EARTH ~

all of these drawings were made in response to titles contributed to the artist
sam brown
at his website explodingdog by viewers here there and everywhere.
i've never been to his website. i'm old fashioned. i read his books.

where does it all go?

mom says i'm special

this seems to be quite interesting

it used to be so easy

i am building a better world for you

she is my sunshine

gallopingdog.com

NEW FROM LONGHOUSE ~









FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD
for Lynn Nankivil

At the horizon, I sit at the center of the Universe
observing all living creatures,
inhaling, exhaling the universal soul;
I discern each individual fate carefully:
Alexander the Great, President Abraham Lincoln, Czar Nicolas,
Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, people
who sailed on the Titanic, people who flew
on Pan Am flight 103 and others,
and Buddhist monks in the cursed nation of Cambodia,
and hovering in front of me--- the Kennedys---
what rose up from John-John’s karma? Or maybe JFK
wanted his son to join him
in the Nagaraja realm
and not ascend to the Devaraja?
All these beings, their appointments
set so bizarrely--- violent death.

When the body is dead
Ignorance or Knowledge adheres to the soul
and it comes back again and again….
I gleefully contemplate Knowledge;
but Ignorance frightens the wits out of me.

Greed! Anger! Hatred! Are roots of Ignorance!
Wisdom! Love! Compassion! Are fruits of Knowledge!
I pray that Wisdom, Love, and Compassion should prevail.

Looking at the sky, I see Walt Whitman;
when I look at the trees, Walt Whitman peers out at me;
when I look at the grass, he beckons me;
and when I close my eyes,
Brother Walt is beyond the earth waiting for me and you.

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NEW FROM LONGHOUSE ~












holding my breath—
a drive to deep right field
and the rising moon

Please inquire about purchasing with a credit card. You may order by check (total $9.95) made payable to "Longhouse" & send to

Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303. Thank you!

Or, Order now with easy-to-use Paypal ($8.95 + $1 s/h - US addresses only). Thanks!

EARTH ~

Eilen Jewell Band


We've been visiting Grafton, Vermont for many decades now, always as a side-trip passing through and never for the 4th of July fireworks and Vermont Symphony Orchestra extravaganza which we can't afford the tickets to anyway. I know there are other Vermonters like us.

The village of Grafton has a population of less than 700 — easily half the size of its Civil War era.

The town was named after Grafton, MA., supposedly during a bidding & drinking episode — so connect the dots. Lots of American history was made this way.
The town was first founded as "Thomlinson".

The Old Tavern inn was established when Thomas Jefferson was newly President and has stayed afloat continuously ever since, a feat with few rivals in this country. The folks we visited with on the hotel's broad front porch seemed extra comfy and happy with their stay.

In the 1960s the Windham Foundation restored the village, making it almost impossible for any hardscrabble Vermonter to own much of anything in the village, but it also spiffed up buildings and decorated the spot as an authentic New England town with much success. Greg Joly and I did a poetry reading to raise money for flood victims of Hurricane Katrina on the town library porch without ever being invited and no one chased us off. In fact few were there. Likewise, when Sweetheart and I visited recently and had a little impromptu picnic by a village brook, boots off, books with us, lunchpail, no one said "No". We arrived at 9AM and would stay for Eilen Jewell's Band who were to perform at 5 that afternoon right behind the Old Tavern.

Since we were there for the day we roamed all the village on-foot. To the school playground and the swings, then down to the working forge — a fire pit and blacksmith hammering away inside the darkness. After that it was a stroll over to the minerals museum with a fellow running the one room quite friendly and quite batty about all things rock: from Zaire to local Vermont-bred gems. We took a run through the Grafton Cheese station, neighboring deli, out to a well used baseball diamond and scrubby bleachers, small garden pockets, through backlots of barn and homes, taking photographs, the one country store not exactly decked out for tourists and more homespun (we like it always), finally back to the library, and with a mental note we would delve into the town historical museum after our little picnic and deep reading.

The tools are a hallmark in the historical museum, as is the back history of soapstone manufacturing and sheep raising from the region. There is a legacy of African-American families in the town, maybe the most notable is the native storyteller Daisy Turner, who died in 1988 in Grafton at age 104. In Ken Burns film The Civil War, one can watch Daisy Turner reciting Civil War poetry on her dying year. She was one of a kind.

By 4 in the afternoon we got ourselves to the Eilen Jewell Band. A free concert, which is absolutely giving of the town. A small short step-up stage with canopy was placed in the parking lot and folks just gathered round — under the huge maple trees, on the lawn, walking past; you'll even see a kid on a bicycle caught in my film pumping around the parking lot in his own time with the music. The little film was shot hand-held right on the spur. This is a performer and band working in the great tradition of the self-employed — they tune their own instruments and put up the whole show and take it all down, travel to the next town — which will be on Thursday in Burlington, Vermont as the opening act for Wanda Jackson.

film © bob arnold

EARTH ~

old pole, old flag






photo © bob arnold

EILEN JEWELL ~

photo © bob arnold

BEAT ~

photo © bob arnold

GROOVE ~

photo © bob arnold

FRIEND ~

Yesterday in the late afternoon, faraway from home, browsing between a large barn and a large house through an aisle of grass, and mere feet from an outdoor rock 'n' roll concert, I found this friend on a cool stone step taking a breather and listening (more later)





photo © bob arnold

TELLING IT WHOLE ~
(the best damn writer in the NY Times)

TIMOTHY EGAN:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/conservative-cash-crop/?hp





Courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.

WITH ME ~

DAVID TRINIDAD



ODE TO THELMA RITTER


There's no one like you in the movies
anymore, Thelma, no lovable, middle-aged
character actress, gravelly voiced and
hard-boiled, with a sharp-tongued flair
for the cynical as well as the comical. You
could work miracles with a little screen time,
turning out indelible performances in a matter
of minutes: Bette Davis's acerbic sidekick
in All About Eve, Jimmy Stewart's down-to-
earth nurse in Rear Window, Doris Day's
perpetually hung-over maid in Pillow Talk.
You played women with names like Clancy,
Aggie, Bertha, Birdie, Lottie, Leena, Della,
Stella, Sophie, Sadie, Maude, Mae, and Moe.
But what of you, Thelma? Online I find only
this mini-biography. Born in Brooklyn on
Valentine's Day in 1905. Trained at American
Academy of Dramatic Arts. Stage career
mostly unsuccessful. Married Joseph Moran
in 1927; briefly gave up acting to raise two
children. Started working again in radio in
1940. Bit part in Miracle on 34th Street launched
noteworthy screen career. Appeared in thirty
films between 1947 and 1968. Died of a heart
attack in 1969 in New York. Thelma, six times
you were nominated for Best Supporting
Actress, and six times you lost. You, who
could save any movie with your wisecracks!
A Google search uncovers this little-known fact:
"Shirley Booth was not the first choice to play
Hazel. Thelma Ritter was. Miss Ritter wanted
the role badly, but due to illness had to bow out."
Booth would win two Emmys in the early '60s
for playing television's sassiest maid — your
rightful part. O elusive trophies! O tired heart!
You, who survived the Titanic in one picture,
would say sadly, world-wearily, in the next:
"I have to go on making a living so I can die."


from The Late Show
David Trinidad
Turtle Point Press 2007

photo : flixster.com

BACK ROAD CHALKIE ~

photo © bob arnold

NEW FROM LONGHOUSE ~










TEST MILE


Lost the big herbivores but gained
all these trees. The fir tree is formed
like a flame and is thus the Universal
Root, the foundation of all things.
Enormous and immediate, the dynamic
expression. Alive in a molecular world.
A world estranged from the Mysteries,
reduced to fingering detective fiction.
Science is great when it confounds
fundamentalists, not when it modifies
corn. In the front room pounding
Beethoven with the door locked. Sleeping
with too many afghans. Staff around
to make life nicer. Knit me a corgi.
I was thinking about it and then I was there.
Not important what others call it, so long
as you have a name for it. As the
monarch follows the milkweed. The king
in the custard pie. Even his bookmarks
are interesting. The temptation to be smart.
To dwell inside a cave and glow green
from living off nettles. We are the mountain.

Please inquire about purchasing with a credit card. You may order by check (total $9.95) made payable to "Longhouse" & send to

Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303. Thank you!

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NEW FROM LONGHOUSE ~

HIGH WATER


Running downstream on high water
you don’t have to muscle the paddle;
just knife it in the current to stay straight.

When a whirlpool roils to the surface
your body flexes and veers with the boat.

Watching the shore go by:
red granite, white birch bark,
the bronze-green thickets of trapper’s tea
your mind drifts.

Where the river widens into a lake
you start working again,
and step back into the world;
searching for the next portage
or a good camp site,
thinking about supper.

Look at that raven playing with the wind:
his mind isn’t penned in
by deadlines and maps,
his body’s not burdened with tools.
Setting his wings,
he swoops, and gives us the eye.
Flapping them twice,
he climbs, clears the timber
perches in a jackpine snag,
talks to us as we float past.

For him, the sky is water.
Clouds mark the currents
of the rivers he runs.

Cirrus River

"The Bob Love (booklet) is especially perfect, almost as if it should have a waterproof pocket to carry it in in one's backpack." ~ Ken McCullough

Please inquire about purchasing with a credit card. You may order by check (total $9.95) made payable to "Longhouse" & send to

Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303. Thank you!

Or, Order now with easy-to-use Paypal ($8.95 + $1 s/h - US addresses only). Thanks!

LONGHOUSE BOOKLETS SUMMER 2011




version 2

please email us for ordering information

or visit Longhouse 2011 New Titles

film : © bob arnold

EARTH ~

MIKE WATERSON

1941-2011

Goodbye to a British folksinger, boat builder, carpenter from Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire village, UK.

Here Lucy Ward sings Mike Waterson's delightful revenge ballad "A Stitch in Time".

photo : mike harding

PANTS ON FIRE ~

please watch & listen:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/24/new_expos_reveals_nuclear_regulatory_commission

DREAMER 1 ~

image : caughtbytheriver.net

DREAMER 2 ~

image : caughtbytheriver.net

DREAMER 3 ~

image : caughtbytheriver.net