All I’ll say is that this week sucks: reading 100+ pages per day for only a portion of my courseload, working continuously from 6 am to 11:30pm every day.  Blah.  Being and time vs. time and being.  Double blah.

Last week was much the same, but augmented by Zhao Liang’s moving documentary, Petition, at the Walker on Friday night.   A trenchant, ten-plus years’ effort, the film was followed by a disheartening Q & A– made so by the audience member’s questions, which ranged from thoughtful to overly-thoughtful to inane and even thoroughly ignorant.  But worst for me was Zhao’s proclamation that his intent in making the movie was not to show it to foreign audiences but rather the Chinese themselves. At best this is endearing, patriotic, and naively optimistic, but he seems far to intelligent for such folly in light of China’s history of human rights.  Thus, I can only perceive his remark as being totally arrogant, in a way that’s akin to the arrogance of the very perpetrators of his film.  We live in a world, and, despite its name, China (nor anyone else) is not at the center of it.

This week, like I said, sucks.  I watched Lost.  I read, and went to class.  That’s it.

Next week, however, has some good stuff, which I’m hoping to attend:

Tuesday has (to my surprise!) my friend Chris Olson and (not surprisingly) fellow U of M anthro dept. member Greg Laden (who has a great blog) for an installation of Heavy Table, talking about the evolution of cooking at the Bell Museum. Given my recent hiatus from omivorousness, I may not be forking out the $50 to chow down, but you may see me lurking in a corner somewhere, trying to sneak a peek at the goings on.

Heavy Table

Thursday has another item of curiosity with Rohan de Saram’s performance at the Barker center.  This one’s free and another (welcome) great excuse to give my eyes a break from all the backlit LCD they’ve been taking in as of late.

Rohan de Saram