...mirrors, transparent wires, scaffolding and, above all, tremendous physical stamina that allow him to create his extravagant performances

"The study of their dust"
dust houses
Maria Lopez

Martian horizon at APOD

The Sleep of Wood in The Houses of Wrens

...when it looked like there wouldn't be
enough water for people to drink in town.
Even the drunks, singing harsh,
took their whiskey straight, sacrifice
an angel that grapples with us

beside many rivers, even forgotten ones
that have gone to dust. Can we
expect wrens to live in graying wood and sing,
or a woman with gray wood
budding in her heart...

George Looney
Verse Daily
14.Nov.05

R.D. Laing:"The major scale for instance, we talked before about this, the major scale, I don't believe in this absolute consistency of definite sort of intervals. The major scale was banned in churches until the late Middle Ages. It was called the modus lacivicus, it was supposed to be inciting to lasciviousness. We don't really think of that now, I mean "I'm Dreaming of White Christmas" doesn't really incite people to have orgies under the Xmas tree at all.

Van Morrison: When did they think that, the Middle Ages?

RDL: I'd have to check it ... twelfth or thirteenth century.

VM: What I find very interesting when exploring the Renaissance period, Dowland wrote primarily about grief, that was the main thing he wrote about. You know this 'down in the dumps', you know where that expression comes from? Well they actually called music pieces a dompe, they called something like, Lady Fanshawe's dompe [My Ladye Careys Dompe] there was a piece of music called that. That's where the expression 'down in the dumps' comes from. They were into moods of despair and all sorts of things. You don't find that in songs hardly at all now. You find the sentimental folk thing, but you never actually find songs about despair or death. Dowland wrote some stuff about death as well. There must have been a completely different society at that stage, if that was the popular music at that time. "

Van Morrison In Conversation With R. D. Laing

Other mysteries are less well-documented

Veiled Prophets Will Appear:

The first meeting of the organization was held on the 10th day of September, 1889, and it was named for the leader [Leroy Fairchild], the "Fairchild Deviltry Committee." It was decided at this first meeting that the membership of the organization should be confined to Master Masons in good standing.
The idea of the Order proved immediately attractive. Many distinguished Masons entered the Enchanted Realm and returned pleased and charmed by its brilliancy. The Order could no longer be confined to any one locality and in response to imperative requests that were not to be denied, on the 13th of June 1890, the "F.D.C." duly founded and established the Supreme Council of the Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm.

Metareligion

The Juggler of Worlds:

La Reunion was a communist community formed in 1855 by French, Belgian, and Swiss colonists approximately three miles west of the present Reunion Arena and Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas, and near the three forks of the Trinity River in Texas, USA.
The community was led by the French philosopher Francois Marie Charles Fourier whose followers and associates established over 40 similar colonies in various parts of the United States of America during the 1800s.

Wikipedia
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Reunion Arena in Dallas was named for the colony, as was Reverchon Park.
Gil Glover's Dallas View
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"If your sciences dictated by wisdom have served only to perpetuate poverty and strife, give us rather sciences dictated by folly, provided that they quiet furies and relieve the miseries of peoples."
Théorie des Quatres Mouvements et des Destinées Générales
-Charles Fourier

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"Si donc Psyché et Narcisse se livrent à 20 personnes passionnées pour chacun d'eux, ils peuvent contribuer au progrès de la sagesse et de la vertu. Il faut que cette union soit sacrée aux yeux du corps social, qu'elle opère sous les formes les plus nobles et les plus opposées aux orgies crapuleuses des civilisés."
-Fourier

Charles Fourier links and quotes
Christian Ronse
Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg

Evidently someone at the LoC has rewritten the code for their page links, so that the less bandwidth-heavy links in to the thumbnails and image data are broken.
Mrs. Bishop's links below will be fixed as best I can tonight, but the rest of them will have to wait until spontaneous happenstance calls them to my attention.
It seems an odd thing to guard against, but these are odd times.

Isabella Lucy Bird:

Mrs. Bishop's tent on her ride amongst the Bakhtiari Lurs - 1890
[larger image]
"In the middle of the 19th century they could put 20,000 well-equipped horsemen into the field..."
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Isabella Bird and two natives on elephant, with
other elephants, in swamp, in Perak, Malaya - 1883
[larger image]
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My home in the Rocky Mountains
[larger image]

Collected Travel Writings of Isabella Bird

"premier cybercafé entièrement dédié à l’informatique libre. Outre la nourriture spirituelle et informatique, le café, qui ouvrira ses portes le 15 octobre, vous propose une gamme de 26 sirops artisanaux au prix d’un euro et onze jus de fruits."

OpenSource Café
126 Rue Sébastien Gryphe
69007 Lyon

fiction image
Ria Dastidar
-

Cityscape
Edwina White
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Kate Larkworthy

Swadesh list: a useful list of the most common words, which are essential to most languages and may be used in learning basic communication in other languages and even multiple languages at once.
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Rosetta Project

* To create an unprecedented platform for comparative linguistic research and education.

* To develop and widely distribute a functional linguistic tool that might help with the recovery of lost or compromised languages in unknown futures.

*To offer an aesthetic object that suggests the immense diversity of human languages as well as the very real threats to the continued survival of this diversity.

Professor Lowe discovered the jet stream, revolutionized the manufactured gas industry, invented the predecessor of the modern refrigerator, and was [possibly] the model for the Wizard of Oz.

At Night The Glitterng Lights of Fifty-Six Cities Far Below!

The Great Mount Lowe Trip
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Incline
Echo
1894 - World’s largest searchlight delivered to Echo Mountain
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3 levels Circular Bridge
Scenic Mt. Lowe Then and Now
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Railroad Boosters last run 1937
also the last hurrah
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The Angeles National Forest
and Mt. Lowe Committee Volunteer Group's
Annual Mt. Lowe Excursion December 03, 2005
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LA Transit Lines cars awaiting their fate at Wilmington
California Trolleys
Harry Marnell (an abundance of California trolley links)
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Savant Passes

Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, known the world over as the discoverer of the formulae for making water gas and artificial ice, famous as an aeronaut during the Civil war, builder of the incline railroad up Mt. Lowe and a pioneer in Southern California enterprises, died at 4:45 o'clock this morning at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Edna Wright, 280 South Euclid Avenue.
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At the time of his death Professor Lowe was working on plans for a dirigible balloon to be operated in Southern California.

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Images of Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe at LoC:

Lowe observing the battle from his balloon Intrepid
Fair Oaks Va. May 31, 1861

Lowe's "Balloon Camp" Gaines Mill, Va., May 1862

Lowe replenishing balloon Intrepid from balloon Constitution

Prof. T.S.C. Lowe, Civil War balloonist

Lowe prepares to ascend

Isolina Maldonado 1921 (detail)
Robert Henri
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Two Women 1924 (detail)
George Bellows
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Spring in Georgia 1942 (detail)
Andrée Ruellan
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Deirdre 1940 (detail)
Dorothea Tanning
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Georgia Museum of Art
Univ. of Georgia, Athens
Also:
Winslow Homer Butterflies
George Bellows The Picnic
Christian Bérard Portrait of Tamara Toumanova
Eugene Berman Perspective of Columns at Paestum

Mike Weiss can kiss my [Eric Doeringer's] ass
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link bloggy

unusual showers unusual faucets and unusual sinks
cersaie fair
designboom

Burkburnett, Texas, January 20th, 1919 (fixed)
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Desdemona Field
Lt. Rip Masters was from Desdemona TX
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Annie Oakley, 1922, with gun Buffalo Bill gave her
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11-year old farm hand.
Father, G.G. Jones, said: "She's the only farm hand I got. She helps a lot in the field work and house work too. Is good in school--5th grade."
He owns the farm and expects to build soon.
Location: Hardin County--Sonora [vicinity], Kentucky
Lewis W. Hine

Demetra Jones, Sonora, Ky. 1916
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Western Union Telegraph Building West Broadway, New York 1931
Irving Underhill
LoC

The USS "Shenandoah" took to the sky for the first time on September 4, 1923. She was destroyed in a violent storm over Sharon, Ohio on September 3, 1925 with the loss of fourteen of her 39 sailors.
This disaster was the trigger for Army Colonel Billy Mitchell to heavily criticize the leadership of both the Army and the Navy, leading directly to his court-martial for insubordination and the end of his military career.

Copernicus