Gas Price and Hurricane Katrina

I didn't pay much attention to the news yesterday. Learned on Monday that the city of New Orleans was spared by Hurricane Katrina from the worst direct hit, I thought that it was over. I don't like the idea of living in a coastal city that is basically under the sea level, but some people choose to do that. And New Orleans prospered.

This morning as I was driving along my usual commute passing a gas station where I am a regular, I saw the sign for the gas price. $3.17. At first, it didn't registered with me. It was different. Yesterday it was $2.79, and two days before that it was $2.59 and had been that for 10 days. For a split second I didn't even know whether the price went up or down. Then I realized it was more than 10% increase from yesterday! I simply couldn't believe my eyes.

Lunchtime I read New York Times, which I do everyday. On the front page was a large photo of New Orleans inundated by floodwater. Levees broke and water rushed in. 80% of the city was under water. Everyone had to evacuate. City is uninhabitable for weeks to come. Damages are not just limited in New Orleans. Other coastal communities and infrastructures were also destroyed. Oil refineries on the Gulf Coast included. Some experts are predicting $4 gas within this year.

As I grow older, I sadly realize that disaster can strike at such an unexpected moment, and bring so much devastation. In my childhood memory, we had floods two to three times. My brother and I would make the best out of it on those occasions. We tried to catch fish from the floodwater, and my brother did catch some one time. Our furniture were soaked in ankle-deep water, but a child would not care that much. Now as a grownup, I understood what natural disasters meant to my parents then. They had to protect their young children as well as their meagerly earthly possessions. Disaster means you have to start all over again.

Tonight on my way home, I stopped at another gas station and filled up my gas tank, only 4.3 gallons, at $2.78 per gallon. My next car will have to be more fuel efficient than 30 mpg.

Silkworm, Silk, and WWII Anecdote

You may ask, “How is the third related to the first two?”

Here is the story.

The four silkworms I have are now in their cocoons. They had drawn everyone’s attention when they were busy growing and then spinning cocoons some 12 days ago. They seem to be doing nothing presently, but that doesn’t stop people from coming to my desk everyday. Yesterday, Vaso took her friend Tom to visit these little creatures. Tom and Vaso marveled at the strength of the silk those little worms made.

Tom then said, “that’s why they made parachutes from silk in World War II.”

I went, “really?” That was definitely new information to me.

“Yes, because silk is very light, yet very strong. Before nylon was successfully made commercially and the price went down, silk was the choice for parachuting fabric. It is better than cotton.”

“Aha, I see.”

“In fact, during WWII, women were urged to donate their silk stockings as raw material for making parachutes.”

“Wow, that was very patriotic!”

Vaso, who came from Greece originally, then said, “In Greece, people would go out to the fields after paratroopers came down and look for their discarded parachutes. They then brought them home for making covers, clothes etc. You see, on one end, people donated their stockings for making parachutes, but on the other, people collected them as their own.”

That is very interesting to learn.

I did a little research about parachute silk online and found this:

http://www.neam.org/adelinegray.html

The following is directly quoted from the above website.

However, in December 1941, just after Pearl Harbor was attacked and America entered WWII, Adeline—famed as a jumper and skilled as a federally licensed parachute rigger—was hired by Pioneer Parachute Company in Manchester, Connecticut. The company, in conjunction with Cheney Mills, also of Manchester, was planning to make personnel parachute canopies using Cheney’s “nylon” fabric to replace silk material rapidly unavailable from Japanese-controlled Asian locations.

In earlier days, cotton fabric had widely been used to make hemispheric-shaped parachute canopies. It served well for years but had many shortcomings. In time, aeronautic laboratories developed improved cotton yarn that could be made into higher-strength, lower-weight parachute fabric. In the 1920s, filaments produced by silkworms were found to be superior in many respects to cotton yarn, and parachute fabric thereafter was made of stronger, more flexible, lighter-weight silk cloth. The majority of silk filament was produced in the Orient where silkworms were easily raised and could feed on the leaves of mulberry trees, ultimately making dense cocoons from which lengthy filaments could be drawn to create silk yarn convertible into fabric.

The loss of sources of high-volume silk filament production stimulated intensive searching for synthetic substitutes. Lab researchers at DuPont developed what they named “nylon” and introduced nylon hosiery at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. The rest is history.

Shakespeare on Boston Common

It has been 10 years now. The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company has been offering works of William Shakespeare to Boston’s diverse community for free every summer since 1996. I didn’t know this until last year (so much about being an “informative” Bostonian). I was really excited when I saw “Much Ado About Nothing” under the stars on the lawn of Boston Common. It was just amazing. The stage set and the cast were both of high professional quality. I was also surprised that I understood the play fine, though being a foreigner, I tried to read some Shakespeare 12 years ago, only to find it too difficult to cope with. That was my first Shakespeare play ever, and I enjoyed it very much. I decided to go again this year.

This year the stage was moved to another location in the park, the Parade Ground, maybe to accommodate a larger audience. And it was really crowded: my friends arrived two and half hours before the performance and still we were sitting a bit too far even for my 300mm telephoto lens. This summer’s three-week run of the play was “Hamlet”. It is about a lot of things: murder, revenge, incest, love, madness, and suicide, to name a few. That certainly would make an utter tragedy. Jeffery Donovan played the title role. Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, “to be, or not to be”, showed his dilemma: to keep his moral integrity, or to avenge his father’s murder. He did succeed in the revenge, but not until almost everybody died, including himself.

Prince Hamlet with his father’s ghost


Ophelia and Hamlet


Hamlet with the traveling players

Acorn Street, Boston

The most photographed street in Boston. Basking in the setting sun. After a second walk through the lovely Beacon Hill neighborhood, I finally found it.

Why I want to start a blog

Quite a few of my friends have blogs now. The nice thing about a blog is that you can write anything you want, and people can read and comment. And here, people can come from a broad range of backgrounds, some you know, some you don’t.

Last week I went through link to link to link and I found one entry of another college classmate’s blog. To my surprise, I found that he is also interested in Chinese landscape painting, and the paintings he posted were by the artist that my painting teacher admires most. Then I realized, a blog is a very good way to express oneself, to let people know one better. I should have my own, too!

Determined to create a blog, I went to blogger.com, which seems to be everyone’s choice. First I have to create a login. I felt like to use some music tempo that night. I started with “adagio”. Too bad, it was not available. Then I tried “allegro” (you see, I am getting faster), still not available. I was quite disappointed already. I didn’t want to just pick a random word from a dictionary any more. What should I do?

At that moment, I laid my eyes on the signed CD of Lang Lang’s Carnegie Hall debut. Why not try one of the pieces as my login? What about “traumerei” (dreaming)? It was not available, either! I was almost ready to give up that night before I decided to try a last one on “liebestraum” (love dream). And I got it! So now my blog is also named “liebestraum”. The music itself is a short piano piece by Franz Liszt, very romantic, delicate, singing-like. Since its tempo is poco allegro, con affetto, I will just sign my blog as “allegro”. That should fit very well.

So now you see, that was the origin of allegro’s liebestraum blog.