I’m currently reading a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World (2008).

The main point of the book is that modern parents tend to over-schedule their children and otherwise deprive them of time for creative play.  For instance, many parents are letting their children get addicted to two-dimensional screens (television and computer screens) and many of us are inundating our children with toys that deprive them of creative play, toys that “aren’t designed with the goal of engaging children for years, or even months.  They are designed to sell.”  The net result is that creative play “is in danger of extinction.”

Why is this loss of time for creative play important?  Because children use play to cope with “the greatest of human challenges, including life-threatening illness, death and loss.”  Play is much more than momentary fun.  It is “a fundamental component of living a meaningful life and essential to mental health.”  Linn was motivated to write her book to encourage readers to ensure that their children are given ample opportunities for creative play.

It seems as though Linn’s subject matter, creative play, might also extend to adults in a critically important way.  Such application would have the potential for shedding light on religious rituals.  Although Linn’s book doesn’t dwell on this possibility, it is certainly acknowledged.

Linn speaks of the transitional objects of childhood, the blankets, bears and other “cuddlies” that are crucial for a child’s comfort.  Sometimes they “seem to be even more important than actual parents because children cannot bear to be parted from them.” As Lynn observes, children invest these objects with “special meaning.”  Such objects help children feel safe.  The children “create the blanket’s meaning.”  Furthermore, the power of these transitional objects flourish “because adult caretakers accept the importance of their significance to the young owners.”  (75)

The phenomenon of transitional objects is nearly universal.  Such objects “live at the intersection of inner experience and outer reality.”  Lynn notes that as children grow up, these transitional objects “fade in importance.”  At the same time, however,

the psychological space they occupy remains and [it's] in that space that creative play takes place.  Our childhood experience of what D.W. Winnicott calls “transitional space” as children affords us access as adults to a rich panoply of experiences that are neither wholly internal nor wholly external, but somehow both.  Religious and patriotic symbols, like a cross, a star of David, or a flag, for instance, have meaning beyond their physical properties that vary depending on your experience.

Though the growing children eventually put their stuffed animals away, these animals “teach” the children symbolic meaning.

What remains, for the rest of our lives, is the capacity to experience a kind of psychological space that is simultaneously internal and external, real and not real, me and not me–a transitional space.  In that space, once occupied by beloved transitional objects, people continue to assign personal, powerful meaning to objects from the outer world and to mold and shape these objects to give tangible shape to dreams, ideas and fantasies.  [I]n play, not unlike artists, we express real feelings by using ideas or objects that are symbols of real objects.

Based on Winnicott’s account of transitional objects, Lynn concludes that “we play in the service of a dream.” (80)

It doesn’t take much imagination to see religious and governmental rituals as extensions of the creative play of childhood. The objects of a ritual can be seen as a “transitional objects” that bridge the gap between often times disturbing real-life experiences and one’s hopes and fantasies.

I’m not claiming that all religious believers engage in rituals because they are in some way “infantile” or as a conscious attempt to extend childhood play into their adult lives; rather, they might be (unconsciously) extending the important benefits of childhood play into their adult lives.

I believe that people are “religious” for numerous reasons, and many “religious” people are not much into rituals.  On the other hand, it would seem as though the creative play of childhood could enable children to engage in religious or civic rituals. Or, at least, the lack of creative play as children might cause adults to struggle to understand religious and civic rituals.

The objects of  adult rituals  might serve to bridge the gap between what actually exists in the world of adults and the things for which  religious adults hope and dream.

I’m not finished with Susan Linn’s book yet.  I’ll be looking to see whether she comments further on this potential adult application of the function of creative play.  I would also be interested in knowing whether adults who get lots of time for creative play as children are more (or less) likely to feel fulfilled when participating in religious and civic rituals.

When we think of skies, we often think of blue sky with white clouds. As adults we often forget to appreciate the natural beauty available to us simply by looking up.

There are many other types of skies, of course. For the past ten days, we’ve had lots of turbulent weather here in the Midwest (St. Louis). We’ve seen thunderstorms almost every day. We’ve also see lots of sun, and we’ve seen many of combinations of bright sun while new storms were brewing. It makes for some spectacular skies. I couldn’t help noticing and photographing the dramatic cloud formations.

The photo above is actually a stitching together of three photos, looking to the north from a midtown St. Louis overpass. If you click on it you’ll get a much better view (you are invited to click on any of these, to enlarge them).

The above photo was taken by Charlotte, my seven year old daughter, who exclaimed that the huge clouds dwarfed the airplane.

Charlotte took this one too:

She snapped the photo out of the car window, which you can see from the blurred telephone pole.

I took the photo below outside my office window today. The formations changed so dramatically and so often that I found myself glancing out the window repeatedly. It made me feel like a kid that I was taking the time to notice the vista. It’s like living in a lava lamp.

If it weren’t that we so often have the chance to see spectacular skies, we’d stop taking them for granted. If they occurred only once each year, we’d probably gather outside to stare at the skies on that special night–we’d probably even create a holiday for that day where all of us would show up with our cameras. We’d sing special cloud songs and eat special cloud-watching food.

Truly, the colors, the formations and the movement make Fourth of July fireworks look amateurish.

Maybe we should even cancel the fireworks this Fourth of July to remind each other that we can also be peaceful people. We really could start to celebrate our peaceful moments as well as our war-like history. And we can do it with naturally-occurring glorious backgrounds many days each year.

I’m not qualified to comment on the technical skills or artistry, but this “popper” performance was fun/bizarre/engaging/memorable.  Quite an unusual dance, to say the least.

If you want to know more about the performer, Robert Muraine, you can visit his Myspace page.

This is a most unusual opening to a dance, involving precision moves.

What are we to make of this latest flap over a teen icon revealing herself as a potentially sexual being?

I was only dimly aware of Hannah Montana till the Vanity Fair scandal (if scandal is the word). Now it seems I can’t get away from her, which is, of course, the goal of marketing—to make something inescapable for the general public. There are elements of the incident that require less froth and more examination. The accusations of “whose idea was it in the first place and how was Mylie Cyrus manipulated?” are loud and in many ways naive.

First off, Hannah Montana is a Disney product. I don’t think we’re yet quite comfortable with the idea of a person—even a fictional one—being a “product” like a box of soap or a car, but this is indeed what the character is. Designed, engineered, and road tested, Hannah Montana is a money-making machine for Disney and the various participants in the show and franchise.

Pause for a moment and consider: Disney.

It is difficult to imagine a marketing machine that is better at what it does. Which means the chances of something being done with one of its properties that it (a) doesn’t know about and (b) doesn’t approve are next to zero. Especially when you add to that:

Vanity Fair.

Big magazine, famous magazine, a magazine people in show business lust to get into. In the vernacular, Lot A Bank there.

So we’re talking about two major corporate entities, huge public presence, who are involved—without a doubt contractually—in a presentation of a property. Again, the oddness of talking about a person as property is unsettling, but this is a show business idiom quite common. Agencies discuss “properties” all the time and they’re talking about musicians, actors, artists.

Throw into the mix Annie Liebowitz, who is arguably iconic herself. From the early days at Rolling Stone up through the present, Annie is a public figure. Meaning that, especially “in the business”, everyone knows what she does. She would also have been involved in the arrangements between Disney and Vanity Fair.

So far so good. Everyone knew what was going on.

Now, the photoshoot was crowded. Lots of people there. Including Mylie Cyrus’s parents. Not sure who mom is, but dad—Billie Ray—is an entertainment industry insider. He’s been around a long time. He has survived quite well. He knows the ropes. He is not a “stage dad” in the sense of not knowing what’s going on.

I’ve laid this out at some length to show how utterly unlikely it is that the photographs of 15-year-old Mylie in a pose more appropriate to a 20-something were an accident. That no one knew what was happening. It’s not like this was done in a basement studio, digitally, and the shots immediately posted to the web. Disney would have had to clear the shots. I cannot imagine it wasn’t in the contract that someone at Disney would get to look at them and say, one way or the other, whether they could be published. Of the two, Disney is by far the bigger gorilla—Vanity Fair was not likely to hold them over a barrel.

So what then is the Big Deal? And, if this is so inappropriate, why was it allowed?

Control over a teen-age superstar is doable. Look at Leann Rimes. Her burgeoning sexuality, while certain present and eminently marketable, was not “unleashed” till she was over 18. Her parents kept a handle on it. We can doubtless find other examples. Reese Witherspoon. Jody Foster. Helen Hunt. Even earlier, Annette Funicello.

(Though Annette is a curiosity—she never really stopped being a Mousketeer. Her emergent sexuality—blatant and impossible to get around—somehow failed to take her into “adult” consideration. Management may have been too tight and she remained—popularly—the girl on the beach who never went past the first kiss. This happens—actresses who have the audacity to “grow up” and find themselves trapped in an adolescent image. Sally Fields is a case in point. She went from Gidget to The Flying Nun, completely bypassing a mature sexual phase, and nearly remained stuck with it. She made a minor film—I forget the title—in which she appeared nude. In an interview, she admitted that the decision to do so was calculated to shatter the Gidget/Flying Nun image so she could then be taken seriously as an adult actress. The tactic might be questionable to some, but the result was a critically-successful career.)

Managing the property is the whole game here. And Hollywood (and Nashville, etc) have a problem with starlets like Mylie. Once they establish them as an icon for preteens to teens—what is called “tweens”—what do you do when they grow up and start acting like women?

Age here isn’t the issue. Let’s face it, sexuality strikes in the teen years, some sooner than others, and the limelight of a successful career seems somehow to advance the timetable. We are all-too-familiar with the meltdowns in instances where the transition is, well, bungled—Lindsey Lohan and Britney Speers are the poster girls of crash and burn. (more…)

I previously wrote that I bought a little camera that I try to take everywhere. Having that camera nearby forces me to look more carefully at the startling sights that are everywhere. Many of those sights are the postures and expressions of people, but privacy concerns keep me from freely photographing or sharing the photos of strangers (I haven’t given up somehow accomplishing this!). To this point, I’ve focused on taking photos of nature and architecture. This morning, my wife Anne and I took a walk in Forest Park (in St. Louis, Missouri). In the morning light, we came upon some startling bursts of color, causing me to take out my little camera.

When I look at biological wonders, I sometimes imagine standing with Charles Darwin and learning from him. That’s how I felt a few weeks ago at an orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Even before Darwin published his findings there were various levels at which one could appreciate nature (it’s beautiful, it’s functional, it inspires poetry). Darwin added an explosive new level, however. Such was his impressive legacy. Before I appreciated Darwin’s contributions, my attention to plants was limited. But now I see functionality embedded in the beauty–there is now so much more to behold [I was also inspired last year when I viewed David Attenborough's Private Life of Plants and Life in the Undergrowth (focuses on bugs). These are both spell-binding must-watch collections].

There are life and death wars going on out there among the plants and bugs. The thing that first caught our eye this morning was this flowering fruit tree. It was truly exploding with blossoms in its effort to propagate.

It’s beauty was “fractal,” in that it offered similar views from different distances. Anne especially enjoyed the contrast between the blossoms and the blue sky behind them. She took the photo below.

I was most fascinated by the sex organs of the trees (see below photo–parental discretion advised).

As we strolled away from this tree I noticed the expansive patches of clover that were lit up by a huge ball of nuclear explosions 93 million miles away. I took this picture to illustrate a quirky story: I have repeatedly seen something (actually many things) that I can’t explain. This particular story has to do with my wife Anne. She has the uncanny ability to spot a four-leaf clover while walking briskly. I’ve seen her do this several dozen times. When walking, she will stop suddenly, maybe back up a step or two and then reach down to pick up a four leaf clover. The first few times I witnessed this, I suspected that it might be a trick, but it wasn’t. She can really do it.

What makes it more amazing (or, perhaps, more believable) is that Anne’s mother can also do this. They are both gifted with incredibly sharp long-distance vision, but that really doesn’t explain this ability. For most people, finding a four leaf clover requires getting down on one’s knees and carefully and slowly fingering through the individual plants. When I ask Anne how she does it, she says “I just see them. Four leaf clovers stand out. (more…)

I was visiting a friend of mine in Vienna for the Easter holidays. Here are two things I did which I liked a lot - visiting the Karlskirche (St. Charles’s Church) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History). If you ever go to Vienna I recommend that you explore them, too (the Arcimboldo exhibition in the museum lasts until 1 June 2008).

Karlskirche:

The Karlskirche is supposed to be the most beautiful baroque church in Vienna, but that is not the reason why I liked it so much and feel the need to tell you about it. No, the reason why it excites me is the panorama lift that takes you to vertiginous heights to give you a really great view of the fresco paintings on the ceiling (also over the city, but with all the security wire netting occluding and limiting the view it was not really worth it). Usually, a normal visitor will never have the opportunity to see these paintings at such a close distance, but here the scaffolds that had been used for previous restoration works had been preserved to take visitors upstairs (not sure how long they will stay though, seems like they have been around for a while though).

The lift takes you to a platform, from there you have to take stairs (they look the same as the stairs in the first picture ) to reach the top. Let me just tell you, if you’re not a fan of heights and standing on a scaffold that surely was stable more or less, but well, not as stable as a nice stone staircase, you would also get the butterflies… (more…)

“There is no evidence whatsoever that flowering plants evolved.”  

Answers In Genesis

I can understand this resistance to believing that orchids evolved without the help of God-the-Artist.  I understood this resistance while strolling through an extraordinary display of orchids today at the Missouri Botanical Garden.   

It was like looking at fireworks.  Just when you thought you had seen it all, you would see yet another dazzling package of color and shape.  Why would “Nature” waste such time on crafting such masterpieces?  For those primed by a religious upbringning, the emotions would compel the thought that flowers of this type must be no less than “God’s” aesthetic gift to Humankind.

Such thinking, of course, is prevalent among creationists.  Prevalent and wrong.   Not that orchids sculpted by natural selection are any less stunning in appearance that those that might have been crafted by an omniscent deity.   They are what they are.  They are compelling beings, those orchids.  They are beautiful and they are alive.   And they can be appreciated by anyone, of any world view, who comes to view them.  I imagine that, today, many creationists lined up with those who are convinced by evolutionary theory, all of them appreciating the orchids. 

Viewing this orchid display reminded me of Darwin’s writings regarding the many versions of finches Darwin observed on his trip to the Galapagos.   Regarding those finches, Darwin concluded that, in geographical isolation, the various species of finches evolved from a small number of common ancestors so that each species was thus modified to suit “different ends.”  Darwin’s conclusion that the species of finches specialized due to geographical isolation was key to the development of his theory of natural selection.  

Darwin studied orchids carefully after publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859.  Darwin later published a book called On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects and the Good Effects of Intercrossing.  Rather than argue that the beauty of orchids was God’s effort to please humans, Darwin argued that the various species of flowers were honed by natural selection to attract specific types of insect cross-pollinators.   Incredibly, there are more than 22,000 known species of orchids.

The following excerpt, published by Nature (on the PBS site) notes the significance of orchids to Darwin:  (more…)

For its entire existence as a sport bodybuilding has struggled to gain acceptance with a mainstream audience. Some say it never will. They say that the freakishly exaggerated physiques of bodybuilders will never be applauded by the general public. And so, bodybuilding remains a cult sport. Looked down upon by many as a freak show.

As hard as it is for male bodybuilders to gain acceptance as legitimate athletes, it’s even harder for female bodybuilders. The male bodybuilder creates an exaggeration of the male form. They have taken the shape and the characteristics of male-ness and pushed it to its limits. They give the impression of being a “super-male”. Though freakish to some, at least it’s consistent with their gender.

The problem for very muscular women is that as they become more muscular the general public sees them as becoming less feminine and more manly. This has been a growing problem for women’s bodybuilding since the early nineties as advances in training and chemistry have enabled female bodybuilders to far exceed their natural muscle building capacity. Debates about “feminity vs masculinity” in female bodybuilding are an eternally hot topic on bodybuilding forums around the world and discussed with the same fervor that “God vs no God” is debated here on Dangerous Intersection.

Into this fray jumps celebrated photographer Martin Schoeller. Martin’s latest project is a series on female bodybuilders that is being exhibited at the Ace Gallery starting in March. Known for his stark brand of portraiture, Martin’s work has a frankness that is often controversial. Presidents, royalty and celebrities have all sat in the glare of his harsh lighting. The result has been described as honest or raw; real or unflattering, depending upon your point of view.

Martin’s art intrigues me as a documentary filmmaker. Martin attempts to get a photograph of the “real” person by removing all artifice and getting them to let down their guard. He does this by stripping away every crutch that photographers, the photographed, and we as viewers have come to expect. There are no costumes, no props, no scenery, no backdrop, sometimes no makeup, no sense of place or time or fashion. What is left is deceptively simple and leads people to think that it is cheap or easy. It is not, because the hard part comes when he then attempts to disarm his subject, relax them and catch them off guard. A tactic that I endeavor to employ every time I shoot footage for my films.

True to form Martin photographs the bodybuilders when they are at their most vulnerable. Spirited away in the midst of their contests before they know their placings, some of them literally right off the stage, the women are exhausted, insecure and dehydrated. He then strips them of their last crutch…he does not allow them to pose. Asking a bodybuilder not to pose is like asking a singer not to sing, a dancer not to dance or a politician to be silent. There is nothing left to do but be yourself. (more…)

Just one word - fabulous.

The first time I watched the video I thought, “What can you expect from a picture drawn with MS Paint?” But watch how it unfolds.

Other works of his that I also like: here or my personal choice for president. Or check out the videos where he paints with ketchup and french fries or chocolate syrup and a spoon. I also need to check out the videos where he teaches how to draw.

Click here for a slide show of the works of Spencer Tunick.   Incredibly ambitious, delightful, fun, thoughtful.  Certainly something you don’t see every day. 

And how interesting that so many people are so willing to sign up to participate.  What does that say?

A few months ago the English alternative rock band Radiohead released their long awaited album “In Rainbows” as a free download, leaving it up to the fans to decide what they would pay, if anything at all.

As someone who has had the difficult and expensive experience of distributing physical copies of my documentaries on DVD I can tell you that it was with great anticipation that I viewed this experiment. I was surprised and a little disappointed to find that only 40% of those downloading actually paid for it.

I recall as a young man buying vinyl records for about $5 a piece and watching as the price slowly went up and up, hitting about $12 before giving way to CDs which eventually topped out at around $16 to $18 a pop. These days, with iTunes selling individual songs for $.99 and most albums for about $9.99, I feel like I am getting a bargain. Of course, I still have the expense of having to burn my own CDs to play them in my car, not being hip enough to own an MP3 player.

Still, I find myself wondering what I would pay for some of my favorite music if given the opportunity to decide on my own. The temptation to take it for free would be strong but I am smart enough to know that if enough people do that the ability to place our own value on music would disappear, as it has done with Radiohead. The band has since retracted its “free or whatever” offer, prompting some to accuse the band of chickening out as they saw potential revenue slip through their fingers.

In the band’s defense, Radiohead’s leader Thom Yorke contends that it was always an experiment, not a business model for themselves or anyone else, and that it had run its course. (As of December 31st “In Rainbows” has become available on iTunes and the CD can be purchased through the usual outlets.)

However, a nagging question still remains. Now that music is being freed from the cost of being physically reproduced on disk, how much should we pay for it?

What is music worth to you?

As some of you may know, bloggers like us are destroying “our economy, our culture, and our values.” At least according to one Andrew Keen, who also says we are “betraying Judeo-Christian ethics,” but we knew that already.

The Knackered Hack has an interesting response to Mr. Keen, recalling a time not so long ago, in a country that no longer exists:

…Keen’s attack on the amateur and self-published is, in my view, a little bit Stalinistic.

I’d like to contrast the world he defends, where what we watch, hear and experience should be mediated by professionals, with one still in the recent memory where to self-publish was a political and democratic act and a gesture of defiance.

Samizdat, (Russian for self-publishing) was the process whereby some of the most important literary and politicial texts of the Soviet era were preserved and circulated. Each recipient of one of these precious, dangerous texts would make additional copies, either handwritten or typed with carbon paper, and pass them on.

Later, when cassette tape players became available, another culture of magnitizdat grew up as a clandestine distribution network for singers like Vladimir Vysotsky, whose material was too edgy for the official state recording company.
Which brings us (again following the lead of the Knackered Hack) to Viktor Tsoy of the Russian band Kino, the most famous rock star you’ve probably never heard of, and certainly the only internationally famous rock star who never gave up his day job (as a boiler operator in an apartment building; you can see him at it here.)

The Knackered Hack writes:

Tsoy and Kino are noteworthy for a number of reasons in the history of 20th century culture, and arguably much more iconic than all those indie bands that we neurotic boy-outsiders modelled ourselves after in our youths — those that were invariably selling out while pretending not to.

(Aside: The part about neurotic boy-outsiders resonates with me, as a former girl outsider. I distinctly remember buying my first Talking Heads album - More Songs About Buildings and Food - at a record store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska - about the most uncool place imaginable to buy such a record, now mostly known as the scene of a shooting rampage.
The record store clerk was impressed with my choice, I remember, and flirted with me. This was the first hint I had that a certain taste in music might be a possible key to success with really existing boys, as opposed to the ideal boy of my dreams, who hung out at CBGB’s and generally lived in a realm of mythic coolness beyond my reach.
Aside within aside: My record collection was later confiscated by my parents - the concept of a band named the Sex Pistols was just too much for them. If you want to get a picture of what’s it like to believe that rock and roll can save your mortal soul, while living with parents who believe only Jesus can save souls and that the electric guitar is the Devil’s invention, think Lane and Mrs. Kim on the Gilmour Girls, but without the fixation on health food. )

Back to Viktor Tsoy. Tsoy was born in 1962; his mother was Russian, his father Korean. The years of his musical career, from the time he started writing songs at seventeen, to his tragic death in 1990, coincide with a momentous period in Russian history. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; 12 years later the Soviet Union collapsed. (Something to think about, Bush & co.) (more…)

Last night I saw The Da Vinci Code for the first time.  I had read the first chapter of the book some time ago and frankly it so did not capture my imagination that I haven’t picked it up since.  Years before, I’d read Holy Blood Holy Grail, the book upon which most of Brown’s novel seems based, although the ideas in both have been around for a long, long time.

What did I think of the movie?  It was entertaining.  It moved well.  One might say it is almost (almost, not quite) a Thinking Person’s Indiana Jones.  The photography is gorgeous, the settings cool, and I am never disappointed by Ron Howard’s direction.  Tom Hanks character seems a bit too restrained at times, but this is a minor quibble.

I am frankly impressed that they had the nerve to follow the argument all the way through.  The whole notion of Jesus’ sex life drives many people into spasms of irrational anxiety and vehement denunciation.  It is not just that the early church—from the time of Constantine on—exhibited a profound and evolving misogyny, but that the very idea of sexual intercourse itself elicits a kind of systemic, reflexive revulsion I find baffling to say the least.  I mean, if it were only the subjugation of women at issue, then the notion that Jesus might have used them like kleenexes (much as most charismatic cult leaders have done and continue to do) should raise no passions.

No, it is beyond that.  It is a rejection of sex as a valid exercise between men and women.  Jesus and the Apostles become not just the ultimate He-Man Woman Haters Club, but a paradigm for an asceticism echoed down through time as some sort of ideal state for the true christian.

It falls apart, though, in the subsequent perversion of the Ideal in the very subjugation and profound misogyny that Jesus himself seems to have had no time or patience for.  Later generations of church leaders found that in order to reject sex, they had to demonize the very thing that kept pulling them away from that Ideal—the desirability of women.

(I’m speaking here in terms of heterosexuality, but the same applies to all forms of sexual intimacy.  If it was sinful for a man to lust after a woman, at least such lust was discussable, while homosexual lust brooked no dialogue whatsoever, just condemnation.)

The difficulty of this part of the standard operating procedure of christianity appears unique among the other ideals sought—honesty, humility, generosity, forgiveness.  Frankly, none of them are as difficult to achieve and live by as chastity.

The fact that sexual love can be so magnificent, so transcendent, so Other Worldly makes me wonder—has always made me wonder—if this were even an issue for Jesus.  I seriously doubt it was.  I seriously doubt it was part of his ethic.  He seems to have regularly chastised his disciples for being “boys” when it came to letting the women in as equals.  Doubtless there was a lot of competition among the Twelve for Jesus’s attention and approbation, and doubtless—because of the persistence of the aesthetic within Roman, Greek, and Hebrew cultures—there was more than a little resistance to letting women in on anything the boys did, so it would be natural, while the male competition was going on, to resent even more the intrusion of—ugh—females!

Like all oppression, misogyny on the systemic level is a control device.  The church learned early that it could control its followers best by instilling a constant state of anxiety over sin, by making them all feel guilty and requiring expiation through the intervention of priests.  If they could make you feel guilty during your most private and intimate moments, boy they had you.

Did they do this consciously?  Some probably knew very well what they were doing.  Most just followed orders.  They revered hermits and ascetics, set them up as standards—like St. Jerome, who castrated himself rather than be distracted by lust.  After a time, it becomes entrenched, and the cult of chastity becomes self-perpetuating.  It is always a mistake to think that psychological tyranny is a new thing, invented by the Bolsheviks, or that Back Then people weren’t good at it.  Nonsense.  Modern dictators study Caesar for more than mere military advice.

But was it based on Jesus’s teachings?  Likely not.  He was very much about freedom, about getting out from under the shadow of sin, about finding truth, and about people being equal.  The idea that he would somehow have found women lesser beings is not borne out in the texts, either canonical or apocryphal.

The idea that he was married is hardly the Big Deal the church makes of it.  All it would mean is that he lived life fully as a human being, eating, sleeping, working, talking…loving, in all the ways humans have of loving.  To claim, as the church does, that he was made human in order to live as us so that when he died he could die as one of us is undermined if you take away one of the most basic and powerful and intimate of human experiences.  All the rest of that list is barely more than survival.

I’ll leave the examination of why the decision was taken to subjugate women in the church to others.  It’s a lengthy topic.  Suffice it to say that they did and we’re paying the price of ridding ourselves of that condition, and have been for some time.

What interested me in the ideas behind The Da Vinci Code and it source material is the notion that the revelation of such a fact would overturn the church.  People are gullible, but stubborn.  It would do no such thing.  People would fight and cling to their faith and reject the new fact, just as they reject anything else, true or otherwise, that threatens them where they pin their hopes.  I see atheists all the time hoping for the day religion disappears (hoping, of which most faiths draw sustenance, hence an ironic condition for one who wishes faith to disappear) and thinking that this or that piece of science might dispel as if by magic the blindness of those who see the world otherwise.  Never happens.  Never will.

At best, people adapt and modify the new facts to fit with the old framework, and over time the whole thing gradually morphs into something new, even while appearing to be the same old schtick.

Therefore, I see the idea of the Priory of Scion not as a secret organization designed to guard a Great Secret until the time is right to reveal it, but as another church that has a different kind of icon at its center—a human one, but nevertheless just as potent a symbol as any other.  The bitterness of Ian McKellen’s character that when the first millennium rolled around and the Priory failed to reveal the heir misses the point.  They didn’t reveal the heir (fictionally, mind you) because it would have gotten them all killed, including the heir.  But more importantly, they would have lost their icon.  Their center.  They changed, became like the thing they sought to replace, and simply continued on, worshiping in their own idiosyncratic way.

I quite enjoyed the whole scene with The Last Supper.  Absurd in many ways, though.  While I liked the notion that the person on Jesus’s right is, in fact, Mary, it is a problematic conjecture.  The original was painted on a wall in a mess hall—the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan.  It did not fare well.  Even in 1556, one commentator described it as ‘a muddle of blots.’  It has been restored more often than any other painting by Da Vinci.  The church itself was hit by a bomb in 1943 and rubble covered the painting.  The current version is the nth restoration and no doubt a lot of it is guesswork.  It is not the only Last Supper with a beardless youth at Jesus’s side, but many have pointedly identified this person as John, his brother (another point of contention among those who find the idea that his mother had sex with Joseph offensive).  If Da Vinci had been so bold as to paint a woman, I think there would have been public controversy at the time.  But who can say?  It’s as concrete as any other aspect of this particular issue.

I think we are best left to the long and slow process of just growing up when it comes to this issue.  The supernatural elements of the church have less and less hold on more and more people.  The essential points of Jesus’s teachings do not require his deification or the intercession of divinity—except, perhaps, the divinity we ourselves possess simply as conscious beings capable of greatness.  Capable of wholeness.  Capable, finally, of love.

Missouri’s first State Poet Laureate.  Walter Bargen.

I can’t tell you how pleased I am by this.  Walter is a first-rate poet and, just if not more importantly, a decent human being.

He will be formally introduced on February 13th at the state capitol.  After that, he will serve a two-year-term, administered by the Missouri Center for the Book .  We are enormously proud of this and look forward to a fruitful affiliation.

The shameless promotional part:  if anyone feels generous and wishes to support an institution whose goal to the elevation and promotion of the literary arts, go to our website, find the P.O. Box address, and…you know…

We will appreciate it.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Walter Bargen and a thank you to all who support the arts.

In this entertaining video, Ken Robinson discusses the critical role creativity should play in education.

Robinson is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Robinson argues that Western education has failed to teach young people to think critically about life, art, culture, and humanism. Instead, most education is geared to producing workers. In the process, most education systems downplay or even disparage art: “Don’t do music; you’re not going to be a musician.” Many brilliant people are taught to think that they are failures because the things they do well–often valuable things-are not valued by most schools. Robinson argues that we’ve got to develop a new “ecology” of education–we’ve got to stop “strip-mining young minds.”

About a month ago, I wrote an e-mail to one of my heroes, the great jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson.

I have been listening closely to Oscar, mesmerized, ever since I started appreciating and playing jazz (when I was 17 years old, back in the mid-1970s). I saw Oscar perform in Champaign, Illinois about 25 years ago. About 20 years ago, I attended an outdoor concert Oscar gave in Boston. I owned about a dozen Oscar Peterson record albums and I studied these relentlessly, until I could anticipate much of his improvisation. It’s one thing to anticipate the music, but it is another to carefully hear it, much less play anything resembling it. I will never come close to playing music like that, no matter how hard I work at it. It’s just a fact of life and it is not a cause for any sadness that I will never come close to playing music at that level. In that regard, I am a member of a huge club.

For those of us who play jazz, it is difficult to decide what to like best about Oscar Peterson. Was it his beautifully arpeggios that spilled like rapids or was it his multi-textured chords, or was it that ebullient left hand that was never content to assume a subservient role to that explosive right-hand? Or was it Oscar’s equanimity, or his unrelenting effort to reinvent and expand his musical scope, or was it the care he took to never musically stomp on those with whom he played, or was his deep-rooted never-ceasing musicality that was never overwhelmed by his surreal technical abilities?

When I wrote my e-mail to Oscar (I found his e-mail address on Oscar’s website), I felt a bit conspicuous. After all, I’m a 51-year-old man who was writing a fan letter to a musician who probably received buckets of fan mail every month. Nonetheless, I wrote an e-mail to Oscar Peterson. In that e-mail, I attempted to express to Oscar how much his playing inspired me over the years. I told him that my favorite album was Tristeza (although it was difficult to decide on a “favorite”). I tried to explain to Oscar that his music was more than just music.

I knew that Oscar had had a stroke in 1990s, losing the use of his left hand for two years. though he worked his way back to playing concerts. I had read, however, that his health was not good in 2007, so I ended my email to Oscar by wishing him well and expressing hope that he was in good health.

Three days ago, on Christmas Eve, Oscar Peterson died of kidney failure. Like most people who truly love jazz, I felt I knew Oscar more than I knew most of my friends. That’s how it is when you listen to someone with such musical intelligence so carefully for so long. What kind of musician was Oscar Peterson? It’s time to show, rather than tell. The following video is a performance of “You Look Good to Me,” performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1977. It’s an unusual combination of musicians, as you’ll see–it includes Oscar playing along with Ray Brown and Niels Pedersen, both playing the upright bass. Notice how Oscar takes a very simple tune and develops it-—this was not the only time Oscar took a quiet simple song and injected it with an overflowing musicality; this was one of his trademarks. Notice the intense collaboration among the musicians. You simply won’t find better jazz musicians anywhere or anytime (the bass solos of Brown and Pederson are also exquisite). With regard to Oscar, you’ll never see a keyboard player with a better command of the keyboard, a consequence of Oscar’s intense study of classical music along with jazz.

Here’s what MSNBC had to say about Oscar on Christmas Eve:

Oscar Peterson, whose early talent, speedy fingers and musical genius made him one of the world’s best known jazz pianists, has died. He was 82. (more…)

One of my favorite current cartoonists is Brooke McEldowney. I discovered his work online a few years ago in the form of “A Fairy Merry Christmas”. In the interest of copyright non-violation, I’ll leave it to youse to Google up your own excerpts.

This cartoon series was an NEA sponsored 6 week series. Finally, a use of NEA funds that anyone can appreciate. Except that it only appeared online, and maybe in a few papers. Anyway, I was captivated by the sense of humor. It doesn’t hurt that McEldowney has a magnificent grasp of sensual line in his figure drawing.

After its conclusion, I found his two other strips, 9 Chickweed Lane, and Pibgorn. It took my local paper about another 2 years to discover either one of these, but I’ve been reading them online. (Pibgorn is temporarily without a home as of this writing).

Well, I’ve started reading the cartoonist’s blog, wherein he refers to his teenage daughters as Snark Major and Snark Minor. This led me to one of the Snarks own blog, currently written from her post as a freshman at Aarkvard University (arch rival of Dale, you know).

So, if you want to follow a mental roller coaster of exceptionally twisted and oblique prose, check these out. I had enough fun there to be willing to impose it on yall.

The state of Missouri has never had an official poet laureate.  Like many people, I didn’t know that, although unlike many of those many people, I should have.  One of the hats I wear (besides the one in the cool profile photo above) is the president of the Missouri Center for the Book.

What, you may ask, is the Missouri Center for the Book and what, furthermore, does it have to do with state poets laureate?

I’m so glad you asked.  The Missouri Center for the Book (hereafter known as MCB) is the state affiliate to the Library of Congress Center for the Book.  All 50 states have such an institution now, and we are all as different in our structure and specific goals as those states.  The common thread is that we are all dedicated to promoting what we call the Culture of the Book.  This includes authors, certainly, but also publishers, editors, reviewers, literature teachers, schools.  We see all these things as inextricably part and parcel of that culture, though obviously authors are the most visible part.

We do not do remedial reading work.  There are other agencies that do that and do it far better than we could.  That’s not our mandate.

In our heyday, the first several years after our founding in 1993, we did all sorts of things to promote the idea of books and reading, mostly through the mechanism of conferences which addressed certain themes.  We had notable guests, lots of writers and publishers, an open forum.

And then, as happens in such things, funding slipped away and we did smaller and smaller programs.

Among the things we do is administer the state Letters About Literature contest, which is a very cool program for three levels of students, primary to secondary, in which a student writes a letter to the author of a book that has had a significant impact on that student.  We select the best, the winners go on to a national contest.  Some of these letters, even from very young students, are tremendous.  They give me hope for the future.  Quiet hope, a confidence that we have a chance, that the young are not dumber than their parents or grandparents, but are generally smarter.

As president for the past three years, I’ve been reorganizing and rebuilding the MCB.  We have plans to relaunch the conferences.  We intend to rebuild our website, which contains an author database which was, when it was instituted, the first of its kind in the nation.  We intend that it be made interactive.  That’s going to be a bit pricey, but once done it will be a great tool.

There are other programs we’d like to do.

But one thing we’ve been working at for the last eight years, doggedly and consistently, is the creation of a state poet laureate.  I won’t go into the details of that effort, they would bore you.  Mostly the work consisted of letter writing, long conversations with “influential” people, planning the structure of the post, often just being a pest.  MCB itself could not do this—for it to be “official” it must come from either the governor or the legislature.  Most states, it is an appointment of the governor.  It boils down to convincing the governor to do it.

Governor Blunt has decided to do it.  Last month we received word that the position would be created and the first poet laureate will be named in mid-December.  MCB has been named the agency which will administer the post and work on selection.

Warning:  what follows is an unapologetic promotional request for financial support.

I canvassed a number of states about their poet laureate programs.  There are about 8 or 9 states that do not have the position.  Among the others, the post is largely honorary, with no funding.  From the beginning, we thought the post should have some money behind.  It is incredibly difficult to make a living as a writer, triply so as a writer of poetry.  Besides, we intend for our laureates to travel the state, speaking on the matter of the literary arts.  That shouldn’t come out of the laureate’s own pocket.  But we’ve already learned that Missouri’s laureate post will also, as far as the state government is concerned, be honorary.

So I am asking for donations.  MCB’s future programming efforts will be built around the poet laureate–not specifically so much as thematically.  Missouri is stepping up to the plate, symbolically, to declare that literature, that reading, that authors are actually important.  In order to move forward and take advantage of the very public opportunity this is giving the Culture of the Book, we want to put some teeth behind it.

You can go to our website– books.missouri.org –and read a bit more about us.  Mind you, the site as it stands is going to be changed in a year or so, but there’s still worthwhile content.  If given the chance and the support, we intend doing a job of elevating the stature of the written word in Missouri.  So if you are so inclined, please send your tax deductible donations to:

Missouri Center for the Book
600 West Main,
P.O. Box 2075
Jefferson City, MO 65102-2075,

or call 573-751-1821

Before you ask, I cleared this with Erich.  MCB is a 501c3 nonprofit organization (which receives no money from state or federal sources).

As I said, I am unapologetically, unabashedly, unashamedly asking for money.  We want to pay our poets laureate a reasonable honorarium and we want to fund programs that will do for books what PBS does for documentary film or NPR does for radio broadcasting.  Granted, on a more modest scale, but still.

The governor has decided to announce this before Christmas.  Seems like a good time to give a present to the state and to make a stab at doing better for one of the things we all love and need so much—good books.

Thank you for your time and attention.

I know that I’m going to get into some trouble with some people as a result of this post.

Yesterday, my family visited an art fair where more than 100 artists displayed a wide variety of art.   One of the artists, an adult man, offered the following abstract paintings:

The painting on the left was offered for $3,200 and the one on the right for $1,300.   I don’t “get” much modern art. I never have. It amazes me that there is a market for much of it.  As you might correctly guess, I wasn’t tempted to buy either of these paintings.

Now, consider the following article from Salon.com:  “Here’s looking at you, “Kid”: Is 4-year-old Marla Olmstead a painting prodigy or the instrument of a hoax? “My Kid Could Paint That” The documentary “asks fascinating questions about art, family and journalistic ethics.”  This article concerns a new documentary about a young girl (Marla) who became a modern art phenom.  At least things were going well until the maker of that documentary, Amir Bar-Lev, started digging deeply:

As New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman discusses in the film, Marla’s story appealed to two contradictory popular prejudices. First of these is the idea of prodigal artistic talent as a lottery prize handed out to random toddlers by God. Second is the notion that modern art (at least in its abstract or nonfigurative guises) is a pseudo-intellectual con game that has no standards and conveys no meaning, so the apparent success of a 4-year-old debunks the whole enterprise.

I know that I’m not the first person to cry that the Emperor has no Clothes, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to cry out. I do wonder how far one could go as a modern artist with a pristine resume, assuming that the abstract art you presented as your own was actually art created by non-artists.  For instance, how easily or often could the scribbles and doodles of children pass as the creations of an adult “artistic genius?” To look at it another way, imagine that a traditional painting (e.g., Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”) was accidentally destroyed. Compare the pain the world would feel to the pain it would feel at the loss of a piece of abstract art prominently displayed in one of the world’s modern art museums.

To make it clear, I’m not dissing all modern art.  There is some that consists 99% of unchannelled energy as opposed to creative effort.

I look forward to viewing the aboved-described documentary.  To listen to Bar-Lev’s podcast regarding his video, go here.