Creations from Gender Reel festival

As I mentioned in this post I gave the audience at the opening night of Gender Reel art supplies. Here's what I salvaged from their hands.

 Those little dangly bits on the sides of my pants were these (below) which an author taped to me. They themselves were torn strips of rubbing from a vent on the floor.

Journalism in China, again in the news

Yowzer. Since I whined about the poor quality of journalism in China no effective and innovative organizing had caught my ear. Until this: press freedom row erupts over censored editorial.

The British Telegraph reports: "Yesterday hundreds of people converged outside the Guangzhou newsroom of the Southern Weekend in a rare street protest. Photographs posted on social media showed demonstrators carrying signs calling for 'free press, constitutional government and democracy'." Interviews also illuminated the incident on PBS Newshour.

Following the awkward and mysterious succession of Xi Jinping to the highest rank in Chinese governance, small moves to straighten crooks in power and to narrow internet access blew up with an otherwise unremarkable order to replace criticism with a Party-cheering editorial piece in a regional newspaper. What's more, lay people supported the journalist strike and authorities invited them to return to work without persecution for protest. Capitulations like this perk up the most jaded of China watchers, but what about Chinese citizens?

Despite the paper having been allowed to go to press "as normal" today editors still fear reprisal from the government for statements to foreign reporters. What can we do to support press freedoms and legal treatment of dissidents?

A lesson from Buddha

In Buddhism we learn to bypass the pendulum of suffering and satisfaction with equanimity for life's ups and downs. Just two blocks from my Buddhist meditation center an SUV honked at me and sped down a fork in the road. After the usual series of large-speeding-vehicle close shaves on my bike, it frightened and angered me so much my only relief was in fantasizing about shooting electric pulses to shut down his computer system, stalling the car. By the end of a half hour meditation, I wished him love and safety in sincere compassion. I had found a gentle kindness toward myself which spawned kindness toward everyone around me. If only I can balance survival instincts with compassion in my everyday life.

I have an older friend who looks a generation younger than he is. He sheds his suffering and ecstasy by exploding them instantly from his body, keeping his vitality and a light heart. For those around him, though, the unfiltered expressions pass anguish from his body and heart to theirs. Perhaps this is the old "drama" I've criticized before. What can this teach me?

He is teaching me that bottling up my emotional responses to fit my standards of appropriate behavior and of identity harms me. At the same time, I have to be mindful about the solution so I don't simply transfer the harms to empathetic friends around me. This brings us back to my experience of kindness.

If we can feel unconditional kindness (love, compassion, or any other name) toward ourselves, then we can extend it to those around us and still the pendulum of suffering. We need to confront the barrage of distraction: money, information, relationships, household, judgment; in order to return to our fundamental selves. Self care is a growing value. Identity, though, can be a distraction itself, putting up barriers and drumming up defensiveness and judgment. Buddhism and many other practices offer generosity as a solution.

It's not generosity as reason, e.g. giving to this needy organization fits my ideals, but as instinct. That same empathy that shakes me up when I'm near my explosive friend gives me peace when I can share my security and kindness with others.

Written In Stone

Remember how I was fascinated by the Permian-Triassic mass extinction? I had an awestruck moment yesterday finding out about a four-winged bird of prey from a more recent, Cambrian period who hunted with great agility in forests.

Imagine witnessing such a place with all the foreign and familiar sounds of animals and wind and leaves, before the "Anthropocene" story had been written in industrial destruction. On Radiolab I heard an untested hypothesis that voice vibrations could have been written into ancient Roman vases when they were spun and we could read them with modern equipment. (Seek to about 9:20) So imagine being able to read those prehistoric sounds with future technology!

This opens up all sorts of cans of worms: when a tree falls in a forest 120 mya, does it make a sound for the first time now as a fossilized recording? Is aleatoric sound less spontaneous heard on playback? In what context does the dichotomy between live and recorded music cease to exist?

Attention Asian environmental advocates

I'm interested in connecting with other people of color, particularly Asian Americans, who value environmental conservation. What led me to this step is at the conclusion of a shark conservation talk I recently attended, both a small Hong Kong immigrant and older white China basher were visibly convinced a (white) speaker had placed 100% of the blame for shark kills on demand by ethnic Chinese. I felt this was an embarrassment for the shark conservation movement.

Environmental conservation has radically shifted since I was in school: climate change has finally entered popular awareness and the pressure on international cooperation is on. But domestic environmental campaigns are still white-dominated. I'm interested to find if and how other Asians stand among their ethnic communities as conservation leaders. Until conservation values are held in common across national and ethnic borders, there can be little progress on global environmental concerns.

Please suggest people for me to track down or let me know what you think about domestic or international conservation movements.

New piece for voice: We Built That Together

My friend spotted a trilobite fossil on a hike yesterday. She was in Michigan, on billions-years-old tectonic plate that probably hosted the individual she found in a stream or lake. This vastly diverse group of invertebrates were wiped out 250 millions years ago along with almost all life on earth.



We're thoroughly connected to an unimaginable past and inevitable future. Our nation was connected by President Eisenhower via a spectacular program to build interstate highways. High-volume transportation burns fossil fuels, a practice that notoriously connects us to the most unstable regions of the world and destabilize the planet's capacity to sustain life as we know it.

With this in mind, I dashed off a piece for solo voice. Vocalists & linguists, please try it out! Bring your phone or favorite recorder so we can listen together. Comments are welcome here.

Tues Nov 6 is Election Day

In under three weeks we'll be stopping by our local polling places in the definitive act of democracy. I've avidly followed the presidential and vp debates, always arriving late from work, this Tuesday from being trained to work an Oakland return center (where ballots are collected after polls close). The process is a well-oiled machine, run by the County and citizen workers, that's put to the test only once a year, and expected to process record volumes this year.

No matter what your priorities and values, you participate in the US economy and government. Get out and vote November 6, or now if your state has early voting. You can find out this and other ballot information at lwv.org. By filling in your street address, the site takes you to a summary of contested seats and referendum items in your district.

I'm into the list of upcoming debates and forums, below. That's hot date material right there.

Then as always, write your representatives. They're also listed on LWV. Yes, the ones who rubber-stamped the waiver of environmental analysis for deep-sea drilling that resulted in the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Even those who aren't up for election this year. Show your friends and me what you tell them, because if nine others write a congressional office about the same issue, staff will investigate. Remember to identify yourself as a voting constituent. If you can blog, you can write your rep.

That's what democracy looks like.