Japanese Priest Tries to Revive Buddhism by Bringing Techno Music into the Temple: Attend a Psychedelic 23-Minute Service

in Music, Religion | February 17th, 2017

Many reli­gious lead­ers would like to liv­en up their ser­vices to attract a younger, hip­per flock, but few have the nec­es­sary back­ground to pull it off in a tru­ly impres­sive way. Not so for the Japan­ese Bud­dhist priest Gyōsen Asaku­ra, who answered the high­er call­ing after a career as a DJ but evi­dent­ly nev­er lost his feel for the unstop­pable pulse of elec­tron­ic music. Get­ting behind his decks and don­ning his head­phones once again, he has begun using sound, light, and the orig­i­nal splen­dor of Fukui City’s Shō-onji tem­ple to hold “tech­no memo­r­i­al ser­vices.” You can see and hear a bit of one such audio­vi­su­al spir­i­tu­al spec­ta­cle in the video just above, shot at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice last fall.

“Bud­dhism may be approach­ing some­thing of a cri­sis point in Japan,” reports Bud­dhist­door’s Craig Lewis, “with 27,000 of the country’s 77,000 Bud­dhist tem­ples fore­cast to close over the next 25 years, reflect­ing shrink­ing pop­u­la­tions in small rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and a loss of faith in orga­nized reli­gion among the country’s pop­u­la­tion as a whole.”

He also sites an Asahi Shim­bun sur­vey that found 434 tem­ples closed over the past decade and 12,065 Japan­ese Bud­dhist tem­ples cur­rent­ly with­out res­i­dent monks. Can this tem­ple in a small city, itself known for its phoenix-like rise from the ash­es of the Sec­ond World War, do its part to reverse the trend?

Gyōsen Asaku­ra frames his tech­no memo­r­i­al ser­vices, how­ev­er incon­gru­ous they might at first seem, as in keep­ing with the tra­di­tions of his branch of Pure Land Bud­dhism. “Orig­i­nal­ly, gold­en dec­o­ra­tions in the tem­ple are expres­sions of par­adise light,” he told THUMP. “How­ev­er, the light of a tra­di­tion­al tem­ple has not changed its form from 1000 years ago to use can­dle­light, even after elec­tric­i­ty was invent­ed. I felt doubt­ful about that, and then I thought about express­ing par­adise with the lat­est stage light­ing such as 3D map­ping.”

After all, as he said to Japankyo, “peo­ple used to use the most advanced tech­nolo­gies avail­able to them at the time in order to orna­ment tem­ples with gold leaf,” so why not har­ness today’s tech­nol­o­gy to evoke the Bud­dhist “world of light” as well? And in any case, ecsta­t­ic sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences are noth­ing new in the realm of faith, though ecsta­t­ic sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences of Gyōsen Asaku­ra’s kind do cost mon­ey to put togeth­er. And so he, in the way of most reli­gious projects the world over, has asked for dona­tions to fund them, using not a bowl but the crowd­fund­ing site Ready­for. Judg­ing by 383,000 yen (more than $3300 U.S. dol­lars) he’s already raised, quite a few tech­no-heads have seen the light.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Edward Snow­den & Jean-Michel Jarre Record a Tech­no Protest Song, “Exit”

Hear the Great­est Hits of Isao Tomi­ta (RIP), the Father of Japan­ese Elec­tron­ic Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Kraftwerk Plays a Live 40-Minute Version of their Signature Song “Autobahn:” A Soundtrack for a Long Road Trip (1974)

in Music | February 3rd, 2017

“The joys of motor­ing are more or less fic­tion­al,” wrote Zel­da Fitzger­ald to Lud­low Fowler, a friend of her hus­band F. Scott, in 1920. But what an inspir­ing breadth of fic­tion they’ve inspired on the page and screen, most­ly set along the seem­ing­ly end­less road-miles of Amer­i­ca. But look over to Ger­many, a land of dri­vers renowned for their love of and respect for the auto­mo­bile, and you find a whole oth­er sort of, as it were, dri­ving-dri­ven cre­ativ­i­ty. Most famous­ly, 34 years after Fitzger­ald wrote to Fowler, a young Düs­sel­dorf band by the name of Kraftwerk looked to the joys of motor­ing and laid down their sig­na­ture song: “Auto­bahn.”

Tak­ing up 22 full min­utes of the epony­mous 1974 album (though less than three and a half as a sin­gle), “Auto­bahn,” which rock crit­ic Robert Christ­gau described as ema­nat­ing from “a machine deter­mined to rule all music with a steel hand and some mylar,” uses the kind of elec­tron­ic com­po­si­tion tech­niques Kraftwerk would go on to pop­u­lar­ize to evoke the feel­ing of move­ment on the tit­u­lar Ger­man high­way sys­tem.

“We used to dri­ve a lot,” per­cus­sion­ist Wolf­gang Flür once recalled. “We used to lis­ten to the sound of dri­ving, the wind, pass­ing cars and lor­ries, the rain, every moment the sounds around you are chang­ing, and the idea was to rebuild those sounds on the synth.”

But as vet­er­an road-trip­pers know, you aren’t real­ly dri­ving unless the dri­ving hyp­no­tizes you: not only should you spend pro­longed stretch­es of time on the road, you should ide­al­ly do it to a rhyth­mi­cal­ly and tem­po­ral­ly suit­able son­ic back­drop. And so we offer you this live 40-minute ver­sion of “Auto­bahn” which, in the words of Elec­tron­ic Beats, “demon­strates what a musi­cal force the group was back in the day,” tak­en from “a show in the Ger­man city of Lev­erkusen that fus­es the group’s lat­ter-era tech­no-futur­ism with its ear­li­er free-jazz psy­che­del­ic freak­i­ness.” To keep the road-robot mood rolling, why not fire up the ani­mat­ed “Auto­bahn” music video from 1979 we fea­tured last year? But please, don’t watch while you dri­ve — espe­cial­ly if there’s no speed lim­it.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Mesmerizing GIFs Illustrate the Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery — All Done Without Screws, Nails, or Glue

in Animation, Architecture, Art | January 12th, 2017

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try, whether used to build a din­ner table or the entire house con­tain­ing it, does­n’t use screws, nails, adhe­sives, or any oth­er kind of non-wood­en fas­ten­er. So how do its con­struc­tions hold togeth­er? How have all those thou­sands of wood­en hous­es, tables, and count­less oth­er objects and struc­tures stood up for dozens and even hun­dreds of years, and so solid­ly at that? The secret lies in the art of join­ery and its elab­o­rate cut­ting tech­niques refined, since its ori­gin in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry, through gen­er­a­tions and gen­er­a­tions of steadi­ly increas­ing mas­tery — albeit by a steadi­ly dwin­dling num­ber of mas­ters.

“Even until recent times when car­pen­try books began to be pub­lished, mas­tery of these wood­work­ing tech­niques remained the fierce­ly guard­ed secret of fam­i­ly car­pen­try guilds,” writes Spoon & Tam­ago’s John­ny Strat­e­gy. If you find it dif­fi­cult to grasp how sim­ply cut­ting two pieces of wood in a cer­tain way could unite them as if they’d grown togeth­er in the first place, have a look at a Twit­ter feed called The Join­ery, run by a young enthu­si­ast who has col­lect­ed a great many of these car­pen­try books. He’s used them, in com­bi­na­tion with mechan­i­cal design soft­ware skills pre­sum­ably honed in his career in the auto indus­try, to cre­ate ele­gant­ly ani­mat­ed visu­al expla­na­tions of Japan­ese car­pen­try’s tried-and-true join­ery meth­ods.

Arch­dai­ly points to the work of archi­tect Shigeru Ban as one exam­ple of how this “unique­ly Japan­ese wood aes­thet­ic” has sur­vived into the mod­ern day, but the man behind The Join­ery imag­ines even more ambi­tious pos­si­bil­i­ties: “3D print­ing and wood­work­ing machin­ery has enabled us to cre­ate com­pli­cat­ed forms fair­ly eas­i­ly,” he tells Spoon & Tam­a­go. “I want to orga­nize all the join­ery tech­niques and cre­ate a cat­a­log of them all,” so that any­one with the tools might poten­tial­ly make use of their beau­ty and stur­di­ness in hith­er­to unimag­ined new con­texts. And so anoth­er tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese craft that has looked doomed to out­mod­ed obliv­ion, what with all the more advanced and effi­cient fab­ri­ca­tion and con­struc­tion tech­niques devel­oped over the past 1400 years, may well thrive in the future. To learn more about the art of join­ery, you’ll want to explore this 1995 book, The Com­plete Japan­ese Join­ery.

via Arch­Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Japan­ese Crafts­man Spends His Life Try­ing to Recre­ate a Thou­sand-Year-Old Sword

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Inside the Creepy, “Abandoned” Wizard of Oz Theme Park: Scenes of Beautiful Decay

in Film, Life, Travel | January 6th, 2017

The roman­tic allure of the ghost­ly, aban­doned theme park is dif­fi­cult to resist. Case in point: The Land of Oz, above, a not-entire­ly-defunct attrac­tion nes­tled atop North Carolina’s Beech Moun­tain.

Deb­bie Reynolds, accom­pa­nied by her 13-year-old daugh­ter, Car­rie Fish­er, cut the rib­bon on the park’s open­ing day in 1970.

Its road was far from smooth, even before urban explor­ers began filch­ing its 44,000 cus­tom-glazed yel­low bricks, even­tu­al­ly forc­ing man­age­ment to repave with paint­ed stand issue mod­els.

One of its two founders died of can­cer six months before open­ing, and lat­er a fire destroyed the Emer­ald City and a col­lec­tion of mem­o­ra­bil­ia from the 1939 MGM film.

Crip­pled by the gas cri­sis and insur­mount­able com­pe­ti­tion from Dis­ney World and its ilk, the Land of Oz closed in 1980, thus spar­ing it the indig­ni­ties of Yelp reviews and dis­cern­ing child vis­i­tors whose expec­ta­tions have been formed by CGI.

Its shut­ter­ing attract­ed anoth­er kind of tourist: the cam­era-tot­ing, fence hop­ping con­nois­seurs of what is now known as “ruin porn.”

An iso­lat­ed, aban­doned theme park based on the Wiz­ard of Oz? Could there be a holi­er grail?

Only trou­ble is…the Land of Oz didn’t stay shut­tered. Local real estate devel­op­ers cleaned it up a bit, lur­ing overnight vis­i­tors with rentals of Dorothy’s house. They start­ed a tra­di­tion of reopen­ing the whole park for one week­end every Octo­ber, and demand was such that June is now Land of Oz Fam­i­ly Fun Month. The Inter­na­tion­al Wiz­ard of Oz Club held its annu­al con­ven­tion there in 2011. How aban­doned can it be?

And yet, unof­fi­cial vis­i­tors, sneak­ing onto the grounds off-sea­son, insist that it is. I get it. The quest of adven­ture, the desire for beau­ti­ful decay, the brag­ging rights… After pho­tograph­ing the invari­ably leaf strewn Yel­low Brick Road, they turn their lens­es to the lumpy-faced trees of the Enchant­ed For­est.

Yes, they’re creepy, but it’s less from “aban­don­ment” than a low-bud­get approx­i­ma­tion by the hands of artists less expert than those of the orig­i­nal.

It’s safe to pre­sume that any leaves and weeds lit­ter­ing the premis­es are mere­ly evi­dence of chang­ing sea­sons, rather than total neglect.

What I want to know is, where’s the sex, drugs & rock’n’roll evi­dence of local teens’ off-sea­son blowouts—no spray paint­ed f‑bombs? No dead sol­diers? Secu­ri­ty must be pret­ty tight.

If creepy’s what the per­pet­u­a­tors of the aban­don­ment myth crave, they could con­tent them­selves with the ama­teur footage above, shot by a vis­it­ing dad in 1970.

Those cos­tumes! The scare­crow and the tin man in par­tic­u­lar… Buz­zfeed would love ’em, but it’s hard to imag­ine a mil­len­ni­al tot going for that mess. Their Hal­loween cos­tumes were 1000 times more accu­rate.

(In inter­views, the one gen­er­a­tion who can remem­ber the Land of Oz in its prime is a loy­al bunch, recall­ing only their long ago sense of won­der and excite­ment. Ah, life before Beta­max…)

The doc­u­men­tary video below should set­tle the aban­don­ment myth once and for all. It opens not in Kansas, but New York City, as a car­load of young per­form­ers heads off for their annu­al gig at the Land of Oz. They’re con­ver­sant in jazz hands and cer­tain Friends of Dorothy tropes, sure­ly more so than the local play­ers who orig­i­nal­ly staffed the park. Clear­ly, these ringers were hired to turn in cred­i­ble imper­son­ations of the char­ac­ters immor­tal­ized by Ray Bol­ger, Burt Lahr, and Judy Gar­land. Pre­sum­ably, their updat­ed cos­tumes also passed muster with Autumn at Oz’s savvy child atten­dees.

Still crav­ing that ruin porn? Busi­ness Insid­er pub­lished Seph Law­less’ pho­tos of “the crum­bling park” here.

If you’d pre­fer to rub­ber­neck at a tru­ly aban­doned theme park, check out the Carpetbagger’s video tour of Cave City, Kentucky’s Fun­town Moun­tain. (Though be fore­warned. It was sold at auc­tion in April 2016 and plans are afoot to reengi­neer it as as “an epic play­ground of won­der, imag­i­na­tion, and dreams.”)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dis­ma­land — The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film, A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Banksy’s Apoc­a­lyp­tic Theme Park

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

Juras­sic Park Tells You Every­thing You Need to Know About the Dan­gers of Glob­al Cap­i­tal­ism

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Opposition Letter to Teach to One Signed by 180 Parents

in | January 5th, 2017

Decem­ber 7, 2016

Updat­ed with addi­tion­al sig­na­tures — Decem­ber 16, 2016

Super­in­ten­dent Ayindé Rudolph

Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent Cathy Baur

Moun­tain View Whis­man School Dis­trict

750‑A San Pierre Way

Moun­tain View, CA 94043–3133

Dear Super­in­ten­dent Rudolph and Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent Baur:

We are the par­ents of cur­rent and incom­ing Gra­ham and Crit­ten­den sixth graders. After one trimester of the Teach to One (TTO) pilot, we have sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns with the pro­gram and its impact on our chil­dren as they pre­pare to enter the com­pet­i­tive high school envi­ron­ment. We rec­og­nize and praise the dis­trict for con­sid­er­ing inno­v­a­tive ways to sup­ple­ment stu­dent learn­ing (Mem­beam, Lex­ia, Khan Acad­e­my). How­ev­er, TTO does not appear to be serv­ing our stu­dents as well as the tra­di­tion­al teacher-direct­ed method.

We have found the TTO pilot to be inef­fec­tive in inspir­ing and encour­ag­ing our chil­dren. Liv­ing in Sil­i­con Val­ley, we appre­ci­ate tak­ing chances, exam­in­ing impact and chang­ing course if things are not work­ing. After 3+ months of TTO, we feel that TTO is not the right solu­tion for our stu­dents.

Over­all, although laud­able for its inno­va­tion, the TTO pro­gram is still under devel­op­ment and the kinks have not been worked out. Con­tin­u­ing to require the pro­gram, now that we have first-hand expe­ri­ence with the prob­lems, would be a dis­ser­vice to our chil­dren. We have fab­u­lous, qual­i­fied and com­mit­ted math teach­ers at Gra­ham and Crit­ten­den, and they should be per­mit­ted to teach our chil­dren, as they are trained to do. Online learn­ing can be pro­duc­tive for extend­ed learn­ing, such as home­work. But at this point, noth­ing match­es the effi­ca­cy of a face-to-face stu­dent-teacher rela­tion­ship in com­mu­ni­cat­ing com­plex and impor­tant mate­ri­als. Stu­dents are not get­ting this from TTO in its cur­rent form. Some par­ents’ frus­tra­tion has reached the point where they are now look­ing into oth­er school options for sev­enth grade, which would be very unfor­tu­nate.

We under­stand that the dis­trict is cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing TTO. With this let­ter, we respect­ful­ly ask that:

• TTO be dis­con­tin­ued for the spring 2017 trimester and there­after.
• If the dis­trict wish­es to con­tin­ue with TTO, either:
  • Make it option­al for all stu­dents and pro­vide a tra­di­tion­al teacher-led option for those who don’t wish to par­tic­i­pate, or
  • With the involve­ment of the par­ent com­mu­ni­ty, restruc­ture the pro­gram so that TTO is sub­stan­tial­ly min­i­mized or lim­it­ed to a sub­pop­u­la­tion where it has proven to be ben­e­fi­cial.
• The dis­trict solic­it par­ent feed­back pri­or to imple­ment­ing major cur­ricu­lum changes going for­ward.

Below please find a list of items that sum­ma­rize many par­ent con­cerns regard­ing the TTO pro­gram:

• The TTO cur­ricu­lum does not fol­low a log­i­cal path­way, enabling stu­dents to build a strong math foun­da­tion. TTO removes the thought­ful­ness behind math cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment, by pre­sent­ing top­ics in an illog­i­cal and inco­her­ent order. By jump­ing around among con­cepts, stu­dents fail to make con­nec­tions between sub­ject areas. Stu­dents may “pass” an Exit Slip with­out the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build mas­tery in core mid­dle school math con­cepts. When top­ics jump around illog­i­cal­ly, par­ents find them­selves forced to teach ear­li­er con­cepts to which the stu­dent was nev­er exposed in order to assist with under­stand­ing the con­cepts at hand.

• Much of the instruc­tion is quite shal­low, in some cas­es even mis­lead­ing and fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect. Top­ics which would nor­mal­ly take days or even weeks of class­room instruc­tion are some­times com­plet­ed in a sin­gle day. Fur­ther, this super­fi­cial expo­sure to math con­cepts will dis­ad­van­tage all stu­dents. This will be espe­cial­ly evi­dent when they join neigh­bor­ing Los Altos mid­dle school stu­dents in high school.

• With TTO, stu­dents are often test­ed on mate­ri­als that they have nev­er been taught, caus­ing anx­i­ety, frus­tra­tion and dis­like for math. In a time where we want to encour­age stu­dents to build foun­da­tion­al skills for cut­ting edge STEM fields, TTO seems to be affect­ing stu­dent atti­tudes toward math and prob­lem solv­ing. Many par­ents report a strik­ing change in their child’s atti­tude toward math this year. The stu­dents gen­er­al­ly have very pos­i­tive feed­back about math teach­ers at Gra­ham and Crit­ten­den, but many stu­dents hate TTO and now dis­like math.

• TTO does not sup­port the Com­mon Core cur­ricu­lum, where stu­dent under­stand­ing is based on how the stu­dent arrived at a solu­tion, not the final answer alone. With TTO, stu­dents choose a mul­ti­ple choice answer with­out ever show­ing their work. This will not pre­pare them for high school math or advanced math class­es, where the final answer just rep­re­sents a frac­tion of the over­all process.

• One ben­e­fit of the TTO pro­gram tout­ed by the dis­trict is that “The pro­gram will reduce the time teach­ers ded­i­cate to stu­dent assess­ments and allow more direct instruc­tion­al time with stu­dents.” In fact, the stu­dents have lit­tle con­tact with teach­ers. With the Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence aspect of learn­ing, stu­dents ben­e­fit from pos­i­tive rein­force­ment of a teacher, espe­cial­ly in math where they have to push a lit­tle hard­er to get to a solu­tion. Assign­ing more growth mind­set videos is not a solu­tion to over­com­ing frus­tra­tion and encour­ag­ing per­se­ver­ance. Fur­ther­more, teach­ers appear to serve an admin­is­tra­tive func­tion, afford­ing lit­tle instruc­tion time. The few teacher-led ses­sions are degrad­ed, as teach­ers must fig­ure out their lessons with lit­tle advanced notice based on what TTO pro­vides.

• The pro­gram doesn’t edu­cate stu­dents or par­ents about what lev­el of math skills the stu­dents are work­ing on, so we have no idea if they are work­ing at a fifth grade lev­el or an eighth grade lev­el.

• Par­ents and staff have iden­ti­fied mul­ti­ple and per­va­sive errors through­out the TTO mate­ri­als includ­ing: mis­takes in answers, illog­i­cal ques­tions, link errors, etc. The instruc­tion­al mate­r­i­al is often con­fus­ing and of poor qual­i­ty. This is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that there is no text­book, so when a stu­dent strug­gles with con­cept in the home­work, they are left to look­ing for answers online.

• The TTO home­work algo­rithm seems to be flawed. Some­times stu­dents receive home­work that is mis­aligned with their playlist. Oth­er times the home­work either too advanced or too sim­plis­tic for the stu­dent.

• While we are pre­pared to sup­port our stu­dents in math, TTO requires too much par­ent involve­ment. Many par­ents spend sig­nif­i­cant time at home pro­vid­ing math instruc­tion because there is no text­book and because there are few in-class teach­ing ses­sions by math teach­ers. Many par­ents have hired tutors to make up for the lack of teacher-stu­dent inter­ac­tion. This is unfair to both the par­ents and teach­ers. Many fam­i­lies lack the aca­d­e­m­ic or finan­cial means to pro­vide this extracur­ric­u­lar sup­port to their stu­dents. Gra­ham and Crit­ten­den have excel­lent math teach­ers who are pas­sion­ate about teach­ing math. Fur­ther, per­for­mance results may be flawed in favor of TTO as a result of par­ents pro­vid­ing dai­ly direct instruc­tion and/or tutor­ing to sup­ple­ment TTO’s defi­cien­cies.

• The lack of text­book and com­plete depen­dence on the inter­net inter­feres with math study in the class­room. Glitch­es in the system/Internet mean that stu­dents often miss instruc­tion­al time, are unable to com­plete their Exit Slip, or are late to their next class. Not only does this com­pro­mise time in math class, but this affects learn­ing in oth­er sub­ject areas. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this has hap­pened quite a few times to many of our chil­dren.

• Small group col­lab­o­ra­tion seems to be inef­fec­tive at this stage. One child likened this to prac­tic­ing a com­plex piano piece with­out an instructor–you prac­tice and prac­tice, and when you meet your teacher, you real­ize you learned it incor­rect­ly and must now unlearn what you taught your­self. With­out the foun­da­tion­al skills, it is inef­fi­cient for a group of stu­dents to work out a prob­lem with­out teacher guid­ance or foun­da­tion. Fur­ther, at this age, some stu­dents goof off and inter­fere with oth­ers’ abil­i­ty to learn. The lack of teacher sup­port makes this a con­stant prob­lem.

Thank you very much for your con­sid­er­a­tion.

Sin­cere­ly,

Sig­na­ture of 180 par­ents

Graham Letter to Parents

in | January 5th, 2017

Dear par­ents:

We have fin­ished half of the year in our Teach to One math pro­gram pilot and col­lect­ed feed­back from teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents. In review­ing sur­vey respons­es, let­ters, emails, and infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by teach­ers, there are both pos­i­tives and con­cerns across all groups and schools.

What we learned is that stu­dents have ben­e­fit­ted from Teach to One’s indi­vid­u­al­ized learn­ing and inno­va­tion. Teach­ers have access to dai­ly data about their stu­dents’ progress and appre­ci­ate TTO’s abil­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate math instruc­tion for all stu­dents. Addi­tion­al­ly, our teach­ers and stu­dents stat­ed that they find val­ue in the math advi­so­ry, teacher-led instruc­tion, vir­tu­al instruc­tion and rein­force­ment, and task por­tions of TTO.

We have also heard the desire for a bet­ter bal­ance between teacher-led instruc­tion and Teach to One to pro­vide stu­dents a deep­er under­stand­ing of math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts.  More­over, there are some con­cerns that stu­dents need more expo­sure to grade-lev­el and foun­da­tion­al con­cepts before advanc­ing to high­er-lev­el skills.

So what comes next?  As a Dis­trict we oper­ate as a learn­ing orga­ni­za­tion. We have heard from some about aban­don­ing the pro­gram com­plete­ly, and from oth­ers who would like to con­tin­ue to improve the deliv­ery of this inno­v­a­tive pro­gram. Tak­ing all fac­tors into con­sid­er­a­tion, the Dis­trict will make changes to the pro­gram, begin­ning Jan. 9 for the remain­der of the year, to strike a bet­ter bal­ance between tech­nol­o­gy-assist­ed and teacher-led instruc­tion.

Teach to One will be reduced to 50% of class time. The oth­er 50% of time stu­dents will work with a teacher on the lev­el of Eure­ka Math appro­pri­ate for them. Stu­dents are assigned strate­gi­cal­ly for their Eure­ka math instruc­tion based on the results of a vari­ety of assess­ments. This will pre­pare stu­dents to be on tar­get to exit eighth grade hav­ing com­plet­ed Geom­e­try, Alge­bra I or eighth-grade math.

In order to ensure that stu­dents deep­en their knowl­edge before mov­ing to a high­er lev­el, we will pro­vide more tra­di­tion­al instruc­tion time and mod­i­fied TTO pro­gram­ming.

Teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors devel­oped a new sched­ule for their indi­vid­ual sites, and details about the spe­cif­ic sched­ule will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed by each mid­dle school prin­ci­pal on Jan. 3.

This pilot process is an impor­tant one that allows us to iden­ti­fy the strengths and weak­ness­es of Teach to One for all stu­dents, so that we may make changes in a thought­ful, method­i­cal man­ner. Thank you for your sup­port and patience.

Sin­cere­ly,

Hear a Great 4‑Hour Radio Documentary on the Life & Music of Jimi Hendrix: Features Rare Recordings & Interviews

in Music, Radio | December 15th, 2016

The lega­cy of Jimi Hendrix’s estate has been in con­flict in recent years. Since his father’s death in 2002, his sib­lings have squab­bled over his mon­ey and bat­tled unli­censed and boot­leg venders. But Hendrix’s musi­cal lega­cy con­tin­ues to amaze and inspire, as Janie Hen­drix—his step­sis­ter and CEO of the com­pa­ny that man­ages his music—has released album after album of rar­i­ties over the last cou­ple decades. Not all of these releas­es have pleased Hen­drix fans, who have called some of them mer­ce­nary and thought­less. But it is always a joy to dis­cov­er an unheard record­ing, whether a live per­for­mance, wob­bly stu­dio out­take, or semi-pol­ished demo, so many of which reveal the ter­ri­to­ry Hen­drix intend­ed to chart before he died.

In 1982, some of that unre­leased mate­r­i­al made it into a four-hour Paci­fi­ca Radio doc­u­men­tary, which you can hear in four parts here. Pro­duced by what the sta­tion calls “some of Pacifica’s finest” at its Berke­ley “flag­ship sta­tion 94.1 FM,” the doc­u­men­tary does an excel­lent job of plac­ing these record­ings in con­text.

With help from Hen­drix biog­ra­ph­er David Hen­der­son, the pro­duc­ers com­piled “pre­vi­ous­ly unheard and rare record­ings” and inter­views from Hen­drix, his fam­i­ly, Noel Red­ding, Ornette Cole­man, Ste­vie Won­der, John Lee Hook­er, John McLaugh­lin, Chas Chan­dler, and more. After a new­ly-record­ed intro­duc­tion and a col­lage of Hen­drix inter­view sound­bites, Part 1 gets right down to it with a live ver­sion of “Are You Expe­ri­enced?” that puls­es from the speak­ers in hyp­not­ic waves (lis­ten to it on a sol­id pair of head­phones if you can).

“I want to have stereo where the sound goes up,” says Hen­drix in a sound­bite, “and behind and under­neath, you know? But all you can get now is across and across.” Some­how, even in ordi­nary stereo, Hen­drix had a way of mak­ing sound sur­round his lis­ten­ers, envelop­ing them in warm fuzzy waves of feed­back and reverb. But he also had an equal­ly cap­ti­vat­ing way with lan­guage, and not only in his song lyrics. Though the received por­trait of Hen­drix is of a shy, retir­ing per­son who expressed him­self bet­ter with music, in many of these inter­views he weaves togeth­er detailed mem­o­ries and whim­si­cal dreams and fan­tasies, com­pos­ing imag­i­na­tive nar­ra­tives on the spot. Sev­er­al extem­po­ra­ne­ous lines could have eas­i­ly flow­ered into new songs.

Hen­drix briefly tells the sto­ry of his rise through the R&B and soul cir­cuit as an almost effort­less glide from the ranks of strug­gling side­men, to play­ing behind Sam Cooke, Lit­tle Richard, and Ike and Tina Turn­er to start­ing his solo career. We move through the most famous stages of Hen­drix’s life, with its icon­ic moments and cau­tion­ary tales, and by the time we get to Part 4, we start hear­ing a Hen­drix most peo­ple nev­er do, a pre­view of where his music might have gone into the seventies—with jazzy pro­gres­sions and long, wind­ing instru­men­tal pas­sages pow­ered by the shuf­fling beats of Bud­dy Miles.

As has become abun­dant­ly clear in the almost four decades since Hen­drix’s death, he had a tremen­dous amount of new music left in him, stretch­ing in direc­tions he nev­er got to pur­sue. But the bit of it he left behind offers proof of just how influ­en­tial he was not only on rock gui­tarists but also on blues and jazz fusion play­ers of the fol­low­ing decade. His pio­neer­ing record­ing style (best heard on Elec­tric Lady­land) also drove for­ward, and in some cas­es invent­ed, many of the stu­dio tech­niques in use today. Process­es that can now be auto­mat­ed in min­utes might took hours to orches­trate in the late six­ties. Watch­ing Hen­drix mix in the stu­dio “was like watch­ing a bal­let,” says pro­duc­er Elliot Maz­er.

This doc­u­men­tary keeps its focus square­ly on Hen­drix’s work, phe­nom­e­nal tal­ent, and unique­ly inno­v­a­tive cre­ative thought, and as such it pro­vides the per­fect set­ting for the rare and then-unre­leased record­ings you may not have heard before. Paci­fi­ca re-released the doc­u­men­tary last year as part of its annu­al fundrais­ing cam­paign. The sta­tion is again solic­it­ing funds to help main­tain its impres­sive archives and dig­i­tize many more hours of tape like the Hen­drix pro­gram, so stop by and make a dona­tion if you can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Plays “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” for The Bea­t­les, Just Three Days After the Album’s Release (1967)

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

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

Hear Controversial Versions of “The Star Spangled Banner” by Igor Stravinsky, Jimi Hendrix, José Feliciano & John Philip Sousa

in History, Music | December 13th, 2016

Debates over whether or not we should destroy or alter U.S. icons seem to turn on a crit­i­cal ques­tion: are nation­al sym­bols qua­si-reli­gious totems of some tran­scen­dent sacred order? The kind of impe­r­i­al project like­ly to end up a col­lec­tion of crum­bling mon­u­ments with every oth­er empire of the past? Or are they liv­ing emblems of a sec­u­lar repub­lic whose pri­ma­ry embod­i­ment is its peo­ple? A coun­try, like its peo­ple, that must recon­sti­tute itself with each gen­er­a­tion in order to sur­vive?

Either way, the nation’s sym­bols have always with­stood cre­ative destruc­tion, détourne­ment, and recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion. Sub­ject­ing nation­al iconog­ra­phy to the inter­ven­tions of artists and activists restores a sense of pro­por­tion, show­ing us that our gov­ern­ment and its sym­bols belong to the peo­ple, rather than the oth­er way around. The idea is a pow­er­ful one. So much so that its expres­sion nev­er fails to excite con­tro­ver­sy. And few expres­sions have pro­voked more ire than per­for­mances of (or respons­es to) the nation­al anthem that devi­ate from the staid tra­di­tion­al arrange­ment.

We could point to very obvi­ous anthem con­tro­ver­sies, like Roseanne Barr’s irrev­er­ent 1990 ren­di­tion. But cer­tain oth­er inter­pre­ta­tions have had much more seri­ous artis­tic intent, like that of nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zen Igor Stravin­sky, whose 1944 ver­sion (top) came from his “desire to do my bit in these griev­ous times toward fos­ter­ing and pre­serv­ing the spir­it of patri­o­tism in this coun­try.” Stravinsky’s earnest ambi­tion was thwart­ed. He couldn’t help but add his sig­na­ture, in this case a dom­i­nant sev­enth chord, to the arrange­ment.

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The Boston police respond­ed by issu­ing him a warn­ing, claim­ing, we not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, “there was a law against tam­per­ing with the nation­al anthem” (there wasn’t). Stravin­sky “grudg­ing­ly” pulled the anthem from his Boston Sym­pho­ny bill. Over twen­ty years lat­er, the blind Puer­to Rican folk singer José Feli­ciano played the anthem before the 1968 World Series in his own emo­tion­al­ly-charged style. And like Stravin­sky, he was moti­vat­ed by love of coun­try. “I had set out to sing an anthem of grat­i­tude to a coun­try that had giv­en me a chance,” he lat­er recalled, “that had allowed me, a blind kid from Puer­to Rico—a kid with a dream—to reach far above my own lim­i­ta­tions.”

Much of the coun­try did not respond in kind. Even dur­ing the per­for­mance, Feli­ciano could “feel the dis­con­tent with­in the waves of cheers and applause that spurred on the first pitch.” After­wards, he learned that “a great con­tro­ver­sy was explod­ing across the coun­try because I had cho­sen to alter my ren­di­tion.… Vet­er­ans, I was being told, had thrown their shoes at the tele­vi­sion as I sang; oth­ers ques­tioned my right to stay in the Unit­ed States.” Feli­ciano admits, “yes, it was dif­fer­ent but I promise you,” he says, “it was sin­cere.” So was the most rad­i­cal of “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” inter­pre­ta­tions, Jimi Hendrix’s feed­back-laden ver­sion at Wood­stock the fol­low­ing year.

A vet­er­an him­self, Hen­drix wasn’t moti­vat­ed by wartime patri­o­tism or per­son­al grat­i­tude, but by a desire, per­haps, to tell the truth about what his coun­try was doing to thou­sands of peo­ple in South­east Asia—“Napalm bombs,” as he said at the time, “peo­ple get­ting burned up on TV.” It’s a sub­ject he occa­sion­al­ly touched on lyri­cal­ly; here he let the gui­tar tell it, “turn­ing the music to a lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the lyrics: bombs burst­ing in air, rock­ets light­ing up the night,” writes Andy Cush at Spin, “Hen­drix began to sly­ly use the music’s own mar­tial bom­bast to reflect the vio­lence car­ried out under his nation’s flag.” He was hard­ly the first to exploit the song’s inher­ent bom­bast.

Almost 100 years before Woodstock—before the nation­al anthem was even the nation­al anthem—one of the most icon­ic of Amer­i­can of com­posers re-arranged “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner.” John Philip Sousa (who would go on to write “Stars and Stripes For­ev­er”) con­ceived the song in the “man­ner of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Over­ture,” New York­er music crit­ic Alex Ross tells us. (You can stream the Wag­ner­ian adap­ta­tion of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” here.) He was “young and lit­tle known at that time,” Ross remarks, “and his sly­ly Wag­ner­ian take on the future nation­al anthem was eclipsed by the famous­ly mediocre and expen­sive Cen­ten­ni­al March that Wag­n­er him­self penned for the occa­sion.” There’s no indi­ca­tion Sousa’s arrange­ment pro­voked a nation­al upset. But it did set a prece­dent for what we might as well call an Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of musi­cians alter­ing the anthem, using it to speak not to Fran­cis Scott Key’s Amer­i­ca, but to their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov: “I Am Crazy, Absolute­ly Nuts, About our Nation­al Anthem” (1991)

William Shat­ner Sings O Cana­da (and Hap­py Cana­da Day)

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

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

British Advertisers Predict in 1935 What the World Will Look Like in 2500: Wireless TV, Atomic Cars & More

in Business, History, Sci Fi | November 28th, 2016

Back before the pub­lic came to terms with the grim causal rela­tion­ship between cig­a­rettes and can­cer, smok­ing was a jol­ly affair, whose plea­sures extend­ed well beyond the phys­i­cal act.

Smok­ing was socia­ble. Yes, there were cer­tain sit­u­a­tions in which three on a match could spell doom, but a far greater like­li­hood that light­ing an attrac­tive stranger’s cof­fin nail might kin­dle con­ver­sa­tion, and more.

If you were at a loss for words, you might break the ice with the trad­ing cards man­u­fac­tur­ers slipped inside cig­a­rette packs, such as these mid-30s beau­ties that came inside packs of Greys, a now-defunct British cig­a­rette brand, and favorite of WWI vets.

The sub­ject is unusu­al. Sports, cin­e­ma stars, and mil­i­tary scenes were com­mon themes of the time. The “Greys Antic­i­pa­tions” series took cre­ative lib­er­ties, by imag­in­ing a (can­cer-free) year 2500, in which Lon­don­ers would be privy to such inno­va­tions as solar-light­ing, mov­ing side­walks, and wire­less tele­vi­sion…

Great Scott! Were they psy­chic!?

Hope­ful­ly not.

Hope­ful­ly, we’ve still got 484 years to find out…

“Pica­dil­ly, Lon­don, A.D. 2500: Roofed-in under non-con­duc­tive mica glass . . mov­ing path­ways . . rub­ber road­ways avenued into 50, 100, 150 and 200 miles per hour . . sus­pend­ed mono rail­ways . . motors dri­ven by atom­ic ener­gy . . pho­net­ic spelling . . wire­less tele­vi­sion . . light­ed by cap­tured solar rays . . excur­sions to Mars.”

I’m fine with excur­sions to Mars and mono­rails but atom­ic ener­gy is as prob­lem­at­ic as the health claims once put for­ward by cig­a­rette ads.

“At the Cus­toms House on the Roof of Lon­don, A.D. 2500: The rail­way train has fol­lowed the ichthyosaurus into extinc­tion. Mighty aer­i­al lin­ers trans­port pas­sen­gers in their thou­sands, with great car­goes of mer­chan­dise from con­ti­nent to con­ti­nent. Mankind, liv­ing amidst such tremen­dous achieve­ments, thinks, plans, and acts with cor­re­spond­ing big­ness.”

Hmm…I was kind of root­ing for train trav­el to make a come­back…

“The Plea­sure City, Lon­don, A.D. 2500: Plea­sure-seek­ing has been raised to a fine art … muti­tudes when the short day’s work is done find a sat­is­fy­ing means of relax­ation in smok­ing “GREYS” Cig­a­rettes and lis­ten­ing to the mam­moth mechan­i­cal orches­tra … char­ac­ter­is­tic of the music of the peri­od … music so com­plex that it can be ren­dered only by won­der­ous mech­a­nism.”

This does sound rather fun, depend­ing on who’s doing the pro­gram­ming… per­haps we should just stick with head­phones and a busker on every cor­ner.

A Hive of Indus­try, A.D. 2500: Lit­er­al­ly a “hive” in that it is a city unto itself … radi­at­ing from the mam­moth super-fac­to­ry are work­ers’ dwellings and asso­ci­at­ed insti­tutes … archi­tec­ture gov­erned by the pre­vail­ing mate­r­i­al — con­crete … no smoke (oth­er than from tobac­co!) … no house­hold cook­ing . . meals deliv­ered by pneu­mat­ic tube from cen­tral cook­house.

Um…I strong­ly sug­gest revis­it­ing Ter­ry Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil,  before sign­ing off on the whole pneu­mat­ic tube thing.

Dar­ran Ander­son, author of  Imag­i­nary Cities, took a clos­er look at one of the cards in the above talk about imag­i­nary Lon­don. I share his opin­ion that “phonet­ic spelling… is the best thing that they envis­aged of the future.”

He also notes that the card is about 20 years ahead of its time in pro­mot­ing a mid-50s‑style vision of the future, but that it failed to pre­dict the demise of Greys Cig­a­rettes, by promi­nent­ly adver­tis­ing them on the side of a sus­pend­ed mono­rail.

Hubris!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean Luc Godard

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Alice’s Restaurant: An Illustrated Version of Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

in Music | November 24th, 2016

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion. Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing to every­one who plans to cel­e­brate the hol­i­day today.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam War Protest

Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occu­py Wall Street

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings