Sunday, November 22, 2009
New Home of the Happy Lion
There is a story here. From Ohio to Barre, VT to Rhode Island to Old Westbury Gardens, Long Island to Mastic Beach to the front yard for patination by weather (and curiosity of neighbors and visitors) to the in-progress kitchen suspended across from the wood stove, in the winter reading area now resides the happy lion, carved by Deborah Mills.
Celebrate Thanksgiving thru Comix
My friend Arthur Bicknell (Ithaca HS 1969) composed a comix about T-day when he was 12 years old. A friend of his in cleaning out boxes from his mother's attic ran across this delightful artifact. Arthur has given me permission to reproduce it for your pleasure and delight.
A portion of our family came over not on the Mayflower but possibly on the next boat to follow. They came from Northern England via Holland to New Amsterdam, where they then along with the Montgomery family cross pollinated their way up the Hudson to eventually end up in the Finger Lakes Region of NY State. As Arthur says, the storks must have cried for us too.
Another portion was Seneca, had been here in the USA for a while.
Another portion, the latecomers were from Germany, France, Ireland, Scotland and who knows what else.
WHEN YOU CLICK ON EACH IMAGE IT WILL COME UP IN A LARGER SCREEN so that you can read it.
cover
1
2
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5
6
7
8
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20
A portion of our family came over not on the Mayflower but possibly on the next boat to follow. They came from Northern England via Holland to New Amsterdam, where they then along with the Montgomery family cross pollinated their way up the Hudson to eventually end up in the Finger Lakes Region of NY State. As Arthur says, the storks must have cried for us too.
Another portion was Seneca, had been here in the USA for a while.
Another portion, the latecomers were from Germany, France, Ireland, Scotland and who knows what else.
WHEN YOU CLICK ON EACH IMAGE IT WILL COME UP IN A LARGER SCREEN so that you can read it.
cover
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20SOS Gab & Eti
I wrote a serial e-mail story several years ago.
Gabriel and Etidorpha Orgrease were brother and sister. They are friends of the narrator. Their father Buck had brought home a fiberglass portable toilet with a hole in the side and Gab & Eti started out their life by my hiding their identity and sending out an e-mail to a list of 600 historic preservation practitioners with a request for advice on how best to restore the monumental artifact. This actually did happen, I did send this e-mail, it is not a fiction.
It all started when I was riding on a train from Chicago to New York so that I could ride through Horseshoe Curve. At the time this train ride was one of those pressing ambitions of my life.
This first e-mail caused several things to happen in short order. My poor mother got all sorts of weird e-mails and she had no clue why, seeing as I had disguised myself behind her e-mail address and not got around to tell her. She no longer uses her computer for anything, and I mean anything. A small band of people were delighted. A very large mass of people were outraged, and nasty. It seemed that 599 people on the list did not want to ever get any e-mails about anything even though they had subscribed to the list where nobody was supposed to say anything. The preservation they intended was the preservation of blank.
It was rough. Essentially if you are a young person in debt for having gone and got a Masters degree in fixing old buildings, and you can’t find a decent job, you will be very far above the mundane and vernacular study of outhouses. There are people with very heavy career investments in the religion of ancestor worship and they cannot truck any folderol in the midst of their well oiled world. In short as the e-mail series continued it gained fans, and it gained enemies.
The enemies and the fans both helped to encourage the project to continue. It did wander on for close to two years, with every week or few weeks or whatever a new e-mail that came along to play out the adventures of our two characters... and their dog Altuna.
The fans of the series would write in suggestions as to what the characters could be up to next... there was a lot of interest in shopping for shoes as I remember. It is one thing for characters to earn a living but readers seem to really want to read about characters that go shopping for weird stuff. I would meet readers in the real world, in the course of business (fixing old buildings) and they would talk about the characters. There was always a desire to know, “What next?”
The enemies of the series wrote death threats. Leastways they wanted the characters, and the series, dead. There is no telling how far unpleasantness that starts with words will go before there are shots in the night and burning Greek-Revival columns in our yards, let alone problems with freak flags.
The original has 42 installments, each section within the confine of a one to one-and-a-half page screen on a computer (eventually we sided with the anti-scroll down contingent) and people would have to wait days and weeks for more.
This all occurred on a listserv, a dynamic community exchange, an e-mail system that allowed broadcast, and feedback, and that was originated in part to sustain the life of the story, and also it established a worldwide community of histo presto deviants that has lasted in near daily contact with each other for 13 years now (give or take a few stragglers and lurkers).
In the grasp of an existential crisis I took on the name of one of my characters, Gabriel Orgrease and made it as my own a writer’s pseudonym. It is a name that I have worked steady and diligent to promote and brand as a distinct identity, as my real name has been previously used up in the market of books by a hack author that I need not mention here.
Well, this puts me in something of a fix if I want to do anything with the story, and I have decided that I do want to do something with it, like publish it as a book (a novella). For the longest time (10 years) I thought, well, this is fun but it is a bunch of crap... I have gotten far enough away from the heart of the mess to see it with new eyes and I am laughing. I like to share laughter, it is a very true and gut emotion and we need a whole lot more of it in our lives.
So, my problem is that in order to be the author [Gabriel Orgrease] and the friend of the brother and sister (and not the brother of the sister the author and the friend and the black dog too), I have to change the names of the characters. Henceforth they will be named Perveril and Etidorpha Farmsworth. In short, what has been known as SOS Gab & Eti will now be titled SOS Perv & Eti.
I anticipate and welcome heated and pungent argument. I am not inclined to put it up to a vote. I know that for some loyal fans and friends this will be a monumental change... but keep in mind your limited edition t-shirts will be worth more next week than they are today.
SOS Perv & Eti 1.3
"An ointment made of the juice, oil, and a little wax, is singularly good to rub cold and benumbed members." -- Nicholas Culpeper.
In line with the current topic we are reminded that a character in Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Lotion (desperate in need at this point in the narrative) used pages torn out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in practice of her daily constitution. Thank God that Old George did not, as far as GWSH (George Washington Shat Here) will confirm, likewise find himself compressed too often to rely upon signed paperwork that lay convenient at hand to assuage his constitution. Otherwise the population of Boston would probably still be stuck with soggy tea leaves, which, as I have heard rumored, causes one to remain consistently flushed and stiff in demeanor and is only moderated by a late-night flagon of Jamaican spiced-rum. Probably just another one of those bothersome urban myths to be Scoped.
Plugged up or otherwise defective plumbing is not of much good to a democracy and I would think the political scientists of academe would do well to contemplate the historical significance of single occupancy structures. There could be a whole new international movement, S. O. S. (Save Our Structures).
"We call a shack a shack and not a structure." -- Mies van der Rohe.
There are always detractors from any noble movements, and when they come down too abundantly, all conveniences have their inconveniences.
I'd be curious to know where Marco Polo stopped off in his travels. Bad enough he described a rhinoceros if he had also described a loo with a Ling Luk Loo busy in it. We might think it was a Saturn rocket prognosticated by the Tings, or the Tangs, or all those terra cotta guys, something slightly orange this way comes. I would not in the least be shocked, as with so many other claims of cultural superiority, to find that the Chinese are thousands of years ahead of the West in development of specific compost (humanure) black-art technology. There has to be a text on the feng shui of one-holer jakes. I can just imagine things like, "Do not place door of mouse in dragon mouth.", or, “Better a lizard in the well than a poot in the toot," 更好的蜥蜴以及在比poot的嘟嘟聲。,“Better than poot lizards, as well as the beep beep sound.” You know, those sort of thingies that seem to lose all sense in Google translation but sound kool and mysterious just the same.
To be continued... on the bus, again... well, almost on the bus, cross your legs and hold it...
Gabriel and Etidorpha Orgrease were brother and sister. They are friends of the narrator. Their father Buck had brought home a fiberglass portable toilet with a hole in the side and Gab & Eti started out their life by my hiding their identity and sending out an e-mail to a list of 600 historic preservation practitioners with a request for advice on how best to restore the monumental artifact. This actually did happen, I did send this e-mail, it is not a fiction.
It all started when I was riding on a train from Chicago to New York so that I could ride through Horseshoe Curve. At the time this train ride was one of those pressing ambitions of my life.
This first e-mail caused several things to happen in short order. My poor mother got all sorts of weird e-mails and she had no clue why, seeing as I had disguised myself behind her e-mail address and not got around to tell her. She no longer uses her computer for anything, and I mean anything. A small band of people were delighted. A very large mass of people were outraged, and nasty. It seemed that 599 people on the list did not want to ever get any e-mails about anything even though they had subscribed to the list where nobody was supposed to say anything. The preservation they intended was the preservation of blank.
It was rough. Essentially if you are a young person in debt for having gone and got a Masters degree in fixing old buildings, and you can’t find a decent job, you will be very far above the mundane and vernacular study of outhouses. There are people with very heavy career investments in the religion of ancestor worship and they cannot truck any folderol in the midst of their well oiled world. In short as the e-mail series continued it gained fans, and it gained enemies.
The enemies and the fans both helped to encourage the project to continue. It did wander on for close to two years, with every week or few weeks or whatever a new e-mail that came along to play out the adventures of our two characters... and their dog Altuna.
The fans of the series would write in suggestions as to what the characters could be up to next... there was a lot of interest in shopping for shoes as I remember. It is one thing for characters to earn a living but readers seem to really want to read about characters that go shopping for weird stuff. I would meet readers in the real world, in the course of business (fixing old buildings) and they would talk about the characters. There was always a desire to know, “What next?”
The enemies of the series wrote death threats. Leastways they wanted the characters, and the series, dead. There is no telling how far unpleasantness that starts with words will go before there are shots in the night and burning Greek-Revival columns in our yards, let alone problems with freak flags.
The original has 42 installments, each section within the confine of a one to one-and-a-half page screen on a computer (eventually we sided with the anti-scroll down contingent) and people would have to wait days and weeks for more.
This all occurred on a listserv, a dynamic community exchange, an e-mail system that allowed broadcast, and feedback, and that was originated in part to sustain the life of the story, and also it established a worldwide community of histo presto deviants that has lasted in near daily contact with each other for 13 years now (give or take a few stragglers and lurkers).
In the grasp of an existential crisis I took on the name of one of my characters, Gabriel Orgrease and made it as my own a writer’s pseudonym. It is a name that I have worked steady and diligent to promote and brand as a distinct identity, as my real name has been previously used up in the market of books by a hack author that I need not mention here.
Well, this puts me in something of a fix if I want to do anything with the story, and I have decided that I do want to do something with it, like publish it as a book (a novella). For the longest time (10 years) I thought, well, this is fun but it is a bunch of crap... I have gotten far enough away from the heart of the mess to see it with new eyes and I am laughing. I like to share laughter, it is a very true and gut emotion and we need a whole lot more of it in our lives.
So, my problem is that in order to be the author [Gabriel Orgrease] and the friend of the brother and sister (and not the brother of the sister the author and the friend and the black dog too), I have to change the names of the characters. Henceforth they will be named Perveril and Etidorpha Farmsworth. In short, what has been known as SOS Gab & Eti will now be titled SOS Perv & Eti.
I anticipate and welcome heated and pungent argument. I am not inclined to put it up to a vote. I know that for some loyal fans and friends this will be a monumental change... but keep in mind your limited edition t-shirts will be worth more next week than they are today.
SOS Perv & Eti 1.3
"An ointment made of the juice, oil, and a little wax, is singularly good to rub cold and benumbed members." -- Nicholas Culpeper.
In line with the current topic we are reminded that a character in Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Lotion (desperate in need at this point in the narrative) used pages torn out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in practice of her daily constitution. Thank God that Old George did not, as far as GWSH (George Washington Shat Here) will confirm, likewise find himself compressed too often to rely upon signed paperwork that lay convenient at hand to assuage his constitution. Otherwise the population of Boston would probably still be stuck with soggy tea leaves, which, as I have heard rumored, causes one to remain consistently flushed and stiff in demeanor and is only moderated by a late-night flagon of Jamaican spiced-rum. Probably just another one of those bothersome urban myths to be Scoped.
Plugged up or otherwise defective plumbing is not of much good to a democracy and I would think the political scientists of academe would do well to contemplate the historical significance of single occupancy structures. There could be a whole new international movement, S. O. S. (Save Our Structures).
"We call a shack a shack and not a structure." -- Mies van der Rohe.
There are always detractors from any noble movements, and when they come down too abundantly, all conveniences have their inconveniences.
I'd be curious to know where Marco Polo stopped off in his travels. Bad enough he described a rhinoceros if he had also described a loo with a Ling Luk Loo busy in it. We might think it was a Saturn rocket prognosticated by the Tings, or the Tangs, or all those terra cotta guys, something slightly orange this way comes. I would not in the least be shocked, as with so many other claims of cultural superiority, to find that the Chinese are thousands of years ahead of the West in development of specific compost (humanure) black-art technology. There has to be a text on the feng shui of one-holer jakes. I can just imagine things like, "Do not place door of mouse in dragon mouth.", or, “Better a lizard in the well than a poot in the toot," 更好的蜥蜴以及在比poot的嘟嘟聲。,“Better than poot lizards, as well as the beep beep sound.” You know, those sort of thingies that seem to lose all sense in Google translation but sound kool and mysterious just the same.
To be continued... on the bus, again... well, almost on the bus, cross your legs and hold it...
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Sunrise at Salt Hay Marsh
Mastic Beach, NY -- November 21, 2009
There was incredible color in the sky at sunrise this morning. Between getting the wood stove going and correspondence w/ a writer in Japan (in real time w/ Google Wave -- re: an Author's Directory) I went down the street to capture a bit of the scene.
and I am struck by the colors of the salt hay as they blend with the water and the sky
There was incredible color in the sky at sunrise this morning. Between getting the wood stove going and correspondence w/ a writer in Japan (in real time w/ Google Wave -- re: an Author's Directory) I went down the street to capture a bit of the scene.
and I am struck by the colors of the salt hay as they blend with the water and the sky
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Book Review: Only a Girl by Lian Gouw
This is not a book that I would have found on my own but how we come to read a book is often an important element of our understanding and appreciation of the book itself. I will go into that circumstance further on near the end of this review.As an American, and as I work in the construction industry in New York City where in a single day I encounter one-on-one a wide range of national identities, I am interested in the process of immigrant and cultural assimilation. As a writer I am interested in how an immigrant population that arrives in America, with the isolating aspect of different language will eventually work their way, often through generations to a point where individuals begin to contribute to the arts and literary culture of the American experience, in ‘mainstream’ American English, and to describe the history of the process of this ‘coming to America.’ And, though many consider America a destination, the path through America is not always the end of a cultural migration as much as a beginning. This book takes place in Indonesia and ends at the airport in Jakarta as the young protagonist leaves to America.
The author’s native language is Dutch. The book begins when Indonesia was the Dutch colony of the Netherlands’ East Indies. There is a whole lot to deal with the cultural and real politics of language in this book. In seeking out information online about the author I found a video interview where Lian Gouw describes how she had to learn to write her story in English. It does seem very much to be ‘her’ story, the book feels autobiographical. It is presented as a novel. As an object within a cultural vortex it says a whole lot about family, and feminist structures within the context of a politically volatile geographic place, growing up in Indonesia through WW2, a sort of growing up very modestly presented, with hopes, and fears, love, and pain that eventually necessitate departure.
This is not a prose to inflame the new-literati of the internet. The technical and stylistic elements of the story telling are not flashes. It all moves slowly in a relatively safe and traditional manner of telling it fairly plain without gew gaws. This lack of flair I mean as a solid compliment to the tenacity and strength of the author, the courage to simply get on with it as best as possible. When I first started to read the book I thought it was outright boring. By page six I was captured. Toward the end of the book the young protagonist is essentially raped, at first I was like, “Oh, great, the obligatory sex scene,” the sensational steamy bit that all romantic readers have been waiting for, but it was actually handled quite well and did not advertise itself as a deux ex machina. I would be curious if the author were to venture to explore this volatile element in depth, to provide a more dynamic emotional context to the incident and her feelings about it in a short story form. In fact, for reasons of visibility and access, that I will get into further on here, I would suggest that the author move into writing and distributing online shorter, more densely focused texts to explore a whole lot of the panorama of issues and emotions that this novel presents. I very much admire this writer.
Now for the downside.
Immigrants to any other place are at a disadvantage for a number of reasons. Often these disadvantages are never overcome in a single lifetime. Often these disadvantages are taken advantage of by the very community and culture from which the individual derives, but as well from the existing opportunities that are accessible. It is a tough life on this planet and one needs to admire anyone who obtains any level of satisfaction in the accomplishment of their goals. When I thought that I would want to write a review of Lian Gouw’s novel it occurred to me that I should look into where it had been published. The book is fairly expensive, particularly for a paperback. I will let you find that out for yourself (cheapest if you buy direct from the author). And there is the manner in which the book came to me that made the publication of the book more curious.
A younger generation relative of mine is a friend of the author and it was through a status update on Facebook that I was informed of the existence of the author, and of the novel. A book, and an author recommended up through the family seemed relevant to me. Usually I find out what is going on with various babies and young children that I do not know, but would like to know, in the family through Facebook. In part I wanted to procure the book in order to share it back through the family (which if you read the book will seem particularly circular and relevant). This share back remains my intent, and it is the main reason that the cost of the book did not dissuade me from the purchase. So I ordered it through the author’s attractive billboard website, paid with PayPal.Next thing I get an e-mail direct from the author that thanks me and asks how I had come to find the book. I thought, wow, this is nice! I pay for a book and within the day I get a direct communication with the author. How neat is that? I explained the family connection. We shared over that. The book arrived in the mail. There was a note from the author, sort of — it looked like it had been a copied note to again thank me for the purchase, with the PayPal receipt information. It felt sort of like when you buy a used book through Amazon and it shows up in an envelope that has seen a few global excursions and the system wants to know if you were happy with the exchange. I was happy.
So I went to look further online into Publish America (ironic since I have been on about assimilation into America) and what I gather is that they offer to publish nearly any author on the planet... with a royalty (seems to be $1.00 which I suppose qualifies as a royalty) with promises of promotion (best I can tell they do a bit of cover artwork, nothing fancy, print up a blurby book marker and a large postcard, and take the author’s e-mail list of friends and relatives then send them all a mass e-mail)... and the book is POD (publish on demand) meaning that when it is ordered each copy is printed (a friend recently told me he wants to buy one of these machines that does this, they cost like $100,000 and you can set it in your living space and have an instant publication empire) and the author is allowed to purchase up stock at ‘discount’ with which they are able to sell, promote and distribute as they so please, and their book is locked into a multi-year exclusive contract with Publish America. Oh, yes, it is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, those conglomerations of enabling of the moving of books. Meaning that, best as I can tell when you click on your PayPal at the author’s site it goes to the author who collects a small amount of money, takes the book off the pile in the pantry and wraps it into an envelope and then off to the post office, but they do get one more copy of a book, in this case a novel that took the author seven years to produce, hard to tell if that time included all of the English language writing workshops, out into the hands of a potential reader... someone most likely in the family or a friend or a relative of a friend who is curious about reading stuff. In short, it is ALL up to the author to give their book legs.
I felt really bad for this as I do believe Lian Gouw deserves a whole lot more exposure. I get the impression that she may feel bad for this as well. But as Lian explains elsewhere on the web, there is an expedient to the need to get a book out into the world as life moves on. Her novel moves on through life and if any of all of what I have said above makes sense to you then I strongly suggest that you pay attention to the work and future appearances of this author. (And check out her traditional Indonesian recipes.)
Videos frm KabariNews.com (which I did not watch all of before writing the above review)
Book Author "Only a Girl" by Lian Gouw, from Indonesia
What is the legacy in the book of "Only a Girl" by Lian Gouw?
"Only a Girl", by Lian Gouw, explain Why she become a writer?
1. Lian Gouw shares her experience how to write a book
2 Lian Gouw shares her experience how to write a book
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Starlings
Not too many years ago we had a pet starling. I found it as a chick on the sidewalk outside of our then shop in Brooklyn. It obviously needed some help so I took it home, fed it baby bird food from an eye dropper and nursed it along. Named the bird Persnik... because he/she was always complaining about everything.
Leave the room Persnik would complain, enter the room Persnik would complain. Feed Persnik and all sorts of complaints. The bird was not exactly musical, not like the blue jay Blueboy that we had when I was a kid. Blueboy liked to sing along w/ Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos... Persnik liked to complain, bitterly. Whistle a little tune and Persnik would go nuclear. All the same I thought we were friends. It can be like that with friends.
In the spring I decided to give him/her freedom and took the cage out onto the front porch. When we let Blueboy loose he would not go away. The jay always hung around the house and would come visit us, and prefered to sit in his cage at night. Persnik had no such idea of human-bird communion... once the cage door was open he/she/it flew off across the street screeching and complaining the whole way. I felt... I felt abandoned.
My wife made up for my feelings of loss by giving me a pygmy African hedgehog that turned out to be a she and pregnant. Little hedgehogs do become attached to their human handlers.
Regardless, whenever I see a lone starling at the feeder I tell Persnik what is up for the day. Honestly, I can’t tell one starling from another.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Writer's Workshop Along Bird Cemetery Road
In the barn studio below the amazing skylight the names were put in a large galvanized hopper and churned around.
A one-man aviary band Jeffrey cranked the curved handle on the reclaimed writer’s desk and some of them came down like sounds of wind or car horns, rude expletives or to mimic the crazy cawing from above. The names dislodged then rattled then spun down around a copper spring-tubing as with a timeless still where they slowly echoed down; in the shiver of small quills they left trail marks, as they revealed a more pure essence.
Other names got jammed at the top. They formed boldly arched natural bridges against gray metal skies; they were as dark bouillon cubes contaminated with moisture that stuck them together. No vibration of the writer’s mechanism could break them free.
Jeffrey cranked hard he blew the call. Caw. Caw. Caw.
As he cranked his name changed shape with their names and he became Jeff. Less black birds encircled in flight above the skylight and above the clattered pace of wooden gears. He thought of a windmill near the seaside and the dream of rye flour. The light of day that is special.
From our muffled station behind a sliding door we could hear the sound of cracking and cawing into a more centered sentience with the pressure of his hand against the gritty lever where he worked in the antiquities room. Then it was Jay, then it was just… and a list of small hearts which were previously homogenized with a kitchen cleaver in separate identities became like a nude perfume.
It leaked, spilled and flowed to etch identities to the desk, then rivulets down the oak legs then onto the pine floor where it mixed with dust-of-radon and congealed bird's blood, or boat varnish and copper flakes that smelled musky with a hint of greenish organic form.
As sun set the now fluid bird names eared themselves into the structure of the barn walls where all that night to next century they confused spiders and black crickets with their cackled noises.
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