Daily Archives: May 4, 2021

By Express News Service

RAMANATHAPURAM: In 1996, when the then Minister Anthiyur Selvaraj and DMK MLAs V A Andamuthu and S K Rajendran took part in a firewalk and walked on burning coals at Bannari Amman temple as an offering for the longevity of the DMK government, the then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, who was sworn atheist, publicly asserted I am not bothered about how long my government lasts.

I am worried about how long it will adhere to the principles of rationalism, and threatened to remove Selvaraj from cabinet terming his action as a barbaric act. Analogously, on Monday, in Podhuvakudi village near Paramakudi, a 30-year-old woman, who is a long-time supporter of DMK, severed her tongue in a bid to fulfil her vow to do so if DMK President MK Stalin becomes the CM.

She has been a long-time supporter of DMK although not an official member in the party. So is the family, for decades, her brother told TNIE. During the recently-concluded Assembly polls, she actively canvassed votes for the DMK MLA-elect S Murugesan, added sources.

Link:

Woman cuts off tongue over Stalins win in Tamil Nadu - The New Indian Express

Though today is the first Monday in May, we are not rolling out the red carpet on the front steps, says the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Marina Kellen French Director Max Hollein. But that doesnt preclude the release of exciting new information about the Costume Institutes two-part 2021 exhibit In America: A Lexicon of Fashion and In America: An Anthology of Fashion. Hollein was joined by Eva Chen of Instagram and Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, this morning at a virtual press conference that revealed all the details about the upcoming exhibits and galas.

Part one of the exhibition, A Lexicon of Fashion, will open September 18 at the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Met, marking the Costume Institutes 75th anniversary. An intimate gala to celebrate the exhibits opening will take place on September 13, cochaired by Timothe Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka with honorary chairs Tom Ford, Instagrams Adam Mosseri, and Anna Wintour. The exhibit will be organized to resemble a home, with intersecting walls and rooms that will establish what Bolton calls a new vocabulary thats more relevant and more reflective of the times in which were living.

Traditionally American fashion has been described in terms of the American tenets of simplicity, practicality, and functionality. Fashions more emotional qualities have tended to be reserved for more European fashion, Bolton says. In part one well be reconsidering this perception by reestablishing a modern lexicon of fashion based on the emotional qualities of dress. The many rooms in this part of the exhibit will be titled to reflect the personal and emotional relationship we have to fashion: Well-Being for the kitchen galleries, Aspiration for the office, and Trust, the living room, for example.

In pushing the human connections to our clothes, Bolton is writing a new history of American style that focuses less on sportswear and Seventh Avenue dressmakers, instead framing designers as creators, innovators, and artists. Taken together these qualities will compromise a modern vocabulary of American fashion that prioritizes values, emotions, and sentiments over the sportswear principles of realism, rationalism, and pragmatism, he says. Pieces from Christopher John Rogers, Sterling Ruby, Conner Ives, Prabal Gurung, and Andre Walker feature in part one of the exhibition. Rubys Veil Flag, a short film presented at Paris Fashion Week, was recreated at the Met, and its central piece, a denim American flag, will open the show. Director Melina Matsoukas will also create a film for the exhibit that will evolve over the course of its run.

See original here:

Everything You Need to Know About the 2021 Met Gala and Costume Institute Exhibition - Vogue

With the DMK winning Tamil Nadu Assembly elections after crushing the AIADMK-led front, and M.K. Stalin set to become the Chief Minister, the cult politics, which had subsided after the passing away of M. Karunanidhi and J. Jayalalithaa, may as well return.

After M.G. Ramachandran, a matinee idol and superstar of Tamil Nadu entered the state politics, the cadres and sympathisers found in him a new messiah. He was adored and worshipped just like he was in the movies and there were jokes going round in Tamil Nadu that 'if MGR was found falling down during a fight scene in a Tamil movie, the spectators would throw knives at the screen so that MGR could use them and win the fight'. While this may be a joke, the point of adoring MGR as a Tamil icon and saviour of Tamil Nadu was clear. When MGR split the DMK and formed his own party, the AIADMK in 1972, the fans followed him and he won the elections with a comfortable majority.

M. Shivakumar, a political analyst and a former journalist with a Tamil news paper of Madurai told IANS, "While Periyarr and Annadurai gave the ideological moorings to the Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu, MGR raised it to a cult status and he was adored and worshipped across the spectrum and his movie fans moved on with him as his political fans and there started the cult worship in Tamil politics."

Karunandihi, one of the best lyricists and writers of Tamil Nadu politics had a special gift of the gab and his oratory skills had kept the audience spellbound. He was also worshipped and adored within and outside the Dravidian politics even though the ideology was rationalism.

MGR had carefully picked Jayalalithaa, his one time pair in filmdom as his political successor. But after his passing away, Jaya was kicked out of the party and even from the funeral procession of her mentor. However, Jaya bounced back and became a powerful Chief minister with a huge fan following. She, as Chief minister took the cult politics and image of invincibility to a higher level and even ministers and senior party functionaries were seen prostrating at her feet in public domain. This was considered as a privilege by the political supporters and Jayalalitha silently supported this.

After the passing away of Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi, the cult politics of Tamil Nadu had taken a back seat and both Palaniswami and Panneerselvam were ordinary leaders who were accessible to the general public, bureaucracy and party office bearers.

However, after the DMK captured power in Tamil Nadu with a sizeable majority and M.K. Stalin is set to become the Chief Minister, the politics of cult worship will find an entry to the political firmament of Tamil Nadu as he has the aura of the political dynasty of Karunanidhi which is being worshipped by the cadres and leaders of the DMK.

C. Rajeev of the Centre for Policy and Development Studies, a think tank based out of Chennai while speaking to IANS said, "With Stalin coming to power, the DMK cadres and leaders will commence the worship culture again which will ultimately lead to cult worship. If Stalin does not fall into this trap and stick to his business of administering the state, there can be a respite but the culture of this politics is not easy to be erased and there is every likelihood that cult politics will continue in the state."

Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.

Excerpt from:

Cult politics set to return in TN with Stalin's win - Moneylife

Although some young teachers may be willing to take responsibility, the truth is that few schools practice true outdoor education (Midland School near Los Olivos is an exception).

About 220 years ago, German Romantic poets realized that an overdeveloped scientific rationalism threatened their cultural vitality and individual imaginations. Poets likeFriedrich Schiller, the early Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Novalis noticed that the Industrial Revolution and scientism had heavily impacted their epoch in the Germanies (and also in 19th century United Kingdom and United States).

Novalis claimed that the highest form of true culture was music, and later in the century, Friedrich Nietzsche agreed through his adulation of operas by Georges Bizet and Richard Wagner.

Like the English Romantic Lake poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, the Germans looked to nature and the green vitality at the core of the cosmos for spiritual sustenance, proclaiming that simply walking in the woods or shrublands creates energy in the human spirit and mind. (Only a few hundred years earlier we would read only negative stories about scary nature [wildeor], vicious wild animals about, with no roads at all.)

Wordsworth memorably wrote: "Knowing that Nature never did betray the heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, through all the years of this our life, to lead from joy to joy."

Accentuated by rigid COVID-19-based self-quarantining, many of us today remain wary of going farther outside past the local parks and frontcountry to the less populated backcountry trails in federal wildernesses. Like the materialistic central Europeans, we also need new and enchanting nature myths and stories to lift the brain fog and draw us away from town and its many cares.

I know that local Rattlesnake Canyon Trail has been inundated with hikers, hence, as with most of the other local frontcountry trails, there are now parking issues at some trailheads, e.g., along Hot Springs Road and at the Romero Canyon Trailhead.

We can imagine how indigenous people in pre-contact days also might have chosen to head across the local mountains (e.g., past Santa Barbara's Painted Cave site on todays Highway 154 to enjoy the interior areas during bounteous springtime. They might have been drawn by spiritual stories about alapay, petrified mythic boulders, skulking nunasin, coyote tales and the sheer animistic magic of the older times.

UCSB political science professor Tae-Yeoun Keum writes about those late 18th century German idealists and poets (including Friedrich Schlegel), who found themselves in a modern [German] political society so thoroughly dominated by a culture of rationality that it has become impossible to imagine it any other way (see 4.1.1 Books).

I definitely admire and appreciate logical thinking and the scientific method, and happily acknowledge the achievements of the Industrial Revolution.

Yet, it remains that the Holocaust is still the major lesson of the 20th century, and our industries continue to decimate the Earths climate. The growing dystopian worldview, especially the cynicism growing among the young, is partly a result of the mistakes of materialism and just too many humans (and their 1.5 billion cows) on the platform.

Therefore, we really need new stories and poetry to illuminate the positive, to cheer on good solutions-oriented science, and to entice humans to drag their kids farther out of doors for longer sojourns.

UCSBs Keum writes that those German idealist-poets thus made calls on the literary genre of myth to serve as a ground from which individuals can begin to imagine different possibilities for what politics and the society can look like (see 4.1.1).

Honestly, I gain absurd joy from roaming around the backcountry, out past Cachuma Reservoir and into the dry hinterlands beyond Nira Camp. Today, we have some truly depressed children and adults. Vitamin N nature therapy is an infallible cure for such conditions! Despite the driving and gasoline costs, day-hiking and car-camping is pretty inexpensive ($20 a night at Fremont Camp along Paradise Valley Road vs. $200-plus a night at El Capitan Ranch glamping center).

It seems like many local schools, including private schools, have given up leading students out into local wilderness areas or on light backpacking treks anywhere and they gave this up long before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.

A wonderful 20th century Santa Barbara public school teacher and legend led many students into local nature areas for decades without any issues. Frank Van Schaik taught for several decades at the old Wilson School (since shuttered), eventually becoming principal and retiring in 1982.

In his fascinating 1994 memoir, "Home of the Wilson Wildcats" (see 4.1.1), he eloquently describes repeatedly hauling students into nearby nature areas, much as we did at Crane School when I taught there in the 1980s and 1990s. Thirteen chapters cover outdoor trips he led, some with his pal, the legendary Dick Smith, and the adventures became very exciting for the students and truly educational (and somewhat outlandish).

My gosh, did they take chances back in the day! Yet, some of this camping and rough play was precisely the attraction for the students. I located a dozen activities in Van Schaiks book that simply would not be sanctioned or allowed at any school I know about today.

These are outdoor losses for children in my view, and most of the hikes and regions remain fabulous and enticing today. See below, although the B.B. gun wars (!) would certainly have gotten me fired at any school!

Van Schaik lists these destinations among those he visited with his Wilson Wildcats: We went to Rattlesnake Canyon to Bear Meadow and to Figueroa Mountain to the beach camps at Gaviota and Las Varas to Big Sur to the Monterey coast to Blue Canyon and to Pine Mountain to Mineral King to various spots on the Mojave Desert to Mount Abel and Mount Pinos ... (partial listing).

Intriguing stories about backcountry characters such as the Kansas farmers led by faith-healer Hiram Wheat in the 1880s, or memorable vignettes from the Chumash oral tradition (Blackburn, 4.1.1) including the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island" (cf. Scott ODell novel), and scores of semi-mythological tales about the Road to Similaqsa abound.

In truth, uttering a few tales around a tiny campfire at Nira Camp with 15 students, all enjoying a mug of hot chocolate, strumming a few guitar chords and singing, may be worth any five or six algebra classes (especially if the class has been on Zoom!).

Make every effort to go over into Santa Ynez or Matilija Creek or Manzana Creek areas and entice your children to come along and enjoy the greenery, too. Good nutrition and gear make it more enjoyable, of course.

We all desperately need Vitamin N and new backcountry tales told after hiking and climbing around. As Wordsworth chants, Nature leads us from joy to joy as we tread the shrubland path beside the flowing creek.

Tae-Yeoun Keum, "Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought" (Harvard, 2021); Frank Van Schaik, "Home of the Wilson Wildcats" (Capra, 1994), p. 169 for BB gun wars and pp. 333-334 for partial list of places he camped with fifth-grade students; Thomas Blackburn, "Decembers Child" (UC Press, 1975); I discuss the Road to Similaqsa in "Autobiography in the Anthropocene" (2019), pp. 139-147 and rock art pictograph N-1, p. 133.

Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at [emailprotected]. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

See the original post here:

Dan McCaslin: Outdoor Education and New Nature-Based Myths Needed in the Anthropocene - Noozhawk

May 2, 2021 marked the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray. Mostly known for his highly acclaimed films, Ray was a remarkable polymath whose contribution is not restricted to just filmmaking.

Ray the Writer: Ray had said, My family runs on royalty from my books. Among Bengalis, is Satyajit Ray more popular as a writer or as a filmmaker? Perhaps, most are proud of his films, while he is dearer for his books. Feluda, Rays detective, is a household name, and Feluda books have been sitting atop bestseller charts for five decades now. Amitabh Bachchan had said that his one regret is never having played Feluda on screen, which his compatriot Shashi Kapoor did.

Science fiction is another genre of Rays expressive best. His protagonist, Professor Shonku, the inventor of Evolutin a drug that makes people evolve ten thousand years in a jiffy and such wonder products, is as comfortable in the rarified academic circles of Germany and Sweden, as in his adventures in Bolivia and Congo, chasing inexplicable phenomena or fighting evil forces.

Rays short stories, other than detective and sci-fi ones, are both fascinating and intriguing. Interestingly, while rationalism and realism reign in his films, many of his stories explore the occult and the supernatural.

Ray has also written a few weighty books on films.

Master Filmmaker:Award-winning director Rituparno Ghosh said Satyajit Ray showed us how to create poetry with the camera. There are volumes written and reels of films shot on Rays filmmaking. From Shyam Benegal to Adam Low to Goutam Ghose, acclaimed film and TV producers across the globe have captured Ray the filmmaker.

Starting from Pather Panchali to his last film Agantuk (The Stranger), Ray has received countless awards,including the Oscar for LifetimeAchievement. Akira Kurosawa, one of the greatest filmmakers, said, Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.

Insightful Artist:Ray was lucky. After graduating in Economics from Presidency College, on Rabindranath Tagores insistence he reluctantly enrolled in Shantiniketans Art Department Kala Bhavan. During his brief stay, his artistic finesse sharpened under some of the greatest modern artists of India Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari. Ray acknowledged the lasting effect of this serendipitous twist in his life, how Shantiniketan shaped his way of looking at nature and his understanding of human sensibility. On a lighter note, Nandalal Bose, the departmental head, got a longer cot made in the dorm for the 6 foot 4 inch Manik Satyajits nickname to family and friends.

Rays artistic manifestation spattered wide from being a visualiser in advertising to designing posters for his films, delightful illustrations for his stories, and book covers for Signet Press, which revolutionised printing and publishing in 1940s India.

Ray learnt calligraphy from Benode Behari while in Shantiniketan, which he applied extensively in Bengali fonts. He eventually created his own font of Roman alphabets, internationally known as Ray Roman.

Rays Music:Satyajit Ray had one international and two national awards for music under his belt. Artist Annada Munshi said Ray was Beethoven in his previous life. He could identify any Western Classical piece by listening to any part for a moment. While in Shantiniketan, Ray and Alex Aronson, professor of English Literature, spent countless evenings listening toBach and Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Vivaldi. Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who scored music for four of Rays films, said Rays mastery over music has no parallel in the world of film direction.

From the trilogy of Teen Kanya (Three Girls), filmed in 1961, Ray started scoring music for his own films. He also scored music for Merchant Ivorys Shakespeare Wallah. Ravi Shankar profusely praised Rays music in Piku, a film Ray made for French Television. In his penchant for realism, Ray made Kishore Kumar untrained in Tagore-Songs sing one in Charulata, arguably Rays finest film.

In his long spell in film music, Ray created two full-scale musicals in which he wrote the lyrics too. Songs of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (GGBB), a fantasy adventure, and Hirak Rajar Deshe (Land of Diamond King), a political satire in the form of a childrens film, are still sung in carefree and concerned moods.

Using a mix of western and Indian musical instruments, Ray created a signature genre for himself. Which music would he carry to a remote island? Ray had quipped, Mozarts opera, The Magic Flute.

Ray for Children:The intellectual halo and the baritone voice obfuscate the voluminous work Ray has done for children. To think of it, most of his writings are for children. He resurrected the children magazine Sandesh, and wrote, edited and drew for it amid hectic film shootings. Four if his films are for children, and in one of them, GGBB the musical fantasy, Ray lent his deep voice, singing as Bhuter Raja (King of Ghosts).

Satyajit Ray wore his laurels lightly and remains an icon reflecting the finest flavours of a modern man.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based software entrepreneur)

Read more:

The five Rays of Satyajit - Deccan Herald