Poem: [The Cloud Endures]

By Jack Brummet (with assistance from The Poetry Generator)

1
The cloud endures like a red sun.
Winds calmly rise like a dead captain.

2
Love, adventure, and anger.
Work, anger, and death.

3
Laughter, anger and death.
The dusty skyscraper grabs the truck.
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Poem: Coyote Comes Home Like A Salmon

By Jack Brummet

Crossing real estate lines
That mean nothing to him,
Coyote traverses the pale fog
Driven in from the sea.
He has a loan of time
To walk through his old salal tangled home.
Sneaking through nettles and Oregon grape,
He carries his battered canoe
Along magnolia darkened clay
Back where he grew from whelp to pup.
Down whitewater roiling over boulders
He feathers the current with his paddle,
Turning in the current like a leaf.
The spent river slinks into the sea.
Pipers spoon their bills in the sand for clams
And robins claw at earthworms.
A diving hawk sends smaller birds
Tumbling into hysterical flight.
His bones feel fragile as obsidian
As he watches the green Kalopanish stop
And they all come to the end:
The river, the creek, and God's old friend.
                      ---o0o---

Fritz Kahn's industrial palace

Stuttgart, 1926. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn
(1888-1968)
[author]

Kahn’s modernist visualization of the digestive and respiratory system as "industrial palace," really a chemical plant, was conceived in a period when the German chemical industry was the world’s most advanced.

click to enlarge

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The NYC Swim-mobile, circa 1960

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A Marilyn Monroe Poem

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Ed.


From Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (First Edition October 12, 2010, ISBN-10: 0374158355)

Only parts of us will ever
touch only parts of others –
one’s own truth is just that really — one’s own truth.
We can only share the part that is understood by within another’s knowing acceptable to
the other — therefore so one
is for most part alone.
As it is meant to be in
evidently in nature — at best though perhaps it could make
our understanding seekanother’s loneliness out. 

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MOHAI's fantastic new home in South Lake Union

By Jack Brummet, Seattle Ed.


The Museum of History and Industry opened this year in Seattle in a beautiful new (to them) building (a converted armory) and location.  At any given time, they display around 2% of their collection.

The exhibits were excellent and their collection (four million items and growing) is amazing.

The new MOHAI, in a converted armory on the shore of South Lake Union

Some random snapshots of various objects in the museum:

The sign from the notorious, now defunct Lusty Lady, an all-female owned strip club on Second Avenue

The old sign from the Doghouse, a 24 hour dive that everyone loved

In mid-20th century Seattle, the hydroplanes were the coolest thing that happened in town. We would know the names of all the boats and drivers. One of my dad's friends, Bill Brow a/k/a The World's Fastest Milkman, drove Miss Burien (he would die in a race in Florida in the late 60's). It was cool seeing this at MOHAI today, since the annual hydroplane races are happening this weekend.

Amazing early triple bill (with Nirvana as the bottom-liners)

a poster from the 1999 WTO protests that made world-wide news

A display about a machine that enabled processors to can meat and fish.  

These are maybe half of the brands of salmon on display.

Bill Gates' notebook

The Log Lady from Twin Peaks

The sign that used to sit atop the Rainier Brewery next to Interstate-5

A sign from a famous gay bar in Pioneer Square -- lots of disco, I remember

A speaker from Mark Lanegan's band Screaming Trees

An ancient wooden tugboat

An early Boeing airplane.  They were made of spruce!

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Drawing: Faces No. 528 - Sand In His Boots

By Jack Brummet

"He brought the war home with him./Still got sand in his boots." - Guy Clark

click to enlarge

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The Original Harley Davidson plant (ca. 1903)

The Harley-Davidson® 10x15 foot factory/shed in 1903.  They produced every 'cycle for the next couple of years here, until they outgrew it.  [Photo by Harley-Davidson®]

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Happy (woulda coulda shoulda) 71st Birthday Jerry Garcia

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Emperor Peter I's Russian Beard Tax

By Jack Brummet, American beard owner

“In 1705, Emperor Peter I of Russia instituted a beard tax to modernize the society of Russia following European models. Those who paid the tax were required to carry a “beard token”.  This was a copper or silver token with a Russian Eagle on one side and on the other, the lower part of a face with nose, mouth, whiskers, and beard. It was inscribed with two phrases: “the beard tax has been taken” and “the beard is a superfluous burden”.” [From Wikipedia]

1705:  Beard Tax Token:

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Drawing: Faces No. 526 (scratchboard)

By Jack Brummet

[Scratchboard, digitally reversed]

click to enlarge

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The International Space Station Passes By The Moon

By Jack Brummet, Stellar Ed.

A Romanian astrophotographer, Maximilian Teodorescu. recent used a Maksutov telescope to photograph the International Space Station passing in front of the moon in daylight. Wow.  He shot the photograph with a Canon 550D--an ISO 800 image with a shutter speed of 1/1250s.

The International Space Station flies about 220 miles over the earth, or, a three hour drive in your Honda, if it could drive straight up.

The international space station zoomed up a bit (image courtesy of NASA/JPL):

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