DeRosaWorld

Get Out Of My Living Room!

Republican pigs and assholes are #Occupying my living room.

 

Etta James: January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012 - Sugar On The Floor

Irreplaceable.

Ben Franklin Was Cooler Than Everyone Else

We all know about Benjamin Franklin’s kite-flyin’, library-establishin’, Declaration-signin’, newspaper-printin’, lady-killin’ ways but, in honor of the Ben’s 306th birthday, let’s celebrate some of his lesser-known but very cool contributions to society...

In Other Words: An Interview With Writer Walter Bernstein

Came across an interesting interview on-line with screenwriter Walter Bernstein after reading some of his journalism work during World War Two.

It is a seven-part interview and the official link from The Archive of American Television can be found below...

Walter Bernstein was interviewed for three-and-a-half hours at his home in New York, NY.  Bernstein discussed openly about being listed in "Red Channels" in 1950.  Despite being blacklisted and the pressure by the FBI, Bernstein wrote under pseudonyms for shows including Danger, Charlie Wild, Private Eye, You Are There, and David Susskind's The Prince and the Pauper.

Once his name was cleared, he wrote many movies including, Fail Safe, The Front, and the Emmy award-winning Miss Evers’ Boy s. The interview was conducted by Sunny Parich on April 20, 1998.

Here is Part One found on YouTube:

Sunday Morning Music: Stan Kenton - Artistry In Rhythm

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra circa 1972 - Artistry In Rhythm.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close... And Still Around

“We think the fundamentals of the expansion going forward still look good,” Timothy F. Geithner, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, told his colleagues when they gathered in Washington in December 2006.

Some officials, including Susan Bies, a Fed governor, suggested that a housing downturn actually could bolster the economy by redirecting money to other kinds of investments. 

And there was general acclaim for Alan Greenspan, who stepped down as chairman at the beginning of the year, for presiding over one of the longest economic expansions in the nation’s history. Mr. Geithner suggested that Mr. Greenspan’s greatness still was not fully appreciated, an opinion now held by a much smaller number of people..."

Time For The Tar & Feathers In Pennsylvania... And Maybe An Old Rail Or Two

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency abruptly changed its mind Saturday about delivering fresh water to residents of a northeastern Pennsylvania village where residential wells were found to be tainted by a natural gas drilling operation.

Only 24 hours after promising them water, EPA officials informed residents of Dimock that a tanker truck wouldn't be coming after all. The about-face left residents furious, confused and let down — and, once again, scrambling for water for bathing, washing dishes and flushing toilets.

Agency officials would not explain why they reneged on their promise, or say whether water would be delivered at some point..."

I guess the American government is preparing for the day when the people have had enough and either have to fight or starve... or in this case die of thirst.

Sunday Morning Music: Linda Ronstadt - I Keep It Hid

A live video of Linda Ronstadt performing I Keep It Hid. (shot from the audience.)

Saturday Musings: 'The Choice Between Morons and Demons... Oh, And Then There Is Obama' Edition

Barack Obama is a bad President. He is a really bad Democratic President. Heading into his fourth year and there are no victories, just a series of unending mis-steps or steps not taken.

We Democrats are forced, however to support him because the Republican Party candidates are unfathomably evil. The Republican candidates, I would argue are demonic.

So what's our choice?  President Obama makes one recess appointment Progressives like and suddenly he is the Messiah, again?

Most of the people destroying America today should have and could have been put in jail in President Obama's first hundred days. Instead, some made it into his inner circle of advisers. The rest are working overtime to take him down.  He thought he could stand above the fray, but he didn't have the legs, stomach or understanding of the issues for that.

Now, we're all screwed. I have no idea what I am going to do when I am in the ballot box in November.

 

Killer Whales Visit My Neighborhood

Killer Whales visisted the surf off South Redondo Beach...

It started out pretty amazing, but then... the killer whalers got hungry apparently, and it has been getting pretty ugly for some gray whales and dolphins.

Why Whould God Choose A Loser?

Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann... but God said....

This One Is On Obama.

"Bank of America Corp., under pressure to raise capital and cut risks, is severing lines of credit to some small-business owners who have used them to stay afloat.

The Charlotte, N.C., bank is demanding that these customers pay off their credit line balances all at once instead of making monthly payments. If they can't pay in full, they are being offered new repayment plans for as long as five years, but with far higher interest rates than their original credit lines had.

Business owners complain that BofA's credit squeeze is abrupt and could strain their small companies and even put them out of business. The credit cutoff is coming at a time when the California economy can't seem to catch a break, and bucks what the financial industry says is a new trend of easing standards on business loans..."

The Bank of America seems to me to be the most dangerous terrorist organization threatening America today.

The Republicans Are About To Go On Record As A Dying, Fringe Party

What a pack of Jackasses. The voters and the policicians. More dangerous than Nazis, Communists or Terrorists.

Saturday Musings From Around The Blogosphere - 2011 Review

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2011 (The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves) from Vagabond Scholar

Two Headlines America Needs In 2012:

Justin Bieber Enlists In The Army!

Millions of Suburban Youth Follow

Scientologists Buy Facebook!  

Millions Drop Their Pages Overnight

Personal Photos Irretrievable

Information Overload? I Suggest You Read This One Article To Start 2012

It is from Steve Clemons post on The Washington Note: Rebuilding America's Stock of Power and it is mostly a review of Charles Kupchan's essay titled "Grand Strategy: The Four Pillars of the Future."

Relax, read all the links and let your mind think beyond the corporate media's coming circus of doom coverage of the 2012 Presidential Election.

Are You Guys Still Trying To Take A Picture of That Tree?

Hitchcock would like to be in the Christmas Tree photo, please.

Your Republican Majority At Work

There must have been a group of prepubescent boys in the Visitors' Gallery.

Sunday Morning Music: Beethoven's Funeral March from Symphony #3

A Friend Has Died: Eleanor Hamerow: 1920 - 2011

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
      -- Henry Adams

men·tor:  [men-tawr, -ter], noun
1. a wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
2.an influential senior sponsor or supporter.

A friend of mine died this past week. She was 91 years old. She was a teacher, a filmmaker, a chemist and pharmacist, a dancer, a communist and atheist, a lousy cook and one hell of a person. They don’t make them like that in New York City anymore.

I met Eleanor Hamerow when I attended NYU’s Graduate Film Program back in the 1980s. She was my teacher and we were terrified of her gruff New York accent and attitude which was only a veneer for a caring and intelligent woman.

The heyday of the NYU Program was slipping fast, mostly due to the enormous popularity of film schools across the country. NYU was becoming a money-making corporate entity and some of the old timers like Ellie seemed to be in the way of a new image the school wanted to portray. Her last years at the school were a constant political battle for students and the art of film.

She hung in there as long as she could showing Orson Welles and John Ford movies and La Belle et la Bête and teaching film editing.  She was a film editor and documentary filmmaker of some renowned.

(CBS News (She was fired for including President Eisenhower's "beware the military, industrial complex" speech in their televised documentary of his life.), Martha Graham: An American Original in Performance,  A Dancer’s World, An American Family...)

Film Editing was her second profession after her early years as a chemist.  Teaching was her Third Act.

She got a small auditorium named after her at NYU...but when she finally retired, the soul went out of the school along with all the increasingly antiquated film equipment, like hand-cranked sound synchronizers, moviolas and film splicing blocks...and the old projectors that chewed up old French new wave or Italian neo-realist film prints...

After I finished school, Ellie gave me a job working for her to help me pay off my student loans and I was able to work on her last documentary...appropriately about a teacher.

Somehow...and it is probably worth a novel in itself, I travelled to Moscow with her in 1989 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the VGIK Film School started by Eisenstein in 1919.  One brief story I’ll share is we went in search of the Moscow Arts Theater...home of ‘The Method’ and Stanislavsky...the mythical directing and acting philosophy that breathed life into Marlon Brando, James Dean, Lazlo Benedict, and Elia Kazan...and the NYU Gradate Film Program under Ellie Hamerow.

We found the old theater in the early afternoon and walked into the empty lobby. The doors were open, but the place seemed deserted.  A man in a dark suit handed Ellie a rose and escorted us into the theater...on the stage was a casket with a large photo next to it of one of the actors from the theater troupe. They assumed Ellie had come to pay respects...she looked born and bred...her boots, her head popping out the top of a heavily-scarfed, long black coat...all 5' 1" of her...so we joined the line of mourners.

We had a young interpreter from the school with us and he found the administrator of the theater and told him that Martin Scorsese (me) and a famous American film producer (Ellie) were here. So he came to see us and though we didn’t fool him, we scored some tickets to the theater the next night, and Ihe gave me a poster for the 100th anniversary of The Seagull.  

The next night, we got to see a play that was banned since the 1930s by Stalin himself. Ellie was in heaven. There we were sitting in the front row at the Moscow Arts Theater watching a play in Russian. Our translator was there, kind of filling us in on what was being said and of course there was Ellie's running commentary as though the performance was taking place back at NYU in one of her classes...

Again, a story for another time...but Ellie had written a speech for the VGIK Film School celebration in which she was going to scold the Russians for Stalin and ruining the promise of communism...

After Ellie retired and the years started piling up, some of her contemporary friends began to get ill or even pass away. I would get a phone call from her telling me that Mimi or Ruby couldn't make the performance tonight at Lincoln Center and would I like to go...I saw my first Shostakovich with her and my first Tudor ballet...and my first opera...(a four-hour Semiramede where I didn’t realize that Marilyn Horne was supposed to be playing a man).

She introduced me to the Manhattan cocktail...she couldn't drink anymore, but she wanted me to order one so it sat on the table through dinner so she could smell it...she ordered it the way she liked it: gin, dry vermouth, a dask of bitters and a twist lemon peel.

She was a teacher, but also, always a scholar. Into her eighties she was taking classes at Columbia University. In her late seventies she decided she needed to read the Bible and took a class. I would get a call from her. “What do you know about The First Nicene Council?”  or “Have you read Aquinas?  Let’s have a nosh and talk about it.”  So I would wrap up in a scarf and coat and gloves and take a cab from my East 55th Street apartment to her West 89th Street penthouse and we’d get coffee and something to eat and discuss religion and inevitably movies.

I moved to Los Angeles over twelve years ago and only corresponded with Ellie at first by phone and letters and then dwindling to a few emails and a long Holiday card.

I wasn’t there for the dementia or the need to put her in a home, or for the end where I am told she simply refused food and shortly after, died.

To live such a life and to take it to age 91...Not bad Ellie, not bad at all. You are remembered and cherished...tonight over a Manhattan, Ellie-style.

Now Witness The Firepower of This Fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL Battle Station! ... On My Christmas Tree

Sunday Morning Music: Heart - Dream of The Archer

Saturday Musings: 'Enough With The Republicans On TV Being Taken Seriously' Edition

Short and Sweet, folks...

Herman Cain’s announcement shouldn’t even rate enough power to break into a Phineas & Ferb rerun on Saturday afternoon...

No kidding. He is not going to be the Republican nominee...

Remember Michelle Bachmann, the functionally-insane woman who is allowed to wander the stage on Corporate TV?

Rick Santorium? 

Newt Gingrich? Well, he still has another round or two on the Sunday Pundit circle jerks, I guess.

And we all know no one in America is ever going to vote for Mitt Romney for President... no matter how many times he runs.... except maybe his sons.

John Huntsman presents himself like a Bill Clinton, but if you listen… he sounds like a Paul Ryan.

So that leaves me with this thought. There are no Republicans in America anymore: There are Psychotics, there are FOX NEWS Fools and there are  what makes up the 1%. .. that should add up to 21%...

So Democrats… it is time to start paying attention to who runs in your Primaries.

So You Don't Think There Is Much Difference Between The Two Parties?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tom Wicker - A Shame He Got It All Wrong

...On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Wicker, a brilliant but relatively unknown White House correspondent who had worked at four smaller papers, written several novels under a pen name and, at 37, had established himself as a workhorse of The Times’s Washington bureau, was riding in the presidential motorcade as it wound through downtown Dallas, the lone Times reporter on a routine political trip to Texas.

The searing images of that day — the rifleman’s shots cracking across Dealey Plaza, the wounded president lurching forward in the open limousine, the blur of speed to Parkland Memorial Hospital and the nation’s anguish as the doctors gave way to the priests and a new era — were dictated by Mr. Wicker from a phone booth in stark, detailed prose drawn from notes scribbled on a White House itinerary sheet. It filled two front-page columns and the entire second page, and vaulted the writer to journalistic prominence overnight....

It is apparently good men like Tom Wicker that frustrate me most and I can not understand... over time, they had to know what they reported about the Assassination of President Kennedy was wrong... but they never said anything... and I understand if they were fed false info, etc... but at some point... they had to look in the mirror and admit that the officail story just does not work...

Wicker's reporting for the New York Times on 11/22/63 was what he hung his reputation on... I know it was not his entire life... but his life was certianly lived in the shadow of that day... as all of our lives have been... so in the end... he did more harm that good with his reporting.

 

Ken Russell - A Passing That Should Be Noted

Film director Ken Russell, who was Oscar-nominated for his 1969 film Women In Love, has died at the age of 84.

At leaset the BBC didn't simply describe him as 'controversial' in the first sentence.

I liked Ken Russell and as a youngster just starting to explore films that my parents didn't show me on television... Ken Russell was always an exciting day at the movies.

Altered States

Thanksgiving Musings: "Shop, You Fuckers!"

I guess it is not surprising that Americans are pepper spraying each other to be the first to get at the latest electronic toys being offered on sale… to replace last year’s models that are now obsolete… We learn our behavior from TV and what we see on TV is people being pepper sprayed who are in the way.

What a chasm between the Occupy Movement folks on their knees being pepper sprayed by campus police or the real city police, and the people who are on their knees before the glass doors of discount shopping malls at mid-night, gathered uncomfortably and even dangerously waiting to crush into the store and put Christmas presents on credit and debit cards…  debit cards that almost were going to charge an extra usage fee … until the  Occupy movement made the Banks back down.

Supposedly, Black Friday 2001 is breaking a record for consumer consumption… and just wait until Cyber Monday! ...but who has the money?

Are the Wal-Mart and Target shoppers delusional enough to think they are a member of the 1% and not the 99%?  Did people in Wisconsin sign recall petitions as they stood in line at the local Target?

And what do you buy in Wal-Mart and Target? It doesn’t seem like you could get a nice gift for someone amidst the foreign made junk that sits on the shelves.

I spent Saturday walking around my neighborhood shops and buying small, meaningful gifts… and yes, I am bragging that I did so. There is a local craftsman who makes beautiful sun catchers out of beach glass and a small yarn shop where folks sit around and show each other stitches… no teacher present, just people interested in the craft of knitting and crocheting and hanging out.  I brought some local wine and  handmade soap and candles and tchotchke… and no one pepper sprayed me.

This Holiday Season, I am even having trouble watching network television, the commercials are so crass and gluttonous.  I have to look away.

#Occupy The Republican Party

Why do we put up with this nonsense? The embarrassing debates. The idiotic candidates. It is an insult to our Founding Fathers, our history. our present and our future.

If this group of candidates is the best that Republican Party has to offer this country and the world... then I say we need to #Occupy the Republican Party... Take back the Party of Lincoln... if we want a Conservative Party... so be it... but why are we forced to put up with this shit day in and day out... Our pathetic media should be ripping these liars, fools, demons and ghouls apart with fact checking and intelligent analysis of the insane words that come out of their mouths..

Enough!

#Occupy the Republican Party.

11/22/63 : A JFK Assassination Conspiracy Video

Here is a multi-part documentary about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Even Jesus Cracked A Few Skulls At The Temple

Maybe it's time to get up and start fighting back...

Let's ask her... or her parents...

More Shelby Lynne... Lead Me Love...

Veterans Day

The Big Two-Hearted River
by Ernest Hemingway

PART I

The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber. Nick sat down on the bundle of canvas and bedding the baggage man had pitched out of the door of the baggage car. There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country. The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.

Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled against the log spires of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their positions again by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time.

He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge. At the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them at first. Then he saw them at the bottom of the pool, big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in a varying mist of gravel and sand, raised in spurts by the current.

Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.

Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling. He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved away around the foot of a bluff.

Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders beside the railway track. He was happy. He adjusted the pack harness around the bundle, pulling straps tight, slung the pack on his back got his arms through the shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tump-line. Still, it was too heavy. It was much too heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to keep the weight of the pack high on his shoulders he walked along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the burned town behind in the heat, and he turned off around a hill with a high, fire-scarred hill on either side onto a road that went back into the country. He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.

From the time he had gotten down off the train and the baggage man had thrown his pack out of the open car door things had been different. Seney was burned, the country was burned over and changed, but it did not matter. It could not all be burned. He hiked along the road, sweating in the sun, climbing to cross the range of hills that separated the railway from the pine plains.
 

The road ran on, dipping occasionally, but always climbing. He went on up.  Finally after going parallel to the burnt hill, he reached the top. Nick leaned back against a stump and slipped out of the pack harness. Ahead of him, as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The burned country stopped off at the left of a range of hills. All ahead islands of dark pine trees rose out of the plain. Far off to the left was the line of the river. Nick followed it with his eye and caught glints of the water in the sun.

There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until the far blue hills that marked the Lake Superior height of land. He could hardly see them faint and far away in the heat-light over the plain. If he looked too steadily they were gone. But if he only half-looked they were there, the far-off hills of the height of land.

Nick sat down against the charred stump and smoked a cigarette. His pack balanced on the top of the stump harness holding ready, a hollow molded in it from his back. Nick sat smoking, looking out over the country. He did not need to get his map out. He knew where he was from the position of the river.

As he smoked his legs stretched out in front of him, he noticed a grasshopper walk along the ground and up onto his woolen sock. The grasshopper was black. As he had walked along the road, climbing, he had started grasshoppers from with dust. They were all black. They were not the big grasshoppers with yellow and black or red and black wings whirring out from their black wing sheathing as they fly up. These were just ordinary hoppers, but all a sooty black in color. Nick had wondered about them as he walked without really thinking about them. Now, as he watched the black hopper that was nibbling at the wool of his sock with its fourway lip he realized that they had all turned black from living in the burned-over land. He realized that the fire must have come the year before, but the grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long they would stay that way.

Carefully he reached his hand down and took hold of the hopper by the wings. He turned him up, all his legs walking in the air, and looked at his jointed belly. Yes, it was black too, iridescent where the back and head were dusty.

"Go on, hopper," Nick said, speaking out loud for the first time. "Fly away somewhere."

He tossed the grasshopper up into the air and watched him sail away to a charcoal stump across the road.

Nick stood up. He leaned his back against the weight of his pack where it rested upright on the stump and got his arms through the shoulder straps. He stood with the pack on his back on the brow of the hill looking out across the country, toward the distant river and then struck down the hillside away from the road. Underfoot the ground was good walking. Two hundred yards down the fire line stopped. Then it was sweet fern, growing ankle high, walk through, and clumps of jack pines; a long undulating country with frequent rises and descents, sandy underfoot and the country alive again.
 

Nick kept his direction by the sun. He knew where he wanted to strike the river and he kept on through the pine plain, mounting small rises to see other rises ahead of him and sometimes from the top of a rise a great solid island of pines off to his right or his left. He broke off some sprigs of the leathery sweet fern, and put them under his pack straps. The chafing crushed it and he smelled it as he walked.

He was tired and very hot, walking across the uneven, shadeless pine pram. At any time he knew he could strike the river by turning off to his left. It could not be more than a mile away. But he kept on toward the north to hit the river as far upstream as he could go in one day's walking. For some time as he walked Nick had been in sight of one of the big islands of pine standing out above the rolling high ground he was crossing. He dipped down and then as he came slowly up to the crest of the bridge he turned and made toward the pine trees. There was no underbrush in the island of pine trees. The trunks of the trees went straight up or slanted toward each other. The trunks were straight and brown without branches. The branches were high above. Some interlocked to make a solid shadow on the brown forest floor. Around the grove of trees was a bare space. It was brown and soft underfoot as Nick walked on it. This was the over-lapping of the pine needle floor, extending out beyond the width of the high branches. The trees   had grown tall and the branches moved high, leaving in the sun this bare   space they had once covered with shadow. Sharp at the edge of this extension of the forest floor commenced the sweet fern.

Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back and looked up into the pine trees. His neck and back and the small of his back rested as he stretched. The earth felt good against his back. He looked up at the sky, through the branches, and then shut his eyes. He opened them and looked up again. There was a wind high up in the branches. He shut his eyes   again and went to sleep.

Nick woke stiff and cramped. The sun was nearly down. His pack was heavy and the straps painful as he lifted it on. He leaned over with the pack on and   picked up the leather rod-case and started out from the pine trees across the sweet fern swale, toward the river. He knew it could not be more than a mile.
 

He came down a hillside covered with stumps into a meadow. At the edge of the meadow flowed the river. Nick was glad to get to the river. He walked upstream through the meadow. His trousers were soaked with the dew as he walked. After the hot day, the dew halt come quickly and heavily. The river made no sound. It was too fast and smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before he mounted to a piece of high ground to make camp, Nick looked down the river at the trout rising. They were rising to insects come from the swamp on the other side of the stream when the sun went down. The trout jumped out of water to take them. While Nick walked through the little   stretch of meadow alongside the stream, trout had jumped high out of water. Now as he looked down the river, the insects must be settling on the surface, for the trout were feeding steadily all down the stream. As far down the long stretch as he could see, the trout were rising, making circles all down the surface of the water, as though it were starting to rain.

The ground rose, wooded and sandy, to overlook the meadow, the stretch of river and the swamp. Nick dropped his pack and rod case and looked for a level piece of ground. He was very hungry and he wanted to make his camp before he cooked. Between two jack pines, the ground was quite level. He took the ax out of the pack and chopped out two projecting roots. That leveled a piece of ground large enough to sleep on. He smoothed out the sandy soil with his hand and pulled all the sweet fern bushes by their roots. His hands smelled good from the sweet fern. He smoothed the uprooted earth. He did not want anything making lumps under the blankets. When he had the ground smooth, he spread his blankets. One he folded double, next to the ground. The other two he spread on top.

With the ax he slit off a bright slab of pine from one of the stumps and split it into pegs for the tent. He wanted them long and solid to hold in the ground. With the tent unpacked and spread on the ground, the pack, leaning against a jack pine, looked much smaller. Nick tied the rope that served the tent for a ridgepole to the trunk of one of the pine trees and pulled the tent up off the   ground with the other end of the rope and tied it to the other pine. The tent hung on the rope like a canvas blanket on a clothesline. Nick poked a pole he had cut up under the back peak of the canvas and then made it a tent by pegging out the sides. He pegged the sides out taut and drove the pegs deep, hitting them down into the ground with the flat of the ax until the rope loops were buried and the canvas was drum tight.

Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheesecloth to keep out mosquitoes. He crawled inside under the mosquito bar with various things from the pack to put at the head of the bed under the slant of the canvas. Inside the tent the light came through the brown canvas. It smelled pleasantly of canvas. Already there was something mysterious and homelike. Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good   place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.

He came out, crawling under the cheesecloth. It was quite dark outside. It was lighter in the tent.

Nick went over to the pack and found, with his fingers, a long nail in a paper sack of nails, in the bottom of the pack. He drove it into the pine tree, holding it close and hitting it gently with the flat of the ax. He hung the pack up on the nail. All his supplies were in the pack. They were off the ground and sheltered now.

Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened and emptied a can at pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the frying pan.

"I've got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I'm willing to carry it," Nick said.

His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did not speak again.

He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump.   Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the tour legs down into the ground with his boot. Nick put the frying pan and a can of spaghetti on the grill over the flames. He was hungrier. The beans and spaghetti warmed. Nick stirred them and mixed them together. They began to bubble, making little bubbles   that rose with difficulty to the surface. There was a good smell. Nick got out a bottle of tomato ketchup and cut four slices of bread. The little bubbles were coming faster now. Nick sat down beside the fire and lifted the frying pan off. He poured about half the contents out into the tin plate. It spread slowly on the plate. Nick knew it was too hot. He poured on some tomato   ketchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at the fire, then at the tent; he was not going to spoil it all by burning his tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never been able to wait for them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was very hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.  "Chrise," Nick said, "Geezus Chrise," he said happily.

He ate the whole plateful before he remembered the bread. Nick finished the second plateful with the bread, mopping the plate shiny. He had not eaten   since a cup of coffee and a ham sandwich in the station restaurant at St. Ignace. It had been a very fine experience. He had been that hungry before, but had not been able to stand it. He could have made camp hours before if he had wanted to. There were plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was good.

Nick tucked two big chips of pine under the grill. The fire flared up. He had forgotten to get water for the coffee. Out of the pack he got a folding canvas bucket and walked down the hill, across the edge of the meadow, to the stream. The other bank was in the white mist. The grass was wet and cold as he knelt on the bank and dipped the canvas bucket into the stream. It bellied and pulled held in the current. The water was ice cold. Nick rinsed the bucket and carried it full up to the camp. Up away from the stream it was not so cold.

Nick drove another big nail and hung up the bucket full of water. He dipped the coffee pot half full, put some more chips under the grill onto the fire and put the pot oil. He could not remember which way he made coffee. He could remember an argument about it with Hopkins, but not which side he had   taken. He decided to bring it to a boil. He remembered now that was   Hopkins's way. He had once argued about everything with Hopkins. While he waited for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from spilling, then meditatively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.

The coffee boiled as he watched. The lid came up and coffee and grounds ran down the side of the pot. Nick took it off the grill. It was a triumph for Hopkins. He put sugar in the empty apricot cup and poured some of the coffee out to cool. It was too hot to pour and he used his hat to hold the handle of the coffee pot. He would not let it steep in the pot at all. Not the first cup. It should be straight. Hopkins deserved that. Hop was a very serious coffee drinker. He was the most serious man Nick had ever known. Not heavy, serious. That was a long time ago Hopkins spoke without moving his lips. He had played polo. He made millions of dollars in Texas. He had   borrowed carfare to go to Chicago when the wire came that his first big well had come in. He could have wired for money. That would have been too slow. They called Hop's girl the Blonde Venus. Hop did not mind because she was not his real girl. Hopkins said very confidently that none of them would make fun of his real girl. He was right. Hopkins went away when the telegram came. That was on the Black River. It took eight days for the telegram to reach him. Hopkins gave away his 22-caliber Colt automatic pistol to Nick. He gave his camera to Bill, It was to remember him always by. They were all going fishing again next summer. The Hop Head was rich. He would get a   yacht and they would all cruise along the north shore of Lake Superior. He   was excited but serious. They said good-bye and all felt bad. It broke up the trip. They never saw Hopkins again. That was a long time ago on the Black River.

Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting   on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets.

Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire when the night wind blew. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blanket. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.

 
PART II

 
In the morning the sun was up and the tent was starting to get hot. Nick crawled out under the mosquito netting stretched across the mouth of the tent, to look at the morning. The grass was wet on his hands as he came out. The sun was just up over the hill. There was the meadow, the river and the swamp. There were birch trees in the green of the swamp on the other side of the river.

The river was clear and smoothly fast in the early morning. Down about two hundred yards were three logs all the way across the stream. They made the water smooth and deep above them. As Nick watched, a mink crossed the river on the logs and went into the swamp. Nick was excited. He was excited by the early morning and the river. He was really too hurried to eat breakfast, but he knew he must. He built a little fire and put on the coffee pot.

While the water was heating in the pot he took an empty bottle and went down over the edge of the high ground to the meadow. The meadow was wet with dew and Nick wanted to catch grasshoppers for bait before the sun dried the grass. He found plenty of good grasshoppers. They were at the base of the grass stems.  Sometimes they clung to a grass stem. They were cold and wet with the dew, and could not jump until the sun warmed them. Nick picked them up, taking only the medium-sized brown ones, and put them into the bottle. He turned over a log and just under the shelter of the edge were several hundred hoppers. It was a grasshopper lodging house. Nick put about fifty of the medium browns into the bottle. While he was picking up the hoppers the others warmed in the sun and commenced to hop away. They flew when they hopped. At first they made one flight and stayed stiff when they landed, as though they were dead.

Nick knew that by the time he was through with breakfast they would be as lively as ever. Without dew in the grass it would take him all day to catch a bottle full of good grasshoppers and he would have to crush many of them, slamming at them with his hat. He washed his hands at the stream. He was excited to be near it. Then he walked up to the tent. The hoppers were already jumping stiffly in the grass. In the bottle, warmed by the sun, they were jumping in a mass. Nick put in a pine stick as a cork. It plugged the mouth of the bottle enough, so the hoppers could not get out and left plenty of air passage.

He had rolled the log back and knew he could get grasshoppers there every morning.

Nick laid the bottle full of jumping grasshoppers against a pine trunk. Rapidly he mixed some buckwheat flour with water and stirred it smooth, one cup of flour, one cup of water. He put a handful of coffee in the pot and dipped a lump of grease out of a can and slid it sputtering across the hot skillet. In the smoking skillet he poured smoothly the buckwheat batter. It spread like lava, the grease spitting sharply. Around the edges the buckwheat cake began to firm, then brown, then crisp. The surface was bubbling slowly to porousness. Nick pushed under the browned under surface with a fresh pine chip. He shook the skillet sideways and the cake was loose on the surface. I won't try and flop it, he thought. He slid the chip of clean wood all the way under the   cake, and flopped it over onto its face. It sputtered in the pan.

When it was cooked Nick regreased the skillet. He used all the batter. It made another big flapjack and one smaller one.

Nick ate a big flapjack and a smaller one, covered with apple butter. He put apple butter on the third cake, folded it over twice, wrapped it in oiled paper and put it in his shirt pocket. He put the apple butter jar back in the pack and cut bread for two sandwiches.

In the pack he found a big onion. He sliced it in two and peeled the silky outer skin. Then he cut one half into slices and made onion sandwiches. He wrapped them in oiled paper and buttoned them in the other pocket of his khaki shirt. He turned the skillet upside down on the grill, drank the coffee, sweetened and yellow brown with the condensed milk in it, and tidied up the camp. It was a good camp.

Nick took his fly rod out of the leather rod-case, jointed it, and shoved the rod-case back into the tent. He put on the reel and threaded the line through the guides. He had to hold it from hand to hand, as he threaded it, or it would slip back through its own weight. It was a heavy, double tapered fly line. Nick had paid eight dollars for it a long time ago. It was made heavy to lift back in the air and come forward flat and heavy and straight to make it possible to cast a fly which has no weight. Nick opened the aluminum leader box. The leaders were coiled between the damp flannel pads. Nick had wet the pads at the water cooler on the train up to St. Ignace. In the damp pads the gut leaders had softened and Nick unrolled one and tied it by a loop at the end to the heavy fly line. He fastened a hook on the end of the leader. It was a small hook, very thin and springy.

Nick took it from his hook book, sitting with the rod across his lap. He tested the knot and the spring of the rod by pulling the line taut. It was a good feeling. He was careful not to let the hook bite into his finger.

He started down to the stream, holding his rod, the bottle of grasshoppers hung from his neck by a thong tied in half hitches around the neck of the bottle. His landing net hung by a hook from his belt. Over his shoulder was a long flour sack tied at each corner into an ear. The cord went over his shoulder. The sack slapped against his legs.

Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all his equipment hanging from him. The grasshopper bottle swung against his chest. In his shirt the breast pockets bulged against him with the lunch and the fly book.

He stepped into the stream. It was a shock. His trousers clung tight to his legs. His shoes felt the gravel. The water was a rising cold shock.

Rushing, the current sucked against his legs. Where he stepped in, the water was over his knees. He waded with the current. The gravel slipped under his shoes. He looked down at the swirl of water below each leg and tipped up the bottle to get a grasshopper. The first grasshopper gave a jump in the neck of the bottle and went out into the water. He was sucked under in the whirl by Nick's right leg and came to the surface a little way down stream. He floated rapidly, kicking. In a quick circle, breaking the smooth surface of the water, he disappeared. A trout had taken him.

Another hopper poked his face out of the bottle. His antennas wavered.  He was getting his front legs out of the bottle to jump. Nick took him by the head and held him while he threaded the slim hook under his chin, down through his thorax and into the last segments of his abdomen. The   grasshopper took hold of the hook with his front feet, spitting tobacco juice on it. Nick dropped him into the water.

Holding the rod in his right hand he let out line against the pull of the grasshopper in the current. He stripped off line from the reel with his left hand and let it run free. He could see the hopper in the little waves of the current. It went out of sight.

There was a tug on the line. Nick pulled against the taut line. It was his first strike. Holding the now living rod across the current, he hauled in the line with his left hand. The rod bent in jerks, the trout pulling against the current. Nick knew it was a small one. He lifted the rod straight up in the air. It bowed with the pull.

He saw the trout in the water jerking with his head and body against the shifting tangent of the line in the stream.

Nick took the line in his left hand and pulled the trout, thumping tiredly against the current, to the surface. His back was mottled the clear, water-over-gravel color, his side flashing in the sun. The rod under his right arm, Nick stooped, dipping his right hand into the current. He held the trout, never still, with his moist right hand, while he unhooked the barb from his mouth, then dropped him back into the stream.

 

OK... So The Banks Get Paid... But Who Owns The Water In Italy?

Italy's parliament began rushing through austerity measures demanded by the European Union to avert a euro zone meltdown, after U.S. President Barack Obama ratcheted up pressure for more dramatic action from the currency bloc.

Italy's Senate approved a new budget law, clearing the way for approval of the package in the lower house on Saturday and the formation of an emergency government to replace that of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi...

In Athens, former European Central Bank policymaker Lucas Papademos was sworn in as Greek prime minister after days of political wrangling, tasked with meeting the terms of a bailout plan to avert bankruptcy.

Obama spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy late on Thursday and also called Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

A German government official said there had been an "exchange of opinions" between Merkel and Obama, while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner demanded fast action from Europe.

"The crisis in Europe remains the central challenge to global growth. It is crucial that Europe move quickly to put in place a strong plan to restore financial stability," Geithner said in a statement following a meeting with finance ministers from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation countries...

Are You Fucking Kidding?

Students at University of California, Berkeley are met with violence from the Police on their own campus... It's time for the parents to get involved... then let's see how the Chancellor explains this...

 

Joe Frazier

"Joe Frazier, the relentless slugger who became the heavyweight champion of the world and earned boxing immortality with three epic battles against Muhammad Ali, died on Monday at age 67, his personal manager said.

"Smokin' Joe" Frazier, who was the first boxer to beat Ali, died in Philadelphia a month after being diagnosed with liver cancer. Leslie Wolff, Frazier's personal manager, confirmed his death.

Frazier won the Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medal for the United States in 1964 in Tokyo and held the world heavyweight boxing crown from 1970 to 1973..."

Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1970s, my house was in Joe Frazier's corner when these boxing matches were held.

I asked my Dad, who was a  big boxing fan, why he wasn't rooting for Ali, who was so cool and fast and funny and always on TV... my Dad's answer was..."He's a big mouth and a show off."

The ultimate sign of respect from my Dad was when he thought a television event was so important he would bring the portable TV downstairs into the pizza parlor at night... The network premier of In Harm's Way couldn't be missed...  a Phillies pennant game couldn't be missed... The Flyers playing the Russians couldn't be missed... a Joe Frazier fight couldn't be missed.

Joe Frazier will be missed, by boxing fans, by Philadelphia and even by Muhammad Ali... who wouldn't be who he was if Joe Frazier wasn't there, too.

 

Pennsylvania Is A Sad, Strange and Perplexing Place

"Time and again, questions about an alleged cover-up of a sex abuse scandal at Penn State, circled back to one name: Joe Paterno.

Major college football's oldest, winningest and perhaps most revered coach, was engulfed Monday in a growing furor involving former defensive coordinator and one-time heir apparent Jerry Sandusky, who was indicted on charges of sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years.

The Pennsylvania state police commissioner said Paterno fulfilled his legal requirement when he relayed to university administrators that a graduate assistant had seen Sandusky attacking a young boy in the team's locker room shower in 2002. But the commissioner also questioned whether Paterno had a moral responsibility to do more..."

Why the institutional child molestation? Is it a 'safe' environment for the preditor?

Like the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on the other side of the State, some in charge looked on... and worse... turned away... as children were being raped and molested.

There never seems to be an answer as to why? We treat Priests and Coaches with kid-gloves as they practice a secret life of preying on the young. We do not go after the question of what led to such behavior.

It is frustrating and hard to look at, but that question needs to be answered. The children and their parents deserve an answer to that question.

Why?

Thanks #OCCUPY

Citing customer concerns and a "changing competitive marketplace," Bank of America said it won't charge customers a fee for using their debit cards.

"We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee," said David Darnell, co-chief operating officer. "Our customers' voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so."

Be Careful Papi... This Is How Dallases Happen...

Greece's government is holding an emergency meeting following a day of turmoil triggered by PM George Papandreou's announcement of a referendum on the proposed EU bailout.

Happy Halloween

This Is A Good Question... But So Is Why... Two Days Later... NPR Does Not Mention The Police Victim Is A Two-Tour Iraq Veteran?

"Why did police officer fire gas canister into crowd trying to help injured Iraq veteran?"

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=141748014&m=141747993

Happy 200th Birthday To Franz Liszt!

Tom & Jerry join in the Lisztomania

Symphonic Poem - Tasso (Part One)

Symphonic Poem Tasso (Part Two)

Ken Russel's Lisztomania

Bipartisanship Failed To Attract Conservatives To Obama… How About This….

Here is some read meat for the masses and pundits:

   * Osama bin Laden, brought to justice. Republicans said it would be rude to go after bin Laden on Pakistani soil, but President Obama did it anyway and SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden on May 1.

    * Moammar Gadhafi, removed from power. The Bush administration signed a peace deal with Gadhafi, despite the Lockerbie bombing. President Obama supported the Libyan people who successfully removed Gadhafi from power, ultimately killing him.

    * Iraq war, ended. George W. Bush said the mission was accomplished nearly 8.5 years ago, and in 2007 and 2008, Republicans like John McCain said wanted to stay there a thousand years, it that's what it took. Now we'll be out be end the of 2011. And that's a real mission accomplished.

The Math Does Not Add Up... They Gave Away Everything!

The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government’s first-ever audit of the central bank.

Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was $14.5 trillion...

They gave away EVERYTHING! 

 

Sunday Morning Music: Shelby Lynne - Dead Flowers

This just about sums it all up. I am no longer a McCabe's Guitar Shop virgin. I went to see The Shelby Lynne and she was most impressive. Man, does this woman have her fists up, ready to fight.

Saturday Musings: Some Links

Here are some interesting links to visit that contain the wonderful attribute of 'surfing',,, these articles link to other articles and before you know it you are spinning a web.

Here is a nice little history lesson about the relationship of Wall Street and Main Street:

Our system of government is an oligarchy inside a democracy. The system is built on an unspoken bargain:

   " The rise of representative democracy involved a difficult and delicately executed trade-off of property security for the richest and historically most powerful actors in exchange for universal suffrage for the unpropertied masses."

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Here is a good article, with a good history link to deep dive into the topic if you want (with a video link as well) about the ridiculous notion that Corporations are People:

Of all the Occupy Wall Street refrains, one of the most memorable is, "I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one." But, clever as it is, the quip looks to the wrong end of the life cycle: The only thing more corrupt than the legal concept of corporate personhood is the way a Gilded Age judge birthed it.

-----

 Here is an example of the Obama Administration in action:

"In a new report, the chief executives of GE, Intel, Boeing and other companies also backed White House proposals to fix infrastructure like airports, railways and electricity grids and to expand broadband Internet networks as a way to boost hiring and speed up flagging growth."

So American taxpayers are going to flip the bill to build the infrastructure for private corporations to then bill us for the services of using them ...

"Let's go to the videotape!"

   

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Here is one to make you get up and join or start your local #Occupy brigade:

Speaking at the Atlantic Idea Fest earlier this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan sat down for a televised interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. Defending the bank’s new $5 per month debit card fee, Moynihan invented something he called  the “right to make a profit.”

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And then Iran tried attacked us!  Which side are the Koch Brothers on?:

In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts...

“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”

“Those activities constitute violations of criminal law,” Koch Industries wrote in a Dec. 8, 2008, letter giving details of its findings. The letter was made public in a civil court ruling in France in September 2010; the document has never before been reported by the media.

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There is a littel snapshot of America for you... and they hate us for our freedoms.

It's The Pictures That Got Smaller

I just got old...

"An article at the moviemaking technology website Creative Cow reports that the three major manufacturers of motion picture film cameras — Aaton, ARRI and Panavision — have all ceased production of new cameras within the last year, and will only make digital movie cameras from now on.  As the article’s author, Debra Kaufman, poignantly puts it, “Someone, somewhere in the world is now holding the last film camera ever to roll off the line...”

Now I know how Norma Desmond felt...

The technical aspects of my NYU training no longer apply. No more Moviolas, Steenbecks or hand-cranked sound synchronizers.

No more loading film in a black bag using only your sense of touch and counting sprocket holes.

I guess it is easier now... more democratic... but light projected through film... you can't beat that.

He Had Them In His Office And He Didn't Arrest Them... Or At Least Tax Them?

"President Barack Obama could create millions of jobs by attracting more foreign capital to the United States, helping entrepreneurs and being more aggressive  in energy, business leaders said on Monday.

In a new report, the chief executives of GE, Intel, Boeing and other companies also backed White House proposals to fix infrastructure like airports, railways and electricity grids and to expand broadband Internet networks as a way to boost hiring and speed up flagging growth..."

Some revolutions this past century led to bloody overthrows and people like 'Big-Business Leaders' were marched through the streets and people threw stones at them... before shooting them.

At least the Occupy Wall Street folks are non-violent.

To Protect and to Serve...

 

Our local. State and Federal government needs to answer questions about the police... who are they, what is the chain of command and what are their orders...

"It’s time reporters on all news organizations begin going to their local and state police departments and asking: How much of this crap do you have, and why do you need it?

"When they come dressed like that, they are not there to protect and defend our constitutional rights to peaceably assemble," Quigley said. "They are there to intimidate. Every demonstration is like a practice-run for state and local police to try out their new equipment and devices. They're all getting the federal anti-terrorist money, so if you go to a peaceful protest in Georgia, or Pittsburgh or New York or other places, you'll likely see the police using that as a pretext for a military-like response."

What would the police on Wall Street do if some protesters showed up armed...

What would the NRA do?

How would our Media report on it?

Let It Fly...

Felonious Munk has a few choice words for President Barack Obama...

Stunningly Stupid... President Obama Claims Banks Did Nothing Illegal... Just Tricky...

“Banks are in the business of making money, and they find loopholes,” the President said. Apparently forging and fabricating documents to prove ownership of homes that are subsequently stolen from borrowers is now a loophole..."

Three years in and I still argue with myself over whether Barack Obama was a major historical mistake by the American people, especially The Left...

Well... here is the answer, finally.