What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore–And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over–like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Photo from Bixby Park in Long Beach, California
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Not sure if I made this better or worse
I feel like it’s worse, but probably because I’m having a bad day.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Women did it first: Writing novels
This is a new installment of blog posts about women who did it first. A lot of times in school and history classes we learn about women who first did something, even though men had done it before. Even though I think all female achievements should be celebrated, I think this mode of qualifying “firsts” is only supporting the man-centered view on history.
So who wrote the first novel? A woman, duh.
It is generally accepted that Murasaki Shikibu wrote the first novel, called Tale of Genji. At the time, women in Japan were not allowed to learn or use calligraphy, and only did so in secret. So this was definitely a creative achievement as well as a social one. A type of phonetic script called Kana began to be popular at the time, and Murasaki picked it up and wrote the first novel created by any culture on earth. Not only was this novel written by a woman, it was written for women.
As with any firsts, there is some debate if this was truly the first novel ever written. It is a story that surrounds a central character, with many lesser characters and it follows them through time. There are psychological and historical that also have characterized novel-writing to this day. Most stories before this were written as poetry or with very little prose. The Tale of Genji was entirely prose. Other competing works from the Heian period either have unknown authors or are too short to be considered novels.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done.
— Van Gogh
I love looking at some of my favorite painters and seeing how they drew. This is the study before the painting.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.I love the quiet mind-mud on the ground after the intense brain-storming session.
And sometimes there’s a rainbow, and it smells like wet grass, and everything is figured out. Yes, Cuberry is on the way to becoming something incredibe.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Crap. I’m in a ‘phase’
Maybe, maybe not. One of my portfolio painting ideas involves a deer so I figure the practice will come in handy.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Leni the non-conformist (& why we’re sometimes conformists.)
The test subject is told that everyone in the room is a test subject, but they are not; they are actors placed there to try to create a fake community for the one true test subject. The first few fake test subjects are asked, and they answer with the wrong answer, “B”. The examiner goes down to each subject and they all continue to say, “B”. The last test subject is the true one, and his or her answer depends on what they see on the screen, as well as what they think their peers believe. Solomon Asch conducted this study on college students and this was his result:
To Asch’s surprise, 37 of the 50 subjects conformed themselves to the ‘obviously erroneous’ answers given by the other group members at least once.
According to Asch, people conform to a wrong answer for two reasons: they want to be liked, or they trust the group’s opinion. In all of the pictures I’ve seen of this study, all of the test subjects are men. I’ve always been fascinated with what would happen with a mixed group and different variations. All female actors and male test taker, all make actors and female test taker, and so on. Moreover, if the groups were truly mixed, would women or men align themselves with the majority more often, or would there be no statistical difference?
Leni taking photographs in Africa.
In my experience, women have trouble withstanding the pressures of community more than men. (Anecdotal, no less.)
So one person that totally fascinates me is Leni Riefenstahl, because of her absolute resolution when it comes to her art. She made (possibly) propagandist films commissioned by the Nazi party, which she calls art films. Her arguments are that at the time, most Germans supported Hitler and her films are more about art than about fascism, and she never publicly endorsed the Nazi Party and was not a member of it. After the fall of the Nazis, she was blacklisted and never made another movie until she was 90-something, when she made a scuba diving movie. I find it incredible that she never once caved in to any admission of guilt or being a propagandist. She said “no” to all the critics. She declared herself an artist through-and-through until the day she died.
As most film critics describe her as the most accomplished, creative and innovating female filmmaker of the 20th century now, she spent most of her life not making movies. I admire her resolution but at the same time she sacrificed her career for it. (Although maybe even if she admitted she was wrong, she could still be blacklisted.) Ultimately she didn’t care about being accepted and she didn’t care if people thought her films were propagandist. She cared about being right. She trusted her own instinct and never balked. Whether she’s right or not, is above my pay-grade. Ultimately, I thought that was pretty inspirational.
Oh, and her work is incredibly striking, too.
You can read more on Leni and watch her Nazi-commissioned films (warning: some people are offended by the Nazi imagery) and you can read more on conformity studies to get more in depth statistics.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.More bambi
Done! I get to start something new. :)
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Letter from an air-conditioned home in Southern California
While browsing Facebook I noticed the different viewpoints my friends had on the Occupy movement. While I ignore most people’s political ramblings, I’ve had certain conversations that made me think, “hmmm”, which is significant, considering the last thing that made me think that was LOST.
I have no authority to speak on the Occupy Wall Street movement; I haven’t attended any protests. I “liked” them on Facebook and “liked” a few statuses, which in this day and age means a bit less than nothing. I have no real authority on economics. I got an B in my introductory course to Macro-Economics. I’m a college student – nay, a community college student – so I think my authority on morality and justice is also lacking. I have no starring role in any political movement. I change my political party back and forth every year, because if I ever run for office, it would make a really funny news story.
The Occupy movement is about frustration, and there’s no real frustration leader, is there? I get frustrated pretty easily, so I’ll go ahead and nominate myself for the role! Sorry guys, power vacuum. Couldn’t help it.
First order of business when you are frustrated is: What’s wrong?
Well alot of things are wrong for people in my shoes. One, it’s hard to find a job, much less one that respects your skill set. Education is incredibly expensive, and although doing a stint in the ole community college helps out – there are still two more years I have to pay for by selling my soul to bank loans the devil. So the issue is money. Money, money, money.
Must be funny, in a rich man’s world.
So there are people who are richer than me, and that sucks! How come I don’t get that money?! Oh yeah, cause I didn’t work for it.
But the catch is – they didn’t work for all of it either. And therein lies the injustice.
We have a social contract: us peons agree to pay a part of our income to the government so they can go fight wars, pave roads, educate kids, pay senators and twiddle their thumbs and whatever it is they do. Along with the peons, businesses, who legally sometimes like to be considered “persons”, also have to pay taxes.
One solution thrown around is the $20 minimum wage, which is strange to me. This is where the community college econ class comes in! From what I understand, a higher minimum wage can eliminate poverty for some, but raises unemployment and the victims end up being those that are handicapped or socially disadvantaged. This, to me, is immoral. On the other hand, proponents of a higher minimum wage say that it raises the quality of life and increases business efficiency. Ultimately it is a give and take, with morality being intertwined with both sides. But .. the question arises:
Is a high quality of life part of our current social contract? Do we deserve it just because we pay our taxes? We clearly deserve to live above the poverty line, and eliminating poverty is a, shall we say, government intention. I don’t think the government has completely abandoned the really poor. While the programs are struggling and mostly failing, I don’t think this is where the Occupy Wall St. movement stems from. We want the poor to be taken care of, but it’s not just the poor, it’s the 99%. The middle class and the lower class feel cheated. Even the upper middle class does. And it’s not because the government isn’t guaranteeing a high quality of life or directly neglecting the poor.
Deep down, as Americans, we know we have to work hard to pursue happiness.
So we do, we work hard, we use public roads, public education, we pay for it, we work harder. We play it fair. But it suddenly occurs to us that it’s not fair. Because for the social contract to work, everybody’s gotta play it fair.
The law is just. Sort of. I am not about to read the tax code and call things out as just or unjust. But I think it is fairly okay. Ideally certain things are subsidized and I understand the economic and sometimes political powers that influence that. Ultimately if all businesses paid their taxes legally the economic landscape would be crucially different. I fondly remember a CNN segment (back when I had cable) of them going over which companies used offshore tax havens, they displayed a huge list which included their parent company – Time Warner. Wolf Blitzer explained that out of respect for full disclosure they included that, and also pointed out that FOX News’s parent company, News Corp, had about twice as many. That really makes it okay, CNN.
What kind of enforcement exists in a country where a company’s cable news network can nonchalantly mention in a news story how they break the law? The morality of the topic has become so lenient that someone even considering paying their taxes fair and square is almost a joke.
I hope I’ve convinced you by now that the problem is injustice in tax code enforcement. If we lived in a tax-just country, we wouldn’t be frustrated, because we would earn what we deserved. We would work harder or smarter, and earn more. And when someone at the head of a large corporation would screw up, they would crash and burn. I think being an executive is an incredibly demanding job, and I do think they deserve to get paid based on their job performance. The job demands excellence, and doesn’t warrant forgiveness. If you screw up, you crash and burn. This isn’t Sunday school. You don’t get to try again. If you can’t aspire to excellence, get a job that doesn’t require that.
So, what’s the solution?
1. Bank run party! Take all your money out of your bank, and hide it in your backyard, or a local credit union or something. If a true bank run occurred, banks would have a harder time lending money and would be happy to forgive chunks of your debt. This happened when Citi was failing. Imagine if they were all failing! This isn’t a direct protest against unfair tax enforcement, but it’s a legal and effective way to show frustration. And if you’re in a bit of debt, and enough people do it, it could help you out. I think I’ve earned $5 in my entire lifetime from bank interest. The loss for me moving my money to a credit union would be insignificant.
2. Stock vote party! I’m not exactly sure how stocks work and how buying a stock enables you to vote on who runs the company. I sort of vaguely remember that once you own a stock there are certain things you can vote on. Could the 99% mobilize to buy a stock of a certain company and then vote everyone out of power? My dog could probably run a bank. Don’t quote me on this one, I don’t think it’s this easy to fire an exec.
3. Someone with authority actually enforcing the law. Someone that is like, the chief enforcer of the law, enforcing the law. Why don’t we have one of those? Oh, wait..
Aside: I think the lack of focus of the Occupy movement makes it so easy for Obama and other politicians to brush it aside. I think his official statement is that he “understands” and that it reflects “broad-based frustration.” End of line.
4. ???
5. Profit
In Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he condemns hate, and even shows that segregation is morally detestable. But he knows that fighting hate is not the battle, you can’t fight people into loving you. Just as fighting greed can’t be your battle. We can’t fight corporate America into wanting to give everything away and go to India to “find themselves.” The only thing you can fight for is justice. And as MLK said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The civil rights movement fought for justice under the law, but this protest against Wall St. is a fight for justice to be enforced.
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