mosses from an old manse: 07/01/2003

John Ashbery - The Academy of American Poets: from "For John Clare"

"It is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long,
barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The
whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you
could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an
uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before
you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the
wind--and yet it's keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky.
Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it's their time
too--nothing says they aren't to make something of it. As for Jenny
Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin'
to tell us somethin', but that's just it, she couldn't
even if she wanted to--dumb bird. But the others--and they in some way
must know too--it would never occur to them to want to, even if they
could take the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling
somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east
of the sun and west of the moon. So their comment is: 'No comment.'
Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting
in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail."

The Great Arc

Lowell Sun Online - Local Bobblehead Kerouac

F Word

Rockford Log

Insurance salesman eating a malted with a wooden paddle out of a paper cup with well-spaced diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades. Ask for Oly sign at the demolition derby. Seneca construction workers. Blue plastic alligator checkbook cover. The hard clack of typewriters in the insurance office. Brown miniskirt with three pink bands. A sports shirt under a maroon jacket with interlocking emerald and blue faux-Escher shapes.

Too late for a Lapin Kulta at Koneisto

Jordan:"Jim lugged a foam rubber window display spray painted brown to look like a brownie from Thompson and Prince to Dyckman and Broadway. He gave an extra wiffle kit to a family of three kids on the A."

The Secret of the Black Paintings

Legendary Dog-Eating Catfish Dies

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads

Tam Lin

The Great Menagerie: The Wonderful World of Pop-Up and Movable Books, 1811-1996

Kim Stanley Robinson: Wet Mars

The Lycette Bros. Illustrated Alphabet of Unfortunate Chance

The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata

The new apples on the trees across from the school a teeth-clenching acid green.

la Ronde

Bob le flambeur

Tony Randall as Medusa

Noodles and Max

Lone Wolf and Cub

all from BadAssMovieImages.Com

Dr. Mabuse

Pop bubble wrap online

Puck of Pook's Hill (Project Gutenberg): "Dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife, and Puck began to carve out a piece of turf from the centre of the Ring.
'What's that for - Magic?' said Una, as he pressed up the square of chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese.
'One of my little magics,' he answered, and cut another. 'You see, I can't let you into the Hills because the People of the Hills have gone; but if you care to take seisin from me, I may be able to show you something out of the common here on Human Earth. You certainly deserve it.'
'What's taking seisin?' said Dan, cautiously.
'It's an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. They used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren't lawfully seised of your land - it didn't really belong to you - till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it -'like this.' He held out the turves. "

Forests -- The Shadow of Civilization: "Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed springs blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist orisons edge surrounds
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all--a hope that blossomed shall ever be
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labours rights and left the poor a slave
And memorys pride ere want to wealth did bow
Is both the shadow and the substance now.' "

Saw a lizard at the top of the road run out from the rocky brush and stop on the faded divider. Encouraging it toward the safety of the wooded hill on the other side I was able to see its snake-like downhill controlled tumble, feet up, until it wanted to stop in which case the feet acted as brakes. And fast.

: "In a spot were a bard or a readable book Is as scarce as good food in famine Five muck worms their own honest callings forsook & must needs a new calling be a shamming Theyd heard of famd parnuss its fountains & daughters & ryhme turnd their brains topsy turvy So they thought if they een got a dip in its waters Twoud cure as the sea cures the scurvy"

Midsummer Traditions

Then there is the day itself. As was a custom of old "..to dress out stools with a cushion of flowers, so our Lady's bottom would be met softly. A layer of clay is placed on the stool, & therein is stuck with great regularity an arrangement of all kinds of flowers, so close as to form a beautiful cushion. These are exhibited at the doors of house in the villages, & at the ends of streets & cross-lanes of larger towns where the attendants beg money from passengers, to enable them to have an evening feast & dancing." Also "This custom, the Romans saw, as part of their rites. Feast of the Lares, or Household Gods, who presided as well over the house a streets. This mode of adorining the seat or couch of the Lares was beautiful, & the idea of reposing them on aromatic flowers, & beds of roses, excellent. And so do the folk worship still."

John Clare in "The Midsummer Cushion"

Poems of the Middle Period, Volumes III and IV: "The Midsummer Cushion (named for the local Helpston children's custom of inserting wild flowers into rectangles of turf to make 'cushions' of flowers and grasses) "

Dore's "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch

reasons to be cheerful pt 32

Nicolas Freeling

Outlaws and Highwaymen

noseyflynn's Joyce blog

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | A life corrected: "'Meanwhile, I move them from one room to another, one shelf to another, one pile to another, and may spend three hours looking for a book without finding it, but sometimes having the satisfaction of coming upon six or seven others which serve my purpose just as well.'"

Sleeping on it

The Power Of the Moon

Robert Burns - Robert Burns as 'Dirt and Deity': "'When proud misfortune's ebbing tide recedes,' he wrote in one letter, 'you will bear me witness, that when my bubble of fame was at the highest, I stood, unintoxicated, with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hastening time when the blow of Calumny should dash it to the ground, with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph.' "

Henry David Thoreau - Thoreau on Taxes, Huckleberries, 'Civil Disobedience': "'I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour—for the horse was soon tackled—I was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.'"

Mont St-Michel

Berkeley profs revive Adorno's "Authoritarian Personality" wheeze. Keep working on that cure, folks.

return of Sparks?

"Pea Soup" - Pea Experiment: "A pea is either wrinkled or round - there is no in between"

Happy Birthday George Clinton!!!

my favorite P-funk song:

Funkentelechy

Yo, this is mood control (yo-ho!)
Saying you might as well pay attention (this is mood control)
You can't afford free speech
(mood, mood, mood, someone's funking with the mood!)

Mood control is designed to render funkable
Ideas brought to you by the makers of Mr. Prolong
Better known as Urge Overkill
The pimping of the Pleasure Principle

Oh, but we'll be pecking lightly
Like a woodpecker with a headache
'Cause it's cheaper to funk
Than it is to pay attention
You dig?
Huck-a-buck
A-Lo and behold, someone's funking with the mood control

When you're taking every kind of pill
(deprogram, program)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
(peck me lightly like a woodpecker with a headache)

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Funk! The nonprofit organization)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
Where'd you get your funk from (where'd you get that funk from?)

Heh! Name that feeling!
Would you trade your funk for what's behind the third door?
The big deal!
Heads I win, tails you lose!

How do you spell relief?
Huck-a-buck, sucker!

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Ho! The bigger the headache, the bigger the pill)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill

When you're taking every kind of pill
(You deserve a break today)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
(Have it your way)
Where'd you get that funk from?
(Ooh, who was that? ha ha ha ha ha ha, ohh ohh ohh)

The salvation of inspiration is the motivation
Fasten your safety belt
While I take you face-to-face with the nosiest computer I know
Where'd you get that funk from?
When I count to ten I want you to jump up! Stay there!
Oh, ho! But don't come down til I Flash the Light.
You deserve a break today, have it your way
Funk is not domestically produced. Ho!
There's nothing that the proper attitude won't render...funkable.
Where'd you get your funk from? Funktism! Hey!

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Mood control!)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill

When you're taking every kind of pill
(Urge overkill!)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
(yeah, ho!)
Where'd you get that funk from?
(Program)
Where'd you get that funk from?
(Deprogram)
(And reprogram)

?????

Heads I win, tails you lose (how do you spell relief?)
Would you trade your funk...for this? (you deserve a break today)
Or that? (have it your way)
A funk a day keeps the nose away...ain't it true!
I ain't gonna hold the lettuce, the pickles or the mustard (ha ha!)
Yo!

Step up and dance until I tell you to come down
You deserve a break today, sucker!
I'm gonna flash the light and flop the j, down again????

This is mood de-control
Saying pay more attention
For free speech is high finance
possible funkability???
Ho, Let the funk begin!
Do anybody have change for funk?

Where'd you get your funk from?
Oh yes, this is heavyweight funk
Put up your dukes, haha!
You want to funk around with me, oh!

This is mood de-control, yo-ho!
The home of the P.Funk, the Bomb
Mind your wants 'cause there's someone that wants your mind

When you're taking every kind of pill
(The bigger the headache, the bigger the pill)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
(How do you spell relief?)

When you're taking every kind of pill
(The bigger the headache, the bigger the pill)
Nothing seems to ever cure your ill
(whoa, this is the big pill)
(yeah, ho!)

Where'd you get that funk from?
(there they go again, there they go again)
(You might as well pay attention, free speech is too high)
Where'd you get that funk from?
(Huck-a-buck! Ho!)
(You deserve a break today)
(How do you spell relief?)
Where'd you get that funk from?
(Hey, wind me up!)

Yeah!
Take it to the bridge, hahaha
Let's take it to the stoop???
This is mood control

Funkentelechy (program,deprogram,reprogram)
Funkentelechy (how's your funkentelechy)
Funkentelechy (I got you back into turnaround)
Funkentelechy (right now, so y'all space)
Funkentelechy (heavyweight funk/hey ????!)
Funkentelechy (rump to rump, we)
Funkentelechy (shall get down)
Funkentelechy
Funkentelechy (how's your funk?)
Funkentelechy (how's your funkentelechy?)

How's your funk-en-te-lechy?
How's your funk-entelechy?
(x2)

How's your funk-en-te-lechy? (When you're taking every kind of pill)
How's your funk-entelechy? (Nothing ever seems to cure your ill)
(x2)

Where'd you get your funk from? (ho!)
You're in the presence of your future
You deserve a break today
Have it your way
I ain't gonna hold the lettuce, the pickles or the mustard
A funk a day keep the Nose away
Mind your wants 'cause someone wants your mind
Funk is a non-profit organization
Peck me lightly, like a woodpecker with a headache
'Cause funk is not domestically produced
It is responsive to your mood
You can score it any day
On WEFUNK, we-funk, HO!

Name that feeling, baby
This is mood de-control
Program, reprogram and deprogram
Funkentelechy (how's your funkentelechy?)
Funkentelechy (you might as well pay attention free speech is too high)
Funkentelechy (we are specially programmed for your p's????)
Funkentelechy (unfunky possibilities arrive for the makers of urge overkill)
Funkentelechy (and not your funky funny bone)
Funkentelechy (you deserve a break today so name that feeling)
Funkentelechy (would you trade your funk for what's behind the third door)
Funkentelechy (the big deal, heads I win, tails you lose)
Funkentelechy (there's nothing that funk will not render funkable)
Funkentelechy (this is mood decontrol, urge you to Funk On!)
Funkentelechy (oh ho, how's your funk-en-tel-echy?)
Funkentelechy (ideas brought to you by the makers of urge overkill)

Do not respond
This has been a test
Ha ha ha ha ha!

And once again the Pleasure Principle has been rescued
With the aid of the funk
(this is Mr. Prolong)

How's your funk-en-te-lechy? (I have to leave early today, ha ha ha)
And in doing so, (How's your funk-entelechy?)
Freed the possibilities of funk beyond compare (How's your funk-entelechy?)
Program, deprogram, reprogram (How's your funk-entelechy?)

When you're taking every kind of pill (How do you spell relief)
Nothing ever seems to cure your ill (You deserve a break today)

When you're taking every kind of pill (ha ha ha ha)
Nothing ever seems to cure your ill (have it your way, this is the doctor)

When you're taking every kind of pill
(saying, the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill)
Nothing ever seems to cure your ill (what's happening?)
Ha ha ha
Sucker!

How's your funk?
How's your funk? (what's happening?)
Funkentelechy (x2)
Funkentelechy (I want you to stay up there until I tell you to come down)
Funkentelechy (Check your funk pressure)
Funkentelechy (fly on)
Funkentelechy (ain't nothing but a party, baby)
Funkentelechy

How's your funk-entelechy?
How's your funk-en-te-lech-y?
How's your funk-entelechy? (Heads I win tails you lose!)

happy birthday Terence Stamp of Stepney

experimental garden where Mendel (July 22 1822) hybridised his peas

two below from excellent::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal"

It's all Jazz: an interview with DJ Spooky

interesting "New Bohemia" formulation

ringing defense of Liz Phair's new CD

Danteworlds Image Gallery

tons to read as always at Perfect Sound Forever

time for Rockford!

English corner shop in time warp

Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History

Apollo 11

JULY 2O 1969

London at night from space

parrotfish

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Orkneyjar - The Heritage of the Orkney Islands

"How Fela Landed Me in Jail"

seamless city

Hinterland Who's Who

"Barnacles are not what they seem. They are not shellfish, like cockles or winkles. They are more closely related to shrimps and lobsters, belonging to that great group of animals having jointed legs known as arthropods. Barnacles have given up the vagaries of a wandering life in favour of a sedentary, reliable existence. They are crustaceans tucked into a box made out of several calcareous plates. When currents wash over them, the valves open sufficiently for the appendages of the sequestered animals to filter out tiny edible particles, a fine soup of plankton. The delicacy of their limbs contrasts with the solidity of their stony homes, which cluster together on even the most tempest-lashed cliffs to make a white crust. Barnacles can attach themselves to whales, to boats, or to the shells of other animals in the deep sea; they are found everywhere from Antarctica to the tropics."

Happy Birthday Edgar Degas

Food Museum

"Musical Telegraph"

reminds me of the story of Colette, walking in New York, hearing a cat and saying "At last! Someone who speaks French!"

Tool-making crows

Contemporary Canadian Art Database

Jordan is "aching for piggyback rides"

Summer writing workshops in the parks! Co-sponsored by the Buffalo Olmsted
Parks Conservancy

Developed during the second half of the nineteenth century by the well known
landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the Olmsted
Park System in Buffalo is the oldest coordinated system of public parks and
parkways in the United States. It was a visionary attempt to create islands
of tranquility in the growing bustling city.

just buffalo, in collaboration with the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, is
offering a six-week writing workshop designed to explore outdoors writing in
the Olmsted park system. Classes will meet each Saturday beginning July 19,
in a different Olmsted Park: Front, Delaware, Martin Luther King, Cazenovia,
Riverside and South Park.

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS: WRITING IN BUFFALO'S OLMSTED PARKS

In this six-week writing workshop, we will explore the Olmsted Park System
as well as the "ecopoetic" possibilities and questions of outdoor writing,
visiting a different park each week. Emphasis will be on plein air writing
exercises, short readings from Olmsted's own writings on city landscapes, as
well as from poetry and nonfiction by a range of authors. Discussion themes
will include: nature writing techniques, ecology, urban design and politics,
experimental and investigative writing, border living, Buffalo's various
city cultures, as well as the pleasures and paradoxes of Olmsted's unique
park system.

Writing exercises will accommodate a variety of genre interests: poetry,
essays, nature journals, letters to the editor, prose fiction and other
mixed forms. Beginner as well as experienced writers welcome; each student
will be encouraged to work at his or her own level. Writings produced during
the workshop will be geared toward eventual publication and gathered into a
chapbook. All meetings will be held on Saturdays, at alternating times in
order to accommodate the different moods of the day (please pay close
attention to the schedule).

1) Front Park, Saturday 7/19, 4-7pm. Lake Erie and the Niagara River;
Olmsted's vision for Buffalo; 'descriptive' nature writing; Romantic vistas;
industrial contrasts; arboreal poems in the 'dialectical' landscape.
Readings: Baudelaire, Hopkins, Olmsted, Williams, Smithson.

2) Delaware Park, Saturday 7/26, 10am-1pm (class will end with free visit to
the Albright Knox art gallery) "The Park" : the picturesque; people
watching; Olmsted and the growth of American cities; 19th Century American
visions; landscape art. Readings: Whitman, Hughes, Olmsted, Smithson.

3) Martin Luther King Park, Saturday 8/2, 4-7pm. (class begins with optional
visit to Buffalo Museum of Science; price of museum admission not included
with fee). The politics of open space; science and creative writing;
investigative poetics; East Side views. Recommended viewing: "Claiming Open
Spaces," by Austin Allen (documentary film available at just Buffalo in the
week preceding the meeting). Readings: Ponge, Sanders, Dillard, Olmsted.

4) Cazenovia Park, Saturday 8/9, 10am-1pm. Urban wildlife; literary
environmentalism; South Town views. Readings: Dickinson, Leopold, Carson.

5) Riverside Park, Saturday 8/16, 4-7pm. Rivers and cities; the shoreline;
the indigenous perspective; border living. Readings: Johnson, Kenny, Silko.

6) South Park, Saturday 8/23, 10am-1pm (class includes a visit to the
botanical gardens) Natural history and avant-garde poetics/ experimental
writing. Readings: Ponge, Finlay, Mayer, _ecopoetics_.

(Note: three hours have been scheduled for each class, but this can be
shortened if students so desire. Meeting times can also be adjusted to
accomodate the group's needs.)

Students supply own writing materials; readings available online or as a
photocopy at just Buffalo. Classes will be held rain or shine: please bring
appropriate gear (rain jackets, sweaters, umbrellas, walking shoes). In the
event of a torrential downpour, however, we'll meet at just Buffalo instead
of the designated park. Readings include work from Walt Whitman, Emily
Dickinson, Charles Baudelaire, Gerard Manley Hopkins, E. Pauline Johnson,
Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Aldo Leopold, Francis Ponge,
Robert Smithson, Bernadette Mayer, Ed Sanders, Annie Dillard, Ian Hamilton
Finlay, Rachel Carson, Maurice Kenny, Leslie Marmon Silko, and the journal
_ecopoetics_.

Jonathan Skinner, who hails from New Mexico, edits _ecopoetics_ in Buffalo,
NY where he misidentifies birds along the Niagara River and is currently
completing his dissertation on ecology and poetry for the SUNY English
Department. His chapbooks include Political Cactus Poems (Periplum Editions)
and Little Dictionary of Sounds (RedDLines).

Registration

1 class: $30, $25 for jblc and O.P.C. members
2-5 classes: $25 each, $20 for jblc and O.P.C. members
Six-week workshop: $120, $100 for jblc and O.P.C. members

For more info please email Mike Kelleher, mjk@justbuffalo.org
or Jonathan Skinner, jskinner@buffalo.edu
or call the just buffalo literary center at 832-5400

sure wish I could take it...

Rum babà--must get Savarin mould

Almanac Laurable reminds me of the birthday last Sunday of

John Clare: "While pismires from their castles come
In crowds to seek the litterd crumb"

judging books by the cover

Common-place: nice article on

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Common-place "Early Cities of the Americas" special

Classical Atlas Project

Moon Gardening Growing in Popularity

from Connecticut College's Wetmore Engraving collection...

Virgin in a Crescent Moon with Christ

The Origin of the Moon

Jules Michelet's Cicindelidae (1859)
"On the fore parts, numerous meanders, diversely and softly shaded, are trailed over a dark ground. Abdomen and legs are glazed with such rich hues that no enamel can sustain a comparison to them; the eye can scarcely endure their vivacity"

the novel A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel contains a hair raising account of the storming of the Bastille, among many other things

Bastille Day: "Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé. "

The Seattle Stranger's Canada Supplement

wicked Flash Gotan Project site

San Francisco School of Holography: "Sandbox Holography
Holography typically requires manipulating the laser beam with lenses, mirrors, beamsplitters, pinholes, etc. All of these elements must be positioned in space and held steady to within about 1/100,000 inch for up to several minutes. To accomplish this task, most traditional optical laboratories use expensive micro-positioning mounts to hold the optics. To isolate the optics from room vibrations, they are mounted on a foot thick granite slab floated on compressed nitrogen pistons. These set-ups cost many thousands of dollars.

Jerry Pethick suggested a much simpler but equally effective system using sandboxes floating on automobile innertubes. A 4X6 foot or 4X8 foot slab of concrete was poured and a 2 foot deep box made of cinder blocks was built on top to hold the sand. The slab and box were then floated on innertubes for vibration isolation. Optics were mounted on the ends of 2 inch diameter PVC pipe sunk into the sand. With Pethick's method, adjusting the position of the beam was simply a matter of moving the pipes in the sand. Once released, the pipes held their position. After making all the adjustments, we tapped the pipes with a finger to give them a final 'set', then let the table 'settle' for 30 minutes before exposing a hologram. I saw several very high quality 8X10 holograms made with this system using small 1mW lasers with 5 minute or longer exposure times."

Piracy

Green Lama

smoke ring in the sky

Botanical Art and Illustration by Wendy Brockman

Sound Signature

NOW: Theo Parrish Likes Mashing the Mix, Nov 28 - Dec 4, 2002: "'With the way technology has changed, we've lost the whole idea of the mix tape. The beauty of the mix tape is that you have to listen to the whole thing over and over again.
'There would inevitably be songs on there that you wouldn't know and couldn't find out what they were, which would put more of a struggle into searching for records. I want people to look and search and struggle for their art. If you have everything spoon-fed to you, it gets to a point where you don't expect to have to work to play records.
'We're in the days and times of disposable culture. Everything's ready-made. We don't want to wait. We don't have any patience. You pick up a CD, you go to the track you want to hear and if something else catches your ear it's all right, but otherwise, who cares?'"

01, chaka khan - papillon aka hot butterfly (lp: naughty)
02, mos def - may-december (lp: black on both sides)
03, groove theory - 10 minutes high (lp: groove theory)
04, david axelrod - mucho cupar (lp: heavy axe)
05, fred wesley and the j.b.'s - damn right i am somebody (same-titled lp)
06, shuggie otis - xl-30 (lp: inspiration information)
07, prince - she's always in my hair (b-side of raspberry beret 12")
08, savage progress - heart begins to beat
09, fela kuti - who no know go now (kalakuta, fela box #3)
10, bob marley - concrete jungle
11, kdj ?
12, roy ayers - life is just a moment pt. 1 (lp: mystic voyage)
13, theo parrish - unreleased track
14, eryka badu - bag lady (mix)
15, incognito - fearless
16, tony allen vs. kraked unit - the man with the drum
17, theo parrish - lights down low (sound signature 011)
18, theo parrish ?
19, liaisons dangereuses - avant apres mars (same titled lp)
20, theo parrish - people of the sun
21, james mason - sweet power your embrace (lp: rhythm of life)

twoplayer - sound signature: "
01, those guys feat. ras baraka - an american poem
02, moodymann ?
03, son dexter - sonrise dance (from: son dexter ep)
04, tortured soul - i might do something wrong pt.1 (yoruba mix)
05, theo parrish ?
06, round four feat. tikiman - find a way
07, blakk society - just another lonely day
08, lil’ louis - wargames
09, leron carson - china trax (sound signature 012)
10, ?
11, new sector movements - the sun (dwele's motorcity remix)
12, herbie hancock - chameleon (lp: headhunters)
13, dinosaur l - go bang (francois k mix)
14, tony allen - jealousy
15, tony allen - afro disco beat
16, tony allen vs kraked unit - the man with a drum
17, roy ayers - running away
18, donald byrd - lansanas priestess
19, dexter wansel - life on mars

mixed by theo parrish... "

St Mary Magdalene in East Ham. My dad's boyhood local late 20's early 30's.

A Modern Herbal

from Jamie Reid:

"Let light in, let images in, and by so doing, let man out."
Jerry Pethick

Jerry Pethick, a favorite artist and friend of many artists and writers in
British Columbia died July 5 on Hornby Island at 6 pm from brain tumors
which proved intractable and incurable despite radiation treatments and
other medical measures taken to save his life. Shortly after it became
known that the radiation treatments had been ineffective and probably would
not save his life, Jerry slipped into a coma but then there was a brief
rally and recovery, sponsoring the hope that Jerry and his friends might be
able to continue the project they were working on, but in the end Jerry
never recovered beyond the ability to sometimes get out of bed, eat at the
table and meet briefly with his friends who were with him throughout his
final weeks. He was attended by his wife Margaret, who greeted all of
Jerry's many well-wishers and provided all possible comfort to Jerry and
his friends during Jerry's last days.

Bill Smith, another Hornby Island resident who was Jerry's close friend and
companion in many artistic projects on Hornby remarked that Margaret was
nothing short of angelic in the way she was able to deal with all of the
details of the unfolding events surrounding Jerry's illness.

The loss of Jerry Pethick is an irreperable one to the British Columbia
artistic community because he was a man of relentless energy and creative
power besides the great kindliness and goodness of his personality, the
spiritual energy he dispensed to others as part of his dedicated life's
work. Although he was a great artist, there was nothing of the great man
about him except for his total dedication to his work and the absolute
energy and confidence with which he pursued his artistic aims. To his
friends and the other Hornby Island residents, except for his exceptional
energy and kindness, he was simply another one of their neighbours, ready
to assist them in their projects and with his great skill and knowledge of
the workings of material things so necessary to an artist of his kind.

He and his family were hugely self-sufficient, growing their own food,
making their own wine and beer and liquors which they drank and dispensed
with a supremely simple yet fabulous and open-handed hospitality. The
frugality of their means of life was overmatched by their generosity and
friendship. The outstanding self-sufficiency of the Pethick family was not
so much an ideological or religious quirk as the necessary condition of
Jerry's artistic production. Without these economies, in the absence of
significant official support or patronage, Jerry's artistic life would have
been impossible. The economies were part of the commitment and dedication
Jerry brought to his entire life's work, part of the important independence
that his art required.

The residents of Hornby still remember the arrival of the Pethicks in the
1970s when Jerry, Margaret, and their infant son Yana literally lived in a
cave while Jerry worked on his sculpture and other artistic activities,
struggling to build up the means to survive on the land, to build their
rustic living quarters that were nevertheless perfectly adapted to the
modernist direction of Jerry's artistic work, a series of cabins
constructed out of waste wood connected by rain-slippery wooden walkways.
In the final years of his life, Jerry was occupied in building a studio to
house his sometimes massive work. The studio embodied all of the same
principles that animated Jerry's art -- the use of simple and recognizable
materials from daily life, the recycling of old objects, the setting-up of
a dynamic relation between the organic world of nature and the human world
of mechanical industrial objects. The side walls of the studio were made
from stacked up hay bales, while the back wall was an array of recycled
propane containers filled with water which would act as both insulation and
energy storing devices. In front of this wall of propane containers, a
narrow glass enclosure was intended to act as a greenhouse wherein his
family could grow vegetables and flowers. Standing in that spacious room
with it's high ceilings surrounded by the smell of hay like sweetgrass, I
always felt a sense of huge freedom connected to the human imagination, its
flexibility, its direct connection to the things of the earth and the
industrial products of human beings. This studio and several other
projects were in a state of evolution while Jerry lived and now it seems
they may never be completed in the absence of anyone with the necessary
vision and energy to complete them.

His artist friend and fellow Hornby Island dweller, Gordon Payne, says
without qualification that the work Pethick has already performed is enough
to establish him as "the most important Canadian artist since Emily Carr."

There is no verbal description and no photographic representation that can
provide even the smallest sense of the marvellous and delightful effect of
so much of Jerry Pethick's extremely varied body of work. The advertisement
for a recent showing at the Catriona Jeffries Gallery in Vancouver gives an
unexaggerated summary of the substance and content of his amazing work:

"..employing both anti-technological and technological materials such as
bottles, hand-blown, glass, plastics, light bulbs, mirrors, lenticular and
Fresnel lenses, image projecting devices, photo graphs as well as more
traditional sculptural elements such as wood and metals both made and
found. Pethick's use of recycled materials inspires dual readings between
environmental interests and complex metaphors for visual perception."

Along with all of this, Pethick's typical artistic projects involved a
close investigation of the boundaries between two spheres of knowledge
usually considered separate, natural science and technology on one hand,
and art on the other. This was especially true of his truly radical
interrogation of the parameters of human ocular vision, of optics and of
light. In this regard, Scott Watson has remarked that Pethick is the
legitimate continuator of the work in color theory and perception begun by
the Impressionists at the outset of modern art. Some of his earliest
investigations in this sphere were in the art of holography, and he is on
record as the holder of a U.S. patent on a sand-based holography
technology. Through these investigations, Pethick showed over and over
again in varied ways that vision itself is deeply paradoxical and always
accompanied by enigma and uncertainty. In Pethick the trompe d'oeil was
often transformed into a literal and objective trompe d'ame, a "trick" on
perception based on the objective qualities of light and vision themselves.
It is not really a trick, however, because it is based on the real quality
and activity of visual perception itself.

Viewing a Pethick-made object for the first time, one is never sure what
one is viewing. Almost everything he has ever produced is surrounded with
this aura of visual enigma. Nevertheless, on closer examination, all of the
objects so whimsically yoked together in his constructions resolve
themselves easily into recognizable every-day objects, and objects of
playful contemplation. Often enough in modernist art, these apparent
disjunctures of vision are accompanied by anxiety and doubt, but with
Pethick, the equation is reversed, the ambiguity of vision is something to
be celebrated rather than a source of despair or uncertainty. It is the
sign of the delightful multiplicity of life and the world and our
perception of it.

With Pethick's work, as soon as one has a purchase on the object, one has a
satisfying and reassuring realignment with the materiality of things as
well as the inherent disjunctures of vision, its simultaneously objective
(in front of the eye) and subjective (behind the eye) character, become
part of that familiarity, even if unresolved, all of this accompanied by an
engaging funky humour.

Pethick's interrogation of vision and optics uncovers the uncertainties of
normal vision, the way in which visual phenomena mix objective and
subjective perceptions so that the boundary between the seeing and the seen
is impossible to place. All of these investigations, serious as they are in
scientific and human terms, are surrounded with an atmosphere of a great
and generous, clear-headed and clear-hearted humour and playfulness.

Like the dadaists who influenced him, Pethick's art was made from the same
materials which others had thrown off, the junk and rejectementa of
capitalist industrial society. Passing through his hands the worn out
objects of this world found a new and vibrant life, transformed by the
special power of his imagination and intellect, which in spite of the
humble materials in which he worked, were majestic and free-ranging. Though
his work in its immediate homely, not to say funky, appearance seems at
first glance to have nothing in common with what is called high art, the
second glance always brings out a world rich in surprise and humour, and
also of a suddenly apprehended deep intelligence and beauty, an art which
evolves a profound and valuable synthesis between social and aesthetic
concerns and epistemological and scientific ones.

There will be a memorial for Jerry at the ball park on Hornby Island on the
afternoon of Sunday July 20th.

Some references:

http://www3.telus.net/cat_jef/jer_pet.html

http://www.presentationhousegall.com/PethickJerry.html

http://www.cbc.ca/artspots/html/artists/jpethick

http://www.galleries.bc.ca/kamloops/pethick.asp?ShopperID=

http://www.thismagazine.ca/36_5/col_2.html

http://collections.ic.gc.ca/mercer/177.html

Danziger Cartoons

Warm Wine also loves Neko Case and Buffalo's grain elevators

close-ups

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

John Snow - a historical giant in epidemiology

Laurable's Poetry Weblog kindly notes my move

a link from Oakland's moon-worshipping Stephanie Young

office machines

David Shrigley's "Anti-Depressants"

Edward Lear Parrots

Flash Klaus Nomi

For a Verse, Scorned Is He in the Name of Uniformity