Dungannistan

Cartooneconomics Strikes Again

2012-02-02T15:45:00.001-05:00

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on

Oh Lord, they're all doing it. It seems that the only way radical economists can get their doom-laden prophesies across to the general public is by using a lightening-fast cartoonist animating their words as they speak them.

First there was the venerable Professor David Harvey, whose 2011 speech to the Royal Society of the Arts explained the current world recession/depression with that quick-on-the-draw animation.

Then U.S. profit of doom Porter ~~Gussethounder~~, sorry, Stansberry, got in on the action with some really low-brow linesman.

And now it's the turn of Irish economist and wise guy, David McWilliams, who has just come out with his latest web site / book / TV show, Punk Economics, surely a very late-in-the-day attempt to follow in the paths of the Freakonomics guys. Cue moving finger:

It's worth quoting the rest of the lines about the Moving Finger, which are taken from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, in the controversial translation by Edward Fitzgerald:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

But helpless pieces in the game He plays,
Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days,
He hither and thither moves, and checks ... and slays,
Then one by one, back in the Closet lays.

And there's more:

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted - "Open then the Door!
You know how little time we have to stay,
And once departed, may return no more."

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou,
Beside me singing in the Wilderness,
And oh, Wilderness is Paradise enow.

If chance supplied a loaf of white bread,
Two casks of wine and a leg of mutton,
In the corner of a garden with a tulip-cheeked girl,
There'd be enjoyment no Sultan could outdo.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out of the same Door as in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Yesterdays

2012-01-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

Few readers of this blog (and few you are!) know that yesterday, January 29th, is the anniversary of my birth, and also that of my very good friend, Oprah Winfrey, or OW! as she prefers. We got together as usual yesterday and using special technology only available to NASA and Oprah, we visited the Taj Mahal, then, as it was kind of crowded, we just came back home again. Oh OW! Happy birthday to all 01/29thers.

Because my birthday was coming up, I had to endure conversations like this all week:

Person: Oh, it's your birthday! That means you're ... Capricorn, same as Cinderblock, my sister-in-law! You two are very similar.

Me: No, Aquarius actually.

Person: Oh right! Then you're the same sign as my Auntie Ironingboard. She's Aquarius. [A darker mood descends] ...but so is her husband, Mongoose. I don't think they are likely to get along, do you?

Me: Well, I think astrology is unscientific mumbo-jumbo.

Person: No, not astrology!!! Your star signs. The Zodiac. You know the Zodiac? It explains Everything, you know, Everything?

Me: Errr...

Brooklyn, 1959

2012-01-27T20:25:00.000-05:00

Photo: Bruce Davidson

It's an Old Joke...

2012-01-27T13:31:00.001-05:00

...but I'll tell you anyway. Liam McEneaney, who is of course, Jewish by birth (he's a Buddhist these days) and a stand-up comedian from Queens, NY, was featured in the Wall Street Journal last August 28th. I interviewed McEneaney many, many years ago, and it is great to see him continue to succeed in that most difficult of careers, making people laugh.

Don't Be Fooled By His Purple Tie

2012-01-26T18:03:00.001-05:00

Something big is getting bigger across the river... Interesting to note that often, New Jersey police officers and other uniformed Garden State officials always seem to have stepped out of Fantasy Fascist Costuming Inc.

I Spot a Copy Cat!

2012-01-18T08:22:00.005-05:00

The Federal Reserve at Prayer

Prophets of doom and merchants of apocalypse abound in this Age of Anxiety we live in. The complex economies which are both progenitors and products of Modernity, go off kilter despite wise men gathering in council around walnut tables, as the recently-released transcripts of discussions from the Federal Reserve meetings in 2006 showed -- America's pre-eminent economists and bankers blathered and boasted during meetings, amused by signs of the housing market collapsing but not apprehending it or its dire consequences. And so for those who seek to profit from doom, one of the ways through which Modernity unraveling is often foretold, is that of economic collapse.

If you watched MSNBC in the weeks before Christmas, you may have seen a commercial inviting you to sample some of the latest in doomsaying. The commercial stated only that if you thought the economy was bad, the worst was yet to come (of course) and then offered the viewer the chance to learn more at a web site, newamerica3.com:

Porter Stansberry is an American conservative investment specialist (though he sounds like something from a microbrewery: "I'll have two Porter Stansberrys and a Hound of the Baskervilles IPA") with a reputation for prophet-of-doom-style predictions, sez Wikipedia, and his Newamerica3 web site confirms this. The voice-over entones on and on and on and... on, about ruinous new things that cause him concern and will scare YOU and YOUR LOVED ONES when he finally tells you, but I stopped listening before he got round to telling, as he clearly likes to entone a lot.

But what really undermines the Stansberry spiel is that he speaks over an ever-evolving animated graphic of a human hand sketching at high-speed to illustrate what's being said in the voice-over.

Haven't we seen this somewhere before? Why, yes, and seen it done with far greater panache! Pre-eminent Marxist historian Professor David Harvey gave a speech about the current Crisis of Capitalism to the Royal Society of Arts in London in 2011. The RSA excerpts its best speakers online, with an ever-evolving animated graphic of a human hand sketching at high-speed to illustrate what's being said by the speaker.

I guess Stansberry and Co. thought it worth ripping off -- perhaps because they thought their poorly-imitated animation might somehow lend clarity to the murky-scary blather that Stansberry comes out with.

Watch Harvey animated below, and go to www.newamerica3.com to endure an eighth-rate imitation of it, if you can be bothered.

Recently on Divorce Court

2012-01-09T14:42:00.001-05:00

"Look Into My Eyes! Both of You!Hold My Gaze For Ten Seconds.........There. Now You George and Sandra Are Divorced, and Your Minds Have Been Erased."

You May Plug Your Charger into the Outlet by the Clover

2012-01-06T16:31:00.000-05:00

I saw this scene through the window of a vacant store on Flatbush Avenue, way down by Avenue N, in Brooklyn. Obviously a leaky roof and several other factors has resulted in a vigorous bursting-forth of nature.

I'd Rather Claw Out My Eyes

2012-01-04T13:12:00.003-05:00

No thanks, New York Times, I do not need your iPhone app, hemorrhaging the latest antics from Iowa or Hew Nampshire... I get all my political news delivered to my Inbox (see below)...

HNY

2012-01-01T02:18:00.000-05:00

Ask. The. Bust.

2011-12-31T21:37:00.000-05:00

Mr. Bair bought a phone: my friend Paul at a Verizon store on the Upper West Side.

The cars from on high in Harlem.

1 World Trade Center already looms over the vertical city... from Seventh Avenue South.

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn at dusk.

It's in Prospect Park... cannot remember the name of this edifice, which is most beautiful at night.

Newark Public Library: still beautiful in an age of brutal budget cuts.

In the foyer of Newark Public Library there is a bust of Julius Caesar, which I was photographing earlier today, when the security guard had a fit and yelled: "You can't do that! you have to ask permission!"

So I said: "Come off it! Permission to take a photo of a work of art?"

She yells back: "Yes!! You needa ask permission!"

So I replied: "Whose permission do I need? The bust's?"

Then I went outside, sat down on the steps. About a minute later, the security guard comes out and lights a cigarette.

"May I ask you for a cigarette?" I said, sweetly and trillingly. She gave me a hard, long look, then she says:

"ASK. THE. BUST."

If You Cannot

2011-12-29T19:59:00.000-05:00

Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street, early evening rain, 12/27/2011

2011-12-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

Thank you for the pizza, Ren!

An out-of-shape America

2011-12-26T03:28:00.001-05:00

Depressing but good:

The Iraq war was a kind of stress test applied to the American body politic. And every major system and organ failed the test: the executive and legislative branches, the military, the intelligence world, the for-profits, the nonprofits, the media. It turned out that we were not in good shape at all -- without even realizing it. Americans just hadn't tried anything this hard in around half a century.

Around Town

2011-12-25T09:59:00.001-05:00

The cars they drove: a Dodge Challenger parked across Eighth Avenue from Madison Square Garden.

The things they worshiped: strange family of totem-starers on the Upper West Side.

The Man in Red: Santa, everywhere. As I keep reminding people, Santa is just an anagram of SATAN.

Bike-lit.

Don't forget, times are tough this Christmas. Above, one of many small, independent-y
businesses, heading for the history books.

Apposite for the neighborhood: a ramshackle Christmas decoration thing in Spanish Harlem.

The secrets she told: gossiping outside a West 21st Street night club.

I: The food they ate: fruit stalls are everywhere in New York City these days.

II: The food they ate: chicken with rice stall; nearly as ubiquitous as the fruit stall (see above).

Their lives, our memories, memorialized: a First World War memorial in Central Park.

Accursed Claus! Christmas everywhere on 125th Street.

On 175th Street, the invitation still goes forth from that famous church:
"Come on in! Or, smile as you pass."

And in Spanish Harlem again: not a neon Bible, but a neon Cross.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all.

Freewheeling on Freylinghuysen

2011-12-23T03:03:00.004-05:00

To quote Wikipedia,

Route 27 crosses into Newark, Essex County at the Virginia Street intersection, where it becomes Frelinghuysen Avenue, a road that heads north through the Dayton neighborhood of Newark, passing through urban areas and by Weequahic Park.

Ah, Frelinghuysen Avenue, you are my darling, Come sit you down upon my knee, And tell to me the very reason, Why I am slighted so by thee... It's not just me feels slighted by this desolate street in Newark, New Jersey. I'd think anybody who pitched up there late at night, as I did recently, would wonder about the ill luck or terrible fate that brought them to this stretch of poisoned post-Soviet pavement.

When looking at these photos I hope you will agree with me that there is even serenity and peace on the edge of desolation, under the silent halos of the streetlights.

I felt at times that the streetlights were in some kind of secret conversation with the leafless trees.

A thoughtful reminder from some steely locals... I did not need any for my nerves.

The ghastly green afterglow from a visiting fliegende Untertasse.

But it was the trees that struck me as most alien... silent, still, gnarled, angular...

...stark in the glow of the neon streetlights...

...that, and Chicken Holiday and Pizza!

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-21T06:05:00.003-05:00

Christopher Hitchens succumbed to cancer of the oesophagus last week, at the age of 62. He died in Texas, of all places, which I personally felt was kind of apt.

Why apt? Texas is a place of extremes -- extremes of weather, terrain, people, and events. Hitchens has been eulogized, even lionized in the (American) press as an extreme contrarian, a man for whom nothing was sacred, not even Mother Teresa or Princess Diana -- or even his long-held left wing ideals, which he ditched with utter finality when he came out in support of President George W. Bush's War on Terror, after September 11th.

I can't say I had much admiration for Hitchens, though his last stand against religion and superstition was courageous. He did seem a bilious, unpleasant type, at least in public. Also, I feel that his adulation in some quarters of U.S. society came from the well-known American tendency to be suckers for anything and everything that comes with an English accent. And I feel that in argument, he wielded an intellectual bludgeon, where perhaps a sharp stick might have worked just as well. The hideous monsters he took arms against (the Catholic Church, religious bigots, Henry Kissinger) would never have afforded him nor anyone, graciousness in defeat, but that is no reason for him to be ungracious. If you're going to kill a man's argument, it seems unkind to not give him an arm up out of the hole he dug himself.

As it was clear he was suffering terribly from the effects of his cancer and treatments, Hitchens physically looked terrible, so in deference to all our vanities, here is a photo of him in his heyday, the piercing stare, pursed lips, "Looking as if she were alive..." Or about to explode!

UPDATE: Others with greater insight have committed their Hitchens hatchet-jobs to the public sphere, including this conclusion, bringing us back to the lone-star state: "the older Hitchens was so full of shit that you could use him to fertilise all of Texas for decades."

Indeed. In 2006, one of his Vanity Fair columns trumpeted a study that he said claimed to show that women had less of a sense of humor than men. There followed an unfounded, uncalled for, appalling screed of misogyny:

There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three.

The Craic from Midtown Manhattan

2011-12-14T21:24:00.000-05:00

Thank goodness some quick-thinking citizen spotted a huge fault line opening up on West 40th street, and taped it closed before disaster struck.

[Note: "Craic" or "crack" is a term for fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland].

A Miracle on West 22nd Street

2011-12-14T05:34:00.000-05:00

The Van Alen bookstore at 30 West 22nd Street opened a while back, but I only made it through the door yesterday morning. It's cute, in lemony yellow, with a sort of stairway / shelving area and an invitation on the web site invites you to linger among the books and periodicals on sale, which are largely Van Alen Institute-related. And what does the Van Alen Institute do?

The Van Alen Institute is an independent nonprofit architectural organization that promotes inquiry into the processes that shape the design of the public realm.

I say this only because I feel it deeply: book stores are closing everywhere, and people and society will suffer for their loss, in subtle, incalculable ways. The last independent book store in the Bronx is closing this month (or closed in 2008, depending on who you believe). So the specialist Van Alen Books deserves continuing support and browsing visits, even if it may not be your interest in reading material.

Recently I met someone who is fairly newly-arrived in New York City, and they noticed that within 15 or 20 minutes, I had twice mentioned books I have been reading. Perhaps they were seeking to wrong-foot me or deal with their own inadequacies, but they suddenly declared: "Reading is for people who can't think for themselves." Well. Yet you'd think after a year in the city, the same person would have a basic grasp of the subway system, why the concepts of east and west are slightly vital ones to grasp, and why Grand Central Terminal is not in Harlem. "And tell me what street / Compares with Mott Street / In July?"

The View From Dean Street

2011-12-09T06:27:00.000-05:00

Peel Me a Grape!

2011-12-06T23:27:00.004-05:00

Or rather, do NOT peel me a grape, if it comes via Eataly... That's the name of celebrity chef Mario Batali's new gourmet food porn store at the Fifth Avenue end of 23rd Street. Despite its name -- a pun about as effectively corny as the tourism commercials some years ago during which a posh English accented voice would intone "Aaaaaah... Indiaaaaaaaaaah!" -- the Italian food joint is: a) packed to the ceiling with Italian fine foods; b) crammed with shoppers who seem not to have heard the news about the recession; and c) expensive.

How expensive? This expensive: in an August Q & A interview with New York Magazine, Batali slipped in this crass store policy regarding pre-prepared vegetables (by the store 'vegetable butcher', an artist (!) called Jennifer Rubell).

And it’s true that artist Jennifer Rubell is running the vegetable department?
Yeah, she’s the vegetable butcher.

What does a vegetable butcher do?
Anything you want. If you’re not familiar with how to trim an artichoke, we’ll trim you an artichoke. If you don’t think you have time to peel your baby carrots, you can leave them with us and go shop in the other parts of the store, and we’ll peel them. We’ll do anything but cook them. On your way out, we’ll put the peels in a little separate bag—because they’re going to weigh them at the checkout counter—and then they go into a compost can up front.

The Saps

2011-12-05T15:32:00.000-05:00

Never homeless, never hungry, always certain, reassured daily of the complete and utter truth of their truth, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are the Great American Cheerleaders, from their special playroom at the New York Times, where both men are columnists.

Thank You, Mr. Mayor!

2011-12-02T03:31:00.001-05:00

While I disagree with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on many issues, I support his signing of Introductory Number 656-A on November 22nd last. This bill limits cooperation between local and federal law enforcement. Here's a summary by WNYC:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a new bill into law Tuesday that limits the city’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities on Rikers Island.

The law will prevent the Department of Corrections from turning over immigrants with no criminal convictions upon their release, who are not known gang members or who are not on the terror watch list to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said it was an historic day for the city and immigrant communities in New York. "We are sending a strong and unified message that this city will no longer allow innocent immigrants who pose no threat to be unfairly detained and deported due to an antiquated immigration system," she said in a joint statement with council members Daniel Dromm and Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Bloomberg initially endorsed cooperation with ICE at Rikers, but later this year came out in support of the bill.

Information about prisoners at Rikers is shared with federal immigration authorities under an initiative known as the Criminal Alien Program. Agents from ICE, who are stationed at Rikers, can interview foreign-born inmates and decide whether they want to place the inmate on an immigration hold or detainer.

If a detainer is lodged against an inmate, the DOC will hold him for an extra 48 hours at Rikers after his case is closed to give ICE an opportunity to assume custody of the individual.

“Under the new legislation, if an inmate gets an ICE detainer but has no record of criminal history or pending cases, and no other record of being a threat to the community, the Department of Correction will not honor the detainer,” said Sharman Stein, Deputy Commissioner for Public Information at the DOC.

The Criminal Alien Program, ICE argues, allows them to target an illegal alien with a criminal record and prevent them from being released into the general public and potentially committing other crimes.

But immigration advocates and some politicians have argued the city works too closely with ICE and that many individuals with no prior criminal record end up being deported

UPDATE: He Came In Third >>>Martin McGuinness For President of Ireland

2011-11-28T15:27:00.000-05:00

Martin McGuinness, ~~the former IRA chief-of-staff~~ deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and Member of Parliament for Mid-Ulster, has announced his candidacy for President of Ireland. McGuinness, seen above ~~campaigning for votes~~ getting the vote out* in 1972, is a member of Sinn Fein, the only political party ~~in Ireland~~ the entire world that has No Connection Whatsoever With The IRA. As a politician, McGuinness is known for being flexible while never selling out his core principles. "I always stick to my guns," he never said, no, not once. He also enjoys socializing, and his parties are huge successes. "They always go off like a bomb," someone else didn't actually say for fear of being whacked.

In keeping with the carefully cultivated message of peace and reconciliation that Sinn Fein has fostered since the IRA cease fire and Good Friday peace agreement, McGuinness plans to campaign under a simple slogan: Vote for me! or I'll blow your fockin' knees off.

* As in: get that vote out and put a bullet in its head noy!

UPDATE: Michael Higgins won the Irish Presidential Election held on October 27th, 2011. Martin McGuinness came in third. In other words, although McGuinness was gunning for the job of President, he totally bombed. Still, he gave it his best shot. So shut up or I'll knee-cap you. Ohohohohoho...the old jokes are the best!

Days

2011-11-27T12:45:00.001-05:00

Images, November 26th, 2011

2011-11-26T10:02:00.003-05:00

Many moons ago, a woman called Brooklyn Hilary commented on my photos on Flickr. At the time, she was dating a guy called Blaine, and before Hilary and I met and went on many a photo expedition, she and Blaine concocted an idea of me as 'Irishman!' -- see Blaine's sketch above.

From Taschen, a new, beautifully illustrated edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales...

Taschen has opened a pop-up store at 998 Madison Avenue, in NYC. Red Riding Hood, presumably, above.

In other news, there will be an annular or total eclipse of the sun, visible from eight western U.S. states, next May.

Forty-eight Years Ago Today

2011-11-22T20:05:00.001-05:00

Perfect Lives

2011-11-22T09:59:00.002-05:00

Mayor Bloomberg: 'so I prophesied as commanded...'

I know next to nothing about this story (above) except that the bare bones details do not give me confidence in the authorities that rule over us. It seems all too easy to point (as Mayor Bloomberg did) to the so-called 'lone wolf' terrorist theory, when deflecting people from looking at or seeing something else that's going down. All you need is a suspect.

During his statement to the press on Sunday evening, Mayor Bloomberg said that the suspect arrested, Jose Pimentel of Washington Heights, "represents exactly the kind of threat FBI Directer Robert Muller and his experts have warned about."

OK, great. Except now it seems that the FBI declined to arrest and prosecute the suspect. Allegedly, the suspect smoked marajuana with the NYPD's secret informant, and also...

...and also, the suspect tried to circumcise himself when he decided he had in fact converted to Islam.

For these reasons among others, it seems that the FBI declined to arrest and prosecute Pimental. Perhaps the thought of a defense attorney standing up in court and saying: "my client is a pot-smoking self-circumciser, and the chief witness against him was high at the time,"gave them concerns about the case's merits.

Since Sunday, other details have come out: the suspect was considered mentally unstable but harmless by neighbors and friends of his family in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in Harlem, where he had recently been kicked out of his home by his mother, and had moved in with his uncle.

I'm reminded of Ezekiel chapter 37, though I'm taking the words completely out of context:

So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.

Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army...

You can scare people up into an exceeding great army, by just breathing that word, terrorism... or can you, Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly? Aside from anything else, as the headline from NBC at the top of this posting says, 'Suspect had expressed anger at U.S. soldiers.' This alone seems well and truly covered as a right under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

New Bank of England 50 Pound Note

2011-11-20T16:09:00.003-05:00

Above, detail from the new Bank of England 50 pound note, issued by the Bank on November 2nd of this year. Matthew Boulton (left) manufactured the steam engine inventions of James Watts (right): together the two men were of huge importance to the Industrial Revolution. On some level, the Bank's officials must hope that the ingenuity and canny ways of Boulton and Watts et al might trickle down the 200 intervening years and save and inspire the Austerity Britain of today.

Speaking of austerity, an austere-looking raven (above) has been perched for weeks now, at 103rd and Broadway, here in New York City. Perched on an apple which is held aloft by an outsized clamp, or
vise, the whole thing is one of a series of animal sculptures by artist Peter Woytuk.

If you're not from America, nor a resident thereof, you might wonder at that word, vise. It's the American English spelling of vice, which has other connotations both here, and where English-, Scottish- and Irish-English, are spoken. We, non-American English speakers, know that a piece of paper money is called a 'fifty pound note', and not a 'fifty pound bill.' A bill is a document requesting payment for goods or services rendered, but Americans perversely call a bill, a check. Hardly anyone is left in the world who might try to pay a bill or a check, ...with a cheque.

From bills, to bills, and beautiful birds:

This cute little bird is from Ethiopea. I thought I would test Google Image Search using this image, and these are what turned up as 'visually similar', according to Google's great machines:

Yes, that first image is a bird. The others are airplanes, save one, which is... a ceiling fan!

An Early Occupier

2011-11-18T22:04:00.002-05:00

Checking in With Irish Mental, Sorry, Central

2011-11-14T11:19:00.001-05:00

If you look carefully at the photograph, you can see the face of Satan laughing at McLaughin as she bursts into flames. Well, I never...

Speaking of faces, the egg on Irish Central's seems to be covering their eyes, because they also published this story below. But I suppose it evens things out, intergalactically speaking, to have both Satan's face in the above story, and Almighty Lord appearing on the Cliffs of Moher, below.

That photo on the left was taken of Jesus at the Curragh last year, when Our Lord was placing a bet on Holy Guacamole, the horse that eventually won the big race.

Behind Every Successful Woman Is Herself

2011-11-11T20:46:00.001-05:00

Meet Doris V. Amen, deep Brooklyn funeral director, with purple nails: “People are sometimes surprised I’m a funeral director,” she said. “But I tell them, ‘Listen, if a woman can bring you into the world, she can certainly bring you out.’ ”

She's a Brooklyn original!

With no connection to the above...

Overtoun Bridge, where dogs commit suicide.

The Empire of Light Appears

2011-11-03T01:04:00.000-04:00

One of Surrealist painter Rene Magritte's most famous works is called The Empire of Light: a street and dwelling dimly lit by street lights but in the deep darkness of night, with an incongruously bright sunlit noon sky behind the gloomy trees.

Most people who know Magritte's work even slightly, will remember the image. In fact, The Empire of Light is a series of paintings depicting similar scenes.

So, I was rather amazed when a few weeks ago, I saw the above scene and took an photo of it: it's Magritte's Empire of Light, but happening for real!

A Leader In Inequality

2011-10-27T11:38:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times:

In a breakdown of New York City neighborhoods, the biggest income gap is in Morningside Heights-Hamilton Heights, Manhattan. The median household income for the area is $207,053 for those in the highest one-fifth of the population compared with $6, 073 for those in the lowest one-fifth.

Up in the Bronx, Looking for the Crack of Dawn?

2011-10-27T11:29:00.001-04:00

Castle Hill Avenue, Bronx (Photo: NYT)

Recently, after a cab ride from Manhattan and a friendly chat with the yellow cab driver (he was from Moscow, and wanted to know if I thought Irish people drank more than Russians), I found myself on Castle Hill Avenue, walking to the 6 train. There was a growing throng of early lunchtime adults and uniformed schoolkids on the street, and as I walked past a guy and a girl, neither of them more than 15 at most, I overheard the girl say to the boy:

"Have you had sex today yet?"

Speak Roughly

2011-10-26T17:43:00.001-04:00

The Duchess’s song to the pig baby, from Through The Looking Glass:

Speak Roughly

By Lewis Carroll

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

Chorus
Wow! wow! wow!

I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!

A History of the Typewriter

2011-10-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

History of the typewriter recited by Michael Winslow from SansGil—Gil Cocker on Vimeo.

Father And Son: In Fact They Did Meet

2011-10-24T12:16:00.000-04:00

The late Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and technological magician of our times, was estranged from his father, as I wrote last week, and though the father emailed several times in the months before Jobs died of pancreatic cancer, it was widely reported that they never met. In fact, it seems they did meet, but without knowing it.

Jobs' father John Jandali had two children with Joanne Simpson: Jobs and his sister, novelist Mona Simpson. Jandali seems to have abandoned his ex-wife and the children (though Jobs was given up for adoption first). This abandonment colored Jobs' view of his father, such that he refused to meet him during his final months.

“I learned a little bit about him and I didn’t like what I learned,” Jobs said on an audio recording played on a “60 Minutes” segment yesterday.

But they did in fact meet. Mona Simpson tracked down her father some years ago, and Jandali told her that he once ran a restaurant in Silicon Valley, where many hi-tech company executives came to eat, "including Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was a great tipper."

From a NYTimes blog post, oddly titled 'Steve Jobs' search for his father':

In the recording, Mr. Jobs said he remembered being in that restaurant a couple of times and meeting a manager there who was from Syria. “I shook his hand and he shook my hand and that’s all,” Mr. Jobs said.

Is It a Bird, Is It a Novella...?

2011-10-20T08:51:00.001-04:00

For occasions when you have a piece of writing that is too long to publish in a magazine, but too short to turn into a book...

...these sites may be the places to publish at, or at least distribute...

And if you are looking for interesting new things to read, you should also have a look at Byliner, Longreads and Longform.

Speaking of interesting things to read, this book is excellent:

New York at Night

2011-10-15T16:45:00.001-04:00

Columbia University's Professor Ken Jackson (above) teaches a course called The History of the City of New York. To fully demonstrate the urban environment around his students, he decided to take them o0ut on walking tours, but during daytime, there were always too many people on the streets. So now Jackson takes his youngsters out on bikes, starting at 11pm... riding through the city at night, he stops here and there to speak through a megaphone about various important sites and points. Rides typically last until 6am! So if you're woken up late at night by a voice entoning a history lesson, it may well be Jackson.

Father and Son

2011-10-14T12:16:00.003-04:00

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported the poignant story of the late Steve Jobs (above right) and his estranged father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali (above left), who, at 80 years of age is still going strong as a casino manager in Nevada. Jobs, as most will know, was CEO of Apple computers, the conjurer who gave the world the iPhone, and who died of pancreatic cancer last week. Father and son never reconciled.

Jandali, born in Syria, immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s, had a relationship with Jobs' mother, but they divorced and lost contact after Jobs and his sister Mona were born (the sister Mona, is a well-known novelist in California). Both children were put up for adoption.

Mr. Jandali only learned around 2005 that Mr. Jobs was his biological son. He doesn't remember how he heard, but he said the news was "a major shock." After that, Mr. Jandali began watching online videos of Mr. Jobs's famous keynote speeches launching Apple products. He emailed a few times in the past year after becoming aware of Mr. Jobs's failing health.

Although Jobs contacted his mother and sister in recent years and established a close relationship with them, he did not reach out to his father. Jandali, sounding resigned and philosophical in the WSJ article, emailed Jobs in recent years, especially upon learning that Jobs was dying of cancer. He said he received two brief emails in recent weeks, thanking him for his concern, but that seems to be the extent of the contact.

Reading the story conveys only a little of the ineffable sadness and regret. One wonders if Jobs had lived, would he eventually have reached out to his father? In his final days, Jobs' sister said: "His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he’d have to leave us."

Apple fans have left thousands of post-it note tributes to Steve Jobs on the windows of Apple stores in NYC and elsewhere.

Street Renamed For Odessa Steward

2011-10-09T11:31:00.000-04:00

In August I was walking by the corner of West 103rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue and noticed that the street sign was covered up thusly, above, and there was a crowd of locals and police officers gathered...

The street corner was being renamed in honor of the late Odessa Steward, a community activist and campaigner who lived in the area for many years...

One of Them Shall Not Fall To the Ground

2011-10-06T12:15:00.001-04:00

On East 16th Street this morning: a mouse that didn't make it.

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them ~ Revelations 14, verse 13.

Straight Up, With a Twist

2011-10-05T18:34:00.000-04:00

"And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city..."

"...and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD..."

"And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

-- II Kings 2:23-24

Holding Still

2011-10-03T12:17:00.002-04:00

Wisdom...

...hath builded her horse...

A thousand umbrellas were tilted over a thousand hats in Piccadilly...

Would you like another urn of tea?

Tea-hee...

Petals on a wet, black bough...

Surely the Second Coming is at hand...

Look on my works ye mighty, and despair...

and despair...

Thatcher hath builded her house

Who's next?

Hard to run when one is cherubic...

The world? It is we who hold up Atlas.

All images except the sixth were taken on West 26th Street, NYC.

"If I don't call you..."

2011-09-27T17:32:00.001-04:00

...ask the Secret Service to locate you, Mr. President?

Another slightly irritating email from President Obama. What on earth could he possibly want from me?

From Uncle Mad To...

2011-09-26T13:55:00.000-04:00

...Auntie Christ. In the news again:

The end is near — or so it seems to a segment of Christians aligned with the religious right. The global economic meltdown, numerous natural disasters and the threat of radical Islam have fueled a conviction among some evangelicals that these are the last days. While such beliefs might be dismissed as the rantings of a small but vocal minority, apocalyptic fears helped drive the antigovernment movements of the 1930s and ’40s and could help define the 2012 presidential campaign as well.

A Half Could Be Had For Half a Crown

2011-09-26T12:59:00.002-04:00

When times are going well, complacency and sloth can sometimes leave us numb and dense, like a big gulpin* from the backwoods of South Tyrone. Yet so too, when times are evil, and the day is one long hard slog just to get by, people can become all wrapped up in their wee world of survival.

What we need, I believe, is a startling, shocking sight, an image that shakes us and shocks us out of our rut! If not the pull-back of the camera lens that reveals the land around us with greater clarity, then perhaps its all-seeing eye pausing for a moment and focusing in on something bizarre or jaw-dropping.

Yet we're all used to, you might say, innured against the push-in and the pull-back of the 'camera eye' aspect of our vision, real, critical or otherwise. What if the lens of our reality revealed some freakish blend or mix of realities? This is what the poet Paul Muldonn calls 'immarrhage,' which he defines in his book, To Ireland, I as "the tendency towards the amalgam, the tendency for one event or character to blur and bleed into another."

Muldoon's long poem, "The Old Country", does this brilliantly. I quote only the first two sections here.

The Old Country

By Paul Muldoon

I
Where every town was a tidy town
and every garden a hanging garden.
A half could be had for half a crown.
Every major artery would harden

since every meal was a square meal.
Every clothesline showed a line of undies
yet no house was in dishabille.
Every Sunday took a month of Sundays

till everyone got it off by heart
every start was a bad start
since all conclusions were foregone.

Every wood had its twist of woodbine.
Every cliff its herd of fatalistic swine.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.

II
Every runnel was a Rubicon
and every annual a hardy annual
applying itself like linen to a lawn.
Every glove compartment held a manual

and a map of the roads, major and minor.
Every major road had major road works.
Every wishy-washy water diviner
had stood like a bulwark

against something worth standing against.
The smell of incense left us incensed
at the firing of the fort.

Every heron was a presager
of some disaster after which, we’d wager,
every resort was a last resort.
III

Every resort was a last resort
with a harbor that harbored an old grudge.
Every sale was a selling short.
There were those who simply wouldn’t budge

from the Dandy to the Rover.
That shouting was the shouting
but for which it was all over –
the weekend, I mean, we set off on an outing

with the weekday train timetable.
Every tower was a tower of Babel
that graced each corner of a bawn

where every lookout was a poor lookout.
Every rill had its unflashy trout.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.

* Gulpin: one who swallows without question whatever he hears; a simpleton or credulous person; among sailors a ‘marine.’

NOTE: With apologies to Michael McKee for using the photo of him as himself and Frank the Rabbit.

One in Five New York City Residents Living in Poverty

2011-09-22T18:32:00.001-04:00

This just in!

Poverty grew nationwide last year, but the increase was even greater in New York City, the Census Bureau will report on Thursday, suggesting that New York was being particularly hard hit by the aftermath of the recession.

From 2009 to 2010, 75,000 city residents were pushed into poverty, increasing the poor population to more than 1.6 million and raising the percentage of New Yorkers living below the official federal poverty line to 20.1 percent, the highest level since 2000. The 1.4-percentage-point annual increase in the poverty rate appeared to be the largest jump in nearly two decades.

Many New Yorkers were spared the worst of the recession, but the median household income has since shriveled to levels last seen in 1980, adjusted for inflation. Household income declined among almost all groups — by 5 percent over all since the beginning of the recession in 2007, to $48,743 in 2010.

Manhattan continued to have the biggest income gap of any county in the country, with the top fifth of earners (with an average income of $371,754) making nearly 38 times as much as the bottom fifth ($9,845).

At top: a particularly dank stretch of the Bronx as seen from the 6 train, as it passes Whitlock Avenue Station.
When things are bad in Manhattan, they are invariably worse in the Bronx. In no particular order: according to USA Today newspaper, Americans at the lower income levels are having trouble paying for funerals for dead relatives. So bodies have been dumped... here and there, across the nation. Is there anything more demeaning than being so poor that you can't afford to bury your dead?

There was a by-election here last week: the congressional seat in the House, Democratic since 1920, voted for the Republican this time. But, it should be noted: 20 percent of eligible voters actually voted. Does that seem like a real victory?

Republican Presidential candidates debated last night... one great proposal came up: abolishing the Department of Education! Again I have to ask the question: if you believe, as they all do, in smaller government, why are they running for office?

I Was Shocked That The Aliens Who Abducted Me Hadn't Upgraded To Vista

2011-09-22T04:53:00.003-04:00

Of mild interest to a few people last week, was Microsoft's launch of its latest Windows 8, which the corporation released as a version running on a tablet (see above). The tablet is being demonstrated in the photo by Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky.

Sinofsky, it has to be said, sort of resembles an extra from a Star Trek episode. And so it was most unfortunate that the above photo appeared in AM New York newspaper right next to an article about the death of Charles Hickson, "the Mississippi man who said he was abducted by aliens" in 1973, because for the rest of the day, when I thought of Hickson's bizarre yet consistent retelling of his abduction, Sinofsky's smug visage would float into my mind...

The American South: Don't You Mean the Middle East of the USA?

2011-09-18T13:13:00.004-04:00

The New York Times puzzles with its juxtapositions... Today, the Sunday Review section profiles Andre Leon Talley (above left), fashionista, formerly of gentil black poverty, Durham, N.C., now portly and courtly of Westchester County, NY.

Then below, or rather... SOUTH... of the fold, another story, about the Dixification of reality TV (I never watch TV, so bear with my clumsy critique). Apparently, there are a lot of reality TV shows at the moment which are using the American South, Dixieland, as their location -- including the Dukes of Hazzard (above right) -- is that a reality TV show? Something seems wrong with the universe if that is the case.

The American South bothers me, ever since I first understood it to mean not really the South, but somewhere that approximates with the United States' Middle East. The South of America, surely, geographically, is... is places like Florida, Texas, California, given that they are closest to Central and South America.

Obviously that's not the only thing that bothers me about the So-called South. I guess the juxtaposition of Mr. Talley and those Dixie TV shows made me think that the Times is subliminally letting (gay) black people know that the underground railroad is still open, while somehow mollifying redneck white Southerners... Or something.

UPDATE: a friend of mine rolled his eyes at my mention of Mr. Talley, and I said that I'd never heard of him before I read today's article. "If you met him today and told him that you've never heard of him before, he'd probably collapse on the ground with convulsions," he said.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the New York Times, Monday, September 26th, 2011 -- The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.

Several Southern states — including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation — have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.

Crisp Friday Afternoon Round-up

2011-09-16T17:26:00.007-04:00

Ever feel like you're being watched? Some idiot has recently taken the opportunity to have a good old nosy around in my Facebook and other online services. If only my life were interesting enough to warrant such an unpleasant invasion of my privacy! But that did not satisfy Mister Nosy, who this morning handed back to me my personal journal, which he had been reading all week!

I am upset by this. Besides the unlawfulness of hacking into another person's private online accounts, I am concerned about what these incidents say about Mister Nosy's inability to respect other people's boundaries.

I am also disappointed that my life as lived to date is so boring, because what Mister Nosy's snooping has uncovered is... nothing that he didn't already know. Nothing remotely interesting. No goat-shagging or slaying, no wife and seven children in Delaware. Which presumably means that instead of concluding that there's no point in further digging a hole for himself, as well as into my personal life, the lack of evidence will simply goad him to dig deeper. Like conspiracy theorists who, when they can't prove that Cheney and Bush planned the 9/11 attacks, conclude that the proof is buried deeper than they thought!

Moving on from poor Mister Nosy, it's an unusually cool, crisp September Friday, here in New York City. I've been reading The Relentless Revolution: a History of Capitalism by Joyce Appleby.

What's this image, above? It may look like the austere, intimidating standard of some fictional fascist nation, but in fact it is the flag of Cornwall, that bit of south-west England that sticks out towards the Atlantic Ocean, like the toe of the 'boot' that is Italy. I've never been to Cornwall, but it is often associated with a lurid, ancient history involving tin mines, Roman times, little men with anvils and evil eyes...

...and so it comes as no surprise that the above photo is from Cornwall, and shows the most popular tourist attraction in the south-west of England. It looks like something H. G. Wells might have described. It is in fact the Eden Project, a biosphere that is the world's largest greenhouse.

And speaking of Italy, Cornwall and boot-like objects... what's this? If you remember any high school Biology, you may recall that in animal cells there are things called mitochondria (cut-away diagram, above), which process chemicals into energy (I'm simplifying dreadfully here), and are therefore essential to life. I am amazed to read recently that mitochondria contain small bits of DNA that fit logically into a family tree of various ancient viruses, leading to the theory that mitochondria were once viruses which fortuitously infected the animal cells, or were eaten -- but only partially digested -- by the animal cells, eons ago. Life is a fearfully wonderful thing:

I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well -- Psalms 139, 14

East River

2011-09-12T20:28:00.000-04:00

Best viewed on Joe's NYC...

In the Bronx

2011-09-12T12:58:00.002-04:00

More of those contrasting old buildings in the Bronx.

Happy September the Eleventh

2011-09-11T17:55:00.000-04:00

President Obama and the First Lady at today's tenth anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, with former President Bush and former First Lady Laur--is that a pants suit she's wearing?? Could she not have found a skirt?!

Late Summery Summary

2011-09-10T23:38:00.005-04:00

Some nice building contrast in the Bronx. After I took this photo, the (alleged) building owner drove past slowly, and shouted at me: "Nice old building, eh? I own it. You wanna buy it?"

A taller-than-thou building in New York.

Don't move or he'll shoot your ankles off.

Neon, always neon.

Next Day

2011-09-08T10:16:00.003-04:00

What I’ve become / Troubles me even if I shut my eyes

I take some small comfort in the thought that our turbulent times are only to be expected after the world thawed from the Cold War. The destruction of the twin towers followed on the same continuum as the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the Wall and the Cold War have their roots in what is perhaps the most fateful year in modern history, 1945. But the comfort gained from perspective is, as I said, small.

Remember when President George W. Bush asked for our "continued participation and confidence in the American economy", or, in other words, 'keep shopping!' The voice speaking in this poem by Randall Jarrell is that of a woman out shopping.

Next Day

BY RANDALL JARRELL

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

I take a box

And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical

Food-gathering flocks

Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise

If that is wisdom.

Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves

And the boy takes it to my station wagon,

What I’ve become

Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty

And poor, I’d wish

What all girls wish: to have a husband,

A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish

Is womanish:

That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.

For so many years

I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me

And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,

The eyes of strangers!

And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,

I too have taken

The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog

And we start home. Now I am good.

The last mistaken,

Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm

Some soap and water—

It was so long ago, back in some Gay

Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss

My lovely daughter

Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work—I wish for them.

The dog, the maid,

And I go through the sure unvarying days

At home in them. As I look at my life,

I am afraid

Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

It looks at me

From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look

Of gray discovery

Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral

I went to yesterday.

My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,

Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body

Were my face and body.

As I think of her and I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything, I’m anybody,

I stand beside my grave

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

Photo by Mitch Epstein.

Hurricane or Him-icane?

2011-09-06T13:02:00.001-04:00

That is Roxcy Bolton. Motivated by Hurricane Irene, I decided to find out why hurricanes are named as they are, and discovered that pilots of WW 2 aircraft collecting meteorological data over Florida informally named hurricanes after their wives or girlfriends. Florida feminist Roxcy Bolton said the practice was sexist, and called for male names to be used -- women generally do not cause vast amounts of economic devastation and death, she said -- men do. She even suggested that 'hurricane' sounded too close to 'her-icane', and wanted 'him-icane' used instead. Meteorologists adopted equal naming of these vast storms, from an alphabetical list that rotates about every six years. Hurricanes that cause huge death and devastation, such as Andrew (1992) or Katrina (2005) have their names permanently retired.

Only What I'm Comfortable With Showing You

2011-09-03T03:46:00.000-04:00

Is this door ORANGE enough for ya?

In central Queens, these are some of the things I saw...

...that didn't fall on the wrong side of the law.

Queens is the dead center of New York City.

And the cranes fly overhead...

The Longest War

2011-09-01T12:22:00.000-04:00

In Myanmar, an unexploded bomb dating from the Second World War killed seven people when it finally detonated. Meanwhile, above, a washing machine self-destructs -- although to be fair, a human gives it a helping hand...

Inner Tubes' Inner Beauty

2011-08-29T19:03:00.002-04:00

Eli Baxter, an artist based in Hawai, makes fantastical creatures out of old inner tubes from bicycles, such as this spiky thing, above, incorporating the tyre valves... She also makes such marvels as these, below.

This... is a handbag!

Another Hawaian artist worthy of note: Aaron Padilla, working in wood forms which interweave and interlock, below.

Hurricane Irene and the Aftermath

2011-08-28T23:39:00.001-04:00

Hurricane Irene made landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, then made its way up the East Coast, with typical destructive force. Above, an uprooted tree on New York City's East 17th Street, also uprooted the tree's surrounding brick wall.

Everyone in the storm's pathway either evacuated or locked down in preparation, except for those young, naive TV weather reporters whose colleagues hate them such that "if you cover Irene from the Outer Banks, it'll mean a big promotion..."

A couple watch as the FDNY cut up a fallen tree on West 4th Street. This storm came up the east coast with massive destructive force, but not in the most-expected, through high winds. Instead, the heavy rainfall and flooding that followed did most damage, even in states like Vermont which would not normally be in the path of a hurricane.

Another broken branch on another damned bicycle.

Pete's Tavern in Gramercy: clearly in the anti-Irene camp.

A fallen tree branch neatly cocoons a car on East 17th Street...

Sometimes a Man

2011-08-28T20:55:00.000-04:00

I had a very vivid and powerful dream about my dad two nights ago. When I woke up, I saw a book on a friend's table, and when I flicked through its pages, I came upon this passage from a poem by the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

Hurricane Irene Is Not the Only Killer Lady

2011-08-27T15:31:00.001-04:00

As Hurricane Irene heads for New York City, certain to End Civilization As We Know It, I was alarmed to stand this morning on my friend's deck and see that his eccentric old lady neighbor (Saffron shawls! Feeds the pigeons! Likes to chortle in German! Ach, Du lieber!) has not removed any of the crap from her deck. All of it could take to the air during 100+ mph winds, and become lethal. Does anyone know what a lovingly hand-thrown clay gnome-shaped crock pot might do to human tissue on impact?

Shocking Act of Vandalism at Columbia

2011-08-25T03:43:00.000-04:00

Sailing To Byzantium

2011-08-23T09:44:00.003-04:00

This still-dense poem by W. B. Yeats is nevertheless a majestic and beautiful work. It's about the eternal spiritual quest for meaning, for wholeness, for unity -- the whole "Is it better to travel hopefully than to arrive?" debate. The first line, of course, gave Cormac McCarthy the title for his novel which then became a box office hit in movie form.

Other phrases and lines stick in my head, too: "the mackerel-crowded sea," for example -- I will never forget standing on faraway West of Ireland piers with my dad, watching nets and crates of mackerel being brought to dry land, silvery arrows still locked in a shoal, even though expiring. My mother too, would be there sometimes, and she always delivered the generally-agreed-upon judgment that mackerel were "too oily" to be enjoyable to eat, though one of my brothers still eats them to this day, in the form of sardines (also known as pilchards).

Also as stirring as scripture, the couplet: 'And therefore I have sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium.'

Sailing to Byzantium

By William Butler Yeats

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Touting the T

2011-08-23T09:28:00.000-04:00

If you didn't know already, the long-awaited, often-postponed Second Avenue subway line will debut sometime later this decade, and will be known as the 'T' line -- that's the official MTA logo above, in a color which is said to be robin's egg blue, or you may also call it teal.

Official MTA merchandise is already on sale, see below.

Late Summery Summary

2011-08-20T23:29:00.000-04:00

A game in Harlem...

A bike ride on Park Avenue...

A view of the mighty Hudson...

And the executioner's blade...

A Vision in The Bronx

2011-08-20T04:11:00.000-04:00

Recently in the Bronx, I was at the 174th Street subway station, when a golden ~~holy light shone down on me -- yes! it was a vision of~~ shaft of light caught my eye, sunlight shining through some stained glass artwork on the platform...

Don't Let's Go To the Dogs

2011-08-16T18:47:00.000-04:00

Here are some images of really striking and totally scary feral dogs and other animals, by South African photographer Daniel Naudé.

More Fascinating Fascists

2011-08-15T03:19:00.000-04:00

It's Time for a Poem

2011-08-11T03:28:00.000-04:00

I liked this poem by James Lasdun when I found it a few months ago.

Woman Police Officer in Elevator

By James Lasdun

Not that I’d ever noticed
Either a taste or a distaste
For that supposedly arousing
Rebus of pain and desire, the uniformed woman,
Whether as Dietrich in epaulettes,
Or armored like Penthesileia, or in thigh boots
And cocked hat, straddling the Atlantic,
Fishing for campesinos
With live torpedoes,

But when the rattling, john-sized
Tenement elevator paused
Mid-fall to blink a female housing cop
Into its humid cranium, I felt her presence
Spooling through me like a Mobius strip,
Splicing her spilling curls, nightstick, the gun at her hip,
Chrome shield, the breast it emblazoned,
Seamlessly into the same
Restless continuum …

I caught – was it possible? –
The scent of some sweet-tinctured oil;
Troubling, alluring; and looked away
The glanced back obliquely: had I imagined it,
The sudden scimitar-glint of danger,
Or had some forbidden impulse – longing, lust, anger –
Tumid inside me like a hidden
Semiautomatic
In a schoolkid’s lunch pack,

Triggered the blue-lashed, tiny
Metal detector of her eye?
I backed against my corner, watching
The numerals slowly swallow their green gulp of light;
Interminable! And as we fell,
Our little locked cube of stale air seemed to bristle
With a strange menace … I thought of harms;
My own and not my own,
Contemplated or done;

Betrayals, infidelities,
Coercions, seductions, lies,
Ready to confess them all, and more,
As if in her firm indifference she’d regressed me
Inward down some atavistic line
To the original essence, the masculine
Criminal salt; a frieze of victims
Paneled in my own skull
Like a lit cathedral hell …

A shudder, and then stillness;
Avoidance of each other’s eyes
As in some bedroom fiasco’s wake,
The air too brimful with disclosure, till the door
Opened and we parted, the clamped rift
Between us widening like a continental drift
Of the sexes; she to the butcher, the breaker,
The ripper, the rapist,
I to my therapist.

London's Burning

2011-08-07T08:26:00.001-04:00

There has been a significant riot in the Tottenham area of London overnight. It started as a protest over the

shooting death of a 29-year-old man by the Metropolitan Police

and it seems despite many riot police, police on horseback and in helicopters, rioters had the upper hand for some hours and:

[a]n enormous fire raged in a blocklong building, with no sign of police or fire department intervention, even while residents raced to drive their cars away as the building’s windows exploded and glass rained down on them. Giant fires raged in alleys, unabated.

Up From Zero

2011-08-07T06:09:00.001-04:00

Things are changing, finally, at what I hope will one day go back to being known as just the World Trade Center. Photo above by Jake.

2011-08-07T05:07:00.001-04:00

The New Yorker's big piece on How They Got Bin Laden ends with this vignette, of Obama thanking the SEAL team:

Before the President returned to Washington, he posed for photographs with each team member and spoke with many of them, but he left one thing unsaid. He never asked who fired the kill shot, and the SEALs never volunteered to tell him.

(The photograph and slightly unfortunate title above both come from the New York Review of Books blog).

There Are No Cats in America

2011-08-06T13:41:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday I went down and over to immaculately coiffured Brooklyn Bridge Park to eat a picnic dinner with the estimable Daniel Marks, who as you can see, is way ahead of that bottled water fad you're all still following.

We saw an open air movie: An American Tail, about the transit of some Jewish mice from their Old Country to America and freedom. (I had to ask Daniel, who is Jewish, why the movie was portraying Jews as rodents, which are also known as vermin, and he's still explaining). The recurring refrain, sung with gusto throughout the film, is that "There are no cats in America / and the streets are made of cheese," and despite what we all know, think and feel, a warm glow was radiating from my heart as the movie came to an end. (Or was that because of the Jameson's brought by Daniel?)

But! That was not all.

During the movie showing, I had noticed the hurrying and scurrying of tugs and river traffic, right behind the big screen, up and down the East River -- with lower Manhattan, the green light, the orgiastic future, just beyond -- and as the film ended, I noticed this bloody big barge just sitting there, as if parked, or stuck, or stalled. I remember thinking "what's that sinister big barge out there?" even entertaining the brief, lunatic thought that during the movie, the river had turned to molasses and things like barges were now churning fruitlessly in the grips of sweet glue, but then...

...out of the barge came forth fireworks! Happy 50th birthday, Mr. President!

More Fascinating Fascists

2011-08-06T09:39:00.002-04:00

Fascinating Fascists

2011-08-05T14:24:00.003-04:00

A Mile From Manhattan

2011-08-04T09:49:00.007-04:00

Less than a mile, in fact, from the big city, across the George Washington Bridge (below), I saw this curious individual (above), who peeked and peered at me for a while through the bushes. I threw him a line from 'Home On The Range': "where the deer and the aaaaaaantelope play!" but he said nothing in return...

The great bridge, seen from the Palisades, announces itself like a major chord in a mighty symphony. One pushes through the bushes and thorns, and suddenly there is a tiny step of granite, a very low fence, and then the bridge and Manhattan is there, as if you could reach out and touch them, across the Hudson River.

Meanwhile, back on the mean streets of New York, Mr. Rat (above) had his photograph cruelly printed in the New York Daily Asphalt. Had he the eloquence of that deer I saw, what sad words might he have spoken?

“Ay,” quoth Jaques,
“Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens.
'Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?”

French people were scandalized (aren't they always?) earlier in the summer by the sight of this year's most famous French man, Dominic Strauss-Kahn, photographed during a perp walk, after he was arrested, accused of raping a hotel chambermaid.

The case against DSK, as he's now known in the tabloid press, has been falling apart for weeks, and seems set to collapse -- prosecutors said they caught the chambermaid out lying repeatedly about various facts in the alleged DSK rape or sexual attack on her, also her application for asylum in the U.S.

About the perp walk: in America, and most often associated with New York City's police department, it is common for cops to walk a famous or notorious person after their arrest past waiting T.V. and news cameras. In France, there is a law preventing such media feasting, and the image of DSK (below) outraged French public opinion, which centered around the thought that DSK would not receive a fair trial, given that the media circus and perp walk made him appear guilty.

A dear friend of mine was very ill in hospital during the DSK arrest and offered the following amusing explanation for the whole DSK affair:

DSK calls an escort service from his hotel room, and asks for some female company. He is specific: "I want an African lady, yes please, and can she wear a chambermaid's outfit, merci. Aussi, I want her to, errr, resist me at first, a little..."
Along comes the actual chambermaid, enters DSK's room. He leaps at her, naked. She freaks out, fights back, then runs from the room. DSK thinks she is pretending to resist as requested, chases after her, etcetera. She flees.
So, he shrugs, potters around all day, has lunch with his daughter, finally boards an Air France flight to Paris from JFK, thinking: "I can't wait to tell my pals about that ridiculous American hooker chick... she didn't even wait for me to give her a tip!" Then...
"Excuse me sir, are you Dominic Strauss-Kahn of seat A1, First Class, Air France, Transatlantic City?"

Wherefore do you look?

Signs of the Times

2011-07-31T05:37:00.002-04:00

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but when a work of art so completely resembles something that it also seeks to undermine, a shiver of pleasure runs up my spine. Example: about a year ago, I saw a spiral-bound notebook for sale on a book stall near West 4th Street. On closer inspection, the notebook, complete with photographs glued on the pages as well as apparently random scribbled notes and doodles in pen, was in fact a vehicle for a line of expensive designer clothing.

Norm Magnusson has done something similar with historic marker signs, which are instantly familiar, until one reads the text.

Magnusson's signs in fact are critiques of contemporary American society, with some of the sharpness of his social conscience message achieved by the illusion of putting contemporary American opinions or situations within what looks like a historic marker setting, as if to say, future generations will judge the opinions and prevailing wisdom of today, harshly. Thus: "On this spot stood Matt Lucash, a Christian for whom preventing gay marriage is more important than feeding the poor."

Below, an example of the real thing...

Chilling Sight

2011-07-31T00:29:00.002-04:00

That is the late Amy Winehouse and her father, photographed about a year ago. She of course died last week, of a drug and alcohol overdose.

The chilling sight of my title is not Winehouse, however, but something much more mundane -- it's definitely the summer silly season here in NYC, because the New York Post reports that a large refrigerator was found on the subway platform at West 4th Street station, origin unknown: the New York Post ran the news with the headline Chilling Sight...

Spam Poetry

2011-07-29T21:25:00.000-04:00

Little or nothing has been written here recently, but I urge any and all of my two and two-thirds readers to check back often, as I shall write again!

Though my words have been few, the whirligig of spam continues, most recently this 'poem':

He studied many languages in childhood
Dim supplementShould I refinance my house or take out a home equity loanSears ankle braceletsKevin reader Glastonbury Ct arrest DUIElizabethton, Tn., rafting

River Erne

2011-07-25T16:56:00.000-04:00

Two photos of tiny currents and eddies on the River Erne in Ireland, taken during the summer of 2007. At first glance I thought these were two rare examples of my attempting black and white photography, but in actuality both are color — you can see some color on the bottom left of the one above...

Light and Shadow in Queens

2011-07-24T19:54:00.000-04:00

A Sunday from back in late Spring...

Amy Winehouse, 1983 — 2011

2011-07-23T16:12:00.001-04:00

I was trying to find a photo of Amy Winehouse, who appears to have died of an overdose in London, aged 27, and could not get rid of that annoying shoe ad which half-obscures her on the New York Times web site: I could not make it go away.

Nipples and Bingo and Sex Crimes

2011-07-20T12:32:00.001-04:00

It was way back in 1994 that Roger Taylor of the glam-rock group Queen, wrote "Dear Mr Murdoch." He has updated the song for the present day. The original lyrics speak loudly:

Dear Mr. Murdoch, what have you done
With your news of the screws and your soar-away sun?
You sharpen our hatred
You've blunted our minds
We're drowning in nipples and bingo and sex crimes
How many time must they poke and they pry
Must they twist and lie?
Just to add to the grime they even screwed up the times
Love to kick their arse goodbye oh wouldn't I!

Dear Mr. Murdoch you play hard to see
But with your bare-arsed cheek you should be on page three
And dear Mr. Murdoch you're really the pits
Bad news is good business, you're the king of the tits

They stain all they touch, they're real woman haters
But we're on their trail
They go straight for the lowest common denominators
How could they fail? go straight to jail - (no bail)!

Dear Mr. Murdoch you're a powerful man
You control half our media whose values don't scan
And dear Mr. Murdoch we're not so amused
Just line up the people whose lives they've abused

Dear Mr. Murdoch what do you know
With your minions like vultures and carrion crow
They've sunk just as low as humans can sink
For profit they tell us how mass murderers think

And dear Mr. Murdoch you come down from on high
You even bought up the air waves, you control all our sky

David Carr's column in the Times says that Murdoch "used blunt force spending to skate past judgment."

UPDATE: left-wing singer/songwriter Billy Bragg has a new anti-Murdoch song called "Never Buy The Sun," downloadable for free.

An Unfortunate Experience

2011-07-17T12:29:00.001-04:00

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire of influential newspapers and TV stations/channels, a media monopoly bar none, has been shaken by the British phone hacking scandal (journalists hacking into the cell phones of the rich, famous, or just plain unfortunate). The police in the U.K. just arrested Rebekah Brooks (see above), the former chief executive of News International, the British newspaper unit of News Corp. By 'former,' I mean 'resigned five minutes before the cops showed up.'

As you can see above, she probably has Murdoch's direct number. So how far does the scandal go? As far up as Himself (that's Murdoch on the left)?

More interesting is how the police and the journalists in the U.K. operated in tandem, like two parts of a well-oiled machine (in Ireland, 'well-oiled' can also mean 'loosened by drinking'), to each other's benefit — cops would feed scandalous news of crime and criminals to the newspapers, in return sometimes for, yes, cash payments. When the cops fucked up, that sort of news would be buried, so of course Scotland Yard went easy on the British tabloids when the phone hacking thing started to gather momentum.

How easy? Well, it wasn't just at the level of Police Constable Plod and Reporter Zoe Inkyfingers: the New York Times today says that from November 2005 to November 2010, Scotland Yard officials met more than 30 times with newspapers owned by News International, a British subsidiary of News Corporation.

Here is famous English playwright and critic Alan Bennett, describing vividly how the relationship worked. You can imagine a million stories and situations in which this scenario would play out, to the dishonor of everyone. Bennett had just been mugged in a supermarket, in 2010:

I give my details, and my address and phone number, to a constable who, when I get back home, duly rings with the incident number. Ten minutes later, less than an hour after it has occurred, the doorbell rings and on the doorstep is a rather demure girl: ‘My name is Amy. I’m from the Daily Mail. We’ve just heard about your unfortunate experience.’

Williamsburg Bridge, July 8th, 2011

2011-07-10T04:32:00.001-04:00

Happy IVth

2011-07-04T14:25:00.000-04:00

And There You Have It...?

2011-07-02T22:02:00.000-04:00

Woman in Red

2011-07-01T15:38:00.000-04:00

That's a woman in red, there, on the left, on Sagamore Street in the Bronx.

Eternally hovering: a statue in a cemetery in Queens...

In Highland Park in Queens, some sporting types kick up the dust of summer...

Summery Summary

2011-06-23T22:17:00.002-04:00

There is a remarkable sculpture in Madison Square Park: the piece is called 'Echo', and aside from the beauty of the young woman portrayed, no photograph can do justice to a mysterious property of the sculpture: it seems to defy the eye from foocusing upon its three-dimensionality. All I can say is that as you walk and look at it, it seems to become two-dimensional...as though seen on a screen...

Friday a week ago, was a day of deluges of rain, such that everything and everywhere was soaked, damp, sodden, drenched, dripping, drizzly, moist, muggy, saturated, soggy, waterlogged... wet!

During this week, I was in Hartford, Connecticut for a day, and visited the state Capitol... This is me in a Captain America t-shirt outside...

A new section of New York City's gorgeous High Line Park has opened... A section of old rail with some wild foliage, above...

New York Supreme Court Appellate Division

2011-06-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

New York Then and Now

2011-06-16T03:26:00.001-04:00

Some things...

...never change...

See That Obama, He Can Spot a Wrong 'un...

2011-06-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

Dominique Strauss-Kahn meets the Obamas in Pittsburgh, in 2009. Hmmmm...

Coombes' Tome

2011-06-08T23:42:00.000-04:00

This little book, sadly long out of print, is a work of genius -- more on this another time. My own copy is falling to pieces (below).

These Mean Streets

2011-06-08T23:31:00.000-04:00

Walking on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, crossing streets and avenues... Atlantic Avenue, above...

Herkimer Place...

Herkimer Street...

Fulton Street...

Melancholy, Long, Withdrawing Roar

2011-06-08T22:35:00.002-04:00

1) Despite the many changes that have rippled through American society over the last 6 ½ decades, belief in God as measured in this direct way has remained high and relatively stable. Gallup initially used this question wording in November 1944, when 96% said "yes." That percentage dropped to 94% in 1947, but increased to 98% in several Gallup surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Gallup stopped using this question format in the 1960s, before including it again in Gallup's May 5-8 survey this year.

2) The transformative trends of the past 50 years that have led to a sharp decline in marriage and a rise of new family forms have been shaped by attitudes and behaviors that differ by class, age and race, according to a new Pew Research Center nationwide survey, done in association with TIME, complemented by an analysis of demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A new “marriage gap” in the United States is increasingly aligned with a growing income gap. Marriage, while declining among all groups, remains the norm for adults with a college education and good income but is now markedly less prevalent among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. The survey finds that those in this less-advantaged group are as likely as others to want to marry, but they place a higher premium on economic security as a condition for marriage. This is a bar that many may not meet.

Mark Twain On the Phone

2011-06-07T06:48:00.003-04:00

Mark Twain describes an astonishing (to him) thing: hearing a person make a telephone call.

Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world, -- a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise, or sorrow, or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says...

Now I Seen It All

2011-06-05T04:07:00.000-04:00