Yesterday, I saw the documentary, Moving Midway at the IFC Center, a fab movie theater right here on 6th Avenue and 4th Street.
The movie centers around Midway, a plantation in North Carolina built in the 1800s. In recent times, the land immediately surrounding the large home had been developed into strip malls, fast-food joints, and roaring highways. So, the eldest son who had inherited the mansion that formed the center of the plantation decided to preserve the integrity of the home by purchasing a large plot of land nearby, picking up the entire house on steel beams, and moving it by truck to the new land.
As word about the plantation’s move gets out, previously unknown family members make themselves known — African American family members who were descendants of both Midways slaveowners and slaves. In this way, the movie is a thoughtful meditation on race at a micro-level through a look at this one family’s history.
It also offers a macro-level analysis of racial stereotypes with a history of the slave trade and American attitude towards race as reflected in movies and literature.
There’s humor here, too, and warmth and hope for the future. There’s a serious discussion of Midway’s matriarch haunting Midway and throwing plates when angered, and a grandmother who, upon hearing that a new quilt was 100 years old and bought from Pennsylvania, declares “damn Yankee quilt.”
And there’s hope for the future when the descendants of the slaveowners and the descendants of slaves embrace and joke and throw a party together on the newly preserved, newly renovated Midway plantation.
So, we live in New York City, where it is not so unusual to see celebrities walkin’ down the street, just like the rest of us slobs
Once upon a time, about 6 or 7 years ago, I was walking across the street in midtown, with two women behind me. All of a sudden I hear one of them sing, “Old McDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o.”
And there was something about that voice … something that made me turn around.
The woman singing had short gray hair that stood up on her head in a crew-cut. She wore sweatpants and no make-up. She had a child of about 2 or 3 years old on her shoulders, and she was singing in a voice I knew, but couldn’t place.
The woman walking next to her said, “Are you …?”
And the woman with the child raised her finger to her lips and said, “Yes, but … shhhhh.”
Forbes had a great article on Modest Needs, a website that connects people with short-term needs — such as covering the rent for one month, hormone treatments to prevent a premature birth, hospital bills that insurance won’t cover — with people who donate money to cover those needs. People can donate as much or as little as they want, and choose specific requests or certain areas, such as domestic violence or single mothers.
The needs are verified by Modest Needs, a nonprofit organization. The money goes directly to the hospital, the landlord, or the bank.
There are so many fascinating things about Modest Needs:
– It was begun by Keith Taylor, an English teacher making $33k/year, who gave away small amounts of his own salary to people with short-term needs by setting up a website telling people to send him requests
– Seven out of every ten recipients log back into the site as donors (think about that a minute)
– Only 10% of recipients ask again, proving that a little bit of money can do a lot of good.
The article also has really interesting statistics about the giving habits of various classes, including the fact that households making less than $20,000 a year gave away 4.6% of their income, a higher percentage than any other group.
Ah, just came back from visiting P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the museum in Long Island City, and I loved it! My favorite exhibits are interactive and whimsical and I had a ball.
There was James Turrell’s Meeting, a serene room with benches all around it and a perfect square cut through the ceiling. I was there on a Saturday night, so the square was opened; I lay on the floor and stared straight through to the sky.
There were also several exhibits by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, who is now one of my favorite artists. One of his exhibits was Beauty, a misty waterfall you could jump through, which was quite exciting. I also saw Take Your Time, where you lay on a floor surrounded by other people doing the same thing and look up at a large, slowly rotating mirrored ceiling. This gave me ample opportunity to engage in people-watching, one of my all-time favorite activities, without fear that anyone would catch me. People are cute when they’re looking at themselves: lots of childish laughter, poking each other, wiggling, staring.
I didn’t have my camera :(, but I will try to describe what I saw out the window overlooking the courtyard of P.S.1. On Saturday night, there’s music outdoors. So, there were these undulating bodies all crowded together. Behind and above them, there was P.F.1 (Public Farm 1), a fully-functioning, 30 feet high “urban farm,” made of plants, vegetables, and flowers. People were dancing with fervor in the aisle of the urban farm. And, in the distance, rising behind the dancers and the farm, 5 Pointz, the Institute of Higher Burnin’, a wall of legal graffiti art.
And behind that, a storage facility. This is, after all, New York, and not everything can be artsy fartsy.
P.S.1 is also one of the most interesting buildings ever. It used to be a school, and there’s all kinds of art in all kinds of nooks and crannies: stairwells, elevators, bathrooms.
So, you should make a visit there. It’s really easy to get to in Long Island City …
Whenever I go to museums, I try to leave with at least 2 or 3 facts that I didn’t know before that I try to never forget. (If you attended MoMA and have another 3, feel free to chime in with a reply.)
1. I never knew Dali was so into movies. He created dream sequences for Hitchcock’s Spellbound, and collaborated with Walt Disney on an animated movie called Destino. (Destino was not made into a movie until 2003, when Walt Disney studios took storyboards created by Disney and Dali and created animation magic). A trailer for Destino is at the end of this post — just click in the center to play it.
2. Museum of Modern Art has 6 floors, and they are designed to be seen from the top floor down.
3. We are slowly moving from an age of mass production to mass customization. Instead of the same car, for instance, being made an infinite number of times in the same style, an infinite number of cars are being made catering to people’s individual style and preferences.
James De La Vega is an artist that tags New York’s sidewalks, doors, even the discarded mattresses you see below –with whimsical, inspiring little pics and murals. He often signs his art with a fish and his name.
New York is a gritty city; De La Vega brightens it up. (Picture thanks to the wonderful Dave Beckerman.)
So, every year for a very long time, I have asked myself which season is best, or the least tortourus for me: winter, with its cold, dark days and colder darker nights, or summer, with its oppressive, wilt-inducing, pee-smelling but bright ‘n shiny days?
Well, I am self-absorbed enough to test it once and for all. This past Winter, I made a conscious effort to store up how the weather effected me. And now, in the Summer, I am comparing that feeling to how I feel now.
And, even with an office that’s not as air-conditioned as it could be, the Summer is definitely better than the Winter.
The days are long, the sun is shining, the leaves are firmly on the trees, the flowers are blooming, and when I go inside I don’t have to trudge around with a heavy coat.
Yes, I’m wilting a little in the humidity and yes, the city sometimes smells like it lacks indoor plumbing, but I can still greet the sun when I get out of work!
As many readers of this blog know, I organize Culture for the Non-Cultured Meetup, a large social group that attends various cultural events — theater, museums, movies, ballet, baseball games, etc. — in groups of 20-60 people. After each event, we eat.
Below are events in our future. (many have not been officially announced on the Meetup, but you can click on the title of the event to RSVP).
Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five, Welcome to the Monkey House, and other novels contributed fantastic words of advice to writers in a newspaper years ago, re-published on San Diego State University website (via Kottke via Chris Glass)
Vonnegut’s whole article is great — self-deprecating and witty and downright charming. His suggestions are for writing, but I think that some of these would not be bad to follow in the course of everyday conversation and life in general.
Can violent video games narrow the gender gap in science? According to one intriguing paper, reported on by Cognitive Daily, it seems possible.
The study found that:
– After playing a violent video game, women performed just as well as the men did on a spatial test commonly used to test science skills — and this gender gap absence was still present 5 months after the study.
– Both men and women improved drastically on the spatial test after playing a violent game, while a peaceful puzzle game resulted in little improvement.
it’s intriguing that video games could possibly help more women excel in a career reserved for men …
Sad that maybe violence is necessary to do it, but maybe a more peaceful game could be developed that hold attention while improving science skills.
Tetris, anyone?
(Complete paper: Feng, J., Spence, I., Pratt, J. (2007). Playing an Action Video Game Reduces Gender Differences in Spatial Cognition. Psychological Science, 18(10), 850-855. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01990.x)
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