codiyioti

Mixed Vegetable

2012-01-02T09:07:00.000-06:00

I cook instead of craft. I forego the pottery, jewelry making, weaving, and painting, though I do identify myself as unusually interested in objects. I cook because I can consume rather than accumulate the product. I’ve seen aging Pharoah’s building their mighty pyramids of sequins, plastic beads, ceramics, and paint too often as they build their Great Loot of Aunt Jill for the ages. They never say it’s to take into the other world, but I think there’s an unspoken element of that. They say it’s to leave behind, so we will have it to keep them “alive” de objecto, I presume. Sometimes they put your name on something they want to make sure "goes to you." Personally, I would prefer the cash spent on the GL of AJ.

A mall near my home, pretty much emptied of retailers of the usual variety, became an arts and crafts outlet where artisans rent spaces and sell their treasures. It’s a delightful idea, but I am skeptical of the economic viability of using enclosed acreage to sell BFA detritus. Or even MFA detritus.

Why not turn those big old enclosed spaces we’re finding ourselves stuck with into hydroponics malls. With the layers of plants one can house in such a tall and sprawling space, the yield of produce treasures should be pretty spectacular, and since it's climate controlled, all year round. Growing beautiful, colorful, textured organic vegetables and selling them locally through stores within the self-same mall would be--spectacular. Repeat business out the zucchini.

Growing spaces could be leased out like farmland is, and producers might also be store owners or wholesale to mall storefronts run by others. There would be new small business opportunities like those once represented by the formerly burgeoning restaurant industry. You might be able to put a beehive in one of these set ups. (My gawd, Stuckey’s can do it.) A cooking school! And all the stores wouldn’t have to sell just the veggies from the growers: lots of specialty grocers and food makers would find a good target market among this mall’s customers.

You’d get the satisfying Saturday afternoon excursion out to transact and mix in the community, but instead of going home with another blouse like the one already hanging in your closet, you’d come home with healthy, safe food that was grown locally.

Commercial real estate could use a boost. This new, redefined mall could be a model for a new commercial real estate play. REITs get those prospectus presses warmed up for the mixed vegetable development. Sell it.

Read More:

Hydroponic Home Food Gardens

Roofline Redux

2012-01-02T09:06:00.000-06:00

Ceilings, ubiquitous as they are, haven’t always been there. The ceiling is, of course, an elaboration on the interior of the roofline. Castles, to log cabins, to thatched huts, ceilings weren’t elements engineered separately from the general outline of a structure. The boxed room is a relatively recent, no pun intended, construct.

Ceilings took on standardized heights and squared off geometry, if you could afford that sort of thing. They became something of a status symbol, didn’t they? The palace ceiling was celebrated with carved, molded, and gilded adornment. No more inefficiencies of heat rising up and away from freezing occupants clustered around puny heat sources. No more dark expanses overhead filled with gawd-only-knows-what. No more critters falling out of straw onto your head. All worth celebrating in my book!

Ceilings put a jaunty topper on life indoors. And ceilings were happily pressed into service by a middle class as it bubbled up to control heat, light, and enhance the sense of refinement in shelter. Chandeliers all around. Then (it was about the Eighties) some of us started doing something different. If you had enough money, you dismissed the ceiling and pressed into service instead the “exposed ceiling” high over head in your loft or farmhouse, a simulated cathedral ceiling in your McMansion , or skylights in your urban digs to break out of the middle class box. Ceilings were, again, referring back to roofline contours. And they trended up.

Women’s hemlines are held to reflect economic times: dropping during tough times. Might the height of what’s over our heads be a new barometer? Recently, there is press about the tiny house which is as beceilinged as a turtle shell. What correlation coefficient might there now be between dropping hemlines and dropping ceilings? Between shrinking home values and tiny teardrop campers? Between sales of Slankets and strained budgets?

Read More:

Marcel Wanders: Behind The Ceiling

Lawrence & Tin Tin

2012-01-02T09:04:00.000-06:00

In Tin Tin: Land of Black Gold, not only are the Arabs simplistically represented. Everyone’s a tad laughable. The Tin Tin comix probably didn’t have a tremendous obligation to dig real deeply into the Arab soul, though the veiled actors in the drama do reflect some of the players in the incorporation and kingdomification of oil in Araby. And to Herge’s credit, there are all permutations of Anglo and Arab good guys and bad guys. He is said to have been a humanist.

T.E. Lawrence’s book, Revolt in the Desert, the unabridged version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom which greatly informed the film Lawrence of Arabia, also offers a reasonably balanced, albeit necessarily outsider’s view, of Arab culture and politics in the tumultuous days during which Turkish-ruled Arab tribes came to unsteady unity and dominion over the world’s richest oil fields. In a politically multi-polar world, it is of interest to consider how this reasonably curious and balanced approach transformed into such heavily black and white thinking about Arabs, a topic Jack Shaheen addresses in his book Reel Bad Arabs.

Shaheen, previously a Southern Illinois University mass communications professor and researcher, started his description and research into the phenomenon of the “bad Arabs” in the ‘80s when it wasn’t very popular to do so. He has since become a Middle East consultant with NBC News. Mainstream media mended its ways some after the 70s and 80s when all Palestinians were guerillas and terrorists and Israelis were always Freedom Fighters. 9/11, not surprisingly, produced a set back not per se for Palestinians, but for Muslims. In addition to harming innocents when such stereotyping takes hold, and perhaps this is the reason for the stereotyping to begin with, it gives an oversimplified view of the individuals, movements, motives, and even the intellectual capacity of the individuals being stereotyped.

The lack of respect contributes to ineffective methods for interfacing with the culture, power structures, and mindset of a sophisticated people with a troubled faction. To short change Arab and Islamic culture is to short change our own capacity for our most intelligent response to our role in 21^st Century. Arabs in the Gulf States are keen on economic success to the point that the conservative protective stance with women is starting to change to permit women access to education, employment, and the steering wheel. We’re talking hell is freezing over. So far, the oil-rich Middle East has been competing with one hand tied behind its back. How might things go if both hands are employed?

Cuteness Recession

2011-12-25T09:26:00.002-06:00

Mary Engelbreit is an illustrator who once had a studio in a firehouse. It’s still not clear if, in her own lifetime, her work is going to catch fire at a national level. Her work is whimsical, charming, and appears to promote a sort of colorful Twelve Step philosophy without the cigarette smoke and Big Book. ME started out doing illustrated children’s books and branchised out to tea cozies, tea cups, tea spoons, teapots, tea towels, and many, many other non-tea-related items. Her website and online catalogue reveal all:

maryengelbreit.com

Keri (not her real name) has an amazing ME object: a handmade doll autographed by ME. It’s a one of a kind because there can’t be another first one sold. Keri’s doll, according to what ME told Keri when she bought the tall-drink-of-water character, was named “Sophie” and ME wrote that on “Sophie’s” cloth belly. “It helped,” Keri recalls, “because the doll was pretty expensive and I thought I was a little nuts to buy it. I now think Mary made that name up on the spot because I asked her what the character’s name was, and she had to say something.”

ME’s plan seemed to be to sell handmade dolls such as “Sophie,” but she later made a detour and became involved in birthing dolls that were manufactured. Robert Tonner has produced ME dolls, among other sources. She also detoured on the “Sophie” because later a different character was named Sophie and Keri’s “Sophie” has became nameless, except for it being written on her belly.

"Sophie's" Belly Scan

ME tried to go lifestyle with a magazine. A whole house MEified. Wow. But isn’t that right in keeping with her Arts and Crafts inspiration as well as Martha Stewart business planning? Arts and Crafts integrated decoration, craftsmanship, and architecture. “The magazine’s gone or going under, I think” Keri reported.

Did the recession kill cute?

“There were some rumors a while back that Mary Engelbreit and Steven Spielberg were working on a deal, but I’ve never heard anything else,” Keri reported. “That was years ago.”

It’s hard to picture ME characters engaged in much of anything real funny, dramatic, or suspenseful. What they are is charming and, of course, cute. Sometimes a thing is perfect as it is, in this case illustration with a Walter Crane feel. The assorted tea-related and other objects work because they carry illustrations or 3-Deify the illustrations: ME’s Arts and Crafts posies in a flower pot. Tea cups that look like those illustrated. Dolls that look like what’s her name.

Hmmm. Could anime creators do something interesting with the illustrations, Keri? You know, because they are so flat in their feel and complex in detail? It would bring things full circle since Japanese art was an influence on Arts and Crafts decoration and illustrators connected with the movement.

“I always feel a little guilty about “Sophie,” Keri confided. “I’m drawn to the fantasy, but feel guilty about the decorative character. It’s close to art, but I know it’s derived. Is it art? Is it craft? Is it cartoon? I’m pulled in different directions. It’s darling, but on the other hand the style is so borrowed.

“I felt a little better about it when I got a fund raising appeal from the St. Louis Art Museum. ME made a personal appeal in the mailer. I thought, maybe SLAM has figured it out and says it’s art, at least decorative art, and I should, too. But I’m not sure.”

“I hope that anime thing you are talking about works out. Then there could be little character cards and stickers and stuff. I think “Sophie” could hit the big time then.”

Read More:

Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement (Dallas Museum of Art Publications)

Midnight Blue et Rouge

2011-12-25T09:26:00.001-06:00

Evening in Paris. The name of this perfume created by a long-established French cosmetics company can elicit more memories and stories of the mothers, grandmothers, glamorous aunts, and first girlfriends than you can shake a blush brush at. Bourjois (named for founder Alexandre Napoleon Bourjois) developed the scent decades after his first creation, lightweight makeup for theatrical performers, including the first “blush.” His cheek colorant was long known as “rouge” before a more natural appearing aesthetic developed in cosmetics in the 1960s driven by the Earth Mother of hippie culture.

Evening in Paris reflected the marketing acumen of Monsieur Francois Coty who became France's emperor of perfume before the First World War got underway sending doughboys by the boat load to France. Before the soldiers headed home, Monsieur and Madame Coty did their best to give them a shot at taking back to the ladies in their lives renowned French perfume in gift sets with glassware originally imagined by the likes of Lalique and Baccarat. Coty was originator of packaging as important as contents in the perfume game. The tiered scent experience of powder, eau de toilette, and parfum was his inspiration. It was the catalyst to Evening in Paris by Monsieur Bourjois bonding with so many American women’s dressing tables.

The scent was re-introduced in 1992 bearing only its French name Soir de Paris. No label changes and namby-pamby translation. And while the original scent has taken shots, on occasion, for lacking sophistication, its return to a second life after a first one spanning the years 1928-1969, has been under the masterful eye of perfumers of great merit: Jacques Polge and Francois Demachy. Polge is arguably the world’s finest “nose” having left the world’s largest scent and flavor molecule manufacturer, Givaudin, to become the olfactory creative force behind Chanel. Demachy, Polge’s partner in the re-launch and many other well-known luxury fragrances, is artistic director for olfactory development at Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey. At LVMH he oversees uppermost echelon brands like Guerlain and Dior. He, too, is arguably the finest “nose” in the world.

The firm Bourjois invited remembrances of Evening in Paris from consumers when Soir De Paris was released. The entries flowed on and on:

“When I was little my mom always had a beautiful blue bottle of the most wonderful smelling aroma I had ever smelled on her dressing table.”

“One day I as I was looking through her top dresser drawer; I found a tiny blue glass bottle with a blue tassel called Evening in Paris perfume. I knew that this was a secret luxury . . . .”

“ . . . I would take my babysitting money down to the old Woolworth’s …. and buy a bottle of Evening in Paris for my mother.”

“I was 19, she was 16. The year was 1936. It was my first date with any girl and she invited me to her house to learn to dance. . . . She was wearing Evening in Paris perfume. . . I was smitten and for a month afterwards I was haunted by the intoxicating scent . . .

"My mother, a dressmaker, kept her Evening in Paris next to a cedar trinket box on her vanity. I don't think she recognized that the sandalwood and cedar smells created a kind of harmony."

Soir de Paris is a floral scent with top notes that are fruity and also include bergamot and violet. The middle notes include Damask rose, jasmine, heliotrope, ylang ylang, muguet de bois (lily of the valley), and orris (iris). The final, lingering notes come from amber, musk, sandalwood, and vanilla.

By 1950 Evening in Paris reigned as the most worn women’s fragrance on the planet, and then it was made obsolete by a back to nature, free love culture of the Sixties. Well, it’s back. And it has returned with some very classy escorts.

Read More:

The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York

Eloise Long Wells

2011-11-13T06:53:00.000-06:00

Eloise Long Wells painted in the Midwest near the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. She called her studio, according to her granddaugher Frances Wells, a Hudson River Valley painter of some accomplishment herself, the Pilot House, even when it was in the basement and there was no view of the river at all. Eloise lived between 1875 and 1953, an interesting, kaleidoscopic life in terms of moods, trends, and highlights of the various eras through which she passed.

Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountains
Altitude, 14,000 feet plus. Scott Bauer

I encountered Eloise in a basement, myself. Lana (not her real name) is a resident of St. Louis though she spent much of her childhood in St. Albans, Missouri, now a toney area to which some of the wealthier of St. Louis have fled. It takes a lot of prompting to get Lana to reveal her upper crust background filled with family names that St. Louis streets carry. Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountains carries a family name, as well. One of Lana's great-greats was Stephen Harriman Long, a member of the Bell expedition which ascended Pike's Peak. After descending Pike's Peak, Long went one way, Bell the other, and Long ultimately ascended Long's Peaks. Topography, you will see, runs in the family.

Eloise became part of Lana's lineage and when she married Eugene Wells. Eloise had formal training with tutelage from Charles Winter, Percy Davis, and Richard Miller at the St. Louis School of Fine Art and Chouinard Art School, which later morphed into part of Washington University and CalArts, respectively. California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is known today as the breeding ground for Disney art talent.

Today, just kitty-corner from the main campus of Washington University, a gallery called TYLER says on its website it's searching for works by Eloise. Lana should pay them a visit. In Lana's basement, sadly not altogether better for the experience, are three oil paintings by Eloise. There is a still life called The Four Arts, a river scene featuring a riverboat and a trio of three passengers that is titled Interpretation of "Old Man River" No. 5 Heading for the Channel, and another still life filled with seashells and starfish that is signed and dated on the front but not titled. They are dated 1930, 1936, and 1940, respectively.
The Wells family in St. Louis included people of the who's who type, and Eloise went who's who herself landing mentions in Who's Who in American Art (1999), the Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1989), Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (1986), the Dictionary of Women Artists (1985), and a couple of others. She is known to have exhibited at the Pennsylvnia Academy of the Fine Arts (1929) the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition (1927), and at the Kansas Art Institute (1923). The St. Louis Public Library also has some of Eloise's work, but at this writing all is trussed up and put away due to an extensive renovation that's underway.

Eloise painted, it appears, de rigueur still life topics and predictable river scenes, as well as less de rigueur scenes from New Orleans and other cities to which she traveled with her husband, an engineer who worked for Anheuser Busch, the iconic brewery sold not long ago to international megacorp InBev of Belgium much to the anguish of St. Louisans. She generally worked in oil, though it's reported she did some work involving graphic design and printmaking, as well.

City of St. Louis riverboat
depicted in Interpretation of
"Old Man River" No. 5
Heading for the Channel

Very near Eloise's birth, another twig on the family tree that led to Lana and her basement engaged in proliferation of city imagery by producing Pictorial St. Louis: The Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. It was a topographical survey as meticulously drawn by Camille N. Dry. The tome was designed and edited by Richard J. Compton (Eloise's grandfather), who owned Compton Lithographics (later Western Engraving), a highly reputable lithography concern with origins in Richard's silver and gold engraving skills. When one sees an iconic historical engraving related to the City of St. Louis, one is most probably looking at Richard Compton's enterprise or its influence.

Eloise's work was at the other end of the T-square and graphing paper continuum. She worked freely and generally in a style not dissimilar to German expressionism, extrapolating from the "basement paintings." Using these paintings as examples, her work seems rather subdued and dark with a mild but purposeful use of a limited amount of enlivening color. She used muddy tones in the painting of the river scene with one figure wearing a vague red garment. One has the sense looking at the river painting that Eloise is seeking shaded respite such as one finds in an Arabian sook as she depicts what would be a hot, sun baked scene. The discovery of the works in Lana's cool, dark basement seems karmic.

The Four Arts. Script on the envelope under the violin neck
reads: Eloise Long Wells, Art Painting, April 1930

The still life called The Four Arts is dark, too, and contains both classicial still life references as well as what seem to be symbols of personal meaning. To depict the art of writing there is a sealed letter addressed to herself in the foreground. The art of theater is depicted by what looks like an African mask rather than a traditional comedy-tragedy style mask or something from a costume. The Four Arts is as ambivalent about reflecting meaning on the symbols it contains as the river painting is about reflecting sunlight. The seashells painting similarly is void of light and shadow, almost as though the shells are underwater. The technique creates a Cassatt-like pattern but without the bright colors. One can picture the motif in silk on an evening gown set off by brown rubies or transformed into a more graphic medium such as an element in a poster.

Untitled oil painting of seashells signed and dated 1930.

Lana has a a trio of complex works resting in her basement. Perhaps it's time for them to get out into the light more. It would be a bit of an adventure like the ones Eloise liked to go on with her husband when he traveled for business, times when color seemed to more easily slip off the palette onto the canvas.

Read More:

American Women Painters of the 1930s and 1940s: The Lives and Work of Ten Artists

Motorrad

2011-11-13T06:52:00.000-06:00

Nothing says checkmate like a piece of militaria squirreled away from the enemy. Soldiers have been proclaiming na-na-nee-na-na since the Greeks and Romans were duking it out and coming away with the opposition's standards and arms to prove their superiority. Before that, and in other places with less materiel in their material cultures, warriors would take trophies of a more corporeal nature.
Among the edged weapons are perhaps the most violent and the most elegant of militaria: the swords and daggers. Swords and daggers made it to the ball as well as the battlefield with formal versions often part of European and American military apparel traditions as well as having been pressed into service of diplomacy by organizations like the German Foreign Service.

Jackson (not his real name) was happily surprised when he learned his father-in-law had a trunk full of militaria including a German officer’s dagger produced by Alcoso. The Alcoso brand name was an encoded founder’s name: Alexander Coppel Solingen, a man of Jewish descent. The town of Solingen in Germany is even now knicknamed Blade City. You might have Solingen knives or scissors in your home.

The dagger was found to be in unusually good shape and an excellent representation of Germany’s metallurgical arts and the Third Reich imagery that still makes us feel a little edgy. The dagger has a portepee (sword knot). Its detail is crisp. Jackson sees the dagger as the heart of his collection.

Jackson’s diverse collection includes a rather large Nazi flag which is just plain awkward in a non-institutional setting, such is the power of that particular object. Jackson ponders, “Where can you hang a 20 x 10 foot Nazi flag?

“It wasn't until after [my father-in-law’s] death in 1998 that I delved into all the stuff he brought back,” Jackson says. “[My father-in-law] had no idea of the significance and value of the things in that footlocker. Like the big box of unused Hitler personal stationery and the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. Only 14 were made and about half were awarded." Jackson’s collection contained a Grand Cross that had been in storage in Berchtesgaden having not yet been awarded to a foreign dignitary, for example, a Henry Ford or Mussolini. Lesser notables like American aviator Lindbergh might be given instead a First Class Order of the German Eagle, another item in Jackson's collection.

Jackson’s gravitated to another emblem of the Third Reich which doesn’t seem to have the same image problem as his gigantic flag. Jackson rides a Beemer. The Bavarian Motor Works started out making airplanes. The BMW logo symbolizes an airplane propeller. Of course, they make fine cars (incuding the Little Sipper Mini Cooper) but perhaps nothing finer than their motorcycles. The motorcycle and sidecar were prominent equipment of the German field command. The airplanes were real helpful to the German military, too, but not after World War I when production was halted by the terms of the peace treaty.

“Among the things he gave me at a time when I was jonesing for my first BMW was a commemorative beer stein depicting a Wehrmacht motorcycle trooper astride a BMW R12. I cherish it because it combines my passion for BMW motorcycles and history.” Later Jackson found another stein like the one he was given. “Each [stein] is decorated [with its owner’s name] and both [were] from the same [German Army] Motorrad Kompanie that trained in Munich in 1937, so I’m confident that the two guys must have known each other.”

Read More:

Exploring the Dress Daggers Of the German Army

Leapfrog Girls

2011-10-20T06:26:00.000-05:00

We live in a cottage with an anomalous side yard. It's essentially a city sidewalk. There is a run of these sidewalks that cuts between properties. At one time they linked residents to the streetcar line. It's called, duh, a cut-through. It saved hard working people from a lot of circuitous walking. This is a neighborhood with a history of clay mining and brick making. That's St. Louis Brick. Still sought after in used condition. Savvy Long Islanders, even, have heard of St. Louis Brick. It's got a rep.

The city decided, since there was no longer much of a need for the cut-throughs because the streetcar had long ago bitten the dust, to offer the soon-to-be-formerly public property to residents on either side. The elderly lady living next to our home didn't really feel she needed a half of a concrete slab running about 50 yards from the sidewalk proper to the two-lane alley with median in back. That alley used to be the right-of-way for a small railroad that ran clay from mines to brick and clay pipe factories. Now it's trees, grass, bushes. A median.

So the whole cut-through enchilada was titled to our side. I pondered what to do with a "private sidewalk." To reflect what we used to do on the sidewalk in the city, I thought placing a sculpture of kids playing would fill the bill. I found the right stuff on the internet and it was shipped here in an amazing crate. A firm that is accustomed to things with more corners and heft bolted it into the concrete. They didn't even charge me. And it's been sitting there unscathed, unstolen, since. though there was one spectacular close call.

I was drawn to that solution for the space because it told a story. Maybe my story: I was raised in the city and played on concrete sidewalks in front of my family's pet shop. We lived upstairs over it. Sidewalk was my childhood. The sculpture made the space not only symbolic, but gave it an alive, interactive feel. And in this economically mixed neighborhood it said nobody's excluded. We're just taking care of this sidewalk. The street belongs to all of us.

I had some political intentions, I suppose. We were the new kidz on the block being ogled by the neighborhood stalwarts as they mowed and mulched. But I did not picture the social medium Leapfrog Girls would become.

Leapfrog Girls have been in the newspaper and in American Bungalow magazine. Tiny mention. In the newspaper they said "the owner travels often to Mexico and brought this back with her," to paraphrase. I have no idea where they came up with that. Ningun.

We've had people (many people) approach us and say thanks. We love that statue. We thought it was real. I think that's what gets people. It looks just like two little girls playing leapfrog on the sidewalk. Parents bring their kids--in cars--to see the statue. Families stand around it. People take their kids' picture with it.

I've had people I was giving directions to the house stop me and say, is that the house by the little girls playing? DISH Installer Guy last week said he remembered passing this house every day going to high school and looking at that ______. He didn't know the word for it, but he knew it. Public buses go down our busy street regularly, and I see people in the lighted bus look out into the night at the sculpture and I know it gives them a little friendship. A little connection. They look for it.

Social media offers the same "Ping, I'm here. I see you are, too." Everyone makes the effort to be creative, to show their art through the turn of a phrase, in photos and videos, in their blogs, and by making zeroes and ones do tricks. Right out there where all of us can see it.

And we all look for it.

Read More:

The Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA

Style & Comfort for the Everyman of the 1930s

2011-10-20T06:25:00.000-05:00

Two blocks of St. Louis' Cherokee Street (among the streets in St. Louis named after Native Americans contrasted with those named after States) are a reflection of a significant turning point in the city's and the nation's home building practices. A brochure produced by the Ball Lumber and Supply Company in the 1930s explains that the model of home chosen for 5300 Cherokee is the 5-Room Economy Bungalow. Comparing and contrasting the models discussed in the brochure, one learns that the Economy Bungalow is distinct from some other homes in the 5200/5300 blocks of Cherokee a in that it has a small amount of space shaved off the wall-to-wall hardwood floor plan, there was no exterior ventilation port and fan in the kitchen, there was no original copper guttering, and there was no original ceramic wall tile in the kitchen, though the walls were covered with a new-fangled linoleum type material with tiles insinuated in print. The first family also sprang for a drop-down door from the attic and a staircase inviting “finishing” of the attic to increase living area, a particularly stylish Art Deco refined stonework porch and iron railing, and a porthole front door with archway, again in Art Deco style. (1) (2), (3)

Ball Lumber and Supply Company was owned by Charles Vatterott who was to become a leading homebuilder in the St. Louis area. Vatterott was the force behind the creation of St. Louis’ first orchestrated suburban community, St. Ann, Missouri. St. Ann’s development, with Vatterott at the helm, included homes for large families, several impressive drive-in theaters, climate-controlled shopping centers, churches, and schools. He also built as part of his suburban vision the neighboring Dosporres subdivision for Black Americans. Doporres was the first such subdivision built in the St. Louis area during more segregated times when single-family homes for Blacks were not widely available.

5300 Cherokee and the rest of Vatterott’s Cherokee development was built after the closing down of the extensive clay mining in the area. Behind 5300 there is a “double alley” with a median down the middle. Until Vatterott’s development, it accommodated train tracks that ran to brickworks at Christy and Kingshighway. A shaft from a clay mine was very near the 5300 address and clay mines extended both to the North of the address and to the East. These clay mines supplied material to factories that produced high quality “brand name” brick that helped build not only St. Louis but many other American communities, as well. Used St. Louis Brick remains a sought after commodity all over the United States for elite touches to new construction and improvements. (4) (5)

Along the east wall of 5300 Cherokee is a “cut through” sidewalk. It became part of 5300 Cherokee in 2000 when the City of St. Louis terminated its right of way. The sidewalk was originally designed in as a community amenity to permit access to street car lines without necessitating a longer walk around the block. It extended both North and South from 5300 Cherokee, a foreshadowing of Vatterott's concern with community, not just housing. (6)

C.F. Vatterott

Vatterott incorporated streamlined art deco styling in the Cherokee development. Art deco originated in France in design synergy with the “machine age.” At 5300 Cherokee, the tile in the bathroom with its wrap around of the mirrored and etched medicine cabinet, the sharp geometric styling of the tub, the design of the stained glass windows in the front room, the “French” finish on the plaster, the details of the address sign, the porthole window in the front door, and the sunburst motif on the mailbox cover all reflect Vatterott’s interest in imbuing his affordable homes with a style vernacular.

Sources, that include a Reflections exhibition at the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, archival materials contributed by the author that are currently housed in the MHS, a doctoral dissertation by Cornelia Sexauer, and surveying and mapping done by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, contributed to putting together this brief article. (7), (8)

Informal notes and references follow.

(1) Not, incidentally, at $4,250 the lowest cost model in the series. This status goes to "Our Leader House" riced in 1932 at $3,950.

(2) The drop-down stairs to the attic appears to be an option, as does the type of stone used in the front porch, based on observation and comparison of feaures described in the sales brochure and homes as actually built.

(3) Porthole windows were inspired in Art Decor originators by cruise ship portholes.

(4) A relative within the brick making Parker Russell family in St. Louis was Charles M. Russell, an artist who made the early West his focus and who is known to have ridden his ponies in the vicinity emulating mightily, it is supposed, both cowboys and "Indians."

(5) Story about thieves burning down buildings to obtain sought after St. Louis Brick. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20brick.html:

(6) Also see this blog: Leapfrog Girls, January 2009.

(7) Missouri Historical Society Reflections -- http://www.mohistory.org/node/85

(8) Currently a professor of history in Wisconsin, Connie took her doctoral degree at the University of Cincinnati

The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective of Paintings and Sculpture (The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West)

Kuato and the Governor of California

2011-09-17T09:28:00.000-05:00

In the film Total Recall, an in-the-know, rough and tumble leader of the mutant resistance movement promises to lead our brawny hero to the intuitive leader of the underground who divines the resistance's strategy and does not charge a consulting fee. The shocker is that our erstwhile Sacajawea della Futura takes Arhhnaald into a super double secret hideaway and flashes, right there attached to his abdomen, The-Big-Cheese-Behind-It-All. The Consultant Kuato (ugly baby) is an abdominal appendage of our guide. O-M-G.

When not on display, Kuato folds into the middle section of his more formed brother and appears externally only after some effort. After moaning and groaning and a barely audible popping sound that only dogs can hear, Kuato is revealed and spills the intuitive beans to our protagonist. The resistance goes forward with new muscle, insight, and a nascent capacity to win the governorship of California.

In his book Beyond the Zonules of Zinn, David Bainbridge, a clinical veterinary anatomist, neuroanatomy virtuoso, and lover of language and names, goes through not just the mapping of the brain, but the evolution of its development, naturally with a particular interest in development of the human central nervous system. In his readable and suspenseful book he writes of fetus in fetu. The development of the nervous system, it turns out, is genius origami, and it is believed that there can be internalized twins folded into otherwise normal appearing individuals. The internalization generally robs the co-developing embryo of form and function, and what is believed to be the physical manifestation of this occurrence tends to be more like a tumor with teeth and hair than a Kuato.

Nonetheless, the Kuato of Total Recall is an imagiling evolved from the fetus in fetu phenomenon. I am left with the question: Is Kuato the product of the creator's esoteric knowledge of embryonic development or an unspoken echo in his being?

Read More:

Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers

Haptic Haptic on the Wall

2011-09-17T09:27:00.002-05:00

FedEx deliverying Enchantment.

We have CCTV that gives us a view of a busy street and a serene backyard. It’s supposed to be for security, of course, but I get a lot more than that out of it. I love reviews that let me watch the nocturnal meandering of the neighbor’s cat and a rabbit that lives not in the serene backyard but along the sidewalk/front lawn perimeter of our home and the neighbors. The rabbit lives life with a deformed leg. I take joy in seeing him come to safe rest under our thorny bush located on a front corner of the lawn. (The cat's just kind of grumpy. There might have been a tipping point for him when we got the dog.)

A toothy critter chewed through a wire and blinded the front camera. A service man came out to fix it. He was a nice guy and had to trace the reason for the blue blank on our monitor screen. The toothy critter problem was not understood upon his arrival. It took a couple of hours of work to find out where the problem rested. As it happened it was in a far corner of the attic, which due to inconvenience, was the last place to get checked out.

I was having problems with the remote and asked the service man if he could work something out. After he worked for his two hours, he said he was leaving and I walked up to where the monitor is encased. He had improved the monitor by adding labels to each of the camera views, for example, front and driveway. It’s a small thing, but that was my moment of enchantment with the service man. That little detail made possible by a programming option hidden under a couple of layers.

Kawasaki writes in a new book endorsed on the front cover by no one less than “Woz” that haptics are a mechanism for building enchantment. For example, he points out, sitting in hard chairs makes “people appear strict, stable, less emotional, and less flexible.” The service man, a man who does his job like he owns it, observed lots of books and reading material on the round table in the living room where he was working at times and he sensed an addition of labels, words, literalness, on the monitor would be nice. It was very nice. It was enchanting.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

2011-09-17T09:27:00.000-05:00

There is a type of book published in the 1940s that makes you feel adventurous just opening it. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is one of those. These books typically are autobiographical and perfectly suited to sale after a private club presentation, lecture, or speaking engagement to The Rotary. The leap onto a movie theater screen is easy to anticipate.

Bob Considine, self-taught, fast, and prolific, edited (ghost wrote) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo with Captain Ted Lawson. It is the story of a clandestine bombing mission headed up by Jimmy Doolittle. U.S. Army Air Corps planes left the aircraft carrier USS Hornet on April 18, 1942 to lay waste to Tokyo industry and advance to China for landing. Lawson himself was downed and remnants of his aircraft, The Ruptured Duck, went on display in Tokyo.

The book came out at the speed of light in April 1943. By 1944 the book was converted into a movie starring Van Johnson. Perhaps one of the things that made this movie stand out in memories as it did were the special Fx used to depict the action as bombs fell. As a war movie it put a stamp on the terror from above genre that vibrates through the Lucas era. There was something about the realism as well as the war fantasy that stuck with people in a post-trauma return to life at peace. It is a classic among classics.

The book is as close to a layered media event as the techno-times could produce. There are journalistic-style photographs, graphics, and two-color maps on front and back binding interiors of the book. Random House designers went all out to engage the reader as a navigator in this adventure. The first person account ("I helped bomb Tokyo on the Doolittle raid . . . ." ) involves the reader as a trusted friend who's getting the low-down on Lawson's involvement in the secret mission. Part confessional, part propaganda, part newspaper story, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo set a bar for action realism in popular tales of World War II. The graphics and maps shown are from the first edition, which is not leather-bound, but seems as leathery as a World War II aviator's jacket.

Arab Sails and Frozen Custard

2011-09-17T09:26:00.001-05:00

Bet you never heard of Saudi Aramco World. The clumsy name refers to a magazine in a league with National Geographic in terms of scholarship and depth of reporting. It also has spectacularly deep pockets behind it. Sort of a magazine Burj Al Arab. What makes it different from Nat Geo is the exclusive focus on the “cultures, history, and geography of the Arab and Muslim worlds and their connections with the West,” as stated by the publication itself. The array of stories is impressive and designed to make it clear this is not just a bunch of bedouis you’re dealing with, though Bedoin culture can be a topic handled by the magazine as adroitly as so many others. (1)

Seated in the Sultan's portable chair
at the Ottoman Garden within the Missouri Botanical Garden
Photograph by Jakob M. Berr
http://www.jakob-berr.com/

This stunning magazine is free to interested individuals. It is published by Saudi Aramco. Aramco refers to the neo-name of the Arab American Oil Company, which became Saudi Aramco in the 1980s because King ibn Saud was clever enough to wrangle with strategic legal issues, pretty much without hesitation. There are people in the US who'd be rich today if they'd handled their oil rights as shrewdly.

Keep this in mind if you have any lithium deposits on the ranch. (2) (3)

Apex of the
minaret built
in South
St. Louis
by the
Bosnian Community.

Photo at the
top of this
item shows
another view
of the same
minaret.

The current issue of SA World contains a story about the Missouri Botanical Garden which has installed a traditional Ottoman Garden. “An Ottoman Garden Grows in St. Louis” in the December 2010 issue speaks of the walled garden as a serene place to visit, even more so because at MoBot visitors tend to be focused on the larger and more promoted Japanese Garden, so it is less overworked by the throngs. The Ottoman Garden is a lovely spot for reflection, listening to the fountain’s water play, and hearing birds. And, الحمد لله , you can sit down. It was created with funds donated by the Bakewell family that had some perhaps mythical, certainly romantic, ties to the Turkish sultancy.

Door to minaret
through which a caller,
or muezzin,
would ascend if prayers
were called from the
mosque in South St. Louis

A less well-endowed and less isolated element of Islamic culture in St. Louis is the mosque and minaret near the Burlington Coat Factory in South City. The mosque was an undertaking of the area’s notably hardworking Bosnian community. The mosque and minaret are graceful and fulfilling in every way as Muslim architecture. The community does not issue the standard yodelish calls to prayer from the minaret, however, as a courtesy they owe no one.

The Bosnian's mosque and minaret sit surrounded by a black asphalt desert, which is as hot as the sands of an Arab landscape or a St. Louis sidewalk in summer with a White Castle, StarBucks, and the city’s favorite frozen custard stand within yodeling distance. It represents another peaceful, perhaps more signifying, incursion into an American city by a lesser seen culture. Its funding by ordinary working stiffs and its placement among the everyday neighborhood hubbub lends it a value the wealthy, sequestered, albeit lovely, garden cannot claim.

(1) Burj al Arab, or Arab Sail, is reportedly the world's only Seven Star hotel. It certainly looks like every room gets a view.

(2) Literally, ibn Saud means son of Saud. If he were Swedish, he'd have been King Saudsen. Use of "ibn" and "bint" (daughter) is a standard means of formation of last or "family" names. Were he a woman, he'd have been Queen bint Saud.

(3) time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809461,00.html

Read More:

Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

Uranium Glass

2011-09-17T09:25:00.001-05:00

Glassmaking, with its radical conversion of materials into frozen ephemera, has mesmerized artisans since the very earliest civilizations of man. It held a value at least on a par with gold in ancient cultures in Egypt and Mesopotamia. While its origins may have been accidental, artisans have used glassmaking and glazes to extraordinary effect since the effect of heat on certain minerals was stumbled upon. Each generation has built on the knowledge of the last.

Uranium glass possesses an attraction based on the aesthetics it possesses as art glass as well as its place in modern art glass history. Uranium glass is not just a colorful name applied to the green colored glass. Uranium glass's character was produced by introducing Geiger-counter-activating uranium to the molten glass mixture. Genuine uranium glass glows under black light. Diamonds radiate; uranium glass irradiates.

Uranium glass is the evolutionary predecessory of varieties of glass that have come to be called things like Vaseline glass (due to the Vaseline-like color and slippery look), carnival glass, Fenton glass, and Fiestaware. Fiestaware was made possible by significant amounts of radioactive material in the early glazes. Dinner ware manufacturer Homer Laughlin promoted Fiestaware as mix and match from among a rainbow of colors. Eccentric solid color was marketed as a strong design element set amid a high contrast Art Deco milieu featuring black and white coloratura that promoted sanitation, efficiency, and modernity in the American domestic opera.

In all the high color glass art forms, there is an iridescent energy and/or intensity of color that gives the impression fairies of some sort (albeit wearing lead aprons) must have been engaged in the manufacture. If there was ever a means to paint with fire, uranium glass and its offspring are arguably the highest proof. There’s always a celebratory feeling about the pieces that hang upon the uranium glass branch of art glass evolution.
Transformation and color are at the spiritual core of all of the offspring.

A Baccarat box of uranium glass.

Content of uranium in uranium glass varied and actually dropped to 0% in the late fifties when the Cold War intensified. At that time all industrial uses were cutoff from the supply of uranium as part of the effort to keep the world safe for democracy. The hunt was on for alternatives among glassmakers.

The Fenton Glass Company began production of what it branded as Iridill around the turn of the 20th Century, well before the uranium impound. The company pursued the art of glassmaking as ersatz Steubens and Tiffanys, but the depression era or tastes thwarted the demand for it as high art glass. Its greatest distribution occurred as it was marketed to retailers, banks, and carnivals to function as promotional items and prizes eventually leading to it being known as carnival glass. Iridill has the appearance of gasoline on top of water. It shimmers and is rainbow like. This “poor man’s Tiffany” has an avid following and Fenton has done well in the manufactured collectible arena producing series of items like eggs on pedestals and glass baskets. The novelty of the items continues to draw collectors.

"I like the variety of it,” Julie (not her real name), a second generation collector says. Julie leans away from what could be called the more high intensity pieces and prefers the subtly of a satiny, alabaster appearance being used in some of the pieces produced by Fenton in relatively recent years. But the glow around Fenton glass will always come from a Cold War-free, pre-depression use of uranium dioxide in glassmaking that dates back to the First Century, Bohemian glassmaking, and early Baccarat. Long may it iridesce.

Fiesta Ware: A Little Collectible Book (Little Books (Andrews & McMeel))

The Square Tomato Jay Hawks

2011-09-17T09:25:00.000-05:00

Patterns of cognition appear to be easily molded. Work heavy hours in a fast food environment for a few weeks and the way you think will change. Not your attitude, not your perceptions of the world, but how you think: the architecture of your thoughts. The architecture of a shepherd’s thoughts differs from the architecture of a Vegas showgirl. The material, the positive and negative space, and the rhythm of thinking wrap around an infrastructure of purpose, information, and habit to produce one’s thought architecture.

Before educational institutions, fast food, and Vegas participated in the systematic development of this architecture, nature was the teacher. Teaching practices from rote to Socratic have produced the architecture of thought of their time after nature took more of a back seat.

We currently have a costly bureaucratic approach to teaching, learning, and development of new knowledge. Subjects are separated into departments and there is a hierarchical management of our institutions of learning and research. Students are pretty much the lowest stratum of the hierarchy (except maybe the lunch ladies) from grade school to graduate school, if for no other reason than someone other than the student decides what the student is to learn. IDEA, law to promote appropriate education of special needs students, is supposed to be a guarantor of individualized education. In reality it is a guarantor of time-consuming, fictionalized paperwork to substantiate that individualization took place when it most certainly did not.

Students at every level are placed in little boxes and encouraged to become square tomatoes that are grown less round so they won’t fall off the conveyor belt.

Open access learning has the capacity to flatten and reduce the cost of educational bureaucracy and to decompartmentalize knowledge. Peer2Peer, open access to university curricula, and the power of search engines and internet content give those who wish to learn and to create new knowledge the opportunity to do so in an open, relational framework rather than one that is linear, sequential, and gate keeping.

Breaking down barriers between disciplines and putting the learner in the driver’s seat has the potential to radically speed up learning, creation of new knowledge, and the spread and application of knowledge. It can turn knowledge creation into a design build proposition.

Isn’t it time, then, to make it as valid to ask “Where did you access?” as “Where did you go to school?” How about job app questions to ask applicants about their participation in open access education as a learner and/or a teacher? How about online gaming teams to build up the identity of open access learning nodes?

Yea, yea, yo, yo. MIT Sloandogs, go, go, go!

Read More:

“Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” (From: A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities". Menlo Park, California. A work supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.)

The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

Hyperreal Baby

2011-09-17T09:24:00.002-05:00

There is something simplifying about objectifying. Things are made more understandable when we objectify them. Perhaps, less accurately, we see them as more manageable, as having concrete boundaries. Seeing them as clearly not us which makes things simpler, especially if they are like us. Sculptures like Ron Mueck's hyperrealistic baby turn complex humans into objects that produce curiosity and attraction while the humans they represent, maybe not so much. Make-up, costumes, and the film medium work so well in effecting the same objectification that we feel safe to watch as lives unfold while we munch popcorn.

Autism has had another explanation shot down. Once it was cold, uncaring moms producing autism. That theory ended in scandalous disrepute. Now it’s the vaccine genesis of the disease headed down the road of scandalous disrepute. Soporific carbs are suspect, too.

Autism comes in so many forms, it has not been easy to come up with the hallmarks of the disorder. One is said to be disturbed interpersonal relationships. It has been described that an individual with autism may see other people in a manner akin to just so many talking statues. Frequently persons with autism like movies and can improve social function if they are shown how to interact with others using video, film, photos. It is said there is an objectifying of others and difficulty taking on the others' perspective that lends to difficulty with relating person to person. For the individual with autism this produces profound anxiety and a sense of being locked up inside themselves more alone than alone.

Could autism, which is being diagnosed in phenomenally high numbers along with what may be something of a cousin disease, ADHD, be a societal or lifestyle disease. At least two bases come to mind where our materially successful culture may have led us down the road of scandalous dysfunction. What others might there be?

One, for example, is our increasingly monocultured scent environment. Scent plays an important role in cognitive development and cognitive development is origami-like. Fail to make the first folds in the most primitive parts of the brain and the swan doesn't appear. Scent is an unseen but potent environment and one we tend to engineer mostly when we find it noxious. We have removed the diversity of scents in our homes with sanitation, relatively scentless diets and cooking, and introduction of artificial products made to smell like things. The things they smell like are based on a relatively few directions engineered by even fewer developers and manufacturers of scents and flavorings. Burning an apple pie candle is not the same as baking an apple pie. And who'd care to burn cabbage fermenting in brine incense, but many things once made up a truly diverse scentscape.

Another example may be, again, an invisible cause, if you don’t count obesity. Food is very plentiful and mothers, while they do need good nutrition, may be overdoing it. There appears to be an energy processing dysfunction in certain brain cells in individuals with autism. If you pull a butterfly out of its cocoon instead of letting it use its own energy to emerge, that butterfly will not have the strength to fly. Perhaps our sense of love and charity for the unborn is resulting in damage to cell physiology that needs to be challenged to function rather than flooding cells with the material they use for production of energy. Perhaps the overabundance makes it too easy and makes the cells less functional while promoting overly rapid brain development, like giant roses brought on by plant food.

There is a massive emotional and economic cost associated with autistic dysfunction and we appear to be manufacturing it in some manner. We are far from getting it. We spin up theories and pursue all manner of witch doctoring. Is a crisis being generated by how we are encouraging, over-encouraging, or not encouraging the development of the human brain through our behavior as consumers? The more time we waste on simplistic boogey men like vaccines and bad mommies, the more this tragedy takes from us all.

(Photo: Ron Mueck's hyperrealist sculpture being delivered.)

Ron Mueck

Collector

2011-09-17T09:24:00.001-05:00

Pretty much everybody is a collector if not a curator. My first collection was the paper tags on the end of teabags. The little thing you use to pull the teabag back out of the cup of hot water. It carries the brand name. My collection included thousands of them.

That collection taught me, and I’ve never stopped marveling at this, if people know you are collecting something, they will make a special effort to add to your collection when they can. (I really should try this with gold bars.) I ended up with teabag tags from all over the planet. They were handed to me, mailed to me, appeared mysteriously.

There’s something about helping people along their way that makes us feel very good. We don’t even have to be asked. We just love to delight others by communicating we understand their intention and materially support their success. The phenomenon floated Tyco’s Beanie Babies to the stratosphere. (Pictured at the top of this entry: Beanie Baby desperados were accused of invading a home and stealing a young girl's collection.)

Guy Kawasaki’s business book Enchantment, as well as his marketing of the book, speak to and demonstrate the point. Guy wants to collect readers for his light as a feather treatise on what are actually some pretty complicated ideas. So far, so good. The book has gone business best seller with the New York Times and the WSJ. He also collects sportswear. “The closest thing that I have to [a] personal museum is my collection of hockey jerseys. I have jerseys from around the world--and not just North America and Europe. I have jerseys from places like Israel, South Africa, and Malaysia. Hockey is my great passion, and people send me jerseys from around the world.”

Read More:

Collecting Costume Jewelry Christmas Tree Pins: Vol. I: Unsigned

Trike

2011-09-17T09:23:00.002-05:00

I'm addicted to centrifugal force. It's so reliable once you get the hang of it riding a bicycle, a motorcycle, a horse, a roller coaster. And it's such a secret. People often love doing these things, but I don't think many of them have deconstructed it. Centrifugal force is a blast. We're glued to the Earth by centrifugal force. It's just the coolest thing since Speed Queen washers.

A couple of years ago we got the energetic Black Lab Cubby. I was casting about for ways to get him enough exercise, something working dogs really need. I had a bum knee and foot and walking very much wasn't going to work out too well. I pondered and figured getting an adult tricycle might fill the bill. I didn't like the idea of having him run on a lead with a bicycle. I didn't know him well enough to trust he wouldn't do something nuts. He may have thought the self-same of me.

So I thought: a tricycle. Nice and stable. Michael and I went to the bike shop, picked one out and got it home. I was utterly leveled when I found I simply could not ride the thing. I'd get on and get going and, as will naturally occur, I'd need to make a turn or at least an adjustment from straight line. I couldn't do it. I was just dumbbounded. People were screaming at me to turn the handlebars, but I couldn't stop reflexively leaning, instead. This went on for a weekend. I was nearly in tears at my own "stupidity." I made Michael take it back. I was too embarrassed to face them at the store.

I Googled and came to understand I was not the first sap this has happened to. An adult "trike" isn't really like our kid tricycles. It's a two-wheeled vehicle connected as usual by the chain drive mechanism with a third wheel added. You'd think a motorcycle with a sidecar seems like a swell idea. Safer. Easier to balance. Can't fall over so easily. Well, it turns out experienced motorcyclists too experience the "tricycle phenomenon." I deduce from my own experience that individuals who are used to sailing under the principles of centrifugal force are quite disoriented when all the unconscious balancing and compensations that come to them without conscious thought are a hindrance if they have had the power of centrifugal force removed. Actually, the hindrance is that those skills don't work when you ride a faux tricycle and your mind goes nuts trying to get things worked out before you hit the tree or end up out in traffic. It's a horrible panicky feeling.
The experience made me think about the attitude from iron workers who railed mightly against the wearing of safety lashings of assorted types that came to be mandated by OSHA when they worked on high iron (or even-off the-ground iron these days). I attributed the 'tude to some sort of ignorance, machismo, and disregard for non-union authority. I now think that quite the contrary was true. These individuals were adapted to working on high iron using their built-in safety (their instincts and skill) and they found external trappings were disorienting, confusing, cumbersome, and dangerous. No wonder they protested. But nobody much listened. It made other people feel safer if iron walkers had visible harnesses with which to impress the workmen's comp insurers. Skilled iron workers left their trade because of this issue. It wasn't hard-headedness; it was self-preservation.

Consider individuals with disabilities, though they are not as homogenous a group as the above-mentioned ironworkers, of course. I have heard or activists avow they would not care to lose their disability were it possible to do so. They would not elect to be non-disabled. These declarations came across to me as incredibly strident and it made me wonder about dependency on secondary gains. However, wouldn't it be like the ironworker or the motorcyclist who's learned how to live without third wheels or tethers because they find them distracting, cumbersome, confusing, and dangerous. An individual can become highly--brilliantly--adapted to circumstances others cannot fully perceive. I know I can hop on a bicycle, motorcycle, or horse and feel quite at home; and I love a roller coaster. But keep those tricycles away from me.

Read More:

A Day in the Life of a High-Iron Worker

Aurora Eyes

2011-09-17T09:23:00.001-05:00

Are we ever more aware of light than in a public restroom? We look into the mirror and, depending on the lighting, we leave with a spring in our step or fussing with our hair, head a little lowered as our reflection transforms our sense of well-being. The lighting of meat cases is famous for its flesh-enhancing overtones.

But natural light is to “lighting” as a properly ripened fresh peach is to canned slices. There’s just a world of difference.

Natural light is a phenomenon that some of us who aren’t artists and photographers might consider pursuing more actively. How about a little Light Tourism: Trips to bathe in hot mineral waters at 3 AM on a summer night in Iceland. The light there and then lends a depth to rock facets and the very bend of the Earth that leads one to anticipate arrival of a dinosaur at any moment. Why not excursions to experience combinations of light and cloud cover throughout Great Britain? England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales each offer a different experience. Or how about an excursion to see the landscapes in New Zealand seemingly backlit by a light only NZ geography produces.

Art and light shake hands at the Pulitzer Museum in middle America. Tadao Ando has built a perfect concrete structure and makes light an architectural element that plays into experience of the works presented. Quite a feat given the Pulitzer's highly concentrated urban locale. The Design Museum in London has practically branded light, perhaps the ultimate display of both Terrence Conran’s marketing prowess and largesse.

Consider for a viewing the American West’s Big Sky Country for purposes of contrast with New England’s coastal ghost light. So much light, so little time.

Bon luminage.

Read More:

Nothingness: Tadao Ando's Christian Sacred Space

carte de visite

2011-09-17T09:23:00.000-05:00

carte de visite appears as a subhead at the top of this blog. A carte de visite was a small photograph of oneself mounted on a thick card stock. A carte de visite was about the same size as the standard visiting card used during that period (roughly a finished size of 2 ¼ x 4 inches mounted). The carte de visite was extremely popular in the second half of the 19th Century among people who could afford them. They were sort of personal bubble gum cards and they were collected. There were collections containing friends and family, naturally, but some people collected the cards of prominent individuals exclusively.
One item that is held in the Royal London Hospital Archives is a carte de visite of Joseph Merrick who spent some of life being exhibited and billed as the Elephant Man. Merrick is photographed dressed in a suit and holding himself in a gentlemanly fashion. His carte de visite speaks of his aspiration for socialization as well as his hope to be respected as a person of prominence. There is a digital museum piece created by David Hevey as part of the Rethinking Disablity Representation project executed by the University of Leicester (England) about Joseph Merrick. The carte de visite is featured in it. Joseph Merrick was born in Leicester (pronounced Lester). His years until he was in his late teens were spent in a workhouse there. You can view the digital work online at:

http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/research/pub1129.html

It has become” fashionable” for museum academics and professionals and to be more cognizant of individuals with disabilities relative to museum content and interpretation (displaying things in a manner to tell a story or telling the story of things displayed). It is a giant step forward from accessibility, the key focus of attention relative to individuals with disabilities in museums, heretofore. But it is a tricky proposition.

See also: Museological Mash-Up at codiyioti.blogspot.com

There’s a tendency to focus on the highly visible forms of disability, such as Merrick’s. The proposition being laid out is: it’s okay to stare, for example, at fine art photographs of burn survivors by Doug Auld (http://dougauld.com/shayla.htm). This staring, it is hoped, will result in seeing: seeing beyond the disability. It seemed to work out for the Elephant Man. He became quite a celebrity at the Royal London Hospital due to the novelty of being a conversant, thinking individual while looking so very unusual. The trap is that the hook is freakishness.

Courtesy Of
The Royal London Hospital
Archives

Individuals with visually enunciated disabilities have an opportunity to come to terms with how others perceive them, even though they might not like how they are seen. Sometimes individuals come up with artful strategies to capitalize on their appearance. Merrick, as an instance, sought opportunities to be exhibited. He came up with the idea. When the disability is visible, it seems, there’s a form of social closure in the transaction between the individual with a disability and the people he or she encounters. It might not land in the very best place, but the relationship is grounded.

This closure is not experienced by individuals with invisible disabilities, e.g., dyslexia, ADHD, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis, depression, narcolepsy . . . . There is an array of complex states of disability for which there is no apparent deformity or conspicuous assistive equipment. The invisibility of the disability may itself be a substantial facet of the disabling condition. Consider an individual unable to exhibit facial expressions who cannot express the joy of seeing a loved one come into view, or a traumatic brain injury survivor prone to confabulation who seems to be a compulsive liar. The disabling condition is just a ghost that produces altered functionality and altered relationships.

Many would prefer “to pass” rather than self-identify as an individual with a disability because explanation is so emotionally complex. There is fear of stigma. Sometimes an individual with a disability is just not self-reflective enough to provide an explanation of the significant facts of his or her disability to someone else. Sometimes the social transaction is fleeting and does not warrant a complex disclosure. It is out of reach to form a brief disclosure that is beneficial to both sides.

Would it be helpful if some subtle identifier could make the point without a lot of elaboration, in the way a wheelchair, white cane, or visible hearing assist device can? Just a clue that an individual has differences could help orient the social transaction instead of it leaving it hanging in a muddled limbo. A recognizable object of identity for invisible disability can orient others and, perhaps more importantly, defend the self concept and sense of personal worth of individuals with invisible disabilities.

Read More:

The Invisible Smile: Living without facial expression

Drive-Up Learning

2011-09-17T09:21:00.000-05:00

Distance learning is a magical idea. Its precursor, correspondence courses, had the magic, too. It was in the mail. The happy moment when the instruction module arrived, the hopeful mailing off of the lessons to be reviewed, commented upon, and graded. And best of all, the arrival of the positively skewed feedback. Relative to the digitized learning environment, there is a lilting sentimentality when one recalls correspondence courses: the paper, the handwritten notes, the arrival of–correspondence—in your mailbox. For god’s sake, it was like Christmas.
On the internet, there’s no 3-D face-to-face like in the classroom, no handwritten notes and mailbox arrivals like correspondence courses, but there is the promise of techno-based networking among the learned. It should be a setup for massive exchange of ideas fueled by intrinsic motivation. Is it?

The interstudent chatatorium, whatever it may called on a given digital campus, is rarely a glimpse into a think tank of budding scholars but more of a dart throwing exhibition with participants’ aim being to get closest to the instructor’s attention. This can be achieved with accuracy or a shotgun approach by firing at every moving comment in a thread. The threadtrix also usually gives birth to at last one annoying ersatz student-instructor who wouldn’t get very far in a traditional classroom setting and certainly nowhere in a correspondence scenario. The value of the threadtrix appears to be that it gives students something to do other than pester the (real) instructor, and sometimes people get dates.

Professors/tutors/lecturers/graduate teaching assistants--whatever the title--are faced with an enormous amount of work if they elect to interact with the virtual class members--and nobody really pays them for that. In an analog classroom setting, it’s possible to limit ad lib intercourse by having office hours of a limited number and limited access during class time for “Excuse me, excuse me, I have a question.” Just show up pretty close to start time for the lecture, have only short breaks, and keep people long enough that as soon as they can leave, they run for the next class, home to get some sleep, or to the job. The onslaught 24/7 of communication from virtual classes, which may be fairly large in size since nobody actually takes up any space and fire codes don’t apply, is staggering. In addition to their number, participants can’t be seen and “read,” and the tendency for digital communications to get a little hinky when they are executed in isolation without typical social feedback, like the look on someone else’s face, can be nightmarish. Not to mention that far less than 100% of the population is skilled in writing with clarity, brevity, and intent. And that’s on both sides of the podium.

Pen, pencil, paper: low-tech, yes, but so easy to use. Sigh. So very easy . With distance learning it’s desirable to know how to use your computer and printer, naturally, and your computer’s camera that points at you (you want to look smart, don’t you?). You also should know how to use your cell phone or other handheld for social media, and picture taking can be very important in emphasizing a point. You need to know how to blog and feed it; how to use word processing, paint, and photoshop-type programs; how to put a video on You Tube; how to use LEXUS/NEXUS, online libraries, or at least Google really, really well; how to manage files and zip and unzip them and turn them into PDFs; how to take tests scored by computer, and how to Skype. All of that takes some pretty expensive hardware if the intellectual capital doesn’t give you pause.

With distance learning there is no etiquette. You run through McDonald’s and your fries are in there jostling up against the paper wrapper on your hamburger and the bag. The niceties, like a table, chair, and plate, are extraneous. Technology tends to level the layers of bureaucracy, which in my opinion is nothing but a good thing. But doesn’t there need to be some form of manners for the sake of each the student and teaching cadres. Something that you carry away with you as what it was like socially to go to school there. I’ve had instructors who acknowledged each bit of communication in a personal, individualized manner. I’ve had instructors who didn’t respond to anything, ever referring students to the course techie instead. And I’ve had instructors who responded to every manner of missive with, “Thank you.” Those seemed to be automated. If they weren’t, why the heck not?

Reputable schools and even made-up schools can “brand” programs and shoot them out like Happy Meals to build a revenue stream as strong and steady as an American fast food drive-up window. Distance learning tends to be expensive but, alas, students are the only consumers on the planet who like to be cheated. The value-added that expensive distance learning can claim is enrichment through facilitated access to a wide net of authorities and sounding boards, flexibility, and lots of practice with technology. But it’s just not worth much if the instructional community feels it must or may hide behind a digital, bulletproof drive-up window.

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