The Parity Pledge and Gender parity in the art world

The Parity Pledge asks for a commitment to take action and working to increase awareness of gender parity issues was the area I pledged to take action.

Thinker frog might be thinking about other things besides the need for gender parity in the art world. I don’t really know. The photographs are actually unedited rather than being badly edited and were taken with natural lighting. I haven’t learned how to use my new photo editing software yet. /adjusting the light would have been easy on the software that I had been used to using./ So these photos are poor representations of the collection of posters – I’ll add a few details about the collection and the artists later. (Second post, Third post in the series)

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Hanging the collection of posters of art masterpieces from around the world was a self challenge. I had bought the collection used and laid them out on the floor one morning. The arrangement was pleasing somehow and I had an empty wall so — I just hung them up even though I wasn’t sure if I could do it by myself or without a scaffolding. I did have a stepladder though and a tape measure but no other person to help with laying out a measured gridwork over the large area. The room has a cathedral ceiling so the wall has extra space.

With poster putty on the corners laminated posters are fairly easy to stick up anywhere  though and then you can adjust them slightly as needed to straighten the horizon line. I did measure the base of the wall and double check where the center of the room was located. Then I worked from the center row, hanging the lower, middle, upper posters; and then hung the bottom row, middle row, and top row. Thumb tacks at the top corners helped secure them in place after all the tiny adjustments were completed to my satisfaction when viewed when standing on the far side of the room. The poster putty by itself tends to unstick after a day or two — leaving you to rehang and readjust. I learned that lesson earlier though but thankfully with fewer posters involved.

I did it even though I wasn’t sure if I could.

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So a revised version of my childhood belief: “One learns by trying, but it helps to read the instruction manual first, and it may be helpful to write one or revise the old one if needed.” Hat tip to Kurt Vonnegut for the part about the instruction manual.

“I’ve often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they’re on, why they don’t fall off it, how much time they’ve probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don’t fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn’t explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I’d tell them how we reproduce, how long we’ve been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It’s also a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.”
Kurt Vonnegut

Gender inequality in the art industry reflects similar employment and wage differences that are seen in other fields. Opportunities may not be as prevalent for female artists or female art museum directors according to recent research and surveys:

“Women run just a quarter of US art museums with budgets over $15 million, according to the study “The Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships,” released in March by the Association of Art Museum Directors and the National Center for Arts Research. Those leaders make just 71 cents for every $1 earned by men, the study says. As for artists represented by galleries in New York and Los Angeles, just 30 percent are women, according to the collective Gallery Tally.” Read more: [https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-world-bias-by-the-numbers-94829]

Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use.

Prenatal Vitamin D deficiency may be associated with the infant’s risk for developing Multiple sclerosis later in life

Vitamin D deficiency at levels equal to or below 12 ng/dL in prenatal women was associated with the baby’s later risk for developing Multiple sclerosis as an adult. No potential reasons for the association were discussed in the article. Read more: [http://neurosciencenews.com/vitamin-d-ms-3809/]

Two to three servings of dairy products fortified with vitamin D provide an adequate amount of vitamin D for the average person. A pregnant person may be recommended to have one additional serving per day for both the vitamin D content and the calcium. Mushrooms and egg yolk are natural sources of vitamin D. Canned salmon and sardines provide vitamin D and are a good source of calcium due to the tenderized bones that remain in the prepared fish. Sesame seeds, almonds and other nuts, beans, seeds, and deep green vegetables are also non-dairy sources of calcium.

/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

“One learns by trying”

Recently I shared a core belief from my childhood, “One learns by trying.” The search engine didn’t find that specific phrase so I think I learned the lesson by observing my father with his invention process. He’s a mechanical engineer who worked in the defense industry as a contract worker for government projects.

The corollary to the phrase is that “Sometimes what you learn is that doing that thing really was not pleasant/effective/fun/beneficial; and that it seems to be something to not ever repeat doing; or that it seems to be an activity worth actively avoiding even accidentally ever doing again; or that it seems to be a really dangerous thing to have tried, which may be worth warning others to avoid ever trying in the first place, as well.”

That first part is easier to write.

I found a few similar quotes while not finding “One learns by trying.” These were all “Popular Quotes” on goodreads.com and while I didn’t find the one that was close enough for the search engine’s algorithms,

these are a few that stood out to me as similar or otherwise helpful (from 17 pages of 100) On re-reading them I realize a sub-corollary could be, “Reading the Instruction Manual first is a good idea.” or something along those lines:

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

 

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Abraham Lincoln

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer
Douglas Adams

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
Herbert Bayard Swope

What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.
Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
Joseph Conrad, Chance

I don’t want to be a man,” said Jace. “I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who can’t confront his own inner demons and takes it out verbally on other people instead.”
“Well,” said Luke, “you’re doing a fantastic job.
Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
A.A. Milne

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
Virginia Woolf

When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun’.”
Groucho Marx

It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

Peace begins with a smile.”
Mother Teresa

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
Dalai Lama XIV

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The truth.” Dumbledore sighed. “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
Joe Klaas, Twelve Steps to Happiness

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero

So many books, so little time.”
Frank Zappa

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Ray Bradbury

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Mark Twain

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Mark Twain

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
Albert Einstein

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
Elbert Hubbard

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
Oscar Wilde

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

Without music, life would be a mistake.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
Bob Marley

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
Bob Marley

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Rob Siltanen

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
Mark Twain

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas A. Edison

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
Roald Dahl

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
Neil Gaiman, Coraline

The Paradoxical Commandments

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council   

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
Gustave Flaubert

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
Jorge Luis Borges

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
Oscar Wilde

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Albert Einstein

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
C.S. Lewis

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

We read to know we’re not alone.”
William Nicholson, Shadowlands

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Ernest Hemingway

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
Dr. Seuss

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Anaïs Nin

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
Terry Pratchett, Diggers

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
Mark Twain

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Mark Twain

Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.”
John Green

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

These turned up when I entered “One learns by trying” directly into the Goodreads.com search engine:

But what if I make a mistake?’ Will asked.

Gilan threw back his head and laughed. ‘A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You’ll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you’ll make mistakes. Just don’t make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don’t try to hide it. Don’t try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us.”
John Flanagan, Erak’s Ransom

One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer… is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you’re going to manage to get down on paper. (And if you ever think otherwise, then you’ve turned into an arrogant self-satisfied prat, and should look for another job or another avocation or another weekend activity.) So you have to learn to live with the fact that you’re never going to write well enough. Of course that’s what keeps you trying — trying as hard as you can — which is a good thing.”
Robin McKinley

 

I’ve often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they’re on, why they don’t fall off it, how much time they’ve probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don’t fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn’t explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I’d tell them how we reproduce, how long we’ve been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It’s also a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.”
Kurt Vonnegut

You get older and you learn there is one sentence just four words long and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this… Ready ”
“Ready.”
“At least I tried.”
Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting

Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use.

Red-tape, busywork, unnecessary regulations – are more polite terms for BS

To give a specific example of a recent policy update that even though it is an important issue, I would categorize as adding too much red-tape. The issue is the increase in amount of time schoolchildren are spending on the mandated testing that has been increased with the No Child Left Behind [3] and Race to the Top [1, 2] initiatives.

Research into how much time children were spending preparing for the mandated tests and taking them found that the total time was the most significant in only one of the school years when 2 or 3 tests were being taken (in 8th grade I think some areas had 2 or 3 tests). In that year students were spending 2.3%* of their time on the tests (*or some statistic near that number but I haven’t re-found that article. A different one: [4])

The policy that has been proposed to address the excessive time spent in mandated testing may end up making more busy work than necessary for administrators and teachers because it sets a limit based on a percentage. It states that no more than 2% of the student’s time will be spent on the mandated testing. This may have been based on the 2.3%* number from the research, but what is only a few sentences for a politician or other administrator to write in a policy, can sometimes ending up being a time intensive tracking job for all of the individual schools to have to add to their busy schedule.

Percentages require totals that are obtained from all the different time spent by the children in all the different types of activities for the whole school year in this case — which is a lot of data for one research study let alone all schools throughout the nation every year into the future.

During my career I had to do a time study for one week every three years in order to see whether the time the agency spent in total on breast feeding education was within federal goals. Doing the time study was laborious but educational regarding just how I did spend my time — some of it was on breast feeding education but I would have hated to have to do some sort of time tracking for the entire year — every year.

A much simpler policy that would also have been based on the school testing research would have simply set the cap at no more than two mandated tests per year or only one test per year for younger children and a maximum of two for students in older grades, and limits could be simply set on a maximum number of hours of preparation time allowed just as tests usually have a time limit for how long students can spend completing the tests — Counting the total number of tests would be much simpler to track and count — one — two — easy, compared to having to monitor how much time students are spending on tests compared to everything else they do in the whole school year.

Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./