Category Archives: Contemporary Culture

Shout Out!

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I found out today that a graphic novelist I have long admired won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

I discovered Alison Bechdel’s strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” some time in the 80’s. I think it might have been in one of the papers I read, or the paper DARE, which I sometimes helped with. I loved the witty but real storytelling; the sarcastic but wounded characters. It was sort of like Friends, but with human beings instead of characters. They were each unique, but also reminded me of some of my friends I was hanging out with at the time.
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However, I was blown away by the drawings–simple, clean, but very expressive, very real. Mellow, not busy, but still full of life. If I could get back to cartooning, that is the way I wish I could draw.

She is also known for the Bechdel Rule, to show how male dominated the film industry is. THE RULE is that:

A movie should have 3 things:
1. At least 2 women,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man.

It really is startling how few movies meet those basic criteria.
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Ms. Bechdel  put the regular strip up on blocks a few years back, to work on longer pieces. She has published two graphic biographies, Fun Home, about her childhood and her father–being adapted as a musical, and Are you my Mother? She is working on a third, The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
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Her simple but direct depiction of everyday lives shows how powerful and beautiful a kind of literature graphic novels can be.

We now return you to whatever pop drivel graphic universe you were in.

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Why the long shorts?

When the Bistro was on the road recently, I happened upon a copy of USA Today (June whiteredseersucker12, 2014), that printed thing whose lack of journalism is compensated for by colour. In it, an etiquette and style writer criticized how short men’s shorts were becoming. After all, she wrote, who wants to see a man’s thighs?
The photo that accompanied it showed this mid-thigh pair of men’s shorts.

 

Seriously, USA Today?
He is wearing a pair of pink seersucker shorts, for crying out loud!
Your problem is its length?

At athletic events, of course, the longer shorts of the time are coupled with high athletic socks, giving us a look like this:Lionel Messi (L), Bruno Alves (R)

Which is not too different from this:victorian bathingsuit

bruce_jenner_wheaties_boxI certainly am not an advocate of short shorts.
Somehow, Bruce Jenner came back, but we certainly don’t need his  I’m not really that big of an advocate of shorts in general. They are comfortable in warm weather, but not very high on the fashion totem.
But this: mid-thigh being considered “too long?”
or even long? Not exposing anything but the knee?

This is a little crazy— especially when we think about the standards for women’s shorts.

Among the ancient Greeks, the male body was a symbol of Netuno19bpower—virility and action rather than a passive, vulnerable object—and therefore depicting it nude was a symbol of power.
By contrast, in our culture, clothes are power, so the more power a man wishes to project, the more he puts on—business suits, hunting cammo, or Teflon armour.
So maybe length does matter.
Of course, the gaze we fix upon women’s clothes is much more sordid.

We have always been ludicrous when it came to women’s bodies, but here in the 21st century, when we should have been getting away from our hang-ups and cultural expectations are we going to start worrying about not exposing men’s thighs?

Our Nation’s founders all had bodies, but two centuries later, American’s are as obsessed and repulsed by them as ever.

Men’s thighs— OY!
Have a bialy— it’ll do ya’ good.

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Signals, Self-expression, & Sharing

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a rant turned into a meditation turned into philosophy.

seriously?!?  would it kill you to use your flogging turn-signal????

I don’t know if it is a sign of the decline of Western Civilization in general, IMG_3601or just where I live, but apparently many drivers no longer feel obligated to signal that they are going to change lanes, and quite a few feel no obligation to do so when turning.
I don’t understand this.
You can share almost anything, but this information you have to keep to yourself?

You can send selfies to the whole blasted planet, but you can’t tell me you are turning?!?

We live in a time of tremendous self-expression. Every day, folks share things online that I cannot imagine sharing with anyone, let alone with strangers; in fact, people share personal information with me in check-out lines, or as I am helping them at work, or when I just happen to sit near them. Sex lives, religious lives, prostate surgery, difficult child-birth, bowel status, getting kicked out of rehab–I have been bombarded with all this information, and yet, some how, I cannot get information that I really could use.
At work, of course, I learn something new every day, and usually it’s something that Avignon Theater Signs 6would have been much more useful earlier. The sad thing about this is that there usually is someone who could have shared it with me, but didn’t. But of all the things that could be shared, the one that frustrates me on a daily basis is when you don’t share the fact that your car will turn before it reaches me, and that I don’t need to wait for it. Or that you are about to turn into my lane directly in front of me.
See, here is the thing about turn signals, kids: it’s not about you. You don’t signal as a form of self-expression, or because it is a law (yes, it is) and you are afraid of a ticket, the signal is a sign put out there for other drivers. I recognize that there really isn’t anything in it for you–neither profit if you do nor punishment if you don’t–and this really effects your memory and concentration. However, maybe it should. It is something the other drivers who are sharing the road might want to know, and it makes their commute just a little less frustrating, so signaling shows that you are a reasonably good person, and failing to do so shows that you are an inconsiderate little Schmendrick.
Why? It is such a little thing that doesn’t make much of a difference.
That, my dears, is how worlds are lost. Besides, if you can make another human being’s day just a little bit easier with just a little flick of one finger, but you fail to do so, what kind of Schmo are you?

That little flashing light is a signal, which means it works as a sign. Avignon Bla BlaPeirce, our literary penguin, could tell you quite a bit more about signs, since he was named after one of the world’s greatest semiologists. This is a very complicated field, and both Peirces would probably disagree with me.
However, the point we need to remember is that in this case a sign communicates between us–you and me. It allows us to share something–warning, commands, information, affection; we meet in the clearing that sign creates.
We are sharing.
Although we say “thanks for sharing” facetiously when someone over-shares, really they aren’t sharing; they are blathering on. Because we value self-expression (and because dime-store freudianism somehow convinced us that talking about ourselves lead to better mental health), we do talk a lot. However, this isn’t really sharing.
Sharing involves both of us. We establish a connection; we connect. The hyper-sharing of on-line self-expression may seem intimate because one is throwing intimate information out there, but it is not intimate; intimacy involves two or more people connecting.
Without sharing and connection, self-expression is just as empty as any other form of intimacy without them (even if all these forms of false intimacy might seem or even be pleasurable).
The turn signal shows consideration and concern about others; the rest is just silly, crazy bumper stickers. One is attempting to connect; the other is just self-expression.

I could include the Bistro in this.
Now, I have rarely been accused of sharing too much personal and intimate information about myself, but my writings at the Bistro are often just talking to you as if I were just talking to myself, my dearest guests.

(of course, you could change that by writing questions to me)

In the mean time, I do hope you end your days with something warmer and more substantial.515signature

PS: You could always write. That would be a connection.


 

Millennials

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Occasionally, I read something about the Millennials.
This is a term used to describe people who have grown up on one side or the other of the year 2000. Generally, they are categorized as being very technological, or as Hipsters in Washington Heights - Copyspending time on facebook (really? still?) or instagram (more likely) or other networks. Pew Research described them as “detached from institutions and networked with friends.” They are more tribal or more global, more self-centered or more public works minded (how they are both mystifies me). They can be narcissistic and feel entitled, they never grow up, they volunteer and are community conscious. They aren’t as polite or respectful as they ought to be. They live with their parents, and on and on and on.

My main observation is that they are younger.
They are mostly in their 20s and 30s.
They have the qualities most people that age do: a desire for authenticity (although not as good a BS detector as they think they do), an ambivalence towards the previous generation’s interests and institution, an absorption–not exactly self-absorption, but an focus upon their own priorities, and a lack of interest in ours.
They are different than previous generations.
They tend to move more freely with and within technology, but it is more of a tool–like a pen or a telescope–than an object in itself.Spanish exchange students singing along with the Copenhagen Marching Band as they play YMCA.
They are sometimes more inked, pierced of plugged, and have their own music. But even the things I have just described aren’t universal or defining: Some are technological, but some are luddite fixies while some are never disconnected, and most are somewhere in between. Some are urban, or even live in the artificial worlds of steam-punks and furries, but some are growing beards and returning to farming. They have their own music, but for some it might be country, some Rap, some traditional Jazz, some Old Time with strings and banjos,  so they do not share this music as a group. Each little part of Millennial reality has its own furniture.

Most of all, they are human beings, just like any young adults have been and will be.

Studying ancient texts, one of the great constants is complaining about younger generations. It comes up at Socrates trial: the problem that youths don’t trust the -ancient-greek-statue-of-hercules-by-lysippostraditional institutions; they are drawn to new ideas and are narcissistic and would rather hang out with their friends than work hard. Narcissistic, pleasure seeking, disrespectful of traditional authority and unwilling to become involved with it–that describes the Baby-Boomers, Generation-X, the Jazz Age, almost any Generation. (Well, it really does describe my generation pretty well, the disrespectful Me-Generation of Reaganite Neo-Cons, Wall Street “Greed is Good,” Bonfire of the Vanities, giving up on “Causes” and instead looking for designer jeans and drugs–or just looking for the comfort of the suburbs.)

Yes, this young generation has its own qualities, but each individual in it has their own qualities, their own aspirations, their own needs, their own quirks.

The Doctor dislikes categories.
I really dislike them when applied to human beings.
I especially dislike categories when those human beings have little choice in their categorization.

Labels and categories are a lot of things. Some of them are conceptually handy, but most of them bad. However, one of the main things a label or a category can do is define a fellow human being as “other.” This is the alienation of categories. Surfing in MunichTo understand someone as other–the second sex, the minority, those GLBT who won’t hide–is to create a distance between “them” and “us.” This distance is a way of not trying to see how connected we are, or even how alike we are; “us” are in this Venn Circle and “they” are way, way, way over there in their own fence. It allows “us” to distance ourselves from “them,” and to deal with them as if they were an aberration. It gives us an excuse not to care about “them,” and not to be too curious about “them,” because we couldn’t even understand them if “we” tried.

We can ignore the fact that each generation is made up of our brothers and sisters, our friends, our co-workers, our students, our children.

The danger to those living with the category is that humans internalize categories, and will come to see themselves in terms of that label–will become colonized by it. This is the tyranny of categories. Being saddled with a category leaves people between 20 and 35 with few choices: either these individuals conform to the Millennial image and internalize it, or they become odd and few exceptions to the rule–weirdoes–no matter how many of them there are.

Good thing they don’t trust authority or institutions.

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The Once and Future Library

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Do you remember the feeling of your first library?

To be surrounded by so many books was like suddenly Libraries (2)being allowed into Aladdin’s cave: so many treasures that they seemed limitless. Then as now, I always want to take more than I could possibly read in those two weeks. Then as now, I am drawn to them–even more than I am to bookstores; they are not home, but they are a haven. Although my parents had quite a good library, I was always reading, and always had a few books checked out, as well as a few on my list.

I remember taking my own daughter to libraries and us staying there for hours. There was a stillness and sunshine, but also amazing librarians–helpful, kind, and bookish. At first, Grace came for the excitement of the public story-time, but soon she came for the books. She would lose herself for hours on some beanbag or chair or table. We each felt a magic to walking down the stacks–those rows and rows of shelves, all housing dazzling wonders.Libraries (20) In the book Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke, the bookbinder Mo has told his daughter: “Books have to be heavy because the whole world’s inside them.
My whole family has always felt the same way; to walk down those shelves is to travel across multiverses.
One of our great pleasures in Europe was to see that libraries Bycilcle before the librarywere still going strong there as well, as we could see when there was a half acre of bicycles parked by one in Munich.

Since I have spent 13 years of my life working in bookstores and only a year or so in a library (I was a OCLC monographs cataloguer rather than a librarian who dealt with the public), I do think of myself as more of a bookseller–pirate to the librarians’ ninjas. However, I do adore them, my librarians, and am grateful to them.

Happy National Library Month, you wonderful, lovely, crazy bunch.

The book industry is going through a tremendous upheaval.
Books are certainly not dead, but they are changing, and their role in our lives is changing. Does this mean the end of libraries?

Don’t be silly.
People will always want books, in fact, people will always need books.

One of the great services libraries have provided is that they have brought books to huge numbers of people, many of whom might not Libraries (3)have had any chance of reading them otherwise. Three centuries ago, few houses had more than one or two books, and many had none. Two centuries ago, only the rich had more than a shelf-full. Even a century ago, books were expensive, and many could not afford them, escecially outside of the middle and upper classes. Libraries put books within the reach of almost everyone. Great fiction (or exciting but not so great fiction), could be in anyone’s hands, as could biographies and travelogues of faraway places, science and engineering books, huge dictionaries and medical encyclopedia, as well as things like atlases and maps. President Harry S Truman, who had to support his family and was unable to finish school, is said to have educated himself by reading most of the Hannibal, Missouri, Public Library. The steel lincolnlibrary_inside-newmagnate Andrew Carnegie endowed 2,509 libraries–including another one of my libraries, the public Library in Lincoln, Illinois)–in part because he felt they provided an opportunity for the “working man” to better himself. For years, they were a place anybody could learn, as well as an important public space in most American communities.

This continues.
Libraries (14)This continues in large part because of the way libraries and librarians have approached the problem. They are adapting–not always perfectly, not always smoothly, but they are adapting. The see what the new needs are, and work to meet them where they are. Precisely those things that are changing the world of books are making libraries more important. 

It makes me furious when I hear someone describe the internet and e-books as accessible or convenient or free.
They are not.
Neither are they democratic.
Nothing that requires a hundred dollar piece of equipment–and most nooks, kindles, smartphones, etc. are more than that, while genuine laptops and iPhones or iPads can be much, much more–is free. Nothing that requires a service contract to provide internet access, WiFi or data packages is free.
In addition to this, nothing that costs this much is convenientLibraries (13) or accessible for citizens of modest means (“Oh honey, mine aren’t just modest; they’re downright meek–shy to the point of agoraphobic”). These folks, who are becoming more and more common in this “New Normal,” are still finding resources at their local public libraries (since students in higher education are also of timid means, these necessary resources continue to be offered to them–even fought for–by college and university libraries).
I am not talking about the homeless–although the book gods know how much they use the libraries–I am talking about hard-working people trying to carve out a decent life by holding down 2 or 3 part-time jobs.

In addition to still providing books, an amazing way that libraries have adapted is to provided computer and internet access, as well as some printing. I chatted with one of my local librarians–4 blocks from the Bistro, and although they don’t keep records of use, their 30+ terminals are all in use several times each day, often with people waiting.
This is important.
All those government websites that make information “more” available require internet access. Many of those applications for Medicare or Veterans’ benefits require internet access. Most job applications are now made “easier” by requiring internet access. In an age of “instant” communication, that communication is only accessible to those with internet access.
Public libraries provide that, not just to the margins of our society, but to its foundation, as well as to the foundation of our future.Libraries (6)

Libraries have also stepped into the electronic world by lending e-books and freegal, making those more accessible to folks with computers and e-readers, especially to those who cannot make the trip to the library–due to lack of mobility or of transportation.

Of course, all of us–those of modest means, those of the crunched middle means, and even those of comfortable means–can still take our children, our nieces and nephews, or grandchildren to wander down those magic aisles curiously–looking to be fed on words.

Celebrate National Library Month, and hug a librarian.
On second thought, they are book-people; thank them from a distance of at least 3 feet.
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The Book was Better

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Looking at the marquees, it seems like almost all of the movies now playing are adaptations of books.
This seems odd since “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that the movie is never as good as the book.

The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(1978)Everybody has a horror story or two of a book or story they love that then becomes something hideous on screen—King fans can fill books with critiques of bad adaptations. For me, the worst adaptation ever will remain the animated version of The Lord of the Rings, released in 1978. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.

(On a related note, the DVD of The Hobbit; The Desolation of Smaug was released this week. If you were concerned that the movie was too brief or didn’t add enough material in, it includes a director’s cut.)

Now there are exceptions to the rule about bad movies.
The Grapes of Wrath is an amazing movie in every way, and quite true to the book; nevertheless, the epic novel is better. Similarly (and more recently) The Book Thief was a quite good adaptation, and the acting was masterful; again, though, the book is even better.

So why is the change of medium such a muddle?
Why is the book almost always better than the film?

A lot of it is, of course, the abysmally poor writing–or lack thereof–in the film industry today, but I think the difference goes even deeper.
Some of it has to do with the power of words to tell stories.
We think in storytelling. This is not poetic hyperbole; we think in stories, Reading (3)and organize information within a narrative framework. Stories go back as far as humans do; they are an integral part of being human. Stories are the most basic way of learning complex, not immediately present information. Our own experiences are integrated into stories so we can make sense of them and remember them.
The world is a story we tell ourselves.
So it is not surprising that it seems natural for a storyteller to create worlds for us: beautiful worlds, complex and real, terrifying and moving worlds, worlds more real than the pale things pinging upon our senses.

Now, I do love films, and I do think we can make stories with pictures. We have since we lived in caves. However storytelling is the action and art of words—not sensation that has to be edited into experience, or experience that has to be interpreted into ideas and words, but rather sensation and experience already put into the form our mind would live with.

…and live within.

I love a quick, intense 2 hour encounter with the wonder of cinematic story,
but I can live years inside the world of a book, even on a single, rainy afternoon.

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Tea.

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I used to teach two philosophy courses, a course on Ancient philosophy titled “How to live well,” and a course on Modern philosophy I called “How to be human.” Because each of them only met once a week, they were 3 hours long. I can certainly talk for 3 hours, but classes are much better as a conversation, and their energy would begin to flag part way through.

At this point we would break for tea.

Classroom Tea (3)Sometimes, I had cookies, but generally I would just buy a variety of apples at the local farm stand–they go quite well with tea. After the tea, they would have more energy (though often less concentration), and the conversation would assume a more relaxed, mellow character of give and take and exploration.
Many of my students have made tea a regular part of their lives, which I find gratifying. A higher proportion of boys in their 20s own teapots thanks to me, which means they have learned something important about being human and living well.

Why tea?

There are many rituals that involve meeting around a table and sharing food. Some are more time consuming, but sharing a pot of tea can be done fairly simply, and instantly involves sitting together and interacting. It is something that is made, so it involves a little bit of an individual touch, and Tea and Scones for my classa personal touch. The host has a position of control, but also must assume a servant role as he or she serves the tea, asking about milk, sugar, cookies, etc. One already has some small talk asking and answering these questions. Tea is a caffeinated beverage, but generally doesn’t signal the need for intense stimulation that coffee does, leaving instead a more gentle, thoughtful visit (don’t’ get me wrong; I love coffee, too).

It is civilized, and civilizing.

Asian Teapot (6)There is also the ritual of preparing the tea, which, like most rituals, can be relaxing and meditative itself. Cold water in the kettle, the wait for the boil, pouring hot water in the tea pot to warm it up, and then offering it up as a cleansing votive offering. Measuring out a teaspoon of tea leaves for each guest, and an extra one in case Mousey or Wode Toad come to visit. Adding in the hot water (it should have boiled, but should not be boiling), and allowing the tea to steep–I would say at least 3 minutes, since I like strong tea, but you should experiment: too soon is too weak, too late becomes bitter, or acquires a tinny, unpleasant edge.

At this point, the variety begins: with milk? poured in before the tea? (try it, it tastes different) sugar? one lump or two? rock sugar? honey? a bit of jelly in the tea to sweeten it? lemon?
Would you like something with that?

Tea is part of what we want to be. Yes, we want to be classy, like the British upper-crust of the 19th century, but sharing tea makes us–or allows us–to do things that make us better. We automatically become more polite–in part because of the atmosphere it creates, but also because of all the interaction:
Tea with Mousy (5)“Would you like sugar?”
“Yes, please.”
“Milk?”
“No, thank you.”
“Here you go…”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
More than that, it is shared. It involves the gentle gift of hospitality, and the gracious gift of appreciation. It involves a sensual pleasure that is shared–although it is one which is appropriate and can be talked about in public. Most of all, it moves at a slower pace than doing shots of Jägermeister. It is tea time; it is taken at its own speed, sitting and relaxing.

Sensual joy, physical sustenance, engaging in little comforting rituals, giving, receiving, and sharing hospitality, slowing down in order to have a conversation, listening, being polite–perhaps even witty–most of all, taking the time to sit down and engage with another human being–these and more are the elements that go into tea.

Isn’t that really what being human and living well are about?
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