Prabhakar Kolte. Untitled, 2005.
Acrylic on canvas.
Bauhaus Is 100, Whatever That Means
by Thomas O’Dwyer
On April 1, one hundred years ago, Walter Gropius established the Bauhaus school of design in Weimar, central Germany. It lasted a mere 14 years — exactly the same time as the Weimar Republic. In 1933, the Nazis destroyed both. Short life or not, Bauhaus opened up a modern way of thinking about arts and crafts, the marriage of form and function, education, and the growth of cities. Its ideas have had an impact well beyond the school, its locations and its era. And there have been some resurrections. Sleepy Weimar has regained its pleasant obscurity and the recovery of Bauhaus has been a little uneven, but robust and international. Nazi thuggery was dealt a satisfying poke in the eye by one living monument to Bauhaus, the White City of Tel Aviv in Israel — a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Gropius’ revolutionary school of art and design was an achievement of modernism itself. It began as the Thuringian state Bauhaus in Weimar, moved as a school of design to Dessau, and finally as a private institute to Berlin. Its themes grew from an active arts and crafts movement and when the Nazis crushed it, these ideas flooded out of Germany with thousands of emigrants. The influence of Bauhaus has been immense, especially in the United States, where many artists moved before and during World War II. As well as Tel Aviv, built by Jewish German refugees, there are World Heritage Bauhaus sites in a dozen states around the world. The 100th anniversary this year is being marked by exhibitions, theatre, music and modern dance events. A flood of books has appeared, most destined to languish unread on post-Bauhaus bookshelves.
What the term Bauhaus means to the wider public today is hard to pin down. Read more »
Catspeak
by Brooks Riley
Loosen Your Hands And Let Go
by Mary Hrovat
I was struck by a sentence in Susan Orlean’s The Library Book: “If nothing lasts, nothing matters.” This line was part of a discussion of memory, the fear of being forgotten, and the value of passing things on to future generations. I share a passion for the idea of continuity between generations (and I highly recommend Orlean’s book), but ultimately I don’t think that something has to last to matter. Alan Watts, in his book This Is It, says that “This—the immediate, everyday, and present experience—is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe.” It’s not about connecting with anything but what’s here in front of me now. (Easier said than done, of course.)
The idea that impermanence can be embraced is both a difficult one for me and something I sorely need. When I was in my early 20s, I rejected my parents’ religion, including its teachings about an afterlife. One of the longest-lasting effects of having once believed in an immortal soul has been the persistent sense that this brief existence, limited to 70 or 80 years on this planet if you’re lucky, can’t be as worthwhile or meaningful as a life that endures forever. On the other hand, being out from under the disapproving gaze of a punitive god and outside the limiting story of sin and redemption has ultimately been tremendously freeing. Read more »
Let’s Work It Out: Language of Fitness
by Gabrielle C. Durham
I teach two kinds of group exercise classes, and part of the certification processes for both disciplines devoted no small amount of attention to how to speak to your minions, uh, students.
- Negative forecasting is a no no. (Example: “Don’t think about the searing pain you’re probably feeling” is not considered positive forecasting.)
- Use the imperative rather than the interrogative. (Examples: “1, 2, 3, lift those legs behind your neck. Now!” vs. “Could you please move this way, pretty please?”)
- Try not to use overly involve anatomical terms, especially when referring to the butt. (Example: Use “seat” rather than almost any other term that all students would understand and potentially complain about. It’s happened.)
To be fair, the setting for such interactions matters. I teach in a gym, so word of mouth is terrifically important to getting bodies in the room, and you never know when you are going to offend someone with an offhand remark. At the studio where I also torture people for money, I have a bit more leeway with such rules. I’m still not supposed to say that a particular move will hurt or cause pain. Other rules include expectations such as: Don’t kill your client directly, try not to insult the client, come on time, wear clothing, et cetera.
Most dance classes, such as Zumba, NIA, Polynesian, or hip-hop, but not ballet, require almost no words, so that’s a factor that you can reasonably eliminate from this consideration of how language is used. If you can find the beat and see the instructor reasonably well, you can follow along as expertly as you can manage. When I took ballroom dancing, this was not the case, but the less said about that, the better. Read more »
Poetry in Translation
Spring in Kashmir
by Rahman Rahi
And there’s a love-torn couple
In the lap of a shikara on Dal
And there’s a vermilion cloud
In a sapphire sky flirting a peak
And there’s a deodar
With kohl-rimmed eyes
And there’s a tulip
With parched lips
And there’s a wine goblet
Bubbling with pearls
And there’s a black wasp
Digging the heart of lotus
And there’s a whirligig
Dancing
And there’s a surge
Rising, naturally.
Oh, spirit,
Amidst all this
If you did not hold my hand
And beat in tune
With my pulse,
Would you know
How my unruly heart sings
And an orchestra plays?
* * *
Abdur Rehman Rahi, b.1925, recipient of several top literary awards in India, is the greatest living poet of the Kashmiri language. He has published five collections of poems and seven books of literary criticism in Kashmiri. Rahi lives in Srinagar.
Translated from the original Kashmiri by Rafiq Kathwari for 3QD.
Philosophy: A Dialogue
by Jeroen Bouterse
“…And now to introduce our second panelist: Martha. Martha does believe that academic philosophy is worth pursuing, and she has – of course – written a book about it. Martha, can you briefly summarize your argument?”
M: “Thank you. Yes, well, you can imagine that, though I told my publisher that my book is aimed at a broader audience, I should also like to emphasize that my argument will not easily be shortened to 140 characters. Even though I have no doubt that Rob here would find a way to do so.”
R: “Not in your case, Martha; your books are a three-tweet problem. But in all seriousness: I see what Martha is getting at here. It is the contrast between highbrow academic philosophy and ‘pop philosophy’ – a contrast I believe to be mostly a fiction. The notion that what happens in the universities is real philosophy, and that whatever the public can digest can only be a shadow of that, is misguided. It is an artifact of the fact that a few generations of great philosophers happened to work in a world where the highest intellectual authority was that of the university professor.
That Hegel’s lectures were well-attended does not mean that philosophy is, of its essence, most at home in the university. On the contrary: it is illustrative of the fact that a certain, very abstract type of thinking is suitable to the university. But it is not for school, but for life that we learn; there are other types of philosophy, and I am not ashamed that on my Twitter account I try to connect traditional philosophy to topical and pressing issues. I also write books, by the way..”
M: “That is all well and good, but I’d say that now Rob has replaced one doubtful contrast by another: his approach to philosophy concerns ‘life’, and academic philosophy, by contrast, is scholastic – which apparently means dead or lifeless.”
R: “Those were not my exact words, but I will happily embrace a similar statement in the same spirit: philosophy, in the classical sense of that notion, is not a system of more or less well-founded claims, but a way of life, defined and inspired by a reflective attitude towards life. And yes, that requires it to engage in conversation with life.” Read more »
A Perfect Day (According to Self-Help)
by Joshua Wilbur
I wake up just before sunrise.
For weeks, I’ve gone to bed at exactly 10 PM because—as Shawn Stevenson shows in Sleep Smarter—a consistent bedtime is the single most important factor in waking up well-rested. Before getting out of bed, I perform a series of stretches to prime my body for the day and gently transition to a waking state. I stand up feeling energized. I go to the window, open the blackout shades, and take a moment to appreciate the view. I’m ready to win the morning.
It’s hard to overstate the value of a morning routine. According to Hal Elrod, the author of The Miracle Morning, “By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible.” My morning routine begins with some vigorous exercise, a HIIT of strength and cardio. With the Scientific 7-Minute Workout, I “essentially [combine] a long run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of discomfort.” This leaves me with plenty of time to meditate afterwards.
For a long time, I struggled to choose between mantra meditation, body scan meditation, and breath awareness meditation, so now I cycle through and reap the benefits of all three. I spend half an hour chanting, scanning, and breathing before taking a short contrast shower, alternating between warm and cold water in order to boost circulation and relieve tired muscles. I get dressed for the day, choosing an outfit that is both comfortable and likely to impress. I tidy my room and go to the kitchen. Read more »
Monday Photo
White rose, May, 2014.
Music to My Earworms
by Carol A Westbrook
What song did you have in your head when you woke up today? Was it, “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling” as you recalled your St. Patrick’s Day celebration from the previous weekend?
Probably not. Chances are, the song in your head was not a slow, melodic ballad with simple lyrics, but a catchy, snappy tune. It might have been a line from a popular song, such as Lady Gaga’s “Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah” from her song Bad Romance, or Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Maybe it was an annoying commercial jingle “1-8-7-7-Kars-4-Kids.” Maybe you’re thinking of food, and getting hungry. O-Oh! How about some Spaghetti O’s? Or Rice a Roni, that San Francisco treat?
If you didn’t wake up with a song in your head, you probably have one after reading this far. I’ve just infected you with an earworm.
An earworm is a catchy tune that worms its way into your head when you hear or even read it, and then seems to get stuck there. And it’s really hard to get rid of. Many people enjoy these tunes that loop through their brains, much like they enjoy listening to music on the radio or their iPod. Others find them distracting. And for a very small number of people, they can be incapacitating. Read more »
W
by Christopher Bacas
My answering machine whirrs. From an echoing room, the chainsaw-voice shouts into a speaker phone:
THIS IS GOD.
ANSWER THE PHONE…
SON….OF….A….BITCH
PICK…
UP…
THE…
GODDAMPHONE……
CALL ME…GOD
‘click’
Creator of the universe overloads a magnetic comb-and-wax-paper. Failing to make contact, he curses his fragile creation, then himself. W was that God. In truth, he was an atheist. Son of a Vaudeville pianist, Confirmed Catholic, drummer and devout musician (per Prophet Charlie Parker), W realized early his Washington, DC parish was as ignorant and segregated as its city, so he kept only the latter faith.
In the sixties, W opened a music store in a sleepy neighborhood just beyond the District line. As the population grew, it got rougher. During a lesson on a hot day, one kid asked to go out for a cold drink. W pulled a pistol from an ankle holster, then headed to an open window, saying over his shoulder. “Run, I’ll cover you.” Read more »
Monday, March 11, 2019
The N-word and the Misleading Simplicity of the Use/Mention Distinction
by Joseph Shieber
One of the philosophical tools that seems utterly obvious to me is the so-called “use/mention distinction”. Because it strikes me as so obvious, it is always baffling to me that people seem to have such trouble with it.
Simply put, the use/mention distinction is this. Let’s look at use first.
In order to choose an easy case, let’s say that the word I’m using is a noun. If I use a noun, I utter or write the noun in order to refer to what the noun refers to. So if I write “Neptune is the farthest planet from the sun in our solar system”, the word “Neptune” in that sentence refers to the planet Neptune.
If I mention a word, on the other hand, I am not using the word. Let’s take the case of nouns again. If I mention the word “Neptune”, then I’m referring to the word itself, rather than the object to which the word refers. So, for example, in the sentence ‘“Neptune” isn’t the only seven-letter planetary name’, I’m referring to the word “Neptune” rather than the planet Neptune.
Simple, right?
So why does it seem so hard for people to get it?! For example, there was the recent kerfuffle over an Augsburg University professor who, in discussing James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, had a student who quoted Baldwin’s use of the N-word. The professor, then, in discussing the student’s mentioning of the word, employed the word himself. Read more »
Monday Poem
Teach the Children About the Cycles
.
…… —on a poem by Gary Snyder in which Snyder is
……… visited by Lew Welsh
Dead Lew comes to Gary in a poem
and tells the thing that must be taught,
he says,
……….. Teach the children about the cycles.
The life cycles. He may as well have said
the universe is a breathing spinning top,
the children should know this,
a cliché is its essence,
what goes around comes around believe it or not;
and
……….. All other cycles, he says,
so as to bring the truth of all turbulence
out and set it on a table turning
to make the why of their dizziness understandable
and clear. Because, Lew goes on to say,
It’s what it’s all about but it’s been forgot,
which keeps us in our fears and burnings
and our fables while at the center,
at its hub, everything is still. This is
what they should be learning
Jim Culleny
3/6/18
On Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
by Emrys Westacott
I just read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations for the first time. Not every word. It’s over a thousand pages, and there are long “Digressions” (Smith’s term) on matters such as the history of the value of silver, or banking in Amsterdam, which I simply passed over. I was mainly interested in what Smith has to say about work, so I also merely skimmed some other sections that seemed to have little relevance to my research. Time and again, though, I found myself getting sucked into chapters unrelated to my concerns simply because the topics discussed are so interesting, and what Smith has to say is so thought-provoking. Reading the book is also made easier both by Smith’s admirably lucid writing and by the brief summaries of the main claims being made that he inserts throughout at the left-hand margin.
By any measure The Wealth of Nations is one of the most influential books ever written and represents a monumental intellectual achievement, initiating a paradigm shift in political economy. Before its publication in 1776, the dominant view in Britain and many other countries was some form of mercantilism. According to this theory, the path to prosperity and power for a nation lay in its having a positive balance of trade, exporting more than it imported, thereby accumulating wealth at the expense of its rivals. Government policy thus sought to promote the production of goods while ignoring or even suppressing domestic consumption. Against this, Smith argues that the wealth of a nation does not reside in a store of goods or gold, but consists, rather, in the totality of the economic activity that its people and institutions are engaged in. Read more »
Perceptions
Fifty Shades of Pakistani Feminism
by Samia Altaf
After an anxious and grey winter, the gloom of an unraveling economy, topped by the ominous beating of war drums, spring arrived in Punjab and Lahore’s academies and activists put aside their concerns to celebrate Women’s International Day on March 8. Amidst the blooming of flowers and the heady fragrance of newly sprouting jasmine—feminism and feminist concerns and the doings of women suffused the air.
There were reviews of achievements by Pakistani women—Malala, Sharmeen Chinoy, Mukhtaran Mai, Fehmida Riaz, Hina Khar were lauded. There was the woman’s march of sisterhood and solidarity. The Prime Minister wants to ‘create an environment in which women can play their rightful role.’ Lively discussions were held on university campuses and in exclusive clubs. Television channels and talk shows competed to give more upbeat views of the whole ‘woman question’ that included duties of women, responsibilities of women, rights of women, clothes of women as well as the pro-women actions undertaken and being planned. A female student of an elite university dared to attempt to wear shorts. Thankfully that is where it remained, a dare. We spoke of the hijab, the veil, its ‘badness’ and ‘goodness,’ and so on. All discussions ended with exhortations for ‘women’s empowerment.’
Ah, that word. What does it even mean? Read more »
Catspeak
by Brooks Riley
Jesus with the Light Brown Hair
by Shawn Crawford
In 1987, Anderson University, an Evangelical school in Indiana, acquired 140 works by the artist Warner Sallman, including Head of Christ. You may have never heard of Sallman, but in terms of sheer sales and presence, his Head of Christ makes him the most popular 20th Century artist in America. Exponentially more popular than Warhol or Wyeth. If you are a Boomer or Gen X Evangelical, Head of Christ provided the definitive image of Jesus, in a way that you can never shake.
At my house, this was the only “art” hanging on the wall. Many of my friends could say the same. One of the wealthier families in our church also had a copy of Sallman’s Christ at Heart’s Door, with a heavy gilt frame and one of those fancy lights attached at the top to better illuminate Jesus trying to get in. The painting has obvious echoes to William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World without thePre-Raphaelite theatrics. Our Jesus did not wear a cape. And that beard needs a trim. As a freshman in college I learned Hunt had also painted The Awakening Conscience, a painting so erotic to my sheltered sensibilities I could not reconcile the two. I also stared at the reproduction in my British literature anthology for hours on end.
If you are wondering just how ubiquitous Sallman’s picture is, over 500 million copies have been sold since he painted it in 1940. That’s enough for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. with plenty left for Justin Trudeau to pass out to his disillusioned base. Oh pretty, pretty Justin. Read more »
Monday Photo
Saw this hunting blind while walking in the woods near Raas last week.
Animal Stories
by Joan Harvey
We are all the animals and none of them. It is so often said that poetry and science both seek truth, but perhaps they both seek hedges against it. —Thalia Field
A handsome bearded man leads a row of eager young ducklings who mistake him for their mother. Many of us recognize this image, warm and charming, gemütlich even, as that of ethologist, Konrad Lorenz. Thalia Field, in her book Bird Lovers, Backyard, in a section titled “A Weedy Sonata,” leads us to Lorenz the way I came to him, the way I remember him from childhood: “…the imprinting idea reveals this white-bearded man in work pants and waders, a row of ducklings strolling behind him….Picture: Konrad Lorenz on his steps, feeding a baby bird from a dropper. Martina the goose waiting to go up to sleep in ‘her bedroom’ at the top of his house. A family portrait in progress.”
Recently Leanne Ogasawara, in her 3 Quarks Daily essay on Leonardo’s painting Salvator Mundi, concludes that in evaluating the provenance of an Old Master, it is wisest to trust the scientists, a position with which I’m inclined to agree. But in the discussion that followed, others raised the need for a “fresh eye,” suggesting that artists and philosophers and laymen should weigh in for a more balanced view, one less prone to innate bias. Today, with more women in science, with research in neuroscience leading to an explosion in ideas about what consciousness is, with neuroscientists concluding that animals too are conscious, there is recognition that we have drawn false borders where there may be none. Previously agreed on methods and theories have been increasingly questioned both from within and without a number of fields. There is a general re-visioning of assumed truths, of the canon left by mostly white men. Of course the best science is always open to correction as more information becomes available.
My mother, a passionate animal lover, who often preferred animals to humans, and who had six kids in a row, somewhat as if she’d produced a litter, had Lorenz’s book, King Solomon’s Ring, on her shelf, though I no longer remember if she gave it to me to read, or I just found it myself. And what I remember, what everyone remembers from the book, is this man, embodying both the maternal and paternal, leading a flock of baby geese around, feeding them, acting as their substitute mom. Imprinting. Read more »