Sunday, December 30, 2012

Taiwan Folk Arts Museum

The Taiwan Folk Arts Museum was once the Koyama Hotel and Hot Spring. It also served as a Japanese officer’s club during the Second World War. Today the building and grounds have been restored to pristine condition and serve as beautiful examples of early twentieth century Japanese architecture.

The attractive two story structure hosts revolving folk art themed exhibits. We viewed a collection of embroidered baby carriers from southwest China. The mothers who made these carriers believed that the carriers took on aspects of her child’s spirit through long use. After the babies had outgrown them, mothers kept the carriers to remind themselves of the babies they’d raised. As treasured heirlooms, these carriers were rarely sold, but if sold, the ornamentation was generally removed prior to the sale. The fancy embroidery and trim was intact on the rare carriers displayed in this exhibit.

The Taiwan Folk Arts Museum is located at 32 Youya Road, in Taipei’s Beitou District. The 230 bus can take you there from either the Beitou or Xinbetou MRT stations. Their phone number is 2891-2318.

Other attractions within walking distance include: the eerie view at Hell (or Thermal) Valley, the historic Beitou Hot Springs Museum, and public bathing at Millennium Hot Spring.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

An excellent sampling of Richard Purtill’s fiction



Parallel Worlds of Richard Purtill
Richard Purtill
Fiction 404 pages
AuthorHouse. 2011


This collection contains a full-length novel, “The Parallel Man” and ten additional stories, including some never before published. Some of the stories are science fiction, some fantasy, some combine elements of both. Regardless of genre, they are all delightful. For example:

What would it be like to be so empathetic that it causes emotional distress, or to see the world through the eyes of others instead of one’s own? Richard Purtill addresses extreme empathy in “The Chrysenomian Way”, and the second theme in “Other’s Eyes”. The situations in both stories, like those of most Purtill stories in this collection, have unexpected, yet satisfying, solutions.

When live actors perform in the space faring Universal Commonwealth, their psionic technique creates rapport with their audience. In “Blackout” an actor learns that gods can also use psionic rapport. Will he be able to face down a god and stop its killing spree?

Can a vampire live a comfortable life on a Greek island among malicious and superstitious neighbors? Is the arrival of a beautiful stranger his key to escaping an eternity of lonely despair?

The final four stories in the volume are adapted from Russian folk tales. Although each of the four stands on its own, together they form a suite of related stories. Several feature a knight named Karl, a war veteran now weary of killing, who seeks nothing more than a worthy cause to serve. Karl’s heroic humility will charm those who read his adventures.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Denver to Chicago by Plane and by Train


Initially I planned to fly both to and from Chicago. But, then something went wrong. Both tickets, spaced four days apart, were for flights from Denver to Chicago. Some days after booking the flights, but well before the flight dates, I realized my mistake: you just can’t fly to a city if you’re already there. I attempted to get a refund for the second ticket, but they said it was already too late. Even changing the flight date would cost more than the ticket had. Economy fares are great when they save money, but when their providers are unwilling to refund or exchange their tickets, they are no bargain at all. So, I lost $68.00 and Spirit Airlines lost both my custom and good will.

On the plus side, I was now free to rethink my return trip. I decided to take a train back instead, and I’m glad I did. Trains don’t go as fast as planes, but they’ll show you far more scenery. And, the clacketty-clack sound of steel wheels rolling on iron rails are soothing to the soul. The train rolled past fields of yellow grain and over the wide Mississippi River before entering that long tunnel called night.

Sleeping in coach is not as comfortable as is doing so in the sleeping car, but it is reasonably tolerable. Besides, I did not ride a train to be pampered. I rode a train to take a journey. In the air, there is little to see and even less to do. However, on a train, conversations happen and one experiences the solid land between here and there. Periodically, the train stops and one walks along the platform breathing the night air of a strange, and otherwise unvisited, city.

In Omaha, the train platform is old, dingy and dim, but in Nebraska’s capital, Lincoln, the platform stands outside a modern and friendly looking station. Just before dawn, the train arrived in Denver. It stopped several blocks from historic Union Station. When renovation completes in 2014, Union Station will serve as a regional transportation hub. However, for now a detoured stop is used.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Killing with the Edge of the Moon

Killing with the Edge of the Moon
A. A. Attanasio
Fiction 160 pages
Prime Books. 2006

Would you go all the way to Hell just to get a date? Chet does, but not entirely willingly. He makes the trip partly due to a very convincing witch, but also because he has a crush on Flannery.

Long ago, Orpheus made a similar trip. However, when he tried it, things didn’t work out so well. Of course, the Otherworld isn’t exactly Hell, and Flannery, unlike Orpheus’s wife, Eurydice, isn’t exactly dead. But, the situation is similar, and if Chet isn’t able to work the Fetch, Flannery will be both dead and dragon food.

While Flannery dances with fairies in the Otherworld, her body lies in a hospital bed connected to life support equipment. For Flannery, the Otherworld is far more joyful than the one she has known all her life. But Arden, the fairy prince, hasn’t told her everything, and Flannery doesn’t know how much danger she’s in. Even if her witch grandmother, Nedra, is able to convince Chet to work the Fetch, Flannery and Chet will face great danger before their story is done.

The Orpheus myth is a prime example of what Joseph Campbell calls the hero’s journey. Chet’s hero journey is faithful to the mythic archetype, yet modern and unpredictable. Filled with reversals and surprises, Attanasio’s story pits the uncertainty of contemporary adolescence against the ageless themes of Celtic myth.

Sunday, December 02, 2012

After Dancing Long and Well, It’s Time to Pay the Piper


It’s absurd to maintain tax cuts for the wealthy when the country faces massive debt and many of its citizens are unemployed. By now, most of us realize that prosperity does not trickle down from the wealthy, and never did.

It’s argued, however, that increasing taxes for the wealthiest citizens may result in lost jobs. But it’s also argued that the resulting reduction in the federal deficit will more than compensate for those lost jobs. Further, it’s not certain that job losses will occur since businesses are running on minimal staffs already. After Clinton raised taxes, the economy thrived, so it’s entirely possible that the effect of tax increases for the wealthiest may have no, or only minimal, effect on job losses.

Alternatives that include reducing entitlement funding will also increase the hardships already faced by entitlement beneficiaries. As for cutting federal spending, we all know that Republicans never actually follow through with such reductions despite their talk. To do so would result in lost jobs for federal employees and for those who supply the government with goods and services. Clearly not an acceptable alternative.

During the Eisenhower years and beyond, affluent Americans paid much higher taxes than they do today. The country prospered and employment was strong. Currently the wealthiest citizens hold a greater percentage of America’s wealth then they ever held previously resulting in record levels of income inequality. Yet does all this capital in so few hands result in economic growth? Not at all. In order to bring economic growth, capital needs to be moving, not sitting stagnantly in the hands of the elite. The United States does not have a royal class, yet the desire to worship royalty remains present in those who seek to protect it from imaginary threats.