Great picture of Tommy Douglas

Tommy Douglas A Remarkable Canadian: "The North American Medical Establishment tried to defy Medicare, Douglas's top priority project, and Saskatchewan became an intense battleground. This turbulent time was marked by the Doctor's Strike as the physicians of the province protested socialized healthcare. However, the striking doctors were no match for Douglas. When the dust settled with the resolution of the strike, Medicare in Saskatchewan was born. Douglas showed Canada two things: that it was possible to develope and finance a universal Medicare system and that the medical profession could be confronted. Had Douglas not have made these first ground breaking steps, national Medicare would never have happened."

Welcome to the Tommy Douglas Website
a great Canadian, Tommy was our MP in Nanaimo (then considered a very safe NDP seat!!) during the 70's. I met him a couple of times and remember the iron grip of his ex-bantamweight boxer's grip, the calm yet room-filling clarity of his speech...I wasn't sure Kiefer was up to playing his grandpa until some of the stuff he had to pull on "24" last year....

Kiefer to play grandfather Tommy Douglas
this was my idea!!

lovely old movie theatres in Sheffield

vote for the top Scottish album of all time
for me either the Average White Band's second album or John Martyn's "Solid Air"...

but when I lived in Scotland (68-72) the universally encountered albums were

1. Something by Andy Stewart or Kenneth McKellar
2. Jim Reeves "Greatest Hits" (red cover)
3. Mario Lanza "The Student Prince"
4. Hank Williams "Greatest Hits" (yellow cover with guitar against a chair)

Spy pictures of suffragettes revealed
weapons of mass enfranchisement

happy Birthday Sidney Paget, illustrator of Sherlock Holmes

Please Hold (UK) message megamix

Character Actor Index

Why no one really cares about prison rape. By Robert Weisberg and David Mills: "So accepted is assault as part of prison life that an outsider might conclude that on some basic, if unarticulated level, we think it an appropriate element of the punishment regimen. Perhaps we believe that allowing prisons to be places of horrific acts will serve as part of the utilitarian deterrent effect of criminal sentences. Or perhaps we recognize that prison rape and assault are an unavoidable byproduct of the rape and assault in society generally, so that our goal here is not utilitarian but retributive: that is, even though we cannot eliminate rape and assault, we can at least reallocate them. Thus, when we purport to incapacitate convicted criminals, what we are really doing is shifting to them, the most 'deserving' among us, the burden of victimization."

new blog "tufluv" reviews luke vibert and more: "Indulge me and imagine this: ‘YosepH’ (WhaT’s WitH ThE CapitaL ‘H’?) is like an archeologist sometime after the next Ice Age drilling into a block of permafrost. Within it he finds encased a perfectly-preserved acid-box, with it its once-owner cryogenically frozen with his fingers stuck to the quaint little machine’s knobs (It must have been one of those ‘flash’ ice ages, you see). Once they’ve thawed him, the guy is unable to do anything but tweak his knobs, making these fucked up, funky, squiggly noises that amaze the future people. Only, the time in the ice has sorta slowed his whole motion down a gear – it’s kinda fatigued and frosty yet sorta tender and loving. "

Gilgamesh tomb believed found

Some virus today.

Keats to Leigh Hunt from Margate, May 10 1817: "Before I come to the Nymphs I must get through all disagreeables - I went to the Isle of Wight - thought so much about Poetry so long together that I could not get to sleep at night - and moreover, I know not how it was, I could not get wholesome food - By this means in a Week or so I became not over capable in my upper Stories, and set off pell mell for Margate, at least 150 Miles - because forsooth I fancied that I should like my old Lodging here, and could contrive to do without Trees. Another thing I was too much in Solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought as an only resource. However Tom is with me at present and we are very comfortable. We intend though to get among some Trees. How have you got on among them? How are the Nymphs? "

TCB Baby! Bruce Campbell's Elvis movie

Core Sample site

words to remember from Lawrence Rinder as I prepare to attend and write about the big Core Sample show in Portland, which opens 11 Oct.: "The saddest thing going on these days in Portland is the yearning for recognition from afar, the aspiration to an imagined normalcy which seems to motivate a number of up and coming art enthusiasts. When you have a chance to be anything, why would you cultivate, as Jef Jahn advises, the tepid success of a Julie Mehretu or even the vapid stardom of a Matthew Barney? And why the cloying need to be appreciated by someone from out of town? Athens (Greece, not Georgia) had far fewer citizens than Portland and you can bet that they didn't measure their success by the sheen of their reputation in Corinth. "

D U B S E L E C T O R really great flash

MIT for free

Bobby Womack (flash)

Donny Hathaway

Top Ten Silliest Historical Sites in America

Marcel Broodthaers interviews a cat (MP3)

Doin' The Banana Split!

"The Forest Rangers"

another nice Charles Willeford site

Charles Ray Willeford, Sergeant, United States Air Force & United States Army

more Willefordiana: Susan Waggoner ("Pepper")'s Vinegar Pie Recipe from "Miami Blues"

pastry for a 9-inch pie crust
1 Cup seedless raisins, all chopped up
1/4 cup soft butter
2 cups sugar (granulated)
1/2 teaspoon cinammon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
4 large eggs, separated
3 tablespoons 5 per cent vinegar
1 pinch of salt

Cream the butter well with sugar. Add spices and blend well. Beat in yolks with a beater till smooth and creamy.
Stir in chopped raisins with a wooden spoon. Beat egg whites with a dash of salt until they are soft, then slide onto sugar mixture. Cut and fold lightly but well. Turn into pastry-lined pan. Bake fifteen minutes in preheated 425 F. oven. Reduce heat to 300 F. and bake for twenty minutes longer, or until top is beautifully browned and center of filling is jellylike. Cool on a rack for two or three hours before cutting.

for Mina and Pete Cummings: Charles Willeford's "Cockfighter Journal"

The Italian Futurist Book

Bruce Sterling's "Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die"

Whitstable Museum and Gallery: Photo Gallery
Spent an odd melancholy couple of days alone on the Kentish coast after I'd done readings in London and Cambridge. Whitstable a grand little ship shape town, famous for big skies and various seafood/beer combos (oysters and Guinness, or what I had, potted prawns on toast with the local St. Augustine Ale) and paradise after the depressing and slightly scary Margate, where I convinced myself that I'd gotten Verlaine and Rimbaud's old room in the unfriendly, windows-painted-shut b & b.

Ander Monson road trips into Canada in "Bridge Trilogy"

Hollywood super-hunk Andrew Jackson: "In one of several joint marketing efforts between the Treasury and consumer goods companies, the bill's design will grace bags of Pepperidge Farm's Goldfish crackers, and the crackers themselves will be colored to match the new bills. "

i s h k u r 's guide to electronic music

Louis Menand on the Chicago Manual of Style: "The notion that the personal computer has eliminated the bone-crushing inefficiency of the typewriter, and turned composing The End Matter into a drive in the word-processing park, belongs to the myth that all work on a computer is “fun”—one of the Digital Age’s cruellest jokes"

Renewable Brooklyn good cause, great sounding concert Oct 4th

Guardian Unlimited reviews Buck 65: Talkin' Honky Blues

Canadian DJ/rapper Buck 65's flash site

more from David Perry: "We were meeting in the tree house to plot our escape from wage slavery at the pencil testing facility. We didn't know enough to keep the new kid away and he kept coming back.... "

thanks Metafilter for Tufts Perseus Digital Library, home of

Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

Simplon Postcards Home Page