Continuing with our look at architectural spaces as constructs of the human imagination, a new book, Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms, by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis, gives special insight into the ways in which Justice has publicly appeared and influenced our own democratic ideologies.
Buildings are one way to tell the story. The rise of courthouses tracks the rise of rights and the transformation of courts as democratic institutions – insistent on the equality of all, but as the authors argue, democracy did not only change courts, it also challenges them. Resnik and Curtis analyze how Renaissance “rites” of judgment turned into democratic “rights,” requiring governments to respect judicial independence, provide open and public hearings, and accord access and dignity to “every person.” Courts developed, alongside the press and the postal services, as mechanisms for building the public sphere and for calling the government to account.
Today, however, private processes are replacing public ones, as public and private sectors promote settlement, devolve decision making to agencies, and outsource judgments to arbitrators and mediators. Often clad in glass to mark justice’s transparency, new courthouse designs celebrate adjudication without reflecting on the problems of access, injustice, opacity, and the complexity of rendering impartial judgments. What Resnik and Curtis insist is that the movement away from public adjudication is a problem for democracies because adjudication has important contributions to make to democracy.
Listen to Judith Resnik on The Takeaway to hear about the current shortage of federal judges and what that means for judicial administration.
I'm sure you spent Saturday listening to WRSI's Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child show, which runs from 8am-10am EST on your radio or computer. Which means you heard Trixie and I hosting a segment, playing some of our favorite tunes, some live music, and a track from the Knuffle Bunny Musical Original Cast Recording.
If you didn't check out the archived shows here and have a listen
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My first book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, was first published 8 years ago today and now look at the mess we're in!
Thanks to all of you around the world for saying "NO!" to my first effort!
Happy Birthday, Pigeon!
And check out Trixie and I hosting a slot on WRSI's Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child show, tomorrow (saturday) at 9:20 am in Northampton or on your computer!
Baseball season begins this week, and if you missed it last weekend, be sure to listen to Jerome Charyn, author of Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, on NPR’s Weekend Edition to hear about what lay beneath the stoicism of Joe DiMaggio’s classy surface.
Starting this Friday, April 1, a blog tour with over 20 sites for the book, sponsored by Tribute Books, begins for the month of April. View the full tour schedule.
And finally, lest you forget, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil is also on Facebook.
Janet Malcolm’s feature interview, titled “The Art of Nonfiction,” in the new issue of the Paris Review is only the fourth nonfiction interview in the publication’s history. She discusses with Katie Roiphe her career as a journalist, the relationships to her subjects, and the presence of court cases and trials in her writing, touching on her new book from YUP: Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial.
Earlier this week, Malcolm sat down with Mark Oppenheimer, Brian Slattery, and Binnie Klein on Paper Trails, a new public-radio show about books, unafraid of giving its honest opinion on authors and their books before the author weighs in and responds. Listen on the site or subscribe to Paper Trails’s podcasts on iTunes.
And if you haven’t already, there’s still time to enter YUP’s Goodreads giveaway for Iphigenia in Forest Hills!
Last Thursday, Adam Bradley, one of the editors of The Anthology of Rap, appeared on Minnesota Public Radio alongside Mark Anthony Neal and Toki Wright to discuss the past 30 years of rap and hip-hop and how they have risen to become the cultural tour-de-force we know today.
Meanwhile, the phenomenon has never been exclusive to the United States. Check out the Yale London Blog to read up on how the book is being received by critics overseas.
Everyone who drives and uses the music transmitter inserted into the dash knows that the simple act of driving down the road will necessitate changing the station from time to time. According to where the person happens to be driving at the time, the type of music available may or may not be to the taste of said driver.
If the person grows up listening to radio, a sense of propriety takes over when discussing hometown stations. Many of the radio stations do more than play songs. News, weather, and local advertising take up part of that air time.
Regions of the country take their radio seriously. West Coast vs. East Coast. North vs. South. There is a difference in stations and listeners.
Something that many who’ve never toured around the Deep South don’t experience is the difference in approach to living. Radio stations come into this category. Having grown up part of the time in the south, I learned that people there listen to the radio as much or more than to the television. At least the older generations do.
I grew up with radio and still prefer it most of the time. Southern radio differs from that of the North. Talk radio isn’t unusual in the South. On the contrary, it’s expected.
The small town South relies on that link for reports of local doings. They reveal who’s going on a cruise, who has out-of-state company coming, and whose kids were doing what at school. They keep up on local sports, obits, awards, community affairs, you name it.
I listen to radio in the North and can barely find a hint of weather reports, much less news. Talk radio in the North relates to state or national politics, religion, or news about things that affect large numbers of people across the country. In the North a person hears little other than an occasional ad for a local business or a station give away contest. There’s no local flavor, no real local information.
As you can see, the interests of the radio station tend to run along different lines than those of the Southern stations.
I’ll be honest and say that modern hip-hop and rap isn’t my preference. What other people listen to is certainly up to them. I don’t particularly care about local sports, either. The point is that when local information is presented on the radio, I learn far more about an area, town, or region than by the music played. That’s what happens when an astute listener hears a Southern station.
The Coasts are too busy trying to be cool to give any real information. At least, that’s how it seems to this casual listener. They work very much like the North with regards to the music played and the promotions used.
In contrast, I can listen to a station in any small town in the South and discover all sorts of info. I can learn how many people will be buried and when and who the family members are along with where they live. I hear about the latest developments at the local area schools and who has been honored for what. I also learn about discover the major economic news that concerns the county and surrounding counties and why those concerns exist.
That’s a lot of information on the airwaves and all for free. I feel like one of the locals listening to the radio. I’ve been made a member of the community by listening. That’s something special.
Elsewhere in the country listening to the radio means nothing more than listening to sound. There is no real community as there is in the South. That’s the major difference.
I like the radio and what it adds to a community. It’s one of the last few forms of free of communications media. In a time when nearly every form of media costs the recipient, having radio available is a pleasure. Having so much information available for the cost is unbelievable.
Tell me—do you listen to the radio? And if you do, what do you get from it? Do you learn about your area because of it? Does it help define you and your loife experience?
Give me your comments and tell me about your experience with radio. Let me k
Earlier this week, I found myself wandering the rainwashed streets of New Orleans with U2′s “All I Want is You” playing on the soundtrack in my head. Cut to sitting at the French Quarter’s hippest bar, sipping cocktails mixed by a beautiful actress bartender. Chatting beside me was a local gallerist* and, along from him, a couple of artists he represented. In front of me was the notebook open at the final chapter of Johnny Mackintosh: Battle for Earth and a copy of Mark Kermode’s autobiography, It’s Only a Movie.
The gallerist wanted to talk science fiction, notably Iain (M.) Banks and Dr Who. We had similar views on both and I could recount the time where I accidentally got the Scottish novelist a little drunk in a bar before a book reading, buying him whisky and telling him he’d inspired my own novels. It took a little while for the bartender to fess up to being an actress (it turned out a show of hers was even on HBO when I returned to the hotel), but once the fact was divulged she was reciting Shakespearean sonnets and having me recreate a scene from Austin Powers with her. After which I could even tell her how I once worked with Mike Myers!
I know I’m incredibly lucky, but it often feels as though I’m living inside a wonderfully entertaining movie in which I’m director, screenwriter, cinematographer, location manager, head of casting and leading actor. And that’s exactly the conceit of Dr Kermode’s autobiography. It’s already the third book I’ve read this year so I figured it’s time to get busy reviewing or get busy dying. Choose life.
A damn fine bfi book I published with Jonathan Ross
Ever since I noticed there were film critics, Kermode has been my favourite. He’s risen through the ranks to be the nation’s favourite too, with regular slots on The Culture Show and a weekly movie roundup with “clearly the best broadcaster in the country (and having the awards to prove it)” Simon Mayo that’s so entertaining it’s been extended to two whole hours on a Friday afternoon. Possibly the highlight of my time as publisher at the bfi (British Film Institute) was receiving a very lovely email from Dr K. It goes without saying he wrote the bfi Modern Classic on The Exorcist, but this is also the man who made On the Edge of Blade Runner.
Saleem Ali,
author of Treasures
of the Earth, appeared today on WBUR/NPR’s Here and Now to talk about his timely book, now available in paper.
You can listen Here
and Now.
I just did a fun interview with pal Monte Belmonte, the DJ who is as funny as his name. We chatted Knuffle Bunny Free and Elephant & Piggie's We Are in a Book!Take a listen if for no other reason than he reads Elephant & Piggie to his kids they sound like they're in an episode of Speed Racer.The link is HERE.(& scan down for some of his other fun interviews while you're there)Also yesterday, I
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