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"...whereas the swimmer merely challenges fate, the diver insults and bullies it."

Happy Summer Olympics! In honor of the swimming and diving portions of the Olympics, we are reading The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool by Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen. Here’s an excerpt that contains a few of van Leeuwen’s observations on what makes a body of water a place for swimming—and what swimming and pools mean on a deeper level:

The pool’s form is straightforward and simple, determined by its main modus usandi—swimming and playing. The pool is the architectural outcome of man’s desire to become one with the element of water, privately and free of danger. A swim in the pool is a complex and curious activity, one that oscillates between joy and fear, between domination and submission, for the swimmer delivers himself with controlled abandonment to the forces of gravity, resulting in sensations of weight- and timelessness.

To secure such a high degree of individuality and control, a privately owned piece of water is a prime requisite, yet where such is not available, segments of natural bodies of water may be isolated and identified by the eloquent paraphernalia of the craft of swimming—springboards and ladders, often attached to rafts. A pond, a lake, a river may be changed into a swimming hole by the simple introduction of a springboard, which transforms any kind of water—natural, sacred, or ceremonial—into athletic water…

Springboards have been introduced into the domain of swimming to enhance feelings of abandonment and weightlessness and as launching pads for the swimmer’s eternal game with death. The swimmer is, as Gaston Bachelard worded it, “un être en vertige. Il meurt à chaque minute.” The embrace of water is an erotic one, yet at the same time its cool fingers presage the immediacy of mortality. Eros and Thanatos occupy the two antithetical components of the complex sensation that we call swimming, with diving as its most radical extension, for whereas the swimmer merely challenges fate, the diver insults and bullies it.

 

In Memory of Chris Marker

We are saddened to learn of the death of Chris Marker, one of French cinema's most influential artists and author of Staring Back and La Jetée (Zone Books), based on his legendary short film of the same name. As a tribute to him, here is a passage from Chris Marker: La Jetée by Janet Harbord (Afterall Books).

In a short piece of writing to accompany the digital release of La Jetée in 2003, Marker gives us a memory, a recollection of his first attempt at making a film. Inspired as a boy by a hand-wound projecting box, a Patheorama, he drew a series of pictures of his cat, glued them together and added captions. As he scrolled the images along, ‘all of a sudden, the cat belonged to the same universe as the characters in Ben Hur or Napoleon. I had gone through the looking glass.’ Cinema is at once more complex and more simple than previously imagined. It may be resourced by a complex array of materials, but it can also be reduced to the simple movement of frames through a gate. ‘Thirty years passed. Then I made La Jetée,’ he writes, as though this childhood image took its own time of return. Marker’s fondness for composing film from bits and pieces, material gleaned from unassuming aspects of everyday life, can be glimpsed in the intervening period in his documentary projects. Cartoons, drawings, posters, maps, advertisements, poems, archive footage, paintings and engravings are used, pasted in, mixed up and drawn into some sort of narration. In what appears to be a highly idiosyncratic practice, Marker also incorporates various art movements that pre-date him: the political photomontage of the 1930s, Dadaist cut-ups, Surrealist juxtaposition and the Lettriste passion for writing systems.

Going through the looking glass is to enter a place of different scales and where time may run backwards as well as forwards. Yet there is something else here to do with frames. The looking glass is, after all, a mirror, a framing device, and in La Jetée we are given the opportunity of viewing photography through the frame of cinema.

Monday Eye Candy: Spacesuit

Happy Monday! Here's even more space-related content--today's images are from Nicholas de Monchaux's Spacesuit. Click on each image to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin on the surface of the moon,  July 21, 1969. Aldrin is looking down at the systemized list of mission procedures sewn onto the surface of his left sleeve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neil Armstrong shortly after reentering the Lunar Excursion Module Eagle, July 21, 1969.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, standing by the Lunar Rover with the earth above; note that, as for all Apollo moon landing missions, the earth was in its first or last quarter as seen from the moon. Schmitt, a geologist, was the only nonmilitary astronaut to land on the surface of the moon.

"Sally Ride had not needed a role model, but she knew others did."

Betty Ann Holtzmann Kevles, author of Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, discusses Sally Ride and her influence on the role of female astronauts.

 

 

 

 

Before NASA chose Sally Ride as the first American woman to fly into space, they selected six women for the Astronaut class of 1978. They were not alike but each knew that she might be the first to fly, and all agreed that none were "typical seventies women." Each had fought gender discrimination in Medical School or Doctoral programs. Ride alone was a "card carrying feminist," a member of NOW. She readily acknowledged that she owed her career to the feminist movement. She had walked through doorways pried open by activist sisters. In 1982, preparing for that first flight, the supply crew was ignorant of feminine hygiene and embarrassed to ask how many tampons they should include in her personal kit, in case she needed them. They chose an excessive number, stringing them together like sausages so that they wouldn’t float away in 0 gravity. In 1985 Sally was at Mission Control when Rhea Seddon fixed a torn sail on an instrument in a satellite she was launching. When a NASA spokesman described her work as “the skill of a good housewife,” Ride corrected him; Seddon’s stiches were the work of a heart surgeon. After Challenger, Ride presented a brilliant assessment of what NASA needed to do to regain public confidence and respect in The Ride Report: “Leadership and America’s Future in Space.” Then Ride, the first American woman in space, was the first to resign. She brought her fame and experience to Sally Ride Science, an organization she founded to show girls that science is cool. She had not needed a role model, but she knew others did. She devoted the rest of her life to providing a model so that the current generation of young women would not have to brave the obstacles of being the first. 

Ai Weiwei on the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony

We’re excited for London’s Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, so in eager anticipation, we’ve been checking out reactions to Beijing’s iconic 2008 Opening Ceremony to tide us over. Although the Beijing Opening Ceremony garnered an overwhelming number of positive reactions from around the world, Ai Weiwei, Chinese dissident artist, architect, activist, and outspoken social critic, and a designer of the 2008 Olympics’ famous Bird’s Nest stadium, provided a completely different perspective on his blog. Chinese authorities shut down the blog in 2009, but his posts have been published in Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009, translated into English by Lee Ambrozy—the most complete, public documentation of the original Chinese blog available in any language. 

Here’s Ai Weiwei’s post regarding the 2008 Opening Ceremony.

 

Closing the Opening Ceremony

POSTED ON AUGUST 8, 2008

Those incompetent tools perverted the Olympic opening ceremony into the archetypal example of bogus “traditional” rubbish, a blasphemous “spirit of liberty,” a visual crap pile of phony affection and hypocritical unction. Offensive noise pollution and a monarchical mentality have been revived as a vaudeville variety show. It was the ultimate rendering of a culture under centralized state power, an encyclopedia of spiritual subjugation. Before we can stand up straight, we are heavily bent over once again.

We sacrificed the cheer and good will of the entire population in exchange for a worthless fantasy, a soulless political whitewash, and a hopelessly humorless display of puffery and helpless bravado. It was a phony scene of cultural prosperity, one that runs counter to reality…

As for the performance of those directors and their undermined sense of public morals, I’ve said it before: it’s like savoring the flavor of a fly—a complete, aggressive, and overbearing housefly, from head to tail.

Such is your fate, and you must own up to it. That’s your face bearing the revolting smile, and you will be remembered for leaving your shameful mark.

 

Happy Birthday, Amelia!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Simple Science of Flight has been my sweetheart ever since I started dreaming of it, back in 1978. It has become a favorite of many readers all over the world. Its revitalization and rejuvenation will surely endear it to the next generation of people who are, like me, enthralled by everything that flies.”—Henk Tennekes

In honor of Amelia Earhart's 115th birthday, check out The Simple Science of Flight: From Insects to Jumbo Jets by Henk Tennekes. If you're not already enthralled by everything that flies, you soon will be!

 

Monday Eye Candy: The Springboard in the Pond

Today's eye candy is a cover that we love--it's from The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool by Thomas  A. P. van Leeuwen, which features 110 illustrations (get a closer look by clicking on the image). In The Springboard in the Pond, Thomas van Leeuwen looks at the domestic swimming pool and discovers an icon indispensable to the reading of twentieth-century modernism. We'll be posting more about this book to celebrate the Olympics in the coming weeks. Happy Monday!

Playtex on the Moon

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon--wearing Playtex. Check out the history of the iconic spacesuit in Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux.

 

 

 

 

#ParentsDay

Sunday, July 22nd is National Parents’ Day. In honor of parents, here is some economics-related parenting advice from Parentonomics, written by economist dad Joshua Gans, followed by a Twitter contest:

 

 

 

1. Solve sleep issues with the economics of property rights.

Gans recommends handing out free passes in order to limit the amount of sleep disruptions: “A free pass is a card the child can exchange after bedtime for, say, leaving their room to get a drink (a common delaying tactic) or a parental hug. Basically, by limiting the number of passes a child has, you limit the quantity of disruptions they can get away with, without having to resort to an outright ban.”

 

2. Be a shrewd salesman with children when it comes to unhealthy foods.

Gans says parents should “sell” the smallest amount of junk food in exchange for healthy food: “It is easy to get caught up with the idea that you are selling health to your children, but that path leads to a marketing campaign on peas and carrots. It just won’t work. Instead, you need to consider yourself as the seller of unhealthy foods—chocolate and ice cream…You need to try and get your customers (the children) to give you the best possible price for your wares. By ‘price’ I don’t mean money but, of course, healthy eating.”

 

3. Look for profit opportunities at parties.

Gans once hosted a successful Tupperware party for his eight-year-old daughter, making a profit and providing a unique fun time: “I can highly recommend Tupperware parties for eight-year-olds. For starters, they satisfy a deep need children have to do things that seem adult. But more important, it really is cost-effective. How many kids’ parties have you run that turned a profit?”

 

Be sure to tweet us (@mitpress) your most creative parenting tips (use #ParentsDay) for a chance to win a copy of Parentonomics. Each tweet will earn you an entry in a random drawing. Contest ends at 9 PM ET on July 22nd.

 

Monday Eye Candy: Food Justice

Happy Monday! Eye candy from Food Justice by Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farmworkers picking and transporting tomatoes in the fields of Immokalee.
Photo credit: Scott Robertson, 2007.

 

 

 

 

Gus Schumacher (left) in the pea fields with Hmong farmers.
Photo credit: Michael Yang, Fresno County Extension Service.

 

 

 

 

Rodney Taylor (left rear), child nutrition director, John McComb (right rear), principal, and students from Emerson Elementary School pose with bounty from the school garden.
Photo credit: Riverside Unified School District. 

 

 

 

 

A boy holding a kohlrabi grown at the Boys and Girls Club at the Pine Point Farm to School Program, Ponsford, Minnesota.
Photo credit: White Earth Land Recovery Project. 

 

 

 

 

Project GROW members at a battered women's shelter.
Photo credit: Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College.