Extraordinary Discourse

What can I say? The link is on my feed reader now. Podcast themes (or would they be topics, with mashups one is never quite sure) work and the workplace (The World Owes You A Living 1 & 2) and knowledge (The Twisted Hairs Rhizome, Fractal Documentary, Delectables for Autodidacts) both relate to interests I blog and curate content about. There are more. I could blog selections on The New Faculty Majority (work, learning), Work and Life (more work) and Computers Language Writing (knowledge, learning). I may eventually. For now, c'est pour la flâneuse...

Jack Saturday explains in the header, "Extraordinary Discourse has been long in preparing. I offer a multi-voiced thought adventure, around an hour a week. Its many themes converge in the theme of Play" and quotes Whitman, "Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Kairos lays out the plan in succinct detail and less playfully....

"Extraordinary Discourse" is the latest project of Canadian audio and new media artist Jack Saturday, previously best known for an enormous sound-collage called "The World Owes You a Living" which was self-published on 6 CDs back in about 2005.

His technique is to harvest thousands of short sound-bites from the infosphere - from pundits and commentators, from interviews with ordinary people, and sometimes from films or TV shows - then stitch them together into king-size sound-quilts. As the title "The World Owes You a Living" suggests, there is a polemical slant to his work: he's a millenialist who believes that there is plenty of wealth to go round and that we could all be leading fulfilling and meaningful lives, but that society has been rigged to keep both wealth and self-fulfillment in the hands of a priveleged few.

The resulting work is full of both visionary hope and libertarian outrage, but it's also full of artistic inventiveness, kaleidoscopic variety, humour and fun. "Extraordinary Discourse" takes the form of a series of podcasts - twenty-nine to date - built on an even larger scale than "The World Owes You a Living" and incorporating all the material from that earlier project. Check them out. His is a voice well worth hearing, particularly right now.

Extraordinary Discourse" by Jack Saturday, Kairos

Broadsided: Responses: Japan Earthquake and Tsunami 2011

RESPONSES

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami 2011

At Broadsided, we believe that art and literature belong in our daily lives. We believe they are not just decoration, but essential communication. They inspire and they demonstrate the vitality and depth of our connection with the world.

Moved by the plight of post-tsunami Japan, Broadsided artist Yuko Adachi sent us the image "Love Heals Japan" (see right) and asked if we would help her find writing to accompany it. We were inspired by her idea, and decided to ask other Broadsided artists if they had been similarly moved and, if so, if they'd be willing to share their work.

We posted that art, and asked writers to respond. Below are the collaborations that resulted, as well as a short note from the writers and artists about this process. We hope that you will download, print, and share these with your community.

Yuko has created a high-quality giclee print of her collaboration with Hugh Martin. You can purchase it on Etsy. All proceeds will go to the relief effort in Japan.

Click each image below for the pdf; scroll down for more information about each collaboration.

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"How Love Heals" Yuko Adachi & Deborah Fried-Rubin Download the pdf (352kb) Artist Yuko Adachi is a Tokyo-born artist who was raised in Japan, Paris, London, and the United States of America. She has been painting since she was a little girl and has been showing her works through solo and selected group shows internationally. Her painting was featured for the cover of Artscope, New England's Cultural Magazine (May/June 2007) and Takara Magazine, the Japanese Culture and Information Magazine in New England (2007 issues). In 2007, her work was awarded best in painting for "Healing Power of Art" by Manhattan Art International. Today, she lives and works in Boston. In 2010, she opened an artist studio store, "Planet MOMEKO," in Rpckport, MA. www.yukoadachi.com. Writer Deborah Fried-Rubin is a second year graduate student in the Queens College MFA program, pursuing an interest in poetry after many years of practicing law. A recipient of Queen's College's Silverstein-Peiser Award for Poetry, her work has appeared in Why I Am Not A Painter, an anthology of MFA poetry from the NYC area, published by Argos Books. She lives on Long Island with her husband and three children. QUESTIONING OUR RESPONSES Why did this piece of art resonate for you or seem like it would give you an avenue into writing about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Deborah Fried-Rubin: Yuko Adachi's beautiful work automatically conveyed to me an image of one world, both fractured and unified. The lines reaching to circles illustrated trajectories of trauma engaging people across the globe, making the pain of one the pain of many. But the lines can also be seen as shooting from a place of brightness to reach circles of suffering. This back-and-forth reading reinforced the connectivity for me. The work also reminded me instantly of the kabbalistic concept of "shattered vessels" which humanity heals by acts of kindness, as well as teachings by the Ben Ish Chai, regarding the world as an orb spinning in space, constantly returning light to dark places. Yuko's saturated colors, both innocent and textured, felt like a hope for deeper understanding. Why did this visual response come to mind when thinking about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Yuko Adachi: I wanted to create an image that is positive, gentle and healing for Japanese people and to those who purchse this print. The reddish bubbles are love energy that is being sent to Japan and the circle represents the Japanese flag as well as the earth energy and the ray of light shining upon it, to indicate that the sun will rise again! The suffering that Japan is experiencing aches my heart to the point of numbness but I want to thank you for your support and love that you are sending to Japan. We feel it! What do you think is the role of art in regards to real-world, real-time events? In other words, what makes a "successful" occasional or political piece of writing or art? Deborah Fried-Rubin: I hope art helps us make sense of the emotional content of "world" events, and shows us how to relate in our private capacities to make a cumulative impact. Because everything is ultimately reducible to millions upon millions of individuals, the best "political" poem is a personal one, with heart in it. Yuko Adachi: An agile creative response with a purpose to the event that opens up our mind and willingness to make an effort to spread what we created and talk about it. "The Horse of Higashi-Matsushima" Yuko Adachi & Hugh Martin Download the pdf (312kb) Artist Yuko Adachi is a Tokyo-born artist who was raised in Japan, Paris, London, and the United States of America. She has been painting since she was a little girl and has been showing her works through solo and selected group shows internationally. Her painting was featured for the cover of Artscope, New England's Cultural Magazine (May/June 2007) and Takara Magazine, the Japanese Culture and Information Magazine in New England (2007 issues). In 2007, her work was awarded best in painting for "Healing Power of Art" by Manhattan Art International. Today, she lives and works in Boston. In 2010, she opened an artist studio store, "Planet MOMEKO," in Rpckport, MA. www.yukoadachi.com. Writer Hugh Martin is a veteran of the Iraq war and a graduate of Muskingum University. He now attends the MFA program at Arizona State University and his chapbook, So, How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010) was a winner of the 2009 Wick Chapbook Competition. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Willow Springs, Nashville Review, Mid-American Review, Third Coast, River Styx, American Poetry Review, and War, Literature & the Arts. QUESTIONING OUR RESPONSES Why did this piece of art resonate for you or seem like it would give you an avenue into writing about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Hugh Martin: The piece of artwork is a small, yet beautiful and important reminder that we need to keep Japan in our thoughts. I'd already drafted a poem about the picture of the horse, but the piece of art, focusing more on the disaster to the country as a whole, was a powerful juxtaposition to the specific, more concrete death of the horse, which ultimately leads us to the human deaths and the temporary graves. Why did this visual response come to mind when thinking about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Yuko Adachi: I wanted to create an image that is positive, gentle and healing for Japanese people and to those who purchse this print. The reddish bubbles are love energy that is being sent to Japan and the circle represents the Japanese flag as well as the earth energy and the ray of light shining upon it, to indicate that the sun will rise again! The suffering that Japan is experiencing aches my heart to the point of numbness but I want to thank you for your support and love that you are sending to Japan. We feel it! What do you think is the role of art in regards to real-world, real-time events? In other words, what makes a "successful" occasional or political piece of writing or art? Hugh Martin: I think all art should help us acknowledge and be more aware of disaster, both in the sense of the collective and the personal. Art can help heal those who were victims; it can help those who were distant better understand. Yuko Adachi: An agile creative response with a purpose to the event that opens up our mind and willingness to make an effort to spread what we created and talk about it.

"Children at Play" Cheryl Gross & Susan Cohen 11" x 12" Ball point, ink, handmade paper. Download the pdf (424kb) Artist Cheryl Gross has an MFA in New Forms from Pratt. She writes: "When asked about my work, I always equate it with creating an environment transforming my inner thoughts into reality. Much like an architect or urban planner, that reality and humor becomes the foundation of the work. Beginning with the physical process, I work in layers. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, my urban influence has indeed added an "edge" to my work. Coming from a totally vertical and intense environment, I now live in Jersey City, NJ." www.cmgross.com Writer Susan Cohen is author of the forthcoming book of poems, Throat Singing, and two chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Poetry International, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and elsewhere. She lives in Berkeley and is two-time winner of the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award. QUESTIONING OUR RESPONSES Why did this piece of art resonate for you or seem like it would give you an avenue into writing about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Susan Cohen: I found "Children at Play" wildly imaginative, yet so strange and disturbing. When I made myself address it, that sense of being disturbed turned into a deep grief. I had a nephew who died a few years ago at sea and whose body later washed ashore, so I'm especially haunted by the idea of children in the waves. As I wrote, I realized I was hearing sounds of bicycles and surf and kids playing before supper, that the visual image had a strong aural effect on me. Was that triggered by the incongruous bird perched on the bicycle? I don't know, but I found myself wanting to intone or chant, which made this poem very different from those I usually write. Why did this visual response come to mind when thinking about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Artist:--> What do you think is the role of art in regards to real-world, real-time events? In other words, what makes a "successful" occasional or political piece of writing or art? Susan Cohen: Real-world events disappear so quickly and completely from the news. Perhaps art contains the capacity to focus our attention at least a little longer. Artist:--> "sliding house/meditation for after an earthquake" Ira Joel Haber & Lisa L. Moore 10 1/8" x 7 7/8" Ink and crayon on notebook paper. Download the pdf (420kb) Artist Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn New York. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer and teacher who sometimes writes poetry and movie reviews. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one-man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum, The Hirshorn Museum & The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. In 2004 he received The Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant. Currently he teaches art at the United Federation of Teachers Retiree Program in Brooklyn. (View Ira's Work) Writer Lisa L. Moore grew up hiking, skiing, trail riding and working on her family's ranch in the eastern foothills of the Canadian Rockies. After working as an arts journalist, Lisa went into academia and since 1991 has been teaching English and Women's and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author or editor of several books, including Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia and the Austin Project (Texas) and most recently Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes (MInnesota). She is the co-director, with Meta DuEwa Jones, of the Texas Institute of Literary and Textual Studies, which is offering a series of lectures, workshops, readings and symposia in 2011-12 on the topic of Poets&Scholars (more information here). Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Sinister Wisdom, and she blogs at Sister Arts: Gardens, Poems, Art, Community. QUESTIONING OUR RESPONSES Why did this piece of art resonate for you or seem like it would give you an avenue into writing about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Lisa Moore: My poem started from a couple of awkwardly-translated sentences on a news report. A woman whose husband had just been found in the rubble was asked for a reaction and I was struck by the difference between watching her speak (in Japanese) and the rather bloodless subtitles: "I am relieved to see him, of course. But there are so many others still missing." Those words sounded so measured but the woman looked so distraught and desperate....not "relieved" at all. Those words and their inadequacy and what might be behind them rattled around in my brain for a few weeks and were called back to mind when I saw Ira Joel Haber's piece "Sliding House." The plainness and somber colors of the image combined with the terrifying movement of the house out of the frame seemed to capture that dissonance. Why did this visual response come to mind when thinking about Japan's earthquake and tsunami? Ira Joel Haber: I did this drawing in a notebook when I was living in San Diego teaching Art at UCSD. I lived in a very small apartment which was on a high hill. and had a patio overlooking the valley below. This drawing is of course about hanging, literally and figuratively. Some of my work, especially the work from 1969 to 1975 have a strong dose of catastrophe and destruction so this latest environmental disaster hit home. What do you think is the role of art in regards to real-world, real-time events? In other words, what makes a "successful" occasional or political piece of writing or art? Lisa L. Moore: I read a lot of eighteenth-century "occasional" verse composed for particular people or events, and the poems that last are the ones that speak with enough specificity to conjure the feeling of that moment in a way that grabs the reader even across centuries. Like Pope's "Epistle to Bolingbroke." Who cares about Bolingbroke? But the line "Hope springs eternal in the human breast" breaks my heart. Ira Joel Haber: I can recall one work that I did in direct result of real world events and that was the Viet Nam war. The role of art with regards to the above is the same as any person's reaction should be. "River Vessel" Kevin Morrow & Mason Schoen Download the pdf (300kb) Artist Kevin Morrow is a native of Wisconsin who received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2003. Soon thereafter, he received his MFA degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand where he studied in the Contemporary Maori Department (Te Toi Hou). Upon completion, Morrow returned to the U.S. to live and work in Austin, Texas where he spent a year or so concentrating on earthworks. Morrow now lives and works in New York. Images of other work at Mason Schoen: I don't know, really. Of course art should capture experience, perspective. In my opinion, successful poetry or prose leaves a reader feeling stranded and tethered at the same time. That's what I shoot for, but often miss. Artist:-->

via broadsidedpress.org

Posted via email from Just Writing

A whiff of history

Azra Raza, 3quarksdaily: A whiff of history

From The Boston Globe:

Think of some of your most powerful memories, and there’s likely a smell attached: the aroma of suntan lotion at the beach, the sharpness of freshly mown grass, the floral trail of your mother’s perfume. “Scents are very much linked to memory,” says perfumer Christophe Laudamiel. “They are linked to remembering the past but also learning from experiences.” But despite its primacy in our lives, our sense of smell is often overlooked when we record our history. We tend to connect with the past visually - we look at objects displayed in a museum, photographs in a documentary, the writing in a manuscript. Sometimes we might hear a vintage speech, or touch an ancient artifact and imagine what it was like to use it. But our knowledge of the past is almost completely deodorized. “It seems remarkable to me that we live in the world where we have all the senses to navigate it, yet somehow we assume that the past was scrubbed of smells,” says sensory historian Mark Smith.

It seems far-fetched to think we could actually start to smell the past - or somehow preserve a whiff of our daily lives. But increasingly, technology is making it possible, and historians, scientists, and perfumers are now taking the idea of smells as historical artifacts more seriously. They argue that it’s time to delve into our olfactory past, trying harder to understand how people experienced the world with their noses - and even save scents for posterity. Their efforts have already made it possible to smell fragrances worn a century ago, to re-create the smell of a rare flower even if it goes extinct, and to better understand the smells that ancient cultures appreciated or detested.

More here.

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arts, letters & other cyber flânerie

Good stuff from Arts & Letters ~ essays, opinions, articles, book reviews ~ while I ponder editorial policies for sundry blogs and their respective social media extensions and test drive alternate modes of blogging. The rss reader's added functionality for sharing / sending feeds to other social media platforms, Facebook's improved sharing and so on. On the other hand auto-posting syndicated feeds seems less reliable, oddly readable as jelly side up.

from Draper's Takes, On the Future of Blogging

Flâneuse seems the place to think in text: flâner et écrire. Écriture comme espèce de flânerie. The platforms ~ blog, microblog, social network ~ possess distinct characters, both in how they manifest and are used, as well appealing to distinct user, in not groups, then inclinations. Obviously, NFM's cyber personae will tend to belong the same group: adjunct / contingent faculty and their supporters, such as they are. Do I develop one as a single one stop portal, sync everything to post or just cross link platforms and cross post just some items? The mother ship (e.g. New Faculty Majority page, Web 1.0) should function as portal and centre de ville but does not, whether by accidental design or deliberate policy.

Each network is distinct, albeit with overlaps: none a silo. I'm looking at customizing policies for each network ~ community, literary, adjunct advocacy, teaching, personal ~ that will spare blogging from the worst ravages of social media. Each network has it's own character, purpose, audience parameters. Overall, Facebook and Twitter are better for the short, timely and perhaps more ephemeral. Grab and share it with minimal comment. Blogging thrives on reflection over sheer timeliness.

Reading and writing reflectively live: read on..

Boozing with the ancients. Nothing gives beer a bite like mugwort, dried doum-palm fruit, and liberal doses of hemp and poppy. Cheers... more

Are you glib and superficially charming? Do you lack empathy and remorse? You might have just what it takes to be a psychopath... more

The politics of rescue. Michael Walzer has questions: Is humanitarianism a duty or a gift? A responsibility of states or individuals? Maimonides has answers... more

Feeling blue? There’s an app to manage your emotions – your cognitive ability, weight, and attention span, too. How about an app for narcissism? ... more»

Stagnant wages, stalemated wars, growing debt. Depressing, right? Time for a dose of David Brooks's sunny optimism... more

It is becoming physically harder to read a book in print. Online connections have disconnected us from ourselves. Johann Hari is mounting a resistance... more

Arts & Letters Daily (26 Jun 2011)

New Elderly Rising

Talking Revolution: The New Elderly Generation can Provide the Spark for an American Rising by Dave Lindorff

Posted to This Can't Be Happening April 22, 2011; Reposted on Common Dreams April 25, 2011

I am 62 and have just reached the age where I could apply for Social Security retirement benefits. Of course, I'd be crazy to do that and collect some $700 a month for the rest of my life, when I could keep working and wait until I'm 70 and get $2000 a month.

But the point is, I've arrived. I'm a "senior." And now I'm paying a lot more attention to what the Right and its paymaster, the corporate lobby, are trying to do, not just to my retirement plan (which is Social Security. period), but also to Medicare, the program upon which my medical care will depend once my wife decides to retire from her university job.

The picture is not pretty. Both the Republicans, and the pathetic Democrats, led by President Barack Obama,
are talking brazenly about cutting back on Social Security, and on Medicare. The Republicans openly say
they want to kill Medicare and secretly want to end Social Security too, which is the agenda of most of the
corporations which fund lobbies like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the
Business Roundtable, etc. Oh, I know they say they're only talking about "changes" for people who are under
55, but that's just for starters. The goal is to ruin the program for younger workers, and then make them
resent what we older folks still get. Then the next step will be to eradicate both programs altogether.

But here's the thing. The reason these parties and lobbies are trying so hard now to use the recession and
the national deficit as cover to decimate and destroy these two proven and critically important social programs into which all working Americans have been paying all our working lives, is that they realize what most 50 and 60-something Americans haven't realized yet: that we are about to become the most powerful political force in the country, and that we are certainly going to demand both an excellent government Medicare program, and a decent retirement program.

The way I see it, we in the Baby Boom generation--those people born between 1946 and about 1964--are just starting to hit retirement age. In another 10 years, we will become a political force twice as powerful and
certainly more than twice as noisy and demanding as the current senior lobby. We can either wait until then,
after they have successfully gutted the two programs we depend on, making it so we have to fight to recreate or
restore them, or we can start organizing now to defend and improve them, and save ourselves a whole lot of trouble.

So here's my proposal.

Let's start building a coalition of Baby Boomers, working through every conceivable organization - labor unions, churches, veterans organizations, alumni organizations, political chapters, etc - with one goal: Defending and improving Social Security and Medicare.

Here's my idea for a slogan:

Tax the Rich and Save Social Security! No Cuts in Medicare! Make it for Everyone!

Here's the argument. Social Security is said to be in danger of "running out of money" in 2037, because there
will supposedly be too many retirees drawing checks and too few younger workers putting money into the so-called Trust Fund. The Trust Fund itself had its trust broken by our politicians, Republican and Democrat, who have for years been raiding the money we put into it, leaving us with government IOUs. These IOUs, the Republicans and the corporatists now say, they don't intend to honor. (The main reason for these raids has been to fund America's imperialist wars, which the public never would support if they had to pay for them up front through higher taxes.) 

Well, first off, we need to demand that they honor those IOUs. Second, since that would mean raising taxes to fund our retirement, we need to demand that the money come not from our working kids and grandkids, but from the rich.
It's really an easy fix. Require that the FICA tax which pays for Social Security benefits apply to all income, not just the first $106,000 of income, and make it also apply to investment income, which currently pays no FICA tax. (I'm not talking about retirement investments. They can be exempted. I'm talking about regular taxable investment income.)

As for Medicare, which we're told is going to run out of money sometime before 2017, the answer there is to stop making it a program just for disabled and old people, and to expand it to cover everyone, which is what President Obama should have proposed way back in 2008, instead of the outrageous health "reform" that was pushed through Congress and which is going to be undone by the courts anyhow.

Poll after poll shows that Americans love Medicare. It's a program that works, that only spends 1% of funds on administration (compared to almost 30% for the private medical system), and that has vastly improved the health of older Americans since it went into effect in 1965. It's a program that actually is very similar to what all Canadians have (which is a program they also call Medicare), but here in the US you have to be either over 65 or permanently disabled in order to qualify.

That is nuts!

The truth, which our politicians are loath to discuss (both houses of Congress refused to include a discussion of a Medicare-for-all option during the health "reform" legislative process, and the Obama White House refused to bring in Medicare-for-all advocates to its planning sessions, or to invite experts from Canada to explain their program), is that a universal Medicare program in the US would provide care for every citizen, while costing significantly less than our current outrageous mix of private insurance for most working Americans, Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for the elderly, Veterans Administration care for veterans, and no care or charity care for tens of millions of poor people.

Think about it: right now the program funds the oldest and sickest part of the population. As it is, 90% of the cost of Medicare is for the care of the oldest 10% of the Medicare population. It doesn't cost that much to care for the "younger old." It would cost even less to provide medical care for the rest of the population that isn't even 65 yet. And covering everyone with Medicare would mean that Medicaid, Veterans care, charity care, employee disability insurance, etc., could all be eliminated, along with all private medical insurance!

We "new oldsters" need to demand Medicare-for-All not just because it's right, and not just because it's the most efficient, cost-effective solution, but also because it makes strategic political sense. Why should we let the Right divide us by creating a bogus generational conflict? Why let them claim we "greedy codgers" are making younger workers pay for our health care? We don't want that anyway! Those younger workers are our own kids and our grandkids! They should have access to decent affordable healthcare too, and shouldn't be bound to their employers like serfs, or forced to pay extortionate premiums to vulture-like insurance companies in return for problematic coverage. We should demand that they get the same thing we get: Universal health care! Medicare for All!

Such a campaign for secure retirement income and for a program of government health insurance for all could become the rallying point for a resurgent progressive movement that could grab back our politics and our
government from the narrow special interests that have hijacked them.

If we fight and win on Social Security and on Medicare for All, who knows what other issues we could fight and
win on! 

[Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. He is co-author, along with Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, June 2006 and paperback 2007), he is also the author of three earlier books: This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy (Common Courage Press, 2004), Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For Profit Hospital Chains (Bantam, 1992), and Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003).]