a fool in the forest

Planespotting

B-2 Spirit [fka Stealth] Bomber, en route to overfly the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, as seen from our back yard in neighboring Glendale, January 1, 2009.

This fool Welcomes You to 2009

Under the familiar weight 
Of winter, conscience and the State, 
In loose formations of good cheer, 
Love, language, loneliness and fear, 
Towards the habits of next year, 
Along the streets the people flow, 
Singing or sighing as they go: 
Exalte, piano, or in doubt, 
All our reflections turn about 
A common meditative norm, 
Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform. 

-- from W.H. Auden, "New Year Letter" (1940)

So Hang Your Holiday Rainbow Lights in the Garden

Merry Christmas to each and all, from this friendly fool.  And in these days so cold and dreary, whether literally or metaphorically, let cockeyed optimism thrive.  

~~~

Photo: "Fairy Lights" by Flickr! user dandy_fsj, used under Creative Commons license.  Post title via The National.

Miscellahootenany

Do not stop to think or edit:
You must be the first who said it.

-- Baby’s First Internet

~~~

Some traveling music please, maestro:

I -- I can remember (I remember)
Standing -- by the Wall (by the Wall) . . . 

[via The Morning News.]

~~~

Genre, I'm Only Dancing:

The Los Angeles Times' Michael Chabon interview from a week or two back revisits, more interestingly than it deserves, the well-worn topic of Serious Writers Working in Genre Fiction:

Let's start with some of the pulp or genre writers who have spoken to you over the years and perhaps inspired your own books.

There are so many.  Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Ross Thomas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Alan Moore.  And there are a whole list of borderland writers -- John Crowley, Jorge Luis Borges, Stephen Millhauser, Thomas Pynchon -- writers who can dwell between worlds.

[fool's note: That's a very nice list of very good writers there -- other than the comic book guys, whose work I am not qualified to assess.]

Where did this bias against work created for a popular audience come from?

In all fairness, it came from the fact that the vast preponderance of art created for a mass audience is crap.  It's impossible to ignore that.  But the vast preponderance of work written as literary art is high-toned crap.  The proportion may settle down in the neighborhood of 90/10 -- Sturgeon's Law said that 90% of everything is crud.

~~~

On the subject of recommended reading lists, Robin Varghese of 3quarksdaily points to China Miéville's top 10 weird fiction books for the Guardian.  It actually dates back to 2002, but the list -- at least the half of it of which I have personal experience -- is a good 'un.

~~~

With Deerstalker, Calabash and Tentacles:

Neil Gaiman is no stranger to weird fiction.  His tale, "A Study in Emerald" [PDF] cross-pollinates the worlds of Conan Doyle and Lovecraft, with not necessarily predictable results.  Several key characters go unnamed; readers reasonably familiar with the Holmes canon will draw the appropriate disturbing conclusions.

~~~

Unhappy with your bank?  Keep your chin up and remember that things could always be much, much worse.

~~~

Tom Wark offers up Lester Bangs' Lessons for Wine Writers.

~~~

Virginibus Puerisque:*

Friends, are you looking for lawyers rapt in the contemplation of life's rich pageant in all its scintillant richness?  Then, look no further than Victoria Pynchon's brightwhiteandsparklinglyvirginal edition of Blawg Review #171 on the IP ADR Blog.   It's lubricious and nutritious!   

Vickie, who is known to have a soft spot for poetry and other humanizing pursuits, is also well worth reading on a regular basis at her other shop, the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog (where, for the benefit of executives, millennials, blogging fools and others with foreshortened attention spans, she offers a handily pre-digested Executive Summary of Blawg Review # 171). 

As a twice-three-time Blawg Review host myself, I am appropriately awed by Vickie's accomplishment -- or her stunning Beginner's Luck, as the case may be.

* Don't get excited: that's just classical Latin for "boys and girls" or "youths and maids."

~~~

Photo: "Foolish House, Ontario Beach Park in 1910," via Flickr user (!) the George Eastman House.  More on the Eastman House collections here.  Existence of Eastman House photostream discovered via ::: wood s lot :::.

Sparkling Distractions

A random collection of links and remarks that have been piling up in recent days, weeks, months:

• It seems like only yesterday that Cyd Charisse was dancing on these pages, and now comes word of her passing at age 87.  By way of tribute, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News offers a comprehensive collection of YouTube exemplars of Ms. Charisse's terpsichorean artistry.  His choice of Brigadoon as all-time favorite would not be mine, but is entirely defensible.
  

• Sir William Hamilton is best known as the cuckolded husband in the romance of Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson, but he was also The Volcano Lover referenced in the title of Susan Sontag's (excellent) novel.  The Volcanism Blog has an appreciation of Sir William's thoroughgoing fascination with all things Vesuvian: 

• "Aesthetic geology - Sir William Hamilton’s ‘Campi Phlegraei’." 

(Via Alan Sullivan.)  Previously, of related interest, but not involving volcanos:

• When Emma Met George
• Susan Sontag Breaks Camp, Moves On Into Larger World

• I have been entirely willing to overlook it, given the beauty and charm of the site and the high fascination value of the objects in question, but Lee Rosenbaum is right: the theming and many (not all) of the supporting labels at the Getty Villa really ought to aspire to a higher lowest common denominator than they do.  (In the Getty's defense, the available audio commentary on much of the collection is generally better than the display labels.)

• Louis Menand in the New Yorker gives a good precis of what was right and wrong (and deeply dreadful) about Ezra Pound.  He also does a good job of capturing what still appeals to me about the High Modern moment at the start of the last century, before the 1914-1918 War distorted and disfigured it beyond recognition and the 1939-1945 War did it in altogether.

[Hugh] Kenner’s title was deliberately ironic: the point of 'The Pound Era' is that a Pound era never happened.  The hopes of the pre-war avant-garde, the artistic excitement of the years between 1908 and 1914, when the modernist movement spread throughout Europe, died in the trenches and the camps. 'Dreams clash and are shattered': two wars of annihilation destroyed the aspirations of poets and painters to be the authors of an earthly paradise

Via former Reasonite Tim Cavanaugh at Opinion L.A.  See also my previous mumblings on Kenner and Pound here.

• Also from the New Yorker: Jonathan Rosen thinks much more highly of Milton than Menand does of Pound.  With reason.

• If anyone cares, I am of a mind that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Boumediene decision, acknowledging the potential habeas corpus rights of Guantanamo detainees, is pretty plainly correct.  This places me in the company of wild-eyed leftists the like of Barack Obama and ... George  Will.  (Link via Tim Lynch.) 

• The sad story of the Power of the State and Tom Stoppard's swimming pool.

Finally, speaking from personal and ongoing experience, this list by Matthew Baldwin is remarkably accurate:

• Typical Reaction to the Revelation That I Do Not Own a Cell Phone, By Year. 

(Via The Morning News.)

California will ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving, effective July 1.  Not good enough: use of the pestilent contraptions should also be prohibited while walking. 

In fact, I would propose the wholesale reintroduction in this country of the fully-enclosed Telephone Booth, with this difference: instead of containing pay phones, the Booths would be empty.  The Booths would also be declared by law to be the only places, outside of one's home or private office, that cell phone use would be permitted.  There would be no Telephone Booths in public restrooms.

This is an idea whose time will surely come, and you will all thank me for it.

~~~

Illustrations:
Ezra Pound by R. B. Kitaj, via Second Evening Art. 
"Phone booth near Death Valley 431-5--Oct 1981" by Flickr! user km6xo, used under Creative Commons license.

A Miscellany's Good as a Mile

In Her Majesty's Royal Mail:
The new James Bond postage stamps -- that's right, James Bond postage stamps, issued on January 8 to coincide with the centennary of Ian Fleming's birth -- show the evolution of Bondian cover art as "[a] dumbed- down, sexed-up nose-dive from intriguing subtlety to crass commercialism." 

[via The Elegant Variation]

~~~

Romance 'neath the Autumn Stars:
Speaking of The Elegant Variation, earlier this week TEV proprietor and generally serious literary person Mark Sarvas -- to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for introducing me, by his obsessive online proselytizing, to the novels of John Banville, before the manifold excellences of which my powers of description cower for shame of their insufficiency -- revealed the buried childhood secret that he is a recovered Trekkie.  In the course of his confession, Mark recreates an exchange between his younger self and William Shatner during Shatner's long-ago university lecture tour:

SHATNER:  Well, is there anything at all you want to ask me?

ME: (thinking; only one shot here with the Captain.  Then it strikes):  Of all the women you ever kissed on Star Trek, which one did you like the best?

(The room, as you can imagine, erupts.  Thumbs up from my friends in the cheap seats.)

SHATNER:  (after it dies down; a slight leer)  I liked them all, Mark.  I liked them all.

Compare and contrast this exchange on similar subject matter from this morning's Los Angeles Times (60 Seconds With . . . William Shatner):

HOW MUCH FUN WAS IT TO BE JAMES T. KIRK, CAPTAIN OF THE ENTERPRISE AND UNIVERSAL LADIES' MAN?

It was so much fun I got a divorce . . . My body is ruined as a result.

Do not underestimate his recuperative powers.  William Shatner, after all ... is a shaman:

Usage Note: Although William Shatner portrayed Captain James T. Kirk and later, in the role of T.J. Hooker, played opposite Heather Locklear, he is not to be confused with the also-famous Wee Kirk o' the Heather.

~~~

á LA cart-ography
Which map of greater Los Angeles do you prefer: Raymond Chandler's or Tom Petty's?

~~~

For the "Now" Voyager

• Are you infected with the desire to circle the globe without further warming it? 
• Have you been bitten by the Environmentally Sound Travel bug
  [e. cotourismi]? 
• Do you desire to see the sea without seeing the CO2, too? 

Then consider booking passage on an Alternative Energy Cruise utilizing the amazing Glatfelder Atmospheric Convection Propulsion Engine.

~~~

"There's No Lang Like an Auld Lang," Says the Syne Post Up Ahead

a fool in the forest wishes, for all and sundry, a pleasant ever-present effervescence in 2008.

Regular posting resumes here by January 2.  Meanwhile, please visit this fool's alter ego, Declarations and Exclusions, for the latest in Pyramid Power news and particularly for Uncle Walt and little Shirley's announcement of our nominees for 2007 Blawg Review of the Year.

~~~

Photo Credit: "First New Year (2007)" by dmhergert, featuring the lovely and talented Flora Hergert, via Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.

And Koala Good Night

Happy Christmas from this fool to you and yours.

Music, maestro!

• wisp - Candlegrove [MP3 link]

• wisp - Silent Night [MP3 link]

~~~

Wisp music from Xmas87 (2004), via The Wisp Archive out of Spoilt Victorian Child.  The origins of the candletree illustration are cloaked in Eastern mystery.

Dies Natalis Invicti Solis

With solstice here we'll celebrate
This sacred time and have much cheer
We will bring warmth and we'll bring light
Unto the darkest time of year

The mistletoe will be cut down
With sickle from the sacred tree
A kiss I'll give to you my love
A pledge of friendship made to thee

For greater than the will of man
Or want of that which can be done
It falls and shines on where we stand
Beneath the great unconquered sun

from "Unconquered Sun" (Steeleye Span/Ken Nicol)

I have long held a soft spot in my heart for the Winter Solstice.*  It is always close to Christmas without actually being Christmas, and it comes freighted with oodles of colorful pagan, druidical, Golden Bough-ish regalia.  Even better, it is in that rare class of events that occur simultaneously for the entire world.  Unlike man-made holidays and calendar-based observances such as the variously calculated New Years, which occur at different times or on different days depending upon your time zone or creed, the Winter Solstice occurs for all -- as do its cousins the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes and that other, less interesting Solstice -- at that moment when the entire planet occupies a precise spot on Kepler's ellipse.  It is there and gone in a flash, but it is the same flash no matter where you are.  Whoa.  Dude.

Unfortunately, because I scheduled this post to appear at the moment of this year's Solstice, the fact that you are reading this means you have already missed it.

The solstice being no more than a memory already, lets continue to dwell on the past.  Here are links to my two previous Winter Solstice posts.  Not sure where I went wrong in 2003 and 2005:

• 2006: A Southwest Solstice [w/ special guest, Howe Gelb]

• 2004: Trilithon for Size [w/ special guests John Constable and J.M.W. Turner]

Special solstice greetings to Cowtown Pattie, down around the Big Bend, in honor of her decidedly ribald suggestion of last year concerning appropriate celebratory rituals.

And extra special solstice greetings to each and all, out here lost in the stars.

~~~

UPDATE [122207]:  Because I originally pre-posted this, I was not able at first to link this year's contribution from that other congenital Solstice observer, David Giacalone at f/k/a.  There's haiku involved, naturally.  Also, a reminder that it's not too late to equip yourself for the coming year with the freely downloadable and printable 2008 Giacalone Haiga Calendar, combining David's poetry with his twin Arthur's photography. 

I've got mine.  Have you? 

(What's that?  You've got mine, too?  Get your own, why don'cha?)

~~~

* The Wikipedia article on seasons tells me I should call the Winter Solstice the "December Solstice" because "it is no longer considered appropriate to use the old northern-seasonal designations for the astronomical quarter days" lest one be thought a loathsome southernhemispherophobe.  (Antipodophobe?)  This comes as news to me, and I am not certain I actually believe it.

~~~

Photo: "Solstice Garden" by strollerdos via Flickr under Creative Commons license.

"Unconquered Sun" appears on Steeleye Span's 2004 Christmas album, Winter, available most affordably via
  .

"The Hora! The Hora!"

Hanukkah will begin at sunset today.  It is not my own holiday season, but it is a holiday season for many -- most, really -- of my longest lasting and most cherished friends.  So, for them in particular, let me offer this excerpt from a 1989 Chabad telethon broadcast, featuring the festive song stylings of Mr. P. Himmelman, Mr. H. D. Stanton, and, looking very relaxed on the mouth organ, Mr. B. Zimmerman-Dylan.  L'Chaim indeed:

Those same friends of mine will appreciate that I could not resist this when it turned up in a search for appropriate imagery.  I detect the influence of Marc Chagall in this fine Menorah of the North:

 

~~~

Chabad video via Some Velvet Blog.

Moose Menorah photo by Kathy Willens (AP) via Ventura County Star.  Simply have to have one?  Try New Orleans' Dashka Roth contemporary jewelry and judaica.