How useful1

I brought my uke to Jake’s concert. I plucked the strings the entire ride to San Rafael, and was excited that I might have a chance to talk to him. When we got to the Marin Center, I was intimidated by the number of people there to see him. “I think I’ll leave my uke in the car,” I said. “Why?” “I don’t know. I feel shy. I don’t think he’ll sign it.” “Why, just take it. I’ll ask for you.” So I took my uke into the auditorium.

He was an amazing live performer. Just one man, one ukulele, and one stage. But the harmonies that just these four strings create! It was truly wonderful. “Missing Three” was an especially beautiful piece. When Jake played “Akaka Falls”, I felt like it took me right to Hawai’i. Particularly impressive were his skills at playing perfect harmonics over such a wide range. I learned what harmonics are recently, and I cannot do it below the 12th fret! Haha. And he can play it over octaves! So crazy.

What added to the magnificent performance were the lights. There were six white drapes on stage and lights shone on them in different colors that suit the atmosphere of the songs. There were moving lights that shone on the performer, the stage, the audience, and on the walls around. These had beautiful patterns and fluid movements that were perfectly synchronized with the music.

At the end, he said to us to “please come and say hi” to him in the lobby afterward. My pleasure! I was very happy that I listened and brought my ukulele. When it was my turn, he shook my hand and said, “How are you?” I mumbled some compliments very shyly because I was too overwhelmed by the fact that he touched my hand with the same hands he played music. Then I said to Jake, “You are my ukulele god. Would you please bless my uke by signing on it?” He laughed and wrote, “Aloha!”

Aloha!

Thank you! Finally. A funny article on love that kicks some sense into the readers’ heads. 

“Think of Romeo and Juliet. It appears to teach that it is better to marry in haste, without thought, because that is what it means to be star-crossed, to be passionate, to be authentic.

Although note that when Shakespeare told the story he called it a tragedy.

…

The risk is that you then feel that love has died because, following the romantic myth, you measure love by its felt intensity.

Standing in love, though, is the capacity to be with someone and be free with someone. …”

 

From: BBC News. Read the original article here: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21410275>

 

Viewpoint: Down with romantic love

Our idealised notion of romantic love is actually the biggest enemy of long-lasting relationships, says Mark Vernon.

Romantic love is widely celebrated as the pinnacle of love. It is marketed as the peak experience without which you cannot say you have lived. The signs of its allure are everywhere, not just on Valentine’s Day.

Take the cost of the average wedding. It has rocketed in recent years, now easily topping £20,000 in the UK. It is as if couples make a direct link between romantic value and cash value.

Or think of the cinema, where romantic comedies are big box office. If you get the formula right, of lovers finally falling into each others’ arms, you net hundreds of millions of dollars. Or again, there are the dating websites that are recession proof - 60% growth in spending last year,according to reports.

Love is blind, the proverb goes, though it might be more accurate to say we are being blinded by a hyper version of romantic love, and are losing out on life as a result. To cut to the chase, I think that the romantic myth is one of the most pernicious of our times.

The myth is that there is someone out there with whom your life will be complete, and conversely, without whom your life would be a half-life. A major task of modern life is, therefore, to find this person and, falling in love, to cease to be two and become one.

It is hard to prove, though I wonder whether such a view of romance has become so monstrous in the pressure it puts on couples to find fulfilment in each other, that it actually undermines more relationships than supports them.

It is socially corrosive because it idealises love, rather than understanding that love is made not found. Love is made in the gritty ups and downs of being with someone who is as flawed as you.

The power of the myth is demonstrated in the fact that most people would say that they don’t believe it.

They would protest that such a story shapes the plots of romantic novels and movies, and the advertising blurb of online dating sites, but is not real life.

And yet, is it not precisely this dream that drives so many to glossy magazines, to cinemas and online? It is telling that the top question asked of Google last year was: What is love? Malign myths are at their most powerful when we presume we are not in their grip.

Might such romance be, in part, a driver of divorce figures.

It is striking that remarriages appear to work best when they have outgrown hyper-romance. A recent review study listed three top success factors - couple consensus, social support and financial stability.

These couples, perhaps having learnt the hard way, are now able to talk rationally about their difficulties, rely on the love of family and friends as well as of their partner, and feel materially grounded, not rushed off their feet. If romance first draws the eye, relationships have a chance to thrive when it does not seal the deal.

More darkly, have you ever wondered why romance is so closely associated with death?

Think of Romeo and Juliet. It appears to teach that it is better to marry in haste, without thought, because that is what it means to be star-crossed, to be passionate, to be authentic.

Although note that when Shakespeare told the story he called it a tragedy. He saw a deeper truth in what happened, namely that a tragedy arises when the pernicious action of romance seizes young lovers’ hearts.

There are signs that individuals are rejecting the romantic myth. The number of people living on their own has risen by 50% since the mid-1990s. Many report that singleness means they enjoy more freedom and have time for other relationships, like friendship.

It is as if these individuals are bearing witness to the tyranny of the exclusive twosome that meets freedom and friendship with powerful feelings of jealousy and suspicion.

So why has romance become so distorting?

I suspect that the desire for a peak experience of love has eclipsed the fact that love is primarily about others. The romantic myth would have us fall in love with love, paradoxically not with another. This twisted love whispers that it does not much matter who you fall for, only that you fall in love.

There is a spiritual dimension to this romantic addiction too. The philosopher Simon May has proposed that while many have given up on God in the West, we still long for the unconditional love that God used to offer.

But godless, we seek instead unconditional love from our fellow humans. We make them gods, and of course they fail us. And then love turns to hate. It’s a desire that, because of the excess, destroys love. People kill the thing they love, lamented an observant Oscar Wilde.

The true art of loving is to navigate the shift from falling in love to standing in love, to borrow the psychologist Erich Fromm’s phrases.

Falling in love, the stuff of romance, is the intoxicating sense of possessing someone and/or being possessed. And it just can’t last, because possessiveness crushes liveliness.

The risk is that you then feel that love has died because, following the romantic myth, you measure love by its felt intensity.

Standing in love, though, is the capacity to be with someone and be free with someone. It too feels good, though for different reasons. It can allow more subtle qualities to come to the fore, such as commitment and generosity, honesty and openness. It welcomes life.

Standing in love is, perhaps, a healing notion as we face the romantic onslaught of another Valentine’s Day.

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Half a bowl of Chipotle I left in the lecture hall

by H. L. (which is my name.)

Our paths doth crossed

Where Telegraph and Bancroft crossed.

You were open, good, and hot,

I devoured in you everything I was not.

I wasn’t done with you yet when

We moved to the professor’s den.

I held you tightly in my hand

As I took you to the econ land.

You were, with my jacket, covered.

I laid you right beside me.

But when the lecture was over,

I left you there. Pee.

You were so easy to forget,

As if you never filled my heart or stomach.

Like a master abandoning her pet,

I did not once look back.

And it must have been because

You were only half a bowl

of

Chipotle

Rodrigo Fantasia para un Gentilhombre: Danza de las Hachas

This will be my first Spanish baroque piece on the ukulele. The first song in “20 Spanish Baroque Pieces by Gaspar Sanz Arranged for Uke”.

This elaborate concerto is written by Joaquin Rodrigo in 1954 based on the guitar solo pieces written by Gaspar Sanz back in the 17th century. The one in the video is the third movement of “Fantasia para un Gentilhombre”. Rodrigo also wrote  Concierto de Aranjuez. 

Whenever I hear this piece, I can picture glorious gardens and great woods. The brass sing proudly. Woodwinds sing like birds in the sky, and strings add smooth and magnificent harmony to it all. The strings keep reminding me of the soft brown color like the trees. And of course, the guitar. The one that speaks alone, the voice to which all the instruments respond. This is so beautiful. Very powerful.

And what do you know, the song is called “The Dance of the Axes.” 

Desperado

- The Eagles

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? 
You been out ridin’ fences for so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin’ you
Can hurt you somehow

Don’ you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can’t get

Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no youger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time? 
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day
You’re loosin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away? 

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? 
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late

Henehene Kou ‘Aka

- Iz

Our eyes have met. 

Our lips, not yet.

   Vamp                                    Walk Up
    D7   /    G7   /    C    /    /    /    Bb   B    C
A|--3----3----2----2----3----3----3----3----1----2----3----
E|--2----2----1----1----0----0----0----0----1----2----3----
C|--2----2----2----2----0----0----0----0----2----3----4----
G|--2----2----0----0----0----0----0----0----3----4----5----


C            C7  F            C
Henehene ko aka, kou le`ale`a paha
                D7  G7          C
He mea ma`a mau ia, for you and I
  
C               C7  F               C
Ka`a uila makeneki, ho `oni`oni kou kino
                D7  G7          C
He mea ma`a mau ia, for you and I

C             C7  F          C
I Waikiki makou, `au anai ke kai
                D7  G7          C
He mea ma`a mau ia, for you and I 

C              C7  F        C
I Kapahulu makou, `ai ana lipoa
                D7  G7          C
He mea ma`a mau ia, for you and I

C              C7  F           C
I Kaka`ako makou, `ai ana i ka pipi stew
                D7  G7          C
He mea ma`a mau ia, for you and I

C              C7  F            C
Our eyes have met, our lips not yet
                  D7  G7                C
Palama pono kou kino, I'm gonna get you yet

C               C7  F              C
Haina mai ka puana, kou le `ale `a paha
                D7  G7          C
He mea ma`a mau ia, for you and I

I found a Korean version of the following article on Naver. I don’t know how many Korean people will understand what he is talking about, but I felt like a lot of what he said resonated with my life in the US.

From: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/10/27/easy-tiger-nation/

Easy Tiger (Nation)

By Jeff Yang

When I was graduating from Harvard University at a time that now seems like eons ago, I remember having a conversation with a classmate about the uphill battle I faced in convincing my parents — and, for that matter potential employers — that I wanted to pursue journalism as a career. The perception, I complained, is that if you’re Asian, you’ve been drilled your entire life for a future in a white coat: Medicine, science or engineering. It’s unimaginable that you might be interested in a risky “creative” profession, manipulating words or images rather than test results or code.

He waited quietly through my rant, and then, quirking an eyebrow, said this: “So you’re basically saying that Asians have it tough because people think you’re too smart to make a dumb move like becoming a journalist? Wish I had that problem.”

We both laughed and moved on to other subjects, but in my gut, I felt a burning need to explain to him further why the so-called “positive” stereotypes Asians encounter are a burden — not as immediately corrosive as the ones he faced growing up African American, but nevertheless insidious and harmful.

I admit that it does seem odd that Asians would rankle at the exuberant praise that others offer up for our “work ethic,” our “family values” and our status as “exemplars of the American dream.” After all, why should we decline the chance to be placed on a pedestal? Is it our simple Asian humility, our desire to give others “face,” our passive, fan-fluttering desire to avoid the spotlight?

Or could it be because such statements rest on fundamentally mistaken assumptions, with problematic implications for both individuals in the present, and generations in the future?

Here’s the first issue I have with the blanket celebration of “Asian” success: The fantastical, unicornlike super-Asian depicted in the breathless statistics frequently cited from sources like Pew’s “The Rise of Asian America” report simply doesn’t exist.

In fact, it’s fair to say that Asians don’t even exist — at least not in Asia, a region whose boundaries have over the millennia been conceptually arbitrary and cartographically fluid, whimsically including or excluding the likes of Turkey, Iran, Egypt, the states of the Southern Caucasus and numerous small Pacific island nations based on the turning wheels of global and regional politics.

None of this mapping has been conducted with much input from the actual people who live there, and neither has the presupposition that those people have any kind of default sense of solidarity because of their geographical proximity. (Ask Chinese in the streets of Xi’an today if they feel kinship with their Japanese neighbors, and they’ll likely be too busy setting fire to unattended Toyotas to respond.)

This isn’t to say that Asians have nothing in common, or to suggest that there isn’t an emerging sense of shared, pan-Asian identity. There certainly is; I’ve spent much of my career as a journalist (spoiler: I managed to waste my Ivy League education after all), tracing its developing outlines. It’s just that the site of that evolution hasn’t been Asia, it’s been right here — in the nation on earth that, paradoxically, has both the most openness to the blending and remixing of identities, and the most rigid expectations that identity be at the core of how we behave, present ourselves and communicate.

The pan-ethnic definition of Asian and the assignment of common cause to those who bear that title is a legacy of immigration to and residence in these United States, forged during the Civil Rights, Third World and antiwar movements of the late Sixties and early Seventies, and formalized in the standardization of racial categories that subsequently followed in the Eighties.

All of which makes Asianness a quintessentially American invention, superimposed on a set of peoples that have historically given one another the side-eye. We have embraced the Asian idea as a pragmatic response to the need to field a squad in America’s never-ending Hunger Games of race. (If there’s one thing that immigrant groups throughout U.S. history has discovered, it’s that being relegated to Team Other guarantees that you’ll have no voice and get no pie.)

Of course, since then, Asian Americans have explored our shared history, evolved a cultural canon, accrued collective political clout and, to some extent, exported our notion of Asianness abroad, although there still isn’t a precise translation for our unique definition of “Asian” in most Asian languages.

But any use of the term “Asian” should recognize that its meaningful existence is less than half a century old, and the identity it refers to is very much in beta — and working out the compatibility issues that come with a rapidly growing and wildly varied installed base.

Which means that there are many individuals of Asian descent in America who, if congratulated on the success of the “Asian community,” will simply look blank. Not all Asians think alike. Not all Asians think they’re “Asian.” And not all Asians share the same values, the same opportunities and obstacles — or the same socioeconomic outcomes.

The communities that sit under the Asian umbrella comprise over two dozen ethnicities speaking over a hundred languages and dialects, with each population arriving in the U.S. at different times and under unique circumstances. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Asian Americans have the widest income spread of any demographic group: Indian Americans have the highest per-capita income of any ethnic group in the U.S., at around $38,000; Hmong, the lowest, at around $11,000, with a full 27 percent living beneath the federal poverty line.

Yet the flattening effect of means and medians erases these distinctions, encouraging the trumpeting of the triumph of “Asians” in broad, paint-roller strokes. It’s a major reason why the Pew Research Center’s large, important and widely cited study of the Asian American population, titled “The Rise of Asian Americans,” has generated such consternation among advocacy and service organizations.

While the data the Pew report offers is valuable, the sensationalist and nuance-free manner in which it has been promoted to the media has produced an avalanche of stories about how the Asian American community, powered by its work ethic, family values, prodigious overachievement, et cetera, serves as a blueprint for how other groups can eliminate need and attain success (overlooking the fact that the “rise” of Latin, Caribbean and African immigrants is easily as laudable as that of Asians).

These articles also frequently point to the overrepresentation of Asians at highly regarded Ivy League universities and in good-paying white-coat careers, and refer to us as “The New Jews.”

Encountering this label always prompts me to puzzle at the bizarre game of sociological musical chairs that this assertion implies. What about the old Jews? Have the old Jews become the new WASPs? If so, are we suggesting that the old WASPs are now the new blacks?

Though a hundred reasons exist why the “new Jews” epithet is unfounded and misguided, it does hide within it a sad truth: the tragic history of antisemitism teaches us how this kind of ethnic admiration is but one face of a coin that can flip all too quickly to its uglier side.

Minority groups that are perceived to have obtained disproportionate success provoke envy, misdirected scapegoating and ultimately, a bloody backlash. That’s especially the case when the minority group is one that is phenotypically obvious — and even more so when that phenotype ties them to countries that are in direct geopolitical rivalry with ours.

And yes, we’ve seen a backlash happen before, right here in the U.S. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was ostensibly prompted by fears that they might choose to collude with Imperial Japan as spies and saboteurs, to bring down the nation from within. These suspicions proved entirely unwarranted, and decades later, America offered an apology, and nominal financial redress, for these wartime actions.

Some historians have pointed out, however, that many Japanese immigrants had overcome the era’s racist and exclusionary laws to build businesses and amass homes and farms, often held in the names of their American-born offspring (since it was illegal in states like California for “aliens” to own property, and Asians were federally barred from naturalizing). The wartime incarceration, which impacted Japanese immigrants and U.S.-born citizens alike, forced them to sell valuable property and thriving enterprises to white counterparts for pennies on the dollar — a redistribution of wealth along racial lines that represents billions in value today. It shouldn’t be a surprise that these rival farmers and businessmen were the most vocal agitators in favor of internment.

And that’s the real and present danger in even presumptively positive stereotypes. With little warning, they become a lightning rod for the unsettled anxieties of those concerned about being supplanted. Success in society should not be a zero-sum “Survivor”-style competition among racial groups, like that reality show’s 13th season, and it isn’t a game of musical chairs.

Which should serve as a warning to those who use the “[blanks] are the new [blanks]” construction, implying, even rhetorically, that society is built on serial ethnic displacement: What are you suggesting will happen once the music stops?

To read Siegel’s original essay go to Rise of the Tiger Nation.

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

dirtypans:

Dinner option: Sirloin steak with skillet potatoes and arugula salad 

• 3 cups of baby arugula
• 3 small gold potatoes (or any you have at hand), sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
• 2 sirloin steaks (about 6 oz each)
• 2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, divided
• 1 tbsp of Dijon mustard
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• Salt and black pepper to taste

1- Start with the potatoes. Season them with salt and pepper. In a non-stick skillet, heat 1 tbsp of olive oil and lay them in one layer under medium heat. Cover, and let them cook for about 8 minutes on one side, until golden brown.

2- Meanwhile, season your steaks with salt and pepper. In a large skillet under medium-high heat, cook them for about 6 minutes on each side (for medium-rare) or 9 minutes (for medium well). Let them rest while you put your salad together.

3- Mix the remaining tbsp of olive oil with the Dijon mustard and garlic. Add about 1 tbsp of water and whisk to make a salad dressing. 

4- Arrange the plate as you see in the photo, drizzle the dressing over the arugula and enjoy!

Nutritional information per individual

• Calories = 557
• Carbs = 28g
• Protein = 55g
• Fat = 25g
• Fiber = 2.9g

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, No 13 Dance of the Knights (Valery Gergiev, LSO)