DustyBrine

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Jord Have Mercy

Trying to get a jump on this morning’s entry. Just read over the paper, quickly. What did I see? The San Francisco Bay Area had a quake, just north of the Bay. That certainly caught my eye. Though it seems that while this 6.0 earthquake rattled some folk and destroyed some property, no one was killed. I can remember waking up in San Francisco to a minor quake and thinking someone had broken in. Reading it made me want to check the magnitude of the Haitian earthquake as I seem to recall that a low intensity quake caused so much death, but it was in fact much stronger, at 7.0. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/us/strong-earthquake-shakes-bay-area-in-california.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumMediumMediaFloated&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Remaining in Hispanola, the papal nuncio from the oldest cathedral in the Americas was whisked home for disciplinary action, after it was revealed that he routinely went down to the wharf and paid shoeshine boys for sexual services. Local people understandably want Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski tried there in the Dominican Republic, but the Vatican has invoked diplomatic privileges, as the Archbishop is technically the Pope’s ambassador in the country. Francis is going to have difficulty convincing the world that anything’s different if the Church continues to operate above the law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/world/americas/whisked-away-vatican-ambassador-accused-of-sexual-abuse-of-minors.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The simple video that the New York Times provided on the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson was one of the most thoughtful explanations for what happened that I have seen. Up until this, it was hard to understand particularly why things became so incendiary. Watching as people explained with video shot on their cell phones, showing a boy lying on the road, shot dead, blood pouring out of his body, while the crowds gathered. No one was allowed to go beyond the yellow tape. The body remained uncovered, and the crowds kept growing and growing. And then a police force over armed with anti-terrorist weaponry, they never needed but now have a surfeit of, escalated in equal measure to the growing crowd. Ten days on, hearing people calmly explain what happened in their neighborhood, it all suddenly made sense. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/us/michael-brown-a-bodys-timeline-4-hours-on-a-ferguson-street.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LargeMediaHeadlineSum&module=photo-spot-region&region=photo-spot&WT.nav=photo-spot

And it was good to read, at the top left of the page that one of the other reporters held captive by ISIS, Peter Theo Curtis, has been released. If I understand correctly he was threatened to be the next captive to beheaded. Apparently thirteen months ago, another prisoner being held with him was able to wiggle out a small opening to freedom, while Mr. Curtis, of a bigger build, could not make it through. That would have been me and so I had a moment of empathy for the man who was tortured and threatened with the unimaginable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/world/middleeast/peter-theo-curtis-held-by-qaeda-affiliate-in-syria-is-freed-after-2-years.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Unfortunately, the unimaginable which was removed from Youtube, was, I’ve come to find, broadcast on a huge screen in downtown Beijing at Dongzhimen, on an infinite loop of poor taste: http://www.tnp.sg/news/video-james-foleys-beheading-shown-giant-screen-beijing

And the soundtrack for this morning’s read? The spacious, haunting work I stumbled upon randomly by the Swedish bass player Anders Jormin. This is his 1995 release “Jord.” I’ve tune on called “Mocambique” which must be Swedish for the country in the south east of Africa. I’d like to play my little one the trumpet solo. But who it is attributed to I can’t tell from the album cover. Born in Jönköping, Sweden in 1957, the mix is sparse enough to let his bass playing reach for the canopy. I had a look at what “Jord” means in Swedish. What do you figure? I guessed it was either “north” or “Lord”, but it is, in fact, “soil.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Jormin

One of those days where you start off considering beheadings, and unarmed shootings and natural disasters and little boys lured into prostitution by the powerful, rough injustice where 就地正法[1], transpires, swiftly, and I’m thankful for the relative calm, and the time to plan before waking my kids up to face the day.

[1] jiùdìzhèngfǎ: to execute on the spot (idiom); summary execution / to carry out the law on the spot

Saturday, August 23, 2014

A Contest of Intentions

Absolutely lovely Sunday outside. Idyllic. One of those counterfactual superlatives to throw back at the world that derides this town as hopelessly polluted. Yes it sucks some days. But not today. Perfect soundtrack this day that oozes optimism, and possibility. “Intentions” is the opening track of one of the only George Adams albums available on Rdio, “Paradise Space Shuttle” from 1979. Such were the sorts of things one titled one’s albums in 1979. Looking at pictures of the tenor player I’m almost certain I saw him play with Don Pullen at Wesleyan in 1986 or so. His face is very familiar. I’ve played the tune three times in a row now and it makes me think of walking around lower Manhattan on a Sunday with a big smile and nothing, whatsoever to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adams_(musician)

I woke up this morning and got beat twice, which was nice. My little one has a friend coming over and is preparing a menu that she and her friend will prepare. I lured her away from her cookbook research earlier into a game of chess. The board sits prominently in our living room, but it isn’t always in use. “I’ll give you the first five moves.” That caught her attention. “Let me use them whenever I want.” OK. She played well from the outset and caught my knight when I was being careless. But by the time I assembled some unforgiving firepower at her king in the corner she utilized her three moves and pinned mine into check-mate.

I encouraged her to play her older sister who’d quietly risen and made her way downstairs during the heat of competition. “Hey, you’re the winner,” but she demurred. “I’ll watch.” No fool, her older sister, had heard there was a special offer on multiple-moves and she requested three. “Do you want to take them all up front?” I asked hopefully? “No. I’ll let you know when.”

If there are different, higher and lower level, orders of thinking, “I’m hungry” vs. “Why am I here?” I think “winning” must be not too much higher up than eating and defecating. “I want to win.” It’s primal. “It’s only a game,” higher ordered reasoning. Certainly both are in motion with any game of chess. Having been womped moments earlier I was smarting now to win 势在必得[1], and set out to decimate my daughter's kingdom. Judiciously banking her extra moves she unveiled them artfully, moments before facing certain doom, and forced the crown off my kings head back in the lower left corner of my realm. Two victorious daughters: a higher-order balm to massage the lower-order lion that set out for, but did not secure anything to eat.

Another twelve pages or so aloud, with Winston followed. Orwell has Winston wandering around in the proles quarter encountering antiques and people older than 60 and trying to discern a bit of higher order thinking of his own. What was it really like before the revolution? Winston considers a room without a tele-screen and taps into a primal memory of sitting about, without any surveillance. Pausing, I asked my daughter to consider a China that was, effectively worse. Within eighteen years of the publishing of “1984” gangs of teens were empowered to scour Beijing looking for and summarily destroying any old things they found. The simple transaction Winston conducts, where he purchased the old piece of India glass from the shopkeeper wouldn’t have simply been frowned on by a Party member, it would have been entirely illegal. Hard to consider Big Brother as an under achiever, but some of what was to transpire in China, youth gangs destroying “the four olds” for example, seems even beyond the pale for Orwell.

Certainly the higher-order “intentions” on-line feminist protests wouldn’t have had much of a chance in either milieu. Pleased, I was, to see the courageous actions of these four young ladies in Guangzhou. They posted an online photo in their tee-shirts, that seems to sport a character with its middle finger in the air, with the phrase: “My vagina does not come free with my labor,” on their bodies and on a white board. This, in response to a story of a woman who was recently raped and killed in an after work drinking session in Chongqing. Are online feminist protests permissible? I wouldn’t have thought that this would have been allowed to stay up but the link to Sina suggests any Chinese person is still free to view it, consider it. Organize around it? http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/womens-photo-says-it-all-no-sexual-freebies-with-work/?ref=asia

Last night my wife called me over somewhat surprised and read me a bit by some Chinese intellectual suggesting that a belief in God is central to Chinese thinking and that a Christian-like Reformation is critical to the evolution of Chinese moral thinking. Controversial from so many angles I was primarily interested in the fact that it was allowed to exist, on line at all. Posted on Tencent’s QQ news I challenged my wife that if it really said all that it probably wouldn’t still be up tomorrow. It’s still there. http://cul.qq.com/a/20140718/049772.htm

And of course the article is a bit different than what was reported to me and less controversial than what I initially imagined. But, like the feminists in Guangzhou it serves to reinforce how broad and varied the discourse is on the Chinese web, a place I have many assumptions about, but little immediate experience with. It is my “intention” then, to change that this year, once this particular 365-day globe spins’ been spun, in thirty-six days or so. Set out with a new goal to win, then, in the contest against myself.

[1] shìzàibìdé: to be determined to win (idiom)

Brassy Saturday

Hamiet Bluiett had featured Don Pullen the other day and I spent some time with him last night. Unlike Bluiett, I have a clear recollection of Pullen, having seen him slam the keys around 1986 or so. Turns out he’d only be around for nine or so more years before dying young of lymphoma at the age of 53. This song Big Alice recorded on his 1976 album simply titled “Solo Piano Album” is a simple major to minor melody that he apparently did with Mingus as well. I’ll have to go look that other version up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Pullen

Magically, I’ve got it on now, and it’s wonderful. One of Mingus’ last albums from 1973. Neither George Adams on tenor Dannie Richmond on drums, nor Ronald Hampton on trumpet are musicians I know of and will now be digging further into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingus_Moves

And let me tell you, we are all about trumpets around this joint. I just took my little one over to the school as this was fifth grade, try-out-an-instrument day. My kids have had piano lessons for years but somehow they never really took off. The younger one plays the guzheng with her mom, which is lovely, if large. They do not however, yet play flute or violin, the otherwise obligatory young, female, Chinese/American default instruments and I was hoping she might take a shine to the trombone, which the flyer suggested they were sorely in need of players for. I, for one, took clarinet and tenor sax through middle school band, before talking my way into guitar lessons. But I never ever figured out how to make brass instruments sing.

I warned her accordingly on the way over. “You probably won’t be able to make a sound out of the brass instruments, but that’s OK. It takes time.” We got there and strode past the string instruments in search of fat brassy tones. Welcomed in, a host of “big” kids were showing whoever showed up how to make sounds. The kid off the right started playing Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunters” on trombone and I pointed out to him that this was really wonderful to hear, twice.

She saddled up to the big baritone first and, to my complete surprise, she blew out a big, fat, steady tone. “Excellent baby, keep going!” I could have paid the twelve year-old student instructor cold-cash money for saying “Wow. I don’t think I could have done that when I started.” I don’t know who you are kid, but I love you. Intrigued she continued a peregrination around the house of brass. The trombone was a bit oblique without any valves to push, though they did have them in blue and red, which was rather intriguing to her. The French Horn she was warned required a very small, tight ombiture. She still got it humming. (I reminded her that John Entwistle played said instrument in Tommy, though no one else assemebled was familiar with “The Who.”) And she played the trumpet, beautifully for the first time and nodded knowingly when I pointed out that it was, of course, comparatively portable.

A rather goth looking lass with a “Suicidal Tendencies” shirt on did not play the oboe, she played the flute. I considered telling her I’d seen the band thirty-three years ago or so, but reasoned I should stick to priorities and we had a go at the clarinet which struck my little gal as rather complicated. Next thing I knew she was up banging the xylophone, which, wisely, isn’t offered as a starting instrument for the fifth grade. She migrated back to brass and settled on the trumpet, which I couldn’t have been happier about. “You do realize you get to stick the bathroom toilet plunger in here and make a wah sound?” “Yes, of course. After you clean it.” She starts Friday.

Riding home, I couldn’t wait to throw on any one of a hundred trumpet players I had on my phone. Where to begin? Pops? Miles? I thumbed quickly and noticed an album by Bill Hardman, which I’ve written about last spring. The song Asunta has both a muted opening and an open solo and, I think for the first time really, she listened closely to a jazz recording. I asked the teacher about securing a second hand sax somewhere and he surprised me by saying he might be able to lend me one.

So, with any luck I’ll be Coltrane to her Miles down in the basement this year. I know her mom’s concerned that her cheeks will start to look like Dizzy Gillespie’s, but I for one am elated. Excited enough to 自吹自擂[1] with abandon.

[1] zìchuīzìléi： to blow one's own trumpet (idiom)

Thursday, August 21, 2014

What Could You Do With a Stele?

Sailing in over the silence from the dining room was a familiar voice. Who is that? I had put it on my wife’s laptop a few years back along with a broad download of female grandeur from jazz, blues, R&B, rock and, like this sound coming in now, samba. I was listening to Brazil’s wild man of interstellar funk at the gym yesterday, Tim Maia. It was perhaps the first time since we traveled to Portugal that I had a chance to listen to the language. Alas, nothing much new was decipherable.

Listening then, to this lovely voice, the familiar mix, I scraped at my head to figure out who it could be. Eventually I caved and went and had a look. Ah, yes, Céu, a.k.a.: Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças. Born Sau Paulo in 1980, I’d long been familiar with her debut album “Céu” from 2005. I’ve a disc on from a few years later in 2009 entitled “Vagarosa.” This second song “Cangote” is fascinating. Her voice couldn’t be clearer and the mix is broad and spacious with a host of compelling little studio effects that have me wanting to share it with my older daughter who might appreciate her voice.

She is trying out for a part in the school musical today. They are doing Mulan, which seem a tad predictable, but it’s not for me. She was all over it, digging up the song from the movie that she wanted to sing for the audition and practicing diligently. Last night she was singing and, as happens, everyone had something to say about how she should properly belt it out. Summarily ordered out, we left her to it.

It will be a busy night for her as they also have the back-to-school middle school dance. Her old school never had such a thing. “If we were even seen walking next to a boy outside of class we’d have been reported.” I’m reasonably certain nothing Bacchanalian will transpire tonight. Boys will stand in one corner, girls in another and they will alternatively laugh out loud and stare down at their shoes, or or in this day and age, thumb along on their phones. We are most assuredly not invited.

Certainly, it does bring to mind all the odd, awkward “dances” we had when I was in public middle school, in Pleasantville New York. Cool people would be coupled-up, disaffected folk like myself would have been seething in the corner, everyone having, of course, ignored our music requests for something like “Clash City Rockers”, hating absolutely all the music being played, most prominently of course, the obligatory final number, “Stairway to Heaven” which, year after year started with a few couples embraced and ended with a few boys jumping around on one foot, in some form of air guitar with the girls all retreated to the walls, preparing to leave. Perhaps middle school dances have evolved, but I doubt it.

I was intrigued last night, looking around the Times’ Sinosphere blog to see the following article about a rather large stone, at the emperor’s palace in Japan, where it is never seen by anyone, save the Imperial family and, presumably the imperial gardeners. It is a Tang Dynasty stele that removed as booty from the city of Port Arthur, now known as Lushan. The subtly titled group, “China Federation of Demanding Compensation From Japan” has requested the return of the rock, which was taken between 1906 and 1908 after Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. When the Tang erected the stele, the area, which has been part of what is contemporarily known as “China” was not part of the Tang Dynasty, but rather the Koguryo Dynasty in northern Korea.

Certainly, “liberating” the stone and pavilion from the private gaze of the imperial family seems reasonable. But then, who do you return it to? It was carved by Tang imperial subjects and erected in a place that was not Tang territory at the time, but is unquestionably Chinese soil today. But it was taken from the Russians as war booty. The article suggests that South Korean scholars will not be happy if the stele is returned to China, as it is part of Korea’s cultural heritage. One can only imagine that North Korea will have an opinion, before long, as well.

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/chinese-group-calls-on-japan-to-hand-over-tang-era-stele/?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

When I go to Japan, my favorite hotel is the Sheraton Miyako. I always stay there in that lovely wooded neighborhood of Shirokanedai. Walking in along the hallway to their Sichuan Restaurant which doubles as the breakfast buffet, there are a number of museum grade, historical treasures from China, including a seemingly complete Tang Dynasty progression of riders and horses. There is one wine drinking vessel, a jue, which, if memory serves was from the Spring and Autumn period, roughly when Socrates walked the earth. It is always inspiring and disturbing to see it there. How did it make its way to Tokyo? Did a Japanese archeologist unearth it at a dig? Did a noble Japanese collector rescue the treasure from some market stall where it was unrecognized and likely to be disregarded and destroyed, or is it simply plunder, stolen from someone in China who knew what the treasure was and valued it, but was powerless to stop it being carted off to Tokyo as war booty, like the stele? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_period

Once we go down this path, half the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections are presumably up for reexamination. But if I were Emperor Akihito, who has no political power and extraordinary symbolic power, I would consider strongly off-loading stone, which is probably no more than a “nice-to-have” in his vast gardens. Personally oversee the return of the stone to Lushan and tell the assembled crowd that it is a gesture of reconciliation. Oh, and deliver the one two sentence message in both Korean and in Chinese. What else are you doing for the rest of your reign? One can only assume you had no opportunity to attend a middle school dance, but remember, there is always time to 改弦易辙[1]. It’s good to be the emperor.

[1] gǎixiányìzhé: change of string, move out of rut (idiom); dramatic change of direction / to dance to a different tune

Notes At the End of the Day

Trying to pen something off at the end of the day. The end of the day is always different. The end is near. It must be like the end of a life. There are graceful ways to end a day and sudden ways to end a day, regretful ways to fade out, and triumphant, symphonic summations to the inner audience. And you’d probably be happy if you just stared back at it and surmised you were productive, and nothing too terrible transpired.

Muhal Richard Adams apparently taught himself how to play piano. That’s beyond me. Guitar? Maybe. Piano? But here he is behind me playing it out confidently if strangely. I’ve got this 1977 set “1 Oqa +19” on the mix. I found it randomly by searching things akin to William Parker, the bass player, who was akin to Chico Freeman and so on. I am digging the cover of this album, no doubt. I’d have stopped and picked it up, just to check it out no matter where I saw that. It looks earlier than the year it is from. I am considering, rather than fully digging the interplay between Henry Threadgill’s exploratory saxophone solo and Adams ambling, and occasionally, communicative piano work. They are both burrowing about wildly. It’s a wonderful contrast to the calm of the cover photo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-OQA%2B19

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhal_Richard_Abrams

Born in Chicago in 1930, he is still alive, still playing at 83. How does one stay fresh enough to play with the boppers in the early fifties to driving the experimental loft jazz movement in the 1970s? He must have stayed particularly hungry, curious, searching. That song just now “Charlie in the Parker” was lovely and angular. Nothing wrong with those who wanted to always play the music they came up with. Dexter Gordon, our first DB feature, comes to mind. But hurray for the souls who just never stopped pushing for something further beyond anything akin to anyone’s comfort zone, like Sun Ra or Mr. Adams. We don’t always want to be so far from terra firma, but without explorers, the music, like the world, would be flat.

I had my second parents’ night tonight in a row. This was for middle school, and my older daughter. Amid learning about all the remarkable things they can take and will take and how they will take them I had an uncomfortable feeling. I think it was when the guy my age, in the suit was talking. It crept up on me: “I feel like I’m in America.” Indeed, most people in the audience were ethnically Chinese, whatever their passports. The teaching staff had plenty of Australians or Canadians, I suppose. But the guy in the suit was American. His accent was American. And so were many of the other teachers, and so sounded much of the English being thrown about, everywhere I turned. It felt great to have a Chinese conversation with two parents, who were confused about the confused about what to do as we regarded the five pillars of school community with the cue cards and number two pencils we were given.

I’m not supposed to feel like I’m in America in Beijing. I am decidedly 离乡背井[1], at least until next summer. America happens when you go back home. But on two consecutive nights now, the unexpected familiarity continued to wax. The feeling was unmistakable, not unlike being at the Irish Ball in Beijing and being surrounded suddenly by hundreds of Irish-looking faces like some hall-of-mirrors, family reunion where the majority of faces, suddenly look rather related to you. No one is. You don’t know anyone. This feeling is surreal though because you’re in China, very far from Dublin or South Boston. But there it is. Erie staring back at you from everywhere, in a wonderful, but artificial way.

For me, for a while now, my kids school has been a challenge, as its all in Chinese and I have to work so hard at being non judgmental and patient. And there was an ease too because, no one expected me to completely understand and I only pushed myself so hard to "completely" understand. Now, suddenly I understand absolutely everything, as one should, as is normal. What’s more I have strong opinions and my preference are largely being balmed, and massaged. Things I want and expect are nearly all being completely addressed and as a result, I feel buoyant. “We’ll be studying how the media forms people’s opinions, revolutions of the world, and Chinese geography and kids will be posting things on their blogs weekly.” Cool. Can I take this class?

My younger one wants to know if I prefer the school photo of her wrapped on to a mug or the option wherein I can have her fashioned on to a calendar. Tomorrow is the LAST chance to order these and other remarkable products. “Do they have just a square photo option? I’ll take that and put it in a frame.” “Dad??!!” Chinese pedagogy isn’t so nearly well covered, in comparison, when it comes to selling things and obliging you to make purchases. It’s all rougher. Sophisticated, Amerian-style marketing purloins your bills before you can consider that it was anything other than normal. I think back to all the mint cookies we sold to raise money for whatever it was we were raising money for, baseball jerseys? Door to door we went, earnestly. Some kid always came back having sold a phenomenal amount more and you knew his parents had deputized their friends to help. “ “Can you do that for us mom?“ "No. Parents who sell cookies for their children are simpletons. You do it yourself."

This isn’t America. Even at the school. All the annoyances have been carefully removed and rather it is like some kind of Athenian America of one’s dreams. Some other time, they’ll have to consider how to maintain equanimity amidst the America with all the rough edges. But there is a long way to go, for them at least, till nightfall.

[1] líxiāngbèijǐng: to live far from home (idiom) / away from one's native place / to leave for a foreign land

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Regrets au Sujet de Retardateurs et Décideurs

The sounds of Edith Piaf a flowing in from the dining room. "Non, je ne regrette rien" from 1960, has a bit of a cornball marching mix beneath it, but her voice soars above as forever plausible, uncompromising, wounded. My wife, who like my daughters is studying French all of a sudden has decided to listen to as much French music as she can get her hands on. No wonder then, she has found Piaf, the French National Diva. My mind turns to compare her now with Amelia Rodrigues who we encountered this summer in Lisboa, the Portuguese National Diva . Piaf is older, as I would have guessed, but she seems to have aged faster and died much younger. Piaf was born in 1915 and died a year younger than me, at the age of 47 in 1963. Amelia was born in 1920 and nearly lived out the century till 1999. No mean burden that, “National Diva.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89dith_Piaf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A1lia_Rodrigues

Now we have accordions and shouts about Paris in the night and forgotten numbers searching streets and avenues; glimpses I can otherwise make out beneath my rusty French. I must go find out what this is. She has on a Youtube clip called “Great French Music for a Romantic Dinner.” I see. The musicians are not listed; rather we have a shuffle of photos of Les Halles, and Notre Dame the Siene and areal photos of the city. This, and food and wine. I’ve suggested she should check out some Serge Gainsbourg. Perhaps she will. The last time I’d tried to do this she’d commented on how unattractive he was. Ah, la beauté est dans l'œil (ou l'oreille) du spectateur.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_9AOJ_DG0I

She was beating herself up about not making more progress with this project. I suggested she go live with a family in a French speaking country for a few weeks, and she’d come back at another level. She immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous but I thought I could glimpse a moment of consideration there. Would that really be possible? My daughters too have begun studying la belle langue this year. It’s one thing for these guys to leave me behind in Chinese. Now I dread that history will repeat itself. Right now I have a tenuous edge, but anyone with some modest dedication or regular homework, could go from rien to plausible quickly and laissez-moi dans la poussière.

I rely on my news from back home largely from the New York Times. I don’t tend to watch any broadcasts, other than out of the corner of my mind. I find myself being pushed from my comfort zone on matters of the presidency. I’ve set a notion for a while that Obama is smart and doing the best he can. Roger Cohen whom I respect and who I know, in kind, respects Obama, had an interesting editorial about “Obama the Restrainer” being a logical counterpoint to “Bush the Decider” but that, in his opinion, it has shifted out of balance. American soft power is still dominant, but the pull-back on our hard power has left the world confused and allowed for movement by a range of opportunists who, to his mind, exploit American ambivalence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/opinion/roger-cohen-ambivalence-about-america.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

And I wonder to what extent it is possible to have an opinion about a public figure that isn’t weather-veined this way or that; by the copy we read or the way reporting is framed. Yesterday there was an article suggesting that Congressional Democrats like Harry Reid are all fed up with Obama, because of his aloofness and his unwillingness to schmooze and engage. Is that really true? I see Ferguson Missouri resembling a war zone of racial divide all of a sudden and I’m perplexed. As it continues on, is it appropriate to look to the leader for a solution? It was much easier to suggest that G. Herbert Walker Bush was somehow “at fault” for the mood in the country during the L. A. riots. Is the same true now, if it ever was?

The underlying message in the paper would appear to be that Obama has tuned out and is somehow stewarding a careful course, to the end of his term. I don’t believe that is the stuff he is made of, though perhaps time in that remarkable role, has ultimately changed him, taught him restraint. I do hope Obama is able to seize upon some meaningful initiatives that speak to the possibility for American power, rather than simply its limitations. China approached America about a joint development initiative in the Congo recently. Where is it then, that we are approaching people with a fresh sense of possibility? I want to feel some risk taking on the part of the presidency so that he can leave the office with more than simply, "Non, je ne regrette rien." These two years are the time to find ways to act boldly, and perhaps independently. The next inauguration will certainly be 后悔莫及.[1]

[1] hòuhuǐmòjí: too late for regrets (idiom); It is useless to repent after the event.

Dromedary Driving

You run into a lot of interesting driving prowess across Asia. I’m heading over to Shang Di now in a cab with a pleasant gentleman, who is probably my age. It’s an open road and there is no traffic to complain about, now at 2:00PM. But his approach to making his way along the highway is it to tap the accelerator, gain speed, and then slow down, at odd intervals. What this means is we accelerate and pause, accelerate and pause, which tends to have the impact of making one feel as though they were riding a camel. I wonder if it is his conditional attitude or not. Tough job, that, Dromedarian. I just looked up to take a gaze at the meter on my camel driver. We better get there soon or he’s gonna max out my wallet, said the artist formerly known as "Lao She." Over to the right is the ‘so modern it already looks retro’ buildings of Beijing’s ‘Z Park.’ I don’t think I’ve ever gotten out here so fast. I compliment my driver but he disregards it as though it were 驴唇马觜[1]. We’ve made it in record time.

Three hours later, I’m at a gas station at the fourth ring road and airport express way round about. A friend heading into the city dropped me off here and I ducked out as there are literally forty empty cabs. Unfortunately there are also forty idle drivers playing cards on the veranda and they don’t look much like they want to go anywhere. I followed what looked like a driver with the yellow shirt into the convenience store and asked if he wanted to go to the airport which is usually a the sort of destination that gets drivers attention. Fortunately he was game, right away. And now I’m in the back, of his cab, back tracking over the road I just traveled, heading out now on the Jing Cheng highway back out to the burbs.

My girls announced something last night that was truly startling. “I really don't’ have any classes I don’t like.” “Me neither.” Is that really possible? My ice-breaker question with newly-met kids in Chinese or English is usually, “so, what’s the class you love the most and what’s the class you hate the most.” Never fails. And my kids were telling me they didn’t have any classes they didn’t like . . . Wow. Give us time. We’ll work on it. I’m sure we’ll have something to complain about before long, but so far, two weeks in . . . I like the way this is going down.

Riding along the Jing Cheng highway I also like the way this Chico Freeman is going down in my ears. I saw him years and years ago in lower Manhattan. I think he was playing with Casandra Williams. Long, lanky, commanding, to a point, I also seem to remember I was rather sleepy that night. This tune “Like the Kind of Peace it Is” from the album Morning Prayer is very familiar. I know this head, this tune through another version, though I can’t quite place where. This appears to have been the first album by Mr. Hamilton from the year `1976. Born in Chicago he moved to New York shortly thereafter, where he lives to this day, teaching at the New School.

Home, sweet, chaotic, neighborhood home. Coming in the back way now, past the rough, brick, ramshackle buildings that line the roads of all small towns in China on any street that abuts a roadway on the town outskirts. A few restaurants have thrown up tables outside and people are beginning to fill up the space, near and around the mountains of waste and more waste. Standing there are seventeen parked steamrollers with their wheels up in the air. And down in the side off from the trucks are crates and crates of beehives that you don’t want to bump into, unawares. There, to the right is the wall to my compound, complete with welcoming glass shards fastened into hardened concrete in the top row.

[1] lǘchúnmǎzī: lit.camel's lip, horse's mouth (idiom) / fig. to chatter / nonsense / blather