A Student Writes a Rejection Letter Rejecting Harvard’s Rejection Letter (1981): Hear It Read by Actor Himesh Patel

in Education, Harvard, Letters | March 16th, 2023

The doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and sports edi­tor Paul Devlin has won five Emmy awards, but he may well be bet­ter known for not get­ting into Har­vard — or rather, for not get­ting into Har­vard, then reject­ing Har­vard’s rejec­tion. “I noticed that the rejec­tion let­ter I received from Har­vard had a gram­mat­i­cal error,” Devlin writes. “So, I wrote a let­ter back, reject­ing their rejec­tion let­ter.” His moth­er then “sent a copy of this let­ter to the New York Times and it was pub­lished in the New Jer­sey sec­tion on May 31, 1981.” In 1996, when the New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a cov­er sto­ry “about the trau­ma stu­dents were expe­ri­enc­ing get­ting reject­ed from col­leges,” she seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to send her son’s rejec­tion-rejec­tion let­ter to the Paper of Record.

It turned out that Devlin’s let­ter had already run there, hav­ing long since gone the pre-social-media equiv­a­lent of viral. “The New York Times accused me of pla­gia­rism. When they dis­cov­ered that I was the orig­i­nal author and they had unwit­ting­ly re-print­ed them­selves, they were none too hap­py. But my mom insists that it was impor­tant to reprint the arti­cle because the issue was clear­ly still rel­e­vant.”

Indeed, its after­life con­tin­ues even today, as evi­denced by the new video from Let­ters Live at the top of the post. In it actor Himesh Patel, well-known from series like Eas­t­En­ders, Sta­tion Eleven, and Avenue 5, reads aloud Devlin’s let­ter, which runs as fol­lows:

Hav­ing reviewed the many rejec­tion let­ters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejec­tion at this time.

This year, after apply­ing to a great many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, I received an espe­cial­ly fine crop of rejec­tion let­ters. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the num­ber of rejec­tions that I can accept is lim­it­ed.

Each of my rejec­tions was reviewed care­ful­ly and on an indi­vid­ual basis. Many fac­tors were tak­en into account – the size of the insti­tu­tion, stu­dent-fac­ul­ty ratio, loca­tion, rep­u­ta­tion, costs and social atmos­phere.

I am cer­tain that most col­leges I applied to are more than qual­i­fied to reject me. I am also sure that some mis­takes were made in turn­ing away some of these rejec­tions. I can only hope they were few in num­ber.

I am aware of the keen dis­ap­point­ment my deci­sion may bring. Through­out my delib­er­a­tions, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have tak­en for you to reach your deci­sion to reject me.

Keep in mind that at times it was nec­es­sary for me to reject even those let­ters of rejec­tion that would nor­mal­ly have met my tra­di­tion­al­ly high stan­dards.

I appre­ci­ate your hav­ing enough inter­est in me to reject my appli­ca­tion. Let me take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wish you well in what I am sure will be a suc­cess­ful aca­d­e­m­ic year.

SEE YOU IN THE FALL!

Sin­cere­ly,
Paul Devlin
Appli­cant at Large

How­ev­er con­sid­er­able the mox­ie (to use a whol­ly Amer­i­can term) shown by the young Devlin in his let­ter, his rea­son­ing seems not to have swayed Har­vard’s admis­sions depart­ment. Whether it would prove any more effec­tive in the twen­ty-twen­ties than it did in the nine­teen-eight­ies seems doubt­ful, but it must remain a sat­is­fy­ing read for high-school stu­dents dispir­it­ed by the sup­pli­cat­ing pos­ture the col­lege-appli­ca­tion process all but forces them to take. It sure­ly does them good to remem­ber that they, too, pos­sess the agency to declare accep­tance or rejec­tion of that which is pre­sent­ed to them sim­ply as neces­si­ty, as oblig­a­tion, as a giv­en. And for Devlin, at least, there was always the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

T. S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Meet the “Gram­mar Vig­i­lante,” Hell-Bent on Fix­ing Gram­mat­i­cal Mis­takes on England’s Store­front Signs

Steven Pinker Iden­ti­fies 10 Break­able Gram­mat­i­cal Rules: “Who” Vs. “Whom,” Dan­gling Mod­i­fiers & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Retired Math Teacher Helps Students Learn Geometry Through Quilting

in Creativity, Design, Education, K-12, Math | February 27th, 2023

Some real talk from retired geom­e­try teacher Wendy Licht­man, above, the author of sev­er­al math-themed YA nov­els:

Not many 15-year-olds care that two par­al­lel lines are crossed by a trans­ver­sal.

“But right here are two par­al­lel lines,” she con­tin­ues, point­ing to a pink and orange quilt. “and these are trans­ver­sals, and they are at a 90º angle and it feels real. You’ve got­ta get it to look right.”

The teenaged par­tic­i­pants in the Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia pro­gram she found­ed to demys­ti­fy geom­e­try through hands-on quilt­mak­ing get it to look right by plot­ting their designs on graph paper, care­ful­ly mea­sur­ing and cut­ting shapes from bright cal­i­co of their own choos­ing. (Lic­th­man has com­mit­ted to but­ton­ing her lip if their favored print is not to her taste.)

Licht­man came up with this cre­ative approach to help a bright stu­dent who was in dan­ger of not grad­u­at­ing, hav­ing flunked geom­e­try three times.

She details their jour­ney in How to Make a Geo­met­ric Quilt, an essay for­mat­ted as step-by-step instructions…not for quilt­mak­ing but rather how those in the teach­ing pro­fes­sion can lead with humil­i­ty and deter­mi­na­tion, while main­tain­ing good bound­aries.

Some high­lights:

6. Some­time after the sewing has begun, and the math note­book is ignored for weeks, begin to wor­ry that your stu­dent is not real­ly learn­ing geom­e­try.  She’s learn­ing sewing and she’s learn­ing to fix a bro­ken bob­bin, but real­ly, geom­e­try?

7. Remind your­self that this kid needs a quilt as much as she needs geom­e­try.

8. Remem­ber, also, the very, very old woman who taught you hat-mak­ing one night long ago.  She had gone to school only through 5th grade because, she said, she was a Black child in the deep south and that’s how it was back then.  Think about how she explained to the hat-mak­ing class that to fig­ure out the length of the hat’s brim, you need­ed to mea­sure from the cen­ter to the edge with a string and then do “three of those and a lit­tle bit more,” and remem­ber how you sat in awe, because three radii and a lit­tle bit more is the def­i­n­i­tion of pi, and this hat-mak­er had evi­dent­ly dis­cov­ered for her­self the for­mu­la for cir­cum­fer­ence.

As the two become bet­ter acquaint­ed, the stu­dent let her guard down, reveal­ing more about her sit­u­a­tion while they swapped sto­ries of their moth­ers.

But this was no easy A.

In addi­tion to expect­ing reg­u­lar, punc­tu­al atten­dance, Lict­man stip­u­lat­ed that in order to pass, the stu­dent could not give the fruits of her labor away.

(Sol­id advice for cre­ators of any craft project this ambi­tious. As Deb­bie Stoller, author of Stitch ‘n Bitch: The Knit­ter’s Hand­book coun­sels:

…those who have nev­er knit some­thing have no idea how much time it took. If you give some­one a sweater, they may think that you made that in an evening when you were watch­ing a half-hour sit­com. It’s only when peo­ple actu­al­ly attempt to knit that they final­ly get this real­iza­tion, this light bulb goes on over their heads, and they real­ize that, “Wow, this actu­al­ly takes some skill and some time. I’ve got new­found respect for my grand­ma.”)

Ulti­mate­ly, Licht­man con­cludes that the five cred­its she award­ed her stu­dent could not be reduced to some­thing as sim­ple as geom­e­try or quilt-mak­ing;

You are giv­ing her cred­it for some­thing less tan­gi­ble.  Some­thing like pride.  Five cred­it hours for feel­ing she can accom­plish some­thing hard that, okay, is slight­ly relat­ed to geom­e­try.

Exam­ples of the cur­rent cohort’s work can be seen on Rock Paper Scis­sors Col­lec­tive’s Insta­gram.

Once com­plet­ed, these quilts will be donat­ed to Bay Area fos­ter chil­dren and pedi­atric patients at the local Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Solar Sys­tem Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Cre­ates a Hand­craft­ed Quilt to Use as a Teach­ing Aid in Her Astron­o­my Class

17-Year-Old Ade­line Har­ris Cre­at­ed a Quilt Col­lect­ing 360 Sig­na­tures of the Most Famous Peo­ple of the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Lin­coln, Dick­ens, Emer­son & More (1863)

Bisa Butler’s Beau­ti­ful Quilt­ed Por­traits of Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, Nina Simone, Jean-Michel Basquiat & More

Via Boing Boing

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: It’s “Basically High-Tech Plagiarism” and “a Way of Avoiding Learning”

in Education, Technology | February 10th, 2023

Chat­G­PT, the sys­tem that under­stands nat­ur­al lan­guage and responds in kind, has caused a sen­sa­tion since its launch less than three months ago. If you’ve tried it out, you’ll sure­ly have won­dered what it will soon rev­o­lu­tion­ize — or, as the case may be, what it will destroy. Among Chat­G­P­T’s first vic­tims, holds one now-com­mon view, will be a form of writ­ing that gen­er­a­tions have grown up prac­tic­ing through­out their edu­ca­tion. “The essay, in par­tic­u­lar the under­grad­u­ate essay, has been the cen­ter of human­is­tic ped­a­gogy for gen­er­a­tions,” writes Stephen Marche in The Atlantic. “It is the way we teach chil­dren how to research, think, and write. That entire tra­di­tion is about to be dis­rupt­ed from the ground up.”

If Chat­G­PT becomes able instan­ta­neous­ly to whip up a plau­si­ble-sound­ing aca­d­e­m­ic essay on any giv­en top­ic, what future could there be for the aca­d­e­m­ic essay itself? The host of YouTube chan­nel EduK­itchen puts more or less that very ques­tion to Noam Chom­sky — a thinker who can be relied upon for views on edu­ca­tion — in the new inter­view above. “For years there have been pro­grams that have helped pro­fes­sors detect pla­gia­rized essays,” Chom­sky says. “Now it’s going to be more dif­fi­cult, because it’s eas­i­er to pla­gia­rize. But that’s about the only con­tri­bu­tion to edu­ca­tion that I can think of.” He does admit that Chat­G­PT-style sys­tems “may have some val­ue for some­thing,” but “it’s not obvi­ous what.”

As the rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy now stands, Chom­sky sees the use of Chat­G­PT as “basi­cal­ly high-tech pla­gia­rism” and “a way of avoid­ing learn­ing.” He likens its rise to that of the smart­phone: many stu­dents “sit there hav­ing a chat with some­body on their iPhone. One way to deal with that is to ban iPhones; anoth­er way to do it is to make the class inter­est­ing.” That stu­dents instinc­tive­ly employ high tech­nol­o­gy to avoid learn­ing is “a sign that the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is fail­ing.” If it “has no appeal to stu­dents, does­n’t inter­est them, does­n’t chal­lenge them, does­n’t make them want to learn, they’ll find ways out,” just as he him­self did when he bor­rowed a friend’s notes to pass a dull col­lege chem­istry class with­out attend­ing it back in 1945.

After spend­ing most of his career teach­ing at MIT, Chom­sky retired in 2002 to become a full-time pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton’s Robert Zaret­sky, who still teach­es, recent­ly offered his own, grim­mer take on Chat­G­PT and edu­ca­tion. “The col­lege essay died years ago,” he argues. “It’s a mug’s game in which a stu­dent sends me an elec­tron­ic file that, when open, spills out a jum­ble of words that the sender pro­pounds to be a fin­ished paper” — to which, pre­sum­ably, the out­put of a machine-learn­ing sys­tem would actu­al­ly be far prefer­able. Most tech­no­log­i­cal “dis­rup­tions” leave both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive effects in their wake. If the col­lege essay is indeed unsal­vage­able, per­haps Chat­G­PT will final­ly bring about its replace­ment with some­thing more inter­est­ing.

Update: Chom­sky has co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times called “The False Promise of Chat­G­PT”. Find it here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Chat­G­PT Writes a Song in the Style of Nick Cave–and Nick Cave Calls it “a Grotesque Mock­ery of What It Is to Be Human”

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Thanks to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, You Can Now Chat with His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures: Shake­speare, Ein­stein, Austen, Socrates & More

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Has Given Away 186 Million Free Books to Kids, Boosting Literacy Worldwide

in Books, Education, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | August 19th, 2022

Dol­ly Par­ton cre­at­ed her Imag­i­na­tion Library, a non-prof­it which gives books to mil­lions of chil­dren every month, with her father, Robert Lee Par­ton, in mind.

“I always thought that if Dad­dy had an edu­ca­tion, there’s no telling what he could have been,” she mused in her 2020 book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics:

Because he knew how to barter, he knew how to bar­gain. He knew how to make every­thing work, and he knew how to count mon­ey. He knew exact­ly what every­thing was worth, how much he was going to make from that tobac­co crop, what he could trade, and how he could make it all work

Despite his busi­ness acu­men, Parton’s father nev­er learned to read or write, a source of shame.

Par­ton explains how there was a time when school­ing was nev­er con­sid­ered a giv­en for chil­dren in the moun­tains of East Ten­nessee, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those like her father, who came from a fam­i­ly of 15:

Kids had to go to work in the fields to help feed the fam­i­ly. Because of the weath­er and because of con­di­tions, a lot of kids couldn’t go to school.

I told him, “Dad­dy, there are prob­a­bly mil­lions of peo­ple in this world who don’t know how to read and write, who didn’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Don’t be ashamed of that. Let’s do some­thing spe­cial.”

Par­ton is con­vinced that her father, whose pride in her musi­cal accom­plish­ments was so great he drove over with a buck­et of soapy water to clean the bronze stat­ue her home­town erect­ed in her hon­or, was proud­er still of a nick­name bestowed on her by the Imag­i­na­tion Library’s child ben­e­fi­cia­ries — the Book Lady.

Togeth­er with the com­mu­ni­ty part­ners who secure fund­ing for postage and non-admin­is­tra­tive costs, the Book Lady has giv­en away some 186,680,000 books since the project launched in 1995.

Orig­i­nal­ly lim­it­ed to chil­dren resid­ing in Sevi­er Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, the pro­gram has expand­ed to serve over 2,000,000 kids in the US, UK, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Repub­lic of Ire­land.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion can start well before a child is old enough to attempt their ABCs. Par­ents and guardians are encour­aged to enroll them at birth.

The Imag­i­na­tion Library’s lit­tlest par­tic­i­pants’ love of books is fos­tered with col­or­ful illus­tra­tions and sim­ple texts, often rhymes hav­ing to do with ani­mals or bed­time.

By the time a read­er hits their final year of the pro­gram at age 5, the focus will have shift­ed to school readi­ness, with sub­jects includ­ing sci­ence, folk­tales, and poet­ry.

The books — all Pen­guin Ran­dom House titles — are cho­sen by a pan­el of ear­ly child­hood lit­er­a­cy experts. 

This year’s selec­tion includes such old favorites as The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, Good Night, Goril­la, and The Snowy Day, as well as Parton’s own Coat of Many Col­ors, based on the song in which she famous­ly paid trib­ute to her moth­er’s ten­der resource­ful­ness:

Back through the years

I go won­derin’ once again

Back to the sea­sons of my youth

I recall a box of rags that some­one gave us

And how my mom­ma put the rags to use

There were rags of many col­ors

Every piece was small

And I did­n’t have a coat

And it was way down in the fall

Mom­ma sewed the rags togeth­er

Sewin’ every piece with love

She made my coat of many col­ors

That I was so proud of

The Imag­i­na­tion Library is clear­ly a boon to chil­dren liv­ing, as Par­ton once did, in pover­ty, but par­tic­i­pa­tion is open to any­one under age 5 liv­ing in an area served by an Imag­i­na­tion Library affil­i­ate.

Pro­mot­ing ear­ly engage­ment with books in such a sig­nif­i­cant way has also helped Par­ton to reduce some of the stig­ma sur­round­ing illit­er­a­cy:

You don’t real­ly real­ize how many peo­ple can’t read and write. Me telling the sto­ry about my dad­dy instilled some pride in peo­ple who felt like they had to keep it hid­den like a secret. I get so many let­ters from peo­ple say­ing, “I would nev­er had admit­ted it’ or “I was always ashamed.”

Learn more about Dol­ly Parton’s Imag­i­na­tion Library, which wel­comes dona­tions and inquiries from those who would like to start an affil­i­ate pro­gram in their area, here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Google Unveils a Digital Marketing & E‑Commerce Certificate: 7 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Business, Education, Online Courses | May 13th, 2022

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” Their first cer­tifi­cates focused on Project Man­age­ment, Data Ana­lyt­ics, User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design, IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion. Now comes their latest–a cer­tifi­cate ded­i­cat­ed to Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑commerce.

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑commerce Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of sev­en cours­es, all col­lec­tive­ly designed to help stu­dents “devel­op dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce strate­gies; attract and engage cus­tomers through dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels like search and email; mea­sure mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics and share insights; build e‑commerce stores, ana­lyze e‑commerce per­for­mance, and build cus­tomer loy­al­ty.” The cours­es include:

In total, this pro­gram “includes over 190 hours of instruc­tion and prac­tice-based assess­ments, which sim­u­late real-world dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place.” Along the way, stu­dents will learn how to use tools and plat­forms like Can­va, Con­stant Con­tact, Google Ads, Google Ana­lyt­ics, Hoot­suite, Hub­Spot, Mailchimp, Shopi­fy, and Twit­ter. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es. If you con­tin­ue beyond that, Google/Coursera will charge $39 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $235 after 6 months.

If you don’t want to pay, you can audit each course for free, with­out ulti­mate­ly receiv­ing the cer­tifi­cate.

Explore the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑commerce Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

Google Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate: 8 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

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The Depths of Wikipedia: Enjoy a Compendium of the Online Encyclopedia’s Most Bizarre Pages

in Comedy, Education, Random, Web/Tech | April 4th, 2022

@depthsofwikipedia If the author­i­ties kill me for mak­ing this tik­tok just know I loved you guys #learnon­tik­tok #tik­tok­part­ner ♬ orig­i­nal sound — Annie Rauw­er­da

What’s your stance on Wikipedia, the free, open con­tent online ency­clo­pe­dia?

Stu­dents are often dis­cour­aged or dis­al­lowed from cit­ing Wikipedia as a source, a bias that a Wikipedia entry titled “Wikipedia should not be con­sid­ered a defin­i­tive source in and of itself” sup­ports:

As a user-gen­er­at­ed source, it can be edit­ed by any­one at any time, and any infor­ma­tion it con­tains at a par­tic­u­lar time could be van­dal­ism, a work in progress, or sim­ply incor­rect. Biogra­phies of liv­ing per­sons, sub­jects that hap­pen to be in the news, and polit­i­cal­ly or cul­tur­al­ly con­tentious top­ics are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to these issues…because Wikipedia is a vol­un­teer-run project, it can­not con­stant­ly mon­i­tor every con­tri­bu­tion. There are many errors that remain unno­ticed for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years.


(Anoth­er entry coun­sels those who would per­sist to cite the exact time, date, and arti­cle ver­sion they are ref­er­enc­ing.)

Wikipedia has a clear­ly stat­ed pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing con­trib­u­tors from close para­phras­ing or out­right copy­ing and past­ing from out­side sources, though in a bit of a cir­cle-in-a-cir­cle sit­u­a­tion, sev­er­al not­ed authors and jour­nal­ists have been caught pla­gia­riz­ing Wikipedia arti­cles.

A list of Wikipedia con­tro­ver­sies, pub­lished on — where else? — Wikipedia is a hair rais­ing litany of polit­i­cal sab­o­tage, char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion, and “revenge edits”. (The list is cur­rent­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed by 338 ref­er­ence links, and has been char­ac­ter­ized as in need of update since Octo­ber 2021, owing to a lack of edits regard­ing the “con­tro­ver­sy about Main­land Chi­nese edi­tors.”)

It can be a pret­ty scary place, but Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan senior Annie Rauw­er­da, cre­ator of the Insta­gram account Depths of Wikipedia is unfazed. As she wrote in an arti­cle for the tech pub­li­ca­tion Input:

Wikipedia is a splen­did­ly exten­sive record of almost every­thing that mat­ters; a mod­ern-day Library of Alexan­dria that’s free, acces­si­ble, and dynam­ic. But Wikipedia is char­ac­ter­ized not only by what it is but also by what it is not. It’s not a soap­box, a bat­tle­ground, nor a blog.


It’s also becom­ing famous as Rauw­er­da’s play­ground, or more accu­rate­ly, a packed swap shop in which mil­lions of bizarre items are tucked away.

If your sched­ule lim­its the amount time you can spend down its myr­i­ad rab­bit holes, Rauw­er­da will do the dig­ging for you.

Turn­ing a selec­tion of Wikipedia excerpts into a col­lage for a friend’s quaran-zine inspired her to keep the par­ty going with screen­shots of odd­ball entries post­ed to a ded­i­cat­ed Insta­gram account.

Her fol­low­ers don’t seem to care whether a post con­tains an image or not, though the neu­ro­science major finds that emo­tion­al, short or ani­mal-relat­ed posts gen­er­ate the most excite­ment. “I used to post more things that were con­cep­tu­al,” she told Lithi­um Mag­a­zine,  “like mind-blow­ing physics con­cepts, but those didn’t lend them­selves to Insta­gram as well since they require a few min­utes of think­ing and read­ing.”

The bulk of what she posts come to her as read­er sub­mis­sions, though in a pinch, she can always turn to the “holy grail” — Wikipedia’s own list of unusu­al arti­cles.

In addi­tion to Insta­gram, her dis­cov­er­ies find their way into an infre­quent­ly pub­lished newslet­ter, and onto Tik­Tok and Twit­ter, where some of our recent faves include the def­i­n­i­tion of hum­ster, a list of games that Bud­dha would not play, and the Paul O’Sullivan Band, “an inter­na­tion­al­ly based, pop-rock band con­sist­ing of four mem­bers, all of whom are named Paul O’Sullivan.”

Along the way, she has found ways to give back, co-host­ing a vir­tu­al edit-a-thon and bring­ing some gen­uine glam­our to a livestreamed Wikipedia triv­ia con­test.

And she recent­ly authored a seri­ous arti­cle for Slate about Rus­sians scram­bling to down­load a 29-giga­byte file con­tain­ing Russ­ian-lan­guage Wikipedia after the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Mass Media (Roskom­nad­zor) threat­ened to block it over con­tent relat­ed to the inva­sion of Ukraine.

(You can read more about how that’s going on Wikipedia…)

Sub­mit a link to Wikipedia page for pos­si­ble inclu­sion on the Depths of Wikipedia here.

Fol­low Annie Rauwin­da’s Depths of Wikipedia on Insta­gram and Tik­Tok.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lis­ten to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambi­ent Music in Real Time

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Painting?: It’s Not What You Think

in Animation, Art, Education, History | January 7th, 2022

Leonar­do da Vinci’s unfin­ished, five cen­tu­ry-old por­trait of a Flo­ren­tine silk merchant’s wife, Lisa del Gio­con­do (née Gher­ar­di­ni), is, quite pos­si­bly, the most famous paint­ing in the world.

And its sub­ject pos­sess­es the world’s most cap­ti­vat­ing smile, inspir­ing rhap­sodies and par­o­dies in seem­ing equal mea­sure. (Its Ital­ian title, La Gio­con­da, is a nod to the sitter’s mar­ried name, and depend­ing on whom you ask, trans­lates as “joy­ous,” “light heart­ed,” or  “mer­ry.”)

The Lou­vre, where the paint­ing has resided since 1804 (fol­low­ing stints in Fontainebleau, the Grand Palace of Ver­sailles, and Napoleon Bona­parte’s bed­room), reserves a spe­cial mail­box for paeans from Mona Lisa fans.

Ask a ran­dom per­son on the street how this com­par­a­tive­ly dinky oil on wood came to be so uni­ver­sal­ly cel­e­brat­ed, and they’ll log­i­cal­ly con­clude it’s got some­thing to do with that smile.

Those with a back­ground in visu­al art may also cite Renais­sance inno­va­tions in paint­ing tech­nique — atmos­pher­ic per­spec­tive and sfu­ma­to, both of which Leonar­do employed to mem­o­rable effect.

Those are good guess­es, but the real rea­son for the Mona Lisa’s endur­ing glob­al renown?

The pub­lic’s love of a good crime sto­ry.

As art his­to­ri­an Noah Char­ney, author of The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Steal­ing the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing, recounts in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above, La Gio­can­da owes her block­buster rep­u­ta­tion to a sticky-fin­gered Lou­vre employ­ee named Vin­cen­zo Perug­gia.

In 1911, Perug­gia, a painter whose day job involved build­ing crates for works in the Lou­vre’s col­lec­tion, hid in a cup­board for hours after clos­ing, then escaped via a back door, the unframed can­vas tucked beneath his arm.

The police papered the streets of Paris with the Mona Lisa’s like­ness on miss­ing fly­ers, and the press fanned inter­est in both the crime and the paint­ing. Read­ers devoured updates that iden­ti­fied poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire and painter Pablo Picas­so as sus­pects, and steamy the­o­ries regard­ing the nature of the rela­tion­ship between Leonar­do and the lady in the por­trait.

As art crit­ic Lau­ra Cum­ming writes in The Guardian, “Mil­lions of peo­ple who might not have seen it, might nev­er even have heard of it, soon became experts on Leonar­do’s stolen paint­ing.”

For two years, its where­abouts remained unknown:

(Perug­gia) kept her in a cup­board, then under a stove in the kitchen, and final­ly in (a) false-bot­tomed trunk. For a while, he rather cock­i­ly propped her post­card on the man­tel­piece… But fair­ly soon he seems to have found her hard to look at, impos­si­ble to live with; there is evi­dence of repeat­ed attempts to sell her.

The thief even­tu­al­ly arranged to repa­tri­ate the pur­loined paint­ing to Italy, strik­ing a deal with Flo­ren­tine art deal­er Alfred Geri, who sum­moned the police as soon as he ver­i­fied the work’s authen­tic­i­ty.

The Mona Lisa was restored to the Lou­vre, where eager crowds clam­ored for a look at a new­ly mint­ed house­hold name they could all rec­og­nize by sight, as “news­pa­pers took the sto­ry for a vic­to­ry lap.”

Find a quiz and cus­tomiz­able les­son plan on the rea­sons behind the Mona Lisa’s fame here.

Hats off to ani­ma­tor Avi Ofer for his puck­ish sug­ges­tion that Leonar­do might have tak­en some flat­ter­ing lib­er­ties with Lisa del Gio­con­do’s appear­ance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Made His Mag­nif­i­cent Draw­ings Using Only a Met­al Sty­lus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renais­sance Man

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Doreen Ketchens’ Astonishing Rendition of “The House of the Rising Sun”: A World-Class Clarinetist Busks on the Streets of New Orleans

in Education, Jazz, Music | December 27th, 2021

Dirt­i­ness has no descrip­tion. It is a  feel­ing. — music tran­scriber George Col­lier

You may be able to read music and play the clar­inet, but it’s extreme­ly unlike­ly you — or any­one — will be able to play along with Doreen Ketchens’ “dirty” solo on “The House of the Ris­ing Sun,” above, despite an assist from Tom Pick­les’ scrolling tran­scrip­tion.

Down­load the tran­scrip­tion for free and keep try­ing.

It’s what Ketchens, a world renowned clar­inetist and music edu­ca­tor, who has played for four US pres­i­dents and busks reg­u­lar­ly in the French Quar­ter, would advise.

“You have to prac­tice and be ready to per­form at the drop of a hat” she told The Clar­inet’s Ben Red­wine, when he asked if she had any advice for young musi­cians hop­ing to make it pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

She’s also a strong advo­cate of lis­ten­ing robust­ly, not throw­ing in the tow­el when some­one else gets the job instead of you, and let­ting your per­son­al­i­ty come through in your play­ing:

You don’t want to sound like you’re play­ing an etude book. This is for all types of music – even clas­si­cal. You want to move the audi­ence, you want to touch them.

Trained as a clas­si­cal clar­inetist, Ketchens cozied up to jazz short­ly after she cozied up to the tuba play­er who would become her hus­band. “All of the sud­den, jazz wasn’t so bad,” she says:

I start­ed to lis­ten to jazz so I could learn the tunes and fit in with his band. I start­ed lis­ten­ing to Louis Arm­strong. He is my biggest influ­ence. Some peo­ple call me Mrs. Satch­mo, I guess because that con­cept is in my head. I’ll hear some­thing he plays, which I’ve heard thou­sands of times, and I’ll think, “What? How did he do that?” Then, I lis­tened to the clar­inetists who played with him: Edmund Hall, Buster Bai­ley, Bar­ney Bigard. Those cats were awe­some too! Edmund Hall had this thing he could do, where it sounds like he was play­ing two tones at the same time. Peo­ple today might hum while they play to achieve some­thing sim­i­lar, but I don’t think that was what he was doing. Buster Bai­ley had a sim­i­lar back­ground to me, start­ing out with clas­si­cal music, then learn­ing jazz. Ear­ly on, I emu­lat­ed Jer­ry Fuller, clar­inetist with the Dukes of Dix­ieland. I would steal so many of his solos just so I could keep up with my husband’s band. Even­tu­al­ly, I real­ized what he was doing, and it trans­lat­ed into me being able to impro­vise. I’d start out tran­scrib­ing solos, then play­ing by ear, copy­ing what those clar­inetists were doing. I don’t remem­ber those solos now, but I’m sure that I still play snip­pets of them that creep into my impro­vi­sa­tions.

How­ev­er she got there, she pos­sess­es a sin­gu­lar abil­i­ty to make her instru­ment growl and her com­mand of 32nd notes makes us feel a lit­tle light­head­ed.

Clar­inetists abound in New Orleans, and they prob­a­bly all cov­er “The House of the Ris­ing Sun,” but you’ll be hard pressed to find a more excit­ing ren­di­tion than Ketchens’ on the cor­ner of St. Peter and Roy­al, with hus­band Lawrence on tuba and daugh­ter Dori­an on drums.  Here’s the full ver­sions, sans tran­scrip­tion.

You want an encore? Of course you do.

How about Ketchens’ mag­nif­i­cent solo on “Just a Clos­er Walk With Thee” for the Louisiana Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra?

Find more aston­ish­ing, tran­scribed solos and a heap­ing help­ing of Jacob Col­lier on George Collier’s (no rela­tion) YouTube Chan­nel.

His tran­scrip­tions, and those of col­lab­o­ra­tor Tom Pick­les, are avail­able for free down­load here, unless the artist sells their own tran­scrip­tion, in which case he encour­ages you to sup­port the artist with your pur­chase.

If you’re a music nerd who would like to dis­cuss tran­scrip­tions, give feed­back on oth­ers’ attempts, and upload your own, join his com­mu­ni­ty on Dis­cord.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

Jazz Vir­tu­oso Oscar Peter­son Gives Dick Cavett a Daz­zling Piano Les­son (1979)

Lit­tle Kid Mer­ri­ly Grooves to ZZ Top While Wait­ing for the Bus

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, the­ater­mak­er, and the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her lat­est book, Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo, will be pub­lished in ear­ly 2022.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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