It seemed fitting, somehow, to read Naomi Wolf's The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See on Father's Day. I had heard her interviewed when it was first released in 2005 and filed the title away in some back recess of my mind, deciding to read it in the future. Later, when I stumbled across copy of the newly-released paperback in my local Barnes & Noble, I took it home with me. That was some time ago.
You may know Wolf as the Yale-educated, Rhodes Scholar, feminist author of The Beauty Myth. You may also know that her father was Leonard Wolf, a teacher/author and philosopher of sorts, who found his way through the early days of the American Communist Party to teaching creative writing in San Francisco in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Given her background, you might expect Naomi Wolf's voice to be stridently feminist, unwilling to accept advice from any father figure, even her own. She readily admits to having done that. Finally, in her forties and beginning to take on the role of teacher herself, she asked her father to share with her the lessons he had taught so many students along the way. The lessons take place as three generations work together to build a treehouse for seven-year-old Rosa Wolf.
The lessons are simple yet somehow profound; a few seem hopelessly impractical. You may come away with the sense that there are Quixotic windmills nearby. But that's the magic of this father's lessons - encouraging you to do what you love, be who you are, and allow the "grace of the imagination" to guide you through your life. They are lessons worth reading.
6.25.2007
6.12.2007
A different kind of Father's Day movie
With many thanks to PBS and a "Nature" re-run, I finally saw the short documentary called "Pale Male."
I had heard part of the story a while ago when CBS "Sunday Morning" did a segment on the male Red-tailed Hawk who had made his home in Manhattan's Upper East Side for close to ten years. I had even visited Lincoln Karim's site viewing many of the photos that have been added there for over five years. Both were interesting, but the program is so much more.
The show itself is wonderful - telling about Pale Male's unlikely appearance in New York, then weaving in the story of the many New Yorker's who took up the vigil as he mated with his "First Love" and began raising the first of many chicks. He has now out-lived four mates and has sired more than twenty chicks.
He hunts tirelessly to feed his chicks, protects them from marauding flocks of crows, and ultimately entices them out of the nest when it's time for the chicks to learn to fend for themselves. In short, he's a father. And a good one, at that.
The camera work is beautiful, capturing close-up shots of the birds along with beautiful views of the city's skyline and Central Park. We get to know some of the New Yorker's who come together daily to celebrate Pale Male's life. Like them, we watch breathlessly as the first fledgling chick is blown off the nest (150 feet above the nearest tree) and tries to fly. We feel the loss of Pale Male's first mate, and celebrate his devotion to his chicks.
But the real story is this remarkable bird who decided to make a Fifth Avenue co-op near Central Park his home. That this small bird somehow brought together strangers and turned them into friends - well, that's just a bonus.
If you have the opportunity, watch "Pale Male." It's an extraordinary story, purely natural, and a very positive kind of Father's Day tale.
I had heard part of the story a while ago when CBS "Sunday Morning" did a segment on the male Red-tailed Hawk who had made his home in Manhattan's Upper East Side for close to ten years. I had even visited Lincoln Karim's site viewing many of the photos that have been added there for over five years. Both were interesting, but the program is so much more.
The show itself is wonderful - telling about Pale Male's unlikely appearance in New York, then weaving in the story of the many New Yorker's who took up the vigil as he mated with his "First Love" and began raising the first of many chicks. He has now out-lived four mates and has sired more than twenty chicks.
He hunts tirelessly to feed his chicks, protects them from marauding flocks of crows, and ultimately entices them out of the nest when it's time for the chicks to learn to fend for themselves. In short, he's a father. And a good one, at that.
The camera work is beautiful, capturing close-up shots of the birds along with beautiful views of the city's skyline and Central Park. We get to know some of the New Yorker's who come together daily to celebrate Pale Male's life. Like them, we watch breathlessly as the first fledgling chick is blown off the nest (150 feet above the nearest tree) and tries to fly. We feel the loss of Pale Male's first mate, and celebrate his devotion to his chicks.
But the real story is this remarkable bird who decided to make a Fifth Avenue co-op near Central Park his home. That this small bird somehow brought together strangers and turned them into friends - well, that's just a bonus.
If you have the opportunity, watch "Pale Male." It's an extraordinary story, purely natural, and a very positive kind of Father's Day tale.
6.05.2007
A new world disorder
I've just finished reading David Weinberger's new book "Everything Is Miscellaneous." This was one of those rare books that challenged the way I think and made me want to share it almost immediately. You can read the prologue and first chapter for free on his site.
The book deals with man's tendency to want things neatly classified into categories, explaining how different ways of organizing information have evolved over time. Weinberger romps through the history of thought, moving from Aristotle to the future of the internet, by way of such classic "organizers" as Linnaeus, Dewey, and Amazon.com. Along the way, he covers elements of philosophy, biology, and library history, ultimately defining what he refers to as the three orders of order.
Oversimplifying a bit, think about it this way:
The "first order" of order is about organizing things. We put books on shelves, clothing in closets, and our music CDs in cabinets.
The "second order" of order is about making it easier to find the stuff we've organized. We sort books by type and then by author, and we store winter clothing separate from our summer clothes. We categorize and file CDs as Jazz, Classical, or Rock. Then the whole thing falls apart, when we find that Moody Blues album made with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Is it Classical or Rock? It can only be filed in one place, so where does it go?
Both the first and second orders of order deal with organizing physical things in space. The third order deals with our brave new digital world, where information can be organized free from physical constraints.
The "third order" recognizes that knowledge doesn't necessarily fit into a top-down view that's exactly the same for everyone. Computers free us to sort and categorize things in a way that makes sense to us. When I visit an online store, I want to see products categorized by the manufacturer. You might prefer to see them organized by price. You say toMAYto, I say tomAHto, and we can both be right.
This is where Weinberger really take flight. "Everything in its place" is no longer valid. It's now "Everything has its places." As he points out, you can "hang a leaf on many branches" in the trees of knowledge. And you can do this because "we have an infrastructure that allows us to hop over and around established categorizations with ease."
Weinberger says, "Knowledge - its content and its organization - is becoming a social act." (Let's pause a moment here to think about Wikipedia.) Ultimately, it's OK if everything is miscellaneous, because we can find - and structure - it the way we want.
We now accept that "Knowledge comes in gradations and varieties." It's messy, it changes, and we need to learn to deal with that. Using a computer, you can identify that CD as both Classical and Rock.
This book will make you think; you should come away from it wanting to discuss it with a friend. It's intelligent, readable, and even funny, and it describes how we will need to rejigger the way we think about information in the future.
Think playlists, think Flickr, think hyperlinks, think tagging, think taxonomy. Think about what search approach and which way of organizing works best for you. Chances are, you'll be able to use it soon on your favorite web sites.
The book deals with man's tendency to want things neatly classified into categories, explaining how different ways of organizing information have evolved over time. Weinberger romps through the history of thought, moving from Aristotle to the future of the internet, by way of such classic "organizers" as Linnaeus, Dewey, and Amazon.com. Along the way, he covers elements of philosophy, biology, and library history, ultimately defining what he refers to as the three orders of order.
Oversimplifying a bit, think about it this way:
The "first order" of order is about organizing things. We put books on shelves, clothing in closets, and our music CDs in cabinets.
The "second order" of order is about making it easier to find the stuff we've organized. We sort books by type and then by author, and we store winter clothing separate from our summer clothes. We categorize and file CDs as Jazz, Classical, or Rock. Then the whole thing falls apart, when we find that Moody Blues album made with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Is it Classical or Rock? It can only be filed in one place, so where does it go?
Both the first and second orders of order deal with organizing physical things in space. The third order deals with our brave new digital world, where information can be organized free from physical constraints.
The "third order" recognizes that knowledge doesn't necessarily fit into a top-down view that's exactly the same for everyone. Computers free us to sort and categorize things in a way that makes sense to us. When I visit an online store, I want to see products categorized by the manufacturer. You might prefer to see them organized by price. You say toMAYto, I say tomAHto, and we can both be right.
This is where Weinberger really take flight. "Everything in its place" is no longer valid. It's now "Everything has its places." As he points out, you can "hang a leaf on many branches" in the trees of knowledge. And you can do this because "we have an infrastructure that allows us to hop over and around established categorizations with ease."
Weinberger says, "Knowledge - its content and its organization - is becoming a social act." (Let's pause a moment here to think about Wikipedia.) Ultimately, it's OK if everything is miscellaneous, because we can find - and structure - it the way we want.
We now accept that "Knowledge comes in gradations and varieties." It's messy, it changes, and we need to learn to deal with that. Using a computer, you can identify that CD as both Classical and Rock.
This book will make you think; you should come away from it wanting to discuss it with a friend. It's intelligent, readable, and even funny, and it describes how we will need to rejigger the way we think about information in the future.
Think playlists, think Flickr, think hyperlinks, think tagging, think taxonomy. Think about what search approach and which way of organizing works best for you. Chances are, you'll be able to use it soon on your favorite web sites.
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