short notes:
will brady's ruminations
home town scenes
At the entrance to the Salmon River Conceptual Art Project [site closed for the winter]
culture wars?
Santa Claus is a Black Man I can just imagine how
Bill O'Reilly will react to this one. After all, it was O'Reilly, the
phalandering self-righteous prig, who used his
Faux News bully pulpit to distract the populace from real issues, like Iraq, and economic disparities, to focus on what amounts to a a false arguement.
Profit hungry Corporate retailers cashing in on the
commercialization of the Birth of Christ. You know, the Hebrew prophet who
threw the money lenders out of the Temple.
I mean, really, I can't understand how obtuse O'Reilly is ...until I remember he's getting paid to be so. So in essence, O'Reilly's just another
Scaife Whore even if not directly on that ideologue's personal payroll.
adventurers
Couch Potatoes beware!
Dave Moore, from Middletown, Connecticut hosts and sponsors Aerosapiens. What's that, you ask? Quite simply the quest to engage in human powered flight. He provides a brief glimpse of those who aspire to succeed where Icaraus did not.
Not to be outdone, and more down to earth [so to speak] there's the winter version of the Boston Marathon, known as the
Santa Speedo Run [reported first for me at the Tillerman's
Proper Course Blog] I'm sure the icecicles were stunted last weekend.
But then I return to my long-time favorite of hard-core leisure adventurers, Tim Zimmerman's
Wet Ass Chronicles. Actually, Tim's on hiatus this week or next so you might want to see how the folks at
Sailing Anarchy ["
Where the status quo blows"] and the kiters are doing.
washington d c
the capitol rests
Justin Watt took this photo after driving up from the Carolinas during an ice storm in 2002. I was struck by its serenity.
THANKS TO: Justinsomnia | BTW Justin, I've corrected that link glitch | Write me with your actual e-mail addy one of these days | write to will(dot)brady at gmail(dot)com |
art or porn
Think you can tell the difference? The Guardian Unlimited
asks the question of its readers.
I got 8 of 10 right, prompting the findings that either I'm "
1: a devotee of great cinematic art, and recognise key moments in film history when you see them. [or] 2: have a huge stash of vintage porn."
You, too, can take the quiz.
blog stats
For what it's worth:
my readership stats from SiteMeter 
This is with no publicity outside an occasional word of mouth mention and a handful of other blogs that have this page blogrolled.
The majority of the page's readers come from repeat visitors, though I get a goodly number of new visitors from
Google and
Yahoo Search engines. From the "key words" tracking I can see this has a lot to do with the variety of materials I opine upon.
I have to admit to some disappointment that the photo of the
bondage bed [
not even mine, just a reference to a site that seemed off-the-wall] and the "
gay kiss" image get, overall, the most draws to my site; the mention of the
Numa Numa Dance coming close behind these popular draws.
On the other hand, I get lots of draw because I seem to be one of the few places that has info posted about billionaire
Timothy Mellon and the Colonial Realty theives
Ben Sisti and Jonathan Googel.
52% of my readership is from North America. 14% from Germany. Go figure.
But hardly anybody writes.
at the hospital
Images from where I work. Some might not expect to find things of beauty at a
mental hospital, but one can. There is, doubtless, a certain sadness to the beauty, but it is beauty nevertheless.
These are but a handfull of over 600 photos taken during a prolonged shoot with a fine arts photographer who specialized in capturing the haunting images of abandoned buildings. The campus these are from is still an active hospital grounds. The images were capured in 1998 and 1999.
solstice
Today's the day the Earth Stands Still> Winter Solstice. A day solemn and sacred for many, including Deists and Pagan alike. The literal and symbolic point when the Earth is closest to the sun yet, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, seems to be the farthest away.
Four days from when Lorraine and I travel to witness the sun rise at Misquamicut.
And a day when Native Peoples celebrate the
Unity of the Sacred Circle of Creation.
My warmest wishes and heartfelt prayers for happiness, contentment, safekeeping and love go to all of you on this occasion.
propaganda
Remember Ronnie Reagan's war?
Saved from Rape and Slavery 
is the message from a
real CIA propaganda comic distributed in Grenada in 1983 and 1984.
Propaganda distributed in war zones is nothing new, especially not for the United States. While I find it reprehensible that my tax dollars went to pay for placement of canned articles about soccer fields in Iraq, I am hardly surprised at the practice.
For that matter, given that Bush & Company paid to write, publish, distribute and miseducate Americans with propaganda about No Child Left Behind, the eviseration of Social Security [an who knows what else] it outght to be no surprise at all.
I have to thank
Ethan Pearsoff for having the gumption, and courage, to post the Grenada propaganda on his altogether bizarre site. Check out
The Recovery of Charlie Pickle to find out how weird.
iraq quagmire
reflections on president bush's speech 
ebeneezer scrooge awards 2005
an open letter to US Congress
Greetings,
FIGHT BUDGET CUTS TO VITAL SERVICES Call your U.S. Senators today!
House and Senate leaders in Congress have agreed to over $41 billion in cuts over 5 years with many harmful cuts to Medicaid, child support enforcement, foster care, Social Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and student loans.
The House voted to approve these cuts after an all-night session, allowing virtually no time for members to look at the 774-page bill. The agreement now stands or falls on the final vote in the Senate which could happen as early as today.
Call your Senators today, using this toll-free number: 1-888-355-3588.
Tell them:# Vote NO on the budget bill conference report (S. 1932). It hurts low-income children, families, the elderly and disabled.
# Do not allow these one-sided sacrifices to be inflicted on low-income Americans while Congress is preparing to give still more tax breaks to the rich.
Here are some of the cuts in this nasty deal:
* Medicaid will be slashed by an estimated $4.8 million.
* People with disabilities will have to wait as long as a year to receive Social Security Income benefits they are owed because the government has taken so long to approve their application.
* Children will be deprived of $1.5 billion over 5 years in child support not collected because of cuts in enforcement.
* Cuts to child care will mean that 255,000 fewer children will receive child care in 2010 compared to this year.
* Student loans will be cut by $12.7 billion over 5 years.
The Republican leadership is determined to reach an agreement on these cuts before the holidays. So call your Senators today. Your support will make a big difference. Thank you very much.CREDIT TO: UNION VOICE "Online Activism with an Offline Impact" |
christmas in new york
Rockefeller Centre Tree
IMAGE BY: Tom Pfau | Tom + Courtney are headed up to the Adirondacks for Christmas, a far sight away from NYC, but they took a visit recently and came home with the tree.
american skyline
As a kid, I was always fascinated with the American Skyline Kits. Manufactured and sold by
Elgo Plastics, the outfit best known for the American Bricks toys sets, the kits were designed to imitate the sleek design of modernist architecture
from the 1930s.
The sets are comprised of white plastic wall panels of various lengths and styles which slot into connectors which stack to form columns
between the wall units. Panels come in three lengths and are either windows or doors - there are no solid walls.
There are also short foundation parts and steps to allow buildings to have a plinth. Thin plastic roof / floor plates sit on top of
walls which can be finished by balustrading and capping parts. Further set back storys can be built on the roof if desired, anchoring them to the lower building by special column caps.
The sets came in about five different sizes, the smallest allowing someone to build a scale model of the Wrigley Building, the largest, a complex. Toy
enthusiast Geoff Lilliker
describes the Skyline set in more detail.
American Skyline was by no means the only building kit set that set about to teach curious kids about high-rise construction endeavors. Architoys, a site devoted to all toys construction oriented, has published an essay on
Other building / construction toy sets written by George Wetzel.
[
Incidentally, there's a set on sale this week at e-bay if anybody wants to gift me it for Christmas, though I dare say that Bruce would object after seeing the potential for clutter] And although I recognize that envy is a sin, I'm certainly envious of the author of
Swapatorium who bought an impressive
Kit # 93 for only $1.00 last October.
rockwell kent
I worked for a chain of small newspapers,
Denton Publications, back when I lived in the Adirondacks. One year I talked Bill Denton Jr. into running a spread of Christmas images that had been done by noted artist
Rockwell Kent for our annual Christmas issue.
This left it to me to call Sally Kent Gorton, Kent's surviving widow, to ask if we could do this. She graciously accepted and invited me to visit their home at Asgaard, outside of Ausable Falls, NY.
I was left alone in his old prints room for close to two hours, looking through the vast assrotment of images. I found over a dozen, one of which she and John Gorton though had been lost. She permitted the paper to print them all.
I wrote about this visit in more detail in April 04.
But what you see here are none of those images. The ones you see here [except for the color painting, which is, I think at Plattsburgh State] are surprise Christmas gifts to Bruce and I. We found them on sale yesterday and bought them immediately. It is a treasure to now have two prints of Kent's in my home.
holiday cheer
We don't go to parties very often but we did get to see Bruce and Kathy's soiree. We were honored to have been a part of the festivities.
distractions
On the lighter side of things Joe-KS put this little ditty up.
Marilyn Monroe has nothing on these guys. I'm certain this parade isn't happening in New England right now.
On the other hand, perhaps they would be right at home in
Fairbanks, Alaska.
New Orleans at Christmas
John Strain and the Times Picyune give an update on things in the Big Easy these days. While it seems clear that
some remain unhappy it's clear that different parts of New Orleans, even the
New Orleans Police Department are rebuilding themselves.
Rebuilding and becoming untraumatized from catastrophic events such as the near total destruction of a city is certainly never easy. It is easy to understand how people can, in frustration, vent their anger at just about anyone and anything. And in an age where telecommunications conveys the almost universal [yet] distorted perception that things resolve as quickly as they get disrupted, the expectations of people become all the more unrealistic and demanding.
Eventually, the Big Easy will one day again look like the image on the right [by
Justin in 2001] instead of that on the left [from
NOLA.com]. Would that it were now, but it isn't. Recovery shall, no doubt, take years but New Orleans' revival has, however already begun.
A blog adjunct to rondak.org [click on the globe] | Perspectives on: human rights; environmental concerns; life as a visual artist; 21st century feudalism; progressive politics; aboriginal culture; new urbanism; permaculture; sustainable technology; non-traditional families; achievable utopias
Hurricane Katrina: John Strain from Covington, LA. continues reporting his observations. From my end, here's a page of useful Katrina Links. Not that you can drive anywhere but WDSU's Causeway Camera is STILL NOT operating.
