Autumn Cometh

  Yesterday was National Pepperoni Pizza Day. That doesn't mean much to this pizza lover, who no longer consumes critters, and I've yet to come across tofuroni. I've been known to enjoy pizza crust dipped in Ranch dressing, and I've recently taken a shine to eating hummus with pizza. It's a fabulous twist for the tongue. Anyway, it's been too long since I've posted a pizza pic.  This image was found searching 'autumn pizza'. It's looks good with its roasted squash and cauliflower, and just a hint of rosemary. Yum!

Pizza party on people!

Firsts and a Last

  I have not yet looked through all of the cards that were in the box that Jack Downs sent, but I have found several 'Ooh this makes me happy!' cards already. I'd thought I'd post the cards I've pulled that are firsts of some sort in my collection.

My 1st & 2nd Joba Chamberlain (Winnebago) 

 

 

  This 2010 Allen & Ginter card, of Chamberlain going for the tag, is really nice. I don't have a lot of Allen & Ginter cards yet, but I don't recall having seen action shots on A & G cards. 

My 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th minor league cards 

  I had not put much thought into collecting minor league cards. So many guys never make it to the big league and those that do make it big, often end up playing for another ball club right out of the gate. All of these fellas actually played for the Cubs, so they can stay. 

For now.  

dun-dun-dah 

1st & 2nd Moody Blues cards

(Yay!) 

The last card needed to complete 2001 Topps Cubs: 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Peeling Away One Layer at a Time

(Click each pic for full article.)


Funny- 
Man Must Think It Enough To Wear Blackhawks Jersey At Cubs Game 

Funnier- 
Wrigley Field Grounds Crew Feed Buckets Of Raw Meat To Hungry Ivy 

Funniest- 
Wrigley Field Home Plate Collapses Under Weight Of Numerous Cubs Celebrating Home Run

Have a fantastic day!

MOOC Notes Index

Stereoscopy: An Introduction to Victorian Stereo Photography
National Museums Scotland
March 2017 at FutureLearn, 2 wks
Christine McLean

Introducing Robotics: Robotics and Society
Queensland University of Technology
May 2017 at FutureLearn, 3 wks
Prof Peter Corke

Homo Floresiensis Uncovered: The Science of 'the Hobbit'
University of Wollongong
July 2017 at FutureLearn, 4 wks
Profs Richard G. Roberts and Zenobia Jacobs

Cultural Heritage and the City
European University Institute
Sept 2017 at FutureLearn, 3 wks
Profs Anna Triandafyllidou and Jeremie Molho

Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime 
University of Glasgow
October 2017 at FutureLearn, 3 wks
Dr. Donna Yates


MOOCs completed without online notes: 


Buddhism Through Its Scriptures 
Harvard University - HarvardX 
Feb 2018 at EdX, 4 wks 
Prof Charles Hallisey

Food as Medicine
Monash University
July 2017 at FutureLearn, 3 wks 
Prof Helen Truby

Archaeology: From Dig to Lab and Beyond
University of Reading
March 2017 at FutureLearn, 2 wks 
Prof Duncan Garrow

Sports and Society
Duke University
Aug 2016 at Coursera, 7 wks
Prof Orin Starn

Ancient Egypt: A History in Six Objects
University of Manchester
Oct 2015 at Coursera, 8 wks
Profs Joyce Tyldesley and Glenn Godenho

Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region
University of Wisconsin- Madison
Feb 2015 at Coursera, 4 wks
Profs Steven Ackerman and Margaret Mooney 

Living with Dementia: Impact on Individuals, Caregivers, Communities and Societies
Johns Hopkins University
Jan 2015 at Coursera, 5 wks  
Prof Nancy Hodgson 
  
The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem
Tel Aviv University
at Coursera, 6 wks
Profs Oded Lipschits and Ido Koch 

The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose and Political Future
Emory University
June 2014 at Coursera, 6 wks
Prof Jacob Wright

Golly Gee!

  My grandfather often said 'By golly.', and my grandmother's phrase was 'You bet your boots!'.
             -Yeah, I have no idea why my mind was going there either.

  So how have you all been? Safe, dry and well is my hope for you. I've been busy. I can't pinpoint what's been keeping me so busy, but busy is happening! I caught up on my latest MOOC yesterday, Cultural Heritage and the City. I have a thing for anthropology and archaeology, and MOOCs are like interactive documentaries. Free brain candy is what they are, and I love that no matter what the subject of the classes are, they are all electives. Everyone is learning what they want to learn of their own free will, and that is an awesome achievement towards the betterment of modern education.

  (-Oh, a heads up- I will be posting a blog entry a little later today, to serve as an index for the class notes I've been storing on Now and Zen. It seems to be much easier and faster for me to type the class notes in an adjoining tab as I need them, rather than writing the notes by hand. Storing the notes here (online) also means that I don't have to worry about losing them if the computer dies, and an added bonus is that I do not have to re-write them 'nicer' afterward. lol)

  The Sox game will be on television in less than an hour. (Yay!) This is a White Sox and Cubs home. Zipper's a pretty hardcore Sox fan, and she has been causing me to have fits of chuckles lately. "Oh no, the Sox won again!" "Get him out of there! Get the bullpen in the game. We need to lose!" "Oh not another homerun!" etc... It's been a riot here for about a month. Love it!

   This new laptop means I can watch Netflix again. (again- Yay!) Two shows stand out from last weeks' binge-a-thon.

Knights of Sidonia S1&2

  and 

 Disjointed S1

 
  I thoroughly enjoyed both of these shows. Knights of Sidonia .. wow, brilliant writing! Disjointed- Over the years, I've not really been a Kathy Bates fan, but I love her in this, and I like that hair! Disjointed has been dogged by critics, but by the end of season one, I cared about all of the characters, so it is not deserving of the incoming squishy tomatoes. It's comedy, pot comedy, and that makes me laugh. Plus, I love watching Shego (Nicole Sullivan) rock this character. I get easily bored with series shows. Yes, even The Walking Dead became dreadfully boring for me. If it weren't for Carol, I would have ditched TWD a few episodes into the BORING Alexandria storyline. All I've been wanting to watch is the upcoming new episodes of the X-Files.  Bring it!


  Last but not least, I received a box of Cubs cards from Jack Downs (Trading Bases) over the weekend. Wow, there are several cards worthy of posting about here at Now and Zen. I see some fun card posts in the near future.

  Here's a Ryne Sandberg pop-up standee to tide us over until I get to posting some of these new baseball cards. Thanks Jack!

 

Have a great day!

Cultural Heritage and the City

Cultural Heritage and the City
European University Institute

First class Sept 4, at FutureLearn


Anna Triandafyllidou
Full Professor at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Global Governance Programme where she directs the Research Area on Cultural Pluralism.

She is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, since 2002 and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies since 2013.


 Jeremie Molho
Research Associate at the Global Governance Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.

From 2010 to 2013, he completed several missions at the archaeological site of Carthage in Tunisia for the NGO Urbanistes du Monde, in collaboration with the UNESCO and local stakeholders.

From 2012 to 2014, he was a member of the Istanbul Urban Observatory at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies in Istanbul and he set up a cycle of urban excursions on the city’s train stations.

Since 2011, he has been conducting research on the cultural economy and the cultural policies of a wide variety of cities: Marseille, Genoa, Istanbul, Singapore, Hong Kong.


WEEK ONE:

Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies online repository

Professor Trianafyllidou's website

European University Institute's Global Governance Program

The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz Amazon

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by  Raymond Williams Amazon

 

Culture-
Culture is a type of knowledge, a system of meaning.
Culture is the context within which behaviours, events, processes, and institutions are situated.
Culture is the set of mental categories that we learn as we grow up and which help us organize our behaviour and interpret our experiences.
Culture is mostly about ideas and behaviour.

Heritage-
Heritage can be seen as one aspect of culture.
Heritage has a stronger material connotation than culture and is oriented towards the past.
Heritage, as a system of tangible and intangible objects and practices, contribute to forging the sense of belonging to a community.
Heritage can be natural – our environment – and constructed: what we create.
Heritage also may be lost because of destruction, loss or decay.


  Instead of a fixed set of definitions for each language, Nick Dines draws on (Raymond) Williams’s approach of cultural materialism on semantic use, and his notion of “keyword” to account for the shifting meanings of the concept of cultural heritage depending on cultural contexts. Ex. British vs. Italian usage of heritage.

UNESCO team assesses damages to Syria's Palmyra world heritage site UN News Centre

Palmyra, Syria before ISIS 

Palmyra, Syria after ISIS 

'They observed the destruction of the triumphal arch and Temple of Baal Shamin, which was “smashed to smithereens,” UNESCO said. The members of the mission observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims murdered at the amphitheatre. The experts had to examine damages to the Temple of Bel from a distance, as the edifice is still inaccessible and demining operations have not been completed.' 

UN World Urbanization Prospects pdf

Globalisation “refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnectedness” and includes four socio-spatial dimensions.

 1.  The stretching of social, political, and economic activities across borders;
 2.  The intensification of interconnectedness and of patterns of interaction and flows;
 3.  The speeding up of global interactions and processes;
 4.  The intertwining of the local and global in ways that local events may affect distant lands.


Modern Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage policy involves four types of actors:
1.  National authorities such as culture ministries and their different branches
2.  Civil society actors cultural associations and foundations
3.  International organizations whose aim is to preserve and promote heritage such as UNESCO
4.  Professionals, experts working in the field of heritage restoration or preservation
5.  Private companies such publishers and art galleries.

For the purposes of:

- To preserve and protect cultural heritage
- To use it for educational purposes
- To promote citizen participation and inclusion
- To create employment and promote economic growth

WEEK TWO: 

  

UNESCO

The only two means UNESCO has to enforce the preservation and protection of heritage are either putting a site on the list of endangered heritage or to unlist it. The latter has happened in two cases:

1.  2007,  Oman’s Arabian Oryx Sanctuary was degraded because of oil extraction activities

2.  2009, Dresden Elbe Valley was removed from the list because of the construction of a four-lane bridge on the site.

These examples show that in the end, UNESCO was unable to stop local authorities from degrading their sites.


UNESCO website United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

International Council of Museums website  (ICOM)

International Council on Monuments and Sites website (ICOMOS)

Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization website (ALECSO)

Global Heritage Fund website

Europa Nostra website

Aga Khan Trust for Culture website

UNESCO Archaeological Site of Carthage videos World Heritage List

UNESCO Report on Culture and Sustainable Urban Development  large pdf

Monitoring and Evaluation in Cultural Heritage Projects at the World Bank Overview

Some of the positive affects of urban governance of Cultural Heritage:
(Order varies by city and those involved in the designation.)

1.  Creating jobs directly at sites or museums
2.  Attracting tourists, thus generating indirect revenues
3.  Educating the urban population on their past, passing on knowledge to future generations
4.  Creating intercultural dialogue
5.  Regenerating urban areas and improving the wellbeing of their inhabitants

There are three key conceptual frameworks of power dynamics in the strategies towards urban cultural heritage.      

                              1. Levels of governance: constraint or resource?
                              2. Urban policy sectors: who gets involved?
                              3. Three modes of regulation: public actors, private actors and civil society


Carthage
The complexity of urban governance of cultural heritage.

Different scales of governance are intertwined.

1.  Local scale: The municipality is a key actor, despite the few powers that municipalities have in the centralised Tunisian administrative system.

2. National scale: Key strategic decisions made involving not only the ministry of culture, but also ministries of planning, transport, or tourism.

3. The presidency:  Directly involved because of the presence of the Presidential Palace.

4. National Institute of Heritage: In charge of the archaeological works

5. Agency for Enhancement, Promotion of Cultural Heritage: In charge of the operation and the promotion of the site.

6. UNESCO was central in defining a strategy for the site through numerous reports and missions. It still advocates strongly for actions to preserve and enhance the site.

7.  Private actors: Involved since the 1980s. (Following the limitations of the restrictive approach defined by the 1985 decree, which defined no-construction zones and led to the permanent vacancy of numerous lots.)
                            In the following two decades, the private sector became increasingly involved in the site.
                                                       1.)  One operates the Acropolium, the former Cathedral located on top of Byrsa Hill. The firm that manages this building operates a different ticket policy from the rest of the site.
                                                       2.)  The second, a private operator recently established a complex named the Phoenix of Carthage. The initial goal planned for this location was to set up an information point for the whole site. But the company in charge of the project eventually developed a venue for entertainment and weddings that does not benefit visitors of the site.
                                                      3.). Another example of intervention of the private sector is the selling of parcels of the site to a real-estate developer for high-standing villas. This shows the risks that privatization can represent for the integrity of a cultural heritage site.

8. Civil society:
                          1.)  The Association for the Safeguarding of the Medina in the 1960s, launched the UNESCO campaign.
                          2.). After the Tunisian revolution in 2011, the civil society denounced the sale of parcels of the site to the relatives of the former president.
                          3.). The Tunisian press published nearly 20 articles in early 2011 to make the public aware of the situation in Carthage.
                          4.). Over 4000 people signed the petition entitled the “Call for the defence of the cultural site of Carthage Sidi Bou Saïd”.
                          5.) Two new non-profit organizations, the “Friends of Carthage” and the “Dwellers of Carthage” were created to put forward their vision on the future of the site.


WEEK THREE:

Global and Local Change on the Port-City Waterfront American Geographical Society

The house where Hitler was born NBC 

The house where Hitler was born -follow up CBS

The Big Dig -Istanbul’s city planners have a problem: too much history The New Yorker 

Gentrification in Istanbul Driving Residents Out Al Jazeera YouTube 

Gentrification: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Can Be Done about It Geography Compass 2

Urban Heritage and Social Movements pdf

The Shaping of a European Cultural Identity Through EU Cultural Policy EJST

European Cities and Capitals of Culture Palmer/Rae Associates

European Expert Network on Culture pdf 



Urban Heritage Tension:

1.  Archaeology vs urban development
2.  Preserving the historical landscape vs adjusting to urban change
3.  Authenticity vs instrumentalization of heritage

 Photo credits: By Buddha_Bamiyan_1963.jpg: UNESCO/A Lezine; Original uploader was Tsui at de.wikipedia.Later version(s) were uploaded by Liberal Freemason at de.wikipedia.Buddhas_of_Bamiyan4.jpg: Carl Montgomeryderivative work: Zaccarias (talk) - Buddha_Bamiyan_1963.jpgBuddhas_of_Bamiyan4.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8249891


The bulk of this class was drawn from this document:
UNESCO Report on Culture and Sustainable Urban Development  large pdf 

Topps 2011 Chicago

  I recently completed that small trade I mentioned in a previous posting. Of note are two Topps 2011 White Sox cards. They are Paul Konerko #93, and Omar Vizquel #243.

  I have all of the Cubs from this set except for the two SP cards. (Banks #247b and Sandberg #405b) I really have an appreciation for this set's design. The arc across the bottom with the player's name is okay, but it would be even better if the player's jersey number was printed in the arc as well. The player's position printed underneath is a nice touch too, but the double ring with the team's name around the baseball with the team's logo in the center, that brings an added touch of class not normally seen on baseball cards in general. Plus, silver foil always looks nicer than gold foil to my eyes.

  So these two White Sox cards are the first Sox in my collection from the 2011 Topps set.

Nice! 

Cub on Cover

  It's overcast today, but yesterday it was nice outside well into the early afternoon, and I had needed to run (more accurately, walk) a couple errands. I took advantage of the weather and made what would have been a mile there and back and turned it into two miles there and back. There are free periodicals available along the sidewalks. I almost always check them out because once in a while there is a really well written piece that I enjoy reading. Usually the article is in the Reader, a weekly publication printed on newsprint by Sun-Times. The story of interest in the issue of Reader that I picked up yesterday is The New Face of Socialism. I'm not one for talking politics, but right now I am trying to read and understand everything I can about what all these break-out factions represent. I can't figure out if things look so screwed up because I am getting old and out of touch with the younger adults, or if the fan has truly begun sputtering stinky goo. Either way, time will tell. ;)

  Anyway, the thing that I am posting about is Albert Almora and his wife Krystal on the cover of Paws Chicago magazine. This is the first glossy and free publication that I have found with a Cub adorning the cover. This issue has a nice write up about the Almoras , and there are some more photos inside. I love the Almora's dog Luna, she's a Shiba Inu beauty.  A copy of this 'zine is going into my Cubs collection! If I seem maybe too happy about this Almora cover, it is because I live within walking distance to Wrigley Stadium, and I have never come a cross a Cubs pocket schedule. In fact, the only pocket schedule I have seen more than once is for the Chicago Red Stars, Chicago's professional women's soccer team. Once in a while I'll spot a DePaul or Northwestern pocket schedule. A Maroons schedule would be cool, but I have not seen any of those either. Yup, this Almora find is a keeper folks!

 
 Have a great day everyone!