...more recent posts
Shanghai 1987 & today
In Part 1 of “My Saga,” which was published March 1, the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard journeyed from his home in Sweden to Canada, with the intention of tracing the Viking trail from L’Anse aux Meadows, the first European settlement in North America, into the United States and westward to Alexandria, Minn., site of a possibly fraudulent Viking runestone. After several setbacks, and with just days to spare before he had to catch his return flight to Sweden, Knausgaard met the photographer Peter van Agtmael in Cleveland, and the two of them drove to Detroit.
We still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a more sinister reality. It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – Clive.
if you smell french toast does that mean you are having a french stroke?
A 1948 flood washed away the WWII housing project Vanport—but its history still informs Portland's diversity.
Looking pretty cold in NYC
frackin' texas
Lincoln highway
Apparently this was at the top of the charts when I was conceived ...
For a certain math student ...
videos of late-80's NYC by Nelson Sullivan. You might see old friends and familiar faces in some of them.
guess i should go food shopping. although i did just buy that can of beans. nah.... im good.
Ronnie DeMonarco hosts this 1995 video introduction to the LES. I met Ronnie in 1996, pre-moustache I think.
Dead whale in the NW news
was listening to a podcast talking about the selma movie which reminded me of a favored professor who was also my college advisor. it was widely known that he was shot while registering voters for sncc in the early 60s but i never knew the particulars. so i googled him just now to see if i could find out more only to learn that he died late last year.
NYC at night from 7500 feet above.
9. Carry bolt cutters everywhere.
Here’s a self-effacing diary entry from March 1851 in which Tolstoy chronicles his flaws, hour by hour—part of a larger project in which he evaluates his own ethics. How many of these peccadilloes have you committed today? “Koloshin (Sergei) came to drink vodka, I did not escort him out (cowardice). At Ozerov’s argued about nothing (habit of arguing) and did not talk about what I should have talked about (cowardice). Did not go to Beklemishev’s (weakness of energy). During gymnastics did not walk the rope (cowardice), and did not do one thing because it hurt (sissiness).—At Gorchakov’s lied (lying). Went to the Novotroitsk tavern (lack of fierté). At home did not study English (insufficient firmness).”
Beekeeping is changing. So are we. “Honeybees aren’t going extinct,” one beekeeper told me, “they’re becoming more intensively managed livestock.” Which continues the agricultural trend—thousands of years in the making, but accelerated by modern farming—of relying entirely on a handful of chosen species and hoping we can continue to keep them alive. The system feeding humanity keeps growing, but it keeps growing more precarious.
Better love story than Twilight.