Reading
The thing about reading is that it always makes me want to share. Thanks to the Post (Washington, not New York): peep jousting.

Also in the Post, but apparently not available online, was a 3/28 commentary piece written by Patricia Dalton, a psychologist, on the manifestations of "you must get into (an outstanding) college"-stress on high schoolers. The family fights more; the kid's stomach hurts:"In offices like mine, therapists are trying to release pressure before the lid bursts right off." She writes about parents' beliefs that the "right college" will insure their child's professional and personal success; she notes increasing selectivity at top schools. And, Dalton writes, "[t]here are Americans who no longer make a distinction between needs and wants . . . . They have internalized a particularly insidious message -- that unless a person reaches the top of the remuneration hierarchy, life will hardly be worth living." I know, or encountered, some young people on that track: "I want to earn my Girl Scout Gold Award because it will look good on college applications." That college is the only important thing is the unspoken sentiment. But lots of young women in Girl Scouting are grounded, focused on the world and people around them, and making things better. And then there was the time when I was subbing at a high school and I was to take a count of how many students in homeroom wanted to take advantage of some college-prep thing: none. Not everyone needs a college degree, to be sure, but surely one out of this thirty or so would have benefited?

Someone abandoned Wednesday's New York Times at the Pryz, and I have been enjoying a great the special section on Museums. Topics include funding, the meaning of objects, keeping bugs out of natural history specimens, and the thinness of many children's museums (the fasting-growing category). A small item on art given to the UN reminds us of the need for collecting statements and guidelines, and the imperative to take care of what we have been given. I am coming to believe that institutions are duty bound to give up, to sell, not to accept that which they cannot care for properly.

I recommend Adam Gopnik in the March 22 New Yorker on Times Square: "Those who pointed at the old Times Square as an instance of everything that capitalism can do wrong now point to the new Times Square as an instance of everything that capitalism can do worse." Yeah, I can see that. There would not have been trashy entertainments had people not paid for them. Not could there now be a Gap and a Starbucks on every third Manhattan street corner if they weren't bringing in cash. Ater all, none of those businesses are charities.

Finally, school reading (and the Times)brings up how cultural institutions use websites. Are they doing it because everyone else is, because it makes them seem cutting edge? Are they real exhibtions, scholarly articles, and full digital collections (for example The Valley of the Shadow, or just selections from the colelction? Does the web allow institutions to bring real content to people who cannot get to the museum or library? Does it matter if you never see The Original? The paper of record seemed to like MoMA and the Whintey among others. My April 2 link is full of stuff, high and low, good and bad, instructional and not. I like the create-your-own-gallery at the Met.

West Broad Street
I drove home from downtown on Broad the other day. Yup, that's a burned-out shell. The north-most lane is still blocked, either for fear of its stability or that of the buildings that once housed antique and auction businesses in that block. I'd say that the trees on both sides of the street are goners. VCU's newish bookstore and parking garage, on the south side, seems to have lost windows. Lucky the wind didn't blow that way -- that seems like lots of fuel. Equally, a lot more people could have been displaced by the fire than were: many more people live on both sides of the street than used to. I had forgotten how much VCU has changed the face of West Broad.