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In his new book Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods, Michael Wex explores the history and culture of Yiddish: its complaints, curses and codes.
From its historic role in the isolation of Jews in Europe to its modern impact on American English, Yiddish has filled the air with lively metaphors and colorful expressions.
Now, despite a precipitous drop in fluent speakers, the language that includes elements of German and a handful of other tongues seems destined to adapt and thrive.
A novelist and lecturer, Wex previously translated The Threepenny Opera into Yiddish.
Three months since Hurricane Katrina it remains difficult to ascertain what progress has been made in rebuilding New Orleans and its region. Using a wide array of about 50 economic and social indicators, the Metropolitan Policy Program has compiled the first in a series of monthly snapshots of economic and both short term and long term reconstruction trends, finding that the area remains mired in a state of emergency still.brookings institute
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.nyt
We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.
There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.
Before Katrina sent hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians into indefinite exile, there was no love lost between the cosmopolitan Crescent City and its upriver country cousin, Baton Rouge. Louisiana's Baptist-leaning capital city had long tsk-tsked New Orleans's decadence and inefficiency--not to mention the baroque corruption of its political power structure.metropolis mag
In contrast, the government of the consolidated city-parish of Baton Rouge governs as little as possible, which is especially evident in planning. Because the city is otherwise utterly dys-functional for north-south traffic, locals have taken to using the interstate to travel in those directions. Development is permitted on a project-by-project basis, with little consideration of broader impact. The city-parish's zoning code contradicted its pro-infill master plan; and in any case, the Planning Commission and the Metropolitan Council routinely ig-nore existing plans. In a metropolitan area with barely one percent population growth, new housing development has charged unabated into the fringes.
But the influx of New Orleanians to Baton Rouge is hitting at a moment of promise--and uncertainty. The new mayor-president is the first African American to hold the job. He is a liberal Democrat, but his chief administrative officer, Walter Monsour, is a Republican with a real estate-development background. Meanwhile, a well-funded local smart-growth movement has put urban-planning issues on the public agenda for the first time. Hal Cohen sat down with Monsour to talk about his city's sudden growth and more populous future.
About a month after the brown waters of Lake Pontchartrain breached the levees and inundated New Orleans, I found myself listening to a long discussion on NPR about the plight of the Formosan termite. This is a terrible bug, capable of eating its way not only through wood, as one expects of its kind, but also, an on-air entomologist informed us in the direst tones, vinyl siding, lead sheets, concrete, and copper--in short, not just the cellulose bones and skin but everything that makes up a home. Before Hurricane Katrina this creature had been eating New Orleans. The termite smuggled its way back from Asia in palettes as the military infrastructure of the Second World War was dismantled, and like the plagues of gypsy moth caterpillars in the Northeast and zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, it ran amok in its new ecology. The storm was a reprieve; the entomologist, citing his research, noted that the population would be much reduced: Formosan termite colonies can't survive more than a few weeks underwater.metropolis mag
By that point the Katrina coverage was clearly ebbing with the flood waters. The damage from the storm had been described by panicked pols as worse than September 11 and Hiroshima, an "American Pompeii," and with infamous overstatement by the mayor of Biloxi, "our tsunami." Unwatchable images of government neglect and tales of official malfeasance were everywhere. Who could begrudge the radio pundits and producers their attempt to find a silver lining? New Orleans had ceased to be...but the termites were dead! It was a classic example of late-cycle media overreach; with the flood and the reaction to it dominating the news for a month, all other tales had been told. A city had been submerged, its people had been scattered, its buildings and infrastructure were at that point defunct. Cue the bug guys. And we still hadn't heard from the architects.
Last week "...FEMA officials [met] with the people or Rural Studio to review a proposal to provide the federal disaster agency with "research, precedent and feasibility studies as well masterplans, models, and schematic designs to establish an array of 'container housing' communities of 100 to 10,000 inhabitants."
As for ideas, plenty of experts are spouting them already. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, the American Institute of Architects warned about the dangers of isolating temporary housing far from services and infrastructure. Other national organizations of planners and historic preservationists have weighed in and are sending volunteers to New Orleans to help. And in architecture schools across the country, disaster recovery has become a hot topic this term. Students at the Rural Studio at Auburn University in Alabama have just designed a prototype for a temporary shelter made from shipping containers (there are thousands of empty ones along the Gulf coast), which can be adapted for habitation for $2,500 each. They hope a representative of FEMA will come check them out next week. And at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, architect Frederic Schwartz switched the subject of his studio to New Orleans just as the term began; he plans to take his 12 students to the Big Easy next month for research. Schwartz brings a special perspective to his course: he spent more than a year working on proposals for Ground Zero in Manhattan. “The lesson from that is don’t let political people decide to make the rebuilding their legacy, as [New York Gov. George] Pataki did,” says Schwartz. “It isn’t anyone’s legacy. And beware when it gets taken over by real estate.”
jim louis has a friend down in nola who was asking about the availability of shipping containers in the area. on craigslist i found this sweet looking 40 footer for $3,500.00 and he has two. note thats a little high but the containers look to be in pretty nice condition. although one appears to be an 8 footer and the other eight and a half. go for the headroom if you can.
Monument to the 50th Anniversary of the Founding of the Korean Worker’s Party
On 9-11 the U.S. government faced a terrible decision: Should the military be ordered to shoot down other commercial airplanes full of civilian passengers, so that they, too, would not be used as missiles? Vice President Dick Cheney, although not part of the National Command Authority, gave the orders, although under the Constitution the vice president has no authority to command the military. The 9-11 Commission dealt with this fundamental issue by ignoring it. Among the other 9-11 topics the commission ignored.
On Monday, December 5, the 9-11 Public Discourse Project—a private group formed by 9-11 Commission members after their official mandate lapsed in 2004—held a wrap-up press briefing in Washington, signaling the last gasp of official inquiries into the attacks four years ago. The National Institute of Standards and Technology also recently completed its final report on the twin towers. Already gathering dust are a Federal Emergency Management Agency study, the joint inquiry by Congress, the McKinsey reports on New York City's emergency response, probes by federal inspectors general, and other efforts to resolve the myriad doubts about the hijackings.
Some questions can't be answered: People who lost loved ones will never know exactly how the end came, if it hurt, what the final thoughts and words were. But other questions are more tractable. Here are 10 of them:
1. Where was the "National Command Authority"?
2. Who gave the order to try to shoot the planes down?
3. What exactly were all those firefighters doing in the towers?
4. Did anyone think the towers would collapse?
5. Why was Giuliani's command bunker at ground zero?
6. Why did 7 WTC fall?
7. How did the twin towers fall?
8. How dangerous was—and is—the air at ground zero?
9. What exactly did Zacarias Moussaoui plan to do?
10. What's on those blanked-out pages?
leonardo on-line book review
The Culture of the Copy
Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimilies
Hillel Schwartz - MIT Press
The Culture of the Copy is an unprecedented attempt to make sense of our Western fascination with replicas, duplicates, and twins. In a work that is breathtaking in both its synthetic and critical achievements, Hillel Schwartz charts the repercussions of our entanglement with copies of all kinds, whose presence alternately sustains and overwhelms us.
Through intriguing, and at times humorous, historical analysis and case studies in contemporary culture, Schwartz investigates most varieties of simulacra, including counterfeits, decoys, mannequins, ditto marks, portraits, genetic cloning, war games, camouflage, instant replays, digital imaging, parrots, photocopies, wax museums, apes, art forgeries, not to mention the very notion of the Real McCoy.
At the same time Schwartz works through a range of modernist, feminist, and postmodern theories about copies and mechanical reproduction, posing the following compelling question: How is it that the ethical dilemmas at the heart of so many fields of endeavor have become inseparable from our pursuit of copies -- of the natural world, or our own creations, indeed our very selves?
The Culture of the Copy is a stunning, innovative blend of microsociology, cultural history, and philosophical reflection that will fascinate anyone concerned with problems of authenticity, identity, and originality.
In the 1880's, Currier & Ives, the printmaking company that was the Google Maps of its day, dispatched an artist to record a panoramic vista of New Orleans. The drawing shows a thriving port city - steamboats, church spires and all - whose populace clung to the elevated areas near the Mississippi.
There were few settlements in the flood-prone lowlands to the north. The swamps to the east were not deemed worthy of illustrating.
It is not easy to broach the idea of such a smaller-scale city. The people here have long defied the perils of this place, whether that meant the yellow fever outbreaks of the 1800's or Hurricane Betsy in 1965.
"New Orleans has survived for 300 years," said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell.
But for much of that time, wasn't the city settled largely on the elevated areas?
"You are underestimating the intelligence of the people of New Orleans," Ms. Hedge-Morrell replied. "They know what they are doing."
Before lawmakers in Washington, D.C., break for Christmas, people in one hurricane-ravaged New Orleans neighborhood want to send them off with a yuletide message -- "We Want to Go Home."Lakeview Civic Improvement Association
In a full-color, full-page advertisement set to run next week in the influential Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, a group of Lakeview residents and other New Orleanians hope to impress upon legislators that the effort to rebuild the city's infrastructure and levee system is far from over.
The ad, called "A message from homeless New Orleanians," contains a 570-word message saying they "have lived like refugees in our own country" and are still waiting for members of Congress "to spearhead the rebuilding of our flood protection, and reclaim one of the nation's most important cities from ruin."