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."