Originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

Museum of Life and Death

Last Friday Fitz and I went to the nursing home to visit his father, John Sr. Nearing the end of a long, ugly battle with Parkinson's, these "visits" are bereft of any of the usual social graces that we tend to think of when we imagine visiting with someone. There are none of the usual niceties, no small-talk (any conversation takes a huge effort and focus), we often wonder where John thinks we are - or where he thinks he is.

We like to bring brandy manhattens in a silver shaker - served over ice in the same small glasses that John used when made them in his whiskey pantry in Ironwood and served them to guests at the end of the day. It is getting almost impossible for him to hold the glass, or sip them without a great amount of drama. Soon he (we) will be robbed of even this small pleasure.

We reconfigure our thinking, yet again....the sadness mixed with the mystery and wonder.

Leaving there, we drive downtown to see friends Mark and Isabelle in their new production (with Andy Kishner) of "The Museum of Life and Death." On the way, Fitz remarks that it will take an enormous effort to compete with our visit with Dad. But the piece is an enormous effort - and it doesn't compete - it compliments.

A combination of drama, dance, performance art and mixed media - it is a futuristic retelling of a medievil morality play, "Everyman." Death comes for Everyman and tells him to make an accounting of his life. He comes to realize that no one, not "True Love," "Beauty," "Strength," or "Knowledge" will accompany him on this journey and he must go alone.

The projected images and use of shadows worked with the stage performances to create a stong, universal and sometimes bittersweet accounting of our age old - and universal - attempt to understand death. However it comes.

Under the moon

Under the moon
Originally uploaded by WayneMethod.

What a wonderful world

I "met" Wayne through his photos on flickr - which are exceptional. I had to publish this one with a link to his blog as well. It is such a lovely counterpoint to Lindsay and Barb's piece.

We all do want the same things - I know this more and more - no matter where we find ourselves on the planet.

Peace

A new year greeting from Barb Curej and Lindsay Lochman. Always working, always thinking - the link to their website it listed on the right - under art links.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATTHEW WARD

Interesting

SEEING OUT LOUD
by Jerry Saltz

This month is my seven-year anniversary at the Village Voice, so I thought I'd use Frieze magazine's recent queries to me about the "de-skilling of art criticism" and "our post-critical era" as a way to write about what I think I'm trying to do here. First, I fretted I was the kind of "de-skilled" critic Frieze was referring to. I have no degrees. I started out as an artist, stopped painting, and became a long-distance truck driver. My CB handle was "the Jewish Cowboy":
Shalom, partner. I didn't begin writing criticism until I was almost 40. All I knew was I loved art and had to be in the art world. The truth is, I wasn't sure what Frieze meant by "de-skilled." It sounded vaguely bad. But to me de-skilled means unlearning other people's ideas of skill. All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy. I don't look for skill in art; I look for originality, surprise, obsession, energy, experimentation, something visionary, and a willingness to embarrass oneself in public. Skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency; it has to do with being flexible and creative. I'm interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or reimagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks.

The best critics look for the same things in contemporary criticism that they look for in contemporary art. But they also have an eye. Having an eye in criticism is as important as having an ear in music. It means discerning the original from the derivative, the inspired from
the smart, the remarkable from the common, and not looking at art in narrow, academic, or "objective" ways. It means engaging uncertainty and contingency, suspending disbelief and trying to create a place for doubt, unpredictability, curiosity and openness.

Dishearteningly, many critics have ideas but no eye. They rarely work outside their comfort zone, are always trying to reign art in, turn it into a seminar or a clique, or write cerebral, unreadable texts on mediocre work. There's nothing wrong with writing about weak art as
long as you acknowledge the work's shortcomings. Seeing as much art as you can is how you learn to see. Listening very carefully to how you see, gauging the levels of perception, perplexity, conjecture, emotional and intellectual response, and psychic effect, is how you learn to see better.

Art is a way of thinking, a way of knowing yourself. Opinions are tools for listening in on your thinking and expanding consciousness. Many writers treat the juiciest part of criticism, judgment, as if it were tainted or beneath them. The most interesting critics make their opinions known. Yet in most reviews there's no way to know what the writer thinks, or you have to scour the second-to-last paragraph for one negative adjective to detect a hint of disinclination. This is
no-risk non-criticism. Being "post-critical" isn't possible. Everyone is judging all the time. Critics who tell you they're not judging or that they're being objective are either lying or delusional. Being critical of art is a way of showing it respect. Being subjective is being human.

Yet people regularly say, "You shouldn't write on things you don't like." This breaks my heart. No one says this to theater critics, film reviewers, restaurant critics, or sports writers. No one says, "Just say all the food was good." Nowadays, many see criticism mainly as a sales tool or a rah-rah device. Too many critics enthuse over everything they see or merely write descriptively. This sells everyone short and is creating a real disconnect. People report not liking 80 percent of the shows they see, yet 80 percent of reviews are positive or just descriptive.

Obviously, critics can't just hysterically love or hate things, or assert that certain types of art or media are inherently bad (e.g., no one has actually believed that painting is dead since the Nixon
administration, yet writers regularly beat this dead horse). Critics must connect their opinions to a larger set of circumstances; present cogent arguments; show how work does or doesn't seem relevant, is or isn't derivative; explain why an artist is or isn't growing. As with Melville's ideas about art, criticism should have: "Humility -- yet pride and scorn/Instinct and study; love and hate/Audacity and reverence." Good criticism should be vulnerable, chancy, candid, and
nervy. It should give permission, have attitude, maybe a touch of rebellion, never be sanctimonious or dull, and be written in a distinctive, readable way. Good critics should be willing to go onintuition and be unafraid to write from parts of themselves they don't really know they have.

If criticism is in trouble, as many say, it's because too many critics write in a dreary hip metaphysical jargon that no one understands except other dreary hip metaphysicians who speak this dead language. They praise everything they see, or only describe. These critics are like the pet owner who sews up the cat to stop it from fouling the sofa: Tbhey keep the couch clean but kill the cat.

©2005 Jerry Salt/ Village Voice

Milwaukee

DSC_2842
Originally uploaded by uicukie.

shanghai

flickr

John Norquist: From Detroit to Shanghai

By Carolyn Kelly / Great Lakes Bulletin News Service

John Norquist is one of the world’s leading thinkers on urban design and Smart Growth. But he’s a leading doer, too: As mayor of Milwaukee, Wis., from 1988 to 1993, he helped to change policies and minds in order to facilitate more than $200 million in downtown redevelopment that was based on New Urbanist principles.

Mr. Norquist is now president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a Chicago-based non-profit organization that works with architects, planners, developers and others to promote those principles, which include regional planning, walkable neighborhoods, and attractive, accommodating civic spaces. Many CNU members are now leading a major planning effort in Gulf Coast regions devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

As the following interview with Mr. Norquist reveals, New Urbanism’s influence is rapidly becoming worldwide. In 2005, CNU awarded six of its prestigious charter awards to projects in China, India, Australia, and Europe.

Institute: Why did so many of your awards go to projects outside of the U.S. this year?

Mr. Norquist: Part of it is that they applied for the awards. I think we’ll continue to have projects from all over the world. We really like to see where the needs of ordinary people are being met—housing, retail, offices, and things people actually use in their lives. One of my favorite prizes, from 2003, was a small neighborhood elementary school with windows facing the neighborhood and a small playground that really showed how to insert a school into a neighborhood on a very small lot.

Institute: What about New Urbanism in Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East?

Mr. Norquist: We have a few members in Latin America, especially Mexico. The ideas are starting to spread. About 300 of our 2700 members are outside the U.S. The ideas are popping up—in Brazil there was a reaction against Brasilia [the country’s federal capital, built from scratch in the 1960s], where the major streets tunnel under or bridge over each other to keep the traffic moving and so there’s no street life. They had such a stark presentation of modern form that there’s been a reaction to it. In Argentina and Chile, they tend to take their cues more from Europe. But if I had to predict, we’ll draw in more Mexicans. They have their own strong architectural traditions in Mexico: Early modernism, art-deco, and beautiful communities built in a proper way, an urban way. If you go to Mexico City, it’s one of the most sophisticated cities in the Western Hemisphere. It has over 200 miles of subway and distinct neighborhoods, including some just packed with artists, so there’s a lot to learn from Mexico. Since they know we know that, they like us.

Institute: What kinds of projects are going on in places like India and China?

Mr. Norquist: In China, they’re desperately trying to figure out how to manage their growth. They’ve experimented for the last 20 years with creating the most dysfunctional sprawl they could possibly put together. One thing about the Chinese is that, when they make a mistake, or at least an economic mistake, they change it fairly quickly. So now they’re trying to undo some of the damage. They realize that the buildings of pre-WWII Shanghai don’t have to be eliminated, that maybe there’s some traditional Chinese architecture that can be used instead of using the corporate executive park as their model. They’re very aware that they have a problem, and they’re trying to change.

In India, their exposure was to Le Corbusier [an influential 20th-century French architect], but there’s a lot of American stuff and suburban sprawl being built in India. Hopefully the Indians will catch themselves in time to stop it. They really can’t afford the waste in a country as big as that with so many mouths to feed.

Institute: So is the emergence of New Urbanism a question of the Chinese and Indians saving themselves from the American example?

Mr. Norquist: That’s what I say. I was with a delegation of Chinese people and said, “A lot of the answers can be found in your own traditions.” We advocate street networks, grids, and boulevards instead of freeways. And the Chinese don’t really have a long tradition of dealing with autos, so we can probably help teach them what to do and what not to do. But in terms of housing types, the traditional courtyard apartments of Shanghai and Beijing and Hong Kong are traditional building types that are beautiful and shouldn’t be replaced with buildings that are sterile and surrounded by parking lots that look like they’re on the outer edge of the Detroit metro area.

The Chinese are expanding public transit, although there is a disturbing trend against bikes—bike ridership has actually declined in China. I suppose that as the country becomes more affluent, people think it’s a step up to go in a car, and the streets are being taken over by cars. Maybe the Chinese should visit Copenhagen and see how you can be an affluent, well-respected person and ride a bike. The problem isn’t that there’s a resistance to transit—the problem is the street types they’re choosing. Traffic, in order to function, needs a rich network of streets and blocks, not a small number of large roads that channel the traffic and push more and more drivers out into the countryside. Right now they’re following the pattern of the U.S. during the 1950s to 1970s, trying to concentrate traffic in a few giant trenches, which is what destroyed the Detroit area.

They hollowed out Detroit with massive government investment, and it was a bi-partisan effort. And that happened across the country. Michigan has spent billions of dollars to make Detroit a disaster. You just compare it to Toronto. It was a minor city at end of WWII, compared to Detroit, and now it’s just the reverse, even though there was more investment in Detroit than in Toronto.

And there are a lot of U.S. companies that pushed road development in other countries. In the U.S., road builders think they can only make money by building roads. U.S. companies went into Mexico City and convinced the Mexican government not to put in high-speed rail to other cities, so there’s just a freight line. And they just keep building bigger roads in Mexico City. The current mayor opposes expanding the subway system. With the air problems and the population, it’s not a good move.

But even though U.S. companies have bad habits, they’re learning. Transit is not always their first choice, but if they’re hired to do it, they’ll do it.

Institute: Speaking of roads, how does parking fit into the picture?

Mr. Norquist: Parking is an amenity you need. New Urbanism deals with it in a new way—we like parking on streets, but we think it should be priced appropriately. Eighty percent of spots should be filled at any given time. Parking becomes blight if there’s too much or if it is overly emphasized or subsidized. But you do need some of it, there’s no question.
A lot of parking regulations destroyed the ability to build in an economically feasible way. For example, in Milwaukee we had a neighborhood that required seven onsite parking spots per unit, and there was a building on a narrow lot in a neighborhood where the tallest building was five stories, so to do parking?the first three floors would have been parking. So we removed that restriction. The lot had been empty for years, but almost immediately developers applied for permits.

The idea that parking has to be onsite is really entrenched, but if you build more parking, there are more cars, and it creates more dependency on the auto. Let the developer figure out how much parking they need—you should never have a minimum number of parking spaces, though you might consider maximums if they build too much. Look at Portland and Pasadena—those cities are great examples.

Institute: Do New Urbanist projects need more incentives?

Mr. Norquist: People want a sense of place, and the public is usually ahead of government in appreciating New Urbanism. Developers and architects who produce good urbanism and respect context are going to be rewarded in the marketplace.

What we need is to get rid of incentives for bad stuff. Fannie Mae has a restriction on the mix in residential areas—it can’t be more than a certain percentage commercial or retail, so it really limits what you can do, like building housing downtown. And their mortgage machine is set to suck up single-family mortgages.

Institute: I imagine that makes providing affordable housing more difficult.

Norquist: For all the benefit Fannie Mae provides in slightly lowering mortgage rates, it probably raises costs for good projects that have a lot of low cost housing with higher densities of urbanism mixed in. For example, you can put five stories of apartments on top of a Best Buy, as they did in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. And some of those apartments can be affordable. It works. But mixed use is really illegal in most communities in America.
If form-based codes are adopted and people can build above the store, we can create more affordable housing. Fannie Mae should get with it. They claim its restriction is from Congress. We can’t build enough affordable housing from subsidy and inclusionary zoning, so the market has to do it, and restrictions on urbanism make it hard to produce for the market for affordable housing.

Institute: Why are so many people from such different backgrounds attracted to New Urbanism?

Mr. Norquist: I think people are searching for equilibrium. There were thousands of years of building traditions that were deleted by modernists, who thought their rebellion was the end of history. All the other traditions, like properly terminated vistas and streets and blocks and boulevards were no longer emphasized and weren’t taught at all, and the perceived utilitarian needs of the automobile became dominant.

Carolyn Kelly, who interned at the Congress for the New Urbanism, is the Michigan Land Use Institute’s associate editor. Reach her at : carolyn@mlui.org.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS

Can I just tell you how happy I am to stumble across THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS - alive and well and (what else?) podcasting!!

Heading towards a new year --

This is from a commencement address by Senator Barack Obama. It was given on June 4th of this past year at Knox College. It is a good message with which to head into a new year as well -

So let’s dream. Instead of doing nothing or simply defending 20th century solutions, let’s imagine together what we could do to give every American a fighting chance in the 21st century.

What if we prepared every child in America with the education and skills they need to compete in the new economy? If we made sure that college was affordable for everyone who wanted to go? If we walked up to those Maytag workers and we said “Your old job is not coming back, but a new job will be there because we’re going to seriously retrain you and there’s life-long education that’s waiting for you—the sorts of opportunities that Knox has created with the Strong Futures scholarship program.

What if no matter where you worked or how many times you switched jobs, you had health care and a pension that stayed with you always, so you all had the flexibility to move to a better job or start a new business? What if instead of cutting budgets for research and development and science, we fueled the genius and the innovation that will lead to the new jobs and new industries of the future?

Right now, all across America, there are amazing discoveries being made. If we supported these discoveries on a national level, if we committed ourselves to investing in these possibilities, just imagine what it could do for a town like Galesburg. Ten or twenty years down the road, that old Maytag plant could re-open its doors as an Ethanol refinery that turned corn into fuel. Down the street, a biotechnology research lab could open up on the cusp of discovering a cure for cancer. And across the way, a new auto company could be busy churning out electric cars. The new jobs created would be filled by American workers trained with new skills and a world-class education.

All of that is possible but none of it will come easy. Every one of us is going to have to work more, read more, train more, think more. We will have to slough off some bad habits—like driving gas guzzlers that weaken our economy and feed our enemies abroad. Our children will have to turn off the TV set once in a while and put away the video games and start hitting the books. We’ll have to reform institutions, like our public schools, that were designed for an earlier time. Republicans will have to recognize our collective responsibilities, even as Democrats recognize that we have to do more than just defend old programs.

It won’t be easy, but it can be done. It can be our future. We have the talent and the resources and brainpower. But now we need the political will. We need a national commitment.

And we need each of you.

Now, no one can force you to meet these challenges. If you want, it will be pretty easy for you to leave here today and not give another thought to towns like Galesburg and the challenges they face. There is no community service requirement in the real world; no one is forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and go chasing after the big house, and the nice suits, and all the other things that our money culture says that you should want, that you should aspire to, that you can buy.

But I hope you don’t walk away from the challenge. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. You need to take up the challenges that we face as a nation and make them your own. Not because you have a debt to those who helped you get here, although you do have that debt. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you, although I do think you do have that obligation. It’s primarily because you have an obligation to yourself. Because individual salvation has always depended on collective salvation. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

all is calm - all is bright

caderno das estrelas 3/star book

caderno das estrelas 3/star book
Originally uploaded by magic fly paula.

For me, this wonderful image by Paula speaks to the coming of Christmas...

Latte Art

more latte art from Kyle
Originally uploaded by tonx.

Link to this photo to visit the entire set of latte art images - nice.

From the Toronto Star

Deal protects massive exports of Great Lakes water

Dec. 13, 2005. 03:38 PM

CANADIAN PRESS

Dry southern U.S. states will be unable to take massive sips from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin under a deal reached today by Ontario, Quebec and other jurisdictions that border the waterways. The Ontario government called the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Sustainable Water Resources Agreement an "historic" deal that will essentially prohibit massive, bulk water exports from the fresh-water lakes. Ontario signed the deal in Milwaukee alongside representatives from eight American states — Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Quebec also signed the deal since the St. Lawrence River is connected to the Great Lakes, which account for one-fifth of the world's fresh water supply. The deal, which still requires endorsement by the U.S. Congress, is meant to prevent thirsty southern American states from diverting massive amounts of water to their own jurisdictions. It's more of a theoretical risk, but Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay said the deal was key to protecting Great Lakes water from drainage over decades to come.

"Primarily the pressures come from the southwest United States, the drier part of the continent," Ramsay told reporters at the Ontario legislature in Toronto. "We hear musings from time to time (from) southern California, Arizona, New Mexico of their challenges to supply fresh, potable water to their populations," Ramsay said. "They look north and they see the Great Lakes as the largest supply of fresh water in the world . . . and sometimes they get visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, to use a seasonal analogy."

The deal is also meant to protect the water system from the environmental effects of large-scale diversions, however it does permit large amounts of water to be taken under some circumstances, including for bottled water. There were actually two agreements signed — a binding pact among the eight states and a "good-faith" agreement among the two provinces and eight states. Provinces and states are unable to sign treaties by themselves across international borders. Ramsay expected Congress would rubber-stamp the deal, saying it's ``fairly automatic" for Washington to acknowledge agreements already reached between states.

Still, each jurisdiction, including the Ontario and Quebec legislatures, will have to pass into law their commitments not to allow large-scale water diversions by jurisdictions outside the Great Lakes region. "It's our own laws that are going to keep us honest," Ramsay said. The province received applause from environmental groups. Robert Wright of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund congratulated the government for taking a "no diversions" stance rather than a position of "diversions with exceptions." "It is a victory for Ontario," Wright said, adding that while the agreement isn't perfect in protecting the Great Lakes for decades to come, "it is a good start."

Wright was particularly pleased that the deal allows for more scientific examination of Great Lakes water that will monitor and forecast its depletion from climate change and other factors. Without such agreements there's risks that resources such as water can be sold to the highest bidder without concern for the environment, said Sarah Miller of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. "While on the surface it seems to go without saying that we should be doing our best to protect 20 per cent of the world's fresh water, there are still those that feel bounty means no limits," she said.

---

From Tegic Reveals the Year's Most Buzzworthy Additions to T9 Dictionary: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
The top ten "buzz words" to be added to the T9� dictionary for 2005 include:

* Lifehack - a tool or technique that makes some aspect of one's life easier or more efficient

* Mashup - new information created by combining data from two different sources

* Placeshift - to redirect a TV signal so the viewer can watch a show on a device other than his or her television

* Playlistism - judging a person based on what songs are on the playlist of his or her digital music player

* Podjack - to plug the cord of one's digital music player into the jack of another person's player to hear what the person is listening to

* Puggle - a dog bred from a pug and a beagle

* Sideload - to transfer music or other content to a cell phone using the cell phone provider's network

* Vlog - a blog that contains mostly video content

* Vodcast - a video podcast

* Ubersexual - a heterosexual man who is masculine, confident, compassionate and stylish

Raising Chicks: Chick Christmas Tree Fun

Ben and Heather's chickens have started blogging - among all of the other adventures they are having, like getting ready for Christmas and enjoying their first Great Lakes winter. Here is how they introduce themselves on their blog.....

"We were born in Texas on October 26, 2005. Ben ordered four hens, but we decided to surprise him and mix it up a little. Actually there's eleven of us now, some roosters and some hens, but we are all chicks. Shipped straight from the egg to Milwaukee and arrived one day later...follow our blog to find out about all of our adventures."

I highly recommend you check them out!

The many shapes of prayer

In Prayer: A History, Smith College professors Philip and Carol Zaleski take an unusually probing and thoughtful look at a topic that might otherwise seem to defy academic treatment.

The Zaleskis define prayer as "action that communicates between human and divine realms." They trace prayer across time and cultures and find it in expressions as diverse as the funerary rites of Neanderthals, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, the Sun Dance of the Cree Indians, and the admission by Alcoholic Anonymous members that they need the help of a higher power to stay sober.

They also distinguish between different types of prayers, such as those that ask for specific help ("the prayer of the refugee"), prayers that arise spontaneously at moments of crisis ("de profondis prayer"), and prayer that is part of a routine ("devotional prayer.")

The Zaleskis' treatment of their topic is sensitive. Nonbelievers will appreciate the fact that they don't argue for the efficacy of prayer. (They are, in fact, fairly negative about studies that purport to demonstrate a link between prayer and improved health.)

Those who do believe will enjoy the respectful - and occasionally even poetic - tone applied to the subject, as well as what appears to be a real understanding of the actual process. (Contemplative prayer is a "grueling enterprise," they point out, because the human mind, as capricious as a monkey "eagerly seizes any opportunity for woolgathering.")

20051126-dn-020
Originally uploaded by mrbula.