for birds sake

"for birds sake," an online exhibition by Cemre Yesil and Maria Sturm, begins with a statement offering a fascinating bit of history and contemporary politics:

Since the time of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul has been a very important city for aviculture. The city’s geographical location for bird migration has led to the establishment of a huge culture devoted to birds and their care.

The photographers’ statement goes on to describe the purpose of the photographs:

This work is about the birdmen of Istanbul and focuses on the shrouded relationship between the bird and the birdman, one full of contradictions of love, possession and pleasure.

The birds compete to determine which has the most beautiful song of the day. The authors of the show put it this way:

 an illegal tradition 
an addiction
a meditation
Something they need in order to feel good.

The first photograph shows two hands pulling apart curtains that hang over a birdcage. We can see past the door's grill, but we see nothing except darkness. This is as close to a bird as the exhibit allows us. "A white box that contains darkness," the statement says. The succeeding images do not pull away the curtains but speak gracefully of songbirds and their keepers--or should we call them patrons?

Objects of bird care--brightly colored feeding and watering containers, two beautiful Turkish tea glasses with plastic snaps for cage attachment, twine, and other paraphernalia--appear against black backgrounds that push the objects toward us.

The cages are a central theme in the photographic sequence. These men who cultivate beautiful song are masters of simple but elegant design. Cloth and attachments speak of eyes that find beauty in both music and color and texture. 

Music echoes in two ironic cages--old vinyl record holders converted from one kind of song protection to another--birdcages. 

The birdmen that we see are large, small, trim, pudgy--the variety of people you encounter on any Istanbul sidewalk. Nothing remarkable marks them as bird or song lovers. They are "Men smelling like newspapers and turkish tea." I saw only one birdman marked as a birder, a beautifully composed young man wearing a short black shirt. The shot is cropped at the shoulder, muscular arm akimbo to the waist and forming a large triangular negative space between arm/hand and torso. The arm has two tattoos. On the shoulder is a beguiling geisha-like figure disappearing around the limb. On the forearm is a tattoo of a bird perched on a limb.

Next to this photograph is another of a bright white and torn competition scorecard that mimics and fills its neighbor's negative area.

Placement of the images is carefully considered. Some of the images sit by themselves surrounded by plenty of white space, while others hang close together, pairs that invite consideration of image relationship, formal or narrative.

The portraits of birdmen reveal a couple of smiles but most show a serious demeanor that borders on apprehension. Is it the look of men waiting for the results of a competition, or an uncertainty about the photographic documentation? From the show's statement:

A mutual madness between photographers and birdmen; us; trying to understand this passion fitted into cages, and them; trying to understand our urge to take pictures of these ‘ordinary’ cages.

The political side of the tradition is explained simply:

Many diverse social platforms exist devoted to the keeping and breeding of birds. Today this culture is in danger; keeping songbirds such as goldfinches and greenfinches, in particular, may soon vanish due to Turkey’s adaptation to criteria for European Union candidacy.

The slow dance between Turkey and the EU ought to be a poetic movement; otherwise it will atrophy from what Ezra Pound described as poetry moving too far from the music.

Protection of wildlife is vital, but so is the protection of beautiful cultural treasures. Brussels needs to listen to the music, the music preserved and bequeathed by the birdmen of Istanbul.

The exhibition by Yesil and Sturm is visual poetry toward that end.
______
Images provided by Cemre Yesil and Maria Sturm who retain all rights. The show resides on Yesil's website, http://www.cemreyesil.com/. Maria Sturm's site is available at http://www.mariasturm.com/

Notes on Istanbul Photographers: Ege Kanar, Mortals

Among recent works exhibited by Ege Kanar is a remarkable series of portraits on glass called Mortals. Kanar is a photographer steeped in theory and philosophy. His work explores being, existence and the unfathomable relationship that photography has to being. He writes

How can photography, a tool that is presumably incapable of depicting what is beyond the visible, that which lies not on the surface but beneath it, possibly be used to contribute to the formation of a new transcendent representative state, a hypothetical real, which exists beyond dualities such as visible or invisible?

Mortals immediately reminds one of nineteenth century portraiture, that time when Europe and America celebrated the surface and rarely questioned what the surface really meant. I find that Kanar's Mortals journey back, taking with them the questions that should have been asked but were not. Because the surface ideas of photography's beginnings remain with us, Kanar's work is relevant, more: crucial to an understanding of what the photographic world does today.

As the best nineteenth century portraits do, Kanar's are silent at the same time as they murmur. We encounter them and they are silent even as they pose important questions.

William H. Mumler's spirit photographs of the 1860s cleverly "demonstrate" another realm through trickery that nonetheless satisfied an audience eager for photographs that reached into another realm seemingly uniting the here and the there.

Kanar searches for a metaphor to question the great question.

This work, the appearance of which followed a period of research and discussion regarding the ontology of lens based images, aims to harvest an uncanny photographic metaphor regarding the burden of mortality and the unimaginable state of death.

Kanar's sitters, seen in nude busts, are conspicuously slow to rise to dialogue with the viewer. Only when we zero in on the eyes do we begin to grasp the metaphor made visible. The eyes, "the vehicle to the soul," blink during an exposure of several seconds.

Mortals stare right into the eyes of the observer, blinking only to vaguely indicate the inherent nature of the act of photography which produces death whilst trying to preserve life.

  

Kanar creatively uses time and change to leave a trace of transformation. The eyes carry the busts into a questioning realm of the moment and the passage of the moment, the here not bound by present. 

  

 
These quite images ask questions. So too the viewer. Both are metaphysical. But the questions are different, resembling two one-way "conversations." Therein lies the profundity as well as the beauty of these traces.

Images copyright by Ege Kanar. Presentation at http://egekanar.com/works/mortals/

Me, MOOC and St. Paul

A couple of months ago I signed up for a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) offered by the Harvard Divinity School and taught by Laura S. Nasrallah, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity.

I was enthralled, pulled in, captivated. From the syllabus

The letters of Paul are the earliest texts in the Christian scriptures, written by a Jew at a time when the word “Christian” hadn’t yet been coined. What is the religious and political context into which they emerged? How were they first interpreted? How and why do they make such an enormous impact in Christian communities and in politics today?

Nasrallah's scholarly passion comes through again and again especially in the numerous videos in the class. The introductory video is a good example.

I will not describe the full course. You may still visit the archived portions of the course. I want to stress the value of the MOOC as a learning platform and from my point of view a learning platform perfectly suited for students interested in a topic but not seeking academic certification (A certificate is available but that did not concern me).

The obvious target I see are those of us who seek exposure to topics, presentations by first-rate faculty, and a community of like-minded students.

Community needs comment. According to the Harvard Crimson 28,000 students from 183 countries signed up for the MOOC course. My impression is that far few than 28,000 people took full advantage of what the Crimson described as

The course consists of video lectures, annotation assignments, online discussions, and other short videos that help students gain a glimpse into the historical world Paul occupied and the controversies, both ancient and new, that surround his letters.

What I realized is that MOOCs, seen as a way to push education to the world, to those students who need access to reliable courses of study, are also a perfect vehicle for those who no longer need "credit" for participation. Well-produced MOOC classes make everyone a learner, including those such as myself who want to pursue topics for the pleasure of learning. I was completely engrossed and satisfied.

The Book of Embraces Helps

"What is art?" is a question impossible to answer. Eduardo Galeano avoided the question and wrote instead about the function of art. My favorite Galeano function is the first one in his Book of Embraces. 

The Function of Art/1.

Diego had never seen the sea. His father, Santiago Kovadloff, took him to discover it.

They went south.

The ocean lay beyond high sand dunes, waiting.

When the child and his father finally reached the dunes after much walking, the ocean exploded before their eyes.

And so immense was the sea and its sparkle that the child was struck dumb by the beauty of it.

And when he finally managed to speak, trembling, stuttering, he asked his father:

“Help me to see!”

Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces, page 17.

What is wrong with this picture

What is wrong with this picture

At our (university) faculty meeting today we were given permission to skip teaching our classes tomorrow so that we can catch up with paperwork.

I just want to wake up dead

I just want to wake up dead

That is what my father always said about dying. A gentle, uneventful passing. 

This is what happened. He awoke on the fateful day, got up, ate his usual cholesterol-rich breakfast, and then returned to bed for a nap. 

He was in his mid-nineties. 

At some point somebody noticed that he did not look quite right. A check at the bedside revealed that he had died during his nap. As I see it, things turned out better than he had hoped for. He woke up, had a good breakfast, fell asleep and died. 

I'm glad he had the breakfast.  

How well I remember our elderly cat who went on vacation and returned with an attitude

The Special Needs Of Old Cats Caring For Your Elderly Feline 

I am guilty of not remembering the name of a special cat of my childhood. The older I become the more I love cats and forget things such as names.

Well, Cat lived outdoors and would sneak in the house from time to time. My mother did not want animals in the house (well, other than we three sons). The attitude was rooted in an incident from my mother's childhood on the farm, on a day when a goat got in the house at a time when my grandmother was any-day-due with a child. Not pleasant. Not for the people and not for the goat. The goat returned to the outdoors and my grandmother soon gave birth to a healthy little girl.

But I digress. Cat visited the back door of our house every day signally meal time. This was in the 50s and we fed the cat from a can of what I suspect was the cheapest cat food at the grocery store. Can and large spoon in hand, I walked to the back of the yard where a long unused chicken coop sat. The top was a good height for a cat leap and a good height for me to spoon out cat food. I believe the cat got half a can of food a day. I was adept at spooning out the food and breaking it into small hunks for the cat. After impressive gobbles, Cat sat patiently licking any morsel that remained. Where Cat got water I have no idea.

Cat lived with us for several years and then disappeared. It was more than a year later when Cat returned and scratched on the screen door. I understood the body language and the meow. Time to eat. I checked the cupboard and sure enough, a cat food can remained. Can, spoon, Cat, chicken coop. I'm sure that I read an indignant attitude in the cat. "It's late; where was my food?"

Cat ate and I went to bed. The next afternoon Cat was at the back door. More cans had been laid in and the routine returned. I do not remember how long the cat stayed. One day I realized that the cat was not at the door. Cat disappeared and never saw him again.

Cultural Institutions & Wikipedia: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship Webcast (Library of Congress)

Cultural Institutions & Wikipedia: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship Webcast (Library of Congress) 

This is good news. Acceptance of the Wikipedia as a serious and useful should be bolstered. And by the way, I found an objectionable phrase in the Wikipedia this morning and before a note reached the editors the phrase had been removed. Here is what the Library of Congress says about the video cast (or transcript download)

TITLE: Cultural Institutions & Wikipedia: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship

SPEAKER: Dominic McDevitt-Parks, Kristin Anderson
EVENT DATE: 08/13/2012
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)

DESCRIPTION:
Over the past few years, cultural institutions have formed partnerships with Wikipedia in order to increase their visibility on the web and connect with a vibrant community of online volunteers. As a purpose-driven, non-profit educational project, Wikipedia and its sister sites have shared values and interests with cultural institutions that are only now being fully realized. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has become an enthusiastic and vocal participant in this movement to build bridges with Wikipedia and its community. Using specific examples, Dominic McDevitt-Parks discusses how NARA views the partnership as a vehicle for increasing access to holdings, citizen engagement, and openness, while addressing practical concerns and challenges institutions will likely face if they choose to become involved.
Speaker Biography: Dominic McDevitt-Parks was Wikipedian in residence at the National Archives and Records Administration from 2011-2012. He came to NARA from the Archives Management program at Simmons College and also holds a B.A. in history from Reed College. He has been a volunteer Wikipedia contributor since 2004.
Speaker Biography: Kristin Anderson is a cataloging librarian in the History and Military Science section at the Library of Congress. She is an active volunteer in the Wikipedia community.

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. 

Just what does Gmail know about my university?

Gmail is pretty clever at placing ads next to messages--ads that pertain somehow to what is in the message. I've noticed recently that when message from or about my university show up that an add for the University of Phoenix appears. I wonder if this means that Gmail thinks that I might want to work at another place or that it likens my university with UPhoenix. Hmm. Well, yes.

Afghanistan Invasion Ten Years Later

Ten years ago. I vividly recall the moment when I heard that my bombs were raining on Afghanistan. I was working in the garden. A neighbor was playing his radio or TV loud enough that I heard the "news flash."

I stood frozen for a moment and then dropped the tool and screamed. I saw old friends and their children and grandchildren exploding, dying, suffering. I ran inside. Tears ran down my cheeks. 

I told my wife. We held each other. What else to do?

October: Time to Propagate Roses!

October is the month for rose bush propagation. And helping rose bushes multiply is easy. Look for a cane of goodly diameter, large enough that you will be able to push it or hammer it into the soil without the stem breaking, and yank the stem from the bush with enough violence that you pull a strip of bark from the mother branch. 

Flat cut the branch 4-5 inches above the tear (being certain to leave 2-3 stem segments between top and bottom).

Poke the branch, rip end down, into the earth. If need be, gently hammer the flat top of the stem to help the sinking.

(If the earth is hard, place a gallon plastic jug of water over the spot where you want to sink the stem. Make a small hole in the bottom of the jug and allow the water to seep into the earth and soften it).

Push the stem into the earth so that the earth remains compact around the stem (that is, do not dig a whole or poke a hole with a tool). 

Walk away. Forget about the bush-to-be until spring. 

While you have forgotten, the stem will summon energy to repair the damage and part of the energy will go to root creation. 

After a spell of warm days in the spring you should notice some growth beginning and the growth will continue until you have a nice new bush. 

If you do not see growth in the spring then you failed. Better luck next time.