speaking of absence

Humans are meaning making machines.

Professor Tyler Curtain, wrapping up an interview with WUNC in Chapel Hill re a lecture he'll be delivering this Friday on Evolution and Ethics. Extinction is the core idea that runs through the interview. With a welcome peppering of comics.

Long time ago I shared a pizza with Tyler and his then sweetie, a biology grad student, and there was moment in which the conversation wrapped around to global warming and extinction and the biologist said something like: "Oh the planet will always be here: it's humans that won't be."

That was long before Al became Oscar Nobel and things like that simply weren't said in polite society. But it stuck with me, vividly, because it rang so true.

Give the interview a listen »

narwhals with picnickers & pepsi

narwhals with picnickers & pepsi
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Field Museum, Lower Level
Chicago, IL

Scarfing some vending action before seeing George & David Stuart (father & son Mayanists) speak at a National Geographic event on Palenque. (What's Palenque? Search my Flickr stream. ;)

Foraging upshot: Hostess Ding Dongs, 11 days past their expiration date.

Posting by cameraphone from seat #D22.

domesday

domesday
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Chicago Cultural Center, the illuminated floor that runs under the Tiffany Glass domed ceiling.

Caught a couple of lectures at the Chicago Humanities Festival this morning; both of them re apocalyptic themes (comets as harbingers & the Mayan 9th cent. collapse), and each a little too generalized to be of any great interest.

But, this being Chicago, each shared the distinction of being conducted in striking proximity to a stunning Tiffany Glass
domed ceiling (the other one was at the Art Institute), which isn't something you get to see every day.

Unless, of course, you're in Chicago's Loop every day. ;)

Posting by cameraphone, after the fact.

always look on the bright side of life

Video: Monty Python, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Time’s tight this morning, so I’ll spare you the cogent analysis [1] of Paul Krugman’s delivery last night to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and just bullet out what I heard. I took good notes in lieu of a Martin’s request for audio and video -- or relatively good notes.

Although I have to confess that the very first note that I took was off -- the one that said it started at 6.30, so be there by a little after 6. No, actually, in fact it started at 6. So we missed a few minutes -- about five, according to the kind lady who seated us late, but we were there in time to catch Krugman’s depressing assessment of the race card in America -- that invisible force which he described as “a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement”, that has influenced so many elections and moved so much policy, and remains too often unnamed.

Krugman noted that Southern white men are the only group that votes strongly Republican in the U.S., reminded us of Bush Sr.’s Willy Horton and Reagan’s welfare mother driving the Cadillac, and made a side comment about Guilliani’s strange appeal to Republican voters -- which Krugman believes has more to do with Rudy’s reputation for cracking down on “you know who” than it does on his 9/11 moment. (Re Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Guilliani: it’s “still leaving me kind of freaked out.”)

Having heard that I was getting ready for the full waterboard: we’re screwed. It’s over. We might as well cede to China and call it a day.

But then the tide turned.

Most Americans are liberal, Krugman stated -- they just don’t say they are. It’s an epithet that folks won’t subscribe to -- but the policies they support -- health care, sorting out this mess in Iraq -- they support in surprisingly liberal ways. About the race card he said “we’re not that country anymore”. Immigration has changed us. Diversity has shaped us.

The Conscience of a Liberal, he said, the book he just wrote, that he was here to shill, “is a happy book -- because I think it’s about over.”

But not because our government is straightening out the worst of it -- it’s because the people won’t take it anymore.

Krugman stated that it’s “amazing to me that the worst didn’t happen; the public turned out to be better than we feared.”

As I review my notes I realize that I didn’t record any of his proofs -- I can’t recall that he offered more than this compelling optimism, or maybe I was so grateful and glad to hear it that the pen stopped for a while and I just steeped in it. I do know that the statement he made as he wrapped up his remarks settled well in my sternum. He said he was “astonishingly hopeful” because America did turn out to be the country he hoped it was.

And then came the Q&A.

• Of Bush on National Security Krugman stated he’s “destroyed the brand”. Krugman doesn’t see the fear factor influencing future elections that it did in years past -- Bush and his administration have made such a mess of the war in Iraq that they’ve destroyed all credibility on this front. The American public won’t allow themselves to be manipulated again. (We can only hope.)



• He cited a “constitutional lawyer who asked to remain unnamed” who stated that “if Bush hadn’t been such a screw up [2] the republic would be over” -- we came that close to losing it all.



• Of Milton Friedman and the piece in the NYRB (assuming this was the piece you were referring to, Martin...) he defended his original position, of course, saying that Friedman’s ideas were fresh in the ‘50s, but that as he aged he became “increasingly doctrinaire” to where he was defending things that were indefensible -- like the belief that the FDA was unnecessary because the free markets can police these things. To this he alluded to our recent troubles with imports from China, and told the joke that he said has been circulating in academic circles: “Sure our trade with China is fair and balanced -- they send us poisoned toys and we send them fraudulent securities.”



• Of the economy -- “it’s pretty bad, but don’t panic yet”. He said the dollar is having a Wiley E. Coyote moment, observing that law of “cartoon physics where objects stay suspended in space until they become aware of their environment”. We’ve plunged off the cliff and are just now realizing what we’ve done. Here again my notes offer no solid proofs outside his reassurance that all will be well -- I suppose we’ll have to read the book to find out why.



• Of media coverage of the politics and the presidential elections, he disparaged what he called the “cult of even-handedness”, skewering the press for failing to call folks on their bullshit -- he cited Guilliani’s recent wrong-headed statements about prostrate cancer when the headlines read “Guilliani claims disputed” (No, said Krugman, Guilliani’s claims were WRONG.) Said Krugman: “The moments when my optimism leans over to dispair is when I look at the coverage.”
  
  The remedy: Harassment. Journalists have thin skins, said Krugman -- the Right figured this out a long time ago and it resulted in the “asymmetrical intimidation of journalists”. The Left needs to fire off and hold the Media accountable.

And now I have to go to work. Happy Friday, Y'all.

[1] Yeah, right. I’m qualified to deliver cogent economic analysis on Krugman like... well. You know. I’m not.

[2] Krugman noted that this was a paraphrase -- the lawyer used a stronger phrase than "screw"

curiosities of the sciences and marvels for the eyes [1]

a map as tall as me
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.[2]

Where am I? Where do I want to go? How do I get there?

—What Maps Tell Us, per the Field Museum

Maps, Finding our Place in the World, which opened up at Chicago’s Field Museum on November 2nd, is a peep show for the schematically inclined.

Caught it last night in a private showing put on by the good folks at the Anthropology Alliance, who also brought in Ryan Williams, one of the show’s curators, to speak on the technologies of mapping. (The buffet, for those who care most about these things, pulled in a meager 3 points out of 5. Full points for the open bar were offset by the unidentifiable Satay, which may or may not have been poultry product. Admittedly the score would have plummeted to 2.5 if the desserts weren’t as solid as they were: mini-carrot cakes, lemon bars and a molten brownie glazed in frosting, sprinkled with jimmies, and vaguely reminiscent of an uptown Hostess ding dong)

But to the exhibit.

All the big guns were there: Lindbergh’s Flight Chart for his historic New York to Paris trek. The first Mercatur projection (I know -- get out!). Cook’s chronograph (although no word on whether it was with him during that unfortunate incident in the Sandwich Islands in which the locals mistook him for Lono -- the second time).

Edmund Halley’s 17-hundred-something map of the magnetic North -- the very first graphical representation of the earth’s magnetic field, bifurcated by the lovely curvilinear “line of no variation” -- also put in an appearance; and Cortes’ map of the Aztec capitol he conquered was also in attendance.

Even a 15th century rendering of Ptolemy’s Geographia was there.

Fans of Edward Tufte will be sure to recognize John Snow’s 1855 Cholera Map of London and Minard’s Figurative Map of the Successive Losses in Men of the French Army in the Russian Campaign 1812-1813.

The freaking cool North/South digital military map of the Civil War conflict from the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, which I wrote about back in August of last year, was there, although it lost some of its impact on the small screen that it was afforded (about twelve inches across -- in Springfield it fills a wall).

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin also put an appearance, mapping colonies and the Gulf Stream respectively, but it was the more obscure gems that were ultimately the most interesting.

• Places Visited by Emperor Yu by an unknown Chinese mapmaker in 1136 was one of the first maps to use uniform scale to represent distance. The map itself is carved in wood -- copies were made via ink rubbings. The image is a strict grid -- solid blocks of black outlined in concave lines of white -- intersected and overrun by the sinuous meanders of what I assumed was the Yangtze, but realize now that I failed to write it down



• A map of Oaxaca, Mexico, when it was still called Amoltepec -- drawn just like you would expect a Mixtec artist would draw it on paper in 1580 -- hauntingly reminiscent of the few remaining Mayan Codices



• A map drawn from memory by Wetallok, an Inuit, of the Belcher Islands in Canada, on request for Explorer Robert Flaherty, that in its harsh expressionistic lines appears to be strikingly abstract -- until you compare it with the satellite image of the area that hangs alongside it, and you realize that folks who work the land know the land better than any surveyor ever could



• A spectacular letterpress map of Venice executed across six panels on that gorgeous stout Italian-made paper, the upper rightmost of which, in all its peripheral abstraction, earned my award for “map I most want to take home to live with me and be my love”



• The beautiful mystery of seeing first, the 1863 map by John Hanning Speke, on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society expedition, that verifies Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile River and then rounding the corner to find Francesco Roselli’s 1508 map of the world -- the first one post-Columbus’ discovery -- that not only tries to make sense (and does so badly) out of North and South America, but also harbors a sweet little divot cut clean through the paper where the heart should be in Africa that is, in fact, Lake Victoria -- and is fed by all those marvelous rivers, including, yes, why isn’t that the Nile? Hey...waitaminute...

I only got two-thirds of the way through in the hour before we were called away to the lecture, and then again in the brief twenty minutes that we squeaked in after the lecture before we had to hit the road home. So I’ll return soon to finish it, and to circle back to see the rest of the exhibit and to visit my favorites again -- including the sweet little slash of blue turbulence, perfectly tamed, that caught my eye like the crystalline call of an eagle’s cry [3] just as we were heading out the door. A story beautifully told, a man’s plan to tame the Arno and turn Florence into an economic powerhouse to rival its sister city: The Plan to Regulate the Arno River in Florence drawn by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci.


p.s. If you’ve never read Stephen Jay Gould’s explication of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the role that, he believes, water as an energy resource plays in that painting -- well, who am I to tell you what to read? But honestly -- you won’t be disappointed.

p.p.s. This map thing is going on all over the city for the next little while -- good times »


[1] Stole the title of this post from a remarkably beautiful Egyptian series of maps -- 13th century copies of 11th century originals by an unidentified mapmaker who turned out strikingly graphic and geometric representations of the European world that looked unlike anything the Europeans were producing at the time

[2] The image is illegal, taken by cameraphone before I saw the “no photography” sign, of an Italian book of maps, c. 1665, that, had it been standing, would have stood as tall as me -- and I’m 5 foot 12.

[3] Have you ever heard anything like it -- that clear blue chime that an eagle makes when it’s calling to its mate? I heard it once on Christmas Day walking through Seward Park in Seattle and it took me several disorienting minutes to realize that what I heard was a living breathing creature.

of sundogs & standing

Blogging belatedly on this previous weekend’s Humanities Day at the University of Chicago (not to be confused with the City of Chicago’s Humanities Festival which is currently in full swing).

How it works: During parents’ weekend each year (I don’t think UofC calls it “homecoming” -- there’s no football team, no tailgating, no ritual brutality at this particular egghead U) the Humanities Department throws a party for all the folks, and the Humanities’ Profs queue up and give lectures in a day long show and tell. The event is free and open to the public, so along with the grey hairs a few younger pulses show up for the offering.

Results, over the seven years we’ve attended, have been hit and miss. This year was a winner on all counts, with a kick off by Christina Van Nolcken delivering a lecture on the Vikings -- plump full of great stories of Eric the Bloodaxe and Ivar the Boneless, including speculation on whether or not Ivar’s inability to produce bonage at strategic moments with young maidens may have contributed to his nickname.

Richard Neer’s keynote was also first rate -- an explication of Poussin’s Landscape with Blind Orion Seeking the Sun that attributed the striking occurrence of a double sundog [1] in Rome contemporary with the artist's time in that city (resulting in the optical illusion of four additional suns), for the freaky ambient light source in Poussin’s image -- hard to pin down, difficult to trace -- and the speculation that the artist may have been a commenting on the rising tide of Scientific thought.

Made me wish, as it always does, that I could make a living just thinking stuff up like that. And reading books and shit.


But the lecture that stuck was the one delivered by the one guy who got out of his own way and led the gathered assembly through the materials, using the shake up your brain with that good old fashion dialectic method of Socratic inquiry.

David M. Thompson, Associate Dean of the Humanities Division, laid down several different texts -- including Article III of the U.S. Constitution, two Supreme Court rulings and a handful of poetry -- and from there bent my brain into a pretzel re the difficulties of getting anything accomplished on behalf of the environment in America’s courts.

His point in a nutshell: To stand before the Court and argue one’s case one must have standing, or “the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case” [2]; but of course to establish standing in a case where the environment is under threat -- when a species, or landscape, or ecosystem is endangered rather than an individual -- demands that the plaintiffs and their counsel perform all kinds of legal acrobatics to show some kind of “injury in fact”.

The first example Thompson put forward was Lujan, The Secretary of the Interior v. Defenders of Wildlife heard by the Supreme Court in 1991 in which two Americans argued, some what ridiculously, injury in fact as individuals who may be future tourists to Egypt and Sri Lanka who, given U.S. government funding of deleterious projects on foreign soil, would no longer have the privilege of viewing endangered species in their native habitat.

Not a particularly compelling approach, unless you believe in championing the right of the Bourgeoisie to an ideal vacation. But one of the only few available in a legal system that’s oriented to the primacy of property ownership. I.e., if you bought it you can call it broke: otherwise, no dice.

In striking contrast we read Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist and Wallace Stevens’ The Idea of Order at Key West, which as poems set out to do very different things, but manage each to accomplish that thing that the good poets are so good at: turning translucent the boundary between the self and the natural world, and wondering at our indivisibility from it.

Nearly a week later when my friend Aric blew through town he mentioned a concept that threads through the paper he was to present -- an African (Swahili?) word for citizen: “mwananchi” -- “one who belongs to the land”, and he noted that in Africa there are no words for scenery, for view -- for this thing that we gaze upon, objectify. It’s all one: part and parcel. Earth and body; host and resident. Solid ground on which we stand -- ours to injure, in fact.

EVENT
Nothing is happening
Nothing

A waterdrop
Soundlessly shatters
A gossamer gives

Against this unused space
A bird
Might thoughtlessly try its voice
But no bird does

On the trodden ground
Footsteps
Are themselves more pulse than sound

At the return
A little drunk
On air

Aware that
Nothing
Is happening

—Charles Tomlinson
(another poem served up by Prof. Thompson)

[1] The Plains serve up sundogs every once in awhile -- also known as a 22 degree halos. I captured a weak one once upon a time »

[2] Legal Standing per Wikipedia

whole lotta sweetness

Unlike some brave souls I passed on a full weekend of Patty doing the Rose at Ravinia -- fearing mostly that, after a night like Friday, I’d be left like Semele when she begged Zeus to give it to her full on – and was split in half by the force of what he had to give.

I opted instead to hang out in a dark cellar of a theatre with the playwright Jeffrey Sweet.

Not a bad trade.

I only knew a little bit about this guy going in – the Chicago Dramatists blurbed him as an influence behind Wicked, so I was ready to be disappointed. A succession of phone calls on Saturday morning that pushed back the start time by three and half hours only added to the dread. But that turned out to be Amtrak’s fault, and the workshop – which was billed as a Playwriting Nuts and Bolts Intensive -- delivered the goods.

Two days later I came out with moleskine packed with techniques for turning it on, and a head full of stories from a man who’s lived his life in the theatre.

Sweet is a fierce technician with a great sense for a good story. He's also a gorgeous gossip and a name dropper and I loved every minute of it: How can you not get excited about hearing someone tell a story they got straight from Jack Klugman -- about being there the day that Clifford Odets returned to NYC (to run Golden Boy through rehearsals) from D.C. -- where he had just named the names of half of his Golden Boy cast and crew to Joe McCarthy. (Talk about a rough day at the office.) (Rat fink.)

Also came away with a list things to read and watch and listen to – some for a second time:

The Apartment
Beyond Culture
Fires in the Mirror
Waiting for Lefty
Daughter of Time
The Collection
The Gin Game
The Cradle Will Rock
The Dramatist's Toolkit

The weekend also succeeded in splitting me down the middle (kinda like Semele) -- torn between the impulse to do nothing but write and the impulse to do anything else at all.