Rethinking Lowrider Artistic Representations: An Aesthetic Response to Social Exclusion

This article examines the narrative and visual construct of the lowrider vehicle as part of the barrio aesthetic. The central argument is that the display of lowrider art can be better understood as an artistic community mechanism of resistance used to contest cultural exclusion from white art spaces. The principles of Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory provide exceptional insights into the analyses of aesthetic lowrider displays from the margins. We use this approach to theoretically frame lowriders’ artistic representations as a Chicana/o identity effort to build contemporary cultural spaces for themselves. This study employs a qualitative triangulation method that includes participant observations, photo documentation, and six semi-structured interviews. Between December 2006 and September 2007, data were collected from the cities of Lansing and South Haven as well as from two lowrider car shows in the state of Michigan. This study found that lowrider art works as a source of stability and structure for Chicana/o young adults who live on the margins of society. For young adults isolated from mainstream cultural spaces by the essentialist interpretations of art, the lowrider aesthetic represents an identity–resiliency component introduced through family and friends—consciously or unconsciously—to resist cultural oppression.

Introduction

This book’s seed was planted in 2006 in South Haven, Michigan, at the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum, at one of its first weekly series of programs, which we called Brown Bag Botany. These were free summer lunch presentations, given on warm, halcyon days behind the white clapboard homestead of Bailey’s parents, just about a mile from Lake Michigan. They took place underneath a grand, mature black walnut tree planted when the surrounding land was still the old Bailey farm. Never lacking for content, Bailey’s instructional books in the museum library were an easy means to create easy programs. This was my introduction, as the museum’s first director, to his writings, which, despite being removed nearly a century from our own time, were readable, engaging, and, frankly, a hit. His voice spoke. Local folks, sitting around picnic tables under the old tree, would nod along to passages, laugh at moments of Bailey’s sparkling wit, and sometimes be moved to applause. Museum newsletters featuring his work would lead to museum blog posts, which in turn would lead to small in-house reprints of out-of-print material. So began a natural process to bring together for the first time an anthology of Liberty Hyde Bailey’s most inspirational garden writings, which evolved into a labor of love to track down as many such pieces in Bailey’s massive oeuvre as possible....

Homogenization of Daily Temperature Data

This paper develops a method for homogenizing daily temperature series. While daily temperatures are statistically more complex than annual or monthly temperatures, techniques and computational methods have been accumulating that can now model and analyze all salient statistical characteristics of daily temperature series. The goal here is to combine these techniques in an efficient manner for multiple changepoint identification in daily series; computational speed is critical as a century of daily data has over 36 500 data points. The method developed here takes into account 1) metadata, 2) reference series, 3) seasonal cycles, and 4) autocorrelation. Autocorrelation is especially important: ignoring it can degrade changepoint techniques, and sample autocorrelations of day-to-day temperature anomalies are often as large as 0.7. While daily homogenization is not conducted as commonly as monthly or annual homogenization, daily analyses provide greater detection precision as they are roughly 30 times as long as monthly records. For example, it is relatively easy to detect two changepoints less than two years apart with daily data, but virtually impossible to flag these in corresponding annually averaged data. The developed methods are shown to work in simulation studies and applied in the analysis of 46 years of daily temperatures from South Haven, Michigan.

Precast Concrete Slabs as Full-Depth Repairs: Michigan Experience

Continued efforts are being made to expedite the construction of durable concrete repairs. In the recent past considerable attention has been given to the use of precast concrete as an alternative to conventional full-depth repair. The use of precast portland cement concrete panels eliminates the time required for curing and offers numerous other benefits, such as an excellent quality of concrete (strength and durability), minimal variability in slab thickness, and minimal negative impacts from built-in curl. In October 2001 and summer 2002, Michigan State University, in cooperation with the Michigan Department of Transportation, installed 21 precast full-depth patches along I-94 BL in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and I-196 in South Haven, Michigan. The construction and performance monitoring protocols for the precast panels placed along I-94 BL are documented. The results from this pilot study will facilitate effective technology transfer to other state agencies contemplating the use of this technology.