Friday, December 30, 2016

Achieving Nirvana


ü     Floating in a pool
ü     Sitting in hot oil
ü     Sitting in a room screaming
ü     Walking for weeks without lying down, not even to sleep
ü     Staying awake for three days
ü     Sitting in a box with pythons
ü     Sitting in a coffin
ü     Sitting next to a rotting corpse
ü     Total silence for ten days


These are some meditative paths to Nirvana as practiced by Buddhist monks, nuns, and laypeople in Thailand. [Details from an article by Bryant Rousseau: "Corpses, Pythons, Sleep Deprivation: Meditation Rituals in Thailand Can Be Intense," New York Times, Aug 30, 2016.
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1977 NYC Blackout

By Jack Brummet, NYC Metro Ed.

7/13/1977 during the NYC Blackout. KeeKeeJan, and I are all down there somewhere.  The fires were to the south of us, in Bushwick, Crown Heights, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.



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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

drawing: Faces 1820—The Smiler heads back to work

by Jack Brummet

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Mystery solved: the Ode To Darwin original by William Holbrook Beard (painted 1891)

by Jack Brummet

This is a painting I bought for $100 at a roadside stand in Jensen Beach, FLA in 2006 (It cost $150 to ship it home in its delicate, ornate frame). The painting is titled "Ode To Darwin" and was painted by David Zarkin.

The mystery of its origins was solved last night by an intrepid member of the Facebook Lowbrowart group, Jon Groobz  (see details below).



Detail:



The original canvas, titled "The Discovery of Adam," was painted by William Holbrook Beard in 1891 (30 years after Darwin published his famous book).  There is a good web site here with this and some other paintings (he was a fascinating painter).  The painting 

The painting I own is an amazing copy of this original, but I know no details of the painter at all or how or where he copied this work.  Here is the original, which resides at the Toledo Museum of Art.

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drawing: faces 1819 - PSA: "if you see something, say something."

by Jack Brummet 


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Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Take A Load Off Your Feet—one of the very strangest Beach Boys tracks

By Jack Brummet, Music Ed.

After Brian Wilson lost his way, his songwriting became, for a time, extremely bizarre.  This is probably one of The Beach Boys top five weird tracks. . .Brian Wilson's ode to good foot care.




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Monday, December 26, 2016

Counting every tree in New York City

From Architecture Daily, 11-28-2016:



New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation has completed its two-year project of assigning ID numbers (with arboreal characteristics) to every one of the 685,781 trees in the city's five boroughs. More than 2,300 volunteers walked the streets, then posted each tree's location, measurements, Google Street View image, and ecological benefits for the surrounding neighborhoods (rainwater retained, air pollution reduced)."

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Shorts: tiny poems

by Jack Brummet
Resurrection

He was ready to live again
Even if living just meant running
To keep ahead of the ghosts.

___________________________

It’s so still and calm
In the mosque,
You could hear a fly expire.
___________________________

Stealth

You think one thing,
Say another,
And do a third.

___________________________

A roiling thunderstorm clears the air
Like Wyatt Earp's peacekeeper                    

___________________________

When you strip away the stage flats, makeup, and costumes,
It’s all one story starring our private heroes and dreams.

___________________________

The Marriage

Two tattered mannequins
Prop each other up
In the Salvation Army Store window
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Tragedy

Take the worst that could happen
And add two zeros.

___________________________

High fidelity clouds gather over 
The tattered stage flats of a world on fire.

___________________________

It's Getting Crowded

We cover the earth with Venn Diagrams
As our steps bisect old steps.
___________________________

Weather Report

Life is a raindrop
Sizzling as it skitters
Across the universal griddle.

___________________________

Waiting

There is no tomorrow
until we get through
the day after yesterday
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Willie's Reserve hits the market

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Monday, December 19, 2016

Poem: snow day

by Jack Brummet

In silhouette
against bisque skies,
crows bounce

on snow-humped branches,
shaking snow to the ground
and survey the valley

for prey
in dark relief
on the cold white fields.
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Sunday, December 18, 2016

The famous letter the FBI sent to MLK (trying to push him to suicide)

The letter was deliberately scattered with bad grammar and typos. It is believed to have been composed an mailed to King by William Sullivan with J.Edgar Hoover's specific approval.

 

Friday, December 16, 2016

The Grateful Dead play a free show in my neighborhood in 1967




July 16, 1967 — The Grateful Dead performed at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. Five other local bands perform at the "Be-In." Admission was free.


The Golden Road

Located in Ballard, Golden Gardens was typically a place where the “straights” hung out, far away from the usual hippie hangouts near the University District and Capitol Hill. The crowd of 2,000 people who gathered at the park for the Be-In was a mix of all folks who just wanted to enjoy some rock music in the hot summer sun.

The bands performed on a flatbed truck with electricity provided by a small portable generator. Brick went on first, followed by Karma, The Daily Flash, The Time Machine, and Pappa Bear's Medicine Show. The Grateful Dead came on last.

The Dead were in Seattle for a show that evening at the Eagles Hall, and since they were veterans of many Be-Ins in San Francisco, the band and their manager, Rock Scully, decided to take part in the gathering at Ballard. The Be-In was arranged by Tim Harvey of Overall Cooperative Structure and Jerry Mathews of United Front Productions.

Unlimited Devotion

In an interview with the Helix, a Seattle-based underground newspaper, Grateful Dead lead guitarist Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) talked about the band’s background, noting that he started playing guitar at 15, that vocalist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was heavily into country blues, and that bass player Phil Lesh was classically trained on the violin and trumpet. He described the band’s music as mostly blues.

Garcia also talked about the influence of psychedelic drugs on their music, noting that these drugs were just another part of their lifestyle. “The thing that happens when you get high and play,” said Garcia, “is like new ideas present themselves, new possibilities ... . If you’re a little stoned, you’re less into yourself, less into demonstrating your ability, less into your own thing and more into the total thing. Playing itself is a high, playing is in fact the best high I know. There’s no comparable experience in drugs. Nothing like it.”
When asked about the kind of people who came to their shows, the interviewer pointed out that not all people in the Golden Gardens audience were hippies. “No, but they’re all people,” responded Garcia. “Like the more straight people that come to these kind of scenes, the easier it’ll be for them to see that the hippies aren’t going to hurt them. The whole scene is ... good natured.”

Poster for The Grateful Dead at the Seattle Eagles Hall, July 16, 1967 later that night (a paying gig):




Sources: “The Cool Brave Heat for 'Gentle Sunday,'" Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 17, 1967, p. 3; Interview with Jerry Garcia, Helix, August 16, 1967, p. 11.
This essay was corrected on July 16, 2015.

Fifty years of the Crisis Clinic (video)

A nice video about the Crisis Clinic, where I work two days a week.  Check it out, and if you can, donate. . .or volunteer.  /jack


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Thursday, December 15, 2016

Irregular roundup of celebrity and other middle fingers




By Mona Goldwater, Signs and Gestures Ed.
Every few months, we publish the various images of middle fingers our readers have sent to us, along with any choice ones we find along the internet. 














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