the affected provincial’s almanack

BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS: LAST WEEK AT PAFA

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:15:55 GMT

This show will be up at The Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts until January 3rd, so catch it now.

A GOOD CHRISTMAS FOR BIRDS

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:54:30 GMT

On Christmas morning, the local robins and mockingbirds discovered the deciduous holly I planted this summer, and feasted upon its red berries until there were none left.

THE NUMBER ONE SONG IN MY BRAIN

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:35:00 GMT

LA TIMES ARTICLE

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:30:01 GMT

Lady Gaga and her peers are the ones who've gone beyond fake. It's not that they no longer recognize the distinction between real life and performance; it's that they don't care about it.

LUC SANTE: ON HIPSTERS

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:49:28 GMT

"It took me until today to understand what the word "hipster" has come to mean. When I heard people complaining about neighborhoods infested with hipsters, bars ruined by hipsters, I didn't really give it much thought beyond remembering Yogi Berra's lament: "The place is too crowded--nobody goes there anymore." The red herring was the word "hipster," which to my mind couldn't possibly be synonymous with "yuppie" or any of the other terms for people who have more money than you do but no souls, and who spend their free time subjecting all you hold dear to unfriendly takeover.

"In my mind the hipster stood for fingerpops, harlequin-pattern banlon shirts, cuban heels, toothpick and cigarette both at the same time, mohair suits, shirt-jacs, chesterfield overcoats, comb in the breast pocket, use of brylcreem years after the British Invasion, Jimmy Smith records, Mongo Santamaria records, Arthur Prysock records, unfiltered Kools, the novels of Richard Stark, the pornographic novels of Alexander Trocchi, the glory days of Gent and Cavalier, never raising the voice above a throaty whisper, clipped hand gestures, wakefulness despite half-shut eyelids, communicating volumes entirely with the eyebrows, walking with a rolling shuffle, having a substantial number of friends whose race is different from yours.

"You get the picture, I think. Yes, it was largely a male phenomenon--there were hipster women in black leotards, but they didn't look all that different from beatnik women in black leotards. It was a style that may have peaked between 1957 and 1963, but it remained, persistent and underground, for decades afterward, ignoring all movements and trends, implacable in its deep and nearly unreadable coolness..." Link

PERSONAL BEST

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:07:35 GMT

Looks like we got around twenty-four inches here. Anyone get more?

LUC SANTE'S BLOG

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:45:36 GMT

Pinakothek

OLIVE OIL CONNECTION

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:44:52 GMT

For those of you who were interested in ordering a bottle of that amazingly fresh Umbrian olive oil: below is Kathy's email. Kathy has told me that shipping to the west coast may run up to about nine or ten dollars for one bottle.

umbrianadventure(at)gmail.com

Here is Kathy's blog, Umbrian Adventures, which depicts her travels in Italy.

Enjoy!

~W

SUPPLY RUN

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:35:21 GMT

Went on foot this evening to deliver a venison lasagna and an Arvo Part cd to a friend who lives in the woods outside of town. Took me three hours.

Went over the wooded mount, and into town.

Walked through town, over the canal and creek, and ino the woods where Bill lives. Dropped off his venison lasagna, and started making my way back. Met a fellow with a very large dog on the wooded path. My knee, which was in its brace, started getting sore at this point.

Got sleety on the last mile. Was a little tricky finding my way through the woods on the mount on the way back. Boy, am I glad I have a beard. I'm gonna give it an extra helping of chicken casserole tonight.

FISHING SHACK

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:38:11 GMT

Over a century old. Shutters and cedar shingles were ripped off by wind. Made temporary repairs to brace it for the coming winter storms.

A VISIT WITH UNCLE WALT

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:18:50 GMT

Got some of the trash up. The Good Gray Poet, for heaven's sake, and trash everywhere. Oh, Camden.

I LOVE TO LOVE

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:34:27 GMT

OLIVE OIL TASTING

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:24:08 GMT

Attended an olive oil tasting at friend Kathy's house last week. Tried a selection of freshly-pressed oils sent from Kathy's friend in Umbria, who grows olives. The one above was stellar: the oil was a blend of several kinds of olives, and had a beautiful green color. The taste was a complex blend of herbal, almost tomatoey notes. Best olive oil I've ever had. Took this bottle home.

Kathy's quite the foodie. You can catch up with her at Forking Delicious, Umbrian Adventures, and Philly Stories. You can also see her Flickr travel pics and food porn here.

AN OLD JERSEY FURNACE

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:43:24 GMT

This is taken from "Harvey Moores - an old jersey furnace"

Men get drunk, beat up their wives; fall in
the creek; break various and sundry bones; have "grand" fights with each other; lose
their cows in the woods; and have their teams run away, which usually take a couple of
days to recover.
Stray dogs roam through the town. "Michael Mick kills a rattlesnake". James Craig
returns to work "after enjoying the pleasures of matrimony and goes to chopping wood".
Jacob Ventling takes pot shots at a loon for two days, and then don't get it. Jane
Hamilton is tried by the synod of her church for drinking the "spiritual" liquor, and is
acquitted. James McEntire brings his daughter back from Half Moon "for fear her morals
will be corrupted". The floor boards of the bridge slip up and "Old Leather Jack falls in
the creek casouse." Walter Anderson "dreams ecstatically of kissing two handsome
girls". Sol Reeve gets drunk, breaks his nose, "throws Pink out of doors and breaks his
leg", and then goes about all the next day "grunting like a man 100 years old". Jesse
Evans, the ironmaster, makes surveys, lays out "crossways" (corduroy roads), builds
bridges, hunts for ore, checks cargo, makes out bills of ladings, goes to court, visits
Philadelphia, and once a year starts out with his wife, Lucy Evans, for "Schuley's
Mountain Spring".
The moulders all quit one hot August day and go "over to the beach" to cool off. "Old
Sore Toes departs this life" - he was a horse. Ed Ruffer gets "$3.00 per month for
wheeling cinders". Men dig for buried treasure. A "conflagration" destroys the furnace,
casting shed and warehouse, which are all rebuilt in record time. Bogs are cleaned out
and fresh ones opened up. The saw mill is rebuilt and so is the stamping mill. A new
hearth is put in the furnace each spring. The bridge house gets a new floor. The
"coaling" (charcoal) comes in good, bad, and indifferent, and occasionally catches fire
and damages the wagons. The ore boat runs aground in the pond coming down from
Sassafras. Fires occur in the pines. A gale of wind blows the roof off the carpenter shop.
Teams fall off the bridges; wagons collapse; the "pacer" breaks down; the bellows get
wrecked; the dam gives way; and all hands get hilariously drunk when the furnace goes
out of blast for the winter.

TIPULARIA DISCOLOR

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:13:17 GMT

Cranefly Orchid, Tipularia discolor. Summer inflorescence in top photo. No leaves in summer, just blooms. In winter, this orchid puts out a single, ground-hugging leaf with a purple underside.

OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:00:59 GMT

Let it go, guys. It's over.

"SUNDAY MORNING" BY WALLACE STEVENS

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:53:13 GMT

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkness among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

V
She says, ``But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.''
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

AGRIFOLK

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:54:44 GMT

THE TROCADERO

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:57:26 GMT

This week I read a filthy poem on this stage.

MALCOLM WELLS

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:53:59 GMT

(Photo: NY Times)

Received word last night that pioneer environmentalist architect Malcolm "Mac" Wells has died. The NY Times ran a piece on him:

Bearded, affable, self-deprecating and appalled by the destructive footprint that buildings, roads and parking lots can leave on the earth, Mr. Wells was dedicated to what he called gentle architecture, something that would, as he put it, “leave the land no worse than you found it.”

Writing in Architectural Digest in 1971, he set forth 15 goals that he said all new buildings should strive to meet. Among them were to use and store solar energy, to consume their own waste, to provide wildlife habitat and human habitat, and to be beautiful.

To that end, his designs incorporated the land. He designed some homes (and other buildings) that seemingly burrowed into hillsides, and others whose main living space was subterranean, perhaps with above-ground lean-to roofs or atria and skylights to let in the sun. In general, his roofs were covered with layers of earth, suitable for gardens or other green growth.

It was a philosophy he extended beyond buildings to infrastructure. In a 1994 article for the magazine The Futurist, he proposed — and sketched — underground airports, underground stadiums, even earth-covered bridges.

(Credit: NY Times)

Mr. Wells had local connections: his old offices remain on Cuthbert Road outside of Collingswood, NJ. He also was a patron to local hermit-artist Hugh Campbell (Hugh's shack still stands on a friend's property in a wooded area outside of town). Some time ago, Wells donated his entire collection of Campbell's paintings and drawings to Burlington County, which otherwise would have certainly been ruined by the sooty, damp conditions in Hugh's shack.

Mr. Wells' writing on architecture is worth a read. His tone is humorous, playful, and down-to-earth. You can find his books and essays on his website.

AM I BLUE

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:28:19 GMT

Was finally cold enough to don the Duchess dark blue velvet suit last night. Yes, I continue to look like the Cowardly Lion.

ROBO-KABUKI

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:34:06 GMT

MATERIALIZING QUEER DESIRE

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:56:11 GMT

Materializing Queer Desire: Oscar Wilde to Andy Warhol

How did the queer subject come to occupy such a central, and in many respects, contradictory place in the modern world of the early twentieth century? What role has capitalism played in the development of modern gay and lesbian identities? Materializing Queer Desire focuses on the figure of the dandy to explore how and why gay and lesbian subjects became heroes of modern life. Elisa Glick argues that the gay subject emerged out of the specifically modern, capitalist contradiction between the public world of production and industry and the private world of consumption and pleasure. Boldly bringing modernism into dialogue with Marxist and queer theory, Glick offers an innovative, materialist account of modern queer consciousness that challenges tendencies to oppose “private” eroticism and the systems of value that govern “public” interests. In the process she illuminates the connections between aesthetic, sexual, and social formations in modern life—between modernity’s disruptive, “queer” desires and their unfolding in an increasingly rationalized society.

I was sent this book to review a couple months ago, and have been nibbling at it in fugitive moments ever since. Although I have my own take on it (Gutter Dandyism, Black Dandyism, Pop Dandyism being among the more interesting chapters), it seems unfair to delay getting the word out any longer. As someone who is both straight and outside academe, I'm probably not the ideal person to ask about this book. However, I do think that those interested in dandyism, particularly as it relates to queer subcultures, will derive much from reading this book, whether you agree with its analyses or not. It's good grist for a lively book club discussion.

Link

FOR THE FANCYPANTS WHO HAS EVERYTHING

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:37:07 GMT

May I humbly suggest this trifle. Even has Christmassy colors, you know.

GO, DOUGHBOY, GO!

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:57:36 GMT