Music of the Tigers

When I’m traveling, I seek out certain home pleasures.  And one of those is swimming.  I’m here in Vancouver, visiting with Jeremy.  With a little research on the web, I was able to find a great place to swim–the Aquatic Center.  It’s not every place that has a 50m public pool.  On top of that, it has a large skylight, so that while I was swimming–at least today–the sun was beaming in.  It’s hard to top that.  At least, when the temperature outside means that it’s only polar bears who are swimming in the ocean.  [And I mean the human ones, not the threatened ones–Vancouver isn’t that far north!]                                                                                                                                                                                                         And, having traveled a bit in the U.S. and finding it a bit of a challenge to find a place to swim, it was also a pleasant surprise to find that the cost was not outrageous.  It was about $5 today, and there are several times a week when it’s only $2.                                                                                                                                                                                                I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised that the Aquatic Center closes in the summer–at the point where the weather really is warm enough for people to use the various outdoor pools around the city.                                                                                                        One of the things that’s even more amazing to me is that the people who swim at the Aquatic Center seem to take a moment to assess whether they should swim in the “Slow”, “Medium” or “Fast” lane–and, by and large, they seem to get it right.  I don’t mean complain about my fellow U.S.A.nians, but it seems that when I’m swimming in the U.S., there are a fair number of people whose attitude is, effectively, I’m swimming here, and if you don’t like it, tough luck for you.                                                                                                        Another minor, but real, convenience for me as a visitor is the fact that there are lockers available.  On top of that, they take a quarter to lock–and they give the quarter back when I’m done!  I suppose it’s all of a piece with the luggage carts in Vancouver airport being free.  There are times when I think that I don’t live in a civilized country. 

I was talking with a friend about the California Marriage ruling, and the prospect of an ugly initiative campaign in the Fall.  And I said that the most important thing that gay people can do is to come out–to friends, colleagues, acquaintances–to everyone.  I know that there are some people whose mind is not open about this issue.  But there are, I believe, a whole lot more people who, if they knew that someone they cared about is gay or lesbian, and they found out how much this issue matters… Well, it might make a difference.I’ve seen the statistics that suggest this is much less of an issue for young people than older ones–so, in the long run, this probably will work out.  But there are times when I wish the long run were here.–But maybe that’s not possible at this time.                                                                                                                                                                                                  There have been a couple of different articles from various counties in California about how the staff are dealing with the prospect.  All of the counties are saying, “not yet!”.  It was interesting that the report from Kern county [very conservative, inland] was clear that if the Court rules that they have to start issuing licenses to same-sex couples, then they will.  But San Diego, a conservative but much more mixed county, was pondering allowing employees to claim a moral or religious objection and to be excused from performing same-sex marriages.                                                                                                                                                                                                         By comparison, when Canada began performing same-sex marriages, the Government was very clear that any Marriage Commissioner [the Canadian equivalent of a Justice of the Peace] who objected to performing same-sex marriages could no longer continue as a Marriage Commissioner.  It’s quite refreshing to see a Government saying that the laws apply to everyone.And, the cheery thing is that, in Canada at least, after a period of grumbling about it, Canada seems to have gone on to other, possibly more significant, issues–like the economy and trade policy with the U.S,, for two.So, let me recognize that the coming campaign is going to be difficult, and that the result is going to matter deeply to me; but there is, always, eventually, Hope.  

By now, you’ve heard that the California Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.  There is much about  the ruling that cheers me.  [Just so you can find it, here’s the ruling–don’t print it, the pdf is 172 pages!]  As I read it, I find that I’m surprised over and over that the Court seems to be analyzing the case as though gay people are people…what a notion!

For example, the Court rejects the claim that what gay people want is “same-sex marriage”, and that there is no right to that in the California Constitution.  Rather, what gay people want is “marriage”, and there is a right to that.  The Court explicitly rejected the claim that history and tradition have restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples.  In their analysis, they looked back to Perez v Sharp of 1948, the California ruling overturning the ban on interractial marriage.  And they said that at the time, custom and tradition were all on the side of continuing the ban on interracial marriage.  But now, we find that position unacceptible.

I was interested in the Court’s analysis why the case was not a case of sex discrimination.  They said that the current law didn’t treat men and women differently–both have the same rights to marry [as long as the partner is of the opposite sex].  So, the question is not one of sex discrimination, but of sexual orientation discrimination. 

Then, the Court went on to explicitly rule that sexual orientation–like sex, race, and religion–should be a “suspect characteristic”, that is, one that requires “strict scrutiny” of the constitutionality of statutes that treat people differently based on the classification.  In some ways, this may be the most significant part of the ruling.  And, in their discussion, the Court rejected the notion that sexual orientation should not be a suspect characteristic since it is not inborn like sex or race.  The Court explicitly drew the analogy with religion, which is also not inborn, but is a suspect characteristic.  

With all this good news, why in the world should I not be hopeful?  You probably also know that there will be a Constitutional amendment on the November ballot overturning the ruling, and enshrining an ban on same-sex marriage in the California Constitution.

As an aside, I have to say that a simple majority of the voting population denying rights to a minority strikes me as problematic at best.  It seems to me that I’ve read stories that the majority of people in the U.S. would vote against the rights in the Bill of Rights if they were on the ballot.

Having lived in California for over 10 years now, I know what this election campaign is going to be like.  In a word, ugly.  I fear the worst appeals to fear and prejudice, and dramatic exagerrations of what the consequences of allowing same-sex marriage will be.

And, some years ago, I read an analysis of the issue that explained that some people feel that gay people are so “unclean” that whatever we do is similarly “unclean”.  It’s this sense that leads to “defense of marriage” statutes.  I understand that most people can’t imagine how marriage needs to be defended.  This analysis suggests that some people think it needs to be defended from profanation.

But, I’ll not be basely fearful…

Let me come back to another positive from the ruling.  The Court noted that, with the current structure of domestic partnership in California, same-sex couples have access to almost all the rights and responsibilities of marriage.  Indeed, California domestic partners file their [State] income tax as “Married”.  But the Court said that, nevertheless, the word matters.  They suggest that restricting same-sex couples to domestic partnership rather than marriage may suggest that the relationship is not as valid.  The Court said, once again, that “separate-but-equal” isn’t.  

Once again, I find myself confused by the difference between the way I use the expression “next Saturday” and the way that other people do.  I would think that it’s just me, except that now and then I run into someone else who uses the expression the same way that I do.

Just to explain.  I think that most of use know when “last Saturday” was.  Just to be specific, today is Thursday, May 15.  So “last Saturday” was the most recent Saturday–that is, May 10.  Similarly, “this Saturday” is pretty clear–it’s the day after tomorrow, May 17.

 But when it comes to “next Saturday”, to me it means the next Saturday after “this Saturday”–that is, May 25.  The place that the communication breaks down seems to be that most people use “next Saturday” as a synonym of “this Saturday” in this case.  I’ll admit that I recognize that it’s a problem for me, so when I’m making plans, I usually try to include a date, just so no one gets surprised.

You may think that I’m just over-intellectualizing.  It seems to me that there’s a window into the much deeper question of how we manage to communicate across the barrier of separate consciousnesses.  There always has to be an agreement about what we’re talking about.

I was surprised to read some novels about life in the British navy in the 1800s that at the time, the day started at noon [rather than midnight] with the astronomical observation of the sun.  And, when I was in college and was regularly staying up past midnight, the group collectively defined “tomorrow” as “after one sleep or after 6 a.m., whichever comes first”.  In this case, as a group, we came to a definition that worked better for our situation.  The trick, I guess, is to identify those circumstances where we need to explicitly make clear how we’re using language.

Jeremy and I are getting ready for our annual expedition to the gay square dance convention.  For those of you who haven’t done any square dancing since seventh grade, this is meant for a refresher–and a discussion of some differences between the gay and the non-gay version of square dancing.  [And I’ll apologize to non-gay square dancers if I misrepresent their notion of square dancing.  This is what it looks like from the outside.]

In square dancing, the dancers are arranged in groups of eight around the floor.  Indeed, there are two dancers, a couple, on each side of a square.  And, somewhere, there is a “caller” who will provide the sequence of moves for the squares to do.  The couples facing or with their backs to the caller are called “heads”, and the couples with their sides to the caller are called “sides”.  In each couple, the “boy” stands on the left and the “girl” stands on the right.

In gay square dancing, the sex of the person dancing “boy” or “girl” may not match the designation.  Indeed, I’ve been in lots of squares where all eight dancers are men.  So, when the caller says “men trade”, in gay square dancing, if I’m dancing “boy”, the first thing that I do is to stick up my hand and say “boy”–otherwise, how can anyone know who is who.

In non-gay square dancing, at least usually, the expectation is that dancers come in pairs.  The man’s shirt matches the woman’s skirt, and they’ll be dancing together all evening.

In gay square dancing, the expectation is that dancers are individuals.  We dance together as a couple for one “tip”–about 15-20 minutes.  [The name comes from the old days where the caller would work for a while and then pass the hat.  The caller wouldn’t go on unless he got enough of a “tip”.]

As we dance, the dancers often reply to the instructions from the caller with an interjection–known as “fluff”.  For example, when the caller says “acey deucey”–which is a direction to the dancers to do a particular move–the dancers also reply “Quack!”.  Why?  Because sometime lost in the mists of time, a caller pronounced the call “acey ducky”.  As time goes on, the fluff evolves…so the fluff of gay square dancing is quite different from that of non-gay square dancing.

The fact that non-gay square dancers come in pairs leads to some unfortunate consequences.  It’s often the case that, of a square dancing couple, the man dies first.  Then, there is no designated partner for the survivor.  And existing couples are not eager to allow an unattached interloper to dance.  So a number of these widows start dancing with gay square dance clubs, where not having a pre-planned partner is a non-issue.

I’ll close with a personal vignette of difference between gay and non-gay clubs.  When I was living in Los Angeles, I wanted to get in some extra time dancing, so that I would improve my skills.  So a woman friend and I went to a non-gay club.  I was very habituated to “identifying” when the caller gave directions like “men trade”.  One time, when that happened, I stuck my hand up and said “boy!”.  The little old lady dancing next to me patted my arm and said “We can tell, dear”.

I just came across a column that  finally makes some sense of the voting in the Democratic primaries in various states.  This is David Sirota’s article in In These Times “The Clinton Firewall“.  He points out that for states where there has been a head-to-head matchup between Clinton and Obama–where the Hispanic vote is not a large factor–the primary predictor of the outcome is the percent of the population that is African American.  Where the Black population is quite low [<6%] the White population seems not to be threatened by the idea of a Black president, and Obama does well.  Where the Black population is large [>17%], the polarization of the White population is overwhelmed by the support of the Black population.  But in between, the polarization of White voters gives an edge to Clinton.  Not surprisingly, a significant part of the Clinton strategy is to remind voters that Obama is Black in order to increase the polarization of White voters.

Sirota goes on to explain the roles that the mainstream media has had in obscuring this phenomenon.  He names two approaches of mainstream media–“the ostrich”, who ignores that race is an issue, and the “minstrel show producers”, who portray African Americans as less than human but entertaining.

Among “ostriches” for example, he cites a pundit who sought to explain the voting results by the pattern of migration of German and Scandanavian immigrants from the Nineteenth Century.

The soundbiting of Rev. Wright is just the most egregious example of the “minstrel show producers”.  More significant is the way that pundits contrast “regular people” and black people.  Or contrast “working class” with African Americans, as though there is no overlap.  There are lots of other examples.

The final paragraph of Sirota’s newspaper column summarizing the In These Times article:

Some will read this and  go on pretending the Race Chasm doesn’t exist, while others will keep insisting that the black vote is irrelevant.  Both sides will claim they aren’t prejudiced.  But racism, whether from ostriches or minstrel show producers, is racism–and it will persist until we recognize it and reject it.

[Warning: This is a post from Nerd World.]

Over the years, I’ve come to make a distinction between two kinds of diversion: puzzles and problems.  To me, a puzzle is an intellectually stimulating activity whose only goal is the completion of the activity.  Naturally, many of these diversions are actually called puzzles–for example, crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles.  Others don’t use the word “puzzle”, but certainly are–the current favorite is Sudoku.

But, even within this category, there are some activities that are more engaging than others.  I read that Mary Leakey, one of the anthropologists of the Olduvai Gorge project, spent her time as a child solving jigsaw puzzles with all the pieces turned over so the picture doesn’t show.  She claimed that this was an early indication of her astounding ability to piece together fossil hominid skulls from hundreds of pieces.

I’m not nearly so visual.  But I do love words, so one of my favorites is cryptic crosswords.  It’s a type of crossword, but one where each clue has to be solved, rather than deducing a synonym to fill in the blanks.  It’s perhaps easiest to explain using an example.  Here’s a clue:

He’s about fifty and lives in the room upstairs, but is strong and healthy (8)

The number at the end tells the length of the word.  Each clue will have a definition in it someplace, and another way of deriving the word from some kind of wordplay.  It might be hidden, or an anagram, or a pun, or–in this case–a combination of pieces.  One trick is that numbers often turn into Roman numerals.  So, fifty is L.  Next: “He’s about fifty”, so we put the letters of HE around L, we have HLE so far.  “The room upstairs” is the ATTIC, so we put what we have so far inside it: AT(HLE)TIC and get ATHLETIC–strong and healthy.  If you want to try one, they’re published monthly in The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine.

The distinction that I’m trying to make with the diversions that I call “problems” is that they’re much more open-ended.  And they can lead to interesting discoveries.  Let me take an example. 

Suppose you have a chain where the lengths of the links are the successive numbers starting with 1.  Suppose you have four links: 1″, 2″, 3″, 4″.  Connect the two ends.  Now, the question is: Can you place this loop of chain over two posts, so that the links don’t bend in the middle. Like this: 0==========0.

 In our example, we can.  2+3=4+1–the posts are 5″ apart.  What happens when we try a chain with five links?  Well, 1+2+3+4+5 = 15, so we can’t divide that evenly in half.   If we continue trying longer and longer chains, we find that 5 and 6 don’t work; 7 and 8 do; 9 and 10 don’t; 11 and 12 do.  At this point we see a pattern.  Here’s where it turns into a problem [rather than a puzzle].  What’s the underlying explanation of why this works? The place to start is the algebraic formula for the total length of the chain.  The sum 1+2+3+….+n [up to some number, n] is equal to n (n+1)/2.  So, if n is a multiple of 4, then when we divide by 2, there is still another factor of 2 for us to use to divide the chain in half.  [And this works when (n+1) is a multiple of 4 also.]  It’s a bit harder to trace through what happens when n is even, but not a multiple of 4 [like 6, for example].  This is one of the situations where the length of the chain is an odd number, so we can’t divide it in half.

Actually, the original version of the problem had three posts, arranged in an equilateral triangle and asked what was the shortest chain that could be looped around the three posts without bending any links.  To just find one example is a “puzzle” in my lexicon, but to find some formula or explanation that gives all, or most, of them–that’s a “problem”.  And this one leads in some interesting directions, which I’ll postpone for the future.

[If you’re trying to figure it out, one thing that has to be true is that the length of the chain has to be evenly divisible by 3–that’s not enough, but it rules out some cases.]

Before I go on with this post, a quick quiz:  In what year did the U.S. Supreme Court declare that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional?  [The answer is at the end of the post.  For extra credit: What was the first state to recognize that antimiscegenation laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?  When?]

I just heard of the death of Mildred Jeter Loving.  Mildred Jeter was an African-American woman living in Northern Virginia.  She met, and fell in love with, Richard Loving, a White man from the same town; the Washington Post describes them as “childhood sweethearts”.  They married in Washington, DC, when she was 17 and he was 23.  They moved back to the town in Virginia, and were arrested for violating the laws banning interracial marriage or cohabitation as man and wife.  They pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in prison.

However, the judge suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the state and not return for 25 years.  They moved to Washington, DC.  There, they filed suit to have their convictions overturned.  And this suit eventually ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court ruled unanimously that the antimiscegenation laws of Virginia were unconstitutional, and, as a Supreme Court case, this decision applied to all states.  [Here’s the answer to the quiz: June 12, 1967.  Consequently, some interracial couples celebrate June 12 as Loving Day.].

 In summarizing the decision of the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren writes:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. […] To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Here a link to the whole opinion, which, though a bit long, goes into the whole logic of the case.  In particular, it refutes the claim of the Commonwealth of Virginia that, since the punishment was applied equally to citizens of both races, that the law was not discriminatory.

Here’s the obituary from the Washington Post, and another article of appreciation from the same paper.

Finally, the answer to the extra credit question: California was the first to make that ruling, in 1948.

I’m getting ready for my annual trip to the convention of lesbian and gay square dancers.  This year it’s the twenty-fifth annual convention, and it’s in Cleveland [Touch a Quarter Century].  So, of course, I’m looking forward to seeing lots of friends–I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, so I’ve met lots of people over the years.  In fact, Jeremy and I met at a square dance convention–this year is our tenth anniversary.

But I’m also thinking of the people I won’t be seeing.  Not because they’re no longer alive–though there are far too many of those friends–but because they can’t get into the U.S.  Not because they’re criminals or dangerous, but because they’re HIV positive, and the U.S. government found out.

The U.S. is one of only 13 countries that completely ban incoming travel by HIV+ visitors.  [The others are: Armenia, Brunei, China, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Sudan.  Interesting group, hmm?].  Some friends have tried bringing their HIV medications along with them, hoping their bags weren’t searched.  They guessed wrong, and now they’re permanently banned from the U.S.  Other friends have just skipped taking medications for the duration of their trip, hoping that it wouldn’t have too bad an effect on their health. 

This travel ban is the legacy of a conscious disregard of the advice of the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control at the time that this was originally discussed in Congress.  Indeed, the original version of the legislation made a distinction between AIDS and HIV; but Jesse Helms [remember him?] sponsored the “Helms amendment” that added HIV infection to the list of excludable conditions.  For people who are keeping track, the only contagious illness that the CDC recommends for exclusion is infectious tuberculosis.

The ban does include the possibility of waivers for travellers attending important events–the Olympics, the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS, etc.  It was done on a case by case basis, in a fairly informal way.  It did, of course, mean that the prospective visitor was permanently on the list of people who needed waivers to visit the U.S.

Last year on World AIDS Day [December 1], the Bush administration announced that they were “streamlining” the process of granting travel waivers for HIV+ people.  But, after all the fanfare died down, it became clear that the proposed process has become more bureaucratic, more intrusive, and, ultimately, more restrictive.

By the way, the UN recommends the abolition of travel bans on HIV+ people.  [Here’s the Policy Statement.]  It looks like Congress will consider this issue at some point, but it may have to wait until after the election. 

In the mean time, there are indications that China will rescind it’s ban before we do.  Now that’s a competition that I hate losing.

This morning we had a final run through with the orchestra.  The basic task is to get through the whole piece with no interruptions [and no “do overs”].  Orff’s Carmina Burana is divided into sections, but within the sections, the different numbers join together with no break.  This often means an abrupt change of tempo, mood, even harmonic structure.  But that’s all part of getting the performance into shape.  As a chorus member, it’s my responsibility to map my way through the score.  People who grow up with the notion that one doesn’t write in books really need to get over that in order to particpate in music; my scores get so marked up by the end of one time rehearsing and performing that I often end up getting another score the next time the chorus is preparing for a subsequent performance.

We got through the run through in very good shape.  The conductor seemed quite pleased, and thanked the chorus for giving 150%.  Then he added that he was going to ask us for 200% in the performance in the afternoon.  On of the real concerns of having a rehearsal and a performance on the same day is that we shouldn’t leave the performance in the rehearsal–that is, we shouldn’t sing so much that our voices can’t do a good performance.

We reassembled for the matinee performance and the chorus director gave us a few reminders.  We worked on some of the tricky spots, and warmed up our voices.  Then we lined up, and filed on stage.

Then we all came together and did the best we could.  There were some little slips–someone’s attention lapsed for just a second, and that’s all it takes to do an “inadvertent solo”.  And, there were a couple of times that the conductor did something slightly different–which led to a certain tentativeness on our parts.  At the end, the audience seemed quite appreciative.  One fellow, who had sung with the chorus in seasons past, stayed to compliment us as we left the stage door.  He said, in part, “Boy, that was loud!”.  And we really did give as much as we could.  However, as  our director says, “Never sing louder than beautiful”.  And I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself for taking care of my voice during the performance.

Along the way, someone remarked that the current situation where people are more likely to hear classical music from a CD [or on the radio] than a live performance.  And the current production process usually ends up with a CD that is technically flawless.  And there are people who think that in the process of taking bits and pieces from several “takes” and assembling it into one performance robs the performance of some essential bit.  And that’s the essential part of a live performance.

Finally, I’ll pass along a comment from a couple of the orchestral musicians about the piece…”Well, it’s not music, but it sure is entertaining”.