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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
I am realizing as I read about the Spanish Civil War, how strongly I have ingrained to think about the military as an arm of the state. When I read about a group of citizens breaking into a military base and stealing arms, it's a huge cognitive dissonance to identify the citizens as defending their government against the rebellious soldiers.
I am finding La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri) a very inspiring figure -- overcoming her personal shyness to be a powerful public speaker; exhorting the people of Madrid to resist the military while the radio station was under attack; convincing rank-and-file soldiers to resist their commanding officers. Her "¡No Pasarán!" speech is translated here.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona was... not a complete waste of time. (Note: Arguable spoilers follow; if you are planning to see the film and don't want any plot elements given away, don't read this.) There were fun and even moving bits to it, it was really enjoyable visual composition, but the movie did not hold together. It did not seem like the filmmaker's heart was in the project.
The central problem I had with the movie was the voice-over. The narrator was obviously, audibly bored with the story he was telling. Every time he started talking I tuned out completely. Ellen suggested the narrator was playing the role of Allen's character in his old movies, which sounds right -- but Allen's character being bored with his own life comes off as jaundiced and world-weary; whereas Allen's narrator being bored with the story he's telling just comes off as lazy.
Also lazy: not bothering to develop the character of Judy, the older woman who is trying to warn Vicky off of getting bogged down in an unsatisfying marriage. The first conversation she has with Vicky was really moving and sympathetic, and seemed like it had the potential to form the emotional core of the movie; but apparently Allen was not interested enough in the story he was telling to develop that any further, once he had the plot element set up he lost interest in the character.
So... not a great movie. Fun and pretty, though! The high points for me were four actors: Rebecca Hall, Patricia Clarkson, Javier Bardem, and Penélope Cruz. These four are just splendid, poetry in motion. Watching them move around through the streets of Barcelona is an excellent way to spend an hour and a half.
I started reading Peter Wyden's The Passionate War: the Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War today -- not chosen through any research, it was just the only title the bookstore had that matched what I was looking for. It seems all right though. (I felt a little disappointed when the first chapter was about some Americans who were stealing into Spain to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade -- I had thought the book was going to be about Spanish history, not Americans' involvement therein -- but that seems to have been just a hook for getting into the history.)
A few chapters in I haven't quite got a handle yet on how quickly events are moving. It seems like Sotelo was assassinated on July 13 and a week later, Sanjurjo has died, Franco is already victorious in Morocco, and Queipo de Llano has surrealistically seized power in Seville; but I don't see the connection between events yet.
I was interested to see that the slogan of the Foreign Legion in Morocco (under Franco) was "Long live death" -- Saramago makes very cryptic mention of this slogan in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, saying that a soldier had said that to Miguel de Unamuno but declining to tell what Unamuno's response had been. A Google search leads me to this article at libertarian site LewRockwell.com, which gives Unamuno's response as, "To conquer is not to convince." -- More information about this exchange is at José Millán-Astray's Wikipædia entry.
posted afternoon of August 24th, 2008: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Readings
We had no trouble finding a baby-sitter on the spur of the moment, and we're off to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona after dinner tonight. Yay! Woody Allen's "diary" from the project is published in today's NY Times. (thanks for the link, Cyrus!)
posted afternoon of August 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is really making me think I need to learn more about the history of the Spanish Civil War. This looks like a good book; anyone got recommendations based on more than searching on Amazon for keywords? Leave them in comments please. Also I will stop by the used book store this afternoon and browse around their history section.
Tomorrow is Ellen's birthday! Courtesy of Josh Hosler, here is the number 1 hit song in the U.S. on the day she was born, Rosemary Clooney singing "Come On a-my House" (which is, to my surprise, written by William Saroyan of Human Comedy fame and Ross Bagdasarian of Alvin & the Chipmunks fame):
posted evening of August 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Birthdays
Looking more at the "Live from the NYPL" calendar -- I see Bernard-Henry Lévy and Slavoj Žižek will be giving a talk on Tuesday the 16th. That seems like it will be great -- well worth going in to the city on a Tuesday evening.
...And later on, December 5th, Zadie Smith will be speaking "on Sensibility".
I was looking at Annie Proulx' Wiki page and that led me to find out about a talk she took part in this May at the NYPL: Books that Changed My Life -- you can watch it or listen to it online, I didn't see any transcript. And on that page, I see she has a new collection of Wyoming short stories coming out in September! This is a fine moment to have been reminded about her writing.
posted morning of August 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Annie Proulx
I read the NY Times op-ed features most every day; but the columnists, hardly at all. This is different from how it used to be; maybe 5 or 10 years ago, I would hardly ever miss a day of op-ed columns. There is a certain chatty style the columnists use that has gotten more and more annoying over the years.
This by way of saying, today I read a chatty op-ed column that was well done, and I found it hilarious. Not much meaning to be taken away but a refreshing read. It's Gail Collins' piece from today's paper, "Digging ourselves a black hole." I remember laughing at Art Buchwald's columns when I was a kid, before I started finding his humor annoying; I was laughing at this in almost exactly the same way.
(I wonder whether Pamuk's depiction of Turkish newspaper columns in The Black Book has much relationship to reality. The style seemed way more interesting than that of American newspaper columns; but OTOH this could just mean "Pamuk is a more interesting stylist than most American columnists
" which goes pretty much without saying.)
Take 2! This one is, I dare say, up to tempo and generally in time. I figured out a neat riff to start it out with; but got a little bit lost at the end. Still, I manage to keep straight when I'm playing the A or the B part, and have the correct number of repeats. Not bad!
Note: to hear a real fiddler performing this (with fretless banjo!), check out Twelvefret's recording of it at fiddlehangout.com.
posted evening of August 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Songs
We had no trouble finding a baby-sitter on the spur of the moment, and we're off to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona after dinner tonight. Yay! Woody Allen's "diary" from the project is 
Tomorrow is Ellen's birthday! Courtesy of 
does the math