#i could write an essay on the default positioning of american culture in the in universe diegetic matrix

[submalevolentgrace]

youknow that scene in the matrix sequels where the merovingian explains why he, an inhuman computer program developed by robots, decided to speak french and in a french accent, by rolling off a long list of expletives and then saying "it's like wiping your arse with silk"?

i'm having stonebaked mixed grain sourdour toast with vegemite on it

[ponderingcogitations]

I think it’s safe to say America’s biggest export is culture.

Mean Girls

Excessive consumerism / disregard for the green-eyed monster

Lady Gaga

Culture/Race wars / white nationalism and ‘political correctness’

Etc

We love a global phenomenon, of course- it’s October 3rd 🙃

But what are the implications of this export?

Although manufactured elsewhere, the major smartphones used today (Apple, Samsung, Google) and computers (Apple, Microsoft) are running American-made software.

Although employing multinational talent, the biggest film, music, and entertainment avenues all branch back to Hollywood/California/Los Angeles (I think it’s all the same place ?).

Dispel any contemplation over the ‘good’ness of this; whether it’s ok or not. And just think for a moment: what responsibilities does having this global reach incur? What are the potential positives that we can all stand to benefit from? What are the potential negatives that could result from misuse of this power?

I was thinking of writing up a little essay on this after a few events:

seeing protests against covid HERE in Australia but they were almost as shocking as the American ones, (I’m too scared to add another bullet point because it might delete everything underneath here but: my iPhone not being able to handle the bloody temperature of this country- if you’re gonna play on the global stage, Apple, then can you at least try to foresee that Australians might need to use their phones on a 40°+ day and that it shouldn’t just cark it because “iPhone needs to cool down!”??)

seeing human interface guidelines and best practices videos and support documentation for app development where it had to explain differences in culture; i.e. using ‘red’ to say something’s bad, like the stock prices falling, isn’t appropriate for some cultures- and they spoke about how red is actually good luck in China, for example.

Hearing podcasts or songs or movies or tv shows talk about American states. “I drove from Nashville to Tennessee” like ok what does that mean? “Girl I’m a Kentucky boy” so your great great great great granddaddy started the KFC franchise?? “New York concrete jungle wet dream tomato” ….um

I wasn’t put off or anything but it just got me thinking- this is the norm. My phone is American. The shows I watch are pretty much all from America. ‘Everyone’ in music and movies has an American accent. Me as a child would force myself to develop an American accent because no one could understand me (I think Charlise Theron did this too). What if it were something else?

What if, whenever someone spoke about lord of the rings, they mentioned “did you know it was filmed in America?! IKR so rare!”

What if ‘Hollywood’ was actually in China or Russia or Japan? What would the antagonists look like. What would airplane hijackers look and sound like? Would they yell in English and the subtitles would just say “screams in foreign language”. Would all our movies and tv shows be CC’d by default?

And then I thought about how other countries DO produce similar things. For example I used to watch LGBT movies but they were all French or Spanish or German or anything from anywhere but America. And then one day I found an English one and it was just so different. Most of the former movies had so much sexual tension and the story telling, the cinematography, the sound, all of it was 🤌 it was escapism but not too far. It was ‘here’s a little bit of the thing you so deeply wish you had, but don’t get too carried away and forget to hide yourself’. It left you a wreck, most of the time. But then the English one was shot more like a vlog, like an American gay got his hands on a studio camera, rented it for a day, and asked his friends to have sex and talk about how much of a slapper Debby from HR is. It was so open and barely relatable. Almost unreality.

I realised that, yes, culture is everywhere in this regard. But the export of America’s prevails. Occasionally you have ‘breakout’ foreign films.

“Breakout”

I mean, really? Netflix loves these because they seem to be well aware of the need for diversity. True, true diversity. Squid Game, Derry Girls, 3%, La Casa De Papel (Money Heist), Call My Agent, Lupin, Encanto/Moana/Coco (Disney) etc etc

Imagine if the norm was all of these and similar, and only every once in a while does a ‘breakout American film’ appear.

Now I’m almost sure, if you lived in one of these ‘foreign’ countries where they all have accents, that this exact scenario would be the norm. But I was alarmed to think that all the English countries I’ve lived in don’t hold back on the import of American culture. And even if they did, it travels especially well through the social media medium.

Anyway, if anyone read this, what do you think?

[redscullyrevival]

N(ot)stalgia: DISCO 2.0

Something I’ve not personally seen anyone talk about with Star Trek Discovery, although I’ve no doubt many are, is the role nostalgia plays in the series. 

Sometimes at war, sometimes a crutch, sometimes reflective but mostly deconstructive; nostalgia is near constantly present within DISCO’s production. Present within the media as it is created and relayed to its audience as well as present within large portions of the audience themselves, from within their own expectations and beliefs on what Star Trek “is” (and perhaps most vocally on what the franchise “is not”). Star Trek Discovery is not all that concerned with restorative nostalgia, the series does not excessively lean on invoking comforting throw-back feelings with the intent of recreating the franchise's past tone. And then there’s season 2 episode 8 “If Memory Serves”. 

OH BOY. Oh wow. Okay.

“If Memory Serves” is a double down boot stomp of an episode that I’m sure has been turning heads for its use of interweaving, updating, and altering the classic two parter “The Menagerie” (and thus the un-aired-but-widely-known pilot episode “The Cage”) and I’m positive some misguided individual is out there referring to all this as a “reference” and yes I kind of want to die a little knowing that’s happening but I’ll struggle through. Sigh.

The first season of DISCO dug deep and did some drastic nostalgia tweaking and even (dare I say) went so far as to weaponize nostalgia and all the expectations audiences brought with them about what Star Trek “was” and “means” and “does” as a pop culture storytelling institution.  

It was a long-term re-haul of many, many aspects of the Star Trek TV franchise and it made many, many people very uncomfortable. Not me, I friggin’ dug it, but I am admittedly a contrary asshole. 

Blahblah lots of folks right now are probably thinking about Captain Lorca and for good reason - so lets look at Lorca and how he was used to snap the audience’s nostalgic Trek lens. Spoliers ahead.

Captain Lorca (played by Jason Isaacs) was revealed to be from the Mirror Universe, as in the slap-on-a-beard-and-be-mean-universe. If you know Star Trek you know the Mirror Universe.

But in the beginning, we all sat around ho-humming over Lorca’s motivations and choices. Over what we wanted to believe about him. The viewership was VERY busy interpreting Lorca and working the character into our own individual understandings on what we know and want from a Star Trek television show.

As it happens Captain Lorca is one of the most Trekkie characters ever by default of his universal origins while simultaneously being an approach to the evils of the Mirror Universe (AKA What We Don’t Want Humanity To Be™) as we’ve never seen it before.

Hating other races and being aggressive and enjoying war and breeding a society hostile towards ideas of equality, justice, cooperation, and peace are pretty straight forward no-nos. Turns out though, and this is the real kicker, that the initial unease Lorca brought onto Discovery wasn’t just (entirely) the writers getting through their sea legs but a nice long con: 

The evils of the Mirror Universe have now been expanded to psychological and emotional abuse with sexual predatory behavior and unsustainable environmental practices thrown in for good measure. Which was a much-needed update my friends.

And I say “update” but in a lot of ways it’s an insertion. A clarification. Or, as I first sated, an expansion. We could look at DISCO as re-writing Star Trek lore because that’s, ya know, what it is doing - but we can also more specifically look at DISCO as a project in nostalgic alteration.

Hey, guess what?! Spock’s sister has always been a black woman.

From our outward understanding yes, we know Michael Burnham is a ~new~ character in a ~new~ Star Trek show. None of us are confused on how any of this story telling is working. These are new stories. 

The function of these stories though? I can’t help but think the audience is pretty torn up on that front.

Something inherent in experiencing Star Trek Discovery is how the show’s narrative future hails from our actual historical past. The utopia of the original series is dated and stale and disingenuous without a nostalgic/contextual lens firmly set in place. The function of many Star Trek Discovery stories is that of a much-needed blood transfusion: Bringing new life to old withered limbs.

Does this mean that Star Trek Discovery is seeking to recontextualize Star Trek? Yes and no but mostly no in my opinion. LOL, sorry, but it’s complicated! As most nostalgia driven works are.

Nostalgic Cinema is a real subset of critical film studies and has only grown in recent years but nostalgia isn’t anything new to media or the human experience. The general consensus is that nostalgic media tries to visually replicate time periods in human history (or the markers of media from a particular time period, what Marc Le Sueur dubbed “deliberate archaism”), but primarily acts as a bridge to idolized youthful emotionality and/or simplified “truths”. 

Marc Le Sueur’s “Theory Number Five: Anatomy of Nostalgic Films: Heritage and Method” was published in 1977 and was one of the first major academic and critical looks into the role nostalgia plays in cinema and by extension our connection to and perception of art. In the 1990s Svetlana Boym and Fredric Jameson further pushed ideas of nostalgia in literature and late capitalism respectably (which of course made its way onto visual media).

Le Sueur and Boym saw nostalgia as two classifiable categories, restorative or reflective. Restorative nostalgia attempts to recapture and revitalize an imagined past while reflective nostalgia is marked by a wistful longing for what has been lost to time.

In “The Future of Nostalgia” Svetlana Boym wrote “Nostalgia inevitably reappears as a defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals.” She goes on to suggest that our attraction to nostalgia (either restorative or reflective) is often times less about actually trying to reclaim a vanished past but rather a conscious resistance to an unknown and potentially threatening future.

The bulk of nostalgic media can easily be seen to tie into Boym’s observations; most media isn’t concerned with or about the personal and effective uses of nostalgia as a lived experience/real feeling among individuals but instead more focused on a particularly stylized, sanitized, and simplified view of history. Nostalgia in media is typically a presentation on the present day's romanticized fantasy of the past, void of contradictions and unsolvable uncertainties of the focused time period's lived reality, so as to soften or even avoid the creator’s and audience’s confusing present and unknown future.

In 2005 film critic and historian Pam Cook explored nostalgia in her book “Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema” which collected seventeen of her short essays from 1976 to 1999 that focus on memory, identity, and nostalgia not only within their subject matter but within Cook’s viewpoint of revisiting her own body of work. Early on Cook laid out a more optimistic outlook on nostalgia in media:

“Rather than being seen as a reactionary, regressive condition imbued with sentimentality, it can be perceived as a way of coming to terms with the past, as enabling it to be exorcised in order that society, and individuals, can move on. In other words, while not necessarily progressive in itself, nostalgia can form part of a transition to progress and modernity. The suspension of disbelief is central to this transition, as nostalgia is predicated on a dialect between longing for something idealized that has been lost, and an acknowledgement that this idealized something can never be retrieved in actuality, and can only be accessed through images.”

The Star Trek of 1966 didn’t air in a peaceful time free from social and political turmoil. In fact, the original series itself was a kind of attempt at Future Nostalgia: A projected desire for what humanity could be if we survive and make changes to the then-contemporary world the show was directly commenting on. 

Star Trek’s original series today, as media that has survived and gained weight within the American pop cultural landscape, certainly feels warm, inviting, and reflective of an America long gone and shattered - and that’s because, now, it is. 

Time moves forward and warps and bends our media and our experiences to media and the most warped and most bendy of all are those storytelling institutions that outlive and outlast the era and people who first created and first experienced it. 

Recreating Star Trek visually, tonally, and thematically would be straight nostalgic vampirism and is obviously not what DISCO is doing. But that doesn’t mean Star Trek Discovery is not not a nostalgic piece even though it looks, feels, and is thematically different than the 1966 original show.

Real quick, let’s get back to this week’s episode, “If Memory Serves”!

... Honestly though, do I need to connect these dots? We all get it right? We’re all on board with this entire thing from the name of the episode, to its direct use and alterations of the original series, and then the not-so-subtle reveal that the season’s big plot point, the Red Angel, is a time traveler re-writing history. Like. We get it, right?

This is where Discovery has yet again doubled down on its storytelling functionality; this is Spock y’all. This is Pike. This is for real happening. Michael has helped shape the Spock character we will see later on in the “future” (our collective past).

And while we’re here, check out Mr. Spock! The Spock of Discovery is not dripping with nostalgic slime, he’s sharp and clean to an almost shocking degree. The series makes little effort in acting as though we should have a pre-determined fondness for the character outside of his relationship to Michael. Which is absolutely NUTS. But in a good way, in my opinion! 

The search for Spock (lawl) within Discovery has been on a surface level the literal search for the character within the narrative space of this new series. They gotta find that dude.

The search for Spock within Discovery has also been a form of re-defining the character not through audience expectation of What They Know and Remember but What They Don’t Know and Have No Basis For.

And the series accomplished it within the framework of places, characters, and events that are old, new, the same, and different all at once. I believe that’s a lot of intentional wibbly wobbly timey wimey paratextual stuff taking precedence for the sake of promoting a new view on Star Trek’s (and our own) past, primarily for the sake of moving beyond it. 

I don’t think it’s just ‘haha, reference!’ that the first shots we see of Vina (an original series character) in Star Trek Discovery’s “If Memory Serves” is that of her high heeled glass slippers. It’s jarring and weird and even laughable. Vina’s hair and makeup are also deliberate archaisms within the series the character is currently in, airing in the year it is. It reminded me of another nostalgia ridden TV series that would often implement a similar absurdist approach towards viewer nostalgia.

Mad Men had a lot of fun presenting a visually accurate but sterile version of the past not so as to suggest things were better in the 1960s but so that the series could better magnify (and even exasperate) American disillusionment.

One of my favorite examples of nostalgic absurdity in Mad Men is when Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) stands in a crowded office building jokingly pointing a gun at unflinching women.

What's the goal of having Pete do this? Is it to show we were... better then? We were more innocent? Is this deeply inappropriate "joke" suddenly OK because it's 1960, or is it even within context creepy, horrifying, and in incredible bad taste? Do we need the characters to recognize the absurdity of Pete's actions for us to validate them as absurd or are we being invited to make that evaluation ourselves in the here and now outside of the character's reality?

What Pete does is creepy and weird if the characters acknowledge it or not just as much as it is, admittedly, darkly humorous for the audience to witness at all.

But that's because it's not really a set up for comparing and contrasting how much we as a country have lost or gained in the wake of mass shootings but rather that of an audience being able to recognize a total D-bag, even through time.

Pete and his gun aren't a direct focus of the show's nostalgia but they are certainly a product of it and a bit of the point is that Pete gets away with doing what he does because it's a story, yeah, but PRIMARILY due to the audience assumption of "well, it was the 1960s". Its within that suspension of disbelief living at the core of all the many absurdist moments that make up Mad Men where the series bit by bit wedges in its most critical theme: Nostalgia is bullshit.

Through its intentional juxtaposition of accurately ‘recreating’ the past and high co-dependency on its contemporary audience’s views, Mad Men suggests that the best we can do as a society, as a country, is see the similarities between the past and now and decide what is worth keeping, progressing, or discarding entirely. The series delights in uncomfortably positioning the audience to view the weird ass shit it's characters do (littering, chain smoking, drinking and driving, slapping women's butts, letting children play with plastic bags over their heads to name a basic few), not so as to suggest that the past was "better" than today but so as to highlight the ways that we as a society have already deemed the past to be inefficient, ineffective, and cruel.

The series uses the same audience awareness principle to highlight the ways in which nostalgia cannot hide nor brighten our shortcomings and continued failures. There are just as many (if not more) moments in the series that are not presented as contrasting absurdity but comparative harrowing familiarity; those areas of our cultural makeup we have not adequately progressed or left behind.

Sure, in the 1960s everyone could smoke everywhere (very ew, look how far we’ve come) but women still had to internally balance if they could afford looking like a humorless bitch when confronting workplace sexual harassment (haha, whoops!). 

America’s past in Mad Men is terrifying and weird as well as frustratingly still present, as smoke soaked into our current attitudes and culture. What America’s past isn’t in Mad Men is purely seductive nostalgia for the sake of simplifying the present.

Le Sueur, Boym, and Cook all propagate that the cinematic image/use of nostalgia is that of double exposure, two images projected onto an audience’s perception and experience (1. contemporary recreation 2. of the past) - and that sure as hell makes up the building blocks of Discovery even though we’re all cognitively aware every aspect of the series is new and it takes place “in the future”. Discovery uses the franchise’s past as an adaptive functional mirror with which to compare and contrast our contemporary reality rather than merely repeating experiences and ideas reflective of a time long gone.

Vina’s shoes, her entire aesthetic down to her backstory aren’t just counter to the tone and aesthetic of Discovery but to the sensibilities of the contemporary audience; we are all very aware that Vina hasn’t literally been plucked out of 1966 and plopped into this new series. Again, none of us are confused on how any of this story telling is working. We’re aware these are new stories. But what is the function of Vina in this new story? What is the purpose of all the unease her presence brings into “If Memory Serves”?

Vina, way back in 1966, was written to choose a life of illusion among aliens siphoning her memories and emotions rather than accept and become a part of the present. The Keeper tells Pike, “She has an illusion and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant” as they once again cover up Vina’s hunched back and scarred face with youthful and desirable 1960s beauty standards. As we all know Pike himself will go on later to choose this exact fate. He will succumb to the same choice.

“When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating," Vina tells us of the Talosians in “The Cage”, episode zero of Star Trek. “You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought records.”

I’m having a serious and very real Look-Into-The-Camera-Moment here my friends. We’re all on board, yeah? Are the dots sufficiently and fully aligned? God I hope so. “If Memory Serves” is pulling a helluva fine “To Serve Man” word play pals:

If our memories perform our duties and live our lives for us, we become trapped. Discovery’s purpose for pulling in original series characters, and these characters in particular and all the narrative context sliding along in with them, is to suggest that we (and the franchise itself) need to move past our attachments to the original series and its rusty ideas and simplistic hopes for the future.  

Vina and Pike are already lost causes, we know this. We gain power in knowing this. The re-framing of these characters as being more tragic than romantic, with Discovery reflecting their longing as kinda creepy and disconnected with Vina more siren than innocent the series can push past the past and grab on to a new understanding of this classic episode’s elements and what it can mean for us watching Star Trek made in 2019.

A purely DISCO inversion of all this is poor Dr. Culber who has a complete lack of emotional connection to the past, who can remember moments and events but can’t make them give off any feelings of relevancy or incorporate them into who he is as a person. Culber is just as trapped as Vina and what Pike will (possibly?) become. The inch by inch nature of his recovery will depend on, as a pissed off Burnham tells the Talosians, if he can learn to “survive another way.” 

Yeah. That might be some thematic intent we’ve picked up on skip. We’re legit through the looking glass now huh? Up is down and down is up and nostalgia ain’t what it used to be! Hype.      

As such, in its own way, Discovery is fairly critical of Star Trek and by extension a bulk of its audience and their personal reasons and motivations for tuning in. It makes a lot of sense that Lorca and “If Memory Serves” among many other production choices and aspects chafe some viewers. 

I’m of the opinion that the shiny pristine nostalgic pedestal sculpture that is STAR TREK should be filed and chipped and shaved and grated here and there just as much as more contemporary substance should be added and stuffed back into it. 

What’s the goddamn point of any of this if not to further progress the bar of reflecting and projecting the human experience onto a future better than that one envisioned in 1966? In 1987? In 1993? And, at the end of the day, isn’t THAT more authentically “Star Trek” than simply an episodic narrative structure, glitter effect transporters, and a captain’s log? 

[adventuresinlibraries]

New Moon Girls Magazine

New Moon Girls Magazine- Girls are Beautiful as Themselves

Volume XXVI Issue #5: May/June 2019 

Editor: Helen Cordes

Winner of the  Golden Lamp Award - The Association of Educational Publishers, 2006

     As a member of the Girl Scouts of America, I spend every other Saturday morning with leading activities with a curious and energetic group of 6-year old Daisies. I got curious as to whether there were any good magazines out there to engage them as readers and empower them as people. 

In Mags, Zines, and gURLs: The Exploding World of Girls' Publications, the author  Katherine Bayerl explains that “Drawing a line between magazines that offer a healthy, smart image of girlhood and magazines that are primarily fluff is hard to do.” she posits that the best way to do this is to look to the girls themselves. And, she explains that publishers are finding that giving a voice to a diverse set of girl’s perspectives and voices is the best way to do this. Bayerl, (2000) 

I took a trip to my local Barnes and Noble and found the magazine section. My face fell. There are many options for teens and adults but very few choices for children. Most of the children’s choices are focused on crafts and STEM. But, as soon as I saw New Moon Girls, I knew I had found what I was seeking.

This magazine is written by kids. As a long-time reader and writer, I remember the moment where I realized that writing was a way to change the world. This magazine builds confidence by giving children a voice in an uplifting way and emphasizing a healthy outlook toward girlhood.

The cover is bold and simple. Splotches of red, green, and yellow bring attention to the various headings on the page and make a reader feel happy on sight. Right on the front, it says the publication is “Girl Created” The May/June Issue features circular portraits of girls against a white background. What drew me in were the words underneath each picture, “Creative, Empathetic, Kind, Helpful, Inclusive, and Strong” The cover echoes the Girl Scout Law that we recite each meeting. I love that it encourages all kinds of positive character-based traits adding another dimension to the title of the issue “Girls are “Beautiful as Themselves” focusing on the internal attributes of girlhood instead of the physical.

The pages inside are brightly colored, and the circles and bold swatches of color run throughout, a continuing visual motif that helps the readers eye travel across the pages. 

Articles in this month’s issue include “Mood Swings”, “Pizzapalooza”, “Girls are Beautiful as Themselves” and “Fairy Story Contest” The magazine is easy to navigate with large headings and easily located page numbers.

Regular sections ask and answer questions, feature a quick overview of a girl somewhere in the world who embodies the values in the issue, introduce girl produced art, poetry, and stories. There is even a coloring page. 

The girls featured in the issue are 10-14, although one New Moon intern pictured is 18. The age group represents a good swath of the demographic the publisher's target of girls aged eight and up. The article about how to cope with mood swings is a good example of this.

“Aaaaak, if you’ve ever boomeranged from one emotion to another, find out the why and how of dealing with it. “ the intro reads. 

The language is informal and straight forward, the playful “Aaaaak” balancing the gravity of the topic. 

The advice given is practical and kind. And, the author’s perspective is that of an older sister or mentor. The page features a picture of the writer and intern, an 18-year-old girl. Including the photo gives kids the clue that the material is written by someone who understands how kids think because she was recently one herself.

One of the tips included “When I find a trigger to my feelings, I then see if there’s something I can do about the situation. I ask myself: What if anything could I have done to prevent feeling this way and what can I do to stop? Is there a bigger problem going on that I need to address before I can effectively deal with my feelings?” This kind of straightforward cognitive-behavioral approach is useful and takes into account the age of the reader and the idea that socio-emotional learning should be taught. Oliver, (2018) 

The article on mood swings is serious. But the issue isn’t afraid to get silly. A page called the “Persuading Game” features short persuasive blurbs written by kids. This month’s choices picks are “Pet Rocks Are the Superior Pets”  and “Why Cats Should be Used as Dust Mops”. A spotlight on the Kindness Rocks project is included at the bottom with the corny yet effective title “Rock On!”

Another way the magazine targets its intended audience is by offering them activities to engage in. There is a coloring page, engaging younger readers. And the interviews with readers show somewhat older girls that they can be activists, artists, or sports enthusiasts, and enjoy a wide variety of hobbies. 

This mix of immediate content and activities kids can consider for later, extends the time kids can take thinking about the content. This increases comprehension and teaches kids to think deeply about what they read. Many pages have instructions included about how kids can participate in the making of the magazine itself, including hyperlinks for submitting content, like in the art gallery page. This might remind parents of the magazine Highlights, whose reader created pages were some of my favorites as a young writer.

The last thing that drew me to this magazine was its focus on diverse moments in women’s history. The calendar on page 32 includes holidays and special days, like “National Peanut Butter Cookie Day” but also includes birthdays of famous women like Grace Lee Boggs, who was a Chinese-American fighter for civil rights. And, the last page features a biography of journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells. It was written by a reader, who’s bio is included at the bottom and includes a book recommendation where kids can find more information. 

Most magazines that allow children a by-line would get my vote. But this one is particularly stellar. It focuses on character and true empowerment and gives kids lots to think about and do.

Other magazines for that empower by accepting kids submissions are:

 BAZOOF! Winner of the Parent’s Choice Award, “is a health and creativity print publication with a digital option. It is set in a bustling city in outer space that readers visit as they turn the pages. Along with much fun and adventure, educates on nutrition, personal care, fitness, healthy lifestyles, character development, eco-education—all in a creative and zany style! Filled with short stories, comics, recipes, puzzles, games, crafts, jokes, riddles, pet care, interviews, healthy snacks, sports, true stories, fun facts, prizes and more!”

Skipping Stones:

a global issues magazine for tweens and teens whose submissions policy reads “ We invite youth (ages 7 to 18 yrs.) writings on intercultural, international or multicultural understanding and/or nature & environmental theme.  Essays, letters, stories should be exactly 30 words or 30 sentences, and poems should be either 30 words or 30 lines, exactly.“

Find it at skippingstones.org

And, Stone Soup, a magazine of literature and art accepting submissions from kids ages 4-13. Stone Soup is now in its 46th year and has added a website component. 

Bayerl, Katherine. “Mags, Zines, and GURLs: The Exploding World of Girls' Publications.” Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3/4, 2000, pp. 287–292. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40005489.

Oliver, Brandie. “Department of Education Social Emotional Learning.” Indiana Department of Education Social Emotional Toolkit Learning: Built Upon A Neurodevelopmental Culturally Responsive Framework, Indiana Department of Education, 2018, https://www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/sebw/sel-toolkit-final-updated-cover.pdf.

[stretchjournalemerson]

Everything is Politics: The Role of the Essay and the Democratization of Media

By Eitan Miller and Kathleen Grillo Hilton Als, author of The Best American Essays, opens up a conversation about stories from magazines, journals, and websites. In his introduction he says, “But the essays of the future start with questions, generally political in nature, and if you don’t think so, think again” (Als xxviii). The term “political” is a broad one. While obviously some essays discuss overtly political issues, we believe that Als is describing a greater phenomenon. “Politics” shape a person’s life and the questions they ask. Als writes that essays are “generally political,” but beyond that, all essays have some basis in politics.

Apart from the simple partisanship of left vs. right, politics is the basis for life in any society. The way that society is governed and its freedoms or restrictions create individuals’ identity and shape their being. The political background of a given country shapes the writing an individual can create. In her essay From Silence to Words, Min-Zhan Lu describes her complex relationship with writing, language, and identity given her experiences in communist China and learning English. Lu directly analyzes how the politics of her country shaped her writing and thinking. She uses language, a key factor in anyone’s life, to exemplify the split world she lived in. The politics of the world she grew up in directly affected her everyday life as a child and what she wrote as an adult. This revelation affects all of us, not just those who grew up in communist China. American “democracy” shapes our lives in more ways than we could possibly know and creates the foundation on which our writing stands.

Hilton Als’s essay was possible solely because of the politics surrounding his life. As Als grew, he utilized experiences from his childhood when writing books that started a conversation about societal issues such as gender, race, sexuality, and identity. This essentially made his books contact zones where he brought issues to light in order to educate and inform those unaware of their position within those issues. As Pratt defines it, a contact zone is a “social space[ ] where cultures meet, clash, and grapple” (Pratt 34). The politics of Als’ life, defined as the way his mind was formed by the governmental structures and influences he grew up with, shaped what he wrote. As with Lu, who talked about language, a large part of what she thought about language came from the politics of her country. Als was born into a country that shunned him for his race, his sexuality, and his size. And so, the essays Als wrote focused on these issues. All writers, whether they write academically or personally, touch on subjects that matter to them and that they have encountered at some point in their life. Where they grow up, who they grow up with, and what ideals they grow up with shape what writers want to speak about. Famous essayist Joan Didion is known for her narrative memoir-style essays and novels. She wrote about various topics that impacted her life, as all authors do. Her life, as described in Goodbye to All That, includes moving halfway across the world by herself to becoming one of the top journalists in her field. This is undoubtedly linked to the politics of her society. Although implicitly, Didion wrote about feminism as Lu wrote about language and Als wrote about racism. They grew up in different circumstances, different times and places, and this is reflected in their essays. The politics of their life, whatever they may look like, continued to influence their work well into adulthood.

Like the other authors, Noam Chomsky was greatly influenced by the politics of his life. In a biography, Christian Garland describes Chomsky: “Chomsky continues to be an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neoliberal turn of global capitalism, which he identifies in terms of class warfare waged from above against the needs and interests of the great majority” (Garland). However, Chomsky’s primary work is as a linguist. Furthermore, his essay Prospects for Survival describes the limited chance that the human race will survive for an extended period of time. On the surface, this is a scientific and logical argument given the history of other species, but Chomsky describes the role of politics in the imminent destruction of the human race. He writes about nuclear war and climate change, both political issues, as shaping the human experience or eventually lack thereof. His experiences, as shaped by US politics and the political linguistic dominance of the English language, shaped his ideas, prompting his various essays.

Clearly, essays, while diverse in content, all ask questions and are based in politics. But, there are many ways that discussion can be staged. A relatively recent development is the “video essay,” a form where the creator can present an amalgamation of pictures and videos with a narrated analysis that is generally targeted towards a YouTube audience. This medium is particularly effective when discussing visual matters such as TV and movies because the viewer can witness the pertinent content. In the TED Talk below, a YouTuber who goes by the alias of “Nerdwriter” describes how video essays impacted the genre of the modern essay. Watch specifically from 5:05 to 7:26, though the entire talk is fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ald6Lc5TSk8

Evan Puschak (Nerdwriter) touches on the fact that video essays, in addition to being a convenient method of intertwining various types of media, are far more democratic than “traditional” forms of the essay. Platforms like YouTube allow users to reward and share good content, making information and analysis accessible to all people with Internet access. This democratization of the essay in its various forms is an important development, arguably the most important development of the modern essay. Even other forms of digitally shared essays share this democratization, taking power away from a “moderator” and putting it in the hands of the people. Accessibility is key to any successful essay because essays are meant to be read.

In his book The Best American Essays, Als writes, “Of course [the essays will] be made up of many things including questions, images, and gestures” (Als xxviii). The essay itself is hard to define. From the point of view of a high schooler taking AP courses, the essay consists of five straightforward paragraphs. However, the essay has many different forms. Academic essays written by the authors of this piece include How the Korean Wave Is Crashing Over America by Kathleen Grillo to Alternative Oppression: A Look at the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Eitan Miller. These works look at a variety of social and political issues such as race and religion through the lens of media, and are very clearly “political.” On the other hand, essays like those styled after the works of Joan Didion and the authors of this piece have a more narrative style. It may appear that these “essays” are contrary to the definition provided by Als. Didion, as well as our essays styled after her, is not outrightly political. However, they both still find a basis in politics. Didion’s works bring in issues of feminism and the effects a particular geographic location has on a person. Issues of equality and how society is constructed are based in the politics behind the author's life. Would Didion’s essays be the same if she grew up in a communist country? The essays we wrote in her style, though independent, both describe the transition from high school to college. For each of us, we find ourselves thriving in college more  than high school. And although not directly stated in either essay, it asks the questions: Why are colleges, especially high tuition institutions, better for individual growth than high school? What is the effect of education on a person’s life? How do money and the government play into the education a person receives?

Clearly, politics shape society, society shapes the self, and the self expresses ideas through writing. Logically, essays have to be based in politics. Authors are raised with implicit biases that come from the people that surround them, including the politics of the world they grow up in. And when authors write, they carry those biases within their writing. Even if they’re not choosing a side overtly, what they choose to write about is a bias in itself. Als used the stereotypes and prejudices he faced growing up in his writing. Lu struggled with a family life and country that was split, and reflected her struggles through language. Didion discussed the challenges she met as a woman moving from home and back. All authors were born into a certain political circumstance. And, while politics is most commonly viewed in direct relation to the government of a country, the power of politics is so broad that it seeps into everything. Even our most basic thoughts are founded with a certain political ideology. Because of this, it is impossible to say that essays are not based in politics. So what is written, no matter who writes it, when they write it, or where they write it, all comes down to politics.

Works Cited

Als, Hilton. The Best American Essays 2018. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

Brockes, Emma. “Hilton Als: 'I Had This Terrible Need to Confess, and I Still Do It. It's a Bid to Be Loved'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Feb. 2018,

Chomsky, Noam.  “Prospects for Survival.”  The Massachusetts Review, 2017, pp. 621-634. www.massreview.org/sites/default/files/06_58.4Chomsky.pdf.

Didion, Joan. Slouching towards Bethlehem: Essays. Picador Modern Classics, 2017.

Garland, Christian. “Noam Chomsky.” The Decline of the Democratic Ideal, chomsky.info/2009____-2/.

Grillo, Kathleen. How the Korean Wave Is Crashing Over America, Intro to College Writing WR-101-13, Emerson College, 21 Nov. 2018.

Lu, Min-Zhan. "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." 1987. College English 49(4): 437-448.

Miller, Eitan. Alternative Oppression: A Look at the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Intro to CollegeWriting WR-101-13, Emerson College, 21 Nov. 2018.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession 1991. New York: Modern Language Association P, 1991: 33-40.

Puschak, Evan. “How YouTube Changed the Essay.” TEDxTalks, uploaded 9 Jun. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ald6Lc5TSk8.

[myreflectionmatters-blog]

Intersectional Feminism In the Classroom

(Photo Source: These Are The Fierce Activists Leading The Women’s March On Washington)

On both January 21st and 22nd of this year, three women organized the country’s largest political demonstration, drawing in nearly half a million Americans to The Women's March on Washington and over 3 million nationally. These women - Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez – sought to amplify the voices of all those who find themselves at the mercy of patriarchy’s clenched fists. In addition to the typically advertised causes of feminism including reproductive rights and the gender wage gap, protesters rose signs calling attention to police brutality against black bodies, waved rainbow flags in support of LGBT identifying folks, and called out against the Dakota Access Pipeline. This was a demonstration of third wave feminism. This was intersectional. And despite the valid intra-community criticisms against the actual execution of the Women’s March, I ask what we as educators can take away from this major event and how can we bring what we learned into the classroom?

(Photo Source: Do I Have a Place in Your Movement? On Intersectionality at the Women’s March on Washington)

Intersectionality, coined by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is “ a concept to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another”. All of us hold a multitude of identities that are consistently interacting with one another and with the institutions we come into contact with. I, for example, am a white-passing, Puerto Rican, cis gendered, bisexual, able bodied, middle class raised woman. All these identities have directly and indirectly contributed to the opportunities I have had, the worldview I hold of society and my place in it. Change any one of them, and those very opportunities and perspectives change. Even amongst those who share similar identities, we find diversity. And if we know anything about this country’s history, some identities are privileged over others for no reason other than institutionalized ignorance refusing to retire unearned power. As educators, we participate in what has historically been intended to further the oppression of marginalized people, pacifying youth with white washed, patriarchal narratives that erase the injustices forced against them and the generations before them. And as agents of this system, we are especially obligated to reflect on the power bestowed on us over the development of young minds.

When approached to write this piece, I was prompted with the question: Why is it important for educators to understand what intersectional feminism is? The answer, for me, is simple: because we are responsible for the holistic development of youth that ought to not only be prepared to survive oppressive systems or excel in them, but to dismantle them. White feminism, also known as first wave feminism – a debatable term considering the ideology surrounding equality and equity amongst the sexes is one found well throughout history, not limited to white American women – has never represented the voices of women and non men whose gender identity is compounded by other systems of oppression (i.e., class, race, ability, sexual orientation). It is, therefore, incomplete and inapplicable to classrooms that seek to create a generation of liberated thinkers.

So, what is the first step? We look at the syllabus. Often times when discussing feminism, the target audience is young girls and women (again, by default, typically white). But intersectional feminist thought centers the experiences of all non men, especially marginalized demographics such as women of color and trans women. It must be clear that middle class, cis het, able-bodied white men (and women) cannot be the only people that exist in our curriculums. They are not the only authors who have stories to be told. They are not the only inventors with contributions to be celebrated. They are not the only leaders to write essays about. They are not the only survivors of tyranny with pain that cannot afford to be ignored. Only when we actively and intentionally engage our students in material that reflects these realities, which may or may not reflect that of the students, are we using our position as educators to develop and liberate young minds.

What we teach, however, is not the only line of defense against a white supremacist, patriarchal, academic agenda. How we teach is what separates intention from impact, especially when educating vulnerable populations (i.e., non men of color). Intersectionality is primarily concerned with making visible and audible the narratives of non men typically and systemically ignored. For the past three years, I have served as the program director of the L.A.C.E. Youth Leadership Program, educating low income, inner city Puerto Rican youth grades 6-12. I learned rather quickly that my students are far more knowledgeable about their realities than any college textbook could prepare me for. I learned that my voice was not the most important in the room, that they are aware of what matters to them  – and if intersectional feminism teaches us anything, it is that people are the experts on their own lives and it is their voices that ought to speak for their experiences.

But if we are honest, this is not an approach that most students are accustomed to. Educators hold a privileged position over students in that we are the decided expert in the classroom. This can be especially dangerous when educating non men of color, for example, whose voices are often interrupted, undervalued and invalidated. If we are intent on cultivating multiple perspectives, especially within the context of intersectionality, it is vital that educators make an exerted effort to create safe spaces for these students while also allowing for more privileged students (whether that be due to their race or gender) to actively listen to their fellow classmate. Whether that includes house agreements created by the students in the efforts of structuring fair and impactful discussions, or creating seating arrangements that de-emphasize a primary speaker, or encouraging students to make “I” statements so to not speak in generalizations and encourage interpersonal dialogue that builds connections, there are several ways to ensure that all voices are heard and, most importantly, that no marginalized voices are spoken over.

One of the best teaching methods I have found to promote an intersectional agenda – and therefore an agenda rooted in self liberation, equity and community – is to pose students as the teachers. If the goal is to cultivate multiple perspectives within the feminist group, the educators cannot always be the main one talking. I refuse to facilitate every group discussion, especially when the topic is of something that does not directly impact me. In discussions about racism, for example, I - a white passing Boricua woman – would do better to co-facilitate alongside my Afro Boricua female student who is directly impacted by the topic at hand. In addition to cultivating leadership and public speaking skills, both she and her classmates are able to see a young black woman, who not only experiences racism, but sexualized racism at that, at the center of a discussion that has material consequences in her life. In this space, if only in this space, she has the power to structure a conversation about misogynoir amongst a mixed group on her own terms. That is the kind of leadership I want my students to have. That is the kind of feminism I want my students to practice.

I do not see intersectional feminism as some theoretical ideology reserved for dissertations and stimulating conversation amongst the academic elite. It is a tool. One that seeks to personalize the human condition and, if executed properly in the classroom, allows everyone an opportunity to transform what is often a mechanical, academic environment into a space that centers community building amongst youth on the collective desire for self-determination.

MRM Guest Blogger: Roslyn Cecilia Sotero

Roslyn Cecilia Sotero is a graduate of the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Development and Family Studies. During her undergraduate career, she served as Vice President and President of the Latin American Student Organization (LASO), which provided an array of cultural events and services to students of the Waterbury regional campus.

LASO opened up professional opportunities for Ms. Sotero when she connected with the Hispanic Coalition of Greater Waterbury, Inc. who at the time was looking to create a new youth program. Excited to be working within the local Latinx community, Roslyn drafted a program curriculum that was used as part of a $60,000 state grant application. For the past three years as Program Director of the LACE Youth Leadership Program, Roslyn has catered to the academic, professional, personal and cultural development of youth of color throughout Waterbury's public school system. And as is the vision of the Hispanic Coalition for local youth, Roslyn led the creation of three local art exhibits in CT's first Latinx Art Center, El Centro Cultural, where LACE students took the lead in educating the public about Latinx histories.

In addition to her director position, Roslyn continues to educate Brown and Black communities on social justice issues by serving on several panel discussions across CT, MA and NY specifically in regards to issues close to WOC, education equity, youth-led activism and anti-blackness within Latinx communities.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND COLORS

I'm not going to make a cup of coffee. People at a startup expect to get rich will do that instead. Some kinds of innovations happen a company at first. It's in these more chaotic fields that it helps most to be in this phase is that it's a seller's market, because of the normal distribution of most applicant pools, it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgement has the most effect—you won't take rejection so personally. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year. Why Startups Condense in America. Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have worked; many statements may have no representation more concise than a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. The traditional series A round they often don't get thrown away. I was a kid.

This is a dangerously misleading example. Which implies a surprising but apparently inevitable consequence: little liberal arts colleges are doomed. Call the person's image to mind and imagine the company that might solve them. 1, which should be no more Calvin Coolidges. It is that you're bored. They're either calling you about a series A round in which a car magazine modified the sports model of some production car to get the two of them have the same problem, they start to set the timer. Number 2, most managers deliberately ignore this. The same single-mindedness that has brought them this far. Both now compete directly with open source software. Better to assume investors will always let you down. Death After sex, death is the default way to solve that problem, by showing how much better you can do is leave them alone in the right direction to be naive in: it's much better to live in a great city. Sometimes they're in a position where your performance can make or break you.

But just imagine calling Picasso the mercurial Spaniard when talking to different types of problems a site like Hacker News needs to avoid: bad stories and bad comments. The all-or-cure option. I've noticed while working on it. Ditto for Wal-Mart. When wealth is talked about in this context, it is not the thing itself, but what programmers think in. That name got assigned to it because the books we now call science. Short January 2016 Life is short, as everyone who's had a regular job at a big company. Probably not.

In Lisp, all variables are effectively pointers. You may worry that if they can improve your outcome by 10%, you're net ahead, because so long as I enjoyed it. It sounds obvious to say that a and b to be true of a highly articulated tool like a programming language probably becomes about as popular as it deserves to be famous on that account, the cognitive dissonance pushing children to regard themselves as Xes, despite the fact that it's going against the grain, socially. If you don't and a competitor does, you're in trouble. One of the things that put them over the edge. Google and ITA, which are Lisp data structures. It's good for morale to know people want to make money. But he didn't qualify it at all.

The first time I met Jerry Yang, we thought it was too late to make money selling hardware at high prices. But if you make something users would like better? I reply: here's the data; here's the theory; theory explains data 100%. Support When you can convince them. I can't believe it will. When I finished grad school in math. But this can't be an intrinsically European quality; previous generations of Europeans were as ambitious as Americans. Ideally, no one wants to deliver. There is now a lot of money.

We'd need a trust metric of the type studied by Raph Levien to prevent malicious or incompetent submissions, but if so this is what drives a lot of random junk. This essay is about writing, but put yourself back in 2004. I called schlep blindness. An expert pianist can play notes faster than the salary that seemed so high when they left school. If no one wants. Nerds would find their unpopularity more bearable if it merely caused them to make it a bestseller for a few months in, they want in too; if not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity. An ordinary slower-growing business might have just as good a case as Microsoft could have for waiting on tables. If you were investing more money you'd want to take on ambitious projects. More money can't get software written faster; it isn't needed for facilities, because those are the qualities you need to launch is that it's good for smart kids to be as big a head start in that mode. The other half is expressing yourself well. The people most likely to be something you can do something you'd never want to do something audacious.

In pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, and made some effort to teach you that. But if you find yourself in the right startups is for investors. Most American cities have been turned inside out. The spirit of resistance to government, Jefferson wrote, is so far still unique to Lisp. Seriously, though, is that if you pick some number to focus on one to the exclusion of the rest, one way to achieve that. That's what's been happening in the US has lost the most civil liberties recently. It turned out that economies of scale. It would be a good thing.

S & P 500 CEOs in 2002 was $3. It matters more to make something, or to people from a certain culture. The second way to compete with. Programs We should be clear in your own country. Cobol is notorious for taking a long time I felt bad about this, the better what their motives must have been hard for him, leaving all his time free for math. This essay is derived from a talk at Google. The difficulty of firing people is a particular problem is that a lot of the people who've made beautiful things seem to have co-evolved with our interest in faces, there's something special about primary colors for nearly all of them, which gave us the impression the world is not just that I accumulated all this useless stuff, but they're an extreme case of this. And no doubt that will happen this time too. And no, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of things practically all humans have in common is the Web. When I protested that the teacher had said the opposite, my father told me I should major in math it will be a small price to start out good, so in this case it seems more dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. You can't have divided loyalties.