tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315986212024-03-06T23:19:06.398-05:00A Brooklynite on the IceOriginally the diary of 4 months spent in Antarctica working as a documentary film sound recordist, this blog has evolved into an online repository for the thoughts, travels and trivia of the writer Richard Fleming. For McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and polar exploration, see August through December of '06. Currently you are likely to find in these pages chronicles of my actual and literary meanderings, as well as notes on my many other passions. Also, did I mention I wrote a book?They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.comBlogger632125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-33398626749944211502020-02-14T09:18:00.001-05:002020-02-16T23:36:08.851-05:00Artemisia, the bitter herb that keeps malaria at bay<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">Standing on a dike in central Uganda, the last of the setting sun glinting on the surface of the rice paddy makes it look like a gleaming sheet of copper. Birds splash. Crickets chirp. As far as the eye can see, young emerald stalks sway in the lightest of breezes. It's a spectacular vista, but it's impossible not to be fearful of malaria. When director Katharina Weingartner called to ask about coming to Uganda to work on her film, </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Das Fieber</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">, she mentioned that despite visiting some highly malarial areas, the rest of the crew would only be using a Chinese herb, </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Artemisia</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">, for prophylaxis against the disease. After weighing my skepticism regarding natural remedies against the unpleasantness and side effects of other anti-malarials I've frequently had to take in a career mostly spent working on social documentary films, I reasoned that it wasn't an extremely long trip. Why not give the herb an experimental try? But in that moment, standing in the rice paddy, that decision feels like a very bad one.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">Kenyan public health entomologist Dr. Richard Mukabana stands on the bank in rubber boots and gestures across the field towards a long line of farmhands trudging home along the top of a parallel dike. All will at one time or another likely have suffered from the incapacitating fever; some may be carrying it back to their houses at this very moment. But the mosquito, however hated, is no more responsible for the disease than you are; it's a deadly symbiosis, with </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Anopheles</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">merely the middleman who transmits the parasite from one human to another. The insect can range over 5km between blood meals; much further than the distance between you and those workers.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Dr. Richard Mukabana in the night market at Masaka, Uganda. He pointed out that such markets, teeming with chapatti vendors, bus-ticket hawkers, and tire repair and oil change shops are a cultural gap in the interruption of the malaria transmission cycle. In the comparative cool of the evening the bustling commercial and social activity of humans perfectly coincides with the malaria mosquito's most active period in the hours after dusk. Nobody is under a mosquito net at this time of day.</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">Everywhere over the rice paddy now is the audible whine of a million insects; the water seems to tremble with the density of their larvae. Stooping over, Mukabana collects at random a small sample of paddy water in a test tube. He holds it up: the water is alive, wriggling with tiny baby mosquitos. In a sense the prevalence of malaria in this part of Uganda is a legacy of the colonial period, when vast jungles were cleared for agricultural production. “Normally, land with a lot of forest is not good for the malaria mosquito in Africa” he explains. “If the place had been left virgin, without opening it up to rice cultivation, you would not expect to have the endemicity of malaria in that area.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">Despite recent gains, the disease remains one of the world's most prolific killers. Well into the 20</span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><sup><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">th</span></sup></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">century it was common in southern Europe (the name of the disease comes from the italian </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>mal aria</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">, or 'bad air,' once thought to be the cause), but it is now overwhelmingly an African disease. According to the WHO, in 2017 the continent experienced 92% of the world's 219 million cases, and 93% of the 435,000 deaths that resulted. Researchers like Mukabana can therefore be forgiven for wondering why Africans often seem to be left out of the global conversation around the disease. “Most decisions about malaria control are not made in Africa,” he points out. “They are made somewhere in Europe or in the US, with very minimal or no participation of African people. And if you look at the cultural practices back in Africa, a lot of those are going to be a very big bottleneck towards eliminating or eradicating the disease.” It is sentiments like this that inspired Weingartner to include only African voices in her film.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">In another field, not far away, the herbalist Rehema Namyalo tends a different crop, a pungent, bitter weed that she cultivates in her mother's kitchen garden. This is </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Artemisia annua</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">, a plant with potent anti-malarial properties that grows easily here. It may be the kind of indigenous, affordable solution to malaria that Africa needs. Used for over 2000 years in Chinese medicine to combat fever, it is credited with helping the communists win the Vietnam war, by keeping the Viet Cong malaria-free. The WHO [OMS/World Health Organization] recommended front-line treatments used against malaria today, ACTs, or Artemisinin Combination Therapies, are all derived from it. [In 2015 the Chinese chemist Tu Youyou was co-awarded the Nobel prize in medicine for her discoveries of artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin] Namyalo is not a scientist, but she has been growing, harvesting, drying and distributing </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Artemisia</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">since training with the German NGO ANAMED in 2004. Every morning, at breakfast the film crew hand around a jar of it, mixing a heaping tablespoon full with peanut butter, to cut its extraordinarily bitter taste. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><i>Rehema Namyalo with some of her </i>Artemisia<i> seedlings.</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">In 2008 Namyalo opened her own clinic based around herbal therapies, where she treats malaria with carefully measured doses of Artemisia infusion [tea]. She teaches visitors and villagers how to cultivate the plant, giving away seeds and seedlings. “I have seen so many positive results,” she says. “[</span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Artemisia</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">] is both a preventative measure and a curative. Before, in those first years, every day we would have 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 people coming and complaining of malaria. Sometimes people would come with their whole family of, say, 8 people, and six of them would be down with it! We no longer have those cases. Now in a month I treat one or two people. Sometimes I can complete a month without anyone coming in with malaria.” Her eyewitness evidence has increasing scientific support; a 2018 double-blind study in Maniema [Congo], co-authored by Congolese doctor Jerome Munyangi, found that similar doses of infused</span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>A. annua </i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">and its native African cousin </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Artemisia afra </i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">had better results than ACTs against the parasite. Another study at the Wagagai flower farm in Entebbe demonstrated the powerful prophylactic effects of Artemisia tea. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">In a recent policy paper of October 10</span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><sup><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">th</span></sup></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">, however, the WHO comes out firmly against this herbal regimen: “WHO does not support the promotion of use of </span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: , monospace;"><i>Artemisia</i></span></span><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">plant material in any form for the prevention or treatment of malaria.” Increasingly, the institution appears to be on the wrong side of science.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">Standard arguments against the use of artemisia invoke the precautionary principle [according to WikiPedia likely derived from translating the German “Vorsorgeprinzip” in the 1980s], the idea that potential unknown dangers in the implementation of any problem-solving strategy must be rigorously evaluated and eliminated before it is employed. In the context of malaria, however, which annually causes close to half a million deaths worldwide, this creates an ethical dilemma: lives are being lost while international organizations like the WHO urge caution in the use of an evidently successful anti-malarial remedy on the basis that it is unproven. The fear is that resistance to ACTs might develop, but it is far from clear that Artemisinin is the only anti-malarial compound within the herb, whose complexity of compounds acts as a natural combination therapy. With the debate currently raging around vaccine safety and the dangerous entitlement of the anti-Vaxx movement, it is ironic to find the WHO and major pharmaceutical manufacturers in the business of denying science, or at least being very selective in the science they choose to pay attention to.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">This selectivity is reinforced by an unwillingness to fund further scientific research needed to prove Artemisia's effectiveness, either because of, at best, western biases against herbal remedies, or, at worst, organized drug industry resistance to a non-marketable product that can easily be grown in the African kitchen garden, dried, and consumed as plant powder or tea at essentially no cost.Accompanying these concerns swirl retrograde colonialist warnings, familiar to those who remember arguments against introducing ARV HIV treatments onto the continent. Africans, it is hinted, do not enjoy a standard of education conducive to treating themselves, or their medical infrastructure is too weak to provide support for regular therapy. The last malarial continent seems to be explicitly required to wait for outside help to cure a disease that remains a major driver of infant mortality. “We have to conclude,” says Dr. Munyangi, “that this is in bad faith, intended to make Africans depend entirely on medicines that come from the exterior, and that Africans shouldn’t develop solutions that are local, less costly and adapted to the conditions of the poor.” </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><i>Powdered </i>Artemisia<i>, ready to prepare the tea.</i></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">Weingartner hopes Das Fieber can be used to spread the word about Artemisia across the continent. On February 24</span></span><span style="color: black;"><sup><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">th,</span></sup></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;">at the Berlinale Africa Hub, she will launch a “Fight the Fever” initiative and distribute ready-to-plant seeds. She is intent on creating a mobil-cinema that will drive from village to village across Africa, showing the film in a multitude of languages. While in Uganda the film crew shared a motel with a traveling musical-comedy troupe called the The Ebonies, who pulled up one afternoon in a battered old green truck full of actors and props, set up a stage in the courtyard, and then drove through the bumpy, dusty streets of Masaka loudly broadcasting advertisements for their theatrical production. Weingartner imagines her film being broadcast in a similar context, complete with free Artemisia seedlings.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">The argument that malaria should only be treated, and is only curable using standardized doses of ACTs produced in overseas factories and available for purchase in pharmacies is even less compelling in the face of estimates that in Africa fully 30% of anti-malarial drugs on the market are counterfeit. Pharmaceutical counterfeiting is a vast, multi-billion dollar business that causes as many as 200,000 deaths each year in Africa. [After spreading awareness of bogus drugs on the Congolese market Munyangi was arrested in Kinshasa at the behest, he says of the importers responsible. Granted asylum, he now lives in exile in France.] In this context a therapy that Africans can cultivate and process themselves seems like an obvious response.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434; font-family: "courier" , monospace; font-size: large;">One of the problems with prophylaxis is that you only know if it doesn't work. Back in New York, the artemisia grown by Rehema Namyalo and smuggled through customs remains a part of my breakfast routine for a full three weeks. The subject remains healthy, but it is impossible to say whether the herb or just the luck of the draw played a part. But for Namyalo, living where malaria is a chronic condition, the benefits are certain. “In my family,” she says, “now we can complete an entire year without having any cases.”</span></div>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-87633039378120118482018-05-06T22:42:00.000-04:002018-05-06T22:42:14.972-04:00Finally, an article about ME in a New York daily newspaper!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been working for some time on a project based on the Mexican <i>Lotería</i>, the Bingo-like card game whose 54 images are touchstones of Mexican popular culture. I haven't written about it here because I have a whole section dedicated to it on my personal website (about which more in a moment).<div>
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The Lotería de la Migración, as I call it, reimagines the original images of the most widely played version of the game as commentaries on the obstacles and issues encountered by would-be migrants to the U.S. in the age of Trump. 25 of the images from this project are currently on display at the Hemispheric Institute at NYU (20 Cooper Square, 5th floor. Tell the security guard you are there to see the "migration exhibition", which will be up until May 31st.). </div>
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After seeing the show, Carmen Molina Tamacas of El Diario NY interviewed me and wrote <a href="https://eldiariony.com/2018/05/03/el-universo-de-la-ruta-migratoria-en-una-loteria/" target="_blank">a much longer and more in-depth story</a> than I could possibly have hoped for. </div>
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On the very same day I got a message from Google suggesting that my website was infected with viruses and malware. I opened an onscreen chat with my hosting provider to ask them what they thought. They chatted back: do you mind holding for a few minutes while we check out the issue? </div>
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Pro tip: don't ask your web host to check whether your site has a virus. If you do, they will just shut you down and ask questions later. It seems pointless to provide a self-promotional link here, but if you go to my website now, here is what you will see:</div>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-3347433420265767212016-12-19T10:48:00.000-05:002016-12-19T16:09:10.395-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over on his Tropicalizer blog, dedicated to the vernacular of the global south, Leo Ramseyer just <a href="http://tropicalizer.blogspot.com/2016/12/tresor-dinstagram-3-amazing-barbershop.html" target="“_blank”">published an interview with me</a> about the "Amazing Barbershop" project. Check it out!</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-44369180001691903692016-08-16T11:38:00.002-04:002016-08-16T12:13:05.614-04:00i'm loving this entirely non-partisan, locally targeted Trump attack ad!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe width="500" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TdX6pGO-arI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-57466375823195250652015-11-30T11:43:00.003-05:002015-11-30T11:43:23.998-05:00Val Jeanty on Radyo Shak for Clocktower.org<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The lovely and talented Val Jeanty stopped into the Clocktower radio studio at Pioneer Works not long ago, and she brought her gear with her: a laptop, a deejay's sample controller and a stack of suave loops. We chatted a bit, but the heart of her visit was the amazing set of improvisational electronic music she did, blending vodou samples and other snippets of Haitian audio into deep grooves. She makes music on the fly with a few simple pieces of chip-based hardware in a way I have never really experienced live, right in front of me, before. In other words, <a href="http://bit.ly/1NO8LTA" target="_blank">this is a one of a kind performance!</a></div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-34574415517648239742015-11-23T11:36:00.002-05:002015-11-30T11:44:54.363-05:00An Interview with Josh Jelly Schapiro on Clocktower.org<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span 14px="" 19.32px="" arial="" font-family:="" font-size:="" helvetica="" line-height:="" quot="" sans-serif="">Just gone live today on Clocktower.org is my interview with Josh Jelly Schapiro about the heinous, ongoing efforts by the Dominican Republic to expel Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian extraction in what amounts to racial cleansing right next door in the Caribbean. Josh recently returned from the Haitian-Dominican border; he's one of the few journalists who has been closely following this issue since the passage of discriminatory legislation in the DR 18 months ago. We met at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince about the time that law was going into effect, and Josh has been back many times since to investigate the realities engendered by the xenophobic climate and grotesque new law in the Dominican. You can listen to our conversation <a href="http://bit.ly/1lEY1QL" target="_blank">HERE.</a> </span></div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-68536280139276423752015-11-16T13:45:00.002-05:002015-11-30T11:45:17.004-05:00Radyo Shak<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm embarked on yet another diverting and rewarding and entirely non-profitable collaborative venture, the production and realization of a pirate radio station in the inner-city of Port-au-Prince. This is and will be the <i>Radyo Shak</i>, coming soon to the Caribbean hood. <br />
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I've written here before about the <a href="http://antarcticiana.blogspot.com/search?q=ghetto+biennale" target="_blank">Ghetto Biennale</a>, an event that started out, one imagines, as something between a fantasy shared over a beer on a late night in a hot city and a potential promotional opportunity for some of Haiti's most dynamic and original artists. After the first Biennale, held just before "the" earthquake in December of 2009, the event has like Lazarus risen every two years since, growing in the meantime into something that the outside world, especially the art world, now pays attention to, has actually heard of, wants a piece of!<br />
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Earlier in the year, the Biennale co-founder, my dear friend Leah Gordon, contacted me to see if I would be willing to serve as the point person for the creation of a radio station to broadcast news of the Biennale and its artists, its excitements, its failures and personalities, throughout the surrounding neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, and throughout the world via Clocktower.org.<br />
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This idea, too, seems to have grown out of a fantasy shared over a beer on a late night in a hot city, except in this case the city was not Port-au-Prince but Sharjah, or rather neighboring Dubai, beer being entirely unavailable in Sharjah, and indeed illegal. Alanna Heiss, founder of MOMA PS-1, and Leah were attending some sort of arts meta-event, like a biennale devoted to discussing other biennales, or something. Alanna is also the founder of <a href="http://clocktower.org/series/ghetto-biennale-radyo-shak" target="_blank">Clocktower.org, a fabulous online arts and music and everything else radio platform</a>
, housed for the moment at Pioneer Works right here in Red Hook. (I presume the geographical convenience of this is not the only reason Leah called me).<br />
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The rest is soon to be history-in-the-making. Along with Clocktower studio guru Jake Nussbaum I'll be broadcasting all things Haiti from a shanty in the inner city of Port-au-Prince during the culminating ten days of the Biennale, December 10th through 20th. We're also producing as much programming in advance as we possibly can; my interview with <a href="http://clocktower.org/show/richard-laurent-earthman" target="_blank">house music legend Richard Laurent is online now</a>. Upcoming shows include an interview with General Dadou of Brooklyn rara Djarara and an exclusive midnight recording of them marching through Prospect Park, a story-telling extravaganza and musical parade through Brooklyn with the Haiti Cultural Exchange and artist Allenby Augustin, Troubadou music with yours truly DJ Richard Nixon coming out of retirement, and <i>anpil lot bagay tou</i>! (Much, much more.) Watch this space.</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-10398668939514109402015-07-29T14:15:00.001-04:002015-07-31T10:21:14.760-04:00The Many Moods of Donald Trump<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My very first proper job was in the camera department at the Princeton University Store. It was a summer employment, and I was very temporary, but it was a time when working behind a retail counter was a perfectly stable and respectable career, and two of my co-workers were middle aged guys who had been working there ever since I remembered first going into the place when I was virtually a toddler. One of them was mildly animated. The other, Bob, was slightly pudgy and entirely unflappable, so unflappable that he appeared to be emotionless. Bob never got upset and Bob never smiled and Bob always wished the departing shoppers a good day. On the wall, to show passport photo customers what they would receive after getting their picture taken, we posted a grid of four identical photographs of our unflappable coworker. Underneath, someone scotch-taped a caption: "The many moods of Bob."<br />
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That job might mark the beginning of my love for and interest in photography. But while I'm fascinated by the photographic image, I've always questioned the ability of photographs to convey meaning. Photographs are an amazing tool that help immeasurably in telling a story, but they cannot tell stories on their own. Without writing or context the typical photojournalistic "capture" is only capable of a message so broad that it is essentially meaningless. A picture of a policeman pointing a gun, with bandanna'd youth threatening to hurl shards of brick in the background? Sure, there are racial clues, and a full-on semiotic analysis of a particular image will yield more, but often we don't know if we are in Baltimore, Algeria or Burma. "Demonstrators confront authority" is about all we can extract.<br />
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What does this have to do with Donald "I have ten billion dollars" Trump? Recent coverage of the Republican frontrunner's presidential campaign in <a href=“http://www.theguardian.com/us” target="_blank">The Guardian</a> has me thinking about how single, but especially multiple images, can drive an agenda virtually without context. I find, at least collectively, that the images below convey a consistent and undeniable message. They convey meaning without caption or context. All of these have been lead illustrations for various Guardian articles about the Donald over the recent weeks since he announced his candidacy, but you don't even need to know who this is to understand that you are dealing with a flatulent, mansplaining blowhard.<br />
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The relentlessness of the photoeditorial decision-making process at the Guardian raises questions of fairness in journalism that are more typically leveled at written coverage. Or perhaps there just aren't any photographs of Trump in which he looks friendly, reasonable, or electable.<br />
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<i>(All photographs are screenshots from the Guardian online, rights and authors various. Any copyright complaints will be swiftly considered, although I generally feel that the fair use principle applies here.)</i></div>
</div>They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-72084794885725833702015-03-18T18:02:00.000-04:002015-03-19T10:45:38.092-04:00Some technical notes on the Grand Finale of HBO's "The Jinx," from the perspective of a sound recordist.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1">Warning: spoiler alert. You may wish to avoid reading this if you live in a cave and haven't yet seen <i>The Jinx</i>.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Andrew Jarecki's riveting series for HBO, <i>The Jinx</i>, seems at present to be well on the way to fulfilling the ultimate goal of investigative journalism, the righting of wrongs. His subject, Robert Durst, the millionaire scion of Manhattan Real Estate royalty, was a free man when Jarecki began his research into three separate murders that Durst may or may not have been involved with. Today, just a few days after the airing of the sixth and final episode, Durst is behind bars, accused of first degree murder. </span>Most of us working in the documentary arena dream of moments like this, when the ethereal work of filmmaking has an immediate and real-world impact. But instead of reveling in the moment, Jarecki and his collaborator Marc Smerling have gone silent, invoking, like many a corporate entity of recent decades, the notion that it would be imprudent of them to comment because they are likely to have to testify in court. “Given that we are likely to be called as witnesses in any case law enforcement may decide to bring against Robert Durst, it is not appropriate for us to comment further on these pending matters. We can confirm that evidence (including the envelope and the washroom recording) was turned over to authorities months ago,” they announced, in a statement. Although it would seem to me that another option would be to tell the truth now, and then tell the truth again later, in court, the filmmakers have cancelled all further interviews and press appearances. </div>
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The press hate to be shut down, and journalists hate little more than having their interview cancelled, but the backlash against the creators of the <i>The Jinx</i> has nonetheless been extraordinary. From Gawker to the Guardian, my entirely unscientific analysis is that as much as half of the press coverage has more to do with when Jarecki learned what and what he did with the knowledge than it does with Durst's guilt or innocence. The snark also began <i>before</i> the filmmakers cancelled all appearances, with questions about the "timeline." Because the final interview with Robert Durst occurred "a couple of years" after the earlier ones of 2010, Jarecki is accused of having sat on some extraordinary audio, presumably recorded in 2012, in which Durst appears to confess all. For as long as three years. While Durst roamed the streets. Jarecki's response has been to say that "many months" passed between the filming of that last interview and the discovery of that audio. How can such a thing have come to pass?</div>
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<b>Durst and Jarecki, in a screengrab from HBO Go.</b></div>
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There are two potentially inculpatory bombshells revealed in the final episode of what, in stepping back and taking a retrospective overview, is some ostensibly documentary television that is extraordinarily difficult to distinguish from the mood, feeling and structure of a fictional scripted narrative crime drama. The first is the comparison of two hand-written envelopes addressed to different addresses in Beverly Hills. Both writings are in block capitals. Both misspell "Beverly" as "Beverley." Both appear to have been written by the same hand. One envelope once held a letter from Durst to his since-murdered friend Susan Berman; the other told police where to find Berman's corpse. Durst admits he wrote the first, and denies writing the second. Then, at the very end of the episode, apparently at the very end of the interview, Durst goes to the bathroom, where he is recorded muttering to himself apparent admissions of guilt. It is the ethics and "correlation to reality" of this section that most interests me from a technical standpoint as a sound recordist. </div>
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<b>Jarecki holds a photograph, or photocopy, of the "two Beverleys"</b></div>
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The "timeline" questions about the Jinx are important, but they essentially boil down to wondering when Jarecki and Smerling told the police what they knew. In other words, despite believing Durst to be dangerous, did they privilege the schedule for the release of the series over the safety of the public? Did they, ethically or not, postpone the inevitable moment when their relationship with Durst was going to change from one of friendship, collaboration and mutual exploitation into one of antagonism and betrayal? The jilted LA Times' <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-the-jinx-questions-for-filmmakers-20150317-story.html" target="_blank">Questions we'd like to ask <i>The Jinx</i>'s Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling</a> is typical of the quite numerous articles that question the filmmakers' priorities. It is literally a list of questions, much harder questions than I think Meredith Blake would have asked if the LA Times had actually been able to conduct an interview.<br />
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<b>Durst's numerous nervous tics include belching, blinking and yawning as if bored. Note the lapel mic, prominently visible at the top center of Durst's shirt.</b></div>
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Handwriting experts will battle over the "Beverley" envelopes in court, but to understand what happens in the final two minutes of <i>The Jinx</i>, it may be necessary, for once, to call to the stand experts in the recording of documentary film audio. How is it recorded? What equipment is used? When are those recordings listened to? How are those recordings used? How do they actually get into the filmmaker's workflow?<br />
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<b style="text-align: center;">A quite murky and poorly-defined extra-wide shot that will not be earning anybody any cinematography Oscars. Durst faces Jarecki in the lower right-hand corner. Note the microphone pointed towards them from the ceiling. I would estimate it to be a good six or seven feet from the subjects.</b></div>
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These final two minutes are presented as having happened at the very end of Jarecki's very last interview with Durst. After the scene in which Jarecki confronts Durst with the two envelopes, we cut to a high-angle wide shot, in which much film equipment is visible; the cameraman, who we have just seen passing behind Durst's head, back on the other side of the table (the edit leaving insufficient time for him to retake his place, incidentally); a boom microphone on a stand, very high up, almost against the ceiling; a lamp, also clamped up high. In this shot, Jarecki is holding a photograph that is not visible on the table in the shots that make up the sequence of the envelope confrontation. It appears to be a photograph of a couple. It is certainly not the image of the two "Beverley" texts that he was holding two shots prior. In a feature film this would be a continuity flaw, a failure by the script supervisor. In a documentary, it slides by. Film editing is all about collapsing time in a coherent way, and this sequence clearly shows that some unspecified amount of time has passed between the envelope conversation and the wide shot, in which the two men thank one another and say goodbye. (This sequence analysis also answers one of Meredith Blake's LA Times questions; "Did the interview end immediately after you confronted Durst with the handwriting samples, as depicted in <i>The Jinx</i>?" Meredith, the answer is "no.")<br />
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This camera and its position are themselves odd. The images from it are much blurrier and darker than those from the "primary" and "secondary" cameras used to construct the envelope sequence. It is a sort of "record" camera, in that it sees as much of the room as possible, without any artistic intention. In my entirely speculative estimation, it was likely a small "Go-Pro" style camera placed in a high corner, perhaps just on the off chance that Durst might lose control of himself and attack Jarecki. Even as a rarely used third angle it is a bizarre shot, given that it sees the appurtenances of filmmaking. The already extremely wide position of the microphone on the boom indicates to me that it has been installed in such a way as to be invisible to even the widest possible shots from the two cameras set up across the table from Durst and Jarecki.<br />
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<b> At the end of this shot, Jarecki appears to remove his own microphone.</b></div>
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What happens next is also quite odd, cinematically. The wide shot holds as the two men shake hands and get up. Durst walks forward, around Jarecki, and out the bottom of the frame as Jarecki asks for someone to locate "Bob's" bag. Someone else offers Durst a sandwich-to-go, which could be taken as a rather nasty inside joke, given that Durst was once arrested in Pennsylvania for shoplifting one. At the end of this shot, Jarecki can be seen removing his own wireless transmitter. We then jump-cut to another shot from this same camera, with Jarecki no longer in frame, and a couple of presumed technicians, who we have not seen before, suddenly visible, coming around the far end of the table. Is one of them the sound recordist? <br />
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From the moment of this odd jump cut there is only an illusory synchronicity between the sound and the picture. Once we see the two technicians, what we primarily hear are the private murmurings of Robert Durst, no longer visible. I would argue that the jump cut here, from one, synchronous moment in this strange wide shot, to another, with Durst's voice coming from some unspecified area off camera, is used precisely to create the illusion that Durst is speaking at the same time as we see <i>and hear</i> a light being switched off in the interview room. It is important to note that we hear the light being switched off, meaning that in constructing the scene, the editors took audio both from some source within the interview room, perhaps the overhead boom, and also from Durst's lavalier microphone now out in the hall, as he looks for the bathroom. The two have very consciously been mixed together, presumably by <a href="http://imdb.to/1bg7YPy" target="_blank">Coll Anderson,</a> who has the audio post credit on the series. The sound of the lamp being switched off reinforces the idea, for which there is no actual basis, that Durst's monologue and the shutting down of the set are happening simultaneously. We then see an intertitle card:<br />
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You are now going to accuse me of pedantry, of harping on semantics, but this is a strange card. Microphones do not record. Tape recorders record. Actually, in the present day film business, a combination of software, hard-drives and compact flash memory record. The filmmakers have thought very carefully about what images they are going to put in what order in the telling of their story; I'm going to assume they also thought carefully about how to phrase the crucial intertitle that introduces Robert Durst's earth-shattering, allegedly self-incriminating statements. Let's imagine for a moment that we are sitting in on a meeting in which this phrasing is being discussed:<br />
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As a sound recordist I might raise my opinion that sound recordists get insufficient credit for supervising the most important half of the image-sound combination that make up the modern film. Why not make up for that in this intertitle? How about "The sound-person continues to record Bob while he is in the bathroom."? </div>
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No, someone would point out, that reinforces our ongoing intrusion during his going to the toilet. It gives us agency.<br />
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I should mention that approximately 90% of the interview subjects I have wired in my more-than-twenty-year sound recording career forget within minutes that they are wearing a microphone. Only crack professionals who are interviewed almost daily sometimes remember. Very often it is only when they go into the bathroom and find that there is a small wire leading from their belt or pants pocket up to their shirtfront that they realize someone may be listening to their every fart. It is quite common for interview subjects to then come see me and ask me to turn the transmitter off before they return to the toilet. On a recent shoot with former president Bill Clinton I was informed by his staffers that I was not to use a lapel mic, presumably because of the risk of recording an unauthorized or unguarded moment before or after the official interview. Obama, Bush, and Ronald "we begin bombing in five minutes" Reagan are only a few of those who have been burned by so-called hot mics. Jarecki <a href="http://bit.ly/1xfpIVb" target="_blank">told Charlie Rose</a> that Durst knew that his microphone was always on, but knowing this and remembering it are two entirely different things.<br />
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How about: "The tape is still rolling as Bob goes into the bathroom?" No. First of all there's no tape these days, and we can't exactly say "The hard-drive is still rolling...."<br />
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OK, then, what about "The audio is still being recorded as....?" I suppose that might work, but it would be nice to avoid using the passive voice.<br />
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The obliviousness of the New York Times and the Washington Post with regard to my profession should embarrass both of those venerated publications. Here's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/03/15/did-an-hbo-show-solve-a-14-year-old-murder-case/" target="_blank">The Post</a>'s absurd sentence about the bathroom confessions: "The camera crew had already packed up from the day's interviewing but the recorder kept rolling as Durst went to the bathroom." For their part, demonstrating a breathtakingly gullible interpretation of how this film was edited, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/nyregion/robert-durst-subject-of-hbo-documentary-on-unsolved-killings-is-arrested.html" target="_blank">the NYT writes:</a> "Near the documentary's end, the filmmakers were packing up their equipment when Mr. Durst asked to use the bathroom. He did not remove his wireless microphone as he closed the door, however, and began to whisper to himself."<br />
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This is already dragging on, but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. Most people who aren't in the film business don't have a firm grasp of what it is that a sound recordist does. I'm often asked if people hire me to come along and record the music that will be used in the film, or the sound of the birds in the trees or the passing traffic. In fact, these are usually the things I am trying to avoid recording, in the context of an interview, or a scene with several people talking to one another. Viewers don't understand that in order for a speaking human being to be heard crisply and with clarity on film, that person, in the vast majority of contemporary settings, needs to have a microphone very close to their mouth. Let's say, ideally, within 18 to 24 inches. Someone needs to put that microphone there, and the audio coming from it needs to be monitored at all times. (For this I charge approximately $90 per hour, if you are looking).<br />
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Back in the long-distant days of film, sound recordists were blissfully independent. We attached our microphones to our tape recorders with wires, and our only worry about the camera was whether it would see our boom poking down into the top of the frame, or our lavalier microphone peeking out from behind a shirt placket. We recorded the sound, and the camera recorded the image. In post-production, the two were synchronized. In this scenario, it was important for sound to begin rolling before the camera, and to continue to roll, if possible, after the camera cut.<br />
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Throughout much of the 1990s and the "aughties," as film became too expensive and video became more sophisticated, most audio was recorded on the camera. As a sound recordist my microphones were now attached to my portable mixer, with the camera doing the actual recording, whenever the cameraman was "rolling". I monitored the sound, but did not myself have control over the recorder. I would either have a couple of wires leading from my mixer to the camera, or transmit the audio to the camera wirelessly. Cameramen generally hated this arrangement, because the wires risked impeding their movement, and the "wireless link" option demanded that they do some level of monitoring to be certain the sound was coming through okay. In this scenario, which prevailed in television from about 1990 until at least 2005, and persists on many lower-budget productions, essentially zero audio was ever recorded when the camera was not rolling. Durst's mumblings would never have gone down on tape.<br />
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In a sense, we have now gone back in time. Because of the widespread adoption of portable multi-track hard-disc recorders like the Sound Devices 788T, and thanks to the proliferation of Digital SLR cameras, which shoot high-quality video but sound something like a broken walkman, sound recordists today, and during the period <i>The Jinx</i> was filmed, once again generally record the sound independent of the image. Although the video camera visible in the final shots of <i>The Jinx</i> is capable of recording decent sound, the use of a multi-track machine allows the recording of a large number of discreet audio tracks, offering more flexibility in the final mixing of the film.<br />
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The credited sound recordists on <i>The Jinx</i>, neither of whom I know, are Tim Hayes and Paul Marshall. I suspect that either of them would have been recording on some kind of multi-track machine. We could ask them how it all went down, but I am certain they will have signed deal memorandums ensuring not only their salaries but their silence. I expect them to be subpoenaed.<br />
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There are three microphones visible in the scene: the boom, the lavalier on Durst, and a lavalier on Jarecki. Each of these would be recorded on its own track. In order to aid the synchronization of sound and picture, the sound recordist would then send either one or two tracks of "scratch" audio to be recorded on the camera. On lazier or lower-budget productions, or quite commonly still on network television productions, the editors might well take the sound from the camera tracks rather than bother synching up the files from the hard-disc to the camera images. In this case I would only believe that this had happened if the recordist told me that he had sent Jarecki's and Durst's microphone signals to separate channels on the camera. The boom is so far away from the scene that it can only be there to record room ambience or to provide marginal backup audio in the case of a catastrophic failure of one or other of the lavalier microphones. It is quite possible, although lazy filmmaking, for the editors to have listened only to the audio recorded alongside the camera images, and to have ignored any audio recorded after the cameras had cut. Nonetheless, <i>this</i> recordist would have immediately alerted the producers to the bombshell that had just come into my headphones.<br />
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It is important to understand something about the transmitter packs to which these lavaliers are attached. I can see Jarecki's in the near final shot, but I cannot determine its make or model. Often just called "wireless," these body packs transmit the signal from the subject's lapel mic, or lavalier, to the sound recordist. Because of FCC regulations on their transmitting power, they typically have an out-of-doors "line-of-sight" range of approximately 100 yards. In dense urban environments with lots of other wifi activity their ranges can be significantly diminished. Walls also have an impact.<br />
<br />
In my sound recording setup, I use Lectrosonics wireless systems. A receiver for each wireless is attached to the recorder, and I record the signal only when I choose, that is to say, when I press record. At the obvious end of the shoot, or interview, I will generally cut (press "stop"), if it is abundantly clear that we are finished. In an exceptional circumstance, and recording a final interview with Robert Durst probably qualifies, I won't cut at all until the director makes it very clear that he considers the filming complete. But in that case I will be sitting in front of my rig, with my headphones on, listening to what I am recording. Jarecki, or at least the media's interpretation of what he has told them, would have me believe that whoever recorded the Durst interview walked away, or started packing up his gear, while still recording. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.<br />
<br />
If we accept that the Durst confession actually did happen after the close of the interview, rather than at some other time, it is clear that Jarecki thought the interview had concluded. How else do we account for him removing his own microphone? He can't have known that Durst would hang around long enough to use the toilet. The sound recordist could be excused for cutting, and even for beginning to wrap up his cables. Had I been the sound recordist, I would probably have been attempting to get the okay from a producer to remove Durst's microphone, in order to prevent him from walking out of the building with it. Durst's bag, after all, is being gotten for him, and he has left the room. If we accept the film's chronology, the lights have been turned off. The shot of the darkened, empty room then holds during Durst's entire lengthy bathroom monologue. This is another oddity; it even seems manufactured. I have never been on a film set where the film lights were turned off without the "house" or overhead room lights being promptly turned on. When the film lights are turned off, wrapping is about to commence, and wrapping is not done in the dark. It makes me suspicious. There is something slippery here. When we hear Durst finally say "killed them all, of course," the room dramatically darkens even more, as if the filmmakers flicked off a couple more switches out of frame, and have left the building, with all their gear still installed.<br />
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<b>A dark and empty room full of film equipment.</b></div>
<br />
There is one possibility that alleviates, but does not entirely remove my skepticism about how and when this audio was recorded, listened to, and noted. It also could account for the strange phrasing of "Bob's microphone continues to record...." The sound-person might have use Zaxcom wirelesses. These differ from Lectrosonics in that their transmitters simultaneously transmit audio to a wireless receiver <i>and record it locally</i>. They make a time-stamped backup of all the audio fed into them by a microphone for as long as they are switched on, regardless of whether or not the sound recordist is listening or recording. The idea is that if the subject wearing one walks, runs or drives out of range, it is still possible to recuperate their audio. I've heard they are useful for extreme sports.<br />
<br />
I have a question for Meredith Blake to add to her list. I would like to know what brand of wireless Durst was wearing, and, if it was a Zaxcom, how anyone ever came to listen to the files that were recorded on it, given that they would be imagined to serve only as emergency backups of the production audio recordings on the hard-drive? If it wasn't a Zaxcom, the whole scenario is very fishy indeed.<br />
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-29999731669049878912015-01-25T17:52:00.001-05:002015-01-25T17:52:15.360-05:00Daniel Morel Interviewed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In my last post I promised a full interview with Daniel Morel, with whom I got to spend some time in the Grand Rue of Port-au-Prince on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the earthquake. I went to Haiti to write a couple of stories about his spectacular photo exhibit, a show that was put on in, by, for, and featuring the people of the Grand Rue. Morel, now 63, grew up just down the street, and his family had a bakery there. He was sitting in this same courtyard five years ago when the earthquake hit, and some of the same neighbors and friends and family who appear in the images helped install the show. Many, if not most of those who came to the opening know personally people in the pictures.<br />
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A nice long piece I wrote appeared in german in the <i>Suddeutsche Zeitung</i>, and I also recorded for the BBC's "From Our Own Correspondent." You can listen to that story about sixteen and a half minutes into <a href="http://bbc.in/1zzGbnb" target="_blank">this MP3 file,</a> or <a href="http://bbc.in/1yCm7i4" target="_blank">read it online.</a><br />
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The day after the very moving opening of the exhibition, Daniel and I went back to the outdoor gallery space and sat down to talk about the ideas behind the show and the painful process of reconstructing Haiti. I've lightly edited the transcript for clarity:<br />
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<div class="p1">
<i>How long have you been working as a photojournalist? Have you worked other places besides Haiti?</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I would say over 30 years, that’s my career. I started professionally here in Haiti in 1986. I like working here; I’ve always worked here. Sometimes, in New York and other places, Venezuela, Santo Domingo. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>What do you consider the highlights of your career?</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
This. Also, the return of Aristide, when I was on the plane with him. October 15th, 1994.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>That must be, probably, the day before I met you. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>To me what is really interesting about this show is that the people who are in the pictures are the people who helped put the show together, and they are also the people who live around here. Could you talk about the philosophy behind that?</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
That was a dream come true. It's the purpose of the show. That’s the reason I didn’t do it any other place, I didn’t do it in Petion-ville, I didn’t do it at the Oloffson, I wanted to do it here. Because the people here deserve to have a good show, up to an international standard. This show could be [put on display] anywhere. I think they deserve that.</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
<i>How did your ideas for this come together?</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The very next year it was in my head. Because the year [after the earthquake] I came back here to see all of the people that I had photographed, to see how they were doing. And since then the idea was in my head. I always wanted to do it with a book, but the book hasn’t come true yet, because of a lack of money and sponsorship. The second phase of this show will be to travel around Haiti, to take it to where people were not affected by the earthquake. And the book, always, of course.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The idea that was in my head was to do photography for the people. To do photography for people who never had any experience of photography. So that movement starts here. Not photography for the gallery, photography for the people. And they should have the same quality of photography, not lower.<br />
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<div class="p1">
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<i>Do you think it is a traumatic experience for people to see these photographs, the people around here?</i></div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
Yes and no. I have observed a few moments—because I have been photographing their reactions—I have seen people who were very emotional when looking at the photographs, and I see others who were shocked and excited at the same time. Excited because they don’t know—they were in the earthquake, but they didn’t <i>see</i> the earthquake, or see themselves in the earthquake.<br />
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<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
<i>I think I was expecting people to be more traumatized than they were. People I saw were very moved, but in a positive way, and I’m having a bit of trouble understanding why that would be.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
One reason is the way I edited the photographs. Destruction yes, but not so much blood and death. The photos are not <i>so</i> shocking. It’s a documentary about their life. I think that’s the main reason why you didn’t see so much emotion.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>I saw plenty of emotion, but it was mostly positive.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Yes, it’s not very harsh, like sadness. I think this exhibition is more happiness than sadness. When people are thinking about earthquake photos, the first thing that comes to their mind is death, just like they exaggerated with the 300,000 dead. When other photojournalists came here, they focussed on the same thing: death, death, death, death. Only one subject symbolized the Haitian earthquake, and it was death. But human struggle is what really symbolizes this earthquake. That’s the way I shot it, and that’s the way people react to it.</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
From what I can remember, I only have four dead bodies from that moment that you see here. No more than four. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>I can easily imagine why the number of dead would be exaggerated. Of course I have no idea how many people died, but I know you feel strongly that the numbers were grossly exaggerated. Do you want to talk a little bit about why you think that is the case?</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Yes. Because to have a death count, you have to count the bodies! I remember one of the networks said, the very next day, 150,000 dead, and from that point on it was out of control. Every hour the death count was going up without counting any dead bodies. Without counting how many were injured, without counting the missing. Myself personally, I don’t think more than 20,000 people died, but of course I am also in the wrong, because I did not count the bodies [either]. I think it shows disrespect for the country, disrespect for the victims; it’s taking advantage of the misery of the people to collect money. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I went to <i>Fort National</i>, the whole place really was wiped out. And I asked the people in the neighborhood how many people died, and they told me maybe ten people. Also, the soldiers came here without body bags. That’s another way you could have made an estimation of how many died, by knowing how many body bags were distributed, you could have made some estimation.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Can you explain how your pictures were stolen?</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I was not working for anyone. I received some offers [for the pictures] that were very low. I decided to put them on Twitpic, for the world to see it, and maybe to sell it, too. So, someone in the DR stole the photos and removed my name and put his name on it, but at the same time, people, the AFP, was trying to contact me, and then they decided to go with the other name. Then, the next day, they removed that name and they put my name, but without any authorization—and they say they had $20,000 for me—I never knew that! Basically the photos were unauthorized. The proper thing to do would have been to delete all the photos and send me an apology, say ‘we made a mistake,’ --they didn’t even bother to do that.</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
I was lucky to use Twitpic, because most people use the local phone company, and all the local phone companies were out of service. So us, in the hotel [Oloffson] we had a Satellite dish, and we had a little power left in the inverter, so I managed to send some photos out, but the power was in rationing. Every hour they would give us like ten minutes, I don’t remember. I think it was about twenty photos, 19, I think.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The power was off first of all. We had the inverter, but the generator was down, we couldn’t charge the battery, so we only had maybe an hour left of power, and we had to manage it, like ten minutes every once in a while, something like that. One reason I put the pictures on Twitter in high resolution was that it could’ve been the last time I was going to be able to have access to the internet. They [AFP] claimed this as an excuse, saying that I should not have put the pictures up at high resolution; it doesn’t matter. The lowest resolution can be stolen, too! Stealing is stealing!</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Is there a difference for you between documentary and photojournalism?</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
For me, my style is documentary. Photojournalism, it depends how you do it, you can do it as documentary and you can do it as spot news also. All my pictures are a picture story. I don't like showing one photo. I always have a group of photos, a minimum of 4, 5, 6, or more. That way you can see the story better. I don't even have to write a word, you can see the story. There is a continuation, point A to point B.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
You have the breaking news, the real news when it is happening, but the aftermath is more important than the breaking news, because that's the continuation of the story, and it's very important to know how your subject is doing, if they survive. That's the way I work. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>I would say that's very different from many photojournalists who come, they get the picture, and they move on. So they don't know whether that person has a future or not. It may have changed a little bit in the digital age of photojournalism, but I remember when we first met, twenty years ago or so at the Hotel Oloffson, those guys would be sitting around saying "oh, it's more of a hot scene in Rwanda than it is here, I'm going to fly over there", this kind of thing.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
They cover spot news. They get paid for three days work, for four days work. Maybe it's not their fault.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>I'm not blaming them. But you see an iconic photograph of a person, and you don't know what happened to them before, you don't know what happened to them afterwards.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
That's one reason I choose not to travel. Because I think the story belongs to the local photographers. They are the ones who know the area, they are the ones who know their people. Why me, to go some other place, taking photos, when I have my own story to cover?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Haiti's enough of a story for an entire lifetime.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Yes.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>You chose 5 years as a good time to look back at the earthquake; it's also a good time to look back and see what has happened in the country in those five years.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
One year was too fresh, and two years still too fresh to evaluate it. I think five years is a good period of time. The president is elected for five years. Two presidents have passed since that five years, you know. And my personal evaluation is not about reconstruction. My personal view of this period of five years is still that there is a lack of leadership. Nobody is really leading the reconstruction, leading, to help the people. Because the death toll was exaggerated, the homeless were exaggerated, and that became anarchy, really. Anybody could claim they were a victim. Nobody asked them, where did you used to live? What did you lose? They didn't have a file on each person who was in a camp, first of all. The camps were born by themselves. The camps were not planned, well planned by some organization, namely the Haitian government. They let the international [community] take over. They thought the international community was going to do everything for them. That's wrong. The first step is that the Haitian government should lead the reconstruction. Instead of that, everybody is trying to make money. The Clinton Foundation came here with a lot of money; the airplanes used to be full coming here, everybody coming with their project. Some of those projects, they are very useful, like solar power, some other stuff I saw was really useful, and the money was available. I'm not blaming that the Clinton foundation stole all the money, yes they did, but mainly it's our fault, because the government didn't have any plan. They're lazy. They thought Clinton was going to come here and build everything for them. That's not the case. You should have your own plan, and you say what you need: "I need a roof for this place here," and make an estimate for how much the roof is going to cost, how much the labor is going to cost, and you ask for money or whatever, to me that's the way the reconstruction should be planned. It's not by building those little cages for people that I see--and then they're going to accuse the international community? No. If I have to accuse, I have to accuse myself. I didn't do the right thing, I didn't take the responsibility to do what I was supposed to do, I failed. I'm not blaming NGOs, I will never make an excuse and say that it's because of NGOs that this country is like this. Because us, as Haitians we are incapable of doing the reconstruction, and the reconstruction can be done only by Haitians! </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Considering the location where we are, this is as much like a gallery show in Chelsea as I could imagine. It's clean, it's a beautiful presentation. In a way I see the show as a metaphor, or a commentary on what hasn't happened in the reconstruction.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Yes. You see the way I did it here? I did it with respect. Not because it is for poor people should it have to be on a poor level. People are people. Not because they are poor you should build them one room, without windows, in the middle of the desert. Because they are poor? No. Every single human being deserves a minimum standard of living, but here the minimum standard of living--when somebody is poor, they are not even like an animal, they just build anything for them--this is wrong.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>The international community only comes here in moments of crisis, and out of these crises somebody always manages to make money. So it's as if Haiti is a kind of resource of disaster that the international community can draw on in a way, from time to time. And I think that the way they treated you, the way they took your photographs is in a way a parallel. Like, they raped your photographs.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Yeah, and they sued me!</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>And they do the same thing in the aid arena.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Yes. The way they are building those little rooms, for the reconstruction; it's the same thing. In Haiti, as a photojournalist, I'm nothing. In Pakistan, as a photojournalist, I'm nothing. It's not a matter of race or color anymore, it's a matter of big and small. What happened to me here could happen to a Pakistani, or Afghan, or Iraqi or any small local photographer. Because before the internet the local photographer was nothing. When something happens, they charter an airplane, come here, take the shot, go back, make their book, enter for the Pulitzer. Like they did here, they stole my Pulitzer away from me! Somebody came here 72 hours after... I submitted my work for [the Pulitzer for] breaking news, and you could see all the headlines, with my picture, all over the world. And I managed not to win the Pulitzer, I was second? And the person who came 72 hours later was the winner? This is the same thing. The only people who are really supposed to have a better life, is them.</div>
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<i>You don’t think that race…? I mean, to me it seems like the attitude was, “This guy can't really fuck with us, so....</i></div>
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They didn't even know I was in the US. They didn't even know I was a US citizen. They kept on asking my lawyer where to send the papers, my address in Haiti!<br />
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<i>That was a special moment, when the shoeshine guy came in....</i></div>
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When I saw that, I mean, whew. It was what I had been dreaming of. When I saw that guy walk in here, freely, looking at those pictures; that’s probably the best moment in my life. I didn’t even look at his face, I was so excited. I just kept taking pictures of his box, and I didn’t even try to look at his reaction. But I was so excited. </div>
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<span class="s1">To see a shoeshine man walk in and look at those photos, with so much interest, it was like a dream. Because a shoe-shine boy, or man, in Haiti, that is the lowest category of human being. It's the lowest job, the worst work you can do in this society. Can you imagine, you have to carry a box, </span></div>
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<span class="s1">you walk for miles, and miles to make $2, or $1? When I saw that guy walk in here, first of all <i>he knew </i>he had the right to come here, freely, to look at those pictures. That guy carried his shoeshine box in here to look? I tell you, seeing that was worth everything I did. </span></div>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-2831590318637694462015-01-22T10:10:00.001-05:002015-01-23T10:41:38.465-05:00Sonje means remember<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I made a quick trip to Port-au-Prince last week to catch the opening of Daniel Morel's show of the photographs he took on the day of the earthquake, five years ago on January 12, 2010. It was an entirely unique event in my experience of the Haitian art world. He displayed the photographs in the Grand Rue inner-city neighborhood where he took them, so that the primary audience for the show was the same people who appear in the images. The are the subjects, or the friends and neighbors of those seen running, panicked, through the streets, in the pictures. Furthermore his assistants and docents are all drawn from the community, making it entirely a neighborhood affair. It was extremely moving, and I remarked at the time that I have never seen visitors to any Chelsea gallery stare with such intensity at the images on the wall.<br />
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I hope to post an interview with Daniel Morel about the show soon. At the moment I have a piece about it running on the BBC's "From Our Own Correspondent." You can listen to it online <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ykk4w" target="_blank">here,</a> or catch on the BBC World Service wherever and whenever they run the program.<br />
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<b>Daniel, in front of his exhibition.</b></div>
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ps: Anyone still having trouble with the link, as pointed out by phuzz in the comments, can cut / paste this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ykk4w</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-27204252996251804852014-10-28T21:47:00.002-04:002015-01-14T23:19:15.915-05:00Electrosmog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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At the beginning of <i>What We Don’t See</i>, the new documentary by Austrian filmmaker Anna Katharina Wohlgenannt, the artist Christina Kubisch wanders through a weedy field beneath high-tension wires, wearing bulbous old-school headphones while gently waving a pair of what appear to be plastic tennis rackets, as if swatting slow-motion flies. Later, we see her meandering through city streets, lost in her own auditory world. Her headphones are modified to translate the electro-magnetic radiation that surrounds us, all the time, into sound. We hear what she hears, a constant, dense soundscape of hums, buzzes and tones that serves as a powerful metaphor for the hyper-connected technology-driven world we have created for ourselves. There are now more cellphones in circulation in the world than there are people. Our homes have wifi accessible air-conditioners, thermostats and smoke detectors, and telecommunications companies squabble over the last unused blocks of radio bandwidth. If all these anthropogenic transmissions and emissions were <i>visible</i> we would scarcely be able to see our own hands in front of our faces. What if all those signals flowing through the air are debilitating to our health and sanity?<br />
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Rather than attack this question head-on, Wohlgenannt offers non-judgmental portraits of five people already certain that electricity, wifi, and cellular transmissions are poisoning them. Her characters live underground behind thick brick walls, or in remote, isolated rural areas. They sleep in Faraday cages, line their homes with mylar foil, or wear metallic radio-repelling chain-mail undergarments. If what they say is true, they are canaries in the digital coal mine; all of our fabulous technology is killing them, and will soon kill us. They suffer from, or believe they suffer from, Electro-Magnetic Hypersensitivity, or EHS.<br />
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A year ago, I drove to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. to pick up Wohlgenannt and her cameraperson, Judith Benedikt. I had been hired to record the sound on the final, United States portion of their shoot. We headed to Green Bank, West Virginia, a remote, forested bowl in what is one of the poorest states in the country. The town is near the heart of the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, where a near-complete radio blackout is enforced over thousands of square kilometers. Eliminating human-based radio signals avoids interfering with a giant telescope that has sometimes been used to monitor the intergalactic radio waves constantly beaming down on us from space, in hopes of finding signs of intelligent life. Perhaps paradoxically, many Americans who have diagnosed themselves with EHS have moved here because of the government prohibition on man-made radio waves. Diane Schou and Jennifer Wood, who appear in the film, told stories of discovering Green Bank as if it were a lifesaving oasis in the desert. They believed their self-diagnoses with near-religious fervor, and had made great sacrifices to move there. Although Schou lives in a quite comfortable, custom-modified house, she rarely sees her husband, who works halfway across the country in Iowa. Wood abandoned an architectural career and almost all the trappings of contemporary life (she owns a car) to live in a tiny wooden cabin without electricity or plumbing.</div>
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Are these people simply incapable of coping with modern life, and so flee a society that has become too dense with communication and information? Or have they correctly identified the source of the almost absurdly diverse array of maladies that EHS sufferers report: everything from migraines and tinnitus to numbness, joint pain, weight loss, exhaustion and gas? Science has so far failed to find support for their claims, to which many answer that because the curing of their condition would require abandoning mobile telephony and the wireless internet, twin drivers of the global economy of the last twenty-five years, great forces are aligned against them. Perhaps it is no surprise that EHS sufferers can seem paranoid and conspiracy-minded.<br />
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<i>What We Don't See</i> is a kind of documentary science-fiction, proposing an alternate future, one already inhabited by Schou and Wood, who both say they would like to warn us about the path that we are on. </div>
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On her last day in Green Bank, I asked Katharina whether, after a year spent in the company of electronically tormented people, she had grown more or less convinced that the phenomenon is real. It's a question she carefully avoids addressing in her film. “I'm much more certain it's a problem,” she said, quickly. </div>
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Then I asked the cinematographer, Judith Benedikt, the same question. She said “I'm afraid I feel the opposite. At first, I thought, maybe.... But not any more.” But back at home in New York, I had a ten-month-old baby in the house. Ruby. It was hard not to say to myself: <i>What if?</i> For a couple of weeks, every night before going to bed, I carefully turned off all the cellphones, the computer and the router. Did we sleep better? Some nights I thought so, but gradually I got out of the habit. It was too much trouble.</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-25429585371702635022014-09-29T13:08:00.000-04:002014-10-02T14:54:13.362-04:00On the Streets with Camilo J. Vergara<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">Standing
on the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 130th St., in
Manhattan, a good approximation of the geographic dead center of
Harlem, the photographer Camilo José Vergara is looking around with
a puzzled expression on his face. At 70, he's been photographing and
rephotographing the streets, landmarks and avenues here for more than
forty years, and he knows every corner. Now he is all but scratching
his head. "I wanted us to look at something," he says. He's been giving me a tour of the latest incarnation
of "new" Harlem. "But I'm not seeing it."
Whatever it was is gone. He seems truly distraught: "It's just
not there. That's why it was so fucking disorienting!" We
hurry back up the sidewalk and across the street. On the east side
of the Avenue, stretching for two full city blocks, is a wall of
blue-painted plywood fencing, marking an enormous construction site.
It is as if a huge tree has been felled in the forest, so that along
the north side of 132</span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><sup>nd</sup></span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"> St.
the low winter sun shines warmly on the red brick and brownstone of
classic Harlem. Through a cutout in the fence can be seen a vast hole
in the ground, lined with the cement of a new foundation. "This
was the Lafayette Theater. Right here. And it's gone.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">To
describe the Chilean-born Vergara solely as a photographer is to
minimize his extraordinary achievement. Part ethnographer, part
sociologist, obsessive documentarian and full-time chronicler of the
declining American city, Vergara has been fully embraced neither by
the world of art photography nor by that of journalism or academia.
Taken alone, his images often appear mundane, little more than generic streetscapes
populated by minorities and the small, peripheral businesses of the
American urban fabric: hair salons, corner bodegas, greasy spoons and
burger joints. “A photographer is somebody who cares about making
beautiful pictures,” Vergara says. “I'm not that.”
Despite this demurral, which I only coaxed out of him after sharing a couple bottles of fine red on my back deck, Vergara has published six major photo books, and in 2002
he was the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so-called “genius
award.” In July 2013 he became the first photographer ever to be
honored with the National Humanities medal. But in his latest
book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226853365/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0226853365&linkCode=as2&tag=anantarcticvo-20&linkId=TIFWBUKAW4NQ6CAL"><i>Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto,</i></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0226853365" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
he writes that when he began focusing his lens on the built
environment he was dismissed as “a real-estate photographer.” It's a line I think he might have gotten from his good friend Ben Katchor, fellow genius-award recipient and the creator of the sublime comic strip character <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=as_li_qf_sp_sr_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=aps&keywords=Ben%20Katchor%20Julius%20Knipl&linkCode=ur2&tag=anantarcticvo-20&linkId=HCZK4MNJRMSPFJ2M" target="_blank">Julius Knipl</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=ur2&o=1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />.</i> Eerily, like Knipl, who Katchor created years before the two met, Vergara's daily routine is to go out into America's cities with a
camera and take pictures, largely, of buildings. Looked at as a whole his enormous archive is an unequaled and
irreplaceable catalog of the vicissitudes of an urban United States
routinely overlooked, downplayed and marginalized. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Over the past few years, I've gone out a few times with Camilo as a sort of chauffeur-sidekick. My late-lamented little red pickup truck was already so battered that any extra dents Vergara made standing on the roof to take pictures merely added to its aura. A trip we made together to Camden, NJ was something like driving through an episode of <i>The Wire</i>. E</span><span style="color: black;">ntirely unlike the real-estate boom town that is Harlem today, the small and shrinking city is a dingy, derelict place just across the river from Philadelphia. As we drove past crumbling houses and weed-choked sidewalks, he explained that “Camden has always only existed to service the needs of Philadelphia.” Once it housed print shops, shipbuilders and light manufacturing, but the jobs, and even entire industries, began to dry up in the 1960s. Now, on some of the streets Vergara had me drive along, the only signs of economic life were prostitutes and streams of crack and heroin dealers who jumped down off of rotting porches to approach the car, confident that nobody other than a customer would ever bother to cruise their notorious block. On several occasions, Vergara pointed his camera into a vacant lot, aligning the view with the help of slides made on previous trips, and showing modest brick houses where there were now piles of rubble. </span><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;">The
city seemed to be disappearing before our eyes.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>On another trip, to Jersey City, behind the vast high-school that looks down onto the traffic waiting to pass through the Holland tunnel, we discovered a rather sad and unkempt 9/11 memorial. Vergara observed that it had probably begun its pre-ordained decline as soon as it had been installed and celebrated, almost as soon as some gaggle of earnest potentates had wandered off after a moment of silence and some minor speechifying. A plinth that perhaps once held a flagpole, complete with rusty bolt holes, now held a granite monument that had clearly been commissioned from a tombstone carver. It sat in the sort of tucked-away and neglected area used by students as a place to sneak away and share a joint. Two plastic tubs containing weeds and dead houseplants completed the tableau. </b></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again
and again Vergara returns to the same streets and ghettos. He has
worked primarily in New York City, Newark and Camden, NJ, Detroit,
Chicago, Los Angeles and Richmond, CA, always in inner city
neighborhoods that rarely make the news for much other than violent
crime. He has documented housing schemes built and demolished, the
slow deterioration of entire blocks, the rising tide of
gentrification and the puddles of poverty left when that tide goes
out. His groups of images, charting a single building or stretch of
sidewalk over decades, become miniature time-lapse documentaries,
simultaneously about nothing while encapsulating everything from
fashion and diet to urban planning and city politics. In these
pictures, sometimes taken decades apart, Vergara demonstrates the
same relationship with specific modest buildings that most people
only have with their children. He notes their tiny advances, their
gradual changes, and he documents them. It's a strangely intimate
relationship with his urban surroundings. The fonts lettering the
storefront churches, the meals advertised for sale, the peeling paint
and the shoes on the feet of the passersby suggest the ebb and flow
of aspirations, achievements and illusions. “By taking a picture of
a building,” says Vergara, “you begin to establish a trajectory.”</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjV2-ZDg73xDsB93etktbEtnBvLKAnZGAaavo0vwTLsPszCGA5agtdUtDXZaii3c9mIAwzSvZCovOq_FNG5Dbm5RkJQACcdtIVVz0aYhEESm3VNVulX2-6O0GqPb5qQcsuN_Ds/s1600/1-99-+View+NE+along+Adam+Clayton+Powell+Bl.+from+W.+131st+St.+Harlem+1988_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjV2-ZDg73xDsB93etktbEtnBvLKAnZGAaavo0vwTLsPszCGA5agtdUtDXZaii3c9mIAwzSvZCovOq_FNG5Dbm5RkJQACcdtIVVz0aYhEESm3VNVulX2-6O0GqPb5qQcsuN_Ds/s1600/1-99-+View+NE+along+Adam+Clayton+Powell+Bl.+from+W.+131st+St.+Harlem+1988_.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1988</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEV_A3PFqW6ASBeRI-YiiHa6MySg3iQF-ECmRiQrEkiKAoDwt9Yb2bepqmiuiNhjPG6CATV3mgxJmKisB8sF060JOEZ1zN3XICDKlY2ncyPwKjIEaC6d0nFAKzSDJuXJPg90X/s1600/2-+View+NE+along+Adam+Clayton+Powell+Bl.+from+W.+131st+St.+Harlem+2012_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEV_A3PFqW6ASBeRI-YiiHa6MySg3iQF-ECmRiQrEkiKAoDwt9Yb2bepqmiuiNhjPG6CATV3mgxJmKisB8sF060JOEZ1zN3XICDKlY2ncyPwKjIEaC6d0nFAKzSDJuXJPg90X/s1600/2-+View+NE+along+Adam+Clayton+Powell+Bl.+from+W.+131st+St.+Harlem+2012_.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2012</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVcWDnojBk5nYAeEu_6synphumA_OrgBRjq1hUYhWKuOiArSH9gKB0yCxYBSVWpa4YIZ2AjpDM-3A1kn25y9-uJPkg65NACHdqreeM8nVXZwifcj-ggnBCDTcI57Z-m0gItc9/s1600/2-DSC_6207.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVcWDnojBk5nYAeEu_6synphumA_OrgBRjq1hUYhWKuOiArSH9gKB0yCxYBSVWpa4YIZ2AjpDM-3A1kn25y9-uJPkg65NACHdqreeM8nVXZwifcj-ggnBCDTcI57Z-m0gItc9/s1600/2-DSC_6207.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2014</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">Coming soon to a vacant lot near you. Condos! Three views of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/11/realestate/streetscapes-harlem-s-lafayette-theater-jackhammering-the-past.html" target="_blank">Lafayette Theater</a> site courtesy of and </span><span style="line-height: 150%;">© </span><span style="line-height: 150%;">Camilo J. Vergara.</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">Back
</span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">on
Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard</span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">,
Vergara seems to take the disappearance of the Lafayette Theater personally. It's part of what he calls the “Disneyfication” of
the neighborhood. Harlem is being sanitized, he suggests, its rich
history and architecture erased by condominiums, its legacy
concentrated in a few untouchable icons like the “world famous”
Apollo Theater, the emblem of Harlem on its most famous street,
125</span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">.
“We've designated a place to be the repository of history, so we
can change the rest,” Vergara explains. “The survivors become
more powerful. It's like wealth, it's like an inheritance.” It is
interesting to note that the disappeared Lafayette was the first New
York theater to integrate racially, as early as 1912, more than
twenty years earlier than the Apollo. While Vergara agrees that the
new Harlem of luxury condos and espresso bars offers a better
standard of living than the one of burnt-out tenements and
trash-strewn vacant lots that he started photographing in the early
1970s, he feels acutely a tension between the destruction of the
historical landscape and the preservation of culture. In this way his
work writes an alternative history, one that questions our dominant
economic and political assumptions that equate progress with expansion and development. 125</span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;">Street,
once an ever-evolving jumble of mom and pop shops, soul-food eateries
and African hair-braiding palaces, was a place with its cultural DNA
engraved onto the landscape. In the new Harlem, traces of that
landscape linger, but the view is dominated by many of the same huge
national chain stores and franchises that are to be found in any
saccharine suburban strip-mall. Near the former Lenox Lounge, another
shuttered landmark farther south, Vergara gestures across the street.
“I have pictures of a guy standing in a yard on this block, next to
a scarecrow,” he says. “And now it's a Starbucks."</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSE4nQSfq1FCxGjT5fbBlOESTxJf0y7HClYeYa__rbE2IQ_eiW6tevRKikhc_bkaHEBZyeJjTAJ-jVMbXirsyLqkHKUju2dv6fTVLfAOKf5XvQf6zZnzFRRdftXQZgoBe4BHUq/s1600/Red+Hook+MLK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSE4nQSfq1FCxGjT5fbBlOESTxJf0y7HClYeYa__rbE2IQ_eiW6tevRKikhc_bkaHEBZyeJjTAJ-jVMbXirsyLqkHKUju2dv6fTVLfAOKf5XvQf6zZnzFRRdftXQZgoBe4BHUq/s1600/Red+Hook+MLK.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; line-height: 150%;"><b>A weathered MLK on the streets of Red Hook (not a Camilo Vergara)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
gentrification of Harlem is only one of countless stories Vergara is
able to tell with his enormous archive of images, and they aren't all
about the ebb and flow of neighborhoods. A 2012 exhibition at the New
York Historical Society showed murals of Martin Luther King Jr.
painted on walls all over the United States. Just the varied contexts
in which the untouchable civil rights hero was to be found is fertile
ground for sociologists. In latino neighborhoods, MLK appeared
browner skinned, in the company of notable latinos. Other, early
murals show him with Malcolm X; more recent ones show him with Barack
Obama. A timeline of black heroes emerges from looking at the
images, with the others, the not-Kings, going in and out of fashion,
but always basking in King's glory. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813536820/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0813536820&linkCode=as2&tag=anantarcticvo-20&linkId=KF7UB7NWIEKQ4ZBW"><i>How the Other Half Worships</i>,</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0813536820" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
(Rutgers University Press, 2005) Vergara mines the typology of
inner-city storefront churches. The book is a demographic goldmine
that charts the hopes and aspirations of faith on a low budget.
Modest cinderblock buildings make humble attempts at spires. Cornices
and stained glass windows are installed, renovated, then obliterated.
Signage changes from hebrew, to english, to spanish. “A one shot
view of anything is not that interesting, because what does it say?”
Vergara asked me, rhetorically. “It says, well there are beautiful
things here, or there are interesting things here, but it doesn't
give you any sense of time. And that, after all, is what really
gives meaning to things.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;"><i>I'm grateful to my old friend <a href="http://www.a2studio.org/" target="_blank">Alice Arnold,</a> who first introduced me to Vergara's work, almost fifteen years ago. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 24px;"><i>Camilo has written me with a couple of corrections. I had him down as 71 years old, but apparently had added an as-yet unlived year. I have corrected his age, above. He also wrote, in defense of Camden, that the city "was not there to serve the needs of Philly. It was a world recording capital, one of the largest shipbuilding centers in the US, a center of the leather industry and of the Ham radio industry. In its time, a little silicon valley." All of this is likely true, but I have not corrected the somewhat contradictory quote, which comes directly from my notebook. From job-lot printing, toxic dumping and mob-controlled carting to crack-dealing and streetwalking, Camden has a plenty long tradition of being a tortured industrial appendix to Philadelphia. </i></span></div>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-58263017866145215152014-05-18T11:36:00.000-04:002014-05-18T11:36:59.010-04:00Rara ap soti! (The rara is going out!) Recent adventures in sound recording, Part One.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My last trip to Haiti represented the fulfillment of a long-term dream. At least, I hoped that it would. Ever since spending several hours back in 1996 marching from Kenscoff to Furcy while recording a band of drumming, singing, bamboo-didgeridoo playing musicians named <i>Foula</i> I have wanted to make a dedicated trip there to immerse myself in the phenomenon known as Rara. What I then interpreted as music was raw and percussive and unstoppable. The experience of hiking up a mountain surrounded by the constant performance of musicians and singers, under Caribbean heat, resulted in an almost spiritual loss of the self; after some time the marching and the driving beat had no beginning, and no anticipated end, and in my participation in this ever-growing parade I began to feel as if I were a small part of a giant organism, not an individual, but an interchangeable ant in an ant-army. To march with that crew was to viscerally experience Elias Canetti's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&keywords=Elias%20Canetti%20Crowds%20and%20Power&linkCode=ur2&tag=anantarcticvo-20&linkId=T5I5IRM6N4XZG2MG" target="_blank">Crowds and Power</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=ur2&o=1" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i>
to feel both the implicit terror and the enabling thrill of communal action. It was a strange experience, not only to lose one's self in a mass of humanity, but to welcome that loss. Just before Easter, thanks to the persistent encouragement and support of a good friend and fellow Haitiphile, I packed up my sound equipment and flew down to Port au Prince. There was no guarantee, however, that I would be able to locate and obtain the permission to record an raras. My time was short, and pre-production had been minimal.<br />
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<b>The first photograph I made, taken out the car window shortly after pulling out of the airport in Port au Prince. I find that within hours in Haiti I become inured to these sorts of scenes, and no longer think them photo-worthy. </b><br />
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Although we outsiders use "rara" generally to refer to the genre of music, a rara is much more than that. Properly speaking, it is a kind of ambulatory vodou ceremony, with an important ritual significance, and dedicated tasks it must accomplish. To come upon one making its way through the Haitian countryside is a truly special and spectacular occurrence. The musicians are lead by flagbearers, and by two queens, also holding banners. Sometimes a gloomy figure, shrouded in black, goes before them with a broom, sweeping away any evil powders and poisons that competing raras might have scattered earlier to trip them up. The crowd is controlled by a kind of majordomo, cracking a whip and often wearing a skirt made from dozens of brightly colored silk scarves hanging from his belt. The percussion can be heard at a great distance; one can wander through the fields following the sound of the drums until the parade is located. A rara is, all at once, joyful, militaristic, focussed, chaotically disorganized, musical and cacophonic, voluntary and obligatory, serene and warlike.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhpWnTfgYvoDQ0LIDCA0hpaD3Jd4isiFTHwuWloRknankzEHS-VgjWnP7SZfV0gSSSZhu9ub1dVnCJb-0RVHqASMjzSIRTqe0Xa_W77tWYTHT6D0ME8j3vHu3oTLcoqNpoEkmd/s1600/IMG_5512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhpWnTfgYvoDQ0LIDCA0hpaD3Jd4isiFTHwuWloRknankzEHS-VgjWnP7SZfV0gSSSZhu9ub1dVnCJb-0RVHqASMjzSIRTqe0Xa_W77tWYTHT6D0ME8j3vHu3oTLcoqNpoEkmd/s1600/IMG_5512.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></div>
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<b>Waiting for the rara. Traditionally, rara instrumention is composed of two drums, and five "bamboo" of varying lengths, and, therefore, pitches. Today these are usually made from lengths of PVC tubing, actual bamboo having become scarce, along with the knowledge of how to craft instruments out of it.</b><br />
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Although similar pedestrian groups with similar instrumentation start going out shortly after Christmas (usually beginning on the <i>dia de los Reyes</i>), the street revels of the pre-Carnival period are essentially festive, and it is incorrect to refer to them, as I often have, as raras. These are <i>Bann a Pye</i>, literally "foot-bands," with none of the exigencies of vodou invested in them. One might think of them as secular while raras are religious. Rara is strictly a Lenten phenomenon, either a thumb in the eye of the slave-master and his forty days of austerity or their syncretic expression.<br />
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<b>For all your Jacmel lodging needs.</b><br />
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Without tremendous forethought I had settled on Jacmel as a great place to begin this project, and on the Tuesday before Easter I drove across the mountains of Haiti's southern claw and installed myself there at the sublime Hotel Florita. Raras go out everywhere the length and breadth of Haiti, and even in Haitian enclaves in the Dominican Republic.* Leogane, about halfway between Port au Prince is Jacmel, is considered a particular stronghold, but I had heard that its annual rara festival had become rather commercialized. The Artibonite valley (Latibonit) is generally considered to be a stronghold of vodou, and I might try to spend a future rara season there. But in Jacmel I have friends. In the late 1990s I lived there for two months, working on Charles Najman's film <i>Les Illuminations de Madame Nerval.</i> The town is also traditionally considered to be Haiti's artistic and literary capital, and it is the home of the Ciné Institute, the film school where I have twice gone to teach sound recording. I had already discussed the possibility of recording local raras with a former student of mine, Bayard Jean Bernard, and he had sent some encouraging reports of the season's activity.<br />
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<b>Faith of Job art supply. Also, have faith, the rara <i>will</i> go out....</b></div>
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Nonetheless, Raras do not have websites where they advertise their sortees, and I was rather nervous as to whether or not the trip would pay off. Then, shortly after I collapsed in my hotel bed on Tuesday night, I heard a rara moving through the streets of Jacmel. Although exhaustion overwhelmed me, as well as the fact that I had not yet unpacked and prepared my gear, it seemed a good omen.<br />
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<b>My room at the Florita, in which I lounged underneath the mosquito net listening to raras pass by in the streets of Jacmel.</b><br />
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On Wednesday, I got together with Bayard. "I'm ready," I said. "What can we line up for this evening?" He made a few phone calls. He shook his head. "It sounds like everyone went out last night," he said, "I'm not sure what else will happen before Friday...."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMczJHgEbbxrrniQOwoR78gllLNoQyfiVDmepUX7H3QgGBgJ4EZmIJJbxDxWeoDLGeS6Uk4BvqZAC7yjSnTdOTwtNy_Pw-hJNoJr0Fxp6S-0TA5GIVY2i45WqOZGTgQx-2867n/s1600/IMG_6034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMczJHgEbbxrrniQOwoR78gllLNoQyfiVDmepUX7H3QgGBgJ4EZmIJJbxDxWeoDLGeS6Uk4BvqZAC7yjSnTdOTwtNy_Pw-hJNoJr0Fxp6S-0TA5GIVY2i45WqOZGTgQx-2867n/s1600/IMG_6034.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Bayard gives me the bad news.</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I am unsure whether rara persists within the Haitian communities of Cuba, but it seems likely, as vodou is widely practiced in them.</span></div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-75890627014658392932014-04-18T11:07:00.000-04:002014-04-18T11:07:54.050-04:00Tropical Camouflage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Like Kingston, Port au Prince is one of those Caribbean cities where the heat, stench and oppressive humidity of the downtown waterfront has historically inspired all those with means to flee up into the cool, forested highlands. In the distant past they went there on the weekends to relax, and then, soon after the introduction of the automobile, to live. Petionville, several miles up a steep hill from the sweltering business district, is still synonymous with the economic elite, with refined dining and shopping for such things as <i>charcuterie</i> and champagne. But the one-time suburb has been all-but consumed by the Haitian capital's tremendous population growth; those seeking the tranquility of the forested highlands now need drive much farther uphill to find calm. </div>
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The mass exodus from downtown in the wake of the earthquake of January 2010 has further clogged the enclave. In the twenty years that I have been going regularly to Haiti, Petionville has spawned its own shanty-towns, impromptu hillside communities that began as opportunistic squats and have burgeoned into dense and undeniable concentrations of humanity. Paint has never been a priority for the residents of these often slapdash cinderblock boxes, which have spread, gray and sunbaked, farther and farther out around the hillsides on both sides of town.</div>
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On a trip last fall I was stunned to look up at this perilous, ever-evolving hillside and see a riot of color. Every tropical hue from the (hypothetical) Benjamin Moore <i>Caribe</i> collection seemed to be represented there, as if all the third-world's painters of charming wooden fishing boats had descended at once, brushes in hand, in a mad frenzy of civic improvement. Suddenly, the slums above Petionville looked like <a href="http://bit.ly/204Tz5" target="_blank">Valparaiso</a>! </div>
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As much as I would have loved to learn that the citizens of this marginal, cliff-like community had banded together into a decorative council something like the competitive gardeners of Brooklyn front yards, I knew, or should I say I was quite certain, that some more grand imperial hand must be at work. How on earth did all these houses get painted in such a uniformly random cataclysm of colors? I asked our driver.<br />
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"Mateli te fel," he replied. President Martelly did it.<br />
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Not personally, I imagined.<br />
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Jobs had been created, I was assured, the people are really happy about it.<br />
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Now, were someone to come to my house and offer to paint it for free I might well accept. But it smelled to me like the worst sort of populist pandering, not to mention an absurdly cost-ineffective way to buy community goodwill. I probed a bit more. Why, I asked, did the painting stop so abruptly, leaving miles of dull-gray slum to trail off into the distance?<br />
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"They are intending to paint all of them," said my friend. "Eventually." One often finds in Haiti that things are wrapped in multiple layers of meaning. Often there is a surface explanation for events that, like a brilliant coat of tropically-themed paint, obscures other realities beneath. My friend decided that my pronounced interest merited the peeling off of some of the onion skin. "What I heard," he went on conspiratorially, "was that the owners of your hotel and some of the other new constructions around Petionville were complaining."<br />
<br />
Our team was staying at the Oasis, a brand new, international style flying vee of a hotel, distressingly multi-storied in the still earthquake-ravaged country. I can attest that many of its rooms enjoy a panoramic view of the brightly painted cinderblock homes on the opposite hill.<br />
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"They spent all this money to build, but their guests were not seeing a pretty picture."<br />
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All that poverty was sullying the view, and nothing says "happy, contented natives" like lemon-yellow, guava-pink, passionate-purple, palm-frond-green and azure-blue.<br />
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Do I hate cynicism, revile and despise it? If so, then in this particular case I must confess I am filled with self-loathing.<br />
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-39547332963359695992014-04-11T06:56:00.000-04:002014-04-18T11:03:59.631-04:00Not just another night at WD50<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had a crazy start to the week. My friend WoWe asked me if I wanted to join him and see what might dribble out the end of my pen while he photographed a gang of international culinary superstars spending 72 hours in New York to prepare for an all-star tribute dinner for Wylie Dufresne. Okay, I said, sounds like fun. Here's one of many possible dispatches:</span></div>
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<b>3 Dufresne dishes, with his famous "Shrimp noodles" on the right.</b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Last
Tuesday afternoon on Clinton Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side,
chef Wylie Dufresne's molecular gastronomy restaurant WD50 appeared
to be closed. The sun streaming over the tenements made the windows
glow a dull, mottled brown: they had been blocked out from the inside
with lengths of butcher's paper, as if the place was under
renovation. Inside, however, the kitchen was a hive of activity, full
to bursting with an astonishing gathering of some thirty head chefs
from the best restaurants around the globe. Apples were being cored
and mousses were being frothed. Magnus Nilsson of Sweden's <a href="http://favikenmagasinet.se/en/booking/" target="_blank">Fäviken</a>
and Agata Felluga of <a href="http://www.vinsnaturels.fr/006_restaurants/006_restaurants-vin-nature-Jour-de-F%C3%AAte-540.html" target="_blank">Jour de Fête</a> in Strasbourg were hip to hip,
braiding shallot shoots into little nests of “Longevity” brand
noodles, purchased in nearby Chinatown. René Redzepi of Noma, ranked
#2 on the influential <a href="http://www.theworlds50best.com/" target="_blank"> <i>World's 50 Best Restaurants</i></a> list, was
sampling a variety of hot chile infusions with Ben Shewry of
Melbourne, Australia's <a href="http://www.attica.com.au/#!home" target="_blank">Attica</a> (#21). Iñaki Aizpitarte <a href="http://www.lechateaubriand.net/" target="_blank">(#17)</a> and Kobe
Desramaults (#72--the “50 Best” actually has 100 restaurants on
it) were piping caviar-laced chicken liver parfait into those cored
apples.
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wylie
Dufresne was not present. In the basement, event producer Alexandra Swenden had assembled a team that was madly editing video footage to be tweeted and uploaded later in the evening. Out in the dining room, seemingly immune to
all the stresses of the kitchen, the impresario Andrea Petrini had
only one concern: with hours to go until dinner would be served,
could this giant international secret possibly be kept from the
pioneering chef whose restaurant they had all occupied?</span><br />
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<b>Agata Felluga, Blaine Wetzel, Virgilio
Martínez, Fulvio Pierangelini, Claude Bosi, Daniel Burns, Ben
Shewry, René Redzepi, Alex Atala, Rosio Sanchez, Ana Ros, Rodolfo
Guzman, Karime Lopez, Magnus Nilsson, Danny Bowien, Daniel Patterson
and Gabrielle Hamilton are just the people in this photograph I got
to meet and chat with and even interview over the three days of
Gelinaz! preparations. Daniel Boulud is in there, too, but I didn't
really get to talk to him. I did meet him, at Frankie's Spuntino on
Monday night. He walked up while I was talking to Frankie Falcinelli
and when Frank introduced us he said “do I know you? I don't think
I know you.” I don't think he intended to be rude, I imagine he was
just wondering if I was some Gelinaz! chef he hadn't met yet, but I
never quite recovered enough to ask him to talk to me later. David Chang and I had plans, but apparently he started running the kitchen at WD50 to get things back on schedule
Tuesday night and so he eluded my interviewing stamina. That's why
I'm only an accomplished home cook, not a chef. All the other people
who aren't named: I hope to meet you another time and I don't mean you any disrespect.</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This
surprise dinner for one of their own was the most recent in a series
of undefinable culinary events presented by <a href="http://gelinaz.com/" target="_blank">Gelinaz!,</a> a loose
collection of chefs that is part think-tank, part spectacle and part
gathering together of friends who like to cook. Petrini, a longtime
food journalist and talent scout, is the co-founder and the cement
that binds them together, much like the transglutaminase “meat
glue” that Dufresne uses to make his infamous shrimp noodles.
Coincidentally, this is likely the actual dish immortalized in the
recent premiere of HBO's <i>Silicon Valley</i> as “liquid shrimp.”
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<span style="font-size: large;">Gelinaz!
started in 2005 “as a joke,” Petrini told me. His good friend, chef
Fulvio Pierangelini “was known world-wide for being a pain in the
ass, always complaining that people were stealing his ideas and his
recipes. So I proposed that he go onstage with a bunch of other chefs
who were re-imagining his dish and we would do away with copyright
forever.” Perhaps the only thing all subsequent Gelinaz! events
have had in common is this core idea of many chefs concocting their
own versions of a specific dish. At a June, 2013 event in Ghent,
Belgium, diners were served <a href="http://www.gazzettagastronomica.it/2013/gelinaz-plays-cauderlier/" target="_blank">twenty interpretations of an 1861 Cauderlier recipe</a> for chicken in pig's feet jelly.
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<span style="font-size: large;">We
live in an era uniquely obsessed with food and its preparation.
Cookbooks, now almost invariably tied to a particular chef and
restaurant, are one of the few thriving areas in “old”
publishing, despite the mind-boggling number of recipes and
preparations available on the web. As evidenced by HBO name-checking
Wylie Dufresne, high cuisine is pop culture, and an art-form. Last
night's dinner is as worthy of conversation and serious discussion as
the latest Wes Anderson film or that recent museum show that just
opened. “We live in difficult times,” Petrini explained to me as I was trying desperately to dodge hot saucepans and
scurrying sous-chefs. “Food is something that can reassure us”.
The old standard of excellence in food was the <i>Guide Michelin</i>,
which, Petrini says, “judged food by the criteria of the upper
classes.” The idea was that a regular family would save its money
to go to a great restaurant, perhaps once or twice a year. Today,
that seems absurd. “For young people,” Petrini says, “food is
everywhere.”
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<span style="font-size: large;">On
the web, we have instant access to menus and photographs from the
most far-flung of the world's temples to eating. Places like
Nilsson's Fäviken, in a remote corner of rural central Sweden, would
likely never have become must-eat destinations without the
information era. But meticulously prepared food is not a commodity
that can be ordered from Amazon. The global promise of the internet
has also brought a great uprooting which with food has had the
paradoxical effect of making us desperate to regain a sense of place,
a sense of craft. We want access to unique ingredients and
preparations that in the past might have remained unknown. Craft in
general, and food in particular, is an antidote to the emptiness of
consumer culture, and to the mass production and anonymity that are
the less welcome side effects of the information technology
explosion. Food grounds us, and an innovative, memorable meal is
something everyone can aspire to create. It is no coincidence that so
many of the <i>World's 50 Best</i> chefs here, many assisted along
their way to stardom by Petrini's significant influence as its french
chairman, are foragers, cooks who make it a point of pride to use
ingredients so fresh and so local that they are often found growing
only in the immediate surroundings of the restaurant. Places like
Noma and Attica turn the winemaking notion of <i>terroir</i> into a
guiding culinary principal.
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<b>Monsieurs Wylie and Andrea</b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Petrini
is modest, with a profound sense of humor he expresses daily in his
wry smile and his choice of wardrobe. At WD50 he was wearing a pale
lemon-colored flannel shirt trimmed all the way around at the bottom
with a row of dangling white lace balls that looked as if they might
have been stolen from your grandmother's lampshade. “I'm not trying
to influence anything,” he said, but chef after chef commented that
they first met Petrini because he came to eat at their restaurant
when it was still comparatively unknown. Rodolfo Guzman struggled for
five years to keep open his restaurant Boragó, in Santiago de Chile.
Then he was named #8 on the Latin American <i>50 Best</i> list.
“Overnight, we were booked one month in advance,” he explained to me, while
picking through his arsenal of endemic Patagonian <a href="http://fundi2.com/2011/08/murta/" target="_blank"><i>murtilla</i></a> berries. “It was like a gift. It's why I am here.” Redzepi
remembers meeting Petrini at Noma only a few months after he had
opened: “That's why he knows everybody, because he discovered
everybody.”</span></div>
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<b>The chefs gather around unwitting host / roastee / honoree Wylie Dufresne, stretched out on his own work table.</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">At
WD50, time was running short. The sun had set, and Dufresne was due
to walk through the doors at 7:30 PM, lured to the restaurant on his
day off by bogus reports of a refrigeration catastrophe. The
ten-course meal--what Petrini called “remixes” of three of
Dufresne's signature dishes, including the shrimp noodles—was as
ready as it could be. Seventy non-paying guests—each chef had
invited two—were hushed into silence in the dark dining room. In
the kitchen behind, the lights dimmed; the only sound to be heard was
the roar of the range hoods. Thirty of the world's best cooks had
worked seamlessly together preparing for this moment, their egos apparently
left at home. Now they crouched in the gloom in their colleague's
kitchen. Precisely on time, Dufresne entered. In the middle of his
own dining room he was greeted with a wide-screen television playing
videotaped greetings from one chef after another. “Where are they?”
he murmured in the dark, “where are they?” Suddenly, the lights went on, and
there they were, hugging him, and serving him reimaginations of his
own food. At once the world seemed smaller, friendlier, and a whole
lot more delicious.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfwaH4cAuHWL4IVPUW0uBnv5LP1j6huQUeqR3tp-WrT_7jH11DPU0uz41gm9WbTREUPiwhEfgkkp0R_cb_izasJEPjjurwevAc6l8c2KnRSaj_mttFfqrO8vTmyf_9jdZCisyZ/s1600/wylie.691.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfwaH4cAuHWL4IVPUW0uBnv5LP1j6huQUeqR3tp-WrT_7jH11DPU0uz41gm9WbTREUPiwhEfgkkp0R_cb_izasJEPjjurwevAc6l8c2KnRSaj_mttFfqrO8vTmyf_9jdZCisyZ/s1600/wylie.691.jpeg" height="266" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<b>Alex Atala, Wylie Dufresne and René Redzepi</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>All photographs courtesy <a href="http://www.wowephotography.com/intro/" target="_blank">WoWe</a>
</b></i></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Update: I don't want to jinx anything, as it hasn't run yet, but this story has now been acquired by the </i>Suddeutsche Zeitung<i>. If you want your own story, be in touch, as I have many more. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Another Update: A gently longer version of this story will run in the </i>Suddeutsche Zeitung Feuilleton<i> tomorrow, April 19th, with more images by WoWe.</i></span></div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-85520511553809154112014-03-08T14:15:00.000-05:002014-04-11T06:59:44.141-04:00Proud Freaks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Even mardi-gras aficionados might not think of Jacmel when making a list of the world's greatest carnivals, but the Jacmelians, much as they would love to have had more visitors since mass tourism withered in Haiti some thirty-five years ago, ultimately don't seem to care. Through dictatorships long and short, political turmoil of every stripe, cyclones and hurricanes, this small city on the south coast has nourished and maintained its old and eccentric carnival traditions. Only the terrible earthquake of January 2010 put a one-year damper on the festivities. Today's urban planners and "creative placemakers," fond of overusing words like <i>resiliency</i> and <i>vibrancy</i>, would do well to visit Jacmel, where on most Sundays between the Day of Kings and mardi-gras itself the Avenue Barranquilla and its innumerable side streets may be filled with impromptu parades, guerilla theater and entirely freelance carnivalesque actions. New Orleans is definitely a good time on mardi-gras day, but its uniformed high-school marching bands and vast motorized floats populated by waving bacchanalians seem hopelessly corporate when put up against the roving pantomimes of Jacmel's masqueraders. I confess I have never been to Trinidad or Rio, but it is hard for me to believe that their mardi-gras wonders could surpass those of Jacmel.<br />
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Haiti's carnivals have been by no means immune to corporate pressures. There is now an "official" national carnival, organized by the government, held this year in Gonaïves, and in recognition, perhaps of Jacmel's uniqueness, there is also a weekend dedicated to Jacmel's "historic" kanaval. This took place on the weekend of February 21st and 22nd, a few days before I arrived in Port au Prince, fed up at last with New York's endless winter. We wanted to film and record music in Jacmel, and because the previous weekend had been heavily promoted, people in the capital announced that Jacmel's carnival had already happened, that we had missed it and would find nothing on the weekend of March 1st and 2nd, when the whole country, they said, would be heading for the giant party in Gonaïves. Contacts in Jacmel, however, assured us that this was preposterous, that the revelries would be in full swing, and that we would find, if anything, a more authentic and relaxed expression, given that the town would not be overrun by partying outsiders.<br />
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Early on Sunday morning, we headed out from Port-a-Prince for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Jacmel. By 9:30 we were cruising slowly through near-deserted streets. While many of Jacmel's tropical Victorian coffee warehouses and gingerbread homes were damaged by the earthquake, the town is still architecturally splendid. There wasn't a carnival reveler to be found. “Perhaps after church lets out,” said my friend and former student Bayard, a graduate of the <a href="http://cineinstitute.com/" target="_blank">Ciné Institute of Jacmel</a> who had agreed to help us film some <i>kanaval</i> action. As the unofficial producer of this particular weekend's filming, I felt a sense of responsibility, and therefore nervousness. I had been in close touch with Bayard all week, and he had urged us to leave the capital as early as we could, but now that we had arrived bright and early Jacmel was so calm that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a tumbleweed blowing down the street. I had to wonder if my intel was bad.<br />
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Then, as we were turning onto a steep cobblestoned street leading up to the town square in search of breakfast, we were accosted by a strange figure. He wore turquoise trousers and a blue blazer, festooned with colored ribbons and ersatz medals. On his head was a red felt hat and a mask made from flesh-colored screen decorated with a cotton-ball beard. In one burgundy-gloved hand he held a small scepter, or perhaps a short length of tin curtain rod, to which were tied bits of red, white and blue ribbon. "Je suis Mr. L'histoire D'Haiti," he said. "I am here to tell you about the Haitian history. Would you like to know it?"<br />
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Why, yes, we said, excitedly. We unloaded our gear just in time for Mr. Haitian History to begin what turned out to be a grand recitation of some long-forgotten (by others) primer, complete with commas and full-stops. ("On August fourteenth comma seventeen ninety one comma the voodoo priest Boukman held a ceremony at the Bois Caïman comma launching the Haitian revolution period.) Soon, under the tropical sun, we were exhausted. Mr. History was not. He seemed prepared to recite the entire textbook, if we were interested.<br />
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I'm not sure if Mr. History of Haiti is a well-established member of the Jacmel carnival pantheon, or a recent creation, but this uncertainty is just one of the things that keeps the town-wide party interesting. Successful "traditions," once invented, are passed down the generations. Sometimes they lie dormant for years, or decades, only to be resurrected, often when their particular political message once again seems relevant, or pointed.<br />
<br />
Perennial favorites are the gangs of "Charles Oscar," a sort of combination of multiple eras of evil political enforcer based on a single early 20th century Jacmel police officer of renowned brutality. These roving bands wear Napoleonic gear and huge sets of felt teeth to represent their corruption and insatiable greed.<br />
<br />
Those interested in the history of anti-semitism will be shocked and awed to turn a streetcorner in Jacmel and come upon a pantomime of the Wandering Jew, in which a beak-nosed, silk-robed figure with a tall shepherd's crook takes turns trading blows with a hostile, jeering, laughing crowd.<br />
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The semiology of the "Lanceurs de Corde" should be obvious; these ominous chain gangs of whip-cracking youth, painted head-to-toe with a foul, black and sticky tar, menace spectators with their long ropes, their threat of a syrupy smear, and their allusion to slavery.<br />
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Our random, felicitous encounter with Mr. History of Haiti proved to be a good omen. As the day wore on, we were to meet with all these Jacmel archetypes and more.<br />
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<b>My dear friend Leah Gordon has published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&keywords=leah%20gordon%20kanaval&linkCode=ur2&tag=anantarcticvo-20" target="_blank">a spectacular book of photographs</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=ur2&o=1" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /> culled from more than fifteen visits to the Jacmel Kanaval. (Full disclosure, I wrote one of the accompanying essays.)</b><br />
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<b>I believe Jacmel represents the apogee of papier-maché construction.</b><br />
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<b>March of the zombie Carmen Mirandas?</b><br />
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<b>Where else are you likely to find a marching gang of green satin frogs banging bits of scrap metal together and presenting an impromptu parallel-bar gymnastics act?</b></div>
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<b>Demented transvestite beautician-arborist? This gentleperson is a solo operator who runs madly up the street cacking to himself, before pausing to touch up his astonishing makeup.</b><br />
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<b>We're really into recycling.</b></div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-32454245439907208382013-12-22T06:23:00.002-05:002013-12-22T06:23:18.421-05:00Bloggus Moribundus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Don't worry, I have some spectacular new posts coming soon. It's just that I'm spending my mid-life with my one-year-old daughter and it is difficult to find the time to scintillate you regularly with my bloggery.</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-40851638255913755382013-11-04T15:29:00.001-05:002013-11-04T15:29:58.849-05:00All the Bookworm leaders we don't trust<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="gc-word-med1" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">One of the huge array of free services and products that Google provides in order to get our data in their clutches is the automated transcription of voicemail messages. I have my cellphone set to forward all unanswered calls to Google Voice, which then instantly transcribes any left message and emails it to me. While typically garbled in whole or in part, the transcript is usually enough to gauge the basic content and urgency of the message. It is far easier to read an email than go through the rigamarole of dialing in and entering prompts to listen to a message, with the result that I no longer do the latter. Sometimes the transcripts are so incomprehensible as to be amusing. Blame Marty Markowitz's heavy Brooklyn accent. </span></div>
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<span class="gc-word-med1" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Tomorrow is election day; don't forget to cast your vote!</span></div>
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<i><b>All</b></i></span><i><b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-1" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">what's</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-2" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">I'm</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-3" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">delighted</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-4" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">to</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-5" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">call</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-6" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">you</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-7" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">because</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-8" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">there</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-9" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">is</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-10" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-11" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">very</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-12" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">important</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-13" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">election</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-14" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">this</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-15" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Tuesday.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-16" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Will</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-17" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Brooklyn</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-18" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">District</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-19" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Attorney</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-20" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">so</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-21" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">I</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-22" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">hope</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-23" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">that</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"></span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-24" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">you'll</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-25" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">join</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-26" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-27" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">and</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-28" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">supporting</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-29" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Democrat</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-30" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">10</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-31" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">times,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-32" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">along</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-33" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">with</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-34" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-35" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">New</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-36" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">York</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-37" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Times</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-38" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">and</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-39" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">all</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-40" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-41" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Bookworm</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-42" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">leaders,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-43" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">we</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-44" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">don't</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-45" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">trust</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-46" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">from</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"></span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-47" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">some</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-48" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">of</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-49" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-50" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">truck</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-51" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">show</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-52" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">month,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-53" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">so</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-54" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">I'm</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-55" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">next</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-56" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">may</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-57" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">have.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-58" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Again</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-59" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-60" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">course</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-61" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">is</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-62" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-63" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">top</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-64" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">notch</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-65" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">federal</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-66" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">prosecutor.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-67" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">He</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-68" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">has</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-69" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-70" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">plan</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-71" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">to</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-72" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">get</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-73" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-74" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">legal</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"></span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-75" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">guns</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-76" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">or</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-77" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">possibly</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-78" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">as</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-79" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-80" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">integrity</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-81" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">and</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-82" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">this</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-83" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">is</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-84" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">to</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-85" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">make</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-86" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">each</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-87" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">about</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-88" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-89" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">person</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-90" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">is</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-91" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">able</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-92" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">to</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-93" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">see</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-94" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">if</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-95" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">and</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-96" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Scroll.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-97" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">This</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-98" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">is</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-99" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Borough</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-100" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">President,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-101" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Marty.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"></span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-102" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Markowitz</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-103" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">bridging</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-104" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-105" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">both</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-106" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-107" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">democrat</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-108" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Kent</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-109" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Thomson,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-110" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">but</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-111" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">book</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-112" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">with</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-113" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">District</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med1" id="101-114" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Attorney</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-med2" id="101-115" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">this</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;"> </span><span class="gc-word-high" id="101-116" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 21.125px;">Tuesday,</span><span style="background-color: white; 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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNFfHxzeQPUHIjjHD-kOi7dtsPY4h7E0ipy-NzWF1Oon5aY1VwKgwT84r4DtPyuCHhIL-m7Qk_FLHYPPzu3cnPihU67EdEIfCv9xvrehQMO1vO4S7h6FHr0SuSiabR4-nl0n_u/s1600/MM+Screenshot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNFfHxzeQPUHIjjHD-kOi7dtsPY4h7E0ipy-NzWF1Oon5aY1VwKgwT84r4DtPyuCHhIL-m7Qk_FLHYPPzu3cnPihU67EdEIfCv9xvrehQMO1vO4S7h6FHr0SuSiabR4-nl0n_u/s400/MM+Screenshot.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-90960111147135970212013-10-16T22:13:00.002-04:002013-10-27T19:36:36.688-04:00Evolution of a Banksy: the subversion of vandalism UPDATED<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We are now halfway through street artist Banksy's <a href="http://www.banksyny.com/" target="_blank">self-proclaimed</a> "artists residency on the streets of New York," a so-far successful attempt to create a work on each day of October, in disparate locations of the city. More of a stencil artist than a graffitist, Banksy is still what used to be called a vandal. Property owners, the city of New York, and the MTA have spent countless millions* of dollars erasing, buffing or painting over the likes of him. His (or her) continued anonymity is astonishing given his fame. The one fuels the other, but by insisting on keeping hidden, Banksy is also insisting that his art remains of the street, outside, unsanctioned. For an artist who commands hundreds of thousands of dollars for works translated into a gallery context, this is rather the point of this month-long onslaught: I will come to your city, I will surprise and baffle on every night of the month, I will make art for the people and it will be free and I will not get caught.</div>
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The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&keywords=Wall%20and%20Piece%20Banksy&linkCode=ur2&tag=anantarcticvo-20" target="_blank">witty and accessible stencils</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=ur2&o=1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
that earned Banksy his notoriety tend, despite some pointed political commentary, to be one-liners: <a href="http://arts.theguardian.com/pictures/image/0,8543,-10405256016,00.html" target="_blank">the stenciled girl</a> floating over the West Bank Barrier on a bouquet of balloons; <a href="http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1678584_1477732,00.html" target="_blank">a maid, sweeping</a> the world's problems behind a trompe l'oeil white curtain; <a href="http://missionlocal.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/banksycops.jpg" target="_blank">two bobbies, smooching</a>; the bandanaed anarchist hurling a fistful of flowers instead of a molotov cocktail. </div>
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In New York, Banksy has once-again put spraycan to some of his familiar stencils, but more importantly he is continuing the broader critique of commodification and art-as-business so deftly elaborated in his documentary film <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=dvd&keywords=Exit%20Through%20the%20Gift%20Shop&linkCode=ur2&tag=anantarcticvo-20" target="_blank">Exit Through the Gift Shop</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=anantarcticvo-20&l=ur2&o=1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />. What has been happening to the New York works within hours of their completion turns the economics and motivation of graffiti-removal, in the city that pioneered the cleansing of subway trains, entirely on its head. It is safe to say that property owners around the city are wishing and hoping that Banksy would strike their wall, instantly bestowing a valuable windfall upon them.</div>
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A phenomenon like Banksy's October show is precisely the kind of blog-fodder we at antarcticiana would normally avoid like the plague, but given that the home turf of Red Hook, Brooklyn was last week the happy recipient of Banksy attention, we're making an exception. The piece he did here is a perfect example of the multiple, interactive layers of baggage that pile up at the feet of almost every Banksy work, just as fast as it goes up on the wall or out onto the street.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr0zJ3h3XE3orgSAA5rnyjsTzhtLkKE7-epqmqgIuS4JMlB5ev_kNh0U3qITYNLCtVjLx3fhc5ww1H5fj8aJx3a_01s920i4rHPX32TnFmFVuh_PSyDuhHtQTvF66mPc4YYE3F/s1600/Wide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr0zJ3h3XE3orgSAA5rnyjsTzhtLkKE7-epqmqgIuS4JMlB5ev_kNh0U3qITYNLCtVjLx3fhc5ww1H5fj8aJx3a_01s920i4rHPX32TnFmFVuh_PSyDuhHtQTvF66mPc4YYE3F/s400/Wide.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Sometime in the middle evening of October 7th, the Banksy crew rolled up on this unassuming single-story cinderblock nothing of a building at the north-west corner of King and Van Brunt. Second-hand reports were that a white tent-like structure was quickly assembled to shield a portion of the wall from the view of any passersby. Presumably this is to protect the anonymity of the artist(s), but in and of itself I found this description hilarious; I had seen just a few weeks ago, at the Clinton Global Initiative, a similar tent set up in the middle of 53rd St. to enable President Obama to safely and invisibly exit his limousine and enter the Sheraton Hotel out of the prying eyes of midtown snipers.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGRHWsl7btPkYJeKmgnlhU1vlorZuq-rvNB54beBvuSMQZyjTEwhDyU9CUd3g0fAXjhVRlC4dqfiPAoOhy_r2gtdOc8P_eL02nABtn68LxXcU7MY-ccQbjETJyfmrjJbjplcUF/s1600/Goog+Maps.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGRHWsl7btPkYJeKmgnlhU1vlorZuq-rvNB54beBvuSMQZyjTEwhDyU9CUd3g0fAXjhVRlC4dqfiPAoOhy_r2gtdOc8P_eL02nABtn68LxXcU7MY-ccQbjETJyfmrjJbjplcUF/s400/Goog+Maps.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Note in this pre-Banksy Google Street View the varied tonal grays where the property owner has rather lazily painted over previous graffiti. I'm certain it is no accident that Banksy chose such a wall. He made <a href="http://www.banksyny.com/2013/10/01/the-street-is-in-play" target="_blank">a similar choice a few days earlier</a>.</b></div>
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The resulting artwork was a simple stencil of a pink, heart-shaped balloon, heavily patchworked with band-aids, floating up the wall. The balloon is a favorite in the Banksy iconographic toolbox. It represents liberation from constraint, imagination, taking flight. According to the gently fatuous faux-museum "audio guide" <a href="http://www.banksyny.com/2013/10/07/brooklyn" target="_blank">posted with photos</a> at Banksy's NYC website, this heart represents the "battle to survive a broken heart." Of course to Red Hookers, it can only represent resiliency and the uplifting of our neighborhood, now all-but-fully recovered and soaring once again, one year after hurricane Sandy.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT7nL45WtaaX75pfEFD79K9dJ3Hb_QQm7Sq9R0XPsQeY5cm9fX70bW1_5qiVJmhjrj1AvCW8euZESy8Qhey3IlcXHJi8DIM6mEnh9dUsPyZk9cAY1ow5mgJlOyM9nVjrIL0Ale/s1600/day7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT7nL45WtaaX75pfEFD79K9dJ3Hb_QQm7Sq9R0XPsQeY5cm9fX70bW1_5qiVJmhjrj1AvCW8euZESy8Qhey3IlcXHJi8DIM6mEnh9dUsPyZk9cAY1ow5mgJlOyM9nVjrIL0Ale/s400/day7.jpg" width="326" /></a></div>
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<b>(Not my image: boosted from Banksyny.com, linked above)</b></div>
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According to these photos, the piece seems to have survived the rest of the night and seen the light of day. Quickly, however, layers began to pile up. As soon as the location of Banksy's October 7th stencil was made known, it was scrawled over by graffitist "OMAR," <a href="http://animalnewyork.com/2013/photos-of-omar-bombing-banksys-red-hook-balloon/" target="_blank">who apparently makes what little career he can out of defacing Banksies</a>. Such behavior is of course in the time-honored New York tradition of graffiti greats claiming territory, or over-painting perceived peons, except that Omar is by no stretch a graffiti great, nor can jumping in a car and rushing to the scene of the latest Banksy be described as marking territory. What's interesting is that public sentiment is clearly against Mr. Omar, who is seen as no better than some maniac rushing into a museum and dumping a bucket of paint onto a Monet. In bloglandia, Omar is a vandal, destroying the art of Banksy. This is perhaps because Banksy is far more famous, far more successful, and far more creative than "Omar," but it surely also has to do with the very real notion that Omar is destroying cash value where Banksy has just added it. </div>
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Soon thereafter, perhaps because his temporary New York HQ <a href="http://gawker.com/is-this-banksy-1446472062" target="_blank">is said to be right here in Red Hook</a>, Banksy seems to have revisited the scene of the crime to get in the next word, appending "is a jealous little girl" to <a href="http://gothamist.com/2013/10/15/red_hook_banksy_has_a_night_watchma.php" target="_blank">Omar's self-aggrandizing tag</a>, in dainty typescript. Someone else, with distinctly un-streets penmanship, then wandered by with some purple spraypaint.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVWVE00-uv9Dq-TMVgpzN9WAV90b9CMweTQNF1vsAEx_cHjz3wGAuQ_wnMbYCeWUQgX0R0tuuZgQKI9YIlsKYEuIVh2arQJPzcUfFEwWLEjPwMhIaLULpX3RS0m3mbZJVZ2dY/s1600/jealous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVWVE00-uv9Dq-TMVgpzN9WAV90b9CMweTQNF1vsAEx_cHjz3wGAuQ_wnMbYCeWUQgX0R0tuuZgQKI9YIlsKYEuIVh2arQJPzcUfFEwWLEjPwMhIaLULpX3RS0m3mbZJVZ2dY/s400/jealous.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>(Not my image: boosted from NBC news)</b></div>
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Meanwhile, we can imagine the owner of this modest building bitching about the quickly evolving mess on his wall as he heads to the utility closet for his trusty can of off-gray paint. As he emerges with bucket and brush he finds a crowd of art-lovers gathered on the sidewalk. No, they inform him, you haven't been vandalized, it's actually more as if you had won the lottery! Don't you know that gallery Banksies have <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-487230/Brangelina-spend-1-million-Banksy-work-contemporary-art-auction-London.html" target="_blank">sold to celebrities for hundreds of thousands?</a> Don't you know that a street Banksy was cut out of a wall in London and <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-02/disputed-banksy-taken-from-wall-fetches-more-than-1-dot-1-million" target="_blank">auctioned off for 1.1 million</a>? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWXERjnMZAM2Zg8Nx4mbVUmMkI3Lfkukb0S6RMaKvmJP-Z7inuf-RcOh1Dm81DgDwkDepgBeaf0_c1We2EvF4pQAIykdHuZRYJTxXv6mfDj7K-CVytZUhPssFpVe3rXN0QRWBO/s1600/verge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWXERjnMZAM2Zg8Nx4mbVUmMkI3Lfkukb0S6RMaKvmJP-Z7inuf-RcOh1Dm81DgDwkDepgBeaf0_c1We2EvF4pQAIykdHuZRYJTxXv6mfDj7K-CVytZUhPssFpVe3rXN0QRWBO/s400/verge.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Away went the gray paint. When I first saw this piece, after returning from a jaunt to West Virginia, it was covered with an enormous square of plexiglas, PL'd, and then duct-taped to the wall. When I next saw it, the following day, the plexi had been entirely painted over, and visitors had attempted to pry it from the wall. The owner of the building, out of a deep and selfless desire to maintain access to public art, or perhaps some other reason, then hired a night-watchman to guard the wall. This local worthy sat out on the sidewalk for at least an entire night in a deck chair, just as the weather was getting nippy. But the long-term economic deficit implied by this strategy, or possibly the ever-present threat of napping, soon became apparent. The owner decided, one imagines, that selflessness might be alright for some, but there comes a moment when one must stop messing about. It was at about this time that workmen covered over the already mutliply-defaced Banksy with a shallow box made from cold-rolled iron angle and welded one-quarter-inch steel plate, bolting it right into his precious cinderblock wall. </div>
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This double-parked would-be Banksy viewer found only sheet steel, itself tagged with the note below, reading "SELFISH! Art is for Everyone!" </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgkbRjPlRUBALtRzCgcUyfk1yfRI2HZYVuMsKAVo3YIdHVNcpePDvNJJcYi9gZ1DPqAyw-s7mLGzpvUMB5ydoRqZhlLjHc7bGjkBIH9f0n5843M12pNblKbFeYLdEviNYaKsl1/s1600/IMG_3030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgkbRjPlRUBALtRzCgcUyfk1yfRI2HZYVuMsKAVo3YIdHVNcpePDvNJJcYi9gZ1DPqAyw-s7mLGzpvUMB5ydoRqZhlLjHc7bGjkBIH9f0n5843M12pNblKbFeYLdEviNYaKsl1/s400/IMG_3030.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Similar insanity has greeted most of Banksy's October output. My favorite response to his work so far were the East New York entrepreneurs who covered their neighborhood Banksy with squares of cardboard and then <a href="http://www.vladtv.com/video/176419/east-new-york-men-charging-people-20-to-see-new-banksy-piece/" target="_blank">charged slumming hipsters $20</a> to get a look at it (this is $5 less than MoMA charges for admission). Some <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/13/4831840/banksy-hits-new-york-city" target="_blank">headlines</a> have suggested that Banksy just can't get a break in New York, but unless he is far dumber than his work suggests I think he must be laughing uproariously at every twist and turn and value-enhancing antic.</div>
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Somewhat late to the party, and demonstrating a startling lack of business acumen, Michael Bloomberg "<a href="http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Banksy-Graffiti-NYC-Mayor-Bloomberg-Art-228045431.html" target="_blank">told reporters Wednesday that graffiti ruins property 'and is a sign of decay and loss of control.</a>'" Mr. Mayor, Banksy is no vandal, he's wealth creation.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*According to Craig Castleman in <i>Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York</i> (1984, MIT Press, Cambridge. Pg. 149), the MTA spent $300,000 on graffiti eradication in 1970, a figure that spiraled upward by orders of magnitude in the subsequent decades.</span><br />
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Update #1: My friend Amy Helfand send the image, below, of the handwritten sign currently posted on top of the sheet steel box. The one calling the box-makers meanies and art-concealers has apparently been removed:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEIRilUyhx6Tu7aEr71HdejOyd7dVVeipy7U81mOGgQxcJCOejnsz9neAr5VJMH8Dam18DFrSJCU1tNn2jApJjXuw_YfkZkygcuKzj9p3d9NNTPJOSJBbH9Ck1x-UqjjWoL7e/s1600/Unfortunately.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEIRilUyhx6Tu7aEr71HdejOyd7dVVeipy7U81mOGgQxcJCOejnsz9neAr5VJMH8Dam18DFrSJCU1tNn2jApJjXuw_YfkZkygcuKzj9p3d9NNTPJOSJBbH9Ck1x-UqjjWoL7e/s400/Unfortunately.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This suggests they cut out the wall and that the steel plate is just covering a big hole, but I suspect that is a red herring.<br />
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Update #2: The property owner has finally gotten it together to remove the wall. Walking past, this evening (Sunday, October 27th) I found him observing two laborers who were drilling out a kind of postage-stamp perforation all the way around the outside of the piece. The building appears to be made of brick, not block, to judge by the brick dust, below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqz29ep0pYcz-pdBsA77QWdqi_7wJJ2CA0iEOakMTGm_YRxgjhnU8LLops4rQG2NVPpdktCiIzzZb3A8_p1fFy3y1abqORUOp36BWA6BiOql3D2C_ACiIsaCIqtjD8nftzxDjI/s1600/IMG_3129.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqz29ep0pYcz-pdBsA77QWdqi_7wJJ2CA0iEOakMTGm_YRxgjhnU8LLops4rQG2NVPpdktCiIzzZb3A8_p1fFy3y1abqORUOp36BWA6BiOql3D2C_ACiIsaCIqtjD8nftzxDjI/s400/IMG_3129.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwaVwVQd2iS9ApwuBgbzYcFN2kdHic72QQFWoAEV06ryql1zkHG1D_Myyo-qciw-M5vBOOT6VHoKXL7tXI05dZnjbi8AvEvc4N669uIOynzzy8VkeaGcpzDjhVNUdwPo0EiySi/s1600/IMG_3131.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwaVwVQd2iS9ApwuBgbzYcFN2kdHic72QQFWoAEV06ryql1zkHG1D_Myyo-qciw-M5vBOOT6VHoKXL7tXI05dZnjbi8AvEvc4N669uIOynzzy8VkeaGcpzDjhVNUdwPo0EiySi/s400/IMG_3131.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Dude: "Don't take pictures."<br />
Me: "I'm on a public sidewalk, I can take as many pictures as I like."<br />
Dude: "Good answer. But if you write something, you have to tell us, and if it is something bad, you are responsible. We are preserving it. If it was your wall, would you spend $3,000 to preserve this artwork?"<br />
Me: "I have no idea what I would do. The whole thing has been a comedy since the beginning."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg391QfKWu5o3LAEx3HJvfj0dVaJ5OetwzBs1xYS8YOsi012YHvvzS_ZB1-YKMPN5Dct2IyMSrjcPzqX5VH9_HG5p9_khbRQFjNWIpcdQKK3dTjlsEibRFkJdy8f3nRbiKkmrVZ/s1600/IMG_3133.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg391QfKWu5o3LAEx3HJvfj0dVaJ5OetwzBs1xYS8YOsi012YHvvzS_ZB1-YKMPN5Dct2IyMSrjcPzqX5VH9_HG5p9_khbRQFjNWIpcdQKK3dTjlsEibRFkJdy8f3nRbiKkmrVZ/s400/IMG_3133.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-69743767800086429112013-09-02T19:07:00.001-04:002013-09-02T19:07:49.365-04:00Carlos Menchaca for City Council!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtEzMsRvq_vGHzeAb_b0gJqTBK_HHoZdb4ESx0QRgPk9bgQQRdYWJx1HuOlDxT6PkLSxL7XY-lJpbeEpaf74w9PK9Dc4ApNP7efw1MPNqK6yVVncVxrP9XuChmqAa95uIPZt7/s1600/IMG_2853.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtEzMsRvq_vGHzeAb_b0gJqTBK_HHoZdb4ESx0QRgPk9bgQQRdYWJx1HuOlDxT6PkLSxL7XY-lJpbeEpaf74w9PK9Dc4ApNP7efw1MPNqK6yVVncVxrP9XuChmqAa95uIPZt7/s400/IMG_2853.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Down in deepest Sunset Park the other day, I pulled the car over to send a text (don't text and drive, kids!) and found myself parked right in front of a Mexican specialty store. From the contents of the front windows, it looked like its taste in Mexican specialties ran pretty deep. I'm a sucker for that stuff, so I ponied up for 15 minutes worth of parking credits and went in to check it out. With an unpronounceable name like "Plaza Xochimilco,"* it's a fair bet the place was not designed or stocked with gringos in mind. I was not disappointed. The shelves held dozens of varieties of dried chiles, obscure brands of Mexican soda pop, nixtamalized corn,** molcajetes and nuestras señoras de Guadalupe up the ying-yang. </div>
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In the front was a fridge case with plastic bags full of fresh epazote and papalo**, this year's most fashionable Mejican ingredient out on the west coast, but one still near-unobtainable around this way. I had some in a sandwich at the Red Hook ball fields a few weeks ago, and have been on the lookout for it ever since. In the front window was a poster for Carlos Menchaca. His is a smiling face I got to know well, almost a year ago, after Red Hook was walloped by hurricane Sandy. Menchaca was the guy who marshalled the large quantities of volunteers who came down from dryer neighborhoods to help clean up the hood. Tireless and invariably pleasant and friendly while surrounded by mountains of soggy rubble and dozens of eager-but-anxious volunteers, all raring to go, with nobody quite sure yet what they could do, Carlos brightened the mood when a lot of us residents were wandering around wondering if we would ever again live in our houses, drink in our bars or eat in our restaurants.</div>
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I don't frankly know if he had already considered running for office, or if this experience of organizing and helping people pushed him in the direction of city government, but he's getting my vote. It won't be easy. City Councilperson isn't exactly mayor or president, and most people, I fear, will vote for the incumbent simply because they may have heard of her.**** </div>
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Carlos lives in Red Hook now, having fallen in love with the neighborhood in those trying post-Sandy weeks. I'm not surprised to see his posters in most every neighborhood window here, but I was surprised and pleased to see his face behind glass in the demographically very, very different depths of Sunset Park. I think he's going to get elected. He helped us. You should help him.</div>
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*I'm going to go with <i>zhou-chee-mil-co</i>. For all you would-be papalo-purchasing punters, it's on 5th Avenue between 62nd and 63rd. (Brooklyn, obv).<br />
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**I've only just noticed that "tamal" is embedded within this word.<br />
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***Known to some as "summer cilantro", this may be a bit of an acquired taste. This weekend, my sister told me "your corn salad tastes like soap." Well, maybe, but if so that would be a cilantro-grapefruit artisanal body bar.<br />
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****S_____ "<i>no hace nada</i>" G________z, who won't be getting a name-recognition-boosting mention from the likes of me.<br />
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Corn Salad Recipe:<br />
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12 ears Jersey sweet corn<br />
1 red bell pepper<br />
1 medium red onion<br />
1 pint sweetest cherry tomatoes<br />
12-15 fresh papalo leaves<br />
1 lime<br />
1/4 cup fine olive oil<br />
salt and pepper to taste<br />
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Cut the kernels from the cobs of corn. Chop red bell pepper and red onion very fine. Chop papalo into fine shavings. Halve the cherry tomatoes. Mix well in a bowl. Juice the lime and mix with the olive oil, salt, and pepper to make a dressing.</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-45998422169411928312013-08-14T14:06:00.001-04:002013-08-14T14:06:40.504-04:00For when you want that very special feeling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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And they are kosher, too! Spotted by my wife at our local Fairway.</div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-18497621966119091552013-07-21T16:34:00.000-04:002013-07-21T16:35:27.408-04:00The Ancient Airborne Yeasts of Crete<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Back in May 2012 I received a facebook message from a recently decamped New Orleans friend, <a href="http://vondamitz.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">the painter Myrtle Von Damitz III:</a><br />
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<i>Hey,<br />I'm in the countryside of central western Oregon with the same family as last year--they run a big greenhouse and this is the busy season--my friend's sister married a guy from Crete and they live here half the year and back in Greece the other half. The food here is pretty much like eating in the Garden of Eden and everyone relishes it. Anna and Markos brought back some bread starter--they asked the baker at their favorite bakery in a village in Crete for some and he surprised them by obliging--it's been around since before he became a baker.<br />They asked me if I had any baker friends back in NOLA to send some to. You're not in NOLA, but if you give me an address I will mail you some of the starter. You're the only bread baker I know! They make some pretty good bread, mostly simple, no yeast.<br />xo,<br />Myrt</i></div>
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Intrigued by this unsolicited offer, I replied at once that I would be honored.<br />
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I bake bread using my own starter, the wild yeasts harvested from the air right here in the wilds of Red Hook. Now almost three years old, that starter has been fed and kept alive not only by me, but by house-sitters, subletters, a neighbor and former tenant, my mother, and anyone else I could con into dropping by the fridge and adding some flour and water to the Ball jar during my frequent travels. Even my wife, for whom the kitchen is a rarely-visited and unfamiliar land, something like Uzbekistan, even Katie has helped the starter survive my absences, removing half of the bubbling mass and replenishing the bacteria with fresh whole wheat flour.*<br />
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But three years are few, compared with the romance of ancient Greece. Who could say how long that cretan sourdough had survived? Generations, certainly. Centuries, perhaps. It is a fabulously romantic notion, rather like a legendary and likely apocryphal stock-pot said to have been continuously bubbling on a Lyonnaise hearth since the medieval period, never cleaned, with fresh ingredients and water being added every day. Ancient flavors simmered eternally right on down to the present day. Would those ancient cretan yeasts persist? Would the bread baked with it be redolent of the savage, rocky and herb-choked slopes of that most rugged of greek islands? Could such bread be said to be an expression of cretan terroir?<br />
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The rationalist in me says no, absolutely not. The yeasts that rise sourdough bread are introduced with the ground wheat that feeds it, or harvested accidentally but inevitably from the air, and it seems to me that very soon after transplanting that starter from Crete to Oregon the local flora must begin to dominate. After all, the flour added is not cretan, nor is the air, and both are constantly replenished in one's baking practice.<br />
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Nonetheless, the romantic in me begs to believe otherwise. Could it not be that the strains of yeast, once established, propagate themselves at the expense of the local yeasts? Might they create a stable colony capable of overpowering any freeloading visitors? The <a href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p3984.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.Xsourdough+starter.TRS0&_nkw=sourdough+starter&_sacat=0&_from=R40" target="_blank">many online purveyors</a> of sourdough cultures subscribe to, or at least exploit, this romantic notion, offering things like original California Gold-Rush San Francisco Sourdough, and <a href="http://www.sourdo.com/home/our-sourdough-cultures-2/" target="_blank">"Tasmanian Devil"</a> Australian starter. The implication is that by purchasing some far flung fungus, the home baker will be able to marshall exotic flavors and traditions right in their own kitchen.<br />
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In this case, romance was obviously going to win out over rationalism. There was only one problem: although I checked the mail hopefully, every day, no starter was forthcoming. Weeks went by. It seemed unsporting to inquire, or pester.<br />
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Flash forward 13 months, to June 24th of this year. A post by Von Damitz, with whom I had more or less fallen out of touch, washed up in my facebook feed. It was a link to an article about bread, possible fallacies relating to gluten intolerance, and the sourdough biome. The pull quote was this:<br />
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<i>"Expert bakers are thus essentially bug ranchers, managing their herds to achieve their signature balance between flatulence and, well, that other stuff. The result is a fecundity of enzymes, amino acids, and more than 200 flavor compounds."</i></div>
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"Word," I flippantly commented. "Where's my starter?"</div>
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Using starter instead of commercial yeast has several benefits. Bread baked with it takes much longer to go stale; it imparts flavor--that famed San Francisco sourness comes largely from the lactic acid produced when the yeasts "consume" the flour in the fermentation process; the intensity of this flavor can be regulated simply by varying the amount and maturity of the starter; it is free of charge, so long as the baker finds some use for the flour and water removed during division and feeding. Another result of this processing is the off-gassing of carbon dioxide; this gassy bubbling is what introduces space and levity into a loaf of bread. The carbon dioxide pockets in the dough ultimately become the crumb structure of the loaf.</div>
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Soon afterwards, Myrt wrote back, typifying the rationalist perspective: "the greek starter was probably no longer greek (or cretan) a month after its time in Oregon, but I'm heading up to the farm tomorrow and bringing a collection jar."</div>
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A few days later, on the way to the airport, en route to spending the July 4th holiday weekend in Tennessee, I received another message: "At last, starter is in the mail to your P.O. box, marked perishable, wrapped up the wazoo. They say it's due on Friday."</div>
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This wasn't great news. We were due back Monday evening, too late to go to the post office, and although starter can survive just fine in the refrigerator, where the cool temperatures retard all of its bubbling and frothing and dividing and conquering, left at room temperature for too long it can quickly overextend itself and expire in an acidic puddle of its own juices. </div>
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I didn't write anything of my concerns to Myrtle. Once back in New York, somewhat worried, I made my way to the Clinton Street post office at the earliest. On July 5th, in England, a gifted <a href="http://bit.ly/1av2mep" target="_blank">jar of home-made rhubarb chutney had exploded</a>, destroying the kitchen of a small apartment, and that had been in the fridge!<br />
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I handed over my claim slip and received my wild yeasts, which had been fermenting all along their merry way to Brooklyn. In two small Ball jars, wrapped tightly in paper and plastic bags, I found, intact, and innocuous in appearance, a few tablespoonsful of soupy white liquid. They had clearly blossomed and then died back, for the one marked Crete, despite being half-empty, had at some point oozed out from under its Ball jar lid. The outside of the jar was caked with a now-dried, bready substance. I was lucky indeed that it hadn't exploded, and lucky that Myrtle hadn't screwed the lid on any tighter.<br />
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The yeasts were not dead! It took only a couple of feedings (50% white flour and 50% dechlorinated water) before the Cretan starter began to bubble merrily. Holes, like pores, were visible on its surface, and it had doubled in volume. Here I was, in possession of my own little vat of ancient Greece. It was time to bake.**<br />
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<b>"Cretan ciabatta," on fire bricks at the bottom of the oven.</b><br />
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<b>Splendid crumb structure despite the slight overproofing suggested by the largest cavity just below the crust.</b><br />
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The dough was very wet, for two reasons. I usually incorporate significant whole wheat flour into my loaves, and whole wheat flour is more absorptive than the white flour I decided to use to respect the whiteness of the starter. Also, at 100% hydration, the cretan starter was wetter than my typical mixture. While not soupy, the dough was almost unmanageably flowy. I fermented it overnight in the refrigerator to imbue the loaf with the maximum in Aegean island flavor. In the morning, the dough was worryingly moist. Nonetheless, it was veined internally with a powerful honeycomb of carbon dioxide voids stretched through with springy strands of gluten. It reminded me of the wet dough for Ciabatta, and I treated is as such.<br />
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Soon the house was filled with the spectacular aroma of baking bread, albeit more venetian in style than cretan. Was it just my imagination, or was there an herbal edge to it, as of a bouldery Rosemary and Thyme-choked hillside? After giving it an hour on the cooling rack I carved into it. I have never been to Crete, much less to Armeni, in Rethemno,*** so while it may be anticlimactic to report it, I cannot say if my loaf shared the rustic flavors of the village bakery there. But it was delicious, especially dipped into some fine greek olive oil.<br />
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<i>Many thanks to Myrtle Von Damitz III both for mailing me the starter and for kind permission to reproduce <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/passarola/" target="_blank">images of her paintings</a> here.</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Commercial bakeries that bake daily easily keep their starters going for years and even decades, given that constant feedings are simply a natural part of the baking process. Home bakers, and especially travelers, have a more difficult time of it. I have successfully frozen starter and brought it back to life after months away, but I generally find that two weeks without a feeding brings refrigerated whole-wheat starter to the brink of exhaustion and death; if I am home but not baking I try to "feed" it about once a week, discarding half of the contents of the jar and topping it up with an equivalent quantity of fresh flour and (dechlorinated) water. Bread starter has a pet-like tyranny to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">**Technical notes in the comments.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">***These two words, "Armeni, Rethemno," were just legible on a bit of masking tape on the lid of the jar, half effaced by oozing starter.</span></div>
They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-8376911504332715902013-07-13T21:27:00.000-04:002013-07-13T21:27:47.503-04:00A Jarring Experience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Due to various travels, it has been several Saturdays since I was last able to visit the stellar Fort Greene Farmer's market, which spreads out along the south-eastern flank of Fort Greene Park on Saturdays only. I'm not sure if it was the long absence that made everything look good to me, or whether the abundant late rains have helped farmers grow a bumper crop, but it all seemed extraordinarily fresh, green, firm and splendid. The result, of course, was massive overshopping. At the end of wandering up and down the vegetable stands Ruby's folding perambulator could scarcely fit in the trunk of the car, for it was crowded to bursting with bunches of beets, carrots, onions, eggplants, okra, amaranth, lemon cucumbers, more beets, cilantro, squash blossoms and zucchini.<br />
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Once home, with the bounty spread out on the dining room table, the excess was obvious. All this perfect legumery would rot and shrivel in the crisper drawer long before we would ever get around to eating it. There was only one possible solution: a long afternoon of pickling.<br />
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They say it's a cold worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09059089212388940864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31598621.post-35254864977722285622013-07-03T14:50:00.000-04:002013-07-03T14:57:48.856-04:00Mulberries for Ruby (with apologies to Robert McCloskey)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On a recent trip to Greece, to visit what might best be described as a sustainable techno-hippie commune, I was astonished, again, by the number of olives growing everywhere. Every curve, every rise of the land, every back yard and neglected plot held stands of the trees, their distinctive gray-green leaves swaying in the Aegean breeze. I asked one of the cofounders of <a href="http://telaithrion.freeandreal.org/" target="_blank">the Telaithrion Project</a> if each and every one of the thousands of oliviers that I had seen from the car window had a putative owner. "Absolutely," he said. "But it is cheaper for the people to go to the store and buy olive oil than to bother harvesting and pressing their own, so many people in this village just let us help ourselves to their olives."<br />
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When I got back to Red Hook I described this vision of thousands of unharvested olive groves to my dear friend <a href="http://www.goglobalbags.com/" target="_blank">Erika.</a> Both of us were somewhat horrified by the thought of all those splendid olives falling down to the ground and going to waste. We're accustomed to paying twenty dollars for a liter of fine oil at <a href="http://antarcticiana.blogspot.com/2010/11/nothing-exceeds-like-excess-eataly.html" target="_blank">Caputo's</a> or carefully tasting the $6.99 per pound selection of olives at the bar at Fairway. What paradise to have your own olive tree in your own backyard, we mused, without even taking into account the climate that comes with one! I told Erika that the folks at Telaithrion aren't certain exactly how much of their diet comes from foraging, but that they think it might be as much as 20%. When I had arrived, in their front yard, there were bedsheets spread on the ground beneath two mulberry trees, to collect the fruit.<br />
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"Now when you start talking about mulberries," said Erika, "I guess I kind of get it. We have a giant tree up in Rockland County, and I admit we don't do a very good job of harvesting the fruit." It's easy to fantasize about other people's fruit trees, but when it's in your own backyard it's harder to make it happen. In New York City? Who has the time?</div>
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Actually, Ruby and I do. My peripatetic freelance existence makes for some intense work when I'm on, but when the calendar is empty I bake bread, make preserves and lounge about the house with my seven-month-old daughter to my heart's content. Inspired by the greeks, and without so much as asking Ruby if she wanted to participate in my jammy schemes, I plonked her in her stroller and we headed out into the wilds of Red Hook <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=204185305595273021812.0004897c5fcfdb7b46d7b" target="_blank">in search of mulberry trees.</a> (There are no olives.)<br />
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Like wild animals, mulberry trees leave tell-tale sign. Looking down the block from the corner the rich dark berries may be invisible on the tree amongst the green leaves, but the swollen, dark fruits scattering the sidewalk are a dead giveaway. </div>
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Low-hanging fruit: An early June mulberry branch, brimming with berries. I can't tell you where, or I would have to kill you.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">Above, a typical presentation; an unruly tree has long ago breached the confines of its owner's yard, shading the entire sidewalk with its fruit-laden boughs. Perhaps because they are smudged and smeared by passing pedestrians, who tend to collect a seedy, gooey purple paste on the soles of their shoes, mulberries are not on </span><a href="http://www.nycgovparks.org/trees/street-tree-planting/species-list" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">the New York City Parks Department list of officially sanctioned trees</a><span style="text-align: center;">. Although there may be exceptions, the eager forager must therefore typically go in search of the overhanging branches of trees planted on private property. Although nobody has ever come out of their house and accosted me for stealing their berries, this possibility does give urban mulberry gathering an added frisson, the thrill of the trespass. My sense that Ruby's irrepressible grin would help take the edge off any such potentially unpleasant encounters was just another reason to bring her along.</span><br />
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Ruby enjoys the shade of a mulberry tree. Note the dense scattering of fallen fruit on the sidewalk behind her.<br />
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Ruby slumbers, while daddy harvests.</div>
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Ruby dozily guards the slowly filling mulberry pot with her stroller.<br />
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Here an aggressive mulberry has forced its branches through a chain-link fence, soiling the sidewalk with its sugary offerings.<br />
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A few days shy of ripe. (I picked the ripe ones before taking this photograph.)</div>
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Mulberries come in two varieties, purple, and white. In Red Hook, at least, trees with purple fruit far outnumber those with white fruit, but I did find a few of the latter variety, which are mixed in, above. I believe them to be sweeter, and more highly prized, but perhaps I just think that because they are more scarce.<br />
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A healthy bowlful, on the kitchen counter.<br />
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The same berries, after macerating overnight in two cups of sugar. Some people skim off the foam before they begin cooking down the jam, but I don't bother.<br />
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A case of half pints. I would estimate it took approximately 20 cups of berries to make these, and approximately two-and-a-half mulberry-picking man-hours.<br />
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An extra half jar, for immediate use.<br />
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TECHNICAL NOTES:<br />
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Most recipes for mulberry jam call for an obscene amount of sugar, as much as one cup per cup of berries. That's not mulberry jam, that's mulberry-flavored simple syrup. The problem is that even with low-sugar pectin, mulberry jam won't set very well unless the pectin reacts with a lot of very hot sugar. For me this isn't a problem; I don't care if the jam is runny. You are most likely going to be spooning this over vanilla ice-cream anyway. I used about three cups of sugar for every 8 cups of berries.<br />
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You need:<br />
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8 cups of berries<br />
3 cups of sugar<br />
1/2 cup of fresh or bottled lemon juice (you want this for the acid, not the flavor, so bottled is fine, and perhaps more consistent).<br />
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Ball Jars (about six half pints)<br />
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Wash your berries really well; they are, after all, urban berries, subject to soot and exhaust and I know some of them fell on the sidewalk when you were collecting them. Some nerdlins try to remove the tiny green stems. Really? They are very, very small, and I can't see them having a deleterious effect on the final flavor.<br />
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Mix the berries and the sugar in a bowl, then gently crush some of the berries with a potato masher or the back of a large spoon, to release some of the juice. Cover and refrigerate overnight. While the berries are macerating, get a good night's sleep.<br />
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Clean and then sterilize your ball jars in a boiling water bath. Put your jar lids to soak in the hot water once the jars are ready.<br />
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Put the contents of your berry bowl into a saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil over medium flame. Stir while simmering for a minute or five. (If you want to go the pectin route in hopes of firm and spreadable jam, follow the direction that came with your pectin and add the appropriate quantity now--probably a lot more sugar will be required....) Stir your lemon juice in well and turn off the heat.<br />
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Pour your jam into the jars, preferably with a canning funnel, and set the lids. Tighten your jar bands finger tight and process the jars in a boiling water bath (fully submerged) for ten minutes.<br />
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Spoon over vanilla ice-cream and enjoy.<br />
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