clotheslined
The clothesline presents an opportunity for creative expression
My favorite memory of clothes on the line is sheets hung between two lines. The parabolic “u” it shaped. They were crisp on the bed and smelled like fresh air. Yellow jackets built nests inside the poles sometimes and came in with the laundry. The bag for the pins hung right on the line, didn’t it? And sometimes the yellow jackets would get in there, too. When I was little, I would hoist myself from one end of the line to the other, imagining a rushing river. Once I got to the end, bumped the metal pipe, and got stung about the neck and face. I fell in the river that time, running for the house. I vaguely remember running between clothes hanging like a maze. Mother had three lines, one higher in the middle. We would take naps there. Sometimes overnight. We started out ten. I woke up, eight. A couple of hours later it might be just sister and me. I grabbed her hand and we were headed for the back door. Later, they would say, “There was something in the woods.”
The Spencer Plan started in the 1930s as a form of “carefully regulated corporal punishment” between husband and wife
Single mothers, former drug addicts and other struggling young women who came to wealthy businessman Henry Allen Fitzsimmons for a chance to climb out of their financial hole knew his help came with a catch.
(via marginal revolution)
headline of the day
How Nazi Scientists Tried to Create an Army of Talking Dogs
the civic duty of leaving a data trail
There is something about this I find very appealing:
Instead of arguing about ownership and the right to privacy, they say, we should be imagining data as a public resource: a bountiful trove of information about our society which, if properly managed and cared for, can help us set better policy, more effectively run our institutions, promote public health, and generally give us a more accurate understanding of who we are. This growing pool of data should be public and anonymous, they say — and each of us should feel a civic responsibility to contribute to it.
Lundbreck Falls
Check out the video of a kayaker going over a serious waterfall at the bottom of this post.
quote out of context
Great snipes are so fat and heavy in autumn that their skin sometimes ruptures when the shot bird hits the ground.
headline of the day
Police find bar for inmates at prison in Mexico
first person view of an Afghanistan firefight
I have watched a lot of war footage and simulations in my day, but I have never seen anything like this.
(via ★robinsloan)
Rabbit Show Jumping
Invented in Sweden in the early Eighties, Kaninhop involves bunnies bouncing their way around courses consisting of several small jumps of varying height and length.
quote out of context
The clothesline presents an opportunity for creative expression.
Nick Cave reissues courtesy of Mute
Oftimes Nick grates on my nerves, but he sure does have some flat-out transplendent tunes. Mute has reissued four worthy titles: Let Love In, Murder Ballads, The Boatman’s Call, and No More Shall We Part.
(Thanks to Ju Ju for the tip.)
Hardly an offbeat choice for a dearly beloved, but damn. Nobody’s Baby Now. From Let Love In (1994).
The Art of Fiction No. 174
INTERVIEWER
Do you enjoy writing? Is it pleasurable?DAVENPORT
Sometimes. What do you mean by “enjoy”?
From an interview in the Paris Review with Guy Davenport.
Then Sharp added more, something sinister. He told of the dragging sounds he heard on the night that Benjamin Fink moved out of the house, and he told of the strange holes that were being dug in the back yard. And he told of the awful stench that came from one of the rooms upstairs.
Like most cities, Sacramento had a homeless problem. Many of the street residents were suffering from mental illness, or they were alcoholics and drug addicts. Judy Moise was a street councillor working for an organization called Volunteers of America. Her job was to make certain that the homeless of Sacramento had help, and received the benefits and services that they were entitled to and needed. One of the people she helped was 51-year-old Alvaro Montoya, whom everyone called Bert. He was a mentally disabled schizophrenic who spent much of the time having loud arguments in Spanish with the voices that were in his head. Bert was a gentle man, almost childlike, and no danger to anyone. Living on the streets was not good for him. He sometimes slept at a nearby detox centre, but Moise felt he should have somewhere better. Luckily, there was such a place, a boarding house at 1426 F Street. It was popular with social workers as they knew that no-one would be turned away. Some of the people who lived there had many problems, such as James Gallop, a 62-year-year-old man who was suffering from a brain tumour. There was also 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, a long term alcoholic. There were Betty Palmer and Leona Carpenter, both 78 years old. They were unable to fend for themselves. No matter what your problems, no matter what your mental state, your infirmities, or your addictions, all were welcome at 1426 F Street. The boarding house was run by a white-haired landlady in her seventies, who was known for her charitable work, donating money and clothing to the needy, and employing paroled prisoners from the local halfway house to do repairs and other work that was needed. She also knew how to work the system and was very good at getting more money in benefits for her boarders. Her name was Dorothea Puente.
Also, Dorothea Puente was a serial killer.
(via the browser)
Dear India
Will you tell us where you got your name? Was someone in love with the impish India in “Delta Wedding” maybe? Or something more obvious. You can tell me to mind my own business.
Dream, dog. Just for a little space.
This is one of my favorite comment threads.
an exhibition of drawings by Wil Freeborn & Stuart Kerr
I’m doing an exhibition with Stuart Kerr at Coffee, Chocolate & Tea
If you’re in Glasgow over the next few weeks it would be cool if you could visit.
from the comments
Olfuctory has some fucumference to it, word-wise.
A Favorite Book of Stories by Lydia Davis
I have been reading the brief stories of Lydia Davis with pleasure for years, and one of her books I keep coming back to is Samuel Johnson Is Indignant. Here is one of the stories in it that I have read often enough to hold now in memory:
Happiest Moment
If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.
I hesitate to spoil things by speaking of what I love about this piece–but since when have I been able to keep quiet about such matters? I love the way the question is never answered–but is. The question evolves in the way that all stories do, given that connections between readers is what makes them live. We write about what matters to us; but who is the author of that? Even in the making of stories we are walking through the lives of others and finding our own words there. We are made of stories. And sometimes a very brief story can open upon the largest understanding we may hope to hold.
‘Twelve Polished Chapters Stacked Neatly on His Desk’
The last three sentences of Sam Anderson’s review of David Foster Wallace’s Pale King:
The book feels less like a public performance than a private fact — an object that exists right in the unglamorous teeth of all the little nondramas of daily work: routine, failure, repetition, trivia. In its conspicuous imperfection, in other words, the book ends up perfectly embodying its own themes. This feels, somehow, sadly, like at least one of the right possible endings.
blackberry
Not local, but very good.
Multilingual is something to do with animals
Further thoughts on the evolution of language on safari in Kenya.
Ask a law librarian
Big woman with imposing bosom: “My husband tole me he had done the divorce, but I ain’t seen ‘m in years, an’ I didn’ ever git no papers.”
Librarian: “So what is your question?”
Big bosom: “Well I been remarried. If the divorce ain’t been done, would the compooter see that I’s already married?”
Librarian: “No, it’s not automatic like that.”
Big bosom: “Uh-oh. Aw well. I guess I’m a bigamist.”
1620 East Route 66 Blvd, Tucumcari, NM 88401
words we don’t say
tacked to the bulletin board in the office I took over was a single page titled “Words We Don’t Say.” It contained, as you might surmise, words and phrases that Kurt found annoying and didn’t want used in his magazine.
