Category Archives: Arts & culture

Sunday morning

The choir I just joined, the Labor Heritage Rockin’ Solidarity Choir, performed “A Musical Biography of Pete Seeger” at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco this morning. We were the main event in their worship service. After being introduced by their choir director, we filed up onto the stage at the front of their worship space, dressed in our black t-shirts and black pants. This “musical biography” combines narration and semi-staged dramatic vignettes, with songs which Seeger either wrote or made famous.

About ten minutes into our performance, the congregation applauded one of the songs. I was a little surprised; I could hear the bass section well and I knew we had not been at our best. But from where I stood I couldn’t hear the rest of the sections very well, I had no idea how the choir as a whole sounded. Then came the dramatic vignette where Seeger goes before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and when he is asked if he ever joined the Communist Party, he pleads the First Amendment, saying that he shouldn’t have to answer any questions relating to his freedom to associate. The congregation applauded for that, and I realized that they really liked what they were seeing and hearing.

I was a little surprised by this, because I kept hearing all the things the bass section did wrong — we fumbled some key entrances, we weren’t all singing in unison a few times, all the moments when we messed up. I was also all too aware of my own shortcomings as a singer — I don’t have the breath control I should, I’m not a confident enough singer that I can always stick to the written music when the singers around me are singing wrong notes, I sometimes lose my concentration. But the congregation didn’t care. They sang along with familiar songs like “Guantanmera,” and “If I Had a Hammer.” The soloists were very good; the speakers were moving; the message behind this musical biography was deeply moving; and, in spite our technical and musical faults, our section sang with feeling and power, and though I couldn’t really hear them I assume the rest of the choir did too.

The congregation gave us a standing ovation at the end of the worship service. That surprised the heck out of me, although that standing ovation wasn’t really for our choir as performers — that ovation was more for the power of Pete Seeger’s career as a singer and community activist, as captured by the script written by our music director, Pat Wynne. I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. This kind of thing happens all the time in worship services and amateur musical performances in which an important message is delivered with genuine feeling. But when you’re standing at the far end of the bass section, and you can’t really hear, and all you can do is concentrate on singing the right notes when you’re supposed to, you may not be aware of what’s happening around you.

Clean elections

I just attended a meeting titled “Palo Alto Passion-Raiser for Fair Elections,” billed as “an event tailored for politically active people and intended to build a local coalition to work for passage of the California Fair Elections Act in June 2010.” This event was co-sponsored by our church’s Social Action Council, and by my count drew 136+ people, including 3 current California State Assemblymembers, and one former Assemblymember.

The former Assemblymember was Sally Lieber, who served from 2003 through 2008. Of all those who spoke in support of the bill, I liked what she said best. Speaking as a former state legislator, she said she supported reforming the way elections were funded because of her own experience: “It’s tough being told, ‘You have to spend at least two hours per day doing fundraising.’ It’s tough being told, ‘I love your bill, it’s a great bill, but if I vote for it, it will damage my fundraising efforts.’ “

Summer evening

It was hot today. The weather station at San Francisco Airport recorded a high of 91 degrees Fahrenheit, and I’d bet it hit 95 degrees at our house. About the middle of the afternoon I saw one of our downstairs neighbors. We both agreed it was hot. She said it was so hot she was having a hard time staying focused on doing housework. I admitted that the heat had gotten to me and I had given up on housework.

Since I wasn’t getting any housework done, I decided I wouldn’t stay around the house. I got on the train, transferred to BART at the Millbrae station, and headed over to Berkeley. I walked up to Telegraph Ave., then threaded my way through the street-chaos generated by the resident freaks, weirdos, and college students of Telegraph Ave., making my way down to Moe’s and Shakespeare & Co., the two bookstores remaining on the avenue.

I turned into Shakespeare & Co., with its narrow aisles and mis-matched bookcases. As I turned towards the mysteries, a small bearded man stepped backwards and ran into me; I apologized, but he didn’t notice me at all, and continued asking the clerk, “Are these the only chess books you have?” The clerk said, “Yes, they’re all on that shelf.” The small man said, “But what about these here?” The clerk said, “Yes, those there, yes they continue down to that shelf.” I wandered from the mysteries towards the science fiction books. A young woman and her guitar blocked one end of the science fiction aisle. She answered her cell phone: “Hello? … Oh, hi! … I’m here in Shakespeare & Co, you know that used bookstore? … Yeah. I’m looking for something new to read. I was trying to read Kafka, but I didn’t like it, which is strange, because it’s this really well-written book, so now I’m trying to find something else….” I turned the corner into the pocket fiction aisle, and there was a small handwritten sign saying, “Hey, kid, don’t look up here, this is where the adult books are.” Sure enough, in shelves about seven feet off the ground, there were some forgettable mass-market porno paperbacks, back from the days when there was no Internet porn, including an old copy of Emmanuelle that smelled moldy. I eavesdropped on a conversation that the clerk was having with one of the customers; actually, it was more of a monologue, where the clerk analyzed the motivations of the 9/11 bombers, speculated that Osama bin Laden is probably dead by now, or at least in very poor health, and in his pleasing tenor voice gave details of the Jayce Lee Dugard case, including the fact that the alleged abductor, Philip Garrido, had been spouting some kind of crazed religious nonsense on the Berkeley campus when he was confronted by two campus police officers, and that was what led to the discovery of Dugard. This conversation motivated me to move on to the Political Science section, and then to glance through the titles on the True Crime shelves. I heard the customer say to the clerk, “At least she [meaning Dugard] will have a normal life now,” and the clerk responded, “Well, relatively normal, considering what she’s been through. Apparently she considered the guy as some kind of god. And she had two children with him.” I kept browsing for a while longer, but in the end all I bought was a collection of Chinese poetry in translations by David Hinton.

I walked across the street to Moe’s bookstore. The book selection was less entertaining. The people-watching was far less interesting. The only conversation I overheard had to do with Ackermann functions, and frankly I did not understand what the two guys were talking about. But I wound up buying more books, probably because I wasn’t distracted.

Upcoming event in the Bay area

The San Francisco Bay Area Labor Heritage Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus, which I recently joined, will be singing at the San Francisco Unitarian Universalist church on Sunday, September 6. They’ll be performing a musical biography of Pete Seeger, that great Unitarian Universalist folk musician and labor advocate. I’ve heard some of it in rehearsal, and it sounds pretty good, so if you’re in the San Francisco area over Labor Day weekend, check it out. (I won’t be there, alas, since I’ll be at my own church.)

The truth about worship services

I am in the middle of reading a biography of James Boswell, famous for his biography of Samuel Johnson; but when I read about Boswell’s London Journal, I got distracted — went out and found a copy, and started to read it. Near the beginning of the Journal, Boswell goes to church one fine Sunday, but is distracted from the sermon by other thoughts:

“Monday 29 November. I breakfasted with Mr. Douglas. I went to St. James Church and heard service and a good sermon on ‘By what means shall a young man learn to order his ways,’ in which the advantages of early piety were well displayed. What a curious, inconsistent thing is the mind of man! In the midst of divine service I was laying plans for having women, and yet I had the most sincere feelings of religion. I imagine my want of belief is the occasion of this, so that I can have all the feeling. I would try to make out a little consistency this way.”

But Boswell is mistaken in thinking that consistency is possible for us human beings. Don’t you think?

Books and libraries

We haven’t completely unpacked yet, but we are mostly done. The bulk of my possessions consists of books, and I have most of my books unpacked and placed into book cases.

By Wednesday, I had gotten most of my professional books into the bookcases in my office at church. On Thursday, I noticed that I started thinking differently: I was thinking about a work-related problem, and I knew part of the answer was to be found in a book that I owned, and I walked over to the shelf and pulled that book out. A week ago, I would not have been able to find that book; and a week ago, I simply ignored that problem.

The theory of distributed cognition suggests that tools contain a measure of accumulated wisdom. A crosscut panel saw, for example, contains accumulated wisdom on one way of cutting wood (whereas a coping saw contains a somewhat different accumulation of wisdom on cutting wood). I used to work for a cabinetmaker, and saws and other tools shape both your body and your mind: using a Western-style crosscut panel saw strengthens certain muscles, and makes your mind think about wood in certain ways; if you then try to use a Japanese-style pull saw, you find that you use different muscles, and you also find that you have to think about wood in a different way.

But it’s not just individual tools which contain distributed cognition. When I worked for the cabinetmaker, over time I came to realize that the layout of his shop also contained accumulated wisdom: the way he organized his workbenches and big machines shaped the way we thought about making things, and shaped our work physically as well. Not only that, but the toolboxes that he carried to job sites were also a form of distributed cognition. Thus, tools which are in themselves a kind of distributed cognition can be assembled in arrangements which are yet another layer of distributed cognition.

A library, whether a personal library or an institution’s library, is a form of distributed cognition that is similar to the cabinetmaker’s shop. An individual book is one form of distributed cognition (obviously); but a library, the way it is arranged, the books that are in it and the books that are not in it, is another form of distributed cognition. I learned how to lay out my personal library both from spending a great deal of time in institutional libraries, as well as from looking at the personal libraries of friends and mentors in my field; another influence on my personal library has been syllabuses from graduate school courses. The Library of Congress cataloguing system and the Dewey Decimal system offer ways to systematically arrange human knowledge (as it is contained in books); and each profession has its own ways of organizing the knowledge essential to that profession. Professionally speaking, I think more clearly when I can get at my professional library.

One of my frustrations with Google Books is that the books within it are poorly organized; Google wants you to browse its online books using its search engine, but search engines contain very little in the way of distributed cognition. Books and libraries are highly evolved and subtle technologies; by comparison, today’s e-books and e-libraries are in many ways crude and clumsy technologies.

New food fad

This afternoon, my older sister, the one who lies in Indiana, called. “We’re going to the Indiana State Fair,” she said. This year, she said, the food to try is chocolate-covered bacon. “Everyone says that it’s one of those things that sounds gross at first, but when you try it, it’s really good.”

I’ll bet it is really good — you can’t go wrong combining sugar, fat, and salt. I did a little Web research on this new food phenomenon. According to Wikipedia’s entry, chocolate-covered bacon dates back to at least 2005. But last year chocolate-covered bacon was the big hit at the Minnesota State Fair under the name “Pig Lickers,” which means that this year it is appearing at all the best state fairs across the nation. Biggest thing since deep-fried Pepsi.

Given the realities of Bay Area culture, I’ll bet I won’t find any chocolate-covered bacon around here (although I might be able to find vegan bacon-substitute covered in low-fat fair-trade chocolate). Well, I may have to drive up to the California State Fair in Sacramento, just so’s I can buy me some Pig Lickers.

Yes, this is big.

Forget the accusations that George Bush planned the war in Iraq from his earliest days in office. The really big news was released yesterday on the Official Google blog:

[T]oday, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome [Web browser] — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

That sound you just heard was Microsoft’s lawyers figuring out how to prompt anti-trust regulators to take action against Google. That other sound you just heard was everyone else in the world sniggering at the thought of Microsoft cooperating with anti-trust regulators.

Aside from the sniggering, Google’s new OS has the potential to really change the way we think about the Web. Imagine an operating system that is fast, small, stable, and extremely resistant to online security threats. And imagine that operating system is opensource so that a community of programmers can keep it safe, and develop new functionalities for it. If Google can actually deliver such a product, this really could be a big deal.

Why? Because with a free OS, you should be able to buy a netbook for a couple hundred bucks. That netbook will be smaller and lighter than your current laptop, so you won’t care if it gets stolen (and if it does get stolen, all your data will be online, not on the netbook). So you’ll leave your current laptop at home, and when it’s time to replace it, you’ll buy a less-expensive but more powerful desktop machine (and you won’t have to worry about transferring data from the netbook to the desktop machine because the netbook’s data will be online). Or if all you have right now is a desktop machine, you will be more likely to get a netbook.

At this point, all the Linux fans will rear up and point out (rightly) that the Google OS is little more than a stripped-down version of Linux. This is true, but lots of people are already using GMail and Google Docs (and who would never use Linux because of its geeky reputation), and they will just assume that Google’s OS is going to be easy to use.

So this is big. It is not huge, nor will it threaten Computing As We Know It. But it’s big.