You can follow the summer's blog posts here.
You can read my experiences trying to learn to fly, which is here.
Capitol Shakespeare.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 7 comments link this postI'm enjoying my home-away-from-home (i.e. Bismarck). Oh, the benefits! For example, Capitol Shakespeare.
Even if it's really bad acting...well hey. Bad Shakespeare is still Shakespeare. And I don't think it will be bad. I'm going to be positive.
So, amazingly, I will be here the weekends of the free performance. Yes, in this busy July month of me driving gazillions of miles around the state to play violin at various weddings, the one weekend I will be staying in town is the weekend of Capitol Shakespeare's performance of Twelfth Night.
I can't wait.
If you're in Bismarck, you ought to check it out: July 17-20, 6:30 p.m., with a 2 p.m. show on Sunday. Get there early, drop a blanket on the ground, and settle in for cross-dressing star-crossed love as only Bill could write.
I just need to find an old blanket...I don't really have one here. Hmmm.
Labels: culture, my life, summer 2008, tour north dakota
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 7/08/2008 01:18:00 PM
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Forked mouth.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this postThe economy is pretty good up here in the Dakotas. It's actually, in some regions and types of work, difficult to find workers. The discussion that drives me crazy, then, generally goes something like this:
"Those Mexicans come in and take all the jobs. And, I tell you what, they better learn to speak our language!"
Something like that. Then there's more yammering along those lines before the conversation goes like this:
"I can't get anyone to work on (the farm/the business/the shop). I can't afford to pay them what they ask now. For the work I need done, I can't afford to hire anyone! There's no one to work."
My suggestion, which I do not tend to voice aloud and hide behind a grimace, is to consider hiring some of "those Mexicans" that are supposedly taking all the jobs. I also suggest that many English-speaking Americans can't even speak the language. Seriously.
What jobs are they taking? The jobs we don't want to do but must be done?
The truth is, few Americans are willing to take certain kinds of jobs. We expect more for ourselves: more benefits, better pay, breaks, and certainly as little manual labor as possible. Maybe some are lazy -- I don't know, though I don't think that's fully accurate. Still, you won't find many of us out in the strawberry or broccoli fields of California, hoeing and working. Unless they invent a machine that we can drive to do the work, we don't do it. We still expect to have that produce in the supermarket, though, even in winter. We like the lettuce and tomatoes on our fast food burgers that we eat while complaining about the immigrants whose hands helped bring that food to us.
There's still a pretty good work ethic up here; I see it in the groups when we go to Nicaragua where we work like dogs all day in the hot sun. That, however, is a week or two experience and not our daily grind. I don't know that we'd be throwing ourselves into such a job every day for our livelihood. I know I'd probably look for something a little less extreme.
It's an odd mash-up and I'm not about to make gigantic, locked-in assumptions about different ethnic groups. There are plenty of hard-working Americans in dangerous and back-breaking jobs (mining comes to mind). I simply find it more and more tiring to hear the litany of complaints, ranging from language threats to job-stealing and not be aware of how much we have grown to depend upon the people we are verbally cutting up.
You know, when I walk into WalMart and see Spanish on a sign, I don't get freaked or upset. My blood pressure doesn't go up, and I don't reach for an American flag or stick a bumper sticker on my car that says something about learning the language. I think about Nicaragua and how much I want to learn Spanish and the people I love down there, and I move on. Frankly, the Hispanic culture is a rich, family-based culture that we could learn a bit from in our day and age.
It sure is nice to be able to bitterly complain about the people keeping us from getting scurvy or rickets during the winter in the guise of alleged culture and job destruction while, out of the same mouth, complaining that we can't find workers to fill low-paying jobs.
Note: This post was pre-written and published as scheduled. Read more about this here.
Labels: culture, current events, rant
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 6/05/2008 06:03:00 AM
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Different norms.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this postThe quote of the day comes from Warren Buffett, who said that factories in China have different norms for working conditions than those in the U.S., and he won't "tell the world how to run" their businesses.
That's one way to put it.
If you're the world's richest man, you gotta find some way to live with yourself.
Labels: celebrities, culture, current events
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 5/05/2008 08:01:00 AM
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Conscience busters.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this postI purchased a copy of Adbusters magazine to read while locked in the medical study center this past weekend. I frequently read publications usually labeled as alternative or independent.1
Adbusters as an organization claims to be a "culture jammer", deriding consumerist, wasteful, traditional culture. On their web site, they say they are "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century."2 The organization publishes a self-titled magazine, criticizing standard media methods using standard media methods to do so.
Oh, sure, there are swear words in the articles, and the graphics and layout are edgier3. This, however, does not change the fact that it is a high-color, high-concept magazine with...ads.
Not as many ads as a regular magazine. That's true. Actually, only two sets of ads. Ads for BlackSpot shoes, and ads for Buy Nothing Day.4
BlackSpot seems to be an acceptable ad in a magazine that seems to want to kill that sort of thing because:
- It practices "environmentally friendly" practices.
- It's part of the Adbusters company/network/movement/brand/whatever.
- It encourages people to cull consumerist habits.
- It's part of the Adbusters company/network/movement/brand/whatever.
An ad is an ad, whether the company is environmentally acceptable or not, whether it is a huge corporation or not, whether it is a cutting-edge brand or not. It serves one purpose, no matter the intention of the product, and that purpose is: to sell stuff, and to promote a brand which supposedly represents a lifestyle.
Don't get me wrong.
Many of the articles were interesting and even though I get tired of publications trying to be so edgy in their writing and graphic design that it is, at times, annoying to read, I appreciate the wide breadth of subject matter. My problem is, however, that like many of these alternative, edgy, independent -- in your face, traditional media! -- publications, Adbusters has such a narrow and pure focus that in order exist, grow, and have influence...they have to be hypocrites.
I don't buy the excuse that using traditional media and consumerist tendencies to curb those very things is a winning solution. Why encourage people to throw off unnecessary consumerism and allegiance to brands only to ask them to buy shoes and then buy nothing, all part of the Adbusters brand?
While reading this edition of the magazine (and from experiences reading earlier editions), I found anger at how many products were available and how useless it was and how no one needs to have all these products that companies are telling use we need. I then read about anger at how large corporations were buying out smaller ones and creating a monopoly.
Somehow, when I think these two points of view through all the way to the end, they seem at odds with each other. Kind of like printing a large high-quality heavy-papered magazine and encouraging environmentalism within its pages are at odds with each other. (Soybean ink and X% of post consumer waste ain't gonna cut it.)
I appreciate their effort, and I can't even disagree with all of the message. The irritation is that these kinds of magazines and newspapers give my conscience indigestion. They take themselves so seriously they're hilarious. They always seem, by the time I'm finished reading, to be trying to organize anarchy.
Impossible.
-------------------------------------
1When traveling, I try to grab any such publications from coffee shops or restaurants just to get a feel for how independent they all are. Oddly, the independent paper from Michigan is just like the one from Fargo which is like the one from Seattle. They all complain about the same thing. How independent is that?
2The usual suspects. Never an accountant or beautician or barista in such a list, though you can be sure the people that comprise this list make full use of those kinds of services. I could comment more on this brief summation and what Adbusters hopes to do (particularly on the inclusion of "pranksters, educators and entrepreneurs"), but that will have to wait for another blog post.
3The issue I read had a full page photo of a dead deer on a highway with gore coming out of its mouth. Underneath it was a mindless quote by Paris Hilton. I'm not sure of the why on either aspect.
4I rather appreciate the concept of Buy Nothing Day, though I appreciate it more in the form of the Buy Nothing Christmas. Either day, though it makes a perpetually broke person like myself feel confident, does nothing to increase sales here at Lone Prairie. Without money, I can't purchase either the Adbusters magazine nor the BlackSpot shoes.
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 9/25/2007 11:58:00 PM
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Camille Paglia misses good preaching.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this postI wrote a post a while back talking about how distressing it was to realize that Biblical references in art and writing were being missed by a younger generation that hasn't been taught the Bible. (I'm still trying to find that post in my archives...)
I saw the tip of this back in the art history classes in college, during the mid-1990's.
Rod Dreher shares a little from a recent interview with Camille Paglia.
Camille said that she's been really disturbed over the last five years by the lack of knowledge among her students of basic Biblical concepts, characters, themes and motifs -- the forgetting of which makes so much Western art, literature and culture opaque.
The money quote:
"[...] There's no preaching anymore. The Bible is one of the West's foundational texts, and they don't know it anymore."
--Camille Paglia
"There's no preaching anymore." Bingo.
Go read the full post. The comments section is its own fun.
Labels: culture, current events, religion
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 4/13/2007 12:18:00 PM
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