danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

This week has been unpleasant, weatherwise.  It began cold: on Monday night as I sat at the Broward Recreation Complex watching Mrs. Hill practice her roller skating, I became quite uncomfortable, and the temperature dropped quickly after sunset.  By the time it warmed up mid-week, rain came.  It was soon cold again, and today has been cold and rainy.  Unusually for winter, these are genuine thunderstorms with lightning.  This is bad for me, since I ride a bike to and from work/school.  I don’t know which I like less, either, the rain or the cold.

As I pedaled miserably home this afternoon, I came to an important conclusion: I need this.

Filed under: Meteorology on January 19th, 2008 | No Comments »

I won’t lie to you people; I eat a lot of sugar. I suspect sucrose constitutes a substantial portion–if not an outright majority–of my daily caloric intake. An irony I only just acknowledged is that I know almost nothing about sugar production, including the planting, cultivation, refining and processing of cane into the delicious crystals we all know and love. I can think of no other subject so important in my life about which I know so little, outside of the realm of physics (I don’t understand Newton, but I obey the laws of classical mechanics, for example).

But that is all changing now that I am reading Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, by Sidney Mintz. I won’t call it a page-turner, since it is an academic book, with copious annotations and dull statistics. But it is informative. For instance, I never gave any thought to it, but up until a couple hundred years ago, sugar constituted a minuscule portion of the average person’s diet, and not long before that, almost no Europeans had ever even tasted it; it was unknown there before 1100. For someone like me, who frequently eats cookies for breakfast, those would, indeed, be dark ages.

I am taking a course on the history of consumption (consumerism, not the disease), and Sweetness and Power is one of our texts. Sugar’s rise from rare “spice” to global commodity was not miraculous, nor without victims. Indeed, sugar’s place in our daily lives probably would not have come to pass had the industry that brought it to all corners of the world not relied so heavily on slave labor for long. By the time human bondage was ended in the Caribbean, sugar had so endeared itself to us, that its place on our tables and in our recipes was secure.

I am looking forward to learning more about our shift from a society in which the gap between production and consumption was nonexistent, to a society in which we are entirely divorced from production of goods. That phenomenon is compounded in the United States by our gaping trade deficit:  so few products are manufactured in America.  I also wonder if we’ll explore a theory of mine, which is that we consumers no longer drive production for many goods, but that we simply buy what producers make us.

Meanwhile, I am going to go enjoy some…

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Filed under: Food, Literature and Books, School on January 15th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

In an upstairs bedroom of this house, on this date in 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born.

In my mind, there is no more important American figure of the 20th Century.  The sinful bigotry of world into which Dr. King was born is beyond my imagination.  The state-sanctioned racism of that age defies reason, and leaves me with a sick feeling.  It took the courage and dedication of many to stand in opposition to those long established injustices and bring about change.  Dr. King, by virtue of his eloquence, stamina and sacrifice, deserves the gratitude of every American, and, indeed, every man who values what is fair and what is good in this world.

Next Monday, as we all enjoy a holiday, let’s consider the man whose words and deeds brought so much good to our country.  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s was a life worthy of celebration.

Filed under: History, Musings on January 15th, 2008 | No Comments »

I had a little time before class this morning, and since I needed a book at Goering’s Bookstore, I walked across campus to their now–as far as I can tell–sole Gainesville location on NW 1st Avenue west of 17th Street (now appropriately re-named Lt. Corey Dahlem Drive). Goering’s had until recently also been in the plaza at the southwest corner of University Avenue and 34th Street, and, of course, long ago was at the corner of University and 13th Street, in a building that has now been demolished, while the University Corners project sits stalled. Nevertheless, the book I needed for my English Romanticism course was not in stock, so I, and the rest of ENL3241, will have to get by without it.

Not wanting the whole trip to be for naught, I strolled across the street to the post office, where I found in my box two parcel slips indicating that packages awaited me inside. Back in the glory days of 2001-2005, these salmon-colored cards were an almost daily notice of a newly acquired CD won on eBay. These days, however, I very seldom receive such booty, so these parcel notices caught me off guard.

The envelopes associated with said slips turned out to contain pleasant surprises: a new CD by pianist Wu Han performing Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky; and a brand new cloth-bound, hardcover book called Authenticity Is Now.

Authenticity Is Now is significant to me for the simple reason that it includes amongst its glossy color pages a photograph of mine. Verily, in Chapter 2, on page 48 you’ll find my full-page picture of a lawn ornament deer. An oddity, for sure, but that’s what the publisher, Ziba Design, asked me for. The people at Ziba seemed very nice, too. Huzzah, book!

The Wu Han CD came from the ArtistLed label, which I have mentioned here before. They are unique among classical music record labels in being run entirely by the artists themselves, who choose the repertoire and even the takes that make it to disc. David Finckel–of the Emerson String Quartet–and pianist Wu Han–co-director of the Music at Menlo Festival–are well-served by the ArtistLed label, as the performances and recordings are of a consistently high quality.

This new disc includes Tchaikovsky’s Les Saisons, Op. 37, which is a piece I have loved for some time, particularly the sixth movement, “Juin: Barcarolle”. Wu Han plays it with a distinct pulse and less affectation than I have heard from most other performers.

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My only regret is perhaps absurdly persnickety, and concerns a subtle bit of phrasing that I have grown so fond of in Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Decca set. Listen for the note cluster:

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Ashkenazy uses a good deal of rubato–perhaps too much for some–but I love that little bit of dissonance. It is less evident in Wu Han’s recording, but nobody will accuse her of being overly-sentimental for it either. The Rachmaninoff Preludes on the disc are all excellently done, the Scriabin Sonata No. 4, Op. 30 is an interesting and welcome programming choice, and Liebesfreud by Kreisler is a lovely filler. I can enthusiastically recommend this and other ArtistLed recordings.

So, a good day at the mail box.

Filed under: Gainesville, Music, Musings, Photography, School, WAYLTL on January 10th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Let me begin by saying that I do not hate Hillary Clinton.  On the contrary, I believe she is an extremely intelligent, hard-working senator.  Likewise, John Edwards has heretofore been my hope for 2008.  His pro-middle-class, anti-corporate greed message resounds with me.  (I do sincerely believe that increasingly powerful corporations, unencumbered by any sort of sensible regulations, have taken America down a dangerous path.  The present mortgage crisis is a perfect example.)

Alas, John Edwards doesn’t seem to have any traction at this point, and that leaves me in the position of having to root for another team.  If it cannot be Edwards, then Barack Obama will be my man.  He is an electric speaker, and obviously smart and compassionate.  Coming out of Iowa with a surge of momentum things looked very promising.  For nearly a week the media made it appear that victory for Obama was certain in New Hampshire.  So, when all the pollsters and pundits got it wrong last night, it was disappointing for two reasons.  First, it reminded me a bit too much of the 2004 presidential election, where John Kerry was predicted to be the winner until late in the evening on election day.  Second, I really do not want Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee this year. 

As I said, I don’t believe she isn’t as qualified as anyone else.  I simply think she is the most likely democratic candidate to lose to a Republican in November.  I think John McCain would crush her.  I believe that there are millions of Americans who, right or wrong, despise Hillary Clinton.  If Democrats would like to once again grab defeat from the jaws of victory, I think Clinton can do it.

On the other hand, I think Obama, with a message of unity and goodwill, has the most promise in terms of bringing in all the Democrats and most of the unaffiliated.  In order to make this happen, I think it might be best at this point, I am sorry to say, for Edwards to withdraw, and allow most of his supporters to move to the Obama camp. 

Filed under: Current Events, Politics on January 9th, 2008 | No Comments »