What to Wear to a Successful PhD Thesis Defense? A Skirt’s Worth of Academic Rejection Letters

in Creativity, Education, Fashion, Life, Science | November 8th, 2019

Some peo­ple are par­a­lyzed by rejec­tion.

Oth­ers, like Michi­gan State University’s Earth and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences PhD can­di­date, Caitlin Kir­by, sport rejec­tion like a man­tle of hon­or… or more accu­rate­ly, a pleat­ed skirt falling to just below mid-thigh.

“Suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed my PhD dis­ser­ta­tion today!” Kir­by wrote in a Tweet that has since gar­nered over 25,000 likes. “In the spir­it of acknowl­edg­ing & nor­mal­iz­ing fail­ure in the process, I defend­ed in a skirt made of rejec­tion let­ters from the course of my PhD.”

The cus­tom gar­ment, which Kir­by teamed with a dark blaz­er and red waist­band, was orga­nized in two tiers, with a tulle ruf­fle peep­ing out beneath.

MSU’s Career Ser­vices Network’s Direc­tor of Employ­er Rela­tions, Karin Han­son, told the Lans­ing State Jour­nal that rejec­tion comes as a shock to many high achiev­ing MSU stu­dents.

Kirby’s deci­sion to upcy­cle 17 dis­ap­point­ing let­ters received over the course of her aca­d­e­m­ic career was par­tial­ly inspired by a Parks and Recre­ation episode in which the skirt of Leslie Knope’s wed­ding dress is a wear­able col­lage of news­pa­per arti­cles about the char­ac­ter, drawn from ear­li­er episodes

More to the point, Kirby’s skirt is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign to acknowl­edge rejec­tion as a nec­es­sary, if painful, part of aca­d­e­m­ic growth.

The whole process of revis­it­ing those old let­ters and mak­ing that skirt sort of remind­ed me that you have to apply to a lot of things to suc­ceed. It seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive to wear your rejec­tions to your last test in your Ph.D, but we talked about our rejec­tions every week and I want­ed them to be a part of it.

And, as she lat­er not­ed in a tweet:

Accep­tances and rejec­tions are often based on the tra­di­tion­al val­ues of acad­e­mia, which excludes POC by not valu­ing the approach­es, research ques­tions, and expe­ri­ences that POC tend to bring to their work.

Kirby’s let­ters were culled from a vari­ety of sources—scholarship appli­ca­tions, sub­mis­sions to aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals, and pro­pos­als for con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly and We regret to inform you are recur­rent motifs. About 8 let­ters were left on the cut­ting room floor.

But she is pre­pared to low­er her hem­line, when she starts apply­ing for jobs, fol­low­ing a stint at the Research Insti­tute for Urban and Region­al Devel­op­ment in Dort­mund, Ger­many, the result of a suc­cess­ful Ful­bright appli­ca­tion.

Fol­low Kirby’s exam­ple and turn your tem­po­rary set­backs into a pow­er skirt, using the tuto­r­i­al above.

via Boing Boing 

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)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, res­ur­rects Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Art Class Instead Of Jail: New Program Lets Young Offenders Take Free Art Classes Rather Than Spend Time in the Criminal System

in Art, Life, Museums | November 4th, 2019

Art saves lives, and art can also save an indi­vid­ual from the stig­ma of an arrest record, pro­vid­ed that the arrest is for one of 15 non-vio­lent mis­de­meanors.

Project Reset, a muse­um-based ear­ly diver­sion pro­gram in three of New York City’s five bor­oughs, aims to reframe the way youth­ful (and not so youth­ful) offend­ers see them­selves, by con­sid­er­ing an art­work via a col­lec­tive inter­pre­tive process, before using it as the inspi­ra­tion for a col­lage or oil pas­tel-based project of their own.

The stakes are high­er and far more per­son­al than they are on the aver­age pub­lic school field trip. Upon com­ple­tion of a class rang­ing from 2.5 to 4 hours, the participant’s record is wiped clean and their assigned court date is ren­dered moot.

Rather than being herd­ed through a num­ber of gal­leries, par­tic­i­pants zero in on a sin­gle work.

At the Brook­lyn Muse­um, par­tic­i­pants in the under-25 age range get a crash course in Shift­ing the Gaze, Titus Kaphar’s inten­tion­al palimpsest, in which all the fig­ures in a repli­ca of Frans Hals’ Fam­i­ly Group in a Land­scape are whit­ed out so view­ers may focus in on the only char­ac­ter of col­or, a young boy who appears to be a fam­i­ly ser­vant.

Old­er par­tic­i­pants under­take a sim­i­lar­ly deep dive on The Judge­ment by Bob Thomp­son, an African Amer­i­can artist who was inspired by the con­stant inter­play between good and evil.

While this may strike some as a cushy pun­ish­ment, it’s a legit­i­mate attempt to acquaint par­tic­i­pants with the very real impact their actions could have on future plans—including col­lege admis­sions and job appli­ca­tions.

Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney, Cyrus Vance Jr., one of Project Reset’s archi­tects, shared a non-par­ti­san fis­cal take with City Lab’s Rebec­ca Bel­lan that may per­suade naysay­ers who feel the pro­gram rewards bud­ding crim­i­nals by giv­ing them an easy out:

If you jump sub­way turn­stiles in Man­hat­tan, you nev­er go to jail. You can do it 100 times and no court is ever going to send you to jail. So we spend about $2,200 to process a theft of ser­vices arrest for a $2.75 fare. Our jus­tice sys­tem falls most heav­i­ly on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and we real­ly need to rethink how we approach these cas­es, both to get bet­ter out­comes, but also to reduce the impact which is very often viewed as tar­get­ed and unfair on par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties.

Above is a list of the non-vio­lent mis­de­meanors that can chan­nel first timers toward the apt­ly named Project Reset.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Med Schools Are Requir­ing Stu­dents to Take Art Class­es, and How It Makes Med Stu­dents Bet­ter Doc­tors

Won­der­ful­ly Off­beat Assign­ments That Artist John Baldessari Gave to His Art Stu­dents (1970)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC for her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

in Life, Nature | November 1st, 2019

“Take a walk at night,” wrote avant-garde com­pos­er Pauline Oliv­eros in her 1974 “Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” a set of instruc­tions for what she called deep lis­ten­ing. “Walk so silent­ly that the bot­tom of your feet become ears.” Lis­ten­ing to silence opens up rich new worlds of sound. It can be a life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence.

“It’s hard to imag­ine that a sound can trans­form some­one’s life, but it hap­pened to me,” says acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton in the short 360-degree doc­u­men­tary above, “How to Find Silence in a Noisy World.” Hemp­ton learned to walk silent­ly while car­ry­ing a micro­phone, doc­u­ment­ing his lis­ten­ing jour­ney through remote places like the Hoh Rain­for­est in Wash­ing­ton state, con­sid­ered one of the qui­etest places in North Amer­i­ca.

“By hold­ing a micro­phone, I became a bet­ter lis­ten­er. I learned that the micro­phone doesn’t lis­ten for what’s impor­tant, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t inter­fere.” The micro­phone, that is, has no ego. Record­ed and ampli­fied, the silence of the Hoh becomes cacoph­o­ny, or a sym­pho­ny, depend­ing on how we describe it. Maybe any descrip­tion gets in the way of lis­ten­ing. “Just lis­ten,” says Hemp­ton. “Silence is the poet­ics of space. What it means to be in a place… Silence isn’t the absence of some­thing, but the pres­ence of every­thing

If silence is full of sound, why might we crave it when we’re stressed? Because we are bom­bard­ed by noise pol­lu­tion, “sounds that have noth­ing to do with the nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem.” These sounds have been encroach­ing on places like the Hoh Rain­for­est for many decades, and Hemp­ton has doc­u­ment­ed their incur­sion over the past 30 years, build­ing a col­lec­tion of over 100 record­ings “equipped with a 3‑D micro­phone sys­tem that repli­cates human hear­ing,” notes Brain Pick­ings.

“Ema­nat­ing from his col­lec­tion… is the idea that ‘there is a fun­da­men­tal fre­quen­cy for each habitat’—a tonal qual­i­ty that shapes the sense of place and qual­i­ty of pres­ence.” Hempton’s work com­ple­ments the nature record­ings of Bernie Krause, for­mer musi­cian turned renowned expert on nat­ur­al sound, whose the­o­ry of bio­pho­ny describes how nat­ur­al sounds work togeth­er to fill in the spec­trum, each one estab­lish­ing its own spe­cif­ic band­width so as not to drown out the oth­ers.

Nat­ur­al sounds cre­ate a kind of self-reg­u­lat­ing har­mo­ny. In order to ful­ly inhab­it the space we’re in, we must be able to hear them. But as the record­ings made by Hemp­ton and Krause show us, humans have a unique abil­i­ty to feel our­selves deeply immersed in oth­er places, too, by lis­ten­ing to record­ings of their silences. Hemp­ton implies that record­ings may soon be all we have left.

“Silence,” he says, “is on the verge of extinc­tion. There is not one place left on plan­et Earth that is set aside and off lim­its to noise pol­lu­tion.” It inter­feres with the cycles of mat­ing ani­mals, dis­rupts call and response pat­terns ecosys­tems use to coor­di­nate them­selves. Silence is part of a glob­al biofeed­back sys­tem, telling us to qui­et down, slow down, and become part of all that’s hap­pen­ing around us. We ignore it to our great detri­ment.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Collection of Vintage Fruit Crate Labels Offers a Voluptuous Vision of the Sunshine State

in Art, Design, Food & Drink, Life, Travel | October 28th, 2019

Ah, Flori­da… The Sun­shine State.

Tourists began flock­ing to it in earnest once the rail­roads expand­ed in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, drawn by visions of sun­set beach­es, grace­ful palms, and plump cit­rus fruit in a warm weath­er set­ting.

The fan­ta­sy gath­ered steam in the 1920s when cit­rus grow­ers began affix­ing col­or­ful labels to the fruit crates that shipped out over those same rail­road lines, seek­ing to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion with mem­o­rable visu­als.

These labels offered lovers of grape­fruit and oranges who were stuck in cold­er climes tan­ta­liz­ing glimpses of a dreamy land filled with Span­ish Moss and grace­ful long-legged birds. Words like “gold­en” and “sun­shine” sealed the deal.

(The real­i­ty of cit­rus pick­ing, then and now, is one of hard labor, usu­al­ly per­formed by under­paid, unskilled migrants.)

The State Library of Florida’s Flori­da Crate Label Col­lec­tion has amassed more than 600 exam­ples from the 1920s through the 1950s, many of which have been dig­i­tized and added to a search­able data­base.

While the major­i­ty of the labels ped­dle the sun­shine state mythos, oth­ers pay homage to grow­ers’ fam­i­ly mem­bers and pets.

Oth­ers like Kil­lar­ney Luck, Umpire, Sherlock’s Delight, and Watson’s Dream built brand iden­ti­ty by play­ing on the grove’s name or loca­tion, though one does won­der about the mod­els for the deli­cious­ly dour Kiss-Me label. Sib­lings, per­haps? Maybe the Kissim­mee Cit­rus Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion dis­ap­proved of the PDA their name seems so ripe for.

Native Amer­i­cans’ promi­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tion like­ly owed as much to the public’s fas­ci­na­tion with West­erns as to the state’s trib­al her­itage, evi­dent in the names of so many loca­tions, like Umatil­la and Immokalee, where cit­rus crops took root.

Mean­while, Mam­my, Aun­ty, and Dix­ieland brands relied on a stereo­typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of African-Amer­i­cans that had a proven track record with con­sumers of pan­cakes and Cream of Wheat.

The vibrant­ly illus­trat­ed crate labels were put on hold dur­ing World War II, when the bulk of the cit­rus crop was ear­marked for the mil­i­tary.

By the mid-50s, card­board box­es on which com­pa­ny names and logos could be print­ed direct­ly had become the indus­try stan­dard, rel­e­gat­ing crate labels to antique stores, swap meets, and flea mar­kets.

Begin your explo­ration of the Flori­da Crate Label Col­lec­tion here, brows­ing by image, place, com­pa­ny, or brand name.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

Browse a Col­lec­tion of Over 83,500 Vin­tage Sewing Pat­terns

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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A 108-Year-Old Woman Recalls What It Was Like to Be a Woman in Victorian England

in History, Life, Television | October 25th, 2019

The per­ils of old age—demen­tia, eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty, social iso­la­tion—are receiv­ing a lot of atten­tion these days.

How refresh­ing to spend three min­utes in the com­pa­ny of a sharp-wit­ted 108-year-old, who, respond­ing to a ques­tion about what life was like for women in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, acts out a cou­ple of social­ly rel­e­vant, peri­od Punch car­toons, delib­er­ate­ly draw­ing atten­tion to her shock­ing­ly well-pre­served ankles in the process.

Flo­rence Pan­nell was born in Lon­don in 1868, 3 years after the US abol­ished slav­ery and eleven before the advent of the elec­tric light­bulb.

Her appear­ance on Thames Television’s Mon­ey-Go-Round pro­gram appears to be her only pub­lic record­ing. The Kens­ing­ton Post cap­tured her leav­ing her polling place, after cast­ing her bal­lot in a 1971 elec­tion at the age of 102.

It’s a pity there’s not more of an online pres­ence, as this cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­teller clear­ly rel­ish­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it the past.

A pity too, that she was stuck with a dud of an inter­view­er, Joan Shen­ton, who has gone on to find fame as a promi­nent AIDS denial­ist.

The AIDS cri­sis is one event of glob­al his­tor­i­cal impor­tance that Mrs. Pan­nell missed—barely—she died in 1980, a few months shy of her 112th birth­day.

We learn that she found­ed a suc­cess­ful beau­ty care busi­ness that took her to Paris for a time, but oth­er than that, the details of her pri­vate life are left to our spec­u­la­tion. She was mar­ried. Did she have chil­dren, and if so, did she sur­vive them?

Did she ever get the chance to go up in an air­plane? As of 1977, she hadn’t, but was open to the idea, imply­ing that the risk had out­weighed the poten­tial thrill in the ear­ly days of avi­a­tion.

Most strik­ing is her hearty reply con­cern­ing the biggest change she had wit­nessed over the years:

Every­thing! Noth­ing is the same! Everything’s changed!

Some of the mile­stones she was alive for, as not­ed by var­i­ous YouTube and Red­dit com­menters:

The coro­na­tion of the five mon­archs to fol­low Queen Vic­to­ria: Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Eliz­a­beth II (whose 93 years on the plan­et she makes seem mar­gin­al­ly less impres­sive)

Jack the Ripper’s ter­ror­iza­tion of Lon­don

The sink­ing of the Titan­ic

Both World Wars

The Great Depres­sion

The tele­phone

Tele­vi­sion

The hip­pie move­ment

The moon land­ing

Star Wars

Anoth­er com­menter sug­gest­ed that it would have been math­e­mat­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble for Mrs. Pan­nell to have heard sto­ries about Napoleon at her grandpa’s knee.

Read­ers, what are you bog­gled by, with regard to the sig­nif­i­cant events tran­spir­ing with­in this woman’s life­time?

(And for those curi­ous as to her for­mi­da­ble accent, there’s a wealth of lin­guis­tic infor­ma­tion here.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

You’re Only As Old As You Feel: Har­vard Psy­chol­o­gist Ellen Langer Shows How Men­tal Atti­tude Can Poten­tial­ly Reverse the Effects of Aging

Meet Vio­la Smith, the World’s Old­est Drum­mer: Her Career Start­ed in the 1930s, and She’s Still Play­ing at 106

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Werner Herzog Offers 24 Pieces of Filmmaking and Life Advice

in Film, Life | October 24th, 2019

Image by Erinc Salor via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There are few film­mak­ers alive today who have the mys­tique of Wern­er Her­zog. His fea­ture films and his doc­u­men­taries are bril­liant and messy, depict­ing both the ecstasies and the ago­nies of life in a chaot­ic and fun­da­men­tal­ly hos­tile uni­verse. And his movies seem very much to reflect his per­son­al­i­ty – uncom­pro­mis­ing, enig­mat­ic and quite pos­si­bly crazy. How else can you explain his will­ing­ness to risk life and limb to shoot in such for­bid­ding places as the Ama­zon­ian rain for­est or Antarc­ti­ca?

In per­haps his great­est film, Fitz­car­ral­do — which is about a dream­er who hatch­es a scheme to drag a river­boat over a moun­tain — Her­zog decides, for the pur­pos­es of real­ism, to actu­al­ly drag a boat over a moun­tain. No spe­cial effects. No stu­dios. In the mid­dle of the Peru­vian jun­gle.

The pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most mis­er­able in the his­to­ry of film, is the sub­ject of the doc­u­men­tary The Bur­den of Dreams. After six pun­ish­ing months, a weary-look­ing Her­zog described his sur­round­ings:

I see it more full of obscen­i­ty. It’s just — Nature here is vile and base. I would­n’t see any­thing erot­i­cal here. I would see for­ni­ca­tion and asphyx­i­a­tion and chok­ing and fight­ing for sur­vival and… grow­ing and… just rot­ting away. Of course, there’s a lot of mis­ery. But it is the same mis­ery that is all around us. The trees here are in mis­ery, and the birds are in mis­ery. I don’t think they — they sing. They just screech in pain. […] But when I say this, I say this all full of admi­ra­tion for the jun­gle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my bet­ter judg­ment.

His world­view brims with a hero­ic pes­simism that is pulled straight out of the Ger­man Roman­tic poets. Nature is not some har­mo­nious anthro­po­mor­phized play­ground. It is instead noth­ing but “chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der.” For those sick of the cyn­i­cal dis­hon­esty of Hollywood’s cur­rent crop of Award-ready fare (hel­lo, The Imi­ta­tion Game), Her­zog comes as a brac­ing ton­ic. An icon of what inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma should be rather than what it has large­ly become.

Below is Herzog’s list of advice for film­mak­ers, found on the back of his lat­est book Wern­er Her­zog – A Guide for the Per­plexed. (Hat tip goes to Jason Kot­tke for bring­ing it to our atten­tion.) Some max­ims are pret­ty spe­cif­ic to the world of moviemak­ing – “That roll of unex­posed cel­lu­loid you have in your hand might be the last in exis­tence, so do some­thing impres­sive with it.” Oth­er points are just plain good lessons for life — “Always take the ini­tia­tive,” “Learn to live with your mis­takes.” Read along and you can almost hear Herzog’s malev­o­lent Teu­ton­ic lilt.

1. Always take the ini­tia­tive.
2. There is noth­ing wrong with spend­ing a night in jail if it means get­ting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Nev­er wal­low in your trou­bles; despair must be kept pri­vate and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mis­takes.
6. Expand your knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of music and lit­er­a­ture, old and mod­ern.
7. That roll of unex­posed cel­lu­loid you have in your hand might be the last in exis­tence, so do some­thing impres­sive with it.
8. There is nev­er an excuse not to fin­ish a film.
9. Car­ry bolt cut­ters every­where.
10. Thwart insti­tu­tion­al cow­ardice.
11. Ask for for­give­ness, not per­mis­sion.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a land­scape.
14. Ignite the fire with­in and explore unknown ter­ri­to­ry.
15. Walk straight ahead, nev­er detour.
16. Manoeu­vre and mis­lead, but always deliv­er.
17. Don’t be fear­ful of rejec­tion.
18. Devel­op your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of hon­or is to fail a film the­o­ry class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cin­e­ma.
22. Guer­ril­la tac­tics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Top Films

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

in Biology, Environment, Life, Nature, Science, Television | October 18th, 2019

Those who har­bor a deep-seat­ed fear of the water may want to look for oth­er meth­ods of stress relief than BBC Earth’s relax­ing 10-hour video loops, but every­one else is encour­aged to take a dip in these stun­ning nat­ur­al worlds, pre­sent­ed with­out com­men­tary or back­ground music.

All sev­en 10-hour playlists are salt-water based: coral reefs, coast­lines, deep ocean, open ocean, frozen seas, ocean sur­faces, and sea forests.

As in most com­pelling nature doc­u­men­taries, non-human crea­tures loom large, but unlike such BBC Earth offer­ings as Creepi­est Insect Moments or Ants Attack Ter­mite Mounds, there’s a benign, live-and-let-live vibe to the pro­ceed­ings.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the pho­tog­ra­phy is breath­tak­ing, and the uses of these marathon-length por­traits are man­i­fold: med­i­ta­tion tool, sleep aid, child soother, social media decom­pres­sor, trav­el­ogue, and—less calmingly—call to action.

Sci­ence tells us that many of these life forms, and the ocean in which they dwell, are in seri­ous dan­ger, thanks to decades of human dis­re­gard for the envi­ron­ment. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to immerse our­selves in what we stand to lose while it’s still pos­si­ble to do some­thing about it.

If that thought seems too depress­ing, there’s also strong sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that nature doc­u­men­taries such as these pro­mote increased feel­ings of well­be­ing

What are you wait­ing for?

Click here to trav­el the oceans with polar bears, jel­ly­fish, dol­phins, sea­hors­es, bright­ly col­ored trop­i­cal fish and oth­er crea­tures of the deep, com­pli­ments of BBC’s Earth’s Ocean­scapes playlists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

Bob Odenkirk & Errol Mor­ris Cre­ate Comedic Shorts to Help You Take Action Against Glob­al Warm­ing: Watch Them Online

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Yo-Yo Ma Performs the First Classical Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Mental Health Break and Watch His Moving “Tiny Desk” Concert

in Life, Music, Radio | October 15th, 2019

For those who feel their enjoy­ment of J.S. Bach’s gor­geous Pre­lude from Cel­lo Suite No. 1 in G major has been under­cut rather than enhanced by its fre­quent TV and film appear­ances, Yo-Yo Ma’s 2018 NPR Music Tiny Desk Con­cert is a ton­ic.

As he explains above, the pre­lude was the first piece he learned as a begin­ning four-year-old cel­list, adding one mea­sure per day, an incre­men­tal approach he rec­om­mends.

He and the 300-some-year-old com­po­si­tion have done well by each oth­er through­out a rela­tion­ship span­ning near­ly six decades.

His first record­ing of the Suites, in 1983, result­ed in his first Gram­my.

Cur­rent­ly, he’s wrap­ping up the Bach Project, play­ing the Suites in 36 icon­ic loca­tions around the world, believ­ing that Bach has a unique abil­i­ty to unite humans and inspire col­lab­o­ra­tion, espe­cial­ly in “a time when our civic con­ver­sa­tion is so often focused on divi­sion.”

The leg­endary cellist’s unas­sum­ing, friend­ly demeanor is also a uni­fi­er, well suit­ed to the infor­mal­i­ty of the Tiny Desk Con­certs.

(Pro­duc­er Tom Huizen­ga—a non-cellist—recounts how Ma passed him his bow, along with a 1712 Stradi­var­ius, encour­ag­ing him to “play some­thing.”)

Music is a clear­ly a major part of Ma’s DNA, and also the way in which he expe­ri­ences the cir­cle of life. He intro­duces the Sara­bande as the heart of the suite, telling how he played it at two friends’ wed­dings and then again at their memo­r­i­al ser­vices, illus­trat­ing the ways in which music is a cumu­la­tive emo­tion­al propo­si­tion.

As he told NPR’s Mary Louise Kel­ly imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing his per­for­mance:

You try and tran­scend tech­nique to get to what you think is there. Instead of say­ing, “Here are these notes and this is dif­fi­cult and I’m going to try and nail it,” you try to express it.

With the sand quick­ly slip­ping through the hour­glass of his 12-minute per­for­mance, he treats his audi­ence to Bach’s tiny, pop­ulist Gigue.

Set List:

J.S. Bach: “Pre­lude (from Suite No. 1 for Solo Cel­lo)”

J.S. Bach: “Sara­bande (from Suite No. 6 for Solo Cel­lo)”

J.S. Bach: “Gigue (from Suite No. 3 for Solo Cel­lo)”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Yo-Yo Ma & The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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