Helvetica in Picture Form
 A sweet Slate slideshow of the simple Swedish font that took over the world -- branding everything from the New York City Subway to Microsoft to many a restroom sign. Helvetica is very much the rage these days because of the eponymous documentary. (I very much want to see it, but doesn't appear to be playing anywhere in the New York area anytime soon.)
Are Political Leaders Willing to Stand Up for Facebook?
(Crossposted on TechPresident.)
There are two competing trends in online social technologies. One is that everyone from presidential candidates to up-and-coming musicians are scrambling to master MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Along the way, they're embracing a new openness that sees value in the networked public sphere. The second is that everyone from the U.S. military to universities are rushing to control the tools that those over whom they have dominion -- from soldiers to swimmers -- use to express themselves online. The Army is both cracking down on milbloggers and YouTubers, citing security and bandwidth; college administrators are banning athletes from Facebook, citing threats to school reputation.
The question for political candidates and political leaders in my mind becomes: you're willing to exploit the enormous potential of new social technologies to further your agendas, but are you willing to stand up for the right of the people you lead to use them?
Internet Pioneers Night is Now June 13th
It turned out that there was some sort of clog-dancing show or something upstairs on the night that we had originally scheduled Internet Pioneers Night at the Tank, so we've moved it to the quieter June 13th. This is a chance for us to revel in our common online heritage and to really get riled up about the fact that many people don't have access to technologies that connect us all together in this great big happy human web. Save the date.
Brooklyn Blogs
When Outside.in, that new local website aggregator project, posted their list of the 10 Bloggiest Neighborhoods, I was a bit suprised that only the Brooklyn neighborhood of Clinton Hill made list. I mean, Brooklyn has all the ingredients for what we might think would make a vibrant local blogosphere -- a literate, wired, and dense collection of humans in an area that has both rich histories and is undergoing a good deal of rapid change. And then there's the hard evidence, any number of fantastic Brooklyn-based and focused blogs; off of the top of my head, there's Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, Gowanus Lounge...okay, that's only two, but they're both really good and there's for sure plenty more. As it turns out, according to the rules of the "bloggiest neighborhoods" compilation process as explained by the New York Times, only one hood from Brooklyn could be named to the list. Ahh, that explains it...
Bloggy and bloggable Brooklyn is, for sure. So I'm particularly looking forward to the Brooklyn Blog Fest on Thursday night at the historic Old Stone House on 5th Avenue and 3rd Street here in Park Slope. There will be Brooklyn bloggers and there will be margaritas, and that sounds great to me.
Newtown Creek on Bike
I did something cool yesterday, if I do say so myself. I've been doing some research into and background learning on the rich industrial history and present of Newtown Creek, the natural boundary between Brooklyn and Queens, because I think I might want to make a short film on some aspects of it. And so I joined a group called the Newtown Creek Alliance for a bike tour from Greenpoint, down the waterfront, over to Queens via the Grand Street Bridge, west on Review Ave to Borden Avenue, and back to Brooklyn over the Pulaski Bridge. I'm not sure how much I learned, but it was helpful to get the lay of the land. Course, I took pictures. First up, our 'friends of Newtown Creek' bike gang, about 20 strong:
Industrial barges are a common sight on Newtown Creek, with Manhattan as their backdrop. The Alliancers identified Hugo Neu, the owners of this recycling barge, as one of the area's better industrial agents:
Somewhat remarkable to see first-hand is the almost complete lack to public access to a waterway that runs straight through two densely-populated areas. Buildings tend to run smack up to the water, and narrow passage ways that could be used as walkways are left overgrown:
Couple more photos after the jump.
There's
more...
MyDD Interviews Tim Westergren
Adam Conner has posted the audio from the conversation he and I had on Friday with Tim Westergren, the man behind both the Pandora Internet radio service and the remarkable Music Genome Project. We were beset by technical troubles but it was still, I think, and fun and enlightening conversation about the troubled future of Internet radio.
Music Genome Project and Internet Radio Fees
I just put a post up on MyDD that I thought I might link to from here, just because I think that it's useful when we talk about the Copyright Royalty Board's recent Internet radio rate hikes that we remember that copyright is supposed to help innovation to flourish, not cut off oxygen to awesome innovative things like the Music Genome Project.
Prometheus Radio Project and Low Power FM
The first I heard about Low Power FM radio was when the Indigo Girls came up to Capitol Hill to lobby for it and put on a mini concert for Hill staffers. One of the stranger experiences I ever had on the Hill -- about 70 of us in our dark suits swaying back an forth to "Galileo" in some committee room. Anyway, I had the chance today to interview Hannah Sassaman, the project director for the Prometheus Radio Project:
The particular focus of Prometheus' fight these days is
Low Power FM -- small, community-based radio stations that have a broadcast
range of only a handful of miles. In a day and age where Clear Channel
owns more than a thousand radio stations across the country, community
radio is a means by which the people can communicate, organize, and effect
change. But the future of LPFM in America is not certain. Legislation
passed by Congress has restricted low-power stations to small cities and
towns, claiming concerns over interference with full-power stations of
the sort owned by Clear Channel and other corporate broadcasters. There's
a chance in the 110th Congress to re-open the radio spectrum to local
broadcasting, and even the rare opportunity this fall to grab full-power
licenses for non-profit broadcasters. In this interview, Hannah and I
discussed deejay-public feedback loops, untying the hands of the FCC,
and Prometheus' pirate radio roots.
Hannah eloquently explains the importance of both Low Power
FM and telecom policy that frees at least some lines of communication
from corporate control. But me, I think it's summed up well in the words
of that bard of my generation, John Mayer: "when they own the information,
oh, they can bend it all they want."
This is the seventh interview in a series hosted on MyDD called Hearing Progressive Voices. Go on, check it out.
Since the Storm: No End to Katrina in New Orleans
(I wrote this for MyDD and pointed to it last night, but I've since decided to repost the whole thing here.)
I've
been back from New Orleans for a few days now and have gotten a chance
to sort through my thoughts, notes, and research. I went down with the
intention of focusing on the rebuilding process and it seems to make sense
for me to chop up what I have into three posts. The first up is this post,
on the scope and impact of Hurricane Katrina in post-storm New Orleans.
The second will look at major factors in the rebuilding process. The third
will be a report on the day I put down my pen and camera (mostly) and
picked up a crowbar to help ACORN gut a house in the Lower Ninth Ward.
It doesn't take long back in New Orleans to figure out that Katrina is
embedded in every fiber of this city's being. It's all "storm,"
all the time, some 20 months since the storm.
Here's what I mean. On the radio, for example, were advertisements encouraging
applications for the HUD-funded Road Home program championed by Governor Blanco,
an interview with locals starting an ambassadors program that just sent its
first envoy to Boston, and pitches for home demolition services. Actor/write/HuffPo
blogger Harry Shearer does ads for Levees.org
and proposing a 9/11-style commission on levees. Talk show hosts discussed how
useful local bloggers were in keeping the community updated in the days and
weeks after the storm. (The
local New Orleans blogosphere -- including honorary New Orleanians like
the bloggers at First
Draft -- is vibrant and active. More on that later.) Then there were local
celebrities promoting the need for New Orleanians to have a voice in the national
discourse and talk show hosts ruminating on the importance of New Orleans as
an American city.
It just did not end. You hear updates on progress from neighborhood rebuilding
projects, talk about wetlands reclamation, and ads from banks encouraging residents
to restructure their debt, saying "you survived the storm -- now start
your financial rebuilding." One show discussed new reports on post-storm
depression rates, especially in kids but in everyone, really -- stemming from
lost photos and from parents and grandparents moved away. This isn't right,
a woman says. In southern Louisiana, she says, you're supposed to live by your
family for life.
Two commentators debated Mayor Nagin's dig on the comparative cleanliness of
Philadelphia, with the lead-in, "Ray Nagin is at it again." Jefferson
Parish President Aaron Broussard took questions from callers and Army Corps
of Engineers officials delved into where the levees stand now, about six weeks
before the start of 2007 hurricane season.
In the French Quarter, "Make Levees, Not War" is emblazoned on mousepads
and t-shirts for sale, alongside shirts showing an outline of a FEMA trailer
and offering a twist of the New Orleans slogan, "Proud to Call it Home."
Then there are "Proud to Swim Home" bumper stickers and t-shirts offering
new takes on what FEMA stands for: Fix Everything My Ass or Find Every Mexican
Available. Tchotchke shops sell copies of storm books: 1
Dead in the Attic, Do
You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, Waters
Dark and Deep and Not
Left Behind: Rescuing the Pets of New Orleans. The gorgeous Times-Picayune
Katrina photo book is for sale in cooking stores in the French Market.
On late night television was a compelling program that offered a comprehensive take on
the storm, covering everything from how the levees broke to mold remediation
techniques. Between segments, quotes from the House
"Bipartisan" Select Committee on Katrina's final report flash
on the screen.
Of course, once you spend time in the city, all this is no wonder.
When
I posted earlier that I was going down to New Orleans, several commenters
suggested that I delve into the city beyond the Lower Ninth Ward. So I did that.
On their recommendations, I explored a handful of racially and economically
different neighborhoods: the Lower Ninth (in crude generalizations, black and
working-class), yes, but also Lakeview (white and middle-class), Gentilly (racially-integrated
and middle-class), New Orleans East (mixed in race and class, as far as I can
tell), and Chalmette (white and working-class).
With
just a few hours of daylight left on my first night, I found myself in New Orleans
East. One of the first places I headed was the Sheralane Dog Grooming Shop on
Downman Road. I had driven past Sheralane when I was in town in October, 2005,
about a month after the storm. On that trip, I was so chilled by the spray-painted
notices like "Dead Dog Left in Crate." (Something about animals...their
fates are probably just easier to let my mind contemplate.) And when I visited
again on April 21, 2007, and it looked little different from the outside, other
than that those markings were just barely painted over.
So
much still looks the same in New Orleans. (I have a
full set of photos up on Flickr.) So many houses still bear the spray-painted
markings on their doors and faces from the first days of the storm. Still,
there's progress. Houses have been gutted, there is construction here
and there. I toured neighborhoods, the Ninth Ward and New Orleans East,
for example, where I would see one rebuilt and landscaped house on an
otherwise empty street. In one neighborhood, I found a boy of maybe nine
years old shooting hoops on the street, alone, and not another soul around
-- other than me and the folks in the National Guard humvee rolling by.
The whole city is a study in contrast, but Lakeview in particular. In a strip
mall there, there was a women's clothing store (photo)
that I swear I was the first person to set foot in since the storm. Like so
many of the buildings still vacant in the city, the door is left wide open.
A
brand new shoe store stood next to a completely wasted fast food place. In the
Lower Ninth Ward, one house had a bed post still sticking through the front
window, still strung with Mardi Gras beads. On the front porch sat a television
set and some children's toys. Those back had hung signs that say, "Welcome
Home, Holy Cross Neighborhood," (Holy Cross is a section of the Lower Nine)
and "We're Home -- Rebuild the New New Orleans." Also in the Lower
Nine, someone has painted his car with the plea "I'm Back. RU?"
In Chalmette, signs lashed to fences read "St. Bernard Proud -- We're
Coming Back!" (photo)
Still, piles of trash and debris five and ten feet high sat in front of gutted
houses, apartments, and stores (photo).
After a hot afternoon in Chalmette, I went into Brewster's, a restaurant offering
"Fun, Food, and Spirits" and newly reopened in an otherwise-empty
shopping center (photo).
The neon signs out front and inside advertised various brands of beer. When
I order one, the waitress seemed a bit taken aback and says, "oh no, not
yet."
A
FEMA trailer parked in front yard and in driveway is a sign of progress (photo).
It means that the homeowner has gotten some FEMA money and that the neighborhood
has a clean water hook-up, and that's no small feat some 20 months after the
storm. When I talked trailers with Mary Rickard, ACORN's web campaign coordinator,
she had a great quote -- "When George Bush says to be patient...In his
next life, he's going to have to live in a FEMA trailer."
Of course, that boy playing basketball in New Orleans East needs to go to school.
Leaving the neighborhood one day, I passed by a school building. What struck
me was that the door to the library was propped about half-opened. The gate
to the school grounds was also opened, so I stopped the car and went in. Amazing,
the way it still looked (photo).
A friend of mine who is doing PhD work in sociology with a focus on disasters
says that the photos I showed her of the Barbara C. Jordan in New Orleans East
remind her of Chernobyl. A moment stuck in time, late August, 2005.
Schools,
of course, need not only students but teachers and landscapers and food workers
and principals. What will it take to bring people back to New Orleans? Infrastructure,
for one thing. They need schools and stores and electricity and water and roads.
Livability of the city is a problem, and crime certainly is too. I keep coming
back to the idea that it seems just so difficult for residents to get firm footing
in the city, no solid ground to start building on. The Lower Nine, for example,
lacks grocery stores (and did so before the storm), schools, hospitals, and
religious services. It's not exactly a situation that screams 'welcome home.'
You have to wonder if the people who have moved back in and rebuilt lives
here -- almost like frontiersman -- are courageous or, shoot, just a bit
crazy. But those brave souls may well be what it takes to get the city
growing to the point where momentum takes over. They are attempting to
regrow the city from the bottom up, house-by-house, business-by-business.
One
aspect of New Orleans circa 2007 that is still so striking to me is the
water line. You see it everywhere in the city, from the sides of homes
in New Orleans East to the overpass support pillars in Lakeview, a line
of muck showing just how high the waters rose -- and stayed, of course,
for days and day and days (photo).
Along those lines, my mom (who is from Cottonport in central Louisiana)
met me in New Orleans and we went up towards Monroeville, Alabama for
a local production of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Along the way,
we stopped in Mobile and went to the excellent A
Day in Pompeii exhibit at the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center
there. The sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, 79 A.D., killed
about 2,000 and the diagrams showing the lines to which the ash rose,
the stories of people trapped on second floors -- the similarities to
Katrina are a bit eerie. (Also looking forward to Hurricane
on the Bayou, an IMAX movie on the survival of Louisiana's wetlands
that wasn't getting to Mobile until June 1 but is now playing around the
country . If you happen to be in DC, it's now playing at
the Museum of Natural History.)
All signs point to this being a long, hard, slow slog. New Orleans is
New Orleans, for better and for worse -- city living that's less about
granite countertops and central air conditioning and more about old urban
life. Mary Rickard suggested that Americans living in newer cities might
not get understand what's important about a city as old and as gritty
as New Orleans. She put it well: "If you've always lived in a new
city, new is better. So many cities in America are interchangeable. People
don't get why we just don't move to Salt Lake City."
So it goes for New Orleanians. For whatever reason, it was as I sat in
the Clover Grill (motto: "we love to fry and it shows") in the
French Quarter eating a grilled cheese and tator tots, with Natalie Cole
singing "Pink Cadillac" on the stereo system, and enjoying the
spectacle of Vic the waiter and the fry cook berating each other back
and forth over who messed up an omelette order, that I realized that I
have a great deal of love for this place and that it would just be a damn
shame should we lose this city.
To Kill a Mockingbird in Monroeville
Doh, I forgot to post some of the photos from the trip that my mom and I took to Monroeville, Alabama to see the Mockingbird Players' production of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Monroeville, of course, is the hometown of Harper Lee -- though they know her as Nelle Lee -- and is the inspiration for the town of Maycomb in the book. Lee's father Amasa Lee was a lawyer who argued cases in the courthouse at the center of town, and Lee would go and watch her father from the balcony. I trust you're gettting the gist here -- much of the book is based on Lee's own experiences growing up in Monroeville.
What's more, the 1965 movie version of TKAM features a courthouse set that's almost an exact reproduction of the Monroeville courthouse. So it was certainly pretty cool to see folks of Maycomb/Monroeville acting out a story that was set in their town and featured characters inspired by some of their neighbors and friends and the like. And the race issues addressed in the book are still much in play in Monroeville. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the first act of this two-act play was set outside the courthouse, on a set of mini-houses meant to represent those of the Finches, the Radley's, and Miss Stephanie and Miss Maudie:
Then the people showed up. Maybe 250 of them?
Act Two was set in the actual courthouse. The jury was plucked from the audience (all men, of course, for the sake of being true to the time):
And "Tom Robinson" (a local funeral home employee) and "Mayella Ewell" (a sophomore at Monroe Academy) testified here:
Then we have a full view of the courthouse, taken at night, after the performance:
You notice that there are no photographs of the actual play itself. The sound engineer (who played "Jem" in years past) announced that to take photographs or video would "void our copyright." I'll admit, this is a nuance of copyright law that I had not run into before now. I'm going to look into it. Anyway, there are other sites to see in Monroeville. Namely, where Nelle Harper Lee's house once stood -- now the site of Mel's Dairy Dream:
And also Truman Capote's relatives' house. He lived just next door to Nelle when he stayed in Monroeville, but all that's left of his family's home is the stone wall around the perimeter:
All in all, a fantastic trip. If you ever get a chance to do it, I highly recommend it. But you have to be quick on the draw -- tickets tend to sell out the first day they go on sale.
All Storm, All the Time
One of my strongest impressions of post-Katrina New Orleans from my trip last week was this sense that the storm is just embedded in every fiber of life in that city. I've just posted on that on MyDD. I'll be following it up with two more posts: one on the ins-and-outs of the rebuilding process and the other on the day I spent gutting a couple Lower Ninth Ward homes with ACORN.
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