Cat and Shanmao's blog

The Fog of War

I saw the movie The Fog of War this weekend, was fascinated, and thought some of you, dear readers, might also be interested in learning a little bit about the movie, from my perspective of course!

The is a documentary featuring an 85 year old Robert McNamara recounting his early life, involvement in WWII, time spent as a professor and as an executive at Ford, then his time as secretary of defence. The film is structured as a presentation of 11 lessons, each lesson a phrase gleaned from McNamara's conversation. Visual images of a present day McNamara are interleaved with historical footage and voice overs. Occasionally, an unseen interviewer shouts questions at or prompts McNamara when he stumbles on a phrase.

Of the 11 lessons, the one that fascinated me the most was 'Rationality will not save us'. This was one of the pearls of wisdom that accompanied a presentation of the the Cuban missile crisis. Both sides acting completely rationally, in McNamara's opinion, could head straight to oblivion. For me, this underlies how much we have misunderstood 'rationality', a decision making process that targets a beneficial outcome given incomplete information and probabilistic weighting of projected future events.

Another chilling admission from McNamara is that oftentimes as Secretary of Defence, neither he nor LBJ knew precisely what was happening in Vietnam nor had they any idea of how to proceed. The film editors splice in footage concerning the 'fog' surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin. More chilling then any depiction of Heart of Darkness, the confusion surrounding something apparently as simple as determining whether the enemy had actually attacked an American ship, erodes faith in a rational, organized, fearless military machine. The viewer realizes that the machine is operated by frightened, confused, fallible, human beings. The machine is so complex, the variables so many, the objective so unclear, that no one knows what is going on.

The most fascinating aspect of the movie is hearing an important decision maker discussing the news stories of the previous century. Perhaps in 30 years we will know how much or how little present day leaders know. I don't buy the notion that there are powerful shadow forces pulling the strings. I believe that the mess that we are in is simply the result of intelligent, well-meaning, men making the best decisions they can. But unfortunately, their best isn't good enough.

For a couple of years now I've had the privilege of participating in a relatively obscure musical practice - 8 hand piano music.

Before recordings and broadcasts were widely available, music was heard live. The cost and logistics of attending a concert prevented most people from hearing symphonic works. The solution for 19th century musicians and publishers was to publish transcriptions of popular works for the piano. One of the most famous sets of transcriptions was Franz Liszt's transcription of all 9 Beethoven symphonies for solo piano. One aspect of Liszt's transcription was both positive and negative - the innovative use of symphonic approximations on the piano produced a faithful and, in some cases, reasonably convincing substitute for the orchestra. However, the same innovative techniques require that the performer have great skill. Liszt was the most famous piano virtuoso of the 19th century and made great demands on the performer through his transcriptions.

To appeal to a broader group of performers, 4 and 8 hand transcriptions were published. These editions allowed groups of amateur musicians to recreate the symphonic work. 4 hand music (for 1 piano) has never died owing to original compositions by some of the greatest composers and the relatively modest requirement of having only 1 piano. There are fewer original works for 4 hands and 2 pianos. There are probably very few original works for 8 hands (I don't know of any). The vast majority of 8 hand music is transcriptions of symphonic (including concertos, eg. Schumann, Brahms' I and II) and chamber music works. 8 hand piano music has suffered from the advent of the commercial recording and broadcasting.

Nevertheless, it is fun and educational. Pianists usually play music by themselves and therefore don't have ensemble practice that single-voiced players will typically have. Also, since most 8 hand transcriptions are of famous symphonic works, you will become familiar with some of the great classics.

There are some publishers of 8 hand music. A local Bay Area publisher, and personal friend, runs a small publishing company, Editions Poole. Working in a relatively obscure corner of the musical world, he has laboured to spark interest in a very interesting musical genre that is both a social, musical, and education experience.

A quote I discovered today:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you
look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On
it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived,
lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings,
thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and
destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young
couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every
inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt
politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and
sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust,
suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

A short quote I discovered a few years ago:

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Crowfoot

Perhaps it is time for this little firefly to rest ...

Rain, rain, rain.... It's that time of the year. As we drove up to Sonoma, the hills were green and lush, and the traffic was sparse. Only later did we realize that it was superbowl Sunday, a perfect day for an excursion to the winecountry, or anywhere for that matter. We went to our usual wineries, tasted some wines and condiments. The day was still young, so we decided to venture to some new territory.

The new territory is named Buena Vista, and it turned out to be quite a find. Founded by a Hungarian count in 1857, it claims the title of the oldest premium winery in California. At the tasting bar in the old press house, a bartender with a distinctive curved mustache told us stories of the count and his successors while we sipped some pinot noirs. Later we wandered around the property and the adjourning park, where a museum stood amid a peaceful green landscape. The white structure was modelled on the count's old house, which mysteriously disappeared in the forgotten years after his departure. The museum recounted the live of Count Agoston Haraszthy, who fled prosecution from his native Hungary. He planted vineyards in Wisconson and San Diego before finally settling in Sonoma, where his vines finally flourished. He travelled all over Europe in search of grape varieties and brought them back to California. But typical of that volatile time in California history, his fortune rose and fell and his story did not have a happy ending. He was forced out of his winery and the country altogether by the powerful businessman Ralston. He ended his days in Nicaragua, drowned in a river.

The winery changed hands serveral times and was forgotten until the second would war came, and it was purchased by a journalist and war correspondant, Bartholomew. His wife restored the winery while he was covering the war in Asia Pacific. The museum warden, an old bush pilot from Maine, recalled fond memories of the couple.

Looking out of the museum windows at the surrounding vineyards, and wooded rolling hills, I felt a sense of history, its mystery enhanced by the moody, misty weather. I imagined the pioneers who came here and started anew, who looked out at the same hills and same sky. California has a short but dramatic history, rich with stories of daring men, of fortunes found and lost. This place and its history reminded me of the book Men to Match My Mountains, which tells many such fascinating stories of California.