and patrolled (currently against Falun Gong protesters). Remarkably the Chinese have brought all the splendor of Maoist architecture to the interior of their Chicago offices. By the time you reach the window you’re ready to be collectivized. And do not mess with the schoolmarmish window attendant. I believe you will lose your pinky for doing so. (I wonder if consulates, like DC embassies, are technically on foreign soil and obey foreign laws?)

But the Turkish consulate was different. Open, airy, and not unlike a travel agent office. The clerk greeted me personally and led me to his office to fill out the paperwork. The detail so craved in other visa applications seemed secondary. I figured I would have to pay an expedite fee just to get my visa (and passport!) back on the day I left. But he asked if I would like it back at noon. Regular cost. Hey sure.

When I returned later in the day the clerk asked me to have a seat and tell me why I was going to Turkey. (I had no time, but I did anyway.) He was the nicest old guy, giving me tips and telling me that, unlike Chicago cops who love to ticket out-of-towners — he specifically said people from Wisconsin — Istanbul cops love foreigners. In retrospect I think he was either encouraging me to commit a crime in Turkey or testing to see if I was a criminal seeking asylum in his country. From this discussion came the Turkish bath recommendation. Not a tourist bath house, mind you, but where the locals go. No English spoken.

Perfect. Just what you want when surrounded by naked men.

Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?

Posted at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Travel

Globalization

T+ 1 hour since bedtime. Four-year-old comes tramping down the stairs. Wife asks him why he keeps getting out of bed.

“Because I have things to tell you.”

She says, “Please save these things for morning.”

Pause. Thinking. He rejoins, “But it’s morning in China.”

And this is, yet again, why I am not the best at discipline. I crumble in the face of genius or creativity. I’m also ashamed to admit that he probably derived that bit of logic from my morning declarations of “it’s happy hour somewhere, glug-glug.” (Kidding. I don’t drink in the morning. Usually.)

Posted at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things

January 26, 2006

Entropy of winter

I’m of what you might call the local school of meteorology. Yes, yes, I understand that butterflies cause nasty weather halfway around the globe and that my Right Guard has carved a hole in Earth’s jacket of O₃. And I understand that tornados do not actually chase people nor hurricanes punish communities for being un-Christian. Yet, I can’t shake the sense that weather behaves locally.

For example, consider the bizarre mid-winter temperature spike here in Chicago.

Weather, being just a manifestation of energy, obeys the first law of thermodynamics and so it follows that weather, like energy, is not created or destroyed, just moved around. A scientist would tell you that someplace else in the world is getting screwed because Chicago weather was so different in January.

But not me. I’m more local. I don’t trust the balmy weather because I know the conservation of energy is local to Chicago. Why would the weather gods punish anyone but us for our high-energy month? We’ll suffer a below-zero March or four feet of snow in April. Chicago weather punishes its own. We’re part of a closed system. Bundle up!

Posted at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Chicago

January 25, 2006

Where are they now?

It isn’t an overstatement to say that my life would be different if not for Anucha Browne-Sanders. According to the headlines today I’m guessing Isiah Thomas might say the same thing. Anucha used to work for IBM and she brought me my very first project, what became the State Hermitage Museum website and the thousands of digitized images on it. Anucha was larger than life to me. Fresh out of grad school I was naive and eager where Anucha was bold and forthright. She had heard of my group’s work and so she brought an IBM executive down from New York to see if we actually had the goods to deliver. We did and I went to Russia with Anucha and the rest is a history that I consistently mark as my professional beginning.

So now she and Isiah Thomas take their quarrel to the public. I really never liked that guy, but who knows. Guess I’ll follow it in the press like everyone else.

Posted at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Work

Formula

Like a zoologist giddy with insight after long weeks of observing primates in the jungle, I have had a breakthrough. I will now share with you one of the secrets of parenting.

1. If the two-year-old is silent he is about to do something bad.
2. If he is laughing he is currently doing something bad.
3. If he is crying he just finished doing something bad.

Use these non-visual clues to establish your own timeline of wrongdoing and tailor your parental strategy accordingly.

Posted at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things

January 23, 2006

Matera

The most interesting city in Italy, in my opinion, is not even on 5% of tourist itineraries. Matera is a gem protected by being nowhere near the sea or a navigable waterway in a region, Basilicata, which is still struggling to shed the image of bumpkin backwardness held by its northern Italian compatriots. Matera was centuries-old before Rome was founded and is known primarily for i sassi, troglodytic caves carved from the soft rock of the hillside. It is impossible to tell where the hill leaves off and man-made structures begin. Carlo Levi famously exposed the plight of the impoverished populace of Matera and Basilicata in Christ Stopped at Eboli and since then things have improved. The Italian government moved residents out of the caves a few decades ago and set about to rehabilitate and modernize them. Though most of the caves are abandoned, some Materans are now moving back in, some own them as storage, and at least one hotel exists built into the rock.

Now comes word that Matera has a new use for the rock-hewn dwellings: data-haven. A company called Datacontact is using the caves to house their servers and a call center. It makes some sense. Physically the servers could not be better protected inside the mountain. Though in a tectonically active area, the sassi have survived in their current form for over a millennia. Geographically too the placement is sensible. Labor is plentiful in Basilicata marginale, as regional natives mockingly call themselves. One hopes that this geographic marginalization (and associated prejudices that accompany it) will matter less in a the virtual world of telecommunications. After all, in a network there is no such thing as a margin.

And lastly a cookbook recommendation: A Mediterranean Feast. Got this as a Christmas present and it is a wonderful introduction to the food of the whole region. Southern Italy, being a cross-roads of the Mediterranean, is a hodgepodge of cultures and influences not known in the more European northern regions of Italy. Greek, Roman, Norman, Albanian (more on that later!), Spanish, Muslim — all mixed together. So this cookbook, as a much a regional history as a culinary guide, is particularly illuminating about the myriad influences that define Basilicatan cuisine. This weekend I made Lucanian roast chicken with homemade wheat pasta. But really that was just an excuse to try Mark’s reconstituted apricot tart recipe. Apricots, of course, being a favorite fruit in Egypt and so wonderfully in keeping with my OCD-like focus on the Mediterranean basin. Tip #1: add some orange juice and even a splash of sweet liqueur to the water that will rejuvenate the dried apricots overnight. Tip #2: Don’t try to force wheat pasta through a capellini-sized extruder die. The wheat is too dense and the angel hair holes too small. Your machine will blow up. Trust me.

You may notice that this entry belongs to a new blog category, sub-category really, called Basilicata. I’ll be posting more on this region throughout the year. Though there’s been one travelogue written on the region recently, the instep of the boot is fascinating and unknown to most. Just like Ascent Stage.

Posted at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Basilicata

January 20, 2006

Three weeks until Torino

Really I was looking for an excuse to post this photo from a transalpine flight of a few years back, but the Olympics are three weeks away. I can’t wait to see how many countrymen take home the Olympic donut.

Posted at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: I Like

January 17, 2006

Guilt-free flatulence

My oldest son has manners, damnit. The kid is just polite. Bless you, thank you, may I? And when he farts, well, he’s quick with a “scoo-me” which is the “excuse me” apology for those with little time for extra syllables. Problem is, he’s too polite about it. For some reason he thinks that every part of the fart — every discrete fart quanta, if you will — must be separately excused. Imagine if you will (and please pardon the excursion into the vulgar if you don’t have kids) a child gatlin-gunning flatulence which bystanders cannot hear while saying “scoo-me scoo-me …. scoo-me” for each occurence. (At least he no longer calls the act “passing gassing”. That was just unbearably cute.)

Worse, he thinks he must do it no matter when it happens. He’ll be mid-sentence: “I was swinging at — scoo-me — the park — scoo-me scoo-me — and this kid walked in front — scoo-me — of me …” It is out of control. How out of control? Well, when he’s pooping behind a closed bathroom door you will hear the poor Emily Post mutant crooning scoo-me as he actually defecates. That’s just wrong. The crapper is sacrosanct. Do what you will in there with no repercussions, son. It is your temporary kingdom.

We have told him this. But he’s just so damn polite. Scoo-me.

Posted at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things

January 16, 2006

I caffè dei sorrisi

Smile, you’re drinking authentic Italian capuccino. (Rionero in Vulture, Italy, 2003)

(The site was getting too text-heavy, OK? Had to break it up a bit.)

Posted at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Italy

Conferences call

Gonna be at a couple of conferences in March. If you’re attending and want to meet up, drop me a line.

March 11-14, South by Southwest, Austin. Very first panel. Yeah there’ll be tons of people there.

March 22-25, Museums and the Web, Albuquerque. No paper this year (and no Best of the Web!), just glad to observe for a change.

Oh, also, the video from my presentation at UCLA is available online. Prepare to be rivetted to your seat.

Posted at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Work

Get in here before we both starve!

In all the RSS retooling I forgot to mention that the original site feed (no comments, no marginalia) has changed. If you follow Ascent Stage in a newsreader and you want this feed please make sure to subscribe to http://www.ascentstage.com/atom.xml. All other feeds are at the bottom of the home page.

Posted at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Housekeeping

Less than a million little pieces

Some things I’m liking lately. (I swear this is all true.)

• iTunes 6.0.2 contains a barely-documented feature (see image near bottom) that I am really loving. iTunes can now stream music wirelessly to multiple Airport Express units running firmware 6.3 or, if you have only one, it can play music from your computer simultaneously with the remote speakers. Shoulda been possible originally, but hey I’ll take it. This is basically the Sonos system without the custom network, custom controller, and powered speakers in every room.
• Gigabit Ethernet ‘tween ThinkPad, Powermac, and Lacie network hard drive. File transfer bliss. Just getting the plumbing right before embarking on mass DVD-ripping.
• Picasa. Hey, I bought iLife ‘06 merely for the new iPhoto and it is good. But Picasa, Google’s desktop image catalog, is even better — and free.
• Chandler 0.6. This is the best ical-compatible calendar app for PC that is available. Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird has made virtually no public progress in the last nine months so I started looking around. Not sure if Chandler will make it — and it is a fairly unselfconscious rip-off of Apple’s iCal, but for now it does the job.
• LinkedIn. Social networking/contact management. You know you’re a loser when you join an online networking site because you see your friend using it, rather than being invited by one of the hundreds of people you know who are already on it. I’m off the grid!

Posted at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Notes

January 13, 2006

Putting the kids to bed

Two tips.

1. When exploring the novelty of bathing your children in the master bathroom tub — a novelty because it is a jacuzzi-style tub with jets — be sure to check the cleanliness of said jets before turning them on. After I had recently finished soaping the boys we thought it was time to churn the water a bit so … rumble rumble … up powered the jets. And out spewed chunks of mildew fragments, breaking the surface of the water like so many moldy sub-launched ICBM’s and leaving the boys looking like they’d just had a brussel sprouts fight.
2. Check the fishtank in the child’s bedroom for dead/dying marine life before letting him approach for the nighly feeding. You never know when the mundane task of apathetically flushing another dead fishie down the toilet will become a moment of sobbing emotional catharsis. Enough Nemo- or Bambi-viewings and sooner or later the kid will understand that a dead pet is not coming back. My oldest son dropped to his knees, sopping, bawling, and covered in mildew spew, folded his hands heavenward and immediately began telling his recently-deceased great-grandfather how to take care of Fred the fish. (Who knew the kid had even named it?)

Thank me later.

Posted at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things

January 9, 2006

Pasta as pastime

I am able to screw up cooking a meal even when I follow the recipe precisely so it was particularly foolhardy of me to get a jump on my new year resolution to cook more by trying to put together dinner Saturday night based on a short narrative passage in a travelogue. But since I had the kids without wifely backup I decided to at least fill the time with enough potential for mess and chaos as to keep them interested.

Tip: if you have kids and a pasta machine, use it. My boys loved it. Making pasta is hard to screw up in a machine*. Just pour in flour, some eggs, optional dry ingredients and then watch it ooze out of the template you screw on. It looks somewhat excretory or vermiculate or both, which of course is nothing but fun for little kids. Pulling the strands and cutting them off with scissors also scores high marks. How often do you get to use arts and crafts supplies in the kitchen? Next up: Elmer’s Glue.

We made the pasta, called lagane, a type of wide strand noodle from the Basilicata region, out of wheat flour for inclusion in a simple sauce also from the region. Actually everything from Basilicata is simple. It is the most poverty-stricken part of the country (which is why so many of its people emigrated, thanks great-grandpa!) and so recipes are always simple, if sometimes unfamiliar. Great for a guy trying to learn to cook. The sauce was comprised of olive oil, garlic, chili peppers (always in dishes from Basilicata), tomatoes, walnuts, and basil. Turned out wonderful.

The other, riskier dish culled from the travelogue mentioned above is called ciambutella, a kind of omelette of Italian sausage (and pancetta, but we had none), peppers, zucchini, potatoes, onion, tomatoes, olive oil, herbs, and of course eggs. You eat it on cross-sections of crusty bread, like bruschetta or crostini. My guess is that I should have doubled the egg quantity as it seemed to be little more than cooked veggies with sausage. Not bad, of course, especially with the pasta dish, but still.

Lastly, a real crowd-pleaser (remember my crowd): R2D2 Treats. Half of a banana covered in melted white chocolate and chopped peanuts and flanked by two pieces of Kit Kat. This is the droid you are looking for.

Please note: my new year resolution did not include cleaning up the kitchen after cooking.

[*] Unless the machine fails to turn on. At which point I considered panic as the children were all geared up for pasta and the only way to do it was manually. Hand-cutting pasta is only slightly more fun than peeling a carrot with a fork. A Fonzie-like thwack on the side started the unit, thank god.

Posted at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Basilicata | Topic: Food

January 8, 2006

La Befana

Today the main Catholic church in Chicago’s Little Italy celebrated La Befana, the good witch of the epiphany. The story goes that Befana was a little old lady who took the three kings in for a meal and rest on their way to Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. They asked her to join them but being too busy with housework she declined, only later realizing that she had missed an opportunity to witness the birth of the savior. So she packed up some gifts and set out to find them and the baby, but she never did and continues wandering the earth (a bit creepy, no?) depositing gifts in children’s stockings to make up for missing Christ’s birth. Typically the gifts are treats of some kind. Even the coal is sweet.

For our family, La Befana marks the end of exactly one month of gift-giving mayhem. It starts on Dec. 6. with the Dutch tradition of putting out shoes for St. Nicholas moves through the pagan-Christian-consumerist Christmas festivities and ends with the Italian tradition of La Befana. Phew. Multiculturalism is tiring.

See also: The Legend of Old Befana by Tomie De Paolo, a great kid’s book.

Posted at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Italy

January 7, 2006

Stork

Confronted with the double-whammy of having to explain to our sons that there was a new baby coming and that the nanny wouldn’t be around as much, we chose the easier of the two. Sat ‘em on the couch, pulled up mommy’s shirt (my job) and said, “Boys, mommy has a baby in her tummy.” Blank stares. “Guys, you are going to have a new brother or sister soon.”

“When?” As in, like later today or tomorrow morning? “In May.”

“Oh, that’s great. Can we see?” Now both are off the couch, poking, prodding the belly. The youngest thinks the belly button is the baby.

Then … the question. “So, how did it get in there?”

Mommy lunges for her stack of baby books. Index, index — “Babies, questions on where they come from” — damnit, where is the index?!

I rock back and start in my best 1950’s public service ad narrator’s voice, “well, son, when a man and a woman love each other very much —”

OH NO OH NO! I HAVE TO GO POOPY RIGHT NOW! He darts off for the toilet and completely forgets his question.

Saved by a crap attack. Isn’t it wonderful?

Posted at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Topic: The Darnedest Things

Feedbag

Turns out the new blog + marginalia feed was not updating. Should be fine now. Also, by popular request I have added a feed that contains blog posts plus reader comments. Happy feeding.

Posted at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Housekeeping

January 6, 2006

Resolved 2006

Recently I have encountered a few people violently opposed to new year resolutions. They say, what’s so special about January 1? If you want to change yourself just do. Or they say, resolutions set you up for failure. Change should be gradual and flexible.

OK, fine. But I like to make lists, especially those that I can cross stuff off of. So maybe what I really like is unmaking lists. Here’s the list to be undone for 2006.

1. Cook. I like to cook, but I have been cursed with a wife who is both more willing and more skilled at doing so. If only she’d let me do it more often. A few of the blogs I read are by cooks, amateur and professional, so I have resources and inspiration. Pass the olive oil!
2. Visit San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, or Santa Fe, all US cities I have never been to.
3. Rip DVD collection. A much more daunting task in practice (if not in volume) than the CD collection. Decryption, dumping of extraneous video material, figuring out the best format for playback, getting the video from the server to the TV, and of course the immense storage requirements. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but the final push was purely practical: our kids have already destroyed one DVD player and one CD player and we’re constantly washing their drool, half-chewed meals, and finger muck off of the actual discs. Ain’t nothing to touch on a video server.
4. Get to know the south side of Chicago. Lots of hidden architectural gems and great parks, not to mention restaurants and clubs, down there. If it was good enough for the 1893 Expo it is good enough for me.
5. Look into Italian dual-citizenship. My father and my siblings are all eligible. Still debating the merits of this, but I am sure it will smooth the path to my dream of owning a villa in southern Italy. Of course, it also opens up political possibilities.
6. Shave head. Or at least near-shaved. The cruel irony of male hair loss is that the more you lose the more often you have to get your haircut so as not to look like you are growing for the combover. There’s certainly maintenance involved in a shaved head, but at least there’s no mistaking my intentions.
7. Visit Xian, China. Should be easy given my travel to China. Gotta have some “safety” resolutions.
8. Find Jim LoBianco. My roommate from study in Rome in 1993. In the seminary at the time, most likely ordained now. Why can’t the interweb help me find him? May need to appeal to higher powers in the search.
9. Run a half-marathon. Once upon a time I regularly ran 25 miles a week. And then the midget squad arrived and my mileage plummeted. Time to ignore the kids.
10. Teach sons how to swim. One is terrified of the water, the other thinks he can swim, which is far more dangerous.
11. Call (not ping, not e-mail) my mother more often. Because “hi, mom, love u … brb” just doesn’t cut it.
12. Return to home winemaking. Made a batch of mostly-swill Mouvedre in 1996. It didn’t kill me, so I must be stronger. A decade later I’m ready to try again.

12 resolutions, 12 months. Begin.

Posted at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Notes

January 5, 2006

"Mama, I gotta make my guitar louder"

OK, so, today. Let’s see.

Had lunch with Les Paul, music pioneer and inventor of the solid-body electric guitar. Encountered a Braille edition of Playboy magazine (yeah you read that right) owned by Ray Charles. Ran my hands through the actual straw that filled the costume of Ray Bolger, the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Chatted about abortion with the inventor of Lasik eye surgery. Went home. Responded to some e-mail. Kissed the wife and kids. Went to bed.

Actually, most of the day was spent with Les Paul, an extraordinary, vibrant 90-year-old Renaissance man who is one of the most charming people I have ever met. Known to one generation as the co-host of a TV show with Mary Ford in the ‘50’s and to another as the brand on an exceptional type of Gibson guitar, Les Paul understands his place in history, though he is humbled by it, and knows that it is his responsibility to preserve his contribution to American culture. In his home, Les Paul has a Xanadu-like collection of audio-visual media (on a truly bewildering spectrum of recording media) and the artifacts from his career as a performer and inventor (guitars, effects gizmos, recording equipment). This man was a celebrity geek before such thing was in vogue. Musician, inventor, television personality, storyteller, and (thankfully) packrat, Les Paul probably would not even understand the received wisdom of the left-side right-side brain paradigm.

Today one of my colleagues noted that he was going to devote the next few years of his life to becoming as young as Les Paul. To this Les, in a room full of academics and museum-types, leaned back on his chair and mimicked taking a long drag from a joint. This man is 90 years old. He is obviously physically well; Les Paul plays two sets every Monday night at the Iridium club in NYC. But what strikes you is how mentally sharp he is. His stories do not ramble but arc right when they should. His tinkerer’s mind grasps technology concepts that elude people half his age. And his ear — despite hearing aids — detects the textural differences between pianos made a few centuries apart.

Do I have a man-crush on Les Paul? You bet I do.

He told the story today of being hired to play music to patrons at a drive-in movie theater half-way between Waukesha, Wisconsin (his birthplace) and Milwaukee in 1930-something. To amplify his voice he took apart his mother’s phone receiver. He stuck one half of it on top of a broom handle propped upright in a cinder block and wired the other half into a radio. Voila. After his performance he got a note saying, “Good show, kid, but your guitar needs to be louder.” This note changed music forever. Les Paul went home, told his mother that he needed some way to amplify his guitar, and set out to construct what became the solid-body electric guitar that has been so important to the 20th century music. His prototype, a 2.5 foot length of railroad track (!) strung with guitar wire and undergirded with the guts of a telephone magnet like his makeshift microphone, was the first in a series of inventions that eventually became the Gibson Les Paul.

Documentaries are being made. Oral histories are being taken. Strategies for the preservation of his legacy are being executed. Everyone knows that documenting Les Paul’s life is a race against time (though you would not think there was much urgency from his vitality). But all one really wants to do is slow down and sit on a couch and listen to him tell stories. It isn’t the hundreds of guitars in his house or the vintage recordings or the goofy doodads he created to manipulate sound before digital audio made it commonplace. It is the stories in Les Paul’s head that are priceless, Americana if ever that word had meaning. This is what we must document now. The material culture is but punctuation on his extraordinary exposition.

Posted at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Topic: America

January 4, 2006

Nannylessness

Today is the first day since shortly after my first son’s birth in 2001 that we’ve not had a nanny. Things change. The dynamics of our home life are radically different than they were back then when my wife and I both worked full time separated by a commute and had only a newborn to contend with. Now things are at the same time more complex, a curious four-year-old and a precocious two-year-old with an infant coming in May, and simpler, my wife works from home with flexible hours and school is ramping up to five days a week for the older boy.

We hoped to keep our beloved nanny on as part-time help and to this she agreed initially. But the fact is — and this is the bitter reality at the heart of the matter — however much you and your children may love the hired help, the parent-nanny relationship is, at root, an economic one. You pay for services rendered, even if a portion of that service is love. And if the economics of the relationship don’t make sense, then the bond is broken. There’s something slightly whorish when you look at it that way, but there it is.

In a review of Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century Directions to Servants in the most recent Atlantic Monthly Mona Simpson notes:

For generations women have been puzzling over the ethics and etiquette of “having” help. The very verb is troubling—what boys of my generation said about the girls they’d laid—because “help” has traditionally helped us with what is still, no matter the opinion of weekly newsmagazines and polite company, our responsibility first and last.

So our nanny moves on and so do we. We’ll still need help for sure. Business trips come up. The parent-child ratio is about to swing in their favor. Things change. Hello, 2006!

Posted at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Notes

January 3, 2006

Engineer

Got a Christmas card from some colleagues in Egypt on my return to the office today. It was addressed to Eng. John Tolva. Eng. for Engineer, an honorific I’ve never seen in the West but which is always given in Egypt to (I think) graduates of science-related or engineering-related programs. I like this. It seems more logical to award prefixes based on the type of degree than the level attained, doesn’t it? Imagine a world where everyone was addressed by the job or role they performed.

“Bricklayer Jones, so nice to see you today!”

“You as well, Seamstress Diaz! Say, here comes Ambulance Chaser Franklin.”

There’s a certain LEGOland quality to the division of labor and labelling, but I think I could like it.

Posted at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Words

Cord-free

My guess is that the biggest complaint about the iPod and portable music players is the headphone cord. You do have to wonder about outtake footage from the famous iPod silhouette commercials — dancers getting entangled, accidentally ripping the earbuds out violently, cursing, storming out from in front of the chroma screen.

The cord is a particular pain in the ass for me, especially in the winter when I am bundled tightly with the cord wrapped into my scarf and the iPod buried deep in my coat. Add to that the hassle of basically undressing to make it through the metal scanners at my security-obsessed office building. So, it was a special treat to receive a pair of Plantronics 590a stereo Bluetooth headphones for Christmas. There are a few of these on the market now and because of the lack of devices that support the A2DP Bluetooth profile (or lack Bluetooth support at all, like the iPod), Plantronics includes a dongle that hangs off the headphone jack and pairs with the headphones. Conveniently, if a phone call comes in to your Bluetooth phone while you are listening to music you can easily switch over and talk. There is a small, clear telescoping tube that you can pull out as a microphone boom. When not in use it is hidden away. Actually the physical design of the headset is the nicest thing about it. Slightly retro with robotic-looking hinges, the 590a inverts to sit in its charger and pulses red and blue to indicate status.

This morning was the first real-world test: the L train commute to work. The headphones worked great on the walk to the station, hugging my hat over my ears. Waiting for the train, the flashing blue light on the headset (indicating a strong pairing) literally lit up dark train platform. A bit too bright, I’d say. I can only imagine how annoying this will be to fellow flyers on an airplane. About 20 minutes into the trip the headphones started to drop occasionally, at first for only a millisecond and then for a second or two at a time. Worrisome. That’s basically a showstopper. I’m wondering if it has to do with Bluetooth interference from other devices on the train.

And so I embark on a time-honored post-holiday tradition: contacting tech support.

UPDATE: It did have to do with Bluetooth interference, but from my own phone. I unpaired the phone and the drops stopped. In fact, I re-paired it and the drops have not returned. Interesting. This bit of sleuthing was no thanks to Plantronics tech support which gets a D- for a crappy attitude and absolutely no clue about the dropouts. “Just return it for a new one,” they said. That’s the consumer electronics version of “um, have you tried rebooting?”

Posted at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Science/Tech

January 2, 2006

Rose-colored glasses

The city of Austin is throbbing in anticipation of the Rose Bowl. I don’t follow college football closely at all and can’t claim to be even moderately knowledgeable about matters that generate so much trash-talking and inanity. Still, it is hard to avoid the interesting aspects of this matchup that have little do to with football. There’s a tempting blue state-red state analogy to be made what with the celebrity photo-ops on the Trojan sidelines while most Longhorn fans are, let’s face it, Bush-loving conservatives. (I spotted not one, not two, but three copies of Sean Hannity’s latest book being read in the waiting area for a charter flight out of Austin to Ontario, CA today.) That kind of facile, polarizing thinking does make sports matchups more fun, I suppose, but ultimately it rings just as hollow as all the post-election talk of two Americas. For instance, on NYE Austin held its first ever “First Night” parade and fireworks celebration — easily one of the most eclectic, left-leaning public spectacles I’ve participated in. Yet, nearly everyone — including the freakiest of the paraders — was adorned in burnt orange or celebrating UT in some way. I’d like to see Texas win, but I can just hear Rush Limbaugh or the conservative blogosphere reading more into a Longhorn national championship than is warranted. Some tripe about west coast vs. heartland values. (Maybe they already have?)

And thus you have the first and likely last post about football on Ascent Stage for 2006. Go Cubs!

Posted at 8:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: America