nice appreciation of one of my favorite artists Samuel Palmer--

"Palmer's drawings of the Lullingstone oaks were in answer to this, though he wrote fellow "Ancient" George Richmond that he would "never be a naturalist by profession." And to Linnell: "Milton, by one epithet, draws an oak of the largest girth I ever saw, 'Pine and monumental oak': I have just been trying to draw a large one in Lullingstone; but the poet's tree is huger than any in the park....""

(thanks robot wisdom weblog)



 

"Drum Beat for Baby" by Weekend (offshoot of Young Marble Giants) from a Gallery of New Wave Single Sleeves
 

PDF's of back issues of Jonathan's excellent ecopoetics, "An annual journal dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between making (with an emphasis on writing) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings)" with subscription information, etc, can be found here. His field-ready "Political Cactus Poems" is available from Palm Press--

FALL

vinyl cooking is worn
in periodic waves with slips
circadian zone attunes rain
one final night of rest
out the back yard window
summer gives up its thaw
the city moves inside
of solitary note's flagrant
shiny pin on the shirt

 

from the excellent Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History an Olmsted Park Cybertour with history, images and information about the numerous Seattle parks designed by the great landscape architect between 1903 and 1908.

(this correction from Olmstead maven Jonathan Skinner--

"I just noticed on your blog you have the Seattle parks as designed by “the great landscape architect,” but note it’s his nephew who did the work, who had joined the firm in 1893. John Charles Olmsted and Olmsted’s own son, Frederick Law, effectively ran the firm from the mid-1890s on—from the point at which Olmsted himself began to succumb to Alzheimers. Olmsted lived out his last five years at the MacLean asylum in Waverly, Mass., on grounds he had himself designed... Many “Olmsted” parks are actually by the Olmsted firm, some done as late as 1950. The great Olmsted went out on August 27, 1903.")

from The Teletype Story--my dad ran a teletype machine (an early form of internet?) for the RCAF at various Canadian outposts of the "Pine Tree Line" early warning system, and then (still with the RCAF) for 4 years in Scotland, where at some point I got to see one--vast, clattering, gray (bigger than the ones here) though what most impressed me was that you could only type in capitals with no punctuation. When they started phasing them out in the 70's he would bring home the big rolls of carbon paper on which I would type my early poems Kerouac-style...



(thanks Antti)

important PBS documentary on the torture question tonight--

"The legal framework developed by administration lawyers like Berenson, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo provided the impetus for unprecedented rules for interrogating detainees, rules authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- rules officials insist never condoned torture.

FRONTLINE follows the implementation of the Rumsfeld rules from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, where eventually the FBI began to document a trail of abuses by interrogators.

In one e-mail, an agent reports on conditions in an interrogation room: "[T]he A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

The Torture Question follows the migration of such practices to the horrific scene photographed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in the fall of 2003. "Guantanamo Bay people were implanted in the prison around October, and they showed up and changed everything," a person with intimate knowledge of the events at Abu Ghraib tells FRONTLINE. "Things got more harsh." "

Merle Haggard

'Yea, men in position but backing away
Freedom is stuck in reverse
Let's get out of Iraq and get back on the track
And let's rebuild America first.'
 

A minor mystery solved, of who had been neatly scything--as with a bluntish but well-wielded knife, sections of some of the numerous windfall apples around the place. Raccoons are theoretically around but rarely seen & would have found much else to their liking & made a big mess, bears wouldn't leave a half apple under any imaginable scenario & who knows where they are this year, ravens perhaps but just can't see them bothering with fruit what with all the carrion around, but just now I saw a steller's jay fly by with a good third of a big red apple in its beak with a bit of cut edge showing: they must use their beaks, apples must be splittable with a good pivot and a couple of sawstrokes. And yesterday I saw a young swain walking home from school hand in hand with his girlfriend in the rain run into a yard to fetch a big yellow apple off a tree, which he dried and polished on his hoodie and presented with courtly panache. Like Daph (who deigned to construct a pie last week) & Bob (who ran onto the coaltip farm & fetched one for me some weeks back), but unlike me, the jay had that mental map of good trees, secure caches, secret routes, recipes.

spare a thought for my wife & thousands of others marching in the rain today, on picket lines or onto the legislature lawn in support of BC's teachers today--


Where Are Our 'Guardians of Public Interest'?


"What kind of public fails to appreciate the national investment entrusted to the work of our teachers? What kind of public tolerates the kinds of suffering they now endure? It is a failure of the state, not of the teachers. This is nowhere better expressed than in the words of the influential and respected French academic, Pierre Bourdieu, who died a few years ago. Writing of the growing disillusion felt by our public servants, by 'social workers, family counsellors, youth leaders, rank and file magistrates, and also, increasingly, secondary and primary teachers'. Bourdieu went on to point to where the blame lay: 'One of the main reasons for all these people's despair is that that the state has withdrawn, or is withdrawing, from ...sectors of social life for which it was previously responsible ...What is described as a crisis of politics...is really, in reality, despair at the failure of the state to act as the guardian of public interest.' Where today, here and now, are our guardians of public interest? Without them, without their defense of those public servants, like teachers, who labor in the service of the greater good, there can be no public welfare, and there can be no justice either. "

the written view of Mount Baker below is from John Muir's "Steep Trails" at EXPLORION a truly vast trove of traveller's tales, includes all of Hakluyt, Aubrey's Wiltshire, Bartram &c &c (via Metafilter)--


"Passing through the strait, we have the Olympic Mountains close at hand on the right, Vancouver Island on the left, and the snowy peak of Mount Baker straight ahead in the distance. During calm weather, or when the clouds are lifting and rolling off the mountains after a storm, all these views are truly magnificent. Mount Baker is one of that wonderful series of old volcanoes that once flamed along the summits of the Sierras and Cascades from Lassen to Mount St. Elias. Its fires are sleeping now, and it is loaded with glaciers, streams of ice having taken the place of streams of glowing lava. Vancouver Island presents a charming variety of hill and dale, open sunny spaces and sweeps of dark forest rising in swell beyond swell to the high land in the distance."

Another sure sign that fall is locked in is the overwhelming need to break out Stan Getz Plays (one of the first CD's I bought) to hear his version of
Henry Nemo's "'Tis Autumn", in which you can see the leaves skittering down the sidewalk, smell the expired Bengal Matches along the canal...as Coltrane said of Getz "We'd all play like that if we could..."



Old Father time checked, so there'd be no doubt
Called on the North wind to come on out,
Then cupped his hands so proudly to shout,
"La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, 'tis autumn!"

Trees say they're tired, they've born too much fruit;
Charmed on the wayside, there's no dispute.
Now shedding leaves, they don't give a hoot --
La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, 'tis autumn!

Then the birds got together to chirp about the weather
Mmmm - mmm - mmm - mmm.
After makin' their decision, in birdie-like precision,
Turned about, and made a beeline to the south.

My holding you close really is no crime --
Ask the birds and the trees and old Father Time.
It's just to help the mercury climb--
La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, 'tis autumn!

Happy?

"The founding fathers, said John Ralston Saul, a Canadian political philosopher, defined happiness as a balance of individual and community interests. 'The Enlightenment theory of happiness was an expression of public good or the public welfare, of the contentment of the people,' Mr. Saul said. And, he added, this could not be further from 'the 20th-century idea that you should smile because you're at Disneyland.'"

(thanks to I like)


(more pictures at Kings County Library)


 

interesting gen on the alternating Law & Order: Criminal Intent casts: I enjoy them both, myself--

"D'Onofrio's overheated, scene-hogging style couldn't be a sharper contrast with the cool, sly suavity of Chris Noth. Det. Mike Logan is a throwback to an older school of TV cop, less Gil Grissom than Jim Rockford; he gives the impression not only of having a life outside work, but of occasionally phoning it in at the job so he can get back to the fun stuff."
 

(click on image to read)

the arrival in my mailbox of this month's TOLLING ELF makes October official--this month's has art by Debra Steckler and six poems by Hoa Nguyen, including (and excuse the reformatting of the last stanza!

THE MOOD

The mood here is serious
which would call for sitting
in a circle on pad-less chairs
Wear stripes but in dark colors
DON'T OVER ACT!
& cross your arms

I had a tan pleather jacket
large buttons and honestly
the jump cuts show
my button-down father
and a pouty look

I will be super-evil
Twinned male
dressed all alike
white & indistinguishable


*


next month: a surprise!

A Letter From Hammertown to Fort Tryon

My exoskelton
protects my tongue

but leaves my
hindquarters exposed,

if only to the weather:
my country,

created by the dry stroke
of a Whitehall pen

for the benefit of haberdashers
and fishmongers

saw the draft resisters
as a rich source

of mental pelts
for acid testing

and the carbonation
of Lake Erie,

Vancouver was the
first city

to banish Lenny Bruce
ship back the Sikhs &c.

& skim the foam
from the cappuccino triangle

so of course
we're funny--its what

we have
instead of checks and balances, what

allows us
to coin in the shit

with a smile
in a dome

of bearish lavender
while pivoting

our ju-jitsu
ever inward.

Whitman Cigar Label

Whitman Cigar Label, originally uploaded by Mongibeddu.

from below...

Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868)

Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868), originally uploaded by Mongibeddu.

thanks Ben Friedlander for photo and poetry link, from his "American Poets in the Age of Whitman" set

from her "Genius"



"I hear people speak of "unfortunate genius," of "poets who never penned their inspirations;" that "Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest;" of "unappreciated talent," and "malignant stars," and other contradictory things.
It is all nonsense.
Where power exists, it cannot be suppressed any more than the earthquake can be smothered.
As well attempt to seal up the crater of Vesuvius as to hide God's given power of the soul.
"You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops, and to make no noise When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven," as to hush the voice of genius.
There is no such thing as unfortunate genius.
If a man or woman is fit for work, God appoints the field.
He does more; He points to the earth with her mountains, oceans, and cataracts, and says to man, " Be great!"
He points to the eternal dome of heaven and its blazing worlds, and says: "Bound out thy life with beauty."
He points to the myriads of down-trodden, suffering men and women, and says: "Work with me for the redemption of these, my children."
He lures, and incites, and thrusts greatness upon men, and they will not take the gift.
Genius, on the contrary, loves toil, impediment, and poverty; for from these it gains its strength, throws off the shadows, and lifts its proud head to immortality.
Neglect is but the fiat to an undying future."

currently rattling the windows at the Manse--Cambodian Cassette Archives Vol.1 (good blog too)

"This time, though, the cassettes come not from Cambodia, but from the Asian branch of the Oakland, California public library. As with the earlier classic, this album contains everything that makes 'old school' Khmer pop such a pleasure - driving acid-tinged guitars, sinuous 60's organs, lilting Bollywoodesque chanteuses, and suave crooners... But, in addition to that, we get to hear how elements like ska horn sections and cheesy 80's synths have seeped into post-Khmer-Rouge music. "
 

& speaking of old school American funny (American humor has too often in recent years been a branch plant of Canadian humor--snarky, self-referential, status-ridden, mean-spirited, driven by secret envy and schadenfreude--since the 70's rise of Letterman, SNL & National Lampoon, all written by Canadians) its nice to see the great Shelley Berman still at it as Larry David's dad...



 

memo to KD: new W.C. Fields box includes not only "International House" (discussed here) but the peerless "It's a Gift"...
 

very pleased and surprised to see that Harold Pinter has won the Nobel Prize for Literature--

"Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is is that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality - to distort what happens-because we fear it? We are encouraged to be cowards. We can't face the dead. But we must face the dead because they die in our name. We must pay attention to what is being done in our name."


 

Paradise Lost to be given the Hollywood treatment

"Paradise Lost, John Milton's epic poem about Adam and Eve's temptation and fall, is to be turned into a feature film for the first time since its publication more than 330 years ago. Hollywood producers aim to keep the screen version faithful to Milton's 1667 original, a complex work comprising 12,000 lines of blank verse. The production is described as 'epic in scope and size'."
 

Man Walks To France

"It would have been a very long and dangerous journey as trains would have been passing him regularly."

listening with great pleasure to the 1986 live in Saugerties Whispering Pines which sadly proved to be the great Richard Manuel's last recording...

"Richard had briefly lived in a house in Woodstock that once belonged to the painter George Bellows. There was an old piano in the house which had been left behind and Richard wrote "Whispering Pines" on it. It had one key that was out of tune, and when he came to record the song he had the studio piano tuned the same way, so that one key was still out. That's what's responsible for the vamp figure at the beginning and end of the song."
 

belated farewell to great jurist Constance Baker Motley who would have still been on the Supreme Court last month if LBJ had appointed her instead of Abe Fortas....

"She was indomitable," said Jack Greenberg, who succeeded Marshall as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal and Education Fund and is now a professor at Columbia University School of Law. "She would take on a project like opening up the University of Mississippi and just keep coming back again and again and again. She was like Grant at Vicksburg. She just dug in there and stayed there until they rolled over."

 

Amazing Rock Facts!

I did not know that...



Ralf Hutter can't program his VCR...The best selling album of all-time is "Trout Mask Replica" by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band...John Cale is used as a standard measurement of weight in Wales...Suzanne and Alan Vega are identical twins...Due to a rare bone condition, Bootsy Collins is unable to float in water, and has not had a bath since 1967....

No Trespassing--Vancouver's "urban explorers"...

"To urban explorers like Ninjalicious (and now me) 'no trespassing' signs serve as an invitation to investigate the drains, abandoned buildings, steam tunnels and other facets of the city most people never glimpse. We operate under the belief that trespass, while technically illegal, is not immoral. We don't vandalize or take objects from sites, and most of us follow a strong ethical code that mirrors the Sierra Club's: 'take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints'."

CBSNews.com: Blog

"Yesterday we heard about possible attacks in New York just hours after the President delivered a tough-talking speech about the dangers we face from terrorists. And the subway story stepped on breaking news that White House political boss Karl Rove would again testify to a Grand Jury. How convenient! "

hardcore Zukofsky scholars may want to now that his preferred Century Dictionary is available here online. (Robert M. of Seattle the only person I know with a hard copy, though I have the smaller revised one)

"..s (15'i), n. [F., a coin, so named from Louis XIII.] A gold coin of France.--I...
.. first struck in 1640, in the reign of Louis XlII., and coined continuously the..
.. the republican and Obverse. Reverse. Louis d'or. imperial 20-franc piece was..
..or. imperial 20-franc piece was styled louis, and is still some. times so styl..
..-i-zet'), n. [F.: so called from a Dr. Louis: see guillotie.] A former name (i..
..Louisiana. louisine (15-i-zSn'), n. [4 Louis or Louise, a person's name, q- -i..
..t silk material used for summer wear. Louis-Quatorze (15'i-ka-t6rz'), a. [F.] ..
..on prevalent in France in the reign of Louis XIV. (1643-1715), and copied in ot..
..irit of the age. In decorative art the Louis-Quatorze style embraces several ne..
..assed all previous work of this kind. Louis-Quinze (15'i-kafiz'), a. [F.] An e..
..ure and decoration which succeeded the Louis-Qua- torze style, and characteriz..
..e style, and characterized the reign of Louis XV. (1715-74). In it the peculiar..
..ament of this style is termed rococo. Louis-Seize (15'i-saz'), a. [F.] An epit..
..ch prevailed in France in the reign of Louis XVI. (1774-92), distinguished by ..
..return to greater simplicity than under Louis XV., and not seldom by the aim to..
.. during the prevalence of this style. Louis-Treize (15'i-traz'), a. [F.] An ep..
..oration characteristic of the reign of Louis XIII. (1610-43), or in general of .."