The Maker Cookbook: Recipes For Children’s and ‘Tween Library Programs

This book is full of crafts projects for kids not old enough to use tools. The first is a pneumatic car, made of a plastic bottle on wheels, and powered by a balloon.  The instructions are simple; tape the balloon to the straw, inflate it, and let the escaping gas drive the car. There’s also a Zen sand garden, made from a box, which could lead to something bigger. You could get a piece of wood the size of a knock hockey table and make it portable. The kids can take turns using it, and make the tools from scrap wood. The drum project is another simple activity using minimal materials. It uses oatmeal cartoons, string, and sticks to make a kiddie size drum corps. The kids can decorate the cartons, and then bang away until it drives you crazy.

Each project is divided like a cookbook recipe. You have the ingredients (materials,) then the “preheat” which is the prep section, and then the “bake” where you actually make the project. The drum project, which you can also do with old tomato and bean cans, is perfect for the rambunctious five year old. Even better than just the drums, let the kids compose a song about their favorite children’s book to the tune of Stars & Stripes.

I remember back in second grade, we made puppets out of socks and cardboard, then turned a shipping box into a stage set and did a puppet show. In an age of common core standards, it’s important for kids to have physical activities. These projects are great for kids, especially when you have a limited budget.

The Lost Notebook: Herman Schultheis and the Secret of Walt Disney’s Movie Magic

There’s history to American animation, and I don’t just mean the cutesy stuff. Behind every Disney classic were hundreds of artists, photographers, costume designers, cameramen, and cell painters, all laboring to make Technicolor fantasies come to life. If you’re a film student and you wonder if it might’ve been fun to work for Walt Disney in the 40’s, then you’re right, it would’ve been fun. But it wouldn’t have been rewarding. The pay was low, the hours were long, and deadlines were strict, and you’re name wouldn’t live on forever. That was where Herman Schultheis came in.

    Schultheis’ name is forgotten to history. He was just another guy hired by Disney, originally an electrical engineer and amateur photographer in German, who found work as a light and sound technician, moving through different departments in his career. He would photograph the production drawings for animated movies like Bambi, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and others. The drawings for the movies went through many changes, and different styles were explored for all the characters and backgrounds. The various stages would all be forgotten if not for the scrapbook that Schultheis kept; it’s a treasure trove of beautiful artwork.

    One of the most beautiful pieces in the collection is the concept art for the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia. The drawings are simple, just colored pencil and watercolor, but the artwork is wonderful. Schultheis also saved the space photographs from local observatories which were used for the (scrapped) galaxy sequences in the movie. The drawings from Night On Bald Mountain are here as well, with the skeleton horses, demons, and flying witches. It’s both beautiful and creepy to see.

   One of the most unique things about the Disney studio is the type of work performed by the women there. While the drawings and production art were all done by men, the cell painters were all women. They colored in the animation cells, spending all day painting in the traced draw
ings. A lot of the model makers were women too. I wonder if they were paid the same as the men?

Art Studio America

    Art Studio America begins with essays by art historians about the word “studio.” It’s more of a “city” word, with New York and Paris coming to mind. Today, the artist studios are found in Brooklyn and Berlin, though Brooklyn’s position as the hub of the art studio may soon be over. Artist spaces were always in old factories, because they were the only way to get huge rooms at low cost. First it was Soho, then it was Chelsea, then it was Brooklyn, and it remains to be seen if the Bronx will be next. Artist studios eventually make the neighborhood more stylish, and the artists get priced out. But keep in mind that the Soho art scene began with a profit-making enterprise, such as 80 Wooster Street. If George Macuinas had not bought the building and sold the apartments to artists, then none of them would’ve had studio space.

    Not all of the artists in this book work out of a city. Donald Judd, for instance, has a studio in Marfa, Texas, a place where you’d least expect an art exhibit. On one hand it’s dirt cheap, but on the other hand, the art connoisseurs don’t live there. Some, like Ed Moses, work in “cool” places like Venice, California, but this is unusual for an artist. Venice is one of the priciest parts of Los Angeles, and it’s unlikely that an artist could find an affordable place there. Artis Lane lives and works in West LA, but she does her sculptures in her kitchen.

    Artis Lane should have a book or movie all about herself, because her story is fascinating.  She was born in a Canadian town called North Buxton, a stop on the Underground Railroad, and taught herself to sculpt with local river clay. Then she went to art school in Michigan, and paid her rent by doing portraits of oil company executives.  If you think her use of her kitchen as a studio is strange, wait till you hear this; she was invited to Switzerland to paint Yeslam Bin Laden and his wife and kids! Unlike many artists discussed in this book, Lane was trained as a commercial portraitist, not as a fine artist. This would be unusual for someone under 40 today, but in the 1960’s, this was the norm. A lot of pop artists, like Andy Warhol, began as commercial artists, moving on to gallery shows and acclaim. It’s a shame she didn’t get included in the exhibitions of other 1970’s photorealist painters like Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, and Audrey Flack. But Artis Lane credits her Christian Science belief with making her avoid hypocrisy.

    Richard Prince, also trained in commercial arts, lives and works upstate in the Catskills. It was no unusual for NYC based artists to move upstate in the 1980’s, thanks to the abundant space and low living costs. Others, like Mickalene Thomas, still live and work in either New York, City or Brooklyn. She has a large studio that she calls her “garage,” and paints comic-book images of Black women, decorated with rhinestones. Others, like Deana Lawson, share studio space.

    Art Studio America begins with an upfront purpose, and that is to interview the artists in their studios. Along the way, you end up learning a lot more about the artists themselves, and the locality, size, and content of the studio tells you a lot about them. Today’s artists, like Deana Lawson, aren’t commercially trained. Artis Lane, who has commercial training, does very small sculptures that are easy to fit in a small studio. Mickalene Thomas, with her massive paintings, raises an important question, and that is how she stores all her work.  I often wonder why large paintings are sought after, when most New Yorkers have small apartments. Even the Chelsea art galleries aren’t that big, so I wonder how they can display the artworks. 

    Van Gogh’s paintings, which sell for upwards of $20 million, weren’t that big, usually 18x24. He could never have transported huge canvases, or bought enough paint to do a major piece. His rooms were always small, so there would’ve been no room for a painting that was 25 square feet. His famous portraits of Dr. Gachet and the local postman aren’t especially large, and since he paid his rent (and doctor bills) with his portraits, there would be an incentive to keep them small. Most of the Frenchmen he gave them to didn’t have huge homes, and while Van Gogh was mentally unstable, he wasn’t crazy enough to give anyone a painting that wouldn’t fit through their tiny front door!

    Perhaps Art Studio America is something of a prediction. The art world has gone through massive changes in the past decade. The digital revolution has altered art photography, eliminating the need to develop pictures. The credit crunch has limited the buying power of the patrons of the arts as well, and according to the book Dark Matter, art today is used more for social improvement than profit. Some artists don’t use studios as all, like the guy in Union Square who does sand paintings on the pavement. Artists who paint, draw, or sculpt small pieces don’t need much studio space either, but that means they’re less likely to show it.

Maybe small works will become the new wave of the future? 

Handbook For Student Affairs At Community Colleges

    Community colleges play and important part in American life, not merely in education, but in public services. They’re the colleges most often selected by older or working-class students, for two reasons; firstly the tuition is affordable, and secondly, they offer an easy commute from home. NYC’s junior and four-year colleges train nurses, paralegals, bookkeepers, and criminal justice graduates who go into law enforcement.

    Because the community colleges are publicly funded, tuition in usually lower than others, but students may still have trouble paying. After that, you’ll have to deal with remedial needs for special needs students, liabilities, nutrition, and more. HSACC is broken into chapters regarding all issues for students in community colleges, such as Legal and Policy Issues, regarding things like free speech. Where do we draw the line on free speech in a school? What about racist or hateful language? There’s been a Supreme Court case involving Saxe Community College, where Judge Alito wrote “no exemption from free speech, it protects offensive language.” Anybody remember CUNY and the Leonard Jeffries affair in the mid 1990’s? What about the Brooklyn student center named after Assata Shakur? There were many in the city who objected to having a criminal’s name in a city-funded school room. Then we have 4^th amendment issues, like searching student bags, or checking their personal laptops for evidence of cheating. Due process has to be observed for all disciplinary actions.

    There’s almost nothing here about fraternities, athletics, or housing, because those are not the kind of issued you deal with in a community college. The issues in this book are the ones that you deal with in colleges where the students commute, and where the learning is often specific to a career. Each chapter is written by an experienced college administrator, so you can expect to read advice from men and women with industry experience.

New Capitalism in Turkey by Ayse Bugra and Osman Savaskan

In the 1970’s, a Turkish film director made Seytan, a campy, micro-budget movie about a little girl possessed by the devil. Do you think it was based on the Exorcist? Well you’re wrong, it was an outright ripoff of The Exorcist! Ismael Metin Erksan, creator of Suzuz Yaz (Dry Summer) made this cardboard piece of junk, using a copy of the script, smuggled from the USA. Turkey’s government had this insane program to bar American movies from the country, then make their own plagiarized version in Turkey, so that 100% of the revenue would stay domestic. There was a Turkish Exorcist, a Turkish Superman, and I’m told there was a Turkish Jaws. How they filmed the shark scene, I don’t know, and the Superman ripoff features four different stuntmen holding on to a (slowly) speeding car. The bad guys run so slowly that Superman has time to grab them and throw them through the cardboard wall of their hangout.

This is essentially what Turkey’s economy was until the 80’s; low-quality domestic products, protected by tariffs. Years earlier, Ataturk started a policy of government intervention in the economy, mainly to increase industry and agriculture. The problem was, it made the economy dependent on the government. I guess Turkey was a lot like Britain and Argentina, with lots of state-owned enterprises, rather than a free market. At the same time, it wasn’t easy to get loans to start businesses, nor were there a lot of people willing to buy bonds or buy shares. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that a lot of modern economies would take off running.

In the second chapter, the authors credit the removal of protectionism with bringing the economic transformation. I shouldn’t say they blame the old tariffs for the problem, because a lot of small countries like Britain and Italy had tariffs. It was their only way to keep their farms in business and prevent the country from becoming dependent on cheap produce from the USA. However, there’s a point when a country needs to make the farmers compete, so I guess 50 years should’ve been long enough. The chapter also brings Islam into the argument, particularly the religious political parties. How they changed the economy isn’t clear, but I suspect that by having a multiparty state, the “old guard” loses power and becomes more receptive to new thinking.

One thing that isn’t discussed much in this book is the diaspora funding. How much of Turkey’s money comes from Turks living abroad, I have to wonder? There are sizeable Turkish communities in Germany and Australia; do they send money home? Prior to the 1980’s, did money sent home by Turks living abroad contribute to the economy? Bugra and Osman make it clear that foreign investment, heavy tourism, and bond sales would come around much later, so once again we see that funding was scarce in pre-1980’s Turkey. Also, there was a high level of socialism to the economy, similar to the John Maynard Keynes model. The country wasn’t exactly mineral-rich, so there wasn’t much to export, and they didn’t get into light manufacturing the way Japan did. Would that have strengthened their economy earlier?

I guess the main point of the book is that a government can’t prop up the economy forever, and at some point you need to get rid of the tariffs and make the business “leave the nest.” Britain did it in the 80’s, and so did Israel, South Korea, and many other small nations. From reading this book, I think Turkey made a great decision not to go on the Euro. It would’ve left the economy worse than that of Greece. Now that the Eurozone is a shambles, maybe Turkey’s currency will rise in value? I wonder.

Hotel Chelsea: Photographs by Victoria Cohen

No two rooms in the Chelsea Hotel look anything alike. The furniture is a far-flung collection of different era, and each bed, table, dresser, and rug looks old enough to have been made right here in the USA, no particle board desks to be seen. We might as well call it “Garage Sale Gothic” and if the furniture were in better condition, they would be museum pieces.

Hotel Chelsea is one of many books on the Chelsea Hotel, but it focuses on the décor rather than the people. This is not going to be a typical Martha Stewart style book, because the furniture is randomly placed and the paint schemes are random. What makes this book great is that it isn’t stylish at all; this is exactly how the average New Yorker would decorate an apartment. Few of us can afford fancy furniture and rugs, so we have to buy what we can. My father, for instance, used to take old furniture right off the street, sand it down, and refinish it. He’s told me hilarious stories about bringing home an old bureau in the mid 1970’s, full of dead cockroaches, and vacuuming them all out. The only thing louder than the vacuum was my mother’s screams.

Victoria Cohen photographs the many rooms, some with beautiful furniture, some with cheap-looking 80’s accessories. Most of the rooms are well-maintained, however, so I can assure you this is not a welfare hotel. The owners tried to match the furniture to the look of the room, such as a red leather armchair in front of a red wall. Room 617 has old nasty wallpaper, contrasting with the recently repainted white molding. One room has a flowery old divan next to a lace curtain, while another has a small scratched-up desk and ugly red curtains. When I saw this room, I was reminded of Joe Buck’s fleabag room in Midnight Cowboy, before he gets locked out for not paying rent. I wonder if the average out-of-town transient would’ve been put off by the curtains, or felt right at home? Depending on his situation, it would probably not have been much different from mom & dad’s tract house.

Cohen is a New York based photographer, and like anyone enamored with the city, had a fascination with the Chelsea Hotel (or Hotel Chelsea, if you prefer.) She was not happy to hear the sad new in 2011, that it was closing down to be renovated, and all the charm and history would be gone. This was the same place where Arthur C. Clarke began 2001 A Space Odyssey, where William S. Buroughs wrote Naked Lunch, where Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin, and where Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend. The last one we could do without, but what about the rest? Doesn’t this hotel anchor a lot of the city’s history? It certainly took in a lot of the people that were not especially welcome among the Eloise crowd at the Plaza Hotel. You wouldn’t see a lot of kids in this hotel, except for Gabby Hoffman, who lived here until age 11. In describing the hotel where she grew up, she says it was a great place to be, like every day was an adventure. Like most of us, she wasn’t happy to see it closed off and full of construction dust.

Maybe this book about the Chelsea’s décor is the antithesis to the hotel business? It was never a choice lodging for affluent people visitors, mostly popular with writers, artists, people with less money to spend. After WWII, the owner took artwork in place of rent, so his art collection was probably worth as much as the hotel. My fault with this book is that it leaves out the artwork; the hotel’s walls were festooned with art from all the people that lived there, and the hallways were like one great big gallery. I wish the photographer had included some in the book, but you can still see it in other books about the hotel. Cohen does make it clear, however, that she was interested in the individual hotel rooms, not the residential apartments. The long-term residents could decorate how they liked and throw parties, but the short-term renters weren’t there for fame; they came to “drop off the radar” and be anonymous. Kind of like E.B. White describes in his book Here Is New York, it’s a city of anonymity.

Oscar Wilde, on the last night of his life, wrote “either the wallpaper goes, or I go.” He was referring to the hideous wall paper of his room in Paris, where he retreated as an anonymous expatriate. While Oscar Wilde’s widely-celebrated last words are seen as those of a genius critic, I’d rather see old décor celebrated. The average bohemian, living in austere circumstances, should celebrate the cheap décor as part of the adventure.

A good title for this book would be “Chelsea Hotel: Ode to An Old Dresser.”

A Young Man's Journey by Floyd Godfrey

Floyd Godfrey’s story is about a man “curing” himself of his attraction to other men. This is a controversial topic, because of the debate on whether conversion therapy is legitimate or quackery. I’m going to base my review on the quality of the writing, not on the actual content or the opinions of the author. Say what you like, but I have to respect free speech.

Godfrey describes his experiences in middle and high school with his female classmates, and needless to say, they weren’t very good. He saw the girls as friends, not as people he was attracted too, and since the girls often tried to seduce him, it was even more difficult. From his aunts, he was told that men were detached, didn’t want to listen. From his father he learned that flirting with girls was sinful, as shown where his father deliberately sat between him and a girl in church so they wouldn’t look at each other. Then he attended a Christian camp, where the boys are only interested in doing things that are forbidden by the church. From that he learned about hypocracy.

Each chapter ends with a list of questions. In the chapter on sexual abuse, there’s a checklist for all the things that might be going through a young man’s mind while he’s being abused; does he think it was his fault, was he looking for a mentor, did he know deep down that this was wrong?

Godfrey also touches on the issue of pornography, which he sees not as a perversion but as a kind of addiction. He says that viewing it doesn’t make you a pervert, but you do need to recognize that it’s not something you can control. I don’t necessarily agree that porn is evil, but I don’t think it helps young men improve their sex lives either. Seeing women with large round breasts, big brown nipples, perfectly round butt cheeks, big beautiful lips, long blond hair, and “come hither” looks can make you expect too much when you finally get laid. The average woman looks nothing like that. Just like the famous writer John Ruskin was horrified to discover that his wife had pubic hair, the average young man will have a hard time with the fact that women aren’t all Vogue models.

I’m going to give Floyd Godfrey credit for the effort. He touches on a lot of issues with regard to how young people are taught about sex dating. It’s definitely something that has to be dealt with through sex ed.