this journal blug

why am i thinking percy grainger and charles mingus... charles mingus and percy grainger... ?

and while i'm at it... ordered some ligeti today... o what have i done...

Society of Indexers - The Indexer: contents for October 2003 issue:

216 Exploring fiction and poetry through indexing - Tom Murphy

:: so it would seem there is some verification of my two-page piece... finally paper published... i'm still trying to figure how to get a hard copy in my grubby little paws

the weather here in mundelein illinois truly and sincerely sucks of late... cold, rainy, snowy, icey, gray... you know... january... so you can be sure that i'm totally knocked out to find myself on Antonio Savoradin's Desert Island with some excellent company (go check 'em out)... i'll bring the sunscreen... thanks very much, tonio!!

faculty in-service today... fairly mundane stuff... but there was some weirdness in the halls... and we got to visit the almost but not quite finished new science wing... pix coming soon...

today is the senior goal holiday... this means that i have had classes of four to seven students all day... this means that a perfectly good and rare regular schedule is wasted on... treading water... alas...

and my big tv monitor finally kicked today... and the tech folks were here to pronounce it... sigh

The Chatelaine's Poetics is thinking about Cecilia's latest:

...anyway, am sincerely enjoying Cecilia Bartoli's The Salieri Album. Indeed, the listening experience is nothing short of a REVELATION!.

i probably need to get my mitts on this one

is it possible to get... stupider?

braidwood events: baked beans

In Lower Braidwood, it was almost impossible to get the soft water in which to bake beans. Wherever a well existed that contained good bean-baking water, it was the mecca of miners' wives, especially on weekends, as baked beans were a Sunday delicacy. The Peter Rossi bakery, just off Division St., was most popular because of the generosity of its owner and his baker. After getting a supply of bean-baking water in which the beans were soaked over Friday night, the miners' wives placed the beans in earthen crocks, and took them to the bakery. After the bread was baked and removed, the heat in the oven would fully and deliciously bake the beans in plenty of time for Sunday dinner.

braidwood businesses

Peter Rossi, Sr. came to the United States from the Piedmont area of Northwestern Italy in the late 1870's and began manufacturing macaroni, as he had in Italy. In 1898 Rossi purchased the old Broadbent Hotel, which he extensively remodeled to serve as a factory. It was powered by a blind horse that traveled in a circle turning the capstan to which were attached belts to distribute the power to the semolina mixer and kneader and to the screw press which fashioned the shaped dough bearing descriptive names.

Design Observer: writings about design & culture

...it might be argued that a poster has always been seen as a kind of visual tonic, an antidote to chaos - and something which, by sheer virtue of its scale, can knock you right over. "Some one sole unique advertisement," as James Joyce once wrote, "to cause passers to stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life."

doesn't seem to be much online concerning rossi life in braidwood

concerning the old days: braidwood recreation

Rossi's saloon was located on the south side of Main Street, west of the railroad tracks. The saloon was in operation from 1912-1919, selling beer for a nickel a pail, until Prohibition put it out of business. For the steady customers, there was a free spaghetti lunch in the back of the saloon. Pictured here (L-R): unidentified man, Charles Haggerty, William Cox, Margaret Rossi, Stephen 'Spaghetti' Rossi, George Mortimer, and Thomas Ross

happy birthday, pop...

a review by Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer Book Critic of John Gardner: Literary Outlaw by Barry Silesky

Silesky, an admiring ex-student of Gardner's, cares mainly about the personality that drove the prolific, gregarious, motormouthed writer, always engaged in several projects at once - a man many knew around the '70s literary circuit, but one few understood well.

i've ordered this book and hope to make it some regular bedtime stuff soon as it arrives... seems biography is best for bedtime... wonder why that it... am currently working through nicholson's very short one of virginia woolf... and liking it...

ENN News Story - Consumer appetite erodes quality of life for all

Around 1.7 billion people worldwide - more than a quarter of humanity - have entered the "consumer class," adopting the diets, transportation systems, and lifestyles that were limited to the rich nations of Europe, North America, and Japan during most of the last century. In China alone, 240 million people have joined the ranks of consumers - a number that will soon surpass that in the United States.

well... i think it's up to us rich nations to save the planet by keeping them little old poor nations back where they belong... not using up so much of our stuff... dagnabit

Stephen Vincent considers Fate:

In the context of American culture, reflections on "Fate" most often seem either tortuously academic or a condition to which we, as a nation, are not beholden ­ "Fate" was a yoke born by the folks of yore, most likely on another continent, and not something in which we are ever to be implicated.

Ernesto Priego at ::..Never Neutral..:: wonders:

What would have happened if Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickinson had had blogs? What would they have written?

a (tentative) mind is b(l)oggled by the possibilities...

now... some of us are writing an in-class essay on the dead wolf passage from c. mccarthy's The Crossing... when mcccarthy gets it right he gets it very very right...

He squatted over the wolf and touched her fur. He touched the cold and perfect teeth. The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her.

tomorrow is pop's 123rd birthday ... i've only got one picture of him... so i messed around with it...

see suzanne's excellent expansion on something i mumbled about reading...

eye openers
erotica
entertainments
engagements
electrifying illuminations

from kasey's {lime tree}

Bad poetry is bad because of a lack of two kinds of writerly consciousness: 1) consciousness of one's own methods and the self-imposed standards that govern them, and 2) consciousness of the socially-imposed standards current within the particular community or communities one imagines as one's audience. These two kinds of consciousness intermingle and overlap, of course.