My cell phone dictionary Pleco has lots of Communist slogans among its sample sentences. My favorite so far: 又红又专, both red and expert; both socialist-minded and professionally proficient; both politically conscious and professionally competent.
atrium with stripes, flashes and reflections. I gather the panes will be
Here's a thing of beauty from Tricycle, a magazine I find I'm appreciating more all the time. It's a lineage chart of all the women teachers in Zen. It was created among convert Zen Buddhists in Canada. Sort of like Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party," but compiled by a male teacher, Peter Levitt. He was "roused from a dream" in 2007 when asked the question of the missing women posed by Rowan Percy, a woman who was approaching her jukai, the ceremony of Dharma transmission. Traditionally in Zen, the jukai is represented by giving the new member a lineage chart - all men.
It tells its rich, complicated and often very painful story very well. And I understood some of the Chinese - though none in this 1875 phrasebook!
If you looked today into the big Parsons Gallery where, exactly a week from now, "Offense & Dissent" will have officially opened, you'd have seen these beginnings... Already up: the brilliant piece of interpretive design commissioned to go with the Matsunaga section.
Walked the lower part of the High Line with a friend today, and almost missed a way cool work of art on display there, Josh Kline's "Skittles." It looks like yet another case of designer drinks, down to the shapes of the bottles, the colors and texture of the contents. and the font in which which ingredients are listed. But where's the salesperson? In fact they are poetic mini-portraits of contemporary New York types. A pinkish one: anarchy, infused vodka, 
axe body wash, protein powder, red bull, self-tanner, banana, dhea. A bluish one: designer toothpaste, vitamin water, listerine, toner, 
magazine, sneaker. A deep green one: mixed greens, baby spinach, baby kale, lacinato kale, nyquil, tennis ball, wheat grass, spirulina, olive oil, dollars. Murky brown: big data, google glasses, underwear, verizon bill, bacteria, omega 3 fish oil, purell, porn. Brilliant, if a little painful too!
Just had my first conversa- tion in Chinese about religion! It was with a young woman from Beijing who works as a tutor at China Institute, and I dare say I needed help with most of what I was saying. But still, we talked for an hour! I tried to write down some of the things she helped me say in the subway on the way home. Something I find very interesting is... I've heard Chinese young people read a lot of books about religion... Compared to Europeans American have faith but Europeans know more than Americans concerning religion... I would like to discuss these things with Chinese students... I taught Buddhism and Modern Thought... Some of my students are creating their own religion... I'd like to know if American and Chinese young people are the same... For most people knowing how to use religion is enough; for me, a professor, not enough... I'm studying Chinese in order to be able to have this kind of conversation! Approximate, no doubt (in a foreign language it's easier to use your few words, say your things, than understand fluent speakers' wealth of words and things) but it feels like I've arrived somewhere!
Two weeks from now, I'll be most of the way across the country on JetBlue flight 89 to San Diego. Lots of things to do in the interim, from clearing up my apartment and office to getting a physical, procuring a visa, using up or giving away the food in my larder and choosing what to take for what will be a whole year away. Lots of people to see, things to do as well! I take it as an auspicious sign that it was just today that the plant on my landing (I rescued it from the street two years ago) decided it was ready to bloom: do you see the flower getting ready to unfurl?!
Ah, Saturdays in Brooklyn - I'm going to miss you! Today I went from the farmer's market (where I made a contribution to "textile recycling") to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Expecting (actually dreading) the uniform green of summer I was delighted to find blooming rosebay (a rhododendron native to the eastern North America), irises, mountain laurel, extravagances of little roses and the splendid red display below. From there it was on to the Brooklyn Museum for coffee, a glimpse of Clarissa Dalloday (a Woolfian riposte to Bloomsday), and a stroll through the wonderful American collection. Nice neighborhood I live in!
This was braided with work on an essay I'm finishing on teaching
comparative religious ethics. It's based on my AAR paper last
year - our panel on teaching
religious ethics is becoming a special
section in a journal! Somewhat awkwardly, though, I find my thinking has changed.
samutpāda (interdependent co-arising) is central to the change, I think. Will I incorporate this new understanding in the paper? I can't, really. For one thing, there's a respondent, who's expecting my paper to be basically the same as the one she responded to in November. For another, I'm not sure where this will lead - an ethics without selves!?
This map's been making the rounds: second largest religious tradition in each state in 2010! No wonder the South is worried about sharia law, eh? In fact, it's as uninformative as the red-blue maps I've been huffing and puffing over since the election of 2006. Break things down by county and you get another story entirely - much more religious 
diversity. And face the numbers and you realize that we're still talking about vanishingly small numbers of people in most cases - the "second largest" in many cases will be less than 1%. (And then there are the usual problems with religious identity polls.) The absurdity of it is is perhaps clearer in the case of this other map. CA: Kamusta? NY: 很好！ 
gobo! -and it works pretty well, so far as I can tell.
overcame - or at least nuanced - their skepticism. Is it art? Is it brilliant? It's important. And a few pieces, like "Straight" (above), are treasures.
It includes archival materials of every sort, expertly arrayed; two works of interpretive art commissioned for the occasion (including the one from which the witty image above hails), and provocative reflections on art, design and belonging from many current New School citizens.
Another great show currently up in New York is "Object of Devotion," an exhibition of English alabaster sculptures from the 13th-15th c. now showing at MoBiA, the Museum of Biblical Art. Images online are few, so these two will have to suffice: Incarnation/ Annunciation and Parliament of Heaven and a Scene from the Life of Saint Edmund, still in vibrant color - both from the 15th century. The former is striking not only for the unusual juxtaposition of the four virtues known as Daughters of God and the annunciation, but just
look at the size of that Jesus! The latter is thrilling not only for its scene of everyday life but the fact that this scenes happens against a theatrical background, the ground on which the wheat seems to grow is really a green cloth painted with flowers... and of course, peeking out over the top of the scrim of the world and its clueless denizens, the saint on his way to martyrdom in the golden light of eternity.
