9-11 Truth has better looking
women than Official Story.
women than Official Story.
Bigger breasts too. A recent survey found 33percent more tissue per orb than dessicated
official-story establishment women have
Friday, August 24, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Mario Salvio on Spraul Hall Steps
December 2, 1964
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious that you’re so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you have to make it stop, and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, and the people who own it, that unless you are free the machine will be prevented from working at all.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Hitler at Sotheby's
I finally located a carton of old files of mine containing some interesting tidbits of personal history to blog on over here at my more "personal" expression, the context-creating Steven_War_Ran--colloquially referred to by some in my base as "his gay-shit blog," as distinct from my "paranoid-shit blog," the spaceless, and duly 9-11-focused: StevenWarRan.
But tidbit doesn't begin to describe the fruits of Google research borne after I seeded a chance synchronicity, or as I prefer to call it, a God-incidence, twenty-five years ago, when I tried to peddle an official portrait of Adolf Hitler at Sotheby's auction house in New York--a task at which I was not successful.
The back story of my attempt to hondle an over-life-size (in real life Hitler was 5'8'', in the painting he is 6'2") oil-on-canvass, painted by the artist who Albert Speer in his 1970 book, Inside the Third Reich, calls "Hitler's official painter," Heinrich Knirr, is my intent here, and not der Fuhrer himself, a subject widely considered to be the most evil and destructive political manifestation of the 20th century, a verdict I'm content with, since George W. Bush's reign of terror can be neatly said to have only begun with the 21rst century, so in no way provides competition for the title.
Although, the historicity of propaganda is of some interest too. Absent any help from me, the picture resides today as the centerpiece of the WWII Victory Museum, a contrived affair located just outside of Auburn, Indiana. Jeff Gubitz, executive director of the Fort Wayne Jewish Federation, in an explanation of the exhibit for museum visitors, says of its home at exit 126 of Interstate 69, “I think the importance of this particular exhibit is that it doesn’t honor or glorify Adolf Hitler," which, I should think under the circumstances, goes without saying.
Also in providing a context for the exhibition, Rabbi Jonathan Katz wrote, “This exhibit suggests the way art, just like humanity itself, can be corrupted in the service of wickedness....We often speak today of the power of the pen. But the power of the paintbrush and canvas can be equally, if not more, influential. An exhibit like this should prompt reflection on the use of mind control to achieve dastardly deeds. In an increasingly uncertain and vulnerable world it should make us that much more vigilant of those who would propagate odious falsehoods and exploit diabolically crafted images to infect and overthrow the foundations of civilized society,” which is my sentiment exactly. It is holocaust elucidaters, not the deniers, who should see the fruits of the present American administration most clearly.
The important work of researching and conserving the painting was done gratis by Barry Bauman Conservation a Midwestern firm which in 2004, "left the private sector to establish America's first national conservation laboratory dedicated to offering complimentary conservation services to museums and non-profit organizations." In addition to the extensive case study: "Portrait of Adolf Hitler" by Heinrich Knirr, which will tell you everything you want to know, Mr Bauman's web site lists three other case studies of laudable conservation services (amongst many others) he carried out on important paintings since 2004, at no charge to the not-for-profit institutions who hold them.
The museum, which had its grand opening in May of 2003, says, "According to the portrait’s donor, Jack Smith of Thomson, Ga., the portrait was liberated by one of the first American soldiers to enter Munich, Germany, in the spring of 1945. The soldier intercepted two Czechoslovakian men running down a street carrying a large object, which turned out to be the painting of Hitler."
It is at this point, I believe, that our stories intersect. My involvement stems from a chance acquaintanceship with an earlier owner of the painting, a man a generation or two older than myself, Jim Luce, an old friend of and frequent visitor to the household in which I lived. Jim may very well have been the Czechoslovakians' interceptor, or perhaps an officer just above them--that detail is lost from my memory. But I do recall, that in the time I knew him, in the early 1980's, Jim worked on a plantation in Georgia, which may, or may not, provide the linkage with Mr. Smith.
And I can state for the record, Jim was not an anti-Semite--he was a sadist. A collector of Wilhelmina, to whom Hitleriana was tangential. On the plantation, he worked in the tack room, polishing the stable gear, his fetish, which may indicate a grace-and-favor position offered in his dotage. As a young man, he had done the same while working in the Queen's stables at Buckingham. His was an old-school fetish, one in which the object was taken seriously for life. Since he had to work, he combined it with pleasure.
He was from the working class Wisconsin Luce's, like his brother Charles, chairman of Consolidated Edison from 1967 to 1982, not the ritzy New Jersey Luce's, like Clare Booth, whose first husband was a Brokaw, who beat her, which provides some symmetry to the story at least, or her second husband, with whom she experimented with LSD under the tutelage of Gerald Heard...also a motif.
The stories which tickled me the most were from when Jim worked as the major-domo to "the last remaining Dodge in Grosse Point, Michigan." He told a story about how after she died he took a Renoir down off the wall but then thought better of it, thinking if he went after some of the good Japanese imari the daughter was less likely to notice the liberation. He was an influence on my career, I see now.
He was austere, and arch, and very, very wicked and I was glad I had made a good impression at our first brunch, when I served thin omelet's made of folded-over eggs without any filling inside. This pleased him immensely, as he referenced it for years afterward--perhaps I made up in style what was lacking in flavor, although I attributed the afternoon's success to the Bloody Mary's.
So having an important portrait of Hitler rolled up in one's closet (he said it sometimes fell out and hit him) certainly adds to one's overall effect. My brief foray across town to see what Sotheby's thought seemed innocuous at the time. I was aware the painting had no artistic merit, but its quality and historic importance were undeniable I felt, so I dismissed as odd what the auction house dismissed as controversial.
Since nothing succeeds like success, having a brother be the well-known chairman of Con-Edison was a component of his allure to me at that time as well, although after what I've learned recently researching Charles's career, I have to wonder who was the real sadist.
A lawyer by training, Charles Luce had had limited experience with utilities, according to Time magazine, writing in a 1977 Luce on Luce apologetics following a disastrous blackout--of not the drinking kind. He had been administrator of an Oregon power company in the 1960s and later "showed managerial talent as an Under Secretary of the Interior during the Johnson years"--the dead giveaway.
Speaking on the record for the company, but in actuality, I'd submit, more about himself, Luce said they provided "a tremendous catharsis for the pent-up tensions of the city. If we didn't have a Con Ed, we'd have to invent it." In other words, he was paid 200,000 of those delicious early-1970's dollars to be a whipping boy and a lightning rod. How else to explain his karma, which would have him quoted as saying only four days before the big event: "I can guarantee that the chances of a brownout or a blackout are less than they have been in the last 15 years, and that the chances are less here than in most other cities in the United States."
(A history project has conveniently organized bibliographies pertaining to the Great Northeast blackout of 1965; and the far different New York Blackout of 1977; as well as to the electric utility industry and the use of electric power in general, and hypertext links to web sites germane to the issue.)
The economic history of the utility makes absolutely no sense to me. Not surprising, given the company's own history, which speaks offhandedly of Thomas Edison's apparent "liberal payments to New York's open-handed city government," beginning at its inauguration in 1880, saying succinctly that by the mid-20th century, there was a "growing perception among New Yorkers that Con Ed was an inefficient utility. The origins of this reputation seem to be split between the unavoidable difficulties of supplying power in so complex an environment as New York City and Con Ed's failure to meet that challenge."
When the company couldn't afford to finish operating plants it had begun construction on, Luce had the state buy and finish them, then bought the power back, but how the consumer benefited by this is unknown. What then is the definition of the "state" here, versus a "power company?" Can a power company raise a militia in return? With 25 percent of a Con-Ed bill representing taxes, what is "off-the-books" to hide inadequate fiscal health? The company's history doesn't mince words: "Charles Luce's decision to sell off two of the company's plants in 1974 made possible a renaissance at Con Ed," but only for the real center of concern: the stock and bond holders. For the rate payers the dark ages continued.
"Luce took the unprecedented step of withholding dividends in the first quarter of 1974" causing the stock price to fall from $30 per share to $6, which would have been a good time for the state to buy out the utility and manage it for the public good. Because by 2001, the company could write, "As a result of our strong financial performance, we have been able to increase our dividend each year for more than a quarter century." "Strong financial performance" is code for "high rates," and lack of accountability.
"Between 1990 and 1993 the company laid off 3,000 workers, and by 2000 it had reduced its workforce by another 3,000." Since its business wasn't shrinking, doesn't this imply its prior workforce was inflated by 6000 workers?
It took the capital of Vanderbilt and Morgan to innovate and develop the electrical industry but that investment was paid off long ago. Even with politicians regulating the monopoly (that is, until they "de-regulated" it,) the seat of power always remained in the corporate board room and for 127 years, rich and poor New Yorkers alike have paid the highest electricity prices in the nation (with Long Island running a close second.)
But what should scare us the most is the lesson from the Blackout of 1977. Within a few hours of going off grid, disadvantaged neighborhoods devolved into orgies of looting, while in Greenwich Village, the hooting of orgies--one big all-night block party--was heard. The summer of "77
As Nietzsche said of Hitler (in 1881), so shall be said of George Bush.
to be continued.......
Hitler Historical Museum
Kaiser Wilhelm
Hitler Paintings Auctioned in England
Hitler Historical Museum
CONJURING HITLER: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich by Guido Giacomo Preparata
www.baumanconservation.com
Buchenwald
Knirr Portraits of Hitler 1935, 1936, 1937
www.thirdreichruins.com/kunsthaus1.htm
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=2D46D95946CC3DD4
www.thirdreich.ca/portraitsphotos.php
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
ConEd
But tidbit doesn't begin to describe the fruits of Google research borne after I seeded a chance synchronicity, or as I prefer to call it, a God-incidence, twenty-five years ago, when I tried to peddle an official portrait of Adolf Hitler at Sotheby's auction house in New York--a task at which I was not successful.
The back story of my attempt to hondle an over-life-size (in real life Hitler was 5'8'', in the painting he is 6'2") oil-on-canvass, painted by the artist who Albert Speer in his 1970 book, Inside the Third Reich, calls "Hitler's official painter," Heinrich Knirr, is my intent here, and not der Fuhrer himself, a subject widely considered to be the most evil and destructive political manifestation of the 20th century, a verdict I'm content with, since George W. Bush's reign of terror can be neatly said to have only begun with the 21rst century, so in no way provides competition for the title.
Although, the historicity of propaganda is of some interest too. Absent any help from me, the picture resides today as the centerpiece of the WWII Victory Museum, a contrived affair located just outside of Auburn, Indiana. Jeff Gubitz, executive director of the Fort Wayne Jewish Federation, in an explanation of the exhibit for museum visitors, says of its home at exit 126 of Interstate 69, “I think the importance of this particular exhibit is that it doesn’t honor or glorify Adolf Hitler," which, I should think under the circumstances, goes without saying.
Also in providing a context for the exhibition, Rabbi Jonathan Katz wrote, “This exhibit suggests the way art, just like humanity itself, can be corrupted in the service of wickedness....We often speak today of the power of the pen. But the power of the paintbrush and canvas can be equally, if not more, influential. An exhibit like this should prompt reflection on the use of mind control to achieve dastardly deeds. In an increasingly uncertain and vulnerable world it should make us that much more vigilant of those who would propagate odious falsehoods and exploit diabolically crafted images to infect and overthrow the foundations of civilized society,” which is my sentiment exactly. It is holocaust elucidaters, not the deniers, who should see the fruits of the present American administration most clearly.
The important work of researching and conserving the painting was done gratis by Barry Bauman Conservation a Midwestern firm which in 2004, "left the private sector to establish America's first national conservation laboratory dedicated to offering complimentary conservation services to museums and non-profit organizations." In addition to the extensive case study: "Portrait of Adolf Hitler" by Heinrich Knirr, which will tell you everything you want to know, Mr Bauman's web site lists three other case studies of laudable conservation services (amongst many others) he carried out on important paintings since 2004, at no charge to the not-for-profit institutions who hold them.
Mr. Bauman at work.
The museum, which had its grand opening in May of 2003, says, "According to the portrait’s donor, Jack Smith of Thomson, Ga., the portrait was liberated by one of the first American soldiers to enter Munich, Germany, in the spring of 1945. The soldier intercepted two Czechoslovakian men running down a street carrying a large object, which turned out to be the painting of Hitler."
It is at this point, I believe, that our stories intersect. My involvement stems from a chance acquaintanceship with an earlier owner of the painting, a man a generation or two older than myself, Jim Luce, an old friend of and frequent visitor to the household in which I lived. Jim may very well have been the Czechoslovakians' interceptor, or perhaps an officer just above them--that detail is lost from my memory. But I do recall, that in the time I knew him, in the early 1980's, Jim worked on a plantation in Georgia, which may, or may not, provide the linkage with Mr. Smith.
And I can state for the record, Jim was not an anti-Semite--he was a sadist. A collector of Wilhelmina, to whom Hitleriana was tangential. On the plantation, he worked in the tack room, polishing the stable gear, his fetish, which may indicate a grace-and-favor position offered in his dotage. As a young man, he had done the same while working in the Queen's stables at Buckingham. His was an old-school fetish, one in which the object was taken seriously for life. Since he had to work, he combined it with pleasure.
He was from the working class Wisconsin Luce's, like his brother Charles, chairman of Consolidated Edison from 1967 to 1982, not the ritzy New Jersey Luce's, like Clare Booth, whose first husband was a Brokaw, who beat her, which provides some symmetry to the story at least, or her second husband, with whom she experimented with LSD under the tutelage of Gerald Heard...also a motif.
The stories which tickled me the most were from when Jim worked as the major-domo to "the last remaining Dodge in Grosse Point, Michigan." He told a story about how after she died he took a Renoir down off the wall but then thought better of it, thinking if he went after some of the good Japanese imari the daughter was less likely to notice the liberation. He was an influence on my career, I see now.
He was austere, and arch, and very, very wicked and I was glad I had made a good impression at our first brunch, when I served thin omelet's made of folded-over eggs without any filling inside. This pleased him immensely, as he referenced it for years afterward--perhaps I made up in style what was lacking in flavor, although I attributed the afternoon's success to the Bloody Mary's.
So having an important portrait of Hitler rolled up in one's closet (he said it sometimes fell out and hit him) certainly adds to one's overall effect. My brief foray across town to see what Sotheby's thought seemed innocuous at the time. I was aware the painting had no artistic merit, but its quality and historic importance were undeniable I felt, so I dismissed as odd what the auction house dismissed as controversial.
Since nothing succeeds like success, having a brother be the well-known chairman of Con-Edison was a component of his allure to me at that time as well, although after what I've learned recently researching Charles's career, I have to wonder who was the real sadist.
A lawyer by training, Charles Luce had had limited experience with utilities, according to Time magazine, writing in a 1977 Luce on Luce apologetics following a disastrous blackout--of not the drinking kind. He had been administrator of an Oregon power company in the 1960s and later "showed managerial talent as an Under Secretary of the Interior during the Johnson years"--the dead giveaway.
Speaking on the record for the company, but in actuality, I'd submit, more about himself, Luce said they provided "a tremendous catharsis for the pent-up tensions of the city. If we didn't have a Con Ed, we'd have to invent it." In other words, he was paid 200,000 of those delicious early-1970's dollars to be a whipping boy and a lightning rod. How else to explain his karma, which would have him quoted as saying only four days before the big event: "I can guarantee that the chances of a brownout or a blackout are less than they have been in the last 15 years, and that the chances are less here than in most other cities in the United States."
(A history project has conveniently organized bibliographies pertaining to the Great Northeast blackout of 1965; and the far different New York Blackout of 1977; as well as to the electric utility industry and the use of electric power in general, and hypertext links to web sites germane to the issue.)
The economic history of the utility makes absolutely no sense to me. Not surprising, given the company's own history, which speaks offhandedly of Thomas Edison's apparent "liberal payments to New York's open-handed city government," beginning at its inauguration in 1880, saying succinctly that by the mid-20th century, there was a "growing perception among New Yorkers that Con Ed was an inefficient utility. The origins of this reputation seem to be split between the unavoidable difficulties of supplying power in so complex an environment as New York City and Con Ed's failure to meet that challenge."
When the company couldn't afford to finish operating plants it had begun construction on, Luce had the state buy and finish them, then bought the power back, but how the consumer benefited by this is unknown. What then is the definition of the "state" here, versus a "power company?" Can a power company raise a militia in return? With 25 percent of a Con-Ed bill representing taxes, what is "off-the-books" to hide inadequate fiscal health? The company's history doesn't mince words: "Charles Luce's decision to sell off two of the company's plants in 1974 made possible a renaissance at Con Ed," but only for the real center of concern: the stock and bond holders. For the rate payers the dark ages continued.
"Luce took the unprecedented step of withholding dividends in the first quarter of 1974" causing the stock price to fall from $30 per share to $6, which would have been a good time for the state to buy out the utility and manage it for the public good. Because by 2001, the company could write, "As a result of our strong financial performance, we have been able to increase our dividend each year for more than a quarter century." "Strong financial performance" is code for "high rates," and lack of accountability.
"Between 1990 and 1993 the company laid off 3,000 workers, and by 2000 it had reduced its workforce by another 3,000." Since its business wasn't shrinking, doesn't this imply its prior workforce was inflated by 6000 workers?
It took the capital of Vanderbilt and Morgan to innovate and develop the electrical industry but that investment was paid off long ago. Even with politicians regulating the monopoly (that is, until they "de-regulated" it,) the seat of power always remained in the corporate board room and for 127 years, rich and poor New Yorkers alike have paid the highest electricity prices in the nation (with Long Island running a close second.)
But what should scare us the most is the lesson from the Blackout of 1977. Within a few hours of going off grid, disadvantaged neighborhoods devolved into orgies of looting, while in Greenwich Village, the hooting of orgies--one big all-night block party--was heard. The summer of "77
As Nietzsche said of Hitler (in 1881), so shall be said of George Bush.
to be continued.......
Hitler Historical Museum
Kaiser Wilhelm
Hitler Paintings Auctioned in England
Hitler Historical Museum
CONJURING HITLER: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich by Guido Giacomo Preparata
www.baumanconservation.com
Buchenwald
Knirr Portraits of Hitler 1935, 1936, 1937
www.thirdreichruins.com/kunsthaus1.htm
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=2D46D95946CC3DD4
www.thirdreich.ca/portraitsphotos.php
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
ConEd
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Deaths in Iraq from Southampton, Long Island
Southampton, on the East End of Long Island, is not all glitter and glamor after grubbing for money. Places have karma just like people do, and Southampton has her "issues" she's working on.
As the oldest English settlement in New York State, 1640, (well, Southold, our sister settlement on the North Fork also has a claim to oldest, but Southampton had Henry DuPont and Henry won) Southampton was a land grant, and the proprietors, as they were called, were still divvying up the spoils well into the 20th-century. The indigenous population, the Shinnecocks, are still with us, maintaining traditions on a small reservation of bottom land they were relegated to by an illegal act of government, land they are now resented for because of its tax-free status, as they start new traditions like suing for casino gambling rights. Descendants of the big name in original settlers, the Halseys, are also on the scene, many still farming, and I surmise having these original players still around after 360 years represents some sort of unfinished business.
In World War I, Southampton lost seven young men in the trenches and field hospitals of Europe. They are memorialized in a beautiful room called Parrish Hall, now owned by its neighbor, the financially strapped Southampton Hospital. The room has great leaded-glass French doors--centered on one wall is an elliptical light bay of them. Another wall has a fireplace flanked by niches articulated with semi-detached columns. The names of the seven boys are carved in marble below a broken pediment as an over-mantle.
When the room was recently renovated, a hidden movie screen was installed in the ceiling directly in front of the fireplace. When drug reps use the room, bringing with them enormous displays of free food to tempt the doctors, it is lowered for their slick presentations and often they forget to raise it back up again. The switch to operate the screen is in a little storeroom hidden behind one of the flanking niches. To access it, half of a bookcase swings open, like a hidden library door. If the screen is down, like a punctuating blank, when non-drug-transacting groups use the room, I take a fierce joy in the symbol-laden act of going behind the books to lift the veil to remember why the room exists.
Southampton has lost two men in the Iraq war so far. The first was Staff Sgt. James Pettaway, 37, and he might be considered typical, in as much he was a black man from a working class background, who segued into a career as a prison guard while serving in the reserves. Southampton has had a sizable minority community going back to the 18th century, coming up from the South as migrant farm workers, inter-marrying into native-American families, but never on an underground railroad. Pettaway was on his second tour of duty and he left behind a son.
The other loss is far from typical, socio-economically speaking, and as it continues to echo, I tend to believe Southampton is not such a bad place to stay after all, as something of great import unfolds across our planet and the field of our group consciousness.
He was Sargent 1rst Class Schuyler B. Haynes, 40, and he came from vweery good family, as the hard C in his given name is the same family name that gave New York its hard-c Schuyler county. Socially speaking, Southampton has a single sine qua non, the Beach Club, and the Haynes' had made the cut several steps back. Actually, his maternal grandmother, who was an Albany Townsend, had a magnificent shingle-style house on the ocean. In a back hall of the Haynes house in Southampton is a large-format aerial photograph of the ocean-front Townsend house, which was approached by a horseshoe driveway centered by a planting of blue hydrangea, all of it on a scale we can only dream about. The house burned down in 1927, making it the sort of ancestral bona fide having a family house lost in the hurricane of "38 is.
I understand that his mother remains distraught over her son's death. His funeral last November, held at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, had the pews overflowing with a type who, for the most part, had never had the war brought home to them in this way. There is no easy way out of Iraq and learning its lessons won't be easy, although I am of a mind the lessons will be hardest for people of Schuyler's background. He will be memorialized this coming Sunday at St Andrews Dune Church, where the rich worship in blazers, at least until the next hurricane. He left behind his cat.
As the oldest English settlement in New York State, 1640, (well, Southold, our sister settlement on the North Fork also has a claim to oldest, but Southampton had Henry DuPont and Henry won) Southampton was a land grant, and the proprietors, as they were called, were still divvying up the spoils well into the 20th-century. The indigenous population, the Shinnecocks, are still with us, maintaining traditions on a small reservation of bottom land they were relegated to by an illegal act of government, land they are now resented for because of its tax-free status, as they start new traditions like suing for casino gambling rights. Descendants of the big name in original settlers, the Halseys, are also on the scene, many still farming, and I surmise having these original players still around after 360 years represents some sort of unfinished business.
In World War I, Southampton lost seven young men in the trenches and field hospitals of Europe. They are memorialized in a beautiful room called Parrish Hall, now owned by its neighbor, the financially strapped Southampton Hospital. The room has great leaded-glass French doors--centered on one wall is an elliptical light bay of them. Another wall has a fireplace flanked by niches articulated with semi-detached columns. The names of the seven boys are carved in marble below a broken pediment as an over-mantle.
When the room was recently renovated, a hidden movie screen was installed in the ceiling directly in front of the fireplace. When drug reps use the room, bringing with them enormous displays of free food to tempt the doctors, it is lowered for their slick presentations and often they forget to raise it back up again. The switch to operate the screen is in a little storeroom hidden behind one of the flanking niches. To access it, half of a bookcase swings open, like a hidden library door. If the screen is down, like a punctuating blank, when non-drug-transacting groups use the room, I take a fierce joy in the symbol-laden act of going behind the books to lift the veil to remember why the room exists.
Southampton has lost two men in the Iraq war so far. The first was Staff Sgt. James Pettaway, 37, and he might be considered typical, in as much he was a black man from a working class background, who segued into a career as a prison guard while serving in the reserves. Southampton has had a sizable minority community going back to the 18th century, coming up from the South as migrant farm workers, inter-marrying into native-American families, but never on an underground railroad. Pettaway was on his second tour of duty and he left behind a son.
The other loss is far from typical, socio-economically speaking, and as it continues to echo, I tend to believe Southampton is not such a bad place to stay after all, as something of great import unfolds across our planet and the field of our group consciousness.
He was Sargent 1rst Class Schuyler B. Haynes, 40, and he came from vweery good family, as the hard C in his given name is the same family name that gave New York its hard-c Schuyler county. Socially speaking, Southampton has a single sine qua non, the Beach Club, and the Haynes' had made the cut several steps back. Actually, his maternal grandmother, who was an Albany Townsend, had a magnificent shingle-style house on the ocean. In a back hall of the Haynes house in Southampton is a large-format aerial photograph of the ocean-front Townsend house, which was approached by a horseshoe driveway centered by a planting of blue hydrangea, all of it on a scale we can only dream about. The house burned down in 1927, making it the sort of ancestral bona fide having a family house lost in the hurricane of "38 is.
I understand that his mother remains distraught over her son's death. His funeral last November, held at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, had the pews overflowing with a type who, for the most part, had never had the war brought home to them in this way. There is no easy way out of Iraq and learning its lessons won't be easy, although I am of a mind the lessons will be hardest for people of Schuyler's background. He will be memorialized this coming Sunday at St Andrews Dune Church, where the rich worship in blazers, at least until the next hurricane. He left behind his cat.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Spray Painting Over Blast Damage: It's Not the Crime, It's the Cover-up
Note especially the middle window on the right. It has been blasted outwards into the air shaft, which is forward, toward the facade of the Pentagon; in other words, in the opposite direction an aircraft supposed took, which entered the building from the outside in.Also on the right corner, is a clear indication of the technique used, of gradating metallic shades in imitation of the natural shades on planes as seen in sunlight. The giveaway however, ruining the trompe l'oeil effect, was in painting over even the window glass.
The brightest goldest gold is reserved for the cleave that splits the back of the E-ring on the left, and I would submit it serves as the central iconic symbol of an opening up of a rich vein of wealth, a manifest destiny for the 21rst century, complete with downspout, but hidden, meant to be seen only by the knowledgeable few--and of course, predicated on war. I should think being "cut in" on a deal like this is a powerful inducement for keeping the secret, that, and the implications behind the little rhyme, "snitches get stitches."
Also note on the extreme left, on a fifth-floor windowsill, the hardened puddle of melted blast-proof window.
This photograph sure gets around. It can be found in one Navy and two Army image archives, and it's even available commercially---I found it at the Corbis image archive, although they makes three mistakes--one, it is not by Ron Sachs, two, it is not an aerial view, and three, they have it positioned sideways!
0000382189-006| RM|© Ron Sachs/CNP/CORBIS
AERIAL VIEW OF PENTAGON AFTER ATTACK Original caption: Result of the crash of an American Airlines aircraft on the Pentagon. The offices were destroyed.
Image: © Ron Sachs/CNP/CORBIS Photographer: Ron Sachs Date Photographed: September 14, 2001 Location Information: Arlington, Virginia, USA
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And why did these "blast-resistant" windows on the exterior facade of the E-ring fail so catastrophically? Sgt Lagasse's little dissertation in the PentaCon film Smoking Dutch Cleanser, that the explosions at the Pentagon were deflagrations not detonations, misses the connotations of the conflagrations , which were concussive not percussive and Lagasse is a little ass-e.
(Flickr terminated my 3000-image study account of editorial material I had downloaded off the web. This image was of an office interior with untouched photocopy machine, but with windows melted from exterior heat.)If this was a test, the windows failed.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
My Friend Russ the Retired New York City Fireman
Well, some heard "surprise party" but i heard "slumber party" so I'm wearing my new pair of pajamas, damn it. Others heard "funny hat" party, which Ill go along with because funny hats make terrific centerpieces and I don't want to run out and buy a mess of flowers.
Russ, my retired New York City firefighter friend, just came by with some supplies, and be brought his old New York City fireman's hat from the 1970's when he was a probie and I just love saying the word, let alone trying to spell it. It's made of tooled leather and it is melted in the back. Russ told an excruciating story about how his brass emblem came to be bent like that and I believe him.
His head went inside here.
Russ says that the average carbon fire can burn at 1000 degrees and that a skyscraper fire can burn much hotter--2000 degrees! I don't argue with him because he is much bigger than me. He also gives great hugs and I don't want to alienate him.I don't know why I act so difficult online. Do you think it has to do with the new technology? In person I'm much more cautious about consequences.
He's a terrific dancer too! I think I could fall in love with a real person.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
I'm in a Knucklehead ocnsky Russ State of Mind
Here I am weeding my shady wild-flower glen filled with the rare white Alba form of the biannual Lunaria, commonly called "Silver Dollar Plant" for the seed pods which develop later. Of course, in the foreground, a few examples have reverted to the loud purple, which I allow, although I rip them out of the ground before they can even think of completing the sex act.The birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees.
A thing called love.
Funniest thing I ever read on the BCO/Crewcial circuit is a play on an IP address:
cut.us.in
cut.me.in?
My idea for the next Google billionaire:
GooglePsychHistory!
Instead of an "I feel lucky" button
You'd press "Off His Meds?" for a quick search.
cut.me.in?
My idea for the next Google billionaire:
GooglePsychHistory!
Instead of an "I feel lucky" button
You'd press "Off His Meds?" for a quick search.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Stevenwarran Turns 50: The Pre-Party
Getting in between Mr & Mrs. Pink.
Tee-shirts and body English talking.
Cherche le femme.
Three of my favorite guys and a mother.
Parking like in a Pentagon photograph.
Color theory gone wrong!
Much more sophisticated theories at work.
The money shot.
Coming up next: The Slumber Party
Coming up next: The Slumber PartyMonday, April 30, 2007
Beaver Welch
I must really be feeling wounded to pull this out. Perhaps just a temporary malaise after seeing myblackass's contribution of a photograph of a bloated corpse on a related message board. Hopefully, his is judicial evidence, and not extra-judicial, and he posts it because he identifies with a fate in the electric chair, which is obviously his destiny. Everybody brings something different to the table and that's his gift.
I love the fact that I'm one-year old and I'm interested in the man with the camera.
What do you make of this copy?
The Welches spent their vacation in Wisconsin and Canada--and while there convinced a Canadian couple to come down to Rock Island on their vacation.Convinced? Was it hard? Why?
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dixon of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, spent this week in Rock Island at the Welch home.
The penultimate paragraph bears repeating:
"Steven is nicknamed 'Beaver,'" Mrs. Welch explained, :Partly because of the TV program and partly because he's 'busy as a beaver' all day."I recall my report cards in the third grade were still issued to "Beaver Welch."
On edit: Feb. 11, 2009
The truth can be so elusive. That's why having good archives is important. On a recent dip into such I found the following two images from 1958:
In the first, where I thought I was so cute being intrigued by the strange man with the camera, in truth I was simply being purchased, bought off, with some sugary food substance. See the hand of the woman with the painted-on eyebrows, and the opened bag of mini-marshmallows ? Take THAT away, and then you can SCREW the man with the camera---give me more cookie! One in the hand and back em up on the tray, bar-maid!
And look at my hair. Do I seem to be the only one sweating? AT AGE ONE??! What's up with that?Although, I must say, mother looks tastefully accessorized with that interesting bracelet and those clip earrings. And such humble, focused poses.
This leads me to another issue: We, the two of us---my mother and I---have agreed that our memories can sometimes be so divergent that we are both going to have to write independent history books of our shared experiences.
A case in point---I am convinced that somewhere along in my childhood I accessed knowledge held inside "my baby book" where a fascinating anecdote was recorded----my first word. According to my memory, my first word as recorded in that book was "fry-fries," said on the way to some of the beef-suet-soaked treats at the golden arches of McDonald's.
Now, this is a trick, because there weren't very many McDonald's around in 1958. However, if you do the research, you'll find that one of the first few was on 23rd Avenue in Moline, Illinois, "The Farm Implement Manufacturing Capital of the World"---Moline, that is. In 1900, the John Deere Company was the fifth largest corporation in America, and it has always been headquartered in Moline, since the 1960's in a beautiful Eero Saarinen-designed building, so don't go looking down your noses at Moline, mind you, because it's also home to Case and Caterpillar.
Now here's where it gets very tricky. On a recent trip back to the salt mine holding family material I could reasonably determine that my baby book is no more! Yes! It has been squashed! Suppressed! Not to cast aspersions loosely here, but Cui bono? Who might have an interest in seeing my early addiction training, um...altered? Ma-ma? Da-da? I say fry-fry.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
April 24, 2007
The Day my Juliette Balcony was Installed.
Erected. Raised. Whatever.
Erected. Raised. Whatever.
10am "Oh happy dagger....here is thy sheath!
Spring in Southampton!
My Berty, Reminding us: two fists for every asshole!
OK. It's up. What do you think?
We'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to take a proper picture in "the golden light."
Here's a fancy pair of wrought-iron gates from the Bradley-Martin house in Old Westbury: Knole by Carrier & Hastings. My fancy-pants lawyer friend who appreciates fine metal work can have them for a cool 12K. The original gilt is under the black paint. I'll have his initials crafted for the central cartouche, which are what again?
Chris is a hot 25-year-old who wants to come live out back at my place. I said sure, let's talk more tomorrow. I got him going.
Monday, April 23, 2007
THIS IS MY LIFE
THIS IS MY MIND
THIS IS MY CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS
THIS IS THE AMERICAN MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AT
FULL FLOWER
FULL FLOWER
WHO DO YOU THINK WILL WIN?
THIS IS WHAT I LIKE TO DO TO YOUNG MEN WHEN I GET THEM IN MY CLUTCHES
In honor of the arrival Wednesday of Bella Elizabeth Duque, a Taurus with a shock of dark hair like her father, Luis, who for three years was my live-in Hispanic (there needs to be a term for that.) Although Luis had lots of natural ability, I take some credit for classing up his act, and getting him married into a well-fixed local Catholic family. I had a wonderful experience standing up for him on the altar of our wildly overdecorated local church. The lighting was so superb I felt like I was in a movie.
Later, I crashed and burned giving the toast. Why did I think it was important to tell the gathered, "I want you to know! I never had sex with that boy! Luis. Luis Duque!"
As his "American father," I was forgiven. They are a very happy, growing family
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