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  • Two Book Arts Exhibits: The Art of the Book in California and Illustrated Title Pages: 1500 – 1900

    The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University presents an exhibition featuring the “new book,” as defined by contemporary art practices, successful experiments with media, and innovative structures in book production. The Art of the Book in California: Five Contemporary Presses continues through August 28, and includes some of the most significant works from each press, with approximately 50 works in all.Moving Parts Press, Codex Espangliensis

    “During the last 50 years, the conception and production of the book has evolved into an art form that exceeds all former standards for the book as object. Book arts have become a mature medium, and California artists and printers are leaders in the fine arts of the book,” said Roberto G. Trujillo, head of Stanford Library’s Department of Special Collections, which is lending works for this exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center. “We are pleased to share these exemplary works from our Special Collections for the exhibition, and we hope this display inspires viewers to come to the library to further explore this artisticFoolscap Press, Other Worlds: Journey to the Moonmedium.”

    The exhibition presents works by Foolscap Press (Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence G. Van Velzer) of Santa Cruz; Moving Parts Press (Felicia Rice) of Santa Cruz; Ninja Press (Carolee Campbell) of Sherman Oaks; Peter Koch Printers (Peter Rutledge Koch) of Berkeley; and Turkey Press (Harry and Sandra Reese) of Isla Vista. Each press is unique, and each produces books and related art with a rich variety of content and media, often in collaboration with other artists and writers and often incorporating their own writing and art practices. All five presses are distinguished by their typographic sophistication, excellent design, discerning presswork, and attention to the bookbinder’s art.Turkey Press, Turnings, 1990

  • Put That Laundry Basket Down; There’s a Robot That Folds

    Editor’s Disclosure: The following was released last spring but we decided that it was well worth the repeat about The New York Times Science article, Race to Build a Robot More Like Us.

    Who wouldn’t want a robot that could make your bed or do the laundry? Well, a team of Berkeley researchers has brought us one important step closer by enabling an autonomous robot to reliably fold piles of previously unseen towels.

    Robots that can do things like assembling cars have been around for decades. The towel-folding robot, though, is doing something very new, according to the leaders of the Berkeley team, doctoral student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard and Assistant Professor Pieter Abbeel of Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

    Robots like the car-assembly ones are designed to work in highly structured settings, which allows them to perform a wide variety of tasks with mind-boggling precision and repeatability — but only in carefully controlled environments, Maitin-Shepard and Abbeel explain. Outside of such settings, their capabilities are much more limited.

    Automation of household tasks like laundry folding is somewhat compelling in itself. But more significantly, according to Maitin-Shepard, the task involves one that’s proved a challenge for robots: perceiving and manipulating “deformable objects” – things that are flexible, not rigid, so their shape isn’t predictable. A towel is deformable; a mug or a computer isn’t.

    A video — posted on this page — tells the story best. It shows a robot built by the Menlo Park robotics company Willow Garage and running an algorithm developed by the Berkeley team, faced with a heap of towels it’s never “seen” before. The towels are of different sizes, colors and materials.

    The robot picks one up and turns it slowly, first with one arm and then with the other. It uses a pair of high-resolution cameras to scan the towel to estimate its shape. Once it finds two adjacent corners, it can start folding. On a flat surface, it completes the folds — smoothing the towel after each fold, and making a neat stack.

  • Hawked

    by Julia SnedenRed shouldered hawk

    If you’ve followed Senior Women Web for awhile, you may have come across a column a few years back in which I admitted to being in love with the many birds outside my kitchen window. It’s definitely a one-sided love affair, inasmuch as I doubt they are aware that I exist on the other side of the glass. Even if they did, it would be silly to interpret the birds’ enthusiasm for filling their bellies as something which indicates affection for the providers of the feast (unlike my voracious offspring, who probably love me best when I am in the kitchen).

    When I open the back door to step out onto the deck, the birds flee. No doubt they perceive my gigantic self as alarming and dangerous. Finches of all kinds, chickadees, titmice, Carolina wrens, towhees, cardinals, all scatter pronto. There are even a couple of nuthatches and woodpeckers in the mix, seeking a bit of vegetable matter to supplement their usual diet of the grubs and insects that live in tree bark. Only the tiny hummingbird stays at his feeder when I emerge, correctly assuming that anything as ponderous as a human poses no threat to him. The rest return swiftly when I go back into the kitchen, their love of black oil sunflower seeds and Niger thistle overpowering their fear of my return.

    The only real problem in this pretty picture is a bunch of predatory squirrels and raccoons, who feel free to interfere at will. We seem to have squirrels of unusual persistence and intelligence, because we’ve never yet found a squirrel-busting feeder that can foil them. And raccoons, of course, are just plain geniuses, which, added to their opposable thumbs, enables them to unscrew, outfox, and destroy any and all measures taken to stop them. We live in an uneasy state of truce with them, because after all, they too have to eat.

    Last year, our neighbor, a bona fide ornithologist, pointed out to me a pair of red-shouldered hawks that had built a nest in the enormous trees in the gully between our houses. Using a scope that he had set up in the woods, he could keep watch on their chick, and even take a photo of it. It was, like all babies, adorable: snow white and round-headed, peering up over the edge of the huge nest.red shouldered hawk in california

    Before a red-shouldered hawk chick fledges, the parents stay close by, so we had plenty of time to observe the whole family. Often the parents stopped to rest on the railing of our deck, or perched in a nearby tree. My ornithological guru tells me that they are believed to mate for life, and usually return to the same area to make a springtime nest. This year, sure enough, they came back. They moved the location of the nest, making it harder for us to see it once the trees leafed out, but it’s still in the same area, and they still visit us regularly.

    Oddly enough, the smaller birds don’t seem to be particularly afraid of the hawks, although they do fly into the branches of the trees nearby while the hawks are on the deck. The squirrels are smart enough not to show up. The chipmunk population, however, has simply disappeared, which means that my pots of herbs have a chance of making it through the summer. Thank you, hawks.

  • A Summer TV Schedule: Hearings on Violence Towards Women, Veterans Mental Care and Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers

    It’s the summer and television programs are on a new episode vacation. Why not take in a streaming webcast or televised hearing from a Senate or House Committee?

    Aside from the scripted statements of our representatives, some drama might ensue. Perhaps they’re assuming their constituents are not listening or looking in?

    Prove them wrong.

    Hearings of interest in both houses, July 12 – 14:

    Violence Against Women — On Thursday, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee will hold a hearing, “Native Women: Protecting, Shielding, and Safeguarding Our Sisters, Mothers, and Daughters.”

    Persons With Disabilities – Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Senate Committee. Lessons From the Field: Hearings to examine learning from what works for employment for persons with disabilities.

    Closing the Gaps In Veterans Mental Care: Veterans Affairs Senate Committee. Hearings to examine Veterans’ Affairs mental health care.

    Child Protection — On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security will hold a hearing on the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act (H.R. 1981).

    Bill Markups —Violence Against Women: On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing, “The Violence Against Women Act: Building on Seventeen Years of Accomplishments.”

    Editor’s Note: We do not see these hearings listed on C-Span.org’s CapitolHearings.org list for live streaming to be viewed on television. Then again, it’s possible to encourage C-Span to take on these subjects if there is viewer interest.

    Check the US Senate Radio-Television Gallery Coverage List and the US House Radio-Television Gallery Coverage List for information on the broadcast of specific hearings. The Congressional Chronicle lists these hearings, too.

  • Theodore Roszack (1933 – 2011): Cult of Information

    The late Theodore Roszack recorded this video over 25 years ago on the independent television program, Thinking Allowed.

    His subject in this ©Thinking Allowed video uploaded to YouTube in honor of his life  is what it means to think. Is it just to manipulate Ideas or to create them? And how does this relate to the value of the computer?  “We need good old-fashioned literacy; not just computer literacy … what data matters and what data does not matter.”

    From Thinking Knowledge: “This program is being posted in its entirety to honor the memory of Theodore Roszak, who passed away on July 5, 2011.

    Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
    Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
    — T.S. Elliott

    “Our real educational and cultural needs are in danger of becoming lost in the erroneous fascination with the information processing model of the mind. One of America’s foremost social critics, Theodore Roszak, Ph.D., author of The Making of the Counter-Culture, Eco-Psychology and The Cult of Information, delivers a scathing indictment of the over-selling of computer and high-tech ideology to the American public.”

    Editor’s Note: Prof. Roszack also wrote The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation (2009). Theodore and Betty Roszack were the editors of Masculine/Feminine: Readings in Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women (1969)

  • Libyan Conflict Erupts on Pennsylvania Avenue

    by Jo Freeman

    Supporters of the Libyan insurgency have been demonstrating in front of the White House every Saturday between 3:00 and 5:00, but they came early last Saturday.

    ANSWER had called for people to come from all over the east coast to protest the bombing of Libya beginning at noon. Local Libyans wanted them to have a warm welcome.

    ANSWER claimed the prime photo-op spot in the street, closest to the White House. About a hundred people marched and chanted with printed signs saying “NO War for Oil” and “STOP US/NATO War on Libya.”

    Facing them about fifteen feet away was a long line of about fifty Libyans waving the flag of the insurgency. They chanted “Our Blood. Our Tears. For Forty Years.” Their signs said “Thank You Obama,” “Thank You NATO.”

    Keeping the two sides a safe distance apart were six officers from the US Park Police. Every now and then they had to move the line of Libyans back as it slowly encroached on the de-politicized zone. After an hour, the cops decided it would be easier to demarcate the DPZ and out came sections of barricades which, when linked, left the two groups to harangue each other across a fifteen foot alley populated by photographers.

    After calling the demonstration, ANSWER decided to expand its reach to include the Ivory Coast. About a dozen Ivorians joined the picket with signs supporting President GbaGbo and telling “France/UN” to get out of the Cote d’Ivoire.

    Demographically the two protests were quite different.

    About eighty percent of the four dozen Libyans were women and young children. I asked one why there were so few men and she initially said that this is what the protests looked like in Libya itself. When I pressed her, she said the men were afraid of retaliation against their families.

    The ANSWER pickets had gender balance, but no children. Almost all were twenty-somethings, with a scattering of men over fifty. Except for the Ivorians, they didn’t look like they came from Africa or the Middle-East but they did have a lot more dark faces than the Libyans.

    Behind the ANSWER picket line was a long table manned by three members of the Nation of Islam, wearing their trademark suits and bow-ties in 90 degree heat. They weren’t chanting or holding signs, but were selling the NOI newspaper and CDs. I didn’t see any buyers. They said they were there because the NOI supports Quaddafi, but didn’t mention that the Libyan dictator has long been a generous supporter of the NOI. In fact Quaddafi and NOI head Louis Farrakhan have been allies for many years.

    Another Quaddafi supporter is former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. She has twice visited Tripoli, spoken on Libyan state TV, and been the featured speaker on a recent US tour sponsored by ANSWER.

    ANSWER is a front group for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which split from the Worker’s World Party in 2004. Its Stalinist ancestry perhaps explains its knee-jerk opposition to anything done by the “imperialist powers” – which currently means the US, NATO and France. Its leaflet for this event said “it is time to stand up and oppose the racist logic of humanitarian intervention.”

    The Libyans said they weren’t mobilized by any organization. They are a loose network of people who know each other and pass on information through e-mail and Facebook. That’s how they knew to come early for their weekly Saturday demonstration so ANSWER wouldn’t have Pennsylvania Ave. to itself.

    ©2011 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com

  • Is It Speed-Dating Or Dîner En Blanc

    Dinner in White, 2007

    The original Dinner in White  held it’s first event over 20 years ago in Paris, the most recent edition being held this past May. Here is the premise of the event, as described by the company who not only presents the happening but controls the *guest list.

    “After Paris, Lyon, Amsterdam, Munich, Zurich, Berlin, and Montréal, New York will have at last its first Dîner en Blanc (Dinner in White) this summer.”

    “Thousand of people, dressed all in white, and conducting themselves with the greatest decorum, elegance, and etiquette, all meet for a mass “chic picnic” in a public space.”

    “Over the course of an evening, the diners enhance the function and value of their city’s public space by participating in the unexpected. Beyond the spectacle and refined elegance of the dinner itself, guests are brought together from diverse backgrounds by a love of beauty and good taste.”

    “The ‘Dîner en Blanc’ recalls the elegance and glamour of court society, and diners engage one another knowing they are taking part in a truly magical event.”

    “There are no disruptions: no car traffic, no pedestrian traffic — except for the occasional amazed and astonished looks from passersby at the scene unfolding before them. And we, as they, wonder whether it’s all not a dream …”

    There are two websites and a Facebook page that can be consulted.  (http://newyork.dinerenblanc.info/, http://newyork.dinerenblanc.info/) The date is set for the first New York version  (August 25th ) and perhaps all the invitations have been sent out to a secret, selective list, limited to 1,000 guests. The Paris event nowadays numbers are quoted totaling as many as 15,000.

    *However, you can register for the Waiting List. In the meantime, here’s a YouTube of the event in Paris by an American tourist, who so aptly mused that it could be a speed-dating event.

    The New York Times story recently described the beginnings of the event thusly:

    This annual event, called the Dîner en Blanc — the “dinner in white” — is like a gustatory Brigadoon, equal parts mystery, anachronism and caprice. Now attended by thousands at some of the best-known Parisian spaces, it began humbly in 1988. That year, François Pasquier, now 67, returned to Paris after a few years abroad and held a dinner party to reconnect with friends. So many wanted to come that he asked them to convene at the Bois de Boulogne and to dress in white, so they could find each other.

  • Book Review: Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine: Pleasure, Value and Adventure Beyond Wine’s Usual Suspects

    by Sharon Kapnick

    I look for value wherever I go. I buy clothes when they’re on sale. When I donate to public radio or charity, I try to do it when there’s a matching offer. Sometimes I decide what I think a fair price is, and I look around until I find it — or something very close to it. So when I notice the word “value” in a book title about wine, I pay attention.

    As I did recently when I went to hear Mark Oldman speak at the James Beard Foundation about his new book, Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine: Pleasure, Value and Adventure Beyond Wine’s Usual Suspects, published by W.W. Norton; 333 pp.

    I knew that Oldman was already an award-winning writer. His first book, Oldman’s Guide to Outsmarting Wine, won the Georges Duboeuf Best Wine Book of the Year Award. It covers the usual suspects and helps you navigate the world of wine with ease. His second book is a spin-off of the Secret Alternatives section in it.Oldman's book

    In Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine, he explains that you pay a comfort premium for popular, familiar wines, so value is to be found in the less familiar varietals — the also-delicious-but-not-yet-particularly-sexy wines. Oldman calls these wines his Brave New Pours. Many have recently improved, he explains, because “an ambitious new generation of winemakers and improved winemaking technology [have been] revitalizing forgotten grapes and revamping wine regions throughout the world…. The diversity of wines and their quality and affordability has never been greater.”

    So this is a perfect time to try them. With these Brave New Pours, Oldman may at first take you beyond your comfort zone (although some will, I imagine, already be in your repertoire). Hopefully you won’t stay there long because these are the wines that captivate wine experts. As you become familiar with them, many should please you too. Most average under $20 a bottle, some cost $10 or less. They offer excellent quality for their price.

    Among the 43 wines Oldman includes are the crisp, aromatic Moschofilero from Greece; the semi-sparkling white Txakoli from Spain’s Basque country; Aglianico, southern Italy’s most prestigious red; and California’s hearty Petite Sirah. He also recommends reliable producers, suggests food matches and provides pronunciations when necessary. One of my favorite sections is “Enthusiasts Also Like” —  “If You Like This, You’ll Also Like That” recommendations. There are other helpful sections that may become your favorites.

    BOTTOM LINE: Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine is a wonderful book for those eager to escape their Pinot Grigio-Chardonnay-Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot wine rut. The book speaks to readers with different levels of wine experience and knowledge. It’s just my kind of summer reading. (Of course, it’s de rigueur in fall, winter and spring too.)

    ©2011 Sharon Kapnick for SeniorWomen.com

  • A Frida Kahlo Painting Comes Home

    Frida Kahlo's Self PortraitA mesmerizing painting we had seen at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art returns to its home after years of travel and display on what would have been the famed painter’s birthday. Right, Exhibition Conservator and Head of Exhibition Services Ken Grant and Preparator Wyndell Faulk inspect Frida Kahlo’s Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.

    The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, celebrates the homecoming of one of its most famous and peripatetic art works, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). The painting was put on display on July 6, which was Kahlo’s 104th birthday, and run through January 8, 2012.

    Since 1990 the painting has been on almost continuous loan, featured in exhibitions in more than 25 museums in the United States and around the world, in countries such as Australia, Canada, France and Spain.

    The painting was most recently on view in exhibitions in Berlin, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Madrid, Spain. It will next be on view in the three-venue exhibition “In Wonderland: The Surrealist Activities of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States,” organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). This exhibition will be on view at LACMA from Jan. 29, 2012 through May 6, 2012; at the Musee National des Beaux-arts du Quebec in Quebec City, Canada, from June 7 to Sept. 3, 2012; and at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, Mexico, from Sept. 27, 2012 through Jan. 13, 2013.

    Kahlo (1907-1954) taught herself how to paint after she was severely injured in a bus accident at the age of 18. For Kahlo, painting became an act of cathartic ritual, and her symbolic images portray a cycle of pain, death and rebirth.

    Kahlo’s affair in New York City with her friend, the Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray (1892-1965), which ended in 1939, and her divorce from the artist Diego Rivera at the end of the year, left her heartbroken and lonely, but she produced some of her most powerful and compelling paintings and self-portraits during this time.

  • Pew: In Two Years of Economic Recovery, Women Lost Jobs, Men Found Them

    by Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director for Research, Pew Hispanic Center

    Overview

    The sluggish recovery from the Great Recession has been better for men than for women. From the end of the recession in June 2009 through May 2011, men gained 768,000 jobs and lowered their unemployment rate by 1.1 percentage points to 9.5%.1 Women, by contrast, lost 218,000 jobs during the same period, and their unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 8.5%, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

    These post-recession employment trends are a sharp turnabout from the gender patterns that prevailed during the recession itself, when men lost more than twice as many jobs as women. Men accounted for 5.4 million, or 71%, of the 7.5 million jobs that disappeared from the U.S. economy from December 2007 through June 2009.

    Employment trends during the recovery have favored men over women in all but one of the 16 major sectors of the economy identified in this report. In five sectors, notably in retail trade, men have gained jobs while women have lost them. In five other sectors, including education and health services and professional and business services, men gained jobs at a faster rate than women. And in an additional five sectors, such as construction and local governments, men lost jobs at a slower rate than women. The sole exception to these patterns is state government, a sector of the economy in which women have added jobs during the recovery while men have lost them.

    A Historical Perspective: What Is New About this Recovery?

    From a gender perspective, the recovery from the Great Recession has defied modern norms. Women fared better than men in the first two years of all other economic recoveries since 1970. Both women and men gained jobs, with women doing so at a faster rate, immediately after the recessions in 1969-70, 1973-75, 1980-82 and 1990-91.2 Neither women nor men gained jobs two years into the recovery from the 2001 recession, but losses for women were only half as much as for men. The recovery from the Great Recession is the first since 1970 in which women have lost jobs even as men have gained them.