It was fifty years ago today when Bill Greenshields was photographed at a protest rally against the war in Vietnam on the grounds of the Pentagon burning his draft card.
The identity of the picture taken is lost to history (Greenshields assumed it was an undercover intelligence agent trying to collect incriminating evidence on any and all of the demonstrators) but it somehow came into possession of anti-war and social justice activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya who, as Greenshields was amazed to see as he relates in an exclusive interview to Dangerous Minds a year later his image had become a counter-culture icon. The 1967 Washington protest march that Greenshields took part in also happened to be the one where Abbie Hoffman with the help of Allen Ginsberg led a chorus Tibetan chants to try to levitate the defense headquarters compound with positive psychic energy. Be sure to read the entire reminiscence and learn more at the link above.
Saturday 21 October 2017
yippie
้ขใฎๆจ
Sadly, authorities in Osaka had to confiscate all the marijuana plants that a thirty-five-year old gentleman was discovered to have been growing in his apartment—even though we feel he ought to receive some special dispensation for having cultivated and cared for his crop according to the ancient art of bonsai. The title—transliterated hachi-no-ki—is a subcategory of growing dwarf specimens (he did so to save space in his tiny accommodations) that means potted (bonsai denotes tray-planting) or “the bowl’s tree.”
visual evoked potential
Accomplished artist Laurence Aรซgerter, who lives and works between Marseilles and Amsterdam, has with the help of neuroscience and a gerontologist curated five volumes of disparate, gently jarring pairs of images meant to stimulate the minds of dementia patients.
Aรซgerter calls her therapy Photographic Treatment and hopes that inviting caregivers and residents to look over these photobooks together might solicit engagement and creative thinking whereas other activities might come across as off-putting or cause feelings of embarrassment or frustration. Some institutions in the Netherlands are already employing Aรซgerter’s technique and importantly paying more heed (in matters as simple as changing the wall decorations) to other opportunities to capitalise on the power of images. Be sure to visit Hyperallergic at the link above to see a gallery of the images and to learn more.
girl interruptus or from here to paternity
The introduction to a particularly brilliant crossover episode that profiled the intersection of the history of Ancient Greece with that of witchcraft was a nice reminder of the bizarre and complicated origin story behind the liminal figure of Tiresias of Thebes, the blind seer who tried to keep Oedipus from investigating too far into the murder of the former king and posthumously advised Odysseus how to return home and avoid the traps in store for him and his crew. For disturbing a pair of copulating snakes whilst hiking up Mount Kyllini, he garnered the displeasure of Hera who punished him (I guess) for his transgression by transforming him into a woman.
Seeing this baffled individual, Apollo came and offered a measure of explanation, saying that Tiresias would be made his former gender should he encounter mating serpents a second time. Legends vary but some accounts hold that female Tiresias was a prostitute of great fame, and giving birth to and rising a daughter, sired by none other than Hercules (though some dispute paternity), called Manto, who was also gifted with the curse of prophesy and was the namesake of the city of Mantua (Mantova). Seven years later, Tiresias came across another pair of snakes entwined in the act and either did or didn’t interrupt their activity (accounts vary) and his manhood was restored. At some point afterwards, Zeus and Hera were having a heated debate as to which gender derived more pleasure from sexual congress (though they didn’t specify what sort of intercourse) and at an impasse decided to bring in Tiresias who had experienced it from both sides as arbiter. When Tiresias sided against Hera once again by saying that ninety percent of the pleasure was the woman’s share, the goddess was so enraged that she gouged out Tiresias’ eyes. Out of pity and unable to countermand the punishment of his sister-wife, Zeus tried to compensate by granting Tiresias the ability to see into the future and a number of other superhuman talents plus a life extension that crossed seven generations and he became a prophet of Apollo.
Friday 20 October 2017
dรฉcoupรฉ
utilidors
By way of a new documentary that covers its history and the vision that was far ahead of its time, City Lab introduces us to the space-age utopia that was never realised, a modular, scalable settlement that could accommodate a quarter of a million individuals, conceived by geophysicist and oceanographer Athelstan Spilhaus in the mid-1960s and designated Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). Aspiring to what EPCOT was originally meant to be Spilhaus’ ambitious plans anticipated the rise of working and shopping remotely and was centred around recycling, energy efficiency and generally minimising mankind’s environmental footprint.
Prohibiting internal combustion vehicles, the compound was to make use of a novel, dual-carriage mass transit network that addressed the last-mile conundrum that continues to vex public transportation and discourages people from taking the bus. MXC, however, proved too revolutionary and support began to flag once Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr (a fellow Minnesotan and avid cheerleader for the project along with architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller) lost his bid for the US presidency to Richard Nixon and locals began picketing the proposed site. It’s sad to think that such a bold departure from toxic urbanisation seems just as unachievable today as it did all those decades ago—and even less so in some places.
onomastique
With the name Kevin too having been an explosively popular choice for a generation of newly reunified Germans as well, we appreciated this examination by French edition of The Local about how expectant parents were infatuated with the Hollywood-propelled but accented version of the name.
Although Kรฉvin appears in the official rolls of recognised prรฉnoms—which dictated, coincidentally, what parents were allowed to name their children up until 1993, two years after the phenomena that so captured the attention of mothers and fathers swept the continent—as the namesake of an Irish saint that was not uncommon in Brittany, the popularity soon faded and this class of like-named boys and their parents became (like in Germany) targets of mild ridicule and derision. The French government, like that of Germany, still retains discretion on what names might be inappropriate and therefore not allowed—which I believe is a sound and appropriate policy and does strike me as an expatriate associated with an American community with babies and young people named Maverick, Voilร , etc. as something highly advisable.
nosce te ipsum
Despite the prevalence, pedigree and seeming verisimilitude and versatility of the maxim, Know thy Self, Professor Bence Nanay writes it is a potentially dangerous directive, making a pretty persuasive case that we’re wilfully blind to the gradual changes in our personalities, tastes and characters and sticking with the self-same choices and preferences, which are importantly within our control but yet may be misinformed or no longer complimentary to the person we’re becoming, may help perpetuate this delusion.
Not that there are no consistent qualities and abiding principles in our lives, but holding tenaciously on to a self-image that may not be an accurate reflection of oneself is a potential source of tension. It is also impetus to keep doing things that one does not particularly care for and even resents, because we mentally shroud the contradiction with cognitive dissonance that makes us think our choices are own rather than a resigning to habit because we’ve squandered all of our energies on self-censorship and keeping up appearances. What do you think? We especially liked the quote from Andrรฉ Gide on how “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” We ought to strive to reacquaint ourselves with ourselves daily to avoid repairing to vanity and pandering.
