Jewish-Chinese fusion

Even though I have no religious or family connection to Judaism, my first years of elementary school were at a Jerome Lipman Jewish Day School.  Chinese food has always been a principal way that my Chinese-American father has connected with his culture and its consumption has definitely defined itself as a tradition within my family.  I’m always surprised and a little delighted at the scale that cultural mash-ups can take on. 

Hot Dogs From Column A, Pastrami Egg Rolls From Column B – City Room – Metro – New York Times Blog:

One paper, by Hanna Miller, even goes as far to say that Chinese food is the ethnic cuisine of the American Jew, arguing that they identify more with Chinese food than the Eastern European food of their immigrant ancestors. And two sociologists, Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine, investigated the historical and cultural reasons for the Jewish Chinese culinary axis in their 1992 paper Safe Treyf [pdf].

So why is it that chow mein is the chosen food of the chosen people? Among the theories posited:

  • Chinese food does not use dairy (unlike the other two main longtime ethnic cuisines in America, Italian and Mexican), so when many more Jews kept kosher, Chinese food was easier to eat.
  • Chinese and Jews are among the two largest (if not the two largest) non-Christian immigrant groups, so they followed similar calendars. This is where Chinese food on Christmas may stem from, since Chinese restaurants were open.
  • The Chinese use of garlic, rice and chicken were familiar to an Eastern European palate.
  • Chinese food was not too expensive and involved family-style sharing.
  • Chinese food represented a way to become cosmopolitan.
  • Chinatown and the Lower East Side, where a significant number of the Jewish immigrants from around the turn of the century lived, bordered each other. Indeed, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, one of the oldest Jewish houses of worship in the United States, is now squarely in Chinatown these days. (It even has an egg roll festival.)
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Categorized as Bloomington

“Best Buy” schools

It’s so hard to find that something that seems as fundamental and universal to me, like public education, always gets viewed through a commercial context.

Report: South, Edgewood named best value schools: HeraldTimesOnline.com:

Bloomington High School South and Edgewood High School in Ellettsville have been named “Best Buy” schools by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Hoosier high schools that have excelled academically while providing good value for Indiana tax dollars were recognized last week by the Chamber of Commerce with the release of the ninth edition of the Indiana’s Best Buys report.

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Categorized as Bloomington

NYT blog post on community forum on gentrification in NYC

My feedreader brought me this interesting blog post about a forum in NYC about gentrification in neighborhoods.

A community leader once optimistic about development in Harlem said:

We want the gentry, because they represent people who can support the commercial businesses, and attract more. But we don’t want to be overrun by them. We don’t want to be smothered by them, and we want to make sure the working women and men we were concerned about are not run out of the neighborhood that they stuck with and fought for and even died for.

Errol Louis, a New York Daily News columnist who seems much more pro-development is quoted as saying:

“Terms like ‘oversuccessful,’ terms that get thrown around like ‘out of scale’ — even gentrification itself – these are terms of art,” Mr. Louis said. “These are differences of opinion. These are things that have to be fought out at the community level, frankly. It’s probably too late by the time you get to the public hearing.”

Sadly, the last sentence reads true to me, but I feel like whether it’s residents of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, or in Bloomington, it can be nearly impossible to become involved in the process of neighborhood development before it’s too late.

link

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Categorized as address

they don’t make em’ like they used to

I watched the film Girls Town last night.  I thought it was really good.  It dealt with topics like domestic violence, rape, motherhood, and suicide in a way that was both empowering but not naively triumphant.  I liked that the fact that the group of friends that the movie’s story followed were coming from different ethnic backgrounds and differences in class, even in the worn, urban setting of the film, were definitely eluded to, but weren’t exploded into the cliches that one finds in a lot of films about urban youth.  The film’s soundtrack also reminded me of the song U.N.I.T.Y. by Queen Latifah which is awesome and it made me sad that the standards seem to have been lowered so that it is seen as important when there are women MCs, period, even if people in mainstream music aren’t talking about challenging things in a direct, personal way like Latifah and other artists did in the 90s.

On a side note, I found this review of the film on IMDB really endearing:

I’m a 62-year-old white male in Northern Michigan, and I liked this film. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that I was getting a good inside look at a culture that I have never brushed shoulders with. Lili Taylor, for a 30-year-old gal from Illinois, seems to have captured the spirit of Patti in a very convincing way, and her body language showed that she really had rapport with her friends. Under ordinary circumstances, I would not choose to watch a film about the subject of school kids in Brooklyn or Hackensack or wherever, but I liked these kids. It’s a nice piece for older people to watch, and be entertained by people telling you things you probably didn’t know. Rightly or wrongly. I’m not in a position to judge the authenticity of the cultural overview that the film presents. Warning to old fuddie-duddies: The F-word uccurs 31 times in a 51-second scene (Is this a new record?) so don’t watch if the grand-kids are around!

Herbert J. Rieth III art opening @ sweet hickory. 8-11p. free.

getattachment.jpeg

Friday, December 14th 2007
at sweet hickory
(317 east 3rd st in bloomington)
an opening of paintings by
Herbert J. Rieth III
8-11pm
show will run until January 24th 2-8pm daily (normal gallery hours)

Artist Statement and Bio

As an artist Herb Rieth has explored many different media and conceptual territories. His works range from discrete and succinct mixed media wall pieces to traditional oil painting in addition to open ended installations that incorporate viewer interaction and play.

One of his main areas of focus is the use of cloth as a signifier as well as a formal element within his work. This has taken the form of pillows used by the audience to construct their own meanings as well as in a two dimensional format to seat images in time and to contextualize them in terms of social class and function.

Recent topics of exploration have included the use of cartoon imagery as filtered through the Chicago Imagist movement, exploring disjuncture through quilted cloth and use of camouflage as a form of landscape.

He has exhibited nationally in the United States in juried competitions (winning top honors in the 2006 Northern National Juried Exhibition), invitational exhibitions (recently at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN) and various national and regional group shows.

Mr. Rieth has also begun to lecture on his work extensively, at various venues from Community Colleges to large state Universities.

As a long time resident of Bloomington, Herb played in various local bands including The Doo Dads, The Squash Blossom String Pullers Orchestra and The Ballroom Roustabouts.

Currently living in Starkville, Mississippi, Herb teaches Drawing and Design at Mississippi State University after stints teaching at Ohio Northern University and University of Cincinnati.

captivity narratives

Chiara is just finishing taking a class about captivity narratives and I’ve been reading a few things at the periphery of that.  It’s created this reality tunnel about stories about captivity and stories that expose the basic human dynamics that cause people to value different groups of people differently.

I made this post to aggregate a few things:

  • Last week’s This American Life, The Competition, had a story about a Tulsa factory owner who imported workers from India and had them living and working in terrible conditions.
  • Yesterday’s NYT had an article on slavery on Long Island and the abuse of foreign domestic workers throughout the US.
  • The book Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives has a narrative by Sarah Wakefield entitled Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees that has an uncharacteristically critical perspective (and uncharacteristically outspoken for a woman writer at the time) on white’s perceptions of Native Americans.

from the radio: analysis of digital media and a cool sounding college class

This radio piece had interesting statistics on the financial viability of the latest Radiohead album which was also available as a free download.

Adam Greenfield, the person interviewed in the piece teaches a class in Urban Computing at as part of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.

Link

Update:

My friend Peter, had the following to add:

Regarding your recent blog post ( http://blogs.terrorware.com/geoff/2007/12/03/from-the-radio-analysis-of-digital-media-and-a-cool-sounding-college-class/). The statistics cited in the NPR story are indeed interesting, but not for the reason most people (even in the “quality” mainstream press) think they are.

As I reported in a recent issue of The Nation (http://www.thenation.com), the stats were gathered by Comscore, an internet marketing firm that gathers data from 2 million poor souls who let their every point and click be monitored in exchange for some free software and sweepstake entries. Their software doesn’t work on macs or in firefox. They provide no detailed information about the type of statistical analysis they use They don’t even publish their relevant sample sizes ( i.e. how many of the folks they monitor actually bought the album – the way they phrase it leaves). Their findings are not accepted by many trade groups, and have been widely (and justly) critiqued across the web. Yet the AP, the NYtimes, NPR, etc. etc. are all regurgitating their Radiohead findings, never once noting that the evidence isn’t there.

Why would they do such a thing?

While reporting my first story (a reported personal essay, also in The Nation) on the Radiohead album, I noticed that all the industry people I talked to were not-so-subtly trying to put down Radiohead’s effort. One exec told me he’d heard they were just demos they were dumping on the public for laughs. When I pressed him, he told me he got the info from a members-only industry message board. I weaseled my way into a membership and guess what? No talk of “demo dumping.” Others told me “just look at the reviews, no one thinks its any good, etc.” It’s aggregating in the high 90s at metacritic.com!

To quote one of my own articles:

“It’s hard to resist some cynical conclusions: Comscore’s client base includes several media conglomerates, media conglomerates want In Rainbows to fail, newspapers want stories, and failure sells.”

Update 2:

I read on my friend Jenny’s blog, Greater Detroit, about a Detroit-based artist who also released his latest album, DETRO!T BE!RUT, as a free or donation-based download.

From the artist’s website:

This music comes from South Lebanon, was born in Lansing and lives in Detroit.  A sound declaration.  This music is rhythm for revolutions, rebellions, empowerment and progression.  Through audio and images, history is projected onto the future, terrorific stereotypes are rejected, a slandered heritage is reclaimed, the ruins of a city are rebuilt.  Sound and visions express the struggles and share the beauty of Detroit, Beirut.

Honestly, I’ve only just started listening to the recording, but it makes me think about refocusing the question of downloadable music.  I think the question is often asked as whether free or donation-based music is viable for the music industry or for artists in the context of the music industry.  I’m not sure if it is viable for the industry, or artists trying to operate within that system.  However, I don’t think that’s problematic.  I think that the Internet and digital music is less interesting as a tool that can be assimilated into the current music industry’s business model, or even as something that will shift the direction of the music industry, and more interesting as something that allows for a completely separate space for the dissemination of music and ideas.

It’s easy to see downloadable music and the social and technological network infrastructure that supports it as something that can be exploited by those who wouldn’t succeed within the confines of the record industry.  This casts those who utilize these networks as failures within the mainstream media market.  However, I see the recording industry and mainstream media as failing to produce media that is multicultural or culturally critical and that speaks to or from those for whom the traversal of these cultural boundaries is personal and important.  Digital media offers an opportunity, not just as reform or critique, for artists to succeed where existing cultural systems has failed.  It offers a tool to create something that is completely new and separate, not a music industry, but, hopefully, music culture.

linuxing the imac

There’s an old imac under the table at bz’s house that’s gathering dust and I was going to try to put Linux on it. I’ve had a good experience with xubuntu running well on older hardware and having good, easy-to-use features (and it’s debian based), so I’m going to try that and document my experience here.

I had a little trouble finding the iso for PPC xubuntu, but eventually found it at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/ports/releases/7.04/release/

This article gave some information on installing xubuntu on various platforms, and said that the firmware needed to be upgraded on the iMac before xubuntu could be installed. I found the firmware for this particular iMac (slot-loading, 350 MHz, 128MB SDRAM) at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88010 (or maybe at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75130) and instructions for installing the firmware at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60385.

The machine ended up being bricked, but I thought I’d post this for future reference.