ORDINARY EARTH ~

The Man Who Never Rode In A Plane

Airports just don’t do it for me. I can probably count on one hand how many airports I’ve been to in my life, never for a plane. When I was a kid we used to go out to a small airport (single engine planes) because it was near my uncle Frank’s house, and the airport, for some reason, had huge trampolines out in a field we bounced on through the summer evening. Where’d that life go? All gone. In my late 20s we drove a friend out to the Keene, New Hampshire airport to catch a plane for somewhere faraway. Rented a car in the middle of the night at a Salt Lake City airport, zoomed all night toward Wyoming. Loved the drive. Some years later, we picked up another car in the El Paso airport at midnight and glided all night through eerie west Texas, not a town in sight. Big wind. Jack rabbits in the orange full moon with the tallest ears I still can’t believe how tall. That moonlight shone right through those ears. We slept a few hours in the back of the car, our young son in the front, wind like we haven’t felt since Newfoundland slamming the parked car, then we went a mile down into a cave in Carlsbad the moment the place opened. Came out and had breakfast in town served by the oldest waitresses we’ve ever seen using wheeled dolly carts as their trays. They’re too old to carry anything. Later that day saw the small Santa Fe airport for another car. That may be it. Never been on a plane.

Hounds

Hunting hounds are again across the river barking and carrying on, lost to their scent and trail and blocked by the river. This happens rarely now but it used to happen all the time. We hear the dogs for the longest time and then the hunters get down here with their old pickup trucks and cages in the back bed rattling. They are trying to catch their dogs. The dogs have gotten away from them following a scent and the hunters weren’t aware of the river. They hiked all over the mountain and woods to locate their dogs only to find them long lost and better to take their trucks and catch the dogs where they will be at the border of the river. No way to cross, too deep. But a hunter in high waders can get across, water to his chest. He will carry the dogs across the river in his arms to his truck. The barking will stop. Before this all happens it seems like the mountain is moving horizontally with a wild and strange sound. 

Ordinary Earth

Today I sat on the step stoop at the cabin I built in the woods 12 years ago. A lot has not happened and a lot has happened since then. The helper that worked with me moved away. The twin towers in New York City went down. We lived through a hurricane. A flood. The cabin didn't care, its back to the world. At the dutch door I built and the only door in and where I sit and look to the woods all the woods did was grow, much brush. Right to the door. You sat there and couldn't see a thing, only the brush. So you thought, often deeply, breathing and feeling the brush at your feet. Years of this. One day I got tired of the brush and no view and took my tools and chain saw for a few days and cleared all the brush. Not only at the cabin site but away from the cabin and up through an old sugar bush. Trees too. Made firewood. The more I cut, the more I cut some more, until I was to the top of the hill, looking back at the cabin through a glade of massive sugar maple trees. The sunlight coated the trees now, so did the shadows. It was a splendid work effort. The brush all piled. I went back to sit on the step stoop. The cabin hadn't moved.  

———————————   

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

GLENN GOULD / BEETHOVEN PASTORAL ~

THE FIGHT (DON'T TURN AWAY) ~

People with disabilities are among the most discriminated against in Bolivia. Fed up with being ignored, a group of them march across the Andes to the seat of the government in La Paz, asking to speak to President Evo Morales. They are met with riot police, barricades, teargas and water cannon

Headed by determined leaders, including Rose Mery, Marcelo, Feliza and Miguel, the protesters camp on the streets a block away from the main plaza near the government palace. For the first time in Bolivia’s history, police erect 3m-high barricades, station tanks and hundreds of riot officers to stop the protesters in wheelchairs from entering the plaza.

Violent confrontations flare up between police and the protesters, with officers using pepper spray and water cannon. The government refuses to discuss their request for a pension of $70 a month and the protesters suspend themselves from the city's bridges in their wheelchairs.

After following the protesters on the march, film-makers Violeta Ayala, Dan Fallshaw and Fernando Barbosa gain intimate access to their camp, including up-close scenes of regular violent reactions from the police. The film-makers and other journalists are also threatened. For three months the activists with disabilities attempt to speak to the president but face criticism from the state's official news outlets.

As public pressure grows, can Rose Mery and her fellow protesters win their fight?

Read our article about the changes the protests have caused since this film was shot.

Share your experiences of being a disability rights campaigner

Key credits
• Directors, producers and editors:Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw
• Co-producers: Fernando Barbosa and Andrea Monasterios
• Executive producers for the Guardian: Charlie Phillips, Lindsay Poulton and Laurence Topham
• This video is produced in collaboration with the Sundance Institute Short Documentary Fund supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The Guardian, U.K.

BLITZED ~

N    Y     T I M E S      R E V I E W

Houghton Mifflin 2017

READING ~

A great stack of

New York Review of Books Titles

EDWIN FRANK, READER

OTIS RUSH ~

BACK ROAD CHALKIES, J.D.WHITNEY ~

N E W !

Order now through PAYPAL ~

J. D. Whitney

& COUSINS

Issued from Longhouse, Spring 2017

or check to ~  Longhouse, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303

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$10

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RADIO UNNAMEABLE ~

JOHN CAGE and MORTON FELDMAN ~

GIFT ~

Gift

every

morning

the same

river

through

the woods

through

my tiny

bedroom

window

Taking A Book Off The Shelf

The mystery or the irony

or whatever you wish to call it

may be this —

the writer you read

whom you consider great

may be a true son of a bitch

in real life, this life we live in,

he or she may have solid wisdom

in the pages, though is impossible

to live with, or to live, period —

but what must not be forgotten:

this great work that has for whatever

reasons made you feel great

is enduring

and you may be, too

Waiting In The Car

That finger tap at the window

any of us can do —

I just heard the rain do

—————————————

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

JOAN MITCHELL'S COLOR ALPHABET ~

J O A N      M I T C H E L L

THE FEUD ~

Pantheon 2016

A  REVIEW

THE CHILD POET ~

R E A D      M O R E

SUSAN STEWART ~

Graywolf Press 2017

Wrens

their tumbling joy

decanted descanting

over cobble

stones in and out

of firethorn back

and forth to gingko

who knows

who will

ever know

what net

binds them

loosening

song?

I would not

lose them

could not lose

them know

if there's

another

place another

world another life

there must be wrens.

———————————

Susan Stewart

EDNA GALLMAN COOKE ~

AND THE RICH, GET RICHER ~

Obama Accepts $400,000 Fee for a Speech

( on Wall Street )

( Surprise! Surprise!)

R E A D       M E

JONATHAN DEMME ~

JONATHAN  DEMME

photograph by Suzanne DeChillo

———————————————

One of our grandest modern film directors

is elegantly showcased and

remembered by the

New York Times,

with a film lover's thanks.

G O O D B Y E

D E M M E     F I L M S

D E M M E     &     M U S I C

EMILY DICKINSON ~

Amherst College Press

2017

M O R E      E M I L Y      D I C K I N S O N

ANSELM KIEFER ~

A     R E V I E W

Seagull Books
2016

MY BEAUTIFUL KNOW-IT-ALL ~

Library In The Woods 

1000s  & 1000s  & 1000s  & 1000s of books

Neat in rows room to room, floor to floor

Sometimes the mice

Run over the tops

My Beautiful Know-It-All

Before the robins could tell me

My lover told me —

“The robins are back”

Surgery

I just moved a curled up

woolly caterpillar from this

year’s woodpile into next year’s

10 Days Worth Of Amox~Clav

My cat can’t figure out why I’ve been sick so long

I see it in his face, eyes blinking, pinkest nose

my friends don’t know what to say after awhile

they figure it’s better to just go quiet

and so I go quiet

next subject will be politics

my lover is most concerned but sees me coming

to make love and says with a grin, “you’re better”

my mother, who shouldn’t come into this poem after

I make love but there she is, asks, “so what’s the

matter?” like it’s my fault

and maybe it is

—————————————

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse