Arts & Humanities

Those All-Important First Teachers

By Amy Nathan
“I only want to play cartoon music!” That was the pre-condition my older son made at age seven for being willing to begin piano lessons. He loved music, having become a fan of the Empire Brass Quintet after seeing them on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood on TV, and was waiting eagerly until he was old enough to toot a trumpet. But learning something about the basics of music in the meantime by taking piano lessons — that he wasn’t sure about. So he made his cartoon-music demand.

For The Love Of Bob Marley

Something about summertime makes Bob Marley music pop up everywhere, but I recently realized I don’t actually know very much about Marley. The following is from The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin.

What on Earth is The Wind in the Willows?

By Peter Hunt
To judge from a quick poll of friends, acquaintances, students, and the ladies in the village shop, The Wind in the Willows is fondly remembered, even by those who don’t actually remember reading it. It is a children’s book, it is about small animals – and it is somehow quintessentially English: for almost everyone I spoke to, it conjured up endless summer, boating on a quiet river, large hampers of food, a peaceful, unthreatening way of life.

The “Ground Zero Mosque” and An Ode to Political Correctness

By Elvin Lim
Last Friday, President Barack Obama communicated his support for the building of a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero, saying, “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.” This seemed harmless enough until he found out that over two-thirds of America disagreed with him. Chastened, the President went off-message…saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.” Tsk, Tsk, Barack Obama.

The Beatles Arrive in Hamburg, August 1960

By Gordon Thompson
Although Americans often talk about a “British Invasion” that started in February 1964, the groundwork for that cultural phenomenon may actually have begun fifty years ago this month when, on 17 August 1960, the Beatles began performing at the Indra, a small club in red-light district of the West German city of Hamburg. The van and ferry ride to Hamburg with manager Allan Williams had the Beatles arriving at night in one of Europe’s most decadent enclaves. The St. Pauli district thrived on sex

Lives of the Artists

By Alana Salguero, Grove Art Editorial Assistant
From van Gogh and his notorious left ear to Salvador Dalí with his legendary moustache, the art world boasts a colorful cast of characters whose unorthodox behavior has generated as much public interest as its artistic oeuvre. It appears that creativity often begets eccentricity (or vice versa, the age old chicken-and-egg conundrum), blurring the boundaries between art, performance, and life.

Technology Update: Flying Books Can Be Dangerous

One of the big news stories this week was about JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who famously unleashed an expletive-ridden rant over his plane’s PA system, then pulled emergency-evacuation chute lever and made a dramatic sliding exit onto the JFK tarmac. It is only appropriate, I think, that we take this moment to consider the intersection between e-readers and airplane safety. Please pull your desk chairs into the full, upright position and enjoy the following musings from Dennis Baron.

The State of ‘Judenpolitik’ Before the Beginning of the War

Peter Longerich is Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London and founder of the College’s Holocaust Research Centre. His book, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, shows the steps taken by the Nazis that would ultimately lead to the Final Solution. He argues that anti-Semitism was not a mere by-product of Nazi political mobilization or an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses. Rather, from 1933 onwards, anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement’s attempts to implement, disseminate, and secure National Socialist rule. In the excerpt below Longerich analyzes the state of Jewish citizens of Germany right before the start of the war.

The Edinburgh International Festival

This week the world famous Edinburgh International Festival kicks off, beginning three weeks of the best the arts world has to offer. The Fringe Festival has already begun in earnest with countless alternative, weird, and wacky events happening all over the city. Later in August sees the Edinburgh International Book Festival and there will be several OUP authors giving talks over a fortnight, including David Crystal, Tariq Ramadan, Frank Close, Ian Glynn, and Robin Hanbury-Tenison.

Struggling for the American Soul at Ground Zero

By Edward E. Curtis IV
Like Gettysburg, the National Mall, and other historic sites, Ground Zero is a place whose symbolic importance extends well beyond local zoning disputes and real estate deals. The recent controversy over a proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks away from the former World Trade Center shows it clearly: the geography of Lower Manhattan has become a sacred ground on which religious and political battles of national importance are being waged.

God’s Polity: Faith and Power

Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Easter Studies Emeritus at Princeton University. His new book, Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East, illuminates the role of religion in the Middle East, revealing how it has shaped society for good and for ill. In the excerpt below, which looks at Islamic government, we learn about the long history of religion intertwining with governmental authority.

The Mysteries of Summer

By Rosemary Herbert

Henry James was a man of many words. But when it came to selecting just a pair that he would define as “the two most beautiful words in the English language,” he chose the words, “summer afternoon.” If you are an avid reader setting out for a weekend — or better yet, an extended vacation — with a stack of books or a well-loaded electronic reader in hand, you may speculate that James saw summer afternoons as beautiful because they are especially congenial times to spend reading. Voracious readers know that the prospect of extended leisure time to spend with their books is one of the great joys of summer.

Obama on “The View”

By Elvin Lim
President Barack Obama knew that he needed to help his party out as Washington gears up for the November elections. And so, he went on daytime television.
According to Nielsen ratings, Obama had 6.5 million people tuning in to The View last Thursday. In his last Oval Office address on the BP oil spill at primetime on June 16, he enticed only 5.3 million to listen in. As a pure matter of strategy, the decision to go on The View would have been a no-brainer. With a bigger audience in a relaxed atmosphere and soft-ball questions, Obama had little to lose and much to gain by going on daytime TV. In fact, because people are tired of speeches from behind a desk (which is why speeches from the Oval Office garner smaller and smaller audiences the further we are from Inauguration day), people rarely get to see a president taking questions on a couch (which is why The View got .4 million more viewers on July 31, 2010 than on November 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected).

Linked Up: William Carlos Williams, Goats, NASA

Yesterday, I tried to start a #mathbattle on Twitter, but it proved too geeky to take. (Go figure.) I was having a nostalgic moment, remembering back in middle school when we had to write date equations. Everyday. Because each day, my friends, is different. A new day, full of new possibilities, opportunities, and numbers. Today is 7/30/2010. That means two things:

1) It will be August very, very soon.
2) We have the numbers 7, 3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0 to work with. (Or, you can leave out a 2 and a 0. That is the cheater’s way.)

LET’S DO IT! —> 7 – ((3+0)(2 + 0)) = (1 + 0)

Yessssss. Math is awesome. Got a better equation? Prove it. Until then, here are some interesting things.

Friday Pet Blogging: Bentley

Did you guys see that movie The Blind Side? I’m a huge Michael Lewis fan—MONEYBALL WHAT!—plus I’ve been a huge Sandra Bullock buff ever since her performance in Speed 2. So needless to say, Blind Side was a must-see for me last year. Anyway, I was SHOCKED by how much that movie resonates with my real life. Consider these similarities between me and the protagonist, Michael Oher:
1. Oher lived in poverty for 16 years; I lived in a cage for 6 years
2. Oher was adopted by a southern lady with strong opinions; my mommy is southern and has very strong opinions about me eating chicken bones in the park (SPOILER ALERT: she’s against it)

The Beatles, Orientalism, and Help!

By Gordon Thompson
At the July 29, 1965 premiere of the Beatles’ second film, Help!, most viewers understood the farce as a send-up of British flicks that played on the exoticism of India, while at the same time spoofing the popularity of James Bond. Parallel with this cinematic escapism, a post-colonial discourse began that questioned how colonial powers justified their economic exploitation of the world. Eventually, Edward Said’s Orientalism would describe the purpose of this objectification as “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (1978: 3). In effect, Said and others argued that portrayals of the non-Western other