The Bothersome Man at the Dryden

I'm not referring to someone who was bothersome, that's actually the name of the movie: Den brysomme mannen (The Bothersome Man). Ali and I got a chance to see it at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.)

It was a remarkable film. It documents the purgatory-like existence of a man after he tries to kill himself. Basically he's brought by bus to this city, given a decent job and a decent apartment. At first he's complacent, but he finds it irritating that everything is "72° pleasant" all the time. None of the food has any flavor or smell. He meets a woman who seems nice but is just as interested in him as she is in decorating the house. When he tells her he met someone else and wants to break up, she suggests that it wait until Saturday because they're having guests over.

The people of the town cannot understand why he is unhappy — after all, everything is pleasant. It very strongly rang true for me and I empathized with the protagonist Andreas [well, maybe he's the antagonist … no, perhaps just a pestisnist]. It seems a lot of people believe that complacency and safety are the pinnacle of human existence. Safety and comfort are good and fine, but continuing to grow and to achieve is much more important to me. And the way to do that is to increase interaction with other people — especially those that are bothersome to you.

I believe that I get and deserve a huge amount of control only of that inside my mind. When I encounter a situation that makes me feel that outside influence has that control then I want to understand why. It may be a situation that is dangerous — a manipulation that is destructive — but in my experience, it is more likely a situation that is a stimulus for growth.

I guess in a way, I feel that all growth comes from irritation and adapting to that irritation. Once you grow enough you no longer experience that irritation — even when the conditions present a similar scenario (i.e. if you had not grown, you would continue to experience irritation).  A physical example might be that of learning to play guitar: as you learn, your fingers get irritated from the strings, but after a while, your fingers develop callouses. The strings did not change and you did not avoid the irritation — and now you have grown the ability to deal with that irritation.

I remember years ago when I was living on Burkhard Place and people would come to visit the neighbors and use their car horn as a doorbell. It irritated me to no end because I had no way to stop them from doing that. There were vengeful acts I devised, but none could teach the world. I fantasized that I'd go outside and ask them to stop, then play out the sarcastic scenario that they would say, "my goodness! I thought that when I pushed this button that only my friend would hear — I am deeply sorry and won't do it again."

But in the end, I was awakened one morning at 3 a.m. and tossed and turned in bed until it finally hit me: it's just a noise. I can reassign all sorts of noises in the world and some — while pervasive (like the noise of the wind) or loud (like birds chirping) — I had already set up in my mind to be ignored. I learned that I could reassign the sound of cars honking on the street to just another noise. It was remarkable: I actually did it. And while I can still be annoyed by it, I no longer get impotently irate at people who do it.

Now, an alternative would be to move far away from people and their cars with horns. But there is a tremendous sacrifice in that — that one isolates themselves from the rest of humanity. And having selective interactions with people — especially with the behavioral pattern of always going away if it is irritating — suppresses personal growth.

And as populations increase and energy stops being so darn cheap, the necessity to interact in close proximity is a necessity. One way to do that is to impose the serenity of suburban life onto individuals — externally manipulating them to ensure they conform to the lowest common denominator. Another is to teach people to adapt and to grow — or rather, to rekindle and foster the capacity in all of us to do so.

Unfortunately, there seems to be tremendous pressure for the former. And this pressure leads to a milquetoast gray society. It does not foster a great civilization, but an impotent one. And as for the United States, there is a promise of opportunity — but that promise cannot be upheld simultaneously with a promise of serenity.  So as a conservative, I favor the tradition of opportunity that I was taught.

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The Rochester Genealogical Society meeting

I arrived a little late for the The Rochester Genealogical Society meeting at The Asbury First United Methodist Church (1050 East Ave.) and Robert Coomber was talking about his Research trip to LDS Library in Salt Lake City. It was too much a tourist slide show but an informative overview of the library. I was also kind of annoyed that the guy running the laptop slide show didn't know how to operate the software, and neither of them really understood feedback and microphones. But hey, it didn't cost me anything.

In the break for refreshments, I had some instant coffee and cookies and briefly chatted with Rick Porter — the keynote speaker for the night and operator of Finger Lakes House Histories.

His lecture was titled If Your House Could Talk, What Story Would it Tell? It was quite informative. He gave case-study examples describing the kind of information you can find and how that manifests in a house history. He said it's not too hard find the hard history of a structure — its architecture and land history — and it's not too hard to find genealogical information about families, but he's interested in finding the "soft history" of a house … who lived there, when, and why.

Some obvious tools include deeds, census information, and tax records. It might seem straightforward to use deeds, but there's some unexpected challenges: like they were not transfered to newly formed counties so you need to search based on the old county's records. And before 1840, deeds were not often recorded at all. Records of mortgages, deeds, and "discharge mortgages" are available on the county clerk's office — the last being for second mortgages for improvements that were successfully paid in full.

There are other avenues of research as well. Legal notices are another interesting source of house history as they include wills and auctions of households. There are also "Sanborn maps" which were used for fire insurance and include materials, building changes, and power sources and are often available on microfilm at the library. Also, in this area, a house sale included an abstract that itemized the full land history, but usually all that is provided to a new buyer in recent years is evidence of a clean title. Apparently Monroe county is one of a few counties that still requires abstracts, so you can locate that information from the abstract company.

I had always wanted to stop by one of these meetings as the topics discussed often seemed quite interesting. Perhaps I'll make a bigger effort to do so in the future …

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Do the Right Thing at the Dryden

I just barely made it to the screening of Do the Right Thing at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) I think I'm beginning to understand what's meant by a Spike Lee "Joint" as compared to a "movie": in a movie, it's like a moving representation of reality, but in a "joint", it's like a view of reality as viewed through a filter or machine. Kind of like the difference between a photograph and an X-ray, or better, the difference between a fire and a box of matches.

I left and went to Solera Wine BarMySpace link (647 South Ave.) for a bit to think about it. I really couldn't come up with anything but that match-fire metaphor. I did know it was different from a "movie" because "did you like it?" is not really a valid question to ask afterward.

See, it's like an extract of life. You take all the stuff that makes people behave a certain way and you strip away all the parts that aren't important and you're left with this residue that's the essence of it all. Spike Lee then takes that and shapes it back into a reality with characters and a story. But it's not reality. The pizza shop isn't a pizza shop, it's the non-black outsiders in a black neighborhood who everybody obviously knows aren't black, but who get blown up when they try and express/impose their culture/beliefs/biases. Mookie isn't a black man who works at said pizza place, he is the silent majority who try to make ends meet but slowly boil inside as they try to find the point of the pointless.

So it really doesn't even make sense to talk about it like a movie. It's … umm … you know, a Spike Lee Joint.

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Colaborating artists from Athena and Petra Designs

I stopped by The Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester (277 N. Goodman St.) to listen to Melanie Updegraff, and Sharon Jeter discuss Athena and Petra Designs: Two Artists, One Product Line. What Makes It Work? It was rather fascinating and I wish I could have stayed longer, but I had to leave right at 8. Stupid America with its "this starts right now" mentality!

Anyway, the two women discussed how they collaborated artistically. First off, they were friends first — they always valued their friendship over their art; and their art over their business. Melanie commented that she thought it funny that artists can barely utter the word "business" much less deal with selling their work. I guess I can understand both sides a bit: as an artist, I'd like my art to find a home that fits rather than to just make a buck (or allow the work to be cut up for scrap) and as a businessman, I understand the importance of connecting "earning a living" with something that is rewarding. But with "Athena and Petra", they develop art that has a ready market — jewelry — so I think it's easier for them than an artist who makes works in varied media, or even "traditional" media but with widely varied styles.

But that was only part of it. They didn't have a nice easy answer to "what makes collaboration work?" Their tiered approach to their relationship was certainly a start. It seemed to me, though, that they always respected the other's opinion — they were never dismissive of an idea. They also understood the value of play: that when creativity dries up it's because it isn't fun, so fun is very important.

What I found fascinating — and I think I may track them down to get a better understanding — is that they were able to collaborate on the creative design. My understanding of collaborative projects so far is that a single creator has to own the idea, they need to understand what is important and what is not (i.e. can it be shiny or green? and is it important that it be done one specific way?), and the people who collaborate with them need to allow the creator to dictate certain aspects and let others be decided by the collaborators. What I've never seen is two people coming together to work on the same idea — Updegraff and Jeter don't split the creative process; it seems they actually collectively contribute to central design elements. As a counter-example, I've seen experimental films created where one person creates the visual experience and the other creates the auditory experience but not two people working on both.

It's killing me not to know how this all works.  But, like I said, I had to get going, so I couldn't even stay for the question-and-answer.

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Disappointed with Experts-Exchange

I signed up for this website called Experts-Exchange to find out why my Garmin eTrex Legend Navigator would suddenly die, leaving only a thin vertical line on the display that required removal of the batteries to reboot. I figured it had something to do with the recent firmware "upgrade" I gave it (knowing that these "upgrades" almost always have side effects like "sometimes ruins everything", but this is how corporations make money). Or maybe it was just that the batteries were flaky.

Anyway, at this Expert-Exchange, you can sign up to the service for $12.95/month or cheaper for longer periods. Stepping back once: I had done a Google search and found this as a question on the site with two answers from "gurus" that I could reveal by signing up. There's a 7-day free trial so I figured I'd give it a go.

So what was the "guru"-level answer as to what can be done to fix the problem? Did it include instructions on a firmware upgrade? Did it ask for more details? Did it describe a specific kind of failure that is either user-serviceable or not? Did two different people answer the question — or perhaps offer different advice?

At the risk of violating the terms of service of the site, let me just say it was none of those. The "solution(s)" even failed to include a link to buy a whole new unit. Now, it would be one thing if these answers were listed as "well, pretty crummy but it's something", but apparently this is the cream-of-the-crop — the very best Experts-Exchange has to offer.

Needless to say, I've canceled my free trial.

As a footnote, I also found this page that describes my problem and offers a link to a solution — along with some discussion absent from the page therein linked.

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Lake of Fire at the Dryden

All this weekend, Lake of Fire was playing at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) Ali and I went tonight and it was a very impressive film. It attempts to document the abortion debate in America in a respectful, unbiased, and balanced way. Until you see it, you don't think it can be done.

What I came away with that was new was to concede that a new, separate human being starts at conception. Life doesn't start at conception: life is a continuum from parents-to-child, for at no point is there some non-living thing that suddenly becomes living (i.e. life being created). One way to look at it is that all human beings are really just on big organism with different corporeal bodies. So in the end, an abortion (depending on the specific situation) destroys what would likely become a baby, and likely become an adult.

So then I had to examine my stance on killing. Is killing wrong? Almost every time, yes. There are exceptions and they aren't simple or pretty, but one way to look at things is that as we grow, we develop potential that peaks and slowly turns into actuality.

I think that's a big chunk to get one's head around. The idea is this: as a human being grows, they develop potential — the capacity to do and to create. The older they get, the more that potential turns into actuality; their capabilities are utilized in the act of doing and creating. So a 5-year-old has only a little developed potential — it's rather unlikely they could design the Space Shuttle. But once we're old, ideally we should have used that potential as fully as possible so that we have a lot of actual experience: that we look back and know that we "used our potential".

(Now I realize my wording gets a little muddy. One could argue that a baby has "unlimited potential", but what I mean by "potential", is "developed potential" or "the capacity to do" as opposed to "not having made any life decisions yet" or "having a maximum unused lifespan". But in a way, everybody has that second kind of "unlimited potential" as long as they're alive. In one case, you can learn a whole new trade at 50-years-old and do great things. And in the other, one baby might die at 15 and someone who's 75 might live to 100.)

So when I think of a bundle of 50 cells that could someday become a human being, I see that they have no experience and no developed potential. The same is true of that developing being when it's developing. But at some point they get so big that they cross some line that says they'd be more likely to live than to die if taken out of the womb early. In essence, this means I prefer that abortions are done as early in a pregnancy as possible. In part because at some point, it's pretty much a baby and I'm still human and have an automatic, instinctive reaction to the sight of a helpless baby.

Like I had said in the post I did last week, laws need to reflect the universally accepted elements of morality. As long as there is a group that can show that their actions are responsible and respectful, then no law should be made to take away the right of that behavior.

So then we get into the case of someone who wants to kill people because it would be convenient for them. And therein lies the rub, eh? I mean, the fundamental argument of Pro-Choice is that it's convenient for one person to kill something that would likely become another person. How's that different?

Well, in the case of abortion, we're talking about a person inside another person. A pregnant woman can't just pack up and move to another state, away from this other person who inconveniences them. So then, what if a pregnant woman was willing to kill herself as well as the unborn child? No law can stop that — but would that really be true?

Going back to the film, I learned that prior to Roe v. Wade, the law said abortion was only acceptable when the life of the mother was in danger. With vague wording like that, no doctor was willing to risk a murder conviction on probabilistic speculation on a woman's survival, so almost none were performed. This is where coat hangers came into play: I always thought it was the tool used for illegal abortions, but in fact, it was to cause bleeding so severe that the woman's life was in danger and they could therefore get an abortion. The problem was — as one doctor pointed out — that women didn't understand just how fragile their bodies were versus a coat-hanger, and they'd often rupture their uterus and bleed to death.

So now you have actual evidence that, if abortion were illegal, that some women would want an abortion so bad they were willing to kill themselves as an alternative.

And in that case, we're talking about a person destroying their own life — destroying the developed potential they have — to destroy the life of a being that has no developed potential. In my mind, the value of someone with developed potential is higher.

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Friday dinner at Jeremiah's

Ali and I had a late dinner at Jeremiah's Tavern (1104 Monroe Ave.) This time the selections were good (remember that Jeremiah's changes the menu to be a bit fancier on Fridays) but the meal wasn't as great as in the past. First, there was rosemary on everything. Ali doesn't like rosemary but I do — up to a point. Ali had the chicken Marsala which wasn't all that much of a Marsala sauce. My "country pork chops" with mushrooms were good but a little tough. Everything had rosemary on it. Fortunately for Ali, simply picking out the pieces of rosemary corrected the meal, and our server was really nice when she mentioned it to him (i.e. more to ask that they add "lots of rosemary" to the menu so people know). He insisted that we take a piece of bananas foster cheesecake home.

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A most excellent evening at Solera

After she got home from a long day of work, Ali and I headed to Solera Wine BarMySpace link (647 South Ave.) We got a glass of (naturally) great wine and ran into our friend Rich who's been out of the country for a month but who arrived back in Rochester earlier that day. We talked with him and his friends and generally had a really good time. Another of our friends from a different circle showed up: she's moving out of town as well with her husband and things are just getting wrapped up for them. She was out on the town trying to avoid being bored stupid at her parents' house in the suburbs.

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Photos at Image City Photography Gallery

I stopped by The Image City Photography Gallery (722 University Ave.) and briefly checked out the new exhibition, America… So Beautiful with photographs by Gary Thompson and Phyllis Thompson. I generally liked the show; it consists of images of beautiful locations expertly shot. It's subtly a "new" way of looking at those places, but largely captures the essence of what has been captured before.

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The films of Len Lye at the Dryden

Ali and I headed to the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) but we arrived early, and we got to join the tail-end of Jim Healy's coffee chat in the cafe. I'd like to have attended, as I only got to really listen in on other people's comments.  I'm still stuck on trying to think of a romantic comedy in the past 10 years or so that Jim would like, as he was at a loss to think of one off hand.

Anyway, the films that night were those of Len Lye, an experimental filmmaker in the 1930's through 1960's. His technique was to "compose motion" by drawing directly onto film stock. A Colour Box was one of his earliest and I immediately recognized the tiny nuances of hand-painted and stamped images magnified hundreds of times. He also incorporated innovative music — typically Cuban music in his early films and jazz in his later ones.

It was amusing that some films were created as advertisements — such as The Birth of the Robot and Colour Flight, but they were so abstract that it was difficult to tell what the point was. Well, The Birth of the Robot was rather direct. In it, a guy dies in the desert and is resurrected by Shell oil into a robot that operates the mechanisms of the cosmos. Rhythm had interesting story: it was a commercial for Chrysler that got rejected by the company because it used African drumming and included a "knowing wink" from a black worker (although IMDb's trivia says it was because the film was "too abstract" rather than that Chrysler opposed racial equality in 1957). This also meant that an advertising reward for it was revoked because it was never actually shown.

Two of his last films: Free Radicals and Particles in Space were both excellent. Completely abstract in their artistry — and created from scratching white lines in black film — they conveyed the magic of motion and dimensions. I thought the hand-scratched titling that was animated to move in some warped spacial way was really innovative. The films also incorporated that technique, as if it were the film of objects dancing in a way unnatural to our orthogonal 3-D world.

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