What-are-you-reading-Wednesday: A History of the World in Six Glasses

By Kristen Fuhs Wells, communications director at the Indiana Humanities Council.

In A History Of The World In Six Glasses, Tom Standage boldly states that the history of the world can be told using six signature beverages (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola). These drinks are intricately linked to six major periods in world history–from our nomadic brethren deciding to stay in one place to the current fascination with Coca-Cola.

He goes on to divide history much like archaeologists divide it based on different materials (stone, bronze, iron) only in the form of beverages. But not in a world history textbook kind of way (although I did find myself re-learning bits of world history that I had forgotten over the years). Instead, Standage summarizes great periods of history and concepts into just a few sentences, sprinkles in a few interesting factoids and connects both big picture thoughts and minute details to the development of these beverages, as well as their widespread adoption. Standage explains how these beverages extended life expectancies, fueled the enlightenment, contributed to wars, and divided cultures. For example:

Beer contributed to an increase in farming and decrease in hunting.
Wine divided classes and cultures, particularly in Greece and Rome. 
Spirits influenced slavery, the American Revolution, and contributed to the British Navy’s strength.
Tea improved and sustained life, and it was the “lubricant” for the industrial revolution.
Coffee (and coffeehouses) served as fuel for the enlightenment.
Coca-Cola, love it or hate it, is symbolic of America’s rise in dominance.

Some of those interesting tidbits include that the oldest known recipe is for beer; that Coca-Cola created a clear, un-branded bottle for a leader in the Soviet Union so that he wouldn’t be seen drinking Coke during the Cold War; and that rum significantly contributed to the dominance of the British navy because it kept scurvy at bay.

It’s a brisk read, and offers fascinating insights into our history, and into human nature.

12 of Indy’s most creative minds compete for $10,000

Twelve ideas. Hundreds of chit-chatting audience members. And one $10,000 prize. It’s all on the line Thurs., Nov. 12, at 9 p.m., during “Pecha Kucha Vol. 7: The Next Indianapolis,” an official Spirit & Place Festival event. At the conclusion of the unique presentations, judges will award $10,000 from the Central Indiana Community Foundation to one of twelve presenters – on the spot.

These twelve presenters will employ the Pecha Kucha format, a 6-minute, 40-second PowerPoint presentation of 20 slides at 20 seconds each, to propose their plan to make Indianapolis even more inspiring. Their grassroots ideas are the best of the best, culled from nearly 50 submissions across the city by Indianapolis’ civic and social leaders. The eight judges, named below, will convene for just 6 minutes and 40 seconds to determine which idea is the most deserving of the Spirit & Place $10,000 award.

 

“This event is by far the most collaborative and impactful event yet,” said John Beeler, a member of the Pecha Kucha Indianapolis team. Other partners include: Asthmatic Kitty Records, Big Car, the Indiana Humanities Council, Indianapolis Downtown Inc, IndyHub, the Local Initiatives Support Coalition, Method Architecture, and NUVO. 

The event is free (with cash bar onsite), and takes place at The Toby in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Tickets are required, and can be secured at at the door, at http://imamuseum.org, or by calling 317-955-2339.

To match the uniquely social and collaborative spirit of Pecha Kucha, a variety of organizations have crafted an entire evening centered around the event. People are invited to start early by grabbing a local, seasonal, and delicious dinner at the new Nourish Cafe in the IMA. From there, people can try out the groundbreaking iPhone/iPod app “TAP Into Sacred Spain,” a “director’s commentary” to the IMA’s newly launched, first-of-its-kind exhibit.

And at 7:30 p.m., IndyHub will hold “ChitChat,” a mixer in the IMA’s Nourish Cafe Fountain Room organized to help presenters, judges, and audience alike to connect and network before the main event.

Doors to The Toby will open at 8:30 p.m. 

Presenters & Presentations

“A Little Birdy Told Me…”
Green 3

Green 3 is an Indianapolis landscape architecture and environmental design firm. The Green Team is Dawn Kroh, Tia Agnew, Phyllis Boyd, Brian Harbison, Scott Minor and Reed Nicholson. With this project Indianapolis can begin to imagine possibilities of transformation, taking the city closer to the past past and, in turn, pushing the city toward the future.

“Letteracks: A 3D map for Indianapolis”

Matthew C. Hale

 

Matthew C. Hale is a life-long resident of Indianapolis and graduate of Herron School of Art & Design. Letteracks is a coordinated system of 26 giant letter bikeracks (one for each letter of the alphabet) designed for the regional center of Indianapolis. 

“Growing Place: The Slow Food Edible Garden at the White River State Park”

Laura Henderson

 

Laura Henderson is the founder of the Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market, co-founder of Urban Earth Indy – spreading rain barrels and gardens with husband Tyler Henderson, and one of Indianapolis’ most dynamic yoga teachers. Laura consciously engages in the belief that we must be the change we wish to see in the world, and she has been working with Slow Food Indy, the White River State Park, and Matthew Jose (owner of Big City Farms) to grow the Slow Food Edible Garden from idea to reality.

“The Visual Archiving Center of Narrative and Myth of the People Videre Archivum Nararre MythosVolk”

Anna Rae Landsman

 

Anna Rae Landsman was born in Chicago, currently working on her thesis work at Maine College of Art. With ‘home base’ located in the east side of Indianapolis’ “Moon Block Building,”  the Visual Archiving Center will host a collection site for anyone in Indianapolis to share their personal myth and narrative.

“10th Street Walking: Building Billboard Narratives”

Mark Latta

 

Mark teaches English, runs a record label, enjoys meandering walks with his wife and dogs, and loves getting lost in a great story. 10th Street Walking will chronicle the wisdom, experience and advice of the people who live along 10th Street and publish the shared narrative through billboard-sized public art.

“Pogue’s Run Press: Indy’s New Nonprofit Book Publisher”

Kevin McKelvey

 

Kevin McKelvey is a poet and writer that teachers editing, publishing, and writing at the University of Indianapolis. He is involved with The Second Story and Big Car Collective. Pogue’s Run Press will be an independent book publishing nonprofit that publishes in three areas: books by kids for kids, place-based Midwestern writing, and non-traditional collaborations and projects.

“Design Maintained”

Wil Marquez

 

A Northwest Indiana native and long time Indianapolis resident, Wil Marquez is currently employed with A2SO4, an Indianapolis based, international architecture firm. He acts as both a senior designer and the director of A2SO4’s exploratory design initiative, A2SX.  A 10K Design Competition will call out to others to help cast a new vision embedded with ideas of modernity, connectability, and maintained growth in the Devington Neighborhood. 

“Second Story: On The Possibility Of Kid-Powered Flight In Fountain Square”

Matt Mays & Ken Honeywell

 

Matt Mays and Ken Honeywell are two of the founders of Second Story. They are in love with their wives and have never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Second Story is using creative writing to help kids connect with their community in ways they never imagined.

“Lights on the Canal”

Jim Merz

 

Jim Merz creates kinetic computer-controlled sculptural and video installations as a way to demarcate time and space. His artwork reflects and celebrates complex systems, both natural and man-made. “Lights on the Canal” is a performance of approximately 60 lighted globes floating down the canal at Broad Ripple. These floating globes will be lighted by LED’s inside and connected to each other by a wireless network that will enable complex moving patterns of multi-colored lights.

“Shifting Landscapes”

Cynthia Pratt

 

Cynthia Pratt, Professor of Dance at Butler University, holds an MFA from Temple University and is a Certified Movement Analyst from the Laban Institute of Movement Studies.  Her choreography has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and she is a regular guest choreographer for Dance Kaleidoscope. Shifting Landscapes will be a series of three large-scale (500-1000 participants), site-specific choreographic works set at key locations in Indianapolis.

“Perspective on Peace”

Callie Smith, Khadijah Muhammad, and Tim Nation

 

The “Perspective on Peace” project is Peace Learning Center director Tim Nation, co-founder of Muslim Women of America and member of Nur-Allah Islamic Center Khadijah Muhammad, and clergyperson Callie Smith of Christian Theological Seminary are involved with peace, justice and interfaith work in the city of Indianapolis. This project will examine the impact of 9/11 on Indianapolis and the stories of people from diverse faiths interacting in ways that inspire peace using a new multi-media installation in the Peace Learning Center at Eagle Creek Park, interfaith peace learning workshops for area schools and an annual September 11th dialogue event will memorialize the past while offering people of all ages a vision for the future.

“homespun: modern handmade”

Amanda Mauer Taflinger & Neal Taflinger

Amanda Mauer Taflinger is an art educator and photographer, as well as the organizer of the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange, a biannual contemporary craft fair. Her husband, Neal Taflinger, is a multimedia storyteller. homespun will be a retail shop on East Washington Street, in the Irvington neighborhood, that focuses on high-quality, modern handmade crafts and artisanal goods. 

 

Judges

Sarah Green: a resident of Indy’s near north side since 2007 and Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

 

David Hoppe: a regular columnist and editor who writes about culture and politics for NUVO, the alternative weekly in Indianapolis 

 

Tammi Jones: Senior Vice President of Policy and Planning for the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, named by Women’s Enterprise Magazine as one of the nation’s top 100 Female Executives in Supplier Diversity 

 

Gail Payne: owner of The Goods: Thoughtful Marketing, Authentic Living and manager of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail public outreach and fundraising

 

Aaron Renn: consultant and urban affairs writer who publishes The Urbanophile blog

Krista Skidmore: president of FlashPoint, an Indianapolis-based human resource consulting firm, and a board member of the Arts Council of Indianapolis and the Indiana Humanities Council

 

David Wu: policy director for the Mayor of Indianapolis

 

Tamara Zahn: President of Indianapolis Downtown, Inc., a NFP organization charged with developing, managing and marketing Downtown. 

Indiana Recycling 19th Anniversary Celebration this Friday

This Friday is the first Friday of the month and that means that the Indiana Humanities Council is opening its doors to the public (truth be told, since we work here, we’re kind of open all the time during business hours–but these Open Houses are much more official and traditionally come with cheese and wine…and cookies.)

This Friday we have an extra treat. Not only can you come in and check out our outrageous Georgian Revival digs–a neat treat if you’re into that sort of thing, but this Friday we are celebrating the 19th anniversary of the Indiana Recycling Coalition.

They started their quest for a cleaner, more efficient Indiana way back in 1989 which, if I recollect properly was a the second big wave of environmentalism in this country and about time time politicians first started to really wake up to some real problems. Back then we were mostly concerned with acid rain which was literally washing away national monuments and eating through people’s roofs, holes in the ozone layer, and CFCs in hairspray and nearly everything in the household cleaner aisles.

In the 19 years since, we’ve seen the creation of the multibillion dollar bottled water industry and the mountains of plastic it brings with it, the rise of plastic bags, and perhaps most startling a huge increase personal electronics.

Now 1989 was no slouch when it came to boomboxes, walkmans (walkmen?), cooler-sized “portable” TVs, VCRs, and even PCs. But 2008 has so much more and more of it. It’s not just that cellphones exist, but nearly everyone has one. And an iPod…and a digital camera…and a DVD player…and a DVD player in their car…and multiple computers…and an XBox, Playstation and a Wii.

And a home theater system.

And a wifi thermostat. Et. cetera.

Many of these electronics have high metal content that is incredibly destructive to the environment; and, by “environment” I mean “that place where humans live, work, and play.” There is no “environmental” concern that is not also (and perhaps most importantly) a human concern.

So come on out and congratulate the IRC for 19 years of fighting the good fight for you, (probably your parents,) and your kids. And in the meantime head out over to their website to learn more about who they are, what they do, and where they do it. [Celebration details after the fold.]

Hope to see you on Friday.

Master the Technology and Share the Cookies

Our resource partners at Buddy² have helpfully passed along the Indiana Department of Education’s K-8 Technology Skill Benchmarks. If you have a kindergartner at home, it’s time to make sure your young person can “identify digital tools by name” – scanner, cell phone, MP3 player, etc. Your 2^nd grader should be able to “cite sources of information, print and non-print, for class projects.” Good, because then they’ll be ready for grad school.

Of course, many parents are way behind their kids technologically and need their offspring’s help to log onto secure networks and so on.

What, then, is the pinnacle of this K-8 pyramid of tech skills? The effective 8^th grader should be able to:

• Plan, design, and develop a digital product.
• Explore technology use in real world applications in a global society.
• Demonstrate effective use of the Internet and exhibit digital citizenship.

The global society is no problem — one can hardly get involved in any online discussion without Finns, Italians, Australians, Taiwanese, and others putting their 2 euro-cents in. Digital citizenship, though, would definitely take a few weeks to learn, for it is “a complex set of behaviors that define the appropriate use of technology, including the areas of safety, rights, communications, etiquette, education, access, commerce, responsibility, and security.”

In fact, the threads woven through the K-8 benchmarks are these three — productivity, communication, and digital citizenship. Only one of them is concerned solely with the child/machine relationship. The other two have to do with the child/world and child/society interface, still the crucial application where education needs to ensure a higher level of functionality.

This entry was posted by: Nancy

Meandering Indiana – 7

We need to thank our alert friends at Inside INdiana Business for pointing out this piece from WISH-TV8: Shoe Thefts Puzzle Small Town. The story of a beagle, a firehouse, and a crime spree in Waveland, Indiana, needs to be read in its entirety, yet we are thereby reminded that in Waveland people still have porches and they still leave shoes on them. Foolishly.

However, this tale jogged my memory about the next county I’d like to revisit virtually – Montgomery County. The county seat, Crawfordsville, is probably best known as the setting for Wabash College, “A Liberal Arts College for Men,” as its home page declares. Passing over the reasons why this institution still refuses to admit women (about which I have no clue), I will pause instead to recognize a past Indiana Humanities Council chair, Don Herring, who taught at Wabash and brought his love of literature to his work with us. Let me also give a nod to our friends at the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum who do wonderful work there.

Yes, Montgomery County is an amazingly rich spot for the humanities, but I have to admit that for sheer remarkableness, it’s hard to beat the Old Jail Museum. This structure is a two-tier cylindrical block of wedge-shaped cells that rotates to allow prisoners in and out of the only opening. I actually saw its mechanism demonstrated once, and it is beyond bizarre. It was only later that I learned about the Panopticon, a prison structure built for covert surveillance and popularized by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish. The Old Jail is different from a panopticon, but it too is chilling in an Orwellian way.

Whew, I feel like I just did six degrees of Hoosier associations to get from beagles and front porches to paranoid French intellectuals. Small town Indiana — it’s quite surprising once you get to know it.

This entry was posted by: Nancy

Posted Aug. 28, 2008

Do Museums House the Simulacrum Threat?

I know in advance I’m probably way off base here, but this very brief interview with Alison Griffiths at the Columbia University Press blog about her new book Shivers Down Your Spine and the Immersive View kept making me think of “the uncanny valley.”

If you have spent any time on the internet (and given where you’re reading this, I’m certain you have) you have probably heard of the “the uncanny valley,” which is a measure of likeablity for various kinds of “human facsimiles” (robots, muppets, cartoons, etc) that runs from “Super Creepy” to “Totally Great.” I’m going to be pretty general here, if you want something less so, then click the previous link. Basically our willingness to accept certain human forms rises very slowly as facsimiles move from not-human (one of those robot arms that puts bolts in car doors) to an attractive healthy human. But somewhere around Tom Hanks’ character in The Polar Express the general level of acceptability plummets before it rises again with actual humans on the other side of this “uncanny valley,” the unhappy denizens of which are often described as “corpselike.”

At any rate, there’s something here, I think for philosophers in the Baudrillardian tradition. Is Griffiths correct in assuming that the shiver we feel upon entering “the rainforest in the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History” is rooted in ” a sense of the infinite and divine” as when we enter a Gothic cathedral; are the “shivers down our spine” really inspired by “a disjunct between what we see and feel and what we know is happening to us” similar to the ticklebelly feeling of watching Batman leap from a Hong Kong skyscraper in The Dark Knight in IMAX? Or, as the interviewer asks, is it more akin to the “shivers down our spine” we get from horror movies, something rooted in the reptilian part of our brain that seeks survival when confronted with the existential threat of the Artificial pursuing dominance over the Organic? Are we staring into the abyss and recognizing that the face of the beast that looks back is this one?

The New Hoosierati Feed

I have added a widget to the top of the right-hand sidebar (the one under the header RSS with a link that says “Subscribe to Hoosierati.”)  If you use a news aggregator or RSS feeder, you should use that link to subscribe to this site. If you have already subscribed to Hoosierati with our old feed (http://www.hoosierhumanities.wordpress.com/feeds) it would be totally awesome if you would change that subscription to the new feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Hoosierati). I don’t know if it would be any awesomer for you or not, I doubt it will change anything. But it would be way awesomer for me, since I’m trying to get a clearer picture of how many readers we have and how often they show up and what not.

(PS: Did you like the use of the various versions of “awesome?” I was getting a little self-conscious near the end there and I fear I may have crossed the line. I was just trying very hard to convince you how great this feedburner subscription would be because I know it’s an inconvenience to ask you to change.)

No hard feelings if you elect not to change feeds, I understand.