Some Jewels in the Cultural Crown

Some Jewels in the Cultural Crown

Museums are no longer the dusty fusty repositories of fine arts that you may remember visiting as a child. Now the walls are coming down as museums increasingly take note of developments in the outside world. Multi-cultural, high-tech, and « pop » are today's watch words on the cultural beat, and new museums have clearly heard the call, From new high-tech kiosks where one can see how an artifact such as a ceremonial Indian flute was used in its original context to grain elevators that one can climb into, the new museums are offering fresh perspectives on the historical and the everyday. Here, Donald Garfield, senior editor of Museum News, the official news magazine of the American Association of Museums, recommends the following recently built museums. Also included are outstanding additions to existing museums.

American and Modern Art

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design: Kansas City, Montana. The museum, a block from the beautiful campus of the Kansas City Art Institute, features works by such artists as David Hockney, Bruce Nauman, Nancy Graves, Georgia O”Keeffe and Thmas Hart Benton. It is strong on interaction between artists and community and offers many discussion groups with contemporary artists.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: San Francisco, California. One of the two most significant post modern museums of the last five years – the other is in Seattle. Designed by world-renowned architect Mario Botta, the modernist structure doubles the current exhibit space in the Veterans building.

Seattle Art Museum: Seattle, Washington. Designed by the celebrated post-modern architect Robert Venturi, this is the other most significant museum built in the last five years. It does not have an encyclopedic collection of art like New York<s Metropolitan, but its African American and Native American collections are among the most impressive in the country.

Andy Warhol Museum: Pittsburgh, Pa. A fabulous example of what can be done when a seven-story warehouse is turned into a museum. Architect Richard Gluckman also designed the avant-garde Dia Foundation in New York. The museum features the history and creative works of Andy Warhol, the father of pop art.

Wexner Center for the Visual Art: Columbus, Ohio. And important and controversial museum due to architect Peter Eisenmann's post-modern aesthetic. This architectural marvel mimics the street grids of Columbus, as well as the streets on the Ohio State campus. Following the grids, the structures inside the museum have no 90-degree angles – even the stairs are slanted. Although there are no permanent collections, many rotating shows visit here regularly. 

Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum: Minneapolis, Minnesota. A visionary metallic museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota, the only one in the United States designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry. It continues the tradition of the private collection, in this case, Frederick Weismna's. It is especially strong in American art between 1900 and 1950.

Barack Obama exposed in the Museum Grevin of Montreal. Photo by Elena.

History

American Heeritage Center and Art Museum: Laramie, Wyo. On the campus of the University of Wyoming, the center is housed in architect Antoine Predock's new conical-shaped centennial complex, which is reminiscent of an Indian teepee. The arrached art museum is a Pueblo-inspired design. It contains a variety of fine arts exhibits and features Native American and cowboy art and artifacts.

Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance: Los Angeles, California. This museum explores the horrors of the 20th century: genocide, the Holocaust, racism, through audio and visual displays.

Michel C. Carlos Museum: Atlanta, Georgia. Part of the Emory University Museum of Art and Archaelogy, first-rate collections of art and artifcats from classical antiquity, including the Egyptian, Roman, Grecian, and Pre-Columban periods. In the forefront of technology, this museum by architect Michael Graves is developing interactive kiosks in the galleries, where one can call up the history of an artifact and see in a video how it was used in its original context.

Holocause Museum, Washington, D.C.: Based on an idea rather than a collection, this museum chronicles the Holocaust through many extraordinary audiovisual displays.

Minnesota History Center: St.Paul, Minnesota. More than just a museum, this is also a library, an archive, and a research center. The museum explores all aspects of Minnesota history. Among the various interactive exhibits is a model grain elevator you can climb into, the better to understand how grain is processed. It also features an important collection of Native American art.

National Civil Rights Museum: Memphis, Tenn. The museum makes use of audiovisual displays to document the Civil Rights movement. It starts with the slave revolts and ends in the motel (now part of the museum) where Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Valentine Riverside Museum: Richmond, Vs. Associated with the Valentine History Museum, the Riverside Museum is geared toward the family. It has a Colonial Williamsburg quality to it, along the lines of a theme park, but with a strong historical basis.

The Warm Springs Tribal Museum: Warm Springs, Oregon. The magazine American anthropologist described the museum as having just about the finest exhibitions in the United States. It tells the story of three tribes, the Paiute, the Wasco, and the Warm Springs. The narration along the way is by tribal elders.

Miscellaneous

Children”s Museum of Houston: Houston, Texas. Where does the food on the dinner plate come from? How do televisions work? What is gravity? The answer to these and other questions can be found at hundreds of interactive exhibits at this award-winning children's museum designed by architect Robert Venturi.

Software Review – Gimp and Poser

Software Review – Gimp and Poser

Long ago, there was a time that drawing was available to only a few persons, who had the talent to draw images. Naturally, not everybody can draw. Conversely, today, many more people can draw because of existing software designed specifically to draw, model and render. Perhaps the most famous, or one of the better known such software are Maya by Autodesk and Adobe Creative Suite. However these programs are fairly expensive and difficult, if not at least lengthy to learn. Luckily, there are on the market much easier and user friendly options. While the achieved results differ significantly, the programs are ideal for the beginner. The following quick review focuses on two programs, namely Poser from Smith Micro and Gimp.

Gimp is a free and open source software, which means that you can simply download it from the Gimp Website and use it. Gimp has often been called the layman’s Photoshop. You can edit your images, add colour, draw, add special effects and text. The interface is simple. For example, to create transparent text in Gimp, the work is done by layers. First you add a text layer, write your text and then make that layer transparent. Gimp also has interesting lighting effects, not to mention its Filters tab, which can enhance, distort or add a special something to the image being edited.

Alternatively, Poser is a commercial software, but Smith Micro often offers discounts on its products. Many people compare Poser to Daz Studio, however the two systems are very different. Poser comes with in-built figures (characters), poses, props and much more. The software is more modelling oriented and has an excellent rendering capacity. You can choose your figure, pose it, render it and voilà – you have an artistic image. Daz Studio, while offering high quality pictures, is a free software, but it requires that you add figures, poses, places and so on, which come at a cost. Poser is very easy to use, but for added performance, one can always either read the corresponding manual or rely on the thousands of Web tutorials on how to use the program.

Three edited images by Megan Jorgensen:

Staying Warm If the Air If Frigid

Staying Warm If the Air If Frigid

Layer yourself with the new synthetics for maximum protection

Whether you’re out skiing the slopes, shoveling the driveway, or just walking to work, there is a science to keeping your body warm in freezing temperatures. Heat loss is directly proportionate to the amount of body surface that you expose to the environment. Frostbite occurs when unprotected parts of the body such as your face or fingers freeze. As the body’s temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, some body systems are affected. Below 90 degrees Fahrenheit the body’s shivering ability ceases and the body cannot warm itself without outside help. Uunless you act quickly, hypothermia can set in. That’s when the heart rate slows, blood pressure falls, and a person drops into a semi-comatose, then comatose state.

Dr. Warren Bowman, a physician at the Billing Clinic in Montana and a specialist in high-altitude and cold-weather care, has these tips on avoiding the problem:

Wear clothing made of appropriate fabrics. Of all the things to do, the most energy-efficient is to use proper clothing and shelter. But you have to use the right fabrics. Cotton is bad. Wool and some of the newer synthetics are better. Among your choices: polycpropylene, a treated polyester; Thermax, a hollow polyester; and garments filled with a stuffing-like down such as Dacron.

Layer your clothing. Instead of wearing one or two thick layers, wear three, four, or five thin layers to avoid overheating. Garments lose their insulating ability when you sweat. Depending on how cold it is and what the wind chill is, an inner layer of long underwear made of wool, polypropylene, or Thermax may be a good idea. Duofold is a fabric with a cotton and a wool layer. It is good for skiing, but for any other use it’s not as good as Capilene or polypropylene.

Staying Warm in Winter. Photo by Elena

The second layer should consist of pants and a shirt made of wool or some kind of artificial fabric like acrylic. Third would be a pile jacket and pants. The fourth layer would be windproof – a Cortex parks and pants, for example. A fifth layer would include a ski jacket filled with down or synthetics and a pair of quilted pants. And your feet need a pair of boots with up to three pairs of wool socks, maybe with an inner sock of polypropylene. And don’t forget a ski cap and mittens, preferably one of the three-layer systems. This should take car of you down to about 49 below zero.

Fortify yourself with extra calories. The amount of heat from a hot cup of tea is not much. An instant breakfast, powdered eggnog, or a pack of Jello makes a very nice drink and packs a lot of calories, which your body needs in cold weather.

Pay special attention to children. Babies have a large surface area compared to their volume, so they lose heat very quickly. Children also tend to lose heat faster than adults. They are not careful about keeping mittens and hats on and have to be supervised so their hands, hands, ears, and feet stay warm.

In the event of hypothermia, get the victim out of the cold and to the hospital quickly. Do not use a stove, electric blankets, or a hot tub to warm someone up. They can cause dangerous physiological changes. At the hospital, a victim can be warmed using special hypothermia blankets, warmed IV’s, and humidified oxygen. In severe cases cardiopulmonary bypass or dialysis can even be used to warm the patient from the inside-out.

When putting a finger to the wind won’t do

The Beaufort Scale of Wind Effects can help you estimate wind speed from simple observations. It also gvies the basis for converting the wind descriptions used in weather reports to wind speed equivalents, and vice versa.

Wind speed (mph), Beaufort number, Wind effect on land, Official description.

    Less than 1 – 0, Calm; smoke rises vertically. Light.

    1 to 3 – 1, Wind directio is seen in direction of smoke but is not revealed by weather vane. Light.

    4 to 7 – 2. Wind can be felt on face; leaves rustle; wind vane moves. Light.

    8 to 12 – 3. Leaves, small twigs in motion; wind extends light flag. Gentle.

    13 to 18 – 4. Wind raises dust, loose papers. Small branches move. Moderate.

    19 to 24 – 5. Small trees with leaves begin to sway; crested wavelets appear on inland waters. Fresh.

    25 to 31 – 6. Large branches move; telegraph wires whistle; umbrellas become difficult to control. Strong.

    32 to 38 – 7. Whole trees sway, walking into the wind becomes difficult. Strong.

    29 to 46 – 8. Twigs break off trees; cars veer in roads. Gale.

    47 yo 54 – 9. Slight structural damage occurs; roof states may blow away. Gale.

    55 to 63 – 10. Trees are uprooted; considerable structural damage is caused. Whole Gale.

    64 to 72 – 11. Widespread damage is caused. Whole gale.

    73 or more – 12. Widespread damage s caused. Hurricane

What School Choice Means?

What School Choice Means?

There are more options than ever for public school kids

The traditional assumption that most children will attend school in their neighborhoods is far less true today than a generation ago. The move away from purely neighborhood schools began in the 1970s with court decisions mandating busing as a desegregation tool. The rise of magnet school programs, which early on were developed in some school districts to persuade families to accept busing, has fueled the trend. In the last few years, as public dissatisfaction with the quality of schools has mushroomed, the idea that families should be able to choose where to enroll their children based on program quality and not just location, has been embraced in many states and cities.

It's hard to understand your options unless you know the new vocabulary. The following terms represent variations on the school-choice them now being debated wherever educators and politicians meet. The definitions are drawn from the Washington D.C., think tank, the Heritage foundation.

Charter school: A “public” school created and operated by a group of teachers, or other qualified individual or groups of individuals, that is largely free from state and district oversight. A charter school differs from a magnet school in its method of creation and its autonomy.

Controlled choice: Choice that is limited by court-ordered desegregation guidelines. Example: The City of Boston must observe strict racial guidelines in city schools. The the choice program there limits parents to choices that do no upset the racial balance of a particular school.

Full choice: Includes private as well as public schools, but not necessarily religious schools.

Interdistrict choice: Students are permitted to cross district lines to attend schools. Some states, such as Colorado, allow interdistrict choice only among a limited number of districts.

Intradistrict choice: Open enrollment among the schools in one particular district. Also called transfers.

Public School... Photo by Elena

Magnet schools: Public schools offering specialized programs to attract students. This may be done as a voluntary method of achieving racial balances when districts are under court order to desegregate. Magnet schools offer students an option or substitute for their location-based school assignment.

Open enrollment: Parents in a state have the right to decide which public school their children will attend anywhere in the state, rather than having children assigned to a school based on location. With voluntary open enrollment the district is not required to offer choice among its schools, but it can allow parents to choose a school. With mandatory open enrollment, the district must allow parents this option.

Post-secondary enrollment options: High school students (usually juniors or seniors) are permitted to enroll in courses at state universities or community colleges at government expense and to receive high school graduation credits and college credits for those courses. The money allocated for the child's education is used to pay for the courses selected, thus forcing high schools to compete with colleges to retain their students.

Private voucher programs: Programs supported by private individuals, businesses, and other groups that give vouchers to low income children to attend the private school of their choice. The programs differ in the type of support they give to families and in the type of schools that are eligible.

Drug Addiction and Rehab

Drug Addiction and Rehab

Drug addiction and its devastating consequences are often depicted in the popular media. One of the most dramatic such depictions is the movie “Requiem for a Dream”. The film follows the descent into madness of an elderly woman due to amphetamines and the tragic consequences of three other characters using heroin. The movie “Blow”, starring Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp deals with cocaine. Heroin is also portrayed in motion pictures such as “Trainspotting” and even “Pulp Fiction”. Documentaries like the TV show “Intervention” describe addicts’ paths to recovery or relapse.

Heroin withdrawal is one of the worst drug withdrawals there is. Heroin withdrawal is physically painful, dangerous and must be medically supervised. Heroin is not the only powerful opiate. Derived from morphine, heroin is also a painkiller, a highly addictive and potentially fatal substance. In recent years, an even worse opiate has made its way onto the streets, fentanyl. More powerful than heroin, fentanyl is responsible for countless overdoses. The popular star The Artist, previously known as Prince, died from a fentanyl overdose. Another opioid more powerful than heroin is dilaudid. Opioids are used in the medical field to manage pain, but due to the euphoric effects they produce, they often make their way to the black market.

Fatal drug overdoses are the worst consequences of drug abuse, but they are not the only dangers that substance use produces. The DSM-5 or the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the APA (American Psychiatric Association) has a category for substance use disorders, ranging from mild to severe. Thus, a drug or alcohol addiction is considered a mental illness in psychiatry. However, not all substance use disorders are treatable, at least pharmacologically. But some, such as heroin, can be treated with medication. For example, methadone reduces heroin withdrawal symptoms without producing a “high”.

Bob Marlow museum in Jamaica. Photo: Elena

But why do people begin experimenting with drugs in the first place? As the joke goes “just say no to drugs” and the response is “stop talking to drugs!”. Peer pressure and boredom are among the main factors for initial drug use. And afterwards, the vicious cycle begins. Very addictive and powerful drugs such as cocaine or heroin can have a person hooked after only a couple of uses.

The important part to remember is that once you try a drug you like – you will always like it. For instance, while most cocaine withdrawal symptoms go away with time, cravings or urges to use persist for a lifetime. People can also be trapped into doing drugs, let us tell a true story.

A young, innocent girl just turned 17. She has never experimented with hard drugs and had no intention to. But, being at an impressionable and romantic age, she fell in love with the wrong person. Her new boyfriend was a criminal, a drug dealer. The police caught up with him and he was incarcerated, but he had already damaged the teenager by then. One evening she wanted to go out clubbing by herself. However, her criminal boyfriend had other plans. He cooked crack-cocaine and made her try it. She did, and of course, stayed with him until they consumed all of the drug. He told her that she would now have to face a life-long battle and later admitted that he only did it so that she wouldn’t leave him. We’re telling this story to warn parents and others that there are ruthless thugs out there who will stop at nothing to hook people on addictive substances for personal gain. The girl in the story was lucky enough to avoid becoming addicted, she broke up with the selfish, malevolent boyfriend and never touched crack-cocaine again. But it was a close call, a young life could have been destroyed by this one huge mistake.

Other horror stories involving street drugs include a young man from Australia and another from Quebec, Canada. A young Australian tried ecstasy for the first time and as a result remained permanently in a damaged state. Long after the high wore off, he continued stuttering and shaking and is unable to talk properly. The doctors said he was lucky to even be alive. Similarly, a young Quebecker (17 years old!) also tried ecstasy for the first time and his life was permanently ruined as a consequence. He became paralysed, deaf, mute and blind.

As mentioned above, drug addiction can be devastating. The worst part is that there is no cure. The truth is hurtful, abrupt. Once you’re an addict, you’re an addict for life. But, that does not mean you’re helpless, there are tricks:

• talk to yourself, communicate with yourself
• it’s ok to feel negative emotions and understanding that can reduce cravings and urges
• ask yourself how you’re feeling
• halt – an acronym – hungry (eat something healthy), angry (emotions, it’s ok to feel different emotions, talk to yourself, it’s human), lonely (call a friend or girlfriend/boyfriend), tired (pain) – exercise and sleep/relax
• regular exercise will help with energy and good mood
• doing nothing makes you feel unaccomplished and depressed/worthless
• key to do 40-60 minutes of low-impact cardio (releases endorphins)
• YouTube or favourite music can motivate you while exercising
• sauna, jacuzzi or steam-room release melatonin, and helps you relax (also helps you sleep for insomnia)
• have a schedule, fill up your schedule, having a full schedule helps.