Cow Parade: Budapest and Boston

And so I decided to instead write about cows.

That is correct, cows.

The CowParade is a phenomenal public art success by most measures. If you have not yet experienced the parade of cows in a major metropolis, it is a public art moo-vement (forgive me) intended to make art accessible for the masses. Cows are safe. Have you met a person who did not like cows? We all love ‘em, and most of us happily eat them. (Pause and consider what that says about human nature.)

And then someone got the bright idea to use cows as a blank canvas. Artists in each city transform the same basic cow model into fantastic flights of imagination (or sadly, mere advertisements for the companies who sponsor them). Peter Hanig, the even coordinator explains:

Art is about breaking down barriers. It gets people to feel, to think, to react. So when you come across life-sized cow sculptures that have been covered in mirrors or gumdrops, cows that have been painted with elaborate themes or transformed into something else entirely, you can’t help but stop and think about what it means. All your preconceived ideas go out the window. Suddenly people see that art can be fun and that art can be interesting to everyone, not just people who frequent museums.

Art can be fun. Indeed. I am not sure what artists have to say about that, but I can imagine that some agree and some are not amoosed (sorry, I can’t help it, really.)

Peruse the CowParade website. It is a hoot. People love these cows. And the cows raise a huge amount of money for charity. It looks like a win-win game: artists get public exposure, charities get cash, and the art is temporary (so no one has to actually LIVE with it for longer than a summer).

The cows do reflect a city’s culture. Boston’s cows were upright, dignified chaps. Budapest’s cows—yes, they are hosting the parade this summer—are not of the Boston Breed. Strangely, however, the official CowParade website does not list Budapest as a participant. Odd. Is Budapest a renegade cow stampede? Two striking examples of cows in Budapest:

Handicap Cow: his two back legs were amputated and replaced by old-fashioned wheelchair wheels. Not exactly whimsical. Especially when a beggar with a similar impediment worked the subway stairs within sight.

And my personal favorite: The Ice-Cream Cow. The cow is located just near the traditional café for distinguished ladies and gents, the Gerbaund. (Update: I recently learned that this is its new location. It was moved here after much controversy. Read this article from Budapest's English weekly newspaper, Budapest Sun.) It is blue cow ice cream melting into the hot summer pavement. If you imagined a cow as ice-cream, where would you have to insert the wooden stick? Exactly. On the stick it says: Don’t Lick.

I love Budapest and its cows. Whimsical without the sentiment.

Another Update: I found the official Hungarian site for the CowParade. Check it out and dust off your Hungarian language skills! http://www.cowparade.hu/index2.html

(Photo credits go to my Dad and his first digital camera.)

One Hour to Madness and Joy

One Hour to Madness and Joy

by Walt Whitman

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me
in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of
a determin'd man.

O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
untied and illumin'd!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

To be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and
you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
To have the gag remov'd from one's mouth!
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.

O something unprov'd! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

Poem: August Morning

Summer travels are finished. We are back in the Bend for the school year. Our trip home from Budapest was smooth--no delays or lost luggage to complain of.

Settling into the house will take time after such a long time on the road. I do not look forward to the unpacking. In fact I am a notorious non-unpacker. I live out of my suitcase for weeks rather than face the laundry I should do sooner rather than later. Of course L. unpacks first thing.

To kick things up a notch, here is a lovely poem to savor:

American Life in Poetry: Column 071 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day.

August Morning

It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife's eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

Poem copyright (c) by Albert Garcia from his latest book "Skunk Talk" (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in "Poetry East," No. 44. Reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Back in Budapest

My parents arrived in Transylvania on Friday morning and I have hardly had time to check my email never mind think about blogging.

It is a long, long trip from Kansas to the land of pine trees, mineral water, and kurtos kalach. They have been troopers, however. This morning we arrived back in Budapest via overnight train. In the couchette to our right was a film crew from England (including Jeremy Daniels--whose passport was confused with one of ours at the border), who had just finished shooting a film in Romania. On our right, a group of folk singers/story tellers from Hungary. My family took up an entire couchette.

Saturday and Sunday were spent on the pot-holed roads between villages and bigger cities in Transylvania. We visited a region famous for its salt mines, partially because my hometown in Kansas also has salt mines. We thought it would make for an interesting parallel view of the two cultures. We took a bus down into the mines for a few hours tour.

The mines we visited were huge caverns used here for health and recreation. It is considered therapeutic for those with respiratory problems to spend hours down inside the mines breathing the air which is certainly pollen free. None of us noticed an air ventilation system. No fire escapes. After the 1.5 kilometer bus ride down into the mine, we descended about 200 wooden steps. The experience was eerie. The mine is now equipped with picnic tables, swings, ping pong tables, and room for badminton. There is a church and a museum. And, of course, a coffee bar. (Other parts of the mine are still in working condition.)

After leaving the mines we spent the afternoon in nearby Szovata, a resort town with a salty-water lake. The lake is filled with bobbing heads due to the buoyancy of the water. We didn't float ourselves; instead we enjoyed a long, long lunch on a patio near the lake.

We fed my parents all the local foods we love: cheeses, cakes, fresh fruits and vegetables, mushrooms taken down from the mountains, micc (a kind of grilled meat), kurtos kalach, etc.

We took them up into the mountains around Csik to look at land we might want to buy. We drank Csiki beer on the main street and people watched. (We kept the gypsies at arm's length.)

We played with grandma's new puppy, Bodza.

On Monday we visited the church at Csiksomlyo, famous for its miraculous Virgin Mary statue.

We ate Grandma’s lunch at 1 pm everyday—roka mushrooms paprikas or chicken paprikas, puliszka, or potatoes, or perhaps sheep’s milk cheese and always enough perfectly ripe watermelon to feed an army.

Thanks be to God, the heat wave broke before we arrived in Budapest today. We are all happily ensconced in our castle district residences, most of us sleeping off lunch and rich servings of cake.

Things observed during this trip to Transylvania:

1. Roads in Transylvania are not just for cars--expect hay-loaded horse carts, motorcycles, bikes, old ladies walking, hitchhikers, train crossings operated by hand, hand-picked berries or mushrooms for sale, trucks, and the occasional grazing cow.

2. Kansas and Transylvania have more in common than you might expect.

3. Poverty does not equal danger or violence.

4. Language barriers can be overcome by walking a puppy on the street.

5. Poverty does not equal lack of education.

6. "Decarbonated" does not mean no carbonation when looking for water with no gas.

7. If you are willing to give your last piece of pizza to a beggar woman, do not feel shocked or offended when she walks two steps away and shares it with her son right before your eyes.

8. Transylvania and Budapest--not handicap accessible.

9. Puppies are worth it.

Updates from Csikszereda

We played mad tennis this morning. We made a ferocious team versus an eleven-year-old and our spritely seventy-something-year-old couch. We manage to win a few games here and there.

I finally finished my biography of Marcel Duchamp, for which I am to be one day rewarded with a trip to Philadelphia where his major works are on display. His life and work, his life as his art work, his anti-art as art, etc. fascinate me. I once turned up my nose in the Picasso museum in Paris. Now I salivate at the thought of making a special trip to Philadelphia to see Duchamp's Glass. Life is like that.

Duchamp's demise (as all biography's must end) opened a floodgate for me. Within 24 hours I had read Julia Glass's first novel, Three Junes (highly recommended, especially if you need good literary fiction as a post-Duchampian salve). I am in the middle of The Road to Coorain, a work of autobiography. Next I plan to read Uglies, a young adult novel. Fast. Furious. And strangely ecclectic.

Tomorrow at 6 am my parents arrive on the Korona train from Budapest. They have traveled from Kansas to Transylvania in one long shot. I expect them to drop dead from exhaustion when they arrive. I am sure while they are here they will absorb sights and the local flavors, and offer little commentary on their impressions. Yet I look forward to their reactions to life here in the Carpathian valley.

Writerly Quote for the Day

"In your writing, be strong, defiant, forbearing. Have a point to make and write to it. Dare to say what you want most to say, and say it as plainly as you can.
Whether or not you write well, write bravely."

--Bill Stout

News about Teachers

Education Week (July 12, 2006)

College Board Calls for ‘Drastic Improvements‘ In Teacher Salaries and Working Conditions
By Vaishali Honawar

The College Board, calling for “drastic improvements” in teacher quality and the conditions of teaching, released a set of recommendations today that includes an immediate increase of 15 percent to 20 percent in teacher salaries as well as a 50 percent pay hike within the “foreseeable future.”

The report, which was prepared by the New York City-based organization’s Center for Innovative Thought, a group of academic and business leaders, makes six recommendations, including the creation of a public-private trust to help pay for the reforms.

For More Info
Read the report, "Teachers and the Uncertain American Future," posted by The College Board.

“This is about globalization, about innovation, and about the future of our children,” said Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, which sponsors the SAT college-admissions tests and Advanced Placement courses. “We have to get better and better in the education we offer; we have to provide educational opportunities for all students. And that demands better and better teaching, and attracting the best people into the teaching profession.”

He said the goal of a 50 percent salary increase was “very realistic” and achievable through a partnership among federal, state and, local branches of governments. “It is how we finance the interstate-highway systems, how we finance health care,” he said, adding that education deserves to be a top priority for the nation.

Citing the scale of the “crisis” facing the teaching profession, the report says school districts nationally will have to hire 2 million new teachers in the next decade to account for student enrollment increases, teacher retirement, turnover, and career changes. Meanwhile, nearly half the new teachers who enter schools will leave the profession within five years, it says.

Among other recommendations, the report calls for recruiting more minority teachers; improving working conditions in schools; establishing merit-based scholarships in math, science, and engineering to attract new teachers; and encouraging multiple pathways into teaching.

To pay for those reforms, it calls for setting up a national fund with contributions from the federal government, matched by state and local revenues. The fund would also receive contributions from the corporate sector. The trust would hold funds for a general salary increase and to support teachers in shortage areas.

“This is an investment, not an expense,” the report says. “It is a fantasy to believe we can attain educational excellence while teachers are among the poorest paid college graduates in the country.”

Csiki Tales

We arrived to Csikszereda, Transylvania a few days ago with a puppy hidden in our luggage. (Technically he is too young to be exported from Hungary to Romania.) He is a six-weeks-old very adorable King Charles Spaniel recently dubbed Bodza (which is a kind of tree with a flower used to make our favorite summer soft drink). I was in charge of him throughout the overnight train ride from Budapest. He only piddled once on my sheets. Since we were tucked up in the third tier couchette bed, I had to make a fence with my body to prevent him from jumping to his death. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much as all my latent maternal instincts surged in good will toward his warm little body.

Per usual, grandma fed us all our favorites the first day and my stomach couldn't handle the gastronomical love. I have recovered and re-learned the importance of pacing. We have a few more weeks in her kitchen's care and plenty of time to indulge.

I must have mentioned it before, but in Hungarian the word for tomato can also mean heaven. Need I say more? Heaven on my plate in plump red flesh. Cheese brought down daily from the moutains. Stuffed peppers. Thick white bed fresh from the corner bakery. Grandma's cakes. Bodza to drink. And rivers of dense black coffee--the kind that penetrates deep into my DNA and calls forth endorphins.

We started our summer tennis lessons this morning. Our teacher is an over-sixty years old sprite of a man with dashing good looks and bountiful energy. It is shameful to be outplayed by a man three times my age. But the more tennis I play here, the more yummy food I need to eat. See the logic? Logic with a serious caloric impact.

I am still reading the O. Henry short stories and in awe with a few of them, but I am also reading the biography of Duchamp. I started to memorize some Hungarian poetry. We all took a stanza from a famous poem and will "perform" dada style--all shouting our stanzas at the same time while wearing important black turtlenecks--for grandma. At least that's my plan. Grandma may not be amused.

Yes, I am deeply in love with Bodza, the puppy. I admit it.

In a few weeks my parents will make their first trip to Transylvania--it is a long, long trip from Kansas. We plan to show them as much as possible of life here in the short time they will visit.

Reading, eating, deep-mountain-air sleeping, walking in the city, etc. are the stuff of summer. This summer I will add to my agenda: work on my novel. I wrote an epilogue, which means, I guess, that I have finished a first draft. I can hardly believe that given that fact that I know how much work needs to be done. I printed off the second half and brought it here so that I can revise with my cruel red pen.

Summer in Csikzereda is good, very good.

En Route

Today begins my summer travels to Hungary and Transylvania. My 6 am alarm buzzed me into a frenzy of last-minute packing and by the time I arrive in Budapest my internal clock will have done several cartwheels and backflips. As soon as I board my O'Hare flight, I will refrain from all temptations to monitor a clock. I submit to the jet lag gauntlet.

These past two weeks in South Bend, IN were spent unpacking from the move and then packing for the trip. Somehow the house is still filled with boxes despite all opened boxes left out for the recycling truck. Boxes will wait.

A highlight of the week was Book Club, which I hosted at my house. We discussed Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides. It is an epic tale with elements of magical realism, as pointed out by one reader. It is long. And filled with lyrical passages laced with metaphor. I must go to the Carolinas. I plan to return to the book after our summer trip to glean some of its colorful vocabulary and memorable phrases.

For the plane ride read: the current New Yorker, the 2006 O'Henry Prize Collection (short stories), The Road from Coorain, and the current Harper's.

In my suitcase: approx. 10 pounds of books, including the biography of Duchamp (his second round trip to Transylvania) and my Hungarian language textbooks; our tennis rackets; and a Gwen Stefani CD requested as a gift from a young fan in Csikszereda. Did you know that Shakira will tour Romania this summer? It is a smallish world made smaller by pop stars doing their thing.

World eBook Fair Up and Running

I have had several readers peruse my site looking for information about Project Gutenburg. I blogged about the non-profit last month after I read an article in the Boston Globe about their upcoming free eBooks event. (See first entry at Write Now: Free Books! Gutenberg Project.)

They have successfully launched a month-long program called the World ebook Fair allowing readers to download books at http://worldebookfair.com/. The extended list of free ebooks will be available until August 4th.

Volunteers have scanned the books, many of which are classic titles, and you can access them as pdf files or html files. Some texts are also available in mp3 format. There are amazing titles available, including some children's books, that you can easily download and print (a color printer would be nice for the illustrations).

The site offers you free ebooks, so I hate to complain about its user-friendliness. It takes patience to navigate through the heavy text and various databases. The effort, however, is well worth the reward.