ADVENTURER ~

~ George Hitchcock ~


poet, pressman, designer, artist, publisher of the great Kayak,
novelist, playwright, teacher, Californian, gardener, raconteur

Goodbye !
1914-2010

flickr.com

LABOR ~

Mississippi John Hurt

Greatness sometimes walks around with a one-word name, even greater might walk around with a state name before his name. John Smith Hurt was born in Teoc Mississippi in either 1892 or 1893; anyway, it was a few years after Ezra Pound, and he would die in 1966 after many long years of hard lived obscurity as a musician, and those last re-discovered years with an affection from devoted followers and fans. His music began in the 20s when he was first recorded by Okeh Records, which went belly up in the Great Depression, sending Hurt back to the fields of labor. There, hidden, he stylized his own home remedy of country flavor, and no one but no one has been able to copy it to this day. Many try. Before Okeh quit, they gave him the moniker "Mississippi John Hurt" as a gimmick, but he spun it into legend.

crossroadsclub27biographies.blogspot.com

EARTH ~

Born outside Manchester UK, 1941. A self-employed musician — the majority of his recordings can be found on his own label Science Friction — and he's played with all styles from skiffle, folk, ballads, rock 'n' roll, full jam, with a devoted following. Nearing his 60th year in 2000 Harper released one of my favorite of his recordings The Green Man. Sylvan through and through. I found myself playing the song below late Saturday night into Sunday morning.

EARTH ~

We're on the home stretch of rebuilding the roof, setting on the spruce purlins for nailers, and getting the last leg of steel roofing up and anchored on. I'm curious to see if between Sweetheart and me we can rig up a ramp system to slide the seventeen foot sheets six-feet up the ramp and then climb onto the scaffold and pull the sheets up and onto the roof. More husband and wife team stuff. We do it all the time with stone, logs, and snow, why not steel? Seven years ago on the back roof we pulled up 18 footers, but we had boy wonder Carson with us then. Nothing like a young lad. I'll have to see after I build the ramp, and lock it in at a comfortable angle onto the scaffold, then watch how the material slides and how well we can maneuver ourselves ground-to-roof. We're still pretty quick. If it becomes obviously nuts, Greg will come down and help give us a lift. Nothing like a friend. I've even thought of grabbing the first stranger going by: walking, bicycle, scooter "Hey, want to help us a moment and give this sheet a lift?" The ever grounded feeling of common community.

Getting up high with the last pieces of 16-foot spruce purlins. It's a Sunday morning, maybe nearing on 11AM and the roof asphalt must be 110 degrees. I mean hot.

I love the new jiffy handsaws, so I keep mine close by hung on a temporary nail. As I need to lop off a short end piece to fit in the purlin I do it from the high staging with my trusty handsaw. No nailguns on this job.

The old steel ridgecap we'll remove from the house roof I'll be putting right onto the stone hut's ridge. You can see it needs a new one. I built this hut 25 years ago, all laid up dry except for the gable end. I started on it the day our son Carson was born. The stone all came off our land, hauled by old jeep and wheelbarrow to the site. The windows came from a friend stopping by before moving to Arizona. He unloaded what he owned to lighten his load for the journey.The old barn board door came from barn boards I found in a barn and brought home and built as a door. The chapel style window came from a chapel. That's a second run of cedar shingles on the roof. The first were white and worthless for roof work but what are you going to do when no money? Years later bought red cedar from British Columbia and cut in that star. So many basics in New England. It's only when you head down to Baltimore and remember that Edgar Allan Poe termed the Transcendentalists "frogpondians", it's all together perfect. I chuckle way high on the roof staging thinking of this.

Here's old friend white pine seen from the scaffold, directly east of the house, over the river. No one lives anywhere near it. The land over there has been heavily logged twice since we've been here forty years, and no one has taken the tree. Looking now at the tree it seems to have two out stretched arms, an arched back, and it's singing.

This is what a day off from the roof job looks like. Fellow worker Sweetheart.

At the west gable of the house, where the steel roof will finish up.

The safe passageway, kept mainly clean, of an obedient scaffold.

We're working through two layers of asphalt shingles and setting in 3/4 inch spruce strapping. I've even stripped the first layer of shingle tabs to get closer to solid footing. You want a 3-inch screw to go along here and there with the regular ringshank nails, and you want to try to remember where the chestnut 4 x 4 beams are below. Sink a screw or a nail into one of those as much as you can. At best they were set in where the setting-in was best. Farmers built this place. Otherwise, it's a full one inch softwood deck under the shingles. It'll grab.

There's always a place to hang a saw.

photos © susan & bob arnold

EARTH ~

CHANG DAI-CHIEN

Oh ~ what beautiful work.

A twentieth century master who could out smart the best with his forgeries posing back to ancient times.

He had the touch.

And he lived long enough and wise enough to range as a traditionalist to impressionist to expressionist painter.

His life took him from his native China to Kyoto to Brazil to California and finally settling in Taiwan.

Prolific, he painted 30,000 paintings in his lifetime ~

capturing the essence of balance:

calligraphy, brush painting and poetry.

Just look at those blues!






Please click onto each painting for the exquisite size











photo: www.c-c-c.org/.../ChangDaiChien.htm

COLD TURKEY PRESS ~

Since 1970 Cold Turkey Press, led by Dutch artist Gerard Bellaart, has published limited, handmade editions of books, cards, and art pieces by authors Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Ira Cohen, Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, Blaise Cendrars, Louise Landes Levi, d.a. levy, Sinclair Beiles and many others.

Gerard is now back producing large, elegant, color, poem cards.

These three by Bob Arnold are translated into French by Agnes Racine & Frederique Berringer.

Go here for a whole new world ~
http://gerardbellaart.com/artist/index.html

PLUS!

MORE from Cold Turkey Press will be forthcoming at the Birdhouse

CEDAR SEE ~

photo © bob arnold

WONDER ~

Hello everyone, or maybe it's just one or two, hello always.

Please take a moment (it'll be a great long moment) and have a look at what Steven Fama has brought to bear about my, and perhaps your friend, Cid Corman. It's an exquisite walk through the park of Cid's many small Japanese bound books done in just the flair Cid made with his own day. One on one with a poem. Steven selects his personal favorites and the company he makes for us is kitchen-table-sit-down-scrumptious. Be prepared to wanting to own a few of these books when you finish this visit! Origin Press, Elizabeth Press are the two presses involved at making these beauties through the 1960s-70s.

There is also an appreciation for Mark Kuniya's Country Valley Press titles, mostso Mark's own handwork, akin to the Corman titles. Mark is working at this as I speak. Books built like traditional Japanese houses. Park your shoes out at the door.

photo © bob arnold

NEW ENGLAND ~

photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

Since we last saw the roof job came four days of steady raininess ~ which means a half inch one day, then drizzles the next, followed by a good inch of nice rainfall which splashed up the river a notch, juiced the gardens, grew the grass, and kept us off the roof.







By Tuesday we figured we could play between the rain drops. Overcast all day, ideal for hunkering up at the chimney where I could tear out the old and rebuild new flashing and lead escarpment, and with Greg slide on two more sheets specially cut to work around the chimney. For awhile there it was Greg on one side of the roof where I had built in roof brackets so he had a landing to perch. And from there, the letterpress man could hand me hammer, drill, caulking gun, metals with the same grace and delivery of handling his type, fonts, ink and special papers. All with a certain deckle edge, graceful. I made the chimney water-tight. Sweetheart was up on the scaffold tending to any loose ends, checking the guys' work, putting that ever wondrous woman's touch to things. I wouldn't want a house without it.

A day off for another rain day Sweetheart and I got many town errands done. This means two weeks of groceries, two weeks of laundry, paperworks for printing at Longhouse and, an ice cream cone (shared).







Thursday was pitch perfect ~ not hot, not cold, not real windy, but a breeze ~ Sweetheart and I started the day and finished it building the rest of the scaffold across the face of the house and it would be one we think Michelangelo would have climbed up there with us. Had a look around.

Now we have 42 feet wide scaffold and we can walk like a stroll in a park (almost) down the whole edge of the roof eave and get at everything. Put up the ladder and hook and climb to wherever. Work either side of the roof.

I still have a day ahead of me to level off the old roof and set in the last of the spruce purlins for screwing the steel into. I'll work that alone with my one board helper who holds one side of the long and flapping sixteen footers.

When the purlins are anchored, we go with more steel.

Mr. Nonchalance up there has actually gone to the trouble of building all this wood scaffold because for once in his life he's doing a roof job with complete safety in mind. It must come with age. I'm also a traditionalist and remember as a boy working on hardy work crews where guys in simple cars and trucks arrived at a job and nothing stood in the way — need to get over an impasse? grab some 2 x 4s and build a bridge, a scaffold, a tower. Take it all down later, use it again, or bury it into something else. Plus I'm wanting everyone dear to me, and helping out, to feel safe. Plus halfway across with the steel, and a closer look at the chimney, I've gotten it into my bandanna skull that maybe it is time to rebuild the chimney while we're at it — either stucco and fully seal it, or maybe even rebuild the outer frame in slate. Yes, slate. I know, I've never seen one either, but no one gets anywhere interesting without first a dream. Or two.

So far we have found two damaged sheets and await two new ones from the lumberyard who awaits from the steel supplier in Pennsylvania. Everything connects. It's a map.

Our wedding anniversary is on Saturday.

photos © susan & bob arnold