Alan Jacobs

[gallery] citiesofsound:

Johann Dogiel, Blood-pressure rhythms in dogs, cats and humans in response to the sounds of musical instruments, Leipzig Institute for Physiology, Saxony, 1880

Source: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, or Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

“With the nation’s eyes on Baltimore (and Baltimore’s eyes on Sandtown), what has struck me, as someone who has lived here for five years, is the speed with which people from the outside are willing to impose their own preconceived notions on my neighbors and our neighborhood. There have been arguments about the rhetoric of “outsiders” from the start, but whether it was protest leaders accused of hogging the camera or violent protesters accused of causing trouble, those of us here recognize that the cameras will follow the loudest voices. Though more accurate narratives took a few days to emerge (and rightfully so), we’ve been blessed to have fair, thoughtful stories and interviews featuring people young and old from my neighborhood who have been working for change. What has been harder is seeing local forces disrupt our daily life and national media discussing what’s the events of our neighborhood with only the faintest idea of what people who live here think.      I don’t watch TV news of any sort, so I’m sure there were worse examples there I missed. However, my eye was caught by David Brooks’ recent column discussing the need for a change in culture and social values in inner-city communities without any hint of the fact that people here in Sandtown have been doing that work for decades. One of my church elders started a program specifically to focus on mentoring black men to be better fathers, primarily those returning home from prison. It’s an uphill struggle, certainly, but this reflects what black leaders have been saying in their own communities for years: we have to take responsibility, encourage stable families, and (since many of these proclamations come through the local church) we have to call for spiritual renewal. If any of this is news to you, you probably haven’t been listening to black Christians.”

- Matthew Loftus, in as close to a must-read essay about Baltimore as you’ll find.

via tumblr ift.tt/1F1yjOE

With the nation’s eyes on Baltimore (and Baltimore’s eyes on Sandtown), what has struck me, as someone who has lived here for five years, is the speed with which people from the outside are willing to impose their own preconceived notions on my neighbors and our neighborhood. There have been arguments about the rhetoric of “outsiders” from the start, but whether it was protest leaders accused of hogging the camera or violent protesters accused of causing trouble, those of us here recognize that the cameras will follow the loudest voices. Though more accurate narratives took a few days to emerge (and rightfully so), we’ve been blessed to have fair, thoughtful stories and interviews featuring people young and old from my neighborhood who have been working for change. What has been harder is seeing local forces disrupt our daily life and national media discussing what’s the events of our neighborhood with only the faintest idea of what people who live here think.      I don’t watch TV news of any sort, so I’m sure there were worse examples there I missed. However, my eye was caught by David Brooks’ recent column discussing the need for a change in culture and social values in inner-city communities without any hint of the fact that people here in Sandtown have been doing that work for decades. One of my church elders started a program specifically to focus on mentoring black men to be better fathers, primarily those returning home from prison. It’s an uphill struggle, certainly, but this reflects what black leaders have been saying in their own communities for years: we have to take responsibility, encourage stable families, and (since many of these proclamations come through the local church) we have to call for spiritual renewal. If any of this is news to you, you probably haven’t been listening to black Christians.

Susan Holman:

This child met my gaze at the 2013 Kumbh Mela, a Hindu bathing festival in rural India, where her family was working. She stands just a few yards from a new-built latrine and the faucet providing piped clean water to this workers’ camp. Simply because she is a poor girl, her chance of education is dismal and, according to recent research on maternal literacy, her literacy level will someday directly affect her children’s health. Yet unlike Americans, she lives in a nation that ratified (official accepted under law) the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), meaning that families like hers ought to be able to enjoy equal rights to food, housing, and education. I see here a little girl hugging a beloved blanket. What do you see?

Susan is a deeply compassionate Christian and a simply first-rate scholar. Please check out her new book Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights.

[gallery] Susan Holman:

This child met my gaze at the 2013 Kumbh Mela, a Hindu bathing festival in rural India, where her family was working. She stands just a few yards from a new-built latrine and the faucet providing piped clean water to this workers’ camp. Simply because she is a poor girl, her chance of education is dismal and, according to recent research on maternal literacy, her literacy level will someday directly affect her children’s health. Yet unlike Americans, she lives in a nation that ratified (official accepted under law) the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), meaning that families like hers ought to be able to enjoy equal rights to food, housing, and education. I see here a little girl hugging a beloved blanket. What do you see?

Susan is a deeply compassionate Christian and a simply first-rate scholar. Please check out her new book Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights.

The usual morning visitor

[gallery] The usual morning visitor

It seems to me that in recent years the people who have done the most to make some worthwhile change possible have been the truth-tellers, those who said things that did themselves no good—they’re going to be on the run from the authorities more or less forever—but that they couldn’t stop themselves from saying because of a moral, rather than a partisan, motive. There’s a pretty clear contrast between such truth-tellers and the Nobel Prize–winning president who campaigned on a platform of moral action and then decided it was safest to forget about it. Parables about this kind of thing run through the book, and some of them complicate the whole issue. Norman Mailer, for example, was always committed, in what seems to me a thoroughly admirable way, to the democratic left, very much like Dwight Macdonald, but Mailer got himself tangled up in the idea that his own personal mythology and vision mattered more than what happened to other people. Macdonald never made that mistake, but Macdonald paid a price for seeing things as clearly as he did: he spent many years in something like passivity and despair, which didn’t do him any good, and certainly didn’t do any good for the kind of society he wanted.

momalibrary:

A wrapped $50 stack of ARTCASH, comprised of two “ones” by Andy Warhol, and two $24 bills by Tom Gormley.  ARTCASH was a benefit party held by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1971.  E.A.T asked artists to design currency to be purchased and used by attendees during the casino style event.  The bills were printed by the American Banknote Company on the same stock used for U.S. currency (though without the anti-counterfeit threads).  From the Steven Leiber Extra Art Archive. -ar

momalibrary:

A wrapped $50 stack of ARTCASH, comprised of two “ones” by Andy Warhol, and two $24 bills by Tom Gormley.  ARTCASH was a benefit party held by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1971.  E.A.T asked artists to design currency to be purchased and used by attendees during the casino style event.  The bills were printed by the American Banknote Company on the same stock used for U.S. currency (though without the anti-counterfeit threads).  From the Steven Leiber Extra Art Archive. -ar