A love letter to my favorite city

When I was growing up, people used to ask the question, "Are you a city person or a country person?"  I always had a hard time answering it.  I loved the outdoors, the smell of the forest and the lakes, going camping with my family, and the peaceful feeling of being connected to the earth.  But I also loved going into the city (for me, the city was Boston), which had so much to see and do.  I loved its energy and the stimulation.  I loved the museums, architecture, events, and (as I got older) shopping.

But I didn't grow up in the city or the county, I grew up in a suburb.

When I was in school, that suburb was fine for me.  There were places I could ride my bike, small bits of forest where the local kids could play, a couple of small lakes that were good for swimming, fishing, and exploring. The schools were good and I liked my teachers. But the older I got, the more boring I found the town.  It didn't have easy access to the city or to the country.  It didn't feel very international.  There wasn't much to do there except for hanging out at the shopping mall.  At one point, in my late teens or early 20's, I even felt like the suburbs were a place where culture went to die.

At around the same time that I was becoming increasingly unhappy with suburban life, I got the opportunity to move from the East Coast to the West Coast, to Berkeley to be exact.  If any of you have been to Berkeley, you know that even though it does not have skyscrapers and is not very large, it is very much a city!  And not only that, it is just a 20 min train-ride across the bay to San Francisco.  It was eye-opening and energizing to experience actually living in a city, as opposed to only visiting one.  For seven wonderful years, Berkeley was my home and San Francisco was my world.  I had discovered that, although I love and need to be near nature ("the country"), I am at heart a city person.

When I lived in the Bay Area (the area around San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay is simply called the Bay Area by people who live there or are familiar with it), there was a columnist (similar to a journalist or blogger, a columnist writes a weekly "column" in the newspaper) who wrote about life in San Francisco.  His name was Herb Caen and he had a sharp wit, was very observant, and had a wonderfully rich and expressive style of writing.  It seemed like everybody in the Bay Area loved to read Herb Caen's columns. 

Today, as I was reading SF Gate (the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper), I came across a reprint of one of Herb Caen's columns.  It's an old column, from 1963, but he could have written it yesterday.  Well, actually, he couldn't have written it yesterday because he died in 1997, but you know what I mean; what he wrote is as relevant today as it was almost 50 years ago.

In his column, he talks about what makes a city a city.  (No, that's not a typo. It's a set sentence pattern: "what makes (an noun) (a noun)."  See me after class if you'd like examples or an explanation of this pattern.)

I'm posting the column here because it's a beautiful piece of writing.  I must warn you, parts of it will be difficult to understand.  But the style and the feeling that he puts into his writing make it worth reading all the way through.  Because this column is about getting a feeling for what makes a city a city, it's ok to skim (and even skip) over the parts that you don't understand - in fact I strongly suggest you do that.  Read it just for the feeling, don't worry about every word.  Enjoy the pictures he paints with his words, and think about how you feel about cities.  Do you share the same feelings?  Does he give you new idea about cities?

If you look at the column and are afraid that it is too long or that it's really too hard for you, just read the first 5 paragraphs and the last 3 paragraphs.  Here is some vocabulary from those paragraphs to help you along:


Paragraphs 1-5:
'burb - Short form of "suburb."  In the US these are often also called 'bedroom communities' of larger cities.

In parting - When we were leaving, when we were saying good-bye.

Watch it - A variation on "watch out" meaning "be careful."  Here, it means that the speaker thinks the listener will be surprised when his city becomes bigger than San Francisco.

Merely - Only, just


State of mind - way of thinking, attitude

Clash - Fight together

Bittersweet smell of success and failure - A play on words with the set expression "the sweet smell of success."

Gauged - Judged, measured

The last 3 paragraphs:
Accessibility (n) - The state of being able to get to (or enter) a place easily or not.

Baggage - Caen mixes the idea of actual luggage and suitcases with the psychological idea of "emotional baggage," which refers to our own personal histories & emotions which make us who we are (and often not in a good way).

Assimilate - To absorb (take in) something and make it part of you.  For cities this is both physical and abstract.

Poise - Balance and gracefulness.  Dancers have physical poise.  Diplomats are very poised in their relationships.

Supermarket satellites - Caen's poetic way of saying that suburbs are nothing more than satellites of a city, with a supermarket at their center.  (Does a supermarket offer culture the way a traditional city center does?)

Formless vacuum - Formless = having no clear or definite shape.  Vacuum = having nothing inside, not capable of supporting life.

Housing project - Mass-produced housing, usually apartments, usually built by the government.  In the US these are traditionally built is cities, are usually ugly and very basic, and are for low-income (poor) people.

Ravens and crows and jays, oh my!

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 The title of this post is a play on words with famous line from the move The Wizard of Oz.  In the movie, Dorothy and her friends are following the Yellow Brick Road through a forest on their way to see the Wizard.  They don’t know what kind of wild animals are in the forest, and they become more and more afraid of being attacked.  As they become more afraid, they keep repeating the names of the animals that they are afraid of, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”  “Oh my!” is something you say when you are surprised or worried.  It’s a lot of fun to repeat this line, because it has a really fun rhythm.  (Ask me in class about this some day.)  So this line is often repeated in the media (news, tv, articles, etc) , with different things substituted for the 3 scary animals.

But I must admit, this post is about crows and ravens but not really about jays.  I just included jays because I needed a 3^rd bird for the title and jays are related to ravens and crows.

I decided to write this post about ravens and crows because I came across this article in the BBC about how intelligent crows are.  It turns out there has been a lot written about crow intelligence.  The BBC has two more articles here and here, and the New York Times has a different article here.  The New York Times article is longer and harder to read than the BBC article.  It’s a very interesting story about a study at U.Washington which showed that crows are very good at recognizing individual human faces.  If the article is too difficult, you can see a video about this research (and more) here.  It’s fascinating to watch, and they speak pretty clearly and not too fast. The program is called "A Murder of Crows."  When it is used this way, "murder" is the more specific word for flock (group) of crows, although most people usually say "flock of crows."

Crows fascinate me.  Have you ever been asked, “If you could be any animal, what would you be?”  Many people say ‘dolphin.’  And I used to, too.  But then I remember watching, closely watching, a group of crows.  For a long time I thought of crows as nothing more than noisy, irritating birds.   Their “caw” is very loud and not particularly beautiful.  But when I watched a group of crows carefully, I was impressed by how social they were and how intelligent they seemed.  So now, if anybody asks me what animal I’d like to be, I tell them I’d like to be a crow.  What’s not to love about crows (except for their loud caw)?  They’re exceptionally  smart, they’re very social, and their shiny black feathers are so cool!

Similar to crows are ravens.  (Notice the inversion in that sentence?  Nice, eh?)  To me, ravens looks like very large crows on steroids (muscle-building drugs).  Here is short description of how you can tell crows and ravens apart.  

When I was a child, I visited the Tower of London, where, in addition to housing the Crown Jewels of England, they also keep several ravens.  It is said that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, England will fall.  I don’t know if they mean “fall” like “conquered by another country,” or if they mean simply that something bad will happen to England and it will stop existing.  Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but the ravens at the Tower of London are a cultural icon, so it’s not surprising that the BBC wrote an article about them here.

Ravens and crows are very symbolic birds in many cultures.  Wikipedia has a very interesting article about them here.  Some people think they are scary, and in the US you sometimes see ravens on Halloween decorations.  A famous American author, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote a long poem called The Raven.  This poem is considered a classic of American Poetry.  Wikipedia summarizes it very well, saying:

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas (Athena), the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". The poem makes use of a number of folk and classical references.

Mostly, most people think of The Raven as a scary poem because the young man panics more and more as the poem goes on.  I like the poem because it has a great rhythm and it is rather musical.  As I mentioned, the poem is long and it uses a lot of old-fashioned words as well.  If you’d like to just listen to a little bit of it, I really like this reading of it.  If you’d like to read along, here is a link to a site that has an illustrated book to go along with the reading.  But my favorite version of all is the Simpsons version.  True, it does include all the crazy, hard to understand words, but it makes it very easy to get a feeling for the story and the mood.  I definitely suggest you take a look at it.  And, if you want more explanation of the poem, Wikipedia does a good job, plus it has several links to more resources at the bottom of the article.  

 So there you go.  Once I started looking for stories about crows and ravens on the Internet, I discovered that there is LOTS of information out there!  Some people even have blogs that are only about crows and/or ravens.  Hmmmmm, seems like crows or ravens might make a good essay or paper topic, eh?

This just in - Celery Recall

(Note: The title of this post is in the old style of television newscasters.  When a newscaster was reading the evening news and a big story which was not part of the planned broadcast had just happened, the newscaster would interrupt his normal broadcast and say “This just in…” and then give the breaking news.)

I know I said that I would only post once a week to this blog.  But how could I resist when this article 1) appeared in the news just today, and 2) is on the same topic that the class read about last week?  All those great vocabulary words are still fresh in your minds, so give this article a try.  Take your new words for a test drive!  (The expression “take (something) for a test drive” refers to what you do when you’re looking at new cars, and the salesman urges you to try the car out.  He’ll tell you to, or maybe you’ll ask to, “take it for a test drive!”)

Here are some words that you might find helpful:

Recall (n., v.) – Sometimes this means remember (v), and occasionally it is used for a particular type of memory (n).  However, in this article it means the situation when a manufacturer asks people who bought their product (consumers) to return that product to the store.

Consume (v.) – Eat

Findings (n.) – Something that is discovered in an investigation.  Sometimes we say “conclusions” instead.

Erroneous (adj.) – Incorrect.  (Did you notice its similarity to the word “error”?)

Leak (n., v.) – What happens when there is a hole in a container (like a bag), or when the lid of a bottle is on tightly enough, and whatever is in the container/bottle/etc comes out.

Manure (n.) – Poop which is used to make vegetables grow better.

Resilient (adj.) – Hard to hurt or kill.  

So, do you need to be worried?  Do you need to stop eating celery?  No.  The contaminated celery was found in just a few places in Texas and in one part of Oklahoma.  But now that you know this vocabulary, I hope you will feel confident reading similar articles in the future, thus keeping yourself safe, healthy, and informed.  :-) 

 

Benoit Mandelbrot, the Father of Fractals

The other day, a friend of mine who teaches computer science posted a link on his Facebook page to the New York Times obituary for Benoit Mandelbrot. I've included the link here in case you'd like to read it too.  It's a bit long (he was a famous scholar, after all!), and the writing is sophisticated, but if you read the first sentence of each paragraph you will get a good general idea about his life.

[Obituary = death notice and short story of the person’s life]

Being a person who loves food, the first thing I think of when I hear “mandelbrot” is a very yummy type of almond cookie.

But the second thing I think of when I hear “Mandelbrot” is a kind of crazy, psychedelic (a hippie term for very colorful, as if one were on drugs) art form called fractals. 

Mandelbrot, Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot to be exact, is the name of the person who described and named them. 

But to tell you the truth, I have no idea why fractals are important (aside from creating strangely hypnotic art).  Fortunately, I came across an article on the BBC which explained what fractals are used for.  

One very simple thing that fractals are good for is creating images of complex things.  For example, here is one that reminds me of broccoli:

Here is a picture which looks like a satellite photograph of a river, but was really created on a computer using a fractals art program:

But fractals are not just used for creating images, the theory of fractals can be applied to abstract ideas and patterns.  In the BBC article, Jack Challoner writes, "Fractal geometry can also provide a way to understand complexity in 'systems' as well as just in shapes."  He mentions that fractal theory can help to describe patterns in earthquakes, heart rhythms, and even economics.

If you'd like a simple explanation of fractals, Wikipedia's Simple English site has a page about fractal geometry which gives you a good general idea.  It includes some mathematics (I ignored that part, but you might like it) and some animations (my favorite part of the page).

If you'd like to know more about Dr. Mandelbrot, here is the link to his entry on Wikipedia.  The page includes references to articles and other web sites, if you want to find out even more about him and his ideas.

Two common words that share a root with "fractals" are fraction and fracture.  

Often you see fraction in mathematics: 

Q: If you divide a pie into 4 equal pieces, and you give one piece to each of your 3 friends, what fraction of the pie is left?

A: One quarter.

But sometimes fraction is used to mean a very small amount of the original number:

"I bought these shoes on sale for a fraction of their normal price!"

Fracture means break, most often when we talk about bones, and it can be used as a verb or a noun.

Doctor: "Well, Mrs. McCarthy, I'm sorry to say that Timmy fractured his arm when he fell off his bike."

Mrs. McCarthy: "Oh no!  How bad is the fracture?"

So when you think about the meanings of fracture and fraction, the word fractal (notice the adjective suffix?) really makes sense. 

RIP* Benoit Mandelbrot.

(*RIP = (May he/she) rest in peace.  We often write this when we want to indicate that someone has died.)