...One afternoon shortly after Christmas break, however, Mr. Lefkowitz was waiting for us in the locker room. He told us not to change because we were going to the auditorium instead. Everyone was seated in the first rows of seats, and the place was semi-dark accept for the stage. One of the seniors who assisted Lefkowitz "manned" the spotlights. Another put a chair on the side of the stage. Lefkowitz told me to sit with all my books on that chair. He announced to the class: "Today we're going to teach Jackson how to walk and act like a man." I was ordered to walk across the stage, carrying my books. Whenever he or one of the class decided my walk or way of holding the books was too effeminate (every time for about ten times) one {of} the senior assistants leapt to the stage and knocked all the books out of my hands. I had to scoop them up, and start all over again.

Finally Lefkowitz directed me to pull the chair to stage center and sit on it. The assistant turned a pin spot on me. There were whispered instructions to the oldest of the senior assistants, muffled laughter, and then a momentary silence....

from Oxydol Poisoning, Chapter Seven, by Earl Jackson Jr.
link through the irascible bellona times . . .2003-04-09

Prophecy

At the end of the year the stars go out
the air stops breathing and the Sibyl sings
first she sings of the darkness she can see
she sings on until she comes to the age
without time and the dark she cannot see

no one hears then as she goes on singing
of all the white days that were brought to us one by one
that turned to colors around us

a light coming from far out in the eye
where it begins before she can see it

burns through the words that no one has believed

__________________

W. S. Merwin
from The Pupil

see also:
The Creation of The Moon
Original text by Anonymous Caxinua Amazon, translated by W. S. Merwin

here's the Ateneum Art Museum at the Finnish National Gallery

and here's the Rijksmuseum

how to, and, on the other hand, how not to

"Excuse me, General Powell?"

KIDS' GUERNICA PEACE MURALS

Subterranean Places Can
Be Used for Almost Anything

ssshhhhh SoundArt Denmark

there is a woman in this painting

Cows in a birch woods
Victor Westerholm at the Turun Taidemuseo/Turku Art Museum

Hugo Simberg at the Finnish National Gallery

Post-Festum

Hero's well

Dolly Parton described her childhood home in Tennessee as "three rooms and a path."

LMBoyd

Dorothy Gambrell, art goddess
Cat and Girl

Shoen Uemura

ghost

Japanese Women Artists Chronology (born 16th-19th c.)
adapted from "Japanese Women Artists" by Patricia Fister
(Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1988)
with links to Illustrations & Online Sources

Daimaru Museum

Hasui Evening Snow at Edo River
also Hasui Kumamoto Castle
at Ukiyoe-Gallery
Charles Bartlett Udaipur
Yoshida Mt. Fuji from Miho

Katsuyuki Nishijima at Yoseido Gallery

Rakuzan at Japaneseprints.net
Hasui Autumn Rainbow at Hatta, Kaga

Hasui Evening in Itako at Shogun Gallery

one of the last works of Kawase Hasui, Konjikido in Hiraizumi, completed in 1957, the year of his death.

Hasui Bright Moon at Matsuyama Castle (watercolor)
from Robin Devereaux's Hasui Watercolors and Prints - Some Comparisons

...as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention


I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't...

W.S.Merwin Berryman at Off The Wall Anthology

Thank goodness, however, that Alcott did not live in the Age of the Memoir, that she spared us the unburdening of her deepest feelings and ambivalences, leaving nothing to our imaginations. She lives fully in us precisely because she left out so much in her fiction. It is by working through her sketches, her novels, a biography, her letters, trying to find the real person, the true spirit beyond the sentiment and moralizing, that the reader is able to claim Alcott as his own. Perhaps this is what a reader wants for himself: a handful of best characters to people his heart and mind, someone who is created fully human and given away, a character with strength and wisdom and sufferings like our own, but a little larger than our own selves. Louisa May Alcott is her own great character -- her best gift to us.

Jane Hamilton on the creator of Little Women, in Salon

beginning search on the Black 97th Regiment and the Alaska-Canada Highway reveals this:
http://www.sandiego.edu/~kalenius/images/alaska28.jpg
and this page, yes! at The Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections
and as it turns out the 93rd, the 95th, and the 97th were all involved, while the 388th Engineer Battalion was up in Yukon Territory building the Canol Trail to provide oil for the WW2 machine.

living in Tok!

a photo history of the Black 97th!

Unlike the armed forces, the Merchant Marine was integrated from the start of WWII.

A full-size replica of the Wheel stands in Yokahama, Japan. The only stoppage in the history of the WONDER WHEEL was on July 13, 1977 during the Great NYC Blackout - when the entire northeast lost electrical power. Riders on the WONDER WHEEL were brought down safely because the owners handcranked the Wheel to turn it.

Ula the Pain-Proof Rubber Girl