LA is fine, the sun shines most of the time

                                 L.A.'s fine, the sun shines most the time and the feeling is "lay back"

                       Palm trees grow and rents are low. But you know I keep thinkin' about making my way back 

Well, I'm New York City born and raised but nowadays,
I'm lost between two shores L.A.'s fine, but it ain't home
New York's home,
But it ain't mine no more.

 

----Neil Diamond

 

When we moved from Boston to Los Angeles two years ago (not counting a little more than a year we spent as nomads), this Neil Diamond song captured the feeling we had. We were lost between two shores. LA wasn’t home, and Boston wasn’t ours any more. 

 

Now two years later, we still occasionally miss Boston and New England. The lovely fall colors, the serene beauty of fresh snow, and the blossoming of flowers at the end of winter…how can we forget them? Also, the White Mountains, our outdoor playground, and Plum Island, where we went birdwatching. Above all, how can we not miss our family and friends who were a part of our lives for so many decades?

 

However, to our surprise, not only have we made home in Los Angeles, we actually like it here. Like it a lot. 

 

Of course, having both our children and their families nearby, and my sister living not far away (as LA distances go), are big reasons for our happiness in this megapolis. Afterall, we moved here because of them in the first place.

 

Another big factor is how different LA has turned out to be from what we expected. Yes, it is huge and driving on the freeways can be frightening. There is practically no downtown to speak off and what there is can be considered to be quite plain, at least at the first glance. It has none of the beauty of the Boston downtown. 

 

On the other hand, we discovered that LA is not a monolithic entity but a collection of a large number of neighborhoods, connected by those freeways. Some of these neighborhoods are really pleasant, like Pasadena, where we have now settled. 

 

Living in this quiet part of Pasadena we get a sense of what a “walking” neighborhood feels like. We get our daily walks through treelined streets (talk about LA being very dry) with hardly any cars around. There is Arroyo, a little stream we can walk down to. Walk a little further, and we end up at Rose Bowl, famous for its New Year’s parade.

 

Pasadena is in the foothills of San Gabriel Mountains, where we can see almost every day the 5,700’ high Mt. Wilson, and on a clear day, Mt. San Gorgonio, which is 11,200’ high. I never imagined living so close to mountains, especially in LA. There are also a number smaller hills nearby, all providing excellent hiking opportunities. On a typical morning, we would drive for ten minutes to a trail head and do a 3-mile hike that takes us 400’ high. As there are few trees to obstructing views, we can see the entire San Gabriel Valley as well as downtown LA. 

 

This town also has an active cultural scene. The Pasadena Symphony orchestra performs in Ambassador Auditorium, only one mile away, within walking distance. Also, the downtown begins around there, and so we can dine in all types of restaurants and walk back home. There are several lovely gardens, the largest and most famous being The Huntington Gardens. It is enormous and makes you forget that you are in a major city. There are museums and an auditorium inside this garden, as well as well-designed Chinese and Japanese sections. There are thousands of trees and plants of every type imaginable.

 

Caltech is not far from our home either. In pre-Covid days, we used to attend lectures on scientific topics, such as space travels, which is what this university is famous for. Now we attend them on zoom. Soon, the in-person lectures should start again. JPL, the world-famous NASA facility managed by Caltech is just a little further away. That’s where most unmanned space probes get designed and built.

 

Then there is the Mediterranean weather of Southern California. Although I enjoyed snow as well as cross country skiing in New England, and cold weather does not bother me, I must say that being able to sit outdoors every day on our patio for a cup of coffee or a drink has its advantages. 

 

Finally, being where we are, we are within a day or two drive away from some splendid areas of the country and a huge number of National Parks. We have done a couple of two-week road trips already and visited/hiked in multiple places located in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Utah. Hopefully, this is just the beginning. 

 

Boston will always have a special place in our hearts. However, fortunately, we have ended up in a pretty good place to spend the winters of our lives. 

 

 

Beethoven's tenth symphony

 On October ninth (2021), Beethoven’s tenth symphony was released. This work was never completed by the maestro but now Artificial Intelligence has advanced to such a stage that finishing it was possible. I presume that all the nuances that makes a Beethoven’s symphony unquestionably his were understood by the machine and extrapolated to develop a piece of music that sounds just as if the old composer had created it. 

 

This opens up intriguing possibilities. Should we expect that other composers would receive a similar treatment? Certainly. Expect to hear Tchaikovsky’s seventh symphony or a finished version of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Perhaps the creators will be honest and say that AI helped develop them. However, one can envision that many “missing” pieces will be “found” in the cellars of old people who lived in the same town as those composers, and then auctioned off as authentic.

 

Talking about missing pieces…what about fine arts? How about a “missing” oil painting by Van Gogh suddenly turning up? A “Starless Night” which is a companion work of the famous “Starry Night?” I am sure a properly trained AI program can very easily figure out the colors, techniques, and the chemicals used to create those colors to create a painting that looks totally “authentic”.

 

This type of scam will only work if people value authenticity and are be willing to pay for it. An authentic work by Van Gogh has far more value than a print made out of it (like the one I would have hanging on my wall). That begs the question, why is it so?

 

If the pleasure is obtained by looking at the art and appreciating what it is conveying, what difference does it make whether it is authentic or not? The only reason I can think of is the bragging rights that accompany the acquisition of an authentic piece of work. “I can afford an authentic van Gogh and you can’t.” 

 

If we can somehow move away from the ego that comes from owning an authentic art, then we can sit back and enjoy these new products without worrying about the fact that they are not authentic. We can live in van Gogh’s world and admire “his” new paintings every few days, and I can continue to enjoy new works by my favorite composer, Beethoven, as the dead man continues to compose symphonies and piano concertos forever.  

 

The end of conversation

  

In 2009, I wrote a Post on different types of conversations. The four types I identified were:

 

• A ping pong match, in which the other person tries to one-up every statement you make. For example, you say, “We had a good vacation in Arizona.” To which the person you are conversing with replies, “We had a good vacation in Paris.” No interest what so ever in hearing your story.
• A Spanish Inquisition, in which every statement you make is torn apart in pieces by the other person who just cannot see the larger picture and seems to be on a quest to prove he/she is smarter/more street wise than you.
• A Communist debate, so named in honor of how Soviet Union used to respond to almost every proposal from the West in United Nations. “Nyet,” they would say. In this type of conversation, everything you say will be opposed by the other person, does not matter what you say. 

 

I pointed out that a more pleasurable conversation would be the fourth type, a Productive Conversation, which involves listening to what the other person is saying, thinking about what was said, and then responding. The point here is to not to think of the other party as an opponent and the reason for conversation as an opportunity to score a victory

 

Little did I know that we would be heading a situation in which there will be no conversation among people. 

 

You know the scenario. Two people sit down for dinner in a restaurant, and both are engrossed in viewing and tapping their own smartphone. An occasional word will be exchanged, otherwise it is total immersion in the outside world.

 

This is a very frustrating situation if you are trying to have a conversation with an addict of smartphone. You are staring at him; he is staring at the smartphone. 

 

“So, how was your day?”

“Good” …. Tap, tap, tap, full concentration on the device, total absence from the present moment.

“What did you do today?” No response. Tap, tap, tap.

“I said, what did you do today?”

“Huh…nothing.” Back to tap, tap, tap.

You give up.

 

Occasionally, the conversation starts normally, but the phone pings and it is taken out in a moment. Then, you lost the conversation partner. Sometimes it does not even need to ping. Every few minutes the addict has to take out the phone to check if he has missed something. How bad would it look if the text of a distant friend is not responded immediately? 

 

Now I am no saint. I too check my smartphone periodically, but I make it a point that it does not come in way of a conversation, which can be a joyous, fruitful activity that further cements the bond between two people. Perhaps some people don’t see the need or don’t feel that they are good at talking with the others. Smartphone provides an easy out in those situations. 

 

As the grip of these devices tightens, there will be no talking. 

It will be the end of conversation.

A far-out scenario

 I recently wrote a Blog Post commenting on the beginning of passenger space flights, thanks to the efforts by Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk. That would usher in a new era for making dreams of many people like me come true. 

 

When I posted it on FaceBook, I was criticized by two sets of people. One group of responders could not stand these billionaires, especially Jeff Bezos, and so could not see anything good coming out of their efforts. “They are terrible people, sucking blood out of their workers and amassing fortunes that are unconscionable. All they are doing is boosting their already inflated egos,” they said. Right, I responded. I am not a big fan of who they are either. However, that does not diminish what they have done for space travel. Let us not throw the baby with the bathwater.  

 

I was also told that they could have spent their money on fighting climate change (and multitude of human problems that can be addressed by pouring more money). 

 

That last point made me think about the future of our planet. How fruitful will it be to throw money at fighting climate change? Hasn’t the train already left the station? Aren’t we heading to a disastrous scenario? Looking at what is going on this year I cannot help but believe that we are now beyond the tipping point and things will accelerate rapidly in an undesirable direction. Perhaps the earth will become uninhabitable in a few decades.

 

It may be time to start thinking about survival, not just prevention. Perhaps it is more meaningful to pour money into assuring that we the human beings can survive the coming catastrophe that we have brought upon ourselves.

 

Under that scenario, what the billionaires have done is even more meaningful than ever. One option for human survival, albeit far-out, is to transfer some portion of the population into space when earth becomes largely uninhabitable. 

 

This far-out scenario is similar to what was envisioned by a science fiction author Neal Stephenson in his wonderful book called “SevenEves.” In that book, moon is destroyed and its parts are going to hit earth after two years. With the clock ticking, a significant portion of the population manages to get into the near-earth orbit and start a long journey toward an uncertain future. It has a happy ending with population coming back and establishing presence in a ring rotating around earth at the geosynchronous orbit. 

 

That may be one scenario that may come to pass as climate change manages to destroy earth over the coming decades. Then, people will say that those crazy billionaires in year 2021 played a small but significant role in making human survival a possibility. 

 

 

Into space

Space travel is back in the news. The adventures of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have made it possible for an average person like me dream again of traveling in space. 

The last time I had that feeling was in the late 60’s after moon walks. We believed then that space travel would become common place and we would all be making journeys to the moon, if not Mars. Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well, 2001 came and went, and 20 years later, we are still no closer to travelling to moon. Now, I am getting too old, but thanks to Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, there is some hope that my dream will be fulfilled.

 

For many people, this is just a stunt by very rich people and they could have used their money elsewhere. Well, yes, and I am not endorsing Bezos or Branson. They are showmen and have accumulated enormous wealth, some of it on the backs of people who work for them. They are also human beings with faults. 

 

But that does not take away from the fact that they demonstrated at their own risk two different systems for commercializing space travel. These are still baby steps but now there is a price attached to make any individual an astronaut. It is still expensive, but the price will come down. Also, this is just one of many possibilities opening up…consider the SpaceX system for example. They have announced an all-civilian crew for an orbital flight later this year.

 

Regarding spending money elsewhere, I have heard that argument many times, for example, when NASA was launching manned flights or when the Indians Space Research Organization was testing rockets in the 60s. If you go with that attitude, there will be no discoveries, no adventures, no excitement. 

 

Now a few explanations and clarifications. 

 

In US, if you go above 50 miles (80 km), you become an astronaut. Another organization (FAI) requires the altitude to be 62 miles (100 km). This is when you cross what is called Kármán Line, and the atmosphere is so thin, you require centrifugal force to remain afloat for a long time. That is how satellites or space station stays afloat. 

 

The space-flight of Bezos or Branson was not quite sustainable. They went up above the 50-mile limit and came down making them (and their fellow travelers) astronauts. In the past, a rocket powered experimental aircraft, X-15, went up high enough to make its pilots astronauts in 1959, long time before Virgin Galactic. 

 

They did experience weightlessness. Weightlessness does not mean zero gravity. Gravity is always around---you experience weightlessness when you do not resist its force by being in a free fall. After reaching its maximum altitude, Blue Origin crew experienced weightlessness because they were in a free fall inside their spacecraft which was also in a freefall. Hence the sensation of floating around in their vehicle. 

 

Now if you add horizontal speed to the vehicle, free fall will not be straight down but a parabola. This is what an airplane designed to simulate weightlessness does…it executes parabolas starting from high altitude. It is nicknamed vomit comet because of what it does to many people experiencing weightlessness. 

 

If you keep increasing the horizontal speed the vehicle will fall further and further away until at one speed, it will not fall and start going round and round earth. This is when it will be in orbit. 

 

Another, easier way to understand weightlessness while in orbit is to observe two forces: gravity (very much present) and centrifugal force. They balance each other out. Also, both the vehicle and the astronauts are in the same force balance situation and so they can float around. 

 

Oh, how I would love to participate these emerging possibilities! 

 

I realize that at this stage it is a competition between my physical ability to undertake such a journey and its financial affordability. 

 

Who will win?

Pandemic of the No-Vaxxers

 So, we are back to using masks in enclosed space after getting used to not doing so over the past few weeks. The new cases are rising everywhere in the country, the virus is making a comeback and there seems to be no end in sight. This time you cannot blame it on any government screwups or lack of understanding on how virus spreads. You can blame it squarely on misguided people who stubbornly refuse to get vaccinated…the “No-Vaxxers.”

I am tempted to say that let them catch Covid and then refuse to provide them treatment if they get it. That, however would be a cruel and unusual punishment. As they say, you provide treatment even to injured enemy troops during war. That is what makes us human. 

 

However, being a human also means that I can get angry. I ask myself, “What the hell (or another four-letter word) is wrong with these people?”

I know some of these “No-Vaxxers.” When asked what are the reasons why they refuse to get vaccinated, I get one of the following responses:

“I am afraid of the side effects of the vaccine.” My response to them would be: Perhaps you prefer the side effects of Covid.

“The cases are rising due to the Delta variation.” Yes, and who is providing home to these variants? 99.5% of the Covid patients are non-Vaxxers and for that Corona virus thanks you. 

“The vaccines were rushed through without much testing.” Ok, do you know the procedure for getting vaccinations approved? Where, in your opinion were corners cut? How about hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated? Can you think of a bigger clinical trial in the history of drug approval? How many of them have died?

That will bring up the next objection. “I know so-and-so who died even after taking vaccine.” Yes, maybe there are isolated cases here and there, but have you heard of Confirmation Bias? It means looking for evidence to support whatever your belief you hold. You will hang on to any news report (the source be damned), that provides ammunition to what you believe in. What about the hundreds of millions of vaccinated people who did not die? 

Now it starts getting more and more bizarre. “I don’t like foreign DNA to invade my system.” Hmmm. How much genetics do you know? What do you think these vaccines are composed of and how they work? Where did you get this dazzling insight from? Fox News?

“I don’t believe in science.” I strongly suggest that the next time you have medical problem, go to a snake oil salesman. They are supposed to cure every disease known to men.  

“It is a plot by Bill Gates to plant microchips in our bodies.” As I mentioned, it gets more and more bizarre. 

“It is a free country and I can decide what I want to do.” Sure, I don’t care, as long as you don’t harm the others. In this case, that is not the case. Just see what you have wrought. 

You are allowing the Coronavirus to continue its rampage by providing safe havens. Thanks to you, the virus feels free to develop even more resistant mutations, and someday even the ones that attack people who have taken vaccines. Like myself. And what about kids who have not been vaccinated? How do we protect them from people like you? Finally, what about the cost of treating you? If your insurance pays for it, where will that money eventually come from?

Do you go around driving drunk? How is not getting vaccinated any different? In both cases, by claiming that you can do what you want, you kill not just yourself but others as well. Yes, I know, you don’t drink and drive, because if you are caught, you will end up in jail. For not getting vaccinated, our permissive society does not punish you. In fact, we can’t even ask you if you have been vaccinated, in order to protect your privacy. You are given a free pass. 

So, what exactly is the end game according to you? 

Do you believe that the virus will get tired and just go away? 

 

Exploring creativity through photography

 A few years ago, the person who founded MetroWest Camera Club in the Boston area asked me to go beyond taking “pretty pictures”. I took up his challenge and have been exploring the medium of photography to find my voice in the world of creative art. A recent lecture by a famous photographer Guy Tal provided me with the vocabulary to express what I am doing.

 

Guy Tal does not consider himself to be a photographer who makes art, but a self- expressive artist working the medium of photography. In other words, he has successfully moved on from taking pretty pictures. 

 

A stepwise progression of what one needs to go through to attain that level can be found by studying what Minor White, another great photographer, has written. He classifies photographic images in four categories: 

 

·      Informational: This is---and how the camera saw it.

·      Documentary: I was there—and this is what I saw.

·      Pictorial: I saw this—and here is how I feel about it.

·      Equivalent: I feel this—and here is a symbol for my feeling

 

Most photographers stay within the first two categories. Those pictures of flowers, landscapes or family document what they saw. When you move to the last two categories, you enter the zone of creativity. 

 

The question is: why do it?

 

The answer can be found in what a guy with an unpronounceable last name, Mihaly Csikszentmihaliy, has written (as per Guy Tal), “Most of the things that are interesting are the results of creativity…. The reason why creativity is so fascinating is that when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of artist comes close to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get from life and rarely do.” 

 

He calls “Flow” as the state you are in when creating art.  “…the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

 

That’s why. You do it to get into Flow. 

 

Personally, as I attempt to progress in the Pictorial and Equivalent categories of photography, I have experienced that zone of excitement, and I like it a lot.

 

My version of using photography as an art form comes in several different varieties:

 

·      I like the concept of minimalism---to express what I am seeing and feeling with very few objects, sometimes just a few lines or shapes.

·      Minimalism very often that leads me to convert color pictures to black and white. Removing the distraction of color makes one focus on shapes, textures, shades, lighting and composition. 

·      I try to find beauty in small things. A flower is interesting but a petal with backlight is more so. 

·      I enjoy converting photographs into images that are impressionistic. Instead of realism, I try to distill the essence of the experience using Photoshop techniques such as creating composites of multiple images, and applying various layers and filters. 

·      I create abstracts that are nothing but colors, shapes, and lines arranged to my satisfaction. (There are ways by which a photograph can be distorted into abstracts using Photoshop.) I cannot articulate how I conclude that an image is acceptable...I just feel it in my guts.

·      I combine slideshows of images (real or abstracts) with music, generally Western Classical compositions. I am exploring the connection between visual and aural experiences and feel good when they complement each other. 

 

Here are examples of what I create:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/ashokbo/

 

Now these are the areas to get my fix of excitement through creativity that Mihaly talks about. Different photographers pursue different avenues in their attempts to go beyond taking pretty pictures. That is if they feel the urge.  Many don’t and that is totally their prerogative. 

 

As for me, I thank the founder of that camera club for pushing me into this quest.