Monday, September 30, 2013

The unscheduled landing

[context and photographer unknown]

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The Sphinx and Pyramids in flux

Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.

The Sphinx in 1890, and recently, from the nearby Pizza Hut.  You can no longer actually climb or even touch touch The Sphinx, but you can climb around some of the pyramids.  Most photos show these monuments in a vast desert, but they are actually on the outskirts of Cairo and Giza, in easy walking distance.



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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Painting: Yoga

by Jack Brummet

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Drawing: Faces No. 539

By Jack Brummet

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Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers




Crazy in Love with Patsy Cline

Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers

Sponsored by the Pete and Pat Curran Family

Friday, October 4
7:30 p.m.
Kent-Meridian Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $20 general, $18 senior, $15 youth

Lavay Smith and her all-star 7-piece jazz band deliver a loving and creative tribute to country darling Patsy Cline. Jazz and country music have been “kissing cousins” since each art form took shape in the early 20th century. Lavay Smith knows this history well and brings a bluesy jolt of energy to the jazz/country crossroads, delivering jazz and blues-steeped arrangements of Cline’s songs.The show features Lavay’s scorching Red Hot Skillet Lickers. With her big, luscious voice and sassy stage presence, Lavay infuses sultry swing into Cline’s tales of woe.

Click here for tickets

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Eleanor Roosevelt and her gun

By Mona Goldwater, Women in politics ed.

Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to drive her own car and wanted a pistol for protection.  She refused to  travel with Secret Service agents, police escorts, or a chauffeur.

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Saturday, September 28, 2013

The U.S.S. Franklin training ship (which looks like a two story apartment building)

By Jack Brummet, History Ed.


From 1916, a photograph of the U.S.S. Franklin, used as a training ship. From a 5'x7" glass negative held by the Library of Congress.

This image comes from the Harris & Ewing Collection of photographic negatives of people, events, and architecture, during the period 1905-1945. Harris & Ewing, Inc., gave its collection of negatives to the Library in 1955.

click to enlarge
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RomCom aversion aside, you should go see James Gandolfini and Julia Louise-Dreyfuss's "Enough Said"

By Mona Goldwater, Film Ed.


I am not a fan of the Rom Com, but "Enough Said" is an exception. So sweet to see James Gandolfini on the big screen one last time. The script was great, the story bittersweet, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Catherine Keener, and Gandolfini all delivered amazing performances.
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Friday, September 27, 2013

Pre-radar technology for detecting bombers

By Jack Brummet, History Ed.

These two devices—before radar—were used in England for detecting approaching German bombers. The second photos shows a portable version.


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Drawing: Smile

By Jack Brummet

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Poem: Hold together

By Jack Brummet



1
We could hold together,
Like the water
Covers this sweet green sphere,

And eventually become
A beige world of one purpose
On the road of love,

With no jihads or wars,
Klans or factions,
Bombs or bullets,

Corporations or landlords,
Parties or armies,
Walls or fences.

2
There is one ocean
With seven names
And into this ocean,

Sooner or later, flows
Every river, creek, and teardrop,
Every lake, bay, and lagoon.

Every spring and aquifer,
Every pond and swamp,
Every snowflake and mudpuddle.

But to coalesce people
You need a nucleus,
A leader

With greatness of spirit, love,
Consistency, and strength.
Let he or she who wishes to gather others

Under their wing ask themselves
If they are equal to the undertaking
When no natural laws create the union.

3
The door is locked.
You jiggle the knob.
The door eases open.

4
Water fills
The lacunae of the earth
And clings fast

In a way we can never
Cling to each other.
Water flows to join water

Because the laws of nature
Will not be broken.
Selah.
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Digital art: Pansies

By Jack Brummet


click to enlarge
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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Poem: Prayer In Istanbul

By Jack Brummet

The Blue Mosque (© 2010 by Jack Brummet)


1.
On a dusty cobblestone street
I hear three muezzins
In three directions

Call people to prayer
At three mosques,
With a slight delay

Between the calls.
Three chanters in three different rooms
Sing the same song

In phase-shifted rounds
Through nine silver speakers

Mounted on three
Ivory-white minarets
Capped in gleaming cerulean blue.

2.
At the washing stations,
Water splashes from brass spigots
Into pale grey limestone basins.

The faithful wash,
Bag their sandals,
And for the fourth time since dawn,

Walk onto the lush carpet
Of the cool quiet mosque
Tiled in words and symbols.

3.
They kneel, face the wall
And pray one more time.
I don’t know what they pray for,

But when I see their faces
And watch their devotions,
I know it’s something good.

4.
It’s so still and calm
In the mosque,
You could hear a fly expire.

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Painting: Poppies

By Jack Brummet


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Painting (digital): Sixteen fake flowers

By Jack Brummet

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Mockups of how Adolph Hitler might have gone undercover to evade the Allies

By Jack Brummet

In the mid-1940's, the U.S. Government created these mockups to show what Hitler might look like in disguise had he decided to try and elude the Allies. 

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Poem: "I contain multitudes"

By Jack Brummet





We all have a platoon
Of partly-contained

Spooky and multiple personalities
Ready to burst 


From the confines
Of our clown car.
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Drawing: Signs

By Jack Brummet

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Monday, September 23, 2013

Digital art: Petals

By Jack Brummet

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Signs: Double Trouble (Guns + ____________)

Signs sent in by All This Is That readers:


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The Tumbling Walls Of Jericho

By Jack Brummet



Jericho was locked down tighter than a submarine.
It made Helms Deep and Fort Knox look porous.

Joshua studied the walls, scooping a way inside,
When a man with whirling gaslight eyes appeared.

"Hey Spook! Are you for us, or against us?"
The spook whirled around, rattled his sword,

And grew ten feet tall and five feet wide.
"I am the General of all Generals."

It was The Lamplighter himself. "Take the shoes
From your feet on my holy ground,

And follow the ark, with seven priests with seven trumpets.”
Joshua told the peasants, "All right, beat feet!”

Seven priests tooting seven horns led the parade
Around and around and around Jericho

Like Sambo marched the tigers around the tree,
Or the way the earth spins in the dark around the sun.

They marched in silence six long days.
On the seventh day they lit out at dawn

And marched around the city seven times.

After the seventh orbit, the priests blew a cadenza.
Joshua said "Shout”

And the roared swelled with each passing minute
Until the walls came tumbling down.

Every man, woman, animal and bug,
Young, old, red, yellow, black and white,

Fell on the sword.
Joshua was the Lord’s boy now

 And put the hairy eyeball on any plan
To resurrect Jericho.
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Essanay Films movie script rejection slip

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Saturday, September 21, 2013

An Ivory Soap Orgy - an advertisement from about 1919

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed. 

In this advertisement, from about 1919, did Madison Avenue try to exploit the homoerotic content of their image and message, or were they really completely unaware?

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Friday, September 20, 2013

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Middle finger of the year (and the usual monthly roundup)

By Mona Goldwater, Gestures and Signs Ed.

Here is our usual roundup of reader-submitted middle fingers, both celebrities and just regular folk like us.  This first one, however, has to be our finger of the year (I can't remember if it was sent in by reader Jeff C or Dean E).



But, then, a close runner-up has to be the middle finger given by former representative Anthony Weiner following his concession speech in the NYC Mayoral election primary.  His parting shot to the press was to flip them off as he was driven away into much-deserved obscurity.















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