Meeting Bowls in NYC encourage conversation

One part of my summer work has involved working with colleagues to select furnishings for Old Main, where we will move in a few months.  We've tried out office chairs, discussed bookshelves, and thought hard about the benefits and draw-backs of various configurations of seating and writing surface for the classrooms.  We've also delighted that we'll have several areas designed specifically to encourage students and us to be conversation with each other: comfy chairs, nice view, etc.

All that is in the background of my enjoyment of this story about urban furnishings.  Look at those two, inside the bowl.  Try not to think of the spinning teacups at Disney Land although the bowls do rock a bit when people enter.  Imagine the conversation they are having as they face each other inside that bowl in the midst of Time Square. 

No, we will not install these in the lawn, outside the east entrance of Old Main.  Perhaps we will have some inviting chairs on the porch.

Animating history . . . Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson, is not one of my favorite books despite my fascination with the 1893 World's Fair.  (This the legacy of those years in Hyde Park where the Midway marks one region of its location and recalls the Ferris Wheel and other wonders.)  His recounting of two intertwined stories--the White City at the Colombian Exposition and a murderer who exploited the transient presence of fair-goers--are compelling, but perhaps too much so.  It was frightening.  Not long after I read the book I stayed at Chicago's Congress Hotel; that was about the creepiest room I've ever rented.

In his Chautauqua talk about his new book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, he says that his goal as an author is to "animate history."  He also claimed that in some way this is different from what historians intend to do.  His goal is more to transport his readers to the time he writes about.  Based on the lingering fear the earlier book imparted to me, he succeeds.

He also described his path into the topic of his new book, that is his research.  That also was interesting and worth remembering when we come to the "Day in a Life" assignment at the end of 201.  To hear the talk we'll have to go through MPR's Mid-day site which seems not to allow a direct link to the talk.  He began with the biggest picture provided by reputable scholars and worked his way toward the personal stories and minute details of his characters' lives. 

After hearing Larson talk, I also wonder if I should re-read the earlier book and look for a section we could read along with the relevant chapter in Gilbert's Perfect Cities.

Don't be that guy

Don't Be That Guy is "a refreshing and new approach to tackling sexual violence among youth aged 16 to 25. Instead of placing responsibility for preventing sexual assault in the hands of victims, the posters appeal to potential offenders—speaking directly to them in their language. The posters can be displayed in bars as well as other places where young people gather."  


You can see the posters on their FACEBOOK PAGE or on the WEB-PAGE

Here is a notable instance of the importance of freedom of speech being linked to responsibility to listen and a reminder that freedom of speech also is a form of self-determination.  Not only are we in favor of individuals (including young women) having the right to speak, but also of their right to autonomy about their lives and bodies.

Coalhouse: Context for Ragtime

As we prepare to read Ragtime together and to pay attention to various social matters the new Martin Luther King memorial is being dedicated on the mall in Washington, D. C.  King's "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered a dozen years before Doctorow's novel was published in 1975.  Malcolm X was assassinated a decade before the book.  Three years later, King was assassinated. These three events remind us of the context in which Doctorow was writing and of the pressing concerns that informed him as he represented an earlier era of American life. 

As I listened this morning to an American Icon episode on Malcolm X Coalhouse, both the man and the group around him, echoed.  I was struck as much by the testimony of people who had been effected by his autobiography as much as by the portrayal of Malcolm X.  A white journalist spoke of recognizing the truth of the book's portrayal of "white devils."  A black man recalled trying to join the Black Panthers when he was about 15 years old: when he declared his desire to be armed, he was given a stack of books that included The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 

Riverwalk Marketplace: Saturdays in Northfield

Our little town has revived market day.  The seasonal, weekly event makes great use of our riverfront. 

It is not yet quite what we loved in Madison, Wisconsin walking around Capital Square on a Saturday to stock up on the week's supply of veggies, to enjoy fresh pastries, to look at the people.  But. . .  there are veggies, and delicious pastries, and people to see as well as ceramics, and jewelry, and other crafts by artisans who reside within 25 miles.

elephant on the prairie . . . without further comment

I post a photo from Vining of my personal favorite made from lawn mower blades:

What technology for reading? What we learn?

Slate article:  "Print vs. Online: The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers."
By Jack Shafer

My anecdotal findings about print's superiority were seconded earlier this month by an academic study presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The paper, "Medium Matters: Newsreaders' Recall and Engagement With Online and Print Newspapers" (pdf), by Arthur D. Santana, Randall Livingstone, and Yoon Cho of the University of Oregon, pit a group of readers of the print edition of the New York Times against Web-Times readers. Each group was given 20 minutes reading time and asked to complete a short survey.

The researchers found that the print folks "remember significantly more news stories than online news readers"; that print readers "remembered significantly more topics than online newsreaders"; and that print readers remembered "more main points of news stories." When it came to recalling headlines, print and online readers finished in a draw.

I wonder what transferability there might be between this study of newspapers and other sorts of reading?  What does this suggest about the medium of delivery (i.e. a printed book or even a photocopy of an article in contrast to a PDF or web-page) and the actual information delivered and received by the reader/student?

I do worry a bit that the cost savings of providing full-text on-line to students can undermine the primary reason for the assignment, namely to learn from the reading.  Certainly there must be ways to overcome the problem.  Taking notes would be one that hearkens back to the days when books were scarce or to using a library book in which one does not make marks.  The very act of making notes channels the information and insights through one's muscles in a way that can add memory.  Needing to take notes would also slow the process of reading from the skimming that often passes for reading on-line.

tomatoes

not my plant

1)  My out-of-control tomato plant has escaped from its cage and I have now lashed it to the pole of the basketball hoop.  I notice that the basket on the hoop bears some resemblance to the cage from which the tomato has escaped and that at least one tomato seems destine to be as big as a basketball.  I hope it turns that orange-red color!  I also notice that the words in that first sentence seem rather violent, not at all suited to a romantic notion of gardening.

2)  I've also heard Terry Gross interview the author of Tomatoland on Fresh Air and I know that much related to producing "grocery store" tomatoes is very far from our romantic notions of gardening and agriculture.  Barry Estabrook wanted to know why there are no tomatoes worth eating in the winter. Distaste for mealy, tasteless, pale tomatoes lead to a more disgusting set of  revelations.  What he uncovered about commercial tomato growing in Florida may keep readers from even attempting to eat a winter tomato ever again.  Pesticides are a beginning.  The labor practices are horrific, words like cage, lashing, and escape are accurate.  The story is not for the faint of heart.  Gourmet Magazine article on the topic.

iconic collegiate foliage

These are not the ones I saw.

This morning I saw the first hints of orange and gold in the trees.  Fall and students are not far behind.

Working together

"In the wake of the recent debate over the debt ceiling, I imagined my father’s solution. If the goal were to cut $4 billion from the deficit, he’d have suggested that the Republicans be put in charge of coming up with $2 billion of tax increases and the Democrats with finding $2 billion of cuts in services and entitlements. “Only when you try to argue your opponents’ point of view,” he’d have said, “does your own begin to make sense.”" 

What a Solomon-esque approach to a seemingly intractable problem!  Moreover, what a wise strategy to use each party's strengths to promote the common good.  This goes beyond a classroom exercise to real politics: the art of the possible.

The whole piece by JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN is worth reading: here it is.

Remaking medicine and health

In this morning's news: two children in Dakota County have measles and one of them is very seriously ill.  Why is this news?  Because measles is no longer a common childhood disease that almost every American kid got and some died from.

The news item recalled for me sections of the book Emperor of All Maladies:  A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, specifically the section near the beginning that describes the remaking of health in the United States in the middle third of the twentieth century.  Development of immunizations and of antibiotics changed our experience of illness and expectations of health and thereby remade American childhood, parenting, and much more.

This got me thinking about measles as a dense fact and the sorts of questions we could ask about the disease in this cultural context.  Some parents would deliberately expose all their kids at once, to "get it over with."  What was the effect onschool classrooms of kids being sick?  There is the larger issue of school's requireing students to have been vaccinated against this and other diseases before enrolling and some parents' objections to doing so.  We might also be interested in the insurance industry and its encouragement, or not, of preventative medicine.

Although this is not a development that we'll take up in class, it may be one to keep in the back of our minds.  The notion that Americans are healthy is, I suspect, pretty central to our self-understanding.  We could expand beyond measles to investigate just how true this self perception is.  I'd want to look at infant mortality rates, the crisis of obesity, diabetes, and cancer as well as the positive effects of polio vaccine, penicillin, and the like.  Mukherjee points out that one factor contributing to the incidence of cancer in the USA is how long Americans live.  If one dies from a childhood disease, that person will not get cancer later.

Here is Jack on Putnam on the Tea Party movement

Jack Dutton's Commonplace Blog: Putnam on the Tea Party: It seems that Robert Putnam thought it necessary to one-up our Tea Party editorials by writing one of his own, co-authored with David Camp...

As hinted at in one of my blogs from yesterday . . . . .

anticipating Chicago

 A young Theodore Roosevelt's thoughts on Chicago.

"It is certainly a marvelous city of enormous size and rich, but I should say not yet crystallized. There are a great many fine houses; but I should rather doubt the quality of the society." -

with thanks to Chicago native Daniel Roberts, who is biking from Washington, DC to Seattle.

duh. . . . . Norwegians at St. Olaf. maybe that is why . . .

"There are lots of Norwegians at St. Olaf," said Wencke Berger without showing any sign of moving.  "And people of Norwegian descent.  Maybe that's why--"   from Anne Holt's crime novel What Never Happens

Well, the observation is significant in the plot of this novel by Norway's former Minister of Justice whom you may have heard interviewed after the shootings in Norway last month.  And, there is always a tiny bit of a thrill to find one's "home" noticed and mentioned.  Still, to those of us who live here the observation is no big surprise.  What is more interesting is to wonder what those folks contribute to the continued life of the place founded by immigrants more than 125 years ago.  "Maybe that's why--"  We'll ask that in 201.

Putnam on the Teaparty

 








Jack called my attention to this NYT's piece that is rather like Robert Putnam's response to an assignment from AmCon 101 last fall.  Here he reports on research that calls into question the assertion that the TeaParty movement is a manifestation of 'grass roots' democracy and a call for a return to government "by, of, and for" the people.  Rather, he asserts that the power of the movement is in its particular way of drawing upon certain streams of American evangelical Christianity.  I'd love to read a response by Nathan Hatch because I think he would give us some insight into the similarities (and differences) between this linking of religious commitments and political/social agendas and the linking of these in earlier eras, particularly in the early 19th century.

Close to Vining: The Peak Supper Club

The Peak Supper Club 

Both my parents turned 80 this summer.  Certainly a cause for celebration.  Since they have lived in six states and several more towns in the 57 years that they have been married, a big open house with all their long-time friends was not a possibility.  A weekend at the lake with their children (4), childrens' spouses (3), and grandchildren (3) was.  It was a fine time with fun and some work.  The last event was to be brunch so my husband I scouted for a place to go.  We rejected the buffet at the bowling alley and breakfast off the menu at the new up-scale golf resort.  We failed in our half-hearted attempt to convince Stella's Bistro to open up and serve us brunch even though they don't usually do that.  We tried out a place in Detroit Lakes, but decided that it was too far to drive in the wrong direction.

Then, at the eleventh hour, my sister-in-law noticed that The Peak Supper Club has a Sunday buffet.  My brother allowed that he'd always been curious about the place.  So we went.  The link above gives you the menu and a map so you could locate it near the highest point in Otter Tail County, and near Vining about which Beth has recently posted.  But . . ..  this would not give you any sense of the most remarkable feature of the place: extraordinary taxidermy in abundance!  One room of fish and the other with deer, elk, moose and a bear skin!  I wish I had photos to show you.

Stout reappears to Enich

Blessed are the Organized: Life back on the hill is quickly approaching, so I thought I would ease myself back into the swing of things. Part of my goal this summer ha...

This from Enich who found that our spring conversation is sticking with him as he reads the news this summer. 

Small Town America . . . . from Beth!

 In the field across the road from my house the tassels on the corn are turning yellow: a sign that summer is growing short and fall will soon arrive.  Along with it, students back on the Hill for the second year of American Conversations.  Some of them are starting to post on their blogs and a few have begun sending me e-mails about "Remaking America."  These digital missives are stimulating my excitement for the return to the classroom with them and Mary Titus.  We'll pay lots of attention to cities--New York and Chicago and also to some rural and small town settings.

So ...... this post from Beth about her summer vacation in MN lake country is a fine preview.
Vining: Vining, Minnesota is the proud home of Karen Nyberg, astronaut; the Charles Nyberg Sculpture Park and the annual "watermelon days" fe...

another entry in the sculpture park 

 

next to the Big Foot gas station.

place, again, or maybe still

Cows, Colleges, Contentment

 "Requiring neither extended analysis nor rational justification, sense of place rests its case on the unexamined premise that being from SOMEWHERE is always preferable to being from NOWHERE. All of us, it seems, are generally better off with a place to call our own." - Keith Bass

Summer food and liturgy

Seasonal food matters in a place like Minnesota that has definite seasons. At the local coop food is labeled by its origin so we know which produce came from a place we could, perhaps, bike to and which requires a truck or a plane to reach us.   Seasonal food also matters for some things that require a truck.  Cherries don't grow in Rice County, but I bought some recently that had been brought in from Wenatchee, Washington and they were nearly as good as the ones I've eaten in view of the trees along the Columbia River valley.  Last night we had peaches that my friend brought back from Colorado with her.  Delicious with ginger pound cake and the last scoops of vanilla ice cream from Izzies.  Corn on the cob from a farm near Northfield.  Walleye that probably came from Canada but eaten with the illusion that it might have been caught in a Minnesota lake.  A small handful of raspberries from the bushes in my front yard.  Anticipating the tomatoes that are forming on a plant at the end of the driveway, to be eaten with basil exploding among the out of control morning glories.

Even without fair-food on a stick, all these mouthfuls of delight signal summer in the midwest.  Their aroma and taste and textures recall previous meals in specific places.  (Ah the peaches offered in Seattle's Pike Place market.  Sweet corn rushed from the farm to our kitchen in Ames.)   They also link us to the cycles of the seasons which return again and again.  Each summer's food is distinct.  Each juicy mouthful is its own pleasure.

In this the tomato (to select one fruit) is oddly like the Christian liturgy which is always specific and local and at the same time follows a cycle that guides its participants through the year in a pattern of predictable, yet potentially surprising, change.

In praise of the ordinary life here and now

And, after all, isn't one of the points of keeping a commonplace book/blog using it to help one notice the ordinary?  Certainly that is a way that the books can be used.  So, here is a poem by a poet who often draws readers attention to what is with appreciation.  I am grateful for this from Carl Dennis whose sensibility seems computable with a vocational outlook that urges us to respond to these people who are in this plaee today rather than being preoccupied with finding a perfect job somewhere else for later.

Drugstore

by Carl Dennis

Don't be ashamed that your parents
Didn't happen to meet at an art exhibit
Or at a protest against a foreign policy
Based on fear of negotiation,
But in an aisle of a discount drugstore,
Near the antihistamine section,
Seeking relief from the common cold.
You ought to be proud that even there,
Amid coughs and sneezes,
They were able to peer beneath
The veil of pointless happenstance.
Here is someone, each thought,
Able to laugh at the indignities
That flesh is heir to. Here
Is a person one might care about.
Not love at first sight, but the will
To be ready to endorse the feeling
Should it arise. Had they waited
For settings more promising,
You wouldn't be here,
Wishing things were different.
Why not delight at how young they were
When they made the most of their chances,
How young still, a little later,
When they bought a double plot
At the cemetery. Look at you,
Twice as old now as they were
When they made arrangements,
And still you're thinking of moving on,
Of finding a town with a climate
Friendlier to your many talents.
Don't be ashamed of the homely thought
That whatever you might do elsewhere,
In the time remaining, you might do here
If you can resolve, at last, to pay attention.

"Drugstore" by Carl Dennis, from Callings. © Penguin Poets, 2010.