listen my children and you shall see
Jun. 8th, 2011 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleAs you've probably heard, Sarah Palin visited Boston recently, and said something silly about Paul Revere. That's not very surprising. Lots of people visit Boston*, and most of them say silly things at some point. The remarkable thing is that so many people seemed to take her seriously.
Dichroic made an insightful post about different kinds of mistakes:
http://dichroic.dreamwidth.org/196242.html
I think it was partly inspired by Palin's mistake, and partly by the responses to it among ideologues who really want to be on Palin's side.
(ETA: I meant to link to this post. http://dichroic.dreamwidth.org/196469.html Not the poem. It's hard to discuss mistakes without making more.)
It reminded me of a local mistake about Paul Revere. Near the border of Lexington, there's a mural of Revere's ride on a brick wall, between Mass Ave and the Minuteman Bikeway. (I think the wall belongs to the MBTA, but I'm not sure.) It's not a brilliant mural, but it's lively and colorful, and horse and rider have plausible numbers and arrangements of limbs. They both look tired yet excited, running hard. Revere is shouting--I think he's waving his hat. I walked past that mural hundreds of times before it occurred to me that itfaces the wrong way .
I don't know how many murals there are of Paul Revere's ride, where the orientation doesn't matter. This one is along the path he actually rode, and it shows him riding towards Boston. For many years, I was so thoroughly non-visual, it didn't occur to me to think about it. Last year, I started reading chemistry textbooks out loud and describing the diagrams...that pushed me to think about how visual information might be useful and important, and made me start noticing misleading visual information.
*The city encourages it. So do I! All you nice people from away should come visit!
Dichroic made an insightful post about different kinds of mistakes:
http://dichroic.dreamwidth.org/196242.html
I think it was partly inspired by Palin's mistake, and partly by the responses to it among ideologues who really want to be on Palin's side.
(ETA: I meant to link to this post. http://dichroic.dreamwidth.org/196469.html Not the poem. It's hard to discuss mistakes without making more.)
It reminded me of a local mistake about Paul Revere. Near the border of Lexington, there's a mural of Revere's ride on a brick wall, between Mass Ave and the Minuteman Bikeway. (I think the wall belongs to the MBTA, but I'm not sure.) It's not a brilliant mural, but it's lively and colorful, and horse and rider have plausible numbers and arrangements of limbs. They both look tired yet excited, running hard. Revere is shouting--I think he's waving his hat. I walked past that mural hundreds of times before it occurred to me that it
I don't know how many murals there are of Paul Revere's ride, where the orientation doesn't matter. This one is along the path he actually rode, and it shows him riding towards Boston. For many years, I was so thoroughly non-visual, it didn't occur to me to think about it. Last year, I started reading chemistry textbooks out loud and describing the diagrams...that pushed me to think about how visual information might be useful and important, and made me start noticing misleading visual information.
*The city encourages it. So do I! All you nice people from away should come visit!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-08 11:10 pm (UTC)She's right, you should.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 04:20 am (UTC)I learned about the compass points outdoors, in the woods. But I live the compass points in cities, where I feel like a migrating bird with magnetic vision. There's something super disconcerting about a wrong-way mural in the city. (Half of our bus stations are rotated from the compass: the buses that drive east face west when they park for boarding. Makes my brain itch every time I ride.)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 12:14 pm (UTC)Get off at MIT and play with the wonderful musical sculpture on the tracks
The musical sculpture broke last year, and a group at MIT is working on the restoration. They took down the big chimes for repair, and put them back up last month. The sculpture isn't silent anymore, but it has limited range. I think they're planning to restore the smaller pieces in place.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 05:02 am (UTC)I'd love to come back, and not just for an evening. Boston is full of old friends and old houses, and I have never spent enough time there.