Konradical's Weblog

The Wall, pt. VIII

aderkon — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:39:00 +0000

Hi! as if it hadn’t been a year of stone cold silence on this blog, here’s a quick update:

The Wall in what is to become our baby’s room in March.

Efflorescence. It’s ugly. It tears apart families. It’s a leaching of moisture from the other side of the brick which carries minerals and leaves these unsightly white deposits.

The solution:

Scrape the crap off with these tools, then use industrial oil-based polyurethane coating to seal the bricks from moisture coming through.

The results:

So far, not what I’d hoped. Even after scraping with the wire brush attachment on the drill it looks whitish in places, the wire brush itself seems to be staining the brick black, and the old layer of polyurethane doesn’t come off, leaving some flaky messy looking areas.

Will consult with my handy neighbor who loaned me the tools and poke around on websites.

Chinatown research 05/03/2010

aderkon — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:35:26 +0000

Chinese Names

Tags: Chinese, characters, surnames, names

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Chinatown NYC ethnography group favorite links are here.

Chinatown research 02/27/2010

aderkon — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:35:43 +0000

Chinatown Community Young Lions

Tags: no_tag
- – By Konrad Aderer

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Chinatown NYC ethnography group favorite links are here.

Chinatown research 02/15/2010

aderkon — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:36:30 +0000

Essay (General) on The Lion Dance

Lion dancing has long been associated with kung fu, an association that dates back to the Ching dynasty, when revolutionary martial artists used the dance as a secret means of communication. Under the guise of celebration, revolutionary martial artists traveled from village to village performing the lion dance.

Tags: lion dance
- – By Konrad Aderer
- – By Konrad Aderer
“The Lion Dance: Tradition and Symbolism” text with photos by Glen Doyle (?)

The lion dance has been part of the Chinese culture for thousands of years and is performed on auspicious occasions such as weddings, store openings, and various festivals and celebrations. The lion, a symbol of power, wisdom, and good fortune, chases away evil spirits and brings hapiness, longevity, and good luck. The lion dance is also performed at many business locations during the Chinese New Year’s Celebration for the lion brings prosperity and good luck to the business for the upcoming year.

Tags: lion dance
- – By Konrad Aderer
From VOICES: Folk Photography by Martha Cooper (Chinese New Year)

Martha Cooper & Madeline Slovenz on Chinese New Year & lion dancing

Tags: lion dance, Chinese New Year
- – By Konrad Aderer
- – By Konrad Aderer

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Chinatown NYC ethnography group favorite links are here.

2009 Presidential Survey for Breakfast

aderkon — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:03:14 +0000

2009 Presidential Survey – What does “Change” really mean – SunLao – Open Salon

I’m contemplating this survey wondering what they’re going to do with the info. I find it more interesting to look at this survey now because I’m taking a course in survey research as part of my graduate sociology studies at Brooklyn College. The fact that the SURVEY INSTRUCTIONS include sending a contribution to the DNC with the survey is something which deeply compromises the survey’s validity. But it’s a chance to revisit the broad categories of policy they spell out. I volunteered in Philly for his campaign, and have very mixed feelings on the outcomes so far. My negative views of the Obama administration are mainly centered around their continuity of Bush “war on terror” policies, especially the enforcement holocaust against immigrants and the refusal to prosecute those who committed torture and rendition. This survey doesn’t have any possible responses to express that opinion.

tags: sunlao, obama, survey

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Chinatown research 02/08/2010

aderkon — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:36:09 +0000

The following is a test of my autopost-through-diigo sytem. Diigo is a social networking site that works well with research and I’ve started posting my sociology and documentary-related items there.

Margaret Chin’s career highlights the importance of community groups like Asian Americans for Equality.

As you can see, I haven’t worked out how to make these posts automatically blog-worthy yet.

This weekend I’m going to start figuring out the difference between documentary cinematography and video ethnography when I go shoot the Lunar New Year activities like the lion dance in Chinatown.

Sunday Routine – Margaret Chin – A Busy Day for a Record-Setting Councilwoman – NYTimes.com

Tags: no_tag
- – By Konrad Aderer
- Margaret Chin, a longtime housing and immigration rights advocate who grew up on Mott Street, is the first Asian-American woman on the New York City Council and the first Chinese-American to represent Chinatown, a feat achieved after three losing bids for the Council. She taught for 14 years in LaGuardia Community College’s Division of Adult and Continuing Education, and in 1974 helped establish Asian Americans for Equality, an advocacy group.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Chinatown NYC ethnography group favorite links are here.

Freelance Samurai (Ronin?)

aderkon — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:35:14 +0000

Seems like every single impulse I have leads to having to learn some technical thing…This weekend I have to figure out Macromedia Fireworks so I can redesign a webpage for my documentary. Also reeducate myself how to embed video on my own web page which I keep doing then forgetting how to do…then I’m trying to use all these social networking tools to market myself better as a freelancer…

I went and saw the Art of the Samurai exhibit at the MOMA last week. It cast an artistic-reflective-determined spell on me. I hadn’t read up much on samurai culture even though for four years I’ve been training in aikido, which is derived from samurai fighting arts.

Watching how the swords are made was fascinating, and they had dozens and dozens on display. I got pretty engrossed in them, looking at all the different areas of the blade. The Marxist sociologist in me was cooly assessing the feudal culture that fetishized these objects to such a degree, while the martial artist/zen student in me was inspired to deepen my practice & embody the samurai ideals.

The samurai ideal of bushido, living in the moment and retaining mindful serenity in all circumstances, even in the face of death is one I’m calling to mind a lot since I had the chance to contemplate these objects and the culture that created them. Which is also in my blood, even though I don’t believe in culture as a genetically exclusive thing. Let’s say it’s in my heritage, and at this point in my life I can appreciate it more than ever before.

By the way, “mu,” roughly translatable as “nothing” is also a zen koan which is the meaning of this particular daimyo’s standard (banner to identify rallying point in battle) below:

Out in the Styx

aderkon — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:23:27 +0000

So we made it to Niagara, but first we stopped in Beacon, NY. Eh, but I didn’t take any pictures there. We arrived on the totally wrong day — Tuesday — when all the art galleries were closed. We went to some glass-blowing gallery which was kind of cool and after we ate this hearty dinner we just crashed in our bed & breakfast.

So then after about 7 hours of driving we made it to the border for 2 hours of waiting at the Rainbow Bridge. We later found out that’s where all the dumb tourists like us go because it goes straight to the Niagara tourist district. Funny, this was the second time I’ve recently crossed over to Canada and both times we got a fairly harsh white lady customs officer on the way in, and an easygoing male officer on the way back. You’d think Canada would be less severe but that wasn’t my experience.

We were bemused by our own choice to go to Niagara since we tend to avoid touristy areas as well as huge crowds, but we didn’t want to spend a lot of dough for this trip, and though I wanted to see my grandma in Ohio my aunt thought that would be too much people around over the holidays. Once we learned Styx was playing that clinched it, even though we both were only vaguely familiar with that one song of theirs.

Of course, even the most kitschy of tourist attractions has something worthwhile about it and in this case that was the Falls. You can get a slight sense of the undeniable awe of being there even in my hastily edited night footage. This is our little stroll on the way to the main event on New Year’s:

Then of course, there was Styx…this is just a cover they did of a Beatles song, a nice surprise. They were pretty tight, good energy…wonder how the guitarists dealt with the cold, I couldn’t even hold my camera very long without my fingers freezing. We’d gotten to the vantage point this video was shot around 10 p.m.:

and after a half hour had to walk around, ducked into a place for some Irish coffees. I was not looking forward to going back out but when we did at 11:30 the crowd had grown massively and it was significantly warmer, not bad at all. And the spectacle was not lost on two homebodies like us, the display they put on was thrillingly near-apocalyptic as you can see:

The whole milieu was pretty balanced for family-type fun. There were strollers and rowdy college kids, but the atmosphere never felt overly belligerent or policed.

Happy 2010 friends! I’m not a maker of resolutions, but consistency in blogging is visible on my agenda.

Heading North for New Year’s

aderkon — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:10:40 +0000

Niagara Falls fireworks!

Feels like the terrorism scares are heating up again. Michelle & I are in Beacon, NY and it’s a little less freezing than yesterday.

"wow, this really IS Hades!"

Believe it or not, we’re going to be in Niagara Falls for New Year’s. We kind of picked the idea out of the internet blue-sky at the last minute. I want to shoot some snow for my film and it was the closest place of any interest we could think of. I didn’t realize before that it was in Canada.

Not surprisingly, there’s a big shoo at Niagara Falls for New Year’s eve. And we found out Styx is playing! Wish I knew more than one song of theirs. Stay safe for New Year’s everyone! Hope our faces don’t freeze.

Got both my cameras, will shoot the festivities with my little Optura 600. Going to run and try to pick up some kind of face protector at the ski shop here in Beacon before hitting the road.

Stumbling to Fall

aderkon — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:07:42 +0000

So I have another job with the UN, basically I’m in charge of about ten short videos on how people are affected by the global economic crisis around the world. The last one turned out really well: (go to the Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System box & click the video link)

And of course at the same time I’m making the final push to complete Enemy Alien. I got a $15K grant so I can put a solid six weeks into the film. I have a great web designer retooling my website. But I’m not going to be done with the UN Secretary General job until September so that pushes everything back a bit.

Plus school is starting again, like right now. I really should register this week. I thought I was going to do some leisurely academic reading over the summer and meditate on my thesis…but the second school was over was the first UN job and then there was a rough cut to finish for the screening and then the CA trip and…here we are.

I have to think hard about how much of a courseload to take on. In a sense I really would like to be full-time but that might be tough as I’m finishing my doc. On the other hand, I’ll have control over my schedule so maybe now would be the time to do it. But then, the fees are not negligible. Yet it’s going to be the same amount in the end, and I really don’t want to drag out getting this degree.

Navy blue hakama

Feeling a bit pressured now. My sensei recently told me to start wearing hakama which is a big step at my aikido dojo. So there’s that to maintain too. The training definitely helps my mental acuity for other purposes as well. But time is time.

The fabulous Mally

Oh yeah, on Monday I shot another fun set of product demos for Mally Beauty. Mally Roncal is a fabulous, beautiful, funny and warm Filipina makeup artist with her own line of products. I did two days of shooting last year for her website, and this was a one-day update.

Tonight I’m going to see The Bacchae at New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park. Joanne Akalaitis is directing, music by Philip Glass. I’m really eager to see what they do with it, I know the play pretty well because I was in it not long after NYU, played Dionysus in a blond wig and Mardi Gras beads on the Christopher Street pier.

With that mental break I hope to have a contemplative Sunday morning and reach some equanimity about how my next few months are going.