A Call for Constructive Engagement

Courageous inquiry, deep learning, and respectful dialogue. It is what our students deserve, and it is what our democracy requires.

The Call for Constructive Engagement.

Relief, at last

Today was another difficult day, physically and neurologically. Rather than struggle against it, I took the whole day off from work and just threw in the towel. I rested in the morning, then had acupuncture and a trip to the sauna, with some meditation and an eye massage afterwards, and then a bout of resting. 

A few hours after that, there seems to be some relief, finally, and I feel like a human once again.

It’s well past time for bed, of course, so there’s nothing else for it but to make a pot of tea and settle in with a bit of fiction (if I read the news, you know I’ll be up until dawn). 

Happy Thursday.

The power of ideas

Bully to Harvard.

Columbia could have stood up, too.

The regime has but one lever against Universities: money. Only once the academy rejects being bought can they be free.

And academic freedom matters.

Never underestimate the power of ideas to shape the course of human possibilities. 

Here's Isaiah Berlin paraphrasing Heinrich Heine in the opening of Two Concepts of Liberty (1958):

"Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilisation. He spoke of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as the sword with which German deism had been decapitated, and described the works of Rousseau as the blood-stained weapon which, in the hands of Robespierre, had destroyed the old regime; and prophesied that the romantic faith of Fichte and Schelling would one day be turned, with terrible effect, by their fanatical German followers, against the liberal culture of the West. The facts have not wholly belied this prediction; but if professors can truly wield this fatal power, may it not be that only other professors, or, at least, other thinkers (and not governments or congressional committees), can alone disarm them?"

Burnt

Burnt, 2015 

directed by John Wells, written by Steven Knight, starring Bradley Cooper 

There's this little moment when Cooper's character has to make a birthday cake for a kid, and he says,"they can have sorbet; I don't do cake" and then he does and is surly about it and he takes it out to the kid. It could have been a scene filled with arrogance and further proof (not that we needed any) of the ways in which ego destroys us but it ended up being my favorite moment in the film as he served the cake, presented a slice, and waited for the child's assessment. 

Knight (most recognizable for Peaky Blinders and the recently-released MobLand) has a gift for showing us how ego is the most destructive and addictive drug of all.  Somehow his presentations of this simple truth continue to be fresh, engaging, and--despite the subject matter--optimistic, or at least hopeful of hope. Cooper is great, of course, and choosing actors to portray ego-riddled chefs is always dicey. It takes a master to portray this particular breed of hypercompetitive arrogance without it becoming so one-note and performative that it's nearly meaningless. Matthew Rhys as Cooper's rival spends little enough time on screen, but when he is there, his words and his acting create depth. Knight has a knack for creating secondary opponents that show up our main character and take them to task while still being just as flawed (see Alfie in Peaky Blinders) and this is a deft art in any form of fiction. Wells hits just the notes. This is a movie about how living in our scars separates us, and how the damage is everyone's, and how our chosen families are the path out of darkness, if only we will allow them to be.

When Art fights the Law

Sally Mann's exhibit in the Forth Worth Museum was seized by police for being "obscene." [I interviewed Mann in 1993 for a paper, specifically focusing on her collection At Twelve and Immediate Family.] For those of you experiencing a case of deja vu when reading that sentence, yes, in fact, we did already settle this exact issue in 1990 with the Mapplethorpe obscenity case, and y'all I'm tired, but more than that, I am concerned that this time when Art fights the law this time, we will lose. I am very much trying not to feel as though we have already lost, and to focus instead on where to go from here.

Beware the Ides of March

So much is happening right now.

More chaos and confusion, and I felt a bit defeated with the Senate vote yesterday, and then hours later the Executive Order to dismantle seven more agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It’s not even a federal agency, but an independent one, and I am so tired of the abject absence of the rule of law and also of basic common sense about government. Common decency has been lacking for some time, but the sense of dim-wittedness is exhausting. 

And then today we had actual military strikes, as though domestic tornadoes, wildfires, and severe storms weren’t enough. 

Beware the Ides of March, dear Reader. 

Fighting Their Rescuers

Drowning people 

Sometimes die

Fighting their rescuers.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler