Read Allen Ginsberg’s Poignant Final Poem “Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)”

in Life, Poetry | January 24th, 2014

Things I'll Not Do

Allen Gins­berg died on April 5, 1997. Less than a week before, after the long ter­mi­nal­ly ill poet had made part­ing phone calls to near­ly every­one in his address book, he wrote the poem above, “Things I’ll Not Do (Nos­tal­gias).” He once called all his work extend­ed biog­ra­phy, and we might call this par­tic­u­lar work a piece of biog­ra­phy extend­ed into spec­u­la­tion, com­pris­ing all the places (Tibet, Moroc­co, Los Ange­les), peo­ple (com­pos­er Philip Glass, not­ed Tang­i­er expat Paul Bowles, his own rel­a­tives), and things (attend­ing con­certs, teach­ing stu­dents, smok­ing var­i­ous sub­stances) he knew he would nev­er expe­ri­ence again, or indeed for the first time — items left over, in short, from what we might now call Gins­berg’s buck­et list. The tran­script runs as fol­lows:

Nev­er go to Bul­gar­ia, had a book­let & invi­ta­tion
Same Alba­nia, invit­ed last year, pri­vate­ly by Lot­tery scam­mers or
recov­er­ing alco­holics,
Or enlight­ened poets of the antique land of Hades Gates
Nor vis­it Lhasa live in Hilton or Ngawang Gelek’s house­hold & weary
ascend Pota­la
Nor ever return to Kashi “old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly habit­ed city in the world”
bathe in Ganges & sit again at Manikarni­ka ghat with Peter,
vis­it Lord Jag­ganath again in Puri, nev­er back to Bib­hum take
notes tales of Kha­ki B Baba
Or hear music fes­ti­vals in Madras with Philip
Or enter to have Chai with old­er Sunil & Young cof­feeshop poets,
Tie my head on a block in the Chi­na­town opi­um den, pass by Moslem
Hotel, its rooftop Tin­smith Street Choudui Chowh Nim­tal­lah
Burn­ing ground nor smoke gan­ja on the Hoogh­ly
Nor the alley­ways of Achmed’s Fez, nev­er­more drink mint tea at Soco
Chico, vis­it Paul B. in Tang­iers
Or see the Sphinx in Desert at Sun­rise or sun­set, morn & dusk in the
desert
Ancient sol­lapsed Beirut, sad bombed Baby­lon & Ur of old, Syr­i­a’s
grim mys­ter­ies all Ara­by & Sau­di Deserts, Yemen’s spright­ly
folk,
Old opi­um trib­al Afghanistan, Tibet — Tem­pled Beluchis­tan
See Shang­ha again, nor cares of Dun­huang
Nor climb E. 12th Street’s stair­way 3 flights again,
Nor go to lit­er­ary Argenti­na, accom­pa­ny Glass to Sao Pao­lo & live a
month in a flat Rio’s beach­es and favel­la boys, Bahi­a’s great
Car­ni­val
Nor more day­dream of Bali, too far Ade­laide’s fes­ti­val to get new scent
sticks
Not see the new slums of Jakar­ta, mys­te­ri­ous Bor­neo forests & paint­ed
men and women
Nor mor Sun­set Boule­vard, Mel­rose Avenue, Oz on Ocean Way
Old cousin Dan­ny Lee­gant, mem­o­ries of Aunt Edith in San­ta Mon­i­ca
No mor sweet sum­mers with lovers, teach­ing Blake at naropa,
Mind Writ­ing Slo­gans, new mod­ern Amer­i­can Poet­ics, Williams
Ker­ouac Reznikoff Rakosi Cor­so Creely Orlovsky
Any vis­its to B’nai Israel graves of Buda, Aunt Rose, Har­ry Meltzer and
Aunt Clara, Father Louis
Not myself except in an urn of ash­es

March 30, 1997, A.M.

Allen Gins­berg

As much of a final state­ment as it sounds like, “Things I’ll Not Do (Nos­tal­gias)” remains, in a way, a work in progress, giv­en the man­u­scrip­t’s semi-deci­pher­able hand. “Although many of his poems’ first drafts looked like this,” say the care­tak­ers of AllenGinsberg.org, “if any­thing was unclear, we could just ask. That, obvi­ous­ly, was­n’t an option after April 5 that year.” Ten of Gins­berg’s asso­ciates passed the paper around, Google- and Wikipedi­aless­ly try­ing to piece togeth­er all of his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly far-flung ref­er­ences. The Caves of Dun­huang “went incor­rect­ly tran­scribed for the first edi­tion as ‘cares of Dun­huang’, since none of us were aware these were caves,” and “when we got to the ‘antique lands of Hades Necro­man­teion,” we could­n’t find a sin­gle ref­er­ence to it any­where, and in the end sim­ply stat­ed ‘Hades Gates.’ That’s how it’s pub­lished today — still. Till the next edi­tion that is.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Hear the Very First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing His Epic Poem “Howl” (1956)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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An Undertaking: Woodworker Honors His Grandma with a Custom-Made Coffin

in Art, Life | January 19th, 2014

Good thing Austin-based design­er Michael Yates stud­ied abroad. Three months spent in the vicin­i­ty of Kyoto as a Texas A&M elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing stu­dent ulti­mate­ly inspired him to aban­don the pro­fes­sion for which he had trained, in order to pur­sue wood­work­ing. “…the sacred­ness of the process and atten­tion to detail res­onat­ed with me in a way that noth­ing had before,” he recalls in an Apart­ment Ther­a­py pro­file. “I’ve since learned in prac­tice what I saw evi­dence of in the temples—that com­plete­ly focus­ing on where you are will get you the best prod­uct at the end. Every step of the process is pre­cious.”

Had he not changed hors­es in mid­stream, his grand­moth­er would have like­ly stuck to the plan too, depart­ing for the after­life in a stan­dard-issue cof­fin or urn, rather than ask­ing Yates to build her some­thing spe­cial. In his mind, it was a col­lab­o­ra­tion, a process doc­u­ment­ed above, at the behest of Whole Foods’ online mag­a­zine, Dark Rye.  (Indi­cat­ing, per­haps, that arti­sanal, upcy­cled coffins will soon be avail­able for pur­chase beside bam­boo cut­ting boards and local­ly sourced, grass-fed, beef jerky?)

Yate’s grand­ma placed her request pre-need, in the indus­try lin­go, a move that afford­ed him plen­ty of time to study—and reject—the over­ly ornate ves­sels that have become a cul­tur­al norm. Lux­u­ri­ous details have no place, he feels, when the user can derive no enjoy­ment from them. (Guess he and Grand­ma weren’t con­sid­er­ing going with the off-the-wall Ghana approach.)

The cof­fin is the most mean­ing­ful piece he’s ever cre­at­ed, even before it could be beta test­ed. It caused him to think deeply about our rela­tion­ship with death and each oth­er. The sound­track hints that some­thing very sad is about to hap­pen, as do the pho­tos of his grand­moth­er as a vibrant, younger woman. (Such shots have become de rigeur for any­one mourn­ing an old­er rel­a­tive on Face­book.) Yates men­tions that his grand­moth­er, healthy when she hatched this scheme, has been diag­nosed with can­cer. I think we can assume where this is going, right?

At the risk of  a spoil­er, I’d like to com­mend the film­mak­ers for allow­ing some key scenes to occur off-cam­era. Yates remarks that after all that went into mak­ing the cof­fin, it would be “a ter­ri­ble miss” if his grand­moth­er did not get a chance to see it. He’s filmed load­ing it into his truck, but view­ers are not privy to its deliv­ery. Some things, it would seem, are still per­son­al.

Michael-Yates-Body-Woodworker-25

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Gus­tav Jung Pon­ders Death

Find Yale’s Course Death  in our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day oper­ates in the shad­ow of the South Brook­lyn Cas­ket Com­pa­ny. @AyunHalliday

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The Science of Willpower: 15 Tips for Making Your New Year’s Resolutions Last from Dr. Kelly McGonigal

in Life, Psychology | January 5th, 2014

At the stroke of mid­night, mil­lions of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions went into effect, with the most com­mon ones being lose weight, get fit, quit drink­ing and smok­ing, save mon­ey, and learn some­thing new. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, 33% of these res­o­lu­tions will be aban­doned by Jan­u­ary’s end. And upwards of 80% will even­tu­al­ly fall by the way­side. Mak­ing res­o­lu­tions stick is tricky busi­ness. But it’s pos­si­ble, and Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal has a few sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-proven sug­ges­tions for you.

For years, McGo­ni­gal has taught a very pop­u­lar course called The Sci­ence of Willpow­er in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, where she intro­duces stu­dents to the idea that willpow­er is not an innate trait. Rather it’s a “com­plex mind-body response that can be com­pro­mised by stress, sleep depri­va­tion and nutri­tion and that can be strength­ened through cer­tain prac­tices.” For those of you who don’t live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you can also find McGo­ni­gal’s ideas pre­sent­ed in a recent book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, which just came out in paper­back yes­ter­day. Below, we have high­light­ed 15 of Dr. McGo­ni­gal’s strate­gies for increas­ing your willpow­er reserves and mak­ing your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion endure.

  1. Will pow­er is like a mus­cle. The more you work on devel­op­ing it, the more you can incor­po­rate it into your life. It helps, McGo­ni­gal says in this pod­cast, to start with small feats of willpow­er before try­ing to tack­le more dif­fi­cult feats. Ide­al­ly, find the small­est change that’s con­sis­tent with your larg­er goal, and start there.
  2. Choose a goal or res­o­lu­tion that you real­ly want, not a goal that some­one else desires for you, or a goal that you think you should want. Choose a pos­i­tive goal that tru­ly comes from with­in and that con­tributes to some­thing impor­tant in life.
  3. Willpow­er is con­ta­gious. Find a willpow­er role mod­el — some­one who has accom­plished what you want to do. Also try to sur­round your­self with fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends or groups who can sup­port you. Change is often not made alone.
  4. Know that peo­ple have more willpow­er when they wake up, and then willpow­er steadi­ly declines through­out the day as peo­ple fatigue. So try to accom­plish what you need to — for exam­ple, exer­cise — ear­li­er in the day. Then watch out for the evenings, when bad habits can return.
  5. Under­stand that stress and willpow­er are incom­pat­i­ble. Any time we’re under stress it’s hard­er to find our willpow­er. Accord­ing to McGo­ni­gal, “the fight-or-flight response floods the body with ener­gy to act instinc­tive­ly and steals it from the areas of the brain need­ed for wise deci­sion-mak­ing. Stress also encour­ages you to focus on imme­di­ate, short-term goals and out­comes, but self-con­trol requires keep­ing the big pic­ture in mind.” The upshot? “Learn­ing how to bet­ter man­age your stress is one of the most impor­tant things you can do to improve your willpow­er.” When you get stressed out, go for a walk. Even a five minute walk out­side can reduce your stress lev­els, boost your mood, and help you replen­ish your willpow­er reserves.
  6. Sleep depri­va­tion (less than six hours a night) makes it so that the pre­frontal cor­tex los­es con­trol over the regions of the brain that cre­ate crav­ings. Sci­ence shows that get­ting just one more hour of sleep each night (eight hours is ide­al) helps recov­er­ing drug addicts avoid a relapse. So it can cer­tain­ly help you resist a dough­nut or a cig­a­rette.
  7. Also remem­ber that nutri­tion plays a key role. “Eat­ing a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes ener­gy more avail­able to the brain and can improve every aspect of willpow­er from over­com­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion to stick­ing to a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion,” McGo­ni­gal says.
  8. Don’t think it will be dif­fer­ent tomor­row. McGo­ni­gal notes that we have a ten­den­cy to think that we will have more willpow­er, ener­gy, time, and moti­va­tion tomor­row. The prob­lem is that “if we think we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ent choice tomor­row, we almost always ‘give in’ to temp­ta­tion or habit today.”
  9. Acknowl­edge and under­stand your crav­ings rather than deny­ing them. That will take you fur­ther in the end. The video above has more on that.
  10. Imag­ine the things that could get in the way of achiev­ing your goal. Under­stand the ten­den­cies you have that could lead you to break your res­o­lu­tion. Don’t be over­ly opti­mistic and assume the road will be easy.
  11. Know your lim­its, and plan for them. Says McGo­ni­gal, “Peo­ple who think they have the most self-con­trol are the most like­ly to fail at their res­o­lu­tions; they put them­selves in tempt­ing sit­u­a­tions, don’t get help, give up at set­backs. You need to know how you fail; how you are tempt­ed; how you pro­cras­ti­nate.”
  12. Pay atten­tion to small choic­es that add up. “One study found that the aver­age per­son thinks they make 14 food choic­es a day; they actu­al­ly make over 200. When you aren’t aware that you’re mak­ing a choice, you’ll almost always default to habit/temptation.” It’s impor­tant to fig­ure out when you have oppor­tu­ni­ties to make a choice con­sis­tent with your goals.
  13. Be spe­cif­ic but flex­i­ble. It’s good to know your goal and how you’ll get there. But, she cau­tions, “you should leave room to revise these steps if they turn out to be unsus­tain­able or don’t lead to the ben­e­fits you expect­ed.”
  14. Give your­self small, healthy rewards along the way. Research shows that the mind responds well to it. (If you’re try­ing to quite smok­ing, the reward should­n’t be a cig­a­rette, by the way.)
  15. Final­ly, if you expe­ri­ence a set­back, don’t be hard on your­self. Although it seems counter-intu­itive, stud­ies show that peo­ple who expe­ri­ence shame/guilt are much more like­ly to break their res­o­lu­tions than ones who cut them­selves some slack. In a nut­shell, you should “Give up guilt.”

To put all of these tips into a big­ger frame­work, you can get a copy of Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal’s book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Or you can get The WillPow­er Instinct, as a free audio book, if you care to try out Audible.com’s free tri­al pro­gram.

If you live in the SF Bay Area, you can take Kel­ly’s The Sci­ence of Willpow­er course that begins on Jan­u­ary 13. (Any­one can enroll, and yes, I know that because I help run the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram at Stan­ford.)

Final­ly you might also want to peruse How to Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist (iTunes Video), a free online course led by Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal. It appears in our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of 800 Free Online Cours­es)

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On Christmas, Browse A Historical Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

in Archives, Creativity, Education, History, Life | December 25th, 2013

paratroops in action

The Strong Nation­al Muse­um of Play, locat­ed in Rochester, NY, is a fun children’s muse­um. But the insti­tu­tion also has seri­ous research archives, stuffed with toys, games, and records of the toy indus­try. Its online col­lec­tions, which cur­rent­ly boast 55,068 objects, take a hol­i­day brows­er on a trip into a fig­u­ra­tive grandma’s attic, chock-full of the play­things peo­ple loved in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies.

The online archives are divid­ed into four cat­e­gories: “Toys”, “Dolls”, “Games”, and “More.” Each of these four sec­tions is fur­ther sub­di­vid­ed into top­i­cal­ly-spe­cif­ic groups, cho­sen by the archivists.

The collection’s strength is also its weak­ness: there are so many toys that it can be easy to get over­whelmed. The sub­ject divi­sions are help­ful here. As some­body with an inter­est in gen­der and child­hood, I found myself fas­ci­nat­ed by the house­keep­ing toys—kids used to use ovens that were heat­ed with real coals!—and that was an easy way to nar­row down my browse.  Sub­ject group­ings for toy sol­diers, celebri­ty dolls, and board games also piqued my inter­est.

It’s fun to look around for toys from your own child­hood (I found a few), but if you’re inter­est­ed in his­to­ry, you might find the echoes of his­tor­i­cal events to be even more intrigu­ing. Late-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry kids played with a paper doll inspired by the cir­cus celebri­ty Tom Thumb; chil­dren of the 1930s had licensed dolls of the media-sen­sa­tion Dionne Quin­tu­plets; a play­set from 1940 fea­tured grim, suit­ed-up “Para­troops in Action.”

Mou­s­ing over the thumb­nails will allow you to see the item’s name. If you see a blue “Learn More” tag, be sure to click through; that means that the item’s image will be accom­pa­nied by an inter­pre­tive his­tor­i­cal note writ­ten by the Strong’s archivists. These vary in length, and con­tain intrigu­ing tid­bits. Did you know, for exam­ple, that Hol­ly Hob­bie was a real per­son: the artist Hol­ly Ulinkas Hob­bie? Or that the famous artist Charles Dana Gib­son had a now-for­got­ten fol­low­er, Nell Brink­ley, who illus­trat­ed the flap­per era?

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion. 

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Short Film Shows What Happens When a Letter from World War II Finally Gets Delivered 69 Years Later

in History, Letters, Life, Random | December 20th, 2013

A few years ago, I stum­bled upon a nev­er-sent let­ter writ­ten to a friend when we were both in col­lege. The con­tents weren’t heavy. Dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion is the most like­ly expla­na­tion for why it nev­er went in the mail. I cracked the enve­lope and had a look.

It was a time cap­sule, for sure, a cringe-induc­ing one. It was­n’t so much the life I was report­ing on as how I framed it, self-aggran­dize­ment strain­ing to pass as non­cha­lance. For­tu­nate­ly, an artist acquain­tance hap­pened to be run­ning a project— send her your shred­d­a­ble doc­u­ments, and even­tu­al­ly, she’d send you a few sheets of hand­made paper in which your mulched data min­gled with that of oth­ers. Tru­ly a beau­ti­ful way to dis­pose of the evi­dence.

But what hap­pens when nei­ther the writer, nor the intend­ed recip­i­ent, is the find­er of the lost let­ter? In Feb­ru­ary 2013, some mail post­ed by Lt. Joseph O. Matthews, a sol­dier sta­tioned at a mil­i­tary train­ing facil­i­ty in Jack­sonville, North Car­oli­na, found its way to Abbi Jacob­son, an actress (and col­or­ing book author!) rent­ing an apart­ment on Mac­Dou­gal Street in New York City. Addressed to Matthew’s wife, the can­cel­la­tion mark was dat­ed Decem­ber 2, 1944.

Jacob­son opened the let­ter, the con­di­tion of the enve­lope hav­ing sug­gest­ed that she would not be the first to breach its con­tents dur­ing the 69 years it had spent wan­der­ing in the wilder­ness. The words inside were roman­tic, a young offi­cer inform­ing the bride he’d left back home that he’d soon be ship­ping out to Oki­nawa. Eager to pull an Amélie by reunit­ing the let­ter with those to whom it would mean the most, Jacob­son enlist­ed the help of her friend, doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Todd Bieber. Togeth­er they searched records at City Hall, look­ing for clues. When that approach proved fruit­less, they cre­at­ed the Lost Let­ter Project, a web por­tal that invit­ed the pub­lic to join in the search.

An avalanche of tweets, Face­book updates, and human inter­est pieces ensued. In no time at all, they had their man, or rather his descen­dants, Lt. Matthews hav­ing passed away in 1999, crush­ing Jacob­son’s dreams of hand deliv­er­ing the let­ter to “a lit­tle old man and a lit­tle old lady.” (I’m will­ing to bet Jacob­son will one day wish there was a giant blender capa­ble of turn­ing dig­i­tal state­ments like how cute would that be, my god, right? I love old peo­ple into hand­made paper.)

Bieber’s video reveals what became of Lt. Matthews and his wife. Even more inter­est­ing is how the let­ter res­onates with his grown chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly a cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal ref­er­ence at odds with the man they thought they knew.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is all for stuff­ing your stock­ing with a hol­i­day gift sub­scrip­tion to the East Vil­lage Inky, her award win­ning hand-illus­trat­ed zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Teacher Helps His Student Overcome Stuttering and Read Poetry, Using the Sound of Music

in Education, Life, Music | December 19th, 2013

Musharaf Asghar, a stu­dent at Thorn­hill Acad­e­my in north­east Eng­land, over­came an acute stam­mer when his teacher, Matthew Bur­ton, bor­rowed an idea from The King’s Speech. The teacher asked his stu­dent to put on some head­phones play­ing the music of Ben Howard, and to start recit­ing a poem called ‘The Moment.’ Sud­den­ly, for the first time, the words began to flow. All of this was cap­tured in a doc­u­men­tary series, Edu­cat­ing York­shire, that aired on the BBC. The seg­ment above con­cludes with Mushy, as he’s known, giv­ing a short talk in front of his class, at what looks like a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny. It did­n’t take long for his fel­low stu­dents to break down in tears.

Writ­ing recent­ly in The Guardian, the stu­dent recalls. “My nerves over speak­ing in assem­bly were TERRIBLE though. I did­n’t realise how big 200 peo­ple looks like. I was sweat­ing and I had a lit­tle wob­ble but even­tu­al­ly, I man­aged to get through it. I was excit­ed, if ner­vous, about the whole thing going out. But I’m real­ly hap­py and proud to be on tel­ly as I hope it gives oth­er peo­ple with a stam­mer the con­fi­dence to have a go at pub­lic speak­ing. My speech is get­ting bet­ter every week. Every­one at col­lege gives me time, but I’m get­ting quick­er any­way so they don’t miss their bus while they are lis­ten­ing to me. I still won’t be apply­ing for any call-cen­tre jobs yet though.” Find more infor­ma­tion on how music ther­a­py can help peo­ple over­come stut­ter­ing here.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

via @courosa

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French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Customers

in Food & Drink, Life | December 19th, 2013

french-rude-cafe

A cou­ple of days ago, we high­light­ed a delight­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explain­ing How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way. It comes to you cour­tesy of the RATP, the gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that makes the sub­ways and trains run in Paris (some­times on time).

Let’s now head 600 miles south, to the Riv­iera city of Nice, where some café own­ers opt­ed for anoth­er way to keep bad behav­ior in check. At the Petite Syrah, they’ve imple­ment­ed a sim­ple pric­ing scheme that works like this:

If you ask for “a cof­fee” (it’s most like­ly an espres­so), it will run you 7 euros, or $9.50.

If you ask for a “cof­fee please,” the charge drops to €4.25/$5.80.

But if you start your order by say­ing “Hel­lo, may I have a cof­fee, please,” the bill becomes a man­age­able €1.40.

Now, truth be told, the pric­ing scheme is more car­rot than stick. The café’s man­ag­er read­i­ly admits that he has nev­er actu­al­ly charged any of the puni­tive high­er prices. But that’s not to say that the scheme does­n’t work. Accord­ing to manager/owner Fab­rice Pepino, reg­u­lar cus­tomers quick­ly took note of the sign and began to “say, ‘Hel­lo, your high­ness, will you serve me one of your beau­ti­ful cof­fees.” Eh voilà, no more cof­fee jerks.

via Kot­tke/The Local

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explains How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

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Watch Kids’ Priceless Reactions to Hearing the Timeless Music of The Beatles

in K-12, Life, Music | December 17th, 2013

Yes­ter­day, John McMil­lian, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty, appeared on KQED’s Forum in San Fran­cis­co (lis­ten here) to talk about his new book Bea­t­les vs. Stones. It offers a new look at how the two British bands co-exist­ed, often helped one anoth­er, and strate­gi­cal­ly defined them­selves against each oth­er. The Bea­t­les were every­man’s band. Whole­some, clean-cut, wit­ty, the Fab Four appealed to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. The Stones, try­ing to make a name for them­selves in the wake of Beat­le­ma­nia, posi­tioned them­selves as the anti-Bea­t­les. As the jour­nal­ist Tom Wolfe once wrote, “The Bea­t­les want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn down your town.”

50 years lat­er, The Bea­t­les still have a near­ly uni­ver­sal appeal. The Boomers and their now mid­dle-aged chil­dren haven’t let dust gath­er on The Bea­t­les’ discog­ra­phy. And, if you plunk the grand­chil­dren in front of old Bea­t­les’ videos, they’ll love what they see. Just watch above.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

The Bea­t­les Per­form in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, 1964

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

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