Trendlist: Althouse

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Althouse

"A student said she was racially profiled while eating in a college dorm. An investigation found no evidence of bias. But the incident will not fade away."
"What's the avocado tree's name? (I have forgotten). It's looking pretty large."
"Mr. Le Va used his own body as material, violently, with 'Impact Run Velocity Piece,' an audio work that he performed just once — and recorded..."
The snowhead.
"It's maddening to watch the liberals who insisted for months that we should 'follow the science' reject the overwhelming scientific evidence that schools can reopen safely."
At the Sunrise Café...

"A student said she was racially profiled while eating in a college dorm. An investigation found no evidence of bias. But the incident will not fade away."

Posted: 25 Feb 2021 08:47 AM PST

"The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN picked up the story of a young female student harassed by white workers. The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the student's case, said she was profiled for 'eating while Black.' Less attention was paid three months later when a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode found no persuasive evidence of bias. [Oumou] Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed. Smith College officials emphasized 'reconciliation and healing' after the incident. In the months to come they announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Ms. Kanoute and her A.C.L.U. lawyer — set aside for Black students and other students of color. But they did not offer any public apology or amends to the workers whose lives were gravely disrupted by the student's accusation... 'It was appropriate to apologize," [Smith president Kathleen] McCartney said. 'She is living in a context of 'living while Black' incidents.'... Ms. McCartney offered no public apology to the employees after the report was released... Anti-bias training began in earnest in the fall.... [C]afeteria and grounds workers found themselves being asked by consultants hired by Smith about their childhood and family assumptions about race, which many viewed as psychologically intrusive."

From "Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College" by Michael Powell (NYT).

The article quotes Mark Patenaude, whom Kanoute accused of racism. He was a janitor at Smith, but not on the job at the time of the incident. He now says: "We used to joke, don't let a rich student report you, because if you do, you're gone.... I was accused of being the racist... To be honest, that just knocked me out. I'm a 58-year-old male, we're supposed to be tough. But I suffered anxiety because of things in my past and this brought it to a whole 'nother level." As for all the training sessions in race and intersectionality, he said: "I don't know if I believe in white privilege. I believe in money privilege."

"What's the avocado tree's name? (I have forgotten). It's looking pretty large."

Posted: 25 Feb 2021 08:01 AM PST

Said MadisonMan, in the comments to the post with video of Meade grinding hard red winter wheat. Meade answered "Arthur" with a link to "Recurring features in Mad (magazine)" (Wikipedia), and then, later, took this picture of the tree and me.

I'm there, I suppose, for scale.

The hat is not an affectation, but a needed shield for my eyes as I work in front of the big window, but it's funny to see it in the picture, because I just finished writing a post on the NYT obituary for the artist Barry Le Va, and the obit has the line, "Mr. Le Va became known for his ever-present Borsalino hat," and that's what my hat is, a man's Borsalino hat.

Here's how Arthur looked in May 2019, after we drove home from Utah in one day to save him from a mid-Spring freeze. And here he is in October 2015, when he was 2.

"Mr. Le Va used his own body as material, violently, with 'Impact Run Velocity Piece,' an audio work that he performed just once — and recorded..."

Posted: 25 Feb 2021 07:43 AM PST

"... at Ohio State University in 1969. Here he ran repeatedly at full speed into opposite walls of a gallery until he was unable to proceed. The recording was then played in the open gallery, leaving visitors to deduce his actions from sound alone: footsteps, impact and slowing pace. He allotted 30 seconds for each run. In one interview he said he had kept it up for an hour and 45 minutes (more than 200 sprints), at which point friends ended the performance, fearing for his health. The recorded piece is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. By contrast, some Le Va works were overtly gentle, even serene. An especially beautiful example, from 1968-69, was made entirely of chalk dust.... The material, gathered into dunelike drifts, resembled an indoor earthwork. It was swept up and discarded when the show closed this month...."

From "Barry Le Va, Whose Floor-Bound Art Defied Boundaries, Dies at 79/Extolling horizontality, he made sculptures from felt, flour, glass sheets and even meat cleavers. Elsewhere, in a performance piece, his body was a sprinting projectile" by Roberta Smith (NYT).

The snowhead.

Posted: 25 Feb 2021 06:43 AM PST

ADDED: The "puns" tag is for something Meade says. I make a remark that presumes familiarity with a song that I'm just going to make sure everyone is familiar with:

"It's maddening to watch the liberals who insisted for months that we should 'follow the science' reject the overwhelming scientific evidence that schools can reopen safely."

Posted: 25 Feb 2021 03:06 AM PST

"Conservatives have argued for years that liberals don't actually care about science and only pretend to when it's convenient for the advancement of their political agenda. It appears that they had a point."

A commenter named Jadon writes, at "School Closures Have Failed America's Children As many as three million children have gotten no education for nearly a year" by Nicholas Kristof (NYT).

At the Sunrise Café...

Posted: 24 Feb 2021 05:08 PM PST