#throwbackthursday

Exploring our new Seattle neighborhood. (2019)

Creeping out our old Estacada neighborhood. (2019)

Monsters from the Id

I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

Another Girl, Another Planet

From Space:

You are smaller than I remember

And so is the house, set downhill

Afloat in a sea of scrub oak. From up here

It’s an ordinary box with gravel

Spread over its lid, weighting it, but

Inside it’s full of shadows and sky.

Clouds pull themselves over dry

Grass, which, if  I’m not mistaken, will erupt

Any minute in flame. Only

A spark, a sunbeam focused. From up

Here, enjoying the view, I can finally

Take you in. Will you wave back? I keep

Slingshotting around. There’s gravity

For you, but all I ever wanted was to fly.

Katharine Coles.

See androids fighting Brad and Janet

Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet.

To Strive

The Struggle Staggers Us:

Our birth and death are easy hours like sleep
and food and drink. The struggle staggers us
for bread, for pride, for simple dignity.
And this is more than fighting to exist,
more than revolt and war and human odds.
There is a journey from the Me to You.
There is a journey from the You to Me.
A union of the two strange worlds must be. 

Ours is a struggle from a too warm bed,
too cluttered with a patience full of sleep.
Out of this blackness we must struggle forth;
from want of bread, of pride, of dignity.
Struggle between the morning and the night,
this marks our years, this settles, too, our plight. 

Margaret Walker.

She's jeering at the shadows

Sneering behind a smile.

The Only Painter Left Who Understands What Colour Really Is

Marc Chagall:

See, the sound of yellow
is a season of
incendiarism. A blaze taller
than leaves, and genesis impales
martyrdom in the ultimate eye. 

See, the fish with the leaping violins
invades the childhood's continent;
the sun breaks the color explodes,
the motion of all: clown versus
subsequent calf in tear's embrace. 

See, the ordained clock
upon the cheek of its village,
a strange vase unlatched in space.
And love, the mythical-blue,
spins delirium of all colors—
pursuit of the aerial kin. 

And here,
the moon renews the kiss of the evening,
and re-infected in that metamorphosis
of red, the third eye blooms a historic tear.
This is Vitebsk's fever, indelible color,
the flawless purple of grandfather's caftan.

Selwyn S. Schwartz.

By the waters, the waters of Babylon

We lay down and wept, and wept.

Work Away Today, Work Away Tomorrow

Threshold:

You want a door you can be

            on both sides of at once.

                       You want to be

           on both sides of here

and there, now and then,

            together and—(what

                       did we call the life

            we would wish back?

The old life? The before?)

            alone. But any open

                       space may be

            a threshold, an arch

of entering and leaving.

            Crossing a field, wading

                       through nothing

            but timothy grass,

imagine yourself passing from

            and into. Passing through

                       doorway after

            doorway after doorway.

Maggie Smith.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Far be it from me to critique Independence Day in terms of accuracy, but I do have one quibble right from the start.  As the alien mothership approaches Earth, passing over the Apollo 11 landing site we see the Star Spangled Banner.

Problem: our flag is not still there¹.

Or, more precisely, it's not still standing (sorry, Rocket Man).  See, it's hard to plant anything on the moon because its dust ain't like dust down here:

The regolith...is formed by a sort of fine dust, but it's extremely sticky. It's curious to note, that it takes quite some efforts to plant the American flag in this material, an observation often contested by Moon landing conspiracists. On Earth, dust, formed by weathering of rocks, shows under the microscope tiny grains with smooth edges.  Moon dust is formed by tiny fragments of rock with sharp edges. The edges of the single grains tend to get caught into each other, like in a sort of zipper. 

Yeah, nobody had anticipated this:

[Armstrong] and Aldrin unfurled an American flag, stiffened with wire so that it would fly on an airless world, and struggled to plant it in the dust. As hard as they tried they could push the flagpole only six or eight inches into the ground. For a moment it seemed the flag would fall over in front of the worldwide audience, but at last the men managed to steady it; then they backed away.

So when they left (watch what the ascent engine did to Old Glory):

“We’re off,” Aldrin exulted. “Look at that stuff go all over the place.” Outside, a spray of gold foil and debris from the descent stage flew away in all directions. The flag toppled to the dust.

And that was a good learning experience, even if we littered.

In conclusion²: They could send a man to the moon, but they couldn't think to place the flag away from a rocket so it wouldn't get blown over.

1 - Not fluttering, at least!  I'll also cut them slack on the visible stars.

2 - Borrowing from Dave Foley, playing Apollo 12 LMP Al Bean.

God Speed the Year of Jubilee

July 5, 1852:

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. 

You may rejoice, I must mourn...

My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 

Selah.

The Fidgets, the Whims, the Caprice, the Vanity, the Superstition, the Irritability of Some of Us

On this date in 1775:

The Congress resumed the consideration of the petition to the King, which being debated by paragraph, was agreed to, and ordered to be engrossed.

Thus the so-called Olive Branch Petition was passed, to be signed a few days later.

And you know how salty John Adams was about the delay in declaring independence?  Yeah, he was salty about this, too, writing to James Wilson on the 24th:

In Confidence,—I am determined to write freely to you this Time. —A certain great Fortune and piddling Genius whose Fame has been trumpeted so loudly, has given a silly Cast to our whole Doings —We are between Hawk and Buzzard— 

We ought to have had in our Hands a Month ago, the whole Legislative, Executive and Judicial of the whole Continent, and have compleatly moddelled a Constitution, to have raised a Naval Power and opened all our Ports wide, to have arrested every Friend to Government on the Continent and held them as Hostages for the poor Victims in Boston. 

And then opened the Door as wide as possible for Peace and Reconcilliation: After this they might have petitioned and negotiated and addressed, &c. if they would.—Is all this extravagant?—Is it wild?—Is it not the soundest Policy?

And then what happened?

This letter, a letter of JA to AA of the same date...and a letter of Benjamin Harrison to George Washington, 21–24 July, were all three printed in sequence in the Massachusetts Gazette. They were seized by the British when Benjamin Hichborn, the bearer, was captured on Narragansett Bay en route to Massachusetts...Copies of JA's letters were forwarded to England by Adm. Graves, Gen. Gage, and others... 

With the oblique reference to John Dickinson as a “piddling Genius,” this letter brought to a head the conflict between him and JA over whether conciliatory or more vigorous measures should be pursued in the congress. The expression of JA's impatience and frustration was not new, for he had relieved his feelings in earlier letters to Warren and AA... 

Copies of the letters arrived in England on or about 17 Sept. and were immediately printed in Lloyd's Evening Post and British Chronicle, 18–20 Sept., and then in other newspapers as well...Their immediate impact was probably limited, for the king had already, on 23 Aug., proclaimed that the colonies were in rebellion, and the Olive Branch Petition had been submitted to Lord Dartmouth on 1 Sept., in whose hands it died...

RIP, John Adams, you would've loved using Signal... 

Moving through the doorway of a nation

Pick me up and shake the doubt.

Crown Thy Good with Brotherhood

I, Too:

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes.