Police and Society

Philosophical thoughts on the role, meaning, and place of police in society from N+1 Magazine.

I'm not familiar with this magazine. My advisor posted the link on her Facebook page. Some of this reminds me of China Mieville's "The City and the City" and the role of Breach, dealing with the things we don't want to see or acknowledge. It makes me want to follow up with some of the ethnographic work done on police mentioned within.

It's also interesting to read this and think about my own encounters with police, positive and negative, and of the college students I just heard speak this Friday who glowingly described their internships with local police departments. These things are deep.

Mothers Day

Isn't it amazing how holidays change through time?

The following blockquoted text is the original Mothers' Day proclamation, a pacifist call for peace and disarmament. as a response to the Civil War.

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

To mothers. To people with mothers. To people without them or who have chosen to end their relationships with them. To those who want to to be mothers and cannot. May your day be a good one.

Mothers Day

And a happy mother's day specifically to my mother.

I was a very difficult child at times. I could easily have had an even more difficult childhood with parents who were less understanding. My mother (and my father) have always seen some kind of potential in me, and always believed in me. I have no doubt that a large part of my current success is my parents' unwavering love and support through hard times over my entire life.

I love you Mom.

Motorists, Pedestrians, Vintage Science-fiction, and the Right to the Street

A couple interesting pieces of writing on being a pedestrian.

First, a short history of how 'jaywalking' became a crime. Can you imagine what moving through a city or town was like when cars were that which was out of place on a street? When it was a motorist's responsibility to avoid pedestrians? From Vox Magainze, "The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

Second, an interesting piece of science-fiction that I found when looking through UW-Parkside's collection of vintage sci-fi pulp magazines. In Amazing Stories, I found this oddly relevant tale of a world where being a pedestrian is illegal. The author writes of the far future, when certain roads had actually been made illegal for pedestrian use, and where people seem to be perpetually driving just to go somewhere, anywhere. Where those who walk are seen as throwbacks to a primitive past.

David Keller's "Revolt of the Pedestrians" was written back in 1928, when automobiles were becoming more and more a part of everyday life. Right in the middle, in fact, of the campaign being waged by auto-makers against pedestrians that the Vox article describes. It begins on page 1048 (the pages were sequentially numbered between issues) of the magazine.
https://archive.org/details/AmazingStoriesVolume02Number11

One of the things that fascinates me about this is the political views that inform these feelings about cars. Wikipedia tells me that Keller is known is a conservative writer. In the present day, this kind of anti-car attitude might be seen as radically progressive. In 1928 though, it would probably have characterized as conservative, and even reactionary. A new paradigm of movement through the city was rising to replace an old one, and Keller was railing against it with his imagined world where motorists run down and kill pedestrians with impunity.

It's amazing how the same political position can mean very different things, and be related to a very different set of *other* political positions, depending on the time and place it occupies.

Happiness is Time

You know what's amazing? Talking with my brothers about playing a board game and being able to say, "Yeah, I have time for that!."

It's just amazing.

-----

Holst's "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" sure sounds like music from one of the Conan the Barbarian movies, doesn't it?

David Harvey and Economics

A discussion of William Jennings Bryan and the cross of gold speech elsewhere on Facebook makes me think, tangentially, of the book I'm reading now, David Harvey's "Rebel Cities."

Harvey is a leftist geographer at CUNY. Rebel Cities is a look at the place of cities within the global economy through a Marxist lens. They are, he argues, places where the creative destruction of the built environment is a sink for surplus value extracted from labor. That they have served this function, at increasing scales, essentially since the rise of capitalist economies. He uses Haussman's reconstruction of Paris as an example, which is really interesting to me because I just read Robert Fishman's "Bourgeoise Utopias," wherein he devotes an entire chapter to exploring Haussman's Paris as a counter-suburban example but doesn't talk at all about its role in the French national economy of the time. (Which makes sense, as that's not really his point; he's writing a social history of suburbanization.)

But anyway, the long and short of it is that I feel the same way about reading Harvey as I did learning about William Jennings Bryan and the Populist movement of the late 19th century and the contention over the gold and silver standards in the United States. There's more economy here than I feel comfortable with. I wish I knew more about economics. I actually kind of wish I had murstein here with me to have a mini-book club with. *grins*

Maybe I need to read some good Economics 101-type stuff over the summer. Any suggestions?

Verso Books

I should also note that I'm really impressed with Verso Books. The two hardcovers I ordered from them came with really novel (no pun intended!) dust jackets: one has numerous rectangular cut-outs showing parts of the front cover, and the other has a transparent jacket with information written on yellow strips made to look like caution tape wrapped around it. Clever.

Just as good, when I noted that one of the books had a slight tear in the jacket (even more unfortunate when it was such a nifty-looking one), Verso immedately offered to ship a replacement copy, suggesting I donate the first one. Which I think I will do; I think it would be great if the UW-Parkside Library had a copy of Bradley Garrett's "Explore Everything."

I just wanted to say publicly that I appreciate the great service from Verso.

And did I mention that all of their more recently published books include, DRM-free electronic copies? Nice!

Duolingo

danaeris having introduced me to the app, I just started playing with Duolingo on my phone. I want to improve my Spanish over the Summer. I've already been treated to some of the strange sentences that the program comes up with. "My cats eat potatos." Sure they do, Duolingo. Sure they do.

Rola Bola Practice

It's been a while since I've had this thing out. It's a little hard to get a photo of myself on it; I can't quite hold it steady for long enough yet.