Sarah Chang at the Ent Center for the Arts

Last night, Paige and I saw violinist Sarah Chang in concert at the new Ent Center for the Arts, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs' 92,000 square foot facility hub for the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. The building opened with its first gala performance just last month on February 3. The center includes four theaters, a recording studio and audio lab, an art gallery, and space for rehearsals, lessons, and offices. It's a gorgeous structure. The long, rippling front of the building has floor to ceiling windows that offer beautiful views of the Front Range with Pikes Peak front and center. Colorado Springs has a vibrant musical tradition, and the new center enriches both the university and the community.

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UCCS, which was established in 1965, is growing rapidly. Enrollment has spiked by over 60% in the past decade, and the student population is currently about 12,400. There's some speculation that the student population will double in the next ten years. The school was a commuter campus until 1997, but has since been adding student housing. In the fall of 2014, The Lodges of Colorado Springs, an attractive student housing complex with mountain views, a pool, and a sauna, opened, and more housing is being built.

It's good to see Colorado encouraging the arts. The University of Northern Colorado, with its gem of a music school, has students rehearse in a scruffy, off-campus hall and perform at the admittedly attractive but off-campus Union Colony Civic Center. UNC will finally get its own on-campus performance hall, along with a multi-purpose auditorium, an art gallery, and other functionality, when the new Campus Commons opens later this year. The last beam of the new structure was placed in December, 2017, and the building should open within the next few months.

Last night's performance was spectacular. Sarah Chang was accompanied by a small ensemble consisting of two violinists, a violist, a cellist, and a bassist. She exhibited great exuberance and joy, both in her play and in the way she related to the audience. She was an extraordinary child prodigy who started studying at Juilliard's Pre-College Division at the tender age of six, and debuted with the New York Philharmonic at all of eight years old. Her parents apparently tried to keep her childhood as normal as possible. They told her she didn't need to go to Juilliard if it "wasn't fun" for her (she says it was tremendous fun) and tried to ensure she didn't feel pressured. She seems bright and bubbly and has had influence outside of music. She was appointed to President Obama's Commission on Russian Relations and was also a State Department Special Cultural Envoy. She seems to have a rich and happy life.

Sarah and her ensemble played three pieces in the intimate setting of the Shockley-Zalabak Theater, which is an ideal setting for a chamber orchestra. The first piece, by the Italian composer Tomaso Antonio Vitali, was Chaconne in G minor. Very pretty! The second was a series of excerpts from Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Spectacular! They concluded with The Four Season of Buenos Aires by the 20th century Argentinian composer, Astor Piazzolla. Fun and interesting, especially in the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.

It was a fun evening, and I look forward to many more performances at The Ent Center. I hope its opening heralds the further development of UCCS's music program.

Theological Hope Versus Secular Optimism

In another iteration of his overarching narrative that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, writer Anthony Esolen today had A World Without Hope published at Crisis Magazine, a supposedly Catholic site that attracts the angriest and gloomiest of Internet warriors. For someone who reveres "that guide of intelligence and beauty, Lady Faith" and quotes Charles Péguy as saying that Hope is the "little sister" of the other theological virtues because she gives them "the heart to go forth", his piece is surprisingly pessimistic. We live, he writes, in "a cheerless world".

After demonizing public schools for relating morality to secular politics while simultaneously claiming it is parents that instil faith in their children, he goes off on a tangent about 1 Samuel. In this Old Testament narrative, a woman named Hannah, the favorite wife of Elkanah, grieves about her apparent inability to bear children and prays for a child. She eventually manages to produce Samuel, whom she hands over to the Temple to be raised and trained by a priest, Eli. Eli has two badass sons, Hophni and Phineas, who are described as "scoundrels" and "the sons of Belial". Hophni and Phineas, in contradiction of the Law of Moses, keep the meat of sacrificial animals for themselves and have sex with women who serve at the entrance to the Temple. Eli scolds his sons, who pay no attention.

Old Testament God then gets all butthurt because Eli is honoring his sons more than his God, so he sends a "man of God" to gleefully announce that God will break his former promise that members of Eli's family would "minister before me forever". Instead, God will now ensure that nobody from Eli's house will reach old age, that his sons will die on the same day, that all his descendents will die in the prime of life, and that those family members allowed to continue serving at God's altar will only be spared in order to have their strength sapped and their sight destroyed. OT God then apparently allows the Philistines to attack the Israelites. The Philistines kill 30,000 Israelites, abscond with the Ark of the Convenant, and kill Hophni and Phineas. On hearing this, Eli keels over, breaks his neck, and dies. It is mentioned that he is overweight, perhaps from eating all that meat that was supposed to be sacrificed (I keep telling people veganism is the way to go). And all these people had to die because Hophni and Phineas are "sons of Belial".

So apparently this story proves that hope is good but optimism is bad and that schoolteachers can't be religiously neutral but must choose between being the wise Samuel or the evil Hophni and Phineas. I don't get it either. The "reasoning" behind this conclusion is that Eli, like certain bishops (Pope Francis not specifically mentioned), was too lenient in his rebuke of his sons. If I had to order the immorality of the characters in the story, God would be first, and the Philistines, who killed thousands, would be second. The sins of Hophni and Phineas would be small potatoes by comparison. Poor old Eli seemed like a reasonable dude.

Esolen claims that modern schooling is "Belial, with bright banners and sparkle-dust". He claims children are raised today to embrace wealth, pleasure, and self-advancement. He claims efforts to raise children to "make the world a better place" are not based in true goodness but in "a perfectly grim hedonism, gussied up as Progress." This is a very uncharitable view that excludes the very real possiblity that many teachers act with the best of intentions.

If Esolen wanted a biblical story that would inspire a teacher, he could have chosen better than one so filled with murderous themes of sadism, control, and submission. How about the parable of the loaves and the fishes with its kindly sentiments of mutual support? Or the parable of the good Samaritan, with its ethic of reaching out to the marginalized? His resentment of "progress" and the benefits of modernism seems to be based in fury that the world, as I have pointed out in other posts, is becoming a kinder, gentler place, even as it is becoming more secular.

If Esolen wants to make the case for the value of religion, he needs a better story than 1 Samuel. If he wants to make the case for the value of hope as a theololgical virtue, he needs to stop moping and wringing his hands and passing judgment on everyone and start seeing the beauty and goodness in the world and its people (which he dismisses as "optimism ... mere atheism with a glad hand and a smile.")

Perhaps he believes we are all "made in the image and likeness of God" and that God is the monster of 1 Samuel who kills off people who aren't sufficiently servile. Well, that would make me depressed too.

Modern Youth

Bashing young people has long been a popular pastime. 

Socrates (469 - 399 BCE) is quoted as saying, "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

In The Winter's Tale, III.iii, Shakespeare has an old shepherd say, “I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting -"

I'll have to tease my kids about "wronging the ancientry". 

While young people do get arrested at higher rates than older people, they are, in general, better behaved than their parents were at the same age, as this graphic shows:





The only people acting up worse today than a generation ago are the over-55's!

Each generation appears to be doing a better job than the previous one. By every metric, the world is getting better over time. We live longer, global GDP has surged, and extreme poverty has fallen.  War deaths have fallen dramatically. Deaths from HIV/AIDS and many other diseases have fallen. Fewer mothers die in childbirth, and infant and child mortality rates have dropped.

On a global scale, we are far better educated than we have ever been. Global illiteracy has dropped from almost 90% in 1800 to 14.7% in 2014. School enrollment and mean years of schooling are increasing. Education is becoming more accessible to girls, in spite of the many barriers that still exist in some parts of the world. Educated women, in turn, contribute to further bettering the world. Young people are smarter than their elders. Global IQ has risen 20 points since 1950 (the Flynn effect).

As Steven Pinker would say, "The Enlightenment Is Working". As a species, we are making more rational, data-driven choices about what does and does not improve human flourishing.

Today, a month after the Parkland shooting, young people all over the country walked out of their schools to protest our gun culture and our society's unwillingness to address mass shootings. The student survivors of Parkland have spoken out with clarity and confidence in a way that I don't think students of my own generation could have done. They have looked at the facts and come up with compelling arguments. They are not intimidated by powerful adults who accept NRA donations. These clear-eyed, outspoken, and courageous young people give me great hope for the future. They have taken a look at the status quo and are, as Emma Gonzalez puts it, calling BS:

"Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that we are all self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn't reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS."

You go, kids!

Composer Andrew Norman

So yesterday I went up to see Paige play in one of a series of concerts put on by her university orchestra, for which she is the harpist. This one featured music by Andrew Norman, a modern composer, born on Halloween, 1979, who was educated at USC and Yale. He is currently the Composer in Residence for the LA Chamber Orchestra. Norman's atonal pieces have won wide acclaim and have been performed by several notable ensembles, including the LA and New York Philharmonics. Among many accolades, he was named Musical America's 2017 Composer of the Year, and he was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Andrew Norman was present at last night's performance and spoke to the audience about what inspires him. He's very intrigued by architecture, and the first piece on the program, Farnsworth: Four Portraits of a House, is a musical representation of four different viewing angles of a midcentury modern house, The Farnsworth House, in Plano, IL. The piece is scored for four clarinets, a violin, a flute, and percussion (in this case, a marimba was used.) The clarinets, or "House Ensemble", take center stage and express the architectural form of the house, while the remaining four instruments, the "Nature Ensemble", are spread out in a wide rectangle (last night, the flautist and violinist were in the audience on opposite sides of the hall, and the pianist and percussionist were on far sides of the stage) and make sounds intended to represent the fluctuating state of the natural environment surrounding the house.  The next piece was Try, which Norman describes as "messy and fragmented." It represents the process of trial and error inherent in composing. Musicians in the orchestra produce a series of experimental sounds and have some latitude to produce different sounds at every performance. Toward the end of the performance, the pianist and percussionist appear to get into a "musical argument" that culminates with the pianist asserting a piece of musical material that seems to satisfy him. In the final piece, Switch, Norman experiments with "control and agency" to illustrate the degree of freedom individual musicians have in an orchestra. When a percussionist would hit one wood block, the violins would, for example, stop playing and the cellos would start. When he hit another, the situation would be reversed. This piece also plays with physical gestures and sonics. For example, when the violinists would suddenly stop playing, in response to a "command" from the percussionist, they would freeze with their bows held high.

His work is clever and imaginative. I must be a complete philistine because none of his pieces sounded like music to me. Instead, they sounded like random scritching, scratching, and banging, frequently interspersed with periods of total silence, during which the musical energy and power of the orchestra were squandered.

His pieces reminded me of an unpleasant auditory (and visual!) experience I had a few weeks back. I was sitting in our basement family room, when I heard some movement from behind the gas fireplace -- a series of rustling and scratching sounds punctuated by periods of stillness. Suddenly I heard loud metallic banging and clanging, as though someone was trying to break in with a crowbar! Then, to my horror, a little mouse burst out of the fireplace and ran around the hearth, its feet making raspy, whispering sounds. That mouse was the Andrew Norman of the rodent world. I sprinkled the entire basement and fireplace with two large bottles of peppermint oil, which is to mice what garlic cloves and crucifixes are to vampires, and we have had no more mice or scritching sounds since. Alas, I had nothing similar to repel the abrasive, migraine-inducing cacophony of last night. My only solace was an adorable baby, who could be heard cooing softly during the silences and who provided the only sweet, melodic notes of the performance.

Please, Dr. Orchestra Director, could you select some nice, harmonious Romantic-era pieces for the next performance?

I picked Craig up the airport on my way home from Greeley this morning. Paige is coming home later today for spring break, which means cocktails and harp music😀

High School Reunion

I was contacted the other day by two old schoolfriends who are planning a high school reunion for our class. I was thrilled to hear from them both. The reunion will be in Cape Town in mid September. They have set up a WhatsApp group, and old friends have been checking in from every continent except Antarctica! 'So good to "hear" their voices after all these years.

From a bunch of convent girls, many of my old friends have grown up to be incredibly free-spirited people. Some have chosen paths that might have been considered transgressive back when we were at school. Sadly, some have passed away, and some have faded away and none of us is able to find them.

High school was not a happy time in my life. All I wanted at the time was to hide away from the world. My schoolfriends seemed happy, carefree, and exuberant, for the most part, and I watched their lives as though I were watching a movie -- an interested observer of something remote and surreal. Now, after several decades of living with confidence and dignity, I feel I can join in their joyful, light-hearted chatter and enter their circle as one annointed to feeling welcomed and valued.

I hope to be able to attend. I won't go there to slay old demons but to rediscover a part of myself that once felt trampled. I want to liberate the teenaged girl that I was and to allow her to be as frivolous, lively, and boisterous as every happy teenager should be.

The "TTLA" and Fast Food

A hot new fast food is the TTLA sandwich, a vegan twist on the classic BLT, from Whole Foods. It comprises tempeh bacon (Whole Foods uses Lightlife Organic Fakin' Bacon tempeh strips), tomato, lettuce, avocado, and garlic aioli on a toasted ciabatta roll. These sandwiches are so popular that Whole Foods outlets have been running out of some of the ingredients, particularly tempeh. I found a copycat TTLA recipe and made one earlier today. I thought it was very good, although I found the tempeh bacon a little overwhelming; I think I'd have preferred it with the more subtly flavored Morning Star Veggie Bacon Strips, lightly crisped with perhaps a smudge of BBQ sauce. Also, I think it was improved by a little red onion.

Laura and I schlepped 30 minutes down to the Springs last Sunday to get vegan burgers, chicken strips, and fries from a drive through grill. We waited in a line of cars for 40 minutes to get some very mediocre food. The fries and chicken strips were deep-fried and slick with grease. The burgers were dry, and there was about a square inch of lettuce and tomato on each. For anyone feeling entrepreneurial, a vegan fast food restaurant in the Springs would probably do well.

Tennis and The Case Against Competition

I was just reading a September, 1987, article by Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Competition. Kohn suggests that competition is always destructive as it damages self-esteem, hinders performace, breaks down empathy, encourages hostility, fails to foster cooperative behavior, creates anxiety, and diminishes creativity.

I wonder how much Emma has been hurt, as a tennis player, by the insanity of intense competition. I've certainly seen Kohn's concerns play out. Most of my family's interactions with other parents, coaches, and players have been overwhelmingly positive and we've made some wonderful friends through the sport, but we've also witnessed some very bizarre, toxic, and downright abusive behavior. Every athlete and sports parent has a few war stories.

Here are my "toxic parent" stories ...

Crazy Mama: Emma, at 14, was in the midst of winning an easy match. A friend of ours stopped by to watch and announced loudly -- and rather tactlessly, given that Emma's opponent's mother was sitting nearby --"Well, this match is completely one-sided!" This appeared to trigger Crazy Mama, who had been noticeably irritable and hostile even before the match started. Shortly thereafter, this woman had a complete meltdown. She began shrieking hysterically at Emma, who was then up 4-0 in the second set, accusing her of making bad calls and yelling at her to "give up tennis." Craig (I wasn't there) was too stunned to respond to her but went to fetch the tournament director. Both the TD and other parents who had been watching said they had seen no bad calls. After the match, as Craig and the tournament director were discussing the incident, Crazy Mama ran after Emma, cornered her alone, and screamed invective at her. Hearing the fracas, Craig and the TD hurried to the scene, where Crazy Mama was bellowing to Emma that she should "Just give it up!", that she'd "never get anywhere," and that she'd "never catch up" with the top player in our section (which includes six states.) The only person unfazed by the shrieking banshee was Emma, who calmly advised her to settle down. The TD praised Emma for handling the situation with maturity and poise. Other parents who witnessed the incident said it was the worst case of parental bad sportsmanship they'd ever seen, apologized for being too taken aback to intervene, and offered to help us file a USTA complaint. Unsurprisingly, we later learned from several sources that this woman is widely known as an absolute wackjob. I hope she doesn't treat her own kid the way she treated mine😧

Angry Papa: We've had a father yell "Kill her!" to his daughter as she played Emma. The next time the two girls played, I decided to defuse his hostility early in the match. As Angry Papa became increasingly clamorous and aggressive, I went over to him and asked, "Are you L's dad?" He jutted his jaw forward, obviously expecting a confrontation. "Yes, I'm L's dad!" he growled. "Well, I'm Emma's mom. Pleased to meet you," I replied with a smile. I shook his hand politely and sat down right next to him. Angry Papa looked sheepish, a guilty expression that screamed "Busted!" crossed his face, and he didn't utter a sound for the remainder of the match.

Sour Mama: On another occasion, as I arrived for one of Emma's matches, her opponent's mother and a friend sniffed disdainfully and looked away. Sour Mama's friend had a face like a grouper -- reproachful, a downturned, dissatisfied mouth, an affronted and protruding lower lip, and colorless, disapproving eyes. Sour Mama appeared to be deeply offended. The two indulged in a steady stream of mean-spirited remarks about Emma that I was obviously meant to overhear. They were piqued by the red streak in her hair. When she showed mild frustration, they rolled their eyes and said, "I can't believe her parents let her behave like that." I can't believe their parents let them behave like that, but I endured their passive aggression in silence.

So that's the sum of our negative experiences with sports parents. 'Not too bad, really, except for Crazy Mama. Most of our tennis friends have seen worse. One was physically threatened by a tennis dad who was irate about his daughter's loss. Another dad almost got into a physical confontation when a father insulted his daughter and accused her of cheating. This girl attends a tennis academy in Florida, where cheating, bad behavior, and fraught, stressed-out parents and kids seem to be the norm. Florida is awash with failed pros trying to redeem their careers through their children.

I don't know of any kids who have behaved as badly as these parents, although Emma has had to put up with her share of cheaters. Sometimes they have tried to change the score on her ("What do you mean it's 5-2? It's 3-4!") or have made obviously bad calls. I think the kids are sometimes overwrought or confused rather than mendacious. One girl, who thankfully graduated high school and went off to college some years ago, was notorious for protesting her opponents' every call. She could usually be heard, even from several courts away, passionately shrieking and objecting throughout every match she played, whoever she was playing. Playing Emma on one occasion, she suddenly erupted, when Emma called a ball out, with "That ball was on the line! I saw it! I saw it clearly RIGHT. ON. THE. LINE!!!" She stormed over to Emma's side of the court and pointed triumphantly to a mark on the clay. "SEE. THERE!!! ON THE LINE!" "Are you sure that's the mark?" asked Emma. "Yes, I didn't take my eyes off that point from the time the ball landed," she professed indignantly. "I agree with you. That's where the ball landed," replied Emma, "but you are aware that that is the doubles line?" That meant the ball was not only out, but 4.5 feet out! The girl realized her mistake and became flustered and defensive. "But ... I'm sure ..." She looked frantically for a mark on the singles line. There was none. Eventually Emma just gave her the point to get the match going again.

The coaches are not always above reproach either. They will sometimes play mind games or illegally coach their students during a match. One, a high school coach, blatantly "fixed" his high school tryouts to give his private (paying) student a preferred position on the varsity team. Coaches at a certain Florida academy tell their students they need to hate their opponents. "If you can't find anything about the other player to hate, try to hate her shoes," they advise. I am so grateful that all of Emma's coaches have been outstanding human beings and worthy mentors.

There have been many positive aspects for Emma in terms of tennis. Above all, she has made wonderful friends of all ages and met some incredible people who have guided and encouraged her. She was recruited to play for several very nice colleges. She'll be playing for one in the fall, and she already has a college "family" there in the coaches and the team (she met most of the people on both the men's and women's teams over two visits to the school). Her life will be enriched by traveling around the country for tournaments. She has become physically fit and healthy, despite suffering through several injuries. She has gained mental strength, focus, and a deeper understanding of herself. On the whole, and despite some significant negative experiences, I would say tennis has had a positive impact on her life. If one enjoys the game and can keep the competitive aspect in context, perhaps competition is not always toxic ...

Adventures in Asian Vegan Cooking

So tonight I served Air Fryer Orange Tofu , along with a rice concoction I made in the Nutripot. For the rice dish, I fried a large, diced onion on "Sear" until caramelized, added garlic, one red and one green pepper (both diced), and "Seared" the lot for a couple of minutes. I added the juice from a tin of pineapple chunks, some rice, and some veggie broth, and cooked it all in the pressure cooker for 11 minutes. I allowed a natural release for about 10 minutes before stirring in the pineapple chunks and some chopped scallions. Alas, Emma wouldn't eat it, but Laura and I thought it was delicious (Craig is in California.)

For our next Asian dish, I plan to do a peanut sauce (some combination including Thai red curry paste, peanut butter, and a can of coconut milk) and to serve it with cubes of tofu rolled in a mixture of nutritional yeast and wheat germ and baked in the air fryer at 390°F for 10 mintutes. Courtesy of my picky eaters, I'll make plain rice. And then the tofu-hating, sauce-hating contingent can have microwaved Morning Star "chick'n" nuggets (made primarily from soy.)

Air Frying

Today, because I'm trying to get us all eating healthily, I picked up an air fryer. I just learned about this new beast when I attended a vegan cooking class last month. The new toy is really just a little convection oven that cooks without oil (or with just a little spritz of oil) by rapidly circulating very hot air around food, crisping the outside and giving it the texture of deep fried food. Air fryers cook a lot more quickly than convection ovens (usually in about 60% of the time.)

The first thing I tried were zucchini fries. I just chopped up a zucchini into shoestring fry shapes, threw them in a basket, and cooked them for 15 minutes at 350°F with no oil. They came out somewhat crisp, grease-free, slightly caramelized, and with their flavor greatly intensified. Then I tried regular shoestring French fries. Although the basket contained about as many French fries as it could hold (I should probably have cooked them in two batches), they cooked fairly evenly (the outer ones were slightly crispier.) I gave them just a light misting with oil (about a half second spray) and cooked them at 400°F for 20 minutes. They were the best French fries I've ever had, and they went down well with vegan hot dogs! So far, I'm very happy with the results.

I plan to try Air Fryer Orange Tofu next. I'll serve it with Instant Pot Fried Rice. I've never had much success with making my own veggie burgers (they tend to crumble), but I'm told these hold together well in the air fryer, so burgers with a variety of veggie fries are also on the agenda. And then I want to try vegetable tempura.

I'm trying to avoid making desserts. However, Laura and Emma, with all the running and tennis they do, can well afford some extra calories. I'll be able to make them individual chocolate lava cakes in the air fryer very quickly and easily. I've been getting them packages of "chocolate cake in a mug" kits. One mixes the contents of a pouch with some water, cooks it in a mug in the microwave for just over a minute, and then adds a small pouch of chocolate frosting to the result.

Cooking is becoming so quick, easy, hygenic, and convenient! And healthy ingredients like quinoa, tempeh, and vegan meat and dairy analogs are so readily available! I'm looking forward to using my air fryer and multicooker in tandem to experiment with many new recipes. So far, I've been surprised by their ease of use and by the quality of food they produce. Both lend themselves well to preparing vegan meals, and both cook food very quickly. They also make cleanup a cinch. The air fryer has one little basket to wash, and the multicooker just one teflon-coated pot.