Sunday, March 31, 2013

The Nazz: Lord Buckley's wonderful meditation on the life of Jesus Christ

By Jack Brummet

Lord Buckley's tribute to "the sweetest, gonest, wailingest cat that ever stomped on this sweet swinging sphere.  And they called this cat The Nazz.  He was a carpenter kitty..."   Lord Buckley covers Jesus with love.  My favorite part is the scene of Jesus stomping across the water of Galilee.   Or when he performs his miracle on the "cat with the bent frame."   This is one of the Lord's greatest performances...

  ---o0o---

Friday, March 29, 2013

Snapshot: Taking Grandma for a Sunday spin

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Alien Lore No. 247 - The most popular file in the FBI's digital Vault is a memo about the Roswell UFO crash

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

The FBI recently opened a digital reading room--The Vault--with thousands of documents on their most famous cases (you know, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, The Unabomber, the 9/11 conspirators, et cetera). The most downloaded document (by far)?  A 1950 memo about a UFO sighting.

The memo to J. Edgar Hoover is from from Guy Hottel, the special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C. field office.


click to enlarge

The informant, whose whose name is redacted, said that saucers had been found in New Mexico because the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area that is believed to interfere with the guidance systems of the saucers. 

The town of Roswell in New Mexico became infamous after reports that a flying saucer crashed in the desert near a military base there on or around July 2, 1947. The bodies of aliens were said to have been recovered and autopsied by the U.S. military.  American authorities allegedly covered the incident up.  We won't go into a lot of detail here, since this is one of the most well-documented UFO stories of all time. 


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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Photo - Counter-demonstration: Pornography harms

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Full Moon Craziness

By Jack Brummet, Unexplained Phenomena Ed.



When I worked on the flying squad at a crisis clinic in the 70's, the Conventional Wisdom was that, on the night of a full moon, we could expect far more, and far crazier and desperate calls.  Tonight was a full moon, and I didn't really see anything untoward happening.  But I have also heard a greater number than normal of sirens in the distance. 

I never understood how the moon could possibly affect people's sanity or will to live. But I also never really grasped how something 239,000 miles away could affect us at all. I do remember, from my physics for poets (or dummies?) class in college that tides are created because the earth and the moon are attracted to each other like magnets. The moon tries to pull at anything on the Earth to bring it closer. And, the earth can hold onto everything except the ocean. I understand this (sort of), but probably need my science children Del and Claire to actually explain it in knucklehead terms.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Two Marilyn Monroe Statues

By Jack Brummet 

The first Marilyn Monroe statue is from Palm Springs, California.  The second one is from 1,400 miles south, in Bucerias, Nayarit, Mexico.  It stands outside Billy's Gym, where I go to cycle when I am there...

click to enlarge/right click to download 
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Ezra Pound: Canto 120


By Ezra Pound [1]
[Richard Avedon's 1958 photos of Ezra Pound, shortly after he was released from his 13 year stint in St. Elizabeth's mental hospital in Washington, D.C., where he was committed in lieu of being tried for treason for his broadcasts from Italy during WW II]
"I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
let the wind speak
that is paradise
Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.”
[1] E.P. wrote many wonderful and some baffling works.  I truly love a lot of the Cantos.  The problem with liking E.P. are the broadcasts, and his virulent rants about the the Jews and the alleged international banking conspiracy.  He broadcast hundreds of addresses over Italian radio, paid for by the Italian government.  And of course, when the Americans liberated Italy, one of the first persons they came looking for was Ez.   So, how do you reconcile this?  Do good works somehow ameliorate the invective and hate speech?  I've read about anti-Jewish comments coming from people I admire (just a sampling: Harry Truman, T.S. Eliot, Lennin, Churchill, Martin Luther, George Washington), , and whose work I love. My best friend (R.I.P.) had a thing about Jewish people...not hatred I don't think, but a very deep mistrust  Do you forgive and forget, or forgive but never forget?  Maybe it all falls under "hate the sin; love the sinner."

Of the mainly poor blue collar families people I grew up with, there was plenty of animosity toward African-Americans.  Until I was maybe in high school, I don't think I ever heard anyone describe them as black, or even negro.  Except on television.  They used the other four words--the n word, the c word, the j word, and the s word.
             ---o0o---

Digital art: "I spy with my little eye"

By Jack Brummet 

click to enlarge

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Friday, March 22, 2013

Drawing: Faces No. 381

By Jack Brummet 


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The complete (so far) painting oeuvre of George W. Bush (24 paintings and counting)

By Jack Brummet, Painting and American Art History Ed.


As you have possibly read,hacker--Guccifer--purloined these photographs of Ex-President George W. Bush and his paintings by hacking into the Bush family's email.  He originally furnished the stolen photos to The Smoking Gun and recently, to Gawker.  Three batches have been released so far.  We already knew a little about POTUS 43's painting from his art teacher's website and interviews.

Guccifer hacked the accounts of Dorothy Bush Koch and at least five others with close ties to the Bush dynasty. To highlight his brilliance, he furnished The Smoking Gun with a series of paintings  by Ex-President George W. Bush.  He also included a string of emails about Bush’s ailing father, POTUS 41. And, this week, he sent along to Gawker a new batch of photos of Dubyah's oil paintings. 



A scary dog behind bars with a prospect of the White House


In a package on Georgia’s WAGA-TV, Bush 43’s art teacher, Bonnie Flood, said the president regularly opts to draw household pets.


“He started off painting dogs. I think he said he painted 50 dogs,” Flood said. “He pulled out this canvas and started painting dogs and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I don’t paint dogs!”




Cats, dogs, and a still life


a photo of the President's painting of his recently deceased dog Barney

The artist at work, painting a church

Self portrait in the shower

Bathtub self-portrait

Twelve photos of paintings that Guccifer gave to Gawker
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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Poem: Perpetial Motion

By Jack Brummet 




The mountain is the youngest child
Of heaven and earth,
Striving ever upward

And simultaneously tumbling down,
Like the five volcanoes
That surround me.
        ---o0o---



ATIT Reheated (from 2005) George W. Bush's scandalous speech in Israel

By Pablo Fanque, Foreign Relations Ed.


[Listening to President Obama's "historic" speech in Israel today, which has received much acclaim  we remember back to a far less well-received speech by his predecessor]

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), has joined the flood of Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”— Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee
Speaking at the Knesset, The President said “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Barack Obama joined in, accusing President Bush of "a false political attack" Thursday after Bush warned against appeasing terrorists.

Speaker of the House Pelosi tore into the President, saying Thursday that Bush's remarks were "beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation" at the celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary.




Even Senator Hillary Clinton took the time to lambaste POTUS: "President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush."
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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

e.e. cummings poem [in Just-] spring

By e.e. cummings




[in Just-]

in Just-
spring          when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far          and             wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles
far
and
wee


---o0o---

Spring has sprung (but not quite in Seattle) - William Carlos Williams' poem Spring And All



by William Carlos Williams

I

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
                ---o0o---

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Republicans for gun control

By Mona Goldwater, Societal Mores Ed.


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Faces No. 380 - Plaid Pantry Night Clerk

By Jack Brummet

[Nib and needle on India Ink scratchboard; second image is the scratchboard scanned and digitally reveresed]


































































Charlie Parker plays "Air Conditioning"

By Jack Brummet, Jazz Ed.

Air Conditioning is one of my very favorite Charlie Parker songs. I first heard it on a Dizzy Gillespie-Charlie Parker LP, "Groovin' High," and it's been a top tune ever since. . .




 ---o0o---

Monday, March 18, 2013

Poem: With Or Without Words

By Jack Brummet 




 1-
If I don't write it down
It's gone like a pickpocket
Easing back into the crowd

 2-
If I don’t write it down
The world will carry on
Merrily on its own

Unaware of the loss
The world revolves
With or without the words

 3-
If I don’t write it down
The words race away
Like a hit and run driver 

      ---o0o---

Drawing: Faces No. 379 - Associate Professor

By Jack Brummet 

[pen and ink analog drawing, digitized and effed with in photoshop]


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Saturday, March 16, 2013

The Grateful Dead's amazing Wall of Sound system, ca. 1973

By Jack Brummet, Music Ed.



I saw the Grateful Dead play in front of their wall of sound in Vancouver, B.C. in 1973.  It was amazing.  And quickly abandoned because it was so expensive to set up and transport (they had to have two sets leapfrogging each other on the tour).

It just sounded phenomenal.   Apparently one reason bands play so loud is that loud music overrides some of the delays and muddiness in sound.  Because the wall was so clear, they didn't need volume.  And the many speakers covered any hall or stadium with a gigantic wave of clear sound. They didn't need to turn it up to 11.

"The Grateful Dead sound system is really 11 independent systems or channels as shown in the table  below.  The source of sound are located behind and above the performers so they hear what the audience hears.  Only one source location for each channel is used to cover the entire hall and the music is clearer both on stage and in the audience.  The stereo effect is very satisfying and natural to persons all over the hall.  Intermodulation distortion between instruments is of course non-existent." - from http://www.dozin.com/wallofsound/#



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Drawing: Faces No. 376 - Arthur

By Jack Brummet 

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Poem: Hard Landing

By Jack Brummet 


A plane embedded in the ground
And scattered across the desert
Is called an hard landing.

            ---o0o---

Friday, March 15, 2013

Happy 73rd birthday to Phil Lesh!




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ATIT Reheated (From 2010): What would Jesus eat?

By Jack Brummet, Theology Ed. 



What Would Jesus Eat?   We don't really know what Jesus ate, but there is, naturally, a panel of wildly divergent experts on the Internet who will tell you they know.  In fact, someone wrote a book, and put out a "What Would Jesus Eat? diet." 



What do we know about what Jesus ate?  Not much at all.  The Bible does not specifically detail whether he ate on the day of the Sermon On The Mount or not; we know he fed a large crowd that day with a few loaves of barley bread and two fish. 

"...he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people."  
The Feeding of the 5,000 (the story of the loaves and fishes) is the only miracle (besides his  resurrection) that happens in all four Gospels (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15).  But we still don't know if he ate, held out for a steak, or maybe lentils, back in town.


We know He changed water into wine.  We just don't know whether he drank it or not. 

The Gospel of Luke says Jesus ate broiled fish and honeycomb (Luke 24:42).  As far as I can tell, this is the only mention in the Bible of him actually eating.  This knocks out some of the most vociferous claims of Christ's vegetarianism.   But there seem to be many people who believe that Christ was a vegan or vegetarian, and many others that believe he probably ate fish, and maybe some lamb once in a while.  We know he served bread and wine at the Last Supper, but we do not know whether he ate or drank any of it himself.

Both crackpots and scholars believe that Jesus ate a Mediterranean Diet version of strictly kosher Jewish food, which would include olives, olive oil, lamb and fin fish, and possibly beef (we know the kosher diet could include "fatted calf"), grains, vegetables, and fruit.  But other crackpots and scholars claim he ate no meat or fish at all.   People don't seem to have eaten chicken in the bible, which would rule out matzoh ball soup. 


Many people claim Jesus Christ as a vegetarian.  In 1999, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) launched a campaign to claim that Jesus was a vegetarian. Billboards stating "Jesus was a vegetarian. Show respect for God's creatures - follow Him" were put up around the country.

The Gospels specifically mention Jesus keeping three Passover feasts in Jerusalem. In order to keep the feast, the participants were given roasted lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread to eat (Exodus 12:3-4). The entire lamb had to be eaten during the feast. If there were any leftovers, they had to be burned (Exodus 12:10). If Jesus did not eat the lamb, he may have been violating the Law and could have been accused of sin.  But we just don't know....no one mentions whether he sat at the table and ate, or not.


"... observe the Passover to the LORD. 'In the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight, they shall observe it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 'They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break a bone of it; according to all the statute of the Passover they shall observe it. 'But the man who is clean and is not on a journey, and yet neglects to observe the Passover, that person shall then be cut off from his people, for he did not present the offering of the LORD at its appointed time. That man will bear his sin." (Numbers 9:10-13)
Jesus possibly ate lamb, and definitely ate fish:
"But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, 'Have you any food here?' So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. And He took it and ate in their presence" (Luke 24:41-43).


Whether Jesus ate fish or lamb, or was a strict vegetarian, we know he believed in fishing, and helped his disciples and other fish.  Vegetarian, or not, he was at the least, an enabler:


"So Jesus said to them, "Children, you do not have any fish, do you?" They answered Him, "No." And He said to them, "Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch." So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. ... So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish which you have now caught." Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." None of the disciples ventured to question Him, "Who are You?" knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and the fish likewise." (John 21:5-6, 9-14).
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