William Easterly, the NYU economist, suggests that Starbucks is using aid to Africa as a brand-enhancement gimmick: “I was curious about what the going rate is these days for attracting customers who want to save Africa. Five cents was a little lower than I expected.”
A Starbucks senior VP for public affairs responds, but Easterly’s commenters are not convinced by her arguments.
(Photo via Aid Watch)
As the Arctic ice melts, countries are engaged in a polar land rush.
It is time for a fun internet personality quiz! No this one is actually fun.
What your favorite Grateful Dead song says about you.
Plus, bonus yearbook quotes!! (Missing however my Deadhead brother's actual yearbook quote: "what a short, normal trip it's been.")
Here's the link: QUIZ
Cool animation for Nike by James Jarvis, of Martin fame. This is apparently his first motion project, which is super cool for him. Obviously rotoscoped, but a lovely application of the process, in the tradition of Pinocchio and 101 Dalmations (something there is, tragically, no video evidence of on the internet, putting to rest the idea that EVERYTHING is online. But look for it in the movie, when Cruella DeVillie’s car flies off the embarkment and into the snow; some of the strangest, coolest rotoscoping ever).
I posted this to a online group I’m a part of, and it immediately brought up the ’sell-out’ clarion call, and whether it would be applied to Mr. Jarvis. What a crock of utter horseshit. As a professional illustrator, I want to, for once and all, call every single self-important punk-ass artist out on the mat for using this tired term born of petty spite and jealousy. There’s only two types of work in this world: the kind of work that satisfies you, and the kind of work that helps you continue to make the kind of work that satisfies you. Nothing else matters.
Well done, James: I hope Nike paid very well
With fewer Wall Street firms hiring, some biz-school grads are considering alternative careers.
It may be time to consider a fallback position where global warming is concerned, according to an article in Foreign Affairs by a passel of environmental experts and engineers.
The evidence that the climate is changing keeps growing — glaciers are melting, sea levels rising — yet so do indications that the political will to change behavior is lacking: The United States has yet to impose any restrictions on emissions, for example, and most scientists consider the current European cap-and-trade system a baby step.
Therefore, we ought to be debating “geoengineering,” suggests David G. Victor, director of Stanford’s program on energy and sustainable development, and four co-authors.
They grant that efforts to tinker with the weather have a poor track record and a worse reputation. The U.N. banned efforts to alter the weather for hostile or military purposes in 1976. But reducing or eliminating global warming (even as carbon-dioxide emissions continue to soar) could turn out to be easier than making it rain more in South Dakota — let alone ginning up a hurricane to flatten Moscow. Volcanoes offer one hint about one way forward: In 1991, the ash spewed by Mt. Pinatubo, in the Philippines, for example, caused global temperatures to fall by 0.5 degrees Celsius. The eruption increased the proportion of sunlight reflected back into space, a measure known as the Earth’s “albedo.”
Aircraft, balloons, or cannon might be used to loft reflective particles of some sort into the upper stratosphere, the authors say. Candidate sunscreens include sulfate aerosols, aluminum oxide dust, “or even self-levitating and self-orienting designer particles engineered to migrate to the Polar Regions and remain in place for long periods.”
Any drawbacks? …
Bill Slammon reviews the newest releases from St. Vincent and Akron/Family.
The accordion-playing Gary Sredzienski’s varied character comes alive in Creek Man.
To all of you in the Rochester area, be sure to come to the University of Rochester Interfaith Chapel today at 6 p.m. for the newest installment of our ongoing Reading the World Conversation Series. This time we’re proud to bring to town Jan Kjærstad (an internationally renown author from Norway) and Mark Binelli (an American author and contributing editor to Rolling Stone). All the good info is here.
Also, to sweeten the deal, we’ll have an some excellent organ music at the top of the show, and food and drinks at the bottom. All of this, of course, is free.
We hope to see you there!
This was the question that Leon Neyfakh from the New York Observer asked a few people at the recent PEN Foundation annual gala. The answers aren’t all that provocative or surprising: Edmund White points out how most panels are “an exercise of competing egos rather than an effort to communicate or focus on the topic” and Daniel Menaker (whose Titlepage.tv project seems to have gone into permanent hibernation) offers up the excuse that most authors aren’t good at interacting with the public.
The one comment that I completely agree with is from Rhonda Sherman (organizer of the New Yorker Festival): ““In general, it’s not a party unless there’s blood on the floor. There needs to be tension on a panel. You need to have some disagreement. If everyone agrees on the panel, it’s a total snooze-a-thon.”
Every panel needs a contrarian to really foster a discussion. Otherwise it’s easy for these events to devolve into a series of disconnected, individual presentation.
As mentioned on Conversational Reading, the new issue of Hermano Cerdo is now available.
Included in this issue are articles on Juan Jose Millas’s El Mundo, on Sergio Chejfec’s Los incompletos y Mis dos mundos, and on Daniel Sada’s Casi nunca, which will be published by Graywolf.
Chad Post (who you may know as the guy who wrote all the words above and below this post) was recently interviewed by Nigel Beale for his literary podcast. It’s a candid 28 minutes—covering the state of literature in translation, the American publishing landscape, Open Letter, and etc.—so take a look.
(Also, you can check the rest of Nigel’s offerings here.)
Guys, I am dealing with a demon right now — the demon of temptation.
Obama gave a press conference last night, and I don’t know what my favorite bloggers thought of it.
Would someone please transcribe my favorite bloggers’ thoughts onto a piece of parchment and staple it to a lamppost so that I can read it without violating my pledge of not reading blogs?
Thank you.
With Catalan Days quickly approaching (the festival kicks off on Saturday with the Merce Rodoreda/Jessica Lange event at the Baryshnikov Arts Center) this seems like an appropriate time to mention Black Beach and Other Plays a collection of three works of contemporary Catalan drama by Jordi Coca, Joan Casas, and Lluisa Cunille, (and translated by Richard Thomson, Peter Bush, and Laura McGloughlin) published in English translation by Parthian Book (distributed in the U.S. by Dufour Editions).
I can’t imagine many works of Catalan drama are available in English translation, so this is a pretty unique publication. And the opening intro by Jordi Coca that provides a very interesting overview of the “minor renaissance” Catalan theatre is currently experiencing.
According to Coca, the big turning point came in 1976 with the availability of public funding for theatre. Prior to that there was a pretty diverse, exciting theatre scene, but it was primarily done “from the perspective of resistance” to the Franco regime, and was performed by “semi-professional companies.”
In the 1980s, the public funding let to the creation of numerous theatres, including the Drama Centre of Catalonia and the National Theatre of Catalonia. All of these outlets have lead to the vitality of the current scene, but according to Coca, the popularity of Catalan theatre comes with a price:
Such is the present state of play. Programming for public theatre is very conservative, very close to the interests of the commercial stage, and proceeds without any risk-taking from an aesthetic, dramatic or ideological point of view. We are therefore waiting for a new generation of English-style angry young men or women able to shake up today’s complacent and optimistic bourgeois outlook.
Nevertheless it would be wrong not to acknowledge that the consolidation of audiences and adaptation of programming policy to more conservative, insipid sensibilities has led to an increase in ticket sales and an increase in the strictly economic level of theatre business.
But that brings us to the three playwrights featured in this collection: Lluisa Cunille (“The Sale”), whose work is “rooted in Pinter;” Joan Casas (“Naked”), in whose work “the place where his characters find themselves is an abstract space subordinate to the interplay of ambiguities of time that form part of the project,” and Jordi Coca, whose “Black Beach” is “driven by a wish to rework the myth of Antigone.”
EBSCO made a bold move recently claiming that libraries that offer e-cards [for accessing electronic library resources from home] are violating their licensing agreement. San Francisco Public Library has a statement on their databases page.
Special Notice Regarding E-Card Users: Due to electronic vendor licensing agreements, San Francisco Public Library must suspend issuing e-cards, effective immediately. Existing e-cardholders must validate their current address no later than April 10, 2009 in order to continue using SFPL databases and other electronic resources remotely. This validation must take place in person with appropriate identification and proof of address at any San Francisco Public Library Branch or the Main Library. The Library will continue to investigate ways of offering a revised e-card in the future. We recommend that non-San Francisco Bay Area residents check for similar electronic resources at their local public library. We apologize for the inconvenience
Boston Public Library is taking a different tack and keeping the e-card program and dropping remote access to EBSCO. Both libraries have to curtail services — and SFPL is changing their e-card policies fairly dramatically — because of this. Does anyone else see this as a shot across the bow? While I’m aware that things are tough all over, this move surprises me. Not because it may not be EBSCO legally enforcing their agreement, but because libraries with e-card options have always been offering patrons an amazing service in a way that seemed almost too good to be true. I have access to Heritage Quest with my totally free library card at the library I work at. Lucky me, but really anyone can get a card at my library — no matter where you live, no matter where you pay taxes — and get access to the same resources. I think this move, and libraries’ decisions about their responses to it, is going to be the start of a long (or depending how you look at it, continuing) struggle.
The Met Office predicts that Britain is in for a hot dry summer: “Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer.” After the wash-out summers of 2007/08, in which July and August were monsoon season, this is welcome news.
Barbecuing with your shirt off: Dadness 1970s-style
Combine the prospect of good weather with a weak pound and a recession, and you have the prospect of a mammoth camping season.
As part of a Google-sponsored competition, 2 firms are partnering to grow the first Mustard Seed on the Moon. In a little Bubble. But you know, why stop there?
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
Poetry Brothel in the New York Post
Writes one, in response to a compilation of Glenn “I’m Mad as Hell” Beck’s greatest video hits:
You know I’m beginning to think this is all an act by Mr. Beck to gain ratings.
(FWIW, there is no detectable irony in the post.)
Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist, notes that some high earners in England are threatening to decamp — to Switzerland and even the Isle of Man (!) — in protest of rising tax rates.
He then wonders aloud why American workers don’t pay more attention to variations in state taxes. Economists, one might think, would be likely to consider such things, but they appear not to. The example Mankiw provides is not chosen at random:
Massachusetts has a top income tax rate of 5.3 percent, while New Jersey has a top rate of 8.97 percent. That difference of 3.67 percent shrinks to about 2.4 percent after taking into account that state taxes are deductible at the federal level, but it is still not trivial. If Paul Krugman and Eric Maskin had stayed at MIT and Harvard, rather than moving to Princeton, they each would have enjoyed about $29,000 more after taxes from winning the Nobel prize.
In short, there can be a hidden financial cost to saying no to a job offer from a Massachusetts college. Take note, department chairs.
Check out this CNN report on swine flu realities down in the Mexico City metro, the capital's "veins." Karl Penhaul appears to take a few short trips between metros Bellas Artes and Hidalgo (stations I personally use almost daily), but he does capture the sense that the city must move to stay alive, even in the face of a never-before-seen epidemic.
Now the government is saying there are no current plans to shut the system down. Today, the metro is offering anti-bacterial gel to commuters.
One thing Penhaul mentions is that "all social classes" use the D.F. subway, but I'd say that's not very accurate. Many people in Mexico City actually take pride in the fact they do not take the metro, seeing the practice as far too beneath their class or social bearing.
Class barriers are omnipresent in the social body of Mexico, of course, and are making themselves apparent during the current swine flu crisis. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is now defending his decision to shut down restaurants and public spaces in the capital, as a figure emerges of just how badly the city's paralysis is hurting the local economy. People rely on their salaries and tips in restaurants, theaters, sporting events, gyms, to live and provide for their families.
How will we live without pay?
In today's La Jornada, a clown who works the now-emptied Chapultepec Park wrote a letter to the editor asking if the municipal government's new influenza victim support fund would be open to him. Jose Antonio Herrera demands:
I'd like to know if, as a clown of the Bosque de Chapultepec, I will be helped by the support program for those affected by the influenza. Since I was unjustly fired from my job as a mailman, I work [at the park] and that's how I support my family. Now that it's closed, how will I feed them? Or is the fund only for business owners who do have money and were affected by the closure of their bars or restaurants? Or will I have to look to get sick to be able to support my family? Where do I have to go to get help?
Tourism to Mexico looks to be decimated by the swine flu outbreak. Airlines are canceling service, countries are asking to cut off all air travel to Mexico, and flight crews are outright refusing to fly here.
Meanwhile in D.F., it looks like Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova had another disastrous press conference last night, confusing reporters with conflicting swine flu figures. Interestingly, President Felipe Calderon met this morning with four ex-health secretaries. There will be word later this afternoon on that meeting's results.
* I'm still in Puebla, working, and watching. More later.
Hey all: If you would like to read and/or purchase my latest minicomic, Flytrap Episode Four: Performance Anxiety, illustrated by Sarah Burrini, you can totally do that thing! All you gotta do is scroll — or, as I once overheard someone explaining, “stroll” — down to the bottom of the page linked in the previous sentence. (Also, I am so fond of this image of Maddy yelling. It cries out, as it were, to be a LiveJournal icon…)
How was your spring break? Mine was fab. Just back from Texas, and New York City. All I needed was a trip to California to complete my tour of the United States’ swine flu outbreak sites. Yesterday included a bus ride to Boston (luckily avoiding Lowell, where two swine flu cases were reported today). Later this week: a plane to Chicago.
Very Short List’s Alex Abramovich has more from the best of the web.
I can’t find it on their website, but the French-American Foundation recently announced the finalists for their annual Translation Awards. These awards, which are co-sponsored by the Florence Gould Foundation, are given out to the best French translations in both fiction and non-fiction published in the past year. The winners will be announced at an award ceremony on May 26th.
Here are the fiction finalists:
And for non-fiction:
The Web series Speedie Date looks at the anguish of the six-minute romantic interview.
We’ve all heard about melting glaciers, rising temperatures, and droughts. But what effect will global warming have on the ocean? The sea absorbs carbon dioxide emissions, causing ocean waters to become more acidic. These changing pH levels have an impact on marine life from coral reefs to salmon. But scientists are fighting back with a new device to more closely monitor the pH of the ocean.
There is so much wrong with Philip Jones’s “English writers outperform rivals” post on The Bookseller.com, that I’m not even sure where to start . . .
I’ll get to the actual content of the article in a minute, but first off, what is up with this title? Since when did English writers have “rivals”? Is there some sort of secret literary tournament going on that I’m not aware of? If so, I hope there’s at least some good smack talk going on: “Take that, Spain! We will dominate you and your florid prose, fine wine, and beautiful beaches once again with our English wit and neo-realistic family dramas.”
Granted, there is a Writers Football League (apparently dominated by the Hungarians), but in this case, Jones is actually talking about international bestseller lists. Over the past year, Rudiger Wischenbart has been tracking bestseller lists in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK to analyze trends in translation flows and popularity. Through the information he gathered, one can see how Steig Larsson’s books traveled through Europe, or how Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog (a huge success here), only made the bestseller lists in France, Germany, and Spain during the past twelve months.
What’s really interesting, and what Rudiger opens his report with, is the fact that English books don’t top, or even dominate this “mega-bestseller list:”
Analyzing bestselling fiction authors and their books’ performance in seven major European book markets over the past 12 months (April 2008 through March 2009, Top 10 in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) presents a stunning landscape of probably unrivalled inner cultural diversity, yet under strictly European colours – and with books written in English representing only a surprisingly small island in comparison to other European languages.
The top 40 writers divide into 13 writing in English, and 27 writing in other – European – languages, with Swedish (8), French (6) as the strongest, beating Dutch and German (each 4), Italian (3), Spanish (2), and Brazilian Portuguese (1).
Before finding out about this report, I would’ve assumed that 25-30 of the writers on the list would’ve been writing in English . . . Both Americans and Brits are champions at exporting out titles around the world, selling rights to dozens of countries, and invading the overall cultural landscape. So to find out that less than half of the bestselling authors wrote originally in English (including authors from India, UK, and America, three rather large countries) was pretty surprising to me.
But look what Philip Jones does with these same statistics:
English writers continue to outperform their rivals across Europe, according to an analysis of the top 10 international fiction bestsellers published by book trade magazines, including The Bookseller, Germany’s Buchreport, and France’s Livres Hebdo, over the past 12 months.
“Continue to outperform their rivals.” Classy.
I know better than to expect anything more from a trade magazine, but a bit of analysis about these findings, such as the “One Country Block Buster Phenomenon”1 would be a lot more interesting than some chest-thumping, pro-English, totally banal statements.
1 From the study: “Close scrutiny of the analyzed data show ever more telling results. Of the top 40 writers, 25 made their (heavy) splash in just one country. In return, only 2 English and 10 non-English writers could make it to the top of bestseller lists in 3 or even more countries with translations of their books. (In fact most of these local block buster titles had been translated into other languages, but were not successful to the point of getting into the top segment of the charts.) This illustrates to what extend book markets are still centred on a predominantly domestic readership.”
The Amish church is allowing laid-off workers to file for unemployment for the first time.
An astute observer of American politics says Obama and Reagan have more in common than we realize.
The radio says
It’s Obama’s 100 days today
I bet the blogs
are burning.
And also I heard
about a press conference tonight
I bet the blogs
are burning.
But I wouldn’t know
because I’m
blog-free
miles away from the burning.
Dear God, what have I done.
Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone, translated from the German by Michael Hoffmann and published by Melville House earlier this year, has been receiving a ton of good attention, such as this review in the New Yorker and this bit for the daily Very Short List e-mail.
Never before published in English, this novel is a perfect example of what we miss (or almost miss) by living in a book culture that translates so little.
Monica Carter—who works at Skylight Books and runs the always excellent Salonica World Lit website—penned this glowing review, which begins with a bit about Fallada’s crazy life:
Hans Fallada, née Rudolph Ditzen, led a tumultuous, short life, producing several great works even under the crushing hand of the Nazi Regime. Fallada’s own life, itself worthy of several novels, was plagued by drugs, alcohol, stints in sanatoriums, and most importantly, artistic integrity as a writer. At eighteen, he entered into a suicide pact with his friend while they were at college. Disguised as a duel, it passed miserably with Fallada killing his friend and shooting himself in the chest, an event that he survived. This suicide pact resulted from their growing attraction to one another and mutual desire to avoid besmirching their family’s names. He dropped out of college and began a career path working in agriculture. As he worked on farms, Fallada continued to write and depend heavily on drugs. He managed to publish two novels to no great acclaim. After two separate prison terms for embezzling from his employers, he landed a clerk position with his publisher and, after a disastrous financial time, is asked to reduce his salary. Fallada declined, instead asking to have his advance parsed out in five installments during which time he penned the bestseller Little Man, What Now? This success saved not only Fallada, but also the publishing house itself from financial ruin. Fallada attempted to buy a house in the environs of the city, but the owner accused him of being an anti-Nazi conspirator. Through his new connections, he escaped punishment yet decided to remain in Germany. The ensuing years consisted of periods of drying up, stays in psychiatric hospitals, novels that contained no political content, and a tenuous relationship with the Nazi regime. The Nazis censored and promoted his work with equal fervor and their typical unpredictability. Upon release from a Nazi insane asylum he was confined to during the end of the war, a friend gave him a Gestapo file of a couple that resisted the Nazis by writing postcards filled with anti-Nazi sentiment and dropping them anonymously at various locations throughout Berlin. At first this didn’t strike Fallada as all that interesting, although after being urged by friends to write another novel with a political bent, he penned Every Man Dies Alone in 24 days. Fallada died days before its publication in 1947.
For the rest of the review, click here.
BORN IN 1900, German artist Gerd Arntz designed a pattern language for life in the twentieth century. His prints and designs were intended to further the purposes of a socialist world even as they dreamt it into being. A protege of Otto Neurath, Arntz labored in the febrile utopia of interwar Vienna before immigrating to the Netherlands to escape the rising tide of fascism. His central work in that time was the elaboration of some four thousand iconographic symbols depicting the activities, desires, labors, and lures of modern life. He called these figures Isotypes, a freeform acronym for “International System of Typographic Education.” He hoped they could be used to disambiguate the specialized rituals of bureacracy; they survive today as stark and indelible reminders of a disorienting century.
Arntz developed over four thousand isotypes, many consisting of syntactical variations on a theme. The generic pawn-like figure for man, decorated with various icons inscribed within its bulk, could stand for a baker, a teacher, an engineer, or a scribe. But even if the outline of many figures was the same, each variation required its own handmade linocut. It’s as if the symmetry and interchangeability of industry furnished Arntz a visual grammar, an idiom for communicating with the enlightened masses, long before it could provide him with a means of production.
The iconographic grammar Arntz created to effect the enlightenment of the masses persists now in debased idioms; our symbols wink and lure, beguile and correct, discipline and punish. The future into which Arntz shone his art was a fraught one; the only options it offered the thinking person were sundered hope or turgid obedience. It seems to us as if Arntz looked into this future and said, Yes—and…. Arntz pursued a tragic vision of clarity, perhaps noble, but certainly impossible. Today, the quotidian totems that flicker on our desktops and stand erect on airport stantions are the minor spirits of a softly coercive magisterium, a world of long queues and capthchas and telephonic labyrinths. It’s a world that leaves many chilled and ennervated, defeated and domesticated. But looking at Arntz’s art, we see a thoroughbred intelligence at work—ironic and engaged, tragic in its abandoned wisdom, luminous in its effects—and catch a glimpse of another disposition.
Arntz’s life and works are richly documented in an online exhibition created by the design firm Ontwerpwerk and realized with the cooperation of the Municipal Museum of the Hague (which holds the Arntz Archive) and the artist’s son, Peter. Arntz’s collaborations with Neurath, his own charmingly engagé prints and other works, and some six hundred of the isotypes are presented there in stark Modernist splendor; it’s a site that repays many visits.
Images of Isotypes by Gerd Arntz, 1930s, and Isotype with linocut (photo by Max Bruinsma), above, appear courtesy of the Archive Gemeentemuseum The Hague, The Netherlands.
As you may have read, Jared Diamond, the best-selling author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” has been sued for libel over a piece he wrote for the New Yorker.
At Savage Minds, the anthropologist Alex Golub (aka “Rex”) observes: “Most news coverage will focus on the more spectacular aspects of the case: Diamond publishes a piece in the New Yorker depicting a tribal fight in Papua New Guinea, Shearer produces documentation that his accounts are untrue, and the Papua New Guineans involve sue Diamond for US $10 million.”
But Golub finds at least as disturbing as the charges in the lawsuit — unproven, of course — what he sees as a flouting of anthropological ethics ….
It’s impossible to say too many great things about Duke Ellington— just try it! And if 
by accident of fate or fatigue one does get tongue-tied, Stephanie Stein Crease, author of the recently published Duke Ellington: His Life In Jazz (Chicago Review Press) will have heps making creole love calls again faster than they can say antidisestablishmentarianismist— just try it! The publishing racket (understandably) requires I tell ya’ll that Stephanie’s Duke is, in fact, a kids book written for ages 9 and up but keeping it hush-hush, on the QT and just between ya’ll and me: Edward Kennedy Ellington is for everyone, all the time— forever— although April 29, Duke’s birthday, will always be cause for special celebration.
Like many people in the New York City area, I rocked the 1999 Ellington Centennial by listening to WKCR, which played nothing but Duke for two weeks straight, 24 hours a day. It was awesome. Duke’s 110th anniversary in show business doesn’t have the same public profile but I’m hopeful that Stephanie’s highly engaging work will help raise a generation of kids who’ll keep Duke’s abundant genius alive: it’s not something to take for granted. As for Stephanie herself, her 2001 not-for-adults-only Gil Evans biography, Out Of The Cool was praised by Mr. American Splendor himself, Harvey Pekar, so— as with Pekar’s insistent championing of the Brooklyn-born jazz genius Joe Maneri— you know its quality. (For more on Stephanie’s Gil Evans, see her extensive interview with Jerry Jazz Musician.)
For those WWIB readers who don’t know Duke Ellington’s music, what can I say? In very brief, 
Ellington is one of the towering artistic figures of the 20th century. For a variety of aesthetic and historical reasons I’ll refrain from detailing here, the boldness, invention and sheer excitement of the best swing-era bands have been so marginalized, most people under the age of, say, 70, have a hard time considering them as more than hokum, or some fogey dancer’s nostalgia trip. That couldn’t be further from the truth— listen to Miles Davis’ Ellington memorial, “He Loved Him Madly” (from Get Up With It (1974)) to hear how one avant-garde composer/performer adored and transformed another. Likewise, as much as we all love Sun Ra, the Arkestra are no further out than Duke (check out Afro-Bossa from 1962, say) and, when he wants to, Duke can whomp a piano with as much weird space as Thelonious Monk, whose solo Plays Ellington (1955) is partial payback for the inspiration, genius-to-genius style.
From near a swampy river in Athens, Georgia, Brian Berger told Stephanie Stein Crease in New York he was “Tootin’ Through The Roof” with the spirit of “Dooji Wooji.” Stephanie kindly overlooked this indiscretion and their conversation swung onward. — Willis Still Sunsweet, Music Director
Click here to view the embedded video.
Brian Berger: A good friend of mine, the historian Philip Dray, did a children’s book on journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells—how’d you get the idea to do a Duke Ellington children’s book?
Stephanie Stein Crease: Duke is a great subject for teens and pre-teens because of his inventiveness, his vast musical legacy and gifts as a composer, arranger, bandleader and pianist. His life story and rise to international acclaim is dramatic, and full of twists and turns due to his very longevity and the longevity of the Duke Ellington Orchestra; he was born in 1899 and died in 1974, and some of his musicians had been with him for decades. I also treated this biography as a window into American cultural history.
Brian: I take it there’s a certain editorial process for writing kid’s books, like you can go far but not too far. Your book is for ages 9 and up but I didn’t feel you wrote down much at all. Were there any places you had to pull back or revise?
Stephanie: This book is one of a series of history books for pre-teens. It is my first book for young people, and I trusted my editor Cynthia Sherry, who founded the series, to advise me on content and the narrative “voice.” I did not shy away from controversial topics, such as racism in D.C., when Duke was growing up, harsh aspects of the entertainment world during the Depression, and the racial inequities of the music business. But, there were several things that I did not dwell on: Duke’s extensive love life, the more complicated aspects of his working relationship with Strayhorn and other musicians, drug and alcohol abuse among musicians, etc.
Brian: It took me a while to get to this interview not because my enthusiasm dimmed but because I got caught up in the various musical activities that go along with the text— dig this washtub bass solo, S! [Boom boom boom boom] Had you been involved with teaching and/or music education before?
Stephanie: I have an extensive musical background, and am an advocate of music education, particularly instrumental training for children. My son started playing an instrument at age 4, and played in a children’s orchestra from early on, which was outside of most of the public schools he attended (he is now in high school). My book Music Lessons (Chicago Review Press, 2006), explores the state of music education in the schools, and how parents can fill what is now a huge gap in music education in school. Music is a great leveler—kids who are introduced to all kinds of music, and playing real instruments early on can carry that through life. It enriches everything they do, and benefits the many other kinds of learning they experience every day. The activities in the book are designed for children who may or may not have any musical training; they include rainy day activities like designing album covers to “Learn to Read Drum Notation”, or “Write Your Own Blues.”
Brian: I appreciated your look back to the minstrel and vaudeville roots of jazz, which have often been obscured because of distaste for the racial caricatures they utilized, although it should always be noted that minstrel shows were a Northern—and in fact, a New York—invention, not something borne from the racist South. Later, of course, there were important black minstrels, Bert Wiliams being the best known today. When did you become aware of this part of America’s pre-jazz music heritage?
Stephanie: To me, jazz history and music history goes hand-in-hand with social and cultural history. Vaudeville grew from minstrelsy, with all its murky racial background. The vaudeville circuit, black and white, gave several prominent musicians their first professional jobs along with survival skills to cope with getting stranded in small towns without pay, and other life mishaps. Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk were just a handful of jazz musicians who started their careers in vaudeville.
Brian: Although Duke has rightly occupied a vaunted place in African-American and American musical culture, there’s this impression that Ellington was apolitical. I think this is obviously NOT the case and also blurs his biography a great deal. Duke was obviously an artist and—by necessity—a showman first but that is hardly all he was. I highly doubt that younger, more ‘outspoken’ Duke admirers like Charles Mingus and Max Roach felt that way, i.e. they knew Duke did what he could—which was quite a bit—in the context of his times.
Stephanie: Max Roach was outspoken and visible during the civil rights era. He was once carried off the stage of Carnegie Hall bearing carrying a sign that said “Give Africa Back to the Africans.” Harry Belafonte participated in some of the watershed civil rights marches, as did other noted African-American performers. Duke had many sides. He did not want to be made a public spokesman, but by virtue of his acclaim he became one. Yet his music and some large works were what he used as his strongest means of expression. He composed and staged several ambitious instrumental works and shows that expressed the beauty, richness, and significance of African-American history and experience. “Black, Brown and Beige,” “Jump for Joy,” “My People,” “The Sacred Concerts,” and his many musical portraits of Harlem are terrific examples of this. He received several awards from the NAACP and other civil rights organizations; in 1965 he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal by Lyndon B. Johnson, and in 1969 was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S., by President Nixon.
Brian: Today, it’s somewhat hard to convey the excitement and glamor of the big bands to young people yet all evidence shows how thrilling they were and that– even after the rise of be-bop— you could love Charlie Parker and still think wow, Harry James and Gene Krupa still have great bands! What’s your relationship to big bands been and what are some of your favorites (records, periods, etc)?
Stephanie: The big band era was fabulous for many reasons, but one of the most significant is that jazz was popular music—dance music. Big band music, the best of it, had so much swinging unity. Big bands and the dancing that went with it—mainly the lindy hop –galvanized youth culture through the Depression and World War II. Plus, the bands were hot houses for talent. The bands of Ellington, Basie, Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Goodman, Woody Herman, Billy Eckstine and others featured the likes of Lester Young, Cootie Williams, Dizzy Gillepsie, Ben Webster, and Miles Davis. This parade of musicians became the next trend-setters in jazz styles.
Brian: It seems the great Duke biography has yet to be written, with David Hajdu’s Billy Strayhorn book the last major advance. I don’t keep up with academic writing on Ellington so perhaps I’ve missed something. With respect to John Edward Hasse, Beyond Category is a fine summary but there’s still a place—and need—to fully embrace the man and the cultures he travelled through.
Stephanie: I really appreciate Mark Tucker’s Early Ellington, and all Tucker’s work on Ellington, including The Duke Ellington Reader, which he compiled and edited. Sadly Tucker died in 2000, I am sure he would have continued to research and write about Ellington’s music and life. Ellington was a very complex man, so I appreciate reading about him from many perspectives—I actually don’t think there can be one definitive book.
Brian: What’s a brief list of your favorite Duke records (sides for the early years, albums later) and given your closeness to Duke and Gil, who are some of your other favorite composers working in the jazz idiom? I’m fanatical about Cecil Taylor Unit Structures as the modernist interpretation of Duke but sometimes I still long for a modernist big band—something combining Cecil with the traditional power of the later Woody Herman bands might be especially great.
Stephanie: Duke Ellington:
“Black and Tan Fantasy”
“Creole Love Call”
“Mood Indigo”
“Come Sunday” (from Black, Brown and Beige)
“It Don’t Mean A Thing” (1945 vocal version)
“Cottontail”
“Jack the Bear”
“Take the ‘A’ Train” (Strayhorn)
Chelsea Bridge (Strayhorn)
“A Tone Parallel to Harlem”
“Such Sweet Thunder”
“Rockin’ in Rhythm” (from Ella Fitzgerlad Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook)
“Blood Count” (Strayhorn)
“UMMG” (Strayhorn)
GIL EVANS
Gil Evans Plus Ten (with Steve Lacy)
Porgy and Bess, featuring Miles Davis
New Bottle, Old Wine, Featuring Cannonball Adderley
Out of the Cool
The Individualism of Gil Evans
Priestess
The Gil Evans Orchestra— Live at the Public Theater
CHARLES MINGUS
Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
Mingus Ah-um
OLIVER NELSON Blues and the Abstract Truth
The list is endless. My listening tastes are “beyond category”— Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein; New York-style Cuban and Puerto Rican music of the ‘50s (pre-salsa) ; Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Copland, Berio, Ella, Billy Holiday, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum—the list is endless. I get on listening jags depending on specific work projects, or what my family are listening to (for ex., my son is back to all-Beatles, all the time.)
Brian: What’s next for Stephanie Stein Crease and how can people help support the musical education which is part of the Duke book’s purpose?
Stephanie: At the moment, I have several book ideas that I have yet to formalize. I am very fortunate to work in the Jazz Arts Program at Manhattan School of Music, where there is an amazing amount of concentrated musical talent, creativity and dedication in action, from the students and faculty. I would encourage parents, family members and friends to do whatever you can to bring live music into children’s lives, sing with them, bring instruments into your home to learn together, and go hear live music— be it a Young People’s Concert at the Philharmonic, or a stop-and-listen to a great player in the subway.
MANY thanks to Kay, who sent the link to this pattern this morning.
I feel that I should find this pattern in my size and make it up immediately, in case we are ever invaded and I find myself leading a cell of the Resistance. (I used to be obsessed with resistance narratives, especially Story of a Secret State
My point is, with this dress, the beret, and the jaunty neckerchief, I would SO be a leader of the Resistance. I’d have some unobjectionable cover story — running an orphanage? Where some of the “children” were actually “little people” AND demolition experts? — but in reality, I’d be obtaining false papers, robbing weapons transports, engaging in acts of sabotage, and using those fantastic pockets to hide my snub-nosed derringer. (And as long as I’m writing this, at some point, I get to fly a prop plane.)
Too bad my twin sister, the quisling in yellow, tries to betray me. Luckily, we knew she was up to no good, so we distracted her with a decoy mission while spiriting the real fugitives out of the country (that’s where the prop plane comes in).
Or, you know, you could just make this dress and become the leader of something else (Resistances being fewer and farther between these days). Good luck!
Humphreys family in Benodet in 1977
A nostalgic look back at the way we camped. Share your vintage camping pictures.
If you have images to share, contact Math through the comments section.
I had no idea, until somebody told me at lunch yesterday, that Pierre Deligne had been granted a viscounty by the Queen of Belgium; and that, as part of his ennoblement, he had to devise for himself a coat of arms. And here it is:
Why three chickens? Read here.
* Above, police in Mexico City. Photo by Conrad Starr.
What is swine flu? And ... wait ... should we even call it that? How did it appear in humans? How exactly is it spreading from Mexico to other countries? Where exactly in Mexico did it originate -- that is, if it originated in Mexico at all? How many people worldwide are actually infected by it, or just 'suspected' of being infected? And why are people dying in Mexico and no where else?
No one seems to know, and that's a deficit of knowledge that could be costing people their lives. In The Washington Post on Sunday, Dan Brown pointed out that U.S. health officials did not hear about the outbreak from Mexico first but rather from a lab in Canada. As tagged yesterday, Niko Price noted in the AP that "Two weeks after the first known swine flu death, Mexico [...] hasn't determined where the outbreak began or how it spread."
Predictably, in the absence of answers, conspiracies abound.
But the unanswered questions on the global heights are more troubling. How prepared are we, really, to combat and contain not just this epidemic but those that are bound to strike in the future? In The Guardian, Mike Davis lays it flat:
The swine flu may prove that the WHO/Centres for Disease Control version of pandemic preparedness – without massive new investment in surveillance, scientific and regulatory infrastructure, basic public health, and global access to lifeline drugs – belongs to the same class of Ponzified risk management as Madoff securities. It is not so much that the pandemic warning system has failed as it simply doesn't exist, even in North America and the EU.
There is a rising level of impatience on unanswered questions about the swine flu, and it's up to the Mexican government, firstly, to start providing answers. On Monday night I caught a bit of the live press conference that several Cabinet members held -- every non-cable channel was carrying it -- and found it terribly frustrating. The AP's Mark Stevenson was hammering the panel with rapid-fire questions but the secretaries just rang around the inquiries.
At one point, Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova churlishly said, "Ladies first," before passing the mic to stone-faced Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa while chuckling inappropriately. For me, that's when the truly dangerous quality of Mexico's culture of political nepotism became so clear. You get the sense that some of these authorities have no idea what they're doing, and just got appointed to their post because it was their turn.
In the age of swine flu, that's the stuff of nightmares.
It's now Tuesday, Day 5 of the swine flu scare. At 10 p.m. last night we took off for Puebla to get away from the toxic urbanism of the capital. People are wearing masks here (not that they help in any way?), but the atmosphere is way more chilled out. From my perch right now at a tranquil rooftop apartment a half-black from Puebla city's Zocalo, the fear frenzy of Mexico City feels like a far-off daydream.
I'll be back in the city soon, though. Can't not. D.F., the postmodern mega-magnet, draws human energy like flies to a fire.
** Post updated with fresh links.
So, sue me: I thought the magazine was pretty good, and hardly deserved the torrents of ridicule directed its way by various blogs.
Is it possible that some of the barbs directed at the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Joanne Lipman, and her numerous supposed failings, had their roots in sexism? I think it is possible.
