The View from My Window

(1.2.3.4.5.6.)

Twitter

Green is Ryan Lochte's favorite color, too! #olympics

Found Fonts

Things to do when I have a life again:

--exercise
--catch up with friends, in person and on the phone
--go thrifting
--sleep all night
--buy actual clothes that suit my age (my summer shoe, including for teaching, is a black patent leather flip flop that is about as hideous as it sounds)
--volunteer
--take a photography class
--travel to see all my long-lost friends

A Random Assortment

(More flowers--those and lemon/ginger cookie ice cream and hand-written notes: I really lucked out on the roommate front this summer.)

~ Pictures of an abandoned subway station in New York with glass skylights. If (any) metro stops looked like this, I wouldn't complain as much. Although, it's still really just too hot in the summer for metroing.

~ This is not a joke. This (left) is how Philly announced SEPTA's award on its website. Not that I really blame them: it feels a lot like a joke (Philly's buses come just at whatever point they would like--there is absolutely no correspondence to any sort of schedule). Although philly.com also feels like a joke--I still read the website even though I've moved away just because how bad it is never fails to shock me. It's about 50% news and 50% tabloid.



~ The Olympics. I guess I've never watched the opening ceremonies before. The Fug Girls nailed it (as always) on twitter:

"OH MATT LAUER WE KNOW THE QUEEN DIDN'T REALLY JUMP OUT OF THE PLANE. But she looks fab"

(Actually, I was slightly confused as to whether or not it was her.)

"Oh, YES, QE2 looks SO bored, even though she got to skip the first bit. Must've been watching in disbelief on her iPad"

 (She can't have been feeling well: she looked way too grumpy the whole time.)

"The Austrian flagbearer is cute. I'm just saying"

"The Olympics: Where we learn about hot people who live in other countries."

"Boys in blue and girls in pink? REALLY, GERMANY? REALLY?!?!"

(Etc.)

It's easier to work with flowers on the table (even if they're your roommate's flowers).

Teaching

Teaching Tocqueville this week was great fun (who am I kidding--it's always great fun): I have a student whose family lives in an old-fashioned township in New Jersey (I didn't even know they had functioning townships there) and could explain the benefits of participating in a township first hand. Then there is a student from South Africa whose family was originally from Kenya. He explained that he was familiar with certain aspects of the aristocratic age, such as the property inheritance going to the first son--he is his family's first son and so stands to inherit all of their lands. And then there is a student who has been living in Hong Kong for the last several years. He could testify to China's problem of ignoring neighbors who are in trouble (something that Tocqueville would say associations help prevent in America).

Stained Glass

I love stained glass windows. While some in the National Cathedral are a little too neon for me, this moon rock window is interesting. I like the colors and the shapes.

I don't quite know what I think about sticking a moon rock in a stained glass window in a cathedral, though. Perhaps slightly nationalistic? Like, "Don't forget, we're America, darnit, and we won that moon race."


Other stained glass: St. Augustine, St. Peter's, Chagalls in Zurich, Seattle, Chicago Chagalls, Spisska Kapitula, Montreal.

Quote

Me: "I'm nocturnal like a possum."
Myrrh: "Pick a more attractive nocturnal animal."
Me: "I think only ugly ones are awake at night."
[We wikipedia nocturnal animals.]
Myrrh: "How about a paradoxical frog? Or a slow loris?"
Me: "Now I'm looking at videos of slow lorises being tickled, so thanks."
[They don't giggle, so it's actually slightly disappointing. Honestly, I would say it's closer to scratching than to tickling.]

Online Education

In the wake of the recent UVA scandal, a UVA English professor, Mark Edmundson, considers whether or not online education can be "education of the very best sort." He argues that teaching ought to be responsive to the particular students in front of you, in a way that online education can never be:

Teaching, even when you have a group of a hundred students on hand, is a matter of dialogue.
...
Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition. There is the basic melody that you work with. It is defined by the syllabus. But there is also a considerable measure of improvisation against that disciplining background.  

In addition, classes allow for intellectual community--discussions about the classes outside of the classroom with others who are present.

What's wrong with online education?

Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. ... This is particularly true of online courses for which the lectures are already filmed and in the can. It doesn’t matter who is sitting out there on the Internet watching; the course is what it is. 

 ...

A truly memorable college class, even a large one, is a collaboration between teacher and students. It’s a one-time-only event. Learning at its best is a collective enterprise, something we’ve known since Socrates. You can get knowledge from an Internet course if you’re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning. ... Internet learning promises to make intellectual life more sterile and abstract than it already is — and also, for teachers and for students alike, far more lonely. 

Gosh, there's a lot to say here from the perspective of Tocqueville on associations--the classroom provides a physical community in which we are drawn out of our isolation and can connect with other people who share our interest or goals. But what I want to focus on is a small point that Edmundson makes and which I think is the crux of the matter: "In fact there was nothing you could get from that course that you couldn’t get from a good book on the subject."

Everyone totes online education as a good way to widely disseminate knowledge. But I don't understand how it's different from a good book. A good book will give you a lot of knowledge. A video lecture just presents it to you in a more engaging fashion. You could even read a bunch of textbooks or readers. Readers typically have introductions that orient you to the readings. What is the point, then, of a teacher? I wonder, though, if the main point of online education is in fact the dissemination of knowledge--perhaps it's just the certification. Which brings us back around to the problem that college itself often isn't about gaining knowledge; it's often about buying a certification.

A class taught by a professor is sort of like a book--it includes a professor's reflections on a particular topic. Those reflections are evident not only in the choice of readings, but also in the way that the professor interprets the readings. However, there's a lot more going on in a class, otherwise we could all just read Aristotle or Plato or Rawls and be done with it. One of the primary things that a class teaches you to do (at least in political theory) is to read Aristotle or Plato or Rawls, understand it, and respond to it. 

When I teach political theory, my goal is not only to expose the students to a wide range of writings in the subject of hand, it is also to teach them how to read, how to construct an argument, how to write, and how to discuss. I work on these skills in a variety of ways--including through asking them to read complicated arguments and then to explain those arguments to me. When they have misunderstood or understood those arguments incompletely, then I help fill in the pieces. Part of teaching them to construct an argument is teaching them to dissect and analyze the arguments of the thinkers that we read. In class, I talk about how to construct an argument and how to write a paper. I sit down with them when they're making their outlines and talk about the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments, as well as about how to organize a paper. After reading their whole paper, I offer feedback on their papers, and then often sit down with them to discuss this feedback in person. I encourage them to make arguments orally in class throughout the semester, and at the end of the semester in an oral exam. These skills, as Edmundson points out, are skills that require frequent interactions between the teacher and the student. It requires the student to do work and the teacher to give feedback. It requires the student to first offer his or her interpretation of the reading, before the teacher steps in to aid them in that process. Watching a video will not provide students with these skills, although it may tell them something about political thought. Maybe even something more brilliant than what I can teach them, although I doubt it. 

Joe Paterno's Statue

Penn State President Rodney Erickson on removing the statue of Joe Paterno from in front of Beaver Stadium (the Paterno Library will keep its name):

"For that reason, I have decided that it is in the best interest of our university and public safety to remove the statue and store it in a secure location. I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse."

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to the calls to remove the statue:

It is indeed hard for us to reconcile the commission of evil with the commission of good. We like to think that evil is only perpetuated by those who are obvious, the better to relieve ourselves of the burdens of constant evaluation and reflection. It's similar to our conversation around race here. How does one accept that American democracy depended on American slavery? How do you accept that your brilliant spiritual father, Thomas Jefferson, committed the sin of slavery, knew it, and continued nonetheless?

 And again (here too):

The point I'm driving at is that in a free society, I am skeptical of the notion that sins can simply be pinned solely at the top.

Clearly, something this serious needs to cause us to reevaluate Joe Paterno's legacy, even given the deep attachment that many have to him. Not only is his failure to sufficiently deal with the 2001 rape at stake, but so is his later failure to acknowledge and express remorse for what he'd done in the grand jury questioning. I'm not going to say anything about his motivation: it may have been to protect his friend and his program; it may have been that he honestly thought that he was dealing with the situation in the most appropriate way. The motivation isn't the main thing.

Coates worries that pulling down the statue allows for a too-easy forgetting of what happened, which was not only the fault of Joe Paterno, but of all of Penn State--it's a scapegoating that allows the rest of the community to feel that the situation is resolved. I worry, similarly, that pulling down the statue is a quick fix (this is not to say an inappropriate response): The media-feeding mass seems to long for some sacrifice to be offered up to it--once it's had that sacrifice, it quickly forgets and moves on to something else that can outrage it. And there's no end of evil to be outraged by. What we need is a more sustained reflection on evil, on its causes and the institutional supports that perpetuate it.

And we need to realize the truth that good and evil are not always as neatly separated as we might wish. Coates points out Jefferson's complicity in slavery (and, what he doesn't even mention, Jefferson likely slept with at least one of his slaves--a misuse of power, to massively euphemise). There are many examples of people who have had an admirably positive effect in one area of their life and have had serious and significant faults in others.

I'm not saying that the statue should remain. I'm saying that what should be done and people's response should be much more thoughtful and lasting. And interest in this situation, and in the broader fact of sexual abuse, shouldn't flare today only to move on tomorrow.

Self Portrait in Thumbtacks

Or Killing Time in My Carrel.

The Fire of Personal Enthusiasm

"What to Read Next":

The fire of personal enthusiasm is what really makes for the best advice on what to read next, a quality rarely found in an ordinary book review. That burst of incandescent awareness and pleasure that only a good book can give us often becomes an uncontrollable desire to grab complete strangers by the lapels and demand that they, too, read this book, right now, on the double. Drop everything. Do it.

The best guides, then, aside from one’s intimates, whose tastes and habits are known and loved, are the authors whom one admires. So I am especially grateful to George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw, and Henry Fielding, all favorites of mine whose recommendations in essays and criticism and occasional lists saved a lot of room on my dance card.

I think that this is exactly right. I guess that the only thing that I have to add is that you have to evaluate where the fire of personal enthusiasm is coming from--for instance, Papa Leopard, whose favorite genre is real life adventure books, perhaps particularly military adventure books. Those aren't my favorite kind of books, despite his overflowing fire of personal enthusiasm. Although I have read Endurance, because how can you be one of his children if you haven't done that?

How to figure out what to read, especially when you're just beginning to read, is a problem. I started with just shelves and shelves of Christian romance novels, because that's what my aunts read. Well, that was after I finished the teen section of the library. The teen section was uniformly awful. I wish someone had just told me to skip it and to go straight for the adult section (not the adult section in the romance sense, but in the not-teen-novel sense). Gosh, so many coming-of-age novels set in revolutionary America. Bleh. (This is not to say that all Young Adult literature is bad--I love Elizabeth George Speare and The Giver and Chaim Potok, which I'm pretty sure Ilana set me onto. But the stuff at the James V. Brown was pretty bad.)

Stearns has always been more clever than me. She found a top-100 novels list somewhere and started reading her way through it. I'm not sure how she knew that was a good idea, but it was a great one. Of course, there was, I'm sure, just some competitive motivation for it, because she's always ask me to check off how many of them I'd read and then compare our numbers.

I was introduced by many of my favorite authors now by friends--Robinson introduced me to Marilynne Robinson; Sayers introduced me to Jhumpa Lahiri; Hopkins introduced me to Muriel Spark and Laurie Colwin; Salinger introduced me to Ishiguro by giving me Remains of the Day for a birthday present one year. And the authors I read introduced me to other authors: Laurie Colwin recommended Barbara Pym; T.S. Eliot recommended St. John of the Cross; Graham Green recommended Shusaku Endo.

My roommate at the moment is lately out of college. She's reading lots of books that I love from my library--Robinson, Colwin, Paton, even Never Let Me Go, which I definitely didn't recommend, but do own. She's borrowing my books like nobody's business. And it's the most incredibly gratifying thing to share the books I love.

So dear readers, how do you know what to read next? How did you know what to read in the first place?

A Random Assortment

~ I love this designer's jewelry (above). And I want some right away.

~ Oh my goodness! I unfortunately saw this groupon deal too late: $24 for one love letter a month for a year. This combines two things that I really love: love letters and good deals. The description:

For one year, each new month will bring with it a hand-typed love letter, semi-personalized to profess undying affection for everything you are, were, and will be. Swoon as you learn more about your admirer as he or she (you choose the gender) grows less guarded and lets you into their world. One letter will even contain a lock of hair*. At the end of each month, you may begin to worry that your love has grown distant and cold, like a dying star, only to sigh with relief as a new letter arrives and the love is reaffirmed. As you cradle the correspondence against your bosom, you may find that food tastes better, birdsong rings sweet and true all around you, and the world becomes a less dismal cesspool. At the end of 12 months, the romance will end in beautiful melancholy, like the sinking of a great schooner or the last line of a poem about a sick horse. You will be saddened, yes. But your life will be all the richer for the experience.
*Hair may not be human.

I don't quite understand--are you supposed to write back each month? Also, I'm dying to know what sort of hair they send. (via Francisco)

~ Religious experience on the moon. This article talks about translating religious practices made for earth into space--"Muslim astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor had to figure out how, exactly, one faces Mecca during prayers when you are moving at about 17,000 miles per hour and its location relative to you is changing minute to minute, sometimes as much as 180 degrees in the course of one prayer." Buzz Aldrin brought a little bit of communion up to the moon and took it when he was on the moon. Religion and the moon is fascinating and makes me think of Hannah Arendt--I think our urge to take religion with us to the moon tells us something about what sort of beings we are (hint: not just conditioned ones).


~ Speaking of space, I didn't get to see the Northern Lights this time around (stupid clouds), but these pictures and video from people who did gave me at least a little Northern Lights fix. 

Never Let Me Go

Carey Mulligan (who plays the narrator, Kathy) and Keira Knightley (who plays her frenemy, Ruth) star in Never Let Me Go, the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel. This was far and away my least favorite of Ishiguro's novels and I didn't much like the movie, either. The main problem is this: Never Let Me Go is a great title, and it sounds like it's going to be a wildly romantic story. In reality, it traces the lives and loves of clones who are raised to donate their organs to humans. 

I think I started crying a couple of minutes in and basically sobbed through the rest of the movie. It's just such a horrible, de-humanizing topic. I mean, that's the point. But it's unimaginably awful--Ishiguro brings you in, much like the clones were brought in--gradually--always knowing and not knowing what the movie is about. Because you see what is human about the clones--their loves and jealousy and artistic expression--you can't imagine that they are really clones and that there's a society that would actually be okay with gradually killing them, with using them as means, rather than loving them as ends. 

The one argument I have with the film adaptation is small, but I think significant: In the film, the title, Never Let Me Go, refers to a romantic relationship between two of the characters, Kathy and Tommy; In the book, Never Let Me Go is much more complicated. Sorry to quote myself, but here it is:

The clones cannot have children. One of Kath's most treasured possessions of her childhood is a tape with a song on it called, "Never Let Me Go." The song is clearly addressed to a man, but Kath always believes it to refer to an infant: "Never let me go. Oh, baby, baby. Never let me go." Kath says, "I imagined it was about this woman who'd been told she couldn't have babies. But then she'd had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she's going baby, baby, never let me go." One of the guardians sees her as she dances to the music, holding a pillow, imagining that she's holding a baby. This guardian has a different interpretation of the situation: "I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go." This is Ishiguro at his finest--tracing the movement from an old society to a new society; in this boundary and conflict between the two, he finds his themes, whether the setting is in England, Japan or the future.

The film version says nothing about the clones' inability to conceive. This is what separates clones from humans and something that is really heartbreaking--Kathy has the desire to have children, but not the capability to do so. Instead, the film focuses only on the things that the clones have in common with humans--their ability to create artistically and their ability to fall in love. At the end of the film, Cary Mulligan has a monologue in which she says that the clones are not very different from humans, they just have a little less time on earth. This is not the way that the book ends; it ends simply with a reflection on memories and with a stoic resignation of what Kathy's role as a donor will be.

Ishiguro's real point in the novel is profound: Kathy longs to be a human--she wants to hold onto the "old kind world," which is being replaced with a new "harsh, cruel world." Having children is part of holding onto the old kind world. Having children would give Kathy a place in that world, would give her a place in the movement of generations. It would prevent her from being excluded completely from the world, which is literally what will happen to her--if she had children, she would at least remain in some way in them, even if she died. As it is, she is sterile. This sterility mirrors society's decision to take her organs and let her die.

Mondrian

There's a DC underpass that I often drive by (around 6th and Virginia, SE) with Mondrian-esque murals (there's a mediocre article about their creation here).

According to the article, some people want to get rid of them (they're in rough shape) or have something different painted, rather than repaint them. I can't understand this: I love public art, I love these Mondrian rip-offs, and there are plenty of other underpasses that could stand some sprucing up if someone has another idea for a mural.

Random Occurrences

~ When I was driving from Williamsport to DC the other day, I stopped in a little antique store in Allenwood. I was chatting with the proprietor for a little while about various topics, including local politics and the store's lovely tin ceiling (it used to be the town's bank). When he left, he said, "If I didn't have a longtime girlfriend, I would beg you to have dinner with me."

As a recent article about exploring Chicago while single recounts,

As I slid onto a stool, from which I would order a glass of Gosset Grand Blanc de Blanc, a dark-haired stranger turned to me.

“I love your dress,” he said.

Was it a come-on? Or just another friendly comment?

In Chicago, you never know.

 In Allenwood, you never know. 

~ When Francisco and I were in line the other day for the Market Lunch's breakfast "brick" (sausage, egg, cheese and potato all on a sandwich--I can't recommend it strongly enough--except that the line to get it is really, really long), the owner, Tom Galaway or some such cliche-ly Irish sounding name, was ringing us up. I ordered the cheese grits (since they were so divine at the Casa Monica and I can't get them out of my head). He asked if I'd ever had the special that they were offering--grits with green chili peppers and Parmesan. I hadn't, and it didn't sound good to me, so I gave him a look of amazement and repulsion. In the end, he convinced me to try them anyway, and I didn't like them as much as regular grits. Anyway, when we finished checking out he shook his head at Francisco as if to sympathize with the hardship of his life and said, "Good luck." Meaning with me!

~ When I was in my university's grad lounge today, two older men walked by and stopped to chat (which, incidentally, basically never happens). They said that they had gotten their Ph.D.'s there in the mid-70s. They were coming back to check the print copies of their dissertation, because one had stuck a twenty dollar bill in it after he printed it out in order to be able to tell if anyone ever looked at it. One mentioned that when he arrived for his dissertation defense, he noticed that there were glasses with sherry already poured in them, so he wasn't too nervous. Now I'm not a big sherry drinker, but I'm pretty sure that this is a tradition that needs to be revived. Also: back in their day, you got to pick two members of your committee; the other two were chosen for you by the department! Unbelievable!

Cardigan heard that my new-to-me flowered Ray Ban-ish sunglasses broke (not that I was dropping hints or anything) and sent me these gorgeous replacements! She made my week or possibly my whole month.

Eastern Market

The Southeast branch of the DC Library has a book sale most months (I think it's the second Saturday of the month, from 10-3). Some great finds this month: Muriel Spark's The Public Image and Alan Paton's short story collection, Debbie Go Home, neither of which I'd even heard of before (that's the surprising delight of browsing). Also: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (everyone raves about that, right?) and, best of all, Laurie Colwin's husband, Juris Jurjevics (two different people can't possibly have that same name, can they?),'s novel The Trudeau Vector, which combines geopolitics and environmental disaster, according to the blurb on the back of the book.

Other pictures from the neighborhood:

(This house is about to be restored, with some additions to the property. I'm curious to see how it comes out.)

Twitter

The way to get me to run outside every 10 minutes: tell me there was a space event a couple of days ago and there's a chance of seeing the Northern Lights. I will keep running outside, even if it's cloudy.

Also, my new goal: to see the Northern Lights from an airplane.

Thinking of moving to Alaska...

So, the first reading at mass today:

Amos 7:12-15

Amaziah, priest of Bethel, said to Amos,
"Off with you, visionary, flee to the land of Judah!
There earn your bread by prophesying,
but never again prophesy in Bethel;
for it is the king's sanctuary and a royal temple."
Amos answered Amaziah, "I was no prophet,
nor have I belonged to a company of prophets;
I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores.
The LORD took me from following the flock, and said to me,
Go, prophesy to my people Israel."

The problem is, the girl who was reading pronounced "Amos" (which I say, A-mis) as "Ah-moss" or something like that. And she pronounced "prophesy" as "prophecy" and "prophesying" as "prophecying."

The weird thing is someone got up after mass to give the announcements and they, too, talked about Ah-moss prophecying!

Georgetown

A Random Assortment

~ I always dreamed that we'd be able to see more, new colors in heaven. Here's the way fiction has described impossible colors.

~ "22 Fascinating and Bizarre Classes Offered This Semester"--some look like a waste of time, although #6 Fly Fishing sounds blissful to me. And I wish that I'd written #11 from Georgetown, Philosophy and The Wire. (HT: Ilana) 

~ This Northern Virginia woman founded a non-profit that purchases homes to rent to people with mental illness. What a wonderful example of local initiative to meet the needs of the community in a way that the government struggles to do. 

~ PAL, brilliant, as always: 

 "So I realize I've been pretty short on pop cultural commentary lately.  It's not that I haven't seen the new Wes Anderson movie and don't have opinions about it.  I'm just not sure yet whether it's mainly edifying and encouraging--a testimony to the America of 1965, just before everything got unhinged and screwed up--or a self-indulgent fantasy for rich and pseudo-sophisticated white people.  I'm talking about the type of people (like me) who get suckered time and again by the mixture of kindness and suffering that IS Bill Murray's face.  I just saw Lost in Translation again, and it sort of hit me that there's very little to that admittedly very touching and artsy movie beyond Bill's face.  The movie's big joke:  What's lost in translation is Bill's face.  The Japanese don't get it.  It does nothing for them."

Ain't that the truth! I love Bill Murray's face. 

The whole piece, about The Andy Griffith Show, is more evidence for what I've long suspected: PAL out front-porches the front porchers.

Hats

On the way home from Williamsport, in Allenwood to be precise, I passed this man sitting on his front porch. His front porch was smack up against the road. He's makes these hats and gives them away for a donation for the yarn. He showed me a CD that someone gave him on her travels (below). He said that she sat beside him on the swing and played the guitar for him and sang. Someone from Germany stopped and took the picture in his left hand (below) and sent it back to him with an inscription. It is this hat making that connects him to the world in his old age--he has no internet, so this is how he meets people and interacts with them.

We're terrible at finding useful things for people to do as they age--we tend to have a full-time-career-or-nothing approach to work. My grandfather worked at a funeral home for the past 50 years, until he was 87. During the last decade or so, he mostly just opened doors and greeted people at the viewings and funerals. How many employers would have gotten rid of him years before and hired someone younger to open the doors? And yet, he loved that job, and he loved his co-workers. Chatting with people at funerals kept him connected to the community. We need to look for ways to keep people integrated in the world in productive ways as they age.

Downtown Williamsport

What is now the Park Home used to be the hotel beside the train station in Williamsport's glory days. At some point it was a nursing home; hence, the name. Now it's an office building. In front of the Park Home, there's a large yard. It looks out on this church:

And this is part of an enormous building just across the street. I think it's vintage Williamsport lumber boom architecture. Not much is left from when the street cars roamed wild, but this building is in all of the old pictures:

I noticed a hair shop (some wigs in the window) and a bar in this building; I don't know what's upstairs, but I think that there are at least some apartments.

I don't think that there are many, if any, small towns in America (Williamsport has about 30,000 people) with such lovely architectural remains.

Newberry

Mama Leopard grew up in a neighborhood of Williamsport called Newberry. We spent most of our childhood Sundays exploring that neighborhood, including the penny-candy store down the street from my grandparents' house, owned by a friend of the family. (Incidentally, he later said that we were the only children who literally came with pennies and other coins--the rest of the kids came with dollars.) Above is a centrally located statue commemorating those who died in World War I.

The Bank of Newberry is now an M & T.

 

This church has the oddest steeple. 

And the Newberry Post Office, where my Poppop used to work. 

Home

My Poppop's funeral was wonderful not only for sharing grief at his death with family and friends and people I'd never met before, but also for sharing with each other how much we loved him--I never really knew how many people my grandfather blessed with his kindness. At the viewing and funeral many people shared how warm and generous he was to them--people he knew from church and from boyscouts and from his various workplaces and neighbors from his street. That day was a pretty persuasive argument for the beauty and joy of being committed to your place and to the people around you. My whole life growing up, I was convinced that Poppop loved his family more than anything in the world and that he basically only loved his family (also, he sort of loved his white Lincoln Towncar), but his funeral made me realize that he loved so many other people, too.

After the funeral, we went back to my grandmother's house to visit. I love that as part of the day, we also celebrated the birthday of my newly four-year-old cousin. Poppop would have wanted that--the family continues to gather and celebrate, even in the midst of our pain.

Mama Leopard gave the four-year-old cousin a picture book. I think he only liked one picture: this picture of a piranha. The kid loves fish. He's an avid talker and he primarily talks about fishin', cabbin' (crabbin'), and huntin'. He carried the book around, open to this page. He was shocked when his father told him that piranhas can eat people. He asked at least three times afterward, "Dad, can this fish eat people?!"

Below: My four-year-old cousin puts another gift, a piggy-bank baseball cap on his two-year-old brother.

Allenwood

There's some great, albeit dilapidated, architecture in this town, stuck smack up against the road, like so many Pennsylvania towns.

A pink and purple house; I sort of love it. If it were an outfit, I would wear it.

The stenciled name is a great touch (taken from my car window).

A Random Assortment

~ From a review of a new (third) volume of Eliot's letters that covers 1926-1927 (1927, of course, being a key year in Eliot's life: the year he converted to Anglicanism and became a British citizen):

"Eliot rarely if ever confides in a correspondent about his spiritual life and even warns the priest who baptised him, William Force Stead, to keep quiet about it: 'I do not want any publicity or notoriety – for the moment, it concerns me alone, and not the public – not even those nearest me. I hate spectacular 'conversions.''" 

And from another review of the letters:

"Given Vivienne's baleful behaviour, her affair with Russell, her general impossibility, it is an unsurprising surprise that one of Eliot's letters confesses unequivocally to adultery. He is pre-empting a charge of excessive puritanism: 'I remember also minor pleasures of drunkenness and adultery…'"

 I am more surprised than unsurprised, but maybe that's just naive of me. 

~  Nick Offerman Reads Tweets from Young Female Celebrities:


(via Hopkins)

~ The former director of the Barnes, responding to the new Barnes and along the way mentioning why they moved. Sadly, I didn't make it to the old Barnes before it closed, nor have I been to the lately opened new Barnes, so I can't say a thing about the changes, but I'm intrigued by the controversy.

~ The Manolo's series on what shoes tell us about the wearer is spot on.

 
~ I want Jane Austen's ring. With the note from Eleanor Austen, "My dear Caroline. The enclosed Ring once belonged to your Aunt Jane. It was given to me by your Aunt Cassandra as soon as she knew that I was engaged to your Uncle. I bequeath it to you. God bless you!"

~ The Prime Minister of Romania, Victor Ponta, has been accused of plagarizing his dissertation on the International Criminal Court:

"[T]he ethics committee in charge gave its ruling, with its chairman saying it was plagiarised "copy-paste style", 85 pages out of a total of 307, from the work of another Romanian scholar. ... In an twist of irony, the professor who oversaw Mr Ponta's work was no other than his political mentor, Romania's former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, the first high level official to be put behind bars for corruption."

I also loved this quote from the article: 

"Interior minister Ioan Rus on Friday claimed (this and most other links in Romanian) that "ever since Plato and Aristoteles, everyone who has ever written a PhD in philosophy, in social sciences, has plagiarised."

Whatever else my dissertation may or may not be, it is emphatically not plagarized.

I consulted with my Romanian academic friend for his thoughts on this. He said it's even worse than the article lets on. He said that the heads of the academic community have said that academics shouldn't comment on this plagiarism case until an independent committee looks into it. They and politicians who are on the side of the Prime Minister have deferred to legal scholars, who are mostly unwilling to come forward with their opinion. When they critique the plagiarism, they themselves are critiqued. Two organizations which should have examined the case were recently disbanded by the government just before they could to meet to consider the Prime Minister's case. It's actually a very turbulent time for democracy and the rule of law in Romania, instigated by the revelation of this plagiarism.

~ Oh my goodness! You have to read this: This car-less mother of six has a bike to bike all of her children around in. In fact, she hasn't driven since she moved to Portland. And she moved to Portland from Williamsport, Pennsylvania! She said that 20 miles of biking a day is her and her kids' limit. You have to look at the pictures. And this story is my favorite:

"I have literally bungee-corded my 5-year-old to the back of the bike. He wouldn't get on. He was screaming and everyone was staring, so I stuck him on the seat and bungee-corded him in and just started pedaling really hard... He screamed all the way home."

 And this:

"The bike attached to the rear of the bakfiets [the kind of bike] is a key part of the motor. 'I rotate kids into pumping position to keep them fresh,' Emily tells me."

White Country Churches

 (Allenwood, PA)

 And a brick one, for good measure (Eastern Market, DC):

Beside this church a man was painting a view of the street. He said that he might have to add a girl in a white dress to his scene. That's right: I inspire painters.


 (White Country Churches.1)

Poppop

I'm home now, and Poppop's chair is empty. I joined Grandma for her nightly bowl of ice cream--there are no little bowls of ice cream in her house, I can tell you: she looked shocked at how little I'd dipped up and asked for more. We ate butter pecan, which was my Poppop's flavor left over in the freezer.

(The Love carving hanging on the wall has been there since I was born--pictures of the grandchildren as babies fill in all the gaps and spill out into the picture frames next to it. The clock above the pictures has a picture of each grandchild and a recording of their voices that marks each hour.

On Grandma's arm in this picture, you can just see a bracelet that Poppop gave to her on the first Christmas that they were dating. It was also the Christmas that he proposed, but he wanted to get her a proper Christmas gift in case their relationship didn't work out and he wanted the ring back. After their more than 60 years of marriage, this story makes us all laugh. And Grandma treasures the bracelet.)

Quote

"Why do you have to travel to those places, now that you have google earth?" --Mama Leopard

Lena Dunham

Besides New Girl, Girls was my favorite tv show of the year. I'm in awe of Lena Dunham--that she created, wrote, directed, and acted in Girls and Tiny Furniture and that she's 26.

Tiny Furniture is a lot like Girls--it explores the ennui of a recent college graduate who has also recently been through a break-up and is now trying to figure out what she's going to do with her life. Aura, Dunham's character, also feels the pressure of living up to the expectations of her mother, a photographer of tiny furniture (not too different from Dunham's own mother, who photographs dolls in dollhouses, among other things).

The film captures the complications of family life--the way that they can drive you crazy, the way that you act like an angry fool in front of them, and the way that you make up and love each other afterward. In the course of the film, Aura discovers her mother's journal and becomes aware of the many ways in which she's just like her mother, with the same struggles with men and food that her mother faced. I remember finding my mother's journals--both her journal as a child, dealing with things like her grandfather dying, and her journal from just after she married my father, which she redacted before sharing. It's a funny realization that's part of growing up: your mother wasn't always your mother, she's also a person who has had a lot of the same experiences that you've had.

Girls is Sex and the City, except not about affluent 30-somethings dealing with men and relationships, but about dirt-poor 20-somethings, trying to find jobs, figuring out what friendship is, and dealing with men and relationships. And maybe it's told from Miranda's perspective, rather than Carrie's. Or a mix of Miranda and Carrie.

Everyone calls it a comedy, but if it's a comedy, then it's much better than all the other comedies. It's much more realistic, with better developed characters who could be real people (in the way that Liz Lemon or Leslie Knope or Jess Day couldn't really be real people, as much as I love them all). I don't think the show is about the funny moments--it's about the struggles: the roommate struggles, the boy troubles, the drama at work.

Richard Diebenkorn

Hopkins and I went to see Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series at the Corcoran. The Ocean Park series is inspired by Diebenkorn's Southern California neighborhood, both from ariel views and from looking out his window (how localist!).

I don't know too much about modern art, but I love it, probably mostly to be contrarian. I almost inevitably find modern art at least intriguing, if not incredibly beautiful.

Diebenkorn's painting was unlike anything I've ever seen. You might think it's big blocks of color like Rothko, but the focus of Diebenkorn's work is on the texture in the color, and the layers of colors. The paintings are a palimpsest: they contain traces of colors Diembenkorn used first and lines he drew at earlier stages of the composition. The faint lines both hint at the process of the work and contribute to the finished whole.

Some of the 180 paintings that comprise the Ocean Park series are small paintings on cigar box lids--Diebenkorn painted over the brightly colored tops, letting little snatches of their design peak through. I love it.

Also: go on Saturdays! The Corcoran is free this summer on Saturdays.