Titmouse Action

Irresistible Birdness--Monday, 6/22/15

Classic grey and black blazer and trousers were easy to send back, but the top was a bit trickier.  Here it was interpreted as a floral print blouse.

From savvy-southern.blogspot.com

And here it was an orange blouse.

From 260daysnorepeats.blogspot.com

They each got it partly right. 

*Peach titmouse blouse (Kohls), $16.00/wear+
Light grey blazer (JNY), $4.41/wear
Black pants (thrifted, Lane Bryant), $1.67/wear+
Black pointy-toed flats (Nordstrom), $3.33/wear

You can see how it was impossible for me not to buy this blouse, yeah?  I mean it's got titmice on it!  I love titmice and I miss them because they do not live this far north.

It's nice to put together outfits from new items (like my snazzy bird blouse) and old standbys like these plain black pants.

Here is a new/old combination from my office.  The print on the left is Feldhause (Field Hare, often erroneously translated into English as Young Hare) by Albrecht Durer, completed in 1502.  The print on the right is a contemporary photograph of a rabbit with glasses by the Rachel Hale brand of "lovable animals," completed about 500 years later. Bunnies: their beauty is timeless.

In other news...Robert sent me this fascinating article about controversy surrounding a book written by a young sociologist who spent 6 years (while a grad student) embedded with a group of lower-class, criminally-involved black men in Chicago.  The article discusses what the criticism of the book and responses to that criticism reveal about ethnography as a field of research.  A central problem is the fact that to protect the privacy/anonymity of their subjects, the researchers do a significant amount of fact-scrambling when they write up their results.  As the article's author notes, "producing research that is detached from reality to the point of being unverifiable is a central tenet of their discipline...As a result, some of the most vital and nationally relevant findings that come out of their field...are vulnerable to questions about how much truth—and what kind of truth—they actually contain."

Also, yesterday Robert and I played a game of Boggle with a combined score of 169!  The presence of the "-ed," "-er," and "-ing" endings along with at least 2 S's made it crazy productive.  I think my best word was "stringers."   I thought to take a photo of the board right after Robert started shaking it up for the next game.  Oh well.