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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
All they have in common is both being accessed from Crooked Timber this evening. The first is an Argentinian art video by BluBlu* that Kieran Healy posted without comment -- living graffiti!:
And the second is of a band recommended by xboy in comments to this post: Dr. Michael White's New Orleans jazz band plays some sweet sounding traditional jazz. Check out the "Christopher Columbus"** reference in the trombone solo. Right up my alley.
* Be sure to visit their web site if you enjoy this video -- there is lots more great stuff there including more videos of similar installations.
** And hey, I found a recording online of Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band doing "Christopher Columbus" -- the first version I ever heard, from a band close to my heart. It is the first couple of minutes of this podcast from Mike Pell.
Sylvia and I saw Prince Caspian tonight -- we enjoyed it and I would recommend it to people who are fans of the books. I don't think I'd recommend it as a movie to somebody who is not predisposed to like it; I guess my reaction to it was a little bit like Ebert's reaction to the latest Indiana Jones movie.
Good things: the talking animals, great; Trumpkin, great; the beautiful scenery and handsome actors were candy for my eyes. The camera work in the opening sequence was really startlingly good. Not so good: There wasn't really anything to distinguish this movie as a different film from the previous one -- where the two books are quite distinct from one another. A lot of the battle footage in particular, which made up a huge proporiton of the film, seemed like it could easily just have been lifted out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Sylvia had a good time identifying the differences between the movie and the book, which I guess means the movie was faithful enough to the book, for them to stand out.
I've been teaching Sylvia to play chess -- in a very limited sense of the word "teaching" anyway; mostly just playing games with her every so often and winning, hoping she is picking up a bit on how I'm winning. I'm not much of a player, and don't know how I would go about explaining what is going on in the game.
Whenever I capture her Queen she gets really bent out of shape about it. Today we played and it was, according to her, "the first time you haven't been able to get my Queen -- you're always sneaking up on my Queen!"
posted afternoon of May 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
So my understanding of "allegory" is kind of vague, and I think mostly of examples of allegory rather than of a definition. So e.g.A White Bear was talking about The Phantom Tollbooth and The Wizard of Oz as examples of allegory, and I thought Sure -- ok, these stories tell about the main character being transported into an imaginary parallel reality where human character traits are cartoonishly represented by marvelous creatures, and learning/growing in the course of the experience. That matches up pretty well to my memory of learning the term "allegory" in high school English class.
So here's what I'm wondering about the Commedia: It fits that loose definition pretty well. But something is very different about it. In those books the lecturing about human virtue that is going on is beneath the surface, in the Commedia it is front and center. In those books the "main thing" is the story line and the character development of the main character, while the pedagogy is a side effect; in the Commedia the pedagogy is very much front and center, there hardly is a plot besides as much as there needs to be to keep the book moving. Is this a distinction between modern and classical allegory? Or just between these particular books? The pedagogy in The Phantom Tollbooth strikes me as much more effective than in the Inferno, but then I am not a 14th-C. Catholic.
posted afternoon of May 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Inferno
I've been looking through The Portable Dante -- I must admit I'm kind of bogging down in Inferno, reading it is feeling more like a chore than a pleasure. So I'm rethinking the idea of reading the full Commedia -- I prefer reading for pleasure. I was trying to compose a post about what in Dante is putting me off -- it is something to do with the difference between allegory and pedagogy, and Inferno having too much of the latter and too little of the former, but I'm not sure enough of myself writing about
literary technique to phrase this properly.
Dante's sonnets are nice. I don't think I've read any of them before except "To Guido Cavalcante", which I've seen anthologized in several places. But the niceness of them is more to do with the imagery than with the narrative content, which seems pretty cloying to me.
...nam eorum que sunt omnium soli homini datum est loqui, cum solum sibi necessarium fuerit.
Non angelis, non inferioribus animalibus necessarium fuit loqui, sed nequicquam datum fuisset eis: quod nempe facere natura aborret.
...To man alone of all existing beings was speech given, because to him alone was it necessary. Speech was not necessary for the angels or for the lower animals, but would have been given to them in vain, which nature, as we know, shrinks from doing.
I did a couple of double-takes going back and trying to figure out what "angels" is doing in that second sentence. Still not sure, but it makes for a lovely comic effect.
posted morning of May 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Dante
Tom Hunter, whose music I remember fondly from my childhood, is in poor health -- he has been diagnosed with a progressive neurological disease. If you remember enjoying his music, drop by his family's blog, A Time for Sharing, to wish him well.
posted evening of May 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Just downloaded from DimeADozen, this concert -- Robyn Hitchcock and The Electric Trams, 5/18/2008, Arts Theater, London, which includes a cover of "Up on Cripple Creek". Nice! I don't think I've ever heard Robyn perform a song of The Band's before; it is very pleasant to listen to. Dig the saxophone.
I had been thinking about
this combination of artists recently because I've been listening a lot to Robyn's "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom", which includes the lines "Rolling down the frozen highway/ Like a burning tyre." Sounds to me like an obvious reference to Dylan's motorcycle accident by way of "This Wheel's on Fire". (And note that Robyn said he pictures Danko singing lead on this.)
Other good covers in this set: George Harrison's "Old Brown Shoe"; The Beatles' "I've Got a Feeling". Also, "Adoration of the City" off of "A Star for Bram", which I had never heard before.
...I love a coincidence: today a post on Catbird Records' blog features Robyn covering Every day is like Sunday, by The Smiths.
Tonight 5 (or possibly 6) 7- and 8-year-old girls will be sleeping in our house, which is 3 (or as the case may be, 4) more children than we've had sleeping over here at once before. That's right, it's Sylvia's first sleep-over party! Fingers crossed for no major problems to occur, and for me and Ellen to be able to get some sleep of our own.
...Hmm, this is not promising: more than half of the girls, including our own little girl, are picky eaters.
...Well, dinner over -- some of them did not eat much but that doesn't seem to be affecting their spirits much. They've played out in the yard, they've done some crafts (origami), they've made bags of popcorn and sweets, and they're watching their movie ("Sherlock Hound vol. I").
...And, the girls are in bed. There was quite a lot of noise a little while ago and Ellen or I had to go in and give them some talkings-to. But the noise is lower now, I think they're on their way to sleep.
Looks like putting up a wish list was a good idea -- my birthday present from my parents just arrived in the mail, and it is volumes 1 and 2 of The Music of Kentucky: Early American Rural Classics. Great stuff too -- the fiddle music is incomparable.
This is a good movie without, I think, being in the same league as Herzog's best stuff. The main two good things in the movie are: the personality and charisma of Mr. Dengler, who is kind of a natural ham; and the camera work and composition of shots. It is a good decision of Herzog's, to let Dieter talk through most of the film. Herzog's narration is not very useful; and his decision to have Laotians and Vietnamese in the film but completely without speaking parts and frequently posing as statues, just seems bizarre to me. I think I'm going to take a pass for now on watching Rescue Dawn.
posted evening of May 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
Good things: the talking animals, great; Trumpkin, great; the beautiful scenery and handsome actors were candy for my eyes. The camera work in the opening sequence was really startlingly good. Not so good: There wasn't really anything to distinguish this movie as a different film from the previous one -- where the two books are quite distinct from one another. A lot of the battle footage in particular, which made up a huge proporiton of the film, seemed like it could easily just have been lifted out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I've been teaching Sylvia to play chess -- in a very limited sense of the word "teaching" anyway; mostly just playing games with her every so often and winning, hoping she is picking up a bit on how I'm winning. I'm not much of a player, and don't know how I would go about explaining what is going on in the game.
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Tom Hunter
Robyn Hitchcock and The Electric Trams, 5/18/2008, Arts Theater, London, which includes a cover of "Up on Cripple Creek". Nice! I don't think I've ever heard Robyn perform a song of The Band's before; it is very pleasant to listen to. Dig the saxophone.
Looks like putting up a 
Patrick Nielsen Hayden 
