after fall break.....

We enter fall break with some expectation that there will be catching up.  Here's my confession, I came back more behind than I was before.  My office looks more and more like this.  even if the books, and piles of papers, are not moving, not spinning like those plates we contemplated last fall, I'm feeling something like a person with too many plates spinning.

"domestic" spaces and politics

Occupy Wall Street, or Boston, or Minneapolis:  All of these encampments are examples of protesters taking up residence in a public space in order to express their political views.  While the particular point of protest is specific to now, the strategy is not.

Last spring we read about Egyptians living in a central square within view of the world famous Egyptian Museum, the Nile Hilton, and the Nile River itself. For years British women occupied Greenham Commons, a peace camp near a nuclear facility.  Perhaps a closer parallel can be drawn to the "Hoovervilles" where out-of-work Ameriacns lived during the Great Depression.  The link leads you to a small PBS article about these in New York City, including the largest one in Central Park.

These examples of appropriating public space by turning it into ones' own private, "domestic" living space in order to make a public statement interest me because of our ongoing discussion of the boundaries between public and private space; because the desire for (and expectation that one will have) a house and home secure from invasion is a central characteristic of the middle class about whom we are reading in the Gilbert book; and because Riis's photos show quite another reality in an effort to sway public opinion.

Democracy in Boston

Last year we spent the fall preoccupied with the TeaParty, both the historical event in colonial Boston and the contemporary political movement.  Then in the spring, as we turned our attention to  democracy and the 19th century we were presented with outbreaks of popular protests in Madison, WI and across North Africa.  Now, as we consider the re-making of America, urbanization, and the like, the Occupy Wall Street protest is spreading across the nation and its Boston expression presents an opportunity to think about democracy, social movements, and re-making of America in today's cities.

This NPR (WBUR) story about the Boston Occupation (LINK TO STORY) was playing as I drove to work.  It describes the ground-level organization of a "village" within the city and toward a re-imagining of democracy as something closer to ancient Athens than to the modern voting booth.  Maybe this encampment is a sort of "city on a hill" in a park, an effort to demonstrate a Utopian vision in which tweets bring in a blizzard of dry socks and news of each evening's general assembly is carried by word-of-mouth.  One of the interviewees, or perhaps the commentator, observed that this sort of democracy is slow and time-consuming.  Lots of meetings and conversations are needed before concrete goals emerge with consolidated support.  Nonetheless, there is something hopeful and encouraging about this aspect of the movement, a belief in "government by, for, and of the people."

Link to a long blog post about democracy in the Boston encampment.

Ragtime: the musical @ ParkSquare in February

Our own Gary Gissleman is directing the musical in St. Paul.
Shall we go?
It is NOT the script used in the film.

(Ultimate) Team = Social Capital?

Steph's AmCon Commonplace Blog: Team = Social Capital?: I played in an ultimate frisbee tournament this weekend; as usual, it was super fun and made me super tired! But, at the end of the day, th...

I had not seen Steph's post before I wrote mine.  Looks like we were thinking along compatible lines.