Sentient Beings

"I'll let ya know if I find th' one wot invented th' 88."

The PBS show about WW2 is on. Stillwell was in Burma, and his aid, Frank Roberts, who had been on board the Panay.

I learned more studying the Panay than I have ever from these documentaries...more I mean about the causes of the war.

Once these things get going the warrior's stories pretty much take over. The one about the American Indian was interesting...seeing the war as opportunity to continue warrior tradition of the Plains...wonder if the horses were Liepisons....and they have Paul Fussel, who wrote Wartime, a book that tells of WW1 British Poets...Robert Graves one of them...and today I saw somewhere, "The Last Tommy"...story of the last remaining British soldier that fought in the trenches.

This from the blog cited yesterday...

quote

Covering the peace protests in San Francisco for the monks, nuns, people of Burma, and all sentient beings

unquote

from a wiki site...

quote

The anti-aircraft gun was not very useful during World War I because it could not fire high enough and it couldn't fire rapidly enough to shoot down much planes. Soon the German Krupp company developed the new guns in partnership with Bofors of Sweden. The original design that led to the 88 was a 75 mm model.

unquote

The 88 was intended as an anti aircraft cannon, but was used more usefully, I suppose, against ground targets.

Bofors was a company run by Wenner Gren of Sweden, and sold weapons to both sides, and Wenner Gren had a girlfriend who later hooked up with JFK... Inga Arvid. If I remember right, Gren got his start with vacuum cleaners.

I regard the woodpecker as a sentient being...not so sure about the human race.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 30, 2007

Revolution

I found a blog about Myanmar/Burma...
http://sanfranciscolovesburma.blogspot.com/2007/09/photos-from-san-francisco-protest-few.html

...but I have no idea what it is all about.

British comedies on when I came home, first one about a clairvoyant that communicates with the departed, which reminded me to think on the Haunted Mind bit...but I didn't think about much today.

Oh, here comes Dr. Who...a museum underground in Utah of alien artifacts!!

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 29, 2007

Buddah

Is it a revolt in Miramar?...I just watched the brief CNN news story...cell phone pics. All the monks marching in their robes...I see them here sometimes dressed the same, and from I dont know which Asian land.

I've been meaning to contemplate Buddah and the Bo Tree, and maybe I should mention my preoccupation with Kannon, goddess of mercy.

The Merced was named by the Spanish explorers, who were thirsty on their trek, and so called it "mercy".

A few days back I dreamed of some Buddhists, which is unusual for me.

brb

I snagged a pic of Kannon, and a little one of Buddah...

There's redwood tree on the path to the Superintendant's House. Been by it many times, but just noticed it today, and it's big! Tour bus driver explained that they have a flared bottom, like a bell...there's some more by the Chapel, and of course by Galen Clark's grave. They will grow here, and most anywhere, but they propagate by themselves only in the groves...I think!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 28, 2007

King Midas

Sometimes I think I could figure everything out from just reading Aesop's Fables, Fairy tales, Hero myths, and such. Hollywood has certainly lost the story telling ability to tell these old stories well...part of it is special effects have become too important...and too real...I think I read Disney has an animation movie in the works that is completely hand drawn like the old ones. The Three Little Pigs was a big hit during the Great Depression, it message hitting home.

But anyway, I was thinking again about King Midas, whose every touch turned things, and his child, into gold, if I remember right...and how that is like our inventions and technology...like everything we "touch" with our imaginations is becoming a technology.

The trouble with gold is it that in itself it's pretty useless, and immutable. It doesn't rust or corrode...something made from it will last forever, even left on the ocean bottom...ocean saltwater being the all time universal solvent. Bronze lasts too...but it gets a patina. Gold just stays gold.

Rust and corrosion to the mineral world is like decay in the organic.

Technology, it's machinery and products, rusts, corrodes, wears out, and even gets recycled... so it can be said it's like the cycle in the mineral and plant/animal kingdoms.

Well, I'm being long winded. Leme shorten up...Technology is our King Midas Touch...and it has the same hazards as gold to King Midas.

There wasn't much on...but cool, now Man vs Wild is in Scotland, one I haven't seen yet. Met some hikers from Scotland...asked them about trekking there, and they said sure, they have little huts...that seems to be case all over Europe.

If I remember right, gold in it's natural state sometimes has little four sided pyramid shapes...and I studied that out thinking that the Egyptian pyramids were derived from that...gold, immortality, pyramid crystal, eternity.

lemesee if I can find that..

quote (I'll snag their pic!)

Gold crystallizes in the cubic system, forming octahedral and dodecahedral crystals, often distorted into dendritic or leafy growths.

http://www.3dchem.com/molecules.asp?ID=177

unquote

leafy crytals from wikipedia's site

I had a stuff sack I carried my billiard balls and one nite I spilled them out on the floor and became possessed with how they formed pyramid and hexagonal shapes...like honey comb...part of my dynamic symmetry period!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 27, 2007

Harvest Moon

In this 72 dpi pic the stars are hard to see, and the lamp of the rock climbers by Lost Arrow too. I was so pleased to get a nighttime moonlight pic of the Falls, after failed attempt last night, and much study of other's taking pics and posting them to web.

I set the 12x, a Canon S3, to M, ISO to 400, shutter to 15 seconds, F stop to 3.5 and held down the MF button the whole while after setting it to infinity...top of vertical bar...and THAT worked. The "Busy" shows up, and the screen was dark for the while it took. But the pic showed up. I have more than a few that just stayed dark! There are likely other settings to use to do this.

These digital cameras are a marvel, and marvelously frustrating at times. Last night I dragged everything out and ran into another photog taking pics of the moon and the Falls in the parking lot. His advice helped get moon shots...set camera to Av...I have exposure bracketing on...and it foucsed itself...one pic of three good...and that worked, though pic isn't as in focus as it should be...maybe holding down the MF focus button here will help too.

Apparently, the camera has a tiny gyroscope that steadies the focus....but it's own vibration in long exposure shots works against it...why stars are squiggly. I'm not sure of the accuracy of this, but that seems to be the case according to one account.

On Flickr there's a S3 group I found looking for bird pics taken by the S3, and it's just amazing how the web makes pic sites like this possible.

TV is on but I'm not watching...Myth Busters...and power speedboats....

MSN did a neat little bit on the Moon and it how it effects the Earth...the seasons and tides and such...not unlike my earlier post...lemessee if I can find that...

Well, I lost it...should have snagged the illustration the other day...but the search turned up the tale of Harvest Moons, which is what the Moon was tonight and last night. Full moon nearest the Equinox, and Harvest as it comes up just after sunset....adding extra light to the Harvest. Here the walls block out sunrise and sunset...though I have some spectacular ones of the sun setting behind clouds out beyond the Cathedrals.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 26, 2007

Albatross

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

Cooleridge

Bronx Story was on...Robert DiNero in good scene when he takes his son to give back the money from the crap game...

Then a Molly Ringwald teen movie...

I had something in mind for tonight's post, but can't recall at moment!!...lemeethink...

Well, the Bronx Story can fill in here...two stories again...working Father and gangster ...Godfather I guess....and a two story subplot with the Black girlfriend trying to determine if her new found Italian boyfriend beat up her brother...I didn't follow that all too close...trying to google search how to take night shots with the 12x!...the biker's in the bar harks back to Arnold in T2!

Oh, now I remember...at the back of this months Sierra Club magazine is a pic of a dead Albatross..dead awhile as it is near gone, and the contents of it's stomach revealed...beside it a circular array pic of these contents...all manner of plastic and other trash eaten...and a Buchwald quote, which I haven't read out...I was showing it to everyone...with the usual responses of sardonic humor!

Maybe I can find it on web..brb...that was easy...

quote

"And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate and the disposable bottle, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy his food all in one place and he could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And pretty soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles, and there was nowhere left to sit down or to walk. And Man shook his head and cried, 'Look at all this God-awful litter.'"
--Art Buchwald, 1970

end quote

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 25, 2007

Acorn Bear

Watching back to back to back Man vs Wild...shooting Parana in the Amazon with bow and arrow...

Ted Copple in ad for show about crowded prisons..dont know how anyone survives that.

The bears are tagged, collard, and so forth, according to their behavior...different colored tags indication the number of "strikes".

It's pretty awful...they've done nothing wrong. But managing them and the tourists, the dynamics of it, have shaped the program of bear control as surely as the Tiki Temple Trash Cans.

Blake does another poem about something caged, but looking I found this one..

quote

The School Boy

I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!
But to go to school in a summer morn, -
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring!
O father and mother if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay, -
How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?


William Blake

unquote

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 24, 2007

Cold Hard Reality

Well, Steven Segal in "Fire Down Below" won out over "The War", and "The Green Berets"....he was on this morning too in the Alaska one.

Segal just finished giving a sermon in Church...didn't listen but imagine it was "cold hard reality" speech like he gives in the Alaska adventure. In that one he's talking to his sidekicks, a couple American Indians, and they protest that the
Spirit World will help them, and Segal acknowledges that, but says it's time for 'cold hard reality"...then he takes the one sidekick on horseback to his weapons arsenal!! This is a stock scene in movies...Men in Black in the jewelry store...

Does Segal abandon the Spirit World? I'm not following the one on now too close, he's often in and out of the church, so I imagine his methods are abandoning that Spirit World too.

Oh, and it was the use of the word "abandon" in a show about Noah and the Flood last night that's got me going here. The show was telling how archaeologist had found a large layer of mud, circa 5000 years ago, in their digging, and this together with the mud tablet accounts in Mesopotamia of a flood and arc and a Noah, give credence that there was a flood, but a local occurrence, and because it was local, the story in the Bible of a world wide flood, and the animals two by two, and huge arc, and Noah, had to be abandoned.

Well, "abandon all hope all ye who enter here"...I think that's Dante...earlier post too...

Chris Christopherson is the bad guy..he has that role a lot!


And a lot of these poets and writers I've been touching on often write up a cold hard reality, and then get out of it with "pleasant dreams"...the shoot 'em ups often end with the Hero getting together with the Heroine...though I dont know if Segal ever hooks up! Jackie Chan never gets a kiss...

Oh, forgot, I was going to tie in the "cold hard reality" with the movie, Friendly Persuasion, which deals with the dilemma as best any ever did.

I came home with three pastries and a banana, and ate them all...cold weather makes me hungry.

Segal delivers porch materials and gets a hug...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 23, 2007

The Haunted Web

I'm still thinking about Hawthorne's "The Haunted Mind"...

And maybe I should call this post "Tomb Web"...

The web's a repository, and as a graveyard is a kinda storage place too...maybe it's like that...and haunted.

Certainly one ghost that is about is JFK, and the spirits of wild woolly conspiracies...

But speaking of repositories! Something got away from one, six nukes that accidentally got loaded on a plane and delivered to a base where they didn't know a thing. See "Bent Spear" story of today...

Made my heart race a bit with anxiety to read about it...letmegoget my jfk post on subject...

selfquote

99 Decision Street
In trying to fill out General Norstad I find him a commonsensical levelheaded sort in a pretty un level circumstance!! Here he appears as Chief of NATO (at another time he was Tibbets' bomber unit commander)...
quote
20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War by Alan F. Philips, M.D. Ever since the two adversaries in the Cold War, the U.S.A. an the U.S.S.R., realized that their nuclear arsenals were sufficient to do disastrous damage to both countries at short notice, the leaders and the military commanders have thought about the possibility of a nuclear war starting without their intention or as a result of a false alarm. Increasingly elaborate accessories have been incorporated in nuclear weapons and their delivery systems to minimize the risk of unauthorized or accidental launch or detonation. A most innovative action was the establishment of the "hot line" between Washington and Moscow in 1963 to reduce the risk of misunderstanding between the supreme commanders.
Skip
10) October, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: NATO Readiness It is recorded on October 22, that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and NATO Supreme Commander, General Lauris Norstad agreed not to put NATO on alert in order to avoid provocation of the U.S.S.R. When the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered DEFCON 3 Norstad was authorized to use his discretion in complying. Norstad did not order a NATO alert. However, several NATO subordinate commanders did order alerts to DEFCON 3 or equivalent levels of readiness at bases in West Germany, Italy, Turkey, and United Kingdom. This seems largely due to the action of General Truman Landon, CINC U.S. Air Forces Europe, who had already started alert procedures on October 17 in anticipation of a serious crisis over Cuba.
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm
unquote
A curio is how many of these near mishaps involved radar. My favorite ...
Quote
6) October 25, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Intruder in Duluth At around midnight on October 25, a guard at the Duluth Sector Direction Center saw a figure climbing the security fence. He shot at it, and activated the "sabotage alarm." This automatically set off sabotage alarms at all bases in the area. At Volk Field, Wisconsin, the alarm was wrongly wired, and the Klaxon sounded which ordered nuclear armed F-106A interceptors to take off. The pilots knew there would be no practice alert drills while DEFCON 3 was in force, and they believed World War III had started. Immediate communication with Duluth showed there was an error. By this time aircraft were starting down the runway. A car raced from command center and successfully signaled the aircraft to stop. The original intruder was a bear.
Unquote
Sweet Jesu indeed...
DavidDavid

unquote

Sigh, it's easy to be confused and lose things..witness my lost gear of today while chasing after a red tail hawk gliding from tree to tree. Didn't note it's missing till after work, and couldn't find it though I went back to look. Can only hope it will be returned.

People are People, we're human, and absolute perfection is not in our nature.

Tomorrow is the equinox I think.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 22, 2007

The Seventh Seal

Pic is a pen and inc watercolor I did when first arrived...a control burned meadow. I make postcards out of some paintings, with the thought someday to market postcards, but I doubt if I'll ever get to it...one of the "sometime" things.




CNN is on with the Jena story...


I'm still mulling yesterdays start at a post...I want to get at the 19th Century authors tone...from Muir to Melville, Poe to Emerson, Whitman to Longfellow, and a lot of others I'm not that familiar with...Mark Twain too. I think all of them were over come by America's natural beauty and landscape, and the discoveries of Darwin and the geologists, something of what goes on with the Hudsen Valley painters...this might take a bit of thinking!


One pioneer posed the question, Was the discovery of Yosemite the opening of the Seventh Seal?...when I find that quote's source I'll add it...



I found an account of Whitney's journey through the valley and surroundings, which I want to work with too, and his quarrel about the Glaciers with Muir.

quote from early newspaper account of Huthchings' visit...
San Francisco Daily California Chronicle, August 18, 1855

From Mr. Hunt’s store, we kept an east-of-north course, up the divide between the Fresno and Chowchillah valleys; thence descending towards the South Fork of the Merced river, and winding around a very rocky point, we climbed nearly to the ridge of the Middle or main fork of the Merced, and descending towards the Yo-Semity valley, we came upon a high point, clear of trees, from whence we had our first view of this singular and romantic valley; and, as the scene opened in full view before us, we were almost speechless with wondering admiration at its wild and sublime grandeur. “What!” exclaimed one at length, “have we come to the end of all things?” “Can this be the opening of the Seventh Seal?” cries another.

end quote

Sublime, that's the word, the 19th century pursued the Sublime in Nature...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 21, 2007

Tomb Earth

I remembered the following quote from wikipedia's site on William Cullen Bryant and his early poem Thanatopsis ...pic from wiki...

quote

Due to the unusual quality of the verse and Bryant's age when first published in 1817 by the North American Review, Richard Henry Dana, then associate editor at the Review, initially doubted its authenticity, saying to another editor, "No one, on this side of the Atlantic, is capable of writing such verses."

unquote

(and snagged it tonight from another blogger doing a bit on Bryant..)

Hawthorne's Haunted Mind is still in the mulling...and this poem I'm trying to tie into it...the poem sees the earth as a tomb...

And I've been thinking about graveyards as common haunted ground...and is there a "common haunted ground"?..is where I'm headed...but it needs some work up...

Getting up early tomorrow, so I need to make it short tonight...

quote from poem..

The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.

unquote

watched cnn all nite after work...the Jena story tells about the use of digital cameras and blogs...I may have mispoke about the web dampening things down!

One of interviewed dodges a question...did he think the nooses were a hate crime...and I saw note that Bush is dodging a question...and the two stories are related!

quote

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent 1 hour, 3 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday refused to criticize a U.S. security company in Iraq accused in a shooting that left 11 civilians dead, saying investigators need to determine if the guards violated rules governing their operations.

unquote

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 20, 2007

Jason and Golden Fleece

Yesterday morning an old Hercules movie was on...one of those Italian ones dubbed with English. It had the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece (I came in during the Amazons...)

And it was funny when Jason tries to get the Fleece away from the protecting Dragon. The Dragon bellows with Godzilla's roar, and the "music" is from The Forbidden Planet soundtrack, famous for being all electronic music...a first in a movie.

Animal Planet on...I dont know what to watch anymore. First the ocean show, now the animal police.

Noting the Hercules movie soundtrack is from my new found sensitivity to how the movies are made, the sound, and how the cameras take in things. This because of the little videos I'm making of the Creek critters.

Even the worst of movies is a lot of work, and the effort goes unheralded, even in the best and frequently watched movies.

Robert Graves was working on a historical novel, Hercules My Shipmate, when he got sidetracked and started writing the White Goddess.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 19, 2007

Charcoal Half Dome

I'm one of those who feels I must go somewhere, or do something, or I'll feel bad because I haven't done anything or gone anywhere!

I'm likely to skip meals, housecleaning, doctor appointments, just generally everything, in the pursuit of this.

And if I'm trapped by work, I feel worse, and go into a funk, which makes things twice as worse as I'm likely to just turn the TV on and zone out, totally frustrated.

I should be doing charcoal drawings...this one I did today one of few I've done here...and writing my poems...as that's what I can do.

But I like to do the photography, it's poplular, and I spent most of tonight editing video, and shortly try to get it all on dvd.

I have no idea what to do with newsprint charcoals once I've drawn them..the paper turns dry and crumbles quickly...I've tossed hundreds of class drawings...I could use Mi Tientes paper, or some other, but it hasn't the same feel.

Two of my channels have gone mute on TV...dont know if it's my pushing wrong buttons on remote, or the TV...Letterman and Ferguson and PBS...

CNN has gone totally silly.

I was going to post about the meteor, Tamanana or something(Tomanowa), sacred to the Indians up North...someone selling a chunk...last night...and now tonight one has fallen in Peru making people sick.

The Indians held the meteor sacred, a gift from the Sky People...and it is thought that the old Egyptians with their BenBen stone did the same. Or is it BenBen bird, and another name for the sacred stone...then there's the Kaaba cube with the meteor in it's corner...that's the square monument Muslims circle in Mecca.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 18, 2007

Happy Ending

A hiker, near my age!, somehow got lost between Glacier Point and Taft Point. This pic from yesterday when I thought this helicopter was looking for a lost hiker. They found him okay, just a little thirsty. That's the west side of Sentinel.

PBS has story of Japanese American airman, turret gunner. Flew missions in Europe and over Japan too.

I was going to do a bit on morbid movies, and morbid 19th century authors (Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Whittier..I've been gathering them..) but it was such a nice day that the whole thing evaporated. For another time...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 16, 2007

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Movie "Blade" was on before I went to work, and now repeated...and it's nuts...oh but Dirty Jobs was going nowhere...

I thought to look up Nathaniel Hawthorne and give that Haunted Mind piece another reading...brb

Oh, I quoted Hawthorne in the Dragon's Teeth post...he told the tale of Cadmus.

Well, I thought about dreams today...they defy those parameters for the scientific principle...they are not separate from the viewer, and two or more people can't view them, or see the same thing.

So how can they be reported? I dont know!

Now, last night, this morning actually, (Hawthorne does quite a job in describing sleep!), I had a dream which seemed connected to those Alaska scenes last night, and mixed in with the Creek....I have my tripod and camera, and climbing gravel slopes and come upon an open view of a river in a deep ravine...and it's a good photo I think, and start to set the camera up...and I hear, or see, machinery, a bulldozer?, working in the woods, and I think they wont be bothered by me, and I go back to the camera, but now I'm looking at the forested river bank...no open view..and I try to climb the gravel slopes to find it again, and climbing the slopes should make me tired, I think, but my strides are strong.

Did I remote view someplace? I dont know. It seems a mundane enough dream, but what interests me is the pervasive anxieties in my dreams...in this one, will I bother the machinery operators?, will I tire climbing the gravel slopes? and the allusiveness of taking the view photograph.

The 19th century American poets and novelist seem to seek insights, and to pass them on...I suppose because of two things, it was still the age of exploration, and like the scientists they wanted to make discoveries.

Maybe tomorrow I'll find some examples of this...Winslow Homer comes to mind too, as his paintings are often meditations of one thing or another...

Well, I have to watch Blade...I think that's Jessica Biel... oh, there's a whole series of these...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 15, 2007

Haunted House

Time was, a long time ago, I dont know how long!, people believed in ghosts and the supernatural. Since the advances of science, all that's changed.

But if our heads, our minds, can be considered a "house", where we truly live, we're still haunted.

National Geographic has the story of two different bear attacks about the same time in the Kodiak archipelago...it's a bit drawn out!

We intuit that our 'house" is haunted, and that's why, I think, so much of our entertainments have supernatural things, scary things.

Ferguson had a fellow on his show the other night that articulated very well how the news shows play on our fears...because fear more than anything gets our attention, and that's what advertisers seek, an audience that stays tuned to see what new catastrophe, from anywhere in the world nowadays, may be threatening. And, he explained, watching these shows leads to stress and other ailments.

Well, my new illusive friend from Tuolumne just explained to me that books dont have advertisements, and you can leave a story and come back to the same spot in the story..."You cant do that with TV..." We both love books.

More Kodiak bears...they're brown bears, distant, and much much bigger, cousins of the brown bears hereabouts.

"People who love books, always have a friend." I read that, or something like that, in a WW2 history book, or something, by a retired military officer.

Pic is a book about the Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion...been there many times delivering bogies.

Link to Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Haunted Mind

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/haw3610.txt

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 15, 2007

There's Two Stories...

Jericho was on when I came on...I can't follow it...more everyone being made tough...I swear, if I ever happen upon some "tough" guy tormenting a squirrel, or any of the critters, I'll toughen up my own self.

Anyway, I was thinking on Grave's "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" and that opening..

There is one story, and one story only...

The one story of course is romance, but actually it's two, insomuch romantic competition is, well, it's everywhere. The eternal triangle and all.

So I thought maybe the opening should be...

There are two stories, and two stories always...

There's the suitors story and his rival's.

I was going to rework the whole poem!, as the notion is easy to follow through...

Hero and Villain movies use the "theme" all the time.

Jelly Bellies, Peeps and Twinkies on National Geographic...and now children raised by animals like Romulus and Remus...hmm...they might be a good example of the rivals...I'll go see what Graves has to say...

Well, I can't find it, but found stuff for a Comparitive Mythology post I've had in mind...

Meanwhile, a recollection of Cassablanca...

from song As Time Goes By

It's still the same old story

A fight for love and glory

A case of do or die.

The world will always welcome lovers

As time goes by.
Oh yes, the world will always welcome lovers As time goes by.

unquote

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 14, 2007

Inspiration Point

Well, I was mulling over that article again and it's notion that the Internet is another "Afghanistan". The Taliban used Afghanistan as a hide out, and the idea is that Al Quida uses the Web the same way.

I find this far fetched, but I've seen other story on this too, that they've become very sophisticated in using the web.

But the notion that web viewers will be won over, inspired, on the web to join the jihad, the parade of martyrs, seems a bit much.

If anything, the web seems to dampen things down, almost a pressure release. Peace marches nowadays are paltry compared to the old days!

But where's the inspiration point? Well, Myra Breckenridge is on, and for her it was the illnesses caused by the power plant pollution...she became radicalized.

Radicalized is a poor term, and poor notion, the whole Reuters article is kindof off, and has the look of just another scare story.

But people get inspired to do, or follow, something all the time, and there's no one recipe that explains it.

Enough on that point.

But here's another! I realized today how MANY of the movies we see are about a story being overtaken by another story. Myra uncovers the pollution story which overtakes the power plants "cover" story.

It's like the Colombo detective stories...Colombo would bit by bit unravel the culprits false alibi story, and coup de gra them with a summation of the true story.

And Men in Black has this fantastic story of aliens everywhere underlying everyone's everday story.

Graves does this with his writing, now that I think of it. He's all the time talking about true poets, and true kings, and true poetry, and I guess we should all know he's telling the truth in illuminating us. But he got took.

Omar ali Shah roped him into collaborating on a translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and in the book Graves compares their translation next to Fitzgerald's, and touts it's genuineness, it's trueness. Not so!, to borrow his frequent protestation!

Shah's story is as concocted as Fitzgerald's, but whose to say...maybe I can find a site that tells this tale...

Well, the Jay Lo as police officer is on again, where the accident victim who loses his family in car blocks out the event and makes up a whole new identity for himself. Again, a story to be overtaken by the true story.

Maybe that's all there is to making a Hollywood script...

Here's a bit of the Omar ali Shah and Robert Graves controversy...too long to snag...http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10797...two stories at odds!

pic from wikipedia's site on Omar Khayyam

and a bit..

quote

If with wine you are drunk be happy

if Seated with a moon-faced (beauty)? Be happy

Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness

Hence then you shall be naught, then while you are, be happy!

unquote

...which is bit like the "Don't Worry,Be Happy" song the Jamaicans sing at work...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 13, 2007

Convincing Moment

quote from Reuter's site:
Internet is "the new Afghanistan": NY police commissioner
Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:51PM EDT
By Michelle Nichols and Edith Honan
unquote

To continue yesterday...

That article was referenced in jfk, and it caught my eye in that it describes a series of things that radicalizes someone.

In Terminator 2, it's the development of Linda Hamilton's character, she convinces herself that to alter time and stave off Armageddon she must stop the research scientist who is studying the remains of the first terminator, it's arm, and a chip. She almost succeeds...but cant go through with it to the point of killing him.

Then, and this is the part I'm trying to get at. the research scientist is "radicalized" by story of the time travel and devastated future...the convincing moment coming when Arnold cuts the skin off his arm and hand, revealing a self same robotic arm and hand to the one the scientist has been working on, the first terminator's.

He joins the little band of rebels, and they go to the lab.

Rebels, believers, I'm not sure what to call them.

It's an interesting character development, Hamilton's and the scientists.

Arnold goes through one too, in that he becomes a bit human...robots are always doing this!...and we are back where he dropped into the molten metal.

What happened is one story is over ridden by another. The new story, that the world is in peril form the rise of the machines, unfolds because of the Terminators rampaging. All through the movie norms of behavior are scoffed at, from the Biker Bar scene to the truck chases busting through the streets. Everyone, and that is everyone in LA, is made to look foolish, living their everday story while this new story unfolds in their midst.

Most adventure movies do this, they break speed limits. Does Hamilton convince herself, or do the repeated breaking of rules convince her?, or both?

Well, I cant sort this out tonight...I'll have to think on it some more.

No pic comes to mind...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 12, 2007

Presage

Well, pleased with hawk pics, I went over to my friends to show them off, especially the big 16x20 print, and while the slide show played, I looked to their faces to see how they liked them, but Terminator 2 was on the TV above, and their eyes too! Oh, it was a bit too much like the blog!! I had to keep saying, look at the hawk!!

It is a more sophisticated film than most viewers are aware, including myself. But I do remember when the villain is driving the Liquid Nitrogen truck, and camera has a long pause on the writing on it's side, that I did think on first seeing the film, that, Oh, the liquid nitrogen is going to somehow freeze the liquid metal terminator. That's a presage. The sort of thing in detective stories, the author putting in hints of what's to come.

Hollywood film script writers are hardly known, not like novelists, and play writes. Part of the reason is that scripts are group efforts.

Now, thinking on this, I was watching ABC's bit on blogs, and one about a rock group that did a kinda test audience session before finalizing their new songs...

You could be getting text messages on what songs to play?

Yeah, like we could have a big screen behind us with texts on it, requesting songs...

I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare's plays were written by script writers like Hollywood films. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but only after much input from the Founding Fathers.

Something like that going on, inputs coming in while writing, like this ekphrasis blog here, taking off on what the TV is doing while on...and other inputs..

They could have done a special on weblogs in 1986, network TV I mean...none of the big media caught on to the old text only newsgroups and such...

Now, lemegosee what the heck happened, if anything, on August 17, 1997, a date, if I remember it right, of significance in the Terminator Films...the singularity. brb

Actually, it's August 4, 1997, and sometimes a search is just...a search!!

When I was doing the Panay weblog, part of the study was of the bombing of Old Shanghai, this in August 1937 when the USS Augusta was in the harbor, and Chennault's pilots were trying to bomb the Idzumo..they missed, and hit a kindof early mall like building called The Great World.

At the time, it stuck in my head that The Great World was similar in name to The World Trade Center, which at the time was recovering from the first bombing.

I called the bombing of The Great World the "ground zero" of events in Old China, of The Panay Incident and Related Matters. The Panay is often called a prelude to Pearl Harbor. I was going back and forth in history from Dec. 12, 1937, trying to figure it, but on reading about The Great World thought that might be a better date, and event. What I was seeking was the presages of WW2.

This is likely difficult to follow. See the Panay Weblog...it's there...the concerns I had. Of two minds, I was thinking of WW2, and also what was being presaged by the first bombing of The World Trade Center, and later of the USS Cole.

It's intuitive thinking derived from following current events with a background of the past. At times it can look like magic, but it's just study and hard work!

Linda Hamilton has some remarkable scenes in the film...shaking the chain link fence, sitting on the desk smoking a cigarette, going on a rant about the MAD men (no, not those in the new show...who appear to be wearing heavy makeup!)...MAD as in the creators of Mutually Assured Destruction...

Her character's development also follows a well known psychological progression that creates radicals...actually that's a leap by me, as it's not well known to me..but I've seen it explained over in JFK.

I'll "tinker" with that tomorrow...

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Sept. 11, 2007

Piffle

Pic from wikipedia 911 page...



Some words, once I use them for the first time, take on a kindof charm...like piffle, which no sooner than I thought of it I looked it up in the dictionary...and I like it!

National Geographic on with shows on laying undersea pipeline, and a biker's convention in Daytona Beach--biker nation.

I'm tired, and bloggers going down for maintenance...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 11, 2007

AI Convention

There was an Artificial Intelligence convention this weekend in San Francisco. I read about it in the paper, recalling my post here...

Kid pianist on PBS at Carnegie Hall.

When the machines learn and begin programing themselves...

Well, we do that...parents teach their children to play the piano and become pianists.

And if that can be encoded into the genetic code, and passed on, then that is in the works too...

What's happening is that machinery is married to people who passed the threshold of artificial intelligence a long time ago, that is if our intelligence is "artificial"!

Anyway, some very rich and educated people have taken this serious, notably the creator of Pay Pal...which I'm not sure was a display of intelligence!! I guess it works okay, the spam scared me off, along with the lack of response to queries regarding same.

If these web businesses can sign me up by email, they can just as well unsubscribe and answer questions by same!

By the way, when I sign something with DavidDavid, a painting, or a mountain top registry, I put one David below the other...then draw a line, so it looks like a reflection...

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 9, 2007

MAD Max

Mel Gibson is on in a bad guys one good guy with a girl gangsters shootemup...

I dunno why I watch these things...it's a guy thing..

There's actually a lot of virtue being promoted...he shoots 'm all for 70,000 dollars, the collection of a debt, or theft...I missed the beginning.

Mel Gibson of course is Mad Max of the Apocalypse...just to keep the blog in theme here! And, actually, he's been pretty much mad max throughout all his movies...and why in the world he produced a movie about Jesus I dont know, and have never seen it. More storytelling it would seem.

And then a Charlie's Angels movie comes on....

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 8, 2007

Creek Hawk

Madness

National Geographic was on with Naked Science and story of global warming...the increasing hurricanes the scariest part.

But the big thing, which no ones mentioning, is that the Gulf Stream may shoot straight up past Greenland and defreeze the North Pole, and throw Europe into a deep freeze...I've head the remarkable notion that during an Ice Age there is no ice at the North Pole because of this.

But I dont know, just a casual thought...

Then a show about Claus Fuchs, the atom spy.

There's a disconnect all through are culture between what we do and the consequences. I've been thinking on how celebraties really dont know their audience, somewhat like I really dont know all the tourists hearabouts. It's kinda depressing to see so many people and not know them, and the ones I do become acquainted with are gone in a moment. Co workers too....that's the worst. This time of year is full of goodbyes.

If the Atom scientists had lived awhile in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, had family there, and friends, and pets, and memories, would they have been so industrious to make the bomb? And why in the world did they give the things nicknames??

It's mad.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 6, 2007

Divulgationism

quote from wikipedia site about Jacques-Yves Cousteau:

His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called "divulgationism," a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern TV broadcasting.

unquote

That word caught my eye last night when The Global Dimming show on PBS was playing...lemegoolook for it...no, the only sites using it are Cousteau ones...this from JanCousteau..

quote

He co-developed the aqualung, was on the forefront of marine conservation and
created a new kind of scientific communication called “divulgationism”—a new and
simple way of sharing scientific concepts through story. Though it was criticized at the
time by scientists, it became a cornerstone of modern broadcasting, nonfiction
television, in particular.

unquote

Basically what TV documentaries do is dumb (dim?)down scientific jargon so the general populace can follow it. Just for the fun of confusion in the old big used book store I'd sit on a stool and read technical texts...and wonder, these are tough enough to write, but how in the world are they edited?

Some docs, thinking of ufos and the war ones, try to smarten up things by throwing in jargon...dont know what that's called.

Cousteau is one of my heros, and they dont repeat his shows...the ones his sons and others do now are technically far superior, but Cousteau's were really charming.

I'll grab a pic of Calypso...the goddess. From here:

http://www.waltm.net/calypso.htm

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 5, 2007

Global Dimming

Well, PBS has a documentary on called Global Dimming.

I've said it myself, back in a GEnie post, this twenty years ago now!, that...The Earth is drying out.

Which is ironic, insomuch as the surface is mostly covered by the oceans.

But anyway, the pollution is dimming the sun's rays causing less evaportion over the ocean which means less rain fall.

The film has a monster movie sount track!!

Now, somehow the storyteller ties this all in with jet's vapor trails...lessee what this one says...

Friends of mine were camped out by Saddleback lake the night of 911, and found the quiet remarkable--no jets. The park is under the major flight ways. Slow to go to sleep camping, I watch them go by...sometimes they look like ufos.

Well, the temp went up 2 degree F. in the three days after 911 because the jets were grounded...that's the story.

Earlier PBS has a panel on talking about whether the surge in Iraq was working. I thought they'd be fine bunch to sit down beside the Larry King ufo panel of last night!!

Oh, the dimming story has lost me...

Lambert Dome, Tuolumne is the pic...a bit underexposed!

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

September 4, 2007

Empires of the Future

“Empires of the future
Will be empires of the mind."
Winston Churchill



“There’s no alternative…”

Quotes from photo journalist Robert Capland's documentary about our foreign…what…legion..on PBS.

No alternative to America being all over the world with military help to keep order. And that’s always been the effort of the Navy, to preserve the freedom of the high seas. And the Yangtze Patrol.

And that’s the story being told. PBS was on with show about the new American empire. And it’s an empire in the sense that we train and assist other nations to keep the peace inside their nations.

There was a flashing pop up ad in my mailbox from Wal Mart…and it hurt my eyes and made me feel uncomfortable.

Which reminds me of a new weapon developed that flashed lights…they showed it on local news briefly, and it hurt my eyes and made me feel uncomfortable.


Frank Capra made a film after the victory in Europe in WW2 called “Why We Fight” I think, and it’s purpose was to prepare the soldiers in the winding down European war to fight in the one still raging in the Pacific.

Maybe I can find a site for that…(wikipedia has a Why We Fight site, and links to Capra's movies...

Story telling is strained to the limit in war, and from the looks of things…there’s always going to be war.

At Tuolumne I was happy to take pics and video of a deer feeding by the river. Reviewing the video I noticed when the doe turned her head she has a growth on her nose. There’s more on her flanks. I don’t know what it is…but I see sometimes injured and dying animals…and it’s immeasurably sad.

A few moments later the falcon perched in a nearby tree while I was sitting there at the bridge to Parson's Lodge.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Sept. 3, 2007

Storytelling

Well, I thought some more on these storytelling notions.

A movie was on, Pierce Bronsman, Salma Hyack...jewel thieves in paradise.

UFOs on Larry King...

The Scientific Principle has it...well, let me go get wiki's take...while they're talking about empirical principle!!

Couldn't find a good wiki, but this will do..

quote

The scientific principle operates in the context of objective reality, which basically means two things:
1. The assumption that the observer and observed are completely separate.
2. The assumption that if many observers look at the same thing, it will still look/be the same thing.

unquote

A problem is that no sooner than we perceive something than it is made into a story...that's what we do...

The quarrel between the evolutionists and the creationist is a conflict of two stories. There's no way around that. And neither can claim to be truer.

This isn't to say one should abandon all hope! in a kinda you can believe what you want world! No, you must be very determined and careful in what you believe, as that is your story.

Propagandist are always up to no good, as they are basically lying, luring folk into false stories.

Well, Larry has a panel and they are quarreling over the Phoenix Lights.

Woody Harrelson dupes Bronsman in the jewel thief movie.

"Confabulation of Different Memories"

True believers...

Buzz Aldrin coming on...I'm supposed to be packing up for a hike...oh, it's late again...I'll try to do it in the morning. I cant think this late this tired, and if I scurry around it will make me less sleepy, and then I wont sleep!! I'll set the alarm...

a poem...

America went to the moon,

And we'll go back,

With Buzz Aldrin,

Or Buzz Lightyear,

Either way, it's certain.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
Sept. 2, 2007

Migration

To continue yesterday's thoughts...

The web isn't quite a collective conscious, insomuch it isn't conscious (though monitors might give it that quality!), but it is a collective storehouse of our stories.

And I realized that's what we are in our heads, stories.

That movie, The Never Ending Story, had it that a story in a book came to life...the kid reading it entered the story.

And I think we have a hard time reconciling our stories with reality. We live in a realm of make believe.

I'm part of the American story, and Christian story, and of course my own personal story, and it's all a story, a story come to life.

The old tribes all had their own Genesis story, a story about where people came from. And there's the Bible's...and here the protestations begin insomuch as the faithful insist the Bible's story isn't just a story but the truth and real.

We're saturated with story telling!! Alias is on, a grim megalomania hunt.

Our stories interplay with reality. When the Israeli's took back the Wailing Wall, the soldiers broke into tears. This was because they were moved experiencing an episode in the story of Israel.

The Arabs have their story too.

At the end of WW2 a story was made that had the United Nations reigning in the nations conflicts. I dont know, it still may be unfolding. One of the first tellers of this story was Cordell Hull, and some others of the JFK cast.

JFK is a story, it weaves in and out of reality...

Sloan's getting the mind treatment, hallucinating under interrogation!

I thought a lot about this today, our dependency on story, on story telling, seeing ourselves in a story.

"All the world's a stage..."

It might be the trouble with Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East is that no one can come up with a good story for it all...

Seeing it all as an unfolding of an Armegeddon story, while it gives ideas for Hollywood, is grim. And the movies enfold back into our minds these stories and we role play with the expectation that reality is part of the story. The shaping of reality, building temples, bombing temples, is OUR doing, our acting out these stories inside our minds.

CNN last night with The Anivl of God doc. told a story. Reality happend, and is the source of ideas for the story, but the story isn't real. To use the story to make more "reality", more battles, leads to a loop, a back and forth zig zag between story and reality.

There's a movie about bird's migrating. Migration is their story, and each individual has it's own story. Great movie.

Each species has it's story. And they interplay with reality, which would be the passing seasons.

Our reality is no longer the seasons....in fact, in the City's world, it's all story.

Grave's has this poem, To Juan at the Winter Solstice, which begins...

There is one story, and one story only...

The image of Geese migrating is a good fit for that, the migration as the one story.

I watched the Dirty Job episode again about the Yukon Geese!!

from As You Like It by Shakespeare...

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
September 1, 2007