Tag Archives: culture

Tweet of the Day: Of Flowers and Donuts

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When I saw this tweet, I felt my heart sink.

After all, until November of last year, the Fairhaven Historic District here in Bellingham was my neighborhood, and A Lot Of Flowers an iconic presence in the heart of this beloved village only a few blocks walk from my old house. (Photo source: Flickr user brewbooks)

It is hard to imagine that street corner without the charming, mostly open-air, flower shop, and impossible to imagine what’s going to be there in its place: a donut shop.

Mind you, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Rocket Donuts, our locally-owned donut masters, it’s important to keep in mind that they will be providing a space in the new building for A Lot Of Flowers, and this, especially, is a relief:

[A Lot Of Flowers Owner] Ferguson said she’s excited to work with the new owners. She said weather presents a lot of challenges to her nursery and retail business in its current open-air operation, which has a small building on the property. She plans to talk to the new owners about what she would like for the new space, as well as discuss ways to incorporate some of the outdoor aspects to her business that have made it popular over the years.

Ferguson also is happy to potentially have some stability with her tenant lease. In recent years other property owners have proposed ideas to build structures that could force A Lot of Flowers to leave.

“This is good news for us,” Ferguson said.

But change, even needed and well-planned change, can be challenging, painful even, and it is certainly true that the northwest corner of Harris Avenue and 11th Street will never be the same again.

Video Fridays: Dispelling Stereotypes of African Men

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Today’s Video Fridays installment could easily be a Tweet of the Day installment as well.

Chris Anderson, the TED curator, tweeted a wonderful and badly-needed video produced by African NGO Mama Hope.

Here’s a little something about Mama Hope:

Vision:
At Mama Hope we believe that there are enough resources in the world for every human being to live healthy, happy lives. We envision a world where resources are correctly shared across the globe to provide the tools communities need to thrive.

Through our projects Mama Hope has unlocked the potential of over 76,000 people in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda…and we are just getting started.

Mission:
Mama Hope works in close partnership with local African organizations to connect them with the resources required to transform their own communities.

All our projects are managed for and by partner communities themselves to ensure sustainability. So far, we have achieved our mission by funding the completion of schools, health clinics, children’s centers, clean water systems and food security projects.

The video is particularly noteworthy for how it takes a deadly serious subject and injects humor without diluting the message.

Shame on Hollywood for participating in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of African men, and thank you to Mama Hope for reminding us all that there are realities beyond the movie screen.

Video Fridays: Ye Olde Ye

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As a lifer English major, when I came across the following, via Gizmodo, I couldn’t not select it for this week’s Video Fridays installment.

Cuz, you see, the irony does not escape me that I actually earned a degree in English from Rutgers University without ever having been required to take a class in the history of the English language, linguistics, or even English grammar. As a result, I had to grind my way through Shakespeare (my concentration) and Chaucer more heavily dependent on footnotes than I ever should have been.

Anyway, for years I felt a little illegitimate when declaring that I have a degree in English, and this was heightened when my family and I started hosting Japanese exchange students some years ago. There I was, a native speaker of my language, with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and yet I wasn’t much use when these students started asking me for help with their English as a Second Language homework.

A couple of years ago, however, I started taking classes in the Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages program, and the first class, which very nearly killed me, was linguistics. Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said that that which does not kill us makes us stronger, and ever since I’ve felt that my English degree cred was finally more legitimate.

Still, I never knew, though I always wondered about, the history of the Old English term ye, and I found this clip highly entertaining. I loved the subtle, humorous placement of “porn” and the bit about the French using way more letters in their language than they need to really cracked me up, as my wife and I have a running joke that reading French is easy, because all you need to do is not pronounce the last 2-3 letters of every word.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend, everyone!

Levon Helm and the Preemptive Obituary

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Yesterday this tweet appeared in my Twitter feed:

By the end of the day, dozens of retweets later, it was clear how dearly loved Levon Helm, legendary drummer and vocalist of legendary music group The Band, truly is, operative word = is.

Then, this morning, I came across this headline (emphasis in bold added by me):

Levon Helm Was The Real Voice Of America

…and before I even clicked on the link to read the Esquire article by Charles Pierce, I rushed to read the standard news reporting on Levon’s passing, only to find that, as of this writing, he hasn’t actually died yet.

And, before I could process how uncomfortable it was to see a writer referring to Levon Helm in the past tense before he’d even passed, I clicked on the link to read the preemptive obituary only to find that the headline had been changed to:

Whip to Grave: Levon Helm, the Real Voice of America

Now, I don’t know if Charles Pierce changed the headline because he realized how people might react to an obituary for someone who hasn’t died yet, or because the new title fit the premise of his piece better. The latter is compelling, because the phrase “whip to grave” refers to a lyric in a song from The Band’s first album, 1968′s Music From Big Pink, a tune titled We Can Talk, a powerful statement about America’s often stark contradictions.

As for the former, I’ll probably never know, but the question seems irrelevant when you consider something Pierce writes in his last paragraph:

I wanted to write all of this before he passed. I wanted to thank him for the way he sang, and for the throb of his drums, and for the way he helped point the way home for all of us who thought we’d lost our country. He brought us back to what was really important: the fugitive grace of a young democracy, that America, for all its flaws and shortcomings, for all its loss of faith in itself and its stubborn self-delusions, was a country that was meant to rock.

For me, the thought of losing Levon stirs up the sadness of having already lost Band members Richard Manuel in 1986 and Rick Danko in 1999. (A post of mine from September 2010 sings praise for Danko specifically.)

But Levon Helm deserves the credit that Pierce gives him, as he was the only American in a band full of Canadians, he was their street cred as purveyors of Americana music, his southern drawl was unmistakable and his Arkansas roots oozed from his music.

He will be missed when he’s gone, but for now I join in the celebration of his life and the many glorious musical gifts he’s given us.

Tweet of the Day: @NaomiAKlein

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A downer of a topic, but this Tweet of the Day recalls a post of mine from February 2011 titled The Cruel Joke of Austerity Measures.

Eyecatchers: Street Art by BLU

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It’s been a while since I featured a street artist in an Eyecatchers installment, but I was inspired to do so today when I came across the work of Italian artist BLU, via Street Art Utopia.

Of the last artist I featured, Sam3, I said that his work was particularly noteworthy for having, “…a distinct touch of sweetness that is often missing in the edgy world of street art.”

Which is not to say that I don’t appreciate edgy art. Indeed, edginess is practically inherent in street art, specifically because there’s often a conflict in the mere existence of it — in works created on a large, in-your-face scale — and the act of creation itself is often illegal.

Digging deeper, as I wrote on the subject back in March 2011, street art can be seen as a powerful reminder, to an economic elite wearing blinders, that injustices keep them elite, an elite that wants to, “…cocoon themselves in their squeaky clean estates, trying to blot out visions of tin shack shanty towns and war-ravaged landscapes.”

Well, BLU’s work is loaded with statements, both subtle and overt, about the inhumane ugliness wrought by the wealthy and powerful, so it seems more appropriate for me to just hand it over to him, via the following photos, as well as a stunning “making of” video of a piece he did in Valencia. (Be sure to check out BLU’s website too for even more of his work, including some amazing animations he’s done.)

Click on the images to enlarge: