Posts

The News is Killing Me - No. 42

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There was a day when I stopped time Or better said: I saw time stop to check its hair in a mirror Watching Kuwait invasion on TV at a bar, while reading that day's paper which held - you know - the previous day's news It took many beers, years, cigarettes, and news editions to get to the moment Where the datelines chase the deadlines and portend the news about diplomatic shuttles and armed buildups on a border. And you could see the future there even though it was the day after like sam spade Sam spade in The Maltese Falcon reading The Shipping News  and He sees a notice, the La Paloma is arriving. A little column of type not even spinning in animation. He circles it. In the film he heads to the docks. Emergency is evident. The ship is on fire Fire foretold in a close up of a column in a paper. Just like the wormhole of Kuwait.

The Masonic Temple

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In Racine, the Masonic Temple held mystery for me. On my way to work from school. And I liked it that way. "Let the mystery be" as Iris DeMenthe might say. We made a movie for Screen Arts class called "The Masonic Temple" (credits were press typed to Saran Wrap and held in front of camera). The establishing and exterior scenes were the building, but the basic interior bit was shot inside Krogers.

From the Vaults: Return to the Dreamland Sea

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This one was written together with several friends...together with several friends (Oct 2006) When I got to that town I found me a home Glad but I found the twilight zone Not a horrible one It cheered the late bloomer An offbeat episode With droll black humor In a halfway house Stuck halfway The sun in the morning was a big red flame ...   FOR MORE

To monitor and measure the Longwood and the Shortwood of it

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Dear Editor: As described in a July Fenway News article and a Globe piece ,  the changes underway to the MATEP power plant bear greater scrutiny. Installation of new gas turbines at the MATEP facility is being rushed with inadequate consideration for air quality in densely populated Mission Hill, Fenway and Brookline. The community fought hard for fairness and justice when this MATEP power plant was conceived in the 1970s. Here, we live with immense congestion and hazardous particulates from autos. The future does not promise less population density, as big residential projects are underway in close proximity to the facility. It's finely scrubbed output does in fact add particulates to our already murky part of the sky. Additional turbines firing natural gas with Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel as a backup will add more. Much has changed since the 1970s' struggle versus MATEP, not the least of which was the sale of the former Harvard trust to NStar and then to Veolia Energy...

From the vaults: Over the Superstition Mountains

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Thinking of Rob - as I am in the vicinity again. I saw a rainbow doughnut floating down in the cloud wisps streaming over the superstition mountains flying into phoenix looking for a sign of you one sunday morning. -Jack Vaughan, Nov 3, 2013

AmaWal meets Martzon

Here in the Digital Age, business models continue to be buffeted, often in surprising ways.  The big, lever you push to sell your product – it seems – is data, analytics, and cloud (you figure which is rod, pivot, force). It plays out most vividly in the dialectic of Walmart and Amazon. http://itsthedatatalking.blogspot.com/2015/10/amamart-meets-walzon.html

Reading on Christian Art of the Early Kind

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Reading on Christian Art of the Early Kind REVISED IN 2025 - At a friend's I picked out of a discard brown bag a text, and I opened it, picking the bones of the book I took some notes about where Christianity came from. A long view would hold that Text [the Word] would drive the start of it, but that Image [drawings, e.g.,] would take increasing precedence in communication. Décor - ah, that would come later.  My reading in general of  Early Christian and Byzantine Art  by John Beckwith: It’s from the early 1970s and somewhat spans the spectrum that has Western Art as more of an Ideal than Asian (Farther East). It's accompanied by narrative showing some objective understanding that includes consideration of social forces.  My Reading in its specifics starts here: The early Christians had their ways and they were kind of a mix of Hebraic and Greek cultures.  Some hybridization. But text [word] was the way at the start, with art coming on gradually ove...