Hello, I’m Veronica
The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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Patriot Games
Tomorrow a chessboard will be auctioned off in New York City, with an opening bid somewhere north of $75,000. For that kind of money you’d picture a one-of-a-kind treasure beautifully crafted from the finest materials; perhaps inlaid with gold. The chess pieces themselves would be intricately carved ivories or bronzes. On the contrary, the auction block chessboard looks like most others: alternating light and dark wood squares with nondescript wooden pieces. Not much to look at – unless you know its epic history.
In 1972, in what was later dubbed “Match of the Century”, American Bobby Fischer and Russian Boris Spassky met in Reykjavik, Iceland to play a total of twenty-one games of chess over a three month period. The match recognized history’s eleventh World Chess Champion, with Fischer emerging as the eventual winner. With the title Fischer claimed a purse that in today’s dollars would be almost $1.5 million. The chessboard in tomorrow’s auction was used in Fischer/Spassky games 7 through 21, replacing a stone board used for the earlier games.
The significance of the Fischer/Spassky match goes entirely beyond the crowning of another World Chess Champion. In the 1970’s the United States and its NATO allies, and Russia (then the Communist-ruled U.S.S.R) and its Eastern Bloc allies, were in the throes of a “Cold War” that defined the post-World War II tension between dominant world powers. The sociopolitical cultures of these “western” and “eastern” countries could not have been more different. Thus the chess match was seen as an allegory; especially with Fischer – the first American to ever compete for the title, taking on Spassky – the current World Chess Champion and one of five consecutive Soviets to hold the trophy dating back to the 1940’s. It was as if a feisty newcomer was speaking loudly for the first time. As former world champion Garry Kasparov described the outcome, “… the lone American genius challenges the Soviet chess machine and defeats it.”
The Fischer/Spassky competition attracted more worldwide attention than any chess match before or since. All twenty-one games were televised (though the third game had to be illustrated with move-by-move graphics since Fischer insisted on temporarily moving away from the cameras). In the years following the match, “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess” became the best selling chess book ever published. The opening scene of the James Bond film “From Russia With Love” depicted a chess match with moves patterned after Spassky’s . Chess became supremely popular among American kids (maybe because Fischer was already playing in national championships at the age of fourteen).
I have a personal connection with the Fischer/Spassky match, as shown in the photo above. I learned chess at an early age thanks to the determination of my grandfather. He insisted on a game every time we were together, and most times he beat me. Today I have one of his chess sets as a precious keepsake. But my grandfather also urged me to participate in a school-wide chess tournament, and the trophy you see was the result. From then on my grandfather teased me by saying he wouldn’t play anymore unless it was for the trophy.
Notice the date of the school tournament; inside the same year as the Fischer/Spassky match. By wonderful coincidence I was competing at a time when chess was most prominent on the world stage.
My chess game never really matured from those grade school years – and Fischer and Spassky likewise descended into relative obscurity – but a marked impression was made by watching their 1972 match on television. Now whenever I see a chessboard I’m reminded the game is not just kings and queens surrounded by their armies. The successful bidder at tomorrow’s auction will hold an emblem of history – from a time when the world’s chess pieces were as divided as never before.
Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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America Makes the List
Last Friday’s celebration of the Chicago Cubs in the Windy City made headlines the following day. The fantastic turnout to celebrate a long-awaited World Series victory – from those lining the parade route to those further south at the rally – was generously estimated at FIVE MILLION people. That’s a serious confluence of baseball fans. But the number really gave me a jolt several days later, when someone ranked the gathering as the seventh largest in human history.
Five million. Hard to picture that many people in one location. The population of Chicago is only half as much so the suburbs must’ve emptied out as well (it was a record day for the Metra commuter rail service). Maybe I should’ve hired a helicopter or the Goodyear blimp and flown overhead, just to see all those human heads from a single vantage point.
Perspective? If you take the combined attendance to Major League Baseball games in the 2016 season – 73,159,044 fans watching 30 teams play 2,424 games – Friday’s crowd was almost 7% of that. If you only consider the attendance to the seven games of the World Series – 299,704 fans watching 2 teams play 7 games, Chicago’s party drew seventeen times that many.
Five million people live in Norway (though I challenge you to see every single Norwegian from one location). Five million people also live in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, but how would you get them all to stand still while you counted?
I still can’t picture five million, but maybe the following will help. Dunkin’ Donuts just announced its “DD Perks Rewards” program exceeded five million members. Whirlpool just announced a recall of five million tumble dryers in the UK because of “blaze risk” (same technology as the Galaxy Note 7 phone?) A recent census indicated five million people have jobs in Switzerland. By the year 2020, a bunch of new robots will be added to the global workforce, thereby eliminating – you guessed it – five million jobs. Finally, here in Colorado the government’s ‘Project Baseline” built a vault to store all kinds of seeds for future experiments, in response to climate change and environmental degradation. Scientists have been collecting the seeds since 2012 and the vault now contains… five million of the little buggers.
Those are some fun facts but they don’t really paint the picture I’m looking for. Let’s consider five million another way. When someone says “seventh-largest gathering”, you want to know about gatherings one through six, don’t you? What would you guess – religious pilgrimage? Papal mass? State funeral? Correct, correct, and correct. Here are the top ten gatherings in mankind’s recorded history:
- Kumba Mela pilgrimage, India, 2013 – 30 million
- Arbaeen festival, Iraq, 2014 – 17 million
- Funeral of CN Annadurai, India, 1969 – 15 million
- Funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran, 1989, 10 million
- Papal gathering in the Philippines, 2015 – 6 million
- World Youth Day (also attended by the Pope), Philippines, 5 million
- Chicago Cubs World Series Celebration – 5 million
- Funeral of Gamal Abdel Nasser, 1970 – 5 million
- Rod Stewart concert, Brazil, 1994 – 3.5 million
- Hajj pilgrimage, Mecca, Saudi Arabia – 3 million
Thanks to the Cubs, America finally makes the list. But I’m no closer to picturing five million people than I was at the start of this post, and I’m running out of words. Tell you what. If the Cubs win the World Series next year (meaning the world comes to an end again), I’m heading to Chicago to be a part of the victory celebration. If I can’t picture the number, at least I can say I was “one in a million”. Or five million.
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Let’s Do the Time Warp Again
Here we go again, time-travelers. This Sunday at 2:00am a good portion of the world will effortlessly move backwards one hour as we roll off of Daylight Savings Time (DST). It’ll be dark outside earlier (no more “summer nights”) and it’ll still be dark when most people wake up. Slam the door on summer – our days will feel shorter for the next eighteen weeks.
The rules of DST have changed over time (ha), at least here in the United States. The concept itself was borrowed from the Germans as a way of conserving fuel, and began in 1918; the same time the U.S. adopted “standard time zones” (Pacific, Mountain, etc.). At first it was a federal mandate in conjunction with wartime activities. Several years later DST was abandoned entirely. Then it was turned over to the individual states to adopt (or not). Finally, DST was given formal guidelines in 1966 as part of the Uniform Time Act.
DST still feels like an experiment with no satisfactory results. In 1974-1975 the U.S. tried DST for an entire year, but went back to the on-off approach when concerns were raised about kids heading off to school in the dark. In 1986 DST was extended from the half-and-half calendar to include the entire month of April. In 2005 DST was extended again to the first Sunday in November -to accommodate trick-or-treating on Halloween. That last modification was only eleven years ago, for a concept that has been around for a century. Any bets the rules of DST will change again?
Arizona (outside of their Navajo lands) and Hawaii may have the last laugh. Both states leave their clocks untouched while the rest of us move backward and forward year after year after year.
Whether or not DST continues, this much is true. On Sunday I will be resetting two alarm clocks (my wife’s actually auto-adjusts but doesn’t understand post-2005 DST), three wall clocks, three temperature gauges, two thermostats, two car clocks, and several appliances and watches. Any of these products could be designed to auto-adjust (like phones and computers) but maybe their creators don’t trust the DST rules won’t change yet again?
A word of advice about Sunday’s change. Proceed with caution when you head out on Monday. Not only will it be darker, but your body clock – which can’t be adjusted with a button – will be slightly out of kilter. Strange things happen the day after clocks adjust, including more accidents between cars and people (if certain Department of Transportation reports are to be believed).
Last thought. Today’s word is mnemonic, which refers to any means of making the retention of information in the brain easier. MNEMONIC is also an acronym for “Memory Needs Every Method Of Nurturing Its Capacity” (I like that). That brings to mind a couple other mnemonics. The Great Lakes can be remembered with HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior). The bass clef in music (the notes A,C,E,G) can be remembered with “all cars eat gas”. And of course, DST has its own mnemonic to determine which way the clocks adjust. Remember: “Spring forward, Fall back!”
Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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Hooked on Classics
If I am to believe certain lists, there are over forty different genres of music in the world today. The more common ones come to mind quickly: “Rock”, “Pop”, “Hip-Hop”. But now we have “Industrial” and “Tex-Mex” as well. Indeed, definitions of music are becoming as diverse as the cultures from which they took flight.
Among music genres – the list of which inflates to hundreds if you include sub-categories – “Classical” looks a little lost. Classical music’s definition is broad and complicated, but most of us would acknowledge its “golden age” as the time frame between the lives of Bach and Beethoven (effectively, the 18th century). The volume of symphonies and concertos and sonatas created in that period is so vast, even those with no interest cannot deny a familiarity with the genre’s most famous compositions.
The absence of orchestras (or music programs altogether) in today’s schools and universities is a tragedy. Attendance at classical music concerts is down. Even classical radio stations lack the advertising revenue to survive, depending instead on the generosity of their donors. But here’s the good news: the genre still finds its outlets.
Consider the movies. Year after year Hollywood produces fairly forgettable films, yet certain scenes are worth the watch if only to hear the accompanying classical music. Some examples:
1) Ocean’s Eleven (2001). Danny Ocean’s gang of thieves finally completes the heist at the Bellagio Hotel, and gathers outside at the fountains for a moment of reflection. The enchantment of that scene is as much about the fountains as it is in the soaring strings of Claude Debussy’s mesmerizing “Clair De Lune”. Watch and listen here.
2) If I Stay (2014). Chloe Moretz’s character Mia performs “The Swan” (from Camille Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals”) on solo cello at a community concert, and the music continues through several more scenes. “The Swan” is elegant and lullaby-soft. Listen here (performance by Yo-Yo Ma).
3) Somewhere in Time (1980). Christopher Reeves’ character’s obsession with the lovely Jane Seymour leads to a desperate time-travel effort to find her in her youth. When the couple is finally reunited (in his dreams, of course), we are treated to Sergei Rachmaninov’s powerful “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini”. This scene would be nothing without Rachmaninov. Listen here.
Hollywood once created an entire movie about classical music. The Competition (1980) – an early film in the careers of Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving – explored the rigors of the real-life Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Watch the movie and you’ll hear excerpts of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 and Sergey Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Listen to the glorious Prokfiev piece from start to furious finish and you’ll wonder how anyone can play the piano with that kind of speed and dexterity.
Even a child’s story can be uplifted by classical music. In the stage production of “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” Schroeder plays Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on his toy piano while Lucy accompanies him in song. The lyrics are creative and work surprisingly well for a sonata created over 200 years ago. Watch and listen here.
This post would not be complete without a begrudging nod to the album “Hooked on Classics”, created and performed in the 1980’s by Louis Clark and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “Hooked” is a mash-up of familiar classical pieces, attached to an annoyingly robotic drum track. It’s a ten-minute audio nightmare for anyone who truly respects the genre. Remarkably, the title track made it to #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982 (alongside Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”). If you must listen, go here.
My campaign for the survival of classical music stems from years of childhood piano lessons, including a teacher who demanded strict adherence to the genre. Thus I didn’t practice “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or “Frere Jacques”, but rather Bach’s “Solfeggietto”, Beethoven’s “Ecossaises”, and Albert Ellmenreich’s “The Spinning Song”.
Listen carefully the next time you’re at the movies. Lend an ear to the classical strains of an orchestra or philharmonic. Flip the radio dial to something instrumental every now and then. Classical music lives, and still deserves a prominent place among the music genres.
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Athens of the South
Ever been to Nashville? It’s a lot to see and do in a city that still feels like a small town. My brothers and I visited Music City for the first time two weeks ago. We toured the historic Ryman Auditorium – the “Mother Church of Country Music” and former home of the Grand Old Opry. We walked through the massive Gaylord Opryland Hotel. We drove down “Music Row”, the area of town with hundreds of record labels, publishing houses, and recording studios. We even sampled carefully-crafted moonshine (if you believe there is such a thing).
Yet, none of these sights prepared me for another of Nashville’s attractions that frankly deserves more press. Just southwest of the downtown area in Centennial Park, rising prominently on manicured lawns, you’ll find a full-scale fully-authentic reproduction of the Parthenon – that most famous of ancient structures on the Acropolis in Greece. If one can laugh and be in awe at the same time, that was me. A reproduction of a temple built in 438 BC? That’s the last thing I expected to see in Nashville.
Here’s what’s left of the original Parthenon (or “O-Parthenon” if you will) – which I spent significant time studying in architecture school. It is considered the most important surviving building of the classical culture of Greece, and the finest example of Greek architecture. It is a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the Greeks considered their patron. If you visit O-Parthenon today you won’t see much of the original structure, thanks to a mid-1600’s explosion of a munitions dump inside the building. Attempts to restore O-Parthenon have failed for lack of funding. Ironically, back in its heyday O-Parthenon was used as a treasury.
Nashville’s Parthenon (“N-Parthenon”) is the complete restoration, and it is a colossus. N-Parthenon is 200 ft. x 100 ft. with a surround of 70 columns. Inside its main space you’ll find a massive statue of Athena, rising 42 feet from the floor and gilt with more than eight pounds of gold leaf. A likeness of the goddess Nike standing in her right had is fully six feet tall. Pictures don’t do justice to the scale of N-Parthenon.The origin of the Nashville Parthenon is almost as impressive as the building itself. Nashville’s Centennial Park was the site of the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition, a celebration of the state’s 100th year in the Union, including dozens of pavilions, restaurants, and large-scale carnival rides. Prominent within the Exposition was the Parthenon, which was surely a nod to the “Athens of the South”. Nashville earned that nickname in the 1850’s for the city’s establishment of several institutions of higher education.
The Exposition Parthenon was built of plaster, wood, and brick; not robust enough to last beyond the year of the celebration. But the cost of demolition and its popularity drove a movement to reconstruct the building in concrete – authentic to O-Parthenon to the last detail. N-Parthenon was completed in 1931. Athena herself was added in 1990. Appropriately, N-Parthenon contains a wonderful collection of photographs and descriptions from the Exposition. Makes our county fair look like small potatoes.
There have only been two other attempts to replicate O-Parthenon since its creation 2,500 years ago. The Walhalla Memorial in Germany (above, left) was built in 1826, but the completed structure is merely a nod to the architecture of O-Parthenon and much more about the distinguished people in German history. The National Monument of Scotland (above, right) was also built in 1826 – go figure – but abandoned three years later due to lack of funds. Take your pick; I say N-Parthenon beats “G”-Parthenon and “S”-Parthenon in a runaway.
Any visit to Nashville should include some aspect of the city’s rich history and allegiance to the music industry. But add the Parthenon to your agenda as well (especially if you think you’ll never make it to Greece). Oh, and per the sign, leave the wheels at home.
Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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