Pecha Kucha Night, devised and shared by Klein Dytham architecture, was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Read More >>

Professor Michael Heller’s book about the problems of property ownership and intransegence is at times interesting, and at times a pointless book. Its an argument that needs to be made, but its book form is up for question, and without a doubt, Heller’s solutions are not all that convincingly.

The Gridlock Economy:  How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives

Michael Heller

Basic Books:  July 2008

Heller’s book is a detailing of the many issues that exist for broad ownership within today’s western society. Specifically, Heller targets pharmaceuticals, bio-engineered products, music, and landed property, and the property rights that have developed around these industries. His argument is that because ownership is so splinted around a product, or a path to a product, that incentives encourage groups to work against each other, to not product valuable goods.

His best example in my mind was the massive problem with commercial airlines in this country, the number

of planes delayed, the sometimes brutal nature of using airports. Yet he cites that no

new large airports besides Denver have been built since the 1970s. And that is because groups (citizens) around established airports have adapted NIMBY (not in my back yard) policies and refuse to allow expansion, new airports, or any sort of development.

Heller also has a very interesting take on the pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology and the innovations that is creating. His argument is that numerous university scientists and for profit companies are using each other ideas to create cures for cancer or disease, or whatever. However, they can’t bring their solutions to market because they don’t own all of the underlying science technology. They would have to buy the patents or pay usage rights to the owners, and because the trouble with getting that done, they often simply don’t go through the effort, depriving the world of cures. This is immensely tragic.

As I said before, Heller has good examples. However, I come away from the book wondering if the problems he cites can be solved, moreover, I very much doubt the world he envisions would be better than ours. Property rights in America are sacrosanct; we have seen this be upheld in reaction to the New London ruling.

In the end, Heller doesn’t succeed at convincing me his solutions will solve the problems he has found.

Two Melons out of Five.

Michael B Oren was recently appointed to be Israel’s ambassador to the US. Born in America but having spent much of his life in the Middle East and still living there today, he should provide an excellent view point on how to judge America’s interactions with the Middle East and most importantly, what we can do to change our image their and get our priorities solved.

Oren is a noted historian, most famous for his book Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. I have not read that book. And in the end, I did not read the entirety of Oren’s latest effort either. Because I gave up after about 100 pages. The book did not engage me. I felt bored. His stories of the evangelists who first ventured to the middle east and their difficulties there were somewhat interesting, but the style, the story, and the concept just did not capture me. He was developing the themes and the history of America’s engagement of the Middle East. But he wasn’t getting there quick enough for me, and the writing style wasn’t holding me close. I took it back to the library and dived into other books that I was much more interested in reading.

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present

Michael B Oren

WW Norton, 2007

One Melon out of Five.

Because I might pick it up some day later. But really, go find a book you are interested in reading elsewhere. This one isn’t necessary or even that great.

Christopher Hibbert’s Garibaldi:  Hero of Italian Unification is another example of why libraries and brick and mortar bookstores can never be replaced by online retailers. In fact, its an example why libraries have such an great value that even Borders or Barnes and Noble can match. You can read a book that you don’t necessarily want or need to read and would never ever purchase.

Garibaldi:  Hero of Italian Unification

Christopher Hibbert

Palgrave Macmillan:  2008

Hibbert wrote a biography of one of the more interesting people I could imagine, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi was an Italian, who was banished from Italy for leading an insurrection, left for South America where he played a critical role in the independence of Uruguay and then returned to Italy, where he lead a series of unification attempts in Italy, often with the help of more political influential leaders while he saw himself as the military leader.

Garibaldi is that unique character in that he is seen as a spectacularly successful guerrilla military leader, achieving a mythical quality by his compatriots and the peasants who he claimed to be leading/serving. Hibbert’s books traces Garibaldi’s exploits after his return to Italy. He only touches on Garibaldi’s tours in South America when it has direct impact on an event in Italy, such as the death of his wife (who was from South America) or when former comrades joined his banner.

In the end, this book is interesting, and I’m better off for having read it, but its very specific focus on Garibaldi is limiting. It talks very little of the broader picture that is going on throughout Italy, the different unifaction drives that are taking place in the disparate regions and cities. It gives rather short change to Giuseppe Mazzini and Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour (more commonly known as Cavour).

The most interesting part of the book to me is when Garibaldi and 1000 followers set off for Sicily to conquer the island and restart the push for unification after it had been stopped. Its a story of ridiculous faith in an extremely charismatic man, of amazingly poor training for his soldier who yet overcome a large, better trained, better armed force and in spite of some natives siding with the Bourbons. The story is so ridiculous and illogical, the characters all bigger than life and act with unseen motivations that could only be told by Neal Stephenson. And yet, Garibaldi succeeds.

As I said above, this is story about Garibaldi, not about the Italian Unification. If you are new to the history, as I was, this is not the book to start. If you want to know much more about a thoroughly complex and interesting individual, then read this book. But find it at your library. Its not a book to reread. But its a fun one.

Three out of Five Melons!

Imagine you serve on an arts commission – lets say, the Pierce County Arts Commission.  The economy is so bad its not even fair to say “it’s in the toilet.”  Rather, it would be more accurate to describe the economy as “in the outhouse.”  Your annual budget has been cut beyond the bone so that what revenue you do receive goes exclusively to operating costs (rent, heating etc.).  To make matters worse, legal restrictions on said commission make it almost impossible for you to improve the situation.

You serve as an adviser to the county and therefore can make only recommendations or – more often – sign off on the recommendations of Pierce County Employees.

You are unable to seek additional sources of revenue outside the county council (eliminating any hope of private sector support).

Suddenly, there is bright glint on the horizon.  Could it be a change in the economy? A second NEA stimulus package that doesn’t give 50% of its money to Seattle and 50% to the state agencies in Olympia?  No, its CULTURAL CONSULTANTS…

I know what you’re thinking.  Why is the Pierce County Arts Commission wasting money hiring consultants when we could put that money to community use like strengthening Artist in Residency grants or mobilizing a bid to have Tacoma host the 2022 Summer Olympics?  Well the truth is I can’t honestly explain fully why the decision was made to do this, except that the way the budget is structured (seemingly with railroad ties) we do not have the authority to shift funding from one division to the other.  I can say, however, that my fellow commissioners and I were universally skeptical of this decision when it was first revealed to us, and promise to do our part to make sure the county gets its money’s worth out of this project.

Anyway, who are these consultants you might ask?

Marc Goldring, Associate Principal, WolfBrown

Claudia Bach, President, AdvisArts Consulting

Bonnie Berk, President, BERK and Associates

They’ve developed a three phase plan to combat cultural decay in Pierce County.

PHASE 1 (September – December)

Research and Community Engagement.  Cultural Mapping and Data Mining.

PHASE 2 (December – January)

Analyze and Synthesize.  Pitch critical issues report to a twenty person steering committee (which yours truly is not on).  More Community Engagement and Integrate feedback into a “Cultural Needs Assessment Report.”

PHASE 3 (February-April)

Still more Community Engagement before finalizing plan via the steering committee before unveiling the final draft…..

If this at all sounds ambiguous, your not alone.  Commissioner Beth Willis did a fine job of trying to nail down the consultants’ specific definitions of success and to present a mission statement, but it was clear that they had been hired to find solutions to problems that had yet to be fully articulated.

So we spent the rest of our last meeting offering “feedback” to our new friends.  The question was, imagine that in 2012, Pierce County had a vibrant and growing cultural economy.   What happened?

The following were my suggestions:

1)  The Pierce County Arts Commission had an official website with content that was under the supervision of an assigned commissioner – not staff.

2)  The Tacoma School District was no longer dependent on volunteers to provide arts education to its elementary and middle school populations.

3)  Pierce County had somehow expanded the 1% for Art program to the private sector to include commercial real estate above a set assessed value.  (Additionally, it would be nice it we could revise the 1% for art program to include improvement on existing structures rather than the one-time payment of newly constructed government building – of which relatively few exist.)

4)  The county council had a 5:2 Democratic Majority.

Other members discussed the need to develop arts apprentice programs so students graduated with not only artistic interests and aptitudes but also vocational skills that could enable them to start earning money immediately.

You can join the discussion regarding what exactly Pierce County’s Artisistic Needs are by emailing your thoughts to the following emails

claudia@advisarts.com

marc@wolfbrown.com

mbuchan@co.pierce.wa.us

KBENSON@co.pierce.wa.us

image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/spadgy/

Today I came across this article by Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all. In the following paragraphs, I’ll explain why I disagree with Gladwell’s analysis of Atticus and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Let me qualify my statements by saying I’m working in rural Maine right now, and I have no access to a To Kill a Mockingbird book. I did teach the novel a year-and-a-half ago to ninth graders, however, so I do remember the passages I’ll reference here.

Gladwell spends the first third of his article describing Jim Folsom, an Alabaman governor of the 1950’s–who had a “gradual and paternalistic” view toward bringing about racial justice, “a prodigious drinker, and a brilliant campaigner,” and a man who said “All men are just alike.” And then Gladwell claims that Harper Lee based Atticus Finch’s character off Jim Folsom, that Atticus was an “Old-style Southern liberalist” instead of a Civil Right’s activist, and that, therefore, Atticus shouldn’t be toted as a such a hero, since he wasn’t radical enough.

Although Atticus wasn’t a large scale Civil Right’s activist, he also was not the passive, stuck-in-social-mores “Old-style Southern liberalist” that Malcolm Gladwell claims. I’ll take a closer look at the To Kill a Mockingbird passages Gladwell cites in order to debunk Gladwell’s claims.

Gladwell says the scene in which Atticus quietly leaves court after the jury pronounces Tom Robinson guilty shows Atticus couldn’t be a Civil Right’s hero. “If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.”

Why must Gladwell write in dichotomies? To him, if Atticus isn’t Thurgood Marshall then he must be Jim Folsom. But does Gladwell forget that Atticus doesn’t bow under the jury’s verdict? As Atticus says, he knew the jury would convict Tom Robinson; only Jem, Atticus’s son, in his naivete and youthful inexperience with racism, thinks Atticus stood a chance. Even before he lost, Atticus planned to take the case to a higher court, and he has hope to win in that court. But then Tom Robinson escapes, and is shot and killed, and Atticus’s work abruptly ends. He would have taken his case further if he had the chance; he doesn’t have the chance, so he continues his work as a small-town lawyer. Lee didn’t portray a governor like Folson or a big-time Civil Rights activist; she portrayed a small-town lawyer who did his best against racial prejudices.

At the end of this same section Gladwell writes that, “All men [Atticus] believes, are just alike.” Atticus never says or implies he believes all men are alike; his closing speech in court suggests this simple statement is ludicrous. All people are not or never will be equal in ability, he says, but everyone should be equal before the law. I wish I had before me this excellent speech–to which Gladwell never even mentions. Here, Atticus appeals to Tom Robinson’s innocence before the law, not just the “hearts-and-minds” approach for which Gladwell derides Atticus. Atticus doesn’t tell the jury to let Robinson off because they’re good people, Atticus tells the jury to let Tom Robinson off because he has proved Tom innocent, so it’s their duty before the law.

Gladwell, amazingly, admits that Atticus stands up to racism. Yet he qualifies this praise by citing instances where Atticus admits that some men who are racists also have good traits. Gladwell also qualifies this praise by saying “What [Atticus] will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama. Folsom was the same way.”

To Kill a Mockingbird is a good novel, and a good novel has complex characters. Thus, Atticus can applaud how Walter Cunningham lives independently of WPA handouts and rebuke him for leading a potential lynch mob. Atticus’ attitude doesn’t mean he applauds Cunningham’s racism; it just shows how any human being, with some admirable qualities, can also be racist. Gladwell ignores one of the excellent messages in Lee’s novel–that a racist can lurk within even the best of us–and complains that Lee didn’t go far enough in her condemnation.

Folsom was a governor; if he only looked at one town he wouldn’t have been doing his duty. But Atticus was a lawyer in one town whose first priority was that town. Plus, he would have looked beyond that town if he’d had a chance to take his case higher. Gladwell argues that Folsom (and by a weak extension, Atticus) couldn’t see that “racism had a structural dimension,” that it must be changed at a political, not just personal level. Atticus started with the personal level, but he also worked in the political realm. He worked for justice among his neighbors and then in the courts, leading to the larger world.

Next, Gladwell argues that Atticus wants the jurors to “swap one of their prejudices for another,” i.e. Atticus wants the jurors to be prejudiced against the white trash Ewells whereas they would usually be prejudiced against a black man. Yes, the Ewells are white trash, but in the courtroom Atticus never once refers to, let alone derides, the Ewell’s social class. He sticks strictly to facts of the case, and he gains no pleasure–personally or in the context of his case–in humiliating the girl Mayella, who says Robinson raped her but was in actuality raped or beaten by her father. Galdwell cites other cases of the time period that use class as a way to argue for guilt or innocence, but he uses no evidence of Atticus doing so in To Kill A Mockingbird’s court case.

And lastly, when I was sick of Gladwell picking apart the novel for his own argument, he completely misconstrues the book’s ending. A kind, eccentric neighborhood recluse, Boo Radley, kills Bob Ewell when Ewell is trying to hurt, or even kill, Scout and Jem, Atticus’ kids. The Sheriff and Atticus decide not to bring the events to the limelight. Gladwell claims that this final event means, “Maycomb would go back to the way it had always been,” that the Sheriff and Atticus have “cut their little side deal” and “decided to obstruct justice in the name of saving their beloved neighbor (ie. Boo Radley) the burden of angel-food cake.” This conclusion may be cute word choice yet it’s untrue to the novel and the characters’ motivations.

If they took Boo to court, he’d get off in self-defense, but they decide he should be left alone. Boo Radley’s character is a parallel to Tom Robinson’s character. Both men have quietly done good to others and deserve to be left alone. Robinson is brought to the spotlight and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit; Boo would be brought to the spotlight and acquitted of an act of self-defense. The Sheriff and Atticus want to spare him of this exposure to which they couldn’t spare Tom Robinson. Furthermore, Maycomb can’t revert to the way it has been, because it never changed in the first place. It still doesn’t understand the best citizens among it, and it still needs people like Atticus and the Sheriff (who asked Atticus to take Tom Robinson’s case) to defend its  falsely accused and misunderstood people.

Gladwell’s last two sentences say that Atticus adopts “one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.” I’ll discuss each sentence separately.

Let me reiterate that Atticus never acts on social conventions; he looks at peoples’ actions and characters. Ewell both raped or beat his own daughter as well as tried to killed Atticus’ children. Boo Radley saved Atticus’ children’s life. Their social class was completely incidental to his views of the people. And who thought Boo Radley was a respectable white anyway? The whole town except Atticus wanted Boo thrown in an asylum and said that he sliced his own father’s leg open with scissors. Boo Radley is only deemed “respectable” in order to fit Gladwell’s argument.

And that last sentence–meant to be revelatory and stunning–doesn’t make sense. The first and the second potential functions of the book aren’t mutually exclusive. Even if the book did only tell us about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism, wouldn’t that be a way of “instructing us about the world?” (A very vague phrase, by the way.) The world of Alabama, in the fifties, placed limits on Jim Crow liberalism, and To Kill a Mockingbird, through specific characters and situations, could show these limits so that political reformers and others could make things how they should be. Although, as I’ve proved, Atticus wasn’t the passive man, ignorant of the outside world, that Gladwell thinks.

So, why was Atticus a hero? It would take someone more learned than I to scratch the surface of that complex character. But, as a teacher, I taught him as an admirable character because he treats people the same despite their race, social class, or differing viewpoints. Atticus has progressive views and hidden talents and yet, unlike Gladwell’s description of Folsom, Atticus uses these views and talents only when occasion arises, not vainly, nor superfluously. He is a man who works for family justice all the time and neighborhood and community justice and national justice when occasion arises. I could give multiple examples which prove these traits, but I’ll spare you here. Other real Civil Right’s heroes could have had different, maybe better, qualities, but these are Atticus’ fictional ones.

This complex, classic novel and novel’s hero deserves a more nuanced perspective than this article gives it and him.

On September 29th at 4pm, The Melon’s Electric Elliot will be among many other local Tacomans as judges in the Best Fall Soup Blind Tasting and Silent Auction at the 6th Ave Farmers Market.

The event, which is being put together by the 6th Ave. Farmers Market and South Sound Eats was put together as a charity event to raise money for Tacoma’s Bee Lady, aka Chanetta Ludwig, whose husband, Peter, died unexpectedly leaving behind seven children. That’s a lot of mouths to feed in this economy.

A plethora of local restaurants slated to contribute soups to this taste-test-o-rama (like Masa, Gateway to India and more). The winning soup will be put on rotation at Tacoma’s Infinite Soups. Best of all, you too can be a judge of the Best Soup in All of Tacoma by putting $10 towards the Bee Lady. Tickets are available through South Sound Eats.

Get out there and judge some soup.

Justin Fox, an economic columnist and blogger for Time, released a book in June 2009 detailing the rise of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. His tear down of the failures of theories is an interesting read but only for his writing ability. Fox does such an efficient job of pointing out the market’s inefficiencies and irrationality that the book seems almost like a study in restating the obvious. Fox succeeds at telling the story well by using clever anecdotes. However, the book is not a must read except for who are caught up in the stock market.