Category Archives: culture

Primal Museum Archetypes

Husband and I went to visit the Buddhas today at the Sackler Museum of Art. We always stop and say hello to Ganesha. We also checked out the Southeast Asian Ceramics exhibit, which we hadn’t seen yet even though it’s been up for months.

The Sackler store was playing some sort of demonic j-pop Christmas/Dance music. We had to leave quickly, the music was blocking our qi.

In our wanderings we also meandered through the National Museum of African Art. I wanted to link to a couple of especially cool pieces in the Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection, but the site crashes Firefox and is giving me an error message in Safari. I’m too tired to figure out the problem. Searching google, I was able to get bypass the Museum website’s splash page and go directly to the section about the masks on display, but there’s no deep-linking. Let’s take that as a sign that you should just go browse the exhibit yourself and pick your own favorites. (Why can’t you go between the Sackler and African Art anymore without leaving the building?)

We also passed through the Freer Gallery of Art to visit their Buddhas. We made the obligatory stop into the Peacock Room on our way out. I’d never noticed it has sunflower-shaped fireplace doohickeys. (I don’t know what they’re called – are they part of the screen? I’m from Florida. We don’t have fireplaces. I could look it up, I suppose. But I probably won’t).

We’ve realized that at any given time, in any museum in the world, there are always five people there. Not the same five people, quit being so literal and/or paranoid. Five representatives of the basic museum-going archetypes. Perhaps they’re Museum Spirits who don’t exist outside the confines of institutional cultural presentations? Who can know. They are: Aging Hippie Woman Anthropology Professor, Woman Wearing Too Much Perfume, The Bickering Couple, and Random White Guy. The museums were all practically empty, yet at each one we kept bumping into incarnations of the Museum Spirits.

Husband pointed out that maybe to other museum goers he appeared to be The Random White Guy. He was smart enough not to point out I could play the role of the Aging Hippie Woman Anthropology Professor, otherwise we might have also found ourselves playing the role of The Bickering Couple.

R.I.P. Punk Planet

I know it’s old news, but I’ve been in denial for a while: Punk Planet is deceased.

As much as it breaks our hearts to write these words, the final issue of Punk Planet is in the post, possibly heading toward you right now. Over the last 80 issues and 13 years, we’ve covered every aspect of the financially independent, emotionally autonomous, free culture we refer to as “the underground.” In that time we’ve sounded many alarms from our editorial offices: about threats of co-optation, big-media emulation, and unseen corporate sponsorship. We’ve also done everything in our power to create a support network for independent media, experiment with revenue streams, and correct the distribution issues that have increasingly plagued independent magazines. But now we’ve come to the impossible decision to stop printing, having sounded all the alarms and reenvisioned all the systems we can. Benefit shows are no longer enough to make up for bad distribution deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of subscribers.

[read the rest of the post]

So very, very sad.

Mia Zapata's Killer sentenced

Mia Zapata’s killer gets 36 year sentence:

The sentence was 10 years longer than the standard maximum for felony murder.

After playing a film paying homage to Zapata, King County Deputy Prosecutor Tim Bradshaw argued that Mezquia deserved a longer sentence than the standard.

He said Zapata’s death was painful, cruel and violent.

“The state thinks that Mia was an exceptional person and the crime was exceptional,” Bradshaw said.

Then, in an unusual move, he called for a show of hands from those in the packed courtroom who supported the longer sentence.

Most of the spectators raised their hands.

In meting out the punishment, Armstrong said she found a legal basis for the longer sentence in the physical evidence presented at trial. Zapata suffered numerous rips, tears and internal injuries that went beyond those found in a typical rape and murder, Armstrong said.

[read the whole article]

It seems appropriate to close this post with a link to Home Alive. The Seattle-based organization, formed in response to Mia’s death, teachs self-defense and does anti-violence public education programs. There’s a second compilation album to benefit Home Alive available at cdbaby.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and the DC Rape Crisis Center has a plethora of events scheduled throughout the month, including the annual Take Back the Night rally, which is scheduled for April 24th this year.

If you aren’t in DC and are looking for info on a local Take Back the Night rally, you can try searching the Feminist Majority Events Calendar, or search the web for local universities or other organizations sponsoring events in your area.

Your local IndyMedia site might also have information specific to your area. (Go to the main site and look for the IMC closest to you).