No, ma'am, neither of those things would do it.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Three months later.
Earth science lesson: The river is steaming because it is warmer than the air temperature, which was 5F the morning this was taken. The ducks swim on. They look like they hate it.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Now I feel like I'm blogging.
Over here at the Chicago Reader, they posted a story about the layoffs that took place at WBEZ and :Vocalo on Friday, December 5. To preserve my own, ahem, professionalism in commenting on something that I regard as fairly unprofessional and back-biting (but alas, such is the nature of the Internet and independent print media), I'll just direct y'all down to the comments and make my observations about those. My own opinions about :Vocalo, WBEZ, and the management of both will be reserved for personal emails.
What's fascinating to me is the insane amount of them that have accumulated in the week in a half since the post went up. (152!) In some ways, it is reassuring that this many people care so passionately, and at times stupidly, about public radio. But the personal bent of so many of the comments is disconcerting/makes me feel icky . It's a bummer that readers are adding their thoughts here, anonymously, as opposed to emailing CPR or the Vocalo staff. It's public media! Board meetings are open. Radio stations have phone numbers. And it's particularly ironic that so much of the bashing of or support of :Vocalo and WBEZ and Torey Malatia is the exact type of dialogue that the :Vocalo wants to foster: angry opinions that bounce off each other, find no resolution, and get broadcasted all over the Internet. Like a collectiuve of journalists who simultaneously cover the press conference and then throw their shoes as a hard as they can at the head of the Head of State.
And this also makes me think of the nature of independent media, which is competitive and nasty and makes me weight the merits of being a journalist every time my work is published/broadcast. It's striking how independent media outlets try to out-indie each other all the time. I'll wager that almost every American city has seen this little battle take place at some point. To cite specifics, take Newspeak in Colorado Springs. Started up by former writers for "The Independent" (quotes used to indicate title and irony of publication's title considering that it is... not alternative, to put it concisely), Newspeak used to spend at least 200 words of every issue shitting on the Independent. Be it taking them to task for boring features, quoting its writers and editors on off-the-record comments, or just generally being snarky, it was sad to read. The "alternativeness" of Newspeak was built on comparing themselves to the more "mainstream" rags in the Springs, rather than being built on providing voices to marginalized community members, like in the Homelessness issue, or advocating for government and media accountability. Newspeak is now all online and has finally cut that shit out for the most part, instead replacing it with YouTube videos, so who knows if that's an improvement, but I'd rather watch a kitten be all sleepy than read about one newspaper's thoughts about another newspaper/newspaper's thoughts about a radio station/radio stations thoughts about a newspaper.
What's fascinating to me is the insane amount of them that have accumulated in the week in a half since the post went up. (152!) In some ways, it is reassuring that this many people care so passionately, and at times stupidly, about public radio. But the personal bent of so many of the comments is disconcerting/makes me feel icky . It's a bummer that readers are adding their thoughts here, anonymously, as opposed to emailing CPR or the Vocalo staff. It's public media! Board meetings are open. Radio stations have phone numbers. And it's particularly ironic that so much of the bashing of or support of :Vocalo and WBEZ and Torey Malatia is the exact type of dialogue that the :Vocalo wants to foster: angry opinions that bounce off each other, find no resolution, and get broadcasted all over the Internet. Like a collectiuve of journalists who simultaneously cover the press conference and then throw their shoes as a hard as they can at the head of the Head of State.
And this also makes me think of the nature of independent media, which is competitive and nasty and makes me weight the merits of being a journalist every time my work is published/broadcast. It's striking how independent media outlets try to out-indie each other all the time. I'll wager that almost every American city has seen this little battle take place at some point. To cite specifics, take Newspeak in Colorado Springs. Started up by former writers for "The Independent" (quotes used to indicate title and irony of publication's title considering that it is... not alternative, to put it concisely), Newspeak used to spend at least 200 words of every issue shitting on the Independent. Be it taking them to task for boring features, quoting its writers and editors on off-the-record comments, or just generally being snarky, it was sad to read. The "alternativeness" of Newspeak was built on comparing themselves to the more "mainstream" rags in the Springs, rather than being built on providing voices to marginalized community members, like in the Homelessness issue, or advocating for government and media accountability. Newspeak is now all online and has finally cut that shit out for the most part, instead replacing it with YouTube videos, so who knows if that's an improvement, but I'd rather watch a kitten be all sleepy than read about one newspaper's thoughts about another newspaper/newspaper's thoughts about a radio station/radio stations thoughts about a newspaper.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Reality TV is my favorite kind of TV
This is me, my mom, and Bob Crowley. Bob is currently one of the final 6 contestants on the seventeenth (!) season of Survivor. He also helped my dad build our back porch and trim our catalpa tree after a nasty storm. I've gone lobstering on his boat and jumped on his kids' trampoline.
Home for Thanksgiving, I went to the Portland Yacht Club with my parents to drink beer (as you can see) and watch that week's episode on a big screen with about 150 other people. Bob won the immunity challenge and is generally a badass Mainer. He's a great guy with a great family and let's all hope that he wins a million dollars in the next week.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
By Bus and By Train
The Piscataqua Bridge, connecting Maine to New Hampshire.
Palace Playland in Old Orchard Beach. Nothing sadder'n an amusement park in a Quebecois resort town on the Maine coast in December.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Found
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Palling Around
Over here on Youth Radio are some segments of an interview I produced with Bill Ayers last week. The inside scoop: Bill has a pierced ear, likes to be called by his first name, hugged me goodbye, has an insane amount of ephemera on his door, and has beautiful pictures of his family around his office, which is terribly disorganized. I'm hoping to get some further interviews with him in December to talk more about his past and his views on activism and its many permutations, such as terrorism. It'll show up here if it happens.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
WWCPLD?
Over the weekend, we threw a party. And it was a great party, but it came with a price: my computer screen got spiderwebbed by unnamed parties that do not include myself. So, until I get something worked out, the Public Library computers are my Internet home and although T.S. Eliot says, "The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man," you can't download/upload a GD thing onto their computers. So, Thomas Stearns, what hope do you have for the future of web-logging? Huh? Huh?
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Big Crowds at Night
The moment it was announced, Barack descended in a ball of white light.
Critical Mass on the North Ave. Bridge in September. After I left they ended up getting onto Lake Shore.
In addition to that "USA" lite brite, the Hancock had red, white, and blue gels along its top floor, and the Sears' antennae were red and blue. Hoorah!Friday, November 7, 2008
Andy Wentz Made This
As usual: documentation of the work does the original no justice. This piece is about 8 by 6 feet and hotter than two hells. Andy's the bomb.Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
An Experiment
I had this thought, as this web log is intended to showcase things that I make/create... What have I done in the past four years? One answer is, "Wrote papers. English papers." So here is one that I got a subjective "A" on. Enjoy.
Molly Adams
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
David Mason, The Romantic Lyric
Combating Stagnancy: Savage Torpor in “These chairs they have no words to utter”
As with any screed of idealism, William Wordsworth has trouble living up to the goals he sets for himself in the Preface he wrote for the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads. Trying to head off a critic from panning you usually leads to generalizations and sweeping statements made about your work. But rather than finding all the spots where he uses so-called elevated/poetic imagery that no farmer would ever use, I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and examine the poem where I believe he is the most successful in meeting some of his own standards. Of primary importance to this paper, Wordsworth states that, “For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor” (499). Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the opposite of truth is repose. To be reduced to a state of savage torpor is to cease to seek the truth and commit one’s self to ignorance. Wordsworth writes further that, “I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have endeavoured to counteract it [the “deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.”] The time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed by men of greater powers and with far more distinguished success” (500) This declaration exposes the political Wordsworth of sonnets and allegory, the poet fighting against the increasingly totalitarian government that had developed in England since the American and French Revolutions with his words. He saw increasing complacency around him, people unwilling to use their minds because it might land them in jail. Although “These chairs they have no words to utter” (528-29) is not a call to arms—subtlety is key—it shares a personal story of rejection of the complacency that into which, oppression tempts the human mind.
The objects first met in the poem furnish a basic room in a house: chairs and a fireplace, a ceiling and a floor. It is a rustic setting, an almost empty room, with not even a lit fire, a simple sign of comfort. “Low and Rustic life was generally chosen” as the setting for most of his poems “because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings and are more easily comprehended and are more durable…in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (497). All alone, this speaker is content in his “chamber hushed and still.” What Wordsworth is doing is flipping a scene of domestic tranquility on its head, following his guideline that, “the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and the situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling” (499). But he has also created a speaker who has a mind “[unfit] for all voluntary exertion]. The silence of the room is stifling, “The ceiling and floor are as mute as stone.” The feeling of entrapment is then applied to these familiar objects. The speaker is alone, but the next line catches us off guard: “Happy and alone.” Because following that, the speaker is not just happy with being alone, isolated from humans who have the power to utter, stir, or flutter, or nature, which feeds the thoughts of poets (ln 13) but equates that happiness experienced through stagnancy of mind and body with the experience of being dead, thereby desiring death over “the passion, the sorrow, and the strife” of life because it is a more simple and peaceful state. This is craziness because Wordsworth tears down what he has established as an idealist vision in poetic works. Low and rustic life—at least the indoors part of it—becomes a source of savage torpor. Wordsworth has found the weakness of his own opinion concerning rural life: “Beautiful and permanent forms of nature” are not always present. And the speaker indicates himself as sharing these tendencies toward barbaric laziness that I would imagine he usually only attributes to “the accumulation of men in cities” (499).
Supposedly composed “Half an hour afterwards,” the first line of “Part Two” flat-out rejects the complacency of the first two stanzas. The speaker says, “I have thoughts that are fed by the sun,” making it clear that the outdoors are an essential ingredient to get those brain juices to flowing. The amendment to the first section complicates who is doing the speaking in the first and second parts and opens itself up to a number of interpretations concerning who is affected by savage torpor and how to avoid becoming one of the afflicted. Assuming the speaker is the same, if this part was composed 30 minutes after the first part, it suggests that to move away from savage torpor is not all that difficult. It’s as though the state of the speaker is a form of light melancholy, like he woke up a little grumpy and then after stretching and yawning, makes a drastic turn-around to greet the day. It can then be read as part of the poet’s struggle, or even part of all worker’s struggles, that no matter how good life gets, sometimes you just do not want to get out of bed. The second part embraces “The things which I see/Are welcome to me, /Welcome every one[.]” But the second composition could be the voice of a second speaker chiming in after a little thought. In this case it serves as a caveat, a voice crying out in opposition to the boredom of the first. It is Wordsworth the poet attempting to reconnect humanity to reality. “Reflecting upon the magnitude of general evil,” Wordsworth writes in the Preface, “I should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy had I not the deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind” (500). Sound is reintroduced in the second part as “the quiet of death” (italics mine). The poem is not a call to arms because it does not need to be. Wordsworth believes that people are basically good, innately wanting to eliminate evil and death from the world and not take oppression lying down. The lament of “peace, peace, peace,” as the last line of the poem is for all humanity, not just for one man who “may lie in peace on his bed” in line 10 of the first part. And though I read it both ways, I think it is the reading of the second part as an example of a singular rebellion against savage torpor by a poet that has the most power.
Now, what is really one of the loveliest bits about this lyric is that Wordsworth let its sentiments spill into his life of leisure with Dorothy, emphasizing his assertion that “all good poetry is the spontaneous of powerful feelings” (498). In her April 29 journal entry, a week after the poem was written, Dorothy recalls her day by a creek with William, listening to the “voice of the air”: “William heard me breathing and rustling now and then, but we both lay still and unseen by one another. He thought that it would be as sweet thus to lie so in the grave, to hear the peaceful sounds of the earth and know that one’s dear friends were near” (587). Because at the end of “These chairs they have no words to utter,” life should “be thou ever as now, /Sweetness and breath with the quiet of death, /peace, peace, peace.” Life must commingle with death, otherwise, without being part of a binary, how would life be defined? And if pervading silence signals the death of the mind, the ability to hear and appreciate sound beyond the grave is representative of an individual whose thought never ends. Like the “Lucy” poems, to die is to be immersed in the earth, losing the self-propelled force and energy of life, but becoming part of the eternally churning energy of the earth. But to be immersed in that energy, there has to be energy to begin with. To die a death of savage torpor is in effect to commit suicide by ignorance. And we all know what happens to suicides…
All following citations in the paper are from:
Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology, 3rd Edition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden,
MA: 2006.
Molly Adams
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
David Mason, The Romantic Lyric
Combating Stagnancy: Savage Torpor in “These chairs they have no words to utter”
As with any screed of idealism, William Wordsworth has trouble living up to the goals he sets for himself in the Preface he wrote for the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads. Trying to head off a critic from panning you usually leads to generalizations and sweeping statements made about your work. But rather than finding all the spots where he uses so-called elevated/poetic imagery that no farmer would ever use, I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and examine the poem where I believe he is the most successful in meeting some of his own standards. Of primary importance to this paper, Wordsworth states that, “For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor” (499). Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the opposite of truth is repose. To be reduced to a state of savage torpor is to cease to seek the truth and commit one’s self to ignorance. Wordsworth writes further that, “I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have endeavoured to counteract it [the “deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.”] The time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed by men of greater powers and with far more distinguished success” (500) This declaration exposes the political Wordsworth of sonnets and allegory, the poet fighting against the increasingly totalitarian government that had developed in England since the American and French Revolutions with his words. He saw increasing complacency around him, people unwilling to use their minds because it might land them in jail. Although “These chairs they have no words to utter” (528-29) is not a call to arms—subtlety is key—it shares a personal story of rejection of the complacency that into which, oppression tempts the human mind.
The objects first met in the poem furnish a basic room in a house: chairs and a fireplace, a ceiling and a floor. It is a rustic setting, an almost empty room, with not even a lit fire, a simple sign of comfort. “Low and Rustic life was generally chosen” as the setting for most of his poems “because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings and are more easily comprehended and are more durable…in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (497). All alone, this speaker is content in his “chamber hushed and still.” What Wordsworth is doing is flipping a scene of domestic tranquility on its head, following his guideline that, “the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and the situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling” (499). But he has also created a speaker who has a mind “[unfit] for all voluntary exertion]. The silence of the room is stifling, “The ceiling and floor are as mute as stone.” The feeling of entrapment is then applied to these familiar objects. The speaker is alone, but the next line catches us off guard: “Happy and alone.” Because following that, the speaker is not just happy with being alone, isolated from humans who have the power to utter, stir, or flutter, or nature, which feeds the thoughts of poets (ln 13) but equates that happiness experienced through stagnancy of mind and body with the experience of being dead, thereby desiring death over “the passion, the sorrow, and the strife” of life because it is a more simple and peaceful state. This is craziness because Wordsworth tears down what he has established as an idealist vision in poetic works. Low and rustic life—at least the indoors part of it—becomes a source of savage torpor. Wordsworth has found the weakness of his own opinion concerning rural life: “Beautiful and permanent forms of nature” are not always present. And the speaker indicates himself as sharing these tendencies toward barbaric laziness that I would imagine he usually only attributes to “the accumulation of men in cities” (499).
Supposedly composed “Half an hour afterwards,” the first line of “Part Two” flat-out rejects the complacency of the first two stanzas. The speaker says, “I have thoughts that are fed by the sun,” making it clear that the outdoors are an essential ingredient to get those brain juices to flowing. The amendment to the first section complicates who is doing the speaking in the first and second parts and opens itself up to a number of interpretations concerning who is affected by savage torpor and how to avoid becoming one of the afflicted. Assuming the speaker is the same, if this part was composed 30 minutes after the first part, it suggests that to move away from savage torpor is not all that difficult. It’s as though the state of the speaker is a form of light melancholy, like he woke up a little grumpy and then after stretching and yawning, makes a drastic turn-around to greet the day. It can then be read as part of the poet’s struggle, or even part of all worker’s struggles, that no matter how good life gets, sometimes you just do not want to get out of bed. The second part embraces “The things which I see/Are welcome to me, /Welcome every one[.]” But the second composition could be the voice of a second speaker chiming in after a little thought. In this case it serves as a caveat, a voice crying out in opposition to the boredom of the first. It is Wordsworth the poet attempting to reconnect humanity to reality. “Reflecting upon the magnitude of general evil,” Wordsworth writes in the Preface, “I should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy had I not the deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind” (500). Sound is reintroduced in the second part as “the quiet of death” (italics mine). The poem is not a call to arms because it does not need to be. Wordsworth believes that people are basically good, innately wanting to eliminate evil and death from the world and not take oppression lying down. The lament of “peace, peace, peace,” as the last line of the poem is for all humanity, not just for one man who “may lie in peace on his bed” in line 10 of the first part. And though I read it both ways, I think it is the reading of the second part as an example of a singular rebellion against savage torpor by a poet that has the most power.
Now, what is really one of the loveliest bits about this lyric is that Wordsworth let its sentiments spill into his life of leisure with Dorothy, emphasizing his assertion that “all good poetry is the spontaneous of powerful feelings” (498). In her April 29 journal entry, a week after the poem was written, Dorothy recalls her day by a creek with William, listening to the “voice of the air”: “William heard me breathing and rustling now and then, but we both lay still and unseen by one another. He thought that it would be as sweet thus to lie so in the grave, to hear the peaceful sounds of the earth and know that one’s dear friends were near” (587). Because at the end of “These chairs they have no words to utter,” life should “be thou ever as now, /Sweetness and breath with the quiet of death, /peace, peace, peace.” Life must commingle with death, otherwise, without being part of a binary, how would life be defined? And if pervading silence signals the death of the mind, the ability to hear and appreciate sound beyond the grave is representative of an individual whose thought never ends. Like the “Lucy” poems, to die is to be immersed in the earth, losing the self-propelled force and energy of life, but becoming part of the eternally churning energy of the earth. But to be immersed in that energy, there has to be energy to begin with. To die a death of savage torpor is in effect to commit suicide by ignorance. And we all know what happens to suicides…
All following citations in the paper are from:
Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology, 3rd Edition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden,
MA: 2006.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Goldsworthian Public Art
The documentation of a little public art project that mi amigo Leath and I made in the Art Institute garden last Thursday. We directed a Segway tour to view it as we were leaving. I am wondering if it is still there.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Let Go of That!
I "work" at Vocalo.org. I have a couple things to say about it, but for now I offer up a link to a piece I cut together using some of my own audio and some stuff that I picked off of our library and out of our website. And perhaps from here, you will explore on your own.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Self-deprecation is the new confidence.
My silly piece of nothing about boats was on NPR's Day to Day yesterday. You can stream it here.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
On Tree Grates
All along 51st street, where Rockefeller Center is, are tree grates like the one right below this post. I'm guessing John J. wanted everything to fit into his Art Deco sensibilities.
A tree grate like this one, I believe, is a seized opportunity for urban decoration and is there to protect the possibly exposed roots of a tree from foot traffic and cigarette butts and general contamination. Maybe it is also there to keep tree liberators from digging the poor city tree up from 51st street in New York City and bringing it to a restful, shady place that a tree actually has business being in.
A tree grate like this one, I believe, is a seized opportunity for urban decoration and is there to protect the possibly exposed roots of a tree from foot traffic and cigarette butts and general contamination. Maybe it is also there to keep tree liberators from digging the poor city tree up from 51st street in New York City and bringing it to a restful, shady place that a tree actually has business being in.
Friday, September 12, 2008
City to City to City
Before I move on to Chicago (where I am), here's where I've been: tree grate, lonely Jewish boy at the MoMA, delicious white pizza in the park, the goddamn subway at three a.m., and Boston at night.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
For Bud: A Dying Deer
This is what we should do if we accidentally hit an animal with a car and are unable to complete the kill. However, I don't think anyone I know is this brave. Click the title of the post to listen in.
Nitty Gritty: From an audio project I completed last year. This story belongs to my project advisor's brother.
Nitty Gritty: From an audio project I completed last year. This story belongs to my project advisor's brother.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
A Reason Why I Do and Do Not Miss Living With A Cat
I'm house sitting this week and taking care of five (5!) cats. One of them woke me up this morning at 7:20 by licking my elbow because he was hungry. When I opened my eyes, he earnestly meowed at me, if you'll excuse my anthropomorphizing. It was kind of cute I guess.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Who wants to hear a cuy have its neck snapped?
If the answer is yes, click on the title of this post.
From recordings I made in Peru four years ago. South Americans call them cuy (coo-ee) because, well, that's the sound they make and it makes more sense than guinea pig.
From recordings I made in Peru four years ago. South Americans call them cuy (coo-ee) because, well, that's the sound they make and it makes more sense than guinea pig.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Squirrel Story
Ten years ago, I was racing time trials on bikes with Gena, and I ended up losing because when I was coming down Ashmont Street, a squirrel darted in front of me and I had to swerve to avoid hitting it. The feeling of running over a squirrel's spine with a bike tire, which I have never felt, is what I think about whenever I am biking near squirrels. So today, I cut through Deering Oaks on my way downtown, and these two little squirrels, little teenage squirrels, freak out and make a run across the path. The first one makes it, but the other smacks into my moving tire and then runs alongside it as I'm braking, trying to squeeze underneath the front of it. I ran over its paw, finally stopped myself, and it climbed up a tree. I yelled "Stupid squirrel!" at it for being a stupid squirrel and further traumatized it.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
i think if you click this you can listen to what this post is about
my completed assignment for: radio ephemera. it's called "I'd Like to Introduce You to My Mom."
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