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You are here: Home / Community / Travelling for Lisa
Travelling for Lisa
February 19, 2019 By Roger Clark 6 Comments
Sequel story to: Doctor's father makes second epic journey in daughter's memory after snapping wrong penguin on 8,000-mile trip (The Telegraph), and Trip of a Lifetime – My Antarctic Trip on Chandler's Ford today.
Lisa loved to travel and her extreme joy of being abroad was expressed in several of her diaries. She wrote about the places she visited, whom she met and how she felt on the journey. People and places were often recorded in her photo album.
Roger made second epic journey in Lisa's memory after snapping wrong penguin on 8,000-mile trip
Remembering Dr Lisa Jayne Clark. My daughter Lisa from Chandler's Ford died of ovarian cancer aged just 40. Here is a photo of Lisa at Glastonbury where she was a lead clinician for Festival Medical Services.
After Lisa passed, diaries and photos were left with us providing a delightful account of her travels. While she was still with us she told us she had had a good (but sadly shortened) life and her diaries certainly seemed to substantiate this.
We were particularly interested to read of her time as a Junior Doctor on the Tongan Island of Vava'u, and the Northlands of New Zealand. These were places where she really enjoyed some different experiences but also had a chance to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings. On occasion she expressed in her diary the hope that her parents might share some of the sights or places that had given her so much pleasure.
Lisa had delivered her first baby in Tonga
The idea emerged that we would trace Lisa's footsteps in these two countries using her diaries as our guide. More importantly we would add a specific mission. Lisa had delivered her first baby in Tonga and according to her diary, and in a letter, the baby was to be named Lisa in her honour. Thus we formulated an objective to meet the Mother and the baby (who would now be 21).
Lisa's photo album featuring Lisa the Mother and the Baby taken on the 28th Jan 1997. This was our mission to find the baby and her family in the photo.
To assist in our search we took a couple of photos from Lisa's album taken at the hospital just after delivery, showing the Mother, the baby, and of course the proud and glowing Junior doctor.
It took nearly a year of planning. From our previous trips in Lisa's memory we had become very interested in photographing penguins so we decided that if we were going to travel to the Southern Hemisphere we should take the opportunity to add-in a wildlife Expedition.
Some time previously I had been reading a book about exploration around the sub-Antarctic islands off Tasmania and learnt of a penguin called the Royal Penguin. Colonies existed only on one island – Macquarie Island – remotely situated in the Southern Ocean near to the Antarctic Circle. I had photographed Emperor and Kings so why not add the Royal species to my portfolio?
The Mother and the Baby. My daughter Lisa delivered the baby on 28th Jan 1997.
To find the young lady called Lisa on the Tongan Island of Vava'u
The final plan we put together was a) to join an Expedition to Macquarie, b) to trace Lisa's footsteps in the New Zealand Northlands and c) to find the young lady called Lisa on the Tongan Island of Vava'u. The trip was to take a month and would cover a distance of 30,000 miles.
My wife Lyn and I left home Dec 15th 2018 and didn't arrive back to Chandler's Ford until Jan 17th 2019.
The storyline below is an account of the third stage of our trip to the Tongan island of Vava'u to locate and hopefully meet the Mother and the baby shown in the photograph.
It had been known within our family for sometime that Lisa had delivered her first baby when she was a student doctor in the Tongan Island of Vava'u.
She wrote in her diary:
I went to the hospital and after a lot of waiting around I delivered my first baby and it weighed 9lb 12oz. It was all a bit nerve wracking but I loved it. It was her 8th baby – she was now 40 – and it was a little girl this time. The lady was very proud though and even named her after me. After all that experience I was feeling good and walked home in the sunset.
Lisa cherished this special moment in her life and at the time she also mentioned it in her letter home.
The idea that we should go and make contact with this baby called Lisa had been worming its way through my thoughts and finally it surfaced as an action-plan a year ago. It fitted well with the request from Lisa that she didn't ever want to be forgotten. It would also enable us to visit the places she talked about in her memorable stay in Tonga.
Vava'u Island
Raising a spark in the life of the special 21 years old Tongan girl
I thought as the spark in our lives had been extinguished maybe we could raise a spark in the life of this 21 years old Tongan girl, by telling her she was special to both Lisa, when she was alive, and now to us.
We were in possession of a good photograph of the Mother and we knew the name of the baby so weeks before leaving we tried to find the identity of the young lady. I tried genealogy routes, and I tried contacting the hospital, the Vava'u Ministry of Information office, the Tongan Registrar Office et al but drew a blank each time.
A part of me didn't really want to discover too much as there would be an element of excitement in going to the island and researching on the spot. However with 3 weeks to go I relented and contacted the Tonga High Commission in London with an email request for assistance.
The First Secretary responded in a short time and said he was sympathetic to the cause and if I provided more detail and the old photo from Lisa's album he thought he would be able the locate the Mother and daughter.
It all happened very fast and a note came back with both a name for the Mother and the young lady. They happened to live in the village of Ta'anea, in Vava'u, in a village next to where the First Secretary had been raised.
We arrived in steamy Tonga after the completion of our tour of the Northlands in New Zealand. It took an hours flight from the Tongan mainland to get to the Island of Vava'u where we were picked up by a hotel taxi.
To start with we stayed at Flying Annie Moa close to the capital town of Neiafu, population 6000. We initially had a little hassle about the kind of room we were expecting (not a pokey room without a bathroom door). We were finally upgraded to an air-conditioned room.
The next day we went to the Ministry of Information office, armed with our photo from 21 years ago and the name of the Mother and the village where we knew she lived. We related our story to the lovely smiling lady behind the desk. She thought she knew the lady and was very empathetic. A stranger came into the office and heard our story and claimed he knew of something related to our search that had appeared on Facebook.
In a short time we were armed with a rough map and the name of a friendly contact who would rent us a reliable car. That day we weren't prepared to visit the village as we needed a little more acclimatisation time given the summer heat and humidity. Instead we visited the hotel mentioned below where we would have liked to have dinner had it been open.
Diary quote:
Had a great swim at the Tongan Beach Resort. It's a really nice place with golden beaches and huts. Good swimming and snorkelling. Might be a nice place for Mum and Dad to stay.
Visiting the Neiafu hospital where Lisa had worked
The next day we were ready though and decided our first port of call would be to visit the Neiafu hospital where Lisa had worked.
Neiafu hospital
The hospital exterior looked a little run down compared with the photo Lisa had taken all those years ago but as we wandered inside it was not hard to imagine what it had been like when Lisa had worked there.
The hospital had fields around it and there were pigs and chickens wandering around the corridors.
On a positive note we could see an extension to the hospital that had been built with funds from China Aid in recent years. We walked inside and were struck by the drabness of the interior walls, the small wards, and an obvious lack of medical equipment. We didn't see pigs wandering around the corridors as Lisa had mentioned but we could certainly imagine it as there was a real openness to the hospital to enhance the air flow.
The staff were few but well presented and very charming. We spent sometime talking to two ladies in a side office into which we had been ushered. They were fascinated by some of the photos we showed from Lisa's time in Vava'u. "Oh yes that man is now the Minister of Health and that one there may now be the Minister of Tourism."
Inside the Neiafu hospital
The delivery section where the baby, that might have been named Lisa, had been born had now been relocated within the hospital so we didn't pursue a visit to the actual room.
We left the hospital and took on, once again, the enormous potholes but this time for our journey to the rural Ta'anea village. Not the best time of the day given the heat but the car comfortably pushed out ample air conditioning.
We found the village quite easily and it was spread out either side of a paved road. From a sign promoting Japan Aid at the entrance to the village we could see their water system had been upgraded in 2012. We stopped in a small store and asked at the checkout whether they recognised the person shown in the photo of the Mother. No they didn't so we asked the driver of a car outside and again a negative result.
Finally someone recognised the people in the photo
In the end we found a man at a nearby church and it was instant recognition – even though the photo had been taken 21 years ago. The instructions were simple – follow the track beside the church, take first right and on the second corner you will find an unfinished building and that is where the family live.
Their house was set-back so we parked at the edge of their grass frontage and exited the car holding the two photographs that showed the Mother, Lisa and the baby that might have been called Lisa.
This was our first encounter with the family. My wife Lyn was discussing the photo details with the family members.
The family emerged from the building with some hesitation. We, or they, didn't quite know how this initial introduction was going to turn out. We later learned that they had an expectation of a visit or communication as the photograph we were going to show them had actually been posted on Facebook.
From our perspective we weren't sure how we would be received – for example did they share our sense of feeling of celebration or was it just a special occasion for us alone?
Meeting the extended family (several generations!)
It started awkwardly as we were met by the first, second and third generation family. It was hard to work out who was who as initially the Mother had stayed back. There was only one, a visiting family member, who could speak excellent English and fortunately she quickly came to our rescue as an interpreter.
Meeting some of the young family (including neighbours' kids). They are framed by the unfinished house.
Slowly we sorted some of the family out and with introductions made the situation became a lot more relaxed. The Mother was friendly and gestured us inside their home to meet her husband. Sadly he had an illness and was resting on his stomach on a wooden bench. The number of children seemed to grow during this time – a mixture of curious cousins and neighbours.
The family member doing the interpretation was an 18 year old young lady called Oso. She was the visiting daughter from the Tongan mainland and her Mother was one of the 8 children. Her skill in speaking English was our salvation. So we asked her where the 21 year old was that may have been called Lisa.
She responded that Meleane was in town and coming straight back to meet us.
From Lisa to Meleane
This might have been a shock for us to learn that the baby hadn't actually been called Lisa but in fact we were prepared for this news as the Secretary had notified us of this fact just two weeks before we left.
The baby had ultimately been named Meleane. Not a major setback as Lisa never knew any different and after all Meleane was still the baby from Lisa's first delivery – the special one we had often had had in our minds.
Roger with Meleane: We found out the baby is not called Lisa but is called Meleane.
It was a significant moment meeting Meleane and her mother Hainite. After all this was a commitment I had made to myself and confirmed with others sometime back. How the Mother Hainite felt I just couldn't tell. She did confirm she remembered our daughter 'the palagi (foreigner) nurse' but didn't recall a conversation about naming her baby Lisa.
We concluded it was a mis-understanding as a consequence of the language barrier between them. We hoped Hainite wasn't upset about our earlier expectations of a daughter called Lisa.
After some more small talk with the family, through Oso, we decided take our leave but not before leaving a present of a silver necklace each with Hainite, and her daughter Meleane. They didn't open the present there and then.
Meleane did want to see us again so we suggested we drop by later and take her and Oso for a drink and meal in town.
Hainite's special gift to us
Then as we were heading back to our car Hainite came out struggling with what looked like a huge and awkward bundle of canvas decorated with traditional and patterned symbols. Oso explained it was Hainite's gift to us.
We laid it out and it was really an enormous size (4m x 4m) and although externally we showed gratitude we inwardly were puzzled as to how they could afford to gift it to us when they had so little, what would we use it for back home and how could take it back on our 13,500 mile trip back home when we were already over the baggage limits.
This is the gift from the family. Its called a Ngatu or Tapa. We were very honoured and managed to bring it home.
The kindness and meaning behind the gesture was so appreciated and a token that they sensed the importance of the occasion to us.
We met the two girls later. Meleane was wearing her Tree of Life silver necklace and she told us her Mother wept (hopefully with joy) when she had opened up her necklace – a Jane Eyre replica cross.
What's a Ngatu?
They asked how we like our present – of course we expounded our sincere joy at receiving such an unexpected and unusual gift and asked a little about its significance. Oso explained it was called a Ngatu – the Tongan name given to a tapa or decorated bark cloth.
It is made from the inner bark of Hiapo the paper mulberry tree. The pieces of bark are beaten with a mallet, widened and joined together to make larger pieces of cloth. Groups of women work together to decorate the cloth with natural dyes and pigments.
Ngatu are often decorated with motifs and patterns taken from the natural environment or associated with important people and events. We just couldn't believe the amount of time and effort that gone into creating this work of art. We were very humbled to be the new owners.
Attending a Kava session
After demolishing a few pizzas with Meleane and Oso on our evening out we went on to visit a Kava session held by the firemen and the police. Lisa had mentioned this Kava drink in one of her journals:
…we then walked to the Church Hall. Kava is served in wooden bowls that have been in the family for years.
The Kava Club we visited was outside the fire station. A group of men sat on picnic benches sipping from their polished wooden bowls originally made from coconut shells. The only lady there was seated and serving the drink to the men from a large bowl.
I sat next to the Police Commissioner and he asked me if I would like to drink some of the intoxicating potion. I wryly replied I was driving but would take a sip. It tasted woody neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
It became quiet for a time and as you could feel the atmosphere building up as the mild hallucinogenic substance hit home and we knew it would culminate in the melody we had come to hear. Sure enough the impromptu singing began as a guitar was slowly strummed and then we had to agree with Lisa's diary entry:
… their voices break my heart every time they sing. They have the voice of angels. As they drank more Kava they got sleepier and more melodic. It was funny to watch.
In our case it was a more serious affair as they specifically sang woeful hymns in memory of a fireman they had buried in the week.
Next day we were in town and Ana, Meleane's sister, hailed us from the far side of the road. She also asked how we liked the present of the Ngatu. We said we were overwhelmed knowing a little more about the construction and asked a little more.
It turned out it had been made by Ana herself after growing the plants and it had been presented to her parents. Seemingly it turned out that after we had given out our presents Hainite had asked Ana if she could present the Ngatu to us as a gift from the family.
Generosity was in their very nature
Gift giving didn't stop there as next time we visited I was given a necklace with a shark's tooth while Lyn was give a similar necklace and a traditional fan made out of coconut fibre. Generosity was in their very nature.
The time came on a Monday to say our goodbyes. The family were dressed up for Church and they were very happy for us to photograph them in their fineries and their traditional lavalavas. The sadly ill Dad couldn't get up and so we said our goodbyes in the house. He was tearful and we were so sorry to leave him while the others went to Church.
A lovely photo of the family. The Mother is called Hainite. The photo of the baby 21 years ago (Lisa / Meleane) and her mother is our last memory. They were dressed up for church.
With our limited time it was all over so quick with little time for reflection. We hoped it would not be just a single encounter but we knew communicating to this family in their rural setting would not be simple. We couldn't discount, from the suggestions we heard, that one day there will be a baby called Lisa born into this family.
The Paradise Hotel
My daughter Lisa – in room 115 at the Paradise Hotel.
On our way back to our lodgings and as a last port of call we decided to stop at the Paradise Hotel. This was where Lisa stayed for her short time in Vava'u and she loved it with the views over the Bay and the outdoor swimming pool to keep cool –
it was heaven.
Since that time however the hotel had largely fallen into disrepair. There was a fire in the kitchen and the property was sold on. We knew Lisa had stayed in room 115 with her friend Sarah, another junior doctor from London.
To get to the room we traipsed through some mud created after a recent cyclone. The room obviously had not been occupied for many years. The double bed was on its edge and the rest of the furniture was in disarray.
The bathroom was in pieces and the bath was home to large insect. Maybe a relative of the large spider Lisa had reported on her first night's stay in Vava'u – "it was the biggest spider I have ever seen!" We stood in awe at this dishevelled mess and then ventured on to the balcony for the view that Lisa must have surely enjoyed.
A deep and stirring sense of personal closure
We returned to the room and savoured the peace of the room feeling Lisa's presence more than in any other place on our travels.
Finally, as we slowly shut the door to room 115, a deep and stirring sense of personal closure hit us. We had followed Lisa's footsteps though her diaries, we had seen what she wanted us to see, we had touched on her foreign experiences.
Closure came as I closed the door
We had read through her diaries each evening. More than anything though we felt we had re-connected with our daughter as if we were in a time warp. However it was time now to say goodbye to our young daughter, leave the Paradise Hotel, and travel home with our special new memories.
By – Roger Clark
Roger Clark's Quest to Antarctica to Photograph the Right Penguins Lisa Clark's Legacy Growing up in Chandler's Ford: 1950s – 1960s: My Passions with Bikes and Boats (Part 9) Growing up in Chandler's Ford: 1950s – 1960s: Rotrax Memories; Joy of Powerboat – Part 14 Trip of a Lifetime – My Antarctic Trip
Tags: Chandler's Ford community, community, culture, inspiration, memory, ovarian cancer, storytelling, travel
About Roger Clark
Another Chandler's Ford ex-IBMer who is just learning to say NO to volunteer opportunities. Enjoyed flying and sailing after retirement but now golf and wildlife photography in the ascendancy. I do feel responsible for putting something back into the Community or organisations that I have enjoyed. Hence I have an active interest in the Hiltingbury Community Organisation and the Hilt, Winchester Photographic Society, South Winchester Golf Club, Festival Medical Services, and a charity called Ovacome.
June Chapman says
What a lovely story. A life so tragically cut short, but full and inspirational.
Allison Symes says
A beautiful and sad story, Roger. Thank you for sharing.
Mike Sedgwick says
What a fascinating story, both interesting and poignant at the same time. A lovely Ngatu, is it a bedspread, wall hanging, table runner. Whatever it is, it is a beautiful piece of art work.
Roger says
There two aspects to the Ngatu, Mike. The first was the significance of the gift – "it is of great social importance to the islanders, often being given as gifts." As we didn't have a common language we didn't really know how they felt. Were we an intrusion? It was Hainite (the Mother) who initiated the gifting after talking to her daughter Ana who had gifted it to her. This gesture was truly significant to me which I obviously took as positive feedback.
However your question was do with its utility. I believe it was on their floor and it might have been for sleeping on. On the island we saw many applications – wall decorations, artwork, lampshades etc. We haven't the heart to cut ours. It is too huge to hang on the wall. The only use we could make of it would be as a large picnic covering but we would have to so careful not to get it damp. Ultimately I would like to donate it to a gallery or museum or exhibition.
Steve Michelle says
So glad you published this Roger, a really lovely read, with a heart warming memory of your trip.
Kind regards, Steve.
What a poignant, wonderful story to tell, thank you for sharing with us!
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A key element that distinguishes various guitarists from one another is the tone that they produce when they play. With some of the best players you can tell who it is by hearing just a few, or even one note (Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson and Wes Montgomery come to mind). Initially, new guitar players try to emulate the sound of their favorite players by focusing on what kind of guitar, amp, pedals, or pickups they use. These are all important but I am here to tell you, after years of experience, that the simplest and arguably best way to improve guitar tone is through your choice of a pick or the decision to not even use a pick at all.
I heard it once said that the "artist is in the right hand". What this means is that the right hand is primarily responsible for setting the string into motion; bringing it to life. The texture, weight, and flexibility of the material that comes into contact with the string to make this happen are all critical to the sound that is produced. Of course what "good tone" sounds like is subjective and depends on the context of the music you are playing.
Heavier picks sound better than thin picks. Thin picks tend to flex too much. This extra motion slows you down as the pick must bend back into place after each hit to a string. A heavy pick does not give way to the string as you pick hard or fast. Thin picks also seem to produce a clicking sound as the pick strikes the strings and generally produce a "thinner" tone.
The tip of the pick should be pointed but not too sharp. If it is too round it is difficult to get a clean articulation of the notes. If it is too sharp then the tone produced tends to have too much high-end and not enough mid-low frequencies, producing a thin brittle sound. I often fine tune the tip of my picks with grade #0000 steel wool.
The material matters. Picks are made from a variety of materials including: celluloid, nylon, acrylic, metal and stone. This is an area for experimentation. Compare the sounds of similar shaped picks made from different materials. You will be surprised at the results. For example some materials work better on a clean versus distorted sound.
Shape is a matter of personal preference and comfort and does not affect tone as much as the other aspects of the pick.
Many times the best tone is achieved using your finger or thumb.
Relative to other musical gear purchases picks are cheap so experiment and try out a bunch of them. A good place to start is the basic Fender heavy pick. My current favorite is the Dunlop Ultex Jazz III.
I hope you are able to use this information on how to improve guitar tone through your pick selection. If you would like to hear some of what I have discovered on my "tone quest" visit, http://www.curtisguitar.com/free-music/ to get a free download of two of my songs.


BJ's Restaurants, Inc. is an American chain of restaurants, home of the world famous Pizookie dessert. With select restaurant locations operating full process microbreweries, some of their brews have been awarded gold and silver medals at various competitions throughout the world. BJ's is publicly traded on the NASDAQ as BJRI, with a market capitalization of $1.1 billion.
BJ's is headquartered in Southern California, and currently has 197 restaurants across the United States. BJ's is a strong net leased investment because of their family friendly environment and centralized locations. Primary lease terms are typically 20-year triple net ground leases with 5-year renewal options. For 2017, cap rates and sales prices averaged 5.25% and $5,000,000.


When it comes to working with ASP.NET most developers who have done standard desktop development always run into the problem of their class variables not retaining their values. You create a variable at the class/page level and expect that when you click a button or change a server control on the page that those variables will be there when its event is triggered. But in many cases they are not and it can be frustrating because you can see them right there in the code, initialized to some value, and yet the code said they are not set. I guess the even more frustrating part is that when you go on the forums and ask the question, all people do is point you to the same MSDN article talking about the page life-cycle and tell you that the web is stateless. But what exactly does that mean? We will get to the root of the cause and hopefully answer the question once and for all.
The web is stateless, ok so?
When you surf to a page of a website, your browser makes a request to the server asking for a specific page of HTML to be returned. In the case of an ASP.NET site, that request is passed to the .NET framework, processed, transformed to HTML and then returned. The important thing to know here is that once it returns the HTML, it forgets about the request you just made. It is like dealing with someone with short term memory of less than a minute. Here is the reason your variables don't hold their values. It forgets them each time a request is finished. This is what is meant by the web being stateless. Unless you store the value somewhere more permanent (like a database, session variable, cookie or viewstate) it forgets all about the things you calculated on that one request.
When you request a page the first time, you set your variables to some value. Perhaps you fetched that value from a database or did some calculations and set them to the result of that calculation. Let's say you set these class variables in a button click event. The page returns to the user. The user then clicks another button. This second click is a completely new and different request. It starts out with fresh class variables (yeah the ones you thought would have remained set) and calls the Page_Load event to load the page.
In order to fix the problem, we have to understand a bit about the page life-cycle. However, before I just kick you over to the MSDN article and leave you to fend for yourself on that rather dry page, I will just cover some of the events you might need to play with to remedy the situation. Each time you request a page, and the ASP.NET tech does its work, it calls some standard events in a particular order. It calls some initialization events, loading events, controls events (like button click events), rendering events and finishing events. If we understand that these events always fire and in a specific order we can understand that if we setup our variables in these events, they will be available to other events later down the chain.
One of these events is the Page_Load event. It is always fired when the page is being, well, loaded. Makes sense doesn't it? It is a great event for establishing database connections and… initializing our class variables! We can rely on this event to setup our variables because even when we click a button, the Page_Load event fires first before the button click event. We set the variables in page load, then use them in the click event. When we post back the page again, the page load event is again ran and then the other event is triggered. Think of the Page_Load event as the "Prepare the page" event so that when another event is triggered everything will be setup.
To save your values between requests you are going to have to dump the values somewhere that the Page_Load can read them again on the next page load. Where you put these values is really up to your application but if you save them to a database, you could read them again from the database on Page_Load. Another place you could save them is in a Session Variable. Then on Page_Load you read them back out of the session (or read them from session in the click event itself. It is really up to you). It is the same with cookies or viewstate. Each of these methods has their advantages and disadvantages. Some last longer than others and some are easier to work with. In the end ask yourself "Do I really need to persist this data to begin with or can I just easily recalculate it again on next page load?" If you are just adding 2+2, why save the 4 when you could just do 2+2 again? If the calculation takes a bit of time, then it might be perfect to store the result and retrieve the result again instead of doing the whole calculation from scratch each time.
Here the Page_Load is ran again FIRST (not the click event). Here you can reset your variables or fetch them from your storage location of choice.
NOW the button click event is fired. Since you set the variables in Page_Load, you will see them available in this event. This might also be a good time to save values you want to persist.
ASP.NET uses the variables and then returns the page back to the user…. again forgetting the values you just set.
Seeing the pattern above you can see why many developers like to setup an "initialize" or "config" method that is called from Page_Load to put things on the page back to some known state.
ASP.NET variables forgetting their values seems like a real pain sometimes. But you know, this isn't really a problem with the framework. It is just how the web works. Web servers see thousands or millions of requests a day and if it had to remember everything about each one of them on every request, you could see where the problem might happen. It would have to remember that one off time someone came to the site and clicked a button as well as that person who visits every day.
By utilizing events like Page_Load to set your class level variables you should have no problem working with them later on in the life-cycle. This is because the Page_Load event is often triggered before any control events. Read values from storage, set your variables and you are off to the races!
To keep values around from page request to page request you are going to need save them in some sort of persistent storage. Some options might be sessions, cookies, viewstate, databases or even files. But if you understand that on each request a certain number of events are triggered, and in a specific order, you can plan when to initialize (Page_Load), read (control events like button clicks) and save your data (also in control events) without a problem.


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Home Locations DC Spine: 'When We Were Young and Unafraid' at The Keegan Theatre
SPINE: Theatre, History & Culture in the Belly of the Beast
Spine: 'When We Were Young and Unafraid' at The Keegan Theatre
Robert Michael Oliver
Stepping back 45 years, America is in the midst of a social revolution, and feminist consciousness-raising sessions are underway.
Radical feminists, cultural feminists, and political feminists are all calling for social change, from the passing of laws to protect women to the wholesale transformation of American society.
Theo Hadjimichael & Jenna Berk. Photo by Cameron Whitman Photography.
Sarah Treem's new play, When We Were Young and Unafraid, and now playing at the Keegan Theatre, takes us back to those turbulent days.
And what a difference four decades makes.
And the waves keep rolling in.
Treem's play may be a little too polemic at times, but it definitely accomplishes its mission: it's a dramatic thought-producer that will lead to late night discussions, or even arguments, over post-show wine-spritzers and morning cups of Joe.
Narrowly defined, When We Were Young and Unafraid deals with violence against women. More broadly, it dramatically engages the theme of female empowerment.
At the center of When We Were Young is Agnes (Sheri S. Herren), a strong-willed, loner of a woman who runs a safe house for battered women on a remote island in Puget Sound. Her 16-year-old daughter, Penny (Kaylynn Creighton), is all hormones and high feminist expectations. When a battered, yet still feisty Mary Anne (Jenna Berk) arrives, bringing her expertise in masculine manipulation with her, Agnes' Whidbey Island hideaway is turned upside down.
Jenna Berk and Kaylynn Creighton. Photo by Cameron Whitman Photography.
That turbulence is only intensified when Nora Achrati's radical Hannah and Theo Hadjimichael's weirdo Paul enter: then, the whole world is subject to change.
And, indeed, that's exactly what idealistic dreams were swirling around in the movement days of the early 1970s, and what Ms. Treem wants us to consider from her historical look back of a play.
Violence against women is still very much with us, but the means for neutralizing that violence and its effect on women have improved.
And the empowerment of women has skyrocketed.
Treem's play establishes a feminist incubator of sorts within its isolated retreat where the women struggle for self-definition mainly amongst themselves. By contrast, in today's America, women's identities are front and center across a broad spectrum of issues.
Sheri S. Herren and Nora Achrati. Photo by Cameron Whitman Photography.
Violence against women remains an issue but it is no longer relegated to safe houses (though they still exist) or to feminist consciousness-raising sessions. Now, public debate on the issue is commonplace with the voices calling for change growing stronger than ever.
Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the return of psychologically traumatized soldiers to civilian life, When We Were Young and Unafraid seems ironically appropriate to today, as America struggles with its newest longest war.
Today, Americans might not be conscious of the ongoing wars and the psychological wounds they create or the violence they unleash on loved ones at home, and When We Were Young and Unafraid might not drive that point home quite hard enough, but this viewer couldn't help feeling the parallel.
As a democratic republic, we are responsible for the violence we manufacture, and for the violence we endorse. Many women and some men have stood up to shout: "No more!"
When We Were Young and Unafraid calls us all to say: it's time for everyone to accept a share of responsibility. It's time for all of us to stand-up.
Running Time: Two hours, including one intermission.
Advisory Warning: Contains sexual situations and references to domestic violence and rape. Recommended for ages 16 and older.
When We Were Young and Unafraid plays through July 8 at The Keegan Theatre—1742 Church Street NW, Washington, D.C. For tickets, call the box office at (202) 265-3767, or purchase them online.
Review: 'When We Were Young and Unafraid' at The Keegan Theatre by Julia Hurley
Previous articleAn Interview with the National Orchestral Institute and Festival (NOI+F) Director Richard Scerbo: Thirty Years After It Began, NOI+F is Breaking Ground and Stronger Than Ever by Robert Lintott
Next articleReport: 'Justice for Shylock' at the Library of Congress
Poet, Performer, Theatre Artist, Playwright, Educator, Writer--Robert Michael Oliver, Ph.D., has been involved in the DC arts scene since the 1980s, when he co-founded The Sanctuary Theatre in the old sanctuary of Calvary United Methodist Church. Since those fierce days in Columbia Heights, he has earned his doctorate in theatre from University of Maryland, raised two wonderful children, and seen more theatre as a reviewer over the last two years than he saw in the previous thirty. He now co-directs, along with his wife Elizabeth Bruce, the Sanctuary's Performing Knowledge Project, which organizes a host of writing and performance workshops, plus Mementos: Poetry and Performance for Seniors, a yearly literature-in-performance Fringe Festival show, as well as Performetry--a monthly poetry and prose performance event at DC's community arts & culture center BloomBars.
Review: 'Ann' at Arena Stage
Review: 'Hamlet' at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Free for All
Review: 'Seussical' by McLean Community Players at Alden Theatre

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Back in the Stone Age when I was young, there was a popular TV commercial for Memorex-brand cassette tapes. For those of you under the age of 40 who have no idea what a cassette tape is, go ask your uncle.
The Memorex people wanted to tell us that the quality of their recording tape was so good the average person couldn't tell the difference between a real, live sound and sound recorded on Memorex recording tape.
According to an article I read in today's paper, we might soon be asking a version of the same question about our next-door neighbors.
That might be stretching the point a little for the sake of argument, but it is not too far off base when it comes to the whole area of A.I., or artificial intelligence. AI is certainly not new, but it seems that the folks who have been toiling away in the AI labs around the world have been making a lot of progress lately.
Enough progress, in fact, to scare tech guru Elon Musk.
You know Elon Musk… he is the guy who can't stop inventing stuff, from the Tesla battery-powered car to the reusable Space-X rocket to the supertrain known as the HyperLoop. You would think a guy with high tech credentials like these would be chomping at the bit to own a piece of a robot-filled future.
Instead, the Kansas City Star reports that Musk recently warned an audience that if we are not careful with AI, we might end up living in a world where the humans answer to the machines instead of the other way around.
It sounded like the world depicted in the movie I, Robot actually come to pass.
I don't know if Mr. Musk is accurate or not, but the whole topic made me stop and think… using my genuine, authentic, grey matter human intelligence.
What is intelligence in the first place? And what makes one kind of intelligence natural and another kind artificial?
The dictionary says that anything made by human beings can be defined as artificial. Which, of course, means that this computer I am typing on, the desk that holds it up, the house I am sitting in, and the water bottle I just took a sip out of are all – technically – artificial.
Intelligence is defined as: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
Using those definitions, I suppose it is not impossible to see how something made by human beings could acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
Pausing for a minute and reading that last sentence again actually gave me a little shudder of dread.
I mean, yes, I would love to have my own domestic robot who could fry a perfectly over-medium egg, mow the lawn, and take the dog for a walk. But I am not at all sure I am comfortable with the idea of him (do robots have genders? Hmmmm.) acquiring his own knowledge and skills and running around applying them, willy-nilly.
I guess what I find fascinating in this whole conversation is the very thinly veiled fear that we might be entering a future filled with knowledge and technological wizardry, but utterly bereft of SOUL… for lack of a better word.
And the people who seem to be the most worried about the consequences of this soul-less future are the folks at the forefront of bringing it to us!
I think this is exactly the kind of situation that the word IRONY was invented to describe.
Intelligence is good. God did not put brains in our heads without expecting we would use them. Our intelligence is right at the forefront of reasons the psalmist says human beings are "… fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14).
But intelligence without soul and without heart is just plain fearful.
YES!… We need knowledge. We need skills. We need solutions to the complex, critical issues that face the world today.
But those skills and solutions have to flow from a renewed, soft, soulful heart… the one so lovingly fashioned by our God.
You and I have a choice about the kind of future we will enjoy; will we choose the hyper-efficient, albeit soul-less one? Or will we pick a slightly wobbly and off-kilter, soulful and thoroughly human future?
I know which one I'm voting for.
But please don't tell the robots!


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Kukkolankoski, 22 o'clock. The alarm shrieks me out of my dreams and I realize that I napped at least a few hours in the front seat of my old and trusted Toyota.
In two days we're heading out to the Lofoten islands and I used the day to get some missing items for that trip. As I'm already in Sweden I revisited this location, called Kukkolankoski. I have been here once before in bad weather on the road to Norway last year and decided to return today as I was already quite close.
I arrived a few hours ago and explored the location still hoping for the light to improve. I left home in beautiful sunlight, but the more to the north I came the worse the conditions got. It's not an easy place to shoot, or better to compose. The main attraction, an old pier which was built for fishing purposes, is so low, that framing it in a dramatic way seems to be impossible. After some experimenting prior to my nap I think I found a decent angle though.
Also I found another composition featuring the shore line with an older house in background to be a pleasing composition. All I need now is better light and hopefully some drama in the sky.
A look into the rear mirror after waking up from my nap makes me optimistic about this evening's shooting. The light is getting warmer and the previously grey sky has disappeared in favour of clouds which now only have to be illuminated nicely by the evening sun.
With all different kinds of more or less nasty bugs around me, I proceed to my previously scouted viewpoint. The sun is still at a slightly unfortunate position and I spent some time catching a few detail images of the old huts at this location. Especially the reflections in a window got my attention. The image is surprisingly difficult to achieve as I have to get into a higher position. A box which I found next to it gives me the angle that I was looking for.
By now the position of the sun has changed enough to make my previously planned image possible. Still, the dynamic range between the foreground and the sky behind the house is too big. It turns out that I will not succeed with filters on this image and decide to blend two exposures in Photoshop. An option of which I will have to take advantage of a little later at the desired pier.
Image done and I proceed to the pier. The setting sun beautifully lights the wood but somehow the shot is not working. I will have to merge images again. I take my images and proceed. I planned to leave the location and look for something interesting along the way home when I spot that house on the other side of the river. It is beautifully lit buy the setting sun and has wonderfully coloured clouds above it.
Quickly I set up my tripod, switch to my 70-200 lens, attach the filters and compose. A look at the preview on the back of my camera tells me that I managed to get a pleasing composition and exposure. I stay around, accompanied by mosquitos, and wait for the light to return and the clouds to move a little. But it's not happening.
Satisfied I head home, looking forward to import the images into Aperture and see the result. The sky is beautifully lit by the midnight sun all the way home. Now looking forward to the next trip to the Lofoten in a few days.


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The outsiders behind Jagmeet Singh and the new NDP - Macleans.ca
The outsiders behind Jagmeet Singh and the new NDP
Singh's inner circle brings uneven federal experience to Ottawa, and new tactics. Can they survive their leader's early stumbles?
by Murad Hemmadi
Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Chief of Staff, Willy Blomme chat prior to having their portrait taken before the Broadbent Institute's Progress Gala in Toronto on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017. (Christopher Katsarov/CP)
After working as a constituency assistant to late NDP leader Jack Layton and another Toronto-area party MP, Melissa Bruno was seeking advancement, but did not want to move to Ottawa. So in 2012, she took a job with Jagmeet Singh, a rookie New Democrat in the provincial legislature. "It was the first time since Jack had passed away that I was super-inspired by another person," she says.
Five years on, Bruno has recently relocated to the capital as a key member of Singh's staff as he takes over the federal NDP.
Singh's successful bid to lead the party was orchestrated by a notably young group of organizers and advisors—the then-38-year-old candidate was the oldest person on the team, as he likes to point out. Many of those now moving into top jobs in the NDP worked on his provincial staff and campaigns.
Singh wants to be prime minister, and the task of making that happen falls to a group with uneven federal experience. Their mix of tactics, messaging, tone and culture won out in provincial and party elections, but can Singh's staff replicate their success at the federal level?
READ MORE: Jagmeet Singh on his path to the prime minister's office
Bruno, who was an advisor on the leadership campaign and led the transition, is the NDP's new interim national director. Willy Blomme, Singh's chief of staff, has worked in Ottawa before, as speechwriter to Layton and a Quebec organizer for the party.
Other leadership campaign team members making the move to Ottawa include digital director Nader Mohamed, a longtime Singh staffer, and James Wardlaw, who previously worked for the activist group Acorn Canada. Singh's brother Gurratan, who has been beside him through his political career, is "maintaining relationships" with new donors and members. Communications director Jared A. Walker, whose volunteering on political campaigns included Barack Obama's 2008 presidential run, is Singh's English speechwriter.
"At the top of the food chain, you can sense a generational change," says Karl Bélanger, who worked for four NDP leaders, including as principal secretary to Thomas Mulcair. He says that in Blomme and Bruno, Singh has "brought in two young women with experience, and they're both very capable and energetic."
Significant turnover in personnel under a new boss is not unusual. Many of the top people under Layton and Mulcair were gone before Singh was selected. Some left in previous reshuffles and others to work for the NDP governments in British Columbia and Alberta. While Singh had the backing of longtime staffer Brad Lavigne during the leadership race, no notable veterans have been announced in prominent positions thus far.
Bruno says she maintains relationships with party veterans, even if they don't have formal roles, and seeks their advice. She also coordinates with senior leaders at the provincial level. "The NDP world is not actually that large," she notes.
Early stumbles have lately soured the positive narrative Singh carried out of his leadership win. Speaking to reporters in late November, he suggested an Indigenous nominee for the Supreme Court of Canada might not have to meet the French-English bilingualism standard required of other candidates. At least two NDP MPs pointed out that was not the party's position, and Singh had to walk back the comments. His response to a question about overtime at a meeting with NDP Parliament Hill staff was also reportedly a temporary point of contention.
These instances, and a few others where the party has disputed or had to correct media reports, will have served as a warning to Singh and his staff of how unforgiving and challenging federal politics can be. And in the Liberals and Conservatives, they are facing opponents with plenty of organizational and messaging skills of their own.
Over the course of multiple campaigns, the Singh team has developed its own way of organizing. A young volunteer base—many high-school age—has necessitated more training. Just handing canvassers a script, showing them how to look for signs of support, and sending them to knock on doors, isn't enough. Their hour-long training module walks through, among other things, the differences between the three levels of government and the three major parties.
It may seem odd for someone to volunteer without such basic knowledge. But Bruno says volunteers without partisan backgrounds are drawn by the culture of Singh's type of campaign. "This is more of a fundamental distinction between the Liberals and us, frankly," she says. "We kind of sound the same, we say very similar things, but our approach and our practice is very different."
READ MORE: How Jagmeet Singh hopes to win over the next generation of NDP voters
The team has also been effective at using tech tools and social media to organize and build support. Mohamed, who was working as an usher at Queen's Park when Singh was first elected provincially, took over his web presence in 2014. (He also co-founded a Dragons' Den-featured fantasy sports app called StockJocks; he's no longer involved).
Mohamed discovered that videos in which Singh spoke directly to the camera drove engagement. The team also strayed beyond conventional political language to capture Singh's "authentic voice." "When Jagmeet says, 'Shoutouts to this person,' these are terms that any other politician would never be able to use, because it would just come off so weird," says Mohamed.
But it's more than just smart Snapchat strategy. Mohamed says voters are growing less receptive to traditional mediums of communication—getting them to open an email or a door is harder than ever. During the leadership race, the campaign solicited ideas and coordinated volunteers using the messaging tool Slack. It also used Hustle, a one-to-one texting platform made famous by Bernie Sanders that helped bring out crowds for the candidate's "JagMeet and Greet" events during the leadership race.
Singh's staff plan to replicate some of these tactics in the federal party, though they're allergic to any suggestion they'll be imposed from the top. "There's never a one-size-fits-all model," says Bruno. She won't diagnose what went wrong in the 2015 election. "What we're really bringing in," she says, "is a reframing of a mindset and creating a particular culture."
READ MORE: Jagmeet Singh and the newest new NDP
Still, Singh's tactics have worked when harnessed to his own singular knack for projecting energy and authenticity. Adapting them to work in 338 federal ridings for candidates of indeterminate emotional resonance and popularity is a bigger challenge.
Not everything transfers from the provincial to the federal level, or from a leadership campaign to a general election. "It's different when you're in the driver's seat, and barreling towards something," says Jesse Brady, a spokesperson under both Layton and Mulcair, and one of the campaign managers for Charlie Angus's unsuccessful leadership bid this year.
Long before the 2019 election campaign, the leader's attention will be needed on Parliament Hill (Singh is not yet an MP and has no immediate plans to seek a seat in a by-election). Mismanaging parliamentary basics drains energy away from campaign preparations.
READ MORE: Jagmeet Singh's rookie blunders
The bilingualism issue, combined with poor poll numbers and Singh's absence from the House, led to reports of grumbling in NDP ranks. The party lost vote share in four December by-elections, including in Scarborough where Singh was born and a member of his leadership campaign team was the candidate. Asked about the results, NDP MP Matthew Dubé noted that the "transition" was still underway and the new team's strategy had yet to be implemented.
New deputy director of communications Dave Weatherall says a learning curve is normal for any new leader. He says Singh is a quick study, giving the example of the improvement in his French over the course of the leadership campaign.
"It took Jack seven years from the moment he was elected leader … for the Orange Wave to come to fruition," notes Weatherall, who previously worked for the party under Layton and on the 2015 campaign. Of course, Layton did not announce a "run for prime minister" the day he won the leadership, as Singh did.
But Ian Davey, who was instrumental in Michael Ignatieff's rise to the Liberal leadership and served as his chief of staff in opposition, predicts Singh's recent travails will be swiftly forgotten. Davey says an opposition party facing a popular majority government gets antsy, and its MPs are prone to fretting that their party isn't getting its message out. Davey says Singh's team needs to discount bumps in the road and focus on the essentials they'll need in the 2019 campaign. "You need money and you need memberships to fight an election."
And in those critical categories, Singh led the field during the leadership contest. But his opponents in 2019 will be much better resourced: the Liberals and Conservatives have historically far out-raised the NDP. Mohamed acknowledges that campaigning costs money, but insists his boss is an "incredible fundraiser," and that his ability to connect with people will attract volunteers and donors.
Ignatieff's original team was ousted a year into Ignatieff's run as opposition leader. Coverage painted the deposed group as novice Torontonians. Davey disputes those characterizations, but allows that "politics does get driven by perception." There's only so much a team can do to propel their boss forward, Davey says. "The staff ultimately doesn't make the leader, the leader makes the staff."
If he's right, the reputation of Singh's team will rest on his ability to deliver the NDP big gains in 2019, and not just on their strategy.
MORE ABOUT JAGMEET SINGH:
'Why are fidget spinners so popular?' What Canadians searched on Google in 2017
Jagmeet Singh's rookie blunders
Jagmeet Singh and the shunning of Parliament
Canadians feel Trudeau's image on the world stage is his biggest asset: Poll
Jagmeet Singh on his path to the prime minister's office
If the economy is so great, why do we feel so bad?
Jagmeet Singh and the rise of a new brand of Sikh politics
It's time for the NDP to end its ideological loyalty test
Ian Davey
Melissa Bruno
Nader Mohamed
Willy Blomme


I'm wearing Suit Supply Fall/winter Blue Line collection. It comes in classic blue and gray shades and the Napoli fit. It's a different cut than what I normally wear but I actually like this fit. I think this is a good look for office/ business meetings and other formal occasions. At 399 I'd say it's a pretty good investment.
lso thought it'd go well with a turtleneck.


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Home : Background : Procedures and Services : Birth Control : Morning-after pill poses moral dilemma for some MDs
Morning-after pill poses moral dilemma for some MDs
Doctors don't have to prescribe contraceptive pill but they have to offer patients an alternative
The Standard (St. Catharines - Niagara)
Reproduced with permission
Allison Lawlor
Of the 10 doctors who rotate shifts in St. Catharines General hospital's emergency room, only one will not prescribe the emergency contraceptive pill on moral grounds. . .If a doctor is morally opposed to a medical treatment, it is his or her obligation to provide the patient with alternatives. . .
[Project Letter to the Editor]
When a young woman arrived in a panic at the St. Catharines General's emergency department last month looking for a drug, commonly known as a morning-after pill, she didn't expect to be told the doctor on duty wouldn't give it to her.
The woman, who did not want to be identified for reasons of privacy, was told by a nurse the doctor was morally opposed to the pill, which prevents pregnancy after sex, and would not prescribe it.
The recent incident raises several questions about the controversial issue of doctors refusing to administer a drug based on personal beliefs.
The issue set off a debate when the drug Preven, known as the morning-after pill, was approved by Health Canada late last year. It is now sold in some pharmacies.
"As far as a physician is concerned they can decide to give treatment or withhold depending on his moral feeling,'' said Dr. Ashok Sharma, chief of staff at the St. Catharines site of the Niagara Health System.
As long as doctors are upfront with their patients, give them sufficient information or alternatives and fall within the province's Regulated Health Professions Act, they have the right to limit their medical practice, said Jill Hefley, spokeswoman for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
"It is up to physicians to define the parameter of their practice,'' said Hefley.
Of the 10 doctors who rotate shifts in St. Catharines General hospital's emergency room, only one will not prescribe the emergency contraceptive pill on moral grounds, said Sharma. The hospital would not release the name of the physician and said the doctor did not wish to talk publicly about his beliefs.
If a doctor is morally opposed to a medical treatment, it is his or her obligation to provide the patient with alternatives, said Sharma.
In a non-emergency situation where contraception was not used during sex or it failed, a doctor at St. Catharines General can recommend a woman go to a walk-in clinic, a birth control centre or another hospital emergency room.
In a case of sexual assault, the circumstances change, said the chief of staff.
"There is a standing order that they (doctors) have to give the pill in any emergency,'' he said.
The Sexual Assault Treatment Centre, which serves the region, is located at the hospital.
Women who fear an unwanted pregnancy have 72 hours after intercourse to take the drug.
"It is not uncommon for people to come to get the morning-after pill,'' said Maria Vuono, program manager of the hospital's critical care unit.
The emergency room gets a handful of non-emergency requests each month for the treatment, she said.
"ER is not the right place for contraceptive care,'' said Sharma. "We are too busy.''
The emergency room can't provide sufficient counselling or follow-up care. Family doctors or walk-in clinics provide more appropriate care, said Sharma.
In the recent case of the St. Catharines woman, she was told by the nurse on duty she had the option of either waiting until another doctor came on duty or go to the St. Catharines birth-control centre or a walk-in clinic to get the pill. She went to a centre.
Niagara Region runs three birth-control centres. If a woman goes to a centre looking for the morning-after pill, she can't get it without a doctor.
"Emergency contraception is always prescribed by a physician,'' said Alan Spencer, program manager of sexual health with the Region's public health department. "People can access it through the clinic.''
The clinics in Welland and Niagara Falls are only open during the afternoon. The St. Catharines clinic is open all day but doctors are not on-duty at the three clinics at all times. If a physician is not available, the woman will be referred to a family doctor or walk-in clinic, said Spencer.
A person would only be denied the emergency contraceptive on a medical and not a moral basis, he said.
"We believe in non-judgmental health treatment,'' said Spencer. "We want people to be healthy.''
At Hotel Dieu Hospital, the decision to prescribe the drug is left to the emergency room physician, said Rick Mauro, the hospital's spokesman.
The Catholic hospital would prefer to refer a woman to the city's other hospital because it is better equipped to deal with such cases, said Mauro.
However, administering the drug is still a decision each doctor must make, said Mauro.
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Saatchi Art's curators have worked with artists from around the world to hand-pick every artwork we offer on Limited in order to provide you with an unmatched selection of limited edition prints. We are proud to offer "Seeking" by Vikram Kushwah, which is available exclusively on Limited.
Artworks in a limited edition have a set number of prints available for each size offered. For the 10x8 size edition, "Seeking" comes in a limited edition of only 40 prints. Once all 40 of the prints in this edition size have sold out, there will be no other prints of "Seeking" available in the size of 10 inches high by 8 inches wide. Limited edition prints of this artwork may be available in other sizes.
This image is part of a larger body of work titled 'Ofelea'. This project is a portrait of my imagination and memories, often twisted by the dark underlying layers of the storybooks I read as a child. The series of pictures is a juxtaposition of the Freudian theory of 'The Uncanny', the constantly recurring mysterious environments in the Surrealist art movement and reconstructions of my distant childhood imagination. The feeling of the uncanny, as Sigmund Freud points out, is one of confused fear, something that you feel when confronted with something that was meant to remain hidden, locked away and has now come out into the open. This feeling is certainly not unambiguous. It is this ambiguity itself that makes the mind wander. The wandering mind opens many doors. Behind these closed doors lies what we call the imagination. There are more doors behind the ones that have been opened. They all whisper to each other about what lies beyond, engaging and gripping the psyche. These images are constructed using fragments of recollections, often uncanny, from my childhood, stitched up by the secret and powerful tool of day-dreaming and also with the careful understanding of Sigmund Freud's essay, Das Unheimliche. They lie somewhere between reality and fantasy, between the conscious and the sub-conscious. These images are not only a reflection of what I saw behind the closed doors of my mind, but also of what I could have seen. Researched and shot over a period of nine months, this project has involved long aimless walks in the woods in Kent, meeting strange people and finding myself in remote and isolated places as a result of which my dreamscapes and memory gave me rather peculiar visuals. Intricate study of the art and writings of the surrealists and re-visiting my very old storybooks helped me give perspective to the Freudian philosophy of the uncanny. Rather than illustrating the uncanny, the idea here is to give the viewer an experience of the uncanny by extracting fragments of desires and fantasies buried within the sub-conscious. This artwork (like all of my other artworks) is sold in 3 sizes - all limited editions of 8 each. 60cm x 50cm - $900 90cm x 74cm - $1400 110cm x 90cm - $1850 *sizes rounded off to the nearest centimetre.
Vikram Kushwah's photographs are full of whimsy. Delicate foliage, mysterious women, and eerily calm locales blend the boundaries between fiction and reality in his works, which are inspired in part by his childhood, romanticism, and just a touch of the surreal.


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2 people who've been pen pals for 42 years meet for the 1st time
Lori Gertz lives in California, and George Ghossn lives in New York.
JOI-MARIE MCKENZIE
Cross-country pen pals of over 40 years meet each other for 1st timeLori Gertz, who lives in Encinitas, California, and George Ghossn, who lives in East Islip, New York, have been pen pals for 42 years. The two met for the first time April 11 in Carle Place, New York.George Ghossn
— -- Two pen pals who have been corresponding in handwritten letters for 42 years finally met this month for the first time.
George Ghossn, of East Islip, New York, and Lori Gertz, of San Diego have been writing each other since they were children. And after many attempts to see each other, the two finally met April 11.
"He was superstitious. He never wanted to do it," Gertz, 54, told ABC News. "I was always curious."
So when Gertz, a married mother of two, was taking her 18-year-old son to New York to visit Hofstra University, relatively nearby in Hempstead, she decided to see if a meeting with Ghossn, 56, could come to pass. And it did.
Long Distance Girlfriend Gives Boyfriend Creative Surprise
Man Sends Viral 'Love Letter' to Long-Distance Girlfriend
Lori Gertz , who lives in Encinitas, California, and George Ghossn, who lives in East Islip, New York, have been pen pals for 42 years.
Lori Gertz , who lives in Encinitas, California, and George Ghossn, who lives in East Islip, New York, have been pen pals for 42 years. George Ghossn
Ghossn told ABC News that he and Gertz began writing each other "when I was 15 and she was 12. We started writing through a chain letter. It said to send out five letters, and you were supposed to receive thousands back. I got four letters back ... One was from Lori."
The two wrote about a letter a month, updating each other on their lives. Ghossn said they discussed school, their aspirations and, of course, their families.
"When we were young, we painted idyllic pictures of our lives," Gertz said. "It was almost cursory, but as the years went on, it became more mature in what we discussed in the letters."
They've both kept all the handwritten letters written over the years.
"I had a lot of loss in my family, so I had a lot to write about," Ghossn said, noting that he even penned a letter to her on an airline napkin while traveling to his mother's funeral in 2006.
Gertz said she vividly remembers receiving that letter. In fact, she said she recalls feeling humbled that he thought of her in that moment.
"It blew my mind. That just blew my mind. [It signaled] a loyalty and a deep abiding commitment to our relationship that I'd never had with anybody. Anybody," she said.
The two are quick to clarify that there was never a romantic relationship. Ghossn said he considers Gertz his sister, especially since his brothers died and he has no living family members.
"I love George. George is a staple in my life. My whole family knows George ... It's my longest relationship that I've had with anybody. It's beautiful," Gertz said.
The two pen pals met in the lobby of a Red Roof hotel in Westbury, New York. A touching video shows their first meeting.
"We just hugged, and we cried ... and it was very emotional after all the years," Ghossn said.
"It was my childhood crashing with my adulthood. It was glorious," Gertz said. "When we met, he was sobbing. I was so gloriously happy. I didn't cry until hours later. The emotion hit me then."
The two plan to continue to write each other. Each is grateful for their relationship.
"She's a darling. She's the sweetest person," Ghossn said.
Gertz said of their relationship, "This is so beautiful ... It doesn't have the weight of all the s--- that's happened to us in our lives. It has the lightness of what a true connection really is."
Apr 27, 8:56 PM


The educational system in which I was brought up encouraged "cramming"; that is, waiting until the last possible moment before an exam and then trying to cram all the information into your brain in one sleepless night, usually fueled by coffee and sugar. At exam time you'd then vomit all this information back out, probably never to remember it — or use it, for that matter — ever again. Clearly, this doesn't work in the same way with a musical instrument, or at least not very well. A professional could probably get away with it once in a while, but having to deal with students that try to practice this way is extremely frustrating.
The times I've had to cram like this for a concert have been pretty uneven. It worked for me with Gershwin, since it ended up being more improvisatory and spontaneous because the interpretation wasn't too grounded and overly drilled. On the other hand, it was a complete disaster when I had to do it with Brahms. In both cases, the notes left my head almost as fast as they went in, I wouldn't be able to play a single note of either of those pieces right now, even with a gun to my head.
Getting a student to practice consistently is a familiar problem for most teachers, maybe because this cramming habit is ingrained in many children. When I get absolute beginners in my class I recommend that they practice in short sessions of 10 minutes, two sessions per day. Every day. There's the key: every single day. Even a single daily 10-minute practice session each day is better than skipping a couple of days and then undergoing a two-hour practice marathon before the lesson. Getting this practicing habit across is a recurring problem when teaching children, and a big headache for most teachers.
Practicing in short 10-minute sessions was something that I thought was exclusive to children and beginners, to hold their interest. Gradually I would get them to add a bit more practice time to each session. However, recently I've found that practicing in short little bursts like these gives really good results for a professional as well. It makes it easier to conserve that one thing that is so important: enthusiasm.
Lately I haven't had a choice, it's either practice in short 10-minute bursts or don't practice at all. With recitals and concerts looming in the horizon, the second one is not really an option at all, unless I want to quit playing completely — by the way, is there a term for giving up the piano? (In Spanish I've heard it referred to as "throwing out the harp.") In any case, I've been forced to practice in a dozen little bursts each day. Either between students, or in the little while in which my 8-month baby is absorbed with some particular toy and doesn't demand my presence.
After a few months of learning some repertoire by almost exclusively practicing in this way, I'm pleasantly surprised with the results so far. An obvious advantage to practicing in this way is in the increased focus on solving problem spots and going straight to the point each time I sit down to play. It also probably has to do with the way the piece grows in the mind between practice sessions. However, the main reason this has worked for me is probably more subtle; I think it has to do more with the way I end practicing each time. By practicing in short little bursts that are suddenly interrupted with a pressing matter (either a student or a baby needing his dad,) I'm forced to stop whatever I'm doing. If the practicing is going well, then I am enthusiastic and can't wait to get started again; if the music isn't cooperating with me that particular day then I'm forced to stop before I reach throw-the-piano-through-the-window levels of frustration.
I'm not sure it would work with everyone, and I'm still unsure about recommending it to my older students, but so far it's been working for me. At least much better than the 4-5 hour non-stop practice marathons I'd stupidly do back in music school.
Mozart 21 and the Dangers of Overplaying.
For one of this year's concert engagements, I will be playing Mozart's 21st piano concerto. This piece has a very personal meaning for me. It's one of the reasons I ultimately fell in love with the piano and with music. This will be the first time I play this concerto with an orchestra and I am very excited.
One of my earliest musical memories is of me and my brother as toddlers dancing around while our father played a record of this concerto with Alicia de Larrocha. There were words that we would sing along to the second theme of the concerto about how "all the good little kittens were off to their beds," (in Spanish: todos los gatitos ya nos vamos a dormir…) and when the trumpets played that little descending third that begins the theme before the coda, we would sing along: "Meaaaa-ow! Meaaaa-ow!" Now I get to practice this concerto while my baby watches from the playpen (not too long, I don't want him getting too bored,) jumps around on his stationary jumper (louder, because that jumper is pretty noisy,) sleeps in his crib (sempre una corda e molto pianissimo,) or with him on my lap (one hand at a time and with him "playing along" with his fists — a lot of fun by the way.) I am truly blessed.
The Mozart concertos that I have played before — 9, 11 and 12 — all had original cadenzas by the composer. Since this one doesn't, I decided to try my hand at improvising the cadenza. I am not sufficiently skilled at improvising to go out on stage and invent something completely from scratch. Instead, I decided to set up a sort of framework that I could follow, working out beforehand certain chord progressions and themes that I'd like to play along the way, but leaving enough room for spontaneity. For example, in a certain spot I could know that I want to go from C major to E minor using a certain chord progression; whether I do it playing arpeggios from the development section, or scales in broken octaves, or a sequence made out of one of the themes is up to whatever I'm feeling at the moment.
My first attempt at a cadenza went something like this: Go down along the keyboard from the I6/4 chord until I reach the bottom G. After that, I would make some sort of sequence using the second theme while modulating to E minor and then come back to G major. Play something based on the "Meaow" theme and then hit the trill and give the orchestra their cue. Quick and simple with little parts of my favorite themes from the first movement. After a while, I noticed that the beginning of the development section would be a nice way to start the cadenza, maybe changing it to major instead of the original minor key, so I added that. Then, while practicing the development, I noticed that I could cross my left hand over while playing the descending E minor arpeggios and play the "Meaow" theme over and under it, so I added that too. Every time I practiced it I would add a little more, never noticing what my cadenza was turning into.
After a month of working on the concerto, I asked my wife to listen to the cadenza. I was really quite clever: I combined themes with one another, played them in unexpected harmonies, and quoted little snippets from the orchestral part of the concerto. I showed off my broken octaves and sixths and all sorts of cool harmonic tricks I'd picked up from different parts of the concerto (especially that amazing variant on a simple progression along the circle of fifths that is right after the second theme.) So, when I was done, what did she say?
She was right, of course; my cadenza was a convoluted Frankenstein's monster. Self-editing has been pretty painful now. Each section I've had to cut since then feels like a jab at my own ego. I think I've got it down to something workable now — start with the little theme the woodwinds play three times before the piano's entrance, doing a little variation each time; then some sort of variation on the opening passage of the concerto while going up to the dominant; play one of the themes (probably the second one) on the dominant in a more risoluto character to lead into the final trill. Every time I play it I have to resist the temptation to tack on more unnecesary stuff to it again.
I had this problem in my short stint as a jazz pianist in my high-school's junior jazz band (I didn't make the cut for the big jazz band, I was a trumpet player at the time.) There was a piano solo for me in a Count Basie standard. Each time we played it I added something new to it and, by the time we showed up to the regional competitions, it was a convoluted mess of octaves and broken arpeggios (the only technical difficulties that I could reliably do without messing them up too badly.) Back then, one of the judges from the competition wrote on his advice slip: "The pianist is way too busy, this song should be laid-back." Apparently I haven't learned anything since then.
Charmes, by Federico Mompou is a work comprised of six short pieces that, as the title implies, are short little spells intended to conjure different effects: …to alleviate suffering …to inspire love … to penetrate the soul …to effect a cure …to evoke an image of the past …to inspire joy. This approach towards composition is a great example of what Mompou's music is about. Traditional analysis brings nothing to the table, most of his works from after the 20's are wisps of fog; scraps of melody, ostinato figures and refined harmonies which, while owing a lot to the music of Satie and his contemporaries, have an entirely different approach towards musical discourse.
Development and rigid construction are the furthest thing from Mompou's mind –in fact, in an interview he admitted to adoring all music except for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, precisely because of those qualities. What Mompou fully appreciated, decades before John Cage talked about everything around us being music, is that every chord, every motif, every note has an intrinsic beauty and meaning that is completely independent of what a composer does with it. What results of this aesthetic is music with long ostinati, frequent repetition and in which harmony has no functional meaning, but is profoundly connected with timbre. Much like bells –which play a very important role in Mompou's music and life– the notes in each chord and the harmonics they produce result in different qualities of tone, ranging from the tinny, metallic sound typical of minor seconds and tritones, to the full, resonant, harmonic-rich superimposed fifths and fourths.
Magic is the word that best describes Mompou's music, a meaning to be taken literally in his 1920-21 work Charmes. But perhaps this concept isn't so unique to Mompou. After all, the use of music for its magical properties is something that has been a part of every culture since we started walking upright. The first spell in this cycle, …pour endormir la souffrance (…to alleviate suffering) conjures up an effect that everyone has felt at some time. Music as a refuge, as a way of dulling our pain.
Contrary to what happens with the majority of serialist music, which is more interesting to analyze than it is to play or listen to, Mompou suffers from analysis. The first piece in Charmes is just a short Debussyian fragment of a melody repeated exactly the same four times over an ostinato pattern in the left hand, with very slight coloring shifts in the harmony. While not to everyone's liking, I find that repetition to be an essential part of Mompou's language; here it softly nudges you over and over, subtly shifting from darkness to light. It's like taking a beautiful gemstone in your hands and turning it, watching the light play on its surface.
Does this music do what Mompou intends it to do, that is, "alleviate suffering"? I think it does. But that's entirely up to the listener. While one may just hear the same thing over and over, someone else will allow himself to be swept away.
The music of Erik Satie presents some very difficult problems of interpretation, especially when you consider that it wasn't long ago that he was considered a minor composer, an eccentric that really didn't know what he was doing. There are two reasons why Satie is so difficult to play right: the very disparate extremes of character in his compositions and the amount of trust that Satie places in the hands of his interpreters. In other words, he does all kinds of crazy things, constantly changes everything around and doesn't give you a single clue to what's going on.
His music can evoke both classical antiquity and a smoke-filled dingy café. It can seduce the listener at one moment and thumb its nose at him in the next. He writes delicate, refined, Schubert-like melodies that were intended for the cabaret, to be belted out by a booze-soaked, raspy-voiced singer while, for a solemn, grand-scale work like Les fils des étoiles, he fills the dissonant score with eccentric comments and a huge dedication, poking fun at the seriousness of the event.
I find that the biggest problem with Satie, much like eighteenth-century French harpsichord music, is in the characterization. The pieces are increasingly fragmentary, and one has to learn to give each passage its proper character (even if it means pondering long and hard on what a "nightingale with a toothache" sounds like) without falling into the trap of bringing it all together by playing everything in the same tempo. Another problem here is that most pianists approach Satie's music with preconceived notions about his music, failing to take into account the wildly differing changes of style from one piece to the next. The two most common approaches are "this music is too boring for an audience, let's speed it up!" –Aldo Ciccolini is a good example of this done well– and "this music is so pretty, let's make it minimalist" –Reinbert DeLeeuw does this in a good way, with his six-minute Gymnopedies.
The fact is that a good Satie interpretation is a very delicate thing, there's much more to it than just picking a tempo and trying to make pretty noise. It's all about the little nuances in the phrasing, timing and timbre. Things you pick up by knowing the composer's life and work in-depth and, most of all, by really loving the music and being truly convinced that what you are playing is a great work of art. But be careful, there is still a trap there. By giving the music the importance it deserves, that very seriousness undermines the spirit of Satie's music, be it in his funny moods or in his "furniture music" period. See the problem? That's why to play Satie, what you really need is a sense of humor.
One of my favorite twentieth century pieces is Morton Feldman's Piano and String Quartet. Playing it is grueling, mainly because it lasts almost two hours and requires a constant attention to the duration of the rests and the number of repetitions for each measure (all the durations are written out.) One little lapse of concentration in those two hours and it's very easy to get lost and never catch the rest of the ensemble again, since it all sounds so similar –it's also exhausting for the page turners, my wife turned the pages for me during a performance a few years ago and her back ached for a week! Feldman's music tends to have rhythms that seem free and floating, with slow evolution and asymmetric patterns, his later music also tends to be very long.
I find that the Prelude to the second act of Le fils des étoiles, by Erik Satie has some elements that are very Feldmanesque, not a small feat considering that it was composed 100 years before Piano and String Quartet, while the rest of Europe was still playing to Wagner's beat. The first similarity is in the character of the music; when I play the music of both composers, I feel it has a very slow, quiet evolution, as some sort of solemn ritual (which is very much in the context of Satie's prelude.) All kinds of interesting things are happening in the music and we have time to enjoy and assimilate each and every one. The other element in common, which is much more technical, is the way they both use repeating asymmetric patterns in their music.
There is a special expression in the way asymmetric patterns and structures that are not quite perfect work. The imbalance in the music immediately calls attention from the listener and, in the hands of the right composer, it becomes fascinating.
A lot is happening here, all of it for the first time in musical history. We have a small unit which is formed by two minor chords, superimposed. The top voice then jumps up in a tritone –since the middle ages, the tritone has had strong satanic and mystical symbolism and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sort of extra-musical significance to its use here by Satie (he did hang out with a Satanist sect for a while, after all.) The remarkable thing about this tritone is that it does not resolve in any way, he just repeats the whole thing a minor third below and then he continues downward with the sequence at a major second. Then comes a beautiful, metallic chord moving in parallel harmony. Note his use of asymmetry, he could have built the chord using only perfect fourths but he adds an augmented fourth right in the middle of the chord. This gives the chord a kind of metallic quality, a distinctive dissonance that alters the way it rings.
Then comes the whole thing again, only transposed up by a major second. Here is another use of asymmetry; the beginning gives the impression that he will repeat the same sequence, but he departs from it in the third repetition, going down a fourth instead of a second and replacing the octave with a minor ninth. We end this section with another one of those planed quartal chords.
Satie was always credited by Ravel as being the mind behind the french impressionist movement. The role he played in the history of music was that of a great experimenter, every few works moving into new ground. Much of the best music by Ravel and Debussy –and most french composers that immediately followed– was directly inspired by Satie's experiments. I believe that, besides the experimental nature of his music, there is great substance in what he wrote. The aesthetic of his writing is so far beyond romanticism or impressionism that it is no surprise that his music wasn't fully appreciated until the second half of the twentieth century.
Erik Satie wrote the music for a pretentious play called Le fils des étoiles (The child of the stars) by self-entitled "super magician imperator" Sar Peladan, leader of an order of Rusicrucians and obsessed with mysticism (particularly that of Wagner). This composition by Satie included incidental music for the whole play, probably scored for flutes and harps (and recently re-orchestrated for that instrumentation by Toru Takemitsu), but Satie only published the preludes to each act for piano. The prelude to act one, La Vocation, is a surprisingly advanced piece of music.
The music is very immobile and detached, a complete departure from the prevailing aesthetic of Wagnerian romanticism –the irony of this work being used for a play for a sect that included Wagner in their daily prayers was certainly not lost on Satie. More than an homage, this piece is a rebuttal to Wagner's musical aesthetic.
The score has no bar-lines or time signature, something that hadn't been done since the renaissance. In this piece, for the first time in history, there is a systematic use of chords –in fourths, no less– moving in parallel motion, three years before Debussy's famous use of parallel harmony (also known as planing) in his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Unlike Debussy which, in this period, was still using traditional harmonic functions and writing tonal music, the preludes to Le fils des étoiles are atonal and the parallel-moving tritone on top of the fourths already makes possible a proto-polytonality, due to the voices moving in completely different tonal planes. In only a few minutes of music, Satie uses harmonic techniques that were unheard of in the music of his time and predates an aesthetic that has much more in common with the music of Morton Feldman or Toru Takemitsu than with any of his contemporaries.
There are many problems with the interpretation of Satie. Many pianists fail by trying to make the music "exciting", worried about boring their audience. Although it is also easy to lose oneself in a work that is so open to interpretation, often without time marks of any kind and with cryptic, sometimes humorous music directives such as "on the tip of the tongue." Players often get distracted by the eccentricity of Satie's personality and the often bizarre indications on his scores but, beyond the surface, there is amazing, revolutionary music in these still, immobile compositions.