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three good things from last week
Last week I engaged in *three* cultural experiences, which is three more than I usually do--and *all* of them I want to share about. . . but somehow I suspect that won't happen, or it may be some time in coming. So here's a Cliff Notes version. If you read this, you will probably pass the pop quiz.
Lois Ahrens on the real cost of prisons
Lois Ahrens is a long-time activist against the prison industrial complex, who spoke a little about her experience documenting the cost of prisons. Her talk about bail reform particularly galvanized me; I'm actually going to write up a nonfiction piece on alternatives to bail to try to get these ideas in front of new eyes. Two relevant websites: The Real Cost of Prisons Project and The Pretrial Working Group.
Gerald Vizenor: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar
I heard him speak about researching his most recent novel, Blue Ravens, about young men from the White Earth nation in Minnesota who fought in World War I.
He dropped poems right into the talk, and even his ordinary speech was alive--he talked about troubled words, enthusiastic silences. He said, "It's difficult, always, to make poetry out of horror, but it must be done."
The Magna Carta . . . and some other documents
One of four extant copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta was visiting a [not quite] nearby museum, so we went off to see it. So that there would be some other things to look at, the museum had also gotten first printings of the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of the Rights of Women, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a draft copy of the Constitution, complete with copyediting insertions and critiques.
The Magna Carta was written in what was described as a tiny but legible script . . . and boy, was it tiny! Except for the first line, which tall, lean capital letters before each word.
As for the other documents, one thing that impressed me was the IMPRESSION of TYPE on PAPER--if we could have reached under the glass and touched them, we could have felt the depressions where that hot lead was pressed into the fibers of the paper. So tactile. Not like now, when words are just photostatically stuck to paper, or laser jetted onto it.
More in dribs and drabs, if I get a chance. And now, back to work. . .
Lois Ahrens on the real cost of prisons
Lois Ahrens is a long-time activist against the prison industrial complex, who spoke a little about her experience documenting the cost of prisons. Her talk about bail reform particularly galvanized me; I'm actually going to write up a nonfiction piece on alternatives to bail to try to get these ideas in front of new eyes. Two relevant websites: The Real Cost of Prisons Project and The Pretrial Working Group.
Gerald Vizenor: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar
I heard him speak about researching his most recent novel, Blue Ravens, about young men from the White Earth nation in Minnesota who fought in World War I.
He dropped poems right into the talk, and even his ordinary speech was alive--he talked about troubled words, enthusiastic silences. He said, "It's difficult, always, to make poetry out of horror, but it must be done."
The Magna Carta . . . and some other documents
One of four extant copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta was visiting a [not quite] nearby museum, so we went off to see it. So that there would be some other things to look at, the museum had also gotten first printings of the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of the Rights of Women, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a draft copy of the Constitution, complete with copyediting insertions and critiques.
The Magna Carta was written in what was described as a tiny but legible script . . . and boy, was it tiny! Except for the first line, which tall, lean capital letters before each word.
As for the other documents, one thing that impressed me was the IMPRESSION of TYPE on PAPER--if we could have reached under the glass and touched them, we could have felt the depressions where that hot lead was pressed into the fibers of the paper. So tactile. Not like now, when words are just photostatically stuck to paper, or laser jetted onto it.
More in dribs and drabs, if I get a chance. And now, back to work. . .
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The Magna Carta was previously at the MFA and I saw it there.
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I'd like to go to Mass MoCa one day--we passed it on our way over.
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http://www.businessinsider.com.au/an-american-warden-visited-a-norwegian-prison--and-he-couldnt-believe-what-he-saw-2014-10
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Amongst the provisions were protection for widows - there was a mandated forty-day break before they could be ousted from their house (ie when it had been inherited by the heir) and they had to be paid their dower by then - and they couldn't be forced to marry anyone, which apparently had happened before then, in an attempt to get hold of the widow's property.
(She got her dower even if her husband died in debt - her dower came before paying the debts. Even middle or lower classes, who wouldn't have a formal dowry, were guaranteed a "reasonable share" of the estate.)
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