#michael flaherty

Why does time seem to fly by at one point and trickle by at another?

Today on The Academic Minute, Michael Flaherty, professor of sociology at Eckerd College, discusses time and how we measure it.

Burnished Evening

Michael Flaherty

Not often do I experience light quite like this. I was passing through southwestern Colorado on my way to the mountains, in search of the last of autumn's colors. Though a bit of a rush, I decided to take the short detour to Great Sand Dunes National Park and spend the night. The best thing about a dune field? You can just take off walking, no trail required, and wander at will. Though I had made the exhausting climb up these dunes (largest in the U.S.), and was planning on catching sunset up there, the temptation to run down while it was still light was too strong. Once below, I walked off into an area that is covered in low dunes, basically foothills to the big boys. No footprints told me it was my favorite kind of place to photograph, a random area nobody thinks to explore for shots. I paused on top of one of these dunes and shot. It was only after the sunset that the light took on this character, strongly influenced by the golden-tan color of the sand. The moon was also out, adding extra light to the scene, and as a bonus lighting my way on the return hike.

A Precarious Moment in Ceramics

Michael Flaherty

This is a parody of Richard Notkin's All Nations Have Their Moment of Foolishness, a 2006 portrait of George W. Bush, in which I have replaced Bush with an image of Notkin himself. Notkin writes that his work is a "visual plea for sanity" and I consider mine to be nothing less. Primarily, my piece is a critique of an entire sub-genre of ceramic art, arguably epitomized by Notkin's work, wherein the focal point for the political content is imagery. I contend that political imagery does not necessarily equate to political action and that therefore such representational work is passive and ineffectual within the political sphere.