I took a quiz that attempts to discern which American accent a person has. Not surprisingly, I got this:

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Southern People used to hate Southern accents but now everyone wants one.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

As singers, particularly opera singers, our ears have to know how to hear different languages and reproduce them correctly. Italian, French, German, (The King's) English, Russian, or Ogalala Sioux, it shouldn't matter. Unless you've spent years studying all these other languages, it is often difficult to understand what you're singing word-for-word, so we are reduced to reproducing the appropriate string of sounds--technical name, "phonemes"--and hope for the best. If the particular phoneme doesn't exist in our native tongue, e.g., the French "u"/German "ü," we have to be extra diligent in our practice and attentive in our performance to make our bodies conform themselves to produce that sound. After awhile, it becomes a lot easier. Our brains have linked the symbol with the sound. Even though we don't use it in our everyday language, it sits ready to be used, regardless (with some polishing, ya know). We take pride in that fact. I take pride in that fact.

The thing is, when I speak, I don't hear myself as having a Southern accent. Huh? I'm an opera singer! I'm supposed to hear things like that! What's going on? I don't have a Southern accent! I'd know it if I did... right?

Now, before you go yapping that I do have an accent, I know that. When I was an undergrad doing student teaching, we had to record ourselves in class and then listen to see what we did right, what we did wrong, did we stick to our lesson plan, blah-blah. The thing that amazed me when listening to the tapes was how hard a Southern accent I had. It embarrassed me to listen to the tapes. Part of that is just me: I absolutely can't stand to listen to a recording of me, whether I'm singing solo or in a choir, teaching, or lecturing. But why was my accent so much more pronounced when I was student teaching?

Curious, I did a little research. It turns out that when one gets nervous, their accent usually becomes more pronounced. I can't remember the theory behind it, but it kind of makes sense. Stand up in front of 150 middle or high school students that you don't know that well and attempt to bend them to your will. Can you say "stressful"? And it was, for me, at least. It was intimidating. (That turned out to be the least of my problems in my short student teaching career. But that's an unrelated long and sad story.) I became so focused on other things--hundreds of other things--required for teaching, I didn't even give a thought to how I was saying what I was saying. Hence, my brain relied on what it had stored in its speech pattern buffers since birth. So I sounded more like I was from further up "the holler" than I actually was.

Isn't language an amazing thing?! We take bits of sound that our bodies can produce and string them together into a group of sounds that convey an idea. Whether it's Italian, German, French, English, or Swahili for that matter... and the thousands of dialects within them, we all are able to discern meaning from our grunts and yelps. Even small geographical differences make huge differences in the sounds we use.

Example: When my brother (2 years my junior) and I were seven or eight years old, a family from Middle Tennessee, south of Nashville, moved next door to us. There were three daughters, two of which were approximately our ages. The oldest daughter (my brother's age) was named Sarah, which I pronounced "Seh-ra"; however, her mom, having grown up in a certain area of Middle Tennessee, always pronounced it "Say-ra." Sarah, had had the chance to start school at her former home, so she tended to sound more like her mother in speech. One dialectic affectation that always tickled me was how she and her mother pronounced "our." Now, here in East Tennessee, most people would say that word either as a very pirate-like "arrr" or with a lighter "a" sound, "ah-r." Well, Sarah and her mom said it with a long "a" sound, "A-yerr," or a lighter, more short "e" sound, "Ehr." See the pattern? They tended toward the long "a" sounds in their speech.

The middle sister, was named "Mary Beth." You might conjecture that when Sarah and her mother spoke her name, it might be something like "May-ree Bay-eth," but they pronounced it similar to anyone would in East Tennessee: "Merry Beth," though, oddly enough, when they contracted the name to "Beth" it was long "a," "Bay-eth." Now Beth, being younger than Sarah, hadn't had as much socialization in Middle Tennessee as had Sarah, so her accent was much less affected by the long "a" sounds, though she did call her sister "Say-ra." Overall, Mary Beth ended up with an East Tennessee-styled accent, as did the youngest--probably 10 or 11 years behind us--Amy (her mom's, "Ay-mee").

But then y'all know about that kind of thing already, as we see even tighter geographical dialects. Knoxvillians, for the most part, tend to pronounce a small town to the northeast of the city, Maryville, as "Merry-vul" or "Mehri-vul," whereas folks in and around Maryville, Blount County, nestled right against the Great Smoky Mountains, tend more toward the characteristic East Tennessee hard "r"s, "Murr-vul."

But if you want to study accents and dialects, Oak Ridge is the place to do it. You have to understand, everybody knows Oak Ridge today as a part of the Manhattan Project (development of the atomic bomb) during WWII. But, prior to 1939 or so, Oak Ridge was just that: pretty much a ridge covered in oak trees, a name in small type on a georgraphic map. There was little or no town to speak of. It was all farmland: cows, chickens, horses, and backwoods, Appalachian country folk (which we'll stereotype them for argument's sake, even though the area sits against the Cumberland Mountains more north and west of Knoxville). But, along comes the Manhattan Project! Suddenly people from all over the country--all over the world, even--converge on the poor little valleys in and around Oak Ridge. There was a mass of dialects; there was a mass of different cultures, all tossed in together with the farm-folk (many of whom had had their land forcefully purchased by the government).

I really hope that some sociologists are taking a look at Oak Ridge. As it stands today, it's even a more diverse community. The establishment of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the "Y-12" plant, which still produces nuclear weapon parts to this day, and all the high-tech industries and companies that have sprung up around them(even as far as Knoxville and Maryville), have become havens for the best minds in the world from all countries and cultures. So, we have multi-PhD Nobel Prize winners walking into Walmart (yes, the presence of Walmart indicates that Oak Ridge is a real city) with pig farmers and coal miners that dropped out of grade school to feed their families. You have snake-handling, splinter-sect Baptists from up in the highest "hollers" conversing with Hindi and Muslims. I once temped for a very prosperous technology firm that was started in Oak Ridge by a man who began life as a water buffalo herder in Korea!

So, it will be interesting to see what kind of dialect comes out of Oak Ridge in a century or so. Welcome to America, melting pot and land of opportunity. I doubt they'll ever write an opera in that dialect, but who knows? That "dead" language Latin is still around with us. Thanks to the Catholic Church, primarily, those of us who sing in sacred music have an additional set of phonemes to memorize. A thousand years from now, distant relatives of Don Townsend may say, "And please! Look at your Oak Ridgian text and work on it."

So, to bring things back around, dear readers, dear singers, be ever watchful of the tricks our brains and attached "ears" play on us. It's not like the French "u"/German "ü" are going anywhere soon.

More Details on UT's New Music Building

A followup story in the Knoxville News-Sentinel on UT's new music building.

The new $40 million facility ($30 from the state and $10 a gift from Jim and Natalie Haslam) will be built at the current location at the corner of Volunteer Boulevard and Andy Holt Avenue. The old building (Hallelujah!) will be torn down to make way for the new one, with construction slated to start spring of 2009.

But it will be a hassle for everybody, at least for the two years it will take to build it. The choir room would be moved to the (recently renovated, I believe) Panhellenic Building on Cumberland Avenue. UT bands and other large ensembles will get use of a large (hopefully heavily acoustically modified) gym in the Phys. Ed. Building across Andy Holt behind Tom Black Track. Other facilities would be located in Dunford Hall which, if memory serves correctly, is a block off of Cumberland Avenue on Volunteer. (Dunford has become a catch-all for construction-displaced departments, apparently. When I was there it was used as everything from UT Library to office space. It was originally a dorm, so I imagine that the small rooms will make excellent practice rooms.)

The new building sounds like it's going to be sweet! It will have a 600-seat concert hall (current one probably only holds about 300), a 225-seat recital hall (similar to facilities in the newly renovated Alumni Hall), larger rehearsal spaces for choir, band (including the Pride of the Southland), and other large groups, practice rooms, private studios, a recording studio, piano and music technology labs, classrooms, and administrative spaces. As a sacred music grad, I am speculating that the university would relocate the three or four practice pipe organs and reinstall them in the new building. Perhaps best of all, again, as a former student library assistant, I'm very happy to report that the music library will have three times its current space!

It's exciting to see UT finally taking an interest in the School of Music. (Back when I was there, it wasn't called a "school," it was just another liberal arts, uh... that is, arts and humanities--believe that's the current moniker.) The fact that they renovated Alumni Hall into a first-class performance venue, added rehearsal and chamber performance spaces, built a half-million-dollar pipe organ, and now are replacing the past-its-prime main building is evidence enough.

To have the Haslams take such an interest in the music program is not a bad thing, either. The Haslams, owners of Pilot Oil Corporation and parents to our current Knoxville mayor, have been supporting the symphony and opera company for many years. Apparently, they care about what kind of performers, composers, historians, theoreticians, and conductors will be feeding those organizations and those like them around the world.

According to the article, of the 175 students accepted to the music program last year, approximately 80 went elsewhere for their education due to UT's lack of modern music facilities. Kind of sounds like there might have been some financial incentive for the the university to build a new building, eh? C'mon, let's all admit it: UT is all about profit and the bottom line. Having the next Pavoratti not attend your school, or having him come, graduate "make it" in the big time (i.e., ka-ching $$$$), and then ignore his alma mater because he's embarrassed by it--there are real-world examples of this behavior, by the way--is another incentive.

I am so stoked right now! I didn't think I'd ever see the day when a new music building would be built! When I was in grad school, we used to toss around the rumor that the music building was, like, number 5 on the list of campus facilities to be replaced. Apparently, it was a little further down the list, but they did get to it.

Of course, it would be nice to be like the athletic department, that can wish "Hey! It would be cool if we had yet another practice field... or how 'bout some sky boxes!" and it magically appear. But ya gets what'cha can gets.

UT Gets Funding for New Music Building

Alumni of UT-Knoxville music rejoice! The state has finally set aside funds for a new music building!

According to an article in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, "UT's capital budget for next fiscal year includes... $30 million for a new building for the UT School of Music in Knoxville...." How much it will cost in total to build a new building and where that building will be located, I don't know. Also unknown is whether the new building would incorporate all of the music department, including the offices, classrooms, and studios in the newly-renovated Alumni auditorium (I still think of it as "gym"), or just replace the dilapidated current music building.

The old building was designed and built in the early 60s, if memory serves correctly. Back then, George Devine and composer and conductor of the Knoxville Symphony David Van Vactor raised enough cane to get a building that would house an auditorium, band room, classrooms, practice rooms, offices, and a branch of UT Libraries that would be devoted specifically to musical materials. (As a matter of fact, the music library is named after George Devine and, among other things, it houses the David Van Vactor collection) The space would allow instrumental and vocal studios that were spread all over campus (many of them in old houses) to be brought together under one roof, with ample space for performance. Its design would reflect the post-modern style. And while it did this very well, some practical considerations were compromised.

In 70s, when I was in middle and high school band, I remember coming to UT for concert competitions (East Tennessee School Band and Orchestra Association). My impression then was that the building was already antiquated. It was dark, dingy, and dirty. And my impression didn't improve when I became a UT music student and had to live in it for most of the hours of my day. The practice rooms on the ground floor were grottoes in a vast cave hallway system. The only windows in the place were the two small windows in the doors on opposite ends of the main hallway. The rooms weren't very big, maybe 6 feet by 5 feet; add in a medium-sized upright piano and its bench, some kind of dried-seaweed-like acoustical absorption system, and an instrumental or vocal student and accompanist and it was downright tight.

Worse, the lighting was terrible! I think the lighting designer was going for the idea that musicians would want an ambiance similar to what they would encounter on stage. And they did a good job with the concept, for what it was worth. But the phrase "Practice how you play" has its limits. The rooms, originally, had one or two incandescent "can"-style lights. As a result, it was like you were on a darkened stage with spotlighting. They did come in later and put in standard office fluorescent fixtures, but half the time most of the bulbs were burned out, so you ended up with the same amount of illumination as in the past.

The classroom and office spaces on the succeeding floors were somewhat better. To minimize sound-reflecting glass surfaces, the windows were tall and thin and pivoted vertically in the center. They did provide adequate ambient light. On two sides of the room were the aforementioned "seaweed" acoustical treatments, and some of the rooms were actually built out of square to break up the sound.

It's amazing to me, now, to think that UT was able to develop world-famous marching and concert bands, a top-notch jazz program, and--of all things, in Tennessee!--a solid opera studio in such a space. I guess having brilliant people like Dr. W. J. Julian, Jerry Coker, and Donald Brown, on staff overcame many shortcomings in the building.

But, regardless of program or facilities, I really learned an important fact about being a musician when I came back to graduate school at UT in the early 90s: It's not where you've been, but where you're going that counts.

Strauss Heirs Have to Share

An Associated Press article in the Knoxville News-Sentinel this morning tells of a Munich state court's decision which would force the heirs of Richard Strauss to share royalties from his operas with heirs of his librettist, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, who collaborated on some of Strauss greatest hits, e.g., Rosenkavalier and Elektra.

We tend to think of composers before the 20th century as paragons of virtue. They wrote because their muse told them to. They spread their music all over the world for the betterment of mankind, never worrying about things like royalties and commissions. If someone did commission a work, that person was also virtuous in that he was helping a composer spread the joy of his talents.

In other words, we don't think of composers and averages Joes. They were like characters on our modern TV: static, melodramatic, and never encumbered with going to the bathroom:

Knock-knock. "Jack! Jack Bauer! Are you in there? The evil president is threatening to launch all our nuclear missiles!"

"Uh, well... hold on a second. That chili dog I had for lunch went right through me."

The reality is quite different. Artists had to eat. They had to have a place to stay... and to go to the bathroom. They had to buy clothes and sundries. They had wives and/or ex-wives and/or mistresses, kids, parents, etc. to take care of. So they had to work, hard! If you're amazed at Bach's musical output, consider that he had 17 kids to feed. (Which begs the question, how did he have time to write everything he wrote, teach music at two schools, and oversee the music programs of three churches... or anything for that matter?) Beethoven never married, but he had various "amenuenses"--that was my Masters committee music history prof's $1.75 name for "assistants"--among them Anton Schindler, who wrote a very entertaining if somewhat spruious biography on the classical romanticist's travels and travails ("Or was Beethoven a romantic classicist?" My history prof, again).

So, all those folks you see in oil paintings, they had to get out every day and pound the pavement to find a job to feed themselves and their retinue. And, in those lean times, they scraped by. Some got other jobs. The eccentric composer Charles Ives, who made millions as an insurance agent while composing the greatest American music of the early 20th century, was very adamant about supporting his family: "If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?" Other composers were assisted by more affluent family members (e.g., Mozart's dad). But they all got by, somehow.

The same goes for artists that worked with composers: choreographers, poets, librettists, singers, instrumentalists, etc. Unfortunately, often these people were forgotten when a work they'd done for a composer was a hit and vilified for ruining things if it wasn't. Regardless, they're often cited in a footnote of the 1,000-page biography of a composer.

And so we come back to Herr Hoffmansthal. From the article, it appears that Hoffmansthal talked to Strauss about the problem of his contributions being forgotten and they worked out an equitable and legally-binding agreement. (I wonder when legal documents started coming into commissions and collaborations in music? Probably about the same time that things like honor and personal responsibility began to wane.) And so, nearly 80 years after Hoffmansthal's death, his forebears can still receive the fruits of his labor, the world's way of saying "Thanks for having a great relative. We appreciate his contribution to mankind's brightest and best creations."

Sydney Opera House Website Infected

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday announced that the Sydney Opera House website was hacked last month. The hacker installed a Trojan horse program that infected visitors to the site with code that could potentially capture sensitive information (e.g., bank account usernames/passwords).


For those unfamiliar with term, a Trojan horse (or simply "Trojan") is a type of malicious computer software (aka "malware") that, like its namesake, disguises itself as a legitimate program and sits silently on a system until activated. A Trojan isn't a virus per se, as a virus infects other files. A Trojan sits in its own file. When a computer accesses an infected website, the Trojan downloads and installs itself and does nasty stuff like steal passwords or render the system vulnerable to an attack. Visitors to the opera house's site that had not applied security updates to their web browsing software (e.g., Internet Explorer) were infected.

The malware was discovered by a good ol' American geek, who notified the SOH information systems folks. The malicious code was promptly removed. The house insisted that no user data (i.e., names and credit card numbers of ticketholders) was stolen.

The moral to this story is, update your software regularly: Internet Explorer, Windows XP, Firefox, even OSX... all of 'em. The only possible excuse you might have is that you're still on a dialup connection and it would take a millenium to download a 50 megabyte file. Even so, you need to try to keep current. Most companies will ship you their latest software patches on CD for a small mailing fee. A corollary to the moral is to use both antivirus and anti-malware software, update it, and scan your system regularly. Anyone on a broadband connection (i.e., cable or DSL) needs to purchase an inexpensive network router or switch to place between their system and the filthy environs of the internet. These boxes contain hardware "firewalls" that drastically reduce your online vulnerablility. And, since you asked, your cable or DSL modem doesn't do this.

Consider yourself "geeked" for the day.

AMA Might Need New Definition for "Brain Dead"

"In the future, I plan on taking more of an active role in the decisions I make.
--Paris Hilton

You know, 1,000 years from now, people are likely to look back on 20th century Hollywood and say, "Why couldn't they be more like those nice 1st century Romans?"

An Inauspicious Start

Yet another "nugget" from a stash of historical documents at my parents' house.

Tales of Hoffmann was the first Knoxville Opera production that I actually sang on stage. Previously, I had been operating the supertitles. Actually, the supertitles "gig" I stumbled into accidentally, too. A friend was doing them but was going to be out of town, so I filled in for him. I think he liked being relieved of the responsibility, so he would call on me every production. Eventually, the opera company started calling me directly. Then Don Townsend found out I was a singer... and a tenor! and the rest, as they say, is history.

Below is a transcription of the Knoxville News-Sentinel review, November 21, 1992. Bob Barrett was right. Hoffman was long! And it was a whole lot more work to be on stage than to doing supertitles. With supertitles, I just had to come in during production week, read through the score, and push a button. As a chorus member, I had to study and memorize the score, go to music rehearsals, and then block off two to three weeks for staging and production. It took me awhile to began enjoy doing chorus. I did a few more supertitles, begging off with Don Townsend. But, as I may have mentioned previously, it became easier to just do chorus than to say no to Don everytime he called.

Length, heat sole ills in outstanding opera
by Bob Barrett

The Knoxville Opera Company production of Jaques Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann" gets off to a rousing start but begins to drag before its three-and-a-half hour production ends.

Enjoyment of the opera was not helped by the heat in the Civfic Auditorium that reminded operagoers of the summer production of "Don Quixote." Many of the men in the audience shed their coats and those that remained to the end were in shirtsleeves.

Many others were not able to stay through the entire evening.

It's a pity. The voices were excellent, the staging inventive and the acting well above par for most operas.
Top vocal honors must go to soprano Stella Zambalis, who starred as each of Hoffman's loves, but took the audience by storm in the "Olympia" segment with her comedic talent.

For those unfamiliar with the story line, Hoffmann falls in love with Olympia, unaware that she is only a mechanical doll. Her movements and comic timing as she delivered the starring aria of the scene were without compare.

It's too bad the members of the chorus could not all act the part of automatons as well as the gifted Zambalis.
Their part in the act was adequate for a local product, but that's all.

A deep bow to the one who staged the method for getting "Olympia" to glide so smoothly over the stage while being pushed by servants. (The secret is roller skates--I kid you not.)

Only a hair behind Zambalis in vocal fireworks was Lester Senter. Her role as the muse and Nicklausse was outstandingly done. Had she had as much to sing as Zambalis, it would be a tough call.
Joseph Wolverton, as Hoffmann, had the longest role among the male voices, but, good as his tenor was, he paled before the power and execution of Richard J. Clark's fine bass-baritone.

Clarke played the roles, if you will, of Satan--bringing Hoffmann to the depths with each of his lady loves. He was a convincing evil, with rich body that carried all the overtones of evil he intended to portray.

Cesar Ulloa, was outstanding in his character tenor roles. His comic timing and rubber face only complimented his fine voice. Some may be put off by his hunchback characterization in the final act as an unnecessary cut of those afflicted, but that's the way someone decided to play it.

WUOT's voice of classical music, Daniel Berry, was in fine fettle in several supporting roles. His fine voice was best in solo and duets, but tended to be drowned out in the trio with Wolverton and Clark in the second act.
Scenery, belonging to the Virginia Opera, was oustanding.

"Ancient" Technology

If you read my previous blog, you know that I've been taking a trip down memory lane to my high school days and before. In cleaning out my parents' house, I've been finding bits and pieces of history: homework assignments, journals, report cards, pictures. With all these "treasures" just waiting to be discovered, it's becoming hard to actual get any throw-out work done at house, as the minute I grab a box, I see some of these trinkets of my past. So, naturally, I have to stop and look at them all. I suppose many people would just go ahead and dump it in the dumpster. Alas! I've been on a quest to "find myself" for the past few years, so finding stuff like old papers, etc. gives me a lot of pleasure, a certain sense of groundedness. As we age, our memories tend to forget the reality we lived in in the past. Finding an artifact from your past--especially something like a journal that you had to keep in English class--is both gratifying ("I was a darned good writer back then.") and somewhat disheartening ("Yikes! I thought I was a better speller!").

So, the other day I'm going through a closet and, lo and behold, here's this book on programming in BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for the Wang 2200 computer I used in "Computer Math" in high school. The copyright date on the book is 1976; I started taking Computer Math a couple of years after that, and it changed my life forever.

Talk about the memories flowing back. I'd been a science geek kid since I was in kindergarten! During show-and-tell in second grade, I had attempted to explain the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas) with a candle, Peter Pan peanut butter lid, tongs, and an ice cube. If there was an Apollo mission in space, I was glued to the TV for every moment of the coverage. Mom and dad had always fostered my wonderment with science and technology. They both worked for Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL), dad as a graphic artist and mom as a secretary. The highlight of my year was when Union Carbide would have a "family day" and open up the lab to family and friends so you could see what people did for a living. I distinctly remember standing at a railing looking down into a giant "swimming pool" at the blue-white glow of the High-Flux Isotope Reactor (HiFIR) at ORNL as a kid. (Yes! A nuclear reactor! I know you're incredulous, but the late 60s/early 70s were a different time. Pre-Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Nuclear energy was our friend.) So I was all ready for a career in a white lab coat. And what scientist didn't use a computer, even back then when "microcomputers" were as big as a roll-top desk?

Case in point, the aforementioned Wang 2200. As I was entering high school, the school purchased two Wangs: one for use in keeping library records, the other for classroom use. The models they purchased looked similar to the picture at left, though the CRT (monitor "box") incorporated a cassette data drive and an old IBM Selectric typewriter was hooked up as a printing device. Though computer math was considered a senior course, I was able to weasel my way into it just by hanging around the computer center, talking with friends that were already taking the course, and picking up a few things. I also joined a computer Explorer post during that period. (Explorers was a program set up by the Boy Scouts for young men--and women!--"exploring" a specific career area. For example, other Explorer posts in the area were devoted to law enforcement and firefighting.) Happily, the post was sponsored by the local Wang dealer, so I was already familiar with the hardware and how to operate and program it.

The school's Wang 2200s had a whopping 8 kilobytes of memory--kilobytes (1,000), not megabytes (1,000,000), and certainly not gigabytes (1,000,000,000). The floppy disk drives (the vertical slots in the CPU box, bottom right) were a full 8 inches in diameter. These were true "floppy" disks, as they were composed of a thin, flexible shell enclosing a mylar disk with a magnetic coating that served as the recording media. They held a full megabyte (1,023 kilobytes) of data. At Explorer's, we learned that by cutting a slot at a certain place on the shell would allow to you access "side B" with another megabyte's worth of code, although you couldn't access both sides at once. Like an LP record, you would have to take the disk out and flip it over.

Software for the computer? None. If you wanted a program to do something, you had to write the code yourself, in BASIC. The school could've purchased some programs available commercially, but back then software was almost as expensive as the computer itself. And since the whole purpose of the computer math class was to teach kids how to program themselves... So, when the computers were purchased, everybody had to "roll their own." (The brainiac students ended up writing a cataloging program for the library's Wang.)

Of course, we didn't have Windows' lovely graphical interface; likewise, the first Mac was at least five years off. In the late 70s/early 80s, though, Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center--PARC--was beginning to develop a graphical interface using a new input device they called the "mouse." One day a young kid by the name of Steve Jobs visited PARC, and later duplicated Xerox's research and built the second most powerful technology empire in the world. To be fair, at that time Xerox didn't think that the idea had any potential and were merely indulging their researchers. Ironically, at this same time, a nerdy kid named Bill Gates was pulling a similar stunt with IBM.

To use the Wang, you had to use cryptic verbal commands like "SELECT DISK 310" and "LOAD DC F" to get the computer to do what you wanted it to do. And each program ran serially from first line of code to the end. If someone said "event-driven software," they must've been talking about driving a hot babe to a concert. So programming was really and truly a separate "language" you had to learn to speak. Thankfully, BASIC was designed to be very conversational. Commands like "PRINT 'YOU WIN!'" and "LET X = 1" were self-explanatory. So it was a good language for aspiring young programmers to start with before they graduated to more cryptic and powerful languages like PASCAL and FORTRAN.

I spent many an hour on the Wang. I would wheel into the computer lab between classes and, if someone wasn't already using it, jump on. Needless to say, I was tardy to English, French, Economics, etc. Somehow, we did end up with some games someone had written. But the graphics on the Wang were all character based and the only sound it could output was a beep, so you had to use your imagination. A screen shot of "Star Trek," probably one of the most popular games, is at right. But we had to write more serious software, too. I developed a program that would ask a user questions and, based on a scoring system, evaluate his/her risk for a heart attack. I also was instrumental in finding a bug in the library computer's software. I even took a stab at writing a grade recording/computing program. Pretty soon, people were coming to me to ask questions instead of the other way around. Eventually, I was able to work my way up into the elite few in computer math that even the instructor consulted on difficult problems.

Even when, during my senior year, the school purchased two early model Radio Shack TRS-80s (aka "Trash 80s"), I continued to prefer the Wang system. Being developed for big business made it a far more elegant platform to work on, even if the TRS-80s had double the memory and the ability to display more than alphanumeric graphics. The Wang's floppy drives were vastly superior to the TRS-80s storage system, which consisted of a $30 Radio Shack cassette tape player that was unreliable, slow, and highly inefficient. With the cassette system, you would spend all class period loading a program only to have the computer tell you "LOAD ERROR" just as the bell rang. But the TRS-80s were destined to be the future. They were about an eighth the size of the Wang, had the aforementioned 16 K of memory, and cost probably 10% of what the school had paid for one Wang system. So, even back then, we were learning that technological development was moving along at a break-neck pace.

Alas, I didn't go into computer science in college. It would've been fun. However, back then, math skills were critical in programming computers, and my grades in Algebra I and II and Geometry hadn't exactly been stellar. (Trig? Me?! Yeah, if they'd let me stay at high school another year.) So, in assessing my skills my senior year, I decided the only thing I was really good at was music. The rest, as they say, is history.

Or is it? I somewhat kept up with programming. As a music education student, I took a programming language called PILOT (Programmed Inquiry, Learning or Teaching) designed for ease of use so that teachers could develop instructional software for their classes. When I learned WordPerfect, I got tired of doing tedious, repetitive projects and delved into its macro command language. Years later, I did the same with Microsoft Office products. Starting with the 1997 version, Microsoft sought to integrate Office's crude macro language into its Visual Basic (VB) programming language so that developers could take advantage of Word/Excel/Access/etc.'s capabilities for processing words and numbers. The result they called Visual Basic for Applications, and I became very proficient with using it to efficiently manipulate data for reports, tables, graphs, etc. I've also tried to keep up with VB, though only recently, with the 2005 .NET edition, have I done so seriously. I'm currently taking classes in VB 2005 in the hopes of furthering my career.

Which brings me to the present. I had this old BASIC programming manual for the Wang 2200 and I got to thinking, "I wonder if other people liked using the Wang as much as I did?" A quick Google turned up Wang2200.org, which had tons of history, documentation, specifications for the old Wang systems. Some programming guru had decrypted the 2200s operating system and written an emulator (a program that "emulates" another computer or programming environment) which I downloaded. The site even has all the old games available for downloading and playing on the emulator. (The Star Trek screenshot is from the emulator.) I've been having been having a lot of fun with "relearning" the Wang's ancient dialect of BASIC. In a way, it's a bit like taking Latin: You know nobody's actually speaking the language anymore, but you see its roots in all the modern languages.

A Remembrance of Things Past

As many of you know, within the past few years both my parents have passed away, and my brother and I have been trying to deal with the estate, including a somewhat run-down 1950s 2-bedroom, 2-bath rancher with just short of 50 years worth of junk. Since I've had a lot of time on my hands--being unemployed helps a lot with that--I volunteered to do the lion's share of the cleanout and to oversee any renovations and repairs needed.

Last week, in cleaning out some things, I happened upon a big box with folders and papers. I almost threw it out without looking at it, but my bro and I are trying to be very careful and judicious in the cleanup, lest we throw out some priceless 50-plus-year-old vase that looks like a pot-metal flower-holder thing. This comes by hard experience: mom lost her engagement ring and a pretty bluish-stone ring to a thief at the nursing home. We were foolhardy enough to believe that mom's valuables were safe in her room. My brother and I knew that, just by the age of the rings, they were valuable; we didn't know how valuable until we found an insurance policy on them over a year after mom died. Some nursing home employee is now driving a new car thanks to our "contribution." It's a sad thing to happen, but once-bitten, twice shy.

So I started digging through the box to try to discern and evaluate its contents. It turned out it was a huge collection of notebooks, homework, and miscellany from me and my brother's days in school, some going back as far as the second grade! Since I'm currently in a phase of self-exploration, I couldn't help but take the time to examine each item individually. There was my old French notebook (cahier) from my senior year! Yikes! I thought I had done better in that subject than what the quiz, homework, and test scores told. There was a collection of band concert programs and correspondence from the booster club.

Then there were several folders from my English classes. I had always struggled with grades in English. As a matter of fact, I had had to double up on English classes my last spring semester in order to graduate on time, as I'd flunked Prose the previous winter. I somehow managed to tough it out and get two passing grades, though I distinctly remember waking up with panic attacks during that horribly stressful period.

Rather ironic, really, flunking Prose. Especially considering how accomplished a writer I was. Though my grades didn't show it, I enjoyed writing somewhat. Despite my deficiencies, I was able to tell a good tale. It was obvious in looking at some of my earliest work in the box. The "One day..." stories were very original. I was a bit disorganized in my thinking and tended to "write ahead" of my thoughts--not to mention sloppy penmanship--but I had a knack for seeing things in a fresh was. I recall almost fainting one day when my sophmore English teacher, Mrs. Middleton, who was definitely of the "old school," hickory-switch-and-ruler educational era ("A dog can be 'mad'; but humans get 'angry.'"), came up to me unbidden and exclaimed, "Have you ever thought of being a writer?" What? Me?! Are you talkin' to me?! Eric White? Sit over on the side wall? Score low C's on your tests? She was talking to me. I'd apparently written some kind of wonderfully clever entry in my journal--remember those?--a few days before. (Alas, the journal had apparently not been saved in the box.)

But I liked writing. As a matter of fact, during that period in my life, I began keeping a private journal (i.e., one not meant for anyone to see but me... and before you say "diary," let me say, women keep diaries; men keep journals). It wasn't a consistent thing. It started out as a way to remember my thoughts and experiences on various school and church trips, but it came to be a great way for me to clear my head about something that was bothering me, so I started doing more personal entries. I was a shy kid back then, and writing allowed to voice my own feelings and opinions couched in a nonthreatening way. The weird thing was that I began letting people read my journal. It started with me letting people read my "documentation" of whatever school or church trip we happened to be on, but since my personal entries were in the same book, there was nothing to stop them from reading those. People seemed to enjoy reading what I'd written, and it made me feel good that I had made, say, a six-hour bus ride more bearable for someone. There was even a point where I would have to hunt down my journal on the bus in order to continue my thoughts.

Suddenly, I had a voice; I had something to say that mattered. Granted, the people reading it were my friends, people I was close to. But later on in college, it got to where I really didn't care who read it. Someone would ask to see it and I would oblige--most of the time. If you didn't like my opinions and impressions, too bad. They were mine and mine alone. Journaling was a terrific way for me to develop my usually somewhat lacking self-esteem.

I have continued--somewhat irregularly--my journaling to this day. Hmmm... you might say that I was the original blogger! A man before his time. You might say that. You might be wrong, too.

So, getting back to my magical box of goodies. It's quite enlightening to see who you were way back when. There are two tracks of thought in doing this: 1. I wish I were more the person that I was back then now, and 2. I'm glad I'm not the same person I was back then. The final answer to that is, for me, a little of both, I guess. One the one hand, I wouldn't go back to those days in high school and college to save my neck; on the other, that period was a magical part of my life. Bad, a lot. Good, a lot, too.

Suffice it to say, if you had told me back then where I am now, I probably would've laughed my head off. Singing opera? C'mon. Get real, dude. If anyone can't say that you're a different person than you were as a teenager, I'll need to give you the number of my therapist.

A rather odd footnote to the writing:

In 1985, my mother went out with a bunch of her friends to celebrate someone's birthday. As part of the celebration, they all went up to Morristown to see a local "world famous" psychic, Bobby Drinnon. Apparently, the birthday girl visited him regularly and thought "Wouldn't it be fun if..." Now, my mom doesn't believe in all that psychic stuff... at least she didn't think she did at the time. But she went along with the group, as it was just something different and fun to do, like those old machines that you'd put a nickel in and it would give your weight and tell your future. And who doesn't open their fortune cookie after eating Chinese?

So, she saw the psychic... and came away dumbfounded! When she walked in the door, he asked her if her husband was in the military or a policeman or fireman, as he was seeing a uniform. My mom couldn't figure it out... until she realized that he was seeing dad in his scout uniform! Dad was a lifelong scouter: scoutmaster, advisor, leader. Okay, so maybe that could've been a coincidence. But the other stuff he told her about herself and her family was equally uncanny!

"Bless her heart, mom was so amazed with what he said, when she came home she jotted down everything that she could remember him saying for future reference. That piece of paper was in the box I found. Regarding me, he had said (sic):

"Regarding your other son, the musical one, people at the church absolutely love him. He is very talented. I see him making a living as a writer. "

Writer? Me? C'mon, dude. Ah, but life is not over yet. I wonder if Bobby Drinnon has any openings in the near future.

- EW

SF Opera replaces singer after final dress

I happened upon an Associated Press story this morning in the News-Sentinel about the San Francisco Opera replacing their Donna Anna, Hope Briggs, after the final dress rehearsal of Don Giovanni. (The opera opens tomorrow night.) The original SFO press release is here (Adobe Acrobat format). The gist of the article can be summed up in the phrase "not ultimately suited for the role..."


Ouch. Given the length and intensity of our recent production experience, how would you feel if we got to Wednesday night and Don came up to you and said "[Name], we think you're not ultimately suited for the role of chorister in this production"? All that work, all that sweat, blood, and tears. For nought!


Granted, Briggs will probably get some kind of salary, probably with some kind of good-faith incentive package for keeping her mouth shut about the whole deal. But talk about a career blow! Of course, the press release is mealy mouthed. the words "not ultimately suited" can mean anything from "couldn't hack it vocally" to "was too much of a diva to deal with." But there's that word "suited." That seems to indicate that she just didn't have the chops to do that role. But her agency's bio page says that she performed the role in Frankfurt in 2006 (though it's listed under future engagements.) A little research turned up a review of her performance which seems positive enough... at least, as far as my German and the Google translator goes.