Inmate-sourced labor for furniture and clothing that public entities throughout the commonwealth are required to buy.
They furnish residence halls for Virginia’s colleges and universities.
Floodwall at The Camel
Floodwall will be performing a free show at The Camel on Monday, June 17th with Houdan The Mystic, The Kindling Kind, and Mynah (Evan Hoffman). Come out and enjoy a collage of local sounds from post rock to indie acoustic to ambient electronic. See details on Facebook.
This event will include Open Minds participants performing work they created during the program.
Doors at 7PM, Show at 8PM.
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Poetry in Prison with WTJU
Open Minds collaborator Mark Strandquist will be hosting an event at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. As a part of the “Some Other Places We’ve Missed” exhibition at the Bridge, Poetry in Prison will create a direct feed between a local jail and the gallery. During this time Prisoners and the audience will engage in discussion and the reading of poetry. This will be simulcast with WTJU. Find out more at The BridgePAI. If you can’t make it, stream it live at WTJU.net!
At the Bridge Arts Initiative in Charlottesville, 1-2pm.
Jerry Rubin on Saturday Night Live, Oct. 18th, 1975.
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Abbie Hoffman’s Steal this Book is online for the stealing.
Loren Glass has a new book out about Grove Press that looks very interesting.
An ongoing photo project by Mark Strandquist is opening this weekend at Charlottesville’s The Bridge. For the project, titled “Some Other Places We’ve Missed,” Mark asked people who were incarcerated to write in response to the question, “If you had a window in your cell, what place from your past would it look out to?” Participants then received a photo of the site they described to hang in their cell.
This exhibition will pair the writings with the photos produced in response. The writing is very moving; the images are beautiful.
The opening reception is June 7th (6-9pm), and there are ongoing events scheduled throughout June. I will be on hand Saturday, June 8th, in support of a prison letter writing workshop and a screening of Herman’s House.
If you’re not available this weekend, on Saturday, June 15th, the exhibition will host “Poetry in Prison with WTJU:”
As a part of the “Some Other Places We’ve Missed” exhibition at the Bridge, Poetry in Prison will create a direct feed between a local jail and the gallery. During this time Prisoners and the audience will engage in discussion and the reading of poetry. This will be simulcast with WTJU.
I won’t be around for the broadcast on the 15th, but I will be listening in from Ohio. A recording will be posted online for later streaming.
Hope to see you there!
Among other things, Griner discusses challenges faced by cis female, trans, and gay athletes.
She’s pretty incredible.
Edward Tufte blogged about my favorite academic hypocrisy: plagiarism in slide presentations. The sample he cites here is actually a presentation on how to craft solid slideshows.
The slideshow itself is terribly put together. It’s hard to imagine someone created it in the first place, much less plagiarized it.
Amanda Shapiro
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“Power Loss.” The New Inquiry. thenewinquiry.com, 13 May 2013.
On the acreage of the Indianapolis Museum of Art there is a lake that has, since 2010, hosted a site-specific free-floating habitat that houses resident artists. The structure, Indy Island, was designed by Andrea Zittel.
Learn more about Indy Island at the IMA website, or take a tour below:
The mycofilter residency described above is documented thoroughly here. Other residencies linked below:
I *highly* recommend 2012, where you have the option to feed the artist in his natural habitat by leaving food in an accessible cage.
The University of Virginia has put the full text of Winesburg Ohio online for your reading pleasure.
My mother lives very close to the town that provided a model for Anderson’s novel. My partner group up just a few miles from Anderson’s hometown; they attended the same college. Anderson occupies a place of reverence in our household.
I recently sent my mother a copy of The Onion’s article, “Walmart Opens in Winesburg, Ohio,” which is the sort of text that is made humorous and sad and sweet by proximity. She wrote back that she loved it, but that she was certain Clyde is too small for a Walmart. I checked, and she is correct.
From the Lakota Peoples’ Law Project:
The summit starts tomorrow, and the agenda has been successfully broadened to include the author of the Indian Child Welfare Act, as well as the new Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn. If you can’t attend the summit, be sure to catch the LIVE STREAM here: http://bit.ly/19q7xdh . We can take it from here!
I’m just getting to a place where I can catch up on grading, much less on this blog. For the time being, I want to point you to a project that is happening in Richmond.
Mark Strandquist has spearheaded a few projects at Richmond City Jail that will be exhibited this summer. In one instance he and a few artists met invited inmates to write about what, if they could choose anything, they would choose to look at out of their cell window. Collecting the writings, Strand and a few photographers have gone out and photographed these views, and ferried the photos back to the inmates to hang in their cells. You can read more about that project here.
Outside the jail, Strandquist has brought together a few book makers on a project he calls The People’s Library:
The Richmond Public Library helped collect discarded books that Strandquist and his collaborators recycle into new paper. Since March, they have been holding bi-weekly paper-making workshops at the Main Branch of the library as well as at other places in the community to produce the pages (Dahlberg & Puffenberger).
Once the group has created 1000 books they will bind them and the blank books will be added to Richmond Public Library’s permanent collection. Library patrons will be able to check out the books and add their personal histories. These collective journals will remain at RPL for future generations to add to or to read.
You can follow Mark on Tumblr here.
You can read more about Mark’s project at his website. Listen to him comment on the project in the interview below.
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Dahlberg, Jessica and Caitlin Puffenberger. “People’s Library recycles its own books.” CBS6. 9 Apr., 2013.
This won’t go down easy: Sally Bell’s Kitchen, the bakery and sandwich shop on West Grace Street, of the famous potato salad and upside-down cupcakes, just might be gobbled up by Virginia Commonwealth University.
On the compass? We’re about to have an impromptu reading.
“Make this mirrored wardrobe for the silvering.” -MD
You are so welcome, because this is an awesome collection.
It will take a while to download.
From Jerome Rothenberg’s notes on Inuit throat singing:
Inuit throat-singing is done in the following way: two women face each other; they may be standing or crouching down; one is leading, while the other responds; the leader produces a short rhythmic motif that she repeats with a short silent gap in-between, while the other is rhythmically filling in the gaps. The game is such that both singers try to show their vocal abilities in competition, by exchanging these vocal motives. The first to run out of breath or be unable to maintain the pace of the other singer will start to laugh or simply stop and will thus lose the game. It generally lasts between one and three minutes. The winner is the singer who beats the largest number of people.
Originally, the lips of the two women were almost touching, each one using the other’s mouth cavity as a resonator .
Poictesme literary journal is celebrating its annual release TONIGHT at the Camel from 7 to 10. There will be free food, a cash bar, an art show, and an open mic, as well as issues of the ‘12-‘13 journal.
Via IUonstrike:
Because of IU’s contract with Barnes & Noble, the Friends of Art Bookshop will be closed this summer, as it violates the contract. The goal of the bookshop, for those of you who dont know, was to “assist faculty and graduate students in their research and creative activity, generate income for…
It’s baseball season.
Contribute a Square to the Year of Freedom Commemorative Quilt
VCU’s Year of Freedom Celebration, marking the 150th anniversary of Emancipation and the Civil War (http://www.yearoffreedom.vcu.edu/), has been sponsoring the creation of a North Star Freedom Quilt.
Students can come make their own quilt squares on Friday April 12 8pm-11:30 pm in the VCU Student Commons, Virginia rooms A-D.
Supplies will be provided, although students should feel free to bring fabric (old t-shirts, etc) to personalize their squares. No knowledge of sewing or quilting is needed.
Refreshments will be provided.
co-sponsored by Student Activities and the YoF Committee
Join ROOTS and ASPiRE for a Poetry Reading
Members of ROOTS (Reinventing Ourselves Outside the System), a re-entry program born out of the Richmond City Jail, and a seminar through VCU’s ASPiRE program will be reading poetry written during their shared seminar this year at VCU. Join us:
Friday, April 12th, between 5 and 7pm, in the fireside lounge of the ASPiRE building, 835 W. Grace Street, at the corner of Grace and Laurel.
We had a fantastic panel, such that I’m already trying to engineer a reunion at ALTA.
Below is the program as it finally came together, with links to our participants and their texts.
April 5th, 8:30am:
Anna Marshall - “The Trace of an Accent: Translation through Ghostwriting in Budapeste by Chico Buarque”
Xiaomin Zu - “Between Transgression and Tradaptation: The Roundtrip Travel of The Dream of the Red Chamber from China to Japan and Back”
Isabel Gomez - “The Afterlife of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry in Spanish: Between Indeterminacy and Faithless Love.”
Ana Lincoln - “Theories of Translation in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée”
April 6th, 8:30am:
Gen Creedon - “Translating Environments: Disney’s National Park Lodges”
Veronika Ryjik - “Lope de Vega, Lenfilm and The Technicolor Time Machine.”
Wendy Hardenberg - “Faithful to What?: Transforming Translation Through Hindi अनुवाद (anuvad)”
April 7th, 8:30am:
Zaid Suidan - “’AL-Birweh’s Ruin’: Mapping the Lyric in Translation”
Anne Freeland - “Octavio Paz’s “Intimate Exoticism” and the Erotics of Translation”
Allen Hibbard - “Friendship, Cultural Antagonisms, and Civil War: Translating A Banquet for Seaweed by Syrian novelist Haidar Haidar”
Why have I been reblogging so much Soviet paraphernalia? Because I am still reading Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, which I absolutely love.
I feel guilty, because it’s National Poetry Month, and my field of study is poetry, and I should be blogging poetry (which I am, actually, but over at OAR). In lieu of a great post on poetry today, here is a passage from Frazier’s book:
Telling us again that her name was Galina, she pointed down the hill to where she said she lived in her own izba (cabin) with a small black dog and a milk cow. She asked us if we liked poetry. She wrote poetry herself, she said; now we would hear her read her poems. The next we knew we had been walked from the church down to her cabi, which was a tiny, rustic affair with grass growing on the roof and a door frame barely taller than she was…Galina began to declaim her poems after first announcing to us the quality of each one. Some she described as “very good,” some as merely “good.” The sonorousness of her reading reverberated pleasantly in the little open-air roofed shelter where we were sitting, but the poetry’s style was antique and I couldn’t understand a word. After each poem she nodded her head appreciatively while we smiled and murmured praise.
and here is the poem by Blok that it brings to mind:
Девушка пела в церковном хоре
О всех усталых в чужом краю,
О всех кораблях, ушедших в море,
О всех, забывших радость свою.
Так пел её голос, летящий в купол,
И луч сиял на белом плече,
И каждый из мрака смотрел и слушал,
Как белое платье пело в луче.
И всем казалось, что радость будет,
Что в тихой заводи все корабли,
Что на чужбине усталые люди
Светлую жизнь себе обрели.
И голос был сладок, и луч был тонок,
И только высоко, у Царских Врат,
Причастный Тайнам,- плакал ребенок
О том, что никто не придет назад.
It is the first poem I memorized in Russian. More poetry posts soon, once I catch up from my conference weekend.
Alex Pareene, “One thing we don’t know about Hillary,” Salon, April 4, 2013
I’d also like to nominate Terry McAuliffe for inclusion in this test.
EDIT: I read on; Pareene does include McAuliffe, as well as Howard Wolfson and Harold Ickes.
(via screwrocknroll)
McAuliffe is running for governor of Virginia (we elect our governor the year after the presidential election because the state legislature decided at some point in the past that it’d be best for them if voter turnout was really low) on the Democratic ticket, which he also did in 2009, and while he couldn’t get the nomination then, he kind of poisoned the well for the Democrats, as the party’s supporters were sharply divided between the DC-suburb McAuliffe supporters and those of us in the rest of the state who saw him as an interloper and supported someone from our area instead. The eventual nominee, Creigh Deeds, wasn’t a bad guy, but he didn’t have name recognition or personality enough to beat out Bob McDonnell, our current governor.
Governors are limited to one term, so this year McAuliffe (or whatever eventual Democratic nominee beats him out) is running against current VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who is extremely polarizing and who you non-Virginians may have heard of due to a variety of incredibly frustrating and high-visibility extreme right-wing actions he has taken or attempted to take during his tenure as AG (attempting to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional, the whole transvaginal ultrasound debacle and other more successful attempts he’s made to curtail abortion rights in VA, his current attempt to keep VA’s sodomy laws, which are considered unconstitutional in the wake of the precedent set by Lawrence v. Texas, on the books and enforceable, etc.).
The last fucking thing we need as a state is for Cuccinelli, who makes McDonnell look kind of moderate, to become our governor. In order to defeat him, we really need a strong Democratic candidate. And yet Terry McAuliffe has already made it clear that he’s going to be going great guns for that Democratic nomination once again. So now we’re faced with the prospect of another divided Democratic electorate, and the disturbing possibility that we’ll have to either back McAuliffe despite misgivings about the guy, just because the alternative is so much worse, or that we’ll end up with another Democratic candidate who barely beats McAuliffe in the primary and isn’t strong enough to carry the state after the primary fight is over. The Cuccinelli backers are a considerable force in Virginia (despite going Democratic in recent presidential and congressional elections, there’s still a strong contingent of old-school Southern conservatives here), and this distraction from a lifelong creature of the DC political machine is not what we need right now.
What I’d really love to have happen right now is for someone to unleash a career-ruining political scandal on Terry McAuliffe. Any takers? We need you!
(via andrewtsks)Day two of our translation seminar; very exciting, very early.
I’ve been looking for this since yesterday, and only just now realized I’ve blogged about it before.
VCU’s Year of Freedom Celebration, marking the 150th anniversary of Emancipation and the Civil War (http://www.yearoffreedom.vcu.edu/), has been sponsoring the creation of a North Star Freedom Quilt.
Students can come make their own quilt squares on Friday April 12 8pm-11:30 pm in the VCU Student Commons, Virginia rooms A-D.
All supplies will be provided, although students should feel free to bring fabric (old t-shirts, etc) to personalize their squares. No knowledge of sewing or quilting is needed.
Refreshments will be provided.
co-sponsored by Student Activities and the YoF Committee
