Galileo's finger

the point:

In Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings, American astronomer Edwin Krupp states that the centre in all cosmologies marked the place ‘where creation began, where order and life first emerged.’
This explains why many world centres are often referred to as ‘the navel of the Earth, the point at which creation began,’ says Mircea Eliade.
Stones or other objects such as golden rods in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, or meteorites in the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis (now an outer suburb of modern Cairo) marked many of these so-called ‘centres’ of the world.
The ancient Greek name for these marker stones is especially revealing, for omphalos means ‘navel’. Given this link with creation, it would be interesting to discover how many of these centres have an association either directly or indirectly with the stars of the Pleiades. The omphalos at Delphi may be one of these.

Munya Andrews
Seven Sisters of The Pleiades

the real heart of the story is:

'Residents called to complain there was an old scruffy man acting suspiciously,' said officer Spencer.

so long old-timer

One is driven near frantic with all to do that must needs be done and then a moment's pause amidst the field of wires, yes and apple trees, fencing tool in hand and glove, resting what now seems a young man's arm upon the accomplished task. Though then the age I was seemed central and precisely there, neither young nor old.
So much was hidden still yet to be made clear, including life in other forms and beings with other names and places where dragons' heads - really - were carted in to await processing and set design, and fences built to keep Bambi away from the Ewoks.
All true, and all vanished into a quarter century of steady-as-we-go.
And here to this now I put these more or less more experienced fingers and hands onto these far more cunning wires, to say, dear Boynton, I too as well was once caught by the camera in a moment's leisure in the midst of who knows what, but there it is.
70 acres of smooth-wire trellising, down rows and rows of dwarf-apple trees, the style of wire imported from New Zealand, and very popular in Australia we were given to understand.

ISB Tricks of the Senses
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via RW

Bulbul Tarang

in the centre a liuto attiorbato based on instruments by Matteo Sellas (this version has engraved mammoth ivory fingerboard panels)

Storm Catechism

Do the gods see us?
Will the waters be rising soon?

Kim Addonizio/VerseDaily

The Road to the World's End
By Sigurd Hoel

In 1995, Paul Williams suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bicycle accident, leading to early onset of dementia, and a steady decline to the point where he now requires full-time care.

The burden on his immediate family has been immense.

Paul Williams was Crawdaddy! before Jann Wenner was Rolling Stone

Mine: story of a sacred mountain from Survival Int.
narrated by Joanna Lumley

A History in Six Couplets

...And all around,
a kind of tilting.

All around, chunks of concrete
like torn bread...

Idra Novey/Poetry Daily

Some photos. No photoshop, just focus and shoot.
Links go to very big files. Too big really, didn't take the time to resize.

Secret Sea

...& I heard, very softly, a new name.

It happens every morning. Once upon
a time I bustled for bread behind thin

glass in a fashionable section of a port
city...

Nathan Parker/Verse Daily

Happy birthday BK

Beggar Woman
Sojourn, 1917-1919: China, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, San Francisco
Sidney D. Gamble Photographs
Duke University Digital Collections
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Her feet were bound.

Todd Hido's site, in addition to exploding with his photographic genius, is a perfect example of how to deliver photography online.
See how fast the pictures load. Though you'll have to figure out that the headings in the lower left corner, generate the titles of individual photos, then scroll the titles and the photos appear. No ten second load times, no vanity web design, simple, subtle and effective. Minimalist efficiency in the service of whatever it is that happens there.
Such is not the case at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks+Projects, where the exploding genius of Nikki S. Lee can only be seen by those patient enough to wait around for the images to load.

How it Started

The water was cold and pushed
at the shore. At the house I kept
setting the table. Knives for the dominant
hand, his grandmother's plates...

Leslie Harrison/VerseDaily

Her mother is a crane operator
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Good music / Bertram Dorien Basabe
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Maud Muller, wearing headphones

Can't spell smart without art
Tom Chapin > Suzanne Vega > robotwisdom

the lilac switch, the apple tree, soot, gravity

With fiction, poetry and mystery I observed the airport.
via :::

How quickly doing good gets tangled up!

Landscape with Mud Turtle

I pressed the rough, live ends of their antlers
against my forehead and wished.

Under the pond mud, half-frozen, dormant among the dormant,
turtles breathe through their skins...

Jennifer Atkinson/PoetryDaily

a small guitar

If people are telling me -- and especially if they are warning me -- "Don't go there," "Don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that."

The nose seems to have gone for a walk

Nomad Two Worlds

University of Nottingham - The Periodic Table of Videos

(youtube videos about each element on the periodic table)

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via YouTube Education: 80 Intelligent Video Collections
Open Culture "The best free cultural & educational media on the web"

Er

Twelve days after his death in battle, the body of Er—
Son of Armenius, a hero of legend in far Pamphylia—
As torches were readied, came to life again on his funeral pyre,
And told what he had seen of the other world,
That his soul in a crush of companions had journeyed
To a mysterious place...

J. D. McClatchy/Poetry Daily

washing those dishes

He carried the grief of those left behind

Man & Load of Fuel (detail)
Sidney D. Gamble Photographs
Pyongyang (Korea)
Sojourn, 1917-1919: China, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, San Francisco
Duke Libraries > Digital Collections > photographs

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Gorge
House on Cargo Junk
Prison Gallows
Carruthers & Spot (horse)

Too far—he said

...Hand me that what do you call him cellular,
I will arrange dinner. No. What good is what
can talk if not over mountains,
like the megaphone trucks selling trees and fish
slow-trawling down the village street...

Charles O. Hartman/PoetryDaily

What's Not to Love about Bagpipes?

On the other hand—
the years they've persisted (thousands),
comforting shepherds on the Isle of Mull,

And the guy at the beach wearing running shoes,
practicing scales in a pre-dawn mist...

Juditha Dowd/Poetry Daily

Smudge of a dog, up and to the west, I try

Where bushes periodically burn, children fear other
children: girls

...which—don't we know—is all the heart afforded
a certain type: untended, magnifying...

Camille Dungy/PoetryDaily

Stories are an inseparable part of the human dream.

Robin Williamson interview at Green Man Review
via Wizz Jones

The Inpenetrable String Tangle
John Renbourn & Robin Williamson - Wheel Of Fortune

Life in Russia
Aleksey Petrosian/English Russia
genius photographer

Muxtape got knee-capped

Why is there methane on Mars? No one is sure.

For a dyed-in-the-wool author, nothing is as dead as a book once it is written. She is rather like a cat whose kittens have grown up.

Rumer Godden

Lake Powell, AZ

xzxzxzxzxzxzxOh holy day.
For the river to fill...

Ian Harris/Verse Daily


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Little White Truck

xzxzxzxz ...as they kiss, and surely
it could hold...

Jessica Greenbaum/Poetry Daily

Martian sunset

Go On, Sure, Why Not

eternity in which we
pause occasionally and insist upon staking claim
to an aesthetic point of view. One wants
to be singled out. At the same time, one
wants to be hidden in a thicket of sharp
black leaves to be nothing
but a pair of orange eyes without
the human burden of self-awareness

Gail Wronsky/VerseDaily

One fact, important to remember in futile moments: a duck’s quack is incapable of producing an echo.

I declare the crippled Dorothy Horn

Then Jack the Truth-Teller visited the projects