Art and the Common Man

The art was at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I, by process of elimination, am the common man. And what a phenomenal day! I took my youngest daughter there today, our last day of vacation, and (believe it or not) she was actually excited about going. It's an hour drive from my house over Route 43 into Stephentown, NY, and then Willimastown, and, despite the iron gray day punctuated by bouts of snow squalls, it was still pretty scenic and enjoyable.

Once there, we took advantage of the free admission (yes, free from November through May), got some soup in the museum cafe to fight off the chill, and each availed ourselves of the five dollar self-guided audio tour devices. Then we strolled. Strolled through hard wood floored galleries of some of the finest art to be seen in the upstate NY/New England area (outside of Boston). From Renoir to Degas to Monet, the heavy hitter Impressionists are well represented, but there is also a very nice selection of American masters, as well. Pieces by artists like Remington, Sargent, and Winslow Homer are all available for viewing, and the special exhibit on Toulouse-Lautrec was colorful, bright, and my personal favorite. In fact, my personal favorite in the collection, T-L's "Waiting," seen above, is featured prominently as you enter the third floor gallery. I could go on, but I won't. Go to this museum if you haven't yet. It is well worth the trip.

And in this age of pixels and electronic paint, there is something very magical about being surrounded by hand made, authentic, non-digitized art. Not that there's anything wrong with "new," in fact you can get a heaping helping of it just down the road in North Adams at Mass MoCA, but there is truly something about the masters that make us all humble, or common, or connected. Standing in the presence of my favorite piece, I became contemplative and was moved. And my daughter was, too, but only when she was admiring Degas's "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen." She loved the real silk bow and authentic muslin tutu, and was outraged at the critics who found the little model's body ugly and flat. I didn't even know she had a thing for sculpture before we got there, but, as we admired the collections's bronzes and marbles, I could see it in her eyes. I learned something about her today that I hadn't known before, which is really very cool. So I suppose that's another reason to go...the bonding over art. Go figure. I guess art has something to say to forty year olds and eleven year olds alike after all, even in this age of text messages and IM's. Which commenced as soon as we got in the car for the ride home, but, for the few hours that we walked amid beauty, it was all magic.

RSS Feeds and Your Cellphone

So in an effort to publish more, and to get into the blogging game full force, I have decided to incorporate RSS onto my blog using Feedburner. Now all people need to do is click the subscribe icon in the right column to get new posts sent directly to their newreader of choice, or they can simply sign up in the email box to have new content sent right to their inbox!

Not that I'm fantasizing about hordes of people reading my blog, but I guess I should know how to do this in case I have to teach people how to do it. And what a great tool for teachers! Utilizing a blog as a digital repository of class materials (PowerPoints, .pdf's, class notes, etc.), the RSS feed is a way to inform students when new material is online for them to look at. Of course, most high schoolers don't check their email, so the dilemna is to find a way to deliver the content right to where the students will actually see it: their phones.

So I did some research, and lo and behold I found Web-Alerts. Simple to use, all you need to do is enter the URL of the site you would like to follow (http://brianstumbaugh.net/blog/, for example) and Web-Alerts will look up the feed for the site. Once it finds it, all you need to do is enter your cell number and- BAM!- you get text message alerts right on your phone.

A similar service is Pingie, a very similar set up. Pingie is easier, and allows for a quicker application process, but the results are the same. Once you apply and set up a free account, you can direct any feeds you want to follow right to your phone. Very cool, and easy as an option for students. Imagine having all of them anxiously awaiting your next text...dizzy with the expectations of unbridled learning! It boggles the mind.

Oh, but be careful, normal text messaging rates apply, so unless you have unlimited texting, this could get expensive. And since a growing number of teens have smartphones that have free RSS reader apps, this might seem a bit unnecessary. But there are some out there who don't have the fancy do-hickeys, but they just about all have cell phones. Why not bring school to that world?

Technology Meets Saint Valentine

I'm a romantic. I admit it. I write poetry, appreciate a good ballad, and can be persuaded to watch a good love story if it's enmeshed in the glow of good writing. But I also love technology, as anyone who spends any time with me understands, so it really was inevitable that I would come across the unholy union of the two at some point as we approached this Saint valentine's Day.

My brush with cyber-cupid came in the form of an electronic valentine sent to me, remarkably, by my dentist. Now, I like my dentist, but I didn't get him anything, and since we see each other on a bi-annual basis, unless of course he's on vacation at either of the two points during the year I happen to be on his office, I didn't feel a card of any kind was necessary. So imagine my surprise to see a little red and pink animated gif sitting in my inbox along with an innocuous link. A quick click and I was transported to the larger e-card, complete with some cheesy midi music to complete the tableau. The standard message was emblazoned across the red heart, smaller pink hearts floating around their bigger, redder brethren.

I don't want to appear ungrateful. The gesture is well taken, especially in this age of suspect customer service and faltering brand loyalty. But viewing the card forced me to really look at the contradictory ideas contained within. Valentines are supposed to be heartfelt messages reserved, in theory, for the people that really matter to you. The effort put in to creating the message, whether in a homemade card or in the thoughtful words penned inside a store bought Hallmark, are the measures of the sincerity. Just remembering to send a valentine for some of us is a testament of our depth of emotion. But email is just so easy, and e-cards are especially easy. You never even have to get up from the couch: just a few taps and clicks and there you go: instant sentiment.

I just think that Cupid looks better with his wings, bow and arrow, and toga. The image of a cherub with a laptop leaves me cold.

Valentine's Day

Should I Facebook?

Well, should I?

The social implications are there. A cute old friend, who happens to be my first girlfriend (made out with her on the steps of the Ravena Elementary School), invited me to join her Facebook, as has my ex-wife (not sure how that will play out- not sure I'll be in on the friend talk). The old friend is a biologist in Europe, so I'm intrigued. Just not sure what to do here.

I have fought against it so hard- not sure why, either- but it must have soemthing to do with the fact that my students are all over the site.

Maybe inspiration will strike soon.

I like that I can network and get my work out there, though.

Finn and the Politics of Narrative License

Just finished Jon Clinch's excellent debut novel, Finn. Wow...what a dark ride! Clinch takes the story of minor but memorable character Pap Finn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and fleshes out his back story in vivid and sometimes brutal style. Finn is a nasty, mean, racist, whiskey swilling, river man that happens to have a thing for black women. The beauty of the novel is that it is faithful to Pap's appearances in the Twain novel, but recasts his actions in the light of the new and fascinating revelations exposed in the text.

Perhaps the most revelatory thing about the novel is that Clinch asserts, based on some exhaustive research in the current body of Twain literary scholarship, that Huck is bi-racial. Which leads me to the politics of narrative license. I happen to love the idea of taking an established classic and turning it on its head, a la Grendel in John Gardner's modern take on Beowulf. Even the Coen Brothers' take on The Odyssey in their film O 'Brother Where Art Thou? serves to give the text new chops. But this method is not without its detractors. Apparently, Clinch has received some negative comments from Twain purists, which is ind of sad. No text is sacrosanct. No text is beyond revision. You'd think most people would get that. I think the thing that makes this particular novel so compelling is the concept of unreliability as seen in the boy narrator of the older text. Huck is a liar, no doubt, so it goes to follow that some of his assertions would be lies, too, no? Clinch just takes the idea and runs with it; and what a wild dash it is. Not for the faint hearted, at all, but worth the time if you love Huck, this book will do the most important thing a book can hope to do: get you thinking.