Too much killing, too much heartbreak. Americans with 88 guns per 100 persons (now totaling 310 million guns in a nation of about 320 million) are the ones who have created an armed society.
We are like Somalia when it comes to the easy availability of firearms...see
"According to ATF reports, in 2010 there were 5,459,240 new firearms manufactured in the United States, nearly all (95 percent) for the U.S. market. An additional 3,252,404 firearms were imported to the United States. That's nearly 8.5 million new firearms on the street in one year.
Right now if you don't have a criminal record and you have not been adjudicated as mentally incompetent, you can buy guns. In 2011 the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) ran 16,454,951 background checks for firearms purchases. Only a small number of these purchases (78,211 or 0.48 percent) were denied." ABC NEWS STATS
To give you an idea of how many this means
At it's peak in March 1945, the U.S. Army had 8,200,000 personnel. A comparison of Army Ground Forces strength with total U.S. Army strength is provided below.
Date Strength U.S. Army Strength Army Ground Forces Percent of U.S. Army
31 Dec 1941 1,657,157 867,462 52.4%
31 Dec 1942 5,398,888 1,937,917 35.9%
31 Dec 1943 7,582,434 2,551,007 33.6%
31 Mar 1945 8,157,386 2,753,517 33.8%
Source: Greenfield, Palmer, & Wiley. US Army in World War II, The Organization of Ground Combat Troops
In other words...in 2010, Americans legally purchased over three times the number of firearms which would have been needed to arm the entire US Army ground forces in World War II (the study did not break out USAAF). How much weaponry is enough for a "well-regulated militia?"
A modest proposal...each person who legally purchases a firearm must
1) register it and be trained in its use (not just the safe use of a firearm)
2) Have it microchipped by the manufacturer and registered in a national database
3) If it is stolen b/c the owner has not secured the weapon properly and the weapon is then used in a felony, the original owner will be liable for the same criminal penalties as the perpetrator and a $1 Million fine payable to the victims of that crime. And
4) Every person who purchases a firearm, in accordance with my (not SCOTUS) reading of the Second Amendment, must join the National Guard in their state for not less than 1 term of Enlistment and be subject to call-up when directed by their state or by the federal govt.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
The Words of Clowns: Spur of Moment Truth
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19631430
Do not usually put a link up as a header...but you need to hear and see the Romney clip from the fundraiser in Boca Raton Florida on May 17th. Here the Richie Rich of the political world explains to his GOPer donors just what those who would support Obama really are. According to Mitt, the 47% locked up by the President are of the belief that they are entitled not to freeze (a roof over their heads), not to starve (food in their bellies), not to die from a disease prevented at the turn of the 20th Century (Healhcare).
Horrors because they also pay NO INCOME TAX!!! A thought which made all the rich boys and girls shiver for fear that the wolf at the door...you know, them, would want to eat their porridge which made only from carefully picked grains (by the hands of the same workers who mowed Mitt's lawn).
Of course this stunning admission was later rolled back by Romney saying it was "off the cuff." But, that is when truth-telling happens...before the brain can go into lie mode. Romney told his truth. He sees the 47% who do not pay income tax as being dependent upon the Federal Govt. And in his world dependency is a loaded word...often a trope for, well you know, drug addled lazy bums living in cities having babies and not knowing who the fathers are wanting free contraception and even freer abortions so they can spend their food stamps on the food their money should have purchased. But we know about those people, don't we <wink, wink>.
And then the facts come out on the 47%. From this chart prepared by the Tax Policy Center, you can see that well over half of them are working enough to pay the payroll taxes for SS and Medicare. Another 17% are either elderly (and thus receiving SS or Pension Benefits outside of taxes...or they are what we call the Working Poor...obviously another group of takers and spongers according to the elitist Romney/Ryan crowd who happily applaud when either man goes after what they consider to be drags on the nation's economy. Doesn't Romney have to do better with the elderly and the working poor if he wants to win...or is the game to play voter suppression so strongly that the elderly and poor who cannot get to the DMV for new IDs in time for the election will be SOL?
Do not usually put a link up as a header...but you need to hear and see the Romney clip from the fundraiser in Boca Raton Florida on May 17th. Here the Richie Rich of the political world explains to his GOPer donors just what those who would support Obama really are. According to Mitt, the 47% locked up by the President are of the belief that they are entitled not to freeze (a roof over their heads), not to starve (food in their bellies), not to die from a disease prevented at the turn of the 20th Century (Healhcare).
Horrors because they also pay NO INCOME TAX!!! A thought which made all the rich boys and girls shiver for fear that the wolf at the door...you know, them, would want to eat their porridge which made only from carefully picked grains (by the hands of the same workers who mowed Mitt's lawn).
Of course this stunning admission was later rolled back by Romney saying it was "off the cuff." But, that is when truth-telling happens...before the brain can go into lie mode. Romney told his truth. He sees the 47% who do not pay income tax as being dependent upon the Federal Govt. And in his world dependency is a loaded word...often a trope for, well you know, drug addled lazy bums living in cities having babies and not knowing who the fathers are wanting free contraception and even freer abortions so they can spend their food stamps on the food their money should have purchased. But we know about those people, don't we <wink, wink>.
And then the facts come out on the 47%. From this chart prepared by the Tax Policy Center, you can see that well over half of them are working enough to pay the payroll taxes for SS and Medicare. Another 17% are either elderly (and thus receiving SS or Pension Benefits outside of taxes...or they are what we call the Working Poor...obviously another group of takers and spongers according to the elitist Romney/Ryan crowd who happily applaud when either man goes after what they consider to be drags on the nation's economy. Doesn't Romney have to do better with the elderly and the working poor if he wants to win...or is the game to play voter suppression so strongly that the elderly and poor who cannot get to the DMV for new IDs in time for the election will be SOL?
| Distribution of Federal Income Tax in-flows | Wait until Romney starts talking "Food Stamp President! |
Monday, August 13, 2012
Plagiarism--Why Students (and I guess Grown-Ups) Do It
This article was originally published in the Community College Humanities Association newsletter "The Humanist" in the Fall of 2011.
The Hidden Discourse of Plagiarism: A Reappraisal of Fox’s
“Heartbreaking Problem”
Author: Don Jacobson, MA
College of
DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL
Oakton
Community College, Des Plaines, IL
Benedicitne
University, Lisle, IL
Late
summer brings the inevitable gatherings of faculty and administrators to
celebrate the annual ritual of the launching of another school year. And, equally inevitable, comes the
discussions decrying the increasing prevalence of plagiarism.
There seem to be two themes
which run through these lamentations...
1) Students think plagiarism is acceptable because they have been brought up in a world of cut-and-paste ease abetted by a “succeed at any cost” mentality. To them, the idea of ownership of an idea is of less importance than meeting a deadline.
2) Students are seeking the easiest way to reduce their workload. Add to this a belief that academic expectations for “unimportant” but often mandatory courses force students to “waste” time on activities that will not immediately translate into financial gain.[1]
1) Students think plagiarism is acceptable because they have been brought up in a world of cut-and-paste ease abetted by a “succeed at any cost” mentality. To them, the idea of ownership of an idea is of less importance than meeting a deadline.
2) Students are seeking the easiest way to reduce their workload. Add to this a belief that academic expectations for “unimportant” but often mandatory courses force students to “waste” time on activities that will not immediately translate into financial gain.[1]
The reactions to plagiarism
frequently rest on the optimistic hope that most students are somehow ignorant
of what plagiarism is, and that pupils will not plagiarize if they are
re-educated (shades of the camps!).
Yet, students have long since absorbed the lesson that copying another’s
work is wrong. Still, educators’ presentations
beat the drums of the evils of plagiarism and its horrible consequences. They
are seeking to cure the symptom with fear rather than drilling down for the
hidden discourse.[2]
Most “adult” explanations
are all-too-often simply convenient answers and are not informative of the
deeper discourse which reveals the dimensions of the problem. These transfer blame onto technology or
the altered ethical standards of a digital age rather than considering that
plagiarism itself may be a manifestation of a deeper problem.
There is no question that
barriers concerning intellectual property have been lowered or eradicated
altogether. According to Donald
McCabe of Rutgers, “the number who believed that copying from the Web
constitutes “serious cheating” is declining — to 29 percent on average in
recent surveys from 34 percent earlier in the decade.”[3] Ideas do not have a physical
“footprint.”
That may
explain why a student could justify appropriating something, but this does
little to explain the rationale for the sin.
We should reformulate the question
from “Did the student plagiarize?” to “What made the act of plagiarism an
acceptable option?”
In a word: FEAR. Not terror of something going “bump in the night,” but rather
something more pernicious; the fear that others will discover how wrong one’s
ideas are.
How
is this fear shaped and mobilized?
I believe it is partly because students have been "taught" by
the adults in their lives that their opinions mean little. Consider today’s "helicopter"
parents, always hovering, seeking to protect their children from failure.
Years ago, I would watch 11 year olds on their first campout struggle to set up
a tent. After about 5 minutes of general confusion, the fathers (and a
few mothers) would swoop in to get the tent set up "right."
What
did the youngsters do? The moment that the adults appeared, they
stepped back to let the grown-ups do it. What did they learn?
Adults always knew better. They
also were taught that they, themselves, knew nothing and were going to screw
up.
Next,
in high school, the teacher lectures. And the teacher's opinion is
law. Picture the posture of a normal 15 year old in the classroom...head
down in silent prayer "Please, oh please, don't let her call on me.
I will be revealed to all as the freak/fool I am."
At
college, we find Fox’s history professor who “warned [a student] against
putting his own opinions in his written work.”[4]
Thus, in a HAL-9000 moment, even
“good” students are faced with an intolerable choice…use their own synthesized
opinions which they “know” to be specious or cut-and-paste from an “authority”
made safe through publication…even though they know that to be wrong.
In
the end, we have a generation who believe that their thoughts and opinions are
substandard and fear others discovering that fact. This silent, hidden
discourse is an updated iteration of Fox’s “heartbreaking problem.”
The
crisis is neither that students plagiarize nor that they cannot understand the
opposite.[5]
Rather it is that plagiarism has
become an acceptable choice for far too many. They have concluded that they are
inadequate and in the process have gelded their brains to the point where they find
it nearly impossible to synthesize a creative thought. They fear being exposed
as a fraud...but, because they are striving to meet expectations and to protect
themselves from psychological damage, they commit fraud and theft.
[1] Trip
Gabriel, “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in a Digital Age,” The New York
Times, 2 August 2010, p. A1 accessed from www.nytimes.com
on 8/18/11 and Richard Wrightman Fox, “A Heartbreaking Problem of Staggering
Proportions,” The Journal of American
History, Vol. 90, No 4 (March 2004), p. 1341.
[2] Ibid and Joyce A. Brannan, “Plagiarism: What is it?” Downloaded from
library.uwa.edu/Help/Plagiarism.ppt on 1/25/10. For a Norwegian
perspective, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwbw9KF-ACY
[3] As cited in Gabriel.
[4] Fox, p.
1345.
[5] Ibid, p.
1342.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Death of Creativity II: Director, Actors and Audience Need to Work Together
Reading both the Tribune and the NY Times today and was struck by stories reporting film directors being concerned about the levels of violence in the films they make...but are resigned to it because they are "commercial" and in the end they must produce what sells. Studios demand a payoff for their massive investments. The directors wish it was different...but...
We knew Bane was bad. Did he have to annihilate an entire stadium full of people to prove it? Or could we have figured it out? How did we ever know that Scorpio was truly bad...OK...a couple of long-distance murders and a buried kidnap victim...but it was not until he hijacked that school bus full of children and menaced them (because we knew he was a killer from before) and put the audience on edge that we all were rooting for Harry to give him a third eye!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmj714_school-bus-from-dirty-harry-1971_shortfilms
Yes...1971...yes there was violence...but it was not the wholesale destruction we get today. Point is this...Don Siegal (Director, Dirty Harry) had to build the tension throughout the theater throughout the first two acts. Scorpio was bad. Harry was always a step behind him. Would he vanish like the real-life Zodiac (now there is an alternate history idea)? Would Harry catch him without losing yet another partner? (Sardonic Humor) Would justice be served? It took work...a lot of creative work to get there. At any point the film could have slid into formula (yes, I know there was a formula...Harry would get the Scorpio in the end...and yes, Harry would stay true to his Avenger creed of being the instrument of the audience's justice) and become a parody.
Of course, it helped that Siegal (and Harry) had an audience with an attention span of more than 45 seconds.
But, what Don Siegal did with the help of the ever-internalizing Clint Eastwood was a lot of work...directing and acting work. Even Andrew Robinson (Scorpio) didn't call in what could have been an otherwise stereotypical nut-case. His Scorpio was slobbering, drooling insane...and clever.
Now I am not suggesting that Heath Ledger's Joker wasn't spot on. It was...and honestly, that issue of the Batman trilogy was so strong because of the menacing nature of the character and his threat. And that made it a more intense film experience.
OK...which is more terrifying...the shadow of Norman Bates on the shower curtain? Or the stabbing itself?
Menace takes work.
Destroying a fair chunk of downtown Chi/Gotham requires a lot of technical work...and certainly Nolan is great here on the technical stuff. But, how hard does the audience have to think? Everything is laid out on a platter so that even the most uninspired can get it. Oh...he blows up a stadium full of people...he must be really bad!
"Blockbuster" films feed us existential threats. Bane will destroy all of Gotham for the sheer (paradox here?) nihilistic pleasure of it. But, cartoonish as he was, Goldfinger did not want to destroy the planet. He wanted to rule it!
And, a lot of what we get is because of the rush for profit. These films make money precisely because they do not demand the audience to stay engaged with the plot. I call them "popcorn burners." This rush forces the filmmakers to appeal to the most basic and obvious human emotions and driving forces...survival against overwhelming odds, sex, violence, conflict and anger. Yet the core of the human being is often ignored because of the need for one more car chase...one more monumental blast. The actors work hard, but often they are merely decorations around the edges (or perhaps in the center) of one more action sequence.
These films ultimately are easy (and I am not talking about FX)...and are truly formulaic...and nothing really new...consider how the old style Westerns were cranked out. Peaceful setting...small town...bad guys show up...shoot up town, rob bank, kill honest, but kind of creaky old sheriff (town has been so peaceful that the job was a sinecure..see Andy Griffith without gun-play)...noble young man vows over the not too bloody but certainly dead sheriff to avenge the death...but, he has a conflict...the good-looking daughter of the store-keeper wants to see him in one piece and so has made him vow never to strap on a gun...so he walks it off...baddies return and harass her (maybe even rip her dress!) and beat up her Dad (maybe shoot or stab him...but if it is a knife, has to be someone greasy looking), but not fatally..daughter is distraught over both her virtue and her father...now the avenging angel arrives...and we see strength and leadership and nobility of purpose as our (now) hero proceeds to eradicate the bad guys with dynamite bombs and finally a flood caused by a blown beaver dam upstream from their hideout! No guns...so he gets the girl...and the baddies are once-again removed from the scene...oh...and the noble Sancho-Panza best friend gets to be the next sheriff as our hero and the storekeeper's daughter are married and leave town in a buckboard off into the setting sun. (Note...best friend could also not make it to the final reel because he takes a bullet because our 'hero' won't stand up when the bad guys come back to hit the General Store.) Sound a bit like the latest?
Only when the Batman and Alfred are alone together on the screen do we suddenly get the sense that this is something more than one more Ninja movie (replete with the heroic nobility).
Where does the Batman's loneliness come from?
I do feel a bit like Justice Stewart who said famously about porn "I know it when I see it." Got the same situation with creativity. Consider these films as markers of true creativity: Inception, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Rear Window, Headhunters (Norwegian), Bob le Flambeur, The Professional, Ronin, The Raid: Redemption. Even if some are violent beyond belief, these movies establish an intimacy with the audience. You cannot view these films without being involved in the plot. If you ignore development, you will be lost. You cannot follow.
But you do not need insane violence...existential destruction...to understand that the bad guy in The Headhunters (go see it...the movie is set in Norway, not in the jungles of New Guinea) is really awful. Wait for this scene...the one AFTER the bad guy has slammed the police car off the road using a stolen 18-Wheeler (violence...but all core to the plot...in fact everything fits into the plot...everything)...when he comes to the destroyed vehicle and checks out the bodies. Tension and menace. And it is very up close and personal. Remember to breathe.
The audience has to work as hard as the directors and the actors. That is the creative process. Otherwise, what is it that you are creating? Or are you following the old Roman formula which knows that as long as the Lions win over the Christians, the Audience leaves with a smile and forgets just how crappy their lives have become. Bread and Circuses...the old equation that keeps the Patricians somewhat secure from the rest of the population learning who has picked their pockets.
We knew Bane was bad. Did he have to annihilate an entire stadium full of people to prove it? Or could we have figured it out? How did we ever know that Scorpio was truly bad...OK...a couple of long-distance murders and a buried kidnap victim...but it was not until he hijacked that school bus full of children and menaced them (because we knew he was a killer from before) and put the audience on edge that we all were rooting for Harry to give him a third eye!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmj714_school-bus-from-dirty-harry-1971_shortfilms
Yes...1971...yes there was violence...but it was not the wholesale destruction we get today. Point is this...Don Siegal (Director, Dirty Harry) had to build the tension throughout the theater throughout the first two acts. Scorpio was bad. Harry was always a step behind him. Would he vanish like the real-life Zodiac (now there is an alternate history idea)? Would Harry catch him without losing yet another partner? (Sardonic Humor) Would justice be served? It took work...a lot of creative work to get there. At any point the film could have slid into formula (yes, I know there was a formula...Harry would get the Scorpio in the end...and yes, Harry would stay true to his Avenger creed of being the instrument of the audience's justice) and become a parody.
Of course, it helped that Siegal (and Harry) had an audience with an attention span of more than 45 seconds.
But, what Don Siegal did with the help of the ever-internalizing Clint Eastwood was a lot of work...directing and acting work. Even Andrew Robinson (Scorpio) didn't call in what could have been an otherwise stereotypical nut-case. His Scorpio was slobbering, drooling insane...and clever.
Now I am not suggesting that Heath Ledger's Joker wasn't spot on. It was...and honestly, that issue of the Batman trilogy was so strong because of the menacing nature of the character and his threat. And that made it a more intense film experience.
OK...which is more terrifying...the shadow of Norman Bates on the shower curtain? Or the stabbing itself?
Menace takes work.
Destroying a fair chunk of downtown Chi/Gotham requires a lot of technical work...and certainly Nolan is great here on the technical stuff. But, how hard does the audience have to think? Everything is laid out on a platter so that even the most uninspired can get it. Oh...he blows up a stadium full of people...he must be really bad!
"Blockbuster" films feed us existential threats. Bane will destroy all of Gotham for the sheer (paradox here?) nihilistic pleasure of it. But, cartoonish as he was, Goldfinger did not want to destroy the planet. He wanted to rule it!
And, a lot of what we get is because of the rush for profit. These films make money precisely because they do not demand the audience to stay engaged with the plot. I call them "popcorn burners." This rush forces the filmmakers to appeal to the most basic and obvious human emotions and driving forces...survival against overwhelming odds, sex, violence, conflict and anger. Yet the core of the human being is often ignored because of the need for one more car chase...one more monumental blast. The actors work hard, but often they are merely decorations around the edges (or perhaps in the center) of one more action sequence.
These films ultimately are easy (and I am not talking about FX)...and are truly formulaic...and nothing really new...consider how the old style Westerns were cranked out. Peaceful setting...small town...bad guys show up...shoot up town, rob bank, kill honest, but kind of creaky old sheriff (town has been so peaceful that the job was a sinecure..see Andy Griffith without gun-play)...noble young man vows over the not too bloody but certainly dead sheriff to avenge the death...but, he has a conflict...the good-looking daughter of the store-keeper wants to see him in one piece and so has made him vow never to strap on a gun...so he walks it off...baddies return and harass her (maybe even rip her dress!) and beat up her Dad (maybe shoot or stab him...but if it is a knife, has to be someone greasy looking), but not fatally..daughter is distraught over both her virtue and her father...now the avenging angel arrives...and we see strength and leadership and nobility of purpose as our (now) hero proceeds to eradicate the bad guys with dynamite bombs and finally a flood caused by a blown beaver dam upstream from their hideout! No guns...so he gets the girl...and the baddies are once-again removed from the scene...oh...and the noble Sancho-Panza best friend gets to be the next sheriff as our hero and the storekeeper's daughter are married and leave town in a buckboard off into the setting sun. (Note...best friend could also not make it to the final reel because he takes a bullet because our 'hero' won't stand up when the bad guys come back to hit the General Store.) Sound a bit like the latest?
Only when the Batman and Alfred are alone together on the screen do we suddenly get the sense that this is something more than one more Ninja movie (replete with the heroic nobility).
Where does the Batman's loneliness come from?
I do feel a bit like Justice Stewart who said famously about porn "I know it when I see it." Got the same situation with creativity. Consider these films as markers of true creativity: Inception, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Rear Window, Headhunters (Norwegian), Bob le Flambeur, The Professional, Ronin, The Raid: Redemption. Even if some are violent beyond belief, these movies establish an intimacy with the audience. You cannot view these films without being involved in the plot. If you ignore development, you will be lost. You cannot follow.
But you do not need insane violence...existential destruction...to understand that the bad guy in The Headhunters (go see it...the movie is set in Norway, not in the jungles of New Guinea) is really awful. Wait for this scene...the one AFTER the bad guy has slammed the police car off the road using a stolen 18-Wheeler (violence...but all core to the plot...in fact everything fits into the plot...everything)...when he comes to the destroyed vehicle and checks out the bodies. Tension and menace. And it is very up close and personal. Remember to breathe.
The audience has to work as hard as the directors and the actors. That is the creative process. Otherwise, what is it that you are creating? Or are you following the old Roman formula which knows that as long as the Lions win over the Christians, the Audience leaves with a smile and forgets just how crappy their lives have become. Bread and Circuses...the old equation that keeps the Patricians somewhat secure from the rest of the population learning who has picked their pockets.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Death of Creativity?
On my quest for the inner heart of American creativity, I have started reading "The Book of Tea" by Kakuzo Okakura. This was a book first published in 1906 when Okakura was a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. My copy is a bit more recent (1989).
Now you may ask why a book by a visitor to the United States should place so prominently in any quest for the roots of American creativity. If you research the American modernists (artists like O'Keeffe, Dove, Hartley) fostered by Alfred Stieglitz you will discover that many of them were profoundly affected by this simple little book. Maybe it was their reaction to the acceleration of American life as Europe committed suicide in World War I. And after the United States emerged from the war as the dominant economic power, the pace only moved faster.
They needed a pool of tranquility into which to peer as they searched for new ways to interpret the world around them. Recall that O'Keeffe literally stopped painted for two years as the second decade crept toward its midpoint because she felt she could not do original work, rather copying the forms and styles "proven" by Europeans and "approved" by art critics. This little book on tea and the structure the cult of tea imposed on the two dominant Asian societies China and Japan offered a new path, perhaps with a bit of Tao and Zen, to a new way of looking at the world.
And so they did find that way. And, in the process, I am convinced, these artists and writers and filmmakers and composers and choreographers developed forms which each of us can "get" as something which is uniquely American. But, this creativity took time and a lot of staring into those dark areas of the soul...not seeking sadness or guilt...but rather looking for that which had been hid in the process of creating an American soul. And it was found in the richness of the land and of the people.
Most of the seeds had been planted and had sprouted by the time the United States had closed its borders in 1924 to the unlimited immigration that had fed the American industrial revolution of the 1880s forward. As it was, the War had cut most immigration to a trickle, so there were fewer newcomers and those who had arrived previously were swiftly being submerged into the American stream. Most of these immigrants had been the poorest of their peoples, the ones with nothing to leave behind...and certainly the ones who had done little to influence the cultural norms that were characterized by the elites of their states. But what they brought to the United States was a vitality and folk sensibilities which leavened the American loaf.
O'Keeffe was Irish/Hungarian. John Ford was a first generation Irish-American. Aaron Copland's father emigrated from Russia. Others like Ansel Adams and John Steinbeck were children of first or second-generation Californians who had put down roots in the Golden State before Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed forever in 1893. Martha Graham was a relative late-comer to California, but her parents, too, left Pennsylvania for the West sometime after 1910. These, too, were immigrants of sorts, those who abandoned the predictability of the East for the possibilities of the West.
But all found an anchor in something which we today can identify as American culture. Not something translated from British norms or French and German techniques of opera or impressionism or nihilism. They found America in its hills and valleys and cities and people and told these stories using abstract impressionism on canvas or in bronze or sonic riffs which characterized the work of another immigrants' child, George Gershwin. Some argue that Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby tells the American story of the 1920s. Maybe so, but Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is a true sequel exploring the fruit borne by the vines so planted in the 1920s. An American "gets" it. "An American in Paris" or "Appalachian Spring" when performed in Berlin will sound "American" to one raised in Lawrence Kansas or another brought up in Eugene, Oregon. But, to the German ears in the audience, while beautiful, it will not transport them to the same place as their American counterparts.
And these masters arrived at their greatness slowly, with contemplation, looking through that shimmering curtain of quiet and concentration which was discussed in that little "Book of Tea." And that solicitude and calm is what we may have lost in the process of achieving our own speeding modernity.
"The
masters are immortal, for their loves and fears live in us over
and over again. It is rather the soul than the hand, the man than
the technique, which appeals to us,--the more human the call
the deeper is our response." Okakura, Kakuzo"The Book of Tea", Part V Art Appreciation accessed from http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm on July 25, 2012.
Now you may ask why a book by a visitor to the United States should place so prominently in any quest for the roots of American creativity. If you research the American modernists (artists like O'Keeffe, Dove, Hartley) fostered by Alfred Stieglitz you will discover that many of them were profoundly affected by this simple little book. Maybe it was their reaction to the acceleration of American life as Europe committed suicide in World War I. And after the United States emerged from the war as the dominant economic power, the pace only moved faster.
They needed a pool of tranquility into which to peer as they searched for new ways to interpret the world around them. Recall that O'Keeffe literally stopped painted for two years as the second decade crept toward its midpoint because she felt she could not do original work, rather copying the forms and styles "proven" by Europeans and "approved" by art critics. This little book on tea and the structure the cult of tea imposed on the two dominant Asian societies China and Japan offered a new path, perhaps with a bit of Tao and Zen, to a new way of looking at the world.
And so they did find that way. And, in the process, I am convinced, these artists and writers and filmmakers and composers and choreographers developed forms which each of us can "get" as something which is uniquely American. But, this creativity took time and a lot of staring into those dark areas of the soul...not seeking sadness or guilt...but rather looking for that which had been hid in the process of creating an American soul. And it was found in the richness of the land and of the people.
Most of the seeds had been planted and had sprouted by the time the United States had closed its borders in 1924 to the unlimited immigration that had fed the American industrial revolution of the 1880s forward. As it was, the War had cut most immigration to a trickle, so there were fewer newcomers and those who had arrived previously were swiftly being submerged into the American stream. Most of these immigrants had been the poorest of their peoples, the ones with nothing to leave behind...and certainly the ones who had done little to influence the cultural norms that were characterized by the elites of their states. But what they brought to the United States was a vitality and folk sensibilities which leavened the American loaf.
O'Keeffe was Irish/Hungarian. John Ford was a first generation Irish-American. Aaron Copland's father emigrated from Russia. Others like Ansel Adams and John Steinbeck were children of first or second-generation Californians who had put down roots in the Golden State before Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed forever in 1893. Martha Graham was a relative late-comer to California, but her parents, too, left Pennsylvania for the West sometime after 1910. These, too, were immigrants of sorts, those who abandoned the predictability of the East for the possibilities of the West.
But all found an anchor in something which we today can identify as American culture. Not something translated from British norms or French and German techniques of opera or impressionism or nihilism. They found America in its hills and valleys and cities and people and told these stories using abstract impressionism on canvas or in bronze or sonic riffs which characterized the work of another immigrants' child, George Gershwin. Some argue that Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby tells the American story of the 1920s. Maybe so, but Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is a true sequel exploring the fruit borne by the vines so planted in the 1920s. An American "gets" it. "An American in Paris" or "Appalachian Spring" when performed in Berlin will sound "American" to one raised in Lawrence Kansas or another brought up in Eugene, Oregon. But, to the German ears in the audience, while beautiful, it will not transport them to the same place as their American counterparts.
And these masters arrived at their greatness slowly, with contemplation, looking through that shimmering curtain of quiet and concentration which was discussed in that little "Book of Tea." And that solicitude and calm is what we may have lost in the process of achieving our own speeding modernity.
"The
masters are immortal, for their loves and fears live in us over
and over again. It is rather the soul than the hand, the man than
the technique, which appeals to us,--the more human the call
the deeper is our response." Okakura, Kakuzo"The Book of Tea", Part V Art Appreciation accessed from http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm on July 25, 2012.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Two Weeks In and a Beginning
You know...my actual birthday is July 13th...but I am looking at July 1 as my 59th birthday because that is when it changed...the day I returned from New Mexico. Since then, I've been grading...but also reading and revisiting. Fighting to keep fit. Riding 4 days-a-week. To pull back, claw back that which I
never really had. I will admit that I started this about 6-7 weeks ago
before Santa Fe.
Santa Fe...the workshop with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Me...an American History instructor from a community college there in Georgia O'Keeffe's refuge...the land which was her soul. A journey meant to illuminate one of the more creative spirits of the last century...a remarkable woman who discovered that the greatest loss for her was to compromise artistic vision on the altar of the critics' views. She shed it all...the New York determinism...Stieglitz' monumental disloyalty which sapped her strength...and came to New Mexico where the horizon is closer to heaven.
I came away with a different sense of my time and place, with the belief that there are corners I have yet to turn and sights I've yet to see.
And maybe that's the message of Santa Fe for me. What has been need not always be. That this year is one of change, of transition. The face I see in the mirror is a veil draped over something yet to be carved from tat timber I have spent 59 years growing. This year will take me from where I have been rooted for too many years into higher meadows where the shadows are crisper, the colors stronger and my own place becomes more defined.
Santa Fe...the workshop with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Me...an American History instructor from a community college there in Georgia O'Keeffe's refuge...the land which was her soul. A journey meant to illuminate one of the more creative spirits of the last century...a remarkable woman who discovered that the greatest loss for her was to compromise artistic vision on the altar of the critics' views. She shed it all...the New York determinism...Stieglitz' monumental disloyalty which sapped her strength...and came to New Mexico where the horizon is closer to heaven.
And maybe that's the message of Santa Fe for me. What has been need not always be. That this year is one of change, of transition. The face I see in the mirror is a veil draped over something yet to be carved from tat timber I have spent 59 years growing. This year will take me from where I have been rooted for too many years into higher meadows where the shadows are crisper, the colors stronger and my own place becomes more defined.
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