Diabolus in Musica

So the other night I went to a LA Chamber Orchestra talk on the history of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto, a work that is famous for throwing out the rulebook of the concerto form (and also having some bits that sound so much like Chopin, it's eerie).

The conductor mentioned a term I hadn't heard before - Diabolus in Musica (The Devil in Music)- a medieval term that was given to the tritone, an interval that was deemed so dangerous, people thought it conjured up the devil.  It's the interval of three whole tones dividing an octave, so a C natural to an F#, for example, and it was expressly forbidden in church music according to cannon law.

It's also an augmented 4th, which is the interval between the first two notes in "Maria" from West Side Story.  It longs to be resolved.  Can you imagine the Ma-Ri without the A at the end of it?  It's desperate for a resolution.  So having it just hanging there seems unnatural and sinister.

From an article in Token Rock:
http://www.tokenrock.com/secret_resonance/tritone_interval.php

Some say the tritone represents the Devil because it is a dissonant interval with an irreconcilable split ratio of 7:5 (augmented 4th) or 10:7 (diminished 5th) as found in meantone temperament. But dissonance cannot be the only reason. The tritone is not much (if any) more dissonant sounding than the intervals of a minor 2nd or major 7th and no one thinks they are devilish. They're not even naughty.

Some say it was the Devil in music because the tritone is so close to the interval of a perfect 5th that two monks could too easily sing dissonantly as they tried to chant in pure parallel 5ths. But this cannot be the only reason because when they sang out of tune anywhere else, those wrong intervals weren't the Devil. They were just out of tune.

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It received a revival in popularity during the 19th century, and the second movement of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto uses it liberally, as it supposedly tells the story of Orpheus going down into Hades to tame the devil.  Interestingly, a lot of heavy metal bands use it now.  Slayer actually has an album entitled "Diabolus in Musica," paying homage to the tritone.

The whole thing really interests me - that just a few hundred years ago people actually thought that the devil could live in music, and be summoned by an interval.  We think we're so clever now, but how many of us still freak out over Ouija boards, or tarot cards?  I wonder whether, in five hundred years, someone will bring up card games, and say, "and even into the 21st century, many people still believed that tarot cards had some type of power to summon the devil or spirits."  Our brains are so funny.

The Week in Books

I've been on a major reading kick lately, because I'm aware that there's a ticking clock and in less than six months (hopefully) the time I have to read books without pictures in them will be cut very short.  So I've been going through my Amazon wishlist, putting books on hold at the library, and trying to make my way through as much of my reading lists as possible.

This week I finished:

40 Love
by Madeline Wickham:
my froth reading for the week.  I first fell in love with Sophie Kinsella when I bought the first Shopaholic book at the Tesco's in Covent Garden on my lunch break as an impulse when I was getting a sandwich in 2000.  Her books aren't deep, though they deal with issues that are sometimes hidden beneath all the foam.  This one was about four families getting together for a tennis tournament, and, as usual, madness ensues.  The finale was worth the entire book.  I read it in about three hours, and thoroughly enjoyed those 180 minutes.

 The Age of Wonder

How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

by Richard Holmes.
Full disclosure, I listened to the unabridged audiobook.  And it seemed to last for freaking ever.  In fact, I think it did.  I started listening to it in October.  Before I was even pregnant.  Now granted, normally I listen to audiobooks when I walk around the lake, and with winter I've been walking a lot less.  But not that much less.  This book is L-O-N-G.  It's all about the age of romance (ie in music there's Chopin; in art, Van Gogh) and how Science had it's own Age of Romance.  It starts with the journey of the natural scientist/botanist Joseph Banks to Australia (with the crew that was measuring the Venus Transit) and ends with the rise of Darwin.  It focuses on several other leading scientists - William Hershel (astronomer, who built a 40 foot telescope and discovered lots of stars) Sir Humphrey Davy (basically made chemistry a recognized science) and a few others.  I enjoyed it, but yeah, it was long.

Island of Vice

Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean up Sin-loving New York

by Richard Zachs

Here's something I didn't know: Roosevelt was a prime example of Victorian Puritanism.  This book was the monthly book club choice in the library, and looked appealing to me, so I picked it up.  It goes over the time when Roosevelt was getting started in politics, and became a police commissioner for the NYPD, which was, at the time, completely corrupt.  Brothels were everywhere, giving kickbacks to cops to look the other way. The Sunday laws against saloons being opened were completely ignored.  And cops took bribes left and right.  Roosevelt didn't like this, and set about changing it.  The people of NY didn't like corrupt cops, but they disliked not being able to buy beer on a Sunday, their only day off, even less.  There was a huge backlash against him.  Then he started going against prostitution, which is a noble idea, but not so much when the cops start arresting women who are simply walking alone after dark.  Fortunately McKinley got elected and Roosevelt's friends were able to lobby him for a job for TR, so he could get out of NY before he was fired.  Oh, it also shows him having petty political fights with rival commissioners.  Not his best time, but probably hardened him for national politics.

Needles and funny movies

I went back to acupuncture today.  It's been a while.  Not only did I reach my limit with my insurance last year, but I also was freaked out about doing much of anything during my first trimester.  Plus, it was kind of crazy, between Christmas, New Year's, then I got a cold, then the Great Spotting Incident happened; it's only been within the past few weeks that I've started settling (if you could say that) into this pregnancy.

I'm such a baby when it comes to needles.  Seriously, my acupuncturist just laughs at me as she takes out the needles that she uses on toddlers.  Toddlers, I tell you.  And they even freak me out.  I'm getting a bit better since I've had so much blood drawn lately, but there's still something ridiculously unsettling about looking down and seeing needles sticking out of your knee, feet, and wrists.  And if you accidentally try to scratch your head, and you hit a needle there, it's just weird.

But I do think there's something to this acupuncture.  Last May, acupuncture alone increased my luteal phase from 10 days to 14.  I can only imagine it was the acupuncture since it was the only thing I was doing differently.  Later on when I was taking progesterone during the IUI's my luteal phase got longer as well, so for those I can't chalk it all up to the needles, but for that cycle in May, it's the only thing that had changed.

Here's something else.  When I ask my Western Doctors what they think about acupuncture, half of them just kind of snicker.  "Well it won't hurt," one said, "because it doesn't do anything."  So then when we did the first IUI I asked him whether it was ok to keep doing it during that cycle, and he says, "well, yes, but make sure they know you're doing fertility, because there are spots they will want to avoid."

Now here's the thing.  If it doesn't do anything, then why would there be spots they would want to avoid, and why would that matter?

It doesn't take a Sherlock to figure out that there's more to this story than these MD's are letting on.

Anyway, it's been over three and a half years of trying to get pregnant - and sustain a pregnancy - and I'm pretty much convinced that doctors are stabbing in the dark.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I still go to them.  I still listen to what my OB says, and I ask her about everything under the sun (like, is Neosporin safe?) but I also think that there's an awful lot they don't know.

So the short story is, I got needles in my wrist, knee, feet and head today.

Also, I've been feeling a lot better lately.  The whole second-trimester thing is rocking.  I'm exercising regularly, even though it's winter (which is a challenge, because I also hate being cold) and I'm meditating, and spending a lot of time reading books (because I figure that my reading will be kind of curtailed here in under six months).  So after acupuncture I went to Panera.  I could eat every meal at Panera, but J isn't as much of a fan.  Whenever we go out, I always ask for Panera, and he usually just rolls his eyes.  Sometimes he indulges me.  But I was on my own today, so Panera it was.  I ordered the Fuji Apple Chicken Salad without even thinking about it (no chicken because I'm still a veggie, extra apple) and then when I saw it, I realized there were blue cheese crumbles.  Soft cheeses are on the (very long) list of things I'm not supposed to eat during pregnancy, and I immediately started thinking about what to do.  Do I ask them to make me another one, without the cheese?  But the queue for lunch is really long.  Do I try to pick them off?

[Sidebar:  These are the dilemmas with which I am faced every day, which is why I insist that actually raising a child will be cake compared to this act of trying to conceive and carry one.  My mother in law just laughs at me when I say this, though my stepmom gets it.  Here's my thinking:  I can do everything perfectly, but I have no ultimate control over how it will turn out.  Yes, that applies to parenting, obviously, but it's not your own freaking body.  Plus, with a kid, you can look at them and see that they are ok.  With a fetus, you can't.  I could eat the blue cheese, and it could cause some terrible birth defect, and I wouldn't know about it.  For the final two weeks with Baby T I was blissfully going along thinking everything was going ok, starting a google doc of my favorite names, and it turns out that my body was rejecting him, and I didn't even know it until the last day.  I'm sorry, but with the exception of your kid getting really sick, I don't think there's anything in parenting like that.  Your own freaking body rejecting your baby, without you even knowing it, so that while you're just hanging out doing the laundry and sticking a chicken in the oven for dinner, your body is preparing to expel him (after 7 hours of active labor, of course).   You can't tell me that letting go and letting another human being just do their own thing and become their own person and make their own mistakes can be as hard as that.  Maybe I'll find out that I'm wrong, but I am pretty much convinced that 40 weeks of pregnancy (God willing) will be the hardest thing I have ever done by the time it's over.]

So, do I eat the blue cheese or do I not eat the blue cheese?  I decide to be reckless.  I pick out the really big chunks, but for the little crumbs that are left in the dressing (which also, I might add, freaks me out because there might be raw eggs in it, who the fuck knows, this is why I don't eat out much) I figure that it can't hurt.

I'm hoping I was right, but of course, as I just stated above, I have no idea whether I'm right or not.

If you think too much about this stuff, you can drive yourself crazy.  I mean, really crazy.   But for thirty seconds at Panera before the blue cheese, I was really having fun, and feeling like my old self again.

Tonight we watched a movie called Hard Times which is the silliest movie I've seen in a long time. It's set in a little village in Ireland where there are few opportunities and lots of time to come up with crazy plans to make money.  Four of the least brainiest among the village decide to hijack a Pfizer truck and steal the viagra, take it to Amsterdam and sell it, and make lots of money.  The truck-jacking scene itself was priceless.  In a fit of fear when the three American Hummer-driving security guards show up, they dump the drugs down the well.  And the drugs get into everyone's water supply.  And the entire village is suddenly feeling the effects of viagra.  It's on netflix instant-watch if a silly Irish movie about a horny little town harboring stupid criminals appeals to you.

Old Music Thursday

So I'm really into Early Music, right?  Like, the stuff before Bach.  And the other weekend I found a new radio show on Sirius (we got it in our new car, a Ford C-Max hybrid - yes, I drive a hybrid, don't start) called The Millennium of Music.  A whole hour of Josquin - bliss!  My staple for finding new/old music up until now has been the Harmonia Early Music Podcast that I get on itunes, but it's only like 10 minutes a week, which is enough for them to talk about 2, maybe 3 new releases.

My new favorite album, since hearing about it on Harmonia this week, is Arias for Guadagni: The First Modern Castrato.  So this is interesting because Gaetano Guadagni, the mezzo-soprano male singer for whom Handel wrote the arias, was an Italian who met Handel in London, where he had arrived as part of a traveling circus.  His family was musical, and it seems that they made an informed decision to have him undergo the operation that would have him be able to sing the mezzo-soprano pieces.

Guadagni showed up in London and, through connections, was able to meet Handel, who fell in love with his voice, and wrote several arias from the Messiah for him.  It was in London that he became well known, and became what we would think of as a modern actor/opera singer.  He wouldn't interrupt his performances for encores or applause, which audiences thought was rude, but was just the actor trying to portray the role authentically.  He played his role in Orfeo repeatedly, which was also unusual in a time when actors would rarely reprise a role for a second season.  He was "difficult" to work with for managers, and he got upset when composers (like Gluck) didn't cater to the personality of his voice, and his special techniques.  He was also caught in bed with other men's wives, which, considering he was, you know, castrated, would seem to support the rumor that castrati had some kind of sexual prowess.

Anyway, these days the roles are sung by counter-tenors, who have all their parts and were never operated on.  They simply train their voices to be able to hit the high notes.  Which is just slightly more boring, but probably a lot healthier and more hygienic than things were in the 18th century.

 

Finally Knocked Up!

In case anyone's been wondering, I've been hibernating.  Not just because it's winter, though that would certainly be enough justification on its own, but because I'm preggo!  Finally!  14 weeks, due in August.

It happened in November, which was a non-IUI cycle, but I was still on Letrozole, the nasty breast-cancer medicine that helps fertility by tricking your body into thinking that you're going into menopause and need to release a bunch of eggs at once.  It made me crazy - just ask J - and I resolved not to do any more hormones after that cycle.  Adoption it would be.  But then in mid December I find out I'm pregnant.  I'm fairly certain the baby was conceived over Thanksgiving weekend, which makes me so happy because Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, and now, every year at Thanksgiving, I can embarrass the crap out of my kid by giving thanks for their conception.  I don't care how much "Mom, that's so gross," crap I get.  I'm still doing it.

So anyway, now, with pregnancy, I have a whole other level of worry and freakouts.

There was the Great Spotting Incident of 9 Weeks, during which time I spotted for 65 hours, and was convinced I was miscarrying.  I talked with a midwife about how to do it at home; I was adamant I wasn't getting another D&C if I could help it.  That's been the high point of freakouts so far, I guess.  Now that I'm in my second trimester I'm starting to relax, but only a little.  Baby Teysko was lost at 21 weeks, and I won't fully breathe easy until they put a live baby in my arms.

I'm meditating a lot, though, and using all the relaxation and stress-management tools that I know.  For example, having spent so much time nurturing myself over the past two years, I know that I really love Harry Potter.  Like, really.  So I watch a Harry Potter movie on Amazon Instant Video almost every day.  They distract me, and make me feel like a kid, and if I can pass two or three hours at Hogwarts, so much the better.  I also play a lot of Skyrim, which also distracts me.  I can lose three or four hours just doing quests, which is great.  And I'm sleeping a lot better now, so I spend a lot of time in bed.  If I could just go to sleep and wake up at, say, 38 weeks with a kicking baby ready to be delivered, I'd be pleased as punch.  It doesn't work that way, so I need to find ways of coping, at least until we get past Baby T's time.  7 more weeks.

I shall probably start blogging more often now, as well, since I don't feel like I have to hide being pregnant...

Internet Archive Love

Earlier this month my organization had our annual board meeting at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.  We have  a relationship with them through their Open Library project, though I've been a fan of them for years because of their awesome Wayback Machine.   Since one of the Internet Archive's goals is to archive every page of every website, you can check out what sites like Yahoo looked like back in the day.  Remember Lycos?  Here's a nifty screenshot from 1999.  Remember Beanie Babies?  And how everything used to be curated by subject? 

So anyway, you can have hours and hours of fun on the Wayback Machine, and I highly recommend it for fun on a rainy day.  It's also useful.  I had a geocities website on Colonial America that I started right after college in 1998.  I got lazy and stopped updating it, and eventually geocities deleted it since it hadn't been updated in ages.  I thought all my essays and links and everything were gone, until I found it on the Wayback Machine and was able to save a copy.  So cool.

The Internet Archive also does all kinds of crazy stuff in addition to the web archive.  They digitize and archive home movies.  They record TV from countries all over the world to have an archive.  They digitize and lend out digital copies of books, the Open Library.  They are, in a word, awesome.

And they do it all from a church in San Francisco.  And we got a personal tour from their founder, Brewster Kahle.  The main offices are in the basement; the Sunday School room.  They have people scanning books in a separate scanning facility.  They have DVR's recording TV from all around the world.  

But the coolest part of the Internet Archive is the sanctuary.  It's huge and could easily hold a couple hundred people.  Every Friday they have a free lunch where anybody can just go in and learn about what they do.   And when you work with the Internet Archive for three years, they make a statue of you, that sits in one of the outer two rows of pews.  It's incredibly freaky, but so awesome, too.

   

Spot the real humans... there are two of them in this picture.

If you live in San Francisco, you should totally go to the Internet Archive some random Friday to meet them and see the awesomeness that they create.

How to Build a Feral Cat House with Few Tools and Having Practically Failed Shop Class

In case you haven't noticed, Old Man Winter is staring down at us, getting ready to pounce.  We try very hard to take care of all the cats that run around the neighborhood, and sadly, since we live next to a forest, there are a lot of people who abandon their animals near our property, and those poor little creatures wind up hungry and cold on our deck (there is a special place in hell for people who abandon a domesticated animal in the forest).

I was looking for a simple and easy way of providing some shelter to the outdoor feral cats.  It warmed my heart, seeing all the many pages of articles and videos from creative people who built creative cat shelters. Rubbermaid even got in on the action by letting people buy their storage containers at wholesale prices. All of it reminds me that there are lots of good people in the world who care for the neighborhood animals.  

So I was looking at some of these shelters thinking, "but they look like they require tools, and I nearly killed myself in shop class..."  (I was particularly drooling over these from the Urban Cat League.)  J has tons of tools, and knows how to use them, but I am not so gifted in the ability to handle a screwdriver.

Here's my few-tools-required, very-little-measuring-required, doesn't-require-scary-materials, and can-do-in-an-afternoon shelter, modeled by Polly, before it went outside.

Materials needed:

18 gallon storage containers (I used two, since I was making a two-story condo).  About $8/each at Home Depot.

2 sheets of foam insulation, though if you do it right, you only need one.  I bought the heaviest stuff, and it was about $9/sheet.  

Boxcutter or knife for cutting plastic

Hair Dryer to heat up plastic before you cut it

Liquid Nails (about $5)

Duct tape (because if you're me, you will spill the Liquid Nails and need to reinforce it all with duct tape anyway.  About $5)

Tarp, if you live in a place that gets a lot of rain (About $10)

Bedding: most sites recommend using straw or hay, which won't hold dampness when it rains.  I just used old blankets and clothes.  

So, the gist is, you're going to use the insulation to build a little condo, and put the storage containers inside.  The insulation will hold the heat from the storage containers, and if you make them long enough, you can slide the storage containers way back so that rain won't splash in, and there will be protection from wind.

So, step one is to cut out the pieces.  I am notoriously awful at measuring, so I just sat the storage containers on top of the foam, and did it all through eyeballing it.  I don't recommend this way.  If you're smart, you'll take a measuring tape to Home Depot, measure the storage bins, and then, with that information in hand, give the measurements to the nice man next to the cutting machine, and he will make the cuts for you.  They generally charge a dollar or so per cut, but if you look like a sweet ditzy girl, they won't charge you.  At least, that was my experience.  One other note of caution; that foam insulation makes a Godawful mess, so keep a shopvac nearby.  

So you've cut out your pieces, and then you want to glue them together, into a little box.  Have the silver sides facing in; that's the side that will hold the most heat.

If you're me, you will totally mess up one side, have to take it off and do it again properly, leaving a stripe down the side.  But whatever, this is the no-brainer way to do it, so you can manufacture while watching Love Actually and it will still be ok.

Big Boy is checking out the new box.  I put the storage container inside to make sure it fit.  Lucky for me, it did.  Barely.

Next, you do this all over again, to make a second level.  And glue on pieces for the back, too.  While the Liquid Nails is setting, I went around and used duct tape all around all the seams, just to make it solid.  And I have to say, I'm quite proud of how solid it is now.  When I shake it, it barely moves.  Mama Cat, who is now about 18 pounds, jumps up and sits on the top of it, and it just barely shakes when he lands on it.  It is a solid unit.

When you have both pieces glued together, you should have a two-story condo that looks like this.

Now, the fun part: cutting entrance holes in the storage bins.  Heat will make the plastic softer and easier to cut.  You can use a hairdryer to soften it up a bit.  You want to make the holes small enough so that the cats can get in, but predators (ie raccoons or coyote) can't.  It's better to start with a smaller hole and make it bigger if you need to.  You can always cut more out.  You can't make a big hole smaller, though.  So cut it out, and check to see if the cats will fit inside.

Make sure you use duct tape around the edges, because they are sharp, and you don't want your little one to scratch their belly trying to get in and out.

The best part is filling up the storage bin with blankets and bedding for them to get comfy.  They will create their own little nest, so don't worry too much about making it perfect, but give them the raw materials and they can decorate how they'd like.

The storage bin will look like this:

Then you put the storage bins in the condos - one on the top and one on the bottom.  The insulation surrounding each one will keep the cats nice and toasty.  Slide the bins back pretty far.  The other thing I've done is place an old bath mat in front of the storage bin.  It acts a bit like a doormat.  The cats get all the water and dirt off them before they go into the storage bin, so their inside home stays warm and cleaner.

Now take it outside, and see how the cats like it.  You may want to create a little foundation for it to go on - I just used a couple of 2x4's that were lying on the deck and put them underneath, spaced out evenly, to keep the unit off the ground, and also to add some additional protection against splashing.  Depending on how comfortable and trusting your ferals are, you might have to feed them a few times inside the home so they get used to it, and associate it with goodness.

When it rains, I throw a tarp over the entire thing, again, just as some additional protection.  If you leave it hanging over a bit in the front, like in my picture below, it will deflect the water from the homes.  All day today Mama Cat sat on the upper floor cuddled into a blanket, looking out at the rain.  I think he really enjoyed feeling like he had a porch, and could watch things, while still being warm and dry.  I feed him in there when it's raining, too, so he never has to come out and risk getting wet, which is the worst thing for cats to be (can lead to pneumonia, for example).

And even when he's outside his storage bin, the insulation still keeps a lot more heat in than if he was sitting outside.  When I reach my hand in to pet him, it's a good 5-7 degrees warmer when he's just sitting on his porch.  His storage bins get downright toasty when he's in one.

Spending an afternoon and $50 in materials can make a huge difference in the life of a cat, or two,  stranded outside with no shelter this winter.  And anyway, how else can you build a two story home for $50?

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EDIT 2/27/13: We've been having crazy winds here - up to 60mph - and the cat house, with the cats inside it, is intact.  The cats are snuggled and warm, and only slightly freaked out about the wind because they have such a cozy spot to rest.  I'm definitely building another one next year!