What was Beijing really like?

I lived there a year but have always felt that I got to know the tiniest corner of it. This despite fluency in Chinese, a fine bicycle, plenty of time and money, friends at BTV, the film studio, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and many students born and raised in the capital. I need to know more about Beijing's temples.

Those the brokes

The emotional topography has not changed, the riffs are much the same, but by a sort of layering, The Magic Numbers have made a second album that has a kind of aural filigree that the first album lacked. And the songs are longer, more playful. It's like listening to the first album after a really gifted arranger added strings and overdubs galore.

Roles

What sort of role do I want to play in the lives of others? Do I want to change how my friends feel and think? Do I want to be someone they admire and long to see? Do I want to be invited to their parties? Do I want them to dedicate their novels to me and have me to their children's bar and bat mitzvahs? Do I want to serve as their conscience? Do I want them to trust me? Do I want them to remember things that I say, write them in their diaries, claim them as their own? Do I want them to make dinner for me? Do I want them to think me good or strong or uplifting or wise? Do I want them to trust me? What sort of role do I want to play in my own life?

風與花

Today it is windy here. The tress bend, their branches whipping. And the Romneya coulteri I planted in the fall has grown terrifically tall, taller than I, so it is bent and whipped too by the wind, its tissue white flowers sadly clinging to the stalks they crown. Inside I listen to music, loll, braise kabocha.

Michael G. Belanger, you are such a drip.

Dear Sam,

It is not often that I am genuinely embarrassed when an error is pointed out to me, but in this case the embarrassment is genuine and deep. I regard Mary Cassatt as a great painter (with no regard to gender), and a few years ago it was with great pleasure tha [sic] I attended a major exhibit of her work. At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, "Mary Cassatt" attracted record-breaking crowds. The year of her birth must have been prominently displayed, and I never thought to check if any of our books got it wrong.

As much as I am chagrined by the incorrect birthdate for Cassatt, it pales in comparison to the horror I am experiencing upon learning that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has an incorrect date for Caravaggio. Mary Cassatt is a geat American painter. Caravaggio is one of the giants of art. On my list of all-time favorites, Caravaggio--or, 'Cary' as you casually call him--is outranked only by Rembrandt and Vermeer. (Artistic genius aside, you have to admire someone responds to an insolent French waiter by shoving a platter of hot artichokes in his face.) Who knows how many times I have encountered the correct birthdate for this enfant terrible in books and museum exhibits--and never thought to check to see whether all of M-W's references got it right.

Our online dictionary is based upon the hardback "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition." The errors involving Cassatt and Caravaggio--I don't think that I can bring myself call him 'Cary'--go back through several editions of the Collegiate Dictionary to an out-of-print biographical dictionary that we used to publish decades ago. Judging from the entries for artists in that biographical dictionary, I would say that the editors had no knowledge of, or interest in, art. The entry for Howard Chandler Christy is much longer than the entry for Picasso.

Fortunately, not all of our publications are so artistically illiterate. The single-volume "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia" not only has the correct dates for Cassatt and Caravaggio, it also has an article on Picasso that sounds like it was written by someone who had heard of the guy. Alas, Howard Chandler Christy did not make the cut; in his place is an entry for Christo.

Amazingly, you are the first person to notice the misinformation for Mary Cassatt and Michelangelo Merisi. Congratulations on your sharp eye, and shame on everyone else for missing it.


Michael G. Belanger
Associate Editor
Merriam-Webster,Inc.
Springfield, MA 01102
mbelanger@Merriam-Webster.com
http://www.Merriam-Webster.com

Life

Do we all get to a certain point in our lives and ask ourselves whether the structure of life has been set? As I was walking to P Market this evening (moon through tissue of cloud, streets quiet) I thought to myself, "How many days have you spent like this? And how many more will there be?" The day was fine. I saw flowers blooming on a Point Reyes hillside, thought a thought about turkey vultures and skunks, decided against calling the local police about the motorcyclist who roared around me past a stop sign, spoke with a close friend. I spent the day alone, as I do most of my days. So I could not help wondering, "Is this it?" Even the most dramatic upheaval rarely changes this sort of structure. I wonder whether I responded so strongly to the trip to Taiwan because I spent so much of it with another human. I often claim that it's best to travel alone and my trips to Bali and Hong Kong and New Zealand and New York and Chengdu and so on were memorable, romantic trips but maybe it's not such a bad thing to get practice being human.

The girl from Djibouti

There is magic in this phrase. I was told today that I was formerly wont to use it to refer to a girl, a sort of splendid and unattainable creature, for whom Roger Hochschild harbored a profound longing. She became a sort of stand-in for all of our desires, which in those days were without exception unconsummated. I wonder whether she refused to dance with a fellow in a kilt. Of course, she wasn't from Djibouti. She was probably from Baltimore or Trenton.

My Mouth

Something is happening to the corner of my mouth. This is not a part of me I'd have much noticed if not for a comment Abigail Asher made in 1984. Since then the mouth has not much changed—until now. A noticeable line now extends south from the corner about one-quarter of an inch. It's a wrinkle but it might not be. It might be the fissure that begins the utter erasure of the bottom part of my face. It might be a crack into which fall all of my finest comments and adages, unheard and unheeded. It might be a pit that collects the finest tidbits of fine foods (blood oranges, for example, or guacamole). Please let this line mend itself.

Desert Island Discs

The conventional limit is eight songs or pieces of comparable length. Phooey to that.

(1) Blue
(2) London Calling
(3) Gould Goldberg 2
(4) Richter WTC
(5) Manifesto
(6) Mozart serenades
(7) Sacre
(8) Köln
(9) Shostakovich piano concertos
(10) Liebeslieder Waltzes
(11) Love Is All Around
(12) Norwegian Wood
(13) O Superman
(14) Big Pink
(15) Sail Away
(16) North Country Fair
(17) Electrolite
(18) Foolish Love
(19) Ma suites
(20) Prettiest Eyes
(21) Sonata representativa
(22) Sur incises
(23) Ballades
(24) Lutoslawski cello concerto

Flute & violin

Really a divine combination. I'm listening to Bach's trio sonata in G. (My feet are cold.)

raining now

meteors later

I'm listening to The Beta Band, wearing my cardigan, enjoying a day without cats. Even if it's raining on them. Oh, poor cats.

What we had at Gary Farrell on Sunday 15 April 2007

2004 Chardonnay-Russian River Valley, Rochioli-Allen Vineyards (311 cases)
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Rochioli Vineyard (396 cases)
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Allen Vineyard, Hillside Blocks (203 cases)
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Rochioli-Allen Vineyards (396 cases)

2004 Chardonnay-Russian River Valley, Russian River Selection
2004 Pinot Noir-Russian River Valley, Russian River Selection
2004 Zinfandel-Dry Creek Valley, Bradford Mountain Vineyard
2003 Merlot-Sonoma County
2002 Cabernet Sauvignon-Sonoma County

Rufus & Judy

23 September 2007, at the Hollywood Bowl. Rufus will be performing the songs that Judy Garland performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 1961 with a full orchestra.

Listening

Andrew Manze & Richard Egarr, "Mozart Violin Sonatas, 1781"
Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, "In the Heart of the Moon"
Guillemots, "From the Cliffs"
Roxy Music "Flesh + Blood"
Billy Bragg, "Sexuality"
Mariner & AoSMitF, "Mozart: The Great Serenades"
(I adore the Mozart serenades and am particularly fond of the violin bits in the Haffner.)

A death

On returning from work this evening, I found a small corpse on the patio behind my apartment building. For nearly a year I've lived in Petaluma, a town of fifty-six thousand that straddles Highway 101 thirty miles north of the Golden Gate. I work for a publisher of calendars and what-have-you on the far side of town and ride my bike to and fro. When I wheel into the gravel of the parking area behind the three-story converted house the neighborhood cats eye me and stretch, stalking off. Today only the silver was about and we are not on friendly terms. He ignored me. I parked my bike where it would block the woman who lives upstairs from claiming an extra space (she does this when her lover comes to call; both own large vehicles) and walked over to the patio area that leads to my back door. There, at the base of one of the posts that supports the upstairs balcony, lay the dead animal. I had never seen it before but I knew its parents: this was the offspring of the pathetic possum who blundered into my bedroom five days ago just before sunup. I see the possums from time to time, and hear one almost nightly, the sound it makes while eating the cat food left on the patio terrifically loud. The cats want to be the possums' friend, and the youngest cat, the black one, eases right up to it, is ignored. The dead possum lay on its side, its pink tail only slightly curled at the very tip, its white fur fresh and soft, its mouth only very slightly agape, revealing tiny sharp teeth. I wondered whether it had been killed by one of the two cats who sleep on my bed and the idea angered me, but seeing no wounds and refusing to draw any conclusions from a single feline hair on the dead possum's lip, I became far more interested in the body of the animal than in the identity of its murderer. Only a possum's ears have any claim to beauty, and a young possum has translucent, spotted ears not entirely unlike the petal of the Romneya coulteri that bloomed today outside my window. I buried the possum, hacking through the thin concrete skin poured over the parking area, making a small, deep hole between the handsomest of the trees, carrying the small, soft, limp body on a clean sheet of newspaper and setting it gently in the bottom of its grave, then hurriedly raking the dirt and stones over it.

Why YouTube matters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbYtOEftc0&mode=related&search=

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C8R6qYoaJo&mode=related&search=

Listening

The Beautiful South, "0890"
Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, "In the heart of the moon"
Amy Winehouse, "Back to black"
Bach violin concertos played by Andrew Manze, Rachel Podger and the English Concert
Cécile Kayirebwa, "Rwanda"

Spring

A pair of sparrows have built a nest on a crossbeam of the front porch and the whole thing is visible from where I sit at my desk. But I never noticed until this morning when I was plucking caterpillars off of my Romneya coulteri and lively chirps caught my attention. Good luck, sparrows.

Why I like spring

Because it's pretty. Trees have lots of little flowers on them. And because in P and SFO spring is a time of great vinosity, with people standing at every corner passing out glasses of Musar, Christoffel, Gary Farrell, Gimmonet, Fevre, Beaucastel and other tasty wines.

Hurray

Asparagus!