Bird lost

It is past mid November. We are here on the southern shore of Lake Erie.

Are we a mockingbird lost? or has the climate, or just the current weather changed?

Coup de Ville

Cadillac Coup de Ville

This model name was used on a series of cars from 1949 to 1993. The one above was toward the end of the first generation [1949-1953]. On the front bumper, there are chrome road rockets. Tail lights were on a vertical fin, as Plato would have them. It is starting to bury itself, while being in outside storage in Lorain, Ohio.

As I was motivatin' over the hill
I saw Maybellene in a Coup de Ville.
A Cadillac a-rollin' on the open road,
Nothin' outrun my V8 Ford.
The Cadillac doin' 'bout ninety-five,
We was bumper to bumper rollin' side to side.

—Chuck Berry, in 1955, using the tune of Ida Red

White Squirrel

To-day on a damp, drab, dreary and dreich day in Oberlin, O., a white squirrel in an oak tree.

Woollybear Sunday

A local television weatherman, Dick Goddard, created a festival highlighting the woolybear caterpillar. Its coloration is an orange stripe between dark brown segments. The thickness of the center stripe is thought to forecast the winter. It is believed to be cold with snow.

This was the 39th festival. It began in the nearby village, Birmingham, Ohio, and after a few years to the small town of Vermilion. Several activities are enacted throughout the morning, and early afternoon, culminating in an overly long parade.

People enjoy the marching bands, antique and vintage vehicles, and the dogs that go by. Politicians march to get noticed as do others. Dennis Kucinich, and his wife, marched in what will be part of his new congressional district, other very local politicians marched, or rode too. Union members marched against state ballot issue 2. Firemen were very much represented. Police, sheriff, and marines had units. Practically, every local festival, and beauty pageant had vehicles, and marchers; as well as businesses too numerous, and uninteresting to mention.

Before the parade starts, the Vermilion Sailors Majorettes stand together meeting with parade watchers.
Homing pigeons were released after the singing of the national anthem. Here they fly back, beginning to make a formation.
Near the beginning there followed, after every fire vehicle Vermilion had available, a piece of steel wreckage from New York City on that disastrous day when the buildings fell.
Many channel WJW-8 newscasters rode in vehicles, this wagon was drawn by draft horses; the others were mobilised by gasoline engines.
High school marching bands from local counties marched, and played, accompanied by majorettes, bannermen, baton units, and others.
There were several contingents of hounds; two of retired racing greyhounds, one of Irish wolfhounds, some homeless and mixed ancestry dogs, and others in seasonal costumes.
Ohio's leading Generals in the War for the Union, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Ulysses Simpson Grant rode in the parade too. Here afterwards they are stopped for a photograph. It has been reported that the War for Union was successful, and the War for Secession was not; depends what you read. Books for a southern audience were written differently.

Art Deco Erie County, Ohio

On the southern shore of Lake Erie, half way between Toledo and Cleveland is Sandusky. Sandusky is the county seat of Erie County. In the 1930s the county had 42 thousand people, and the city 24 thousand.

The courthouse was built in a Second Empire style (1874). Roosevelt's Public Works Administration remodeled the building changing the exterior in late art deco style. The central steeple remained, but the surfaces became very clean, sharp and rectilinear. Two architectural medallions were added. One was a bald eagle (symbol of the United States), the other an allegorical figure of Equity, or possibly a guarantor of equity.

Equity, in common parlance is fairness. Now, small children (and even dogs) voice objections to actions they seem as unfair. They need no education this, they know it by nature. In natural law, as it developed in republican Rome, it was recognised that certain principles existed in all nations, and this law must be superior [in some fashion] to civil law of any particular nation.

This figure has art deco stylized hair and beard [not the clothing]of a Babylonian king in the age of Abraham. Hammurabi had a code of laws in this period, and they are known to-day. There is a tablet icon of the Ten Commandments delivered by Moses the Lawgiver. There is the fasces (bundled birch rods, and bronze axe) which stood for the magisterium, and the Roman Republic. There is also, the scales of justice.

This is wonderful decoration. For a courthouse the dense, civil iconography is concise and complete culturally for the activities that were meant to happen in this building. Beyond this time [1938 on the new cornerstone] it is hard to find such artistic, architectural artifice. For such a populated locale that was stable in population, and not very great, there would not be so much more opportunity sites. There are some handsome churches, a post office redone as a carousel museum, and an adequate business district with a 1920s picture show building. To-day's city population is just barely above 1938's. I did not see a newer building worth describing.

Chalk Fest

In front of Cleveland's Art Museum was a Chalk Fest. Parents with children, young artists and people with cameras enjoyed the last weekend in summer. They were selling boxes of colored chalk. People were free to draw and color. Most people tried not to step on the pictures. Walking through the path midst distracted kids, and oblivious gawkers, and haphazard sandstone canvases was easier done by folks of nimble feet. It was an interested, and quiet crowd.
Some people imitated great works, such as Michelangelo's 'David'.
Others tried far simpler artists. You have to get your books out to see, if this is a Mondrian, or just one in the style of one.Someone liked Jan Vermeer's, 'Girl with Pearl Earring'[Het Meisje met de Parel]. Are her eyes supposed to be that big?Two fellows were working on this base ball series. I was to impatient to wait for a moment in which both could be framed without shadows and interlopers.
This sweet, young woman is in the process of creating, 'Peace, Love, and ...'.
One of several animal pictures. Several well known, and new cartoon characters were also a favorite subject. My nephew, jokingly, advised me that i might be liable for copyright infringement by Disney, Sony, or some other. All in all, these works were far better than the stuff in room 225 inside.
And the one only ironic one, which was also, the only political one in the kit-and-kaboodle.

You’ve gotta see the General

I came to Woodland Cemetery on a fluke. I was noticed. First one woman, then by a second. And at both incidences, i was just about to hop into the flivver and go home. They were both enthusiastic volunteers, and ambassadors for Woodland Cemetery. They catalogue, and help maintain the once premier Cleveland necropolis.

The second lady, was extremely eager to talk. By happenstance, my current street of residence had been her old street of residence. She gave me a tour. We had a two vehicle caravan about the cemetery. She spoke of the denizens, and the ground hog [woodchuck] problem [they are digging up graves], former vandals and grave robbers, and other interesting things. We spoke about war, and the ravages it does to the combatants. But, most insistently, “You've gotta see the General”, or really his monument. I did, and was quite pleased.

It was a four sided pillar. Donald McLeod, could the name be any more Scottish? And right behind him, across one street had been Holy Trinity. Across the other street, a Catholic Cemetery. Donald was an Unitarian. Well, one face tells you Donald was born at Fort Augustus near Inverness [by Loch Ness] Scotland, on the 1st of January 1779. Now, that was its new name after the disaster of Culloden 1746. The old name, for the wee village, was Kiliwhimin [Cill Chuimein]. It was newly named after the Butcher, Duke of Cumberland, William Augustus, third son of William II.

McLeod lived 100 years, 6 months and 21 days. What did he do for a century? How did he get to die in Cleveland? Well, a part of the story is on another face:

A soldier in the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington. And a participant in the burial of Sir John Moore. A British officer at the Battle of Waterloo. And in the American War of 1812. Major General of the Patriots in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837.

France under Napoleon Bonaparte wanted the control of Europe. The Peninsular [Iberia = Spain, Portugal] War was fought from 1807-1814. The British were first lead by Lt. Gen. Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington). He was recalled, and the Scotsman, Lt. Gen. John Moore took command. He died after being struck by cannon shot at the Battle of Corruna, in Galicia, Spain on January 16, 1809.

McLeod had attended the University of Aberdeen. In 1803 he joined the British navy. He joined the 42nd Highlanders, infantry in 1808. His unit was active in Spain, and Portugal. They were sent to Canada. Sgt. McLeod participated in Battle of Lundy's Lane (Niagara Falls, Canada) July 25, 1814. He also participated at Queenston Heights, and Crysler’s Farm. The regiment came back to England, then Waterloo. June 18, 1815 Napoleon fought his last battle. The newly created, Duke of Wellington led the British. The British, the Dutch, and four German states ended Napoleon's return to power.

In 1816 McLeod settled in Prescott, on the St. Lawrence, across Ogdensburg New York. He became a teacher, publisher of a newspaper, and a militia major. In 1837 rebellions broke out in Lower Canada (Papineau's)[Quebec], and Upper Canada (Mackenzie's) [Ontario]. The Rebels (Patriotes, Patriots) wanted a responsible government, they were in opposition to the Tories (Conservatives) and the Crown. The Tories trashed his printing press. McLeod escaped to New York state.

He became a brigadier general overseeing 500 men. On the second day of the March, a US colonel, and his troops took all their weapons. February 24, 1838 he reached Windsor. Four hundred British troops wee waiting, they had been notified by the American General Hugh Brady. McLeod and his, now, 300 had six muskets, and one cannon. They retreated to the American side, and were arrested.

The Canadians in the US formed a Hunters Lodge in Cleveland, and one in Rochester. They were imitating masonic structure. McLeod was appointed Secretary War, and Major General, in Cleveland. In 1840, the US ended these lodges, and other Canadian organisations; also the government in Canada was improving. The rebellions were put down. Self-rule was still a generation away [July 1, 1867].

McLeod wrote a book: A Brief Review of the Settlement of Upper Canada by the N. E. Loyalists and Scotch Highlanders in 1783; and of the Grievances which Compelled the Canadas to have recourse to Arms in Defence of their Rights and Liberties in the Years 1837 and 1838. Together with a Brief Sketch of the Campaigns of 1812-'13-'14: With an account of the Military Executions, Burnings, and Sackings of Towns and Villages, by the British, in the Upper and Lower Provinces, during the Commotion of 1837 and '38. By D. McLeod, Major General, Patriot Army, Upper Canada. Cleveland: F. B. Penniman, 1841.

In 1846 the British pardoned the surviving rebels. Some had been hanged, more were sent to the prison colony of Australia. McLeod returned to Canada, later coming to Cleveland. Where he died.

pro patria mori

To be born in one land, and to die in another. On a gravestone, it is not a novel inscribed; but in a few characters a story is limned. An historian, an antiquarian, or some sort of researcher may be able to uncover more details. One could search for relatives to interview. Often, after the passage of a certain number of years, no one knows more than the marks inscribed. Yet, those marks have some instructive value. St. John's Cemetery, Cleveland. Sargeant James Kelly. Company B, 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Wounded at Gettysburg. July 3, 1863. Born in Ireland March 3, 1836. Died July 7, 1863. May his soul rest in peace.Kelly was an immigrant to America [when did he arrive?]. He died four days after being wounded in the most famous of that war's many, many battles — Gettysburg. The name is Irish. The stone has the clover, the Irish will have you know, is the shamrock. The stone also has a cross, and sits in a Catholic cemetery. It was very important, and very promoted for Catholics to be buried only in hallowed grounds, which usually meant Catholic cemeteries.
Woodland Cemetery, Cleveland. 7th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. War for the Union 1861-1865.
Woodland Cemetery was the City of Cleveland's most important public cemetery in the XIXth century. It opened in 1853, and was conveniently available for the war dead. Near the main entrance there are two large monuments for two regiments [23rd, 7th] of infantry. The one for the 23rd was dedicated on August 1, 1865, just a few months after the end of combat. The names of the war dead are written on all four sides of the lower portion, of the monument. The number is almost evenly divided by those who died in action, and those that died by disease. Remember, the four horseman are war, famine, death, and pestilence.

The other [1872] is harder to read, for the engraving in the color of stone. Raised lettering is easy to read. It has four freshly restored, union painted, rifled cannons [West Point Foundry] defending it. The regiment was infantry.

That war had many names, but in Cleveland, at that time, it was called 'War for the Union'. The Republicans were successful politically. There were no Republicans in the South. To-day, things have changed. The South is full of Republicans, and no Republicans would use the term—'War for the Union'.

Woodland Cemetery, Cleveland. Alfred J. Straka. Born July 5, 1895. Died May 26, 1914 at Vera Cruz Mexico in the service of United States Navy.

I heard Woodrow Wilson's guns
I heard Maria calling
Saying, "Veracruz is dying
And Cuernavaca's falling"
—Veracruz. Warren Zevon and Jorge Calderon

That Battle of Vera Cruz took place 21-24 April 1914. The Mexicans were having a civil war. The US occupied Vera Cruz to 23 November. Twenty two American servicemen were listed as dead. This fellow, presumably, was one.
Lake View Cemetery. John S. Allen 1893-1918. Private, Company M 18th Infantry American Expeditionary Force. Died from wounds received in action Argonne France.
The Battle for the Argonne Forest was the last offensive of the War to end all wars. It began 26 September 1918. It was the largest American engagement in the war. It was the only engagement for most Americans. It was the deadliest battle that Americans ever engaged in. America does not remember this one. This was the big one. The American Expeditionary Force (an honest name), fought along side the 4th and 5th French Armies, against the German Fifth. The Allied Forces were more than twice the size of the Germans, and suffered more casualties. The Americans were a larger country than the Germans, and this was the first of their troops. The Germans agreed to an Armistice.

The only surviving veteran of World War I is an English waitress, that signed up in 1918. She is 110 years old, Florence Beatrice Green (née Patterson, born 19 February 1901).

another thing about art

We have a few names to consider in American XXth century art. One movement has several names, the 'New York School' is one such term. If it had the same 'art' and was in Milwaukee, or Little Rock, it would not have been as prominent. It has intense defenders, and foes. It is in opposition to realism, this must be accepted without argument.

Jackson Pollock. Number 5. 1950. Cleveland.

This is oil spilled and dripped on canvas. If one would have pulled up the floor boards of a contemporary chicken coup, and fixed the accretions to prevent their dislodging, a similar composition would have appeared.

How would one know the orientation of the canvas? Is it meant to be horizontal? What difference would it be if it was rotated 180°? 90°? 270°? And if it is meant to be unconventional, why can it not be any other angle? Is art only at right angles? Or turn it facing the wall.

There is an odd point politically. This was in the cold war period. The socialists [soviets especially] had an approved style of formal, heroic realism presenting the achievements of the active individual. This 'American' art looked nothing like that. Of course, the socialist could look at this abstract expressionism as capitalist crap masquerading, in its death throes, as art. A patriotic triumphalism of the US over the USSR, and New York City over Paris, hyper-pretentious jingoists* hawking splattered works in tinted acrylics, and oils had success.

Norman Rockwell. The Connoisseur. 1962. Saturday Evening Post cover. Private collection.

The US had three generation of Wyeths, and Norman Rockwell. But this certain circle finds them déclassé. They were successful and popular, and they could draw. A painter must have the talent and ability to draw; if he cannot, he should try to get in an union apprenticeship so he can paint schoolroom, and grocery store walls.

Now, defenders of this art were upset with, and dismissive of 'Pop-artists', whose art was making images of comics, mundane objects [which could be labelled 'still lifes of a single object'], and celebrated commerciality. Advertising agencies did hire artists, why would not the occasional one think he should have the acclaim of a 'fine' artist?

Wayne Thiebaud painted cakes, ice cream cones, pies and gumball machines [he also did portraits, realistic]. People easily find his stuff pleasurable. There is a simple joy in much of pop-art. Some are miffed about Andy Warhol, who became lazier and lazier, and produced more and more, as the money rolled in. Raggedy Andy may have been, no was, crazy; but as compared to drippers, and color field abstractionists, at least one knew where cartographic north was on his canvas. With Hofman, Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell, Kline, u.s.w...upside down, or vertically high versus horizontally wide, can one really know? Some like conceptual art, kinetic art. Just put it on a turntable, and every ten minutes turn it 90°. On some of them just flip and show the reverse. And there are minimalists, who carve a niche of non-realism. They acknowledge geometry, but not much else.

In Cleveland, there is a world class art museum where one can make mental notes on a wide variety of art. In the basement, they keep cases of art, centuries old, and relatively crowded. One experiences sensory and object overload, the treasure chest overflows. The modern art upstairs, the paintings from 1500 to almost now are plentiful on the walls. In the new east wing, the contemporary rooms are less dense. You are encouraged to focus on fewer objects, unfortunately there is less content in those objects.

John Rogers Cox. Gray and Gold. 1942. Cleveland.

Sister Wendy Beckett featured this one on Public Television. The lady has discernment. Cox painted few compositions. He was from Terre Haute, Indiana. Cox was a regionalist, [Middle West] expressionistic realist bordering surrealism [cf. Thomas Hart Benton-Mo; Grant Wood-Iowa; John Steuart Currey-Kans]. The painting, supra, was exhibited at a war effort programme, a year after Pearl Harbor Day. Cleveland bought it right away; but it has not always been on display. Where it is displayed now, it is not in much commensurate company.

Now, this is interesting in several ways. It is a pleasing composition. Modernistically, it is geometric, limited in color, and devoid of people. There are troublesome clouds [wartime], the golden wealth of a mystery grain [it is too uniform in shade, too brilliant, some presume it corn (it is not maize), unharvested, it has characteristics of wheat] and a nod to the American idyll of its rural and agricultural heart [at its last, though then not realised, glory]. The more you look at it, the hypnotic tease becomes stronger. This is not pure realism, it is a mild surrealism. The power poles are filled with porcelain knobs, but there is no electric wire. There is barbed wire, on the fences across from the grain fields. The roads are very much like a Christian cross. There is a loneliness that is reminiscent of Edward Hopper.

There were other earlier XXth century realist movements: the Ash Can School. Cleveland has George Bellow's, Stag at Sharkeys in the 1916 building. Sr. Wendy talked about that one, too. During the Depression Franklin Roosevelt paid artists to paint, and many painted in a socially conscious style, urban and rural scenes of realism; often in post office and other public buildings. Very few pre-WWII American paintings are in the east wing. One is Reginald Marsh's, A Paramount Picture, 1934 [which is hanging next to the Cox]. They have his, Locomotives Watering, 1934; but not on display.

In room 225c [minimalist] there are a bunch of big canvasses with nothing on them, or rather, nothing to look at. Is this meant to be an isolation room? I have been told, that, a room with a portrait deters some theft. The face and eyes of a mere image of a person has an effect on a person. Art appeals to the senses. This room desensitises. [See last paragraph of this previous essay.]
________________________
*a chief critic had been a former communist; there is also an ethnic component

Path to Freedom

Susan Schultz. Path to Freedom. Sandusky. 2007.

...During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were, dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a husband, a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject slave--a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy.

But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. ...
—Frederick Douglass. My Escape from Slavery. 1881

In a small, very well landscaped, park near the Lake Erie shore in Sandusky, Ohio there is a wonderful sculpture. It is avant-gard in material, and philosophy; but is done with genuine talent. It is a well conceived historical monument. It delivers an important narrative, and is surrounded with short stone stanchions with foto etched tablets and script atop.

It is concerned with the Underground Railroad. Josiah Henson's autobiography was published in 1849. He, and his family, escaped slavery in Kentucky, and went north to Sandusky in 1830. By lake vessel he made Buffalo, and across the Niagara to freedom. Harriet Beecher Stowe takes his story into her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Henson would return through Sandusky to help others escape slavery. Sandusky was a gate to freedom in her novel.

People to quickly want to forget, or acknowledge that slavery existed in the United States. Even in the 'free states' an ex-slave could be captured and returned to slavery. This was formalised by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Those who helped runaways were also susceptible to legal punishment. Ontario (Upper Province of Canada) was free from slavery in 1793, and would not not return slaves. Leaving the United States for Canada was a journey of freedom.
The sculpture uses 800' of chain. Its links are welded together to form the bodies. There is an invisible vertical plane (as in science fiction) that is being crossed (or entered) by the male figure. Beyond the crossing, the man's face, an arm and a knee are solid and smooth of bronze, and not iron chain.

f (ART)

Now, in certain equations, 'f' stands for function. “f(x)” means plug a value for x into a formula f .

Years ago, i had an education class, and the professor liked 'discovery' learning. I was quite lucky he wasn't a deweyist, or skinnerian. He brought out the art cards from the board game, Masterpiece. It had several postcards of paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago. His idea was give out a card per kid, without saying anything of the work. The kids then would form groups of art similarity. After that point, they would say why the subjects were alike. This worked better if they knew nothing, beforehand, about art.

Recently, i went to the Cleveland Art Museum, for a second time, since the re-opening. I stayed about two hours, and saw the rest that i did not see the time before. I revisited the spanish baroque, and the Welfenschatz. This is one of the six American museums Sr. Wendy Beckett chose to film. Cleveland is a grand panoramic historical museum. It still hasn't reassembled its collection. The asian, and some other non-western collections are on tour, or in storage. There is still too much to view in one visit. Take a leisurely ninety minutes, and come back again.

Franz Kline. Accent Grave. 1955. Cleveland

They have many suited guards/guides. I engaged one about boredom on duty. He doesn't get bored, some others do get real antsy. We discussed, at my instigation, artists without talent. We were in the 'contemporary' and abstract expressionist rooms. He got my point. He was a jazz aficionado. He would accept a free form 'artist', if he could demonstrate the talent to be play real music. He would overlook the odd, 'shit and giggles' stuff, if he could play straight. Put if he could only play like a five year old, then no. So, in art, if it is something i could make while drunk, then it doesn't count. I did not have to bring in my 'Jack the Dripper' quip. His, “Number 5” was behind the wall. Next to it, and in view, was a Franz Kline, “Accent Grave”. I compared it negatively to chinese, and japanese calligraphy, which used selected hair brushes, and prepared ink to gracefully draw characters that have been valued for its artisanship, and beauty of line for centuries. Another guard remarked that it looked like someone was cleaning off his brush in a few slap strokes.

I blame Picasso. Cleveland has a Picasso half room. Picasso showed himself, as a young man, quite equal to any realist. He could draw and paint a recognisable canvas. He chose to go off in other directions, yet he still used color, line and form. He chose to make ugly art, it was no accident, nor inability. The first essay on this journal was partially about a Picasso line drawing I enjoy. I have his peace dove on a shirt.

Also, nearby is a repeating image of Marilyn Monroe with additional paint. Cleveland has the largest of Andy's Marilyns, it is in an hundred views. He silk screened photos of soup cans, and celebrities; one not much more important than the other. Warhol was criticised by many, whom promoted abstract and other forms of modern art. He openly treated his products as products to be created and sold in quantity. He enjoyed plastic, commercial, vapid trivialities. He honestly presented a meaningless nihilism. Andy Warhol believed, “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art”. Some of the criticism was prejudice against his social background: working class ethnic, a people newly arrived from some, byzantine, slavonic backwater now living in an industrial city with thousands of similar folk. Being fey, frail, and peculiar was not a problem. It was not that he was without talent, or using so little of it; but being brutally, and carelessly blatant about producing kitsch, wanting fame and money, and i think, knowing it was empty and valueless.

Back to the Masterpiece analogy, this art can be formed into the following groups, and these rooms [225 a-f] fell into that pattern: white and shapeless, colored and shapeless, black and shapeless, mangled junk, assembly of pre-fabricated geometric forms into nothing in particular. For several of these works, the title, is 'Untitled'. Then what is it? Nothing. And the proof is often in the written descriptions, on the wall, inches away [“rather than describing reality, the painting describes the artist's making of it”]. It is a 'con'. They may be artists of a sort, but they are not craftsmen.

Stan Rogers

Stan Rogers *1949, 1983† invented maritime songs. They are his fictions, and they sound real. He had a pleasant, strong baritone as he played a twelve string guitar. In 'The Mary Ellen Carter' (i wonder if there is a Gordon Lightfoot-Edmund Fitzgerald inspiration), he has two marvelous phrases, both worth remembering for depth of impact: ...'Let her name not be lost to the knowledge of men', wonderful sentiment, and he tricks us in thinking his creation is an historical ballade: the other, 'With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go', a commonplace truth not often mentioned out loud. It is a cynical acknowledgment of reality.

The first phrase of Rogers sounds very much like the words of Pope Gelasius I †496, in referring, to famous beloved saints, that, we know nothing concretely of [George, Valentine]: “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God”. I have seen that line, or similar, written many times in mini-hagiographies. The person, here for Rogers—a thing, is of such importance that some portion must be remembered, if only the name.

He invents a rousing shanty with 'Barrett's Privateers'. Both songs have had some popularity amongst canadian folkies, and some festivals have closed with the several singers singing together a Stan Roger's song. A couple of local college radio folk programmes are fond of Rogers', Mary Ellen Carter. Both songs are infectious. There is something of the joy of survival through struggle in the songs. This you tube on l'éther électronique is a fine portal to find a singer, and those singing his songs. Stan's brother, and his son, sing his songs; as well a cute college amateur uploading from her room.

The other song of his on the 'radidio' you might hear, is his history song on the centuries' search for the 'Northwest Passage'. We need more lyrical baritones. No tinny, thin voice with dithering diction; but deep, round clarity.
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postscriptum: 9 September 2011. By chance, the BBC has run a story on the Franklin expedition, mentioned in the Northwest Passage.

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

urban rusticated

This house has corn growing in the gutter. Birds are odd sowers of grain.

Houses are increasingly empty in Cleveland, and other cities. Some of these neighborhoods just past the point of hanging on. Loss of work, leads to loss of income, and people's finances fail. They have to go; if they are renters, well, the pool of future tenants is smaller. Empty houses are vandalised quick. There is destructive joy in window breaking. The metal scavengers come quickly. Aluminum siding, it goes. Copper piping, it goes. Metal downspouts, it goes. The house supra, has new asphalt shingles and vinyl replacement windows. Not very long ago, it was to be an occupied residence.

The bulldozers are more active, than in years past. There must be some government money for demolition. The city administration prefers vacant naked lots, to reasserted scrub woodland. Urban prairie will be prohibited. Cleveland does not want to be Detroit. If one comes to this lot, in what is called 'Slavic Village' now, a year from now, will the building be standing?

Poor neighborhoods are endangered. Economic compression is destructive. The change in populations, when one group evacuates under pressure, and is succeeded by both a more desperate, and careless group doesn't bode well in stability.

Next week, it will be ten years that the acolytes of Osama bin-Laden attacked America. Ten years of gwbjr's usurpation of government, and wreckage of the national economy has done greater damage. Stupid unpaid wars, extension of privilege and breaks to the super wealthy, and the fomenting of an idiot class of reactionary fascists that believe the country is theirs to hold, and destroy, is depression indeed.

Who's that stone?

Before this summer, i had been to Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, O., i think thrice. Once to see President Garfield's Monument, it was closed. Once a friend wanted to drive by Eliot Ness's stone. I stopped in to see the Tiffany decorated chapel. Once to drive from Mayfield to Euclid Avenue, while pointing out what a place it was. The trips were short.

Walking around with a camera, there is so much to see. It is a sculpture garden, and history museum. Graveyards are filled with the unknown dead, but this one has notable exceptions.
John D. Rockefeller, the man richer than Midas or Croesus, is planted here near a huge granite needle. Very near by, there is [maybe] the most pompous statue in Cleveland. Whatever one thinks of Cleveland, it is very plentiful in sights. People on tour, and they do tour, ask, “Who the hell is that?”

One sees a large mausoleum [which acts as a pedestal], reminiscent of the original at Halicarnassus for Mausolus, king, and satrap of the Carians in Anatolia, built by his queen/sister/wife, Artesimia II. On top, seated in a chair, is a statue of S.S. Stone, which sits as enthroned king of the cemetery as ridiculous as Yertle the Turtle.

Do the people, who walk or drive by, know who Silas Safford Stone was? Of course not, he was a real estate speculator, that became rich dealing to railroads, and the federal government. The Civil War was a marvelous way to get rich.

this is a slavonic Quijote

Fritz Eichenberg was an artist that chose wood engraving illustrations. His artistic social conscience drawing he absorbed from Daumier, Goya and his near contemporary, Kathe Kollwitz. Upon immigrating to America, he found work through Roosevelt's New Deal.

Some of his commissions were of the novels of Dostojevskij, Tolstoj and Turgenev. He also did many religious pieces. He was a convert to Quakerism from Judaism. He did illustrations for his friend, Dorothy Day's, Catholic Worker. Most of his works were expressive and empathetic. They exhibit a strong beauty, and affecting presence.

I have suggested my fascination for Don Quijote. Eichenberg draws the Man from La Mancha [1975] as if he was mediæval bogatyr.
Viktor Mixajlovič Vasnecov (Viktor Vasnetsov). Bogatyrs. 1898. Moscow.
Dobrjnja Nikitič, Ilyja Muromec, Aljoša Popovič

the other angel

Recently, i posted essays on Lake View Cemetery (a, b). It is a place that can be photographed repeatedly. It is the Who was Who in Cleveland; beyond that, it has had some serious landscaping. One can, rightfully, consider it a sculpture garden.
I have seen people outside the area (Cleve., O.), and outside the country interested in one particular piece: the Haserot bronze angel, created by Herman Matzen, and called by some, 'the Angel of Death Victorious' [i have not yet discovered the source]. Some just call it the 'seated angel', or the 'crying angel'. There is also a Haserot stone woman in the cemetery by Joseph Carabelli. This verdigris vision is right below the Hanna mausoleum. Hanna was the man who bought, and stole the 1896 presidential election for McKinley from Bryan. That mausoleum is marked by a worn rubber mat on the sidewalk leading to it.

The other angel that is popular was sculpted by James Earle Fraser. Fraser did many American historical statues (Franklin, Patton, Lincoln). The buffalo and Indian head nickel was his design. John Milton Hay died in 1905 as the Secretary of State. He had married a daughter of the railroad, and steel mill, magnate, and bridge architect, Amasa Stone of Cleveland. In 1916 Fraser carved a monument of soft, fossil bearing, limestone.

Hay created the 'Open Door Policy' in China. The beginnings of American imperialism, was seriously begun in the administrations of McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. US troops joined in the quelling of the Boxer Rebellion in China. The US fought Spain for their remaining overseas empire. The Caribbean was becoming an American lake. Hay wrote to Theo. Roosevelt that the Spanish war was “a splendid little war”.
It is an odd, martial angel with a stele quoting James iii. 18, “And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” The stone is not strong enough to withstand the rain, and snow of Cleveland, and is being washed away. The original, sword shaft has been replaced by concrete cement, and is noticeably different in shade, and texture. The pedestal is of granite and is mostly covered by blue spruce, which greatly adds scenic ornament.

It is a naked, almost, burly Saint Michael. The wings are there, but not prominent when viewed directly. He is helmeted, and is gazing downwards with arms crossed, expressionless. He is more of a gladiatorial guard than Christian angel.

Silly names

Some of us were christened with saints' names, often a middle name we are not fond of. There has been many a schoolboy with the middle name of 'Aloysius', 'Francis', 'Chrysostom' or 'Chrysologus' that he doesn't care to tell the world about. I have a friend whose son chose the name 'Athanasius' for confirmation. It was the fashion, for some, to add this name to their other christian names, and surname, hence: Theodore Michael Athanasius Somebody. Now, some are not enthused with 'Francis', but there are boys named 'Francis Xavier'. When we see the name Francis X. Bushman, or Francis X. _____, there is no other candidate for 'X'. Then, there is the unintentional humor one finds after the fact. Peter and Ignatius are fine, fine, distinguished names; but when his schoolmates find out that Petey's middle name is 'Ignatius', the boy has to live with 'Piggy'.

Well, those are catholic conundrums. Waspish ones are different. Many of us, who have noticeably non-english names have been told how odd sounding they are. No, they are not odd in the language context which they sprung. At some time, the wasps in this country thought what? they were aristocrats? They gave the mother's surname as a first, or second name to the child; seemingly the male child. The resulting conglomerations sound as law firms, 'Parker Willingham Throckmorton'. No, that is an odd name, not Miroslav Stojanovič. There is a current fashion, or has been, for there are many girls in their 20s, and 30s to have first names as 'Parker', 'Madison', 'Tyler', et cetera. I will not go in detail about what black women name their children, if you know, you know. The french, and the danes [amongst others] have laws concerning child naming to stop such absurdities.

The best creator, or compiler, of odd names is Charles Dickens. 'Ebenezer Scrooge', in the KJV Bible (I Sam. vii. 12), 'Stone of help' [Lapis adjutórii] retains an hebraic form as 'Ebenezer'. The more protestant of the english, for a time, scoured the Old Testament for such names. 'Lord Scroop' shows up in Shakespeare's [that is a funny name, as is Dickens] 'Henry V', Henry Scrope, who did exist, and was executed by Henry V. If the english had Scrope, Scrooge is not far travel; Dickens doesn't stop there: Peg Sliderskew, Chevy Slyme, Augustus Snodgrass, Spottletoe, Snagsby, Paul Sweedlepipe, Phil Squod.

At a presidential convention, Jimmy Carter introduced Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Junior as 'Hubert Horatio Hornblower'. I remember laughing. Only Li'l Abner's founder of Dogpatch, Confederate General Jubilation T. Cornpone, is better.

Hinman B. Hurlbut (what could the 'B' be?)

In Cleveland, there is the name 'Thwing', come on say it, stretch it out...let it snap. It is the student centre at Case Western Reserve U. Now, Thwing is a town in the Yorkshire wolds from the time of the Danelaw. In the 19th century Hinman B. Hurlbut owned four banks in Ohio, and a railroad. He, along with others, bequeathed to build an Art Museum for Cleveland. One can walk a staircase [if it is not cordoned off because of construction] and see such names, plus a passel of millionaires from early Standard Oil. I think Dickens *1812, 1870†, was out dickensed, or out hurlbutted, by the parents of Hinman B. Hurlbut *1819, 1884†.

Recipe

imperative of recipere: to take

Perhaps, the oldest form of 'recipe' is a medication prescription. We generally take it as a list of ingredients, and preparation instructions for a meal. For the former, we need to follow exactness for the chemical mixture and portion; for the latter there should be a spirit of liberty, and the practicality of availability, and taste.

Those of a certain age (well, now we have rerun television stations) may remember the slightly befuddled Baldwin sisters on The Waltons. They distilled Papa's recipe, a Blue Ridge 'moonshine'. Posthumous Papa Baldwin was a local judge, and a man respected for his vocation, and learning. He had the first typewriter in the county. He cooked his whiskey before the prohibition dictated by the 18th amendment. The stories run during the time of the good Roosevelt; there was no prohibition, but there were 'revenuers', who eventually would take their still. There is some question whether the conservative old girls realise they are bootleggers. Mama Walton disapproves of their hobby (this is Baptist country), Papa Walton, the store owner Ike Godsey and, others enjoy the recipe, and have affection for the old maids.

Then there is idle talk amongst womenfolk, “That was delicious, I've gotta have the recipe”, or “what's the secret ingredient? ”. If it is a familiar meal, this is just chatter. If anyone think the 'secret' is magical, or meant to be protected; well they have problems.

There are cookbooks, and cooking shows a plenty. A reasonable cook/chef will approve of substitutes. A favorite is the nonchalance of Jacques Pepin, “you can eat it, but i give it to my dogs”, “you can have it with coffee, or champagne”. Options, sometimes icebox foraging, and scrounging; use what you got, or need to use up [before it goes bad], and if you dunna like this, use that. Cooking is an art of necessity, not an exercise of exactitude. And if ethnically, it is new to you, then you generally find out what is the central ingredient, and do what you can, or like with the rest. E.g., guacamole needs avocados, borsch needs beets.

People even older, may remember the original broadcasts of Julia Child. She had a clumsy good humour. Recently, there was an amateur journalist who went through the entire cookbook, and the darling Amy Adams played the part in the movie. Why are there so many recipes of aspic, and who eats it? What, is that french for headcheese?

Now, recently i found on the youtubage a young girl's Drunk Kitchen. She is hilarious, spontaneous, and either carefree or careless. She does make the apt observation, that there is a lot of waiting in cooking. Drinking can fill the gap, and she is not too interested in results. If you smell burning, it is finished. If it tastes bad, put cheese on it. I like it when there's pictures. Ingredients: eggs, champagne

Art Deco meets the New Deal

After World War I, the US suffered twelve years of Republican rule everywhere, and Klan rule some places. The roaring '20s was alive with Prohibition, and the associated criminal activity to provide the public with contraband, and that business network branched into other unlawful, and often seedy enterprises. The racket that was banking, 'lawful' industry, and Wall Street led into the Great Depression that began in the autumn of 1929.

November 1932 saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt win the general election, to the dismay of the bankers and other millionaires. They planned a coup d'état that was made public by Major General Smedley Butler USMC, who refused to overthrow a Democratic government in his own country.

Roosevelt saved America by the creation of the New Deal, the Republicans have never forgiven him. Many programmes were created for relief, recovery, and reform. Republican obstructionism was everywhere, especially in the Supreme Court. Most of the press was Republican, and propagandised against Roosevelt in the editorial pages. After recovery was succeeding, the Republicans hindered and rolled back recovery. A parallel to to-day is quite easy, unfortunately Barack Obama is not as brave or as tenacious as Mr. Roosevelt, and the Republicans are even more stupid, and just as greedy, vicious, and dishonest.

On the near west side of Cleveland, we can still see some of the still bearing fruit of Mr. Roosevelt's New Deal. The Kentucky School (Paul Dunbar temporary) is still up. Its cornerstone reads, '1939'; a product of the Public Works Administration, one of the many new government agencies that saved the US from becoming a third world country.
All over the United States, one can find similar edifices. Toledo, Ohio is proud of their zoo, and there are buildings with such stones there. Such stones can be found on bridges in Lorain, and Hocking counties in Ohio. Ohio has 88 counties, it would be interesting to see how many benefited: hospitals, schools, libraries, water and sewage plants, bridges, post offices, town halls. Ohio was a populous state then, what of thinly populated Republican Utah? 233 buildings by Roosevelt and crew. In some library (perhaps even a library so built) there must be a very large catalog, or listing, of these projects for the entire land. Many are still in use, and the country's population was far less than half of what it is now. Franklin Roosevelt's domestic and economic policies are a highpoint of American history. It is beyond shameful what the anti-Roosevelt party has done to this country in recent years.

John Carmody was an able administrator, who was given a series of top jobs (unlike the promotions of failures that was standard by the unelected president we suffered through in the last decade). Carmody was chief engineer of the Civil Works Administration in 1933. In 1935 he was on the National Labor Relations Board. In 1936 he was deputy administrator of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), administrator of REA in 1937. In June 1939, he headed the Federal Works Agency, which covered the Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration, Public Roads Administration, and the United States Public Buildings Administration. In 1941 he was given war time positions. Republicans would call him, and all New Dealers, 'communists'.
That was the social, economic, political and practical value of those New Deal expenditures. There was also an artistic one. On the other corner of the Kentucky School alongside West 38th is an allegorical female figure with flowing hair, kneeling amongst plants, holding a tablet, with a river crossing her lap, and the sphere of the earth, and a star behind her. It is a bas-relief on several blocks in a late deco style.
Art deco was not just in grand figures, it was also in little embellishments, sometimes of functional elements. The school that shares the same parking lot, used to be called William Dean Howells, now it is Garret A. Morgan. It too was part of the same New Deal. Here a stylized metal grate is book ended by simple decorating stone.