Thursday, January 17, 2008

Climate Change

I have recently been feeling the effects of climate change--not the global variation, but that which comes from returning to snow and school from a vacation in warmth. The temperature change, of course, has been shocking. I can feel my new tan fading as the snow dampens my face outside. I lucked out with unusually warm weather during my visit to LA, but it's been snowing intermittently since my return to the east coast.

The other change in climate, in the sense of the tone of everyday life, has been returning to school after 5 weeks of leisure. That long of a break makes relaxation into a routine. So, launching back into my grad school schedule has been as big of a shock to my system as the snow. It's one of the beauties--and drawbacks--of grad school: constant change. The prospect of new professors, new books, new people in my classes can be exciting. It's a reminder that getting settled in academia means adjusting to the general climate rather than hanging on to the particulars.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Buying indie, eating locally

I was just reading the beginning of Bill Bryson's nostalgic new biography, and he reminisces about "the glory of living in a world still free of global chains. Every community was special and nowhere was like everywhere else." I hope Bryson got to walk around the city a bit when he was here last month to give a talk (his voice, fyi, is suprisingly high), because a bit of that glory remains.

Today I had wonderful food, and I didn't have to enter a single chain store. Nor did I have to go out of my way. I picked up a chunk of pecorino fresca and a loaf of ciabatta at the market a few blocks away, fresh tomatoes a block from there, and went home to make a sandwich. On my way to campus I grabbed a chai latte at an indepedent coffee shop/art gallery. Then, for dinner, I ate at White Dog Cafe, a restaurant that specializes in locally produced goods, with a group of alums from my high school.

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, Slow Food is a big deal lately, and Philly is a great place for it. There's a group here that helps people find locally-grown food, plus a website with a similar purpose called Farm to Philly. There also seem to be farmer's markets all the time, including one on campus.

I've also found it pretty easy to find independent places (more likely to have local products, and better for the community to begin with) here; they predominate in my neighborhood. It's not the 1950s, but hey, I'm quite happy to have a Trader Joe's near by, too.

Monday, November 19, 2007

The political past

The New York Times and the liberal blogosphere have spent a fair amount of time lately discussing the legacy of Ronald Reagan--specifically, about a campaign speech he gave in 1979 that seems to have expressed solidarity with southern racists. Paul Krugman writes, "Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong." David Brooks, on the other hand, believes that "the truth is more complicated."

What struck me here is the contrast between how columnists like these analyse a historical event versus how historians would go about this. For people like Krugman and Brooks, it's an approach that my classmates note with disdain: a teleological one. This means, roughly, that they're starting with the end point and putting together evidence that leads up to that end. That end point is usually a political point for columnists, whereas historians are more likely to let readers infer the contemporary political connections on their own. Historians are concerned with how things might have turned out differently--in our terms, contingency.

Why is one stump speech Reagan made using coded political language for racism suddenly the topic of a flurry of debate? It probably has a lot to do with this year's campaign and republican invocations of Reagan, and very little to do with that speech's historical importance. To me, it's eerily familiar of what a superb Washington Post piece recently described as a debate about race in America that is "stuck in purgatory, a cycle of skirmishes." Columnists fixating on this speech in 1979 are doing just what historians try so hard to avoid: getting mired in the detail without figuring out the meaning and implications.

And so, for the final word on Reagan and race--and an example of what the historical method can bring to debates about the past's role in the present--I'll defer to another historian's take.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Working out...ideas about body image

One of the positive life changes I've made since moving to Philly has been starting a good work-out regimen. There's a gym around the corner from me, so it's easy to get there and come home to shower. I've been doing yoga class one night a week there, then cardio and weight-lifting as many days a week as I can fit in. Given that my father has always promoted going to the gym as the panacea for all that is bad in life, I had high expectations for my new habit.

I feel great when I leave the gym, but since I started working out, I've noticed an unhealthy preoccupation that I've never dealt with before: my weight. I had such a fast metabolism growing up that people used to ask whether I was anorexic. I could never understand why 1) girls would starve themselves to look like models and actresses or 2) why even models and actresses would want to be that thin--I knew that it was uncomfortable.

And now, for the first time, I am feeling what those girls must have felt. I expected to lose weight working out, although I didn't feel I needed to, but discovered after a month that I had actually gained a few pounds (possibly muscle, but this didn't console me) and weighed more than I ever had before. Suddenly I was noticing that all of my pants were tight. I began to scrutinize my body every time I looked in the mirror for where the fat was residing. Finally, I realized I needed to step back. I checked my body mass index online, and discovered that I was at the low end of normal weight for my size.

Given my awareness of how the media feeds girls' unhealthy body image, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that I had bought into it. In high school, I boycotted stores whose ads I found distasteful in this way--this Bebe ad was one of the all-time worst. Things haven't improved since then. Magazines and blogs today treat cellulite, which one blog notes "effects 90% of women," as if it were a disease, and this recent blog post is an utterly tasteless example of that.

Where does this all leave me? I can't wipe out all of the negative associations I have with fat, but I can keep in mind where they're coming from. As an academic, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how culture shapes people's ideas, so maybe it's time I think about that in relation to myself.

Want to learn more about media and body image? Check out www.about-face.org.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Ugliness and the city

The results are in, and Philly has the ugliest people out of 25 American cities in a CNN/Travel and Leisure poll. Second ugliest? Washington, D.C. Apparently I've been hanging out in the wrong cities if I'm looking for the beautiful people. Philly also ranks 23rd for a category called "People (overall)." What exactly this means I'm not really sure. How can you possibly rank a city's population as a monolithic whole anyway?

Beyond the rather laughable methodology of this study (the rankings are based on people who have visited the city, but it doesn't appear that they asked how recently that visit was), I wonder if it's even possible to consider a city as one place in the way this study does. West Philly is vastly different from Center City, which in turn has little in common with South Philly. Tourist areas of a city are one thing, but large cities in America are so diverse--and, in turn, segregated--that it's often hard to make generalizations.

A kind of disturbing post on Gawker (a NYC blog) basically argued that what makes a city ugly is how many poor people live there. Wow. Another blogger suggests that people are just prejudiced towards blonds and Philly doesn't have enough. Maybe it's all the time I spend doing criticism for school, but I think this study should be taken with a giant spoonful of salt.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Why do history?

Pretty much since I started college, I've been concerned about doing something that mattered. Maybe it was because 9/11 happened my second week in college, or because many of my friends went into politics, advocacy work, or teaching, but whatever the reason, I've always been uneasy about being in the ivory tower. It doesn't help that the usual response from people when they hear I'm going for a PhD in history is some variation on a sarcastic "wow, that's useful..."

Last week, at the annual American Studies Association conference (held, conveniently enough, in Philadelphia), I attended a panel about the role of American Studies in informing public policy. There was clearly a lot of interest in the topic, because the room was so packed that people were standing the doorway (and believe me, this is not common at this kind of conference!). What emerged from what all of the scholars there were saying was that studying the past doesn't have to create analogies, but rather possibilities, for the present. Possibilities of other ways of doing things based on how we have done things in the past.


GW named one of its new dorms Ivory Tower, embodying the concept of the detached university (particularly apt here, since this was built over the neighborhood's objections)

To be honest, I'd never really thought about it that way. Certain topics lend themselves to this approach better than others: one scholar on immigration explained how her research shows past laws and policies that have been abandoned but could be useful today. An expert from a think tank explained that he reads articles by historians looking for answers to questions he approaches today when advising lobbyists. I asked about what a scholar who doesn't work on something that's currently a hot topic can do, and they insisted that being an activist can be an important role for somebody already trained in critical thinking and formulating arguments. True, but less compelling, I think.

Then I read, at a professor's suggestion, the incoming president of Harvard's inaugural address. The new president there, Drew Faust, is an historian. She echoed the concerns of a lot of historians I've talked to in school this year who worry about "presentism," or trying too hard to make historical research respond to present questions (although I think this is different from the possibility suggested by the panel about looking to the past for ideas--they weren't suggesting that the past try to
answer current questions). Here's her answer to why we study fields like history and classics:

"We pursue them in part 'for their own sake,' because they define what has over centuries made us human, not because they can enhance our global competitiveness. We pursue them because they offer us as individuals and as societies a depth and breadth of vision we cannot find in the inevitably myopic present. We pursue them too because just as we need food and shelter to survive, just as we need jobs and seek education to better our lot, so too we as human beings search for meaning. We strive to understand who we are, where we came from, where we are going and why."
I guess her "depth and breadth of vision" is kind of like the panel's idea of alternative possibilities. I'll agree that the pursuit of knowledge is part of what makes us human, but as much as I know I'm in this for a search for meaning, that is a selfish pursuit. A lot of people in the ivory tower are appeased by the noble nature of the pursuit, but I will continue to stubbornly insist that there should be something more.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Strolling to the market

Last weekend, I walked down to the Italian Market via South Street. Most people think of this street as it is on the eastern end of it--an alternative, edgy bordering on scuzzy, street lined with bars. But the middle section of the street seems to be in transition. There are cute cafes and boarded up houses, ethnic restaurants and outsider art. The art scene--and an agent of that transition--on the street is dominated by an abandoned lot that has been turned into a bricolage of ceramics, glass, iron, and mirrors. I use the word "bricolage" here because it's how the artist, Isaiah Zagar, positions himself; he got the idea to do this sort of art when he saw similar work sharing walls at MoMA with Picasso and Gaudi.

Zagar began transforming empty lots and walls with his inventive work in the late 1960s, when South Street was slated to be ripped out to build an expressway. After that idea was scrapped and the real estate became more valuable, Zagar had to launch a campaign to save his grandest creation, the magic garden (the site refers to gardens, but there's one main garden, which is where my photos are from). It was closed when I walked by, but this creation is an entire three-dimensional wonderland of his mosaic work. His work is scattered through-out the neighborhood, and while it may not end up in a museum, it definitely causes people to stop, look, and marvel--as all great art should.

It was a nicer walk than I expected down to the market, and the first task there was to get lunch. I had an unbelievable panini at Di Bruno brothers and split a risotto ball (arancini) with Anne (the pic is her artistry; check out her photos).

We were so full it we passed by a gelato cart and continued shopping. We found a great pasta factory where we both bought ravioli and fresh-cut pasta. And then, for a finale, we discovered Isgro's pastries. It was pretty tough deciding between the cookies, tarts, cupcakes, and other pastries, but we both settled on cannoli. It's usually not my favorite, but this was good enough to make me want to go back for more.