drawing: faces 1544-1553 — nine rocks

by Jack Brummet

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1543 — the guy with the sign at exit 149

By Jack Brummet

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Drawing: faces 1542 — 7th Anniversary

By Jack Brummet

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drawing: faces 1541 - driftwood

By Jack Brummet

[Another piece of drift(ply)wood Keelin found in her travels...]

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Inspirational quotes from uninspirational people

• "Words build bridges into unexplored regions." - Adolf Hitler

• "He who stops being better, stops being good." - Oliver Cromwell

• "Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." - President Richard M. Nixon.

• "Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow." - [Scientology Creator] Ron L. Hubbard.

• "Equality means nothing unless incorporated into the institutions." - War Criminal Slobodan Milosevic

• "As long as you have love in your heart, you'll never be alone." - Charles Manson.

• "I only believe in one thing only, the power of human will." - Joseph Stalin

• "A man's gotta make at least one bet a day, else he could be walking around lucky and never know it." - Rev. Jim Jones [Cult leader who convinced all of his followers to commit suicide by drinking a poisonous Kool-Aid. Jones prompted the suicide attempt as a "revolution." 900 people died, and Jones either killed himself or was murdered by a gunshot wound to the head.]

• "Countless million who have walked this earth before us have gone through this, so this is just an experience we all share." - Ted Bundy

• "An action committed in anger is an action doomed to failure." - Genghis Khan.

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drawing: faces 1539 — tripleganger

by Jack Brummet

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drawing: faces 1534, 1535, 1536 join their rock family

by Jack Brummet

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jack and Keelin in PDX

Photo by unknown passer by

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drawing: faces 1537 — in distress

By Jack Brummet

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drawing: faces 1538 — PDX faces

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12 jazz albums that made a difference for me

By Jack Brummet

On Facebook, a friend asked us to come up with 12 jazz albums thatr stuck with us, or made a difference. Here are mine. [Note: a couple of these are compilations, because we don't really buy or listen to the haphazard collections released by many of the older artist's record companies. The Louis Armstrong and Bird sets in particular].

1. Forest Flower — Charles Lloyd. This was the album that got me hooked on jazz when I was around 20.
2. The Legendary Dial Masters — Charlie Parker. [It's kind of cheating —maybe—to use a compilation like this.]
3. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall —Thelonious Monk. [This tape of this 1957 concert was long lost and then found in 2005 at the library of congress. It was mastered and released a few years ago, and became a jazz best seller. It’s great.]
4. The Complete Atomic Basie — Count Basie
5. Live at Antibes — Charles Mingus. [Ah Um, Pithecanthropus Erectus, Oh Yeah were close contenders.]
6. Blue Train — John Coltrane [I was tempted to put Live in Seattle, which as some critics noted, contains some of his best, and worst, playing ever.]
7. Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band — Duke Ellington [This is peak Ellington which = peak jazz.]
8. Milestones — Miles Davis [this one was really hard…so many fantastic albums.]
9. Bug Music — Don Byron
10. Love Devotion and Surrender — John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana [Odd choice? Yes. I love each guitar player on their separate stereo channels and their rocking take on Coltrane].
11. Hot Fives and Sevens- Louis Armstrong
12. Visiting Dignitaries — Milo Petersen and The Jazz Disciples [by my oldest friend Milo and some really talented sidemen. I dig this out pretty often. Beautiful songwriting and arrangements. It includes a song, “The Good,” he wrote for our wedding.]

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The Soviet human-ape hybrid

By Jack Brummet, Genetics Ed.

OK. This is completely nuts. From weirduniverse.net:

The Human-Ape Hybrid

For decades dark rumors circulated alleging that the Soviets had conducted experiments to try to create a human-ape hybrid by breeding chimpanzees and humans, but it wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of Russian archives that the rumors were confirmed.

Dr. Il'ya Ivanov was a world-renowned expert on veterinary reproductive biology, but he wanted to do more in life than breed fatter cows. So in 1927 he traveled to Africa to pursue his vision of interbreeding man and ape.

Thankfully his efforts weren't successful. This was due both to genetics, and to the native staff of the West Guinea research facility where he worked, from whom he constantly had to conceal the true purpose of his experiments. If they had found out what he was really doing, he wrote in his diary, "this could have led to very unpleasant consequences." The necessity of carrying out his work in secrecy made it almost impossible to do anything, although he did record two unsuccessful attempts to artificially inseminate female chimpanzees with human sperm.

Frustrated, Ivanov eventually returned to the Soviet Union. He brought an orangutan named Tarzan back with him, hoping to continue his research in a more accepting environment. Back home he advertised for female volunteers willing to carry Tarzan's child, and remarkably he got a few takers. But then Tarzan died and Ivanov himself, suspected of harboring counter-revolutionary sentiments, was sent off to a prison camp for a couple of years. This ended his research. There are vague rumors suggesting that other Soviet scientists continued Ivanov's work, but nothing has been proven.

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