Artificial Wombs?

Greetings Collegues!

I am packing up the Swiss Chalet on River Road and heading south towards NYC and eventually to JFK and a flight back to California. (My actual flight is on August 1; some family visits will occupy me until then).

I will add several articles to our blog from NYT essays we discussed in seminar, but, in the mean time, I found this essay via a feminist philosophy posting on a network to which I belong.

Let us continue to "think what we are doing."

I hope we will continue to use this blog for postings!

The wonderful video that Veena created is now in Drop Box. Anyone in the seminar who has not subscribed to the Drop Box should do so in order to access the files and projects uploaded there. I have added some papers by David Kettler, for instance.

In coming days I will add the video taken of Mark's staged reading of his play-in-progress, so watch for that soon.

Be well! Have a great teaching year!

Kathy

Kat's Collages

Katherine Katter July 2014

"Kat's Collages"

NEH Seminar: The Political Theory of Hannah Arendt

1. The table

2. Action (large)

3. Miracles

4, Dear Spirit,

5. Universal

6. Personal (notebook)

7. New York (notebook)

8. It's not the same without us...

Kat's NEH project/reflection

Reflection on our study of Hannah Arendt's Political Theory

NEH Seminar Project @ Bard College

Katherine Katter

July 24, 2014

What I Did on my Summer "Vacation", A Story "for the sake of a story"

Once upon a time, in the far hamlet of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I either saw a bumper sticker or a hoodie or something that said "Bard College." With the three brain cells I allotted to thinking about this, I wondered, "WOW, a place where people train to be bards! How cool! ... How questionable! ... How bold! -- Way to keep up the western oral tradition! Seriously, I wondered if they required people to play the lute. Oh, dear, What I don't know could fill the spaces between the molecules of this table (the one that deceptively only appears to be here)!

In the weeks and days leading up to this seminar, I was generally preoccupied, as I imagine many of us were. While I had read the NEH seminar site, as well as the Bard web site, uncertainty prevailed. When I mentioned it to others, "I'm going to study EVIL for five weeks!", people would give me a quizzical look, and then nod. Five weeks! Nobody seemed to know how to respond to the idea of studying evil. 

For me, Five Weeks sounded like unheard of freedom. I had the vague notion that I was heading off to some strange summer camp where my days would be spent reading a little (understatement) and going to class. I would have vast expanses of time to think and read and do art and wander around campus. I was pretty sure that my fellow campers would be cool. They were teachers after all. So I packed up my things, with a few thoughts of being in a dorm room. I brought my own pillows. I packed some silverware, mugs, bowls, and some napkins. And a few practical things, like a french press and a desk set. (Seriously, raise your hand if you've ever taken a desk set on vacation!) Oh, and a stack of greeting cards. I'm not sure why ... Oh well. 

The school year ended only three days before I had to head out. In those few days, I happened to take my son to an art supply shop. The clerk, Maddy, was a former student -- they're everywhere. She asked me what art project I was working on. Now, unlike my son, I have no particular skills with regards to the visual arts, but a few sheets of handmade papers caught my eye, so, when pressed, I said I might be interested in doing some collage work. Materials seemed portable and non-threatening. In no time, Maddy had me set: a range of special papers, art boards for backing/mounting, an exacto knife, a cutting board, a ruler, some acrylic medium, and a paint brush. I bought a large black art folio, and I was in business. Still, I wondered if I would ever do anything with them. 

Then, I headed East. 

Bard College. North Keene. There on the door of room 112, I saw my name on bold yellow card stock. I knew I would have to add something to that door. And so it began. I had seen something about "How do you know if you're an artist?" It was a flow chart. I took its light-hearted message and ran with it. It encouraged me to make art -- terrible or not -- and that became the first thing I posted. A deep saying here, a cartoon there, and pretty soon, it became a thing. I joked early on that it was my project. In truth, I was finding more and more things to post that were pertinent to the class. Then I read that Hannah Arendt elevated Art to be among the "durable" objects; "works of art are the most intensely worldly of all tangible things" (The Human Condition, p.167). Among the greatest acheivements of man, she says, are the arts -- poetry, storytelling, performance. Art provokes thought in the public and private spheres. It transforms feelings and has the potential to transcend. Both art and the artist serve as potential threats to totalitarianism. Perhaps that's why, as Professor Kettler said, those leftist artist-types were among the first to be killed in the camps. Artists seem to be the heroes, if Arendt can be said to have any heroes -- so long as they are not Expressionist Artists, for whom she had nothing but distain (The Human Condition, footnoote on p. 207). By the way, Milwaukee's Art Museum is home to one of the largest collections of German Expressionist art, should you ever visit, and I hope you will.

The time to decide what I would do for my project neared. I had (and still have) a long and growing list of things I want to write about -- lesson plans that relate to Arendt's writings. I still have to put my thoughts on standardized testing on paper. I want to work Arendt into my unit on 1984. I have pertinent stories to write, and I intend to review my notes and offer a semi-public talk about what we have discussed. Maybe I can work this into some professional development. I am sure some of these ideas will take shape. Some over the next few weeks and months. Some may extend beyond. I know I have a lengthy, but focused list of books, articles, and films that I have yet to enjoy, and I imagine that list may grow in the future, to the extent that we stay in touch. (Reunion in Beijing 2015?!) I want to thank you in advance for the various postings you are sharing, with lessons that I can adapt to the courses I teach. I have a sense that you have done some of the work I might have struggled to do, and I will be happy to rip off your ideas.

But back to my project. I took Kathy at her word that we were also here to renew ourselves. By last week, I was pretty sure that I would do collage work, I just had to get started to see if it worked.  One YouTube video, and a couple of collage "how-to" web sites, and I found information I could adapt, using the materials at hand: magazines, National Park brochures, promotional materials, even our text book, became source material. A special shout out to the New Yorker for its cartoons.

What you can see here today is a series of small collages, a larger collage, and a couple of notebooks. They are, for me, something new, so you see a beginner's efforts. A driven and devoted beginner, to be sure. I had to deal with humidity, the enemy of the drying process.  As you view them you may want to pair up and view them together -- make a conversation of the experience. After about five or six minutes, I will ask you to sit down and reflect in writing, I will ask you to respond generally and/or specifically, if something stands out for you, and I will ask you to write down any questions that come to mind. 

There is one collage that especially reflects our group. If you would please sign its back side, I would appreciate it. I mean it to symbolize how we are all creators of this seminar, this table-gathering. (This collage is now in Kathy's hands.)

One last note. I have had students create collages for me in the past. I have a whole new appreciation for the potential of collage work as a way to reinforce and reflect learning. The time spent perusing magazines was like seeking pieces to a puzzle. I was often in a reverie, sometimes a frenzy -- ecstatic to find the right word or phrase. 

I hope the collages speak to you. They reflect my experience here at Bard. I will find places for them in my home and at school, where they will remind me of this public/private space we created together, and of the affection we have shared. Merci mille fois. My thanks to all of you. Colleagues, collaborators, and friends. 

Three poems for you

NEH Seminar

Poems of Some Connectiom to Arendt

K. Katter

July 24, 2014

Three poems for you

Arendt elevates poetry as one of the highest art forms. It engenders contemplation and dialog. The meaning-making of any careful reading of poetry has a certain quality of natality. The italicized comments are mine.  

An appreciation of LABOR. Anti-utilitarian to its core. A reference to Greece. 

The everyday work.  I think of teachers as being like this: we "strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward" and "do what has to be done, again and again." And we aren't "parlor generals."

Poem: "To be of use" by Marge Piercy from Circles on the Water. © Alfred A. Knopf. 

To be of use 

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge 

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest 

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

A different take on the ideas of the mob and the mass.

I Am the People, the Mob

By Carl Sandburg

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

A new definition of "famous,"  this poem came to mind one day during class. It speaks, again, to value and purpose, authentic interactions.

Famous

By Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.   

“Famous” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

Seeing Hannah all over the newspaper!

This is an article about tracking every cell in an embryo. I don't know that Hannah would approve, even if Aristotle was invoked at the beginning and end of the piece:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/science/tracking-life-from-its-smallest-form.html?referrer=

And this is an interesting article about collective mourning, written by a Dutch writer about how the Dutch are grieving "their" losses after the Malaysian flight crash:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/opinion/The-Dutch-Mourn-Flight-17s-Victims-in-Their-Own-Sober-Way.html

A propos our previous discussion on forced sterilization....I found this article via some networks I belong to.

http://mic.com/articles/92739/the-horrifying-women-s-rights-injustice-that-modern-feminism-forgot

Social media propaganda in Gaza

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/world/middleeast/in-a-clash-between-israel-and-gaza-both-sides-use-social-media-to-fire-epithets-and-hide-behind-euphemisms.html?emc=edit_th_20140721&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=66399329&_r=0&referrer=

This article about the propaganda wars on social media re: Gaza takes propaganda to a whole new level. "Benumbing" or dehumanization?