I hate cliches, Often, I suspect the motives behind those who constantly spout them. At the very least, I imagine intellectual laziness...
So, a New Year and resolutions. B.L.E.C.C.H. and best holiday wishes.
F.U. I.T.
I remember a particular NYE with Karen Hanna in Westlake, OH at age 12-13 or so. As we were walking outside of our suburban neighboring homes on Columbia Avenue, I said when she started to spout resolution crap:, "Just wish for less uncertainty." and went inside my empty (of food) kitchen. and drank my mother's vodka in tribute.
So full of bullshit-so early.
But as I told my friend Larry recently, I have gained humility in my 40s. He looked surprised, so I assume it's not always evident. Not evident for someone who in their teens was dangerous but fun. And In my twenties, was serious- too serious . In my thirties, I allowed others to shape me-but it was about time. and then I came home to New Orleans when I was 36 (in 2000) and I relaxed- thank the heavens. and walked with the ghosts...thank god for the ghosts.
Part of my resolve is to tell how I I friggin love this city. I get it, I laugh at it, get absolute joy from it just riding down the GODdamm street on a sunny morning on my scooter talking to my ghosts.
Every point above a cliche. But in my humble 40s, so what? good enough.
I also absolutely get that I NEED to live NOW. If I don't enjoy THIS, what the fuck is the point? H . Katrina gave me that. And my sister in Cleveland OH. And those lovely farmers and fishers (at times). And my friends, who laugh at and share my weirdness. And companions like Hettie, the "mop" dog who is pure of heart and motivated to tell everyone she is alive when she walks out of the door....and Maddie the Cartoon Dog who just wants to roam far and wide with me....
DAMMIT, this place is ONLY now. I do not want your away analysis or American cynicism. We understand we have no plan, no rational history to draw on. Creativity, ingenuity and bravado is all we got. We're okay with that. We got that and boiled crabs. and the poetry in our souls.
To move forward, I remember Roger and Bill Wall and Dinerral and Chip and Louise and Helen, and those other ghosts that happen by.
And laugh and nod in recognition as they pass.
Essays, links and visuals highlighting an alternative, resilient place at the strategic crescent of one mighty river.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Representative Democracy?
From "The U.S. Census and the Amazing Apportionment Machine" video made by the US Census Bureau:
in 1790, each member of the House of Representatives represented around 34,000 people.
in 2000, each member of the House represented an average of 647,000 people.
in 1790, each member of the House of Representatives represented around 34,000 people.
in 2000, each member of the House represented an average of 647,000 people.
200 countries in 200 years
I bet this guy would be a nutty professor, but the way he organized this was amazing. The information is fascinating.
200countries, 200 years
200countries, 200 years
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Christmas Day 2010
Started the day at Fair Grinds, assisting on Xmas Day for maybe the 6th time (a few years break after Horrible Katrina).
Made coffee while owner Robert happily tinkered with espressso machine, and then finally put his tools down and brought Elizabeth from home around 9. (She is quietly kind of great by the way.)
Made coffee, laughed at lovely Lawrence, Steve, Mark, Pat, Perry, Larry (and a few others) stories, jokes, POV and fumed at the regulars that I cannot handle (as they hog center stage disagreeably- boy do I hate that.)
After 4 hours, I left it with much coffee made and loads of treats on the table from quiet citizen/neighbors (in other words, no thanks needed.) I have noticed that those who offer more also leave enormous donations for the non-profit that I donate the proceeds from the tip jar on that day.
Texted and received texts from loads of friends, and decided not to head to Marigny for ELM and cajun famulee's pahtee. I miss her. She can make me laugh when she works at it. I hope I can see her soon.
Went next to M&V's for omelets. warm (friends, house and food). Stayed til dark, over talking and laughing (sometimes til we all cried and had to wipe our eyes) at M's latest goof-giving away V's pecans to his friend. She told him about himself and he good naturedly listened and even agreed to the one point. ONE out of 5 or 6 she made....
Drove home and made lamb chops, drank French 75s and talked to my French Quarter mother via email, telling her I would see her on Sunday. True to her nature, she was fine with that, and more worried that I was warm enough in my apartment. She also told me a funny story about her friend who drank too much sloe gin on their 1959 prize trip to Columbus OH for godssake. When she was 18 and an assistant buyer at Maison Blanche. And unfortunately, met my father. But the sloe gin part was funny...
Made coffee while owner Robert happily tinkered with espressso machine, and then finally put his tools down and brought Elizabeth from home around 9. (She is quietly kind of great by the way.)
Made coffee, laughed at lovely Lawrence, Steve, Mark, Pat, Perry, Larry (and a few others) stories, jokes, POV and fumed at the regulars that I cannot handle (as they hog center stage disagreeably- boy do I hate that.)
After 4 hours, I left it with much coffee made and loads of treats on the table from quiet citizen/neighbors (in other words, no thanks needed.) I have noticed that those who offer more also leave enormous donations for the non-profit that I donate the proceeds from the tip jar on that day.
Texted and received texts from loads of friends, and decided not to head to Marigny for ELM and cajun famulee's pahtee. I miss her. She can make me laugh when she works at it. I hope I can see her soon.
Went next to M&V's for omelets. warm (friends, house and food). Stayed til dark, over talking and laughing (sometimes til we all cried and had to wipe our eyes) at M's latest goof-giving away V's pecans to his friend. She told him about himself and he good naturedly listened and even agreed to the one point. ONE out of 5 or 6 she made....
Drove home and made lamb chops, drank French 75s and talked to my French Quarter mother via email, telling her I would see her on Sunday. True to her nature, she was fine with that, and more worried that I was warm enough in my apartment. She also told me a funny story about her friend who drank too much sloe gin on their 1959 prize trip to Columbus OH for godssake. When she was 18 and an assistant buyer at Maison Blanche. And unfortunately, met my father. But the sloe gin part was funny...
Monday, December 20, 2010
Creole Copyright
I love the sophisticated attitude of our creative culture. They are the heart of the city and need to protect themselves from piracy.
Creole Copyright - Mixed Media - Utne Reader
Creole Copyright - Mixed Media - Utne Reader
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Part 6: Living Locally and Globally: The Revolution(s) Will Use Appropriate Technology
I hate Facebook.
Well, actually I don't but those of you who do hate it are now at attention, and those of you who do not are fuming.
Is this to be the big divide in our adult lives- whether we use social networking tools or not? (Because I just don't believe the Tea Party thing is gonna turn out to be the new revolution.)
Let me just say that I worry for those of my friends who buy any new thing or follow every new trend, but I also worry for those who pooh-pooh ideas before testing them. And I find myself in both places at different times, so I'm with you all on different days. Remember, I contain multitudes.
Some clarity came to me recently when a writer with whom I am too often in agreement talked about Twitter. (It's just that I just fear being in agreement with anyone all of the time, especially another in a long line of New Yorker magazine writers). The writer, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote about the Iranian revolution and the reported use of social networking tools at the time to further the cause. Even that some reporters took to calling it the Twitter Revolution. Overstated was his conclusion. He just didn't find it. Sure activists outside of the country were using it, but on the line folks, not so much.
If that was the end of the story, I might have started to think more negatively about things like Twitter et al, but as usual Malcolm went further, adding social theory and mass communication and history lessons. First, he took the story back to the civil rights sit-in movement and shared the information that most of the young people that were sitting together waiting for who-knows-what to happen behind them at those lunch counters knew each other beforehand. Knew each other well as a matter of fact. Were roommates or long time friends. So in that era, he concludes Twitter would also not have mattered.
But before you "aha!" me (you FB haters) he goes on to explain why and thereby changes the story.
In his context, the question is whether that particular activist moment calls for strategic organizing with long meetings and teamwork and leaders on call, or if it needs to build a network of peers to keep up with and share information quickly. Serious support ( like top-secret, password-giving, face-to-face strategy meetings or lessons in how to link arms for hours to stop police from taking some away) is necessary in the type of movement where you need backup and comfort (like Iran or Greensboro circa 1960). In sociology language, high-risk activism is a "strong tie" movement. And on top of that, discipline and strategy are necessary in high-risk activism. Certainly not two words that apply to social networking.
He wrote the story to dismiss social networking, but ends up actually showing its use when he went on to point out (via sociology research) that it is often through acquaintances and not close friends (weak ties) where we get NEW information. He even talks about the diffusion of innovation as the hallmark of any internet based communication. And that leadership is shared.
So, not high-risk activism, but you do find adaptive activism and (oh be still my heart) NON-hierarchical networks in internet or social networking. He dismisses networks as messy and chaotic, but doesn't that describe democracy itself?
(He also overstates the need for complete consensus in networks. He may not know that there is often allowable dissent in group decisions with methods like "stand-aside" or "with reservations".)
So it seems to me that for campaigns that need innovation or ways to keep up with constant information (like an neighborhood-obliterating hospital development, or a consumer campaign to stop a city's water privatization) you might find these tools an excellent strategy.
In other words, based on your campaign, use the appropriate tool and technology needed. And to go back in history, the Free Speech Movement or the anti-nuclear movement might have been helped by the type of tools available to activists today. Lack of information was the killer there, not baton-wielding thugs.
Those who mock FB or Twitter or smart Phones may be the spiritual children of those who mocked the old-fashioned telephone (the one attached to the wall), or fancy schmancy telegrams, or The Pony Express. And while it is true that all of those tools started out as expensive and only for rich people, do remember: long distance calls can be made for free now, the telegram is now an email which can be sent for free (yes, once a computer is found), and the Pony Express became rural free delivery or a postage stamp.
Recently, I found an old book (probably someone's thesis) in a used store. Using the Progressive intellectual movement of the early 20th century, it showed how these individuals used communication strategies to further their movement. Dewey's education movement, Jane Addams' immigrant settlement houses and so on.
They did this because they came from small-town America and so "recognized the forces undermining primary communities (in cities) and sought a replacement for neighborhood solidarity in the form of impersonal controls." (italics added). The author also found that these activists thought that "...Through the new means of communication,the values of intimacy and immediacy would permeate the whole structure of society."
The author used another phrase that struck my ear pleasingly: intimate community.
I hear social networking in that phrase: a type of informal talk that mimics the small town Main Street where everyone would pass at some point in their day or week. Main Street where conversation as small as talk about weather rested alongside of 'hey, watch out for that horse!" warnings.
Why is this important? Because in order to know who carries what information and how trustworthy it is, one needs to have lots of conversations. Lots of small, quick and some not so quick conversations with more people than we have time to call or stop on the street and talk to for 20-30 minutes a day or even once a week. Because we live in a much larger village (and travel at different times of the day now that we don't use daylight as our timepiece) and therefore our tools need to match the speed and the many different paths that our world has for us. And because (One of the areas that Malcolm does not cover) we have to find creative ways to know what the other side knows and share it fast. And the front lines for that is not hierarchical media, but messy Wiki everything.
So, if you find yourself on the front line of a police state protest, I hope your old, true friends are on either side of you with full prior knowledge of what you both must do. And I'd say put down that phone.
And, if you are working to find a way to insert some citizenship in your daily hectic life so as not to lose a cherished building or to take the time to uncover corporate crime, I hope someone has a phone handy with emails of those who could help and a Twitter or a FB account to start posting updates.
Because we need both of those revolutions.
Well, actually I don't but those of you who do hate it are now at attention, and those of you who do not are fuming.
Is this to be the big divide in our adult lives- whether we use social networking tools or not? (Because I just don't believe the Tea Party thing is gonna turn out to be the new revolution.)
Let me just say that I worry for those of my friends who buy any new thing or follow every new trend, but I also worry for those who pooh-pooh ideas before testing them. And I find myself in both places at different times, so I'm with you all on different days. Remember, I contain multitudes.
Some clarity came to me recently when a writer with whom I am too often in agreement talked about Twitter. (It's just that I just fear being in agreement with anyone all of the time, especially another in a long line of New Yorker magazine writers). The writer, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote about the Iranian revolution and the reported use of social networking tools at the time to further the cause. Even that some reporters took to calling it the Twitter Revolution. Overstated was his conclusion. He just didn't find it. Sure activists outside of the country were using it, but on the line folks, not so much.
If that was the end of the story, I might have started to think more negatively about things like Twitter et al, but as usual Malcolm went further, adding social theory and mass communication and history lessons. First, he took the story back to the civil rights sit-in movement and shared the information that most of the young people that were sitting together waiting for who-knows-what to happen behind them at those lunch counters knew each other beforehand. Knew each other well as a matter of fact. Were roommates or long time friends. So in that era, he concludes Twitter would also not have mattered.
But before you "aha!" me (you FB haters) he goes on to explain why and thereby changes the story.
In his context, the question is whether that particular activist moment calls for strategic organizing with long meetings and teamwork and leaders on call, or if it needs to build a network of peers to keep up with and share information quickly. Serious support ( like top-secret, password-giving, face-to-face strategy meetings or lessons in how to link arms for hours to stop police from taking some away) is necessary in the type of movement where you need backup and comfort (like Iran or Greensboro circa 1960). In sociology language, high-risk activism is a "strong tie" movement. And on top of that, discipline and strategy are necessary in high-risk activism. Certainly not two words that apply to social networking.
He wrote the story to dismiss social networking, but ends up actually showing its use when he went on to point out (via sociology research) that it is often through acquaintances and not close friends (weak ties) where we get NEW information. He even talks about the diffusion of innovation as the hallmark of any internet based communication. And that leadership is shared.
So, not high-risk activism, but you do find adaptive activism and (oh be still my heart) NON-hierarchical networks in internet or social networking. He dismisses networks as messy and chaotic, but doesn't that describe democracy itself?
(He also overstates the need for complete consensus in networks. He may not know that there is often allowable dissent in group decisions with methods like "stand-aside" or "with reservations".)
So it seems to me that for campaigns that need innovation or ways to keep up with constant information (like an neighborhood-obliterating hospital development, or a consumer campaign to stop a city's water privatization) you might find these tools an excellent strategy.
In other words, based on your campaign, use the appropriate tool and technology needed. And to go back in history, the Free Speech Movement or the anti-nuclear movement might have been helped by the type of tools available to activists today. Lack of information was the killer there, not baton-wielding thugs.
Those who mock FB or Twitter or smart Phones may be the spiritual children of those who mocked the old-fashioned telephone (the one attached to the wall), or fancy schmancy telegrams, or The Pony Express. And while it is true that all of those tools started out as expensive and only for rich people, do remember: long distance calls can be made for free now, the telegram is now an email which can be sent for free (yes, once a computer is found), and the Pony Express became rural free delivery or a postage stamp.
Recently, I found an old book (probably someone's thesis) in a used store. Using the Progressive intellectual movement of the early 20th century, it showed how these individuals used communication strategies to further their movement. Dewey's education movement, Jane Addams' immigrant settlement houses and so on.
They did this because they came from small-town America and so "recognized the forces undermining primary communities (in cities) and sought a replacement for neighborhood solidarity in the form of impersonal controls." (italics added). The author also found that these activists thought that "...Through the new means of communication,the values of intimacy and immediacy would permeate the whole structure of society."
The author used another phrase that struck my ear pleasingly: intimate community.
I hear social networking in that phrase: a type of informal talk that mimics the small town Main Street where everyone would pass at some point in their day or week. Main Street where conversation as small as talk about weather rested alongside of 'hey, watch out for that horse!" warnings.
Why is this important? Because in order to know who carries what information and how trustworthy it is, one needs to have lots of conversations. Lots of small, quick and some not so quick conversations with more people than we have time to call or stop on the street and talk to for 20-30 minutes a day or even once a week. Because we live in a much larger village (and travel at different times of the day now that we don't use daylight as our timepiece) and therefore our tools need to match the speed and the many different paths that our world has for us. And because (One of the areas that Malcolm does not cover) we have to find creative ways to know what the other side knows and share it fast. And the front lines for that is not hierarchical media, but messy Wiki everything.
So, if you find yourself on the front line of a police state protest, I hope your old, true friends are on either side of you with full prior knowledge of what you both must do. And I'd say put down that phone.
And, if you are working to find a way to insert some citizenship in your daily hectic life so as not to lose a cherished building or to take the time to uncover corporate crime, I hope someone has a phone handy with emails of those who could help and a Twitter or a FB account to start posting updates.
Because we need both of those revolutions.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Part 5: Living Locally and Globally-Maybe we are more than one nation anyway?
The Nine Nations of North America by Joel GarreauMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
My boss gave me this book, as we are fascinated at marketumbrella.org by regional differences. Our friends at RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions) did a great map of food regions of America in their recent book, which we often use to show how food and culture can be the sovereign organizing principle rather than the political boundaries drawn by surveyors hundreds of years ago.
This book by Joel Garreau was written long before RAFT came to be and the author has thoroughly mapped out the future possibilities and limitations of each of his chosen nations (read regions) in North America. These areas should and often act as nations in his argument, and as he points out, state lines were in many cases quite arbitrarily drawn and yet seemingly encased in stone tablets somewhere. The inability of America to stretch it's thought process beyond weak city governments, stymied state ones and federal overseers is one of the great puzzles in this land and may yet undue us.
I enjoyed it throughout and will recommend it here as only a regional planning or public market geek can: In annoyingly detailed terms when people just want an easy answer.
Each "nation" (I believe less in nations than in city/states, so I wish he could call them that, but I do know that he could not) is defined by some natural geographical boundaries and also by the author’s very interesting analysis of the identification of the lines between cultures. We can do worse than to examine his map with an open mind. As he says early on, "Studying these nations is certainly more constructive that examining ideas such as Colorado."
He writes very well, finding lovely bites of information and great quotes for each nation. Maps included for better description than I give here.
Let me give you just a tidbit for each and leave it to you to read the entire book on your own. Hopefully, you can read it while traveling on a train between 2 or more of these nations so you can see if the same personality is still clear to you when you step off into bustling or sleepy:
The Breadbasket: Area west of Houston, north of Austin, east of Denver, up to Winnipeg and down to Chicago through St. Louis and Tulsa.
The nation that is most at peace with itself.
The Foundry: From DC to Cincinnati (following Ohio River), east of Indy, up to Milwaukee, Green Bay, north to Ottawa, over to Albany, Trenton and down to southern Connecticut.
The whole point of living here is work.
Dixie: Everything north of Ft. Meyers to Houston, up to St. Louis, down to Kentucky and over to DC, everything south.
Sociologically, climatically, historically. politically, topographically racially it’s a quilt.
New England: New Haven, to Providence, Boston, Burlington, Prince Edward Islands, Nova Scotia to Portsmouth.
(Emerson of Thoreau): “He chose to be rich by making his wants few.”
Mexamaerica: Mexico to California (west of Sierra Nevada range), south of Denver, east to Houston.
Binational, bicultural, bilingual.
The Empty Quarter (portion of Saudi Arabia is called Rub ‘al Khali - Empty Quarter).: West of Sierra Nevada, north to Alaska, and over to Lake Winnipeg and down following the Missouri River.
Where the argument between empire and environment lives.
The Islands: South of Ft. Meyers, Keys. Cuba, Puerto Rico
Smugglers paradise.
Ecotopia: Anchorage to Point Conception to north of Sierra Nevada.
Temperate island surrounded by a sea of envy
Quebec:
The most improbable yet the most undeniable nation.
A wonderful book that I am very glad to have read and more importantly, to share.
View all my reviews
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Part 4: Living Locally and Globally: The Empathic Civilization
This video gives an extraordinary explanation of the evolution of community. It helps explain how the world may save part of itself. I look at the kids under 20 years--I find that they have a very different attitude about people and the world than those just ahead of them, and different from my generation which was all about personal political and emotional growth. I feel some hope talking to them...
Rifkin theory of evolving empathy
Rifkin theory of evolving empathy
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