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

Watch Orson Welles’ First Ever Film, Directed at Age 19

in Film | January 5th, 2017

“It’s noth­ing at all. Absolute­ly noth­ing. It was a joke. I want­ed to make a par­o­dy of Jean Cocteau’s first film. That’s all. We shot it in two hours, for fun, one Sun­day after­noon. It has no sort of mean­ing.”–Orson Welles

The Hearts of Age may have indeed been a lark when it was shot in 1934, but giv­en that one of the two teenagers went on to direct Cit­i­zen Kane sev­en years lat­er, no doubt it’s worth a sec­ond look.

Like all things Welles, his 19-year-old life was much more fan­tas­tic than most high school grads. Though he and school chum William Vance shot the film at their alma mater, the Todd School in Wood­stock, Illi­nois, Welles had grad­u­at­ed three years ear­li­er. Accord­ing to Sens­es of Cin­e­ma, Welles

had spurned a schol­ar­ship to Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, vis­it­ed Ire­land on a sketch­ing tour only to talk his way into per­form­ing for the Dublin Gate The­atre, writ­ten detec­tive sto­ries for pulp mag­a­zines, and trav­elled through Lon­don, Paris, the Ivory Coast, Moroc­co and Seville, where he spent an after­noon as a pro­fes­sion­al bull­fight­er. After return­ing to Amer­i­ca in 1933, intro­duc­tions to Thorn­ton Wilder and Alexan­der Wol­cott led to a posi­tion in Kather­ine Cornell’s tour­ing reper­to­ry com­pa­ny. Welles toured with the Cor­nell com­pa­ny from Novem­ber 1933 to June 1934, appear­ing in three plays and mak­ing his New York debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juli­et.

Back in Wood­stock to spon­sor a the­ater fes­ti­val at the school, Welles and Vance bor­rowed a cam­era from their old prin­ci­pal and shot this eight minute short.

William Vance, Welles’ friend and co-direc­tor, kept the only copy until he donat­ed it to the Green­wich Pub­lic Library, where film his­to­ri­an and writer Joseph McBride dis­cov­ered it in 1969. McBride then wrote about it in Film Quar­ter­ly and the secret juve­nil­ia of Welles was out of the clos­et. (“Why did Joe have to dis­cov­er that film?” Welles was quot­ed as telling his cam­era­man).

Nev­er entered into copy­right, it’s a pub­lic domain film and so has been avail­able on var­i­ous plat­forms for years. (I saw it in the ‘90s as part of a “before they were famous” short film fes­ti­val with stu­dent work by Lynch, Scors­ese, and Spiel­berg).

The short indeed looks like a par­o­dy of sur­re­al­ist film, a bit like Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet as Welles intend­ed, but with a bit of René Clair’s Entr’Acte and some good ol’ Eisen­stein­ian mon­tage thrown in.

Welles appears in heavy stage make­up as a rich, old­er man in a top hat and cane, look­ing not too far from the elder­ly Charles Fos­ter Kane. His then girl­friend and future first wife Vir­ginia Nichol­son plays an old hag who rides for­lorn­ly back and forth on a bell. There’s a clown in black­face played by Paul Edger­ton, an Indi­an in a blan­ket (co-direc­tor William Vance in a cameo) and a Key­stone cop, which some web­sites say is also Nichol­son. But Charles “Black­ie” O’Neal is also cred­it­ed as a per­former with­out a role and he indeed may be the actor play­ing the Key­stone Cop. (O’Neal, by the way, would lat­er be father to Ryan O’Neal.)

Although he dis­missed the film, Welles’ pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with death are here, right at the begin­ning of his career, with sui­cides, coffins, skulls, and grave­stones fea­tur­ing promi­nent­ly. And though it’s no mas­ter­piece and hon­est­ly a bit of a mess, it shows a direc­tor inter­est­ed in exper­i­ment­ing with film, with humor, and the won­ders of make­up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Is It Always Right to Be Right?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1970 Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion That Still Res­onates Today

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Download 20 Free eBooks on Design from O’Reilly Media

in Business, e-books | December 29th, 2016

A quick note: Thanks to O’Reil­ly Media, you can now down­load 20 free ebooks focused on design–every­thing from Design­ing for Cities, to Design­ing for the Inter­net of Things, to Design Essen­tials. You can down­load the books in PDF for­mat. No cred­it card is required. See the com­plete list here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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

in Art | December 28th, 2016

A friend recent­ly told me he’d had his hair cut with a pair of $10,000 scis­sors, reput­ed­ly the high­est-qual­i­ty in the world. He hard­ly need­ed to add that his bar­ber ordered them from Japan, the land where those tru­ly ded­i­cat­ed to their craft spare no expense of mon­ey, time, or ener­gy to take each small step clos­er to per­fec­tion. The rig­or­ous tra­di­tions behind that extend far back into his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly in the mak­ing of paper, swords, and, as you can see in the video above, mar­quetry, pat­terned veneers which use wood — and only wood — to cre­ate ele­gant and elab­o­rate geo­met­ric pat­terns to apply to the sur­faces of all sorts of objects: artis­tic, func­tion­al, and any­where in between.

In 2012 and 2013, Guc­ci Japan went around film­ing the world of mas­ters of tra­di­tion­al arts and crafts all around the coun­try and assem­bling them into the video series “Hand,” some of which we fea­tured here last year.

Its four-minute short on mar­quetry, as prac­ticed by Noboru Hon­ma of Hakone, has espe­cial­ly daz­zled its view­ers by reveal­ing how almost unre­al-look­ing aes­thet­ic pre­ci­sion can result from one man’s work with noth­ing more than saws, sanders, and woods of var­i­ous nat­ur­al col­ors. These woods, which include cher­ry, dog­wood, ash, mul­ber­ry, and cam­phor, can make about 60 dif­fer­ent canon­i­cal pat­terns com­bin­able in an infini­tude of ways.

You can learn more about tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese mar­quetry, or yose­gi-zaiku, in the Tech­nigeek video above. It pays a vis­it to anoth­er wood­shop, not far from Hon­ma’s in the neigh­bor­ing city of Odawara. (Both Odawara and Hakone are locat­ed in Kana­gawa Pre­fec­ture, an area known for its woods.) Kiy­ota­ki Tsuyu­ki, the crafts­man in charge, works with a group of younger yose­gi prac­ti­tion­ers with the aim of push­ing the for­m’s bound­aries and keep­ing it rel­e­vant to the times. “Yose­gi is about beau­ty, the detail in the pat­tern, and the col­ors,” he says. “It’s about design, using it in your dai­ly life, or enjoy­ing it as art. If it’s fun to look at and easy to use on any occa­sion, you’re more like­ly to love it and enjoy being around it.” Espe­cial­ly if you under­stand the work — and in some sense, cen­turies of work — that went into it.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed con­tent:

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

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.

Carrie Fisher’s Long Career as a Writer, Screenwriter, and Hollywood Fixer: “I’m a Writer” First and Foremost

in Film, Writing | December 28th, 2016

By now the news of Car­rie Fisher’s death has hit hard all over the world. It’s true that for an entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple, her break­out role at 19 as Princess Leia in the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy has made her a sci-fi icon and a child­hood crush—both roles she longed to escape. Trib­ute after trib­ute on social media and else­where remind­ed us almost imme­di­ate­ly after Tuesday’s announce­ment that her life and work have had a much wider impact, even on peo­ple who have nev­er even seen a Star Wars film.

Fisher’s unabashed­ly can­did pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions about her per­son­al strug­gles with sub­stance abuse and bipo­lar dis­or­der made her a pow­er­ful advo­cate for oth­ers who felt ashamed to talk about these too-often-taboo sub­jects and often too ashamed to seek help. Much like George Michael, anoth­er celebri­ty mourned by mil­lions this hol­i­day sea­son, Fish­er refused to be shamed into silence or to capit­u­late to bul­lies and big­ots. Instead she prac­ti­cal­ly bloomed with earthy charm and wit as she co-opt­ed tabloid char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion and turned it into her own form of auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal art and ther­a­peu­tic out­reach.

Her return to the reboot­ed Star Wars fran­chise last year as the wise, aging Gen­er­al Leia Organa ele­vat­ed the con­ver­sa­tion about old­er women in Hol­ly­wood, after her response to some vicious com­ments about her looks made her haters look small, mean, and stunt­ed. Fish­er’s tal­ent for Oscar Wilde-wor­thy apho­risms that sliced right through lay­ers of insuf­fer­able bull­shit also led to one of her most suc­cess­ful career stints, as a writer, script doc­tor, and Hol­ly­wood fix­er dur­ing a “long, very lucra­tive episode,” as she told Newsweek in a 2008 inter­view. (In true Car­rie Fish­er fash­ion, she brought these life expe­ri­ences to an Emmy-nom­i­nat­ed guest turn on an episode of 30 Rock as her fun­ni­est char­ac­ter, Rose­mary Howard.)

It’s rumored that Fish­er revised her lines in George Lucas’ noto­ri­ous­ly wordy Star Wars scripts. (Although one image of Empire Strikes Back edits pur­port­ed to be in her hand actu­al­ly con­tains revi­sions by the film’s direc­tor Irvin Ker­sh­n­er.) But her for­mal screen­writ­ing career began in 1990, when she adapt­ed her best­selling 1987 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, Post­cards from the Edge, into the screen­play for a Meryl Streep-star­ring film. The project led to rewrit­ing work on high-pro­file come­dies through­out the next decade. In addi­tion to a cred­it for one of those unwieldy Lucas scripts for The Phan­tom Men­ace in 1999, Fish­er helped rework films like Hook, Sis­ter Act, Made in Amer­i­ca, So I Mar­ried an Axe Mur­der­er, The Wed­ding Singer, and sev­er­al more.

Always a fierce­ly out­spo­ken crit­ic of the way Hol­ly­wood treats women, Fish­er fought to make female char­ac­ters more three-dimen­sion­al. In a Web­MD inter­view, she was asked, “What does it take to heal bad dia­logue?” Her pithy answer: “Make the women smarter and the love scenes bet­ter.” As a peace­mak­er for trou­bled pro­duc­tions, how­ev­er, she often advised women actors to use diplomacy—with her own spin on the con­cept. When Whoopi Gold­berg feud­ed with Disney’s Jef­frey Katzen­berg, for exam­ple, Fish­er advised, “Send Jef­frey a hatch­et and say, ‘Please bury this on both our behalfs.’” Gold­berg thought it over, and “the next day Katzen­berg received his hatch­et. With­in a few days a token of Katzenberg’s respect arrived at her front door: two enor­mous brass balls.”

Sto­ries like this one, and many more uproar­i­ous and often per­son­al­ly self-destruc­tive episodes, formed the basis for Fisher’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal best­sellers, includ­ing her mem­oir Wish­ful Drink­ing, which also became a one-woman Broad­way show, then an HBO spe­cial (see an excerpt at the top). She has always won over crit­ics as an actress, and she made a wry kind of peace with her eter­nal fame as Princess Leia, imbu­ing the char­ac­ter with renewed grav­i­tas and sen­si­tiv­i­ty in the year before her death. But she did not see her­self prin­ci­pal­ly as an actress. “I’m a writer,” she told Web­MD. Asked whom she’d choose to share “con­fined quar­ters” with from his­to­ry, she answered—with her win­ning com­bi­na­tion of dis­arm­ing sin­cer­i­ty and wink­ing self-aware­ness—“Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge. He was man­ic-depres­sive, too.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Young Car­rie Fish­er (RIP) Audi­tion for Star Wars (1975)      

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

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

Stephen King Explains the Key to His Creativity: Not Losing the Dream-State Thinking All Children Are Born With

in Psychology, Writing | December 27th, 2016

While noth­ing could make me per­son­al­ly want to return to child­hood, chil­dren do, for bet­ter or for worse, per­ceive the world more vivid­ly than adults. The best writ­ing for kids makes rich nar­ra­tive use of that fact, as do sto­ries about but not for kids by writ­ers who haven’t for­got­ten their pre-grown-up selves’ expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty. Stephen King, for instance, hard­ly writes chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, but his nov­els about the fear that seeps into every cor­ner of work­ing-class Amer­i­ca often include very young char­ac­ters. Not only does King write plau­si­bly from their psy­cho­log­i­cal point of view, he uses that point of view as an engine of his entire project.

King, in a 1989 inter­view on WAM­C’s Pub­lic Radio Book Show, elab­o­rat­ed on “the two things that inter­est me about child­hood,” the first being that “it’s a secret world that exists by its own rules and lives in its own cul­ture, and the sec­ond that “we for­get what it is to be a child and we for­get that life, which is kind of exot­ic and strange.” Though read­ers often ask him what ago­nies his child­hood must have vis­it­ed upon him that spurred him to write such vivid­ly hor­rif­ic fic­tion, King does­n’t remem­ber any­thing wrong with his for­ma­tive years. But he does remem­ber “that we think in a dif­fer­ent way as chil­dren. We tend to think around cor­ners instead of in straight lines.”

We see these dif­fer­ences ani­mat­ed in the Blank on Blank video at the top of the post, which envi­sions the adult King in the world of imag­i­na­tion that kids instinc­tive­ly inhab­it and out of which they even­tu­al­ly grow, but to which he reg­u­lar­ly returns to write his sto­ries. “Some­times for a kid, the short­est dis­tance between two points is not a straight line and that’s the way that we think and dream,” he says. “As chil­dren we tend to live in this kind of dream state [ … ] and because I equate that sort of dream state with a height­ened sort of men­tal state, I make this easy cross-con­nec­tion between child­hood and strange pow­ers, para­nor­mal pow­ers or what­ev­er, and it has been suc­cess­ful as a fic­tion­al device.”

As the source of such best­sellers as Car­rie, The Stand, Chris­tine, It, the Dark Tow­er series, and count­less oth­er works, it’s been suc­cess­ful to say the least. If con­nect­ing one thing to anoth­er in new ways — be those things peo­ple, places, events, ideas, feel­ings, or what­ev­er else — con­sti­tutes the cen­tral act of cre­ation, then it makes sense that the nat­u­ral­ly asso­cia­tive nature of a child’s imag­i­na­tion, har­nessed to an adult’s expe­ri­ence and dis­ci­pline, can pro­duce such abun­dant and wide­ly res­o­nant results. No coin­ci­dence, sure­ly, that young­sters unable to pay atten­tion to the lin­ear pro­gres­sion of the class­room get labeled “dream­ers,” a ten­den­cy that King has used to his advan­tage — though he seems to have got most of his tex­tu­al mileage out of the night­mares.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

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

Stephen King on the Mag­ic Moment When a Young Writer Reads a Pub­lished Book and Says: “This Sucks. I Can Do Bet­ter.”

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.

How the Films of Hayao Miyazaki Work Their Animated Magic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

in Animation | December 23rd, 2016

Last week we fea­tured a video that con­vinc­ing­ly places the char­ac­ters of Hayao Miyaza­ki and his Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s ani­mat­ed films into real life-set­tings. It jux­ta­posed two very dif­fer­ent kinds of real­i­ty, the con­crete three-dimen­sion­al one in which we live and the fan­tas­ti­cal two-dimen­sion­al one those char­ac­ters inhab­it, in the process demon­strat­ing that both some­how car­ry an equal weight. How, then, do these most respect­ed of all ani­ma­tors so con­sis­tent­ly pull it off, cre­at­ing real­is­tic worlds through an inher­ent­ly unre­al­is­tic medi­um? In “The Immer­sive Real­ism of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li,” the video essay just above, Ash­er Isbruck­er address­es that very ques­tion, look­ing into the nuts and bolts of their ani­ma­tion tech­niques as well as, through Miyaza­k­i’s own words, what we might call their ani­ma­tion phi­los­o­phy.

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has stayed (at the very least) a cut above oth­er ani­ma­tors not just by virtue of their exper­tise at cre­at­ing con­vinc­ing phys­i­cal worlds — whether or not their physics aligns with that of our own — but at cre­at­ing con­vinc­ing emo­tion­al worlds, pop­u­lat­ed with char­ac­ters full of desires and con­tra­dic­tions of their own. In “Hayao Miyaza­ki — The Essence of Human­i­ty,” which Ayun Hal­l­i­day wrote up here last year, video essay­ist Lewis Bond of Chan­nel Criswell exam­ines Miyaza­k­i’s “approach to ani­mat­ed film­mak­ing that con­cen­trates on the emo­tion­al intri­ca­cies of his sub­jects, as opposed to cre­at­ing — iron­i­cal­ly — car­toony char­ac­ters,” result­ing in ani­mat­ed films that don’t speak down to chil­dren but “help us all fur­ther under­stand the human con­di­tion.”

Once you start seri­ous­ly try­ing to answer the ques­tion of what makes a Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind or a My Neigh­bor Totoro or a Spir­it­ed Away so cap­ti­vat­ing, an abun­dance of rea­sons occur. Just above in “Hayao Miyaza­ki: What You Can Imag­ine,” JD Thomp­son iden­ti­fies the pow­er of imag­i­na­tion that ani­mates, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, all of Ghi­b­li’s movies. Below in “Hayao Miyaza­ki — Every­thing by Hand,” the video essay­ist RC Ani­me con­sid­ers the sheer amount of labor that goes into work that flies under the flag of “one of the hard­est-work­ing ani­me direc­tors,” and how it ulti­mate­ly deliv­ers more impact with sim­ple ges­tures than oth­er high-pro­file pieces of ani­ma­tion do with extend­ed action set pieces.

All these video essays touch on one espe­cial­ly impor­tant part of Miyaza­k­i’s cre­ative process: he begins mak­ing a film not with a script to be strict­ly adhered to, but with a series of sketch­es and sto­ry­boards. Dur­ing the long and ardu­ous course of pro­duc­tion, the sto­ry can thus change to suit the needs of the char­ac­ters, their emo­tions, and the worlds imag­ined around them. This pri­ma­cy of the image makes sense for a cre­ator like Miyaza­ki, who began with the child­hood dream of becom­ing a com­ic artist, and who dur­ing his peri­od­ic “retire­ments” returns his focus to that much sim­pler medi­um. He has, in fact, just emerged from the lat­est such retire­ment and got­ten to work on anoth­er ani­mat­ed fea­ture, as revealed in a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary on his life and work appro­pri­ate­ly titled Owaranai Hito — “The Man Who Does­n’t Stop.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

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.

David Bowie Sends a Christmas Greeting in the Voice of Elvis Presley

in Music | December 21st, 2016

After David Bowie died ear­li­er this year, we dis­cov­ered that the musi­cian had a knack for doing impres­sions of fel­low celebri­ties. Could he sing a song in the style of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bruce Spring­steen? Turns out, he could. And yes, he could do an Elvis impres­sion too.

The clip above aired back in 2013 on “This Is Radio Clash,” a radio show host­ed by the Clash’s Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Top­per Head­on. “Hel­lo every­body,” this is David Bowie mak­ing a tele­phone call from the US of A. At this time of the year I can’t help but remem­ber my British-ness and all the jol­ly British folk, so here’s to you and have your­selves a Mer­ry lit­tle Christ­mas and a Hap­py New Year. Thank you very much.”

It’s maybe not as mem­o­rable as his 1977 Christ­mas duet with Bing Cros­by, but, hey, it’s still a fun lit­tle way to get the hol­i­day sea­son in swing.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings Impres­sions of Bruce Spring­steen, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits & More In Stu­dio Out­takes (1985)

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy” (1977)

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

Hear “Twas The Night Before Christmas” Read by Stephen Fry & John Cleese

in Audio Books, Poetry | December 21st, 2016

You have to hand it to the Eng­lish: they know how to do Christ­mas right. Maybe it has to do with their respect for tra­di­tion, maybe with their sense of occa­sion, maybe with their apti­tude for pageantry, and maybe with their com­pul­sion, for all that, not to take any­thing too seri­ous­ly. It helps that they also pro­duce per­form­ers of the high­est cal­iber, espe­cial­ly of the ora­tor­i­cal vari­ety: Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese, for instance, or man of let­ters and all-around enter­tain­ing per­son­al­i­ty Stephen Fry. And so today, with its tit­u­lar eve near­ly here, we give you both of those Eng­lish­men’s ren­di­tions of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas.”

Fry’s read­ing at the top of the post, which comes with orches­tral back­ing, adheres close­ly to Clement Clarke Moore’s orig­i­nal 1823 text. The poem, for those who’ve nev­er spent Christ­mas in an Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­try, tells of a father awak­ened in the mid­dle of the night by none oth­er than San­ta Claus, come to deliv­er his fam­i­ly’s presents. More recent­ly, Fry nar­rat­ed anoth­er sto­ry of San­ta Claus in “San­ta For­got,” an ani­mat­ed pro­mo­tion­al video for Alzheimer’s Research UK that uses the beloved fig­ure glimpsed so vivid­ly in Moore’s poem to raise aware­ness of demen­tia and the research ded­i­cat­ed to cur­ing it.

In his read­ing of “ ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas” just above, John Cleese mod­ern­izes the sto­ry, freight­ing it with ref­er­ences to safe­ty belts, flat-screen tele­vi­sions, and Apple com­put­ers — and end­ing with San­ta Claus cap­tured by the father: “So he now lives with us, locked up in the cel­lar. We go down each day to see the old fel­low and get our new presents. And we ate the rein­deer, so we’re sor­ry but Christ­mas is can­celed next year.” Cleese has a ten­den­cy to dis­play such irrev­er­ence to the hol­i­day. “So sad to see u end with a tirade against Christ­mas,” tweet­ed some­one who’d attend­ed a live show of his and Eric Idle’s last month in Ari­zona. “Not against Christ­mas,” Cleese fired back, “against its com­mer­cial exploita­tion. Big dif­fer­ence, which the rest of the audi­ence under­stood.”

Noth­ing like a brac­ing shot of Eng­lish wit to treat an over­dose of com­mer­cial­ism, espe­cial­ly of the pow­er­ful Amer­i­can vari­ety. But for all the mas­tery of Christ­mas on the oth­er side of the pond, Clarke Moore, an Amer­i­can, defined the very char­ac­ter of San­ta Claus in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion — a spry old gen­tle­man with rose-like cheeks and a cher­ry-line nose, a beard “as white as the snow,” and “a lit­tle round bel­ly that shook when he laughed, like a bowl­ful of jel­ly.” “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas,” orig­i­nal­ly titled “A Vis­it from Saint Nicholas,” remains quite pos­si­bly the best-known poem ever writ­ten by an Amer­i­can. But wher­ev­er in the world one reads them, San­ta Claus’ final words, and the poem’s, still res­onate: “Hap­py Christ­mas to all, and to all a good-night!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan Lee Reads “The Night Before Christ­mas,” Telling the Tale of San­ta Claus, the Great­est of Super Heroes

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

“Wern­er Her­zog” Reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas”

Impres­sion­ist Reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas in Celebri­ty Voic­es

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.

75 Years of CIA Maps Now Declassified & Made Available Online

in Design, History, Maps | December 20th, 2016

Satel­lite-con­nect­ed devices do all the hard work of nav­i­ga­tion for us: plan jour­neys, plot dis­tances, tell us where we are and where we’re going. The age of the high­ly skilled car­tog­ra­ph­er may be com­ing to an end. But in the past few hun­dred years—since Euro­pean states began carv­ing the world between them—the win­ners of colo­nial con­tests, World War bat­tles, and Cold War skir­mish­es were often those who had the best maps. In addi­tion to their indis­pens­able role in sea­far­ing and bat­tle strat­e­gy, “good maps,” writes Dan­ny Lewis at Smith­son­ian, have been “an inte­gral part of the trade­craft of espi­onage.”

The CIA will tell you as much… or they will now, at least, since they’ve declas­si­fied decades of once-secret maps from the days when they “relied on geo­g­ra­phers and car­tog­ra­phers for plan­ning and exe­cut­ing oper­a­tions around the world” rather than on “dig­i­tal map­ping tech­nolo­gies and satel­lite images.”

Now cel­e­brat­ing its 75th anniver­sary, the CIA’s Car­tog­ra­phy Cen­ter boasts of “a long, proud his­to­ry of ser­vice to the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty,” at the Agency’s friend­ly web­site; “Since 1941, the Car­tog­ra­phy Cen­ter maps have told the sto­ries of post-WWII recon­struc­tion, the Suez cri­sis, the Cuban Mis­sile cri­sis, the Falk­lands War, and many oth­er impor­tant events in his­to­ry.”

What­ev­er noble or nefar­i­ous roles the Agency may have played in these and hun­dreds of oth­er events, we can now see–thanks to this new online gallery at Flickr–what pres­i­dents, Direc­tors, and field agents saw when they planned their actions, begin­ning with the country’s first “non-depart­men­tal intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion,” the COI (Office of the Coor­di­na­tor of Infor­ma­tion). Once the U.S. entered WWII, it became the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS). The Car­tog­ra­phy Center’s first chief, Arthur Robin­son, was only 26 and a grad­u­ate stu­dent in geog­ra­phy when COI direc­tor William Dono­van recruit­ed him to lead the orga­ni­za­tion. The office rapid­ly expand­ed dur­ing the war, and by 1943, “geo­g­ra­phers and car­tog­ra­phers amassed what would be the largest col­lec­tion of maps in the world.”

In the ear­ly for­ties, “map lay­ers were draft­ed by hand using pen and ink on translu­cent acetate sheets mount­ed on large Strath­more boards.” These drafts were typ­i­cal­ly four times larg­er than the print­ed maps them­selves, one of which you can see at the top of the post, “The Russ­ian Front in Review.” In the fifties, “improved effi­cien­cy in map com­pi­la­tion and con­struc­tion” pro­duced visu­al­ly strik­ing doc­u­ments like that fur­ther up from 1955, “USSR: Region­al Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Gross Nation­al Prod­uct.” Not a map, but what we would call an info­graph­ic, this image shows how the Car­tog­ra­phy Cen­ter per­formed ser­vices far in excess of the usu­al map app—visualizing threats to the U.S. from Cuban sur­face-to-air mis­sile sites in 1962 (above) and threats to the African ele­phant pop­u­la­tion from poach­ers in 2013 (below). Fur­ther down, you can see a 2003 map of Bagh­dad, with the omi­nous­ly non-threat­en­ing note print­ed at the top and right, “This map is NOT to be used for TARGETING.”

These maps and many more can be found at the CIA Car­tog­ra­phy Flickr account, which has a cat­e­go­ry for each decade since the 1940s. Each map is down­load­able in low to high res­o­lu­tion scans. In addi­tion, one cat­e­go­ry, “Car­tog­ra­phy Tools,” fea­tures high-qual­i­ty pho­tog­ra­phy of vin­tage draughtsman’s instru­ments, all of them, like the Ger­man-made ink pens fur­ther down, sym­bols of the painstak­ing hand­i­craft map­mak­ing once required. While we can prob­a­bly draw any num­ber of polit­i­cal lessons or his­tor­i­cal the­ses from a deep analy­sis of this deep state archive, what it seems to ask of us first and fore­most is that we con­sid­er car­tog­ra­phy as not only a use­ful dis­ci­pline but as a fine art.

As the Car­tog­ra­phy Center’s first direc­tor put it, “a map should be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing, thought-pro­vok­ing, and com­mu­nica­tive.” Giv­en these stan­dards we might see how cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy, for all its tremen­dous ease of use and unde­ni­able util­i­ty, might improve by look­ing to maps of the past. Vis­it the CIA’s flickr gallery here.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Lets You Down­load Thou­sands of Maps from the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

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