--- Pride of Place: Cultural Artifacts in a Time of Change ---

Cultural artifacts can be practical or artistic, or anything between. Here's that mural at the Alameda RTD station again.

                                                     [Alameda mural]

It's obviously an art piece and the artist, Aaron Glasson, from New Zealand, said outright that it's purpose was to give people something to look at while they were waiting on the trains.

The artist, Aaron Glasson is being compensated through the Denver Urban Renewal Authority - a group that partners with different developers in the city - and helps fund their projects through TIF - or tax increment finance bonds. One percent of the money that goes toward each re-development project has to be used for art. Glasson has created murals around the world. So, this is not a piece of "local art", in that the creator is not "from around here", but I think he admirably captured many elements of the spirit of Denver.

Glasson took about a month, working up to 10 hours a session.

Perhaps the most obvious elements are the trains - here, the reality - there the dream.  Alameda Station here, the mural in clear sight across the street. The mountains west, the painting east, with the mountains, plains and river. Denverites, more than any other peoples that I have lived around, are outdoors people.

One of the birds is a space satellite, or is it a kite, or a wind ornament companion to the pinwheel/windmill?

And the mural expresses the diversity that I love in this area. The people, obviously, but the plants are both native and exotic, reflecting the bold use in local gardens of plants that would never have existed on these high plains - perhaps plants that people have brought from their homelands, like the deities in "American Gods."

The mural depicts a dreamscape of people and things floating through the scenery. At once the dream elements seem mystic, perhaps aboriginal, and also technological, with geometric, tesseract-like constructs. It's as if the high technology of Denver's industries has seeped into the storied heritage of the land.

This is an art object, there for the enjoyment of commuters. It is an everyday object with other world content. I remember seeing the artist at work while I drifted through on the way to a job training session. He used paints in cans and a cherry-picker-like conveyance. He looked like a house painter.

The work looked like a job. The worker looked like he was enjoying himself, as workers, in an ideal world, should. I am fascinated by the work of workers who enjoy their work. I did not get to converse. He did talk to other passersby.

There was a transformation. It was a work. Now it's a confrontation, a statement. People actually sit across the street and look at the mural. I wonder how many know what they're looking at.

In Pride of Place: New Haven Material and Visual Culture - Cultural Artifacts in a Time of Change: Material Culture of Daily Life (http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/2008/3 accessed 9/14/18) Pedro Mendia-Landa presents frameworks that can be used to evaluate cultural artifacts and cultural spaces. These are standard tools for the anthropologist. Try them out on a favorite heirloom or an interesting building in your area. Everything, everywhere, everybody has a story and that's what learning is about.

--- Sociology in the colleges ---

The social sciences cover a very large conceptual area. Any situation in which more than one person is interacting is social. Even when there is only one person, the way they think about other people is social. So, it's no wonder that I can't just tell you what the universities around here focus on in the social sciences. From what I've said about psychology, philosophy, and religion in the area, you probably aren't to surprised that a lot of it is about social justice.

I didn't travel to Boulder for this one but I did look over the School of Sociology website. I noticed that they do have a focus on criminology, like Denver University. It lists four working groups that come together to discuss topics in sociology and I assume that those give some idea of what's going on there in research - what's in vogue. Those groups are:

Criminology and Criminal Justice Working Group
Culture, Power and Inequality Working Group
Political Economy Working Group
Population and Health Working Group

I did walk down the street to the Denver University and had a nice day of it. A major emphasis there seems to be criminology. For instance, one of the professors, Jared Del Rosso is doing some significant work about the public perception of torture.

The main building for sociology is the Strum Hall. The School of Sociology and Criminology is the largest on campus, consisting of 15 schools and departments.

                                                                  [Sturm Hall]

Sturm Hall also houses the Denver University Museum of Anthropology. The public part of the museum is one small room but museums like this are my favorite. It is a teaching museum. Students interact with items in the less public museum holdings to create installations displaying their academic work. The study is ongoing, the information is current, and the displays deeply consider the items, the people who created them, the students who study them, and the visitor who views them.

When I visited, there was an installation about Korean shadow puppetry. The text on the wall emphasizes the importance of the shadow in the human psyche.

                                                                        [Shadow]

The displayed artifacts were primarily Asian and North American (much was Hopi).

                                                                      [Display]

"Activating the Collections" makes explicit what this museum is about. I'll let the museum, itself, explain.

                                                  [Activating the Collections]

The museum offered a book written by a professor at Denver University. I didn't expect much - I got much more. Sarah Milledge Nelson's Spirit Bird Journey is an engaging, very well written, but odd little story that weaves three threads together. It is a fascinating description of Korean culture that tells of an archeologist's research in Korea, and also tells of her spirit journey as a bird to paleolithic Korea. Part scientific expedition, part shamanic fairy tale, this novel is informed throughout by the author's own archaeological expertise, knowledge of Asian history and culture, and an excellent handling of narrative.

I decided to buy a copy for a friend and found that new paperback versions are hard to find - perhaps out of print. The original publisher was RKLOG Press in Littleton, Colorado but all I could find were used copies, hardbacks, and digital copies.

I also noticed that the author has written other novels and academic books. I will have to check them out.

Leaving the museum, I was treated to a stroll through the water gardens.

                                                                      [Water gardens]

The semicircular plaque looks like a sundial or some kind of astrolabe but it actually points out the mountains that you can see from this point in the gardens. As you can see, in the summer, there are too many trees. Most of the campus is an arboretum.

                                                                   [Mountains]

I have been passing a small wine bar for some time. Hiking, I'm not drawn to wine or espresso, but this time I stopped in and was delighted to be reacquainted with Italian sodas - the perfect drink for a hot summer day. I'm now identifying all the places around town where I can get Italian sodas. La Belle Rosette, on University Drive just south of the campus is now a favorite stop - friendly people with Italian sodas in the summer and specialty espresso drinks in the winter. What more could I ask for?

Are there any teaching museums in your area? They often are on college campuses but, not always. My favorite paleontological museum in the area is the Museum of Natural History in Morrison, which is also a research site. Again, it's a small museum but the staff is on the cutting edge of paleontology and the tours are packed with up-to-date information about fossils in an area where fossils are big.