Star Axis
Posted: April 18, 2017 Filed under: architecture, art history Leave a comment
When completed it will be eleven stories high and one-fifth of a mile long. (Star Axis by Charles Ross, not Vali)
Star Axis was begun in 1971. The Star Tunnel is the central element of Star Axis. It frames our north star, Polaris. The Star Tunnel is precisely aligned with the earth’s axis. Within it a stairway rises 10 stories toward a circular opening at the top that frames all of the orbits of Polaris throughout the ages. As you climb the stairway toward the circular opening you see larger and larger views of the sky. The view from each stair frames an orbit of Polaris for a particular time in the 26,000 year cycle called precession. The smallest orbit of Polaris, viewed from the bottom stair, is about the size of a dime held at arms length. The largest orbit of Polaris, viewed from the top stair, encompasses your entire field of vision.
Literary Life
Posted: April 17, 2017 Filed under: heroes, Texas, writing Leave a comment
Some real talk from Larry McMurtry
One of these days I’m going to rank all of McMurtry’s non-fiction books. They’re all chatty and great. This is the single best one.
Either Film Flam or Hollywood tells what it’s like to be friends with Diane Keaton and her mom.
McMurtry has really meant a lot to me. Here are some other posts about him:
about the time I heard him talk about Brokeback
Oh What A Slaughter and Sacagawea’s Nickname
Joshua Tree from the air
Posted: April 15, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
from Google Earth. A little closer to the ground:
Bob Marley’s lawyer
Posted: April 11, 2017 Filed under: Jamaica Leave a comment
Diane Jobson, as seen in the Marley doc. (contender for best doc ever?)
250 points if you can guess the pun headline for this article about sorting out the Bob Marley estate.
Marley had eleven kids with seven women and left no will. Good luck, Diane!
More on Chikamatsu
Posted: April 8, 2017 Filed under: Japan, writing Leave a comment
Donald Keene isn’t having any of this Japan’s Shakespeare business:
A poem:
Railroading was a talent
Posted: April 7, 2017 Filed under: music, travel Leave a comment
Reading about Casey Jones:
Railroading was a talent, and Jones was recognized by his peers as one of the best engineers in the business.
Campfire cooking
Posted: April 7, 2017 Filed under: food, the California Condition Leave a comment
Something Biblical about roasting lamb chops right on the fire. A true al pastor. Plus it seemed to honor(?) the local fauna:
Of course you need a charcuterie plate.
Working on taking campfire cooking to the next level. HT various campmates for the photos and ideas.
Some notes:
- Foil packeted onions and peppers came out pretty well. More elaborate foil pack meals have been a bust for me. I tried some stew meat / potatoes sitch once, pointless. Keep it simple.
- Wrapping a potato in foil and putting it in the ashes is such a crapshoot. You have to leave it in there for a good hour I believe.
- You always want the cheapest hot dog buns you can find.
- Enjoyed reading these camping experts’ recipes from kayakcritic.net and would like to try Cristina Lash’s cast iron apple cinnamon oatmeal.
Man vs. nature. A tie, in this case.
You’re the puppet
Posted: April 4, 2017 Filed under: Japan, the theater Leave a comment
Bunraku is Japanese puppet theater. It’s been around since the beginning of the 17th century. The puppets are maybe three feet tall and are operated by people all in black.
Must credit young adult book The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson for giving me some background in this bizarre art when I was a boy.
When I was in college the Awaji Island Puppet Troupe of Awaji Island came and did a performance in Boston. I went to see it and only left with more questions. Awaji puppets are similar to but not exactly bunraku.
Here we see Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who wrote at least 130 plays and is sometimes compared to Shakespeare. Until 1705, he wrote kabuki plays, for human actors. Then he abruptly switched to puppets.
WHY?
Why did Japan’s greatest dramatist switch to writing plays for puppets?
Wikipedia wagers some guesses:
The exact reason is unknown, although speculation is rife: perhaps the puppets were more biddable and controllable than the ambitious kabuki actors, or perhaps Chikamatsu did not feel kabuki worth writing for since Tōjūrō was about to retire, or perhaps the growing popularity of the puppet theater was economically irresistible.
Perhaps in Chikamatsu’s day the puppets weren’t really point, the point was the lyrics and the music, so you may as well have puppets instead of actors.
How cool would it be if Aaron Sorkin switched tomorrow to puppets? Or better yet Shonda Rhimes?
“I only do puppets now!”
After the switch, Chikamatsu’s career followed an all too familiar path:
Chikamatsu’s popularity peaked with his domestic plays of love-suicides, and with the blockbuster success of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, but thereafter the tastes of patrons turned to more sensational gore fests and otherwise more crude antics
I feel I’ve reached the end of what I can learn about this art form unless I actually go to the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka to see a performance of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki.
The National Bunraku Theater – Mc681 on Wikipedia.
“Art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.” — Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Naniwa Miyage
Roundup of books I haven’t read all the way through but have in a crate in my garage
Posted: April 3, 2017 Filed under: advice, America Since 1945, heroes Leave a comment
Wow.
PFC Albert Bullock took this one of the damaged Franklin.
My copy is pre-owned and comes already highlighted:
I’ve always hated Hugo’s. On acting technique:
How about this one, about Australian historians?
Geoffrey Blainey’s recipe for peach-tin eggs:
Graeme Davison on the wrong side of the law in Melbourne:
There are no wasted humans:
from the boss Thomas Cleary:
And finally, some Daily Drucker:
History of theater
Posted: April 2, 2017 Filed under: actors, Japan Leave a comment
Trying to help Filip and Fredrik out on their commedia del’arte question, I pull down my Oxford Illustrated History of the Theater.
There I learn the reason there are no female kabuki actresses:
The earliest kabuki performers were women, but later all roles, including female, were played by men. This was because the government banned women from the stage in 1629, their policy being that nobody should follow more than one profession: this prevented women from being both prostitutes and actresses.
source: ukiyo-e.org
JCO on Twitter
Posted: April 1, 2017 Filed under: writing Leave a comment
a consistently wild experience.
At Hungry Cat
Posted: April 1, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
© Andrew Stuart source
Ran into a bartender I’ve seen there before who greeted me by saying “Have you seen Logan yet?”
Good sentence
Posted: April 1, 2017 Filed under: women, writing Leave a comment
from Jean Rhys wikipedia page:
After her father died, in 1910, Rhys appeared to have experimented with the prospect of living as a demimondaine.
This period in the life of Bob Marley
Posted: March 31, 2017 Filed under: Jamaica Leave a comment
In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a DuPont lab assistant and on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant, under the alias Donald Marley
The War Between Mochi and Sake
Posted: March 30, 2017 Filed under: art history, food, Japan, war Leave a comment
Ametora
Posted: March 29, 2017 Filed under: Japan Leave a comment
Strong endorse to my bud Dave Marx’s book.
Would love to see a doc about the Farleys, who bought classic jeans across the heartland and sold them to Japan.
Sylvanus Morley: hot or not?
Posted: March 28, 2017 Filed under: Mexico, Wonder Trail Leave a comment
I say hot!
Also quite sexy if you can draw this:
His boyhood:
It was during his later schooling in Colorado that Morley first developed an interest in archaeology, and in particular Egyptology. However his father—a man trained in the hard sciences and who had graduated at the top of his class in civil engineering at PMC—was initially unsupportive of his ambitions. Seeing little scope for employment opportunities in archaeology, the Colonel encouraged his son to study engineering instead.
The other Sylvanus Morley I can find no picture of. From Wiki’s The “other” Sylvanus G. Morley, Sylvanus G. One says:
However, the person with the most right to complain was my cousin Sylvanus Griswold Morley, the celebrated archaeologist. The move made us homonyms, and gave rise to endless confusion. Look in a Who’s Who in America and you will learn the facts. Look in a library catalog, and you will be lucky to learn anything but errors. Sylvanus, a most good-natured soul, never protested. He was an undergraduate at Harvard while I was in the Grad. School. I sometimes received his Univ. bills, and less often, billets doux from his lights of love. I think he has none of mine.
More about eccentric heroes drawn to Central and South America can be found in:
The Ordnance Survey
Posted: March 27, 2017 Filed under: Ireland, maps Leave a comment
A friend is going to Ireland to do some landscape painting. I’m like, amazing. Plus this is a guy who usually gets it with maps. One day I sit down at my desk which has under its top an Ordnance Survey map of the Dingle Peninsula.
And I’m like oh friend make sure you get the Ordnance Survey map for where you’re going!
Why, he says.
Look, the Ordnance Survey Ireland website doesn’t have the smoothest experience.
But the treasures within!
Ordnance Survey Ireland is headquartered in the Phoenix Park.
The origins of the Ordnance Survey lie in the aftermath of the last Jacobite rising which was finally defeated by forces loyal to the government at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Prince William, Duke of Cumberland realised the British Army did not have a good map of the Scottish Highlands to find the whereabouts of Jacobite dissenters such as Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat so they could be put on trial.
They just missed him here.
You don’t want to have a map that marks every stone row and holy well?
A map that shows the ancient druid stones and the ruined churches like something a wizard would have?
good to have a waterproof map
Helytimes 
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