EARTH ~

ANCESTOR OF THE HUNTING HEART



There is a distance in the heart
and I know it well—
a somberness of winter branches,
dry stubble scarred with frost,
late of the sunburnt field.

Neither field, nor furrow,
nor woodlot patched with fences,
but something wilder: a distance
never cropped or plowed,
only by fire and the blade of the wind.

The distance is closer than
the broomswept hearth—
that time of year when leaves
cling to the bootsole,
are tracked indoors,
lie yellow on the kitchen floor.

Snow is a part of the distance,
cold ponds, and ice
that rings the cattle-trough.

Trees that are black at morning
are in the evening gray.
The distance lies between them,
a seed-strewn whiteness
through which the hunter comes.

Before him in the ashen snow-litter
of the village street
an old man makes his way,
bowed with sack and stick.

A child is pulling a sled.

The rest are camped indoors,
their damped fires smoking
in the early dusk.

JOHN HAINES

(1924 – March 2, 2011)





Photo © Dorothy Alexander

EARTH ~

WHILE DEEP SNOW

FALLS IN THE

NORTH WOODS



clear

clean



tea

cups



in

the



kit

chen









Bob Arnold
from Builder


photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

NINE AFGHAN BOYS COLLECTING FIREWOOD KILLED BY NATO HELICOPTERS

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?ref=global-home

I met Ali yesterday when with the other friends were in Ghahroud (an small town near Ghamsar) walking in a path of an almost dried river.
He is 11 years old but can not go to the school because he is from Afghanistan ! This was what he said about himself. I did feel ashamed of being an Iranian in front of him when he was talking about his situation! I wish I was able to send him to the school.
He said :there is someone from Afghanistan who teaches me how to read and write and how to drive a loader machine the same time. While he was talking I couldn’t take off my eyes from his hardened hands. When I asked him where you wish to live, he looked at a very far place and said nothing!

He was collecting woods beside a dried tree. I captured his portrait with the roots of the dried tree. It seemed that the river has taken the tree off in one of its torrents and now both river and tree were dry. We don’t help Afghani people because their roots are out of their lands…As it goes on, this flood of disaster in the region will root up our tree, one day! This was what I was thinking of afterwards…

علی گفت که اجازه نداره در ایران مدرسه بره چون افغانیه!! در برابر نگاهش از ایرانی بودن خودم خجالت کشیدم.

photo : flickr

LITTLE THINGS ~

IF INTERESTED IN ONE, TWO OR MANY

PLEASE CONTACT US ~

New titles from Longhouse

poetry@sover.net






film : © bob arnold

EARTH ~

Protecting the Lion From U.S. Predators

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/a-protective-scepter-for-the-lion/





photo : associated press

EARTH ~






PACIFIC


Lovelier —

When the

Bandanna from

My pocket is

Worn around

Her neck








© Bob Arnold
from Where Rivers Meet
(Mad River Press)



photo © bob arnold

GOODBYE ~

Suze Rotolo
Nov 20, 1943-Feb 24, 2011







photo: Don Hunstein

POETRY ~

tuesday weld

EARTH ~

Joe Long of Birdel's Records

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/sked-for-sunday-feb-27-a-beloved-record-store-closes-among-last-in-a-dying-breed/





photo : Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

OSCAR ~

Sweetheart has gone to retrieve books at the faraway cottage on snowshoes. Books for customers. Snowshoes to get to & fro. Beat down the trail. When I go out to do all the trails — around the house, to the studio, and through the woodlot (pick up more logs), I'll take a spin and do the faraway cottage trail as well.


"Do you want any cookies baked?"


"Why?"


"Ah, the weather's so bleak."


She's right. It may take a few cookies to get us into March.


I've lost count of the days now and am about to give up on the weather map for the first time in years — it's just going to snow some more, then weeks on end of mud. That's the weather report. We hand shoveled the long driveway three times since Friday. Maybe 16 inches of snow over the three days. The snow banks are well over our heads.


Now to the important news: Natalie Portman looked by far the finest, and radiant, at the Independent Film Spirit Awards last night. Nothing in the world like an expectant mother. Dale Dickie from Winter's Bone appeared quite taken and humble on the announcement of her winning, and John Hawkes well deserved his award as one scary and thin meth tooler also from Winter's Bone.


The Oscars will be watched by millions worldwide this evening, and I only hope they will likewise pay attention to the Oscar winners out in Wisconsin who are fighting for their work lives and home lives. It remains the Greatest Show on Earth. It may indicate just how fascist state these united states have become.


Perhaps go back and run a finger (as if through flour) across the time line and history since Ronald Reagan, through lying in Congress, to liars now in Congress, AIDS, homeless, the bogus air "attack" to America which has performed an excellent excuse for anytime and anywhere states of emergencies, clamp downs, search and seizures, torture, wiretaps, email snooping, and let's not forget world banks and finance (a great deal of it centered in NYC) over throwing governments of the people for governments of the all-mighty buck.


If you've got the bucks, you're included, if you don't (majority) you're out.


Political parties mean zilch. It's all down to what cash you hold and who you protect. It's boiled down to the working-class being treated like garbage by a vast minority who have never worked an honest working day in their lives.


This is paramount. It's what dreams are made of, whole libraries of books, folklore, old sayings, traditional songs worldwide, wisdom from grandparents and parents and the wily neighbor who always had a keen tidbit to offer your way.


Unions aren't perfect but they are people. Every dictator is a louse.


An Anthony Scalia on a Supreme Court is obviously not justice.


War criminals BushCheneyRumsfeld jetting around free and with book parties is obviously a hideous joke.


One fatcat in America making the income of 350,000 Americans is a something-is-awful-wrong-here moment.


People kept healthy and educated and warm through mutual support are stronger, sharper and willing.


And united. It's about time this country earned its name.


And the Oscar goes to the ground-breakers, the name makers.

MORE JANINE ~

A short film by
Kurt Hemmer & Tom Knoff


please link here ~

http://www.harperdoit.net/videos/janine/

photo © susan arnold

TEAMWORK ~

William Saroyan, the master storyteller, once co-wrote a song with Ross Bagdasarian (the creator and voice of Alvin and the Chipmunks) that Rosemary Clooney spun into a novelty hit in 1951. Welcome to the world of
"Come On-a My House" ~

saroyan : parajanov.com


coda: I just had a letter this morning, snow falling all around, from good friend William out in Oregon who knows a thing or two about the two gentleman above. He kindly sent this version not to be missed ~ please link here

EARTH ~

CANTOS DE VIDA Y ESPERANZA / SONGS OF LOVE AND HOPE



IX.




Towers of God! Poets!

Heavenly lightning rods

withstanding severe tempests,

like unadorned crests,

like rustic peaks,

breakwaters of eternities!



Magical Hope announces the day

when on the rock of harmony

the perfidious siren will pass away.

You must have hope, let's still hope!



Keep hoping.

The bestial element takes comfort

in its hatred for sacred poetry,

hurling brickbats of every sort.



The insurrection from beneath

spreads to the upper class and elite.

The cannibal covets his piece of meat

with red gums and sharpened teeth.



Towers, place a smile on the pavilion.

In the face of that evil and that unease

place the lofty suggestion of a breeze

and the tranquility of sky and sea. . .





Rubén Darío
(1867-1916)

Songs of Life and Hope
translated by Will Derusha & Alberto Acereda
(Duke University Press 2004)

WITH ME ~

A great midnight song, when the moon is rising over the trees and the incomprehensible is invited in.

Johnny Guitar Watson was the ultimate rocker of blues. He took his name as still a teenager after he saw the Nicholas Ray film Johnny Guitar.

Etta James called him the best, and she traveled with him and knew. Frank Zappa picked up his guitar because of Johnny Guitar Watson. Hendrix is in the corner nodding yes to all of this.

A sleek pompadour and one more mountain lion bluesman from Texas raging in the 50s; by the 70s he had transformed without losing any of his claws or talent into a brother of style and funk, fly suit and all, and maybe just maybe he was the one who swept in Rap. Blame someone, JGW can take it.

Music historian Peter Gurlanick claims Watson not only was a musician but also a pimp — the wild man said it paid better than music.

Born in Houston, he played with everyone by the time he collapsed on stage in Yokohama, Japan, grasping his Fender Stratocaster mid-guitar solo! It was May 17, 1996. Age 61. Over there, it's still on some people's lips.

EARTH ~

RISING


Some sound outside has raised our heads
Made us look into the eyes of one another.
You by the kerosene lamp glowing into your
Face and hair, knitting needles down in your lap.
I pull on high boots and wool shirt
Walk out to the dogs on their chains
Muzzles sniffing to the hillside.
We wait, beneath a clear wash of moonlight,
For sure we’re heard something and we’ll freeze
To hear it again — there, low bark, speaking from
A darkness left in the woods, excites the malamute
To circle his hut, piss on the pine he’s tied under.
No stir or movement up there, though these barks are
Moving across the face of the night, striking out
From some loss or pain, wearing down a trail.


I leave the dogs whining to go to the river
Rushing deep and flashing white light of the sky.
This is the clearest night yet for October
Frost webs open ground
Deer everywhere must be fattening on mushed apples.
A howl, now straight across from me —
I can’t see the bear but know it’s a bear,
The call it makes fills that body.
In a moment it will be farther away
Gone back into the hairs of darkness.
I hear nothing more, as if I’ve heard enough —
Now the middle of the night.
Soon that white light will rise out of the river.







© Bob Arnold
from Where Rivers Meet
(Mad River Press)



photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

Kesang Lamdark

'O Mandala Tantric'

pin-pricked and back lit

plexiglass, LED light & wood

roughly 4 foot square

The above was easily the highlight of the modern Tibetan art we saw the other day while traveling around. This piece is quite bold and might even be eye-popping to some. The museum had it tucked away in a cozy alcove all its own. We have often seen school children and whole classes in this section of the museum with very diligent teachers, and always women, guiding by hand flocks of classes from one fascinating event to another. I've got a sneaky feeling this mandala will be avoided. The "mandala pattern composed of images of skulls and animals, erotic Buddhist art imagery and modern pornography. The work touches upon themes of “debasement of sex in the modern commerce” and the East-West divide over views on eroticism," says art critic Ken Johnson.

The artist, Kesang Lamdark, was born in Dharamsala, India, in 1963 and grew up and schooled (Rudolf Steiner) in Switzerland. After apprenticing and working as an interior architect in Switzerland, he studied art at NY's Parsons School of Design in the early 90s, and received an MFA from Columbia University thereafter. His multimedia sculptures and installations are built from varied materials including metal, plastic, lights and found artifacts, which reflect upon his Tibetan roots and later lifestyle in a more freewheeling Europe and America. He makes his home in Switzerland.

EARTH ~

A little news for the few woodslore fanatics still out there in the world. Since December we have been breaking a trail through our woodlot as we always do fall, winter through spring. In the summer we are walking behind lawn mowers and on bicycles enough to keep ourselves walked-up, so we're less in the woodlot.


Last December gave us barely any snow and the trail was easy. We also knew by every passing day in December, either January or February or both (and add March), would pay us back for the open ground in December and give us all the snow we could wish for. The wish came true, even if we weren't wishing. We broke a snowshoe trail all of January every day through the woodlot. And while making that daily trail we decided to pick up each day one or two logs from a full cord of rock maple and beech wood we cut and split a year earlier and stashed under a tarp up there. It's primo wood.

It's late February and the cord is collapsing down in size. We used to see it bold and awaiting as we marched down one hillside and rose with the other. Now it's greatly diminished and maybe halfway gone. Some days I hike the trail (a 15 minute jaunt) four times and am able to bring home eight logs, one under each arm. If Sweetheart is with me, we do better. If Kokomo comes with us on his blue leash we may bring home less wood, but having a kitten on a leash in deep snow is much more fun. Not to worry, he usually stays with us on the beaten down snow trail. The trail is maybe 16 inches wide, and if you or anyone veers off it, you're in snow up to your thighs.


Kokomo's favorite trees to climb along the way: ash and cherry. The leash is 16 feet long.


I know, I know, a cat on a leash, who would have thought. . .


So the plan is to see how long it takes for two people to hand carry a cord of hardwood out of the woodlot and bring it back home. As a daily hike. Not a job. The days I hike the trail four times is to make up for the days and days I have lost to just snow shoveling. Hemingway used to write twice longer on Friday so he could go fishing on Saturday. It's all about balancing the scales of the mind.


It's also about mathematics, which almost kept me from graduating from high school.


The other day I read an essay on backwoods life as mused over by a self-described urbanite. He was speaking of those who had "runaway" to the wilderness from responsibilities, as he called it, to a life often further disgraced with such descriptions as "romantic" and "irresponsible". As if breaking bread and earth with mother nature is "running away"? It seems more likely it is a life living with the source. With many elemental responsibilities. With dire consequences when undisciplined regarding the weather, making fuel, making food, making shelter. While all along shaping a communion with a greater space (a wilderness) and the greater neighborhood. If you can get a little romance out of that, when all is said and done, you deserve it.


So laugh along with me like a happy go lucky fool at all the other fools. As a wonderful fool once put it ~
"We are all amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else." *


I'm saying April 1st will be the day we have all the cord pile home and burned. I always considered April Fool's Day the first day of Spring.

*CHARLIE CHAPLIN LIMELIGHT
photos © bob arnold

WITH ME ~

Between blues and jazz, few had it down as well as Lonnie Johnson. Born in Orleans Parish in 1899 in a family of musicians, by eighteen years of age he was already off to England with a music revue. When he returned home he found all his family had perished with the 1918 influenza epidemic. Only a brother survived, James "Steady Roll" Johnson, and they teamed up together for awhile.

Johnson started recording with Okeh in 1925 and cut 130 tracks with the label over the next eight years. He went to the Bluebird label in the 30s&40s, Decca in Chicago, then King Records in 1947. His inspiration spans with Armstrong and Ellington as he gives it back to both, as well as to Elvis and Bob Dylan. The latter readily admits his first album is busy with Lonnie Johnson wisdom. Just listen to "Corrina, Corrina".

Johnson picked up the electric guitar in 1939. Before that, his influence to all jazz guitarists, including Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, is a phenomenon all its own.

In his later years Johnson could be found on many Prestige recordings, all memorable. His performing could be erratic where one found him making a living as a steel foundry worker, or janitor...just to make ends meet. It's the old Blues story in old worn torn young America.

The great one was struck by a car in Toronto in 1969, causing kidney injuries and a broken hip leading to a fatal stroke in 1970.

There is a whole evening, or two, of Lonnie Johnson to listen to ~ try "The Mooche", "Winnie the Wailer", "Hot Fingers" for the unmatched. I'm offering a tune here that's pure stream running Lonnie Johnson.

FOR JANINE ~

The tribute & songs from the tribe for Janine


in Woodstock, NY on February 20th


has immediately been hailed as a classic.


It's New York City's turn this weekend ~


be there or be square.

MAGGIE'S FARM ~

I had to let a week go by to soak up the good soap of Bob Dylan's appearance at the Grammy Awards on February 13, 2011. It's always a surprise when he wants to show up.

With opening acts by Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers, these multistring instrument virtuosos — part hillbilly (but not)/part good craze wonder — were the ideal decoration for Dylan performing one more rendition of one of his classic tunes from the 60s. The very tune he used once upon a time (Newport '65) to shake up another sedate audience who were expecting a folk musician and instead they got themselves a rock 'n' roller.

During this same night, on the same stage, Mick Jagger would flaunt in high-strut, a song for Solomon Burke. A great number. Burke was also, invisibly, all over Dylan's "Maggie's Farm", since he covered it in 1965 on the flip-side of his hit "Tonight's the Night". This release by Burke was even prior to Dylan releasing the song as a single. Back in the golden age of 45s. Back when one or two songs were quite enough, played over and over and over again.

On this night Dylan stepped forth past a fire line set-up of these hillbilly musicians — caps and beards and grins, strings and bows perched at-ready — blasting behind him with the greatest of glee as he took a stance, reminiscent of maybe Al Jolson, a song a poem a plea of heralding disgust and revenge. Maybe even with some courtesy of forgiveness. At the closing he went to play his harmonica and heard it was backwards, flipped it in hand with wicked charm, and finished one more time on earth.

In the audience Neil Young and some others gave the act a standing ovation.

MAGGIE'S FARM

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
No, I aint gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
Well, I wake up in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane
It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
No, I aint gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you're havin' a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother more.

I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more
No, I aint gonna work for Maggie's pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more.

I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more
No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more
Well, when she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She's the brains behind pa
She's sixty-eight, but she says she's fifty-four
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more.

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
I aint gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

zooomr.com

albania : popartmachine.com

EARTH ~

Warm day and we shot out of the house for the first time in months. Been burrowed in the woods.

Went wayward and visited one art museum, floating through an exhibit on Tibetan modern art, plus some favorites like Remington's painting "Shotgun Hospitality" — three Indians in blankets, one white settler, all holding rifles. Knowing how to hold rifles.

Bookstore, cafe, walked around. I took photographs.

Got back to Brattleboro before 8 and went to catch Carson in a band opening for a country swing sort of ensemble from North Carolina we were drawn to: Woody Pines.

The lead singer looked and acted quite a bit like Buddy Holly. It wasn't just the glasses, there was a genuine storyteller's demeanor and appeal to all parts of his playing — a cross blend of country-swing, traditional (fine Hank Williams cover) and their own material. Three guys on gorgeous stand-up bass, mandolin, guitars, hearty kazoo, and nicely torqued neck harp playing.

Many young women showed up, slinky and sisterly, dancing with each other on the dance floor. A sure sign things were heating up.

Sweetheart and I watched like two cats curled up, heads swaying. We bought the band's CD because it was the right thing to do. They said thank you, we did too.

Drove home with a moon as big as our house.

Go see Woody Pines if they hit your town. They've got a great story about having their van breakdown 30 miles south of Memphis on Highway 61. Last seen, they were carrying all their instruments with them down the highway.

FUNNY THINGS: while on stage, between songs, the friendly mandolin player for Woody Pines asked down to the dance floor, "Whatever happened to Howard Dean?" Referring to Vermont's former governor who some feel went off the deep-end while running for President. For some reason none of the young people at the concert had any of idea what the musician was asking. He waited and smiled and then asked, "You do know who Howard Dean is. Right?" No reply.


WOODY PINES has a lead singer by the name of "Woody Pines" who looks, somewhat sounds, and has all the get-up-and-go of Buddy Holly. Uncanny. I told him so later. He said, "Oh, yeah, the glasses", touching them for a moment and seeming a little rattled by my observation. I said, "No, not just that; it's your sound." He's young and turned away from me back to the young. Bob Dylan once wrote about seeing Buddy Holly when Dylan was a squirt, unknown, and he stood up front right at the stage edge near his hero's feet. He claims Holly looked straight down at him. It was as if he were bequeathed by the heart of rock 'n' roll. Watching Woody Pines I felt like I was seeing their great grandchild.

EARTH ~

FROM THE ZURAU APHORISMS

1

The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope.



6

The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct — because as yet nothing has happened.



11/12

The variety of views that one may have, say, of an apple the view of the small boy who has to crane is neck for a glimpse of the apple on the table, and the view of the master of the house who picks up the apple and hands it to a guest.



20

Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.



22

You are the exercise, the task. No student far and wide.



30

Goodness is in a certain sense comfortless.



35

There is no possessing, only an existing, only an existing that yearns for its final breath, for asphyxiation.



36

Earlier, I didn't understand why I got no answer to my question, today I don't understand how I presumed to ask a question. But then I didn't presume, I only asked.



41

The disproportion of the world seems fortunately to be merely numerical.



42

To let one's hate — and disgust-filled head slump onto one's chest.



48

Belief in progress doesn't mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.



52

In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world's coat.



62

The fact that the only world is a constructed world takes away hope and gives us certainty.



69

Theoretically there is no consummate possibility of felicity: to believe in the indestructible in oneself, and then not to go looking for it.



77

Dealings with people bring about self-scrutiny.



78

The spirit only becomes free at the point where it ceases to be invoked as a support.



90

Two alternatives: either to make oneself infinitesimally small, or to be so. The former is perfection and hence inaction; the latter a beginning and therefore action.



93

No psychology ever again!



95

Evil is sometimes like a tool in your hand, recognized or unrecognized, you are able, if you have the will to do it, to set it aside, without being opposed.



96

The joys of this life are not its joys, but our fear of climbing into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its torments, but our self-torment on account of this fear.

Schocken Books

WITH ME ~

Björk & PJ Harvey at the 1994 Brit Awards