Maple Sugaring I: Know Thy Enemy

In maple-sugaring, as in any other kind of warfare, a crucial first step toward victory is simple: know your enemy. Don't let these folksy trappings fool you. For, as Old Ken's grandmother knows only too well, behind these antiquated phones and cross-sections of (possibly totemic?) wood ...



... lives a cutting-edge maple-sugaring operation administered by one of the leading juggernauts and nicest guys in the biz, Willis Wood. As an occasional installment in our ongoing series of contributions to industrial espionage, Old Ken wants to share with you a bit of insight into maple sugar making as the pros do it.



And here is our featured professional, Willis Wood, pointing westward along the side of his recently-constructed sugarhouse toward the outdoor cistern into which sap from some 700 maple trees is collected by truck.



By underground pipes, the sap is then communicated to a reverse osmosis machine, which eliminates most of the water and concentrates the sugar-content. Normally, forty gallons of sap are needed to produce one gallon of maple syrup. But, once the sap is concentrated by reverse osmosis, the ratio can be reduced to eleven to one (as in Willis' case) or perhaps even low as three to one as some other producers claim. Obviously, the less sap required, the more sweet, sweet syrup you can make!



So, once the sap has been concentrated by reverse osmosis, it is pumped into a cistern ...



... and then boiled down in a massive evaporator.



Here, Tina Wood looks on as Willis tests some boiling, concentrated sap in the final chamber of the evaporating pan. So we learned, you can tell that the sap has nearly cooked down to the consistency of syrup when it hangs from the dipper in "sheets" rather than in drips.



Once it is ready, the boiling almost-syrup is drained into a metal jug, which is then carried to the finishing station.



And here is said station. Whereas the main evaporator is wood-fired, the finishing station runs on gas, which is presumably easier to control for the crucial operation of getting the syrup to exactly the correct temperature and viscosity.



Now, from afar or to those of us with a bit of a ... "poetic" sensibility, this may all look, taste and smell like some kind of sugary shambala.



But, let me tell you, friend, there's a lot of work to be done and no time to get sappy about it, if you'll pardon the pun.

Stephen Hawking: "Live" in Concert

In April of 2007, famed physicist Stephen Hawking experienced weightless in a zero-gravity environment aboard an aircraft designed by British tycoon Sir Richard Branson. So he explained to a packed audience of some four thousand plus in Pasadena's new (and architecturally dreadful) convention center, this was a special thrill for someone living with a disability as he does.

Although it might seem churlish to focus on his disability in offering a review of last night's talk on whether or not we should pursue further manned space flights, two factors make it almost inescapable. First was the extremely general and bland nature of the talk. His basic line was that space-race of the 1960s was a spectacular moment that captured the public imagination and inspired many young people to become scientists. To reap the same kind of off-shoot benefits that came from that project, what we need now are further manned missions deep into space and he then proceeded to elaborate what likely targets of those missions might be (the moon, Mars, etc.). Fair enough; but, also sufficiently pedestrian stuff that it could have been found in—and indeed sounded quite a bit like—programs announced early in the first term of George W. Bush. So, the talk simply didn't seem to be saying all that much.

Secondly, the presentation last night made Hawking body into the stuff of theatrical spectacle. After a series of introductions, he was wheeled down the center of this cavernous "ballroom"-cum-airplane-hangar to nothing less than the theme from 2001! Taking a cue from that film's soundtrack, we were then treated to Strauss' Blue Danube waltz as his wheelchair was pushed up a snaking ramp onto the stage. When finally placed in position near the podium, Hawking sat motionless (as he did for the entirety of the event) and the audience sat in hushed silence with the image of his tiny, contorted frame projected on the Jumbotron above his head.

Minutes passed and nothing happened.

Hawking's attendant returned and fiddled with some wires on his wheelchair. Still nothing.

Finally, what seemed like ten minutes of awkward silence, a faint mechanical voice trickled out of the public address system: "Can you hear me?" This address brought an appreciative, revealed ovation from the crowd and we proceeded to hear the brief, general talk from this great scientist who, nonetheless, remained unmoving - - even as if sleeping - - through the event. Apparently, so a subsequent speaker explained, Hawking's wheelchair is fitted with both a computer screen with a flashing cursor and an infrared sensor, which is able to detect tiny motions of his right cheek. So, by moving his cheek, he is able to pick out characters and form sentences. Thus, when he gives a speech, he is "releasing" these pre-programmed passages line by line to be read out by the voice synthesizer.



It is hard not to marvel at this discrepancy between the man's tortured body and his active, brilliant mind. But, it was also hard for Old Ken not to be reminded of Clifford Chatterley in D.H. Lawrence's famous novel. Blown to pieces in World War I, Sir Clifford returns to the English Midlands where he prowls his baronial keep in a motorized wheel-chair. Frustrated in his artistic efforts as a novelist, Clifford regains his shattered masculinity through an embrace of industrial progress and scientific improvement of the local collieries.

What's the implied by the analogy? Not that there is some strong correlation between the embrace of science and the torment of the human body, I hope? No, but perhaps that, despite best intentions, it was hard for this listener at least not to collapse the content of the speech and the motionless, seemingly-absent speaker "speaking" into one another.

CAA 2009: Operation Mindcrime

Professional conferences are often described as what we see here: meat-markets. Sweaty, nervous job candidates gather from all over the country to interview for jobs they probably won't get with sweaty, tired and gassy faculty in weird hotel rooms. To make matters worse, these conferences are frequently held in cold places in the middle of winter.



But, this year, the big art/art history conference (known in the biz as CAA) was held here in LA. A good choice by Old Ken's reckoning, as all that was required was a zip down the road ...



... and before you could say "the discourse of modernism and the modernism of discourse," there I was. Doing what, pray tell? Listening to some people rap about some stuff? Mixing it up? Hob-knobbing? Rubbing elbows with the high and mighty? Sneaking out of dismal sessions to make the scene at the book-fair? Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes!



Because I attended all of zero sessions last year—despite flying halfway around the world to attend the damn thing—Old Ken made a point of actually listening to some papers this year as well. Some, such as those by friend Dawna above, were insightful and interesting. Others ... not so much. Attendance was definitely down from last year, which is probably not surprising with the dismal economic situation and the fact that so many job searches have been canceled.



Still, there were some lively get-togethers and plenty of free drinks if you were feeling brave enough to do some gate-crashing. (FYI: the image above does not represent an open bar at a university party, although no doubt some good times could have followed).



One highlight for yours truly was definitely the Svetlana Alpers tribute session. As you'll recall from a previous post, Ms. Alpers has a central place in my heart and in my musical repertoire:

http://nicebirdrox.blogspot.com/2006/05/dream-song-or-svetlana-alpers-tribute.html

I had dreamed of smuggling a ukelele in and providing a serenade to the guest of honor, who we see in blurry form at right.

As is more-or-less accurately suggested in the song, Ms. Alpers has retired from academic art history and has parlayed her talents into a New York-based life as an art critic. Thus, when she was approached about being honored at CAA (so she informed an audience of probably 300+ at the conference on Thursday afternoon), she was hesitant. She didn't want the session to be about her or retrospective tributes to her past work; she wanted it to have a topic.

So, making the most of the intellectual parlor game dimension inherent in most of these conference sessions, she invented a topic ("painting/problems/possibilities") and, more importantly, assigned six images that the participants (who included Tom Crow, Stephen Melville and Carol Armstrong) had to speak to.



As we see them from left to right, top to bottom above, Alpers' choices were: Givanni Bellini's "Saints Christopher, Jerome and Louis of Toulouse" (1513, Chapel of Giorgio Diletti, Venice); Pieter Saenredam's "View across the Choir of the St. Bavokerk" (1636, National Gallery, London); Velazquez's "The Spinners" (1657-8, The Prado, Madrid); Leon Vidal, "Coffre dit d'Anne d'Autriche" (1873, MOMA, New York); Paul Cezanne, "La Montagne Sainte-Victoire seen from Bibemus" (c 1897, Baltimore Museum of Art); and Bradley Walker Tomlin, "Number 3, 1953" (1953, MOMA, New York).

So, in turn, each speaker was asked to speak to some or all of these images, using Alpers' work and key terms as stimulus to discussion. While the results certainly were not revelatory, it was amusing to observe how each speaker inevitably gravitated to one image over the others. (The weird photograph by Vidal, by the way, was very much the odd man out, as none other than Alpers herself spent very much time discussing it.)

"What was learned in the end?" we might ask. Well, to generalize about the conference as a whole we could say that certain topics remain in scholarly discussion at major national conferences far past what would seem to be their expiration dates. It's lovely to see old friends, even in a weird and stressful context like a professional conference. And, there's no time like the present to wear a horrible couch-killer suit!