Wear Sunscreen
For More Baz Lurhmann videos: go here
01 January 2011
weather ~ the cold
My friend Audrey, in Alaska, text-messages me about the temperature. When she got to the library, she sent me this image, of an acquaintance, Barb Tharp, who wanted everyone to know just how nippy it was at the end of November 2010. The caption read "Not too cold for an Alaskan"So here is the picture:
Separate from this, Audry has also discovered a cat meowling at night outside her door, living outside at temps similar to those shown in Barb's picture.
Only last night, New Year's, as the Aurora Borealis provided a dramatic light display overhead [I wasn't there, I'll take her word for it], did this chilly almost frozen cat allow Audrey to pet him [or her, I'm not certain which - but Audrey's dubbed him "Walter Coldcat"]. So if you happen to be in Delta Junction Alaska, and looking for a lost cat. Let me know, I'll tell Audrey.
IMAGE CREDIT: Barbara Tharp, 2010. Published on 3 December 2010, in the online version of Delta News Web
reminiscence ~ brithdays
"Do you remember the day you were born?" My father was fond of asking me every year. He also long maintained ~ with me at least ~ that I was prematurely born, but I get ahead of myself.I was born on New Year's Eve. But it was the events that preceded the actual time of birth that my Dad was constantly asking if I remembered. Over the years, eventually, since he told the tale so frequently, it was easy able to say yes, I did remember the day I was born. It was his version, but, what the hey... who's looking too closely?
Anyway... My parents were at my grandparents house, getting ready for a New Year's Eve party. My Grandmother [we called her "Happy Day"] had washed and waxed the kitchen floor earlier and placed old newspapers all over the floor to keep dirt and grime from outdoors off the tile.
My dad decided to play with a cake mom had made, "I'm gonna eat this all myself" grabbed it off the table and got mom and began running about the house - the women chasing after him in pursuit.It wasn't a big house, kind of like the one here [only in winter, with snow on the ground] and so my dad ran out the back door into the yard, standing there in his shirtsleeves, waiting for them to follow.
They didn't.
It being pretty cold out, he went back in, and found my mom splay-legged on the floor, having slipped and fallen on the newly waxed, news-papered floor. Happy Day was standing over her, exclaiming "Oh my God! Her water's broke!" and it was off to the hospital, where, an hour and 14 minutes before midnight, I provided my dad a tax deduction for the year.
As for the other part of the story, I was born earlier than expected... but we're talking a number of days not, as Dad insinuated, that I was, according to the marriage date, a miraculously born - and surviving - 5 month old pre-me; a seven pound, three ounce pre-me at that [that's about 3.2 kg].
By the time he got around to telling me otherwise, I had already figured out the math.
Dad's gone now. Has been for over a decade. I'd love to have him here now, to correct any errors in the tale telling. Happy birthday to me, a day late. I do remember the day I was born though I don't remember if Dad got to eat the cake.
28 December 2010
social history - Torture and psychiatry
Three segments on video about Dr Ewen Cameron, who both attended the post holocaust Nuremberg Trials and later over saw the infamous CIA MK-ULTRA torture experiments at Allen Institute at McGill University in Montreal PQ, during the late 1950s.
What Cameron wanted more than anything was to find a new way to treat mental illness. He instead endorsed "depatterning" or brainwashing as a kind of "cure. Instead, while he admitted to "failure" he never acknowledged the horrors he subjected his victims to.
Dr Cameron's main 'crime' here was not that he didn't tell his patients what he was doing and why, but that what he was doing was intrinsically evil, horrifying, destructive, even sadistic.
Cameron's ultimate crime was betraying his patient's trust. He wanted to go to his grave knowing he'd made a difference. But he became infamous, rather than revered.
What Cameron wanted more than anything was to find a new way to treat mental illness. He instead endorsed "depatterning" or brainwashing as a kind of "cure. Instead, while he admitted to "failure" he never acknowledged the horrors he subjected his victims to.
Dr Cameron's main 'crime' here was not that he didn't tell his patients what he was doing and why, but that what he was doing was intrinsically evil, horrifying, destructive, even sadistic.
Cameron's ultimate crime was betraying his patient's trust. He wanted to go to his grave knowing he'd made a difference. But he became infamous, rather than revered.
reading list ~ travels around the world
HAITI: The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis ~ In 1982, ethnobiologist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis - people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead. Drawn into a netherworld of vodoun rituals and celebration, Davis' investigations resulted in his placing the phenomenon of zombification in its proper context, as well as in his eventual realization that the story of vodoun - from its African origins to its contemporary practices - is the story of Haiti itself.The author steeps himself in the search, and at times one can't help but wonder about a curious kind of name-dropping and hints of intimate links to those about whom he writes. In particular, is the recount where he extols his horse riding skills with a battalion of mountain cavalrymen. More chilling, his brief reference to the psychiatrist and infamous CIA torturer Ewan Cameron, That said, the book is a quick, energetic read while traveling through dark little-known corridors of the mind.
The book provides an extremely detailed picture of parts of Haitian society, strips away many Western misconceptions of vodoun, offers a wealth of fascinating information on toxicology, botany, modern world history, religion, occultism, and the psychology of death amongst various cultures, and blends it all together with the central tale of Davis' search for the zombification agent, resulting in what amounts to a travel narrative-cum-tale of high adventure.
SOUTH AMERICA: The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux. ~ An account of a train journey that begins in Massachusetts, via Boston and Chicago, Theroux travelsacross North America to Laredo, Texas. Once across the border, another train south through Mexico to Veracruz. There he meets a woman looking for her long-lost lover. Then to Guatemala and El Salvador where he goes to a soccer match and is amazed by the violence. Stymied by political upheaval he flies to Costa Rica where he resumes the train to Limon and Puntarenas. He ended his transit of Central America in Panama where he takes the short train ride across the isthmus.
Then to Colombia and over the Andes, making pilgrimage to the oxygen depleted atmosphere of Macchu Picchu before and finally reaches distant heart of Patagonia, the small town of Esquel.
He endures harsh climates, including the extreme altitude of Peru and the Bolivian Plateau, meets the famous author Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires and is reunited with long lost family in Ecuador.
Theroux is an excellent descriptor of place and person. His visits with Jorge Luis Borges made me wish I could have been there; likewise his recounts of the vast empty stretches of Patagonia.
THE MIDDLE EAST: The Way of the World by Nicholas Bouvier. translated from the French by Robyn Marsack ~ You may not have heard of Swiss-born Nicolas Bouvier if you live west of the English Channel. Yet on the European continent Bouvier was Switzerland's answer to Jack Kerouac. He wrote mainly in French, a cult travel writer whose books sell by the pallet-load, even though he died more than a decade ago. His father encouraged him to travel and in 1953, without waiting for the result of his degree, he left bourgeois Switzerland with no intention of returning. In a small, slow Fiat, he and his friend Thierry Vernet - whose stark illustrations are reproduced in the book - traveled across Europe and Asia over nineteen months, pausing in Belgrade, Istanbul, Tabriz and Quetta to paint, write and wait tables, taking longer than Marco Polo - as Bouvier proudly pointed out - to reach Japan.
Along the road no sensational, headline-grabbing event befell them. They were not attacked by Baluch bandits or held hostage by an Afghan warlord. The Way of the World elevates the mundane to the memorable and captures the thrill of two passionate, inquisitive travelers discovering both the world and themselves. Racy and meditative, romantic and realistic, the book is as brilliant and as alive as Kerouac's On the Road, though without a whisper of self-aggrandisement.
I found a copy of the book on a free-take-me rack at the West Haven VA Hospital. Would have been worth paying for it.
LOUISIANA: All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren ~ If you don’t have a molasses-slow, deep southern voice narrating All the King’s Men in your head when you read it, put it down and start again. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is based on the larger than life Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long. Like Gatsby’s Nick Carraway, everyman Jack Burden [a callous, corrupt and cynical newspaperman] tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern politician who will say whatever it takes to get a vote, but makes most of his decisions in back room deals.Robert Penn Warren, Kentucky born and Tennessee educated, poet, professor, critic and novelist, is a Southerner who hates the shortcomings of the South, as do so many Southern writers. But he writes about such shortcomings with an eloquence and an elemental rage worlds apart form the sordid bitterness of some of his literary colleagues.
There is something about Huey, his combination of magnificent abilities and a genuine if primitive idealism with bottomless corruption and lust for power, which fascinates the literary as well as the political mind. Here was a man who destroyed the democratic structure of an American State while shouting his championship of the common man. How significant and how representative was he? How serious is the threat of his kind? I could not help but be reminded of today's Tea Party "movement", with slick politicians hiding their anti-populist beliefs, behind the Gadsden Flags. Indeed!
My partner says he couldn't put the book down; he is definitely one of those readers who kept going to 3 am only to arise the next day and pick it up, reading again.
We read the newly restored version. Parts of the tale that Penn Warren wanted but didn't get from his editors, were returned. The tale - in addition to being an uncomfortably intimate view of how a populist can become incredibly corrupt - is a thick morass of poetic imagery and style. One can easily see why Penn Warren is the only writer to get the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry.
VIETNAM: These Scars are Sacred by Elliott Storm ~ This was an unexpected find; at the manager's counter of a Shop Rite a block or so from the West Haven VA. For me it was one of those books I couldn't stop reading. Elliott Storm, a 100% disabled Vietnam combat veteran, struggled with the ‘inner demons’ that veterans shared coming home from an unpopular war. This book is his recount. He wrote the book intending a personal catharsis but the result was entirely unexpected. The blurb on a website promoting the book says "THESE SCARS ARE SACRED now helps others understand, and in many cases regain, a level of trust needed to bridge the gap of pain caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."
Storm writes with an intensity that makes it difficult to avoid being with the protagonist while he watches his mates get shot down before him as they fight to re-take a hill in The 'Nam that the brass in DaNang sagely sat back and let them do it.
Storm is every bit as descriptive in his narration as the other four - much better known - authors cited here are. His battle scenes are afire with a searing clarity. And the insights shared still show how warriors, albeit on opposite sides, are able to grant one another begrudging respect, even as they are faced with the inevitability of only one surviving a skirmish, scarred though alive.
But it isn't just the bloody battle front he tells you about. He speaks with passion about the psychic battle scars; of cheating spouses; of civilians - as well as stateside insulated textbook fighters - who completely fail to grasp what the latter scars do when left unable to heal.
This last book on the list differs from the others in that it is newly first published. The tale - and the message - is timely as men and women return home from war zones, ill prepared to acclimate back into civilian life; yet legitimately seeking a chance for refuge in therapies that are under funded and with limited availability for signing up into. [Combat weary Vets who hope to gain access into the VA's inpatient PTSD program at Northampton MA, for example, can expect to wait between 3 to 6 months.]
The other books you can find through the library. Elliot Storm's book? Well, try getting a copy online.
IMAGE SOURCES: 1- HorrorScope: The Australian Dark Fiction Blog; 2- Wikipedia: Old Patagonian Express "La Trochita"; 3- The Guardian/UK, accompanying a 2007 book review by Rory Maclean; 4- Library Journal - entries on "dusty books"; 5- "Moratorium" a poster by Jasper Johns that was used as a fundraiser for anti-war efforts during the Vietnam Era.
27 December 2010
social policy - pursuing betterment
From the weblog The Standard Review
"The only practical way for government to operate effectively is to teach people to make wise choices and reward them for doing so in order for them to feel empowered by their ability.READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY: The pursuit of human betterment.
"There is no worse crime perpetrated against the planet than for people engaged in the practice of governing choosing to encourage the public to make unwise choices as well as intentionally creating unfairness, inequality, and exploiting people based on class distinctions.
"When we choose to believe that our betterment will result from glorifying this system, we are involved in the very same crime".
IMAGE CREDIT: Nelson Rockefeller, Wikipedia
26 December 2010
social policy - Net Neutrality
OH WHAT THE F**K. THE PEOPLE HAVE LOST ANOTHER BATTLE TO CORPORATE CRIMINALS.
boxing day ennui
Sluggo was the rough-and-tumble character in Ernie Bushmiller's post-Depression era comic strip Nancy. Some have said that Sluggo was like "a moron on an acid trip" [or could that have been a reference to Bushmiller himself?].
Bushmiller's style was of an understated elegance. One should never mistake the simplicity of design for simple-mindedness, however.
Bushmiller's work has been repeatedly alluded to by other artists: Andy Warhol made a painting based on Nancy. Many cartoonists have produced work directly inspired by or commenting on Bushmiller's art, including Art Spiegelman, Mark Newgarden, Chris Ware and "Zippy the Pinhead" cartoonist Bill Griffith, who lives in East Haddam, wrote an essay on Bushmiller.
The American Heritage Dictionary uses a Bushmiller Nancy strip to illustrate its entry on "comic strip."
Me, I didn't think about any of the philo- or sociological underpinnings to the strip. In my own way, I thought, quite simply, that Sluggo, was sexy. Nothing boring about that.
THANKS TO: Billy Miller for reminding me of the strip by putting Sluggo's image on his FaceBook Photo page.
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