Lit Bits-12/31/2014 The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell

Aleathia says:

This year in review for literature is pretty slim for me.  I have had a wholly distracted year when it comes to reading or keeping up with print media other than comic books and the occasional news story online.   This is somewhat distressing to me as I have been an avid reader all my life.  Books are what I have turned to in my darkest times.  Hell, I have even slept in a bed with a pile of books to not feel so alone.  But in the last three years, with Michael in my life, the need to escape into the pages of a book has been reduced to next to nothing.  While this is exciting news (I'm happy!) it is also saddening because I miss books.

Our recent work schedules find me spending more time alone and therefore more likely to pick up a book and actually finish it.  I mentioned my lack of reading to a Forked Road cohort and she simply said..."look at all the writing you are doing".  I do blog a fair amount and I suppose I am doing a fair amount of reading to research for these blogs, but it isn't the same as a worn book in the hand.  I digress.  You get it.

Another amazing factor about being with Michael is that he has, over the years, given me a new love for non-fiction reading.  This summer I found a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" at the Salvation Army store.  I only knew something about the book from my Barnes & Noble Literary Desk Planner which had a blurb in one of the corners about it.  For 49 cents, I'm game for just about any book.

This book started out as my "bathroom book"....yes, you all have them.  A book that isn't quite interesting enough to carry around or read in bed, but interesting enough to read while pooping.  The first half of the book was spent like this and now this second half finds the book in the living room where it is likely to get read with a cup of coffee on mornings when Michael is at work.

"The Tipping Point" looks at the world from a sociological/psychological point of view.  It cracks open seemingly insignificant factors about individuals and groups of people that go unnoticed to the average person.  In reading this book I have felt like a foreign government receiving inside secrets.  It is like a Wiki Leak happened in my brain.  The ideas in this book are relevant to my life because I work in an industry where there is a great mix of personalities, psychological conditions, and different types of people.  It would be a travesty for me to NOT read this book.

This book came out in 2000 and yes, it is nearly 2015, but I don't think it renders the information obselete with time.  I think the basics of the formula are pretty concrete in its understanding to last.  It is a book about how epidemics get started and grow and how they can be altered with simple, small changes.  It has three rules:  The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context.  I won't rewrite the book here for you.  It's interesting and you should read it but I will give you a little idea.

Malcolm Gladwell

The Law of the Few

"The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts"-Malcolm Gladwell

Supposedly there are three main types of people that get things done.  There are Connectors who are people that know a large population of people and tend to make connections between these people. They do a lot of introducing of one group of folks to another.  They are a network hub not unlike Facebook.

Mavens are people who connect us to knowledge and information.  They are gifted in spreading this information around and would be the type of person behind the driving force of "word of mouth" type epidemics.

Salesmen are just that, salesmen.  They have charismatic attitudes and can get you to buy the information they are selling or negotiate terms of an agreement.  They have a powerful use of body language and non-verbal cues that subconsciously make you want to do what they want.


The Stickiness Factor

This is the theory of how well a message or idea stays with a person.  How well does it stick?  Will it be memorable enough to change a person's habit without them realizing it?  Does it enhance retention of an idea?


The Power of Context

"Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur"-Malcolm Gladwell

The idea of context is that the environment around us will greatly influence our set of behaviors despite how we may or may not have been raised or how our values lie.  The world immediately around us can change the structure of behavior and minute, seemingly insignificant changes in this environment can make bad situations better.

I have not finished this book yet, but I am on the last section, The Power of Context, and I started thinking about how this can relate to my own little environment in the ER where it is a world within a world.  The staff is its own tribe of people and each department a new tribe.  We have to "trade" with each other and work together despite our differences in habits, rules, and work ethics.  In addition to this, there is the tribe of people that come to us for healthcare.  Each time we enter a patient's room, we step into their world.  They bring with them a different set of political ethics, education, social value, moral value, and life experience.  These may clash with ours, but I think that some of Gladwell's ideas could prevail in making the healthcare experience better.  It could make all of us understand where each of us is coming from and how to better deal with the community on a social level that we had not considered before.

I am not sure I have been this excited about a non-fiction book in a long time.  It isn't a difficult read despite it being wholly about sociology and epidemics. Gladwell uses real life events that happened in our country to detail and explain the theories or laws of his tipping point idea.  Pick up a copy, throw it in the bathroom.  Give it a try.

Quills and Frills-12/27/2014 TwoGrand, food tracker

Aleathia says:

This year has been wonderful and crushing at the same time.  There have been a lot of stressful situations and a fair amount of subconscious depression over my mother.  My fix for this sort of thing is to eat my way through it.

In the last few months I have noticed that the jeans were getting tighter and tighter, and I made excuses for it because I didn't want my bag of chips ripped from my hands.  I was filling holes with greasy yummies like chips and pizza and late night McDonald's.  The other day I woke up and said to myself "this shit has to stop".  I'm not young anymore.  41 with a thyroid problem who has worked the night shift for 12 years.  I'm slicing years off my life left and right just for being a shift worker.  It doesn't allow you to sleep or eat properly and exercising gets blown off pretty easily because night work is exhausting.

In high school I had an eating disorder.  There were lots of reasons why, some of which are too damn personal to really get into, and it set me off on a bad path.  I had a bad perception of myself; I hated everything about myself.  It took a friend of mine who also had a disorder to get really sick for me to realize that I needed to cut it out.  So, I ate my way through things and just suffered being overweight most of my life.

Diets and calorie counting are dangerous for me.  I get obsessive and hyper-focused on the adding of calories to the point that I forget to enjoy my life.  Fads are just that...fads.  It has felt pretty defeating over the years.  How can you eat without feeling like you are starving to death or so restricted that life is miserable, but still lose weight?  This is the age old question isn't it?

Having a smart phone has its perks for sure.  Anything you want is at your fingertips.  So I started looking up apps that track food in hopes to find one better than the last one I had which was so tedious and difficult and made me crazy to the point where my family wanted me to delete it from my phone and eat a damn slice of pizza.

I found one called TwoGrand.

I don't generally endorse these sorts of things, but I love this app. You can track your daily intake in under 3 minutes a day, set goals for yourself, track your weight, track your water intake, and visually look back on your day.  It is sort of like an Instagram food tracker.  Very hipster, don't you think?

Before you eat your meal or snack or have a drink, you snap a pic of it.  Boom, recorded.  I love it because I can see what my portions look like, if I have eaten too many carbs that day or didn't eat enough.  It is a way to be honest without feeling shameful.  It is fun.  Who the hell ever said dieting was fun?  This girl.

I have used this app for 4 days and lost 5 pounds already.  I made a commitment to eat breakfast every day, stop drinking soda, do yoga 3 times a week, and 100 crunches a day.  If I miss the goal that day, it's ok.  The f-ing world won't end.

I know New Year's resolution time is coming around.  I think this is something you can stick with.  It has taken the stress out of my life and with 3 days of crunches under my belt my shirts even fit better. It allows for realistic goal setting.  Who could ask for anything more?  It is available for iPhone and Android.

Art Bomb-12/26/2014 Jonas Lie

Aleathia says:

One of the things I love about art is that there seems to be an endless supply of it.  Each person's eye is different and what I find beautiful you might not, but the fact that the artist can reach a person with their vision always invigorates me.  I tend to love modern forms of art and sculpture. I do not dislike the old master works, but there are only so many religious pieces I can visually consume at one time. I think I like the modern works much more because they leave room for the imagination to take hold. The viewer gets to make an interpretation of color, light, line, and space that may be completely different than the painter's intention.

While at Memorial Art Gallery I saw a beautiful work from Jonas Lie whom I had never heard of before.  I wasn't sure if he was a regional artist or if I was just naive.  It was a bit of both.

Jonas Lie was born in 1880 in Moss, Norway, but was essentially a Norwegian-American.  He came from a large and talented family.  His father was a civil engineer but his aunt was pianist Erika Lie Nieesn and his uncle was author Jonas Lie.

Earlier in his life his father passed away and he went to Paris to live with an aunt and uncle. While there he studied art at a small private school for a year before reuniting with his mother and sister in New York City.  As a family, they moved to New Jersey.

Between 1893-1897, Jonas studied art at Dr. Felix Adler's Ethical Culture School while also taking night classes at the National Academy of Design.  While there he also studied at Cooper Union and the Art Students League of New York.  After graduating, he worked as a shirt designer for nine years in New York City.

During this span he was very active in the art scene and participated in many art shows in New York and Pennsylvania as well as winning awards at the St. Louis World's Fair.  In 1906 he decided to return to Norway to find his roots.  He traveled again to Paris where he was introduced to Monet's style of painting which changed his own.  He began to infuse more urban settings into his work with a fine mixture of realism and impressionism.

The pinnacle of his career is considered to be a 30 canvas series of the Panama Canal.  Several of these pieces have permenant homes in major art museums across the US.

In 1922 he bought a cottage in the Adirondacks where his wife was recovering in a sanatarium from Tuberculosis.  She did eventually die from this disease and Jonas moved back to NYC with his daughter.  He again became very active in the art scene.  He was president of the National Academy of Design from 1034-1939.  Jonas Lie died in New York City in 1940.

Let's Go Somewhere-12/23/2014 Home Is Where the Heart Is

Aleathia says:

I have been on the move since before I was born.  Always moving on to the next bigger and better thing.  This was my mother's life which I had no choice, but to be a part of.  I adapted the best I could to the continual change of scenery, children's faces, and schools.  I never questioned it until was a teenager.  I wanted to stay in one damn place for a change.  She honored this and I am sure she was unhappy and I think this was so because the longer she stayed still the more she drank and she gave up her hobbies that brought her joy.  As an adult, I feel a bit selfish about it, but honestly it was the best thing she could have done for me.

I spent 7th grade to my senior year in Upstate NY (Elmira, NY) and then a few years in Corning, NY before I picked up where she left off.  I went traipsing off to Seattle and then to Atlanta and eventually back here to Corning under a certain amount of duress.  I had a baby and ended a marriage.  I had a few failed relationships and the desire to run away was pretty strong.  I understood my mother more than I ever had at that time.  If you keep moving, the pain doesn't feel quite so bad. I'm sure drinking and drugs also help that all go away, but that was never my strong suit.  I'm not an angel by any means, but I never saw the point of making it a life long career.  It isn't a coping mechanism by any stretch of the imagination.

If anything, my mother gave me New York.

In 2011, I drove Michael back to Corning with me from Cleveland where he flew in from California. He was jaw dropping excited about how beautiful this state was as we drove through hills that I never paid attention to anymore.  He saw this world for the first time, something I had stared at for a large part of my life and hated, and he found something to treasure.  I was resistant at first.  I thought he was a bit crazy, but over the last three years I have embraced this state as my forever home.  We have so many things to see in this one state.  It will take my life time to see them all.

His genuine nature, his love, his brutal reality made me love New York.  He opened the door for it being ok to set down roots; to take the risks in stride that come with being in one place.  I am sure I have not been too pleasant in this transition, but I am truly happy.  I stand on our porch and look out at the hills....the river...and think of how blessed we are to have found each other in this place.  

So today, I'm not going anywhere but here.  Home.  It  is where the heart is no matter how far away you run, or how you try to escape.  There is something beautiful about having a love affair with the landscape that holds all of your memories.  Thanks Corning, for the memories and the long years ahead.  Stay cool.

Art Bomb-12/19/2014 Angela Ellsworth

Aleathia says:

My recent trip to Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery showed me many new artists which is always exciting.  There was one sculptural/fiber arts piece there by artist Angela Ellsworth from her Seer Bonnets collection that has been ongoing since 2008.

I have always been a lover of both fiber arts as well as sculpture.  I think they require such vision and tactile response.  I am always in awe of what people come up with, but also in my own life I have been creating found object art to pass the time.  Everything in the world has more than one incarnation despite their intended purpose.

Angela Ellsworth's Seer Bonnets are made of steel, pearl tipped corsage pins.  The pearls make subtle exterior patterns and are unassuming while the inside looks like a prickly torture chamber.  These bonnets were meant to stand in for Joseph Smith's estimated 35 wives.  Ellsworth looks at these bonnets as "tools of translation".

In continuation of Ellsworth investigation of Mormon, polygamous life she had an installation of collared braids and bows called Lady-Ties for a Line Dance.  These pieces were worn by her "sister-wives" as live performance pieces.  Each lady-tie was monogramed for the performer who would wear it.  These pieces again look at the idea of ancestry.  The performers would also wear plain, prairie dresses and communicate their desires and intentions through a series of hand gestures.
Ellsworth is said to be interested in the homosocial dynamics found in queer cultures and polygamous communities.

Beyond these bold social statements Angela Ellsworth also works sculpturally with paper, stitching, and motion drawing.  Her stitch portraits are done on towels, paper, and other fabrics and are made when she travels from place to place.  She stitches those that she misses and love and those she would like to meet.

Her works on paper look at the latent potential of commonly used vessels like cardboard boxes and book casings.  She deconstructs them and rubs them with graphite to change their color and texture and to show their geometrical architecture.

Lastly, Ellsworth has a collection of work she calls Walking Drawings in which she looks at the possibilities of mark making in context to the motion of a body.  Each work is a single walk in which the number of steps are recorded within the drawing.  These are journeys to people she loves.

Foodies-12/18/2014 Hand + Foot, Corning, NY

Aleathia says:

Last weekend Mike and I had an impromptu "date night" so we decided to walk to Market Street and have dinner.  It is rare that we have a weekend off together, let alone a Saturday night where it is justthe two of us.  Our plan was to grab a burger at The Market Street Brew Pub and have a beer or two and head home.  My famous last words were "I don't want to get three sheets or anything...".  

Yeah.

I wasn't hungry when we made our way to the center of town so we walked down to Maley's to have "a beer" which became two and then we walked in the crisp night to the brew pub and had a flipping amazing burger.  The chef was on top of his game that night.  Spectacular food porn grade burger happened with some tasty homemade fries and their always wonderful Wheelhouse IPA.  I surprised him with a shot of Basil Hayden's.

We had a fantastic waitress for a change.  She was perfect in every way.  It had been a great night. We bundled up for the walk back up the hill and then....

Hand + Foot happened.  It happened real good.

It should be pretty evident that we don't go out much anymore, but we had been watching the progress of this new bar that was sprouting up on Market Street.  We love to see new businesses come to our town and love even more when they bring something lively to the mix.  This bar/restaurant took over the old Snooty Pig site.

We would have never went in had a group of bar hopping teachers not crowded the sidewalk in front of Hand + Foot.  I looked up, the heaven's opened, and we had to go in.  One beer, I thought, just one.

Right.

The bar is a beautiful pale wood with enough lighting to see the person next to you but not enough to make you blind or irritated.  They have a luscious menu filled with more brews, wines, and boozes than you can possibly comprehend.  To make it easy they have a nice chalkboard sign with what is already on tap.  I have an insane love for IPA's and am pretty easily suckered into trying any new one that comes around.  Hand + Foot were featuring a seasonal, limited run of Green Bullet Triple IPA (10.1%) from the San Diego company called Green Flash Brewing.  This beer was not served in a traditional pint glass (thank god) because a little is all you need to get the party started.  This brew was hopliscious and grassy and made me want to climb mountains.

Half way through that brew, while we were vigorously chair dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire and Chaka Khan, I decided a shot of Elijah Craig 12 was a fantastic decision.

The bartenders in Hand + Foot are fun!!  They are knowledgeable about what they serve, they laugh with you, and play the best music.  They even dropped little surprise bag of the hottest god damned chex mix I have ever eaten.  I got all Alice in Wonderland about it.  I carefully opened the stapled bag, smelled the contents (I smell everything before I eat it), and tried to decide if I was going to eat it.  At first, it looked like chex mix.  It had a bit of a soy-nutty taste to it and minutes later my eyes are bugging out of my head and my hand is waving in front of my mouth like a typical spice wuss. You would guess that I would leave it alone.  No.  I went back for seconds and thirds because damn it burned so good.

We moved on to another brew which I can't remember the name of but it was from the Keuka Lake area, a bit lighter at 7% and very enjoyable.  We saw some bourbons and such closed up behind glass which appeared to be Japanese.  Both and Mike and I were pretty interested in what that was all about so the bartender, sporting the Run DMC shirt, pulled out the bottle and explained that this particular Scotch Whiskey had just been voted the best in the world.  It beat out Scotch from Scotland.  Shut the front door!  The bartender mentioned something about James Bond and it was all over.  We ended up with a shot of this spectacular, mind vaporizing, went-down-so-smooth-I know-I'm-going-to-be-in-trouble golden gem called Yamazaki.

After this beautiful shot in walks a friend from high school who I had not seen in 23 years.  I was in full tilt boogie by then.  Laughing, giggling, and most likely walking like a sailor who forgot he wasn't at sea anymore.  Good times.

It took me a few days to recover, but I have not stopped thinking about what a great addition to the community Hand + Foot is.  I felt comfortable in this bar and that, if you know me, is saying a whole hell of a lot.  I can't wait to go back to eat this:

Lit Bits-12/17/2014 Stephen Crane

Aleathia says:

As a child, one of my all time favorite stories was The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.  At the time I was very unsure as to why this story touched me so much.  Later on in my childhood I had the same sort of reaction to All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque.  As an adult, I understand to some degree that these stories helped me to have an imaginary connection with my father who had fought in Viet Nam and though loving, has a distance about him that comes with the atrocity of war.

In writing these blogs, I often hope to share and discover what the world has to offer in the magical world of language.  I don't do as much reading anymore (insert adult onset ADD here) and find it harder and harder to just sit still.  It is a shame because the worlds encased in books make life so interesting.  It is also hard to push the teenager to read more when she doesn't see mom with a book in her hand for more than 5 minutes.  Either way, reading is magic.  We all should do it more.  Now back to Stephen Crane.

Tonight I was looking up poets that existed in the 1900's and low and behold there was Stephen Crane's name.  What? I never knew that he wrote poetry.  In fact, I never knew him for anything other than The Red Badge of Courage.  By nature I am not an investigator that way.  I love stories and music and art for what they are to me in that moment of life.  I have never been one to dig below the surface into the life or extended works of an artist or writer.  This is a character flaw on my part, but one that I live with daily.

If you want to jump into the long and connected life of Stephen Crane you can scroll through his Wiki page.  Today I just want to share a very short, cutting poem from his collection The Black Riders & Other Lines, 1905.

Yes, I have a thousand tongues

Yes, I have a thousand tongues,
And nine and ninety-nine lie.
Though I strive to use the one,
It will make no melody at my will,
But is dead in my mouth.

Quills and Frills-12/13/2014 Wayward, Image Comics

Aleathia says:

Yes folks, it is time for another great comic book from Image Comics.  I recently picked up the first 4 issues of a new series called Wayward.  This comic features stories by Jim Zub (of Samurai Jack and Skullkickers fame) with line art by Steve Cummings (who has worked on Elektra, The Flash, and Deadshot) and color by Tamra Bonvillain (lighting it up for Blackout, Curse, Sleepyhollow, and Penny Dora and the Wishing Box).

Wayward is a great story about a half Irish, half Japanese girl that leaves her father's home in Ireland to live with her mother in Tokyo.  She has bright red hair and muddles through her understanding of her mother's native tongue.  It is a story about trying to fit in where you feel you don't belong.

The great twists and turns come when the girl, Rori, finds out she has a special gift...a supernatural power...that leads her to find others in Tokyo that are different thus finding a way to fit in together. The story weaves in a lot of great myth and folklore that is native to Japan and at the end of each comic Zack Davisson, a scholar of Japanese Folklore, gives an understanding of the current issues myth and any creatures that make their way onto the pages.

If you love a more traditional looking anime, but also love the new world of color and fantastical themes then this is the series for you.  I eagerly await the new issue.

OM-12/7/2014 Worrying Changes Very Little, Dalai Lama

Aleathia says:

Everyday is a learning experience.  Every moment I understand who I am in this life.  The navigation is difficult despite trying to make it smooth; despite best efforts.  I often turn to my faith when I feel the wheel of suffering spinning.  It spins constantly, but sometimes I have run so fast in circles that I notice it and have to stop.  I have to grab the brass ring and get off the go round.

"Because of our worries and our grieving and our self-inflicted torment, God takes away nothing at all.  We must pray about it."--Paul Gerhardt, German poet.

Dalai Lama:

"That is a beautiful thought.  For us, this means: if there are worries that we can do something about, then there is no reason to despair.  But if there is nothing we can change, then despair will not help.  So why should we worry if a problem can be solved?  If there is a solution, then we don't have to be afraid.  But when something cannot be changed, then we must yield to it.  Worrying just takes away necessary strength.  It is useless.  I usually follow this rule:  hope for the best and be prepared for the worst......When a hope is not fulfilled, this is not a catastrophe.  Life with its many possibilities goes on, and other wishes are fulfilled.  If we put all our eggs in one basket, then a failure may cause us to fall into a deep despair and depression, or we may even take our life out of disappointment.  But with the right attitude, no one needs to be this hopeless."

Quills and Frills-12/6/2014 Black Science

Aleathia says:

As you may know I have recently gotten back into the comic scene.  It was something I enjoyed as a kid and then again in my 20's.  I didn't read the usual fare, but enjoyed things like Night Breed and Wild Palms.  If it was dark and maybe on the fringe, I enjoyed it.  The 90's was a bit of a fade out for comics and then it was uncool to be a nerd for the longest time, but god damn if I'm not totally excited that the nerd nation has risen again!!

The problem I am having is there are so many damn awesome comics out right now that I can't catch up or keep up.  I am reading one now called Black Science.  It was created by Rick Remender with art by Matteo Scalera.  I am telling you.  I have no idea what the hell is going on in my brain when I read this.  There is science fiction and real science....dudes speaking in alien languages, German and English.  There is a breech in the time space continuum.  There is blood and guts and jaded love.

You can find this gem of a series on Image Comics.  Yes, I am an Image Comics whore at this point. They are producing some spectacular work.  I have loads more to read in the Black Science series as well as a ton of titles that my better half has squirreled away in the office.  More to come!

Art Bomb-12/5/2014 George Grosz

Aleathia says:

On my most recent travel excursion to Rochester, I had the opportunity to visit the Memorial Art Gallery in the East End neighborhood.  It was a nice little gallery and in the coming weeks I will be featuring some of the artists that I saw while I was there.  There were 18-20 artists that I had never seen before so investigating their work is a pleasure.  I love finding new art!

George Grosz is a German born painter (1893-1959) who is known for his caricatures of Berlin in the 1920's.  He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada movement as well as New Objectivity before he emigrated to the United States in 1933.

Grosz was bitterly opposed to the Nazi movement in his country and left Germany before Hitler came to power.  In 1933 he was invited to teach the summer at the Art Students League of New York. After that summer he returned to Germany for his family and then emigrated.  He taught at the League permanently until 1955.

In 1959, Grosz decided he wanted to visit his homeland and returned to Germany.  While in Berlin he fell down the stairs after a night of drinking and died.

His original influences were expressionism and futurism as well as graffiti.  He drew Berlin city scenes until he emigrated and left those themes behind.  He eventually turned to landscapes and conventional nude painting.