Anne Dalke's blog

...i thought you might be interested in (inspired/put off by?) this
animated version of Janis Joplan's final interview, on creativity and rejection....

One of the questions we played w/ yesterday was whether we are the dolls of the endless, or whether they they are ours (cf. Rose's musing, p. 222, "we're just dolls," with Morpheus' telling Desire, p. 226, "We of the endless are the servants of the living...we are their toys. Their dolls....").

In this context, I thought this story about the Barbie Liberation Organization (just uncovered by my co-teacher in Play in the City, Mark Lord) might amuse/interest/enbolden you. A number of activist-artists attained possession of Barbie and G.I. Joe Dolls, switched their voiceboxes, then re-boxed and returned them to store shelves. So some little girls got Barbie Dolls who talked like men about war and fighting, and some boys got "fighting man" dolls who would say (in a prissy girl voice), "Math is harrrd." Dolls have agency, too!

Here's film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHMf9y-27w

Mark shared these rules with me y'day, and I'm passing them on to you--good counsel, I think, as you create these mosaics! Enjoy--

seeing where i read-and-responded to your papers this week. this park, @ the end of my street,
is dedicated to an old resident of the neighborhood...

who designed this building (where some of you will soon live)

and who had a clear vision of cities as composed of "schools, streets, and village greens."

This park, designed in his honor, clearly separates spaces humans can occupy

from those they can look upon (archaic form chosen advisedly):

How bounded do you want your pleasure-and-play to be?

Vitiligo causes depigmentation of the skin. I know about this, because my son has patches of vitiligo on his wrists, hands, and jaw. The condition is much more noticeable in those of us who are dark skinned, than in those of us whose skin is lighter in color.

I'm trying to write a short story here about vitiligo. It is about the absence of homogeneity, the presence of authenticity (cf. Zukin) on Logan Square. It's about how a biological phenomenon invites a certain kind of social drama (cf. Mumford), playing out perceptions, creating uneasiness, dis-ease. Do I attend carefully enough to the raced and classed history and present of this country, in which people with darker skin bear a disproportionate burden of discrimination? Do I offend, in making a physical condition metaphoric?

I loved the conception of “The Quiet Volume.” I loved being whispered to attend to the sounds in the library, and to attend to the ink on the page. I loved the shadows cast by the image of my hand on the blank page—having my attention called to the gradations of color and sound created when I placed my hand there.

So: I'm wondering if Sasha has approached Civic Engagement about getting your all's transportation funded, as you suggested?

And if Sasha and Sara have made any progress in applying for a 1/2-credit independent study?
What are the procedures? Has the deadline passed?

And what our meeting schedule will be from here on out?
Will you three meet on 9/19, then all of us again on 9/28? (i mean 9/26)
(Sasha's not being able to come, Sarah's coming late, and Hayley's having to leave early this week makes me think that 5-6:30 on Thursday is NOT such a good time after all?)

Here's how I'm now seeing our reading list:

Aug. 9 Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"
Sept. 6 Alice Walker, "Beauty"
Sept. 20 Howard Zehr, What Will Happen to Me?
Oct. 4 Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power ($14.73 x 15 copies= $220.95)
Oct. 25 Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power
Nov. 8  Toni Morrison, Sula ($10.89 x 15 copies = $163.35)
Nov. 22 Toni Morrison, Sula
Dec. 6 Gilliam, Kettle Bottom ($10.63 x 15 copies = $159.45)

In the midst of all our conversation about the constructed, limiting nature of gender
assignment-> role-> identity -> expression -> attribution --and all our play with each of those categories--
I also want to keep in play the very real consequences of being seen as "woman" in the world.

This just out: a fascinating case study of (the lack of) gender equity @ Harvard Business School--
and the school's "unapologetic" attempt to change this.

I thought it might amuse you all to see what I was seeing (peripherally, of course)
as I was reading through (focusing, of course, on) your papers this afternoon:

It's a fountain of otters playing on the Lubert Plaza of Thomas Jefferson University
(in center city Philadelphia, near where I live....)

Since the number 14 is not easily divisible by 3 (or, actually, at all), and since we wanted to be sure that each of you had @ least 2 readers for her essay, I’ve decided to join one of the writing clusters in my section. And so I thought also—just playing along—that I’d throw a short piece I wrote earlier this summer, as Mark and I were designing this class, into the mix. See "I feel extrinsic to the city" (to make sense of this piece, you might want to start with the post above, poor b.b. (plus), which gives the context: a poem by Bertold Brecht, and then a commentary by Mark (which happens, also, to be the story of his own relationship to the city…)

am also wondering what folks think about this form of representation?
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/design-firm-gets-real-orange-new-blacks-great-opening-credits-151971