Thoughts from New Albany

CERPP Conference Remarks: 2012

2012-02-02T16:02:00.004-05:00

University of Southern California Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice

21st Century Knowledge and Skills:
The New High School Curriculum and the Future of Assessment

Perspectives: Media, Politics, and the
Responsibility of Higher Education

Roderick G. W. Chu
Chancellor Emeritus, Ohio Board of Regents

January 13, 2012

I delivered the following presentation and remarks in Los Angeles at the USC CERPP 2012 Conference.

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1. The Case for Change from Within

2012-02-02T16:01:00.004-05:00

As Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents (the state coordinating board for Ohio’s public and private colleges and universities), I lived at the interface among the worlds of K-12, higher education, and politics, so I’m delighted to reiterate some of what I learned from our conference speakers and participants, to offer a few observations of my own, and to hear those my fellow panelist, Scott Jaschik, representing the Fourth Estate of the press and media.

Before getting into the topic, however, I need to ask: Why change? Harry Brighouse kicked off this conference with his though-provoking challenge regarding the purpose of education. Yet mine is a serious question, because in many ways, the school curriculum fundamentally hasn’t changed for about 100 years.

Indeed, our agrarian school calendar hasn’t changed for over 200 years, despite the fact that less than 2% of our population – and virtually no kids – work on farms and many students lose 70% of what they’ve learned in the school year during their summer breaks.

Despite the local control authority of over 10,000 school districts, our industrial one-size-fits-all model of education has persisted, in the face of students who learn different subjects better at different times and in different ways – the age-graded instead of ability-graded system that Morgan Polikoff mentioned yesterday – and of cognitive research that has found that our model successfully educates mainly the 25% of students who are abstract learners but not the 75% who are contextual learners.

Why do we continue to educate kids for our past, instead of for their future?

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote so persuasively on the impact of globalization and the Internet in The World is Flat – now almost 7 years ago. He brought popular attention to the fundamental sea changes that have occurred in the past decade.

At this conference 2 years ago, I noted forces driving change because of state policies. Since then, the impact of the Great Recession has settled in.

Per capita state funding in constant dollars for public colleges and universities has shrunk to its lowest point in 25 years and hefty increases in tuition has barely kept resources level, in the face of the highest enrollments in history. [SHEEO SHEF 2010]

Yet things continue not to change much, driving higher education further down the death spiral I described then of inadequate higher education funding resulting in graduates without the requisite capabilities to produce growth, leading to economic and social decline, producing further shortages in funding for education.

As one who has been tweeting the pearls of wisdom I’ve picked up during this conference, I am hopeful that a tipping point of public understanding on the critical need for dramatically improved educational outcomes may come about through the social media.

For example: this excerpt from the viral YouTube video, Shift Happens.

It has become clear to most Americans that the objective of making students college-ready is critically important economically – since an educated populace is the key to winning in a world of global competition, and a knowledge and creative economy – and continues to be the main defender of a free and democratic society. But it’s also becoming clear that we need to re-ignite the American Dream that Jaime Aquino spoke of so passionately last night – of enabling future generations to do better than the current one, socio-economically.

On the political scene, I see a continuing building of the Perfect Storm. Because of a muddling economy in most states and communities, there will be a continued inability and political unwillingness to invest what’s needed to dramatically improve educational attainment with 100-old strategies, techniques, and attitudes. Further, increased public demand will pressure politicians to transfer the heat they’re feeling, resulting in their demanding better performance and greater accountability for results, while at the same time, they continue not to invest more in the education of our children and adults.

The educational establishment will continue to do what it’s proven itself best at doing: resisting change. Millions of the K-12 teachers and college and university professors who will be retiring in the next several years will deny there’s a need to change, hoping to ride out this perfect storm until they retire.

Tristian Stobie’s graph yesterday Accelerating Change Demands Different Skills reminded me of Al Gore’s graphs in An Inconvenient Truth. Yet educators seem to be very much like those who deny global warming and their need to do something to contribute to a solution. Where is our Union of Concerned Educators, crying for action by our own colleagues to rescue our future?

So what hope is there for change? Will the Academy recognize higher education’s responsibility for school reform?

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2. Higher Education's Responsibility for School Reform

2012-02-02T16:00:00.006-05:00

Despite my gloomy introduction, I’ve always been tremendously optimistic about the ability of our higher education institutions to change the future.

After all, we in higher education have the privilege of working with the single biggest concentration of intelligence our country has!

If we adopt 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey’s habit of focusing on our circle of influence (what we can do), rather than our circle of concern (what we need to rely on others to do), we can reignite the American Dream for vast numbers of Americans!

Of course, changes to the Ivory Tower will be required. Higher education needs to take some responsibility to instigate and facilitate change. The Academy needs to become the change it wants to see in others.

For the first time in 900 years, the Academy no longer has oligopolistic control over the transmission of knowledge, as demonstrated by the Khan Academy and Sal Khan’s thousands of video instruction clips on YouTube, and MIT’s Open Courseware initiative.

For the Academy to remain relevant, it must become more than transmitters of knowledge. It must generate graduates who are critical thinkers and synthesizers, who can and do – as Trevor Packer stated – employ their thinking skills to translate knowledge into action.

But even if the Academy is willing to accept its responsibility as a collaborative partner in K12 curriculum reform, the challenge will be enormous.

We need to bridge the K-12/higher education divide.

The K-12 world has mainly been about authority and control, not results.
Our education colleges are now seen as our institutions’ cash cows rather than creators of colleague educators.
Higher education faculty disdain what’s being taught in their disciplines in K-12 schools, yet do little to change this sad state of affairs.

An example: Prof. James Loewen’s revealing picture of the sad inadequacy of K12 history texts and instruction in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me. Yet, as Trevor Packer noted, until faculty are recognized for helping their K12 colleagues, most won’t invest their time doing so.

In general, most colleges and universities don’t work effectively with elementary and secondary schools, despite their inability to successfully remediate the academic preparation of entering students in most disciplines, let alone the needed non-cognitive skills we don’t try to remediate.

Perhaps one reason for this failure of engagement is that we have competing objectives:

Some seek authority and control;
Others focus on job protection and salary increases;
Most faculty are concerned with professional regard,
research and publication, and
creating the next generation of professors.

Will the enlightened self-interest that David Conley mentioned – or public or political suasion – convince K12 and higher education that we must work together and agree on the primacy of one objective: Educational Equity, Excellence, and Success for All?

As Jaime Acquino challenged last night, America’s colleges and universities educate our nation's educators and we are somewhat culpable for their shortcomings. We also educate many of our local, state, and federal policy makers, and, I shudder to think, we are somewhat responsible for their shortcomings as well.

Higher education has claimed to be about developing critical thinking and synthesis abilities in our students. As we’ve heard throughout this conference, we need to be about more – about nurturing dispositions and the ability to act effectively on the knowledge we have imparted.

As Allison Jones and Christyan Mitchell noted, we need to define what students need to be life-ready and help them acquire these skills. We also need to help politicians, as Doug Christiansen mentioned, by declaring the achievement level required – cut scores on assessments – to do college-level work.

If “it takes a village,” we need to get out of our ivory towers and work with others in our villages to define and develop the needed knowledge and skills, attitudes and beliefs, motivation and behavior for many, many more to succeed.

We need to get beyond eduspeak and express cognitive and non-cognitive standards in terms students and their families can understand. If we want them to take responsibility for their own education, standards need to pass the “refrigerator test”: be in language and succinct enough to put up on the refrigerator door, so students and their families can work on and monitor their attainment progress.

As a former businessman, I was heartened by Carolyn Adams’ observation: Educators need to work with the employers of our villages. For when we do, we’ll find their standards for career-ready employees are the same, academically, as those for college entry. Actually, as Patrick Killonen just reported, recognized workforce needs are greater than those for college entry, since workers must have non-cognitive skills and dispositions not required to enter college:

Interpersonal skills such as teamwork – which, as I noted yesterday, schools call “cheating” – and
Intrapersonal characteristics, like integrity – in an era in which 70% of high school graduates admit to have cheated in school.

Getting American education out of our death spiral will take far greater wake-up calls than a former chancellor can muster. Perhaps the cries of public opinion and a greater exposure to the new realities from respected members of the media can help.

With that hope, I’ll turn the session over to Scott. Thank you.

Year of the Dragon

2012-01-22T21:40:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

To provide my friends with this interesting information, here is Ms. Lau's overall forecast for the Year of the Dragon, plus her predictions for how individuals will fare this year, given the animal that represents their birth year. (To determine what animal you are, see my table of animals for birth dates.)

The Year of the Dragon

1/23/2012 - 2/9/2013

A magnificent comeback after the recuperative year of the Rabbit. We will throw caution to the four winds and roll up our sleeves for all sorts of grandiose, exhilarating, colossal, overambitious and daring projects. The indomitable spirit of the Dragon will inflate everything to larger than life size. Somehow we will find ourselves bubbling with excess energy. It will be wise not to overestimate ourselves or our potentials in this combustible year. Things appear better than they actually are.

On the brighter side, business will be good and money can be generated or obtained easily. It is the time to ask your bank for a loan. Big spending and lavish plans are the rule of the day. The mighty Dragon sneers at the prudent and penny‑pinching. He gambles for all or nothing. He will stimulate us to think and act big, even overstepping the bounds of caution.

Orientals consider this to be an auspicious year to get married, have children or start a new business, as the benevolent Dragon brings good fortune and happiness.

However, this is also a time to temper our enthusiasm and look twice before taking a plunge. For although the lucky Dragon showers his blessings indiscriminately on all, he disappears when the time comes for making retributions for our errors. Successes as well as failures will thus be magnified. The Fire Dragon (January 31, 1976 to February 17, 1977) is especially feared, as he wreaks more havoc than the Dragons of the other elements.

In the Dragon's year, fortunes as well as disaster will come in massive waves. This is a year marked by a lot of surprises and violent acts of nature. Tempers will flare the world over and everyone will be staging some real or imaginary revolt against constrictions. The electric atmosphere created by the mighty Dragon will affect us, one and all.

How you will fare in the Year of the Dragon

Rat A very good year. Excellent business and romantic prospects. The Rat will have a smooth time with financial gains or promotions. But while the Rat could be recognized for his achievements this year, he must also be on guard against newfound friends who tend to use him.

Ox A moderate year as many changes and unexpected troubles keep the Ox busy. Plans will be realized but not as quickly as he wishes. He will have to work hard although he will come in contact with helpful and influential people.

Tiger Not much in store for the Tiger this year. He will find it hard to raise money or he may be influenced by others to make unwise investments. Some unhappiness foreseen, such as separation from a loved one or a break in partnership. He finds it difficult to adjust to changes even when they are for his own good.

Rabbit The Rabbit can expect a moderately happy but busy time at home and in his career this year. Things may be mixed or mediocre money-wise, but the Rabbit will still find it easy to be congenial and contented as his overall gains will exceed his losses. He may make powerful new friends who will prove useful.

Dragon A very good year for the Dragon native. Numerous benefits in store and he could gain recognition or make fantastic progress in his work. Success comes easily to all his undertakings as this busy and exciting year keeps the Dragon very occupied and alert.

Snake A difficult year in store for the Snake. No sizeable gains can be expected in business or career. He must beware of malicious gossip and jealous associates. The worst of his troubles will be over by summer and the cold weather should bring some welcome news. A year to avoid extravagances and hold on to his money.

Horse A mixed year. Many unsteady and unsettled affairs try the Horse’s patience and worries weigh upon his mind, causing health problems. He must not expect the worst. The storm will blow itself out and there may not be as much damage as predicted. A time to look to the bright side of life, cultivate friends and placate enemies.

Sheep Hectic but sober year. The Sheep’s gains will be marginal and although there may be numerous disputes he is fortunate not to face any major calamity. The Sheep will find it hard to accumulate money at this time, but he should ride out the storm admirably if he does not gamble or make drastic changes in his life.

Monkey Gains this year for the Monkey will be in the form of knowledge or technical know-how. The benefits he receives will not be tangible or immediately realized. Troubles and unsettled differences cloud his mind and he may have to spend his own money or savings to push his plans through. A year to watch and learn. He must not speculate.

Rooster A very good and prosperous year. Success shines on the Rooster this year as he is able to occupy leading positions or is given the power to shape his own destiny. Home-wise and health-wise, there may be frustrations that make him tense and tired. Birth or marriages in his family.

Dog A difficult year in store. The Dog will have to strive very hard to maintain his former status and may have to fight off the competition constantly. People take advantage of his weak position and he is susceptible to infections and contagious diseases. A time to lie low and join forces with others instead of acting independently. He will receive good news in the winter.

Boar A smooth year. The Boar will win the support of powerful people and be able to please his superiors. He will gain the recognition and respect of his coworkers. Family life is smooth but he could expect some health upsets or loss of personal belongings.

From: The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes by Theodora Lau, First Edition, 1979

Sous Vide 3: Hamburger

2011-08-07T00:51:00.000-04:00

Following the good example of Slow Food Columbus leader Bear Braumoeller, I bought some locally produced grass-fed ground beef at my local farmer's market and made burgers sous vide. The were deliciously palate-opening!

I took 1/3 of the 1 pound of meat I bought and gently shaped a burger patty. Just a little salt and freshly ground pepper, then into a Ziploc Freezer Bag. As with my other sous vide foods, I sucked the air out of the bag with a straw and sealed it.

Cooked the burger in its sous vide water bath at 127°F (between the temperatures recommended for rare and medium rare beef) for about 90 minutes. Very little of the meat juices had been exuded; they were almost all left inside the beef.

As with my other sous vide foods, the burger came out an unappetizing color ...

... but that was fixed with a quick 45 second searing on each side in a hot fry pan with a little oil. I accompanied the burger with slices of pan-grilled Vidalia onion and locally grown tomato.

The burger was uniformly and beautifully medium rare inside. The taste was remarkable: It had real flavor! The combination of grass-fed beef and sous vide preparation that kept the juices in the meat made a real difference in taste.

The best grilled burgers I've had are at Squire's restaurant in my Mom's home of Briarcliff Manor. They're flame broiled and for 40+ years have been the juiciest, tastiest burgers I've ever had. (Okay, the $32 burger at db Bistro Moderne in NYC is remarkable, but it's filled with braised short rib and black truffle.) But even the Squire's burger lacked the flavor of my sous vide burger. Maybe it's because its meat juices drip out of the burger onto the bun.

I thought of how I always load my burgers with Heinz ketchup. I savored my sous vide burger without that condiment, enjoying every bite. This was the first time in memory that I chose to have a burger without ketchup.

I'm looking forward to making my next sous vide burger tomorrow without the salt and pepper to see how the grain-fed beef tastes really plain.

Sous Vide 2: Short Ribs of Beef

2011-08-06T17:29:00.008-04:00

Given my experience with the tenderness of sous vide steak, I recalled the incredibly tender short ribs I had 14 years ago prepared by chef Daniel Orr at NYC's La Grenouille restaurant. To this day, I've searched for but not found another short rib dish as tender as Orr's, with no sign of stringiness of the meat. Could he have cooked it sous vide?

I looked for several days for short ribs of beef and finally found some frozen at Carfagna's Italian market. After I thawed the vacuum packed meat, I was disappointed to find the pieces weren't the nice, thick, meaty short ribs I was accustomed to, but rather thin and fatty. Nevertheless, I cooked on.

With the 8 pieces in the 2 pounds of short ribs I had bought, I tried two different recipes: classic, with salt, pepper, minced garlic, and olive oil; and Chinese, with five spice powder, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Again, simple preparation: I rubbed the spices in, packed the meat in 1 quart Ziploc Freezer Bags, and poured in the oils; sucked the air out with a straw; but this time, the recommended cooking time was 36 to 48 hours at 133°F for medium rare.

By the second day of cooking, though, I had been invited out to dinner for that night. So I took out one packet after about 40 hours of cooking to try as an afternoon snack. It was the Chinese preparation.

The meat was medium rare and nicely tender. I thought the bag had leaked, though, as there was a lot of cooking liquid; I noticed a small hole in the bag, caused by a sharp rib bone.

While the meat was tender, it wasn't ethereally so, and the gristle between the meat and bone was chewy, though edible. When braised in the normal way, the gristle is very tender. I left the other pieces to cook.

I took out the other pieces for lunch the next day - a total of 62 hours cooking! I opened the classic style ones. They still looked medium rare. There was less cooking liquid too; these bags hadn't leaked.

I pan seared the ribs for about 45 seconds on each side to give them their classic browned appearance. Sliced open, the were still medium rare.

They tasted like my favorite part of a roasted prime rib: the outside layer between the fat and the rib eye. Although that part is always well done - and I like my beef very rare - it is the most flavorful and tender part, given all the fat that marbles and surrounds it.

The short rib meat was succulent and very tender - and it didn't have the stringiness that braised short ribs always have. The gristle was still chewy, but tender enough to eat and enjoy. I savored eating every piece, though there was rather little meat, given the big bones and thick layers of fat.

I'll have to try sous vide short ribs again with some meatier pieces. I think I may have discovered chef Daniel Orr's secret to his short rib preparation at La Grenouille in that truly memorable meal I had so many years ago.

My Memorable Meals: La Grenouille, January 24, 1997

2011-08-06T17:22:00.003-04:00

My first trials cooking sous vide reminded me of a truly memorable dinner I had many years ago at NYC's La Grenouille restaurant. I wrote about that experience back then, included in notes I shared with friends on my Restaurant Week experiences in 1997. Here's that write-up:

For the sake of completeness, I need to describe how I got involved with this group of bargain seeking gourmets [my fellow 1997 Restaurant Week diners]. Richard and Peggy Hsia invited me to dinner in January. Their hobby is eating at NYC’s finest restaurants. I introduced Richard into the Cuomo administration (he had been a Wall St. lawyer and was looking for something more fulfilling; he became a Deputy Insurance Superintendent). I first dined with them years ago at the old 4-star Restaurant Lafayette at the Drake Hotel (where the aforementioned Jean-Georges Vongerichten began his rise to stardom). Richard asked if I would prefer Daniel or La Grenouille. I picked the latter, having not eaten there for many years (I used to eat there often, when I took Andersen recruits to lunch there in the 1970s). They invited Ray Chen to be the 4th at our table. Once he was invited, Ray called the maitre d’ and asked if he could ask the chef to do something special for us for dinner, since it was Peggy’s birthday. Here’s what I can recall of the menu 6 months after the event (alas, I can’t find my notes on it).

When we arrived, the maitre d’ told Ray that everything had been arranged. We were started with a small timbale of cold mung bean noodles that we enjoyed while looking over the wine list. We selected a modestly priced bottle of Bordeaux (the wine markup in these restaurants is an outrageous 300 to 500%!). Then came a demitasse of soup, described as “tomato bouillon,” a clear broth with small chunks of tomato and a lot of intensely flavorful minced green herb of some sort—really interesting, fresh flavors.

Our first entree was a slab of grilled stripped bass, topped with an extravagant amount of shaved truffles. As we were waxing poetic about the flavors of the dish, the captains presented a tray of roast pheasants. They took them back to the kitchen to be carved while we had a sorbet intermezzo.

The pheasant servings were presented topped with a slab of truffled foie gras paté, all in a rich, heavily reduced sauce. I noted how I had stopped eating pheasant because it is always dry and stringy. Yet this pheasant was moist and tender! At this point, chef Daniel Orr came out to greet us. It also became clear why we were given a normally-thought-to-be-undesirable table near the kitchen: Ours was the only table that the chef stopped by to greet. As we complimented him profusely about the dinner, I started to tell him how I normally don’t eat pheasant. He interrupted, saying: “Yes, it’s normally so dry. But I’ve found that if you don’t overcook it, pheasant can be moist and tender.” I had to agree and promise to try it again—but only if he cooked it.

I knew we were in trouble when the waiter reset the table with silverware. We were given a 3rd entree: braised short ribs of beef in a heavily reduced truffled sauce. I had seen other diners having this from the normal menu. It’s a dish that’s been made popular by Lespinasse at the St. Regis Hotel. This is a dish that is normally tender, but stringy (indeed, in dinner I had at Lespinasse a few weeks later, it was stringy). Yet the version here was fork-tender, yet held its form—something of a miracle! When the chef came out for a second visit, I tried to ask him about how he achieve this miracle, but was drowned out by the praises of my fellow diners. At this point, we cried “Enough!” and proceeded to dessert.

The 4 of us shared one round of 5 different desserts. The plates were cleared and were offered another round of 5 other different desserts, plus petit fours. Every kind of dessert was among them: from the classic French fruit tarts I recalled fondly from 20 years ago, to the more California-like presentations.

Although Richard treated, I managed to catch a glimpse of the bill and saw it was for the normal $75 per person, plus wine.

Sous Vide 1: First Trials

2011-08-05T23:37:00.001-04:00

Inspired by rave reviews in cooking shows and by my foodie friends, I had to try cooking Sous Vide. It's a cooking technique where food is sealed in vacuum pouches and cooked a long time submerged in water at relatively low temperatures - the temperature at which the cooked food should end up. Made popular by famed chef Thomas Keller (The French Laundry, Per Se, and the recipes for the movie Ratatouille), the cooking method is often seen on Iron Chef America. I've tried cooking a few things so far and they've all come out wonderfully tender.

Keeping food within the narrow cooking temperature range required by this technique requires special equipment. I ordered a SousVide Supreme Demi from Bed Bath & Beyond through my local store (using a 20% off coupon, saving over $20 in handling costs rather than ordering online), which cost < $280 net and arrived less than 1 week after I ordered it.

I immediately tried soft-boiled eggs, since my friend May Lee's Facebook description of Onsen Tamago sounded so yummy. Easy to do: I just plunked a couple of raw eggs into the warm water after the machine brought the temperature up to the 146°F. I cooked them for about 1 hour. (While the cooking times are long, given the low cooking temperatures, the cooking times aren't strict, since once the food is done, it can be kept at that temperature without harm.) The eggs came out as others have described: The yolks were custardy; the whites, somewhat runny (the yolks cook require a lower temperature to cook through).

I tried cooking salmon steaks next. This required sealing the salmon pieces in plastic bags and sucking out the air. (Air is an insulator that prevents the food from cooking properly.) Rather than spending $150 for the SousVide vacuum packing machine, I tried using 1 quart Ziploc Freezer Bags. Preparation was quick and simple. After seasoning the fish, I sucked the air out of the bags using a soda straw. I cooked it to between rare and medium rare - according to the cooking chart: 122°F for about 45 minutes. I usually eat salmon sashimi raw on the inside, just quickly grilled on the outside, to keep it from being cooked too dry. The medium rare sous vide salmon came out creamily moist and tender.

Next I experimented with chicken leg quarters. I tried a recipe for chicken with 40 cloves of garlic - reminded me of one of the first recipes I tried ages ago front the Galloping Gourmet, cooked in a Romertopf clay pot - here leaving the skin on, seasoning with salt, pepper, herbs, garlic, and olive oil. Cooked at 176°F for 6 hours, as recommended in the recipe. When it was done, the pouch had a lot of oil, making the preparation somewhat akin to a confit. Under the broiler to brown the skin after cooking. I was a little disappointed: The chicken was overcooked and I preferred the taste and texture of my various chicken curry and stew recipes. The 176° had made sense to me, since that's the temperature I roast a whole chicken to. Now I see other recipes calling for cooking chicken legs at 140°. I'll try that next time.

Then on to a rib eye steak. Like the salmon, I seasoned it simply with a little salt and pepper, sealed the bag, and let it cook at 127°F for 1 hour to a rare medium rare. As recommended, I quickly pan seared the steak after its sous vide treatment to provide a crusty brown outside. The uniformly cooked steak had a nice toothy texture, yet tender throughout. My leftover steak was even more impressive the next day served cold in thin slices.

Since the salmon, chicken, and ribeye were experiments, I had bought inexpensive supermarket fish and meats and didn't bother taking pictures. My mistake! Despite their humble origin, the salmon and steak were fairly impressive in taste and appearance, worthy of showing.

Also, the Ziploc bags worked fine. With the chicken, partway through the cooking I saw a big air bubble in the bags causing them to float. I clearly hadn't gotten all the air out. So I just unzipped the bag, used my straw, sucked out the air, resealed it, and let it go on cooking.

The experiments were fairly successful, so on to the next round. Since cooking sous vide results in food that is incredibly tender, I wanted to try it on short ribs of beef. More to come.

Midwestern friendliness and the flu

2011-02-18T14:46:00.004-05:00

A few days ago, I came down with a mild case of what I conclude is the flu. A little headachy, slight body aches, fever that progressed daily from 99.4° to 101.4° to 100.8° to normal today, and a general blah feeling. With my Internet connection, I was comfortable at home, keeping in touch with family and friends via facebook and email. I got a lot of sympathy and good advice.

This morning, my pastor, Kai Nilsen, called to alert me that he was stopping by in a few minutes to drop off some chicken soup and a bagel for me (and he's not even Jewish!). Kai and his family have become good friends of mine, but I really am not accustomed to church pastors making house calls! I took advantage of the sunny 60° day and went outside to meet Kai. I thanked him for the soup and the bagel – but neglected to thank him for the gifts of his kindness and friendship – and explained I didn't want to risk giving him the flu, so didn't give him my traditional hug or invite him in to my virus-laden home. I did say that I was floored by the fact that I had received a house call from my pastor – on his day off – and would be posting the fact on facebook.

Kai's visit ranks way up there in my book, on a par with my having personally been cooked dinner and served by then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius in her Kansas Governor's Residence. I've told all my family and friends around the world that my life in Ohio is distinguished by the genuine friendliness of people here. Today's experience is another example of that friendliness.

This is the first time I've had the flu since 1988. I've been good at getting my seasonal flu shots each fall. I also take Chinese Yin Qiao Jie Du Pian herbal cold pills at the first sign of a sniffle. Despite these precautions, I got the flu – or maybe because of these precautions, my flu was mild. Or perhaps the mildness the result of the midwestern friendliness that I've been so blessed with.

In any case, I recalled and stuck by my doctors' old advice for the flu: "Stay in bed for 3 days. You may feel better the second day and want to go to work. If you do, you'll relapse and be in bed for 2 weeks." So I stayed home, drank plenty of fluids, including my Mom's new recommendation: honey and cinnamon in hot water (I used hot green tea, taking advantage of another friend's recommendation). I feel almost completely normal now – and very blessed. Still, I'm going to limit my contact with others for the next couple of days to be sure I don't spread any lingering virus particles.

Cornell Asian Alumni Association's 2011 Banquet

2011-02-05T00:52:00.008-05:00

"More than any other person I know, [Rod Chu] is an international leader in higher education." – President Emeritus Frank H. T. Rhodes

The Cornell Asian Alumni Association had its 20th annual banquet on Jan. 22, 2011 at Grand Harmony Palace restaurant in Chinatown, NYC. Here are the videos that my good friend Chester Mah took of the entertainment and speeches from that fun evening.

The 350 guests who attended the dinner were astounded by a performance of Bian Lian - Chinese Face Changing Dance - by Master Jiao, introduced by Matt Palumbo. Can you count how many times he changed masks?

Did you notice that he also changed his costume? How many times? Here's a closer view that I got with my handheld camera.

I am especially happy to share these videos as I was the honoree at this year's event. Bringing greetings was President Emeritus Frank Rhodes, who was introduced by CAAA President Monica Gelinas.

Martin Tang, a Trustee Emeritus of Cornell and past CAAA honoree, came from Hong Kong to support the banquet. He introduced me ...

... and presented me with CAAA's award.

Here's the video of my remarks, which I entitled Reverence for Education - and Our Educators.

The text of my remarks is in my earlier blog.

Next came a vibrant performance of traditional Korean percussion by the student group Shimtah. This video was posted on YouTube by the group.

It was an absolutely delightful evening. I'm glad we have these videos to remind those of us who were there how much fun it was, and to enable me to share the evening with my family and friends who couldn't be there.

Johnson Dean Joe Thomas, Winston Tom, Frances Wong, President Emeritus Frank Rhodes, Frances Chu, Rod Chu, Monica Gelinas, Matt Palumbo, Cornell V.P. Susan Murphy

Congratulations and thanks to the Cornell Asian Alumni Association President Monica Gelinas, Banquet Co-Chairs Winston Tom & Frances Wong, Matt Palumbo and other committee members, and all my Cornell friends and supporters who made this 20th Anniversary Banquet so memorable.

Thanks to Chester Mah for all his hard work in taking and editing the videos and hundreds of photos! You can see Chester's photos of the evening on his photo website with password = banquet.

Year of the Rabbit

2011-02-02T23:22:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year!

Few Chinese Horoscope books contain overall prognostications for the year. In my large collection of these books, one of the few that does is the first edition of Theodora Lau's The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes, published in 1979. Unfortunately, in the later editions of this book, her overall predictions for each year have been removed.

To provide my friends with this interesting information, here is Ms. Lau's overall forecast for the Year of the Rabbit, plus her predictions for how individuals will fare this year, given the animal that represents their birth year. (To determine what animal you are, see my table of animals for birth dates.)

The Year of the Rabbit – 2/3/2011-1/22/2012

A placid year, very much welcomed and needed after the ferocious year of the Tiger. We should go off to some quiet spot to lick our wounds and get some rest after all the battles of the previous year.

Good taste and refinement will shine on everything and people will acknowledge that persuasion is better than force. A congenial tone in which diplomacy, international relations and politics will be given a front seat again. We will act with discretion and make reasonable concessions without too much difficulty.

A time to watch out that we do not become too indulgent. The influence of the Rabbit tends to spoil those who like too much comfort and thus impair their effectiveness and sense of duty.

Law and order will be lax; rules and regulations will not be rigidly enforced. No one seems very inclined to bother with these unpleasant realities. They are busy enjoying themselves, entertaining others or simply taking it easy. The scene is quiet and calm, even deteriorating to the point of somnolence. We will all have a tendency to put off disagreeable tasks as long as possible.

Money can be made without too much labor. Our life style will be languid and leisurely as we allow ourselves the luxuries we have always craved for. A temperate year with unhurried pace. For once, it may seem possible for us to be carefree and happy without too many annoyances.

How you will fare in the

Year of the Rabbit

Rat: A calm and quiet year. Still, the Rat must be careful with money. There may be some misunderstandings within his family or at work, but he will make new contacts in business. New members will be added to his family.

Ox: A fair year for the Ox, although he still has many loose ends to tie up and other problems to settle. He could still lose on some investments or fail to collect debts owed to him. His health is protected although he may experience some sorrow at the death of someone close to him. Progress is steady.

Tiger: A happier year for the Tiger. Some good news is forthcoming and his love and business affairs look rosy again. There are still obstacles in his path, but he will surmount them with little difficulty. All in all, he will be quite content with his achievements.

Rabbit: A very auspicious year for the Rabbit native. Promotions, career advancement or financial success can be foreseen for him and he will reap unexpected benefits or recover lost funds. His plans are easily executed and there may be happy tidings at home or celebrations at the arrival or homecoming of new or old members of the family.

Dragon: Calm returns to the Dragon’s life in the year of the Rabbit. Fair progress can be expected as the winds of fortune blow on his sails again. His home life is more settled, although he could experience minor health problems. A stable time as no financial upsets or bad news await him.

Snake: A fairly happy year for the Snake although many commitments keep him very busy. A year of not being able to spend enough time with those he likes because of fulfilling other promises. Money comes and goes easily.

Horse: A lucky year for the Horse, especially in his investments. His life will be smooth but very involved. He can expect happy news or new members in the family. A protected year in which he can venture anywhere and encounter few problems.

Sheep: A fair year as the Sheep chalks up some gains at work and in his finances. He could also suffer an upheaval at home or some repercussion for past neglect. Health problems are caused by accidental injuries. But he will emerge from all his troubles with more gains than losses.

Monkey: A good year. The Monkey’s prospects are bright again and he will receive help from unlikely people or places. Tranquility is restored at work and home, and business is back to normal although his gains will only be modest. A time for him to seek out new opportunities or make changes in his environment.

Rooster: A fair time for the Rooster if he remains conservative in outlook. Investments this year are shaky and he should not speculate, as loss of money is indicated. He is also prone to miscalculations and his profits may be eaten away by unpredicted expenses. It would be advisable for him to join forces with others this year instead of acting independently.

Dog: A favorable year for the aspirations of the Dog. He can start his own business this year or go into partnership. He will be able to advance his position and can reorganize things for the benefit of others. Problems are solved with a minimum of complications.

Boar: A fair year for the Boar with some modest results. Obstacles still crop up but there will be no major upheavals. He makes some financial gains and is able to consolidate his position to a good degree. Home life is calm and happy. Much entertaining and socializing foreseen.

"Reverence for Education - and Our Educators"

2011-01-23T13:57:00.006-05:00

The Cornell Asian Alumni Association honored me at its 20th Annual Banquet on Saturday, January 22, 2011 in Chinatown, NYC. The following are my remarks to the 350 guests who attended. I've posted the videos of my speech and the evening in another blog.

Introduction

President Frank Rhodes, thank you for your eloquent, kind, and generous remarks. We are all honored by your presence here this evening, but sorry your lovely wife Rosa couldn’t join us. We wish her a speedy recovery. We are all indebted to you for your outstanding leadership and continued service as Cornell’s 9th and one of its greatest presidents.

Martin Tang, you again have demonstrated your love and commitment to Cornell and your fellow Asian Alumni by flying over from Hong Kong to support this evening’s festivities, and also agreeing to take on the difficult task of finding something nice and impressive to say about me. Thanks for all you’ve done and continue to do for Cornell!

Acknowledgements

There are so many others here whose presence I should acknowledge. Given the large number, I was tempted not to do so.

I recall the numerous weddings and new baby parties I’ve attended in this and other Chinatown restaurants in which speakers went on and on introducing the attendees. I used to get upset and weary of these long acknowledgements until a speaker explained – in English for the non-Chinese speaking guests – that the reason these acknowledgements are made – as they have been for thousands of years – is that these dignitaries were the legal witnesses of the event, serving the purpose of a being able to attest to it.

So permit me to extend Chinese tradition by acknowledging some of the many notable guests here at this evening‘s 20th Annual Banquet of the Cornell Asian Alumni Association.

Please hold your applause until after I get through them all – or we’ll be here all night!

Cornell Executives:

Student Affairs Vice President Susan Murphy
Cornell Plantations Director Don and Sue Rakow
Cornell Art Museum Director Frank Robinson
Industrial & Labor Relations Dean Harry Katz
Johnson Dean Joe and Marney Thomas

My family and friends – some who’ve come from afar to be with me on this special evening:

My mother, Frances Chu, from Westchester
My niece Karen and her husband Gian – both Cornell Class of 1996 – and their children AJ and Alexandra from Boston
My longest and dearest friend from our high school years together at the United Nations International School Dr. Michael Richardson, who flew in from Chicago for this evening and his daughter Adassa
Johnson School Classmates from class of 1971 – Randy Hatch, Tom Senker, and Jack MacPhail
Friends from NYC, NJ, CT, and Westchester, including celebrated WPIX newscaster Kaity Tong, fashion designer Zang Toi, and philanthropists Miranda and Hamburg Tang

The Chancellor of the State University of New York, and my friend and colleague from our years together in Ohio, Nancy Zimpher.

Cornell Trustees: Gene Resnick, Bob Harrison, Marcus Loo, Paul Salvatore, and Sheryl WuDunn

Members of the Cornell University Council’s Administrative Board: Ken Gurrola, Annie Wong, and my fellow vice-chairs Katrina James and Jay Taylor

CAAA President Monica Gelinas, banquet committee co-chairs Winston Tom and Frances Wong, and all the banquet committee members.

All the students who took a break from their studies to come down from Ithaca to be with us this evening.

And finally, CAAA's past honorees: Martin Tang, Sheryl WuDunn, Jane Hyun, and Annie Wong

My apologies to all of you whom I inadvertently failed to mention by name, but thank you all – friends of Cornell and of the Cornell Asian Alumni Association – for coming and making this evening so special!

Thank you also for your support for the idea of a new Pan Asian Garden at the Cornell Plantations. Congratulations to Plantations Director Don Rakow for all you have done to make the Plantations a place that continues to inspire and inform generations of Cornellians and visitors.

Now everyone smile so I can capture this moment for Facebook! If you want to see the photo, please “friend” me on Facebook – look for Roderick Chu.

Reverence for Education

I am especially pleased that Cornell Trustee and past CAAA Honoree Sheryl WuDunn is here this evening with her husband, NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. They jointly have won a Pulitzer Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

I follow Nicholas Kristof’s postings on Facebook and was pleased to see his column this week entitled “China’s Winning Schools” because it provided a wonderful backdrop this evening.

In his column, Mr. Kristof explains that 4 of the 5 places in the world with the highest student educational performance in math, science, and reading have a Confucian legacy of reverence for education.

As a College Board Trustee and Chancellor, I’ve seen the results in this country, with students of Asian heritage, on average, outpacing the educational performance of whites and other minorities.

Growing up with a Confucian father and grandfather, I was the beneficiary of my family’s high expectations and sacrifice to provide me the best education I could get.

My mother, of course, joined in those expectations and sacrifices, and has been an exemplary role model of integrity, achievement, and giving. She is our dinner co-chair Frances Wong’s predecessor as a president of the Rotary Club of Chinatown. Among her many notable accomplishments, Mom was one of the first woman Rotary Club presidents in the world – when she was the first Asian woman vice president of Chemical Bank – and continues to serve on her Rotary District’s Foundation Board. And like most moms, she’s also been very proud and encouraging of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Thanks Mom!

Importance of Education – Our Debts

About 12 years ago, when was to receive my first honorary degree when I was Ohio’s Chancellor, my Mom told my then 99-year-old grandfather that both his grandson (me) and his great-grandson (Karen’s brother) would be receiving doctoral degrees that year. She told me how my grandpa perked up and said (in his native Toi Shan dialect) that he didn’t realize that I had gone back to school. When my Mom told him I hadn’t, he gloomily told her “Oh, that doesn’t count. Those are the kind of degrees they just give away.”

Despite my achievements in private business, in government, and in education, in some ways I had always been a failure in my dear grandpa’s mind because I hadn’t earned a doctoral degree.

I remember how disappointed my father was when I wasn’t admitted to Cornell for my undergraduate studies and so went to a slouch of a school, the University of Michigan, instead. Pop had been admitted to Cornell after returning from his post-World War II U.S. Army assignment in Shanghai, where he met the beautiful young woman who would become my mother. However, as a poor immigrant, even with the GI Bill benefits, he couldn’t afford to attend the school of his dreams and instead enrolled in Hunter College. This is why I am so pleased that CAAA and my family have endowed student scholarships at Cornell for needy students.

I’m glad I was able to get admitted to Cornell for my MBA and experience the wisdom of my father’s dream of getting a Cornell education.

I tell you this story because it says how important our families can be in keeping our egos in check. But also because it demonstrates Nicholas Kristof’s point of how important securing a good education for their kids is and has been to so many Asian families throughout the world.

The sacrifices my parents made afforded me the opportunity to learn from them and from talented faculty and fellow students in some of this country’s finest schools.

That education has served me well and my education has continued throughout my life. I’ve learned how vitally important education is not just for personal success, but also for the vitality of our communities, our nation, and our democratic way of life.

This realization is why I am passionately continuing to seek ways we can better educate all Americans – so we can re-kindle the American Dream that I’ve been so fortunate to have lived. It is why, in these difficult economic times, we must all continue to support our educational institutions and educators while at the same time insist that they reinvent themselves to take on the difficult yet critical task of successfully educating many, many more of our fellow Americans for an ever changing and challenging future.

Learning and Love

It was the German writer Goethe who observed “Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.”

So this evening, I am proud to acknowledge my debt to my family and my friends, but especially to my professor, advisor, and friend for 42 years, Joe Thomas, now Dean of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, who embodies for me the strength and love that most of us here tonight have for our dear Cornell.

I offer you all my very best wishes for a joyful, healthy, and bounteous Year of the Rabbit. Gung hai fat choy. Sun tai geen hong. Man see yue yee.

Thank you all for this wonderful honor and delightful evening.

Imperial Garden's Chinese Buffet

2010-10-15T22:45:00.034-04:00

Imperial Garden - Buffet-side Seating

On weekends for lunch, you might find me at one of my favorite Chinese buffet restaurants in Columbus: Imperial Garden. I love Chinese buffets, because Chinese food is my favorite cuisine. But when I eat out alone or with a few friends at a regular (non-buffet) Chinese restaurant, the old rule-of-thumb of ordering one dish per person to share means we don't get very much variety. Fortunately, at even a smallish good buffet, there's quite enough variety to satisfy my diverse hunger.

One requirement of any buffet, though, is that they have enough diners who will empty the food trays quickly enough to ensure that fresh trays of food are continuously coming out from the kitchen. I have tried almost every Chinese buffet restaurant in Columbus and have learned well enough to walk out if I don't see enough fellow diners in the restaurant. This has never been a problem at Imperial Garden.

Imperial Garden's buffet - offered only at lunch on Saturdays and Sundays - has the largest variety of really interesting and original Chinese (specifically, Shanghainese) dishes in Columbus. (Most Chinese buffets cater to an American clientele who prefer what is called "Chinese-American food.") And the dishes are really good here! However, most are dishes that most non-Chinese diners have never experienced. They have sometimes been labeled on the buffet, but the signs are written only in Chinese. So even if my non-Chinese friends are adventuresome enough to try new dishes, they have no idea what they are eating. This photo blog is for those friends, to provide them with a photo menu and diary of the dishes usually served there. Although they often introduce different dishes, many stay the same from week to week.

There are 2 buffet tables. Start with the one in the back of the restaurant. That one has appetizer dumplings and three soups: a savory soup, bean curd soup (to which one typically adds sugar to make it a dessert soup), and a sweet dessert soup (typically, red bean). It also has a few light desserts (usually sesame balls and orange wedges).

Pot Stickers

Cold noodles with hot pepper, bean sprouts, cilantro

Fish soup with preserved cabbage

My first plate selection, with Fried Cruller, Chinese Chive Dumpling

A selection of dumplings, some cold noodles, and a bowl of soup make a nice appetizer course.

On to the hot dishes: about 20 of them, plus 2 additional soups and rice. It's hard to have even just a little taste of all of the entrees, so I concentrate on my favorites the first time around, and go back for another plate to try other dishes. It would take a third plate to have a sampling of all of the dishes, but I never make it that far; I try to save space for a sesame ball and water chestnut gelatin, when offered, for dessert.

Although my family is Cantonese, Mom was born and raised in Shanghai. So while Pop and Yeh-Yeh (Pop's father) cooked Cantonese food at home and most Chinese restaurants in my childhood NY were Cantonese, it was a special treat to go to the 2 Shanghai restaurants in Manhattan (one in Chinatown, the other up on Broadway and 92nd St.). So both real Cantonese and Shanghainese food are comfort food for me - and it's certainly comforting for me to enjoy Imperial Garden's food.

Working on this blog is getting me hungry! I'm glad I've invited friends to meet me there this Sunday for lunch! If you'd like a personal tour of this food for lunch, just give me a call; I'd love to guide you and your palate!

Rice Noodles

Shanghai Bok Choy

Fried Chicken Wings

Roast Duck

Beef Tendon with Bamboo Shoots: my favorite!

Braised Pigs Feet

Chinese Radish with Hot Peppers

Sea Weed

Tendon Beef with Peanuts

Fish Fillets with Pepper Sauce

Chicken in Peanut Sauce

Pigs Ears with Vegetables

Baby Squid with Celery: another favorite

Pork Belly with Cabbage and Carrots

Japanese Eggplant

Pork Intestine with Tofu (don't say "yuk" until you try it!)

New Zealand Mussels

Pressed Tofu with Pork and Bamboo Shoots: my virtuous favorite

Salt-cooked Whole Shrimp

Beef Tripe

Egg Drop and Hot and Sour Soups

White Rice

Sweet Rice Sesame Balls with Black Bean Paste

Main Buffet Table

Das Rheingold - The Metropolitan Opera's New Production

2010-10-05T23:00:00.006-04:00

Robert Lepage's new production of Das Rheingold is a winner! I saw it last night in its third mounting at the Met. While Wagner is not for everyone, I came to enjoy his operas early on. His music is stirring – especially as conducted by the Met's James Levine – and the Met's cast, headlined by Bryn Terfel and Stephanie Blythe, gave magnificent performances, as they usually have done. My comments here, then, focus on the new production.

I had been concerned about what Lepage would do in his production of Wagner's Ring Cycle since seeing his production of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust 2 seasons ago.

For that opera, Lepage created 4 tiers of walkways in large frame for the Met stage, fronted and backed with video projection screens. It was a clever treatment to accommodate the opera, which was written with over 20 scenes (doing that many physical scene changes would have been challenging, even for the Met, and the set costs would have been prohibitive, given the relatively few performances the opera would have over the years). Still, the set didn't use the entire 54'x54'x54' space of the Met's huge stage; I've described that set as being more than the 2 dimensions of a video screen, but not fully 3D – more like 2 1/3 dimensions. Would Lepage limit Wagner's heroic scenes to 2 1/3 dimensions? Horrors!

My concerns were magnified with last season's Opening Night presentation of the new Luc Bondy production of Tosca, replacing the spectacular and much loved Franco Zeffirelli version. News stories of the event reported the production was loudly booed on opening night. I saw it 3 days after its opening and felt the sets, though somewhat minimal, weren't so bad.

But it was a tactical mistake to offer replacements of the lavish Zeffirelli sets with miminal Bondy ones on an Opening Night performance, in which patrons are charged a hefty surcharge and forced donation to see so little. How could the Met charge so much and offer so little to see?

The pre-production publicity about the new Ring Cycle production started to allay my fears. The stories of a gargantuan 45 ton machine in a production costing over $20 million certainly suggested there would be something to see. And seeing something is part of what opera at the Met should be all about. I find myself in a fundamental disagreement with NY Times opera critic Anthony Tommasini, who seems to dislike anything other than minimalist productions, often stating that the visual spectacle of grand productions by Franco Zeffirelli and others distract from the singing and the music. I can get minimalist anywhere – including Columbus, Ohio. With the world's largest opera stage and budget, the Met should mount productions that can be experienced only there!

Well, Lepage's production of Das Rheingold meets my criterion. And it enhanced the story of the opera instead of distracting from it.

The scene opens with the machine's 24 planks extended as a slope, then slowly tilting in unison, lifting and revealing 3 Rhinemaidens on cables to dangle before the angled undersides of the planks as if swimming in water. The visual magic continues, as the planks tilt further until the top sections are fairly horizontal – providing the Rhinemaidens a platform on which to rest – and the bottom sections tilt as a giant slide toward the stage.

The visual magic then started, with the sections changing from their blue hue to a field of river stones – stones that reacted to pressure from the Rhinemaidens' bodies. As the performers' tails swished or they touched their bodies to the platforms, the river stones slid down the slope, as real rocks would! At first, I thought these were carefully choreographed motions made to synchronize with projected movies on the planks. As I watched transfixed, though, the coordination was too perfect. Could it be the planks were touch-sensitive and the images moved in reaction, just as a computer's touch screen display would?

At that point, I longed to find an application for my computer that would replicate this magic! I recall seeing something similar in an app for my iPhone when I first got it. A quick Google search failed to locate such an app or website; finding one – if it exits – will take some effort.

For the rest of the 2 hour 35 minute opera – the longest single act in the Met's repertoire without an intermission (the cognizenti know to go to the bathroom just before the curtain) – the planks transform, becoming backdrop, roof, and stage.

I understood one of my fellow Opera Club member's comment that having seen the performance on Opening Night, he wished there were more use of video on the planks. Yet, perhaps, more video would have distracted from the performances. There are three more operas to come in the Ring Cycle; I expect Lepage will continue to dazzle even the most jaded Metropolitan Opera goers as his productions develop.

The other aspect of note in the production is the use of the planks as surfaces to be climbed – with the help of cables supporting the performers. Except for the Loge character – who walks backwards up the steeply angled planks (aided by a cable and winch) to sing a few of his arias – the singers are all represented by Cirque du Soleil-like body doubles in the same costumes as the singers when the cable walks are called for. When Wotan and Loge traverse to and from the Nibelung realm deep in the earth, the planks are used as an Escher-like staircase, with the stair treads mounted vertically, like a wall. The characters walk the stairs with their bodies jutting perpendicularly from the stairs, pointing straight out to the audience.

The final scene has the gods ascending the Rainbow Bridge to their Valhalla castle. They do so by walking straight up section of steeply angled and beautifully lit planks, their bodies, again, jutting out almost parallel to the stage floor. As they approached the top of the planks, they rotated to a horizontal position, admitting the gods to Valhalla. Visually and metaphorically, it was very powerful, in keeping with Wagner's stirring score. I'm glad the bridge worked for my performance; it didn't on Opening Night. The body doubles did such a good job that I heard some in the audience complain that they would force singers to undertake such strenuous physical activities! It was clear through the Leica binoculars that I use as opera glasses that it wasn't Stephanie Blythe who was walking up the Rainbow Bridge.

So my verdict: While I enjoyed the realism of the Otto Shank production of the Ring Cycle, I always felt it was visually rather dark and somber. Lepage's production is exciting, yet for all its theatricality, I didn't find it overly distracting. I'm ready for more! Number 2 in the cycle, Die Walkure, will premiere on April 22nd, then the remaining two come next season. They'll be hard tickets to get!

[Thanks to the Met's website and news stories on the web for the photos I've used here. The Met, of course, does not permit photography in the theater.]

Wicked: Questioning what we know

2010-09-14T23:30:00.023-04:00

As a frequent Metropolitan Opera goer, I haven't gotten out to see many Broadway shows in recent years. So I was delighted to catch up with the performance of Wicked during its latest Columbus run. While not the same caliber experience as the opening cast on Broadway, the touring company versions we get here compare well to the later casts of long-running shows in NYC. Wicked was no exception: bright, energetic, entertaining, with an appreciative audience; it made for a very enjoyable evening.

Wicked is currently the longest-running show on Broadway (it opened in Oct. 2003). I wanted to see it mainly to learn the backstory it presented to The Wizard of Oz. For those who haven't seen it, Wicked tells the Oz story from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. We learn how the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow came to be as well as many other aspects of the story that, thanks to Judy Garland, is so well known to all of us.

While I was being entertained by the show, songs, and story, I kept thinking how we grow up thinking of history in one way. Of course, The Wizard of Oz is fiction, not real history. But Wicked asks us think whether the story we know so well is what really happened.

So while I was watching and listening, I thought about Josephine Tey's book The Daughter of Time and learning at Cornell several years ago what the study of history is all about. (See my prior blog: Why Study History?) In her book, Tey turns around the story of King Richard III and asks the reader to question whether history's view of the wicked hunchbacked Richard portrayed by Shakespere in his play (and by Lawrence Olivier on the screen), is really accurate. History, after all, is written by the victors, and in Richard III's case, depicting Richard as wicked served the purposes of the succeeding Tudor dynasty. Tey raises her question, though, through a fictional mystery story, much as Dan Brown raised his question, 52 years later, on Jesus Christ's real relationship with Mary Magdalene in his wildly popular The Da Vinci Code.

A more direct history vs. history challenge has been raised by Gavin Menzies in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World in which Menzies challenges the story American schoolchildren have learned for generations: that the European explorers starting with Christopher Columbus discovered the sea routes that led to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The romantic history we were taught is that Columbus and other Europeans were so bold that they questioned the flat earth notions of the time. Menzies reveals documentary and other evidence that Chinese Admiral Zheng He led Ming Dynasty treasure ships around the world in and after the year 1421 and prepared maps that reflected the world - maps that ultimately Columbus and the other European explorers had seen that helped them in their voyages.

American education has long been criticized as being far too Euro-centric. My purpose in this blog entry isn't to carry on that debate (I'll leave that issue to a future blog), but to raise the issue of questioning what we know.

Questioning what we know can be a dangerous pursuit. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, wrote of the slings and arrows he suffered in questioning what we all think we know in his book and PBS show The Pluto Files. When Tyson and other astronomers downgraded Pluto's status from "planet" to "Kuiper Belt Object" he and his colleagues were vilified by the venerable NY Times and scores of third-graders (at least until the Times published another story, 5 years later, acknowledging the reasonable position the scientists had taken). So many of us learned (and had drilled into us) the fact that there are 9 planets in our solar system; that history must be respected and protected. As one who once aspired to be an astronomer myself, my sympathies are with Tyson. But the reasons for my sympathies go further.

One of the fundamental purposes of post-secondary education is to develop critical thinking. But thinking critically about issues - whether they be about stories, histories, or the definition of scientific terms such as "planet" - is not merely an intellectual ability. Critical thinking is also a disposition: a willingness to undertake the hard work of questioning what we are being presented with. Such disposition does not come naturally after 12 or so years of elementary and secondary school education in the U.S., since much of what we learn in school is so often presented as unquestioned fact to be accepted and memorized.

With the continually growing volume of factionalized political argument we are faced with, the future of our democratic system of government and the future of our country depend on our ability to instill more Americans with the ability and disposition to think critically about the "facts" we are presented with and the choices we are being asked to make. I am delighted that a Broadway show might get some in the audience to question what they know and so help underscore the importance of critical thinking.

King's Garden Restaurant - Dublin, OH

2010-08-21T22:31:00.004-04:00

I'm always looking for new Chinese restaurants in the Columbus area, so I was delighted to hear than an old one had reopened last week by a couple who had run a different restaurant that I used to frequent.

Jessie and Guill joined me at King's Garden Restaurant for lunch today. It's on Sawmill Road, about 1 mile north of the I-270 exit. It's a small place - only about a dozen tables - with no decor in yet another strip mall. Although the new owners were known for their dim sum at their former restaurant (Shangri-La), no dim sum here. But they did carry over their 2 menus - including their menu of real Cantonese dishes (fortunately, in Chinese and English here), as well as their Chinese-American menu.

So many interesting dishes - real Chinese comfort food! We started with Won Ton Noodle Soup and Preserve Egg w/ Pork Congee. Each was a big bowl, plenty for 4 or more to share. Then the Empress Fried Tofu (reminiscent of Pipa Tofu), Beef Stew With Daikon (with chunks of tendon as well as meat), and Eggplant w/ Anchovy Sauce (a nice change from the plebeian eggplant with garlic & ginger sauce).

Each dish had authentic tastes, but will be unusual for those not familiar with real Chinese dishes. And the prices are certainly reasonable. Since Jessie & Guill live nearby, they'll be stopping by for takeout on the way home.

I was very happy to find another authentic Chinese restaurant. The dishes were most like those at Imperial Garden on Hayden Run Road at their weekend lunch buffet (always jammed with Chinese diners). Unfortunately, both King's Garden and Imperial Garden are on the other side of town from me. Nearer me with a real Shanghai menu is Little Dragons on Morse Road just off I-71.

Even in little Columbus, we can get authentic home-style Chinese food. As I've been happy to say, I never have to apologize for the quality of food here in Columbus!

Hairy Melons - Restaurant Style

2010-08-12T13:17:00.004-04:00

Last year, I posted a blog on my adventure cooking a hairy melon grown by my friends, Roger & Sherran Blair, from seeds I provided. Well, this year, they grew more, but this time, I took them to one of my favorite restaurants to see how they would prepare them.

On Tuesday night, I dropped off 2 hairy melons with Andrew, owner of Ming Flower in Westerville, OH. He said for the 5 of us who would be eating, the 2 melons would be enough for 2 dishes, and he suggested a soup and a stir-fried dish. I also ordered a few other dishes that I've really enjoyed there, only one of which is on their menu.

Wednesday night, we arrived for dinner with guests Bob and Ann Reves and sat down to the first course: Hairy Melon Soup with Mushrooms and Pork. It was light and delicious. The melon was tender yet with still enough firmness to provide textural interest.

Next course: classic Crispy Skin Chicken. This is one of my all-time favorite Cantonese dishes. The whole chicken is blanched and seasoned, hung to dry for a day, then fried in a large wok of oil. Somewhat like Peking Duck, though fried, not roasted. Still, much too involved to do at home, given the huge wok of hot oil involved in the cooking. When it's done properly, the chicken is moist and juicy -- even the white meat. It's served with fresh lemon and seasoned salt, accompanied by shrimp chips. Ming Flower again did this dish wonderfully. No left overs here.

Then came the remaining courses. Stir-fried Hairy Melon with Pork, Straw Mushrooms, and Carrots -- a stir-fried version of our soup dish. It was a huge platter and again, light and delicious.

Chow Fish Kew -- chunks of fish filets -- with Chinese Broccoli and Ginger. The main components were clearly cooked separately then brought together, for the fish and vegetables were each perfectly cooked. This was the only dish that's on their regular menu.

House Special Pan-fried Noodles. A classic Cantonese dish, but not on Ming Flower's regular menu. The crunchy/soft pan-fried noodles were in a bed under the mixed meat, seafood, and vegetable sauce.

Our wines for the evening: a 2006 Grgich Hills Fumé Blanc and a 2006 Sterling Vineyards Reserve Chardonnay. Both went nicely with the meal.

It was a lot of food for the 5 of us, because each dish was banquet sized -- the equivalent of 2 times a normal order. Despite the quantity, we ate almost all of it because it was all quite delicious and light.

Roger picked up the bill, but I caught a look. It totaled only $63 for the 5 huge dishes! Andrew charged us only $5 each for the two hairy melon dishes -- quite a gift! I asked Roger to tip lavishly.

Ming Flower has become my "go to" restaurant in the Columbus area for Chinese food. Andrew and his son Sam have been incredibly accommodating to my special requests (see my prior blog on Chinese dinners with dietary restrictions), and the food always comes out delicious and interesting. I wonder how I'll challenge them next?

Chinese Pancakes

2010-05-22T11:30:00.012-04:00

Moo Shu Pork. Peking Duck. These familiar restaurant dishes are traditionally served encased in thin Chinese crepes.

I recall wonderful dinners in the late 1960s at the home of my parents' friends I-Cheng & Jane Loh. Their cook Wang Sao kept a steady stream of her freshly handmade two-layer pancakes coming out of her kitchen while we, in the dining room, gleefully peeled them apart, filled them with savory stuffings, and greedily consumed them for, it seems, hours at a time. As much as I enjoy cooking, the memories of Wang Sao's unceasing work while we ate kept me from every attempting to make my own Chinese pancakes.

In 2007, when my Mom and I visited her friends in the Chinese suburbs of Toronto, we were taken to a restaurant with Beijing cuisine - my first. I had grown up learning that the food of Beijing, as China's capital, was called "Mandarin" and represented the best of dishes from the various regions of China. Well this Beijing restaurant's menu was quite an education. The menu was filled with crepe-filled dishes. I concluded that Peking Duck became the most famous of their cuisine's filled pancake dishes.

Mom just reminded me, though, of a scene in Ang Lee's movie Eat Drink Man Woman in which the crepes aren't rolled out, as Wang Sao had made them, but are formed by swirling a lump of dough on a hot griddle. She asked for the clip to share with our foodie friends, so here it is:

The film's cook's skill reminded me of Chinese cooks making hand-pulled noodles - getting 1,000 to 16,000 noodle strands from a single lump of dough. It undoubtedly looks a lot easier to do than it really is!

A Moment in Time

2010-05-19T17:13:00.003-04:00

Mine is one of thousands of photos included in the NY Times' "A Moment in Time" website! Here it is.

In April, the Times asked its readers throughout the world to be ready to snap a picture of what they were doing on Sunday, May 2nd at 11 a.m., EDT and submit it to them for inclusion in this project. I knew I'd be in church and it would be at the end of the 10 a.m. contemporary service I usually attend at Peace Lutheran Church in Gahanna, Ohio. I took a seat in the area I normally do, thinking I'd get a shot of one of our pastors closing the service, along with the band and contemporary choir.

That Sunday, however, we had a guest preacher: Rev. Dr. Kevin Dudley, from the nearby Church at North Pointe, a fairly new congregation he had started. About 20 of us from Peace had attended a service at North Point in January as a way of starting to get our congregations to know each other as a prelude to possibly working together on ministry efforts.

Well, Rev. Dudley's wonderful sermon was more characteristic of the African-American style of worship service and ran a little longer than our usual 10-12 minute sermons, so the service was still running strong at normal 11 a.m. ending time. Pastor Doug Warburger concluded the service with a special prayer involving members laying hands on Rev. Dudley. Rather than joining the group laying hands on, I remained at my seat to take my photo. It was exactly 11:00 a.m. and that's the shot I got from my seat.

The idea of capturing a unique moment in time on earth and showing what thousands of people were doing at precisely the same moment in time is an intriguing one, and certainly one in line with my own practice of being a photo documentarian. That idea has been applied to the many books of photographs entitled "A Day in the Life of [country name]." Having admired those books, I felt that merely taking a beautiful photograph wasn't the point. I wanted to capture something happening just there and then - something that couldn't have occurred a moment after or before, or a day or year after or before. (Indeed, the Times reported they excluded photos that clearly weren't taken at the prescribed time - for example, a daytime photo submitted from China, where it was nighttime.)

Looking at many of the other photos submitted - many of them quite beautiful as photographs - I am pleased that my photo was one of a small percentage of those that captured a unique moment in time. I hope you enjoy the photos on the website.

If you like my photo, I hope you'll take a moment to "Recommend this photo" by clicking on the link at the bottom right of the photos in the Times website. Here's a link to my photo (please be patient - it will take several seconds for the page to load): http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/blogs/a-moment-in-time.html?ex=1289707200&en=fe1e232b8fb2e13f&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0519-L1#/4bddcc2e0bca2560ba00068f.

From there, you can surf to other photos by geography (click "Return to globe"), or subject (drop-down list). As the site warns, "Make no plans for the rest of the day" - it's a fascinating site to explore.

Chinese dinner - no gluten, no MSG, no soy, no pork

2010-04-05T22:48:00.009-04:00

A Chinese dinner with friends at P.F. Chang's? That was the chilling prospect unless I could come up with an alternative. The challenge: Compose a gluten-free, MSG-free, no pork dinner for 5 in a real Chinese restaurant.

On Thursday, I went to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants near my home - Ming Flower, in Westerville, OH - and consulted with Sam Mark, son of the owner, Andrew. Sam was very knowledgeable about gluten-free diets. No wheat, no soy sauce (there's MSG in most soy sauces, and the "G" in MSG is related to gluten). That eliminated so many dishes! Here's the menu we came up with:

Watercress soup
Crispy skin chicken
Fish fillets in cream of corn sauce
King Du pork chops
Jumbo salt-roasted shrimp
Sauteed pea pod tips with Chinese mushrooms
Yang Chow fried rice

Yes, I know: I said "no pork." Actually, I found out about that restriction on Friday. A quick call and the pork dish was replaced by:

Beef with Chinese broccoli

The dinner was a great success. My guests, Tally & Midge Krumm, Herb & Janice Wolman, and I had a great time.

Here are the dishes - some of which we were so excited by that I forgot to take photos until we had already eaten some.

The watercress in the soup was new to my guests. It was tasty, but proved difficult to eat by them. (I pointed out that in Chinese dining etiquette, one may pick up a large piece of vegetable or meat, bite off a piece, and return the remainder to ones bowl or plate.) Tender, thin chicken fillets substituted for the usual pork in the soup.

The chicken was a big hit. The colorful shrimp chips provided a textural comparison to the crispy chicken skin, contrasting with the delightfully moist chicken meat. A squeeze of lemon and pinch of sauteed seasoned salt provided exciting new tastes for my guests, who understood why this is my favorite Chinese chicken dish - one that's difficult to make at home, since the whole chicken must be fried in a large wok of hot oil as part of the preparation.

The fish fillets in cream of corn sauce was new to even me. I was pleasantly surprised with how tasty it was. The fish, coated in corn starch before frying, was moist and tender, in a nicely chewy crust.

Beef slices were very tender (though Mom would probably object to their being so because of the use of baking soda), and the perfectly cooked Chinese broccoli were nicely crunchy and vibrantly green, providing textural and visual contrast to the beef.

Sam warned me about the shrimp dish: Most Western diners are frightened by whole shrimp with their heads on. Still, I wanted them not only because I enjoy the flavor of the little bit of innards in the shrimp heads (the shrimp equivalent of the tamale in lobster heads), but also because it would provide a good conversation piece. I was right and my guests were good sports about eating them.

The closing vegetable dish provided a comparison to the opening soup, looking so similar, yet tasting so different. Eating the pea pod shoots tips was easier than eating the watercress, since the tips were more tender and by now, my guests were more comfortable using their chopsticks. The reprise of the Chinese mushrooms provided me an opportunity to explain the Chinese belief that any black food in Chinese cuisine is good for you. It's a belief concurred by Dr. Andrew Weil, who also recommends eating deeply colored foods for their anti-oxidant benefits.

The Yang Chow fried rice had bits of beef instead of the usual pork and was light, yet tasty, going along with the lighter flavors of the rest of the meal. I had forgotten to order a dessert, but orange wedges came on the house - perfect after so much else to eat!

Andrew and his staff delivered our dishes one at a time so we could enjoy each one leisurely and consume much of the large volume of delicious food. Even so, I got to take leftovers home that will feed me for a few meals.

Wines are always a challenge for a Chinese dinner. I brought along 3 wines from my cellar.

The 2006 Sterling Reserve Napa Chardonnay and the 2004 Lucien Albrecht Alsace Gewurtztraminer were both very full flavored. The 1998 Keenan Napa Merlot was nicely rounded. They would have gone very well with a more traditional Chinese menu, in which the dishes would have also been more heavily flavored. But with these lighter dishes, the wines - especially the whites - were a little overpowering. A Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris would have matched the food better. Still, we all had a good time and enjoyed the good food, nice wines, and great company. All this, while accommodating dietary restrictions!

Alas, I was feeling so good about the dinner and the delightful evening we all had that I forgot to ask Andrew to take a photo of my guests and me. Well, I guess we'll just have to do it again. But I'll have to challenge Andrew and Sam to come up with another menu within my guests dietary restrictions to stimulate us again with something new.

Year of the Tiger

2010-02-15T08:58:00.002-05:00

Few Chinese Horoscope books contain overall prognostications for the year. In my large collection of these books, one of the few that does is the first edition of Theodora Lau's The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes, published in 1979. Unfortunately, in the later editions of this book, her overall predictions for each year have been removed.

To provide my friends with this interesting information, here is Ms. Lau's overall forecast for the Year of the Tiger, plus her predictions for how individuals will fare this year, given the animal that represents their birth year. (To determine what animal you are, see my table of animals for birth dates.)

One of the few online sites I've found with both overall and individual forecasts is WayangTimes (it doesn't provide exact dates for the Chinese years, though).

The predictions are for a raucous year. Never mind. Let's all enjoy the beauty of life, family and friends! You might enjoy seeing my facebook album of the beautiful tiger paintings by famed artist Zhang Shanzi offering 10 New Year's wishes to you and your family for good luck, prestige, prosperity, happiness, safety, contentment, ease, health, longevity, success, and reunion.

The Year of the Tiger

February 14, 2010 - February 2, 2011

This is definitely an explosive year. It usually begins with a bang and ends with a whimper. A year earmarked for war, disagreement and disasters of all kinds. But it will also be a big, bold year. Nothing will be done on a small, timid scale. Everything, good and bad, can and will be carried to extremes. Fortunes can be made and lost. If you take a chance, gamble for high stakes, but understand that the odds are stacked against you.

People will do drastic and dramatic things on the spur of the moment. It is not surprising that Watergate and the drama of Nixon's resignation culminated in the hotheaded year of the Tiger. Tempers will flare all around and it will be a trying time for diplomacy. Like the Tiger, we will tend to charge without thinking and end up regretting our rashness.

Friendships, joint ventures and deals requiring mutual trust and cooperation made at this time are brittle and will be easily broken. However, the forceful and vigorous Tiger year can also be used to inject new life and vitality into lost causes, sinking ventures and drab or failing industries. It will likewise be a time for massive change, for the introduction of new and bold, especially highly controversial, ideas.

The fiery heat of the Tiger's year will no doubt touch everyone's life. In spite of its negative aspects, we must realize that it could have a cleansing effect. just as intense heat is necessary to extract precious metals from their ores, so the Tiger year can bring out the best in us.

Just one brief word of advice for this unpredictable year. "Hang on to your sense of humor and let things sizzle out!"

How you will fare in the Year of the Tiger

Rat: A moderately fair year. This year is unsafe for speculation and the Rat will be involved in some misunderstanding or be forced to take actions that are against his better judgment. He could feel some loneliness or sadness at the death of some family member or close associate. The Rat may also be required to travel more than usual.

Ox: A difficult time. The Ox will meet opposition from many sources but will be able to conquer or persevere through his hardships. He must be patient and not be disappointed if results are not immediately visible. A time for the Ox person to reassess his position. He must not take unnecessary risks or drastic measures during the reign of the Tiger.

Tiger: A moderately good year. The Tiger is lucky in the sense that others will come to his aid when he needs help most. Still, he should not take risks as things may turn against him. He will suffer no major illness or upheavals but may be forced to spend money or be unable to save.

Rabbit: A year in which the Rabbit must be extra careful and diplomatic, as he has the tendency to get drawn into conflicts. Lawsuits or disputes arising from unreasonable demands made upon him are prevalent at this time and it would be best if he is cautious about money or the signing of important documents. Otherwise, he will get by without too much hardship and could make some gains toward the end of the year.

Dragon: A worrying and taxing time. The Dragon's plans are blocked by others and he finds it difficult to achieve desired results without much argument. He has to choose between bitter camps of opposing views and finds it hard to please his associates. Home is disturbed by sad news or the departure of some member.

Snake: A year of small but numerous irritations. The Snake may be easily drawn into conflicts not of his own making and will find it hard to please those who surround him at home or at work. He must keep his sense of humor and not indulge in senseless acts of revenge. This way he will receive the help he seeks and avoid major upheavals.

Horse: A moderately happy year for the Horse. No health problems but a lot of entertainment and additional expenses foreseen. Advancement in his studies or on the technical side of his profession can be expected. Disputes or broken friendships could result from his losing his temper this year.

Sheep: A year of mixed blessings. The Sheep native can retain power but will have to strive hard to keep in step with the opposition. Family life is calm, but trouble with relatives is predicted. His work area will be busy but he has the opportunity to meet new and beneficial contacts.

Monkey: A very unsteady time for the Monkey. He is very vulnerable to the attacks of his enemies and may be forced to flee, travel, work for others or borrow money at high interest. People tend to take advantage of his weak position. He must remain patient and lie low. A year for him to consolidate his resources and refrain from embarking on new ventures.

Rooster: An eventful year. The Rooster is lucky with money and his business ventures could produce very fruitful results. Some worries at home, but his general plans go according to schedule. Still he should be careful this year as things tend to happen too fast for proper assessment. He must not be overoptimistic.

Dog: A moderately happy year. No serious disputes at home or office. Some romantic squabbles predicted but they will do no permanent damage. The Dog's net results this year will be mixed and he will be confused by conflicting reports. Friends and family will make too many demands on his time.

Boar: A tough and trying year. The Boar will encounter difficulties that he may have to face alone. A difficult time for him to borrow money or get back money due him. He may have many unexpected expenses or be forced to pay fines, legal fees or extra taxes. He must be very careful of trusting his associates at this time and attend to important affairs himself.

Chinese Zodiac / Horoscope Dates

2010-02-15T08:17:00.002-05:00

Chinese horoscopes are determined by one's birth date, according to the lunar calendar. Here's a table 12 Chinese zodiacal animals and the birth dates they represent.

ANIMAL START DATE - END DATE

Rat 01/31/1900 - 02/18/1901

Ox 02/19/1901 - 02/07/1902

Tiger 02/08/1902 - 01/28/1903

Rabbit 01/29/1903 - 02/15/1904

Dragon 02/16/1904 - 02/03/1905

Snake 02/04/1905 - 01/24/1906

Horse 01/25/1906 - 02/12/1907

Sheep 02/13/1907 - 02/01/1908

Monkey 02/02/1908 - 01/21/1909

Rooster 01/22/1909 - 02/09/1910

Dog 02/10/1910 - 01/29/1911

Boar 01/30/1911 - 02/17/1912

Rat 02/18/1912 - 02/05/1913

Ox 02/06/1913 - 01/25/1914

Tiger 01/26/1914 - 02/13/1915

Rabbit 02/14/1915 - 02/02/1916

Dragon 02/03/1916 - 01/22/1917

Snake 01/23/1917 - 02/10/1918

Horse 02/11/1918 - 01/31/1919

Sheep 02/01/1919 - 02/19/1920

Monkey 02/20/1920 - 02/07/1921

Rooster 02/08/1921 - 01/27/1922

Dog 01/28/1922 - 02/15/1923

Boar 02/16/1923 - 02/04/1924

Rat 02/05/1924 - 01/24/1925

Ox 01/25/1925 - 02/12/1926

Tiger 02/13/1926 - 02/01/1927

Rabbit 02/02/1927 - 01/22/1928

Dragon 01/23/1928 - 02/09/1929

Snake 02/10/1929 - 01/29/1930

Horse 01/30/1930 - 02/16/1931

Sheep 02/17/1931 - 02/05/1932

Monkey 02/06/1932 - 01/25/1933

Rooster 01/26/1933 - 02/13/1934

Dog 02/14/1934 - 02/03/1935

Boar 02/04/1935 - 01/23/1936

Rat 01/24/1936 - 02/10/1937

Ox 02/11/1937 - 01/30/1938

Tiger 01/31/1938 - 02/18/1939

Rabbit 02/19/1939 - 02/07/1940

Dragon 02/08/1940 - 01/26/1941

Snake 01/27/1941 - 02/14/1942

Horse 02/15/1942 - 02/04/1943

Sheep 02/05/1943 - 01/24/1944

Monkey 01/25/1944 - 02/12/1945

Rooster 02/13/1945 - 02/01/1946

Dog 02/02/1946 - 01/21/1947

Boar 01/22/1947 - 02/09/1948

Rat 02/10/1948 - 01/28/1949

Ox 01/29/1949 - 02/16/1950

Tiger 02/17/1950 - 02/05/1951

Rabbit 02/06/1951 - 01/26/1952

Dragon 01/27/1952 - 02/13/1953

Snake 02/14/1953 - 02/02/1954

Horse 02/03/1954 - 01/23/1955

Sheep 01/24/1955 - 02/11/1956

Monkey 02/12/1956 - 01/30/1957

Rooster 01/31/1957 - 02/17/1958

Dog 02/18/1958 - 02/07/1959

Boar 02/08/1959 - 01/27/1960

Rat 01/28/1960 - 02/14/1961

Ox 02/15/1961 - 02/04/1962

Tiger 02/05/1962 - 01/24/1963

Rabbit 01/25/1963 - 02/12/1964

Dragon 02/13/1964 - 02/01/1965

Snake 02/02/1965 - 02/20/1966

Horse 02/21/1966 - 02/08/1967

Sheep 02/09/1967 - 01/29/1968

Monkey 01/30/1968 - 02/16/1969

Rooster 02/17/1969 - 02/05/1970

Dog 02/06/1970 - 01/26/1971

Boar 01/27/1971 - 02/15/1972

Rat 02/16/1972 - 02/02/1973

Ox 02/03/1973 - 01/22/1974

Tiger 01/23/1974 - 02/10/1975

Rabbit 02/11/1975 - 01/30/1976

Dragon 01/31/1976 - 02/17/1977

Snake 02/18/1977 - 02/06/1978

Horse 02/07/1978 - 01/27/1979

Sheep 01/28/1979 - 02/15/1980

Monkey 02/16/1980 - 02/04/1981

Rooster 02/05/1981 - 01/24/1982

Dog 01/25/1982 - 02/12/1983

Boar 02/13/1983 - 02/01/1984

Rat 02/02/1984 - 02/19/1985

Ox 02/20/1985 - 02/08/1986

Tiger 02/09/1986 - 01/28/1987

Rabbit 01/29/1987 - 02/16/1988

Dragon 02/17/1988 - 02/05/1989

Snake 02/06/1989 - 01/26/1990

Horse 01/27/1990 - 02/14/1991

Sheep 02/15/1991 - 02/03/1992

Monkey 02/04/1992 - 01/22/1993

Rooster 01/23/1993 - 02/09/1994

Dog 02/10/1994 - 01/30/1995

Boar 01/31/1995 - 02/18/1996

Rat 02/19/1996 - 02/06/1997

Ox 02/07/1997 - 01/27/1998

Tiger 01/28/1998 - 02/15/1999

Rabbit 02/16/1999 - 02/04/2000

Dragon 02/05/2000 - 01/23/2001

Snake 01/24/2001 - 02/11/2002

Horse 02/12/2002 - 01/31/2003

Sheep 02/01/2003 - 01/21/2004

Monkey 01/22/2004 - 02/08/2005

Rooster 02/09/2005 - 01/28/2006

Dog 01/29/2006 - 02/17/2007

Boar 02/18/2007 - 02/06/2008

Rat 02/07/2008 - 01/25/2009

Ox 01/26/2009 - 02/13/2010

Tiger 02/14/2010 - 02/02/2011

Rabbit 02/03/2011 - 01/22/2012

Dragon 01/23/2012 - 02/09/2013

Snake 02/10/2013 - 01/30/2014

Horse 01/31/2014 - 02/18/2015

Sheep 02/19/2015 - 02/07/2016

Monkey 02/08/2016 - 01/27/2017

Rooster 01/28/2017 - 02/15/2018

Dog 02/16/2018 - 02/04/2019

CERPP Conference Remarks: 2010

2010-01-14T12:06:00.009-05:00

University of Southern California Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice

What Matters Now: College Access and Success
in the Age of Obama

In Sync: Linking State Higher Education Imperatives
to the New Federal Agenda

Roderick G. W. Chu
Chancellor Emeritus, Ohio Board of Regents

January 14, 2010

I delivered the following presentation and remarks in Los Angeles at the USC CERPP Conference on College Access and Success.

(continued ➛)

1. A Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal

2010-01-14T12:05:00.016-05:00

Faced with the greatest recession since the Great Depression, President Obama has offered not just an "audacious goal," as others have referred to it earlier in this conference, but a BHAG – a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal

– that "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world." We all welcome the President's recognition of importance of higher education in meeting the challenges of a 21st century world.

The State Higher Education Executive Officers - SHEEOs - have been carrying this message for years and provided important input to President-elect Obama's transition team as they formulated their agenda, and are delighted that they listened.

I'm honored that I was elected by my fellow coordinating and governing state system heads to chair SHEEO during one of my years as Ohio's Chancellor and am especially proud of the outstanding work that SHEEO's president, Paul Lingenfelter, has done in leading the organization's work –

so proud that I'm happy to borrow some of his slides to help inform my remarks today.

If you'd like more information on state higher education policy thoughts, please go to the SHEEO website where you'll find some of Paul's and others' presentations and white papers.

(continued ➛)

2. The Sad Reality

2010-01-14T12:04:00.008-05:00

Although higher education is the only investment that government makes that actually pays back (with an annual return of 15-20% on investment), our governments – especially state governments, for that's where bulk of operating assistance to colleges and universities comes from – haven't been making much of those investments.

During the past 25 years, state funding per student in constant dollars – the blue bars on this chart – has risen and fallen, pretty much in line with state economic conditions, but over time has basically been flat and slightly declining. Total state expenditures have increased in constant dollars during this time, since enrollments have risen – the purple line.

Per student tuitions have doubled, though, after adjusting for inflation – the top gray-green bars.

Our elected officials, good at "heat transfer," have pointed their fingers at America's campuses, blamed them for being profligate, and demanded they increase their productivity.

Institutions have responded by saying our elected policy makers simply need to understand the importance of higher education and provide adequate funding.

These arguments have been going back and forth for at least 40 years, but things haven't changed: Funding continues to be inadequate and campuses continue to do what they've always done.

However, the fact is that the U.S. does spend twice what the rest of the developed world does on educating each college student … and our higher education results haven't changed, while the rest of the world has been catching up and surpassing our college attainment rates.

(continued ➛)

3. The Problem

2010-01-14T12:03:00.008-05:00

Why? We've all grown up very proud of America's colleges and universities – for generations, regarded the best in the world. Almost all of us here are the proud products of that system – one in

which my friend, Frank Rhodes, now president emeritus of Cornell University, once quipped, provides the "finest hand-crafted education that money can buy," carrying on a 900-year-old tradition of university education.

Looking back, many politicians admit that they should have invested more in higher education when the economy was good and they had the opportunity, but the economy is now bad and they don't have the money.

But the blame doesn't fall solely on shortsighted politicians. The hard reality is that as other sectors have reengineered and reinvented their operations (wringing out costs while still maintaining and improving the quality of their products and services), the education sector hasn't fundamentally changed its teaching model of students learning at the foot of the master.

Colleges and universities have been among the most staunchly change-resistant institutions on earth. Change and innovation are simply not part of the Academy's DNA.

Or as my colleague Steve Portch from the University of Georgia has observed: "We have found it easier to change the course of history … than to change a history course."

I fear another cycle of inaction.

States, faced with a continued jobless recovery won't be providing needed funding for higher education. Worse, next year they'll have to make up for the lack of one-shot federal stimulus money.

Higher education, buoyed by finally having a president "who gets it," will continue to hold steadfast, hoping for more funding.

As a result, the recovery will be slow, not providing enough revenues to governments to make needed investments to better educate more Americans.

This vicious cycle will continue …
but in the 21st century knowledge and innovation economy …
and the harshly polarized politics we see today …
the undereducated will not have the needed critical thinking ability to
stem social as well as economic decline …
and the result will degrade from vicious cycle to death spiral.

I know this is as "downer" of a message – and I like to think of myself as an optimist – but this death spiral scenario raises thoughts of one of the Academy's own: Albert Einstein. In my decades of working with faculty, I have found that academicians love to sit and "admire" a problem, wallowing in a certain learned helplessness.

(continued ➛)

4. A Way Out

2010-01-14T12:02:00.008-05:00

So what's the alternative?

As a product of the activist campuses of the late 1960s, I say that higher education can take action and answer the call for increased productivity!

This isn't a cry for professors to teach more courses or to blindly exploit technology.

There are other routes to increasing productivity. But we need to get out of our centuries-old mental models of education.

Here are some possibilities – off-ramps from the death spiral.

The first opportunity: Change from a sole focus on access, to embrace completion.

The basic economics of higher education is that costs of higher education vary with enrollment, but payoffs from higher education vary not with credit hours earned, but with completion of academic objectives – typically degrees or certificates.

So colleges and universities can change by embracing the importance of completion, instead of merely access.

A new objective should be to help ensure that the students our campuses admit complete their educational objectives. Let's get out of the old role of being gatekeepers – ensuring "only the very best make it through," and recognize that everyone on campus has an opportunity and responsibility to help students get out, not just in.

The challenge, though, is not becoming K-12-like, cheapening standards or cut scores in order to increase completion rates, for that will do nothing to help the economy.

A second opportunity: Change from an academic model based on Carnegie units, to the holistic development and mastery of needed knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

Tackle the question: "What education is required for our graduates to participate successfully in the 21st century economy and contribute to a free and democratic society?"

We need to change from teaching only the things I'm good at as an educator or institution, to the effective education of the whole person; from a focus on the teaching process, to a commitment to the learning outcome.

The productivity of the participants in and graduates of America's colleges and universities is measured by their contributions to the economy and society – and these contributions are a product of their competencies.

How effectively are our campuses adding value to our students: identifying and helping develop not only what their graduates know and can do, but also what they actually will do.

A third opportunity: Shifting from once-in-a-lifetime education to continuous education – what Jim Duderstadt, President Emeritus of the University of Michigan has called moving from "just-in-case" education (where we open up students' heads and pour all we can into them by the time they're 20-something, "just in case" they need it sometime in the future), to just-in-time, and just-for-you education.

Help define and then provide what it takes to be an effectively educated person so graduates can begin working and then come back for additional education, as they need it.

With the continuingly rapid increase in knowledge, our graduates will need to continue to learn more throughout their lives, not only to get a new job, but indeed, even to keep their current jobs. We will need to invent new ways they can get this general and specialized education where and when they need it.

To achieve some of these opportunities, there will be a fundamental need: To define new concepts of compensation.

Our 900-year-old model of higher education is one in which we measure learning by credit hours accumulated at the foot of the master.

To tackle the question of developing and certifying competencies, we must change old mental and business models of seat time paid for to provide remuneration of educators.

We need to address the challenge set down over a decade ago by the then-president of the National Education Association, Bob Chase, who called for a new unionism in education – to move away from his union's singular focus on job protection and salary increases – a focus shared by their brothers and sisters in the United Autoworkers Union that had nearly killed the U.S. auto industry.

(continued ➛)

5. Transformational Leadership

2010-01-14T12:01:00.011-05:00

These may sound like impossible changes for the Academy undertake.

Yet there are leaders committing to transforming higher education:

Leaders like Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, who has led his university colleagues in developing The New American University.

And lest you think that adopting such a shamefully "vocational" view of higher education is something that only public campuses might consider, let me refer you to Liz Coleman, President of Bennington College, who has called for a Reinvention of Liberal Arts Education.

In her 18-minute TED talk, she throws down a dramatic indictment of the failure of liberal arts education, and makes a compelling case for the change her college is undertaking. (Who here has seen that talk? For the rest of you, if there is one thing I hope you takeaway from my presentation, it is to go to TED.com, search for Liz Coleman, and listen to her talk!)

While I'm convinced of the need to change and am staggered by the challenges ahead, I'm buoyed by President Coleman's closing words in her talk.

I share her hope that America's educators – the single biggest concentration of intelligence this country has – will change their historical practices and start creating the future we all need.

I look forward to working with you to be part of that change. Thank you.

(return to start of my remarks ➛)

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

2009-11-25T05:33:00.013-05:00

My travels and the holidays haven't left me time to write down my recent profound thoughts. So instead, here's an interlude especially for my fellow Baby Boomers who grew up with Queen and have raised kids on the Muppets (with a wry ending for us technology users). Go to YouTube to watch it in HD!

Happy Holidays!

Fresh Pumpkin Pie

2009-10-12T23:00:00.004-04:00

It's National Pumpkin Pie Day, so to celebrate, I made my first fresh pumpkin pie! Thanks to the information at PickYourOwn.org, I learned the difference between pie pumpkins and carving pumpkins and found one of the former at my local Whole Foods. Since they were selling for $2.50 each, I picked the biggest one they had, weighing in at 4.15 pounds, which worked out to 60¢/pound - significantly cheaper than usually recommended alternative butternut or acorn squashes in the supermarket.

As directed in the detailed, illustrated, step-by-step instructions by PickYourOwn, I cut the pumpkin in half (using a heavy Chinese cleaver), cut off the stem, and scooped out the seeds and stringy insides. I steamed each half on a steamer basket, covered, in my tall stockpot (on high heat for 15 minutes, then lower heat for another 10 minutes). The skin came right off in one piece.

Rather than roll out whole graham crackers, I bought a box of graham cracker crumbs and made a graham cracker pie crust with the crumbs, adding sugar and butter as per the box's instructions (mixing the ingredients in my food processor). I spread the fairly loose mixture into a pie pan and pressed it into the pan using a matching pie pan on top, then baked the empty crust for 8 minutes as instructed to make it golden brown.

I cut the pumpkin flesh into big chunks and used my stick blender to puree it. I ended up with almost 6 cups of pumpkin puree. It was quite thick - not at all watery.

Trying for the freshest flavors, I hand-ground whole cloves, allspice berries, and fresh ginger using a mortar and pestle and mixed together the PickYourOwn recipe's ingredients. I ladled the pie mixture into the pie shell, to within 1/4" of the top and loosely covered the edge of the crust with strips of aluminum foil, crimped over the edge of the pie pan. I baked it as instructed using my convection oven at 425° for 15 minutes, then 350° for another 45 minutes.

The doneness testing knife came out clean, so I removed the pie from the oven and let it cool while I ate dinner.

Not wanting to scratch my new pie pan, I cut the pie with a plastic spatula. When I licked the spatula clean, though I was horrified! It didn't taste quite right. I realized that in my multi-processing effort to cook an eggplant parmigiana for dinner while preparing the pie, I had neglected to add the honey to the pie filling!

Resigned to discard my failure and cook another pie tomorrow, I finished eating my eggplant then tried the slice of pie I had previously cut. To my surprise, it tasted quite good. It wasn't the classically sweet pumpkin pie I was used to, but I thought that my Mom would actually prefer it to the normal sweet version, since she doesn't care for sweet desserts. The crust was yummy; the pie mixture had soaked into the crumbly crust, giving it a nicely toothy texture.

So I'll wait a couple of days before using the excess pumpkin mixture and some of the remaining puree to make another pie - this time, hopefully, remembering to add honey to see how sweet it turns out. Meanwhile, I can guiltlessly devour the rest of my under-sweet pie knowing I'm benefiting from the anti-oxidant virtues of the superfood pumpkin, with less sugar! I'll freeze the leftover pumpkin puree - and go buy another pie pumpkin, cook, puree, and freeze it, since it's been very hard to locate canned pumpkin.

Here's PickYourOwn's ingredients, cut down by about 1/3 to reduce the amount of excess pie filling for a 9" pie:

Pumpkin Pie Filling

2/3 cup sugar - or 2/3 cup Splenda, or 1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (another superfood!)
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
3 large eggs
2 cups cooked pumpkin puree
1 can (12oz) of evaporated milk (I used the nonfat version)

Slow Food: Hairy Melon

2009-08-31T12:40:00.010-04:00

Inspired by a delectable Slow Food evening at Saturday night's IWFS-Columbus dinner hosted by Jack & Vivian Davis, and having enjoyed Julie & Julia, yesterday I tackled the challenge of preparing a dish with Chinese hairy melons grown by Roger & Sherran Blair.

Slow Food is a movement I learned about in my Barolo, Italy vacation with the Blairs 2 years ago. The movement was founded in nearby Bra in 1986 in reaction to the opening of the McDonalds hamburgers there. During our week in Piedmont, we savored our dinners and 4-hour dining experiences and came back looking for the opportunity for more.

The Slow Food philosophy: "We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. Our movement is founded upon this concept of eco-gastronomy – a recognition of the strong connections between plate and planet. "

It's a philosophy akin to that espoused by Michael Pollan in his books In Defense of Food and The Omnivor's Dilemma. I should write a blog on those books, but until then, I'll just note that I was impressed his pragmatic, non-preachy observations and conclusions. Advancing the careful and aware production, preparation, and consumption of real food - in contrast to the highly-processed stuff we all buy today - Pollan has convinced me to change my old eating habits, and he has influenced my thinking about the food industry.

Meanwhile, back to the hairy melons. Every spring, I give Roger & Sherran packets of Chinese vegetable seeds to try in their garden - veggies that they don't find in the local markets. It's always an adventure to see what comes up. The first product this year from these seeds has been two large hairy melons (mo gua in Chinese). A few years ago, they took that year's hairy melon crop to Wing's Chinese restaurant and Kenny had them stir fried with pork for us. Sherran & Roger invited me to dinner and asked how to cook the melons without pork, for dinner in their Kosher home. I picked up the melons on Sunday morning and volunteered to cook them after consulting my collection of Chinese cookbooks.

Most of the recipes I found for hairy melons - or "fuzzy melons" as they're also known - were for soup (like wintermelon soup). Alas, soup wouldn't fit into the dinner menu. In Kim Chee Lee's Chinese Cooking, I found a simple recipe for Stir-Fried Fuzzy Melons, but was afraid the taste would be too delicate to accompany the grilled steaks on the menu. On the next page of the cookbook is a recipe for Abalone Mushrooms and Green Vegetables in Oyster Sauce. It sounded like the delicious dish that Mom and I often order at Central Seafood in Hartsdale, NY. Mom has been excited about the health benefits of eating a variety of mushrooms (and we were delighted with a Braised Mushroom dish at a dinner Ray Chen invited us to at the new Three Ocean Restaurant in NYC's Chinatown last week). Since fuzzy melon takes up the taste of the sauce it's prepared with, I thought combining the recipes would work well.

I drove over to the New Asian Supermarket (which has the best selection of Chinese produce I've found in Columbus), and bought fresh King and Shitake mushrooms and baby Shanghai bok choy. I also found some Mushroom Stir-Fry sauce to substitute for Oyster Sauce (trying to keep Kosher - oyster-flavored sauce is made from oyster extract).

As this was a first-time preparation for me, I tested my approach with a little of the ingredients and tweaked the combined recipe. Since the recipe cooks so quickly, I decided to prepare all the ingredients at home and take them to the Blairs to cook just before dinner.

The dish was a big hit. The melon was tender, but not mushy, and as expected, took up the flavor of the sauce. The King mushroom slices were nicely chewy and contrasted with the tender Shitake mushrooms. The green Shanghai bok choy provided another textural and color accent. The entire dish tasted umami! And it was so guiltless, healthwise. The seven of us happily ate almost the entire double recipe (some of us had three or four servings!).

The actual cooking time was less than 15 minutes, but the preparation was quite time-consuming (about 3 hours for twice the below recipe, but that included the trial run). Though the mushrooms, bok choy, and sauces were not from local sources, the preparation was certainly in the spirit of Slow Food, celebrating the home-grown melon as an experience to be savored, lovingly prepared for and enjoyed with good friends.

As in cooking Julia Child's recipes, I've found that spending hours carefully preparing a dish or a meal for family and friends, then savoring it with them, can and should be a tremendously enjoyable experience. At times, it can even be sublime.

Stir-Fried Hairy Melons, Mushrooms, & Shanghai Bok Choy in Mushroom Sauce

INGREDIENTS (for 4-6 side-dish servings)

1 large hairy melon (football-sized)
1 knob ginger, peeled and julienned
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb baby Shanghai bok choy
½ lb fresh Shitake mushrooms
½ lb fresh King mushrooms
2 T cornstarch
peanut oil, for cooking
1 T sesame oil

Seasoning Sauce:
¼ c soy sauce
¼ c mushroom stir-fry sauce
¼ c sugar

PREPARATION

Peel the hairy melon. Scoop out & discard the seeds and inner membranes. (If smaller melons are used – like zucchini - the seeds are tender and don’t need to be removed.)
Slice vertically into quarters.
Cut across into1/8” thick slices, using a mandolin, if available, to ensure uniform thickness.

Cut the King mushrooms across into thin slices (about 1/16” thick).
Remove the stems from the Shitake mushrooms. Wash to remove dirt.

Blanch the bok choy and Shitake mushrooms separately in boiling salted water for 1 minute.
Drain & put into ice water to cool. Drain again. (This process preserves the color of the vegetables.)

Mix together the soy sauce, mushroom stir-fry sauce, and sugar.

Mix corn starch in 3 T cold water.

COOKING

Heat oil in deep fry pan, pot, or wok over high heat.
Stir-fry melon slices. Stir fry for 1-2 minutes, until the slices start to cook. Remove melon from pot.
Stir-fry ginger and garlic. Stir-fry until garlic starts to brown.
Add melon back to pot. Stir and cover to steam 2 minutes. (Add a little water, if needed.)
Add mushrooms, stir-fry, cover to cook 1 minute.
Add bok choy, stir-fry.
Add seasoning sauce (use more or less, to taste). Stir and bring to a boil. Add water or chicken stock, if needed, to make enough liquid for sauce.
Stir in cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce.
Stir in sesame oil and serve.

Julie & Julia

2009-08-14T23:00:00.002-04:00

Though it differed from what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the new movie Julie & Julia. I was psyched for it, having just cooked a big dish of garden fresh Chinese Long Beans for my friends Roger & Sherran on Sunday. Following a week's worth of media hype about the movie and the glowing reviews for Meryl Streep (and less praise for Amy Adams), I went out on Monday for a premium-priced showing ($9 vs. $7 regular price in Columbus, OH) of the film.

With my home theater system and over 900 DVDs, I don't go out for movies very often. I usually wait 6 months, buy a used DVD, and get the same audio/visual theater experience (10' projection image and 7.1 sound from a 2800 watt A/V receiver and a 2500 watt subwoofer), in the comfort (Ekornes Stressless chairs), and convenience (fresh-popped corn with known additives from flavorings and a wide selection of legal beverages - my wine cellar abuts my home theater), of home - at 1/3 the cost for me, plus no additional charge for guests. However, the foodie in me was allured to catch Julie & Julia now.

I grew up inspired by Julia Child on PBS. Her whimsical demeanor delightfully deflated the starched stuffiness of the French cuisine mystique. Combined with my father's genes and his own love for food and cooking, Julia's TV presence reinforced my expectations that cooking should be fun and the resulting food would be delicious.

Writer/director Nora Ephron has woven together two memoirs - Julia Child's story of her cooking and cookbook-writing beginnings in France, and Julie Powell's year of cooking and blogging her way through Julia's cookbook - to provide a delightful comparison and contrast of their lives. At the start of their stories, Julie is actually a better cook than was Julia. But Julia's life was certainly more glamorous and intriguing, with her living the leisure life of an American diplomat's wife in France, settling into a luxurious Parisian apartment, while Julie and her magazine-writing husband have just upgraded to a 900 square-foot apartment above a NYC Queens pizzeria. Julia's need to occupy herself leads her from hat-making classes, to bridge lessons, and finally to cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu. Julie needs a release from her 9-to-5 phone-bank job helping NYC's 911 victims, so commits herself to cook every one of Julia Child's 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and blog daily about her experience. Both husbands are lovingly supportive, through their own trials, as are their friends. The development of these very different yet similar stories, intertwining 8+ years of Julia's life and 1 year of Julie's, carried me along, savoring every scene.

Meryl Streep's portrayal is absolutely marvelous. I've experienced two memorable portrayals by an actress of a celebrity. I recall being mesmerized by Zoe Caldwell's portrayal of Maria Callas in Master Class on Broadway in 1995. It took all of 30 seconds for Ms. Caldwell to have me believe she was Maria Callas - another notable personality from my high school years - on stage, right in front of me, conducting a master class with aspiring opera singers. Ms. Streep never had me believing she was Julia Child, but her absolute mastery of her craft had me admiring, for the entire 2 hours and 5 minutes, how well she could invoke my fond memories of Julia without ever having me feel she was presenting a caricature of her. And somehow, through the magic of film and the film maker, she always came across as the full 6' 2" that Julia Child was, instead of Meryl Streep's own 5' 6", hence never breaking the spell.

I must confess that in the 1980s, I really didn't like Meryl Streep as an actress, despite friends who swooned over her performances. Several years ago, however, I found my opinions completely reversed over the Metropolitan Opera tenor, Richard Leech. For over a decade, I had seen him perform the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly - and I really didn't care for him. Then I saw Mr. Leech perform as Romeo in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette - and I realized that what made me dislike him all those years was that he portrayed the role of his character so well, he had me believing he was the despicable Pinkerton! In that same sense, Meryl Streep conveyed Julia Child, as she did all the characters that I didn't like in her earlier films.

While the critics seemed to share my adoration of Ms. Streep's acting prowess, they were less kind to Amy Adams. I don't know her work (I've seen a couple of movies she's been in but don't really recall her), and came to expect little after the reviews of Julie & Julia. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Since I don't know Julie Powell, Ms. Adams had different challenges portraying her to me. It's hard to say why Julie wasn't as clearly defined or nuanced as Julia. Was it the character (by her own definition, not the goddess on a pedestal that Julia Child is as Julie's muse), the book, the screenplay/direction, or acting? It's hard to blame Ms. Adams; she may have played the part perfectly. Certainly, Ms. Adams quickly had me feeling she was Julie and got me sympathetic for her.

But to my real surprise, this wasn't really a film about food. There aren't any salivation-generating scenes of irresistibly alluring dishes. Even Julie's year-long intimidation of her known need to eventually tackle de-boning a duck was laughable to me, given the fact that my father taught me to de-bone not by slitting the skin down the center, as Julia instructs, but to remove the bones through the duck's vent to retain the skin's shape and minimize the stitching required to enclose the stuffing.

Julia's story is initially about learning to cook, but then moves to her years of working with the original authors of the would-be first English-language French cookbook and the re-writes needed to get the magnum opus published for the American housewife audience. Julie's story is about her self-imposed need to get through preparing Julia's 524 recipes in 365 days and the affect this quest has on her life and marriage. There are nice insights into the impacts and changes of the times - from the McCarthyism of the 1950s to an unknown's blogging of today leading to fame and presumed fortune.

More, it's about two individuals persisting to fulfill their dreams - of maintaining their happy marriages and of completing their self-assigned challenges. In this era in which so many of us require immediate gratification of our desires, Julie's commitment of a year to complete her task may seem to be a lot. Yet the underlying contrast with Julia's 8-year work on her cookbook - and celebration of her $250 advance from a publisher - shows how much times have changed.

Julia Child's efforts made her an icon. Julie Powell's efforts made her a movie character. It was an enjoyable movie - one that I look forward to seeing again when I buy the used DVD for my collection.

Chinese Long Beans

2009-08-09T23:00:00.006-04:00

I gave my friends Roger & Sherran a pack of Chinese Long Bean seeds in the spring. Today, we got to try the grown beans from their garden.

Also known as Yardlong Beans, these are a staple in Chinese markets. They are also great fun for kids - I tell them they're "Jack and the Bean Stalk" beans because of their unusual length. Fresh from the garden, they were more tender than those from the store because we picked them fresh at only about 18" long. Rather than searching my Chinese cookbook collection for a recipe, I found one online by famed restaurateur/chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten (he's been serving Chinese food for decades in his NYC restaurant Vong). I modified his recipe somewhat, since Pop taught me to blanch Chinese long beans in oil to cook through their tough skin.

The result was delicious! The beans had a much meatier taste and texture than American green beans. The onions and red bell pepper added an umami savoriness that plain stir-fried beans don't have.

Since I knew I'd be using a small pot of oil to blanch the beans, I used the oil first to puff up a batch of instant sizzling rice cakes that we had as an appetizer with a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad. The beans were a delicious accompaniment to the perfectly grilled marinated chicken breasts Roger prepared. Watermelon closed out the tasty, healthy meal. Yum!

Chinese Long Beans with Cracked Black Pepper
Recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, modified by Rod Chu

2 cups peanut oil

1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 pounds Chinese long beans, washed and thoroughly towel dried, cut into 3-inch lengths
1 medium red bell pepper, peeled (see note) cut into 1/3-inch dice
4 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Heat the peanut oil in a small saucepan to 375°. Blanch the beans in the hot oil, a handful at a time, until they begin to blister (30-60 seconds). Drain and set aside each batch while blanching the rest of the beans.

Saute the onion in 1 T oil over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add red pepper and stir-fry to soften the pepper, about 1 minute. Add the long beans and stir-fry until the beans are slightly softened and browned in spots, about 3 minutes. Add the sugar and stir to coat. Add the water, cover and cook over moderately low heat until the water has evaporated and the beans are tender, about 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce and cracked pepper and cook for 1 minute. Adjust sugar and soy sauce to taste. Transfer to a platter and serve.

Next time, I'll try adding a couple of cloves of minced garlic.

NOTE: Peeling bell peppers

There are two basic methods for removing the tough outer membrane from bell peppers. The classic method is to roast the peppers over a gas flame, searing the skin until it's black in spots. I used a long handled barbecue fork to hold the whole pepper, skewered through the stem end, over the flame of Sherran's industrial range burner. However, I found the skin rather tedious to remove when seared this way. (I recall another tip was to put the seared whole pepper into a paper bag to rest to loosen the skin; I didn't have a bag handy nor the time to try this time.)

The easier method I've used is from Thomas Keller's (of The French Laundry and Per Se restaurant fame) recipe for Ratatouille, from the movie: Heat oven to 450°. Halve, seed and de-vein the bell pepper. Place pepper halves on a foil-lined sheet, cut side down. Roast until skin loosens, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest until cool enough to handle. Peel and dice. This works well for doing multiple peppers, since they can all be done at once. However, I didn't want to heat up the oven for just one pepper this time.

Comments on "Critical Thinking about Economics"

2009-07-27T13:15:00.005-04:00

My friend K.S. and my Mom left thoughtful comments on my prior blog on "Critical Thinking about Economics." I started replying in as comments, but found my replies were getting rather long, so here's a new blog instead.

First, K.S. suggests that shocking events like 9-11 and the economic meltdown are required to enable Americans to accept changes that they wouldn't have otherwise, even though critical thinking might have unveiled the desirability of such changes. While I agree that shock makes such changes more popularly acceptable, there are other ways to change opinion. Most importantly: Leadership. Whether such leadership is charismatic or visionary, the kind of leadership that can change public opinion goes beyond what Bergen Evans observed in 1954: "For the most part, our leaders are merely following out front: They do but marshal us the way that we are going."

On this 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's moon landing, we're reminded of a young American president who led us to do things we wouldn't have otherwise. One might observe that Pres. Kennedy's vision was built on the shock of the Russians beating America into space. Maybe so. Or maybe Kennedy led us in a chosen new direction; he could just as easily have led us into ignoring Russian scientific advances and have Americans continue to focus inwardly, cutting taxes instead of investing in creating an entire generation of scientists, thinkers, and innovators.

Mom noted the challenge of having the masses understand vision and future greatness. She further noted that to counter greed, families and schools must develop ethical behavior and character in their kids. I totally agree. As I noted, developing critical thinking abilities and dispositions in more Americans is one way to increase openness to new visions and the possibilities of the future. And focusing on the development of virtuous character traits is so sorely needed in this country and world.

In his recent book Five Minds for the Future, Harvard Professor Howard Gardner wrote of the vital importance today of educating our kids not only in the academic disciplines, but also so they can synthesize (connect) information, create new ideas, respect the ideas of others, and behave ethically - beyond self-interest - to improve the quality of life for all.

We all see the impact of the lack of such ethical understanding and behavior in the excesses of greed in our society today. Our families, communities, and schools share the responsibility for this failure. I believe we can and must change this situation and each of us has the opportunity to improve the character of kids, ourselves, and our neighbors within our own communities. Like Ronald Reagan's "thousand points of light," by working on character development one community at a time, we can create a brighter America. The City of Pleasanton, California is a wonderful example of a community that is accomplishing this objective.

Finally, K.S. cited a Guardian article in which experts explained the current financial crisis to Queen Elizabeth. He asked for my comments on that article.

I agree with the points reported in the article. I think the underlying problem goes deeper, however, than the lack of jurisdiction, failure to understand collective risks of the system, the "psychology of denial," and personal incentives that differ from society's interests.

The basic question they didn't address is: What is the purpose of financial markets, from society's perspective? In business school, I was taught that the financial markets provide capital for investment, and ultimately, the purpose of investment is to create wealth.

Even while taking the course on stock markets, however, it seemed to me that the stock market is an inefficient means of providing investment capital. While IPOs provide initial capital for company formation, the continued trading of the stock doesn't provide any additional capital to that company for investment. Trading of already issued stock is merely gambling that the company will pay off more in dividends or the share price will appreciate. But that appreciation is based on gambling that someone will pay more for those shares, expecting more in dividends or capital appreciation. I also learned a term describing a principle in this secondary trading: "The greater fool theory." It's a theory that's hundreds of years old, going at least as far back as the Dutch tulip bubble of 1624, in which speculators bid up prices of single tulip bulbs to today's equivalent of $100,000 before the bubble burst.

Of course, continued trading of a stock can provide additional capital to a company that issues more stock or trade in their own already issued shares. But fundamentally, how much of the money that is traded in stock ultimately ends up as capital usable by companies to create wealth versus money that is just bet on future share prices? With all the concern about legalizing casino gambling, we seem to be oblivious to the fact that the stock market has made gambling legal and socially acceptable - even admired - for centuries!

We have accepted significant changes in the financial markets during the past few decades - notably the creation of increasingly exotic derivatives and increasing deregulation of the markets - during a period of unprecedentedly long market expansion. These changes have helped a relative few make fortunes in personal income for awhile. But these changes haven't created much inherent wealth or wealth-creating investment. Rather, they've created a huge casino enabling a few to make fortunes on other peoples' money and risk.

These changes have worked to lull the world into complacency and also to ignore fundamental truths and lessons of the past. For example, a basic economics lesson is that a company that is too big to fail - a monopoly - needs to be highly regulated in order to protect society's interests.

My answer to Queen Elizabeth's question "How come nobody could foresee it?" is that many people could and did foresee the economic crisis. However, most of us just didn't like the pronouncements of the critical-thinking, ethical Cassandras. Instead, we hoped the easy money would continue to come along with the easy answers. Well, most of us are paying for that misplaced hope.

The current economic meltdown is providing "a teachable moment." Will we learn or will we continue to keep our heads in the sand? I guess the answer will depend on our families, teachers, and the leaders we elect.

Critical Thinking about Economics

2009-07-25T14:45:00.005-04:00

I was delighted when the Ohio Board of Regents hired me as Chancellor to help them and the state "think out-of-the-box." That's what my education and management consulting career had trained me to do. So I've been especially pleased when I find others who do so and help others stretch their thinking.

Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational introduced me to a new field - behavioral economics - and it challenged my previous thinking.

The only economics courses I took in college were in my MBA curriculum. While taking those courses - which I enjoyed - I thought I would have enjoyed taking economics as my undergraduate major (instead of the mathematics and physics which I took), and I have advised others interested in studying business as an undergraduate major to major in economics instead. With my math background, I quickly understood the economics principles from the models on which they were built. My understanding of the simple principles of supply and demand and economic efficiency became the basis for my self-described moniker of "free-marketeer."

From Prof. Ariely's book - and then a couple of sessions by Cornell University professors in Ithaca last year for the Trustee/Council Annual Meeting entitled "Why Trial Judges Make Mistakes" and "Using Psychology to Create a Better Economics" - I learned that the economics models that have been developed to describe decision making are perhaps too simplistic to reflect decisions that are actually made.

The notion that models don't perfectly predict performance isn't surprising to me. All models necessarily simplify the real world and hence must be produce somewhat inaccurate depictions of reality. The research done by Prof. Ariely at Duke and Profs. Jeffrey Rachlinski, Thomas Gilovich, and Edward O'Donoghue at Cornell, though, leads to real questions on how useful many of the fundamental economic theories are in depicting the real world, since their research shows that people behave so differently from what those basic theories predict.

This issue is not one of mere "academic" interest. The world has experienced an economic meltdown that has affected hundreds of millions of people - a meltdown that, at its core, was enabled by notions based on those basic economic theories. Alan Greenspan, for example, has testified that his lifetime of free-market thinking and economic policies were based on the mistaken belief that financial institutions would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions.

For over 20 years, I have questioned whether CEOs really would act in the long-term interests of their companies and shareholders. While I was certainly trained in my MBA studies to act with such interests, I remember first questioning that objective the year Michael Eisner earned what I recall was $104 million in his first year as CEO at Disney. I asked if any CEO who could make more money in one year than he or his heirs could ever spend in their lifetimes would be concerned about the future earnings, let alone survival, of their institutions. Wall Street earnings and bonuses have since made that $104 million look like chicken feed.

I cite the difference between Greenspan's and my thinking not to in any way to suggest that I'm smarter than he is. Rather, I do so to note the crucial importance of challenging old thinking. Trillions of dollars in net worth have evaporated because a basic old thought wasn't sufficiently challenged by those with the authority - and responsibility - to do so.

Developing "critical thinking" in its students is the professed objective of virtually every college and university in America. How these institutions accomplish this objective is a largely unexplored mystery. Certainly, some students have mastered the required disciplinary knowledge to think deeply about questions and are able to synthesize their knowledge to apply it to questions other than those they have studied. But how has their education systematically developed these abilities? Further, to be applied in the appropriate situations, critical thinking must also be a personal disposition, for unless a Greenspan challenges his own thinking, the mere possession of the knowledge and the ability to think critically will be woefully wasted.

As demonstrated by this new work in behavioral economics, one way academe gets its scholars and students to think out-of-the-disciplinary-box is to encourage interdisciplinary studies - in this case, the interaction of psychology and economics. Looking between the cracks in organizations has been a fundamental strategy I learned in my management consulting career. However, such exploration is a very unnatural act in academe, in which scholars' academic careers have been built on being experts in precisely small fields within single academic disciplines. As it's been said, a Ph.D. learns more and more about less and less. Then gaining tenure has required a slavish dedication to one's chosen discipline, if only as an act of career self-interest (for if you don't gain tenure in one institution, you'll need to look to your colleagues in your discipline to help you secure a position in another institution to try again).

So how do we actually get students to develop the knowledge, ability, and disposition to think critically? As I've noted, this is a crucially important question and it is one that transcends individual academic disciplines. The answer must not be sloughed off with simplistic replies like "Well, that's what liberal education is all about." After all, our current economic and political situation is one that has been developed by public officials, leaders, and voters who are largely products of that liberal education system.

We need to do better. Challenging our old ways of thinking is a way to start.

Veggie U's 2009 Food & Wine Celebration

2009-07-20T15:07:00.002-04:00

More than 30 chefs from 10 states prepared tastes of their food and 10 wineries and purveyors kept supporters of Veggie U's fundraising Food & Wine Celebration in Milan, OH very happy last Saturday, 7/18/09. I joined several of my International Wine and Food Society - Columbus Branch members to partake in this event this year. We chartered a mini-bus to do the 2-hour drive for us, letting us all taste as much wine as we wished. (Milan is in farm country near Lake Erie, halfway between Cleveland and Toledo.)

The event supports Veggie U, which provides a 5-week interactive curriculum for fourth-grade and special needs children throughout the U.S. to learn about healthy food and eating. It's part of the Slow Food movement in the U.S. I first learned of Slow Food in my 2007 trip to Barolo, Italy (it was started in nearby Bra in Piedmont). With my friends Roger & Sherran Blair, we luxuriated in a week of Slow Food dinners there, savoring carefully prepared meals each night in our typical 8:30 pm to midnight dinners. As suggested by the name, the Slow Food movement was started in reaction to the opening of the first McDonald's burger joint in Bra in the 1970s.

The 2009 Food & Wine Celebration was wonderful! I've had the pleasure of (over)eating at many such fundraising events over the decades. This was one of the most impressive, in terms of quality of food & wine presented. The chefs prepared most of the food on site and each taste was presented beautifully. The program provided diversions from eating and drinking, with cooking demonstrations, presentations on wine and food pairing, garden tours, and an Iron Chef-like cook-off judged by Food Channel personalities.

Since pictures are worth thousands of words, I'll let my photos do the talking. I've posted 160+ photos from the event on my smugmug photo website in the gallery 2009/07/18 Veggie-U Food & Wine Celebration. There, you can see many of the dishes offered and the chefs who did the cooking right on the spot. Warning: The photos might make you very hungry (or at least salivate)!

Hearty thanks to Sherran Blair for organizing the trip for us! It was definitely "worth the trip!"

Love of Eating and Cooking: Pop's Cold Sesame Noodles

2009-07-06T13:50:00.007-04:00

My father developed my foodie tendencies and from them, my love for cooking. From Pop, I learned to love to cook for my love to eat! Alas, I don't prepare fancy, home cooked dinners much anymore - and never got up to Pop's standard of preparing gourmet Chinese cuisine - but I still enjoy preparing specialty dishes for gourmet cocktail parties, picnics, and dinners at friends' homes. Having grown up with so many happy memories of home cooked meals, it's been wonderful to recreate these dishes - some that I haven't had for decades.

I usually carry around a camera to catch pictures of dishes I've eaten and enjoyed sharing them in my holiday letters and more recently online. The pictures help me remember the wonderful meals I've had and let me recommend specific dishes and restaurants.

My friend Kaity Tong's blog has inspired me to go further and share the recipes of my favorite dishes. I've enjoyed reading her stories about her mother's recipes and salivated in anticipation of trying them out.

I recently learned how important it is to share recipes, even amongst family members. While visiting my sister, I found she didn't know Pop's recipe for cold sesame noodles; she had been using Mom's recipe. While I love my Mom, she's not the great cook that Pop was! The simple cold sesame noodle recipe proves this.

So here's the first of what I plan to be a series sharing the recipes I use - recipes I've collected from watching Pop cook (and taking measurements as he did, since he never had to measure anything), to others I've collected from the Internet. I've tweaked these recipes along the way (with great hubris, in some cases, daring to modify recipes by chefs as legendary as Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame), to make them what I think is clearer and more foolproof. While those modifications make the recipes longer and look more imposing, I've found they help me avoid mistakes that I've made in trying to follow the original recipes. Enjoy!

Norton Chu's Cold Sesame Noodles

1 lb dried noodles or thin spaghetti
2 T sesame oil

SAUCE:
¼ c sesame paste (tahini) or peanut butter - or both
¼ c sesame oil
1 T sugar
¼ c soy sauce
¼ c Worchestershire sauce

OPTIONAL TOPPINGS:
1 peeled, julienned cucumber
2 c shredded chicken
1 c dried shredded pork
2 T toasted sesame seeds

1. Cook noodles in salted water until tender, but still slightly firm.

2. Drain and rinse cooked noodles in cold water to stop cooking.

3. If serving immediately, chill noodles in ice water. Drain well.

4. Toss noodles in sesame oil. Chill in refrigerator.

5. Put sesame paste and/or peanut butter in mixing bowl.

6. Stir in sesame oil to make a smooth paste.

7. Slowly stir in sugar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, making a smooth sauce. Chill.

8. Toss chilled noodles in sauce, thoroughly coating the noodles.

9. Serve with optional toppings.

NOTES:

This recipe is so quick and easy, it makes a terrific snack even just for one serving, after cutting down the proportions.

I prefer the texture of plain white Chinese noodles, available in Asian grocery stores in 5 pound boxes. Spaghetti also works well, though.

In addition to adding flavor, the sesame paste and peanut butter act as binders. Mixed with the watery soy and Worcestershire, the resulting sauce clings to the noodles and prevent the ingredients from dripping onto diners' clothing.

If you use the long English cucumbers, you can julienne the skin too. It adds an interesting textural difference (a little tougher, but still tender), and beautiful color.

Using a mandolin makes easy work of julienning long strips of cucumber that make a wonderful presentation (they look like green noodles).

The optional toppings add interesting textural and visual contrast to the noodles, but for a snack, the noodles don't need any toppings.

This dish works very well for tailgating. The ingredients are less prone to spoiling, so they keep well in a cooler for an after-game snack while waiting for the traffic to clear out.

My $863 Refrigerator Repair

2009-06-27T15:10:00.000-04:00

Four weeks ago, I found that the ice dispenser of my refrigerator had run out of ice. Here's my long story, but you can cut to the end for my conclusions from this experience.

My ice maker had stopped making ice once last year, so I went through my records and recalled the answer the helpful Kitchen Aid customer service people gave me. I tried the old solution to no avail - still no ice. Then I realized that though the refrigerator side was okay, my freezer had warmed up from its normal -5° to +30°!

I called the Kitchen Aid 800 number and was quickly told I needed a service call. They said Capital City Appliance Service in Columbus was my locally authorized service provider. I called them and they arranged a service visit for the next day. My service guy, Mike, told me I had a slow leak somewhere in the system. He recharged the freon, saying that would get my freezer cooling normally again, and said he'd need to return with a dye injector which would show where in the hundreds of feet of cooling system piping the leak was. He said that since my refrigerator (a 36" side-by-side built-in) was 11 years old, parts were still covered by Kitchen Aid's 12-year warranty, but I'd have to pay for labor (confirming what Kitchen Aid customer service told me over the phone). I paid $177 for that first visit for his hour's time plus the freon.

The next day, I got a call from Mike's office. A woman there told me it would cost me $800 for my refrigerator repair. I asked how much time it would take and she said it would be about 3 hours. Well, since parts were covered, I asked if that meant I would be paying almost $200 per hour for labor (given the charge for freon). After getting inadequate explanations to my questions about the seemingly unreasonable charge, I asked her to schedule the next service, but told her that I'd shop for a new refrigerator to consider replacing rather than repairing it and would call her back the next day.

I went to my local Home Depot and Lowe's hardware stores and saw regular refrigerators that might fit in my space, but no built-ins. (I was also surprised in this economy how hard it was to find anyone to ask for help on such a high-priced item!) I realized that with regular refrigerators, I would't be able to have custom cabinet panels on the doors, so it would't look good in my kitchen. I then went to the Great Indoors store and there found built-ins and sales help. Instead of the $1500-2500 for regular side-by-side refrigerators, a new Kitchen Aid built-in would cost over $5000 (confirming my recollection of what I paid for it when I bought it for my new house 11 years ago). In the context of $5000, an $800 repair didn't seem too bad.

I called Capital City back and after getting the same woman who couldn't explain why I was paying so much for labor, I asked to speak with a service manager. He explained they were required to charge according to a schedule of national standard service charges for types of repair. Further, I'd have to pay for a 2nd entire recharge of freon since federal regulations didn't permit them to reuse the freon they just put into my refrigerator until it had been cleaned. Before calling Capital City back, I had checked Angie's List and called Kitchen Aid again to see what alternatives I had, but found that although Capital City had many customers who were unhappy with their service, the alternative service company's ratings were even worse. So, I was stuck.

The service manager told me he advises customers to consider repair vs. replacement cost and expected refrigerator life. If the repair is more than 1/2 the replacement cost, he suggests buying a new one. He also told me that the expected life of a regular refrigerator is 10-12 years, but that of a built-in is 20 years, so my 11-year old unit still had plenty of life left. He said the work had a 90 day warranty and the parts warranty would run out with the 12-year warranty of my unit. When I expressed concern that inadequate repair of a slow leak may not show up until after the 90 day warranty had expired, he assured me that they would consider such instances on a case-by-case basis. I thanked him for his patience and explanations and told him to go ahead with the repair.

From there, things went smoothly. Mike came back to put in the dye injector (with a service charge of $77.55), and 3 weeks later, after the parts came in and my schedule permitted, found the expected slow leak. He replaced the parts, taking the predicted 3 hours. Mike had originally told me to empty my freezer, since everything would thaw during the repair. So in the intervening weeks, I've been trying to eat up my frozen foods (they had survived the few days of warming from -5° to +30°). I hadn't thought that all I needed to do was to put the frozen food into cooler chests during the repair, but I realized this once Mike came for the final repair.

So that's the story. My freezer's running fine again (so far) - I have ice! Mike confirmed that the leak wasn't anything I had caused; it was in a sealed part of the freezer. I was charged $785 for the final repair, less $122.60 I paid for the initial visit, so my total cost was $862.55 for 5 hours of labor and freon.

CONCLUSIONS

Most significantly, I've learned that I really don't need to keep much in my freezer. Fortunately, my side-by-size refrigerator doesn't hold all that much as it is, and one freezer bin is filled with coffee beans (since I've stopped drinking coffee, drinking tea instead). So I'll continue to eat up my frozen food and be more aware of what I put in there (which should be mainly for last-minute entertaining). I should also invite more friends over for coffee!

I'm concerned that the federal government and industry have created a situation where customers are stuck with unreasonable charges. I can understand regulators wanting to ensure that freon is properly recycled for reuse. But why can't we have our own freon put back into our own refrigerators? Also, while diagnostic-based charges may help prevent unscrupulous overcharging for repairs, what assurance do customers have against unreasonable "standard" charges? These may be examples of unintended consequences of government policies (far preferable to being examples of government-industry collusion to bilk customers); I'll have more to say about unintended consequences in a future blog.

Still, I'm happy that here in Columbus, I continue to be able to find service people who can help promptly and courteously (and, hopefully, competently).

Photo Editing Software: Photoshop & Lightroom

2009-06-20T17:40:00.002-04:00

My friend K.S. Liu blogged on his experience with Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom software. His blog is in Chinese (which I read using Google Translate), and I offered him my comments on the 2 programs. I'm repeating my comments here in my own blog (with some additions) for anyone interested.

Adobe offers several programs under the Photoshop name. Their most comprehensive product, which started as Photoshop, is now known as CS (for "Creative Suite"), now in version 4 (CS4). It's aimed at professional photographers. At the other end, the most elementary product is called Elements (now in version 7) and provides some basic photo editing tools for casual picture takers with tools much easier to use than those in CS.

I learned to use the old Photoshop (and now CS - I have the previous version, CS3) and it had become my photo editing program of choice. I tried Elements years ago (it was quite inexpensive - sometimes bundled for free with other stuff), but it just didn't have all the tools I needed to touch up my photos to my satisfaction. My niece's husband, Gian, introduced me to Lightroom several months ago (now in version 2: LR2), and I've become a huge fan.

Once you learn them, CS and LR are very powerful. Alas, both CS and LR require some study before you can use them effectively, though LR, being simpler, takes less study. (I like Scott Kelby's books, but some may not like his CS approach which focuses on memorizing keyboard shortcuts and doesn't tell you how to access the commands via the menus).

LR provides a "left-to-right, top-to-bottom" workflow that helps me quickly edit the hundreds of photos I take at an event. The tools work very well with a touchpad or mouse. It lets me correct a photo and then apply the same correction to all the other photos I've taken under the same conditions, thus saving lots of time. I find I can now get the photos done quickly enough that I'll get them done the same evening and onto my smugmug and facebook webpages for everyone to enjoy.

I still use CS for about 5% of my photos requiring specific touch-ups that I can't do with LR tools. However, CS really requires a pen tablet to work efficiently; using a mouse with CS is quite tedious. I like my IBM ThinkPad PC for this work, where I can select areas directly with a pen on the screen. LR and CS are well integrated - they send the photo to and from each other, keeping a smooth workflow.

Photoshop Creative Suite (CS4) is quite expensive - about $700 at retail. Lightroom (LR2) is about $300. They're available with big academic discounts, if you know someone connected with a school or university. Because they're so expensive, they're also pirated (but reportedly riddled with viruses). Also, Photoshop has gotten more diligent about checking valid registrations before allowing downloads of patches to their programs (though such patches aren't frequent or required). I'm happy, though, to pay for software that works well - as these products do, and I've bought LR licences for family and friends.

The only thing the Photoshop programs don't do well is making panoramic photos. I still use my old Panorama Maker program on my PC to stitch together my panoramic photos (the older version, no longer offered, is better than the one they currently have, since it lets me align adjoining photos manually when the program hasn't matched them properly). For those really interested in panoramic photos, look into Gigapan. K.S. did and bought it, creating some beautiful and amazingly detailed photos (alas, zooming into the detail is provided only on online).

Since I usually take 100s photos at an event, editing my photos is a lot of work. But it's worth all the work to be able to share the photos with family and friends. A picture, as Confucius said, is worth 10,000 words (not the mere 1,000 words many misquote him for), so I get say a lot with all my photos!

My Orchids

2009-06-20T17:00:00.003-04:00

I've been lucky growing plants my whole life - at least with those that need watering only once a month. So imagine my delight when my orchid plants re-bloomed this year!

My story begins a few years ago, when Mom came to New Albany for a visit. To help brighten up her room, I bought a blooming orchid plant at Home Depot. It had a nice stalk with about 8 blossoms, which lasted not only the 2 weeks of her visit, but on for another 4 months! The little tag on the plant said it was the easiest type of orchid to grow: phalaenopsis or "moth" orchid. I spoke to neighbors who had similar orchids, and they confirmed that they re-bloom every year. I didn't know how to care for them and cut off the blossom stalk after the blossoms fell off - only to see when visiting friends that I should have left the bare stem there. I dunked the plant into water when it had dried out (once every 1-2 weeks) and bought orchid plant food to add to the water every month or so. Sure enough, several months later, I was rewarded with a new, short flowering stalk and a couple of blossoms.

I became more adventuresome and bought another couple of phalaenopsis at Whole Foods (which, I found, has very good prices on orchids in November and December). I also bought a few bare-rooted orchid plants at the Franklin Park Conservatory's orchid sale after their orchid show for a few dollars each. I don't have any bright growing places for plants in my house and only a couple of ficus benjamina and a ponytail palm which have thrived through my benign neglect (my watering scheme is to drown them once a month, whether they need it or not). Well, my orchids weren't as tolerant.

I transplanted the orchids when I saw (through their clear plastic pots) that the pots were growing algae. I gave them new bark/peat medium in their transparent plastic pots. I put them in a plastic tray with pebbles on the bottom, which I would water to help provide a little humidity. Also, seeing how happy they were when they came back after being plant-sat at Tally & Midge's home during a couple of my multi-week trips away from home, I finallly put them among other plants (a braided Chinese money plant, and a Jerusalem cherry - from a cutting from a plant originally raised by Thomas Jefferson!). I think I over-watered them last fall and a few of the plants died.

The good news is that one phalaenopsis and a more difficult to grow odontoglossum are now re-blooming! I had even killed off a new bulb of the odontoglossum, but it has bounced back and has given me a spray of 5 buds, 3 now open with a delightful rose-like scent.

I've learned to dunk them in water only once every 6-8 weeks and not to let their pot bottoms get too wet from standing in the water around the pebbles. I think they also like being in with the bigger green plants. The sun from my north facing kitchen window appears to be enough (the money tree and Jerusalem cherry appear to be quite happy and are growing much taller and bushier). While the temperature varied widely during the winter (I turned down the thermostat to 50° when I was away on trips; while I was home, it would get up to the low 70s), the plants all survived.

My orchids: Testaments to the tenacity and beauty of life!

Collective Nouns ("Terms of Venery")

2009-05-30T23:00:00.005-04:00

My friend Kaity Tong's blog (Are YOU Smarter Than a Sixth Grader?) got me to look deeper into collective nouns. We all know that we refer to a group of fish as a "school" and a group of elephants as a "herd." Well, what do you call a group of crows? Kaity's 6th grader knew: it's "a murder of crows."

Where did such terms come from - and why are they needed?

Intrigued, I immediately Googled "collective nouns" and found numerous listings. I eventually found a reference to James Lipton's book An Exaltation of Larks and quickly borrowed a copy from my local library (as a user, I can attest that the Columbus Metropolitan Library has earned its rating as #1 public library system in the U.S.). In this wonderful book, Lipton describes his research into these terms and provides almost 1200 of them - the most definitive list I've come across - with some of their origins.

Lipton advocates calling such descriptors of groups of things "terms of venery," noting that "collective nouns" would be a misnomer, confusing them with words such as "majority" (and committee, team, family, etc.). He justifies "venery" from its etymology signifying "the hunt" and this is where such descriptors originated in the English language: from books of the 1400s, The Egerton Manuscript (1450) and The Book of St. Albans (1486), that provided the earliest surviving lists of these terms and these related primarily to game animals, though also to people and 15th century life. He also described the 15th century as a period in which the English language exploded with new words, providing a new descriptive richness to the language.

Some terms have become so idiomatic, they don't sound like collective nouns. A litter of pups. A month of Sundays. A mountain of debt. A hill of beans. A head of steam. A can of worms. A baptism of fire. An embarrassment of riches.

So that's where these terms came from. Why were they needed? Why isn't "group" enough of a modifier to describe any collection of objects? Since most of these terms of venery are unique to their objects, aren't they superfluous?

Alas, here Lipton provides less information (and my Google search provided nothing more). He cites Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1906) suggesting "for every collection of beasts ... there is their own private name so that none may be confused with another." Closer to the period of their origin, in the 1400s, inventing terms of venery had become a somewhat of a game and of social commentary. (A rascal of boys. A gaggle of women. A pontificality of prelates. A blast of hunters. A drift of fishermen.) Not knowing the correct term was an indication of ones lack of education and breeding. (What would you think of someone who referred to "a school of elephants?")

Lipton himself advocates use of such terms to retain the beauty and richness of the English language - the essence of poetry. Terms of venery illuminate the object to which they refer - they "add something to the equation." Lipton points out that Shakespere's The Comedy of Errors is a group term, as is "a sea of troubles" (Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 1). He notes "the poet came up with a more imaginative term" and cites a couple of dozen other terms in publications from the Bible to New York Magazine in which authors have continued to play the Game of Venery. (George Plimpton: An om of Buddhists. Neil Simon: A mews of cathouses. Kurt Vonnegut: A phalanx of flashers. And the unattributed: An obstinacy of buffaloes. A tower of giraffes. A pomp of Pekingese. A wobble of bicycles. A dawdling of waiters. A mass of Bostonians. A spread of Texans. An upyours of New Yorkers.)

It is these newer, unfamiliar venerial terms that trouble me. While they are clever, I have difficulty envisioning them becoming so popular that they will eventually become a natural part of speech. And this brings me back to my "why" question. While Lipton decries - as do I - the dumbing down of Americans and the loss of English literacy, given the losing battles of over grammar, usage, and spelling, will the public suffer the need to memorize further peculariarities of the English language for the sake of advancing the poetry of the language?

To go further, into territory only obliquely mentioned in Lipton's book: How extensively do other languages employ terms of venery?

In the very little Chinese I learned as a child, I recall that there are such terms in the Chinese language. These "modifiers" typically accompany the noun and often refer to quantity or measure. There's a generic modifier ("ge"), but use of a modifier specific to the noun is far preferred. My mother cautioned me that to use "ge" instead of the specific modifier is a sign of lack of education. As an American-born Chinese, learning Chinese was tough enough without having to learn a gaggle of modifying terms! Perhaps that's why I gave up studying Chinese (much to my later regret).

So there's an answer parallel with the English "why" question: to indicate degree of education. But the Chinese language has a much more fundamental reason for having such modifiers. Because Chinese is a largely monosylabic language, so many Chinese words sound like other Chinese words with completely different meanings (homonyms). Using modifiers helps distinguish among the many objects that would otherwise sound like other objects. As in the rest of the Chinese language, the context in which a word appears with other words helps the listener interpret what is being said. Hence, there's a very good reason why the Chinese language needs terms of venery.

But in English, words for objects don't often sound like other such words, so avoiding confusion isn't a good justification for adding complexity to the language. At this point, I can only speculate as to other reasons. English, as a relatively young language, may have borrowed the use of modifiers such as terms of venery from other languages. Lipton acknowledges such borrowing in his book, citing examples of words borrowed from the French. Going deeper then, how widely do Latin and Greek (the basis of most English words) and other world languages (from which the English may have borrowed) use terms of venery? I have no idea, but I now have a new topic of discussion for future cocktail parties in which I might find myself in the company of a babel of foreign language scholars. Hoorah!

Jules Alexander & Tiger Woods

2009-05-24T09:05:00.006-04:00

I had the pleasure of meeting Jules Alexander last Sunday at K.S. & Gina Liu's lunch and home at the Trump National Golf Course in Briarcliff Manor, NY. Jules recently published his book Tiger Woods in Black & White, a large format volume of his photos of the renowned golfer which he has taken over the past 9 years.

I got to learn about Jules and his book talking over lunch at the Trump Clubhouse. He had published an earlier book of photos of the legendary golfer Ben Hogan in 1994 from photos he took 45 years earlier. He self-funded the preparation of both these books, following the golfers around on tour. Wanting to do the Tiger Woods book in black & white, he couldn't find a publisher to fund his expenses for the book - they wanted color photos. When it was done and they saw how beautiful it was, they wanted to publish it.

Now age 83, Jules has been taking pictures for over 70 years. He told me stories of his studios in NYC and I was pleased that I knew where his favorite studio was: In the Beaux Arts building across from Bryant Park (I've passed it many times while shopping in the area), with its north-facing windows providing wonderful light. We also chatted about both our experiences working with the Ansel Adams studio and learning of his techniques.

Jules' photos of Tiger were taken without prior arrangement or permission. He operated as a freelance journalist, so he was permitted to be inside the ropes. He'd set himself in position at a hole and await the golfers. He showed me a photo he took of Tiger where he had earlier positioned Gina so she would be clearly visible in the crowd in the photo he took. Jules works without an assistant, lugging all his equipment around himself (now, a digital Nikon D3 with a 200mm telephoto and 1.4x telextender), since the assistant wouldn't be allowed to work inside the ropes with him, so he has to have his equipment with him anyway.

I was delighted that I got to help Jules print out some large 13x19" prints on K.S.'s home printer. We had to transfer images from Jules' MacBook Pro (same model as mine) to K.S.'s desktop Mac and PC computers to print with his large Epson printer. K.S. hadn't used the printer for some time, so we had to play with the setup of both desktop computers. We eventually got the Mac to work with the printer, using Photoshop to adjust the photos. It took about 3 hours for the 3 of us to get this all figured out (while Mom, Gina, and others of K.S.'s and Gina's family patiently waited). We wasted a few sheets of Jules' large pro paper (at $5/sheet), but we eventually got the prints done. We finally quit after the Epson ran out of ink.

Jules was especially happy to have gotten a print out of the photo he took of two beautiful girls he took the week earlier so he could present it to the girls' mother.

I'm glad I was of some assistance. Jules' photos are spectacular! I'm honored that he autographed the copy of his book that K.S. gave me, plus one of the new large Tiger prints that he's going to include in his next book.

K.S. also gave me a print of one of his own photos of a wonderful leopard that hangs in his computer workroom.

What wonderful treasures to remind me of two very talented photographers - one professional, one amateur - and a delightful afternoon together!

Why Study the Arts?

2009-05-12T18:20:00.003-04:00

We must ensure that fine and performing arts are an integral part of everyone's education. That's the proposition advanced by two national commissions on the Arts in Education on which I've served - one sponsored by the Education Commission of the States, and the other, by the College Board.

In this era of severe "reductionism" - of taking everything down to its presumed basics and single-mindedly focusing on the most important of these - education in the arts has suffered. Yet there is so little that many non-arts educators and education policy makers really understand about the importance of arts education.

Art education is about far more than learning to draw or play a musical instrument. Numerous research studies have found that kids who are engaged in arts courses do better in their other courses - including the "all important" mathematics and English language arts - than those who are not. But more, arts education develops abilities that aren't addressed in the "core" academic subjects. An 11-minute video prepared by the Arts Education Partnership for its 10th Anniversary in 2005 offers some observations by knowledgeable educators and policy makers on this importance (I'm honored to appear a few times):

So why study the arts? Continuing on the hierarchy of learning lists that I started in Why Study Algebra? and Why Study History?, education in the performing arts develops students' abilities in coordination, teamwork and harmony, and interpretation. The fine arts develop abilities in depiction, dealing with differences, creativity, and emotion. Or, as a professor at the Columbus College of Art and Design once suggested to me, the arts teach us about our soul. And for those who no longer pursue the experiential education of creating art, we can certainly benefit from the personal enrichment and enjoyment of appreciating it.

These are vitally important abilities and understandings in this 21st century. Of course, some may be developed through other educational means. But they probably cannot be developed so readily in students so early in their studies through other disciplines.

A demonstration of these propositions is presented in the achievements of TED Prize winner Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of "El Sistema," a youth orchestra education system that has transformed hundreds of thousands of kids' lives in Venezuela. Just watch and listen for a few moments and you'll be inspired by the virtuosity of poor and middle class kids there in this arts program, in a recent TED broadcast:

As Sr. Abreu states in his TED Prize address: "In its essence, the orchestra and choir are much more than artistic structures; they are examples of schools and of social life, because to sing and to play together means to intimately coexist toward perfection and excellence, following a strict discipline of organization and coordination in order to seek the harmonic interdependence of voices and instruments. That's how they build a spirit of solidarity and fraternity among them, develop their self-esteem, and foster ethical and aesthetical values related to the music in all its sense. This is why music is immensely important in the awakening of sensibility, the forging of values, and in the training of youngsters to teach other kids." His further observations on the effect of his "El Sistema" music education program "in the personal/social circle, in the family circle, and in the community" are well worth contemplating as we seek to reform education in our own country.

Learning to come together with our differences: Isn't that an educational objective we should insist that everyone achieves? Let's be sure to start with all our kids - and also to remediate ourselves.

Dinner at Bouley

2009-04-19T20:30:00.004-04:00

What a thrill to be told that one of the great names in food is "in the kitchen tonight, cooking"! That was one of the treats my NYC foodie friends, Tom & Patricia, had for me at dinner a week ago in David Bouley's eponymous restaurant.

The "new" Bouley opened at 163 Duane St., around the corner from his former site several months ago. Tom & Pat have been Bouley fans from his start and wanted me to try his new digs. The restaurant is strikingly uptown beautiful! A big shift from the lovely, country home atmosphere of the former locale to a similarly elegant, yet more formal, high-ceilinged environment in the new.

We were greeted by George, the Maître d' whom my hosts have known for 20+ years. He apologized that he didn't have a table in the main front room available for us at the moment, but could seat us in the smaller, low-ceilinged back room: the Winter Garden. He showed us to the prime table in the center of the far wall where we would command a view of the room - and everyone would see us. We were happy with the table and settled in; we declined George's offer to move us to the main room a few minutes later.

A hospitable captain took our drink orders, but we were dismayed about 5 minutes later when instead of bringing our drinks, a second captain plunked down our amuse-bouches and blurted out something unintelligible in an affected, accented French. Pat objected that we had yet to be served our cocktails and weren't ready to start eating. This captain was oblivious to her complaints. I asked him to repeat what he had said; he again blurted out something none of us could understand. When I asked him to say it again so we could understand, he condescendingly said something that I could make out as the 3 ingredients of the little dish and he strutted away.

Our original captain came by within attention distance a minute later and Pat summoned him to ask where out drinks were, again complaining that we had been served inappropriately. He apologized and gently informed us that he had checked and that the drinks would be up shortly. George then came by and again asked if we'd like a table out front. Pat said we liked this back room, but would move if we could get more proper attention at the other table. George assured her that we'd be taken care of at either table, so we stayed. From then on, the evening was wonderful.

Tom ordered a Hendrick's gin on the rocks. I'm normally not a martini drinker, but recalling that my niece's husband recommended Hendrick's, I tried a very dry Hendrick's martini. It was quite delicious! A wonderful taste, much lighter on the juniper flavor (and now, reading about it on the Internet, I see it's scented with cucumbers and rose petals), and it didn't leave me feeling woozy, as most martinis do.

We ordered the 6 course Tasting Menu ($95), deciding the 8 course Chef's Tasting Menu ($150) was simply too much food. Four of the 6 courses had choices, and we ordered so we could sample all the offered dishes. The pleasant captain happily accommodated Pat's request to substitute the foie gras course from the Chef's Tasting Menu for the Maine Day Boat Lobster on our menu, given her shellfish allergy. When I asked if I could keep a copy of the menu, the captain readily agreed and graciously asked if I would like David Bouley to autograph it, since he was here this evening cooking. What a treat and a great souvenir!

Bouley's breads continue to be wonderful and it's tempting to fill up on them. (Pat asked for a doggie bag with their signature little apple rolls. She was given a coat check tag for the rolls, which would be waiting for her as we left - the same, discrete service of doggie bags that Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester provides.) Each course was beautifully presented and served nicely. Each lived up to the presentation, being quite delicious and stimulating for our jaded New York palates. The food went very nicely with the magnificent bottles of white and red Burgundy wines Tom had ordered. (The white was a nice Chassagne Montrachet, but I can't recall the wonderful red, which was new to me.)

George sent over a gift course of uni (sea urchin) en gelee. We each got a slice of a mini-pâté, with two layers of uni between 3 thick layers of aspic. An interesting and beautiful concept, but I thought the aspic overly muted the wonderful flavor of the sea urchin.

After the unfortunate service of the amuse-bouche, the dinner courses were well paced and nicely served. We noted that the other tables in our room had turned over three times during our dinner. When we started our 3-hour long dinner, most of the other tables in Winter Garden room (and a few in the main dining room) were filled with fairly young Japanese patrons. Tom explained that the Japanese liked to eat early, typically booking 6 p.m. reservations. Perhaps this explained the arrogant captain's initial treatment of us: He may have thought we were Japanese and wanted to rush us through our dinner.

We were presented dessert menus and given free choice, instead of being restricted to the 3 dessert choices on our Tasting Menu. Tom wisely signaled that we would leave the choice up to the chef and would like to be surprised. Out came 3 luscious desserts, including the Chocolate Frivolous dessert from the Chef's Tasting Menu, plus another gift, a 4th dessert that was the most notable dish of the evening: the best crème brûlée any of us have ever had! Its texture was absolutely silky and the flavor was delicate yet sublimely delicious. Even the burnt sugar crust was perfectly crunchy yet ethereally thin. Although all the other dishes were intriguing and yummy, the simple crème brûlée was utterly perfect.

Despite our initial treatment, Pat seemed to be happier with our evening than the one she had a couple of weeks before with other friends, when they almost starved, with long waits between each of the 3 courses in their meal.

Tom & Pat insisted that I inspect the restroom, and I happily obliged. They are downstairs off a magnificently vaulted hall that Tom said had been imported from Europe. The hall also leads to the large private dining room (at which a few individual tables were still being served, at 11 p.m.). I loved the vessel sinks, and even the red-flocked wallpaper wasn't kitchy, as it usually is.

With the unevenness of the service, I can understand why the NY Times gave them only 3 stars, down from the 4 earned by the original Bouley. The wonderful cocktails and wines plus the tips tripled the $95 per person food cost - about normal for high-end NYC restaurants.

It was a wonderfully memorable evening out with good - and very generous - friends.

Here are some of the photos I took of the restaurant, menu, food, and friends. Alas, I had my camera on the wrong focus setting, so many of the pictures aren't as clear as they should be. But they'll give you an idea of our delightful experience.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Why Study History?

2009-04-18T21:30:00.007-04:00

In this time of concern for getting a good job after graduation, can there be any less useful college major than history? (Alas, "this time" has been around for generations.) My exposure to history majors at Cornell profoundly disavowed me of this opinion decades ago.

One of my good friends in my Cornell MBA program, Bill, had been a history major at Cornell College ("the other Cornell," as he was proud to say.) We had very good times together in our two years in Ithaca and I wasn't surprised that Bill did well after graduation, ending up working for a Chicago bank. He moved into managing bonds, and has been responsible for investing bond funds worth billions of dollars. "What did history have to do with the bond market?" I wondered. At reunions, I discussed this question with Bill and learned that in studying history, Bill had developed the ability and skill of reading voraciously, analyzing masses of data, and projecting likely outcomes, given past experiences. Bill's success in business demonstrates the wisdom of the George Santayana aphorism "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Indeed, in this troubling time of dealing with the excesses of the sub-prime mortgage debacle, some of us ask how this is any different from the past debacles of derivatives, savings and loan deregulation, and junk bonds. Perhaps those who studied history concluded they could repeat the financial killings some had made in those markets by just changing the details of the type of investment, hoping that government regulators hadn't studied enough history to see parallels and the inevitable consequences.

Another revelation on what the study of history really is about came during the inauguration activities for Cornell University's then-new president, Hunter Rawlings, who is a classicist. One of the inaugural sessions I attended was entitled "What is a Classicist?" In that session classicists were described as scholars specializing in ancient Greek and Roman history. But contrary to my impression that historians merely memorized dates and facts about past eras, I learned that the study of history is about discovering what actually happened in the past. The session painted a picture for me of historians being Sherlock Holmes-type characters, piecing together disparate hints and clues to form hypotheses to fill in the blanks. As a Sherlock Holmes fan - and today, loving the TV series House, MD for his ability to do the same in the medical field - had I been taught history beyond the boring rote memorization of dates and facts, I may have become fascinated by history and pursued its study. [On making this observation at the Rawlings inaugural, someone recommended a little novel to me: Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. It's a wonderful history mystery!]

Of course, history courses in our school curriculum are there to develop memorization abilities in students. But just as the purpose of math courses go beyond enabling students merely to "do math" (see my blog "Why Study Algebra"), history courses go further to teach students about relationships and consequences - what happened because a combination of events, decisions, or circumstances occurred. Ultimately, history teaches its students about beliefs of people in their age and environment.

Having been such a poor student of history, I can now relate to the importance that we all develop the skills related to the higher order study of history. There are other ways to develop these skills. But it's important that we recognize that because of our own lack of success in studying certain subjects in our typical education curricula, we may keep setting ourselves up for the recurrence of major problems in our own history.

Renée Fleming at the Opera Club

2009-03-31T12:55:00.001-04:00

What an absolutely delightful evening we had with Renée Fleming at the Metropolitan Opera Club on March 19th! Renée was the honored guest artist for cocktails and dinner at our Club (on the Dress Circle level at the Met). She was tremendously gracious and generous with her time, mingling and warmly chatting with members and our guests and agreeing to our photo requests. While it's hard not to fawn over a performer of Renée's accomplishment, she made us each feel very comfortable to be with her.

The magic of the evening continued after dinner, when Renée spoke to us about her career and life in an interview format conducted by Sarah Billinghurst, Assistant Artistic Director of the Met, and took our questions before we broke for the evening's performance of Cavaleria Rusticana & Pagliacci. I took some notes of Renée's comments that gave us wonderful insights into the life of one of the world's greatest opera stars.

My first note was of Renée's recollection of a chat she had after singing to a small audience several years ago. Someone came up to her after her performance and told her: "You have an amazing voice! You should take some lessons!" With that bit of self-deprecating humor, Renée - the child of voice teacher parents, with voice degrees from SUNY Potsdam and Julliard - noted that the general public doesn't understand the difference in education required to sing on American Idol vs. at the Metropolitan Opera.

She has sung 51 roles in opera, and would still love to do a Strauss, Wagner, and world premiere opera role. As a lyric soprano, she has a broad range and could sing in any language.

Renée recalled that she learned something after giving birth to one of her children: that women who have just had a baby have no memory. Alas, she didn't know that at the time and was very frustrated with her inability just then to learn a new role.

She believes firmly in maintaining the health of the voice; the voice is such a fragile instrument. Renée noted that unlike many other singers, her voice has not "gained weight" over the years (just as Plácido Domingo's also has not).

Sarah mentioned that 1 1/2 million viewers around the world have watched the Metropolitan Opera HDTV broadcasts at their local movie theaters, dramatically expanding the numbers of those who have had the opportunity to see and hear Renée perform.

As to how many years Renée might continue to perform in operatic roles, she replied she doesn't have a particular target, but will take it one year a time. This year, of course, has been a remarkable one for Renée at the Met, featuring her on Opening Night and in Thaïs, Rusalka, and the 125th Anniversary Gala.

Renée finds that the Met, acoustically from the stage, is her most comfortable house. Despite its size [I believe it's the largest opera house in the world today, with just under 4000 seats], Renée says when she just sings well, it carries; she doesn't worry about her voice filling the house.

She noted that she learned a lesson early in her career about singing with ease. She found a piece she sung from Rusalka (in the Czech language of her family heritage) was almost "too easy" to sing. It took a while for her to recognize that it was easy because the piece was a good fit for her voice - an important lesson for singers: They need to audition with pieces that fit!

In working with conductors, she looks to be inspired by a conductor - one who encourages her to take risks. The conductor makes or breaks a performance - especially if the conducting is poorly paced. She can't take tyrants, but has had the good fortune of working at length in this house and city she loves [and, I daresay, loves her!].

Renée continues to share her gifts and knowledge by offering master classes to singers and discovering and encouraging young talent. Among those discoveries is Shenyang, a bass baritone she heard in a master class she conducted in Shanghai. She introduced him to the Met's Young Artist Program where he as been developing while attending Julliard. Shenyang will have his Met premiere on April 13th as Masetto in Don Giovanni.

Now that Renée's Met season is over, she will be taking one of her daughters to visit colleges. I've sent Renée my blog piece on Getting Admitted to a Good College. I hope she and her daughter find it helpful! Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing the pictures the photographer took of Renée and me and using it in my holiday letter!

Why Study Algebra?

2009-03-19T10:08:00.003-04:00

"Why study math?" This was a question that I, as a math major, asked somewhat rhetorically to K-12 educators in Ohio. I was stunned with the responses I received.

"It's important that all students know how to do math" was a reply I received from a top state education official. Okay, but then what do teachers do in school after the 4th grade, by which time kids are expected to be able to "do math"? We were in the midst of the state's efforts to institute standards-based reform, so my question was of serious importance.

I met with the chairs of the mathematics departments of my state's public universities. They were delighted to speak with a chancellor who was a mathematician and explained that "doing" math was, of course, a foundation skill, but all students needed to learn much more. Algebra instruction, for example, was a way to develop analytical problem solving abilities in students. This problem solving ability goes beyond algebra problems; while the techniques are taught in algebra, they apply to all problems. Their point on algebra was of major significance, because algebra was right at the heart of the standards debate.

So many parents have complained "Why does my child need to learn algebra? I took algebra and I never use it!" This conclusion is so common that it has even been memorialized by Hollywood. In Peggy Sue Got Married, the title character is a housewife and mother who is sent back in time to her high school years. As seen in a 49-second clip from the movie, she blows off an algebra test because, as she explains to her algebra teacher, she knows she won't ever use it.

While it's understandable that a typical parent might feel as Peggy Sue did about algebra, I was really shocked when a local teacher's union representative echoed the same conclusion when he complained in the media that the state's new high school graduation exam was too difficult, since it tested algebra knowledge.

I believe it's important to speak plainly and openly with parents and the public. It may be true that few of our kids will have to solve quadratic equations after their school years. But don't you think they'll have to solve problems? In fact, most businesspeople I've spoken to say that one of the basic abilities they need in their employees is to solve problems they've never seen before.

In our school curricula, algebra is the main subject in which our kids are taught to solve problems in a systematic, analytic manner. Unfortunately, algebra taught poorly results in students learning only how to mimic problem solving methods that they've been forced to memorize. But algebra taught well gets students on the path to developing that skill of "solving problems they've never seen before" that employers are demanding and is an important foundation for further learning.

Might the reason that educators, union officials, and parents haven't understood the importance of algebra in our kids' education is that so few of them learned it properly themselves? More thoughts on this to come.

Book One-way Airline Reservations vs. Round-trip

2009-03-15T22:48:00.006-04:00

US Airways changed their pricing scheme several months ago: They no longer offer lower fares for round-trip travel. Because they charge a fee for changing reservations and because last-minute fares are often higher, travelers should consider booking individual one-way reservations instead of round-trip or multi-segment itineraries.

This rule applies to any airline that prices trips as the sum of as individual origin-destination trips - and is especially important for cheap flights.

Here's why:

1. US Airways now prices flights on an individual origin-destination trip basis, without any discounts for round-trips (or Saturday night stay-overs, or any other factor involving combination of origin-destination trips).

2. US Airways charges a $150 change fee for changing a reservation.

3. If you miss flying a segment of a reservation, US Airways (like all airlines) cancels the rest of your reservation.

4. If the trips are booked together as one reservation and you have to change a segment, that will require a re-pricing of the whole itinerary at the time of the change. If that's done near the flight date, it may result in a much higher total fare.

5. If the trips are all booked individually, you can keep the unchanged trips at their original fare; not using any individual segment will not affect the other reservations. So, if you have to change or not fly any segment of a reservation, it may be cheaper to just throw away the original ticket for that segment and pay for a new ticket for the segment than pay the change fee to recoup the fare paid for that segment.

Be sure to check that the sum of individual one-trip tickets is the same as a round-trip ticket for your planned itinerary. It may take a few more minutes to do this checking and book individual trips, but when you have to change a segment, it could save a lot of money!

Finding Happiness in What You Do

2009-03-14T21:40:00.000-04:00

"Be happy in what you do" is a basic maxim of success. I agree completely. But I've learned there are two ways to find that happiness.

When I began my career, I felt I was very fortunate to have found a company in which I really enjoyed working. After 17 straight years of formal education, I would be entering the job market in the depths of the 1971 recession with my newly-minted Cornell MBA degree. There I was, in the Spring of 1971 at the ripe old age of 22, interviewing for jobs. My honors advisor, Prof. Joe Thomas (now Dean of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University), noted that I was smart and that was a competitive advantage; I should talk to consulting firms, since they look for smart people. After interviewing with the few consulting firms that recruited at Cornell that year, I took the offer of Arthur Andersen & Co. to join their management consulting practice in their NYC office.

Andersen's recruiting process sold me. I would be working with other young professionals, consulting on the data processing needs of our clients. My mother had been a pioneer in computer systems, having implemented the first international airlines reservations system in the world for Pan American Airways. I had grown up with computers and enjoyed my computer courses at Michigan. I had worked for IBM in my summer between MBA years, and wrote my honors thesis using computer modeling for complex inventory control questions. AA&Co. would train me in the firm's methodology and other things I'd need to become a successful consultant - they were paying me to learn! I'd work in the Rockefeller Center area of NYC, with my periodic expense account lunches, when not working with broad variety of clients around the world. What a glamorous career! The partners in the firm explained that their job was to help develop the next generation of partners. If I worked diligently, after 10 years or so I might be admitted to the partnership. Everyone was truly supportive. I was really comfortable with my choice of firm and career. I had found a wonderful match and was very happy - and my career progressed as I expected. I was really fortunate to have found an environment in which I was very happy.

After a few years working, I learned an important lesson from one of my mentors. His name was Paul Tom. Paul had started his career with IBM in Texas and then Washington, DC. He took his position as a manager in AA&Co. in NYC and later became a partner. Paul was a wonderfully personable guy who took seriously the task of developing his staff charges. Early on, I was with several other young staff invited to Paul's bachelor pad apartment, high above Lincoln Center on West 65th Street. Paul waxed poetic about how wonderful it was to live in NYC: The most exciting place in the world to live. Later, Paul transfered to the Stamford, CT office and bought a suburban home in Connecticut. Again, at a social function he hosted in his new home, Paul extolled the virtues of living in suburban Connecticut, with his idyllic home on the Rippowam River. There was no better place to live on Earth. Several years later, Paul transferred to the Toronto office. I visited him in his suburban penthouse apartment with a beautiful view of Toronto in the distance. Again, Paul noted his delight in getting out of the NYC rat race and the wonderful life and clients he had in Toronto.

By then, I had learned my "Paul Tom lesson in happiness." You can be lucky to find the perfect job and location in which you'll be happy (my 1st lesson). But you can also decide to be happy in any job and location in which you find yourself (the 2nd lesson, from Paul).

I have shared these two lessons in happiness with all my staff and colleagues at Andersen and subsequent endeavors. One of my staff told me the 2nd lesson - be happy in whatever you find yourself doing - was something he had learned earlier when he participated in "est" sessions with his siblings and parents. After quickly calming my concerns about est's cult-like reputation, he noted that est put my 2nd lesson very simply: "Happiness is a choice."

So it's pretty simple. I've learned I might as well be happy, since I can choose to be so instead of choosing not to be happy. Why choose anything else?

Getting Admitted to a Good College

2009-03-11T23:02:00.007-04:00

I've been asked many times for help in getting friends' kids into a good college, given my long involvement with Cornell as an active alumnus, and my work as a Trustee of the SUNY system and as Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents. I'll offer these disclaimers at the start: I've never been a college admissions officer nor do I have inside information to offer; I also have never had children so haven't gone through the college selection process with my kids. However, I have talked to a number of college admissions officers and have worked with many who have been fellow Trustees of the College Board. Given that exposure, I have some observations and advice to share.

First, it's really important to understand that "a good college" shouldn't be defined in terms of parent's or grandparent's generations ideas of prestige. The objective should always be: Will the student (I'll call him/her "Stu") get a good education there? Will Stu learn the important things needed to in order to start out well in life after school?

When you focus on the learning, you get into the more important questions: What does Stu want to study? What kind of learner is Stu? Is Stu highly self-motivated and a well-disciplined learner or not so much so? If the former, the resources of a large university, with its many choices of majors, minors, courses and activities, can provide a wonderfully broadening experience. If the latter, Stu may get lost and easily distracted in a big university; Stu may do better in a smaller setting with more personal and caring attention by the faculty and staff. Ultimately, chances for success are better when the student is happy with the campus he/she's at. The big objective shouldn't be getting INTO a college, it should be on getting OUT! Focus on success through college, not just getting in the door!

The traditional college experience of those fortunate to go away for a residential 4-year undergraduate experience from age 18 or so is about "formative education" (as Jim Duderstadt, former president of the Univ. of Michigan has said). It's about growing, but not just the mind. When I went to Michigan at age 16, I knew I was pretty smart, independent, and hard working, but I needed to grow up socially and mature too. So I needed a campus where I could be learn through my extra-curricular activities as well as my studies. (Of course, my parents thought I spent too much time in extra-curricular activities, but that's another story.) Amongst the Ivy, I've long said if you just want to study, go to Harvard or M.I.T. (technically, not an Ivy, but it's elite); if you need to study AND be involved in other activities, go to Cornell. Cornell looks at activities as well as grades and admits students who excel in both. However, formative education is about stretching and growing, so just because Stu hasn't been involved in extra-curricular activities in high school doesn't mean Stu should pick a school where he/she'd just be studying all the time. College should be about educating the whole person and helping ensure development into a well-rounded individual.

So how to determine if Stu will be happy at a campus? If Stu's school's college counsellor really knows his/her students, listen to his/her advice. Campus visits -- especially weekend ones where Stu can live with current students -- seem to be very helpful. Talk to friends and students from Stu's school who are currently there or have recently graduated. Some of the chatty college guides that give the straight poop from current students (like the College Prowler), might be helpful. (I met the fellow who started College Prowler when he was a student -- a nice guy who saw a market need and looked to fill it!)

Getting to know a campus and making the match in Stu's own mind will be helpful in the admissions process. Highly competitive schools such as Cornell are now getting 10 applications for every available place they have. The admissions folk at Cornell tell me that for every student they admit, there are 4 others who are virtually indistinguishable from the one admitted in terms of grades, class ranking, leadership activities, SAT scores, etc. One difference is that the admitted applicants have taken the trouble to learn more about Cornell and have demonstrated they really believe they'll be happy there. At that level (after screening out those who just wouldn't do well at their campus), admissions officers are really looking to make the good match between what a student may be looking for and is willing to work hard for, and what their campus has to offer. They want students to succeed, but they don't know the applicants well; when the applicants have done their research and determined they will really be happy at that campus, they make the admissions officers' jobs easier.

I've also been asked for advice on what kind of summer job Stu should take to improve his/her chance of getting into a good college. I look at the summer jobs as part of the formative education process. What would Stu like to learn more about? If Stu is fortunate enough that he/she doesn't need the job mainly to save money (though learning about hard work and money is always an important lesson), that increases Stu's options. Taking a job -- even as an unpaid intern -- related to Stu's area of academic interest would be good. Working in a field in which Stu thinks he/she may have interest as a career would help him/her see the reality vs. the romance (I'm thinking of kids who think they'd like to help people as a doctor, only to learn much later that they can't stand the sight of blood or being around a lot of sick people!). Broadening Stu's perspectives by working in areas he/she's less familiar with -- for example, volunteer work with people in poverty -- can be life changing. The breadth of choice in summer jobs is probably as large as the breadth of choice in colleges; alas, it's one I have far less expertise with. Summer jobs might have some impact on college admissions, but I would think that the impact on the student of the experience is of far greater importance.

4/9/09: Just read an interesting blog with other helpful thoughts: http://www.educatednation.com/2009/04/09/college-admissions-panels-using-their-powers-for-good/

Attention Spans & Learning

2009-03-08T21:32:00.013-04:00

Thirty-five years ago, I wrote my first course on computer systems design at Arthur Andersen & Co. I learned then things about adult learning that are just being applied in colleges today - and they're considered very novel! The punchline: Adult attention spans are short - under 8 minutes long - and shortening, so for learning to be effective, learning activities need to be changed at least every 8 minutes (and maybe even shorter).

Here's my story. Our in-house courses at AA&Co. were conducted at our firm's school in St. Charles, Illinois. They ran from 1 day to 4 weeks in length. In our consulting division - which later became Accenture - our line professionals wrote our own course materials and taught the courses. I learned COBOL programming in 4 weeks of 5 1/2 day/week classes that ran from 8:30 am until 10:30 pm (with coffee, lunch, and dinner breaks). Okay, we were smart and motivated - and we were being paid to learn. But how could our firm ensure we'd learn well?

Two years later, when I was sent to write my first course, I was told that researchers had determined that the adult attention span was 10-15 minutes. If the same learning activity continued longer than that, students' minds went to sleep. So in writing the course, we had to change the activity - live presentation, video, problem solving, reading, discussion, etc. - every 10-15 minutes.

Starting over a decade ago, as Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, I visited Ohio campuses and took special interest in learning about new uses of technology in classrooms. While many professors used various technology tools in their classes, not one knew of the attention span principle that had been drilled into me when I began my professional career.

Years later, in a meeting of university faculty senate presidents, I related my story about the 10-15 minute attention span and asked why professors continued to give 50 minute lectures. I was immediately challenged by a cognitive psychologist in the group. He said he had done research in this area and that I was wrong. I started covering myself, noting that my story was from a finding from 25 years before. The professor interrupted: "My research indicates the adult attentions span isn't 10-15 minutes, it's 6-8 minutes. And we don't give 50 minute lectures; many of us - including me - give 75 minute lectures."

Given the continuing explosion of information, increasing demands on our time, and new, ever-briefer techniques to grab our attention - consider 6 word newsfeed headlines, 140 character twitters, terse instant messenging notes - those 6-8 minutes have probably shrunk even more.

My conclusion: If we hope to increase the efficiency of learning, educators will have to start paying attention to research-based principles like the "change the activity" rule I learned so long ago. Advocates of new teaching techniques - like the 1-minute lecture (reported on 2 days ago in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece) - appear to have come to the same conclusion, though perhaps without the cognitive research foundation. If learning for some students in some topics can be made more efficient by applying 35-year old research, imagine how much more efficient it may become if we apply the research done since then!

Wisdom & Morals

2009-02-28T15:45:00.001-05:00

Synchronocity continues to occur! The latest TED video I just watched directly reflects on my yesterday's blog on "Regulate or De-regulate" plus a number of other sympathetic thoughts we share. Barry Schwartz's 20 minute talk covers a range of important observations and principles that I've been working on and concerned about for years:

practical wisdom, that can't be prescribed by job descriptions (reminding me of Total Quality Management and the Ritz-Carlton's example of quality service by all their associates);

bureaucratic rules and incentives vs. moral skill (expanding on my regulate/de-regulate quandry);

rigid rules (like school curricula), that prevent disaster, but ensure mediocracy;

community responsibilities vs. individual interests.

His answer is to re-moralize work, not through more ethics courses, but by identifying and celebrating moral heroes, being the examples of the ordinary heroes we need, and embodying the character and virtues we want our kids to develop.

It's certainly heartening to hear such views after working with some state education leaders, at least one of whom said she couldn't even mention the words "character education" lest she be accused of being a communist!

Social Networking, Twitter, Blogging - In Plain English

2009-02-28T14:34:00.007-05:00

While cruising around the 'net trying to figure out how I should use social networking, blogging, newsfeeds, etc., I found a series of quick (2 minute), light videos by Lee LeFever and his company Common Craft that effectively convey some basic concepts. Here are the links to the videos on YouTube with the embedded videos. If you go to the videos at YouTube, you'll see other explanatory videos you might find interesting.

Social Networking

Blogs

Twitter

RSS Feeds

Regulate or de-regulate?

2009-02-27T19:20:00.011-05:00

Regulation vs. deregulation. Alas, it's a false black/white, either/or choice. And a dangerous one.

Our current economic crisis is an example of what has occurred many times in past, given slavish adherence to deregulation dogma. In an almost religious quest for deregulation, we've suffered a repeat of the kind of impact we saw with the savings and loan crisis, derivatives debacle, junk bonds, etc. (yet with each occurrence, we've seen an increased magnitude of impact). In fact, the over-leverage by financial institutions in their investment in mortgages is reminiscent of the over-leverage by investors in the stock market of 1929.

Deregulation shouldn't be a religious quest by believers in a free market. The New York Stock Exchange - a global exemplar of a free market - depends on a high degree of regulation to ensure its reliable, efficient operation.

Now, with the problems caused by decades of over-deregulation, we can expect government regulators to step in and close the barn door after they've let the horses out. I'm not arguing that we don't need additional regulation. Re-regulation is needed to attempt to prevent similar bad things from recurring in the future. Such regulation may be appropriate, but trying to preventing unwanted outcomes is not the only approach that should be considered.

My first job was in management consulting within a public accounting firm. As a young associate, I was taught lessons in basic controls. Such controls are of two types: prevention controls and detection controls. Prevention controls keep bad things from happening (for example, preventing employees from stealing money from their company). Detection controls don't directly keep bad things from happening, but detect bad things after they happen (finding out that an employee stole money from the company). Well, what good is that? In the theft example, if the company had something of the employee's, it could claim restitution of the stolen funds - from the employee's next paycheck or pension funds.

Given all the focus on and resistance to regulation, it appears that few lawmakers, government regulators, or bureaucrats know of these 2 types of controls. They focus solely on prevention controls. What's wrong with that? Prevention controls are very expensive. And they're often viewed to be oppressive. In fact, they are sometimes inappropriate, given the level of risk and the potential of detecting the problem and possibility of gaining restitution.

So let's hope this time, policy makers, regulators, and bureaucrats consider such detection controls instead of relying solely on prevention controls. If they don't, they'll inevitably over-regulate, putting us into yet another round of ping-ponging to over-regulation begetting frustration then under-regulation again. And each time, it will cost us each more.