Balanchine Festival, Ballet Arizona

Saturday night we attended a Ballet Arizona performance that was billed as part of a George Balanchine festival. While the music, the dancing, and the choreography were all exquisite, the experience was not without eyebrow-raising issues.

We bought tickets six months ago, when I learned that the program would be all ballets based on Stravinsky's music, a composer with whom Balanchine had a close friendship and affinity. I particularly looked forward to seeing Agon, one of my all-time favorite pieces of twentieth century music, a work that was a pivotal influence in my own composition in the year 1962, and one for which I own the score and have listened to over and over, but have never seen in a ballet production.

The Medium Is Not the Message

Imagine my disappointment when we received mail telling us that the programming had been changed substantially. While still a Balanchine festival, the music was no longer exclusively Stravinsky, but Mozart, Stravinsky, and Tschaikowsky. Furthermore, though Agon was presented on another program in the series, we would not be seeing it.

My reaction was to write a letter of complaint to Ballet Arizona, pointing out that some people choose their performing arts events on the basis of content rather than medium. Such has always been true for me. When I choose a Phoenix Symphony concert, it is always because of the works they are performing, not just to hear the orchestra. It's about the Beethoven or the Ives or the Mahler, not about the Phoenix Symphony, which sometimes sounds great but is nonetheless second rank orchestra even on a good day.

Imagine in comparison going to the theater, expecting to see Hamlet, and learning that they decided to present Harvey instead; or an exhibition of Monet replaced by paintings on black velvet; photographs by Annie Leibovitz substituted by photos of Princess Diana taken by paparazzi; a solo concert by Keith Jarrett stood in for by George Winston; a contemporary music concert of Elliott Carter compositions reprogrammed with somniferous musical blatherings from Philip Glass; a reading from a new novel by Thomas Pynchon changed to Jacqueline Susann; the latest Woody Allen film screening Friday the 13th — Part 227 instead.

Ahem. I've digressed, but you get the point. Okay, admittedly Mozart and Tschaikowsky deserve better than to be compared with the likes of Jacqueline Suzann and Philip Glass. But their music has been played over and over — far too often, in fact. When such program machinations take place, I perceive the activity of the stuffed shirts who control the money in the form of substantial donations behind the scenes. When such things happen we see proposed summer festivals go from all Stravinsky to mostly Stravinsky to some Stravinsky, to maybe Stravinsky to who's Stravinsky? What could have been extraordinary becomes merely pleasant but not innovative.

All the Discomforts of Home

My second disappointment was to arrive and find our seats squarely in the middle of row nine — some of the best in the house — but squarely in back of The Head from Hell, bolted to the body of a tall, broad man who sat squarely. Seeing over him was as hopeless as if I had been seated directly behind a pillar, and the seat next to me was not vacant.

During the first two ballets The Head listed somewhat to the right, which helped, but during the last work I missed the right third of the stage entirely except when I bobbed back and forth to see what was going on over there, which surely was annoying to the person in back of me.

Such things are nobody's fault. They just happen, though it could be noted that in a sports stadium people never have obstructed views because of the steeper inclines of the seating sections. Given that they just spent a jillion quadrillion dollars rebuilding Symphony Hall to make it not much better than it was less than a year ago, I wasn't pleased to have to strain to see the program because of a Goliath in front of me.

Finally, it was uncomfortably warm in the theater. I'm not the sort of person who notices small variations in the environment. But the high temperature in Phoenix was 111.9 during the day, it was still 104 when we left the performance at 8:30, and it was flat out too danged hot in there during the performance. An attendant told Suzy that the dancers like it warm. Well whoop dee doo. What about their gasping audience, which is not leaping around the concert hall wearing tights? Word must have spread, because during the third work the temperature dropped into the reasonable range.

Applause Protocols

Something that disturbed me throughout the performance was far too easily provoked applause.

There is a social protocol regarding when to applaud that people who regularly attend performing arts events readily learn. It differs depending on the medium.

At a rock concert the background noise, which includes constant bedlam and screaming, is high, but is usually drowned out by the deafening music, so it doesn't matter when the audience stands, dances in the aisles, and sings along. This is hardly ever done at a Schubert song cycle recital.

In a jazz performance it is usually considered acceptable to applaud following an improvised solo, even though the music continues. Even at the opera it has long been an accepted tradition to applaud a soloist at the conclusion of an aria or soliloquy. Generally the conductor will halt the performance until it subsides. But imagine the impression that would be made if the tenor hit and held his high C and the audience went into a wild frenzy before he concluded his phrase.

In contrast, in the era of my own lifetime it has been considered inappropriate to applaud during the pauses in multi-movement compositions at classical music concerts, because the entire work is considered as a single entity. Mendelssohn hated so much the lack of sophistication in this regard on the part of audiences in his day that he wrote concertos in such a way that the first movements segued directly into the slow movement without interruption, so the audience would be unable to applaud. Slow movements take care of themselves. To applaud following a serene Adagio would be like applauding a prayer in church. (Though I hear nowadays this would not be unusual.)

Imagine instead what impression would be made if the audience were to break into cheering following each technically challenging passage. The pianist, grinding out an impossibly difficult arpeggio within some tired, overplayed concerto gets to the end of it to be met by hoots of: "Ooooh baby, PLAY that thing!!" It just wouldn't be right.

So then, what is the currently acceptable Right Thing to Do at a ballet performance? What took place on Saturday night — on the part of others, not by me — revises significantly my memories of past ballet performances, prompting me to believe that things must have changed.

I was dismayed to find the audience to be applause happy. Every time a ballerina would catapult across the stage, going bouncety-bounce, twirly-twirl, deedly-deedly, kerthump, the audience broke into wild applause. The first time it happened I was astonished, and felt mildly embarrassed to be a part of such an unsophisticated audience — sitting among a bunch of hicks in suits. But it happened throughout the evening, and I was forced to conclude that this behavior has become the norm.

I asked myself: "What is this, the roller derby? The circus? Ted Mack Amateur Hour? An Olympic skating competition, where each triple toe loop is vociferously approved?" Where was the art? What had become of the sense of decorum, of the understanding of what was actually taking place on the stage, the unfolding of poetry composed in human movement?

To acknowledge a pleasing performance is a fine gesture, but the timing must be dictated by the context, which in the case of ballet should be determined largely by the structure and flow of the music, not by the astonishing physical trickery of the dancers.

The Mozart Divertimento No. 15, performed first, is a suite of five movements, the second being a longer movement consisting of a theme and variations. In a contemporary concert performance one would applaud only after the end of all five movements. A divertimento, as the name implies, is a diversion, a less formal piece than a symphony or sonata, so perhaps in Mozart's day it was appropriate to applaud between movements.

Used as the background for ballet, it seems somewhat acceptable to me to applaud at musical pause points — between movements, possibly even between variations in the second movement. But certainly not following every Big Jump. To do so interrupts not only the music, but also the ballet, which must go on without interruption.

Saturday there was some applause at some spectacularly inappropriate moments. In music there is what is called a I-6/4 (pronounced one-six-four) chord, a tonic (main key) chord in second inversion. In the classical era a harmonic progression into such a chord typically was the gateway to a cadenza, which means cadence, a harmonic formula that ends in a resolution back to the main key; it would be followed by an opportunity for a soloist to enjoy a truly self-indulgent moment in the spotlight. Cadenzas are invariably crowd pleasers because of their pyrotechnics, but in the hands of lesser composers, of questionable musical validity. But that's another discussion.

My point is that it is not the I-6/4 chord introducing the cadenza that reaps audience ecstasy, but what follows. Think: "Shave and a haircut —" (Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap ...) "Two bits!" (More of the same.)

Yet such is exactly the point at which the audience applauded on Saturday night — a moment that was followed by a brief violin cadenza, although the containing work was not in concerto form. I've belabored the point, but my conclusion is: Well, that was just really a dumb and imperceptive thing for them to do.

But it got worse: We even encountered wild, enthusiastic applause on a fermataed diminished seven chord.

If you don't understand all the musical explanation here, never mind. Trust me — these are not proper moments to applaud a ballet performance. But that's what they did.

More Observations

During the first intermission I noted that the audience was about three to one female, a fact that I personally enjoyed. Many of the ladies were young and trim, probably including many who had taken dance lessons themselves and therefore had cultivated a degree of appreciation for the art form.

One thing that has always puzzled me about dance is why such a disproportionate number of male dancers are gay. One would think that being a male ballet dancer would be a good way to pick up babes for someone who is inclined to do so. (Not that I'm recommending it!) Female dancers are usually gorgeous, always in fabulous shape, athletic, artistic, and highly disciplined, and soloists work together with their male counterparts in a state of constant physical contact. Yet the ladies tend to find themselves hurled through the air by leaping sweeties in tights with bulging codpieces.

I'll add the caveat that of course there are always obvious exceptions, and that I know absolutely nothing whatever personally about any of the male dancers associated with Ballet Arizona. For all I know they all shoot pool and watch NASCAR after hours.

Oh dear, I've digressed again.

Say — What About Those Ballets, Anyhow?

My personal preference in dance is for modern and contemporary dance — Paul Taylor, Alvin Ailee, Twyla Tharpe, Merce Cunningham, and others — over classical ballet. George Ballanchine bridged the gap between eras, revolutionizing the world of ballet, with some of the most poetic expressions in movement I have ever seen. His work suits my taste magnificently, and to my eye Saturday's performance was flawlessly performed by Ballet Arizona.

I have mentioned already Divertimento No. 15, set to Mozart's music, largely an ensemble piece with relatively little solo dancing.

The concluding work was Serenade, based on the work of that name for string orchestra by Tschaikowsky, a lovely piece, particularly in its grandly dramatic opening and closing bookends.

By far the highlight of the program was Apollo, with music by Igor Stravinsky, written and choreographed in 1928, a transitional period for Stravinsky, after the big ballets that made him both famous and notorious in his earlier years, and before he found neoclassicism, but on his way there. According to a quote in the program from Balanchine himself Apollo also represented an important change for him. "Apollo I look back on as the turning point of my life ..."

Apollo is a magnificently subdued work of restraint, using only seven dancers, only one male, in the title role. The introduction was danced from a seated position atop a high staircase by a lone woman. Most of the remaining sequences were performed by Apollo and three female partners representing the Muses Terpsichore, Polyhmnia, and Calliope.

To describe motion is beyond my journalistic ability, so I won't attempt to do so. The overall effect was deeply moving, responded to with an appropriately timed standing ovation on the part of the audience, and was worth the price of admission all by itself.

My only gripe is still that I missed seeing Agon.

Conquering the Voice

Whenever I go to the gym for a run there is a period of time between when I quit working for the day and when I arrive, during which my mind engages in relatively unproductive thought. It provides ample time to dwell on negatives, as I rapidly begin to unravel for the day. Upon pulling into the parking lot, I'll turn off the car engine, put my head on the steering wheel, sigh deeply, wish I could take a nap, and as I review the facts of my life, a voice whispers into my ear all the reasons I should turn around and go back home.

In the span of a minute all the worries, the cares, the frustrations, the pain, and the crushing agony of day to day life envelop me and proceed to suck all the wanna out of me. I am reminded that no matter what it is that I choose to be doing at any given time, there is also something else that I could and should be doing; at that time running seems to be of comparative insignificance.

Then I remember that years ago I made a deliberate decision. As difficult as working out can be some days, I've promised myself to opt for minor discomfort on the road or track, daily muscle pain, and tiredness over doctor bills, continual day-to-day illness and early death.

There are no guarantees it will work out that way, but the odds for better physical and emotional health and enjoyment of life are far better for one who exercises faithfully than for one who does not. So far doing so has brought me nothing but benefits, so why should I stop or even pause?

"Get behind me, you cursèd unmentionable orifice!" I say to the voice. Whereupon I drag my discouraged vessel of life from the car — between May and October stepping into oppressive heat — pull my gym bag from the trunk, and slowly drag my carcass toward the building, calulating ways I can cut today's workout short, usually with plans to make up the effort Tomorrow.

Anywhere from forty-five minutes to several hours later I reemerge from the building a different person. In most cases I have conquered the voice, I feel wonderful, and am ready to tackle whatever may come for the rest of the day.

Non-Utilitarian Apparel

There is a certain arbitrariness born of tradition regarding what is considered dressy attire. Utilitarian wear is not the first principle of design.

There is nothing intrinsically praiseworthy from a practical standpoint about tying a piece of cloth around one's neck that gets in the way. They don't call it a tie for nothing. It's a form of restraint. A necktie is a symbol of repression. Nor is there anything praiseworthy about wearing a coat either indoors or out in a city where the daily temperature often reaches 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Likewise, there is nothing commendable about women who wear high heels that throw their bodies out of alignment, forcing them to walk more slowly, and risking spinal and ankle injuries.

Men are considered to be "dignified" when they wear suits and neckties because this is what the business community wears. The implied assumption is that the business community is considered dignified, on the whole a group to be looked up to as a standards setter. The reality is much to the contrary; it is mostly those who strive to become a part of that community who narcissisticly confer that status upon themselves, and because they come to be the ruling class in society, impose it on others.

Jehovah's Witness men (of which I am one) are strongly urged to conform to this standard of appearance. Why we are required to imitate the appearance of greedy sleazebags who rule a class of individuals that God has promised to destroy is an amusing question that has never been adequately justified to my own satisfaction.

If we are to imitate a class of individuals, why not choose a class more worthy of the honor, such as college professors, or professionals?

The efforts we make in our widely known work of visiting people at their homes would certainly improve both in quality and quantity if, when engaged in the work, we would wear clothing that is appropriate to the conditions rather than that which causes people who already regard us as flakes to conclude that we are also unreasonable.

Such clothing can still be regarded as attractive rather than slovenly, in addition to being practical. In the hot months in Phoenix standard items of apparel might include dressy walking shoes rather than formal dress shoes, shorts rather than long pants, moisture wicking, short sleeve, collarless shirts, and hats for head protection. But that's not what we wear.

Nonetheless, the standards are what they are, and are unlikely to change.

Giving Awards

Mankind is inextricably addicted to the ceremonious giving of awards.

When I was a Boy Scout, our troop had a pancake making contest. I took it seriously, thinking the intent was to make the finest-looking stack of pancakes possible. Some of the other boys brought in pancakes that were weird colors and decorated with all manner of doodads.

I chose to submit a single buckwheat pancake, one which covered the entire plate, and was perfection in its evenly distributed dark brownness and texture. I arrived optimistic about my chances for first place, for as a pancake my entry exemplified perfection.

When they announced the awards, mine was the first to be mentioned: It won the title "Heavyweight Champion." I thought that was a might flippant for such a fine specimen of pancakehood, but I was initially gratified to receive the honor.

My delight was only momentary, however, as thereafter the scoutmaster began giving awards to the ones that looked like gangrenous organs, and those with flags attached. It didn't take long to realize that every pancake-maker was getting an award, which meant that my challenge had not been a contest at all, but simply an exercise in pancake making. I should have felt gratified by the knowledge that I'd done a good job of nurturing a useful skill. Instead I was ticked off.

At the same time I learned a lesson: The more awards you give out, the more it becomes like giving awards to nobody.

Whereas it's a fine thing to acknowledge another person's worthy accomplishments, the act of award giving is prone to becoming a shallow act of feel-good psychology, something akin to giving a hug. The Oscars are a prime example of that truth. Another is giving deeper and deeper awards to increasingly narrow age groups at races, something seen frequently at amateur sports events.

Not long ago a New Yorker cartoon illustrated my point. A little boy in a sports uniform walks in carrying an elaborately fancy trophy as tall as he is, and announces to his bewildered father: "We lost."

Since the best I've ever done in a race with more than 100 people in it is about the seventieth percentile of my age group, I've learned to live with this reality. I am unlikely ever to earn hardware, no matter how far down they go, until the day I manage to outlive all the other competition. But I would rather get an award that represents a significant accomplishment, something I earned, than one which seems more like an entitlement.

Morons Need Jobs, Too!

To each person his own job is or becomes important. Morons need jobs, too. Give them their space; let them do their work.

When the average joe looks for a job, his primary objective is usually to find an occupation that will bring in enough money to pay the bills. Other considerations become secondary to that. If he can find something to do that he believes is important; wants to do; is trained for; puts him in an agreeable work environment; allows him to cultivate a measure of satisfaction in the act doing it; and also pays more than the minimum required by the job seeker; then those gains are all added benefits. But without sufficient money, other compensations are secondary. This is why many talented artists, musicians, and actors are sometimes seen working at mundane jobs.

On occasion a person gets a job that to most people seems stupid and purposeless. In order to maintain one's own sanity and sense of worth, the worker adopts or invents the employer's supposed sense of importance to it.

One example of that is the involuntary soldier, one who is impressed into service to fight, and risk and possibly give up his life for a cause that someone else in power believes in, but has found a convenient way to circumvent the need to fight for himself by convincing or forcing others to do it for him, even at the risk or cost of that other person's life. How often we will hear soldiers in the field sing the praises of the flimsy causes they have been sent to do battle over, as though they thought of doing so themselves.

When I worked at Motorla we had POPI inspectors. POPI (which I pronounced "poopy") stood for Protect Our Proprietary Information, a slogan that represented a whole well-intended system by means of which the corporation went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Bad Guys from stealing company technical information, including much that even the most jaded spy wouldn't give a toot about.

Much rigamarole was involved, including the need to mark printed documents with ominous classifications, keep all cubicle drawers locked when we were gone, including those that contained nothing but pencils and paper clips, screen lock programs active, and even removable media such as floppies and tapes out of drives and in locked cabinets.

On occasion official POPI inspectors would show up at 4:00am, when theoretically no one would be there, to check each cubicle for violations. My own office was located in the remotest part of a secure building that was as far from the guarded gates as it was possible to be. Nobody was ever seen in that area who did not belong there. Furthermore, there was absolutely nothing in my cubicle of any interest to anyone, even to me. Nonetheless, I arrived one morning to find a pink citation for leaving a blank floppy disk in a computer that was not plugged in and had not been turned on in at least a year.

I had to wonder about the sense of pride and accomplishment it must have brought to that POPI inspector for having made such an important find. Here was a case of a man (possibly a woman, but let's assume otherwise) doing his job. Why? Because he seriously believed that ferreting out such hideous violations was important to the good of Motorola, the country, the world, and the universe? Excuse me while I gag. He did it because it was a job, probably the only one he could get within the company, which was at that time in a business death spiral, and because he was probably too much of a moron to do much of anything that was actually important.

Ironically, there was a co-worker in my department who could not sleep because of a back problem; he lived less than five minutes from work, and who would get up daily sometime after 3:00am, and would always be there between 4:00—5:00am. Imagine the surprise of the POPI inspectors upon entering that office and finding someone there at that hour. (It happened.)

If there was ever a stupid job, that was one, but someone made at least a part of his living carrying out those inspections at the direction of persons who certainly would never do them themselves. And because a man's job is his livelihood and often a measure of his self worth, he took it seriously and carried it out as if the future salvation of mankind depended on it.

Boredom Redux

Often I've claimed that I never get bored while running. I'll stick to that claim, with a minor rider. Sometimes preoccupation with something else can interfere with whatever task we are presently performing, such that we do it less well, or quit it entirely. This postulate applies particularly well to running.

This week I've had decent runs so far, including a five-mile tempo run Tuesday, a better than expected 10.25 yesterday, and 7.05 today.

The only thing wrong is that I scheduled ten miles for today, not seven. I was doing just fine, was enjoying myself, and would have had no physical problem doing the last three miles. So why did I stop?

Recently a flood of important matters has filled my mind: searching for re-employment once again; preparing for upcoming interviews with two big companies, both scheduled for next Monday; my wife and I have been busy rolling all our material assets into a trust and making a careful evaluation of where we're at; my daughter is getting married in June and will be moving to Indiana, and meanwhile has just sold her house and moved back in with us until then; working to complete a music project, other than when I licensed the distribution rights to my two CDs for commercial distribution, the first musical work I've gotten paid for in at least 23 year; and yesterday we had an Across the Years race committee meeting at our house, and work has begun in earnest to prepare things for this year's races. These and a host of other matters, includine the need to continue to keep up with all the usual day-to-day matters of life, continue to dwell in my mind and heart, and can be distracting when in the meantime I am also trying to train to run ultramarathons, and maybe lose weight while I'm at it.

Once in a while a desire to go do something else immediately becomes ovewhelming during a training run. Today I got a brainstorm on how to solve a programming problem I've been cogitating over. By seven miles into my run I declared the workout to be Good Enough so I could run home to make some notes about my programming project.

Wouldn't it be right to say that in essence I got bored with running today, because I let something of greater immediate interest deter me from my goal for the day? That's how I view it.

Wagner's The Flying Dutchman — Arizona Opera

Last night was the first time in 62 years of musical life that I ever attended a live production of a Wagner opera. At that rate I'll be 124 before I see my next one. I can wait.

The event du jour was The Flying Dutchman, one of Wagner's earliest works. The music was listenable, the singers were real loud — a prerequisite for singing Wagner, the orchestra played well, meaning the first horn player didn't crack too many high notes, and the sets were fabulous.

What was the plot? I'm not really sure. Something about a sailor condemned to ride around in a boat until he could find a faithful wife, which would somehow bring him salvation. It should be noted that it doesn't always work out that way, including in Wagner's own case. Theoretically this was based on something that was considered akin to slapstick comedy in its day, but Wagner had a way of putting a morosely serious spin on things.

'Nuff said.

At a performance time of three hours, Dutchman weighs in as one of Wagner's shorter works. So what does one do in a theater seat for that long? Obviously it's not possible to concentrate on Wagner for that long, so I whiled away the time writing Wagner jokes.

Q: What's the difference between a Wagnerian soprano and a police siren?
A: Vibrato.

Q: What do you get when you cross a Wagnerian soprano with a Mack truck?
A: Another Wagnerian soprano.

Q: What words about Wagner will you never hear?
A: That's the Wagner lover's yarmulke.

Q: What do you call all the scores to the Ring Cycle at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.

Q: What did the Wagner lovers do before heading off for a performance of a Wagner opera?
A: Shut off their water, gas, and electricity, canceled their magazine subscriptions, had the post office hold their mail, got their affairs in order, and left their children at an orphanage.

Q: What is Armageddon?
A: The basis for an amusing Wagner comedy.

Q: Who are Moe, Curly, and Larry?
A: Actors from whom Wagner derived an epic drama about life, death, love, salvation, and universal truth. (He called it Parsifal.)

But seriously, folks ...

The production was excellent, and the singers some of the best the Arizona Opera has ever hired, particularly the soprano, who has a towering yet beautiful voice, and is not built like a weightlifter, as many Wagnerian sopranos are. In fact she's kind of a babe.

The Most Secure Place in the World

Many adventure and sci-fi movies show scenes of top secret highly secure fortresses surrounded by armed guards and protected by more hi-tech gear than the Pentagon can afford. Each of these movies leaves you convinced that there couldn't possibly be a more important place in the world.

What might be found in the Most Secret Secure Place in the ultimate sci-fi adventure movie of all times? All of the following:

• The ark of the covenant, with Moses' stone tablets.
• The real location for all the gold most people assume is in Fort Knox.
• Vials of all the most deadly viruses ever known, including smallpox.
• Gallons of the most destructive chemical weapons ever created.
• The world's largest stockpile of weapons grade plutonium.
• The files of the CIA.
• The guy who really shot Kennedy.
• Aliens from numerous galaxies outside the Milky Way.
• Elvis.
• Jimmy Hoffa.
• Madeline Murray O'Hare.
• Jesus Christ's high school graduation picture.
• A stone carved out of a mountain with the date that Armageddon will take place engraved on it.

Music As Wallpaper

Music today has become like wallpaper — part of the ambience. Hardly anyone ever just listens to it any more, unless it's to get up and dance.

As a child I became accumstomed to simply listening to music, allowing it to take over my full attention. Even when I was little, I would sit on the floor and listen attentively as my father practiced, sometimes for long periods of time. To some people nothing is more boring than listen to a musician woodshedding, but I enjoyed it.

We didn't have a record player during my youngest years. I no longer remember exactly when my father went out and bought a "hi fi", but by that time 33 1/3 LPs were common, a medium that was appropriate for the distribution of classical music, and much superior to the 78 RPM records that had become popular. Meanwhile, pop music came to be distributed with one song on each side of a 45 RPM record. I never owned more then a couple of those. I remember buying "Sixteen Tons" by Tennesee Ernie Ford on a 45 single, and listening to it many times. It was the very first record I ever bought with my own money.

In those days there was always the radio. Even then classical music broadcasts were infrequent, but whenever they were on, is was an occasion for my father to sit in a chair and listen attentively, so that's what I did, too. Before long I became a radio addict. Our radio was not portable. (They didn't have portable radios yet.) Our family owned only one, and when it was on, I sat right next to it and listened to it, for at least a couple of hours every night. I sat so close I could touch it, and loved the warm smell of the vacuum tube circuitry burning inside of it. I knew all the popular programs, the schedule, and what stations they were on, and could slip easily from one to the other, even there was no a mechanism to preset favorite stations. I had to turn the dial and "tune it in," adjusting it back and forth until the signal was the clearest.

When I started to learn music, it was already my habit to sit and listen attentively to it when it was playing. There was hardly anything to do that I enjoyed more. To this day my preferred mode of listening is with a score in my lap, because I don't want to miss any details, and I'm deeply interested in knowing how composers accomplished what they did. I suppose that's why I became a composer myself.

Today few people listen to the radio except as background noise. We listen to talk and news shows in the car when commuting because it saves what would otherwise be wasted time, enabling us to catch up on what's going on in the world when we are held captive in traffic, making it less urgent that we do so on CNN.com or news.google.com or to read a newspaper, or God forbid, by having to watch it on the evening news, when TV news has become a joke.

How Many Miles Per Whatever?

Non-runners will ask runners: "How many miles per unit of time du jour do you run?"

If the inquirer is a fitness oriented type who sees me at the gym frequently, he may be the sort of person who assumes that I follow a periodic routine, and that I run pretty much the same amount every time I go out. The most frequent expectation is that I run so much per day. My usual quick reply is that most runners track it by weeks and months, not by days. The "per" designation is just a handle by means of which one may discuss averages, which themselves may or may not be meaningful.

My own routine is surely not much different from most thoughtful runners. I record all pedestrian miles covered while wearing running clothes for the purpose of "working out" on a daily basis, often in miles to two decimal places when running a known measured route, whether I'm going for a short walk or a long run or some combination thereof. A training session for me can be anything from one easy mile to over forty. The distance almost always predetermined, usually at least days and sometimes weeks in advance.

In turn, those daily accumulations add up to seven-day weeks. In my log I record not only the week as measured from Sunday to Saturday, but each day I calculate a new sliding total of the last seven days, including on rest days. That number can be a good predictor of how well I might expect to do the next time out.

Weeks add up to months. For a while I also calculated the past month's sliding total as 30 days or 31 days, until it dawned on me that a month varies in numbers of days, and activity tends to cycle on a weekly basis, which throws variables into the number. Therefore I changed sometime last year to adding total mileage for the past 28 days on a daily basis regardless of the number of days in the current month —g four weeks, which is constant, and makes more sense as a guide to "how I'm doing" as far as recent mileage. So while my last 28 days might say, for instance, 180 miles, the month total of 30 or 31 days may wind up as 200 or more. That's okay.

Week and month totals tend to build and diminish over the course of a year, depending on complex variables including weather, upcoming races, and explicit training goals. I'll usually set a goal mileage for a month on the first of each month, using those factors, along with recent experience as a guide, and then will rough out the weeks, particularly the long runs so as to hit somewhere near that goal.

Keeping track of detailed training data is valuable, more so than having some vague notion about how much I'm running, which would likely result in not running enough to reach ultrasized goals. More data is better than less data in a sport where a scientific approach can give a person with minimal intrinsic skills (me) a greater advantage than a casual approach. So that's how I measure it.

As noted, other people will ask about my running, and it helps to have a way to discuss it. Because I train an unusual amount on an indoor track at a gym, there are quite a few people who see me on a regular basis, and know that I sometimes run fairly long mileage there. It's not unusual for someone to come up and ask: "How much do you run every day?" There is no answer to that question if taken literally that is both easy and correct. I could do a mental calculation in the knowledge that this past week I ran 48 miles, so could say "about seven", when the real answer is that I did a couple of short runs, a 10-miler, took a couple of days off, and ran 25 on Saturday. Or I could say "about 40-50 miles a week", or I could say so many miles per month. But when you're flying by someone who asks the question in passing, that's not the time to get into a big discussion or to present a lecture on how runners train.

In January I passed on the track an older gentleman I've never stopped to talk to who asked me, "How did you do on your last marathon?" The last race I'd run was Across the Years. I don't know how he knew that I had been in a race recently. I responded quickly: "Which one?" He scrambled for an answer: "Any one." I said "A hundred and forty-two miles!" as I glided out of conversation range, knowing he wouldn't have a clue what I was referring to. He shouted back, "Very good!" in a voice that clearly indicated he was confused and didn't understand my answer.

Still, I'm always happy to discuss this topic in any amount of detail with persons who are really interested and have the time. It makes little difference how one describes his routine. It is what it is.

A rose is a rose is a rose. — Gertrude Stein

A Simple Life

Many people stumble along the path from birth to death with colossal holes in their lives.

They never read. How can a person know anything if he never, ever reads?

They never think.

They never work out.

They never learn to experience music or art or drama and sometimes cultivate a distaste for artistic beauty.

They are immune to spirituality, and rarely give God or questions about the meaning of life a thought.

The puzzling thing is that it's not necessary to be complete in all these respects in order to create an illusion of happiness. Many people die happy and satisfied having never done much of anything.

When you think about it, who of us really knows or understands much at all about anything? Those who take the trouble to investigate the world around them learn above all that they are ignorant and haven't a clue; that notion troubles them and tarnishes their happiness.

Handel's Semele — Arizona Opera Company

On January 30th Suzy and I attended the Arizona Opera Company's performance of Semele by Handel. Some musicologists classify it as a "secular oratorio" rather than an opera, but all presentations of it I've found listed by Google have been completely staged — by opera companies — so it makes little difference what label one hangs on it. Remarkably, this was the very first baroque opera ever staged by AOC in its 35-year history. I do hope they do more of it — particularly more Handel; I'd also be happy to see some Monteverdi.

Upon arriving, I brought a lifetime streak to an end: we were late! Normally we leave home about 6:30-6:35 for a 7:30 performance, which almost always gets us through the front doors at Symphony Hall at about 7:05, with plenty of time to have a coffee and cookie, chat, look at the pretty dressed-up ladies and stuffed shirts, and prepare to be put to sleep soon.

On our journey we encountered an accident snarl on the I-10. It was bumper-to-bumper from there all the way to the parking lot. When we walked in they were playing the last measures of the overture. The decrepit volunteer ushers were whispering "There's still time to be seated!" — barely. They stuck us in the back row, which I guess is a penalty box they normally keep open for latecomers. At least it was roomy. The sound and view were naturally somewhat muffled from there, though not terrible. So it was from there that we saw the entire first act. If we had been fifteen seconds later we would have watched it on plasma TV screens in the lobby.

It was the first time in my memory of a lifetime of concertgoing that I was ever late to a performance event. (I'm not counting performances at Smith Music Hall while in music school that I may have wandered into during mid-performance, having not previously committed myself to going. I'll add that during my six years in Urbana I attended at least eighty percent of what was presented at Smith Hall — probably more.) Added to the fact that I had a bad experience that morning which upset me, I was disappointed to break my lifetime perfect record of on-timeness, so I arrived in a somewhat foul mood.

Naturally, the musicians used modern instruments, no doubt for a lack of appropriate gear and specialist performers, because after all, this was another performance by the AOC using their standard orchestra members; but the program said the singers followed eighteenth century vocal practice rigorously. It certainly sounded so to my ears.

The producers chose to present the work, not in traditional baroque fashion, but with twentieth century pop art staging. The first set consisted of five full-color giant female eyeball paintings hung high over the stage, reminiscent of Andy Warhol, with a set of stark black and white striped furniture. (I presumed the eyeball gender because of the makeup, though in 2006 such conclusions are by no means true.)

"Say what!?" I said to myself.

When a slight guy appeared in Ivy League garb, replete with sweater draped around the shoulders, sleeves tied in front, and a tennis racquet, and began flitting around the stage while singing the countertenor (falsetto) role, which at first, not knowing the plot, I mistook as an effort to portray him as gay as can be, I rolled my eyes, sat back in my chair, and proceeded to make a concerted and successful effort to fall asleep, convinced that the producers had lost their collective mind. It turns out he was scheduled to marry the title character — in the end he fell in love with and married her sister instead.

For readers who may not be aware, a countertenor is a male singer who sings in the female range, usually in falsetto. This may be accomplished in modern times through extensive training first as a baritone or tenor, graduating to specialization in the upper voice. In previous times, when such voices were valued by the Roman Catholic Church, and before it was outlawed, potential countertenors were given surgical help in their youth by means of a procedure that did not involve the vocal chords.

I'm sorry I fell asleep, though given my tiredness after my usual Saturday afternoon long run, a few moments of shuteye was inevitable.

By the end of the first act I started to come around, by which time I began to realize — Oh, this thing is a comedy! It's supposed to be funny. Meanwhile I'd dozed through some undoubtedly superlative music.

There were two intermissions. After the first act we moved to our much better usual seats. From the second act on, refreshed by my nap, I was able to pay proper attention.

The vocalists were by and large excellent, including the countertenor, who did not reappear until the last half of the third act. They did sound much like traditional opera singers rather than baroque specialists, other than the countertenor, who of course is a specialist, because there is virtually no other literature for countertenors, but they sang clean as a whistle.

The cast of characters numbered six. The title role went to a soprano with astonishing virtuosity. Some of the most technically demanding music ever written for singers — most fun to listen to — is to be found in the showy coloratura passages of Handel. In fact, Getting to hear singers showing off is probably what most people like to hear most in Handel's operas and oratorios. The questions that invariably present themselves include: how fast will they go, can this singer cut it, hit most of the notes, mostly in tune, keep up with the pace of the orchestra, and not run out of breath or appear to be left gasping for breath in the next eight bars before he or she has a chance to inhale again? In this regard I'm reminded of the challenges of the patter songs of Gilbert and Sullivan, except that in the latter they also have to deal with mind-bogglingly complex and tongue-twisting lyrics.[1]

[1] "I am the very model of a modern major general,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical. ...
I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous."

Sheesh!!

The only singer I had reservations about was the bass, the father of the title character. It's one thing for a soprano to rattle through those long melismas under a cushion of orchestral backing, but to make it sound clearly in the bass range is technically almost impossible — as was demonstrated by this night's performer. He did perform one amusing and well-acted aria, though — a slower number, in which he was supposed to be the god of sleep trying to wake up, wherein he kept falling back over on his side, and letting his voice continue to drop another half another half-octave below what was written.

By far the best singer to my ears was the sister of the title character, a contralto by my estimation of nearly 300 pounds who shook the walls when she sang, manifested total control and freedom, breathtaking technique, acted superbly, and turned out to be quite the comic character. Upon accepting applause at the end, the enthusiastic cheers earned for her from the audience indicated that the masses in attendance agreed with my own assessment.

As I got into the performance I began to enjoy some of the humorous touches. One of the characters, the tenor who played Zeus, being a god, had the ability to make funny things happen at the wave of a hand, as couches would move into position, and needed objects would appear. The stage was tended by a group of five non-singing tuxedoed men, who brought things in and out, including cotton cloud bedecked scaffolding on wheels with a couch on top from whence various gods and goddesses sang.

In one aria Zeus sang to Semele and desired to give her some flowers, whereupon an attendant walked in with an enormous bouquet of roses, but while continuing to sing to unaware Semele, Zeus made a gesture indicating something bigger, whereupon the attendants wheeled in six 10-foot-tall ultracloseup paintings of roses filling the entire stage, making a most impressive backdrop.

In another, Semele has magically become transformed in such a way that when she looks at herself in a tiny mirror she no longer sees herself as a mere mortal, but as a goddess. She is so impressed with herself she can't get over it, and begins singing an aria that begins with the lyrics that go

Myself I shall adore,
If I persist in gazing.
No object sure before
Was ever half so pleasing.

which goes on and on to ridiculous lengths with no other lyrics added. Each time she launches into the amusing key phrase, beginning yet another session of self-adulation, another attendant walks in with a bigger mirror than before. In the background, the silent sister, who patiently endures it for the first several times (it was she who set the whole thing up in order to make Semele think she was a goddess and suitable match for Zeus, so she could capture the attention of the countertenor for herself), eventually started rolling her eyes, and eventually prostrated herself flat on the couch in exasperation. Surely this over the top immodesty must have been viewed as hysterically funny in Handel's day as well.

Semele, being mortal, could not really ever "unite" with Zeus, because it would destroy her, and Zeus knew it, but pursued it anyhow. He decides to go through with the unitification, but proclaims that he will use his lowest powered lightning bolt to incinerate her. At the critical time, first Semele disappears behind a screen, while making seductive gestures toward Zeus, following which Zeus shrugs his shoulders and joins her behind the screen. There is an enormous and comical flash of lightning and explosion, the screen is lifted, and Zeus is alone, but there is a large cloud of smoke where Semele supposedly had been happily uniting with Zeus. More yucks.

In another scene (I'm telling these things out of sequence), a refrigerator was wheeled out and left in the background. As each character entered, including the stage hands, he or she would go to the refrigerator and open the top compartment, which was stocked to bursting with yogurt cups. The character would take one and carry out the rest of the scene while spooning yogurt. In another scene later on, with the refrigerator still on stage, Zeus comes out to sing to Semele, and opens the bottom half to find it conveniently bursting with champagne bottles.

Other lyrics provoked titters from a 21st century audience, particularly the aria with the opening (oft-repeated) line, in anticipation of Semele's upcoming marriage:

Hymen, haste, thy torch prepare,
Love already his has lighted!

Hmmm. I wonder how many persons are aware that Hymen was the torch-bearing god of marriage in Greek mythology, the son of Apollo and a muse? I have to wonder if Handel himself saw the saucy double entendre that was implied?

By the conclusion of the opera, I was enjoying myself enormously. As the third act was about to begin I turned and said to Suzy: "This opera needs a chorus!" Handel wrote some of the greatest choral music ever written, yet this opera consisted to that point entirely of a sequence of solo arias (with a couple of duets), separated by mercifully short recitatives. Handel was an enormously popular and successful composer in his day, and clearly knew which side of the paper his check was written on, so I surmised maybe there would be a chorus in the third act. Georgie did not disappoint, as the Finale consisted of a glorious work sung by the entire cast (sans stage hands, who were nonetheless on stage). Okay, so a sextet, not a chorus, but with six parts rather than four, just as good -- and one of the best I've ever heard from Handel a well. It was shorter than I would have liked. In compatibility with our desire to see happy endings in comedies, the lyrics, Still saucy by their licentiously amoral implications, go:

Happy, happy shall we be,
Free from care, from sorrow free.
Guiltless pleasures we'll enjoy,
Virtuous love will never cloy;
All that's good and just we'll prove,
And Bacchus crown the joys of love.

In the end, judging by the audience's warm applause, a good time was had by all, and we left smiling and laughing.

Downtown Chamber Players Concert Review

Friday night Suzy and I attended an all contemporary chamber music concert. (Contemporary if you count Ysaÿe.) It's been a long time since I did that.

The venue was a huge space in downtown Phoenix called The Ice House, which is exactly what it was built to be in 1910. It's now owned by a woman who uses it for displaying large contemporary art exhibits that are unusual and can't be or just aren't displayed elsewhere, and for performance art. It's directly across the street from Sheriff Joe Arpaio's offices. (Non-Phoenix readers of this review may be unaware that Sheriff Joe is the most colorful and probably most well-known law enforcement officer in the country. But that's a subject for another post.)

The floors at The Ice House are concrete, the walls are brick, the ceiling is at least 20 feet high, and the lighting is inadequate for spectators who had to squint to see their programs. It was chilly in there, but not uncomfortable. We had a dip in the weather here, with rain and chill and even snow in outlying areas. Inside the venue nobody took off their coats, and two ladies were sitting with a blanket over their lap. Still, I didn't hear anyone complaining.

The program was all string music: String Quartet #2 by Henryk Górecki (I have a recording by Kronos), a Sonata for solo cello by Ysaÿe, "Riconoscenze per Goffredo Petrassi" for solo violin by Elliott Carter, Violin Phase (played by four violinists) by Steve Reich, and a collection of tangos by Astor Piazolla, with the last couple of pieces spiced up by first a pair of dancers with big-shot credentials, and finally by three pair of dancers, all fun to watch.

I enjoy occasional verbal program notes at a concert, especially when some piece warrants some explanation or if background information somehow enhances the listening experience — but only if the comments are accurate and not silly or apologetic, as sometimes happens with contemporary music. "You're probably gonna hate this music, but lemme explain while we're making you listen to it before you walk out."

No, there was none of that at Friday's concert. The commentary was by and large okay, but I didn't like the gross generalization of classifying all the minimalists in one lump while all the others: Carter and Stockhausen and Berio and Boulez and ... well you know ... as the "other" camp that can be described with another single label. Carter in particular stands apart from those others in many ways, as anyone who has really listened to or studied his music is aware. So I could have done without the description of the kind of music "Carter and his camp" compose as being done by the guys who studied hard at Julliard and wherever, while the minimalists were the guys who flunked out of music school and moved downtown. Yes, they actually said that.

Also, while the violinist who performed the Carter was fairly knowledgeable about the music, and played it beautifully, he could have stood to edit and rehearse his remarks at little better, and the violinist who came up next (actually a violist, the founder of the Downtown Chamber series, who was playing violin on the Reich) made a BIG factual booboo when contrasting Reich and the other well-known minimalists with the composers from "the other side of town" when he referred specifically to Carter as a 12-tone serialist composer — which he absolutely is NOT!

Nonetheless, the music was all well played and enthusiastically presented. It was equally enthusiastically received by the audience, which by and large did not need to have someone stand up to defend the music they were about to hear. This crowd seemed to be of the type who knew what they paid their money to hear and that's why they were there. It was pretty much a full house. The audiences at these concerts tend not to be the stuffy older retired rich folks who sit on their hands and complain about anything that's not Mozart.

This series is not available by subscription, which is a good thing. People buy tickets for concerts they want to hear, not more than a month or two in advance, when they get around to announcing the location and program, about five a year. At $10 a head, including wine, cheese, and crackers at intermission, it's hard to get a better deal.

It's good to know that there is an audience for this kind of thing in Phoenix. My biggest regret is not being part of the inner circle. There was not a single soul we know at this concert, no one to talk to about music. I've gotten so out of touch. I miss not being able to hear this sort of concert a couple of times a week, as in my old school days, when we would compare notes during the intermission, then leave the concert and head over to House of Chin or the Capitol restaurant and argue about the music over beers until they threw us out and shut the place down.

A splendid time was had by all.

Job Interviews Are Like Auditions

Recently I have been looking for work once again, and in so doing have had to make myself available for job interviews, the humiliating grilling in which a person is expected to lay his life's work experience on the line in the course of a few minutes. He is expected to know, remember, and be fluently conversant about everything he has ever done over a career that may have spanned decades. Sometimes it helps; sometimes it does not.

Mulling over the inadequacies of the process brought to mind an experience my father had years ago, one he related to me in some detail years after it happened.

My father was a prominent classical musician who made his entire living his whole working life performing as a violist, conductor, violinist, teacher of professionals, and occasional composer. He was primarily an orchestral and chamber music player, but principal (first chair) in most orchestras he ever played in except the Chicago Symphony, the best orchestra in the world, where he was assistant principal during his first of two stints there. His first tenure was in the late forties to mid-fifties, the second in the early seventies under Sir Georg Solti. Dad was Good with a capital G, and I don't think I've ever known anybody who loved music more than he did.

He came up through the ranks before the days of the high-power conservatory training aspiring professionals now get. He got plenty of work because he was known all over the Chicago area by those who hired that kind of musician, whether it was for a pickup orchestra, jingle recording sessions, night club dates backing Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett, or whatever; most professional freelance work was obtained by a well-known core of solid and thoroughly competent musicians. That's how the business works, even today, except in today's world of MIDI-produced electronic music there are fewer jobs and lots more competition.

Today if one chair in a major symphony orchestra such as CSO opens up, management expects 250 players to show up for an audition. These will all be people who passed the initial screening, by sending resumés demonstrating they've already had years of professional orchestral experience, and also submitting tapes, CDs, or DVDs. Even after all that, the conductor and management might not like any of them, so will hire no one.

Around 1971, when my father was working as a freelancer, he got a call from the CSO business manager, who asked him point blank: "Would you like to play the season?" They had a vacancy in the viola section, and no one permanent had been hired. Of course, my father was thrilled to take it. He left when Fritz Reiner was about to take the reins of the orchestra, because the old man had a reputation for eating musicians alive for breakfast. Dad didn't want that kind of stress, plus he had in mind to expand his career as a conductor and entrepreneur, creating a fine arts festival. But if you want to make a really solid living in classical music, nothing beats a regular orchestra job with the best orchestra in the world. Musicians who get that job never leave, because it doesn't get any better than that.

So he played the season, during which the orchestra went on a historic tour of Europe, where they recorded some Mahler Symphonies that got rave reviews and piles of awards. Dad was in heaven doing exactly what he loved and was so good at. By this time he was already pushing 65 years of age, but could definitely cut the job. The next year, and I believe one more year after that, for whatever reason, the orchestra still could not find a real permanent player for that position, so my father continued as a contractor, with somewhat less money and benefits than a full member, and he was no longer assistant principal, just another section guy. But what a gig!

The time inevitably came where the orchestra's management decided to make an all-out effort to find a permanent player for that open position, which meant they had to have open auditions. Dad was never offered the job outright, but was told that if he'd like to take a shot at it, he could participate in an audition along with all the recent conservatory graduates who did nothing but practice difficult orchestral passages and sight reading and basically prepare for auditions like a runner training to win a marathon

Dad said: No way! He'd love the job. The conductor, his colleagues, and everyone in the CSO management knew him, his artistry, that he'd even been the featured soloist with the orchestra on at least one occasion (more if you count Bach's Brandenburg #6), and they knew his vast experience for what it was worth. If they wanted to hire him on that basis he'd be happy to accept. But in an open audition against some young hotshot who could play the Bartok and Walton Concertos in his sleep while whistling Dixie and stomping out the high hat part to an Elvin Jones solo with his feet he wouldn't have a prayer. Dad's position was that anyone who plays a good audition has proven exactly one thing: that he knows how to play a good audition. It demonstrates nothing about his artistry or whether he will hold up his end in one of the greatest ensembles in the world for the next forty years, and it's a sure thing he hasn't already played the Brahms 4th Symphony at least fifty times in performance. So Dad declined to audition.

That was the end of his Chicago music career. He and my mother moved to Florida where he taught for several years at the university in Tampa, was principal violist and associate conductor of the Gulf Coast Symphony until he finally really did retire — but he continued to perform right up the end, playing a recital with accompaniment just a few months before his death in 1995 at age 88.

My point in all this is that some people don't do well in put-on-the-spot interviews or tests and will screw up badly, whether out of nervousness, or whatever. And what does it prove? Nada.

Spinning Statistical Meaning

At Across the Years this year I earned a jacket for covering 1000 miles lifetime in my seventh year of running it. (My total is now 1042.162 miles, the fifth most overall.) That's the accumulated total from one 24-hour race, one 48-hour race, and five72-hour races.

It probably doesn't sound like a very big deal, but today I did a little arithmetic and learned that to get a 1000-mile jacket at an annually run standard 26.2-mile marathon (if they even gave one), I would have to run and complete 39 of them.

It's interesting how a little context can give meaning to a raw statistic

Why Ultrarunning?

On the Ultra List ultrarunning email list one subscriber surmised:

"...some people get into ultrarunning to prove to the world that they're "tough." Deep down inside they feel weak, so they compensate by doing something physically difficult."

Another responded:

Or to prove it to themselves. Running ultras is hard, painful, expensive, dangerous and pointless. So, why do it?

To which I responded as follows.

• Hard? Yes.


• Painful? Not like poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. Most real pain can be relieved instantly by stopping, if it gets bad or dangerous. Running can be uncomfortable sometimes, but it's manageable.


• Expensive? Only if you let it be. I've been broke much of the time I've been an ultrarunner. I train more than I race. That helps.


• Dangerous? Danger is relative. Sure, I could fall down, get bitten by a snake, or collapse from heat exhaustion far from help. But I do my best to prevent that. I have no desire to get hurt.


• Pointless? I suspect that to those who keep doing it, it's far from that.

Some of us have an impetus toward personal achievement built into our firmware.

Few persons get to do the things in life that they truly want in their hearts to do if only this and only that were true, and in short if only life were somehow different. So we settle for what we can get.

As recently as early 1994 the thought that I would ever run long distances for fun and personal satisfaction had never crossed my mind.

I won't presume to speak for females as to what motivates them to do hard physical things. They have babies — willingly! Frankly, I don't understand it.

Often a male's sense of self-worth is strongly tied into what he does in life, often extending beyond the simple satisfactions of having a loving family and knowing one has cultivated enough wisdom and common sense to Do the Right Thing most of the time. That should be enough. I've acquired all that, but for me it's not enough. I need more.

We are motivated to excel in our chosen work — not necessarily for money or recognition, and certainly not to demonstrate ourselves to be better than others in some way, but for the sheer joy of personal accomplishment, to know we have tackled something challenging and done it the best we are able.

That expression "chosen work" can refer to what a person does for a living, or it can refer to the entire gamut of life's activities.

As for me — I'm now 62 years of age. In retrospect I haven't gotten to do what I both wanted and expected as a primary work in life. I'm good at the work that I do, but I'm not great and never will be. I'm a lot better at the work that I did not get to do, for reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion. I'm confident that if I had gotten to pursue it, many people would know my name from sources outside of some blog, email list, or web site; but at a critical crossroads in my life something happened and things changed. That shouldn't bother me, but it does. So I've sought a measure of satisfaction in other pursuits.

When I took up running in 1977, at age 34, it was for fitness. I met a woman in her forties, the mother of seven children, who jogged every day, and thought it was cool, so I tried it myself and kept it up for a few years, but then my enthusiasm faded. I guess I didn't get enough out of doing it at that level.

When I took it up again in mid-1994, I found a way to make it both challenging and fun, and I've been at it ever since. But it was not until I discovered that I have an unforeseen capacity to be out on a trail or a track a really, really long time that I found the activity that allowed me to tap into something that would give me the deep sense of satisfaction I'd been looking for.

Not everyone I know knows or cares about what I do as a runner. Most people know me in other capacities, because I do many other things besides run. A few non-runners know about the ultrarunning and ask questions, and some act like they're impressed, while others are indifferent. I don't do it for them. Some garden variety runners know I'm an ultrarunner and pretend to think I'm crazy; I believe that beneath the surface they admire me for it. I don't do it for them. Most ultrarunners who know my actual performance ability are aware that compared to other ultrarunners what I've done is quite average or below — I'm a mid-packer on the best day of my life. But I don't do it for other ultrarunners, either.

I run for myself, because as I've learned, and was reminded as recently as this afternoon, I love the very act of running for a long time, meeting the onset of cramps, pains, tiredness, and discomfort, finding a way to deal with it, and going on despite it. And when I do that I feel like it's worth it.

From Enron to Pink Plastic Flamingos

This is a tale of web "surfing" in the truest sense — something I don't often do — an exploration of connections that led to an amusing conclusion relevant only to this blog.

Last night Suzy and I rented and watched Enron — The Smartest Guys in the Room, the appearance of which I've been awaiting for quite a while. It's timely, given that the Enron fat cats are now finally going to trial.

The movie is well done — not nearly so entertainingly as a Michael Moore exposé, but the facts are clearly and engagingly presented.

As usual after watching a movie (and often before as well), I wanted to read more about it. I visited the Wikipedia to read the entry on Enron — accurate enough for an overview that confirms the facts as presented in the movie.

My usual first line of movie information is the magnificent IMDB web site, which I visit two or three times a week. That led me to the movie's entry.

I almost always read Roger Ebert's review on any movie first (often as the only one), not because I consider what he says to be gospel, but because I believe Ebert to be one of the best journalists writing on any topic, and because his reviews are so often spot on in addition to sometimes being stunningly insightful, always written in the most engaging and readable of prose. I wish I could write that well. So I proceeded to read Ebert's review of the Enron movie

Near the beginning of his essay Ebert described Enron's business model as "essentially a Ponzi scheme." I was unfamiliar with that expression, so hit Google and came up with an interesting account of Charles (Carlo) Ponzi, who got involved in a bunch of crooked scams, his biggest being one that was pretty much the same as a pyramid scheme.

The place I found that was on a web site devoted to Useless Information, so naturally I had to see what other items they had, which led me to the Useless Information home page.

Scrolling down the page for entries, what did my wondering eyes behold, but a link on the large words Pink Flamingos!

The lead-in paragraph there says:

The pink flamingo is one of those objects that people seem to either love or hate. Considered by some to be a work of art and to others to be visual pollution, this one object stands for everything that is good and bad about our modern society.

The remainder of the article contains a "balanced" view of pink plastic flamingos, far more information about them than most people will ever care to know.

And why is this a funny connection? If you don't know already, then you really must read the August 12, 2005 entry on this blog entitled Pink Plastic Flamingos, and if you still don't see the humor, by all means check out the flurry of comments that the entry generated.

Fantastic Writing

At this moment my wife is sitting in the living room watching Lord of the Rings. I tried watching it when it first came out, but fell asleep, and have had no further interest in watching the others. I also fell asleep watching the first Harry Potter movie, and have not wanted to see the others.

Fantasy as a genre in literature and movies has never interested me much. It seems far too easy to just make up stuff that doesn't make sense, starting from almost any premise or situation, and just keep writing until you have enough to make a book or a movie. For instance:

The Gargon of Morillaland has absconded with the magic Feuerstalk and taken it across the river Fluss, leaving the little people of Imp Valley in mortal danger of attack by the fearsome Giganticus. According to the Scroll of Profesius, only the long-awaited Mesheah, a descendant of the legendary Gutmensch, has the power to overcome the Curse of Gewhilakers that prevents the Impantile Army from traversing the mighty Fluss to confront Gargon and recover their beloved icon, but to date there has been no sign of Mesheah making an appearance.

Lawdy! What's they gwine to do???

I could write another 3000 pages and make millions on the movie rights. Will I? Ummm. I don't think so.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Here is some news from theSuperhuman Achievement department.

There's been an interesting development in connection with Across the Years, the race I love so much and help to present at the end of every year. We learned that we will be honored by the participation of Greek ultrarunner Yiannis Kouros (who now lives in Australia), inarguably the greatest ultrarunner who has ever lived, one of those miraculous people whose successes are so outstanding that they may never be matched.

It's difficult to explain to non-runners the magnitude of this man's running accomplishments. He owns every world record from 50K up to 1000 miles, some of them by margins so vast it seems doubtful that anyone will ever approach them. His web site says he presently holds 134 world records. He wins every race he enters, always by phenomenal amounts, and has done so since the first time he ever ran an ultra.

Whenever he enters a race, the other runners accept that Yiannis will be the winner, and feel honored just to be in the same race with the man.

At age 49 Kouros is still extremely active as a runner, although he also does other things. In late November he broke his own six-day record at a race in Australia, beating the runners who was in second place by 132 miles. Think about that one for a while!! Imagine being a world class competitor at superlong distances and running your heart out for six continuous days to keep ahead of the other world class competitors who are hot on your heels -- but being beaten by a margin of 132 miles. On a standard 400-meter track, where this race was held, that means the second guy was lapped 531 times by Kouros.

These days most of the records that Kouros sets out to conquer are his own, many set when he was much younger. Kouros wants to come to our race to round out his big most recent world record setting year by breaking the record for 300 miles (about 2.5 days), and then just cruise. Given that last year's winner John Geesler has set his own goal of 350 miles for the race, Yiannis will have someone to push him from behind for a change.

Yiannis is now married, has a couple of children, has a degree in history, has been an ardent poet since childhood, is a composer and singer with a couple of albums out (I believe Greek popular music), has written a couple of books, paints, travels, lectures on physical fitness, has made some movies, and rarely sleeps more than three hours a day.

To describe him as the Michael Jordan or the Babe Ruth of ultrarunning would be to greatly undervalue his accomplishments. He's way better than that. Meeting and running in the same race with him will be more like meeting a Beatle. There has never been a runner like him, and may never be again. And he's coming to run in our race.

We'll have a webcam going during the race. We've already tried and tested it. The race goes from 9:00am December 29, 2005 to 9:00am January 1, 2006. Come join us virtually!

Eye Sea Warts

... or maybe the title should be Icy Wards.

When I hear or speak words, I see them spelled out in my head. Similarly, when I read I tend to see the letters in individual words, so that when called upon to read out loud, I rarely mispronounce words, unless I am outright unfamiliar with them.

Until recently, I have always supposed everyone does likewise. Upon inquiring of some other literate people, I was surprised to find that no one else I asked sees words.

Yesterday I heard my favorite NPR commentator Daniel Schorr use a word I have seen written but have never used myself, nor ever heard pronounced: "colloquy", which is a conversation or a dialogue, particularly one that is formal or written down.

I was surprised to hear him say it with the first syllable accented, for until yesterday I had heard it in my head with the accent on the second syllable, as in the word "colloquialism." Nonetheless, I saw the spelled-out word flash up in my head as with a red flag, because I knew the word's meaning, but its pronunciation turned out to be different from what I expected. (Many listeners probably know neither.)

A quick check of an on-line dictionary verifies the venerable Mr. Schorr's pronunciation to be spot on.

At the same time I considered it to be a delightful coincidence that it was that particular word that would serve to demonstrate my apparently anomalous tendency, in that it gave me an opportunity to develop this blog entry on the topic, a blog itself being essentially a form of colloquy.

As I am writing this, I hear in my head Daniel Schorr's precise and fatherly voice reading it back to me. (Dream on!) Will my quirkiness never cease?

I'm glad we had this little colloquy.

Why Do I Write?

Recently I posted a comment to an excellent article written by a friend on Ergo Sum. What I wrote works well as a standalone thought, so I decided to post it here as well.

Why do I write? One reason is to teach myself.

Whenever I begin to write something — as I have just now done — I rarely know what it is that I want to say, only that I have something to say, and want to let it out. By the time I am finished, I do know what it was that I wanted to say. In the process I have learned something. Because I generally write alone, without the influence of others, except by means of research, it's not unfair to say that I have thereby taught myself something derived from my reasoning and meditation on the topic at hand.

There does not have to be an audience in order for me to write. I am my own primary audience. I will read what I have written and then I will reread it. If I read it again years later and have changed my mind about what I have written, or find that I could have said it better, I will change it, because I am pathologically incapable of reading a sentence under the control of an editor and not editing it. In fact, I'm engaged in that very activity right now!

Our need to teach ourselves reminds me of what the apostle Paul said at Romans 2:21: "Do you, however, the one teaching someone else, not teach yourself?" Most people desire at some level to be teachers when they speak or write, to be conveyors of information in some sense of that expression. In speech we have only the speed of thought's opportunity to edit what we say. Perhaps that is one reason some of the best thinkers also use word whiskers and regressions when they speak — they are searching for les bon mots, and are already revising in their heads their just-made expressions.

Another Bible-related thought that comes to mind is the obligation that Christians acknowledge to be teachers of others, an activity in which I myself happily engage. Many is the time I have experienced, when called on 'to make a defense before others who demand a reason for' the things I know and believe, that upon articulating some matter to another person, I have in turn clarified it in my own mind, strengthening my own understanding, and in turn my faith. (1 Peter 3:15) It is not unusual in such circumstances for me to think to myself afterward: "Zounds! I didn't know I knew that!"

Exhalations

• I'm pathologically incapable of reading a sentence under the control of an editor and not editing it. In fact, I'm doing it right now!
  


• I'm having one of those experiences where an action produces a repeatable but seemingly unrelated reaction, so remote as to seem impossible. It's like turning on the car radio and the muffler falls off. Try explaining that one to a mechanic. He'll say: "Hey, I'll bet you been to college, ain't you?"


• Lynn's Law of Losing Stuff: The surest way to lose something is to buy two of them so that you'll have one in case you lose one.


• Once my wife said she'd been to the doctor, where they gave her a shot in the butt that left a eucalyptus taste in her mouth. Hmmm. Gives a whole new meaning to the expression "tongue in cheek", doesn't it?"
  "Don't give me any of your tongue-in-cheek humor! I don't know where that tongue has been!"


• When I say something and you say something else, but neither one of us gets mad and calls the other one an apostate or a heretic even though the other one is clearly wrong — that's called being balanced.


• The other day I got an email message with this in the subject. Hmmm, I'm not sure, but does this look like a spam message to you?
  
  NOTIFICATION OF REQUEST FOR EXTREMELY URGENT CONFIDENTIAL ASSISTANCE


• It's not hard to tell where some people are coming from. They speak
  with a Windows accent.
  
  You have learned the sort of patient tolerance that only regular users of Microsoft operating systems and women with alcoholic husbands or sons on death row can ever truly understand. (I think that's a quote.)


• So I told my friend: "The world is divided into two classes
  of people: Those who get it and those who don't."
  
  He asked: "What do you mean by that?"
  
  I said: "That's what I mean."


• We just went on a long vacation. Those hula skirts on the Eskimo women were really cute. Or did I get on the wrong boat?

Why I Hate News Groups

In the early days of the Internet, I used to read Usenet news groups, now more commonly known simply as news groups. Today I will read some specific news group no more often on average than once in several months because I have come to detest them and the culture that comes with them. In addition to the endless spam, vulgarity, profanity, and flame wars, the on-topic content is often useless.

Therefore I have not read news groups for years, except to field responses to some specific question, usually technical in nature. When I do get an answer at all, generally the answers I get fall within a limited set of models:

• My computer is better than yours.


• See www.donteventhinkaboutit.com for some hot pictures.


• The answer to your question is explained on page 972, paragraph 3 of my book "Arcane Science Artfully Obfuscated", pulished in 1951, which I take the liberty of recommending that you acquire as an addition to your reference library.

So I rarely bother.

Attending Live Professional Sports Events

I've attended one professional football game in my life, when I was nine years old. I went with my grandfather to a Chicago Bears game in December at Soldier Field in Chicago. We had cheap seats, I could barely see anything, and it was bitter cold. I did not enjoy the experience.

Today I often watch the Monday Night game, some of the playoffs, and usually the Superbowl, but little else. I never watch college football. I will never go to another professional football game. I despise the rough crowd, and I like the closeups and commentaries you get on TV.

I've attended one professional hockey game in my life, when I was eleven. Some visiting aunts and uncles and my mother took me on the evening of Thanksgiving Day, after stuffing myself all day. I sat in the middle back seat in the car on the way to the game. In those days all my relatives smoked. My parents gave that up cold turkey in 1960, but this was in the mid-fifties. I had asthma then. The combination of discomforts made me sick to my stomach. They had to make an emergency stop on the Chicago Lake Shore Drive and hustle me out of the car so I could throw up on the ground instead of on them. I didn't quite make it; I still barfed on myself but missed my relatives. Once I heaved, I felt much better for the rest of the night. My family were pretty good sports about it, but I didn't smell too good the rest of the evening. There weren't many people at the game, with few people around us, so my mother made me sit in the row behind them -- out of smelling range.

I didn't enjoy that experience or the game, which I found boring. I have no interest whatever in hockey, and have not watched a game even on TV in at least thirty years. I will never go to another professional hockey game.

I've attended one professional basketball game in my life, unless you add one enjoyable Harlem Globetrotters game in high school. It was just a few years ago, when the Suns made the NBA finals but were beat by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. The seats were fairly good, and the Suns beat the Minnesota Timberwolves that game. I enjoyed that experience, but I rarely watch basketball games. I'll probably never go to another professional basketball game unless a rare opportunity to take someone's seats to a good game drops into my lap.

I have not attended many major league baseball games in my life. When I thought hard I was able to recall every single major league game I've ever been to -- a total of nine since 1954, four of them in the last two years. I have never not enjoyed being at a baseball game. I like the game and I like the experience of watching it at the ball park. As Woody Allen said: "It doesn't have to mean anything. It's just a beautiful thing to watch."

If I were to go regularly I'd get a small FM radio so I could hear commentary on radio. That will never happen, because (a) I have too many other things to do; (b) it costs too much; (c) when I think about it, I resent the direction the professional game has gone the last few years, with the money and the attitude of many players, not to mention all the between inning nonsense that goes on. Baseball in its classic form from when I was a kid is a thing of the past.

Mastering Baseball

My wife and I have been married 27 years. In that time I've watched more than a few baseball games. We have also been to a few major league games and also numerous minor league games. Suzy usually pays attention when she sits down to watch with me. In this much time you'd expect most people to pick up a few things that most baseball watchers take for granted — including some things I had down pat by the time I was eight years old. But the rules of baseball are not easy, so it's no surprise that someone who has been watching the game may occasionally ask questions such as these that were asked during the recent World Series.

"How many innings are in this baseball game?" This is actually another question in disguise: "When will this baseball game be over so you can turn off the TV and pay attention to me?"

"How many fouls make an out?" As anyone who knows the game is aware, this is something that is easier to understand than it is to explain.

In the seventh inning, when it was 0-0: "So will they just keep playing until someone gets a run, even if it takes all night long?" Ummmm — yes. (The night before was a 7-5 game that didn't end until the 14th inning.)

In the eighth inning, with men on base and the score 1-0: "So if they score a run, will it be over?" No. It will be tied. It's only the eighth inning. There are nine innings unless there is a tie after nine. " Oh that's right, this is the World Series." Ummm, there are nine innings in every baseball game. Unless it rains. (There's got to be an exception to confuse matters.) You knew that. "Oh yeah."

As Ebby Calvin LaLoosh said in the movie Bull Durham? "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains!" Think about that for a while.

Rant on Writing

This diatribe was originally foisted upon a class of unmotivated and nearly illiterate university students. It was my job to attempt to teach them something about Unix and Linux, while also demanding, as a matter of school policy, that they upgrade their largely nonexistent writing skills.

If you write well, you will be able to do many things in life. If you cannot, you will find yourself correspondingly limited.

Therefore, writing well matters a great deal to me from both ends of the communications spectrum. I make an effort to write my best even in rapid-fire email exchanges.

Language is the primary tool of human thought. It is invariably true that a person who cannot write or speak effectively also cannot think clearly. Excuses such as "I'm a numbers guy," or "I'm a programmer, not an English professor," merely manifest the speaker's desire to beg off the issue, and to mask fundamental intellectual shortcomings. In contrast, many of the most brilliant technical minds have been superlative writers. Donald Knuth, Douglas Hoffstadter, Richard M. Stallman, and Eric Raymond are just four that readily come to mind.

I refuse myself the luxury of such laziness, and wish that others who desire to communicate with me in writing would make the same effort to express themselves clearly in the full range of their writing, whatever form that might take.

Guidelines on Formatting in Plain Text

A great deal in the way of formatting can be
accomplished in plain text, even without markup. My
email messages always follow the principles I've
learned over the years.

 joe> This is a quote of a message from Joe Blow,
 joe> which is neatly indented with citation software.

 sue> Persons who insist on using braindead tools will
 sue> produce work that looks like it was written by
 sue> braindead authors. Your work can be only as good
 sue> as the tools you use will allow you to be.

Set a narrow margin width. My practice is to wrap
paragraphs at 55 characters in email, and 60, 65, or 70
characters for other things, depending on what it is.
Narrow columns of text are much easier to read than
wide ones, and easier to quote in email as well.

Here are some other tips:

o *Do* use line breaks. No one likes to read email or
 anything else where the lines extend forever.

o Put blank lines between paragraphs.

o Bullet lists can be created to look like this one,
 using an "o" character to represent the bullet.
 Notice how second and following lines indent.

 - Bullet lists can even be nested.

 - You can choose another character such as a minus
   sign for the bullet in sublists.

o Emphasis (normally indicated by *italics*), can be
 emulated by putting text between *asterisks*.

o When sending email, always turn off HTML unless it is
 needed for some special purpose. HTML email is
 *evil.* It's usually ugly, it's hard to quote, and it
 is loaded with security holes. Many recipients *hate*
 HTML email (including me), and many mail lists ban
 it.

        A Centered Main Title
        =====================

Main titles can be centered and indicated as primary
points with an equal sign underline.

Subheadings Are Underlined
--------------------------

A subheading can look like the one that precedes this
paragraph. If you have something you would like to
quote, it can be indented.

   Any Web developer who is unconcerned about browser
   compatibility should be shot. -- Dwight Newton[1]

[1] My brother. Because there is no bottom of the page
   in this type text, my custom is usually to put a
   footnote immediately after the paragraph where
   it appears.

Sometimes we have need for hanging paragraphs, as in a
glossary list:

 SHELL  The SHELL variable usually is set to the name of
    your login shell.

 TERM   The TERM variable is set to the type of
   terminal you are using. In a graphics environment
   it is often set to xterm, but on real character
   terminals is it often vt100.

 HOME   The HOME variable is set to your login
   directory. Therefore, when you execute a command
   such as:

     ls -l $HOME

   it shows the files in that directory regardless of
   what your current directory is.

Finally, tables can generally be created without too
much trouble, and in most cases look just fine.[2]

 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
         YY  YY  NN  YY     [55.82]
 NN  YY  YY  YY  YY  YY  NN [21.83]
 YY  YY  YY  YY  YY  NN  YY [47.30] Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 YY  20  21  22  23  24  25 {35}     10  2w   5 10k   5   2   5
 26  27  28  29  30  31     {52}      R  40  2w  3    5   2  DA

 nn:KK mm.dd h:mm:ss.dd mm:ss.dd mm.dd comments
 ----- ----- ---------- -------- ----- --------
 01:    5.02 0:52:23.00 10:26.11 37.82 22
 02:WQ  3.08 0:42:07.41 13:39.95 30.86 22; w48
 03:                                 
 04:Q  34.96 7:06:39.00 12:12.17 55.82 22
 06:E   2.03 0:28:05.87 13:52.29 52.04 22; w15
 07:    3.08 0:31:12.00 10:07.32       22; w20
 08:W   4.05 0:54:10.89 13:22.46 47.20 22

[2] Of course, this is all much easier to do with an
   editor like Emacs!
   

Chopin on the Banjo

You haven't lived until you've heard Bela Fleck playing a Chopin Etude on the banjo. If you were to listen to it while falling over a cliff while running from a bear in Alaska, your life would be complete (and possibly over). You would never need to drink another cup of coffee as long as you lived, much less any other sort of drug.

Terrorists Win

Image via WikipediaShortly after the horrible events of September 11, 2001, the president of the nation of which I am a lifetime citizen became accustomed to declaring that if people did not go along with his plans and proposals for coping with the aftermath, "then the terrorists win!" Thus was born what has come to be called officially the War on Terrorism.

Four years later about the only people left to whom it has not been revealed that any so-called war on terrorism is unwinnable are the politicians to whom it is an advantage to perpetuate the myth so they may use it as a tool by means of which to continue pursuing their plans.

Whatever heinous acts terrorists commit, the terrorists always win the minute their deeds are done. There is no justice, there is no recompense, and there is no retribution that can possibly be meted out that makes things all better again — especially when the perpetrators zealously sacrifice their own lives to carry out their warped notions.

Following an act of terrorism, what remains is entirely bad — dead and injured victims, ruined lives, social upheaval, psychological devastation, and destruction of property.

Worst of all, the damage done goes on increasing. Anyone who has had to travel on an airplane since September 11, 2001, knows that. Travel used to be fairly simple, but that's no longer the case.

Years ago when I would cross the border into Canada, a friendly security guy would ask two or three questions, wish me a nice day, and send me on my vacationing way. I never even had to show identification. Now I need a passport and immigration papers. I wonder what the people who go between countries on a regular basis have to do?

Last week I traveled from my home in Phoenix, Arizona, to Alaska. Part of the trip took me through Canada. At each airport security station I had to unhitch all the carrying devices I had strapped to myself, empty my pockets, take off my glasses, take off my belt and my shoes, and subject my body and carried belongings to a search, then spend ten minutes reassembling it all again on the other side of the gate, all while smiling, and thinking: "There's nothing wrong here!", making sure not to make security jokes in order to avoid being arrested, strip-searched, and investigated, while inwardly my anger and impatience mounted.

And why is all this necessary? Because I or the person before me or after me is a terrorist? Has all of this rigamarole resulted in snaring even one would-be terrorist? Of course not. This happens because someone else a long time ago was a terrorist, and we all still live with the legacy of his vile acts. In other words: terrorists win.

Ecclesiastes 7:29 See! This only I have found, that the true God made mankind upright, but they themselves have sought out many plans.