Boing Boing: Email attributed to NOLA rescue worker; economics of disaster

"The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out. "
 

old Penny Postcards from Biloxi, Gulfport etc, in better times, looking vulnerable, too open to the ocean, helpless. My deepest sympathies for everyone affected, especially the displaced.


 

Anodyne's list of favorite books includes a poem I wrote in the seventies!
 

Rue Hazard:--Latta's back!!

"Reading against one's clique--that is, omnivorously, unhesitantly, exceedingly--is the sine qua non of any robust criticism (or its recent simulacrum of "author-divvying") or poetry writing. Part of the job description. To constitute it as a particular "project" (donc, "admirable," donc, "worthy of our attention") smacks, yes, of dilettantism, attending schematically to a superficies. Gourmandizing. "

more on 'The Golden Morning Breaks', including a video

samples of Colleen's wonderful new album the golden morning breaks here
 

James Wolcott

"George Costanza, furious that a pigeon didn't get out of the way of his car (in the stellar 'Merv Griffin set' episode), vented to Jerry that we have 'a deal' with the pigeons, a deal that Jerry elucidated upon.

The deal is, they get out of our way when we're walking or driving, and we overlook the statute defecation.

Simple as that. The pigeon George ran over didn't honor he deal.

The neocons had a deal with Pat Robertson and his followers. As long as Pat and company cleaved to Israel, the neocons would overlook that old Protocol Elders nonsense.

In short, Pat Robertson was their pigeon. They were willing to countenance his occasional poop."

guy who looks after the Tower Ravens--

Gwylum (male), aged 17
Thor (m), 14
Hugine (f), 10
Munin (f), 10
Branwen (f), 3
Bran (m), 2
Gundulf (m), 5 months
Baldrick (m), 5 months--


"'The fact it's an unusual job does give me a little bit of a fillip. There's no one else who can say 'I'm the only Ravenmaster Yeoman Warder in the world'.' "



 

over the Rockies and across the Strait comes the new TOLLING ELF with poems by Edmund Berrigan & cool linocutlets from the fabulous Sophia Warsh & a Tim Atkins Horace supplement--weighing less than a catbird--

10 Best Plumage by Edmund Berrigan

elegiac catbird
mercenary hedgehog hoecakes
as I crawls across my cheek
how's the new infection
a breeze sort of
wash the modal straw evaporate
bereaved touch of class
element pigment
anonymous sty hung
form of icebucket



 

buona sera to my favorite cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli

"'You've got to understand the sunlight, the contrast between light and shade. For Italians, who are familiar with the southern sun and the fog of the north, it's difficult to get things wrong.' "


 

How BC Trimmed 107,000 People from Welfare Rolls:

"The month he died, he was just one of 161 people who went out that way, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Between June 2002 and January 2005, a period of 32 months, 6,065 people on welfare died.

(To put that in perspective, in 2003, the latest for which statistics are available, 443 people reportedly died in traffic accidents in the province.)

For comparison, during that period, 37,404 people left welfare by Campbell's preferred route, because they obtained employment. Put another way, for roughly every six people on welfare who got a job, one died."

Frank Rich--The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan

"The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq."



 

listen to 44 seconds of The Ivory-billed Woodpecker

"It is the largest of all woodpeckers found in the United States and has been nicknamed "The Lord God Bird", from the usual expletive uttered whenever one appeared on the wing."

(via the recently-returned robot wisdom weblog)

work of Lateral Argument poet Kevin Davies irks Local Media (though you're told where to get it):--

"The magazine closes on the ridiculous, about 20 pages of deliberate and worthless nonsense by Kevin Davies, who may well be unaware..."
 

Happy Birthday to me. Daph got me the 1913 first edition of the giant Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Dictionary, edited by Frank Vizetelly, printed on 3000 pages of limp, heavy bible paper. 450,000 headwords, numerous engravings, occasional childish scrawls, numerous pressed plants...

"Alfred E. Smith's ''baloney dollar'' could not swerve Dr. Vizetelly from ''bologna.'' But he was quick to favor President Roosvelt's ''chiseler'', which he said actually had attained dictionary rating in England in 1808. He found ''whoopee'' went back to A.D. 450, discovered grammatical imperfections in Noah Webster and dismissed 1935's ''Oakie-doke'' as a moron's ''Yes.'' 

Cascadia Terminal Bucket Elevator, Vancouver


Portland filmmakers Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick are back in the van and touring the Pacific Northwest with new work.

Contact: Bill Daniel, www.billdaniel.net, billdaniel@hotmail.com, 503 939 6916 mobile
Vanessa Renwick, www.odoka.org, odoka@hotmail.com

“Daniel and Renwick make some of the liveliest work on the microcinema circuit, wherein film, video art, and music collide with edgy, confrontational, unpredictable and often exuberant intensity”--- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Headlining is Daniel’s just-completed 56min documentary on the secret history of hobo and railworker graffiti, called WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? Shooting over a period of 16 years, Daniel rode freights across the west gathering interviews and clues to the identities of many of the most legendary boxcar artists while discovering a vast underground folkloric practice that has existed for over a century.

Also on the bill is WALDO POINT, by Saul Rouda, 1970, a 20 min. stoned and song-filled documentary shot in Sausalito’s hippie houseboat community. An utterly unique and authentic snapshot of ‘60’s freedom set in a floating utopia of hand-made houseboats.

Vanessa Renwick (the Oregon Dept. of Kick Ass) presents two shorts: BRITTON, SOUTH DAKOTA, a series of haunting images of depression-era children, and CASCADIA TERMINAL, a mesmerizing portrait of Vancouver’s towering industrial facility.

TOUR SCHEDULE

Aug 12 Santa Cruz, Guerilla Drive-In, www.thespoon.com/drivein
Aug 18 Arcata, HSU, Goodwin Forum in Nelson Hall East, 9pm $5 707-822-9531
Aug 19 Eugene, Museum of Unfine Art, 8:23 pm, 541-683-7357
Aug 24 Anacortes, Dept. of Safety, 8pm, $4, www.departmentofsafety.com
Aug 25 Victoria BC, 50/50 Arts Collective, 2516 Douglas, 9pm, $5
Aug 26 Vancouver BC, The Butchershop, 195 E 26th Ave, 9pm,$5, www.butchershop.ca
Aug 27 Bellingham, 3B Tavern, 122 N State st, 8:30pm, $5 www.3btavern.com
Aug 28 Port Townsend, The Boiler Room, 8pm, $5
Aug 30 Olympia, tba
Aug 31 Seattle, Central Cinema, (runs thru Sept 4) 6:30,8:15, 10:00 nightly,
1411 21st Ave, central-cinema.com,
Aug 31 special opening night event, live music by Spectratone International (featuring Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson of Black Cat Orchestra) at 9pm, screenings at 7 and 10. (filmmaker in-person only on the 31st)
Sept 3 Astoria, Columbia Theatre, 503-325-2233


INFO FOR BRITTON, SOUTH DAKOTA BY VANESSA RENWICK

SYNOPSIS:
Ivan Besse was the Strand movie theater manager in Britton, S. Dakota during the Depression. He had a 16mm camera and went about town shooting people at their various activities during the day. He would show the footage before features and newsreels as a way to lure the people into the theatre.
Most of the 2 1/2 hours of footage that he shot is of people walking down the street, there are also scenes of a barn being moved, a corn husking contest and kids running out of school.
The footage that really stood out to me was these 8 minutes of portraits of children. They had no idea of what a movie camera was.

CREDITS:
Director: Vanessa Renwick
Music: Johnne Eschleman
Cinematographer: Ivan Besse (shot in 1938)
Footage obtained from The Prelinger Archives / Rick Prelinger
for the DeComposer Film and Music series programmed by Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick in Portland, Oregon

“Not only found footage, but a found film made 60-some years ago directly addressing contemporary structural concerns. I wish I had made this film today. Oh, it was made today.”
James Benning, judge NWFF 2003, awarded Britton, S.Dakota† Best Experimental Film
“The lack of narrative invites dressing these cinematic dolls with futures, now histories. The melancholic drone of the accompanying organ music tends to lead them into sad tragic finery.” NWFF

Gecko Prize, Cinematexas 2004

Gus Van Sant Award Best Experimental Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival 2005




"Portrait #1: Cascadia Terminal'
by Vanessa Renwick
sound by Tara Jane O'Neil
16mm hand processed and tinted to video
6 minutes 2005


A mesmerizing stare at the most efficient grain terminal at the port of Vancouver, B.C.
The terminal is serviced by the Canadian Pacific Railway and can unload up to 300 cars in 24 hours which is equal to approximately 25,800 tons of prairie.

Books Do Furnish a Room

"The story of Anthony Cima is the book lover's nightmare: The 87-year-old stuffed 10,000 books into a one-room San Diego apartment, and when a 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit just off the coast of Oceanside in July 1986, he was buried beneath them and barely survived."
 

farewell Barbara Bel Geddes, Miss Ellie on Dallas, "Midge" in Vertigo, "Maggie the Cat" on Broadway, the wife who does in her husband with a leg of lamb and then feeds it to the cops on Alfred Hitchcock Presents...

 

The Bacon Show

One bacon recipe per day, every day, forever...

(via Metafilter) 

(Popular Characteristics 1800)

(Henry Adams)


"Good country this
for lazy fellows,
(wrote Wilson from

Kentucky); they plant
corn, turn their
pigs into the

woods and in
the autumn feed upon
corn and pork.

They lounge about
the rest of the year."
But sometime between

then and now,
despite flip books,
Jack Spicer bootlegs,

Miltown, Motown, Milton
the race of tavern
loafers, customs-house flaneurs

wall holder-uppers
& Virginia eye gougers
died out, wagons

full of keeners,
enthusiasts, stereoptical
estimaters & paint-chip

matchers darkened
the passes, planting apples
for roughage not cider.

*

"That free-born
Rhode Islanders ought
never to submit

to be priest-ridden,
nor to pay for
the privilege

of travelling
on the highway."
Better indeed stranded

up to our
rusticated Yankee necks
in yellow shit

than travel
to Providence
under such pretenses;

wearing a horse collar,
a T-shirt reading
"Citizen X"--

better a beanie,
a New Year's diaper,
a Brownie uniform,

and the bones
of any shiny Hussar--
uncowed by Miranda v. Arizona

or the Second Amendment
or the by-God
Yosemite Sam mudflaps

hanging from my ears--
attempts to stroll unbidden
into my library,

garage or sugar shack
will end up as struts
in the drug tunnel

that gently winds
between Lasqueti
and Narraganset:--

Canadians Hate Freedom, Too

"And if you want to blue-sky a little bit, if that eventuality was to occur, the government would probably move in with some pretty stiff measures and not meet much public resistance."

(when bees are in hives)

(cont.)


Just but one bee
on the paler
other kind of

sweet-pea, orange
chevron very
circa '83, &

you'd think the boys
at Last Call Towing
would be glad to

see their girlriends
(Wednesday PM
half-cloudy

scented August)
but they won't climb
down or let go

their pneumatic
bolt-tighteners
long enough

and won't discuss
who said what to
who last weekend

on innertubes
that flattered them
but made us look

like our dads, tits
up on the couch
and these maroon

uniforms itch
more and more as
threadbare summer

wears out its buzz
and welcome mat
and baseball hat.

UK's oldest fountain restored

"Minister for tourism Patricia Ferguson MSP said: "I think this was built to show the power and the confidence that James V had, and I think he very much wanted to say to people "I'm here, look at me". I suspect that now that it's been restored, it will actually have the same effect in Linlithgow.""

thanks to Daphne for this one 

Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir

"All of a sudden, he pulled out of his pocket a string of firecrackers and asked, 'Where can we set these off?' "

Observations

on the Bills of Mortality:
on the leaves of Sage:
on small living Flies in the powder of Cantharides:
of insects bred in Dew:
of Virginian Silk-Bottoms:
of the parts, and anatomy, of fishes:
of Barnacles:
of the calcin'd powder of Toads:
of an outlandish Deer-Skin, and hair:
of the parts of Vipers:
of Stones taken out of the Heart of a Man:
of young Vipers, that they do not eat holes
through their old ones Bellies
as is commonly affirm'd.

from "The History of the Royal Society" Thomas Sprat 1667
quoted in "Pandaemonium" by Humphrey Jennings

from Darwin's Origin Of Species chapter Vl:--

"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or in any degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed."  

[ mytinygarden ]

splendid, intensive Flash site of the bugs in someone's yard:--

(via Plep)

 

Lambden Milligan's petition to Sec. Stanton


from EX PARTE MILLIGAN

(re: Lincoln's Civil War suspension of habeus corpus & military tribunals)

"This nation, as experience has proved, cannot always remain at peace, and has no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if this right is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate. If our fathers had failed to provide for just such a contingency, they would have been false to the trust reposed in them. They knew -- the history of the world told them -- the nation they were founding, be its existence short or long, would be involved in war; how often or how long continued, human foresight could not tell; and that unlimited power, wherever lodged at such a time, was especially hazardous to freemen. For this, and other equally weighty reasons, they secured the inheritance they had fought to maintain, by incorporating in a written constitution the safeguards which time had proved were essential to its preservation. Not one of these safeguards can the President, or Congress, or the Judiciary disturb, except the one concerning the writ of habeas corpus."

great-sounding Sergio Leone museum exhibit:--


"So on loan from Eastwood himself is the iconic poncho he wore as the Man With No Name, as well as the wooden gun grips decorated with metal snakes that he used in the films. These were the same grips he'd used as Rowdy Yates in the TV series 'Rawhide': The actor, who dedicated his classic western 'Unforgiven' to Leone and director Don Siegel, had brought them to Hollywood for good luck.

Though the curators couldn't manage to pry the bed Claudia Cardinale used in 'Once Upon a Time in the West' from the gentleman in northern Italy who's currently sleeping in it, they did get the Winchester that Gian Maria Volontes bad guy used to put some holes in that poncho, a rifle that took a while to get into this country. 'We're one of the few organizations,' Frayling says dryly, 'importing firearms into the U.S.'"

 

"Advice from a Caterpillar" from

The Many Faces of Alice,

"the process and product
of a fourth grade class study of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its author,
Lewis Carroll, and its many illustrators"

includes great puppet theatre quicktime movies, hypertext annotations &c. :--

"The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

`Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then...'"

(thanks to the Protection Island crew)

"a blood-spattered Canadarm..."

"Taken on its own merits, the Shuttle gives the impression of a vehicle designed to be launched repeatedly to near-Earth orbit, tended by five to seven passengers with little concern for their personal safety, and requiring extravagant care and preparation before each flight, with an almost fetishistic emphasis on reuse. Clearly this primitive space plane must have been a sacred artifact, used in religious rituals to deliver sacrifice to a sky god.

As tempting as it is to picture a blood-spattered Canadarm flinging goat carcasses into the void, we know that the Shuttle is the fruit of what was supposed to be a rational decision making process. That so much about the vehicle design is bizarre and confused is the direct result of the Shuttle's little-remembered role as a military vehicle during the Cold War. "

from

(When bees are in hives)

from

Bracton: De Legibus Et Consuetudinibus Angliae
(Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England
attributed to Henry of Bratton, c. 1210-1268)


For if they settle
in my tree
they are no more mine--

before I shut them
into a hive--
than are the birds

who make their nest there,
and therefore
if another hives them

he will be their owner.
A swarm that flies
out of my hive

is taken to be mine
so long as it remains
in my sight

and pursuit is not impossible,
otherwise it becomes
the property of the taker.

trippy single-cell silica leak forms:--Ernst Haeckel: Die Radiolarien (1862)


(from MetaFilter where there's more)

some deadly unreachable & far from ripe Vancouver blackberries from Adam Harrison; Nanaimo's are good to go, ran into a couple of folks picking in the lee of our hinge and their pails were 3/4 full, leaning over to check, that great wafting smell...
 

interesting guest writer at Altercation

"Although liberals accomplished great things during the first three quarters of the 20th century, thereafter they stumbled badly. When they encountered resistance to black civil rights among poor and working class whites--some of it racially motivated some of it not--rather than dealing with the resistance politically, liberal elites sought to impose solutions from above by taking advantage of their privileged access to judicial and executive power. Then, rather than telling Americans honestly about the likely costs and consequences of a military intervention in Southeast Asia and trust them to make the correct decisions, they used lies and deception to trick voters into supporting an unwinnable war that was fought mostly by the poor and working classes; and when the war came too close to home, they quickly forgot about the lower class combatants and their sacrifices they had made. Then after liberals' attempt to support guns and butter set off hyperinflation to erode the real value of wages, they callously thought up new ways to spend the windfall of tax revenue rather than adjust tax brackets to relieve the unsustainable burden on the middle class. Finally, when faced with political revolt because of these misguided policies, they retreated into arcane ideologies to wage a rearguard cultural insurgency from the safety of the ivory tower. Is it any wonder that liberals lost the public trust?"

many, many versions of Ghost Riders in the Sky--including Burl Ives, Shadows, Roy Rogers & c. I remember a fine, unrecorded instrumental version played by the Dick Damron Band (my pal Vic Bateman on bass)in the hotels & beer halls of Edmonton, winter of '77...

(via the newly-located gmtPlus9)

Flow, Laura Niagara

"when I was a Freeport,
and you were the Main Drag..."

"I've got a lot of patience, baby
That's a lot of patience to lose..."

"affectionate
machine-tickling aphid" Darwin

globalisation's
over-crayoned blue sky flakes

but the duck's left blank,
like Depot Harbour

getting rubbed off
the grid was no biblical

judgement, dig--
it looked like a nice place!

but Carthage NOW
looks better than this place

fifty years on--
alder-poked, broom-worried,

a ghost town
after the ghost had gone--

a desertedness
out of large-print SF--

writhing and plinking
in the furzy foundation

the dreaded
"Ukelele Konig"

laced its tongue
through a web

of taut nylon but
we couldn't make it out

or if it was even
talking at all--

auctioned off
from under your feet

like the family
Astrakhan, and if

a trestle is the only
thing holding it back

then admit the jungle
the empire of the ants

could we not just
get it over with?

Or must we choke forever
on periphery's piney sap?

Shandy Hall in Yorkshire hosts the premiere of A Cock and Bull Story, Michael Winterbottom's promising adaptation of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy

"After a nap in the garden (I woke to see Winterbottom wandering across the lawn), it was time to wander down to the village hall. In the field outside it, people were milling around, eating canapes, drinking wine and staring at a large, black bull. They were trying to guess its weight. I bought a ticket saying 428kg and a 'christen the cock' ticket saying 'Phutatorius'.

I met John, an accountant from York, a woman called Marion, a big, bluff businessman who was in York for the races and a beautiful woman called Polly. She, it turned out, was Lady Feversham. She had offered, since all the B&Bs were full, to put me up for the night. 'We've got 10,000 Hells Angels at the moment,' said her husband Peter. 'Don't worry, you can't see them from the house.'"

interesting Elvis revisionism from jazz writer Will Friedwald--

"Unlike Sinatra’s, Presley’s recorded output looks meager when compared with what it could have been. There are so many songs he should have done: “There Must Be a Better World Somewhere” (a Doc Pomus song for B. B. King that’s far superior to anything he wrote for Presley), “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone,” “A Rainy Night in Georgia,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” Louis Jordan’s “Early in the Morning,” “What a Wonderful World,” “Empty Bed Blues,” “Stand by Me,” “On Broadway,” “I Pity the Fool,” Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “Work Song,” “Señor Blues,” “Don’t Go to Strangers,” “At Last,” “Teach Me Tonight,” Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail.” He could have sung entire songbook albums of the works of Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, and Hoagy Carmichael, three old-school songwriters who also bridged the worlds of jazz, pop, and country music."