- I am still employed and work at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Click on the link to be taken to the NSF web pages where you can find out way more than you ever wanted to know. I am the Program Director for Magnetospheric Physics.
- I also continue to participate in the international research program known as the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN).
- In addition to my enduring love of all things scientific I have a passion for classical music and especially opera.
Recent Books:
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
- The End of Faith by Sam Harris
- Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
- Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett
- God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
- The Dawkins Delusion? Atheistic Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister and Joanna McGrath
OK, I have to admit that reading the Dennett and McGrath books got put on hold until I had time to read a much more important book:
And now I have read it and it brought the series to a satisfying close. I wonder how they'll do the movie. I'll have to give the book a second reading and there were a few things in it that make me want to check back with some incidents in the previous books, but that can wait.
Web Sites I've found to be interesting:
Latest Activities:
Well, it has been a long time since the page got updated. I'm going to record my impressions of a number of performances of various types that I've been to since the last update. I'm sort of horrified by how long the list is. I'll start with a quick list with links to my additional comments.
So here's the list (you'll also find it on out "what's going on page")
- The Christmas Revels
- Edward II by Christopher Marlowe at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC.
- La Traviata by Verdi at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC
- Spamalot by Eric Idle and John Du Prez at the Sam S. Schubert Theater in NYC
- A View From the Bridge (the opera) by William Bolcom based on the play by Arthur Miller at the Washington National Opera, Washington, DC [Rob didn't go to this, just Kile].
- The Bergen (Norway) Philharmonic Orchestra with André Watts, piano, and Andrew Litton conducting at George Mason University Center for the Arts, Fairfax, VA.
- Pianist Murray Perahia in recital at Strathmore Hall, Bethesda, MD.
- Well by Lisa Kron at Arena Stage, Washington, DC
- 33 Variations by Moisés Kaufman at Arena Stage, Washington, DC
- Tales of Hoffman by Jacques Offenbach, Virginia Opera at George Mason Center for the Arts
Reviews and Comments
The Christmas Revels
If you have never been to a Revels performance and you get a chance to go, do it. The first Christmas Revels was developed by John (Jack) Langstaff back in 1957. That first show was presented in New York, but the following year Langstaff brought it to Washington, DC. After several years of occasional performances the Christmas Revels as an annual event were begun in Cambridge, MA where Langstaff was then living. The real founding of the Washington Revels had to wait until 1983, but the Christmas Revels has been an annual event ever since.
This year the production was centered on Elizabethan England and featured Mark Jaster as Will Kemp. Kemp was a real person, who had been a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's theater company. After a falling out with the company, he apparently had the idea for a big publicity stunt. He performed a one-man Morris dance all the way from London to Norwich (about 100 miles) in a period of nine days. The real "Kemps Nine Daies Wonder" took place in February, but the Revels decided to move the event to the winter solstice.
When we arrived at the theater the lobby was packed, but pushing through the crowd was none other than Will Kemp, accompanied by a young woman playing pipe and tabor. Will would periodically would stop and ask if he was on the right road to Norwich and then would dance on. This sort of thing is typical of the Revels. The performance is NOT limited to the stage.
The other featured musical ensembles were the well known renaissance band, Piffaro, and a local group calling itself The Boars Head Brass. We have several excellent recordings by Piffaro so I was expecting excellent performances from them and certainly that is what we got. But I also have to say that The Boars Head Brass were just as good and in several pieces played with Piffaro to excellent effect.
As always, the first half of the program ended with everyone, including the audience, singing The Lord of the Dance and as the performers left the stage and came down the aisles a large portion of the audience joined hands with them and danced out to the lobby. And again as in every year, the performance ended with everyone singing The Sussex Mummers' Carol.
As always it was great fun.
Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
I am probably a rare person who has actually seen two productions of this play. OK, the first was a TV production from the 1970's (why doesn't TV do that sort of thing any more?), but still, I've seen this play twice now. And a really good and intense play it is. Many consider it to be Marlowe's masterpiece. Well, I'm not sufficiently expert on the works of Marlowe to make such a judgment, but I have to say it's a very good and provocative play. I was particularly intrigued by the differences in interpretation between the version I saw on TV back in the 70's and this live production at the Shakespeare Theatre. I should give a brief description of the topic before I go into my further remarks. Edward II was the King of England from 1307 to 1326. The sun of one of England's great Kings (Edward I) he became King at a young age and was a very definitely weak King. Part of his trouble was that he was homosexual and was far more interested in his boy friend, Piers Gaveston, than he was in either his wife, Isabella of France, or in actually ruling England. The result was tragedy and Edward's eventual murder, arranged by his wife and her lover, Roger Mortimore.
The interesting question is the character of Piers Gaveston. Was he truly in love with Edward or was he merely using Edward's infatuation with him to advance himself? In the TV version I saw years ago the answer was clearly that Gaveston was a manipulative, unprincipled man who was simply using the love-struck King. In the version I just saw at the Shakespeare Theatre, Gaveston still clearly has a manipulative character but the overall tone of the production was that the two men were truly lovers. However, an alternative reading of the production could be that what we see about Gaveston is all in the mind and imagination of Edward and has nothing to do with reality.
Anyway, it was a well done production, with the action updated to ~1920's (?) (The time was actually rather indefinite). The Shakespeare Theatre deserves a lot of credit for this production. It's well worth seeing.
Wow, what a fantastic production and what a fantastic cast. It's hard to image a better combination. First, the production, which is an old one by Franco Zeffirelli, still looks great. It's a fully realistic realization of the period of the story. Zeffirelli made excellent use of the huge main-stage elevator so that the ball-room of Violetta's house is on the lower stage and Violetta's bedroom, reached by a curving staircase, is on the upper level stage. In the final act, Violetta decides to leave her bedroom and come downstairs to meet the returning Alfredo and as she walks down the stairs the stage simply moves up, revealing the ball room, now with the furniture all covered by white sheets. It was splendid.
As for the cast, we had Renée Fleming as Violetta, Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo, and Dwayne Croft as Alfredo's father, Giorgio Germont. The other members of the cast were all excellent and the only complaint I had was the Spanish ballet sequence in the third act. But the fact is I've never really found that to be of much use and it really just holds up the action. Fleming was truly outstanding in the title role. She brought so much passion and pathos to the role. Maybe the famed Lisbon Traviata with Callas in the title role was better, but this is certainly the best Traviata I've ever seen.
Spamalot
OK, admit it. You really didn't care about what I thought of Edward II or La Traviata. You want to know about Spamalot. Well, just remember that I'm an intellectual type person who has actually read much of the source material for this farce, including things like Parzival by Wolfram von Eschebach (in German!) and I really love Wagner's Parsifal and have seen it twice at the Metropolitan Opera. So naturally, my feelings about a totally farcical version of the tale are . . .
OK, I have to confess that I love EVERTHING Monty Python. And I think Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of the funniest movies ever made. And Spamalot is a brilliant musical version of the movie. So I laughed until it hurt and cheered every absurd moment. It is quintessential Monty Python. If you love that, you will love Spamalot. If you can't stand Monty Python type humor you'll hate Spamalot. But if you can't stand Monty Python humor there's something wrong with you (just my personal opinion).
Just as an aside, we actually got very lucky in our trip to NY. Our performance of Spamalot was on Friday night and the La Traviata was on Saturday. On Saturday the stage hands union went on strike and nearly all of the Broadway musicals were shut down. Luckily the Metropolitan Opera's contract with the stage hands union is separate from the Broadway contract, so we were able to see (and greatly enjoy) both of the performances we had come for. I really feel sorry for the many families that had come to NY only to find that the musicals they intended to see were closed because of the strike.