@large: ai weiwei on alcatraz

I would brave the Alcatraz crowds for this.

From For-Site Foundation:

“The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”
— Ai Weiwei

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is internationally renowned both as a maker of potent and provocative art and as a passionate advocate for human rights and freedom of expression. His art and ideas find a compelling new context in this exhibition of works created specifically for Alcatraz — a 19th-century military fortress, a notorious federal penitentiary, a site of Native American heritage and protest, and now one of America’s most visited national parks.

Ai’s sculpture, sound, and mixed-media works will occupy four locations in the former prison: the New Industries Building, A Block, the Hospital, and the Dining Hall. With the exception of the Dining Hall, these spaces are usually off limits to the public, but all will be open throughout the run of this unprecedented exhibition. Revealing unexpected perspectives on Alcatraz and its layered legacy, @Large prompts visitors to consider the implications of incarceration and the possibilities of art as an act of conscience.

For Ai, these are not just artistic themes; they are facts of life. A vocal critic of the Chinese government, Ai was secretly detained by Chinese authorities for 81 days in 2011 on charges of tax evasion, and is still not permitted to leave China. As a result, Ai is currently unable to visit Alcatraz. He is developing the artwork for the exhibition from his studio in Beijing, with the help of the FOR-SITE Foundation and a team of collaborators from organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

@Large runs September 27, 2014 – April 26, 2015 at Alcatraz Island 

[photo: for-site foundation]

china's ghost towns

Marketplace: "An empty residential complex in the city of Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia. The city, part of the region known as Ordos, is built for a population the size of Pittsburgh's, but for years has sat empty. It's one of China's many 'ghost towns' built by ambitious local governments eager to report high GDP growth by any means necessary."

After listening to this Marketplace piece on China's ghost towns on Monday, I had to go online and take a look at the photos. Go listen and a take look...

[photo: Rob Schmitz/Marketplace]

happy weekend + goodbye to may

Enchanted Forest by Elsa Mora

Happy weekend, friends!

Vegan Mint Brownie Ice Cream

London Growing. This is FASCINATING. (Maserati's "Cities" is a lovely accompaniment)

The star recipe this week

Chic Fille

Men Who Drink Breast Milk

Elsa Mora's awesome papercuttings

Hachette vs. Amazon

The movie version of Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You looks funny

Hershey Felder does Leonard Bernstein at Berkeley Rep

a few friday links

The Manhattan Dolls

My sister got married on Monday! To help the newlyweds celebrate we surprised them with a "singing telegram" of sorts. Three Manhattan Dolls showed up to their apartment on Monday night and serenaded them with My Funny Valentine, Fly Me to the Moon, Apple Blossom Time, and Blue Skies. Sweet, right?

This Barbara Ehrenreich interview on Fresh Air about her new book, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything, was interesting: "The religions that fascinate me and could possibly tempt me are not the ones that involve faith or belief. They're the ones that offer you the opportunity to know the spirit or deity. ... I think most readily of West-African-derived religions which involve ecstatic rituals where people actually apprehend the spirit or the God or whatever that they are invoking and that they are trying to contact — I have respect for that. But don't ask me to believe anything."

I'm feeling the need for a change and have been coveting this hair/cut for awhile now. To perm or not to perm. I can't believe I'm even writing that...

The midwives are back...

These honey mustard roasted chicken thighs are so easy and delicious. I've been eating tons of greens of late; I've got my eye of some of these main-dish salads.

The Depth of the Problem. The ocean is a vast, deep place. Via Mary.

Happy Friday!

the best american infographics 2013

I love the collision of visuals and information so it's no wonder that one of my favorite books at the moment is this:

The Best American Infographics 2013

Some interesting selections from the book were featured over on Wired, including "Which Birth Dates Are the Most Common," "Four Kinds of Dog," "Map of a New America," and "The Last 45 Seconds." 

One infographic that I keep going back to is Randall Munroe's "Deepest of the Deep" which shows depths of oceans and lakes of the world side by side. As someone with a fear of deep water, I'm both fascinated by it and repelled.

Such a great book!

a "crayon" is not a "crown" (in my book)

Pronunciation and dialect are fascinating don't you think? I've told Jordan a few times that if he calls a "crayon" a "crown," Stella is bound to be confused. Turns out he's not alone in thinking it's pronounced "crown." Fascinating stuff... click through to The Atlantic to see more and larger versions of the maps.

From The Atlantic: "Bert Vaux and Marius L. Jøhndal at the University of Cambridge surveyed around 11,500 people to study the ways we in the colonies have grown to speak. Joshua Katz, a doctoral student in linguistics at N.C. State, made these excellent maps of the results."

[via Mary]

living in the russian wilderness

I just finished reading this fascinating Smithsonian article by Mike Dash about a Russian family who fled into the Siberian wilderness in 1936 and weren't seen or heard from for 40 years until a team geologists found their home, more than 150 miles from civilization.

"Led by Pismenskaya, the scientists backed hurriedly out of the hut and retreated to a spot a few yards away, where they took out some provisions and began to eat. After about half an hour, the door of the cabin creaked open, and the old man and his two daughters emerged—no longer hysterical and, though still obviously frightened, "frankly curious." Warily, the three strange figures approached and sat down with their visitors, rejecting everything that they were offered—jam, tea, bread—with a muttered, "We are not allowed that!" When Pismenskaya asked, "Have you ever eaten bread?" the old man answered: "I have. But they have not. They have never seen it." At least he was intelligible. The daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. "When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded like a slow, blurred cooing."

[photo: The Smithsonian]

[hat tip: Kottke]

"our walking hearts"

From Jessica Valenti's post for The Nation:

When President Obama gave his speech at the vigil in Newtown last night, I was glad that he repeated the saying likening parenthood to having your heart walking around outside of your body. It’s a quote I’ve thought of often since having my daughter - an especially apt sentiment when thinking about the incredible lack of control we have over what will happen to our children.

But if it’s fear that drives us to end this culture of violence and death, so be it. We should all be afraid, every day. Because until all kids are safe, none are. Until all children in all neighborhoods are protected - not just from mass shootings, but from all gun violence - we should not feel at peace.

As President Obama said last night, “we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours.” We feel comfortable sending out children out into the world because the social contract tells us others will step in when we can’t. That’s what the teachers at Sandy Hook did. Maybe we’re afraid because we’re not holding up our end of the bargain.

If it’s fear that’s our initial motivator, though, let it be love that gives us the strength to put a stop to all of this. Because while fear is fleeting, love is not. And if we keep the love of our children at the front of our minds, maybe then we can remember that other children are just as fiercely-loved - that they’re all our responsibility, our walking hearts, exposed and in need of protection.
A poem from Adrienne Maree Brown, love letter to the babies/they are all ours, has been playing over in my mind recently, this section in particular:

and then you came. from other wombs and other stories, but i knew you were also mine. i held you in my arms for the first time, felt your weight upon my chest, the shape of your whole fluttering life becoming solid in my hands. and i realized my ideas and theories would never come to life soon enough. to love a child is to know the limitations of time, and the horror of being in a particular moment of time, a hollowed out age where babies are collateral damage for borders and egos, among other things.
everyday the world reminds me that i cannot protect you. i don’t know if protecting children has been possible yet on this earth. i just believe that what we do, or allow to possibly be done, to our babies, in this world, at this time – that is the measure of our humanity.

It’s natural that we want to protect our own children. But it’s imperative that we seek to protect all of them. Only then will we have nothing to fear.

on raising a prodigy

This article in the NYT by Andrew Solomon called "How Do You Raise A Prodigy?" struck a chord (sorry, the pun came too easy). 

 

I started playing the cello when I was 4 1/2. I wasn't a bad musician, but I was far from a prodigy. A little musical ability and no desire to practice long hours everyday didn't get me very far, but I continued taking lessons through high school, attended a highly regarded youth orchestra every week, went to cello and chamber music summer camps (nerd alert), and won a little scholarship in college so that I could continue taking lessons. 

But back to this idea of raising a prodigy... There was a girl prodigy (if not a prodigy then uber talented) who studied cello with my teacher. She started a few years after me, and was two years younger. By the time she was eight she was playing, beautifully, Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto No. 1 (here's Jackie duPre playing it), a piece I didn't play until my last year in high school. It was always with awe and a little fear that would watch her play in recitals. In high school, she sat first chair in our orchestra and performed the Elgar Cello Concerto (here's Yo-Yo Ma playing it with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in '97) in a solo concert backed by our orchestra. She played Haydn flawlessly for Yo-Yo Ma in a masterclass and after she was finished he said, "so, what are you doing tonight?" A joke, of course, that she could take his place in the concert he was playing that evening. I know this because the exchange was written up in the Los Angeles Times. She was that good. 

But she also practiced 5+ hours a day. She woke up early so that she could get two solid hours in before school, and then came home to a few more. Her mother would bribe her to practice with the promise of new clothes. If she won a competition she would get a new car, etc. I don't know if she still plays the cello. We lost touch when I went off to college. The last I heard she's quit playing, she'd burned-out.

I don't know if there's a good or right way to raise a prodigy. But I can't help but nod with Andrew Solomon when he finishes the article with this:

"Half the prodigies I studied seemed to be under pressure to be even more astonishing than they naturally were, and the other half, to be more ordinary than their talents. Studying their families, I gradually recognized that all parenting is guesswork, and that difference of any kind, positive or negative, makes the guessing harder. That insight has largely shaped me as a father. I don’t think I would love my children more if they could play Rachmaninoff’s Third, and I hope I wouldn’t love them less for having that consuming skill, any more than I would if they were affected with a chronic illness. But I am frankly relieved that so far, they show no such uncanny aptitude."

[Photo illustration by Peter Yang for The New York Times]

coney island in color

Aren't these old hand-painted postcards of Coney Island great?

From The New Yorker:

For the current issue, Lisa Kereszi photographed Luna Park, the new amusement park at Coney Island that opened over Memorial Day weekend. Luna Park takes its name from a historic Coney Island park that had opened in 1903 and was destroyed in an electrical fire in 1944. While working on this shoot, I became curious about the Luna Park and Coney Island of years past. I spent a little time looking at hand-painted postcards that seemed somehow to be imbued with both the weirdness and the splendor of Coney Island’s history. 

international women's day

Gloria Steinem by Yale Joel

Happy International Women's Day to all of the strong, creative, brave, curious, compassionate, and loving women I know. 

You are awesome. 

xoxo

lady of the canyon

I'm "home" for a few days, at my parents' home, in the canyon where I grew up. Being home always brings back memories...coming home from school on the bus to the smell of cookies and my mom sitting at her big wooden writing desk, the long drive out of the winding canyon, the sound of frogs in the creek behind the house, my dad with a big long beard, the smell of trees and earth, the night noises. I can't listen to Jackson Browne or The Eagles or Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez without thinking of this canyon and of growing up. In that spirit, here's Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon.

11.11.11, a very happy birthday

 

On every November 11, my parents like to retell the story of my birth. It was cold and raining in the Southern California canyon where I was born. My Mom woke up in labor and made me a carrot cake in between contractions. Their close friends came to help with the home-birth: one held a mirror, one held the video camera, one person looked after my sister and my sister's friend, etc... There was a fire in the fireplace, and Beethoven was playing on the record player. There was a midwife and a doctor came later. My dad caught me.

On 11.11.11 I turned 33. We celebrated the numerically momentous occasion by inviting friends and family to join us for live music (a ragtime duo!) nibbles and cakes (5 different kinds including carrot cake, death by chocolate cake, both made by my amazing mom, plus strawberry cake, lemon cake, and pumpkin cheese cake). I felt glamorous in my perfect party dress and the Coclico birthday shoes I scored at Anthropologie (last pair, on sale, my size).

I was overwhelmed by all the love and messages from my sweet people close by and far away. As a special surprise treat my sister flew in from New York to celebrate.

I will never experience another 11.11.11 in my lifetime. And I feel like an incredibly lucky girl to have experienced this one.

middle school

This American Life: Middle School provided interesting lunchtime listening material today. As I sat at our dining room table with Stella next to me in her high chair chewing on pear slices, I found myself in the middle; looking back and cringing at the thought of my own middle school experience and thinking forward to the years ahead when Stella will be in the throes of that awkward age. 

I cringed for myself and I cringed for her. Like most parents, I hope that she sails through middle school with relative ease, that she won't be tormented by teasing, bullied by girls who seek to damage her self esteem because they are so frightened by it all themselves, marked by acne, or mortified by shyness. Part of me wishes that she is bookish and nerdy, like I was, that she is able to see middle school for what it is, a large dance into adulthood, towards more complex but better things.

Middle School was a frightening and exciting thing for me. It was big, so much bigger than the small canyon grade school I attended. There were dances, and class periods, and people kissed. Looking back I don't know if I was awkward, but I was definitely out of place. I played the cello, my favorite past-time was reading in bed, and I acted professionally at a local theater. Where I tried so hard in grade school to stand out by dyeing my hair pink, in middle school I found myself doing what I could to blend in and hiding the things that would make me different.

As foreign as middle school was, high school was more so. In high school I stopped trying to blend in and just held my breath and hoped it would be over soon. A few weeks before graduating, a boy I had been in classes with since middle school approached me as I was reading alone at a table in the quad and said "when are you going back to your country?" 

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"Aren't you from, like, Sweden?" he responded.

Oh, adolescence. Listening to the kids being interviewed by the folks at This American Life as they mentally prepared themselves to enter a middle school dance, it was clear that it felt foreign to them too. To all of them.