Hardy Island Granite, from which was made the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Ogden Point Breakwater in Victoria. 

"What If Bush Wins" by a panel of 16 experts cheery, cheery

Kevin Drum in The Washington Monthly

"Now, I happen to agree with Tomasky that Republicans generally go for the jugular more effectively than Democrats, but it's a big mistake for us liberals to kid ourselves into thinking that Republicans win elections solely because they fool people into voting for them. It's not just that this is a debilitating mental attitude--although it is--but it's also not true. Our main problem isn't that this year's campaign has ignored the issues, our main problem is that the #1 issue in this campaign is national defense, and on that issue--like it or not--the majority of Americans favor the Republican position. If John Kerry wants to win, he should focus on the issues, but he has to focus on the issues that matter most in this campaign cycle.

It's all about 9/11, Iraq, terrorism, and national security, baby. This election is going to be won on that issue, and Kerry needs to convince the country that he can handle it better than Bush. And really, considering the botch Bush has made of national security, that shouldn't be all that hard.

Bottom line: Republicans aren't avoiding the issues. It's just that their signature issue happens to be the one people care most about this year. Democrats had better figure that out pronto."

Anodyne on Mina Totino's "Reading Marx"

4. Capital, the Marx text from which the series takes its title, never appears in the drawings. I remember Mina's own copy, an oversize Penguin, well-thumbed, with little pieces of yellow Post-It stuck in the margins, which the used bookseller in me immediately started pulling out and then guiltily replacing. " 

nice review of the Core Sample catalogue...

"The country is full of virtual centers. Such impermanence and uncertainty is the antithesis of the art establishment's fetishization of preservation and collection. Core Sample embraced a center on the move and worked like disappearing ink. "

Annelise Kretschmer 'Portraits 1920s to 1960s'

(thanks gmtPlus9) 

The Likudization of the World

" It has happened in Gaza, in Grozny, in Sadr City. Mr. Sharon says terrorism is an epidemic that "has no borders, no fences" but this is not the case. Everywhere in the world, terrorism thrives within the illegitimate borders of occupation and dictatorship; it festers behind "security walls" put up by imperial powers; it crosses those borders and climbs over those fences to explode inside the countries responsible for, or complicit in, occupation and domination.

Ariel Sharon is not the commander in chief of the war on terror; that dubious honour stays with George Bush. But on the third year anniversary of September 11, he deserves to be recognized as this disastrous campaign's spiritual/intellectual guru, a kind of trigger-happy Yoda for all the wannabe Luke Skywalkers out there, training for their epic battles in good vs. evil.

If we want to see the future of where the Likud Doctrine leads, we need only follow the guru home, to Israel--a country paralyzed by fear, embracing pariah policies of extrajudicial assassination and illegal settlement, and in furious denial about the brutality it commits daily. It is a nation surrounded by enemies and desperate for friends, a category it narrowly defines as those who ask no questions, while generously offering the same moral amnesty in return. That glimpse at our collective future is the only lesson the world needs to learn from Ariel Sharon. "

theo parrish these days and times

Part 1

01. Those Guys feat. Ras Baraka - "An American Poem"
02. Theo Parrish - Unreleased
03. (Sounds like Larry Heard) - ?
04. ? – "Just Another Lonely Night" [majorIV ?]
05. Theo Parrish - Unreleased
06. Round Four feat. Tikiman – "Find a Way"
07. Blakk Society "Just Another Lonely Day"
08. Lil' Louis "War Games"
09. Theo Parrish – "China Trax (Sound Signature 012)"
10. ? (very nice!)
11. New Sector Movements – "The Sun (Dwele's Motorcity Remix)"
12. ? - (Sounds like Herbie Hancock)
13. Dinosaur L – "Go Bang! (Francois K mix)"
14. Fela Kuti - ?
15. Tony Allen – "Afro Disco Beat"
16. ? - (Sounds like Fela Kuti)
17. Roy Ayers – "Running Away"
18. Donald Byrd – "Lansanas Priestess"
19. Dexter Wansel "Life On Mars"


Part 2

20. Ashford & Simpson "One More Try"
21. ? – "keep on doing what you do, cause it feels so good"
22. ? – "never let you go"
23. Eddie Kendricks "Goin' Up In Smoke"
24. ? - "family"
25. ? - "why don't you spread love"
26. ? - "high on your love/mean to be so free"
27. Charles Earland "Leaving This Planet"
28. ?
29. Jill Scott – "Slowely Surely (Theo Parrish rmx)"
30. Fela Kuti – "Who No Know Go Now"
31. New Sector Movements - "The Sun (Dwelogy remix)"
32. ? - "precious love" (sounds like Larry Heard)
33. ? – "trying to prove my love" [ned doheny ?] (I know Al Hudson & The
Partners have a song called Prove My Love...)
34. Fela Kuti - ?
35. Theo Parrish – "Dirty Rhodes (Sound Signature 015)." 

an essay I wrote about Swarm 2 in 2001...

"No economic force compels this vice of amiability. It springs from a faintness of the spirit, from a convention of pleasantness, which when attacked for the monstrous things it permits to enter the mind of the world, excuses itself by protesting that it is a pity to waste fierceness on things that do not matter."

Rebecca West, November 1914 

big multi-gallery foofaraw SWARM starts tonight in Vancouver 

blue syrup pour 

Moss Man (flocked Beast Man figure)  

Pantaloons: Tykes on Poetry on Geof Huth and in general--

"The imaginative confines are the world outdoors: 'mossbark'; 'tadfrogs'; 'hawkspeck'; 'pondsun'; and so forth. The lyrical context, then, is remarkably parallel to Stevens's poem, and the conscious battle waged complements as well the younger Huth's analytical concerns over 'pace,' 'predicates,' and 'switching place.' Here now the basic shapes of the portmanteaux do the heavy lifting for the imagination -- 'dewweb' switching place, moving left and then right of the particle / wave debate; 'echowoods' predicating a place and a sound; 'shadowl' (my favorite) pacing and compressing what might be some gagged, sorrowful tone, but in fine what is only natural." 

short but good list of Favorite Kids' Films 

Buffalo grain silo by Mike Schultz, from Industriekultur-Fotografie 

"Ayalik shoots RCMP Constable Lelliott, 1960" from the Sissons/Morrow Collection

"Justice Sissons became an avid collector of Inuit art during his decade in the North. His collection of carvings dealing with the outstanding trials of his northern career began when one of the accused coming before him, Kaotak, a man found not guilty of killing his father, presented him with a carving in 1956. It gave the man's impression of being on trial. This first carving launched the Justice Sissons' carving collection.

From that day on, on completion of a particularly noteworthy case, Justice Sissons would seek out local carvers whom he commissioned to depict the events in stone, ivory, caribou antler, soapstone and metal. Sometimes he would enlist the local priest or store manager to explain what he wanted; other times he would talk to the carver himself. Justice Morrow succeeded Justice Sissons in 1966. Justice Morrow continued to collect carvings of notable cases and added 3 carvings to the collection. Upon Justice Sissons' death in 1969, the collection was given to the people of the North, deeded in trust to the Northwest Territories Bar Association." (thanks RS)  

subterranean cinema

"Today, visitors can take guided tours around a tightly restricted section, Les Catacombes, where the remains of up to six million Parisians were transferred from overcrowded cemeteries in the late 1700s.
But since 1955, for security reasons, it has been an offence to 'penetrate into or circulate within' the rest of the network.

There exist, however, several secretive bands of so-called cataphiles, who gain access to the tunnels mainly after dark, through drains and ventilation shafts, and hold what in the popular imagination have become drunken orgies but are, by all accounts, innocent underground picnics.

The recent discovery of three newly enlarged tunnels underneath the capital's high-security La Sante prison was put down to the activities of one such group, and another, identifying itself as the Perforating Mexicans, last night told French radio the subterranean cinema was its work. " 

happy birthday Ludovico Ariosto!

from Orlando Furioso canto 34, Astolpho goes to the moon...

LXX
The chariot, towering, threads the fiery sphere,
And rises thence into the lunar reign.
This, in its larger part they find as clear
As polished steel, when undefiled by stain;
And such it seems, or little less, when near,
As what the limits of our earth contain:
Such as our earth, the last of globes below,
Including seas, which round about it flow.



LXXI
Here doubly waxed the paladin's surprize,
To see that place so large, when viewed at hand;
Resembling that a little hoop in size,
When from the globe surveyed whereon we stand,
And that he both his eyes behoved to strain,
If he would view Earth's circling seas and land;
In that, by reason of the lack of light,
Their images attained to little height.



LXXII
Here other river, lake, and rich champaign
Are seen, than those which are below descried;
Here other valley, other hill and plain,
With towns and cities of their own supplied;
Which mansions of such mighty size contain,
Such never he before of after spied.
Here spacious hold and lonely forest lay,
Where nymphs for ever chased the panting prey.



LXXIII
He, that with other scope had thither soared,
Pauses not all these wonder to peruse:
But led by the disciple of our Lord,
His way towards a spacious vale pursues;
A place wherein is wonderfully stored
Whatever on our earth below we lose.
Collected there are all things whatsoe'er,
Lost through time, chance, or our own folly, here.



LXXIV
Nor here alone of realm and wealthy dower,
O'er which aye turns the restless wheel, I say:
I speak of what it is not in the power
Of Fortune to bestow, or take away.
Much fame is here, whereon Time and the Hour,
Like wasting moth, in this our planet prey.
Here countless vows, here prayers unnumbered lie,
Made by us sinful men to God on high:



LXXV
The lover's tears and sighs; what time in pleasure
And play we here unprofitably spend;
To this, of ignorant men the eternal leisure,
And vain designs, aye frustrate of their end.
Empty desires so far exceed all measure,
They o'er that valley's better part extend.
There wilt thou find, if thou wilt thither post,
Whatever thou on earth beneath hast lost.



LXXVI
He, passing by those heaps, on either hand,
Of this and now of that the meaning sought;
Formed of swollen bladders here a hill did stand,
Whence he heard cries and tumults, as he thought.
These were old crowns of the Assyrian land
And Lydian -- as that paladin was taught --
Grecian and Persian, all of ancient fame;
And now, alas! well-nigh without a name.



LXXVII
Golden and silver hooks to sight succeed,
Heaped in a mass, the gifts which courtiers bear,
-- Hoping thereby to purchase future meed --
To greedy prince and patron; many a snare,
Concealed in garlands, did the warrior heed,
Who heard, these signs of adulation were;
And in cicalas, which their lungs had burst,
Saw fulsome lays by venal poets versed.



LXXVIII
Loves of unhappy end in imagery
Of gold or jewelled bands he saw exprest;
Then eagles' talons, the authority
With which great lords their delegates invest:
Bellows filled every nook, the fume and fee
Wherein the favourites of kings are blest:
Given to those Ganymedes that have their hour,
And reft, when faded is their vernal flower.



LXXIX
O'erturned, here ruined town and castle lies,
With all their wealth: "The symbols" (said his guide)
"Of treaties and of those conspiracies,
Which their conductors seemed so ill to hide."
Serpents with female faces, felonies
Of coiners and of robbers, he descried;
Next broken bottles saw of many sorts,
The types of servitude in sorry courts.



LXXX
He marks mighty pool of porridge spilled,
And asks what in that symbol should be read,
And hears 'twas charity, by sick men willed
For distribution, after they were dead.
He passed a heap of flowers, that erst distilled
Sweet savours, and now noisome odours shed;
The gift (if it may lawfully be said)
Which Constantine to good Sylvester made.



LXXXI
A large provision, next, of twigs and lime
-- Your witcheries, O women! -- he explored.
The things he witnessed, to recount in rhyme
Too tedious were; were myriads on record,
To sum the remnant ill should I have time.
'Tis here that all infirmities are stored,
Save only Madness, seen not here at all,
Which dwells below, nor leaves this earthly ball...  

we can only hope

"'At the current rate of loss,' the report yells, 'literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century.'

Really? To answer this question, let's look for a moment at the photograph of NEA chairman Dana Gioia displayed in the report's introduction. He's a trim-looking fellow: I'd guess about 165 pounds. Now, let's say that Dana's been hitting the maple scones lately, and gained four pounds in the last month. By applying Reading at Risk's statistical model of linear progression, I hereby predict that in 50 years time, NEA chairman Dana Gioia will weigh 2,565 pounds. " 

lucid Chechnya backgrounder

"So, what does al-Qaida and international Islamic terrorism have to do with any of this? Probably very little. Chechens have plenty of reason to do what they do without outside inspiration."

Young Marble Giants

"Parrish is dancing, his feet are a bIur
Comes to a standstill,
I ask him a question
He doesn't hear
Wurlitzer jukebox
Fingers are pointed in my direction
Words fly around me,
everyone's chanting..." 

still one of the best almanacs on the web--The Daily Bleed: A Calendar Better Than Boiled Coffee! Timeline, Chronology, Labor, Radical, Arts, Literature, Authors, Poets, Anarchists...

Niall Ferguson in the WSJ

"In my view, the Bush administration, too, does not deserve to be re-elected. Its idee fixe about regime change in Iraq was not a logical response to the crisis of 9/11. Its fiscal policy has been an orgy of irresponsibility. Given the hesitations of independent voters in the swing states, polls currently point to a narrow Bush defeat. Yet Mr. Kerry, like Mr. Kinnock, is the kind who can blow an election in a single sound bite. It's still all too easy to imagine George W. Bush, like John Major, scraping home by the narrowest of margins (not least, of course, because Mr. Bush did just that four years ago)

But then what? The lesson of British history is that a second Bush term could be more damaging to the Republicans and more beneficial to the Democrats than a Bush defeat. If he secures re-election, President Bush can be relied upon to press on with a foreign policy based on pre-emptive military force, to ignore the impending fiscal crisis (on the Cheney principle that 'deficits don't matter') and to pursue socially conservative objectives like the constitutional ban on gay marriage. Anyone who thinks this combination will serve to maintain Republican unity is dreaming; it will do the opposite. Meanwhile, the Dems will have another four years to figure out what the Labour Party finally figured out: It's the candidate, stupid. And when the 2008 Republican candidate goes head-to-head with the American Tony Blair, he will get wiped out."

Laurable's Poetry Weblog is back!!

readers of Spanish might enjoy this translation of an essay on Stan Douglas that I wrote a number of years ago, which talks about Ayler, Glenn Gould etc...

excellent Albert Ayler site--pics, info mp3's, the works--Spirits rejoice!

(Ayler playing at John Coltrane's funeral)

I must have this new Albert Ayler box!! 

Signs of fall--the wind is up and this recipe for Toad in the Hole in New York Press, of all places... 

Lee Konitz


"As soon as I hear myself playing a familiar melody I take the saxophone out of my mouth. I let some measures go by. Improvising means coming in with a completely clean slate from the first note. The process is what I'm interested in. You can turn the most familiar standard into something totally fresh. The most important thing is to get away from fixed functions."

 

(Roosevelt with John Muir, Yosemite 1906)

The Party of Lincoln

"The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others." Theodore Roosevelt, Labor Day speech at Syracuse, NY, Sept 7, 1903
 

An Irving Wallace novel, thickly furred with blue mould...

"Books We Didn't Buy

� The BC Health Guide

� Windows 95 user's manual

� Word 95 installation guide

� 300 Silhouette romances

� Advanced Colon Cleanser's Workbook

� Baby 'board books' -- fat cardboard pages for little hands -- covered in bite marks

� An Irving Wallace novel, thickly furred with blue mold. Little cloud of spores exhaled as I picked it up and set it ever so quickly back down

� The wet, dog-eared books that failed to sell at someone's garage sale and were then apparently left out overnight in the driveway"

happy birthday Maria Montessori!

"But he who accomplishes a truly human work, he who does something really great and victorious, is never spurred to his task by those trifling attractions called by the name of "prizes," nor by the fear of those petty ills which we call "punishments." If in a war a great army of giants should fight with no inspiration beyond the desire to win promotion, epaulets, or medals, or through fear of being shot, if these men were to oppose a handful of pygmies who were inflamed by love of country, the victory would go to the latter. When real heroism has died within an army, prizes and punishments cannot do more than finish the work of deterioration, bringing in corruption and cowardice.

All human victories, all human progress, stand upon the inner force." 

Tasers for breakfast

"Graham says the controversy is no reason to bar the Taser company from paying for the meal for the chiefs of police.

'Because there are certain questions being asked, does that mean you automatically exclude your partners that you've been involved with in life-saving initiatives for years?' he says.

'We have to look at issues of fairness. And this company--we dealt with them way before any of this controversy began.

We've been very open with the fact that Taser was sponsoring this breakfast. There's no hidden agenda here.' "

the party of Lincoln

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military/industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. " 

Hal Foster on Ed Ruscha

"'They do it with automobiles,' Ruscha adds, 'they do it with everything that we manufacture.' Of course, 'they do it' with movies above all, and he also evokes the 'celluloid gloss' and panoramic expanse of cinema. At once deep and flat, space in movies is all surface, and vice versa, and words (again as in credits) appear in the same register as images. Ruscha often intimates the filmic screen of projected light, which he calls a 'deeply Californian version of infinity'." 

The Party of Lincoln

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.
 

I'll miss August Sander at the Met, don't you! 

democratic vistas

"And voters apparently do punish politicians for acts of God. In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that 2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet, as a consequence of that year's weather patterns. Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election."