Author: SeniorWomenWeb

Face Value, Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction: A Startling Freshness and A Touch of Defiance

Interior With Leland by Louisa Matthiasdottir, 1945-1946. Oil on canvas, (38 1/4 × 35 1/4″). Private collection

Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction is featuring mid-20th century artists who were reinventing portraiture at a moment when almost everyone agreed that figuration was dead as a progressive art form. The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has gathered more than 50 paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture from approximately 1945 to 1975 to demonstrate the innovations of American portraiture despite the vogue for abstraction. The exhibition runs through Jan. 11, 2015.

During this period, Chuck Close recalled, “the dumbest, most moribund, out-of-date and shopworn of possible things you could do was to make a portrait.” And yet, with startling freshness and a touch of defiance, a group of young artists demonstrated the value of exploring the face and figure.

“At a time when most artists viewed portraiture as dead or dying, these artists pressed forward with their work and explored new ways to represent the self,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “This collection of varying pieces is a testament to their determination and innovation that continues to influence artists today.”

Al Held and Sylvia Stone. Oil on canvas, 1968. Private collection, © Philip Pearlstein. Photograph courtesy of the artist and Betty Cuningham Gallery, Photograph by Philip Ennik

Philip Pearlstein moved away from abstraction in the 1960s and has since concentrated on painting what was in front of him, including a series of portraits. He focuses on “the human figure as a found object.” Many of his subjects were friends from the art world, including the painter Al Held (1928 – 2005) and sculptor Sylvia Stone (1928 – 2011). They were all friends from Held’s and Pearlstein’s early days showing in galleries on Tenth Street, and both Stone and Pearlstein taught at Brooklyn College. But their work was different: Held was well known for his thick, visceral geometric abstractions, and Stone was experimenting with shaped canvases and geometric plexiglass sculptures. Pearlstein’s cropping and composition, creating sharp angles and psychological distancing, results in a portrait that is as “cool” as his subjects’ own work. As curator Frank Goodyear once noted, Pearlstein’s subjects “arrive as individuals and leave as Pearlsteins.”

Among the artists who pushed the boundaries of portrait traditions were Romare Bearden, Elaine de Kooning, Beauford Delaney, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth. Inspired by the theories and ambitions of Abstract Expressionism and keenly attuned to the themes of their own turbulent times, they reinterpreted human portrayal, reinventing portraiture for the next generation.

The show includes a portrait of the poet John Ashbery by Fairfield Porter. The museum commissioned Ashbery to compose a poem for the catalog. “Hand with a Picture” reflects abstractly on the era and his many friendships with artists. The 175-page fully illustrated publication, Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction, includes essays by the curators.

May 21, 2014
Gatsby to Garp: Our Doubt Is Our Passion, and Our Passion is Our Task. The Rest is the Madness of Art

Between 1973 and 1996 Carter Burden, a former trustee of the Morgan Library and Museum and onetime New York City councilman, assembled the greatest collection of modern American literature in private hands. In doing so, Burden revolutionized the market in modern first editions by paying record prices for copies in the best possible condition and with notable attributes such as authors’ annotations and presentation inscriptions. The depth and breadth of his holdings were truly extraordinary — spanning the twentieth century and including focused concentrations on such movements as the Lost Generation, the Beats, and the Harlem Renaissance.

Beginning in 1997, after Burden’s sudden death the previous year, his family has made a gift to the Morgan of twelve thousand volumes from his collection. Gatsby to Garp: Modern Masterpieces from the Carter Burden Collection, on view from May 20 through September 7, brings together nearly one hundred outstanding works from the collection, including first editions, manuscripts, letters, and revised galley proofs. Authors featured in this unparalleled exhibition are some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated — William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, John Irving, Henry James, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Updike, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright, among others.

Gatsby to Garp examines the vibrant American literary landscape of the twentieth century, a period that encompassed a remarkable explosion of creativity, and explores such topics as language and style, geography and setting, literary identity, and relationships among writers. By looking at the literary output of the entire century through a series of vignettes, connections emerge — sometimes unexpectedly. These writers explored the possibilities of authorial voice through stylistic experimentation, investigations of literary setting and examinations of psychological realism. The exhibition offers particular emphasis on the concept of ‘firsts’ — as it pertains to book production and format and to literary movements and experimentation. It will also include a number of notable authors’ photographs, including several from the Morgan’s unique collection of photographs of artists and writers by Irving Penn.

“The quality and scope of Carter Burden’s collection of twentieth century American literature is truly remarkable,” said William M. Griswold, Director of The Morgan Library & Museum. “We are deeply grateful for the gift of his collection to the Morgan and extraordinarily pleased to present a selection of works in this exhibition. He had a singular eye for books of true distinction and also understood the importance of collecting works representative of major themes and movements in American letters.”

Precursors
We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. — Henry James

Henry James’s importance to modern literature cannot be overstated. Deeply rooted in the realist traditions of the previous century, his thematic concerns and stylistic developments are threaded through the soul of the twentieth. Gertrude Stein remarked that he was “the only nineteenth century writer who being an American felt the method of the twentieth century.” Carter Burden realized that he could not focus his collection on twentieth century writing without a foundation in Henry James, who, as a transitional figure, helps us contextualize what would come later. Along with William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, Henry James was one of the three cornerstones of Burden’s collection. James’s thematic preoccupations — slowing down narrative time and exploring the inner lives of his American characters in European settings — profoundly influenced later authors, and the writings of this expatriate are an essential reference point to keep in mind when examining twentieth century literature. Experimenting with language and form in new ways, the writers on view in the main gallery explore similar themes of identity and the interiority of fictional characters; geography and the impact of physical setting on identity and what it means to be American; and temporality, or the exploration of psychological time.

May 20, 2014
Online Food Reviews Reveal Addiction Metaphors and Sensual Imagery
Identified as Tom’s Restaurant, NYC which became famous as Monk’s in Seinfeld, and as en:Tom’s Diner, in the Suzanne Vega song of that name. Photo by Rick Dikeman, Wikimedia Commons, 2000

By Clifton B. Parker

Word choice in online restaurant reviews reveals much about people’s inner worlds, according to Stanford research.

The study appeared in the April 7 issue of the journal First Monday, used software to investigate almost 900,000 reviews of 6,548 restaurants — from fast food to luxury restaurants — on Yelp.com.

Dan Jurafsky, a Stanford professor of linguistics and one of the co-authors, said, “Our goal was to examine online reviews not for what they tell us about restaurants, but rather for what they tell us about people, about the psychology of the person who wrote the review. We studied the meanings that are hidden in the way people use words and connotations.”

The reviews covered restaurants in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The researchers used techniques from computational linguistics and “sentiment analysis” to measure characteristics of review language – the number of words, the use of specific pronouns or the number of times words appear from specialized lexicons.

For example, to measure negative emotions in reviews, the researchers used a linguistic list of 500 words and word stems that included “fail,” “disappoint,” “bad,” “antagonize” and “heartbreakingly.”

The researchers made several discoveries:
- Positive reviews of expensive restaurants tended to use metaphors of sex and sensual pleasure, such as “orgasmic pastry” or “seductively seared foie gras.” And the words used in those reviews were longer and fancier.
- Positive reviews of cheap restaurants and foods often employed metaphors of drugs or addiction – “these cupcakes are like crack.”
- Negative reviews were frequently associated with the language of personal trauma and poor customer service: “We waited 10 min. before we even got her attention to order.”
- Women were more likely than men to use drug metaphors to describe their attitudes toward food.
- The foods most likely to be described using drug metaphors were pizza, burgers, sweets and sushi.
For Jurafsky, the most surprising finding was how strongly the language of negative Yelp reviews resembled the language of people who have been traumatized by tragedies or the deaths of loved ones.

“Bad reviews,” he said, “seem to be caused by bad customer service rather than just bad food or atmosphere. The bottom line is that it’s all about the personal interactions. When people are rude or mean to you, it goes straight to your sense of self.”

The negative reviews function as a means of coping with service-related trauma, according to the study.

Overall, the positive reviews reflect a more buoyant or fun-loving self in search of pleasure. But reviews of expensive restaurants differed sharply from reviews of cheaper restaurants. Reviews of costly restaurants used metaphors of sexuality and sensuality, talking about “jaw-droppingly good sexy food” and “orgasmic” pastry, according to the study.

Jurafsky said that reviews of expensive restaurants also relied on “complex words and wordy reviews” to craft the image of the reviewer as well educated or sophisticated, using words like “sumptuous,” “commensurate,” “unobtrusively” and “vestibule.”

In contrast, the positive reviews for cheaper restaurants radiated the drug and addiction metaphors, the study found. Examples include “be warned the wings are addicting” and “the garlic noodles should be outlawed! They are now my drug of choice.”

“Positive reviews appeal, presumably light-heartedly, to the author as an addict suffering from cravings for junk foods, non-normative meals and other guilty pleasures,” the researchers wrote.

Why the difference between addiction metaphors and sensual imagery? Foods that are “craved” like a drug are typically meaty, sugary, starchy, snacks or fast foods. “Craved foods aren’t vegetables,” wrote the researchers.

“We talk about food as an addiction when we’re feeling guilty about what we’re eating,” said Jurafsky.

As for meals at fancier establishments, the reviewers adopted the language of higher socioeconomic classes.

By using metaphors of sexuality and sensuality in these long reviews, the reviewers further portray themselves as food lovers attuned to the sensual and hedonic element of cuisine, the report found.

Whether the restaurant was expensive or not, reviewers were sensitive about how they portrayed themselves.

“Across multiple variables, online review narratives reveal the reviewers’ concern with face and the presentation of self,” the researchers wrote.

As for gender differences, Jurafsky noted that prior research shows women are more likely to express cravings for foods like chocolate than men, and that they might be more comfortable expressing these feelings. However, he stresses that more research is necessary to understand what may be underlying the differences they found.

Jurafsky said the findings pose implications for the restaurant industry. The fact that many negative reviews highlight “service-related traumas” may encourage restaurant managers to prioritize customer satisfaction if they are not doing so already.

The research, Jurafsky said, offers an important new direction in the behavioral sciences; online reviews are a valuable source of insight into humanity in the Internet age.

“When you write a review on the web you’re providing a window into your own psyche – and the vast amount of text on the Web means that researchers have millions of pieces of data about people’s mindsets,” said Jurafsky, whose co-authors include Victor Chahuneau, Bryan Routledge and Noah Smith, all from Carnegie Mellon University.
May 16, 2014
Elaine’s Soloway’s Caregiving Series: An Untroubled Brow

This is what you look for in a hospice patient: the brow must be untroubled. Smooth, free of lines. There should be no grimacing. The face of the patient must be serene, peaceful.

Tommy has an untroubled brow. His face remains ruddy. His body is calm, arms propped on pillows to keep him comfortable, two pillows behind his sleeping head. A loose sheet covers his quietly breathing, thinning body.

Regularly scheduled doses of Morphine and Haldol, with an occasional drop of Atropine, are keeping my husband pain-free and tranquil, the goal of hospice.

Tommy, who worked out at the Lakeview YMCA three-times-a-week for 40 years, is hanging in. “There’s no way of telling,” doctors and nurses tell me. “Three days, three weeks?” Those estimates are not my husband’s concern. His body will leave this earth when it is good and ready. I know this, I am prepared, even though at times I expect Tommy to yawn, raise his arms as if stretching, give me two thumbs up to indicate a good night’s sleep, then hop over the bed’s steel sides, and dress.

That will not happen. My husband, when he decides he has had enough of his blubbering wife who strokes his head, holds his hand, and whispers “it’s okay if you leave,” will slow his breaths and that will be that.

Meanwhile, he is being cared for at home by me and a rotating roster of home health aides, hospice nurses, and Certified Nursing Assistants. A few of these people will be stellar — like Stuart, the CNA who was originally hired to drive Tommy to the Y one day a week. Surprise: Stuart is receiving a PhD in nursing before he enters the college. I offered to write to Loyola’s administration and tell them Stuart has completed all the necessary coursework.

Others I loved, like Rebecca, Qui, and Emile. Some I tolerated, and one I insisted never step foot in my house again. Along with inappropriate behavior; i.e. yammering loudly on her cell phone, she texted me constantly from the second floor for various items close at hand. But the straw was when she decided, without consulting me, to remove all of the supplies I had arranged in rows on our empty queen-sized bed, and place them instead on top of dressers, end tables, window sills, and on the floor of the shower hidden by a curtain.

“I wanted the room to look like a bedroom,” she explained as she waved her hand atop the empty bedspread.

When the hospice nurse arrived, she shook her head and returned every box of gauze pads, suction tubes, bed pads, disposable underwear, lotions, and dozens of other supplies back to their original spots. “Much better,” she said after all was returned. I hugged her.

I talk to my husband each time I enter the room. Once I pulled up a chair to read him a letter. Tommy had written it to me in 1996, two years before we married. By the grace of God, I kept it safe. My husband spoke of love, commitment, promises to care for me — in beautiful handwriting, two pages full. At one point during my reading, he opened his eyes and looked at me, as if to say, “I remember writing that.”

With every visitor that enters the house I say, “I’d like you to read Tommy’s letter.” Although his words were meant for me, I fear our friends will only recall the Tommy who struggled with aphasia and could no longer speak, who stopped reading mysteries, or who was unable to fix a broken cabinet door. I want them to know the Tommy who was smart, romantic, eloquent.

Many loved ones — concerned about my well-being and ability to pay for ‘round-the-clock nursing care — urged me upon leaving the hospital to place Tommy in hospice care in a different setting outside the home. “It will be overwhelming,” they predicted.

In a first email update to this group I admitted, “You were right, it’s overwhelming. But, I am doing it.”

Along with the hired caregivers, I am supported by friends, relatives, and neighbors who visit Tommy and me, who bring food and offer to handle any needed tasks. I have doled out assignments, from picking up Chicago hot dogs to taking my Honda Fit in for servicing.

We will get through this. Meanwhile, we keep watch for an untroubled brow.

©2014 Elaine Soloway for SeniorWomen.com

May 13, 2014
Net Curtaining, Upholstery Fabric and Parachute Silk During WWII: Wedding Dresses 1775-2014
Pale grey slashed chiffon wedding dress designed by Gareth Pugh and veil by Stephen Jones, 2011 Worn by Katie Shillingford for her marriage to Alex Dromgoole, 2011. Courtesy of Katie Shillingford. Photo © Amy Gwatkin

The Victoria & Albert’s Museum’s spring 2014 exhibition traces the development of the fashionable white wedding dress and its interpretation by leading couturiers and designers, offering a panorama of fashion over the last two centuries.

The opening section of the exhibition features some of the earliest examples of wedding fashion including a silk satin court dress (1775) and a ‘polonaise’ style brocade gown with straw bergère hat (1780) lent by the Chertsey Museum. The preference for white in the 19th century is demonstrated by a white muslin wedding dress decorated with flowers, leaves and berries (1807) recently acquired by the V&A, and a wedding outfit embellished with pearl beads design by Charles Frederick Worth (1880).

As the 19th century drew to a close historical costume influenced fashion. A fine example is be a copy of a Paris model designed by Paquin Lalanne et Cie made by Stern Brothers of New York (1890) for an American bride.

Designs from the 1920s and 1930s will illustrate the glamour of bridal wear which was now influenced by evening fashions, dresses were slim-hipped and made from richly beaded textured fabrics and slinky bias-cut satin. During the Second World War when clothing restrictions were introduced, brides needed to make imaginative and practical fashion choices. They used non-rationed fabrics such as upholstery materials, net curtaining and parachute silk, or married in a smart day dress or service uniform. On display will be a buttercup patterned dress made in light-weight upholstery fabric by London dressmaker Ella Dolling (1941)

Wedding Dresses 1775-2014 also explores the growth of the wedding industry and the effect of increasing media focus on wedding fashions. Improvements in photography in the early 20th century encouraged photojournalism and society weddings were reported in detail in the national press and gossip columns. Two of the most spectacular wedding dresses on show will be the Norman Hartnell dress made for Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll) for her marriage to Charles Sweeny (1933), and the Charles James ivory silk satin dress worn by Barbara ‘Baba’ Beaton for her marriage to Alec Hambro (1934).

Other pages of images and collections relating to marriages at the V&A’s website:

Silk satin wedding dress, designed by Norman Hartnell, 1933, given and worn by Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Don’t forget to view the V&A’s Wedding shop for items related to the exhibition,
Other images in the V&A’s fashion gallery: Stays and Busk
- Date: 1660-1680 (made)
- Place: Netherlands
- Artist/maker: Unknown
Object Type
Stays (a stiff corset) were essential garments in the fashionable woman’s wardrobe throughout the 17th century. Some sort of stiffening of a woman’s gown had been part of dress construction since the early 16th century. Sometimes it was added to the outer bodice; sometimes it was in the form of separate stays worn under the gown. Originally the stiffening served the purpose of preventing the expensive and elaborately decorated fabric of the gown from wrinkling. However, because stays could mould the female torso, they became essential for producing whatever shape was considered fashionable.

Materials & Making
The stays are made by hand-stitching the watered silk to a layer of linen in long narrow pockets. Thin strips of whalebone are inserted into the pockets to give the stays their shape. Whalebone is in fact not bone, but cartilage from the mouth of the baleen whale. It grows in large sheets in the mouth of the whale and serves as a kind of sieve to filter out tiny krill, the whale’s primary source of food, from the seawater. Commercial whaling began in the early 17th century in the North Sea and quickly spread to the waters around Greenland and eventually to the Bering Seas as the whales were hunted almost to extinction. Baleen was used for women’s stays and hoops as well as a wide variety of other items such as riding crops, whips, brushes, chair backs and bottoms, carriage springs and fishing rods. Whale blubber was rendered into oil and used for lighting. Whalebone was the preferred stiffener for stays because it was firm enough to hold the shape, yet flexible enough not to break when the wearer moved. The ribbons retain their original points, the narrow metal clamps at the ends. They prevent the ribbon from unravelling and help to thread it through the lacing holes. The points are made of tinned iron; normally they would have rusted away.

Above text ©Victoria and Albert Museum
May 10, 2014
I Haven’t a Thing To Wear

by Rose Madeline Mula

18th Century Women’s Fashions: La toilette by François Boucher, 1742; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Colección Permanente

Three mysteries will always taunt me: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, how to buy low and sell high, and how it’s possible to have three huge closets crammed with clothes and still never have a thing to wear-at least nothing appropriate for the occasion at hand.

Everything I own is either too formal or too casual for anything to which I’m ever invited. I seem to have an uncanny knack for either buying all the wrong clothes or not getting asked to any of the right affairs.

For instance, I was recently requested to attend a surprise anniversary party to be held at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. I was very smug as I slipped into my elegantly simple tailored suit that the saleswoman had assured me would be at home at any afternoon social event. That’s just where I should have left it — at home. When I arrived at the party I had the feeling that the other women guests belonged to a secret sorority. All of them (including the lady being “surprised”) knew something I didn’t. There they were — every last one of them-dripping diamonds and black chiffon to their anklebones. At first I thought I had the wrong address and had stumbled into a very dressy wake. But nobody had died. I just wished I could.

Read Rose’s article at http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/rose/articlesRoseWear.html

May 7, 2014
The Scout Report: Folger, Math, Yale Writing, Portraiture & Art Techniques, British Colonialism Images and The Quabbin Reservoir

Research and Education

The Folger Shakespeare Library Celebrated William Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday in April, 2014. Photo of the 2009 celebration by Jeff Malet

Folger Digital Texts

·http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/

As this website proclaims, visitors of the page will find “Timeless Texts” and “Cutting-Edge Code,” culled from the words of the Bard. This code refers to the source code that users can download from the site, allowing interested parties to develop new noncommercial Shakespeare projects and apps. To get started, visitors can access the Read a Play feature. There’s a brief introduction to the editions here, courtesy of Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine. In the About Us section visitors can learn more about this lovely project and also take a look at links to their digital image collection and a range of K-12 teaching resources. [KMG]

Mathematics: MIT OpenCourseWare

·http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/

Interested in integers? Fascinated by fractals? The MIT OpenCourseWare Mathematics website can assist you with your quest for knowledge where visitors have access to all of the materials this institution has contributed over the past few years. Users will note that there are over four dozen courses here, complete with syllabi, lecture notes, and even in some cases video lectures and other audio visual materials. Browse through the Featured Courses to learn about some of the most recent offerings, which include, “Nonlinear Dynamics I: Chaos” and “Category Theory for Scientists.” Additionally, users can sign up to receive updates when new materials are added to the site. [KMG]

Yale College Writing Center

·http://writing.yalecollege.yale.edu/

The Yale College Writing Center “supports writers and writing teachers through the resources on this website” and consequently support an audience far beyond New Haven. First-time visitors should look at the Advice for Students to get started. Here, they will find areas that include “What Good Writers Know” and “Model Papers from the Disciplines.” The first area contains short and succinct advice with detailed explanations while the second area contains thoughtful works from Yale students in fields such as philosophy, natural science, and literature. Moving along, Writing at Yale includes information about the various writing programs and initiatives at Yale College, along with links to writing award programs from around the country. [KMG]

JCE Chemical Education Xchange

·http://www.jce.divched.org/video

The JCE Chemical Education Exchange offers a range of videos designed for educators and the curious public. Created as part of the larger ChemEd Exchange website, videos include Boiling by Cooling, Atmosphere Pressure, Ammonia Fountain, and Canned Heat. All told, the website hosts over 280 videos and several dozen are available at no charge. Visitors can use the search engine on the top of the page for specific content or browse around at their leisure. A list of related blogs and relevant blog topics, such as Lego Periodic Table, can also be found on this site. It is a great resource to get the creative juices flowing in regard to chemistry education. [KMG]

Columbus Letters

·http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0110

The letters of Christopher Columbus have fascinated historians and travelers for over half a millennia. This collection from the Princeton University Digital Library brings together four of the seven Latin editions and one German edition of his letters as published in the last decade of the 15th century. This site allows visitors to peruse a clutch of these fine volumes in their original languages. Visitors can look around the volumes as they see fit or search for various phrases and words. It’s worth nothing that visitors can browse by topic or document contributor. It’s an amazing way to explore these letters which transformed contemporary understandings of the people and places across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe. [KMG]

Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities

·http://www.neh.gov/humanities

What’s the National Endowment for the Humanities up to these days? Plenty, of course, and its Humanities magazine provides plenty of information on such matters. The Recent Favorites are a great place to start, containing links to articles from the magazine, such as “The Trail of Hannah Arendt” and “The Otherworldly Malamud.” Moving along, visitors can delve into the Classics, which include some meditations on Alexander Von Humboldt and the plain speaking mode of Carl Sandburg. Visitors also shouldn’t miss the Browse Back Issues, which offer access to dozens of back issues. Each issue also features the fabulous Impertinent Questions feature, which profiles scholars’ responses to questions about Buffalo Bill Cody, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith. [KMG]

EdCommunity ESRI

·http://edcommunity.esri.com/

If you have an interest in the spatial sciences, you’ll enjoy the EdCommunity website from Esri. The Education Maps and Data area contains several dozen interactive educational modules designed to teach people about geographic information systems (GIS) and a range of visualization tools. The Lesson Plans are another great find, including hundreds of lessons from “Analyzing Supermarket Access With ArcGIS online” to “An Easy Pathway To Create Storymaps.” Additionally, the Videos and Webinars area includes student GIS presentations and useful webinars such as, “Where Do You Start with GIS in Education” and “Analyzing 10 Landscapes using ArcGIS Online.” [KMG]

Science in the Courtroom: The Woburn Toxic Trail

·http://serc.carleton.edu/woburn/index.html

Is it possible to use a popular book to explore interfaces between science, citizen action, public health, and the US Legal system? In short, it is, and this resources from the Science in the Courtroom series makes it possible. Developed by Professor Scott Bair, with funding from the National Science Foundation, the resource uses the landmark case of Anne Anderson et al. versus W.R. Grace & Co. and Beatrice Foods, Inc. to explore a range of issues. The website contains three levels of exploration, including a mock trial and discussion questions, along with a Resource Collection. This last section includes photographs, newspaper articles, animations, and much more. [KMG]

General Interest

Historic Postcards of Alabama

·http://www.lib.ua.edu/content/libraries/hoole/digital/pcards/pcard.htm

The Historic Postcards of Alabama database was created by Diane Wade and the items are housed at the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library at the University of Alabama. The collection contains over 230 rare postcards that document life in this southern state between the years 1900 to 1920. Visitors can get started by using the Location Index to wander around different corners of the state, including Mobile, Selma, and Tuscaloosa. The Birmingham area is a great place to start as it features photos of various prominent buildings, churches, and geographical features. [KMG]

May 5, 2014
Love Your Library

St. Florian Monastery’s Library in Sankt Florian, Austria. Photo by Stephan Brunker, Wikimedia Commons

by Julia Sneden

I was at the checkout counter of a local supermarket last Saturday, watching as a pleasant woman rang up my groceries. In the brief pause as I wrote my check, the cashier turned to the youngster who was bagging the groceries.

“Hey, do you know if the library is open today?” she asked.

“Nah,” the bagger replied scornfully. “I don’t do libraries. I can Google anything I need to know.”

I happen to be aware that the bagger, who is the son of a friend, will be going to college next year. Once he gets there, I hope he may discover what a library can do for him, although in this age of pre-digested, easily-accessed information on the Internet, he may not feel the need.

Read more … http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/julia/articlesJulia033110.html

May 2, 2014
What is a Gender Mainstreaming Pilot District? Transforming Housing and Neighborhood Design

Sustainable gender-aware housing and neighborhood design cuts down on transportation and improves the quality of people’s lives

Nearly 12 years ago, Vienna did something transformative: The city designated the district of Mariahilf as a “gender mainstreaming pilot district.” Gender analysis would become integral to urban planning in this test area. The results? Housing units and community spaces designed to support child and elder care.

Vienna’s Gender Mainstreaming Pilot District (Mariahilf) widened sidewalks and removed barriers (such as staircases) to support pedestrians.

“Taking gender into account better serves the needs of women and men across the life span. Adding a “gender dimension” to design of housing, parks, and transportation improves the quality of “everyday life,” explained Stanford Professor of History of Science Londa Schiebinger.

Vienna’s urban planning is an example of what Schiebinger calls a “Gendered Innovation.” According to Schiebinger, a Gendered Innovation harnesses the creative power of sex and gender analysis to discover new things. (Other examples of Gendered Innovations from Schiebinger’s project include improvements in: heart disease in women, osteoporosis in men, public transportation, and water infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa.)

In the case of Vienna’s urban planning, integrating gender analysis into the architectural design and urban planning processes ensured that buildings and cities serve the needs of all inhabitants. This approach includes special consideration for women and men of different ages, employment patterns, socioeconomic status, and care-giving obligations.

Housing to support care work

Traditional urban design tends to separate living spaces and commercial spaces into separate zones, which results in large distances between homes, markets, schools, and other urban spaces. Often, the distance between these spaces is burdensome for people combining employment with care responsibilities. In response, urban designers created housing and neighborhoods with on-site child-care and elder-care facilities, shops for basic everyday needs, and often primary-care medical facilities.

Vienna’s new housing development named “Frauen-Werk-Stadt I,” or FWS-I, was designed with gender in mind.

In the FWS-I floorplan, kitchens are cantilevered and extend beyond the footprint of the building to allow an unobstructed view of open spaces for caregivers to monitor children at play.

Created by architect Franziska Ullmann, FWS-I has 359 housing units with childcare facilities to minimize the distance parents travel to take their children to daycare. The housing complex supports childcare by enabling line-of-sight contact for parents watching children between interior work spaces (such as kitchens) and outdoor recreational areas, and by providing well-lit ground-level storage for baby strollers, bikes, and other bulky items. FWS-1 also includes commercial space for shops within the housing block, medical facilities, and a police station

Another housing project in Vienna called “In der Wiesen Generation Housing” has mixed complexes with apartments for the elderly. By incorporating different apartments of different cost in a single complex, families have the option of having elderly parents living in the same building but in not their own apartments. As residents become older they can, if needed, pay for extra assistance in their own home. The entire building is accessible for the handicapped. Low windowsills allow those in wheelchairs or beds to have views into green spaces.

April 30, 2014
Boots and Moccasins: An Unlikely Alliance Against the Keystone Pipeline

Photo by Mary Anne Andrei / Bold Nebraska

Thousands of people joined the farmers, ranchers, and tribal leaders of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance for a ceremonial procession along Washington, DC’s National Mall to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. The procession was the largest event yet of the five-day Reject and Protect encampment.

“Today, boots and moccasins showed President Obama an unlikely alliance has his back to reject Keystone XL to protect our land and water,” said Jane Kleeb, Executive Director of Bold Nebraska, one of the key organizers of Reject and Protect.

Musician Neil Young and actress Daryl Hannah were amongst the crowd of thousands who rallied on the National Mall and then marched past the Capitol building. “We need to end the age of fossil fuels and move on to something better,” Mr. Young told the crowd. The day’s procession included the presentation of a hand-painted tipi to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian as a gift to President Obama. The tipi represented the Cowboy and Indian Alliance’s hopes for protected land and clean water.

“Keystone XL is a death warrant for our people,” said Oglala Sioux Tribal President Bryan Brewer, who helped lead the presentation of the tipi to the Smithsonian. “President Obama must reject this pipeline and protect our sacred land and water. The United States needs to respect our treaty rights and say no to Keystone XL.”

April 27, 2014