the Roberto Bolaño plot "thickens"

YouTube - Colour on the Thames (1935)

This film is tricky to describe: is it a boat study, a film-poem, an experiment, a picture postcard? One thing is certain: it's a rare colour snapshot of the Thames and London in the 1930s - and it looks
quite magical.

Its artistic qualities may look a bit
old-fashioned to us today; the slow pace, orchestral music and moody colours definitely belong to a bygone era, strikingly peaceful and
undemanding. Yet colour film was still a novelty for audiences in 1935, and the photography (using the new Gasparcolor system) succeeds in
accentuating the sharp contrast between the vivid green banks of the countryside and the drab tones of the industrial landscape. (Sonia
Genaitay)

Rank And File: Sundown (1982)

...in Kansas there waged a great civil war,
between those wanting freedom
& those wanting more--

slavery's claim
was that man would own man--

throw it down
John Brown!

trees from the Great Storm in London 1987

also from 1987--Robert Altman's film of Harold Pinter's

The Room, with Annie Lennox, Julian Sands, Linda Hunt, Donald Pleasance

essay on criminally neglected poet Charlotte Mew's "The Trees Are Down"--

In Praise of Tree-Valor by Molly Peacock

They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens...

250th birthday of Robert Burns today

Epistle To Davie, A Brother Poet:--

To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin,
Is doubtless, great distress!

Yet then content could make us blest;
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste
Of truest happiness.
The honest heart that's free frae a'
Intended fraud or guile,
However Fortune kick the ba',
Has aye some cause to smile;
An' mind still, you'll find still,
A comfort this nae sma';
Nae mair then we'll care then,
Nae farther can we fa'...

YouTube - "Ode to a Haggis"-Robert Burns, recited for a traditional Burns supper by Lionel Mccelland

Yum!!