Sunday, August 30, 2015

Friday, August 28, 2015

Poem: The 1950's

By Jack Brummet



The 1950s were about
The American Jitters: The Day The Earth Stood Still
Huntley Brinkley, The Thing, Ed Murrow, The Blob
Fidel, Godzilla, Senator Joe McCarthy, Gorgo
Who will own the moon,
Wild-eyed Nikita pounded his loafers on TV
As he promised to bury us,
The Cold War ignited on Ike's watch,
Jack Kennedy inherited the residue,
Alarms shrieked duck and cover,
Dad was in the basement,
Sandbagging the jam closet,
And caching beans and gasoline.
We scared ourselves for good
And grew up to fear nothing but nothing itself.
                   ---o0o---

Thursday, August 27, 2015

poem: The Cover-up

By Jack Brummet



The logical beauty of cover-up theories
Is they can never actually be refuted,

But snowball with every new telling.
The absence of facts

Further inflames the conspiracy theory:
The lack of facts

Points to the utter, diabolical
Efficacy of the cover-up.

            ---o0o---

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Poem: Convergence

By Jack Brummet



It is one ocean with many names
And into the ocean, sooner or later, flows
Every river, spring, raindrop, creek, and swamp,
Every lake, lagoon, aquifer, mudpuddle, and pond,
Every snowflake, icicle, glacier, flood, bay, and teardrop.

                    ---o0o---

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Poem: Joshua Brought Down Jericho

By Jack Brummet


Jericho was locked down tighter than a submarine.
It made Helms Deep and Fort Knox look porous.
Joshua studied the walls, scoping a way inside,
When a man with whirling gaslight eyes appeared
And grew ten feet tall and five feet wide.
It was The Lamplighter himself. "Take the shoes
From your feet on my holy ground,
And follow the ark, with seven priests with seven trumpets.”
Seven priests tooting seven horns led a parade
Around and around and around Jericho
Like Sambo marched the tigers around the tree,
Or the way the earth spins in the dark around the sun.
They marched in silence six long days.
On the seventh day they lit out at dawn
Behind the seven priests and seven trumpets
And marched around the city seven times.
After the seventh orbit, the priests blew a cadenza.
And the roar swelled each passing minute.
Every man, woman, boy, and girl,
―Young, old, red, yellow, black, and white―
And every critter, bird, and bug
Was buried in the rubble and dust
As the walls came tumbling down.            ----o0o----

Painting: Walking Machine

By Jack Brummet




---o0o---

Poem: Escape

By Jack Brummet

 Some of us try astral projection.
The rest of us leave in dinghies, bikes, and cars,

Racing down highways, expressways,
Streets and boulevards.

A continent of smoking skull orchard
Recedes in the rear view mirror.
                    ---o0o---

Monday, August 24, 2015

The Crisis Clinic

By Jack Brummet

I graduated from The Crisis Clinic's three week training this weekend [1]. This was harder than any class I took in college, and it feels great. I work my first shift this week.



[1] "Crisis Clinic offers telephone-based crisis intervention and information and referrals to community services for youth and adults in Seattle-King County, WA. We offer emotional support to those in crisis or considering suicide through our 24-Hour Crisis Line. For youth we offer Teen Link, a teen answered help line. King County 2-1-1 offers information and referrals to community services based on our database of more than 5,000 services. The Washington Recovery Help Line is a state wide service offering emotional support and linkage to substance abuse, problem gambling and mental health services to anyone in Washington State. Our Washington Warm Line is a peer-answered help line for people living with mental illness."
---o0o---


Saturday, August 22, 2015

Friday, August 21, 2015

Alien Lore―varieties of UFOs observed as of 1967



---o0o---

A Profile in Courage: President Jimmy Carter

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.


Watching President Jimmy Carter's heartbreakingly beautiful press conference today, all I could think was please please please let us all show the same acceptance, courage, joy, and hope when we come to the end of the line. What a wonderful man.
---o0o---

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Poem: Prayer In Istanbul

By Jack Brummet
Art by Jack Brummet - The Blue Mosque



1.
On a dusty cobblestone street
I hear three muezzins
In three directions

Call people to prayer
At three mosques,
With a slight delay

Between the calls.
Three chanters in three different rooms
Sing the same song

In phase-shifted rounds
Through nine silver speakers

Mounted on three
Ivory-white minarets
Capped in gleaming cerulean blue.

2.
At the washing stations,
Water splashes from brass spigots
Into pale grey limestone basins.

The faithful wash,
Bag their sandals,
And for the fourth time since dawn,

Walk onto the lush carpet
Of the cool quiet mosque
Tiled in words and symbols.

3.
They kneel, face the wall
And pray one more time.
I don’t know what they pray for,

But when I see their faces
And watch their devotions,
I know it’s something good.

4.
It’s so still and calm
In the mosque,
You could hear a fly expire.
          ---o0o--- 

Painting: Faces #1214 ― the Emergency Broadcast System is activated

By Jack Brummet

---o0o---

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Monday, August 17, 2015

Was William Shakespeare high when he wrote his plays?

By Jack Brummet, Lit Ed.



From The Telegraph, August 9, 2015:

"South African scientists have discovered that 400-year-old tobacco pipes excavated from the garden of William Shakespeare contained cannabis, suggesting the playwright might have written some of his famous works while high.
"Residue from early 17th century clay pipes found in the playwright’s garden, and elsewhere in Stratford-Upon-Avon, were analysed in Pretoria using a sophisticated technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, the Independent reports.
"Of the 24 fragments of pipe loaned from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to University of the Witwatersrand, cannabis was found in eight samples, four of which came from Shakespeare's property."
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   .  .  .
"In Sonnet 76, Shakespeare writes about “invention in a noted weed", which could be interpreted to mean that Shakespeare was willing to use weed, or cannabis, while he was writing."

---o0o---


Saturday, August 15, 2015

Сибирский костюм для охоты на медведя, 1800 год

This is from a Russian Facebook friend.  I don't know what it says, but I love the image. 

 "Сибирский костюм для охоты на медведя, 1800 год"

According to Steve, in the comments, the translation is:  "It says "Siberian costume/outfit for bear 
hunting".

---o0o---



At Dirty Dick's

By Jack Brummet


Dean Ericksen sent me this great found photo. It chimed. I remembered WH Auden's poem Master and Bosun's Song (which Francis used to often read and became one of the maybe ten poems I can recite from heart). I don't know the provenance of Dirty Dick's, but Auden wrote:

"At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's
We drank our liquor straight.
Some went upstairs with Marjorie
And some, alas, with Kate..."
---o0o---

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The face of Matilda, the sleeping bigfoot

This footage, released by Adrian Erickson, purportedly  shows a sasquatch in the woods. She looks very peaceful. People who have seen the whole 5 minute clip says the Bigfoot has a "black tongue".


---o0o---

Australian artist Stelarc's arm ear

By Jack Brummet, Appendages Ed.

The Australian artist Stelarc has grown an ear on his arm. He first got the idea back in 1996, but took a while to find doctors w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶d̶v̶e̶n̶t̶u̶r̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶u̶r̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶r̶i̶e̶r̶s̶   w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶u̶m̶o̶r̶   willing to do the work. The ear looks pretty much like an ear now. Stelars plans to insert a microphone into the arm ear, and connect the microphone to the internet, so that people around the world can hear through his arm ear.


He said, "People's reactions range from bemusement to bewilderment to curiosity, but you don't really expect people to understand the art component of all of this."

---o0o---

Monday, August 10, 2015

Free public artesian well water in Lynnwood, Washington

By Jack Brummet, Hydration Ed.


One of the last Artesian wells in Washington State is not too far from Seattle.  You can go there 24/7 and fill up containers.  There may be a wait, even late at night.

Directions:  2331 164th St. SW, Lynnwood  Take I-5 exit 183 and go right on 164th 3-4/10 of a mile to the bottom of the hill and you will see cars on the north side. GPS: 47.850159, -122.265591.

"This is fresh flowing water right out of the ground. No treatment and that's what they want," said Arden Blackledge, General Manager of the Alderwood Water District, which monitors and tests the water monthly. 

According to the Alderwood Water and Wastewater District

"This well, known as Well No. 5, or the 164th Street Artesian Well, is in excess of 400 feet in depth and is cased to approximately 120 feet.  The well flows at about 10 gallons per minute. 

"The source of water at the well is an underground aquifer (a water-bearing layer of permeable rock, sand or gravel).  The well taps the Intercity Aquifer at approximately 200 feet.

"Alderwood Water & Wastewater District maintains this flowing artesian well as a community source of water for those who prefer untreated water."


From a Yelp comment: "This is some of the best tasting water I have ever had. Makes FIJI WATER taste like sewage!"
---o0o---

Tuesday, August 04, 2015

"The laws of physics do not apply to Donald Trump"


From last night's Morning Joe news and commentary show: 

"The laws of physics do not apply to Donald Trump." 

It's true. Image: Donald Trump with future cabinet member Ex-Governor Sarah Palin.
---o0o---


Drawing: Faces #1195 - trunk faces

By Jack Brummet

---o0o---

Sunday, August 02, 2015

Poem: Dasvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch

By Jack Brummet


Dasvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch,
Living life like it couldn't last.
Each day you feel the marrrow diminish
And each week ending is a week too fast
From which there is no turning back.
So you cinch it up tight and leave no slack

To slip through those towering gates,
Relieved from duty in these United States,
Where you were born but never fit.
Now the powers that be coil and spit
As their venomed fangs are bared.
You want to abandon ship, but never dared

And paced and tried to raise the nerve,
Knowing or praying, hoping for the call
Before stumbling into that last blind curve.
It never came and now you sit and wait,
And swear this time you'll play it straight,
Hovering in circles until you stall.

         ---o0o---