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Open Culture



Open culture is beginning to worry me. Ever since I got across this wonderful site  I have had problems. Not merely in appreciating the openness of the name the web site carries, but also realising how literally the site follows the spirit of openness. If one needs more reasons to appreciate the efforts of the site, then it lies in the second part of he title: culture. The content of the title lays intelligible stress on the word culture. It touches up on the crevices of the lives around, it fishes for those bits, miscellany, afterwords, forethoughts related to art, literature and science, not to mention the balances and main-walks of the usual kind, to make it reflective of what we should term as culture. The convoluted tracks it follows has time and again made me wonder whether this wasn't a site made for me. 

The reason for the worry too begins from the same concern. Some thing which has been 'made for you' can't be neglected. My inbox is getting filled. Unless I find a way to sort the 'needed' from the 'to be deleted', binned category, it will be difficult to manage with the free space gmail has provided me. A couple of sites worry me in this regard. One thing is, since the web site is quite dear to me, I don't want to press the delete key. But another quite amusing fact is that, I don't immediately end up reading it too. It is like the long-chewable dilemma one comes across the moment I get hold of a new magazine. Then first thing one does is to leaf through. Even while you come across a really appetising article, you fight back the urge to immediately go through, since you need to save it for later, like the good old red cherry on the ice cream top of the days of yore. The process of leafing itself is secretly fuelled by the promise of the delayed read. The gap between the find of the catch and moment of real licks, kind of. 

Open culture flirts with the delete button. Flirting which resists and permits. As does a couple of other sites too. Since one  occasionally flirts with the content without fully finishing it off, since it is so rich that one can't fully finish it off. A nibble now and a bite later will be the order of the read. Hence the delete button is off. The outcome of the quandary is the growing inbox. The open culture series which grows in size, opened yet unread. Read, yet not fully. This renders me very inbox friendly, but with a partisan nature. What makes Open Culture tick is interesting. From a teacher tangent, I am always on the look out for the (writer)trivia. Sometimes any kind of trivia is important for the classroom communication. Trivia is has the markings of confidentiality and it can some times emit the fragrance of gossip too. Trivia is often about the behind the scenes. Trivia may make it sound trivial, but not quite so. Students find it interesting when in the middle of your comments on theme of endurance and courage , you state that Hemingway considered himself a better boxer than a writer and follow it up with the kind of bravado associated with the writer. 

The bits I encounter on Open Culture is a treasure house for those who would like to treat their students to lively interaction. This is true not just in the classroom interactions, but in informal small talk too. The kind of bits you can drop about the unspoken yet true lives will make the listen crane her neck. From Hemingway's hamburger recipe to   Fitzgerald's handwritten manuscript of The Great Gatsby, from Zizek - Chomsky spat to Camus friendly letter to Sartre, from Andy Warhol's Jazz album covers to William S Burrough's explanation on what artists do for humanity, from a young rebel confronting Lacan during a lecture to books Hemingway wished he could write again for the first time to Ramone's adaptation of Cage's interpretation of Finnegan's Wake to Faulkner's drawings to Christpher Lee reading Poe's Raven to 8 year old Orwell's picture card and letter to his mother. This is the gold mine of infotainment I fall into when I open culture. More so for a person whose interests are spread wide and thick on the culture spectrum, but no less for anyone who can make use of the necessary stuffings sporadically while lecturing. 

Open Culture. 
It may fatten the inbox. But it is worthy kind of ideological hoarding.  

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