Busy Day (5 cents)

Saturday was pretty busy. It started slowly as the outdoor book sale at the Georgetown library was rained out, but it quickly picked up.

1. Movies at the National Geographic. NG was having its "all roads" film festival and I selected two hour long films which began at 11. They were both about Pacific Islands, the first about the nation of Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands) and the second about the Big Island, Hawaii.

The first movie was an extraordinary downer. There are eight islands in Tuvalu, and the total population is about 10,000. The islands are atolls, so there is no topography. Just flat land (and not much of it). The islands have been a nation only since the late 1970s, and are very poor. There is also no future as global warming is contributing to rising sea levels and it is estimated that in about 50 years or so, they will have to be completely abandoned.

A good deal of the population has already left, mainly going to New Zealand. Sixty of these emigrees formed a "malaga' (Tuvalan for something or other) and headed by boat back to the islands for a stay of two months. It included the elderly who wanted to go home one more time, young women who wanted their children to see where they came from, and the children. Many had been a way for a decade or two.

Two young American filmmakers followed the malaga. You could see the excitement when the boat left Auckland. You could see the disappointment when they saw what had happened to their home. Poverty, crop failure, boredom, trash. Nothing was good.

The saddest movie I have seen in a long time. It is called "Time and Tide". The filmmakers were there for a talkback.

The second movie was called "Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege", and it was the story of the conflict between native Hawaiians who revere Mauna Kea, whose ancestors are buried on the mountain, and want to see it remain (or return to being) pristine, and the world astronomy community and the University of Hawaii, who have built seven or eight observatories on the mountain and are planning more. I found it hard to decide whose side I was on here, and did not know how honest the movie was about the varying positions. But it was interesting (and depressing) and a good introduction to our first visit to Hawaii next month.

2. Lunch was at the Beacon Hotel, where I expected more than we got. Very limited Saturday menu. We had ordinary omelet, in the too-cold sunroom, with lackluster (at best) service.

3. Then on to the new Katzen arts center at American University. We had not been into the building before, and it is very nice (and very, very expansive). We went to see the first round competition of eight AU student musicians vying for the chance to perform with the AU Symphony at a spring performance. There were three vocalists, two violinists, a cellist, a clarinet, and (believe it or not) a tubist. We did not stay for the judging, but the quality was quite good and although we were probably the only people there who were not students or parents, we were glad we went. The music choices were interesting and we learned that someone named Edward Gregson actually wrote a tuba concerto, and thought I wanted to hear the complete Concerto No. 1 in F minor for clarinet and orchestra by Carl Maria von Weber.

After the concert, we looked at two exhibits at the museum. The first, to commemorate the 50th anniversity of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, consists of a large number of photographs taken in Budapest by photographers and residents. The brutality and the amount of destruction is striking. A very worthwhile exhibit. Then, we saw works in glass (not sculptures, but geometric forms of translucent colors, with other colors wafting through) by Mindy Wiesel, which were also quite nice.

4. A quickish dinner at Jaleo was followed by the Capitals home opener against the Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes. After their poor, poor showing two nights earlier against the Rangers in NY, fans (and there were many) were expecting the worst. But it was a 5-2 victory, with Alexander Semin scoring three times, and Alexander Ovechkin scoring twice. We will see what happens from here.