On Friday, February 18 the Fred Jones, Jr Museum of Art hosted a special symposium to honor Han Shaogong, 2011 winner of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. The event featured three scholars and translators who have studied Shaogong’s book Dictionary of Maqiao in its original Chinese, and the author himself spoke to the crowd and answered questions via a translator.

According to Dr. Julia Lovell, who translated the work to English, Shaogong is a memorable author because of his slow, ponderous writing style that gives the reader plenty of time to become absorbed in the work. Lovell says it is especially notable that he does not exaggerate the text or use overly crude language, as many other contemporary Chinese writers do, so the humor in his writing style is even more appreciable. Not only does the story progress slowly, but every step in the process of creating the work moved slowly, and it took Shaogong more than 10 years to write the book.

“Books are an art started by the author and finished by the reader,” said Shaogong through his translator. “Literature is about how we look at our hearts, and instead of blaming others for everything that’s going wrong, looking to see if we ourselves have done anything wrong.”

More than 6,000 books are published each year in China, which has its own style and flavor of literature. One speaker explained that the Chinese word for “science” literally means “laziness,” clearly showing view of science held by the people of Maqiao, who value hard work over science and technology. Shaogong said that as he traveled in the United States, he could see that science can help, but it can also be misused. Much of his view of Americans included fat Americans, trapped in their offices, not exercising.

The event was an eye-opening view of a culture very different from our own, with its own views on history, literature and life. “Sometimes I realize that after more than 2,000 years of literature, the world is no better. I think that the role of literature is not to make humanity better, but to keep it from getting worse.”

More Information:

http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/HanShaogong.html

Aguilera's Star Spangled Banner

On February 6, 2011, Christina Aguilera performed the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Amidst all the confusion, excitement, television cameras and general hubbub, she managed to forget the words, accidentally singing "What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleaming,” repeating part of the previous phrase. People, her nickname is Xtina, what sort of linguistic perfection did you expect?

To be a little sarcastic, too bad they picked an impromptu volunteer out of the crowd to perform on spot… Too bad they picked an average American who isn’t used to lights and cameras, unprepared to sing on a national stage...too bad they sprung an unfamiliar, recently written song on the poor singer… Easy to forgive.

Most people would call that a colossal embarrassment. Okay, so a lot of those words have gone out of use in today’s society – it isn’t the easiest poem to remember. Alright, so you would find a similar failure if you administered a nation-wide test requiring all Americans to sing or write down the correct lyrics. This still does not explain to me why there isn’t a single person the nation who actually knows the words to the song that represents our country to the world and can sing it correctly all the way through.

Eh, they don’t even pay most Super Bowl musicians, so I guess you can’t threaten to dock their pay, or get mad at them for underperforming for their compensation….nope, it’s all for the personal glory. She got her exposure, and as everyone knows, nationwide publicity is priceless. Janet Jackson figured that out a few years ago, and it looks like Christina has too.

I asked people in my classes today if they’d heard Christina sing the National Anthem. The percentage of people who knew she’d sung the words incorrectly was minuscule. For those that didn’t even watch the Super Bowl, cheers to you. You missed some wonderful commercials, which can be watched online at your convenience, but you were also spared the halftime performance. For those of you who watched the performance but didn’t notice that she messed up the words….you’re the jokers I’m worried about. I’m not going to worry about administering my test to you because your first question would probably be “What’s the national anthem….”

Well, enough of that. Most people guessed her rendition would be horrendous before she even started. Who likes any version of the Star Spangled Banner ever sung at a sporting event? It’s over-sung, over-ornamented, and over-glamorized, and singers try too hard to raise the bar. There’s no key to put it in that will make it any easier to sing, and it’s too easy to cover up poor breath support and nervous insecurity with a few more trills.

Most viewers spend most of the time thinking about the artist performing and making judgments about the musical merit instead of actually thinking about our country or the reason the song was written in the first place.

Name-calling, accusing and heading up the blame game, check. Unnecessary sarcasm and overdone writing, check. Generating all the right answers while sitting behind my laptop, check. Contributing nothing to the solution but mocking everyone involved, check. I think I’ve served my purpose here.

In the meantime, why aren’t you reading about riots in Egypt, Obama and the Chamber of Commerce, Planned Parenthood, or something actually important in the world?

Watch Christina's performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgxA3Aus8jY

A collection of photos by a man who took one picture every day for 18 years, documenting his life until he died of cancer in 1997

http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1997.htm#1997/1

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131

Lobster

The man turned to me and demanded I show him the backs of my hands. Oh boy. Jewelry store employee or no, if you’re a girl that usually only means one thing.

“What!!!? No RING!!?? Are you running from love?” Well thank you. And will you be sharing your intimate personal details with me as well?

“Well sir, I’m still kind of….little.”

“Little?? Love has NOTHING to do with stature!”

“I mean….you know, I’m still pretty young”

He had a small fit when I told him my real age (and I was tempted to shave a few years off). I know, it’s the lipstick. It does tricky things to my youthful appearance.

“While you’re young (I’m glad we’d finally ditched the idea that I was a romantically failed middle aged woman) – run off and go places! Have adventures! Go off to Colorado Friday night and come back Sunday, that’s what my sister did with her friends. Then she got strapped into a toboggan and sent off down hill before she knew what had happened. Or – go to Cozumel!

"I was in Cozumel – have you heard of the wine squirters there? They wrap a towel around your shoulders and squirt wine in your mouth from fresh goat skins. We were there, watching all that, it was so crowded in there you couldn’t breathe – they were having to help people out into taxis.
I was saying something about being sunburned and the guy next to me threw his pants off, jumped up on the table wearing only his Speedo, and he was lobster. Lobster red!"

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It's not exactly wine squirting in Cozumel, but this looks way funner: a full on wine soaking involving whole villages....

She stood on the sidewalk in front of the glass outside the showroom, smoking while she waited for her ring to be cleaned and polished. She had snow white hair in huge curls, and she was wearing a cap that said Marines. Later on in our exchange I didn’t doubt that she was in the Marines, and I half wished I could’ve seen her in action. Her piercing dark eyes scrutinized me from behind her humongous…..well, granny glasses. She came into the store after her cigarette, the smell of tobacco mixing with her peppermint scent. Still waiting on her ring.

She handed me a pen from a tailor shop and told me that if I needed a tailor, to go to him. “He’s Greek, and he speaks Greek too. I don’t suppose you’re Catholic? No? Well I am, Latin Catholic, the oldest Catholics, and the Greek he speaks has a lot to do with the Latin services at my church.”

She leaned forward and stared at me, not blinking. “You have to listen to what I’m saying to get the real meaning of what I’m trying to tell you.” ( I had absolutely no idea what she was getting at….unless she thought I was really a Latin Catholic in disguise and there was some secret message being imparted to me…)

“Well anyway, this tailor makes my long broomstick skirts, and he fits them to me too.” (Now I have to wonder how a broomstick skirt could be tailor fit whatsoever) “He’s good, this tailor, so I pass his pens around and advertise for him by word of mouth, cause you can’t trust the newspapers.

“So if your jeweler gets me some pens of his, I’ll spread them around too.” She went on to tell me about young people today, who slide in to work at the last moment, leave the minute their time’s up, and are only concerned with how long of a break they get for lunch.

Then she got quite worked up about the picture of Jesus that hangs in the store, which she knew to have been drawn by a blind man. (I told you a lot of people notice it!) Her reaction was very strong, and she kept going back and forth between annoyance and incredulousness because he was blind, and extreme enthusiasm at the likeness, which must have come straight from God since he was blind from birth and was never influenced by other popular renditions of Christ.

“He saw it – IN HIS MIND!!!!!!” She shrieked, almost poking a hole in her own head. She is one of many, many customers to comment on the picture.

I am not Catholic, as she correctly assumed, but I was praying quite fervently that her ring would appear instantly…..



A BROOMSTICK SKIRT

The jeweler sat across the table in the showroom from his returning customer, the two as comfortable together as brothers. They had long ago left the topic of whatever jewelry-related business had brought the man in, and had turned to the subject of antiques.

The man was talking about a garden fountain an antique dealer had sold for $15,000, and unbelievable price for me to comprehend, from the adjacent desk where I was listening in. The lady who bought the fountain had it completely revamped - drilled, repaired, caulked - months later in defeat, she decided it was best as a plant holder.

"I can never believe the things some people will buy," the customer said, describing some imported dish board. "It's a BOARD!! But it's an antique, and it's what they want.

"And take the dress prices those girls pay for - what is it? Debutante? Cotillion?" (We'd apparently switched from antiques to their polar opposites - 16 year old girls) "God, it's just a white nightgown. Put some beads on it, that's all it is....."

I am always fascinated to observe the varied personalities that come into the store, and to listen to the colorful stories they tell of the people in their own lives.

Two lovely women were in our store today, one newly married at 55. She met her second husband at her children's school - they shared classes with his children. Since he came into her life he has been an antidote for her loneliness and a good influence on her boys, who were growing up without a dad.

It was her best friend who first introduced them - she was married to the single dad's best friend. That worked out well for EVERYBODY!

From their calm demeanor they could have just as easily been talking about the best methods for fertilizing petunias, as dropping little nuggets of wisdom in the shop as they discussed lessons they'd learned about marriage over the years.

When you're old, you concentrate more on being nice to each other. You've learned the importance of unselfishness and working for the good of the other person.

"Things that were important when we were 20, they aren't important anymore. You're going to have to get over all those annoying habits they have eventually, why get mad?"

The long divorced mom met her new husband five months before they began dating - her best friend laughingly relates how they stared at each other during school baseball games. When his sister had surgery, she stayed in the hospital room with him for days as he sat by his sister's bedside.

A short five months after they started dating, they were married.

"You just know what you want by the time you're my age."

Her friend knew her husband for 30 years before they finally got married - a far cry from a short 10 months. He hated dogs, had since being bitten as a child. But over the years as he got to know her and her dogs, he fell in love with her, and with them. Now the two rescue animals together.

"You learn things like, revenge isn't important. And that your words DO affect your husband and your relationship, and if the other person is upset by your negative words or your attitude, it IS your problem."