Album art

London Calling, The Clash

Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley

I tried, to no avail, to find the National Geographic photo that would be incorporated into the excellent Hissing of Summer Lawns. The snake on the outside gatefold provides a nice symmetry with the floating Mitchell on the inner gatefold.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell

Hissing, inside gatefold.

I also tried and failed to find a copy of Blur's (? I think. Could be wrong. Would it be called Blured?) album cover tribute to Slade's amazing Slayed?

Slayed?, Slade

Everything about this is wonderful. The dude with no shirt, flexing the guns. The dude whose bandages cover up the 'L' and the 'A'. The dude on the left who can barely hold back a smirk. The fact that the dude on the right has stolen France Gall's haircut and added a bowl cut to the bangs. And above all, imagining the conversation that led to the rejection of the conventions of the self-titled album. At what point did they add the question mark?

And to bring this needless excursion to a close, here is what some have called one of the greatest album covers of all time, and what others have called the worst hip hop album cover of all time. You'll notice that under the album title are plates of salmon.

Doin Thangs, Big Bear

The wonders of plexiglass

Ghost Car

Whitman and Eliot

I will not descend among  professors and capitalists,
--I will turn the ends of my
trowsers up around my boots,
and my cuffs back from
my wrists and go with
drivers and boatmen and men that
catch fish or work in the field,
I know they are sublime --Walt Whitman, unpublished manuscript

Published for the first time, I believe, in 1984, in Walt Whitman: Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, edited by Edward Grier.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. --T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

C.K Williams remarks "Eliot surely could not have been familiar this when he wrote in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' ' I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.' How odd"[1]. But that is Williams' style, clumsy irony, un-pursued hints (there is no need to hint; we are not idiots).

I find the divergence more interesting than the convergence. Whitman's lines were composed during the burst of confidence and creativity of Leaves of Grass; they are the lines of a beginning, of a brash awareness of talent[2]. Eliot's are distinctly not. The works converge in theme, but each looks another way.



[1] C.K Williams. 2010. On Whitman. Princeton University Press, p.37.
[2] Williams' provides an extended quotation from the accompanying letter for a submission to Harper's:

"'Is there any other poem of the sort extant--or indeed hitherto attempted?
You may start at the style. Yes, it is a new style, of course, but that is necessitated by new theories, new themes--or say the new treatment of themes, forced upon us for American purposes. Every really new person, (poet or other,) makes his style--sometimes a little way removed from the previous models--sometimes very far removed.
Furthermore, I have surely attained headway enough with the American public, especially with the literary classes, to make it worth your while to give them a sight of me with all my neologisms. The price is $40. Cash down on acceptance...
Should my name be printed in the programme of contributors at any time it must not be lower down than third in the list. If the piece is declined, please keep the MS. for me to be called for. Will send, or call, last of next week.
--Walt Whitman'

Harper's rejected the poem." (2010, p.47)

Edward Steichen

Woods Twilight (1899). The Met's Night Vision Exhibition.

Give me back the Berlin Wall

They may not have beat the West in economic development, technological innovation, or individual freedom and democratic governance, but they certainly dominated the rink in Space Propaganda.

Parts one and two.

You are what you eat...

....by Mark Menjivar.

I've attached the artist's statement; the photos are plain, and at first uninteresting. The effect is in the accumulation, the repetition of a shared form within which occurs substantial variety. Worth reading the captions.

You Are What You Eat is a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.
For three years I traveled around the country exploring food issues.  The more time I spent speaking and listening to individual stories, the more I began to think about the foods we consume and the effects they have on us as individuals and communities.
An intense curiosity and questions about stewardship led me to begin to make these unconventional portraits. A refrigerator is both a private and a shared space.  One person likened the question, “May I photograph the interior of your fridge?” to asking someone to pose nude for the camera.
Each fridge is photographed “as is”.  Nothing added, nothing taken away.
These are portraits of the rich and the poor.  Vegetarians, Republicans, members of the NRA, those left out, the under appreciated, former soldiers in Hitler’s SS, dreamers, and so much more.  We never know the full story of one’s life.
My hope is that we will think deeply about how we care.
How we care for our bodies. How we care for others. And how we care for the land.
You Are What You Eat has traveled to many cities and has been used by universities and community organizations as a catalyst for dialogue about food issues.  For more information about bringing the exhibit to your community, please contact me directly.
Exhibition details:  Twenty 32″ x 40″ and sixteen 24″ x 30″ archival inkjet prints in white frames. Can be shown in full or part and is shipped securely in custom-made travel crates.

Edmonton International Speedway...

...and "one badass police car." This could also be a time to link to the posting on Edmontonians' flushing from a few years back. For more on Edmonton, cause who wouldn't want more, check out ignoreedmonton and maybeedmonton.

John Cale and Graham Greene

Someone I met reminded me of this album.



I might subsequently link to Andalucia or Paris, 1919. Excited?

Swedish Bunnies.

Oddly enough, I won several beers from these bunnies. I bring it back up, almost two years since the harvest, because I wanted to link to the picture. Deal with it.

Sweden Burns Bunnies for Warmth:
Thousands of stray rabbits in Sweden are being shot, frozen and then burned for heat. Stockholm even hires rabbit hunters for the task, like Tommy Tuvuynger, a modern day Elmer Fudd. "We are shooting rabbits in Stockholm center, they are a very big problem," he said. "Once culled, the rabbits are frozen and when we have enough; a contractor comes and takes them away."

The procurement process...

.... I can't remember where I found this, but it was on a website that had various wartime propaganda posters, specifically ones related to STDs. Total war requires total commitment, or something to that effect. The well-known loose lips were apparently not the only looseness over which the armed forces were concerned.

But I get a kick out of the image for the following reasons:

1. The use of the term procurable. Calls to mind the language of a mid-level bureaucrat, in the procurement office, natch, trying to talk himself up before going out on the pull in an off-base bar. Or Woody Guthrie's lesser-known song, "There are more procurable gals than one."
2. Now point (1) is really only enjoyable for the first few moments, before it dawns on you that procurable is shorthand for prostitute. At which point you move on from the euphemism and onto the stats. 98% of prostitutes have venereal disease. That is a high number, especially since we are talking about a wartime mobilization, often based overseas in rationing, bombed-out towns and newly expanded ports, where the supply of prostitution has almost certainly ballooned. That is, many if not most of the prostitutes will have only recently shifted into the trade, in response to the pull of inflated prices and the push of wartime dislocation.  I suspect that this is a number that may be true in more stable prostitution markets, although I also suspect that the prostitution market is especially prone to high turnover, with new entries, re-entries, and departures. Still it seems high, and the initial guffaw of reading the high stat without fully comprehending the euphemism suggests a looseness in meaning that may be intentional. Yes, prostitutes. But, more broadly, the morally suspect women who might want to dance.
3. The contrast between the identical women, the cookie cutter imaginary of the procurable woman, with the slightly more diverse, but still not individualized, servicemen. They look like navy men, of different rank, and with only slightly different styles of catcalling and appreciation. All procurable women are the same (or, to be accurate, 98% of them are the same); all servicemen are the same, distinguished not by personal characteristics but by their rank and their branch. This is mid-twentieth century warfare's worldview writ mundane and small.
4. The women having (but not really carrying) a banner has an almost soviet quality to it, the revolutionary vanguard of the doppleganger procurable woman. The posture of the women, when taken in the aggregate, suggests the fascist goose-step, or, at minimum, a soldiers' march. The boys don't have a chance.

So, there we are.

On the take...

On Monday I had a wise-crack, in response to a comment from Atrios.

It's been said a million times, but for the millionth+1 time, the problems we have are solvable. Our elites are evil and/or stupid, depending on your take...

 I believe a more appropriate sentence construction would be "depending on their take."

God I can be insufferable. Well, as it turns out, one person's smart-ass-wise-crack is another person's well-founded suspicion.

And the other Republicans on the commission knew how bogus Wallison’s stuff was. They even worried that Ed Pinto, who was responsible for the data, might have been on the take:

Maybe this email is reaching you too late but I think wmt [William M. Thomas] is going to push to find out if pinto is being paid by anyone.

Good Stuff. Now there is no evidence that Pinto was on the take; nor, really, does his being paid or not paid really determine whether he was on the take/not take, or whether he just likes to play with numbers until he achieves an outcome that massages his priors. But there is a level of willful dishonesty (as opposed to my more noble reluctant dishonesty?) in knowing a report to be false, in coordinating the release of this report so as to strengthen your political coalition's operatives, all the while having a slight anxiety not that the person generating the report might be receiving outside funds to produce a false report but that the Vice-Chairman of the committee, W. M Thomas, might inquire into the matter. From Rortybomb:

Two days later, Mr. Brill followed up with another e-mail to the Vice Chairman’s special assistant relaying a conversation in which Vice Chairman Thomas expressed concern that Mr. Pinto might be receiving outside funds for his efforts to influence the Commission...

Wallison’s argument is the argument for the conservative right on the crisis, echoing through their networks.  Yet behind closed door the Republicans on the FCIC are in damage control mode.  They can’t find a way to deal with Wallison and this argument and they are actively working to play him and his research partner against each other.  They are even so confused as how someone could buy the entirety of this argument that they are worried that it was planted by a paid interest and that their fellow member is a “parrot” for those interests.

Still behind....

....le jour de gloire est arrivé, le jour de gloire est passé.



From Words & Eggs' always enjoyable French Fridays.

Should have been posted yesterday

...both because it was date specific, being a link to a This Day in Labor History post over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and because yesterday was Bastille Day and Woody Guthrie's birthday. Consider it part of the long-standing desire to re-connect the foundational republican revolutions with the working class, the labor movement, and to place it's full realization only in la république sociale (no, 'welfare state' is not the English equivalent).

 

On July 14, 1877, the Great Railroad Strike began in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
After the Civil War, industrialists engaged in an enormous rail building program. Much of this was funded through shaky and corrupt means, leading to the Panic of 1873. When the bubble burst in 1873, many railroads went bankrupt and those who survived forced workers to bear the brunt of cutbacks. Throughout the nation, rail workers became increasingly angry. Feeling like they had no power to lead dignified lives and betrayed by the new capitalist system of the age, desperation set in....

Thomas Alexander Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, said that strikers should receive “a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread.” His hopes were answered in Pittsburgh on July 21 when militiamen fired on strikers, killing 20. In response, workers went ballistic, burning 39 buildings and over 1400 rail cars. The next day, militamen struck again, killing another 20 workers. In Reading, state troopers killed 16 people. In Chicago, nearly 20 died after the mayor called for a volunteer militia to crush the strike.

Judge Thomas Drummond of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered federal marshals to protect the railroads from the strikers, saying ” “A strike or other unlawful interference with the trains will be a violation of the United States law, and the court will be bound to take notice of it and enforce the penalty.” Finally, President Rutherford B. Hayes called out the U.S. military to end the strike, setting another precedent–that the federal government would openly side with corporations over workers, no matter how legitimate their grievances.

What is often not appreciated is the degree to which the militia/National Guard system of the post-bellum, Gilded Age, and early 20th century was the military arm of organized and consolidated capital. There was a remarkably tight integration between the National Guard, the army, and the organized business class: many of the National Guard units were

"directly funded and equipped by big industrialists or associations of businessmen...[,] were staffed or lead by businessmen or middle-class professionals...[and] in some states, like Pennsylvania, large corporations made a point of ensuring that those who commanded the militia were sympathetic to their interests.... Following the wave of labor unrest in 1886, the regional commander, General Schofield, arranged for leading industrialists to raise $156,890 to purchase land for a new fort a few miles north of the city so that federal troops could quickly enter Chicago....During the Pullman strike, the federal troops in Chicago were under the command of General Miles. When Miles was given overall command of the army in 1896, businessmen raise $50,000 to buy him a suitable home in Washington" (Robin Archer, Why is there no labor party in the United States, p.122).

This reorganization of the militia system and its integration with organized capital and industry was undertaken as a result of the 1877 strike.

"[The militias] were revived and expanded in the wake of the 1877 railway strike in order to meet the demands of employers. Now known as the National Guard, the primary purpose of this reorganization was to ensure that state governments would have sufficient military strength to quickly suppress industrial unrest. Thus, the interests of militia forces became intimately linked with the interests of major employers" (Archer, p.122).

 I may be mistaken, but the first militia unit in the United States to carry the name National Guard was the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, which adopted this name in honor of the French revolutionary Garde nationale during Lafayette's visit to America in the 1820s (there is a plaque at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, the details are only dimly recalled). So there is irony. New York was becoming the center of capital and industry, of the organizational hub of Republican cultural, social, and political hegemony (on this, see Bernstein's The New York City Draft Riots). The term National Guard is nationalized, the Guard deployed against the working class, the Revolutions of France and America both re-constituted as liberal, propertied, and ultimately conservative revolutions.

Central Park Monument to 7th Regiment, New York National Guard (107th US Infantry from WWI)

Stridulation

Amongst the more impressive acts of stridulation. Also, among the more impressive BBC headlines.

'Singing penis' sets noise record for water insect.

Scientists from France and Scotland recorded the aquatic animal "singing" at up to 99.2 decibels, the equivalent of listening to a loud orchestra play while sitting in the front row.
The insect makes the sound by rubbing its penis against its abdomen in a process known as "stridulation".

It used to be said of the BBC that they kept popular culture and news out of the trough. But of course a headline like that will be rewarded with links and 18,000 Facebook page shares.

Bastille, Guthrie, Republic

I think it is pleasantly appropriate that Woody Guthrie's birthday is also Bastille Day. We watch the dismantling of la république sociale, and the tradition of democratic-republicanism in the United States is an ashen memory.

Take your pick from the Ludlow Massacre and I ain't got no home, but the above link to una boluda en brooklyn really has the video you want, live footage of Guthrie.

Comme d'habitude

He does not seem particularly at ease in this setting. Or that sweater.

The setting seems to be a low-budget, startrekesque Alhambra. The sweater seems to be a mistake. Pay close attention to his hands.

Agreed

Via una boluda en brooklyn

Another Diamond Day

...or whatever. I have been listening to a lot of Vashti Bunyan; I recommend the song How Do I Know, but cannot find a youtube clip. I take that song to be the questioning of radicalism, but from the position of sympathy, possibly even of a fellow traveler. We all have our own ways of betraying the revolution; this might be hers. But, as mentioned, I have not found a decent clip. So let's go for Diamond Days instead.

Family Structure and Political Ambition

Via the Monkey Cage, a new paper by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox:

Based on data from the 2011 Citizen Political Ambition Study – a new, national survey of nearly 4,000 “potential candidates” for all levels of office – we provide the first thorough analysis of the manner in which traditional family arrangements affect the initial decision to run for office. Despite a substantial gender gap in political ambition, and the persistence of traditional family structures and gender roles among potential candidates, our findings culminate to provide clear evidence that traditional family dynamics do not account for the gender gap in potential candidates‟ interest in running for office. Neither marital and parental status, nor the division of labor pertaining to household tasks and childcare, predict interest in pursuing elective office, taking steps typically associated with a campaign, or actually declaring a candidacy. Further, family arrangements do not influence patterns of political recruitment or potential candidates‟ self-evaluations of their qualifications to run for office, which serve as two leading predictors of political ambition. This is not to downplay the fact that the gender gap in political ambition remains substantial and unchanging. But it is to suggest that family arrangements are not a contributing factor.

They conclude by suggesting that structural and psychological barriers--namely political recruitment and  self-perceived qualification--are the major barriers to more women running for office.

One thing that surprised me was the lack of a question about child care workers. I have moved in the nanny circuit, and there was a presumption among the class of families (women and men in law, business, education, and political activism) sampled here that a child needs a nanny, or more accurately, that a mother needs a nanny [1]. The father's business (and for many of the father, 'business' is a very generous description of what they do or the time burdens imposed upon them) was, supposedly, far too consuming for them to take on a greater share of parental responsibilities. More often than not, these fathers also believed that the burden was shared relatively equally, although most would concede that their wives bore a slight disproportion. They figured, well shit, the kids exhaust me... there is no way she could be doing much more than I am. The mother knows better, and they get a nanny. I wouldn't expect this to have much of an effect, and certainly I agree that the structural impediment of candidate recruitment is the more important cause. But it was an odd omission.

[1] This is a biased sample of anecdotes on my part: I knew these people through nannies, and so of course they had normalized the belief that all families with members pursuing professional careers needed nannies.

Labor Link of the Day

This day in labor history.

Phelps-Dodge and the smaller operations in Bisbee decided to use the war as a pretext to crack down on the Wobblies once and for all. Newspapers in Bisbee and around the nation accused the I.W.W. of pro-German sympathy...On July 11, 1917, the Citizens Protective League put out a call to the surrounding areas for deputies. 2000 men assembled by the next morning. They took over the Western Union office to prevent word getting out about their actions. They then went around to the miners’ cabins and rounded people suspected of radicalism or of being Mexican or eastern European. They collected 1186 men many of whom were not on strike or even miners. They marched them to waiting trains, where they were pushed into cattle cars knee deep in manure. The train took off, went to the New Mexico-Arizona border, and dropped them off in the desert.

Erik Loomis has been running a series on This Day in Labor History over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Worth checking out.

Mary Cassett

Mary Cassett's The Letter. This is a first run etching, drypoint, and it is near perfect. The tenderness with which the woman touches her lips to the envelope, the slight hesitation and distant anxiety in her down-turned eyes. It is at the Met in the prints and drawing corridor, and alone it is worth a bus ticket to NY, a somewhat chintzy donation, and the disfavor of those whose view you will be blocking by staring at it for hours. Also, in colour.

At least with Vietnam...

... no one genuinely believed that sending actual advisers--as opposed to 'advisers', i.e. battalions and freighters of weapons--would have made any difference at all.

The Obama plan for the cities: 

The Obama administration is sending dozens of federal officials to work in the city halls of six struggling cities for a year to try to help them solve some of their most intractable problems. The goal is to help local officials tap federal funds and leverage local and regional resources. The officials will provide technical and planning expertise to assist cities in carrying out the initiatives. "We need to provide assistance and support, not just mandates," U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said Monday in Detroit, one of the cities to get federal help.

I like that the nonsense discourse of welfare reform (oh how I missed you) has crept its way back into fashion: 'we need to provide assistance and support, not just______'. You can insert the missing word of your choice: handouts, jobs, compassion, grapefruit. We see the same thing with those hawking structural unemployment theories of the recession: people with skills that two years ago were in high-demand are now woefully obsolete, and should develop other, unidentified skills, that are in no greater demand than the skills they have at present.

But then the article identifies the specific problems on which these advisers are going to be advising:

"arcane federal regulations or an inability to contact the right people were all that stood between Detroit and much-needed aid. "We found they had millions in federal block grants that they either were not using or not using in the best way," Mr. Donovan said.

So, to be clear, the problems for which Detroit and other depressed cities [1] are going to be provided advice are ones that are largely the fault of the Federal government in the first place. Perhaps they could streamline these regulations, rather than send advisers to tell fully-capable men and women how to navigate the labyrinth.

And then, of course, the kicker:

The federal officials will try to persuade local philanthropic organizations and the private sector to provide similar expertise to the cities after the year is up and officials leave.

We re-create, at every level, the doff-your-cap economy, where all are dependent upon access to the 'expertise' of the rentiers, which consists primarily of knowing how to contact the right people.[2]

[1] Not just any depressed city, but ones that " have shown an ability to execute community programs, attract business and collaborate with other public and private sector players." That is, cities where public services and facilities have been gutted, where the tax code is intentionally manipulated to provide (unproductive, good old-fashioned rentier style) rent to businesses and land-developers, who in turn deploy the arts of petulance and cynicism (in the form of blackmail) whenever anyone suggests that a market system dependent upon constantly distorting the regulatory and tax framework for private persons and enterprises does not exactly merit the mantle of 'free market' in which they righteously wrap themselves.
[2] "An inability to contact the right people" reminds me of an explanation I once heard for why the unemployed, under-employed, and people who were unable to land/afford a prestigious internship or promising job-track right out of school had only themselves to blame. If they had just contacted the right people, doors would have opened up.

abécéderia, but really this time.

Blexbolex, whose Saisons made the weather fun again (too soon?), is also responsible for the  intriguing (as in intrigue) abécéderium (DESTINATION) ABÉCÉDERIA. Via LCS:

"Abecederia is the tale of two bank robbers, Leon and Bernard Blanchet, and their decent into madness in the colony of Abecederia and its outskirts, Katagonia.  While we are still in the early letters of the alphabet, Katagonia seems to be a veritable paradise, but soon it becomes a hell, which doesn’t end until the two scoundrels reach the letter Z, and together with the reader they wade through 'a nightmare with hints of dehumanization, to pseudo-scientific experiments performed on humans, torture, death”, as Papercuts put it.'"

On the matter of typos, I would like to note that one's descent into madness can, on occasion, be a quite decent affair.

abecederia

I do like their appalling brashness, their cavalier determination to exit the field of good, honest, investigative journalism. Enough of that. Sorry. The scandal recalls, and it is always worth recalling, A Very British Coup. We do not yet seem to be at the stage where Perkins found himself [1], but let's face it, Gordon Brown was no Harry Perkins.



[1] Past tense for fiction?

Awful people

Atrios

It's been said a million times, but for the millionth+1 time, the problems we have are solvable. Our elites are evil and/or stupid, depending on your take...

 I believe a more appropriate sentence construction would be "depending on their take."

Faithful

... watch as the over-sized tear goes by, at minute 1:20. I stand by those who think the years of drug abuse only made her voice more compelling, which is why I'll also link to the Ballad of Lucy Jordan (I'll save Working Class Hero for a labour posting).




p.s. I do realize that many of the recent posts have been songs recorded by women in the 1960s and '70s. That's where I'm at. Where the hell are you?
p.p.s. It is something of an understatement to say that this is an over-sized tear. I'd be more concerned than saddened if one of these things went by.

Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930

It does not get much better than this.

 The site is organized into various galleries, including an Artistic Gallery (where the above Art Deco image of Detroit is located), a Literary Gallery, and my personal favorite, the Historical Gallery. The galleries each have an organizing essay, and each book in the gallery has extensive notes as well as high quality photos of the bindings.

Hours will be spent.

Some friends unexpectedly dropped in this evening...

... and brought with them gold.

Baldwin Locomotive Works, Maps, and Machinists

From Broad Street up to 18th, from Spring Garden to Pennsylvania Ave, (which no longer runs through below 20th), the Baldwin Locomotive Works was a massive complex, spreading over 7 blocks,  supporting a robust economy of neighbourhood enterprises, and employing up to 10,000 people. The site was a colossus, relied heavily on apprentice labor (against which the first lodge of the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' International Unity was established in Philadelphia, 1857 [Montgomery 1987, p.187]), and was a crucial site of contestation for Philadelphia's early post-bellum labor movement.

I close my eyes as I walk along Spring Garden, and try to listen to the sounds of the forge and foundry, the smells of the furnaces.

The next best thing is to trace the history in maps. Which made my discovery today of the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network particularly exciting. Here is a draft of the works and the surrounding neighbourhood, from the Hexamer General Surveys. But most exciting by far is their map viewer, which allows you to overlay various historical maps of the greater Philadelphia area over a Google maps display.

Montgomery, David. 1987. Fall of the House of Labor.

While I'm on this trip...

... here is Bridget St. John.

Arrived today in the mail

 From the Wikipedia entry on Sibylle Baier:

"The songs that went on to make up her album Colour Green were home reel-to-reel tape recordings Baier had made in Germany between 1970 and 1973. Some thirty years later her son Robby compiled a CD from these recordings to give to family members as presents. He also gave a copy to Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis, who in turn passed it along to the Orange Twin label. Orange Twin released the album in February 2006. She is expected to release a second studio album."

I heard Sibylle Baier only recently, although a friend insists she had played me some of her songs years before. Within minutes of hearing her I had ordered the record. I have spent the last week listening to her online, and pretty much all of today is going to be dedicated to the same. The song "I lost something in the hills" is after the fold.

My Daguerreotype Boyfriend

Via Extracurriculars,[1] mydaguerreotypeboyfriend. See also fuckyeahhistorycrushes. The defiant rogue below is Lewis Thornton Powell, one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination. A friend comments: he could sic semper my tyrannis. 


[1] Extracurriculars is also responsible for my discovery of Sibylle Baier (next post).

Dakota Lapse

Dakota Lapse, via the Big Picture.

About the only thing I miss about the prairies is the sky. But even those had nothing on these.


Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.