hedera's corner

Polychoral Splendors

2012-02-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard a 40 voice choral piece? No, not 40 singers singing 4 or 8 parts; 40 singers, each performing a separate individual part. That's what we heard last night. When my husband bought us tickets for Cal Performances' Polychoral Splendors of the Florentine Renaissance, I mostly noticed that it featured His Majestys Sagbutts and Coronets (that's pronounced "SACKbutts", by the way)

Life, Death, and Rules

2012-02-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

This isn't the post I started to write last night. In the interval, the power of the Internet has manifested itself again, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation has agreed that it made a mistake, apologized for cutting funding to Planned Parenthood and agreed to restore it. Apparently (as happened with SOPA/PIPA a few weeks ago), when we all rise up on Facebook and Twitter to complain, they

A path to civil war

2012-01-31T12:27:00.000-08:00

USA Today published the following quote, from the AP: BEIRUT (AP) – A senior Russian diplomat Tuesday said a draft U.N. resolution demanding Syrian President Bashar Assad step aside is a "path to civil war," as Syrian troops besieged rebellious areas with hours of shelling and machine-gun fire. I have one question. What do they think is going on in Syria right now, anyway? It

Tracking the Money

2012-01-27T15:17:00.000-08:00

The city of Oakland is facing the loss of $28,000,000 from its general fund, caused by two outside events: One, Governor Brown eliminated redevelopment agencies in this year's state budget, and Two, the state Supreme Court ruled that the "give-back" the Legislature crafted, which would have let cities and states "buy" their redevelopment agencies back, was unconstitutional. So - there goes the

Why I Oppose SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

Who could be in favor of Internet piracy? For the record, not me. But PIPA and SOPA are not only about Internet piracy. (For the record: SOPA is the house bill, PIPA is the Senate bill. Any law would have to be a combination of the two.) In the interest of the free Internet, I will do something that could potentially be illegal under SOPA/PIPA: I will quote two extended discussions of the

In and Around Whistler

2012-01-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

I'll admit I wondered about visiting a world-famous ski resort in the summer. After all, don't you go to a ski resort to ski? But the mountains around it are gorgeous, and when there's no snow you can hike. There actually was snow, above about 5,000 feet - on the peaks, around 6,000 feet, it was quite snowy. It only rained on us one day, and one of the days we were there was glorious - sunny

Be Careful What You Ask For

2012-01-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

I've lost my nice template. I tried one of Blogger's new templates just to see what it looked like - it looked crappy - and now I can't get my old template back because it doesn't fit in their "new" system. Damn. Watch this space.

A Christmas Hike

2011-12-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

Somehow, hiking at Sibley Regional Park seems to be a good way to spend a sunny Christmas Day, when my various physical issues allow it. My photo site shows that I did this in 2009, too. Last year, no, but this year the new knee is doing great, the ten year old knee is cranking right along, and the weather is clear and cold. And smoggy, sigh - we haven't been able to have a fire in the

Interpreting A Christmas Carol

2011-12-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

During a recent online discussion of whether Dickens' A Christmas Carol is really a "great activist story for the Working Class" (imagine an adaptation inspired by Occupy Wall Street), I was asked offline to post my opinion of the book, by someone who isn't familiar with it. This seems a reasonable thing to do on Christmas Eve. For those not familiar with the story: Ebenezer Scrooge is a very

Bears, Oh My

2011-12-23T15:31:00.000-08:00

No lions or tigers, I'm sorry to say. Almost the first thing we did in Whistler was to go on a "bear viewing tour" led by one Mike Allen, a local self-taught bear researcher. This involved driving around Whistler Mountain and then Blackcomb Mountain in an SUV, looking for bears, and stopping to take photographs when we found them. I think there may have been some misunderstanding about the

A Good Deal

2011-11-24T16:03:00.001-08:00

Today being Thanksgiving, tomorrow is Black Friday - the day the Christmas sales officially start. Personally, I hate to shop, and shop only to replace things I need. I rarely buy anything on impulse (and often regret it when I do); and I certainly never go near a store on Black Friday, because I dislike crowds. Boy, am I in the minority. This year some stores (yes, Target, I mean you) are

The Flick Creek Fire

2011-11-18T19:47:00.001-08:00

In 2006 we decided that driving to Washington state to visit Lake Chelan would be interesting. Lake Chelan is a relatively narrow, very long lake in eastern Washington, mostly surrounded by the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. We planned to stay at Stehekin, a small resort near the head of the lake, reachable only by boat (or emergency helicopter) from the town of Chelan at the foot of the

Baroque Opera

2011-11-14T19:28:00.001-08:00

We had an unusual treat last Friday. We attended a performance of Handel's Xerxes, one of the forty-some operas he composed and put on for the delight of 18th century London. Handel's operas are unusual now because, well, the male leads tend to be sopranos. Georg Friedrich was nothing if not fashionable, and the height of opera fashion in his day was the castrato. It's very hard to find

Mayors

2011-10-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

Oakland has had quite a string of mayors, the last few years. We had Jerry Brown, who wanted to be in charge so bad he pushed through a change to the city charter to give us a Strong Mayor. Then we had Ron Dellums, who almost never exercised the powers of the mayor at all (and who rarely even appeared in public). Now we have Jean Quan, who seems - scattered. The good news about Quan, after

Looking at the Occupation

2011-10-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

My curiosity got the better of me today, and I rode the bus to downtown Oakland to take a personal look at the Occupy Oakland encampment. It was a nice day and I wanted to see it for myself. I just missed the parade, with shouting and signs, by (I think) the SEIU. The camp looks about the way the photos look. Lots of tents all over the lawn, pitched elbow to elbow, on a base layer of straw.

Finally, the Truth

2011-10-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for someone to say this on air for months, and today I finally heard it, on Rose Aguilar's Your Call on KALW 91.7 FM. Rose's Friday program is always a "media roundup," discussing the week's best recent reporting, and today they started out with this one: Citigroup settles for $285 million; no Wall Street exec jailed yet Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/19/127742

Discovering Powell River

2011-10-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

We spent 3 nights in Powell River, staying in a bed and breakfast (photos in the last post on this), and spending time hiking with my friends Janet and Wes. Because we also spent a lot of time just sitting around talking, I took fewer photos than I sometimes do. I did take some of the tiny crabs that just covered the beach in front of the B&B, they were none of them over an inch long. Here's

The Tools of War

2011-09-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

Recent discussions of our current crop of wars, plus a session on drones on Talk of the Nation, got me thinking about the evolution of war in general. Because it has evolved. The warriors of ancient Athens and Sparta, the Roman Legions, would barely recognize what we consider "war." As far back as we have records, up until, say, the sixteenth century, war was a hand to hand affair, with

No More War

2011-09-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

You hear this a lot lately. We should get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan and Libya, spend the money at home. Well, of course we should get out of Iraq; we never had any serious business in Iraq. If we had really wanted to block Al Qaeda, which is what they said they wanted at the time, Saddam Hussein was our best friend, a secular dictator with no tolerance for anyone else's power. But

No More Free Speech at Berkeley

2011-09-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've been following the current flap about the Increase Diversity Bake Sale, put on today at U.C. Berkeley by the campus Republican students' group. U.C. Berkeley students, I'm ashamed of you. And I don't mean the Republicans, who are exercising their constitutional right to be publicly offensive in order to make a point. To paraphrase Voltaire slightly, I don't agree with their point, but I

Photos from Carmel

2011-09-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

I just got around to processing the photos I took while I was in Carmel for the Bach Festival. Since I spent most of my time doing non-photographic things, they boil down to two groups - some shots of the Carmel Mission, interior and exterior (taken while waiting for the organ concert), and some photos of surf on the beach, just before I came home. I learned on this trip that beaches don't

Driving the Sunshine Coast

2011-09-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

Our next vacation stop after Vancouver was Powell River, about a day's drive up the B.C. coast from Vancouver. I have an old friend who lives in Powell River. When we entered Canada, the border guard asked us, where are you going, and we said, Vancouver, Powell River, and Whistler. "Powell River!" he exclaimed. "Why would you go there?" Getting to Powell River entails a drive up the

Stanley Park

2011-08-31T21:57:00.000-07:00

We spent our last day in Vancouver wandering around Stanley Park. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and breezy. The pointy white object behind the cruise ship is Canada Place; this was as close as we got to it. (Can't do everything in one trip.) Located on a peninsula between English Bay and Burrard Inlet, Stanley Park is very scenic. Don't miss the seaplane (they went by quite often, heading

Getting Government Out of the Way

2011-08-30T16:45:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing this from Eric Cantor: to get the country moving again, we have to "get government out of the way." By this he means (as he's happy to tell you), less government regulation. Government regulation is Bad. California has a classic example of a business which was essentially unimpeded by government regulation. It's called Pacific Gas & Electric. For at least the last 50 years,

Governor Goodhair

2011-08-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

God Bless the Sacramento Bee. When Gov. Rick Perry of Texas threw his Stetson in the ring (I'm sure he has a Stetson somewhere) for the Republican presidential nomination, the Bee's Viewpoints column chose to publish a series of excerpts from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, written by the late great Molly Ivins (1944-2007 TDS, which means "too damn soon"). Mr. Perry has been governor of Texas

A Day in Kitsilano

2011-08-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

Kitsilano, for those who've never been to Vancouver, is a neighborhood; it's across the inlet from the downtown and has several beachfront parks, plus a couple of museums. It rained this day, so we toured museums; by the time we were museumed out, the weather had cleared and we spent some time in the park. We began in the Maritime Museum. It doesn't look like much from outside; but when you

Debt and Ratings

2011-08-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a number of really good analyses of this situation, and I'm fascinated to find that the questions in my mind are being asked by people with much more experience and subject mastery than I have. So here are the points that annoy me: Standard & Poor's has now downgraded U.S. Treasury Debt to AA+ (which is still pretty good). Their argument that the deal signed this week didn't

More on the Bach Festival

2011-08-04T22:25:00.000-07:00