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.  

more Bewick here 

(Walking across a frozen pond with a branch 1804) A very uncharacteristic for Nanaimo huge dump of snow has everything shut down tight, though our power has held. People in town have been without since early this morning. Walked up to the corner store (almost out of milk!), birds etched Thomas Bewick style against the white page. A great gathering of robins at the neighbours eavestrough.  

essay on Gerry Gilbert's Moby Jane


"the dandelion & the daffodil yellow
the sea & the sky blue
the field and the tree green

the fly on the windshield
the tourist who's seen too much
that was fast

i've set just about everything down for now
feel the light

help
i can't stop writing

come to stay
of course there's space
we're poor

you girls take your room upstairs
i belong down here
near the dishes

the toilet takes doing the doing
takes a moment the moment
takes no time at all

we stare at the cat a lot "

good interview with Jane Jacobs

""During a Dark Age," Jacobs argues, the mass amnesia of survivors becomes permanent and profound. The previous way of life slides into an abyss of forgetfulness.""

all time CKLG FM fave J.B. Shayne aka

"Johanne Bruno Shayne
Captain Midnight
Raindog (also Sundog)
The Semi-Legendary Mr. Shayne
Colonel Nocturnal
Sportscaster Chuck Stake
Rick Vandrazzo
Tony Spiffy (opposite Bill Reiter's 'Michael Gears')
Raouel Casablanca (also Raouel Shayne)
Saskatchewan Smith
Joe Gobbels
The Madame (in drag)
Aaron Schmelling
Johnny (The Rebel Without A Car)
Emperor Rasgula
Reverend Rock
Retired-DJ Jerry Silvers
Teen Jock Dino Hawkes
Showbiz Shayne "

"Red" Robinson & Elvis in Vancouver, 1958

Vancouver Broadcasters is a surprisingly complete list of the people who brought and bring the news, weather, time, talk and music to the lower mainland & island...reminded me of how much radio I listened to as a lad...

Gary at E l s e w h e r e has one for me & Chris

"STEELY DAN BOUCHARD

I make a pact with you Ron Silliman:
I'll learn to play the saxophone
there where I used to stand.

This is the day of the expanding man,
jet fuel flows with ground water. Tomato,
that shape is my shade

the landscape passes beside the highway.
I'll play just what I feel
in a remarkable book burning era.

They got a name for the winners in the world:
if you would like to make a speech
drink Scotch whisky all night long.

For the love of all things found,
crawl like a viper thru these suburban streets
till sunlight slights the cold.

I'm ready to cross that fine line
by streetcar rail. Imagine there's no Lenin,
and die behind the wheel

or from parking lots behind a stretch of trees.
I want a name when I lose
my mood in tandem with a poet's book.

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
whose root lies in the material conditions of existence.
Call me Deacon Blues." 

online versioning of one of my very favorites--Curiosities of Literature

"An incrementally-published online presentation of Isaac D'Israeli's book Curiosities of Literature, a compendium of book-lore originally published in six volumes between 1791 and 1834. "

(ta to wood's lot)

nice radio review of my "album of the year", the Albert Ayler box with useful snippets & examples...

(more info & downloads here) 

various boffins answer the question "What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?"

Old school house sneaking back onto the decks?

"That experimentation lends itself properly to Phuture's 'Acid Trax,' Marshall Jefferson's 'Move Your Body' and Mr. Finger's 'Can You Feel It.' All of these classics have a raw energy completely lacking in the loungy house produced today. Here's to a house renaissance in the '05. "

Steve at Third Factory Notebook has very observant brief notes on recent and "holiday" films. Very good on Huston's "brusqueness", but he should give "Meet Me in St Louis" a few more chances.

gmtPlus9 has a download of the driving, catchy "Bar-b-q" by Wendy Rene, one of my favorite songs from the big Stax singles box, as well as "Starry Eyes" by the Records...

Shirley Chisholm 1924-2005 

omnibus review from "Canadian Literature" includes my Hammertown

"In short bursts this dizziness is quiet pleasing, but longer episodes induce sleep after all. "

from Willeford's cockfighter journal, about the making of Monte Hellman's adaptation, which starred Warren Oates

"Friday is the first day of the spring semester, and I'll be back in the classroom, back to mundane reality, teaching D. H. Lawrence to bewildered strangers.

The more I think about things, the more I admire Roger Corman and his intuitive mind.

Cockfighter, I am certain, is a winner. It will cause some controversy, pro and con, but we can't lose with this film. Because audiences can see an illegal sport legally, they will come to see the film out of curiosity, and then will spread the word about it because it has a good strong story. Frank is the first totally silent hero since Singer, in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, but Frank is willfully silent, not a deaf-mute. So Frank's stubbornness will appeal to anyone who talks too much, which includes writers like myself. " 

Charles Willeford's 'Cockfighter'

"The man who is unable to talk back is at the mercy of these people. He is like an inexperienced priest who listens tolerantly to the first simple confessions of impure thoughts, and then listens with increasing horror as the sins mount, one outdoing the other until he is shocked into dumbness. And, of course, the sinner takes advantage of a man's credulousness, loading ever greater sins upon him to see how far he can really go now that he has found a trapped listener who is unable to stop him. My ears had been battered by the outpourings of troubles, tribulations, aspirations and the affairs of broken hearts for two years and seven months. Only by being rude enough to leave the scene had I evaded some of my confessors."

Boswell and Samuel Johnson's Hodge--

"Nor would it be just, under this head, to omit the fondness which he shewed for animals which he had taken under his protection. I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, "Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;" and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, "but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.""

an immense trove of poetry sound files at Pennsound
(So far I've played Hugh MacDiarmid's "A Glass of Pure Water" and James Schuyler's "Hymn to Life", volume cranked, tucked up under a quilt in the dark for extra concentration. Pressed against my foot tabbycat Blinky seemed especially taken with the latter, even starting a little during Schuyler's recollection of his battle-scarred tomcat Hodge leaving traces of blood on the card table.) 

fantastic, downloadable Bird Songs and Training Records 

American Muslims Fingerprinted By U.S. at Canadian Border...

"Several of the Muslim citizens held at the border for up to six hours on Sunday night and Monday morning told CAIR they objected strenuously to being fingerprinted, but were informed by CBP representatives that 'you have no rights' and that they would be held until they agreed to the fingerprinting procedure. One person was allegedly threatened with arrest if she attempted to leave the detention area without being fingerprinted."

(Clinton, Ontario) thanks S/FJ for the link to a video about a special place where books are free! 

Life Without Trial

"The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, the newspaper said.

'It would be modeled on a U.S. prison and would allow socializing among inmates,' the paper said. "