tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21947153237022551952024-03-12T22:35:13.935-07:00The Global Idaho KidThis blog is going to talk about travel, life events, and social issues, but also the primordial nature of saunas in Finland, the mysteries of Texas barbecue, politics, global media research musings, and maybe even religion, sometimes.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.comBlogger222125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-41200827271618719932010-08-21T08:15:00.000-07:002010-08-21T09:36:57.634-07:00Jersey Boys: I heard an America on the radio<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2aO8yUKkpVJ0fhThHsxPoigwE2o46kedEexpBGhCj-WoI9PwnGl9UWVmSnQ_aT9PcknDJqwtcpSYyifT8irsr2wpuoazzKXoBxm1BxpIaLNdcvxfhVK44XQIl8vuEwtKVGDSZhbYFmcU/s1600/antique+radio.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2aO8yUKkpVJ0fhThHsxPoigwE2o46kedEexpBGhCj-WoI9PwnGl9UWVmSnQ_aT9PcknDJqwtcpSYyifT8irsr2wpuoazzKXoBxm1BxpIaLNdcvxfhVK44XQIl8vuEwtKVGDSZhbYFmcU/s320/antique+radio.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507885267134660370" /></a>Seeing the musical "Jersey Boys" brought back a vivid set of memories for me. At age eleven, I was just beginning to spend a serious amount of time listening to a big old floor standing radio, rather like the one shown here. <div><br /></div><div>I had inherited that from older siblings, along with a bunch of 1950s paperbacks about juvenile delinquents, a flat football, a somewhat exotic collection of matchbooks and matchboxes stuffed into a cigar box, and some 78 records, including Spike Jones' version of "In the Führer's Face".</div><div><br /></div><div>You can hear that little classic on YouTube at:<div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dZlFBSRrSR0?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dZlFBSRrSR0?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>.</div><div><br /></div><div>My parents were already in their late 50s and my siblings all quite a bit older than me, so while all the stuff I inherited from them was pretty interesting, I was beginning to want to discover the world for myself. I had become a voracious reader of all kinds of kids' books and more recently, historical fiction, so I had a lot of jumbled images of lots of times and places from the USA in my head, not to mention a lot of images from TV news and programs, but the narratives from the books were more complete and more compelling.</div><div><br /></div><div>What had become most compelling about my current world, though, was radio. There was one local AM channel from Boise, Idaho that played rock and pop, and at night, if I tuned in carefully, I could pick up Wolfman Jack coming up all the way from Tijuana, Mexico on a powerful clear channel AM signal. Increasingly, the America I imagined was the one on radio.</div><div><br /></div><div>The title to this post is an obscure reference to a song by the Brazilian Chico Buarque, the title tune to "Bye, Bye Brasil," one of my favorite road movies about the Northeast and North of Brazil. Part of the lyrics say, "I saw a Brazil on TV," (which has been a favorite line among Brazilians who study TV). Chico Buarque is referring to the fact, that from the edges of Brazil, while you can see "a" Brazil on TV, it may well not be the one you happen to be living in. Here is a clip with a good version of the song, with visuals of someone riding around Rio on a motorcycle.</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6rCPQ9SupPA?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6rCPQ9SupPA?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div>I guess the point is that I began to hear an America on radio, which was really several rather distinct Americas held together by pop music as much as anything else. When I heard the Four Seasons singing their first big hit, "Sherry," on that radio in 1962, I had no idea what their America was like, the New Jersey of urban streets, wise guys who would lend you money (for outrageous interest), friends and relatives going in and out of jail for petty crimes, and ambitious young guys singing songs under lamp posts, hoping to make a break out of there and into the big time through music. If I remember right, one of the lines from "Jersey Boys" was that the ways you got ahead in (or out of) that New Jersey were the Army, the Mob, or music. I had not yet begun to form my own ideas about how to get ahead in (or out of) rural Idaho yet, but music from these other Americas was probably part of the process.</div><div><br /></div><div>At any rate, I found the Four Seasons' music pretty riveting. Eleven year old, pre voice change me could do the Frankie Valli part, which was a lot of fun. Here are the "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," and Who Loves You" sequences from "Jersey Boys," introduced appropriately by a guy playing a DJ playing the song over the radio, which is how we all heard the songs at the time:</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jGcgvrjdjCE?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jGcgvrjdjCE?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div>In hindsight, what made my imagined Americas from the radio particularly complicated, was that the big competitor to the Four Seasons for my listening affections at the time was a very different band from a very different America, the Beach Boys, who came out with "Surfin' USA" around the same time. Here is what that looked like on a TV show, in black and white, the way I would have seen it, although I remember them a lot more from the radio than from TV:</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/k1FaflUn4Co?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/k1FaflUn4Co?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div> I had an easier time imagining the America, or more specifically the California, of the Beach Boys. And when my time to get out of Idaho came, California was where I headed. (By the time I got there, in 1969, it was more the northern California of the Grateful Dead that called to me than the southern California of the Beach Boys, but that is another story.)</div></div>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-14348284935535098452010-05-06T10:19:00.000-07:002010-05-06T21:09:41.338-07:00Losing Newsweek (the main info medium of my adolescence)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQSLH4PFdHedk9dIK-cuXKQ5MtOxMnriVmh4FpBzqlh80Q0QgI9YRxGAC14RrqZiTAcE4wE9I0ERUi4hp8_oQj_lajqIwtlywwBFL6ORgBtuNtJYOYVgOrmB1UuSY4boJTzS9StME174s/s1600/Newsweek+on+block.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQSLH4PFdHedk9dIK-cuXKQ5MtOxMnriVmh4FpBzqlh80Q0QgI9YRxGAC14RrqZiTAcE4wE9I0ERUi4hp8_oQj_lajqIwtlywwBFL6ORgBtuNtJYOYVgOrmB1UuSY4boJTzS9StME174s/s320/Newsweek+on+block.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468208928462189266" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Caveat: I did a short Face- book post about this earlier, but ended up wanting to reflect a bit more deeply, so the short version is on Facebook, the longer on a blog.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><br /></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have mixed feelings about the passing of the newsmagazine era. The story positions it as the loss of one of the few remaining mass news media that spoke to non-fragmented audiences. I do remember starting to read Newsweek as a teenager and feeling that I had entered into what Benedict Anderson calls the national imagined community. I gradually felt that I knew more about and identified more with what was going on beyond Kuna, beyond Idaho, maybe even beyond the USA, which was something I had not thought much about before that. But I found myself fascinated, not only by what was going on in Washington, DC, but around the world. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Newsweek was an important national lifeline to me growing up in rural Idaho. It was something you could find in most any library and in magazine racks at a lot of stores. As a farm kid, I could not afford to buy magazines, but libraries were an even bigger informational lifeline in many many ways. I remember exhausting my elementary school library (in a very small room) and getting permission to use </span></span></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA-pppLf7m8omd2r8ofZg8YVslN5MBnMikC0dTzW0Ea5MkrAqkjyExoZ_gP-nMsBkI4f53DfmWLirdl-FsVb-1Up-LyscmhWq55nX5R4DghOxQ8B8pdQhH85r443n6uDo1iX40XynkYQM/s320/KHS+lib+entrance+69.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468285980672656498" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">the high school library. That had its own entrance at one side of the school, up some brick stairs that were covered with ivy. You can see it in this photo from my high school senior year annual from 1969, as the backdrop for a photo of the student council of that year.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><br /></span></div><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;">That may not seem like the Ivy League, but it seemed exotic and exciting to a small boy. A largish (to me) well-lit room with a what seemed like a lot of books, a magazine rack with quite a few things that were not in the supermarket, and archives of old historical magazines and things you could dig through. Now, I have to admit that I was also a fairly typical boy. The only Newsweek cover I specifically remember from high school was the one with Jane Fonda's bare back facing us, in a story about Barbarella.</span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 234px; height: 314px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijJFou62GlP8Ja-Zk6kVbMjIVc1gaYcF37PmjK9x1ZoRSsaKJpjqcvuzsJR7sh0vH8R8u9hoHDQLuXH4BuIu0uXBVl8ozMFp4d_piiGRFhR5kgiolCC2ZxCD-f8Ue19dr2GOOaLx9HBkg/s320/Fonda+on+Newsweek+cover.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468284368942193186" /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> That definitely leapt out to my eye from the magazine rack in the Kuna High School library.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As I learned what was going on nationally and internationally, I got very interested in both. It really intrigued me to learn about all these people who seemed foreign but interesting. Mad magazine was almost better than Newsweek that way. I was particularly intrigued with East Coast culture and humor. I couldn't figure out who Howard Johnson was at first and why the magazine wanted to make such fun of him.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Perhaps more important, Newsweek helped me figure out what was important to learn to get ahead in the U.S. I found I wanted to get out into that larger pond and Newsweek offered a lot of clues, if you read carefully. One reason I both took and passed the foreign service test was that I had been reading Newsweek's international coverage closely for over a decade. It turns out that was just about the level of knowledge the test was looking for. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Newsweek was where I learned a lot of the cultural or knowledge capital I had acquired before college. When one of my high school teachers was trying to figure out why I was leaving Idaho to go to school in California (what went wrong from his point of view), after talking to me about it for a while, he put the blame (or maybe the credit) on Newsweek. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;">By the time I got to college, my other big source was Rolling Stone magazine. I figured if I read both Newsweek for the mainstream, establishment view of things, and Rolling Stone for music and counter-culture, I was getting an interesting kind of balance. Now it seems like the interest in knowing what the large scale broadly shared news and culture of the US is has declined, hence Newsweek's decline. Or maybe as the NY Times article asserts, there is no middle anymore, and people are gravitating to more specific points of view, whether Huffington Post, or Fox News, with very little center to aim at. That seems sad to me. I remember the excitement I felt for figuring out what was going on in US politics and culture, trying to figure out where the center of it was. Now, the center cannot hold because it isn't there anymore. </span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-53257622691412379182010-04-11T20:15:00.001-07:002010-04-11T20:15:07.994-07:00Pete Seeger's banjo<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/guano/114357902/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/49/114357902_ee54f0c09f_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/guano/114357902/">Pete Seeger's banjo</a><br />Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/guano/">guano</a></span></div>Here at home we have been watching a documentary about Pete Seeger, the man who invented folk music in the way we think about it since the 1950s. It brought tears to my eyes more than once. Here is someone I really admire, who has affected my life in more ways than I realized. Makes you realize among other things, just how informative and affecting a good documentary can be.<br />Folk music was a key part of the background for growing up in America in the 1950s and 1960s. I didn't get a chance to hear much of it before it finally broke through to mainstream radio and TV in the 1960s. For Sandy, growing in Sherman Oaks, CA, with the kinds of families, kids, summer camps, that a more cosmopolitan (and dare I say the word "progressive") kind of world produced, she heard about all of this, like the Weavers and Pete Seeger himself, a lot earlier, and in a lot more detail than I did. Makes me a tiny bit envious, but hey, I had a whole herd of Holstein cows, barns, fields, a creek and railroad tracks to explore, so it all evens out somehow.<br />By the mid-1960s, though, Seeger's music was trickling out through people like the Byrds (Turn, Turn, Turn), Dylan, songs picked up by the civil rights movement (We Shall Overcome, etc.). So this guy was informing the most intriguing parts of my world even though I did not know his name yet. <br />He has a brilliant idea that music makes many things plainer to us than speeches or newspaper columns or TV. Works for me. Certainly worked for me then. I think both Sandy and I have the kinds of curiosity about the world we have, and to some degree, the politics we have because we started listening hard to those songs we liked.<br />Probably my favorite line from the whole documentary is what Seeger has written on his banjo, "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." At this current moment when several sides are ramping their followers up to truly hate the other side(s), I wish this were more the tactic now. <br />One final thought: the documentary was brought to us by our local library. All my life, libraries (along with public schools) have been the thing that gave a poor kid from an Idaho farm the chance to dream big and go after those dreams. In these days when public leaders would rather cut back libraries' collections and hours than even consider raising taxes, I think we need more libraries with more hours to give more kids a chance, even if means raising a few taxes.<br clear="all" />Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-15755549036806715322009-10-10T15:51:00.000-07:002009-10-10T20:07:31.341-07:00Bethlehem, PA<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLNkc8FO4xg_G2VvnITbMwvtOqmJ_kHWB496go1V6eGPQrRGmMM4RiSeVw11LDJdsCko9d2eCnhqtp31sbR3RGI45I56_7hXjBVRoyfvXpxtEgAGelCfrr2ApJgmLg5EUd0i0_1NoQwas/s1600-h/IMG_0663.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLNkc8FO4xg_G2VvnITbMwvtOqmJ_kHWB496go1V6eGPQrRGmMM4RiSeVw11LDJdsCko9d2eCnhqtp31sbR3RGI45I56_7hXjBVRoyfvXpxtEgAGelCfrr2ApJgmLg5EUd0i0_1NoQwas/s320/IMG_0663.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391171088374298962" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />I am in Bethlehem, Penn- sylvania for a couple of days to give an invited talk to a small conference on globalization at Lehigh University and to work on a book project with my former student John Jirik, who teaches here now.<br /><br />Here is my host, John, framed against the Lehigh River, that cuts through town.<br /><br />Bethlehem is a very traditional looking small town that has been around since 1741. It was started by the Moravian Brethren who arrived here as political or religious refugees from Germany, and originally what is now the Czech Republic.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr6um-cQPFzVW4hFkMdgcKyYRqOI8ZD_rPI7RoamfaECf2q4xPn-9jQp4ncjqLxOkv6qenQoa0giGzdETAPjMNnLfqptz5zyOpyvse9fWjlBxALbXTVSjyWIGJfA1kaHbKn59ne8NdZwQ/s1600-h/IMG_0659.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr6um-cQPFzVW4hFkMdgcKyYRqOI8ZD_rPI7RoamfaECf2q4xPn-9jQp4ncjqLxOkv6qenQoa0giGzdETAPjMNnLfqptz5zyOpyvse9fWjlBxALbXTVSjyWIGJfA1kaHbKn59ne8NdZwQ/s320/IMG_0659.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391110270708329602" border="0" /></a><br /><br />This was one of their buildings, now part of Moravian College.<br /><br />It is a beautiful town with a lot of well preserved historical homes. Here is a nice example, with a bit of autumn color in fro<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWtQvDojd4VbtRO_kpO7jfM-oSQThPxlhutU5PUOHkGfTq6epCankJcQd7wY0_eORIfQGpLIiqDpbowBjfLb03wzTvoK8CAbHTwWm_3LWCLDzaGThfMaKmqEJoyqx5Pi13IhZ_4xY_1T8/s1600-h/IMG_0680.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWtQvDojd4VbtRO_kpO7jfM-oSQThPxlhutU5PUOHkGfTq6epCankJcQd7wY0_eORIfQGpLIiqDpbowBjfLb03wzTvoK8CAbHTwWm_3LWCLDzaGThfMaKmqEJoyqx5Pi13IhZ_4xY_1T8/s320/IMG_0680.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391172583971006498" border="0" /></a>nt of it.<br /><br />During the industrial heyday of the USA, the town was known as the home of Bethlehem Steel, the firm that made the steel for the Golden Gate Bridge and other markers of the age.<br /><br />For better, or I would say, for worse, after the steel mill finally failed completely and shut down, part of it was turned into a casino, someone's idea of a clever replacement for those jobs.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpp8Nka6N8p0z_VDxNkGgCzlWfC4zE6YxtAZvheesaB6QgLUbduPxTWmfzM5_11QmaGUK3MYgZ4eJJfiNjO-pqcb-o6sLU5q3LRpxo27wMzI9fciJVZxsijII2jtG5rVfj1HBCbGXqaxk/s1600-h/IMG_0674.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpp8Nka6N8p0z_VDxNkGgCzlWfC4zE6YxtAZvheesaB6QgLUbduPxTWmfzM5_11QmaGUK3MYgZ4eJJfiNjO-pqcb-o6sLU5q3LRpxo27wMzI9fciJVZxsijII2jtG5rVfj1HBCbGXqaxk/s320/IMG_0674.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391169934337989602" border="0" /></a> Here you see the Sands Casino sign framed against a decaying and unredeveloped part of the steel mill.<br /><br />One of the nice things about this trip is being back in the Eastern part of the USA in October, when the leaves of the hardwood trees and forests begin to turn red and gold, as you can see from this tree that stands in front of the Lehigh University building that houses the Journalism program.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEict6sUV0_dLs4kPp9fNLatfd-DWa1ribP4xguK05Z_RhEIgt_r2OniEtPIVg2SfrMljV7wtFm6zev4SFQpI1oddtPTW-U7Z2stO73eumrbtS-HiOKHArHn5I_LAgQC4ozI0eC8QkUN03Y/s1600-h/IMG_0672.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEict6sUV0_dLs4kPp9fNLatfd-DWa1ribP4xguK05Z_RhEIgt_r2OniEtPIVg2SfrMljV7wtFm6zev4SFQpI1oddtPTW-U7Z2stO73eumrbtS-HiOKHArHn5I_LAgQC4ozI0eC8QkUN03Y/s320/IMG_0672.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391169116384284450" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-kCqKmefqIJUzEo-Va74YQGNpdMdhR3LP5jfsD01y9YJB2JQAkjSJS5S5ffk1Td7L62N06TscVFyRXAmvGKkLv4MDIqCUy2n31n6RoL7UW_Vf_AVgMLOComTQjSuamhBKvxrUWnOJNs/s1600-h/IMG_0657.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-kCqKmefqIJUzEo-Va74YQGNpdMdhR3LP5jfsD01y9YJB2JQAkjSJS5S5ffk1Td7L62N06TscVFyRXAmvGKkLv4MDIqCUy2n31n6RoL7UW_Vf_AVgMLOComTQjSuamhBKvxrUWnOJNs/s320/IMG_0657.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391109436654942178" border="0" /></a>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-66667119700614618812009-09-07T05:21:00.000-07:002009-09-07T06:12:34.702-07:00My Brazilan Skin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgujy_TPsZMSSeDNk87Rt3ECmeO_HNHhBV_hFhalqIyVsSOl2YDyaVmCT5ZtQEknP-Xl8ooxyUvpfpcd0PVPbntLog6yR64cPDK59E1ZzBKiyjrHCs-tvYCPu3-eaFLxyI_KCEbqQSTV3E/s1600-h/images-2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 98px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgujy_TPsZMSSeDNk87Rt3ECmeO_HNHhBV_hFhalqIyVsSOl2YDyaVmCT5ZtQEknP-Xl8ooxyUvpfpcd0PVPbntLog6yR64cPDK59E1ZzBKiyjrHCs-tvYCPu3-eaFLxyI_KCEbqQSTV3E/s320/images-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378706051289380818" border="0" /></a><br />I had not been back to Brazil in two years. Long time. But after I had been back a day or so, it felt like home again. Sort of like home feels when you have been gone for a while. You don't know the latest political scandal that people are talking about, but the air smells good, the language feels comfortable in your ear and mouth, the little details of a typical street scene make you smile in both recognition and pleasure. I slow down my feet and speed up my ear, so I can try to catch everything because every little detail is interesting: what has changed? What is still pretty much the same?<br /><br />I had several levels of Brazilian home-coming this time. The<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFNg-zO3Ri5JT4W87KqOdxIIF1kbCenGwMdVfHERKIjBg2IJjRnU2VjvCOCDAUIo8GQkkfIaUC9Vas9fMTdUu-7aBjey5T_eB0RxOkRMYoEOx6hBDe0Fep7_ONBAauZV13K4Hon5nym9E/s1600-h/images-6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 128px; height: 85px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFNg-zO3Ri5JT4W87KqOdxIIF1kbCenGwMdVfHERKIjBg2IJjRnU2VjvCOCDAUIo8GQkkfIaUC9Vas9fMTdUu-7aBjey5T_eB0RxOkRMYoEOx6hBDe0Fep7_ONBAauZV13K4Hon5nym9E/s320/images-6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378712410978314338" border="0" /></a> first, the three days, was just being back in São Paulo. My hotel was quite close to where we lived in 1989-90, so it was a constant feel of pleasurable deja vu, to recognize that most things really had not changed that much in 20 years. The way that little service shops, like tailors, are still tucked into side streets. The way that people bustle into corner restaurants for a snack. The way people walk on the street and greet each other. The familiar buildings and streets. Things do cost more there relative to their dollar value. I decided I did not want to pay what it took to eat in several places that would have been quite affordable 20 years ago.<br /><br />The second was specifically spending a couple of those days in São Paulo at the University of São Paulo (USP), meeting with people and using the library to catch up on Brazilian media books and magazines that I can't get at UT. The Benson Latin Ameri<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmuhlCbF4gySXyDV7yXe-9cbh8UHTc6NfjvVZ89Jp65DuNcDvlqxraAkCnIOI_qWyCnePG_LdCo5Xg6j57FIn2jviboUdcoEL4vkKR1QZlxWYKVlzKcTSMre_g71SIjsj_z1TA_tmIJQ/s1600-h/images-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 87px; height: 130px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmuhlCbF4gySXyDV7yXe-9cbh8UHTc6NfjvVZ89Jp65DuNcDvlqxraAkCnIOI_qWyCnePG_LdCo5Xg6j57FIn2jviboUdcoEL4vkKR1QZlxWYKVlzKcTSMre_g71SIjsj_z1TA_tmIJQ/s320/images-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378706300052141314" border="0" /></a>can Collection at UT actually has an astonishing amount of the things I do need, but they can't afford every academic journal on communication in the Lusophone countries or business monthlies on cable TV. USP is huge and nicely green, as you can see in the photo here of a path near the the communication school (shown in the next photo here) has quite a bit bigger footprint than the one at UT, which mostly means we at UT are way overcrowded. I taught at USP 1989-90, so the communications school has a pleasant familiarity to me, too, and there are some nice new touches like a nice restaurant for faculty and grad students a few blocks away. I was there mostly to g<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJG-m4qZfOC-Ei4JF6gCX7ENcAH2q7-IwpTE3ArG0Q3mc0JVjPn9UxvCujOBbgfp48B4_iKiqPxXcv7qKhQf8KZ21OheOtyBp7h5G69u0QI3iRQEu25VwQB2vShw2O4kaScMdYSRpaKSU/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 143px; height: 103px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJG-m4qZfOC-Ei4JF6gCX7ENcAH2q7-IwpTE3ArG0Q3mc0JVjPn9UxvCujOBbgfp48B4_iKiqPxXcv7qKhQf8KZ21OheOtyBp7h5G69u0QI3iRQEu25VwQB2vShw2O4kaScMdYSRpaKSU/s320/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378706420574780562" border="0" /></a>et a research project on digital inclusion moving and to see if we can revive our exchange of faculty between the schools. I made progress on both, so we will see how things go.<br /><br />The third nice level of being back was going to the annual meeting of the Brazilian academic communication research association INTERCOM. I have probably gone to at least ten of these since 1981, when I went the first time to discuss my new completely dissertation research on Brazilian television. So I saw people I have know literally since then or even before. Sandy says academic meetings are a lot like summer camp for g<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYzqCKhWoLU4PJv8-omcBHt-Q2MCQBtOeTbXZ4g-HEUPk_doiiW_kzesZeSozIJi_X6WbxocxkWavNpHBUmOz51u9mtyzVBwEoHeP5soCV-11EazFC_WL-GvfyxH3slixw6Evt_ICrziw/s1600-h/IMG_0641.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYzqCKhWoLU4PJv8-omcBHt-Q2MCQBtOeTbXZ4g-HEUPk_doiiW_kzesZeSozIJi_X6WbxocxkWavNpHBUmOz51u9mtyzVBwEoHeP5soCV-11EazFC_WL-GvfyxH3slixw6Evt_ICrziw/s320/IMG_0641.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378710704888784674" border="0" /></a>rown ups. You get to see your friends, in this case for me a somewhat specialized but remarkably close set of friends that I had not seen for a couple of years. (The photo shows a couple of them, Anamaria Fadul and Sonia Virginia Morreira , as we had lunch in cafeteria at the Universidade Positiva in Curitiba at the<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjurAZcmdgLi6jMAzCDiPLCaBcvoEIQg4s-Gb-mYh8j_RZSSiFFTpyAgIY0ekWithd7YC1GFFw1BuXGVaS-SXaKc9c66U1ykQsR67M-Q97Q0bbV0SvmAqeE9tf170zEaJwIADmizreQUoI/s1600-h/images-3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 108px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjurAZcmdgLi6jMAzCDiPLCaBcvoEIQg4s-Gb-mYh8j_RZSSiFFTpyAgIY0ekWithd7YC1GFFw1BuXGVaS-SXaKc9c66U1ykQsR67M-Q97Q0bbV0SvmAqeE9tf170zEaJwIADmizreQUoI/s320/images-3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378710361216231074" border="0" /></a> meeting.)<br />You get to do interesting things like presenting your own research or listening to interesting new things being done by others. (This really is fun if you are a bit of a research and culture geek.) In my case, it was a great, quick way to catch up on a lot that is being done in Brazil right now. A great package of things to do for a couple days -- and you thought summer camp was gone forever.<br /><br />The fourth thing was a bit of surprise at how some things are indeed changing in Brazil. Since the public universities cannot keep up with the demand, new private schools are springing up like crazy in Brazil, some good, some bad. The one hosting us in Curitiba was the Positive University, owned by the Grupo Positivo who are started doing private schools, like some of the private charter school chains in the US, with similarly positive results, then branched into curricular materials and school books, then computers and learning soft<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFn5wIqHS3QjQmoQCgICmS_syuKBZgEvFwvMO8KEi5X79fRUmpgkKRZorYc8-KlbdD9aHetyGmgBqSqzed2QEc6uEzYcUhfDjgcvXPS1KFPJssQ5uIXRhL4422-m06hevDkPXhB8wzIiU/s1600-h/images-5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 135px; height: 88px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFn5wIqHS3QjQmoQCgICmS_syuKBZgEvFwvMO8KEi5X79fRUmpgkKRZorYc8-KlbdD9aHetyGmgBqSqzed2QEc6uEzYcUhfDjgcvXPS1KFPJssQ5uIXRhL4422-m06hevDkPXhB8wzIiU/s320/images-5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378710106285756738" border="0" /></a>ware, and now universities. It is funny how the main Positive School seems pretty normal for a charter school, but a bid odd for a major university to be the Positive University, whose symbol is a big thumbs up.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-35437931407873848902009-09-01T13:16:00.000-07:002009-09-01T17:41:35.229-07:00One Afternoon at Habib's, or When Old Telenovelas Never Die<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ReFSKJL6MX74CsE2H99GWO-R9g3aOfsfrIQ-SxbK5p9xEXtsaoTS6AfFG50AW-_MyJXNtG3X7Sq0pTFKQABjy6DhNLCG3YIqbrMM0PiToztr7UlgsNaArUCQrZJzF_CKXhtOkf7yH1Q/s1600-h/IMG_0615.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ReFSKJL6MX74CsE2H99GWO-R9g3aOfsfrIQ-SxbK5p9xEXtsaoTS6AfFG50AW-_MyJXNtG3X7Sq0pTFKQABjy6DhNLCG3YIqbrMM0PiToztr7UlgsNaArUCQrZJzF_CKXhtOkf7yH1Q/s320/IMG_0615.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376599974112854834" border="0" /></a><br />After a couple of meetings today, I went book and DVD shopping at one of my favorite bookstores in the world, Livraria Cultura, which has five different spaces -- one bigger than your average Borders-- in a small mall on Avenida Paulista. So many new books on Brazilian media that I got footsore standing and looking at them. So I took a break, going kitty corner across from the back corner of this mall on Rua Augusta, to another of my favorite places, one of the world's most interesting fast food joints, Habib's, which serves good, cheap Lebanese fast food: kibes and esfihas instead of burgers, although they will sell you a burger and fries, if you must. Not much to look at, as you see here, but a lot of good places aren't.<br /><br />Sitting there happily munching a small snack, I noticed that everyone in their dining room was more than usually glued to the large TV hanging from the ceiling, so I glanced up, too. And what was showing but a rerun session (TV Globo calls m<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhErRqV8rVmKn84rtiLy0_AEdce24sRN3uOtMhTMLF0gB-962luYpSKVAuLsyJmjfoN328PLcN1GEmsIPbLizvmF0Ngpyot3I2PvZPoBgY1imNjlp3C0c_K7GuRwlyL3Z1qMeE6i3bziz4/s1600-h/IMG_0614.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhErRqV8rVmKn84rtiLy0_AEdce24sRN3uOtMhTMLF0gB-962luYpSKVAuLsyJmjfoN328PLcN1GEmsIPbLizvmF0Ngpyot3I2PvZPoBgY1imNjlp3C0c_K7GuRwlyL3Z1qMeE6i3bziz4/s320/IMG_0614.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376599762836252802" border="0" /></a>id-afternoon reruns the "Vale apena ver de novo" -- "worth seeing again"-- series) of Sandy's favorite telenovela, which features an Indian girl who is apparently the reincarnation of her boss' long lost (murdered it turns out) and beloved wife. Here you see her and a friend looking at the soon to be boss' house, to which she is curiously drawn. He breeds and creates roses, so she is further drawn to his greenhouse.<br /><br />So then before long I was literally watching one of THE crucial scenes of the whole nine month telenovela, where the girl is strongly, inexplicably drawn to the one rose that he created for the lost wife. They are indeed destined for one another TahDah! (although it takes MONTHS for their seemingly pre-destined romance to work out--but that is indeed how this genre works).<br /><br />Some things are just too overwhelmingly melodramatic to die! The whole restaurant clientele, except the ones actually working, was raptly watching this scene. So it is pretty clear that Sandy's tastes run close to the core of what rivets the Brazilian audience most. (I have to admit that I kinda like this one, too.) One of those moments where personal life and our lifelong, ongoing ethnography of media and Brazilian life completely merge. Cheesy but cool.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-82952265592135990932009-09-01T07:32:00.000-07:002009-09-01T07:52:48.198-07:00Back to São Paulo<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhK5InNKmb8YS0ZMsTrz-0QA36f-WogKVr_iLxfbLJuV9WPM0VjEBV2SU4jFMGrmO0JxGcA9ppZaYsw8MmaH9nJmiT2ZjLligSULsPU3LLuwRwkDrPO-n95Di72rZS1AyizobKdxsdvTY/s1600-h/IMG_0597.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhK5InNKmb8YS0ZMsTrz-0QA36f-WogKVr_iLxfbLJuV9WPM0VjEBV2SU4jFMGrmO0JxGcA9ppZaYsw8MmaH9nJmiT2ZjLligSULsPU3LLuwRwkDrPO-n95Di72rZS1AyizobKdxsdvTY/s320/IMG_0597.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376508723231028674" border="0" /></a><br />When I woke up in the plane this morning over Brazil, I popped an eyelid open and looked out the window at the sunrise over the clouds. (Couldn't resist snapping a picture with my trusty iPhone -- the Brazilian guy in the seat ahead was doing the same thing.) I was already filled with anticipation. Brazil really feels like a second home country to me. I get excited thinking about the people I know, the fun of speaking Portuguese again, the fun of catching up on what is going on, even the food.<br /><br />It is wonderful to get back to São Paulo for a couple of days. I have been here a lot off and on over the last 33 years, including living here 9 months in 1989-90, and teaching at the University of São Paulo. I get <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SMxnfHy7VGrlbfUk-hDjxQ3veM_w6siqXpar3ShDS4hwnTnj3itEweG76EUm9Dsah6U4Pxh5Wqhp-yDtZyA33OTy1qevFnxWyH43klf270Ew-TBY3uq81AnrjGCX93V0azWCpq7s-ag/s1600-h/IMG_0598.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SMxnfHy7VGrlbfUk-hDjxQ3veM_w6siqXpar3ShDS4hwnTnj3itEweG76EUm9Dsah6U4Pxh5Wqhp-yDtZyA33OTy1qevFnxWyH43klf270Ew-TBY3uq81AnrjGCX93V0azWCpq7s-ag/s320/IMG_0598.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376509186031944034" border="0" /></a>hungry for a taste of big city life now and then, even thought Austin is certainly easier to live in.<br /><br />The city is much too large and sprawling, when you look at it from the air, as in this photo, flying in, it is overwhelming. It goes on forever before you even land. A number of people argue that huge Third World metropolises, surrounded by rapidly growing slums, are one of the main faces of the world's future. Planet Slum, one book by Mike Davis, calls it.<br /><br />The surprising thing is how green small parts of it can be. People cultivate trees or at least a few shrubs between buildings. The green is almost more delightful, sandwiched into such a sprawling mass of concrete, as the view from my hotel window, at the very nice but<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4CGF3j92L0X8_DjyzFP7G1UCYjntheV-huAcXohzYZ-5Yz7PmiYTB1YPiEX0wWGQNHjwoS23-6HUyUvoIyBEdxLhkTR5gDCrZc3fzAtof3IzLCrJn4-ePIAcpvLo3MIsFaP_mtCxcc9g/s1600-h/IMG_0599.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4CGF3j92L0X8_DjyzFP7G1UCYjntheV-huAcXohzYZ-5Yz7PmiYTB1YPiEX0wWGQNHjwoS23-6HUyUvoIyBEdxLhkTR5gDCrZc3fzAtof3IzLCrJn4-ePIAcpvLo3MIsFaP_mtCxcc9g/s320/IMG_0599.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376510263902746434" border="0" /></a> trendily and oddly named -- Golden Tulip Interactive, shows. The breakfast room looks out onto the garden by the tree -- a nice oasis.<br /><br />So time to go walking in the city, enjoying a little observational update a la de Certeau, as I walk to meetings and get re-acquainted with one of my favorite cities.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-57836363072864150102009-08-18T20:37:00.001-07:002009-08-18T21:14:08.742-07:00Fine dining in Horseshoe Bend<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgITfRuYVdw90-8xwS1L3AAhIAvIFYheX9uUQzZOk-amUqFev5cD0n1Y5AqDY2oCHS6fRDZyymRuRWrO8nHEeEk7qgEvOxEDARFet4eJ3GYZxmtSrlmC44KZI2yDwXOHyi-P_6UgcRx9Jk/s1600-h/IMG_0570.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgITfRuYVdw90-8xwS1L3AAhIAvIFYheX9uUQzZOk-amUqFev5cD0n1Y5AqDY2oCHS6fRDZyymRuRWrO8nHEeEk7qgEvOxEDARFet4eJ3GYZxmtSrlmC44KZI2yDwXOHyi-P_6UgcRx9Jk/s320/IMG_0570.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371516559669923602" border="0" /></a><br />Recently on vacation in Idaho, we drove up to visit my brother Jack and sister-in-law Shirley in McCall, where they (lucky them!) had rented a cabin on the lake for the summer. Here are Jack and Shirley on their deck at the cabin.<br /><br />I have always really enjoyed talking to them, ever since I was 12 or so, and they did me the great kindness of talking to me seriously like I was on my way to being an interesting human being. I craved that more than I can express, as I suspect do many 12-year-olds out there.<br /><br />Here is the view from their cabin deck<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokBcb2E5bRcrzhHtn0Q4NIXZJME2rmsRHRd0VApAPDPAg0PEfTZyRaMSd7qQ9zDEjSTJ7QwGjwKph652wQmn0uGouoGDZNZgb1kLuIMhVvB5zUIpb5yIP0rjPl0lAQlKmZKZJf7-r4x4/s1600-h/IMG_0571.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokBcb2E5bRcrzhHtn0Q4NIXZJME2rmsRHRd0VApAPDPAg0PEfTZyRaMSd7qQ9zDEjSTJ7QwGjwKph652wQmn0uGouoGDZNZgb1kLuIMhVvB5zUIpb5yIP0rjPl0lAQlKmZKZJf7-r4x4/s320/IMG_0571.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371515347687038114" border="0" /></a>. Nice. Sandy said it was like Finland, but with mountains, which is a real compliment, since she thinks Finland has gorgeous lakes and summers.<br /><br /><br />On the way back down to Boise, we stopped for dinner in a funky, former logging town named Horseshoe Bend. We had hear that Kit's Riverside Restaurant had great views, so we stopped in.<br /><br />Here is the view from the backyard dining area, over the Payette River and up over the mountains beyond it.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDZFaxLm0UqZCr5HuHmmosGSR5vDImGr-Qln-XSDZiOTNwbVsB5D1CGIj_0GvTQGjoH2rJJVz3jp718uh7jYtlrj4oQxwMz6vJpIcI5yn2cpsvGpAwY-BFFCQY_Ez8CGEwBkNK9JbnFAk/s1600-h/IMG_0574.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDZFaxLm0UqZCr5HuHmmosGSR5vDImGr-Qln-XSDZiOTNwbVsB5D1CGIj_0GvTQGjoH2rJJVz3jp718uh7jYtlrj4oQxwMz6vJpIcI5yn2cpsvGpAwY-BFFCQY_Ez8CGEwBkNK9JbnFAk/s320/IMG_0574.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371517511718285426" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Here is Kit's. It has great burgers, which I had -- a half pound burger loaded with sauteed mushrooms and remarkably good salads -- which Sandy had, with grilled Salmon. Not to mention steaks, which would have been a bit heavy since lunch had been meatloaf in a similar joint in McCall, called Lardo's -- I kid you not, that is its name. But then Lardo was the name of the town, before someone thought better of it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MSuCkiHbf1Ebzv6hzaZlKOgivTzDGkNdmQnBi2-GAqevemyFU6YAoxM7R25y2WJ02Nwff1pVF0nq0kAL5d3XsKXAOS77rCUrsdKuN6Fn9jCP24KUCHqXFGHILlSEQNz62kJoI-el51g/s1600-h/IMG_0577.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4MSuCkiHbf1Ebzv6hzaZlKOgivTzDGkNdmQnBi2-GAqevemyFU6YAoxM7R25y2WJ02Nwff1pVF0nq0kAL5d3XsKXAOS77rCUrsdKuN6Fn9jCP24KUCHqXFGHILlSEQNz62kJoI-el51g/s320/IMG_0577.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371514405528825298" border="0" /></a><br />It has a great sort of road house cafe ambience, which is the kind of word most of their clientele would probably not use.<br /><br />In fact, you get a sense of most of Kit's regulars from this bumper sticker in the parking lot. Of course, Rolf tells me he has seen the very same bumper sticker in our neighborhood in Austin. Maybe we could import Kit's (and its view) to liven up the neighborhood a bit.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyIOv6TMtpSe2PzoLNjyFkezG0HiwgmlH7KfZk6ah9okcShSp2WQSLVNtUoAwXcVnQgBvjruw4alBsLbZ2PK6TpghFhTeJDlK27Z_YiNBzVsgR3GAD1_8UQI3KzsuWlANEw4glJADA8I/s1600-h/IMG_0578.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyIOv6TMtpSe2PzoLNjyFkezG0HiwgmlH7KfZk6ah9okcShSp2WQSLVNtUoAwXcVnQgBvjruw4alBsLbZ2PK6TpghFhTeJDlK27Z_YiNBzVsgR3GAD1_8UQI3KzsuWlANEw4glJADA8I/s320/IMG_0578.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371518846277246946" border="0" /></a>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-70088721517828846802009-07-26T14:12:00.000-07:002009-07-26T15:00:16.807-07:00Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT-y45IVNnp9gf3VeoqhA-A_aLTCygGWVEKcBJyprfGdiucfSZ2Jmdvn4MzMlWBXcOMQMcASViVRZErTL-grpLIGPlhiQOlZ7RlhBwkaDaaGnogvLSCqI3qmbLSoiRGODrtPyWdSw6M68/s1600-h/death+head+DF2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 279px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT-y45IVNnp9gf3VeoqhA-A_aLTCygGWVEKcBJyprfGdiucfSZ2Jmdvn4MzMlWBXcOMQMcASViVRZErTL-grpLIGPlhiQOlZ7RlhBwkaDaaGnogvLSCqI3qmbLSoiRGODrtPyWdSw6M68/s320/death+head+DF2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362888360010725298" border="0" /></a><br />One of my favorite things about Mexico City is the Museo Nacional de Antropología, one of the world's most interesting museums. It has an incredible collection of statues, pottery, jewelry and large scale reproductions of pre-Colombian buildings from all over Mexico. It also takes a nicely serious but accessible stab at educating the museum-goer about the history of Mexico and its peoples. The pre-Colombian part is the most spectacular, but the whole second floor is devoted to the colonial and post-colonial cultures of the same peoples and places, showing both some considerable continuity of images and cultures, but mostly a great deal of hybridity between those older traditions and what the Spanish brought it. Fascinating stuff at both levels.<br /><br />Here are some of my favorite items and images, from those I took there with my trusty iPhone camera. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my good camera, but the iPhone did pretty well. The first, above, is a very figurative statue of Mictlantecuhtli, the God of Death, from about 100 AD.<br /><br />The second here is an image from a rep<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6B5Uf9M_AJWNyz2iOJ_LVZl_iua8lWhtOnssNp5HwRjJ6pKiSpCSdDT_XQg5vDglSmrHhflKZACUzRG2dnLNE1iEE0Pk5_in7VrW8h4ugjxCtiwj1wognHvIu_uY-AjR2SH89ZF4HBcE/s1600-h/IMG_0528.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6B5Uf9M_AJWNyz2iOJ_LVZl_iua8lWhtOnssNp5HwRjJ6pKiSpCSdDT_XQg5vDglSmrHhflKZACUzRG2dnLNE1iEE0Pk5_in7VrW8h4ugjxCtiwj1wognHvIu_uY-AjR2SH89ZF4HBcE/s320/IMG_0528.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362882486987055650" border="0" /></a>roduction of an entire wall from the temple of Quetzalcóatl in Teotihuacan, just outside Mexico City, about 400 AD.<br /><br />The third is a wall painting from Cacaxtla, about 800 AD.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Yfqv4Kgfnfd0iGyt1-S6blV9DGsx9qQZfBFHenaiKpi0ZcsbwFqNzYmh2xlmr6KYyrTEMFb7WnBs_8hH6lQZXnGubiXriQTXi_5hp_9q7D9a1ngAbHE5g6HcF_hP2iZUFJczkfcYKCE/s1600-h/IMG_0530.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Yfqv4Kgfnfd0iGyt1-S6blV9DGsx9qQZfBFHenaiKpi0ZcsbwFqNzYmh2xlmr6KYyrTEMFb7WnBs_8hH6lQZXnGubiXriQTXi_5hp_9q7D9a1ngAbHE5g6HcF_hP2iZUFJczkfcYKCE/s320/IMG_0530.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362884381363942482" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The fourth, which made me think of my son, Christian, for some reason -- thinking that he would like its expression, is a T<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9Dt5enhwRwzyU1st1Cl3XHwnMx_PH6EYZTqbQUDmqm4WgeJ_iCWKQiLx0PfCeR7AVApLXkqTYDQdm4-eu9-f6qcP6LFMCArT3SOgcsNSn0bDikBMOFG-DnwVe03kUtVtA7vzuBmyKDw/s1600-h/IMG_0537.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9Dt5enhwRwzyU1st1Cl3XHwnMx_PH6EYZTqbQUDmqm4WgeJ_iCWKQiLx0PfCeR7AVApLXkqTYDQdm4-eu9-f6qcP6LFMCArT3SOgcsNSn0bDikBMOFG-DnwVe03kUtVtA7vzuBmyKDw/s320/IMG_0537.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362886027692539682" border="0" /></a>oltec statue of a jaguar, from Monte Alban, probably around 200 AD or so.<br /><br />This doesn't even count all the Aztec and Mayan things that people are probably more familiar with.<br /><br />Amazing times and places, but probably not ones I would want to live in. Very serious mixtures of warfare and religion that perpetuated warfare. Related to a very serious pre-occupation with death. But a lot of people also had time to create amazing art.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-88935489986737521232009-07-26T13:10:00.000-07:002009-07-26T14:12:41.087-07:00Adios MéxicoI spent last week in Mexico City at a conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. Of the various academic meetings (quite correctly seen by my wife Sandy as summer camps for grown up intellectuals--read David Lodge novels for very amusing takes on these) I go to, this is one of the more fun since it draws most heavily from Europe, then the US, then Asia, Latin America, and lots of other places. Very cosmopolitan. Found myself at the closing social dancing to mariachi music with Portuguese, Indians, Australians, Chileans, and a whole bunch of Mexican students who had been volunteers at the event.<br /><br />Here is a representative picture fr<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRbt6jJyUerFBkoWNpvklzxe4Ow18byLsaWm0b42sfuodDGl6kGL_gNyKyPoR-b8y3cXoC7lQrU3wh8Xod0qA4Y5hp4QqgJe1fGH5UWagXTmzXlSyD9_0xRevXM46tJfNQ4ncKwBrYOJE/s1600-h/IMG_0521.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRbt6jJyUerFBkoWNpvklzxe4Ow18byLsaWm0b42sfuodDGl6kGL_gNyKyPoR-b8y3cXoC7lQrU3wh8Xod0qA4Y5hp4QqgJe1fGH5UWagXTmzXlSyD9_0xRevXM46tJfNQ4ncKwBrYOJE/s320/IMG_0521.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362871089842120802" border="0" /></a>om the opening social, at a former convent, turned mansion, turned art museum, built over a corner of the sacred central plaza of the Aztecs, which built over a lot of earlier folks. (The downtown of Mexico City near the Zocalo has more layers of history than anyplace in the Americas.)<br /><br />Shown are two Portuguese professors I am doing research with, Cristina Ponte and José Azevedo, with a gigantic 20th century statue and party-goers below in the background.<br /><br /><br />One of the things I like about this particular organization is that they always pick interesting places to meet in and the organizers do their best to give you some flavor of the city and country. Sometimes one goes to meetings at the airport hotel in St. Louis. Not quite the same.<br /><br /><br />We were meeting in a building that was formerly the cultural center for the foreign ministry and now does the same for the National Autonomous University of Mexico, deliberately named to show its independence of bo<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitNW-QyiO9livP1Lu2DZJp9rPqOY_h9rk0UEu7dqImVncouv7R7-P0BRh3ld30p5Et1KCfT1_CADuuApE5Xy8csIp6j0TJEeLgS6_mpBXaKAFB186xbm4JZKHe0I05Bo2Ap2bGTVCkDAE/s1600-h/IMG_0518.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitNW-QyiO9livP1Lu2DZJp9rPqOY_h9rk0UEu7dqImVncouv7R7-P0BRh3ld30p5Et1KCfT1_CADuuApE5Xy8csIp6j0TJEeLgS6_mpBXaKAFB186xbm4JZKHe0I05Bo2Ap2bGTVCkDAE/s320/IMG_0518.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362874909304586114" border="0" /></a>th church and state. Nice building with nice rooms, but at a big meeting, you still end up sitting in auditoriums a lot, like the one shown here.<br /><br />However, I was listening at the time to one of my favorite academic researchers in the world, a Mexican anthropologist named Nestor Garcia Canclini. He helped define a lot of how we think about how cultures met and hybridized together in Latin America, so hearing him is always interesting. I found it better to listen directly to him in Spanish because the English translation was awful-- reinforces my feeling that although many things eventually get into English, sort of, you get a much better understanding if you can read or listen to the originals.<br /><br />It is always fun to be in a big city with a distinct local flair. Mexico City has modern cosmopolitan areas, our hotel was in one on Paseo de la Reforma. But what I like most about th<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL9jglVzcEkgVEfUu73m51cthhygCtk9VMcKBuy6ol0Z8m3yuYbrZd1Rk1708mWJGpRt99OjAu7pnK-K7yntYh73kLLzZeL7RGcel9iqMY0sskoMC8cfFjjcrQa0lOvK-HfbvXF-Y3Ric/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 98px; height: 130px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL9jglVzcEkgVEfUu73m51cthhygCtk9VMcKBuy6ol0Z8m3yuYbrZd1Rk1708mWJGpRt99OjAu7pnK-K7yntYh73kLLzZeL7RGcel9iqMY0sskoMC8cfFjjcrQa0lOvK-HfbvXF-Y3Ric/s320/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362878595395710914" border="0" /></a>e city is its distinctive folklore. Here are two indicative images I saw. First the classic Mexican image of the fashionable lady as a skeleton, the calavera catrina, who reminds us that the glamorous and wealthy die. To reword a bumper sticker, I saw in Austin, the one who dies with the most toys, still dies.<br /><br />Second is one that shows another of my favorite things about Mexico, its unbelievable ability, in high art, low graffiti and in between to borrow or take in things and hybridize them around. So here is the ubiquitous Bart Simpson as calavera Bart.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMIwrfjL-2cAbddbo_xF3hD4uBQaX9eQ9MSEm-xzpO0iVXvhNd9ZfrSm0IRdRMYa8-CHi3WRvcGHxaWsHblAt5okgFj4ZyLviNardbkQqO81EOG8rvClH-UY-qGlFguUcjp9OfDHOKRic/s1600-h/images-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 90px; height: 126px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMIwrfjL-2cAbddbo_xF3hD4uBQaX9eQ9MSEm-xzpO0iVXvhNd9ZfrSm0IRdRMYa8-CHi3WRvcGHxaWsHblAt5okgFj4ZyLviNardbkQqO81EOG8rvClH-UY-qGlFguUcjp9OfDHOKRic/s320/images-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362878317240621282" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Que vive México!Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-35147842100601924842009-06-03T10:51:00.000-07:002009-06-03T11:19:42.506-07:00The EtruscansWe are in Chianciano Terme in Tuscany. I am giving several talks at a seminar on positioning the local (Chianciano) in the global world and (tourist) market. An old friend from the University of Florence, Professor Giovanni Bechelloni, is positioning or narrating the idea in an interesting way. He argues that this place builds on layers of the past, Etruscan, Roman, medieval and Renaissance that were in some ways already modern or which contribute major layers of the present modernity. (He doesn't really believe in the post-modern, although that would be another way of seeing how all these layers fit together, despite the likely insistence in each of them that they were more important than the preceding eras.<br /><br />Frances Mayes, in Under the Tuscan Sun, says something similar. "In these stony old Tuscan towns, I get no sense of stepping back in time that I've had in Yugoslavia, Mexico or Peru. Tuscans are of this time; they simply have had the good instinct to bring the past along with them." (1996:153)<br /><br />The Etruscan civilization lasted from around 800 B.C. to 200 B.C, increasingly chipped away and swallowed by Rome after about 300 B.C. They had a complex <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBwrR3S-UWcEXs8gZtlXIKA0Qo6vTU6lqRvcqxqhNNnIgP6n-MBFG8D40Mpj-Y8e2RhHwYtEJsG8cbITCBWTvbodjdVoUSW3Fu29kn6kBaoi0GZafWdDI1-7OhK2SWLAPVtk7xHQz82tA/s1600-h/IMG_7619.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBwrR3S-UWcEXs8gZtlXIKA0Qo6vTU6lqRvcqxqhNNnIgP6n-MBFG8D40Mpj-Y8e2RhHwYtEJsG8cbITCBWTvbodjdVoUSW3Fu29kn6kBaoi0GZafWdDI1-7OhK2SWLAPVtk7xHQz82tA/s320/IMG_7619.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343162188681090866" border="0" /></a>religious and cultural life, evident in their concern with burying their dead in careful ways. Their artistic life is visible in their tombs and burial urns, like this one with an interestingly stylized but recognizably modern face.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />You can certainly see Etruscan faces literally walking on the street. Giovanni says a village named Murlo had had DNA comparisons done with Etruscan remains and found almost complete overlaps in DNA with some residents--in fact finding that the DNA also matched up with Lydia in Western Anatolia, indicating where the Etruscans themselves may have come from. (As have a few villages in England. An English schoolteacher was found to have pretty much the same DNA as a 9,000 year old stone age skeleton referred to as Cheddar Man.) This face from an Etruscan bust would not seem strange on the street.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuIGLWmwEnA7EfWhTV2IVhbQEI-EnrQ7vkuE8ZGN2Jmr3zEZoZGypRyBL9umuzO0-W98ALGBB1sUSFzgUXwID72Ggmb8RhB-MBbBGcCB5PL2lntK1Ny7CA9QIQxkabQGTR5wzYc_f2q4/s1600-h/IMG_7634.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuIGLWmwEnA7EfWhTV2IVhbQEI-EnrQ7vkuE8ZGN2Jmr3zEZoZGypRyBL9umuzO0-W98ALGBB1sUSFzgUXwID72Ggmb8RhB-MBbBGcCB5PL2lntK1Ny7CA9QIQxkabQGTR5wzYc_f2q4/s320/IMG_7634.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343165477445348098" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />This couple from the lid of an Etruscan funeral urn would not look that out of place at a dinner party, certainly not here, maybe not even in Texas, if you changed the hairstyles and clothes a bit.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMwx1uam5PVkWgAEqQqsEtNmaTofg0o0-quzrbeqcT5lRWsKdPGxysrfZMHE5gS3cZrfgTz_wDCqQCKfKuAWCN_O3jhezVINEW2XcPLCM5We5kGuj8L70W-BtHyyfqlC2IHBfdmo2u93M/s1600-h/IMG_7614.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMwx1uam5PVkWgAEqQqsEtNmaTofg0o0-quzrbeqcT5lRWsKdPGxysrfZMHE5gS3cZrfgTz_wDCqQCKfKuAWCN_O3jhezVINEW2XcPLCM5We5kGuj8L70W-BtHyyfqlC2IHBfdmo2u93M/s320/IMG_7614.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343161625263104210" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />The Etruscans seem to have had a very sophisticated nobility that in many cases fed straight into the noble houses of Roman or even later times. Here is a reconstruction of what a noble house dining room might have looked like, as reconstructed from archeological finds. They ate reclining, as did later Romans. They had long, leisurely dinners, which still seems to be the fashion, in Italy, home of the slow food movement.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcVNj0p9zoqYoO1qmVVhcsbmrLysAUvxGeP-PrJEFay_Q2nVx9EGLpcE0zcvExyAXQNesp9C7gms4jy5-vPRTebL7Zg_AaD_5_32zzvPTpSUt_28Y03J6wKn4jyihhVeQrOoL0BT-xEHg/s1600-h/IMG_7640.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcVNj0p9zoqYoO1qmVVhcsbmrLysAUvxGeP-PrJEFay_Q2nVx9EGLpcE0zcvExyAXQNesp9C7gms4jy5-vPRTebL7Zg_AaD_5_32zzvPTpSUt_28Y03J6wKn4jyihhVeQrOoL0BT-xEHg/s320/IMG_7640.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343166348141339234" border="0" /></a>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-48208635469477957222009-05-17T13:17:00.000-07:002009-05-17T14:05:18.856-07:00Any Day Now<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizgU91t2ftG3dZFvjgi2QFpSIp0isTXccsrBfodZWW3Z_4uEYzPZ33yOk-RdTP2ONJNMUMvkBL5RnlheLRnbH5_wJhKoufpzbtsdOhqDzcu5LanjgQXHI1TPqSmrt2VfvTp6ahT1jGLFo/s1600-h/21M0NE1M2KL._SS400_.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizgU91t2ftG3dZFvjgi2QFpSIp0isTXccsrBfodZWW3Z_4uEYzPZ33yOk-RdTP2ONJNMUMvkBL5RnlheLRnbH5_wJhKoufpzbtsdOhqDzcu5LanjgQXHI1TPqSmrt2VfvTp6ahT1jGLFo/s320/21M0NE1M2KL._SS400_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336890376248831714" border="0" /></a><br />Sometimes music gets very intertwined with our memories of a certain time and place. And the friends you had then.<br /><br />I wanted a nice quiet, tuneful album to grade essays to. So I came up with <span style="font-style: italic;">Any Day Now</span>, a Joan Baez<em style="font-style: italic;"></em><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>double LP from 1968, made up exclusively of Bob Dylan songs.<br /><br />I have always loved her singing voice and Dylan's lyrics. And on the album, she has a low key but interesting back up band of Nashville session players, who went further into rock than she usually did, picking up the pace from some of Dylan's early songs, but slowing down some, like Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. That song brings up another interesting twist, that of listening to someone interpret songs that were sometimes about her. There have been lots of interpretations of Dylan, but some of these, like the versions of "Any Day Now," "Love is Just a Four Letter Word" and "One Too Many Mornings," are the best around, IMHO.<br /><br />What surprised me, listening to these songs, for a very current purpose, grading graduate student papers, was how much they brought up a now distant seeming, but still curiously fresh past. I can close my eyes and see the dorm room where I first heard this album.<br /><br />This was one of my favorite albums in the spring of 1971. I had just come back from two quarters of study abroad in Vienna, Austria. My girlfriend there, Debbie Maranville, had stayed on for another quarter. Some friends from there and from my freshman year were around, but it seemed like a very new time. After six months of trying to understand Austria in German and a startling three weeks of traveling in the USSR, it seemed odd to be back in California, doing all the normal student stuff, picking up a radio show at KZSU again, getting involved in the anti-war movement again as new demonstrations were picking up again against the Vietnam War, in what was beginning to seem like a regular seasonal riot against Vietnam policy.<br /><br />I was living in a classy old dorm called Toyon. My room-mate was the wretchedly spoiled son of some elite landowner in Central America. (I have repressed his name.) So I went looking for friends elsewhere. One of the best was a woman from Washington, D.C. named Robin Spring. She introduced me to <span style="font-style: italic;">Any Day Now</span>, which rapidly became the soundtrack for the whole quarter. It got me back into my quasi-idolatry of Dylan in a more ear-pleasing way.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhijSp-QxS12axq_3E56_ZV9UCWaL8IPA5LKBBWw-M5vJd6YeTABIMxNOX4MpJTqawmxTMECOVdx3rLz4gKuAIwY9ndkmmuNQ_5CPQA2ykn3K9P3anhsVT1wxBv9ENbozhyphenhyphenwkOGlk9Z6OY/s1600-h/_45439563_001611659-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhijSp-QxS12axq_3E56_ZV9UCWaL8IPA5LKBBWw-M5vJd6YeTABIMxNOX4MpJTqawmxTMECOVdx3rLz4gKuAIwY9ndkmmuNQ_5CPQA2ykn3K9P3anhsVT1wxBv9ENbozhyphenhyphenwkOGlk9Z6OY/s320/_45439563_001611659-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336899241590396258" border="0" /></a><br />Joan Baez herself appeared on campus several times that spring to sing and speak at rallies, appealing to people to burn their draft cards and resist the draft. I think I remember the scene in this photo, but I may be mistaken. This is pretty much what I remember it looking like, however.<br /><br />I remember thinking that I liked her music a lot. <span style="font-style: italic;">David's Album</span> had just come out, lionizing her then husband of that name, a former Standford student president, who had gone to jail for resisting the draft. However, I both admired and resented them, since I wasn't sure resisting the draft was worth the price to be paid, even though I opposed the war very deeply.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-19566625309508669752009-05-16T17:07:00.000-07:002009-05-16T17:29:13.293-07:00Prague 1970 and 2007<div class="note_content text_align_ltr direction_ltr clearfix"> <div>In one of those really curious parallel universe events, Sandy and I both studied abroad in Austria and visited Prague in 1970 and 2007. She was with a BYU group in Salzburg, I was with a Stanford group in Vienna. To add to the small world syndrome, our son Chris did a shorter summer study abroad in Vienna in 2007 with BYU, taught by an old friend of ours, Alan Keele.<br /><br />Sandy just put the following up on Facebook, which is a bit less permanent than a blog, which is easy to archive. So let's start with her observations and then I will add some of my own.<br />Sandy:<br />In 1970 Prague was a grimy and dismal place. A wall around the corner from our hotel was splattered with what looked like fresh blood. Stand-up bars served something that resembled whipped Pepto-Bismol. A postal worker informed us that we couldn't buy stamps to send letters to West Germany because no such place existed. Students identified us as East Germans and couldn't be convinced otherwise. The West really didn't exist for them. It was two years after the Prague Spring.<br />I asked my friend Steve to take a picture of me by a city well in the old town. I had assumed a thoughtful and properly depressed expression. He told a joke and then snapped the picture. I was highly irritated. Picture #1.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1907947&op=1&view=all&subj=95862308640&aid=-1&oid=95862308640&id=512326024"><img style="width: 460px;" src="http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs051.snc1/4466_96076606024_512326024_1907947_2254545_n.jpg" alt="" class="" onload="var img = this; onloadRegister(function() { adjustImage(img); });" /></a></div><div class="caption"><br />Joe: I was wearing longish frizzy hair and a second hand Russian greatcoat from a pawnshop in Vienna when I visited Prague. So nobody thought either I or my Stanford in Austria buddies were East German. They quickly accepted that we were American. (It is a compliment to Sandy's group that their German was good enough to be taken for German -- ours was definitely not.) But they were delighted to tell us how much they liked rock music and hated Russia, at least the USSR politicians who had ordered the Soviet Army to invade them..<br />The town was clearly socialist in a way I almost miss parts of. There were cheap cafeterias, priced for working class people that were also great for poor students, who had already spent way too much abroad. The students we met were intensely interested in politics. They thought the attraction some of us had for Marx was naive. When they heard that some of us were going on to visit the USSR, they were appalled -- why visit people who had just invaded them to put down the political opening or liberalization of Prague Spring in 1968 -- but they also grinned wisely and said things like, "Just wait until you see what 'really existing socialism' looks like." And they were dead right.<br /><br />Sandy: The Prague I visited in 2007 was a decadent party town full of revelers from everywhere in the world. The Karluv Most bridge was full of musicians and bright lights at night. The old buildings downtown were the same, only with clean windows and charming little ice-cream and tea shops in every block. The well was still there, in the old town. We took a picture. It was okay to smile, this time. Picture # 2.<br /></div></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1907949&op=1&view=all&subj=95862308640&aid=-1&oid=95862308640&id=512326024"><img src="http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs051.snc1/4466_96076711024_512326024_1907949_3758256_n.jpg" alt="" class="" onload="var img = this; onloadRegister(function() { adjustImage(img); });" /></a></div><div class="caption">Praha 2007<br /><br />Joe: I was a little ambivalent about the change in Prague. People were no longer worried by being jailed over toxic politics. The city was much less drab and clearly very prosperous. But also much more globalized and westernized. They probably making a lot of money off the European and American partiers who had crowded to Prague for cheap, world famous beer. But the quaint little bookstores where we both (separately, obviously) bought classic books in German were long gone.<br /></div></div></div>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-32023434459540229242009-05-10T13:48:00.000-07:002009-05-10T14:42:00.946-07:00Mothers' DayMy wife Sandy, my partner of almost 32 years and the mother of three quite wonderful adult children is very ambivalent about Mothers' Day. She thinks it is too commercialized and also tends too much to put women and mothers on a sort of revered, but ghettoized pedestal. She is probably quite right about all of that.<br /><br />But it is a day when it is hard not to reflect at least a little bit about our own mothers and the dear but complicated roles they usually have in our lives. Let me start with a list of words prompted by my own mother's memory (she died at 91 in 1996 after a several year long bout of dementia that resembled Alzheimers). And add a few photos.<br /><br />So I think of my mother as:<br /><br />loving - I always knew that my parents were pretty fond of each other, it seems like that became more the case as they got older -- here is a picture of them in their 20s in the 1920s, farmer and flapper<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0NmOwMW3BxpsRN370pDS_tKf8IAyInEqUi6y2zkY-MjTF4dan9xHo6yVN8BJW0NlmGYQ-KQ57EiCO2EhEKpieRJc3oCgrdzFBRXm-UU2uJ8LnsDj9ujhovRQZI3JTwcbO7s23rF4eIgY/s1600-h/John+and+Beatrice+%234947C83.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0NmOwMW3BxpsRN370pDS_tKf8IAyInEqUi6y2zkY-MjTF4dan9xHo6yVN8BJW0NlmGYQ-KQ57EiCO2EhEKpieRJc3oCgrdzFBRXm-UU2uJ8LnsDj9ujhovRQZI3JTwcbO7s23rF4eIgY/s320/John+and+Beatrice+%234947C83.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334309567846888178" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />And I don't think I ever doubted that both she and my father loved me, that is quite a gift, the kind you can never fully repay<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />encouraging (this is her with me at a Boy Scout court of honor in about 1963, mothers always got pins representing the ranks we earned, reflecting this encouragement)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfVlffSrFsG9RWWLKWBHcigxYgVUdLInk_CkC32byug9k3o7yVhgfgCGjZ3C8GKJEHCHI2T7K1sEI1WL9iTF5kvfp1rz2xsvRX6DkGUXPqw8uomYCEwchgJuO-M076KW1usBYYX3ihwPs/s1600-h/scoutsjoegma60s.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfVlffSrFsG9RWWLKWBHcigxYgVUdLInk_CkC32byug9k3o7yVhgfgCGjZ3C8GKJEHCHI2T7K1sEI1WL9iTF5kvfp1rz2xsvRX6DkGUXPqw8uomYCEwchgJuO-M076KW1usBYYX3ihwPs/s320/scoutsjoegma60s.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334303184525488786" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />smart (she started Teachers College but quit to marry my Dad)<br />quiet but strong<br />quiet but probably a little depressed (after they moved off the farm into town, she had lost a lot of the role and critical economic importance she had had as a farm wife and mother)<br />a good reader and someone who encouraged me to read a lot<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />loyal to her family<br />patient with children, grandchildren, husband, and all<br />(here is another picture of my mother and father, after a long life together, after they had retired from farming, by their car on the street where they lived in Nampa, Idaho<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9EfVxkVSACq4aSemu0M5IY30tLE88y1DlplPvmSSx9TrsPrqfrMewOhbIlLMmr9MK7MZWYUVhH5-MD9jlh7sFy9EVIWTqzOGG3sxyvQ-z8yhag0Pj-Zwo6X3N-q3aJVhwjUEuDcrwsk/s1600-h/gpscar67.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9EfVxkVSACq4aSemu0M5IY30tLE88y1DlplPvmSSx9TrsPrqfrMewOhbIlLMmr9MK7MZWYUVhH5-MD9jlh7sFy9EVIWTqzOGG3sxyvQ-z8yhag0Pj-Zwo6X3N-q3aJVhwjUEuDcrwsk/s320/gpscar67.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334309927522474738" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />very good cook<br />unbelievably good and prolific gardener (these are the flowers that lined the lane leading to our house alongside an enormous vegetable garden, which was mostly her job to take care of)<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjihENzWSf94Z8wwosN-8RHzZkh0vph-sOFLmNMK-dIIyfYRS0h8OjUC5SmkBCOXNE6lWq5qx0eiPvnj96w-cFIv5WrpmjWn1sFotj0yTFG0RkcRyEDHz8RtzuKE5gQryDt62pJAEB8ew/s1600-h/driveway60skuna.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjihENzWSf94Z8wwosN-8RHzZkh0vph-sOFLmNMK-dIIyfYRS0h8OjUC5SmkBCOXNE6lWq5qx0eiPvnj96w-cFIv5WrpmjWn1sFotj0yTFG0RkcRyEDHz8RtzuKE5gQryDt62pJAEB8ew/s320/driveway60skuna.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334310321400537570" border="0" /></a>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-59151845050100090972009-05-09T12:03:00.001-07:002009-05-10T15:34:21.795-07:00Wildflowers and development<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUHqZeCc2-KyDjowVvDTUw-yZFW4GCTaE0RLhp4nFREAko_3GgW2_BktGlXeo9RVb7MAlw5vDXK1R1GgOO8416nL4Z-EqhPcklGAeiCg3M2AWBlARQvX9HHfBVSOmVp4GACHmnPaRh2r8/s1600-h/IMG_7388.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUHqZeCc2-KyDjowVvDTUw-yZFW4GCTaE0RLhp4nFREAko_3GgW2_BktGlXeo9RVb7MAlw5vDXK1R1GgOO8416nL4Z-EqhPcklGAeiCg3M2AWBlARQvX9HHfBVSOmVp4GACHmnPaRh2r8/s320/IMG_7388.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334316362779964018" border="0" /></a><br />This is now the late prime time for wildflowers in my part of Texas. Which is a pretty big deal around here. Just think of the memory of Lady Bird Johnson, who became quite beloved for promoting them. Here is one of my personal favorites, Mexican Hats, shot on the road in front of our neighborhood.<br /><br />Here is another personal favorite of the late season, Indian Blankets. (These are both names given by the Anglo settlers of Texas, as I understand, not very subtle or kindly toward the earlier inhabitants.)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq1CibZ_rRCxFrCnZRxU7scv7XcQMmnawjgrki6LAA2lGbDsRIJnBaAs6Red3lTk3fdG3sDqb1FvAfdWr9JSSZSDnk5Qg8BMWeXt1dw02kIkCXcFaqdlGWOcLIHsakKSu32nASlEUOOcg/s1600-h/IMG_7393.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq1CibZ_rRCxFrCnZRxU7scv7XcQMmnawjgrki6LAA2lGbDsRIJnBaAs6Red3lTk3fdG3sDqb1FvAfdWr9JSSZSDnk5Qg8BMWeXt1dw02kIkCXcFaqdlGWOcLIHsakKSu32nASlEUOOcg/s320/IMG_7393.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334321341435143698" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />This second photo is also part of the <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Travis Country Wildflower Preserve. This is a fairly new addition to the neighborhood, built over a tract which had roads in it, ready for further development, either residential or commercial.<br /><br />You can see the old roadbed it straddles here.<br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkSDfOOqBa_Qt7RNJq0lTS4DDPnaUhFPxzjF5VNlaQmTrVfYqPYEQFIO-4A8sK1EsAoO4ZBdnUqKej8w-jy6_PsVzVYKJUD4diliD4N8YC46J4RVNhpA3ejZRTB933rVw09fds-5AFtVY/s1600-h/IMG_7397.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkSDfOOqBa_Qt7RNJq0lTS4DDPnaUhFPxzjF5VNlaQmTrVfYqPYEQFIO-4A8sK1EsAoO4ZBdnUqKej8w-jy6_PsVzVYKJUD4diliD4N8YC46J4RVNhpA3ejZRTB933rVw09fds-5AFtVY/s320/IMG_7397.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334323853913314162" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Apparently the developer had a deal with the city to either develop this tract, which he owned, or another one, but not both. Since this whole area sits right over the Edwards Acquifer Recharge Zone, our neighborhood itself should probably not be here, let alone most of the subsequent growth.<br /><br />I remember seeing a sign in front of the area offering the tract now devoted to wildflowers up for development. The developer ended up wanting to develop the other site into the current local headquarters for AMD computers, just up Southwest Parkway half a mile or so.<br /><br />I guess we dodged a bullet. My neighborhood might have been right next to the latest big box retail extravaganza. But we seem to have been spared. And I hope that wildflowers will indeed fill in all the roadbeds originally laid out to bring cars in to shop.<br /><br />If you want to see more about the Wildflower Preserve, check out<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">http://www.traviscountry.com/traviscountry/page.html?page_id=77<br /><br /></span></span>One page shows 18 types of flowers, but not ironically, the two Texas favorites above that are most visible. Of course they are visible all over the place, on roadsides, in vacant lots, everywhere, so maybe the site is just trying to show what is most rare.<br />http://traviscountry.net/wildflowers/index.htmJoe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-7695712434590604062009-05-09T11:56:00.001-07:002009-05-10T13:45:54.340-07:00The Strength (and Weakness) of Weak Ties<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg38ZHfyLK5ZXUxjlVZtZrDURwLi_eh7JN1SJGUX3tl4NvpvNGpO_xMhBMExpOvYG6YoZM16Zp5F0dw8d2fUiaBbphz0ZU5lggDjKbu6tygPRMHUO7UitFGl7a7227-laA-fzA_0WxKYpQ/s1600-h/f0295_bonnie_october_2006.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg38ZHfyLK5ZXUxjlVZtZrDURwLi_eh7JN1SJGUX3tl4NvpvNGpO_xMhBMExpOvYG6YoZM16Zp5F0dw8d2fUiaBbphz0ZU5lggDjKbu6tygPRMHUO7UitFGl7a7227-laA-fzA_0WxKYpQ/s320/f0295_bonnie_october_2006.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333900260085506082" border="0" /></a>I was looking on the website of Travis Country (the neighborhood where I live) for some info about our relatively new wildflower preserve, when I ran across a special webpage for a walking buddy in the neighborhood who died a couple of years ago. She walked an enormous, over-sized Doberman around the neighborhood. As I walked my own dogs, I would often see her both on the several miles of sidewalk that circle the core of the neighborhood and in the woods. You can see her picture here.<br />One of the forms of very low key sociality in the the neighborhood is stopping to let dogs socialize and talk about them. Although my dog walking acquaintance was very friendly, it took months to get to know that her name was Bonny, and more months to know her last name, Grobar. We liked to talk dogs, politics, neighborhood info, etc. and seing her always brightened my day. But I did not know her well enough to know her family, where she lived, or how to get in touch.<br /><br />I knew she was struggling with her health, with cancer, and I probably should have found out how to check up on her, but our casual dog-walking chats seemed to have their own logic of being light, supportive but casual. It was a classic example of what scholars call a weak tie. All the people we know like old classmates, casual acquaintances, and people who met a few times at meetings, who can actually be quite important to how we live our lives.<br /><br />Months after I had last seen her, I finally ran into another local dog-walker I had seen with her, and I found that she had finally died. I felt like I had let a suprisingly important tie be a little too weak. I wished I had known more and somehow helped more. I know that running into her always seemed to cheer her up. This made me realize that what people call the strength of weak ties is not always enough, that maybe I need to push a little harder to get to know some of them quite a bit better.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi771EBYidF5Ps2-305WrC8DV_lIvbxgWj1WujbOt6G1MrzNI6dBkPXwx2iPqlaBmRgZRTCYD171Bu6BD6fFEU68YnoS1odnAKX8Bltl7JNwKlOpCqwxuSpnUDQa0HUPmASTnsINPy2fJE/s1600-h/f0374_tc_welcome.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi771EBYidF5Ps2-305WrC8DV_lIvbxgWj1WujbOt6G1MrzNI6dBkPXwx2iPqlaBmRgZRTCYD171Bu6BD6fFEU68YnoS1odnAKX8Bltl7JNwKlOpCqwxuSpnUDQa0HUPmASTnsINPy2fJE/s320/f0374_tc_welcome.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334297723390221682" border="0" /></a><br />I was really pleased to see that people put up a memorial to her in the neighborhood Blue Valley Park, right beside a duck, fish and turtle pond where I had often seen her. There is a memorial stone and a bench, along with some extra new plants. You can see the bench at the left of this picture of the pond. Her small memorial is right behind that. One could only hope that you touched enough lives in your time to make people want to do this for you.<br /><br />And here are some interesting details from the memorial page for. It seems that she helped brighten the day of many people who knew. A very important weak and strong tie for many.<br /><br /><span class="ctext"><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Bonnie's family and her many friends in Travis Country held a community "Celebration of Life" on May 19, 2007. To commemorate the many hours and and care that Bonnie gave to the community the family and neighborhood established a lasting tribute site near Bonnie's beloved Blue Valley Pond. A natural area surrounded by native plants, the site is along the creek side bank of the pond. Natural boulders and a bench provide a place where visitors can sit, view the pond that Bonnie worked so hard to save, enjoy the wildlife, and visit with the occasional neighbor walking their animals or hiking along the trail where Bonnie so enjoyed walking her Prince Caliph. Looking across the pond one can envision Bonnie driving along the street in her silver convertible with the Prince by her side.<br /><br />At the 2007 homeowner's meeting the annually awarded "Volunteer of the Year Award" was renamed the "Bonnie Grobar Volunteer of the Year Award".<br /><br /><span style="color:red;">Words never seem to be enough, no matter how hard we try, but Bonnie's family, friends, and neighbors have attempted to record their sense of loss, love, and respect for Bonnie in these comments.</span></span><br /><br />~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /><br /><i>My mom loved Travis Country and her morning walks around the neighborhood. The Blue Valley area was special to her and she worked hard to ensure that the pond was attractive and healthy to benefit the community and wildlife. I can't think of a better way to honor her than to designate a special place in her name. I also know that Jim would appreciate knowing that so many people cared for her and that there will be a place in the neighborhood for her always.<br /><br />Gary [Bonnie's son]<br /><br />http://traviscountry.com/traviscountry/page.html?page_id=98<br /></i></b></span>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-46570565258214169562009-05-06T18:41:00.000-07:002009-05-06T18:43:43.766-07:00Memories of the 1950s<div class="note_content text_align_ltr direction_ltr clearfix"> <div>Some of you might have read another version of this on Facebook. But that is deliberately transitory and I decided I wanted to hang on to this, so I decided to make a blogpost, which I can (and will) archive, since this is turning into a journal of sorts that I want to hang on to.<br /><br />Here is a little exercise in memory, media and nostalgia. Take a decade that intrigues you, whether you were already born or not. If you were born already, name some of the things you remember firsthand. Then, whether you were born already in that decade or not, name some of the things you "remember" about it from media about it.<br /><br />For me, starting with the 1950s, which by my definition run until 1964, when a huge amount of cultural change starts becoming apparent, even to rural white people in Idaho:<br /><br />Things I sort of remember firsthand, which was on a rural farm in a rural state, Idaho, that was at least five years behind California in most trends:<br /><br />1) Fear of being nuked from a classroom exercise where we really were told to bend over in our desks and cover our heads in case of nuclear blast.<br /><br />2) Getting lost in a sea of identical looking adult kneecaps.<br /><br />3) Hanging out with my Dad in farm fields, beginning to realize that farming was really hard work</div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2463036&op=1&view=all&subj=106167291616&aid=-1&oid=106167291616&id=512040745"><img style="width: 460px;" src="http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2726/56/76/512040745/n512040745_2463036_2599079.jpg" alt="" class="" onload="var img = this; onloadRegister(function() { adjustImage(img); });" /></a></div></div><div class="clear_none"><br /><br />4) Doing a lot of farm work, including with work horses at first, before we got a tractor (I am the short one in this photo with horses at haying in 1958)<br /></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2465314&op=1&view=all&subj=106167291616&aid=-1&oid=106167291616&id=512040745"><img style="width: 460px;" src="http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2726/56/76/512040745/n512040745_2465314_5707438.jpg" alt="" class="" onload="var img = this; onloadRegister(function() { adjustImage(img); });" /></a></div></div><div class="clear_none"><br /><br />5) Feeling really patriotic reading a comic book about WW II<br /><br />6) Being afraid of water but finally getting over it via swimming classes<br /><br />7) That TV was black and white and had two channels since there was no ABC station<br /><br />8) Feeling a bit envious that people who did not live on farms got to travel more<br /><br />9) Really enjoying my immediate and extended family, including a lot of nephews near my age<br /><br /></div><div class="photo photo_none"><div class="photo_img"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2465316&op=1&view=all&subj=106167291616&aid=-1&oid=106167291616&id=512040745"><img style="width: 460px;" src="http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2726/56/76/512040745/n512040745_2465316_4330661.jpg" alt="" class="" onload="var img = this; onloadRegister(function() { adjustImage(img); });" /></a></div><div class="caption">Nephews and me in 1959</div></div><div class="clear_none"><br /><br />The mediated things I remember are:<br /><br />1) Being fascinated by historical novels that took place in exotic places<br /><br />2) Thinking Disneyland looked pretty cool and wondering if I might ever get to someplace that far away<br /><br />3) Thinking that Leave it to Beaver families looked a lot richer than we were<br /><br />4) Getting intrigued with exotic items mentioned in Mad Magazine, like bagels<br /><br />5) Wondering who Howard Johnson was and why Mad Magazine like to make such fun of him<br /><br />6) Wondering what ad men did and why Mad Magazine like to make such fun of them<br /><br />7) Being really shocked at the news over the radio, piped over the junior high loudspeaker system, that Kennedy had been shot, and being even more shocked that some kids cheered<br /><br />7a) As a result beginning to realize that my Dad was maybe the only Democrat in town and thinking harder about what that meant<br /><br />8) Tuning into Wolf Man Jack on a huge old tube AM radio because I was beginning to get very intrigued by pop music</div></div>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-1283292472056813602009-04-25T09:50:00.000-07:002009-04-25T11:53:53.119-07:00The complication of moral foundationsI just read a fascinating story about the different moral foundation assumptions of US liberals and conservatives. According to the writer being discussed, <a target="_blank" href="http://people.virginia.edu/%7Ejdh6n/" linkindex="32">Jonathan Haidt</a>, these differences are also reflected in some overall differences between cultures, as well as social classes and political groups within cultures.<br /><br />He argues, based on quite a bit of empirical research as well as some interesting theorization of his own, that people on different sides of a number of arguments are basing their reasoning on different moral assumptions or foundations. Consequently, many times we are left wondering how any decent person with good values could think what the other side thinks.<br /><br />According to his research, the main assumptions or value bases are concern about harm to those who are vulnerable, fairness to all (or to whoever the person responding is most worried about), loyalty to your group or nation, respect for authority, and concern about bodily, moral and other purity. In the USA, most liberals are concerned about the first two and most conservatives are more concern about the last three. He thinks that to make discourse and policy-making fairer and more effective, people on either side need to understand that people on the other side are basing their arguments on values that are important to them and not easily dismissed by the other side. The same applies to many differences between cultures. If you want to see the article<br />that summarizes this, and has links to the original research, it is at http://www.alternet.org/story/138303/conservatives_live_in_a_different_moral_universe_--_and_here%27s_why_it_matters/?page=entire.<br /><br />There is also a link to a site where you can take a test which compares your own moral assumptions or bases to the averages of both liberals and conservatives.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ekYDmOiHuKjoXGNre7F5sy3cC__JHCrZ0roGRJ5Wi6FkZl5w1zI6uO6Oo8Kl-mwNPdWiYXAhmOov-eJLOcWbJmWiZirmP3Jvd7xH0PMDIsfpT25qlbD2JRxdVUO6nds7CqY_UEoQahk/s1600-h/joe+moral+foundations+results.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 142px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ekYDmOiHuKjoXGNre7F5sy3cC__JHCrZ0roGRJ5Wi6FkZl5w1zI6uO6Oo8Kl-mwNPdWiYXAhmOov-eJLOcWbJmWiZirmP3Jvd7xH0PMDIsfpT25qlbD2JRxdVUO6nds7CqY_UEoQahk/s320/joe+moral+foundations+results.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328673596096887058" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I took it and was interested to find out that I was slightly more concerned even than most liberals about fairness and harm, but that I was only slightly less concerned than most conservatives about loyalty, authority, and purity. You can see a bar graph of my scores and the comparisons here.<br /><br />So I find that I am both liberal and conservative, depending on the issue. I could even sense that as I took the test. "Well, this item is going to make me look liberal (or conservative, depending)." I also have the sense, for myself, that this is dynamic. I probably would have been much less concerned about authority when I was 20. After raising three kids and teaching a lot of others, I find that I want people to learn how to understand and respect authority at least initially, until they are old enough to think it through well. I think I might also see the value of both loyalty and purity a bit more now than I did when I was younger, too. They strike me also as important things to value until you avoid some of the naive teenage reactions that can pretty much destroy your life and are experienced enough to make decisions with a longer view.<br /><br />If you want to see how you rate, take the moral foundations questionnaire at<br />http://www.yourmorals.org/Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-5663216730561619882009-03-03T14:36:00.000-08:002009-03-03T15:04:45.521-08:00Loving Web 2.0 -- the US 89 Appreciation Society<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIuM7oYiJMpm6L69t8rrKFVSYzzrW6y_bHbhNReC3J09DlxRyP6PrZLYWxnudCR4hCO7ElmCvgqZ7n8iEHl-Y68JMZ94MWMIcd4CKUclLUuUCWkmCU7Xq6XsTsnIc4rtlH8BodwpeaTN0/s1600-h/46.jpg.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 160px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIuM7oYiJMpm6L69t8rrKFVSYzzrW6y_bHbhNReC3J09DlxRyP6PrZLYWxnudCR4hCO7ElmCvgqZ7n8iEHl-Y68JMZ94MWMIcd4CKUclLUuUCWkmCU7Xq6XsTsnIc4rtlH8BodwpeaTN0/s320/46.jpg.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309095757074017170" border="0" /></a>In my undergraduate class today, we got into a long talk about whether different forms of media move us away from our local roots toward more national or even global identifications and interests, corresponding to high falutin' terms I made them read about like time-space distanciation..<br /><br />What I find most interesting myself is how the ever more participatory nature of the Internet, what we are calling Web 2.0, I guess, is how it loops back around and ties different eras and layers of my own identity and interests back into life here and now, which is increasingly a lot of heres and a lot of nows.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpNm4yx9mnQuGwXnchOytRYLdBa-pu0WGeugt5_XCkV973JsmXGS6Sg6-0ATXggln_oqOg56Bm1R9i05xtWnO7ADOxcnzKsL-YHDqpUmoPWH2xdaAm2jJ86uM7xSqqe-eL4Mnp0MvFmfk/s1600-h/10.jpg.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 91px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpNm4yx9mnQuGwXnchOytRYLdBa-pu0WGeugt5_XCkV973JsmXGS6Sg6-0ATXggln_oqOg56Bm1R9i05xtWnO7ADOxcnzKsL-YHDqpUmoPWH2xdaAm2jJ86uM7xSqqe-eL4Mnp0MvFmfk/s320/10.jpg.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309094370552098370" border="0" /></a><br />One of my favorite examples is the U.S. Route 89 Appreciation Society. I have spent a lot of time in various parts of my life, starting in college driving through Utah, which has scenery much like what I grew up with in Idaho, but even more varied. When our family started driving back to Idaho from places like Michigan, LA and Texas, we also found ourselves on US 89 in Utah, Arizona and even one little corner of Idaho. It is one of my favorite highways around in terms of scenic beauty, so it is fun to find a whole little corner of like minded people on the Web.<br /><br />So here are some images from the latest email I got from them, directing me to their brand new updated website, http://www.us89society.org/<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZ_xbq8LNR6-2D_NsiJuKEtodCRMUYWKhodv_n4z1XjOhwndhI6pH0JErU4uaL13ijqTWab6OBcyQllPhU7Fnw1bM0hr-VD-Tekco46tNormNcOZvvnqz7b6SOugNKuvgpMBdXcGc3Sw/s1600-h/81.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZ_xbq8LNR6-2D_NsiJuKEtodCRMUYWKhodv_n4z1XjOhwndhI6pH0JErU4uaL13ijqTWab6OBcyQllPhU7Fnw1bM0hr-VD-Tekco46tNormNcOZvvnqz7b6SOugNKuvgpMBdXcGc3Sw/s320/81.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309100589443212434" border="0" /></a>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-72755870709914088502009-02-14T13:56:00.000-08:002009-02-14T14:13:09.599-08:00A 1960s psychedelic concert all over again<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrG8NeqUWEp0h3vGONVpo7LGADHeaHKoqu3ZnZzTlaxJF6eYOs7J5Cc4ymhVOnyIgqMUZgHm_RfNSxu4l06PfsMqGyUexC7-i50HsRJeu1yVeE7ag8O6ywbbujuf0tymqugVX1-GMT4_w/s1600-h/IMG_0332.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrG8NeqUWEp0h3vGONVpo7LGADHeaHKoqu3ZnZzTlaxJF6eYOs7J5Cc4ymhVOnyIgqMUZgHm_RfNSxu4l06PfsMqGyUexC7-i50HsRJeu1yVeE7ag8O6ywbbujuf0tymqugVX1-GMT4_w/s320/IMG_0332.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302775878271704610" border="0" /></a><br />A week ago, some old friends from the Momberger family (Joel, Jane, Claire, Grace, Doogie) and I went to hear a sort of neo-psychedelic concert by Government Mule, one of the premier jam band/southern blues rock bands out there.<br /><br />It seemed like 1969 all over again, except for the smell of barbeque (it was at Stubbs), Lone Star signs, and being with friends and their adult kids, who are also friends, rather than college buddies or random San Francisco hippies. (I went to Stanford at a great time for music, 1969-1973, so I went up to San Francisco to see concerts at the Filmore, Winterland, etc. a lot.)<br /><br />Great memories of music then, but I think I liked the experience better now, at least the company. Although the crowd wasn't nearly as interesting, I remember watching people do almost whirling Dervish spinning turns at Grateful Dead concerts, and wondering how people could be so stoned out of their gourds and so graceful at the same time.<br /><br />One of the most similar things was the light show, so here is another shot of it, courtesy of my hand-dandy iPhone camera.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtV05351pF7rGBjoRN5VOMtHfeACaBlUcqvUeBgMQHRLGQlS7tn5S5O7NBqxoU8AeA1PNPdoVzDVsT7QaNmOEcnlblF6DwgOQDVQAjLxZsw9hUcBPNvggWTs9sb2SBlQI_gk6BC1e61TQ/s1600-h/IMG_0335.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtV05351pF7rGBjoRN5VOMtHfeACaBlUcqvUeBgMQHRLGQlS7tn5S5O7NBqxoU8AeA1PNPdoVzDVsT7QaNmOEcnlblF6DwgOQDVQAjLxZsw9hUcBPNvggWTs9sb2SBlQI_gk6BC1e61TQ/s320/IMG_0335.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302778358015885298" border="0" /></a>One other thing that was quite comparable was the quality of music. Government Mule does some of the best guitar rock that I have heard since Jerry Garcia.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-91496325936388915792009-02-14T12:52:00.001-08:002009-02-14T13:55:58.857-08:00My father and his vanishing Swiss-German<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI-LVZDybNa77xo21tahC0zEB4QzQCMgMWFy7xBdgz8sv56TvK9IErZCrt1S0zaSvG1uqQ7RM3xOPm0jU7o6IfFupZjvmpnQvOGgF5JkqYW75H_8Txf2VHfvzBf7iiJFP2gd1-g1mDZeo/s1600-h/gpahayfield60%3F.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 294px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI-LVZDybNa77xo21tahC0zEB4QzQCMgMWFy7xBdgz8sv56TvK9IErZCrt1S0zaSvG1uqQ7RM3xOPm0jU7o6IfFupZjvmpnQvOGgF5JkqYW75H_8Txf2VHfvzBf7iiJFP2gd1-g1mDZeo/s320/gpahayfield60%3F.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302759077990693698" border="0" /></a><br />This is my favorite photo of my father, John Straubhaar, standing in a field of grain on our farm in Kuna, Idaho. It is how I remember him best, a strong sun-tanned man who was pretty happy with what he had on his farm and with his family.<br /><br />My father pronounced our last name stru-bar, which is close to the Swiss-German pronunciation. Most of you who know me know that I say it strawb-har, more the high German way, since I thought it was going to be hard enough, without confusing even German speakers, about how to say it for the rest of my life as I went to school and moved around. I sometimes wonder if I should have kept the Swiss way.<br /><br />I am thinking about all of this because I am working on an article about how language affects immigrants in how they do and don't use new media like the Internet and computers. Here is a quote from that article that made me think about the path my father took through language in America throughout his life as a second generation Swiss-Mormon immigrant. I am going to break the quote into sections and compare it to my father's experience.<br /><br />"May (2000) writes that immigrants pass through three stages in the acquisition of the language of their adopted country. At first they tend to speak the new language only in formal settings—at school, for instance, or at work—while mostly speaking the native language among family and friends."<br /><br />That is where my father started. He was born in 1901 and spoke German at home, with family and at church in a community of German speaking Swiss Mormon immigrants in Montpelier, Idaho. He really only started learning English in school.<br /><br />" In the second stage they speak both the native and the majority languages; some are completely bilingual, while others are not completely fluent in the native language."<br /><br />My Dad moved into and through this stage pretty fast. He told me stories that obviously still stung about how kids would call him a dumb Dutchman if he spoke German at school and teachers would hit him on the hand with a ruler if he did. (Interesting that I hear the same stories from older Latino immigrants.)<br /><br />"In the third stage they have switched almost completely to the language of their adopted land; some remain able to speak the language of their forebears, but others speak little or none of it."<br /><br />My father was 50 when I was born. (I was a surprise ;<) By the time I knew my father in his fifties, he had very little spoken German left, just some songs, sayings and phrases. This was pretty normal, I think, for European immigrants of his time, who were encouraged, almost forced, much more to integrate than the Latinos of that time were.<br /><br />" This process generally takes two or three generations to complete, May writes, although the third stage can sometimes occur as early as the first generation (May, 2000)."<br /><br />That is pretty clearly what happened with my Dad, but it seems to be rarer now, as many immigrants try to hang on to the old language and identity, as one layer among several.<br /><br />Another statement in our paper notes, "The general tendency in all immigrant groups now is for English to become the dominant language by the second generation, with fluent bilingualism being the exception rather than the rule (Portes and Rumbaut, 1990, p. 219; Rumberger and Larson, 1998)."<br /><br /> I rather wish it had worked like that then in my father's day, too. It would have been nice to grow up bilingual, but the America of then did not really encourage that. We integrated but we lost something, too. I think the new model emerging is actually superior, but we shall see how it goes.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-81583698436700599222009-01-31T18:23:00.000-08:002009-01-31T18:50:45.578-08:00Jardim Botanico at UCLA<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqkC2adCRiYmdBO-TQtFvNwPBdqiUy_BKjppP1mx6dEnpKSLjxPHimGe_B7gBwYVaod9vwpGZIVnubdx7Om5rxi1TWQHyf_YLV4wwllwVrGouo_Oz7zTeeHJChzJUlx0GL4_nlIS0bH20/s1600-h/IMG_0324.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqkC2adCRiYmdBO-TQtFvNwPBdqiUy_BKjppP1mx6dEnpKSLjxPHimGe_B7gBwYVaod9vwpGZIVnubdx7Om5rxi1TWQHyf_YLV4wwllwVrGouo_Oz7zTeeHJChzJUlx0GL4_nlIS0bH20/s320/IMG_0324.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297650069076578402" border="0" /></a>This weekend I have been out at UCLA doing some interviews toward an oral history of TV Globo, which is located near the Botanical Garden, or Jardim Botanico, of Rio. I have been staying just off campus at Hilgard House, right down the street from UCLA's own botanical garden. It is a great place to walk in the morning, plus it gives me a chance to muse on the odd symmetry or possibly the bad pun of thinking about both botanical gardens, but in very different ways.<br /><br />UCLA's garden is quite a marvel of compact diversity. It can't take up more than a couple of acres at most. But it has jungle environments, as you can see here.<br /><br />It also has desert environments, like enormous prickly pear you can see here. The garden tries hard to get you to suspend your disbelief about being between a city street and hyper-modern UCLA. In fact, it made me think of a favorite scene in a novel by Gene Wolf in which his characters wander around in two magical botanical gardens. But it is hard to get away from the screen fence you see here,<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCh3lhIjnYIrjwwzNXSTMflebZXzB3Axba38YN1h1zGp_CQkfLhLzytzEYKpp6upFDvcWzbGKn0QGmNPmKvu99JY9KHIxvFz58oa-Ic7znpg6y10lr724_O5IePX8J0np5Z2H9ZSc2-e8/s1600-h/IMG_0330.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCh3lhIjnYIrjwwzNXSTMflebZXzB3Axba38YN1h1zGp_CQkfLhLzytzEYKpp6upFDvcWzbGKn0QGmNPmKvu99JY9KHIxvFz58oa-Ic7znpg6y10lr724_O5IePX8J0np5Z2H9ZSc2-e8/s320/IMG_0330.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297653708551812114" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />or the street behind the desert plants you can see here where the garden dead ends at the top of little hill and merges back into plain old Hilgard Avenue.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Yl_X1ICtEkggS8FDsNcwykJRRoCK6nULxZrydzPXXBhwMTKbG2Sg0aWvdFSXzb-24DfplA_fa3yBG8rMhyXTdxlrOfFSzpZKjUeKiGiAr27pEUH4TA6mQdUd4wbWiRVfr7JNPbatNOM/s1600-h/IMG_0328.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Yl_X1ICtEkggS8FDsNcwykJRRoCK6nULxZrydzPXXBhwMTKbG2Sg0aWvdFSXzb-24DfplA_fa3yBG8rMhyXTdxlrOfFSzpZKjUeKiGiAr27pEUH4TA6mQdUd4wbWiRVfr7JNPbatNOM/s320/IMG_0328.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297652602507268210" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />It has also has some California foothil<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3KqQcTaW1LkyQBvS9s-LE4bNaoXmqWlznoY0Qfe8oRcuyLeo3x-dHwAqE3PrB3GgEACW80OguzjFwXOni97wYFwfMrohEuIjHyOGeXE8RmQC9Pow5hyphenhyphenl3M3e6MPFN5e00hMIZ21wvPfk/s1600-h/IMG_0326.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3KqQcTaW1LkyQBvS9s-LE4bNaoXmqWlznoY0Qfe8oRcuyLeo3x-dHwAqE3PrB3GgEACW80OguzjFwXOni97wYFwfMrohEuIjHyOGeXE8RmQC9Pow5hyphenhyphenl3M3e6MPFN5e00hMIZ21wvPfk/s320/IMG_0326.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297653139855489458" border="0" /></a>ls environments, like this one.<br /><br />Quite a wonderful place to wander about and get a bit or exercise.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-15869616443747415082009-01-27T20:06:00.001-08:002009-01-27T20:16:07.306-08:00Lie down with dogs, get up with a leg cramp?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht1s32tH5mH60AZLiOVtQJtx1iKOwCW11_DYzf_yu0t91RMMNh0SM2_sQbUQu9f7cGrxHu2ThwUhwPD4tZ_76m6V36cGnJd4jyFBkanP48ycX7F1Flz4KTh-z5M7yb0K6cJagj2a1Qovc/s1600-h/IMG_0318.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht1s32tH5mH60AZLiOVtQJtx1iKOwCW11_DYzf_yu0t91RMMNh0SM2_sQbUQu9f7cGrxHu2ThwUhwPD4tZ_76m6V36cGnJd4jyFBkanP48ycX7F1Flz4KTh-z5M7yb0K6cJagj2a1Qovc/s320/IMG_0318.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296191474072794482" border="0" /></a><br />We have a decently sized house, with at least three sofas in different rooms. But it seems that Sandy and our two aging dogs like the old, beat-up leather sofa best.<br /><br />Sandy likes to work, sleep and read on this sofa. She has even taken to doing her email in this unlikely position, sort of like the archetypal way that U.S. teenagers talk on the phone.<br /><br />Both dogs also seem to insist on being on the sofa. So you get scenes like this one. With no one ceding their position and a veritable puppy pile resulting. I guess dogs genuinely like that sort of thing, but this particular creature will use another chair, thank you.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-4500800150850618852009-01-19T07:54:00.000-08:002009-01-19T19:29:40.216-08:00Re-imagining the imagined community, or political participation these daysI really wish I were in Washington, D.C. to watch the Inaugural events. It seems like we put a lot of time, money and media attention into the Obama campaign this last year. I am still behind on some academic projects because of all that time reading blogs, watching speeches on YouTube, going to meetings here, making phone calls for the campaign, etc.<br /><br />A lot of things, including the start of classes at UT on January 20, kept us here in Austin instead. I woke up this morning wishing I could have seen Bruce Springsteen and all the others performing at the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial Sunday night. Opening up the New York Times, I saw a first page photo of Springsteen singing in front of a gospel choir. So I thought, what the heck, let's see if it is on YouTube already. Sure enough. Just in case you missed, it is plugged in below.<br /><br />Now Springsteen's performance is on CNN again. Better video quality but they cut it off after 10 seconds so I am glad I can go back to it again on YouTube anytime. We decided to watch pre-inaugural events on TV tonight, just for variety, to see what they decide to focus on. But a sea change has happened. It certainly is not like the experience I grew up with of TV news as virtually the only window on the world.<br /><br />There has been a sea-change for what individuals can do and how they are informed. My email had links to several Obama talks about several issues. I got an email invitation to take a survey about what I thought of my experiences as a volunteer. The survey made it clear that the Obama organization really did want to get some feedback but was also really eager to figure out what we want to do now as volunteers, what issues we wanted to work on and what kinds of volunteer work we wanted to do. So the impressive Obama campaign recruitment, training and moblization of volunteers seems likely to pull us in again to lobby, mobilize and promote issues for Obama programs. A new kind of massive but also individual politics.<br /><br />So it feels like a new kind of political community that we now imagine for ourselves. We still watch things en masse, like all the events of this inauguration. But we have a lot more choice and control about it. Which probably lets quite a few people who are not big Obama fans ignore the whole thing more than they might have been able to do in the 1960s. I remember hearing people in my Idaho town in 1963 complain about having no option but to watch days of Kennedy funeral coverage on the only three channels they had. I wonder if their kids are choosing to watch the inauguration or ESPN?<br /><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xql3ob0XORY&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xql3ob0XORY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194715323702255195.post-60715321579678389752009-01-11T12:43:00.000-08:002009-01-11T13:19:27.332-08:00Fascination with "The Mind"It is always interesting for me to think about how we get interested in the things that drive us, particularly the big decisions like where to go to school, what career to take, who to marry, what religion or philosophy to be guided by.<br /><br />For example, my son Rolf wanted to be something very specific, and to my mind remarkably cool, an ethnomusicologist, from age 12 when he saw some mind blowingly different music in Brazil, to age 22, when he decided that, while that was cool, it wasn't pro-social enough. So he switched his interests to applying anthropology to making non-formal education in developing countries work better. Part of that had to do with confronting poverty as well as cool music in several experiences in Brazil, part of it had to do with what he learned in a very critical development curriculumn in college.<br /><br />For me, I wanted to be a psychologist for quite a long time, from about age 14, when I read a book called "The Mind," part of a Time-Life series that I found in the high school library, to about 20, when I got terminally disgusted with social pyschology at Stanford University, after being associated with a couple of different experiments conducted by a rock star psychologist there, Phil Zimbardo. I was an undergrad research assistant to him in a couple of very deceptive experiments, then hit the ultimate wall as a volunteer subject in the pre-test to his (in)famous prison experiment. You can see more about the final version at http://www.prisonexp.org/. The pre-test was enough to sour me and send me off to check out more my other interests in international relations and media, which is where I ended up working and studying. Still, that interest in psychology, nourished by a book in the high school library, continues to intrigue. I am very happy that Rolf's wife, Kristy, my new daughter-in-law, is doing a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology, so that there is someone around to talk to about it.<br /><br />So I was very intrigued to read the cover story on today's New York Times' magazine, by Steven Pinker. He dives into the contribution of human genome study to the old question of how much of our nature and interests comes from nature/inherited characteristics and how much from nurture/environment, family, etc.<br /><br />He notes, "Affordable genotyping may offer new kinds of answers to the question “Who am I?” — to ruminations about our ancestry, our vulnerabilities, our character and our choices in life. <p> <span class="bold">Over the years I have come</span> to appreciate how elusive the answers to those questions can be. During my first book tour 15 years ago, an interviewer noted that the paleontologist <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/stephen_jay_gould/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Stephen Jay Gould">Stephen Jay Gould</a> had dedicated his first book to his father, who took him to see the dinosaurs when he was 5. What was the event that made me become a cognitive psychologist who studies language? I was dumbstruck. The only thing that came to mind was that the human mind is uniquely interesting and that as soon as I learned you could study it for a living, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. But that response would not just have been charmless; it would also have failed to answer the question. Millions of people are exposed to cognitive <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/psychology_and_psychologists/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about psychology.">psychology</a> in college but have no interest in making a career of it. What made it so attractive to <span class="italic">me</span>? </p>As I stared blankly, the interviewer suggested that perhaps it was because I grew up in Quebec in the 1970s when language, our pre-eminent cognitive capacity, figured so prominently in debates about the future of the province. I quickly agreed — and silently vowed to come up with something better for the next time. Now I say that my formative years were a time of raging debates about the political implications of human nature, or that my parents subscribed to a Time-Life series of science books, and my eye was caught by the one called “The Mind,” or that one day a friend took me to hear a lecture by the great Canadian psychologist D. O. Hebb, and I was hooked. But it is all humbug. The very fact that I had to think so hard brought home what scholars of autobiography and memoir have long recognized. None of us know what made us what we are, and when we have to say something, we make up a good story."<br />http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/<br /><br />Interesting that he was guided to his interest in psychology by the same book, only with him it stuck for a career. I think our ruminations about media effects tend to miss the books we read when we are young. I can think of how a number of books affected all sorts of attitudes and interests of mine, from my fascination with other cultures to what I think of the state of Israel. But more about that later.Joe Straubhaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12865843701923340040noreply@blogger.com0