In Memoriam Dutch ??/??/?? - 5/16/08

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

This American Life

...summarizes the credit crisis with enough clarity to make any person with a pulse hate capitalism. (Or at least, you know, begin to sense the real predatory violence of the ruling transnational fundamentalist speculative oligarchy.)

cherry mantel

Or more precisely, mantelshelf (the dictionary approves mantelpiece as well to refer to just a shelf). Learnin' things is fun! Anyway I'm a little proud, this 4" hunk of wood really tied the room together. (Overbuilding and portmanteaus are also fun: four rebar in studs and generous epoxy mean a smallish person could probably sleep on it. Counting sheep...)

flog

May Day

When working ten hour days (in the sun) it gets hard sometimes to remember to commemorate things one definitely should.

See also How Wright Was Wronged, from the new US Socialist Worker.

bloodwood trio

Tiger maple, 100% reclaimed African bloodwood and mahogany. Medium size and small bar cutting board, white hickory.

All for sale, reluctantly. Email for prices (negotiable, sliding scale based on your income). Or visit my Etsy.

cutting board, chopping block commissions

Recently custom made:Edge-grain, hard Spalted Ambrosia Maple, with Oak handle


End-Grain Quarter-Sawn Oak, biscuit-joined



Leopard wood and hickory (with cherry and walnut):



Some very direct and generous customer testimonial here.

nyc event

My friend Ross Benjamin will talk of his experience translating Hölderlin's Hyperion.

places (i)

the economy

...is not funny, but this is.

places (ii)

Here 37 seconds of a Saturday afternoon on street corner in Rivas, seen from a cool chair within the high ceilings of what we'll call–after bookending our trip with its fabulous seafood–Cafe Ceviche. The man selling nuts sees a gringo with his tiny camera and quickly makes a beeline to us.

faces

Playa Coco and passage of time

Turtle tracks...a cove notorious for poachers, who were trying to force the creature to lay eggs by burying it in sand. Typically.

Got home (after hours upon hours of continuous body-surfing) to find out they're building 20 hideous luxury condos on this abandoned stretch. So that's what those half-dozen carpenters were doing.

So glad we got there before its ruin. Progress is slow, but another ten years will surely complete the transformation (or perhaps return, in this case) into yet another occupied zone.

is profaning possible

...in the sulfur dioxide? (re:, re:)

Beckett/Rose

Poor, poor Beckett. First clip courtesy of Scott McLemee.

"Who is really trashing America: Wright or Clinton?"

Further to Obama and the concept/definition of 'America,' an article in Today's Zaman (whatever that is), in Turkey (translated courtesy of Watching America):

‘Friends tell friends bitter truths,'-- a Turkish saying. Reverend Wright's critical remarks about America have raised a furor, most of which has been aimed at the Obama campaign.

No one has asked the question, "Who is really trashing America -- Obama's minister or those who defend America -- right or wrong?" All reasonable answers depend on the definition of America. The "right or wrong" partisans seem to define America as the North American superstate, its people, its government and its history. This America is to be defended at all costs, against all critics no matter what. Anyone who fails in this patriotic duty, as Bill Clinton suggested about Obama, "does not love or care about America," at least not as much as McCain or Hillary do [...]

While this definition of "right or wrong" in America has a long lineage, there is another definition to consider. America can be defined as a set of principles, which inhere in creation, are enshrined in the constitution, have been consecrated in the Civil War and are redeemed by its struggles against its own weaknesses, inadequacies and failures. This is the America that has captured the hearts and minds of the oppressed and downtrodden throughout the world. If one defines America in this way, it becomes a duty to criticize the American past which justified slavery and other forms of oppression and prejudice, like the inequality of women in law and in fact. If one defines America by its constitutional principles, as they have been violated in its history, it becomes a duty to criticize imperialism and other forms of aggression. If one defines America by its ideals, it becomes a duty to hate thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife present for its continuing racism -- in all its forms -- and its denial of its fundamental values, like the unconstitutional detaining and torture of "enemy combatants."

This series of duties may seem harsh, gratuitous and unpatriotic. After all, no nation-state is perfect. Consider, however, the implications of silence. The "right or wrong" defenders then become the only patriots. They define the real America, saying that injustice, racism, imperialism, torture and violations of the constitution don't matter. America is what it is. Take it or leave it. Like Bill Clinton, they love it as it is.

See also DailyKos defending Howard Dean. Hear, hear.

Boredom, about

Lee Rourke's excellent Top Ten Books About Boredom (via RSB). No Blanchot (nor any Kierkegaard, nor Andy Warhol...) but Heidegger gets mentioned. Presumably the emphasis was on "about?"

rare reality television from Iraq

What a fucking nightmare this war is for everyone. Good that this stuff is finally getting out there, though. (Or so I remember hearing myself say...what was it, 5 years ago.)

Well you know, almost everyone...

15 months can be a long, long time.

Musical Monday: Samidon

“Folk music is enjoying another of its periodic revivals, but this time the latest recordings are appearing on cutting-edge indie labels...”

Back with a head still overflowing with the beaches and buses, streets and markets of Nicaragua. They say you have to go back to a place to know it for the first time. This trip almost exactly ten years since the first, to many of the same places and some new ones, and despite the bittersweetness of return to a region no longer waiting to be discovered (now full of real estate offices, ex-pats walking their gringo dogs, shouting and chiding their gringo dogs away from the disgusting things dogs eat and back to the mansion on the hill, white kids looking for a new Spring Break), despite all this nothing registers even approaching disappointment. It helps of course to be with the one you love, and to find her the excellent traveling companion you desired. Still the beginnings of a complex nostalgia, compounded greatly listening to this.

1) Sugar Baby
2) Saro
3) O Death


Only temporarily. Download them all here, or purchase a CD. I used to know Sam, and I hope he doesn't mind.


What to say about these songs?



There was this guy staying in the hostel where Hans and I once stayed, hanging our hammocks ten years ago (it took a while to find it, now). He was like a ghost from my own past. Long-haired, pleasant features, maybe as old as 22