Sunday, July 31, 2005
nerd camp redux
At the talent show last night (rather, the "CTY Talent Coffe House") one student performed a recitation of 26 digits of pi. To roaring applause.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
oh but nyc
NYC was so wonderful. I needed to just move at hyperspeed from one thing to the next, and thankfully that is what I did. I saw the origninal Phantom of the Opera in Prospect Park, Alloy Orchestra providing the score. The second projecter blew (in a great flash of light and puff of smoke!) and so we sat through the reel changes listening to the theramin drone. E and I ate sushi and people-watched. It was another one of those situations in which you feel as though you ought to be running into a hundred people you know, but actually these are people like your friends in an alternate universe. And then in five years you'll make a new very close friend and one day you'll be sitting in a coffee shop and someone will walk by and you'll think, whoa, their posture is just like Lon Chaney's when Christine takes off his mask, and you'll tell your friend about it and she'll say, oh, yes, isn't that so, and then you'll realize that you were both there on the lawn in 2005, and you'll try to remember whether you noticed each other. But yes, the gesticulations were amazing. My favorite part of the movie was when the police inspector was wandering in the underground tunnels with Raul and he told Raul to hold his hand up beside his neck because it was quite likely that the Phantom might throw a noose down over their heads at any minute. And then Raul forgot, and we all kind of giggled, and then the interstitial titles (or whatever the proper term is) came up and the inspector was admonishing him, "Keep your hand up! It may save your life."
Mango ice is amazing, particularly when you have it at a pizza parlor/ice cream vendor where you end up the next night for slices of pizza with your soon-to-be-roommate after watching her friend's pirate rock girl band (er, mostly watching the lovely oceany slideshow which was actually somewhat better than the band) and it turns out the place is 2 blocks from her NYC apartment. You know, small city and all.
The Friedlander exhibit at MOMA was quite good, and I was really happy to see his contemporary work, which was a larger format than most of the 35 mm work I'd seen of his in many, many books in the Bard photo library where I would sprawl when I was supposed to be working on my Senior Project. What was fascinating was comparing the recent series of self-portraits with the earlier work, which was all about reflection and shadow, and the way the figure of Friedlander became inflected in the compressed, flattened landscapes he created. In the later work he was actually in the photographs "in person," but he arranged his body against backgrounds (like photo collages, or woven blankets, or simply the side of a picture frame and a corner of a bed) so that the lines of his body and the lines of the background (or the lines of shadow and light) got all mixed up with each other, flattening the space as much as in the earlier work. And it was fun to go with E and hunt for the reflection of Friedlander in all his reflection photos, even if our giggling caused a bit of a ruckus. What was more unsettling was noticing a girl with a bar code sticker on her ass and trying to decide whether we should politely inform her. When E decided to intervene (cause, you know, bar code sticker on her ass?), the girl turned around and said "yeah, I know." In a very patronizing fashion. And I realized it was a girl I studied photo with at Bard. And all 3 of us tacitly agreed (as the looks of recognition flashed over all our faces) not to acknowledge this fact. It was kind of beautiful, actually.
And also. I was very happy to see CJ. It's been too long, I've been feeling lately, since I've been in good touch with the old guard, the people who have known me good and well and long. We watched the roller skaters in Central Park (including the guy who skated with three water bottles stacked on his head and the man who held his hands like he was rubbing the heads of two small children roller skating beside him) and then rowed off into the pond, which wasn't quite as good as sailing on the Charles (or Swan Boating) but was still a singular experience. And we ate mussels at a darling French Bistro (which is exactly what one does with C in the city, whereas Scrabble in a gay coffee shop is exactly what one does with E in the city) and drank wine and just laughed.
And the moral is: I was so glad to remember the big wide world outside CTY.
Mango ice is amazing, particularly when you have it at a pizza parlor/ice cream vendor where you end up the next night for slices of pizza with your soon-to-be-roommate after watching her friend's pirate rock girl band (er, mostly watching the lovely oceany slideshow which was actually somewhat better than the band) and it turns out the place is 2 blocks from her NYC apartment. You know, small city and all.
The Friedlander exhibit at MOMA was quite good, and I was really happy to see his contemporary work, which was a larger format than most of the 35 mm work I'd seen of his in many, many books in the Bard photo library where I would sprawl when I was supposed to be working on my Senior Project. What was fascinating was comparing the recent series of self-portraits with the earlier work, which was all about reflection and shadow, and the way the figure of Friedlander became inflected in the compressed, flattened landscapes he created. In the later work he was actually in the photographs "in person," but he arranged his body against backgrounds (like photo collages, or woven blankets, or simply the side of a picture frame and a corner of a bed) so that the lines of his body and the lines of the background (or the lines of shadow and light) got all mixed up with each other, flattening the space as much as in the earlier work. And it was fun to go with E and hunt for the reflection of Friedlander in all his reflection photos, even if our giggling caused a bit of a ruckus. What was more unsettling was noticing a girl with a bar code sticker on her ass and trying to decide whether we should politely inform her. When E decided to intervene (cause, you know, bar code sticker on her ass?), the girl turned around and said "yeah, I know." In a very patronizing fashion. And I realized it was a girl I studied photo with at Bard. And all 3 of us tacitly agreed (as the looks of recognition flashed over all our faces) not to acknowledge this fact. It was kind of beautiful, actually.
And also. I was very happy to see CJ. It's been too long, I've been feeling lately, since I've been in good touch with the old guard, the people who have known me good and well and long. We watched the roller skaters in Central Park (including the guy who skated with three water bottles stacked on his head and the man who held his hands like he was rubbing the heads of two small children roller skating beside him) and then rowed off into the pond, which wasn't quite as good as sailing on the Charles (or Swan Boating) but was still a singular experience. And we ate mussels at a darling French Bistro (which is exactly what one does with C in the city, whereas Scrabble in a gay coffee shop is exactly what one does with E in the city) and drank wine and just laughed.
And the moral is: I was so glad to remember the big wide world outside CTY.
south hadley hodge-podge
It's been hard for me to conceive of blogging about this experience, mostly because the majority of it hasn't been that pleasant for me, and I've been loathe to blog the hard times. "Hard times is a daddy and a mother, livin in a mansion and hating each other....We ain't got no hard times, at all." I'd say 10 cents if you can name the reference, but little moose knows Lacy J.
Eveyone here is obsessed with foosball. I want to throw myself into the obsession, and have that little mini-bliss which can happen when something unexpected takes over your world. Only I'm embarassingly bad at foosball, in the way that it's possible to be when you haven't played since 1984 in Georgia with your cousins Mike and Amanda in their rec room. Man. Because, also, there's a tournament going on. And of course, all the admin staff, who spend the day playing foosball in the campus center, are the only ones left in the finals.
Yesterday my students had a wonderful conversation about empathy and literature. J was so frustrated that we keep reading disturbing stories/plays ("The Lottery," "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," "The Glass Menagerie," "A Doll's House," "A Rose For Emily") that she asked if the publisher was still in business so she could write to complain about their anthology. And K said she didn't like to think about the sad sorts of things the stories made her imagine. But someone else referenced a line from "The Glass Menagerie" to make the point that it's important to educate oneself about unpleasant events in the past so that one can make the present different. And then P brought up how WWII might not have happened if Germany had been treated differently after WWI. I'm glad I can have these conversations with 10 year-olds. Sometimes I feel as though my 20 year-olds at IU couldn't do it.
Tonight's second activity was child labor in the guise of fun. Seventy kids signed up to wash the staff members' cars. I couldn't get my kids to do that when I was nannying, but these "gifted and talented" kids were totally into it. It was amazing. Almost as good as the activity which consisted of everyone playing Simon Says and me dumping buckets of water on anyone who made a mistake.
I think I need a little distance before I can blog about the real frustrations: the pedagogy issues, the qualms I have with the particularly elitist bent of this program, the persistently bizarre social climate. The 100 degree room (4th floor, no a/c). But I've been feeling my silence and not liking it very much. So there's something, at least.
Eveyone here is obsessed with foosball. I want to throw myself into the obsession, and have that little mini-bliss which can happen when something unexpected takes over your world. Only I'm embarassingly bad at foosball, in the way that it's possible to be when you haven't played since 1984 in Georgia with your cousins Mike and Amanda in their rec room. Man. Because, also, there's a tournament going on. And of course, all the admin staff, who spend the day playing foosball in the campus center, are the only ones left in the finals.
Yesterday my students had a wonderful conversation about empathy and literature. J was so frustrated that we keep reading disturbing stories/plays ("The Lottery," "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," "The Glass Menagerie," "A Doll's House," "A Rose For Emily") that she asked if the publisher was still in business so she could write to complain about their anthology. And K said she didn't like to think about the sad sorts of things the stories made her imagine. But someone else referenced a line from "The Glass Menagerie" to make the point that it's important to educate oneself about unpleasant events in the past so that one can make the present different. And then P brought up how WWII might not have happened if Germany had been treated differently after WWI. I'm glad I can have these conversations with 10 year-olds. Sometimes I feel as though my 20 year-olds at IU couldn't do it.
Tonight's second activity was child labor in the guise of fun. Seventy kids signed up to wash the staff members' cars. I couldn't get my kids to do that when I was nannying, but these "gifted and talented" kids were totally into it. It was amazing. Almost as good as the activity which consisted of everyone playing Simon Says and me dumping buckets of water on anyone who made a mistake.
I think I need a little distance before I can blog about the real frustrations: the pedagogy issues, the qualms I have with the particularly elitist bent of this program, the persistently bizarre social climate. The 100 degree room (4th floor, no a/c). But I've been feeling my silence and not liking it very much. So there's something, at least.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
nerd camp
Everyone jokes that CTY is nerd camp and that's really true. I made a joke about William Henry Harrison the other day and everyone listening laughed. It's not the kind of camp I long for, sleeping outside and singing all the time, but it has its merits. The kids had a social the other night and you haven't lived until you've seen 250 kids shouting "die, die, die, die" after the line "this'll be the day that I die" in "Bye, Bye Miss American Pie" while strobe lights flash around them. Today is Super Death Dodge Ball which reportedly involves the staff standing in a tight huddle while all the kids surround us and throw balls at us. Eek.
The social scene here is a little funny. While the staff aren't all as nerdy as the campers, there's certainly enough social awkwardness to go around. It's getting better though. I stayed up til 4am the other night learning to play chess (nerdy!) and last night we gathered to watch the phenomonally awful movie Dr. Mordrid (my geeky moment was recognizing Kabal, the evil wizard, as the actor who played both Luke and The Judge on Buffy). Making friends is happening slowly, not in that tight camp rush I remember, but I have a feeling it will happen by the time I leave. And I'm telling myself I need to write anyway.
This is sure pretty turf at any rate, and I'm going to enjoy hiking around and hanging out in NoHa and going off in search of swimming holes. Summer is barrelling head over heels. I'm not getting nearly enough done.
The social scene here is a little funny. While the staff aren't all as nerdy as the campers, there's certainly enough social awkwardness to go around. It's getting better though. I stayed up til 4am the other night learning to play chess (nerdy!) and last night we gathered to watch the phenomonally awful movie Dr. Mordrid (my geeky moment was recognizing Kabal, the evil wizard, as the actor who played both Luke and The Judge on Buffy). Making friends is happening slowly, not in that tight camp rush I remember, but I have a feeling it will happen by the time I leave. And I'm telling myself I need to write anyway.
This is sure pretty turf at any rate, and I'm going to enjoy hiking around and hanging out in NoHa and going off in search of swimming holes. Summer is barrelling head over heels. I'm not getting nearly enough done.
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