I went to my tea ceremony lesson as usual on Saturday afternoon. We're now using the sunken hearth (ro) to heat water in the kettle. Another cold-weather change is that the host closes the tea-room fusuma door after bringing in all the utensils, to keep the warmth in.
That evening:
Ira Glass! He talked about how
This American Life has adopted its own structure for storytelling and how they try to present stories as honestly as possible. He talked about radio as a medium, starting with a totally dark theater, as he did
last time. Unlike
last time, this event isn't going to be part of a future radio show; this was more of a making-of thing. It was so awesome. In the question-and-answer session, people asked about how they find stories, how they choose music, how the Internet has affected storytelling, where to find out how to
get started with radio, and what's up with the
TAL television show I hadn't heard about (answer: it's sort of in the works with
Showtime, a pilot having been made and having turned out well; it would be a lot like the show and look more like a film than like a TV news magazine).
On Sunday
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
elwing2000 and I drove up to Philadelphia for a joint
DC–
Philadelphia LinuxChix meeting. We had a very respectable turnout of six (see
princessleia2's
picture), meeting up at the
National Constitution Center before heading to the
Independence Brew Pub for a leisurely lunch. (As someone remarked, six women and no salads! Ha!) We talked about football, the Smurfs,
BBSs, parental overprotectiveness,
MUDs and
MMOGs, security auditing, OS X, the relative tinker-ability of different laptops, and lots of other things. Afterwards we played tourist. Having arrived at the
visitors' center too late to get
tickets to see
Independence Hall, we wandered over to see the
Liberty Bell,
Congress Hall (I think), and
Old City Hall. We were wandering around the courtyard area when one of the docents we'd briefly talked with earlier invited us to join the Independence Hall tour despite lacking tickets. For me, this tour was one of the best parts of the day. The guide really involved the audience and evoked a sense of what was going on there in
1776 and
1787. (I learned that they'd tried to hold a constitutional convention in Baltimore in
1786, but no one showed up.
Poor Baltimore.) For the first time I got a sense that it was a truly exciting time in history, a rare chance to organize a nation around the idea of liberty rather than personal glory. When some amazing people came into political power. Not superhuman people, but thoughtful people. Humanists.
The irony of the security checks we had to go through to see any of this couldn't have been lost on many. Before entering a parking garage we had to have the underside of our car inspected by a guard. We had to have our bags searched every time we stepped into the
constitution center lobby. We went through metal detectors to see the rest of the sites, and about half our group wound up getting the wand treatment. (After
elwing2000 walked through a metal detector she was asked why she was “running.” Umm.) The whole area was surrounded by metal fencing that wasn't quite rendered cheery by red-white-and-blue bunting.
On the other hand, we're still
Better Than China by at least some measure: shortly before we passed by the
Statue of Religious Liberty, I took a pamphlet from a group advocating tolerance for
Falun Dafa on the street corner.
Just like being in
DC, except for that whole
taxation-without-representation part. :)
