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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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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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.
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Digital art: "I spy with my little eye"

By Jack Brummet 

click to enlarge

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Drawings: Faces no. 383

By Jack Brummet

visual poem: Fog

By Jack Brummet 

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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, a 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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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.
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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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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

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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

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