the characters from Part 4

Courage Flowers - Part 4

Meet your character ... they are fascinating

Helen Levitt - "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Levitt

Saul Steinberg - cartoonist for The New Yorker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Steinberg

Walter Benjamin - German / Jewish intellectual
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

Richard Deveraux - a friend of Maira's ...

Why do men have nipples?? Answered by Scientific American!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-men-have-nipples

Why do men have nipples?

Andrew M. Simons, a professor of biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, explains.

Like all "why" queries, the question of why men have nipples can be addressed on many levels. My four-year-old daughter, always suspicious of a trick when asked such obvious questions, answered: "because they grow them." In search of the trick answer, she quickly added that "chests would also look pretty funny with just hair."

Evolutionary biologists, whose job it is to explain variety in nature, are often expected to provide adaptive explanations for such "why" questions. Some traits may prove—through appropriate tests—to be best explained as adaptations; others have perfectly good evolutionary, but nonadaptive, explanations. This is because evolution is a process constrained by many factors including history, chance, and the mechanisms of heredity, which also explains why particular attributes of organisms are not as they would be had they been "designed" from scratch. Nipples in male mammals illustrate a constrained evolutionary result.

A human baby inherits one copy of every gene from his or her father and one copy of every gene from his or her mother. Inherited traits of a boy should thus be a combination of traits from both his parents. Thus, from a genetic perspective, the question should be turned around: How can males and females ever diverge if genes from both parents are inherited? We know that consistent differences between males and females (so-called sexual dimorphisms) are common--examples include bird plumage coloration and size dimorphism in insects. The only way such differences can evolve is if the same trait (color, for example) in males and females has become "uncoupled" at the genetic level. This happens if a trait is influenced by different genes in males and females, if it is under control of genes located on sex chromosomes, or if gene expression has evolved to be dependent on context (whether genes find themselves within a male or a female genome). The idea of the shared genetic basis of two traits (in this case in males and females) is known as a genetic correlation, and it is a quantity routinely measured by evolutionary geneticists. The evolutionary default is for males and females to share characters through genetic correlations.

The uncoupling of male and female traits occurs if there is selection for it: if the trait is important to the reproductive success of both males and females but the best or "optimal" trait is different for a male and a female. We would not expect such an uncoupling if the attribute is important in both sexes and the "optimal" value is similar in both sexes, nor would we expect uncoupling to evolve if the attribute is important to one sex but unimportant in the other. The latter is the case for nipples. Their advantage in females, in terms of reproductive success, is clear. But because the genetic "default" is for males and females to share characters, the presence of nipples in males is probably best explained as a genetic correlation that persists through lack of selection against them, rather than selection for them. Interestingly, though, it could be argued that the occurrence of problems associated with the male nipple, such as carcinoma, constitutes contemporary selection against them. In a sense, male nipples are analogous to vestigial structures such as the remnants of useless pelvic bones in whales: if they did much harm, they would have disappeared.

In a now-famous paper, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin emphasize that we should not immediately assume that every trait has an adaptive explanation. Just as the spandrels of St. Mark's domed cathedral in Venice are simply an architectural consequence of the meeting of a vaulted ceiling with its supporting pillars, the presence of nipples in male mammals is a genetic architectural by-product of nipples in females. So, why do men have nipples? Because females do.

TCG Stage Matters!

http://www.tcg.org/tools/other/stagematters.cfm

http://vimeo.com/22564317

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” - George Bernard Shaw

Screw mortality. :)

Maira Kalman: The illustrated woman --TED Talk

this song.

The Mountain Goats "This Year" from A Bruntel on Vimeo.

Is It Wrong To Celebrate Bin Laden's Death?

Here is an interesting article pertaining to the discussion that we had at the beginning of rehearsal on Monday:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/03/135927693/is-it-wrong-to-celebrate-bin-ladens-death?sc=tw

research.

like Maira I find myself fascinated with odd topics. and Wikipedia has only fueled this curiosity.

these are a few searches that have occupied seconds, minutes, hours of my time recently. you can also google image search some interesting images of these topics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Webster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin
*also an excellent movie starring Robert Downey, Jr. I highly recommend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer#Female_serial_killers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_landmarks

Enjoy some random new knowledge!

The Hand in Our Process

The Journey Weaves In and Out of Mine

After meeting with Libby yesterday at Lillstreet, I am posting the following story at her request:


Junior year was the year that students were allowed to begin driving cars to school. My father, being the creative and pragmatic accountant that he is, figured it would be more cost effective for the family and he would be able to lend me the car if he rode the bus downtown to work everyday instead of driving, paying for parking, and driving back. In fact, we would probably save money on gas!


An unforeseen byproduct of this was that his commute enabled him to read more. (And please remember that I am talking about a bus ride in Knoxville, TN not Chicago so it was much longer and just getting to the bus stop required a half mile walk every morning and evening.) So at first he read the paper, but then he realized that the paper was not the most suitable reading material and he went through it very quickly. He started checking out library books from the main branch downtown every week. At first he read only nonfiction/history books and then one day...he picked up a poetry book. My father! Reading a Poetry book! Every so often he would point one out to me or read it to me or talk to me about it. It was a new thing we could talk about because he never really liked fiction and still doesn't so Mom had always been and still is the one I talk to about plot lines and character.



But this poetry thing...it was something new.



Fast forward a few years - I'm in college and Dad is still taking the bus even though I left the car at home along with my family. He is still reading poetry.



Fast forward a few more - he's still reading on the bus and after being hit by a car my parents promptly give me a used one so that I can drive myself around to doctors appointments. My dad's silver sedan still sits in the driveway.



Go forward a few months - I'm graduating and moving home, only to work a 9-5 until one day I get my acceptance letter from Columbia. I start planning and packing.



The day before we leave my dad reads to me a new poem that he absolutely loves and thinks applies to my life: The Journey by Mary Oliver. The way he reads it is beautiful, sometimes stumbling over a word here and there and tearing up towards the end. I will never forget this.



I move to Chicago with my family's help. They leave 3 days later. I start classes in 3 weeks.



I walk in to my first Visual Images class with Joan Dickinson and she hands out xeroxed reading packets - one of the first things in the packet is a copy of The Journey. I tear up a little and know I am in the right place.



I go home and inscribe the poem in my bathroom above my toilet, next to my mirror in black sharpie marker. Every time I read it I am reminded of why I live in Chicago and what I am supposed to be doing.



When I move out of my studio to a larger apartment with my boyfriend I have to paint over it so that I will not lose my security deposit. It takes three coats of Klutz white primer to cover it completely. I cry when I can't see it anymore, but am comforted that it will always be there.



I'm sure if some scientists wanted to go all DaVinci Code on my old studio they could use special imaging equipment to read the poem written on the wall in my own hand. Why didn't I take a picture of it before I painted it over?



Recently I went to a bookstore that was going out of business and stumbled over a Mary Oliver book. I bought it as a gift for Dad.



This poem still resonates and has a special relationship between my father and myself. I think it will always resonate. I include it here for you:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save


Mary Oliver

Sunday Funday Blog post.