(via Nate Silver)

Powerhouse

Happy 75th anniversary to Raymond Scott's classic, "Powerhouse".  Here's a great cartoon tribute via Boingboing:




More info at the Raymond Scott blog here.

found via Wit + Delight , poem by A.P.

 

Charlotte Bracegirdle, New York 1932 (2010), via here. 

Source: missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com via LB on Pinterest

I am really enjoying Sophie Blackall's illustrations. Her Missed Connections series is charming.

Satomi Kawakita

Satomi Kawakita makes beautiful, amazing, delicate jewelry.

Born and raised in Japan, she studied wood, metal, clay, and textile arts in Kyoto; then worked as a glass-blower. Later, she moved to the U.S. to study jewelry making in New York City.

She makes necklaces and earrings, but her rings are by far my favorites. Each ring looks so beautifully and individually crafted.

Capture the Castle blog features an interview with Ms. Kawakita and lots more pictures.

This one is my favorite:

All photos from Capture the Castle.

Giuseppe Savini

Love these photos of Bologna, then and now, by Giuseppe Savini. Via Floddertje.

One of the best essays on poverty and class I've read in a long time. From Good:

I have learned something about pity in my most recent year of poverty: Very few people on all rungs of our society are equipped to assist others who need it without thinking lesser of them, and in some cases, vilifying them.

And from her comments:

 I would hope that my choice to get an MFA wouldn't make you think less of me, because we do have a similar background, but what I would hope for the world is that we will no longer have a pissing contest like this to decide who has had it hard enough to claim they can't make enough money to live.

Link here: The Rise of the Privileged Poor by A. Wolfe.

Edited to add:

This brought to mind that I read this book by Ernest Callenbach just after I graduated from college in 1979, and have always lived with it in the back of my mind. Ironic, no, that's it's $48 on amazon.com? (Now I'm sorry I got rid of it.) But then I see that Callenbach revised it and changed the title to Living Cheaply With Style. More irony.

There's also an excellent book by M.F.K. Fisher entitled How to Cook a Wolf (first published during WWII). I read this around the same time I read Callenbach's book in the 70s. Highly recommended reading, as it's a good reminder that this way of life is nothing new. We've been here before. And we survive.

Wislawa Szymborska, 1923-2012

One of my favorite poets, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1996 (and it paralyzed her, according to her New York Times obituary-- she couldn't write another poem for "a few years". I'd love her just for this, if not for her beautiful, ironic poetic voice). She passed away today.

More about Ms. Szymborska here and here.

'Could have'

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. On the left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck - there was a forest.
You were in luck - there were no trees.
You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant...

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

Wislawa Szymborska, 'Could have', in View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York,1996, pp.65-66. Via PoemHunter.

Photo of Krakow, Poland, where Szymborska spent most of her life (via Google).

Quote of the day

It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau

Source: lylaandblu.com via LB on Pinterest

Ginger Rogers rehearsing with Hermes Pan.