Ruined Castle with Two Circling Eagles, Arnold Böcklin

source

Eugene, Oregon 2014

Norma Bassett Hall, 1889-1957

Last week a few days unfolded for me in Eugene, Oregon. Inexplicably I had kept away from the city for almost a quarter century. Put four of those units together and you're in the World War I era. 

The chief reason I traveled to Eugene was to attend a talk by Dr. Joby Patterson on my ancestor Norma Bassett Hall. The day also included a guided walk through the exhibition of Hall's work at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, and coincided with the release of Dr. Patterson's book on the artist. That day signaled the culmination of a process which began (as far as my involvement went) nearly a decade earlier, when I saw an Antiques Roadshow segment involving the acquisition of a Hall print at a Goodwill store. (And no, Arthur W. Hall wasn't a "Scottish fellow.") In response to the episode, I sent the following email to The Oregonian newspaper, on April 27, 2005:

I would have enjoyed Inara Verzemnieks' "Road Show reappraisal," (April

24, 2005) for its clear depiction of what antiques and collectibles can

bring out in people; and for its description of a "Antiques Roadshow"

shoot.  But I was also interested in the article, since Norma Bassett

Hall is my great-great aunt.  Although I have been aware of Hall and her

prints for a long time, Verzemnieks' piece has led me to find out more

about my ancestor.

On May 10, 2005 I contacted the author of the newspaper article mentioned in the email. Through her I met Dr. Patterson. I have indeed, almost ten years later, "found out more about my ancestor" through her tremendous efforts.

Dr. Joby Patterson, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, August 23, 2014, with slide of the Cottage in Skye print.

It behooved me to locate the student housing-type building where I lived for two years while attending UO. It abides, like a Pequod of the dry docks.

I set out on a walk through the spokes of the sun's heat to view the memorial statue to Ken Kesey, The Storyteller. Ken had another visitor that day.

The Book of Srang Pages Five and Six

The Living Head Speaks

The Book of Srang, pages three and four:

"Barry Manilo" (Barry Manilow) needs not my aid in description.

Bigfoot and Wildboy was a kids' show of the day.

My friend's grandmother used the phrase, "What's this jigger?"

We were taken with the word "defy" and its variants.

The Book of Srang Pages One and Two

Pages one and two of The Book of Srang. 

"Mason Riech" -- a misspelled rendition of child actor Mason Reese's name.

"Kintire" -- a reference to Paul McCartney and Wings' song Mull of Kintyre.  The friend who drew into being The Book of Srang and I had a fascination for this song. The place-name "Kintyre" is what intrigued us, just the sound of the word -- we knew nothing about the actual site. This reference dates The Book of Srang to late 1977 or sometime in 1978.

  "The Human Jukebox" -- a street performer my friend saw on a trip to San Francisco. My friend told me the musician sat in a large cardboard box. Drop in a coin and one would get a brief trumpet tune.

Nixon Resigns

40 earth orbits have rolled since President Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation. I was in either British Columbia, Alberta, or Saskatchewan on a family trip at that time.

The Book of Srang Cover

This is the cover of a unique chapbook, The Book of Srang (a misspelling of "strange") drawn by a childhood friend of mine. As indicated by the instruction on the left, the book had an audio accompaniment
-- vocal effects imprinted on a cassette tape.  The tape long ago vanished, no doubt first unraveling.

When You are Away from Athens do You Have Another Girl

A century since the start of World War I

Written and mailed on July 30, 1914, two days shy of 100 years ago, and two days after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered World War I:  July 28, 1914.

Alexandrian's Surrealist Art (1970)

(

 "(De Chirico's) father, a Sicilian engineer who lived in Greece, had an aristocratic temperament and had fought several pistol duels.  His mother was romantically enough inclined to have had one of the bullets which had wounded her husband mounted in gold." 

Pullulation

poem ca. 1991

My room, Boulder, Colorado 1984

 

Stares of Destiny

The Man-Fish, and Vigilante Justice

The Man-Fish, from Dewey Tidwell's Heller in the Oilfield, Westerner, November-December 1974

see a similar creature, Jake the Alligator Man, from a former post

from John H. Harrison's "Doc" Lincoln's Cantina Cut-Throats, Wild West, January 1972

January 21, 1943

On January 21, 1943, the Soviet army had only just opened a corridor to besieged Leningrad, the first actions leading to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began, and the Japanese fought in Guadalcanal to maintain their Pacific empire, among other events: January 1943.

Snow also coated the ground, in the view seen from someone's front porch.

Winnemucca Nevada

On one occasion I had a superb meal at a Basque-owned hotel in Winnemucca, including lamb, potatoes, and fresh bread, as I recall.  This card looks to be from around the heyday of the Rat Pack, although they would more likely have been spotted in Vegas.

Indian House

666 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

An old Native American and his wife, and their hybrid, green-eyed wolf-dog dwelt in the above cot at one time, when I lived for a time in the area (western end of the Columbia River Gorge).  I went by the place last week.

If you see 666 ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE on the door of a house in a remote spot surrounded by heavy woods, a word to the wise, do NOT go in!  I got close enough to take this picture.  From here, I heard what sounded like loud running water inside, as if a brook ran through the building somewhere.  No one had apparently yet breached the door when I was last there three years ago. Previous post on the matter:  Sun standing still.   At that time three years past, although the home was long empty, the porch light still glowed.

One way of getting to the squat campsite of 1983-84. 

Florisation Years

2014

2011

1984

I happened to photograph this house in the western part of the Columbia River Gorge over three decades, showing the marks of time and change as the angles slid back into trees, blackberries, grasses.

This is the second post based on this site. The previous one was Twenty-seven years.  

The Movement Toward a New America

I acquired this massive, out-of-print collection, put together by Mitchell Goodman, not so long ago. Noteworthy, among other reasons, for having used some panels from R. Crumb comix, seemingly without having asked.

Security Cam

Security Cam

What’s the point, Wednesday beckoned.  As my dead German teacher uttered, jogging.

They’ve got the spooky eyes, standard orientation to truth.  Pyramid of monitors covering the store,

Minding the pavement beyond shag floor.  Not scrutinized here, the wind winding through the reeds through the grasses, Permian permafrost to blue, it’s a surrealistic style embedded in the embroidery of mountainous snout.  We pulled the video and the team member had as found nicked the sunglasses.  Equinox thistle breath.  Sweep up those maggots, bleach in the eye.  The willows don’t you know what you’ve got here, monitoring ceaseless stopped in the river of scotch broom, waste flora.  I’ve seen the dark squirrels go by, rain isolates.

By Jonathan Falk

June 20, 2014

Brave New 1984

Reagan/Bush is 1984

Bumper sticker I saw during that past presidential election.

I initially read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four not long before the odometer matched Orwell's title.  This year, I read both again.  Huxley himself contrasted the two authors' forecasts:  Huxley letter to Orwell.  My memories of reading possessed a distilled nature;  I recalled the feelies, and a few other details from the softer dystopia.  Much more lingered in mind from the decade of 1948 transposed, the rat mask, the clock striking thirteen, the Two Minutes Hate.

Both utilized the rule of three:  War is Peace (War and Peace?), Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.  Community, Identity, Stability.  Each presented centralized authority. Three Weeks in a Helicopter, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, are the creations within creations.  Huxley indicated an exit:  "He had discovered Time and Death and God," not apparent in Orwell.

As to which author better extrapolated -- someone asked Burroughs if he would rather have Graham Greene or Conrad?  Why not have both, he responded.

Smile of the Gable

The Treaty of Kanagawa

1854-2004

Marker commemorating 150 years of USA-Japan relations, Portland State University Campus, Portland, Oregon. Well, the black ships showed up of their own accord in 1853, and I understand that not all 150 of the years following the Treaty of Kanagawa went smoothly.

D-Day

Seven decades have passed since the Normandy landings (it's still June 6th here anyway).

The transitions in these photographs from now to 70 years ago are powerful:

D-day sites

I recall seeing a documentary which referenced the landings, which mentioned that a number of reels of film shot during that day fell from a boat into the ocean.  This is why relatively little film footage of D-Day exists. Those sequences, had they survived, would have gelled into icons.

Dr Miles on the Origin of Man

Dr Miles, or the front representing him, dismissed natural selection in this essay.  The reasoning meandered incoherently;  the author's use of the Heidelberg Jaw was clumsy and awkward.  The writer lacked awareness of the idea of a common ancestor among simians.

Why aren't monkeys turning into people now?

A joke from another page of this strange almanac:

"Papa, did Edison make the first talking machine?"

"No, son, the Lord made the first talking machine, but Edison made the first one that could be shut off at will."  

RIMSHOT!

The thoughts of Dr Miles

Dr Miles, or somebody, on the Great War in its first year. Unimaginably worse followed.  And hey, why not shill some snake oil and tell a couple corny jokes as a closer?

Dr Miles New Weather Almanac and Hand Book of Valuable Information - 1915

I posted concerning Dr. Miles previously.

A few notes on Seoul

Seoul at the time of the Gulf War

This piece was published by Denise Dumars in her zine Dumars Reviews not long after it was written.

Assembled Films

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), Rain (1929), Apocalypse Pooh (1987)

The past couple weeks I watched these three films, all new to me.  The first and third are examples of found film (Apocalypse Pooh includes found audio as well);  all are examples of film montage.  Esfir Shub 's The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty requires some patience but creates a dialectic momentum as it proceeds.  For me the artifact film clips produce fascination with a vanished past more than they work as propaganda.  This version is subtitled in English and Esperanto (Esperanto, as if it weren't already arcane enough).  It's also completely silent, so I opened up a track of Tchaikovsky's greatest hits as accompaniment, which serves the movie well (although the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy didn't work as a soundtrack for WWI, had to jump to another piece).   Joris Iven's and Mannus Franken's Rain conjures fleeting moods and tones in a prewar Amsterdam. Todd Graham's  Apocalypse Pooh is a funny and well-crafted mashup.

Solarized Deerslayer

The deer, hunter and spot are the same as those depicted in a photograph I posted 24 July 2013.

Rodeo Protection Athletes

Rodeo Clown

Rodeo clowns put the fear in coulrophobia.

Carnation Expression

My Shape iss short: My luf iss long

More pseudo-Dutch humor.