Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC

Heading into Washington, DC

Blossom to Beverage: The Story of Chocolate

This weekend the museum had a special event with lectures and demos about the 
history and uses of cacao, including interactive mural painting. The aroma of chocolate was everywhere! 

The artist creating the murals is Joaquin Alejandro Newman, a Yaqui Indian from Mexico.

Kids could help paint the mural, which is deigned in Aztec style.

The display of chocolate-making, starting with the raw beans and processing them with traditional
equipment, was presented by Jose Reyes and his family, who are Mixtec.

Grinding cocoa beans and pressing cakes of chocolate in the traditional way.

Preparing a Mexican chocolate beverage.

The chocolate demos were on the main floor, while all the exhibits are upstairs.
After looking at the people preparing cocoa beans and mole, we spent quite a lot
of time in the main parts of the museum. From above, we could see the chocolate expo.

The American Indian Museum is one of the Smithsonian museums on the Mall in Washington,
so you can see the Capitol Building from the windows.

Blog post and all photos © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sami’s Monday Murals and with Elizabeth’s celebration of drinks.

Wandering around in the land of Oz

The Oz books are a favorite of ours: this copy of L.Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz
has been in Len’s family for nearly 90 years, and now belongs to our daughter Evelyn.

When she was in fourth or fifth grade, Evelyn dressed as Ozma for Halloween.
If you are a fan of the Oz books, you know that Ozma was the ruler of this fairy-tale country.

Dorothy, Ozma, and Other Oz Characters

Ozma of Oz with the Scarecrow, a familiar character from the first book in the series.

Dorothy with the Nome King, whom she meets in Ozma of Oz.

You probably remember Dorothy, who visited Oz in the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (which was published in 1900). Dorothy was portrayed by Judy Garland in the extremely well-known and loved 1939 movie. In Ozma of Oz, the third book in the Oz series (published 1907), Dorothy returns for another visit some time after the magic slippers brought her back to Kansas. This time, she’s carried to Oz in a shipwreck, rather than by a cyclone. One part of her adventure is thwarting the evil Nome King, who is shown on his throne in the above illustration. In every book, some of the familiar characters reappear, like the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and Glinda the Good Witch, along with new and unusual ones, such as the Nome King.

The details in Ozma of Oz (and also the other Oz books) are always amusing, and for an adult reader they also are revealing about life and expectations in the early 20th century. Here’s an example: Dorothy, having recently landed on the shore of a fairyland near Oz, is very hungry, and finds a tree that produces tin dinner pails. She picks one and finds that it contains a full meal — just what she needs:

“In the cover she found a small tank that was full of very nice lemonade. It was covered by a cup, which might also, when removed, be used to drink the lemonade from. Within the pail were three slices of turkey, two slices of cold tongue, some lobster salad, four slices of bread and butter, a small custard pie, an orange and nine large strawberries, and some nuts and raisins. Singularly enough, the nuts in this dinner-pail grew already cracked, so that Dorothy had no trouble in picking out their meats to eat.” 

 

Dorothy opens her dinner pail. Nearby is Bellina, a barnyard hen who shares her adventures.
Like most creatures in Oz, Bellina can talk and has quite strong opinions.

My Return to Oz   

Thanks to a review by Deb at Readerbuzz, I started thinking about the Oz books, and how I read them as a child and then how we read them to Evelyn. Just reading and thinking about Oz books makes me feel a bit incoherent, because they have such complicated plots and so many irrational occurrences and bizarre characters. So from this point on, I’m going to ramble about my childhood memories of the books and about the two books I read this week while visiting Evelyn in Virginia.

Most of the Oz books that I read as a child were from the public library that was near the house where I grew up. A librarian sat in the middle of the children’s department where I would find the books I wanted and check them out by writing my name on a card from the back of the book. The librarian put the card in a little box and stamped a due-date on a paper inside the book. Thinking of Oz makes me think about the library because most of the Oz books I read were library books. I remember one book where the Scarecrow dug a really deep hole, fell in, and went all the way to China. This was what kids back then thought would happen if you dug a very deep hole.

Besides Ozma, I reread this Oz book in a Dover reprint.

Ozma of Oz, as I said, is the third book in Baum’s series. One of the most memorable adventures in Oz took place in the second book in the series, titled The Marvelous Land of Oz. In this book, the reader learns how Ozma, a beautiful young girl, became the ruler of Oz. This mysterious country, whose capital was the Emerald City, had formerly been ruled by the Wizard. After he helped Dorothy return to Kansas in the well-known first book, he had left in a balloon and was never seen again. The Scarecrow from the first book had become the ruler of Oz.

Among many other creatures, a strange creature called a Gump featured in this adventure. The Gump was a flying machine cobbled together from two high-back Victorian sofas. (Historic Note: Queen Victoria was actually still on the throne when the first Oz book was published, and the Wright brothers’ first flight was a few months before the Gump made its appearance in Oz). On the front end of the sofas, which were tied together with clothes line by the Scarecrow, the mounted head of a fictitious game animal called a Gump, which gave its name to the whole apparatus. The Gump also had wings attached, which were made of palm fronds, and had a broom for a tail. 

A boy named Tip used “the magic powder of life” to make the Gump come alive. This life-giving potion had been obtained by a witch named Mombi from a wizard named Dr. Nikidik. Tip and his friends, including the Scarecrow, needed to fly in order to escape from an army of girls led by one General Jinjur. She and her army had taken over the Emerald City in order to steal all the jewels that were embedded in the streets, and to force all the men to cook and take care of the children so that the women could do whatever they liked.

This is General Jinjur with her army, demanding entry to the Emerald City.
When she took over, she threatened the Scarecrow, Tip, and their friends with
dire punishments, so they designed and built the Gump in order to escape from her.

Is this complicated enough for you? It’s just the beginning of the book, and typical of the Oz books, which usually have a large number of characters who get into trouble and then think up magical and wonderful ways to get out of it. This utter complexity is what I remember from my childhood reading. The Gump is a wonderful creature that I particularly remember from reading aloud to children much later.

The Gump files away with Tip, the Scarecrow, and friends.

An early edition of The Marvelous Land of Oz, originally published in 1904.

What’s it like in the Land of Oz? 

In another book in the  Oz series, The Emerald City of Oz, (published in 1910), Baum provides a description of this ideal society. He conveniently doesn’t mention some of the not-so-nice characters that are encountered in the books, like the Nome King — just the nice ones. It’s a bit long, but if you haven’t read the books, I’d like you to know what a remarkable place Oz was:

 

“No disease of any sort was ever known among the Ozites, and so no one ever died unless he met with an accident that prevented him from living. This happened very seldom, indeed. There were no poor people in the Land of Oz, because there was no such thing as money, and all property of every sort belonged to the Ruler. The people were her children, and she cared for them. Each person was given freely by his neighbors whatever he required for his use, which is as much as any one may reasonably desire. Some tilled the lands and raised great crops of grain, which was divided equally among the entire population, so that all had enough. There were many tailors and dressmakers and shoemakers and the like, who made things that any who desired them might wear. Likewise there were jewelers who made ornaments for the person, which pleased and beautified the people, and these ornaments also were free to those who asked for them. Each man and woman, no matter what he or she produced for the good of the community, was supplied by the neighbors with food and clothing and a house and furniture and ornaments and games. If by chance the supply ever ran short, more was taken from the great storehouses of the Ruler, which were afterward filled up again when there was more of any article than the people needed.

  

“Every one worked half the time and played half the time, and the people enjoyed the work as much as they did the play, because it is good to be occupied and to have something to do. There were no cruel overseers set to watch them, and no one to rebuke them or to find fault with them. So each one was proud to do all he could for his friends and neighbors, and was glad when they would accept the things he produced.”

Note that if you are curious about the Oz books, you can read them online for free at Project Gutenberg. The author, L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), is in my opinion a wonderful writer, though I admit that I like the spontaneity of his earlier Oz books better than the more formulaic later ones. Beginning with the second book, the illustrations were drawn by John R. Neill (1877-1943), who provided a wonderful and imaginative visualization of the magical kingdom and its colorful characters. Baum wrote 14 Oz books in total. After his death, other authors continued the series, and Neill continued to illustrate the books.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander.

Images from the Oz Books, copyrights expired.

Alexandria, Virginia

This morning we took a walk near the Potomac River. We were very happy to see two fascinating birds: a Great Horned Owl and a Pileated Woodpecker.

Lunch and a walk in Alexandria

We had lunch at a Vietnamese cafe in Alexandria after our search for birds at the marsh. Caphe Banh Mi has only a few tables. The menu has many Vietnamese specialties: specifically, the largest selection of Banh Mi sandwiches I’ve ever seen! The three of us ordered three choices: a “classic” with ham and pâté de campagne, one with roast pork, and one with deep-fried catfish.

Another table across from ours.

So many interesting buildings on the streets of Alexandria!

The Torpedo Factory: a huge building with artists’ workshops and art sales.
During World War II, the building produced torpedos for the war effort, and has been adapted as an art space.

The columns that hold up the building are painted in interesting ways.

Mural we saw from the car on the way out of Alexandria:
“For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
— Amanda Gorman

Blog post and photos © 2024 mae e. sander

 

Occoquan, Virginia

This morning there was a tiny bit of snow: a shock for Virginia!
This afternoon was better, and we walked around the tiny town of Occoquan, on the Occoquan River.
We usually go a bit further south to the National Wildlife Refuge at on the bay.

In season, you can rent kayaks and go out on the river.
The highway bridge spans the river just above the town.

The main street is lined with shops selling art work, giftware, and the like. It’s fun.
(I didn’t buy anything.)

This block of twenty-first century condos is made to look like original Victorian row houses.
Up closer, you can see that the siding is vinyl, the decorations are plastic, and it’s too too cute!
Many of the other buildings along the waterfront are older than this!

Blog post © 2024 mae e. sander 

We made it to Fairfax.

Arrived in time for chili and guac.

 

Today and a Year Ago

 

A year ago today in Mexico, we visited the whales that like to approach small boats and look at the people.
People — like us — also love seeing the whales!

Today near our house. Next week these snowdrops and aconite may be buried.

Algorithmic!

 

If you don’t want to read the book,
there’s an excerpt HERE.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture is an amusing new book by Kyle Chayka. The underlying premise of the book is that the world has been “flattened” by computer recommendation programs that solicit “likes” and “views” and make algorithm-driven secret calculations to guide one’s choices and expectations of culture. In Chayka’s world, music means Spotify-recommended lists; Netflix tells you which films and streaming series to watch; art and poetry show up on his TikTok or Instagram posts; travel is validated by Instagrammable selfies; self-published Kindle Books are a type of literature. These and all the other influencer-created tastes occupy a big part of the modern cultural universe. This was his world for a long time, and he thinks many people still live in this world.

Take, for example, coffee shops: Chayka finds that every coffee shop in the world looks like every other one. They have the same color scheme, the same furniture, the same flat white coffee, and even avocado toast (which he mentions ironically, sort of). Except then he contradicts himself — what he really means is that in every city in the world he can FIND a particular kind of coffee shop: the hipster coffee shop where cool people like him want to hang out and open their laptops. And then it becomes obvious that he doesn’t mean every city in the world, just the places that thirty-something hipsters like him have been Internet-influenced to visit. Ditto AirB&Bs: all look alike because then the algorithms top-recommend them. Ditto airports, except they already all looked alike decades ago. TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook —  “likes” or other signs of popularity algorithmically determine tastes and choices, and pressure conformity from the creators of such spaces.

For example, what is Chayka’s paradigm of a coffee shop?

“I could quickly identify a café among the search results that had the requisite qualities: plentiful daylight through large storefront windows; industrial-size wood tables for accessible seating; a bright interior with walls painted white or covered in subway tiles; and Wi-Fi available for writing or procrastinating.” (p. 89)

Yeah, I see what he means. I live in a kind of hipster town, and just in the past couple days I’ve been to the kind of coffee shops he means. I checked my photos and found quite a few coffee shop-type places where I’ve been recently. Plus one old one. I’ve interspersed my photos with quotes from Chayka’s book to highlight some ideas he is presenting.

Coffee Shops

Ann Arbor: note the industrial lighting which the author considers typical.

“Building your own sense of taste, that set of subconscious principles by which you identify what you like, is an uphill battle compared to passively consuming whatever content feeds deliver to you.” (p. 51)

Ann Arbor, Argus Coffee House.

“The force of algorithmic pressure is not theoretical. It’s not a gloomy dystopian future but, rather, a pervading force that is already influencing cultural consumers and creators.” (p. 56)

Miriam’s favorite (Shenandoah Joe’s publicity photo).

“‘Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. … Not that they have come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.’ In other words, we often discover, and even rediscover, ourselves in what we keep around us. But that codependence or co-evolution of collection and person wouldn’t happen if the order of Walter Benjamin’s shelves and the catalog of his books kept changing every few months. … The collector is the only one who decides how to arrange their possessions, ordering books by author, title, theme, or even color of the cover—and they stay in the same places they’re put. That’s not true of our digital cultural interfaces, which follow the whims and priorities of the technology companies that own them. If Spotify suddenly gives the category of podcasts a prominent new placement, for example, it’s because the company has decided that podcasts are going to make up more of its revenue in the future.” (p. 75)

Charlottesville, VA

“‘Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changes over long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception,’ Benjamin wrote.“ (p. 275)

Ann Arbor summertime.

“But there was also something missing: I wasn’t surprising myself with the unfamiliar during traveling, just reaffirming the superiority of my own sense of taste by finding it in a new place. Maybe that’s why it felt hollow.” (p. 109)

Ann Arbor — a sushi place, same vibe. 

“MFA programs influenced mid-century novels. Novelists-turned-professors, taking jobs to support their writing practice, tutored their students at institutions like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, often pushing them toward a style of self-conscious literary realism from a personal perspective. Wendell Berry, Richard Ford, Michael Chabon, Rick Moody, and Tama Janowitz were some of the successes of the MFA-program model.” (p. 145)

Ann Arbor: Venue Cafe, in our neighborhood.

“My point is not that we must gather an understanding of art only through museum exhibitions; rather, it’s that the view we have of culture through algorithmic feeds is often so blinkered as to be useless. We’re not encouraged or informed enough to get beyond it.” (p. 248)

Ann Arbor: note the industrial ceiling with banners, and the transgressive wall color.

“You are unique, just like everybody else.” (p. 96)

A classic "Instagram" cafe photo (according to the author) that I took in Holland in 2014.

The “Instagram Wall”

Another very amusing passage in Filterworld describes the rise in popularity of murals being painted on walls throughout the world, especially a phenomenon he calls “The Instagram Wall.” I’ve been very aware of the international presence of street art and murals through participating in a weekly blog event hosted by a blogger named Sami who lives in Australia; each week, bloggers from almost every continent contribute photos of murals that they have found — I don’t know if it’s “algorithmic” but it’s definitely a cultural commonality spread through the internet. Chayka writes:

“In the early 2010s, a new phenomenon emerged called an “Instagram wall.” In part, it was an outgrowth of the street-art movement of the 2000s, a gentrification of graffiti that saw clean, officially sanctioned murals take over city walls, particularly in neighborhoods where decrepit warehouses were plentiful. … The epitome of the Instagram wall, one of its most popular tropes, was a pair of angelic wings unfurling to the left and right of an empty space where a person would stand, often stretching their arms upward as if taking flight.” (p. 106)

This is me at an Instagram Wall in NorthEast, Maryland, last April.
I didn’t know it was an Instagram Wall. (I drew the angel gown onto my photo.)
I know of at least two examples of these “wings” here in Ann Arbor as well.

What does the author mean by the term algorithmic?

Chayka writes:

“‘Algorithmic’ has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimized for attracting attention: a combination of high production values with little concern for fundamental content.” (p. 140)

“Algorithmic feeds are different from other iterations of technological innovation because they do not just present us with an unusual new format to consider, like camera film or the television screen. They also try to anticipate our individual cultural desires for us in personalized recommendations using the newfound tools of data surveillance and machine learning. Algorithmic feeds stand between the human creators and the human consumers, making an infinite series of decisions about culture.” (p. 278) 

The alternative to the algorithmic feed from online apps like TikTok, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, etc. is (kind of obviously) to find a curated list of the artistic or cultural material you seek. Curators, as I think everyone knows, are humans who select books, films, music, art, etc. Chayka describes a few of his preferred human curators in the book. He says, “independent radio DJs have stuck out in my mind as an ideal form of non-algorithmic cultural distribution.” (p. 250) He points to the Criterion Collection of films, which was founded in 1984: a staff of critics select classic films for their lasting value. These are published in DVD or other editions, and made available for purchase. Also, Chayka describes his interview with a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: museum curators being an obvious example of "curation." This part of the book seemed a bit obvious.

Most of Chayka’s descriptions of algorithmic culture in his experience of modern life are penetrating and rather amusing, though he does get kind of preachy at times. He has a lot to say. His examples are almost exclusively based on his own experiences, which is a point of weakness to some extent. But it’s mainly interesting reading.

Photos and review © 2024 mae e. sander

Shared with Deb at Readerbuzz and Sami’s  murals.