I went to another pre-Christmas event last night which was so much fun. It was a three-set evening kicked off by a 4-piece group called "The Early Music Band," then songs by beautiful young classical singer Stephanie Nakagawa, and finally a set by the Kelowna Community Chorus, which was the reason I'd come.
The highlight of the evening for me was The Early Music Band, because during their set I had a completely out-of-control fit of giggling such as I haven't had in a decade or more. Bless their hearts, I give them full credit for being up there, and you're not seeing me in any sort of band - I know how hard it is, but they did miss a few notes, and I'd invited Brenda so maybe I was a little tense wanting it to be good, so when the guitarist lost his music pages in the middle of a song and had to go scrambling around to gather them, I just completely lost it - quietly, but nevertheless completely. I was shaking and snuffling, and Brenda was hissing "Dianne, you can't do this" in my ear, being pretty close to the line herself and having had a similar experience with her friend Terry once in which they had to walk out in disgrace. I was madly trying to recite "I wandered lonely as a cloud" in my mind, but it kept slipping away as I'd start giggling again, and finally, finally, they finished their set and I was slowly able to pull myself back together.
Stephanie Nakagawa was truly amazing, smashing in a strapless black ruffled ballgown and a fabulous voice with great dramatic flair. Accompanied by the very accomplished Ursula Pidgeon, she sang some Mozart, Schumann and Puccini, but the highlights for me were "O Holy Night," "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady, and the best of all, a comic piece called "Art Is Calling for Me" from a 1911 operetta called The Enchantress. It intrigues me no end all the fun and lovely art there is in the world that I've never even heard of. This young woman is working on her doctorate of music in voice, and one wonders where she might go with talent like this. Although I'm no expert, I had a sense that we could be seeing some history in the making.
I sang in the Kelowna Community Chorus years ago, and was considering it again, so thought I'd go hear what and how they're singing nowadays. It's a 100-member non-auditioned choir directed by Leroy Wiens and he has certainly done a beautiful job with this random assortment of community members who just want to sing. They sang melodic and fairly complicated versions of Christmas songs, with a particularly beautiful and meaningful adaptation of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," and a lively and lovely "Mr. Santa." Maybe I'd like to have heard a little more punch and volume, but with a choir of this size and with many untrained singers, getting a great, relaxed and mellow tone is quite an achievement and Leroy knows what he's doing.
December 9, 2012
December 8, 2012
The Spice Necklace: A Food-Lover's Caribbean Adventure
This book is a great follow-up to Ann Vanderhoof's An Embarrassment of Mangoes which I'd read and enjoyed some time ago. Both books are about years the author and her husband spent sailing around the Caribbean, and especially about the foods they discovered and learned to cook.
I admired the book immensely for its diligent focus and beautiful organization. The chapters really hang together, with themes like chocolate, spices, cocktails, seafood, foods eaten at Carnival, Christmas, etc. yet they are so well-written and varied, with trips to the various islands woven in, that I never got to thinking, "That's enough about chocolate." Well, OK, bad example.
It is a travel book and it does get you excited about visiting the islands of the West Indies, but more than that, it's a book about people and above all, about the food they cook and enjoy. Vanderhoof and her husband are sociable; they get to know people on the islands, visit them in their homes, and especially learn to cook their food. Every chapter ends with three or four or more mouth-watering recipes. I cooked two of them, and both were good, although the chicken one (with onions, tomatoes, chutney, peanuts, cilantro, coconut milk, lots of garlic, etc.) called for whole chicken pieces, so it was greasy, and next time I'd adapt it and use my usual boneless skinless.
True to its title, the book is an amazing chronicle of spices of all kinds, inspiring me to kick it up a notch with my seasonings. Fresh-ground nutmeg, which I have never used, is often featured, along with limes, ginger, cilantro, lots of hot peppers, and even surprisingly, curry, from the islands' multicultural past and present.
The author's website http://www.spicenecklace.com/ reflects the relaxed and happy tone of the book and includes gorgeous photos of her Caribbean adventures and even a few recipes.
I admired the book immensely for its diligent focus and beautiful organization. The chapters really hang together, with themes like chocolate, spices, cocktails, seafood, foods eaten at Carnival, Christmas, etc. yet they are so well-written and varied, with trips to the various islands woven in, that I never got to thinking, "That's enough about chocolate." Well, OK, bad example.
It is a travel book and it does get you excited about visiting the islands of the West Indies, but more than that, it's a book about people and above all, about the food they cook and enjoy. Vanderhoof and her husband are sociable; they get to know people on the islands, visit them in their homes, and especially learn to cook their food. Every chapter ends with three or four or more mouth-watering recipes. I cooked two of them, and both were good, although the chicken one (with onions, tomatoes, chutney, peanuts, cilantro, coconut milk, lots of garlic, etc.) called for whole chicken pieces, so it was greasy, and next time I'd adapt it and use my usual boneless skinless.
True to its title, the book is an amazing chronicle of spices of all kinds, inspiring me to kick it up a notch with my seasonings. Fresh-ground nutmeg, which I have never used, is often featured, along with limes, ginger, cilantro, lots of hot peppers, and even surprisingly, curry, from the islands' multicultural past and present.
The author's website http://www.spicenecklace.com/ reflects the relaxed and happy tone of the book and includes gorgeous photos of her Caribbean adventures and even a few recipes.
A Good Talk
Brenda and I were sitting around early this fall talking about the importance of community and our need to get together with a group of some sort to share ideas. We had only a vague idea what this might look like. Our idea was based somewhat on the care groups we used to have when we were part of a church, but it was not specifically spiritual needs we were thinking of. We thought of care, conversation, and community and decided to run the idea by some of our friends. The response was positive, so we set a date for November.
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, and so, apparently, does good conversation. I read A Good Talk by Daniel Menaker in preparation for this group and among many other interesting things, I learned that good conversation between friends raises the level of the hormone oxytocin in your body, increasing a feeling of bonding, empathy and wellbeing similar to what happens in sex, breastfeeding, and affectionate touch. Conversation is good for you.
We had invited about 7 women, of whom only 3 came the first evening, making 5 of us at Brenda's house. It was what I would call a wonderful evening and everyone there seemed to agree. A Good Talk emphasized the importance of "aimlessness" in good conversation as opposed to having a strict agenda which can become business, foster competition and kill caring and community. I was the designated leader for that evening and I suppressed as best I could my natural tendency towards achievement and focus. At the same time, I wanted the time to be meaningful - I have so little interest in sustained small talk. The dynamic among that small group was excellent, with the conversation flowing easily and courteously back and forth. We introduced ourselves, and a theme of "why do we move and what is home?" emerged.
At the end of the evening, each of us said what we would hope for a group like this, and when Holly said, "I'd like intelligent conversation," my spirit soared. I suggested that the art of conversation could be our next topic, and Janice suggested "Sound and Silence" for January. We decided we'd meet 5 times in total, on the first Tuesday of every month between November and March. Then we could reinvent or restart the group if there was a will to continue in fall.
The December meeting was just as good or even better than the November one. Seven women came, and conversation once again flowed deeply and evenly. I'd handed out quotations from A Good Talk on slips to each person and told them they could fit them into the conversation if they saw a suitable place. This worked! Everyone had lots of their own thoughts about conversation and the ideas on the papers seamlessly merged into the discussion ("OK! Listen to this!"). There was a lot of laughter and for me, a feeling of being exactly in the right place at the right time.
Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, and so, apparently, does good conversation. I read A Good Talk by Daniel Menaker in preparation for this group and among many other interesting things, I learned that good conversation between friends raises the level of the hormone oxytocin in your body, increasing a feeling of bonding, empathy and wellbeing similar to what happens in sex, breastfeeding, and affectionate touch. Conversation is good for you.
We had invited about 7 women, of whom only 3 came the first evening, making 5 of us at Brenda's house. It was what I would call a wonderful evening and everyone there seemed to agree. A Good Talk emphasized the importance of "aimlessness" in good conversation as opposed to having a strict agenda which can become business, foster competition and kill caring and community. I was the designated leader for that evening and I suppressed as best I could my natural tendency towards achievement and focus. At the same time, I wanted the time to be meaningful - I have so little interest in sustained small talk. The dynamic among that small group was excellent, with the conversation flowing easily and courteously back and forth. We introduced ourselves, and a theme of "why do we move and what is home?" emerged.
At the end of the evening, each of us said what we would hope for a group like this, and when Holly said, "I'd like intelligent conversation," my spirit soared. I suggested that the art of conversation could be our next topic, and Janice suggested "Sound and Silence" for January. We decided we'd meet 5 times in total, on the first Tuesday of every month between November and March. Then we could reinvent or restart the group if there was a will to continue in fall.
The December meeting was just as good or even better than the November one. Seven women came, and conversation once again flowed deeply and evenly. I'd handed out quotations from A Good Talk on slips to each person and told them they could fit them into the conversation if they saw a suitable place. This worked! Everyone had lots of their own thoughts about conversation and the ideas on the papers seamlessly merged into the discussion ("OK! Listen to this!"). There was a lot of laughter and for me, a feeling of being exactly in the right place at the right time.
December 7, 2012
Minds and Music
Last week I went to the first of a three-concert series at UBCO called "The Year of the Guitar." It's part of a program called Minds and Music envisioned and run by a philosophy professor at the university, a free concert/lecture series so far funded only for this year, from what I could gather.
What an absolutely lovely afternoon. This first concert/lecture featured guitarist Alan Rinehart, the husband of my new friend Janice whom I met at the beach this fall. Alan spoke very knowledgeably about the early history of the guitar in Spanish music, and showed us four different guitars built by his friend to the historic specifications of peak periods for guitar music between 1500 and about 1850. In between, he played music from these periods on his own concert guitar, beautiful and restful and thought-provoking all at the same time.
Just as with Romanza the week before, I went into this pretty grey, but came out feeling all mellow and happy and artsy. The event was held in the University Centre's airy ballroom, which has lots of tall windows overlooking the campus and a beautiful feature wall of different woods. There was an amazing buffet with all sorts of appetizers and drinks, all free.
Alan is playing and teaching again in Concert #2 of the series, featuring Spanish guitar music of the modern period, from 1850 to the present. This one happens at the same place on January 23, 2013, and the third concert features guitarist musician Daniel Bolshoy of UBC, on March 8. I don't want to miss either of them, and hope to take at least one or two of my friends with me next time.
What an absolutely lovely afternoon. This first concert/lecture featured guitarist Alan Rinehart, the husband of my new friend Janice whom I met at the beach this fall. Alan spoke very knowledgeably about the early history of the guitar in Spanish music, and showed us four different guitars built by his friend to the historic specifications of peak periods for guitar music between 1500 and about 1850. In between, he played music from these periods on his own concert guitar, beautiful and restful and thought-provoking all at the same time.
Just as with Romanza the week before, I went into this pretty grey, but came out feeling all mellow and happy and artsy. The event was held in the University Centre's airy ballroom, which has lots of tall windows overlooking the campus and a beautiful feature wall of different woods. There was an amazing buffet with all sorts of appetizers and drinks, all free.
Alan is playing and teaching again in Concert #2 of the series, featuring Spanish guitar music of the modern period, from 1850 to the present. This one happens at the same place on January 23, 2013, and the third concert features guitarist musician Daniel Bolshoy of UBC, on March 8. I don't want to miss either of them, and hope to take at least one or two of my friends with me next time.
November 27, 2012
Romanza
Lucky me. I was invited to a concert at the Mary Irwin Theatre last weekend featuring Romanza, the West Coast's very own "three tenors." These young classically trained tenors entertained us royally with their beautiful voices and engaging personalities. They were having fun, and so were we.
My favourite was Ken Lavigne, of whom one reviewer said, "It only takes a moment for tenor Ken Lavigne to sing a single note, and the whole dreary day has changed." This was certainly true for me; I came to the theatre under a cloud of sadness for various reasons but within a few songs I was smiling and after a few more, laughing out loud.
The trio started with classical arias, love songs in Italian, like "O Sole Mio." But soon they were interspersing it with more lighthearted stuff including an absolutely hilarious costumed (think ridiculous large sombrero, chaps with dark suits peeking out) "Rawhide." They swept us into the intermission with the most glorious version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" you could imagine.
In the second half, Christmas-themed, the highlight for me by far was Elvis's "Blue Christmas" by Lavigne, once again in full costume, looking and sounding like nothing but The King himself, except better. "O Holy Night" and "The Prayer" and other carols rounded out a wonderful, very classy pre-Christmas evening of great singing.
My favourite was Ken Lavigne, of whom one reviewer said, "It only takes a moment for tenor Ken Lavigne to sing a single note, and the whole dreary day has changed." This was certainly true for me; I came to the theatre under a cloud of sadness for various reasons but within a few songs I was smiling and after a few more, laughing out loud.
The trio started with classical arias, love songs in Italian, like "O Sole Mio." But soon they were interspersing it with more lighthearted stuff including an absolutely hilarious costumed (think ridiculous large sombrero, chaps with dark suits peeking out) "Rawhide." They swept us into the intermission with the most glorious version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" you could imagine.
In the second half, Christmas-themed, the highlight for me by far was Elvis's "Blue Christmas" by Lavigne, once again in full costume, looking and sounding like nothing but The King himself, except better. "O Holy Night" and "The Prayer" and other carols rounded out a wonderful, very classy pre-Christmas evening of great singing.
November 24, 2012
A Beautiful Mind
The three weeks since I last posted is exactly how long it took me to read A Beautiful Mind. I calculated that it has something like 200,000 words, most of them hard. But it's a spellbinding book, divided into 5 main sections and 50 chapters with carefully adhered to and well-thought-out themes, and this made it readable for me. Barely.
Although I'd seen the movie and know the basic story, the biography is grippingly thorough and I basically kept reading to see what would happen next. The whole 20-chapter first section, subtitled "A Beautiful Mind," describes the first 25 or so years of John Nash's life, and the mathematics he did at MIT and Princeton. The next three sections describe his descent into madness and his long sojourn there. And the last section relates his amazing return to rationality.
What surprised me most is that Nash rarely did his homework. His incredible insights came in intuitive flashes, and then he would begin the long process of proving them mathematically, often after relentlessly pestering colleagues for the backgrounds of problems he was working on, rather than studying the literature. This isn't to say he didn't work. He did, constantly - thinking, thinking as he paced the hallways, and calculating for hours, weeks, sometimes years, on a problem that intrigued him, and that he had determined from careful inquiry was important enough to bother with.
Never was such a beautiful mind (one of his colleagues said this about him - "he has a beautiful mind,") encased in such a complex and often downright unpleasant personality. He was competitive, scheming, and petty, and an extreme penny-pincher. Arrogant doesn't begin to describe him. At one point he is quoted as saying something like "There are three true geniuses in mathematics today, me and ___ and ___, and I am probably the best." He would put students and colleagues down mercilessly: "I can't believe you're asking me that! What a stupid question! Don't you know anything?"
This would pretty well disqualify the average person from good society, but Nash's genius was so extreme that he kept on being accepted to a certain extent, although people found his bizarre behaviour highly uncomfortable. Even when his schizophrenia progressed to such an extent that most people were afraid of him, he retained champions who allowed him to hang around Princeton, kept finding funding for him, and tried to get him the best medical care.
I learned a little bit from this book about mathematics (not that there weren't many explanations, I just didn't get them), something about game theory (for which Nash won his Nobel Prize), and a lot about genius and mental illness. A riveting book, researched almost beyond a point I can comprehend, and beautifully written.
Although I'd seen the movie and know the basic story, the biography is grippingly thorough and I basically kept reading to see what would happen next. The whole 20-chapter first section, subtitled "A Beautiful Mind," describes the first 25 or so years of John Nash's life, and the mathematics he did at MIT and Princeton. The next three sections describe his descent into madness and his long sojourn there. And the last section relates his amazing return to rationality.
What surprised me most is that Nash rarely did his homework. His incredible insights came in intuitive flashes, and then he would begin the long process of proving them mathematically, often after relentlessly pestering colleagues for the backgrounds of problems he was working on, rather than studying the literature. This isn't to say he didn't work. He did, constantly - thinking, thinking as he paced the hallways, and calculating for hours, weeks, sometimes years, on a problem that intrigued him, and that he had determined from careful inquiry was important enough to bother with.
Never was such a beautiful mind (one of his colleagues said this about him - "he has a beautiful mind,") encased in such a complex and often downright unpleasant personality. He was competitive, scheming, and petty, and an extreme penny-pincher. Arrogant doesn't begin to describe him. At one point he is quoted as saying something like "There are three true geniuses in mathematics today, me and ___ and ___, and I am probably the best." He would put students and colleagues down mercilessly: "I can't believe you're asking me that! What a stupid question! Don't you know anything?"
This would pretty well disqualify the average person from good society, but Nash's genius was so extreme that he kept on being accepted to a certain extent, although people found his bizarre behaviour highly uncomfortable. Even when his schizophrenia progressed to such an extent that most people were afraid of him, he retained champions who allowed him to hang around Princeton, kept finding funding for him, and tried to get him the best medical care.
I learned a little bit from this book about mathematics (not that there weren't many explanations, I just didn't get them), something about game theory (for which Nash won his Nobel Prize), and a lot about genius and mental illness. A riveting book, researched almost beyond a point I can comprehend, and beautifully written.
November 2, 2012
On Trying to Keep Still by Jenny Diski
To say that the author of this strange travel book is misanthropic is an understatement. She is a traveller who would rather stay home, dislikes a lot of what she does and sees, but nevertheless describes it quite beautifully, and the realness is refreshing.
The theme of the book is her attempt to be in a very still place. She describes three trips - one to New Zealand for an author's conference after which she attempts a retreat to a remote corner of the country, but finds mostly other tourists. The second trip is a two-month stay at a cottage in Somerset, England. This is better but her cottage is attached to the Farmer's house and her efforts to be alone are foiled by the Farmer (she capitalizes this and never gives a name) who worries about her. Her third trip is to visit the Sami people in Lapland in the dead of winter. She thinks in the endless darkness she might find the peace and quiet she's looking for.
I'm a lot different character than the author (she likes to stay in, I love to be out, she likes inaction, I like action), but I could deeply relate to some of her feelings. I like being alone too, and I like her definition of it:
Being really alone means being free from anticipation. Even to know that something is going to happen, that I am required to do something, is an intrusion on the emptiness I am after. What I love to see is an empty diary, pages and pages of nothing planned.[This is my dream exactly] A date, an arrangement, is a point in the future when something is required of me. I begin to worry about it days, sometimes weeks ahead.
Diski is very funny, never more so than when she's describing her thoughts, or lack thereof. Although she prefers to stay indoors, she constantly thinks she should be wandering the moors and thinking, as all good authors do. They suggest, she says, that the busyness of their lives and thoughts covers up a profound inner complexity of being which silence and stillness brings into the open. For me, on the other hand, all the complexity of my outerness appears to be covering up is an inherent lack of inner person.
Years ago a friend told me she resented her children because they disrupted her thoughts. I said that never happened to me. She said, "Well, what do you think about when you're peeling potatoes?" I said I didn't know, and later checked it out. I was thinking about peeling potatoes. Diski says she waits for her thoughts to come, but really there was only: what kind of day is it? Rainy? Sunny? Windy? Mmm. The horses are there, or not there. The sheep are near by in an upper field or not to be seen. My body warm or in need of warming. Tea? Hungry?
That made me laugh out loud, as did quite a few other descriptions in this quirky book. The three sections don't really hang together, and in the end Diski spends a lot of time on the culture of the native Laplanders. What I like is her honesty and humanness that allow me to laugh at this crazy world and at myself and feel OK because I'm not even as introverted as she is.
The theme of the book is her attempt to be in a very still place. She describes three trips - one to New Zealand for an author's conference after which she attempts a retreat to a remote corner of the country, but finds mostly other tourists. The second trip is a two-month stay at a cottage in Somerset, England. This is better but her cottage is attached to the Farmer's house and her efforts to be alone are foiled by the Farmer (she capitalizes this and never gives a name) who worries about her. Her third trip is to visit the Sami people in Lapland in the dead of winter. She thinks in the endless darkness she might find the peace and quiet she's looking for.
I'm a lot different character than the author (she likes to stay in, I love to be out, she likes inaction, I like action), but I could deeply relate to some of her feelings. I like being alone too, and I like her definition of it:
Being really alone means being free from anticipation. Even to know that something is going to happen, that I am required to do something, is an intrusion on the emptiness I am after. What I love to see is an empty diary, pages and pages of nothing planned.[This is my dream exactly] A date, an arrangement, is a point in the future when something is required of me. I begin to worry about it days, sometimes weeks ahead.
Diski is very funny, never more so than when she's describing her thoughts, or lack thereof. Although she prefers to stay indoors, she constantly thinks she should be wandering the moors and thinking, as all good authors do. They suggest, she says, that the busyness of their lives and thoughts covers up a profound inner complexity of being which silence and stillness brings into the open. For me, on the other hand, all the complexity of my outerness appears to be covering up is an inherent lack of inner person.
Years ago a friend told me she resented her children because they disrupted her thoughts. I said that never happened to me. She said, "Well, what do you think about when you're peeling potatoes?" I said I didn't know, and later checked it out. I was thinking about peeling potatoes. Diski says she waits for her thoughts to come, but really there was only: what kind of day is it? Rainy? Sunny? Windy? Mmm. The horses are there, or not there. The sheep are near by in an upper field or not to be seen. My body warm or in need of warming. Tea? Hungry?
That made me laugh out loud, as did quite a few other descriptions in this quirky book. The three sections don't really hang together, and in the end Diski spends a lot of time on the culture of the native Laplanders. What I like is her honesty and humanness that allow me to laugh at this crazy world and at myself and feel OK because I'm not even as introverted as she is.
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