There are still some unspoiled parts of Rhode Island, and a fine day in June, before the crowds of summer, is an ideal time to appreciate it.
Here are a few Rhode Island photographs for you.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged june, photograph, postaday, rhode island | 2 Comments »
I love the staircases from around the world that are posted at Catraca Livre. Wish I could remember where I got this link. Andrew Sullivan? Twitter? This Is Colossal? It’s been a while since I saw it.
I picked the staircase with the koi fish to show you, but there are 16 other amazing staircases at the site. The website is based in Brazil and run by Gilberto Dimenstein. I can’t read the Portuguese. If you can, let me know what it says?
“Muitas pessoas fazem o possível para fugir do esforço de subir alguns degraus. Mas para alguns artistas de rua, elas são fontes de inspiração para suas criações. O site BoredPanda listou 17 escadas ao redor do mundo que são verdadeiras obras de artes a céu aberto.”
OK. I guess the pictures originated at Bored Panda, a site we blogged about once before. You should check that, too.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, bored panda, catraca livre, gilberto dimenstein, international, postaday, queminova, staircase, world | 3 Comments »
Someone has finally recognized seaweed for the artistic creation it is.
That someone is Josie Iselin, whose book An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed was reviewed by Dana Jennings in the NY Times Science section Tuesday.
Jennings begins, “The secret to finding unsuspected beauty, artists and naturalists will tell you, is in knowing how to slow down and really look. The writer and photographer Josie Iselin certainly knows how to do that, as she shows in her beguiling new book, An Ocean Garden.
“In her introduction Ms. Iselin … writes, ‘I fell in love with seaweed at the kitchen counter.’ (She would bring back samples and study them there.) And it vexes her that others don’t share in her tidal pool crush. …
“The 100 color photographs here, though, just might convince some people … The book focuses on seaweeds found in Maine and California, both states she has lived in; the species names tickle the tongue in the same way that the seaweeds themselves can tingle bare feet: knotweed and bladderwrack, bull kelp and green scrap, pepper dulse and sugar kelp, Turkish towel and Irish moss.” Read more about the book, here.
We’re headed to the beach this weekend with John and his little ones. Maybe we will be able to identify some seaweeds there.
Photos: Josie Iselin
Clockwise from top left, seaweeds from Josie Iselin’s new book: Macrocystis, Ulva lobata, Calliarthron tuberculosum, Egregia menziesii, Gloiosiphonia verticillaris and coralline algae.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, beach, bladderwrack, Calliarthron tuberculosum, coralline algae, dana jennings, dulse, Egregia menziesii, Gloiosiphonia verticillaris, green scrap, Irish moss, Josie Iselin, kelp, knotweed, Macrocystis, marine, nature, postaday, seaweed, Ulva lobata | 2 Comments »
Schools are not putting as much emphasis on handwriting as they used to, given the growing use of electronic devices, and that can be a good thing in some ways. (As a teacher, I was bored witless checking penmanship workbooks.)
But guess what. The Law of Unintended Consequences is rearing its head.
Maria Konnikova writes at the NY Times, “Psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.
“Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how. …
“A 2012 study [published in Trends in Neuroscience and Education] led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again. …
“When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write … By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. ” More here.
Konnikova reports that even doubters of the study’s significance wonder if the act of writing by hand makes you think more.
Photo: Karin James
Samples of handwriting by young children.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged brain activity, cursive, freehand, handwriting, indiana unversity, karin james, Maria Konnikova, Neuroscience and Education, neuroscientist, penmanship, postaday, psychologist | 9 Comments »
Here are some photographs from Greater Boston this spring.
The first three represent the work of an exceptional landscaper in an office building downtown.
I also want to show you that the Barking Crab may be surrounded by construction in the Seaport District but is still open for business. There’s a tall ship in the Harbor. The blue whale in the Greenway carousel is ready to ride, and the Greenway demonstration garden is producing strawberries. The Dewey Square farmers market has plenty of produce and flowers.
I threw in the third-floor balcony at home.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dewey square, farmers market, greenway, new england, photo, photography, postaday, tall ship | 2 Comments »
Sindya N. Bhanoo writes at the NY Times about a surprising discovery under the waters of Lake Huron.
“A 9,000-year-old stone structure used to capture caribou has been discovered 120 feet beneath the surface of Lake Huron. Researchers say it is the most complex structure of its kind in the Great Lakes region. …
“The remarkable structure consists of a lane with two parallel lines of stones leading to a cul-de-sac. Within the lines are three circular hunting blinds where prehistoric hunters hid while taking aim at caribou. …
“The site was discovered using sonar technology on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge, 35 miles southeast of Alpena, Mich., which was once a dry land corridor connecting northeastern Michigan to southern Ontario.
“In their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers suggest that the hunting structure was used in the spring, when large groups of hunter-gatherers assembled.”
Hard to imagine life 9,000 years ago. Anthropological archaeologists have the best fun. More here.
Photo: University of Michigan via Associated Press
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alpena-Amberley Ridge, anthropological, archaeologist, caribou, great lakes, hunter's cabin, hunters, michigan, National Academy of Sciences, postaday, prehistoric, sindya n. bhanoo, sonar, under water, underwater | 2 Comments »
As a child, I used to go to my father’s college reunions. All very rah-rah. Now I go to my husband’s at Haverford, which are more self-deprecating and lend themselves to funny stories about football players having to go through the cafeteria line and beg bookworms to come scrimmage.
I spent the weekend pondering whether the more-aged classmates got that way because they quit work or quit work because their health failed. And — amid conversations with people I never see, stimulating panel talks, green-green lawns and trees with nameplates, funny speeches and boring speeches, catching up with a friend who married one of the engineering majors, taking a campus tour, and attending a Quaker memorial service for the deceased classmates — wondering if I would go to my own when it comes around.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged college, haverford, postaday, reunion | Leave a Comment »
At my husband’s college reunion yesterday, we heard a former classmate talk about a wonderfully innovative school he founded in San Diego (High Tech High).
After hearing that a fairly typical class project was developing a genetic bar code to identify endangered species in the bush, my husband wondered how such an inventive school can function in today’s teaching-to-the-test world. I myself figured that whatever the kids absorb from meaningful projects and cutting-edge teaching they absorb deeply enough to pass tests if they need to.
And when I think of the lengths to which test mania is going, I think more schools should learn from High Tech High. Consider the latest testing aberration: robots grading essays.
Les Perelman at the Boston Globe gives examples:
” ‘According to professor of theory of knowledge Leon Trotsky, privacy is the most fundamental report of humankind. Radiation on advocates to an orator transmits gamma rays of parsimony to implode.‘
“Any native speaker over age 5 knows that the preceding sentences are incoherent babble. But a computer essay grader, like the one Massachusetts may use as part of its new public school tests, thinks it is exceptionally good prose.
“PARCC, the consortium of states including Massachusetts that is developing assessments for the Common Core Curriculum, has contracted with Pearson Education, the same company that graded the notorious SAT essay, to grade the essay portions of the Common Core tests. Some students throughout Massachusetts just took the pilot test, which wasted precious school time on an exercise that will provide no feedback to students or to their schools.
“It was, however, not wasted time for Pearson. The company is using these student essays to train its robo-grader to replace one of the two human readers grading the essay, although there are no published data on their effectiveness in correcting human readers.
“Robo-graders do not score by understanding meaning but almost solely by use of gross measures, especially length and the presence of pretentious language. The fallacy underlying this approach is confusing association with causation. A person makes the observation that many smart college professors wear tweed jackets and then believes that if she wears a tweed jacket, she will be a smart college professor.” More here.
Uh-oh. Sounds like the children’s book Petunia. Fortunately, a timely explosion taught the silly goose that books have pages you need to read, that carrying a book under your wing doesn’t make you smart.
More explosions needed.
Photo: blog.spoongraphics.co.uk
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged class, Common Core Curriculum, education, grading, high tech high, les perelman, parcc, Pearson Education, petunia, postaday, robot, school, silly goose, spoongraphics, student, test, testing | Leave a Comment »
Today I need the Indian goddess with the many arms because I want to say about the Barnes Collection in its new home, “On the one hand, on the other hand, on the third hand …”
After I saw the documentary The Art of the Steal, about how the fabulous art collection that was willed to a historically black college to keep it from art-world experts ended up in the hands of art world experts, I thought a trustee at Lincoln University had sold his patrimony for a mess of pottage. Now I think that receiving untold wealth is a curse and the donor better have a good plan and lots of resources to support the unfortunate recipient. (More about the movie.)
That’s two hands.
On Thursday, having visited the Albert C. Barnes collection in its new Philadelphia Museum of Art building, I needed a few more hands.
On the third hand, the building is gorgeous in its simplicity and displays the art (69 Cezannes, anyone? How about 60 Matisses? 44 Picassos? 178 Renoirs? Do you love Seurat? Van Gogh? Pennsylvania Dutch furniture?) in the quirky layout of the old Merion, Pa., setting and without labels as Barnes did. On the fourth hand, lack of labels is annoying. On the fifth hand, the art experts provide an ipod with lectures on selected works and a booklet to identify all the items exhibited. On the sixth hand, faithful as the layout is, Dr. Barnes, who made his money in pharmaceuticals and wanted ordinary working families to enjoy and study art without the filter of the art establishment — would have had a heart attack about the entry fee and the standard gift shop and coffee shop and other luxurious museum appointments.
The museum is definitely worth seeing, for the building, the art, and the way the roaring controversy was all handled. But it’s the little things I will cherish like finding black and white illustrations that reminded me of Dickens illustrations and turned out to be by the school friend Barnes asked to help form his taste and get him started on collecting (William Glackens).
Giorgio de Chirico, Portrait of Albert C. Barnes, 1926
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, art expert, art of the steal, barnes, Cezanne, collection, foundation, Giorgio de Chirico, Matisse, museum, pharmaceutical, philadelphia, Picasso, postaday, renoir, seurat, Van Gogh, workingman | 2 Comments »
We watched Only When I Dance on Netflix last weekend, and afterward my husband did a Google search on the dancer who won the awards.
(The other dancer was heartbreaking. She was told that because she was black, there would be no opportunity in Brazil to join a company and she’d have to win a place abroad. Abroad, they told her she weighed too much — even though she was quite slender. Her family was poor and sacrificed everything for her.)
Dancer Irlan Silva ended up at the Boston Ballet.
James H. Burnett III wrote about him for the Globe. “At 23, Silva is a rising talent with Boston Ballet. But six years ago he wasn’t sure whether he’d even live long enough to see his dream of a career in ballet come to fruition. …
“Where he came from — a gritty favela in Rio de Janeiro — was documented in a critically acclaimed 2009 documentary called Only When I Dance, in which Silva and another dancer from the slums of Rio, Isabela Coracy, battle the odds in pursuit of their careers. Favelas, shanty towns that surround the city, are rife with poverty and violence. …
“Silva’s interest in ballet developed when he attended a professional performance at the age of 10. ‘I was hooked immediately,’ he says.
“He says his natural flexibility and leaping ability carried him until he was able to receive formal training, but not every flexible would-be dancer in Brazil was able to land a spot in Centro de Dança Rio, the nation’s premier ballet school.
“ ‘My teacher — a great teacher — Mariza Estrella is responsible for inspiring me and pushing me on my way, out of the nest.’ …
” ‘Ballet can be expensive,’ he says. ‘My mother ran a cafe from her home. She still does in the same place. And she just made sure I had whatever I needed, like ballet shoes. …
“His father … Irenildo Santos, a factory worker in Rio, said through an interpreter in a recent phone interview that his son’s dancing ability was what convinced him that ballet was a worthwhile pursuit.
“ ‘We live in a very tough community. It can be very dangerous. There is crime. And there are even people who wish to harm you if you don’t behave in a certain way or fit a certain mold. … But when I saw him dance the first time, I was very moved. And now I am his fan. I am his biggest fan.’ ” Read more.
Photo: Essdras M Suarez/Boston Globe
Dancer Irlan Silva
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged boston ballet, brasil, brazil, Centro de Dança Rio, dance, Essdras M Suarez, favela, irlan silva, Isabela Coracy, James H. Burnett III, Mariza Estrella, only when i dance, postaday, poverty, rio, Rio de Janeiro, sacrifice, shanty | Leave a Comment »
It’s a little hard to get my head around using this topic for an opera, but an article at FastCo Design makes it seem almost logical.
“A legendary 1960s battle over the urban design of New York City is getting its dramatic due. The struggle between urban planner Robert Moses and journalist/activist Jane Jacobs over Moses’s proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway will become an opera, thanks to composer Judd Greenstein and director Joshua Frankel.
“Moses and Jacobs had deeply divergent visions of New York City’s future. Moses was the powerful planner behind a swath of New York City expressways that displaced half a million people during his reign as the city’s master builder. He envisioned a city built for easy driving.
“Jacobs, who popularized the idea of eyes on the street — the notion that streets are safer and more vibrant when there are pedestrians on them — vehemently opposed Moses’s plans to raze Washington Square Park and much of Greenwich Village, where she lived, to build yet more miles of highway.” More here.
If you ask nicely, I will sing you the lyrics Arnold Horwitt wrote to the tune of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (substituting the word Moses) that the crowd sang on a ferry ride to protest a road Moses proposed for Fire Island.
Photo: FastCoDesign
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arnold Horwitt, fastco design, fire island, jane jacobs, Joshua Frankel, Judd Greenstein, opera, postaday, redevelopment, robert moses, urban design | 6 Comments »
Zachary Sampson has a nice article at the Globe today. It’s about a project in Boston enlisting passersby to help create a mural.
The mural “was created by artist Ernest McKinley English. He joined with ArtLifting — a Boston organization that works with homeless and disabled artists — to organize the project, which he said was meant to foster collaboration. …
“Liz Powers, cofounder of ArtLifting, said English’s vision dovetails with her organization’s purpose. ‘Both Ernest and ArtLifting have the mission of bringing people together through art, building community through art,’ she said.”
The mural “held a hidden message that would be revealed upon completion. …
“The part-in-a-whole ethic resonated with many of the artists who worked on the piece, both amateur and professional.
“ ‘I think the greatest message,’ [artist Randy] Nicholson said, ‘is as a community, we can accomplish what we can’t as individuals.’ ” More here.
Years ago, Suzanne and John helped paint a beautiful mural about our town for the commuter rail station. Their names were included in the credits and we always felt proud reading them when we passed by.
Photo: Michele McDonald for the Boston Globe
Sisters work on paint-by-numbers mural outside the Prudential Center.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, artist, ArtLifting, community building, disabled, Ernest McKinley English, homeless, liz powers, Michele McDonald, mural, paint by numbers, postaday, randy nicholson, Zachary Sampson | Leave a Comment »
An Imperial Elegy
by Wilfred Owen
Not one corner of a foreign field
But a span as wide as Europe;
An appearance of a titan’s grave,
And the length thereof a thousand miles,
It crossed all Europe like a mystic road,
Or as the Spirits’ Pathway lieth on the night.
And I heard a voice crying
This is the Path of Glory.
@-> @-> @->
Born in Shropshire, England, poet Wilfred Owen is best known for telling the truth of what he saw in World War I, a war joined too lightheartedly by many of his countrymen 100 years ago. He died at the Sambre-Oise Canal a week before the Armistice was signed.
Read more about Owen here.
Photo: Suzanne’s Mom
Azalea moving to the next phase
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged memorial day, poem, poet, poetry, postaday, shropshire, wilfred own, world war I, wwI | 2 Comments »
If you like trompe l’oeil painting — that sleight of hand that makes you think you are seeing one thing when it’s really another — you will love “invisible” architecture.
Writes Mallika Rao at the Huffington Post, ” ‘Invisible’ architecture isn’t a novel concept … But it’s an evolving one. Given the pace of technological change, an architect is never done finding fresh ways to make a building disappear.”
Consider the picture below.
“The revelation is the technology the architects chose not to use,” says Rao. “No fancy LEDs or futuristic materials are needed to build “Invisible Barn,” as the parallelogram-shaped structure pictured in Socrates Sculpture Park is known. The brainchild of the New York-based architecture firm stpmj, it’s designed to be made of wood and sheeted with mirror film, at a cost of $5,000.
“The idea is to ‘blur the perceptual boundary’ between object and setting, according to a statement sent by the architects to The Huffington Post. Niches built into the structure mean the experience changes the closer you get — up close, you can see where true birch trees turn into reflected ones. …
“If it seems whimsical, that’s because the idea was hatched for the Folly contest, an annual event held by the Architectural League of New York. The name references the age-old concept of the ‘architectural folly,’ a fanciful, small building typically set in a garden as a conversation starter.” More here.
Photo: stpmj, an architecture firm
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Architectural League of New York, architecture, art, contest, folly, invisible, invisible barn, Mallika Rao, postaday, Socrates Sculpture Park, stpmj, trompe l'oeil | 2 Comments »
Photo: Thomas Ondrey/The Plain Dealer
Zumba instructor Kelly Perkins, center, leads a group dance-walking through Shaker Heights on Friday. The local version of the craze was organized by Shaker resident Jennifer Lehner.
Mary Ann is one of Cleveland’s biggest boosters. This week she’s been posting on Facebook about a dance-walk outing she joined Friday.
Janet Cho at the Cleveland Plain Dealer interviewed dance-walk organizer Jennifer Lehner.
“The idea came out of a backyard barbecue,” Cho writes. Lehner “was chatting with her friend Karen Katz, wife of Fire Food & Drink’s Doug Katz, about the fun YouTube video where WNBC television reporter Ben Aaron convinces New Yorkers to strut their stuff with him down the city streets.
” ‘We should do that!’ Katz said.
” ‘About one hour later I went home and bought the dancewalkfitness.com domain, set up the website and the Facebook page,’ she said. ‘You know, that’s just how I roll.’ …
“Lehner envisions tying the dance-walks in with her monthly Flash Cashers events, since the group might end up having lunch at a local restaurant after the workout.
“Flash-Cashers summons consumers to descend upon a local Shaker Heights-area business to spend at least $20 each during the cash mob event, giving the merchant a welcome one-night boost and increasing awareness among residents who may never have stepped foot in the store before.” Read more at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, here.
And here is Ben Aaron, who started the whole thing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ben aaron, cleveland, cleveland plain dealer, craze, dance, exercise, Fire Food & Drink, fitness, Flash Cashers, janet h. cho, Jennifer Lehner, karen katz, Kelly Perkins, postaday, Thomas Ondrey, walking, zumba | 2 Comments »
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