Muhammad Ali talks a suicidal man down from the edge

By Jack Brummet, Heroes Ed.

I've posted a lot of photos of my heroes over the years on All This Is That, including dozens of Muhammad Ali.  But this one. . .wow.  What is more heroic than talking a potential suicide back from the edge?  This is the best picture I could find. You can also see a brief news clip of Walter Cronkite reporting the story below:

 

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Poem: Ghosts

By Jack Brummet

1
The scenery whirls by
In a drunken Gaussian Blur
Until I slow it down
And watch it unravel
In a multi-colored, quadraphonic
Parade of flora and fauna
Waltzing Venn Diagrams
Around each other.

2
I quit chasing ghosts,

But once in a while

I look over my shoulder
And find a face in the crowd,
With a sad smile and a halo.
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Living in Brooklyn, 1977 (The Summer of Sam), when the doctors nearly succeeded in killing me

By Jack Brummet, NYC Metro Ed.

My pal and my gal, Brooklyn, 1978

A shot I took from of our fire escape during a Brooklyn parade. The tall building is the House of Detention.

I shot I took from of our fire escape during a Brooklyn parade. The tall building is the House of Detention.

I moved to Brooklyn in June 1977, (The Summer of Sam), and after a couple of months living in a loft near The Bowery on the Lower East Side, we moved for two years to 324 Atlantic Ave. (between Smith and , right across the street from the Brooklyn House of Detention. On July 5th, I experienced a spontaneous pneumothorax that developed into double pneumonia with a fever of 106 one day (the very day the A/C was shut down due to the blackout).

It was seriously touch and go for a few days as to whether I'd make it or not. On July 13th, from my window in Long Island College Hospital, I watched as the lights on the World Trade Center dimmed and went out. And the great blackout and riots of 1977 began. I got out of the hospital three weeks later, in early August.

On August 10th, after a year of terror, they finally captured Son of Sam, and brought him, yeah, right across the street from our crib, to the House of Detention. It was a heady first couple of months in Brooklyn and NYC, to say the least. They've cleaned the place up a tad since we lived there. Back then, people would look kind of befuddled when you said you lived in Brooklyn. And getting a taxi home from Manhattan was virtually impossible unless you paid a double fare. It was a rude and harrowing introduction, but I loved every minute of it and Brooklyn and Manhattan have been part of my DNA ever since.

KeeKee Brummet and Jan Newberry probably saved my life that summer, and for that I'll be ever grateful to my pal and my gal.

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Poem: Dreams

by Jack Brummet

I think about dreams―not drifting
like this, but real R.E.M. dreams.

I don't know which is better―
to dream it or see it,

to see it right now,
or to have seen it.

I don't know which is better,
the memory or the thing itself.

The memory can be repeated forever
but loses fidelity like an old record

and the fictions your mind confects
start filling in the gaps

until the memory becomes a framework
for what we wanted to be, or what should have been.                      

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Poem: Robert Motherwell's Reconciliation Elegy

by Jack Brummet

I think about Motherwell's Reconciliation Elegy―
how he charged around his studio,

rolling vast, turgid highways
of black oil paint over acres of canvas,

and the wrong-headed people
who say "my child could have done that."

click to enlarge

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Alien Lore No. 259 - ACLU lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) lays down the facts about aliens and UFOs

by Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

A clip from the movie Easy Rider (directed by Dennis Hopper, and written by Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Terry Southern.  The ACLU lawyer and town drunk, George Hanson (played by Jack Nicholson) lays out the "facts" about UFOs, and the alien takeover of earth.

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President Garfield's ambidextrous parlor trick

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

He was only President 200 days (with a good chunk of that being mortally ill after being shot),   and is therefore considered one of the forgotten Presidents.

But. . .President Garfield was the first left handed President.  He was left-handed, and also ambidextrous.  He also knew a couple of other languages, and combined that with his ambidextrous hands to be able to write in two languages simultaneously, Greek with one hand and Latin with the other.  He would write a question with one hand, and write out the answer with the other. That was quite a parlor trick.

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Cenacolo di Foligno (The last supper a/k/a sleeping at the last supper) by Pietro Perugino

The Last Supper Fresco by Pietro Perugino (b. 1450, Citta della Pieve, d. 1523, Perugia)

According to The Wikipedia, Cenacolo di Foligno, pained in 1493-96 is located in the ex-convent of the Tertiary Franciscans of Foligno, transformed into the "Conservatory of poor and honest girls" in 1980 after the transfer of the nuns. The fresco was rediscovered in 1845 and attributed at first to Raphael, but recent critics have unanimously agreed it was the work of Perugino, dating it between 1493-96. The idea has also been advanced that it was painted over another fresco of the same theme by Neri di Bicci (1419-1491).

click to enlarge

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JCBSUP? (Jesus Christ Built Seattle Under Protest)

by Jack Brummet, Seattle Metro Ed.

JCBSUP, a/k/a "Jesus Christ Built Seattle Under Protest" is a mnemonic allegedly used by taxi drivers to remember the order of Seattle streets in the downtown core, kind of from Pioneer Square up to Belltown.  You don't hear it so much now (I'm guessing because everyone has a map in their pocket on their "device."  The streets, south to north are:  Jefferson-->James-->Cherry-->Columbia-->Marion-->Madison-->Spring--> Seneca-->University-->Union-->Pike-->Pine.

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Drawing: Faces #698 - skin graft

by Jack Brummet

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Drawing: Faces #688 - scratchboard

by Jack Brummet

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The end of the line for Tubs, a Seattle graffiti landmark

By Jack Brummet, Public Arts Editor

I'm going to miss this place. I know people are really divided on graffiti, but after living in NYC five years, my time in Bogota and Cartagena Colombia, The Mission in San Francisco, and even in Russia, I have come to feel that, in general, it improves far more than it detracts. Is it art? Of course it is; it's just not the art that might be hanging in your aunt's living room. Adios Tubs

We've known it was on the chopping block for seven years.  Yes, many/most people considered it urban blight; I always thought of it as an ever-changing and wonderful "eyesore."

Tubs, the amazing graffiti sandbox, has finally been demolished, after years of sitting idle, and many years as an ever-evolving and changing canvas for local spray paint artists.  After the hot tub club Tubs closed in 2007, it was scheduled for demolition.  Finally, seven years later, they actually did expunge it from the face of the earth.

We are sad to see it go, since we know it will either be replaced by a strip mall, or the dreaded condo development with bottom floor retail.  It was good while it lasted.  Fare thee well Tubs! On a conceptual continuity note, I went hot tubbing there a couple of times in the 80's, and it was great.  By the time of its closure, it had become a notoriously skeezy hotbed of lord knows what. . .

We wrote this piece and took some photos on our last visit to the site, on January 2, 2012.

In March 2009 The Free Sheep Foundation (I think these are the same guys who liberated the Bridge Motel on Aurora) occupied the Tubs building in Seattle's U District, which has been "slated for demolition" for a couple of years now.  It's become an wonderfully and continually changing canvas for whatever artist or tagger shows up.  Early on, people were outraged by all the painting, but over time, it has become a popular stopping by point.  I think every neighborhood needs a building like this. 

I like what you've done with the place.

I always stop by when I am in the neighborhood, but have never seen anyone at work.  I think they only come out at night?  I believe there is some kind of loophole in Seattle's graffiti law, in which "the authorities" are unable to do anything about the artistic improvements to this long abandoned building.

If you're interested, there is a Flickr group that continually posts photos as the building evolves.  I took these seven photos on January 2, 2012.

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