World of Ease

Archive for April, 2010

New York City lives up to its name with being the largest city in the United States; boasting its enormous array of entertainment, shopping, dining and an assortment of cultural opportunities for visitors and New Yorkers alike. Skyscrapers juxtaposing with brownstones, greenspaces surrounded by miles of asphalt and concrete, through-and-through natives walking among just arrived immigrants, high rise luxurious hotels towering over small hotels, and the financially wealthy enjoying innovative street art, you’d be hard pressed not to find something to interest your appetite.

The ever growing number of hotels , nightclubs, and restaurants that bring in millions and millions of tourists per year is a great example of just how the city’s cleaned up its image. New Yorkers can be proud of their safety statistics, clean streets and lower crime reports as new construction springs up every where.

The Big Apple, and it’s five boroughs are microcosms of ethnicity, commerce and distinctive personalities that should be explored, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed when walking through any or all of them, especially Manhattan, so it’s better to pick one thing to focus on such as architecture, people, history or theater and let the exploring begin.

If looking for history, look no further than lower Manhattan, where the old Trinity Church stands in the middle of the modern Financial District, plus the span of the Brooklyn Bridge is seen as a tribute to the engineering feats of the Industrial Age. In the borough of TriBeCa, you’ll find hipsters gathering and in the Upper West Side, you’ll see families nesting. Greenwich Village, despite what they say, is still the cradle of the Bohemian beat crowd. The Upper East Side is the ‘up’ in the upper crust. But, no matter where you are in New York City, you’ll find ethnic enclaves that continue to be the ingredient that livens up best melting pot.

New York is a city of contradictions, which is the glue that holds this city together, and keeps ensures that it will always be the best city in the entire world.

Miami has one of the best Universities in Florida: the University of Miami (UM). It is considered a private research University that has well over 15,000 students from around the world. UM is a diverse and vibrant academic community that focuses on teaching and learning, discovering new knowledge and servicing all of South Florida and more.

UM was established in 1925 during the area’s famous real estate boom, and has become a major research university, involved in more than $326 million in research and sponsored program expenditures per year. Miller School of Medicine houses the majority of the work, conducting several dozens of investigative studies in other areas, including engineering, marine science, psychology and education. President Donna E. Shalala leads the University, which is comprised of 12 schools and colleges serving undergraduate and graduate students in over l1880 majors and programs.

If you are considering UM, stay at one of the local hotels Miami provides, and come visit the campus and make arrangements to talk to the hundreds of councillors on staff. For undergraduates, life is active and encompassing. If you choose to live on campus, classroom activities and friendships flow together in social spaces. There are over 100 programs scheduled during the academic year in each residential college, so students can choose from a wide range of academic and cultural sessions virtually located in their own backyard.

Student life at UM reaches outside the residential halls with more than 200 student organizations and a very active Greek community (Sororities and Fraternities), you’ll find that there’s plenty of opportunities to make friends and pursue your passions all over UMs campus. Both graduate and undergraduate students share facilities and opportunities that include a world class fitness center, arts and culture events, live concerts, a campus cinema, and most important – the nearby South Beach and Coconut Grove.

In 2009, UM was recognized among the top-tier of national universities, ranking number 50 in the listings of ‘America’s Best Colleges’; citing several of UMs programs in ‘America’s Best Graduate Schools’.

Making a trek through London’s ever-evolving art scene, it’s sometimes difficult to shake off the influence of Damien Hirst. There are some who revere him, and others who despise him, but there are few who can doubt that this artist has made a mark on the physical as well as the mental spaces that contemporary art occupies. Visiting London is always a heady experience anyway, where leaving the comfortable hotels always put one face to face with some remarkable works of human achievement. There are also the sounds and the smells of the city to contend with, and they all serve as reminders that this historical moment has as much potential as the last one.

The art world may sometimes be perceived as living high above the rest, where works are created out of sheer inspiration, fed by the generosity of the muses, and lifted somewhere out of time into permanence. Then again, every generation produces a new core group of artists who, like Damien Hirst come to undermine the notions of art and artists, suggesting that the link with the eternal is as tenuous here as it is anywhere else. There is something real and tangible in the life of a human being, and the artists who can tap into their own mortality seem better equipped to address the real questions that art always poses.

Hirst, one of this generations bad boys , might be the original bad boy, an old incarnation from decades gone by re-encased in new skin. The themes are the same eternal ones, constantly questioning the temporality of existence. His fame, or infamy, these days doesn’t stem so much from his ability to shock, with animals soaking in formaldehyde, but from the outrageously expensive prices on his art objects. Diamond-encrusted skulls that sell for millions of dollars do bring up the question about art as commodity, and those are certainly strategic. But there are still the same questions that come from any other work, where we wonder what it is we’re looking for in visual pleasure, and what we might be trying to purchase. Through all of this, there lurks the specter of Joe Strummer, whose punk attitude and premature death are themselves worthy of evoking these same questions.