The Transition to Electric Vehicles

 

i4 M50 BMW

The world of new product development and innovation is fascinating to me.  People and companies are dreaming up new technologies and better mousetraps all the time.  According to Inc. Magazine the late Professor Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School claimed there are about 30,000 new products introduced a year and that about 95% of them fail.  The same article noted the 70-80% of new grocery products fail.  Part of the fascination with new product development are the companies and people that defy these odds and had a string of amazing innovation e.g. Apple under Steve Jobs and Sony under Akio Morita.

When a potentially disruptive technology come to our attention, there are no shortage of futurists and other prognosticators that make bold claims of how quickly and completely the new technology will take over and transform the marketplace.  There is a funny thing about predicting the future… it is really hard to do.  Aren’t we all supposed to be reading books only on computers, pads, or readers by now?  Isn’t typing and handwriting supposed to have given way to voice recognition applications?  We should all be wearing Google Glasses by now, shouldn’t we?  How about jetpacks, flying cars, and holographic TVs? We have been anticipating these technologies for years and probably have years to wait before we see these products… if ever.  Isn’t AI supposed to have eliminated most jobs that humans currently do?

Of course, there are examples of disruptive technologies that actually have disrupted the status quo and dramatically changed the way we live.  Think digital photos.  It happened so fast, it put Kodak out of business.  Think of Amazon.com and the e-commerce revolution.  It is amazing how quickly have they dominated sales in several markets.  The advancement of both phones and e-commerce were accelerated by the innovation of the smart phone, primarily the iPhone. 

We have been hearing about electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles for many years.  It began with hybrids and the popularity of the Prius and Chevy Volt.  It changed dramatically with Tesla launching their first car in 2008.  Tesla has essentially owned the electric car market until just about right now when the traditional auto industry and a few start-ups are finally gearing up to launching a fleet of electric vehicles in short order.

In this blog, I have been critical of Detroit.  I have slammed both Ford and GM for poor management that has resulted in loss of market share and not having the results coming out of engineering to match the best of the Asian and German automakers.  My most recent criticism of GM was just this month:  Another Negative Milestone for GM.  Yes, I was tough on them but this might have been the low-water mark of their long sixty plus year decline as they have been aggressive in moving to electric vehicles.  A year ago, they announced an ambitious $35 billion plan to phase out gasoline and diesel-powered cars and trucks by 2035.  This sounds like a serious commitment by GM and seems more serious and real under the leadership of Mary Barra than the GM leadership of yore.  Check out Our Path to an All-Electric Future.  It is part of the GM website and subject to their own hyperbole, but it lays out their approach and strategy in an easy to understand manner.  It is impressive. 

Whereas GM is all-in on electric vehicles and abandoning the internal combustion engine.  BMW is taking a different approach.  They are developing platforms for their various vehicle classes that is based on a strategy of offering four drive-train options:  gasoline, gas-electric hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-electric .  They will continue to offer rear and all-wheel drive options as well.  In a WSJ article today, Dan Neil their brilliant automotive reviewer noted that BMW is planning to “accommodate an array of power and performance upgrades all without significant rejiggering of the assembly line.”  The WSJ article reviewed, quite favorably, the new i4 M50 and noted that:

From 2026 onward, Plant Munich will be able to produce up to 100% BEVs [battery electric vehicles]. The mix “will be determined entirely by demand,” said Chairman Oliver Zipse in his Q3 2021 statement. “That is how systematic transformation [to electrification] works.”

I feel compelled to favor the BMW strategy over GM’s even though I am aware that I am a 3^rd rate futurist at best.  I think that allowing actual demand to determine the mix appeals to me more.  As demand for electricity increases to recharge cars and the demand for gasoline decreases, there is some equilibrium point where the cost of both is about the same.  So, I am guessing there will be a market for internal combustion and electric vehicles just as there is a market for physical books and e-books.  (Can I even compare books and cars??)  We shall see how this plays out.

In the meantime, I have my eye on the i4 M50 or maybe the 5 or 7 series equivalent when they come out.

Digital and Cryptocurrencies Going Mainstream?

 

Exploding Topics

This is the first time I have chosen to write about cryptocurrencies.  They have been around since Bitcoin was created in 2009.  The reason I never have written about it is simply because really don’t fully understand how it works.  Early on, I thought it was a fad, a flash in the plan, that would quickly fade away.  I thought it was the pet rock of currencies. 

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  The idea of digital or cryptocurrencies appears to be here to stay. 

Furthermore, cryptocurrencies are not easy to understand.  If I cannot understand something as important and complicated as these currencies are, I tend to stay away from them until I have more understanding.  Oddly, people, I know with only the understanding that it is possible to make money on the relative value of Bitcoin, have actually made money. 

Bitcoin has been around going on 13 years.  Per another blog, Exploding Topics:

• As of January 2022, there are 16,598 cryptocurrencies in existence.
• However, not all cryptocurrencies are active or valuable. Discounting many “dead” cryptos leaves only around 9,631 active cryptocurrencies.
• There are upwards of 300 million cryptocurrency users across the globe. And approximately 18,000 businesses now accept a form of crypto as payment.

What inspired me to write about Cryptocurrencies today?  There were two articles in today’s Wall Street Journal to made me realize, finally, that digital and cryptocurrencies were here to stay and on the brink of going mainstream.

• Fed Launches Review of Possible Central Bank Digital Currency
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams to Convert First Paycheck to Cryptocurrency

The Central Bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve or more familiarly the Fed, is preparing a study to consider having a digital US currency.  They will study and present the risks and benefits of doing so.  The US is proceeding very cautiously.  In October 2020, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said:

We do think it’s more important to get it right than to be the first.  Getting it right means that we not only look at the potential benefits of the CBDC, but also the potential risks and also recognize the important trade-offs that have to be thought through carefully. ~WSJ

Today’s WSJ article noted that:

China created its own government-issued digital currency earlier this year and recently prohibited transactions using cryptocurrencies issued by nonmonetary authorities, naming bitcoin, ether and tether as examples. El Salvador, meanwhile, became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as a national currency alongside the U.S. dollar.

It seems that digital and paper versions of currencies can co-exist.  I am not sure how El Salvador can use both dollars and bitcoin as their national currency.  I find these kinds of policies both confusing and hard to comprehend.  Confusion is a recurring theme in my efforts to comprehend crypto and digital currencies.

Mayor Adams is converting his first paycheck as the Mayor of New York City which he is receiving today to Bitcoin and  etherium.  His reason for doing this to promote the role of New York City as the global financial center:

New York is the center of the world, and we want it to be the center of cryptocurrency and other financial innovations.  Being on the forefront of such innovation will help us create jobs, improve our economy, and continue to be a magnet for talent from all over the globe. ~WSJ

Here are some definitions:

• What is a cryptocurrency?  A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized networks based on blockchain technology—a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers. A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation. ~Investopedia        
• What is a digital currency?  This definition is actually pretty straightforward.  It is currency that only exists in digital form i.e. there are no coins or paper bills.
• What is blockchain?  A blockchain is a distributed database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions. The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party. ~ Investopedia

Blockchain provides safe and secure transactions.  It is of benefit to corporations to more effectively and efficiently manage their exports and imports.  It is so secure and untraceable that it is also a perfect vehicle exchanging funds for nefarious purposes i.e. contraband and illegal drug transactions.

When it comes to digital currencies, we are already well along that path.  People carry less and less cash with each passing year.  Online banking, direct deposits, credit and debit cards, and phones in lieu of credit cards e.g. ApplePay already have us used to and using digital dollars.  Paper checks are almost outmoded.  International transactions are easier than ever for the average person to execute. 

Are digital and cryptocurrencies going mainstream?  We are way closer than I thought for the digital.  As for the crypto, I imagine countries are trying to figure out how to manage them in a better way than China’s outright banning of them.

There is so much more to learn and write about this.

More About Pens

 

Yes, I am writing about pens once again.  Perhaps after yesterday’s stroll in the park post, you are wondering if finding topics is so difficult that I am just recycling old ones.  In this case, it is not true.  I ran across an article in The Atlantic, How the Ballpoint Killed Cursive, by Josh Giesbrecht. 

The article is more about the invention and popularization of the ballpoint pen more than how ballpoints killed cursive.  It is a good read in this regard.  Basically, the subtitle of the article sums up the authors arguments: “Thicker ink, fewer smudges, and more strained hands.”  Pencils and ballpoint pens require more pressure to write, thus causing hand strain which in turn causes folks to get less pleasure from the act of handwriting.  As a result, people handwrite less and less.  If people don’t handwrite as much as they used to, why spend time in school teaching cursive handwriting.  For as much as people handwrite today, printing suffices for short notes and jotting this or that, here or there, throughout our day.

I think blaming the ballpoint for people writing less is a stretch.  I would, more so, assign the blame to computers, laptops, pads, and smartphones.  It is simply easier to type for most of our writing needs these days.  We text and email on devices instead of sending handwritten letters and postcards.  Texting and emailing are, in addition, practically instantaneous.  The same applies to both formal and informal work-related communications.  My guess is that the average person types more words a day today than the average person ever handwrote.

I like pens.  I have fountain pens, but I really prefer and use ballpoints for 99.7% of my handwriting.  When I started this writing project back in 2002, I set out to handwrite a page a day to document my fiftieth year on this planet.  I handwrote a page a day for about seven or eight years.  By the time I moved from a monthly e-letter to this blog in 2009, I started to gradually move from handwriting to typing.  These days my writing is mostly done via keyboard.

In that long period of handwriting, I learned to use finer, heftier, pens that were easier to write with.  I used to press down all the time when handwriting.  I realized this and experimented with different pens and refills.  I learned that with Parker, Cross, Caran D’Ache, and Waterman pens I don’t have to press so hard.  My cursive handwriting got better and settled into a new style of curves, serifs, and flair.  I would never call it beautiful handwriting, but it is pleasing to me.  So, basically, I am rejecting Josh Giebrecht’s argument on why cursive writing has waned so much though I did like his article on the history of the ballpoint pen.

Innovation and technology often supplant the way we do things.  In a certain part of the world, cuneiform on stone or clay tablets was the only handwriting mode.  The clay tablets were replaced by papyrus and sheepskin.  The triangular cuneiform was replaced by alphabets.  Writing was done by feather quills dipped into ink.  The fountain pen replaced the inkwell and quilly pens.  Ballpoints, rollerball, and fiber-tipped pens replaced the fountain pen because the ink lasts longer, smears less, and require less fuss than fountain pens.  Things change, people adapt… and they feel nostalgic for what was.  Who carries a pen of any kind in the shirt or jacket pocket these days?  I have no real statistics on this, but it is clearly way less than did so when I first began my career.

My only resolution I really made this year was to send more letters to friends and family.  Using a fountain pen to write these letters was also part of the resolution.  It has been a enjoyable.  Let’s see how many people write back.

 ===

Here are a few of my pieces on handwriting and pens.

• Oh to Handwrite!
• 11th Anniversary Letter
• More than Just a Pen

Just a Stroll in the Park

 

Architectural Digest

There is a problem that eventually, actually inevitably, surfaces when writing a blog post every day.  Inevitably, there will be a day, like today, where I really don’t have a ready to go topic. So, why am I writing?  Because I want to blog every day for the month of January and perhaps February as well.  Of course, this requires having something to write about each and every day. And when I don’t, well, that a bit of a paradox.

In the past, when the topic well was dry, I have written several pieces with the word Potpourri in the title.  To be more precise, I wrote eleven such pieces in the twelve years since I moved my e-letter project to this blog.  A potpourri, per Oxford Languages, is:

• a mixture of dried petals and spices placed in a bowl or small sack to perfume clothing or a room.
• a mixture of things, especially a musical or literary medley.

The part of the definition that applies to what I am doing is “a mixture of things.”  In my potpourri posts, I post a mixture of mini or even micro topics to craft a post of reasonable length.  If pressed, I might even acknowledge that maybe there is a wee bit there might even be some metaphorical dried petals and spices to give a sweeter smell on a lame post. 

Must every post be profound?  Must every post tackle a deep or serious topic?  Of course not.  If, comedy came more naturally, I would certainly write more comedic pieces.  They would be cleverly satirical and subtle.  Or, they might be farcically facetious in an alliterative way to be sure.  Critics would say, “he is he master of British humor without the accent.”

In scourging about the corners of my mind for topics today, I could only come up with well-worn topics like the pandemic or the dangerous absurdity that is American politics of late.  I have written about these things recently.  I think I have written about them too much.  I value the tagline of my e-letter when I started it in February 2004 and is still on the masthead of my blog, “A Monthly Letter of Musings and Meanderings.”  While the letters have given way to blog posts and the frequency is more frequent than monthly, it is the musings and meanderings part that is the theme of what I do.  I do not write about one general topic.  I muse.  I meander.  Sometimes, I write about nothing.  Is this post about nothing?  I think it a mix of musing and meandering with a dash of wandering which could be mistaken as nothing. 

It appears that I have successfully ended up with topic for today’s post.  It might only minimally qualify as a topic.  I am not sure I could even define what the topic of this piece is in a simple succinct sentence.  Maybe this is just a stream of consciousness stroll in the park in search of topic and not even realizing that the stroll is in fact the topic.  Don’t even try to analyze or interpret what I just wrote… it just isn’t worth the effort.

Well… in the end, this piece does not even qualify as a potpourri.

Delete One Thing

 

My cousin David posted the graphic shown here on Facebook earlier today.  “If you could ‘Delete’ anything in the world, what would it be?”  My response was, “Good question.  I am going to ponder this one.”  David responded, “I was hoping this would spur a ThisSideOfFifty piece on the all-too-obvious answers as well as the much-less-than-obvious answers. It perfectly suits your deep-thinking mind.” 

First, I have to thank my cousin for the very kind compliment.  It is a mutual admiration society as it should be with cousins that eerily think a lot alike.  Secondly, he is absolutely correct about the all-too-obvious answers versus the much-less-then-obvious answers and that I would be soon blogging about this.  On queue, a contemporary of our fathers’ posted a one word response:  HATRED.

I thought of hatred.  That is a great answer.  Who wouldn’t want a world without hatred? I also thought about hunger.  What a better world it would be without hatred or hunger.  We could do with no crime, disease, natural disasters, and pestilence for that matter.  We might consider eliminating death or better yet aging beyond thirty years.  On the more esoteric side, we could eliminate failure.  Imagine a world where nothing anyone ever did failed!  It would be a great idea to delete global warming.  We could delete man’s ability to lie, steal, cheat, or kill.

The problem with many seemingly good ideas is the economic notion of unintended consequences.  We enact laws, policies, and regulations all the time with the best of intentions that don’t quite work out as planned.  Big issues and big problems are complex and not so easy to solve by thinking a one-dimensional solution will solve a multivariable multicriteria problem.  We still have problems with poverty, drug abuse, human trafficking, and many other things for which we have laws that was supposed to eliminate these very things.

Another factor is that necessity is the mother of invention.  People need to strive and struggle to make progress.  We strive against oppression.  We struggle with grandiose wants and needs in a world of scarcity.  We need competition to better ourselves.   We struggle and compete with each other and look at how far we have come.  This is all part of Adam Smith’s concept of the Invisible Hand.

Smith put forth the notion of the invisible hand in arguing that free individuals operating in a free economy, making decisions that are primarily focused on their self-interest logically take actions that benefit society as a whole, even though such beneficial results were not the specific focus or intent of those actions. ~ Invetopedia

Many people mistake self-interest for selfishness.  They are not the same.  Maybe deleting selfishness might be a good option. 

Deleting one thing in the world is a delicious notion.  But as stated above, the world is a complex interdependent multivariate network, the machinations of which none of us mere mortals fully understand.  There is no telling what could happen to the system by altering one major variable or dimension.  The rest of network would morph to accommodate the change in ways we could not predict and might not like.

Yet, the question is still on the table: “If you could ‘Delete’ anything in the world, what would it be?”  I guess I would probably go with hatred.  What could possibly go wrong?

Chidem Inch: Dzaner Bar

Armenian-American musicians in the 1950s. From left: Mugurdich Asadoorian (davul/drum), Hovagim Der Hagopian (born in Hussenig, clarinet), Abraham Garabedian (oud) (Source: Queenie Hagopian Sadoian, “Armenian Folk Music and Dance: Selected Materials For Use In American Schools", 1957). ~Houshamadyan.com

 

Sometimes I think I know something about the music I play.  Other times, I feel like there is so much I don’t know and there is little chance I will ever become any kind of expert even though “expert” is a relative term. 

Today on Facebook was a post I saw on Houshamadyan.com a most impressive website that is a “Project to reconstruct Ottoman Armenian town and village life.”  It is an open digital archive that covers trades, schools, missionaries, cuisine, song and dance, games, religious customs, folk medicine, and more.  It is a labor of love of Armenians living in Europe from Lebanon and Turkey.  They need an “about our staff” part of their very impressive and incredibly useful and informative website.  From what I can tell, the brain trust behind Houshamadyan are Garine Gokceyan, Vahé Tachjian, and Shogher Margossian. 

The post I saw was a beautiful piece on just one dance, Dzaner Bar (Heavy Dance), from Kharpert.  There is a detailed explanation on how to do the dance, a video showing how it is done, including a wonderful recording of the melody.  If you are remotely interested in something like this, I encourage you to check out Housmadayan.  Start with the Dzaner Bar page but don’t stop there.

I was not familiar with the song nor the dance.  My heritage is mostly Kharpertsi.  I am a musician.  I take pride in knowing things.  But I only know what I know and hope I don’t forget.  There is so much more to know.

This kind of abyss is not limited to music.  It is in everything I dabble or am interested in.  I wrote a piece just this month on Ford Madox Ford:  The Best Writer I Never Heard Of?  How many other Dzaner Bars and Ford Madox Ford’s are there?  More than I could possibly guess.

Not surprisingly, Harry Kezelian, from Detroit, a friend, and fellow Kharpertsi, knew about the Dzaner Bar.  He is quite knowledgeable about “our” Western Armenian music.  In fact, he is sending me the full recording of the Dzaner Bar as performed by Hovagim Der Hagopian and group.  He has become quite an expert on the history and the early recordings of our music.  It started as a hobby and has become a passion maybe even an obsession.  To me, he is an expert.  I say this by virtue of the knowledge gained and so willing to share with whoever is interested.  He just wrote extensive and well crafted (think monograph) liner notes for a recent 3 CD set Armenians in America on 78 RPM:  From the Ara Dinkjian Archive.  The Turkish and Armenian lyrics he has gathered over the years is very impressive.  I hope he publishes those soon.  He is not an ethnomusicologist by degree but that does not matter he has become one.

Harry is vastly more “expert” compared to me.  After a Turkish concert with the University of Chicago Middle Eastern Music Ensemble, he once me for the program.  I gladly sent it to him.  He responded with, “I thought I knew a lot about Turkish Music, but I was not familiar with most of these pieces.”  Before performing in that concert, I was not familiar with those pieces either.   Indeed, expert is a relative term.

The same also applies to musical performance and virtuosity.  I have been playing the oud for years.  I once told John Berberian at a testimonial we threw for him in Chicago, "When I was 20, I knew it would take 7 years of effort to be your level John.  I have gotten better but now in my 60s, it would still take 7 years of effort to be at your level."  There is some much more to learn and master.  It requires dedication and passion.  

 In 1959, The Readers Digest printed the following in an article Leonard Lyons:

The world’s foremost cellist, Pablo Casals, is 83. He was asked one day why he continued to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I am making progress.”

Casals, clearly a virtuoso, embodied the notion of continuous improvement and the Lexus “relentless pursuit of perfection.”

A Late Night Blog about Nothing

 

I am writing a January 16^th bloggy bit, but it is already, officially, January 17^th. 

It was a wonderful day, I am tired and want to go to bed, but first I want to write a bit.  Write about what?  I am a little tired about writing about deep subjects.  Who is not weary of the pandemic?  Who would like all the politicians just figure out how to get along and serve our nation better and if they can’t do that to just go away?  Count me in on both counts.  Sure, the planet needs help.  Global warming is something we must address, collectively… but not tonight.  Yes, we have supply chain issues and inflation and whatever else is making us economically uneasy if not outright worried.  Again, there is nothing I can do about it now.  Actually, for all of this “stuff” there is nothing I want to do about it now.  I would like to take a vacation from all these troubles.  I would like the rest of the world to do the same but that is really up to them.

Back in 1966 and again in 1967, Dr. Timothy Leary advised that we all “turn on, tune in, drop out.”  I could blog about whatever the fuck he meant by that.  But tonight, the universe is beckoning me or strongly suggesting that I just simply “tune out” and get a good night’s sleep.

Sounds good to me.  Who am I to argue with the universe?  The very notion that I believe the universe communicated with little ‘ole me this evening has brought a sense of peace and calm over me.  The universe is not asking that I permanently tune out, but just for this evening, just until tomorrow morning.  That sounds great to me.

So, that is why I am basically blogging about nothing and doing nothing this evening.

This sounds a bit familiar. 

This evening’s communication with the universe made me conjure up and alter the Timothy Leary quote.  It also made me think of the ancient Chinese test of Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching, where in Chapter 37 it provides the amazing koanic charge to:

道常無為, 而無不為. 
侯王若能守之, 萬物將自化. 
化而欲作, 吾將鎮之以無名之樸. 
無名之樸, 夫亦將無欲. 
不欲以靜, 天下將自定. 

Of course, I can’t read Chinese.  So, I have read a lot of translations to get the feel for the original.  I have a copy translated by Stephen Mitchell on my Evernote that I downloaded from CUNY Brooklyn.  Mitchell translated Chapter 37 as:

The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done. If powerful men and women could center themselves in it, the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace. 

Well, apparently, Lao Tzu has not singled me out.  He has freely offered this message to all of us for thousands of years.  I am glad to be in whatever state of mind I was tonight to experience this insight.  And by doing nothing, this bloggy bit came to be. 

Confirmation Bias

What exactly is Confirmation Bias?

I have used it in a few bloggy bits when worrying about the impact of the crazy political and social polarization that seems to be tearing our country apart.  Let’s look at a few definitions:

• the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. ~ Oxford Languages
• the tendency to embrace information that supports what we and “our team.” ~ Psychology Today

We seek out the news that supports, nay, confirms what we think.  Whether it be online, in print, on the radio, or on TV, we gravitate to places that make us feel good and righteous about what and how we think.  Beyond the mainstream, big name news brands, there are smaller ones that exist to confirm and shore up our biases even better.  Good luck trying to convince those that are devoted to such that their favorite websites and media outlets pedal false news.  They will defend the truthfulness of their source of news and information which dutifully has taught them that everything else is false news.

I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  One is liberal and the other conservative.  They are generally well written and, I believe, well researched.  I understand their editorial perspective and appreciate both.  I also listen to National Public Radio when I am in the car.  It is not clear to me if they are liberal or conservative.  I think they are a just a bit left of center.  I am well aware that a large number of conservatives view them as socialist if not communist.  These news sources allow me to hear a few points of view and help me make up my own mind.  Well, that is what I believe anyway.

I believe Fox News and MSNBC are far more biased.  I used to watch them until the January 6^th insurrection of last year.  Even back then, I could only watch them for maybe 15 – 20 minutes at a time before getting so irritated by the bias.  If I was watching MSNBC, I would get fed up with the liberal bias. I would switch to Fox News and watch it until I was tired of being hammered with their conservative bias.  It was a never ending cycle that I actually ended with extreme coverage given to the events of January 6, 2021.  To date, I have not gone back to either. 

In writing this piece, I learned of other cognitive biases that impacting our polarization the Psychology Today article.  One is called binary bias.  This is where people see things only as black and white, yes or no, with me or against me, versus the spectrum of gray that is the reality.

Last year, I wrote a post, I'd Agree with You, But..., in which I brought up two mindsets that contribute to this polarization as well.  They could both be cognitive biases or something related, but I am an armchair psychologist at best.  The first is attributed to Russel Lynes while the second I coined myself.

• I’d agree with you but then we’d both be wrong
• For me to be right, you have to be wrong.

I am concerned with the midterm elections and then the next Presidential election.  I hope the midterms run smoothly and we see centrist candidates emerge.  I think there is a better chance that the elections run smoothly than we see a swing to the middle.  We shall see.

Women Oud Players

 

When I was an undergraduate, I was in a class where I was assigned an essay written by Sigmund Freud to read.  It was probably in a core class I took with Professor Bolkosky or a philosphy class I took withProfessor Mathews perhaps in 1973.  The essay was The Moses of Michelangelo written in 1914.  I remember that I was dreading reading it because I felt Marx and Freud were being shoved down our throat and into our brains by the philosophy and history departments.  Furthermore, the essay was like 24 pages long, I wasn’t enthused about reading a dense essay of that length that I expected was full of obtuse psychobabble.

I read it and I could not have been more wrong. 

It was an amazing essay that changed my view of Freud.  It was dense, but it was very interesting and opened my eyes to essay writing, art critique, and freed me to use the analytic skills I had developed as a mathematician in evaluating the arts and social and political issues.  I was amazed by his critique and how much the Father of Psychoanalysis gleaned in his study that involved looking at the statue and using his own mind and insights.   

The transforming nature of reading that essay at just the right time in my education certainly contributed to my current writing and blogging avocation.

Just this week, Facebook presented a photo I posted 7 years ago.  It is a photo of seven women.  They are all holding instruments:  six holding ouds and one with a violin.  It is black and white.  The women are nicely dressed.  They are outside.  The three in the front row are seated and other four are standing behind them.  The backdrop is a crude and very old wood and stucco style wall of a home or building used in humble construction for centuries. 

I reposted the photo and several musician friends wanted to know more about the photo.  So did I for that matter.  I invoked my inner Freud (not a pandoran box anyone should tamper with) and asked a variety of questions I wish I could glean by just studying the photo.  What is the background of the photo?  Where was it taken?  What was the ethnicities of these women?  Were they an ensemble?  Were they simply taking classes?  Who were the makers of the ouds the ladies were holding?  Armenian oud players always want to know

I did not know anything.  Judging from the looks of the ouds, they appeared to be Turkish vs Arabic style.  So, we can conclude that the photo was taken in Turkey.  Are the women Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Kurd, or a mixture.  Ethnicity is close to impossible to surmise by simply gazing at the photo.  What is the time frame?  If I were an expert in fashion, I might have a chance here but the best I would do was narrow it down to 1920 to 1960.  If I were forced to narrow that 40-year span to 20, I would go with 1930 to 1950.

This week Ara Topouzian posted that the photo was from 1920 and taken in Turkey.  He went on to post, “I obtained from a musician when I was researching photos for Guardians of Music: A History of Armenian Music in Detroit and got a digital copy.” 

Ara’s post triggered the thought to seek out the lady that originally posted the photo.  Her name is Nemat Battah, a Jordanian performer and composer of Arab music now living in Finland.  I messaged her and introduced myself and asked about any background she might have on the photo.  She did not have much more but suggested I check her background photos as there were was some discussion there.  In 2014, she had posted,

what i found says that it is Women's Musical Association of Izmit. 1925 am not sure . But thats the only information i found

Later in the thread, Nemat posted a link to Pinterest for the photo.  The Pinterest page said it came from Twitter.  One Lütfü Türkkan, posted the photo there with the caption:  “Sene 1940.. İzmit'de Kadın Müzik Topluluğu.”  Basically, with the aid of Google Translate, this means, “Year 1940… Women’s Music Society of Izmit.”  Very cool.  Izmit is a town on the Sea of Marmara about 70 miles east of Istanbul.  I kind of like this.  It fits the dress, again as far as I can surmise.  Izmit had Armenian and Greek populations.  80,000 Armenians were killed or exiled during the Genocide.  Those that remain seem to be more of the hidden or crypto class of Armenians.  Some of the ladies in the photo could well Greek or Armenian

This photo hardly compares to Michelangelo’s Moses and our collective analysis is nowhere near as rich and insightful as Freuds.  Nemat and I ended our discussion with my observation:  “It is ok to have a little mystery about a few things here and there.”  She responded, “Exactly.”

 

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Here are some other photos of women oud players found in preparing this piece.

 

Hamiyet Yuceses (1915-1996),
celebrated Turkish nightclub singer
who was classically trained,
and who also played oud. 
oudmigrations

 

 

 

Mary Goshtigian, 1939, Fresno
Born in Western Armenia
Library of Congress

My friend Huda Asfour
Palestinian born in Lebanon
WAMU

 

Lastly, a favorite woman oudist, Negar Bouban, from Iran performing Chazar Mezrab Abu Ata by Hossein Alizadeh