Category Archives: News
Pictures of the Day
Recently, photographs of an all-white, or albino killer whale taken in the far Northern Pacific, near the Aleutian Islands, have surfaced. Nicknamed “Iceberg,” researchers believe it may be the same whale spotted in 2000 and 2008, but they’re still not certain if it’s a single anomalous creature, or just one of many such animals that simply haven’t been seen before the advent of modern photography and more adventurous scientists. Regardless, it’s a fascinating mystery. Check out this story, which includes video of the whale.
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Quote of the Day
“It is my opinion that if you go to space in a big way – and people know that requires innovation, discovery and achievements that are writ large in the daily newspapers – it will influence the culture in such a way that even if you are not personally engaged in space exploration, you will still want to innovate. Big, grand visions have the power to trigger a wave of innovation. If you go into space in a big way, it creates a seductive dream for the educational pipeline. You won’t need programs to convince people that science is an interesting thing to do, they will be compelled to want to do it simply by reading the day’s headlines.”
– Astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson, on the future of space exploration.
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Women’s Worlds
Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish-born poet and playwright whose works often focus on gender-based oppression and violence. In 2009, she was appointed Britain’s Poet Laureate, becoming the first woman and first openly gay or lesbian person to hold that position in its 300-year history. Even then, however, her male colleagues referred to her as a “poetess,” which I think is akin to a man calling his beloved spouse “wifey.” Duffy’s writings include Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize; The Other Country (1990); Selling Manhattan (1987), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; and her first collection, Standing Female Nude (1985), for which she received a Scottish Arts Council Award.
Dramatic characters and narratives, voiced with a sharp edge of wit and social critique, characterize Duffy’s early work, while her recent collections have wrestled more directly with dark and tangled themes of love. But, perhaps her most intriguing compilation of poems is the “The World’s Wife,” published in 2000, which examines some of history’s most famous events and myths strictly from the viewpoint of the women or female characters who dutifully stood off to the side. In many cases, she creates a female version of the male. The figures include Mrs. Faust, Mrs. Quasimodo and Mrs. Tiresias. A self-contained Penelope doesn’t wait for Odysseus; frustrated Mrs. Sisyphus is married to a workaholic; and Pygmalion’s statue, tired of being pestered by her groping suitor, “changed tack/ grew warm, like candle wax/ kissed back” – and after sex gets dumped. She provides twisted updates to Viagra, sheep cloning and Monica Lewinky. This material has been mined by feminist writers before. But, as women gain more economic and political power – even in such unlikely places such as Brazil and Egypt – it’s always refreshing to contemplate how historical events might have appeared if their creators had been filled with estrogen and not testosterone.
Quote of the Day
“Is this the best we could do?”
– Former Republican candidate Jon Huntsman, on the question that crossed his mind as he stood on the debate stage in Iowa last August with his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls.
No wonder he dropped out of the race – he has too much common sense!
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Still Searching for Harper Lee
Among American writers, Harper Lee remains one of the most enigmatic. It’s been over 50 years since the reclusive author published To Kill a Mockingbird, but the breakthrough novel remains a bestseller, translated into dozens of languages, and is central to school curricula across the world. The prestigious Folio Society is offering a cloth-bound version of this classic at a discounted rate for members.
To Kill a Mockingbird is somewhat autobiographical. Like its central character, Scout, Nelle Harper Lee grew up in a small Alabama town; “quite the little tomboy,” according to her sister Alice who, at age 100, is still practicing law. The Lee sisters’ father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer who served 12 years in the Alabama state legislature. In 1931, when Harper was 5, 9 young Black men were accused of gang-raping 2 young White women, a certain death sentence in those times and in that place. The defendants, who were nearly lynched before being brought to court, were not provided with the services of a lawyer until the first day of trial. Despite medical testimony that the women had not been raped, the all-White jury found the men guilty of the crime and sentenced all but the youngest, a 12-year-old boy, to death. Six years of subsequent trials saw most of these convictions repealed and all but one of the men freed or paroled.
Lee was close friends with the more flamboyant Truman Capote. In 1959, she traveled with him to Holcomb, Kansas to cover the murders of the Clutter family; what they both thought would be a minor criminal affair. Lee ended up working as Capote’s assistant on the story, which culminated with In Cold Blood. But, by the time Capote published his masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird had become Lee’s own magnum opus. It arrived on the literary scene just as the nation was experiencing a major upheaval in social politics and race relations. The book was a turning point in how America viewed itself and its proclamations of true equality and personal freedom.
However, it is the only book its author Harper Lee wrote and she has never been interviewed in almost 50 years. Her Greta Garbo-like reclusiveness from the literary world has only increased interest in her, and – as often happens in the lives of such people – rumors replaced facts. Some claim Capote is the true author of To Kill a Mockingbird; that she is descended from General Robert E. Lee; and that her mother had twice tried to drown her as a child. Lee, obviously trying to stay above the ridiculous fray, won’t respond to such accusations.
Last year President Obama presented Lee – who will turn 86 on April 28 – with the prestigious National Medal of Arts. Naturally she did not attend the ceremony. Recently though, he recorded an introduction to a re-release of the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.
This enduring fascination with the novel and its mysterious author will keep Lee at the forefront of modern American literature.
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Quote of the Day
“It’s becoming obvious to everybody that this campaign is winding down. He’s talked about being a fiscal conservative in the past. So now is the time for him to, I guess, put his mouth where our money is and stop the Secret Service protection.”
– David Williams, president of Taxpayers Protection Alliance, on calls for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to withdraw his run for the presidency.
Breaking news: Gingrich has exited the race, like Elvis once exited a room. I can see it now – Gingrich standing on Pennsylvania Avenue with a sign that reads: “Please help – need delegates – God bless.”
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Past – Future
One key aspect about celebrating “Earth Day” is a call for people to reduce their carbon footprint. That includes recycling and either utilizing as few natural resources as possible, or wisely using what we have. People are encouraged, for example, to “think green and keep it on the screen;” that is, not wasting paper to print something. The “Earth Day” movement began in California, so it was interesting to see The Los Angeles Times’ 17th Annual Book Festival, held at the University of Southern California on April 22, practically celebrate the printed book. The festival took an interesting approach to the future of publishing with its panel, “Future Books: Media in the Digital Age.” It looked to the past to help gauge the practicality of what many see as the growing acceptance of e-books.
Moderator Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at the USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy; Anne Balsamo, professor at USC’s Annenberg & School of Cinematic Arts and Director of Learning, Annenberg Innovation Lab; Steve Anderson, Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at USC’s School of Cinema-Television and Associate Editor of the journal Vectors; and Catherine Quinlan, Dean of USC Libraries, collectively offered dialogue on the dual excitement and anxiety surrounding the future of reading. But, they centered mostly on the past.
Balsamo showcased examples from her experience developing the interactive museum exhibit “XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading” created by the group RED (Research on Experimental Documents) at Xerox PARC in the late 1990’s. Accessible through the Designing Culture website, many of these provided a dose of retrospective humor, like the future-from-the-past vision of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil: XFR’s Tilting Tables, for example, or the Reading Eye Dog, which “translated” the printed page, and as Balsamo mentioned, was designed as a dog since interacting with a canine seemed markedly superior to interacting with a humanoid robot. (Sometimes, people seem to be able to relate better to dogs than other humans.)
Anderson scanned some of the new media from his book and website Technologies of History, in particular in his project “Technologies of History Interactive,” a composite of experimental film, television, video games and digital media that explores how we relate to the historical events of our lives.
Quinlan closed the panel with a discussion of the library’s challenge in storing, preserving and ensuring access to digital media, such as Anderson’s project. As she mentioned, “the more recent the medium, the more quickly it rots.”
This may seem like typical California tree-hugging experimentation, but I can see the greater purpose. You can’t fully grasp your future unless you thoroughly understand your past. New technologies are great, but only within the context of the people who use them. People loathed, even feared computers a generation ago and scoffed at Bill Gates’ outrageous idea to make them personal and intimate by putting one in every home. Even in the early 1990’s, few could have imagined how Microsoft and the Internet would change the American landscape. Today, few people have e-readers, including me. But, just a decade ago the concept of reading a book from a computer screen on your lap sounded as ridiculous as the personal computer did 20 years earlier. We’ll see where all that ambition takes us in the ensuing decade.
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