Honor and Responsibility

It never stops amazing me how this country regards honor and honesty. What a stark contrast our system is to the Far East. When a company here is heading for bankruptcy the CEO and chief executives quickly cash in, give themselves huge bonuses and then let ordinary investors and the company’s workers suffer. Only occasionally are they made responsible when the fraud is too obvious and would backfire politically, such as in the case of Enron. Even in that sad saga there was a movement to protect Kenneth Lay’s criminally amassed fortune after his death, so that his heirs wouldn’t suffer. The Bible talks about people being punished to the third and fourth generation for someone’s grave sins, but our fundamentalists seem to have forgotten that part, although in other issues they seem to take the book at face value.

Japan presents a completely opposite philosophy and way of life. Honor is to be preserved at any cost, even if it means committing a hara-kiri (seppuku), a ritual painful suicide by disembowelment. When Japan’s real estate values collapsed in the 1990s, together with the stock market, many people no longer could afford the high mortgages they had taken during what seemed like an unstoppable economic rise. Rather than following what our country would have done in that situation, Japanese banks realized that foreclosures would have meant shame and loss of face to the borrower and decided, at least in many cases, to absorb the loss.

Here it is customary never to take blame for failure. Whether a company, an arts organization or just an individual, we seem to have a need for finger pointing and finding a scapegoat. Just think of the disastrous handling of hurricane Katrina’s aftermath: nobody admitted to be at fault and the head of FEMA, who was forced to resign following a public outcry, was soon given another important position. In China where toxic chemical, benzene, accidentally was spilled into a river near Harbin and millions of people went without water for many days, the official whose responsibility was to oversee environmental issues ended up taking his own life, in spite of the government wanting to blame the country’s biggest oil company for the accident. Honor is highly respected in that country, too, in spite of the communist system which usually breeds corruption, and one of the most severe punishments, short of a long prison sentence or death penalty, is a public admission of wrongdoing and thus casting shame on the individual.

Wouldn’t it be great if the president took the responsibility of all the mayhem following the invasion of Iraq, even though it is obvious the plans were concocted by others in his administration? We rightfully accuse Hitler of WWII and the Holocaust, and yet his role was probably to be a figurehead and get people into a frenzy with his oratory skills. He wouldn’t have been intelligent enough to have developed a detailed plan to systematically murder millions of Jews and other unwanted in the Third Reich’s concentration camps. Stalin, on the other hand, distrusted even his closest people, and the mass murders in the Soviet Union were his planning, although with the help of other shameless madmen. Same is probably true with Mao in China, who of all the dictators had the most countrymen killed. How would we view Hitler today if England and the Soviet Union had to surrender and Nazi Germany would have emerged victorious? After all, our country had a strange love affair with him; a lot of people admired him as modern day Ceasar, as evident on the New York Times’ coverage of the opening of the Berlin Olympics. A wave of anti-Semitism had spread over the U.S. and very few would have had the courage to have brought up the fate of Europe’s Jews. We only joined the war after the Japanese bombed our naval base in Pearl Harbor, and Germany declared war against us four days later. In France, which was divided into the Occupied Territory and Vichy France, we had rushed to send an ambassador to the latter, thus seemingly giving our blessing to Germany’s actions.

Closer to home, many arts organizations here are presently fighting for their lives, with increased expenses and decreased audiences. Multi-million dollar deficits are more the norm than an exception. Of course, the people in charge have to take responsibility, which most do honorably, resigning and giving others a chance to improve matters. However, there are cases where a person holds on, in spite of pleas and clear handwriting on the wall. These are the art world’s 'little hitlers' who insist on staying in power even when their world is collapsing. After all, Berlin was but a pile of rubble before the Führer and his mistress ended their lives in a bunker.

In A Heartbeat

Sensing rhythm and counting properly are one of the cornerstones of music. Like intonation, it comes naturally to some but takes a lot of training for others. Luckily for want-to-be-musicians it can be learned, often with less effort than other areas of basic musicianship, and later, artistry.

One’s cultural background, and sometimes genetic, plays a role. In my view, the people with the best sense of rhythm in their blood are of African origin or descent. Complicated drumming patterns have been the most important way of communicating beyond language barriers (tribes living in close proximity may often speak in an unrelated tongue) and to share joys of life with dance. A close second are Latin Americans with their incredibly seductive rhythm-based music. Often here the roots may point to Africa as well: a great portion of Cubans and Brazilians are descendants of slaves from that continent. At the opposite end there are cultures where traditional music has been less based on pulse and more on improvisational, often ornamental singing and playing. Much of Asia, for instance, has been of this type, including the Middle East. Great cantorial singing of the Eastern European Jews, for instance, has very little space for a drum beat. That culture borrowed heavily from others, such as the Gypsies, to come up with such music as klezmer, which we associate with the former.

Before the invention of the torture device called metronome, musicians had to rely completely on their inner pulse, which today fewer people seem to possess. All of us have it built in: our heartbeat. Listening to it is another story. Interestingly, after the metronome was introduced, Quantz came up with rules for basic tempo markings. With one or two exceptions, they all had a relationship to 80 beats to a minute, which would have been a normal heartbeat especially at the time before present-day medical care, as most people had some kind of a health issue which would have increased their pulse rate somewhat. Beethoven was the first major composer to use metronome markings, sometimes with results that have given grey hairs to musicians and musicologists alike. Perhaps the fact, that he was becoming deaf and mainly heard the music in his head, accounts for some of the oddly fast markings. Also, in his correspondence Beethoven contradicts himself in this area. The metronome, like an accurate clock, is an instrument for the devil, and later composers started relying on it too much, often in the case of contemporary music to cover up musical inadequacies by writing unnaturally complicated rhythmical patterns. In many ways, music was better off before this device, as mankind was before becoming dependent on accurate watches. Even I was hooked on the latter for years, although its purpose was to track time mainly to prevent a greedy employer from mistreating his employees. Today I don't look at the clock often enough when teaching.

The metronome is a useful device when used in moderation. If one lacks a natural sense of pulse, it can guide a player to learn proper note lengths and hopefully become aware of different rhythms. However, just like a person’s heartbeat, music’s pulse varies often from one moment to another. This is what makes music feel alive, natural and separates it from mechanical, machine-like attempts that one unfortunately hears more and more these days. Teaching a youngster to play correctly is strange: in most cases I have to advise them to practice with the help of a metronome, yet the time comes when I have to tell them to forget all that and start listening to and relying on their inner pulse. That is when they start the complex path of artistry which has little space for mechanical reproduction or imitation of any kind.

It is interesting to listen to performances of great instrumentalists: on the surface everything seems to be perfectly in tempo, yet if one tries to find a metronome marking it simply is impossible. Tempo may vary from measure to measure, yet the playing is so convincing everything makes perfect sense. Secondly, our musical notation leaves a lot to be desired and is an approximation at best. How could one possibly indicate the way a basic dance like a waltz should be interpreted? Fritz Kreisler probably possessed better rhythm than any other instrumentalist, yet nothing in his playing matched exactly the printed page. Furthermore, there are numerous recordings he made of the same little pieces, some his own, some transcriptions, and the interpretation is completely different each time. And Kreisler hardly is alone, just a prime example of an incredible soloist and composer in the same person. How we must pity a musician or a conductor who is trapped in the literal translation of the notated music. Such a person may have good sense of basic metronome-like pulse, but he would be better off being a drummer for a military band than pretending to be an artist, although a drum machine would do a better job and for a lot less money.

More on different areas of the complex art form of performing music will follow here on a later date.

End-of-Summer Reading

This is a good time of the year to do some reading before the season starts in full swing with school and other activities. Yesterday morning I was up early and picked up a book called ‘The Death of Common Sense’, by Philip Howard, and finished it while waiting for the family to wake up. Subtitled ‘How Law is Suffocating America’ it gives ample examples of how good and noble ideas that were turned into laws became a ridiculous and even nightmarish waste of time and money, mainly because of greedy attorneys and people wanting to benefit from the system. Written a decade ago, it made the New York Times bestseller list. Naturally, my daughter Anna gave me a hard time about the views expressed and we had a lively but healthy debate as result.

By accident, while searching on the web, I came across an excellent article on trauma in the Middle East, and was pleasantly surprised that it was written by an old friend of mine, Gina Ross. A Sephardic Jew, she was born in Aleppo, Syria, and speaks Arabic among many other languages, and has an unusually well-balanced view of the area’s conflicts as seen from all sides. A charming and witty person who finished her school in Brazil in a French Lycée, she married a Canadian screen writer and moved to Los Angeles where she still resides. Her son and my second daughter used to go to the same Hebrew pre-school and we became close friends. In addition to being a gifted painter, Ms. Ross became a successful therapist and founded trauma healing organizations in both the U.S. and Israel. She has published a book, "Beyond the Trauma Vortex: the Role of the Media in Healing Fear, Terror and Violence", plus articles in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Finally I’d like to recommend a thought provoking article published In These Times and written by my own daughter Silja Talvi, ‘Narcissists “R” Us?’. Partially a book review of Christopher Lasch’s “Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations” but with plenty of personal research and content, the article brings to mind many self-important people whom one can picture looking in the mirror the first thing in the morning and saying “God is great, but so am I”. Out of curiosity I checked on publicity of several arts organizations and discovered a few mug shots of conductors representing an orchestra, but of no directors of an opera or a dance company, unless they are performers themselves. Perhaps a truly charismatic conductor can attract an audience with his photo (Michael Tilson-Thomas in San Francisco comes to mind), but orchestras often play better for visiting maestros, and after all it is the players who produce all the music, not the man with the baton. Opera companies like to show scenes from a production, as do ballet groups, or perhaps they display photos of their star soloists. We would feel it was absurd if a baseball or football team would feature its coach as the main attraction, as important a function as he serves. Surely there are narcissists leading those organizations, too, but enough common sense is alive in this case to keep them in the background where they belong.

Price of Friendship

Friendships come in many forms. Some people are proud of their large collection of friends, most of whom fall in the category of acquaintances, at least in my view. Some others have only a few people they'd call friends, but they tend to be lifelong and close ones. People in today's 'me-first' society tend to be rather selfish and choose to be friends with someone only if there is something to gain from the relationship. Most of us would rather talk than listen and observing 'friends' interact one often notices a lot of monologues, politely done in a sequence, but little else. I complain or brag first, then it is your turn. When something happens in life where the other person could use a real friend, it is all too easy to disappear and remove this individual from the list as he/she has outlived his/her usefulness and might become a burden or a liability instead. People going through a divorce or a major illness soon find out that most of their supposedly best pals are nowhere to be seen. A head of a non-profit organization might invite potential wealthy, usually elderly, people into their homes and lives, making these folks feel like like they are special. Of course, it is easy to fall into this trap, but this form of friendship comes with a steep price tag as hefty sums of money in the form of donations are expected in return. Perhaps the 'victims' realize they are being used but usually denial steps in and the cruel truth remains hidden.

Talking about buying friendships, there was an excellent Op-Ed in yesterday's New York Times, titled "The High Price of Friendship". Although the facts told in it are nothing new, it is a good refresher course about this country's 'coalition friends' and the enormous amounts of money we pay countries so that they'd officially be 'on our side' and send often minuscule number of soldiers to Iraq or Afghanistan. Little Estonia and Albania receive millions for their participation and have become our trusted friends and allies, even though the public opinion, in at least Estonia, is not as pro-invasion as we'd like to pretend. The article is worth reading; its questioning of the wisdom of paying for a coalition of friends that are there for the money alone. It is sad if America can only find sympathy and understanding by buying it, and a sign of what the rest of the world thinks of our values. Clearly the fact that a year after Katrina people's lives and the city of New Orleans itself are still in shambles is hard to understand. How can a country that can't take care of its own back yard tout itself as a model for other nations? Last week the Christian Science Monitor published an article, "Numbers show a second-rate US" , in which statistics from a Washington think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, show that the United States is near or at the bottom of industrialized countries in poverty, both among adults and children. My native Finland, on the contrary, has the lowest percentage of people living below poverty level, of any country. Perhaps that explains why it is difficult for me to appreciate the value system here. While freedom of speech is wonderful (unless someone influential doesn't like what you have to say and sends the police to your house), one should also have the freedom of education and guaranteed health care. And why is it that the country that parades itself as an example of freedom has locked up more people in prison than any other place, except for North Korea and perhaps China? We are also evidently very pro-life, yet we put to death more people than countries that are really low on our list of human rights.

Back to friendships: although many dear people to me have passed away, I still have others who have remained close since my childhood and youth. There is very little they can benefit from our relationship, other than knowledge that after all this time it feels good to care and love. They certainly wouldn't act like a longtime 'friend' of my wife's who accidentally bumped into her in a record store, turned white as a sheet and ran out like a dog with its tail between the legs, without uttering a word. There are people, and then there are people. One of my favorite shows, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', has an episode where Larry David finally agrees to donate his kidney to Richard Lewis. The recipient is so grateful to his friend that he offers to do or give anything in return. Larry sees a golf club, a putter he likes, and asks to borrow it. Of course the friendship doesn't stretch that far and Richard refuses the request. In the show the once doomed friend feels great after his transplant and goes vacationing with pretty girls; the donor in turn gets very sick, dies but is returned back to the living. The series is outrageous but portrays people with their usually shallow relationships and chit-chat talk more truthfully than any other show, to the point that it is often painful to watch. If you haven't seen it, rent a season's worth or catch it on HBO: chances are you'll become a fan. Warning: it doesn't have a laugh track, so one needs to decide what is funny and what isn't.

End of Summer

This time of year has a sad element to it as a number of students are leaving, having graduated from high school and going to college in other parts of the country, or having finished college here, getting married and starting their own independent lives. This past week I had to say farewell to two wonderful young human beings. One surprised me by having beautifully memorized the Bach Chaconne for her final lesson, another one by playing the Conus violin concerto like the best of them. Although both easily could have pursued a life in music, only one decided to do so. I am reluctant to encourage anyone to go into this field in these uncertain times; yet for some music is a burning desire and they really have no other choice at this young age of hopes and dreams. This young woman in question will do fine in New York: never have I seen someone her age make so much progress in a year's time. Often a student and a teacher don't make a good match and she was stuck in that situation. In her case I was able to free her from whatever was holding her back, and was delighted to watch her blossom into a young mature artist. The previously insecure and hesitant sound has developed into a magnificient and brilliant one, and her technical potential will have no limits. I am so happy to have been able to be a catalyst in her life to help her through this metamorphosis. The other young lady has been no less of a source of joy. I know that she got a lot from me musically and she'll always play well. In turn I learned a lot from her. A true scholar, she will have a bright future ahead, no matter what she'll decide to do after her years at Rice. I hope that both of them will stay in touch for years to come. Former students are often unpredictable in that respect. Some disappear completely, others become like adopted children and make the teacher part of their families and lives for decades.

I will also greatly miss my students who graduated from the university down the hill from us. They will start their own professional lives and if they will stay in the area as it seems, we will be bumping into each other without a doubt. Since I never was able to keep the lessons as short as mandated, we also had managed to do enough talking about life and its issues to get to know each other as fellow humans. This is what I find most rewarding about teaching; learning happens in both directions. Young adults may not have the life experience of an older person, but neither are they burdened by the unpleasant realities of later life, with its backstabbings, deceit and such. It is too bad that we have to go through such negative experiences at all. If the human race only weren't so imperfect, selfish and looking for one's own benefit at any cost, life would be nice indeed. Unfortunately, in this society of ours, niceness, kindness, honesty and good will are all considered to be signs of weakness. How many acquaintances and colleagues we all know who would do just about anything to advance their own careers and other seemingly important goals. Success comes at a price, at the expense of humanity.

No Winners

It felt good to spend a few days in beautiful and peaceful Victoria, British Columbia, away from nothing but terrifying news on the home front. The shooting of six women at the Jewish Federation in downtown Seattle was just one frightening result of the chaos that is spreading in the Middle East. As we learned that the suspect had randomly chosen a Jewish organization from the directory, it could as well have been another one where our 19-year-old had been volunteering as an intern before leaving for Mexico. What could have driven a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin to commit such a horrendous act? His roots are in a ‘friendly’ country, he has nothing to do directly with Arabs or Iranians, yet watching the grizzly images that our news channels transmit 24/7 obviously pushed him over the edge. He is not an isolated case, but rather a symptom of the deep-rooted disease of hatred that is spreading like a most vicious cancer.

War is a strange game: there are no winners, just losers. In addition, the traditional rules of war have been scrapped. Instead of armies fighting each other on the battlefield, one’s enemy no longer has a uniform and hides in the midst of civilian population. Perhaps every army ought to transform itself to a militia or guerilla organization and forget about uniforms or any other traditional symbols of the military. What if Israel equipped itself with thousands of similar rockets that the Hezbollah uses and utilized them instead of the traditional methods that have proven to be surprisingly ineffective against the invisible enemy? Would the world’s opinion be more favorable? That would at least be more of an-eye-for-an-eye tactic and make the Lebanese militants taste their own medicine. With the large-scale destruction caused by aerial and heavy artillery bombing, there are too many uneducated people rooting for the seeming underdog, the guerillas of Hezbollah.

As I have written before, the rapidly worsening situation in Iraq (as well as in Afghanistan) has moved down in the list of important news. Our two top generals from Iraq openly admitted that the scene there has never been this bad. Mr. Rumsfeld sounded completely out of touch with reality when he insisted that the U.S. must stay in Iraq, otherwise Muslims will conquer Spain and the Philippines. What a surreal statement indeed! The N.Y. Times published a good editorial on this just two days ago. Many experts don’t see any other direction for Iraq than the country being split into three. One mustn’t forget that all borders in that corner of the world were artificially created by Western colonial powers. Those sheiks, caliphs and other local rulers that had provided favors to the former masters were rewarded by putting them in charge of ‘countries’. Israel is an exception, as few really wanted it there in the first place, in spite of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The persistent Zionists kept on moving to their ancestral land, and finally the country was ready to declare its independence in 1948, immediately followed by a war with its upset neighbors. Had their been no Third Reich, or if Great Britain and the United States would have accepted the Jews Germany supposedly was offering them, thus avoiding the horrors of Holocaust, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a mass exodus of Jewish people entering Palestine. Of course there are no ifs, otherwise the world wouldn’t be in such a mess. Just imagine how different the world would be today if the Supreme Court hadn’t voted on party lines to decide the outcome of the 2000 presidential election...

So, Canada treated me and my little one with genuinely friendly smiles and warmth. One wouldn’t expect such a difference in people but it was very evident. Of course in a major tourist destination one anticipates visitors to be treated well, but even when shopping or dining with ordinary local denizens, nothing changed. Perhaps the fact that the country is not in a war helps people to relax, or it is possible that Canada, at least in that part of it, is more evolved and civilized. We enjoyed all the different bear statues around the city. We also saw a couple IMAX movies at the Royal B.C. Museum, one of which, the ‘Mystic India’, was very impressive, retelling the 1790s story of a young boy walking barefoot all across India for seven years and eight thousand miles. Anyone who has a chance should see it. What a powerful story, and what incredible scenes with a cast of 45,000! We walked away from the show feeling peaceful and enlightened. Every person involved in bloody politics and decisions that cause death and mayhem would learn from watching it: the only way we humans can coexist is by tolerance and honoring all life.

Heat

A rare heat wave in the Puget Sound area is finally over. Clearly I wasn’t made for a hot climate. Growing up in pre-global-warming Finland meant that I was more at ease biking to school at 20° below zero than sweating in an uncomfortable, almost 100° city. Yes, we Finns like our saunas and when inside, one can tolerate much higher temperatures, feeling great, but we always know it will come to a sudden end, plunging into a cold lake or even rolling in the snow in winter. Last night a cool breeze overtook Seattle rather suddenly and I fell asleep early, in relief. My dreams were even more fantastic than usual, but included some scary elements such as human sacrifice, no doubt a product of following the bloody television footage from conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. I just read on the Independent that the Iraqis are seriously thinking of dividing the country into two, east and west. The Sunnis would have control of the west, and the eastern Shi’a part would become in a sense an extension of Iran, although formally a separate entity. This discussion left the Kurds out: surely there are many who would finally like to see an independent Kurdistan as well. Whatever it takes to calm that corner of the world down, let it be. Iraq as a nation was an artificial creation to start with. Forcing totally different ethnic groups to live under one flag is complicated at best. Just look at the former Yugoslavia: without Tito's iron fist the union crumbled in no time at all.

I have previously written about how little factual knowledge Americans in general have of the situation in today’s world. A few days ago I spoke with a well educated family member who was praising the White House for encouraging the Israelis to ‘squash’ Lebanon and Muslims in general. This Jewish person’s thoughts were based on raw emotions; she had no more knowledge of the real issues than the fanatic Muslims on the streets of many countries. Hamas and Hezbollah were one and the same, the Gaza Strip had magically moved from the Egyptian border into Lebanon, and mentioning the differences between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims drew a blank. Once again, I frankly believe that schools are not allowed or at least encouraged to teach geography. The more ignorant people are, the easier their opinions (=votes) are to manipulate, all in the name of democracy. Yet people live under the illusion that they know a lot about important issues. Yes, some do, but they are a minority, and often a thorn on the side of whoever is in power.

Why the heat felt so uncomfortable was also because it brought back so many unpleasant memories, of life in Southern California and so many wasted summers on the East Coast. The latter was work I felt obligated to do, and it was quite unsatisfying musically; mediocre at best. It was truly 'instant art' (just add water and mix!): three rehearsals bang-bang-bang and then two concerts. Some visiting artists were able to inspire the group to outdo themselves occasionally, though. The opposite was true as well: I particularly remember a big name conductor who hadn’t bothered to learn the opening work, a practically unknown composition, and got completely lost and in the first concert took the orchestra with him, at least those who mistakenly looked up. As nice and great as the musicians were as individuals, as a group the Mostly Mozart orchestra was suffering and miserable, for reasons I well knew but was unable to do anything about. I’m pleased that they are much happier now and able to enjoy music making, even in the heat. The music camp I was part of earlier didn’t fare much better in the satisfaction department, although I liked the teaching element of it. It was billed as the Waterloo Music Festival, but in truth was a student orchestra, fortified with faculty musicians and ringers from New York. Needless to say, it ceased to exist many years ago. Playing under boiling lights in an already-hot and humid tent made good use of my Finnish sisu. Sometimes it was fun watching some of the huge insects fly around during concerts, attracted by the bright lights, and wonder where they would land next. On at least one occasion the rain got so bad that nobody could hear the violin soloist, and the concert came to a halt. We certainly don’t get weather like that in this neck of the woods.

Had I known better and seen the future, I certainly would have turned all that work down and instead enjoyed a vacation every year, something I really never got to do. For over twenty years I managed to squeeze in a trip to the family’s summer home in Finland, but the time there was always limited, and with aging parents, and under the primitive although wonderful surroundings, filled with hard work. True, while living in Finland in my twenties, raising my first family, long paid vacations were guaranteed by law, but being young I was eager to do music camps and festivals, always traveling with the violin and playing. It is high time for me to learn the art of relaxing and enjoying what life has to offer.

As it was too hot to do anything else, I decided to use my logic skills and fixed the networking problem on my own, without having to make any more annoying calls to tech support. So, even the heat wave turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Messy Democracy

One of mankind’s worst inventions is that what we call democracy. Giving an idiot or a truly ignorant person the same voting power as to the highly learned, intelligent and hopefully wise one is ridiculous. Of course in principal democracy is a noble idea, but so is communism. People are manipulated easily and votes bought. When was the last time a poor Mr. or Mrs. Smith was elected to an office of any importance in the U.S.? Campaigns are a game for the rich. Issues put in front of voters are too complex for most to understand, and it is next to impossible to get unbiased information on them. Making the opponent look as bad as possible is a standard tactic for any candidate, not trying to come up with new fresh, doable ideas.

This country has an urge to promote its variety of democracy as a model to the world. We are seeing the results in Iran, Iraq and Palestine, even Lebanon. Has anyone bothered to think that perhaps these people, a great percentage of whom aren’t even able to read, would have been better off with a different system, something they have been used to? Emotions run high in world’s political hotspots; few are willing to listen to a voice of reason. Palestine is a good example: we insisted that they have fair elections and democracy. When the unthinkable happened and a militant group that we consider a terrorist organization won, we simply didn’t know how to react or what to do. It is too late to state that we Americans and Europeans will not have anything to do with Hamas. By denying aid we are like sore losers, and are creating a perfect breeding ground for an endless number of future terrorists. People who go hungry and thirsty and have nothing to lose are easily persuaded to commit desperate acts. Without the election, PLO would be still in charge, and at least Israel and the West was having some kind of a dialogue with them. By taking part in a fair election Hamas for once did nothing wrong: they won because people voted for them. People have also given their support to leftist candidates in Latin America, most notably Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and we are upset. Closer to home, the outcome of the Mexican election is still in dispute. Had the legal and illegal Mexicans in this country been able to vote, most likely the leftists would have fared better, but due to the strict and complicated absentee ballot system in Mexico, only something like one percent were able to cast their vote.

The Middle East situation is truly sad. I can well understand Israel’s desire to disarm their sworn enemy Hezbollah or at least weaken their ability to attack their country. However, the human suffering is hard to take, and innocents have become the victims. Our government has been too uninvolved in the area as they have been since the Clinton era; that much every expert I’ve heard has agreed on. Actually, I think the White House is quite pleased that the horrendous situation in Iraq is no longer front page news. Never mind that the number of casualties in that country is a thousand times higher than Lebanon and Israel. Suicide bombers killing 46 in a mosque barely make the news. Or are these explosions just like fireworks, set off by happy Iraqis to celebrate their new freedom and democracy? A developing pact of Shi’a fundamentalists in power from Iran to Lebanon, via Iraq and Syria, looks absolutely terrifying on the map.

A different kind of conflict is happening at the home front here. A longtime customer of Earthlink, I agreed to have them take over my second phone line and provide a promised extra fast 6 Mbps DSL on it. The previous setup worked perfectly: Qwest took care of the phone service and Earthlink provided the normal speed broadband. All our many computers were networked, no problem. On the day the service was switched the phone went dead and after talking for many hours to India it started working a few days later. The DSL was another story. The green light on the modem would come on and then disappear ten seconds later and this would happen continuously. I spent an entire day on the phone first talking to a hard-to-understand woman in India, and then to a nice and clear man from the Philippines. Finally I asked him to contact someone here locally, and the man from Covad told them instantly that our house is too far from the central to have the promised speed work. The speed was dropped back to 1.5 Mbps and I was finally able to connect to the Internet, at half that speed. However, there has been no way to make the network operate like it did before, even having had professionals come here to try to solve the problem. Essentially we are down to one PC and I dread having to spend another day talking to Earthlink’s technical support, where ever they happen to be this time. I’m also thinking of other solutions. With teenagers who are used to living with the web and a wife who is hard at work writing her book, I’m lucky to be able to check my email. I understand that outsourcing saves American companies a lot of money, but no person on the other side of the globe could have known what was obvious to a local technician. Globalization is another strange phenomena and I’m not certain it works any better than democracy.

On a more pleasant note, my daughter Anna is happy as a clam in Guadalajara and was placed in the second highest Spanish group. She will be able to take her political classes in Spanish unlike most of the others, unless they are native speakers. What a great opportunity this is for her, living with a Mexican family and being treated as a local.

Deepening Crisis

It is not very long ago when the world celebrated Lebanon’s new freedom, after the Syrian occupation ended and the Israeli troops withdrew from the south. Before that the country had witnessed a long and bloody civil war which left much of Beirut, the capital, in ruins. All this was happening in a small country which in my youth was known as the Switzerland of the Middle East, a place where people of different religions and cultures could coexist peacefully. Unfortunately, the joy of peace proved once again to be short-lived.

As if the world wasn’t in enough of a mess already, escalating violence in areas surrounding Israel is getting out of hand. It is not hard to understand that citizens of that country have a hard time trusting their longtime enemies Hezbollah and Hamas, but, in my humble opinion, to start a war because of kidnapping of a few soldiers doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, at least without trying to give diplomacy a chance. The resulting blood bath on both sides is simply terrible. Of course it is nothing compared to the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, but here we are talking about a much more civilized part of the Middle East. Distances are so short that a rocket flying a few miles can cause great damage inside the other country. For the Israeli air force to bomb Beirut is as simple as if New York attacked Philadelphia. Does making the Beirut airport unusable prevent further attacks by Hezbollah? Of course not: the only ones suffering are ordinary civilians. I’m by no means taking a side against Israel; the official goal of both terrorist organizations is the destruction of the Jewish state, a sick principle indeed. But there has been a lot of international pressure from all major powers to change all that; however, after recent events in Lebanon and Gaza it is harder than ever to convince the Palestinians that Israel wants peaceful coexistence. Of course, returning the soldiers unharmed would have resolved the crisis, but militants are not known for common sense and good will, no matter what side they are on.

It is interesting to note that the Palestinian neighbor countries, namely Egypt and Jordan, don’t want to open their borders to let the suffering people in, even temporarily. Muslim brotherhood goes only so far, it seems. The West Bank was a part of Jordan for a while but the kingdom was more than happy to give it up. The pro-Western Hashemite rulers are constantly afraid of the increasing Palestinian population. Egypt certainly could help the suffering Gaza population more, but seems unwilling to do so. Perhaps there is enough unrest within Egypt itself as terrorist strikes there are frequent. Hezbollah is rumored to be financed by Iran and this is where we can blame ourselves. By invading Iraq and causing complete chaos there, the United States removed the greatest threat and competitor to Iran and helped it to become a new superpower for the region. With price of oil rising daily Iran can well afford to stick its thumb up the noses of the Western countries. Financing a guerilla group in Lebanon is good PR for Iran in the Muslim world, at least in the radical part of it, and the cost of it for them is insignificant.

The March issue of the Atlantic Monthly has an excellent article about the situation in Palestine, titled ‘The Checkpoint.’ It makes a very valid observation: “At the dawn of the twenty-first century, soldiers—Israeli, Russian, and American—are learning that the hardest thing is not taking control of a territory but attempting to administer it once you are there.” I think our leaders have finally realized that, too.

At some point my daughter Anna was thinking of going to Israel this summer, just like many of her Hillel friends. I’m relieved that she chose to go to study in Guadalajara, Mexico, instead, having left for there just yesterday. Not that the political situation in our southern neighbor country is comforting: the recent election is still being contested and mass demonstrations have happened and no doubt will just grow in size. At least Guadalajara is a more peaceful place than Mexico City but certainly they will see their share of the unrest. For a political science major seeing democracy at work should be of great interest. She will hopefully be able to visit Israel during a more stable period. I try to be an optimist and believe that one day peace will be a reality. It won’t happen overnight, but one must not forget that both Jordan and Egypt have established diplomatic relations with Israel, something that a few decades ago would have seemed impossible.

Shalom—Salaam

For the Birds

This month’s Scientific American has, among other fascinating stories, an article on the vision of birds. It turns out that they are able to sense colors in the ultraviolet spectrum, having inherited four cone pigments from our common vertebrate ancestor. As mammals evolved, four was reduced to two, and later a third one came to be. All this means is that our feathered friends are able to see a vastly greater number of colors and recognize patterns where it all looks the same to us. There are a large number of birds in which we have trouble telling a female from a male as they look almost identical. Not so for them: with the added UV element added the differences become very clear. Of course we cannot even begin to imagine how birds and other animals sense the world around us: color is after all the product of the brain interpreting input from the eyes, not a property of light. Color-blind people have to make do with what nature has given them; we all seem to be in that position when compared to species that are more advanced than us in this department.

Seeing color is an interesting sensation. In many individuals it is closely connected to other senses. A person may see lights before the onset of a migraine headache or an epileptic seizure. Some of us see colors when listening to music or other sounds, like in my own case. Different pitches and keys are not only sensed by the ear: the brain also translates them into hues of color. Some music can be visually very pleasing, some other evoking ugly images enough to make one ill. I don’t know if this ‘gift’ is a blessing or a curse. People who are happy with just plowing ahead with whatever music they are listening to or playing are probably just as lucky as a person who can’t tell whether he is wearing a red shirt or a green one. After all, sensitivity can be a distraction: in music the most basic elements (loud-soft, fast-slow, short-long) are often all that seem to be required. Many leaders are ruthless and desensitized: when deciding to send soldiers to fight one cannot think of all the resulting suffering. There would be no wars if leaders had sensitivity and emotions; a conscience in other words.

The oldest crow in the world just croaked at the age of 59. It had lived all these years in captivity as a pet, having fallen out of its nest in a cemetery during a thunderstorm in 1947, never having been able to fly as a result of injury. That bird hadn’t seen ultraviolet or any other colors for a long time as it had been blinded by cataracts. Had Tata the Crow lived in Seattle instead of N.Y. State, based on this city’s rationale, he might have become a key figure for Boeing (a bird must be an expert in aviation even if he can’t fly), keeping his prominent role for all those decades (after all, with all those years of experience he must have been very insightful, even when blind). Who knows, perhaps he would have also become a star in the local music scene, a Ta-Ta. We all know what a magnificent singing voice a crow possesses!

Picture of 'Tata' by Kristine Flones

Exciting Times

We are living in exciting times, least of which is not the soccer World Cup. Surely there have been some major upsets, such as all the favorite Latin American teams having been eliminated by the semi-finals, but there has been some wonderful playing by countries such as Portugal, not normally associated with the world’s top contenders. To our surprise, little Ghana managed to kick the mighty U.S. out of the games early on. Now we have four European Union members facing each other; they also all happen to be in the euro (€) monetary union, which some other, now eliminated, contenders (U.K., Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine) are not. Is this perhaps symbolic of something? My daughter Anna and I are the soccer fanatics in the family and both of us prefer watching the games on Univision: the coverage is so much more intense and lively than on ESPN, and it is also good for our language skills. I feel sorry for Argentina’s goalie who was injured and replaced: had this not been the case, the outcome of the deciding game’s penalty kicks easily would have been different, in spite of Germany’s home field advantage. It was also surreal to watch England play Portugal and have the largely British spectators sings ‘God Save the Queen’ anytime their team had the ball and were advancing, or to have a plea for audience members to refrain from racial remarks before the Brazil-France match.

Today is another exciting day as Mexico holds elections. The presidential race will likely be a close one. I like to play with words and think that it would be interesting if an ‘Obrador Retriever’ would follow a ‘Fox’ in office, in true canine fashion. In spite of a large portion of Texans not knowing what foreign country is below their southern border, the development in Mexico is extremely important to the United States. Whoever will be the winner, he and the newly elected parliament will face enormous difficulties with widespread corruption, poverty and the volatile situation in the south. But Mexico also has tremendous potential and should be of great importance to us as of the two neighbors it is by far the more populous. Any solution to our illegal immigrant problem will have to have equal support of both governments, otherwise it will be totally ineffective.

There is excitement on the home front, too. July 4th is promising to be a beautiful day and we can enjoy the Lake Union fireworks right from our sundeck. Anna will be traveling to Guadalajara later this month to study in the university there for five weeks. Needless to say my daughter is as thrilled as can be about the opportunity. All of us here also have a strong feeling that something else incredible is about to take place, even though we don’t know what it will be. Positive thoughts are great and hope for a better world is priceless. If we only could undo our mess in Iraq, or at least bring our men and women home before more of them are killed or maimed. But let us forget about unpleasant realities for a little while and enjoy all the excitement in the air.

Happy Independence Day to you all! No matter how hard some powers try to block it, freedom of choice and liberty will prevail.

Happy 95th, Dad!

Six days ago, on the 21^st of June, my father Veikko Talvi turned 95. Although his short term memory is at times problematic, this picture taken at his party proves that he still enjoys life a lot. Even having had prostate cancer for over 30 years hasn’t affected him as it has been kept in control with hormone therapy.

What an interesting life my father has had. He was adored and pampered by his mother, much more than his younger sister. My grandfather was capable of creating anything with his hands: my childhood home was filled with wrought iron lamps and light fixtures, and he even built several violin cases for me. My dad didn’t inherit any of these skills; they seem to have jumped a generation. Instead, he become very involved with the academic life in the Helsinki University and started researching local history, publishing a number of books over the years, some of which are used as textbooks in higher education. He was also a journalist and a respectable musician, both as a violinist and a conductor. During my childhood and until his retirement he worked for one of the world’s largest paper manufacturing companies as their head of publishing and public relations. Although he didn’t have a head for business (unlike my mother), he didn’t have to worry about money as he was well paid. An idealist, he would always do things for free if it was for a good cause. I don’t think any of his many violin students ever paid for their lessons. Although the well-to-do corporation would have given him a nice car to use, he preferred using our family car, never even charging for mileage.

The Winter and Continuation Wars (1939-40, 1941-44) were hard for everyone in Finland. My father had recently been married when fighting started and he was on the front, unable to get a leave, when my brother Tuomo was born. Just a couple days later the mother died and grandparents had to take care of raising the baby. A brief period of peace followed, but then war started again and my dad had to leave once more for the front lines. When I was growing up, he never talked about his experiences. As he was an officer and an adjutant to the commander of the regiment, he didn’t actually have to fire a weapon and kill enemies. This probably was a blessing as he wouldn’t have taken it lightly. Death was still all around him and sometimes he had to send a platoon for a dangerous assignment, knowing that many of the men wouldn’t return. One time a new soldier was waiting for instructions when a Soviet bullet went through his head, less than three feet from my dad. Later my father developed some heart problems and was sent back to a military hospital. This is where he met my mother Irja, a volunteer, and the two fell in love. Their marriage lasted for 55 years, until my mom’s death on the eve of my 50^th birthday.

It is interesting to see what parallels there are in one’s life compared with his parents. Although I inherited my mother’s quick thinking and business sense, I also resemble my father with my willingness to teach and help, and his love for music. More than anything I enjoyed playing duets with him: we performed together numerous times when I was little. He didn’t force me to have a teacher as I was able to teach myself at first. I had observed my dad carefully enough to know what to do and how; my perfect pitch took care of the rest. He would listen to me practice, and then play a few card games with me, and afterwards I would practice more or we would play duos until late. He, too, had a long friendship with a man whom he trusted. About 25 years later this ‘friend’ showed his true colors, tried to defame my dad and even to destroy archived material, and to take credit for work my dad had done. This betrayal almost killed my father, and it took him years to get over it. However, wounds eventually healed and he was again busy doing more research and writing books even in his late 80s. It was always important for my dad to be recognized for his achievements. The regional central library in Kouvola has a small exhibit featuring my father's literary output, in addition to having a research room named after him. When he lived near there, he would visit the library almost daily, perhaps to admire his life's work. This is where we differ: I don't even own most recordings I've made. Perhaps a generation is skipped again, as some of the younger ones seem to be much like him, rightfully proud of their achievements.

I look forward to your 100^th birthday, Dad!

photo by Silja Talvi

Stepping Aside

Last week the main news topic seemed to be Bill Gates and his decision to leave the reigns of the company he founded, Microsoft. Naturally with his wealth it is easy to retire and concentrate in philanthropy. Health and education for the world’s poor is obviously close to his heart, and being the richest man alive, he has the means to make a difference in this area. Also, he wants to be remembered as a great humanitarian, not just as someone who started a software company at the right time and place. But there is a much bigger issue behind wanting to step aside: the well-being and future of the very enterprise Mr. Gates had been a father to. After all, times have changed a lot from when IBM refused to see the potential in personal computers, and instead of creating an operating system for the then primitive PCs, gave the task to the little startup company of Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen, resulting in MS-DOS. Microsoft has had great success since, mainly with operating systems from Windows 3.1 on (the first versions were rather awful) and their Office software, a standard today with any company and institution. But times are changing and with broadband access to the internet everything in computing is very different from just a couple years ago. Microsoft needs people with fresh ideas and insight; otherwise the company could turn into a dinosaur and become extinct. It has already made a number of mistakes and wrong predictions in the past. Perhaps Mr. Gates realizes that he no longer can be the visionary his child needs and wants to give others the challenge. I salute his wisdom of stepping aside now, instead of growing old together with the corporation.

In Chicago, another famous figure is leaving his post. Daniel Barenboim just conducted his last concerts as the music director of the Chicago Symphony. Fifteen years at the helm of an orchestra is a long time, twice the norm for someone in that position in this country. The beginning of his tenure with the orchestra was somewhat rocky, but with time the musicians and Mr. Barenboim learned to see eye to eye and understand each other well. His decision to leave certainly was not caused by the orchestra’s players’ unhappiness with him; he just felt that his time was up. A first rate pianist even today, he has garnered respect from everyone as an artist. And instead of fraternizing with the Jewish community in order to raise funds, he chose to alienate many of them with his openly pro-Palestinian opinions and actions. This is not to say that Mr. Barenboim wasn’t proud of his heritage: he just couldn’t quietly witness the apartheid politics of Israel and spoke up time after time. It takes a person of courage to say and do what he firmly believes in, unpopular as it may be. With more people like him in leadership roles, both civil and political, we might see peace in the Middle East one day.

In the review of Mr. Barenboim’s farewell concerts in today’s New York Times, it is pointed out how many in the orchestra were initially unhappy with the conductor’s tendency of doing things differently from one performance to another. Of course this is a sign of inspiration and spontaneity on the podium, but requires much more attention from the musicians. In time the players adapted to this and the former ‘fault’ became a ‘virtue’. It will be interesting to see what artistic direction Chicago will take in the future. There is no doubt that Mr. Barenboim will be even more visible as an artist, now that he no longer has to handle all the baggage that came with his former job. Freedom is priceless, and a true artist needs that.

Mozartsky, Anyone?

There are numerous studies claiming that listening to classical music has a calming and positive effect on a person. Even surgeons are known to listen to their iPods while operating on a patient. Some years ago it was claimed that listening to the music of Mozart made a person smarter. This ‘Mozart Effect’ also worked in reverse, as some people claimed that a bad performance of this music actually lowered their intelligence.

I seldom listen to classical music in order to relax. Perhaps all the years of playing and teaching put me automatically in a ‘find the mistakes, poor phrasing and faulty intonation’ mode. This is an unfortunate result of work vs. pleasure. Yes, I can treasure a wonderful performance from the past, but even then listening becomes very involved and not to be taken lightly. Recordings of more recent years tend to sound very unnatural because every little mistake that would have made the music sound live and true has been edited out. Even a bad instrumentalist can sound note-perfect and a very mediocre orchestra well-balanced and faultless. A listener often expects this perfection to carry onto the stage. It is surprising that anyone would even bother to come to hear a recital or a philharmonic’s concert as the performance inevitably won’t be as polished as on a compact disc. We often expect the unnatural in today’s world: why for instance is an old string instrument supposed to shine and shimmer when it has only remnants of the old varnish left? Sure it is easy to add a layer of hard polish on it to make it sparkle, but the result is no more genuine than a recording that has been artificially made to sound good. An old 78 could not be edited at all: the take was either accepted or a new one made. Artists are not machines: from some historical recordings we learn that a great instrumentalist like Rachmaninoff would make over 20 takes on a piece before he was happy with the results.

My daughter had been watching and listening to ‘Classical Arts Showcase’ on cable the other day, and I was about to turn the television off when I saw a group of musicians playing a piece by Johann Strauss, standing up, other than the cellos of course, in one of Vienna’s castles. It was obvious that these were not members of the Philharmonic as their playing wasn’t quite as polished and even their conductor wasn’t a familiar face to me. What caught my attention was the impeccable style and phrasing their music-making had. Growing up in the birthplace of great music has its benefits: the heartbeat of the Waltz was perfect, not just correctly played but lived through one’s soul. A bit later the Vienna Philharmonic played, again Strauss. They had a well-known conductor in this New Year’s program, but the musicians chose not to look up as they intimately knew how the music went, better than him.

Mozart is another composer whose music doesn’t require a pre-calculated interpretation, other than agreeing on some basic facts. There is no one ‘correct’ way of playing his music as it lends itself to almost an indefinite number of them, all equally valid. Yet Mozart can be butchered, a common way of hearing his music today. A pianist will do his best to chop the Steinway into logs for the fireplace; a violinist will try to turn a simple passage into a virtuoso showcase. An overly romantic vibrato and unnatural phrasing will easily ridicule the very essence of this glorious music. Instead of the real thing we are likely to hear Mozalt or Mozartsky, with an ethnic twist far removed from Austria. Since many of their idols play in this manner, it is no wonder our youngsters try to imitate this style. We often accept fakes as originals: Chop Suey and Chicken Chow Mein, followed by fortune cookies, are part of our ‘genuine’ Chinese cuisine, and many of our favorite Mexican dishes are purely domestic Tex-Mex and almost unknown south of the border. Not to blame Americans and their ignorance: people have always liked phony ethnic music. Mozart himself wrote numerous ‘Turkish’ pieces, Rimsky’s ‘Indian’ melodies are well known, Puccini became ‘Japanese’ in ‘Madama Butterfly’ and even Kreisler wrote a ‘Tambourin Chinoise.’

In an orchestra it is often refreshing when musicians are handed almost clean parts, with very few markings, and the conductor is able to show with baton what to do, often changing his ways from one performance to another. Nothing is worse than to have this great music dissected to death as this makes inspiration completely disappear, and instead of using one’s eyes for subtle indications, the poor musician is busy trying to decipher all the information penciled in. Mozart and other composers from that era don’t even necessarily need a conductor, as a good soloist is fully capable of indicating what is needed and desired, either from the keyboard or by playing along on the violin. A really first-rate chamber orchestra can play remarkably well together without anyone on the podium, as long as they hear each other and have keen eyes, just like in a string quartet.

Thank goodness Hershey’s never started manufacturing ‘Mozart Kugeln.’ Enough baking experiments exist under the name ‘Sacher Torte’: luckily ‘mit Schlag’ is universal and helps the bites go down.

Time for Bravehearts

People are often known to say and act the opposite of what they think and believe. This is a sign of weakness, as we don’t want to become targets of the anger of someone who is in a position to hurt us, perhaps even destroy our lives. We also seem to need to save our face. In politics this is an everyday fact. Did all the senators and house representatives really believe in the reasons presented for the invasion of Iraq? Surely Colin Powell knew he was fabricating facts when he spoke in the U.N. about the weapons of mass destruction; he is an intelligent person, after all. How can every member of one political party support the same idea, and all in the other oppose it? Why are we not allowed to say what we really think?

It takes a brave person to stick his/her neck out and speak the truth. In the story “Emperor’s New Clothes” it was a child, who hadn’t yet learned to be a coward, who finally spoke up. During the Nazi era most Germans publicly supported the country’s policies, even if in their hearts they might have been appalled by them. During the Cold War, Americans were taught to despise every communist on the globe, most of whom had no choice but to believe in their own political system. Today’s Palestinians automatically hate their Israeli neighbors: the brave ones talking about peace are few and always live in fear for their lives.

Every day we are faced with situations that are less than ideal, often harmful and in a long term destructive. These may be as diverse as the national problem of discrimination, such as in immigration or other ethnic issues, lack of health insurance, or an intolerable atmosphere at the workplace. A person in a position to help remedy the situation may, in a private conversation over coffee or a drink, admit the problem and say that something ought to be done about it urgently, yet contradict himself by giving a very different viewpoint to the media the next day.

People are reluctant to act alone and it takes time to build the momentum needed to act as a unit. Mass demonstrations do happen, and although they seldom bring immediate results, they don’t go unnoticed, and are often effective in the long run. They eventually brought an end to the war in Vietnam, and have resulted in troops being withdrawn from Iraq by many ‘coalition’ countries. In a workplace results can happen faster if the employees have the courage to stick together for a worthy cause. Surely they will be threatened, both individually and collectively, but in the end the employer will realize that the business cannot go on without the willing participation of the workforce. The more specialized the jobs are, the harder it is to replace workers.

We need strong leaders to help us protect our rights and improve our lives, and we need courage to stand up for what we believe is right. Threats are likely to remain empty, if people stay firm and united. It is easy to be a coward and only care about one’s own paycheck, rather than admit that something has to be changed for the benefit of all. But let’s be optimistic: even the Cowardly Lion finally overcame his fears and became brave, saving Dorothy and the magic world of Oz.