Wondering why photographs of people are so precious

I graduated from Hopkins with a Ph.D. in Byzantine art and architecture and then turned my research efforts to the history of photography. On the face of it, that is a radical career jump. But Byzantium, in particular the Byzantine icon and the justifications for the icon intrigued me. The proper (working) icon had to bear a resemblance to the saint represented and had to be made "in the right way." Then there was a special kind of icon that was not made by human hands (acheiropoieta), images that miraculously appeared (the earliest example may have been the Veil of Veronica, an imprint of the face of Jesus left when Veronica used her veil to blot away the sweat on the face during the march to Golgatha). The icon, a representation rather than an idol, seemed to enjoy a special identity with the person represented. 

I wondered if any post-Byzantine European civilization shared a belief in this very powerful kind of image and one day it hit me that the general attitude was not so different from popular attitudes toward photographs. A photograph's resemblance to the subject is pretty obvious. Being made in the right way is understandable to each of us who had a roll of film returned with negatives that were so bad that the processor claimed that nothing could be printed (for the younger, this refers to ancient picture-making process that involved something called film). It was the identity characteristic that seemed most telling to me. We treat certain photographic images (especially portraits) as treasured objects precisely because they bear such a resemblance to a person. 

Were I to take from you a portrait of someone dear to you and rip it apart, you would react with sadness and fury. Remember, it is nothing more than a piece of paper with tones covering it. But what I have I really done in your eyes? I have destroyed a precious object that was precious precisely because it bore a resemblance of somebody important to you. On the other hand, I have seen people tear apart a photograph when they experience deep anger towards the person "in" the photograph. (This seems to happen most often when a relationship goes sour). 

I pick up snapshots at flea markets. I have no idea where the snapshots were made or who they represent. Finding a snapshot that has been torn to remove a figure that originally stood next to the figure that was kept, is an assault on history. For whatever reason, the removed figure should never have been standing next to the preserved figure (and by the way, we have some examples of the delicate surface of daguerreotypes having been rubbed to effect the same purpose).

While only in spiritualists circles do images seem to appear magically, the notion that photographs are the result of a mechanical process, an image that is not the work of a person but of a machine, was the basis of a very long prejudice against the idea that photographs could be works of art. The maker of a photograph knows how to make the camera work and has little control over how the picture looks (a common attitude no matter how naïve). 

The analogy has not escaped some religious writing

Icons Unite: photographs, films, videos of people we love can make them seem very close. The icons can make us feel very close to Christ and the saints - and this feeling of closeness is no illusion.... 

The analogy between the photograph and the icon allowed me to see how a believer in the identity between an image and the thing represented embodies attitudes that can easily be seen as expressions of faith, the one clearly a religious belief and the other a fuzzy material faith or belief. 

I was able to look again at the Byzantine icon with a heightened awareness of just how precious pictures can be.

It's Time They Started Using Them

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation  

But leadership will have to come from somewhere else, as well. Just as in society as a whole, the academic upper middle class needs to rethink its alliances. Its dignity will not survive forever if it doesn’t fight for that of everyone below it in the academic hierarchy. (“First they came for the graduate students, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a graduate student…”) For all its pretensions to public importance (every professor secretly thinks he’s a public intellectual), the professoriate is awfully quiet, essentially nonexistent as a collective voice. If academia is going to once again become a decent place to work, if our best young minds are going to be attracted back to the profession, if higher education is going to be reclaimed as part of the American promise, if teaching and research are going to make the country strong again, then professors need to get off their backsides and organize: department by department, institution to institution, state by state and across the nation as a whole. Tenured professors enjoy the strongest speech protections in society. It’s time they started using them.

Remembering Skaterman

 As a young father rearing a boy in the age of superheros, I hit upon the idea of creating a superhero just for bedtime stories. He was Skaterman, a fellow with fabulous skates that allowed all kinds of feats in the mold of superheros. I am fuzzy on the particulars of stories, but the tales were sufficiently exciting that the stories had the opposite effect of what parents hope a bedtime story will do. They got the young fellow wide awake and insistent on the story going on and on. More than once I dozed off only to be awakened with the child command to continue.

I was reminded of the stories when I saw this @BritishPathe short on a dad and daughter enjoying an outing on motorized skates. Too bad the invention was not nuclear-powered.

Dad drives daughter to work on motorised skates - YouTube

Bent Nails

My father rarely threw anything away, attitude from the farm upbringing and the Great Depression. 

Nails were an interesting illustration. A nail, no matter how bent and rusty, is useful. Dad had cans and cans of bent nails that he used building things around the house, indeed for building various out-buildings from lean-roof chicken houses to dog houses. Fifty years later they still stand. 

When he needed a nail he took one from the can and either straightened it in a vise or hammered into shape for reuse. I cannot be certain, but I do not think that my father ever bought a new nail. 

I have other examples of one man's trash is another man's treasure. Maybe I will talk about some of those at another time. 

My Mother's Teacake and Pound Cake Recipe

This was handed down from my grandmother. The teacakes are a half recipe because my grandmother was cooking for a family of ten people.

 

Interaction in online courses

Origin:
1740–5 0; inter-  + act

interact. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/interact (accessed: June 13, 2012).

I like the division because it emphasizes the "act" part.

The first time a taught an online class with Blackboard I learned a couple of things about interactivity.

First, I had a student that had taken a class from me before. He sat at the back of the room and never said a word. I noticed that he was quite active on the discussion board. When I saw him at an art opening I remarked that he was more active on the discussion board than he had ever been in the classroom. I asked him why. His response was short. "I don't like speaking in public."

The second thing I learned was by accident. I had to be out of town for a conference and I posted an announcement telling the class that I would have limited access to the Internet but that they should continue the week's discussion.

My previous pattern of discussion board activity was to check on it hourly and to "encourage" the students by commenting on every post. Despite that, the discussion board was a pretty boring place with each student posting and then replying to my reply.

In fact I never looked at the discussion board while away.

When I returned to town on Sunday I opened the discussion and I was amazed. Without me constantly posting the students had begun to talk among themselves. The exchanges were interesting and numerous. Instead of interacting me with me, the students were interacting amongst themselves. Lesson learned. Teacher: do not dominate the discussion.

Yea, Huck, that's pretty much how I feel

SparkNotes No Fear Literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 4 

WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathematics, anyway.

That's pretty much the way I feel about mathematics.

My back, my garden, my grandmother

I've dealt with a sore back all winter. Not fun. Chalked it up to aging. Maybe it is. Anyway...

Yesterday I spent the whole day working in the yard and garden. I kept thinking that I will pay for this when I can't get out of bed next morning. 

I arose and my back never felt better.

I remembered my grandmother saying that if you don't feel good you need to grab a hoe and go outside and work. You know, I think she was right! Good ole granny medicine. 

My eldest cat friend and I ponder electric power

Eldest cat, fourteen, has an electric heating pad and she likes it. I don't blame her. Wish I had one, only me-sized.