So, the latest Ann Arbor Public Schools spending of taxpayer money is a campaign to ask for taxpayer money. The flyers came in the mail. One  implores us to vote on May 6th to give this dysfunctional administration more money to waste.

The other talks about “exceptional Accomplishments.” In the blurb about “Accessible Schools,” it says, “At Huron and Pioneer accessibility improvements were made to the curb ramps, sidewalks, parking areas and the routes of travel to and from both schools.” Of course, it leaves out the phrase, “under court order.” If it hadn’t been for the hard work of an Ann Arbor civil rights law firm,  the ADA would have been ignored. The AAPS was dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing.

My 96-year-old aunt, Virucha, told me this as we walked around the block in Buenos Aires that was once the quinta of the Pagliere clan (the block surrounded by Corrientes, Sarmiento, Gascón, and Acuña de Figueroa). In front of my cousin’s shop was a sign that said something like: “No dejar canastos en la acera o la calzada”. She saw that I wasn’t completely familiar with the words, so to illustrate she told me the following story.

[Virucha, mi tía de 96 años, me contó este chiste mientras dabamos la vuelta de la manzana que antiguamente era la quinta de la familia Pagliere (la cuadra entre Corrientes, Sarmiento, Gascón, and Acuña de Figueroa). En frente de la fábrica de mi prima Lucila Ballester (que diseña y hace trajes de baño de mujer), la hija de la tía, había un cartel en que estaba escrito: No dejar canastos en la acera o la calzada. Virucha vió que no conocía muy bien las palabras, así que para ilustrarmelas, me contó la siguiente historia.]

Una española se muda, con su gata, a Buenos Aires. Le pregunta a un vecino “dónde podría ir a pasear con mi gata?” “Bueno,” le dice el vecino, “el jardín botántico es lindo y ahí hay muchos gatos.” Entonces, un día la española lleva su gata al jardín botánico.
Un gato del jardín se acerca a la gata y le dice, “Qué tal si vamos a pasear por la vereda?”

La gata le dice, “no se dice ‘vereda’, se dice ‘acera’.”

“Bueno,” dice el gato, “qué tal si vamos a la calle?”

La gata le dice, “no se dice ‘calle’, se dice ‘calzada’.”

El gato, un poco harto ya, está casi por irse. Ahora la gata le dice, “Qué tal si vamos a coger un ratón?”

El gato le dice, “No se dice ‘ratón’, se dice ‘rato’.”

After the AAPS gets so-called security cameras installed at Pioneer (because they can, because the community lets them), perhaps they should move on to terahertz cameras. Read about them here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7287135.stm

Here in Buenos Aires again, the land of the unexpected adventure and an anarchistic everyday life, on a nearly annual family visit cum winter escape. Heat, sun and chaos of possibility to escape cold, cloud-locked Ann Arbor with its dual self-delusions of cultural diversity and progressiveness.

Staying at a fantastic find of an old apartment in a casa chorizo in Palermo Viejo, which may have already jumped the cultural shark since last visit. Other barrios up and coming. All in flux.

More postings to come.

It just keeps coming.

George Fornero left quite a legacy to this town. And everyone on the board helped him do it. And almost everyone in the community let him do it.

Ann Arbor News 2/6/2008, Schools Face $6 Million shortfall

I am thrilled to announce that “The Catford Tapes: Professor Catford’s Life in Linguistics” are now available to the world. This is a very happy day for me.

The Catford Tapes are a series of eight one-hour lectures given by Ian Catford in early 1985, on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Michigan Linguistics Department. For anyone with an interest in linguistics, from theoretical to applied, from English to Kabardian, from grammar to phonetics, from Henry Sweet to … well, to Ian Catford, these lectures make clear just how fascinating and remarkably broad Professor Catford’s life in linguistics has been. You can read the background and history of the Catford Tapes below.

You can find videos of the lectures at Deep Blue, the University of Michigan’s service providing access to work in research and teaching:

Lecture 1, February 7, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57765
Lecture 2, February 14, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57766
Lecture 3, February 21, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57767
Lecture 4, March 7, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57768
Lecture 5, March 14, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57769
Lecture 6, March 28, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57770
Lecture 7, April 4, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57771
Lecture 8, April 18, 1985:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57772

or simply go to Deep Blue’s home page ( http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/ ) and search for “catford”

By the way, as I understand it, this is the first instance of Bentley material being hosted by Deep Blue.

————–
My deepest thanks go to all the following for freely giving their time, advice and effort to promote the project of preserving this treasure and making it freely accessible.

• Ian Catford, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Michigan
• John Swales, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Director Emeritus, English Language Institute
• Fran Blouin, Director, Bentley Historical Library, Professor of Information and Professor of History
• Jim Otaviani, Coordinator Deep Blue
• Tom Bray, Managing Producer Media Resources, Digital Media Commons and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art, School of Art and Design
• Greg Kinney and Brian Williams, Associate Archivists, Bentley Historical Library
• Nancy Deromedi, Assistant Archivist, Bentley Historical Library
• David Erdody, Media Development/Services, English Language Institute

————–
Background / History

In 2002, the Catford Tapes had been stored for nearly 20 years at the University of Michigan but it was unclear exactly where and whether anyone was actually benefiting from the fascinating content and story-telling therein. Making sure that the lectures were not lost to obscurity or to failing media or to technology change was important, and so the mission was to have the tapes archived somewhere, somehow, and made available to a larger audience.

The original eight VHS tapes were not, as one might have expected, at the Linguistics Department, but rather at the English Language Institute Library. They were finally found in a cardboard box at the old, about-to-be-demolished NUBS building the very week that the ELI was in upheaval, getting ready to move to its new location. I was given permission to take the original tapes with the intent to more properly archive them. I contacted Greg Kinney at the Bentley Historical Library of the University and Tom Bray for technical advice and help.

The VHS tapes had not been viewed in 17 years but fortunately transfered to digital tapes easily. These masters then became the basis for other derivatives: other digital tape formats, tapes edited with introductory titles, eventually mpeg files and DVDs. Masters, DVDs and the original accompanying handouts, obtained from Professor Catford himself, were accessioned by the Bentley. All along I was supported by John Swales and the folks from the Bentley.

Two missions are better than one. The next step was to see who might host web-accessible versions of the videos. Jim Ottaviani helped coordinate with the Bentley and the ELI to arrange rights sign offs and got downloadable and streaming versions of the lectures into Deep Blue. And here we are today. Follow the links above.

Can this be happening in hip Ann Arbor? Surveillance cameras on kids at Pioneer High School? Sure it can because the AAPS administration is clueless. Let’s not talk about the financial, ecological and demographic fiasco that is the new high school and the concocted lies and painted smiles that backed it up.

But let’s do talk about how the administration can actually think it’s okay, in this day and age, in a town that was once fairly progressive, to set up Big Brother cameras to watch over kids in high schools. Student Safety is the local politics version of National Security: the excuse to remove privacy from your life.

Besides, the community is clueless. Cameras were put in Huron quite a while back.

Besies, the district is “getting a good deal” (only about $80,000). When the same contractor who did up Huron, the district had some equipment left over. Instead of having the contractor buy it back, it’s now the explanation of why we’re getting such a good deal.

Clueless. And just plain bad.

Recently while checking out at the grocery store, the cashier began a nearly sub-vocal, somehow laid-back diatribe about how one shouldn’t vote for a person simply because they’re black or a woman. Hmm. So that’s what this guy, and all the people he is representative of, think. A nice example of how folks lie to themselves to be able to vote against the thing that scares them but feel they can’t, in polite company, air. With all the important issues hitting this society over the head with a baseball bat, he chooses to explain away to himself and a stranger his multi-sided bigotry. Aside: Alluding so subtly to what I assumed were this guy’s political leanings, I replied that people shouldn’t vote for someone simply because they are complete and utter idiot either. Not sure he got the reference.

So, will Americans vote for a black man or a white woman first? Or a white religious man? No surprise if it’s the white religious man. After all they voted for the afore-mentioned idiot. Twice. And in large numbers. But if Americans, with their tradition of prejudices, surprise us by electing either of the first two and if there is any way to separate the personal from the historical and look at the winner as icon, which of those two will they let have power first?

Just purchased, from Steel Guitar Nashville where I found a great price, a new Peavey Nashville 112 to replace my Nashville 400 for my steel playing. I had been a bit wary because most reviews (essentially all positive) are from E9 players and I wondered how the 12-inch speaker would hold up with the lower strings on my Universal. It all seems good at this early stage.

The smaller and lighter amp will make my back much happier. And with the cute headphone out and external in, I don’t need my mixer any more to play along with recorded music, aloud or through phones.

It’ll be fun to give it whirl during the next gig.

After the Shadow Art Fair, stopped in, for my first time, at the Fiesta Mexicana on Cross St. in Ypsilanti. Had some nice poblanas, chocolate mexicano, and conversation with the folks there. Worth a stop if you’re over Ypsi way.

In a conversation recently with someone about how many Argentines are blonde (which for some reason still surprises some people), I was pointed to http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/. Cool site.

So, Stephen King told a reporter that someone in the Bush family, e.g., Jenna, should be waterboarded so she could tell the president [Ed: lower case intentional] whether or not waterboarding constituted “torture.”

That’s just plain silly. If you asked George if his daughter could be waterboarded, he would answer, “No need. She already knows how. She took lessons on a beach in Maui.”

This is my first, and though things could change, very possibly only ever, post under both categories of Beer and Belief Systems. The web page Top Ten Reasons Beer is Better than Jesus covers both areas and as you can see by visiting the page, does indeed have a few good reasons.

My favorites are numbers 3 and 2: There are laws saying Beer labels can’t lie to you and You can prove you have a Beer.

That’s pretty much it.

Great concert last night by They Might Be Giants at the Michigan Theater. Best of all being guests of drummer Marty Beller’s. John (or was it John?) got the crowd to come to its feet  and move towards the stage before the first tune where it stayed throughout. Playing a theater, with those darn seats interfering with movement and energy, is different from playing a club. For an Ann Arbor crowd, it was pretty animated though, according to John (or was it John?) not nearly as wild as the crowd at the gig the night before. In Grand Rapids of all places.

Ann Arbor sure ain’t what it used to be, if Grand Rapids can out wild it. But I digress. Thanks to TMBG. Thanks to Marty.

Back in my Russian Club days at Rutgers University, after a bit too much kvas, someone taught me the following, irreverent and hilarious juxtaposition. Irreverent because this is a beautifully layered and perfectly constructed poem, one of Aleksandr Pushkin’s most famous.

So, If you happen to speak Russian and know the tune to Londonderry Air, try singing the following to that tune. Danny Boy never sounded so … interesting.

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

It seems, in retrospect, we were lambs to the slaughter: all of us who gathered in the theater I was in last night to watch Lions for Lambs by Robert Redford. It’s been over 10 years since I had a violent urge to walk out of a movie, but this one gave me that urge. I always try my best to give a film another few minutes to redeem itself, just another few. It’ll pull it out somehow. And having gone with a couple of other people, there was extra inertia not to bail. I wish I had, I wasted 90 minutes of my life. The only moment reaching 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 was a part of the scene in which Meryl Streep talks to her boss.

However, about 15 minutes in, it was clear there was nothing going to save this one. Confused, preachy and smarmy. And trying so hard to be relevant and clever and smart and failing, failing, failing. The government lied. The media fell down on its job. We can’t trust the government on any new “strategy”. We can’t trust the media since it keeps bringing us Britney news. We get all this. And we get that the rest of us are complacent, unconcerned with doing something about it all. But, OMG, is this the best Hollywood can do? Intellectual doggerel.

I understand that Americans are dumber and shallower than I could ever imagine. Perhaps doggerel is the only thing that Americans understand (they did re-elect Bush and Cheney after all), but this can’t be expected to convince Americans to get involved.

We are doomed.

In cleaning my office, I came upon the business card of Antonio Balsemin, a card he handed me after he gave my son and me a ride in his taxi during our late summer 2001 stay in Rome. It was a very enjoyable taxi ride. He is outgoing, talkative and clearly a man of many interests. I let him do the majority of the talking since my Italian is passable but has no depth.

Though he happens to drive to be a Roman tassista, really he’s a writer. His passion in life is writing in his native dialect from the Veneto region of Italy. One gets the sense that it is partly to preserve his own past, but it also has a larger purpose.

He realizes as many people do, that in the past hundred or so years, the diversity of local cultures is disappearing as individual cultures and languages die. However, he does something about it. By writing in his own language he keeps one tree alive as the larger cultural deforestation goes on.

Check him out at: http://www.antoniobalsemin.it and check out an article written about him the same month he gave us a cab ride and a fascinating conversation.

Congratulations to Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw for earning Bon Appetit’s Lifetime Achievment Award. Cool.

So, Rudy Giuliani has gotten the kiss of death, an endorsement from Pat Robertson who overlooked Rudy’s stance on abortion. Good to know that Pat is not a one-issue voter. He’s also thrown the baby Jesus out with the bathwater. Remember him agreeing with Jerry Falwell when he said that the abortionists, among others, helped bring 911 on the US? (see below) Remember who was mayor during that time?

Let me get this straight: Pat is not only saying that Giuliani, who by virtue of being pro-choice, helped bring God’s wrath down on the very city he was mayor of, but is also saying that he approves of him. Doesn’t that, in Pat’s own eyes, make him accessory after the fact to the the murder of 3000 Americans?

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way–all of them who have tried to secularize America–I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.

Color me disappointed. I’ve usually liked what I’ve read of Andrew Sullivan’s blog. But I followed this link:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/209/story_20904_1.html

a back and forth between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris, author of The End of Reason.

and after reading the entire exchange (I can’t believe I read the whole thing…), I will in the future have to try very hard to keep Sullivan’s words separate from his blind Catholicism and demonstrated inability or unwillingness to confront Harris’ questions and points.

Admittedly, I start in Harris’ camp when it comes to religion, and while we’re at it, I basically agree with his position on the danger of religious “moderates”. But for someone as intelligent and articulate as Sullivan to step fully, and it seems unknowingly, into every last bear-trap of irrational argument in trying to explain why reason doesn’t hold; why various positions along a spectrum of irrationality are implausible, save his; why all religions’ views, each of which denies the others, all of which are as unjustifiable as his, save his, are wrong, is unfathomable.

There are other manifestations of the unfathomable in there and it’s an interesting read if you have the time.

I know that Mr. Sullivan writes well and writes good things but, as I read them and agree with nearly all of them, I’ll be shaking my head.