Slavery on the Lawn: follow up

Rendering of rear of Pavilion VI, JUEL project, University of Virginia
Rendering of rear of Pavilion VI, JUEL project, University of Virginia

A few follow ups to Monday’s post about slave quarters on the Lawn:

“Rooms beneath the student rooms on the East Lawn”: I couldn’t find a photograph, but the excellent rendering above shows how the sloping elevation of the ridge on which the Lawn is situated exposes access to a basement level beneath the student rooms on either side of Pavilion VI on the East Lawn. These are visible as you approach the Lawn via the alley between the gardens of Pavilions VI and VIII. I distinctly remember a conversation with other students (my memory is they were University Guides, but I could be mistaken) discussing the theory that these anonymous windowless doors were slave quarters, a theory which was dismissed at the time but which appears to be true.

“Even in the recent IATH project to create and render 3D models of the buildings, they appear to exist in a vacuum, without outbuildings”: I spoke hastily. The IATH project in question, the “Jefferson’s University: The Early Life” project, does include renderings of some pavilions in a standalone fashion. But as seen above, for some pavilions a more full representation is provided. Particularly noteworthy is the work that has been done on the Pavilion VI outbuildings, which provides renders and historical context for no fewer than five outbuildings, ranging from Gessner Harrison’s office to a privy to a smokehouse. Also see the page on the Crackerbox, which is described as a combination kitchen and slave residence.

In sempibearna saecula

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Every time I come to Tanglewood, there’s something memorable about the rehearsals. Like the time that James Levine forgot about one of the sopranos in the scaffolding above the stage. Or the Meistersinger rehearsal where Johan Botha and James Morris drank their between-solo water from enormous steins.

Today, there was a bear.

Partway through the beginning of one of the movements of Rossini’s Stabat Mater, there was a commotion from the lawn. At first we ignored it; then the words “a bear!” filtered through everyone’s consciousness and we all stopped for a few minutes to watch the adult black bear cut a diagonal across the lawn.

And then we kept singing, as the grounds staff deployed a pickup truck to herd the bear away. One wonders what Rossini would think.

Update: Here’s a photo of the bear wandering the Tanglewood grounds, courtesy Tom Wang.

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At home in The Mews

Pavilion III capitals and pediment, June 5, 2004
Pavilion III capitals and pediment, June 5, 2004

UVA Today: Beneath the Mews. As I noted on Facebook, this article covers a plethora of my interests. University of Virginia archaeologists, working underneath the floor of an outbuilding to Pavilion III, have discovered traces of an original Jeffersonian serpentine wall below where slaves were once housed—and where Virginia Glee Club conductor Harry Rogers Pratt and his wife Agnes Rothery once lived.

Pavilion III, currently undergoing a minor renovation, is said to be one of the few pavilions not to have suffered substantial exterior structural additions or alterations from its Jeffersonian incarnation. Apparently this extends to its mews, which an official Historic American Buildings Survey notes was “constructed between 1829–1830 [and] … is visible over the north garden wall.”

Which means, of course, that the Mews was the outbuilding that was visible from the rear window of my Lawn room when I lived in 3 West in 1993-94.

The other thing that’s striking about this recent announcement is the matter-of-fact inclusion of the following statement, which would have been highly controversial even when I was a student:

“In its early years, [The Mews] served as a quarters for enslaved people, and may also have served before 1865 as a washhouse and apparently, a chicken house,” said Kirt von Daacke, co-chair of the President’s Commission on Slavery and the University. “The building is important because it is one of only a handful of extant structures where enslaved people lived and worked.”

So this fixture of the landscape was silently, unremarked-on, a remnant of the secret history of slavery at the University of Virginia. I say “secret” because it was absolutely never discussed when I was a student. The guides would deny that the rooms beneath the student rooms on the East Lawn housed slaves, when it was clear in retrospect that they must have. No one talked about the fact that much of the original Jeffersonian plant was built with slave labor. And yet it was all around us. If you want an example of how screwed up America’s relationship to reality and its own history is, that’s as good as any.

Aside: the photo at the top of the post is of the front façade of the Pavilion because apparently no one takes pictures of the rear garden. It is emblematic of the history of slavery at the University that this staggeringly well-photographed Jeffersonian residence has very few photographs published of its back gardens and outbuildings. Even in the recent IATH project to create and render 3D models of the buildings, they appear to exist in a vacuum, without outbuildings.

Cocktail Friday: The Interpol

Today’s cocktail was inspired by a coworker who had it in Vegas. He was able to give me the ingredient list but not proportions; I had to work it out by trial and error.

The Interpol builds on several rich traditions: gin cocktails featuring amari (e.g. the Negroni, with Campari) and traditional cocktails that substitute an amaro for some or all the vermouth, for instance. This one builds an alternative to a martini by replacing the dry vermouth with Cardamaro, a cardoon (artichoke) based amaro that adds a woody, herbal flavor. (You might remember it from my Woodsy Owl).

I had to play with the proportions and am not convinced that I got it quite right, but I really liked this version. There’s an alternative formulation at Kindred Cocktails that I also want to try, but I think the simple syrup has to be 86’d—the gin is already sweet enough.

As always, here’s the Highball recipe card, if you plan to try it out. Enjoy!

The Interpol, created with Highball.

BlackHat 2016: roundup of iOS security

A few interesting presentations last week at BlackHat dealt with iOS security. The most interesting was Ivan Krstić’s presentation taking us “Behind the Scenes with iOS Security.” Krstić, Apple’s head of security engineering and architecture, reviewed the implementation of features like Keychain Backup, file encryption, sharing of credit card information across devices, etc.

I particularly enjoyed the description of how the cloud-based key vaults for iCloud are protected:

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Don’t lose the keys: Microsoft and Windows Secure Boot

AppleInsider: Oops: Microsoft leaks its Golden Key, unlocking Windows Secure Boot and exposing the danger of backdoors. Interesting happening following the Apple/FBI standoff over iPhone encryption. If a secret key exists, the odds are very good that it will fall into the hands of an unintended recipient. See also: technical explanation and disclosure of the hack.

Rainy Wednesday blues

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It’s the middle of the week—a three-rehearsal week, two down—and it’s been overcast and rainy all day. Nothing but gray. Which is why all the caffeine in the world isn’t enough and I’m staring at gray skies, and listening to Charlie Haden.

Ah, Charlie Haden. I’ve had the privilege of seeing both Haden and his son Josh Haden (with his band Spain) live. My experience with Charlie was in the context of his Liberation Music Orchestra, with Amina Claudine Meyers on piano and Makanda Ken McIntire, among others. I can’t say that I recall much of the show; I was unprepared to understand the complexities of what that band was playing and didn’t know much about Charlie at that time, including the fact that he had been the bassist with Ornette Coleman’s band featured on The Shape of Jazz To Come. But he made an impression on me for the serenity of his playing and the staggering complexity of some of the music.

What I’m listening to this afternoon is something else entirely. Haden’s other group, Quartet West, performed simpler, melodic, and overwhelmingly romantic jazz, and his 1997 album Now Is The Hour features all of that plus a string orchestra section. The ballads are sentimental and enveloping, the fast tunes are bracing and the playing is absolutely impeccable. Highly recommended.

Living (building) history: flat roofs on Lawn rooms

West Lawn (Pavilions I and III with student rooms), University of Virginia
West Lawn (Pavilions I and III with student rooms), University of Virginia

UVA Today: Jeffersonian Roofs Restored Over Lawn Rooms. When I lived at 3 West Lawn, there were pitched slate roofs over all the student rooms on the Lawn at the University of Virginia. Turns out that those roofs post-dated Jefferson. His original idea? Flat roofs. And the design was ingenious: Cover a serrated wooden roof with decking. The rain water would run down through the decking and run out through the valleys of the wood roofs. Kind of like this:

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Unfortunately, Jefferson’s vision outstripped his engineering. The wood sub-roof leaked, damaging the roof over the colonnade walkway. So in the 1830s the flat roofs were covered over with pitched slate roofs.

What I find so fascinating about the story is the fact that Jefferson’s original roofs were preserved under the slate for 180 years. I also like this tidbit:

“All the single-leaf doors were replaced in the 1990s with new half-leaf doors,” Kutney said. “We’ve more recently found evidence that the single-leaf was the original Jefferson condition, so we’re going back to the single-leaf.”

When I was a student, I had a discussion with the late J. Murray Howard about the ongoing renovations of the Lawn, including his dismay that students damaged the paint of the doors on their Lawn rooms by hanging signs on them advertising various student activities. He didn’t appreciate my observation that the students who occupied the Lawn were the living embodiment of Jefferson’s vision just as much as the buildings, and that part of the vitality of that vision was the presence of advertising for the student groups who had gotten them to the Lawn in the first place. Howard was responsible for adding the half-leaf doors. It’s petty of me, but I like the reminder that even experts can be wrong.

Learning about user feedback the hard way

TechCrunch points to a Fast Company interview with Apple execs, says The Apple Maps launch fiasco led to the iOS public beta program. Really interesting interview with Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi, among others, talking about two big issues that the company overlooked.

The TechCrunch headline focuses on the “public beta” aspect of Apple’s post-Maps transformation. I’d argue that an even more significant aspect is highlighted by Federighi’s comment that “we needed to develop competencies that we initially didn’t appreciate… Maps presents huge issues relating to data integration and data quality, things we would need to do on an ongoing basis.” They’re doing them now, to the tune of an added 4,000 workers in an Indian development center focused on Maps data.

The whole 2012 fiasco – which I believe has been turned around, btw – was completely avoidable had Apple done any strategic analysis on the maps market. A little Porter’s five forces would have drawn their attention to the problem of barriers to entry, and a little thought might have raised the point that data quality was in fact a significant competitive advantage that Google had, and a sustainable one based on their existing efforts around data quality in other, more directly search-related fields.

Thirty thousand feet over Peach Springs, Arizona

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Living in a densely populated state like Massachusetts, it’s sometimes a shock to be reminded that we have such immense areas of uninhabitable land in the United States. There’s nothing like a flyover of the Grand Canyon to bring that home.

And there’s nothing like following it up with a flyover of Lake Mead and a landing in Las Vegas to remind oneself of just how much we’ve changed the landscape of this country. And how much water matters.

Separating the artist from the art

I was in an interesting Facebook discussion last night. One of my friends was struggling to reconcile love for the works of Edgar Allan Poe with increased evidence that he was a virulent racist.

It occurred to me, as I thought about my response, that this is not unlike being a lifelong student of Thomas Jefferson while acknowledging that he not only owned slaves but fathered children with one of them.

What I’ve come to increasingly understand—not “appreciate,” but understand—is that this whole country is tainted with racism and slavery. It’s like Bob Dylan said: “Seen an arrow on the doorpost / Saying this land’s been condemned / All the way from New Orleans / To Jerusalem.” We are, all of us Americans, complicit in the original sin of America. That doesn’t mean, to me, that you throw out the whole thing; it means that you appreciate the moments of beauty that have managed to poke their heads above the horror all around them.

Summertime rolls

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It’s entering the busy season of my summer, though in reality the whole summer feels both jam-packed and oddly relaxed. Last week: mid-year team offsite. This week: mid-year sales training. Next week: hacker summer camp.

Then there are rehearsals. In late August there’s Rossini, and Aida, and a Prelude concert and Beethoven’s 9th. So of course we’re in high rehearsal mode. I think I’ll have had over 18 hours of rehearsal in the last couple weeks of July by the time all is done.

But right now all I can think about is how much fun it was taking my kids around the Museum of Science on Sunday and watching the Tesla coils make music with The Girl. Turns out that you can translate AC frequencies directly into musical tones.

NASA Langley Research Center at 50

I’m going to double up on posts today since I’ve missed a few this week. I want to start by sharing this cool artifact from NASA Langley Research Center in 1967, commemorating the center’s 50th anniversary.

This was released while my dad (happy birthday!) was working at the center; he went there straight out of his undergraduate degree at NC State. He doesn’t talk a lot about those days, but it’s fun to think he might have been in the background of some of those shots.

It’s also thought provoking to reflect on the vision of future aviation that is shared in the video. Supersonic and VTOL “flying cars” never really happened, victims of a collision with environmental concerns and the energy crisis.