A solar system similar to ours discovered

Below, I've posted a recent article based on the news that what seems to be possibly a solar system similar to ours has been found far, far away from ours. So far away is this planet, 41 light years, that even if it were to harbor life, and even if this life form were intelligent enough to have developed science and technology, it's unlikely they would be able to create the technology to bridge the vast distance that separates them from us. Nonetheless, it's electrifying, at least to me, to read that there is a possibility that life of some sort exists elsewhere. The thought that our universe itself is so large, yet, aside from our planet, is otherwise devoid of life on other planets is dismaying--it can't be such a cold, uninviting, dead place, can it?! We can't be entirely alone, can we?!

The new discovery suggests that maybe, no, that perhaps we're not alone. Still, even if life were to possibly exist on this planet or others, one realizes the incidence of life seems quite rare, infinitesimally so. First, there are a few stars that serve as good candidates to serve as suns, which will develop a gravitational forcefield that causes a solar system of orbiting planets to form around itself. Second, one of these planets needs to orbit within a certain distance from this sun so that the temperature allows water to form. Third, the composition of this rocky planet needs to have a certain density with a hot core and a planetary surface above which which an atmosphere can form. Finally, at this point, life can possibly begin to take shape. But meeting all these conditions is a tall order, and one that is not frequently met.

Well, just how the high the incidence is uncertain, for if there are billions and billions of stars, there are seemingly innumerable chances for life to form. Still, at this point, it seems that our universe is indeed largely, dead or to use the more neutral term--inorganic--and virtually everywhere inhospitable to the development of organic life.


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THE NEW YORK TIMES November 6, 2007

A Planetary System That Looks Familiar

By DENNIS OVERBYE

They say there is no place like home, but it is beginning to look as if there is a place sort of like home 41 light-years from here in the constellation Cancer.

Astronomers reported Tuesday that there were at least five planets circling a star there known as 55 Cancri, where only four had been known before, making it the most extensive planetary system yet found outside our own. It is also the one that most resembles our solar system, with a giant planet orbiting far out from the star and four smaller ones circling closer in.

The new addition to the system circles 55 Cancri at roughly the distance of Venus in our own solar system, in the so-called habitable zone where it is warm enough for liquid water. But, with 45 times the mass of Earth, the planet is more apt to resemble Neptune or Saturn than Earth, and thus would be a deadly environment for any kind of life that we know.

“It’s a system that appears to be packed with planets,” Prof. Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University said of 55 Cancri. She is the leader of the team that reported its results in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal and in a telephone news conference on Tuesday from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The scientists said the discovery augured well for the chance that with time and more data, astronomers would find places out there that look like home. They also said it marked the beginning of a transition between studying planets and studying planetary systems.

Another team member, Geoff Marcy, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the discovery had him “jumping out of my socks.” He said, “We now know our Sun and its family of planets is not unusual.”

Jonathan I. Lunine, a professor at the University of Arizona who was not part of the work, said that astronomers were on the verge of beginning to answer a question posed by Albertus Magnus, the medieval German philosopher and priest who wondered whether there was but one world or many worlds. We now know, Dr. Lunine said, “how lonely the universe is, how far we live from distant stars.”

In the last decade, about 250 planets have been discovered around other stars — the vast majority of them by the so-called wobble technique of monitoring a star’s light for signs of the slight to-and-fro motion induced by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets.

As technology and techniques have improved, the planet hunters have been able to move down the scale from Jupiter-size planets to ones only a few times as massive as Earth. But detecting rocky planets like Earth is probably beyond the current technology and must await future space-based missions, the astronomers admit.

One of the first of these “exoplanets” discovered, in 1996, was at 55 Cancri. Dr. Fischer and her colleagues have been observing that star for 18 years, adding more planets to the list of its retinue as they have made their presence known.The outermost and heaviest planet in the system, which is four times as massive as Jupiter, circles at a distance of 500 million miles, slightly farther than Jupiter in our own system, and takes 14 years to complete an orbit.

The star’s three innermost planets all circle more tightly than Mercury at distances from 22 million to 3.5 million miles. The closest of three is also the smallest, only 18 as massive as Earth and surely permanently scorched.

The new planet, which Dr. Fischer called “one of the more annoying planets” because it resisted being folded into their mathematical models for such a long time, basks in the lukewarm light of its star from a distance of around 70 million miles, taking 260 days to complete one orbit. Although too massive for life itself, Dr. Marcy said, the planet could harbor rocky moons, just as Saturn and Neptune in our own solar system do, and these would be warmed to the same lukewarm temperatures as Earth.

The moons would have to be as massive as Mars, however, in order to keep their water from escaping into empty space. Dr. Marcy said, “All bets are off on what evolutionary biology would be like on one of these moons.”The astronomers said they were also intrigued by the large gap — a band about 450 million miles across — between the new planet and the outermost one, in which they have detected nothing. There is a similar, but smaller, gap in our own solar system between Jupiter and Mars, caused by the disruptive effects of Jovian gravity on planetary formation. Dr. Lunine suggested that the more massive Cancri planet could have had a similar and deeper disruptive effect.

But the possibility remains that rocky planets could be lurking beneath detectability in that gap. Dr. Lunine said, “This gives us a name and an address to point out space telescopes at in the future.”

Polish Ukrainian Film Festival Aug 24-26, 2007 Chopin Theatre

The Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, Chicago, has been hosting Post Revolution Blues: the Polish-Ukrainian Film Festival, the last two evenings. The film on the first evening was "Acts of Imagination" made by a Canadian director, Carolyn Combs, and script writer, Michael Springate, neither of whom are of Slavic descent. The film focuses on the difficulties faced by two young immigrants from Ukraine, a brother, who is eager to assimilate and his sister who is haunted by the tragic past of her parents and grandparents, victims of a famine. While the brother has taken a natural step toward assimilation, meeting a Korean woman he falls in love with and plans to marry her, his sister meets a man from Pakistan, but she doesn't feel ready to become intimate with him. But both seem to live very isolated lives, separated from any immigrant community and the larger community as well.

To me the film felt claustrophobic in its relentless focus on the inner conflicts faced by its subjects, and it reminded me of a stage play in its reliance on dialog. Some of the exchanges would certainly be much more forceful and moving in a live performance by actors on stage.

The cinematic element offers some rays of light in its engaging and long lasting closeups and occasional shots of the dark, looming horizons. The lighting in most of the film is dark and scant on color, perhaps capturing Vancouver during a rainy season, but also the meager and straightened circumstances of its characters. There is a strong sense limited mobility and entrapment in the film that reflects the situation and psyche of its vulnerable immigrant subjects, who are . For example, the film begins with a close up of the sister peeling and cutting an orange. It's she who is concentrating on this simple act, as if using it to anchor herself in a world in which she feels adrift and uncertain of herself and troubled by the past. But in the film there are also elusive symbols of transcendence, like an icon, which may serve as a source of rent payment for the brother and sister who have fallen behind in its payment.

This was for me a difficult film to watch. I appreciated the carefully done closeups, the scenic shots, the dialogs, but I felt as if I was locked up in a small place with these characters for too long in their very circumscribed world. After the film an informative post-film discussion took place with the director and screenwriter. We learned from the screenwriter, for example, that mixed ethnic marriages between immigrants are very common.

The second evening there were three films, a long documentary and two short films. The first film was again a film made about Ukraine by a non-Ukrainian, a Spaniard, the director Carlos Rodriguez. "The Unnamed Zone" is a film made about the daily lives of the people living just outside the contaminated zone of Chernobyl. Though they live in a purportedly safe zone, the children from the area are reported to have more illnesses and sickness, and one who is filmed takes medication for headaches. We meet three families and the children talk most of the time, but their parents are also given some opportunity to speak. The film avoids presenting scientific and medical data about the nuclear disaster, and its consequences; instead, the focus is on the daily lives of the people who live in the shadow of this still contaminated and dangerous area. It was a well made and engaging documentary.

In the discussion after the film, we learned that the director took an interest in the film, because every summer children from around the Chernobyl area are sent away for weeks or months to European countries in order to live in an area far from the scene of the disaster. The director curious about the appearance of Ukrainian children in Spain took an interest in them that led to making the film.

The next film was a documentary made about a homeless girl about age 12 named Liza. We follow her around the city and in the reform school where she lives. She smokes and smarts off and swears and violates personal boundaries of others with impunity. She has soaked up much too cynicism at too young an age. The film speaks for itself about the effects that homelessness has on damaging the spirit of a child. In this documentary, as in the first one, statistics and an overview of the problem of homeless children was not given. In the discussion after the film we learned that it is serious problem in Ukraine. Often the children run away from an abusive home, or from homes where grandparent(s) become the guardians, since the parents are compelled to leave the country in search of work abroad for months to years.

The last film in the evening was a short film, A Man Thing, also devoted to a children, in this instance child abuse. The director, Slawomir Fabicki, was at the festival and at the discussions. I found this film to be the most moving and riveting of any I had seen up to that point. It was shot in black and white, and its focus was on a boy at soccer practice at school. The coach tries to toughen up his team of boys by talking tough to them, but this really proves to be not the abuse the boy is suffering from. Instead, it's at home he suffers from his father's physical beatings for misbehaving at school. I won't say more about the plot of the film, for it may take away some of its beauty and charm.

In the discussion afterwards, the director, Fabicki, stated that in his film he focuses on a social issue, like the problem of child abuse, and his purpose in film is to provoke emotions by leading the audience to identify and sympathize with its characters.

The final evening featured two more films. First, a short documentary, again about the problem of homeless children in Ukraine, "There was a woman who lived in shoe," but this time about a family in Western Ukraine who have adopted five young children, though they have two sons, who are young adults in their late teens and attending college. I found this film quite moving. The woman in the film shows an incredible reservoir of love and compassion that she feels compelled to share for her adopted children.

The evening ended with a feature length film, "The Retrieval" by Fabicki. It is a tale of on level of a Polish economy in upheaval and for many young people one that leaves them with few hopes for the future. One such young man weary of work at a cement factory where his friend dies and work at a hog farm of his family, drifts into the criminal underworld, working there as an enforcer, who collects money on loans and threatens and beats those who can't or don't pay up. On another level this is a film that details the process of desensitization to brutality and violence, that is, overcoming a natural human unease about evil. That process is especially well documented in the film. Watching this film, I felt as if it echoed the festival's first film: again, the viewer is led to follow and witness the difficult plight of isolated and young individuals.

This film was even more difficult than the festival's first film: we, who know better, are compelled to follow the descent of a good young man into darkness. There are recurrent scenes of brutality and violence in the film, and ironically, what one would hope would possibly lead this young man away from this path--a woman he loves, a Ukrainian woman--ironically only provokes him to choose this path. For he believes that he will impress his woman by making money.

I can't but help feeling the viewer felt emotionally crushed and beaten up, much as the protagonist of the film is at its end. While the film is technically brilliant, its emotionally grim and tragic in tone. I can't help but feel that the director perhaps wanted to impress on the viewer what a dead-end the new economic situation has become for some young people in Poland.

For a link to a film site created by Yuri Shevchuk, one of the moderators in the film festival discussion and founder of the Ukrainian film club at Columbia University see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ufc/

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More information about the films, which I've cut and pasted here:

Post Revolution Blues: Polish Ukrainian Film Festival

Friday, August 24th 7p Reception 8p "Acts of Imagination" by Carolyn Combs and Michael Springate, 2006 The story revolves around Jaroslaw (Billy Marchenski) and Katya (Stephanie Hayes), Ukrainian immigrants to Vancouver, who each find their place within Canadian society and struggle to make ends meet and honor their Ukrainian heritage. The film touches on the problem of immigration, historical memory and reconciliation with history which resonates with the public on both sides of the Atlantic. English and Ukrainian. 930p Discussion - "Global Identity" with Zbigniew Banas, Film Critic; Carolyn Combs, Canadian Director; Slawomir Fabicki, Oscar ® Nominated Director; Alton Miller, Columbia College Chicago and Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia University. Saturday, August 25th 730p "The Unnamed Zone" by Carlos Rodriguez, 2006 Follows the stories of three young Ukrainians directly affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the worse nuclear disaster in history. They live perilously close to the exclusion zone around the destroyed station and recount their fears, dreams, fantasies and hopes for the future. There is a palpable sense of despair in this cinematographic trip to the heart of one of the world's most contaminated places still inhabited by close to five million people, who have basically been forgotten. Ukrainian with subtitles. 9p "Liza" by Taras Tomenko, 2006 The award winning filmmaker Tomenko follows a homeless teenage girl to understand the personal and societal reasons for the rise in numbers of Ukraine's unwanted children. Ukrainian, Russian, and Surzhyk (hybrid of Russian and Ukrainian) with subtitles. 930p "A Man Thing" by Slawomir Fabicki, 2001 Three days in the life of a thirteen-year-old boy trying desperately to keep secret the fact that his father beats him. Lonely and with no support from his mother or from school, the boy finds his only friend in an old stray dog from the kennels. Polish with subtitles. 10p Discussion - "Social Activism through Filmmaking" with Zbigniew Banas, Film Critic; Carolyn Combs, Canadian Director; Adam Ensalaco, Greenpeace; Slawomir Fabicki, Oscar ® Nominated Director; Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia University; and Stephen Steim, Human Rights Watch. 1030p Reception Sunday, August 26th 4p "Retrieval" by Slawomir Fabicki, 2005 Follows the fortunes of a nineteen-year-old trying to make his way in society. Living in an industrial city that has seen better days Wojtek faces a dismal future. However, he has fallen in love with Katja, a slightly older Ukrainian woman who lives with her young child. But how can he earn enough money to support Katja and her child, and get an apartment large enough for the three of them? Polish with subtitles. 6p "There Was A Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" by Olena Fetysova , 2005 Documentaries about homeless children on the streets of Ukrainian cities are a common sight in countries in transition. This film is about a couple who offer their own solution to this problem. They take in homeless children into their own family and create a home for them, a private crisis center for orphans. Original Ukrainian with subtitles. 630p Discussion - "Family Redefined" with Zbigniew Banas, Film Critic; Slawomir Fabicki, Oscar ® Nominated Director and Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia University 7p Reception

Hell on Wheels: Women's Roller Derby film documentary

Another night at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and tonight I watched a documentary, Hell on Wheels, directed by Bon Ray, about the recent rebirth of women's roller derby, which took place in Austin, Texas, 2001. My expectation was to see a film about the character and motivation of the individual women, but instead what the film documented over the course of several years was the initial organization of the league, its split, and emergence of one league from this split. The issue that provides suspense in the film is whether this league will put the focus more on the model of the skaters enjoying the camaraderie and skating and less on running a business with a management staff in order to make profit.

There are several types of scenes that recur throughout the film. Group discussions, which often become arguments are common up until the very end of the film. The main issue of controversy is how to run the organization, how to spend the money, and who leads it and how much power are they given. There are interviews, usually quite brief, with individual skaters. There are scenes from training, from practice, from the games, as well as the injuries that seem quite common, and a few quite serious that result.

While the focus of this film is understandable--to present the nitty-gritty, often contentious discussion and argument that is involved in setting up the league and determining its structure and goals--it inherently does not seem to make for good film scenes: anyone who has ever sat in on an organizational meeting knows that they can be protracted, contentious, and a hassle that you are happy when concluded. Thus, I found myself fearing in the film, oh, no, not another discussion and argument. Furthermore, without any narrator who intruded to clue the viewer in and provide more information about the context, I often felt lost. The director clearly wanted to leave this narrator out in the name of making the film more realistic--you saw things as the participants saw them--but this I believe this made it more difficult for the viewer to get involved in the film, in terms of better understanding what was going on.

Another disagreement I have with the film is its focus on the logistics of forming and operating an organization. With this focus we see many taped scenes of arguments and bickering about just what to do and how to handle the logistics of running what proves to be a costly enterprise--renting a hall, attracting paying spectators, finding training space, buying skates, dealing with frequent and costly injuries, some quite serious. I suppose someone interested in the business aspect of this enterprise would be curious about this aspect of women's roller derby, but I was not particularly so.

True, this gives you the nitty gritty and unpleasant, yet necessary perspective on what is quite a difficult start up venture. This is truly a realist and documentary film! But in my view it just doesn't make particularly dramatic film. Personally, I would be curious to learn more about the personalities of the participants--what draws them to roller derby and why they enjoy it. For instance, a woman in the film observes that the skaters were loners who didn't fit in, but this observation isn't developed. Or the entire question of using sex to sell the sport, that is, wearing sexy outfits to draw an audience. We get a few brief explanations that the skaters are okay with that, but I sense there is more to it than simply a pat answer. Or probably there are a variety of answers to this questions, it depends on which skater you would ask.

This film constitutes quite an ambitious ground level view of the formation of a women's roller derby league. The director and his friends and associates spent several years on this project and their purpose was to document the messy process that led to the league's formation. In this they do succeed. But if you are interested in learning more about the personality of the skaters, more about their issues of gender, if they have any, then this film may not satisfy you.

Anna Biller's "Viva" (2006): Camp sex film with a critical twist

Tonight at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, I saw Anna Biller's "Viva" is an independent film, which is a labor of love, a visually striking film with wonderfully evocative, period sets and costumes in some of the tackiest and brightest colors that 1972 had to offer. Reading about Biller's background as a student in art explains why this film is so beautifully made. A number of films seem to have come out in recent years that revisit the 1950s through 1970s with an informed perspective that did or was not allowed expression at the time, like, interracial sex and homosexuality in a film like "Far From Heaven."

The hero of the film, Barbie, played by the film's director, takes the name of Viva, which in Italian means a desire to live. Trapped in an empty, predictable existence with a husband who is more wed to his work than her, with a friend, she sets off in pursuit of personal and sexual fulfillment. But she only encounters men who want casual sex first, then may consider Viva as a person. In other words, these men don't share her desire to link sexual to emotional fulfillment. Thus, it seems, from Viva's perspective the sexual revolution empowers men more than women, because most men, it seems, don't take into account women's needs.

One paradox that Viva faces is that she can begin to enjoy her sexy body and her stylish, provocative, sexy clothes, but at the same time this source of strength and new found self-affirmation works against her, attracting men to her who desire her body, but not necessarily her as a person. Thus, there is an irony in taking the name Viva: it symbolizes the promise of life, finding personal fulfillment, yet at the same time these goals prove elusive, if not unattainable.

From the film itself it's hard to determine just what is Anna Biller's position regarding the swinging seventies. While she clearly enjoys conveying the look and color of the decor and outfits--she wears the outfits herself and designed and made the sets--yet she is also clearly critical of the way people, mostly men, behave. This is just an undercurrent in the film, a ripple, for the film is primarily meant to be light, entertaining fun, which indeed it is. Still, the undercurrent of criticism for me provoked a conflicted response to the film. I felt uneasy with the glimmer of the critical eye on the sexual revolution from the perspective of the woman who is more its victim than beneficiary, while at the same time I was admiring the visually stunning recreation of the past and entertained by the film's humor.

This mix of disparate elements that I found jarring in the film "Viva" brings to my mind a book written about Picasso by Elizabeth Cowling, Picasso: Style and Meaning. Cowling considers how Picasso appropriates and often parodies other artists and art forms, often mixing the styles and time periods in a jarring, unexpected manner. Of course, this complicates our response to such paintings--what are we to make of them?! When dealing with say just one nude, however, our response is not that problematic; we can appreciate the manner in which Picasso takes primitive African sculpture and renders it in a cubist style. But consider a more complex subject in a painting, Picasso's now famous painting, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" which shows five women rendered in a loose, cubist manner and which incorporates an element of social criticism of prostitution. The basis of this painting was a photograph of prostitutes that was meant to entice and titillate, but in Picasso these figures become aggressive and disarming, confront the viewer with their large eyes and frightening masks in place of faces. Visually, this painting is a stunning, dynamic study of interrelated figures. But how does it affect the viewer, what sort of response does it provoke? One may be attracted to its composition, but repulsed by its aggressive and blank faces that stare at you. And the viewer can walk away with this mixed response. What in the world am I looking at or who is looking at me in this painting, and why?! If curious, the viewer can read about the painting and learn exactly what is its subject matter.

For me visual art that provokes a jarring response is okay, because I can walk away from the work of art, and return to it, but I find that when this occurs in a film it feels unresolved in a disconcerting way that makes it difficult for me to experience for an hour or two. I don't want to make too much out of this particular reaction I had to Anna Biller's film "Viva"--the combination of a fun, comic film provokes laughter, but at the same time, scenes in which Viva the hero is imposed upon and taken advantage of by men provokes thoughts and the realization that the sexual revolution served as just another means to exploit women. In other words, there are two referents--one, to fun, campy film, the other to a troubling reality avoided in such films.

The film "Viva" resembles a sexploitation film with its lack of character development through extended dialog and conversation; instead, there is more focus on humorous exchanges and deadpan and campy humor. It differs in a very effective and subtle manner from these films when the manner and tone in which the actors speak is transparently outrageous. Viva's husband, for example, is the epitome of the clean cut, handsome, self-righteous, hard-working, and worst of all self-absorbed successful breadwinner and husband. Any time he speaks, he provokes amusement and laughter. When he asserts that Viva is a ball and chain who can't let him go because he wants to go away from an extended business trip that will include skiing, but not Viva, we can only smile in amusement at his self-absorption and self-righteousness.

Perhaps, I want to take Viva as a character too seriously, more seriously than the other characters. She differs in this regard from them: instead of going along with the flow, she hesitates and protests, but she never articulates just how. I imagine doing that would really introduce a new and perhaps undesired tone into the otherwise fun film. In the film all the men that Viva meets impose themselves on her, aside from one woman she meets, so inevitably she must feel dismayed--all her hopes for liberation sexually have been dashed. But how deeply we never do learn, since Viva remains pretty much a closed book, her face, the cover suggesting that she is troubled and disconcerted by her foray into the sexual liberation.

Thus, for me, the film works against itself or at cross purpose: while it wonderfully evokes a sexploitation film, it at the same same time introduces something quite alien to the genre--a critical point of view about the sexual exploitation from the woman's victimized perspective. For me, it seems, the film's last scene, Viva performing with her friend a song and dance on stage, is quite hard to believe, because it implies that somehow despite all her disappointing experiences in seeking love, everything is just fine for Viva who has learned that the sexual revolution is not for her.

Still, the film, for anyone interested in the period is worthwhile watching, especially for its visual reproduction and evocation of the time period, as well as humorous evocation of the past. There is musical accompaniment that sounds like popular music from the time, and there are several well done, amusing singing interludes in the film. Viva's visit to the nudist camp, her song and dance performance at a mansion orgy, her visit to the hair dresser--these are a few of the memorable and entertaining scenes I liked. I am impressed also that Anna Biller ventures into making a film in a genre that had been the domain of male directors and male viewers, and gives it her own critical perspective as a woman. At the same time, she enjoys making the film, having an opportunity to wear a variety of outfits. For a first film this is an impressive accomplishment, perhaps with a few flaws, but I am eager to see future films directed by Anna Biller or films in which she is involved.

For an interview with Anna Billers:
http://www.pollystaffle.com/questionsandanswers/annabiller.shtml

Worldview, public radio international news from Chicago: No, to More Permanent US Bases in Iraq and ex-leaders face extradition -- Noriega, Fujmori

Periodically, I check the archive of the Chicago Public Radio program, Worldview, devoted to international news. Usually, the program involves interviews with scholar, activists, writers who answer questions and discuss issues with the host Jerome McGann. http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_WV.aspx?episode=12407

A program dated August 1, 2007 offers three interviews. First, there is an interview with Barbara Lee, the only member of congress to not vote in favor of granting President Bush carte blanche to conduct war, granting him power of war. Listening to her, I thought, why this reminds me of the situation in Russia: virtually no elected politician there dares to speak out against the war in terror, which is more a scorched earth terror campaign in the Caucaus region against Chechens. Here too, in United States, few prominent politicians make a point of daring to dissent from policy and legislation in fear of being regarded as unpatriotic. However, in United States, there is clearly more opposition and criticism of America imposing its will abroad than in Russia, but this point of view lacks political representation to express its views.

The red X's on the map below indicate military bases that US troops have established in Iraq. Congresswoman Boxer introduced a resolution to ban the permanent establishment of these bases in Iraq. The resolution passed!

Next there is an informative and entertaining interview of a journalist and writer, R.M. Koster, who wrote a book about Manuel Noriega, and comments on his characters, past, involvement with US, and impending release in September from a Florida prison after a 17-year long stay there. Allegedly, for good behavior, Noriega, now 72, is being released early from his 30 year sentence; here, "good" means he didn't bite the hand that fed him, US intelligence. He is facing possible extradition to either Panama or France to face more charges.

Finally, the program ends with an interview with the director Ellen Perry, who made a documentary film about Fujimori, the former president of Peru, who squashed Shining Path extremists in Peru in the 1990s, yet abused his powers in censoring the press and ordering the police and military to cut too many corners, as well as heads, as the cartoon shows, in pursuit of national security. He was forced to flee the country as a result and has found refuge in Japan. Fujimori has been running for political office in Japan, and is also under threat of extradition from Chile to Peru. Hard to believe Fujimori is still so active, and not allowing exile to slow him down.

Paint or Write and Summer Break

Like probably most people who live in Chicago, which has a short summer, I try enjoy the outdoors more and change my schedule and engage in other activities, aside from my usual routine throughout the rest of the year. So, I've taken a break from writing and posting on this blog.

I was attending two 5-week long classes in figure painting, which just finished last Saturday, August 11, and I was working on paintings at home independently as well. Some of my recent work is posted on this blog page. Today, I was accepted into the continuing education program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago for a certificate in painting. The summer courses I took were taken by me to become familiar with the program and see if I like it.

The certification program involves a student taking at least 10 noncredit courses in painting. This program is designed as an evening and weekend program for adults who already have a degree and are working, and who would like to learn about the art of painting without entering a degree or credit program. I may find myself hard pressed to write here on a regular basis, so I need to change the format of this blog. It will become more a blog listing material online that I find noteworthy with some of my brief commentary.

COMMENT ON THE PHOTOS ABOVE: The building in the right photo is the Art Institute which faces west on Michigan Avenue. The school itself, or more properly speaking one of the several buildings owned and used by the school, is a separate 3-story high modernist building, built in 1977, connected to the back or east side of the Art Institute. It is on Columbus Drive and faces Grant Park and the lake just east of it.

Bernard Shaw Major Barbara Rogue Theatre

Last night I saw a very good production of Shaw's comic play of ideas, Major Barbara at the Rogue Theatre in Andersonville. There were signs up in the window, available for rent, because after this production, the theatre is moving out of its current space.

I believe the play is inherently flawed and problematic because Shaw's main characters, Major Barbara, an officer in the Salvation Amry, and her father, Andrew Undershaft, the owner of a large arms plant, are more mouthpieces for arguments concerning the virtues of idealism and pacifism as opposed to pragmatism and militarism, than individuals about whom we learn more about during the course of the play. Instead, we are treated to mini-lectures, arguments, and witty exchanges about pacifism, philanthropy, militarism, pragmatism, capitalism.

And with heavy handed irony, one senses Shaw himself in the background taking delight in pointing how pacifism and militarism are interrelated. For instance, Undershaft contributes money to his daughter's Salvation Army branch, which is on the verge of closing for lack of funds. Convincingly, and without moral qualms, Undershaft argues that though his business of selling arms sows destruction, it also provides steady work for his employees, much more, that is, material well-being, than the Salvation Army, which offers mainly idealistic hope. This sort of argument has an echo in post-WW II United States, because this is just the sort of argument that politicians advance in the name of providing jobs for the constituents in the arms industry of which US constitutes half of the world's production.

To be sure, Undershaft is a study in single-minded ideological bad faith: he claims to serve his nation and provide work for people, but at the same time his products, arms, kill people and destroy civilization or impose colonial occupation. He admits to the destructive consequences of his business, but because he is just playing a part in the game of capitalism and playing according to its rules, he feels no guilt. Of course, any reality outside the logic and rules of capitalism to Undershaft is idealism and to be disdainfully dismissed as idealistic humbug. This includes politics itself, which ultimately serves the arms industry of Undershaft--its needs and profits, not vice-versa.

The cynical character of Undershaft is played with a requisite amount of overweening self-assurance and unctuousness, without overdoing it. There are six more important speaking roles:Undershaft's wife, his son, one daughter in the Salvation Army, another daughter, and both his daughter's fiances. And there are three more important speaking roles, minor characters who make an appearance at the Salvation Army. All these roles are also well-performed, and it's quite an accomplishment for a small theatre company to stage such a demanding play. Most companies settle for plays that don't require so many demanding speaking roles, so it was a pleasure to see this ensemble perform.

Film Review: Transamerica (2005)

Finally, on dvd I got around to watching "Transamerica" which was first screened December 23, 2005. The dvd version includes brief conversations between the director Duncan Tucker and his lead actors, Felicity Hoffman, who plays the transgender woman, Bree, and her son, Toby, played by Kevin Zegers. There is also an optional commentary on the film by the director. I was pleasantly surprised by the film's blend of humor with melodrama, well done scenes of various locales on the road trip that Bree undertakes from East to West Coast with her son. The film begins with Bree eagerly looking forward to move ahead with a new life after surgery, but an unexpected individual from her past--her distant son's reappearance with whom she has had little contact--threatens to delay her long awaited goal. If Bree believes her own life has been derailed, so too, she realizes has that of her son. He is a runaway who lives on the streets of New York City, and who is certain only about two goals--to find his long lost father and to start his acting career.

But a conflict arises because Bree is reluctant to disclose her true identity to her Toby as his father. Exactly, why we don't know--partly, it's a sense of shame that holds her back, and partly it's a fear of taking responsibility for a young man who seeks guidance, yet rejects authority. On the way back to California at a stop at a transgender friend's house in Texas, however, we learn that Toby accepts her friend, but here Bree misses her chance. And so the film tantalizes us--when will Bree talk to her son? how will he react? Doubtlessly, some measure of secrecy is an unfortunate consequence of living with a such a stigmatized transgender identity, but at the same time in some instances, it is harmful to keep a secret.

To what extent is Bree controlled by her own fear we don't get a clear answer; if asked, she herself probably would not have an answer. This becomes the tragic fate of someone who becomes imprisoned by what is an understandable and justified fear. At times the line is very fine and difficult to discern, so often you find transgender individuals erring on the side of caution or boldness.

Bree and Toby are a study in contrasts. Bree is formal to a fault, reserved and guarded, while Toby is brash, spontaneous and outgoing--too much so. The film is as much about Bree as it is about Toby's own growth. Bree needs to confront her deepest fears from her past as a man, that is her son, who she was estranged from; Toby, to stop acting out in anger against the world and himself after having been abused.

The film's flaws were minor. Some scenes were needlessly overdramatized, like Toby's confrontation with his stepfather, and some of the dialog trite, like Toby's crude trashing of the Lord of the Rings.

Ex-Fashion Model out of control, Janice Dickinson

Having an interest in woman's fashion, last night I watched the first six installments on dvd of the realty show, Janice Dickinson, a former model, who decides to begin her own fashion agency in LA. She presents herself as a tough-talking, hard-driving, when necessary, ruthless business woman, who has a soft spot for models that remind her of herself. That is to say models who may look a bit different and not find ready acceptance and promotion. I imagine Ms. Dickinson believes she presents herself as a resourceful, confident and tenacious business woman, worthy of admiration and emulation. Doubtless, we will grant her some of these admirable qualities, but at the same time her manner is so blunt, abrasive, and overbearing that she seems a stock character from stage or film, who serves as source of our laugher, amusement and contempt. Thus her arrogant character, virtually oblivious to criticism and change, serves as one of the chief attractions of this realty show.

During the course of the show, Ms. Dickinson, who herself wears a variety of impressive outfits, ends up making the very indiscretions she counsels her models to avoid, like arriving late to an appointment and behaving oneself at a show. She also can't resist dropping all pretenses of professional conduct, when in one incident, she insists one of her male models to whom she's attracted remove his underwear, so she can check out just how much he packs.

The culmination of Ms. Dickinson's business is almost undermined by her own wild antics. Invited to serve as a queen at the White Party in Palm Springs, wearing a one of a kind designer dress, she meets the designer at the party. Here it should be added that this designer is supposed to be supplying her dresses for her opening day at her fashion agency. Unable to resist temptation, Ms. Dickinson leaps into the white fountain, insisting that she be photographed while doing so, and ruins her dress out on loan. The designer decides to take revenge, so refuses to supply dresses for the opening day of Ms Dickinson's agency. Only the entreaties of her more sensible partner to the offended designer to go ahead and supply the dresses, saves the day for her.

Overall, I enjoyed this show, which offers insight into the world of fashion, a look at fashions, and a larger than life character, Ms. Dickinson, who plays the role quite well of someone quite oblivious to her own shortcomings and flaws, which makes for great theatre.

Film Note: Kalatazov, The Cranes are Flying (1957)

I watched the Russian award winning film "The Cranes Are Flying" (Letiat' Zhuravli, 1957). It was quite an impressive piece of cinematography, featuring beautifully composed shots throughout the film, brilliant acting, moving scenes. The only fault this film, if it can be called that, is the obligatory positive treatment of Russian patriotism during WWII without any hint of the arrogance and incompetence of Stalin and his regime, which allowed the Soviet Union to be caught off guard and to suffer massive casualties, ie, to throw poorly armed or not at all armed troops into combat. Another minor flaw of this film I felt were the occasional and overly done dramatic confrontations scenes. But overall, given the political restrictions under which this was made, it is moving film.

The film focuses on Veronica's plight during the war when her virtual fiance to be, Boris, goes off to fight the war, and she waits for his return. Veronica is the epitome of virtue and dedication, but her ideals are smashed by the war and then by Mark, who manages to have his against Veronica's wishes to marry her. Much of the film depends on key symbols, like a small squirrel that Boris leaves Veronica before he marches off to the front; the migrating cranes seen at key junctures of the film. This film reminded me of Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, which was made few later in that it adopts a different perspective on the war--through the eyes of child, while in Cranes, it's through the eyes of a woman left behind.

Henry Roth, Truth and Stigma, How Silence Stifles Growth

Browsing articles posted in Arts & Letters Daily, an online list compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education, which I provide as a link on this blog, I came across one that caught my eye and caused my pulse to quicken as I was reading it. In an essay, "Memory Unbound" in The Threepenny Review, Morris Dickstein discusses the enigmatic Henry Roth (1906-1995), an American writer, whose first novel, Call it Sleep, published in 1934, and republished with acclaim in the 1960s, but for some reason the career of Roth as a writer faltered, and he never lived up to the promise shown in his first novel. What happened to Roth? What prevented him from continuing to write and publish works like his promising first novel again?

In a word, stigma, the shame of adolescent sexual gone awry, incest. Dickstein explains:

In Shifting Landscape, a collection of essays, stories, and interviews that came out the same year, Roth contemplated the mystery of his aborted career but left out the root cause that most obsessed him. This changed in 1995, when his younger sister, missing from both Call It Sleep and the first volume of Mercy of a Rude Stream, suddenly appeared in his work. He wrote about years of incest with her and a cousin, beginning when both were in their early teens. Though his sister was still living and in her late eighties, he rejected her heartfelt plea that he not shame them by raking up horrors from the distant past. Roth continued to resist any single explanation for his catastrophic writer's block, but it became evident that it was the incest, and the self-loathing that accompanied it, that threw the biggest roadblock across his path. As an autobiographical writer whose work depended on emotional honesty for its devastating power, he found he could not go on in fiction past the ghetto childhood brilliantly evoked in Call It Sleep. In Mercy he at last confronted the dark transgressions he could not face in the years following his first novel.

In his essay Dickstein goes on to make an appeal, arguing that there are strengths in Roth's late and multi-volume autobiographical work of strictly factual reminiscence from the 1990s. According to Dickstein, Roth in a Proustian-inspired manner comes to terms with his long suppressed dark past that clearly haunted him and stifled his writing career; paradoxically Roth does so by using modernist and postmodernist literary devices in a work that is ostensibly factual.

For anyone who has had the misfortune of bearing a stigma from childhood into adulthood, this is a bracing and moving story. Personally, I have a strong connection to this story, because I have struggled with the stigma and shame of my transgender identity in adolescence and young adulthood. But living in a much more tolerant time, the 1990s, I have found validation and solace in being able to write personal essays about my experiences, and my self-imposed prison sentence of guilt-induced silence was thankfully not as long as Roth's near life-sentence.

Stigma is the nemesis of personal growth. If ever there was something we could call a curse in our enlightened age when we regard a curse as a vestige of a supernatural world we no longer believe in, it is the silence of an adult about his or her own stigma. An adult who remains silent about their own stigmatized sexual activity (abuse, incest) or sexual identity (trans or homo or bisexuality) in adolescence is compelled to put a hold on his or her personal life and happiness.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/dickstein_su07.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Roth

The World Naked Bike Ride in Chicago June 2007

In the name of protesting oil dependency, a carnivalesque protest of riding nude in the manner of critical mass rides (when hundreds of cyclists ride one day a month on city streets, taking over lanes and blocking traffic for a time) takes place annually, and this year I joined the Chicago ride. Since I am on the online listservice of Chicago's Critical Mass, I found instructions notifying anyone interested to first arrive at a Chicago park from where they would be directed to a nearby private home of one of the participant-organizers. This is done to avoid creating a distraction in a public area as riders prepare for the ride in the hours leading up to it. By prepare, I mean some put on amusing and outlandish costumes, while others have body paint applied.

The mood already seemed festive with music blaring from a garage set aside to be used as a body painting area, and many cyclists already milling about nude and or with body paint. I went ahead and joined the line to have my body painted, and it turned out to be a bike then fire around it. The ride seemed very well organized with someone in the park, at the entrance, and other individuals talking on cell phones who were going to lead and direct the ride. Finally, the ride set out shortly after nightfall around 9PM. For a time the ride didn't attract too much attention since it was in the industrial Near West side of Chicago where there aren't too many people walking around in the streets, nor many retail stores and restaurants.

Eventually, the ride did come across the first commercial retail street, which usually provoked honks, shouts, cheers, comments, and on occasion you could see people rushing from stores and restaurants to catch a view of the spectacle. People also rushed to take pictures, now quite easy since many cell phones include cameras. In the more crowded streets, the ride assumed a parade-like atmosphere as people lined the streets to look. I should add that not everyone was quite naked, that is, many people wore what look like underwear or bathing suits or various types of costumes. Also, some of the ride organizers were dressed and riding around on bikes or roller blades.

The ride itself was accompanied by speakers in a trailer playing music for most of its entire length. At some moments the music, the festive atmosphere, the notion of violating the rules of social decorum and behavior--all these gave me a sublime sense of pleasure and happiness. I have read Mikhail Bakhtin's book, Rabelais and His World, on the importance of carnival in ritually violating social rules and decorum in order to affirm one's sense of self and connection to others which is restricted and controlled by rigid social hierarchies and status. After a time I did indeed feel this that I could take part in an event and join other people, setting aside the usual barriers that would prevent us from making contact and assembling in an activity.

Personally, I've also had a liking ever since I can recall I was told to wear clothes. Seeing pictures of primitive people from around the world who wore virtually next to nothing always made me think--now why should you wear clothes if it's hot out.

Film Notes: The Lives of Others

Tonight I saw "The Lives of Others" a German film (original release date March 2006) that shows how the secret police, the Stasi, of the former East German Democratic Republic spied on its citizens, compromising, if not ruining their sense of purpose and moral integrity, especially if they were writers and artists. The basic rule to follow is either play along with the secret police, or if not, then face the prospect to not play at all--face silence, neglect, imprisonment, relegation to the margins of the society, and for some artistic death is tantamount to spiritual death, and they commit suicide.

This film won 7 Deutscher Filmpreis awards and the American Academy Award for best foreign film. This is quite a dark film, relieved with some humorous scenes on occasion, but dark in showing how everyone becomes morally compromised in the net of a society founded on mistrust. A lighter look at the East German past is available in the film, Good Bye Lenin (2003).

There are two heroes to the film, not heroes in a monumental, but on a mundane level, who both act when their sense of conscience prompts them to act in a humane way. First, there is the playwright and writer Georg Dreyman, a darling of the state, who writes plays made to order for the socialist government, and in the opening scenes of the film, we see scenes of what looks like a play that focuses on the heroism of a woman laborer in the factory. But a Stasi officer in the audience, Gerd Wiesler, senses something is amiss in the play, even though it seems on the surface to adhere to all the conventions expected of it. And actually it turns out that Wiesler indeed has an acute sense for ferreting out subversion however subtle its hints: he senses it's not the play itself that is the problem, but what it reveals about the director--that he would dare allow a friend, a director who had been punished, jailed for subversion, direct it. This is evidence enough that Dreyman is himself drifting in the direction of subversion.

Ironically, Dreyman regards this act as a simply a gesture of kindness to a friend in need, and not as a political act in any sense. But Gerd's hunch that something is amiss with the reliable writer of state is shared by the chief of the intelligence, who is also in the audience, and Dreyman's apartment is promptly wiretapped. All his conversations are recorded by Wiesler and his associate in the attic above it. Ironically, however, Gerd finds nothing suspicious to report: Dreyman remains a loyal servant for the state; at a party with friends, he dismisses an accusation by his director friend that someone at the party is a secret police informer.

What pushes Dreyman over the edge to question his allegiance to the state and dissent against it is the mistreatment of his friends at the hands of the secret police. His girlfriend, Christa Marie Sieland happens to catch the eye of the chief of the secret police, and the chief cannot resist the temptation to force himself on her sexually, a fact which shakes up Dreyman when he learns about it. This abuse of power, and then the suicide of his former mentor and director who has been silenced by the state pushes him over the edge. He decides to write an article about suicide in East Germany and how the government doesn't publish any statistics on it.

Gerd, who has been listening in on Dreyman, also begins to doubt the state and its ideals he has served selflessly and loyally. The fact that the chief of the secret police has sexually forced himself on Dreyman's girlfriend causes him to question his own institution, the more so because he must leave out his chief's vile practice out of the official transcripts of what Dreyman and all his friends and associates said or did. Gerd realizes that the secret police is corrupt and morally bankrupt. To provide some context, we are told it's 1984, and in only another five years the Berlin Wall will fall, and in the intervening years the hold of the corrupt regimes in Eastern Bloc states like East Germany will begins to unravel.

To say more about the film's plot would give it away. The theme of the film is how loyal servants of the corrupt regimes in the police and arts begin to sense the moral bankruptcy of their government and state are moved to act against it. The quality of the film itself is made with intentionally grainy film in many shots, as if it were made using the available film technology of the 1980s. (If you don't know what year a film is made, you can usually discern if it was made some time in the mid-90s or later by the higher quality of its resolution and color range, thanks to digital production.) Also, the film is generally sombre in its use of color: often the action takes place in night, or in dimly lit rooms, interrogation rooms and eavesdropping rooms. Gerd's apartment room looks like an ascetic cell of a monk with its bare furnishings and absence of any art on the walls. There is not much sunlight in this world, and the weather outside is overcast and a perpetually barren and cold late fall or early spring.

The chief actors--Dreyman, Gerd, Sieland--are first rate. I can't recall the last film that moved me so much but in such a subtle manner with its powerful message. Personally, the film reverberated very strongly, prompting me to ask myself whether I haven't allowed myself to stray too far from engaging in more work that I find meaningful to me. It also made me think about the fact that other former Communist satellite states and Soviet republics have not reckoned with the past as in East Germany; that is, as the epilogue scenes in The Lives of Others shows, the secret service files were not opened to citizens and historians and researchers.

Brecht's The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui

At the suggestion of a friend, I went with him to see Bertold Brecht's play written in 1941, "The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui," which is about a Chicago mobster's rise to power, and which is also an allegory of Hitler's or any dictator's ruthless rise to power. It was performed with a spare set with few props or stage furniture at the Steep Theatre on a second preview evening; and it's ensemble work with fourteen actors and four or five prominent roles. http://www.steeptheatre.com/current.html

This theatre company features ensemble productions; the other and last play I saw here was Arthur Miller's "Incident at Vichy". The actor who played the chief criminal, Arturo Ui, was convincingly and energetically played with animation and sulkiness. The air of someone who observes no rules and limits was conveyed well, though at times I felt as if slouching and sulkiness was overdone; I imagine a mobster, a strong man would keep up appearances of strength and a stoic front, at least in front of his subordinates. Another actor whose performance and roles were powerful was man who played the publisher and the actor, who teaches Ui how to walk, sit, talk in order to impress people.

A few scenes, especially in the second part of the play after intermission were especially powerful and moving. For instance, the court scene in which justice is bent to favor the criminals; the scene in which the newspaper publisher is pressured to remain silent, and then confronts his wife.

I must admit that not being familiar with the details of Hitler's own rise to power made me miss allusions and parallels that Brecht worked into his allegory. In the play, Brecht has a narrator comment on the turning points in Hitler's rise to power after some scenes; in the play itself, we hear an announcer speak over the intercom. Having been regularly reading about the machinations of the current government in Russia, like poisoning a critic in London with radioactive polonium, hacking into and shutting down the internet of Estonian government institutions, I found the play chilling with examples of the close connection between criminality and government that is becoming more apparent in Russia.

Brecht pokes fun at the mobster's rise to power through gaining influence in the grocery, in particular, cauliflower business. I could not quite follow just how one grocer was convinced and pressured to ally himself with the mob in exchange for money in the play's first part, and the allusions this may have had to Hitler's alliance with business in Weimar Germany. In any event, the play picked up momentum in the second part, and I would recommend seeing it.

Art Chicago & The Intuit Show of Folk & Outsider Art 2007

Along with Art Chicago, there was another art show, The Intuit Show of Folk & Outside Art, which occupied about a quarter of the floor below the Art Chicago show. I spent some time looking through this show before proceeding to upstairs, and would just like to mention one gallery, Ridge Gallery, from Oak Park, Illinois, in passing. The paintings of Evarist Chikawe, a folk artist, from Tanzania, caught my eye. The work reminds me of Chagall and Picasso, the latter who freely borrowed from African figurative sculpture and masks in his early paintings.

http://ridgeart.com/paintings2.html
http://www.artshost.org/rafiki/rafiki/artists/evarist.htm

Looking Beyond Borat: A society and architecture of the future, or more state propaganda in Kazakhstan?

I found Sasha Cohen's film "Borat" entertaining, but I was upset and uncomfortable with just how far and for how long the device of ignorant, crude ethnic yahoo was taken by Cohen. For this is the very image of benighted country bumpkin that comes up in and is used to justify an empire's occupation or forceful re-education of its subjects.

For example, it comes up often in the image of the crude and ignorant Ukrainian peasant that was created from an imperial Russian cultural perspective, as evident in many literary works. If the backward Ukrainian peasant, as depicted in fiction, would only learn Russian and renounce his Ukrainian, peasant culture, he would become civilized, and, of course, a proud Russian, as well. Ukrainian writers were quick to jump to the peasant's defense, in particular Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, a recorder and admirer of the peasant's fertile and creative linguistic resources.

After all, peasants possess a rich folk culture with rituals, myths, stories, an extensive knowledge of their surrounding natural world. Modern composers have turned to folk music for their melodies; scientific researchers, to peasants' knowledge of herbs to develop new medications. That said, we can note that the prototype for Cohen's ethnic yahoo is not a peasant as such, but rather a Soviet Man, that is, a descendant of an ex-peasant, one who was forcibly removed from his farm during the process of collectivization and industrialization during the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union. As part of an intensive and harmful industrialization process imposed from above by Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s, the age-old agricultural communities in Kazakhstan, Russia, Belorus, and especially in Ukraine, were destroyed, individual farms made into collectives. Up to seven or eight million peasants starved to death in an artificial famine that resulted. The descendants of these survivors became Soviet people stripped of their folk and rural culture, religion and customs; conceivably, some could even have become similar to the sort of declasse troglodyte that Cohen creates in his film. But one outcome of destroying the indigenous peasant culture was desirable to the nascent Soviet Union--to create a population that was dependent on the state for work and more likely to buy into its state propaganda.

In any event, Kazakhstan the land, and Kazakhs, the people, are by no means the backward land and people that Cohen's satire makes it out be, as demonstrated by some of its cutting edge architectural projects, like the currently under construction enormous enclosed city space, the Khan Shatyry. What is really backward about Kazakhstan is the deplorably bad situation of democratic rights to free speech and assembly--such speech is censored and banned--as well as the lack of transparency in a corrupt government--with no press and media to fear, the rulers of this Central Asian nation pocket much of its wealth with impunity for themselves. Kazakhstan has in fact had only one ruler, Nursaltan Nazarbayev, and his government, since 1991.

Thus, a really more harmful and cruel joke is being played on Kazakhs by their own president than by the comedian Cohen in his film. The sad truth is that it is likely easier to make and market a film about an imaginary ethnic yahoo than about a corrupt politician in a Central Asian nation, a megalomaniac like Nazarbayev.

While some improvement in the economy is clearly evident, as a result of oil revenues, which has provided the funds for spectacular architectural projects such as the tent city, this land has remained in many ways frozen in the Soviet past circa 1991. The snatches of official Kazakhstan state propaganda, which Cohen includes at the beginning of Borat, and which are in themselves unintentionally amusing because of the heavy handed praise of labor that contributes to state power--this propaganda may well have been updated in Kazakhstan, but it has yet to be satirized by the Kazakhs themselves.

Clearly, Nazarbayev's new and spectacular architectural projects of the future also serve as propaganda for his regime and state, more effective propaganda than that of the Soviet era. At this juncture, this architecture also can serve as a symbol of hope, a utopian dream that one future day Kazakhstan's citizens could enjoy the benefits of a democratically more open democratic and progressive society. But for now this tent city functions like a Potemkin-like distraction and stage-prop on the world stage.
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2006/12/10/the-excesses-of-kazakh-architecture/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Shatyry
http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Projects/1438/Default.aspx
http://newsite.irinnews.org/country.aspx?CountryCode=KZ&RegionCode=ASI

Museum Notes: Art Institute Vollard

Before it ended, I made it to the Art Institute exhibit, Ambrose Vollard: Patron of the Avant-Garde. This art gallery owner and dealer and patron of nineteenth turn-of-the-century and early twentieth-century artists, and later a publisher of illustrated books, had an impressive collection of works by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gaugin, and others. What impressed me most were several paintings that I had not seen before, like Picasso's blue period, "The Old Guitarist", Gaugin's massive, mural sized "Where Do We Come From...", and a Van Gogh Starry Night. The book published about the exhibit by the Art Institute, a collection of essays, seems a worthwhile investment to learn more about Vollard's relations to the artists he knew.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/picasso/works.html

Gallery Notes: Morpho and Los Manos

Tired from a busy week and pressed for time, I didn't venture far tonight from where I live to visit a few opening night gallery night exhibits. First, I stopped at Morpho Gallery, which is a relatively isolated and small gallery, but I learned soon to be expanded with another room. There were works by several artists on display, and I've included a photo here of Steven Hazard's color etching, the moose with butterfly wings in place of antlers, as well as Dave Gista's painting, "Yellow Urban Professional, an inventive imposition of the cityscape outline onto figures dressed in suits. The staff of two was solicitous to gallery visitors, and I had a chance to ask them questions about some of the artists.

http://www.morphogallery.com/

My next gallery stop was at the Los Manos Gallery where there were four artists being shown, two of whom worked in larger scale. Striking and original were Tim Hurley's large oil paintings, and the one I included a photo of here was one in a series shown at the gallery tonight. Clearly, these iconic like paintings with brilliant colors and intricate designs have some private symbolic meaning for the artist, but the viewer can read his or her own interpretation into the painting. Fletcher Hayes paintings impressed me as well; he works on a large scale and had several large scale paintings of landscapes.

http://www.lasmanosgallery.org/artists/26/

Note on Readings & Music: The Partly Dave Show at Neofuturarium

Tonight, I went to the Partly Dave Show, which features readings and music, showcasing local talent in Chicago. I especially enjoyed Dave Awl's satire on celebrity relationships as seen from the perspective of the distant future, amused and puzzled about the bizarre lives of movie stars, Kurt Heinz's moving account of a search for love in a bar one evening, and Christopher Piatt's poetic account of his narrator's attempt to find love with someone from the neocon camp. The music of the band Even in Blackouts with acoustic guitars had thoughtful, well written lyrics. John Pierce, the lead guitar and founder of this band, was in a commercially successful punk band, Screeching Weasel. Tonight's show reminds me that there is writing and performing talent aplenty which is on par or better than what can be found in more popular and well funded and publicized work.

I should add a word that Dave Awl's hilarious and zany satire on celebrity relationships took an idea from tabloids and ran with it, that is, introducing an incredible and bizarre rumor about a celebrity. His starting point were two Star Wars erasers of aliens who were mistakenly identified in the distant future as representations of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston.

A podcast of the entire evening should be up soon on Dave Awl's website, Ocelapatomus, so any reader will be able to listen to this and the other parts of the show.

http://ocelopotamus.com/ http://eveninblackouts.com/

Art Project Chicago: 300 Portraits

If anyone has interest in portrait paintings, you can take a look at a link that offers more than 300 of them rendered in distinctive styles by Chicago artists Lisa Parenteau-DePinto and Daniela Ortiz. Lisa takes some inspiration from Alice Neel, a renowned painter of portraits and figures, and her work uses a darker palette than Daniela's. Over a 15-month period, 300 individuals were asked to model for usually one or sometimes two sessions of one to several hours. About half this number may be found on the web page of the project. I was among the subjects selected to pose, since I had met Lisa in a figure drawing workshop. The project culminated with an exhibit opening with performances at a large exhibit space in Chicago named Galaxie earlier this year. http://www.galaxiechicago.com/galaxiesite/home.htm

http://www.300heads.com/heads.asp?p=all

Russia: World Chess Champion Versus KGB Judo Practicing President

I've been reading news stories about disturbing political developments that Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer who has worked for Russian clients, has been posting about Russia on his blog. Not that this is really startling news, but the recent incidents in what's turning out to be a heavy handed and rigged government election to put President Putin's successor in place, a reversion to standard Soviet practice, only reinforces the sense that the Putin government is digging the country into a deeper hole, reverting Russia into a new post-Soviet version of the repressive pre-1985 authoritarian state.

The efforts of retired world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a Russian politician protesting the charade of an election in Russia, and trying to run for the position of president of the Russian Federation, are courageous, but ineffectual. For the Putin-led government controls all the news sources, so simply doesn't allow dissent or protest to be broadcast, nor for that matter public protests and rallies.

Though it's claimed Putin's government enjoys support of the majority of the population, one can certainly assume that it would decrease--just how much is an open question--with an open press and investigative journalism. Perhaps sensing that a mere spark of protest could eventually start a fire, as it had in Ukraine in late 2005, the Putin government has brutally put down protests, with police beating protesters and arresting them. For now Kasparov has taken to the internet to broadcast his candidacy for president, and more importantly provide much needed criticism of the current president's disregard for adhering to democratic process.

One wonders how the government will choose to handle him, because he is well-known throughout the world. Will one of Putin's henchmen venture to slip some poison in his soup, as was done to current president of Ukraine, Yushchenko, as he was running for office against a Ukrainian pro-Putin candidate? It remains to be seen just how low Putin's government will stoop.

For now thanks to genuine democrats, like Kasparov, the undemocratic transfer of the presidency in Russia will be put in a brighter spotlight, exposing the true thuggish, authoritarian face of the current Russian government, which makes itself out to be a benevolent, paternal government that must rule with force and a strong hand.

Recent attempts to silence Kasparov have shown that it's likely that the transfer of power won't be anywhere as smooth as Putin anticipated. Government justifications for cracking down on legitimate and legal protests and rallies will ring quite hollow. And, Putin won't easily perform a judo flip on a wily rival like Kasparov, at least as long as the world is watching. But it's high time for democratic nations to speak out more forcefully at the travesty of electoral politics in Russia where there are no debates even allowed. To begin with, censure Putin and insist that he and his government respect the rules of democracy. To stop overlooking the increasingly flagrant disregard for rule of law being practiced in Russia only encourages it to continue.

For a recent article by a Russian human rights activist published at Open Democracy see:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/russia_civil_society_4573.jsp#

http://www.robertamsterdam.com/