Vision

...over the relationship between those murals and poverty,
prodded by this graph, which shows a direct correlation between
poverty and the Baltimore City mural program:
http://geocommons.com/maps/166122

Hey guys, here is a link for the album where I uploaded the photos I took yesterday! Feel free to share and download them. The password to access it is serendip .

http://s749.beta.photobucket.com/user/sharaai/library/Mural%20Arts%20Tour%20and%20Eastern%20State%20with%20360

You'll find here the photos I took during our visit to Eastern State y'day. Very evocative…and troubling.
So much to think through (for me as a Quaker, especially....), about a vision gone wrong in so many ways…

I didn't take any photos during the mural tour, though--in part because I found it hard to see, and assumed I could find better images on-line than I could take from the trolley. But there's lots more I'd like to discuss about that whole experience--from what it means to ride around on a trolley through poor neighborhoods (while being urged to "wave @ everyone!"); through getting off the trolley and viewing murals, while the neighbors are making music across the street; to what it really means to "make art that represents a community."

I'm hoping that Jody, Sarah and Uninhibited will be able tell us something about the process that went into making the mural about women's education, which they helped to create in the first 360°. I attended one of the early concepting sessions; saw Jody, Sarah and Jomaira and Sharaai posed @ work on the front page of the Alumnae Bulletin...

I'm having a hard time telling you why I chose to use this as my avatar.  It wasn't a verbalized choice, but more an impulsive one.  The kind of choice you make that feels good for good reasons and doesn't come back to bite you in the butt.  This image may have to do with what I imagine silence to look like (see web event 1), but I do think that it also has to do with a certain amount of peaked interest one gets from the anonymity of the person in the cap.  It definitely reveals my aesthetic choices and what I find attractive.  I also just think it's a good picture.

Like most forms of self-expression, this avatar is one that I hope people to draw they're own conclusions from.  One through which people can better understand me and as the semester goes on, perhaps get a better sense of why I made this choice.  I hope to do the same as well.

If someone really wants me to explain myself in class, I'll try.

Here's the passage from the Adrienne Rich poem that I mentioned (and mis-quoted!) @ the end of our discussion today, about the "permanence" of our taking a stand (in barometer) or in writing (especially on-line). It's from "North American Time," and seems (to me) to have resonances for voice, silence and vision:

"Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
and this is verbal privilege...."

I saw this video over the summer and it really affected the way I view arrests and policing in cities. I think in many ways it relates back to "The New Jim Crow" readings we did. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have in the video – it's not too long, and definitely worth watching.

http://www.nytimes.com/video/2012/06/12/opinion/100000001601732/the-scars-of-stop-and-frisk.html?ref=nyregion

I'm only part way through the reading for "The New Jim Crow" but I really wish this had been the texts for one of my American history classes in high school (for some reason, we did 1 year of world history, 2 years of American, and the last year was government).   It's ironic that even though I was exposed to two years of US History, a lot of the flaws of Americas past were left out; slavery was talked about in a very distant, unemotional way and to refer to something like the Trail of Tears as genocide would have been outrageous.  I went to a very racially diverse high school (although we were greatly segregated by AP and honors tracking), but when slavery was discussed a lot of white people complained: "What does this have to do with us? I hate when people say I'm racist just because I'm white, it's not my fault my great great grandfather owned slaves" and so on.  If you accused anyone of saying something racist, they thought you were being overly sensitive.  For example, in New England/Massachusetts, brown ice cream sprinkles are refered to as "jimmies".  My brother told me that this refered back to the Jim Crow laws and given it's racist origin, it was not something I should say.  I remember telling some of my whtie friends about it and their reaction was something like "when are people going to GET OVER slavery?".  I would like to think that had we read a book the The New Jim Crow, my peers and I would have been much more aware of how the history of slavery and racism still impacts us today.

Language has been something we’ve been considering in all three classes, and so language has been in the back of my mind while doing most of the readings. I especially noticed language when I was considering the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy reading. I couldn’t stop thinking about the importance of the rhetoric we use to help shape ideas and formulate the way we see people. The language of the cognitive behavioral therapy paper really seemed like an important factor in how patients are treated; the underlying assumption is that all those who engage in deviant and antisocial behavior are mentally unsound and must be rehabilitated with particular methods to lead them toward a path of stability. I felt like the words chosen were so revealing: “dysfunctional” “anti-social” “irrational” “thinking error.” The last one especially struck me as interesting; it felt as though what was being discussed was not a human being but a computer or piece of machinery. I felt like there was an overwhelming sense of negativity that surrounded the words and implied something general and “true” about the offender’s internal dialogue and behavior. There was a sense that simply rehabilitating someone’s behavior would solve all of their problems in the “outside world” and I have trouble swallowing that. I think it does not speak to the depth of reasons behind criminal activity.