Categories
Diversity

Lifetime of discomfort

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

At a ‘celebrity’ graphic designer event, an audience member asked the all male participants the following question:

Why do you — all three of you — suppose there are so few female graphic designers — or at least so few female ‘superstar’ graphic designers? Is there a glass ceiling in graphic design?

What was the response for one of the participants, Milton Glasner?

[Glaser said] that the reason there are so few female rock star graphic designers is that “women get pregnant, have children, go home and take care of their children. And those essential years that men are building their careers and becoming visible are basically denied to women who choose to be at home.” He continued: “Unless something very dramatic happens to the nature of the human experience then it’s never going to change.” About day care and nannies, he said, “None of them are good solutions.”

The crowd was silent except for a hiss or two and then Eggers piped up that he and his wife both work from home and share child care responsibilities — but added that maybe New York was different (although we don’t think Eggers really believes this). Then it was clear to everyone in the room that it was time to move on.

We’re brought up from birth to adapt to a standard of excellence that is derived from the male. We’re taught to exclaim at male art, male cooking, male design; to admire male scientists and engineers and their behavior; to respect male assertiveness in politics or war. We hear about the male heroes of history, with only an occasional aside to some female character–usually a duplicitous one.

It starts early: the school boy who raises his hand in class is called on to answer 50% more frequently than the girl sitting next to him. No one ever assumes when a boy does poorly in math, it’s because he’s a boy.

We face blatant double-standards in the work place: being competitive is seen as necessary for ‘manly’ men, but being competitive makes a woman a ‘ball buster’. Speaking out is commendable, if you’re male; shrill, loud, abrasive if you’re not. We have to yell just to be heard, but when we’re heard, we’re told to stop yelling.

When we’re equally capable, we have to hide who we are just to get a chance at an opportunity. Orchestras have finally started hiding musicians behind screens during try outs, so that women would have an equal chance in auditions. It works, too.

If we’re pretty, we’re called ‘hot’ rather than intelligent, astute, erudite. If we want to be feminine we’re not treated seriously. If we don’t want to bind our breasts, flatten our shoes, lengthen our skirts, we’re subtly assured that we’re ‘not committed enough’. Lipstick is the corporate kiss of death.

Managers don’t want us in important positions during child rearing ages because we’ll quit to have babies, though statistics show most women committed to a career, stay with the career. If we want the opportunities, if we show our earnestness they’re still given to Sam or Joe or Don, because they’ll ‘stick’ around. Yet Sam or Joe or Don is just as likely to leave as Sara or Jane.

We’re dependable, but the guys are brilliant. We’re cooperative, but the guys are innovative. We’re nurturing, but the guys are powerful. Anything outside of this pattern just can’t be seen.

In the fields where supposedly it’s OK to be woman and capable, our work is judged as lesser. How many women artists display shows at major galleries, as compared to men? How many famous chefs are women? Other than Julia Child? Women now make up almost 50% of the law school graduates: how many judges are women? How many women on the Supreme Court?

How many women in Congress? In a free and egalitarian society, doesn’t it strike you as odd when those who ‘represent’ us, don’t look like us, don’t act like us, and sure as hell, don’t think like us?

We’re told we’re not good at tech, but we make great librarians. However, even in a field dominated by women, male librarians end up with most of the management positions.

We don’t know how to write to appeal to a society dominated by male viewpoints. We don’t know how to design for a society that is conditioned to a male perspective. We don’t know how to debate when the rhetorical rules are derived by men for men. Even our technology: how do we know that women aren’t put off from technology because the tools are customized for how a man thinks, works, programs?

We’re told to cut along the lines, just like the boys, but then we’re given scissors for the wrong hand and chastised for our clumsiness.

To tell a room full of people who ask, “Why are there no women”, because we’re home having babies should shame the speaker to a lifetime of silence and remorse. Mr. Glasner may love New York, but he doesn’t love women. How can he, when he obviously respects us so little.

As for Michael Bierut, what was his response?

“Superstar” designers — and that’s what we’re talking about; read the question again — aren’t just good designers. They’re celebrity designers. And celebrity is a very specific commodity. It certainly helps to be good at what you do to be a celebrity designer (although celebrities in other fields don’t always seem to have this requirement). But that’s only a start. You also need to develop a vivid personality, an appetite for attention, and a knack for self-promotion. Accept every speaking engagement. Cough up a memorable mot juste for every interviewer. Make sure they spell your name right every time. This is time consuming work, particularly on top of your regular job, which presumably consists of doing good graphic design. Naturally, if you choose this route, it helps to be free of the distractions of ten to twenty years of caring for children, to say the least. In many ways, Milton Glaser’s observations were shocking only in their obviousness.

That’s interesting. I didn’t know that celebrity designers were celibate monks with no family life and friends? Huh. Well, that’s good to know for all the young women and men entering the field: you can’t have a family if you want to make it to the top.

Bierut also wrote:

Yet, you have to start somewhere. Glaser answered the question on the card, but the real question was the unspoken one: “Why is it that you guys up there are always…guys?” There is no good answer for this, and it doesn’t seem we should have to wait 150 years to come up with one. It’s depressing for a profession that’s more than half female to keep putting up 100% male rosters, at the 92nd Street Y or anywhere else. And I say this with no small degree of self consciousness, as a member of a firm where only 10% of the partners are women. This is what made me squirm last Monday night, and it’s what makes me squirm today.

So sorry you had a moment of discomfort. We women have a lifetime of it.

Categories
Photography

Adobe CS3 beta

If you’re interested in trying out the beta of Adobe’s CS3, download the trial version and generate a CS3 key from a CS2 serial number.

I haven’t had time other than download the product on my Mac and open it and the new Bridge up to see if there are any obvious differences. After the new year, when I’m finished with Adding Ajax, I can dig into it, and all the other 450 projects I’ve pushed off until the book is finished.

Categories
Environment Legal, Laws, and Regs

Third party

I can agree understand why this Springfield Newspaper opinion piece suggests we need to bring in a third party to negotiate with Ameren, but I disagree with much of what was written.

We can’t leave aside that Ameren is a multi-billion dollar agency that put profits ahead of safety. It is not a Mom and Pop organization, but a large utility company and corporation that has been pitting Nixon and the DNR against each other, as much as they’ve been fighting between themselves. To treat it otherwise, is ridiculous in the extreme.

Now, I do agree that the state of Missouri is embarrassing itself with this three-way battle between Nixon, Blunt, and Childers. I also agree that all parties have some financial association with Ameren. Whatever ‘neutral’ party is brought in, though, will most likely just add yet another voice rather than end the bickering. What we need to do is think about bringing in the ombudsmen to represent our interests, and also see legally who does have the final say in this matter. Once this is determined, then let them do their job.

If politics has so contaminated this state that people can’t, or won’t, do their jobs, then we have serious problems far beyond Ameren and the Taum Sauk Dam failure.

Frankly, I’m putting my support behind Nixon, and not just because he’s Democrat. If the only reason he was ‘fired’ as legal representative by the DNR was that one campaign contribution, which he returned and was subsequently cleared of any ethical wrong doing by state officials, then I can see no further reason for Childers or the DNR to resist his efforts–particularly if this is his job.

At the same time, Nixon must stop playing into the political gaming, and meet with the DNR and Childers. If he needs a third party to mediate between them because of bad blood, then he needs to find this party and begin this effort.

Both putting out their press releases and bringing this entire fiasco into the public eye is embarrassing the state. Rightly so: we should be embarrassed. We should also be working to end this, once and for all. However, if none of the parties can do their jobs, then I suggest they resign. Or we work to impeach them if we feel there is sufficient cause to do so.

We are paying these men’s salaries. We have a right, an obligation, to demand they do their job. If we have to bring in another party, then we might as well say right now that Missouri fails at government and can’t be trusted to govern itself. Perhaps Illinois or Arkansas will wish to annex us, until we mature sufficiently to be trusted to be on our own again.

(Thanks to Black River News, yet again, for finding this story. It’s a good thing the webloggers in this state are on top of this, because the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and many of the other publications sure aren’t.)

Here is Chapter 27 of the Missouri Revised Statues governing the responsibility of the state Attorney General.

Here is Chapter 640 which governs the Department of Natural Resources.

Here is a link to the DNR Ombudsman program, with listings of ombudsman representatives for each area of the state. Assuming it’s more than a token list of people who never expected to be called on for anything, perhaps this is an area where some influence can be felt.

Something else to keep in mind: the state’s Attorney General has filed a lawsuit. This is not a frivolous act that can be quickly put aside. Much of the wrangling is now moot, as a court of law will now determine what is the responsibility of Ameren, and in what way will they be forced to meet their obligations.

It is now out of DNR’s hands, it is even out of the hands of the Attorney General and now in the hands of that third party so much wanted by us all: our state’s judicial system.

Unfortunately, this also means that we can kiss Johnson’s opening next year, good-bye. We can also kiss further Black River clean up good-bye, as well as a re-build of the Taum Sauk reservoir anytime soon. I would suggest those in the area who are economically impacted consider getting their own lawyers, and filing suit individually.

Let’s not all sue at once.

Categories
Environment Events of note Photography

A year in the life of Johnson’s Shut-Ins

One year ago, a billion gallons of water poured down a mountain, scraped away the dirt, the trees, the rocks, and any living thing in a flood of mud and debris. It landed at the entrance to Johnson’s Shut-Ins, slammed into the hill on one end of the park, swirled around taking away every last bit of the Ranger’s house, including the ranger, his wife, and their three small children.

A pickup and a large truck on the road suddenly found themselves adrift in the early morning darkness, as water shoved them into the field across from the Shut-Ins. A dump truck managed to stay grounded.

The water poured past and through the Shut-Ins–ripping away the campgrounds, pouring over the endangered fens, splashing against the hills on either side; dumping five feet of mud and boulders the size of cars in its path.

The residents of Lesterville waited, anxiously, to see if the lower reservoir held. It did.

If this had happened in the summer…

If the reservoir had not held…

From Black River News, many new stories:

More on the lawsuit

Ameren’s Press Release on the lawsuit

Ameren Fact Sheet

Leaked DNR Proposal

DNR and Childer’s response on the lawsuit and Black River News’ response

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Categories
Stuff

The mushroom people

Warning: some spoilers

I rented Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People and I can comfortably say it is the oddest movie I have ever seen. Directed by the father of all the Godzilla movies, Ishirô Honda, the story is about a group of city people out for a yacht ride who get caught in strange weather and become stuck on an island. They find another ship, obviously abandoned from long ago, full of research equipment and covered in spores. As they look for food, they find mushrooms everywhere, but forewarned by the ship’s logs, try to avoid eating them because they could be dangerous.

They camp on the ship and suddenly one night, they hear footsteps approach their door. Shining a light toward the door, a creature enters, shaped vaguely human but covered with mushroom like growths. That’s the secret of the island: everything eventually consumes the mushrooms, and in doing so, becomes itself a mushroom–including the people from a previously stranded ship.

The story ostensibly focuses on the group trying to survive–trying to find enough food other than the mushrooms, trying not to be attacked by the mushroom people, and trying to find away off the island. More specifically, though, like other of Honda’s movies, the movie is a fairly strong condemnation of the modernization of Japan: the bright lights, night clubs, and other adoption of decedent western ways.

In his review of the movie, Jaspar Sharp writes:

Honda portrays the way in which the rapid economic growth of Japan has resulted in a population divorced from these cultural and natural origins. The rigid mechanical efficiency of a modern society is revealed to be merely illusionary, as the hierarchy crumbles steadily the further this ship of fools is removed from it. Carried away by the forces of nature on a freak ocean tide, the film’s irreversible conclusion is that of evolution turning full circle; man becomes mushroom as he reverts back to the primordial sludge.

Sharp also mentions the almost heavy-handed references to the drug culture that was just beginning to take root in most modern cultures. Not only do the mushrooms turn people into creatures half-living, half-fungus, they also exert a hallucinogenic effect—making the people both fey and dangerous.

Where I may go further than Sharp in the analogy between the perils of the island and the perils of modern society on Japan is the movie’s odd focus on the two women characters. One is a nightclub singer: glamorous, brave, willing to do most things; very uninhibited. The other is a student who is shy and proper; uncomfortable in unfamiliar circumstances, and dressed demurely in soft and quite safe pastels.

In the beginning, when the group was safely at sea and in no danger, the men noticed the singer and her obvious beauty and allure, admiring her boldness. However, once on the island, and as time progressed, the singer became rejected in favor of the studious, ‘proper’, young Japanese woman.

I would say that not only was Honda condemning modern society, he was making a specific point of condemning society’s influence on young Japanese women.

The contentiousness between the crew members, the odd mish-mash between scenes on the island and scenes of the Tokyo nightlife, and the effective background scenery–where no attempt is made to ‘seem’ real–make this a movie that, at a minimum, captures your attention if it doesn’t capture your interest.