NewsBusters (press release) (blog) | Liberal Utopia Imagined Through Students in New Season of 'Degrassi: Next Class' NewsBusters (press release) (blog) A few episodes later, Yael reveals her new pronouns: they and them. In classic liberal fashion, the show rebukes Yael's boyfriend, Hunter, for not accepting his girlfriend's transformation. Despite his assertion that he's attracted to girls, his ... |
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In one corner of our fair county lies a lovely little hamlet known as well, lets not mention names.
Oft have I marveled, while passing through that charming village, at its well-shaded streets, neatly manicured medians and pleasant parklands. Ive also noted the size of its police force, relative to population. And Ive wondered:
How do they afford all that?
A few months ago, I learned the answer, which is that those two features the upscale amenities and the number of patrol cars are directly related.
The occasion was a visit to traffic court in one of the towns nice, new, modern buildings, constructed just for that purpose and designed to accommodate more than a hundred people waiting to plead their cases. On that particular day, an otherwise unremarkable Thursday, every seat was filled.
I found myself there because, a couple months earlier, Id been cited for running a red light even though the light was yellow when I entered the intersection, and I was more than halfway through before it turned red.
Of course, if it had been a normal yellow light, I should have been all the way through. Thinking about the timing led me to conclude, as I told the ticketing officer, that it must be the shortest yellow light in history.
He was unmoved. Nevertheless, I believed I had been cited unfairly and decided to fight it.
In preparation for my day in court, I researched the national standard for yellow lights, which turns out to be about five seconds. I also went back to that intersection, parked at a gas station, and timed the yellow for 10 consecutive cycles. It averaged just under three seconds.
Armed with several videos, and now believing myself fully in the right, I took a day off work and showed up at the appointed time only to find myself awash in a sea of humanity. When my name was finally called, my day in court turned out to be more like two minutes with a harried city prosecutor, which went something like this:
Prosecutor: Youre charged with running a red light.
Me: I didnt do it, and I think I can prove it.
Prosecutor: We can knock the charge down to a non-moving violation. Your fine will be $122 instead of $178, with no points against your license.
Me: But I didnt do anything wrong.
Prosecutor: Youre welcome to come back next month and tell that to the judge.
Me: So I have to take another day off work? What if I lose?
Prosecutor: Then youll have to pay the $178, plus youll get the points.
Me: Where do I pay the $122?
As you can see, this is a highly organized, well-thought-out, perfectly legal and extremely lucrative scam. Youre ticketed for some dubious violation and then theyve got you over a barrel.
But, hey, at least its a very nice barrel.
Rob Jenkins is a local freelance writer and the author of four books, including Family Man: The Art of Surviving Domestic Tranquility, available at Books for Less in Buford and on Amazon. E-mail Rob at rjenkinsgdp@yahoo.com.
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JENKINS: Traffic scammed in suburban utopia - Gwinnettdailypost.com
At one point in Kalman Zingmans 1918 Yiddish novella In Edenia, a City of the Future, the protagonist Zalman Kindishman stands admiring a monument on the titular citys Freedom Square:
A young girl with an ardent glance, her hair in loose curls, stepping with her feet on a snake, which is completely wrapped around her. In one hand she holds a blood-red flag and in the other a black one. On the bottom of the red side is a bas-relief depicting high barricades, flattened faces a war is going on. There is also a bas-relief on the other side, under the black flag, of the victims after the war, of those who were shot: a Russian, a Ukrainian, a Pole, a Jew, a Georgian, et cetera all dead. The inscription reads: They fought together, they died together.
Edenia is a utopian future version of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, projected forward from the 1910s into the 40s. Now theres another war going on nearby, this time between Russia and Ukraine; that, and the sickening disjunction between Zingmans Yiddish fantasia and what actually befell the regions Jews in the Second World War, might seem to discredit the authors vision of cooperation and reconciliation.
For Russian-American artist Yevgeniy Fiks and American-Ukrainian curator Larissa Babij, however, the peculiar world of Zingmans Edenia is worth remembering. Together, they have created a new exhibition named after his novella, currently on display in Kharkivs Yermilov Centre. In the novella, Kindishman visits Edenias art museum; Fiks and Babij have invited an international group of artists the participants include Babi Badalov (Azerbaijan), Ruth Jenrbekova and Maria Vilkovisky (Kazakhstan), Aikaterini Gegisian(Greece/Armenia), Haim Sokol (Russia/Israel) and Nikita Kadan (Ukraine) to contribute artworks towards a reconstruction of this imaginary space. In the process, they are posing many of the same questions of multiculturalism and futurism that occupied Zingman almost a century ago. What might a better future for Ukraine look like? And what position might religious and ethnic minorities hold within it?
Utopianor futuristic Yiddish literature is not common, Fiks tells me. Most often Yiddish literature eithertalks about the present or remembers the past. In Zingmans text, Zalman Kindishman comes to Edenia to visit his old friend Yugendboym. Here, there is no money every citizen has their material needs provided for. National communities Jews, Ukrainians and others live in complete harmony and are free to set their own laws. There are flying aerotrains, an artificially regulated climate, abundant gardens with children celebrating Jewish holidays by their thousands. Edenia is not a Jewish-only city, but one where questions of anti-Semitism have been superseded.
Zingmans vision of a peaceful existence for Ukraines Jews clashes horribly with the countrys history. The post-revolutionary, short-lived Ukrainian Peoples Republic (1917-1921) was the first modern state to have a Ministry for Jewish Affairs, and Yiddish was made a state language. But pogroms continued unabated, and between 1918, when Zingmans book was written, and 1920, at least 31,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine the real number may be as high as 100,000. The great majority died at the hands of nationalists and anti-Communists, many of whom saw Bolshevism as a sinister Semitic plot. Even greater horrors were to come in the Second World War, when the country was occupied by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators. An estimated one million Jews were murdered in Ukraine during the Holocaust; 70 per cent of the countrys Jewish population was killed or displaced.
Personally, I feel that the Yiddish question is preciselythe question that should be raised when we talk about the present and future relationship between Ukraine and Russia, Fiks says.Perhaps the silence of Yiddish in the streetsof both Ukraine and Russia, if acknowledgedand contemplated, criesthe need, the hope for a better world, a word of multiculturalism and autonomy. For Babij, this is a question of both national and personal significance. While working on this exhibition I could not help but notice how the site of multi-ethnic or inter-national coexistence has shifted to the scale of the individual, she says. Hence the exhibition acts not only as a reminder of Ukraines rich multicultural landscape of the past, but also as an attempt to present and enact a more complex understanding of cultural identity.
What might a better future for Ukraine look like? And what position might religious and ethnic minorities hold within it?
The question of Ukraines past and its impact on the future is a live one; in Fikss words, the country is reinventing itself withforces of multiculturalism on the one side and extreme nationalism on the other in a state of constant flux. In its attempts to wrench itself free from Russian influence and plant its feet firmly in the western European community, post-Maidan Ukraine has not always trod delicately: from the controversial programme of decommunisation to the nationalist historical retrofitting promoted by Volodymyr Viatrovychs Institute of National Memory and the uncritical public lionisation of wartime figures like nationalist militia leader Stepan Bandera. The reappraisal of Zingmans novella and an attention to Ukraines historical hybridity is timely, even if, as Babij admits, the Kharkiv exhibition represents a relatively small, bounded space.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Zingmans work is its combination of futuristic technologies with a lingering, old world devotion to eastern European Yiddish cultural tradition. Edenia is dotted with memorials exalting Jewish artists and writers: Yitskhok Peretz, Roza Fayngold, Sholem Aleichem, El Lissitsky. Its citizens are avid readers to the extent that the literary scholar Professor Shvartsvald is treated like a rock star, his lectures on Peretz overflowing onto the street.
El Lissitsky
Yitskhok Peretz (second left), a great of early twentieth-century Yiddish literature
A page from El Lissitskys illustrated version of the Yiddish folk tale Had Gadya
A page from El Lissitskys illustrated version of the Yiddish folk tale Had Gadya
For Babij, Zingman maintains a separation between the realms of everyday activity, where technological advancements have increased the comfort and ease of residents lives, and the sphere of culture. Its interesting to contrast this vision with that of the early Soviet avant-garde, which envisioned art and its formal possibilities as a means to transform out-dated ways of living, to shape and prepare society for new forms of organisation, often through a violent break with and obliteration of past cultural traditions.
The exhibition itself jumps across time and space, its contributing artists turning their hands to themes of migration, religion and repression. Curandi Katz embroiders textiles with the borders of territories unrecognised by international law including Russia-annexed Crimea, an open wound in the Ukrainian national psyche. Ruth Jenrbekova and Maria Vilkovisky have created a video guide to their own utopian projection: a world in which the Central Asian states have formed into a federation of autonomous tribes. Perhaps the most pointed commentary on the erasure and resurfacing of history is provided by Nikita Kadans Viewers (2016). The great Constructivist designer Alexander Rodchenko produced a series of portraits of Soviet leaders in Uzbekistan in 1934; when these figures were repressed a few years later, Rodchenko blacked out their faces in his copy of the album. Kadan reproduces these disfigured portraits, labelling them the faces of the spirits of history History (in other words, the accumulation of ruins) happens under their watchful gaze.
Nikita Kadan, Viewers (2016) (left); Repetition of Forgetting (2016) (right). Image: Sergey Solonskij
Photo-collage of exhibition view (with Nikita Kadans Viewers) and Yiddish text from In Edenia, a City of the Future. Image: Sergey Solonskij
Yuri Leiderman, Self-portrait in Ukrainian Costume (2013). Image: Sergey Solonskij
Haim Sokol, Testimony (2015). Image: Sergey Solonskij
Zingmans novella ends abruptly with Zalman Kindishmans mysterious disappearance and death. The Jewish culture Zingman so cherished was brutally cut down a few decades later. Many Ukrainians are now no clearer as to the future they are headed towards than their predecessors of the early twentieth century. What place does utopian thinking occupy in the modern nation state? I think the term utopia, especially after the events of the twentieth century, is loaded and politicised, Fiks concludes. I think hoping and seeking happiness is a very basic, very human thing. But we must be very wary and very conscious about our methods. For Babij, Ukraine today is carried away by visions of a better future, whether in the shape of an idealised image of the European Union or the soothing promises of a strong, authoritarian neighbouring ruler or the hope that current Ukrainian politicians will miraculously change the way this country has been run for the past 25 years. Hence the importance of history: the past is really the only thing we can look at and talk about concretely.
Edenia is governed by two sects. The Heavenly Ones renounce all earthly pleasures, all the enjoyments that life can bring. They maintain that there is an even higher world, a more beautiful one. The second sect are the Earthly Ones, who say: enrich and improve life, so that heaven can be on earth. This practical, materialist message is what is picked up and translated for modern Ukraine in Fikss and Babijs exhibition. Our best bet might be to follow the advice given by Yitskhok Peretz, one of the Yiddish writers celebrated in Edenia, in one of his poems: Dont think the world is a wasteland created/For wolves and for foxes, for spoils and for booty Oh, dont think the world is a wasteland.
In Edenia, a City of the Future is on display at the Yermilov Centre in Kharkiv until 9 July.
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A new international multimedia ensemble from seven countries and across America ritualizes their exile experience in the United States. The result is a defiant theatrical collage that enlists the audience in a revolution for a new utopia.
Facing end-of-the-world paranoia in America and drowning in media, the exiles labour through the act of remembering and performing. To survive America, they must constantly revise their personal histories and ideologies as the alleged other. To combat entropy, to find home, to discover utopia, to believe in anything at all, the ensemble grotesquely re-enacts childhood memories and channels political superpowers.
The blood-pumping rhythm of pop iconography intersects with intensely intimate storytelling, and cuts to operatic manifestos of political prophets, creating an explosive performance collage that defies borders, genre and time. A rich array of multimedia platforms headed by motion-sensor video and real-time light art partners the athleticism and sensuality of the performing bodies.
Venue 13, August 5-26 (Not 14, 21) 17:30, Tickets 8/10
Tickets here.
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Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2017 THE END, THE END, THE END - The Edinburgh Reporter
Enlarge / Sonequa Martin-Green plays protagonist Michael Burnham, first officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, on new CBS All Access series Star Trek: Discovery.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a lot of strict rules for writers on his shows. Some, like the requirement that both female and male officers be called "sir," were thrown out a while ago (Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Kathryn Janeway, wanted to be called "ma'am"). Now, with forthcoming series Star Trek: Discovery, we're about to see one of Roddenberrys most cherished rules bite the dust.
When Roddenberry first framed his ideas for the Star Trek universe, he wanted to be sure that writers would emphasize the Utopian aspects of future life in the Federation. Some of that Utopianism was hardwired into the show's basic premise, in which money, war, and racial discrimination are things of the distant past. But Roddenberry wasn't satisfied with thathe wanted characters whose behavior was exemplary, too.
After decades of complaints about these constraints from producers, Star Trek: Discovery showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg have decided to abandon Utopia for something they consider a little more realistic. On this streaming series, debuting on CBS All Access this September, our protagonists won't always be nice. Their behavior won't be worthy of emulation, and their conflicts will get out of control.
"The thing we're taking from Roddenberry is how we solve those conflicts, Harberts told Entertainment Weekly. "So we do have our characters in conflict, we do have them struggling with each other, but it's about how they find a solution and work through their problems."
Harberts and Berg are also chucking the "planet/alien/giant space object of the week" format that's long been a staple of Star Trek storytelling. Instead, there will be a seasonal arc, with character-driven plotlines. You can expect something like The Expanse or Battlestar Galactica, in which multiple plots play out over the entire season, rather than self-contained adventures each week.
There's risk in doing this, because one of Star Trek's main lures has always been its relentless optimism even when things go pretty dark (see, for example, Deep Space Nine). Plenty of science fiction franchises already deal in gritty realism, and it's possible that audiences won't take to the idea that Star Trek is now one of them. That said, conflict will always be part of human life. What could be more Utopian than telling stories about people overcoming genuine, entrenched conflict rather than avoiding conflict altogether?
Link:
New Star Trek series will abandon Gene Roddenberry's cardinal rule - Ars Technica
The rise of the machines creates complex questions for society
Colin Anderson/Getty
By Ben Collyer
Aristotle wrote in his Politics that if machines could be made to obey or anticipate the will of humans and then function untended, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves. The ancient Greeks were pretty handy with labour-saving devices, and although Aristotle was not predicting the imminent end of slavery in the 4th century BC, his logic remains impeccable.
Yet history has revealed barriers to the adoption of automation: if human labour is cheap, why invest in machines? And when technology is adopted, what happens to the servants or slaves? Throughout the medieval period, the only investments that interested squabbling feudal landowners were related to war. It took the profit motive of 18th-century capital investors to sponsor innovators and weigh the fine financial balance between machines and humans in producing everyday goods.
But as we know, the gains made by ordinary workers in the industrial period came only through bitter struggle and upheaval. Now in 2017, we are struggling again with newer disruptions and inequalities brought on by imbalances between humans and machines.
Enter Dutch thinker Rutger Bregman, whose debut book Utopia for Realists has become an unexpected bestseller. Bregman accepts that many new jobs have emerged since early automation in the 1800s, but suggests that the pace of technological advance has now passed a threshold and the rate of creation is now falling. He cites Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who coined the term the great decoupling to describe this most recent phase, in which wages no longer even partially keep step with technical productivity.
How is it that real incomes have barely risen since the 1970s, despite the most rapid technical advances in human history? Instead, inequality has grown to levels similar to those of the Roman Empire. The answer, suggests Bregman, is twofold: the output of modern automation is not met by adequate purchasing power, and labour has been drawn increasingly into administrative and transactional work that delivers no direct improvement in living standards.
To resolve these problems, first, if machines increasingly make more of the things that meet our needs, then a universal basic income (UBI) is no longer a pipe dream, but essential to permit us to buy those machine-made goods. Its an old idea, toyed with by such unlikely fellow proponents as the 18th-century author of Rights of Man, Thomas Paine, and US president Richard Nixon. Now, argues Bregman, its time has finally come.
Second, the advantages of technology would be enhanced still further if futile admin could be reduced, and labour mainly refocused on activities that directly meet human needs. Bregman makes the argument vigorously, if perhaps a little unsympathetically, to those who, in search of a job, have found themselves in the financial sector.
In the banks, he says, clever minds concoct myriad, complex financial products that dont create wealth, but destroy it. These products are, essentially, like a tax on the rest of the population. Who do you think is paying for all those custom-tailored suits, sprawling mansions, and luxury yachts?
Bregmans Utopia is light on discussion about how the UBI is to be funded, though. Money creation by central banks is already practised through quantitative easing (QE), but it goes to the commercial banks, in a largely futile effort to stimulate the economy with yet more debt. As a result, the idea of QE for the people is already appearing in political manifestos, in line with Bregmans argument, as a source of UBI.
If all this happens, we will need to watch for inflation. When the new UBI is spent, what will people buy? Will the industries that produce these goods or services have adequate investment to gear up? And can progressive governments ensure an orderly reorientation of labour, especially in the corporate sector?
As with previous historic efforts at imagining UBI, the changes that Bregman proposes will meet political resistance from vested interests and risk popular alarm if not carefully planned. Global corporations and their owners, the pension and insurance funds, will need to be persuaded by the economic restructuring implied the shrinking of bank profit and transactional activity, and the need for capital assets, training and recruitment to be redirected to productive sectors.
The questions that Bregman poses must be addressed, and urgently: thought-through projections will be essential soon. It is possible that a modest UBI alone might jump-start a move in the right direction. Too large an amount, and an unprepared productive sector will not have enough capacity to meet the new demand, resulting in inflation and disappointment.
A more detailed treatment of the history, theory and political prospects for UBI is offered by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, who also believe its time has come. They begin to address the complex social issues it raises in their book, Basic Income who receives UBI, at what age, and can we avoid triggering unwanted cross-border migration?
Their work will be essential for the ongoing debate, but by their own admission, leaves much to tackle with regard to macroeconomic and corporate governance issues.
So, to guarantee that UBI doesnt become a flash in the pan and ensure the smoothest possible transition away from dysfunctional modern economics, writers and thinkers will need to engage the public and professional imagination.
These authors make a brilliant start though after all, how on Earth are we to pay for goods made by robots, and wouldnt a world composed entirely of wealth-creating bankers starve to death?
Utopia for Realists: And how we can get there
Rutger Bregman
Bloomsbury Publishing
Basic Income: A radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy
Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght
Harvard University Press
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Can we count on utopian dreamers to change the world? - New Scientist
Inspired by Asian soft porn, Ina Jang's Utopia features silhouetted female bodies that embody passive, girlish stereotypes
Asian soft-porn images all have something in common the gaze of the performer and how they performin front of the camera, assuming really iconic poses, says Ina Jang, a South Korean artist based in New York. Presumably, they are instructed by someone to behave that way.
Jangs exhibition Utopia, which recently went on show at the Swiss Muse des beaux-arts du Locle, is inspired by such images. Delving into the depiction of women in Korea and Japan, Jang found astriking stereotype in the so-called gravure (or glamour) magazines popular there women who are shown as girlish and submissive, sporting pink cheeks and a school uniform even if they were older than 25.
I remembered seeing gravure magazines essentially watered-down versions of Playboy in every convenience store in Tokyo, says Jang. All the females in them are portrayed as passive and helpless, sometimes playful.
When I started researching the pornographic visuals, it hit me that theres a clear formula in the way women are portrayed in them, she continues.I printed out some of the images, cut out the body figures and photographed them. From there, I kept making images with similar positions.
Jang is a well-established fine art photographer, whose images often focus in on women and use an instantly recognisable, delicate colour palette. For this series she used sickly-sweet acid tones recognisably hers but also a reaction to the magazines, which use soft, femininetones. When I was looking at pornographic images online I imagined the series should be shot in a minimalist way, but I wanted the strong colours, she says.
Peach, from the series Utopia Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
Fuchsia, from the series Utopia Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
Lemonade, from the series Utopia Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
It sounds like a rarified world, but for Jang it also suggests a much darker undercurrent. When she started working on the series a story broke in Korea about a man who had been waiting to commit a random murder in a public toilet in the Gangnam district of Seoul;since a lot of places in Korea have restrooms that are for both genders, it means that this guy had been waiting in the stall for a woman to come in so he could kill her, she explains.
Working on this topictook its toll, so after finishing the exhausting research for Utopia, Jang decided to work on another, more playful and intuitive project on the side eventually creating a new series she named Untitled/ Titled.Iremembered the leftover cut-out papers from my previous shots, than I just started painting colours on chipboards and used cut-outs to created portraits, she says. Or landscape, dependingon how you see it.
And, revealing the work ethic thats helped ensure shes already represented by three galleries, just seven years after graduating from the School of the Visual Arts in New York, Jang is also working on another series, for another solo show scheduled to be shown next May in Tokyo. Its a completely different body of work, she says, titled Mrs Dalloway after the Virginia Woolf novel, and inspired by paintings by Old Masters that are on show in NYCs MoMA and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Utopia by Ina Jan is on show at theMuse des beaux-arts du Locle, Switzerland until15 October.www.mbal.ch http://www.inaphotography.com
Untitled left over shape (titled passport photo), from the series Untitled (Titled) Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
Untitled left over shape (titled mountain of dumplings), from the series Untitled (Titled) Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
Untitled left over shape (titled alternative egg rolls), from the series Untitled (Titled) Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
From the series Mrs. Dalloway Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
From the series Mrs. Dalloway Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
From the series Mrs. Dalloway Ina Jang, courtesy the artist
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The utopias of justice are perhaps even more familiar. Asking, typically, for great personal sacrifice, these utopias call for the abolition of all social injustice. While the French Revolution had its fair share of such visions, they reached an apotheosis in 20th-century Marxist politics. Despite his own personal rejection of utopianism, Lenin, high on his pedestal addressing workers in October 1917, came to be the embodiment of all three forms of utopia. At the heart of the Soviet vision there were always those burning eyes gazing intently, and with total confidence, toward the promised land.
Today, the utopian impulse seems almost extinguished. The utopias of desire make little sense in a world overrun by cheap entertainment, unbridled consumerism and narcissistic behavior. The utopias of technology are less impressive than ever now that after Hiroshima and Chernobyl we are fully aware of the destructive potential of technology. Even the internet, perhaps the most recent candidate for technological optimism, turns out to have a number of potentially disastrous consequences, among them a widespread disregard for truth and objectivity, as well as an immense increase in the capacity for surveillance. The utopias of justice seem largely to have been eviscerated by 20th-century totalitarianism. After the Gulag Archipelago, the Khmer Rouges killing fields and the Cultural Revolution, these utopias seem both philosophically and politically dead.
The great irony of all forms of utopianism can hardly escape us. They say one thing, but when we attempt to realize them they seem to imply something entirely different. Their demand for perfection in all things human is often pitched at such a high level that they come across as aggressive and ultimately destructive. Their rejection of the past, and of established practice, is subject to its own logic of brutality.
And not only has the utopian imagination been stung by its own failures, it has also had to face up to the two fundamental dystopias of our time: those of ecological collapse and thermonuclear warfare. The utopian imagination thrives on challenges. Yet these are not challenges but chillingly realistic scenarios of utter destruction and the eventual elimination of the human species. Add to that the profoundly anti-utopian nature of the right-wing movements that have sprung up in the United States and Europe and the prospects for any kind of meaningful utopianism may seem bleak indeed. In matters social and political, we seem doomed if not to cynicism, then at least to a certain coolheadedness.
Anti-utopianism may, as in much recent liberalism, call for controlled, incremental change. The main task of government, Barack Obama ended up saying, is to avoid doing stupid stuff. However, anti-utopianism may also become atavistic and beckon us to return, regardless of any cost, to an idealized past. In such cases, the utopian narrative gets replaced by myth. And while the utopian narrative is universalistic and future-oriented, myth is particularistic and backward-looking. Myths purport to tell the story of us, our origin and of what it is that truly matters for us. Exclusion is part of their nature.
Can utopianism be rescued? Should it be? To many people the answer to both questions is a resounding no.
There are reasons, however, to think that a fully modern society cannot do without a utopian consciousness. To be modern is to be oriented toward the future. It is to be open to change even radical change, when called for. With its willingness to ride roughshod over all established certainties and ways of life, classical utopianism was too grandiose, too rationalist and ultimately too cold. We need the ability to look beyond the present. But we also need Mores insistence on playfulness. Once utopias are embodied in ideologies, they become dangerous and even deadly. So why not think of them as thought experiments? They point us in a certain direction. They may even provide some kind of purpose to our strivings as citizens and political beings.
We also need to be more careful about what it is that might preoccupy our utopian imagination. In my view, only one candidate is today left standing. That candidate is nature and the relation we have to it. Mores island was an earthly paradise of plenty. No amount of human intervention would ever exhaust its resources. We know better. As the climate is rapidly changing and the species extinction rate reaches unprecedented levels, we desperately need to conceive of alternative ways of inhabiting the planet.
Are our industrial, capitalist societies able to make the requisite changes? If not, where should we be headed? This is a utopian question as good as any. It is deep and universalistic. Yet it calls for neither a break with the past nor a headfirst dive into the future. The German thinker Ernst Bloch argued that all utopias ultimately express yearning for a reconciliation with that from which one has been estranged. They tell us how to get back home. A 21st-century utopia of nature would do that. It would remind us that we belong to nature, that we are dependent on it and that further alienation from it will be at our own peril.
Espen Hammer is a professor of philosophy at Temple University and the author of Adornos Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe.
Now in print: The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments, an anthology of essays from The Timess philosophy series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.
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Posted June 27, 2017 06:42:23
The 1955 Australian film Jedda told the story of a young Aboriginal girl separated from her family and raised by a white woman, taught European ways and forbidden to learn her own culture.
Now, the woman who played Jedda hopes to reverse that by teaching young locals about their own culture first and foremost, with plans to develop a new school in the remote Utopia region of the Northern Territory.
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks starred as Jedda, and has signed a memorandum of understanding on behalf of the Alukura Foundation with Sydney's Barker College to establish the Jedda Academy for the Education of Young Girls on the Utopia Homelands.
The region, about 260 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, is one of the country's remotest.
In 2015, Ms Kunoth-Monks was NAIDOC's Person of the Year, as well as the NT's Australian of the Year, and is chairperson of the Alukura Foundation.
She said there was a need in Utopia to strengthen young people's learning by grounding them firmly in their own culture by local educators.
"We signed, we hope, the beginning of really growing two diverse cultures to come together in a way without destroying the other, or without being disengaged from the other," she said.
At the local school in the main Utopia homeland of Arlparra, 206 students are enrolled; Term one attendance was 53 per cent. The school also runs four other homeland learning centres in the region.
Nationally, the latest Closing the Gap report showed in very remote areas, Indigenous school attendance was 66.4 per cent, compared to 91.1 per cent of non-Indigenous students, something the new academy hopes to improve for its students.
Education of Indigenous children "has to get away from the assimilationist approach", Ms Kunoth-Monks said.
"We have a right to retain our identity. In that identity comes your stability, your belongingness and the capacity [for children] to comprehend in their earlier years."
Ms Kunoth-Monks said she felt the mainstream educational system had been pigeonholing Indigenous children and curtailing their abilities, resulting in their disengagement from classroom learning.
"There's many of my people in the Top End of Australia that are also querying that shoving down your throat of a foreign ideal and so forth, that is wrong," Ms Kunoth-Monks said.
"You've got to first of all get that child to accept itself and have confidence in that little body to say, 'This is who I am. Now I want to know further, I want to know what it is in that big wide world'."
Sydney's Barker College has already established an Aboriginal campus on the Central Coast of NSW, called Darkinjung Barker.
Principal Phillip Heath said funding for the Jedda Academy would not be drawn from Barker College tuition fees, but would be sourced privately to begin with, before approaching the Government.
About 30 children of varying ages will be educated at the Jedda Academy "with the intent that we celebrate traditional culture, traditional identity, traditional language, but we support the learning that goes on beyond that so they can contribute to the world that goes outside their community", Mr Heath said.
He said teaching children their own culture first would help boost academic outcomes.
"We've tried so hard for so long; generation after generation we've been discouraged by under-achievement of our First Nations children," he said.
"There's no reason why they shouldn't be doing well academically they're clever, they're committed."
In 2007, Mr Heath started the Gawura Indigenous School at St Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney, which has a 95 per cent attendance rate, most of the school's NAPLAN results are above the national average, and some graduates are now attending university.
He said there needed to be a change in the cultural setting of schooling for Aboriginal students.
"Rather than school happening to you, it happens with you in a culturally informed and gentle way; particularly in this case, where we celebrate the role our young women play in building great culture and a strong community life," Mr Heath said.
"We know from all the evidence right across the world that our young girls, if well-educated, will bring fantastic results to the strength of the local community.
"We want to provide in that setting strong literacy, strong numeracy, high expectations, high attendance, all the things that we yearn to see in this country."
Ms Kunoth-Monks said only some young boys would be educated at the academy alongside girls, because according to local custom, girls and boys are educated separately as they grow into adulthood.
"We want to see the best for our girls here," she said.
"The girls play a large role in that nurturing part, in holding the country, in having that country pattern [painted] on your body and singing it and dancing it and making sure that goes on to the next millennium."
If the school is a success, a second school for local boys will be established, she said.
Mr Heath said establishing the academy was about taking a serious step towards closing the gap.
"If we're serious about reconciliation, we need to go further than just voicing it. We should go further than just acknowledging country or celebrating NAIDOC Week or Reconciliation Week," he said.
"From our point of view, we get access to one of the richest, deepest, oldest, most spiritual and most profound cultures on the planet.
"Who wouldn't want to educate their children in cities with access to that experience?"
If fundraising to establish the school is successful, it could be operational as soon as first term 2018, Mr Heath said.
Topics: education, access-to-education, schools, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, youth, indigenous-culture, alice-springs-0870, sydney-2000, darwin-0800
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Barker College agrees to launch Aboriginal academy for girls in Utopia homelands - ABC Online
Written by Shalini Nair | Updated: June 26, 2017 12:07 am It is alright to overlay the citys infrastructure with technology but, for starters, adequate infrastructure must be in place at a city-wide level. (Representational. Express photo)
In a phantasmagorical rendering of the future of urban space thats increasingly being made sentient through information technology, the Architectural League of New York held an exhibition in 2009 on the Too Smart City. Through smart public benches that respond to the issue of homelessness by toppling those resting on them for too long and smart bins that can squirt out the wrong kind of trash back at the person, architects and artists showed how the Smart City is just a step away from a dystopian nightmare.
While this might be one of the worst-case scenarios, with the Indian Smart City missions tantalising promise to transform 100 cities, perhaps, now is a good time to consider two issues: Whether the path it has chosen to leapfrog to the level of urbanisation in the developed nations entails creation of uneven geographies. And whether Indian cities, lacking in the most basic infrastructure, are ready to be restructured by technology.
In his book Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, urbanist Anthony Townsend defines Smart Cities as places where information technology is combined with infrastructure, architecture, everyday objects, and our own bodies to address social, economic, and environmental problems. A growing cause of worry among Smart City critics in the West has been how big data is a veritable goldmine for data thieves and a surveillance tool for governments and private firms involved. For urban planners, a greater concern is an urbanisation process that accords primacy to technology a field where the private sector has unchallenged monopoly over the basic needs of the city.
The most defining feature of the Smart City mission in India is this: It not only looks at application of technology but also ensures that physical infrastructure of cities, which owing to considerations of social equity, were until now serviced almost entirely by local governments, are redesigned to create space for domestic and international capital. Already the model has thrown up numbers that show that almost 80 per cent of the funds are being channelised to less than three per cent area of the 59 mission cities. These are mostly well-off enclaves that already have decent infrastructure in place and are more likely to yield a dividend for private investors.
Several Smart Cities of the West have been officially conceptualised as living labs, that is, incubators for developing patentable and exportable devices for private firms. The UK Trade & Investment pegs the market for Smart City products and services at more than 900 billion by 2020. India is, no doubt, poised to be one of the largest market for the products developed by technology vendors in these living labs.
The issue is not only the parachuting of consulting firms and vendors for local IT and infrastructure solutions, but that such private partnerships would necessitate a return on investments unconstrained by concerns of social equity or justice. The abolition of octroi, the once largest source of municipal revenue for many cities, has had a debilitating impact on the fiscal sovereignty of urban local bodies. The Smart City mission further bypasses democratic processes by executing projects through Special Purpose Vehicles wherein private corporations can have up to 40 per cent share-holding.
As a corollary, the Union government has made it clear that increased user charges on essential services is the only way forward. Unlike octroi, this hits every citizen irrespective of their income level.
The catchphrase Smart Cities latched on to the Indian imaginary when barely a fortnight after assuming office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spelled out his ambitious plan of creating 100 such cities where the focus shifts from highways to i-ways. It is alright to overlay the citys infrastructure with technology but, for starters, adequate infrastructure must be in place at a city-wide level. Smart Cities might be an inexorable, and even necessary, step in the process of urbanisation but gentrification doesnt have to be the default route.
Official data shows that merely half of the urban households have water connections, a third have no toilets, the national average for sewage network coverage is a low 12 per cent, and on an average only about 10 per cent of the municipal solid waste is segregated. Public transportation and public schools and hospitals are woefully disproportionate to the population densities within cities.
Unless this urban entropy is addressed first, an overbearing emphasis on application of digital technology or developing smaller areas in an attempt at instant urbanism can have disastrous socio-spatial consequences.
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Tobias Jones and his family in their Somerset woodland home. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer
As any relay-racer knows, the moment of passing on the baton is a nervous time: you dont want to lose momentum, but neither do you want to rush and fumble. Eight years after founding Windsor Hill Wood, our residential sanctuary for people in a period of crisis in their lives, were at that stage. Were moving back to Italy and a new family is taking over the running of the woodland.
Its a strange feeling, handing over everything for which you have sweated for almost a decade: the flock of sheep, the newly-hatched chicks, the beehives, the eccentric outbuildings, the mature trees and young saplings, the polytunnel, pond and chapel, a wonderful workshop and all our hand-made furniture.
There are, hopefully, many more intangibles that were passing on: great relationships, abundant goodwill, a settled rhythm, a decent reputation, a degree of wisdom about communal living, spiritual stability and so on. So although were ecstatic that a courageous and experienced couple are taking it on, and will continue to share the abundant fruits of nature with the marginalised and mentally ill, its a real wrench to go.
Ironically, the main reason to leave is one of the reasons we started WHW in the first place: the children. When we lived in other communities for my book Utopian Dreams, we met many kids who had grown up in compassionate, open-door spaces. Those children had spent their childhoods surrounded by rough diamonds and smooth talkers, and appeared to us both streetwise and gentle, both canny and caring. We hoped for our children to grow up like that, and one of the great results of WHW is that our three kids are, I hope, very open-minded and open-hearted.
But, after the meadows and mud of Somerset, our girls yearn for their mothers chic Italian city as much as their mother yearns for them to speak, and feel, Italian. Theyre also entering an age in which its possibly not right for them to be surrounded by some of the slightly manipulative teenagers referred to WHW by rehabs and psychiatric units. As for little Leo, he just reckons that living in a country that has won the World Cup four times will be beneficial to his footballing career.
There are also career decisions on my side. For the last eight years I feel as if Ive done something of a Cat Stevens, renouncing art for faith and very often putting career on hold for communalism. On the occasions I have written about Italy, Ive felt something of a fraud writing about it from the depths of the English countryside. Now, having been commissioned to write two nonfiction books about Italy, it would be absurd not to live there.
But as well as pulls to Italy, there are pushes from WHW. Sharing your home, your life, and all your meals with half-a-dozen troubled people is exhilarating but also exhausting. Over the years, one begins to suffer from mild compassion fatigue. Its not the big things theft of petty cash or the occasional, spectacular relapse that get to you, but the tiny, constant ones: the hourly holding of the boundaries, the incessant site maintenance, the daily listening to deep woes. Even the profoundest people-person begins to feel slightly sociophobic when living in what sometimes feels like an ever-available village hall. Personally, Im still far more exhilarated than exhausted, but I can feel the balance shifting and want to entrust it to others while I still have that enthusiasm and energy.
For all the frustrations of forestry and farming, they are meditative and constantly gratifying
Were aware, of course, of the many things we will miss, most of all, of course, a sense of purpose. Well miss, too, a sense of wonder at all the arrivals: the randomness of, but also the perceptible pattern to, the stream of visitors. Theres never a dull day when strangers are constantly rolling up, bringing blessings and issues, but over the years you become sensitive to the mystery of their coming. Sometimes they themselves dont even know why theyve come, or how they heard of the place. But time and time again, when weve urgently needed a forester or a seamstress, a benefactor or a car mechanic, they have punctually shown up. Its mysterious, miraculous even, and reassures you that there is a generosity to fate (or providence) the wider you open your doors.
Well miss being able to meet almost all our energy needs with our own hands, coppicing, splitting and stacking logs. I feel melancholic at the idea that Ill no longer hear the shrieks of laughter as our children play in the clearings with guests, inventing games and showing each other how to both regress and mature. Play, after all, has always been one of the greatest therapies here. Well miss sitting in silence at dawn in our tiny chapel with its straw bales, and will definitely struggle with having to cook more than once a week. The lack of integration with nature will be felt keenly: for all the frustrations of forestry and farming, they are meditative and constantly gratifying. At the end of the day, once the kids are finally in bed, the ability to saunter in the woodland what the Japanese call Shinrin Yoku (forest bathing) is a balm for the soul.
Just yesterday, in our weekly wellbeing meeting for all the residents, one of our visitors was talking about how she is trying to internalise WHW so that she can take its spirit with her when she leaves. Its something weve spoken about with our guests for years, and now, of course, were having to learn what we want to take with us: a sense of simplicity, certainly, but also a confidence that you can turn your hand to almost anything that you can make a new kitchen table rather than click on Ikea.
It is, for me, about learning patience, living in a time frame which isnt frenetic or instant, but measured in tree time of years and, even, generations. Its about temperance, not just in terms of alcohol, but in terms of temper, being quick to listen and slow to anger. Its about sharing belongings to find that holy grail of modern life belonging. Its about making peace at the same time as learning not to avoid conflict; about being vulnerable but also resilient; about rugged action but also deep stillness.
We are (I hope our successors would agree) very relaxed about the idea that the place will evolve and develop in our absence. And there are certainly many things which could be improved on finances, fundraising, formal procedures, policies and IT to name but a few. But we hope it will always be a place which offers old-fashioned Christian hospitality to the marginalised and displaced; that it will always be centred on the love and informality of family, resisting the constant temptations of institutionalism and bureaucracy; and most of all that it will continue to be inspiring and therefore emulated, not in an identikit way, but bespoke to the situation and circumstances of each place. We, certainly, hope to emulate it in years to come in the Apennines outside Parma.
Tobias Jones is the author of A Place of Refuge. His next book is about the Italian Ultras
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The pleasure and pain of leaving the woodland utopia that taught us so much - The Guardian
Serena Ryder headlines at TD Ottawa Jazz Festival Friday (June 23, 2017) night on the main stage in Confederation Park . Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen
Serena Ryder TD Ottawa Jazz Festival Reviewed Friday
Serena Ryder demonstrated the evolution of her artistry during a thoroughly enjoyable main-stage performance at the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival on Friday.
The singer-songwriter who grew up outside Peterborough not only showed off her star power as a vocalist and bandleader but also reached back to her formative years during a down-to-earth acoustic segment on the Confederation Park stage.
Its so weird to have a set list and a band of rock n roll stars because Im such a small-town little hick, she confessed, just after changing her mind about what song to play. Instead of launching into the solo acoustic segment, she switched guitars and fulfilled a request from the crowd for Mary Go Round, a song inspired by her childhood.
With the acoustic back in her arms, Ryder returned to her original plan, revealing her campfire roots with stripped-down versions of Its No Mistake, All For Love and Weak in the Knees, her breakthrough hit of 10 years ago. In this intimate format, without the band, the depth of her talent was evident, and she was in her element connecting with fans in front of the stage.
But she was just as genuine playing her new material with the big band behind her. Backed by a super-charged lineup that included Brian Kobayakawa on bass, Sekou Lumumba on drums, Joel Joseph on keys, and Joan Smith on electric guitar, as well as backing vocalists Miku Graham and D/Shon, Ryder delivered a funky show that was drenched in R & B. They brought the rhythmic tunes from Ryders brand-new album, Utopia, springing to life, and revitalized some old favourites along the way.
Show highlights included the opener Stompa, the 80s pop-rock feel of Ice Age, the rocking Wolves and the crisp new singles, Got Your Number and Electric Love. Also noteworthy was her turn on keyboards, an instrument she said she kinda plays, plucking out the accompaniment as she applied her most heartfelt wail to Wild and Free, another song from the new album.
Her smile radiating warmth, Ryder looked confident and comfortable on stage, always a good sign for an artist with a new batch of tunes to kick off and a summer filled with tour dates. Shell be back in Ottawa on July 1 to share the Parliament Hill stage with an array of artists, including Alessia Cara, Dean Brody, Walk Off The Earth, Gordon Lightfoot and two members of U2, Bono and the Edge.
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Jazzfest review: Serena Ryder shows her roots, rocks new tunes - Ottawa Citizen
WOODBRIDGE >> People who visit Town Hall, the library, hiking trails or any other townowned property or building should leave their Glocks and other weapons at home from now on, as the town has joined a growing number in creating a municipal firearms law.
The new law in Woodridge bans firearms, air guns, air rifles, crossbows, longbows, archery equipment or other weapons from town-owned buildings and property.
Resident and educator Jean Molot, who worked on the measure along with First Selectwoman Ellen Scalettar, said the law, sends a message that we care about the safety of people in this town.
Scalletar added, I think that gun violence is a major problem for our society and our country This helps make Woodbridge a safer place.
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But second amendment enthusiasts claim the new law in Woodbridge and others like it actually create more of a danger to the public.
Scott Wilson, president of the nearly 28,000-member Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said the local laws are feel good measures to create a false utopia, and actually do the opposite of whats intended by leaving law-biding citizens unarmed in public places where they might need to protect themselves.
This is a bad deal for the citizens of Woodbridge, Wilson said It only emboldens an individual to commit an atrocity.
There is no centralized database for local ordinances related to firearms.
But Attorney Dennis H. Tracey, partner in the New York firm Hogan Lovells, who drafted the law for Woodbridge at no charge, said its not that unusual for municipalities to have general rules prohibiting carrying firearms on town property, although the wording of each is different.
He said municipalities that have similar bans include North Branford, East Haven, Naugatuck, Meriden and Ansonia. Tracey, a selectman in Weston, said he drafted an ordinance similar to the Woodbridge one for his town.
In East Haven, the law appears even more restrictive than the one adopted in Woodbridge, stating, No person shall discharge or set off anywhere within the limits of the town or have in his or her possession for such purpose, any pistol, rifle or gun in which may be used any cartridge, whether blanks or otherwise, except legally licensed hunters It goes on to spell out parameters for those hunters.
In Milford, Mayor Ben Blake said there is a local ban on firearms in parks, beaches and schools, but not town-owned buildings.
Firearms are already banned in schools everywhere in Connecticut, per state law.
In New Haven, there is no local ordinance at all regarding firearms. City spokesman Laurence Grotheer said in an email, According to the citys Office of Corporation Counsel, state law governs the legal possession and discharge of guns in New Haven there are no city ordinances to complement, supersede, or supplant state law
Like Wilson, National Rifle Association spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen maintains gun free zones dont work.
Law-abiding citizens are sitting ducks for criminals who ignore the laws, Mortensen said.
But Michael Lawlor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloys undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, said thats not what the data shows.
Connecticut has some of the countrys toughest gun laws. Everyone needs a permit to carry and to buy a firearm or ammunition in the state and that involves undergoing a background check and six hours of training, Lawlor said.
Lawlor said in the last three years, since state gun laws were tightened in 2013, Connecticut has seen the biggest reduction in reported violent crimes of any state, according to FBI statistics.
We have very tight gun laws. Law-abiding citizens can get a gun, Lawlor said. We have one of the lowest murder and violent crime rates in the country.
Lawlor said it is up to property owners, including homeowners, whether to allow guns on their property and the Woodbridge regulation is reasonable.
He said without a local regulation, a registered gun owner with a permit could be handling a gun only feet from a bunch of kids playing and the police would have no grounds to question him.
The same would be true if a suspicious person with a gun were to enter Town Hall. Now if police see someone with a gun they can ask, What are you doing?, and the person can be charged with trespassing.
Penalty for violation of the local law carries a fine of up to $500, said Woodbridge Police Chief Frank Cappiello, who said hes fully supportive of the revised ordinance. He said it will enhance public safety throughout our community.
While the local law sets a fine of up to $500, anyone violating it could also face stiffer penalties, including jail, Lawlor said, because the state has a law against carrying handguns where prohibited, and a violation is punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to three years, or both, and forfeiture of any handgun found in the violators possession, Lawlor said.
John DeCarlo, associate professor of criminal justice at University of New Haven and a retired police chief, said because we are a federalized Democracy, states cant dispute the constitutional right to own and bear arms in keeping with the Second Amendment, but part of the responsibility of government is to regulate them.
DeCarlo said he recalls as a police chief getting phone calls from residents about a guy in a supermarket with a gun. While unnerving, he said, without that supermarket having a rule posted against such carry, it was legal.
Asked whether Woodbridges new law could prevent a mass shooting, DeCarlo said, Maybe it will.
DeCarlo said in the case of Woodbridges new law, I think this is more of a political statement or consensus by political leaders rather than a reaction to a threat Its based on ideology.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said communities like Woodbridge should be commended for taking sensible, basic measures to protect residents, but that local laws are no replacement for federal action the spread of lethal and illegal guns respects no state or local borders.
It is time for Congress to listen to the will of the American people and approve common sense gun safety legislation, approve universal background checks, tougher penalties against gun trafficking, limits on military-style ammunition and other sensible measures, Blumenthal said.
Scalettar said the idea of revisiting and revising the towns firearms ordinance arose in recent years after it was brought to her attention that a section of the law that was not in compliance with state law.
Woodbridges original ordinance had prohibited discharging a weapon within 500 yards of a dwelling, but state law requires that be 500 feet. That has been changed.
Scalettar said revising the local law had been put on the back burner, but was brought to the forefront after she was contacted by Molot, an educator at Beecher Road School and mother who had always been for tighter gun control. It went into high gear with her advocacy after the Newtown shootings.
As a mother, as a teacher, I was extremely affected by Newtown, Molot said.
In addition to changing the footage cited in the ordinance to comply with state law, they additionally worked on the ban in town buildings and on town property.
I personally feel anytime anyone is carrying a loaded weapon, its the potential for a tragedy, Molot said. None of these laws are going to stop a person intent on shooting people.
Scalletar said tightening the gun law was important to her all along, as she was policy director for Senate Democrats when the shootings took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Twenty first grade students and six adults were killed by a gunman.
A municipality cannot regulate the gun industry like the federal or state government can; we cannot require mental health background checks or prohibit those on the no-fly list from buying guns. What we can do is regulate where those guns are carried and used in our town, Scalettar said.
She and Scalettar met to discuss the topic, and Molot found Tracey who offered to work pro bono. After several meetings, the new law was drafted.
The law was brought to public hearing recently, where it received support of residents and was approved by the Board of Selectmen. There are two exemptions for carrying guns on town-owned property for law enforcement personnel and the other for the lawful transport of weapons on town roads.
Scalettar said the ordinance change is In keeping with what Woodbridge residents expect.
A town-issued press release after approval of the new law said: The Woodbridge Board of Selectmen approved a change to the Towns firearms ordinance on the same day that a member of Congress and four others were shot while at a baseball practice and a year and a day after the countrys deadliest mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub. The release also makes reference to Newtown.
Wilson, the CCDL president, said he disagrees on the reasoning behind the new local law and that gun-free zones make the public vulnerable.
In the case of the Newtown shootings, Wilson said, the outcome might have been different if the principal had a gun when she confronted shooter Adam Lanza.
Mortensen of the NRA said Americans are carrying firearms in record numbers because they know that law enforcement cannot always be there to protect them.
Law-abiding citizens should have the right to exercise their constitutional right to self-protection wherever they maybe, she said.
Molot said shes disappointed and disgruntled with how gun control has been handled at the federal level. She helped in the post-Newtown struggle to try and get federal legislation passed.
But having Woodbridge residents embrace the concept and action made her feel empowered, and it was satisfying to see that happening, Molot said.
Tracey said the municipal firearm restrictions must conform to both Second Amendment and federal and state law requirements and Woodbridges new ordinance clearly does.
He said the firm performs over 80,000 hours per year of pro bono work for thousands of clients and he personally does about 300 hours per year, as is part of the culture of the firm.
As for the Woodbridge case, he said, I am also personally committed to promoting reasonable firearms control.
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Far more people came to Expo 67 than expected, at a time when Canadas entire population was just 20 million, and the islands were more than just a fairground. They were a cosmopolitan pleasure garden, a place to see and be seen. The swankiest Expo denizens were the 1,800 or so pavilion hostesses, kitted out in polyester or lam uniforms and hired for more reasons than just bilingualism. (Montreal is generally known for its attractive women, a male CBC broadcaster intoned in 1967, but this year the situation has become ridiculous.)
Expo 67s subtitle was Man and His World, an English approximation of the title of Saint-Exuprys Terre des Hommes. The place of women at the fair, and the expression of modernity and national ambitions through clothing, is the subject of Fashioning Expo 67, on view at the McCord Museum downtown. Mannequins display Bill Blasss mod uniforms for hostesses at the American pavilion: a white tent dress with a red-white-and-blue head scarf, plus a killer striped raincoat. At the Quebec pavilion, the attendants wore bulbous cloches, while the Brits toted Union Jack handbags; newly independent African nations went for more traditional designs and wax fabrics. Throughout the Expo, hostesses wore pale blue A-line skirts, blazers and pillbox hats. (Over at MAC, the artist Cheryl Sim wears one of these sky-blue uniforms in a contemplative three-screen video, in which she sings a melancholy remix of the Expo theme song Un Jour, Un Jour.)
The futuristic fashions had a counterpart in the Expos architecture, entrusted to young, experimental engineers and backed by budgets unimaginable today. Many made use of industrial materials and modular construction techniques above all, Frei Ottos West German pavilion, whose swooping tensile roofs were reprised at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Expos most lasting architectural project was not a pavilion at all, however, but an experimental housing development. The Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, then just 28, proposed a new mode of living that married urban density and suburban spaciousness, in the form of concrete cubes stacked like building blocks. Habitat 67 was initially imagined as a self-contained community, similar to the superblocks of Braslia, which could be endlessly repeated. It became upper-middle-class condos, and when I walked past Habitat this week, residents were sunning themselves on the balconies while gardeners buzzed the grass. (Mr. Safdies designs and models are now at the Centre de Design de lUQAM, a university art gallery downtown.)
Many cities have gained an iconic structure from their days hosting the world: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Space Needle in Seattle, the Atomium in Brussels. Montreals legacy, along with Habitat, is a massive geodesic dome on le-Sainte-Hlne, designed by Buckminster Fuller, which served as the American pavilion in 1967. Inside were paintings by Warhol, memorabilia from Elvis and Hollywood, and space capsules from the Apollo and Gemini programs, but it was Fullers pavilion itself, pierced in two spots by a monorail track, that enthralled fairgoers most.
At MAC, the Canadian artist Charles Stankievech has assembled a bulging archive of materials that limn the contradictory aims of Fullers dome, as indebted to American military ambitions as to Spaceship Earth environmentalism. But I decided to head out to the island, where Fullers dome gleams beneath the sun. The acrylic panels went up in flames in 1976, and the dome sat vacant for years. Its since been rechristened the Biosphre, and the museum inside hosts exhibitions on the natural world and climate change though, for the summer, a temporary exhibition, Echo 67, includes testimonials from Expo visitors and a small display on environmental impact.
As the clouds went by, and the maple leaf flag fluttered beneath Fullers awing, column-free expanse, I found myself overcome with a feeling I dont often confront when I look at the art of the recent past. That feeling was envy an envy of the certainty in cultural and social advancement felt by the millions who passed across this island, and an envy shared, I think, by many of the artists in MACs exhibition. Its one thing to identify the gaps in Expo 67s narrative, to call out its sexism and nationalism. Harder, and more urgent, is to admit why artists are still infatuated with past visions of the future that didnt come true. We would give anything to believe in progress again.
In Search of Expo 67 Through Oct. 9, Muse dArt Contemporain de Montral, macm.org.
Fashioning Expo 67 Through Oct. 1, McCord Museum, musee-mccord.qc.ca.
Echo 67 Through Dec. 17, Biosphre, ec.gc.ca/biosphere.
Expo 67 A World of Dreams Through Oct. 8, Stewart Museum, stewart-museum.org.
Habitat 67: The Shape of Things to Come Through Aug. 13, Centre de Design de lUQAM, centrededesign.com.
A version of this article appears in print on June 23, 2017, on Page C13 of the New York edition with the headline: Utopia: The Reboot.
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A new addition to Pennsylvanias craft beer market is Modern Times Beer: A sunny, southern California native thats definitely hip to the craft groove.
Named after a utopian-minded community that once thrived on Long Island, New York, Modern Times is effectively snuggling its way into the Keystone States polyamorous arms with no gimmick needed.
Once a safe haven for progressives whose main desire was largely to break away from the rat race and slow down on their own terms, thank you very much, Modern Times residents were focused on social and gender equality. Unfortunately, there were outsiders who didnt understand the mentality of communal living, cohabitation and free love; others sought to take advantage of the communitys freedoms and bend it to their own sordid wills.
Modern Times was destined to have an expiration date.
Similar to its nearly utopian namesake, Modern Times Beer is unafraid to stretch conventional boundaries. Youll likely be pleasantly surprised with many of its offerings, which you now will find in many of your favorite local watering holes.
Most of its beers are named after other utopian communities, and discovering their stories is at least half the fun of drinking the beer, which is in itself an exercise in sensory pleasure.
Orderville, Utah, was an offshoot community of the Latter-day Saints; it had its beginning after Brigham Young proclaimed that his devotees form what he called united orders, or communities of like-minded believers.
Orderville the beer pours a light orange that grows in deeper intensity toward the bottom of the glass when held to the light. There are lazy particulates floating in the hazy body, and its all topped with an off-white head.
In aroma, a mingling of pine and resin blends with guava, passion fruit and pineapple. The flavor follows the nose, with loads of sticky pine and soft, juicy fruit. There is pineapple, mandarin orange and passion fruit, but plenty of bitter, dank earthiness to keep it from being a one-dimensional beer.
I loved the fine balance between juiciness and bitterness, like a tropical explosion in Pacific Northwest woods; this is supremely crushable.
Point Loma, a community within San Diego proper, was once the base of a utopian society formally named the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, founded by Katherine Tingley.
The people here placed a strong emphasis on humanitarian efforts and raised their children in an environment away from parents, with a school system called Raja Yoga.
Lomaland the beer is the color of pale honey with an incredibly thin, off-white head.
Its aroma swells with spicy pepper, soft wheat, dry grass, apples and flowers. There are loads of floral notes, earthy funk and pepper in flavor. The play between gentle mouthfeel and high carbonation is sheer joy, and it finishes somewhat dry and crisp with promises of sunshine.
A few years ago, my husband gave me a bag of coffee that was barrel-aged. The complexity and depth of personality and flavor were memorable.
Modern Times is doing the same thing: Instead of creating a barrel-aged beer, its creating beer brewed with barrel-aged coffee.
The result is nothing less than singular and spectacular.
City of the Dead pours a pitch-black abyss from the glass and is topped with a tan head.
Heavy notes of roasted black coffee, molasses, caramel and dark, bitter chocolate reign in the nose. The flavor mirrors that, with boldly roasted yet smooth coffee thats full of a bourbon shine but with no alcohol heat. This beer is mellow and deep with light carbonation. On the tongue, youll likely find chocolate, tart cherries and sweet, creamy coffee.
Try these and other Modern Times selections soon, although I get the feeling that this brewerys life expectancy is much longer than your average utopian society.
Contact Amber DeGrace with questions and comments at adegrace@lnpnews.com and find her on Twitter at @amberdegrace.
Originally posted here:
Get with the Modern Times and try some beer straight from utopia - LancasterOnline
Forgive me for complaining, but recent decades have not been easy ones for my peeps. I am from birth a member of the WHAM tribe, that once proud, but now embattled conglomeration of white, heterosexual American males. We have long beentheres no denying ita privileged group. When the blessings of American freedom get parceled out, WHAMs are accustomed to standing at the head of the line. Those not enjoying the trifecta of being white, heterosexual, and male get whats left.
Fair? No, but from time immemorial those have been the rules. Anyway, no real American would carp. After all, the whole idea of America derives from the conviction that some people (us) deserve more than others (all those who are not us). Its Gods willso at least the great majority of Americans have believed since the Pilgrims set up shop just about 400 years ago.
Lately, however, the rules have been changing in ways that many WHAMs find disconcerting. True, some of my brethrenlets call them 1 percentershave adapted to those changes and continue to do very well indeed. Wherever corporate CEOs, hedge-fund managers, investment bankers, tech gurus, university presidents, publishers, politicians, and generals congregate to pat each other on the back, you can count on WHAMsreciting bromides about the importance of diversity!being amply represented.
Yet beneath this upper crust, a different picture emerges. Further down the socioeconomic ladder, being a WHAM carries with it disadvantages. The good, steady jobs once implicitly reserved for uslunch-pail stuff, yes, but enough to keep food in the family larderare increasingly hard to come by. As those jobs have disappeared, so too have the ancillary benefits they conferred, self-respect not least among them. Especially galling to some WHAMs is being exiled to the back of the cultural bus. When it comes to art, music, literature, and fashion, the doings of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, gays, and women generate buzz. By comparison, white heterosexual males seem bland, uncool, and pass, or, worst of all, simply boring.
The Mandate of Heaven, which members of my tribe once took as theirs by right, has been cruelly withdrawn. History itself has betrayed us.
All of which is nonsense, of course, except perhaps as a reason to reflect on whether history can help explain why, today, WHAMs have worked themselves into such a funk in Donald Trumps America. Can history provide answers? Or has history itself become part of the problem?
For all practical purposes history is, for us and for the time being, what we know it to be. So remarked Carl Becker in 1931 at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Professor Becker, a towering figure among historians of his day, was president of the AHA that year. His message to his colleagues amounted to a warning of sorts: Dont think youre so smart. The study of the past may reveal truths, he allowed, but those truths are contingent, incomplete, and valid only for the time being.
Put another way, historical perspectives conceived in what Becker termed the specious present have a sell-by date. Beyond their time, they become stale and outmoded, and so should be revised or discarded. This process of rejecting truths previously treated as authoritative is inexorable and essential. Yet it also tends to be fiercely contentious. The present may be specious, but it confers real privileges, which a particular reading of the past can sustain or undermine. Becker believed it inevitable that our now valid versions of history will in due course be relegated to the category of discarded myths. It was no less inevitable that beneficiaries of the prevailing version of truth should fight to preserve it.
Who exercises the authority to relegate? Who gets to decide when a historical truth no longer qualifies as true? Here, Becker insisted that Mr. Everyman plays a crucial role. For Becker, Mr. Everyman was Joe Doakes, John Q. Public, or the man in the street. He was every normal person, a phrase broad enough to include all manner of people. Yet nothing in Beckers presentation suggested that he had the slightest interest in race, sexuality, or gender. His Mr. Everyman belonged to the tribe of WHAM.
In order to live in a world of semblance more spacious and satisfying than is to be found within the narrow confines of the fleeting present moment, Becker emphasized, Mr. Everyman needs a past larger than his own individual past. An awareness of things said and done long ago provides him with an artificial extension of memory and a direction.
Memories, whether directly or vicariously acquired, are necessary to orient us in our little world of endeavor. Yet the specious present that we inhabit is inherently unstable and constantly in flux, which means that history itself must be pliable. Crafting history necessarily becomes an exercise in imaginative creation in which all participate. However unconsciously, Everyman adapts the past to serve his most pressing needs, thereby functioning as his own historian.
Yet he does so in collaboration with others. Since time immemorial, purveyors of the pastthe ancient and honorable company of wise men of the tribe, of bards and story-tellers and minstrels, of soothsayers and priests, to whom in successive ages has been entrusted the keeping of the useful mythshave enabled him to hold in memorythose things only which can be related with some reasonable degree of relevance to his own experience and aspirations. In Beckers lifetime it had become incumbent upon members of the professoriate, successors to the bards and minstrels of yesteryear, to enlarge and enrich the specious present common to us all to the end that society (the tribe, the nation, or all mankind) may judge of what it is doing in the light of what it has done and what it hopes to do.
Yet Becker took pains to emphasize that professional historians disdained Mr. Everyman at their peril:
Berate him as we will for not reading our books, Mr. Everyman is stronger than we are, and sooner or later we must adapt our knowledge to his necessities. Otherwise he will leave us to our own devices. The history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history, is living history. It is for this reason that the history of history is a record of the new history that in every age rises to confound and supplant the old.
Becker stressed that the process of formulating new history to supplant the old is organic rather than contrived; it comes from the bottom up, not the top down. We, historians by profession, share in this necessary effort, he concluded. But we do not impose our version of the human story on Mr. Everyman; in the end it is rather Mr. Everyman who imposes his version on us.
Becker offered his reflections on Everyman His Own Historian in the midst of the Great Depression. Perhaps because that economic crisis found so many Americans burdened with deprivation and uncertainty, he implicitly attributed to his Everyman a unitary perspective, as if shared distress imbued members of the public with a common outlook. That was not, in fact, the case in 1931 and is, if anything, even less so in our own day.
Still, Beckers construct retains considerable utility. Today finds more than a few white heterosexual American males, our own equivalent of Mr. Everyman, in a state of high dudgeon. From their perspective, the specious present has not panned out as it was supposed to. As a consequence, they are pissed. In November 2016, to make clear just how pissed they were, they elected Donald Trump as president of the United States.
This was, to put it mildly, not supposed to happen. For months prior to the election, the custodians of the past in its now valid version had judged the prospect all but inconceivable. Yet WHAMs (with shocking support from other tribes) intervened to decide otherwise. Rarely has a single event so thoroughly confounded historys self-assigned proctors. One can imagine the shade of Professor Becker whispering, I warned you, didnt I?
Those deeply invested in drawing a straight line from the specious present into the indefinite future blame Trump himself for having knocked history off its prescribed course. Remove Trump from the scene, they appear to believe, and all will once again be well. The urgent imperative of doing just thatimmediately, now, no later than this afternoonhas produced what New York Times columnist Charles Blow aptly calls a throbbing anxiety among those who (like Blow himself) find the relentless onslaught of awfulness erupting from this White House intolerable. They will not rest until Trump is gone.
This ide fixe, reinforced on a daily basis by ever-more-preposterous presidential antics, finds the nation trapped in a sort of bizarre do-loop. The medias obsession with Trump reinforces his obsession with the media, and between them they simply crowd out all possibility of thoughtful reflection. Their fetish is his and his theirs. The result is a cycle of mutual contempt that only deepens the longer it persists.
Both sides agree on one point only: that history began anew last November 8, when (take your pick) America either took leave of its senses or chose greatness. How the United States got to November 8 qualifies, at best, as an afterthought or curiosity. Its almost as if the years and decades that had preceded Trumps election had all disappeared into some vast sinkhole.
Where, then, are we to turn for counsel? For my money, Charles Blow is no more reliable as a guide to the past or the future than is Donald Trump himself. Much the same could be said of most other newspaper columnists, talking heads, and online commentators (contributors to TomDispatch notably excepted, of course). As for politicians of either party, they have as a class long since forfeited any right to expect a respectful hearing.
God knows Americans today do not lack for information or opinion. On screens, over the airways, and in print, the voices competing for our attention create a relentless cacophony. Yet the correlation between insight and noise is discouragingly low.
What would Carl Becker make of our predicament? He would, I think, see it as an opportunity to enlarge and enrich the specious present by recasting and reinvigorating history. Yet doing so, he would insist, requires taking seriously the complaints that led our latter-day Everyman to throw himself into the arms of Donald Trump in the first place. Doing that implies a willingness to engage with ordinary Americans on a respectful basis.
Unlike President Trump, I do not pretend to speak for Everyman or for his female counterpart. Yet my sense is that many Americans have an inkling that history of late has played them for suckers. This is notably true with respect to the postCold War era, in which the glories of openness, diversity, and neoliberal economics, of advanced technology and unparalleled US military power all promised in combination to produce something like a new utopia in which Americans would indisputably enjoy a privileged status globally.
In almost every respect, those expectations remain painfully unfulfilled. The history that served for the time being and was endlessly reiterated during the presidencies of Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama no longer serves. It has yielded a mess of pottage: grotesque inequality, worrisome insecurity, moral confusion, an epidemic of self-destructive behavior, endless wars, and basic institutions that work poorly if at all. Nor is it just WHAMs who have suffered the consequences. The history with which Americans are familiar cannot explain this outcome.
Alas, little reason exists to expect Beckers successors in the guild of professional historians to join with ordinary Americans in formulating an explanation. Few academic historians today see Everyman as a worthy interlocutor. Rather than berating him for not reading their books, they ignore him. Their preference is to address one another.
By and large, he returns the favor, endorsing the self-marginalization of the contemporary historical profession. Contrast the influence wielded by prominent historians in Beckers dayduring the first third of the 20th century, they included, along with Becker, such formidables as Henry Adams, Charles and Mary Beard, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Frederick Jackson Turnerwith the role played by historians today. The issue here is not erudition, which todays scholars possess in abundance, but impact. On that score, the disparity between then and now is immense.
In effect, professional historians have ceded the field to a new group of bards and minstrels. So the bestselling historian in the United States today is Bill OReilly, whose books routinely sell more than a million copies each. Were Donald Trump given to reading books, he would likely find OReillys both accessible and agreeable. But OReilly is in the entertainment business. He has neither any interest nor the genuine ability to create what Becker called history that does work in the world.
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Still, history itself works in mysterious ways known only to God or to Providence. Only after the fact do its purposes become evident. It may yet surprise us.
Owing his election in large part to my fellow WHAMs, Donald Trump is now expected to repay that support by putting things right. Yet as events make it apparent that Trump is no more able to run a government than Bill OReilly is able to write history, they may well decide that he is not their friend after all. With that, their patience is likely to run short. It is hardly implausible that Trumps assigned role in history will be once and for all to ring down the curtain on our specious present, demonstrating definitively just how bankrupt all the triumphalist hokum of the past quarter-centurythe history that served for the time beinghas become.
When that happens, when promises of American greatness restored prove empty, there will be hell to pay. Joe Doakes, John Q. Public, and the man in the street will be even more pissed. Should that moment arrive, historians would do well to listen seriously to what Everyman has to say.
See the original post here:
Bill O'Reilly Is America's Best-Selling Historian | The Nation - The Nation.
The brief technical malfunction occurred during her exuberant set on Glastonbury's Other Stage
Part of the joy of Glastonbury is the sense that anything can happen. Even the best-laid plans can crumble when exposed to the elements and the underlying anarchy of this sprawling temporary utopia in the Somerset fields.
Which is a lesson Charli XCX learned today while playing in the early afternoon on the Other Stage. As I Love It, the massive hit she wrote for Icona Pop, kicked in, two huge silver wind-sock men were supposed to launch either side of her. Instead, the one to her right inflated while the other got himself into something of a tangle. Her left-hand dancing man was as out of time as Katy Perrys infamous left shark, but was soon let loose by a fleet-footed stage hand.
The moment added a touch of Spinal Tap to a set that was already seamlessly mixing pop power, on tracks like Babygirl with the woozy rap attitude of songs like the MIA-esque Vroom Vroom.
Charlis musical diversity was reflected in her diverse audience. Even for Glastonbury, hers was a particularly mixed crowd, with actual children mingling with club kids, hipsters, gay couples and older fans too, with or without their offspring in tow.
Glastonbury clearly loves Charli XCX, and the feeling is more than mutual. After Fancy, Charli announced: Glastonbury I love you guys. Whos getting fucked up tonight? Me too. See you in Shangri La!
She performed surrounded by 8ft high pink flowers, and the set was punctuated by explosions of pink streamers and confetti. Even as she walked offstage with a final: Thank you so much Glastonbury. I love you guys. Peace, the pink streamers remained hooked in the mouth of the huge metal fish-lipped buffalo head atop the Other Stage. It was a visual metaphor for something her crowd saw firsthand: Charli XCX has left her mark on Glastonbury 2017.
Read the original post:
Is Charli XCX's left wind-sock guy the new left shark? - NME.com (blog)
Press Release
While many wrongly believe reaching out for support is a weakness, Utopia Creations, a leading provider of sales and marketing solutions, believes it is the key to long-term success
Based in Leeds, Utopia Creations creates personalised marketing campaigns for their clients which they implement in specially selected areas across the UK.
About Utopia Creations: http://www.weareutopia.co.uk/about-us/
Using in-person communication and engaging presentations the firms collective of sales and marketing representatives are experts at securing trust with consumers and providing a unique experience which gets to the heart of consumer need. This drives their clients brand loyalty, brand awareness and customer acquisition, making Utopia Creations a highly sought after outsourced solution.
Throughout their continuing work with aspiring young entrepreneurs in the industry, Utopia Creations has recognised a common misconception that entrepreneurship is a lone journey and that asking for help and support is seen as a sign of weakness. Utopia Creations, on the contrary, are adamant that success is a collaborative process and that every entrepreneur that has found success has done so through possessing the strength and confidence to reach out to people who they can learn from.
The firm believes that creating a support network of expertise allows aspiring professionals to access knowledge and expertise that cannot be gained anywhere else. It opens a source of real world business experiences that can help people to navigate their own journeys more effectively and help them to respond to challenges in a balanced and professional way. Creating a network of support is also integral to launching new ideas and innovation, offering a sounding board to bounce ideas off of and gain new perspectives on how to approach all areas of business.
Utopia Creations is confident that when it comes to building a professional network, no other industry does it better than sales and marketing. While competitive, the sales and marketing industry has one of the best global networks of support. Outlined Utopia Creations. Entrepreneurs understand that for the sector to thrive, we need to work together to develop the next generation and share our ideas and expertise. With a plethora of events held across the UK and beyond every year, we firmly believe that for young people looking to break through as entrepreneurs, there really is no better environment for learning and creating lifelong connections with other ambitious individuals.
To find out more about Utopia Creations, follow them on Twitter @UtopiaCreation_ and find them on Facebook.
See the rest here:
Utopia Creations outline why all great entrepreneurs need a support network - Journalism.co.uk
On Hong Kong Island most visitors will gravitate towards the cluster of international clubs in Shuang Wan, Central and its frenetic nightlife hub, Lan Kwai Fong. Another large cluster of island venues is located between Wanchai and Causeway Bay, discreetly hidden away in commercial buildings.
Over in colorful Kowloon, which has a dense collection of easy-to-access gay clubs along the MTR corridor, crowds throng through neon-lit high-rise canyons, going to/from shopping, eating or partying at innumerable entertainment venues from Tsim Sha Tsui up to Prince Edward. If you are looking for a bit of old Hong Kong, take a taxi to Kowloon City where traditional shops and restaurants are still managing (barely) to fend off encroaching redevelopment.
Hong Kongs population is nearing 8 million (thats over 300,000 Utopians).
Navigating the local gay scene is easy with our interactive Utopia Map of Gay & Lesbian Hong Kong:
Fruits in Suits (FinS) is an informal, gay professional networking event on each 3rd Tue of every month. Like-minded people mostly professional expats (but they welcome all local professionals to join in) come together in an exclusive private area for food, drinks and to chat, socialise with new people, network and promote LGBT rights in the territory. Add your review, comment, or correction
Founded by Filipino and Hong Kong GLBT, this club hosts meetings of the their GLBT Society and the 1000 strong Hong Kong Labour Party. They offer free legal advice and support service through sympathetic lawyers in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Utopia Member Benefit: DISCOUNTS on facility private hire, FREE legal advice, FREE meeting venue for GLBT societies. Add your review, comment, or correction
Pink Alliance aims to link LGBT organizations operating in Hong Kong, to assist them in their work and to provide a network for information in both Chinese and English. Pink Alliance also researches and campaigns on issues of key importance, as well as organising events to promote awareness of LGBT issues. Monthly meetings. Add your review, comment, or correction
Hong Kongs first gay social services center. The government funded center provides counseling, training workshops and a hotline to provide peer support for gay men. Closed Tue and public holidays. Add your review, comment, or correction
Gay and lesbian activities, support and services. Has the only face-to-face free counseling service for Gay people. Chinese only. Add your review, comment, or correction
A Hongkong-based non profit-making, non-governmental organization, established on 1st July 2003. They defend the human rights of sexuality minorities facing discrimination due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. WCHK effects this mission through advocacy, documentation, public education, oral history, cultural development, AIDS education on WSW (women having sex with women) and hosting monthly gatherings for lesbian, bisexual women and transgenders. Add your review, comment, or correction
Gay bookshop with large selection of local and imported books, magazines and videos to choose from as well as pride gifts. Add your review, comment, or correction
Gay-owned Koru Contemporary Art, specializing in modern sculpture, was established in 2001 to present a diverse range of contemporary international artists. A large selection of art featuring wood, bronze, stone, metal, glass, ceramic and mixed media sculpture, fine art, painting, prints and photography, may be found in their two gallery spaces, with a combined exhibition area of over 7,500sqf. Utopia Member Benefit: 5% DISCOUNT on art. Add your review, comment, or correction
Mainly gay, esp. weekends. Take a bus to Repulse Bay and then a ten minute walk, past the Welcome supermarket, to South Bay. The gay area is in front of the 40-story Ruby Court Bld. Some cruising around. Swimming possible. Bring insect repellent. UTOPIAN VERIFIED JUN 2014 Add your review, comment, or correction
This area seems to concentrate more gay-only men. Some nude sun-bathing (illegal) and action in the bushes (also illegal). Approach from South Bay Road. Steep path on the right-hand (sea side). Middle Bay is now so well-known that it is dangerous. For safetys sake it is better to make the 1-hour trip to Lantau Island and walk to the rather remote Cheung Sha Beach. UTOPIAN VERIFIED JUN 2014 Add your review, comment, or correction
MTR: TST or Jordan. Several cruisy facilities and lots of garden pathways. Most action takes place after 11pm. The park closes at midnight, but you can always leave (and enter) through the gate at Austin Rd (all other gates are closed after midnight). So dont panic when you are late and think you are locked up in the park. Mostly Asian guys under 40 years old. Add your review, comment, or correction
HONG KONG ISLAND Central, Lan Kwai Fong
Round-the-clock gay-friendly eatery with handsome staff. Popular for breakfast on Sun morning for those who have danced-til-dawn the night before. Add your review, comment, or correction
On any given Fri or Sat night after midnight, this Chinese fast food place (fried rice, fried noodles) is about 70% gay. When the clock hits 2am, the percentage rises up to 90%. Coming to Tsui Wah has become something of a ritual for late night partiers. Fish ball noodles are the signature dish here, and they also have simple sandwiches (i.e. two slices of white bread with luncheon meat and egg), steak, and acquired tastes such as stir-fried spaghetti! Add your review, comment, or correction
Large, bustling local eatery popular with groups of gays because of its inexpensive food and location close to the bars. Add your review, comment, or correction
KOWLOON Jordan, Mongkok, Tsim Sha Tsui, Yau Ma Tei
Foodie Alert! This tiny hole-in-the-wall has a disproportionate amount of international fame after recommendations by Newsweek, Time Out and celebrity chefs. Excellent dim sum at a reasonable price. Their dessert specialty is a succulent poached pear, so leave room. Sister branches in Jordan, Wanchai and TST. Add your review, comment, or correction
KOWLOON Tsim Sha Tsui, Yau Ma Tei
Located in east Kowloon, well off the tourist track (and overlooked by most locals), this quaint neighborhood stretch of eateries is certainly destined to be torn down and rebuilt into something gleaming, clean and modern. Too bad. Catch this slice-of-life from Kowloons past for cheap eats and loads of character while you still can. Add your review, comment, or correction
Pronounced dai gor, meaning big brother). A gay-owned, online menswear store aimed at the gay male market and at guys who like their t-shirts nicely fitted. Daigo is inspired by the beautiful and fashionable bros in Asia. They aim to provide great customer satisfaction by offering high quality and unique t-shirt designs that will be part of gay Asia and the gay community as a whole. Add your review, comment, or correction
Above Bohemian shop (take the stairway in the alley to the mezzanine floor). Gay mens undergear and clothing shop offers exclusive premium brand underwear, tanks, swimwear, shirts, and more including Andrew Christian (USA), 2EROS (Australia), Addicted (Spain) and NEWURBANMALE (Singapore). Utopia Member Benefit: 10% DISCOUNT. Add your review, comment, or correction
Look for the stairway entry marked #83 and 85, next to Express Korea Fast Food and walk up to 1/F. Gay-owned shop offering sexy branded undergear, toys, SM equipment, magazines, pride gifts and other rainbow merchandise. Open 5-9pm Mon-Sat (closed Sun). Utopia Member Benefit: 10% DISCOUNT. Add your review, comment, or correction
Gay-owned tanning studio established in 2004. They offer state-of-the-art tanning and collagenic equipment from Dr Muller, Germany. Tanning Studio was a sponsor of the Mr. Asia contest (2011, 2012, 2013). Utopia Member Benefit: 10% DISCOUNT on all tanning packages and lotions. Add your review, comment, or correction
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Travel & Resources: HONG KONG Gay Asia and Utopia
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Serena Ryder, shown here performing at the 2013 Juno Awards in Regina, will be back in the Queen City on June 25 at the Conexus Arts Centre. CARAS photo / iPhoto
Canadian songstress Serena Ryder just released her sixth album, Utopia, a fresh and funky follow-up to her gold-selling, Juno-winning release, Harmony. Punchy new songs like Got Your Number and Electric Love reflect her rekindled passion for rhythm, she tells Postmedias Lynn Saxberg, while a quick recording job meant she never lost sight of the groove. Heres more from the interview with Ryder, who performs at the Conexus Arts Centre on June 25.
Q: Its been five years since your last record. Whats been happening?
A: Well, it was five years but I toured it for three years so really its only been two years for me. And then just a lot of writing. I was living in L.A. for a couple of years, and writing so much. I just started doing it for fun because I love it. I wanted to write for other people, try other things. I was not even thinking about a record because I just finished my album cycle. It was super cool, way less pressure. Not like, This song is going to be on the radio, it has to mean something for you and you have to sing it over and over again.
Q: But then you ended up keeping the songs for yourself anyway?
A: I fell in love with a lot of the songs I was writing because they were from a personal place. I always write from a very personal spot. And I started playing the drums and writing songs on the drums in my apartment. I wrote almost 100 songs.
Q: Plus you did some touring. Were you road-testing songs?
A: I went to the U.K. and worked with a few people there, and did some writing and touring in Australia. But the songs didnt change. Whats been happening with me is Ill write a song and record it in the same day, in, like, a few hours, and thats what goes on the record.
Q: Wow, thats different.
A: Its so different now from what it used to be like for me, when youd write a song and then hire a studio band to go in and get a bunch of different takes of it. For me, the energy of right when youre finished writing is so exciting and to be able to record it, its like being in the moment. It used to be such a long waiting process. It was almost like the life in it was gone for me because it was so processed.
Q: That must be why the music feels so fresh and immediate.
A: I think so. We didnt go over and over and over with the different versions.
Q: The songs also have a lot of rhythm, and you mentioned writing on drums. Is that new for you?
A: Yeah, all the rest of my stuff has been based on guitar parts. Ive dabbled on the drums for a while. I wouldnt say Im a drummer but the rhythm is what makes me excited to write a song so a lot of the sessions would start with a beat, and a rhythmic kind of vibe. When I get excited about the beat, thats when I start playing melodies and guitar parts. I love that pulse that moves. Its the music of your body.
Q: Whats the significance of the title, Utopia?
A: I like to create my future by coming up with mantras for myself. What do I want to repeat to myself? The last record was Harmony, and that was about finding balance in everything. My new record is about finding my dream. Whats my fantasy? What reality do I want to create?
Q: And? Whats your definition of utopia?
A: Right now (on a warm, summery day in downtown Ottawa), mine would definitely be a cottage with an amazing dock, warm water, an ice-cold beer and a bunch of books and magazines and board games.
See the article here:
Serena Ryder has moved on from Harmony to Utopia with new album - Regina Leader-Post