Cathedral of Learning

Posted on June 28, 2007 by ruthek

As I attend my classes I’ve been watching the cleanup of the Cathedral of Learning, UPitt’s iconic classroom building. This is the first time the building has looked so pristine since it was built. This picture gives some idea of the transformation.

I took this photo looking down into a courtyard from the third floor. Three sculptures have been wrapped with plastic and duct tape, creating a whole new installation, debris from the cleaning litters the pavement, and you can see a sharp demarcation between clean and dirty along the right side of the back wall.

Imagine all the dirt in Pittsburgher’s lungs collected during the years when the Cathedral got so dirty.

Travelin’ Woman

Posted on June 25, 2007 by ruthek

I ordered my ticket to Japan; I finally committed to flying in the middle of October. I also got a ticket for New York in the middle of August, and yesterday, Linda and I drove to India in West Virginia. Amazing what you can see here in the US.

We went to New Vrindaban, a religious community set in the hills about two hours from Pittsburgh. After driving almost an hour on winding two lane roads we came to another world. First, you see the Palace of Gold, a monument to the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, Sri Prabhupada. We took a tour of the temple and walked around the rose garden. Then we got back in the car and drove a short distance, past a lake, to the temple.
We were encouraged to walk around even though prayers were in progress. Many people seemed to come and go, and many spoke to us and helped us to understand the prayers and symbols in the temple. But I suspect it would take the rest of my life to fully understand. One altar particularly fascinated me:
Jaganath_Baladev_Subadhra. I have not been able to find anything about these images. See a picture here. Maybe I have to go back there.

A vegetarian lunch was served at the conclusion of the activities in the temple. I could eat like that every day. Linda and I went back to the Palace of Gold for another look around. I took pictures I will put in a New Vrindaban album.

Posted on June 22, 2007 by ruthek

Yesterday was my last class about Ancient China. This is the class that met at 8:30 am, and it had to be really good; I missed only one class because I opted to meet friends who were only briefly in town. It isn’t the getting up early I mind, it’s the getting up early and rushing out. These days it seems to take about twenty minutes before my eyes are fully functional. When I was working at my last job I had to drive across the George Washington Bridge. I got up at 5:30 every morning, threw on some clothes, my contact lenses and got across the bridge before 6. (This was to avoid the really heavy traffic on the bridge, but I was still sure those trucks were going to get me.) The rest of the 35 mile trip wasn’t so bad; I was going upstate instead of down to Manhattan. My company had a fitness center. I worked out for about 45 minutes, showered, dressed, went to their cafeteria to pick up breakfast and was at my desk by 8:30. It’s hard to believe that was only four years ago.

Next Tuesday I begin auditing an Asian art class. This one starts at noon so I won’t have that early morning conflict: to go or not to go.

Who owns your elected representatives?

Posted on June 18, 2007 by ruthek

If you think your elected representatives are representing you, or concerned with your needs and wishes, you are sadly deluded. Unless we are able to change our electoral system, those boys are working for the big corporations that pay their election expenses. None of them have your interests at heart. Each time I have posted about healthcare or other political problems I realize that no change will occur unless our huge corporations are behind the change. I had a brief flicker of hope when I realized that one of GM’s biggest problems is employee health coverage. Who better to fight a large industry like healthcare insurance than another large industry. But, somehow the problem has been assuaged if not resolved, so that hope is gone.

All of this is detailed in a wonderfully researched and written post by Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By. Beginning with an AP-IPSOS poll showing 75 percent of respondents think the country is off on the wrong track, Ronni goes through many of the problems we are having in this country and sums it all up with

…I believe the one solution is to remove them [corporations] from politics and
government. That means outlawing lobbying and most of all, creating
publicly funded elections.

Read it all here.

I think this is the single most important thing we can do to take back our government. Let’s start a movement.

Beautiful Saturday

Posted on June 16, 2007 by ruthek

This is the last weekend of the 3 Rivers Festival so I decided to go down and see it again. Robin and I went last Saturday. There were wonderful, almost life-size drawings in Market Square. I was too tired to photograph that evening, so I went back today hoping for another chance, but they were gone. I walked around the festival, took some photos of buildings, looked at some of the artwork, checked out the food but, happily, nothing tempted me and was preparing to go back to the bus when I saw what appeared to be giant puppets high up in the air. They were a group from Australia, Swaypoles, and they were wonderful,
easily one of the best events at the festival. Maybe I’ll go back to see them again tomorrow.

This evening I went to a concert with my family and then out for dinner. Eli
will leave tomorrow to spend the summer in Chile. He’s been home only one week, and I saw too little of him. It’s nice to see him as a grown man; he grew up all too quickly. I had the same feeling when Robin
grew up; it also happened too fast. One grandchild is still at home
for another couple of years.

A Year of My Tulip tree

Posted on June 14, 2007 by ruthek

I have been writing about my tulip tree for about a year. I thought it would be fun to put all the photos on one page.

June 2006

Flowers on the ground after the tree was trimmed.

Blossoms are turning into long, green buds.

Those green buds turned into these strange brown, woody-looking flowers in November.

Watching for new blossoms in April 2007.

The old blossoms are still on the tree.

First new blossoms

New blossoms are shrouded in brown petals that fall off as the flowers open.

They are already beginning to form those green buds, June 2007

Keeping busy

Posted on June 14, 2007 by ruthek

This is the break week between terms for my Osher classes, but the Ancient China class I am auditing is still meeting through next week. This class begins at 8:30; it’s a great class or I wouldn’t keep going. Last night I forgot to set my alarm. I woke up in time but kept waiting for the radio to turn on. I finally turned over and found it was already 7:24. I got to class on time but it was more rushing than I like.

Yesterday an Osher group went out to a farm to learn about sustainable agriculture. It was particularly interesting for me since I know nothing about farming. I was most impressed by the kind of ingenuity required to make this a viable enterprise.
Planting beneath sheets of plastic.

My Tai Chi and Conversational Chinese classes will resume next week and continue for another 5 weeks, and I will begin auditing an introductory class in Asian Art.

Things I don’t understand

Posted on June 11, 2007 by ruthek

Last night, 60 Minutes did a story about the No Fly List. They obtained a copy of the March list which has 44,000 names on it, including Osama bin Laden with strange spellings, 14 of the 9/11 hijackers, Saddam Husein and other dead people, and doesn’t even include another list of 75,000 people who should be pulled aside for additional questioning. There are also several international dignitaries like Nabih Berri, the head of the Lebanese
parliament who recently met with Condoleezza Rice and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia.

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent, says in the headlong rush to get a list, they forgot
quality control. "And, we forgot what this was about. This is to
prevent an Islamic terrorist who is associated with al Qaeda from
getting on a plane. It lacks efficiency and, it makes us, look
ineffective and ill equipped"

60 Minutes went on to discuss the aggravations suffered by people with the same names as people on the list, for instance, men named Robert Johnson. CBS found twelve of them for the show. All had been subjected to long delays, humiliation and, in one case, a strip search. Having on a couple of occasions been subjected to little-old-lady-as-terrorist scrutiny I certainly sympathize.

The most outrageous part of the whole thing is:

some of the some of most dangerous terrorists never even end up on the
No Fly List, because the intelligence agencies that supply the names
don’t want them circulated to airport employees in foreign countries
for fear that they could end up in the hands of the terrorists.

"They’re not given all of the names for security reasons because
the government doesn’t want to have that information outside of the
government."

So we have a list of thousands of people we can harass, but the people most likely to be terrorists are not on the list because, what? The government doesn’t want them to know they are terrorists? The government doesn’t want them to know the government knows they are terrorists? The government wants another incident? Does anyone remember Catch 22?

Much of the time when I have things to say about healthcare, Social Security, politics, etc., I realize that real change depends on changing our electoral system to get corporate lobbyists out of power. But I can’t imagine that anyone other than terrorists could profit from this mess. You can watch the show here.

A Chihuly week

Posted on June 3, 2007 by ruthek

I did not plan it, but from Thursday, my birthday, to last Thursday I visited the Chihuly exhibit four times. Although obviously overkill, it was an interesting exercise and enabled me to more precisely define my feelings about Chihuly. As I mentioned previously, I loved the show in Chicago, did not love it in New York, and loved it here, at least the first two times.

I went to the show last Tuesday for the second time. My class let out early, it’s nearby and I had nothing better to do. At that time I bought myself a ticket for Chihuly at night. I never managed to see the show at night in Chicago. Seeing the show at night in the Bronx turned out to be a nightmare, but I decided I had to try one more time. After a pleasant visit on Tuesday I returned Wednesday evening for a night viewing. It doesn’t get really dark here until about 9 pm meaning there was still some daylight as I walked through parts of the exhibit. Mostly it was dark enough to see the effect lights have. Sometimes it was spectacular, but often I felt the daylight spectacle was just as good, in some cases even better. Here is a photo of the full moon peeking over the Japanese garden, flanked by Chihuly.

Someday I may take only dark photos.

I took this photo too early in the evening. Both the Chihuly and the Cathedral are lit at night and might make a better picture. Maybe I’ll go back when it starts to get dark earlier.

In the meantime I got a call from old friends who were visiting here inviting me to meet them at the Phipps on Thursday morning. Back I went. I think I was Chihulyed out, but it was OK; I had a good time visiting with my friends.

My decision about Chihuly: I like it best when the pieces are made part of the plantings; often the plants are more interesting than the glass. The combination is greater than the sum of its parts.

Coming soon: a Chihuly album with pictures from both the Phipps and the Bronx.

Making noise

Posted on June 1, 2007 by ruthek

When several days have gone by and I haven’t posted anything I start to think about whether this blog is a diary or a vehicle for airing my thoughts (gripes) or just what it is. I suppose it is those things, and most important I think it is my way of not being invisible. When I was younger I was never invisible. Generally, my presence attracted far more attention than I ever wanted or understood how to deal with. Sometime after my fiftieth or sixtieth birthday I became invisible. I know this is not something I’ve dreamt up or that is limited to me. I’ve heard too many elders complain about it. I want to make my presence felt, at least on the internet. I encourage everyone I know to start a blog and gladly help others do it. I would like to see a huge elder presence on the web. Maybe that would make all of us less invisible.

100 Books Before I Die

Ruthe Karlin