I'd meant to post this. On Tuesday the phone rang and the caller identified himself as so-and-so from the Gloucester fire department, I said uh oh, and he said don't worry everything was OK. He said he was in the neighborhood on a call and neighbor alerted him to a beeping smoke alarm. He inspected the house - the door we never use wasn't locked - removed a battery and also commented that the smoke alarm on top of a pile of books along the stairs should be mounted (true - just never could decide exactly where to mount it). We did take a quick trip up and replaced the battery in one of the smoke alarms - and locked the unlocked door. It was too wet to rake leaves so that'll be another time.

I've been going to the Gym (Boston Sports Club - Cambridge) for seven years. For the first year and a half I had had a trainer for a while and then stopped using a trainer. I go 3 times a week and when using a trainer did that once a week. I've gotten pretty sloppy with stretches and don't do free weights anymore because of poor form. So I just signed up with a trainer. I'm using Ryan who I've observed recently and was recommended by neild. I had a preliminary session today with him and he seems to be quite reasonable - not one of these torture types - and start next week. Mre variety in exercise and stretches makes it more interesting which is helpful in insuring that I keep going regularly/

Last night we went to see Carmen at the Boston Lyric Opera. It was a good show with some excellent singing. This was a new production with some significant cuts and as a result Acts I & II were Part One, and II and IV were Part Two with just one intermission. It used spoken dialog instead of sung recitativo. The staging was simple with a huge backdrop poster in different angles for the 4 acts and a bunch of "rocks" strewn about. Act IV usually takes place outside of the Bull Ring and at the end Don José stabs Carmen just as Escamillo is coming out from his triumphant killing. In this production it took place in a bedroom and Escamillo appears coming from the distance just at the end. It was thus a more intimate than dramatic ending and an interesting take.

Carmen is my favorite opera; I know it pretty well and that makes seeing it even more enjoyable. My recording has Risë Stevens singing Carmen and is from 1951. I haven't listened to it in a really long time; my only record player is hooked up to my computer for conversion of old records (yet another undone project). Carmen was my first opera. My piano teacher took me there to the old Met in NYC in about 1951 - we spent some time before we went going over the music. Afterwards he took me backstage and I met both the Tenor and the Mezzo but I don't remember who they were - I think they were the second string.

Last night we went to another What Makes it Great performance by Rob Kapilow. This one was Mendelssohn's Octet. The way these programs work is in the first half Kapilow and the musicians are in stage with Kapilow talking and demonstrating on the piano and the musicians playing parts as he directs. He breaks down the piece illustrating themes and their relationship to each other. He'll play them slowly, or leave out some of the instruments. Sometimes he plays a less imaginative imitation in order to illustrate how great something is. He gets the audience to sing a bit or test out rhythms. He expounds about the music, the composer, and performance at the time of the composition, and in this case how incredible this 16 year old at-the-time composer was.

After the intermission, the piece is played in full. And then there is a Q&A section at the end. I learned a lot about the piece such as the little theme from the Hallelujah Chorus in the last movement, a piece of the Scherzo (3rd movement) that appears in the last in imitation of a then recent Beethoven invention, how Mendelssohn pioneered conducting an orchestra, and also started the practice of performing old music (e.g. Bach was not generally performed at the time). Two of the musicians used MacBookPros with a two-button foot pedal to turn pages as their source of music and one explained how it allowed him to play from the score instead of just seeing his line because rapid page turning was now possible.

The next What Makes it Great is January 23 with Cole Porter's music.

As was true last year, before the concert we went to dinner with eblaug_rss and RP at Bombay Cafe.

Last night I attended the GOAL (Gay Officers Action League - New England) Banquet to receive an award on behalf of the Cambridge GLBT Commission of which I am a co-chair. We worked with the Cambridge Police Department on establishing a program of GLBT training which was is performed by GOAL. The Commission was established in 2005; our first project was to get the GSA in the high school reinstated and our second project was to work with the police department on various GLBT issues including training. Now we are working with GOAL and the Fire Department for similar training, and then the rest of the EMT providers will be next.

Ours was their mostly annual Community Service Award which has been given to various individuals (prior Attorney General Scott Harshbarger was one such recipient) and organizations. They give several kinds of awards and recipients last night included Martha Coakley (Atty General and senate candidate), Gunner Scott (Director of the Mass Transgender Political Coalition), Sheriff Cousins of Essex County, Judge Meagher (retired judge who was the first out judge in Mass), and Officer Karen Berube (Wellesley College police force).

From Left to right: Sarav Chithambaram (other co-chair), Steve Ahern (GLBT liaison in police force), Joanne Shapiro (training coordinator for police department), Toni Snow, GLBT Commission member, moi, E Denise Simmons (Mayor of Cambridge), Robet Haas (Cambridge Police Commissioner), Gloria Kinkaid (Boston police officer - guest of Mayor)

( Two pictures )

Thanks to Sarav for the pictures (the trophy was my picture).

On Thursday I went to the ribbon cutting ceremony of the new Cambridge Public Library. I was heavily involved in the project as a member of the Library21 committee which was charged with determining the need and the program and help build resident support, and then the Design Advisory Committee which worked with the Architects. The Library21 committee first met in May of 1996. It was created because a previous plan had been shot down because of neighborhood opposition. 13 1/2 years later we have a new facility - to open for service on November 8.

The library is a renovation of the late nineteenth century building and a huge new modern addition - a magnificent juxtaposition of the old and the new. They ripped down the ugly 1967 addition, did a first-class renovation of the old building - inside and out - and built a new building with lots of glass with the highest degree of LEED certification. The project also included an underground parking garage, renovation of the park and some work on the adjoining high school.

This room was cluttered with old shelving and was in pretty bad shape.



( More pictures )

Yesterday I went to a Voice of the Turtle Memorial concert for Judy Wachs. It was well attended and very excellent. The group was founded in 1978 and remained intact for 30 years until the untimely death of Judy. She was the researcher for the group taking many trips to collect Sephardic songs and stories. She brought back tapes; the group then worked on arrangements with their huge array of instruments - 'oud, saz, guitar, mandolin, dumbeks, kamanja among others. For this concert they played one of the tapes and then their version of the song which included audience participation.

( some background )
Their concerts were always entertaining and musically satisfying. In yesterday's concert Derek again told the secret of what held the trip together: food. They were on tour a lot and always found interesting restaurants - the most important question about a concert was "where are we going to eat before the concert" and "where are we going to eat after the concert?". And apparently Judy had a good sense of finding good places.

( more )

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Song of Songs 2:12

Their closing piece was Adio Kerida:
( A translation )

There is a Memorial Concert to honor the life of Judy Wachs on Sun Oct 18, 3PM at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square - admission is free. Judy was the founder and artistic director of the Voice of the Turtle, a Sephardic music group. She died in October 2008. The remaining members as well as Libana will perform. I'm going - it'll be fun.

I knew all four of the turtles when we were all members of the Quadrivium - an early music performing group from the 70s and 80's. Also I was on their board of directors for a couple of years. They used to give an annual concert in December around Hannukah and also some others and made a number of CD's - I think I have them all.

that's Judy on the left.

I'm the database guru for one of the City Council candidates: (Henrietta Davis and yesterday I went over to give her the latest voter registration data and we chose a subset for a mailing.

The election Commission releases the voter registration data which includes name, address, birthdate, registration date, party affiliation, precinct/ward info. After each election they release data showing who voted (of course not for whom). They also release a Street Listing which contains the Occupation. The data for all of these is maintained by city workers on a statewide database.

As a result my data base all of this information including the voting history since 1997 (without the last month's of data so there are a few more, registration closed on the 14th).

59,237 registered voters
when people move away they remain registered for a while although if they
reregister somewhere else in the state that removes them from the Cambridge list.
43,847 voted in the 2008 election
12,995 voted in the 2007 municipal election
27,329 voted in the 2006 election

The overall count of registered voters has remained relatively constant (as has the population). The number of people voting in the local elections had decreased by huge amounts over time and 2007 was a low. It will be interesting to see if drops again which is expected.

The population changes rapidly. 16,587 people registered since the 2007 municipal election; 6,743 have Student as Occupation.

I like to drink root beer out of bottles with a straw but most straws are too short. Last night at Four Burgers in Cambridge I got two straws, took out from my pouch my trusty nail clipper (which had come apart and had to be repaired), trimmed a slot at the end of one straw so that it could be crimped a bit and inserted in the other straw to create a double length straw. It worked although the flow was a bit constricted; it didn't leak.

As my brilliant idea for the day maybe I should patent it - though I looked and found 12,960 patents with the word straw in them - I glanced at the titles of the first 150 and they were almost all about drinking straws. This is the first public disclosure - I have a year to file :).

There was an article in the Globe about how ROTC is becoming more popular at local colleges. If I remember right, Harvard doesn't have the program in protest to the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy but Harvard students can be part of the MIT ROTC program.

Now back in ancient history when I was a freshman at MIT I had to take ROTC since it was required for all freshmen and sophomores. (This icon is a picture of me in my uniform). I think we had 2 hour classes a week were we were lectured on topics such as the theories of Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), lots of war history, how to take apart a M1 rifle and other such stuff. Sometimes they showed a movie and I think I had an early morning class (10am which was early for me) and it was always hard to not fall asleep when they dimmed the lights. And there was an hour of drill in the afternoon when we marched around on Briggs field or in the Armory with rifles and had to polish our shoes and brass buttons for the occasional inspection. We never got a chance to fire the M1s - alas.

In my sophomore year one of my friends got excused for flat feet. So I went to the MIT infirmary to give it a try. The doctor said "you don't have flat feet but what about your vision?" A quick trip to the eye doctor for an extra test and I got my equivalent of a IV-F. I turned in my uniform and was happy to no longer have to put up with this. Several years later it became no longer required and the officers who were the teachers were happy to no longer have to teach people who didn't care at all.

While at MIT and in grad school I had a II-S deferment and when I quit grad school and got a job as a computer programmer I was able to get a II-A deferment (critical industry).

Today I attempted to make a post from my phone. Among other things I apparently reposted something from last year without knowing it. Soon to get an iPhone and switch from Verizon to AT&T although there is a chance that Verizon will support iPhones sometime in nearish future.

Pise, pas riche, hâte,
Pise, pas riche, colle,
Pise, pas riche, y n'appâte,
Naine désole.

Sceau malachite hate,
Sceau malachite colle,
Sceau malachite y n'appâte,
Naine désole.

thanks to Ormonde de Kay

Cambridge (MA) has a GLBT Commission appointed by the City Manager; I am one of the Co-chairs. For the past several years we have worked with the City Manager, the City Council, and the Police Department to get GLBT training included as part of their regular training program. And we were successful such that every officer received such training and it is included in the new officers training as well. The training is done by members of the Gay Officers Action League of New England (GOAL). We are now working with the Fire Department to get this training included for them and the EMT personnel.

This week I heard from the GOAL leadership that the Commission was selected for A Community Service Award. Some of us and the point person in the Police Department are invited to their annual banquet at the end of October to receive this award.

As a bunch of us usually do, we went camping in a Vt State park this labor day weekend. The weather was gorgeous although a bit cool during the night. There were ten of us and we spend most of our time preparing food, eating, and cleanup. We did take a jaunt on Lake Groton in canoes on Saturday and a hike up Owl's head ( a nearby mountain) on Sunday.

On Sunday night I had a pair of odd dreams. In the first one which was quite geeky, I was trying to write some software but the documentation wasn't clear so I didn't know how to do it. I was complaining to someone and didn't want to appear to negative and then I realized I was talking to Bill Gates. In the second one I was apparently a baseball manager and was discussing with Manny Ramirez his outrageous behavior (he had plenty of it while on the RedSox). I was trying to be diplomatic and still in the middle of this he called me a racist. Huh?

The view of Kettle Pond from Owl's head:


( A few more pictures )

I've passed through a couple of more states on the train but don't think I got out so it doesn't count. Peru is going to be added this winter. I might not have gotten the components of the former Yugoslavia correct - since that was where I went many years ago.

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately. In no particular order:

Recountings - Conversations with MIT Mathematicians by Joel Segal. I read about it in the MIT Alum magazine - Technology Review which is a pretty interesting magazine. It has long interviews with many Math profs, some of whom were from my time. Some of the interviews are about the evolution of math and I must say I barely know what they are talking about these days having forgotten just about everything I used to know. But it was interesting to hear about these people from my past and their comments about other ones. I quote an amusing thing from Art Mattuck who was my Number Theory instructor.

I got to Princeton in September '51, Those were the day when you got a PhD in three years, not seven. The ones who took longer were the square-dancers. The Princeton Class was filled with all the Putnam Teams from Harvard and Toronto - those were the schools that regularly won the inter-collegiate Putnam math exam. They had taken mostly graduate courses while undergraduates. When they got to Princeton, they said, "Hey, I know all this," and they square-danced. But I was scared, like many of the other first-year graduate students, so we worked! When I left, they were still square-dancing. It took some of them a long time to get a PhD. They were brilliant, but somehow they couldn't work.

It is a good thing I wasn't into Contra Dancing when I was a student.

( click for four more books )

There's been an important meeting going on in our household. It commenced a few days ago and it had continued for much more time than we had expected.



The Senior people have been running it - Lawrence the Koala, Teddy, and Martha the monkey. These are all people who have held management positions in our household back in the days when we had a hierarchical management structure and Martha also apparently had a short career as a judge, or so she tells us. This meeting was precipitated by Marcus, our mountain beaver, who a few days ago started claiming that he was a hippopotamus. Bartholomew, our hippopotamus, was apparently somewhat offended and there was a lot of chit chat among various people about this situation.


Marcus was allowed to bring his boyfriend Daniel to the meeting and Bartholomew brought his friend Balboa. No-one else was invited. We had expected a press conference or some sort of communication but nothing has emanated. Perhaps like many business meetings it has turned into a boondoggle and we will never hear about what was decided. Or maybe we will.

On Monday we went to the Boston MFA to see the Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice exhibition.

It was one of the most interesting exhibitions of this form of art I've ever seen. And these guys were certainly masters at their trade. The explanatory displays with general information as well as one for each work were really well done showing how these three 16h century artists competed and influenced each other. There were several instances of the same scene by each of the artist hung next to each other. There were also several painting where extensive Xray analysis had been done which revealed all sorts of changes in the painting as they were done - and again very well explained and illustrated.

The exhibit closes Sunday so if you haven't seen it there are still a few days to catch it (for locals).

Last night we heard that the small boat cruise to the Galapagos is on for the the end of February. So we signed up immediately. Also after this trip will be a trip to Machu Picchu. We're really psyched for this. Two places on the must-see before I die list. Every since I saw some pictures of Machu Picchu I've wanted to go there. I've never been to Peru but did travel to Ecuador (and Colombia) many years ago. There'll probably be some dancing in this trip, but the details aren't yet known.

I have this special indirect connection to Machu Picchu. When I was about 13 years old (~1951) I was visiting a friend in Connecticut in late summer and it turned out the local golf course needed some caddies since the older kids had quit so I took the job for a couple of weeks. My friends mother drove me there each day. My regular client was an elderly gentleman named Hiram Bingham who golfed with a couple of men his age. I learned that he'd been Governor from 1922-1924 and Senator from 1924 to 1932 (first to fill out a term). What I didn't know at the time was that he was the archeologist who discovered Machu Picchu in 1911.

The White-Ellery House was built in 1709 or 1710 on the Gloucester Common. In 1947 when Route 128 was constructed it was moved to get out of the way and set nearby. Last year it got new siding and a new roof and a few years ago a bit of interior work was done, but otherwise it is pretty intact from when it was last used. It is named White-Ellery since the original resident was the first Gloucester minister John White and later for abut 200 years various generations of the Ellery family lived there. It is open for viewing on the first saturday of the month and I finally got to stop by this time. To increase interest in attracting visitors they have a resident artist with a few works. This time it was a textile artist and one of the exhibits was a yellow woven band in and outside the house with little tags showing where she was at each section - during a trip to Italy. There are also some historical photos displayed inside the house. The house is unfurnished.



( Some more pics )

I ordered a new MacBook Pro to replace my 7 year old PowerBook. It wont come for a few days since it is being shipped UPS ground. The big dilemma is what to name it.

The PowerBook is de la Rue for Pierre de la Rue. This iMac is Clemens non Papa, my older iMac is Machaut, and Obrecht is my old 2cpu G4. I also have no longer used but operational Ockeghem - a Beige G3 converted to a G4 which runs OS9, and I think Palestrina, a 604 is in the basement. In the past I've had Dufay and Lassus. Josquin was my Windows machine.

There's always Gabrieli or Monteverdi but I am thinking of Ludovicus Episcopius because I like the sound of that name and I think I'm going to go with full names from now on.

On this day, July 22, 1962, my father died from a massive heart attack. He was out playing bridge at the time and I am told (if I recall correctly) he had just made 6 diamonds redoubled. He was a serious bridge player - the team he was on won the Vanderbilt cup in 1939, and he made some of his living during the depression with bridge winnings. None of my pictures are here or I'd scan and post one; nor do I have here his "obituary" which was a NY TImes bridge column.

That night I'd been out at Wonderland, the dog track in Revere, and when I got back my roommate said my mother had called and told him. After recovering from shock, I called her and said I'd be there the next morning since it was too late to drive down then. She said some good friends were coming to help out and would be there early in the morning and she was OK. Overall she took the circumstances very well acknowledging that she'd been sort-of prepared for this (as if anyone ever is) because of the prognosis from the after-effects of a prior heart attack 5 years before. And she took a general attitude of not feeling sorry for herself but being thankful for the 25 years of life they'd had together.

One of my memories of a dialogue with him was when we were discussing colleges to apply to and he blurted out - oh, you're going to MIT. He was quite correct as he usually was. When I was younger he'd often say, playfully, "when I was your age I was ...." I think essentially to show that whatever I was grousing about was doable as opposed to rubbing in his success. He was very smart but really quite humble

He was a "business man". He graduated from Columbia and worked for a bank until they fired many employees, especially the jewish ones, at the beginning of the depression. He eventually went into the food exporting business and ran a good sized company (Seaboard Fruit Company) that exported fruits and vegetables to west indies and south american countries. He took many trips there, occasionally taking my mother. He spoke and wrote Spanish quite well - his typewriter at home had an ñ on it. My first "job" was working for him when I was about 8 at Christmas time making labels for gifts that were being sent out to customers. After his business failed he was a financial advisor to several companies before he retired.

He went to Townsend Harris, a prestigious public school in NYC which closed but some alumni were instrumental in causing to be refounded many years later. As a Columbia alum he had seasons tickets to football games at Baker field (seats close to 50 yard line) and I went to quite a few games with him. He was a New York Giants fan and I went with him several times to the Polo Grounds and Ebbets field to see games. (I was a shudder Yankees shudder fan in those days).

His eyes were green, he used green ink in his Parker 51, and had a green ribbon on his typewriter.

Next time I get a chance I'm going to scan some of those pictures.

Last night we saw The Year of Magical Thinking, a play adaptation of Joan Didion's account of the year after her husband died and during the horrific illness of their daughter. It was a two-nights only at the Gloucester Stage Company where we are subscribers. It's a one actress play that lasts for close to two hours and starred Nancy Carroll who gave a brilliant performance (she did at the Lyric Stage earlier this year).

Although I've never read the book, I'd think that seeing this dramatization would be a lot more powerful than the book because it is so personal. It's a pretty powerful story. Of course it made me think a lot about death and its aftermath for the survivor.