Three Ideas for a Novel

Narrowing nine ideas down to three:

2. A boy accidentally strangles a horse with a monstrous vine, and has to figure out where in his muddled ancestry the vine came from, and why.

3. A genius hermit discovers a way to talk to dead people, and can’t handle all the living people who want to talk to him about it.
6. Two assassins are hired to kill a god.

NYTimes: Designing Your Own Wallpaper

I really want to do something like this when I get my own place someday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/technology/personaltech/15basics.html?src=me&ref=technology

I think it would be fun to essentially design my own wallpaper.  I've been thinking of some things that might be awesome:

• A map of the world. I'd put little stickers, or pushpins, or something, on all the places I've visited. I love traveling -- I love exploring all the history and art and architecture, the cultural relics of centuries past (You can probably tell from the Italy posts.).
• An underwater scene. It would be like having an enormous aquarium, only lower-maintenance and more practical (especially since certain beautiful species of fish are rather difficult to keep alive at home, not to mention that certain species don't get along with other species, or members of the same sex of the same species, &c.).  I am a huge fan of anything colorful or shiny that swims around (if I had one of those aquarium screensavers, I'm sure my productivity would plummet).
• A lakeside scene. Something along the lines of a 山水画, which is a specifically Chinese kind of painting (well, the Japanese have something like it too, but it was mostly borrowed from the Chinese). There's no good translation for it that quite captures the complete meaning of the phrase; the literal meaning is "mountain water picture". It's a particularly peaceful sort of landscape painting that I rather like. 
• The sky. I would love to wallpaper a ceiling with a picture of the sky -- perhaps a sunny blue sky with clouds and kites, or a rich sunset, or (if it wouldn't darken the room too much) a night sky with glow-in-the-dark stars -- not the plastic, five-pointed stick-on kind, but stars as seen by the human eye. I know it's not really the done thing to have ceilings of any color but white, but it would be awesome. (Unlike the other ideas, stars could be painted onto a monochromatic black or blue ceiling, but not with the same accuracy. And I'd have to stick the moon up there anyhow.)

Note to self: reread this blog entry in a few years.

Unintentional Humor at the Chinese Supermarket

A number of photographs I've taken of humorous Chinglish at Chinese supermarkets:

When I think "picnic", I'm expecting something along the lines of ham and cheese, not giant slabs of pork...

It sounds like a squid-skinning competition. Do squids even have skins?

Umm... they're heads, but not sheep heads. I Wikipedia'ed it, thinking perhaps "sheep head" might be the colloquial name for a type of fish, but it turns out it's a Wisconsin card game. Right.

Perhaps the oddest one of all... I can't tell if they're Canadian (are American snails any different from Canadian ones?), but they certainly aren't lobsters!

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria: Her Majesty Discovers YouTube

I was highly amused:

http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/2010/08/18/

http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/2010/08/19/

My sister and I have both of these songs memorized. We're an odd family, we know.

Nine Ideas for a Novel

This quarter, I'm taking a creative writing class on NaNoWriMo (that is, National Novel Writing Month). It's exactly what it says: in November, we will be writing 50,000 words of fiction, which is the lower bound for the acceptable length of a novel (though nowadays, that's usually considered a novella).

I've done this thrice in the past, and have "won" twice. (Winning is merely hitting 50,000 by the end of the month; there's no compensation except for the satisfaction of having written.) So for all of you who think I'm a really harsh editor, trust me, I've been in your shoes.

Anyhow, for class, we are supposed to blog about the process, our stories, &c. To wit, the first assignment:

Nine Ideas for a Novel:

1. A girl is kidnapped by an prodigal angel and must find her way out of the seven circles of Hell.
   
2. A boy accidentally strangles a horse with a monstrous vine, and has to figure out where in his muddled ancestry the vine came from, and why.
3. A genius hermit discovers a way to talk to dead people, and can't handle all the living people who want to talk to him about it.
4. A priest has to save the world from a god whom nobody believes is evil.
5. Decades after a bloody civil war, a monk who has been hiding all the records reveals that the war didn't happen the way everyone thinks it did.
6. Two assassins are hired to kill a god.
7. There is a room that runs the world, and one of the people in it wants to destroy the world, but nobody knows which one it is.
8. A boy is kidnapped by the pirate captain of a magic carpet, and steals the captain's genie.
9. An airship cadet is convinced his classmate was murdered by international agents, and tries to find out why.

What do you think?

NYTimes: A Straddling Bus to Alleviate China's Congestion Problems

My father first showed me a picture of this new vehicle from a Chinese newspaper; this is The New York Times's article on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/business/global/18bus.html

I really like the idea; it looks odd (not that that's a problem -- I actually rather like the design), but it's an innovative and tremendously efficient use of space. We should have these back home.

BBC: Cannibal Star Consumes Neighbor

When I saw the title, I had to click on it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11313601

Basically, one star devours another star that got too close. Very interesting, especially since it's not just a matter of the cannibalistic star getting bigger; it also absorbed some of the properties of the smaller one, to the point where scientists weren't sure whether the new dual-star was an old one, or a larger new one.

I miss astronomy sometimes (I live it vicariously by reading science books). I once took a class on it in middle school, and it was one of the best summers ever.

NYTimes: The Dutch Pioneer an Airport Library

One of the very sad trends of today is that fewer people seem to be reading, what with all the other forms of entertainment readily available. Some of the recent e-book innovations (like the Kindle) and blockbuster franchises (like Harry Potter) have helped, but overall, libraries are noting a downturn in patronage and bookstores a decrease in sales. We have to come up with new ways to get people to read, much as many other aspects of life have evolved. One previously underexploited population is the commuter -- not the daily commuter who spends half-an-hour on the train, but the distance commuter who often has plenty of time to kill in the airport. Enter the airport library:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/arts/16iht-library.html?ref=global-home

It's a really good idea, methinks. Of course, we shall have to see whether the net loss of books becomes a problem. Two things to consider:

1. A lending library system with locations at many major international airports. People going on longer journeys may forget about a book entirely during their trip, and probably wouldn't remember to return it at their airport of departure when they finally made it back there. But most people, I think, can finish a paperback of reasonable length during an international flight, and it would be much more convenient if they could drop off the book at a different branch when they get off the plane, rather than bring it with them on their return trip.

2. A system for e-book lending. A lot of people have e-book readers nowadays, and a lot of people bring their readers when they travel, because it's easier than carting around a stack of books in their luggage. Such systems already exist in many library systems; it shouldn't be too hard to adapt that technology to an airport library. I can imagine some system of lending periods corresponding to the duration of flights or trips.

I think this is an excellent concept, and I can't wait to see a library in JFK or SFO one of these days!

Italy Travelogue, Part 3: Vatican City

If you're ever in Rome, the Vatican is definitely worth seeing. It'll take a day, at least, but do go. It's chock-full of centuries of artwork and architecture, and not all of it is Catholic; some of the most famous classical sculptures are there. The pièce de résistance, of course, is the Sistine Chapel; disappointingly, but understandably, we were not allowed to photograph it. We did take pictures of lots of other things...

The Vatican Museums are home to some of the greatest artistic treasures in the world. Exhibit A -- Here's the marble of Laocoön and sons being strangled by Athena's sea serpents, the one that Pliny the Elder wrote about (Yes, I took Latin in high school, why do you ask?), one of the most celebrated statues from antiquity:


The story goes, Laocoön was a Trojan priest of Poseidon, who was in Poseidon's bad books because he took a wife and sired children (this is relevant only because his terrible luck and grisly death is sometimes attributed to the god's displeasure). Anyhow, he was one of the few Trojans who suspected that the Trojan horse was a ruse, and proposed that they set it on fire. Athena summoned a pair of giant snakes to strangle him and his sons. The Trojans then assumed that the horse was sacred (and that anyone who dared to harm it would meet a similarly nasty end), and so they brought the horse into Troy. I'm not sure who had it worse, Laocoön or Cassandra.

We also saw Raphael's even more famous The School of Athens:


This is often considered to be not only Raphael's finest piece, but also the very spirit of the Renaissance in painted form. The term itself, "Renaissance", means "rebirth", and the great artists and thinkers of the Renaissance felt a deep intellectual kinship with their Greco-Roman peers. It is only fitting that the spirit of the era is captured as Greek institution.

I had fun squinting up at it and trying to identify all the people in the painting, but I didn't get very far. The two figures in the middle (under the central arch) are Plato and Aristotle, in the red and blue mantles, respectively. Plato is supposed to be modeled on Leonardo da Vinci (and with that beard, I can see the resemblance). Michelangelo is in the middle on the bottom step (purple shirt and red pants, with his elbow on a box, looking bored), as a Greek painter (what else) of some importance. Raphael painted himself in, too, though I didn't find him until we got home. He's in the upper right, where the bottom of the arch meets the top of the pillar, next to the old man in the green cloak (he's wearing red and purple, too).

Fast-forwarding several centuries in art history, we come to Canova's Perseus, who is depicted in the style of the classical hero (read: naked), holding up the head of his slain foe (Medusa). Here he is:


I thought he looked rather familiar, and that's because he is. Canova made another Perseus, which is almost identical, and that one resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I've seen it before.

Canova's Perseus is one of the few post-Renaissance marbles to be exhibited so prominently in the Vatican Museums, and rightly so. He sculpted Perseus in the tail end of the Baroque era, when everything was excessively embellished (to the point of seeming nauseatingly garish), and manages to capture the hero triumphant, simple and clothed in little besides his own achievement.

The Vatican Museums also house a collection of artifacts of non-European antiquity. They have an excellent Egyptian wing, and also one with Near Eastern art. My sister and I were much amused to find, in the Assyrian section, this piece:


It's Birdman! (My sister is a better bird(wo)man than I am, I know; I have a terrible poker face.)

It's one of many long-standing points of reference for us. She currently attends the same middle school I did, and one of our favorite teachers is the inimitable Ms. Springer, archaeologist and historian extraordinare, who taught us sixth grade history. (She did a wonderful job of it, too; I was immensely surprised to find, in my Ancient Empires course reader, a passage from "Wen-Amon Goes to Phoenicia", which we read in sixth grade.)

Birdman was one of the most memorable characters from our Assyria unit. I still remember taking a field trip to the Met to see him; I thought he was enormous, back then. I spotted him in the Vatican all these years later, and we couldn't resist.

Of course, no trip to the Vatican is complete without a visit to St. Peter's Basilica. The lines were not as terrible as we'd feared (thank goodness!), and the inside was every bit as spectacularly grand as we'd imagined. I made a beeline for Michelangelo's most famous Pietà:


You'll have to click on it to get a closer view, and even then, it's still quite small; I was pressed up against the plexiglas wall, but I was still about a dozen feet away from it. Apparently, some crazy person tried to attack it with a hammer, and ended up chipping off Mary's nose, and so they won't let anyone get anywhere near it anymore. (Something similar happened to the David (who lost a few toes), and so there's a plexiglas shield around him, too.)

One of the first things anyone notices about the work is that Mary looks incredibly young. There's some debate about why this is; we know that Michelangelo made her deliberately so. Some say that it's an indication of her purity and favor with God; others say that she's actually supposed to be a young mother, and that she's holding her baby and having a premonition of her son's fate.

On the subject of Pietàs, I edited the Florence part to include some pictures from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo that I oddly couldn't find the first time around, so scroll down if you're interested in one of Michelangelo's other Pietàs.

Well, that's Italy. It was a lot of fun (and a historian/erstwhile Latin student's dream). There was plenty we didn't get to see this time around, so I'd definitely want to go back sometime in the future!

Driver's License

I got one today. (Or rather, a temporary receipt that suffices until the real thing arrives in the mail.)

That is all.

Italy Travelogue, Part 2: Rome

Rome is big. Not quite as big as New York (what is?), but after Florence, Rome seemed huge. Of course, it was the place to be (in Europe, at least) for several centuries, way before any of the other major metropolises even existed. We procured four Roma Passes, which are designed for tourists and include discounts to major attractions (museum tickets are expensive!) and free public transit, valid for three consecutive days.

Four days in Rome was definitely not enough (especially since one of them was spent outside of Rome, technically, in the Vatican). Unlike Florence, which rose to prominence in the Middle Ages, Rome was the center of a vast empire in antiquity, and has several millennia of history on Florence. (Huzzah for Ancient Empires!)

The afternoon we get there, I drag them to see the Pantheon. (I'm a sucker for Greco-Roman mythology, but this one's really worth seeing.) It also houses the work of several Renaissance masters, as well as several of their graves, most notably that of Raphael. This is an interior view of its dome:


The Romans were really architectural geniuses, given their level of technology. It's incredible that the Pantheon survived several regime changes and wars. Of course, one of the reasons it wasn't quarried for marble or anything was that it was converted to a church in honor of the Virgin Mary and assorted Christian martyrs. It stands in stark contrast to many of the temples in the Roman Forum (dating from the days of the Republic) and the later Imperial fora; most of those now lie in ruins, much of their marble facing carted off to adorn other facades. Even so, the Roman Forum is well worth seeing. Here is a photograph of the Temple of Romulus:


This was one of the most intact of the temples in the Forum (and indeed, in all of Rome), mostly because it was converted to a church, that of the saints Cosmas and Damian, two Greek brothers, to stand in stark contrast to the Temple of Castor and Pollux, also in the Forum. This is, unfortunately, all that's left of the latter:


Freestanding monuments and buildings not constructed of marble were also generally in better repair; take, for instance, this photograph of the northwestern corner of the Forum:


In the middle of the picture is the Arch of Septimus Severus, commemorating the emperor's victories against the Parthians. He was a strong leader and a military man, which was good for Rome, given the corruption and political disunity of the preceding reigns. He also sponsored numerous public works, among which were several arches like this one.

The brownish building on the right (the one with three windows above its main entrance) is the Curia Julia, the Senate building built by (somewhat ironically) Julius Caesar. (He never saw it in its current form, as it was completed during the reign of Augustus.) The height of its ceiling is particularly impressive from the inside.

While I'm at it, here's another Augustan monument:


My sister and I are standing in front of the Ara Pacis (English: Altar of Peace). It was built by the Senate on the occasion of Augustus's subjugation of Gaul and Hispania, to celebrate the Pax Augusta, the peace that the emperor brought about by uniting various far-flung European peoples under imperial rule. My father, when I explained the altar's history, aptly remarked that Augustus was rather like the first Qin (秦) Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), who unified China. (Personally, I think Augustus was a lot friendlier. Also, Augustus's overall geopolitical achievement was probably somewhat less impressive, given that he was building upon Julius Caesar's successful military campaigns, whereas the Qin Emperor had to conquer the other six Chinese states, which were more or less equal in power to his at the start of his campaigns. Not to say that Augustus wasn't awesome, because he was.)

We also spent an afternoon at the Capitoline Museum, where there is a great glass-roofed hall housing some remarkable and historic bronzes. This one is the very famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only such statue of a pre-Christian emperor still in existence. It survived the Christian fanaticism of the Middle Ages mainly because it was thought to depict the Christian Constantine; this sort of imperial statue was quite common in the Roman Empire, but all the others were melted down.


It's greenish because it used to be prominently displayed on a pedestal outdoors, but then people moved it inside and put up a replica instead, because of precipitation damage.

This one, from the same hall, is the equally well-known bronze of the Capitoline Wolf, with Romulus and Remus as suckling infants:


Its origins are still uncertain, with some art historians contending that the wolf was first cast in the Etruscan era and others (a minority) arguing that it was made in the 13th century (both parties agree that the twins were a later addition). Either way, it's an iconic sculpture in the modern consciousness, where Rome is concerned.

This is getting ridiculously long. I'll write a third post on the Vatican, and lump in the Renaissance stuff with it. Stay tuned for travelogue part 3!

Italy Travelogue, Part 1: Florence

I'm back! And as promised, highlights of the first leg of the trip:

Upon arrival in Florence, my father, my sister, and I decide to explore the neighborhood to scope out nearby sources of food and to pick up some essentials at the supermarket. We encounter a strange public service announcement spray-painted on a building. We aren't quite sure what it is all about, so we decide to take it very literally:


Anyhow, on to items of actual historical significance. These are the east doors of the Baptistery of St. John, which Michelangelo famously dubbed "the Gates of Paradise", because they are so beautiful. (They're actually a faithful replica; the real ones are in restoration.)


The first set of Ghiberti doors was actually commissioned for the north-facing entrance in a competition sponsored by the Florentine guild of wool merchants. He and Filippo Brunelleschi were tied for the commission, but Ghiberti, through sheer persistence (and Brunelleschi's temper didn't help), eventually won out. Brunelleschi swore off sculpture in a fit of spite, and took up architecture and engineering instead (and was astoundingly talented at both); he designed the famous dome of the Florentine cathedral Santa Maria Del Fiore, one of the architectural marvels of the Renaissance:


Further reading on the subject, if you're so inclined: Brunelleschi's Dome, by Ross King. It was an assigned reading for a course I took in freshman year on Renaissance machine design (the system of pulleys, cranes, and other machines that Brunelleschi created in the process of constructing his dome is quite amazing), and it's a wonderful (and short) read on its own.

We also went to the Museo dell Opera del Duomo, where the real Gates of Paradise are currently housed. That particular museum is a treasure trove of amazing works by famous Renaissance masters. Among them is the understated, somewhat mysterious Magdalene Penitent by Donatello:


It's most striking, methinks, in its depth of emotion. She's not particularly beautiful, but she's wonderfully tragic.

Also in the Museo dell Opera del Duomo is the second-most famous Michelangelo Pietà, where instead of the Virgin Mary (as is customary), he depicts Joseph of Arimathea holding the body of Jesus:


It's believed that this Joseph was actually a self-portrait; Michelangelo originally intended this sculpture to be placed at his own gravesite. It's beautiful, and unlike many of the other really famous masterpieces, there isn't any plexiglas or a ten-foot fence, so we could walk right up to it to admire it.

We saw a lot of other things, too, like the David (I trust you don't need another picture of him) and some of the Medici palaces and private chapels (some of these restricted photography, to preserve the artwork). Florence basically belonged to the Medicis during the Renaissance, so half the sites in the city from that era were Medici-related in some way.

Florence was smaller than I'd expected; given its prominence during the Renaissance, I had thought it would be much bigger. I'd forgotten that cities in general were smaller back then (comes of being a New Yorker, methinks). We could basically get everywhere on foot -- no public transportation adventures there!

Rome is next.