girl toys?

Talking about social construction of identity: here is a lego ad from 1981.  Notice what is not in this ad:

1) there is nothing pink or glittery
2) there are no direct or indirect allusions to princesses

Notice what is in this ad:

the assumption that girls are creative and can build things, including their own sense of worth and identity.

I'm told that pressure from retailers pushed Lego to market their product as a boy toy so that it could be clearly shelved with other boys' toys rather than in the aisle with girls' toys such as Barbies.  I've no authoritative verification for this, but it seems plausible.

 In 2011 one can buy pink lego.  Notice the domestic theme for these in this image.  Which aisle are these shelved in?

And WHY are toys shelved by gender designations?

Just a little snow

not our snow, but similar to our view

this morning.  This would not be news if we were not on track for one of the least snowed upon winters on record, a fact that depends upon record keeping and counting, or if we could not observe merely with our naked eyes that there has been next to no snow this season and none on the ground since mid-December.   Since we have not had much snow, and not any for some weeks, this tiny bit of snow is news, even good news.  It will provide a tiny bit of moisture. It already reassures those of us (me in particular) who rely upon the orderly rhythm of the seasons.  It gives hope to the skiers who long to glide along trails longer than 2.5 kms of artificially produced snow-like substance.  This is the real deal, flakes falling from the sky!

AmCon connection: 1) sorts of perception: contrast the counting, record-keeping to the direct, observational; 2) harder to find so must be supplied by the reader, maybe some allusion to winter on the plains, e.g. Cather or Holm.

remembering and not remembering: slavery

"When the Civil War ended, there were no truth and reconciliation commissions formed to process memories, no Nuremberg Trials to enable reflection, no Great Emancipator to free the future from the past — only ghosts and the ravenous politics of memory. The need for national reckoning was quickly subordinated to the political imperative of reunification, and on both sides of the Mason Dixon line, forgetting became more valuable than remembering. "

This from Peter Birkenhead on Slate.  He reflects on his visit to various landmark-esque sites in the American South--living  history museums, restaurants, bed & breakfasts--where the existence of slavery was not mentioned.  It is a long piece well worth reading for its insight into our deliberate national forgetting and inability to come to terms with our collective past.  It is also worth reading for its consideration of the more general matter of how we are all always connected to the past regardless of how well (accurately, wisely, or otherwise) we remember it.  He recalls his youthful nostalgia for decades prior to his own, including his trench coat and tattered copy of On the Road, as an entry to shining some light on the difference between nostalgia and authentic historical memory.

If America is a family, it’s a family that has tacitly agreed to never speak again — not with much honesty, anyway — about the terrible things that went on in its divided house. Slavery has been taught, it has been written about. There can’t be many subjects that rival it as an academic ink-guzzler. But the culture has not digested slavery in a meaningful way, hasn’t absorbed it the way it has World War II or the Kennedy assassination. We don’t feel the connections to it in our bones. It’s hard enough these days to connect with what happened 15 minutes ago, let alone 15 decades, given the endless layers of “classic,” “heirloom,” “traditional” “collectible,” “old school” comfort we’re swaddled in. But isn’t it the least we could do? What is the willful forgetting of slavery if not the coverup of a crime, an abdication of responsibility to its victims and to ourselves?

If it’s true that we’re all breathing Caesar’s breath — that because of the finite amount of perpetually moving molecules on Earth, one or two that he breathed are in each of our exhalations — then we don’t need to dress up in his clothes to connect ourselves to the past, we’re already wearing them. The past is with us always, but we need to live with it, open our eyes and poke around in it, take it all in: the good, the bad and the mythic, if we want to stay connected to the ever-changing present.

patriotic display of emotion

Lots on the news about the death of Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the people's response in ritualized mourning: public displays that include chest-beating and weeping.  Some American commentators question the sincerity and authenticity of the ritual mourning.

Do those Koreans really feel sad?  Are they just going through the motions or is their grief genuine?

I have some sympathy for those Koreans.  Perhaps this is because I've heard so many comments about Scandinavian-American, upper midwesterners seeming lack of emotion; these comments are based upon their/our non-demonstrative behavior.  Lacking display suggests lack of emotion and 'excessive' display seems to suggest faked emotion.

Why, I wonder, do we Americans question the sincerity of the Koreans' behavior?  What do we know about the relationship between sorrow and patriotism in a Confucian culture?  And what do we know about mourning or ritual?

It may well be that having conventions for expressing sorrow during the period of mourning serves both to allow expression of "real" sorrow and to evoke sorrow where it might otherwise be lacking.  It may well be that ritual is not the antithesis of real, genuine emotion, but rather its channel and its stimulus. 

Here are photos of the funeral processions for Vaclav Havel and John F. Kennedy.  Perhaps these displays were less subdued, but they are also instances of sorrow and patriotism mixed together in ritual.

The JFK image is precisely right for my recollection of the event for which my elementary school was canceled.  Like many other Americans, I watched the funeral on television.  I heard the symbolism of the riderless horse explained.  I saw that photo of little "John-John," in his serious coat, saluting his father.  I collected newspaper stories in a scrapbook.  Was my emotion real?  Did I catch it from the media and the adults around me?  Some of each seems the most genuine, true response.

Remaking ourselves with small electronic devises and hyperconnectivity

Sherry Turkle (MIT) has been studying and writing about technology for decades.  Her most recent book: Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other. Today I heard her talking about I-phones and I-pads.  The interview sent me to my laptop and internet connection to look up more about her comments on these devises and the changes they are stimulating in our ways of being.  I was struck by the possibility that these are remaking our sense of ourselves in ways that we have not considered as we have focused on the early 20th century.  Turkle, in her most recent work, has begun to explore the losses as well as the possibilities of technology.  These include

1) the loss of solitude, a state of being which depends upon being alone, not connected, not available.

2) the possibility that those small devises in one's hand, manipulated by touch are experienced as an extension of self, a sort of "intimate machine. "

3) the possibility that we avoid real, emotional connection with people when we interact with them only through electronically mediated channels.

All this leaves me wondering about the senses and their role in human life.  And. . . as Christians celebrate the festival of the incarnation, I can not help but reflect that God-with-us was/is not virtual or simulated, but fully human, tangible, sensory, present. 

Then, we must ask ourselves: into what do we want to remake ourselves and our society?  This is not merely a question about political commitments; it is also a question about technology and machines.  The Model-T (and other automobiles made on moving assembly-lines) led to our assumptions about individual transportation, to construction of highways, to long commutes to work from suburbs, and to our dependance upon oil.  (Yes, led to conceals a much longer, more complex chain of causation.) Turkle is far from a Luddite.  She is not anti-technology.  Nonetheless, listening to her I was reminded that Amish provide a model of thoughtfulness about technology that might serve us well even if we are more willing to adopt new machines than they.

Gentle reflection for the season

So much busy activity and noise in this season can drown out its quiet, humble anticipation of joy.  "Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled": these are acts of faithfulness to the truth that this is the world God made, loves, and came to dwell in with us.  And the angels sing "Peace on earth, good will."

 

December

by Gary Johnson

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
           Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
           And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.

old Mohn Hall

some years after construction

maybe from soon after construction in early 1910s

As I'm reading AmCon 201 papers, "A Day in the Life of an Ole," I'm frequently taken inside various rooms of old Mohn Hall, the women's residence that stood on the site now occupied by the renovated and renamed Tomson Hall.  In order to stimulate my imagination I looked up some photos of the woman's residence that was torn down to make room for the then new science center (dedicated in 1968), now replaced by Regents Hall.

Here's a charming account (non-fictional) from the College Archives of move-in day in 1912:

In the annals of St. Olaf, February 12th is historic not only because of the annual recognition of Lincoln's birthday, but because on that day in 1912 some over a hundred women students living in homes on St. Olaf Avenue, Forest Avenue, and all streets between trekked up the Hill with suitcases and boxes, while Lewis Larson hauled their trunks to their new home.

Notice the size of those trees then in comparison to now.

Left Behind, Left Over, Left to do

Here's the AmCon connection:  102 discussion of the Second Great Awakening got us to invite Amy Frykholm to talk to us about her book Rapture Culture as we were thinking about American Democratic Vistas.  Always lurking in the back ground, as we consider dreams for America (in contrast to just my dream for myself in America), are utopian experiments from Plymouth Plantation to Pullman, Illinois to Woodstock Nation and the Great Society.  So. . . a couple of recent opportunities to notice the apocalyptic-inspired reflections on American life.

Friday evening my book group discussed Tom Perrotta's novel The Leftovers. [NYT review] When the book first came out I heard him interviewed and got a sense that while this story is set in post-rapture America it is only vaguely a response to the Left Behind series.  All the action of the book takes place after a rapture-like event.  Rapture-like because those who disappear are not only the Christian faithful of a certain sort, nor do all of those sort of Christians disappear.  This leads to a real question about whether what happened was the rapture so anticipated by that sort of Christian.  However, the book is less about that question and more an exploration of how the left-overs respond to the expected, unexplained loss.

Then on Saturday night I heard my colleague David Booth preview the songs for Promises, to be recorded next month.  Among them was "After the Rapture."  It responded to the rapture that did not happen in May 2011 by positing that the event had taken place and considering the work left to be done once the saints are gone.  (For the purpose of this song I will leave aside a response to this limited use of the term saint.)  One haunting, repeated line called on those remaining to "make this fallen world a paradise."  Among my several responses: wondering why we wouldn't just get to that work now.  Knowing David I suspect that was among the points he was making.  It's a hopeful American point, one with some antecedents in a different sort of Christianity.

by Jyoti Sahi

While I'm leery always about the illusion that either paradise, or an American utopia, or the rule of God can be achieved by human effort, I was moved by this song to think that even if the effort were wasted, it would be worth trying a little harder to do what is left to do toward a more just world.   And then, this morning's gospel lesson for the fourth Sunday in Advent: the magnificent, Mary's song about how God's rule turns the world up-side-down.

p.s.  If you are interested in the sort of leftovers in your 'frig, you might enjoy Stump the Cook.

America as process

Each of the two essays we read on the last day offered jazz as a key to understanding the central characteristics of American culture and/or character.  One, John A. Kouwenhoven's, "What's 'American' About America," was written in the 1950s.  The other, L. W. Levine's "Jazz and American Culture," in the late 1980s.  Both authors boldly attempt to articulate broadly true assertions without falling into essentialist fallacies. 

Why jazz?  In part, of course, because jazz has its origins within the United States.  In the most obvious, and easily demonstrated, sense it is an American genre of music though its roots extend to Africa and it has traveled around the globe.  However, these scholars' claim is more.  Before being invented in the USA, it is the sort of music that jazz is that expresses central features of American culture and character, both of the collective culture and of individual character.  Levine pays more attention to the music itself and to the historical debate about whether a 'low-brow,' popular form could be classified as culture at all.

Kouwenhoven takes another approach, beginning with a list of a dozen items that are more American than others including the grid iron street plan and the sky scrapper.  He considers how the two work together--horizontally and vertically--to create the New York skyline.  They reinforce their commonality: simple infinitely repeatable units.

Mary and I made our own list, topped by the drive-in restaurant.  (We did not think of the drive-in movie, but it could also be included.)  Our list also included garage sales, the interstate highway system, and plastic.  We noted the tension in these between stasis and impermanence, or maybe between the ephemeral and the enduring, that also suggests physical, social, and other sorts of motion.  Is that like jazz?  Is process valued here over product?  We'd need to consider each item on our list and the set of them together more carefully before I'd be willing to defend a claim about precisely what these items tell us about American culture and character.

Norwegian character

ice sculpture of Amundson

Today is the 100th anniversary of the day Roald Amundson and his team of Norwegian explorers arrived at the South Pole.  [HERE a link to the BBC coverage of a ceremony of commemoration.  That is where the photo is from.]  Of course, we in AmCon can not take notice of this event without also thinking of the "Father" in Ragtime and his adventure with an expedition to the North Pole.  I wonder if the Manitou Messenger covered the accomplishment?

The BBC also reports that the Norwegian Prime Minister noted that the explorers had the same virtues "that the young nation wanted to be recognized by: courage, determination and endurance."  Maybe Rolvaag would endorse this.  Maybe Boe would.  I can't say for sure, but I do know that they each admired the virtues they saw as characteristic of Norwegians and their culture.  These seem to be rather stoic virtues, perhaps well suited to polar expeditions and long, dark winters.

A Holiday Flash Mob at the U of MN

HERE

Often, maybe too often, conversations about this holiday season are consumed by complaint about consumerism or overwhelmed by honest acknowledgement of the stress.  Perhaps the latter is amplified on a college campus, especially one where the end of the term coincides with Christmas Festival.  So, this staged flash mob at the U of MN Carlson School of Management is a welcome, joyous interlude.  Since we've recently read Bill Holm, I mention also his tiny essay, "Chocolate Chip Cookies for Your Enemies."  Is it still available?  The little book offers a focused reminder of the quiet genius of the season.  Can I say that it calls us to fail at the hype and to embrace the core message of reconciliation that does not depend upon preserving and performing the habits of our ancestors or even our own favorite things, but only asks us to be open to the powerful force of live-giving love.  Yes, a gift economy rather than an economy built upon buying gifts.

Enjoy! the recording.  Let the music and the joy spread.

a salutary reminder

of an important piece of wisdom for much in life--parenting, teaching, being a friend--


this from Maria Scholz Boda's "Six Questions in Search of Some Answers," a lecture in the series, "Some Things We Learned in the Paracollege."

"...too much guidance can become counterproductive."

hedgerows: where the land is not cultivated 

and small animals and good ideas might flourish

How much is too much?  When is it too much?

Is this also true of other good things such as planning and assessment (not the sort MSB writes about here)?

How do we know when we've crossed the line? Is it when we, and those we learn with, cease to be productive?  Or is it when we begin to take productivity, rather than being and becoming, as our goal?

Boe, Jefferson, Daly, Luther: imperfection, failure

Lars W. Boe, St. Olaf College President 1918-42

Yesterday we looked at Lars W. Boe's 1934 commencement address delivered at Augsburg College.  There is so much to admire about the man, including his support of woman's suffrage and his efforts to raise the academic standards of the college.  But, in this talk and elsewhere we find that he was not too astute about the dangers of fascism in Italy and Germany in the early 1930s.  He seems to sympathize with the notion that in times of crisis rule by the law can be exchanged for rule by a person.  Just what he knew about what was going on in Germany and Italy, we don't know.  He had traveled there not long before and he had professional contacts through his involvement in international, cooperative Lutheran circles.   If he didn't notice or didn't understand what was happening or endorsed what we prefer that he had not, he was not alone and yet, with hindsight, we are inclined to judge his errors in judgment.  Once again, as in the case of Thomas Jefferson and slavery (as well as his attitudes about Native Americans), and feminist theologian Mary Daly and racism, and reformer Martin Luther and the Jews, we are confronted with the imperfection of those we admire, with their failure to see everything the way we d0.

This takes me back to Bill Holm, specifically to his plea that all of us look honestly as our own mistakes and take responsibility for them.  I wonder if one reason we are disturbed by the flaws and failures of those we admire is that those imperfections remind us of our own?  Can facing these collectively help us deal honestly and kindly both with the past and with ourselves?  This is not a plea for disregarding the failure, but for repair.  Holm wants the honest recognition of failures--both to live up to our ideals that are admirable and to false standards of success which are not--to be harnessed to responsibility.

While the dead can not change what they did or did not do, we can.  Thus we build upon the foundations laid by others as well as learning from them to avoid their mistakes.

Being named: what baby names might tell us

This from NPR's Scott Simon:

Parents seem to appreciate that naming your child is not voting for American Idol, but a lifetime choice. They choose names to last, which may be why biblical names, including Sarah, Hannah, Gabriel, Joshua and Elijah are among the most popular.
. . . .
A lot more 2011 baby names seem to have a stamp of ethnicity — but not necessarily their own ethnicity. I wonder how many American girls named Sophia are from Greek or Italian families, how many Isabellas are Spanish or Italian, or how many Aidens, Ryans and Conners are even a scintilla Irish.

Family names are still passed between generations, but a lot of Americans pointedly give names to their children that aren't tied to their past or taken from their family. They mix, invent and come up with names that ring with new hopes and dreams. That's why lists like this change and are worth reading. They remind us that Americans name their children for the people they hope they'll be.

When I heard this on Saturday morning I could not help but think of our current conversation about ethnicity and our earlier conversations about whether ethnic group membership is voluntary.  Simon's comments suggest that at least some aspects of it are indeed voluntary: names, for one.  And, with more constraints, language.

His remarks also highlight an important feature of all dynamics related to identity: to what extent is identity tied to the past and to what degree is it directed toward the future.  I assume that there is always some of each, even if the past orientation is only a desire to escape it.

Simon mentioned that top names from 1955.  For girls, it was Mary.  Now that name is down around 150.   In contrast to colonial New England, biblical names in general are pretty thin at the top of the list.  That is as interesting as the shifts in names regarded as ethnically identified.

So what kind of ethnic statement is this?

Re-posted from the St. Olaf Web.  Article by one of my students; photo by my son!

A new take on Norwegian sweaters

By Alexandra Wertz '12
December 1, 2011

Ian Rollwitz '12 sells Norwegian-sweater T-shirts in Buntrock Commons. The shirts have been a hit, with the first 300 nearly selling out in just two days. Photo by Thomas Dunning '15.

At most college campuses, thick-knit, multicolored Norwegian sweaters aren't exactly in style. But at St. Olaf, especially during the week of the annual Christmas Festival, they're all the rage.
There's just one problem: These stitched sensations typically cost hundreds of dollars, an amount rarely found in the wallet of college students.

So this year a group of entrepreneurial St. Olaf students came up with a way to make these hot commodities accessible to all Oles. They put the design of a Norwegian sweater on a T-shirt and started selling them for $10. The shirts were a hit, with the first 300 nearly selling out in just two days. The group is now taking orders for the T-shirts, and plans to sell them to Christmas Festival visitors as well.

The Norwegian-sweater T-shirt was the brainchild of Isaac Prichard '12. In order to help bring his idea to life, Prichard enlisted the help of Vance Ryan '12, Aaron Matuseski '12, Michael Erickson '13, and Lynne Dearborn '13. Those friends of his are in a marketing class that challenged them to come up with a product idea, market it, and ultimately sell it for the benefit of a nonprofit organization.

The group called in Jonathan Halquist '12 to design the shirts, and he successfully translated the knit pattern of a sweater to an inked T-shirt design. "It is both a great tribute to the Norwegian tradition of St. Olaf while also being a comfortable and casual alternative to the more traditional Norwegian sweater," Ryan says.

The group is donating the proceeds from their T-shirt sales to Kiva, a nonprofit microfinance organization that aims to alleviate poverty across the world through microloans. Ryan says the nonprofit's mission seems to align well with St. Olaf's focus on providing its students with a global perspective. "The ability to help people in some of the most remote parts of the world create opportunities for themselves and their families is very important us," Ryan says.

The group's goal is to raise $1,000 for Kiva, and so far they've raised $650. "By far the most fun part of the project has been seeing this idea come to life," Ryan says. "It has also been so rewarding to see the reaction of students. None of us thought this would be as successful as it has been, and we owe a huge thanks to all of the students who have supported us and Kiva."
For more information about the shirts or to place an order, email Vance Ryan at ryan@stolaf.edu.

Just in time for Christmas Fest . . .

MPR sent a reporter to St. Olaf to scope out the larger context.  Here are his blog posts: LINK  This is also just in time for our consideration of St. Olaf in 201.  The reporter hits most of our current talking points: the community of trust, the food, the dorm life, the music, the Norwegian stuff in the bookstore, the chapel.  Not much about the education, I notice.  And we'd want to think about how the parts go together.  What institutional practices contribute to the community of trust?  Not every residential school has that.  Does singing together build that sort of capital and does that leak out to the non-singers through shared living space?  Isn't that account just a tiny bit too simple?  Certainly we are decades past a time when one could argue that the trust was the side-effect of thick lines of family relationships, but there might be some residual effect, but that assumes that people who are related to each other naturally trust each other.

So my point?  Just this, the description may be accurate as far as it goes, but the posts lack much in the way of analysis.  (To be fair, they also don't promise any analysis.)  That is what we need to do ourselves.  And as we do it we might pay attention to the social effects of so many students in musical ensembles and the spill over effect, especially since we're had other occasions this semester to think about resonances between a particular sort of music and some aspect of American life.