I love fireworks. I have never visited Mount Rushmore.

So when I learned last month that the National Parks Service was conducting a lottery for a Fourth of July fireworks show there, I visited their website to enter my name. I figured I could minimize COVID-19 exposure by driving out, loading the car with plenty of food, and staying in campgrounds during the trip. It would have been great to see the Badlands too. I even considered an extended trip, very much like my colleague who has been working on the road, visiting up to five of the remaining eight states where I haven’t been: South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon.

However,  after I learned President Trump would be there, hosting one of his divisive rallies, I recognized this would be a bad idea. I knew the crowd would be packed closely and would disdain masks. I knew the mere appearance of my brown skin could trigger some racist drunk (or racist, period). In the days since the lottery, I also realized the danger of wildfire, and recollected the slave ownership of Washington and Jefferson, as well as Theodore Roosevelt’s slaughter of Filipinos fighting for the liberation of their islands.

On the Fourth I did view impromptu fireworks, flashing above Homewood and some ground effects in the middle of the intersection at the far end of our block. And over the weekend I saw Mount Rushmore on film, rewatching North by Northwest, often considered one of the world’s greatest films, having been preserved twenty-five years ago in the National Film Registry.

I don’t think the movie is all that great.

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North by Northwest is certainly influential but it is very much a product of its time. The incidental music is heavy-handed and repetitive, the dialogue is more ham-fisted than clever, the characters — especially the gender roles — are stock. 

Watching this Hitchcock movie as a period piece created more than sixty years ago, I was most engaged by the scenery. The establishing shots occurred in New York, Chicago, Indiana, and Mount Rushmore. In New York, Grand Central looked precisely as I remember from real life and countless other films, the then-new United Nations Headquarters was iconic but depicted with an obvious matte painting background, and I didn’t recognize the Plaza Hotel until afterwards. The train from New York to Chicago looks like it is on tracks heading up the Hudson Valley, which would be a very indirect route (and originates in Penn Station, not Grand Central), but I’m willing to believe that change have occurred over the past six decades. Although I lived in Chicago four years, I didn’t see anything definitively identifiable of that city. The field in the middle of “Indiana” was apparently filmed in California’s Central Valley; the land looks a bit arid but I was fooled. I couldn’t tell how much of the Mount Rushmore scenes was done on location or on set.

There are two absolutely marvelous scenes. One is brief: a geometric overhead shot of Thornhill as a tiny dot, fleeing the United Nations. One is extended: when Thornhill finds himself in the middle of a field to meet the mysterious Kaplan. The suspense builds slowly and silently, unfolding at a pace that modern audiences probably no longer have patience for.

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We can admire the finer aspects of something (or someone) even while observing the imperfections.

Indeed, those imperfections can be integral.

When I visited the UN Building as a young child, I first encountered an idea that was completely strange to me, the notion that Islamic art deliberately introduces imperfections, because only God is perfect. When I entered the Minneapolis Institute of Art in the summer of 1992, I saw an incredible mandala and was stunned to read that it soon would be swept away, in concert with the Buddhist concept of impermanence. When I took a graphic design class at the Art Institute of Chicago, my friend and fellow professor taught me to work with what we initially perceive to be mistakes.

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Everything — films and mosaics, statues and statutes — is subject to interpretation. In my most recent Convertsation on Thursday evening, we discussed the complex topic of monuments that memorialize and offend. The Supreme Court recently upheld DACA on procedural grounds, prevented Louisiana from having only one abortion provider in the entire state, and barred discrimination against LGBT workers.

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Still, something is amiss when scenery is the unintentional highlight of a video. This is the case for two Netflix releases from the past month. I’ve watched only the first half hour of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga because it has been unfunny, all the more tragic because Will Ferrell is a comedic genius. The main draw to continue is the stunning landscape of Iceland, which we visited three years ago. I’ve nearly made it through the first season of Warrior Nun despite the incredibly uneven story arc and character motivations, in large part because Spain is so beautiful. The area of Ronda near the parador where we stayed last winter is featured in the sixth episode.

I would like to travel again sometime, see the scenery for real. I don’t mind being at home, in many ways I enjoy it. Technology brings aspects of the world to me, I can see and talk with my sisters who are a state and a continent away.

But I have not visited my sister who lives here in town, nor my parents who live only ten minutes away.

It will be good to travel again sometime.

I want to speak freely.

I want to express myself freely but must clarify that everything I write on this blog, I am writing as a private individual. My views do not necessarily reflect those of Carnegie Mellon University, where I have worked nearly fifteen years, or the Mellon College of Science, where I serve as assistant dean for diversity, or the Chemistry Department, where I am an associate teaching professor, or the Science and Humanities Scholars Program, which I direct, or the Pre-College Summer Session, which I also direct.

The university is a risk-averse institution, as my colleagues Jason England and Rich Purcell described last month. Their article “Higher Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd” continues to resonate powerfully for me. It is now behind the Chronicle‘s paywall but there are excerpts here. In addition, the main point of the article remains visible in the pull quote

Statements by college leaders reflect an unholy alchemy of risk management, legal liability, and trustee anxiety

which is abstracted from the sentence

Instead, many of the statements released by college leaders about the killing of George Floyd reflect an unholy alchemy of risk management, legal liability, brand management, and trustee anxiety.

I often express myself, here as well as elsewhere, independently of the university. For example, when I signed a petition written by Rich Purcell, “Concerned CMU Faculty & Staff – It’s Time To Stand Up!” I now understand that I did so as a private individual, having provided my home zip code. Furthermore, I myself pay for the domain name and hosting for this website; the university provides no financial or technical support for this writing.

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So much for my legal disclaimer.

I will be writing in another post to criticize my government, which is my right as a United States citizen — indeed, this is a fundamental tradition, custom, and duty for US citizens. But in this post I am writing to criticize the Chinese government.

When I visited Hong Kong last year, I was taken by the citizens’ vigilant defense of their freedoms. The city is part of China and yet the Hong Kong Basic Law guarantees the region a high level of autonomy (“One Country, Two Systems”). Hong Kong has its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches, which in turn correspond to entities such as an police force independent of Mainland China, laws built on freedom of speech and other rights not upheld in Mainland China, and courts that run entirely separate from Mainland China.

The Basic Law is in force until 2047. However, the central Chinese government increasingly intrudes on Hong Kong’s internal affairs. In 2014, China proposed to reform the Hong Kong electoral system, and the people there responded with the Umbrella Movement. In 2015, five staff members mysteriously disappeared from Causeway Bay Books, a store that sold books critical of China. Early in 2019, after the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) proposed a bill to allow fugitives to be extradited to the notoriously opaque justice system in Mainland China, the Hong Kong people rose up again.

I unabashedly admire a city where millions march to defend their rights. 

Yet I often wonder what it would have been like for me to live in Hong Kong over the past twelve months. (I also wonder the same about Spain, which we visited as a family last winter.) The disruptions to the MTR, the subway network that unites the city; the frequent smell of tear gas hanging in the air; the closure of retail shops and the universities — all of these daily reminders would have been unnerving. And then, with the rise of COVID-19 in China last winter, I would likely have become even more concerned — as I am now, living in the US — for my personal health and safety.

The vast majority of Hong Kong people conducted their protests peacefully, and the government withdrew the extradition bill. The Hong Kong people, with their first-hand experience with SARS, isolated their borders and closely tracked any COVID-19 infections.

Thus, despite continuing unease around Hong Kong politics and public health, two months ago I had been in awe of how the citizens there had demonstrate resilience in the face of severe threats to their freedom and their health. 

But now, China has begun to tighten the screws. Now, starting this month, Hong Kong has become a place where merely humming the melody of a protest song, or failing to stand during the Chinese national anthem, or noting Xi Jinping’s physical resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, or speaking the words “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” could lead to immediate arrest.

People should be able to sing the songs of their hearts. Citizens should not be forced to stand during a national anthem. They should be able to make jokes at the expense of their leaders, or express differing political views.

Let me be clear: I don’t agree with every statement made by every Hong Kong dissident. Hong Kong is politically part of China, the Basic Law will end in 2047, and Hong Kong’s water and energy depend upon China. Therefore, it’s simply impractical to advocate complete liberation from China. In addition, I am aware that Hong Kong is an imperfect place: people of Filipino heritage generally are treated as lower class in Hong Kong, in a way that is even more open than in the US.

Nevertheless, I mourn for what is happening right now in Hong Kong, this illegal abrogation of their rights in the name of “security” and “stability”. Having observed the Lion Rock Spirit of the Hong Kong people over the past year and recognizing that they are, in fact, standing on moral high ground, I wouldn’t bet against them. But China is large and powerful, perhaps the world’s next empire. If I myself were living in Hong Kong right now, subject to this new law, I would, perhaps for the first time, at least seriously contemplate exit strategies.

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Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

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Update (2020-07-11): The day after I wrote this, Times Higher Education published an article on how Hong Kong scholars may decide to stay away because of the new security law.

This week the Chronicle published the article “Higher Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd,” written by two of my colleagues, Jason England and Rich Purcell. Every paragraph, every sentence hits home; it is worthwhile to read in its entirety. However, because the article is behind a paywall, here are excerpts:

What does it mean when an ice-cream company, Ben & Jerry’s, can come up with a clearer message of solidarity with protesters and against injustice than a university can? It means that higher education’s interest in fighting racism is, at best, superficial and, at worst, cynical.

We are black men on the faculty at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. On the afternoon of June 2, Rich was among a group of faculty and staff members asked by our dean to brainstorm a written response to the killing of George Floyd and to plan campus programming. Rich was the only black man involved. Jason — a faculty member with a background in civil rights who grew up in a traditionally overpoliced community and was recently racially profiled by the police — wasn’t consulted at all. When the statement was released, Rich discovered that the language and editing he had contributed had been eschewed, disregarded.

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We now find ourselves in a predicament at once peculiar and familiar: to advocate for our self-interest — our community, our rights, our safety, and our dignity — puts us in a position of jeopardizing our self-interest (our standing with university administration, and, given that he isn’t tenured, Jason’s livelihood). We’re also left to contemplate our personal and professional value to the university. We seem to exist as props, to be displayed as proof of the university’s nobility and virtue —but not as intellectuals to be engaged.

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[W]e’ve seen statements that serve no higher purpose. They are not messages but, to re-appropriate a term from Daniel Boorstin, pseudo-messages. They simply reaffirm the proclivity of college administrators to ape moral and ethical commitment to social concerns while, in fact, keeping the unruly social world at bay. They are written for an audience that bears little relation to the actual student body, staff, and faculty.

It is both right and possible to construct a statement that confronts the glaring issues of social inequity, the legitimization of extrajudicial violence, and the foundation of anti-blackness that props up our country. It is both right and possible to construct a statement that clearly supports the bodily sacrifice of the protesters and the desire for freedom and true democracy by black women and men. Instead, we get exercises in equivocation and dissembling that have little interest in speaking truth to power or in telling us who is responsible for injustice and why. These statements feign care for the community but ask us to deal with structural inequities not through collective action but by directing us to the university’s buffet of self-care services.

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We’re tired of people hiding behind Martin Luther King Jr. quotes, so we do not invoke his words lightly: It is up to university leadership to choose where we go from here: chaos or community? We have a chance — indeed, a duty — to elevate the discourse on race, class, police violence, and human dignity. We absolutely must force conversations about the spirit and philosophy that demean so many blacks and relegate us to the scrap heap in this society. We are devastated to wake up in a world where the university, the institution in which we invest our energy, love, and purpose, cannot rise to meet the very grave moment in which we live.

I cannot yet bring myself to watch video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd. 

On the one hand, I feel an obligation to bear witness, as a citizen, as a scientist, as a person. How can I hold a political stance without viewing what millions of Americans have seen? How can I claim to have knowledge while declining the opportunity to review hard visual and auditory evidence? How can I fully empathize with my fellow human beings and embrace solidarity with them without observing, even from a fully safe distance, the pain and and death and mourning and frustration that they experience first-hand every day?

Because I have not watched the video, I don’t know how often or how much Floyd gasped to breathe. I haven’t heard the outcries of the bystanders telling Chauvin to stop. I don’t know if Chauvin displayed rage or the cool calmness of the entitled. I don’t know what his fellow police officers were doing for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

8 minutes and 46 seconds.

And yet I do not feel obligated to watch the video.

Because we have seen it all before.

We have witnessed systemic racism and violent acts against black people for years. For my entire life I have witnessed police brutality in the headlines, overt racism in our communities, and more subtle and insidious derogatory remarks in the stores where we shop and the places where we work.

We have seen racism before and it grows everywhere. Like a weed? No, not like a weed, like a subdivision of perfectly manicured lawns, smothering the ground in their uniformed uniformity, poison sprayed on anything that had the audacity to look distinctive, a mocking display of monocultural perfection masking the demons of intolerance and indifference.

I do not want to say that people who mind their yards are racist! This is a metaphor. I am observing that racism in America is deeply embedded in our history and our contemporary way of life. We had might as well ask people who have lawns to give up their lawns.

Or ask people who are breathing not to breathe.

59 years ago today, Alan Shepard became the first astronaut, less than one month after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin ascended into space.

Shepard’s vehicle was the Mercury-Redstone. The first rocket in this series of modified ballistic missiles traveled four inches before the mission was aborted. The third carried Ham, the first hominid in space, who returned to Earth and lived until 1983. Shepard was flying on the fifth.

Reporters later asked him what he was thinking while waiting for liftoff. He responded, “The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.”

I love this answer.

It’s cool and brash. He has a proper sense of the mortal risk involved, and has rationally analyzed what someone might fear in this situation. It’s funny, and it’s funny because it’s true. Shepard is bluntly honest, uncensored. He speaks both as a trained professional and as a free American.

He didn’t say that he was thinking about the space race with the Russians, or the importance of this historical moment. He didn’t say that he was praying to God, looking back at his childhood, or thinking about his family. He is focused on the moment.

He understands that engineers and designers work within economic constraints. He knows that he sits atop a tall cylinder that is about to direct all of its explosive power to hurl him against the force of gravity beyond the reaches of the sky. He recognizes that his country bears the financial cost of this, that he is at the apex of an entire capitalistic system that is struggling to prove it can overtake a rival country that so far has outpaced us at every milestone.

He accepts the hazards because he is an astronaut.

For more than a decade, I have used a slight variation of ISO 8601 for date and time stamps. Yesterday was 2020-02-01 and tomorrow will be 2020-02-03. Sorting chronologically is easy with this format, because it is the same as sorting by alphanumeric character. That’s true even in my modified system, where I sometimes include the day of the week in English, especially as a separator when writing the date and time together (e.g., 2020-02-02 Sun 22:35).

Two palindromic dates have occurred since I adopted this system: 2010-01-02 and 2011-11-02.

Today is 2020-02-02 — a beautiful palindrome with only two characters. I expect to be alive for the next palindrome (2021-12-02) but then that’s it. The next one after that is 2101-10-12. All things must pass.

As my daughter winds down to sleep tonight, she said that she often thinks about when her mic was briefly turned on even though she was backstage, broadcasting her words to the entire audience of the musical.

I told her it is a sad and liberating truth of life that most people don’t think about others most of the time. If we are directly affecting each other or are present with each other, yes. But otherwise: we are ignored, unwatched, neglected, unknown — poignantly alone, pointedly free.

There is no shortage of video entertainment available in our household, even without ever subscribing to cable. First, there is YouTube, where I can lose myself in so many ways: watching Felix Immler in Switzerland present creative uses of the Swiss Army Knife, Galeazzo Frudua in Italy replicate the harmonies of the Beatles; Rick Beato in California teach music theory through popular music; Brett Yang and Eddy Chan in Australia share their humorous takes on contemporary entertainment as classically trained violinists; Tim Rowett in England demonstrate curious and cleverly designed novelties, etc.

Second, we can watch shows on our streaming services: Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix. I also watch programs such as South Park and some videos suggested by Apple News.

Third, we have rabbit ears that allow us to watch broadcast TV. We are “21st-century spoiled” with our ability to watch programs on demand — it’s not like last century, when we had to wait for a small number of channels to parse out their shows at specific times. Nowadays I mostly watch TV just for Steelers games.

Fourth, we borrow DVDs from the public library. This afternoon from the New Releases section I picked out Yesterday, Midsommar, Red Sparrow, and Life of the Party on the strength of the actors and half-remembered reviews. Rotten Tomatoes does suggest that not all of these will be worth watching.

With so many free and inexpensive options at hand, we rarely watch a movie in a theater. Besides the financial expense, there’s also the time involved in finding out where and when a film is being shown, plus the trouble of organizing ourselves to leave together, driving to the theater, and parking there. As a consequence, we sometimes can only understand cultural references weeks or months after a film release, and need to be careful to avoid spoilers.

To defer gratification in this way is a minor burden — we’re watching the same things as everyone else, just on time delay. Anyhow, the entire world is split into small ecosystems these days; entertainment is tailored for niche audiences. It’s not like when I was a child, when my classmates had a common culture around TV, talking excitedly after the series finale of M*A*S*H, or every week about the latest episode of Happy Days. Even back then, I did march to my own drummer. I was instead fascinated by the Watergate hearings, understanding they were important enough that I tried to take still photographs of the broadcasts.

During this winter season, I am interested in several movies enough to want to see them in the theater. Last weekend A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood opened (along with Frozen 2). Next month there is Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which I will certainly watch within a few days of its release, even though J.J. Abrams failed at concluding Lost, ruined the spirit of Star Trek in the film reboot, wrote the nonsensical tripe of Super 8, and produced completely unlikable characters in Cloverfield. He knows how to produce visual candy, but I can’t recall a time when he’s brought a story to a satisfactory close.

I am most excited to see 63 Up. I recognize the theaters where it is playing in New York, Chicago, Berkeley, and Santa Fe, places where I have lived. Maybe I will have to make a trip to Cleveland on January 26. While it is already available in Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray formats, I wonder how I can see it. The films come out only every seven years, and this may be the last one.