There is a huge structure in the middle of the Greenway that the inventive Sam and Leslie of Uni Project fame once envisioned as a projection screen for summer film festivals. It houses the Big Dig’s ventilation system.
About a week ago I was walking past and noticed what looked like window washers cleaning it. I thought, “Now, why would anyone want to wash that thing?”
A couple days later I saw why. Prepping the canvas.
This is in Dewey Square, where less than one year ago Occupy Boston pitched camp.
Now, writes Geoff Edgers in the Boston Globe, “That’s where Os Gemeos (‘the twins’), famous in the street art world for creating towering cartoonish figures with bright colors and grimacing expressions, began work on their first Boston piece. Depending on weather, they’ll need a little over a week to craft the mural on a wall of a Big Dig ventilation building and a second, smaller piece on the Revere Hotel near Boston Common.
“The pieces are part of the first solo museum exhibition in the United States for Os Gemeos. The Institute of Contemporary Art show, featuring paintings, mixed media works, and installations, opens Aug. 1.”
Read more and check out other art by these guys at the Globe.
You might also like to read the museum’s description of the brothers’ upcoming the exhibition:
“This August the ICA will present the first solo exhibition in the United States of works by the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo. Best known as Os Gêmeos, the twins are a major force in graffiti and urban art. The twins have a deep bond; they are tireless collaborators and say that they often experience the same dreams. In an effort to share their dreams with the world, they depict their visions in surreal paintings, sculpture, and installations: human figures with removable faces, exploding bursts of color, and room-size heads installed with shanty interiors.”
This blog uses WordPress site statistics, and it appears that early this morning someone from a country called Réunion visited Suzanne’s Mom’s Blog.
I admit to ignorance. I don’t think I have ever heard of Réunion.
So I looked it up. It’s an island in the Indian Ocean.
“Réunion Island (in French, La Réunion ) is a multicultural society composed of people originally from France, Mozambique, India, China, Madagascar, and the Comores. Islanders use their ethnic origins to define themselves as Cafres (African ancestry) Z’oreilles (born in mainland France), malabars or Tamouls (from Tamil Nadu southern India), Z’arabes (from Gujarat in northern India), Chinois (from China), Malgaches (from Madagascar), Comores (from Comores), Petits blancs (poor rural whites living in the highlands), or Creoles blancs (white landowners). The term Creole today also applies to people with a mixed ethnic background. All the residents of the island are administratively French citizens.”
You might also send me your best guess as to why someone from this island a world away landed at this blog. Could the Réunion visitor have been the person who searched on the words “Arab mom blog”? Or was that the visitor from Bulgaria?
I love reading what people search on and trying to guess how they landed here. This is not an Arab mom blog or any kind of mom blog, but since I have “mom” and “blog” in the title and sometimes mention family from Egypt, Google decides to send folks here.
Manolo, head of audio at SoundCloud, explained to a few of us in the office last week how SoundCloud works.
The way I understand it, SoundCloud is sort of like a YouTube for audio except that you may have to pay. A lot of musicians use it. It’s good for social-networking purposes because it’s fast. You don’t need to download a separate player to hear the audio. It starts playing automatically, as you can see below.
Manolo said something about “two weeks free,” but I’m not sure I understand that part yet. The clip below, from a South African nonprofit is one track that seems to be free at any time. There are other tracks from magazines like the Economist, which I assume the owners want you to use and won’t charge.
But if you want to upload your music, bird calls, or soundbites, I guess that’s where you have only two free weeks.
If anyone understands this better, please let me know. I want to experiment.
Hear kids at the Children’s Radio Foundation in South Africa wish a happy 94th Birthday to Nelson Mandela.
My husband saw a story about this on a German television station.
It seems that in the English towns of Todmorden and Hebden Bridge (names that could only have been invented by a hobbit), stealth farmers are growing vegetables and telling everyone to pick and eat.
At Eat Local Guide,Vincent Graff quotes a cheerful officer at a police station where vegetables are planted and harvested without the station’s permission.
” ‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.
“For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots — and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town — are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they’re in season, they’re yours. Free.
“So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor’s surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.
“The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country that is self-sufficient in food.
” ‘And we want to do it by 2018,’ says Mary Clear, 56, a grandmother of ten and co-founder of Incredible Edible, as the scheme is called.” More from Eat Local here.
At the Guardian, reporter Tracy McVeigh is equally enthusiastic:
“There is an extraordinary sign on the outside of a well-tended West Yorkshire vegetable garden: ‘Help yourself.’
“In the same town this summer, people will be helping themselves to sweetcorn growing around the police station. Compost and watering cans seized in drug farm raids find use in the local gardens. And come the autumn a trip to see a local doctor will be a pick-your-own free-for-all as the health centre’s grounds have been turned into orchards.
“Grieving families who want a rose bush at the graveyard are encouraged to think productive – in one case leading to a remembrance garden of broccoli.
“Meanwhile, commuters can snip fresh herbs from the beds and pots outside the railway station. It’s all kept weeded by an army of local people who give up an hour or so on the occasional Sunday. More from the Guardian.
The Manhattan Paris Saint-Germain soccer team is made up of both rich and poor boys from many cultures. Coach Wilson Egidio thinks the team’s diversity is part of its success.
Vivian Yee has the story at the New York Times. She writes that Amara, for example, “joined the team after an eagle-eyed former player for Mr. Egidio spotted him playing on a Bronx playground. [He] wound up scoring the goal that made Paris Saint-German the first Manhattan youth club to reach the national playoffs.
“For the players, their coaches and parents, the team’s diversity is a source of success as well as pride. Their international styles, they say, add fluidity and creativity to their game.
“Combined with Mr. Egidio’s Brazilian approach — he grew up in Brazil and played professional soccer there — that could be key in the national tournament.”
John and two college friends rented a motor boat in Fort Point Channel Friday to see the sights of Boston Harbor. But first they motored near my building so I could wave as they passed under this piece of public art.
The Mystic Scenic Studios site explains the art:
“A designer named Peter Agoos approached Mystic Scenic Studios with the idea of creating two life-sized human figures made of aluminum to hang above the Fort Point Channel in Boston.
“Mystic Metal’s, Mike Onischewski, fabricated the figures from an aluminum sheet; [they] were then covered with refractive dichroic film with the help of David Forshee, also of Mystic Scenic Studios.
“The piece was installed on July 2, 2012, with a team of 12 volunteers who worked from a small boat on the water and a scissor lift on land. The piece was strung from a 300-foot yellow tightrope between the Samson Post structure on Summer Street and the counterweight tower on Congress Street. The life-sized figures were counterbalanced on the rope and inspired by a classic articulated wooden artist’s manikin.”
Sunday evening I went over to Concord Academy to hear Seán Curran talk about how he creates choreography. Betsy, one of the dancers from his company, did a beautiful job of demonstrating what he meant.
As a little boy growing up in Watertown, Seán said, he waited eagerly for the mail that brought Look magazine. He liked to cut out pictures and make collages with them.
He says that his approach to choreography is similar. He arranges many snippets or dance phrases in different ways. His challenge is to edit down the many ideas so that the choreography doesn’t topple from too much weight.
I make collages, too. I have always liked the idea of taking a bunch of random things people have said and trying to make a play out of them, for example.
I also make collage greeting cards. I keep a box of promising pictures, cut from magazines and gallery postcards. I go through the whole pile and set aside maybe 20 items that somehow remind me of the person for whom I am making the card. Then I edit them down to the few pieces that will be best for the particular occasion.
All that happens before I cut the shapes and decide on how to arrange them. Sometimes I do a cutout of a cutout and put something else in the space: for example, I cut a vista out of a painting of a window and put a girl in the space (bottom right).
Sunday we drove up to Gloucester to the Cape Ann Museum to see Marsden Hartley‘s Dogtown paintings. I have always liked the spooky quality of the rock formations as represented by Hartley somewhere on the continuum between abstraction and realism. I love the strong outlines and the ambiguous puffy clouds, which convey either hope or irony.
The museum itself is charming in an eclectic way, and I was happy to renew my acquaintance with the work of children’s illustrator Virginia Lee Burton, who spearheaded a local artist collaborative called Folly Cave Designers, creators of wonderful fabrics.
Walker Hancock‘s plaster version of the angel-and-soldier war memorial at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station in Philadelphia is also in the museum. Not to mention all sorts of dories and fishing implements and seafaring works by Fitz Hugh Lane.
We enjoyed walking around Gloucester, the Beauport of Kate Colby’s recent book of poetry. I got a blueberry-lavender lemonade.
Science Daily reports on new research that reaffirms the value of daydreaming.
It’s all about letting our conscious mind take a rest while our unconscious mind puts random but important pieces together for us. Getting enough sleep matters for the same reason.
“In recent years, researchers have explored the idea of rest by looking at the so-called ‘default mode’ network of the brain, a network that is noticeably active when we are resting and focused inward. Findings from these studies suggest that individual differences in brain activity during rest are correlated with components of socioemotional functioning, such as self-awareness and moral judgment, as well as different aspects of learning and memory.”
That’s a mouthful, but you know what they are getting at, right?
I can’t imagine life without daydreaming. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem almost afraid of the empty spaces. I think they miss out on a certain amount of insight and creativity.
Thomas Daigle, an optician in Milford, Massachusetts, is a thrifty guy.
Writes Martine Powers in the Boston Globe, “Daigle, 60, has finally fulfilled the goal he set for himself decades ago: Arriving at the Milford Federal Savings and Loan Association in April with two 200-pound steel boxes, Daigle paid off the couple’s final mortgage payment with the contents — more than 62,000 pennies.
“That day was also the couple’s 35th wedding anniversary. Daigle hopes his story, first reported Wednesday in the Milford Daily News, will teach others the value of good old-fashioned long-term commitment.
“ ‘One of my sons always tells me, “Dad, you’re stuck in the ’50s,” ‘ Daigle said. ‘But it’s how you’re brought up, and it comes down to values.’ …
“It took the bank two days to count the coins, Daigle said, but it turned out his tally was exactly correct — to the cent. The sum was a little more than what Daigle owed, he said, but he did not ask for the surplus.
“ ‘I just wanted the pennies out of my house.’ ”
Wouldn’t you have liked to see the customers’ reactions when the 400 pounds of rolled up coins were delivered? But good for him. I value pennies, too.
Did anyone watch the television show Rin Tin Tin as a kid?
I thought of it today when I read this awesome AP story:
“The birth of a white bison, among the rarest of animals, is bringing Native Americans who consider it a sacred event to celebrate at one of the least likely of places, a farm in New England.
“Hundreds of people, including tribal elders from South Dakota, are expected to attend naming ceremonies later this month at the northwestern Connecticut farm of Peter Fay, a fourth-generation Goshen farmer.
“Native Americans in the area have come with gifts of tobacco and colored flags for Fay and the bull calf since it was born there a month ago, and Fay is planning to offer his hay field as a campsite for the expected crowds.
” ‘They say it’s going to bring good things to all people in the world. How can you beat that? That’s the way I look at it,’ Fay said.” More. (There’s a photo there, too.)
I knew I had to blog about it because I loved the Rin Tin Tin episode when young Rusty is in dire straights and is saved by the White Buffalo. I know the song from that episode by heart. It was one of my brother’s records when he was little, although I don’t think it made it into the website with his blues records.
“There’s an old Indian legend that I heard long ago.
“It’s about a special valley and the White Buffalo.
“The legend says you’ll find it if your heart is brave and true
“And you treat all men as brothers no matter what they do.
“I have searched for that valley since I started to grow.
“I won’t stop until I find it — and the White Buffalo.”
The bimonthly magazine called the Utne Reader likes to showcase alternative and contrarian views on the news. Here’s a sort of hands-across-the world story about taking bluegrass music to Afghanistan.
“My name is Peyton Tochterman. I’m a musician from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I make my living writing, teaching and performing American Folk music—the music that tells stories in notes, chords and verse about who we are and what we Americans are all about. And I’m now in war-torn Afghanistan. …
“In little more than a week we have already met thousands of Afghans and found them to be kind, generous, hospitable, talented and honorable. They take great pride in their heritage and culture, but they also have a thirst for American Folk Music, for the stories we tell, our instruments and the way we play. The Afghan musicians with whom we played are some of the best in the world and were eager to share their masterful techniques and songs.
“Some might ask, ‘What difference can a folk singer from the Blue Ridge Mountains make in a tortured place like Afghanistan?’ It’s a valid question—partly answered by one of the State Department officers who said our visit did ‘more for diplomacy between Afghanistan and the United States than any diplomat had done, more then any road that was built, or any power plant that was constructed in the last year.’ ” Read more.
Today I am thinking about the South End Knitters, the stealth street artists who wrap their knitting around parking meters and fire hydrants and telephone poles.
Writes Linda Matchan in the Boston Globe, “The South End Knitters’ weekly meetings at a Washington Street café seem innocuous, but don’t be fooled. Over knitting needles and yarn at the long table they’ve commandeered, they are contemplating something far more mischievous than a sweater. They’re graffiti knitters, and they’re plotting their next target. …
“As with graffiti, no two tags in the yarn-bomber subculture are alike. They range from sleeves on parking meters to tubes on tree limbs to sweaters on statues: A recent high-profile example is the neon pink sweater that the New York street knitter Olek crocheted in December for the 16-foot ‘Charging Bull’ statue on Wall Street.”
What put me in mind of the South End Knitters was an extraordinary post at the WordPress blog Pickled Hedgehog Dilemma, which describes a crochet effort that is drawing a lot of attention to the plight of vanishing corals.
Concerned about the effect of global warming on reefs, Margaret Wertheim and her twin sister got an idea that involved “crocheting corals. They used a crocheting technique invented by mathematicians in 1997 to model hyperbolic shapes called hyperbolic crocheting. … This ended up being a perfect technique for producing coral reproductions. …
“They crocheted a lot of corals,” continues Pickled Hedgehog, ” then they did something to change the world. They shared their corals with art museums. They got a community in Chicago to crochet with them. Then the crafting became a movement and groups all over the world started to crochet corals.”
Read Pickled Hedgehog Dilemma’s illustrated summary here. And if you have the time, this TED talk is super.
Do men and women have different approaches to charitable giving?
In the July 12 Christian Science Monitor, Temma Ehrenfeld writes that the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University has found that “female-headed households are more likely to give to charity than male-headed households, and that in nearly all income groups women give more than men.”
In addition, continues Ehrenfeld, “Insiders say women have their own culture in grant-making. …
“For example, the Global Fund for Women (GFW), unlike most grant-givers, accepts handwritten proposals of any length and in any language, and is unusually open to grants for general purposes rather than specific projects. It also funds meetings to create networks of women activists.
“The approach demonstrated its power during Egypt’s Arab Spring, said Christine Switzer, GFW’s director of development. ‘Our women were able to mobilize together,’ she said, pointing to 77 grants totaling more than $1 million GFW has given to Egyptian women, young and old.”
I often wonder, though, Are women more generous to the underprivileged when they become heads of state? I doubt it. Indira Gandhi? Maggie Thatcher? Golda Meir? Kirchner of Argentina? Let me know if you see studies on this topic.
An Associated Press story on an “innovative program that allows inmates to reduce their sentences in exchange for generating power” caught the attention of NPR today. It seems that prisoners may volunteer to help “illuminate the town of Santa Rita do Sapucai [Brazil] at night.
“By pedaling, the inmates charge a battery that powers 10 street lamps along a riverside promenade. For every three eight-hour days they spend on the bikes, [the volunteers] get one day shaved off their sentences.
“The project in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais is one of several across Brazil meant to cut recidivism by helping restore an inmate’s sense of self-worth. Prisoners elsewhere can trim their sentences by reading sentences — in books — or taking classes.
“Officials say they’ve heard a few complaints the initiatives are soft on criminals, but there’s been little criticism in the country’s press or in other public forums.” Read more at National Public Radio.
Here is what such a bike might look like.
Photograph: Eric Luse, The Chronicle / San Francisco
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