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Venice Venice Lord Byron (1788–1824) (From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)  I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;  A palace and a prison on each hand:  I saw from out the wave her structures rise  As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand;  A thousand years their cloudy wings expand        5  Around me, and a dying glory smiles  O’er the far times when many a subject land  Looked to the wingéd’s Lion’s marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!  She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,        10  Rising with her tiara of proud towers  At airy distance, with majestic motion,  A ruler of the waters and their powers.  And such she was; her daughters had their dowers  From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East        15  Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.  In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.  In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more,  And silent rows the songless gondolier;        20  Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,  And music meets not always now the ear:  Those days are gone, but beauty still is here.  States fall, arts fade, but Nature doth not die,  Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,        25  The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!  But unto us she hath a spell beyond  Her name in story, and her long array  Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond        30  Above the Dogeless city’s vanished sway:  Ours is a trophy which will not decay  With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,  And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away,—  The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,        35 For us repeopled were the solitary shore.  The beings of the mind are not of clay;  Essentially immortal, they create  And multiply in us a brighter ray  And more beloved existence: that which Fate        40  Prohibits to dull life, in this our state  Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,  First exiles, then replaces what we hate;  Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. *        *        *        *        *        45  The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;  And, annual marriage now no more renewed,  The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,  Neglected garment of her widowhood!  St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood        50  Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,  Over the proud place where an emperor sued,  And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.  The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns,—        55  An emperor tramples where an emperor knelt;  Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains  Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt  From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt  The sunshine for a while, and downward go        60  Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt:  O for one hour of blind old Dandolo! The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe.  Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,  Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;        65  But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?  Are they not bridled? Venice, lost and won,  Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,  Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!  Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,        70  Even in destruction’s depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.  In youth she was all glory,—a new Tyre,—  Her very byword sprung from victory,  The “Planter of the Lion,” which through fire        75  And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea;  Though making many slaves, herself still free,  And Europe’s bulwark ’gainst the Ottomite:  Witness Troy’s rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye  Immortal waves that saw Lepanto’s fight!        80 For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. *        *        *        *        *  I loved her from my boyhood,—she to me  Was as a fairy city of the heart,  Rising like water-columns from the sea,  Of joy the sojourn and of wealth the mart;        85  And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare’s art,  Had stamped her image in me, and even so,  Although I found her thus, we did not part,  Perchance even dearer in her day of woe Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.        90  I can repeople with the past,—and of  The present there is still for eye and thought,  And meditation chastened down, enough;  And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;  And of the happiest moments which were wrought        95  Within the web of my existence, some  From thee, fair Venice! have their colors caught;  There are some feelings time cannot benumb, Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

Lord Byron

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28th July 2018, Peets Coffee, Cambridge, Boston, United States

While researching about the greater Las Vegas area for a potential job position, I stumble onto this article published by VICE, the North America based media company that may be known to many by their Emmy Award nominated news series ‘Vice News Tonight’.

Besides the content itself, this article uses speech/writing patterns that are conventionally considered of low prestige given their associations with black Americans. They include vocabularies such as ‘mofos’, ‘mad’, ‘OG’, ‘AF’, ‘chill’, ‘24/7’ and sentence structures such as sentences with no subject and other colloquial structures usually deemed unfit for writing.

The unconventional formal structure of this VICE article intrigues me because I remember their HBO news series ‘Vice News Tonight’ uses a mix of reporters with different ethnic backgrounds and different ‘accents’(linguistically what are usually referred to as ‘accents’ are not precise since speech patterns involve more differences than just intonations). The posh Received Pronunciation English is very common among all the VICE episodes. The contrasts or parallels among different varieties of linguistic patterns of media production of VICE seem to serve purposes of communication to readers/audiences of different ethnic backgrounds.

I find the discrepancies/diversity among different media production of VICE interesting. If we assume diversity is the strength and media is meant to reach for wider audiences if possible, why are not more media companies produce their media materials the VICE way?

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DJ Yifei’s CIEE Cape Town 2018 Spring Report

*****************************************Start of Report

April 22th 2018

       The picture was taken at Mount Nelson Hotel at Cape Town, South Africa. The hotel offers “afternoon tea” sessions for non-hotel patrons to spend their afternoon. Accompanied by fellow CIEE students, I had the pleasure to enjoy a platter of savory mini-sandwiches, unlimited supply of various teas from across the world and a dessert buffet that includes cookies, cheese cakes and brownies.

     Here are some personal comments on this experience. MOUNT NELSON HOTEL, as one of the 5 star resort hotel, clearly pitches towards particular social groups. Among its patrons are elder couples and young hipsters, evidenced by their baseball cap, rugby jerseys and khaki shorts. A afternoon tea session at such a luxury resort gives me a vague impression of businesses initially conceived for hospitality service towards European residents and visitors of South Africa. The very existence of such an aesthetically European hotel gives outsiders, in my case a Chinese person studied in California, an idea of a part of history that younger generation was not alive to witness.

      Here is a little context of other parameters of life in Cape Town at this particular moment. Weather here starts to transit from hot 25 degrees celsius sunny days to cool 15 degrees rainy day. Clearly such weather discourages tourism in general. 

      This paragraph is devoted to describe socio-cultural environment within the American study abroad program provided by Council for International Educational Exchange (CIEE) only. Program participants mostly have adapted to local socio-cultural environment after more than 2 months of living in Cape Town. The solidarity among participants due to pressure to combat cultural shock in a foreign land has diminished. Excursions and activities that involve more than 10 participants are far and few between, informally or formally organized. Most social groups among program participants are organized based on residential proximity, basically how close one lives to another. Social group boundaries start to crystalize. These groups functional largely as fraternal, voluntarily associated organizations. In-group-out-group borders are usually drawn through exclusive communication through Whatsapp or Messenger. One has to be aware that the kind of social fragmentation that exists in any American high school also exists in this American study abroad program.

*****************************************End of Report

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You think you are earning hourly wages but you are actually getting paid for the work you’ve done in that hour. So improve efficiency and close facebook during work.

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What do you see through the picture?

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“South Bronx”

Many people realize gang issues and riots were actually statements, forms of expressions that try to articulate problems inside the community.

Few people ask questions about what exact meanings are behind these expressions and what other forms of expressions that African American communities also have.

Dance has never been independent of community and its people. To peek at what’s really going on inside the community, one needs to look at more than media reports of violent confrontations with police. One needs to know more about lives in South Central

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Jitterbug was the white name for Lindy Hop. Lindy Hop was born in Harlem, New York but as it began to spread across North America, the same steps with a slightly different style might have been called Jitterbug, or just “Lindy” and on the West Coast many of the dancers were influenced by a dancer named Dean Collins and they named their own smoother style of Lindy Hop after him. Dean himself picked up his Lindy Hop back in New York at the Savoy and, like all of good dancers, had his own unique style, but when he moved out to California his smoother style of dancing rubbed off on the people around him, mainly white dancers, and that’s the style that you’ll see in most of the old Hollywood movies. “East Coast Swing” was the Arthur Murry Dance Studios response to Lindy Hop. Everyone wanted to learn Lindy Hop and essentially the studio created a dance that would be easier for them to teach. They took the most basic Lindy Hop steps and simplified them in a standardized way so that they could instruct the masses. East Coast swing is strictly based on six-count patterns while Lindy Hop, which evolved organically as a street dance, is a mix of six-count, eight-count, Charleston, jig and other patterns. East Coast Swing can be danced to the music of the 30s and 40s but better suits early the Rock n’ Roll of the 1950s. “West Coast Swing” is a dance that confuses many people who are looking for Lindy Hop but aren’t familiar with that name. West Coast Swing is a style of dance that did evolve out of Dean Collins’ smoother style of Lindy Hop, but it’s not danced to the same kind of music. It’s less of a traditional swing dance and more of a contemporary partnered dance that suits pop, soul, R&B, blues and hip-hop.

http://beeskneesdance.com/rock-n-roll-jitterbug-lindy-hop-whats-the-difference/

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The music evolved into Rock n Roll and Rhythm and Blue later after Jazz age but people still do Lindy Hop to the new music form. What changes have happened in the society?

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The first picture is a 1930s original jazz dance form called Lindy Hop. The second picture is a alternative jazz dance form created by Broadway choreographers. What has happened to the name Jazz?

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cultural outsiders who seek to invest their lives with meaning through the power of hip hop dance and music (Spencer, 1991: 9). These listeners and dancers come, I think, to physically invest in the enactment of cool dissension; they learn the dances for the obvious associations of physical power contained within the dancing body magnified by the crucible of race. If these dances can empower impoverished black bodies of the inner city, surely they might offer dynamic celebration to young dancers in the vanilla suburbs. Power is what is seen in the form, and power is what these dancers mean to channel by their performances.                               - DeFrantz Black Beat 9 - Hip hop dances also gain power from their subversive [black] stance outside the moral law of [white] America.  The black body in America has long been legislated and controlled by political systems both legal and customary. In social dance, the black body achieves a freedom from traditional American strictures defining legitimate corporeality. The dancing black body, responding to and provoking the drumbeat, acts performatively against the common American law of black abjection. "Speaking well" in terms of black social dance defies--temporarily--systematized oppression.

Page 9~10

The Black Beat Made Visible: Hip Hop Dance and Body Power

Thomas F. DeFrantz

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The Five Boroughs: They are a complicated political ecosystem on their own, from well-educated Manhattan, where about 60% have at least a bachelor’s degree, to the Bronx where more than 31% live in poverty.

<<Wall Street Journal>>

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/04/19/new-york-primaries-5-things-to-watch/

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A street kid gets arrested, gonna do some time He got out three years from now just to commit more crime A businessman is caught with 24 kilos He's out on bail and out of jail And that's the way it goes Raah!

“White Lines” By Grandmaster Flash

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Parochialism offers this false dichotomy because it pits the poor in one country against the poor in another. It pretends we can isolate ourselves and our nations from one another. The whole world is our backyard, and we ignore it at our peril. See, look what happened when we ignored Rwanda, when we ignore Syria, when we ignore climate change. Political leaders ought to give a "funk" because the impact of climate change and extreme poverty comes right to our shore.

By Hughs Evans in his TED Talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_evans_what_does_it_mean_to_be_a_citizen_of_the_world/transcript?language=en#t-787958

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Buddha Stretch: HIP-HOP culture in general was always about expression. Hiphop was the ghetto’s way of expressing themselves, through music and through dance. The ghettto’s way of creating something from nothing. Giving voice to a culture and people, who had no voice. Now the world hears us!

By Buddha Stretch in an interview

http://www.onecypher.com/2005/01/03/interview-with-dancerchoreographer-buddha-stretch-of-elite-forcemoptops/

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60s movie “Rock N’ Roll”

The number is choreographed by Elvis Presley

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"Performers in this tradition know that they may be playing to two audiences simultaneously - the black community and the white hipsters or weekend trippers. ... Black performers constantly recognize that the very performance that is conventional within the black community will be seen as strange, as pleasurably exotic to the hipster. Thus they operate out of a kind of double consciousness, knowing that they are called upon to present an image which will be interpreted as exotic to the outside world and not to the blacks in the audience" (Abrahams, 1992: 155).

Abrahams, Roger D. Singing the Master: The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South. New York, Penguin Books: 1992

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Immediately recognizable material and characters are appropriated from popular sources; Kung fu movies, circus, capoeira, video games, television advertisements, movies, and mag-azine ads are speedily encrypted into the funny, furious language of iconographic gestures or phrases. As dancers radicalize images, they recontextualize the familiar in unconventional ways. The connections must be perceived, then instantly physicalized in order to keep the flow of the image-exchanges.

"C'mon to My House": Underground-House Dancing

Author(s): Sally R. Sommer

Reviewed work(s):

Source: Dance Research Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2, Social and Popular Dance (Winter, 2001), pp.

72-86

Published by: Congress on Research in Dance

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1477805 .

Accessed: 07/09/2012 17:05