thanks WH for hipping me to APOLLO GHOSTS

An ode to the hard-scrabble city of Nanaimo, BC, Mount Benson divulges the dark secrets of this luckless Vancouver Island town, a demystification on par with revealing the Masonic Handshake. Is the song Wakesiah just a tribute to a street above a former coal mine or really about a former lover? How dangerous can it be to swim in Witchcraft Lake? Who are the Sons of Norway? Is this all actually a ploy to reveal why former eccentric mayor, Frank Ney, wore pirate suits and rode in bathtubs across the Strait of Georgia?

Man-eating squid off Nanaimo?

An outdoor magazine article that said a diver was killed by giant Humboldt squid is being questioned by the diving community, which says it could negatively harm Nanaimo’s dive tourism industry.

The article, titled ‘Attack of the Giant Squid’, appeared in the January-February edition of Western Sportsman.

The story focused on how dangerous the large sea creatures are and included a reference to a diver off Nanaimo being “attacked by several squid and dragged to his death.”

Local divers, including Mayor John Ruttan say it could hurt Nanaimo’s growing reputation as a diving destination...

Iraq slaughter NOT an aberration

The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentiments are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do. If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indicment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues...

a happy 80th to composer • Robert Ashley • who has a new collection of writings/scores out...

PERFECT LIVES (excerpts)

out this month: Danny Trejo in Machete

poster tributes to Iconic Televsion

Parkway

Beaver Creek Road

(march 2007)

No need to get
into a stewpot
with the sacrificial horse

the days of course
streaks of Bovril hot
from a tartan thermos

& the battle of the trees
& the battle of the letters
& the battle between the

the letters & the trees
has got my paternoster threading
his beaded naps past dawn--

I am the falcon
I fly blind
through a progressive sky--

Hampton Hawes
of Hermosa Beach his
harmonium gently weeps

a pastel streak
down a marble cheek
while evening recluses

abandon conclusions
to come in out of the rain
& a lighthouse beam passes

over an eagle-eye
copper moon dangling
over the folds of a felt sweater

in a truck more likely to buck
than switch to premium
for the Parkway--

I am the circling bird
I can smell
your meaty hesitations...

after all's been said the
hammer still falls
on an empty chamber:

Joanna to Goldfinch
a row of Specials
nestled in a ravine

where worn hoops swoon
& the sun don't crest
' til afternoon.

Parkway

(November 1992)

(March 2007)

1.

The Rural Parkway-Wooded is characterized as a "cut through the forest" quality created by the regularity of the forest edge and by the relative closeness of the forest to the roadway. However, where the opportunity to separate the bikeway exists, it should be seen to enter the forest; not just make the road right-of-way wider.

2.

The edges of this type of Parkway are defined by the "loose" or "feathered" landscape edge which may include rural fencing. In this type of Parkway visibility into developments is expected and therefore the controls focus on establishing a relatively consistent building setback, controlled signage and mitigiating the negative impact of loading areas and other unsightly elements of development.

3.

Fencing should allow for feathering, undulation and fragmentation of the landscape edge to occur so that the fence is sometimes in front of and sometimes behind random groupings of indigenous coniferous and deciduous plant materials. Open views to pastoral settings should be retained. There are frequent views through the landscape to the rural development beyond. There are view opportunities to the valley below.

from Curious Pages

Afghanistan is a Drug War

To understand the Afghan War, one basic point must be grasped: in poor nations with weak state services, agriculture is the foundation for all politics, binding villagers to the government or warlords or rebels. The ultimate aim of counterinsurgency strategy is always to establish the state's authority. When the economy is illicit and by definition beyond government control, this task becomes monumental. If the insurgents capture that illicit economy, as the Taliban have done, then the task becomes little short of insurmountable.

Opium is an illegal drug, but Afghanistan's poppy crop is still grounded in networks of social trust that tie people together at each step in the chain of production. Crop loans are necessary for planting, labor exchange for harvesting, stability for marketing, and security for shipment. So dominant and problematic is the opium economy in Afghanistan today that a question Washington has avoided for the past nine years must be asked: Can anyone pacify a full-blown narco-state?

baking project today: Martin Prince's Raisin Roundies

Hidden from History: Unknown New Orleanians

Known as “the city that care forgot,” imagined (and promoted) as a seductress on the banks of the Mississippi, New Orleans has long been associated with a lack of consequences, a care-free kind of freedom. But for people who lived and worked in New Orleans, people who served the pleasure economy, people who toiled for the sugar, rice, tobacco, and other export markets, and for people who were unable to work at all, the city was not so indulgent, not so forgiving...

The Tyee — Coalition 2.0: Open Letter to Ignatieff, Layton and May

Open Letter to Ignatieff, Layton & May

At this stage, if the Liberals, the NDP and Greens established a formal coalition, before an election, it would be difficult for the Conservatives to try to discredit this. Importantly, the Bloc would not be part of it. The coalition should be upfront and in the open, as coalitions are in Europe and elsewhere. It's time that people in Canada came to realize that this is now the reality of the situation in our country -- that there is nothing wrong with the centre-left forming a coalition, with a combined platform that reflects the country's political and ideological structure.

Despite entrenched party loyalties, what centre-left Canadians need is a new political entity which the Liberals, the NDP, and the Greens could form if they acted creatively and courageously. If they did this it could be the dawn of a new era in Canada.

just in case you haven't bookmarked Roy Arden 's blog yet...

on TCM tonight Letter from an Unknown Woman

During a rainy night, a horsedrawn carriage with three men inside winds along a cobblestone street. One of the occupants who leaves the carriage and enters his apartment, a middle-aged, refined-looking gentleman, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), is on the eve of a duel...

Will ABC Let Amanpour Be Amanpour?

"There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."

William Carlos Williams

local & South Delta trees

David Frum on the conservative's Waterloo

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours...

"Scrim" from Anodyne