Arcadia, the Play

J putting the final touch on the tortoise shell

M and H inspecting the set

The set lit by a projected slide

Actors on stage before the start of the play.
Thomasina and her tutor Septimus

Thomasina and her tutor Septimus

Charactors from 19th century and present day all on stage in the last act.

This year I was involved in the Longwood Players' production of "Arcadia" as a scenic artist, just like what I did for last year's "Pygmalian". Of course I am not some sort of an "artist". This was all volunteer work, and the skills involved were just some kind of painting, on a large scale.

My friend J was the set designer for "Arcadia", a play by Tom Stoppard. J envisioned that the whole play happened on the back of a tortoise. This was because that a tortoise was referred to several times in the play. So H and I drew a gigantic tortoise shell on 6 3X6 panels and painted each plate of the shell as concentric hexagonals with three different shades of brown. It took us two afternoons. After the first day my legs became very sour from working low on the ground. On the second afternoon we blended the three shades of brown together so that the colors changed gradually. I learned how to do dry brush. Painting on such a large scale is just fun. I also helped M outlining the stones in the stone wall. They look good, don't they?

I was very excited to see the play last Friday. A lot of people came for the performance at the Cambridge YMCA despite of the big snow storm earlier that day. The tortoise shell was tilted on the stage, and on it were a table and several chairs. The play was a complicated one. It happened in the early 19th century and also present day, in a single room. J had to send us an email to explain it before we went so that we would have an idea of what to expect. Still it was quite hard to catch things because every line was important. Characters in this play were all very witty and they talked about the second law of thermodynamics etc. The story was about a young girl (13 years old) in the 19th century who loved science and poetry and dreamed about marrying Lord Byron The Poet, but she died from a fire on her 17th birthday. Decendents of her family in the present time try to figure out what had happened from all the records they can find and they piece together science and literature. The play had a sad ending. Audience left knowing that this girl was going to die that night after waltzed romantically with her tutor.

The following is J's summary of the play, written for our sake:

(for a more complete summary, check out:)
http://www.cherwell.oxon.sch.uk/arcadia/actshead.htm
http://www.sff.net/people/mberry/arcadia.htp

All of the action in this play takes place in a single room in a English country estate called Sidley Park. The play opens in 1809, and scenes alternate between 1809/1812 and the present. In the 1809/1812 scenes (the action jumps ahead three years between Act1 and Act2) a young girl Thomasina is being tutored in many subjects by Septimus. She is really a genius, though, and is fooling around with ideas of thermodynamics (the 2nd law figures prominently in the play) and fractal geometry (which of course hadn't been invented yet).

Meanwhile, Septimus is being called out for boinking the wife of another guest, Mr Chater, Mr Chater being encouraged in the duel by Captain Brice who is in love with Mrs. Chater. Septimus really is in love with the lady of the house, Thomasina's mother (Lady Croom), though, while his friend Lord Byron (the now-famous poet) is basically boinking everyone in sight.

So you're not confused, Mrs. Chater and Lord Byron never appear on stage.

The third plot line in the 19th century involves efforts by Lord Croom (opposed by Lady Croom) to tear up the pastoral grounds of the home in favor of a Romantic landscape, which involves a Holy mess made possible by a "new and improved" steam engine, brought to Sidley Park by the landscape artist, the obsequious Mr. Noakes. The Romantic landscape includes ruins, craggy rocks, and general gloom, along with a hermitage that becomes important in the present-day scenes.

In the present, three scholars are trying to reconstruct the events that occurred at Sidley Park back in 1809-1812. Hannah, an independent scholar (basically a gentleman scholar but she's female), is trying to determine who the hermit was who lived in the hermitage. Bernard, a flamboyant Byron scholar who (unbeknownst to Hannah) panned her last book [note that there is much in the play about the disdain academics have for independent scholars], is trying to prove a theory has has that Chater was killed in a duel, but with Byron, not Septimus, but he doesn't even have proof that Bryon was ever at Sidley Park.

Meanwhile, a Croom descendant, Valentine, is trying to come up with a mathematical model that describes the population flucuations of grouse on the estate over a century. His data comes from the estate's game books, which are a record of who shot what when. These game books are central to the resolution of Bernard's theories. Valentine's sister, Chloe, is not trying to prove anything but falls in love with Bernard.

The final character is Gus/Augustus, who is the brother to Thomasina (as Augustus in 1809/1812) and to Chloe and Val in the present day (where he is called Gus).

Note that Thomasina is 13 at the beginning of the play, and 16 at the end. The play ends the evening of her 17th birthday. That's important. Also, try to follow the fates of Septimus and Mr. Chater.

Language is critical to this play, so pay attention to the wordplay. for example, the beginning lines are a play on words involving the word "carnal" and its root meaning "of the flesh", as in meat, as in carnivore. Also, pay attention to the many parallels between the two time periods, especially lines spoken by characters in each period.

A final note, so you're not confused: in the final scene, characters from both periods are on stage at the same time, with the present-day characters dressing in 19th century clothes for a party. In this scene, Hannah discovers what happens to Mr. Chater by reading Lady Croom's diary, while Lady Croom is speaking the very same lines on stage. It's an amazing juxtaposition, but hard to catch if you're not looking for it.

Other things to watch for:

1. Septimus slipping his letters into a book that will be discovered 200 years later by the present-day scholars. (and note that he burns two of Byron's letters)

2. The drawing of Septimus with his tortoise, kept by Augustus late in the play and later revealed by his counterpart Gus.

3. Note how Lady Croom's description of the events that happen one night differ from the version given to Septimus by the butler.

Finally, there is too much in this play to catch everything, so just sit back and enjoy it!

-J

More on the play from J:

A major parallel in the play between 1809 and the present is the concept of academic review. In 1809 Septimus turns out to have panned Mr. Chater's two literary efforts, and ultimately it is for this, and not for boinking Mrs. Chater, that Septimus is challenged to a duel by Mr. Chater. In the present, Bernard panned Hannah's book but shows up at Sidley Park without knowing that Hannah is already there, so he tries to hide his true identity. Hannah gets over it, at least enough that she and Bernard help each other solve their respective mysteries.

One minor thing that I never understood until I asked Sarah: at one point Septimus is having Thomasina translate a difficult latin passage, which he then translates himself with ease. It's a passage from Shakespeare (leave it to Tom Stoppard to translate Shakespeare into Latin for a play), hence her anger when she realizes the true source.

Okay, I'll shut up now!

-J

M's addition to the explanation:

J promised not to send any more addenda, so I will:

The title of the play, "Arcadia", refers to a part of Greece that, according to legend, is sort of this idyllic pastoral haven.

The famous phrase about Arcadia that appears in the play is: "Et in Arcadia ego"
It appears, most notably, as the title of some well known painting of a bunch of shepards standing around a tomb.

Roughly translated it means either 'I, too, am in Arcadia' or 'Even I am in Arcadia'. The distinction matters because, in the former the idea is that the dead Shepard has made it to paradise. In the latter case, generally accepted as more likely, the idea is that Death (with
a capital 'D') appears even in Arcadia.

There is a bit of playfulness in the play about how to translate this phrase. The implications, though, you'll be able to figure out. There's death in the form of a duel, there's the death of the
landscape after the redesign, there's the death of academic theories, and there is the death of a bunch of people's ideals, all of which can be seen in the context of the title.

Okay, now I'll shut up too!

M

What A Storm

Last Friday Dec. 9th saw the first major snow storm of this season. It started early and when I went on my late morning commute, there were already two inches accumulated. However, we still braved the weather to go to Chinatown for a delicious lunch. At that point, the precipitation changed to rain. An hour later out of Hong Kong Eatery we were greeted by gusty winds swerving larger-than-before snow flakes and lightenings in the sky. Promptly thunders followed. This was really odd that lightening and thunders accompanied a winter storm here in Boston. I soon learned that we were very lucky that we made back just in time to escape from the worst of the storm.

Stata Center, 2:28pm

Stata Center, 2:34pm

Stata Center, 2:56pm
Auto focus on camera stopped working. There was nothing to focus on! I used manual.

Stata Center, 3:53pm

Stata Center, 4:07pm.
Clearing from the west. Sunset.

Campus, 6:27pm

A Mostly Black Sculpture

Festive Lighting

Beauty is only Illusion

I got this in my mail today. Per my friend's instruction: look at these faces closely (real close); then step back, look at them from afar. What do you see?



I was really amazed at the trick my eyes played on me. Then I talked to the friend who sent me this. We took a drawing class together two years ago. She claimed that this perfectly illustrated our drawing teacher's point of "from afar (or when squinting) we see shadows; we see lines when we get closer". How come I couldn't remember our teacher ever said that? No wonder I can't draw well!

Pumpkin Buns 南瓜饼

I have wanted to make these pumpkin buns for at least a month now because they look so happy and so fit for autumn. Finally I made them for my friend's small gathering last Saturday. It took me more than two hours in total to make these 8 buns, and that was really unexpectedly long. However, I was really glad that they were well received by the hosts and guests. My little friend, Emma, probably gave me the most unique approval, though at 14-months of age, her vocabulary is only limited to "要" and "不要". She first started by licking the outside of the bun; then she licked the red bean paste inside and ate that. In the end, she was taking big bites of the sticky flour skin and the filling altogether. She said no words, but I knew she really liked it.

Here is the recipe in case you want to try it in your kitchen (note: the amounts are only my guesses):

pumpkin: 1/2 pound
sticky rice flour: 1 pound
sugar: ½ cup
red bean paste: 1/2 pound

Microwave or steam the pumpkin until it's well done. I think steaming might be better. I had to microwave it forever.

Remove the skin. Chop/blend (or use whatever method you like) to mash the cooked pumpkin. Make sure not to add water to it (it's wet enough!).

Add 1/2 cup of sugar (add more it you have a sweet tooth), and 2 cups or more sticky rice flour. Mix well with the mashed pumpkin. Keep adding flour until the dough is no longer sticky to your hands. Divide the dough into 2, 4, 8, or 16 (or more) smaller pieces. Make a small circular wrap with a piece of dough, and wrap some red bean paste inside to make a bun. Use a knife to make the shallow incisions so that the bun resembles a pumpkin. Steam for 5 to 8 minutes.

Devour.

Two Evenings with the Orchestra (Part II, Julia Fischer)

Julia Fischer after the last note

Thanking the conductor

Greeting Associate Concertmaster Tamara Smirnova

Conductor Pavvo Berglund at the end of the concert

The second evening I went to the Symphony was on October 25th. The program was the last of the four concerts celebrating the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Sibelius' Violin Concerto. The conductor, Pavvo Berglund, was Sibelius' fellow countryman. The Finnish conductor, one of the most distinguished musicians, has won his reputation on the podiums of the world's greatest orchestras. Not until he appeared on the stage did I know that the old gentleman had to walk with a cane. He conducted the whole concert (about 2 hours) from a chair placed on the podium. Even though he was not free to walk, his music ideas, expressed through his baton with the orchestra, were brilliant and upbeat. His conducting was anything but an old and fragile man.

Julia Fischer, the 22-year-old German violinist, made her BSO debut with the Sibelius Concerto. Her 1750 Guadagnini violin in her hand, she walked onto the stage in a red dress, very beautiful and elegant. Before I went to the concert, I checked out Julia's website. I saw that concert-goers in Boston had already signed her guest book and she had really impressed her audience. Thus seeing her bowing gracefully on stage to the audience, I had already started loving her. Music ensued soon after. From her violin came the melancholy opening, quiet, sweet, and nostalgic, like the northern wind sweeping through a wintry landscape. The violin concerto is in B minor. So it was no surprise that it was a little sad and moody at times. But it eventually went through a lot of developments and in the end of the third movement, it gave the audience a satisfying upbeat ending. I had not paid much attention to this concerto before because I was too absorbed with the big four violin concerti (Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky). But since this concert, this has become my new favorite.

My observation: Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe did not participate in the violin concerto, though he showed up for the Shostakovich Symphony and played some prominent solo themes. My understanding: 一山不容二虎。

I totally love Shostakovich's 8th Symphony! From all that I could find in the program I had the impression that this was a very sad and dark piece and so it was a big surprise that it was relatively very much upbeat. Maybe it did not end in the ultimate triumphant note, but in my opinion, the darkest symphony would be Tchaikovsky's 6th. Shostakovich's 8th is a long symphony, running for more than 1 hour. I especially liked the third movement. It was very rhythmic and witty and I thought that it was some kind of dance. Only afterwards did I learn from the program that it was a death march. Oh well. Who says I have to follow the program? I have my own rights to imagine.

Here you can listen to excerpts:

Sibelius Violin Concerto - BSO, Leinsdorf, Perlman
It shows the technique, not necessarily the beauty of the concerto.

Shostakovich's 8th Symphony - BSO, Previn

全民都博客

这世界变化是快。忽如一夜东风来，漫天遍地的到处都是博客。我这回时髦可是赶大发了。我可不是什么写手，从来作文是我的弱项。这个博客呢，只是想用来分享我近期的照片和胡思乱想什么的，毕竟我那个摄影的网页更新起来比较麻烦。只可惜我写得差，读者都很少的。

大概一个多月前，看到了张海迪的博客，我真得很兴奋。海迪姐姐是我小时候的榜样。我们小学生中学生都学习她身残志坚，刻苦学习的精神。这么多年以后又在网上遇见她，读她写的充满感情的文字，看她每天更新，真是一种很奇妙的感觉。

然后就发现新浪在实验他们的博客了。他们邀请了一系列的名人 建博客，真是个不错的商业构想。我也很无聊地跑去看，居然有一些炙手可热的明星什么的。看一下可不得了了，这下知道哪个明星有文化，哪个明星没水平了。徐 静蕾不错。李冰冰还行。范冰冰就没什么意思了，只知道每天贴自己的大头照，好像怕有人不知道她漂亮似的。哎，我喜欢的她的歌声的张靓颖怎么也那么没水平呢，真让我失望。

大家都写博客，所以我都怂恿爸爸也弄一个了。爸爸爱写文章，但是还不知道网络的好处。要是哪天爸爸也博客了，那就全民都博客了。

The Near-Demise of My MP3-Player

Last year before I embarked on a two-week trip back home, I searched for a portable mass storage device for backing up my digital pictures in lieu of a laptop PC. I landed on an Archos Gmini220 based on its good reviews at dpreview.com. At 170 grams and 20 GB, it is a small yet powerful device with a multitude of functions: it plays mp3, wma music; it records voice; it reads data from a CF card and downloads on to its hard drive; it displays JPG images (in gray scale). It was just what I wanted for a long trip. I used the Gmini220 to store digital picture on at least two trips and I was very happy with it. Lately the main use of the Gmini has been an mp3 player. I have about 14 GB of music on the device to choose from according to my taste and mood of the day. I find the large storage very necessary.

Then last Friday I listened till the player stopped. I thought that the battery died. I couldn't wake up the screen. That was normal. But something was strange: the light on the power button was still on. A bit odd. I didn't think much. I pressed on the power button to shut it off. I recharged it. I wanted to listen to the Sibelius Violin Concerto again because I want to write about it in my Part II of Two Evenings with the Orchestra. I pressed the power button. The screen lit up. Then it froze and in the mean time the device made several clicking noise. Very abnormal. After a long wait, the device said, "read access error: can's read from hard disk. Power off." OMG! If you can't read the hard disk, you can't do anything!

Panicking, I googled online for that error. There is not much information about it. Basically many things can cause read access error. It could be the firmware, or electrostatic, or simply a defective hard drive. The last thing is the one thing I worry about these hard drive-based mp3 players: it is not solid-state. It breaks when it's dropped. I dropped mine once, about 10 months ago. That can't be the reason why it's not working now. I updated the firmware, about 6 months ago. I recently installed Chinese font, two weeks ago. I had the player in my pocket while playing it this afternoon. No running or jumping. Nothing seemed to explain the read error. And of course, my player was out of warranty. I tried all the tricks people talked about: press on power button for 10 seconds to reset the player; plug in and unplug from a USB. Nothing worked. I checked its CF card reader function. That still worked. So it can't be the firmware. I was starting to get really frustrated. I was ready to open it up and had already started looking for a replacement 1.8" hard drive, which turned out to be very rare.

I suddenly realized how much I depended on this player. True, these ear buds in lab somehow make us stay in our own isolated realm (we probably have one player per person), but music makes tedious repetitive lab work less boring. Besides, now no one can complain about other people's choice of music. I loved my player. I still haven't used much of its recorder function yet.

Turning to our resident computer expert Dave for help, I plugged my player into our newest, most powerful PC. The PC couldn't recognize the new device because the player itself couldn't read. Dave was convinced that the hard disk wasn't spinning after carefully listening to it. Bad sign. He asked me to plug it into another USB that had been tested working. I turned off the player, and turned it on again. Miracle happened just like that: my mp3 player came back to life after two whole days' worth of revival attempts. I believe that it must be the powerful magnetic field of the new PC that released the electrostatic in my player. No matter for whatever reason my player came back to life, I am just happy that it did. It has been working just fine since. But I am not sure it will be my sole backup device on my next photo trip to, let's say, Africa.

A Life Well-lived

Roodi
April 15, 1998 - November 2, 2005

Roodi left us last Wednesday. It happened all so quickly. Now I still can't imagine that he will never come to work anymore. We are all very saddened by the loss of a very special member of the lab.



Roodi was our advisor's Vizsla (Hungarian hunting dog). Ever since he was a little puppy, he started coming to work daily. He was well trained. He knew he should never come inside the lab, so he stayed in the office on the carpet, most of the time. He brought us so much love and affection, and received so much attention from us in return. He had a certain routine: he would come to work early in the morning, and demand people to play with him for about 5 minutes. Then he would go to sleep in his kennel. He would wake up for his noon walk, waiting impatiently for Steve to come take him. He would basically take himself on the walk route (he needed help getting out of the building, though), running all the time only to stop at certain trees to jump at the squirrels, and to point at the corner of Walker Memorial to some imaginary animals. Coming back from his walk, he would play a rope toy called "Kung" for a long time, shaking the rubbery Kung so violently by the rope that it clashed with his skull while he ran around the office constantly avoiding all the furniture. He was just full of life. Though there were signs that he was getting old, such as the appearance of white hair on his chin, cauliflower-like skin tags popping out here and there, and worse, cysts on his chest and belly (which the vets said were benign). But he was only seven and a half, which was about 52-years old for a person. No one had expected him to go so soon.

Roodi was smart. He saw people putting on their jackets he would think that they would take him out for a walk. We tried not to put on our jackets in front of him. He understood several words such as "go out", "walk", "treats", "Kong", "ball". We would not say "go out" loud in the lab. Instead we say "go O-U". We couldn't even say "T", because he would associate that with "out". If you asked him "do you want...?" he would tilt his head sideways and raise his eyebrows as if expecting something. Sometimes he whimpered and whined to get attention. He hated fire drills. The fire alarm must hurt his ears. He would cry so sadly and loudly and I believe everybody in the building would hear his cry. His cry alone would get everyone out safely.

Though he was a hunting dog and he had the instinct to point and chase animals, Roodi was very timid. He was afraid of almost any new things to him, from a small magnet lion to a large inflated rhino. He was even afraid of ice buckets. Sometimes he would overcome his fear and become fond of certain things, or even become overly possessive, like what happened to the magnet lion or the mouse cover in the shape of a mouse. But sometimes he would run away as fast as he could to take refuge in his safe haven - his own kennel. That usually cracked us up.






Roodi loved people. Though he would bark at strangers and sometimes he was a racist (he especially liked to bark at young Asian females), he would get to know them very fast. If people got down to his level, he would not hesitate to bestow on them his kisses. He rolled over for certain people (he was very selective on this) and asked them to rub his belly. I heard that this was the ultimate show of submissiveness of dogs. That did not necessarily mean that Roodi was submissive. Most of the times he was, but he changed a lot since Strider arrived a year and a half ago. Strider is the younger Vizsla. Roodi was very dominant to Strider. Roodi bond to his caregiver very quickly. I took care of Roodi and his older sister for about a week around one Christmas. I left them for two hours on Christmas day. I came back home he was not in the living room where he used to be. He dashed into the living room hearing me and I was wondering where he was while I was away. I saw that my bed looked a little messy though I made my bed that morning. I could faintly make out the outline of a dog and four paw prints. I touched the bedding and it was still warm! It turned out that Roodi slept in my bed because he couldn't find me in the house but wanted to get closer to me. My bed, which had my scent, was the closest thing he could find! What a sweet dog!


To me, Roodi was a very special dog. He was my most loyal photography subject. I went through all the Roodi pictures I have taken over the years in the last couple of days. I was surprised that it came to a total of 2.5G JPG images. He had certainly helped me improving my skills.

It was so shocking when Dave told me that Steve postponed his trip because Roodi was very sick last Wednesday morning. The whole lab was very disheartened. I knew Roodi was in surgery and they found cancer on his liver and spleen. I thought that they would just remove the tumors and Roodi would recover at Angell's and come back to work later. But he didn't make it.

At least Roodi didn't suffer long. Just Tuesday he was still running around the campus like any other day. He even successfully begged Wendy and I into giving him a bonus walk around 1:30pm that afternoon. Like any other walk I took him on, he got so many compliments from people for his boundless energy and superb ball-catching ability. It was such a nice day: temperature in the 70s, only two days after two inches of snow. Roodi had the sense for a good day. I was so glad that I let him win, let him go on his usual walk instead of playing ball right downstairs. I will always remember him as an energetic dog that loved people's attention and released our stress and tension.

Rest in peace, Roodi. I will miss you a lot.

第一场雪

今年的第一场雪来得很早，而且来势汹汹。短短两小时就积了又湿又沉的两寸。忽然间发现原来好多树已经落尽了叶子，但有更多还是绿叶满枝头，除了几棵刚变黄的枫树。今年的红叶真的很奇怪。

下午二时开始下，到五点钟：


可怜的玫瑰：

Two Evenings with the Orchestra (Part I)

The Orchestra was the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Thanks to Jenny and the Symphony's educational program, I recently have attended two Tuesday concerts for free. It was not my first time with the Orchestra, but every time it always turned out exciting. What was different of these two Tuesday concerts was that there were quite a proportion of young audience. It was nice too see young faces at a concert hall for serious music.

The first concert I went was an all-German concert featuring Weber, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, conducted by the young German conductor Jens Georg Bachmann. The three pieces were all typical Romanticist music with very beautiful melodies and no restrains on emotions. You can hear an excerpt of Weber's Overturn to Oberon here (by the London Classical Players). It was a very happy and festival opening for an evening of music. The second piece was Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, which was first performed by his wife, celebrated pianist Clara. We had Andreas Haefliger as our soloist that night. The last piece was Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3, Scottish. The triumphant last theme was ringing in my head for a long time after the concert (so much better than a stupid Taiwanese pop song I picked up earlier that day). Coincidently I heard his Symphony No. 4 on radio that weekend. Both are very beautiful symphonies.

Now let's take a tour in the Symphony Hall (more than 100 years old!). Above the stage, you see this (it says Beethoven):


The balconies:


And sculptures on the walls:


Oh, I was sitting in D1, four rows behind the stage. I can see this: Scores for second violins on row 5.




Concertmaster (leader of first violins) Malcolm Lowe practicing before concert:


Even the piano movers wear suits:


Pianist Andreas Haefliger:

Rain, Rain, and More Rain to Come

No doubt it will make the wettest October in many years. We have had so many rainy days this month. Apart from the 9 consecutive days of no-sun about 10 days ago, we are now in the fourth day of such a stretch, again. What's more, this is a nor'easter. I hate the word "nor'easter". That means it is a storm that would linger on for a long time. So this one won't stop until sometime tomorrow. It is so windy and wet outside. It is just nasty.

I am going to the Symphony Hall tonight. What a program it will be! It's Sibelius' violin concerto and Shostakovich's symphony No. 8 (completed in 1943 during WWII). The latter is supposed to be excessively gloomy and despairing. It doesn't seem to be the best choice for this kind of weather. But Shostakovich himself said that his No. 8 was about beauty and affirmation: "Life is beautiful. All that is dark and depressing will disappear, depart, and the beautiful will reign."

Glass Pumpkins

Though it is colder and wet after 9 consecutive days of rain (still going), it does not feel like fall yet. Normally at this time of the year, we would see colorful foliage already. Maybe not in our backyard, but at least we could go north or west a little bit to enjoy the red and yellow display. Now it is soaked wet everywhere, I feel like going nowhere.

To cheer myself up, I found photos of glass pumpkins I took two years ago at the preview to the sale. I missed this year's annual glass pumpkin sale, not that I could afford buying anything (the cheapest price tag: $25), but I really wished to be able to take better pictures. The sale started at 10am. People came around 9am to get close to their favorites. I arrived at 4pm only to see a dozen or so left on the lawn. Oh well, there is always next year.

The Great Glass Pumpkin Patch

Close Up

My Favorite Pumpkin
Mmm, $155!

天漏啦

雨这样不停地下，已经是第九天了。下得新英格兰都发大水了，树叶儿也似乎推迟变色儿了。气象预报说今天下午可能会见太阳，怎么看不出来呢？九天没见太阳了，弄得人都很压抑，连实验室的宠物狗Roodi都病倒了。天快晴吧。

Cooks and Bakers 本周新尝试

There is an interesting article in this week's Dining In section of NY Times about the difference between cooks and bakers. I can't agree less with the author. It looks to me cooks just "invent" meals from whatever they have on hands, while to be a successful baker, you have to follow recipes. No invention or impromptu allowed, not until you have done a lot of baking.

I consider myself a cook. I can cook delicious dishes. One of my dishes won me an award. Seriously. And I have only once participated in any cooking competition in my whole life, ever. On the contrary, I'm not much a baker at all. So when I received a 2kg Trader Joe's chocolate as a Christmas gift at one Yankee swap, I decided to venture into baking. I searched all the cooking books that I couldn't resist from buying and found a recipe for brownies. I always think that American desserts are too sweet. So I cut back on sugar. I cut back on butter and shortening (gotta be healthy!). So my first brownies came out as a fudge. I tried again. Now it was somewhere between fudge and brownie. The consequence of these attempts is, I still have more than 1kg chocolate left to consume.

After reading that article, I realized that baking doesn't give a baker that much leeway as cooking do a cook. So I wanted to experiment again. This time I would follow the recipe exactly. I found a recipe from my favorite cooking site and I made these sesame seed cookies. They were putting on a trial at my friend's party last night and turned out to be a success!


Here is Allegro-tested recipe:

1 pound all-purpose flour (3 1/2 cups)
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 pound vegetable shortening
1/4 pound butter
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sesame seeds

In a large bowl or pan, mix together the flour, sugar and baking powder.

Microwave to melt butter. Add along with the shortening to the flour mix and work it in with your hands until well mixed.

Add the eggs and vanilla, and 1/4 cup of water, and work in well. The dough should hold together but not be sticky. If needed, work in a little more water, 1 teaspoon at a time.

Place the seeds in a shallow baking pan.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Pinch off a small amount of dough, about the size of a small fist, and cover the remaining dough with a damp dish towel. Roll the dough out into a long rope, about 1-inch in diameter. Cut the dough into 2-inch pieces.

Roll the dough in the seeds, pressing slightly to make them adhere. Place the seeded dough onto a large ungreased baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough.

Bake on the bottom rack of the oven until the bottoms are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Turn the cakes over and place the baking sheet on the top rack of the oven to bake for an additional 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on cooling racks.

Serve at room temperature.

Yield: 40 cookies
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes



Chinese Chive Pot Pie

这个呢，是本周早些时候第一次做的韭菜盒子。完全是cook风格，用完了所有的粉丝和鸡蛋。经四人数次品尝，评为优秀。“比四川小馆还好！”－－Pearl语。

CNN Offbeat Images 合肥的小猪运动会 及其他

Hogwash

Pigs swim in a pool during a piggy sports contest Wednesday in the Yaohai Park in Hefei, capital of Anhui province in eastern China.

今天看到这么可爱的照片，真为咱合肥骄傲。咱也有这么别出一格的创意。这些小猪的耳朵上都还带着钉，或者那是最新的计时器呢。

瑶海公园在哪里？

Follow the leader

Circus elephants from Africa saunter beside the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they are led from their trains Thursday to the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston in preparation for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

这张是我现在的“前院”。就是前天的事儿，我却没看见。可惜了。马戏团的大象从火车站走到剧场。蔚为壮观。

Photos and captions are from CNN.com, Offbeat Images.

Silkworm Journal II

I am a biologist. My colleagues are biologists. But what we study are tiny molecules (DNA and proteins), and at the best, cells in cell cultures. Thus the first day the silkworms made their debut to the lab, they became our instant stars. They go through so many developmental changes in their short life cycle. We just can't get enough of that. It makes me wonder, how on earth could all the genetic infomation directing all the complicated growth/transformations be packed in such a small nucleus. I just have to marvel at this magic life force.

Soon we learned another lesson from Nature. We had two polls for the silkworms. One was to guess in what order they start spinning. That didn't go well, because we started too late and before everybody could vote, they had already made their cocoons. The second one was to guess the gender of each worm. We had two weeks to decide since it took two weeks for the moths to come out. I'm very proud that I was the only one who got all four worms right. That is a chance of 1 in 16! I didn't really guess. I made an educated guess: since I measured their body weight almost daily, I noticed the growth difference between Worm #1 and the others. It was 1/4 smaller than the others. So I assumed it's male. And it turned to be correct. It could almost make Male #1 and its harem. The guy came out from its cocoon first, and had to wait 2 days for the next female (#4) to come out. Apparantly #1 could hardly wait to mate with #4 when the latter appeared and the mating lasted for a whole day. The second day, #1 was mating with #2, who had been waiting for a whole day for that coupling. That lasted for a whole day, too. Then it was a long, heart-wrenching wait for #3. And she just wouldn't come out. One afternoon we heard the noise she was making. But she didn't come out that day, or the day after. Then I had to go to the Cold Spring Harbor meeting. When I came back, I performed a C-section for #3. It was a sad sight. She was a mutant that wouldn't able to secret the enzyme that digests silk (这可能就是中文里所谓的“作茧自缚”了). She stayed in her cocoon and laid some unfertilized eggs. I tried to revive her, but she was too sick. Even the most ardant Male #1 couldn't coerce her into mating. I was thinking, even if they had produced any progenies, some of them would still have carried the mutant gene. What's the use to force that then? Nature is somehow cruel. This is called the fittest to survive.

So here I write a journal to commemorate my summer pets. I have safely stored their eggs at 4 degrees Celsius, all ready for another generation next Spring. Until then, we can look at some pictures of them:


The Start of a Cocoon
有句词叫“春蚕到死丝方尽”，殊不知它们还有更多更重要的事情要做呢。


这个可以叫“蛾眉”吧，很像古代仕女的眉。真的很美。