Grohmann Museum, that is. Taken sometime around 6:00 p.m. yesterday. The building is closed by 5:00, but a few of my colleagues and I are often still here after hours wrapping up our current work day and prepping for the next.
These videos have been around for over a year but didn’t receive as much attention as I’d have expected. Given the strong resemblance to “pranks” in their inherent trickery and potential for malicious intent, it seems appropriate to highlight them in an April 1 post.
First, from July 2017, is a video created by a research team from the University of Washington using software and previous footage of President Obama to create a speech that is completely fabricated.
Second, from April 2018, is a similar speech created by Jordan Peele to put the same point across to a wider audience in the form of a humorous “public service announcement.”
And finally—also from April of last year—is this TED talk from Supasorn Suwajanakorn, a member of the research team that created the original fake. In his 7-minute presentation Suwajanakorn explains how fakes like this one are created, how to tell a fake video from a real one, and what the implications of this technology may be.
I guess the punchline to this “prank” would be: If we believe that “seeing is believing” with any sort of digitally-vulnerable source, then the joke’s on us.
I showed Sean Baker’s The Florida Project last week in my honors film studies class, where the honors program’s theme, “The Power of Place,” is the central unifying subject of our course.
I really love this film and could not believe it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. Then again, one thing I’ve learned and wished I’d known much sooner in my life is the extent to which awards are arbitrary, political, and subject to both conscious and unconscious bias/prejudice/ignorance. In the case of this film, the subject matter (white welfare mothers and their children living a precarious existence in low-budget motels-cum-housing-projects at the margins of Disney World’s tourist complex) was not “deserving” enough to warrant attention, much less recognition or validation, from cinema’s oligarchs. That’s my personal take on their slight (which clearly somehow affronts me on moral grounds😂).
Anyway, one little moment from this movie that I find incredibly meaningful comes when six-year-old Moonee and her friend Jancey score a loaf of white bread from the church group that distributes food from the back of a van each week at the Magic Castle motel, where Moonee lives with her mother. The girls carry the bread to a nearby field and share a messy, sticky meal of jelly smeared over slices of bread with a spoon as they sit facing each other on what appears to be a tree branch, the jar resting between them on the bark.
“Kind of like that, don’t ya?” says Moonee. An old hand at getting free bakery items (and soft-serve ice cream cones via coins scrounged from strangers outside the Twistee Treat stand) Moonee is Jancey’s guide to the art of enjoying “found” treats.
“This is the best jelly I ever eated,” Jancey replies.
“Do you know . . . Do you know why this is my favorite tree?” asks Moonee, a closeup on her profile as she bites into a slice of bread.
“Why?” says Jancey.
“‘Cause it tipped over,” explains Moonee, licking jelly from the bread’s surface. “And it’s still growing.”
Then we cut to an extreme long shot of the tree, the two girls barely noticeable at first in the lower right-hand corner of the frame. Only as we process their presence do we realize how huge that tree is. And that, yes, it is indeed “still growing” despite its dire circumstances.
An image like a little gem of poetry.
The film is full of metaphors similar to this one. In fact, maybe the best way to deal with the movie’s unexpected final moments (uplifting? heartbreaking?) is to remember the lesson of Moonee’s tree.
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Then you might want to read this review of a new book that sounds so “me” it jumped straight to the top of my to-read list.
I love Phaidon, publisher of fabulous picture books for grownups. Like DK, my other fave picture-book publisher, Phaidon is headquartered in London. Their new book, Ruin and Redemption in Architecture (by Dan Barash), has a ship date of March 29 (tomorrow) if you order it directly from Phaidon. Very pricey to do that, though ($59.95).
Otherwise, you can order from Amazon, but the book won’t be released/shipped until April 17. At a cost of $37.39, though, a savings of almost 40%, I guess that’s worth the wait.
Doesn’t our Milwaukee seem slightly Santa Fe-ish here with the shadows? Last coffee run of the day, just before my 4:00 class. Doing film history this week, which given our quarter system, is more of a “greatest hits” of milestones, technical progress, and cultural reflection/influence than a true history. As always, I’m struck by the outsized influence just a few key people can have in the birth and development of an art form.
I walk the Grohmann Museum’s galleries and climb the atrium’s spiral staircase for exercise when my schedule is tight, starting from the lower level and working my way up to the rooftop garden before taking the elevator back down to the basement and doing it all over again.
Set to house Milwaukee School of Engineering’s AI program, Diercks Hall will open this coming fall. As I reached the top of the staircase during my rounds yesterday, the bright colors of construction workers’ vests and the yellow/green material covering the walls (insulation? vapor barrier? something else???) caught my eye across the finally snow-free sculpture garden. A cheerful sign that progress was achieved during the cold, gray days of our Wisconsin winter—and a reminder that “slow and steady” wins the race, even when conditions are far from ideal.
Proof of which also includes my “Grohman workout,” now that I think about it 🙂
Today is Tolkien Reading Day, a fact I discovered randomly while going through Twitter for a work project. For those of you/us who haven’t read The Lord of the Rings recently (or paid exceptionally close attention to the calendar of Middle Earth), March 25 marks both the day the One Ring was destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, causing the fall of Sauron, and also the beginning of the Fourth Age, ushered in as that ancient evil was extinguished.
Knowing just enough about the Middle Earth calendar to cause trouble for myself, I wondered if that was by the Shire Reckoning or the Stewards’ Reckoning and did a quick search. Not that it matters! Just because once I’d asked the question, I kind of wanted to know the answer. Although I didn’t totally track that down, I did find a website that takes its history of the Middle Earth calendar quite seriously, the Tolkien Gateway project/wiki, “the J.R.R. Tolkien encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” A pretty amazing website covering just about any topic you can think of drawn from the fictional world of Tolkien’s imagination.
I also found a website (Tea with Tolkien) devoted to “the works, life, and Catholic faith of J.R.R. Tolkien,” where a post titled “Why March 25th Might Be The Most Important Date of all History” explains the significance of that date in terms of its religious roots, with their juxtapositions of life and death that most likely inspired Tolkien’s decision to use it in The Lord of the Rings:
In The Spirit of Liturgy, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) explained, “Jewish tradition gave the date of March 25 to Abraham’s sacrifice… This day was also regarded as the day of creation, the day when God’s word decreed: ‘Let there be light.’ It was also considered, very early on, as the day of Christ’s death and eventually as the day of his conception..”
Are you a Tolkienite? For many years I reread The Lord of the Rings trilogy every year. As my children grew and my job expanded, that tradition fell by the wayside. It has now been about 15 years since my last reading.
So many books, so little time. Should I push aside some of the new titles on my “to read” list to make room for another reading of Tolkien? I think maybe yes, I will. After all, just like Heraclitus’s river, this reading would not be a mere repeat of what I’ve already done. I’m a different person now than I was 15 years ago, and the world is a different place. Reading the trilogy today would be an entirely new experience, with new understandings to gain, connections to make, and insights to form.
Here is my favorite poem from The Lord of the Rings. I can still vividly recall the delight my 13-year-old self found in its wordplay and mind-bending reversals. It is found in the trilogy’s first book, when the hobbits are fleeing the Shire with the ring but don’t know where they’re going or even have a full understanding of the evil they’re up against. This poem turns up in a note left by the wizard Gandalf telling the hobbits to trust Strider, the rough-looking and seemingly untrustworthy “Ranger of the North” who is actually Aragorn, descendant of ancient kings and legitimate ruler of the throne of Gondor and the race of Men.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
When I got home last night, I was amused to note that the remnants of our ice storm weeks ago had been uncovered by melting during the day. The photo is dark, but you can see the layer of ice that’s no longer covered by snow.
It reminds me of how some rocks are harder than others, which is how you wind up with formations like buttes.
Photo by Wolfgang Staudt, via Wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)
Temperatures rose even more overnight, and this morning when I left for work there was a swift-moving river of water rushing down the street toward the sewer grates.
Any Milwaukee School of Engineering graduate can tell you this: MSOE never closes for winter-related weather issues. I’ve taught there since 1996, and although we closed early a few times (no classes after 3:00 p.m.), the only time I can actually remember closing for snow was after a blizzard that struck the day after New Year’s Day in 1999.
We’re closed today.
Snow began falling last night and it’s still falling now. It’s supposed to continue till around 7 p.m. tonight. We went out and did one round of shoveling for a few hours earlier today. Round two can wait until it has finally stopped snowing.
Here’s the radar around 3:30 p.m. Still lots of snow waiting to pass over us.
And here is the larger view, just to show the storm that has already passed eastward.
We live in an older inner-ring suburb of Milwaukee, a city originally settled almost two-hundred years ago and only gradually becoming a seamless part of the overall Milwaukee metro area. Lots are larger than Milwaukee’s city lots, but way smaller than newer suburban lots farther out. Our driveway is long, running beside our house from the street to the detached garage at the rear of our property. Our yard is fenced (dogs), and a large gate crosses the driveway at the rear of our house. We have three vehicles in our family (mine, my husband’s, and my older daughter’s), none of which is ever parked in our one-car garage, mostly because opening and closing the gate is awkward and time consuming.
All of this is fine . . . until it snows. Then we have to clean off the cars, one by one, parking each in the street when it’s done so we can then back the next one down our long, skinny driveway to the sidewalk end, where we have enough room to brush the snow off. There’s no room farther up the driveway because it runs between our house and the neighbor’s garage.
And it’s not just brushing the snow off of each car. First we have to clear away the snow between the street and the closest vehicle. Then we back up that car and clear the snow. Put that car on the street (which hopefully has been plowed, and the city has been doing a great job of that in recent years, THANK YOU!!!) and then shovel between where the first car was and where the second car is. Back that car down the driveway to the sidewalk and brush it off. Put it on the street. Shovel our way up to the third car. Back that car to the sidewalk and brush it off. Pull all the cars back in, and now go around to the backyard to clear everything from the garage up to where the third car is parked.
Today my husband and daughter were shoveling and using the snowblower on the back end of this equation, while I worked alone out in front. Something about city lots that might not occur to someone who has never had to do snow removal on one is that you quickly run out of places to put the snow. After the first snowfall of the season, we’re fine. But after several significant storms, all the space near the driveway is taken up by ginormous snow mountains. So then we need to shovel or blow the snow up the sidewalk to the area of our yard farthest away from the drive.
And that’s where I was earlier today. I’d fill a shovel with snow from our driveway, then walk up our sidewalk about two-thirds of the distance to the next house on the street. Dump the snow on our front yard there, where the snow piles haven’t yet grown into mountains. Turn, with the now-empty shovel carried loosely across my body, to stroll back down the sidewalk to our driveway, where I’d get another shovel full of snow and carry it up the sidewalk to dump into that emptier area of our front yard.
Those return strolls are peaceful. Because I’m not using a snowblower, there’s no noise. I can look around at the snow silently falling and appreciate how beautiful it looks covering the branches of our birch in silver-white strips or bowing with the weight of fluffy white the evergreen branches of the tall yew that anchors our front porch.
This afternoon the thought occurred to me during one of my return strolls that I was a lot like Camus’ Sisyphus. Have you ever read that essay? Here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on it. Basically Camus uses the Greek myth of Sisyphus (and here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on that myth) to make a point about the absurdity of life and what makes it worth living when it’s all so pointless. If Sisyphus spends an eternity pushing his rock up a hill for no reason, never getting anywhere, never accomplishing anything, then what’s the point of his life? Why continue living?
And Camus says: because after Sisyphus has reached the top of the mountain only to see his rock tumble back down to the bottom, he has to make a return trip to the foot of the mountain to start pushing the rock uphill again. And during that walk back down the mountain, Sisyphus is able to have some time to himself, temporarily released from the burden of his endless task and given a chance to reflect and enjoy his surroundings. He is at peace.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The older I get, the less sustainable this snow-removal routine becomes. Plus, the day will come when neither daughter is here living with us to help out. I know something has to change. Maybe we need to replace our one-car garage (original to the nearly 100-year-old house) with a two-car garage. Maybe we need to move, either to a condo/apartment (with no shoveling needed) or to a house farther out (with loads of room on either side of the driveway to blow the snow; just zip, zip, zip up and back with a snowblower).
But for the moment, I try to remember Camus’ Sisyphus and use my return trips to be thankful for our home and for our vehicles and for the fact that I’m alive to enjoy the beauty of the falling snow 🙂
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Sometime last winter I began thinking about how nice it would be someday when I’m older to spend the colder months of the year in a warmer climate.
When I started casually thinking about where, I got it in my head that Flagstaff, Arizona, would be the perfect place. No logical reason, just the beautiful landscape and access to medical care and a college campus and other cool things like the Lowell Observatory. Arizona is warm, right? Don’t lots of people spend their winters there playing golf? Plus you can get to Flagstaff by Amtrak, and I’m a huge fan of rail travel.
So then I started following Flagstaff on Facebook and Twitter, etc. And guess what? It turns out that Flagstaff isn’t quite the “warmer climate” I envisioned.
Flagstaff’s first snowfall of the season was October 7th, while Milwaukee’s first real snowfall this year (not just a few flakes in the air, but actual snow on the ground) didn’t come until the end of November. According to an article in the Arizona Republic, Flagstaff averages 101.7 inches of snow every year, while Milwaukee gets less than half of that (only 46.9 inches, according to the Midwestern Regional Climate Center). In fact, Flagstaff has had several snowstorms this season already, but Milwaukee has seen mostly rain. We have no snow on the ground in my neighborhood, and it’s raining today.
While at an academic conference in Chicago last week, I checked the local forecast to see if I needed to wear my scarf and gloves outside my hotel. On a whim, I also took a look at Flagstaff’s forecast.
Flagstaff was colder than Chicago! As proof, here are the screenshots from my phone last Friday.
The moral of my little story? Well, just this, I guess: It’s important to do your homework and NOT make big decisions on the basis of assumptions. I do look forward to spending time in Flagstaff at some point. But I don’t think it’s ever going to be my winter home 🙂
Grohmann Museum, that is. Taken sometime around 6:00 p.m. yesterday. The building is closed by 5:00, but a few of my colleagues and I are often still here after hours wrapping up our current work day and prepping for the next.
Katherine Wikoff 