oblations

sipress | blame the lord

2012-01-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

David Sipress,
The New Yorker
January 16, 2012

peter hessler | yakuza love

2012-01-20T07:53:00.001-08:00

Stories tended to tumble out of Adelstein, full of crazy yakuza details, and today he told a new one. He said that during his period of obsessive research he had conducted an affair with one of Goto’s mistresses. The gangster reportedly kept more than a dozen women in Tokyo and other cities, and Adelstein slept with one who gave him useful information. Eventually, he helped her escape Goto by introducing her to a gay salaryman who needed a wife and was about to be posted overseas. He said that the couple still shared an address in Europe. I asked what the mistress was like.

“We had this lovely conversation once in bed,” Adelstein said. “She said, ‘Do you love me?’ I said, ‘No, but I like you.’ She said, ‘I like you, too. You’re a lot of fun.’ Then she said, ‘Are you sleeping with me to get information about Goto?’ I said, ‘Pretty much. What about you?’ She said, ‘Well, I hate the motherfucker and every time I sleep with you it’s like I’m stabbing him in the face.’ She was into astronomy. Once, we went to a planetarium in Sunshine City. I think that was the only time we ever went out in public together. That was our only date.” He continued, “it was nice. Another time, I gave her a gift — I bought an expensive planetarium set that Sega makes. She cried.”

He lit another cigarette. He had told me once that he didn’t expect to have a long life, but in Tokyo he always seemed happy and full of energy. I liked the image from his story: the odd couple at the planetarium, the Japanese gangster’s mistress and the cross-eyed kid from Missouri, both of them staring up at the stars. I thought about that until we reached the airport and he wend off to find some shoes.

from “All Due Respect: An American reporter takes on the yakuza”
by Peter Hessler
The New Yorker, January 9, 2012

The Thomas Gantz photo of the Sunshine City planetarium is used by permission

stewart henderson | in the parlour

2012-01-19T10:15:00.002-08:00

I only knew her old, and her house with its parlour polished raw
‘because God can see in the dark’.
Dense furniture to weigh weary the spirit and disapproving curtains–
even anything that had colour, hadn’t. So rainbows never called
or circuses,
and parrots were just daft –
it was a room in which to be tethered and bleak.
The best china was never used
because that would be frivolous and wasteful
and something could get chipped.
Outside in the hall, the ramrod grandfather clock
was a ticking sentry, measuring Time’s slow march steps.

I only knew her old
when she darned the days with hate.
She hated Clement Atlee because he was ‘a posh socialist’
she hated Catholics because she observed most of them were short.
She hated all forms of alcohol,
which she described as horse’s piss – but how did she know,
if she’d never tasted either liquid – and if she had,
it may have been just a bad pint or
a stallion with a kidney infection?

She hated tobacco, so a woman with a cigarette was damned
but a man wasn’t – he was just filthy.
She hated gambling, but she did the football pools,
which wasn’t gambling.
She also hated
Haile Selassie, Wilfred Pickles and the first Moon landing.
But she did like dogs – she had several,
all of them madder than Crippen.

All this hate meant that by the age of sixteen,
I was reading impenetrable left-wing books, and
drinking and smoking, and sneaking into Mass, and
getting a mate to place bets on The Grand National.
I also developed a huge affection for Ethiopian emperors,
Yorkshire broadcasters, and the Sea of Tranquillity;
and I became frightened of dogs.
She had the same birthday as Hitler, and there were days
when I used to think: ‘poor Hitler’.

I only knew her old, when life, for her, was about
the dwindling of days, and cataracts, and heavy coats in Summer
and the Pope being ecumenical on television,
and, an even worse abomination for her, a Labour government.

I only knew her old.
I did not see her hurled across the classroom by a teacher,
causing one of her little fingers to snap
(it ever after resembling the shape of a wish bone
pointing back into her palm – a penance of deformity, although
she would never use the word ‘penance’ as that was Papist.)
I did not see her after that incident, when her father
then took his belt to her because
he said she must have deserved it.

I was not there when she lost two babies in childbirth,
and a couple of husbands, and then another child.

I was there, though, when her son suddenly became a ghost,
and her siren grief made next door draw their curtains shut.
Maybe that was the day when love was finally looted from her.

I only knew her old,
and, at the end,
in her room, in her breathless bed,
when she left for somewhere
where I hoped she wouldn’t be old
or beaten
or stooped with hate.

Copyright Stewart Henderson. Must not be copied or reproduced without the author's permission. To do so is to infringe UK copyright law.

linus | what christmas is all about

2011-12-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:
and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not:
for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David
a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you;
Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes,
lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, good will toward men.

*

Network executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke; the network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Version of the Bible. Charles Schulz was adamant about keeping this scene in, remarking, "If we don't tell the true meaning of Christmas, who will?"

The executives thought that the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi would not work well for a children's program. When executives saw the final product, they were horrified and believed the special would be a complete flop. CBS programmers were equally pessimistic, informing the production team, “We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.” Mendelson and Melendez said to themselves, "We've just ruined Charlie Brown."

The half-hour special first aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following the Gilligan's Island episode "Don't Bug the Mosquitoes." A total of 50% of the televisions in the United States were tuned to the first broadcast. Linus's recitation was hailed by critics such as Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram who said, "Linus' reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season."

Wikipedia

evans + frank + herzog | santa

2011-12-22T00:13:00.001-08:00

walker evans | west virginia living room | 1935

robert frank | ranch market - hollywood | 1956

fred herzog | paris cafe | 1959

frank + herzog | witness

2011-12-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Jehovah's Witness

Robert Frank

Los Angeles, 1955-56

Witness

Fred Herzog

Vancouver, 1966

adam gopnik | boring, boring, boring

2011-12-05T00:16:00.001-08:00

At Oxford in the nineteen-forties, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was generally considered the most boring lecturer around, teaching the most boring subject known to man, Anglo-Saxon philology and literature, in the most boring way imaginable. "Incoherent and inaudible" was Kingsley Amis's verdict on his teacher.

It is still one of the finest jests of the modern muses that this fogged-in English don was going home nights to work on perhaps the most popular adventure story ever written....

Adam Gopnik, "The Dragon's Egg"
The New Yorker, December 5, 2011

richard bram | street photography

2011-11-26T22:06:00.000-08:00

Photos by Richard Bram

iN-PUBLiC

jim lepage | word

2011-11-13T20:51:00.001-08:00

jim lepage is a graphic artist who set himself a two-year project to create at least one image for each book of the bible. these are my favourites. here's the link.

peter schjeldahl | you want to be worthy of it

2011-10-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

While you're looking at Giovanni Bellini's big oil on wood "St. Francis in the Desert" (circa 1475-78), at the Frick Collection, it seems to satisfy every personal use you've ever had for art. Wanting any other work would betray gluttony. Now the museum has organized a little show around research into this most perfect of pictures. There's not much to discover. X-rays of the scene, in which the saint stands transfixed in a multitudinous landscape, find a completely worked-out drawing, across which Bellini applied the skin of paint as deftly as if he were pulling a blind. The jewel-like style rivals that of contemporaneous Flemish oils but is suffused with Italian tenderness. The painting stuns with its conception of physical and spiritual vision as one and the same. We are seduced by naturalistic and poetic details - that personable donkey, unforgettably - while being set back on our heels by the polished execution. Like the humility of St. Francis, the work's sublimity makes you want to be worthy of it. Change your life!

Peter Schjeldahl,
The New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2011

photos | re:union

2011-10-19T21:49:00.002-07:00

Re:Union

by Sean Devine

pictured: Andrew Wheeler, Alexa Devine, Evan Frayne
pix by me

regina leader-post | dreamy jazz

2011-10-18T22:19:00.001-07:00

Regina Leader-Post

September 26, 1962

w.h. auden | musee des beaux arts

2011-10-17T20:11:00.001-07:00

Pieter Breughel the elder

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Thomas Hoepker

janet malcolm | struth on the bechers

2011-10-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

Spherical Gas Tanks | Hilla & Bernd Becher

Thomas Struth entered the Kunstakademie in 1973, and studiesd with the photographers Hilla and Bernd Becher. The Bechers are cult figures, known in the photography world for their typologies of water towers, gas tanks, workers' houses, winding towers, and blast furnaces, among other forms of the industrial vernacular.

"Eventually their meaning in the history of art will be linked more with their teaching and the influence it had than with their work."

I asked Struth about the influence on him of the Bechers' pedagogy.

"They were fantastic teachers in the way that they demonstrated the complexity of connections. When you met with Bernd and Hilla they didn't talk about photography alone. They talked about movies, journalism, literature - stuff that was very comprehensive and complex. For example, a typcial thing Bernd would say was 'You have to undertand the Paris photographs of Atget as the visualization of Marcel Proust.'"

I said, "I don't get it. What does Atget have to do with Proust?"

"It's a similar time span. What Bernd meant was that when you read Proust that's what the backdrop is. That's the theatre."

"Did you read Proust while you were studying with the Bechers?"

"No, no. I didn't."

"Have you read Proust since?"

"No."

"So what was the point for you of connecting Atget with Proust?"

Struth laughed. "Maybe it's a bad example."

SolarWorld Factory | Thomas Struth

from Depth Of Field" by Janet Malcolm

The New Yorker, September 6, 2011

sasha frere-jones | merrill garbus

2011-09-23T21:29:00.002-07:00

once the band has kicked in, nothing
can distract you from
the clarity
and oomph
of her voice,

a gorgeous instrument
that slides through dissonant squeaks,
flattening, pure tones,
and various throat noises.

she throws herself into her singing with equal parts
brio
and poise,
as if she's frustrated
that music isn't
harder.

from Critic's Notebook "Going Yard,"
The New Yorker, Sep 19, 2011

photos | steps, art supply store

2011-09-14T00:29:00.004-07:00

iPhone photo

photos | venetian blinds, curtain

2011-09-09T00:30:00.003-07:00

iPhone photos

photos | branches, house: variations

2011-09-04T00:32:00.011-07:00

iPhone photos

photos | fire exit

2011-09-04T00:32:00.010-07:00

iPhone photo

photos | english bay

2011-09-04T00:31:00.007-07:00

iPhone photo

photos | daisies

2011-09-04T00:31:00.006-07:00

iPhone photo

photos | revolver

2011-08-31T00:33:00.003-07:00

iPhone photo

photos | hamlet camp

2011-08-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

Gertrud, Polonius

Hamlet, Horatio, Ophelia

Laertes, Horatio, Hamlet

photos | neon sacramento

2011-08-10T03:32:00.000-07:00

photos | drive-through, sacramento

2011-08-10T00:34:00.004-07:00

iPhone photo

everyday abbey road

2011-08-08T01:25:00.001-07:00

NORMAN. Counting down to the long awaited Feast Of The Holy Crossing, it was twenty years ago today! August 8, 1969, at 11:35 sharp, the commemoration right here on KRBY, Radio That's Way Beyond The Norm! . . .

from You Still Can't

by Ron Reed

photos | sonoma coast

2011-08-08T00:36:00.007-07:00

iPhone photo

photos | ashland

2011-08-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

apricots

lithia park

farmer's market

iphone photos | click to enlarge

#1 and #3 treated with plastic bullet

#2 treated with camera bag

photos | snack bar

2011-07-31T00:34:00.003-07:00

iPhone photo

kirsten hively | project neon

2011-07-19T11:32:00.003-07:00

all images are by kirsten hively

whose project neon was recently featured in the new yorker

blog | photostream

click on any image to enlarge

1 st. paul's house

2 st. paul's house

3 orothodox cathedral of the holy virgin protection

4 new covenant holiness church

5 father's heart ministry centre
6 city chemist

7 st. paul's house

8 new yorker, july 4, 2011

photos | vancouver canadians

2011-07-15T17:01:00.001-07:00

iPhone photos

the new yorker | dietary dialectic

2011-07-15T00:24:00.000-07:00

new yorker | june 6, 2011

new yorker | june 27, 2011

adam gopnik | the absence of impossibility

2011-07-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

I was filled with feelings of helplessness and stupidity and impotence that I had not experienced since elementary school. Why was I so unable to do something so painfully simple? Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility: it's really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never any good at doing in the first place.

from "Life Studies: What I learned when I learned to draw"
Adam Gopnik
The New Yorker, June 27, 2011

photos | coal harbour variations

2011-07-05T20:02:00.013-07:00

iPhone photo | filtered with camera bag

click to enlarge

photos | vancouver canadians

2011-06-28T23:13:00.001-07:00

michael chabon | summer

2011-06-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business. . . . He asked me what my plans were for the summer, and in the flush of some strong emotion or other I said, more or less: It's the beginning of the summer and I'm standing in the lobby of a thousand-story grand hotel, where a bank of elevators a mile long and an endless row of monkey attendants in gold braid wait to carry me up, up, up through the suites of moguls, of spies, and of starlets, to rush me straight to the zeppelin mooring at the art deco summit, where they keep the huge dirigible of August tied up and bobbing in the high winds. On my way to the shining needle at the top I will wear a lot of neckties, I will buy five or six works of genius on 45 rpm, and perhaps too many times I will find myself looking at the snapped spine of a lemon wedge at the bottom of a drink. I said, "I anticipate a coming season of dilated time and of women all in disarray."

My father told me that I was overwrought and that Claire had had an unfortunate influence on my speech, but something in his face said that he understood.

Michael Chabon,
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

luci shaw | states of being

2011-06-01T11:11:00.001-07:00

image by rex lau | acqua pazza ii, 2006

jeanne murray walker | flight

2011-05-21T11:16:00.004-07:00

The angel speeding down the runway pulls up
her wing flaps, and, wouldn't you know it, wobbles,
then dribbles to a stop. She stands on the windy
tarmac, embarrassed, brushing her blond hair
from her eyes, trying to remember how to elevate
herself, wishing she'd worn jeans instead of
the girly skirt that looks good when she's flying.
It's gravity's old malice, showing up in the strangest
places, now at the corner, where the fortune cookie truck
forgets how to turn, tipping gracefully, sliding on
its side as cookies spill into the summer night.
Then mercy stalls in every precinct of the city

and we're just bodies, only protoplasm for a wasp
to sting. Even love is a sad mechanical business then,
and prayer an accumulation of words I would kill
to believe in. There's no happy end to a poem
that lacks faith, no way to get out. I could go on,
mentioning that doubt, no doubt, is a testing. But
meanwhile the bedraggled angel glances towards
the higher power, wondering how much help she'll get,
not a manual, for sure, but a pause in entropy perhaps,
until she can get her wings scissoring. Call it cooperation
that helps a fledgling rise to build, sustain itself, and
lift her past the tree line. And then she knows she won't
fall, oh holy night, can't fall. Anything but.

first published in Cresset | photo by Jeff Gritchen

alan jacobs | the language of stories

2011-05-14T09:50:00.001-07:00

Words in defense of Christianity miss the mark: they are a translation into the dispassionate language of argument of something that resides far deeper in the caverns of volition, of commitment. Perhaps this is why Saint Francis, so the story goes, instructed his followers to “preach the Gospel always, using words if necessary.” It is not simply and straight-forwardly wrong to make arguments in defense of the Christian faith, but it is a relatively superficial activity: it fails to address the core issues. A Christian who participates in a Socratic debate about Christianity could be said to be falsifying the spiritual situation, or allowing it to be falsified. After all, an apologist for Christianity, to some degree at least, commits himself or herself to answering questions that Jesus himself consistently refused to answer.

But strange to say, there is a kind of language that, if it does not avoid such superficiality, nevertheless shows an awareness of that danger and in a sense can point beyond itself. I refer to the language of stories.

“I am not quite sure,” Lewis wrote in 1952, when most of the Narnia books were done, “what made me, in a particular year of my life, feel that not only a fairy tale, but a fairy tale addressed to children, was what I must write. ... Partly, I think that this form permits, or compels you to leave out things I wanted to leave out. It compels you to throw all the force of a book into what was done and said. It checks what a kind, but discerning critic called ‘the expository demon’ in me.”

“Everything began with images: a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.” There was not, he says over and over again, an evangelistic plan in the making of Narnia, no apologetic scheme. ...

What he has to do instead is to trust the images that come into his mind – or, more accurately, trust that he is being formed as a Christian in such a way that the images that come to his mind are authentic ones, ones that lie at, or at least near, the center of his soul.

He can only do this if he rejects not only the market-driven questions of modern authors and publishers (“What do children want?”) but even the more morally sound question of the Christian apologist (“What do children need?”): “It is better not to ask the questions at all. Let the pictures tell you their own moral. For the moral inherent in them will rise from whatever spiritual roots you have succeeded in striking during the whole course of your life.”

by Alan Jacobs,
"The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis"
(pages 242-244)

ron reed, pitcher

2011-05-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

Ron Reed (born November 2, 1942 in LaPorte, Indiana) is a retired American starting/relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for the Atlanta Braves (1966-75), St. Louis Cardinals (1975), Philadelphia Phillies (1976-83) and Chicago White Sox (1984). He batted and threw right-handed. Reed was a basketball standout at the University of Notre Dame and later played in NBA for the Detroit Pistons (1965-67)

In a 19-season career, Reed posted a 146-140 record with a 3.46 ERA, 103 saves, 1481 strikeouts, eight shutouts, 55 complete games, and 2477-23 innings in 751 appearances (236 as a starter).
He is one of only five pitchers in MLB history to have 100 wins, 100 saves and 50 complete games. The other four are Ellis Kinder, Firpo Marberry, Dennis Eckersley, and John Smoltz[1]

1968 National League All-Star team

Two World Series (1980, 1983)

Eight National League Championship Series (1969, 1976-78, 1980-81, 1983)
Won a career-high 18 games to help the Atlanta Braves to its first NL division title

Led MLB with 13 relief wins in 1979

Is one of only eight pitchers in history (with John Smoltz, Elroy Face, Dennis Eckersley, Bob Stanley, Rich Gossage, Dave Giusti and Hoyt Wilhelm) to have at least 100 wins and 100 saves

Was the winning pitcher the night Hank Aaron hit his record breaking 715th home run
Wikipedia

Reed was an athletic superstar in high school in LaPorte, Indiana, earning a basketball scholarship to nearby Notre Dame, where he was good enough to be selected, in 2004, to the university’s All-Century Men’s Basketball Team. He played professional basketball for two years, averaging 9.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game for the Detroit Pistons, then switched to baseball, where he had a productive 19-year career that included selection to an all-star team, a World Series championship, and the tying of the modern-day record for fewest home runs allowed in a season (250 innings or more).

According to Ron Reed’s enshrinement page on the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame, this last accomplishment is the one that gives Reed the most pride. It is mentioned on the back of this card, in a marginal cartoon that features a smiling, generic baseball player reading about the mark in a newspaper.

Reed was born in LaPorte, Indiana, a town recently featured in a book of found photographs. The book LaPorte, Indiana presents a series of black and white portraits taken by long-time LaPorte studio photographer Frank Pease, displaying not only (as John Mellencamp blurbs on the book’s website) "real people . . . [whose] grace and dignity . . . should be a source of hope for us all" but also a kind of nostalgic, idealized American dreamland."

Josh Wilker, Cardboard Gods

Career stats

This is peculiar. Looking for a baseball card showing my alter ego as a Brave, I found it posted on a blog dedicated to the 1975 Topps series of cards. The date of the post: my birthday.Mine and Amada Peet's.

abandoned theatres

2011-04-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

Detroit, Michigan

Gary, Indiana

Boston, Massachusetts

Hudson Valley, New York

source

and the angel said to him

2011-04-07T19:56:00.001-07:00

crime scene

2011-04-07T08:17:00.001-07:00

"The Tivoli Theatre in Castlereagh Street was for decades Sydney's most popular variety theatre, famous for, among other things, its barely-clad showgirls. The circumstances behind this photograph may be thus: police are called in to make a report in the aftermath of a fire. They find themselves granted access to one of the most titillating locales in Sydney - the 'Tiv' dressing room. In the ensuing mood of ribald jocularity a policeman is photographed clowning about."

Justice & Police Museum, Sydney, Australia

police mug shots | sydney, australia | 1912-1930

2011-04-05T23:27:00.004-07:00

source | npr article

photos | calgary + rosebud

2011-03-30T17:58:00.001-07:00

iPhone pix taken mar 25 (calgary) and mar 30 (rosebud)

photos | jesus hopped the 'a' train | orange series

2011-03-21T18:07:00.003-07:00

pictured: Evan Frayne, Rob Olguin, Andrew McNee, Carl Kennedy

These photos of Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train were shot with a Canon Rebel,

then processed with the Camera Bag iPhone app

photos | jesus hopped the 'a' train | blue series

2011-03-21T00:01:00.003-07:00

pictured: Evan Frayne, Rob Olguin, Andrew McNee, Carl Kennedy

These photos of Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train were shot with a Canon Rebel,

then processed with the Camera Bag iPhone app

photos | open, gastown

2011-03-05T21:02:00.001-08:00

iPhone photo,

processed with helga and colorcross filters in camera bag app

peter sarstedt | where do you go to (my lovely)?

2011-02-22T21:50:00.000-08:00

liner notes, Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?

1969

guirgis | number one narcotic

2011-02-21T22:39:00.001-08:00

"Television's the number one narcotic we got going on up here in America! Keeps a man idle and stupid. Might as well pump heroin into the airstream. Same difference . . . TV!! Ha!! ... Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Who Wants To Kiss My Narrow Black Ass? I'd say that's a lot more like it."

Lucius, in Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train
by Stephen Adly Guirgis

bob dylan | gossip

2011-02-17T09:12:00.001-08:00

"Gossip is cheap and it's low. Don't matter if you live in a big city or a small town, there's always someone looking over the fence ready to wag their chin. And don't think you're above it just cause you're not speaking about your neighbours. Every time you look on a TV set, or on a computer, or in those magazines, looking at who's doing what to who, who's drinking what, who's gone to jail, you're taking part in gossip. You've got to remember: be careful of the stones you throw."

Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour: Be Careful Of The Stones You Throw

david emond | photomental

2011-02-12T18:41:00.031-08:00

these photos are by david emond, a photographer in kelowna bc

they appear on his blog photomental

click on any photo to enlarge

eve sonneman | sight - sound

2011-01-31T00:53:00.001-08:00

Sight - Sound: For Mike Goldberg, Samos, Greece, 1977

by Eve Sonneman

from The New Yorker, January 17 2011

balloon church

2011-01-28T10:03:00.001-08:00

"As you all know,

the film Andrei Rublev opens with a man sailing off in a balloon
from a church.

But think of how the sequence could have been improved

had he sailed off in a balloon that IS a church."

quote | du Garbandier, Arts & Faith

balloon church | Kubicek Balloons

scrapiteria | noah's houseboat

2011-01-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

posted by wastedpapiers

at scrapiteria

"Scrapiteria is made up of collagists who work in the traditional cut and paste method. Each week, a new theme is posted which they all intrepret in their own way."

diane tucker | arts groups face drastic cuts

2011-01-02T16:12:00.001-08:00

Each song is a slice of you, I know,
each one a skinless surface that weeps.
I can hear you along your grain; the ring
you grow each year to steady your heart.
We can date the various qualities of gold
by the many shades of your severed flesh.

Every chrome-eyed poem you throw over the side
of your life’s boat is a gasping fish, a sea creature
born on land that must be cast away to find its life.
They hit the water glowing. The further they get
from you, the brighter they shine. Parental,
you hack bits of yourself off and throw in after them.

Your pains you organize into paintings, glaze
the greens of every year with sweat and semi-gloss light.
Your arms’ force spreads on every surface.
They call them brushstrokes, but that’s too sweet
a word. They’re gunshots; dagger thrusts; choke-holds;
machine-gun fire. Burning arrows shot over black walls.

Speak the speech: when you speak, my heartbeat
shoots into thin air: you are emotional cardio.
Your body stands in for mine when you let the story
slay you: you are lower-case substitutionary
atonement. I want to be nailed up beside you
and rise again together with the house lights.

All the labourers of love in the field, the field white
with multi-chambered hearts. They make the muscle work:
systole, diastole, all our life-sustaining ins and outs.
No matter how many times they cut up the heart,
there’s a certain kind of cell that keeps on beating.
Even when left alone in its test tube, it pulses.
When two or three of these cells meet, their rhythms
become one. They organize the others against chaos;
deliver blood and oxygen; we need them all.
Without these cells beating, beating, our poor hearts stop.

by Diane Tucker

g.k. chesterton | magician, person, storyteller

2010-12-24T04:49:00.000-08:00

“I had always believe that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed to a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and that if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a storyteller.”

G.K. Chesterton

joseph's lullabye | ron klug

2010-12-22T10:40:00.002-08:00

Sleep now, little one.
I will watch while you and your mother sleep.
I wish I could do more.
This straw is not good enough for you.
Back in Nazareth I'll make a proper bed for you
of seasoned wood, smooth, strong, well pegged.
A bed fit for a carpenter's son.

Just wait till we get back to Nazareth.
I'll teach you everything I know.
You'll learn to choose the cedarwood, eucalyptus, and fir.
You'll learn to use the drawshave, ax, and saw.
Your arms will grow strong, your hands rough like
these.
You will bear the pungent smell of new wood
and wear shavings and sawdust in your hair.

You'll be a man whose life centers
on hammer and nails and wood.
But for now,
sleep, little Jesus, sleep.

peter la grand | a christmas memory

2010-12-21T02:11:00.001-08:00

It may surprise people that I once was a neo-hippie, much affected by the writings of Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, Dorothy Day, and Jesus. At least it may surprise you (as it does my wife) that I also once had a full head of hair. This was a while ago when I was 20 years old and spent my time grappling with how to live the gospel in a radical way in a modern and western life.

In other words I had no job and attended a small Christian Liberal Arts College.

I obtained the requisite VW camper van, painted it with rolling green hills, a blue sky, clouds, sun, and various radical quotes and a jesus fish; I played guitar; I lived in the bad part of town where rent was cheap. Pretty standard Midwest stuff.

I tell you all this to set the stage for a Christmas memory that took place at this time in my life. On this particular Christmas my desire to get to the marrow of every experience and to follow the gospel as best I could was burning like a fire. At the time my three older brothers all had new families with which to spend Christmas, and my parents had to spend Christmas at the Church where my father was minister. These Christmases were not attractive to me, being either about children, which I didn’t have, or about work with sermons to give and carol sings to attend. So I chose to make my own way and to spend Christmas on my own, in my rented house, reading the Bible and praying.

I forgot to mention how pious I was.

The house where I chose to spend Christmas was an old wooden house that housed seven of us comfortably. On Christmas day, of course, all of my housemates were with their families. They had all reacted as my family had to my desire to be alone – with disbelief and with some hurt when I declined their invitations to join them at their own celebrations.

On that day, I woke up alone in a that big, empty house. I don’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I do remember drinking coffee and reading the gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth, sitting swaddled in my sleeping bag (it was a cold house). I took my time reading, no doubt also smoking a cigarette or two. The thing is, though, that it didn’t take too long. I had no distractions, no family pictures or squabbles, no unwrapping to do, so before long I grew a bit bored. I then drank a Christmas beer, which I was pretty sure fit with the piety as monks brewed and drank beer. At least Martin Luther did, and he was the monk that counted in my tradition.

Sometime soon after I had the idea that I should sing and record some Christmas hymns – which I began to do on the four-track recorder that I had received for Christmas the previous year. I got fully involved in this project, and recorded a version of “Silent Night” in five part harmony – all the voices my own, all the harmonies written on the fly.

When I had finished Silent Night, I began to feel a little lonely. I wanted to share my song with someone. I had contemplated Christmas, but I was ready to now share Christmas. At this point my housemate Marcus came home with a plate of Christmas food he had taken from his parents house for me. Soon after our friend Josh showed up with the same, and we had a feast. I played them my song. The light was rosy and the cheer was good.

I did not think about this Christmas for a long time. It was one that was both full and lonely. Looking back I realize that while my intentions were good, I almost missed the point of Christmas – life. The coming of Jesus means many things, but most of all it means that we have hope in life. It means that we are not alone, that there is a God, and that God loves us. It means that we have reason to rejoice, that we have reason to connect and rejoice with the other. While there is a time for solitude, meditation, and prayer, Christmas is not properly celebrated this way. The birth of Christ was not a solitary affair. Not only was there a mother and child, but there was a father, there were animals, there were shepherds, wise men, angels – and the list might have been even bigger. Even my twenty year-old self somehow knew this unconsciously. I now see that I created my own 5 person community in a music recording in order to celebrate the birth of Christ. That day, Christmas really came in the form of my own two “wise” friends who brought food and presence to the stable I had chosen over the places I had been offered at the inn.

craig erickson | christmas rant

2010-12-19T12:57:00.008-08:00

rev. j.m. gates | death might be your santa claus

2010-12-18T00:47:00.002-08:00

I want to give you a little lecture this morning. I’m using for a subject, Death may be your Santa Claus. While we think on the 25th of December, we are expecting a great day. But on that day it is said that Jesus was born, but we celebrate Christmas wrong. From the way I look at this matter, shooting fireworks, cursing, and dancing. Raising all other kinds of sand.

Ah, but death may be your Santa Claus. Those of you who are speaking to the little folks and telling them that Santa Claus coming to see ‘em, and the little boys telling mother and father, “Tell old Santa to bring me a little pistol,” that same little gun may be death in that boy’s home. Death may be his Santa Claus.

That little old girl is saying to mother and to father, “Tell old Santa Claus to bring me a little deck of cards that I may play five-up in the park.” While the child play, death may be her Santa Claus.

Those of you that has prepared to take your automobiles and now fixing up the old tires, an’ getting your spares ready and overhauling your automobile, death may be your Santa Claus.

You is decorating your room and getting ready for all night dance, death may be your Santa Claus.

Death is on your track and gonna overtake you after while. Death may be your Santa Claus. That same revolver that that boy is toting in his pocket now may bring down somebody’s son, somebody’s daughter; death may be your Santa Claus. Oh man, oh woman, oh boy, oh girl, if I were you, I would be worrying this morning and would search deep down in my heart. For God I live and for God I’ll die. If I were you, I’d turn around this morning. Death may be your Santa Claus. Death been on your track ever since you were born, ever since you been in the world. Death winked at your mother three times before you was born into this sin sinnin’ world. Death is gonna bring you down after while, after while; Death may be your Santa Claus.

Atlanta, 3 November 1926
from "Goodbye Babylon"

horton foote, harper lee | to kill a mockingbird

2010-12-16T09:46:00.001-08:00

"Atticus, Jim says this watch is going to belong to him some day."
"That's right."
"Why?"
"Customary for the boy to have his father's watch."
"What are you going to give me?"
"I don't know that I have much else of value that belongs to me."

lance odegard | impossible dream

2010-12-15T23:17:00.002-08:00

Cribbed, cabined, and confined
Within the walls of a human life
The Infinite defined
Measured out in ticking time
Tell me have you seen
Such a strange way to redeem
It’s like selling all your acres
It’s a mighty big mistaker
To be cribbed, cabined, and confined

It’s way beyond the absurd
Thinking of a skinned on word
A pronouncement given in the mess
The Almighty’s endorsement: ‘flesh is best!’
Tell me have you seen
Such a strange way to redeem
I find it kind of crude
How He’s arriving in the nude
It’s way beyond the absurd

With the child a new economy
The bottom line it’s all for free
Now grace is growing on the trees
It’s in the roots and in the leaves
Tell me have you seen
Such a strange way to redeem
It’s like losing all your savings
all your monies and your makings
It’s a whole, new economy

It’s all yours, you merry little elves
Your manufactured joy on shelves
There’s a old party that’s in town
Hard to say where it’s at it’s all the upside down
Tell me have you seen
Such a strange way to redeem
If ya wanna get a little crazy
Try the incarnation baby
Cause God’s inside a lady
And no I don’t mean maybe
In God’s impossible dream

diane tucker | advent couplets

2010-12-15T00:27:00.002-08:00

People are coming for dinner; lay the table
with freshly pressed green and yellow napkins.

On short dark days she draws impatience tight
around herself, black swaddling clothes.

By noon the page is half full of words.
By two the clock has eaten every one.

All day the stove has been dreaming of stew;
meat, roots, leaves, it performs their marriage.

The gardeners are gathering the fallen leaves
into canvasses to take them all away.

First Sunday of four. Hold your breath
for four weeks in the dark, then exhale a song.

diane tucker | christmas couplets

2010-12-15T00:26:00.000-08:00

We are dumb animals, oxen chewing, cows
breathing steam in the litter. Greasy sheep.

We walk winter, nearly spent in the leafless dark,
waiting for some thrust, some flare of life in the belly.

The signs, wonders, angels hovering over stars
are not the gift; the gift is by birth and blood.

A woman and a miracle wrapped tight together:
God bundled in a girl, shepherd in the sheep’s womb.

There’s shit in the stable, flies and rotting hay,
but a pearl is hidden there, sleeping where animals feed.

When the world opens its greedy red velvet mouth,
shut it with the base and the exalted flesh – shut it with singing.

luci shaw | mary considers her situation

2010-12-14T10:27:00.001-08:00

What next, she wonders,
with the angel disappearing, and her room
suddenly gone dark.

The loneliness of her news
possesses her. She ponders
how to tell her mother.

Still, the secret at her heart burns like
a sun rising. How to hold it in –
that which cannot be contained.

She nestles into herself, half-convinced
it was some kind of good dream,
she its visionary.

But then, part dazzled, part prescient –
she hugs her body, a pod with a seed
that will split her.

Luci Shaw

illustration: Annunciation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898

robert farrar capon | better watch out

2010-11-28T01:47:00.002-08:00

The entire human race is profoundly and desperately religious. From the dim beginnings of our history right up to the present day, there is not a man, woman, or child of us who has ever been immune to the temptation to think that the relationship between God and humanity can be repaired from our side, by our efforts. Whether those efforts involve creedal correctness, cultic performances, or ethical achievements - or whether they amount to little more than crassly superstitious behavior - we are all, at some deep level, committed to them. If we are not convinced that God can be conned into being favorable to us by dint of our doctrinal orthodoxy, or chicken sacrifices, or the gritting of our moral teeth, we still have a hard time shaking the belief that stepping over sidewalk cracks, or hanging up the bath towel so the label won't show, will somehow render the Ruler of the Universe kindhearted, softheaded, or both.

But as the Epistle to the Hebrews pointed out long ago, all such behavior is bunk. The blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins, nor can any other religious act do what it sets out to do. Either it is ineffective for its purpose, or the supposedly effective intellectual, spiritual, or moral uprightness it counts on to do the job is simply unavailable. . . .

How sad, then, when the church acts as if it is in the religion business rather than in the Gospel-proclaiming business. What a disservice, not only to itself but to a world perpetually sinking in the quagmire of religiosity, when it harps on creed, cult, and conduct as the touchstones of salvation. What a perversion of the truth that sets us free (John 8:32) when it takes the news that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), and turns it into a proclamation of God as just one more insufferable bookkeeper.

The Messiah whom Jesus' contemporaries expected - and likewise any and all of the messiahs the world has looked to ever since - are like nothing so much as religious versions of "Santa Claus is coming to town." The words of that dreadful Christmas song sum up perfectly the only kind of messianic behavior the human race, in its self-destructive folly, is prepared to accept: "He's making a list; he's checking it twice; he's going to find out who's naughty or nice" - and so on into the dark night of all the tests this naughty world can never pass.

For my money, what Jesus senses clearly and for the first time in the coin in the fish's mouth (Matthew 17:24-27) is that he is not, thank God, Santa Claus. He will come to the world's sins with no lists to check, no tests to grade, no debts to collect, no scores to settle. He will wipe away the handwriting that was against us and nail it to his cross (Colossians 2:14). He will save, not some miniscule coterie of good little boys and girls with religious money in their piggy banks, but all the stone-broke,deadbeat, overextended children of this world whom he, as the Son of man - the Holy Child of God, the Ultimate Big Kid, if you please - will set free in the liberation of his death.

Robert Farrar Capon,
Kingdom, Grace Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus

stillwell | woodcuts

2010-11-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

These images were created by Andrew Stillwell,

a Durham NC artist who uses a Photoshop process of "cutting" out of a black background

to create a woodcut effect.

He works from scratch, not from photographs.

music philosophy

2010-11-23T08:42:00.001-08:00

music philosophy

zachary kanin | noah's ark

2010-11-16T22:27:00.001-08:00

selected panels from

Amazing Tales Of The Bible: Noah's Ark
by Zachary Kanin
The New Yorker, November 1, 2010

beckett, blake | literary tattoos

2010-11-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

Waiting For Godot | Samuel Beckett

Auguries of Innocence | William Blake

Two of fifteen literary tattoos

offered by The Huffington Post

jeanne murray walker | staying power

2010-11-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

STAYING POWER
In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International
Convention of Atheists. 1929

Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside and question the metal sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can't go on like this, and finally I say

all right, it is improbable, all right, there
is no God. And then as if I'm focusing
a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.
It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't

there that makes the notion flare like
a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon
dragging the hose to put it out. Even
on an ordinary day when a friend calls,

tells me they've found melanoma,
complains that the hospital is cold, I say God.
God, I say as my heart turns inside out.
Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,
and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire
again, which - though they say it doesn't
exist - can send you straight to the burn unit.

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.
Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's
a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone,
but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be.

You don't want to talk, so you pull out
the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer
till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbered up
metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up

and a voice you love whispers hello.

by Jeanne Murray Walker
Originally published in Poetry

donald miller | you'd want your money back

2010-10-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want your money back. But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful."

Donald Miller
A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

photos | los angeles + valencia

2010-10-14T01:13:00.001-07:00

george bernard shaw | no brief candle

2010-10-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

betty spackman | found wanting

2010-10-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

Found Wanting exposes the bones of truth

There is never a feast without a sacrifice.

These photos are from Craig Spence's fine review of Betty Spackman's installation "Found Wanting," currently showing at the Penticton Art Gallery (until Nov 7), transferring to The Reach Gallery in Abbotsford in late January. Here's an excerpt from the Spence piece:

"Feasting without sacrificing is the very essence of consumerism, and Spackman makes that point with a powerful narrative, woven into this installation piece... We have replaced sacrifice – the act of honouring earth, spirit and the souls of the creatures we use – with mind numbing slogans and shopping aisle musac.

"Ultimately, though, these sleights of hand, which make us shop faster because we can skip the vital step of honouring, remembering, and perhaps demanding a little less of the animals that give up their lives that we may partake… ultimately these marketer’s ploys involve us in a lie that denies our spiritual connection to the things we eat.

"We are cut out of the life cycle, which ends in death and commences in rebirth.

"It’s not easy facing up to the truth when we have been so immersed in denial. It takes willpower to listen to the complete message offered up through the headsets at the Cantina, a homey kitchen 'filled with found objects from the culinary, the medical, the commercial and the domestic' realms.

"The smattering of jingles, down home recipes, popular music and reminiscences is underlain by a current of words that evoke thought in stark monotone: '…heat, beat, breast, chest, chill, chop, grind, bake, blemish…' The vocabulary of eating, like the scattered bones of the feast, is gathered together for us to witness. But, like heaps of bones, the words are given no structure aside from what we are prepared to lend them with our own thoughts and feelings.

"Meanwhile, the unavoidable pressure to move on urges us to stop listening. Our watches are the ultimate excuse for the dissected world we live in. We are reminded every second of every day that we do not have time to connect the complex dots on the dial. The stations of life as experienced in the 21st Century are witnessed in isolation, the butcher’s reality not connected to the vendor’s, or the consumer’s, or the victim’s."

Several months ago I took photos of Betty's studio, and of the work in progress. Kate Bradford has created a video documenting the installation, and the exhibition catalog features notes by Karen Mulder.

hachtman | marquee

2010-09-30T08:30:00.001-07:00

new yorker | sep 13, 2010

calvin | the immense weight of glory

2010-09-25T13:16:00.001-07:00

Wherever you turn your eyes, there is no portion of the world that does not exhibit some sparks of beauty. It is impossible to contemplate the vast and beautiful fabric without being overwhelmed by the immense weight of glory.

John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion

france freeman | iphone photos

2010-09-25T00:34:00.001-07:00

iPhone photos by france freeman

freeman is a professional photographer

and photo blogger from seattle

geoffrey hill | accessibility

2010-09-23T07:14:00.001-07:00

Accessible is a perfectly good word if applied to supermarket aisles, art galleries, polling stations and public lavatories, but it has no place in the discussion of poetry and poetics. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves; we're difficult to each other and we are mysteries to ourselves; we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most "intellectual" piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when, if such simplifications were applied to our own inner selves, we would find it demeaning?

Geoffrey Hill
Professor of Poetry, Oxford University
from "Who's Afraid Of Geoffrey Hill?" by Gregory Wolfe, Image Journal, Summer 2010

photos | found wanting | betty spackman installation

2010-09-21T07:13:00.002-07:00

I took these photos during a visit to Betty Spackman's Fort Langley studio in February of this year. The first ten images are elements of the "Found Wanting" project, in progress at that time. The rest are general shots of the artist's studio. The completed installation is presently showing at the Penticton Art Gallery, where it will run until November 7. In 2011 it moves to the Reach Gallery in Abbotsford, opening January 27.

photos | piers, tunstall bay

2010-09-14T23:24:00.004-07:00

iPhone photos, treated with filters from the Camera Bag app
Tunstall Bay, Bowen Island

jay griffiths | resplendently unnecessary

2010-09-06T08:54:00.004-07:00

Play matters because, against the gray backdrop of a jobbing sky, play is the rainbow, is energy, is wicked flirtatiousness, is the helplessly laughing, the leglessly laddered, the God of Things which Brimmeth Over, the pint down the pub, the de trop overflow of excess, the resplendently unnecessary and the one-too-many which make the whole damn thing worthwhile. Play is harvest, is abundance, is generosity, the harvest of pleasure after work, the excess and the gusto, the more-than-enough, the gifts, the spirit of exchange. To play a game is, in German ein Spiel spielen, and the brimmingness, the spilling-over abundance of play is mirrored in this brimming-over phrase: spill it, spiel it twice — just for fun.

Jay Griffiths
A Sideways Look at Time

photo | lantern, public dreams society | folk festival 2010

hoagy carmichael | on stardust

2010-09-05T21:47:00.003-07:00

"And then it happened, that queer sensation that this melody was bigger than me. Maybe I hadn't written it at all. The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, 'Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you.' "

photos | sunflowers

2010-09-01T21:06:00.001-07:00

iPhone photos
filtered with camera bag

granville street, south of 41st
west side of the street, with the sun low in the sky

france freeman | signs

2010-08-27T22:12:00.007-07:00

iPhone photos by france freeman
of signs in washington and oregon

freeman is a professional photographer
and photo blogger from seattle

will rafuse | signs

2010-08-27T18:21:00.008-07:00

paintings by will rafuse
of signs in vancouver, seattle, los angeles

rafuse studied art at capilano college
and currently resides in montreal

road trip | bc to alberta

2010-08-21T01:20:00.003-07:00

photos | east of camrose

2010-08-16T08:15:00.002-07:00

urban trekking

2010-08-07T19:49:00.012-07:00

Myrtle's an urban trekker. Says the true frontiers are the cities, so she explores 'em. Scaling skyscrapers, spelunking in abandoned subway tunnels, mounting expeditions into condemned buildings to collect artifacts. That sort of thing. . . .
You Still Can't

The first seven photographs are by Michael Cook, and are found on his website The Vanishing Point - "Maps, photographs and studies of sewers, hydroelectric tunnels and other underground infrastructure in Ontario and further afield."

The final three photos are taken by urban explorers in Europe, and are found at International Urban Glow.

harvey cox | feast of fools

2010-08-06T08:29:00.003-07:00

I know nothing, except what everyone knows--
if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W.H. Auden, "Whitsunday in Kirchstetten"

Mankind has paid a frightful price for the present opulence of Western industrial society. Part of the price is exacted daily from the poor nations of the world whose fields and forests garnish our tables while we push their people further into poverty. Part is paid by the plundered poor who dwell within the gates of the rich nations without sharing in the plenty. But part of the price has been paid by affluent Western man himself. While gaining the whole world he has been losing his own soul. He has purchased prosperity at the cost of a staggering impoverishment of the vital elements of his life. These elements are festivity -- the capacity for genuine revelry and joyous celebration -- and fantasy -- the faculty for envisioning radically alternate life situations. Festivity and fantasy are not only worthwhile in themselves, they are absolutely vital to human life.

Harvey Cox, 1969
The Feast Of Fools

scrapiteria | beach ambush

2010-08-05T10:24:00.003-07:00

No. 237 The Beach Ambush By Crazed Deckchair Attendants

"Scrapiteria is made up of collagists who work in the traditional cut and paste method."

photos | pictures of painting

2010-08-02T13:29:00.006-07:00

Tanya F. Bone is a painter friend of Barb Bowen.

The buildings she is painting are at the Britannia Heritage site in Steveston.

Here's one of my favourite of her paintings, Out To Pasture.

the calarts story | 1964

2010-07-24T16:26:00.003-07:00

The CalArts Story

"A short film that was originally presented at the 1964 gala premiere of Mary Poppins. The event doubled as a fundraiser for the then-recently incorporated California Institute of the Arts. Produced in the style of Disney’s live-action shorts of the period, and narrated by actor Sebastian Cabot, the film lays out the vision of CalArts as an integral part of Los Angeles’s cultural infrastructure, alongside such institutions as the Music Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hollywood Bowl." from 24700, the CalArts blog

I did 25 things today

2010-07-22T23:05:00.011-07:00

1. Ran

2. Cleaned the lens of my iPhone camera

3. Put my laundry in the wash machine

4. Booked tickets

5. Helped Chloe tidy my room

6. Ate the breakfast I made in our new microwave oven

7. Showered

8. Took Chloe to the vet for a flea bath

9. RSVPed to CalArts pre-reunion reunion dinner

10. Made box for my trunk to put things in that I need to take to people

11. Put all my cards and stuff back in my wallet

12. Bought stamps, mailed letters

13. Checked out used cameras & phones

14. Bought a New Testament to fit in my bag

15. Bought a money clip

16. Took photos

17. Fixed up an organizer for stuff on my desk

18. Organized bathroom shelves

19. Got new barbecue-lighting matches

20. Washed dishes

21. Figured out why the dish washer wasn't working

22. Booked a fancy camera lens for the weekend

23. Picked instrumental tracks for slideshows

24. Hammocked

25. Made this

richard's list, rudi's response

2010-07-22T12:36:00.002-07:00

Life is hard
You are going to die
You are not in control
You are not that important
Your life is not about you

Life is good
Death doesn't have the last word
It's not about control
You matter
Your life is about something

The first list was given by Richard Rohr at a men's retreat at the Ghost Ranch: I believe it is the basis of his book Adam's Return. The second list was created by Rudi Krause in response to the first.

andy goldsworthy | rootless

2010-07-21T11:52:00.005-07:00

I don't think the earth needs me at all. But I do need it.

To just go off into the woods and make a piece of work roots me again. And if I don't work for a period of time I feel rootless. I don't know myself. And it's very odd, if I've not worked for say two, three weeks, and then I give a lecture talking about my work, it feels like I'm talking about somebody else.

I do need to be on my own at times. I enjoy being by myself. There are people's company I do enjoy. There probably is a social nature too, and I feed from that to some extent. But to be honest, I think I am drained by people.

Rivers & Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time (Chapter 9)

photos | steveston, railway

2010-07-15T12:13:00.004-07:00

photos | back yard

2010-07-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

The CalArts Story (1964)

2010-06-25T11:34:00.002-07:00

The CalArts Story
originally presented at the 1964 gala premiere of Mary Poppins
(which is, coincidentally, the first movie I ever saw in a theatre)

"No nation, and no community, can flourish, or possibly even survive, unless it provides full opportunities for the encouragement, the development, and the full utilization of the intellectual and the artistic talents of its people."
Lee A. DuBridge