Edmund Hillary's awesome and humbling "High Adventure"

This book is Hillary's account of the exploratory and Everest summit trips of 1951-53. He writes in a matter-of-fact style that I imagine reflects his character. It certainly suits the character that comes through in the narrative -- an unassuming man of endurance, focus, and courage, not without a warm and funny side.

I am two thirds of the way through this book, and constantly impressed by the effort demanded of these men. Even exhausted from a day of clinging to icy handholds and near-death events slipping and falling into crevasses, they eat a small dinner and prepare to wake up at 3:30 AM so that they can hike to a new route. They do this day after day for months. Each mission to the Everest area took about three months.

I'm struck by the number of people involved -- it's not just Hillary up there. There are teams. Dozens of people. (Surprisingly, he freely uses the word "coolies" to describe hired porters, men and women villagers who are not necessarily mountaineers. Perhaps the word was not seen as derogatory in 1955, when Hillary wrote this account.) They make frequent exploratory trips searching for better, safer routes to Everest. The first two years were reconnaissance trips. It's a huge logistics effort within a finite amount of time. All the while, they work in freezing cold and wind or extreme heat, sometimes both within a few minutes. Their food seems to be barley gruel, potatoes, some chocolate, tea. I wish Hillary had written more about the details and logistics. He doesn't write much about the type of gear and clothes they wear, their training, the food, the reasons for choosing the spring or fall months.

It's the mental toughness that's truly impressive. Trying to sleep in a tent with a howling wind, wind chills of -50 F, exhausted, hungry, afraid of being blown off the mountain, and knowing that you'll be getting up in a few hours regardless to carry on -- because you have no choice, you'll die if you stay there -- it's awesome and humbling.

It's Not Just Google That's Making Us "Stoopid"

Nicholas Carr's essay in the July/August Atlantic Magazine, Is Google Making Us Stoopid?, attempts to make the point that using the Web and hopping from link to link has changed the way we think -- that we are now less able to concentrate on and finish longer pieces of writing or work of any kind, even written content on the Web itself. We now grab a snippet of info and jump to the next somewhat-related snippet. Carr contends that our brains are actually working differently as a result -- they are "wired" differently. The essay's title singles out the Google search engine and environment as the culprit, but that's just a handle for his main argument that the Web is at the bottom of this supposed change.

That a medium of a communication influences the message and shapes the audience as it interacts with it is not a new observation. Carr got 5-6 magazine pages and a cover story out of this point. He offered only a few weak bits of anecdotal evidence to back it up.

My sense is, he is not wrong. But I think that if it is harder for us to concentrate, it's because we simply have less time to do so. A number of changes have occurred in the last forty years to fragment our attention, with less and less time available to us for us to apply that attention:

1. In most families, both parents work. With both adults working, household tasks get pushed into the evenings, where they compete with everything else that has to happen in the evening.
   
   
2. There are more single-parent families than ever, and families with divorced parents. Life is complicated in these families, with parents and children dealing with multiple schedules and connections to family members inside and outside the house.
   
   
3. The proliferation of media, including cable channels, DVDs, games, the Web, mobile phones. All of it competes for our attention, so we have to give all of it smaller and smaller bits.
   
   
4. The technological unification of work. Corporations can now cram more and more disparate tasks onto individual workers, and thus employ fewer workers. A corporate worker with a computer has the tools of dozens of different professionals.

In each of these changes, don't we see the same pressures to fragment our attention that Carr writes about in his essay? We have more and more things to do in the twenty four hours of every day.

Judith Herrin's Wonderful Book about Byzantium

Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, by Judith Herrin

In 28 chapters, most of them 10-12 pages in length, Judith Herrin shows us how the Byzantine empire survived for over 1,100 years. The theme that runs throughout the book -- whether the topic is about life in Constantinople, the Moslem conquests of Christian lands, taxes, Venetian allies and enemies, monks, the crusades -- is that Byzantium articulated and defended a centralized governing system that was creative enough to modify itself, regroup, and endure repeated crises until the final siege in 1453.

A few years ago, I read John Julius Norwich's three volume History of Byzantium. I loved his story telling ability, but I remember thinking that the narrative was almost entirely on the big battle scenes, the ugly successions from one emperor to another, and one conquest after another, all of which was exciting to read, but did not tell me much about how people lived their lives.

Judith Herrin's book is different. She writes interesting portraits of individuals: emperors, scholars, patriarchs, solders. She quotes from their letters. I can practically hear the one emperor, scolding his son in Greek, that he must closely follow the advice he leaves him in his autobiography about when to start a war and when not. I can see him thumping the table with his finger while the boy stares back, bewildered.

A number of points in the book stuck with me, and are worth remembering.

• The iconoclast movement that banished icons from religious observance was deeply influenced by the Arab invasions of the 8th century. The empire suffered a number of major defeats to Arab Islamic armies bent on spreading Islam. The Byzantines lost Jerusalem, and much of Syria. The defeats shocked them -- if they were Christians, and anointed by God, why did they lose so badly to infidels? Some, many from the eastern provinces, who had long established connections with Arabs and Islam, felt that God was punishing Christian Byzantium for an obvious heresy -- the veneration of icons in their worship. Islam forbids any human images in worship. To them, this was proof that God was unhappy with the Christian eastern Roman empire. The iconoclast movement among the Byzantines lasted over a hundred years, and many icons and mosaics were destroyed, until the empress Theodora finally established icons in the religious life of Byzantium and the Orthodox church in 843.

• The empire recovered from the Arab invasions, and even reclaimed some territory. The overall decline of Byzantine power began later, with the devaluation of the nomisma, the gold coin that emperors had maintained for seven hundred years, and had not permitted to fall below 90% gold content. In 1048, the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, because of pressing military campaigns on all sides -- Pechenegs, Normans, Seljuk Turks -- raised money and paid for his campaigns by devaluing the gold nomisma. He undermined internal and foreign faith in Byzantine money, and signaling the weakness of the empire. Which of course encouraged the empire's enemies further. (Obviously, something to think about in modern times.)

• Byzantium was unjustly derided by Western classical historians as corrupt, weak, and morally cowardly in part because the derision provided justification for the West after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the fourth crusade. The West's view of the Constantinopolitan Greek emperors was contemptuous: the Greeks were willing to compromise and negotiate with Arabs, Turks, and other infidels; the Greeks were untrustworthy allies; the Greeks refused to follow the pope; the Byzantine court employed eunuchs; the Byzantines dressed like Asiatics; and the Byzantines spoke Greek instead of Latin. It all went into justifying the destruction and looting of the city, from which the Byzantines never fully recovered.
  

• The tenacious ability of Byzantium to survive, even fragmented, and flourish in times of crisis. After the 1204 loss of Constantinople, it wasn't until 1261 when Michael VIII Palaiologos regained the city and re-established Byzantine rule. Yet, even in that interim period, the empire continued, forming autonomous despotates in Asia Minor and the Greek mainland. They not only managed to carry on, but the artistic and scholarly achievements of this period were among the greatest in Byzantium's history.
  

Throughout, Judith Herrin's love of her subject and sympathetic, fair treatment of the heroes and villains makes this a wonderful book. I was sorry to finish it.

Two Beethoven Sonatas and a Trio -- yet, the music wasn't enough

At the Boston Chamber Music Society concert (all Beethoven) Saturday night at Longy, no one from the BCMS got up to introduce the concert, to talk about the other three August concerts, or to urge people to attend the coming season. The two performers of the first piece, the Cello Sonata in C major (Wilhelmina Smith, cello, and Pedja Murzijevic, piano), simply marched onto the stage from the side door. Their shoes boomed loudly through the hall for a few steps until the audience of mostly retired professors realized the concert was about to begin, and began clapping.

To me, that's no way to start a concert or a recital. I want somebody to say something.

The second piece was theViolin Sonata in C minor (with Steve Copes, violin), and the third was the Piano Trio in D major.

I usually like the heavy, not to say morbid, sound of the cello in sonatas and trios. But Wilhelmina's playing, while obviously accomplished, didn't seem to me to have enough emotional range. The level of intensity in the Cello Sonata was so unvarying that it sounded...boring. The violin sonata had a little more color and feeling. The trio was okay.

I felt disgruntled. We could have just played CDs at home. A concert or recital has to have some element, something, I'm not sure what, that makes the music seem important, that we're here for a purpose. I think just baldly presenting the music is not enough.

Marilyn thinks that sonatas and trios in general just don't have enough range and color to keep her interest. I don't think that's true for me, but in this case, there was something hollow to the experience. (Maybe it has something to do with this being the last year for the main cellist and artistic director of the BCMS, Ronald Thomas. At the end of last season, he had announced he's leaving at the end of this coming season.)

"The Genteel Companion" concert at Longy's Baroque Institute

The full title of the program was "The Genteel Companion," an evening of vocal and instrumental music and dance by the students and faculty of the International Baroque Institute at Longy. It was Saturday night, July 26, at the Longy School.

And it was pleasant and genteel. In the first half of the concert, a number of small ensembles played the music of Henry Purcell, Peter Phillips, Handel, and other composers we didn't recognize. We liked it, but found it a little too much andante. Maybe I was still tired from my insane hour and fifteen minutes of running in the 90 degree sun in the middle of the day.

Hey, the food during the intermission was terrific. Marilyn had a memorable piece of pound cake. The strawberries were some of the best I'd eaten all summer.

The second half was livelier, with dancing, faster pieces, and comedy. One dance number (by Jean-Baptiste Lully) brought two "French Country Gentlemen" onto the stage to cavort with two ladies. The two country gentlemen, it turned out, were themselves women wearing breeches, and Three Musketeers-style hats with feathers. At first I thought this was a statement of some kind, based on someone's dissertation: "Gender Transactional Role-reversal in a French Medieval Village", or something like that. But then it seemed more likely that they just didn't have any male dancers enrolled this year. They all looked great in their costumes, and they danced beautifully.

A hilarious bit from Thomas Arne's "The Judgment of Paris" had us laughing. A flock of sopranos attempt to get the attention of guy reading a newspaper in a cafe ("Turn toMe Thy Gentle Youth"). One soprano did some very funny things with a roll of toilet paper.

We liked it all. But there could have been half an hour less.

And we found a parking ticket on our car. The only parking tickets I have ever gotten in my life have been in Cambridge.

Wall-e, can you save us all?

There's a lot to like in this movie. How can you not like it? Wall-e, an adorable, lonely, trash-compacting robot finds eternal love with Eve, a cute, tough, and curvy robot who can fly and blast her way through several feet of concrete and steel (or whatever materials they'll be using seven hundred years from now). Their victorious love is eternal as long as they can keep recharging their batteries. The two of them save humanity. They have plaintive, child-like voices. You practically sob when Wall-e thinks he has forever lost Eve. I like all that!

It's obvious that this is the old story about humanity letting technology and monopolistic capitalism run amok until it all finally controls us. A few brave and plucky souls manage to break free and wreck the inhuman, infernal machinery. (Surely the scriptwriters had read E.M. Forster's startling 1909 short story, The Machine Stops -- here's a link to a Wikipedia article about it.)

The innovation proposed by this film is that it is two robots, not humans, who rebel against the machinery and reclaim their world -- and humanity. The two robots are similar to the Disney animals we loved as children, and similarly, adults will have to suspend their sense of credulity as to whether animals and robots can talk, feel, and love.

It is not a particularly deep or resonant film. Ty Burr's review in The Boston Globe strangely overpraises the film. The characters are pretty thin, the plot has numerous detailed illogical tangents and sidetracks that don't tell us much, and the whole thing looks like an updated version of 60s animated TV comedy, The Jetsons.

But hey...what about all those children in the audience? They don't know Forster or The Jetsons or 2001: A Space Odyssey, or any of that stuff. This is news to them. (Or rather, it's fun to them, hopefully.) That's true.

Yet, watching the careening colorful pixels on the screen ricocheting from one end of the screen to the other, Wall-e and Eve flying at warp speed from one part of the intergalactic spaceship to the other, I thought, "Do children even know what's going on here?" I couldn't make out what was happening half the time. I just knew something was happening and we were moving toward something. Can children catch the details here? Those early Disney films were slow and simple, the little creatures talked, sang, and explained their way through what was happening there in the forests. In this film, can anyone explain the storyline, why the auto machines take over, why the corporate despot/president appears in ancient videos and warns the captain not to return to earth even though it's part of the original program for humanity to return?

Or doesn't it matter?

A few observations about Greek women's shoe culture

In our recent trip to Greece, we visited our niece's new shoe store several times. An unchanging part of Greek life is the presence of at least one shoe store selling mostly women's shoes every block or two of every neighborhood. A lot of time and money is spent on shoes, especially women's shoes. Here are a few observations about Greek women shoe culture that may have some sociological benefit.

1. The most desired color of a shoe for a woman who is not in mourning is either shiny metallic gold or silver. A limited number of other non-metallic colors (red, bright lemon yellow, fluorescent green, depending on the year's fashions) can be considered acceptable.

2. The height of the shoe's heel for a woman not in mourning should be at least 3.0 inches (approximately 7 centimeters). The woman's height and age is not relevant to the height of the heel, nor is her occupation. This rule can be relaxed if the woman is in mourning, or is a grandmother.

3. The heel of a woman's shoe should be able to neatly pierce a watermelon.

4. The shoe should expose the majority of the woman's foot from the bottom of her ankle bone to the tip of her (usually bright red) toenail -- approximately 96% altogether of the foot should be uncovered.

5. It is always summer in a Greek shoe store.

6. The size of a woman's foot must never be measured or suggested by the shoe store owner. Instead, the woman is expected to announce her shoe size, which will be 2 or 3 sizes smaller than the actual size. The owner will shrug and bring out the requested shoes in sizes that are even smaller, suggesting out loud that the woman's foot is in reality smaller than she herself thinks. The woman will smile and gratefully try on the shoes, then angrily reject them as obviously too small and that the size she requested from the blockheaded store owner, as she well knew, was the correct size. She will buy the shoes in that relatively larger size. Which will still be too small.

7. Number 6 is true whether a woman walks ten meters each day or ten kilometers.

8. It is unwise for the shoe store owner to use the descriptive words "sensible" or "practical" in regards to any pair of shoes when speaking with a woman customer. The customer will be offended. The insinuation is that she suffers from a podiatric condition or disability requiring shoes that are ugly but practical.

Sandra Patrikalakis's Certificate Voice Recital

Our soprano friend Sandra Patrikalakis gave a wondeful recital last Sunday at the New England Conservatory. It was a wide range of songs, in five different languages! I especially liked Five Greek Folk Songs, by Maurice Ravel, not because of the Greek connection, but because Sandy sang as if French was her native language, and she seemed to have a special feeling for the songs.

She was very confident and comfortable on stage, very comfortable with what her voice can do. It was startling. Having heard her for so long in a choir, or as part of a larger chorus, it was startling to hear her voice by itself. It was as if we hadn't actually heard her before.

Sandy sings with the Masterworks Chorale and Cantilena, and is the president of the board at Masterworks.

The movie, "My Father My Lord" -- his name is Abraham

We liked this Israeli film about a Hasidic Rabbi and his son and wife very much (director David Volach). It's lovingly and slowly detailed.

Ty Burr's review in the Boston Globe was laudatory and sympathetic.

The elderly Rabbi Abraham (he seems to be at least in his 60s, with his wife Esther in her early 40s) is devoted to the Torah, his community, and his small family. He defines his life, his world, strictly through the Torah. His young obedient son Menachem gazes up at him while he prays and studies, and senses the instinctual conflicts in the boundaries and dictates of the Torah and his own feelings. You can feel the boy thinking: is it right to expel a mother dove from her nest, dooming the chicks, even though the Torah demands it? Is it right for the Rabbi to angrily demand Menachem tear up a picture of an African native, because the native is an idolater? Is it right that only those who follow the Torah are righteous, as the Rabbi thoughtfully proclaims?

Yet the Rabbi doesn't perform his role without agonizing. It pains him to carry out the demands of his life. He does it because he must. As if to give up on even one of the demands or laws would be the end of his whole construction.

So his name is Abraham: his devotion leads to the film's devastating ending. He can't be blamed for it, can he? Yes, he can be. He can't be responsible for what happens, can he, he who was wrapped up in prayer? He can be.

I would have liked a little less well-mannered reverence in the film, a little less constraint. The tensions between the Rabbi and his wife Esther could have been drawn out more. She's reverent and worshipful to the point of being saintly, yet you can sense her unhappiness and unease. In their bedroom scene, the Rabbi arrives and is apparently disappointed to find her having already said her prayers. She does not speak to him (I think she is not permitted to speak to him, having said her prayers, but she writes on paper to him). Perhaps he was hoping for sex with his wife, and is surprised to find her unyielding. "Are you mad at me, Esther?"

Several times, I was reminded of my last visit to Mount Athos -- the sense of claustrophobia. One day, I was standing in in Daphni, the administrative town on Athos, and looking up and down the streets. I felt a kind of panic. Not a girl or a woman anywhere. Only men. It was a sort of dread, and I felt that several moments watching this wonderful movie.

Brookline Chorus's "Sacred Concert" by Duke Ellington

On May 10, the chorus I sing with, The Brookline Chorus, sang Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert. Although I found myself struggling to rehearse the music, the concert was success for both the chorus and the audience (there were about 600 people in the First Baptist Church of Newton) -- and I felt great.

It was a struggle to rehearse partly because time was tight in the weeks leading up to the concert, because I had never actually heard the music (there are no CDs), and I because I was not especially fond of the music at first. Without hearing and sensing the music, it was difficult to fully express it until the final dress rehearsals. There, finally, we had the White Heat Swing orchestra, the soloists (Rochelle Ellis, the soprano, and Aaron Tolson, the tap dancer). Then it all made sense. Then I could move with it. And naturally, at the concert, Aaron Tolson stole the show. He generated a lot of excitement and pleasure when tapped and leaped in the center of the stage.

Cambridge Community Chorus's last concert by William Thomas

On May 25th, we attended the Cambridge Community Chorus's last concert at Sanders Hall, directed by William Thomas, who is retiring. There were two pieces, Haydn's Harmony Mass, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha's Wedding. Our friend Kate was singing in the chorus as an alto. We really enjoyed the concert. I especially liked Haydn's Mass, and enjoyed hearing another chorus performing Haydn (last spring, the Brookline Chorus sang Haydn's Creation Mass).

Loved "She Loves Me," at the the Huntington

We loved it. How could you not? A sentimental story line with Shakespearean comedy overtones about lovers whose identities are hidden from each other, likable characters whose failings and weaknesses are forgivable, great choreography (especially in the bravura nightclub scenes), great acting and singing (Brooks Ashmanskas -- he's so frantic you think he's going to collapse on stage, and yet he always holds holds back just enough to be in confidently in control).

A big crowd on Saturday night, probably the biggest we've seen all year.

Do you have to like and love the characters -- even the characters who embody evil -- for it to be good theater? Is that what it takes to fill theaters?

There's not a lot of like and love in modern plays. Is it enough to simply recognize and empathize with the alienation, disorientation, and amoral vagueness we see in so many plays? It's certainly not enough to make you love the play, and want to see it again.

And of course, the playwright has to write a good play to begin with.