I Will Never Use GPS for Navigating the Road

My father is in love with maps.  On our hearth in the family room rests a withering State Farm Insurance atlas: only a quarter of the cover remains intact (the rest most likely consumed by one of our many pets over the years), the staples of the bind have fallen out, the corners of the pages roll toward the center fold.  Inside, intertwining lines of neon pink and yellow slither along the rough pages--these are the roads my father has traversed over the seventy-five-and-counting years of his life, and he still keeps track of traveled highways each new route he takes.  You can imagine, then, that my siblings and I from an early age were exposed to his many maps and, subsequently, were taught how to read them.

Here begins my rant.

Regardless of whether he/she has a map-loving father or not, everyone should know how to read a map.  Everyone.

GPS, of course, has handicapped so many people today when it comes to navigating the road.  And it frustrates me.  So when I came across a blog post titled "Does the GPS Take the Fun Out of Driving? And Make Us Stupider, More Locked Up in Ourselves, and Less Open to the World?", I was obviously moved to read it.  The Big Think post highlights the main points of another essay, "GPS and the End of the Road" by Ari N. Schulman.  It is a long read, but well worth it (with some fantastic references to Kerouac and other literary figures!).

NB: I will be using an atlas only on my road trip next summer.

George Harrison + Martin Scorsese...Yes, Please!

Premieres October 5 & 6 on HBO...a channel I don't have.  What to do?!

What to Do about Education?

Fixing U.S. public education--not an easy task, is it?  There is an infinite amount of theories out there about what problems and solutions there are for America's failing schools, but one thing is for certain: we have a systemic mess on our hands.  This article from the Washington Post (thanks to Mary for sharing!) was written by an administrator who has served at both a failing and a high-achieving NYC school.  Though his comparison of the two experiences lacks discussion about major socioeconomic factors such as class and race, I find his overall distinctions on-target and bitingly honest.  I've outlined the five major differences on which he comments for you here, but the entire article is truly worth the read.

1. Parent support and involvement: "How can any school be effective when parental involvement is not there?"
2. School- and city-wide tracking system: "When a system allows schools to be tracked while segregating its highest achievers in specialized schools or academies, schools such as Jamaica are left with a student body that is made up of lower performing students. It is academic apartheid."
3. Discipline: "By pulling higher achieving students out and replacing them with more disruptive students, an anti-academic, disruptive climate is created."
4. Leadership: "How many years working in a public school do former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, current New York schools chief Denis Walcott and former New York City Chancellor Cathleen Black (who was in the job only a few months) have combined? Less than any member of the administrative team in my new school."
5. Hiring method: "Now the solution is Teaching Fellows and Teach for America. Young people who never intended to teach receive a crash course and teach in urban and rural schools. Since most of them will move on after a few years, a revolving door of inexperienced teachers is created. An army of short-timers is not the solution to troubled schools."

And then the conclusion...

"Although there are many other factors that distinguish an ineffective school system from an effective one, it is interesting to note that the five that have been listed above are not under any teacher’s control.

Yet modern education 'reformers' think that evaluating teachers by test scores and closing schools will produce schools like South Side. Perhaps it is their own lack of experience that makes them believe that is true. Or perhaps it is their lack of courage to make the tough political decisions that would result in more equitable schools. In either case, the kids of Jamaica High School and its teachers lose."

Kentucky Mule

A couple weeks ago at Big Star in Wicker Park I discovered an awesome cocktail the bar called the "Bakersfield Buck," made with bourbon, lime juice, and ginger beer (not ginger ale!).  Since then, I've been investigating whether it is a Big Star speciality or a common drink.  With a little research (see this NYT blog post), I've found it is more commonly referred to as a Kentucky Mule (much like a Dark and Stormy or a Moscow Mule)!  Being a Bluegrass-State native, I believe this calls for making the Kentucky Mule my new go-to drink...

Kentucky Mule (from http://greasyskillet.blogspot.com/2011/03/riding-kentucky-mule.html)

And Speaking of JSF...

...Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes.  Awesome.

This was one of the first Brain Pickings posts I ever came across.  JSF took his favorite novel, cut out pieces of the text from the pages themselves, and consequently created a completely new story through the act of removal--creation through subtraction.  As Brain Picker comments, "The result is a beautiful blend of sculpture and storytelling, adding a layer of physicality to the reading experience in a way that completely reshapes your relationship with text and the printed page."

JSF on Screen

I'm a fan of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but I'll admit I'm a little wary of how it will adapt to the screen.  Stephen Daldry has taken the directing reigns, however, and with his proven expertise with The Reader, The Hours, and Billy Elliot, we can only hope he's got things under control.  It'll also be great to watch Tom Hanks again...it's been a while since we've seen him in anything decent.  Slash Film has the details of the film in this First Look blog post.

According to IMDB, Foer's wife, author Nicole Krauss, will be seeing one of her own books made into a movie (The History of Love), though I haven't come across any details about that production yet.  It will be equally as tricky to make that one work in another medium, in my opinion.

Road Trippin'

In honor of 1) the road trip I will be going on next summer with my friend Faith (officially started saving for it yesterday!) and 2) Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which I am currently reading, I share with you this morning an awesome photo journal of a journey east to west.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures from it.  You can see the entire journal here.

My Other Blog

Alexa and I just created another blog that we will work on together called Correspondence of Pathos, a project where we pair words (passages from literary works, quotes from articles) with images (photography, art).  We probably won't have time to update it too much since school is starting back up, but check it out every now and then if you are interested!

Upcoming Concerts I Want to Go See (But Most of Which I Can't Afford)

First off, I actually do plan on attending Andrew Bird's sound installation at the MCA (Alexa, I'm hoping you can get me the member discount?!).  Also, speaking of AB: he's written the score for the upcoming indie film Norman. Check out both a sample of his exhibit and the trailer for the movie below.

Other Concerts I Want to Check Out and May or May Not Actually Attend:

• Pearl Jam 20th anniversary concert @ Alpine Valley on Labor Day Weekend (instead of that, I'll probably resort to watching their documentary, Pearl Jam: Twenty, coming out September 20--trailer below)
• The Civil Wars @ The Vic Theatre on November 6 (right now tickets are just $20!)

Nice Guys Finish Last? Altruism and Survival

Radiolab's "The Good Show" is one of my favorite episodes of all time.  You must listen to it.  Here's a quick summary of what it covers for those who haven't heard it before:

In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another?

The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness ... or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation?

When I stumbled across this article yesterday, then, I was reminded of the same issues Radiolab brings up in "The Good Show." Here are some highlights from the article worth pondering:

• "'Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others,' said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. 'Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct.'" 
• "'Sympathy is indeed wired into our brains and bodies; and it spreads from one person to another through touch,' Keltner said."
• "UC Berkeley psychologist Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney, a professor of biological psychiatry and neurology at McGill University, found that rat pups whose mothers licked, groomed and generally nurtured them showed reduced levels of stress hormones, including cortisol, and had generally more robust immune systems."
• "Overall, these and other findings at UC Berkeley challenge the assumption that nice guys finish last, and instead support the hypothesis that humans, if adequately nurtured and supported, tend to err on the side of compassion."

So what to make of it all?  How do you define the difference between compassion and competition in a world where survival of the fittest shapes the chronological history of every species on Earth?  Is being compassionate--scientifically speaking--actually an instinctual behavior to increase the odds of continuing your blood line?

Through the Eyes of Elliott Erwitt

NPR's The Picture Show today features the photographer Elliott Erwitt, whose iconic images from the past several decades will remain with you long after you give them a view.  The International Center of Photography is having an exhibition of some of his greatest works until the end of this month--if only I were in New York to see it!  Below are a few of my favorites from his collection:

Dave Eggers on an Unforgettable Teacher

Weekend Face-Off will be postponed due to a lack of time and energy (I'm running a half marathon tomorrow...?!?!).

Take a look at this fantastic piece written by the great Dave Eggers (many thanks to Mary for sharing this essay with me).  As a future high school English teacher and advocate for social justice education, I am particularly struck by Eggers's poignant reminder that all students deserve access to teachers like his memorable Mr. Criche, no matter their school or neighborhood.  Highlighting some excerpts will not do it justice, so just read it in its entirety.  It will be worth your time.

Update: Spike Jonze Does "Otis"

Here ya go!

Terrence Malick = James Joyce

I finally saw Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, that is, I finally experienced it, for the film demands much more of its audience than a typical movie.  In many ways, the piece leans more toward the avant-garde, and certainly further studying is required to tap into the mind of Malick--without pressing the pause button, without studying the frame, without taking note of the biblical references and literary allusions, the film will leave you more perplexed than entertained or inspired. 

Nevertheless, while it will take many more viewing to make sense of Malick's Palme d'Or winning film, I am sure of one thing: Tree of Life's cinematographic construction, in all its Kubrickian grandeur, undoubtedly lies alongside the narrative style of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  Recall the opening lines of Joyce's novel:


Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

Just as Joyce's stream of consciousness mimics the psychological patterns of a toddler's mind, so, too, does Malick's camera work jump cut from memory to memory within the same scene: we're not sure how much time passes from one frame to the next; the images race across the screen in a blur, come to a halt, linger, speed up again, slow down again--a whirlwind that is the process of remembering; shots from below place us inside the eyes of the child, making real to us the enormity of the sky above and the world around.  We come to realize, then, that even as adults we still remain the tiniest, most insignificant of creatures in our vast universe.

Of course, this question of postmodern self-identity leads to the subject of morality and purpose--in our daily lives, in nature, in the history of Earth, in the infinite realm of space--which is perhaps the major component of The Tree of Life.  This is when I must halt; I can say no more before studying the film again...and again.

In trying to decipher Malick's puzzling (I say that in all respect!) piece, I've gathered some articles for help.  I'm going to have to find a copy of the most recent Film Comment to read Kent Jones's analysis of the film, as it's not available online.  Here are some other posts with varying interpretations and reviews if you're interested:

Glenn Kenny, "'The Tree of Life': Malick's Masterpiece"
Nick Pinkerton, "The Difficult Gifts of The Tree of Life"
Scott Foundas, "Foundas on Film: Tree of Life"

...and J. Hoberman hated it.  "Cannes 2011: The Tree of Life"

I do know one more thing--the score (from Alexandre Desplat) was fantastic.

Riot Psychology in Layman's Terms

Dr. Vaughan Bell of MindHacks.com posted today some interesting commentary on the psychology behind riots and crowd control in light of the current turmoil in London. You can read the article here; below are a few highlights:

• "In terms of policing, one of the clearest effects to emerge from studies of riots and crowd control is that an indiscriminate kicking from riot police can massively increase the number of people in the crowd who become violent."
• "Suddenly, it’s ‘them’ against ‘us’ and a small policing problem just got much much bigger – like attacking a beehive because you just got stung."
• "And herein lies the problem. The psychology of crowd control is largely based on the policing of demonstrations and sports events where the majority of people will give the police the benefit of the doubt and assume their status as a legitimate force. . . . But the fact that thousands of young people across the country don’t have faith in police is a much deeper social problem that can’t be solved through street tactics." 

The Atlantic also has some great coverage of the riots. Check out these photographs and the time lapse video below.

Spike Jonze Does "Otis"

Cannot wait for this to premiere.  Love Spike, love Kanye, love Jay Z--what could be better?

Get More: MTV Shows

To Do: Learn Vedic Multiplication Method

This video is absolutely insane (via Open Culture).  The first example seems simple enough, but the second one just baffles my mind.  I haven't tried it yet, but will be doing so today!

e.e. cummings on Love

There's just no other person that can say it like him.

Thanks to Alexa for sharing "since feeling is first" for my read-a-poem-a-day challenge.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)



since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

[love is more thicker than forget]

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is more mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

Bookstores on the Mind

I've come across several pieces on independent book sellers recently, so I've gathered them together here:

Articles
From Big Think: "With the Death of Borders, What is the Future of Independent Book Sellers?"
From Macleans: "The Last Great Book Shop" 

Video
From Paris Review: "The Secret Bookstore" (watch below)

There's No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books from Etsy on Vimeo.

Beirut's "The Rip Tide" Online!

Streaming here.
The album is phenomenal.  Just do it.

NPR First Listen is best.

Brainstorming with Radiolab

WNYC's Radiolab is one of my favorite podcasts.  My sister introduced the show to me several years ago, and now that I'm hooked, I tend to reference stories and facts from episodes a bit too often in daily conversation.  One day, after discussing the video below (from Open Culture), my friend Alexa and I decided to email Radiolab with an idea for a show.  Many thanks to Rose for responding!

Dear Radiolab,

We (Alexa and Elizabeth) have been devoted listeners of your radio show for quite some time now, and we constantly refer to stories from various episodes in our everyday conversations. Radiolab has truly enlightened our understanding (or, sometimes, perpetual misunderstanding!) of the world around us.

Although you have already produced a "Numbers" episode, we recently came across a video that we believe could lead toward a possible "Numbers Pt. 2" followup. The video (seen below) sparked a debate that we cannot resolve--what came first, math or nature? How is math so organically integrated into the natural world? Did we discover the math--was it always there?--or did we create the theory based on scientific observations?

http://www.openculture.com/2010/03/nature_by_numbers.html

Marcus du Sautoy's books, particularly The Number Mysteries, bring up similar issues, and are worth investigating!

Looking forward to the next episode!

Best regards,
Alexa and Elizabeth

***

Hi Alexa and Elizabeth!

Thanks for writing! Math in nature is totally fascinating, and your "which came first" question is very tricky indeed. A mathematician would probably say that math has always been there, and it is up to us (well, maybe them, I'm not smart enough to be a mathematician) to sort it out and uncover it. Whenever I talk to mathematicians about why they do math they always come back to this one word: beautiful. And it is!

Really great questions you two, this has been a wonderful way to start my slow-going Friday brain up!

Thanks for listening!

Rose at Radiolab

A Synesthesia Experience: Ken Kesey on LSD

Seeing as I recently watched the film adaptation of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I decided it would be appropriate to share this particular video, an eerie fusion of sound recording and animation.  Open Culture's summary explains the story behind the clip:

"Back in 1959, Ken Kesey, then a grad student in Stanford’s creative writing program, started participating in government-sponsored medical research that tested a range of hallucinogens — LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and the rest. As part of the research project, Kesey spoke into a taperecorder and recounted the ins-and-outs of his hallucinations. These tapes were eventually stored away, and Kesey went on to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a book that now sits on TIME’s list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels since 1923.

A half century later (and ten years after Kesey’s own death), the LSD tapes live again. This week, the filmmaker Alex Gibney will release Magic Trip, a new documentary that revisits Kesey’s fabled road trip across America with the Merry Pranksters and their psychedelic “Further” bus. (Tom Wolfe, you might recall, famously covered this trip with The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, published in 1968.) Taken from the new film, the sequence above mixes the rediscovered tapes with some artful animation, and it captures the whole mood of Kesey’s first trip …"

To Do: Learn the History of Blues

Last night's show at Buddy Guy's Legends--including a surprise performance from Buddy Guy himself!--gave me the itch to start studying up on the blues.  I've now added this book to my wishlist!

Surprise performance by Buddy Guy with Andrew "Jr. Boy" Jones

Weekend Face-Off

Mad Men: Golden-Age Nostalgia or a Melodramatic Painting of Days Gone By?

This weekend's face-off features critics  Katie Roiphe and Daniel Mendelsohn to debate what truly drives the narrative of AMC's hit show Mad Men, now filming its fifth season, as well as the particular relationship between its sixties-era characters and a contemporary audience. Below are some highlights from each article; as for the winner, you be the judge!

Many thanks to my good friend Mary for sharing Mendelsohn's article with me!

"On 'Mad Men,' The Allure of Messy Lives" by Katie Roiphe (July 2010)

• "Watching all the feverish and melancholic adultery, the pregnant women drinking, the 7-year-olds learning to mix the perfect Tom Collins, we can’t help but experience a puritanical frisson about how much better, saner, more sensible our own lives are. But is there also the tiniest bit of wistfulness, the slight but unmistakable hint of longing toward all that stylish chaos, all that selfish, retrograde abandon?" 
• "The large-scale messiness of 'Mad Men' is not for us, the free fall into chaos, into that stranger’s warm and enticing bed; it frightens and enthralls us. What we want, in other words, is to watch four seasons of it through the safe, skewed mirror of the television set." 
• "Perhaps part of what is so appealing, so fascinating about 'Mad Men' is the refusal of bourgeois ordinariness, the struggle against it, in all of its poetic and mundane and tragic forms." 
• "Of course, it’s hard to write in praise of that much drinking in the middle of the day without being perverse; it’s equally hard to advocate purely recreational affairs; . . . . And yet can these messy lives tell us something? Is there some adventure out there that we are not having, some vividness, some wild pleasure, that we are not experiencing in our responsible, productive days? . . . Could we use, in other words, in these fine healthy times, just a little of the madness?" 

"The Mad Men Account" by Daniel Mendelsohn (February 2011)

• "With these standouts (and there are many more), Mad Men shares virtually no significant qualities except its design. The writing is extremely weak, the plotting haphazard and often preposterous, the characterizations shallow and sometimes incoherent; its attitude toward the past is glib and its self-positioning in the present is unattractively smug; the acting is, almost without exception, bland and sometimes amateurish." 
• "For a drama (or book, or whatever) to invite an audience to feel superior to a less enlightened era even as it teases the regressive urges behind the behaviors associated with that era strikes me as the worst possible offense that can be committed in a creative work set in the past: it’s simultaneously contemptuous and pandering. Here, it cripples the show’s ability to tell us anything of real substance about the world it depicts." 
• "The tension between the luminous ideal and the unhappy reality is, of course, what the show thinks it’s “about”—reminding us, as it so often and so unsubtly does, that, like advertising itself, the decade it depicts was often hypocritical, indulging certain “images” and styles of behavior while knowing them to be false, even unjust." 
• "The point of identification is, in the end, not Don but Sally, not Betty but Glen: the watching, hopeful, and so often disillusioned children who would grow up to be this program’s audience, watching their younger selves watch their parents screw up."

Summertime Is for Mistake-Making

In the rural South, there's a lot of time and little to do in the summer. Making your own fun, then, often leads to poor decision-making, and when I discovered this poem by Nate Pritts, I immediately returned to memories of many ill-advised summertime adventures in Marion, Kentucky.

Endless Summer

BY NATE PRITTS

. . .

It was the summer I fucked up    the summer    fucked up    me
fucked up    a fuck-up in the summer    & I spent time laying under stars
too much    time I wasted    the stars    you lied to me under the stars
& the summer was endless    the summer endless    it was an endless summer

. . .

. . .

endless    & I said things like    “If I ever see you again”
but    I’ll never see you again    I never saw you again    I made sure of that
& I circled    the lake    I went in circles    the lake was endless    it was
summer    I fucked up    too much time & I never saw    you again    & I

. . .

. . .

circled & it was    endless & the stars    lied to me    the summer
light    moving so slowly    I saw the summer light move    endless
& when I see you    the trees will cluster    green rage green    trees raging
with love    endless love & I’ll never see you    again    I made sure of that

. . .

. . .

wasted under the stars    the slow summer    light    the endless fuck-up
& you never again    you lovely    you summer you    everything that is now
never again    whatever that may be    the rage I loved    me under the stars
then & now    endless    wasting away me    haze wandering around endless

. . .

. . .

haze    it was endless    too much time & you    lied to me & I    said things like
I can’t describe the air on my skin can you    can you please    I know it was
important & the light from stars    moved    so slowly & you    moved off
forever    how can you save everything    everything    important    endless

. . .

. . .

summer light    the fuck-up    the lake a circle    circling    the lake
how can you save everything    how can I    answer you the light of summer
stars I’m sorry    for my light    the endlessness of my endless & my    fuck-up
the me that is    now    looking back & thinking    & this summer circling

. . .

Nate Pritts, "Endless Summer" from The Wonderfull Yeare (a shepherd’s calendar). Copyright © 2009 by Nate Pritts. Reprinted by permission of Cooper Dillon Books. www.cooperdillon.com
Source: The Wonderfull Yeare (a shepherd’s calendar) (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009)

Welcome!

This blog has existed for some time in my head. Today, it comes to fruition thanks to a Gchat conversation with a friend. Please refer to the excerpt below for details--you will see that it didn't take too much to convince me.

(NB: Name has been changed for the sake of privacy)

me: KAREN I JUST WANT TO BE A CULTURALIST FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE

i just want to read lots of articles all the time and watch cool videos and movies and listen to music and share it with the world

aka be a blogger

that's what i've been doing every day since my classes ended

Karen: I KNOW

i've watched it in real time on facebook!!!

just. do. it.DO IT.

NOW

.