the year 2015

a most interesting collection of old nyc postcards from the original subway system. spend some more time at forgotten ny and check out the stuff that you may have.....well....forgotten about:

"In the subways' early days, postcard manufacturers such as J. Koehler, Underwood and Underwood, Blanchard Press, and others issued images of the subway in its inagural era; the original Interborough Rapid Transit (at first in only one borough) ran from City Hall north, west and north again to west 145th Street."

oh how fantastic. this most entertaining site entitled show and tell comes to me from my most inspired internet hunting brother. it's the isle at the thrift store where all of the records are falling off the shelf, and you just hope that herb alpert disc is in the right sleave. this one will keep you busy for some time to come. i was never so lucky at the local salvation army.

have you ever wondered what the egress procedure is for the mercury spacecraft? I have, and if you have too, you can check it out here at this nifty nasa site for technical diagrams and drawings. actually, if you are anything like me, you will find yourself spending more time at the nasa site then you may have originally planned for.

"a wolf in sheep's clothing"
black sheep
1994

Black Sheep are a rap duo from The Bronx, New York that were also part of the Native Tongues Posse, which included The Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. They are best known for the hit "The Choice Is Yours", and revered in the hip-hop community for their unique and intelligent rhythms and songs.

The two members, Andres "Dres" Titus and William "Mista Lawnge" McLean, charted 3 times on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1992 with "The Choice Is Yours" (#9), "Stroblite Honey" (#1) and as featured rappers on Vanessa Williams' "Work To Do" (#8).

Norman Borlaug is credited with saving millions of people from starvation in what has been named the Green Revolution. His role as an international leader is due not only to his research in wheat genetics, but also to his unique ability to create and implement programs which shared that knowledge with farmers in underdeveloped countries throughout the world.

Norman Ernest Borlaug is an American agricultural scientist, humanitarian, Nobel laureate, and the father of the Green Revolution. Borlaug received his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.

To significantly increase yield in nutrient-poor soil, Borlaug needed to use fertilizer. However, the cultivars he was working with had tall, thin stalks. Taller wheat grasses could better compete for sunlight, but tended to collapse under the weight of the extra grain-a trait called lodging-and from the rapid growth spurts induced by nitrogen fertilizer. To prevent this, he bred his wheat to favor shorter, stronger stalks that could better support larger seed heads. In 1953, he acquired a Japanese dwarf variety of wheat called Norin 10 that had been crossed with a high yielding American cultivar called Brevor 14. Dwarfing is an important agronomic quality for wheat; dwarf plants produce thick stems and do not lodge.

as i was drifting off to sleep last night, my wife had noticed this interesting travel show highlight on PBS about a mystical island in the sea....

Mont Saint Michel is a small rocky islet, roughly one kilometer from the north coast of France at the mouth of the Couesnon River, near Avranches in Normandy, close to the border of Brittany. It is home to the unusual Benedictine Abbey and steepled church (built between the 11th and 16th centuries) which occupy most of the one-kilometer-diameter clump of rocks jutting out of the waters of the English Channel.

Since the beginning of time the bay had been covered by the sea, which retreated during multiple glaciations, allowing erosion to shape the coastal landscape over millions of years. Several blocks of granite or granulite emerged in the bay, having resisted the wear and tear of the ocean better than the surrounding rocks.

The Mount is connected to the mainland via a thin natural land bridge, which before modernization was covered at high tide and revealed at low tide. Thus, Mont Saint Michel gained a mystical quality, being an island half the time, and being attached to land the other: a tidal island. The tides in the area shift quickly, and has been described by Victor Hugo as "à la vitesse d'un cheval au galop" or as swiftly as a galloping horse. The tides can vary greatly, at roughly 14 meters between high and low water marks. Popularly nicknamed St. Michael in peril of the sea by mediaeval pilgrims making their way across the tidal flats, the mount can still pose dangers for visitors who avoid the causeway and attempt the hazardous walk across the sands from the neighbouring coast. The dangers from the tides and quicksands continue to claim lives.

Pugh + Scarpa is an architecture, engineering, interior design and planning firm founded in Santa Monica in 1991. Pugh + Scarpa has grown to a firm of 43 professionals and is currently working on an assortment of commissions for public, private and institutional clients. Pugh + Scarpa maintains offices in Santa Monica, California, San Francisco, California and Charlotte, North Carolina. Gwynne Pugh AIA, Lawrence Scarpa AIA, and Angela Brooks AIA, are the sole principals and the firm is consciously structured to ensure their participation in each project.

Anthony Burgess (b. John Burgess Wilson) was an English novelist and critic who lived from 1917 to 1993. He was also active as a composer, librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, broadcaster, translator and educationalist. His fiction includes the Malayan trilogy (The Long Day Wanes) on the dying days of Britain's empire in the East; the Enderby cycle, about a reclusive poet and his muse; the cult classic A Clockwork Orange; and the Tolstoyan long novel Earthly Powers. He produced critical studies of Joyce, Hemingway, Shakespeare and Lawrence, translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King and Carmen for theater, and scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen.

this is an incredible story, which outlines the events taking place at the gaza strip in recent days, and how they coincide with the ninth day of the jewish month of Av, which marks one of the darkest days in their history

"universal blues"
the redwalls
2003

are the redwalls just recycling the sounds from early beatle and rolling stones albums, or are they making some bona fide good music? i am not sure to tell you the truth, but i do do know that i have been listening to universal blues for the last couple of weeks, and have been thouroughly entertained. Their newer album, de nova is also worth a listen.

.....i like this young mans spirit for the game:

NEW YORK -- A Westchester teenager was in custody Wednesday morning after diving from his upper-deck seat into the baseball net behind home plate at Yankee Stadium, police said.
Scott Harper, 18, of Armonk, was with three friends when in the eighth inning he jumped from his seat into the netting, police and stadium security said.

The netting tore a little, but was able to hold him.

Harper was taken to Lincoln Medical Center to be checked out for injuries and then he was to be charged, police said. He faces charges of disorderly conduct, trespassing and reckless endangerment.

Police questioned Harper's three friends to make sure they were not involved in the stunt.

a scene (the best scene) from jim jarmusch's coffee and cigarettes

so i checked out broken flowers yesterday, the new film from jim jarmusch. for my afternoon yesterday, and other afternoons like it, i shall bestow upon jim...genius of the week.....

Jim Jarmusch, 1953- : Highly original independent filmmaker who has carved out a niche all his own; Pauline Kael called it the "low-key minimalist comedy about American anomie." Jarmusch studied filmmaking at New York University.

Permanent Vacation (1980)
The New World (1982) short
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Down By Law (1986)
Coffee and Cigarettes (1986) short
Mystery Train (1989)
Coffee and Cigarettes II (1989) short, also known as Coffee and Cigarettes: Memphis
VersionNight On Earth (1991)
Coffee and Cigarettes III (1993) short, also known as Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California
Dead Man (1995)
Year of the Horse (1997) documentary
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002) short
Coffee and Cigarettes IV (2003) short, also known as Coffee and Cigarettes: Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) feature
Broken Flowers (2005)

....is this missing the point, like a legal rave...or is this a viable option? you decide:

"An exceptional example of legal graffiti in Queens is a building opposite PS1 in Long Island City. The building, which housesseveral factories and art studios, used to be home to a project calledthe Fun Factory. The Fun Factory formed around 1994, and gavepeople a legal and safe place to create graffiti. Earlier this year, theFun Factory closed, leaving the building and its walls unmonitored. Lordroc, a Queens-born graffiti artist and hip-hop musician, lamentedthat, "The place was open and it was just getting bombed with tags.It looked horrible." Around six months ago, another young graffitiartist named Meres made a proposal to the building's landlord to runanother graffiti project. The landlord agreed, and 5 Pointz began.

The name 5 Pointz signifies all five boroughs of New York. People ofall ages and all parts of the city travel to 5 Pointz to graffiti its walls(in recent months, artists from other areas of the Unites States, as wellas Holland, France, and Germany, have also traveled to LIC to addtheir graffiti). Meres gives each artist an area to paint according totheir ability. The better artists earn the more prominent walls, such asthose that are closest to street level, while beginners receive smallerareas in more remote places."

"advertisement for architecture"
bernard tschumi
1978

"dixie chicken"
little feat
1973

"Well we made all the hot spots
My money flowed like wine
Then that low down Southern whiskey
began to fog my mind
And I don't remember church bells
or the money I put down
On the white picket fence and boardwalk
of the house at the edge of town
But boy do I remember
the strain of her refrain
The nights we spent together,
and the way she called my name"

from "dixie chicken"

this is damn near the best post i have seen anywhere all year long. take a look see over at the nonist and i am sure you will be feeling better in just a few short moments.....

Paolo Soleri born in Turin, Italy on June 21, 1919 was awarded his Ph.D. with highest honors in architecture from the Politecnico di Torino in 1946. He visited the United States in 1947 and spent a year-and-a-half in fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, and at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

He returned to Italy in 1950 where he was commissioned to build a large ceramics factory, "Ceramica Artistica Solimene." The processes he became familiar with in the ceramics industry led to his award-winning designs of ceramic and bronze windbells and siltcast architectural structures. For over 30 years, the proceeds from the windbells have provided funds for construction to test his theoretical work.

In 1956 he settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his late wife, Colly, and their two daughters. Dr. and Mrs. Soleri made a life-long commitment to research and experimentation in urban planning, establishing the Cosanti Foundation, a not-for-profit educational foundation. Soleri's philosophy and works have been strongly influence by the Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

The Foundation's major project is Arcosanti, a planned community for 5,000 people designed by Soleri, under construction since 1970. Located near Cordes Junction, about 70 miles north of Phoenix and visible from Interstate I-17 in central Arizona, the project is based on Soleri's concept of "Arcology," architecture coherent with ecology.

i enjoyed quite a nice saturday a bit upstate in a place called innisfree:

Innisfree is a 150-acre public garden in which the ancient art of Chinese landscape design has been reinterpreted to create, without recourse to imitation, a unique American garden. At Innisfree the visitor strolls from one three-dimensional picture to another. Streams, waterfalls, terraces, retaining walls, rocks, and plants are used not only to define areas but also to establish tension or motion. The 40-acre lake is glacial, most of the plant material is native, and the rocks have come from the immediate forest.