GREAT STORYTELLER ~

Jean Shepherd

at WOR

"Jean Parker Shepherd (July 26, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep.

With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is best known to modern audiences for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories."

http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/4cc30a-memories-of-fenway-park

http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Jean%20Shepherd%22

WESTWARD THOREAU ~

Gosh, what an ugly looking book. Your hand might not want to reach for it, but you should, the reading is a delight from both Henry David Thoreau's own time when he traveled by train in 1861 (one year before his untimely death) with young Horace Mann, Jr. (also an early fatality) from Massachusetts to Minnesota and back, to the 21st century author Corinne Hosfeld Smith's charmed and friendly prose. She's a librarian from Paxton, Massachusetts and I want to imagine an ideal one. She has much the same vigor, humor and hankering for detail that Thoreau had and she shares it throughout this sturdy portrait and study. This is the longest and least known of the Thoreau's excursions, which included up and in and around New England and the American Northeast, Canada (Quebec), Maine Woods and Cape Cod. As Thoreau scholar Laura Dassow Walls shares in her excellent introduction, "Walking became a form of thinking, which took shape as writing — he (Thoreau) once remarked that the length of his walks marked the length of his journal entries — and in his second essay, "A Walk to Wachusett," he wrote that "the landscape lies far and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest travelled."

Go west, young man.

___________________

Westward I Go Free:

tracing Thoreau's last journey

Corinne Hosfeld Smith

Green Frigate Books, 2012

greenfrigatebooks.com 

 

ICEHOUSES ~

Another lovely slight of hand primer from a British press that showcases the humble and forgotten old architecture of thatch roof and stone structures with full elegance, at under 60 pages, and you walk away from the reading fully enriched.

Shire Books, UK, 2014

BIRTHDAY GIRL! ~

Back Road Chalkies 9 July 2014

Chalkie created 5:30 AM barely enough light for a photograph

WANTED MAN ~

Bob Dylan with his first wife Sara poking her head out the door — there are some terrific Dylan oddities packed in here, including this great cover photograph, which if I recall correctly was inspired by a Bobby Vee album jacket, or maybe the other way around? Plus an interview with Eric Clapton setting down the rule of law, followed by one with Ron Wood, a look at some of Dylan's cinema work, Johnny Cash also chimes in, as does Joe Boyd re Newport '65. The Girl From the North Country (Jaharana Romney) fills us in. D.A. Pennebaker, Paul Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Foye, Leonard Cohen, Roy Orbison, Daniel Lanois — it's quite a cast.

Wanted Man

In search of Bob Dylan

edited by John Bauldie

Citadel Underground,1991

MASAOKA SHIKI / DONALD KEENE ~

Spring breezes —

How'd I'd love to throw a ball

Over a grassy field.

After killing

The spider, what loneliness —

The cold of night.

Trampling through

Insect cries, I create

A path through the fields.

Columbia, 2013

Donald Keene

Masaoka Shiki (1867 ~ 1902)

haiku / tanka master

cover self portrait watercolor
translations by Burton Watson
 

baseball lover; prolonged spinal illness

the last 7 years of Shiki's life were confined to his sickbed

when he wrote the majority of his work

leaving behind at his death at 35

22 volumes of writing

each book is 500 pages long

Shiki is buried in the cemetery of Tairyu-ji

a temple in the Tabata Section of Tokyo

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/09/28/books/book-reviews/biography-of-masaoka-shiki-excels-in-the-expanded-details/#.U7C8qKge4pQ

HEY, YOU!

drawing © bob arnold

ANOTHER JULY ~

"another july"

music compiled by bob arnold

2014

UNDERGROUND USA ~

Once In Vermont Films 2014  © bob arnold

OX HEAD PRESS ~

the soulful memoirs of a small press artisan

HANDMADE HOUSES ~

A fine combination of homes and locations situated by architects, or definitely wanting nothing to do with the influence of an architect. Full color and full crafted. Not quite as wood-edged and maverick as Lloyd Kahn's tall, glossy masterwork volumes (ie., Tiny Homes; Home Work etc.) but on the same tool belt.

Cabin of Howard Waite, built with Rufus Blunk, from Handmade Homes, 1973

photo: Nancy Waite

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-olsen/most-beautiful-handmade-h_b_1464514.html

COLLECTED RON PADGETT ~

Ron Padgett
Collected Poems
Coffee House Books, 2013

The Love Cook

 

Let me cook you some dinner.  
Sit down and take off your shoes  
and socks and in fact the rest  
of your clothes, have a daiquiri,  
turn on some music and dance  
around the house, inside and out,  
it’s night and the neighbors  
are sleeping, those dolts, and  
the stars are shining bright,  
and I’ve got the burners lit  
for you, you hungry thing.

Here's the whole house, and the kitchen sink, but not the collaborations with others, nor as I recall the fine translations. I am reading a borrowed copy. But I am reading and reading and reading. And happy to say the book is as impressive as it looks.

RACHEL CARSON ~

Rachel Carson

http://www.rachelcarson.org/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/24/insecticides-world-food-supplies-risk

BACK TO THE MAN CAVE (POSTCARD 44 ~)

Ireland, 1976

Men taking care of things

photograph by Josef Koudelka

JUNE BUG ~

compiled by Bob Arnold June 2014

WHERE CID AND ORIGIN BEGAN ~

"Corman’s old house, 51 Jones Avenue, remains. It’s a duplex now, located at the end of the street, one side only retains the number 51 address, that place from where Corman sent out the copy of those early printings of Origin, the pages filled with writing by Creeley, Olson, Levertov and others."

— Kevin Bowen

photo: Keven Bowen

http://jacket2.org/article/reclaiming-corman

BUCKET OF RAIN ~

After many gorgeous days in a row, good old June, we had almost five inches of rain overnight.

Oh how the wind blew, the dark clouds mounted, almost covering

hidden valley, and the rain came. We left a bucket out overnight

and a wheelbarrow

and the wheelbarrow nearly filled —

saved for the flowers

newly planted

drawing 2014  © bob arnold

FREEDOM ~

Reader Stephen Collins has even painted a nice bench for you to sit on.

 Be patient let it dry, read a book while you wait.

________________

Sorry, 9 year old free-giving-spirit Stephen Collins from Kansas, you live in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave and you are not allowed to give away free books from the tax-paid front yard of your family's home. Uh-uh. No go. Can't do. If we let him get away with this, everyone will want to do it Etc. Besides, it's books. Why doesn't the kid stay wrapped up in video games, or at least learn how to use a Kindle or The Nook? Books, geez, the next thing he'll want to do is think for himself! Cut them down to size when you can. 9 years old. It's never too early to start.
Let's hope the town fathers feel proud of themselves.

_________________

9-Year-Old's 'Little Free Library' Shut Down By City



The Huffington Post  | By Lydia O'Connor


A 9-year-old Kansas boy is fighting for his right to operate a tiny library from his front yard after city officials deemed it an illegal structure.

Spencer Collins built his "Little Free Library" -- one of 15,000 “take a book, leave a book” structures that have popped up around the world -- both as a Mother's Day gift and as an attempt to engage with his Leawood, Kansas, community through one of his favorite pastimes. It's a way to “get into reading, get to know your neighbors, and … make friends,” he told Fox 4 News.

But a month after setting up the birdhouse-sized structure, the Collins family received a letter from the city telling it to take down the library by June 19 or face a fine for violating a code banning freestanding structures, his mother, Sarah Collins, told ABC affiliate KMBC.

The Leawood City Council said it received complaints about the library and could not presently make an exception for it.

“This is different than a one-day Kool-Aid stand; it’s a permanent structure,” Councilman Jim Rawlings told The Kansas City Star. “This question is -- where do you draw the line on front yard structures?”

But supporters on the little library’s Facebook page, which now has more than 20,000 likes, have pointed out what they believe are inconsistencies in the city’s enforcement, saying the library should be treated the same as birdbaths, birdhouses, lawn furniture or holiday decorations.

Leawood Mayor Peggy Dunn told the Star that the council plans to discuss Collins’ library at a July 7 meeting and could make an exception for the structure if a majority of the council supports it.

Spencer and his family said they have been invited to attend the meeting and are eager to work with the city.

"I would tell them why it's good for the community and why they should drop the law," he told KMBC. "I just want to talk to them about how good it is."

DONALD FAGEN ~

Steely Dan — from Burroughs, Naked Lunch — I never played their music. Read the book plenty.

 I certainly heard their music, grew up all around it, actually was drawn to snippets and slices of the songs, still am; we're about the same age, but I never bought a single or an album and won't. Over.

 But I love Donald Fagen's Eminent Hipsters.

 It's a cool book, just the right size (short) and he gets down to all things you would never expect — like Jean Shepherd, a tiny interview with Ennio Morricone, a match struck on Ike Turner, Sci-fi, sixties stuff, as student at Bard College, and a hilarious road journal touring with Boz Scaggs and others, all as old geezers. You'll love it.

Also, be warned — and I hesitate to bring it up to create any false drama because Fagen does not, and I much respect his even temper as a writer, even as he is falling it seems to pieces — that his forty year old stepson takes his life mid-passage in his journal entries "With the Dukes of September," while on tour, writing, playing concerts, sharing with us, and he soldiers on.

Before he became one of the two (with Walter Becker) of Steely Dan, Fagen wanted to be a writer. Well he is.



[ BA] 











~~~~~~~~~~~~

Donald Fagen
Eminent Hipsters
Viking, 2013

Getz Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi
(Verve October 1957)


"I finally manage to get sleep by listening to an old Verve album I have on my computer, "Getz Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi." These two white jazz virtuosos, both acolytes of Lester Young, both ex-junkies and heavy drinkers, and both, according to musicians' lore, megalomaniacal dicks, played like angels, and never more so than on this album. I've been listening to it for a half century, and it always seems fresh and beautiful." 

DF

Edmond Jabès ~

In Touch With the Book

 

1

 

Sitting on a rock, Yukel watched the sea leaf through the world's book of water.

 

We are constantly in touch with the work, as salt is in touch with the sand, as air with water, secretly in touch as scales are with the echo, as silence is with signs.

 

Lived moments, faithfully recorded. The patient work of death.

 

There are no trees for the dead earth.

 

There are no stars for dead skies.

 

Light from beyond the crests, the grooves.

 

It engulfs heaven and earth.

 

2

 

"Impossible to save. Every day escapes the day."

                                                 — Reb Lieto

 

3

"Conscious and unconscious of the possible.

"The impossible is beyond the no-longer-possible. But the no-longer-possible depends as much on what we know of ourselves and the world as on the general scope of human knowledge in the given instant.

"Earth impregnated by the river, the impossible — a fruitful text."

                                                        — Red Tilche

( "We are at the heart of what is added.

We are at the heart of what is subtracted.

We are at the heart of what is multiplied.

We are at the heart of what is divided.

We are at the heart of what is subdivided.

Wea are at the heart of what is silent.

Open my heart.

You will see silence

in the shape of a cloud or lake.

Open, open my heart.

You will speak

for silence."

— Red Libra

"Enter into my speech, my dark home.

On one side of silence or the other, 

we will be the same voice."

— Reb Sieris )

 

 

Edmond Jabès

translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

The Book of Questions: II & III

The Book of Yukel

Return of the Book 

Wesleyan University Press 1977