ma

John Adams

Incredible series from HBO a couple of years ago. I didn't really give a shit about Paul Giamatti or Laura Linney prior to the show and now I am in love with them. I didn't really give a shit about John Adams, either. I have never paid any special attention to the American Revolutionary period, which was an unfortunate choice now that I've researched a very small amount and have read some of T.J.'s letters and all. He's our Nostradamus, predicting epic crises hundreds of years before they occurred, probably because it is - or at one time was - a matter of common sense that unchecked privilege and power tend to be rather corruptive agents, particularly in the banking and religious industries. Well, whatever. On to the tv.

We had a giant Gadsden flag in the garage growing up and I never knew what the hell it was supposed to mean.

I'm re-watching the series. Learning is fun, no? It's sort of a buzzkill, however, when everything I learn is INFURIATING! Like reading 210 year old letters and thinking, Yeah! This *is* fucked up! Or reading accounts of tribal councils from the 1850s in which the Feds told Natives that they were sent by god (The Great Spirit - they got wise to the colloquialisms) and god said to please accept this jar of buttons in exchange for the land stretching between the delta and the buttes. Well, whatever.

Oh, and the guy who plays George Washington in the show? Awesommme. I like to think that he is just like the real G.W.; larger than life, imposing, terrifying, yet harboring such quietsecretconcerns and regrets. It's all too fuckin awesome.

FJT (& JM) say the West is the best

"In the settlement of America we have to observe how European life entered the continent, and how America modified and developed that life and reacted on Europe. Too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins, too little to the American factors. The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick, he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails."

Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893.

He was ridiculed at the time for making studies of the American West and the psychology of frontiering (but he didn't call it that) his express pursuit as a young scholar. It became his life's endeavor.

image from mother earth father sky.

SIGH WHAT

I just found out my best friend is moving to San Francisco in 7 days. I'm going to be there a lot. I haven't actually processed this whole thing yet, so that is my comfort.

It's going to be like this.

I love this photo. Her expression is awesome because it was the first time we tried ecstasyyyyyyyyy

Ragetyme

I totally buy Robert Pela's theory that property owners in Phoenix are burning historic buildings to get rid of them. This isn't the first place I've read about it. Many are protected by historical registers and are otherwise ineligible for demolition.  Read nyah.  Prepare to want to flip tables and scream.  If that's not how you react to stuff like this, then you're doin it wrong.

before fire.

after fire. view from behind.

I've always wanted to see the inside of this place.  I've skulked past it for years, but there never seemed to be a decent opportunity to scale the giant fence and go inside. 

Update: too fucking frustrating. This article on why the property is singular and should be saved was written weeks before the house burned. Does it not seem that if a landmark is significant enough to be added to a historical register, that it shouldn't be available for sale to just anyone? Or at least, not to some dick developer who's just going to raze it and turn it into another CVS?  Nobody in Phoenix cares about anythinggggggg fuckkkkkkk

song is like rad

I'll be productive tomorrow. I have done nothing today but watch the L Word. Disappointing turn of events for Alice and Dana, tell you what.

So ever since I grudgingly replied to my father's facebook friend request (it just felt weird), I have been eagerly perusing all of HIS friends' profiles. People so tightly involved with my childhood, none of whom I have seen in years. I was so happy that friending my dad allowed me to see the photos of his gentle giant bff, Big Don.

Big Don is about 6'7 and at his largest weighed about 400 lbs. It wasn't fat, though. He was simply a wall of man. He frightened people everywhere he went with his bald head, chest-length black beard, biker attire and, of course, general stature. This is made all the more enjoyable by the fact that he is the most polite and charming man on the planet.

For years, we spent most Saturday nights at his place. The kitchen table was picnic style, a massive slab of rough-hewn wood which was always strewn with food, bike magazines, antique guns and whatever other ephemera he was playing with at the time. I would sit at the table, 6, 7, 8 years old while my dad and the other guys drank and talked. Sometimes they would lower their voices or break into code while I sat there trying to stack cards or bullets into pyramids. Don's kids were either much older or much younger than I was, so there was no one to play with.

His garage usually contained more of the same, plus bikes, antique maps, animal skins, and, once, a bucket containing 4 deer legs, salted where they had been severed. Horror. He had purchased an old Wurlitzer from a flea market at St. Francis where it had been used by the nuns. It was dusty and grimy and I taught myself to play easy songs on it during the long summer nights. One night I learned Dixie, and played it jauntily once I had figured out the keys. Don perked up and said, "Yer playin' my favorite song!" I love him.

All culled from the FB:

Big Don in the 70s.

My parents in the 70s.

Early 90s. This is the Big Don of my memories.

My godfather in Vietnam. Unfuckinbelievable. When I learned what godparents were supposed to signify, I prayed nothing would ever happen to my parents.

Chas and one of Don's kids. I had a crush on him. He rode an Indian, smoked Kools, dressed like a greaser, rolled his packs in his sleeve, and slept with high school girls.

Chas again. I hear he's rather lewd and misogynistic, but he treated me with such courtly sweetness that I simply can't imagine it. Although, come to think of it, I do seem to recall his regular reminder to "call me when you're 18." I suppose I would have been about 8 at the time.

65% illumination

Incantations to bring the monsoon. It's going to need some help.

now you know that it can't be

Remember "Said Sadly," that duet between James Iha and Nina Gordon that appeared on the Bullet with Butterfly Wings b-side in '94 or whatever?

The summer I bought that b-side, there was an epic late night monsoon storm that caused a multi-hour power outage. I sat alone in my bedroom burning candles and listening to music, dripping red wax droplets onto cd cases. Not a particularly flashy memory, but sometimes I think of that night and moment, and I don't know why.

When I went through the mandatory young girl phase of putting shit on school folders, it was photos of James Iha from music magazines circa 1995. Things could've been worse. Although people did think I was gay and really into the other girl from Smashing Pumpkins.

Speaking of '90s nostalger, I discovered this blog and tumblr today:

http://90swoman.wordpress.com/

http://thereal1990s.tumblr.com/

"fuck yeah," as the tumblrs say. I love the discourse. The DEBATE about whether nostalgia lists are a valid form of art or social memory was particularly entertaining for me. I want to go back.

Remember '84?

I don't either.

This photo discovered for the first time today on my godfather's facebook. Like a memory never known, but reclaimed. This internet social networking fad sure is getting weird for me.