I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art @ Penn with some friends this afternoon, to see the current exhibition of "The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now," as well as the accompanying multi-artist performance project, "Endless Shout": http://icaphila.org/ I thought that some of the langauge of this vision might speak to/help incite some of the interactivity that we are aiming for in our own exhibit @ BMC:

Please read this powerful story about the artist Kerry James Marshall painting black figures into the canon:
www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/t-magazine/kerry-james-marshall-artist.html

There's a trace of the exhibit--along with some interesting
continuing "back and forth" talk--archived on Serendip @
/oneworld/backtalk

@ the end of that thread, see esp. Michelle Obama on "Museums and Racial Relics":
www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/opinion/charles-blow-of-museums-and-racial-relics.html

I stumbled upon this video on the homepage of Hillary Clinton's campaign website. It talks a little bit about cochlear implants and deaf culture and I thought it might be interesting since we're starting Train Go Sorry. It's kind of long but she starts talking about their decision to get cochlear implants around 1:00 and toward the end they talk about Clinton's healthcare policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai6dlJ_8ZyA 

For a masculine-presenting biological female in rural Texas in the 1960s, Dill Smiles appears to receive a surprising level of acceptance from the other characters in Suzan Lori Parks’ Getting Mother’s Body. Despite confusion or uncertainty about his gender identity, the townsfolk of Lincoln, Texas generally allow him to live as man and respect him as a person, as a friend, and as a good hog farmer. The persecution we would expect a character like Dill to face as a twenty first century audience does not play out in accordance with our historical knowledge of the time, and I for one was glad. But as good as things may seem for Dill, I want to explore how Park weaves in the threads of Dill’s struggle.

The location I chose for Thursday’s class was the classroom. After checking the weather forecast I saw that there was a chance for rain during our class time although it was not that high of a chance. I also prefer staying inside rather than outside due to the numerous bugs crawling and flying distractingly around. Furthermore, our class needed to meet with Jody’s class that day so the classroom was the closest location to meet up with the class. The behavior in the class seemed about the same as it usually is although there were quite a few people missing.

Getting Mother’s Body written by Suzan-Lori Parks traces the life of the Beede family and the main character, Billy Beede, how she searched for money for abortion and how she tries to get away the influence her mother had on her while can never get rid of it, which the book title implied “getting mother’s body” that she became Willa Mae to some degrees. I was impressed the way Suzan-Lori Parks tells the story that each chapter of the book is from a different character’s perspective and reveals the progress of the story.

A question that arose after reading Suzan- Lori Park’s “Getting Mother’s Body” was why was having nontraditional characters and characters who suffered loss necessary to the plot of the novel. There are elements of characters that many authors do not incorporate in their books such as untraditional sexualities and people with disabilities. In this novel, Dill Smiles is referred as a “bulldagger” according to Teddy (Parks 25). Most of the main characters, who are the Beedes, also have a reputation of being cursed with bad luck. As Star, Homer’s mother, describes them, “They will always be Beedes, which is to say they will always be grubbing in the dirt”(Parks 137). The curse can be seen throughout the family.

            The art piece I selected is a Dan Tribe ceremonial spoon from West Africa. I felt compelled to research this art piece because I first saw it pictured on a card that I had taken from the front desk of Canaday Library. On the back of the card, there is a description of the spoon, which helped me locate it in the TriArte database. Although I was able to find the spoon in the catalog, I noticed that the description on the back of the card differs from the description on the database. The card tells us that it can be dated back to the late 19^th century, but the database tells us that it is from the early 20^th century. The card says that the spoon is from Liberia, but the database says that it is from Côte d’Ivoire.

Did Billy Beede follow the footsteps of her mother?