Datter

I love this Etsy shop so much.  I WANT ALL THE THINGS.  I can't even pick one, you know?  The hand with arrow and the watchful eye ring in gold.

 

And, the artist's blog is also totally great.  Kaye Blegvad's Blogvad.

Pictures are taken from the Etsy shop.

Sarabande

We should always listen to music from the era we are writing about.  Because it helps, or whatever. 



We should not, however, then start watching 20 clips of Barry Lyndon on Youtube while the paper rots over in Word.  I should make a Y U NO rage comic about this.

In other news, it is really weird to see Youtube comments, also known as the scourge of the universe, arguing about the provenance of Baroque compositions.  "No u FUCK! the music is French. The style of it is French. Just look at Chopin's Pollonnaise March. It is VERY VERY VERY French."

That made me happy.  The internet is so full of people that sometimes you can't even see the nerds anymore. 

Back to work. This paper is about whether a guy lied about where he was born in his 18th century autobiography. In a rare display of passion, the historians against the argument are saying that the ones for the argument are lying propagandist dicks who are probably racist. My mind-blowing take on all of this is that it doesn't matter where he was born.  The paper is called
"Who Cares: Seriously."

Watch out for it in volume 20 of the journal, "Are Historians Even Alive? A Cardiologist's Review".

STFU: A PSA

EVERYBODY

IF YOU'RE EVER IN A LIBRARY

SHUT UP

DON'T EAT FOOD

DON'T TALK ON THE PHONE

DON'T TAKE YOUR KIDS

DON'T READ ALOUD

DON'T EVEN COUGH

JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP

http://www.lettersofnote.com/

This site rules, because it is filled with letters written by famous, often cantankerous people the quality of which we will never see again since contemporary culture is retarding everything good.

Favorites: Apple code names a 1993 Mac "Carl Sagan," then renames it "BHA," or "Butthead Astronomer" after he bitches about his name being associated with something commercial.

F. Scott Fitzgerald admonishes his daughter not to call him "Pappy" unless she wants him to beat her cat in her absence, and for him to rename her Egg Fitzgerald.  It's a very sweet letter.  No, really.  See here for Hark A Vagrant's Fitzgerald comic.

David O. Selznick had to write a groveling letter for permission to Rhett to speak his famous line at the end of Gone with the Wind.  The word "damn" was specifically banned by the Hays Code.  What arrogant, nervy censor would think that he could make them change the most explosive line in the movie after the entire world had read and fallen in love with the book and cried their ass off after reading THAT SPECIFIC LINE?  What was he supposed to say, that he didn't give a darn, or a fig? OUTRAGEOUS.

Robert Burns attacks an unkind reviewer with a repetitious set of insults worth remembering for later.  "Thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning"!  It reminds me of this Fry rant which I like to think was inspired by that letter.

The Rolling Stones must have large beds.

There are a billion others; the site will take away hours.

Nature rules!

I saw my first jackrabbit today!  I mean, irls.  I didn't realize that I had never seen one with mine own eyes until one galloped across my path and I froze: what the fuck is that, a fucking antelope?  fuck, dude!

They're bigger than I thought.  Possibly not the most adorable of all rabbits. 

The one good thing about having to walk a quarter mile of trail to get to a bathroom at Tovrea (the house is not connected to city sewage and it would apparently cost a trillion dollars to do it) is it forces one to walk all of those nice paths. 

The gardens really are amazing.  Right now, the botanical glory of the site is just a footnote of the tour, which I think is weak and which I believe will be fixed eventually.  Even being from this exact part of the desert, I still find myself feeling a bit awed by the landscape, and I stop every ten feet to observe something new and beautiful.  There are tons of animals around, rabbits, and quail, and cactus wrens, and squirrels, lizards, oh and the feral dogs from the river bottom.  Apparently there was one on the property yesterday, but I didn't see it.

A security guard reported seeing a mountain lion on the site a few years ago.  Amaaazing!

Full Pink Moon

Edgar Oliver reads his poem, The Moon. I'll take that down shortly, but it's appropriate for now.  How I love him!

 
Purchase "The Hermit and Other Poems" here.  My favorite is In Prospect Park, in case you wondered.

And a night bird is singing constantly outside my window.  I don't know how it has the strength.  It goes for hours.  Rogue night birds need to live farther away.

Sometimes I miss Livejournal

For the comedy that's in it.  You can't beat the commenting setup.  It's just ripe for showing off like a cheap Lorelai-Rory Gilmore comedy sideshow. Too bad fools be deleting their journals like they have shit to hide! 

Reading my childhood internet journals is probably a good thing to do while in school, when I begin to feel overly disgusted at all of the baby antics on campus, and angry at all of the dumb kids in tight jeans, Bieber hair, and orange Wayfarers, smoking moodily next to the Pepsi machine while texting simultaneously.  I just want to be like, wait, what year were you born?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Does your mom know you smoke?  Get the fuck out of here!

But then again, that characterization might be incorrect.  It's also my belief that 10 year olds entertain themselves with keg parties and blowjob contests, so maybe I'm all wrong with that style of burn. 

Anyway, reading my 04-05 Livejournal does remind me that I, too, sometimes posted song lyrics (meant to impart some kind of deep truth), or wrote posts with titles like "OMG LIKE WUT" which by all appearances seem to be about the combined themes of failed love affairs and the fact that Stinkweeds would not buy a cd that I felt they should have.  I wrote almost every day, about almost anything.  Writing every day IS a good thing, but eh yeah.  Now I have endless documentation of obscure jokes with friends that I can barely understand anymore.  I am almost too old to decipher younger-me's code.  This seems like a thing.

1940

Oh shit, bitches! The 1940 census is available today for the first time!

Go see what your grandparents were doing!

1940census.archives.gov

Unless you're using a pay site, you need to know where your person lived and find them that way.

Ancestry.com offers free trials, though, and you can access it for free at most libraries.

My Grandfather is 84 Tomorrow

"Or 85, I can't remember," according to my mom.  He is very private.

He, my mom, my uncle and grandmother in Rocky Point in the early 60s. 

He's fussy, as many old people are, and he likes to talk shit.  Except he laughs before he gives you his zinger and then just ends up kind of mumbling it.  He and my uncle were talking about Goodwill at Christmas and he poked me in the arm and said, "You look like you shop at Goodwill, too! heh heh." Listen, buddy.  It's Salvation Army.

He does well on his own.  He built a little machine shop for his house and has customized the entire place.  The hall light is on a motion sensor for when he has to use the bathroom at night, and every electronic device has its own recess in the wall.  The tv, dvd and vhs players each have their own.  So does the microwave in the kitchen.  Yes, it looks ridiculous, but I love it.  He has the most mannish bathroom I've ever seen, which contains absolutely nothing but a sliver of bar soap on the sink and a molded plastic hairbrush from the 1970s.  "Where's all your stuff?!"  "What stuff?"

When we went there for Christmas, I was amazed to see that he had strung garland around and put up a small tree.  All of this decor was obviously from the 70s or early 80s.  He doesn't seem to have purchased anything but real estate since then, which curiously coincides with the end of his second marriage.  He's driven the same car for about 35 years, which is a red El Camino that he purchased new.  As far as a consumerist society goes, he lives off the grid.

It's strange to navigate the deafening generation(s) gap between us.  He's curious about everything, but doesn't have a computer or a cell phone.  When he asks about the functions of these things, I don't know where to begin.  It's uncomfortable to see the incomprehension, mostly because he's uncomfortable with it.  He's not used to not knowing how something works. 

I, on the other hand, am quite familiar with it and am content to believe that iphone = black magic.

I attended a cemetery walk at the Pioneer Cemetery downtown.  I'm not sure how often they have these, but I think it's pretty rare  That's why I had to go, even though I knew they'd be having costumed docents playing the parts of various factual dead persons.

You would think that knowing in advance would mitigate the anger I felt at their obnoxious and cheesy little playacts, but it didn't.  The cemetery association did some research on various graves, then wrote scripts for the docents to read.  "Hi. My name is Mary Malloy. I moved to Phoenix in 1880, but oops, I died of consumption two years later. Thanks for visiting me today, I get lonely here!"  Don't know why, Mary, there's lots to see.  You live between three homeless shelters and the State Capital.  Each docent nattered on about "their" lives and deaths, inserting false observations ("shure is lonely out hur in my grave!") in a strange way that, much as I am not terribly sensitive to these things, seemed disrespectful.  Particularly considering they're standing there with one foot on the grave of the person who really did die of diphtheria, or whatever.  Two of the docents were children made up to look like corpses, with Halloween wounds of fake gore.  The event was...really shit.  I felt second-hand embarrassment, kind of like when I watch Kate Bush's Babushka video. 

But the cemeteries were very interesting and are very old, Phoenix-wise.  1880s to 1910ish.  That's old here!  Most of the headstones are missing, but there are some large and cool ones around.  The tour didn't really involve relevant or famous Phoenicians and instead curiously focused on dead kids.  Like, we learned about a toddler who died when an oil lamp fell on her.  That's pretty sad, but why would this be part of the paid tour?  Was the toddler on the territorial legislature?  Did it name Phoenix, or hide gold in the Superstitions?  Because the people who did that shit were not part of the tour even though they are there.  Sometimes all-volunteer organizations suck because having your heart in the right place doesn't mean you're doing a good job, dudes. 

Not that I want to go around dissing on non-profit volunteer groups, but this is why a lot of small museums shut down forever.  Because they are doing it wrong. 

Some of the cemeteries go by a couple of different names. Loosely is one of them. 

This cemetery is full, but doesn't look like it due to all of the missing stones.  Many were broken or stolen, and some were just wood to begin with.  Some were carved of sandstone, which by now has been eroded into unrecognizable chunks of rock. 

Some of the graves pre-date the cemetery, because they were moved.  I don't remember where from.  Some families then moved their dead from the Pioneer to other places, because it was beginning to look fucked up in there from lack of caretaking.

There were a few of these plain looking vaults.  Unusual for here.

Jacob Waltz's grave.  He's the famous "Lost Dutchman" who allegedly hid gold in the Superstitions.  He's also one of my dad's personal favs.  The stone seems to be a later addition.  The head (or foot?) of the grave has a chunk of granite which at one time was painted gold.  There's a dirty shot glass next to it.

Kind of interesting to note the differences between this place and Cemetery Lindo.  Lindo is not closed to the public even though it's part of the "complex" of historic cemeteries.  Also, people still visit the graves at Lindo even though it seems that the youngest graves are 60+ years old.  I saw recently wilted flowers, pennies and small offerings of food on the stones there. 

After the tour, my dad regaled the staff with stories of Jacob Waltz and then offered to pick up the headstones that had fallen or been kicked off their pedestals by delinquents.  They were horrified by this proposition and insisted that only a machine could hoist such a heavy stone.  He laughed contemptuously, then said, "Eh, I'll get a buddy to help me. No problem."  They actually took his contact info for this.  I guess I'll be curious to hear if they call.  They said the City had decided not to address the toppled stones, which is another example of why we can't have nice things in Phoenix.