Here’s one way to tell if you rely too much on four-letter words, and in particular the strongest Anglo-Saxon variety beginning with the letter “F”: your dog reacts when you say them. It’s no surprise that dogs react when they hear angry language; they may not understand the words literally, but they’re faultless interpreters of tone and mood and body language. But the last time I was around a dog on a daily basis, back when I was a kid, really, I didn’t pick up so much on how dogs responded to the tenor of someone’s speech. Since Scout has been around, nearly a year and a half, I’ve been surprised to find that he’s really put off when he hears me swear. Today, driving home from picking up the van at the garage, I made an angry comment about one of my fellow drivers. Scout had been sitting next to me, but he immediately got down and went to the back of the car; he didn’t want to be around if I was pissed off. He also seems to be especially sensitive to hearing the F-word; maybe it’s because he hears it only when someone is really angry. I don’t know. But it’s something I find myself more and more conscious of; again, I don’t know, but maybe it’s because he reacts so viscerally and visibly. Ironic that it has taken a dog, and not wife, kids, siblings, parents, coworkers, softball umpires or other unfortunate ear witnesses to demonstrate the emotional effect of my swearing habit.
The Pasadena Peloton
OK, here’s one of the many things I didn’t know about Los Angeles and its cycling culture. Every Tuesday and Thursday, there’s an informal event at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl that’s known as the Peloton. Depending on which print source you believe, as many as 100 (Los Angeles CityBeat’s number) or 150 riders (the figure in the L.A. Times) turn out every Tuesday and Thursday during Daylight Saving Time to blast around a three-mile circuit outside the stadium.
It might be fun to do. Once. Or twice. Or at least until the first crash.
Both CityBeat (first) and the Times (second) thought the Peloton a fit subject for a major feature this week. That’s because the city of Pasadena, having gotten an earful from some residents and businesses scared or just put off by the horde of high-speed cyclists, is talking about shutting down the ride. CityBeat’s take, which I’ll give points for sounding like it’s written by someone who’s ridden in the group, is to dismiss the idea. Sure, the ride is dangerous, but so is every peloton. By its nature, though, it’s unpoliceable. The Times notes the conflicts and safety issues among cyclists, drivers, pedestrians and others, but the picture you get is that everyone’s trying to work things out. For instance, car traffic might be limited in the area during the three or so hours a week the Peloton is on the street; and foot traffic might be required to move counterclockwise against the flow of the ride to try to ensure that walkers and runners are at least facing the bikes as they approach.
DST ends this year on the first Sunday in November. It starts again the second Sunday in March. That’s how long folks have to come up with some sort of solution.
Road Dog
Scout, outside the Subway sandwich place in Willows. I like the contrast: ultraserious dog with goofy chicken toy. He (the dog) has proven to be a great traveler. We’ve been up and down I-5 to Eugene about half a dozen times with him so far, and he’s pretty patient with the whole process.
And the (2006) Tour Winner Is …
Only six more days at the most and we’ll know who won the 2006 Tour de France. That’s because the doping cops’ largely inscrutable process of deciding whether Floyd Landis is a doper or not has finally come to an end — there are many good blog takes on this, including ones at Rant Your Head Off and Trust But Verify — and the verdict will be announced by next Sunday. So, Landis will either pull off a win even more stunning than his famous escape in the final week of the ’06 Tour or, more likely, he’ll be found guilty of cheating and some guy named Oscar will belatedly get the now faded and much besmirched yellow jersey.
(And why do I say it’s more likely he’ll be found guilty of cheating? Just this: As shown time and time again, the anti-doping “system” in cycling is a “system” the same way a neck-tie party was a system in the Old West: It has shown itself to have no concern for due process. Landis is a cause celebre here in the States, but arguably much worse has happened to other riders at the hands of doping and cycling and team officials who feel compelled to act before all the evidence is in. The world will little note nor long remember Michael Rasmussen, but any time you yank the leader of the nearly certain winner of the Tour off the road and tell him to pack his bags, you’ve administered a cure that’s far worse than the disease.)
Technorati Tags: doping, floyd landis, michael rasmussen, tour de france
On and Off the Road
Friday morning, the four of us (Kate, Thom, Scout the Dog and I) drove up to Eugene to move one of us (Thom) into his house for the beginning of the school year. It’s his third year at the University of Oregon, and it’s kind of breathtaking how fast that time is going (for us, not him). We spent Saturday taking care of house errands with him, including tracking down a $38 couch at the Goodwill Superstore. Quite a buy, for the money. Sort of a tweedy looking brown fabric that kind of goes with the famous one-dollar chair we found at St. Vincent de Paul a couple years ago.
Anyway, that was yesterday. Today we ate breakfast at the favored spot, The Glenwood near campus, then drove home. It was an uneventful trip until we got to the Mount Shasta area. It’s my favorite part of the drive, the high valleys north of the mountain. My cellphone rang, and Kate answered. It was my brother John, with news: My dad had fallen at home yesterday and had broken his hip. I heard Kate say that much and had my usual calm reaction. We stopped so I could talk to John and my sister Ann, who actually took Dad to the hospital earlier today, and I got the details: He stumbled getting out of a chair sometime yesterday and fell. He picked himself up, though, apparently inventoried his injuries and decided he didn’t need to call anyone. He did pull my mom’s old walker out of the closet and was making his way around the apartment with that. But over time he realized he was dealing with more than just some bruises or sore muscles, and this morning he called Ann and asked her to come over. When she got there, he told her what had happened and agreed with her when she said he’d better get checked out at the emergency room. Ann and my brother-in-law Dan managed to get Dad up the stairs and into Ann’s car, and then they drove to the hospital in Evanston. As part of getting checked over, naturally, he was given an X-ray. One of his hips is fractured, though apparently not badly.
That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that he needs to have surgery tomorrow. Apparently the planned operation is the least invasive procedure possible with this kind of injury. But still, we’re talking about an 86-year-old guy with what is now days called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD for short; one of the old-fashioned terms for it is emphysema, and that’s what you get when you have a pack-a-day minimum Pall Mall habit for a few decades). So tonight, back home in Berkeley, I’m thinking about Dad and the rest of the family and hoping everything goes well tomorrow and afterward.
And if you happen this way, your good wishes, however you’re in the habit of sending them, will be appreciated.
[Update: The news from my brother Chris was that the surgeon says that everything went as expected. Dad was in good spirits going into the operation and apparently stood up to it well. The issue now will be physical therapy and recovery.]
My Name’s Dan, and I Boggle
I’m telling you this so that maybe you won’t have to go through what I have.
During a short but pleasant family game of Boggle — that game where you try to make words out of a tray full of randomly arranged letters — my son Thom mentioned there was a website where you could play online. Later that same night, I found and visited the site.The intervening days are a blur.
The game is like crack. Except you don’t have to buy or smoke anything. You just sit down at your computer and type in the Web site. That quickly, you’re on the road to becoming an unshaven, unbathed lout with his hair sticking out at odd angles, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused, his grimy T-shirt stained with coffee dribblings and crusted with the leavings of granola bars
Also, unlike the popular media depiction of crack smoking, this online “game play” brings no moment of enjoyment, no momentary euphoria, no relief.
There’s screen after screen of letters arranged in the same deceptively simply 5×5 square. Full of possibilities. There’s a time clock counting down from three minutes. There’s the puzzlement at the failure to find a word more complex than b-u-t-t. There’s the automatic scoring at the end of the round, which comes with the revelation that everyone else has found words like “permanganate” and “perplexity” and “propinquity,” whatever those things are. There’s your name again, way down toward the bottom with the people who are just being introduced to written language and those who type with their elbows.
You’re sure you can do better. Really well. Give the player who goes by the handle ShazaMaster something to remember you by. Then it’s time to play. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Technorati Tags: boggle
My Rights, Ably Defended
It’s sort of like Mao said: Free speech grows out of the barrel of a gun. The latest reminder comes from General David Petraeus (a.k.a., the Lafayette of Iraq), who responded to a negative ad from MoveOn.org this way:
“I’m not so sure the infamous MoveOn ad was smartly done, but I found Petraeus’s reaction today interesting: “Needless to say, to state the obvious, I disagree with the message of those who are exercising the First Amendment right that generations of soldiers have sought to preserve for Americans.”
A friend puts it better than me: “I grow so weary of that refrain, heard from the military any time any civilian even hints at criticizing these sainted men and women. If this stunningly stupid war had ANYTHING to do with preserving my right to free speech, I’d be a little more forgiving of the rhetorical ploy. But please, General, don’t insult me and don’t embarrass yourself.”
And the same also sends this, from Slate — “Lost Voices“:
“On Monday, while Gen. David Petraeus prepared to testify before two House committees about the successes of the surge, seven of his soldiers died when their transport vehicle overturned in a highway accident west of Baghdad.
“Two of those soldiers, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were part of another group of seven—the seven noncommissioned officers of the 82nd Airborne Division who wrote a brave, well-reasoned op-ed in the Aug. 19 New York Times, calling the prospect of victory ‘far-fetched’ and appraisals of progress ‘surreal.’ ”
Technorati Tags: iraq, moveon.org, petraeus
Tonight’s Enthusiasm
By way of my brother John: a YouTube video of Luciano Pavarotti performing “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s “Turandot” at an outdoor concert in Paris in 1998. In my brother’s estimation, Paravotti was “a rare and brilliantly gifted artist … one in a billion.”
Me, I didn’t pay attention. An appraisal of the singer’s career that ran in The New York Times on on Friday (along with a long, beautifully detailed obituary) noted that in the later stages of his career, Pavarotti turned “from a hard-working artist into an overindulged and sometimes clownish superstar.” In the peripheral bit of awareness I had of Pavarotti, that was close to my impression.
More’s the pity, because even with crappy Web audio, Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” is a knock out; so much so that I’ve been whistling the tune this evening, prompting calls from cohabitants to cut it out. Part of the power of the performance is witnessing this man as an instrument. The sound! And part of it is the way he appears to merge with the music, the poetry of the lyric, and the emotion behind both.
(I have watched the clip, along with others showing Pavarotti performing the same aria in other settings, several times this evening. I started out not knowing anything about it, but after an hour of Web study: “Turandot” was Puccini’s final opera — in fact, he died before it was completed; although another composer completed the work, the first public performance, conducted by Arturo Toscanini at La Scala in 1926, ended just where Puccini’s work finished; Toscanini is said to have turned to the house at that point and announced, in effect, “that’s all he wrote.” The story, which passed through many hands before reaching Puccini and his librettist, is set in ancient Peking: the emperor’s daughter, Turandot, isn’t keen on marriage; to take her hand in marriage, suitors my answer three riddles; if they fail, they die. The opera opens with the execution of one of these unfortunates and features Turandot scorning pleas for mercy. A deposed Tatar prince, Calaf, happens on the scene and is smitten by Turandot. As a nameless stranger, he takes up the challenge of answering the three riddles and, surprise, succeeds. But it’s clear that Turandot wants no part of marrying him. So he offers a challenge of his own: If you can discover my name by tomorrow morning, the marriage is off and he’ll be at her mercy. A desperate search, torture and suicide ensue. When dawn breaks — well, everything is resolved in a heroically romantic way.
The aria “Nessun Dorma” is set at the beginning of the final act. Turandot has decreed that no one in the city shall sleep until the mysterious stranger’s name is known. As one nice synopsis of the musical passage puts it:
“Act 3 opens in gloomy night with lugubrious chords in the orchestra (technically, minor chords with augmented 7ths and 11ths). Some heralds are announcing Turandot’s decree, ‘Tonight no one in Peking sleeps’ (‘Questa notte nessun dorma in Pekino’), and the chorus gloomily repeats the words ‘no one sleeps’ (‘nessun dorma’). In the first words of his aria, the Prince is repeating the words of the chorus. The G major chord that opens the aria is the first optimistic-sounding chord we’ve heard since intermission and it breaks through the gloom like the light of dawn.”
(The lyrics, both as published in the libretto and set in the score, are here, along with an English translation.)
One of the other YouTube “Nessun Dorma” clips features Pavarotti in one of his Three Tenors performances with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. It’s worth watching to get the context mentioned above; the orchestra and chorus, directed by Zubin Mehta, open with the minor-key refrain of “nessun dorma” that leads into the tenor solo (and here I am being a critic already: Splitting up the aria takes away from its power, though it gives Pavarotti a great showcase on what you might call his home field). One other “Nessun Dorma” performance to recommend: the one Pavarotti gave at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Turin last year.
Of course, this is an evening’s enthusiasm, facilitated by YouTube (hooray for Web video). But Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times critic, looks at the role and Pavarotti’s possession of it with a longer view that I can only imagine:
“By natural endowment Mr. Pavarotti was essentially a lyric tenor, ideally suited to lighter roles in Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi requiring lyrical grace and agile passage work. Yet his voice, like everything about him, was uncommonly large. With that big throbbing sound, he was tempted into weightier repertory requiring dramatic power and heft, like Calaf in Puccini’s ‘Turandot.’ Some opera purists maintain that Mr. Pavarotti erred by straying from the lyric terrain. Don’t tell that to anyone lucky enough to have heard him sing ‘Nessun dorma’ in his prime, not just as a signature aria for televised stadium concerts, but in the context of a full production of ‘Turandot.’ Wow!
Sunday Notebook
Vuelta a España: Well, someone’s leading it. Actually, Dennis Menchov, a Russian who rides for the Dutch Rabobank team. I have to confess that the race is less than totally engaging without the daily television coverage that the Tour de France enjoys here in the United States. Even with the bad race calling and lame, repetitive analysis by Sherwen and Liggett, the fact we get to see at least a couple hours of each day’s stage creates a sense of continuity and an understanding of the terrain and tactics that is very hard to come by when you depend on text and still pictures. It is possible to see the Vuelta online, via CyclingTV. My experience with online video: noncompelling, perhaps given my 12-inch display and reliance on a not-superspeedy DSL connection (that having been said, I did follow some of the Tour of California live online last February and while the pictures were in and out, the audio was pretty good and the commentary from Robbie Ventura and the ever-popular Someone Else was quite good).
Fantasy Vuelta: As earlier predicted, my team, the Berkeley Bombers, has plummeted in the standings as the race has gone into the world-famous Spanish mountains (a.k.a., mountains of Spain). The latest good news to afflict my squad is the withdrawal of Oscar Pereiro (Spain/Caisse d’Epargne), my main (meaning only) hope for a high overall performance; he’s not listed as retirado. For the rest, I do have the two highest-scoring riders in the race so far, Oscar Freire and Paolo Bettini. That won’t be enough to avoid a middle-of-the-pack finish, though, especially since the game doesn’t allow a manager to replace the riders who quit or crash out of the race.
Guest Observation: Madeleine L’Engle
“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”
— Madeleine L’Engle, 1918-2007 (from her New York Times obit today)
Technorati Tags: madeleine l’engle, writiing