happy birthday Jack London--from "The Iron Heel" (1908); Chapter 22: The Chicago Commune

"Many things were to occur simultaneously when the signal went forth. The Canadian and Mexican patriots, who were far stronger than the Iron Heel dreamed, were to duplicate our tactics. Then there were comrades (these were the women, for the men would be busy elsewhere) who were to post the proclamations from our secret presses. Those of us in the higher employ of the Iron Heel were to proceed immediately to make confusion and anarchy in all our departments. Inside the Mercenaries were thousands of our comrades. Their work was to blow up the magazines and to destroy the delicate mechanism of all the war machinery. In the cities of the Mercenaries and of the labor castes similar programmes of disruption were to be carried out.

In short, a sudden, colossal, stunning blow was to be struck. Before the paralyzed Oligarchy could recover itself, its end would have come. It would have meant terrible times and great loss of life, but no revolutionist hesitates at such things. Why, we even depended much, in our plan, on the unorganized people of the abyss. They were to be loosed on the palaces and cities of the masters. Never mind the destruction of life and property. Let the abysmal brute roar and the police and Mercenaries slay. The abysmal brute would roar anyway, and the police and Mercenaries would slay anyway. It would merely mean that various dangers to us were harmlessly destroying one another. In the meantime we would be doing our own work, largely unhampered, and gaining control of all the machinery of society." 

clean-your-screen-for-free---from the inside

take a walk over to stride magazine from Exeter UK, feat. Ottawa's Rob Mclennan, review of Rexroth, lots more 

(portrait of Jenny Yeats, JB's wife & the poet's mother)

I've been reading the letters of John Butler Yeats

"A poor gentleman upon whose hands time lies heavy is absolutely necessary to art and literature. Being gentlemen they know how to idle with dignity, and because of their poverty there is no distraction to prevent their brooding on life and truth. Thinking of life, they become poets; thinking of truth, scientific students. "

Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War

"One of the most important and fascinating discussions in Saunders' book is about the fact that CIA and its allies in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) poured vast sums of money into promoting Abstract Expressionist (AE) painting and painters as an antidote to art with a social content. In promoting AE, the CIA fought off the right-wing in Congress. What the CIA saw in AE was an 'anti-Communist ideology, the ideology of freedom, of free enterprise. Non-figurative and politically silent it was the very antithesis of socialist realism' . They viewed AE as the true expression of the national will. To bypass right-wing criticism, the CIA turned to the private sector (namely MOMA and its co-founder, Nelson Rockefeller, who referred to AE as 'free enterprise painting.') Many directors at MOMA had longstanding links to the CIA and were more than willing to lend a hand in promoting AE as a weapon in the cultural Cold War. Heavily funded exhibits of AE were organized all over Europe; art critics were mobilized, and art magazines churned out articles full of lavish praise. The combined economic resources of MOMA and the CIA-run Fairfield Foundation ensured the collaboration of Europe's most prestigious galleries which, in turn, were able to influence aesthetics across Europe."

I always wonder, well what about Charlie Parker then? James Jesus Angleton might have at least put in a word with the New York Cabaret Commision and got him his card back, seeing how bebop was destroying totalitarianism and all. Black Mountain College could have used a few bucks too, and Olson knew FDR! Though it could explain why the Velvets ended up on Republican Mike Curb's MGM records....

two primo cat cartoons @ Gawker

Our power went out again! briefly, I hope. Also the front porch onto which melting snow dripped when it got to one degree yesterday became during the night a waterfall of ice.

Ben Katchor's site now contains updated weekly strips 

fascinating archive of documentary films at Best Laid Schemes a site exploring the hopes and consequences of Glasgow's sweeping postwar social planning--

"Glasgow grew fast, Glasgow grew overcrowded. In 1945 we planned to fix things. This plan, the Bruce Plan, planned to knock Glasgow down and start again.

Did we need to? Why did we want to? What did we do? When the dust settled, what were we left with? "

(thanks I like)

(Emily Perkins)

more TV:Da Vinci's Inquest is back on CBC tonight at 9... 

thanks metafilter for Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and Conundrums (with answers), which includes the infamous "Puzzle of the Educated Cats" 

a special treat for those of us with fond memories of the great William Devane in John Flynn & Paul Schrader's 1977 Rolling Thunder was seeing the old boy kick a little ass on "24" tonight...  

Catbus!

"(Akira Kurosawa admired it, and somebody did a re-creation of it at Burning Man a few years ago) " 

Pantaloons on the James Schuyler letters

"Schuyler taking in On the Waterfront, Flesh, Cage aux Folles, The Wages of Fear, The Fireman's Ball, Les Biches. He loved Roman flower stands. Salutation to John Ashbery: 'Dear Beany Bacon Dip.' The solace of knowing some of Schuyler's reading matter: a Benedictine tome on herbs, also The Victorian Fern Craze, A Gardener's Book of Plant Names, Intellectual Life in Gay Colonial New England, A Reader's Handbook to Proust, all kinds of mysteries and comix, including Steel Penis Farming. "

another good one from Eagle's Wing

"Gollum, I am swimming on the
sky and you are sinking in the sky
and there is no such thing as
grass. Anyway I am still on the moon..." 

9 days into 365 Sketches by Vancouver photographer Adam Harrison 

link for below

("Protecting the Sampo" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela) decent NYT on the Kalevala--

"The German poet Johann Gottfried von Herder was urging Europeans to seek their cultural identity in their ancient folklore, which he termed 'the mirror of the soul of the people.' Finland, a province of Sweden since 1155, had been annexed as an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire in 1809 and was beginning to hatch dreams of nationhood..." 

"Location", from Hollywood Noir, "a collection of satirical photographs by Will Connell" 

our page on the The Atlas of Canada (thanks metafilter) 

(up to the store for milk and cat food 2005) The power went off here about ten minutes after my last entry, came on for about 5 minutes an hour ago. An expanse of wedding-cake icing like something out of Turegenev's "A Huntsman's Notebook". Last night I made corned beef hash on the woodstove, and Daph and I listened to Dal Richards play swing records as the cheap black candles hissed, popped and fell apart in chunks.