Mount Rainier: Beauty and terror

Source: Washington State Archives. State Library Photograph Collection. Photo by L.D. Lindsley - click to enlarge

I have two friends climbing Mount Rainier this weekend. I recently read the best book I'd ever read about it... The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier by Bruce Barcott. He focused on climbing, the native folklore about the mountain, the animals and insects, the history, including a detailed account various expeditions, and of the army plane crash in the 40s that left dozens of bodies buried in the Tacoma Glacier.

If you are fascinated by Mt. Rainier--and it's hard not to be in Seattle, when its massive presence looms over us every day ("the mountain's out today!")--this is a great book to start with. What makes Barcott's book so engrossing is that he digs in to all aspects of the mountain. And tells his personal story of climbing the mountain, and how when he finally summited, he didn't feel much at all. Except anxious. He does a great job describing both the danger and the beauty.


click to enlarge - Rainier from the northwest

The mountain is arguably the single most impressive mountain in the lower 48. It's only the 5th tallest mountain-- a few feet lower than California's Mt. Whitney (14,494'/4418m) and also a few feet shorter than some of the Sawatch Range peaks in Colorado. It is second to Shasta in total volume for a single peak, and only nearby Mount Baker has more glacial ice. In terms of it's high elevation, massive bulk, and 30 glaciers, Mt. Rainier reigns supreme. And it is only 40 miles to the sea level shores of Puget Sound. Because it is so big, and relatively alone, it dominates the landscape, and can be seen from Oregon to Canada.

Climbing Mt. Rainier, by its easiest route, requires you to ascend 9,000 vertical feet! This is actually the same distance as the climb from advance base camp in the Western Cwm to the top of Mt. Everest. Of course, the air is considerably thicker...
---o0o---

John "Douchebag" Edwards DNA matched to baby mama Rielle Hunter

By Pablo Fanque

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

You won't be hearing much from John Edwards anymore. He is now the next gen's Gary Hart, a guy who threw away national office by "stepping out" on his wife. He could have been Attorney General or VP. He could have even mounted a challenge to Obama.

To make matters worse, he has lied about the paternity for years now, even when it was certain to come out. Good riddance, John. I can't believe I ever thought you were the guy. When did you finally break down and tell Elizabeth?

---o0o---

The Return of Squeaky Fromme: Attempted Presidential Assassin and top Charles Manson lieutenant leaves prison...

By Jack Brummet
All This Is That Law and Justice Editor

This is kind of a mindf***er! Who'd have ever though Lynnette "Squeaky" Fromme would see the light of day again? I remember the day she tried to shoot President Ford. The only thing that stopped her from killing him was a secret service agent who somehow managed to jam his thumb in front of the the hammer of the gun. And I might add, we came one thumb away from President Nelson Rockefeller. And now she is out. She had earlier turned down parole, but took one this time around.


Gerald Ford with Bill Clinton

Fromme was Charlie Manson's head honcho when he sent his followers on a two-day killing spree in 1969, in which eight people were killed, including actress Sharon Tate (and her unborn baby). The killings were allegedly done to trigger a race war. Fromme did not actually participate in the murders 40 years ago in Los Angeles. She avoided prison and was able to take a shot at Gerald Ford a few years later.



Manson and five others did go to prison for life. But then, Squeaky was also to sent to prison for life. Charles Manson is in the California State Prison at Corcoran and will again be eligible for three years from now. Charles is now 74 and Squeaky is 60.
---o0o---

Poem: Robot Wars

The bad news for us:
The loss of one member
Is inconsequential--
Just a millisecond diversion
In their inexorable march.
A platoon of robots,
A company of robots
Stepping over broken robots.
A regiment of robots,
A division of robots
Executing lines of code.
A corps of robots,
An army of robots--
Programmed to make it all come down
By rogue homo sapiens--
March straight ahead,
Utterly indifferent to the fate
Of their brothers and sisters in arms
---o0o---

An amazing view of Ballard, Seattle, Wash., with a frieze of Olympic Mountains

click on Ballard to enlarge, Photo by Jack Johnson. Source: Washington State Archives.
General Photograph Collection. Used with permission.

A photograph of my neighborhood in Seattle (Ballard) in 1960, nearly fifty years ago. I love the perspective--and no, the Olympic Mountains do not quite loom over us like that! We can see them, but from our promontory from Crown Hill/North Beach, they seem further in the distance, far less foreboding, but breath-taking still, and humbling in the way mountains always are.
---o0o---

The Greys claim Wyoming as new homeland

click to enlarge

---o0o---

Video: "the 100 best movie lines in 200 seconds"

OK. These are probably not the 100 best movie lines (although quite a few of them are), but they're mostly memorable, and do cover a lot of territory. It's worth a few to see some of those old cherished nuggets...

Video and poem: Kill my landlord --> Eddie Murphy reads his character Tyrone Green's prison poem Images

You may or not remember this just bent enough for me Eddie Murphy sketch from SNL --it's hard to believe he was on the show for--what?--five years. I did get to see Eddie Murphy on the show in Studio 8H at a rehearsal Saturday afternoon (I had connections...thank you Cheryl [1]).

Images

by Tyrone Greene

Dark and lonely on the summer night.
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Watchdog barking - Do he bite?
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Slip in his window,
Break his neck!
Then his house
I start to wreck!
Got no reason --
What the heck!
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L ...
My land - lord ...
Def!




[1] Our friend Cheryl Hardwick was the music director of the shows for many years, and played piano in the band. She and Pinky were the catalyst for meeting all sorts of interesting people witnessing a lot of crazy events and situations in the late 70s/esarly 80s. I was introduced to her by her partner, Pinky Rawsthorne, a co-worker of mine, and one of the funniest, and wisest persons I ever met in my life. We met or hung out at various times with all sorts of people in celeb and semi-celeb world: Larraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Bob Cranshaw--the legendary jazzman (who we met a few times at her apartment, but the first time was when he was playing with Woody Shaw at a club in the East Village --but it was close to Broadway...I can't remember if the E. Village technically ends at 3rd or 4th or Broadway?); Lorna Luft; Maria Manville; Howard Shore; and Belushi and Ackroyd (I met Belushi once in the lobby of 30 Rock, when Cheryl came down to let me in...when he walked away, he stiff-armed a bunch of excited-looking kids who wanted to say hi. He looked wrecked--either recovering from a long, brutal night or working on the next one. Within a year or year and a half, he died in Hollywood); sometime not long after that, Cheryl took me downtown (we both lived on the Upper West Side) to the Blues Brothers Bar, a private dive owned/run by Belushi and Ackroyd. That was pretty interesting, mostly for the insane levels of Bolivian Marching Powder that were being consumed at any given moment. She played at a poetry reading Keelin, Nick,. Kevin, Pegeen, and I had in a theatre in Chelsea She brought some upwardly mobile dapper New Yorker poet (but I forget who!), and also got Gerald Stern to attend (he was just getting really hot). At a party at her place, for the publication of Gerald Stern's book The Red Coal, I got to meet Isaac Bashevis Singer (who had recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a passel of NY literary celebs). It was pretty crazy stuff for a cracker kid from a farm town...
---o0o---

Could Angela Merkel's breasts tilt the German elections?

The poster says "we have more to offer"

With seven weeks to go until the German elections, billboards of Chancellor Angela Merkel in a low-cut dress (alongside her own cleavage shot) have been put up by by the campaign of Vera Lengsfeld. Lengsfeld is from Merkel's own CDU party, and is engaged in a long-shot race in a left-wing district of Berlin. Merkel did not OK the posters...


President Bush's famous, and unwanted massage

The posters show photographs of each politician in dresses showing mondo cleavage and carry the slogan"We have more to offer."

Lengsfeld, a former East German dissident, said she had not cleared the picture beforehand with Merkel. I suppose if Lengsfeld gets even more desperate, she could break out the infamous shot of Merkel changing into her bathing suit on a beach:


Chancellor Merkel's peekaboo moment
---o0o---

Why you and your boss should maybe not be Facebook friends...

click to enlarge

---o0o---

50 Bands I've Seen

I've written about shows I've seen a few times--click here to see a list of ten previous articles (or so) on shows I've attended/seen/heard (there was a grateful dead show where Keelin and I listened to a feed from a Greek Theatre Dead show (for the ticketless) piped into an amazing loudspeaker system) on a tennis court.

A meme on Facebook making the rounds asks you to name fifty concerts you've seen. Wow. I could probably come up with a few hundred more. I tried to do a mix of old and new off the top of my head...I already am feeling guilty about the people I left out. The good part about this quiz: it's homegrown & doesn't spam you or your friends, do anything skanky, or crash.

The Rules: "Test your memory and your love of live music by listing 50 artists or bands (or as many as you can remember) you've seen in concert. List the first 50 acts that come into your head. An act you saw at a festival and opening acts count, but only if you can't think of 50 other artists. Oh, and list the first concert you ever saw (you can remember that, can’t you)? "

1. The Beatles ($4 and you couldn’t hear much ["Is that Help?"]…but the Beatleness was amazing)
2. Band of Horses
3. Oscar Peterson
4. George Benson/Turrentine/Herbie Hancock/Freddie Hubbard/Ron Carter/Hubert Laws
5. Niko Case
6. The Moondoggies
7. Jimi Hendrix (The famous Sicks Stadium concert where he unloaded on his hometown).
8. Dolly Parton
9. Old 97’s (In Austin, Seattle, and at The Gorge, in George, Wash.)
10. Them, starring Van Morrison (at the skate rink in Kent, Wash.)
11. Lou Reed
12. Dolly Parton
13. The Grateful Dead (about 15 times)
14. The Posies many times (and they played at my 50th birthday party)
15. The Youngbloods
16. Mudhoney
17. Young Fresh Fellows
18. Elvis Costello (5 times)
19. The English Beat (2x
20. It’s a Beautiful Day in Austin and Seattle)
21. The Youngbloods
22. Talking Heads (5 times) NYC
23. The Ramones (4 or 5 times) NYC
24. Sonic Youth NYC
25. Blondie NYC
26. Television NYC
27. The Plasmatics NYC
28. Patti Smith NYC
29. Stan Getz
30. Miles Davis NYC
31. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
32. Dizzy Gillespie NYC
33. John McLaughlin/Carlos Santana – A Love Supreme tour
34. Big Star (4 times)
35. Los Lobos (4 times: Seattle 2x; San Francisco 1x; Austin 1x)
36. CSN&Y (3 times)
37. Rockpile (NYC)
38. The Kinks (Asbury Park, NJ)
39. Bob Dylan and The Band (Vancouver, B.C. Canada)
40. John Prine (Bellingham, Wash)
41. Weather Report (Bellingham, Wash)
42. Blind Boys of Alabama (2 times)
43. George Harrison
44. Bob Dylan
45. The Roches (2x NYC and Seattle)
46. Bela Fleck
47. Taj Mahal
48. Ray Brown
49. Widespread Panic
50. Al Green (1984 - Oakland Paramount)

My Doctor (Linda Gromko) Just Wrote A Book

Dr. Linda Gromko with her husband and daughter

My doctor, Linda Gromko, just wrote a book: "Complications: A Doctor's Love Story." OK. I haven't read it yet, but will as soon as it arrives. She's a wonderful doctor, and we've been patients of hers since her first year in practice. She delivered my son, Del. Most of all, she's been a great doctor and friend, and incredibly enough, I actually look forward to my checkups to touch base with her.

Read her book! You can find out more about it here.
---o0o---

Digital art: SP No. 37

click to enlarge

---o0o---

Poem: In The Blue Mosque

It's
So
Still
In
The
Blue
Mosque
You
Could
Hear
A
Fly
Expire.
---o0o---

Digital Art: eight flags

Click the flags to enlarge them.

---o0o---