Sonic Thrills

I have aways been affected by sounds.  There are some people's voices that affect me physically, giving me goosebumps or earaches.  There have been many public radio programs that I have listened to, not because I found the content interesting, but because the speaker's voice was so physically pleasurable to me.  There are also people whose voices are so irritating to me that I can't stand to hear them talk. 

Music has always played a very big role in my life because my parents were huge music fans.  They had a record collection that filled a fairly large closet.  My mom once told me that, during the first years of their marriage, they would each buy a record a week.  My mom preferred Frank Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Herb Alpert, and movie musicals.  My dad liked jazz - Dave Brubeck, Thelonius Monk, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald.  They also had a good selection of classical music, although no opera.  My sisters and I all took music lessons on various instruments and we played records or the radio nearly all the time.  My mom sang everywhere we went, which was often embarrassing for me.  She also danced almost everywhere.

Throughout my life, I have suffered from ear infections.  As a child, I would have 2-3 ear infections each year.  This gradually became fewer, and, for about the last 20 years, I get an ear infection only once every 3-5 years.  I believe this has contributed to my sensitivity to sounds, although I'm sure there's an element of autism in there, too.  I am more likely to be bothered by loud noises that other people don't mind and there are some types of music that I can't listen to on a car radio without experiencing discomfort bordering on pain.  I love cities, but I have a hard time tolerating the noise levels, especially while walking on a busy city sidewalk.  The combination of the noises of trucks, cars, construction equipment, and people all mixing together makes me very uncomfortable. 

There are other sounds, though, that make me feel very, very good.  Rain, when I'm hearing it through a window screen.  People whispering, when I hear it through a window screen.  A baseball game on the radio, at low volume.  A soda can when it's opened.  Shoes on certain floors and sidewalks (especially in movies).  And, of course, music.  Certain singers or specific vocal performances can send me into bliss. 

Rhett Miller's voice affects me almost every time I hear it.  I'm particularly moved by his voice on "Jagged."  I have no idea why.  I get a thrill every time I hear it.  I love the songs of the Old 97s and of Rhett Miller.  But even when Rhett sings other people's songs, I'm affected by his voice.  Once, when I saw him performing solo in Madison, he did "Can't Help Falling In Love."  It was gorgeous.  I love his voice.  I'd marry it.  I love Colin Blunstone's voice, too.  It sends me every time.  I'm especially fond of "Care of Cell 44" and "This Will Be Our Year."  Beautiful.  Roddy Woomble's voice on "Every Line of a Long Moment" is beautiful.  I don't normally feel anything when listening to him sing, but on that song, I do.  The song, itself, is lovely, but it's his voice on it that I love.  And Jeff Buckley's performance of "I Know It's Over" -- well, you just have to hear it.  It makes me feel very, very, very good.

There are lots of songs that I find especially beautiful, too.  "You Keep Me Hangin' On," by The Supremes, especially the line, "Why don't you be a man about it," and the notes that Diana Ross hits on the word, "man," are great.  How did they do that, anyway?  They must have recorded 2 tracks of her singing the whole thing.  It's a great sound.  I'm always really touched by many Steely Dan songs, like "Doctor Wu" and "Dirty Work."  I'm a sucker for a wistful song, so it's no surprise that I like Steely Dan.

Here is an utterly incomplete list of other songs I find particularly beautiful:
"The Long Way Round," by Badly Drawn Boy
"Since K Got Over Me," by The Clientele
"Baltimore," by Randy Newman
"Unsatisfied," by The Replacements
"Mistaken For Strangers," by The National
"Romeo & Juliet," by Dire Straits
"Un bel di vedremo," from Madame Butterfly
"Mr. November," by The National (although I have reservations about the chorus)
"I Believe She's Lying," by Rhett Miller
"Why I Love Country Music," by Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
"Walk Away Renee," by The Left Banke
"Baby You're Blind," by God Help The Girl (although I'd love to hear Stuart Murdoch sing it!)
"The Loneliness Of A Middle Distance Runner," "Like Dylan in the Movies," and "The Model," by Belle & Sebastian

What sounds/songs/voices do you find beautiful?

The Life of the American Mind

When I think about our intellectual history, I am horribly distressed by the lack of female representation. Granted, it's really only been since sometime in the 20th century that girls and young women have been educated equally with boys and young men, and I know that it takes time to overcome barriers, even after they have been knocked down in legal terms. But reading a book like The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand really drives home how completely women have been marginalized in academia. In 568 pages of American intellectual history from the Civil War on, all of the players are men.


Nearly all of these men were university professors. They were also other things, such as authors, scientists, lawyers, and judges. But, almost all of them were professors. This is important because our institutions of higher education are designed to allow the faculty to theorize, experiment, and take intellectual risks. Tenure and academic freedom are the protections that allow the American mind to continue to develop and grow. So, for women to become better represented in the life of the American mind, they need to be better represented among the faculties of our universities.

Now I know that women are not the only people who've been marginalized in our society and I'm well aware that other groups of people have suffered much worse fates. But what makes this so disturbing to me is how few people I talk to are bothered by it. Many people truly seem to think that it's no big deal and often say things like, "But that's not an issue anymore.  Women have equal opportunities now."

Yes, women have many more opportunities now than ever in our history. There are women in nearly every career and overt discrimination against women is illegal. But there is still what we could call "inadvertent discrimination." The American Association of University Professors published a report in 2006 on gender equity that showed that, in the 2005-06 academic year, women were 39% of full-time faculty at post-secondary institutions. At institutions that award doctoral degrees (doctoral universities), women were 34.1% of full-time faculty and 46.5% of part-time faculty. In institutions that award only associate degrees, women were 50.8% of full-time faculty and 51% of part-time faculty. These statistics are interesting because 47% of full-time faculty jobs in higher education are at doctoral universities.  


Now compare those statistics to the fact that 53% of those American citizens who were awarded doctoral degrees in 2004 were women. Women earn most of the graduate degrees that are awarded nationwide, yet they are not equally represented among the faculty of these institutions. Why?


In another study called, "Demographic Inertia Revisited: An Immodest Proposal to Achieve Equitable Gender Representation among Faculty in Higher Education," which looked at data from one institution through 1999, the authors found that, barring any changes in hiring practices, it would take 40 years for women to make up 34% of the full-time faculty and 57 years for women to make up 50% of the full-time faculty.


Is this acceptable? 

Fear and Hatred

A few years ago, I read a book called In the Devil’s Snare by Mary Beth Norton.  It’s about the Salem witch panic of 1692 and the author argues that the trials, convictions, and executions of accused witches had more to do with local and regional politics than with anything else.  Over the years, many people have developed theories as to why so many people in the Salem area were accused of witchcraft.  Given that all but one of the accusers were female, and the extremely restricted roles women could play in Salem society at the time, many have speculated that this was an attempt on the part of these women to take some control and get some attention.  Mary Beth Norton does not disagree with that, but she then wonders why the local leaders were so quick to act on the accusations, when the testimony of women was usually given very little weight, and why they reacted so strongly.  Why, for example, did they stick to the belief that a young servant-woman had been tormented by a witch, even after her own employer (a man) testified that she was lying?  Why weren’t they suspicious when, during the interrogation of an accused witch who was vehemently denying the accusations against her, the accuser suddenly became unable to speak?  Her answer is that the leaders had experienced so many military and political failures in the years shortly before 1692 that they saw the witchcraft accusations as an opportunity to appear powerful and successful and to assuage their guilt. 

My interest in this book, however, wasn’t in the big argument that Norton makes; rather, I was taken by the details of the story.  Relations with the Wabanakis, the local native people, were strained because of the First and Second Indian Wars.  There were periodic truces, sometimes initiated by the Wabanakis because they had become dependent on trading with the settlers for cloth, liquor, and corn.  During the hostilities, however, the atrocities committed by the Wabanakis had never been seen before by the settlers.  Entire settlements were wiped out during the wars and non-military families were butchered in their homes.   The survivors were shocked and what they experienced fed the region’s growing hatred of the Indians.  The hatred, obviously, ran both ways and the Wabanakis continued to be angered by the unfair trading practices of the settlers.  Everyone was affected by the wars.  These experiences helped to create the panic that allowed something like the witch trials to occur.  I would describe it as a kind of regional madness in which most of the settlers appeared to be incapable of rational thought.

It’s made me look for similar things that might be happening today.  Obviously, the circumstances today are dramatically different than in 1692, but could it still happen that an entire community (or even worse, a nation) loses the ability to examine, rationally, evidence that contradicts its preconceptions, particularly in a situation with high stakes?   It has happened in modern times in isolated incidents.  The FBI report of the early 1990s about ritual/satanic child abuse allegations and the lack of evidence to support the claims shows that it is still possible for communities to allow their collective fears to overcome the ability to think rationally, especially when religion is involved.  Does this describe, in any way, what's happening now between the Republicans and the Democrats?  Between the Occupy Wall Street groups and CEOs?  Between Republicans and everyone else?