Life In The Aerie

By Bitch Ph. D

In fact, I am not procrastinating. It is the weekend, and after last week's fucking meltdown, I have decided I need to give myself permission to take weekends off again. I give myself that permission a lot, and in fact I do take weekends off (graduate students now reading, yes, we do, and you should too) and then I will start to freak out or have a "big" something that I am worried about and I will start sitting at my desk on the weekend--not working, mind you, checking email and other things, on which more in a minute, but pretending that I'm going to start working "any second now" until the day is over and I am a fucking neurotic mess. I know we all know what that's like. So anyway, after doing that to myself yet again last week, I am now on a no-weekend-working jag, goddamnit. Though I still feel a teeny tiny bit like, "well, but wouldn't it be a good idea to look at the essays in that one reader and maybe get a jump start on putting together that course pack this week?" because, as we all know, work that you "sneak" in when it's not "officially" working time and you're doing it just because you're curious about what's in that essay you're going to actually officially read on Monday is, in fact, much easier to do for some reason.


But I am procrastinating in the sense that I am now writing a second blog entry rather than going and fixing lunch for me and pseudonymous kid (who is, bless him, playing quietly on the bedroom floor while I sit with my laptop). I am procrastinating by blogging in order to try to save myself from my other procrastination habit, the one that nearly sunk me this last week and that I am now inspired to "confess" both because of my last post and because Dr. Crazy gave me the intellectual justification I've been searching for as I've been trying to figure out, all week, why I feel compelled to make my confession on this blog. I've been not doing it because of the surveillance thing I talked about in my last post, partly, but more because, without some reason why I'm doing it, it merely seems self-indulgent, and not in a good way. But I think with Dr. Crazy's help I've finally put my finger on it.

This week, I've been procrastinating horribly by hanging out on sex chat rooms and talking dirty to total strangers over the internet. It's the kind of thing one can do while at the computer, so one has the illusion that one is going to start working "any minute now" but it also, of course, occupies the mind well enough to overwhelm the anxiety of sitting at the computer. It would probably be a much healthier habit, work-wise, if I were actually going out, getting drunk, and fucking strangers, since at least I would get some exercise and get away from my desk, but I live in a tiny town and there is just no way I am taking that risk. Because not only am I a professor, I am married. This is not a problem for me or my husband, mind you, but it is a major problem in terms of not being perceived as a whore, professionally speaking. It's one reason why I have got to move out of small-town midwesternness: I know people do freaky shit in the small town midwest, but it is a lot easier to get away with in a city somewhere. Actually, I think what I want is just the knowledge that I could do freaky shit if I chose to: I'm not out there joining swinger's clubs or inviting people to have threesomes. My sex life is in fact fairly sedate and shockingly monogamous--I just reserve the right to be not-sedate and not-monogamous if I want to, damnit. This secret side of me has gotten more play, mentally and emotionally speaking, since I moved here, and it's obviously got everything to do with being a displaced way of acting out my resistance, not to my marriage (which is in fact fine, thanks for asking) but to the whole women-professors-as-asexual-beings thing (thank you, Laura Kipnis). Which is ridiculous, since virtually all the women I know in academia are very comfortable with their own sexuality, thank you very much. But still.

Interestingly, however, I have been thinking about writing porn on the side, and that I would be willing to do under my real name: why not? Anyone who worked with me would "know" that it's "just writing." Again, we have the divide between the body and the text that we are all so very invested in pretending exists. I don't think I'm advocating for a seamless integration of the two--that would be ridiculous, and I'm not under the illusions that people in other lines of work freely talk about their sex lives on the job. But I do think that in other lines of work, there is a more accepted understanding that the division between professional and personal identity is fairly clear. Less so, perhaps, for other professions that, like "professor," have this aura of sainthood about them: you don't want to know that your doctor is a sadist, for example. Still, though, I think ours is a profession with a shockingly limited sense of range. Note that I say "sense" and not reality: surely there must be many ways of being a professor, and certainly there are tons of people out there who get up to all sorts of things in their spare time. And we are all aware of women who have written their dissertations on working in strip clubs and the like. I knew someone once who was quite open about going to the fetish clubs on the weekends. But there's always a sense that these things are "okay" (if they're okay at all) only if they are properly intellectualized: "I'm interested in the aesthetics of fetish gear." Intellectualizing that shit is fun; but the shit is also fun on its own, isn't it? Like NASCAR?

The goal, I think, is that work and play don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Posted by LITA Staff at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

You Tube Link

Obama/McCain Dance Off

Brought to you by the nice folks at Mini-Movie. This piece has nicely roto-scoped mouth positions for both candidates. Allowing them to speak the words means finding footage that contains enough positions of the mouth for each letter and sound that also matches the angle of the face. Then the mouth and the face of the candidate must be motion tracked onto the actors bodies sometimes frame by frame. This is done by tracking the candidate's faces to points on the actor's face. As the actor dances the face moves with him.

The beginning shot with the handkerchief is simple a reverse shot of the actors dropping handkerchiefs.

Posted by M. Hannington at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By M. Hannington

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

When Farah Fawcett died this week I was reminded of seeing "Burning Bed" and being glad that the bastard burned, but it never dawned on me back then that I would ever face such an ordeal or anything remotely like it.

It wasn’t completely true.

There are plenty of men willing to use force to control women. I’ve been held down or pushed into the dark corner of a bar, forced to go along until grips loosened and I could escape. My hand has been made to feel hard-ons and I've felt strangers hands in subways, crowded dance floors and concert mosh pits where escape was near to impossible.

On a primal level, women are most afraid of men using their brute force, but at the same time that strength is often a turn on.

It is something to be worked out in the bedroom and not by strangers in a night club, unless of course you dig that sort of thing.

In our reptilian brains, fear and sex are closely related. Psychologists believe that this is because in our primitive past having sex left one open to predators and so went hand in hand with fear.

Making a double backed beast out in the open where giant crocodiles like Sarcosuchus imperator , whose 5 foot long jaws could swallow you whole was indeed a risky romp.

I have come to realize that I’m a risk taker and I have been for a long, long time. Fear is something I have always romanced.

When dad first pretended to toss me over the observation wall at the Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals, he not only gave me my first delight of fear, but also managed to totally freak out mom.

It started with climbing ever higher in trees and exploring abandoned places that other children wouldn’t dare. I scaled steep cliffs, tried my hand at the trapeze and tight rope and did back flips off high dives.

I loved that buzz so close to sexual arousal. The horror movie tension…

Red herring, red herring… and then, when you’re not expecting it, WHAM drooling alien with metal teeth.

Shiver!

Guys if you haven’t figured out why the haunted house is the best date event at the amusement park you’re a little slow on the uptake.

I also tried every drug known to man. Qualudes, Reds, Speed, Pot – Acapulco Gold, Panama Red, Hashish & THC, Opium, Heroine, ‘Shrooms, Blotter Acid, Mescaline, Window Pane, Peyote, and Cocaine. And later Crack before it was called Crack (and I won’t ever go there again).

It was mostly the thrill of the unknown and not the drug’s effect that I was seeking.

By the time I made it to college my grades had suffered, but for the most part I had satiated my curiosity and there was nothing much left to try.

And it was upwards academically from there.

My next fearful exploit became “trestling”, where you sat on the stone wall of a trestle bridge and waited for a train to fly past merely inches away from your face.

We’d scream our bloody heads off knowing that a loose part traveling at 60 mph could turn you to sludge in an instant, but we'd do it again and again.

I once met a student from Kent State at the trestle, an ultimate Frisbee player like me, who had lain on the tracks and let the train pass over him.

The way he described the ordeal and was so open about his fear… Needless to say I was smitten, but long distance college relationships often fizzle and outside of some love letters it went no farther.

There was diving off rock cliffs and into the black waters of a gravel pit. An abandoned place, near to where I lived in Lansing, it was not only a way to cool off on a hot night, but swimming naked and alone on moonless nights was delightfully scary and a Zen thing at the same time.

Years later while attending the broadcast conventions in Las Vegas I discovered “Der Stuka” and “Bomb Bay” water slides on the Vegas strip. To ride "Bomb Bay" you entered a capsule, crossed your legs at the ankles, wrapped up your arms and the operator opened a trap door and sent you plummeting on an almost vertical 76 foot free fall.

On the way down I was sure I was going to die. No human being should ever EVER travel that fast!

I did it over and over.

For years I often had my lunch and a sunbath on a two-foot ledge, eight stories off the ground. Knowing that when I moved to recline or to get off that a slight slip could send me plunging.

I loved it!

BUT being a risk taker also meant I tended to trust people I barely knew.

This sometimes proved problematic and men often had expectations that I was unwilling to meet.

Unfortunately, some men will never understand that “No means no!” and women are always going to have to deal with that.

Luckily, smarts got me through those situations.

I was able to give one overly gropey fellow the slip after yelling “Hey you just loosened my wooden leg!”

And I’m still waiting to use the Alka Seltzer and water trick, where you let loose with some foamy drool.

Sure to stop even the most arduous.

Psychologists say that what men fear most in relationships is the witch who uses her feminine wiles to trap them. And in looking at serial killers; the female variety tend to trap and use poison on intimates, while the male tend to hunt and stalk strangers. Unfortunately, women are more likely to be killed by intimates than by strangers.

Women fear the brute and men the trickster.

In both cases what we fear is a loss of control, but sometimes that's also the very thing that turns you on. Making relationships tricky things. One can never assume that the shy librarian will be docile in the bedroom or that the football jock doesn't long to be tied up.

Relinquishing control is okay if there exists the one thing that any relationship requires and that is trust.

Without that, force will most likely only produce the kind of body tensing fear that nobody likes to feel. And afterall, shouldn't nookie be equated with getting loose?

That kind of fear almost always leads in my case to the fight instinct and when faced with a big strong man it is not always the right approach.

I once used a well aimed kick to end a stream of emotional abuse and was sorry for it afterwards. It made me no better than the abuser. There are 5.3 million women in America that face this dilemma all the time and while I may have fun with fear I would never want to join their ranks.

BUT if love and life were bereft of risk, fun and rides on water slides, what good would it be?

Posted by M. Hannington at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Guardian of the Galaxy

Walkin' down the street, smoggy-eyed;

Looking at the sky, starry-eyed;

Searchin' for the place, weary-eyed;

Crying in the night, teary-eyed;

Don't you know that it's true?

That for me and for you,

The world is a ghetto...

Is it human nature? When we see something with which we are uncomfortable, do we avert our eyes?

This may explain why we sent Kepler looking for an Earth twin in a star cluster 3200 light years away - to avert our eyes.

The $600 million telescope is designed to peer into a star cluster we call Cygna for a planet similar to Earth, a planet with the potential for supporting life as we have come to know it.

A planet so far away may already be dead for all we know. After all, light emanating from Cygna takes 3200 years to reach us. In what seems the ultimate paradox, we are looking 3200 years in the past for a glimpse of what might be our future as a race, as a species. Regardless, the search is on.

Why Cygna? Why look so far away? If a planet capable of supporting life is discovered, it will be unreachable by current technology. We would have to send robots to scout, and had better start now in order to make this a useful endeavor. It will take humans much more than 3200 years to reach any discovered planet.

Wonder when I'll find paradise;

Somewhere there's a home sweet and nice;

Wonder if I'll find happiness;

Never give it up now I guess.



Don't you know that it's true?

That for me and for you,

The world is a ghetto...

The World is a Ghetto - War

If we are looking in earnest for a new address, could we not look for something more practical? If we are able to construct a telescope to view something such a great distance away, are we not also able to turn that lens on our own little home?

Are we capable of such meaningful introspection?

It is true that we have proven ourselves capable of indescribable cruelty and extraordinary neglect.

We have encountered and endured our monsters.

But is that the way of the world? Would we wish this to be the legacy of humankind on this planet?

Yes, we should spruce the place up a bit but, all things considered, this world is still a beautiful place and its people – the vast majority - are inherently and transcendently good.

Were that not true, astronomers would have no need of Kepler; civilization would not have been possible and we would have ceased to exist as a species eons ago.

But we haven’t. Rather, we have proven ourselves equally capable of art and elegance,

of inexplicable ingenuity

and imagination,

and of a remarkable capacity for magnanimity.

We have demonstrated a boundless desire for, and need to, love,

and to laugh.

Perhaps that is the way humans should rather be remembered. Perhaps that is the way of the world…

In any event, if Kepler is successful, and an exodus of the hopeless to that new shining star begins, be assured that some will stay behind to operate the crossing gate,

and that there will be someone here to drive the last train home,
lest humanity becomes yet another, and the last, ghost I have known.

Plant your flower and grow a pearl...

Posted by LITA Staff at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

By M. Hannington

My father was a Major in the Quartermasters Company of the 96th Infantry division, more specifically the Deadeyes, so named because of the division's superior rifle marksmanship. They were involved in the Battle of Leyte and the Battle of Okinawa, receiving Bronze Stars for valor and were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for heroic action during World War II in 2001- awarded only six months before he died - one of only four ever issued. In taking Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, over 12,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and the Japanese referred to this battle as "tetsu no ame" or rain of steel. His job was to oversee the transfer of land vehicles and men from the ships to the island.

He achieved his Masters of Business in only four years at the University of Michigan and would go on to become the comptroller of a Ford plant in Alabama. A plant where black workers weren't allowed to eat in the cafeteria with whites. With the help of Stanley Rosenbaum, a prominent resident of nearby Florence this was soon changed. Whether my father's love of Frank Lloyd Wright started at this time - Rosenbaum owned the only Wright designed house in Alabama - I'll never really know. This was the time of Wallace in a place that was resisting the segregation of schools. The plant was later closed for fear of unionization and our brief four years in the south came to an end. We moved back to Detroit where my father's father had worked in the iron foundries and later also for Ford. Dad retired in the early 80's, spent most of that time designing a new home and then moved away while I was attending Michigan State University and for years he was a diminishing influence in my life.

Dad was smart and confident, a business man through and through. A conservative that us kids would sometimes see as a fuddy-duddy.

Mom followed the music of the times and we kids controlled the radio player in her car. Not so with my father, who typically had a classical station on.

Mom wore a MuMu and shirts with Nehru collars; Roots sandals or Earth shoes and she delighted in my own style of dressing. The African designer Kenzo before he was well known, with his bright colored cloth dresses in amazing shapes, young Danish designers bought at hip little boutiques, whose clothes looked like rags, tight bikini jeans and teeny weenie bikinis.

Dad shook his head or averted his eyes. He was a man solidly in the 1950's. An older father two generations removed from mine.

Mom dealt with our daily lives, our friends and I think sugarcoated some of the unpleasantness.

The night some friends drove me home in my car after a drinking contest and I puked on her feet? She didn't tell my father about that and felt the resultant hangover was punishment enough.

When she caught my friends screwing in my bed one night thinking the family was on a vacation? She came to me about it and it stayed between us.

It's not that I was dishonest with my father exactly, but he seemed to think I was responsible enough to lead a proper life. And he asked few questions during my high school years.

My dad spent his whole life educating me, providing me with books, articles and taking us to historical places. In our extensive travels we never EVER went anywhere without learning the history of the state we were in. And sometimes vacations were strictly educational affairs that us kids hated.

Left home alone since I was eight I had proved capable.

By twelve Dad was no longer kissing me goodnight; I had long ago become too old for that.

When the sex talk finally came it was brief and from Mom and was met with "I know all that!"

This left my teenage years with little advice from my Mom and none from my father, who was totally unaware of the scene - still existing in his 50's world.

I set about discovering who I was at record pace.

Sexually active before all my girlfriends with men much older than I... Their friends later providing me with a myriad of drugs and happily buying my beer... By the time I was sixteen I was drinking in bars in Detroit easily passing for over eighteen.

Mom let me live my life and learn from my mistakes, not really knowing much about my world either. When I held a party at the house, she'd be up at five in the morning to clear the neighborhood of beer bottles. When my friends, who were taking care of the house, were arrested for marijuana possession when a nosey neighbor called the police?

My mom forgave them and refused to press charges.

When I'd creep in at the wee hours of the morning night after night. Dad was always sleeping and Mom in a tearful conversation pleaded with me to at least call when I'd be late and while I lived at home I did.

When the drug use slowed and I began to seriously study the world. Dad watched me turn liberal, a bra-less feminist and a reader of Marxist literature. He no longer knew what to make of me. Switching my degree from advertising to art was the last straw.

His smart, confident, albeit exhibitionistic daughter was now a leather clad, multiple earring-ed, wild haired artist, whose visits to his own vision of a Wright-style home on a Tennessee cliff included topless tanning!

He'd shake my hand hello and no longer hug me.

Our sole connection centered on photography the one hobby we shared and studied. While mom loved the nudes of Imogen Cunningham, my dad's taste ran more towards the nature photographers like Ansel Adams and he preferred Weston's less overtly sexual pieces.

It wasn't until I met Jerry that he had hope that I'd at least be cared for, despite not approving of my living with a man. Never believing that a career in the arts would give me the kind of 1950's type of success he expected from his daughter.

He understood that women now had this freedom, but missed the point that it also meant the freedom to choose what made one happy...

I spent almost twenty years trying to break down the barriers between my dad and I.

We didn't agree on politics, our schools were rivals, but we learned to make political races and college football games topics we could approach with humor and an intelligent understanding of our own spheres of the world. We at long last could talk about sex and love and life.

The day he died I was holding his hand. I had told the doctor to remove the feeding tube and I knew that his organs would begin to shut down, that it wouldn't take long. I sat with a man that for many years I didn't feel I knew, but who had become at the end a great friend.

For a half an hour I told him everything I had left to say. Then I told him the one thing he needed to hear. That I would always take care of mom, he didn't need to worry about that. It was okay to leave us now, we would be okay.

I never knew if he had killed anyone in the war, or even been shot at, if he had had any great loves before he met my mom or if he was ever scared of life. We hadn't gotten that far during our reacquaintance.

The time had past for that.

I could only listen to the change in his breathing and whisper "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.", until that breathing finally stopped.

Human life is complicated and the choices I have made have to do with innumerable influences in my life, but not having a father's advice on relationships, sex and the world of men, at least until towards the end of his life, made a profound difference.

I sought sensitive artistic types, who I felt would understand me and ran from stronger more confident sorts of men, who I thought would seek to control my life. In truth and knowing many of the latter men today, they have always accepted me for who I am and reveled in the paths I have taken in life more so than the others.

Much like my dad did in the end, they've helped me to see my path more clearly.

We may not have seen eye to eye on everything, we agreed to disagree, but he DID finally understand me and not being able to see my life through his eyes these past 7 years has made staying on that path even harder.

Posted by M. Hannington at 07:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

By Bitch Ph.D
Editor's note: This is one part of a long discussion on anonymity, sexuality and academic blogging. You can read profgrrrrl and Graham Leushke's thoughts for more on the debate.

That anonymity discussion is still on my mind too. I am interested in, and bothered by, the fact that so many of us seem to feel somewhat defensive about our decision to blog anonymously. I am put out by the implications in some of the comments over there that somehow anonymous blogging should be beneath academics. I feel compelled to cover up my irritation --i.e., initially acknowledging it only in the comments to profgrrrl's blog rather than over at leushke or on my own blog, and that annoys me too.

And now I have this feeling that, having gotten a couple trackbacks and gotten readers--which I'm very glad for--suddenly I'm "on the radar" and even though I'm anonymous, I feel more constrained about the subject matter I can/should write about here. There are things that are on my mind that now I think don't "belong" on an academic blog--another kind of blog, maybe. And yet, for solid professional reasons including my research area and the whole question of gender and academic identity, I know that these topics can and probably should be addressed; more to the point, I want to write about them. So actually, it isn't I that think they don't belong on an academic blog; I think other people might think that. I started an anonymous blog not just to bitch, but also to talk about these things, and yet now that people are reading the darn thing, I am nervous again. It's heinous.

Having put that out there, no doubt I will talk about some of those things, many of which--as profgrrrl's post implies--have to do with sex and sexuality. So, I started out my comment on her blog (which you are now reading here instead) with a couple of anecdotes: a colleague once told me something I was wearing was "too sexy" to teach in. Another colleague--he was joking, and I took it as such, but still--referred to my "hooker boots" once at a meeting. No, I do not wear fetish wear to work: but I do prefer clothes that are somewhat tailored and/or body-conscious. At my urban Ph.D. institution, this was just fine; I merely looked stylish. Here, at small midwestern town, I get comments. Interestingly, however, the students (grad and undergrad) seem to "get" that style is not the same as a come-on. Occasionally they will compliment my boots, but that is about as far as it seems to go. They merely seem to assume that I live in nearby Big City, and are always surprised when they spot me around town: "oh, you live here??"

Now, I can hear in my mind's ear someone saying, "oh, you think the students get it but I'm sure it's a distraction, especially for the young men, blah blah." But I look at it differently. I've taught now for nearly a decade, and I have had a lot of conversations with students about feminism, women and careers, children and careers, style, fashion, and work/life balance. My sense is that--especially for young women, but also and not unimportantly for young men--seeing a youngish woman standing at the front of the class wearing fashionable red boots and a well-tailored dress is a formidable statement. When that same prof is approachable and friendly--"oh, you like my boots? Thanks, me too. Where did I get them? They were on sale at Nordstrom's last week, you might still find a pair in your size if you go this weekend"--and extremely professional--"ok, enough about clothes for today, let's get started, pop quiz everyone!"--it accomplishes a few things that I think are important.

1. It shows students that feminism is not a dirty word; it is a pity that so many people still hold the "feminists are hairy-legged man haters" stereotype, but the fact is they do, and I think looking femme and being quite open about also being a feminist is not a bad thing to do. Especially since I always nip comments like, "well, but you're not like most feminists" right in the bud, and we talk about fashion, style, social conventions, and how they work. When these discussions come up, I make a point of asking the students to think very hard about whether my "exceptionalism" (i.e., my femme appearance) is not part of why they are, paradoxically, willing to take my feminism more seriously rather than disappearing it as merely sour grapes, and what this says about the continued expectations put on women to look "good" before anything else.

2. I have had tons of feedback from female students on this issue. Impeccably groomed young women tell me they think more critically about why they spend so much time on their appearance, and what the costs and benefits of it are; quiet pretty girls who sit in the back of the class sometimes begin raising their hands and offering surprisingly insightful critiques of misogyny in the texts we're reading (I am thinking in particular of one extremely conservative young woman with manicured nails who got married right after graduating--I recently wrote her a glowing recommendation to graduate school); already politicized community activist types confide after class that they never realized that their disdain for the sorority types was itself a form of internalized sexism.

3. The men, too. They start listening better to the women in class; they point out that fashion is not just a female issue, that achieving the "right" casual guy-type look is also a lot of work; they talk about the various cultural meanings of male fashion (goth, punk, emo, frat boy, jock) and speculate on whether the "hairy feminist" stereotype might not have its parallels for men (e.g., "all frat boys are date-rapists"); they tell me that wow, I thought this was just going to fulfill a distribution requirement, but now I am thinking of taking other courses in X subject, is so-and-so's course next semester any good?

In other words, the sleek boots and tailored clothing help me create a functioning feminist classroom. The private stuff that I fear is "unacademic" is very much a part of my academic identity; the bitching about job stress is a personal and self-indulgent but no less important critique of academic culture. The fact of anonymous academic blogging is itself the object of study; this stuff doesn't belong in a locked diary somewhere, it belongs out there where people can think about it. That so many of us put it out there without our names on it might be perceived, not as a problem, but as a gift.

Posted by LITA Staff at 06:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You Tube Link

Non-Newtonian Liquids

A cornstarch and water mixture, sometimes called oobleck, is an example of a Non-Newtonian Liquid. This is essentially a liquid when at rest, but when agitated it takes on the properties of a solid. Most polymer solutions are non-Newtonian as is blood and ketchup. These fluids' viscosity change under stress and over time. They are difficult to define because not only are there viscosity changes, but at varying rates. Scientists instead use continuum mechanics to study tensor values and use constitutive equations to study the liquids in various states.

Called shear thickening fluids, they are being researched for bullet resistant body armor because they remain liquid and soft until impacted. There are also shear thinning fluids like paint which flow when agitated. These are called pseudoplastic fluids. One example is toothpaste that can be made to flow out of the tube by squeezing, but will set up on a toothbrush and not fall off.

NASA:The Physics of Whip Cream

Not everything in this world is as it seems and without science and curious cooks of old that studied this type of phenomenon we would be in a world without whip cream or pudding and conveniences like toothpaste. Scientists are just beginning to understand shear-thinning liquids and applications of new theories could be of great benefit in developing high-performance oils or to the plastics industry in the molding process.

Posted by M. Hannington at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By M. Hannington

…into the trash.

Running at full steam these days.

Monday. Wednesday. Friday. Short quiet mornings with a little time to think, to read or to write and then it is off to the Y and the races.

Up to the second floor class, 45 minutes in the lounge to write and create, down to the locker where Ms. 91 changes and I bust through a 15 minute workout, out to the pool lounge 30, maybe 40 minutes to work and then to the pool to fetch her for a shower, bust through a 10 minute workout, out of the shower into a handicapped stall to change, bust through another 10 minutes of ab crunches, fix her hair, put on shoes and socks and we are off wheeling home for the making of lunch, doing of dishes and wiping the kitchen down.

Tuesday. Thursday. Free days that have filled with doctor appointments, lab runs and lunches.

Leaving weekends as the only full days to deal with a run down 110 year-old house that needs me too.

A massive list of things to do here that can't be looked at for fear of freezing up in terror at how daunting it is. Armed with the knowledge that it can be done, but only if ticked off a list one at a time.

Everyone that lives in this historic neighborhood understands how a twelve-step program works equally as well on a house.

1. I admit I am powerless over the enlarging plaster cracks and falling stucco, that my life of endless construction has become unmanageable.

2. That only by mediation, yoga, expensive Italian plasterers, or a giving over to all the vast restoration knowledge can bring sanity.

3. Once we have turned over some of this work to painters or neighbors and read the plasterers manual AGAIN can we feel at peace.

4. That water dripping from the ceiling can't just be ignored and the peeling paint must be duly noted and added to the list.

5. We must explain to the electrician that tube and loop wiring may not be modern nor easy, but it is what we have.

And so on…

While coats of plaster dry…

Eight loads of laundry to go. Still sorting through clothes - I have far too many and too little closet space.

How many pairs of paint-stained sweats does a girl really need?

They hit the trash.

And really, splattering paint on my clothes, it's one of my many fortes and I rest comfortably in the knowledge that there will be a new pile soon enough.

The dress I bought on Queen Street in Toronto? A small designer, who made things of fabric that appeared to belong in curtains or upholstery (reminded me of “Gone with the Wind”), it makes me laugh, it stays.

The lime green one? What was I thinking?

The olive green number from Soho's Zoo? Tight, short… why not?

The batik thing, the peasant skirt, a woven suede shirt (Ew!), an aqua blue sweater and every single Christmas and birthday gift for the past five years, ugh, disasters and into a bag for charity they go.

Do people really wear sweaters like this? One in shades that should never coexist with each other, so thick it must weigh 10 pounds and feels more like armor. Another with knit pom-poms everywhere.

I have a confession to make to my gift givers - I don't like red velvet (especially combined with heart-shaped buttons), pom-poms on sweaters have never been my style and I like flowers in my garden not on my clothes.

I have never been a hearts, flowers and pom-pom girl, never will be!

While we are in a confessional mood… I always dress for Halloween, but NEVER EVER do I wear red and green for Christmas or pastels or anything with bunnies or chicks hatching out of eggs on Easter Sunday.

Okay, TWENTY-FIVE caps?

The sports ones are keepers; Red Wings and Yankees, David Bowie Nine Inch Nails, Yahats Oregon, Purple velvet (so Motown), the grey wool is Hip Hop cool, but the ones that advertise?

They go.

That makes ten.

The Aussie hat from the World's Fair? Where I was so drunk on Fosters beer and so fucking mad at Jerry I threatened to jump off a bridge? Good times. I think I'll keep that one.

A whole grocery bag full of hats for the J House boys next door, who are all struggling with one addiction or another and since they also help around my house, the hats will prevent the splattering paint from hitting their hair.

They keep me company during my front porch smoke breaks.

This is a new habit that has worked wonders to end Ms. 91's latest obsession, my cough. Still fighting a nasty cold, my morning smoke starts a barrage of deep-chested hacking coughs that have her convinced I'm not long for this world.

Now she says “Hey you're not coughing so much!” and she's pleased that despite the fact my doctor has confirmed I have working lungs, my death may indeed be postponed for a while.

It's off to the garden, where digging in dirt is joy, but the weeds are getting the best of me. Where things like wheelchairs and a kitchen pig, who glares at me, clearly don't belong. Perhaps it was that same glare that caused Slouchy to leave her in the yard instead of the dumpster bound trash pile I put her in.

Regardless, one doesn't really NEED a kitchen pig does one? Especially one that has seen her day and once Slouch has been safely deposited at the airport for another round of castles and dinners in Merry Olde England, she goes.

There is Slouchy too, who suddenly wants a tan to hide the well-earned age spots, he could use a professional organizer too.

So, the roller derby shirt with the two inch holes, the halogen desk lamps that haven't worked for five years and the kitchen pig- bye bye. You really won't miss them.

It will all get added to the list along with the shower installation, patching of plaster cracks, repairing stucco, painting the kitchen walls, putting a cement stone patio in the low spot by the back deck, fixing the grill, stacks of stuff that may finally sell on Ebay…

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You Tube Link

Seth Meyers Webby Monologue

Seth Meyers is currently the headwriter at Saturday Night Live. He was born in New Hampshire and graduated from Northwestern University in 1994. His career includes stints on Mad TV, That 70's Show, and his current role on SNL began in 2001.

The monologue is a hilarious look at the financial crisis and the internet. Where would we be without the World Wide Web?

Posted by M. Hannington at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By M. Hannington

Their names are Pinky (she likes to dye her hair pink) and Pointy (his winter hat is so tall I wonder if the hair underneath matches).

I see them around all the time, but we have never really interacted. So I have given them names.

Closer to home, there is Chris, who is bi-polar and can’t always get his meds. White and blonde, he says the others sometimes tease him as he waits in a parking lot for day jobs. There is Brother Michael, not quite right, but functional and he comes and goes, but sometimes does yard work for me.

They are all the victims of another recession at another time when many of the states mental institutions were closed. They survive on the odd job, return money from bottles found and the handout.

They have for years.

From 1987 until the mid-90’s I had a regular bottle man. He would come and collect my returns once a week. An alcoholic, he lived with family and in and out of shelters for most of his adult life. I'll never forget the paper-like feel of his hands and the scars that he said came from sleeping outside.

Clean for many months, he was finally able to, with a relative, get a home of his own. I never saw a happier man.

He died shortly afterwards.

You wouldn’t have known that he was only 58 years old.

In downtown Detroit the panhandlers are different now.

They introduce themselves and shake your hand. They tell you their stories. The overused "I'm just trying to get bus fare home.", is a thing of the past. I'm curious if this is because they are so new to the game, the politeness? Or is there a sense that we are more connected.

All of us in the same boat…

On a recent trip to the Detroit river front, Red Sox Steve and I ran across half a dozen men fishing for Walleye, which is in season from March until June. Many of them are elderly and in scooters having been dropped off for the day by family or perhaps navigated the long dirt path to the river on their own.

Owen Park looks more neglected than usual, it is only half mowed and in the place of the oil drums painted kelly green that serve as trash cans are instead piles of trash. It is typically empty on weekdays and it's a rare sight to see so many men out fishing during the work week. One wonders if this is a new way for them to put food on the table. How long can you survive on fish and unemployment? Are they destined for the streets too?

There are the lucky ones. If you can call it that.

Like the man in the wheelchair, who worked 8 Mile Road for a decade. 8 Mile has long been known as a dividing line between wealthy white suburbanites and poor urban blacks. The wheelchair was a prop, an aid to making a living. He was hit by a car that broke both his legs and his arm. He walks with a limp now, but the insurance company paid a nice fat settlement and he is living large.

My neighbor's sister. On the street with her son, unwilling to reach out to family. Now stricken with cancer and fighting to live. She has found them and a home again.

What will it be like a year from now. Ten years from now?

Where will these people call home?

Under Governor Engler's term (1991 - 2003) homelessness nearly doubled in the city of Detroit.

The Engler administration closed 10 of the state’s 15 psychiatric hospitals (more than any other state). Hundreds of mentally ill patients were turned over to understaffed support groups across the state and city of Detroit. In 2003, the 1,200 bed Northville Psychatric hospital, operating since 1950 was closed after State employees there were offered lucrative retirement packages. The sale of the land and hospital netted the state 31.5 million.

According to a 2003 article in Psychiatric News:

A study by Michigan Department of Community Health found a 50 percent rate of mental illness and a 34 percent rate of serious mental illness among jail inmates in three counties, while an older study, with which Michigan State University was involved, revealed that at least 20 percent of state prison inmates had serious mental illness.

At the time the State reported only 6% of inmates required mental health care.

Over 75% of the U.S. homeless live in cities.

In recent times there has been a shift in those seeking shelter from single adult men to the working poor and families. 50% of the homeless have jobs, but are unable to afford housing. 23% of those sleeping in COTS emergency shelters in Detroit are children. Nationally 56% of persons from homeless families are children under ten.

MSHDA estimated 15,928 homeless persons in Detroit in 2006 with about 11% or 1,856 of those being among the chronically homeless, most of these are either mentally ill or addicts.

Current estimates by Detroit area charities now put the number of those living rough on the streets at 13,000.



On June 1st, 2009 GM filed for bankruptcy citing a debt of 172 million dollars. It is estimated that 20,000 Union workers will lose their jobs because of the filing. It remains to be seen what the real impact of the bankruptcy will have on the City of Detroit, but as of November 2010 GM began hiring in earnest.

Photos by Mary Lee Hannington ©2009

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By Matthew Storey

I was born in August 1963. In Manhattan.

My Mom and Dad, both born in 1940, grew up in Texas.

Mom, the pianist and voracious reader, was a sensitive soul. She was the 3rd child of 4 born to John, a physician and Olivia. Papa's little girl lost her dad when she was 7, and my Mom lost her window to a world beyond Texas. The 3 kids and a pregnant Olivia, moved in with my Great-Grandmother, Alice, the widow of a prominent Dallas Baptist Pastor, who had a strained relationship with my Mom's Papa. Once the baby was weaned, Olivia went to work in the rough and tumble world of Corporate Energy and Alice, at 63, took over the care of 3 young kids and an infant. An educated woman who had been the wife of a brilliant man, Alice, was nonetheless a devout Southern Baptist who had little time for the curiosities of a pretty little girl who'd always favored her father and chafed at moving from the top to the bottom of the family pecking order.

Mom retreated into her books and the Piano and entered Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, it was the fall of 1954...

Dad was a Motorcycle racer and gifted Artist. The son of Lewis, a Home Builder and Nita, an artistic soul overwhelmed by the conventions of Texas life and the responsibilities of being a wife to her traditional husband and mother to her four boys. My Dad, the oldest by 7 years, gradually became the confidant of his Mom, as she slipped into Alcohol and Mental Illness and away from her life as Wife and Mother. She fired his soul with love of Art and Music and a passion for a life that was unattainable in 1950's Texas. Dad straddled the reality of his boyhood and the possibility of a world beyond, channeling the disconnect into his studies and his Artwork. He too was a student at Good Ole Woodrow...

These two kids, from difficult home environments, who loved Art, Literature, Music...and were horrified at the racism, violence and fundamentalism all around them...gravitated to one another and after High School, headed first to Baylor University in Waco and then to Los Angeles, where my Dad enrolled at Pasadena's Art Center College and Mom went to work. After LA, they made their way back to Texas, and then on to Manhattan where the Art Director's, Advertisers, Publishers and Galleries were and Dad began his illustration career. The whole world seemed to be opening up...Manhattan, 1963, Camelot and JFK...as far away from Dallas as it was possible to be and still be in America.

In August, their son was born (the large head on the VG logo), two weeks before Martin Luther King spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Monument...it was must have been intoxicating, the sense of promise and progress, a repudiation of what they'd grown up despising and a celebration of that which they'd only dreamed might be possible.

Then Dallas happened.

Again.

In November.

The Handsome, Urbane, Sophisticated JFK was gone. In his place, a man who could have been one of the attendee's at Grandpa Rogers (Alice's husband) services at Ross Avenue Baptist or a client of Lewis's. A good man, LBJ, but a Texan born and a man of that world - the world they'd left had returned, the city they'd fled had killed their hero, their broken hearts were only two of uncounted millions.

On Christmas Eve, 1963, my Dad's mom, Nita, drank garden poison and left her suicide note to my Dad, she'd disapproved of my Mother, who she felt was beneath his station and was horrified by my birth, which she saw as cementing the mistake. Lewis sent money so Dad could fly home to see Nita in the hospital, but she was gone. Mom and I remained in Manhattan and waited for my Dad to return.

Decades later, in a 1996 Interview with San Francisco Weekly, Dad would describe the events of 1963 as the formative experiences of his life and work. The death of JFK. The loss of his mother.

There was no mention of a son born that year, or the woman who'd been his wife.

In a very real sense, the man who'd been my Dad never did return from burying his mom and his President. My mother, who'd lost her first love when her Papa died, freaked out as she watched her husband retreat from their relationship and home, and, by 1967, Dad left Mom and I for a woman we knew who lived across the courtyard of our Kips Bay apartment complex.

I played with her kids. One day he was my dad, the next he was theirs.

I was three years old.

Mom took one page from her own Mother and got to work on taking care of us, and one from her Mother in Law by descending into pills and booze when the hurt got too deep. She was a bright, vibrant woman of 27, with a 3 year old, who'd lost the only two people she'd ever counted on. We detoured to Texas for a year, where my Mother's sister explained that she'd 'lost her husband' and became a pariah.

It was 1968.

The broken hearted progressives who'd lost their champion in JFK could never warm to LBJ, they lurched to RFK, and watched him gunned down, they flirted with McCarthy and insured Nixon, the same man that JFK had beaten back in 1960. Camelot was dead. Grandma was dead. Mom and I were miserable in Dallas and Dad was remarried back in Manhattan. The dreams we held were the deadest things of all.

Mom chose to leave Texas, chose to marry Dad, chosen 'that life' and failed...a year later, we returned to our real home and I grew up in Manhattan, with my single mom - two damaged kids trying to care for one another. Dad lived with his new family, had a son with his new wife and fought in court with my Mom over Child support for me. We'd meet for weekend visits and they'd tear into one another on the street outside our 21st Street apartment. We'd hang out at Dad's places, first in Brooklyn, than Connecticut and I'd be dying inside and my Dad would ask me things like 'why hasn't your Mom remarried?' - which, to someone who lived with the broken woman in my house, seemed like the cruelest of cruelties.

Dad and I were not close.

Life went on. I boarded a plane at 12 to visit my Dad for the summer in LA, excited to be a kid flying alone, but also dreading the experience of being with my Stepmother, who I was scared of. I'd grown into a dynamic kid, extremely well read and informed, a gifted athlete and a curious lover of books, comics, skateboards, music, animals...I was hopeful that my Dad would see how much I had going for me and would help me get that feeling I'd been missing, of having a DAD in my life.

I walked off the plane and my dad greeted me with his 2 stepkids, the son he'd had with her, a strange woman and a red headed kid I didn't know.

He said 'Matt, I'd like you to meet my new family'.

I'd long since learned to roll with changes that might seem bizarre to other kids. I met the 'new family' and was relieved to find the 3rd wife was a terrific person, who had a handle on what I'd been through and made time for me, where the 2nd wife (like my Grandmother) had always seen me through a prism of who my Mother was. Dad was busy, a thriving career and juggling two families on the West Coast, it was not going down the way I dreamed. But it was cool in its own way, I loved Skateboarding down the Hollywood Hills and into downtown, buying comics and checking out street scenes so different than the ones I was accustomed to.

Dad and his new family moved back to Kips Bay, which meant my neighborhood, and we had a period of relative normalcy in that we saw each other regularly and formed somewhat of a relationship. I was a teenager now, a smart, damaged kid who spent my after-school time playing ball and hanging out with my working-class buddies on the streets. I was the sort of ballplayer who was able to play with the men, and the men drank and drugged after games, I joined in and picked up habits that would alter the trajectory of my life. Habits that had similarly afflicted my Grandmother, my Dad's brother and my mom.

Dad broke up with his 3rd wife, after the birth of his 3rd son, and lived for a time in a studio on Mercer street in the Village. I'd breeze in from my escapades and find him working hard on his art, preparing lesson plans for his art students or meet new women in his life. He married again, and moved to San Francisco, and we didn't see each other for a decade. I got engaged in 1993 to a woman who I'd been dating since 1985, my Dad wondered how I would be dealing with her Catholicism, a question that I bitterly resented when he posed it but one that turned out to be prophetic when it came down to discussions of having children and where we might live. We never married.

In 1996, I was dealing with the fallout of several bad decisions I'd made in business and my mom suggested that I should go spend time with my Dad in San Francisco. I picked up and moved to SF to live with Dad five days after Christmas, 1996. Dad had a wonderful little apartment in the shadow of Coit Tower, with a little porch in the back for me to sleep in...I took it slow, worked on my business goals during the day and my fitness through the various 12 Step programs I required and the little Y in Chinatown. We did our best, as two adult men, to form a bond and succeeded to some degree. But after only a few months, his 4th Wife, who now was a trusted friend, began to appear more and more in the apartment and it became clear I was cramping dad's style. He was amiable and kind, it just wasn't the lifestyle he loved - having to be a care giving parent to a child of 32, who'd been aching for that care for almost three decades. The re-run rejection had a predictable impact, I met a woman and moved in with her, then got a place in The Mission and dad went back to the life he'd known.

We lived in the same city, but we never got together.

I moved back East in '98, first to Miami, then Westchester and back to Manhattan in 2003. Dad lives in San Francisco with his once and current wife, teaches Illustration at two different colleges and has a career in Illustration and another in music and performance art. His brilliance has been reflected in generations of devoted students who themselves have gone on to glittering careers in the Art world. Dad has combined his unmatched ability as a draftsmen with his searching, probing intellect to generate an incredible body of work.

We speak on the phone occasionally, typically when I've had too much wine and need a break from writing. Dad is kind and genuine, its good to talk to him and to share our views on matters that matter.

Last week, my roommate, Erin, told me I'd received an e-mail from my dad's companion, it was an invitation to a Lecture Dad was giving at the launching of his featured show this summer at The Society of Illustrators. The Society is located on 63rd Street, between Lexington and Park Avenues.

I know this because I am a Dogwalker, and I walk my beloved Chester right in front of the Society every single day of the year. My walk down the block is filled with conversations with doormen, hot dog vendors, embassy employees, event planners, other dog owners...it's my backyard.

Today, when I walked by, the front of the Society was flanked by two placards announcing my Dad's show, 'Life After Black: The Visual Journals of Barron Storey'.

I took a cellphone picture of the exterior signs, and I tried to go inside to get one of the announcement cards. The door was locked, labeled 'Private' and the two women inside acted as if I wasn't there, perhaps put off by my Yankees Backpack? My High-Top Converse Sneakers?

They knew right away, this was not a place I belonged.

Dad and I will get together, we'll have a meal or a chat. I think he realizes I won't be making the show.

I'm not the sort of fellow you'll find at an opening, for the same reasons it wouldn't make sense to bring my Dad to the Yankee game I enjoy, or to sit in the Grandstand at Belmont Park, or lay out on Long Beach...we're different men.

And there's the political tenor of his work as well. I respect EVERYONE's right to believe what they wish and to express that belief as they see fit. That right, however does not extend to doing so in my presence. Dad's the same way. He wishes me well here at VagabondGuru.com and understands that, for me, these columns and these rooms are my journals. But we disagree on much, and communicate to audiences in our own ways.

If you know me or have read my work, you know there are two rooms you never want to invite me to.

The first being the sort of rooms my Texas family favor, where the crowd is Anti-Immigrant and Pro-'Life', where homophobia, anti-semitism, anti-catholicism and feudalism are gospel and Progressive, secular, bisexual, stoners from New York City are the 'Bad Guys'.

You know. Guys like me.

Invite me to that sort of room, and fights will ensue.

The other room, which I suspect might develop for my Dad's opening, is a place where the group consciousness runs towards Anti-Capitalist and Pro-Palestinian. Here, the folks known as 'Them' are financial speculators who engage in global currency and equity deals for profit, people who fill their leisure time with spectator sports, moderate progressives who are Pro-Israel and hawkish on Islam.

You got him. That's me, right here.

In this sort of room, the disagreement is more cordial, no fighting. But the disconnect is heartbreaking, and the distance no less firm.

Every son wants to look up to his Father, and to feel that his Dad would do anything, pay any price, make any sacrifice, for him. I've watched Red Sox Steve's Dad these last few years and I've seen what that looks like.

Every Wife hopes her Husband will find joy in devotion to his family and sublimate himself to their care and her happiness.

Every Father wishes his son will grow to share his values and appreciate the choices he has made.

But most of us will never live those lives. The next time you hear someone say that we need to re-stigmatize single parenthood, I hope you will remember the story you just read. Single parents happen, and not just in the ghetto. For every black or hispanic family dealing with this situation, there are three white families dealing with the exact same circumstance. I've got a picture of Mom, Dad and I, circa 1965, and you could easily be looking at a snapshot of Marilyn Quayle's fantasy life (ewwwwwww!).

Doesn't matter. There is no such thing as 'looking the part', only 'living your ideals' and, when your ideals don't match the circumstance, its time to go. Regardless of the situation left behind.

My mom and dad married before they knew who they were.

Each other.

Themselves.

They saw and experienced things in LA and NYC that were beyond the expectations they had when they bonded back at Woodrow Wilson High. It happens. It always will. You cannot and SHOULD not legislate those relationships and you can never make a man stay and provide for a family that he no longer believes in. When you read this, you are reading the story of people who MADE it through, but two of them did so with scars so deep, their lives were never what they might have been.

Tough. That's life. We all had chances to move on and make our own way, and two of us were not able to make the transition. There is ZERO value in demonizing the person who makes a change. There is PLENTY of value in figuring out a system in extracting cash from the departing parent while it STILL MATTERS - the State of California finally came for my dad's income while I was living with him, in 1996, and on behalf of his then, 25 year old son, from his second marriage to a woman who had killed herself the year before. They collected half his pay, but the money went to the State - not the children or wives who went without decades before. What is the point of that?

The point that DOES matter is to make sure that the sorts of kids who can make it out of these family dramas intact do not have to be the sorts who are so gifted they will then make it all the way to the White House.

All kids deserve a real chance at life and as many helps and pushes along the way as it takes, let's put ourselves towards the answers.

Posted by Matthew at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

By Bitch Ph. D

1. Here's an awesome memorial to George Tiller: the George Tiller Memorial Abortion fund.

The George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund will provide assistance to the same women Dr. Tiller served: women seeking abortions in their second-trimesters, women facing extreme obstacles to abortion, and women who often must travel from their homes to obtain the abortion care they need. The Fund will assist with the cost of the procedures as well as the costs of travel and lodging. Notably, this Fund will be available to patients of the late Dr. Tiller's clinic, Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, at such time when the clinic is able to regroup and reopen.

You can donate at the link.

2. Dana at EotAW breaks down some stats on third-trimester abortions. Be sure and read the comment thread, too, where North breaks them down even further and offers an anecdote that demonstrates how really, really difficult it can be to obtain a needed late abortion. (Illustrating, I hope, why the fund linked above is so important.)

3. Interesting essay about the science of life and how it helps redefine the abortion debate. I really like the conclusion, that

If the social and political arrangement of a group puts stress on the autonomy of its individual responsible members (which ours does, and I like it that way), deciding what the criteria are for being judged an “individual responsible member” is of primary importance. Who gets to vote? Who gets to drive a car? Who decides when to unplug the respirator? Who is of “sound mind”? Who is a person?

and I think it's a challenging question for feminists and progressives of a certain stripe (including me) who do, actually, think that we overemphasize autonomy in some arenas.

4. I missed this piece at TAPPED last week, about the conservative case for Affirmative Action. Really well put.

The conservative freakout over Sotomayor's remarks, as opposed to the way Alito's were marketed as a selling point for him as a judge, makes a remarkably salient case for why we still need affirmative action. Two judges made similar points--one was an Italian American man, the other was a Latino woman, both accomplished on the bench--but what was sold as a strength for Alito makes Sotomayor a racist. Taylor and Buchanan, while attacking Sotomayor, have inadvertently made the case for a policy they'd like to see eliminated, by proving that all things being equal, a minority woman is held to a different standard than the white man of similar background and experience.

5. Another jaw-dropping statement that belies conservative squawking about the racism of noticing race. Yes, I know these are a dime-a-dozen, but this one is a real doozy: according to Manny Miranda, Hispanics think just like everyone else. We’re not like African-Americans. We think just like everybody else.

6. After reading all that, how about a little dessert?



You Tube Link

Book 2.0

Posted by LITA Staff at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You Tube Link

George Carlin "It's Bad for Ya"

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. – George Carlin

Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! ... most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don't realize there's such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don't recognize a good show when they see one.
– George Carlin

George Carlin was born in 1937 to Mary Beary and Patrick Carlin. His mother, who left his father when Carlin was only two months old, raised him in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights. Carlin would later refer to the neighborhood as White Harlem.

Carlin, who died almost a year ago has won five Grammies and his seven dirty words were a main focus of the U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation in which the justices confirmed the government’s right to regulate public airwaves.

This video is from his last HBO Special "It’s Bad for Ya” for which the working title was “Parade of Bullshit”. It was filmed only four months before he died of heart failure at the age of 71. He was awarded a grammy for this show and the Mark Twain Prize for Humor posthumously.

Posted by M. Hannington at 06:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By M. Hannington

For more than 30 years I have meditated and practiced Hatha yoga.

Breathing in the joys of my life and blowing away the bad, the anger. I can relax my third eye, feel my other two (no longer needed) sink back in their sockets, and make my hands as lifeless as an empty pair of gloves. The breathe slows pushed gently in and out from the stomach, heart and pulse faint and stress streams away through the hips, thighs, then calves and out my toes.

In this state I feel a great connection to the Earth and everything on it. There is great peace in this knowledge - to know that my actions today will be felt and why the wisdom of this “Tao Te Ching” saying is so profound:

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people
And doesn’t reject anyone.
She is ready to use all situations
And doesn’t waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.

If you are going to explore you can't have a timetable, if you are going to learn you must throw away pre-conceived notions, and to really create is an instinctual process. If you are open to all things, you will automatically follow the right path and teach with your actions.

Lao-tzu, a contemporary of Confucius, wrote the Tao Te Ching in the sixth century and my copy is well worn, warped from long sessions spent with it and a steaming tub. Its translations are second in popularity to the bible and mine is a favorite by Stephen Mitchell. Tao means The Way and in 81 short chapters the book shows how the Master (a practitioner of the Tao) by doing nothing or wu wei accomplishes everything. It applies to raising children, sexual love, government, business, ecology, and just plain living.

What to make of an ancient book that at first glance seems to be offering as its main treatise a paradox?

Practice not doing,
and everything will fall into place.

Great athletes understand this concept better than anyone.

When a baseball player is on a hitting streak or golfer can’t miss, they refer to being in “The Zone”. They are no longer thinking about their swing or making adjustments, it just happens.

The same goes for artists. I didn’t really learn to draw until I stopped looking and DEFINING what was in front of my eyes, but let my hands reproduce what was REALLY there, the light and shadow.

It was a Zen Buddhist, a professor of life drawing that taught me his “way”. I would draw for hours and he would come and take my shammy cloth and wipe it away. It was the act of drawing life and not the drawing itself that was important. He taught us the patterns of life; how the wrist and the arm could draw perfect circles, that the study of anatomy was unnecessary to understanding the human form in a visual way.

No one person is the same.

His studio with its soft light, simplicity and hovering Japanese kites was one of the most peaceful places I have ever been.

In the 1980’s I was looking inward. My paintings were abstract expressions of what I was feeling. Expressed in horizontal and vertical lines and rendering my emotions into small areas of tension on a broad canvas. They would later become black paintings, where only texture and a slight shift in color or gloss whispered of my joy or darkness or pain.

The nineties were a huge period of growth; animation, technology, special effects and film let me explore and create in new ways that I’d never thought possible. Everything I had learned and studied in the eighties came into play for the first time. It was as if I could do anything I opened my mind to... in The Zone.

But I never forgot my minimalist past.

I was in San Francisco in 1992 and a married friend took me to a swank new bar that had the murals of some hot new Neo-Gauguinesque painter. They perhaps thought the hip, artsy place that they had discovered would impress me.

I wasn’t exactly comfortable there. My favorite hang at the time was Honest? John’s Bar and No Grill, which was run by former convict John Thompson and had missing linoleum tiles on the floor. A dump, but full of great characters and far more real than the opulent SF bar could ever be.

Not realizing I was being rude, I commented that I wasn’t into the new primitivist artist (flavor of the month) and at the moment I was still in love with Minimalism. The man’s wife was visibly crestfallen and my friend ridiculed my admiration of Ad Reinhardt, who I had discovered on a recent trip to MOMA in NYC.

"Oh no, not the man that does the black paintings?"

I could stare in marvel at those late 1960’s black paintings with their slight shifts in texture and tone. I completely understood his path to ever-simpler expressions. It was so like my own. He was one of the kindred spirits that shouted out to me and made me say, “Yes, he gets it!”

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Ad Reinhardt’s minimalist path had taken him to painting a black square. To him the most nominal form of expression.

In following the Tao life is stripped of complications, in harmony with the world you can just be without trying. It is easier said than done and I'm on and off that path constantly - losing my way to find it again.

Never more than at this time have I felt more in sync with the world. Though I won’t see it in my time, it seems possible that one day the population of this tiny blue dot in space will stop struggling for what they can’t have and realize what is.

In reading the third chapter of the Tao Te Ching, I see for the first time, in what seems like eons, these principles being applied in America and it suddenly seems like a new world where anything is possible again.

If you over esteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

The Master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything,
they know everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

The above photographs were taken from the 3030 Press book "New Photography in China".

Posted by M. Hannington at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

By Amba

Robert Anton Wilson, quoted by Commenter "Nick" at Church of the Churchless:

DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING

This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as "the Copenhagen Interpretation," because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal."

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

Resonates with this:

One of Universism’s goals is to see if the opposite of faith, uncertainty, can be embraced with the same fervor people have for religious certitudes. If we can replace humankind's dangerous urge toward blind faith with a commitment to an ongoing quest, or at least a steadfast open-mindedness, the world will be much better off.

People would behave in strikingly different ways if they were not certain of the unproven beliefs that faiths promulgate. People who question look at the world more attentively, and at their fellow searchers more forgivingly.

Resonates with this:

God Without Religion offers a way for individuals to discover and define God on their own rather than accepting the interpretation of a particular religious doctrine. Instead of providing answers about God as organized religions do, the book encourages readers to explore their ideas of God by asking a series of questions that ultimately expand their sense of identity. I call this "worshiping by wondering." Wonder is the gateway to spiritual knowledge. The more questions we ask about the nature of God, the more profound the answers will be, leading to deeper questions which broaden our perceptions and expand our sense of self. Constantly challenging our conclusions and refining our knowledge of God promotes the deep spiritual growth needed to transcend the violence so prevalent in the world today.

Resonates with this:

“Outsiders” have all the same human needs [as traditionalists] -- for community, for a conceptual operating system, for metaphysical and not just physical shelter -- but they find themselves unable to deny the central fact of our time: that all the old certainties are being destroyed by two great new transforming forces, science and globalization. (Science is now evolving so fast it’s trashing its own certainties.) To defend any crumbling fortress of certainty today is to go to war not only with the defenders of other certainties, but with reality itself. The reality is that we’re being hurled back to square one, to a naked primordial unknowing face to face with the universe that challenges us to rediscover it from the ground up. [ . . . ]

But the same forces that are stripping away the answers are equipping us as never before to live in the open questions. When you swear exclusive allegiance to no one tradition, their multiplicity is no longer a threat but a vast resource: the record of over 10,000 years of research, a grand reference library for the study of reality [ . . . ]

The crucial divide, as this new millennium opens, isn’t “God or Not” [ . . . ] It’s between those who are sure they know the answers (or know the only place to find the answers) and those who are living the questions. This could actually prove to be a matter of life and death. Daring not to know may be the only way humans will survive our nuclear-armed reunion, because it’s ignorance and wonder that unite us. Even two groups of people who are killing each other over their answers have the same questions.

Is it fair to say this -- humanity moving, in Elaine Pagels' words, Beyond Belief -- is one of the central emerging memes of our time? However, here is the great danger:

In any situation, moral judgments are the sole responsibility of those involved. Every decision and behavior occurs in the context of unique circumstances and relationships, and should never be subjected to universal religious codes or absolute philosophical principles. "Good or evil" is a false choice that belies the complexity of our universe and the people in it.

Or, as quoted by Robert Anton Wilson, whom this post began with:

Nothing is true. All is permitted.
~ Hasan i Sabbah

NOT.

The central emerging question of our time that shadows this meme is: Can we who enshrine uncertainty and wonder avoid being arrogant in our doubt? Can we dethrone our own personal, convenient, self-permissive interpretation of the "truth" when the objective evidence of experience contradicts it, in replicable experiments repeated countless times down the millennia? Can we have the humility to admit that that objective evidence (which you can obtain for yourself at any time by flapping your arms and falling on your ass) often coincides with the core wisdom, the timeless part of many traditions?

Basically the two halves of the book project I'm working on -- the yes-but. From the proposal:

We are at a crossroads between two very different kinds of uncertainty. One is uncertainty as humility in the face of the tough task of figuring out what’s best. The other is uncertainty as carte blanche to “create your own reality” and decide what’s best -- for you.

I want us to go with humility.

When it comes to metaphysics, we really don’t know. When it comes to morals, we do. Buddhism doesn’t posit a God, yet it’s in agreement with Judeo-Christian tradition that you shouldn’t kill, lie, steal, or screw around, and in agreement with Islam that you shouldn’t get drunk or stoned. There’s a purported Native American story circulating on the Web (as yet unauthenticated) about the “two wolves fighting within” –“the one that wins is the one you feed” -- that corresponds exactly to the Jewish idea of the yetzer ha-ra and the yetzer ha-tov, the inner inclinations to natural selfishness and spiritual kindness. This suggests that good and evil do express something about the “inherent nature of the universe,” or at least about our inherent nature and experience.

Throughout the human heritage -- our “grand reference library for the study of reality” – we find the insight that morality, in its essentials, is objective. It’s not a matter of “should,” it’s a matter of “is.” Experience has proven, over and over again, the truth of consequences: “If you do x, you get y.” And these reproducible experimental results, which have great predictive power, are summed up in the set of axioms called “wisdom.” Wisdom is the science of the spirit.

For example, just as one of the basic laws of Newtonian physics is “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” one of the basic laws of moral physics is “What goes around comes around.” Or as Martin Luther King put it: "The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." In the East, that’s called the Law of Karma; in the West it’s “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for as ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Don’t kid yourself: the universe is not a blank slate for your will to write on. You’re perfectly free to try to bend its laws, but it’s you who will break. You could try living “free from universal truths” like the law of gravity, too. Only in dreams and in fantasies like “The Matrix” can we fly unaided.

Embedded in the time-dated customs and myths of every tradition is a core of timeless truth about what works and what doesn’t. Spiritual nomads go for that core. They don’t restrict themselves to one tradition any more than scientists will only study science done in one country. The point is to bring together the truest and most lifesaving information about reality. So spiritual nomads deliberately take their moral compass from all points of the compass.

That resonates with this:

Cosmopolitans believe in universal truth, too, though we are less certain that we already have all of it. It is not skepticism about the very idea of truth that guides us; it is realism about how hard the truth is to find. One tenet we hold to, however, is that every human being has obligations to every other. Everybody matters: that is our central idea. And again, it sharply limits the scope of our tolerance.

And with this:

The Open Source Truth Process aims to ensure that the Yoan Community's core writings and beliefs will evolve over time, as everyone—based on each person's own direct experience of Reality—is invited to provide input and improvements. Through this process, participants will gradually uncover, refine, and document the Truth.

By "Truth" we simply mean the clearest expression of a system of ideas and beliefs that is most consistent with Reality as it is directly experienced. Ours is a truth that you can test and experience directly, with your own senses and mind. Our truth is not based on narrow human authority (dogma, received wisdom, and "imposed truths"). Rather, it is based on the broad authority of the collective, human experience of being-in-the-world, i.e., the human experience of reality. [ . . . ]

Our Truth Process depends on the increasing involvement of many people with diverse life experiences. Only through such diversity will our truths always be improving.

Amba has been a freelance critic, writer and author since 1969, has written for nearly every major women's magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Village Voice and The Nation.
Ambivablog

Posted by LITA Staff at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)