methinks

The Scroll of Wisdom

When I moved into my new apartment in Duyun, I was fortunate enough to find a scroll of ancient wisdom just lying about on a desk.

In this video, I translate the tale and hopefully maintain the same poetic impact of the original.

Click here to watch me decipher the scroll (2.9 mb)

Actors Studio

Last year David selected a short play for our Advanced Class, not to perform it but to build confidence and have some fun. I'd say we achieved both those aims.

I had the bright idea to video the "rehearsals" thinking I'd be able to eek out some kind of nostalgic montage at some point. What I didn't realize at the time is that a camcorder mic three yards away from the subject (who is in a concrete classroom with tile floor)...well, it didn't pick up much discernible speech. At least to the untrained ear. If you speak excellent Chinglish you'd probably be able to make out a lot, but still not enough to merit a nostalgic montage.

What we have here instead are two short clips where the intensity is high enough to register on the mic...and in our hearts.

Click here to watch David and Marrissa in Thirteen (3.4 mb)

Click here to watch David and Julia in Sixteen (0.3 mb)

Old Photos

I found these in a box of old college stuff. I was really cool back then.

Chengdu Pandas

I know everyone has seen pandas on TV before, and I'd guess that 90% of people reading this right now have seen these particular pandas (at the panda preserve in Chengdu) in person. So yeah, not much new here. Maybe it will bring back some fond memories for you.

Click here to see adult pandas eating (3.6 mb)

Click here to see a baby panda playing (4.1 mb)

Christmas in China: The Videos

I guess you could say I'm a little behind in editing footage I shot in China; these videos come from Christmas 2003, not 2004.

On Christmas morning Class 1 (2001) wishes my family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year with a song, then several students and teachers send out individual greetings.

Click here to watch the video (3.8mb)

You might remember the post Christmas in China , in which I wrote about the sumptuous feast, silly games and warm company I shared on Christmas evening. The first of these two videos features a game in which you must pick up a box from the floor with your teeth. It's hard to explain. Just watch the video.

Click here to watch the video (5.3mb)

The last video is a montage from the gift exchange. It's a quick glimpse of the people who made it a memorable evening.

Click here to watch the video (5.4mb)

China Waking

I've previously posted several links to articles that outline China's growing economic foundation and America's resultant dependancy on it.

This op/ed piece puts those figures in the larger context, namely that China is playing to win. That their growing power isn't an economic fluke founded soley on a surplus of cheap labor, but a concerted effort on all fronts to become a superpower. Think about that while doing your Christmas shopping.

Click here to read the Op/Ed

The Third Friday of April

Along the far wall of the Riverton Middle School cafetorium, several feet beyond the lunch-line register and directly under the painted horseman mascot, the school's Environmental Club was selling saplings for Arbor Day. Derek approached the end of the line, picked up a skim milk, and heard a delicate yet heartfelt "Help save the world," followed by a forced mid-pubescent bass, "Buy a tree!" in a tone which implicitly added a derogatory, "bitch." Either convinced or coerced, most students with a dollar bought one.

One dollar seemed a decent sum to Derek's sixth grade mind, but a chance to save the world came cheaply at that price. With feigned disinterest he mumbled a, "Sure." He handed over the dollar and she handed back his own jack pine sapling, short needles on a flimsy trunk, moist roots stuffed in a tiny plastic sack. "You need to plant it soon," she called as he walked away. "Uh huh," as he dangled the bag from a free finger under a lunch tray laden with tater-tots and soggy rectangular pizza.

He left the tree in his locker until school was out. When that time came, he hastily dropped it inside his book bag and zipped it shut. He rode the bus home without incident.

At home he gently pulled the tree out to tend to it. He gave it water, even though it wasn't dry. He propped it up on the counter near the window to give it light and air. As he stared at it, its potential, his mind was racing with one question, "Where should I plant it?" There were so many factors to consider. The obvious factors of adequate light and water were complicated with aesthetics and permission - after all it wasn't his yard. The whole issue was doubly complicated for his young mind because, while he knew that these things were factors, he didn't have enough experience to know what was important for each. Just how much sunlight does a jack pine need? He took a nap to find some answers.

His mom returned home from work while he slept. When he came out of his bedroom she asked, "Is that your tree?" "Yeah, I got it at school. It cost a dollar. It was for Arbor Day today, for the Environmental Club's fundraiser," he replied, answering all potential questions in one breath. "Where are you going to plant it?" his mother asked. "I'm not sure. I haven't decided," was his distant answer. "Well, you need to plant it soon." He looked at the floor. He took the tree and went to his room to ponder.

He could only imagine the worst in each location. Scorching in the southern sun, freezing in the northern winter, being stifled near the house, getting mowed down in the open. He had no experience and would ask for no advice; he chose to reason with his musings.

Hidden in his room, he debated all Saturday and brooded all Sunday and still he broke no ground. The lustrous, supple needles waned to dull, brittle stalks. The pine scent faded to nothing. Sunday night he went to sleep praying for answers. Monday morning he had one. The tree was dead.

Its death gave birth to blameful, subjunctive fantasies. What he would have done, if he'd not been given such a weak tree. If only his yard had been more suitable. Its death gave relief but not release. His problem had been solved but not resolved. He threw away the dead tree, washed his hands, and got on the bus to school as normal.

Time passed and the third Friday of April came again. Derek approached the end of the line, picked up a skim milk, and heard a mature and heartfelt "Help save the world," followed by a bassy, "Buy a tree!" He hesitated. One dollar seemed a decent sum to Derek's mind. He swelled with the coward's bitter courage, "Why? So it can die? I'd rather not waste my money." He stood there, hoping she'd ask him again, that'd she try to persuade him to reconsider. She didn't. She was too busy selling trees. He stood there still, lost. The bass broke the silence, "Get lost, bitch."

Feed n' Seed

He fell through the door and limped across the empty waiting room to the reception window. He pointed his revolver at the one nurse behind the counter.

"I need a doctor. Don't touch the telephone. I'll shoot your pretty face."

She took her hand off the ear piece and started to cry. He reached over the counter and yanked the thick black phone cable from the wall.

"Is the doctor here?" he crescendoed from whimper to shout.

"The doctor is eating lunch."

"Well, if it wouldn't inconvenience you, do you think you could tell him there is a man here who's been shot. Go!"

The nurse swiveled in her chair and ran like she was wearing a skirt, even though she wasn't, to the first of two examine rooms. She knocked before entering.

As he came out the nurse pointed towards the wounded man and flapped her hand up and down at her assailant.

The doctor beckoned, "Would you mind coming around back here? Into the examining room to get a better look at you."

The wounded man limped back across the waiting room, streaking the blood that he'd dripped when he first came in, then locked the main door.

"Both of you in that room," he barked. "You think I'm an idiot." The gun was brandished some more.

The doctor put his arm on the nurse's shoulder and guided her into the exam room. The limping man slumped his way around the reception and back to the exam table. The exam rooms had no locks, so he swore loudly and pumped his fists to convince them that he really would shoot them if they tried to leave.

He sat on the edge of the table supporting his weight with his right leg. He lifted the left leg up with the doctor's help then threw his body back to get the other leg up. The table was smeared in bright blood. His face was equally red.

"What do we have here?" the doctor asked, even though a shotgun wound to the back of the left thigh was clearly visible.

"I got shot by a shot gun," he dutifully answered. Being on the table, for an instant he felt like a patient. "Is it bad?"

"You'll be fine. Don't worry." he lied. His leg would certainly need amputated; the shot had shattered the bone. It was incredible he could even limp.

"Who did this to you?"

"What does it matter who did this to me? Fix it."

"Well, I can't just fix it. It's a big wound. You're losing a lot of blood. I would call the ambulance, but you took care of the phone."

"No calls. I'm not going to no hospital. You'll fix me here."

"Listen, I can't just patch you up."

"I'll make you a deal, you fix me up and get me back on my feet and I won't shoot this pretty nurse in her pretty face. How's that sound, doc?" He pointed the gun at her and imitated a coy, girlish smile.

"Sure, I think I can fix you up. Nurse, would you get me the morphine." She drew a syringe full.

"What's the morphine for? I don't need no morphine? You think I'm an idiot? You trying to drug me?"

"It will help with your pain."

"Who's feeling pain. I don't feel no pain."

"You'll need to roll over then, on your stomach."

"Get over here on the floor and lay down," the wounded man ordered the nurse. She did and he rolled over on the table. His gun extended downwards towards the floor and her face.

"First I'm going to clean out the shot from the area. This might hurt."

"I don't feel no hurt. Get a move on it."

The doctor began to remove the lead pellets from the man's muscle with forceps. The wounded man grimaced in pain.

"Who did this to you?" the doctor asked again.

"Damn it, what does it matter? Some thug at that Feed n' Seed."

The doctor stopped cleaning. The nurse stopped crying.

"Is he okay," the nurse asked lying on the floor.

"I had the cash and was leaving when the bastard shot me in the leg. I planted one right in his chest."

He would have half-chuckled except the doctor injected the morphine deep into his thigh. The man craned his neck to protest as the nurse slid out from under the barrel and grabbed the man's wrist with both her hands. The doctor added his muscle to the struggle, but the wounded man's resolve quickly faded into happier thoughts.

The doctor grabbed his emergency bag and followed the sprinting nurse to his car.

"He'll be fine, Susan, don't worry," he said as they sped towards her husband at Feed n' Seed.

The Gang

When I was in fourth grade, I was in a gang. This was back in the 80s and in rural Illinois, so you shouldn't think that we had guns or knives or anything more than fourth grader fists. I hesitate to say we even had those. The only thing we really had to set us apart from the civilians was a loose dress code -- BK shoes and OP clothes whenever possible. It wasn't a rule, but Jade set the tone and we followed suit. Jade was the leader.

No one ever said, "Hey Jade, you're the leader." But one doesn't need to say those things. He was simply a superior rebel. He was the first to have the double-tailed skateboard and the first to wear the Tony Hawk hair cut. Not that we were skaters; He was the only one who could stay on his board for more than ten feet. But it was that ten feet that set him above us. He'd cuss, and we'd cuss. He'd draw obscene pictures and we'd wonder What is that?, then try to draw obscene pictures too. It was clear that Jade was as cool, as tough, as confident as a fourth grader could be, and we, like so many children and men, thought imitation would mold us in his form.

We weren't a large gang, no more than 5 or 6 people at any time depending on which marginal characters Jade let hang around that day, but our combined talents made us formidable. Jade was the unflinching Iceman. Tom and Mike were brutes whom Jade rescued from being common bullies. And I was the counselor, schemer, some might say instigator for the group. Take, for instance, the Suspension Bridge incident.

The playground equipment was divided into two sections connected by one single wooden suspension bridge, the kind with thick planks and chains that make heavy clinky noises when you run across. Not only was it a coveted piece of equipment in its own right, it was also a critical component of every decent playground circuit. I suggested that by selectively allowing some to pass and denying others, we could create a schoolyard aristocracy, over which Jade would rule.

The first day Tom had to shove someone off the bridge to illustrate our sincerity. I smoothed that over with the teachers. Afterwards, those permitted to pass - those who didn't have to be demeaned by jumping off into the mulch and climbing back up the other side of the playground - were elevated in the eyes of their peers. We gave the existing Nobles the freedom to cross with guests of their choosing, further entrenching them in our status granting system. Within a few days, the object of recess was not to play but to try to earn the right to cross the bridge.

Bribes, favors, threats, all forms of coercion were used trying to cross that bridge. Every other day a wet-eyed 3rd grader would threaten to tell the teacher, which of course got him a visit from a Noble who held his privileges dear. No one ever tattled.

That is until Mario transferred into our school. Mario's arrival spawned a competing Kingdom under the basketball goal, which eventually led to a brutal playground war that ultimately led to my leaving Jade's gang. But that's another story for another time.

A Photographer

This Sunday morning was like the rest.

He left his small rental house before dawn on foot wearing a pocketed vest that held one unopened roll of Kodachrome film, a 72mm polarizing filter and a gray card. From his right shoulder hung an empty second-hand Nikon 6006 fitted with a 35-70 zoom lens. Under the vest he wore an outfit that approximated something he saw a National Geographic photographer in India wearing, except his was clean and pressed and purchased at Wal-Mart. He wore Velcro shoes. Left hand in vest pocket, right hand resting on suspended camera, he walked the three blocks to the river, hoping to capture a magical fog-bridge-sunrise.

He believed a camera could capture truth unseen with a living eye, that an instant isolated from its event, frozen in silvery cellulose to be mulled and measured, would reveal a character of life hidden behind daily distractions, that in fully empathizing with the entirety of an instant, then perhaps one day he could, if only for an instant, empathize with all of entirety. Or at least he read something like that in a book once. He'd read quite a lot about photography in preparation for the day he'd find something to photograph.

Weekly he'd walk the streets of his Midwestern town, his rambling internal dialogue humming so trite and if only I had good Northern light and her face is so bland. He'd stroll the circuit every weekend never taking a picture. Saturday morning sunrises were so done and Sunday evening church crowds were contrived. Sunday morning bridges were blasé, or in his mind bla-say. It was either too cloudy or too sunny or the water wasn't still enough. When shafts of sunrise would penetrate the fog in that heavenly motif we've all seen, he'd refrain from wasting film on something so well documented. He was looking for a real moment, not a postcard.

At the bridge he began to talk:

There is some potential here if only the hues would intensify. That barge doesn't frame well with the diagonals in the bridge. It's a mismatch, always a mismatch. Vertical lines, horizontal lines. I'm looking for composure, symmetry, something like sincere harmony.

His ramblings brought a reply:

You gonna scare off the fish, complained a scrawny grandpa sitting on a bucket, blue jeans dark blue and too long, rolled a full turn at the bottom, white t-shirt white no more and stretched to fit his former frame.

I'm a photographer, he snorted and walked towards town to find the church crowds.