a URL in Yiddish?

Catching up with a stack of Wall Street Journal's, I find an article from Thursday October 11: "What's the Hindi word for Dot-Com?" about a pilot program to create Internet addresses using non-Roman alphabets. The examples given in a box on the front page of the "Marketplace" section: Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese, Tamil. One of these is not like the others! Michael Chabon must be pleased.

And yes, I know that this is still available for sale.

More Irrationality from USAirways

USAir just announced a drop in service levels at Pittsburgh International Airport which was once their largest hub. In contrast to the reactions to previous rounds of cut-backs, most Pittsburghers seem to be just shrugging their shoulders and moving on.

I do like that Southwest has come here and that I can fly to Chicago and Philadelphia for very little. I also like that other airlines have ratcheted up service a little.

But I also miss being able to fly direct almost everywhere in the US. It's becoming nearly impossible to fly direct from Pittsburgh to the West Coast. Toronto is also out which I think may be the end of the "International" in Pittsburgh International.

And I still don't understand USAir: I've already mentioned that 9 flights a day from Philadelphia to La Guardia seems absurd. Today I learned that one can fly on USAir from Pittsburgh to White Plains, NY through Charlotte or Philadelphia (although one might not be able to pay utility bills for a few months after paying the fare). Again, this means that USAir flies from Philadelphia to White Plains.... why?

I certainly understand why USAir concentrated on Philadelphia as an international hub. But why all these short routes to other spots in the megalopolis? Why does the federal government allow this when air traffic around New York and Philadelphia is out of control?

And who flies from Philadelphia to New York?

Advice on Escaping the Spanish Inquisition

If you want to escape from the Spanish Inquisition (and you are a fifteenth-century Spanish Jew), here's my advice: don't convert to Christianity. See, this will actually put you under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.

But today's New York Times reports that apparently some people think that Columbus' "parents converted [from Judaism to Christianity] to escape the Spanish Inquisition." There were lots of reasons to convert to Christianity in fifteenth-century Spain and lots and lots of Jews did so. However, none of those reasons involved escaping the Inquisition.

Clearly nobody at the Times (or at the Post-Gazette which reprinted the article) was reading this blog back in May of 2005 where I thought I made this point pretty clear.
(Actually I'm pretty sure nobody at the Times or the Post-Gazette reads it now.)

(Would it be too pedantic to also point out that Columbus was born circa 1450 and the Inquisition was founded in Spain in the late 1470s? Yes, I thought so. )

Books I read in 2006

removed from the sidebar because it is getting too long:

• December 2006:
• Dorothy Sayers, The Nine Tailors
• Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine
• Laurie R. King, A Grave Talent
• Laurie R. King, To Play the Fool
• Laurie R. King, With Child
• November 2006:
• Laurie R. King, Locked Rooms
• David Mamet, The Wicked Son
• October 2006:
• Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism
• Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany
• Paul Griffiths, Religious Reading
• September 2006:
• Henry Adams, Mont St. Michel and Chartres
• Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, part 1
• Leslie Fiedler, The Last Jew in America
• August 2006:
• Laurie R. King, The Game
• The New Yorker, May-July 2006
• Daniel Dennet, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
• Laurie R. King, Justice Hall
• July 2006:
• Brian Leiter, ed., The Future for Philosophy
• George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture
• Manfred Unger et al., Juden in Leipzig: Eine Dokumentation
• Colm Toibin, The Master
• James Ault, Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church
• Laurie R. King, The Moor
• June 2006:
• Susan Allen Toth, Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East
• P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins
• William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
• Laurie R. King, O Jerusalem
• Zachary Schrag, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro
• May 2006:
• Laurie R. King, A Darker Place
• Myla Goldberg, Bee Season
• Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites
• Laurie R. King, A Monstrous Regiment of Women
• Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland
• April 2006:
• H. Goldberg, ed. The Life of Judaism
• Carl Knappett, Thinking Through Material Culture
• The New Yorker, September 2005-April 2006
• March 2006:
• I. Hodder, ed. The Meanings of Things
• S. Lubar and W. D. Kingery, eds. History from Things
• February 2006:
• Haym Soloveitchik, Yaynam [Jewish Trade in Gentile Wine in the Middle Ages
• Marvin Lowenthal, The Jews of Germany: A Story of Sixteen Centuries
• January 2006:
• Laurie R. King, A Letter of Mary
• Susan Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Books I read in 2005

removed from the sidebar because the page is getting too long:

• 
  
• December 2005:
• Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice
• Michael Sells, Approaching the Quran
• Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night
• William Bayer, Pattern Crimes
• November 2005:
• Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli
• M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, trans. The Qur'an
• Batya Gur, The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case
• Gigi Anders, Jubana: The Awkwardly True and Dazzling Adventures of a Jewish Cubana Goddess
• October 2005:
• Linda Woodhead, An Introduction to Christianity
• Leon Batista Alberti, The Use and Abuse of Books
• September 2005:
• Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, trans. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran
• John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path
• Michael Kurland, ed. My Sherlock Holmes: Untold Stories of the Great Detective
• Willard Oxtoby, ed. World Religions: Western Traditions
• August 2005:
• Batya Gur, Murder on a Kibbutz: A Communal Case
• Lev Grossman, Codex
• Abraham Melamed, On the Shoulders of Giants: The Debate between Moderns and Ancients in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Thought
• David Liss, A Spectacle of Corruption
• T.M. Luhrmann, Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry
• Jane Smiley, Moo
• E.B. White, Stuart Little
• The New Yorker, December 2004-August 2006
• July 2005:
• Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815
• Aaron Hughes, The Texture of the Divine
• David Myers, Resisting History
• Robert Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
• Batya Gur, Literary Murder: A Critical Case
• Michael Chabon, The Final Solution
• June 2005:
• C. Helmer and C. Landmesser, eds. One Scripture or Many? Canon from Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives
• Gershon Hundert, The Jews of Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century
• James Hynes, The Lecturer's Tale
• May 2005:
• Peter Ochs and Nancy Levene, eds. Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century
• David Katz, God's Last Words: Reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism
• Robert Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom
• Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Selected Stories
• E. Benbassa and J-C. Attias, The Jews and the Other
• Ernst Cassirer, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences
• April 2005:
• Jon Stewart, America
• Russell McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia
• Joseph Rykwert, The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of the City
• March 2005:
• Judith Frishman et al., Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation
• Reinhart Kosseleck, The Practice of Conceptual History
• Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture
• Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry
• Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides
• Yvonne Petry, Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation
• Jane Leavy, Sandy Kaufax: A Lefty's Legacy
• February 2005:
• Roni Weinstein, Marriage Rituals Italian Style
• Christopher Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance
• Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets
• Ivan Marcus, The Jewish Life Cycle

When is Art Finished? A not so deep question

I passed a bank branch in my neighborhood this morning. The side wall was painted with what could only be described as a kind of abstract expressionist mural. When I went inside to tell the tellers that I thought it was really interesting, they told me it's not finished and that the finished mural will be a kind of tableau of different houses and buildings in the neighborhood.

So is an unfinished mural art if people see and respond to it as art? If it were a text, I can imagine the debate between Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish, and E.D. Hirsch, but I don't know enough about art criticism to imagine who the relevant art critics would be.

Unions and Cities

This is really interesting. Quick: before you follow that link, which metro area has a lower rate of unionization in the work force: Pittsburgh or Las Vegas?

You're wrong (unless you guessed where I was going with this and switched to the other answer).

Cities Big and Small

I tend to be interested in things Springfield (Mass), because my in-laws live there, and also in things New Haven, because I went to college there. So I found this article by Mark Oppenheimer, "Medium Town: On Living in A City Smaller than New York" interesting. (I got to it via this post at the Pittsburgh blog, Antirust.)

Oppenheimer basically argues that there are pleasures in living in small cities--like New Haven or Springfield--rather than in New York or other very large cities. Oppenheim writes well even if his arguments are not startlingly original: the quality of life is better; the cost of living is lower; people are more normal and life is more well-balanced, etc. In the second part of the essay, he turns to an argument that not all writers need to live in New York in order to be successful. I suppose this is necessary because he is writing in the New Haven Review of Books (a new journal that he founded; I guess the New Haven Register Literary Supplement just didn't sound right).

Anyway, the thought struck me that the piece is particularly New England-centric. Although he does mention Des Moines, his frame of reference is clearly the industrial (or post-industrial rather) New England small city or big town: New Haven, Springfield, Worcester, Hartford, Providence, etc. Although there are other sorts of places where one can have a nice quality of life outside of the really big metropolitan areas (college towns, medium-sized metro areas--e.g. Pittsburgh) and although there are some metro areas/small cities in other parts of the country that have similar demographics to a New Haven or a Springfield, those cities offer a particular advantage. Due to the short distances in New England from one metro area to the next (indeed, is there any part of southern New England not included in an MSA or a CMSA?), these cities are not free-standing entities in the middle of nowhere. Rather, they are part of a kind megalopolis that stretches from Boston to New York and have close connections--in both a figurative (cultural and economic) and a literal (train lines, highways) to both. So it's a little disengenous to pose New Haven as an alternative to New York when in many ways it functions as a kind of urban exurb in the mega New York.

But the evocations of his neighborhoods, past and present--Forest Park in Springfield and Westville in New Haven--are worth the price of admission.

It's also interesting how one's perspective changes:

When I lived in Philadelphia (the 6th largest metro area in the United States), I got tired of explaining to friends in New York (the largest metro area) that Philadelphia was, in fact, a pretty big city with a lot of culture and big-city amenities (restaurants, public transit, etc.) But I would get irritated with Philadelphia's provincialism and wonder why the residents of the nation's 6th largest metro area weren't more assertive about their big-city-ness.

Now that I live in Pittsburgh (the 22nd largest metro area), I am more willing to accept my status as a provincial, but I still tend to boast to non-Pittsburgh about all the wonderful aspects of Pittsburgh.

But I can now recognize that my civic boosting is actually a form of provincialism. And I can now see that my boasting/pushing Philadelphia was also a form of provincialism. (So in a sense Oppenheimer's piece can be read as a kind of praise for civic modesty--taking pride in one's town or city but with a proper perspective on it.)

In between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, I lived in Boston. Boston is my own counter-example that nonetheless somehow proves the rule. I never liked Boston as much as Bostonians thought I should like it. And when I lived in Boston, I was constantly annoyed by the "Hub of the Universe" and "Athens of America" mentality. Didn't Bostonians realize that Boston is only the 7th largest metro area? (Then I read E. Digby Baltzell's Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia and it all made sense.)

So the constant collective need to see Boston as part of a holy triumvirate of the East Coast (money in NY, politics in DC, and culture and science in Boston) is perhaps the greatest provincialism of all.

More song lyric confusion...

For the last few weeks, our kids have been requesting that we sing "Country Roads" at bedtime.

(The other favorites right now are "Sweet Baby James" and "I'll Walk in the Rain By Your Side." This is the fault of a certain aunt with whom we visited in June and July and the people behind the Rise Up Singing songbook. That's right Pete Seeger: you and your buddies have made our bedtime a rather drawn out affair.)

The first stanza of "Country Roads" drives me crazy, because I can't figure out what the subject of "blowing like a breeze" is:

This site has this for the lyrics of the first stanza:

"Almost heaven, west virginia
Blue ridge mountains, shenandoah river
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze."

I have trouble imagining how mountains can blow like a breeze. But this is how I have always heard it in my head:

"Almost heaven, West Virginia: Blue Ridge mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees; younger than the mountains, blowing in the breeze."

I can almost get my head around mountains blowing in the breeze. Really the trees on top of the mountains would be swaying a bit in the breeze which might give the impression of the mountains moving a bit in the breeze.

So perhaps my mishearing the lyrics was my way of correcting the imagery for myself.

Trees can blow in a breeze (but can they blow like a breeze?) more easily (or more litarally I should say) than mountains. However, I don't see how the last phrase can really modify the trees unless you allow for shifting the phrases to fit the rhyme scheme. I guess this would have sounded awkward:

"Life is old there, older than the trees blowing in the breeze, but younger than the mountains which give off the effect of blowing in the breeze because of the trees on them"

My wife insists that proper parsing is:

"Life is old there. [Life is] older than the trees. [Life is] younger than the mountains. [Life is] blowing like a breeze.

This interpretation has some merit (although I was dubious about it when she first proposed it) especially if we consider an important folk music intertext : if the answer can be blowing in wind, I suppose life can blow like a (or in the) breeze.

(Don't get me started on how little sense "Sweet Baby James" makes. But there is nothing cuter than my three-year-old belting out "There is a young cowboy..." at the top of his lungs.)

How to Drink Coffee in Pittsburgh

(The title is borrowed from a friend who once taught the world “How to eat dinner in Princeton.” The coffee situation in Pittsburgh is much better than the dinner situation in Princeton. Read on.)

I recently discovered this website, run by Ariel Rubenstein of Tel Aviv University, which lists good cafes in university neighborhoods around the world. I then contributed 2 places in Pittsburgh. Following his guidelines, I only sent in places in Oakland, adjacent to Pitt and CMU.

So here is my more detailed list of places that I drink coffee (or tea) in Pittsburgh. It’s idiosyncratic, but I try to explain what I like about each place below:

in Oakland (home to Pitt and CMU):

Kiva Han at Forbes and Craig:
This website says the coffee is bad, but I disagree. It’s not the best in the world, but it’s fine. And the snacks and lunches are good. Except on the very hottest days, it’s a nice place to sit and work. They have some tables outside also, but most summer mornings one of them is occupied by a man smoking a rather awful smelling cigar. Kiva Han has another location down Forbes Ave (in the direction of downtown). I don’t like it as much as the Craig Street location.... it’s usually too hot inside and the tables and chairs aren’t as comfortable.

Crazy Mocha, 207 Oakland Ave:
This is around the corner from the Panera on Forbes. Central location on the Pitt campus. The coffee here is a little better than Kiva Han; the food selection is not as broad. Not many tables here so not a great place to work, but it’s a nice place to meet someone for coffee. And there is almost always a New York Times on the newspaper rack.

[Update 8/31/07: For the first time, I was here in the late afternoon--very hot from the exposure to the sun. So pay attention to the timing if you want to sit here in the afternoon.]

Crazy Mocha in the Carnegie Library:
Another outlet of this local chain. The tables here are nice and it’s fun being inside the library but more limited hours (only open when the library is). Same food and drink selection as the other branch. (There are also branches downtown, in Shadyside, and Bloomfield.)

Here’s another reason I often go to Crazy Mocha: For $30, I got a Donor Plus Carnegie Library card which gives me a 20% discount at all Crazy Mocha locations (not only the one in the library). If you drink coffee a lot, you will make back the $30 quickly and the library gets a donation. This is almost too good of a deal and I am probably ruining it by sharing the news.

You can also find Starbucks and Caribou Coffee in Oakland if you really want. Inside Hillman Library is Cup and Chaucer which is a pleasant place to sit. Like most Pitt campus dining outlets, it serves Starbucks coffee.

If you want to sit outside in Schenley Plaza, you can get coffee at the Bagel Factory kiosk. However, you will most likely wait in a long line and your small coffee will come in a cup bigger than your head. (Ask for ½ decaf unless you have high caffeine tolerance.)

I don’t pay attention to WI-FI at coffee places in Oakland because I have an office there with an internet connection or I use WI-FI in the library. But I think Schenley Plaza has WI-FI also.

in Squirrel Hill, from the top of the hill down:

Coffee Tree Roasters, 5840 Forbes Ave
This is right in the middle of the fancier shopping street and was the favorite of the late Mayor Bob O’Connor if that matters to you. Good coffee plus a free refill on the brewed stuff plus free WI-FI for 2 hours makes this a good place to plant oneself for a while. Limited food choices—mainly sweets. Always a NYT and almost always a Wall Street Journal, plus the local papers, lying around. My only complaints are that there are almost always smokers at the 2 outside tables, one of which is right next to the door and that the place is sometimes over airconditioned.

61C, 1839 Murray Ave (at Bartlett)
Decent coffee (although Coffee Tree is better) and pastries. Lots of tables. This is the place that mid-morning will have almost every table taken up by someone with a laptop. Also the place for Squirrel Hill power coffees. A nice outdoor space around the corner (i.e. off the main street), but again smokers flock to it and you have to go out the main door and walk around to get to it. A bit loud when someone orders a smoothie. They also have a lot of teas but if you are a serious tea-drinker you will keep walking a block to the next place on my list.

Te Cafe, 2000 Murray Ave (at Beacon)
Go here to drink tea. They also serve coffee and take great pride in the fancy glass brewing thing they have but it tastes no better than anywhere else and they charge more. This is a tea place and there’s a very good selection. Also some nice sandwiches. WI-FI and usually a NYT lying around. Not that many tables but enough.

Aroma/Rolladin, 2120 Murray Ave. (below Hobart)
This used to be my favorite place in Squirrel Hill: a great Israeli bakery, a very generous “double” espresso, and a nice atmosphere. The burekas are still good but they have cut way back on the other baked goods (now they are bringing in a lot of packaged stuff from NY) and the challah was kind of strange last time we got it. But you can still get a decent cup of coffee and there are plenty of tables and the staff is friendly. The name changes back and forth but I think they may now be sticking with Aroma.

Tango Coffee, 5806 Forward Ave.
Best Argentinean coffeehouse in Pittsburgh. Not a place to linger for hours but a good place for a cortado and a pastry after a movie. They did just add WI-FI so maybe it will be more of a place to work now.

elsewhere:

I’ve blogged about my visit to Mt. Lebanon and to Aldo Coffee here. And as my update indicates, I am told that Uptown Coffee is better.

If you are in the Strip District and just want coffee, you go to La Prima. If you want to sit somewhere and work for a few hours, leave the Strip District. Downtown is not a great coffee area: the Crazy Mocha in the Allegheny Building is a welcome addition and apparently they have added one in the Gateway complex—this covers the two ends of downtown, I suppose. The Symphony store, Curtain Call, also has a coffee bar. I’m sure there are other places also but I don’t know about them. There is a Crazy Mocha in Shadyside on Ellsworth Ave. In the heart of Walnut Street, there is a place called Jitters. I haven’t been there in five years but I used to stop every morning when I lived in Shadyside for a year.

If you want to tell me about other places, leave a comment.

Upcoming Events in Pittsburgh Jewish community

Two things on the horizon look interesting. I learned about both in the Jewish Chronicle:

Sunday, August 26, the Jewish Cemetery and Burial Association will have a public ceremony for burial of worn-out texts with the name of God in Hebrew and other ritual objects. 11 am at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery. The Association holds an annual burial but this year, for the first time, they have decided to hold a communal event. This was reported in last week's issue of the Chronicle. Good luck finding an on-line version.

Sunday November 4, 1 pm: Rodef Shalom will hold a symposium on the history of the congregation as part of its celebration of its 150th anniversary. Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis is scheduled as the keynote speaker. This was reported in today's issue. Rodef Shalom is one of the oldest and most significant congregations in the American Reform movement and was the host for the rabbinical convention that ratified that "Pittsburgh Platform" in 1885, the defining documents of Reform Judaism for about 50 years.

Things I Don't Understand, Cont.

I learn from today's Wall Street Journal that:

"US Airways flies nine trips a day from La Guardia to also-congested Philadelphia International Airport."

In what universe does this make sense?

Two Ironies in Hispanic-less Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is not without Hispanics, of course, but it does have one of the smallest percentage of Hispanics of any major US metro area and, as Pittsblog and Nullspace have just reminded us, it is one of the few major TV markets without a Univision station.

Two things strike me as ironic given this situation.

1) The Steelers are among the two or three most popular NFL teams among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. (See here for a discussion.)

2) The University of Pittsburgh is a major center for Latin American studies, through its Center for Latin American Studies, its Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and Hillman Library's Lozano collection. Pitt also hosts the Latin American Studies Association and one of the major scholarly journals in Latin American history, the Hispanic American Historical Review, moved to Pitt last month.

Literary Critics on the Move

According to this New York Times article, James Wood, a long-time literary critic at The New Republic, will now be playing staff writer for The New Yorker. (Although since this comes in August, I guess he won't be eligible for the playoffs.)

It's really only of passing interest to me since I read both magazines, but I can't think of the last time I laughed out loud while reading an article in the NYT Arts section:

"Leon Wieseltier, literary editor at The New Republic, said, 'The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom The New Yorker can eventually staff itself.'"

Back to Deep Creek

We spent our annual weekend in Deep Creek last weekend.

The lake is beautiful, but the real reason I love Deep Creek: 4-newspaper Sundays.

Musical Miscellany

I'm glad to see here that at least one of the two PSO concerts in Western MD sold out and that the one that didn't (Friday night) had a respectable showing. (I wonder if 7:30 is too early for a Friday night concert in the summer--you would have to leave DC, Baltimore, or Pittsburgh by 4 to make it and more like 3 to be comfortable and have time for dinner. Maybe try for 8:30 next time?) And I'm glad to see that talk about a PSO residency at Deep Creek continues.

In other classical music news, I have to admit that I've never heard of the New York Philharmonic's choice of music director. But reading about the decision in this New York Times article makes me think it's an interesting and bold choice. Interesting to appoint Ricardo Muti at the same time as principal guest conductor (or the equivalent). In many ways, I think this is similar to what the PSO has just done: appoint the up-and-comer as the music director (Manfred Honeck) and the veteran who has already been a music director at a major American orchestra as the principal guest conductor (Leonard Slatkin). Curious that the parallel did not occur to the NYT writer.

My wife has always made fun of me for mishearing a line in "Sound of Silence" as "Hear my words that I'm an angry Jew." But this article in today's Post-Gazette tells me that I'm not alone in being unable to decipher the sung word. And a quick Google search for "Simon and Garfunkel" AND "Angry Jew"* turns up this comprehensive site for misheard song lyrics including this very mistake and gives me a comfort that I'm not alone on this one.

*I tend to put in the Boolean operators even though Google has helpfully reminded me many times that they are not needed.

PSO in Deep Creek: The Details

Go here.

And look at these ticket prices! This is a huge bargain:

"EACH CONCERT:
Ticket prices: $25 Adults, $7 Students and
Free for children five years and younger."

(Compare to Tanglewood prices here).

If these concerts are not sold out, there is no hope for classical music in America.

Culture in Deep Creek

Immediately after the last posting, I thought: maybe I'm being unfair to Deep Creek on the culture and entertainment front. So I looked and found "Deep Creek Blog." I'll stick to the view that there's more going on in the Berkshires (in an absolute sense), but next time I'm in Deep Creek I'll pay attention to this site and patronize what looks like a pretty decent arts scene (per capita).

PSO in Deep Creek: Tanglewisp?

Soon after we moved to Pittsburgh, we discovered the Deep Creek Lake area of western Maryland. 2 hours from Pittsburgh, 2 and a half hours from Washington and Baltimore. Since I have family in DC, it's a perfect meeting place for a family vacation.

But there was one thing we noticed right away. We also vacation a lot in the Berkshires, and while Western MD can compete with Western MA on the outdoors stuff, there's not nearly as much going on in the culture department in the former.

So the first time I went there, I said: this is where the Pittsburgh Symphony should make its summer home. Our favorite place in the Berkshires is Tanglewood, the premier summer music festival in the US. While it would be very difficult to replicate Tanglewood (without a few tens of millions of dollars and a resurrected Leonard Bernstein), I have often thought that a good part of Tanglewood's success is that it is close to two major metro areas (NY and Boston). Thus, Deep Creek seemed like a good spot for the PSO to develop a summer home, drawing on not only a Pittsburgh audience but also DC and Baltimore. And just as there are a good number of New Yorkers who donate to the BSO (instead of, or in addition to, the NY Philharmonic), I thought the PSO could gradually build a base of Washingtonian supporters and that this would be a good long-term move for the orchestra.

So I am very glad to see this report that the PSO will play at Wisp Resort at Deep Creek this summer.

The PSO will play indoors at Wisp. But maybe if all goes well and the PSO becomes a regular summer part of the Deep Creek scene, the Bashford Amphitheater at Mountain Lake Park could be rebuilt with a shed (a la Tanglewood) but open to the fresh summer air?

On the other hand, maybe the all-indoor venue is smarter given the problems Tanglewood has been having with the weather in the last few years. Lots of rain last summer and a general trend of declining ticket sales have a lot of people up in the Berkshires asking "whither Tanglewood?" (See this editorial in the Berkshire Eagle.) So of course, the PSO will have to tread carefully financially (as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story linked above makes clear).

But I can have my dream, can't I?

Stuff I do not fully understand

British academics have apparently voted to promote a campaign to boycott Israel or to promote a campaign to discuss boycotting Israel or to talk more about whether to boycott Israel or something like that. See here for a news report and here for commentary by opponents of the boycott.

Ironic that the vote to boycott Israeli academics (or to move forward with discussions of boycotting Israeli academics or something like that) came on the day that Iranian academics were told by their government that they would be considered spies if they have contact with foreign academics, as reported here.

Mutatis mutandi, of course. The supporters of the boycott are not asking the British government to enforce it and they would say that they are only targeting contact with certain "foreigners." But the present Iranian situation ought to serve the "republic of letters" as a reminder of the importance--and power--of the free interchange of ideas.

Speaking of British academics, I do not understand why readers of the Guardian should be interested in Richard Dawkins' travel diary.

Speaking of British atheists, I think I would rather hang out with Christopher Hitchens than Richard Dawkins.

Speaking of Christopher Hitchens, I think I understand why this reader of the Washington Post Book World might think that assigning a book criticizing religion to a religion professor might be wrong. But I still lament the ignorance of academic religious studies that the writer reveals. Obviously she didn't read my post on the various kinds of religious studies professor. I don't know which sort Stephen Prothero is but one cannot assume that the chair of the religion department at Boston University is ipso facto an apologist for religion or an enemy of atheism as the letter-writer implies.

Speaking of the Washington Post Book World, I just don't understand this review of Al Gore's book. The reviewer seems to be saying that it's nice when a politician is intelligent and erudite enough to write his own book but if that politician demonstrates intelligence and erudition, he's an annoying pedant. This kind of thing is why Al Gore can't catch a break from the media which seems stuck in junior high school mode, making fun of the smart kid.

Speaking of strange reviews of Al Gore's book, David Brooks seems not to have paid much attention to the on-going discussions of the Internet and the printing press and their roles, past and present, in creating spaces for public debate. Instead, he finds it easier just to trot out tired stereotypes about blogs and e-mail.

There are plenty of tired stereotypes about e-mail and the Internet here as well, but at least some of the participants in that discussion try to grapple with the more complex and important issues related to preservation of communications in this digital age.

Speaking of archives, let's not forget the richness of older, paper-based archives. It's nice that the Central Archives of the Jewish People may get a permanent home if a National Library is built in Israel, as reported in Haaretz.

And speaking of archives finding a home, I'm glad to see this EU collection going to Pitt. Pitt's library system is usually under-appreciated but has made enormous strides over the last few years. I don't usually blog about Pitt-related issues, but I will say that I'm glad that Rush Miller responded in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to this editorial whose animus toward Hillman Library was never clearly explained. The main criticism seems to be that the building "dates to the Johnson administration." I look forward to future calls from the Post-Gazette to replace the Cathedral of Learning which was completed during the Roosevelt administration and the Allegheny County Courthouse which was completed during the first administration of Grover Cleveland. I'm not a huge fan of 1960s modernist architecture either, but is it such a terrible thing to renovate buildings instead of tearing them down after one generation?

Plus, how can one tear down a Pittsburgh landmark that has been immortalized in Michael Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh? Why, that would be like tearing down that Greyhound station mentioned in Simon and Garfunkel's "America."

(I wish I hadn't had that last thought because that song is now going to be stuck in my head for about a week.)