Helnwein'd

The Austrian-Irish artist Gottfried Helnwein did the memorable album cover for the Scorpions 1982 Blackout LP. That I knew. What I learned was, he also did that 1987 satire of the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. Helnwein included Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Elvis Presley in his and called it Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It became a popular poster. The Scorps' cover also adorned many a dorm wall. And that is indeed a self-portrait, NOT the teutonic mustachio'd rhythm guitarist Rudy Schenker in the picture, although he does do the imitation in the video! Video bonus: Klaus Meine in little blue underpants.

Aaron Burr and his granddad

Oh man oh man! I can't believe what I learned today!
Aaron Burr was Jonathan Edwards' grandson??!
What?!! Are you jiving me??
Nope.
Jonny Edwards, the Calvinist, Puritan, Monster Theologian?
He made the guy who made the guy who killed Alexander Hamilton?

Got it from the intro to this AMAZING book:
A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign by Edward J. Larson.

Parthenon & Ebbets

PARACLES builds!
++++++++
PARTHENON: most perfect building ever?
It was built to honor ATHENA.
13-ton columns -- 46 of 'em!
That's 2 and a half thousand years ago, yo!
ATHENS!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The mistake of '98: Brooklyn absorbed into New York City.
Charles Hercules Ebbets, ticket-taker to team owner.
Bought property in Pig Town, and abandoned part of Brooklyn.
His ballpark was the The Great Modern Ballpark in 1913 with 25,000 seats.
Too few! In 1932 he added 7,000 more.
The park was intimate all over. It took up ONE city block.
Luv dem Bums and Clowns and Sym-Phony Band!

Satellite & Transistor

The 1st communications satellite = July 10, 1962
TELSTAR = 3 Earth stations: U.K., France, Maine
The 1st image broadcast was the American flag.

The 1st televisions hit the stores in '54.
By the late 60's you got red blood on yer screen.

It is 238,000 miles to the moon.
Roundabout the average center-to-center distance.
About 30 times the diameter of the Earth.

The TRANSISTOR was invented in 1947!
[they won the Nobel Prize for it]
Bell Labs y'all!! [lasers, cellphones, touchtones ... ]

ACCUTRON watches use oscillating tuning forks.
They are electronicall driven wristwatches and they are FRESH.

JET BLACK MARY

Today I Learned? Shoot, every day I learn more about the awesomeness of Howard Ashley Storey cinematix! Jarring! Stirring! Fuggin' ACE!

JET BLACK MARY IS LIVE AND ON THE INNERNETS HELL YESS!

SATANIC VOGUE

Crowley Audio Storey Video

Backstage Snaps

Took these backstage at the L - O - C

Backa the staxa The John Adams Building, knowsit ...

Sneaky cameraphone captures ...

Declassified Government papers ...

Classic rows of archived history herein ...

Dark Matter

Learned about Dark Matter from this article by Richard Panek. A humbling but fascinating read!

Since the invention of the telescope four centuries ago, astronomers have been able to figure out the workings of the universe simply by observing the heavens and applying some math, and vice versa. Take the discovery of moons, planets, stars and galaxies, apply Newton’s laws and you have a universe that runs like clockwork. Take Einstein’s modifications of Newton, apply the discovery of an expanding universe and you get the big bang. “It’s a ridiculously simple, intentionally cartoonish picture,” Perlmutter said. “We’re just incredibly lucky that that first try has matched so well.”

But is our luck about to run out? Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?

“Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever.

If so, such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”

... the time has come to rethink a fundamental assumption: When we look up at the night sky, we’re seeing the universe.

Not so. Not even close.

>>> the rest of the article

Archives Videos

I just learned about Google digitzing all of the National Archives' films. DIG IT RIGHT HERE!

I got it from this excellent article on the current state of digitizing. Google is our friend. Deal with it.

The Death of Artists

Today I learned about the funs in differences of Baudelaire translations! They fluctuate wildly to make them poetically fit.
Check the takes on THIS KILLERNESS:
+

La Mort des Artistes

Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots
Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature?
Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,
Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots?

Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,
Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,
Avant de contempler la grande Créature
Dont l'infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots!

Il en est qui jamais n'ont connu leur Idole,
Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d'un affront,
Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,

N'ont qu'un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole!
C'est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,
Fera s'épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!

— Charles Baudelaire


>>>OKOK! 1st of all, I am SUPERDELIGHTED with these French rhymes!
Grelots and Javelots!
Complots and Sanglots! > hellyes!!
étrange et sombre Capitole ... !!!

now for some English versions >>>

The Death of Artists

How many times must I shake my bauble and bells
And kiss your low forehead, dismal caricature?
To strike the target of mystic nature,
How many javelins must I waste, O my quiver?

We shall wear out our souls in subtle schemes
And we shall demolish many an armature
Before contemplating the glorious Creature
For whom a tormenting desire makes our hearts grieve!

There are some who have never known their Idol
And those sculptors, damned and branded with shame,
Who are always hammering their brows and their breasts,

Have but one hope, bizarre and somber Capitol!
It is that Death, soaring like a new sun,
Will bring to bloom the flowers of their brains!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

The Death of Artists

How often must I shake my bells, and kiss
Your brow, sad Travesty? How many a dart,
My quiver, shoot at Nature's mystic heart
Before I hit the target that I miss?

We'll still consume our souls in subtle schemes,
Demolishing tough harness, long before
We see the giant Creature of our dreams
Whom all the world is weeping to adore.

Some never knew their Idol, though they prayed:
And these doomed sculptors, with an insult branded,
Hammer your brows and bosom, heavy-handed,

In the one hope, O Capitol of shade!
That Death like some new sun should rise and give
Warmth to their wasted flowers, and make them live.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

La Mort des artistes

how often must I shake my bells, and deign
to kiss thy brow debased, full travesty?
to pierce the mark, whose goal is mystery,
how oft, my quiver, waste thy darts in vain?

we shall exhaust our soul and subtle brain
and burst the bars of many a tyranny,
ere we shall glimpse the vast divinity
for which we burn and sob and burn again!

some too their idol never knew, and now,
flouted and branded with the brand of hell,
go beating fists of wrath on breast and brow;

one hope they know, strange, darkling citadel!
— can Death's new sunlight, streaming o'er the tomb,
lure the dead flower of their brain to bloom?

— Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)

[and perhaps my favorite from the pbk. I roll with]

The Death of Artists

How often must I shake my bells and kiss
Your low forehead, O dismal Caricature ?
How many arrows must I shoot amiss
Before I strike the target's mystic lure ?

We must wear out our souls in subtle schemes,
We must dismantle many a scaffolding,
Before we know the Creature of our dreams
That fills our hearts with sob and sorrowing.

Some never know the Idol of their soul;
Like sculptors damned and branded for disgrace
Who hammer upon their own breast and face,

They have one hope -- their somber Capitol!
That Death may rise, a sun of another kind,
And bring to blossom the flowers of their mind.

- this translation is by Jackson Mathews, who worked with many poets, and did lotsa Baudelaire and Paul Valery stuff.

Rare Bookin' It

I learned some things in my few hours in the Rare Book Reading Room: 1st off, I saw the two actual boox exchanged between Whitman and Thoreau! Both copies dedicated to the other on their title pages. Walt mention'd the walk and chat they took! How bout that! Can u imagine? ++ Also, the great Clark Evans talked more about Thomas Jefferson's books and how we got them, keep them, and use them, especially using E. Millicent Sowerby's Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, originally published 1952-1959. It's annotated with extensive entries describing the books TJ sold to the Library of Congress in 1815. ++ I saw a couple of the Lincoln's assassins broadsides. $100,000 Reward! The Murderer! Rare Book has thousands of these AND they get cataloged. They also have a few LP's of speeches ... OOOOH! I also saw Lincoln's grammar book from KY! The one he devoured as a young lad, making the 12-mile trip to "school" ~ He only had less than a year of total proper schooling, but this book this small book right in front of me! had a direct hand in forming his profound command of language.

I learned the LC acquired the Czar of Russia's Library in 1930. The Imperial Collection? That's crazy! How in the world did that level of imperial materials end up here?? In 1930? We were broke, yet that's the year we also acquired the Gutenberg Bible. Sheesh! ++++ I also learned the Liberry went 130 summers of Washington baking heat before they installed the first air conditioner ... of course, now the treasur'd collexions are closely monitor'd with temperature and humidity controls etc so it's all good ... ++++ For a long time, too, the "rare" books were simply mixed among the General Collexion and some were simply marked "Office" which meant the Liberrian kept the volume IN HIS OFFICE. If you needed the book, you simply went and knocked on his door to get it. Easy.


I learned our HUGE collexion of Incunabula -- printed materials from before 1501 -- is well cared for yet difficult to catalog since they usually have no title page or other informationstuffs. ++ I learned about the Beadle Brothers special Dime Novels. We have about 40,000 in our Rare Book section, and some are handsome to the maximum, heck yes.

Classy Liberry Action

Today was the first day of my new library class. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next 6 weeks I get to visit the Library of Congress reading rooms and hear all about their reference collections. What each division has, had, and wants, changes all the time, and these years things are moving swiftly. We began in the new Copyright offices, which are very attractive. All new fixtures and layout with a harmonious mix of modern and classic make the new digs hospitable and even inspiring. It's sooooo cleanly and clearly organized, especially the rooms with the old catalogs. It's the largest card catalog in the world, with all the original writings on the cards, and we cruised through several searches using Ernest Hemingway as our example for making our way through somewhat complex copyright issues and practice. I learned you can search it all for free but they charge $150 and hour to do it for you.

Then we went downstairs to the 1st floor of the James Madison Bldg to visit the way-impressive Manuscript Division. This is where treasure abounds. We were greeted with archived samples of special papers as we sat down for orientation. On the handsome table in front of me was Ralph Waldo Emerson's letter to Walt Whitman from the summer of 1855 (YES! Emerson ADORED Leaves of Grass and he was letting Walt know!), also, right in front of me -- RIGHT IN MY FACE! -- was Alexander Graham Bell's sketches for a telephone from 1876. Holy crap on a crapstick! I'd seen pix of this, but this was a real LC Moment: AGBell pencil scratchings, shadings, and intimate lettering just there. Dig.

So yeah, the LC's got the originals, and sometimes they can simply break 'em out and show us: our treat. Then we got to actually go back into the manuscript stacks. Yes! The whole presidential papers room (Washington to Coolidge) all in neatly labeled boxes and bindings. Our guide even opened up one of George Washington's diaries, showing off all the classy conservation box-making skills around it, and proceeded to hand it TO ME! I held it, I read aloud from it: "Mercury around 74. Later up to 77. Mild and cool throughout ..." [that kinda weather stuff, the quote is phony, the little personal George Washington journal I held in my hands today was mighty real. Oh heck yes it was.

I also learned: we digitize most of our manuscripts from microfilm and not off the originals ... 1938 to 1977 was the Card Catalog's heyday ... titles are not copyrightable ... we have something called Rachmaninoff Holographs, which sounds tantalizingly stimulating.

Paul Dunbar Y'all

Today I learned the great Paul Dunbar was friends with Orville Wright! They lived nearby and went to Dayton Central High School together. Paul's mother was a freed slave named Matilda, and she read and sang to Paul, who was soon reading and singing back to his mother. His daddy Joshua was an escaped slave who served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry > right on, sir ... Paul was the only black kid at DCHS and an active scholar all his life: debating society, literature society, school paper, city papers, writing at home all the time, working as an elevator operator, sometimes selling his books of poetry for a buck a pop while he was working the elevator. Oak & Ivy ! Majors & Minors ! Later he worked at the Library of Congress! Of course they didn't take advantage of his gigantic brains and capabilities. Instead, they simply took advantage of him, giving him a menial job where he became unhappy, then he breathed in too much bookdust, which thereby aggravated his already bad respiratory action into full tuberculosis and so he left the LC after a year. DANG! He kept on writing poetry and novels, but he only lived to be 33 ... he does have a legacy as a true man of letters, which will continue to grow, though, yo, so checkit: lookit all the schools after which he is named!

Library Burning

In August of 1814, British soldiers burned the Library of Congress. In fact, they burned the whole city. They marched in straight for the Capitol. Admiral Cockburn of the Royal Navy sat in the Speaker's chair and shouted, "Gentlemen! The question is, Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned? All in favor of burning it will say Aye!" AYE!! "Those opposed will say Nay," ... a general silence in the room ... "Light up!" and they exploded into action, running wild through the House, using books from the young library as kindling, sliding them off shelves, loudly scrambling throughout the Capitol, torching and stomping on art, like the full-length portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and generally making merry mischief, even across the wooden passage-way into the Senate -- the rotunda had yet to be built ...

Meanwhile that summer, down in Monticello, Virginia, an extremely well-read, retired president had found himself in thickening debt, and, hearing about the tragic indignity which left the new gov't bereft of good books, he came to our rescue (and his own) by offering a fairly priced purchase: $23,950 for 6,700 volumes. The Senators went right for it, happy to have such a splendid offer for such a magnificent array of quality titles. The House paused. Daniel Webster was against it, as were others. Cyrus King of Massachusetts wanted to block all books deemed atheistical, irreligious, or immoral. He got shot down 81 to 71. Score one for the Enlightenment. Since then, the Library has collected in ALL subjects in ALL languages, quickly becoming the largest repository of information in the world. Thomas Jefferson saved us. Without his intervention, that simple congressional library woulda prolly just been fulla boring-ass law books and hurtful-ass morally sound books >>> and all that ICK & SHUDDER to which that all leads.

Also, today I learned Andrew Jackson fired the 3rd Librarian of Congress, George Watterston, when it was alleged he was the one who spread those scandalous stories about Jackson's lady, the lately deceased and ADORED wife Rachel.

PATTON

Today I learned about General George S. Patton and what a MIGHTY BADASS he is and always shall be. All considerations of armored warfare come from him, the Tank Godfather, who used tactics from Stonewall Jackson, who of course got it from the elder battlers, amen. That is, without forgetting the later developmental work and legacies of big boys Rommel and Guderian. Patton read their writings, understood what they planned to do, even while admiring them no end. Patton was everywhere, bursting with action whenever his duty was assigned. He usually wanted to visit the front lines before a battle, doing his own reconnaisance, sometimes relying on strong personal instincts like what he perceived as actual memories of nearby ancient battlefields. He believed he was a soldier reincarnated generation after generation, surprising many with his vast knowledge of places without ever having been there. Sure he was a voracious reader of classics and military history since he was a small boy, but he proposed it was more than simple imagination and memory of studies ... he claimed HE WAS THERE. When in battle he was EVERYWHERE. He was promoted quickly during wartime, even reaching full colonel commanding a brigade in France when he was 32 years old (October of 1918). So many reports like this:
"He was all over the place throughout the battle, jumping in and out of tanks, walking more than he rode, running more than he walked, now ahead of his tanks, coaxing them on, then behind them when they needed a push, like a frenzied schoolmaster trying frantically to keep in line a flock of unruly pupils on an outing." - from the blazing-hot bio of Georgie by Ladislas Farago

Amiens! Amiens!

Today I learned about the Battle of Amiens. Hoo boy was this HUGE! This was the one which finally repelled the Germans AWAY from Paris. August 1918 and the Germans were only 37 miles from the City of Lights. That long trenchline through Belgium and France finally began to break for the Allies with this collective triumph > British, French, Canadians, Australians, even Americans got involved. This is why it worked: the first time all parts worked together - IN SECRET. It was all well-planned when the battle began hours before dawn with a bombardment (with artillery shells fulla deadly gas! blimey!), then sent in wave after wave with different attacks all up and down the line. This was the first big battle to use beaucoup de tanks -- big tanks (Mark V), little tanks (whippets) -- and the Germans pretty much shat themselves when the 1st round of these 4-mile-per-hour machines came rolling through. Of course, operating these monsters was pretty f'ing scary too ... in the middle of it all: cavalry -- hundreds and hundreds of men on horseback ripping through the German defenses, then, later in the day ... PLANES (the Royal Air Force was only a few months old). Pretty much the first full-scale multi-pronged modern attack -- sorta the beginning of the end of trench warfare, right there on the largest, most famous trench of all. They broke the line and began the colossal push-back. General Ludendorff called August 8th "the black day of the German Army." It should also be noted the Americans were the ones who got the ball rolling back in June, clearing out Belleau Wood. The French couldn't clear it, but wave after wave (six full assaults lasting for weeks) of US soldiers finally pushed the Germans out. This was the first US/German scrap. They originally had the place defended so well cuz they had machinegun nests with inter-locking fields of fire all mathematically coordinated while the Americans (featuring thousands of black troops -- yes yes y'all) initially marched in line abreast, getting slaughtered. The wood was a thick'n'nasty thatch of dense, dying forest ... ugly scene, but ultimately mightily heroic. The French gave medals to the black soldiers. They hardly ever gave their medals to anyone not French. Right on.