excursions of the mind

Book vs. Movie: A Clockwork Orange

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Clockwork Orange 几年前试尝读过，读不下去，觉得太难了，好多字都看不懂。

租了电影来看，觉得电影的视觉艺术很棒，配乐也好。

今年年初把书又拿出来读了，终于读完了。才知道我不认识的字都是作者 Anthony Burgess 自己发明的，要根据语法和上下文来猜测。但因为很多是俄文的字根，我自然看得很困难。从网上找到一个“字典”，才看懂了。觉得作者真是天才。

然后又看了电影。Kubrick 当然是天才，视觉艺术的天才。

发现书和电影所要表达的东西非常不同。

故事大致是这样的（书和电影略有不同）。第一部：一个在生活在未来英国社会的青少年 Alex，有严重暴力倾向。他和朋友每天晚上出门，打砸抢奸，无恶不作。后来遭同伙出卖，在一次作案中被警察抓住，送进监狱。第二部：为了早日出狱，他要求接受 aversion therapy。几天之后，他“治愈”了，变得完全不能忍受任何暴力。第三部：出狱之后，他遭受同伙的报复，家人的抛弃，以前受害者的欺负，却因失去自卫能力，想自杀都不行。最后政府为了搞宣传，又把他治回原状。他又开始暴力的生活了。

可是，书比电影多出一章。这第21章使得两部作品的寓意有很大差异。

书的结尾是这样的：Alex 回到暴力的生活后，又过了一段时间，忽然感到暴力很无聊，意识到“that human energy is better expended on creation than destruction. Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.” 他就结束暴力生涯，结婚，生子，"and perhaps even create something... "做了一个正常的社会公民。

电影虽然是在英国拍的，Kubrick 却选择用了美国小说的版本，没有最后一章的内容。

我读书和看电影，最大的收获是读了作者 Burgess 写的前言，主要是关于最后一章的。据 Burgess 说，他的书在美国发表的时候，出版社让他把最后一章删掉：

My New York publisher believed that my 21st chapter was a sellout. It was veddy veddy British, don't you know. It was bland and it showed a Pelagian unwillingness to accept that a human being could be a model of unregenerable evil. The Americans, he said in effect, were tougher than British and could face up to reality. Soon they would be facing up to it in Vietnam. My book was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted was a Nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it. Let us have evil prancing on the page and, up to the very last line, sneering in the face of all the inherited beliefs, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Holy Roller, about people being able to make themselves better. Such a book would be sensational, and so it is. But I do not think it is a fair picture of a human life.

I do not think so because, by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange--meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities....

印象最深的是作者的这段话：

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human characters is se, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel.

最好笑的是，因为电影比书更出名，在作者把第21章加上后，很多读者／观众都来信询问。作者说，他的后半生大部分时间就是在 Xeroxing statements of intention and the frustration of intention，给读者回信，解释为什么书比电影多出一章来--while both Kubrick and my New York publisher coolly bask in the rewards of their misdemeanour. :)

Book: The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Quote:

In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for a an to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery. p.263

Movie/Book: Into the Wild

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:14:00 +0000

5/24/08
昨晚看了电影 Into the Wild，才知道这个人，这家人的事。一边看，一边想，我们能从这个故事学到什么。这个孩子是不是教育失败？

首先，他完全没有按照父母的意愿生活，逃离家庭，不承认父母，心中没有一点对父母的感激。按草叶的准则，他是一个失败的人生。

可是，他独立自主，自力更生，虽身无分文，却过了两年快乐的流浪生活。用浮生和风子的准则，他快乐，喜欢自己选择的生活，是一个成功的人生。

他虽然没有给社会创造很多财富，却给遇到的人带来快乐。他给父母家人带来的是痛苦和悔恨，他的故事给我们外人带来思考和启发。从社会的角度来看，他的人生是有价值的。

最后，他不能按照他的意愿生存下去。他临死前意识到，happiness only real when shared，死之前想念家人，说明他自己选择的道路是不成功的，而且他也意识到了。那么，人生中短暂的快乐，不能决定人生的成功，可是，要多久的快乐才能算成功？十年二十年三十年？后半生？是不是在死的时候，才能对整个人生的成败下定论？再有，谁来下定论？作父母的，是要把子女培养成父母认为是成功的，还是子女自己认为是成功的，或是社会认为是成功的，才算成功？

这个问题越讨论越艰难。

另外，按七月所说，给孩子空间，如果孩子不需要父母，没有信号，父母就不要去打扰他，让孩子自然成长？可是，谁决定孩子需不需要父母？也许孩子的超级独立，是一种对父母需要的表现？电影中的男孩，如果父母能读到他给的信号，能创造一个交流的渠道，是否可以避免悲剧？

当然，电影 version中，最后这个男孩能得到大智慧，父母因为挫折而改变了自己的人生态度，在高一层次上，是否算是一种成功？不论道路多么艰辛曲折，在最后能够醒悟，能够与世界和解，能够认命，make peace with the world，一生也算可以算是完满的。

想到最后，还是觉得，人生道路有各种各样的，没有什么成功和失败，只有不同。每个人只能为了自己最终的内心安详而生活，只能为自己的幸福负责。自己喜欢怎么做，就怎么做吧。最终的心态是最重要的。子女的人生是他们的，他们也要自己找到健康的心态。做父母的，给子女的影响最大，所以首先要调整好自己的心态，以身作则，能帮就多帮一些。心要大，要开。智慧是快乐成功的唯一要素。

我每次想问题，想到最后，得到的都是一样的结论。怎么回事？:)

11/6/08
昨天我看了这本书。我觉得书比电影好。电影只是讲 Chris McCandless 的 misadventure，但书里写了不少其他人对 Alaska wilderness 的向往和追求，尤其作者年轻时有过类似的 Alaska 冒险的经历，读起来觉得很真切。

我也有 Alaska 情结。在美国读大学的时候，同学跟我说，要想赚钱，就趁暑假去 Alaska 打鱼，男生打鱼，女生在 cannery 工作，一个夏天可以挣五六千块钱呢。因为夏天日子长，每天要工作 10-12 个小时，但剩下时间都是自由的。我就特别向往，向往那种别样的生活。可惜大学我只过了一个暑假，上了好多课，没机会去。研究生的时候，我约了女友一起开车去 Alaska 玩一个月。临走那天她才说不想去了。后来我就更向往了，特别想开车去逛 3 个月。我不想坐 cruise，也许要等孩子长大一些，才能圆了我的阿拉斯加梦，但肯定跟年轻时的那种去冒险的感觉又不一样了。

因为是真事，是报告文学，所以才更令人感慨，感慨生命在青春时的脆弱。

Book: The Brethren by John Grisham

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:03:00 +0000

前两天刚读了 The Brethren by John Grisham，小说的一个重要的 subplot 是讲美国总统选举的。书里说，谁的钱多，谁就能赢。读后，我对大选的激情更加淡薄。归根结底还是钱的问题。

CIA director wants to increase military budget, so he picks an unknown Arizona congressman to be a presidential candidate after NH primary, promises to provide unlimited campaign funding. He "creates" terrorist crisis to scare the people, and soon everyone turns to the new candidate. The money comes from defense companies, including "private" companies that nobody knows. The money is used for advertisement, for buying off politicians (to pay off their campaign debts), and such. Throughout the book, the CIA director keeps saying that the one who has more campaign money always wins. The writer John Grisham has worked in a presidential campaign before, so I assume he knows some inside stories.

TTC: 20th Century American Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:41:00 +0000

20th-Century American Fiction
(32 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
by Arnold Weinstein

Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Faulkner. No first names are needed.
These giants of literature are immediately recognizable to anyone who loves to read fiction and even to many who don’t.

Now, thanks to this course from Brown University’s Professor Arnold Weinstein, you can develop fresh insight into these and eight other great American authors of the 20th century. Professor Weinstein sheds light not only on the sheer magnificence of these writers’ literary achievements but explores their uniquely American character as well. Despite their remarkable variety, each represents an outlook and a body of work that could only have emerged in the United States.

Freedom and Speech

The aim of this course is to analyze and appreciate some of the major works of fiction produced in this country over the past century, using as a focal point the idea of "freedom of speech." The focus on freedom of speech is appropriate for many reasons, particularly:
These texts often invoke the fundamental political freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and many of them take the liberty of articulating the painful ideological conflicts that have punctuated our modern history: war, racism, poverty, drugs, sexism, and the like.
"Freedom of speech" also spells out the key thesis to be presented in these readings: Language itself turns out to be not only "free" but a precious means of becoming free, of experiencing life beyond the constraints of the ordinary workaday world.
The overriding theme in American literature, as in American life, is that of freedom itself, whether expressed in a laissez-faire economy, in upward mobility, or simply in our belief that we can make ourselves and our lives into something beyond the origins and influences of our births, a theme sometimes called the American dream. No other society has ever professed such beliefs, and it is not surprising that our literature has much to tell us about the viability of these notions.
Our Ongoing War for Independence

Why would literature be a privileged record for this special American story about freedom? The answer: American fiction is something of a battleground in the "war of independence" that human beings—white or black or red or yellow, male or female—wage every day of their lives.

Our war consists of achieving a self, making or maintaining an identity, making our particular mark in the world we inhabit. This is a battle because the 20th century American scene is not particularly hospitable to self-making: great forces coerce our lives, forces that are at once economic, biological, political, racial, and ideological.

We are dogged by not only death and taxes but by the influence of family, of business, of society, of all those potent vectors that constitute the real map and landscape of our lives. This vexed and conflicted terrain does not resemble the smooth résumés that are our shorthand for what we have done, but it does correspond to our experiential awareness of what we go through, how we have changed from childhood to adulthood, what our work and friendships and marriages have been and what they have meant to us. Literature enables us to recover this territory—our territory. The texts presented in this course constitute an enlarged repertory of human resources, of the battle for freedom.

The Heroic Self in a Humbling Land

We begin by looking at the great texts and movements of the 19th century, especially our belief in heroic selfhood, and we begin to see and chart the kinds of forces that make up the moving stage we occupy.

Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is among the most poignant descriptions of life at the beginning of the century, but the charm of this small-town narrative acquires a deeper hue when we see the amount of repression and inner violence that Anderson chronicles.

Hemingway’s In Our Time and Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night are both, in their own ways, about American loss of innocence; about how the Great War and the brutality of modern life permanently altered our belief systems. This theme is presented as physical trauma in Hemingway and as madness and decay in Fitzgerald.

Faulkner’s Light in August depicts the ravages of racism in the American South, but it seeks, magnificently, to pair its overt story of carnage and neurosis with another, more elusive fable of love, kinship, and redemption.

We turn to Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for the first—and perhaps the best—account of growing up black and female in America, a story that is expressed in a kind of language and diction that moves breathlessly from the vernacular to the legendary.

Flannery O’Connor’s stories bring a different agenda to our course: the challenge of perceiving the contours of God, spirit, and grace in a seemingly materialist Southern landscape peopled with the lowest profile folks in American literature.

Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, once censored and then seen as merely a raunchy drug epic, will be studied as a dazzling and disturbing account of the body in culture, a body that is horribly open and defenseless against the takeovers that beset it.

War returns to our course in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, at once poignant and wacky, speaking to us of mass destruction and of extraterrestrials in the same voice, a voice that is hard to forget.

The course will close with a series of lectures on three of the most significant contemporary writers—writers whose works may not yet be familiar to you.

In his sprawling and audacious Public Burning, Robert Coover uses that most popular American code, entertainment, to present a manic account of the Rosenberg execution and the antics of one Richard Nixon.

Toni Morrison’s fascinating Sula is an experimental novel in which Morrison fashions a group of characters whose lives and values make rubble out of the conventions of humanistic culture, whether black or white.

Finally, Don DeLillo’s appealing, absurdist comedy of modern life, White Noise, depicts our encounter with the technological madhouse in which we live but which we have not quite gotten around to seeing.

Lifelines

These American fictions, seen together, tell a composite story about coping, about fashioning both a story and a life. The range of experiences and subcultures to be found here will dwarf the experience of any single reader, and that is how it should be. Much is dark in these stories, but the honesty and integrity of these writers adds pith and richness to our own lives and makes us realize that reading is as much a lifeline as it is entertainment or education.

Course Lecture Titles

1. American Fiction and the Individualist Creed
2. The American Self—Ghost in Disguise
3. What Produces "Nobody"?
4. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio—Writing as the Talking Cure
5. Winesburg—A New American Prose-Poetry
6. Hemingway—Journalist, Writer, Legend
7. Hemingway as Trauma Artist
8. Hemingway's Cunning Art
9. F. Scott Fitzgerald—Tender Is the Night—Fitzgerald's Second Act
10. Fitzgerald's Psychiatric Tale
11. Dick's Dying Fall—An American Story
12. Light in August—Midpoint of the Faulkner Career
13. Light in August—Determinism vs. Freedom
14. Light in August—Novel as Poem, or, Beyond Holocaust
15. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God—Canon Explosion
16. Their Eyes Were Watching God—From Romance to Myth
17. Flannery O'Connor—Realist of Distances
18. O'Connor—Taking the Measure of the Region
19. Williams Burroughs—Bad Boy of American Literature
20. Naked Lunch—The Body in Culture
21. Naked Lunch—Power and Exchange in the Viral World
22. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five—Apocalypse Now
23. Vonnegut's World—Tralfamadore or Trauma?
24. Robert Coover—Postmodern Fabulator
25. The Public Burning—Execution at Times Square
26. Robert Coover—Fiction as Fission
27. Toni Morrison's Sula—From Trauma to Freedom
28. Sula—New Black Woman
29. Don DeLillo—Decoder of American Frequencies
30. White Noise—Representing the Environment
31. DeLillo and American Dread
32. Conclusion—Nobody's Home

Book: Sister Carrie

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:25:00 +0000

I'm so happy to be reading Sister Carrie instead of the Bone People. I read it with great intent, enjoying each word in each sentence. It sounds like music to me.

I read the first two chapters last year when I was nursing. I found it very difficult, and I could not get into the book. I was not in the mood to enjoy it. I felt sad, and I didn't know if I would ever enjoy a great book again. I am glad this book has given me another chance.

There are several books in the past that I could not get into. I will have to give them a second chance. Yes, One Hundred Years of Solitude needs 3 or 4 chances.

book: The Bone People by Keri Hulme

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:37:00 +0000

I can't say I enjoyed the Bone People by Keri Hulme. While I was reading it the last two weeks, I was impatient with the book, and speed-read many pages. For one thing, I am not used to the language style. It is said to "follow the rhythms and accents of the Maori idiom". It is very difficult for me to follow. Also Hulme changes her narrative back and forth from third person to first person, and it is confusing, especially if I am speed reading. Most of the passages about Kerewin Holmes, which is over half of the book, read like a private diary. Since Kerewin Holmes sounds like Keri Hulme, and they have similar backgrounds (part Maori, part European, painter, drinker, asexual, etc.), I feel I am reading a badly written autobiography. I do not care about the protagonist, because she is self-absorbing and irritating. I care about Joe, but the book tells too little about him. I care about Simon, and in the book there is a promise of a mystery, but it is never resolved. There is no story in the book, only character studies, of only one character, which is the author, who is often drunk, depressed, or dreaming. I have learned something about the Maori people, but it is only through the eyes of Keri Hulme, whom I have a most difficult time to relate. I do not trust her at all.

The only part I can read normally is the part about Joe's wandering, and about Simon's recovering. Hulme uses normal English in those chapters, and I could understand. Then she switches back to Kerewin, and I am lost again. Unlike the other two characters, I don't understand how and why she is healed. In the end, I don't know what has happened. I am confused from beginning to end.

I got this book because it has won several book award, including the 1985 Booker Prize, an award for contemporary fiction writers from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. Past award winners include these two that I have read:

1989 - Kazuo Ishiguro - United Kingdom/Japan - The Remains of the Day - (I love it)
2002 - Yann Martel - Canada - Life of Pi - (I don't like)

Also Alice Walker recommends this book. Well, I don't.

Book: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:07:00 +0000

I really enjoyed this 661-pages long political novel. It started very slowly, with long descriptions of landscapes, people in the background, characters in the foreground, and so on. The story was thin and deeply embedded in the descriptions. After a couple of chapters, I gradually see the history of each character, and the relationships among them. I was drawn into the complicated web of people with past, present, and future. Characters are well-developed. The plots are neat and tight. There is a satisfactory closure at the end.

There are two movies made for this book. I have seen the earlier one but I didn't understand it at the time of viewing. I've read that the character Willie Stark (Boss) is based on a real governor (Huey Long of Louisiana). I've always wondered where the character Jack Burden come from. There were many rich memories from the past. I kept thinking that the author must have had most of the experiences he gave to Jack Burden. This novel also reminds me of The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.

It is a successful novel, a literary classic.

A few quotes from the book:

Yeah, I heard the speech. But they don't give a damn about that. Hell, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em think you're their weak erring pal, or make 'em think you're Gold-Almighty. Or make 'me mad. Even mad at you. Just stir 'em up, it doesn't matter how or why, and they'll love yo and come back for more. Pinch 'em in the soft place. They aren't alive, most of 'em, and haven't been alive in twenty years. Hell, their wives have lost their teeth and their shape, and likker won't set on their stomachs, and they don't believe in God, so it's up to you to give 'em something to stir 'em up and make 'em feel alive again. Just for half an hour. That's what they come for. Tell 'em anything. But for Sweet Jesus' sake don't try to improve their minds. (p.108)

One feels incredulity at the first breaking of a habit, but horror at the violation of a principle. Therefore what virtue and honor I had known in the past had been an accident of habit and not the fruit of will. Or can virtue be the fruit of human will? The thought is pride. p.254

We wrote every day, but the letters began to seem like checks drawn on the summer's capital. There had been a lot in the bank, but it is never good business practice to live on your capital, and I had the feeling, somehow, of living on the capital and watching something dwindle. p.449 (long-distance relationship)

Book: Seabiscuit

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:52:00 +0000

I got Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit from the library for $0.50, and since it had top rating at amazon.com, I began reading it. When the movie came out a few years ago, I didn't see it in the theater. Everyone told me that it was a "guy's movie". I only saw part of it on a train (from San Francisco to Los Angeles), and thought it was all fictional.

But it is all real in history. Charles Howard. Tom Smith. Red Pollard. George Woolf. Seabiscuit.

This book is not about a racehorse. It is about a lost era, about those "dear, dead days".

After reading the book, I become fascinated with horse race, and I want to go to racecourses and see real horse racing. I have been to Churchill Downs, Santa Anita, and the Detroit Race Course, but I didn't know anything about horse race before, and I missed the real excitement. I have checked to see the racecourses near us. The Hollywood Park is in our area, and it was where Seabiscuit won the inaugural Hollywood Gold Cup in 1938. Santa Anita is like a home to Seabiscuit, and there is a statue of the horse and the jockey Iceman Woolf. So many stories of Seabiscuit happened there. I really want to go and see it again. When I told people that I wanted to see horse racing, they

Here's a list of all California horse racing venues from Wikipedia (there are more from other sites):

Santa Anita Park racecourse
Bay Meadows, San Mateo, California
Golden Gate Fields, Albany, California
Del Mar Racetrack, Del Mar, California
Fairplex, Pomona, California
Hollywood Park Racetrack, Inglewood, California
Los Alamitos, Los Alamitos, California
Santa Anita Park, Arcadia, California

Hillenbrand did a great job digging up lost history, organizing the materials, and telling the life of Seabiscuit and those of everyone around him. Her language is colorful and vivid, and sometimes very sensational. For example:

His (Johnny Pollard) emotions were liquid; his anger was a wild rage, his pleasure jubilation, his humor biting, his sorrow and empathy a bottomless abyss. (p.51)

Below is an interesting "observation" of the depression era:

In the winter of 1937, America was in the seventh year of the most catastrophic decade in its history. The economy had come crashing down, and millions upon millions of people had been torn loose from their jobs, their savings, their homes. A nation that drew its audacity from the quintessentially American belief that success is open to anyone willing to work for it was disillusioned by seemingly intractable poverty. The most brash of peoples was seized by despair, fatalism, and fear. The sweeping devastation was giving rise to powerful new social forces. The first was a burgeoning industry of escapism. America was desperate to lose itself in anything that offered affirmation. The nation's corner theaters hosted 85 million people a week for 25-cent viewings of an endless array of cheery musicals and screwball comedies. On the radio, the idealized world of One Man's Family and the just and reassuring tales of The Lone Ranger were runaway hits. Downtrodden Americans gravitated strongly toward the Horatio Alger protagonist, the lowly bred Everyman who rises from anonymity and hopelessness. They looked for him in spectator sports, which were enjoying explosive growth. With the relegalization of wagering, no sport was growing faster than Thoroughbred racing.

Note the part about "cheery musicals and screwball comedies". See my movie review for the 1930s.

I've just signed up for a membership at The Daily Racing Form. I don't know what I am going to do with it....

关于 Bach/Brahms Chaconne 3

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:50:00 +0000

我第一次正式听巴赫的恰空，是两年前，在一个教会举行的午间音乐会上。演奏者是 Timothy Fain，一个很帅的年轻小提琴家。为了写音乐会报告，我在网上查了不少关于恰空的资料，整理了一番，作为我对巴赫恰空最初的理性认识。这是我写的报告中关于恰空的（英文）：

The main piece is Bach Partita No.2 in D minor for solo violin (BWV 1004). It was written in the period 1717-1723, dedicated to the memory of his first wife. The partita is composed of five parts, combining different folk traditions—Allemande (German), Courrant (French), Saraband (Spanish or Oriental), Gigue (French), and Chaconne (Spanish or Moorish). A common theme is shared among the first four parts. The 15-minute long Chaconne runs over the time of all other four parts together, overshadowing the remainder of the partita. It is considered a pinnacle in the solo violin repertoire, covering almost every aspect of violin playing known during Bach’s time, and it is among the most difficult pieces to play on any instrument. Different transcriptions of the piece were made by Busoni (piano), Brahms (piano left hand), Segovia (guitar), and Stokowski (orchestra), among others. It also represents the zenith of polyphonic writing for a non-keyboard instrument. Having listened to Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites many times, I had no doubt that Bach’s solo violin would be magnificent.

Fain was well prepared to tackle all the technical difficulties. At first his whole body moved a lot with the emotion of the piece, which was distracting to me because he was very tall. Half way through the piece, he became more absorbed in the music and his movement was reduced. In Chaconne, there were a lot of technical passages. He played with concentration and passion. It was especially exciting to watch him play the passage of 32nd-note arpeggio over all four strings. However, musically I got lost after a while. A few times I thought the music had reached the climax and was coming to an end, but Bach kept going and Fain kept going. After several false climaxes, I lost my concentration to listen. I did not realize the section was in the form of theme and variations. I think as a performer, one should pay good attention to the structure of the music, and be a guide to the audience and so they could understand where the music is going, help the audience hear how the composer wants the music to flow. Nonetheless, overall I greatly enjoyed this performance of Bach’s Violin Partita, for both Bach and Fain were full of surprises and excitement.

After the concert, I looked up the score of Chaconne (or Ciaccona) and read some analyses. It was actually composed of 64 “stunning” variation upon the “stark, open-ended” four measure theme in the beginning. The theme and its chord progression is on D, C#, Bb and A. The piece starts and ends in a D minor with a D major central section starting and ending in arpeggio. I listened to three recordings of this piece (by Arthur Grumiaux, Hilary Hahn, and Nathan Milstein) with the score. Full of triple, quadruple stops and arpeggio over four strings, it was truly a stunning piece, both technically and musically.

当时我听演奏的时候，听到一半我就跑神了。平时我听音乐都是这样的，除非手里有谱子，我是不会专心的把一个曲子从头听到尾的，即使是我自己弹奏的曲子，弹到一半我脑子就不知跑到那里去了，连我从未弹奏过的新曲子也如此。但是巴赫的恰空，时不时的带来新鲜的音乐，或是委婉，或是激昂，或是遥远，或是悲壮，总是召唤我回到音乐旁边。我发现我并不了解这首恰空的结构，不懂其写作格式和技巧，每个大段都有高潮，三次下来，我丢了方向。我还抱怨演奏者不能给我适当的指示。现在想来也是很好笑的。

演奏中，我印象最深的是前面 D minor 结束前的的那一大段32分音符的扒音，在小提琴的四根弦上，快速的来回穿梭。手指飞奔。我看着都紧张，手里捏着一把汗。这一段持续的时间很久，有8个变奏，大概两分钟。非常精彩。

我看钢琴谱的这一段，第二个变奏标的是 tranquillo，平静，第三个是 p e molto leggiero，轻及更加轻盈，好像是在孕育着后来的风暴。到后来才慢慢渐强起来。这些跨越度大、快速的32分音符，我练了很久，才能勉强把音都弹出、弹对，但轻盈这种力度却难以做到。紧接下来的是自由的、尽兴的感叹，感叹终于雨过天晴，D大调就要来到了。这一段成为我最喜欢练习的，因为不仅可以反复练手指、练技巧，体会和声微妙的变化，而且那种一气呵成的感觉真是太好了。

关于 Bach/Brahms Chaconne 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:15:00 +0000

我看资料说，Chaconne 是一种 baroque 以前的变奏曲式，主题是 harmonic progression，和我们平时听惯的变奏曲以旋律为主题是不同的。我最先接触 Bach Chaconne 的时候，以为主题就是开始八个小节的那一大组和弦（在小提琴上是 broken chords）。这八小节又分成两短句，一问一答，象是在宣言。第二组的八小节，和弦变奏成 French Overture 那种 dotted rhythm，可以用 majestic 来形容。第三组的八小节，保持了 dotted 节奏，但音量突然减弱，好像是前面的回音。再下的四小节是简单的八分音符，虽然只是单音，但充满了紧张的力度，因为钢琴演奏上没有 vibrato，音弹下去就不能再变了，这一段反而特别难弹。后四小节变成16分音符，密度增加，仍要保持从容。

我就这样把 chaconne 分成了32段，每段8小节。

可是，中间有一些段落，并不是以八小节为单位的一问一答。有的是四小节一组，有的是12小节一组，有的类似的八小节是分在不同的单位中。比如在曲子的中间，第17单位的下半，chaconne 从 D小调变成了 D大调。从27段起，又回到 D小调。这种不工整的结构，又应该怎样解释？

很久以后，我看到一篇恰空的曲式分析，才恍然大悟。我一直把主题看错了。

主题就是四个音，D-C(#)-Bb-A。因为是小调，根据旋律要求，C 有时是 C#。每一小节一个音，主题的长度是四小节，这样整个曲子就是64个变奏。有的时候，巴赫把两句并在一起，成一问一答的形式，有时候又是单句，增加了一层变化。

关于巴赫写 chaconne，还有一段凄惨的故事。1720年，巴赫远道回来，到了家，才知道自己的发妻已经去世，丢下七个孩子。他悲愤之中，写了以 chaconne 为主的小提琴独奏主曲，来纪念妻子。也许因此，这首恰空才那么沉重，四分之三都是 D小调。

中间 D大调开始的时候，那几个低沉的音，好像远远传来的长号，带来另一个世界的亲人的消息。然后的大调，给人一点温暖，一点希望，阳光也在一点点渗进来，直到热血沸腾。然而。。。

我最喜欢的是后来转成 D 小调的那几个小节(m.208)。老师用的词是 lament。我曾经有一个月疯狂的爱上 lament 这个词，每天写信写文字，都必定要用这个词来造句。以至我后来一见到这个词，就感到心之憔悴，哀伤叹息不能自已。我觉得 lament 用在这一句音乐上，是再恰当不过了。每当音乐弹到这里，我就忽然心灰意冷。我把这几个小节反复弹了很多遍，沉浸在这泪流尽以后、从肺腑中唱出的哀歌中。

关于 Bach/Brahms Chaconne 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:50:00 +0000

七月让我来讲讲音乐。我也一直想写点东西，但自从做了家庭主妇，整天忙这忙那的，没什么自己的时间写作，也没心情构思。前一阵，我也想写写巴赫。在这里我先写几个碎片。以后如果有时间，再整理。

====

How many ways can you write 4 notes?

巴赫在 Partita for Violin No.2 的乐章 Chaconne (also ciaccona) 里，把这 D-C-Bb-A 简单的四个音，密密实实的写了 64 次。

之后，勃拉姆斯把巴赫的小提琴独奏曲，从头到尾，认认真真的改写成钢琴的左手练习曲。

我因为去年右手受伤，只能练左手钢琴曲，其中就有这一首 Bach/Brahms 的曲子。很多人改写过巴赫的 Chaconne。我的钢琴老师说，相比之下，勃拉姆斯的左手练习曲是比较忠于小提琴曲的。我以为根据小提琴改写的单手的曲子，大多数都是单音，应该比双手的要容易。练了半年，越来越发现，这四个音的变奏曲，这十五分钟的音乐，从音乐的诠释和钢琴的技巧两方面看，都是我接触过最难的曲目了。我的七旬老朋友乔治是勃拉姆斯的粉丝。他听了我的抱怨，对我眨眨眼说，说，勃拉姆斯从来没写过一个简单的音，是吧？

Wikipedia 找来 Brahms 给 Clara Schumann 写的信中关于 Chaconne 的一段：
"On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

我的作曲老师是精通各种二十世纪后期的写作手法的现代作曲家。他最喜欢的曲目是巴赫的 Chaconne，因为其中的变化万千，奥秘无穷。他最喜欢的作曲家是勃拉姆斯。听说勃拉姆斯每天早上都要把 Chaconne 弹一遍，我老师唏嘘不已，悔恨自己不会弹钢琴（他的乐器是 double bass）。我知道了，就央求我的钢琴老师教我这一首，想把曲子学好了，弹给我的作曲老师听。

但是，我的力量是远远不够的。这首恰空(chaconne)，经两位大师之手，是一个 tour de force。我想用笔描述一下，都觉得渺小无力。看了马慧元对 Busoni 版的恰空的文字，我更自愧不如。

我远远的听着巴赫的音乐，弹着勃拉姆斯的曲子，读着马慧元的文字，过后，只有时间留几个空字在这里。

freerice

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:27:00 +0000

>lucy wrote:
>http://www.freerice.com/index.php

04/14/08
22:51

VOCAB LEVEL: 26
YOUR BEST LEVEL: 26
捐了 520 粒大米。
明天再继续。

又捐了 2700 粒大米。
vocab level 26
best level 36
超过 26 极的字我都开始猜了。

这个游戏好玩，学了不少字。谢谢露西mm。

next 2 tries:

VOCAB LEVEL: 35
YOUR BEST LEVEL: 35
Your donation total is 60 grains of rice.

VOCAB LEVEL: 40
YOUR BEST LEVEL: 40
Your donation total is 80 grains of rice.

04/15/08
12:01

we should always start at level 1, zero grain of rice, and work our way up, see what level we get at, say, 3000 grains of rice.

i must stop donating rice now. i have an hour to do two weeks worth of homework. no pizza for me, but i will have rice before it gets too expensive. :)

04/17/08
23:07

我已经达到 leve 36 了，是从 level 1 开始一点点积攒上去的。

04/18/08
09:19

you can set your options in freerice. i have it as my "home" page, and let it remember my last level and the total rice count, so every time i open the browser, i keep donating rice and working on my levels.

04/18/08
14:43

最近几天的大米捐献上涨一倍左右，是不是我们几个在努力的结果呀？我已经捐了 10000+ 粒大米了。

04/24/08
21:52

我也觉得听发音很有帮助。有的字听过很多次（因为最近听了不少讲座），但没见过，所以听了发音就能猜到字的意思。光看词根有时是不行的，因为有的字很短。

我已经捐了 25,000+ 粒大米了，刚到40级就被打下来了。不过我觉得词库不大，做多了就有很多重复。应该把整个字典都拿出来测，根据所有测试者的正误率来调整级别。

04/25/08
15:25

I set the option to NOT repeat the ones I did wrong, so I am not using my short-term memory at all. Every time I open my browser, I get the freerice website, and I work at a few words before I move on to other things. My level is usually around 30-36, starting from the level I leave off the previous time. This way I get A LOT OF repeats, not from the same session (because I allow no repeat), but from previous sessions. And I have done over 25000 grains of rice, so I feel I have a good sense of the size of the 词库. Sometimes I use a different computer and start from default (like touche), so I get to see words from other levels.

If I keep reading and pay attention to what I read, in a couple of years I will know a lot more words.

Got 4 more Harry Potter books and recent reading habits

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:55:00 +0000

I read the first two Harry Potter books and found them to be easy and fun. Then I ordered 4 more, so now I have 6 of 7. I'm surprised to see that the volumes are getting thicker.

I was going to read Sister Carrie before the other Harry Potters came. I read for two evenings, but could not get too far. I found the book great--the language poignant, the observations sharp, the commentary precise. Reading it is like reading any other great English classics. However, my mind is so scattered and so lazy these days that I cannot enjoy a great book like Sister Carrie. This year I have been reading easy-reading popular books like the Kite Runner, Lonesome Dove (great book), John Irving, and now Harry Potter. And I am "reading' a bunch of gardening books too.

Maybe I will finish all Harry Potters, and then get back to Sister Carrie. Being a mother leaves me little time and energy to enjoy serious books which I love. Sigh.

TTC: Tocqueville and the American Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:56:00 +0000

Tocqueville and the American Experiment
by William R. Cook, State University of New York at Geneseo

How is it possible that perhaps the greatest book about U.S. democracy ever written was penned by a Frenchman visiting this country some 175 years ago? Why is it still relevant in today’s ever-changing political landscape? Join Professor William R. Cook for a spirited exploration of Alexis de Tocqueville and his unique observations of this young nation that resulted in the two volumes of Democracy in America.

Democracy and Our National Identity

Democracy is so much a part of our national identity as to be inseparable from it. It is all too easily taken for granted as we live our daily lives, debate our country’s issues, freely criticize our leaders, and cast our ballots.

But in today’s world, when we are also trying to understand how to make democracy a part of the national identity of other nations, an in-depth understanding of this remarkable political system is especially relevant.

What is American democracy, and why has it flourished? Is there something unique in our national character, in our social fabric and communities, that makes the United States especially fertile ground for the growth of democracy? Can American democracy be exported? Does it naturally fortify itself over time? Or do its benefits, ironically, work to undermine its strengths?

After more than two centuries of living with democracy, fundamental questions like these often go unasked.

Yet there was a time when the unique relationship between the American people and their government was still new, barely two generations old, and these questions were very much at the forefront of the age’s greatest minds.

One of those minds belonged to a 25-year-old French nobleman, a lawyer named Alexis de Tocqueville, who journeyed here in 1831, and whose written observations at that time left us a lasting and provocative look at U.S. democracy’s formative years.

Tocqueville took this journey with another young lawyer, Gustave de Beaumont, who had written a report on French prisons. Although the official purpose of the trip was to research innovations in the American penal system, the two of them—especially Tocqueville—had in mind a much broader use of the credentials provided them by their own government.

Tocqueville wanted to observe firsthand the successful political experiment that was evolving in the United States and take his findings home to France, which was itself trying to shape its own young democracy.

A Hero Claimed by Liberals and Conservatives

The remarkable book that resulted—Democracy in America—has been called both the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America.

Published in two parts, one in 1835 and the second in 1840, it reveals, in its 700 pages, insights about democracy and the American character that have led both liberals and conservatives alike to claim Tocqueville as their own, often by citing the very same passages, and often out of context.

And its prescience runs so deep that it includes Tocqueville’s prediction, more than a century ahead of the fact, of the eventual emergence of the United States and what was then pre-Soviet Russia as the world’s reigning superpowers.

In Tocqueville and the American Experiment, Professor Cook leads you on an engaging and energetic discussion on Tocqueville, his journey, his writing of Democracy in America and, most of all, his thoughts on the young nation he was observing. For Tocqueville, it seems, had opinions about almost everything he encountered in America, and not exclusively politics and "classical" issues such as the nature of the judiciary and the role of freedom of the press. He wrote of:
The meaning of family in a democracy
Race and the damage done by slavery
Women's crucial role
Religion as a moral guide
The dangers of turning religion to political ends.
Seeing Ourselves Through a Foreigner’s Observations

"Tocqueville," notes Professor Cook, "provides the brilliant observations of an outsider that still allow Americans to understand themselves better for having encountered his writings.

"Furthermore, in a time when America is encouraging nations around the world to adopt democratic values and is engaged in nation building, Tocqueville can be both a guide and a reminder of the cultural context in which democratic institutions can develop and flourish.

"Whatever we feel about particular American policies," he continues, "we as a nation are trying to build democracies in other places.

"To do that, we have to ask, what in America is transferable to other cultures and other histories, and what isn’t? What are the most fundamental things, and what are secondary and tertiary in importance? What kind of education is needed to create not just a democratic institution, but what Tocqueville himself calls the ‘habits of the heart,’ [the American characteristics that] make a democracy more than a form of government but a way of life?"

Freedom of the Press and Centralized Government

A primary example of Tocqueville’s changing opinions over the nine-year interval between his visit and the completion of Democracy in America concerns freedom of the press.

Describing those changes in the same friendly, conversational style that marks his presentation of the entire course, Professor Cook notes how Tocqueville was initially quite nervous about the unbridled freedom of the press he found in America, fearing that a dominant press might acquire too much power. But Tocqueville was used to the far more centralized press of France, with only a small number of major newspapers. It is fascinating to see how his views evolve as he learns more about the vibrant American press and how its many outlets serve to prevent the centralization of power.

Tocqueville constantly cautioned against the centralization of governmental administration. He believed that if Congress or a state legislature passes a bad law that is administered centrally, for example, the bad effects are felt everywhere. But if those laws are administered locally, there will always be places where the application will be less rigid and the impact of the bad laws thus less onerous. This would provide an opportunity for public demonstrations that would make changes in those laws more likely.

What Else Did Tocqueville Believe?

Tocqueville believed, for example, that the forces that held democracy together and made it work most efficiently bubbled up through society, rather than trickling down from government.

He thus saw serving on juries—especially juries in civil cases—as a crucial part of the education of the citizenry, a "school free of charge," to use Tocqueville’s own words.

"I think," Cook quotes Tocqueville, "that the practical intelligence and good political sense of the Americans must principally be attributed to a long use that they have made of the jury in civil matters."

Cook shows how Tocqueville saw much of American daily life as education in good citizenship, with both political and civil associations providing fertile training grounds.

In the case of political associations, participants would have an opportunity not only to advance causes they believed to be in their own self-interest, but to gain practical experience in learning what he called "self-interest well understood." In giving up their time and energy, and working with other people, citizens would learn how individual self-interest had to be placed within the context of the common good.

In the case of civil associations, Professor Cook uses the story of a cat rescue group in his own town of Geneseo to illustrate Tocqueville’s notion of how civil associations help make life better.

Concerns as Deep as His Admiration

But even as he saw and admired the vibrancy of citizen participation at the base of the American democracy, Tocqueville also saw things that deeply concerned him.

As a system dependent on the will of the majority, democracy needed always to be vigilant against the tyranny of that same majority, the danger that it could rule almost absolutely over the minority.

That danger wasn’t likely to come from government, for there were constitutional safeguards in place. Instead, Tocqueville saw the threat of majoritarianism in the speech that swirled around him, even going so far as to note that despite all of the opinion he heard being voiced, he had found less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion in America than any place he had been!

Though the circle of discussion in America is very broad, he said, its perimeter is clearly delineated. Those whose views fall outside of that circle, though their views are permitted, are cut off from power, with political careers closed to them. They can become the butt of jokes and, in the worst of cases, the victims of social persecution.

Tocqueville was also concerned about the long-range implications of what he called "equality of conditions," a term roughly equivalent to what today is referred to as equality of opportunity. For Tocqueville, equality of conditions was fundamental to democracy, giving "a certain direction to public spirit, a certain turn to the laws, new maxims to those who govern and particular habits to the government."

But in a society in which such a principle pertains, a society without built-in privilege, Tocqueville also saw a danger. He feared that people might well seek other ways to experience the feeling of being special, either by withdrawing into the family or by the selfish pursuit of material wealth.

Tocqueville even coined a term—individualism—to describe this threat, and urged renewed attention to maintaining vibrant local governments and political and civil associations that will constantly demonstrate the advantages of entering and participating in the activities of the public square.

A Book for Today

Tocqueville can be both a guide and a reminder of the cultural context in which democratic institutions can develop and flourish. His book can be seen both as an inspiration and a warning for Americans of the 21st century, providing insights and innovative ways to consider what we all too often take for granted in the United States.

Course Lecture Titles

1. An Overview of Democracy in America
2. Alexis de Tocqueville—A Brief Biography
3. The Journey to America
4. Equality of Conditions and Freedom
5. The Foundations of the American Experience
6. Does America Have a Mixed Constitution?
7. The American Constitution
8. The Judiciary and Lawyers in America
9. Democracy and Local Government
10. Freedom of Speech in Theory and Practice
11. Freedom of the Press
12. Political Parties
13. The Problem of the Tyranny of the Majority
14. Political Associations
15. Civil Associations
16. Blacks and Indians
17. Mores and Democracy
18. Christianity and Democracy
19. Education and Culture in Democracies
20. Individualism in America
21. The Desire for Wealth in America
22. The Democratic Family
23. Are Democracy and Excellence Compatible?
24. Tocqueville’s Unanswered Questions

Tocqueville and Political/Civil Associations in America

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:22:00 +0000

I am listening to lectures about Tocqueville and his book Democracy in America, and I just finished the sections on Political Association and Civil Association. Then today at the beach I met a father whose wife is advocating for an initiate related to children's Chinese immersion program (or something like that). He thinks that I should join the group. It is exactly what I am learning from Tocqueville. How timely.

I looked up the couple's names online, and thought that we could have a lot in common. I would really like to get to know them. The wife is Chinese, a professor at my current school, and the husband is a English professor. They have two boys, 4 and 2. I e-mailed the wife, but only received a formal reply regarding the association. Maybe that's what Tocqueville is talking about (that people with diverse backgrounds come together for a single issue at hand).

so many orphans in the books

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:29:00 +0000

All the books I read this year so far are about orphans.

The Kite Runner
Lonesome Dove (there's an orphan in the book)
The Secret Garden
The Cider House Rules
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

And now I am going to read Harry Potter 2.

I understand John Irving's obsession or insight about orphans. He never knows who his father is. All of his books I've read are somewhat related to single parent families. The Cider House Rules is about real orphans. He is probably about the age of Homer Wells's son Angel. Hmm, I wonder what he was imagining when he wrote the book.

knowledge always comes in paris or more

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 06:05:00 +0000

I am reading John Irving's Cider House Rules. The first part is about orphans and orphanage. It reminds me of the various books and movies I have encountered lately about orphanage:

1. The Kite Runner (book), a orphanage in Afghanistan
2. The Italian (movie), an orphanage in Russia
3. Cider House Rules (book), an orphanage in Maine, US

Comparative study of the orphanage? I don't know. But after these encounters with orphans in arts, I want to help.

Oh, also when I was reading Lomesome Dove, there's a boy Newt who was brought up as an orphan although Captain Call was be his father, and I was surprised that for 17 years nobody could tell the resemblance between father and son. Then in Cider House Rules, Homer Wells and Candy had a illegitimate son then claiming the boy was adopted, and for 15 years or so nobody could tell the likeness between parents and son. These scenes really bother me.

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I just finished TTC (The Teaching Company)'s lecture on Mr. Lincoln, and learned about his life and the civil war. Then the next lecture I listened to, by accident, is Abolitionism, Anti-Slavery and the Origins of the American Civil War. It's like reinforcement learning. Today I started a new course on Argumentation. The professor will give two historical arguments as examples throughout the course, and one of the arguments is the Lincoln-Douglas debate. How timely! A few days ago I had never heard of the famous debate.

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When I was waiting in a long line today in school, I was reading Cider House Rules and was at the passage about Angel. When it was my turn to talk to the person behind the counter, I saw that his name tag said Angel. What chance!

====
One more... On Monday, my friend Allen Poe told me about a musician who plays a musical saw, and I laughed at the idea. On Sunday, Mike and I watched the movie Delicatessen, and the main character plays a musical saw. Wow!

TTC: American Religious History

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:08:00 +0000

American Religious History (24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Patrick N. Allitt, Emory University

I love this course! Prof. Allitt is clear and just, and full of interesting stories. He traces the religious history of America alongside the history of the US. He himself is a English Catholic. Every time I study religions, I re-consider the possibility of converting to Catholic again.

Allitt's other lectures:
American Identity
Victorian Britain

==
Join historian Patrick N. Allitt in exploring the story of religious life in America from the first European contacts to the late 20th century.

Why does America, unlike virtually any other industrial nation, continue to show so much religious vitality?
Why are the varieties of religion found here so numerous and diverse?

Reading aloud from primary sources:
Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech
A Civil War veteran's memory of how Catholic sisters cared for the wounded after the Battle of Shiloh
The heartfelt letter to Virginia's governor in which John Rolfe explains his spiritual motives for wishing to marry Pocahontas
An account of the religious diversity of New York City—in 1683
An Anglican cleric's impressions of revivalism in the Carolinas during the First Great Awakening of the 1740s.
Richly Detailed Personal Glimpses

Biographical sketches and anecdotes about dozens of brilliant, charismatic, or otherwise remarkable American religious figures, among them:

Puritan divine Cotton Mather
Mormon prophet Joseph Smith
Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy
The patriotic revivalist Billy Sunday, who during World War I said, "If you turn hell over, you'll find 'Made in Germany' stamped on the bottom!"

Course titles:
1. Major Features of American Religious History
2. The European Background
3. Natives and Newcomers
4. The Puritans
5. Colonial Religious Diversity
6. The Great Awakening
7. Religion and Revolution
8. The Second Great Awakening
9. Oneida and the Mormons
10. Catholicism
11. African-American Religion
12. The Civil War
13. Victorian Developments
14. Darwin and Other Dilemmas
15. Judaism in the 19th Century
16. Fundamentalism
17. War and Peace
18. Twentieth-Century Catholicism
19. The Affluent Society
20. The Civil Rights Movements
21. The Counterculture and Feminism
22. Asian Religions
23. Church and State
24. The Enduring Religious Sensibility

TTC: Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:02:00 +0000

Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
by Alan Charles Kors, University of Pennsylvania

This is a very boring course. I don't like Prof Kros's NJ accent and voice. A lot of the times he sounds like if he is preaching. I ran through the 12 hours of lectures quickly. Maybe I am just bored of philosophy these days. I want to keep away from his other lectures:
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition
Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment

TTC: Aeneid of Virgil

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:50:00 +0000

Aeneid of Virgil (12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
by Elizabeth Vandiver, Whitman College

I enjoyed this short lecture on Aeneid of Virgil greatly. Professor Vandiver is a good speaker. She made Virgil sound very interesting. I am also looking forward to studying other lectures on Classics with her:
Iliad of Homer
Odyssey of Homer
Classical Mythology
Greek Tragedy
Herodotus: The Father of History

When I was in Michigan, my friend Jeff, a HS Classics teacher recommended Aeneid to me, but the copy I bought was too worn so I left it in Ann Arbor when I moved to California. Now I can't wait to get a book and read it. I have always wanted to know more about the Romans. Maybe I will get into the Greeks too. I tried Homer several times before but I could not get very far. Now I really want to learn all about Homer and Classical Mythology.

==
From teach.12.com:

The Aeneid is the great national epic of ancient Rome, and one of the most important works of literature ever written. It was basic to the education of generations of Romans, and has stirred the imaginations of such writers and artists as St. Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Brueghel the Elder, Milton, Rubens, Tennyson, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot.

The Aeneid represents both Virgil's tribute to Homer and his attempt to re-imagine and surpass the Homeric model.

You join Aeneas on his long journey west from ruined Troy to the founding of a new nation in Italy, and see how he weaves a rich network of compelling human themes. His poem is an examination of leadership, a study of the conflict between duty and desire, a meditation on the relationship of the individual to society and of art to life, and a Roman's reflection on the dangers—and the allure—of Hellenistic culture.

The first lecture provides an introduction to Virgil's Latin epic and to the plan of the course, while the second lecture covers both the mythic and literary background with which Virgil was working. Here you find an insightful summary of the legends of the Trojan War and of Romulus and Remus as well as a discussion of what scholarship can tell us about the Aeneid 's literary antecedents. Lecture 3 provides you with a vital understanding of the historical context in which Virgil wrote, including accounts of his larger literary career, his relationship to the regime of Augustus, and his view of Roman history generally. In Lectures 4 through 12, Professor Vandiver discusses the poem itself with clarity, economy, and enthusiasm that you are sure to find illuminating and thoroughly engaging. Throughout it all, the figure of Aeneas is never far from center stage—as fighter and lover, father and son, refugee and ruler, wanderer and founder, spellbinding storyteller, and sword-wielding man of action.

1. Introduction
2. From Aeneas to Romulus
3. Rome, Augustus, and Virgil
4. The Opening of the Aeneid
5. From Troy to Carthage
6. Unhappy Dido
7. Funeral Games and a Journey to the Dead
8. Italy and the Future
9. Virgil's Iliad
10. The Inevitable Doom of Turnus
11. The Gods and Fate
12. The End of the Aeneid and Beyond

Book: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:50:00 +0000

It took me almost a month to finish Larry McMurtry's epic masterpiece Lonesome Dove. I have not enjoyed a book this much since high school when I read Jin Yong, and I have read many a book. Lonesome Dove has everything--history, geography, action, romance, humor, dialogue, and stories after stories. I have learned so much about American west and cowboy culture than all the western movies I have seen.

The main characters are Gus (Augustus McCrea) and Call (Woodrow Call), two ex-Texas Rangers. After they stopped fighting the Indians and the Mexican outlaws, they settled in a small town Lonesome Dove in southern Texas, trading cattle and doing nothing much. Then one day their old comrade Jake Spoon showed up and told them about Montana. Bored of Texas life, they immediately gathered 3000 cattle from south of Mexican border and some cowboys, and started their epic journey across Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and reaching Montana. On their way they passed towns such as San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth (near Dallas), Dodge City, Ogallala, and Miles City. The cattle drive met with countless adversaries--rain storm, lightning, moccasin (water snakes), sand storm, quick sand, drought, grizzly bear, icy river, blizzard, Indian attack, to name a few. Some dead, some left, some joined, the cowboys and the people they met were all colorful.

The characters include a slow-wit and obedient cowboy from the original outfit, a black cowboy with superb tracking skills, a 17-year-old cowboy born of a whore and whose father was a mystery to be solved, a top hand cowboy in love with a whore he only bought once, a piano player with a whole in the stomach, a cook walking the whole way and could always find useful plants or animals to cook (and his three sons were killed by a Indian, and he killed his unfaithful wife), two Irishmen coming to the US to look for work, a young sheriff in Kansas chasing after his runaway wife from Kansas all the way to Nebraska, a incompetent deputy going on his first trip, a farmer women pressing men to marry her by all means, a teenager girl running barefoot faster than a horse and able to kill rabbits with stones, bandits, outlaws, bad Indians, hungry Indians, peaceful Indians, buffalo hunters, a whore getting married and pregnant only to runaway to look for her old lover, a buffalo hunter getting hung because he killed someone by accident, killers, horse thieves (stealing horses is a hang crime), settlers, a horse trader in a coma, a lady who lost three sons to the cold weather, two young girls growing up in the cold, a lone old man collecting buffalo bones, a father not admitting his son, rude army sergeants, young cowboys getting the first saloon experience, a Yale graduate becoming a cattleman, Mexicans, a saloon manager in love with the whore, a young whore surviving a brutal Indian abduction, two pigs walked the whole way with the herd, a Texas bull, horses with names and characters, ....

I would have given the book 10 stars (out of 5), but I found the part about Clara and the scenes in Nebraska weak compared to the stories of cowboys. There is even an error related to Clara's family history. Almost everything written about her is unsatisfying. It's a pity. I only give the book 5 stars.

The mini-series Lonesome Dove is supposed to be the greatest western movie ever made. I have seen some clips from YouTube. It's going to be different from the book. I hope it's good, because I can't wait to relive the lives of the brave men again.

gardening note

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:35:00 +0000

Top 20 plants for sunny sites:

Allium "Globemaster"
Artemisia arborescens
Calamagrostis brachytricha (a grass)
Cistus "Greyswood Pink"
Cytisus "Boskoop Ruby"
Elaeagnus "Quicksilver"
Eremurus stenophyllus
Eschscholzia californica
Euphorbia characias "Lambrook Gold"
Kniphofia caulescnens
Lavendula stoechas
Nepeta "Six Hills Giant"
Nerine bowdenii
Nigella damasena (love-in-a-mist)
Ozothamnus rosmarinifolius "Silver Jubilee"
Perovskia "Blue Spire"
Phlomis italica
Stipa gigantea (a grass)
Tulipa saxatilis
Zauscheneria california "Dublin"

Weed: Couchgrass, Dandelion

Cracks: creeping mints and thymes

Cyclamen: under trees

Fruit, vegetables, herbs in pots: eggplants, lettuce, chilies, Swiss chard, French beans, runner beans, tomatoes; figs, blueberries, strawberries; rosemary, basil, thyme, invasive mint

Vegetables to grow:

asparagus
bush beans
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
celery
chinese cabbage
sweet corn
cucumber
eggplant

garlic
你到附近的店里买大蒜，最好找一年的陈蒜（有的已经出现绿芽的最好），将蒜分成一瓣一瓣的，出芽那头向上，两行一垄栽下，一定要错落有致，就是两行的三瓣蒜呈品字形，以便将来生长互不影响

cilantro
香菜，则可以到中国店买种子种，注意：这些都不要埋得太深，等出来后可以培些土

leeks
lettuce
melons
onions
洋葱你可以到 Home Deport或者其他卖种子的美国店里买一瓣瓣的洋葱，然后像栽大蒜那样种将下去
peas

peppers
辣椒苗本身比较娇嫩，我一般到farmer's market买苗，然后栽上，考虑到现在的节气，育苗已经有些晚了，我建议你也如法炮制栽辣椒，以巴西和泰国辣椒较辣，问那些garden master, 他们都会告诉你

potatoes
sweet potatoes
radishes
spinach
pumpkin
tomatoes
turnips

新鲜的小葱(以韩国店或者农贸市场的最好，一定要根须完整的），挖一条沟将葱放入，土埋过葱白即可，如果有肥料埋可以上些

plant hardness: zone 10, 40-50F minimum temp

Books purchased today

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Got 3 paperbacks, 1 baby book (Brown Bear Brown Bear--board book version) and 5 National Geographic maps for $1.5 today from the library book sale. The paperbacks are:

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse (I guess I will try to collect and read all his books)

I was tempted to get two other Larry McMurtry books, but I decided to wait.

TTC: Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Jorielle) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:33:00 +0000

Buddhism
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Malcolm David Eckel, Boston University

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=687

If everything is constantly changing, then it is possible for everything to become new. If everything is an illusion, then there is no barrier to accomplishing anything.

Often a person’s first contact with Buddhism has come through reading Siddhartha by German author Herman Hesse, the novels of Jack Kerouac, or works of Beat Poets such as Gary Snyder. African American author Charles Johnson uses Buddhism to explore the change of consciousness that takes place when ex-slaves experienced freedom.

1. What is Buddhism?
2. India at the Time of the Buddha
3. The Doctrine of Reincarnation
4. The Story of the Buddha
5. All Is Suffering
6. The Path to Nirvana
7. The Buddhist Monastic Community
8. Buddhist Art and Architecture
9. Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia
10. Mahayana Buddhism and the Bodhisattva Ideal
11. Celestial Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
12. Emptiness
13. Buddhist Philosophy
14. Buddhist Tantra
15. The Theory and Practice of the Mandala
16. The “First Diffusion of the Dharma” in Tibet
17. The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism
18. The Dalai Lama
19. The Origins of Chinese Buddhism
20. The Classical Period of Chinese Buddhism
21. The Origins of Japanese Buddhism
22. Honen, Shinran and Nichiren
23. Zen
24. Buddhism in America