The Mad Gardener

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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Queen Mom Cat" journal:

March 28th, 2012
10:42 pm [Link]	new formats in reading I can't currently envision myself getting an e-reader of any brand; there's only one (sub)circumstance under which I'd consider it, and even then it's only a mild interest, not a want much less a need...for which see the rest of the entry. I understand that there are a number of valid reasons why others would need and enjoy e-readers. I'm glad for everyone who loves their e-reader. All I ask is that people who do LOVE LOVE LOVE AND ADORE their e-readers understand when I respond with a politely neutral "How lovely for you." and promptly change the subject. Here's an attempt to explain why: Why do people like e-readers? (did I miss anything) 1) They're easier to read under certain circumstances. The text can be enlarged for people who have difficulty reading when the book is held in a conventional position, either through the normal process of aging¹ or through uncorrectable lack of visual acuity. The backlit screen makes text comparably sized to printed books easier to read for people on the borderline between two vision categories. 2) As with Mp3 format audiobooks on an Mp3 player, an e-reader can hold multiple items. Thus they render it easier to store and transport multiple items as they take up far less space than the equivalent amount of printed books. 3) E-book format items are often cheaper than the print equivalent. Why do these not apply to me, at least for now? 1) For the time being, my vision's OK for printed material under the conditions I'm likely to be reading them. This may change. 2a) Space is not a problem when I'm at home, particularly given my inclination to borrow items from the local public libraries. 2b) I read voraciously enough that were I to travel by myself to a place where there were no books for more than a couple of days, I'd have to bring as much reading material as clothing. However, the places I'm likely to travel have personal and circulating libraries, and in a pinch, stephe and I have similar enough reading tastes that we can pack shared books. However, I travel from home (trips longer than 3 days) 2-3 times a year. 3a) The books themselves may be cheaper, but the e-reader is expensive and the electricity needed to recharge the e-reader costs something. The fact that (as mentioned in #1) I have factory installed eyeballs that can upload either format equally well for free renders hidden costs of the e-reader format a very real issue...for which see: 3b) Price of the individual items is only a factor if you'd own the item(s) in one format only; if you want to purchase both the print version and the e-readable version, the cheapness of the latter flies straight out into the ether. 4) The books which I want to own for myself are, for the most part, simply not available at all in e-reader format; older books tend not to be. 5) my husband is employed by an independent bookseller; the Kindle (admittedly a subset of e-readers) is a genuine threat to this and other independent booksellers given Amazon's tendency to subsume lesser businesses. As a concrete example of what it would take to get me to buy an e-reader: it's not just the e-reader but something to put ON the reader that we need to include in the "purchase" price. How about some specific numbers? Let's say I want to purchase the fiction to which I've given a four or five star rating on Goodreads which does not rely upon illustration to tell the story (no picture books, no graphic novels). Will they ALL be available in e-book format? Promise? No, I didn't think you would, and it's probably a good thing too. Most of them aren't available that I can tell either. It could be argued that I'm being disingenuous about not wanting an e-reader, since I've got an Mp3 player. I don't think these are exactly equivalent however, as not only was the Mp3 player a gift but I had several hundred hours of music, audiobooks and radio plays on CD prior to the acquisition of said player and a husband who was willing to give me "conversion of said files from CD format to Mp3 format, and uploading same to Mp3 player" for a Christmas present. I do not similarly have an equivalent amount of digital books. The Kindle in particular is a problem. It's Amazon's proprietary e-reader, sold only by Amazon. The Kindle can read only Kindle format books sold by Amazon, none of the other formats currently on the market, which can be sold by non-Amazon affiliated online and brick-and-mortar bookstores (which is all of them) and distributed by non-Amazon affiliated public libraries (which is so far as I know all of them). Why do I mention this? stephe is currently employed by an independent bookstore, and at least ideally I'm a public librarian. It is not in our interests to see Amazon so dominate the market. Is it worth spending $200 for a device (and however much I'd need to spend for 'books') that I'd use for 10 days a year but might not otherwise? ¹bifocals and reading glasses aren't always enough to allow comfortable reading Tags: books (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 26th, 2012
01:00 pm [Link]	last opera of the season Hopefully, not our last live opera evar; at least this one went out on a (figurative) high note: Aida, and a reasonably well sung one, with a thoroughly traditional staging, with one exception. Whether we attend live operas in future will, not surprisingly, largely depend on where (and when and if) my next full time with benefits job is. If we're lucky, it'll be within easy transportation distance of a good opera company. The generally unappealing nature of next season at the Lyric made our financially necessary decision to NOT subscribe much easier. Overall, I enjoyed this production as much as I hoped I would--certainly, much better than I did The Magic Flute this season and that ghastly production of Abduction a few seasons ago. Aida's one of the grand warhorses of the operatic repertoire, along with other classics such as Carmen and La Boheme and when the Lyric does warhorses with a conventional setting and a decent cast, they do a marvelous job. (We're still humming the trumpet entrance theme for the returning army.) It's quite possible to do them wrong, mind, starting with things like thinking too hard about how to sugar coat the fact that Monostatos (Magic Flute) is a caricature of an African native, and this one had a few flaws. The worst was something the Lyric's done before: the orchestra overwhelmed the singers on more than a few occasions to the point that the only way I could tell they were singing was that they were moving their mouths. A problem not really the fault of the company or house was that the performer in the role of Radames had to step out at the last minute at the end of the run due to being "indisposed" or whatever the euphemism is, so the performer in the role for this performance had precious little time to meld with the rest of the cast. The performer doing Aida was a grand delight, Hiu He; I hope I see her again! The main change, which I appreciated was for the final duet when Radames and Aida are entombed together. Now, as I understand it, the conventional staging is split horizontally, with Our Hero and Heroine below in the "tomb" and the priests standing guard above. This strikes me as being about as plausible as Tosca stepping off the parapet onto what is obviously a mattress just out of sight but then I'm rather of the school that's likely to yell "If you quit singing, you'll last longer!" The Lyric decided to create a model pyramid within the larger Grand Egyptian Temple set, which struck me as a bit more believable in terms of claustrophobia and fear...also providing a plausible excuse for Radames and Aida to snuggle up lovingly together as they sing their last, though a bit less available to provide cover for Aida until she reveals herself at the properly dramatic musical moment. Tags: opera (8 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 21st, 2012
05:05 pm [Link]	final assignments for personnel management online class The assignment was "come up with an orientation checklist/plan for a new hire at a library", including the job description I came up with for assignment #1. ( for my own records as much as anything else ) Tags: work (Leave a comment)
March 5th, 2012
08:19 pm [Link]	back from the opera Overall, it wasn't a bad day: we had an opera, a trip to Chicago, a nice lunch and so on. The opera was Rinaldo, one of those productions that never makes the top 10 list of popular operas as it's not the IN style these days. For those who are only mildly interested in opera: it's set in/outside of Jerusalem during the days of the Crusades, with a group of European Crusaders outside the city (the good guys) and a couple of Saracen magicians inside (the bad guys). Handel isn't best known as an opera composer these days, what with one thing and another. I think I enjoyed it more than stephe but then I like Handel's music and baroque music in general more than he does, plus I appreciate the alternative set design more than he and (clears throat tactfully) other opera goers of our acquaintance. For once, I quite liked the music, though I could have done without the countertenors--castrati were the operatic divas of Handel's day, so he wrote for them. Since that isn't an acceptable medical practice these days, if opera companies want to present operas written when such things were not only acceptable but comparatively common (at least in musical circles), they have to either dig up several men capable of singing in what is, these days, considered a feminine range or bite the bullet and cast 'trouser roles'. Frankly, I'd have preferred the latter, but the Lyric chose the former. This was clearly the Lyric's "experimental" opera, at least in terms of set design. The backdrop was simply a semi-circle of what looked almost like piano/harpsichord keys, capable of being backlit in various colors and flashing sequences, as the emotion of the action required. The primary movable pieces of stage set were a tumbled pile of letters spelling "Jerusalem" in Italian and (don't laugh) a giant harpsichord in which the heroine (soprano, spineless) is held captive for her premiere aria. Yes, just that silly, though at least being trussed up in the strings of an outsized keyboard instrument makes for an aria more amusing to me than the standard "step downstage in front of the other singers and swan about" style of the day and subsequent centuries. Judging by the pre-opera lecture, the original productions were similarly somewhat over the top, though without the special effects modern set design is capable of. None of this fuddy-duddy old fashioned stuff. The trip home was a bit more eventful than I'd have liked; we ended up driving through one of those ghastly "persistent bands of lake effect snow" and Stephen, driving my car, braked harder than he should have under the conditions (crappy) and we ended up spinning out and sliding off into the ditch on the far side of the road. Thankfully, there was a nice soft patch of mud and a shrubbery, and even better--the car wasn't damaged and AAA sent out a tow truck with a winch. We ended up driving home VERY SLOWLY and leaving a following distance between us and the cars ahead of us about three times what Certain Husbands usually leave....primarily because I kept hollering at him "Slow down! Don't follow so closely!" He isn't touching my car again. Just saying. Current Location: United States, Michigan, Holland Tags: chicago, opera, weather (10 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 20th, 2012
02:34 pm [Link]	unemployment benefits Phew: I'm not on the portion of unemployment benefits program which got cancelled in Michigan. I think. I hope. At least the web site seems to think I've got four more weeks of whatever I'm on currently. Now, all I have to do is get through to the UIA in Michigan to find out if the bill renewing EUC does in fact apply to me...and they may not be sure yet either. After this, filing taxes will be a doddle. ( tedious explanation of things I wish I didn't have to know regarding unemployment ) Tags: work (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 14th, 2012
11:29 pm [Link]	back from the opera We're back from our latest weekend trip to Chicago--very wasteful, I know, given I'm this close to running out of unemployment benefits¹ but our excuse this time was that it's stephe's birthday trip. And I'm sticking to it. On the whole, this was a better trip than my previous two²: not only was stephe with me this time for the entire trip, but we found a new restaurant and enjoyed the opera. The opera this time was actually a musical³: Showboat--the showstopper tune for this production is, of course, "Ol' Man River" and it quite deservedly got a massive round of applause at the time and at the end of the performance for the singer who played Joe. I actually do appreciate the fact that the Lyric included the controversial original portions of the lyrics--often later singers switched 'niggers' for 'colored' or changed the line in question entirely to something approximating "we all work while they all play" and omitted the line "Don't look up/ An' don't look down/ You don't dast make / De white boss frown" entirely. Using the original lyrics, unacceptable though the language is for a modern play, makes the departure of Julie and Steve, the married leading man and lady on the titular showboat, much more tragic⁴. Other than that, it was overall a decent straightforward production--the performers sang well together, the stage sets were clear though unadventurous (not surprisingly, the reveal of the Chicago portions got a spattering of applause) and the reunion of the father/husband with his family at the very end had a decent modern twist of the father hugging the daughter, but the mother remaining standing aside. Now for the criticisms. There seems to be a rather snarky attitude among modern opera aficionados that musicals have no place in a Proper Opera Company. "Why is an organization perpetuating The Arts deigning to do mere musicals?" these people ask. Well, my take is that the Lyric may be a non-profit organization, but--quite frankly--all that means is that (drumroll please) they don't have to turn a profit. They still have to break even. In a time when classic opera is regarded by the majority of people as a tired dried out fuddy duddy form, how does such an organization break even? They put on productions which modern audiences will attend and that means musicals. It's not exactly like they're putting on Jersey Boys or Wicked, mind. Showboat's (whispers) _{popularized music} but it's been around long enough to acquire a certain dusty respectability based on the reactions of the library patrons where I used to work. If you don't want to see musicals, don't go. No one's making you see something that you know is going to annoy you. If the season package to which you've subscribed includes tickets to something of this sort, turn them in. Give them to a friend with no taste. Just don't whine about it unless you've made a whopping donation to the production company. No, my real complaint about this particular production is that I'm 99% sure that the Lyric miked the performers for the speaking portions of their roles and 51% sure that the mikes were activated for certain portions of the singing as well. I'm more sensitive to this sort of thing than stephe to the point of not much caring for any reproduced music; he didn't believe me even though the Lyric's done this before with The Merry Widow and The Mikado. It's one thing if we're watching a DVD or listening to a CD at home; our television is 20 years old and its speakers were ** when it was new and our CD player isn't much newer. The rental fee for the DVD and the price of the CD are trivial compared to an opera ticket. I'd just as soon not pay close to $150 per ticket for something as excruciating (to me) as miked singers. That's one of the reasons I don't want to attend what might loosely be called Broadway musicals: so far as I'm aware, the performers there are miked and even that causes a flattening and reduction in tone that sets my teeth on edge. The new restaurant was up by Myopic Books, one of our favorite used bookstores: Il Forno. This looks to be, not a chain exactly, but a collection of restaurants in the greater Chicago area; certainly, this subrestaurant didn't feel chainlike at all, unlike, say the Big Bowl restaurant close to the Homewood suites where we usually stay. Nothing terribly adventurous in the grand scheme of things but this restaurant had decent food in the face of faux Italian consisting of overlarge plates of cholesterol laden alfredos and sloppy tomato based meatballs. stephe and I both had pizzas in which the ingredients were readily distinguishable as real cheese, real basil or olives or what have you. I wouldn't mind coming back to try the cheeses appetizers when my stomach is a bit more settled. (The vegan/vegetarian restaurant to which we'd wanted to return, Earwax, seems to have gone under once and for all; they closed a year or so ago, reopened briefly but seems to have floundered permanently.) (wistfully) I'm hoping this isn't our last overnight trip to the Big Shining Lights City that is Chicago. It's not our last trip to Chicago, to be sure: we've got two more day trips planned for the last two operas in our current season at the Lyric--Rinaldo and Aida. ¹unless Congress gets its collective head out of its collective ass...no I'm not holding my breath either. ²despite my gastrointestinal system expressing its displeasure at being forced to come along with me on my travels; too bad leaving it at home isn't an option as I think we'd both be much happier that way ³please don't ask me what the difference is between an opera and a musical; I'm sure there's a technical difference but all my answers tend to be rather snarky, involving the level of snootieness of the audience and critics ⁴can we say 'miscegenation', boys and girls? Technically, they left voluntarily, but then a good many African-Americans then and in the decades to come did things 'voluntarily', because they knew perfectly well what the alternative was. Tags:** chicago, opera, restaurants (Leave a comment)
January 24th, 2012
03:06 pm [Link]	back from the opera This time it was The Magic Flute, and I have to admit that I was more than slightly disappointed. It wasn't quite as bad as the performance of Carmen we saw last year--the singers were audible over the orchestra this time, for one thing--but the staging was...peculiar. Again, not as bad as The Abduction from the Seraglio. However, kitting Monostatos and compatriots out in "greenface" and orange jumpsuits just made them look like OompaLoompas, which is most definitely NOT an improvement if one is looking to gloss over the racism implicit in having savages in grass huts prancing about with spears. A pity, as the man singing the role was quite good; his costume was just flat out distracting. The Queen of the Night's outfit was a bit odd also; her headdress looked like she had a fiberoptic lamp stuck on her head and her dress looked kind of like the supports for one of those late eighteenth century French court dresses so popular in Marie Antoinette's court...except without the dress. Just the panniers. It didn't help much that she couldn't quite manage the high Fs in her arias; she ended up merely squeaky rather than swooping. Poor dear. No exciting restaurants this time, though Oysy is doing bento boxes for the terminally indecisive: tempura, sushi rolls and grilled protein of your choice. Very pretty. Also, in the notes to self category, a trip up to Myopic Books on the day of checkout works better than one to the Asian market we like; the problem is always that we have four hours to kill between checking out and catching our train, and poking around in a bookstore can be stretched or compressed as we have time and energy. Groceries is usually just an inandout affair. Tags: chicago, opera, restaurants (Leave a comment)
December 14th, 2011
11:04 pm [Link]	back from the opera ( the hotel ) ( the opera ) No new restaurants this time, alas, and not much interesting in the way of food: I was feeling queasy and under the weatherish Sunday and Monday, as if I were fighting off a bug of some sort, which didn't leave me terribly interested in Exciting Avant-Garde Foodstuffs or Noisy OverStimulating Restaurants. Saturday, I went to Fado and finally got an entire appetizer of the smoked salmon bites all to myself, no sharing! and dinner at Big Bowl for the potsticker combo and the (IIRC) Thai Hot Pepper Shrimp. Otherwise, mainly comfort food at Bijan: french toast for brunch on Sunday and then french onion soup and a shrimp BLT Monday before catching the train. Hopefully, I'll be feeling hungrier at least the next time we're in the River North/Streeterville neighborhood. ( the footnotes ) Tags: chicago, hotels, opera, restaurants (Leave a comment)
November 21st, 2011
03:00 pm [Link]	back from the opera It was Boris Godunov yesterday, and as is so common in Russian works, it's all basses all the time. The Lyric put on Mussorgsky's original creation, the short form; under pressure from the opera company, he added a soprano love interest and several more scenes, and later Rimsky-Korsakov "fixed" what popular culture at the time regarded as Mussorgsky's musical mistakes. Thankfully, in the past few decades taste in music and in opera plotting have swung back to something approximating "creator's original intent", so we got to see the merely 2 hour, 50 minute version. Not that I mind either the preponderance of basses or the lack of a love interest. The Lyric went with a fairly spartan set design--bare boards curving up (or appearing to anyway) toward the back of the set, with black curtains concealing the wings and a couple of steps up to distinguish the set from the background. Doors in the upright portion would open as necessary, and for the bar scene, there was a table similarly propped up from the "floor". Not much in the way of props otherwise: benches for the 'madness before the Duma' scene, and banners unfurled from the overhead region for the coronation. At least here, it was consistent through the opera and appropriately designed, unlike that miserable Abduction from The Seraglio a couple of years ago. On the plus side, the comparative lack of set design meant nothing to detract from the voices! (did I mention that I prefer basses?) In this case they had not only Andrea Silvestrelli whom I've heard and enjoyed several times before (as Pimen) but also Ferruccio Furlanetto as Boris Godunov. As for the latter, WOW! Acting convincingly in what are, in the main, rather implausible circumstances is always the distinction between merely good singers and brilliant opera performers--the latter requiring both singing AND acting. Furlanetto was good enough to make me start looking for the ghost of Dimitri during the 'madness before the Duma' scene. Too bad the trip home was marred by the usual problem: twits on the South Shore who'd never learned the "inside voice". This time it was a group of airbrained mothers and daughters who'd come into Chicago for a day of shopping, an activity I find only marginally preferable to having bamboo coals thrust under all my nails. They ooed and aahed over the fact that I can knit without looking, then one mama put her foot in her mouth by asking if I ever sold my stuff--I don't because given the time I put into each garment, there's no way I could charge enough to make even minimum wage, though I'll give them (to family members and dear friends) but only if asked. So she asked "Will you make my daughter a dress?" (I think she was joking.) to which I replied "Will you pay me $500?" She slept the rest of the way home, and the remainder of the party studiously ignored me. Tags: knitting, opera (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 3rd, 2011
12:19 pm [Link]	Frederik Pohl (Originally posted here) I'm not going to say a whole lot about the man himself, as he's got his own blog here: The Way the Future Blogs. Not only is he still able to speak for himself (unlike the previous three authors I blogged about), he can explain himself much better than I ever could. Also unlike the previous three authors I blogged about, I know Pohl best for not just writing but for doing pretty much everything there is to do in the field. He worked for a book publishing company. He worked for a magazine. He wrote books by his ownself. He collaborated with several authors to varying degrees, most recently finishing Arthur C. Clarke's last book The Final Theorem. He did all three for longer than pretty much anyone likely to read this blog have been alive, thankyouverymuch, and over the course of those [mumble] decades, not only done all that reasonably well but gotten on a first name basis with people who I know only as Legends of the Field. Of the works Pohl wrote by himself, I like Gateway best. The basic plot is: our protagonist, Robinette Broadhead, won the lottery and used his winnings for a one way trip to the "Gateway" asteroid, where explorers discovered the first real collection of alien artifacts, ranging from what look like fans to functional space ships, programmed (so far as the humans can tell) to go to a specific destination. Human "prospectors" come to the asteroid in droves in the hopes of striking it rich by riding these ships to whatever destination they've been set for--a lottery of space travel rather than of ticket purchasing. Most prospectors get nothing, some get enough to cover expenses while a lucky few garner a lifetime's worth of wealth...and the unlucky die en route. The book alternates between "now", largely Broadhead's sessions with his psychiatrist program, and flashbacks to Broadhead's time on Gateway. Tastes vary, and I'm sure a lot of readers couldn't stand Broadhead's basically whiny neurotic personality; I liked it for the description of what it's like to live on an an asteroid where the very air you breathe costs money, and hot showers are an expensive luxury. The sequels, as with many others, never quite lived up to Gateway; wondering what the Heechee were like based only on their relic spaceships was (as with many horror movies before and since) never quite as fascinating as what Pohl came up with. Silly, I know: I should prefer the author's vision of what his own creation should look like. The only specific objection I had was why Essie's English didn't improve after all her time in the United States? My favorite of Pohl's collaborations is, hands down, The Space Merchants, not least because I love Kornbluth's short story, "The Marching Morons".The Space Merchants combines the basic premise of The Marching Morons (solve overpopulation by convincing the dimwitted public to emigrate to Venus) with Pohl's knowledge of advertising (how to convince people that Venus is not only habitable but desireable). Some aspects are more than slightly dated now--automation and computerization among other issues--but then this is a problem for pretty much every science fiction novel I've ever read. How do you extrapolate from current technology to something that doesn't exist? Only the really gifted authors manage it, and then only erratically. What to read after The Space Merchants (and presumably the sequel, The Merchants' War)? If it's the satire of 'modern' advertising, try Sayer's Murder Must Advertise; I know some might consider cross-genre readers' advisory heresy, but that's the closest I've found thus far to a sendup of ad campaigns. Tags: books (15 comments \| Leave a comment)

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