Malls

The Mall of America - "The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., turns ten years old [Aug 2002]. Host Madeleine Brand talks to author Ian Frazier about his surreal vision of the massive shopping center." You can read Frazier's Atlantic piece here.

Re-Creating the Mall Online (12-15-08) - "New companies are trying to replicate real-world shopping environments on the computer. Shopping at the new virtual 3-D mall is a little like shopping in Second Life and a little like the actual mall in Seattle."

Mall Makeover (5-20-07) - "Shopping malls are an icon of American pop culture, but they face extinction unless they modernize. Debbie Elliott visits a Washington, D.C., area mall that's getting a makeover for the 21st century."

Musings

• Compare any two of the three NPR pieces above.
  
  
• What's your response to David Segal's piece in New York Times, "Our Love Affair With Malls Is on the Rocks" (1-31-2009). Check out background piece on malls at Wikipedia.
  
  
• It seems that everyone has a mall story. What's yours? If you want, relate it to thus City X mood piece that also serves as a commentary on the place of the modern shopping mall in a “real, yet unnamed, city”: “Using a sound rich audio mosaic of observations and ruminations, all scored to Muzak, the universal mall experience comes to life, for better or for worse.” It was first broadcast (in a shortened form) on NPR’s Living on Earth (15:52) in November, 2004., and is also available in its original full length at the Third Coast Festival (22:32).
  
  

Simple Things

NPR describes its popular series, This I Believe, as "an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives." When it comes to core values and beliefs, people often focus on the simplest things.

Singing: The Key To A Long Life (11/23/08) - British composer and activist Brian Eno talks about the joy of singing, a subject taken up as well by Eunice ("Make a Joyful Noise") and Paige ("Singing, My Anti-Drug"), both in written form only. More pieces on singing here.

Dancing All the Dances As Long As I Can - Best-selling author Robert Fulgrum expounds on his joy of dancing, a subject found in the written pieces, Dancing Is Dreaming with My Feet. More dancing pieces here.

Walking Across the Grand Canyon (6/13/2008) - Radio producer Scott Carrier describes a walk in the desert with his son. From the This I Believe series comes two written pieces, I Believe in Walking and I Believe in Hiking.

Musings

• Which of this pieces (or which two) do you find most effective and why?
  
  
• Describe your own experience with singing, dancing, hiking, or some other simple activity (gardening, hunting)--that is, one that generally does not require electricity.
  
  
• Why do you think so many of the essays in the This I Believe series focus on simple things? Here's an essay on the power of simple gifts. To get you into the mood, you might enjoy this slightly jazzed-up version of the classic Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts (on YouTube)--also the basis of the John Williams piece performed at last week's inauguration. Here are the original lyrics, written in 1848:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Hand work

Woodworking - (Weekend Edition Sunday, 1/6/02 - 2:54) · "Essayist Tim Brookes experiences a flashback to his youth while working with a piece of fine wood."

Typewriter Lover. (All Things Considered, 9/22/98 - 3:46) · "Alex Van Oss introduces us to his family of five old typewriters. One was once owned by a Supreme Court Justice, another by the Christian Science Monitor, and a third - a hefty thing from Switzerland, once crashed through one of his desks."

Baking by Senses and Memories. (Morning Edition, 11/20/06 - 4:18) · “I believe baking is the best way for me to express love for my people in the present, and honor the people of my past, all in one batch.”

Musings

1. Here are three short pieces linked by a common concern: the value of doing work the old-fashioned way, that is, by hand. Which of the three pieces do you find most interesting and why?


2. Describe a mechanical tool (that is, a tool that works without electricity or batteries) you have used, or perhaps still use. Do others still use this tool? Why? Why not? Don't overlook such simple tools as a pencil or a hammer.


3. Have a knack for comedy? If so you might want to take a different approach and describe some new, highfalutin tool (or gadget), mechanical or electronic, that, despite all the hype, you find vastly over-rated. Don't worry about a little exaggeration--it might help underscore your point.

Stuff

George Carlin's classic comedy routine, "A Place for My Stuff" (5:09) is satire at its best--outrageously funny while saying something serious about our behavior.

"The Story of Stuff" is also a video satire, by Annie Leonard--"a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns . . . . [that] exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues."

NPR commentator Daniel Schorr offers this short commentary (2:05) on Princess Diana and Mother Teresa ("Saint of the Gutter, Saint of the Media")--both of whom died the same week. What do you see as the connection between this commentary and the points made by Carlin and Thoreau?

The Nova web site portrays five families from the 1995 book, A Material: A Global Family Portrait, a book that posed families from around in the world standing in front of their houses with their possessions.

Here is a short excerpt by the 19th-century essayist, Henry David Thoreau (from Walden) in which he gives his feelings about furniture.

Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? . . . I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviae; at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them, -- dragging his trap. . . . I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I do with my furniture?" -- My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody's barn.

Here's the Website from John Freyer's 2002 project, All My Life for Sale.

Ellen Kushner’s WGBH program Sound and Spirit offers a wide-ranging, weekly musical tribute to a single theme. Here is the playlist for her show on stuff--click here to listen (59:00).

Musings

• Annie Leonard's video, "The Story of Stuff," is a form of propaganda, although a form that we may not especially object to. What do you feel makes her video so effective?
  
  
• Describe what you see as the most important connection between any two or three of these pieces.
  
  
• Use of these pieces as the basis for a story of your own life--something about you personally or someone or something you have personally experienced.