tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48431576250450997972024-03-13T14:57:19.849-07:00Cabinet of WondersFinding the Early Age of Enlightenment in the modern worldHeather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.comBlogger250125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-5359958436516673512014-02-23T16:26:00.002-08:002014-02-23T16:30:09.951-08:00The Myth of Fingerprints<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-anwdg057vfU/UwqRgwe29pI/AAAAAAAADGk/PAZAIam-Sj0/s1600/orangutans_fingerprinting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-anwdg057vfU/UwqRgwe29pI/AAAAAAAADGk/PAZAIam-Sj0/s1600/orangutans_fingerprinting.jpg" height="229" width="320" /></a></div>
So I came across <a href="http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/2008/10/rule-of-thumb.html" target="_blank">my own post on fingerprints</a>, from way back in 2008, and was suddenly captivated. I wanted to find more out about spider monkeys and other <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehensile_tail" target="_blank">prehensile</a> tail-prints. And to see if anyone else had any interest in fingerprints out there.<br />
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Much to my astonishment, there is one man, <a href="http://fingerchip.pagesperso-orange.fr/index.htm" target="_blank">Jean-Francois Manguet</a>, who is not only interested in the history of fingerprints but also in the science of skin and how fingerprint technology is portrayed in movies, among many other things. It looks like Manguet is an engineer who "invented the sweeping technique for direct silicon fingerprint scanning." He was the chief scientist on the FingerChip, a fingerprint sensor project. Since then, he has followed all things fingerprint-y, including the biometrics of fingerprinting and the physics of fingerprint sensor technology. It's quite worth a browse around the site, despite the technical obscurity of some of the pages.<br />
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(Also, check out his blog and watch the progression of the apparently somewhat-failed fingerprint sensor on the <a href="http://fingerchip.pagesperso-orange.fr/biometrics/types/fingerprint_apple.htm" target="_blank">iPhone 5S</a>).Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-89663668523206693572014-01-31T09:43:00.000-08:002014-01-31T09:43:00.070-08:00Environment in a Book<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Qhe_N9JEWiY/Uuk5yxiO41I/AAAAAAAADF8/l2B-HTh3tjs/s1600/360book_snow-white.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Qhe_N9JEWiY/Uuk5yxiO41I/AAAAAAAADF8/l2B-HTh3tjs/s1600/360book_snow-white.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a> </div>
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Yusuke Oono, a Japanese artist, has discovered an amazing way to take
the book form and make little environments out of it. He calls them 360
degree books: you open them and fan them out into a round, and then his
laser-cut pages come to life, creating incredibly intimate little
scenes.</div>
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Here is Jungle Book, from the outside in:</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-71DswIgD8QU/Uuk7m0me10I/AAAAAAAADGM/XhTweVqy29s/s1600/360book_Junglebook_closed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-71DswIgD8QU/Uuk7m0me10I/AAAAAAAADGM/XhTweVqy29s/s1600/360book_Junglebook_closed.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iUU5fIJVtOw/Uuk7nejyzEI/AAAAAAAADGQ/8JzYrhzPoHs/s1600/360book_Junglebook_open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iUU5fIJVtOw/Uuk7nejyzEI/AAAAAAAADGQ/8JzYrhzPoHs/s1600/360book_Junglebook_open.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7c_-XVe5MA/Uuk7mO2MlmI/AAAAAAAADGE/fuXvjCF6Pe0/s1600/360book_Junglebook1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7c_-XVe5MA/Uuk7mO2MlmI/AAAAAAAADGE/fuXvjCF6Pe0/s1600/360book_Junglebook1.jpg" height="213" width="320" /> </a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pfxFbNvqWjk/Uuk5wXkZKpI/AAAAAAAADFg/WSu0ZASTHIw/s1600/360book_Junglebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pfxFbNvqWjk/Uuk5wXkZKpI/AAAAAAAADFg/WSu0ZASTHIw/s1600/360book_Junglebook.jpg" height="320" width="213" /> </a></div>
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This one is called Sweet Home: </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p4iDHEFIpsM/Uuk5xqcNXpI/AAAAAAAADFs/wUD_5lYIjT0/s1600/360book_Sweethome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p4iDHEFIpsM/Uuk5xqcNXpI/AAAAAAAADFs/wUD_5lYIjT0/s1600/360book_Sweethome.jpg" height="213" width="320" /> </a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I1V5W_QlB9c/Uuk5yTZJPoI/AAAAAAAADF0/qQGbRz6P8ms/s1600/360book_Sweethome1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I1V5W_QlB9c/Uuk5yTZJPoI/AAAAAAAADF0/qQGbRz6P8ms/s1600/360book_Sweethome1.jpg" height="213" width="320" /> </a></div>
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Here we have In a Cheese:</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qAUlDoJ2jyM/Uuk5vQZZsrI/AAAAAAAADFU/YXOKLrELLrY/s1600/360book_Inacheese1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qAUlDoJ2jyM/Uuk5vQZZsrI/AAAAAAAADFU/YXOKLrELLrY/s1600/360book_Inacheese1.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5xH9ml5PAYo/Uuk5wO8JxXI/AAAAAAAADFc/olOGEuZ5sdY/s1600/360book_Inacheese.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5xH9ml5PAYo/Uuk5wO8JxXI/AAAAAAAADFc/olOGEuZ5sdY/s1600/360book_Inacheese.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
There are many, many more pictures on <a href="http://www.loftwork.com/portfolios/oonoyusuke/page/1" target="_blank">his website</a>. They're so interior, they satisfy my instinct for secret little places; for odd, non-rectilinear architecture. Makes me want to get a lasercutter!<br />
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<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-5xH9ml5PAYo%2FUuk5wO8JxXI%2FAAAAAAAADFc%2FolOGEuZ5sdY%2Fs1600%2F360book_Inacheese.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5xH9ml5PAYo/Uuk5wO8JxXI/AAAAAAAADFc/olOGEuZ5sdY/s1600/360book_Inacheese.jpg" -->Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-72215343413811521592014-01-27T22:00:00.000-08:002014-01-27T22:29:49.645-08:00Found Poem<br />
<b>To Walter de la Mare</b> <br />
<pre class="poembox"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The children who explored the brook and found
A desert island with a sandy cove
(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground,
For here the water buffalo may rove,
The kinkajou, the mungabey, abound
In the dark jungle of a mango grove,
And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree -
The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove)
Recount their exploits at the nursery tea
And when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn
Demand some poetry, please.
Whose shall it be,
At not quite time for bed? ...
Or when the lawn
Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn,
The sad intangible who grieve and yearn;
When the familiar is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we yet have to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;
When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance,
Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range
At witches' sabbath of the maiden aunts;
When the nocturnal traveller can arouse
No sleeper by his call; or when by chance
An empty face peers from an empty house;
By whom, and by what means, was this designed?
The whispered incantation which allows
Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?
By you; by those deceptive cadences
Wherewith the common measure is refined;
By conscious art practised with natural ease;
By the delicate, invisible web you wove -
The inexplicable mystery of sound.</span></pre>
<pre class="poembox"><span style="font-family: inherit;">-- T. S. Eliot</span></pre>
Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-25144268911410724052013-01-27T22:36:00.000-08:002014-01-27T22:39:12.283-08:00Winning Pictures from the ContestHere they are, with the first place winner, courtesy of <a href="http://www.rheaewing.com/">Rhea Ewing</a>, a truly elegant image of the Steam Beast.<br />
<br />
This is followed closely by runners-up <a href="http://bookish-ambition.blogspot.com/">Joanne Roberts</a>,
Simon Forster, and Ken Bessemer, who received copies of Songs
as their prizes. I love seeing people turn my writing into artwork!<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9HdgrpXT1uA/UudPe2uROhI/AAAAAAAADEs/aNqinaKapds/s1600/RheaEwingSteambeast1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9HdgrpXT1uA/UudPe2uROhI/AAAAAAAADEs/aNqinaKapds/s1600/RheaEwingSteambeast1.jpg" height="305" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XnJ09fuATP8/UudPi73hLdI/AAAAAAAADE0/XGrycGi1bE0/s1600/Joanne+Roberts+Steambeast1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XnJ09fuATP8/UudPi73hLdI/AAAAAAAADE0/XGrycGi1bE0/s1600/Joanne+Roberts+Steambeast1.jpg" height="278" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kwOoqDSdzNw/UudPp5hRynI/AAAAAAAADFA/b3UEqfN-OsU/s1600/kbessemer_steambeast1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kwOoqDSdzNw/UudPp5hRynI/AAAAAAAADFA/b3UEqfN-OsU/s1600/kbessemer_steambeast1.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X698qGYfXfI/UudPouI3_9I/AAAAAAAADE8/IykneguxtCk/s1600/simon_forster_steambeast1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X698qGYfXfI/UudPouI3_9I/AAAAAAAADE8/IykneguxtCk/s1600/simon_forster_steambeast1.png" height="282" width="400" /></a></div>
Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-74971482689775792712012-09-12T11:04:00.000-07:002012-09-12T11:04:36.241-07:00Contest!<div class="entry-content">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pkYCY1DSl8E/UFDOHL78rOI/AAAAAAAAC9E/vx725WMmLX4/s1600/Songs_frontcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pkYCY1DSl8E/UFDOHL78rOI/AAAAAAAAC9E/vx725WMmLX4/s320/Songs_frontcover.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I’m holding a contest. Not just any
contest, but a contest wherein people make art about one of the
mechanical characters in my new novel, <em>Songs for a Machine Age.</em> This character is a 300-year-old secret whom no one understands, a cornerstone of history and culture in Devien, where <em>Songs</em> takes place.<br />
<br />
Here’s the deal:<br />
<br />
You email me at <i>heather at heathermcdougal dot com,</i> saying you’d like to participate, and I’ll send you a document with snippets from <em>Songs</em>, along with some extra information about the Steam Beast, a <em></em>very
mysterious and mechanical character. In fact, you will receive a
segment of never-before-seen writing from the prequel to Songs, in which
the Steam Beast is being worked on by its creator.<br />
What I’m looking for is artwork showing the Steam Beast. It can be
computer-made, hand-drawn, painted, mixed-media or sculpture; whatever
you are best at. You create it, and send me high-quality digital images
of it (1 image for 2-D work, and 3 images for 3-D work) by midnight on
Sunday, October 28th. I’ll be the judge, and you will hear back to me
by Wednesday, October 31st (Halloween!).<br />
<ul>
<li>The winner will receive $200 and a signed copy of <em>Songs for a Machine Age</em></li>
<li>The three runners-up will each receive a signed copy of <em>Songs, </em>and
will be posted (with credit, of course) along with the winner on this
website, Cabinet of Wonders, and Facebook, among other places (more to
follow on that; I have some very interesting places up my sleeve).</li>
</ul>
For some early tidbits about the Steam Beast, you can see the video at my <a href="http://igg.me/p/222850?a=1187161">Indiegogo campaign</a>, or go to my blog-serial <a href="http://neds-bed.blogspot.com/">Neddeth’s Bed</a>, where the Steam Beast was first conceived.<br />
<br />
Let the art-making begin!<br />
</div>
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Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-41631317306724018792012-07-31T11:04:00.001-07:002012-09-12T10:55:11.592-07:00Getting Published<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AcMefmu-Sgg/UBgZNZQ25VI/AAAAAAAAC8w/hXaNH_lbB-E/s1600/Songs_frontcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AcMefmu-Sgg/UBgZNZQ25VI/AAAAAAAAC8w/hXaNH_lbB-E/s320/Songs_frontcover.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
Well, it happened. I got published.<br />
<br />
I finally finished the extensive edits on my novel, <i>Songs for a Machine Age</i>, which will be coming out in late October. I really have to apologize for my absence here, but the editing process has been a long and arduous journey (one I misled myself about the extensive need for, and then had to learn the hard truth) and now the galleys are done, the cover is designed, the maps inked... I wanted to come back here and let everyone know why I've been gone so long.<br />
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This new universe of publication is going to have an impact, I think. I'm going to be migrating the Cabinet to my extremely <a href="http://www.heathermcdougal.com/">new website</a>, as a sort of archive. I'm not certain yet whether being a Real Author, and all the attendant marketing effort -- keeping up my authorly presence and so on -- will mean I simply can't write for the Cabinet anymore, or if it means I will write only occasionally (which, to my shame, I've been doing for the past year). I love the Cabinet and all the interesting things we've talked about over the years, but I'm already working on a prequel for Songs, and have a dozen short stories that have been on the back burner with all the edits. I've tried to find co-authors for the Cabinet, but without much success, so it's all down to what I have time for!<br />
<br />
Being an educator, I am also pondering --at length-- the idea of starting a blog about education, media literacy, and the impact of advertising and other factors on growing minds. Many, many times have I not posted about education here, because this feels like the wrong venue. I don't want to be a dabbler, but I do work in the field, and there are things that clamor to be written, and I don't think I can hold out any longer.<br />
<br />
I'll keep you updated about what's happening, and if there are further Cabinet-like posts in me, I promise to put them up here for the near future, as well as archiving them in my website! Eventually, though, I'm going to have to put everything together in the same place, so I can keep track of it all.<br />
<br />
It's been great knowing you all, and I wish I could just go on endlessly welling with ideas, but somehow the time has passed when I could pound out ten posts a month. Please keep in touch, and if you hear of anything interesting, let me know. I'll post about them either here or in my author blog over at the website. You can contact me at heather -at- heathermcdougal -dot- com anytime, about anything, and I will do my best to answer.<br />
<br />
And come look at the <a href="http://www.heathermcdougal.com/">author blog</a> on Mondays -- I'm trying to bring a little of the Cabinet in there by posting a Brain Fodder link every week. Things that make you think, and maybe even inspire new stories!<br />
<br />
cheers,<br />
HeatherHeather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-20859276859677429652012-04-10T22:13:00.001-07:002012-04-10T22:40:30.208-07:00When I'm Old and Rich<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TAJz08pLer4/T4US4zCYKLI/AAAAAAAAC8g/4F7-ErOHSh4/s1600/1000-dollar-bill-21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="347" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TAJz08pLer4/T4US4zCYKLI/AAAAAAAAC8g/4F7-ErOHSh4/s400/1000-dollar-bill-21.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
For some reason recently I've been getting into a lot of conversations about what-ifs with my kids. Weirdly, though, it's not just them, because once the ball is rolling, other people always want to participate. The two most popular what-ifs among grownups are <i>what will you do with yourself when you're old and retired?</i> and <i>what would you do if you suddenly came into a lot of money?</i><br />
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I think a lot of my friends are starting to experience the aging parents syndrome, and they are discovering there are as many ways of growing old as there are individual people in the world. A lot of people our parents' age had a job that they plugged away at for years and years, and looked forward to retiring so that they could have leisure time. They had good retirement funds and houses that they bought and paid for, back when that was still possible: the American dream. They dreamed of the day they would retire, secure in the knowledge that after sixty-five, they would be free. Most of them imagined they would finally do with themselves what they <i>really</i> wanted to do all along.<br />
<br />
But the thing that's fascinating is how many of them really didn't envision what those activities would be. There are so many ways to "do" leisure, and a lot of people simply don't put time into anything but work and not-work. They don't have something they love, something they pursue with passion outside their work or family selves, and when they retire they suddenly find themselves at loose ends.
There are lots of people who, having put in their time, simply end up not doing anything. I mean, they walk the dog, chat with their neighbors, watch movies and tv, read the newspapers, and go to the grocery store, doctor, whatever. But they're done contributing; they have no particular hobbies, and they are perfectly happy just to exist, to consume, to live a purposeless, pleasant existence. I think that, in the distopian universes where old people are euthanized, these people would unfortunately be the first to go, because from a societal standpoint they are no longer adding to the status quo, even if they did their bit earlier. They are just... coasting along until it's time to die.<br />
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Then there are the ones that become suddenly aware of the time they have left, who take long walks and look at the world around them; they babysit their grandchildren, they go to weekly games of cribbage and book clubs, volunteer at the local school, try zip lines, learn to use Photoshop.
At the opposite end are the ones who can't seem to sit still, and are always organizing other people. Their lives are never dull, and neither are the lives of the people around them. They run youth clubs, drama groups; they sit on school boards and interfere with their neighbors' lives. They are a constant presence, and often great fun to have around.<br />
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Or how about the gardeners? The contemplative ones, who just want a bit of quiet, but who always work on something to make it better, always out enjoying the day and seeing to the endless, silent, simple work of whatever needs doing.
I have always imagined myself a gardener, a keeper of bees and chickens and possibly goats, a maker of cheese. A knitter, maybe, and a writer, of course: always a writer.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, there are people who didn't organize themselves so nicely in their younger lives. Through bad management or late divorce or simply through not having a good income and being dependent on social security, they are at the mercy of their income. They spend all their time clipping coupons or, in some cases, trying to shore up the holes in their bleeding finances, and there's no time nor money for all the fun stuff. This is who I don't want to be, and it's a crap shoot, so it's scary. What if your retirement is in stocks, and the crash hits?<br />
<br />
Which brings me to the question of becoming rich.<br />
<br />
"I don't know what I'd do with all that money." I hear this comment a lot from a surprising number of people, usually when the subject of the state lottery comes up. I think they look at that $46 million dollar mark, or whatever it is, and think (rightly, perhaps) "it's just too much to take care of." Or perhaps they don't want to end up running around having pictures taken of them like Tamara Ecclestone, or whoever the disgustingly-wealthy-person-du-jour is.<br />
<br />
In any case, I always tell them, "I know exactly what I'd do with all that money." And I do. I could spend that $46 million in a couple of years. And I wouldn't be buying yachts with it, either.
Of course, when I say that, people always look at me strangely and then sort of shut up, as if I've been rude, or perhaps as if I'm showing distressing signs of avarice; but honestly, there are so many things I would love to spend some money on!<br />
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So here, for the benefit of you people who have won the lottery, I have decided to write both some suggestions for what to do with you money, if faced with enforced leisure, and what to do with yourself, in the process. Or... let me rephrase that: these are ten things *I* would do, if I had the opportunity.<br />
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#1 (Boring but useful suggestion: get a good accountant. You can pay this person well, but make sure they're good, and make sure they're honest. It's astonishing how many people who win the lottery end up broke and embezzled from (or had someone dance a financial jig around them and then move on).)
Okay, now on to the real list.<br />
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#1A. Get an art/music/writing/voice/skydiving/etc tutor. Do this even if you have no interest in art/music/writing/voice/etc. Sometimes, we don't know that we like some activity, or even have a proclivity for it, unless we do it for awhile. Learn to play a bluegrass fiddle, or make faux finishes. Learn to paint excruciatingly detailed photorealistic paintings. Think about something you've admired, and try it. If you like Van Gogh, go buy a s**tload of paint and start laying it on, and get someone to show you the ropes of composition and color. It's extraordinary how many doors creativity can open!<br />
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#2. Give a bunch of money to the schools in your area -- the poorer the district, the better. Earmark what you want the funds to go to: technology, art, music... all the things those schools can't afford to pay for anymore (in California this is a statewide problem, since we are 50th in education among the states, but there are always poor schools that need help).<br />
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#3. Set up an endowment for something you've noticed is lacking and you care about. In my case, I would start a Barn Society, dedicated to fixing up all the old barns in California which are being left to fall down because the farmers can't afford to pay the permit fees to resuscitate them. Or I would buy the huge ranches I see going up for sale and put them in a trust, to preserve the beautiful coastline where I live.<br />
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#4. Give to a worthy cause, or many worthy causes. Amnesty International, for example. Charity is possibly the most obvious of these ideas. Do it anonymously, so they don't send you junk mail!<br />
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#5. Pay off all your debts. Pay off all your family's debts: your siblings, your parents, your children. Give each one of them whatever the maximum gift allowance is. Start college funds for every child in the family.<br />
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#6. Set up a travel fund for you and your family, so that every year you can take a modest vacation in some interesting place. Not huge fancy hotels, not expensive tours, just medium-sized. But it will alleviate the impossibility of those airfares, the ones that put you in debt for the rest of the year.<br />
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#7. Set up an educational fund. If you care about educating children about the environment, earmark it for that. If you feel that people don't understand the fiscal side of their voting choices, make a fund that will educate the masses. Raise awareness, help make us all smarter, and the world will be a better place.<br />
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#8. Create an endowment that preserves something. Gypsy songs. Chair caning. Tatting designs.<br />
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#9. Make your house beautiful. I don't mean make it worth more, by turning it into a McMansion, or tiling all the floors in expensive materials; I mean, really think about what would make you happy. Making your garden into a jungle, for example, full of rare, scented herbs and overhanging fruit. Or repainting it in amazing, rich colors. Or redoing the bathroom so it's like an old-fashioned Japanese bath. Or just getting a new stove. See more about the house, below.<br />
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#10. Lastly, set some of the money aside for things like retirement and house-cleaners. Take $1 million and put it somewhere so that you have a cushion when you are old and want to retire, and then put a bit more into a fund which will send you the interest every month so that you can not work so hard. If that means babysitting and laundry help, so be it. It may mean continuing to get tax help after the money's gone and you just have your regular income again.<br />
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At this point, a few things NOT to do are probably also in order.<br />
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First off, keep the things you get for yourself modest. If you plan to spend pretty much all the money as fast as you can and then move on, like I do, buying yourself a huge house is a mistake. Partly because most huge houses are not designed to be lived in comfortably; they were built by developers who got designers to make the things as flashy as possible, but they never imagined happy people living there in love and stability. Those houses are mostly created to show off how rich the owners are. Also, the taxes will kill you -- for as long as you live there. The same holds true for fancy cars and yachts -- they cost a pile to keep up, and need someone to put time and energy into them even when they're working fine. If you have to get out of your tract house, or buy a new car, find something modest that you love, that you can imagine growing old in or with, something that makes you comfortable and cozy and happy -- and then do it!<br />
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In other words, hanging onto your wealth (and your idea of wealthiness) means you will spend most of your time managing your money, as well as all the things your money bought. Is that what will bring you the most happiness in life? If not, take a little bit of it and walk away from the rest. Turn it into endowments that run themselves, and then be happy you could help people.<br />
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Lastly, don't make new friends who like a luxurious lifestyle -- or if you do, don't buy them stuff, throw parties, invite house-guests, etc. Keep your life private, or you'll be the next Hugh Hefner -- until they all move on to the next sucker.<br />
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Unless, of course, that's what you've always dreamed of.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-15933367191956491732012-02-14T16:20:00.000-08:002012-02-14T16:20:00.216-08:00Shades of Old Detroit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OvVREdQYX0M/Ty8ciI98INI/AAAAAAAAC6k/HLypQzxcECg/s1600/marchand_meffre3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OvVREdQYX0M/Ty8ciI98INI/AAAAAAAAC6k/HLypQzxcECg/s320/marchand_meffre3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I just came across this while looking for something else in Google images: a project by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, called <a href="http://marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html">The Ruins of Detroit</a>, a 5-year collaboration between 2005 and 2010. This is part of what they have to say about the work:<br />
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"Detroit, industrial capital of the XXth Century, played a fundamental
role shaping the modern world. The logic that created the city also
destroyed it. Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city’s ruins are not
isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural
component of the landscape. Detroit presents all archetypal buildings
of an American city in a state of mummification. Its splendid decaying
monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of
Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great
Empire."<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nn-wyqqm-x0/Ty8cj6xPWaI/AAAAAAAAC60/Y0gQ3yqwLN0/s1600/marchand_meffre1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nn-wyqqm-x0/Ty8cj6xPWaI/AAAAAAAAC60/Y0gQ3yqwLN0/s320/marchand_meffre1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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My father grew up in Detroit in the 1930s and 1940s, worked in the auto factories during the summer, and went to the grand movie houses during the height of the movie era. I have always wanted to visit the Detroit of his youth, and looking at these pictures is, in some ways, like looking at him: under the age are traces of a marvelous youth, a grace and power that still speak to us, despite the passage of time. It's both breathtaking and heartbreaking to see these remains of another era. Particularly, I find the image of the theatre to be beautiful and sad.
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oMU2FDW9TO8/Ty8cjP8vpKI/AAAAAAAAC6s/0vlkU4CNBQk/s1600/marchand_meffre2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oMU2FDW9TO8/Ty8cjP8vpKI/AAAAAAAAC6s/0vlkU4CNBQk/s320/marchand_meffre2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-20291617066837207682012-02-10T09:43:00.000-08:002012-02-10T09:43:00.821-08:00Those Who Come While We Sleep<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HpKnbrk2jNY/Ty8UDr121MI/AAAAAAAAC50/-5UfqHz8FTU/s1600/John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_Nightmare.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HpKnbrk2jNY/Ty8UDr121MI/AAAAAAAAC50/-5UfqHz8FTU/s320/John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_Nightmare.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
I used to have these naps. They were strange naps; I would lie in the sun in my apartment some afternoon when I'd been working really hard, and I would fall into a sleep so profound it was almost painful. And then, when the first depth of it had passed, I would find myself lying there, unable to move, trapped in my nap. It was like I was pinned to the couch or the floor -- wherever I'd been lying -- and the nap went on, and I couldn't move, the sleep was so intense; and yet I wasn't fully asleep. It would go on for some indeterminate amount of time, and then I would be released.<br />
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Being the kind of person I was, I didn't worry about these naps. Sometimes I thought they were brought on by sugar, sometimes I thought they were a gift, a kind of ubernap that refreshed me more than usual. Once or twice, though, I thought I saw something that really shouldn't have been there: a small man sitting on the foot of my bed, a strange glittering shape in the corner of the room. And I remember all the way back to being a baby, lying in my crib, terrified, unable to move while these shapes streamed at me from the ceiling.<br />
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These unmoving waking-dreams have a name, as it turns out; it's called Sleep Paralysis. Apparently, when the body is moving between sleep and wakefulness -- at either end of the sleep cycle -- the body can be in REM sleep while the mind is awake. It's related to lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming and is able to gain some control of the dreaming experience, and to out-of-the-body experiences; in sleep paralysis, the sleeper tends to fixate on re-establishing control over their body, but in an out-of-body experience, the sleeper perceives themselves as being separate from their body.<br />
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The body naturally falls into a sort of paralysis when it is in REM sleep, called REM atonia, where muscles are kept from reacting to the dreams the sleeper is experiencing. Think of cats or dogs twitching while they dream of hunting: most of the muscles are disabled, but the echo is there, the ghost of the movement. <br />
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Then of course there is the sexual dimension:<br />
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"The release of certain neurotransmitters... is completely shut down during REM. This causes REM atonia, a state in which the motor neurons are not stimulated and thus the body's muscles do not move. Lack of such REM atonia causes REM behavior disorder; sufferers act out the movements occurring in their dreams... Erections of the penis (nocturnal penile tumescence
or NPT) normally accompany REM sleep... In females, erection of the clitoris causes enlargement, with
accompanying vaginal blood flow and transudation (i.e. lubrication).
During a normal night of sleep the penis and clitoris may be erect for a
total time of from one hour to as long as three and a half hours during
REM." [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_atonia#Physiology">wiki</a>]<br />
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Which brings me to another point: sleep paralysis is often accompanied by vivid hallucinations, perceived loud noise, and sometimes an acute sense of danger. So how does this work, if you feel that you are pinned to your bed, unable to move, feeling anxious, but at the same time you have a big stiffy under the covers? What would your hallucination be? Would it, perhaps, be that of a demonic lover, keeping you still by evil magic while taking advantage of your manly charms? Conversely, imagine how confusing it would be if you were a staid Victorian lady who was pinned frighteningly to her bed while experiencing distinct stirrings in the night?<br />
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<span>Enter the incubus, one of the oldest forms of supernatural creature, a male demon who lies with women at night -- and its counterpart, the succubus. Tales of these visitors can be found from South America to Africa to Eastern and Northern Europe. </span>One of the earliest mentions of an incubus "comes from Mesopotamia on the Sumerian King List, ca. 2400 BC, where the hero Gilgamesh's father is listed as Lilu.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4"><span></span><span></span></sup> It is said that Lilu disturbs and seduces women in their sleep, while Lilitu, a female demon, appears to men in their erotic dreams.<span>"</span> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus">wiki</a>]<br />
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There was a great deal of debate as to these creatures' purpose in early Christianity, but the common debate was whether the demons had any reproductive capability, and were they using humans in order to reproduce (a la Rosemary's Baby). It became commonly accepted that incubi and succubi were the same demon, changing shape: by taking female form, they were able to collect male sperm and then turn around and impregnate a human woman using their male form -- and the collected sperm. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum">Malleus Maleficarum</a> states:<br />
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"...to beget a child is the act of a living body, but devils
cannot bestow life upon the bodies they assume; because life formally
proceeds only from the soul, and the act of generation is the act of the
physical organs which have bodily life... Yet it may be said that these devils assume a body not in order that
they may bestow life upon it, but that they may by the means of this
body preserve human semen, and pass the semen on to another body<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambion#cite_note-Malleus-0"><span></span></a>."<br />
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Why the baby conceived in this way is not simply a normal baby, no one seems to know; but in the Christian tradition, a baby conceived this way (a cambion) is usually wickedly smart and able to get people to do their bidding. Some texts hold that a cambion does not exhibit breathing or pulse, but appears to be alive -- until they are seven years old, at which time they begin to appear more like normal people. Caliban, from the Tempest, was supposedly a cambion, as was (according to some stories) Merlin.<br />
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When the experience is not sexual it has still been attributed to demons or other supernatural presences. The word nightmare, for example: <i>mare </i>in nightmare does not stand for female horse, but for <i>mara,
</i>an Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse term for a demon that sat on sleepers'
chests, causing them to have bad dreams. In Newfoundland, the sleep paralysis experience is referred to as the "Old Hag," similar to the Night Mare: a creature who sits on the sleeper's chest while they sleep, making them helpless. Similar stories can be found in Sweden, Fiji, Turkey, Chile, and many other places; one of the interesting things about sleep paralysis is that it is completely cross-cultural -- a product, simply, of being human. Studies done in Canada, China, England, Japan and Nigeria found that 20% to 60% of individuals, across the board,
reported having experienced sleep paralysis at least once in their
lives. <br />
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Often, sleep paralysis is associated with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmXSJooA6T4&feature=fvst">narcolepsy</a>, a disorder where emotional excitement makes the sufferer fall asleep. More rare, but also associated with both sleep paralysis and narcolepsy, is cataplexy, a disorder that makes one lose control of muscles, either totally or partially, in muscle groups. Thus, for example, one woman I know falls to the floor when she gets overstimulated -- but is famous for being able to set her glass on the nearest surface on the way down. Common cataplexy responses are buckling at the knees, weakness in the arms, and lolling of the jaw; but the effect is brought about the same way that REM sleep temporarily paralyzes the muscles.<br />
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This makes me wonder about myths such as Rip Van Winkle. Was he, actually, asleep the whole time? Or did he have some kind of waking dream -- was anyone sitting on his chest, causing him to neglect his life and let his house and crops fall to overgrown ruin while he lay, unable to move? (What about the guy in the song "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Might_Be_Giants">Four Minutes of Two</a>," who fell asleep waiting for his girlfriend and woke up to gigantic metal bugs?)<br />
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And lastly, in the spirit of things falling to overgrown ruin, here is a quote about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilitu">Lillith</a>, the demon/goddess/early feminist (depending on your source) -- whose origin can be found in Lilitu, the Babylonian demon described above. The quote comes from the Bible's Book of Isaiah 34:13–15, describing the desolation of Edom:<br />
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"Her [Edom's] nobles shall be no more, nor shall kings be proclaimed there; all
her princes are gone. Her castles shall be overgrown with thorns,
her fortresses with thistles and briers. She shall become an abode for
jackals and a haunt for ostriches. Wildcats shall meet with desert
beasts, satyrs shall call to one another; There shall <b>the lilith</b> repose,
and find for herself a place to rest. There the hoot owl shall
nest and lay eggs, hatch them out and gather them in her shadow; There
shall the kites assemble, none shall be missing its mate. Look in
the book of the Lord and read: No one of these shall be lacking, For the
mouth of the Lord has ordered it, and his spirit shall gather them
there. It is he who casts the lot for them, and with his hands he
marks off their shares of her; They shall possess her forever, and dwell
there from generation to generation."<br />
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This is supposed to be about an accursed place, and the passage, in Old Testament tradition, shows that accursedness by listing eight different "unclean" -- possibly demonic -- animals (including the Lillith, apparently). However, from my contemporary perspective the beauty of the description gives me chills; it looks to me more like a blessing. In fact, there are places I would like to invoke this curse in the here and now. Wouldn't it be amazing?<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1jFiCfQTfjM/Ty8YK5E44lI/AAAAAAAAC6c/f36KuOw00B8/s1600/51bvHu0GKvL._SS500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1jFiCfQTfjM/Ty8YK5E44lI/AAAAAAAAC6c/f36KuOw00B8/s320/51bvHu0GKvL._SS500_.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<b>Other links:</b><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0h2nleWTwI">- Narcoleptic dog</a> on YouTube<br />
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- Windsor McCay's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1113021020/cabiofwond-20">Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend</a>, my favorite book on dreaming: hilarious and true to life, and drawn in the early 20th century. Pay no mind to the poor design of the modern cover (unlike the cover of my edition, below); the inside is what matters.<br />
<br />Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-62982244630328545032012-02-05T09:28:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:34:28.378-08:00What Ever Happened to Dog Carts?I happened across this some time ago, at <a href="http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2008/10/dog-carts-and-extinction-of-memory.html">Terrierman's Daily Dose</a>. He has a large number of old photos of dogcarts all around the world; mostly they are carts for milk delivery or other kinds of small delivery, pulled by one or more dogs.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qBa8fncxePU/Ty66XwwRFfI/AAAAAAAAC5M/ky4lO2Qx-Yw/s1600/dogcart3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qBa8fncxePU/Ty66XwwRFfI/AAAAAAAAC5M/ky4lO2Qx-Yw/s320/dogcart3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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An example of a milk cart, full of canisters. The unhitched terrier is probably a guard dog.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6-Rf63rCEck/Ty66ZOfsiHI/AAAAAAAAC5U/Lg0xGlJajXE/s1600/dogcart-brussells-tea-cart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6-Rf63rCEck/Ty66ZOfsiHI/AAAAAAAAC5U/Lg0xGlJajXE/s320/dogcart-brussells-tea-cart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Dog cart mobile tea delivery, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Brussels</span>, with three dog team.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--8k53aH4PqE/Ty66ZudjnII/AAAAAAAAC5c/PZNaH3wG40M/s1600/dogcart-canada.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--8k53aH4PqE/Ty66ZudjnII/AAAAAAAAC5c/PZNaH3wG40M/s320/dogcart-canada.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Dog cart postcard, Quebec.</div>
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There are lots more pictures on his blog; check it out. He is a great believer in working dogs; in fact, the blog is connected with <a href="http://www.terrierman.com/">his website</a> about working terriers: his hobby or possibly profession is hunting groundhogs, foxes, etc in their holes using terriers (often the prey are caught around farms and relocated to wilder areas). </div>Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-13803025871222115962012-01-13T10:00:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:33:34.734-08:00The Secret of Kells<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dWhT2RyLcmk/TwlLKzutiPI/AAAAAAAAC4c/K-Ia1zNB81c/s1600/kells4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dWhT2RyLcmk/TwlLKzutiPI/AAAAAAAAC4c/K-Ia1zNB81c/s320/kells4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I just watched The Secret of Kells tonight. I've had it on my list for a long time, and thing after thing has thrown itself in the way of my watching, but tonight I had a time limit. And that was when I said, "Hey, I've been meaning to watch this for a long time. C'mon, I've heard it's good."<br />
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I managed to overcome much grumbling from the other members of my household and force them to watch this instead of an already-seen Dr Who episode. We sat back and prepared to be entertained. And that's when the color and complexity of Kells burst over our eyeballs and we sat, entranced, none of the usual trips to the bathroom or other interruptions for the full hour and a quarter of the movie.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dOB2lVs2Ouk/TwlNChOVvhI/AAAAAAAAC40/s_St7hmQnIM/s1600/kells1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dOB2lVs2Ouk/TwlNChOVvhI/AAAAAAAAC40/s_St7hmQnIM/s320/kells1.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
The story is about a child named Brendan who is growing up in the Kells monastery in Ireland, run by his uncle, who is building a huge wall to keep the Northmen out. They take in a refugee from Iona, a tiny island off the coast of Mull, in western Scotland, where the Northmen have attacked and left no one alive. In his keeping is a book, the Book of Iona, whose pages are filled with the majesty of generations of work; but the book is unfinished.<br />
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The refugee, a monk with the gift of fine illumination, asks the boy to go into the forest to find some oak-berries (probably mistletoe) to make green ink with, so for the first time, Brendan leaves the safety of the monastery and goes among the trees. There, he is saved from the wolves by a girl who tells him to get our of her forest. He accuses her of being a fairy, and she does seem to have a magical quality, flitting through the trees and making flowers grow; she gives her name as Aisling, and she consents to help him find the berries if he will then leave the forest and not come back.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kbFMFjUjiPs" width="420"></iframe><br />
Of course, they end up becoming friends, and Brendan goes back to learn illumination, against his uncle's will. His uncle is obsessed with building a wall strong enough to keep the Northmen out, and does not see as his nephew begins to learn to create incredible illuminations, with the help of a magical glass which he wins from Crom Cruach, a pagan god whom St. Patrick is said to have overcome.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZcD-Bw22WdI/TwlM9O_W3kI/AAAAAAAAC4s/wzRP8YoOTIQ/s1600/kells2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZcD-Bw22WdI/TwlM9O_W3kI/AAAAAAAAC4s/wzRP8YoOTIQ/s320/kells2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
The extraordinary thing about the animation is the way in which you emerge at the end, feeling that you've just swum through the most marvelous illuminated manuscript. The attention to detail, and the careful attention paid to Irish art in its execution, is overwhelming. Apparently, the animators took a leaf from Mulan (which uses Chinese art as an inspiration) in its conception, and it works; the film is lovely, and very Celtic.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xpB-GqHgfQY/TwlMznHxvCI/AAAAAAAAC4k/W4RWnqQAx1Q/s1600/kells3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xpB-GqHgfQY/TwlMznHxvCI/AAAAAAAAC4k/W4RWnqQAx1Q/s320/kells3.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Throughout the film, too, are side-references and little references which, like the endlessly complex illuminary graphics of the film, thicken it into layers of meaning. For example, the cat, Pangur Bán (whose name means White <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulling">Fuller</a> in Gaelic) comes from an Old Irish poem, written in the 9th century by an Irish monk at Reichenau Abbey, in southern Germany:<br />
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I and Pangur Bán, my cat
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'Tis a like task we are at;
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Hunting mice is his delight
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Hunting words I sit all night.
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Better far than praise of men
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'Tis to sit with book and pen;
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Pangur bears me no ill will,
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He too plies his simple skill.
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'Tis a merry thing to see
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At our tasks how glad are we,
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When at home we sit and find
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Entertainment to our mind.
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Oftentimes a mouse will stray
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In the hero Pangur's way:
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Oftentimes my keen thought set
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Takes a meaning in its net.
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FOCoBGICso4/TwlPjIJNo2I/AAAAAAAAC48/yItfQhRyweQ/s1600/kells_pangur_ban.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FOCoBGICso4/TwlPjIJNo2I/AAAAAAAAC48/yItfQhRyweQ/s320/kells_pangur_ban.jpg" width="320" /></a>'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
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Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
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'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
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All my little wisdom try.
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When a mouse darts from its den,
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O how glad is Pangur then!
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O what gladness do I prove
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When I solve the doubts I love!
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So in peace our tasks we ply,
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Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
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In our arts we find our bliss,
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I have mine and he has his.
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Practice every day has made
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Pangur perfect in his trade;
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I get wisdom day and night
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Turning darkness into light.
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Translated by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Flower">Robin Flower</a>)</span><br />
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Which is excellent, because the movie begins: "I have seen the book which turns darkness into light." And, of course, a large part of the movie takes place in the Scriptorium, where the illuminations are created, and where, I suspect, our nameless Irish monk was when he wrote the poem. It's also possible that the author was from Iona, which was repeatedly sacked: a lot of the people fled, many to Ireland, but many of them went to the Continent to set up Columban monasteries. So you see the references are circular, like an Irish knot, or a snake swallowing its tail, or a fine illumination.<br />
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Interestingly, there was a Saint Brendan, but he lived many years before Iona was even founded, so not all trails lead back round to the beginning. But then, though art is about truth, it's not always about having the facts straight.<br />
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And just to give you an idea what they're talking about when they go on about the wonder of their book, here are some images from the real Book of Kells (its final name), which lives <s>in the British Museum</s> at Trinity College in Dublin:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mk3Y-8fnIhE/TwlGEvtghrI/AAAAAAAAC4U/2jPQzwLjUnE/s1600/kells_chi_rho.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mk3Y-8fnIhE/TwlGEvtghrI/AAAAAAAAC4U/2jPQzwLjUnE/s320/kells_chi_rho.gif" width="241" /></a></div>
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Here is the page called the Chi Rho page, meaning the first two letters of the word "Christ" in Greek.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BHs-CG9TyBA/TwlFfK5sheI/AAAAAAAAC4E/4TKvBU3U404/s1600/kells_chi_rho_bowl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BHs-CG9TyBA/TwlFfK5sheI/AAAAAAAAC4E/4TKvBU3U404/s320/kells_chi_rho_bowl.jpg" width="292" /></a></div>
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A detail from that same page, near the top.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HtqLqaP-qgA/TwlF5jJ_F1I/AAAAAAAAC4M/3pKrPu4guKg/s1600/kells_chi_rho_cats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HtqLqaP-qgA/TwlF5jJ_F1I/AAAAAAAAC4M/3pKrPu4guKg/s320/kells_chi_rho_cats.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And just to drive you crazy, here are two cats and their kittens worked into the bottom, in the reddish bit by the lowest part of the P shape. Look carefully (try clicking on the image to see it in more detail). See all that insane detail inside all the other bits? The interwoven curlicues under the cats' feet? That is all miniscule work, which could not have been done without at magnifying glass (the crystal? From the eye of Crom Cruach?); the Chi-Rho page in total is about the size of an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper. Imagine trying to do that with 8th or 9th century technology, quill pens and such.</div>
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This page, by the way, shows up in the movie, so watch out for it. And watch out for all the pieces and parts of the page to appear all through the movie as part of the storyline. It's quite a work of art -- the movie as well as the book. </div>
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Good luck -- you're in for a treat.</div>
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<br /></div>Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-90538317499808530302012-01-06T11:00:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:34:03.614-08:00Misfit Zeitgeist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qqzSAuZdpdA/TwdMiywXq8I/AAAAAAAAC30/DHLXO65t8qA/s1600/IMG_0181.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qqzSAuZdpdA/TwdMiywXq8I/AAAAAAAAC30/DHLXO65t8qA/s320/IMG_0181.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
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This fall, my older daughter entered middle school, and I was scared stiff. This is a child who runs around in the woods with a cloak on, who has always had her own (sometimes very odd) sense of style, a person who has done conceptual art -- without any prompting -- from the time she was perhaps three years old. She is intelligent, sweet, and totally unlike any of her peers. I knew she was doomed: she'd get eaten alive. I certainly had, at that age -- and she was like me, but more so. (This is the same daughter who took those endlessly popular <a href="http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/2008/06/art-of-gesture-in-tourist-italy.html">pictures of tourists</a> at the Tower of Pisa when she was nine).<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n8FHRyZ3BQU/TwdOENN4iqI/AAAAAAAAC38/DU2ihTnauNI/s1600/camp-winnarainbow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n8FHRyZ3BQU/TwdOENN4iqI/AAAAAAAAC38/DU2ihTnauNI/s320/camp-winnarainbow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
She was aware of my anxiety, despite my attempts to be calm. "Mama," she announced to me in August, after coming back from the be-who-you-are heaven of <a href="http://www.campwinnarainbow.org/">Camp Winnarainbow</a>, which she says is like a second home for her, "I've decided on a strategy. I'm going to wear clothes that are totally me, and then see who wants to hang out with me. If they don't like it, we'll both know we shouldn't be friends. If they do like it, then I'll have found people like me to hang out with."<br />
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I was secretly skeptical of this idea, because I felt she had really no conception of how cruel people can be in junior high, but I stifled that part of me long enough to praise her for coming up with a plan. And then the rest of the month she hit the thrift stores, and went through her clothes, throwing out anything that didn't fit in with the "real" her, with the exception of some comfy old clothes for around the house.<br />
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Then school came, and she wore... well, all of it. Even the cloak. And she got no grief for it. Sure, she got a couple of annoying boys buzzing around, saying, "why are you wearing a cape?" To which she answered, with admirable aplomb, "It's not a cape, it's a cloak. Capes don't have hoods." And they nodded! And went away! And the girls didn't even whisper about her! Except for one couple of (potentially interesting) girls who said to each other "Wow! That girl is wearing a cloak! How cool is that?"<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ta05LxDSgpM/TwdJKtT27uI/AAAAAAAAC3M/u7mZPMgnOmc/s1600/IMG_0325.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ta05LxDSgpM/TwdJKtT27uI/AAAAAAAAC3M/u7mZPMgnOmc/s1600/IMG_0325.jpg" /></a></div>
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So either she's totally insensitive to the giggles and whispers, or middle school has changed inordinately since I was there. True, that was a long time ago, and true, this is an unusual American town, being an easygoing surf town in California; but I don't think children that age have changed that much. Instead, I honestly think the culture has morphed a little. I think the geeks, by hook or by crook, have begun to inherit the earth.<br />
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This is what I arrange as my evidence: Mulan, the girl who was not supposed to dress like a boy and go to war. Harry Potter, who went against all that he was told to do, and endured whispers and self-doubt while hanging out with a girlgeek that we all loved. The Incredibles, where a family of unwanted misfits save the world and learn to let their oddness hang out. Percy Jackson. How to Train Your Dragon. The Sorcerer's Apprentice movie, which took a whole show you can see live at Maker Fair as a centerpiece of geek creativity. Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, which turns the whole misfit thing wonderfully on its head. <br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fyxfoDbw1HE/TwdJI1pl3uI/AAAAAAAAC20/_Cys29qmyaE/s1600/how-to-train-your-dragon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fyxfoDbw1HE/TwdJI1pl3uI/AAAAAAAAC20/_Cys29qmyaE/s320/how-to-train-your-dragon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Lesser known are things like the excellent young adult book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440416779/cabiofwond-20">Stargirl</a>, and the incredibly inspiring graphic novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810997223/cabiofwond-20">Page by Paige</a>, as well as the fine novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316058254/cabiofwond-20">A Mango-Shaped Space</a>, and many, many others. All about people who do things differently than the norm, and who are worthy role models.<br />
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Face it, this isn't the 80's anymore. This isn't Pretty in Pink, where they changed the ending so Andie gets together with the boring jerk guy, simply because the sample audience didn't like it otherwise. In this incarnation, Ducky not only wins, but the audience applauds because the misfits are happy being themselves.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_YxpbOYDE1w/TwdJJ_Ch1gI/AAAAAAAAC28/jJuxHxTWqaE/s1600/sorcerers_apprentice_still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_YxpbOYDE1w/TwdJJ_Ch1gI/AAAAAAAAC28/jJuxHxTWqaE/s320/sorcerers_apprentice_still.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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In the adult world, we have the Maker movement. Burning Man. XKCD. Steve Jobs (okay, that was obvious). In other words, the geeks of the last generation got creative jobs, started companies like Pixar, and began to influence culture. Or they took time off from their dayjobs to go out into the desert and build huge sculptures and hang out with people in an alternate city, where the whole local cultural system is based on the idea of giving, of creativity, of being eccentric.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-htKgB6AlO8E/TwdLgHcgPqI/AAAAAAAAC3c/-p6EY1Tgo2Y/s1600/IMG_0202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-htKgB6AlO8E/TwdLgHcgPqI/AAAAAAAAC3c/-p6EY1Tgo2Y/s1600/IMG_0202.jpg" /></a></div>
And what about the Steampunk movement? Before it was boiled down to gears and Victorian garb, it was a bunch of people making things, creating their own alternate aesthetic, revamping computers and rebooting scooters. And all the other things people did before you just bought your stuff on etsy from people who still do make things.<br />
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My point is, even in the mainstream, it's all trickling in. Children are being raised on a diet of misfit heroes, because the people writing the stories and making the films and producing the media were often misfits themselves. And who doesn't create stories that are, to some extent, about themselves -- or at least about people they identify with? And, when they get older, if they're lucky, they'll discover that a lot of misfits are now having a lot of fun doing weird, fun things they made up out of thin air -- and everyone's welcome.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2ARE6QIsHyA/TwdLe_xJ8GI/AAAAAAAAC3U/ZKZe0igfXks/s1600/IMG_0225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2ARE6QIsHyA/TwdLe_xJ8GI/AAAAAAAAC3U/ZKZe0igfXks/s1600/IMG_0225.jpg" /></a></div>
There are a number of interesting factors here, besides the obvious "geeks growing up and taking over" model. For one thing, the whole Web 2.0 model of users creating content means that people are taking control over their own creative production. Communism, if you will, of the culture, where the most outrageously weird person can get seen for their creative genius. For another, there is the way the Internet has allowed subcultures to flourish: geeks and eccentrics and anyone else can now band together with people of like minds to create a subculture, instead of sitting at home thinking they are the only one in the world who thinks the 17th and 18th centuries were the coolest ever.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DIFPPxG87WI/TwdLgawZRTI/AAAAAAAAC3k/roJTukpYQbQ/s1600/IMG_0186.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DIFPPxG87WI/TwdLgawZRTI/AAAAAAAAC3k/roJTukpYQbQ/s1600/IMG_0186.jpg" /></a></div>
And the more this happens, the more the people who learn the technology are the ones who will be producing the creative stuff that influences culture... and on and on.<br />
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Interestingly, it has been pointed out that clothes fashions haven't changed much recently. Car styles haven't changed much either, and nor has music. No one is coming up with the new Punk Rock, or the bouffant hairdo. Back in the last century, clothes and cars and other things were always very distinct from each other from decade to decade, but we haven't seen much of a shift in fashion or industrial design, other than fractional differences, for about twenty years. Why is this? Some people say it's because there is too much change: our technology changes so fast and so often that we have had to drop something. But I think you could phrase it another way -- you could say: our attention is elsewhere. Cars, clothes, songs, these things are parts of our lives that we live with but don't look at so much. Many of us are busy with other things, things less everyday.<br />
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I am finding, suddenly, that my odd tastes, my weird interests, are becoming the rage. Everywhere you look, now, references to Wunderkammern and Cabinets of Wonder are popping up, used in every possible way. Martin Scorcese's wonderful film, Hugo, based on Brian Selznik's even more wonderful book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0439813786/cabiofwond-20">The Invention of Hugo Cabret</a>, is full of things which I've been talking about for years. It's weird. I'm finding ideas I already wrote into novels suddenly cropping up in novels I'm reading (for example, there is the fabulous <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0439813786/cabiofwond-20">Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti</a>, which I have just reviewed in the new book review blog <a href="http://spec-fic-chicks.blogspot.com/">Spec Fic Chicks</a> -- where people are remade with machine-parts as part of their anatomies, and ultimately, part of their souls -- is disturbingly close to something I'm trying to sell in a children's book right now). <br />
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So this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, something I hold very dear is suddenly seeing a surge in interest -- yay! But on the other, it means that the cool things I am interested in are suddenly under public scrutiny, are being watered down as they enter the media and become part of the ad-cycle; and soon, Cabinets of Wonder will be passe, will -- oh horrors! -- show up at Costco. Except... so little of the history will have been truly described, and thus will remain, mysterious and horrific and beautiful, and essentially untouched, the Platonic ideal of exploration and weird magical science. I hope.<br />
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Despite the fact that I could be out of fashion next week, I find this spirit of the times to be incredibly exciting. Watching my daughter go off to school in a tight leather vest over a cotton shirt, a Steamboy-style cap, and rainbow rubber boots, and knowing that she is doing it safe from severe criticism is honestly thrilling. Knowing that my people, my kind, are out there remaking the culture from the ground up, even if I don't <i>always</i> like or believe in the things that they produce... just knowing that they're there, making stuff, questioning stuff, trying new cultural systems, makes my adrenaline pump as I think about all the doors that are opening. Thinking about it, I get shifty in my seat. I get excited, because you know what? <br />
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We're winning.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-75395129064206996802012-01-05T15:31:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:32:42.937-08:00Lena Herzog's Lost Souls<br />
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I came across this by chance: another photographer, photographing Frederik Ruysch's amazing birth defect displays from the <a href="http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/2007/04/finders-keepers-eight-collectors-and.html">Kunstkammern of Peter the Great</a>, as well as Vienna's Federal Museum of Pathology at the Narrenturm. I have always admired Rosamond Purcell's photographs, but now there is Lena Herzog.<br />
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On Science and the Arts, she does a good job of talking about the true nature of the collectors of the old days, the ideals of morality and aesthetic considerations, the way that art and science were not so separate as they are now. Check out her narrated slideshow <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/arts/2010/06/lena-herzogs-lost-souls/">here</a>.<br />
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In the meantime, I recommend her book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982590806/cabiofwond-20">Lost Souls</a>, which sounds like an amazing meditation on the the abstract beauty of these items of study:<br />
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<i>"The arrangements of the fetuses, the specimens, the anatomical skeletons, was highly artistic. Ruysch was a true artist. The images I have created, I took special care not to take advantage, not to speculate, on the macabre -- on the horrifying. I wasn't interested in shocking anyone. They are shocking by definition because it's such complicated territory. They're dead, they're children, they were meant to live, they never lived -- so I truly wanted to follow in the footsteps of Frederick Ruysch, who took special care. For example, he would hide the especially frightening parts with lace, revealing it only to his students of anatomy and to himself to study, in order to help humankind. The morality of the cabinet makers was never in question. They were highly conscious of the moral and human implications."</i><br />
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The preserved fetuses are glimpses into the perils of health and science back when medicine was in its infancy, but she manages to capture some of their ephemeral beauty, and some of the qualities which Ruysch so carefully preserved: that of error and loss, of humanity and the need to understand.<br />
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<b>Links:</b><br />
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More on Ms. Herzog and the book in the <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/06/08/lena-herzog-and-the-lost-souls/">Paris Review</a>,<br />
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A rather technique-heavy <a href="http://www.theasc.com/blog/2011/12/19/lena-herzog%E2%80%99s-camera-finds-%E2%80%9Clost-souls%E2%80%9D/">conversation with Ms. Herzog</a> at the American Society of Cinematographers.<br />
<br />Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-75381181668240826872011-12-06T08:46:00.001-08:002011-12-06T10:07:19.846-08:00Tyger, Tyger in a Folded WorldI just came across this, pretty much by accident. It's amazing, a small film by Guilherme Marcondes, a Brazilian filmmaker, based on the William Blake poem. He uses puppetry, illustration, photography and CGI to make a fantastically rich little gem:<br />
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Mr. Marcondes is influenced by the pastiche of Brazilian culture and the DIY quality of the Brazilian film schools of which he came. Clearly, he uses anything he can get his hands on, including things like origami and the ancient Japanese puppet-art of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunraku" target="blank">bunraku</a>. It's all very stylized and fabulous, and makes me want to know more about his earlier life -- did he study all these kinds of art? He must have.<br />
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I went to <a href="http://guilherme.tv/" target="blank">his website</a>, where he has samples of his work, and I found this, from a movie called Bunraku, the opening sequence of which he was given carte blanche to do:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/28693387?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=F5F500" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="600"></iframe><br />
I never heard of this movie, Bunraku. It looks like it was released in France and Canada, but not here...? It looks like a very violent movie, definitely not my type of thing, but the art direction looks really interesting: the pans through cities seem to unfold like a pop-up book, and the scenery is an odd conglomeration of bits. Which leads me to the fact that Mr. Marcondes originally studied architecture: <br />
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<i>"I like experiencing architecture, not practicing it. Just as I go to the movies or listen to music, I like to wander around a city, paying attention to how the space is organized, how the transportation works,
etc. I’m interested in how the environment we live in changes and conditions our personalities. That’s clearer in Tyger than in any other film I’ve made. That also explains why I like J.G. Ballard so much!" </i>[<a href="http://flux.net/who-is-guilherme-marcondes" target="blank">link</a>]<br />
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And on that note, I will leave you to ponder a world where cities are made to pop up as you move through them, and when the apocalypse comes, flowers of light grow through the cracks of the world.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-49377022196914086502011-11-29T23:30:00.000-08:002011-11-29T23:30:00.663-08:00Prognostications, Ahoy!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Whitby. We've heard of the place, on the coast of Yorkshire, home of the madhouse in Dracula, the place with the lightning, the cemetery; the scene of that great Gothic battle against evil. One imagines it a dreary place, lashed with wind and weather, with dark clouds clinging to the rocky shores.<br />
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But Whitby is actually somewhat of a tourist place, and always has been; a place for the people of northern Yorkshire to go to the seaside, an old fishing port (where Captain Cook learned his trade), connected to the North York Moors, where from Georgian times until the present, people go to walk and look. And Whitby jet, mined there since Roman times, was very popular among the Victorians.<br />
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George Merryweather was a doctor living in Whitby, an honorary curator of the Whitby Philosophical Society in the mid-19th century. His habit of inventing things, so common among the people of the day, led to his invention of the Platina Lamp, a long-burning light source:<br />
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<i>"In a communication from George Merryweather, Esq. to Professor Jameson, dated Edinburgh March 5th, 1831, it is proposed to extend the aphlogistic platina lamp, by constructing the body of the lamp, of tin large enough to contain a quart or more of alcohol. This will be sufficient to keep the platina in a state of constant ignition for thirteen or fourteen days and nights. Such a lamp, while entirely devoid of glare, affords sufficient light to shew the face of a watch in the dark of night. ... if it be connected with an unfailing reservoir of alcohol, the lamp may be ignited for years. The spongy platina does not appear to be, in the least, deteriorated by being kept in a state of constant ignition."<br /><br />-- The American Journal of Science and Arts, Volume 20, under "Miscellanies"</i><br />
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However, the thing which Mr. Merryweather became truly famous for was his "Atmospheric, Electromagnetic Telegraph, conducted by Animal Instinct," or, more shortly, his Tempest Prognosticator," which he built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It is a beautiful structure, with a bell at the top designed to look like the dome at St. Pauls. Around the bottom are placed a dozen glass bottles; threading from tiny hammers around the edge of the bell are threads, which connect to a piece of whalebone just inside the neck of each bottle. Inside each bottle is poured an inch of rainwater and then -- oh happy home! -- each bottle is occupied by a leech. A common, ordinary surgical leech.<br />
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Being a doctor, Merryweather had observed that medical leeches responded to barometric pressure or electrical charge in the air, or whatever it is that allows smaller animals to know when bad weather is afoot. The leeches' response was to climb -- probably a good response for water-dwelling creatures just before a rain, so that they don't get washed away. So when Merryweather's leeches climbed to the top of the bottle, they nudged the piece of whalebone, which caused the string to move and ring the bell. It's not clear, but it appears that the more the bell rang before a storm, the worse the weather to come.<br />
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Interestingly, Merryweather knew that his observations would come under question. He set up a system, using the incredibly efficient postal system of the day, wherein he would post a letter to Henry Belcher, President of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society whenever his Prognosticator gave him warning of an impending storm. Because the postal system delivered mail several times a day, the letters were postmarked with both date and time, proving that he had predicted the storm before it happened. He did this for all of 1850, and his Prognosticator was surprisingly effective.<br />
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The thing that is interesting to me about this invention, which few people actually talk about, is the way in which Mr. Merryweather was working to span that growing gap between the natural world and the newly-ascendant scientific world, using "instinct" as an accurate gauge for something as practical as weather-prediction. Interestingly, however, meteorology was a very appropriate battleground for this clash, as the scientific method did not always work so well with the chaotic ways that weather systems worked:<br />
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<i>"…Faced with problems in constructing meteorological knowledge from the weight of precision observation, meteorologists turned their attention towards kinds of knowledge that stood outside conventional methods and instruments, however extensively situated, however precise and continuous. The reputation of popular weather wisdom explained how meteorology persistently remained a key site for attacks on the dogmatism of scientific culture, and it forced meteorologists to consider the problem of evidence that seemed to escape the forms of number, weight, and measure."</i><i> </i><br />
<i>-- Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology, by Katharine Anderson </i><br />
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In other words, meterologists couldn't simply get by predicting whether people would die at sea based on simple measurements; they had to rely, in some part, on other things they found to be true:<br />
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<i>"Eccentric as it may appear, the Tempest Prognosticator embodied widely shared assumptions about forms of knowledge, instruments, and meteorological science. Its plausibility was based on two key perceptions: first, the precision and infallibility of sensations; and second, the importance of instruments to modern knowledge. Both are crucial for understanding the relationship of weather wisdom and scientific meteorology. The complex instinctive behavior of some "lower" forms of life modeled a natural form of automatic precision."</i><br />
--<i> Katharine Anderson, above</i><br />
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I had never really thought before how much the battleground between accepted wisdom/magic and science was fought to a much later date in meteorology, but it makes sense: for, if there's one thing Chaos Theory and satellite technology have taught us, it's that weather is a fickle, far-ranging thing, and telling sailors whether to go risk their lives merely on a barometer is something no one is completely comfortable doing. Anyone attempting to predict the weather, even today, is likely to come under criticism and even scorn when their predictions appear to be caged in ambivalence; so Merryweather must have thought he was onto something wonderful. He even tried to convince meterologists that his leeches could be hooked up to a telegraph system, with a minimum of difference in design; but not surprisingly, they did not take the bait. They already had their feet set on a road in which animal instinct was discounted, and would continue to be discounted, until the late 20th century.<br />
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(The Tempest Prognosticator is now kept at the <a href="http://www.whitbymuseum.org.uk/">Whitby Museum</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/technology/packer/merryweather.html">Read more</a> about the PrognosticatorHeather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-56171894140379141212011-11-19T20:44:00.000-08:002011-11-29T23:28:42.742-08:00Dragon Hunters<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HC2jeci9Mo8/TslSmyqktbI/AAAAAAAACz0/wExpSITXBGc/s1600/dragonhuntersBackground.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HC2jeci9Mo8/TslSmyqktbI/AAAAAAAACz0/wExpSITXBGc/s400/dragonhuntersBackground.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677159631666066866" border="0" /></a>By pure accident tonight, I watched Dragon Hunters, an animated French movie for kids which was released in America in 2008 with English voices, most notably that of Forest Whitaker as the hugely muscled, sweetly earnest Lian-Chu.<br /><br />Based on a French TV series which I'd never heard of, the movie is a 3-dimensionalized story about two men, friends from their days in an orphanage, who work as dragon hunters, along with Hector, their blue... dog? dragon? rabbit?. Gwizdo, the unscrupulous brains of the outfit, is a fine foil for Lian-Chu's stolidly heroic personality, and though they never seem to get the money they need, they have each other. Their quest in life is to make enough money to retire to a little farm, where they will grow -- "sheep," puts in Lian-Chu, whenever it comes up: Lian-Chu is an avid knitter.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYCRxsNjWM8/TslSmm740hI/AAAAAAAACzs/t-pQvRwNYaA/s1600/684dragonhunters486.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 380px; height: 288px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYCRxsNjWM8/TslSmm740hI/AAAAAAAACzs/t-pQvRwNYaA/s400/684dragonhunters486.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677159628517462546" border="0" /></a>The two are discovered by Zoë, a young girl who lives in a vast castle with her blind dragon-hunter knight uncle, who doesn't appreciate her. She dreams of becoming a knight and dragon-hunter, and has left home to find knights who can help her uncle kill the "world gobbler" dragon who is coming, as it comes every twenty years, to wreak distruction and disaster.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-850hidiLRxA/TslPrWfPAFI/AAAAAAAACyw/PgQCYHs1lLU/s1600/dragon_hunters.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 249px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-850hidiLRxA/TslPrWfPAFI/AAAAAAAACyw/PgQCYHs1lLU/s400/dragon_hunters.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677156411466776658" border="0" /></a><br />This sounds like a normal fantasy, similar to many animated features churned out by Hollywood. Believe me, it's not. The art direction, the scenery, and even the premise is actually totally unique. The landscapes are an amazing fiddle of physics, requiring conceptual leaps which are both disorienting and wonderful, because they live in a floating world, made up of fragments of land which float and move, but nevertheless have their own gravity. Moving through this space consists, often, of stepping from chunk to chunk of ground which either floats near you by accident or is held in place by roots or other debris. The opening scene, where Lian Chu is trying to kill a slug-like dragon which drags him around and around a variety of little ball-like floating planetoids, scraping off the vegetation which takes to the air, floating all around them -- this is like nothing Hollywood would make. The whole thing has a non-American flavor, from the weirdness of the world to the odd details of character and humor.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0VJgtChpgGU/TslPrlzT2wI/AAAAAAAACy4/gGHCCrjjLR4/s1600/Dragon_Hunters_2550.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 249px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0VJgtChpgGU/TslPrlzT2wI/AAAAAAAACy4/gGHCCrjjLR4/s400/Dragon_Hunters_2550.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677156415577512706" border="0" /></a>It's these details that are wonderful, funny and awe-inspiring and vivid, like when Hector, in the middle of an action sequence, pulls a booger out of his nose, and in the next shot wipes it, unnoticed, on Gwizdo's sleeve. Or the passing moment when Zoe comes out from behind a pillar, pulling up her pants. Or when, as they come closer to the end of the world, they encounter the wreckage of some past civilization, looking like Prambanan and Palmyra, all taken apart and floating everywhere, filling space with lost chunks. Or the calendar Zoë's uncle makes to predict when the World Gobbler will return, which gives the inspiration for some of the best credits I've ever seen, full of awesome little clockwork devices that appeal to the deepest part of my clockpunk soul. The details fill out the movie, taking it out of the realm of mere kid's adventure and putting it up with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Barks" target="blank">Carl Barks</a>' duck comics or the best of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix" target="blank">Asterix</a> books, an endlessly repeatable classic.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zJ5onrdO9fk/TslPr3fbTeI/AAAAAAAACzI/XCXSq_gT5e0/s1600/2008-12-24-DragonHunters.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 208px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zJ5onrdO9fk/TslPr3fbTeI/AAAAAAAACzI/XCXSq_gT5e0/s400/2008-12-24-DragonHunters.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677156420325952994" border="0" /></a>Oh, and did I mention the music? I noticed gamelon-ish music going by, as well as some sort of arabesque mix, and I believe there was a Cure song in there somewhere; quite a collection, and very un-Disney.<br /><br />It was so engaging, so awesomely mind-bending and beautiful in its production, that I found myself looking around for more by the same people. But it seems to be a combined effort of several French cartoon directors and writers, and what they've done before is mostly for TV. However, make note of Guillaume Ivernel, who did the really beautiful backgrounds for the Dragon Hunters TV show and was the art director as well as co-director for the movie with Arthur Qwak, the creator of the series. So the luminous anti-gravitational universe through which the characters walk -- and which gives the whole thing its surreal style -- is his doing, though the original concept came from Qwak. It's clear that they had a blast doing this movie, and though it may be a one-off, one can't help hoping for more.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3n2n3F-D6fM/TslPssD5s9I/AAAAAAAACzg/-kXEkp5TjGc/s1600/vqgs1s.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 220px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3n2n3F-D6fM/TslPssD5s9I/AAAAAAAACzg/-kXEkp5TjGc/s400/vqgs1s.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677156434437583826" border="0" /></a><br />More details about the movie <a href="http://www.awn.com/articles/production/idragon-huntersi-itom-and-jerryi-meets-ilord-ringsi">here</a>.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-76213067884026329472011-11-17T17:46:00.001-08:002011-11-29T23:29:00.953-08:00Mechanics for Pure Aesthetics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yoJlOD4HIf0/TsX_QylzhoI/AAAAAAAACx8/BXJEagXIdn4/s1600/machine.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yoJlOD4HIf0/TsX_QylzhoI/AAAAAAAACx8/BXJEagXIdn4/s400/machine.gif" border="0" height="367" width="283" /></a></div><br />As it turns out, I just signed the contract for my novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Songs for a Machine Age</span>, which will come out next November from <a href="http://www.hadleyrillebooks.com/">Hadley Rille Books</a>. This is a good thing, a nice thing, and it makes me happy.<br /><br />However, in the process of all this, I've been having to think where the premise for this book comes from. Like all things such as this, there are layers of influence; and my love of the 18th century and its pointless, beautiful machines, created solely for the pleasure of their existence, has been around so long that I can't put a finger on it; but I think the place where I can start for the influences of this book came from a robotics class I took for educators.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ciiRP6uJPI/TsYBHo66NnI/AAAAAAAACyk/MAvJm5qgNEw/s1600/first_robotics_credit_elizabeth_miskovetz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ciiRP6uJPI/TsYBHo66NnI/AAAAAAAACyk/MAvJm5qgNEw/s400/first_robotics_credit_elizabeth_miskovetz.jpg" border="0" height="267" width="400" /></a></div><br />It began with training us how to use the robotics kit that we were being given, in the hopes (I think) that we would buy it and use it and it would become the Next Big Thing. The people teaching us were deeply involved in <a href="http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc" target="blank" div="" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">First Robotics</a>, a big, expensive robotics competition for high school students. They started the workshop with how to build things, how to use the tools at hand, and how the various available parts worked. We all built the same thing, a little remote-controlled car, and experimented with the various parts.<br /><br />My experimentation was to put two large wheels and two small wheels on my car, the sizes being diagonal to each other, so the car could not ever have four wheels on the ground at once. This meant that when I changed directions, the car would rock back and forth in a very interesting way. I wanted to build a tower on top with moving parts so that the moving bits would sway or swing as the car rocked.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f8JtTyZPzxo/TsX_RVphoFI/AAAAAAAACyI/m7OUXsZ28fc/s1600/VEX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f8JtTyZPzxo/TsX_RVphoFI/AAAAAAAACyI/m7OUXsZ28fc/s400/VEX.jpg" border="0" height="400" width="349" /></a><br />However, the robotics people thought I was odd. They went on to do a series of task-based design assignments; we were supposed to find creative ways to pick something up and move it to a targeted area, or follow a line, or push a ball somewhere without losing it.<br /><br />I came away from this event totally fascinated with the difference between their way of thinking and my own. I wanted to do robotics so I could build interesting things that were beautiful and could move; they thought robotics were about, well, industry. Building a car. Moving a thing from here to there.<br /><br />Tasks.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-prKIce9LPHY/TsX_QjWVuWI/AAAAAAAACxY/UVfUk5wdqDw/s1600/old-digger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-prKIce9LPHY/TsX_QjWVuWI/AAAAAAAACxY/UVfUk5wdqDw/s400/old-digger.jpg" border="0" height="300" width="400" /></a></div><br />The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that machines, in our modern world, are all about tasks, about work, about doing things for us. They are our slaves, our brawn, extensions of us; but they don't do the fun stuff. They do the work. We give them assigned tasks. They were birthed from the can-do attitude of the 19th century, not the Cartesian ideals of the 18th century. Instead of "how can we reproduce, or enlarge upon, the miracles of nature," it was "how can we increase our productivity so that we might subjugate nature, overcome the laws of physics, and make things easier for ourselves?"<br /><br />What happened to the idea that machines might be agents of miracle? True, computers and their ilk do many miraculous tasks, and enrich our lives with music, video and the like; but we are still listening to and watching canned people, not enjoying the machines for the sake of themselves. We are not looking at the idealistic side of it; we are simply wanting good bandwidth. One of the only places in common culture where the workings of the machine are considered, are prized, is in the world of robotics. And in robotics, at least in the traditional venues, they care mainly for tasks.<br /><br />Except.<br /><br />Except for <a href="http://www.burningman.com/" target="blank">Burning Man</a>, and <a href="http://makerfaire.com/%20target=">Maker Faire</a>, and, in its purest form, Steampunk. Except for some areas of the art world. In other words, people who like to make stuff, and arty people who like to find out how things work. People who like their machinery tactile, silly, creative. Why should we only purchase goods made in factories? Why shouldn't we create our own devices? Why shouldn't we hack the manufactured goods and turn them into something beautiful and divine and oh-so-ours? Bring the beauty back into our lives?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h6psphsyaJU/TsX_Q2Q5p6I/AAAAAAAACxo/WGhknTEbpYs/s1600/caterpillar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h6psphsyaJU/TsX_Q2Q5p6I/AAAAAAAACxo/WGhknTEbpYs/s400/caterpillar.jpg" border="0" height="208" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" > Automaton Caterpillar, probably by Henri Maillardet </span><br /><br />Before I wrote <i>Songs for a Machine Age</i>, I hadn't thought clearly about all of this. What I actually said to myself was, I want to write about a place where the only machines in the whole culture (with a very few exceptions, like flour mills) are entirely aesthetic. A place where machines are honored, admired, and used only for the celebration of religious festivals. I began to write <i><a href="http://neds-bed.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Neddeth's Bed</a></i>, to find out what that place was like, and as it progressed, I began to think more deeply about this place: how did the culture get this way? Did they just naturally not think of the practical applications of machines? Or did something happen in their history?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BmMXr-T6POs/TsX_Qn4ErOI/AAAAAAAACxg/fAzdwNubq9s/s1600/childmillworker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BmMXr-T6POs/TsX_Qn4ErOI/AAAAAAAACxg/fAzdwNubq9s/s400/childmillworker.jpg" border="0" height="281" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />What if, for example, the Industrial Revolution never happened? Or, even better, what if something went so awry with the Industrial Revolution that a country rose up against it and threw out the whole idea of manufacturing, reshaping their culture to be entirely based around making things with one's own two hands? And what if the need for technology, for cool devices and complex machinery is regulated by a class of people who were educated entirely for the purpose of making beautiful machines, who are experts on the bad old days -- drilled in the horrors of manufacturing -- so that it won't happen again?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9mpWvt9Z0Lw/TsYBAT1qqgI/AAAAAAAACyY/66wHOdWCQww/s1600/bitforms_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9mpWvt9Z0Lw/TsYBAT1qqgI/AAAAAAAACyY/66wHOdWCQww/s400/bitforms_01.jpg" border="0" height="266" width="400" /></a></div><br />I still haven't finished <i>Neddeth's Bed</i>. <i>Songs for a Machine Age</i> came from the questions I had while writing <i>Neddeth</i>, and grew into a fun adventure novel, with all of the above questions as background. But the layers of understanding, like so many things, went on from there, and now I'm working on the next layer down, the reason why their revolution happened. What could possibly change a culture so much? I had to find out, so I am writing it; and it is definitely not a fun adventure novel. So if you need me, I'll be in the basement, peeling the onion of my world -- and rooting around in all the machine-parts.<br /><br /><hr /><br /><br />...and... if you want to see some machines that distinctly remind me of some of the Festival Devices I imagined in <i>Songs</i>, check these out:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4U0ZOkpjap0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JtmNFWXFaOQ" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/krMpPsBbsRU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />Such amazing attention to detail! Seriously, it's extraordinary how every tiny piece of these devices are carefully crafted. Just exactly like I imagine the devices in the book. Now if this artist only made things that were ambulatory...!<br /><br />More on <a href="http://www.uram.net/eng/intro_en.html">U-Ram Choe</a><br /><br />Odd bonus: Interesting blog post about <a href="http://dumbdecoyduck.wordpress.com/page/2/" target="blank">Descartes and automata</a>.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-79611291895438064782011-11-09T20:56:00.000-08:002011-11-29T23:29:28.768-08:00Visualizing Depression, Happiness as Esprit d'Escalier<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mcZUCRfktUo/TrsMFDTNK3I/AAAAAAAACwY/bUTuuStw-hQ/s1600/depression_hole.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mcZUCRfktUo/TrsMFDTNK3I/AAAAAAAACwY/bUTuuStw-hQ/s400/depression_hole.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673141436528012146" /></a><br />You can always tell what state my mind is in by the state of my house. I am not really bipolar, but I do swing back and forth in energy levels; sometimes it's clean (more rarely than I would like), more often it swings between the clutter of doing lots of things, and the clutter of neglect.<br /><br />Sometimes, the clutter of neglect happens because I'm not home much, or I have too many commitments. Other times, it acquires a patina of depression. This is when things get bad -- the place doesn't smell right; the dust bunnies are mingling too much with the stuff; there are too many things on the floor; everything is collecting dust. That same pair of little girl leggings has been in that same place for two weeks. None of the chairs are sit-able with all the things piling up, and the plants need water.<br /><br />Depression, for some people, is a familiar place, a landmark, some scenery you thought you had left, but now find yourself back in almost without knowing it. In my particular scenario, there is a big black hole that I have to stay away from. It has a certain gravitational pull, and if you simply march thoughtlessly ahead, you will fall into it. Once inside, the whole paradigm is geared toward "DOWN" and like the Red Queen, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay at the level you find yourself. My sister-in-law says it's like an ant-lion's hole, with the loose sand, so that no matter how hard you claw your way out, the terrain underfoot just keeps shifting out from under you, sliding you back.<br /><br />It's easiest simply to steer clear of the hole than to get out once you've moved over that edge. I know where the hole is, and I know the surrounding countryside well enough that I recognize the signposts to stay away from. There are things that push me toward it, but there are also things which carry me away from it: by consciously thinking positive thoughts when it looms, I can change the countryside I walk through -- just a bit, but enough. Like a compass needle pulled toward the North, my thoughts veer toward the hole if I'm close enough, but unlike a compass, I can, with effort, wrench those thoughts off to a different direction -- and by doing so, find myself in a completely different country. <br /><br />Weirdly, pasting a smile on my face often helps; the smile becomes a real one disturbingly quickly. I'd heard from someone that the act of smiling in itself can help you feel better, and it does. Which says all kinds of things, like those people I can't stand, who smile all the time, may in fact actually feel good about themselves. Or that Americans have crummy lives, because they smile so much to stay sane.<br /><br />Other ways people think about depression: I have one friend who says her world becomes two-dimensional, like nothing has any substance anymore. It's all just cheap cardboard cutouts of reality, and all the people she knows, all her friends and family, have lost their depth. The world becomes shallow and lusterless.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pm6AmSIK-48/TrsRB5-hPuI/AAAAAAAACxI/EnIJgmk77X0/s1600/christmas_children1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pm6AmSIK-48/TrsRB5-hPuI/AAAAAAAACxI/EnIJgmk77X0/s400/christmas_children1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673146880043859682" /></a><br />For me, I become slow. I labor along, and I'm never able to accomplish anything: the day simply goes past before I can get there. I wind down like a film coming to a halt, and lose the ability to get enthusiastic. Food doesn't taste good, so I eat a lot of it to try to make up for the lack of interest by trying again and again. Sleep is unsatisfying, so I do more of it if I can.<br /><br />Another friend of mine is absolutely the opposite: she says depression winds her up. She gets tense, buzzes around uselessly, doesn't accomplish anything because she's rattling apart. She snaps at everyone, and can't concentrate on anything. And she can't sleep.<br /><br />Someone else described it this way: it's like a thickening veil between you and everyone/everything else, and you can't reach through it. Sort of like a cataract of the soul, isolating you and making it hard to see where you're going, what you're doing, why you're even doing it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u-WaoNkqjSA/TrsMFVZMtaI/AAAAAAAACws/zw20pLa_mW0/s1600/conversation.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u-WaoNkqjSA/TrsMFVZMtaI/AAAAAAAACws/zw20pLa_mW0/s400/conversation.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673141441384986018" /></a><br />All of these descriptions have an element of the world moving away, becoming distant, of reaching out and not being able to touch anything or feel it touch you. When things are really bad there is this desire to make it all stop: the reaching, the isolation, the inability to communicate across vast distances. Sometimes there is the sense that it's all your fault, that you have isolated yourself, or that others have turned away because you are a bad person. It's hard to live with, and it's hard to live with yourself. The whole thing becomes exhausting. You find yourself just wishing you could wink out, be gone, stop.<br /><br />"It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at." –Sylvia Plath, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Bell Jar<br /></span><br /><br />Elizabeth Wurtzel said, "I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it." Which is an interesting point. Because what are the gauges by which we measure happiness? How do you know if you've won the battle, if you're getting the happiness you've been fighting for? <br /><br />The truth is, we don't know until it's past. "A long and happy life" is something people often say in eulogies, in biographies; but did the person with the "happy" life actually know they were having it, while they were having it? Or is that something you can only judge in hindsight? Is the "long" part of that statement mandatory for the "happy" part to be assured?<br /><br />An interesting study came out recently that compares satisfaction and happiness levels. For example, people with children are generally less happy than people without children; however their satisfaction levels tend to run higher. What is the difference between satisfaction and happiness? Unfortunately, I got this information third hand, so I don't know what the creators of the study call happiness, or what they call satisfaction. But I think it's actually an interesting point to consider.<br /><br />I suppose I would say happiness consists of moving unobstructedly through the world, of being able to take those moments that are beautiful and really wring some enjoyment out of them -- notice them as they go by. It is a matter of being. You <span style="font-style:italic;">are</span> happy; your happiness is a state of being. In the case of the person who has had a "long and happy" life, that happiness may be an artifact of hindsight, of perspective: only when you get far enough away from it do you realize that all that -- that hurdy gurdy and running around and having meltdowns and tears and holding each other close and kissing your child's head -- that held all the ingredients of happiness. But, for most of us, I think we don't know it's happiness nine-tenths of the time.<br /><br />Satisfaction, on the other hand, is about doing. You get satisfaction from the things you do. When your life is satisfying, there is the sense of a job well done, a completion, a feeling that you have done well. You look at your child and see someone well-read and capable and vivacious and you feel that you did the best you could. Your garden is full of flowers; you grow tomatoes and you knit sweaters and you work hard at your job. These are all good things, and honestly, satisfaction is an important emotion to have.<br /><br />The thing, I think, is not to allow yourself happiness as a reward for satisfaction. The doing of things has, I think, ruined many of our lives, because we don't allow any cracks for the happiness to get in. If there are no pauses, the happiness can't slip in on us unawares. Those moments of quiet, that happiness, they need nourishing; and if the doing of things balloons outward to fill all available space, then you will look back on your deathbed and say, "My, I've had a full life," and if you're lucky, you'll confuse fullness with happiness.<br /><br />Because there are always those moments of joy, some of them tiny -- like watching your daughter lean down over her book in the sunshine, her hair hiding her face, and seeing the beautiful line of her back; or when the first curling leaves of your garden begin to sprout; or even that moment when you take the time to sit outside somewhere beautiful with a glass of wine and watch the sunset with someone you love and like talking to. In those moments, if we take them carefully and in the spirit of trust, we can allow the happiness to take root, like a shy plant, and grow through the hurt, the isolation and the busy-ness. And with it, the world will begin to poke through the caul, begin to thin the membrane, the heaviness between ourselves and the world. The isolation can diminish, the compass needle can be taught to point elsewhere, and at the end of it all, we'll be able to see and touch everything again.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dCKw02MLXaY/TrsMFJY1U6I/AAAAAAAACwk/-_AwN_MPpCw/s1600/Poppies.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dCKw02MLXaY/TrsMFJY1U6I/AAAAAAAACwk/-_AwN_MPpCw/s400/Poppies.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673141438162228130" /></a><br />"It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses." -- Virginia WoolfHeather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-59966534631948444292011-11-07T09:02:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:36:11.062-08:00Coming Home from World Fantasy<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hn24FETss7s/Trg52_ZExrI/AAAAAAAACwM/xboqlF0baZ8/s1600/london_fog52.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672347347565463218" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hn24FETss7s/Trg52_ZExrI/AAAAAAAACwM/xboqlF0baZ8/s400/london_fog52.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 378px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
It wasn't until I was coming home that I noticed it: a sinking feeling, a sort of settling back into the greyness of my body. I had been burning, bright and smart and heard; I had been ageless, interesting, interested. I had been in the company of people who also burned with the clarity of their intelligence.<br />
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Now, on the plane, I was falling back into the usual me, flying as it were into a sort of miasma of banality, back into my age, my weight, the sense of disengagement. In other words, back to paying too much attention to other people's world-views and priorities, because they outweigh mine. It was as if I was some kind of outcast who, for a moment, had lived with her tribe, and was now going back to the other tribe, the one to whom she didn't quite belong, and whose opinions and judgements seem, in the immediate day-to-day sense, to shape the world. In fact, to shape me.<br />
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It sounds terrible, doesn't it? Sometimes a little perspective can feel like that. I found myself thinking of a story where the person has a talent -- say, the ability to save lives, or the ability to make beautiful things -- and they are brought into the place where the rich people live because of their talents; for a moment, they see how much they really shine. Then they have to go back to where they live, a place where, perhaps, the powers-that-be put something in the water, or the air, and everyone there never looks up, never shines, never thinks about anything outside their little sphere. <br />
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My father grew up in Detroit in the 1930s. I may have mentioned this before, but his family had a cottage on Lake Erie in Canada, near where my grandmother grew up. Every vacation, and even some of the school year, my father would go and stay at the cabin, where they would swim, or go ice-fishing, make things out of the clay they found along the bank. Then, inevitably, they'd come back to Detroit, over the bridge. Detroit, being a coal-fired town in those days, could not be seen from the bridge. My father says that as they came closer, you could see the steeples and the taller buildings poking up out of the dark haze that obscured the rest of the city; and as the bridge went down, they would descend into that haze, go back to Detroit life. For him, it was merely a symbol of going home.<br />
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Imagine, then, if this talented person in the story were to descend back into the place they came from, exactly like descending into the haze; but instead, it's a haze of lost ambition, disinterest in learning, provincial thinking. A sort of purgatory imposed from above, in which even the most brilliant and talented people only stand out a little through the miasma, the creative and intellectual smog. What kind of story would that make? Having been outside the smog, would the person understand, and rebel? Or would they live tragically, knowing that if they could only live in the untainted area permanently, they could be brilliant and useful and shining? Or would they understand that they might be alleviating some of the smog, challenging people's paradigms, by their very existence? I dare you to write it, and I'll write it too. Maybe we can compare notes.<br />
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In the meantime, all I can say is, hooray for the internet! May the tribes all keep in touch with each other, keep their tribeness in the best way they can.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RdYne3pCDC0/Trg5r6vwu8I/AAAAAAAACv8/aiUKvbAwyPg/s1600/2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672347157339880386" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RdYne3pCDC0/Trg5r6vwu8I/AAAAAAAACv8/aiUKvbAwyPg/s400/2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" /></a>Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-12155219970508401802011-07-08T23:11:00.000-07:002012-02-05T09:37:22.028-08:00Whose Ideal Was This, Anyway?As part of my day job I teach media literacy to children in 5th and 6th grade -- just before they go off to junior high school, and hopefully just before they are inundated with the maximum number of messages about who they should be.
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One of the things I did recently was to make two slide shows about the evolution of what is considered ideal in both male and female bodies. For the female progresssion, we start with the S-curve styles of the 1900's, with the impossibly thin waist and the "monobosom" pouter-pigeon chest.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0QJe5hTe3VA/Thc8EeaY_xI/AAAAAAAACsU/Ha7ATvHaYGc/s1600/WomansHomeCampanionSept1902-59.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627032307003621138" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0QJe5hTe3VA/Thc8EeaY_xI/AAAAAAAACsU/Ha7ATvHaYGc/s400/WomansHomeCampanionSept1902-59.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 204px;" /></a>
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The thing I always debate with myself about this kind of image is this: is it better to rely on a piece of corsetry, torturing one's body into shape through lacings and bonings which everyone uses? At least then, no one expects you look that way naturally. Or is it better to be natural, wearing flimsy knitted clothes that give away every lump and bump, and be expected to be perfect with no structural support at all? The former is painful, but the latter can be even more painful, because the only way to gain the correct shape is to starve yourself, exercise to death, and have plastic surgery -- all invasive techniques that actually change your body and affect your overall lifetime health. And even then, after all that, they don't often work.
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Within about twenty years after this, however, the fashion changed so much that anyone with those kinds of curves is in big trouble -- which means that all the curvy women who were considered beautiful before probably had daughters who inherited their shape and were now struggling with trying to flatten and narrow themselves so as to fit the new shape.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_dpC41jLQns/Thc8EeWelsI/AAAAAAAACsc/uHGzFVR57Ek/s1600/corset-right.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627032306987210434" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_dpC41jLQns/Thc8EeWelsI/AAAAAAAACsc/uHGzFVR57Ek/s400/corset-right.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 132px;" /></a>
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Within another twelve years, you have Mae West making that flat ideal look entirely silly.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2vuO9b5C1Xs/Thc8EoltYeI/AAAAAAAACsk/xGxX9CyrZxk/s1600/MaeWest.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627032309735449058" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2vuO9b5C1Xs/Thc8EoltYeI/AAAAAAAACsk/xGxX9CyrZxk/s400/MaeWest.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 254px;" /></a>
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And then come the forties, time of slim hips and shoulder pads, a more masculine look to go with wartime and the Rosie the Riveter ideal of womanhood.
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rlFiJyV0row/Thc9PMZS-lI/AAAAAAAACss/mldbKbDZRDc/s1600/casablanca-ingrid-bergman-wearing-a-jumper-dress-designed-by-orry-kelly-1942.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627033590657382994" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rlFiJyV0row/Thc9PMZS-lI/AAAAAAAACss/mldbKbDZRDc/s400/casablanca-ingrid-bergman-wearing-a-jumper-dress-designed-by-orry-kelly-1942.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 240px;" /></a>
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But of course, men who are at war and dreaming of home think about girls like Betty Grable with longing: not so masculine looking here. Note, however, that there is no gap between her thighs. If she were a modern pinup, she would have much thinner legs, often so much so that there would be a space between the thighs.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Le8IrQHETWc/Thc9PA05i-I/AAAAAAAACs0/w6jPaTByuxc/s1600/betty-grable.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627033587551931362" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Le8IrQHETWc/Thc9PA05i-I/AAAAAAAACs0/w6jPaTByuxc/s400/betty-grable.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 250px;" /></a>
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By the fifties, things had changed back again from the shoulder pads and the narrow hips.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K_Dl1gBuA5Y/Thc_Bck6epI/AAAAAAAACtc/KQtRx_2rR2Y/s1600/halsman-philippe-marilyn-monroe-7200043.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627035553506163346" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K_Dl1gBuA5Y/Thc_Bck6epI/AAAAAAAACtc/KQtRx_2rR2Y/s400/halsman-philippe-marilyn-monroe-7200043.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 225px;" /></a>
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Then, in the sixties, a new phenomenon came to our attention: the new, "modern girl" look of Twiggy. Suddenly all those girls who looked like Marilyn Monroe were doomed. Thin was in (remind you of the twenties at all? Modernness and shapelessness?).
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hbD1OmMizuk/Thc9Pr5i5ZI/AAAAAAAACtE/dyHK-Rw7WPY/s1600/twiggy.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627033599114143122" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hbD1OmMizuk/Thc9Pr5i5ZI/AAAAAAAACtE/dyHK-Rw7WPY/s400/twiggy.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 243px;" /></a>
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This is, I think, the beginning of our modern supermodel/Photoshop hell.
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Curiously, though, this is where I started to notice a thing. It was a kind of big thing, and I'm not certain how I missed it before, except that with the proliferation of media, there are more examples for me to look at. What I noticed was a rift between the ideal woman for men and the ideal woman for women.
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The thing is that while Twiggy was strutting her stuff to the women, we had Jane Fonda taking the male world by storm in her role as Barbarella.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jqCEi2Q6KC4/Thc_B_005EI/AAAAAAAACts/BA7zHi0txDI/s1600/barbarella.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627035562968147010" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jqCEi2Q6KC4/Thc_B_005EI/AAAAAAAACts/BA7zHi0txDI/s400/barbarella.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 188px;" /></a>
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So what is that about? When women try to emulate someone such as Twiggy, against the general desire to attract men, what are they doing? My guess is that it's about women trying to impress other women. Which is an interesting phenomenon (Note: I am going to set aside gay, lesbian, bisexual and other preferences here because that is a huge discourse in itself; I'm making a choice to talk about the majority, in the services of a discussion of "popular culture," which is, after all, what the media is serving up. I do think it could probably be said that few lesbians are particularly interested in the Twiggy look, either, but perhaps I'm going out on a limb, making sweeping statements like that).
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Another thing I am fascinated by is the incredible strides we've made in the technology of beauty. These earlier examples didn't have the benefits of plastic surgery, personal trainers, and Photoshop. True, the early catalogs are all drawings, so could be as fantastic as you want; and true, they had the soft-focus lens and some retouching in still photographs. But when Ursula Andress walked out of the waves on film, she had to hold it in, to carry herself well in order to look as fabulous as she did. When I compare the photos of her to the apparently effortless beauty of the photos of her modern counterpart, Halle Barry, two things come to mind: "Poor Ursula! She looks so self-conscious by comparison!" --and-- "My word, but Halle looks disturbingly, almost supernaturally, flawless!" And, to be honest, it <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> supernatural: she has the benefits of all the modern technologies. Whereas Ursula was actually standing there, in the raw, being natural -- no "super" about it.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GwbQx3Lte88/Thc9PzTMnRI/AAAAAAAACtM/6dS9VKMWAxI/s1600/ursula_andress1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627033601100782866" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GwbQx3Lte88/Thc9PzTMnRI/AAAAAAAACtM/6dS9VKMWAxI/s400/ursula_andress1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 252px;" /></a>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CZIE68mNBSw/Thc_BPE91CI/AAAAAAAACtU/4R-lFi8pSZA/s1600/halle_berry_300x400.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627035549882504226" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CZIE68mNBSw/Thc_BPE91CI/AAAAAAAACtU/4R-lFi8pSZA/s400/halle_berry_300x400.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 240px;" /></a>
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The thing that disturbs me most about these two images is how our daughters must feel about themselves when they see them. The girls in 1962, seeing Ursula rising from the waves in <span style="font-style: italic;">Dr. No</span>, knew that what they were seeing was a real woman, something they could aspire to (if that was what they wanted). Seeing Halle Barry, above, holds no such comforts, particularly when digital film has so much option for smoothing out those flaws. Such perfection is absolutely outside the realm of anyone who is honest with themselves. They might as well throw themselves against a brick wall, because you can't live, and breathe, and be that perfect. It's impossible, and our daughters know it.
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And I won't need to say much about the present Photoshop climate, and the overzealousness of Photoshop users that, while making fun of themselves to some extent, are also continuing to propagate the impossible image, one that makes it hard to judge what the real person looked like and so impossible to know what to compare oneself to.
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6rHBQUg_O2E/Thc_BZzVwcI/AAAAAAAACtk/daggURXVjFM/s1600/proenzabloodyschouler.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627035552761364930" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6rHBQUg_O2E/Thc_BZzVwcI/AAAAAAAACtk/daggURXVjFM/s400/proenzabloodyschouler.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 312px;" /></a>
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Now, on the male front, there's not a lot of change from 1910 to the 1970s. Maybe a little more muscle, but nothing strange. Male self-image, like male fashion, is one of conservatism and extremely subtle variation, particularly during the 20th century. Sure, there were the Ziggy Stardust exceptions, but very few men actually aspired to that kind of skinny and androgenous look -- or to wearing shiny, colorful stretch body suits and platform heels on the street.
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d8WUc1qn0Ik/ThdEVFYG7VI/AAAAAAAACt0/l1W0vvI0JRg/s1600/1920bvd01ad_2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627041388433960274" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d8WUc1qn0Ik/ThdEVFYG7VI/AAAAAAAACt0/l1W0vvI0JRg/s400/1920bvd01ad_2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 218px;" /></a>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NvG5IpNkuK0/ThdEVbVBy8I/AAAAAAAACt8/lGEmBMWgPPM/s1600/1939duofold01ad.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627041394326621122" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NvG5IpNkuK0/ThdEVbVBy8I/AAAAAAAACt8/lGEmBMWgPPM/s400/1939duofold01ad.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 250px;" /></a>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ecAGJJ9dSaY/ThdEVr0fN9I/AAAAAAAACuE/84J9dGu_o4U/s1600/GrantandScott.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627041398753540050" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ecAGJJ9dSaY/ThdEVr0fN9I/AAAAAAAACuE/84J9dGu_o4U/s400/GrantandScott.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 144px;" /></a>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ift8DqgnuFE/ThdEV1h-KwI/AAAAAAAACuM/WVdhTmYe6vc/s1600/paul_newman022.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627041401360231170" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ift8DqgnuFE/ThdEV1h-KwI/AAAAAAAACuM/WVdhTmYe6vc/s400/paul_newman022.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 240px;" /></a>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1j2qU2-RSU/ThdEV9N1BrI/AAAAAAAACuU/Q-UV_qfgA_4/s1600/ziggy.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627041403423229618" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1j2qU2-RSU/ThdEV9N1BrI/AAAAAAAACuU/Q-UV_qfgA_4/s400/ziggy.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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However, in the 1970s, not too long after Ziggy was blowing peoples' minds, a man who everyone had thought rather extreme, crossed over from the bodybuilding subculture into the mainstream media, bringing with him a sea-change as he came.
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YQLcobGoS98/ThdIn4XF37I/AAAAAAAACuc/fdOW7aVERBg/s1600/ArnoldSchwarzeneggerPicture.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627046109404061618" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YQLcobGoS98/ThdIn4XF37I/AAAAAAAACuc/fdOW7aVERBg/s400/ArnoldSchwarzeneggerPicture.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 236px;" /></a>
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It's true that his first big role in film was one of extreme caracature, and many people laughed at its comic book qualities.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xtz0vcpUKCs/ThdIn2CqO3I/AAAAAAAACuk/e56PojxIdUk/s1600/conan.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627046108781493106" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xtz0vcpUKCs/ThdIn2CqO3I/AAAAAAAACuk/e56PojxIdUk/s400/conan.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 220px;" /></a>
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But the film, and his role in it, captured imaginations too. Arnold made his next appearance in another, more serious role, one in which his physical attributes are used in a much more believable way.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RjmL3TGEL7I/ThdIoLMdHcI/AAAAAAAACus/XRmYVeSM3YM/s1600/terminator.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627046114459721154" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RjmL3TGEL7I/ThdIoLMdHcI/AAAAAAAACus/XRmYVeSM3YM/s400/terminator.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 315px;" /></a>
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To overcome a comic-book image by portraying a truly frightening cyborg is an interesting entry into "normal" roles; but Terminator had a rippling effect of acceptance for his weird physique: how he looked went from being weird and scary:
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mpLq5IeJ5wI/ThdJx5anKVI/AAAAAAAACvM/rOPmwgaGZNA/s1600/arnie_scary.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627047380997581138" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mpLq5IeJ5wI/ThdJx5anKVI/AAAAAAAACvM/rOPmwgaGZNA/s400/arnie_scary.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 232px;" /></a>
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...to being impossibly badass, and that, right there, is an entry into the imagination of the male populace. From there it was on to action movies, and before you know it, others were emulating the look. It became de rigeur for action movie heroes to have that pumped-up look; and a whole generation of boys grew up with the idea that it was the ultimate in masculinity.
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Just look at GI Joe. In the 1960s he was a regular guy, modeled to look like a grownup version of the boys who played with him.
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XtfaMEoQ1Cw/ThdIokqwtDI/AAAAAAAACu0/ROAZgedYrKY/s1600/gi_joe_1964-2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627046121297720370" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XtfaMEoQ1Cw/ThdIokqwtDI/AAAAAAAACu0/ROAZgedYrKY/s400/gi_joe_1964-2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 202px;" /></a>
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But by the 1990s, with G.I. Joe Extreme, whose biceps are nearly as big as his waist, it began to get out of control. Boys were being encouraged to play with role models that not only went beyond anything they could achieve with steroids, but would require actual muscle implants to achieve the proportions.
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yJexQb8dg0Q/ThdIoicGNAI/AAAAAAAACu8/12C0J3VtAt4/s1600/stone.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627046120699343874" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yJexQb8dg0Q/ThdIoicGNAI/AAAAAAAACu8/12C0J3VtAt4/s400/stone.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a>
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Curiously, women didn't go along with this, just as the Twiggy thing never caught on with men. The Brad Pitt of <span style="font-style: italic;">Thelma and Louise</span>, which appealed to so many women, is not the same one as the Brad Pitt of <span style="font-style: italic;"><s>Fight Club</s>Troy</span>, an action movie.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RfxJ6pAYcBc/ThdK4sX3fnI/AAAAAAAACvU/SVgF5RgwD9E/s1600/brad-pitt-1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627048597267119730" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RfxJ6pAYcBc/ThdK4sX3fnI/AAAAAAAACvU/SVgF5RgwD9E/s400/brad-pitt-1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Usp4qmU1Nag/ThdK4mlU9mI/AAAAAAAACvc/qtDp5Jx0P5c/s1600/brad-pitt-workout-brad-pitt-abs.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627048595712964194" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Usp4qmU1Nag/ThdK4mlU9mI/AAAAAAAACvc/qtDp5Jx0P5c/s400/brad-pitt-workout-brad-pitt-abs.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 266px;" /></a>
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And yet, just look at Robert Pattinson, the male star from the recent Twilight movies, who is the romantic fantasy outlet of hundreds of thousands of girls across the world. A farther cry from the Arnie physique I can really not imagine.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EvTdaGaKaoM/ThdK4_JIBdI/AAAAAAAACvk/DdhCog7T-Lk/s1600/Robert%2BPattinson.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627048602305562066" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EvTdaGaKaoM/ThdK4_JIBdI/AAAAAAAACvk/DdhCog7T-Lk/s400/Robert%2BPattinson.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a>
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I can't save the children I teach from the poor information and misleading imagery they are fed every day, but I can try to make them aware of the visual diet they are ingesting. We work in Photoshop, and they learn to do retouching themselves, which gives them not only a technical tool but a deeper understanding of how these images are remade, so that when they see an image, they can look for the telltale clues.
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Hopefully, they learn that there is really no way to make ourselves as perfect as the images we see -- and, in fact, they may even question who we are trying to make ourselves perfect for? As Jean Kilbourne says in <span style="font-style: italic;">Killing Us Softly 3</span>, "We learn from a very early age [from advertisers] that we must spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and above all, money striving to achieve this ideal, and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And <span style="font-style: italic;">failure is inevitable</span>."
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Links:</span>
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Watch <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412">Killing Us Softly 3</a> (from 1999); very interesting stuff
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And here's a nice article on the <a href="http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.06.00/cover/bodyobsession1-0027.html">changing standards of body image</a> for men.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-16325927735160813442011-07-08T15:20:00.000-07:002012-02-05T09:37:53.998-08:00Where Have I Been?<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mC9wLx9GhJM/ThdO6mLyPWI/AAAAAAAACvs/_AG9FoKx-Kw/s1600/tsunami.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627053028012080482" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mC9wLx9GhJM/ThdO6mLyPWI/AAAAAAAACvs/_AG9FoKx-Kw/s400/tsunami.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
Sometimes life is like a tidal wave. You know all those videos of Japan, where houses, and dogs, and trees, and cars were all just lifting up and pouring away to who knows where? That has been a sort of metaphor for my life for more than six months, now. Nothing too bad, just... transitional: life swelling to get so large that it sweeps everything away. Poor health and children's transitions and aging parents and lots of overwhelming commitments (such as the acceptance and subsequent edits of a novel), all at once. All flowing crazily away from my control in the huge tsunami of life, while I watch from the rooftop, helpless. <br />
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I do apologize for my silence. And I do want to write more here, really.<br />
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However, I am rethinking the format of this blog, because as a compendium of interesting stuff it is a wonderful thing, and I want people to go on enjoying it, even if I can't keep up with it the way I used to. So I'm going to keep posting, but it will be a slower, more steady trickle, instead of the bursts of activity I have attempted heretofore, which I can't sustain.<br />
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Also, I am in the middle of looking for a blog partner, so that the blog can continue its extraordinary journeys with more input from more voices than my lone one. I'm planning to be very picky about who this person is, and I hope it will rejuvenate the regularity with which you all have something here to read. Cross your fingers!<br />
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In the meantime, because it is (finally) summer, and I have a month and a half off, please honor me by checking out the new posts which I will be putting up on a (semi) regular basis, much more than what you've been seeing of me recently!<br />
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Cheers!Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-71788823584017673912011-01-27T21:41:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:37:38.843-08:00Why Cheap ArtIf you have not seen this, you should. I have a poster of it up in my house, and have read and re-read it for years. I like it, and I'm still not tired of it. I bought it at the Cheap Art Store on Divisidero in 1989, a place that sold truly cheap art (that really was art) but didn't last that long. <br />
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'Nuff said.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-47627248842430696422010-12-31T08:30:00.001-08:002010-12-31T08:52:25.003-08:00Oddities on TV<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_c4twH_sjx5o/TR4J-b-8AQI/AAAAAAAACr8/8VGgGjJKvj0/s1600/oddities.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 324px; height: 205px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_c4twH_sjx5o/TR4J-b-8AQI/AAAAAAAACr8/8VGgGjJKvj0/s400/oddities.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556889958490046722" /></a><br />I got an email at the beginning of November from Sean Francis at Leftfield Pictures about their new television show on the Discovery channel called Oddities. It's about a shop in Manhattan which sells, well, Wunderkammer things. <a href="http://www.obscuraantiques.com/">Obscura Antiques and Oddities</a> sells such things as bezoars, straitjackets, and wax medical models, and apparently this stuff is becoming increasingly hard to find. The owners spend a lot of time and energy traveling to look at things which often turn out to be nothing worth looking at.<br /><br />I am assuming the show will track these journeys to find interesting stuff, and perhaps some of the odd customers the shop encounters. If you have television, it may well be worth a look.<br /><br />You can read more about the new show at the <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/oddities/">Discovery page</a>: you can see videos, tour the shop or even get on the show if you have something you want to sell them. It looks very cool.<br /><br />Thanks, Sean! And sorry it took so long!Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-40507681058831892242010-12-16T09:03:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:38:21.802-08:00A Plethora of Automata, but Lasting ForeverNick Rayburn sent me a link to this video of a nicely done tapping hand:<br />
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It has beautifully-captured motion and a nice sense of sculpture to it. I watched it three times, and then, as always happens to me, I got distracted by all the other automata videos down the side of the page.<br />
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There are so many people doing automata now that every time I go to Youtube I find more. It didn't used to be this way; when I first started this blog I'd swear the video channels all seemed to show the same few. However, nowadays, more and more wonderful creations are blooming all the time. I'll try and feature a few now and then, although if you're like me you'll probably find them yourself by sheer compulsive watching.<br />
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Here's an example of a very complex one made by Thomas Kuntz:<br />
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Most of them are a little simpler than this one, which is remarkably theatrical (columns of fire!). Arthur Ganson, for example, makes his own gears and other mechanisms out of wire, and then puts together these complex creations that generate what seem like astonishingly simple motions in everyday objects, motions which aren't mechanical-looking at all -- which is why they're actually not simple. I've <a href="http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/2007/06/mechanical-thinking-and-human-soul.html" target="blank">mentioned him before</a>, but he's made many more beautiful things since then. You can find at least 25 different pieces of his on Youtube.<br />
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His pieces are remarkably lyrical, and although Mr. Ganson has a thoroughly Fine Art resume, his work avoids some of the pitfalls that contemporary art often falls into: the banality, the emphasis on a common understanding of mass culture, which taken as a whole -- suburbia, television, consumerism -- doesn't have much resonance for me. <br />
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He says, about the uber-creepy <span style="font-style: italic;">Machine With Abandoned Doll</span>, above: "Stopping to view the ocean from Highway #1 on the coast of California just south of San Francisco, I found this doll lying in a trash pile by the side of the road. I picked it up and immediately visualized this machine. 'As above, so below.'- this recognition of the parallel nature of our spirit and body helps define the formal structure of the machine."<br />
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As you can see, he knows his artspeak, and can write what he needs to get recognized by the High Art community; but at the bottom of it all, anyone can understand his work, because he sticks to simple things that resonate with us at a deeper level than those banal parts of our culture -- even if his machines are anything but simple.<br />
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It makes me happy to see people thinking once again about the mechanical world. It seems to me there is a correlation between looking back at clockwork and other more fundamental mechanisms (as opposed to electronics-based mechanisms) and a more sustainable approach to the world, because it's a clear rejection of mass-produced planned obsolescence. If you've ever seen The Story of Stuff (below), you'll know that something like 80% of all the consumer goods we buy are in the landfill within 6 months, because they're simply designed to break. In a society like this, clockwork and steam -- and even the concepts of clockwork and steam -- have a certain satisfying durability which is often lacking in our day-to-day lives and stuff. Think of those many wonderful surviving automata from the 18th century, which still work: dancing, playing music, moving like they should all these hundreds of years later. Sure, they've needed tune-ups and the occasional rejuvenatory makeover, but they were really made to last, and they show it. That, in itself, has a resonance for those of us living with an endless supply of disposable stuff.<br />
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One of the things I thought a lot about on my hiatus was what is important to me. Much of what I find important is probably the same as most people: love, a good home, happy children, creativity, a job which makes me feel I'm doing something useful. But there are also things like conversation, wonder, discovery, intimacy, learning, community, nature, and aesthetic observation which, though they sound rather abstract, are things I need for true satisfaction in my life. A lot of people don't seem to need those things, or if they do, they don't realize it. For me, communicating some of these needs is part of what makes me write a blog; but I think there is an idea out there now, that the act of making art is a cerebral exercise, as divorced from the ideas above as we are from the realities of production. With Postmodernism, many people in the art world scoff at the naivete of belief in universal truths, which for me are no longer like those old ones in the Victorian novels -- Truth, Beauty, Virtue, and Hope -- but are embodied in things like the movements of birds, the feeling of holding a baby, the quality of water against your skin. Instead, with Postmodernism we have playfulness, multiculturalism (both good things), and fragmentation, which leaves us with a curious lack of certainty.<br />
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And that's an interesting thing, because when you try to paint certainty onto the contemporary world, you hit a mammoth fail. To be honest, I think it's part of what I don't like about some of the art I see now, is that feeling of amorphousness that comes with not being sure of your voice, not being certain what it is you're doing.<br />
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It's in the peripheral cultures that certainty seems to come a little more into focus, those ragtag groups like the Steampunk and Maker communities, where people know what they like and pursue it with happy abandon. The multitude of voices which make up this Postmodern society are finally finding their stride in the minglings of these subcultures, places where beauty and skill and the desire for something a little more permanent are considered good ideals.<br />
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And that's why I like seeing all this automata, from people who have contrived to straddle the space between the over-mixed blandness of the art world and the lively, vibrant certainty of subcultures. The interest in materials, the love of small pleasures, the geeky fascination with how things work: they work against the tendency of made things to end up in dumpsters, and especially they avoid that tendency for art to become saleable, showable detritus made by people who have been stuffed with unreadable theory, who don't, apparently, feel that vibrancy. <br />
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I have to say, it gives me hope.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4843157625045099797.post-3736718622582167612010-12-13T19:44:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:38:40.410-08:003 Small Web Animation ExperiencesMy friend Gwyan sent me these today, and I wanted to share them. Silly, meaningful, and just plain interesting...<br />
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My favorite is this one, by Evelien Lohbeck:<br />
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Then there is this, uh... <a href="http://sour-mirror.jp/index.html">music video</a>?? by a band called Sour.<br />
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Lastly, you could spend quite a few minutes exploring <a href="http://www.aronsommer.ch/">these super-simple but curiously arresting short</a>... uh, thingies by Aron Sommer. Art pieces? Yes, I think.<br />
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Enjoy.Heather McDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09683209580852572301noreply@blogger.com0