The Art of Translation

Aren’t machines wonderful? Well, yes, sometimes, when they work. Like the opportunity for me to have a daily “newspaper column” without going to journalism school and actually having to get hired. (This blog). But as I’ve always said and will keep on saying, keeping the machine servant to the human and with living/breathing back-ups is the best arrangement, whether it be with phone calls (where I’m always screaming at the robot “Agent! Agent!”), parking lot exits (“This machine will not accept your card” while the cars behind you are honking) or translation. Someone from Russia wrote something on Facebook praising my work and here is what Google translator said:

With Doug Gudkinym I met 10 years ago on ruf-seminar in novgorod. I was shocked by them as a musician. All the sounds, what we did, great sounds, had a form and content!
 Maybe it was my first standard and benchmark, who sat in my head. Music should always be, even if it's simple! Otherwise, it's primitive! Thank you Doug for science and example.

Huh?! Well, I can help a little. “Gudkinym” is “Goodkin,” “ruf-seminar” is “Orff seminar.”

As for the benchmark sitting in her head and being thanked for science, that takes a bit more thought. But I kind of like the line, “Music should always be, even if it’s simple.”

Speaking of machines, I used online movie ticket purchase instead of buying a ticket from a person and was so proud to have our seats ahead of time to go with two friends to the John Coltrane movie. But when we gave the tickets to a real person, the real person showed me that I had bought them for the night before and tonight's show was sold out. Aaaargh!!!! And then another real person gave us passes for a future movie and we looked on a machine to see if we could catch any other movie and found space at a theater a couple of miles away and rushed there in time to get to see The Circle. That’s a movie about machines worthy contemplating. Not only is Big Brother watching you, but you’re on the screen in his living room with a few million or billion at the party eating popcorn enjoying shots of you picking your nose in the car stopped at the traffic light. Chilling.

Okay, Blog, do you work and send this out. And let people know that all those “great sounds, which had a form and content” came from our own voices and bodies and simple instruments made from wood and metal with no plugs or moving parts. Simple technologies, great results.

That should be our “standard and benchmark” sitting in our heads.

Such As It Is

What’s to report? I’m back at Yancey’s Saloon as the fair-weather fan cheering on the Warriors. Apparently it’s working, because they’ve won 6 straight games.

The kids at school have Spring Fever, that feeling of school almost done and now’s the time to pull out all the repressed naughty behaviors and show their quirky, edgy selves. Well, not all of them. And my fabulous 8^th graders are plowing steadfastly ahead preparing for the Spring Concert.

I’m taking them to two different jazz shows this weekend, the wonderful singer Mary Stallings with the SF Jazz High School All-Stars and then that night, she sings with vibraphonist Warren Wolf and pianist Cyrus Chestnut. I’m going to both shows and tonight went to hear Gerald Clayton, one of my new favorite up-and-coming pianists. He can swing hard with the best of them, but has a gentle, poetic touch that is rare and his trio listening so hard they could hear corn grow. On Saturday night, I myself am giving a modest house concert and luckily, the Muse has been by my side practicing this week. And tomorrow night going to see Chasing the Trane, the documentary film about John Coltrane. So I guess you could call this Jazz Appreciation Week, not that I need an excuse to appreciate it.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Axis of Evil is trying to take down affordable health care

in their ongoing campaign to hurt as many innocent people who don’t deserve a bit of it.

Should we admire their relentless perseverance? No we shouldn’t. Any more than we should celebrate that Hitler loved his dog and Columbus was a good navigator. Evil is evil and this is it, folks.

After four days of shorts and flip-flops, the fog showed up and it’s back to blue jeans and winterish jackets. San Francisco can’t seem to abide any more than 5 or 6 warm days in a row.

Amidst it all, the roses in the back yard continue to be spectacular, the wisteria is dropping its blossoms, the world keeps spinning even if Nature is shaking her head thinking, “Really, people?”

That’s the news, such as it is. Onward.

Teacher Appreciation Week

Yeah, right. Let’s set aside a week to pretend we give a rat’s ass about honoring our teachers, spend a few moments thanking them and then get on with the work about treating them like dirt. Pardon my cynicism here, but I’m a bit weary of this naïve happy American solution to organize society around choices bad for culture, community and human health and then have a day or week or month to honor all the things we spend the rest of the year disrespecting. Not okay with me. Tom Lehrer nailed this down back in the 60’s with his fabulous satirical song, National Brotherhood Week. As follows (better sung—try to find it):

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,

And the black folks hate the white folks.

To hate all but the right folks

Is an old established rule.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,

Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek to cheek.

It's fun to eulogize

The people you despise,

As long as you don't let 'em in your school.

Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,

And the rich folks hate the poor folks.

All of my folks hate all of your folks,

It's American as apple pie.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,

New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans 'cause it's very chic.

Step up and shake the hand

Of someone you can't stand.

You can tolerate him if you try.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,

And the Catholics hate the Protestants,

And the Hindus hate the Moslems,

And everybody hates the Jews.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,

It's National Everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood Week.

Be nice to people who

Are inferior to you.

It's only for a week, so have no fear.

Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!

That about sums up the political side of Teacher Appreciation Week. However, on the personal side, it’s never a bad idea to reflect on those teachers who helped make us who we are and thank them publicly or privately. For me, that would include my first Orff teacher Avon Gillespie, my college music teacher John Ronsheim, my first jazz piano teacher Art Lande and my Zen Buddhist teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Of course, countless more, including all the teachers I’ve never met, but have read their books or listened to their music or heard them speak. So thanks to teachers and while we keep working on making ourselves worthy of sincere appreciation, let’s also get organized to insist on our value, both monetary and cultural.

And for all those folks sending letters of appreciation, feel free to enclose a check. J

7 + 45 = Bad Math

My favorite stories, hands down, have to do with human transformation. Someone locked away in some cold, dark part of themselves suddenly sees the light and escapes from the prison of their greed, hatred, self-loathing to emerge into the light of their better self. Probably the most well-known and radical example is Ebenezer Scrooge, that Bah Humbug old skinflint who is shown the consequences of his miserable life and given a chance to redeem himself. He takes it and the world is astonished.

No such miraculous transformation will be happening with 45. What you see is exactly what you get and it ain’t pretty. We all hoped that some of it may have been a posture just to get elected, but 100 days into his Presiduncey, there has been no revelation of a kinder heart, more intelligent mind or more open-to-discussion personality and short of the visits by the three ghosts, there will never be one. From the start, some found such “I yam what I yam” honesty refreshing, but that simply reveals the confused state of mind and troubled soul of our nation’s voters.

Take his recent comparison of himself to Andrew Jackson, the 7^th President. As reported recently:

Trump made the comments after going on a lengthy riff about President Andrew Jackson, a past president Trump believes was similar to himself in his populist views and bombastic campaigning. "I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War," Trump said of the slave-owning president. "He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said 'there's no reason for this.'"

Not much subtlety to unpack. Of course Jackson was angry, the same way all the Southern States were. How dare the North imply that slaves were people entitled to the equality promised by the Constitution?! How dare they interrupt our great deal of free labor to make us rich?! Who do they think they are trying to disturb my sipping mint juleps on the porch of my plantation while the happy slaves did work they were grateful to have?! And since I (Jackson) myself own 300 slaves, ain’t no one gonna take them away from me!

For anyone who knows a little history, Jackson’s “big heart” was also responsible for the Indian Removal Act, causing much death and devastation as thousands walked the “Trail of Tears” from Florida to Oklahoma. This is the guy who Trump idolizes.

One thing must be said about Jackson that sets him apart from Trump. He was a man of his times. After all, it’s not unusual that he had slaves—as we know, Jefferson and others did also. It’s not surprising that he believed in Manifest Destiny and that the white race had both the right and duty to take land away from the “savage” Indians. This was common fare in the discourse of the times and he can’t be wholly judged by the standards of our time. 

Not so Trump. He’s alive in a time when the notion of white supremacy has been proven time and time again to be a shameful folly of our undeveloped ignorant stage of human evolution. The more civilized nations—Germany, Australia, South Africa and Canada, for starters—have embarked on their Truth and Reconciliation campaigns to confess to their sins and crimes against humanity. He should know better and instead is trying to drag us back down into the Dark Ages. Jackson never got to witness the extraordinary moral force and intelligence of people like Harriet Tubman (who soon will replace him on the $20 bill), Frederick Douglass, W.E. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Martin Luther King (for starters). Trump is—or should be—aware of their contributions and still persists in bending the moral arc of the universe away from justice. That’s a greater shame and crime against humanity from someone whose “big heart” is 10 times smaller than the Grinch. Without the hope of redemption.

Ironically, I also hung Andrew Jackson’s portrait in my bedroom as a child. In fact, I had commissioned my father to paint it after reading in 4^th grade a biography of Jackson extolling his heroic virtues. The guy greeted me every morning and was the last face I saw each night before sleep.

But like Scrooge and the Grinch, I eventually had my moment of epiphany and realized I had been idolizing a brutal man unworthy of respect. And you, Mr. Trump?

Naked Gardening

It’s May. Time to dance around the Maypole and invite Spring to make her full appearance of flowered splendor. Maia was the Greek Goddess of Fertility, so after the dance, feel free to go off into the fields with the partner of your choice and make merry. The Roman poet Ovid associated May also with “maiores,” Latin for elders, so to honor both meanings, may I suggest taking a 65-year old out into the fields? (Hint, hint).

Coming up soon is Cinco de Mayo, one of a thousand ways our Mexican neighbors have enlivened our culture. In honor of that, may I suggest a barrage of postcards to insist “No walls!” Then comes Mother’s Day and not a bad idea to also nod to our mutual Mother Nature and write some more postcards to the effect of “Climate Change Is Real” (or more poetically, “Our Mother is having hot flashes.”) And then comes Memorial Day and a good time to remind the folks in Washington that soldiers died so that we might have the freedom to carry a sign to the President’s Speech in Pennsylvania that says “The oceans are rising” without getting beat up and thrown out by Bikers for Trump with the full permission of the guy pretending to be President and the support of the police. Mayday, Mexicans, Mothers and Memorials—looks like it will be a busy month for us.

And that’s not to mention recognizing the various holidays that the average person doesn’t even know exist. According to Wikipedia, May is also the month for:

• International Mediterranean Diet Month. (Start making those Greek salads!)

• Better Hearing and Speech Month. (Eh?)

• National Electrical Safety Month (No more electric razors in the bathtub!)

• National Smile Month. ( Start practicing.)

• World Laughter Day (Today! Then downgrade to “smile”)

• National Burger Month (Hmm. Doesn’t go so well with the Mediterranean Diet.)

• Mental Health Awareness Month. (Good time to say it: 45 is certifiable insane.)

• National Moving Month. (Get packing. Especially the folks in the White House.)

• National Teacher Appreciation Day (May 3): (Good time to get rid of DeVos.)

And my all-time favorite on May 7^th.

• World Naked Gardening Day (Don’t forget the sunscreen.)

Happy May!