Things I Heard on the Radio

"Gift yourself."

Ew.


(Compare: here and here.)

Wendell Berry at AAR

On the way home from Carrot's wedding, Francisco and I stopped in Baltimore to see some of our dear friends and Wendell Berry. It was an interview with him, which isn't my favorite format (I always just think that I could do the interview better).

Sadly, although he was speaking to the American Academy of Religion, he still didn't talk enough about religion, except to say that religion should be talking less about heaven and more about how to live while you're on earth--it's about receiving the earth as a divine gift and taking care of it, it's about having "humility in the face of the mystery of the world," it's about gratitude, and it's about loving your neighbor and faking that love when you don't feel it. He advocates particularizing love--"it has got to wear a face."

He's clearly informed by his Christian upbringing, and talks about things in Christian terms, but he always changes the meaning of those terms--original sin refers to the bad things done by our predecessors, religious faith has to do (primarily? exclusively?) with the household economy, church going happens in nature (sounds like Emily Dickinson) and sanctity has to do with the land.

I do fully agree with Berry on heaven: "I always wanted to go there if I could have some choice in my entertainment." Let's just say, some pictures I've been given of heaven are more appealing than others. One of the best parts of his talk were the poems that he read (I don't think I've heard him read his poems before). Here's one that he read that sums up his hopes for heaven (everyone was on the verge of tears as he read, including Berry):

O saints, if I am even eligible for this prayer,
though less than worthy of this dear desire,
and if your prayers have influence in Heaven,
let my place there be lower than your own.
I know how you longed, here where you lived
as exiles, for the presence of the essential
Being and Maker and Knower of all things.
But because of my unruliness, or some erring
virtue in me never rightly schooled,
some error clear and dear, my life
has not taught me your desire for flight:
dismattered, pure, and free. I long
instead for the Heaven of creatures, of seasons,
of day and night. Heaven enough for me
would be this world as I know it, but redeemed
of our abuse of it and one another. It would be
the Heaven of knowing again. There is no marrying
in Heaven, and I submit; even so, I would like
to know my wife again, both of us young again,
and I remembering always how I loved her
when she was old. I would like to know
my children again, all my family, all my dear ones,
to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully
than before, to study them lingeringly as one
studies old verses, committing them to heart
forever. I would like again to know my friends,
my old companions, men and women, horses
and dogs, in all the ages of our lives, here
in this place that I have watched over all my life
in all its moods and seasons, never enough.
I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked?
A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know
by it how far I have fallen short. I have not
paid enough attention, I have not been grateful
enough. And yet this pain would be the measure
of my love. In eternity’s once and now, pain would
place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love.

This poem made me wonder how place and particularity relate to heaven.

He also talked about politics, particularly a new farm bill that he and others are working on. This bothered my friends because here is Berry, the quintessential localist advocating big government regulation and universally applicable laws. I was just excited that he was talking about politics. However, his appeal to politics seems to be only a remediation when things go wrong--there isn't a proactive appeal to politics. At the end of the day, though, his conservatism comes through--he thinks we oughtn't despair, we oughtn't look for radical changes, we oughtn't overstate our ability to change things our selves. Rather, we need patience in an emergency.


(Wendell Berry elsewhere on this blog: his Jefferson lecture, Nick Offerman on Berry, Jayber Crow, A World Lost)

The Lowland

Best. Birthday present. Ever.

Thanks, Francisco.

I didn't like it at first--the pace of Jhumpa Lahiri's latest novel is uneven and the point of view and focus of the story changes frequently. It's actually sort of post-modern in that sense, I think: the story analyzes the growth and fragmentation of the family in a style that is both organic and fragmented.

There are two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, their wife, Guari, and daughter, Bela. The story follows the lives of the family and the splintering of the family over Subhash's lifetime. There's romance and politics (Udayan is a revolutionary in India in the 70s, suppressed by India's government). It's psychologically interesting and not at all a pretty, happy, positive book. It can't help but compare India and America, revolution and conservatism, engagement and withdrawal, family and individualism.

The relationship between the two brothers is close and transcends death; the younger is more daring than the older, more political, more innovative. The title refers to two ponds near Subhash and Udayan's childhood home that sometimes merge and sometimes separate, like the brothers themselves. The story traces this merging and this separation through their lives and death.

Here's a random quote--Lahiri writing about Subhash's visit to a New England village: "A few months later Subhash also traveled to a village; this was the word the Americans used. An old-fashioned word, designating an early settlement, a humble place. And yet the village had once contained a civilization: a church, a courthouse, a tavern, a jail." It is the growth and changes in both families and civilizations that Lahiri attends to.

(Also: Unaccustomed Earth, Interpreter of Maladies, and The Namesake)

Breaking Bad

Francisco and I just finished Breaking Bad. I watched the bulk of it back in the day, but had never watched the second half of the last season (I tend to fizzle out before the end even of tv shows I love: The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad).

I was very surprised by the very end. The whole series traces Walt's decent toward evil--initially, he wants to provide for his family in the face of his impending death. Then he gets a taste of power and excellence (excellence in a bad endeavor) and pursues it for its own sake. And it leads him all the places that you imagine drug-making and -dealing power will lead. And he's left without the family that he was wanting to care for, friendless in a cabin.

And then, at the very end, he masterminds a typically brilliant revenge on his enemies and provision for his "friends" (if you can call them that; you probably can't). And afterward, he dies in a state of peace and happiness--he recognizes that everything he did, he did for himself. He was active and alive and exerted power, even at the end. The end, more than the film, seemed a glorification of seizing the day and living passionately in light of your death.

(Previously here.)

Quote

Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?

--Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium

What I Learned in Class Today

Yolo: You Only Live Once (This came up in relation to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.)

A Random Assortment

~ Marilynne Robinson on Flannery O'Connor's Prayer Journal.

~ On the man with neurofibromatosis that Pope Francis embraced.

~ To visit: a village of painted houses in Poland (via Hopkins) (more pictures here) (it's only a couple of hours from Krakow!).

~ For my sisters, here's to hoping they come and see it (and anyone else who loves GK): Grace Kelly's wardrobe is on display near me.

The Queen of Versailles

I forgot to tell you about this Netflix documentary that I recommend. The Queen of Versailles is a tragic film about the pitiable owner of a time share corporation and his beauty-queen wife who set out to build the biggest home in America. The financial crisis intervened and the documentary-maker got a lot more than she bargained for.

With seemingly endless income, the Seigels, David and Jackie, focus on consumption in the most ostentatious of ways. They have 8 children, countless staff and pets and parties. And begin to build an American Versailles. When the financial crash reveals that their credit was massively overextended, they have to cut back. David's tone of cocky confidence switches quickly to morose introversion. Jackie becomes a bit more human and pitiable--she plastic surgeries herself to the nines in order to stave off her husband's threatened trading her in at 40 for two 20-year-olds. Jackie seems nice, but clueless--their home becomes a mess of dirty and dying pets, because there aren't enough staff to clean it and care for the living things inside. And the Seigels have to put their Versailles building project on hold; the bank eventually takes the house.

The most horrifying moment of the film conveys the complexity of Jackie's character. She says of her 8 children, "I wouldn't have had so many if I had known that I wouldn't have had help." On the one hand, it's generous of her to have lots of kids and to love animals like she does. On the other hand, she has no connection to reality at all and loves her kids and animals as possessions and luxury items that she gathers and other people care for.

Things I Heard on the Radio

"Thanksgivukkah"

Quote

The part of The Confessions that I think my students liked best (because it resonates with hitting snooze):

"The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The thoughts with which I meditated about you like the efforts of those who would like to get up but are overcome by deep sleep and sink back again. No one wants to be asleep all the time, and the sane judgement of everyone judges it better to be awake. Yet often a man defers shaking off sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber. Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived. In this kind of way I was sure it was better for me to render myself up to your love than to surrender to my own cupidity. But while the former course was pleasant to think about and had my notional assent, the latter was more pleasant and overcame me. I had no answer to make to you when you said to me 'Arise, you who are asleep, rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light' (Eph. 5:14). Though at every point you showed that what you were saying was true, yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer to give you except merely slow and sleepy words: 'At once'--'But presently'--'Just a little longer, please'."

--Augustine's Confessions, Book VIII

Housekeeping

I've been wanting to see the film of Housekeeping ever since I knew it existed. Finally, thanks to ILL, I got to watch it. To review--Housekeeping is a coming-of-age novel about the narrator, Ruth's, choice to follow her aunt, Sylvie's, transient life over the traditional way of life of her town and sister, Lucille. Here's Roger Ebert's review, which is better than anything I could ever hope to write (and oh, so, insightful insofar as it's close to my own interpretation of the novel):

At the end of the film, I was quietly astonished. I had seen a film that could perhaps be described as being about a madwoman, but I had seen a character who seemed closer to a mystic, or a saint.

The film was really similar to the book, perhaps the most similar film adaptation that I'm aware of (except perhaps the 5-hour Pride and Prejudice). This was purportedly Forsyth's aim while making the film, and I think I read somewhere in some interview that Robinson was quite happy with the film. I read somewhere, too, that Diane Keaton was originally supposed to play Sylvie. However, she sent Forsyth a list of adjustments to her character; he didn't go out of his way to smooth things over (which is to say, he ignored her suggestions) and she dropped out six weeks before the filming started. Christine Lahti plays Sylvie to general acclaim; I have no complaints.

Some dismiss the film as a family-friendly comedy, but I don't think that's was made at all. Forsyth brings the novel to life--it can't help but be funny as Sylvie and Ruth and Lucille go on with life in a flooded house (cooking breakfast and dancing around the living room) or when Sylvie puts a curtain-fire out while still singing "Happy Birthday." But the real tension between madness and sanity, the real sorrow of the novel, remains (or is enhanced).

The biggest difference between the novel and the film is the ending. While Robinson's novel ends with Ruth and Sylvie engaging in a life of transience, Forsyth's film stops as Ruth and Sylvie run over the train tracks, away from the town of Fingerbone. At the very end, there's a quiet voiceover of Lucille's observation from earlier in the film that "she always does that--she just wanders away." Rather than allow Ruth, the novel's narrator, the last word, Forsyth gives it to Lucille. It isn't Lucille, the character who sides with the town and eschews her sister and aunt, however; it is a younger Lucille, one still in transition toward the town and away from her family. It is an observation, rather than a judgment. Although there is, of course, a nascent judgement inherent in the observation.

The Cloisters

We visited The Cloisters, part of the Met that focuses on medieval art and architecture. The building itself incorporates actual ruins of medieval architecture, as well as houses a wonderful collection of art and liturgical artifacts.

This Triptych of the Annunciation (Merode Alterpiece) is fascinating--you can't see it here, but above the angel is a tiny little baby Jesus holding a cross, zooming toward Mary.

And of course, the Unicorn Tapestries. The Christian imagery was fascinating--I had no idea that the unicorn was a Christ-figure.

The situation of The Cloisters is lovely, especially at this time of year--it's on a hill overlooking the Hudson River.

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Among the title choices for a ticket Francisco just booked me on Austrian Airlines: "Mr. Dr." and "Dr. Mrs."

Brooklyn

Perfect Saturday visiting friends in Brooklyn--coffee from a flower shop and donuts from Peter Pan and a walk to the waterfront and a visit to a brewery with rooftop seating.

And then in the evening, Francisco and I returned to Manhattan and our favorite halal cart.

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We just got some super fancy knives as a wedding gift and they're the first knives I've used in my life that are sharp--now the tips of my fingers look like diced onions. Francisco suggested that in the future, while chopping, I wear thimbles.

12 Years a Slave

Worst date movie ever. (I picked it, so we can't blame Francisco.)

Also at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, and coming out to good reviews, I was curious to see 12 Years a Slave. Based on Solomon Northup's autobiography of being tricked and kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years, before being rightfully released to his freedom and family in the North, the film is well made, but slow moving--it's 2 hours and 15 minutes, and it's painful to be so deeply acquainted with such injustice. The shots are lovely--really tight closeups of faces and lingering shots of nature--but they contribute to the film's speed (or lack thereof).

Let the Fire Burn

I was really wanting to go to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute's screening of the new documentary, Let the Fire Burn, about the conflict between the group, MOVE, and the Philadelphia police, but when Francisco told me it was made by the same people who made the Bill Cunningham documentary (only my favorite movie of all time) and the Hannah Arendt movie (which I still haven't seen! gasp!), it sealed the deal. Even though the screening was on a school night.

MOVE is a really interesting group that I'd only previously heard about in passing--founded by John Africa (born Vincent Leapheart; all of the members of move took the surname Africa) in the 70s, it praised getting back to nature (while remaining in an urban environment) and eschewed technology (while accepting certain technologies like telephones and cars). It was primarily black and settled in various homes in West Philly. Here are some of John Africa's own words from a closing statement defending himself:

"I'm not a guilty man. I'm an innocent man," he said. "I didn't come here to make trouble or to bring trouble. But to bring the truth. And, goddamn it, that's what I'm going to do.
"I'm fighting for air that you've got to breathe. And I'm fighting for water that you've got to drink, and if it gets any worse, you're not going to be drinking that water. I'm fighting for food that you've got to eat. And, you know, you've got to eat it and if it gets any worse, you're not going to be eating that food.
"Don't you see? If you took this thing all the way, all the way, you would have clean air, clean water, clean soil and be quenched of industry. But, you see, they don't want that. They can't have that.
"I've been a revolutionary all my life. Since I could understand the word revolution, I have been a revolutionary, and I remain a revolutionary because, don't you see, revolutionary simply means to turn, to generate, to activate. It don't mean it should be evil and kill people and bomb people. It simply means to be right. If this world didn't revolutionize, everything would stop. If your heart didn't revolutionize, you would stop. If your lungs don't revolutionize, you would stop.
"Monkeys don't shoot people, but people will shoot monkeys. Yet monkeys are seen as unclear and people are seen as intelligent. You can go as far as you want in the forest and you won't find no jails. Because the animals of the forest don't believe in jail. But come to civilization, that's all you see."

After police barricaded MOVE headquarters for 15 months in the late 70s, an officer was killed in a shootout. MOVE went quiet for a time. Then it made an Osage Avenue home its new headquarters and built a bunker on top. The house was boarded up, and a load speaker facing the black working class neighbors broadcast obscenities and revolutionary rhetoric. Once again, the police and MOVE began to shoot each other (the chief of police began talking to them through a load speaker with something like, "MOVE, this is America..."). After ten thousand rounds of fire and all of the police's plans falling through, someone suggested that the police drop a bomb from a helicopter. They did. When a fire resulted, instead of putting it out, the police made the call to "let the fire burn." 11 people, including 5 children died, and 60 neighborhood houses burned down.

The documentary was quite good--and afterward there was a Q&A with a police officer who had darlingly helped the one child who made it out of the fire alive (one adult also made it out) and with the man who wrote the book on which the documentary was based. It was fascinating to hear their own takes on the events, as well as on the shortcomings of the documentary.

The documentary was made exclusively from news footage of the event and footage from the inquiries and commissions afterward. This was an interesting way to tell the story--the only authorial voice was in text superimposed on the film. The impositions of text made the film similar to a book: the transitions in the documentary were chapters dividing the film; there was an epilogue at the end. The film was dialogic in character--it let the different sides' voice be heard. Clearly, the clips were chosen to tell a specific story, a story that was sometimes oversimplified by its telling through film, but the documentary seems honestly attempting to show the wrong that was done on both sides.

One complaint that I have is that I didn't learn much about MOVE from the documentary. I would have been very interested in learning more about what they believed and what the important writings of their movement were. Perhaps it wasn't possible--perhaps the most you can say about MOVE's philosophy is what is articulated through their lifestyle. (It certainly isn't possible to download an online copy of John Africa's purportedly 300-page "Guidelines.")

Quotes

"'Grief darkened my heart' (Lam. 5:17). Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My hometown became a torture to me; my father's house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him changed into cruel torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there. I hated everything because they did not have him, nor could they now tell me 'look, he is on the way', as used to be the case when he was alive and absent from me. I had become to myself a vast problem, and I questioned my soul 'Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?' But my soul did not know what reply to give. ... Only tears were sweet to me, and in my 'soul's delights' (Ps. 138:11) weeping had replaced my friend."

--Augustine's Confessions, Book IV

"There were other things which occupied my mind in the company of my friends: to make conversation, to share a joke, to perform mutual acts of kindness, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and in serious matters, to disagree though without animosity--just as a person debates with himself--and in the very rarity of disagreement to find the salt of normal harmony, to teach each other something or to learn from one another, to long with impatience for those absent, to welcome them with gladness on their arrival. These and other signs come from the heart of those who love and are loved and are expressed through the mouth, through the tongue, through the eyes, and a thousand gestures of delight, acting as fuel to set our minds on fire and out of many to forge unity."

--ditto

A Random Assortment

~ Very cool bike helmet that you wear around your neck. It's all over fb, so I'm probably not the first person to point this out to you. (How annoying is it that fb is just a massive article sharing thing now?)

~ Love this:

Bowling Green’s City Council had voted in September to ban fracking within city limits. Voters appeared worried that the initiative, which would have inserted the ban into the city charter, was overly broad, said Andrew Kear, a political scientist at Bowling Green State University and a scholar of the politics of hydraulic fracturing in Ohio and in the Rocky Mountains.

~ On participatory budgeting. Tocqueville would love this--it takes money to draw Americans into involvement in their government. As Francisco pointed out, this is the best line:

“We’re going to see how this works,” she told them. “We’re not going to stay for the whole thing. We need to have our dinner and scotch.” 

And disability comes into it:

He noted that people with disabilities “are an important part of our community, but they’re not in great numbers.” Still, he said, last year an access ramp to the beach was one of the top vote getters.

~ Pennsylvania's 650th Dollar General. Amazing article; via Ilana.

~ This documentary looks interesting--it's on my list to watch.

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"How odd that bones, reminders of old mortality, should be considered essential to beauty in this perverse age. What of Titian and Rubens? And Michelangelo--no, perhaps not Michelangelo, whose women were really men, cursorily emasculated, with breasts like poached eggs placed randomly on their chests. Then what of those African potentates who force-fed their favourite wives on milk and honey until the beloved women could scarcely move and had to be rolled around."

--Alice Thomas Ellis, The 27th Kingdom

Wissahickon

Sadly, I've been so busy this fall that I haven't spent a ton of time outside. I've heard that Wissahickon (part of the Fairmount Park system, I think) is lovely, so we went over, in the midst of the waning leaves, to check it out.

Francisco's picture

Francisco was adorable about the Canadian geese: "What is that? Is that a goose? It's not a duck. It's not a swan..."

I've gushed to you about how obsessed I am with the bridges around here, right? There are tons--bridges over water, as well as railroad bridges. They're tall with gorgeous arches.

We hiked to this cute old inn and back.

When cleaning that morning, the head of the shower came off--like, out of the wall and started leaking through to the bathroom downstairs. Nothing major, but we have to use our other bathroom for the weekend, until Monday.

When coming back from our hike, we noticed that the lock to my car had been forced. The people breaking in didn't get the door open, but they sure tried--the lock was forced and it looks like they started trying to take the lock out of the door altogether.

I've had my car broken into twice, but this was particularly jarring--it wasn't even late at night--we just went for a little afternoon hike and returned to see that someone had been trying to break in. Such a reminder of how permeable the walls that we put up are.

Clearly, the NYTimes needs a person, probably any person, to whom they can send their articles on Catholicism and that person can tell them if their article is remotely grounded in any reality. I'm volunteering, with my beginners knowledge of Catholicism, to be that person.

I read their recent piece, "With Survey, Vatican Seeks Laity Comment on Family Issues," which begins:

Often, when the Vatican speaks, it can be a fairly one-sided conversation, issuing encyclicals and other formal documents stating the Roman Catholic Church’s official position on doctrine or other matters. 

But Pope Francis, who has already shaken up the Vatican, is asking the world’s one billion Catholics for their opinions on a questionnaire covering social issues like same-sex marriage, cohabitation by unwed couples, contraception, and the place of divorced and remarried people in the church.

and ends:

“It’s a matter of communicating, which is what we do every day,” he said. “The bishops need the people’s opinion and our interpretation of the doctrine.”

 and in the middle:

“It really responds to the desire for the people, the laity in the church, to be consulted on matters which concern them so deeply,” Bishop Hine told Vatican Radio. “Couples are delighted that they’re going to be involved in the consultations.”

In the National Catholic Reporter piece on the same topic, which the NYTimes references, but obviously didn't read, it seems to be the case that some bishops will use polling to collect the data requested, and some collect the data in other ways:

While Baldisseri asks in his letter for wide consultation on the questions, an accompanying letter sent with the U.S. version of the Vatican document does not request the American bishops undertake wide consultation in their dioceses.

and the National Catholic Reporter makes it sound like this process is much less usual than the NYTimes did:

In an email after initial publication of this story, Osman said the bishops will follow a "usual process" for soliciting information as "Rome asks for this kind of consultation on a regular basis." 

Basically, the NYTimes piece made it sound as if the Vatican was requesting individual feedback about the doctrines of the Church from all the Catholics, possibly in advance of some big later change:

This time, however, some analysts say, the style and content of the questionnaire represent a deliberate effort by Francis to engage ordinary Catholics, unlike in the past when synods have attracted little attention. Francis has also raised expectations by changing the format, with next year’s meeting framed as a prelude to a second synod in 2015 that could bring proposed changes, even if few expect him to pursue major doctrinal shifts.

But when you look at the questionnaire itself, you get a different idea entirely--it's attempting to gather information about how Catholicism is actually being practiced: Do people understand the Church's teachings? Do they follow them? How does pastoral care work in the midst of an often blatant disregard for the Church's teachings?

Lesson

Singers who sound like this when you listen to them on Pandora:



sometimes sound like this when you listen to them in concert (only forty million times louder):




All this to say, I'm getting old.

Bonus: here was one of the openers (I've literally never heard anything like this before):



On the positive side, the venue was gorgeous:

The Union Transfer was built in the 1800's as a farmers market and has been other things between now and then, including the Spaghetti Warehouse, which I guess was a restaurant with a great name.

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Just made loads and loads of pumpkin/black bean/oregano soup. Delicious--and I adjusted the recipe myself.

(Maybe I'm overly proud: I know that other people do things like this often. However, it's my first time. And cutting the pumpkin itself felt like a major accomplishment.)

A Random Assortment

~ Via Hopkins: "Smoked Salmon and a Perfectly Ripe Peach: How Pym’s Work Challenges the Soggy-Tinned-Peas Version of British Culinary History":

Occasionally she [Pym] wrote down a recipe, like the one that was tucked amid her notes for A Glass of Blessings. It was for a casserole made with layers of chicken, onions and rice in a wine sauce, with basil and bay leaves placed here and there. (Apparently this dish stayed on her mind, whether or not it stayed in her repertoire, because a few years later she happened to write in her notebook a phrase from Paradise Lost about a blissful Adam and Eve – “Imparadised in one another’s arms” – and this must have reminded her of the recipe, because she then added, “or was it somehow encasseroled. Bay leaf resting on chicken flesh.”

Encasseroled??! Pure genius of word invention.

~ The new Emily Dickinson Archive. Dickinson's poems, in her own handwriting, all online and searchable. How wonderful.

~ I'm not looking to leave just yet, but the day may come: Versatile Ph.D., for leaving academia.

Leger

Goodness, the Léger exhibit (or Leg-er, as I like to call it in rebellion to the French language) was excellent. I'd heard that it was small, but I found it to be enormous, even overwhelming: I guess it was set up by a post-doc, which is telling--it seems like the exhibit tries to show every group that Leger associated with, every movement or artist that influenced him, ever student who was influenced by him. There were a variety of artistic forms, too--set designs, costume designs, films, advertisements, and paintings. Sculpture and architecture that overlapped with the goals of his work were shown.

It was quite an intense and comprehensive exhibit that was sometimes a bit much: modern art can be aggressive and oppressive, at times, and this exhibit captured that--it seemed like musical compositions from collaborators of Léger's were always attacking you, no matter where you turned. There were loads of films, which were amazing, but they were everywhere! And the films themselves--montages and repetitions of mechanical processes and spinning spirals--were visually assaulting, at times.

All that said I loved the exhibit: it gave an excellent picture of the development of art in France from 1913 to the late 20s. I loved seeing how Piet Mondrian and Le Corbusier interacted with Léger. And I would love to see the whole of the film, L'inhumaine (The Inhuman One), for which Léger made the sets.

The centerpiece of the exhibit came early on--Léger's The City (at the top). It is very flat, the subject matter equally distributed across the breadth of the campus. Many different elements of the modern city are present--the puffs of smoke, the shining of an electric sign, a telegraph pole. This makes sense--painted just post-war, it celebrates the city and its developments. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is the absence of the layers of the history that are so prevalent in the architecture of old cities. What's great about the city is diversity--including the diversity of time. Everything isn't built at one moment, but gradually. Léger's paintings don't have history in them: everything is new; everything is modern; everything is flat.

I didn't really expect typefaces to be so important--there were some covers of magazines that were just modernist plays on fonts. There were lots of letters and numbers in Léger's paintings, too, in interesting fonts.

There was one more quibble I had and that was with the lack of translation. Léger illustrated some books in partnership, but while the words were shown, they weren't translated. Similarly, Sonia Delaunay illustrated a poem by Blaise Cendrars. They were trying to make a point about the connection between art and poetry. However, sadly the poem is untranslated and we're just left with Delaunay's (lovely) painting. Here's the bottom of the very long picture/poem:

I saw this exhibit in the morning; in the evening, we went to the First Friday gathering in Center City. The First Friday was great--there are loads of art galleries open, and the artists are sometimes there with their work. Some of the work is by local artists; others by international artists. There was a great pottery gallery. And a lovely book store/antique store/print shop, which is the perfect combination, as far as I'm concerned. I'm determined to return as soon as possible. Plus, after dinner, we visited the Franklin Fountain for dessert--it's an old-time ice cream shop in a lovely building.

Philadelphia.2

Just saw a job ad for Microsoft Visiting Professor of Information Technology Policy. This reminds me of a man I knew who was the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Is everything for sale? Are professors' titles soon going to be like the names of bowl games--sold to the highest bidder? This gets ridiculous really fast: the Chick-fil-A Bowl; the Capitol One Bowl; the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl; Little Caesars Pizza Bowl; GoDaddy.com Bowl. (I found those all on Wikipedia, but those are supposedly their current names; even more distressing is the fact that if a corporation is paying for a position, as soon as the corporation is bought or sold, the name of the position changes.)

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Out godparenting... (!)

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