Five years
I’ve tried to write a post on 9/11 for the past two days and I couldn’t. Today, I kept CNN’s replay of the September 11, 2001 broadcast on the entire day. I thought that the emotional grip of these images would be lighter after five years. I was wrong.
On September 11, 2001 it was impossible to understand the impact of what was going on. Fragments of information were hitting us from all over and formed a fuzzy picture. I was at work, and after the CNN website got jammed, I got small pieces of news throughout the day. At night, the continue replay of the planes hitting the twin towers felt as a scene from an apocalyptic movie, not as a very real event that had just happened 106 miles from where I lived.
The day after, even in the awareness of the horrible tragedy, the entire world seemed to close around us and hug us tight.
Today, the facts are even too clear. We know how many people died, we can name some of them, we know some of their stories, we have seen their pictures. We know what happened after that day. No worldwide hugs are left. There is no mystery, no suspense. September 11 now appears as it is: just a terrible tragedy that is still unfolding in front of us and whose human sense escapes us.
Technorati Tags: September 11
The TED Conference is online
Every year, the brightest and most influential gather in Monterey for TED. The theme of this year’s TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, was The Future We Will Create….
Google Video has a set of video recordings of some amazing 2006 TED conference talks. Al Gore was there and you can feel his presence in many of the videos. If you only have time for one, watch Majora Carter, MacArthur “genius” grant winner and founder of Sustainable South Bronx, talking about environmental justice and explaining why green is the new black.
For more videos, visit the TED site and YouTube; you can also find photos from the TED conference on Flickr and visit/subscribe to the TEDblog for more information and video updates on the conference.
No, you cannot attend TED 2007. The conference is by invitation only (although anybody can apply for an invitation) and it seems to be already sold out.
Technorati Tags: TED, conference, TEDconference, 2006
Katrina, one year later. Mission not accomplished
After one year, New Orleans is still wounded. This pictures of the 9th Ward was not taken last year; it’s just a few days old and was taken by photographer 1115 (via Albert; view the entire set on Flickr).
Technorati Tags: remembering, anniversary, Katrina, New Orleans
Little Miss Sunshine
Yesterday I went to see Little Miss Sunshine with Husband. I loved it. It’s a funny laugh-aloud-real-hard movie and it’s a deep and serious movie. I know, I do tend to see deep hidden meanings in movies that are flat like two-dimensional branes—take for example, most B sci-fi movies made in the 50s and 60s—so I’m not completely sure everybody would agree with me; still, I’m almost positive this movie is deep.
And the police arrived at the scene
It’s such a wonderful night for a walk. You could use a cigarette and you need air. Air. Close the door behind you (did you close it slowly, so nobody would hear? Or did you slam it, hoping somebody would stop you?) and just walk, one step and then another step. It’s not that hard.
And here you are, just outside the train station. Light a cigarette. Watch the breeze play with the smoke and feel it on your skin. For a moment you almost forget. But it’s just a moment then the pain is back, all of it, and it’s time.
Walk to the tracks, take another puff, breath it in fully. Step just in the middle of the tracks, sit down, slowly lower your head to the ground. It’s hard, but not that hard after all. Move just a little bit to get more comfortable, put your legs down, close your eyes. The tracks fit you nicely, like a bed where you can, finally, rest.
At 9:47PM of Friday, August 18, the R5 local to Thorndale leaves Saint David station for Wayne. Wayne is where I left my car before taking the train to Philadelphia this afternoon. Just 2 minutes and I will be there; I’ll get into the car, put my backpack in the back seat, and drive home. I’m exhausted, it has been a long hard week.
Ghana beats Czech Republic 2-0, Italy and USA tie
I love when the underdog wins. It upsets the boring course of reality and makes the future so much more interesting. Surprise is an exciting feeling.
Ghana played a true team game and the Czechs never quite recovered from the surprise of the first goal. What can I say, I love soccer.
On the other hand, I almost had a heart attack watching the USA-Italy match. I could not decide who to root for and I got what I deserved: a tie. In addition to be too nervewracking (I freaked out every time the ball went too close to either net), it was a gruesome game that included a lot of physical contact, blood, and a referee from hell who ejected 3 players.
Even though the Italian team wore blue jerseys and I can’t resist that hue of blue, their performance was truly disappointing: they were not able to score in 10 against 9 and their game was just so-so. There is little doubt that the moral victory goes to the USA team.
What I know for sure, though, is that I am never going to watch a Italy-USA match again. I swear.
Technorati Tags: World Cup, Ghana, Czech Republic, soccer, Italy, USA
World Cup fever and the beauty of scarcity
In Italy, professional sports are played once a week, with few exceptions. Among the sports, soccer is The Game. On Sundays, people watch the game. The rest of the week they talk about the game, argue about the game, read about the game, fantasize about the game, and plan for the next one.
Each soccer game lasts 90 minutes (with a few, rare, exceptions). Forty-five minutes of uninterrupted bliss, nothing to break the totally focused attention on the 22 players and the white-and-black leather ball. Fifteen minutes of half-time for the commercials and to check what’s going on with the other teams, then other forty-five minutes of game. That’s it. A blink of an eye and it’s over, and all you can do is waiting until next Sunday.
Museum art is dead
Yesterday Husband and I went to the Whitney Museum in NYC. In this period the Whitney is having the 2006 Biennial, which is titled Day for Night in homage to François Truffaut’s movie La Nuit américaine. Some of the pieces were outrageous (a large virginal white canvas with piece of dirty chewing gum splattered on it, huge holes in the museum’s walls), some were moving and unsettling (Brauntuch’s shirts, Hannah Greely’s baby), ironic and/or provocative in a sexual (Vezzoli’s trailer for the never made remake of Caligula, Iannone’s "I was thinking of you") or political way (Serra’s Stop Bush, Anderson’s take on Black History, Nari Ward’s Glory).
But what was truly odd and out of place was to see modern art in a modern art museum.
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