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RESOURCES: Community-Building - Visual Sociology - Message-Building
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FACULTY ASSISTANCE: Susan - jeanne - Pat
UWP Criminal Justice Dept. - CSUDH Dept. of Sociology

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WWW www.habermas.org

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: January 7, 2007
Latest Update: January 18, 2007
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Topic of the Week: I Feel Good 'cause I'm Included

It's important that we learn to love ourselves, to offer ourselves socio-emotional support. That inspires us to struggle through the hard times and get to success. James Brown's I Feel Good is bright and fun and makes me want to jump for joy. That's one way to love yourself. Play music that makes you happy. But don't forget to take the earphones off and listen in good faith to the world around you. Let the sound of your world inspire you.

Loving and caring about your self is like including yourself in the circle of creatures, things, and people you love. It feels good to be included.

Music is one way to include yourself. Art is another. Communities are made up of lots of different people. Some of them live for music. Some of them live for art. Some of them have probably forgotten what they live for. That's easy to do in today's world.

Antonia Guzman reminds us of the Other One. The one we haven't noticed. The one we haven't included. It's not hard to include the Other. If the Other is good at music, and you're good at art, then you bring the music and let the Other bring the art.

I'm an artist. I've brought the art. I haven't the slightest idea how to download James Brown's I Feel Good. But lots of you know how. Could someone download it for us? I heard it in the movie, K9, with John Belushi. I loved it. But I didn't even know James Brown. Could someone show me how to put part of it on our site? It goes with our ideas on how art and music bind us together in a creative climate, where we can each contribute what we do best. Could you include me in your music?

Now we're building community. And today's message is that everybody needs to be included. That makes us all feel good.

Joint us, even if it's just by distance, as we work on community building at Challengers Boys and Girls Club in L.A., and develop the projects in art and music that might serve to get community dialog going on social, economic, and political issues that matter to all of us, at all ages. Time to include everybody in governance, even our own kids and neighbors.

Independent Study Form for work with jeanne and Pat in Spring 2007
Ask Susan, if you're at UWP.

love and peace,

jeanne

Announcements:

Sign up for Spring with Jeanne and Pat:
Independent Study Form for work with jeanne and Pat in Spring 2007

We have begun our work with with Challengers Boys and Girls Club on Vermont, just south of USC. Our work will be divided into two phases:

1. Accompanying jeanne and Pat at Challengers, learning how to build team work with a local agency, without interfering with their agenda. Good administrative training.

2. Work with jeanne and Pat on preparing and engaging others in art projects that are designed to stimulate and share discussions on local issues that matter to the residents and their children. This will include developing messages, including visual messages, that will register with kids of different ages. Those of you who want to work with your own or neighborhood children will want to focus on this section.

Instructions, readings, message-building, etc. will be given on line. For grades, we ask that you keep a journal of your learning and experiences for me to share with Dr. Hosokawa, who will turn in the grades for us.

Please check also the issues of Dear habermas I put up over Winter Break. And join our Yahoo discussion group, Write Free, for this project. Share what you are including in your journal as you put it together. I'll join you. Look forward to working with our children and families of all ages, as we learn to bring this learning to whole local communities, in cooperation with Challengers, and others who may wish to join us on Write Free. By the way, the title of our group means that writing will set us free, so it's important we learn to use it to that end.

Independent Study Form for work with jeanne and Pat in Spring 2007
Dr. Fumiko Hosokawa will sign for jeanne if jeanne isn't on campus.

love and peace, jeanne and Pat

• Los Angeles Gallery Exhibit

  Antonia Guzman, the Argentiniam artist whose works are in this issue, is having an exhibition in Los Angeles:

  El Otro - The other One
  

  

  Exhibition by Antonia Guzman
  Couturier Gallery
  166 N. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles
  Reception: Friday, January 19, 7-9 p.m.
  exhibition from January 19 to February 24, 2007

• Say Thank You to our troops:

  The Let's Say Thanks to Our Troops Site. I chose a postcard and message. As the administration insists upon a surge in troops, we need to let the troops know we understand and appreciate the sacrifice they are making. When you're in the midst of a war, you don't have the leisure of questioning whether your country made the right decision in going to war. That's for us here at home to argue. In your message let them know that we fear for them and want to see their safe return to their lives and families.

• Grades at CSUDH from Fall 2006: Check Issue No. 14, Week of December 3, 2006, for any information you need on winding up this semester at CSUDH.

Issues

• Civics 101 Reviewing the basics we all need to know about our civil rights in the United States. This file reviews an article that appeared in the New York Times on Saturday, January 14, 2007, when a deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, publicly stated that those who defended detainees in Guantánamo should deal with the wrath of their corporate clients for having done so. This was repeated on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. These guys wouldn't pass the high school exit test on Civics 101.

  Added Thursday, January 18, 2007: The L.A. Times announced on January 17, on the 13th page of the main section, that Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense apologized in a letter to the Washington Post for his misinformed comments on this issue. Consider the significance of the article appearing on page 13. Where did the original denunciation of defense lawyers appear? Page 1. What does this say about the power of the mainstream media? Do you always manage to get to page 13? I don't.

  Official apologizes to detainees' lawyers By JoAnne Allen, Reuters, Wednesday, January 17, 2007; 5:00 AM. I found this by searchin on the Washington Post site for Stimson apology. Good search engine. jeanne

• Why It's So Important to Use a Spell Checker Give yourself a break. Don't trigger their prejudices.

• An Artist's Story: How Jun Kaneko Became an Artist What stirs our creativity?

• Remembering Not To Use Backstage Words in Messages Choosing messages so that they make sense to strangers in the community.

Summaries and Sources

• Index of Summaries and Sources for Spring 2007 Updated and expanded index on sources for current social, economic, and political issues in our communities. I'll work on this index throughout the semester. It takes time. But you're welcome to nag me if there's a topic that concerns you. jeanne

• My World and Welcome to It.

  Each of the editors on the site writes occasionally to the site community about assignments, concepts and ideas, assignments, and socio-emotional support for the community. jeanne's letter tends to cover what she's been reading that she doesn't have the time to upload to the site, so she summarizes. And she also adds interpretative commentaryy in these letters. Her index includes a list of the concepts included, that she will try to remember to include also in the site index.

• "jeanne's World and Welcome to It" Index

  • Latest letter, posted January 7, 2007. Concept: mosaic condition, in which the real world has a whole spectrum where we tend to see categories. For example, Gov. Schwarzenegger's expression of "girlie men" refers to something not captured by the simple male/female dichotomy.
  • Letter posted January 6, 2007. Concepts: "I feel food" and "good dogs" as coded ways to offer socio-emotional support.

• "Susan's World and Welcome To It" Index

• "Pat's World and Welcome To It" Index

  • Latest letter, posted January 7, 2007. Pat's epiphany on learning that sharing and mutuality make us feel better than the competition of getting the best grade for ourselves.

Visual Sociology

• Visualizing the Other Who Is Different From Me
  El otro - The other One

  

  From Antonia Guzman's Exhibit at Couturier Gallery
  on La Brea in Los Angeles

  Can you find the Other in this image? Does that help you see the Other in the lead Image for this week? We speak of conceptual art when there is a concept or idea that the author would like to evoke in his painting. That doesn't mean that he will tell you, except by his title, what he meant, but that he hopes you will feel some insight or understanding that he was feeling about that issue or idea. In an exhibition, when the artist shows several paintings, you can find similarities between the paintings that might help you feel what the artist felt. Here, the title of the exhibit is El otro. So there's a clue that we should look for the Other. Is the Other facing forward? Or in profile?

  Round eyes show up in both the paintings illustrated in this issue. We rarely have perfectly round eyes. The eyelids fold over the round eyeball. What do you think Guzman wants us to see? to feel? Could this be his way of calling our attention to difference?

  In the image for this week I see three very slender, very tall figures. They don't have arms or legs or faces in the usual sense. Why do I see them as representatiions of life forms like us? Could the triangles be faces? Are all the triangles faces? This is the kind of thinking the conceptual artist wants to provoke. He wants you to think about why you feel as you do when you study the painting.

  Civics 101 - Visualizing Simply

  You Need to Know Your Rights
  
  To Protect Them for All of Us

  Sometimes, when your message is very important, it's a good idea to make it big and colorful and post it where none could miss it, like in a whole mess of stickers on an office wall, or hang it in a mobile in the bathroom. Last year we did a delightful frog mobile that said WASH YOUR HANDS and hung it in the restrooms in a local office, after several women complained that fellow employees weren't. That's public art.

• Hanging Mobiles As a Way to Repeat Essential Messages

  

  Form Against Yellow
  1936
  sheet metal, wire, plywood, string, and paint
  48 1/8 x 32 1/8 x 30 1/2 in.
  Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972
  Registration Number A01862

  Maybe you don't like frogs? Could you mount a black figure against a yellow canvas, and suspend your very important message on a white shape suspended through a hole in the black figure? Don't forget to identify Calder. We want people to learn who our famous artists were, too. Hang this in a restroom in the location of your choice. It might make a difference.

  You could also suspend a toothbrush, real or constructed, from the hole in your figure. Hang it in your child's bathroom with a message to brush her teeth. That's family art. Be sure to take a photograph if it works, and keep it in your Memories album.

• About the Lasting Fame of Public Art

  Yes, someone might take your hanging mobile out of the ladies' restroom. It's gone. Vanished. Are we unhappy? Of course not. We can make another. And you certainly made someone very much aware of washing their hands or brushing their teeth, or of their basic civics lesson. Either they hated it. Which means you got to them. You made them aware. Good first step. Or they liked it and took it for themselves. Wonderful first step. I'll settle any day for getting someone to take for themselves Calder and/or our messages. We're building community. Watch it grow.

A Range of Sources on Global Events

Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times - The National Review
Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation
The Cato Institute (Libertarian) - The Open Society
BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - La Opinion - The Washington Post
Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report

Wikipedia - Web Sources Linked from Dear Habermas
Concept Index

 

 

 

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