HOT CHOCOLATE ~

Rescue Me

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/when-gps-leads-to-s-o-s.html?hp

DREAMERS ~

Buckminster Fuller & Isamu Noguchi



An informal and personal biography of the friendship between Fuller and Noguchi via Shoji Sadao, friend and partner to both men. With its deep survey on the development of Fuller's Dymaxion Map, Geodesic geometry, and Dymaxion Car, as well as Noguchi's vast career as an artist without borders: sculptor, landscape architect and industrial designer. Poets of space.

________________________

[NOGUCHI]

This appreciation for man's innate urge to create artifacts commemorating or memorializing important events would remain with Isamu for the rest of his life. In his reverence for nature he sought in his work to probe its inner, timeless meaning and its relevance to contemporary society. His interest in prehistoric sites, the dolmens and menhirs in Europe, Cycladic sculpture, and Jomon and Haniwa sculpture in Japan, attest to his fascination with and the influence of primitive objects on his works. Traveling with Isamu to Paris we visited the ethnographic museum whose ritual objects I remember he observed with an intense interest. His friendship with Joseph Campbell stemmed from their shared quest for the truth in ancient meanings and interpretation of symbolic language, myths, and archaic rituals. He subscribed to Joseph Campbell's conviction that "It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations." During a 1962 interview, Isamu responded to Katherine Kuh's question, "What kind of art do you admire?" with, "Actually the older it is, the more archaic and primitive, the better I like it. I don't know why, but perhaps it's simply because the repeated distillation of art brings you back to the primordial: the monoliths, the cave paintings, the scratching, the shorthand by which the earliest people tried to indicate their sense of significance, and even further back until you get to the fundamental material itself."

[ FULLER ]

Bucky's aesthetics, if this term can be used, were similar, but Fuller began with the concept of an inherently complex and eternally regenerative Universe. He believed in the primacy of the forces of the Universe, and in staying true to nature's principles in the design of artifacts. "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. . .But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." He applied to design the principle of Occam's razor (which holds that the simplest solution is often the best) and from his New England heritage, Emerson's precepts on beauty: "Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. The cell of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength with the least wax; the bone or quill of the bird gives the most alar strength. 'It is the purgation of superfluities,' said Michael Angelo [sic]. There is not a particle to spare in natural structures."





Buckminster Fuller & Isamu Noguchi
Best of Friends
by Shoji Sadao
5 Continents Editions, 2011

THANK YOU, FRIEND ~

Bob & Susan say thanks (out of the rain)


The complete Susan edited Birthday tribute anthology is here

Once In Vermont films © bob & susan arnold

small print ~
(paul ryan)

"The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a well-respected liberal think tank, describes the Ryan budget this way:

The new Ryan budget is a remarkable document — one that, for most of the past half-century, would have been outside the bounds of mainstream discussion due to its extreme nature. In essence, this budget is Robin Hood in reverse — on steroids. It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history).

The Ryan plan, which has received majority backing twice from Republicans in the House and once from Republicans in the Senate, calls for a major retrenchment of the welfare state.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, at least 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale. New analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts. The new tax cuts at the top would dwarf those for middle-income families. After-tax incomes would rise by 12.5 percent among millionaires, but just 1.8 percent for middle-income households. Low-income working families would actually be hit with tax increases.

In addition, the budget Ryan presented to the House in April last year called for the elimination of taxes on capital gains and dividend income. Romney pointed out in a January 2012 debate that “Under that plan, I’d have paid no taxes in the last two years.”

Even more important, in political terms, those now under 55 would face an utterly transformed Medicare when they reach 65, a health care program that would steadily shift costs to beneficiaries. The Ryan budget would also cap total federal Medicaid spending, which would force sharp reductions in eligibility and coverage.

In an email to the Times, Robert Shapiro, Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under President Clinton, wrote:

Medicare is voucherized and then increases at GDP [Gross Domestic Product] growth + 1 percent per -year, versus actual increases in health care costs averaging over the last two decades 5.7%; and Medicaid is block-granted at current levels and grows at the rate of overall inflation – and neither formula takes account of increases in the number of recipients.

Medicaid is currently the single largest source of support for long-term care of the elderly and disabled. While just over three quarters of Medicaid recipients are children and families receiving basic health coverage, 64 percent of all Medicaid dollars go for the most expensive care (of old people in nursing homes and of the disabled), according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Most of the elderly population is not equipped to absorb higher medical costs. Almost half of those over the age of 65 depend on Social Security for 80 percent or more of their total income. At the start of 2012, the average annual Social Security benefit was $14,760.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer there, see the cost-cutting Ryan budget as a plus:

Republicans own the Ryan budget. And so does Mitt Romney. The question, it seems to us, is not whether Republicans and their presidential nominee own the Ryan budget, but how they choose to talk about it. Republicans shouldn’t worry about having entitlement reform as part of the campaign debate; they should want it there. The 2012 campaign should be about leadership, and about the failure of Barack Obama to provide it on the big issues, including – especially – on entitlement reform, debt, and deficits.

Bill Burton, who was Obama’s deputy press secretary and is now a senior strategist at Priorities USA, is delighted to see Romney wrap his arms around Ryan: “The Ryan budget is one of the most toxic documents that a political party has ever embraced,” Burton said in a phone interview with the Times (which was also conducted before Ryan was unveiled). When Priorities USA tested reactions to specific provisions of the budget in focus groups, according to Burton, the participants thought the cuts were so draconian that “they couldn’t believe a politician would support those policies.”

The momentum behind the Ryan plan within the Republican Party is so strong that Romney has had no qualms about giving it his blessing. In a March 22 interview with a Milwaukee radio station, Romney defended the controversial package of budget and tax cuts:

It’s time to tell people the truth. And if they want to vote for something less than the truth, that’s their right. But I’ve got a campaign of telling people the truth and I believe the American people are ready for the truth and understand that all of the promises and the attacks and so forth that are part of the political process have to be pushed aside for the truth. And so my campaign’s about telling people we’ve got to cut back on our spending and finally live within our means or we could face economic calamity where what we’ve gone through over the last three years would look like a cakewalk.

Conservatives joyful over the selection of Ryan contend that whatever damage Democrats can inflict on Romney with the Ryan budget will be more than made up for by two factors: the willingness of the Republican ticket to forthrightly campaign on a detailed economic agenda, and Ryan’s appeal to white voters, including many blue-collar and Catholic voters.

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard argues that a Romney-Ryan ticket will now be equipped to take on the Obama White House:

Mitt Romney, the cautious candidate, wary of being specific, and counting on the bad economy to defeat President Obama – forget all that! The Romney who picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is an entirely different person. He’s prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest bundle of issues – spending, debt, the deficit, taxes, entitlements, and the reversing of America’s accelerating decline under Obama. Specifics? There will be plenty.

The National Review stresses Ryan’s Catholicism:

One strength he brings to the ticket is a grounding in the social teaching of the Catholic Church, to which he belongs, and a willingness to engage with those who thoughtlessly equate this teaching with support for an ever-expanding welfare state. These traits could have more than parochial interest this year, because a disproportionate number of Catholic voters are up for grabs.

The overarching strategy of the Romney campaign is to turn out as many white voters as possible in a contest that may well come down to turnout on Election Day.

The Ryan budget, however, tackles a broad array of domestic social spending, and in slicing Medicare and Medicaid, Ryan’s plan imposes harsh costs on a very large proportion of white voters. An overwhelming majority of Medicare recipients, 78 percent, are white. Just 9 percent are black, 8 percent Hispanic, 2 percent Asian-American and 3 percent “other.” A solid plurality, 43 percent, of Medicaid recipients is white, 22 percent are black, 28 percent Hispanic and the rest are “other.”

A February 2012 study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of all federal entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), the school lunch program, Earned Income Tax Credit, and the refundable Child Tax Credit – finds that non-Hispanic whites, who make up 64 percent of the nation’s population, received 69 percent of the total benefits. Hispanics, who make up 16 percent of the population, received 12 percent of the payments, and blacks, who account for 12 percent of the population, received 14 percent of the benefits.

The Obama campaign and its allies are preparing to show that the Ryan plan will severely cut social insurance programs that not only provide help to poor people, but also to many in the middle class, including millions and millions of whites. The Romney campaign and its supporters, in turn, will try to make the case that these programs go disproportionately to the undeserving (and heavily minority) poor, who should not be subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

Until now, the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA has concentrated its commercials attacking Romney on his stewardship of Bain Capital, especially on decisions by the company to put businesses Bain acquired into bankruptcy, to close plants and to lay off workers. It has done so in part because of the focus group findings that voters were reluctant to believe that a mainstream politician would back the scope of cuts called for in the Ryan proposal.

Those Democratic anti-Bain ads, according to Burton, have been designed to soften up the electorate to make it possible to run, in the near future, commercials linking Romney to the Ryan budget. The anti-Bain commercials have the long-range goal, in Burton’s words, of “building a ‘thought structure’ among voters of a guy who makes decisions based on profits, and not on the concerns of middle class families.” Adding Ryan to the ticket serves to greatly facilitate development of this ‘thought structure.’

Which bring us to another problematic aspect of Romney’s decision to pick Ryan. The very qualities that attract the right to Ryan — his ideological purity and his verbal dexterity in making the case for smaller government — are very likely to eclipse Romney, who despite the boldness of his choice still projects a weak political persona and ideological ambiguity. No candidate willingly demotes himself from first to second fiddle, but Romney has chosen to do so.

In this context, Fred Barnes paid the ticket a backhanded compliment:

Romney showed that, like a smart businessman, he knows his shortcomings. For all his attacks on Obama’s economic policies, Romney has failed to create a sense of urgency about the country’s faltering economic situation. And without a national fear of an impending catastrophe, he can’t defeat Obama.

Romney’s solution, Barnes wrote, is to get someone who can: “No one in America is better than Ryan in spelling out, with figures and facts, the crisis America faces.”

For very different reasons, Democrat strategists like Burton and Garin would agree."

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University

from nytimes "Paul Ryan's Liberal Fan Cub"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/us/politics/family-faith-and-politics-describe-life-of-paul-ryan.html?hp


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/13/paul-ryan-sold-shares-banking-crisis

photo: from the film "Darkman"

LISTEN TO YOURSELF ~
( RY COODER )

'Social media is Orwellian' … Ry Cooder.
Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/09/ry-cooder-mitt-romney-dangerous-cruel

MIKE'S DAY ~

Mike Luster & Essie "the Blues Lady" Neal

Happy Birthday, Mike!
Aug 12, 1952

FINISH ~

Paul Eluard
Back Road Chalkie
translated by Samuel Beckett

_____________________

The downpour the other evening almost washed the chalkboard clean, despite its roof, and its location underneath the towering and protected tamarack, but Eluard remained. This is one of Samuel Beckett translations from his Collected Poems. Some of the most stunning love poems Eluard ever wrote.





photo © bob arnold

"OKAY, I'M TAKING OVER
Bobby-boy's Birdhouse for a day
or so to showcase this Birthday
Anthology Tribute, please read on!" ~

PLEASE LINK HERE FOR EVERYONE'S BIRTHDAY GREETING

© susan arnold

TERROIR ~

AS ONE



I remember walking in a field,

so young the black-eyed Susans stared

me in the face, the air so bright

that every flick of grass was clear

and leaves seemed magnified. The flowers

stood tall and swayed — the daisies, Queen

Anne's lace, the Susans, yarrow — thrilled

the day and kept me company;

all level as a yard of water,

and made me feel as one of their

exploding fierce community.





COW PISSING


First the tail begins to stiffen

at its root. The thick base rears and

a warp runs out the length of the

appendage to the dirty hank

and the whole is lifted slightly

to the side, exposing the gray

puckered pussy. But it's how the

back arches up that startles, how

she humps as though bracing against

and backing into something hard,

pressing to release a valve or

tip a cask open. And the stream

that starts comes as though from a hose

not round but flattened by her lips.

Shot on the pasture dirt, the jet

wears out a basin that overflows

into tracks and sprays gold mist on

hooves and grass, shivering rainbows.

When the blast lessens and scalds down

to tatters and drips and is done,

she whips the tail a few times to

knock off the last drops and walks on

to graze. The puddle glistens like

gold wine in the sun, and crackles

as it soaks into the splash track.

The grass sparkles many colors

where the growth will be less for the

libation a while, and then more.





IRONWEED


There is a shade of purple in

this flower near summer's end that makes

you proud to be alive in such

a world, and thrilled to know the gift

of sight. It seems a color sent

from memory or dream. In fields,

along old trails, at pasture edge,

the ironweed bares its vivid tint,

profoundest violet, a note

from farthest star and deepest time,

the glow of sacred royalty

and timbre of eternity

right here beside a dried-up stream.


_________________________


Terroir
Robert Morgan
Penguin Books, 2011

click onto image to enlarge

EARTH ~



[ yesterday ]








[ today ]


ELEGANCE



Log trucks pass in a sparkle

Through the redwoods



Empty trailer folded up in half

Every thing polished clean



No rust



[ BA ]







[ clean ]

SPHERE ~

photo © bob arnold

STINK ~

Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation Sheldon Adelson, center, watches a lion dance at the opening ceremony of Sands' Cotai Central in Macau on April 11, 2012.
(Aaron Tam/AFP/Getty Images)



please read on:

http://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-investigation-of-leading-republican-money-man-sheldon-adelson



http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/embracing-sheldon-adelson/?hp

BLACK & BLUE ~

Rain will be here in 5 minutes

photos : © bob arnold
sugarloaf

SHAKE SUGAREE ~

Quvenzhané Wallis
Beasts of the Southern Wild

for J.D. who gifted us the tickets to ride

To be honest, I didn't want to know too much about this film. No previews thanks, see the film poster, 92 degrees out, duck into the air-conditioned theater and hideaway on water and islands and a little girl's dreams and nightmares and listening powers in Louisiana, with my own sweetheart. Both of us could detect Zora Neale Hurston's "Tea Cake" from one of her classic tales, none of it related at all but it's all related, and it's all just as powerful in this film. And by the way, there is no film like this one. Ever before. (We know, we film-fanatics). Even though "Wink" and "Hushpuppy" tell us all "No tears!" (don't cry), hang tough, life can be rotten and we've got to make it through etc. We all cry in this film. I cried through the entire film. So did my Sweetheart, and she cried later when she tried to explain why she cried. No need to explain. Even Marx and Engels would have cried, as they once described to us what a world this film is all about : "If man is shaped by his environment, his environment must be made human," from The Holy Family. If you don't get that, you don't get anything.


Go see this film if you can and don't even think to wait to catch it on DVD at home. It must be seen large and be able to roar in your ears. It must be seen with the world, meaning the people around you, weeping, stunned, sitting in their seats until every bit of the film credits roll on by. There is nothing magnificently cinematic about the film. It's far beyond the Woody Allen and Wes Anderson sort of films being hip and postured in other parts of the small multiplex theater. This film headlines no star names. Heralds no hype. It's just about the Earth — your last home.

Elizabeth Cotton
( great grandchild Brenda Evans is singing )

_____________

"Someone’s ability to bake doughnuts or laugh loud is just as good a reason to make them a dolly grip as their ability to push a dolly. I want to fill my life and my films with wild, brave, good-hearted people. Whatever amount of chaos and disaster that leads to doesn’t matter, because you’re going through it with the people you love, and in the end, no matter what, the movies come out wild, brave, and good-hearted; and that’s more important to me than smooth dolly moves.

This concept extended to every part of the process making BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. My approach to making movies is about crafting an energy, a feeling, and a way of life that the people that make movies with me can live. It’s about inventing a reality and populating it with the best people I know. Most gloriously, in our casting process—where we chose Dwight Henry, from the bakery across the street, and Quvenzhané Wallis, from Honduras Elementary School to take charge of our heroes, Wink and Hushpuppy. Neither of them had any previous experience acting, but when you look in their eyes, you see fearless warriors, and you know they can do anything. Even though you then revise the script as you learn from the actors and settings along the way and change everything about your approach, it doesn’t matter, because those elements were superficial in the face of accurately capturing the fierce spirit that the film needed to articulate. That principle was applied to every decision. Are we going to create an interior water set? Or are we going to sea? Do we dress an accessible location to look like an island at the edge of the world, or do we go to the edge of the world? Do we dress an 11 year-old to look like she’s six? Or do we cast a six year-old? We tested the strength of the story and family that made it against every element that would try to break it.

In order to survive she has to find the strength of South Louisiana at the age of six. I put all the wisdom and courage I’ve got into her. She’s the person I want to be.

I got hooked on South Louisiana because this mentality is everywhere. I showed up for a short visit six years ago and I’ve been there ever since. It’s the home of the most tenacious people in America—an endangered species. And that fierceness was how I came to this story. With the hurricanes, the oil spills, the land decaying out from under our feet, there’s a sense of inevitability that one day it’s all going to get wiped off the map. I wanted to make a movie exploring how we should respond to such a death sentence. Not critiquing the politicians who have caused it, or calling to arms for environmental responsibility, or raising awareness of suffering, or any of that.

The real question to me, is how do you find the strength to stand by and watch the place that made you die, while maintaining the hope and the joy and the celebratory spirit that defined it? I found the answers in the ferocious people I cast in the film, and I found an incredible articulation of that story in my dear wonderful friend and co-writer Lucy Alibar’s play “Juicy and Delicious” —an apocalyptic comedy about a little boy losing his father at the end of the world. From the two of us, and with the spirit of Quvenzhané Wallis, came Hushpuppy. She’s a little beast who, in order to survive, has to find the strength of South Louisiana at the age of six. I put all the wisdom and courage I’ve got into her. She’s the person I want to be."

—Benh Zeitlin, Director/Co-writer

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Directed by Benh Zeitlin
Screenplay by Lucy Alibar, Ben Zeitlin
Featuring: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly, Jonshel Alexander, Marilyn Barbarin, Kaliana Brower, Joseph Brown, Nicholas Clark, Henry D. Coleman, Pamela Harper, Kendra Harris, Amber Henry, Gina Montana
Cinematography by Ben Richardson
Film Editing by Crockett Doob, Affonso Goncalves
Original Score by Dan Romer, Benh Zeitlin
Country Of Origin: USA
Language: English
Running Time: 91 Minutes

http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/travel/the-filmmaker-benh-zeitlins-impressions-of-the-bayou.html?src=dayp

David Bowie

Bob! For Your Birthday Today!

posted by SEA

( please click onto image to enlarge )

a limited print edition anthology from Woven for Bob! 5 August 2012
gathered by Susan
& many many thanks to the contributors

FROM SUSAN

Hello everyone!

Thank you again to everyone who has contributed. It has been a wild July-August between both our birthdays. And so many people answered requests to be here for Bob's birthday party anthology ... I plan to have the anthology active and online by our anniversary on 28 August. I hope you can all wait around to enjoy it. Love, Susan

&

"susan, this is for the 5th / Gerard"

&

"Happy Birthday for my Dad, Love Carson"

&

for Bob,

&

love, Susan

photo: Bob Arnold

SARAJEVO ~

Semezdin Mehmedinović

SPIRITUALITY


In the evening we wait for

the moment forms open:

the sky is still in darkness

from the radiance of earthly things —

and then the buildings become like models

blackened by the shadow of their surfaces

and the torrid sky appears

as the moon begins to shine amidst the war —



That instant everything —

and my son looking out the window —

casts a divine smile

on the domesticated power of the elements






CROWS

I remember a reading one night. Miroslav Toholj, my friend at the time, had just come from Bor (where he had also been on literary business), and was still filled with impressions of his trip. He told us of a town in which "the crows didn't survive." Just like that, ecologically beside himself, he spoke of death as if it wasn't a natural phenomenon. This was right before he read a section of Heartmaster, a novel of his that had just come out.


At my house early the next morning, my mother was making us breakfast when my son, still drowsy, appeared at the door in his pajamas. Toholj slipped a pencil and a notebook into his hand in which there was a single sentence written: "Bor is a city in which crows can't survive." And, while my son was drawing potato head people, the owner of the notebook brushed his fingers through my son's hair.


The whole incident would be completely irrelevant if the scene hadn't repeated itself today: I'm sitting next to my son, completely engrossed in his drawing, and brushing my fingers through his hair.


After everything that's happened in the meantime, the repetition of this situation — and even my recollection of what took place six years ago — is almost comical. There was real warmth in Miroslav Toholj's gesture, a man who, not long after that visit, would fully devote himself to the expulsion of a whole people. That's what time was like, along with the things occupying it, that it made the feelings connected to any memory seem worthless.


Now, when I think of the Serbian novelist Miroslav Toholj, I am deeply aware that people aren't deserving of tragedy because existence is exalted in and of itself, and brings its own consolation. But people don't deserve consolation. Comedy is closer to the truth, since it at least shows the meaninglessness of things.


From this perspective, knowing that there is a town in which crows can't survive is truly absurd.


And look how the story ends: sitting with my son and brushing my fingers through his hair, I discover a detail that, at first, makes me smile — like when you see a kid wearing the boots of a grown up. As I slowly brush my fingers through my ten year old's hair, I find strands of grey.









GETTING THINNER


War is a time of crisis for the male gender. No one can convince me otherwise: war is spurred on by the asexual, the emotionally disturbed. Love offers deliverance from the tyranny of the ego: a sexuality — combined with heavy political control — can only result in criminal perversity. I see young women change several times a day and, with make-up on, walk the empty streets of Sarajevo in which not even a single cafe is open. I know women who, in only two months, have lost so much weight so quickly, that they've also lost any sense of the erotic. And this too is a horrible result of the war: the Serbian leaders' tyranny of the ego reproduces itself in whatever space they make their presence known through war — they want to create an asexual world, no matter what the cost. I watch a famous actress hanging out with some young soldiers, defenders of the city. She's clearly having a good time and, every now and then, she delays her departure. Finally, though, they leave: the carefully chosen, refined words of the young defenders are exchanged for common jokes. Such consolation.

Sarajevo Blues

Semezdin Mehmedinović
translated from the Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay
City Lights Books, 1998





Semezdin Mehmedinović was born in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1960 and is the author of ~
Modrac 1984
Emigrant 1990
Sarajevo Blues 1998
Nine Alexandrias 2002
Transatlantic Mail 2009, Semezdin Mehmedinović and Miljenko Jergovic
Soviet Computer 2011
Self-portrait With a Messenger Bag 2012.

HARRY ~

Harry Hoogstraten






Once In Vermont films
© bob arnold

GUN SMOKE ~

R.G. Armstrong

(1917 ~ 2012)



If you grew up with 50s-60s television & film westerns
then you grew up with R.G. Armstrong ~
dying with his boots on last week
in Studio City, CA. at age 95









top film still from Sam Peckinpah's
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
R.G. Armstrong as
"Deputy Sheriff Bob Ollinger"
ditto the lower photo w/ Kris Kristofferson,
or turn over the jacket of your Dylan album
with the same title and see it there

QUEEN ~

Kitty Wells & Johnnie Wright

A bunch of us (well, "30") lost power last night when a thunder & lightning storm from hell and highwater came about just as we were finishing preparing corn on the cob from the Williams Farm (the best in the world, good people) and power went and stayed went long enough for us to walk and walk outdoors in the wind and light rain and listen to the river rise and rise all muddy and nice (there's been little rain) that we decided to go to bed. . .so Kitty Wells never got onto the Birdhouse with the other four I had slipped on for Wednesday. She was meant for Wednesday, even though it's 6 o'clock in the morning now and Thursday. Today we'll call the power co and ask, "Why is it every time the power goes out the only ones without power are the same "30"? Maybe there's a problem to solve where those same "30" reside?


Kitty Wells (Ellen Muriel Deason) was born 92 years ago in Nashville, Tennessee. She passed away a few weeks ago in Tennessee with one of the longest "celebrity marriages" ever, 70 years to Johnnie Wright, who died in 2011. I believe she was also the first woman country singer to have an album all her own. Back in the dark ages when such things never happened. She was the queen of country, everyone said so. One of her popular songs is below and maybe because of the electric storm last night I'm choosing an electric version of it.

INVISIBLE ~

Chris Marker


"I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, pronounceable in most languages, because I was very intent on traveling. No need to delve further.”

Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve on July 29, 1921, (and may have passed away this year on his birthday, or the day after, ed.) Mr. Marker hid many aspects of his biography. He once claimed he was born in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, though some sources have cited his place of birth as the Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. He granted few interviews and typically refused to be photographed. Information about his survivors was not immediately available. But in his work, at least, Mr. Marker was not anonymous so much as he was playfully evasive.

(NYTimes)


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/movies/chris-marker-enigmatic-multimedia-artist-dies-at-91.html?ref=obituaries

_______________________


Filmography

Olympia 52 (1952)
Statues Also Die (1953 with Alain Resnais)
Sundays in Peking (1956)
Letters from Siberia (1957)
Les Astronautes (1959 with Walerian Borowczyk)
Description d'un combat (1960)
¡Cuba Sí! (1961)
La jetée (1962)
Le joli mai (1963, 2006 re-cut)
Le Mystère Koumiko (1965)
Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966)
Loin du Vietnam (1967)
Rhodiacéta (1967)
La Sixième face du pentagone (1968 with Reichenbach)
Cinétracts (1968)
À bientôt, j'espère (1968 with Marret)
On vous parle du Brésil: Tortures (1969)
Jour de tournage (1969)
Classe de lutte (1969)
On vous parle de Paris: Maspero, les mots ont un sens (1970)
On vous parle du Brésil: Carlos Marighela (1970)
La Bataille des dix millions (1971)
Le Train en marche (1971)
On vous parle de Prague: le deuxième procès d'Artur London (1971)
Vive la baleine (1972)
L'Ambassade (1973)
On vous parle du Chili: ce que disait Allende (1973 with Littin)
Puisqu'on vous dit que c'est possible (1974)
La Solitude du chanteur de fond (1974)
La Spirale (1975)
A Grin Without a Cat (1977)
Quand le siècle a pris formes (1978)
Junkopia (1981)
Sans Soleil (1983)
2084 (1984)
From Chris to Christo (1985)
Matta (1985)
A.K. (1985)
Eclats (1986)
Mémoires pour Simone (1986)
Tokyo Days (1988)
Spectre (1988)
L'héritage de la chouette (1989)
Bestiaire (three short video haiku) (1990)
Bestiaire 1. Chat écoutant la musique
Bestiaire 2. An owl is An owl is an owl
Bestiaire 3. Zoo Piece
Getting away with it (1990)
Berlin 1990 (1990)
Détour Ceausescu (1991)
Théorie des ensembles (1991)
Coin fenètre (1992)
Azulmoon (1992)
Le Tombeau d'Alexandre aka The Last Bolshevik (1992)
Le 20 heurs dans les camps (1993)
Prime Time in the Camps (1993)
SLON Tango (1993)
Bullfight in Okinawa (1994)
Eclipse (1994)
Haiku (1994)
Haiku 1. Petite Ceinture
Haiku 2. Chaika
Haiku 3. Owl Gets in Your Eyes
Casque bleu (1995)
Silent Movie (1995)
Level Five (1997)
Un maire au Kosovo (2000)
One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (2000)
Le facteur sonne toujours cheval (2001)
Avril inquiet (2001)
Le souvenir d'un avenir (with Bellon 2003)
Chats Perchés (2004) - a documentary about M. Chat street art
Leila Attacks (2006)



Film Collaborations

Nuit et Brouillard (Resnais 1955)
Note: In a 1995 interview Resnais states that the final version of the commentary was a collaboration between Marker and Jean Cayrol (source: Film Comment)
Les hommes de la baleine (Ruspoli 1956)
Note: under the pseudonym "Jacopo Berenizi" Marker wrote the commentary for this short about whale hunters in the Azores. The two would return to this topic in 1972's Vive la Baleine (Film Comment).
Le mystere de l'atelier quinze (Resnais et Heinrich 1957)
Note: Marker wrote the commentary for this fictional short (Film Comment).
Le Siècle a soif (Vogel 1958)
Note: Marker wrote and spoke all the commentary for this short film about fruit juice in Alexandrine verse (Film Comment).
La Mer et les jours (Vogel et Kaminker 1958)
Note: Marker present commentary for this "somber work about the daily lives of fishermen on Brittany's Île de Sein" (Film Comment).
L'Amérique insolite (Reichenbach 1958)
Note: Marker was eventually credited as a writer for this one, apparently, he wrote the dialogue (Film Comment)
Django Reinhardt (Paviot 1959)
Note: Marker narrated this one (Film Comment)
Jouer à Paris (Varlin 1962)
Note: This was edited by Marker - essentially, this film is a 27-minute postscript to Le Joli Mai assembled from leftover footage and organized around a new commentary (Film Comment)
A Valparaiso (Ivens 1963)
Note: This gem was written by Marker. It feels like a Marker film.
Les Chemins de la fortune (Kassovitz 1964)
Note: Marker apparently helped edit and organise this Venezuela travelogue (Film Comment)
La Douceur du village (Reichenbach 1964)
Note: Edited by Marker.
La Brûlure de mille soleils (Kast 1964)
Note: Marker edited this (mostly) animated science-fiction exstentialist short and (possibly) collaborated on the script (Film Comment)
Le volcan interdit (Tazieff 1966)
Note: Marker narrates this volcano documentary
Europort-Rotterdam (Ivens 1966)
Note: Marker did the textual adaptation (Film Comment)
On vous parle de Flins (Devart 1970)
Note: Marker helped film and edit this short (Film Comment)
L'Afrique express (Tessier et Lang 1970)
Note: Marker wrote the introductory text for this film under the name "Boris Villeneuve" (Film Comment).
Kashima Paradise (Le Masson et Deswarte 1974)
Note: Marker collaborated on the commentary on this documentary about the destruction of Kashima and Narita (Film Comment).
La Batalla de Chile (Guzman, 1975–1976)
Note: Marker helped produce and contributed to the screenplay for this, perhaps the greatest of all documentary films (Film Comment).
One Sister and Many Brothers (Makavejev 1994)
Note: Marker tapes Makavejev circulating among the guests of a party in his honor as much jovial backslapping abounds (Film comment)



Bibliography (self-contained works by Marker)

Le Cœur Net (1949, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
Giraudoux Par Lui-Même (1952, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
Commentaires I (1961, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
Coréennes (1962, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
Commentaires II (1967, Editions du Seuil, Paris)
Le Dépays (1982, Editions Herscher, Paris)
Silent Movie (1995, Ohio State University Press)
La Jetée ciné-roman (1996 / 2nd printing 2008, MIT Press, Cambridge; designed by Bruce Mau)
Staring Back (2007, MIT Press, Cambridge)
Immemory (CDROM) (1997 / 2nd printing 2008, Exact Change, Cambridge)