Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Video: Tom Walbank, Harmonicat



Video courtesy of JazzVideoGuy.

More on Tom Walbank and the Ambassadors at their MySpace page.

Word Dork alert

Ever had a phrase pop out of the media ether and slap you on the noggin? Call me an English major, but that's what happened in this report on NPR's Morning Edition last week. At about 1:38, a political analyst named Denise Strasser lays the blame for former Mexican President Vicente Fox's recent troubles on his -- wait for it -- "unbridled protagonism" [insert noggin slap here].

I think one part of the problem is translation. "Protagonismo" means a lot more in Spanish than "protagonism" does in English, where it sounds ever so slightly artificial. But as is often the case, the noggin problem lies in the adjective: Are there bridled forms of protagonism, and if so are they more acceptable? Where on the protagonist (protagonizer?) would this bridle fit and who would hold the reins? And sadly it's a short step from tall men with mustaches and horse tack to bondage porn and who needs that during breakfast?

The lesson is this: If your noun is sound, resist the urge to goose it with an adjective.

Speaking of head-scratch-inducing modifiers, check out this online ad from L.L. Bean featuring three words I never expected to see chain-ganged together in the service of commerce.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Show: Chiara String Quartet

Chamber music wasn't on the agenda for my recent trip to Kansas City, but I'm always willing to make room for it. The Chiara String Quartet's show at The Brick was definitely worth the detour.

The Kansas City Star's peripatetic Pablo Horsely caught the second set, after a performance by the Zehetmair String Quartet a few blocks away at the Folly Theater (part of the Friends of Chamber Music series). His review is here, but let me fill in what Paul missed and what for me was the head-snap part of the show.

The CSQ opened their first set with a movement from Jefferson Friedman's String Quartet #2. It's a muscular and angular piece he composed especially for the Chiara, full of growling and animal drive. They followed that with a movement from a piece by Haydn. The effect of that juxtaposition for me was like seeing the skeleton of the same or similar beast.

This is something that Chiara likes to do in club shows like the one at the Brick and it makes sense. They've already broken down the distance and formality that usually separates classical players from their audience. Losing the formal structure of individual works has the same effect. Frankly, I'm more motivated now to go out and find/hear the rest of the Freidman and Haydn (and Brahms and Bartok and other pieces) they played selections from than I would be had I been forced to sit through each in turn.

It's pretty clear that Chiara is still getting used to the club approach. They seemed to be somewhat abashed by the applause between pieces. I didn't think the amplification was altogether necessary or helpful (during the music, that is; it was great for between-piece chats) and it seemed to flatten the overall dynamic from where I was sitting, as though the actual quartet was competing with its amplified doppeganger. I also think the mics occasionally got doinked in the process of spirited bowing.

That said, I'm looking forward to seeing them again. Brava!

Further reading:
The week before the show, Wayward Blog asked the perspicacious Chris Packham to put Chiara in context. And, of course, he did.

Chamber Music Today also covered the Brick gig here, and they have more edjumacated things to say about the gig (and chamber music) than I.

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Photo above courtesy of the Chiara String Quartet's website. (And no they're not standing in downtown KC trying to figure out where the new light rail system is going to be. They can worry about that when they play The Brick in 2025 or so.)

Awarded

I made a brief trip back to Kansas City last weekend (by train - more on that later), to tie up a few loose ends from our recent move and also to collect an award. The Kansas City Association of Black Journalists selected a piece I produced about urban farmer Joe Jennings as best radio feature.

As is so often the case, it came down to luck. I was lucky to have come across Mr. Jennings during my brief-candle stint as producer of the Walt Bodine Show in the summer of 2006. I didn't have room for him on an urban agriculture show, but he was such a great talker that I kept him in my mental reminder file. Then last June, I spent part of day trying to keep up with him at his place in Wyandotte County. When it came time to put the piece together, the trick was staying out of his way. I was pleased with the results and apparently so was the KCABJ.

Have a listen for yourself:


Mr. Jennings is an award winner himself. The Pitch named him Best Urban Farmer in this year's Best of KC issue. Congrats, Mr. J!

Extra linkage:
KC Star story about the KCABJ awards (which featured a KCUR sweep of the radio category)

Poor Mr. Metheney

The Onion

Overfunded Public School Forced To Add Jazz Band

MANALAPAN, NJ—Benjamin Harrison Middle School faculty members regretfully announced Tuesday that, despite their best efforts to prevent it,...

Monday, November 5, 2007

Autumn Leaves (and what to do with them)



Greetings from "Chicagoland" (gag) where the autumn leaves have begun to fall, avec gusto. Two thoughts entered my head when I saw the stately maple in front of our rented bungalow in Oak Park.

- "Ooo, fall colors. Pretty..."
- "God I hate raking leaves."

Actually the raking part isn't so bad. It's the bagging and disposing part that frosts my tomato blossoms. At least it was in Kansas City, where I would invariably not get everything bagged by the time curbside collection (literally) rolled around.

Not a problem around here, where they invite you to just rake your leaves into the street (within certain guidelines). Then throughout October and November the diesel equivalent of a broom and dust pan roam the side streets looking for piles (see above).

This is thanks not only to the sheer volume of deciduous leaves dropping hereabouts but also a level of municipal services that no doubt boils the blood of guys over at Americans for Limited Government. But then I'm not sure the Sierra Club is thrilled about the exhaust either.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

DT Archive: KC Street Names

By request, we return once again to the dusty, shallow confines of the Daytripper archives. The following column demonstrates that you can indeed spend four-plus hours poking around aimlessly in the library's local history collection and still have something to show for it. Photo at right: Petticoat Lane circa 1990 (by LI).

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It's all in a name (or was)
Kansas City View - November 1990

A breeze of controversy buffeted Kansas City in 1966 when the City Council announced its intention to officially rename the section of 11th Street between Main and Grand Petticoat Lane. All the change amounted to was making a customary title legal. Nevertheless, Hartzfeld's, a local clothier who operated on the street in question, objected. Hartzfeld's made a line of clothing called Petticoat Lane and claimed that its trademark rights would be diluted.

The name change went through, but as years passed and shoppers went elsewhere, the two blocks eventually went back to plain old 11th Street. These days, Petticoat lane, like Hartzfeld's, exists only in Kansas City's memory. Not a comforting thought since Kansas City has the collective memory of a flea.

Memory, though, is an odd thing. Take for example the 1988 controversy over naming a section of Maple Street in Independence Higashimurayama Avenue. Higashimurayama, a suburb of Tokyo, is Independence's sister city in Japan. The good folks of Higashimurayama had already renamed a major street in their town Truman Boulevard as part of the tenth anniversary of the sisterhood and the good folks in Independence were trying to do their part.

A group of about 50 veterans showed up at a council meeting to protest the change and, to read the Times account of it (May 3, 1988), the debate centered on whether Harry Truman was rolling over in his grave for or against the change.

"I believe Harry Truman would turn over in his grave if he knew something like this was going on behind his back," said former VFW Post 1000 Commander Buck Stodtman, mixing a sweet metaphor against the change.

The Times apparently couldn't reach the former president for comment. Suffice it to say, the forces of love and world harmony won out over xenophobia, and Higashimurayama is still in the family.

Most of the street name changes in Kansas City's history have been for the benefit of mail carriers and street car conductors. East-west streets were changed to numbers in 1869, which resulted in the loss of many feminine street names: Emily (6th street), Gertrude (17th), Catherine (18th), Amelia (l9th) and Adeline (20th), among others, were banished in one fell bureaucratic swoop, their long hair whipping in the wind.

In 1910, the Post Office, in a fit of excessive practicality, asked that all street names in Kansas City be changed to numbers. City Hall ignored the Post Office until the issue went away.

As the city continued to grow through annexation and other kinds of expansion, street names had to be changed. Many streets in town have had several names. 11th Street, for instance, was first called Chestnut east of Main. West of Main, it was Chouteau. Main Street used to be Eleanore. Grand used to be Market Street. Walnut Street, named for a walnut grove which stood at its north end, has always been Walnut.

A re-survey in 1931 eliminated many duplications in Street names, but was only a warm-up for the nomenclatural lalapolooza the city pulled of in 1947. As part of the Ten Year plan, 149 street names were changed overnight. City Hall explained that this was being done to avoid confusion.

Many streets which had names before became numbered terraces. Hence such names as Loma Linda Road, Bel Airy Place, Reservoir Place and Steptoe Street were gone, taking their music and rhythm with them.

The City Planning Department's escapades continued north of the river in the 1950s, but not without incident. The same system was adopted as south of the river: east-west streets numbered, with eight streets to a mile. A problem cropped up in 1951 when a two-block stretch of pavement was named Crane street because it fell between 45th Terrace and 46th Street. L.D. Klein, who lived at 608 Crane, took exception. The name didn't mean a thing to him. As it turns out, it didn't mean much to anyone else.

As an unnamed Kansas City Star reporter explained (Feb. 18, l95l): "Crane is a small town in Stone County down on the Arkansas line. The city employee that chose the name never lived there, has no friends or relatives there and no love for the place. It was just a short name so he put it on the city map."

So what's in a name? Plenty, if it's where you live.

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Postscript: A companion to this column dealt with Petticoat Lane more extensively and elicited my only written response. I quoted from local history writer Mrs. Sam Ray, who wrote for the Star for many years, and a week or so later got a letter from some Poindexter there asking me not to quote from the late Mrs. Ray in the future, as her heirs found some of the advertising in the View unseemly. Massage parlor ads positively give some folks the vapors.

Concerted efforts on my part to find something else of Mrs. R's to incorporate ended in sad defeat.