Le Printemps des Poètes - 2013

Every year the Lieu Commun at St Céré holds an event for the French National Poetry Fortnight which is called “Le Printemps des Poètes”.  The theme this year was Les Voix du Poème, (the voices of the poem). With such a vague theme there is plenty of scope for different interpretations; including using different voices to read one poem; or reading poems in various languages; or perhaps one person reading a poem in several different voices as each character speaks. Le Lieu Commun opted for the first two of these possibilities.

Fourteen people were asked, or volunteered themselves, to take part on 16^th March and several rehearsals were held in the month before.  Participants chose their own poems, which were subjected to a limited amount of scrutiny by the group for length and suitability. Most of the poems were in French but some were in English, Spanish and Arabic. There was a Spanish song about poetry sung by Jean-Louis and Patrice.

Reading poems outdoors in the Place Mercadial needs to be lively and requires some direction, otherwise the public would quickly lose interest, so Raymonde, who has worked in the theatre, became involved.  She encouraged the performers to engage with the audience, to project their voices and to be expressive.  Her contribution was very effective and allowed the group to achieve such a high standard.

Several texts were split up amongst the performers with each speaking a verse or asking a question. The whole event took about forty minutes.  

Poems were read by, Marie-Ange, Brigitte, Jean-Louis, Joss, Dominique, Quince, Patrice, Pôline, Linda, Ouria, and Albert.  Christine and Agnes organised and paraded the titles before each poem and Quince played short interludes on the piccolo. 

I didn't notice that Albert was missing from the group photo when I took it, so here he is reciting his poem La Pluie (the rain).

Renaud was a very impressive bicycling gendarme who had the role of dispersing these disruptive poets at the end of their performance. 

He continued in character and was effectively moving on the crowd around the refreshments table in the Maison des Consuls afterwards. 

Thanks to Alain and Gilberte for the copious supply of home made cakes.

The Poems

Au bout du monde - Robert Desnos

Ode Maritime -Fernando Pessoa

La voix - Robert Desnos

L'évadé- Boris Vian

Quartier Libre- Jaques Prévert

La Poesia es un arma cargada de futuro - Gabriel Celaya

Haïku - Vent d'avril

Cahier d'un retour au pays natal - Aimé Cesairé

Las de tout ceux - Thomas Tranströmer

Création - Serge Behar

Piedras Antarcticas - Pablo Neruda

Le chat carême - Maurice Carême

La chute de la lune - Mahmoud Darwich

La Poesie ça sert à quoi?

Conversation de l'arbre et du vent - Marie José Christien

Ila Oumi ( Ma mère) - Mahmoud Darwich

La Voix - Charles Baudelaire

La goutte d'eau - Raymond Queneau

Bergeries - Eugène Guillevic

Daïnouri Choque – A Unique Singing Teacher

Yesterday, with the rest of the quartet, I went on a singing course, which was absolutely fascinating. The teacher, Daïnouri Choque, concentrated on the production and blending of the sound but not in a classical fashion. He didn't look for power, or placement of the voice, but worked by getting us to listen to the natural vocal harmonics and how they change with vowel sounds. 

In order to demonstrate, in a very dramatic way, what he meant about harmonics he sang one note and by changing something inside his mouth he produced a series of harmonics which formed part of "the Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th. The harmonics were quite high pitched but, once you tuned yourself in to them, they were very clear. Then he got us producing them ourselves but obviously in a much less controlled manner. Each vowel has its characteristic natural harmonics and when you slowly change from one vowel to another you can hear the harmonics re-aligning themselves in the space between the fully formed vowel sounds.  His preferred sequence of French vowels was i, é, eu, o and the inverse.

So what was the objective here? When I was contemplating the course I have to admit that I had no idea what it was going to be like, or what we were expecting to achieve. Our bass had been before, but all that I could understand from his description was that Daïnouri taught singers how to listen and sing together better. It’s a truism that all musicians or singers working in any type of ensemble have to learn how to play in tune and in time with the others. Sometimes for amateurs this isn’t easy, but that’s usually a question of more practice. What Daïnouri teaches is much more.  He wants the sound to blend at a harmonic level so that individual voices truly enter into the combined sound of the group.  When it’s done correctly the sound has a clarity and unity that is heard in some professional groups like cathedral choirs and other ensembles singing sacred music. 

After a morning of individual exercises, in the afternoon we sang some pieces from our own repertoire and I complained that one of them was pitched too high for my voice. He offered to help me and he sang next to me.  He tuned his harmonics to mine resulting in an enormous change in the quality of the sound and a tremendously intimate connection at a musical level.  The sound was so coherent that it took on a character of its own.  It was like someone else singing inside you but using your own voice to produce the sound. That was a most remarkable and exceptional moment.  I have never experienced anything like it before.

When we sang with all four voices, since he has also been a choirmaster, he knew exactly how to balance the quartet, and how to get us to form the same vowel sounds, so that the result was better than we have ever sung before. We were already singing the chord that starts each piece to get the pitch right but he also taught us to form the same vowel sound so that the harmonics were aligned. The effect of this is similar to that which I describe in the paragraph above. The collective sound is reinforced by each voice and a greater degree of clarity and resonance is created even in a dry acoustic.  In some of the more vertical pieces we were able to sustain this throughout. 

All of this was done without the ego tripping displayed by some teachers and without being fixed on any one technique or method. His explanations were always clear and sensible and when it’s necessary he has the experience to adapt his teaching to the requirements of the individual.  His method is to work with the ear, the body and the voice.  He spent quite a long time with our Alto, getting her to reduce the muscular tension that she naturally has. This gets worse when she's nervous and prevents her from controlling her voice, especially when singing sustained long notes. She found his calmness in explaining diaphragm breathing and how to stand in a relaxed manner very effective. It allowed her for the first time to really understand what was happening with her body, not just whilst singing, and she was very impressed with the insights that she gained. 

His courses usually last a week but we were able to make a special arrangement with him to tack a day onto another course that he was leading near Villeneuve sur Lot and what an extraordinary day it was!

Daïnouri leads workshops all over France, Belgium and Switzerland.  He works with groups of individuals, choirs and choir masters.

Parsifal - New York Metropolitan Opera

Live Relay - 2 March 2013

Wonderful singing from the Principals but the production is flawed.

It has been said that Parsifal is un-stageable.  It’s true that there are quite long moments while the singers are waiting for the music to allow them to move on to the next action.  In the case of Parsifal there isn’t much action anyway and the real movement is often in the music.

It’s also true that familiar concepts for the presentation of operas need to be challenged and in this way operas are renewed down the generations.  Sometimes this is successful, sometimes not.  François Girard has responded to Parsifal by setting it, supposedly, in the not too distant future.   

Act One had the Knights of the Grail in white shirts and black trousers.  The stage was a sloping desert of cracked dried mud, with a small rivulet running through it that turned red when Amfortas took his bath.  The Knights were on the right of the rivulet as a seated circular group, moving together from side to side or using their arms to reinforce the action.  Women in dark clothes were on the left.  They were mostly static. The Grail was a simple golden chalice and no lighting was used to suggest its power.  At the end of the Act the rivulet opens up into a chasm into which Parsifal stares mystified and wondrous.

Act Two, is set in Klingsor’s magic garden, which is generally portrayed as a beautiful colourful place; the text says it is in a wooded valley.  The flower maidens are usually seductive and alluring. Girard put the flower maidens, wearing white nightgowns and having long black hair, in a dark red cave dripping with blood.  If you think of early horror movie female vampires you’ll get the general impression.  
Throughout the act all the performers were standing in a lake of stage blood and, as they knelt or moved, it stained their clothes.  Klingsor had to pick it up in cupped hands and throw it about or pretend to!   A river of blood flowed down the back of the stage between the rocks at the entrance to the cave.  It’s difficult to imagine anything less likely to create a mood of seduction or more likely to distract one from the music. At the end Parsifal just takes the spear from an unresisting Klingsor and that’s it!  In fact so dramatic was this moment that my companion slept through it, although to be fair this interpretation is supported directly by the text!

Act Three returned to the desert of cracked mud, which had now been transformed into a post-apocalyptic scene reminiscent of science fiction from the sixties and seventies.  Klingsors’ realm has been destroyed and, amid graves lightly dusted with snow, men and women stood about looking shocked and filthy, like refugees from the holocaust.  There were a few overturned plastic chairs.  Nonetheless it remained difficult to escape the medieval origins of the work, which is Wagner's interpretation of Parzival, the 13^th Century poem written by Wolfram von Eschenbach.  Instead of a 21^st century coffin Titurel was swaddled in white wrappings like a mummy as he was laid in his grave and Amfortas’ spear, now carried by Parsifal, was prominent.

Clearly there is blood in Wagner’s text.  Amfortas’ wound bleeds continually and blood from the body of Christ is at the source of the power of the Grail.   Blood is also suggested by Klingsors’ self-emasculation in his mistaken attempt to gain purity, but it is not the primary focus of the story of the opera, which is to achieve redemption.  In this production there was too much blood, which had a visual impact far too powerful for its role in the text.  The director also employed too much coordinated group arm waving, which distracted from the performance as a whole.

But what a performance!  All of the principals gave powerful and impressive readings of their parts.  They acted strongly, especially Peter Mattei as Amfortas, the physical nature of his suffering being matched by his range of vocal colours.  René Pape was a powerful and indefatigable Gurnemanz, who was also very human and engaging.  Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor couldn’t have been more angry and evil.  Katarina Dalayman, sings her role very well but she was not successful when playing the seductress Kundry in the second Act.  One was left thinking that she could have been Parsifal’s long lost mother, and her heart didn’t really seem to be in it, but later her memorable duet with Jonas Kaufmann’s Parsifal was overflowing with intensity.  

Both of them gave absolutely everything here and I’m sure that their voices more than filled the Met.  Daniele Gatti conducted the whole evening impeccably from memory with assurance and artistry. This was an exceptional cast for an exceptional piece but I’m sorry that I can’t say the same for the production.

A minor gripe about the sound before I finish.  It was noticeable that the balance for the quiet passages and offstage voices was not correct.  There was a lot of low frequency background noise, as if the microphones were too far away from the performers.  I didn’t notice this problem when they did Götterdämmerung a year ago on MET HD Live so they need to do something to address it.

Why Young Apple Trees Die in Midi-Pyrenees

About three years ago we planted five apple trees. Three have died, another is sick, leaving only one which is reasonably healthy.

They have never grown strongly and we assumed that this was due to the extreme dryness which we suffer from in the summer, but this is not the case.  When these trees start to die the trunks have a diameter of about five centimetres (two inches).   

The bark near the base of the trunk goes soft and then this spreads around the trunk.  By this stage there is no cure and the trees end up on the bonfire.  So far this problem has not affected other types of trees in the garden.

These trees were bought from several local nurseries, but the three which have died have come from the largest, so we went to ask them what was going wrong.  After checking that it was not the result of mower damage, the helpful and knowledgeable assistant at Jarriges asked if the damage started on the Western side of the tree.   I had already registered that it seemed to start on the South Western side.  He then said that sometimes their suppliers grow the trees too close together and so when they are small they don’t get enough direct sun to harden the bark.  If they are then planted out in a position where they receive direct sun from the South and West their bark cooks and is damaged.  A fungal disease then enters and the rot starts.

The solution is to protect the trees by wrapping sacking around the trunk until they are well established. 

Since the nursery is aware of the problem it’s a great pity that we were not given this advice when they were bought.

Thorium - Energy Cheaper than Coal - A Review

Robert Hargraves in his book “Thorium - Energy Cheaper than Coal” has decided to take the layman reader with him on a journey through the highly technical subject of energy and power generation.  His objective is to persuade the reader that it's possible, by making the right choices, to generate energy cheaper than that currently produced from coal in the US. 

So he starts with what you might call “Energy 101”, which would not be out of place in a high school curriculum.  Why is energy important to civilisation?  What is it and in what forms does it present itself? How is it stored and released? By page 60, however, he moves on to the serious issues behind the whole book: the rapidly increasing worldwide demand for energy, how that demand could be satisfied: the consequences of the various options and the link between the consumption of energy and prosperity. 

His book is stuffed with facts, charts and graphics.  He’s clearly done a lot of research but, in the absence of numbered references in the text, the diligent reader should know that they are listed as URL links, page by page, from p401.  I reached the middle of the book before I discovered this!

Energy Sources

Energy Sources  (Chapter 4 pp101-175) is very well developed and comprehensively reviews the advantages, disadvantages, limitations, efficiencies, utilisation factors and costs of energy generated from Coal, Gas, Wind, Solar, Solid Biofuels, Liquid Biofuels, Hydroelectric, Oil and Nuclear sources.  He also deals with energy Conservation and Storage.  It’s quite a tour de force in so few pages.  He’s enthusiastic about the efficiency of the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine, but he effectively demolishes Wind Power because it needs public subsidies and backup power plants running on gas, which can be rapidly started up when the wind drops.  Unfortunately these can actually contribute more carbon dioxide than Gas Turbines running on their own (p136).  He doesn’t make judgements about these subjects, he just lets the numbers speak for themselves!

Gas from Shales and Schists - Fracking

Writing from the North American perspective leads Hargraves to favour gas from shales and schists.  Because he’s convinced that replacing coal burning with much more efficient combined cycle gas turbine generators would lead to less overall release of CO2, he advocates harvesting natural gas from the “fracking” of shales (p121).  This conclusion contrasts dramatically with widespread European opposition to fracking from all fronts, not just the environmentalists.  Hargraves’ confident assurances that the gas bearing shales, (and schists) are well below the water table, and therefore fracking will not cause contamination of aquifers, doesn’t stand up.  Nature, geology and engineering are not so neat and tidy!  In France this pressure has forced the President, Francois Hollande, to announce that “fracking” will not be allowed to proceed.  Mind you in France no decision is ever irrevocable!

LFTR’s v The Rest

The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is presented in chapter 5, along with a plethora of other reactor designs, some of which offer significant advantages over the conventional uranium based Pressurised Water Reactor.  Many of these alternative designs were developed at Oak Ridge National Nuclear Laboratory, which ran a demonstration molten salt reactor from 1965 until the programme was closed down by the Nixon administration in 1969. 

Research on the Pebble Bed Advanced High Temperature Reactor (PB-AHTR) is being pursued in the US, with modest government funding of $7 million over three years, by UC Berkeley, MIT and U Wisconsin, whilst in China, with a $400 million budget and 432 people, they expect to have a demonstration PB-AHTR cooled by molten salt running by 2015 and an LFTR by 2017.   

Following the model of earlier chapters Hargraves begins with the physical fundamentals, in this case that means starting with the nuclear physics of fission and radioactive decay, then he continues by describing the technologies and finally gives a summary of the advantages of the LFTR.  The result is that the lay reader is presented with quite a lot of difficult to digest detail before the real advantages of the LFTR are described.  I’ve grappled with the problems of presenting of this material myself and, whilst Hargraves’ approach is logical and consistent, there is a definite risk of losing the reader in the technicalities.

By the end of chapter 5, I was much more aware of the multiplicity of different nuclear reactor types which have been built in the past, or are now proposed or are actively under development.  He describes numerous designs, along with their advantages and disadvantages; fast or thermal spectrum; solid or liquid fuel; water, gas, liquid metal or molten salt cooled; and of course those using the uranium/plutonium or thorium fuel cycles.  It’s a very useful one stop source for anyone wishing to be more informed about the background of innovation in the nuclear industry that’s going on behind utilization of the dominant pressurized water reactor.  It’s easy to assume that the conservative nature of the major stakeholders is stifling new developments but that’s certainly not always the case. 

Safety

Hargraves, in chapter 6, concentrates on the safety record of the nuclear power industry compared to other industries and by restricting his argument to fatalities he makes a strong case for nuclear power.  He goes on to comment on the perception of the risks of radiation compared to the reality of radiation arising from nuclear power installations.  Again he’s right and presents much evidence to support his case but, by concentrating on fatalities, he downplays the consequences of a major radiation discharge in terms of the disruption and fear that it engenders.  Even if the population concerned have a minor risk of suffering health problems the establishment of exclusion zones means that they will most likely have lost their livelihood or their property or even both.  They will also be terrified of the long term effects on their families.  The WHO report on Chernobyl states that this is the major adverse effect of that disaster.  To appreciate how this weighs on the public mind just consider the reaction to the Tsunami, in which about 23,000 people died, and then to the release of radioactive materials at Fukushima, which has so far yet to cause any direct health effects but where potential predicted cancer deaths range from none to 100.

He presents some surprising statistics, such as 1 in 77 Americans will die as a result of traffic accidents.  But of course we all accept that we have to use the roads!

“Don’t confuse me with the facts, I know what I think!” 

The fundamental problem when trying to convince people that nuclear power can be safe is that it’s a complex subject which concerns diverse technical issues and evaluation of risks.  These are very difficult to discuss successfully with non-technically minded people.  I find that you frequently arrive at the stage of “Don’t confuse me with the facts, I know what I think!”  So for many committed environmentalists there's little hope of persuading them that new nuclear power designs can be very safe indeed because, not being equipped to evaluate the evidence, they prefer not to trust the messenger and revert to views based on emotion.  There are, however, a few environmentalists who have listened to the LFTR message and they agree that it, and other inherently safe fourth generation nuclear plant designs, represent the only practical way of rapidly reducing carbon dioxide emissions and therefore avoiding the planet-wide, but less immediate, environmental disaster that awaits future generations. 

In this chapter Hargraves also addresses nuclear waste and weapons proliferation.

Energy generated from LFTR's for a Sustainable World is a great introduction to alternative technologies for replacing fossil fuels for use in transport: and also to using cheap energy from nuclear power to substitute for fossil fuels in chemical process industries and desalination plants.  This vision is not unlike that of Weinberg’s in the 1960’s when he proposed "making the deserts bloom" using nuclear powered desalination.  It may happen one day if the economics are right.  Energy, which is cheaper than that generated from coal, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition because there’s much more in play here than just the cost of energy.  There would also need to be an acceptance that nuclear power plants and chemical plants, or even cement plants could cohabit on the same sites. 

I’ve visited a few cement plants and they are notable for their lack of security and their proximity to the quarries.  Their technology is really very simple.  I can’t imagine how you would graft a nuclear power plant onto one without a major investment in staff and security that would greatly increase the cement companies operating costs.  I really doubt that cement manufacturing companies would be interested in upgrading their technical capabilities to the required level or taking on the regulatory and technical risks.  Perhaps some sort of "Industrial Park", full of process industries with high energy demands, centred on a nuclear plant built and operated by an experienced nuclear company could be possible, but the whole thing would most likely have to be started from scratch and be very large.  In the European context, with financial uncertainty, a strong environmental lobby, high population densities and restrictive planning laws, it would be an unusually major investment the like of which is now rarely seen. 

The final chapter entitled Energy Policy is a fact packed discussion of the fragmented nature of energy policy and the highly subsidized nature of the energy sector in both the US and European contexts.  He calls for better political leadership in this area, something which the West seems unable to deliver but which the Chinese, in the energy sector at least, appear to be very well placed.

Conclusion

Robert Hargraves starts out by writing for the lay reader and ends up writing for the technically educated thorium enthusiast.  On the way he covers all aspects of energy and not just nuclear power.  In a trajectory that takes its reader from an introduction to energy which is suitable for a high school pupil, to the sort of detail that might interest a post-graduate student of nuclear engineering or environmental studies, he has written a comprehensive book so packed with facts concerning energy costs, efficiencies, utilisation factors and design details that it will serve as a useful reference book for some years to come.

An Alcohol Tester in Every Car

Whilst Sarkozy was in power it was announced in November 2011 , as part of a series of measures concerning road safety, that from 1^st July 2012 all drivers should carry a functional alcohol tester with them.  These devices cost one euro each and I tried to buy one in July but everyone was out of stock.  So that was the first problem.  Plenty of speculation ensued that the manufacturers were friends of Sarkozy but I think that the whole package, which included more speed cameras and devices which display your speed, was a rather pathetic and rare attempt to manipulate the media in order to gather a few votes for being in favour of “road safety”.

In October, when they announced that the law would be applied seriously, Anna found some in a shop, but she was complaining that the manufacturers say that they must be stored at less than 40 deg C.  In this part of France the temperature this August went up to 37 deg OUTSIDE the car so inside it was probably more than 50 deg when it was parked.

Anna wasn’t going to buy them on principle until she saw the name!  Yes that’s right “Le Turdus”!

The Thorium Problem

Current legislation in the US classifies thorium as a dangerous radioactive material. This is in spite of the fact that it has a very long half life of 12.5 billion years and it is an alpha emitter, which means that the radiation is stopped by a few centimetres of air or by your skin. In metallic form you could carry it around in your pocket without risk. The result is that, because thorium is present in most rare earth ores, it has become more and more expensive to mine and separate rare earth elements in the US than in China, which now has a virtual monopoly on rare earth element production.
Global Rare Earth Metal Oxide Production - 1950-2006 (‘000s Tonnes)

Rather than change the legislation dealing with thorium and address the root cause of the situation, the US government has announced that it is launching a WTO case against China.  China's reaction has been to threaten to reduce rare earth output to match its domestic demand and stop exporting rare earth’s. Since these are used in a wide range of manufacturing industries the knock-on effect on the world’s manufacturers would be dramatic.   Rare earths are used to produce magnets used in hard disks and offshore wind farms, batteries for computers and mobile phones, catalysts for the oil industry and catalysts for car exhausts.

In Gordon Mc Dowell’s video below, John Kutsch of the Thorium Energy Alliance and Jim Kennedy of ThREE Consulting take a comprehensive tour of the rare earth problem and follow it up by presenting a highly persuasive case for using liquid fuelled thorium reactors (LFTR’s) to generate electricity, or just high temperature thermal energy, to power communities or industries.




China is the world leader in research into the use of thorium and liquid fuelled thorium reactors and is currently employing 400 people working on thorium projects.  To paraphrase Jim Kennedy (at 12:34), "the Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr Jiang Mianheng, who is also the son of the former Chinese premier, has publicly announced that China intends to not just develop LFTR’s, but also to take out worldwide patents to protect the intellectual property generated by their research". 
The US has little time left to make a serious commitment to develop Weinberg’s 1960’s Oak Ridge research before finding themselves having to pay royalties to China for something they have already successfully demonstrated forty years ago.