Small Town Wren

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I’m pretty late to the game on this one. But please forgive me; I didn’t have Logo until quite recently.

I’ve got to say it: this show is amaaaaaaazing! I spent my afternoon off watching the first two episodes of the current season. Oh the magic of DVRs. It really makes me miss Lucky Cheng’s in New York and more than one NYU anthropology professor. Though I have yet to see a drag queen who could best my friend Drue from high school. He looked better in a dress than most women. He just flat out looked better than most women.

I’m a sucker for camp.

I had the pleasure of going to the opening of The Neo-Futurists most recent main stage production: I AM A CAMERA this evening. It was an interesting, often ethereal performance trying to understand the crossroads of identity and photographs. While there were moments that seemed a little long, this was, perhaps, intentional. However, there were moments of pure beauty to balance it out. At one point, the production took on the qualities of a dance piece while exploring sections of projected photos using pieces of paper. At other times, the actors–Jeremy Sher and Caitlin Stainken–are forced to ask and answer questions using only a small range of photographs.

I really enjoyed the evening. It was a thought-provoking night that posed more questions than answers, and I propose that it is better this way. How can actors tell us who we are? They can only tell us who they are, and, in fact, that is what they spent the evening doing. Greg Allen asks us who we are and that is his thesis. In reality, he is asking us who will we be.

I AM A CAMERA runs through March 13, 2010 on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Tickets can be bought through Brown Paper Tickets.

I have finished a book, and granted it wasn’t the book I planned on finishing next, but I finished a book no less. This one I had the pleasure to read for class, but that doesn’t mean reading Greta Nagel’s The Tao of Teaching was boorish work. The fact that I read it in two days–two busy days–is endorsement enough.

Part of my enjoyment came from the fact that I have had a long standing interest in Taoism. I had the pleasure of having the Tao Te Ching introduced to me by a very proficient scholar while in high school. I recall being 16 and reading aloud with gusto in my dormitory’s lobby. It was total revelation.

In an adaptation of her thesis, Nagel relates the 81 “main” ideas of Taoism to their application in the classroom and attitudes of teachers. It is interesting as my wise scholar mentioned earlier often espoused that Taoism was knowledge without knowledge, knowing without knowing. To transpose it to the structure that by definition deals with knowledge is such a wonderful idea, and also intrinsically Taoist.

Of course, one does not have to be a scholar of Tao to appreciate Nagel’s writing. Admittedly, my own studies have been lacking in the past year or so. She makes everything accessible, which is one of her strengths. She encourages the very intuition that bureaucrats have fought hard to kill in teachers of late. That intuition is the very thing that makes good teachers excellent.

I love alternative views of the traditional classroom, likely because my experiences as a public school student were often full of woe. A major premise of anthropology is that diversity is far more advantageous than homogeny. The standardization of the contemporary classroom is the downfall of education. We should embrace the examples Nagel uses, even the ones that have been legislated out of existence.

I needed turbinado sugar this weekend, which prompted a visit to Trader Joe’s.  I happened to find a bottle of wine.

Hmm, can we get a close up on that label?

Oh, right. Chariot Gypsy 2007. Obviously. Because that’s not problematic at all.

Being gypsy myself, I had to buy it. Being that it was only $6, I can hardly complain about being gypped, now can I?  Much like how a friend’s (black) mother collects racist images of “them negroes,” I find myself drawn to ill thought out representations of gypsies.

I have to say: I’ve seen worse. While this lady does have the headscarf, earrings, and giant mole, her lack of prominent and absurd gold jewelry is somewhat refreshing.  But let’s not kid ourselves, this woman is wearing a lot of odd ice, none of which is based in fact and a lot of which is based in racism and stereotype. Awsm!

On to the wine itself: I was surprised it had a cork. My usual Trader Joe’s pick lost its cork for a screw cap about a year ago.  It was a wet red, which is about all I’m qualified to say. It was a bit sweet and I’d probably drink it again. Coming from me about a red, that’s a lot. Reds tend to be my least favorite kinds of wine.

But back to the racism: haven’t we learned over hundreds of years of colonialism and all those civil rights marches and what not, that it’s not okay to market miscellaneous shit based on racist images of subjugated people and their history?  What if this was Chariot Jews 2007?  Granted that would have excellent pun potential, but that doesn’t make it an okay thing to do.