The John Lennon Peace Wall | Prague 2010

The John Lennon Peace Wall | Prague 2010
John Lennon Peace Wall | Prague 2010 | Photo by Deborah S. Greenhut

About Me

United States
Deborah S. Greenhut, PhD, is a playwright, arts documentarian, and educator who began teaching in a one-room school house in rural New England during 1970. These days you can find me collaborating with urban educators and students, seeking new ways to make education artful. I have consulted on management skills and communication arts in 44 of the United States and 5 provinces in Canada. I believe that people learn more effectively through drama-assisted instruction, and I exploit the Internet to deliver it. The views expressed here are entirely mine and not those of any other institution or organization.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Water Cycle—Drowning in our own confusions

For a few days this week, you might have heard our newsreaders offering information about signs of radiation leaked from the Japanese reactor showing up in Massachusetts rainwater. On Monday, CNN called in MIT Professor Jim Walsh to reassure the viewers. No need to “freak out,” he said, and giving his ultimate imprimatur, he added later, “If I had a glass right now, I’d drink the water.”   Okay, I thought. But thinking back over Carol Costello’s interview, I realized that something she had said earlier concerned me even more. In trying to contemplate what it might mean if radiation could travel to the U.S., Ms. Costello revealed an interesting, and, I think, common misconception about the water cycle and the earth: “I wouldn’t think it could travel that far.” Having been so stumped, Ms. Costello lost her objectivity later in the broadcast and asked the meteorologist: “Didn't your parents used to tell you God was bowling and that was the reason for the thunder?” I worry about us if we are losing track of what we do know about the universe. We can talk about “theories” another day.

Costello’s confusion about the water cycle probably serves as a good surrogate for our general student population and helps us to understand our mediocre results in science. I thought about a few things we should and probably do know to help ourselves make sense of the news about radiation: The earth orbits, and the earth turns. Our planet takes about a year to orbit the sun; meanwhile, the earth spins once a day. These facts are important because, among other things, they help us to understand that the water cycle is also affected by the movement of water around the earth while it’s moving. Yes, Japan seems very far away, but with all this movement of the planet, it’s entirely possible that some molecules of water or units of radiation could reach New England a day after their emission in Fukushima.

Now here’s the beginning of a problem. Most drawings and even many animations of the water cycle do not show the earth’s movement.  Here is one for kids from the EPA (nice depiction of the cycle; no earth movement); here’s another from the EPA with jazzier Flash—it does show clouds moving and states that the earth is moving, but it doesn’t show it, and the background doesn’t move.  The Euro Science Center its own version that might help us to remember that the earth moves, but it does not illustrate the motion. The so-called “Cool Water Cycle Song” gets a little closer, and Bill Nye, Science Guy offers one of the more clear illustrations. But still, you could miss it in all of these if you focus only on the names of the parts of the cycle.  There is a research question lurking here for someone regarding the efficacy of teaching tools. The real work on best practices is yet to be done. Our perception of how things work that could be assisted by more carefully developed art. What is beautiful or attractive is not always thorough, and our thinking is often at risk due to tunnel vision.    

When I was in school our science teachers made a point of reminding us that the water cycle occurred on a moving planet. We need to ask critical questions about how much to tell whenever we teach. Instructional minutes are precious, and students are not all the same person. Ms. Costello, and perhaps many current students, might be forgiven for being confused about how substances migrate. Still, we might hope for more from our journalists. Our system focuses on the water cycle by itself. I’m not sure that the cycle is always integrated with other knowledge about the earth. How many teachers look more comprehensively at the movement of water by means of The Water Cycle Game, a teacher resource,  which you can find archived (and no longer supported) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)?  

Care to explore more? Here are some links from Cornell University’s astronomy department about how fast the earth spins:
what makes it spin:
and how long it takes to orbit the sun:

It is not easy to educate thoroughly. There is always some art involved.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

“From the Fire”: The 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Fire










1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. A heartbreakingly preventable tragedy in New York.

2011: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Centennial. The Judson Street Church, Washington Square, New York City. Two blocks away.

Tonight I had the pleasure of spending an hour in the fierce embrace of socially passionate artists. The Eugene Lang College of The New School Production  of the commemorative oratorio, “From the Fire,” created by Composer Elizabeth Swados, Director and Writer, Cecilia Rubino, Poet and Labor Organizer, Paula Finn, and Bonnie Roche-Bronfman, Architect and Set Designer, was delivered with enormous moxie and loving kindness by Rubino’s students  in the Theater Program. The company featured 32 actors, yet this epic performance generously conveyed the hopes, dreams, and losses of the 146 people who perished one hundred years ago due to safety violations committed by the Triangle Factory owners.

The dignified performance evoked a range of feelings—anger, humor, and sadness among them, but it avoided the maudlin, and as a result celebrated the lives of these immigrant workers, who placed their faith in becoming Americans. Swados’ music offered a haunting range of emotions, and the powerful combination of sound and song guided the audience on a journey through the claustrophobic hum of the sewing machines, to the successful strike of 20,000 women just one month before the fire, to the personal lives of the people who perished, to the fire itself and the workers’ struggle to escape.

Choreographer Eric Jackson Bradley, an adjunct Professor of Theater at Eugene Lang, deserves high praise for developing cinematic bodies-in-motion sequences to propel the drama of the piece. Dramatic lighting and period costumes contributed to the authenticity of the historical moment. The bi-level set by Roche-Bronfman took maximum advantage of the meeting room space to project photographs on the large rear wall and to continually shift the coffin-like parsons-style tables that, carried by the performers, metamorphosed from sewing tables to factory walls, to the elevator as appropriate. Chairs were significant in their absence from Triangle. Clearly, this production effort was served well by numerous artists and professionals, all paying it forward by structuring these one-of-a-kind experiences for the students.

Earlier this week, I linked to The New Yorker’s piece on this play, which closed with Rubino’s poignant observation—“L’dor v’dor,”  a  Hebrew phrase meaning, “from generation to generation.” By the end of the hour, as the students approached the oratorio’s commanding  conclusion, which names and  identifies the victims one last time, the creators have fused present, past, and future, compelling us to take a multidimensional view of history, With their voices crescendoing toward the great high ceiling of the Judson Church, they delivered the recurring punch line—“They will be remembered one hundred years from now” in such a way that the hundred were doubled and tripled, and so made a promise to the future.

A labor organizer I spoke with after the performance mentioned that, usually there are a respectable number of people attending the standard  memorial, but this year, there were hundreds. Today’s performance at the Judson Street Church was sold out. The tragedy has touched a nerve. Maybe in this second century we can get it right. Let’s hope the Eugene Lang students can raise enough money to travel to Edinburgh to spread the message during the summer. It’s a shonda that the artists need to be thinking about a Global triangle, but “From the Fire” makes a dignified contribution to the literature of memorial and its power to heal. You can find out more about global safety conditions for workers at www.sweatfree.org/bcws




Saturday, March 26, 2011

Priming: The User Experience vs. The Educated Citizen


To prime means to prepare or to make ready, as in painting, to apply a prep coat. Priming also has a special application in psychology: influencing a person’s next perceptions by saying or doing something (stimulus) that shapes a context for meaning. If I have mixed results on my report card, for example, I may lead with the B+ in Biology before I mention the D in math. So, too, consumers of information are primed to hear good news, bad news, and sales pitches.

Advertising helps us understand that we are hungry, or thirsty, or out of style by creating a sense of need. Primers know that people use mental information that is most immediately (or recently) available to make decisions. Anne-Katrin Arnold has an interesting blog post on the subject of priming----and her blog itself offers another example of priming if you take into account how the attractive  photographs and charts bring a sense of control and calm to the turbulent subjects she is discussing; for example, “Climate Change News.”

Why does this matter to an educated person? Organizations invest heavily in priming for persuasion’s sake. Most of our political candidates strive to control the context of our voting behavior. To develop an artful understanding of media and presentations of issues, we need to be able to observe and interpret complicated juxtapositions of information. But our goal as educated citizens should be to exceed interpretation and to be able to act in the interest of our society.

 John F. Kennedy described it so precisely in his address to Vanderbilt University. As I reread his words at American Rhetoric, the online speechbank, I felt a bit ashamed by the condition of our educational system and the merely expedient purposes it so often serves now.  First, disdaining mere economic advantage, Kennedy paints a clear picture of the responsibilities and value of an educated citizen:

“Of the many special obligations incumbent upon an educated citizen, I would cite three as outstanding: Your obligation to the pursuit of learning; your obligation to serve the public; your obligation to uphold the law. If the pursuit of learning is not defended by the educated citizen, it will not be defended at all.”

Kennedy’s elegant defense of the profession is crushingly relevant in our own time:
"
For there will always be those who scoff at intellectuals, who cry out against research, who seek to limit our educational system. Modern cynics and skeptics … see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing."

Last, he clarifies the profound social stakes of allowing citizens to languish in ignorance:

"But the educated citizen knows how much more there is to know. He knows that knowledge is power -- more so today than ever before. He knows that only an educated and informed people will be a free people; that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all; and that if we can, as Jefferson put it, ‘enlighten the people generally,’ tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

How far have we drifted  from that perception of the value of a teacher and a student? If we pit the taxpayer against the teacher, we are priming people to resent fellow citizens who also pay taxes. How does that help us to focus on the real problem? We agree to scapegoat easy targets because of semantic priming If we stopped to think about the arguments, we would realize how foolishly constructed they are.


  Maybe it’s time for the user mentality to take a break. As the economic disparities deepen in our society, we are going to need some highly educated people to lead us back to a more humane purpose, to use the right to vote to vote for the right things. Our future prosperity depends on it.



Friday, March 25, 2011

Question 3: Can you prosper if you don’t know the meaning of the word?

A day or two following President Barack Obama’s inaugural address in 2009, I was observing a classroom where his message was being reviewed. The students took turns reading aloud, and they were highly engaged and enthusiastic about the speech. Three times, they stumbled over the word “prosperity,” and, after  the third instance of the word in that speech, the teacher asked if “prosperity” would be desirable. The students said, “Yes!” When the teacher asked why, the students said that If President Obama said it, it must be good! Did they know what prosperity was? No one could define it. Did they still want it? Decidedly, yes.

Now, I imagine those same children could explain “rich,” or “healthy,” or what makes them “happy,” but it is interesting that there was a vocabulary gap, which the best context clues could not remedy. A dictionary was produced, and the meaning was recovered. I can’t stop thinking about what I observed.


Do students need to know the word “prosper” or any form of it? What image do the students have of the well-being of our nation?

When the founding fathers transmitted the Constitution to George Washington, they linked the prosperity of our nation to the States’ ability to form a union.  That makes it important.  Here is a link to the Transmittal Letter. The founding fathers’ message about  a prosperous nation has been reiterated, in fact, by most Presidents in their State of the Union addresses or other first messages to Congress. It seems to be pretty important—even beyond the bling and the bank account. Even beyond fixing our financial institutions.
The archive of Presidential messages at The American Presidency Project (University of California, Santa Barbara), allows us to discover that, nearly all Presidents before Woodrow Wilson in his second term made specific and frequent reference to prosperity in each of their first messages to the American people.  President Abraham Lincoln mentioned it in all of his years. The early exceptions, included James Garfield and  William Henry Harrison, who did not give messages, and Thomas Jefferson, who probably would have found it incongruous, given his confrontation with a massive medical contagion, an outbreak of piracy, and border disputes with Spain over the Louisiana territory. On the bright side, for Jefferson, American captives had recently been released and rescued from Tripoli. That native Americans were surrendering their prosperous lands for money is probably a subject for another day. In his first term, Jefferson had advocated citizenship for immigrants so as not to deny them access to the prosperity and asylum enjoyed by the first arrivals on American shores. In the modern time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt carried it forward during 3 out of 4, changing his focus only in 1941; Lyndon Baines Johnson eschewed it in 1964, understandable given the tragic circumstances of his ascent; and Richard M. Nixon skipped it in 1974 while Jimmy Carter neglected it in his only term. By contrast, Harry S. Truman held the quantity record, referencing prosperity 10 and 12 times in 1946 and 1949, respectively.  

How can we help our students form a connection to this history so that they can make good decisions about leadership and law? Can the arts help?

If we search for children’s drawings of prosperity, very little rises to the top in the way of children’s drawings. By contrast, children’s drawings of war, trauma, homelessness, and peace abound on the Internet. Since the late nineteenth century, children’s drawing has been used, with somewhat mixed results, to study their psychology and pathology. See Knowledge in the Making.

 
Perhaps drawing can also assist in creating a sense of well-being. Do you have an abundance mentality, or do you lean toward fear of scarcity? What will our students see when they look at the world? Can their drawings convey meaning that their limited vocabularies cannot?

At least one performing artist, Leonard Nimoy, thought seriously about the meaning of prosperity in creating his Vulcan character. ”Live long and prosper,” said Mr. Spock.  True fans will tell you that the appropriate reply is “Peace and long life.”  Spring is a good season for a renewal of peace and prosperity. Your well-being may depend upon it.


Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Coat Hanger Era Returns: A sad chapter in the War Against Women

This is a difficult subject. Pity the embattled religionists. In attempting to apply their credos to American civil life, they stumble against powerful forces. If they make heaven too attractive, people may want to control their deaths to try to get in sooner. If they try to prevent people from choosing a death, their slumbers may be troubled by the misinformation they must give out. In this month of women’s history, I hope we’ll ask ourselves why women aren’t mentioned in the Constitution and why life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not advanced now for the majority of the U.S. population.

What are our values? What is our education teaching us about tolerance for different values? It’s a difficult subject, but responsible people need to face it.

Why am I preoccupied with coat hangers today? If you haven’t heard of the coat hanger era, check here:


I hope you will join me in presenting  Base Metal Coat Hanger Awards to the Governors of these United States for signing legislation that crudely micromanages women’s health and beliefs:

South Dakota


Nebraska

Feel free to read up and nominate your own candidates for this dubious distinction!

Perhaps they should have to listen to the Blue Meanies’ song, “Coat Hanger.” Or they could listen to survivors of these rude processes.



I nearly lost my mother when I was seven because she couldn’t find three doctors, including a psychiatrist to support her decision to stop a hemorrhage from an Rh-negative fetus which wasn’t going to live. Some of these brave, principled men hid on the golf course. That was the rule in those days of the Coat Hanger Era. I admit my bias. Religious adherence did not help my grandmother or my mother to make a decision about a medical puzzle during their pregnancies.

If Udo Lindenberg tells it rightly, even vampires have a problem with Type O Rhesus-Negative.



So, why are we sending women to school if we don’t want them to think?


I hope to hear soon that there is a fund to equip women in the heartland with video-capable cell phones when they enter these artless "counseling" session for full display on Youtube. If we all have to listen, maybe some hearts and minds will change.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Explaining War to Children Part 1


War is hard on nearly everyone. After we move beyond notions of heroism and patriotism, I find it difficult to talk about human values alongside battle statistics when I am teaching children about history. If you talk to high school students today, many will tell you that twentieth century history—whether it’s the American or World platform—is the study of war…war…war. We are better at speaking about the causes than the effects. So, as we watch another un-war unfold, I am making a personal connection to the subject and to families left behind. In 1952, my father was drafted to serve as a M.A.S.H. physician during the Korean Conflict. He had already served as a medic in World War II,  and this was his second compulsory service. Howard Schneider, MD was a patriot, and he was not going to avoid this call to duty.

Howard Schneider, MD World War II

During the Korean Conflict, Howard wasn’t told where he was going until he reached Seattle with “secret orders.” He opened them before he left Alaska, and he quickly called my mother with the news: Korea. The plan had been that my mother and I would follow him to Japan after he was settled. My mother had packed her dishes. We weren’t allowed to go.  Here is a copy of the first postcard my father ever sent me, featuring the Seattle-Tacoma Airport in 1953:









He didn’t return for 18 months, and anxiety and fear ruled all of our days. For me, it was the beginning of a nightmare that I dreamed every night for nearly 30 years. In that dream, people were trying to find me to tell me my father was dying, but they couldn’t get to me in time. My father did everything he could to keep our connection going. We spoke to him only once by telephone during that entire time. My first real memory of my father has me standing on an airbase tarmac and putting my hand through a fence to touch him because I recognized his voice.
My father died when I was 45, just after his 80th birthday. I wasn’t able to get to the hospital in time to be with him in his last moments. Becoming a widower, he had told me, resembled the isolation he felt in Korea. I didn’t want him to be alone. War is cruel in so many ways and for so much longer than the incidents a soldier and a family suffer. Sometimes there aren’t any words, and pictures are a better way to express the unexplainable.



Remembering the Triangle Fire

If you are in the New York area, try to catch a new production, "Remembering the Triangle Fire," collaboratively created by Tony-Nominated Elizabeth Swados, Cecilia Rubino, Paula Finn, and Rachel Roche-Bronfman. Here is a case of art helping us to understand U.S. history--particularly why collective bargaining can be a good thing. Check out John Seabrook's article in The New Yorker to get a taste of this fantastic collaboration. Can't get to New York for the 100th anniversary of this horrific event? Link to the Coalition website for a wonderful archive of information.  Here's a map of where the 146 victims lived.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party: Learning the (Her)Story

The first time I saw Judy Chicago’s work, The Dinner Party, was during its first tour in 1979. It was awesome then, shocking to many, and continues to inspire the unexpected emotions today. You can see it at the Brooklyn Museum now, where it’s permanently installed. As an interesting counterpart, there’s a small but extraordinary showing of the collaboration that produced The Dinner Party and many other powerful feminist works at the Museum of Arts and Design, also in New York. There, you can see Chicago’s beautifully detailed drawings that resulted in Audrey Cowan’s gorgeous tapestries. There is a generous selection from a number of pieces, including The Birth Project and The Holocaust Project, and the exhibit documents the friendship and artistic development that blossomed during their long collaboration, which began with Cowan contributing a runner to the dinner table.

There have been times when I felt so overwhelmed by the experience of seeing The Dinner Party that I could not concentrate on the artistry of the 400 people who produced the artifacts for it. It was a special pleasure last week to savor the details--depiction of thread selections and the side-by-side impressions of Chicago’s cartoons coupled with Cowan’s translations into thread. In this month celebrating women’s history, this is an exciting exhibit for our students to view. There’s nothing anonymous about it, and it’s all sheer beauty, even when it depicts pain.  This small museum is a jewel that illustrates the value of art, design, and craft in our lives. Public programs and open studios enable the visitor to experience art with all five senses.


Thursday, March 17, 2011

“People learn from the people they love.” – David Brooks, multiple sources


In honor of the holiday today, I’m writing only a brief note in remembrance of my Irish ancestors, my grandfather, my mother’s foster parents, and my mother. So here’s to Alice and Edward Kelly, who offered their hearts to my mother, Virginia Clancy, when her newly widowed father, William Clancy, was unable to raise his fourth child due to the 1925 death in childbirth of his beshert, Annette Pearlman.

Although they raised my mother during the Depression, the Kellys made sure that my mother had a puppy and a beautiful baby doll and carriage, and they taught her to read before she went to school. Edward Kelly died when my mother was only 10 years old, and Alice and William agreed it would be best for Virginia to stay on with Alice. My grandfather raised Raymond, Margaret, and Mary with his second wife, Jean Clancy. Mary, like her mother, died young. Following her marriage to my father, my mother included William and often my aunt and uncle in our family gatherings until he died in 1960. Alice died a few weeks before I was born. Virginia Clancy grew up taking on every educational opportunity she could grab, and she became a nurse. Alice had made sure Virginia knew how to read before she went to school, and Virginia paid this forward by teaching me to read early.



William Clancy



Virginia Clancy Kelly

Annette Pearlman


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The Second Question

"Miss, where is India?"

Context is important. It might be everything, as some people have suggested. The second question was asked last year in an urban college classroom. I was showing a video illustrating world population growth since the year 1 AD, and a student saw a reference to India on the screen, which depicted an unlabeled world map. I paused the video so we could establish the location. It occurred to me that the students might not be able to appreciate the video without some knowledge of continents and countries, so I asked about the locations of China (they knew), Japan (most knew), Korea (not many), Vietnam (only one). We didn't do much better on the historical references offered by this excellent video. What to do?

How had they learned geography? Photocopied line maps were labeled by copying the teacher's blackboard drawings. In my experience, labels alone don't help people remember where countries are. How did I learn geography? No student could say what a topographical map was. I remember making those with clay, and I think that if you make the Himalayas with your hands, you are less likely to forget where they are, or which countries sit on either side. That's what art does for you. Scaling the Himalayas with your fingers makes you aware of their awesome height. While you are making those peaks, you might be learning about the Dalai Llama's exile from Tibet or Ghandi's coastal birthplace, and the teacher might also play a beautiful raga. Through art, you are nurturing a hearty contextual soup for your memory so it won't let go of the location of India, and its role in the continent of Asia. At least that's what education was for me.

My students are bright and curious. They operate smart phones with lightning speed, and they know how to use search engines. I need their help when the DVD won’t load. Their education has taught them to act quickly on their impulses, and they are often excellent technicians. These are admirable skills. To get the best value from a liberal arts degree, though, they are going to need to know more. While the No Child Left Behind Act has shined a bright light on some inequities, a decade of enforcement has narrowed the scope of every school’s efforts. Bureaucratic education reforms have reduced us to check box goals: "Student is able to label India on a map." When you walk away from the photocopy and the test of that information, what do you know about the culture of the world or why the monsoon season is important to ecology? You may know how to look up things, but how do you know what to look up? Without an artful experience of learning, this single fact--the location of India--has nothing to connect with in our memories. It's fine to teach people enough about reading and writing and arithmetic so that they can shop functionally, but what about solving problems and understanding the consequences of shopping choices? It's easy to educate a nation of impulse-buyers, but don't we all deserve something more in terms of the quality of our thinking about the world? I'm all for assessing learning, but we need to expand our notion of what students need to know.

On a brighter note, in a high school classroom recently, I watched as a newly arrived student from Latin America ran her hands over the Andes Mountains on a classroom topographical map. The teacher guided the student’s hand slightly east of the peaks, and said, “Bolivia.” The student  smiled and said, “My country?” The teacher nodded, and the student stroked the valley, smiling happily,  sighing, “Home.” It’s all about the context, isn’t it?

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The First Question

I'll begin this blog with two questions:

"Miss, what's a skyscraper?" (1970)

"Miss, where's India?" (2010)

My forty years of teaching are bracketed by these two inquiries, posed in different places at different times, by two different students who earnestly wanted to know something. Both stepped out of their comfort zones to ask--risking peer ridicule in classrooms--and both were serious about finding the truth. That is the good news--four decades of turbulent school reform, yet people still want to learn and know. Students need more than the telling of an answer.

How do we learn about the world around us?

As an English teacher, I have seldom taught Shakespeare, even though I am a scholar of Elizabethan literature. More often than not, my literacy skills serve other fields. The first question about the skyscraper, for example, was asked by a fifth-grader in a rural New England one-room schoolhouse in 1970. I was there to assist in social studies enrichment. The topic was "cities." I blundered into this project by rattling on about stop lights, parking problems, traffic, and skyscrapers, none of which were familiar to my students. The development of the Internet may have begun in the 1960s, but my schoolhouse was a long way from that resource. Connections and metaphor-making were made from materials at hand.

A skyscraper is a tall building.

What do we mean by tall? We had to make do without a field trip to Boston or Quebec, so we began with where we were.  First out of the box was the mountain analogy. We were perched on one, and most of the kids had been “down the hill” a time or two, so the “people-look-like-ants” idea was easily transmitted. Tall building? The forest was a good, but limited, stand-in since many New England towns were ruled by zoning ordinances that limited building height to less than the town’s church spire. People working above the clouds without their feet planted on or close to the ground was a puzzling idea. In addition, the state education department distributed a curriculum “enrichment” box for the unit on cities. Our support tools included a game of checkers and a box of dominoes. We stacked up the checkers, and we lined up the dominoes in city grids on the boards, explained scale models, but, after all, they were plastic, easily toppled mini-buildings, which undercut the idea of “tall.” The students wanted to get closer to the reality. I bought newspapers and architecture books of the mountain, we climbed some trees, made a pyramid, and drew pictures from television. We watched King Kong, to see the Empire State Building.

The students could fashion reasonable explanations of cities and skyscrapers when we were done. Still, it all led to another question: Why do they call it a skyscraper if it doesn’t? Ah. Now there was a Purple Haze moment, with apologies to Jimi Hendrix.

Tomorrow, I’ll write about the second question.