John Gardner is a photographer living in Terre Haute, Indiana. I had the pleasure of seeing his work at the Swope Art Museum, where it is part of the exhibition “Reflecting Terre Haute” (closes March 10). Gardner is represented by a slide-show of his Nothing to say, black-and-white photographs of Terre Haute’s empty signs.
Elaine and I have grown to love the Queen City of the Wabash. It is faded, friendly, and unpretentious. It has several small museums— here’s a post on one — and its own Taj Mahal, an excellent Indian restaurant. Here’s a photograph of my favorite not-empty Terre Haute sign.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
John Gardner, Nothing to say
Netflix and Limbaugh
[See updates below.]
From The Atlantic (via Boing Boing), here’s a list of advertisers still doing business with Rush Limbaugh. The list includes Netflix.
I called Netflix last night to share my thoughts on the company’s Limbaugh connection and spoke with a friendly person who offered to type, word for word, what I had to say. She made it clear that Netflix is interested in what subscribers think about the matter. The Netflix toll-free number, open around the clock:
8:52 a.m.: The Atlantic now says: “Netflix emails to say it doesn’t advertise on Rush. We’re waiting to hear back whether the company just bought ads on the local radio station or what.”
2:29 p.m.: Netflix’s Director of Corporate Communications Joris Evers tells Boing Boing that
Netflix has not purchased and does not purchase advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show. We do buy network radio advertising and have confirmed that two Netflix spots were picked up in error as part of local news breaks during the Rush Limbaugh show. We have instructed our advertising agency to make sure that this error will not happen again.A related post
Homer and Limbaugh and epithets
Recently updated
The Artist (and typography) Now with a link to a type designer’s take on the film. There’s so much to see when you know what you’re seeing.
Monday, March 5, 2012
A handy mnemonic
A handy mnemonic I am sharing with my students, with whom I’ll be watching King Lear in room 3290. How to remember the room:
Room 3290 sits at the northwest corner of the building. The northwest corner is the corner closest to Grant Avenue. Cary Grant starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. The title of that film comes from William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote King Lear.
Or just write down 3290.
Does anyone have a good mnemonic for seven o’clock?
A related post
Mnemonic
[“I am only mad north by northwest” (Hamlet II.2). It’ll be the Great Performances production of Lear, with Ian McKellen.]
Friday, March 2, 2012
Homer and Limbaugh and epithets
Surely Rush Limbaugh is not so deranged as to believe that the epithet slut applies to Sandra Fluke, the law student who testified before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act. No: Limbaugh’s purpose is to intimidate by letting women know the price they may expect to pay if they speak publicly about affordable access to contraception.
Limbaugh’s language has a peculiar resonance for me, as I just taught book 22 of Homer’s Odyssey. In that episode of the poem, a dozen women of Odysseus’ household are executed by hanging. Their crime: sleeping with the enemy, Penelope’s suitors, the young men who have taken over the household in Odysseus’ absence. Odysseus’ son Telemachus calls for the women’s execution, not, as Odysseus has directed, by sword (a “clean” death) but by hanging. And in three prominent translations (Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Fagles, Stanley Lombardo), Telemachus explains his decision by calling the women “sluts.” There’s no equivalent to slut in the Greek. In Richmond Lattimore’s highly literal Odyssey, these women “have slept with the suitors.”
A chilling recognition that might arise in a careful reading of the Odyssey : by the end of the poem, these women are forgotten. When Zeus and Athena work out a resolution to the conflict in Odysseus’ kingdom, they decide that all memory of the dead suitors will be removed from the minds of their surviving relatives. But the women of Odysseus’ house are never even remembered before being forgotten: in the ancient economy of persons, their lives and deaths do not count. The poem, we might say, does not care for them.
I’ve stumbled three or four times in writing this post, not sure what point I want to make about this ugly synchronicity of epithets. Homer’s poem is elsewhere deeply attuned to difficulties of women’s lives, and Odysseus and Penelope’s homophrosunê [like-mindedness] offers a startlingly modern way to think about the meaning of marriage. But in Odyssey 22, it is men who have the final word over women’s choices. Current events are all too reminiscent of that scenario.
Related reading and viewing
Sandra Fluke’s testimony (C-SPAN)
Rush Limbaugh’s remarks (Media Matters)
[The translations: Robert Fitzgerald (1961): “you sluts, who lay with suitors.” Robert Fagles (1996): “You sluts — the suitors’ whores!” Stanley Lombardo (2000): “the suitors’ sluts.” Margaret Atwood’s reimagining of Homeric narrative, The Penelopiad (2005), creates a voice for these women.]
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Mark Bauerlein on learning
Mark Bauerlein on what makes education possible:
For education to happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of influence and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine, and conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity — a beautiful artwork you are forced to inspect even though it leaves you cold; an ancient city you have to detail even though history puts you to sleep; a microeconomic problem you have to solve even though you fumble with arithmetic. To take them in, to assimilate the objects intelligently, the intellectual tool kit must expand and attitudes must soften. If the first apprehension stalls, you can’t mutter, “I don’t get it — this isn’t for me.” You have to say, “I don’t get it, and maybe that’s my fault.” You have to accept the sting of relinquishing a cherished notion, of admitting a defect in yourself. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s simple admonition should be the rule: “You must change your life.”Bauerlein’s insulting title makes me wince. His sub-subtitle — Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30 — makes me cringe. My thoughts about poetry and difficulty are far different from his. But I like what he says in this passage about persistence and humility in the face of the unfamiliar.
From The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008).
“You must change your life”: “Du mußt dein Leben ändern,” from the last line of “Archaïscher Torso Apollos” [Archaic torso of Apollo].
Related posts
John Holt on learning and difficulty
Learning, failure, and character
“In March read”
What are you planning to read this March that you’ve always meant to read? Me: Euripides.
Other reading posters
“October’s Bright Blue Weather”
“January: A year of good reading ahead”
“The Vacation Reading Club”
[Always: loosely meant.]
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Remove YouTube history
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: How to Remove Your YouTube Viewing and Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect. Google’s new policy takes effect on March 1.
A related post
Remove Google search history
[Did you know that YouTube tracks your viewing history? I didn’t. As we used to say in Brooklyn, “It’s none of your bee-eye-business.”]
Remove Google search history
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google’s New Privacy Policy Takes Effect. Thanks to this leap year, you have one more day to remove and pause your search history before Google’s new policy takes effect on March 1.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Faux classic typewriter
Related posts
Hemingway’s typewriter
Jack Kerouac’s last typewriter
The legendary notebook of . . .
Montblanc “Yes We Can” pen
[What is the Latin for hipster?]
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