Tuesday, August 5, 2014

START WITH THE TREE ~

It all starts with a tree. One to plant, one to cut down, one to hike to, one to mill, one to saw and nail. Remember the tree.

We started clearing and leveling ground all by hand a month or so ago. . .

that oak tree was dropped, that boulder yanked away. . .the region is bumpy with rock, heavy tree roots, ledge, creeping ground water . . . the elements.

It isn't a job if there isn't a can of spikes, long screws and nails.

I needed stone, lots of stone, so I tore down a stonewall I built 30 years ago to get the stone. This opened up two magnificent oak trees that had been corralled by the stonewall, plus opened a whole new area where we used to shovel snow by hand by having to throw the snow load at every snowfall over this former stonewall. Former is better. And I have stone to build with.

Here's where some of the stone went into, deep foundation pits, heavy with rock. There's more stone under these stones, there always is.

Get grubby

Tools of the trade, bucket of water to pour into the post hole pits. It puts the dirt down where you want it, cements things up. Nothing like an iron bar. You should use a long level on the job everywhere, and on your own life. Of course the can of nails.

String is essential and so is your eye. Train it. Rock. Sawdust. Notching. You may be off a half inch, it will meet you at the roof line. Wait and see.

Good, clean crushed rock. Nothing like it. It will go everywhere, even where you wouldn't expect. The orange cord comes 200 feet from the house, through a window, plugged in the bookshop behind old children's books.

Here's the building roughed-out. The ground isn't close to being leveled or finalized. The dreamers are still dreaming. Know when to stop dreaming and get practical. Don't get bored by being too practical, start dreaming again.

I wouldn't know life without a wheelbarrow. Two in fact. I have a poem about this. And Susan has a little red wagon saved from Carson to complete the WCW cycle.

Try to get one day off a week — take a hike

Now we're getting somewhere. The interior has been boxed in, sills disappeared behind pressure treated plywood, fill hauled in by wheelbarrow and brought to eye level. The old stonewall rebuilt on the end and matched to the framing. Look real close and you'll see a Batman figure sitting and watching me, all day, there all night. He sits, waits, asks for nothing. Soft mossy seat at least.

Use the tailgate as sawhorse and truck cab as tool shed. Wear your glasses.

One Saturday morning at 6AM we just went out and framed up all the walls. Me and Sweetheart who is behind the camera. I haven't touched the camera yet. We had the walls studded by breakfast at 10AM. Sweetheart isn't a carpenter, she's weaver, she is way over-extending herself to help like this. You can do it.

Step-ladder that has been with me everywhere. Not as paint messy as the other one. Extension ladder is quick and light and gets you 12 feet. Don't forget the side braces make everything plumb or plumb won't hold.

Soon enough, after the timbered sills were in and stonework supported, floor joists spread the trees. . .

Old saw sign. It came out for a visit.

Every job has a building inspector . . .they come in all sizes and disguises. Just make sure you keep 'em tied down with a rock.

Handwork the rock inside and feel it all. Mike brought this over hill & dale since the load wouldn't be allowed over the town covered bridge. A bridge about to go out of existence because a town has lost touch with that way of life. Where we live has stayed remote, quiet, part of itself because of this covered bridge. I just paid more money for this stone delivery because the driver has to go the extra distance. One will learn, maybe, that we always pay dearly and work harder to reach some solace.

Dreaming the roof height. One board can do it. Take it as high or as low as you want, just remember the consequences and the snow load. Yes, use the tree. There may be a further attachment there when I'm finished.

Sweetheart tells me if she likes the roof height, angle, and look of it all. There is some deadwood to cut out of my pal towering maple tree before the roof goes down. And some to think of it one of the two twin maples may have to come down — it has a good lean into the building, makes dead limbs which will be precariously over a steel roof. Not good.

While waiting for a lumber delivery — breakaway and put down a new steel roof on the lean-to part of the big woodshed. Sheets all came from protective top and bottom sheets from roofing jobs I've had over the years. I kept them all. We think enough to cover this small roof, and to side all the new building. Time will tell.

Wide board pine, combed on one side, planed on the other, will make the second floor. Twelve and sixteen footers.

The tool you want when setting down long floor planks.

Leave some space to work, break your joints, green life all around you.

Ah, a second plan gets hatched. The lean-to building to tuck in the pickup truck. That two-wheel dolly is going to save your back and your life. The flat rock on it is as heavy as I am. The timber posts you see will be eventually covered with stone. All will blend. Close to.

Timber sill for the lean-to extension notched into place and set on stone.

Corner notch.

High up on the wooden scaffold we built for rafter work.

The base of the scaffold, and stone.

Framing, always framing . . .

____________________

what is it?

it's a chapel of the heart

a dance floor with the lightning bugs

a stone and timber companion piece

a soon enough two-door harbor

vehicles, winter, covered!

more to come

photos 2014 © bob & susan arnold

Monday, August 4, 2014

RURAL LIFE AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD (DETOUR) ~

Here we are smack dab in the middle of summer. A summer that wasn't quite as thick with orange daylilies as last summer but who wants to compare summers. It's summer, not winter! and we waited a long slog through last winter to get to this time. . .even if it has been a much wetter July than usual, the days have also been milder, often cooler, and the nights and dawns are grab a jacket.

I've been out most every morning from 6-10AM for the past five weeks framing a new building. Spruce lumber, field stone, crushed stone, pressure-treated timbers and me. Today I'll write a little about this and a little about something else, and then tomorrow I'll begin to showcase photographs from the job site. Most will have been taken by Sweetheart with the roving camera and eye.

From my vantage point on the structure going up I've had a bird's eye view of traffic, passers-by, joggers, bicyclists, whining crows, an increase on dump trucks (more on that) and newer, faster traffic, also connected to the dump trucks because the old covered bridge 1.6 miles up river from where I'm building, where I once hiked up each day to fetch my mail and timed it with the school bus bringing home the only four boys that then lived on the road (farm family). The mail used to be stored in this covered bridge. I lost count long ago how often I've driven over the bridge, brought friends from far off over the bridge, hiked over, bicycled over, cut trees down around it for a customer, swam beneath the bridge, picked up poison ivy east side of the bridge, snowshoed over the bridge (or better took off the shoes to clean them off and get away from the snow storm). You can see the covered bridge has become a friend for the better part of my life. I was married in a small church right up from the covered bridge, and I've worked on nearly every house in the village where the bridge is the key focus. It's kept big trucks on its toes (they can't come through) and in its own old-fashioned way it's taught each and every traveler about common courtesy and patience — a priceless commodity we seem to confuse with our own selfish needs. Which every day seem to grow greater and greater.

For those following my rural essays, episodes and escapades over the last three or four years, the intriguing caper of our neighborhood that holds personal grudges and prejudice and even malaise continues. Don't ask me why, they just do. It seems to come with the regular malady of our own US Congress — instead of improving, they're busy organizing the next fight, lathering up a further insult.

The dump trucks on the road are part of at least a hopeful and possible improvement and repairs on our covered bridge. The newer and faster traffic are the folks having to go 15 minutes out of their way in a detour well worth its trouble. If you love the bridge. Not as many people have bridge planks and lore any longer in their constitution. And once the people lose the love for their bridge, the bridge will be gone. Covered bridges are a lifestyle and a maker of its own rules: you cross over me one at a time, you move through me as slow as a walk, and you watch the amount of weight you're bringing over me. You pay attention. Not to your Smart Phone, but to your bridge, its river, the calming passage it has allowed. Be so lucky.

This summer so far I've had a few great visitors. The first two were a father and his 10 year old daughter both manning a bicycle built for two. It was a bicycle the man had ridden 900 miles with his wife aboard throughout France. One look at the cute little girl and you might guess the man's wife was French. She wasn't with them, she was waiting at a hotel in town 10 miles away and the man had stopped to ask directions and wanting to make sure he was on the right course. I told him he was hanging true, just 10 more miles, and one part of it, soon, would be one mile straight uphill. That didn't seem to phase the 900-miler. It only brought him closer to Sweetheart and me where we were building — sawing lumber and banging nails — a sort of rhythmic music on a summer afternoon. The man wanted a look around. Glance off at our house across the mowed lawn, the roof line, the old chimney, the whiff of the place. A chalkboard with a poem or a quote tucked off into one corner of the yard. Oh yes, he had seen the countryside of France. Here was someone who knew how to look, listen, ask questions and soak it all in. He now lived in Southampton, Massachusetts, a place where I had once worked on two roofs and so we compared travel notes even further. What a lovely visit.

The other visit was this morning — good friend neighbors wanting to touch base, even console for a very good reason and hug to make it all click into place. They told us some news, which wasn't clean and fair, which enlisted this letter I'll be sharing below. It isn't necessarily their opinion, but it is Sweetheart's and my opinion. After an extended visit which felt great by permitting me an hour away from the toolbox, back at it I went for the rest of the afternoon. While framing in two window rough openings there was a glorious moment where suddenly a bicyclist appeared going at the speed it seemed a bicyclist who loves to bike back dirt country roads should move at. I can't tell you what that speed was by number, it just looked right. He appeared, helmeted, sure, dark glasses, and he saw me up in the windows with a hammer and he threw up a big arm wave and never for a moment lost perfect concentration with the road, his bike, the way further, as I waved back just as sure. It was five seconds in the life.

~ BA

_________________________

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

E.E. Cummings

_______________________

3 August 2014

Dear —,

At each and every step with the Green River Bridge closure this summer, there has been a tremendous misstep by the town.

The town's funding and securing the Zaluzny company for the renovation has been a careful and deliberate job, we are sure. Of course none of this was done overnight and everyone knows that to hire a company takes proper oversight, working with the calendar and the seasons. The job has been impending for quite awhile. But notice to the residents and any other person or business of interest (considering the lengthy closure) was about 72 hours! That is startling. Imagine if someone had made plans for a wedding on the west side of the bridge, or had a serious medical concern with plans established. Never mind the peek-a-boo road signs and detour signs or lack of signs shoved together at the last moment by the town. Finally some real detour signs were installed along the way between Vermont to Massachusetts — a circuitous route to say the least for the uninitiated. Good luck.

What is abysmal is that the town has secured a "community organizer" Steve Lembke to coordinate notices and entrusted him with making sure each and every resident affected by this bridge closure would be INCLUDED with notifications. Well, a dear neighbor of ours sent an email this morning (Sunday a.m.) with a concern that we were not on the list of notices via email. No email has come to us including an "invitation" to a Sunday meeting, from either Mr. Lembke or the town, nor telephone call. Perhaps you should "fire" this person (Steve Lembke) for willful prejudicial non-communication. That this person and the town should expect to receive kudos for their partaking with "community organization and notices" is more absurdity and gladhanding amongst yourselves.

The bridge closure is more complicated than just construction and re-alignment of old foundations. There are a myriad of safety factors and first off, the respect to the integrity of the covered bridge, its historical importance, its once-site for the only mail boxes in the area, a true confluence of admiration for it by the Green River residents and the countless photo-sessions of the covered bridge by travelers who plain as day love the visage of the bridge and waterfall. It's not just the structure that overwhelms them, it's the fact there is a community existing this way. In simpler and quiet fashion. As residents here for over forty years, we spirited a petition in the early '90s that we gathered by foot, bike and auto (no such concept of email communication was applied then) to many many residents and visitors to "save the covered bridge." And we all did, and it stuck, so much so, that the Town of Dummerston once personally contacted us as to how one can keep a bridge alive and well and functioning (referencing their long bridge over the West River). This is one of many snapshots of life with the Green River Covered Bridge.

We are certainly hardy residents and can travel the hill and dale to get around to where we have to be. But what we're not tolerant about is the town's non-communication which includes your organizer Steve Lembke. Remind yourselves and him that ALL residents need to be informed and when there is an event or meeting about to occur "in the moment" ALL residents are entitled to this immediate notification. Otherwise, he is not fit for the job.

By the way, we noticed Mr. Lembke pedaling by our home with Mrs. Lembke on bicycles five hours before the scheduled Sunday meeting at their home. We were building a structure on our property, thus making a joyful noise not thirty feet from their passing. It's funny what people can see, and not see, as they wish. Your community organizer looked straight ahead with no interest at informing us of the neighborhood event. In the old days it used to be done with a smile and a wave. The same way covered bridges were built, repaired and saved.

____________________

Susan and Bob Arnold

Green River Covered Bridge

Sunday, August 3, 2014

CHOMSKY BRASS TACKS ~

Palestinian children gather books from the rubble of the Imam Shafi’i Mosque in Gaza City, Aug. 2, 2014. (Photo: Sergey Ponomarev / The New York Times)

3 August 2014

Nightmare in Gaza
By Noam Chomsky

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25343-noam-chomsky-%7C-nightmare-in-gaza

Amid all the horrors unfolding in the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israel's goal is simple: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm.

For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence.

For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but nothing more.

The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is routine.

"The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence," Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani reports, "but also Israel's latest assault on the Gaza Strip."

In an interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, "The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about cease-fire: Everybody says it's better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don't want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: Everybody is saying that."

In January 2006, Palestinians committed a major crime: They voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of Parliament to Hamas.

The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years.

In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing that commitment.

The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once. The U.S. and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence.

The U.S. and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe.

There should be no need to review again the dismal record since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of "mowing the lawn," to borrow Israel's cheery expression for its periodic exercises in shooting fish in a pond as part of what it calls a "war of defense."

Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to rebuild somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire agreement. The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel's October 2012 assault, called Operation Pillar of Defense .

Though Israel maintained its siege, Hamas observed the cease-fire, as Israel concedes. Matters changed in April of this year when Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement that established a new government of technocrats unaffiliated with either party.

Israel was naturally furious, all the more so when even the Obama administration joined the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement not only undercuts Israel's claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided Palestine but also threatens the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both regions.

Something had to be done, and an occasion arose on June 12, when the three Israeli boys were murdered in the West Bank. Early on, the Netanyahu government knew that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have certain knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie.

One of Israel's leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that "I'm sure they didn't get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act."

The 18-day rampage after the kidnapping, however, succeeded in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.

By July 31, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, mostly civilians, including hundreds of women and children. And three Israeli civilians. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. Four hospitals had been attacked, each another war crime.

Israeli officials laud the humanity of what it calls "the most moral army in the world," which informs residents that their homes will be bombed. The practice is "sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy," in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: "A recorded message demanding hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away."

In fact, there is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from Israeli sadism, which may even exceed the terrible crimes of Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.

The hideous revelations elicited the usual reaction from the most moral president in the world, Barack Obama: great sympathy for Israelis, bitter condemnation of Hamas and calls for moderation on both sides.

When the current attacks are called off, Israel hopes to be free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without interference, and with the U.S. support it has enjoyed in the past.

Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank, Palestinians can watch in peace as Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.

That is the likely outcome if the U.S. maintains its decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection of the long-standing international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the future will be quite different if the U.S. withdraws that support.

In that case it would be possible to move toward the "enduring solution" in Gaza that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for, eliciting hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as calling for an end to Israel's siege and regular attacks. And - horror of horrors - the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of international law in the rest of the occupied territories.

Forty years ago Israel made the fateful decision to choose expansion over security, rejecting a full peace treaty offered by Egypt in return for evacuation from the occupied Egyptian Sinai, where Israel was initiating extensive settlement and development projects. Israel has adhered to that policy ever since.

If the U.S. decided to join the world, the impact would be great. Over and over, Israel has abandoned cherished plans when Washington has so demanded. Such are the relations of power between them.

Furthermore, Israel by now has little recourse, after having adopted policies that turned it from a country that was greatly admired to one that is feared and despised, policies it is pursuing with blind determination today in its march toward moral deterioration and possible ultimate destruction.

Could U.S. policy change? It's not impossible. Public opinion has shifted considerably in recent years, particularly among the young, and it cannot be completely ignored.

For some years there has been a good basis for public demands that Washington observe its own laws and cut off military aid to Israel. U.S. law requires that "no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."

Israel most certainly is guilty of this consistent pattern, and has been for many years.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, author of this provision of the law, has brought up its potential applicability to Israel in specific cases, and with a well-conducted educational, organizational and activist effort such initiatives could be pursued successively.

That could have a very significant impact in itself, while also providing a springboard for further actions to compel Washington to become part of "the international community" and to observe international law and norms.

Nothing could be more significant for the tragic Palestinian victims of many years of violence and repression.

© 2014 Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate

LISA ROBINSON ~

Riverhead, 2014

"Hubert Sumlin died in December 2011, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards paid for his funeral."

LEGENDS OF THE BLUES ~

William Stout
Legends of the Blues
Abrams, 2013

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=45513

Saturday, August 2, 2014

HARRY CALLAHAN ~

H A R R Y C A L L A H A N

'Of all the notable photographers of the twentieth century, surely Harry Callahan is the coolest.'
—John Szarkowski, former director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art

"Harry Callahan (1912–1999) is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential twentieth-century American photographers. By amplifying the abstract tendencies of New Vision in a lyrical mode evincing great sensitivity, he was able to overcome the prevailing realist aesthetic in American photography. This catalog presents the entire spectrum of Callahan's multifaceted photographic oeuvre, the product of tireless and prolific creative labors over the course of nearly sixty years."

Harry Callahan

edited by Dirk Luckow and Sabine Schnakenberg

Kehrek/Berlin, 2013

"I'll photograph my way out."

H A R R Y C A L L A H A N

Friday, August 1, 2014

YVES BONNEFOY ~

Yves Bonnefoy

The Present Hour

Seagull Books, 2013

Translated by Beverley Bie Brahic

Thursday, July 31, 2014

ROBERT WALSER WALKS ~

A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser
Christine Burgin/Donald Young Gallery
New Directions, 2012

Robert Walser died Christmas day while walking in the snow (1956)

DO YOU MATTER? ~

More horseshit questions from the literary community who sound more and more like the Stupids to ask and re-ask: "Does Poetry Matter?"

Or —

"Do the Poor Matter?"

"Do Children Matter?"

"Does Health Care Matter?"

"Does Gaza Matter?"

ETC

Let Cid Corman Matter

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

CARLETON WATKINS ~

CARLETON WATKINS

1829-1916

Carleton Watkins traveled west in the 1850’s in search of gold. Instead of finding gold, however, he became known for his photographs of Yosemite, the Big Trees, and other natural wonders, mainly in California. He visited the Valley and Big Trees areas seven times, the first trip being in 1861. Watkins was the main photographer for the California Geological Survey in 1864-65. Survey members eventually named the peak above Mirror Lake, Mount Watkins, in his honor. He was also well known for his “mammoth” camera. It was, when extended, three feet long and thirty inches wide and could produce a negative as large as 20x24 inches. He also carried a stereo view camera. These cameras, as well as tripods, glass plates, portable darkroom, etc. weighed as much as 2,000 pounds and had to be transported by mule. Ralph Waldo Emerson decided that Watkins photographs of the Grizzly Giant “made the tree possible," for these photographs provided evidence of its existence. He lost his studio in the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and passed on in 1916