oh fuck

if you think that edgar allan was simply some sort of weaselly, sad, ne'erdowell, then you are mistaken. he was, in fact, a sex panther with two hobbies. you figure them out.

fanny osgood, onetime lover and (allegedly) bearer of their illicit baby girl, who died in infancy. fanny was crazy, dark, prone to spells, and the most eminent female writer in the country, for a time. she was also married. her husband thought the child was theirs.

she met poe for the first time in 1845. he greeted her with "...his proud and beautiful head erect, his dark eyes flashing with the elective light of of feeling and thought; a peculiar, an inimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur in his expression and manner."

SWEETNESS AND HAUTEUR! just the way i am described, no doubt. to be fair, i think she was already in love. or whatever sensation histrionic writerly ladies feel. fanny was not the only woman to write in her diary or to compose letters to other women about the compelling e.a.p. that year. in fact, there was a little cadre.

the fucking weather. it was more of a comfort when phoenix received the judgement of "fucking...all right." now it's just fucking 11 o'clock and a hundred gdmfcs degrees out.

venerable family photos

farm dogs and cats of percival, ia. 1930s and 40s.

i like iowa because my grandma was from there. i believe it is the flattest place i have ever been. visiting some cousins there was like visiting the 1940s. we went to the house where my grandma and her 10 siblings were born, a lovely yet prim white victorian with gingerbread and hand-turned wood posts everywhere, and a widow's walk. there is nothing around it but fields and fields and fields.

my great-aunt was living there at the time. as in a time capsule, she had nothing in there but a radio (old), a telephone (one, mounted to the kitchen wall), and a 40 year-old tv. when we laughed, incredulous, she said, "...what? the man asked if i wanted a satellite dish. i said NO!!!" she fixed the simplest, homiest meal ever, which we ate at the 100 year old mahogany dining table. after dinner, we walked the dirt roads and my cousin and i found and contemplated the creek (the crik) from which we were admonished to stay away due to water moccasins. there is nothing more wrong than a water-dwelling snake.

and there is nothing more right than photographing a dog in a hat. points if it is a graduation cap, extra points if it's the graduation cap of the first woman in that family ever to finish high school.

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