Observations on Penn State and JoePa

The cover of my hometown newspaper this morning with the three words that say it all. After 61 years JoePa is gone.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

Tears

morning update - Yes tears, tears for my school, for the kids abused, for the alumni, students, everybody involved, and tears for JoePa because I'm just so sad it had to end this way. But no tears foe Sandusky, if there is a hell hopefully there is a very special place there for him and his kind.

Stay by the phone Urban Meyer.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

This just hurts. Ever since the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal broke I have been avoiding the subject like the plague. I didn't want to talk about it and failed, I didn't want to read about and failed, and totally didn't want to write about it but I can't help myself. Penn State has been my anchor for years, it really has helped me to survive more than anything other than my family and friends so it does hurt like hell to see it all end this way. No matter how it plays out the name Joe Paterno will never sound quite the same again and that's just sad.

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is alleged to have sexually abused eight boys over more than a ten years, both before and after his retirement from the team in 1999. One incident in 2002 was witnessed by an assistant coach and reported to Joe Paterno who reported it to other athletic department officials including Athletic Director Tim Curley who was charged Monday for failing to report the information to the police, a crime in Pennsylvania. He was also charged with perjury in testimony to a grand jury and he resigned later in the day. Paterno, who was not charged or investigated, has been criticized for not calling the police himself or simply following up on what he had been told. Pennsylvania state police Commissioner Frank Noonan said Monday that Paterno fulfilled his legal requirement when he told his superior of the 2002 assault but he also questioned whether Paterno had a moral responsibility to do more. He did.

One of the blessings of Penn State is that it is situated in the mountains of central Pennsylvania with the nearest major media outlet an hour to the south in Harrisburg, literally down the mountain. That blessing is turning into a curse now with everybody from the BBC to Al Jazerra swooping into Happy Valley with seemingly one thing on their mind, Joe must go. I read one article in which the writer went so far as to call Beaver Stadium an “empty cavernous monument to JoePa's failed program.” Tarnished yes but to call a program with the highest graduation rate in the NCAA history failed is just shear stupidity. As long as I have been associated with Penn State there have been people both inside and outside the University who just wanted to bring Paterno down. I'll call it the Lance Armstrong effect, you can't possibly be that good with out cheating so there must be something hiding somewhere and if they just dig deep enough they'll find it. They failed every time but now it seems they have been handed a nuclear option with the timer winding down to zero.

I'm just terribly torn because I know how I would feel under any other circumstances and I know how I feel now. I just can't bring myself to turn on a man who has meant so much to my school. I do believe Paterno, how can I not, but I also know he is terribly wrong. At the bare minimum he should have pushed his superiors for some kind of public investigation and he should have condemned Sandusky's actions, friendship only goes so far. Another cop-out is for anybody to say it was out of his hands because of one thing I am certain, whatever Joe wants in Happy Valley Joe gets.

Should Joe go? As hard as this is to write it probably is time because there will be no moving on for the school until he does step down. But there is no need to fire the man who has made Penn State his life for 61 years, his contract is up at the end of this season. Just don't renew it.

As my dad reminded me yesterday the last time the the voices calling for Paterno's ouster were this loud in the valley I was a freshmen and Paterno was in the middle of his worst season ever. One of the men these people would have replaced him with?

Jerry Sandusky.

evening update - This statement was released by Joe Paterno today:

"I am absolutely devastated by the developments in this case. I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief.

I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care. I have the same goal today.
That's why I have decided to announce my retirement effective at the end of this season. At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can. This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.
My goals now are to keep my commitments to my players and staff and finish the season with dignity and determination. And then I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to help this University."

notes:

On November 4th Sandusky was arrested for 40 counts related to allegations of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15 year period. Sandusky is currently free on $100,000 bail pending trial and could face life in prison if convicted.

Saturday #12 Penn State faces #19 Nebraska in what is in all probability Joe Paterno's final home game as head coach of the Nittany Lions. It is also senior day which is a tear jerker in the best of times. I haven't made up my mind if I'll be making my planed trip to the game but I can't see myself not. If it is JoePa's last game in Happy Valley I'm going to have to be there.

Observations on Art 11.6

I was reading an article on ArtInfo about Occupy Museums and a thought came to mind. Maybe they do have a point, maybe there is a major problem in the art world, but I'm not sure they themselves realize what the problem is.

No matter how you figure it, only about 10 percent of the works major museums show in New York were created by women. Gallery shows are much better but still only about a quarter of all solo shows are by female artists. Every year the major art blogs put out their "power lists" and every year few of the names are women's.

Why is their such inequality in the art world?

To have ones work shown in a major market one has to get the interest of a small group of curators, collectors, and critics. A group that for the most part is male. It isn't any big secret that the social make up of the art world is cliquish and elitist. For any artist, but particularly for a women aartist, to get anywhere you must go to the right schools, meet the right people, be willing to push your work, and be extremely lucky. Even with todays explosion of social networking to get invited to the parties where these power-brokers schmooze over drinks is next to impossible. Over the years some women's groups have tried to duplicate this male dominated world but to what end? To create a permanent sanctioned second class in an otherwise unchanged art world?

I think the time for anything of that sort has long passed. But for now female artists lack the resources needed to counter hundreds of years of informal discrimination against them. They lack the money, influence, and quite literally the space necessary to have any kind of major impact. For now most of the art works you see will still be created by only the male half of the artist population.

One way or another things need to and will change, the only question remaining is how it will be accomplished.

Observations from the Window 11.5

Remember, remember, the 5^th of November, Happy Guy Fawkes Day. Be sure to watch your Blu-ray V for Vendetta Special Addition today. What? Are you trying to tell me that not everybody owns a copy?

It was a stunningly beautiful fall day in the Village so I boldly decided to jump in Foxy and make my escape from the city for some hi-speed relaxation. In a baggy black sweater, jeans, and a pair of Timberland hiking boots I was prepared for anything, or so I thought. What I wasn't prepared for was running into all the perils of driving in this city and all of them in one day. I drove down one street only to have it closed because of a crime scene, than shot down a side street to get to Canal where I turned right into a jam caused by a double parked semi. Here I witnessed a scene straight out of Independence Day as people stood outside their cars, cabbies yelled in middle Asian dialects, and as far as I could tell the truck driver had disappeared without a trace. Luckily I saw it all soon enough to do a quick reverse back into the side street but there was no getting to the tunnel. My escape thus thwarted I settled for a drive up the Hudson River as far as Harlem, across 112^th, than down Second Avenue and home. Not quite what I had in mind but Foxy did get some exercise.

Today also marked the 50^th day of Occupy and it was dominated by Bank Transfer Day, an event organized by Los Angeles gallerist Kristin Christian. Bank Transfer Day originated with Christian's Facebook event which she started October 4th because she was irritated with Bank of America's announced $5 a month ATM fee. The idea is to have massive numbers of people pull their money out of major banks an open accounts at smaller local banks and credit unions. According to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders more than 650,000 people have moved an estimated $4.5 billion into credit unions during the last four weeks alone. That compares to 600,000 new credit union accounts in all of 2010.

To date the number worldwide Occupy related arrests now stands at 3200. The total number financiers arrested for causing this economic meltdown still stands at 0. 

And finally I end on a better note, I seem to have been tumbled and reblogged twenty times so feel free to have a look. It is as always a perfectly safe shot. kaetlinn

Observations from the Edge 11.5

If you follow me at all on twitter you probably have noticed that other than sports I seem to do more retweeting than anything else. One reason is that I find it very hard to say what I want to say in 140 characters or less. But when it comes to OWS related things it's also because there are already some pretty awesome women out there reporting from the street every day. Sometimes I'm more than a little jealous because I know there is no way I could ever compete with them.

Here are some of the the best....

Allison Kilkenny (@allisonkilkenny), New York and the world. Citizen Radio co-host, contributing reporter for In These Times, The Nation and writer of The Uprising blog for The Nation. I met Allison the morning of the “cleanup eviction” of Liberty Square. She is the kind of person that seems to be everywhere at all times, quite possibly VQ material.

Faeza Moghul (@FaezaMoghul), Oakland. Her twitter profile says “Seeker of Sacred Knowledge. Roamer of Ancient Lands. Pakistani Indian American Muslim Sunni married to an Irish Jewish American Shi'i.” She literally exploded onto my timeline during the Oakland general strike with on the scene reports and some amazing photos.

Laurie Penny (@PennyRed), London. “Journalism, feminism, tea and sedition.” Penny writes for New Statesman, Independent, Guardian, Al-Jazeera, The Nation and others.

Lucy Kafanov (@LucyKafanov), Washington DC. “News junkie, policy wonk, skeptic and voracious consumer of stories neglected by mainstream media.” Kafanov is the senior TV news producer and on-air analyst for Russia Today's Washington bureau.

Special honors for Susie Cagle (@susie_c), Oakland. Graphic artist, cartoonist, and founder of the Graphic Journos collective. Cagle was teargassed twice and arrested once during the Oakland protests and general strike.

Also here are some good lists to follow to keep up with news you wont find in the mainstream media....

Occupy The World - Unify Movement
Occupy Wall Street - Kaycee Nightfire
Progressive Politics - Alison Kilkenny
Smart Snarky Lefties - Sarah Jaffe
The 99 Percent Movement - Think Progress

Observations on Sports 10.31

On Saturday afternoon Penn State beat Illinois 10-7 when Illinois kicker Derek Demke missed a 42-yard field goal with 5 seconds left on the clock. With his 409th win JoePa moved ahead of Grambling State’s Eddie Robinson for the most ever wins among Division I coaches.  Penn State is now the only unbeaten team in Big 10 play (5-0 Big 10, 8-1 overall) and moved into the 16th spot in the BCS poll.

If you ever wondered why I so live for Penn State football just watch this vid taken at the end of the Illinois game, it should give you a pretty good idea. Keep in mind that this crowd was about 40,000 short of the normal crowd of 110,000 due to it being snowtober.

link

Observations from the Edge 10.29

I was at Liberty Square a couple days ago and had an interesting conversation. As we looked at the ring of interlocking steel barricades that now completely surrounds the park we started to talk about what the police in this country have become. In major cities they have become militarized to the point that it's hard to call some of the police departments anymore as they are more para-military organizations. They have all the toys and, in the case of Oakland, they want to play with them. I honestly think New York City probably has one of the best small militaries in the world, large enough to suppress all of Jersey in the event of any future Devils' Stanley Cup win.

You could use the so called 'War on Terror' as a reason for all that but none of these toys would have stopped the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. They don't seem to be able to stop drugs from entering the country or people from crossing the borders illegally. So what is their purpose? A question which we may all have to be answer one day soon.

But back to the barricades which started this whole ramble. I searched the New York Times archive and found an article from 2003 called “Steel Barriers Reinforce a Thinner Line of Blue at Parades, and the Bottom Line” (l, not sure if the link works without a subscription). At the time the NYPD already owned 12,000 of the stunningly beautiful things. I read elsewhere that the city now owns enough of them to completely surround the island of Manhattan in steel and right now they are everywhere, surrounding Liberty Square, the New York Stock Exchange, creating a veritable maze in the Financial District. Supposedly they are to keep protesters in the park and out of the street where they can restrict traffic yet the damn barricades themselves are in the street.

At a recent community meeting local resident Sabrina Espinal said “My biggest issue is the barricades, don’t care if they stay in that park 'til kingdom come. I just want the barricades down.”

Maybe the New York City Police Department is the real one occupying Wall Street.

Observations from the Window 10.27

I received a rather weighty package from Amazon yesterday that may signal the beginning of a cold weather reading binge, something I think my brain needs. It also seems to be the time to put Patti Smith's Just Kids on the shelf for a long deserved break. I first read the book back in April and have been rereading parts of it ever since, partly because I live near where so many of the scenes took place. But one part I have stayed away from is the end because it always brings tears to my eyes.

In late February of 1989 Smith saw Robert Mapplethorpe for the last time. In the book she shows the following note which she wrote to Mapplethorpe, but doesn't say whether she actually sent it to him than or was writing it to him in the book. If I should ever meet her that's the first question I'm going to ask.

Dear Robert,
Often as I lie awake I wonder if you are also lying awake. Are you in pain or feeling alone? You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist. I learned to see through you and never compose a line or draw a curve that does not come from the knowledge I derived in our precious time together. 
Your work, coming from a fluid source can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke than of holding hands with god. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go.
The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all of your work, you are still your most beautiful.
The most beautiful work of all.
Patti

Mapplethorpe died a few days later on March 9, 1989.

Like I said, tears.

Patti Smith - Paths That Cross

Observations from the Edge 10.27

Leave it to Jon Stewart to say it best and with the fewest words. "What the fuck happened in Oakland?"

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Cry for Oakland

Jane Tyska for The Oakland Tribune via owsbot

One has to wonder what has gone wrong in this country when a scene like above can be played out in a major American city. In the predawn hours Tuesday hundreds of police from Oakland and maybe a dozen other central California communities assaulted the Occupy Oakland camp in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza. I use the word assault because police used tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades in the surprise raid. It can be debated where the blame falls for the eviction but what can't be debated is that the show brute and, in the case of rubber bullets, possibly lethal force was totally uncalled for. It all made New York Mayor Bloomberg look rather tame in comparison. 

As I write this Tuesday night hundreds of protesters are marching on Oakland's City Hall and the days total arrests for the day in Oakland stands at over 150.

In another bit of OWS news protesters arrested during Occupy Wall Street's march onto the Brooklyn Bridge may turn down a deal offered by prosecutors. The deal would drop all charges in six months if the individual hadn't been arrested again in that time. Most of the 780 arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and have been offered the deal but the National Lawyer's Guild, the group that represents them, says most may turn the deal down and demand a jury trial clogging the legal system in New York City.

And so it goes.

late update - All hell broke loose in Oakland tonight and the words police riot come to mind. Welcome to George Orwell's America....

link

Observations from the Coffee Shop 10.23

This morning I was looking at one of my recent OWS photos with a friend when she commented on a button the girl in the shot was wearing. The button said “2planes 3buildings 911wtf?” Now I know I have seen that line before but I didn't have an answer when my friend asked what it meant and all Ash knew was that it was a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Even though I may be superstitious at times and read my horoscope now and than I do try and stay away from wacko conspiracy theories because I don't need any more crap clogging my brain. I did look into this one a bit today because I have a soft spot for 9/11 and I wanted to know the answer to her question.

The 2planes party is easy, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I found the 3buildings part stands for the twin towers and Building 7 which collapsed during the afternoon of September 11th. Conspiracy theorists seem to use that later collapse to prove that the towers were bought down by a controlled demolition rather than by the airliners. They don't seem to believe that being 400' away from a collapsing 1300' tower would cause enough damage to bring Building 7 down. You might be wondering who would want to do that but I'm not even going to get into it other than to say they believe it was super cabal involving everybody from oil companies, to the CIA, to your local hair dresser's cousin Louie. It was done to justify invading the Middle East and seizing oil fields.

To me the one critical flaw in the whole theory is this. The Bush administration failed at everything it did yet I'm supposed to believe it pulled off and than covered up the greatest conspiracy in the history of the planet? Even if I wanted to I couldn't do it. Along with them the cover up would have had to involve the FDNY, the NYPD, the Port Authority, the FBI, the FAA, NORAD, and on and on. Even scrap yards in the New York City area would have had to be involved because they sold scrap steel before it was all tested as probably they were asked to by the Bush people. Which means Mayor Bloomberg couldn't have been involved because at the time he asked the yards not to sell it.

Omg, I drank the tea, I understand now and I need one of those buttons of my own.

Seriously even conspiracies with a few people are doomed are to fail, like Watergate. The more people you involve in it the more likely it is to fall apart. The amount of people needed for this conspiracy could fill both of the towers so it's just absurd to think this many people could keep a mass murder a secret for this long. Totally effing absurd.

Yet people still believe.

Observations from the Edge 10.23

Friday night I was watching a live feed of an OWS march from 95th Street to Columbus Circle that featured the 92 year old Pete Seeger leading a march of almost 1000 people. It was 1 AM till the group reached Columbus Circle but there they stopped and they sang. Now I'm not about to start buying folk music but even just watching the feed it was one of those nice calm moments in time. Even the NYPD officers present seemed to relax and enjoy it. I have shared enough bad scenes since the protests began, I thought I would share the good too.

Link

Observations on Art 10.21

It may seem as if OWS is now taking over even the art portions of my blog but I have to mention something that irritates me a little. One of the problems of not yet having a central message is the fact that every small group within OWS is treated as if it were speaking for the whole of OWS. That is what happened this week with Occupy Museums which is the brainchild of Noah Fischer and his Art and Culture Group. It's message seems just heated rhetoric about "a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitist of elite." Fischer said in an interview that Occupy Museums isn't a personal project and was approved by the group but really I think the group itself is his personal project. He also said that all statements read will be approved by consensus but again this is in the group and not at the OWS general assembly.

Yesterday Occupy Museums descended upon a strange, and probably befuddled, group of institutions, the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick and the New Museum. I have no idea how they missed the Met other than my theory that Fischer has something there and you don't seem to see anybody from the group stopping the Smithsonian from collecting flyers and signs in Liberty Square. Another complaint I saw was that public museums charge a fee to get in, currently $25 and $14 for students at MOMA. It seems like almost nothing compared to a ticket to a major concert or sporting event. Will the group be occupying stadiums next? Count me in on that one if they protest a Flyers - Rangers game.

Occupy Museum's manifesto also stated, “Recently, we have witnessed the absolute equation of art with capital. The members of museum boards mount shows by living or dead artists whom they collect like bundles of packaged debt. Shows mounted by museums are meant to inflate these markets.” At the risk of stabbing myself in the back I tend to agree with this but they are blaming the entirely wrong people. I think this is becoming a problem the art world will have to deal with at some point but the problem comes more from the larger galleries and art shows and not from the museums. The museums are just an easier target with a much better chance of publicity.

As Kyle Chayka said in ArtInfo's gossip blog, “museums, public institutions as they are, don’t really seem to be fitting targets for such vitriol. Try Gagosian gallery, maybe?”

10/22 update - After I posted this yesterday I found a couple of things that add some to it. The first is a Twitter account I ran into called @OccupyArtWorld that is similar to Occupy Museums. It's about two weeks old and again filled with misplaced rhetoric. Among other things it calls out the art blogs Hyperallergic and Art Fag City for taking ads when these are two blogs that made their reputation before taking any ads at all. It fails to mention ArtForum whose posts seem to go with whoever is buying ad space at the time.

The other thing was a post in yesterday's New York Times ArtsBeat (l) blog that gave a good description of the protest. You can follow the link and read it if you want but I love the last paragraph of it so I'm posting it here.

"At the New Museum, a protester mentioned White Box, a small gallery off the Bowery that was having an opening that night. After a consensus vote, the group marched their protest over to its doors. But the exhibit there, “WALLmART,” turned out to be in solidarity with the 99 percent movement. So after a few minutes, the Occupy Museums group abandoned their sidewalk chants and went in.“We occupied, and now we’re going to schmooze,” Mr. Fischer said."

Artists, what are you going to do with them?