A National Poetry Month surprise

By Jack Brummet

When I walked into Third Place Books yesterday, they were handing out a mimeographed/photocopied (?) copy of one of my favorite poems:  James Wright's "Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota."  How wonderful is that?

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year's horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life. 

- James Arlington Wright 

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The strange numbers station broadcasts

By Jack Brummet

Numbers stations are dedicated shortwave radio stations that mostly broadcast. . .numbers.

When I first got a short wave radio, the instruction book listed several number station frequencies. I have listened to several of them on the air. They broadcast a few spoken words often, but mainly numbers. There are both artificial voices and real voices--usually female. What makes them fascinating to listen to is that no one knows what these hundreds of stations actually do. But, naturally, there is plenty of speculation.

In the 1950s, Time magazine reported that the numbers stations first appeared shortly after World War II using a format that had been used to send weather data during that war. But, what mostly people believe is that the transmissions are used to send messages to spies. They do send out QSL cards (a tradition among ham radio people) if you send them a reception report. Who knows, maybe that's just part of their cover?

According to The Irdial Discs website, "Shortwave Numbers Stations are a perfect method of anonymous, one way communication. Spies located anywhere in the world can be communicated to by their masters via small, locally available, and unmodified Shortwave receivers. The encryption system used by Numbers Stations, known as a “one time pad” is unbreakable. Combine this with the fact that it is almost impossible to track down the message recipients once they are inserted into the enemy country, it becomes clear just how powerful the Numbers Station system is."

The U.S. has prosecuted several spies from Cuba (and some people living in the U.S.) for espionage, and charged they used Cuban numbers stations to communicate. 

 According to The Wikipedia:

"The one-way voice link (OWVL) described a covert communications system that transmitted messages to an agent's unmodified shortwave radio using the high-frequency shortwave bands between 3 and 30 MHz at a predetermined time, date, and frequency contained in their communications plan. The transmissions were contained in a series of repeated random number sequences and could only be deciphered using the agent's one-time pad. If proper tradecraft was practiced and instructions were precisely followed, an OWVL transmission was considered unbreakable. [...] As long as the agent's cover could justify possessing a shortwave radio and he was not under technical surveillance, high-frequency OWVL was a secure and preferred system for the CIA during the Cold War."

Also from The Wikipedia:

"The Conet Project has since become somewhat of a cult sensation and counts many musicians and filmmakers among its fans, including Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, Melvins collaborator David Scott Stone, Boards of Canada, Manu Chao The Besnard Lakes, Devendra Banhart, former Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton, and director Cameron Crowe. Samples from the collection have been used in numerous films and albums, including Crowe's film Vanilla Sky, Porcupine Tree's Stupid Dream album, We Were Promised Jetpacks' These Four Walls album, and Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, the last of which was an issue of legal dispute; Jeff Tweedy did not seek permission to use the Conet sample and Irdial sued forcopyright infringement. The incident sparked debate about who exactly owns copyright concerning recordings of numbers station transmissions, but Tweedy ultimately decided to avoid taking the matter to court, agreeing to pay Irdial royalties and reimburse its legal fees. The Besnard Lakeshave also used recordings from numbers stations throughout their album, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse and frontman Jace Lasek is said to be a fan of The Conet Project. Kronos Quartet incorporated live reception of the Conet numbers into "4Cast Unpredictable", a performed sound sculpture in collaboration with Trimpin. Ten years in the making, the piece was performed once only, at Montclair State University Performing Arts Center, New Jersey, in 2007."

"In keeping with its 'Free Music Philosophy', the Irdial-Discs label has made the entire collection available for download in MP3 form (along with a PDF version of the included booklet) on its website completely free of charge and encourages fans to freely distribute it on file sharing networks." 

The Conet project collected four CDs worth of numbers broadcasts.   You can download them for free from the internet archive here:  http://archive.org/details/ird059

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A fake town hid Boeing from the Japanese during World War II

By Jack Brummet, Seattle history ed.

After Pearl Harbor, Boeing Plant No. 2 in Seattle (where B 17 bombers were built) was put under heavy camouflage to prevent a Japanese aircraft attack. The roof of the huge plant was covered with fake houses, streets, and trees. No Japanese planes came anywhere near the factory (my Mom was a riveter there before she enlisted). The plant is under the darker area in the center of the above photograph. The middle shot shows employees hanging out on the roof, and a view of the roof from street level.

A closer view of the 35-acre roof of Boeing Plant 2, with homes built of canvas, trees and shrubs made of board and mesh, and streets of oil and dirt:

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Faces Drawing: third state

By Jack Brummet 

[work in progress; pencil and Sharpie on primed masonite oval board]

click to enlarge

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Digital painting: My right eye

By Jack Brummet 

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Digital art: The inner workings

By Jack Brummet

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Fifteen of the weirdest board games of all time

By Mona Goldwater, Leisure Editor

Culled from Tumblr, blogs, Wikipedia, and various web sites...

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Drawing: Faces No. ??? - Work in Progress, Stage 2

By Jack Brummet 

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Annette Funicello and The Beach Boys play "The Monkey's Uncle"

By Jack Brummet, American Music Ed.

The Beach Boys and the recently departed Annette Funicello sing the opening track in the movie The Monkey's Uncle.

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Neil Young's best hair day ever

By Jack Brummet 

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The new WikiLeaks dump: a billion words generated by SoS Henry Kissinger (+ bonus cables on the Russians needing more Joni Mitchell, CSNY, Neil Young, Don McLean, James Taylor, and Bob Dylan)

By Jack Brummet, International Intrigue Ed.

WikiLeaks has just released the the "Kissinger Cables," a collection of over 1.7 million pieces of diplomatic communications.  One billion words generated from 1973-76, when Henry Kissinger served as our Cold War Secretary of State/ Détente during the slow spinning down of the Soviet Union.  There is so much material here that you can find almost anything— like, say, the Russian thirst for soft rock. 

This new release is five times the size of Cablegate, the original WikiLeaks dump published incrementally from 2010-2011. I billion words is roughly the size of 125 novels (averaging 80,000 word per novel). 

I've only read a few of the articles, but one of the more interesting threads in the release is the Russian thirst for American "soft rock:"  

Search for "Joni Mitchell," for example, "and you'll find communications between the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the State Department, asking for more Mitchell and Don McLean in Russian lives — and to a lesser extent Neil Young — because, well, that's the Russians wanted in January 1975." -(From TheAtlanticWire.com).

Images from cables in the release:

Somehow, The Eagles and Jackson Brown did not make the list, although this cable seems to hint that they would be perfect Rock Ambassadors. 

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Poem: The Green Knight

By Jack Brummet 

You walk the hall of broken mirrors
Upon the walls of which are hung
The skulls of those who walked before you.

Filtered grey light pools
On the floor in the distance.
A green knight walks toward you,

With a battle-axe in one hand
And a branch of holly in the other.
Bercilak de Hautdesert asks if you want to play a game.

He strops the axe on his green leather pants.
The Green Knight asks you to roshambo.
"You first," he says. "Take the first swing.”

You take the axe and swing. The helmet flies
Into the stone wall.
The head rolls down the hallway.

The Green Knight picks up the head
Which tells you to meet him

At the Green Chapel New Year's morning

So that he may deal his exchange blow.
The Green Knight's head chuckles
As his footsteps fade away.
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