These photos from the Kingston Lounge – This photo essay of an abandoned quarantine hospital on North Brother Island in New York’s East river is incredible. The history he includes is very cool and the photos are both beautiful and interesting. I keep going back to this over and over. Eventually I’ll get to the rest of the blog.
Kids Politics – Last Friday's episode of This American Life centers around children learning about democracy and trying to practice self-governance, and it’s even more moving and compelling than usual. Maybe just because I’m a sucker for stories about kids. But it’s hard to not want to hug these youngsters who want to create a world according to their vision of fairness and goodness. The segments about the Reagan library (there is no better voice to tell this story than Starlee Kine <3 ) and the young Glenn Beck devotee conjure a discouraging skepticism about these students’ prospects of navigating a complicated and demanding political landscape in the coming years. The frustration in their voices is heartbreaking, and reminds me of my own desperate wish for a system that doesn’t seem to always be defeating us instead of making progress. But where I hear a premature resigned cynicism in my own voice, I hear the passion in theirs that only comes with not even having thought about giving up yet. It’s almost worse, knowing what they’re in for.
Discouraging skepticism is not really something I’m in short supply of, having spent a good amount of time on Sunday discussing “kids today” and how unfortunate they are to have all those damn cell phones and Rihanna romanticizing getting the shit knocked out of her (if you’ve not heard my “Love the Way You Lie” rant, you are luckier than a lot of people at the Blue Dome Diner). So it’s a really good thing Ira begins and ends with uplifting segments that let us cuddle with the warm and fuzzy hope that the youth will change the world for the better. A third grade class – in CHINA – practices democracy and somehow manages to independently invent and destroy negative smear campaigns, realizing that they feel better when they are nice to each other. If you’re not getting verklempt yet, the story about the kooky-hippie-experimental-free school where the kids call all the shots will get to you. Even though this is a test tube with a small population that miraculously makes it happen, students who have a say in their rules actually self-correct the amount of time they spend on computers and gadgets and decide to not call each other whores. It’s amazing.
This left me feeling mostly great, with just a few reservations, which is nice. I guess the scary stuff is good for you, and that small percentage of me that’s not totally dejected really wants to try and save the world. I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way (unless you’re going to teach them wrong, scary Reagan library people, then just shut the hell up).
College Radio – I really don’t know how or why I got into this, but I can’t stop. I’ve stumbled upon a curiosity to know what kind of music college radio stations across the country are playing and how good they are at it. But it’s become sort of a train wreck of a hobby. Once I find a good station it is really hard to turn away. With Pandora, I turn it off and it stops existing. But with the radio I just know I’m going to miss something good, and listening to far off and distant college stations seems like accidentally finding a frequency on a ham radio that you probably shouldn’t have, and maybe never will again.
I don’t listen to Ivy League stations – I don’t need their condescension. “Not only do I go to Princeton but I know about all the indie bands you don’t.” Pass. I like community and regional colleges a lot. This blog post was composed while listening to KVSC 88.1FM from St. Cloud State University. I like listening to Chicago stations, to remind me of my dear city. I feel like I know these people. Radio DePaul is the best I’ve found, but this familiarity has gotten me into trouble.
I really should not listen to college radio because now that I’m old and uncool, I get way too jealous of any girl d.j. with good taste in music who also plays video games and knows cool stuff about comic books or geeky genre movies and probably has a perfect pair of cat-eye glasses, because I know she must have no trouble scoring with all the nerd guys that I pined for in college. It’s ridiculous to be jealous of the anonymous DePaul student on the computer radio hundreds of miles away, but it’s also ridiculous to get choked up and a little teary when she plays a Yellowcard song I used to listen to freshman year. It happened anyway. I just know she looks like Ellen Page and when she makes an offhand remark about dancing around in her underwear to hellogoodbye you can almost hear her co-host guy falling in love with her as he mutters “Um, uh... we should talk about something else.”
But it’s nice to remind myself, when she says to him “Oh you’re 21, you’re old now” that they are just kids. And when she plays a Format song that I once played on my college radio show four years ago, I see it all coming full circle. One day a few years from now she’ll be a single 25-year-old trying to figure out how to meet people in Chicago after all her friends have moved away, wondering where all the cute, non-married guys who don’t wear Axe or cutoff shorts are. At least, I hope she’s got those problems. If 29-year-old me actually does have to compete with a perfect, smart, manic pixie dream girl 25-year-old her, I’m going to be fucking pissed.
Kids Politics – Last Friday's episode of This American Life centers around children learning about democracy and trying to practice self-governance, and it’s even more moving and compelling than usual. Maybe just because I’m a sucker for stories about kids. But it’s hard to not want to hug these youngsters who want to create a world according to their vision of fairness and goodness. The segments about the Reagan library (there is no better voice to tell this story than Starlee Kine <3 ) and the young Glenn Beck devotee conjure a discouraging skepticism about these students’ prospects of navigating a complicated and demanding political landscape in the coming years. The frustration in their voices is heartbreaking, and reminds me of my own desperate wish for a system that doesn’t seem to always be defeating us instead of making progress. But where I hear a premature resigned cynicism in my own voice, I hear the passion in theirs that only comes with not even having thought about giving up yet. It’s almost worse, knowing what they’re in for.
Discouraging skepticism is not really something I’m in short supply of, having spent a good amount of time on Sunday discussing “kids today” and how unfortunate they are to have all those damn cell phones and Rihanna romanticizing getting the shit knocked out of her (if you’ve not heard my “Love the Way You Lie” rant, you are luckier than a lot of people at the Blue Dome Diner). So it’s a really good thing Ira begins and ends with uplifting segments that let us cuddle with the warm and fuzzy hope that the youth will change the world for the better. A third grade class – in CHINA – practices democracy and somehow manages to independently invent and destroy negative smear campaigns, realizing that they feel better when they are nice to each other. If you’re not getting verklempt yet, the story about the kooky-hippie-experimental-free school where the kids call all the shots will get to you. Even though this is a test tube with a small population that miraculously makes it happen, students who have a say in their rules actually self-correct the amount of time they spend on computers and gadgets and decide to not call each other whores. It’s amazing.
This left me feeling mostly great, with just a few reservations, which is nice. I guess the scary stuff is good for you, and that small percentage of me that’s not totally dejected really wants to try and save the world. I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way (unless you’re going to teach them wrong, scary Reagan library people, then just shut the hell up).
College Radio – I really don’t know how or why I got into this, but I can’t stop. I’ve stumbled upon a curiosity to know what kind of music college radio stations across the country are playing and how good they are at it. But it’s become sort of a train wreck of a hobby. Once I find a good station it is really hard to turn away. With Pandora, I turn it off and it stops existing. But with the radio I just know I’m going to miss something good, and listening to far off and distant college stations seems like accidentally finding a frequency on a ham radio that you probably shouldn’t have, and maybe never will again.
I don’t listen to Ivy League stations – I don’t need their condescension. “Not only do I go to Princeton but I know about all the indie bands you don’t.” Pass. I like community and regional colleges a lot. This blog post was composed while listening to KVSC 88.1FM from St. Cloud State University. I like listening to Chicago stations, to remind me of my dear city. I feel like I know these people. Radio DePaul is the best I’ve found, but this familiarity has gotten me into trouble.
I really should not listen to college radio because now that I’m old and uncool, I get way too jealous of any girl d.j. with good taste in music who also plays video games and knows cool stuff about comic books or geeky genre movies and probably has a perfect pair of cat-eye glasses, because I know she must have no trouble scoring with all the nerd guys that I pined for in college. It’s ridiculous to be jealous of the anonymous DePaul student on the computer radio hundreds of miles away, but it’s also ridiculous to get choked up and a little teary when she plays a Yellowcard song I used to listen to freshman year. It happened anyway. I just know she looks like Ellen Page and when she makes an offhand remark about dancing around in her underwear to hellogoodbye you can almost hear her co-host guy falling in love with her as he mutters “Um, uh... we should talk about something else.”
But it’s nice to remind myself, when she says to him “Oh you’re 21, you’re old now” that they are just kids. And when she plays a Format song that I once played on my college radio show four years ago, I see it all coming full circle. One day a few years from now she’ll be a single 25-year-old trying to figure out how to meet people in Chicago after all her friends have moved away, wondering where all the cute, non-married guys who don’t wear Axe or cutoff shorts are. At least, I hope she’s got those problems. If 29-year-old me actually does have to compete with a perfect, smart, manic pixie dream girl 25-year-old her, I’m going to be fucking pissed.
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