Lewis Hine , Ellis Island, global trade

Ellis Island is located right in front of NY City. The Statue of Liberty is not very far away. I have been to NY and visited the Statue of Liberty, but today I found a link about its origin and history that I would like to share :

http://education.eastmanhouse.org/discover/kits/imageNotes.php?id=8

Lewis Hine took pictures of immigrants arriving to US from all over Europe from 1905. You can see Italians, Jews, Slavic people, Germans, etc. All of them after a very hard trip in awful conditions, passing the medical tests at Ellis Island and starting a new life in a new country. He also describes the kind of work they did after that, the children working in mines and cotton factories, people without one arm after work accidents, etc. I cannot help but remember the stories from grandparents here in Spain and the job conditions they had after a disastrous civil war.
In this small part of the world we have overcome this (no matter the economic crisis we are "suffering") but we cannot forget that with our lifestyle is based on these conditions still existing in some other countries. Our wonderful cheap clothes, that we happily use for a couple of years and throw to the basket, are done in India, in China, in Thailand, where there is no right for workers or children. Is this situation creating some kind of wealthness for them, or huge firms and consumers are the only ones to profit? Do we really care in our noisy date-to-date? Can we do something?

Some movies about this :
- Voces contra la globalización : Otro mundo es posible
- Invisibles / The Invisibles
- La pesadilla de Darwin / Darwin's nightmare : This one is a tough one, gosh! It also has a web page : http://www.darwinsnightmare.com

... and a very clarifying slideshow on how trade in our globalised world works :
http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/trade/rigged_rules

I also saw something in the pictures by Lewis Hine that we may have lost... Humanity.

Bach's concert

I live in Madrid. Though chaotic and sometimes unpleasant, you can do many diverse things. For example, go to a Bach concert, and that was what I did yesterday. :)
It is always nice to watch performances with the original instruments they were designed for. In this case, a beautiful harpshichord (clavecín), and a viola de gamba. We were not seated in the best place, as we were right in front of the harpshichord cage and a bookrest was standing right in front of the viola. That made the former to be heard very loud in comparison with the soft sound of the latter... Something to take into account the next time.
Besides, I did not know what a viola de gamba was, so I was expecting an instrument just bigger than a violin and something like a violoncello showed up. I learned the difference today : what I already knew was a "viola da Braccio" (arm viola), working as a contralto, whilst the "viola da gamba" (leg viola) works as a bass.
Also, the waves between the two instruments has a name (yippi yippi eh) : contrapunto : several independent melodies, one for each instrument. The name comes from the "puncta" in Gregorian Chant (the notes were written as small dots or squares) by Middle Ages... It was developed in Renaissance and specially in Baroque. Bach is one of its masters.
Some points I also found interesting about Bach's life :
- (1685 -1750) : End of Baroque
- He came from a family of musicians (father, uncles etc).
- He had two wives and 20 sons and daughters.
- When working for duke Johann Ernst III he left and travelled 400 km in order to see Dietrich Buxtehude, which was the best organist player at that point in time.
- BWV means Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis : Bach Catalogued Works in German (KV meaning the Köchel Catalogue for Mozart works)
Unfortunately, the execution yesterday was not very good, though I guess it must be extremely difficult. That's what it seems!

First Entry

Hi there, anonymous world,
The adventure begins. Just for fun.
Will it arrive safely to white-sand beaches full of sun, or will it sink?
Let's see...