Binge Reading James

I've been binge-reading Henry James' lesser known novels in the past few months.  The "reading" I'm referring to here is more involved than merely I eye-balling the texts.  It involved a collective effort, freely given, of many people from the LibriVox community to record and produce these novels as audiobooks.  In case you don't know, LibriVox is a volunteer organization which produces free public domain audiobooks.   

As you may or may not know I'm a devoted Henry James fan.  I delight in his circuitous and laborious way of rendering a character, scene, or a situation.  I admire his ability to spin a yarn out of a tiny germ of a situation that he perceives to contain dramatic potential.  I envy his characters' ability to say much by saying little.  

In July I chanced upon a recording project at LibriVox for a novel by Henry James called The Tragic Muse.  I had read the book before but didn't think much of it; I didn't like the central character, Miriam Rooth, an ambitious "drama queen" kind of person.  However, I was surprised to find that this project had been languishing in the "Readers Wanted" forum at LibriVox for a while.  Usually works by such an established writer like James are snatched up in no time.  Anyhow, I volunteered to record this book starting from the Preface and ended up recording 10 sections for it.  It was definitely not easy-going for me, especially in trying to parse his prose for the Preface, but I struggled on.  Along the way I met a few enthusiastic and responsible readers.  After we finished recording the book, it dawned on me that there might still be other books by James that have yet been "done" at LibriVox and wouldn't it be nice if I could launch these books myself and get them recorded. 

So to make the story short, I managed to launch three projects for LibriVox of three lesser known novels, Confidence, the Outcry, and the Other House, by Henry James in a short span of time, and with the help of several dedicated volunteers got the projects completed in three months.  For me being a BC (Book Coordinator) for LibriVox is a lot easier than being a Reader.  It takes a lot more time and effort to record and edit one's own recordings.  The best part of this experience was that I invited Kirk to record several chapters of these three books.  Kirk, in his obsessive compulsive way of doing everything, spent a considerable amount of effort to make his recordings as best as he could.  So without further ado, please check out the following free audiobooks at LibriVox --

the Other House

The Tragic Mus

the Outcry

Confidence

Courtyard House

Courtyard House

Here is yet another version of the courtyard house that I keep returning to.  There must be some psychological reasons for this obsession of mine--something like a longing to live in a temperate climate which facilitates moving and living in and out of doors with as little reliance on air-conditioning or heating as possible.  The freedom of being able to throw your doors and windows wide open, stepping over a barely perceptible demarcation between indoors and outdoors, with perhaps only a 7-inch high threshold separating the two, seems like a state of innocence that has been lost forever for me along with my childhood.  I remember my grandmother's tiny row house in southern Taiwan where there was no barrier between indoors and outdoors, where one stepped over the threshold right unto the busy pedestrian street.  As far as I can remember, I was totally unaware of any discomfort about the heat, noise, dust, or insects invading the house when I visited my grandmother after school.  Nowadays I can hardly put up with a tiny moth that accidentally flies into the house, or allow dust to accumulate on the furniture or a bit of dirt on the floor.  Since when have I lost the ability to feel at ease letting a little nature inside the house?  It seems that we gradually remove ourselves from the elements and at the same time nature becomes more and more something we have to contend with and contain.  In my case, the process of distancing from nature started with my father's moving his young family from his ancestral home into a small house of his own in order to provide us with better living conditions.  Our house was set back from the street protected by a tall masonry wall with a gate in the middle.  Inside the gate was a tiny bit of garden with a fish pond which my father built.  The front door was equipped with a separate screen door and all the windows were screened.  There were window A/C units in most rooms, a detached kitchen over a covered breezeway with a water closet on one side and a bathroom on the other.  The house was primitive, compared to modern standards, but it was an immense improvement from my grandmother's house.  

For people living in developing countries in the tropics or subtropics in early 20th Century, the kind of improvements in living condition which one strived for could be something as simple as having mosquito nets over one's bed.  This then transforms into the aspiration to have screened doors and windows to keep out unwelcome bugs, and eventually progresses into a desire for fixed, triple-glazed windows and heavily insulated walls, which we have now, and which effectively trap us year-round inside a highly conditioned, unnatural environment, which we call home.  We have practically barricaded ourselves inside a strong box, to keep off the elements, critters, and alas, other people as well.

Now about this courtyard house.  The main feature of the design is a big opening carved out from the middle of the block, allowing natural light to stream in and air to freely circulate inside the house, with the porch roof extending indoors as a continuous light shelf all around the courtyard.  The organization of the various spaces is self-evident, consisting of a more public wing on the one side and a more private one on the other, with a communal dining space like a bridge between the two.  Both the occupants and guests enter the house from the front door through a covered walkway--a rarity nowadays, as most houses have their garages directly connected with the house and people rarely ever use their front doors. 

Floor Plan

West Elevation

South Elevation

East Elevation

North Elevation

N-S Section through Courtyard

N-S Section through Private Wing

E-W Section through Public Wing

E-W Section through Study

E-W Section through Bedrooms

Living Room

Kitchen

Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Private Wing

Courtyard

Knitting Anyone?

Yarn Bowl

I started knitting again in December 2014 after a hiatus of 30 years.  I was first taught how to knit by my French professor in college.  She was from Switzerland originally, moved to China in the teens of the 20th Century after marrying a Chinese diplomat, then in 1950 decamped to Taiwan with her husband after the R. O. C. (Republic of China) was defeated by the Chinese Communist Party.  In addition to French and knitting, she also first introduced me to the art of eating a soft-boiled egg on an egg cup for breakfast.   

Tree Warmer

According to Kirk, I knitted him a pullover 3 decades ago during the early years of our marriage and it was his favorite sweater.  I can no longer recall how I did it.  It, however, soon got misplaced at the Philosophy Department in Berkeley and was never found again.  Fast forward to December 14.  We were in downtown Bloomington looking for ideas for Christmas gifts.  We went into a local yarn shop called Yarns Unlimited--they are the ones who clothe the trees downtown with knitted wool in the winter. Inspired by all the colorful yarn we saw, then and there I (we) decided that I should try to knit another sweater for Kirk just like the one he lost.  That's how I picked up knitting again.
  

Hand Warmers that can type

Thanks to the wealth of knitting tutorials on-line, I managed to figure out how to knit again from scratch. Since then I've knitted several sweaters, multiple scarves, caps, etc.  I like to have my knitting around when I am in between occupations and wanting to keep my hands busy, when conversation in a group seems daunting, or while sitting around at my hairdresser's waiting for my hair to finish "processing"; hours go by more quickly when you're stuck in planes or the airport, if you have your knitting with you. 
   

Tree Hugger

What prompted me to write this post was my chance reading of an article in the New York Times this evening called The Health Benefits of Knitting.  I'm not sure whether all the health claims in the article are verifiable but I can testify that it is an endlessly challenging activity and that it builds patience and perseverance, and teaches you to accept a certain amount of imperfection in your work--mistakes are unavoidable.  I'm certain that if we were still in Gainesville, Kirk and I would be able to get a knitting group going, with our old gang of fearless amateur painters.  I miss them sorely.  A note to the wise, for people with carpal tunnel discomfort, knit in moderation.  

Seymour Bernstein: a discovery

A couple of months ago, in trying to glean some advice from the internet about how to play certain piano pieces, I came across a book called With Your Own Two Hands: Self-Discovery Through Music, written by a pianist named Seymour Bernstein, who is a well-known piano teacher living in New York.  Although the title sounded a little corny, I bought the book anyway, through Amazon Marketplace--a used hardback from a private library collection for about $30.  I devoured the book in a few days, while marking, it seemed, almost every page with little purple stickers, meaning to come back to try to digest some of the passages later.  

A couple of months passed, and out of the blue I read somewhere about a recent documentary made by Ethan Hawke, called "Seymour: An Introduction".  I finally put the two together and discovered that along with many other people I had just been introduced to a great pianist and a great piano teacher.  I missed the film when it was screened at IU Cinema, and have not been able to stream it on-line (iTunes won't have it available until January 2016).  But after watching the many video clips on YouTube of his piano playing and the Q & A sessions given by him and Ethan Hawke about the film, I feel like saying that we've just been introduced to a living legend and a national treasure.  (He was born in 1927.)  On one of the videos Seymour recalled having met an old Viennese lady when he was in his 20s, at a retirement home in New Jersey where he once played some pieces by Brahms, and the lady telling him that he played better than Brahms himself.  She said she heard Brahms play when he came over to Hanover to play at Clara Schumann's funeral!  Now who, if not a living legend, could boast of a connection, though tenuous, like that in this day and age! 

One of the things that struck me about his book and his many recorded conversations is how rare and precious a good mentor and pupil relationship is.  Encountering a truly inspiring mentor in one's life, in whatever pursuit one is engaged in, is a gift of the gods.  The true mentor opens your eyes to something, gives you a momentary glimpse into a world rich and with unfathomable depth, and shows you clues about how to get there. Seymour Bernstein in this sense becomes a mentor to all those in whom his books and recordings strike a receptive cord.  My discovery of Bernstein through a random internet search was pure serendipity, like Ethan Hawke's meeting Bernstein at dinner at a friend's house, which led to his documentary, an unexpected find of a treasure trove.  

With the release of this film, his 1981 book is now selling for about $100 used and $350 to $680, like-new.  That was something I didn't expect when I purchased the book!

Here are some links to reviews about this documentary.  If it shows in your neighborhood, don't miss it.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-an-older-man

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/20/394270834/seymour-a-loving-portrait-of-an-acclaimed-classical-pianist

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/movies/review-seymour-an-introduction-is-a-lesson-in-perseverance.html?_r=1

Searle on Profile

Listen to an interview of John Searle on Profile at WFIU when he visited IU in September 2014 -

http://indianapublicmedia.org/profiles/cognitive-philosopher-john-searle/

7 Wochen Ohne / 7 Weeks Without

7 Wochen Ohne

Several important calendar dates seem to have all come together this week; they are important for different people and for different reasons.  For the Chinese, tomorrow is the beginning of the Lunar New Year, this time, the Year of the Sheep.  For Catholics, today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a period of soul searching, fasting, and praying, which lasts till Easter Sunday.  You wonder how, and what, I know about Lent and its religious meaning; the truth is I know very little but what I found on the web.  However, I've recently picked up quite a bit of information about how German people celebrate this religious "season" -- I call it a season for it literally lasts more than three months -- for 2015, it is 19 weeks and 5 days to be exact, beginning officially from 11.11.14 at 11:11.  I have no idea how that specific date and time came about, but this is how the germanic traditions go. 

Another bit of interesting information I picked up is how the German Evangelical Christian communities have transformed this quintessential Roman Catholic tradition of fasting and penance into a popular movement for concrete actions which aim at changing one's habits, presumably those which one wishes to be rid of.  And instead of the usual 40-day fasting, they've turned this into a 7-week event of "doing without" -- a kind of self-imposed privation which can help kick start the forming of a more commendable habit.  

Every year they come up with a motto, a call to action which the German Protestants can all participate in.  For 2015, their motto is "Du bist Schön!  Sieben Wochen ohne Runtermachen", which I translate as "You are Beautiful - Seven Weeks Without Telling Somebody Off or Running Down on Somebody".  I take this to mean without bashing somebody or making disparaging remarks about someone, here, concerning someone's looks, though I presume it can extend to other aspects of a person, and that the idea of bashing can include deprecatory remarks aimed at oneself.  Maybe a more colloquial translation of "Runtermachen" would be "trash-talking," or talking somebody down.  Whether "bashing" has reached a dangerous level in German society, which calls for a collective action to readdress, is something I can only speculate about.  Taking a curious look at their mottos from previous years, I think, would be interesting for social psychologists.  For example, for 2012 the motto is, "Good enough! Seven weeks without false ambition", and for 2013, "Riskier, man!  Seven weeks without caution."  What did they mean?!

This, however, reminds me of the practical advice which William James offers to help with forming a new habit of the will in his essay called Habit .  He said: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.  That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test." 

Kirk and I have taken a pledge ourselves to participate in this collective consciousness of self-denial.  Our motto is "6 Wochen ohne Fleisch, ohne Völlerei!"  I'm not going to translate it here, in case we don't make it.  

X House

Site Plan

It's funny how architects like to name their house designs with the alphabet.  I've encountered many such names in design publications, while I've done three myself--"L", "E", and now "X".  It's not difficult to see why.  The letters of the alphabet are easily identifiable shapes, and buildings, when seen from above, like those on Google Earth, tend to resemble blocks of various alphabets.  There is a certain pitfall, though, in naming your designs by some abstract shape--the shape itself can be a guiding concept for the design but it can also become a limiting or skewing factor, to the extent that one loses sight of the fact that one is designing a building for human dwelling, and not just to fit some preconceived abstract fancy or principle.

My X house is inspired by a house featured on the ArchDaily website which I saw in the spring.  I was intrigued by its shape, the way spaces flow from one to another, and the incorporation of an isolated tower rising out of the sprawling ranch style building.  It also recalls to me several of my favorite design principles from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, too many to list here but especially in regards to the various forms of family dwellings, No. 75 to 79. 

I started the design in April and worked on it from time to time at a snail's pace, putting in details, fixing design issues, and trying to overcome the challenges thrown at me by the Revit software.  As is usually the case with me, my designs tend to run on the big side for simple dwellings.  This is something I hope to pare down in my future designs.

There are certain advantages in siting a house at an angle to the street, i.e., not strictly following the Cartesian coordinate system of the predominant street grid, if the width of the lot permits it.  For one thing, you can orient the entry and garage at an oblique angle to the street and thus gain more privacy.  Secondly it can open up rooms with more light and views.  

My design is composed of two bars which form an approximate "X" shape, anchored with a vertical volume at where they cross each other.  The X-shape is reflected inside through the unobstructed circulation routes, both ambulatorily and visually, at one side of each bar.  The effect is achieved by the use of (frosted) glazed pocket doors which separate the more private spaces--the guest bedroom and the office/music room in the E-W block, and the master bedroom in the N-S one--at the farther end of the bars from the more public areas.  The vertical volume contains the circulation hub and another office, an "Ivory Tower" for the most discriminating intellectual pursuits.

In addition, there are a couple of features which I'd like to point out - 

1. The generous use of wall-height sliding glass doors.  I use them on the south facing walls of the kitchen-dining area, the office, the guest room, and the master bedroom, which all open out to terraces, on the ground floor.  I also use them between the living room and kitchen/dining area to screen off the after-dinner mess, and in the office upstairs on two sides, which give access to the entire roof deck.

2. An exterior circular stair gives separate access to the roof deck, which provides ample space for an array of solar panels and for various entertaining options.

What follows are the plans, elevations, sections, and some renderings of the interior spaces, which are meant to give you some idea of what the design looks like.  Enjoy!

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Basement Floor Plan

NW Elevation

NE Elevation

SE Elevation

SW Elevation

NS Section facing East

NS Section facing West

Section through stairs

EW Section facing North

EW Section facing South

Entry Drive

Entry

West Perspective

South Perspective

NE Perspective

Vestibule

Living Room.1

Living Room.2

Kitchen-Dining

Her Office

Guest Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

2nd Floor Landing

2nd Floor Kitchenette

His Office

Roof Deck

Laundry Room

Garage