Mom always told me to take eye breaks
While researching remedies for nearsightedness, I ran across an article with a reference to an intriguing study. Dr. Paul Harris an optometrist at the Baltimore Academy for Behavioral Optometry did a study on orchestral musicians and “found that the shape of the eyes of musicians changed to accommodate the instruments they played.” The text of the resulting paper is actually online; it was published in the Journal of the American Optometric Association in 1988. Dr. Harris studied the posture and eye positions of musicians in the Baltimore Symphony and discovered strong correlations with how their eyes adapted to their asymmetrical postures. Musicians spend many hours in one position, heads tilted this way or that to better hold their instruments, read their music and watch the conductor all at once. It’s not surprising that they end up with astigmatism as their eyes adjust to the asymmetry.

The abstract of the paper also hints that “good sight readers in music use a fundamentally different eye scan pattern to read music from the pattern that they use to read written language.” I know I don’t read music the same way as I read a book. There are many layers of information in music, not just the notes but all the annotations regarding dynamics, speed, accents, fingerings, accidentals, exhortations to watch the conductor. I scan multiple points, back and forth, and often much further ahead than what I am actually playing. And I know a number of musicians with glasses prescribed especially for the middle-distance of an orchestra stand. I hope I can avoid that for a few more years.

Alton Brown is back in town. Books Inc., Palo Alto, Saturday, October 26, 11:30 am.

Caltrain’s “baby bullet” railcars were put into service this week, running passengers up to the World Series game. The locomotives aren’t in yet and high speed service is still a long ways off, but this is a nice sign of progress.

The phrase “do-it-yourself” first appeared in an October 1912 article in Suburban Life encouraging men to do their own interior painting instead of hiring professionals. So says the site accompanying the National Building Museum’s exhibit “Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America.” How did home improvement become a hobby? Did the lure of power tools drive us to consider house makeovers as a leisure activity? In the 1870s and 1880s the treadle-driven scroll saw, “America’s original leisure power tool”, kicked off an interest in home improvement skills amongst the middle class which continues today. Men started taking over basements and garages for workshops. The Sears catalog catered to their tool and material needs. Eventually the entire building industry was designing products and packaging materials for do it yourselfers. Black & Decker introduced the trigger grip power drill in 1917. As American homes aged there were more improvements to be made and also historical details to preserve. Modernization co-existed with renovation. Working on the house is now an accepted hobby, and one to take pride in.

Since Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series was largely autobiographical, the houses that Betsy and Tacy lived in actually exist. The two Hill Street homes are actually on Center Street in the town of Mankato, not Deep Valley. The Betsy-Tacy Society has purchased these houses and intends to restore and preserve them to depict the era that Lovelace so accurately and lovingly described in her books.

Fun with tritones
Before a performance of Camille Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 4, our conductor enlightened the audience about the first interval you hear in the piece: a tritone, or diminished fifth. This dissonant interval was also used in Bernstein’s “Maria” from West Side Story, and in the opening of the Simpsons’ theme song by Danny Elfman. While I was shampooing my hair after the concert I also tracked it down to the “Jane, his wife” portion of the Jetson’s theme composed by Hoyt Curtin. Tritones have an interesting history. The tritone was banned in medieval times as the “Diablous in musica” (the devil in music). Since then, this “Devil’s interval” has often been used to signify evil; another classical example is found in Holst’s “Mars, Bringer of War” from “The Planets.” The tritone paradox gets you into scientific musical geekiness. Try hearing it for yourself (if you’ve got Flash).

Aimee Mann is making the circuit of my favorite TV shows. Fresh from her appearance on The West Wing, she’s scheduled to appear on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s November 19 episode. I think she’d be a great fit on Gilmore Girls next if they would only oblige.

I have to thank (alas) Martha Stewart Living (on TV) for introducing me to the existence of magnetic paint and chalkboard paint. If I had known about them before we painted our office room, I wouldn’t be scrounging around now for cheap art mounting and bulletin board-esque ideas.

One simple pronoun
At the very end of this NY Times article about a change in flight time policies for pilots of unmanned Air Force planes, there’s a word that should go unnoticed, but that I couldn’t help but note. Without fanfare, the second to last paragraph begins: “One of the most respected Predator pilots of the Afghan war is an officer who so mastered the aircraft that she was chosen to fly the super-secret C.I.A.missions in which a new, armed Predator tracked Taliban and Qaeda leadership and then launched Hellfire anti-tank missiles.” She. She flew the plane. That the writer doesn’t feel it necessary to point out anything unusual about the pilot being a women is a small victory for women in the military. Combat aviation was opened to women only in 1993 and only one percent of jet fighter pilots are female. Unmanned reconnaissance planes may not have fallen into the combat category, but I think shooting missiles certainly should count.

It’s no surprise that the popularity of foodie books on cooking, running restaurants, eating in foreign countries, and so on has created a market for books about waiting on tables. I recently read “Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress” by Debra Ginsberg (not bad), and now there’s “Hey Waitress! The U.S.A From the Other Side of the Tray” by Alison Owing. In a lengthy Salon review Suzy Hansen recounts her own tales of waitressing woe and theorizes on the unique relationship between waitress and customer. There’s power mongering, class struggles, harassment, greed, and hunger! No wonder the interaction has so much potential to go sour. You don’t have to treat your waitperson like your best buddy, but you should give them the same respect you’d expect from any business transaction.