Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Party's Over

"The Party’s Over…"

Whistle-blowing picketers
blow: “The Party’s Over,
& then” they blow it again;
100K people march against
austerity in Europe, making
their governments fear them.
How much more austerity
eurovoters will withstand
depends on who’s standing
when all of this blows over,
& which party’s over then:
“The Party’s over, & then…”

(29 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Norcalical micro-climates

The following ongoing version was 1st written esp. for Ann Wainwright's GB audience:

Northern CA (Norcal) weather is predictable, if implausible. Mark Twain, as a transplanted AZ-newspaper reporter/editor here (for the S.F. CALL, et al.), once wrote: "The coldest day I ever spent was a June day in San Francisco."

[Q] Could he have been serious? (He was, after all, a world-class humorist.)

[A] Well, yes, he could, relatively speaking, because where it's situated on the chilly northern Pacific Ocean, the Golden-Gate[d]-Bridge city of S.F. is always chilly, windy, foggy, naturally movie-set thrilling.

But only 50 mi south of S.F. (in the South Bay, in Santa Clara, where I'm writing this) it's usually warm, only foggy upon rising, burning off by noon, rarely ever windy. Not at all movie-thrilling, even tho bordering San Jose's competitive tourism bureau wishes it were, now that San Jose, (that I can see out the window as I write this), finally more populous than S.F., is extending further southwards, building more neighborhoods (right up to the borders of garlic-festival town Gilroy & horsey-pricey Morgan Hill.) Proud, nonetheless, San Jose calls itself the Capital of Silicon Valley, bordering Sunnyvale, its Heart; Yahoo & E-Bay, among cyberothers, are HQ'd here.

A relatively-cold Summer has just ended here in Norcal's Silicon Valley, & a relatively-hot Fall is beginning. Today's predicted to be 97oF; while just a few miles south of here (in garlicky Gilroy) it's already been over 100oF for days, as it has been 100 mi. north of here, inland, in Santa Rosa, in what's called the far North Bay.

Every day S.F. Bay TV-weather reports on 3 microclimates: Coast, Bay, & Inland, as well as even smaller microclimates: North-Bay, The Peninsula, and South-Bay. So a day can be hot at the top (Santa Rosa) & bottom (Gilroy), but cold in the middle (S.F.) People always take along a warm (often lined-leather) jacket when heading off to The City (=S.F.) = S.F. Bay living.

For a general explanation on microclimates (including S.F.'s) go to: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate
28 Sep 2010 18:23:44

This appears on Anne Wainwright's TypePad blog: cakecakecake, as well as The [S.F.] Bay Citizen http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blog section as "Mark Twain froze in San Francisco"

Monday, September 27, 2010

[{MOVIES COME 2U}]

Thanks to (historically) broadcast-TV, videotape, cable TV, DVD, & now the internet, movies conveniently come to you – as you sit before your well-lit computer at home, or in the darkened Social Hall of a senior citizens residence where nobody’s paying anything to see them.

[Ex.] The senior citizens’ residential complex where I live in Santa Clara CA, where on almost every Friday night, free films have been shown using an Epson DVD-projector, by ex-Jesuit (Santa Clara University’s) [Fr.] Joseph Grassi.

His choice of films have ranged from the new HD DVD of Rogers & Hammerstein’s 1945 “Carousel” (film, Hollywood USA, 1956 / 129 minutes / DeLuxe Color / CinemaScope 55) that finally piqued my curiosity to see whether it was only schlock or just goulash , made from the 1908 Hungarian stage-play “Lillom” [lillies, meaning hoodlums] by Ferenc Molnar.) Goulash it was – beginning with the early-on accidental suicide of Gordon Macrea (as traveling-circus roustabout Bill), who then becomes an other-worldy singing-narrator.) The currently elderly audience, some even in their 90s, was pleased. So was I; the musical, called ‘dark’ by critics; was much better than I’d recalled.

Most recently, in this series, I’ve seen the John Ford film “The Quiet Man” (Hollywood USA/Eire, 1952) in which John (Marion) Wayne, as the Quiet Man, John Thornton, a retired (having killed an opponent in the ring) heavyweight prize-fighter from “Pittsburgh MA,” (so announces Barry Fitzgerald) “in Americky”, returns home to Inishfree to pummell Victor Mclagan as the local Squire (principal landowner), across various locations of rural Inishfree (minus any bee-loud glade, as in Yeats’ poem "The Lake Isle of Inishfree" ) over the Squire’s spinster sister [Maureen O’Sullivan, who sings one winsome song while playing a spinet], for her hand in marriage and dowry. All’s well when that ends quite publicly by resolving payment of that withheld dowry, which pleased the audience - minus Dereck Jeffers, actually raised Irish, who tells me that Eire Irish dislike the film as stage-irishism, its boozing., batterin’ & beatin’ bein’ the rude traits treasured by most Irish-Americans & others who freely-associate them, but not the actual Irish in Eire.

Fr. Joseph will soon be handing over the production of the Friday-night film series to a volunteer-team of our facility’s residents who will include Jeffers (an ex ed.-in-chief, at McGraw-Hill, NYC), David B. Ogle (Stanford ‘60, an ex-bookstore-owner, now collectables ‘bookman’) and me (Boston College, ‘63) David’s Netflix subscription will get us our films on DVD, while imdb.com will provide any authenticating research. But how will we choose our films? My ingoing idea’s to further authenticate them, whenever possible.

Example. Ogle was once the president of a small ‘recreational’ railroad in NM that was used as the location of the western-railroad film “Bite the Bullet” (Hollywood USA, 1975) starring Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Sally Kirkland, James Coburn, Dabney Coleman, Ben Johnson, Jan-Michael Vincent (!), etc. David was often on-set during its principal filming; so having him preface the DVD’s showing by telling all about that should add authenticity. Of course, we’ll have to see whether the audience actually appreciates that degree of authentication, or even the film itself; I certainly hope so. Fr. Joseph intends to try to show this film on 29 OCT.

Further into the upcoming series, as a lifelong bicyclist, I’d like to adress the audience before we show the (subtitled) “Bicycle Thieves” (Ladri di biciclette, Italia, 1948) directed by Vittorio De Sica, long my (& Woody Allen's "The greatest film ever made." ) To my astonishment, Fr. Joseph tells me he'd already intended to show this film on 22 OCT; unfortunately, I'll be in Portland OR when/if he does.

Sensibly, we intend to start by showing only one Friday-night film per month while we get our novice team’s act together, wondering just how Fr. Joseph has managed to do it so well all by himself on so many Friday nights.

UPDATE:

The JOSEPH GRASSI FILM SERIES

Ex-Fr. Joseph Grassi (S.J.) is dying of cancer. We've renamed his film series after him, with his permission. We’ve just shown “Bite the Bullet” (1975) & will next show“The Professionals” (1966) both written & directed by Richard Brooks who directed “Elmer Gantry” [from the novel by Nobelist Sinclair Lewis.] We’re doing what we can to continue Joe’s service to the senior citizens who live here at Valley Village in Santa Clara, California.

note: this constantly updates an earlier draft that appears on http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blogs

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Ice-cream Dinner

Dr. Ginny's inspiration for dinner
last nite was to fill up large bowls
w/vanilla ice-cream & canned-fruits
(incl. sliced yellow cling-peaches);
add toasted rice-flakes as crusty
topping stirred into the chilly mix;

w/3 sm. cans of mandarin oranges,
bags of frozen raspberries, frozen
blueberries, we're already ready
for next year's ice-cream dinner
celebrating Summer's end, here
in lower Silicon Valley.

Does some ice-cream shop
somewhere-hot* already do
something like this?

*I've just been told that in Japan, a dessert they call a "Parfait" is made with ice-cream, fruit & corn-flakes
.
(25 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Work=Work

for: Work

When is work still work?
When it's paid? Hardly.
Ask any retiree who says
they're busier now than
when they worked for pay.
Whenever someone says:
"Are we having Fun yet?"
I say: "I call it: Work;
work=work=work=work."

(Sat. 25 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)

Friday, September 24, 2010

IFNAI

IFNAI

[in the Lynn MA usa dialect]

Ifnai wuzta tellya
this Receshun’s
fah a'purpost, like a
lessonta insytruckya,
whaduddya say? “NO!
Not me, not fah me, I
diddn’do it! Them,
they didit! All we
gaddadu istah
make’m standuP
n'say: “Yes, we didit!
n'didn’ giv’a sweet shit.
Y’can wipeit all-up
by ya fuckin’ selfts.”

(24 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

TEA-PARTY WAILS

from my CHENI@D: Book CXXVI:

TE@ P@RTY W@ILS

Mad as a whumping Walrus
re-baited by a whacky-Hatter,
CHENEY wails: “NO tea!, NO
coffee! NO caffeine! Can’t you see,
hear, heart, audiate my heart? NO,
NO caffeine! NO caffeine! NO!”

“No caff, you fiend,” quips
the googly-eyed Hatter, his
whacked-grin absorbing
his unnaturalized smile, as

The Dormouse burbles, as
The Tea-Pot bub-bubbles, &
The Tea-Party wails w/out, &
CHENEY clutches his metal heart.

(22 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Monday, September 20, 2010

AS IT'S SPOKE(N)

AS IT’S SPOKE(N)

Name a famously ‘tony’ poet who you’re sure never wrote in dialect. Nope, Alfred Lord Tennyson did once (in his “Northern Farmer” written in broad-Yorks. dialect.) But dialect can sometimes be very fashionable, cf. American regional – Yahnky (James Russell Lowell, Robert Frost) , Suthrun (Faulkner), Westurrn (Cormac McCarthy) , or city-specific – Boston (Bahs'tin) , Brooklyn (Brukl'n), Bronx (Bronucks), etc., or be very un-fashionable: e.g., Southerners Thomas & later Tom Wolfe [no relation] never use it.

Tennyson's single Yorkshire-dialect poem "Northern Farmer" is a telling example in itself. Most poets choose to write dialect/mainstream, unless to them, poetry's always/only written in dialect (cf. Aberdeen's regional poets.) Few aspiring poets seem to want 2B forever sidelined as just regional dialecticists, while some (it appears) can't help writing otherwise. It may depend on whether one feels safe/legit. in retaining one's regional dialect even as/once a formally-schooled & published writer. If so, equally perfectly valid poetry can easily be written in both speeches, but can it be widely published anywhere in deep dialect? It won't be very widely read, unless it's somewhere on the internet, fully accessible from anywhere on the planet.

I’m now realizing that my own vestigial 'greater'-Boston dialect is occasionally noticed by people here in Norcal, but what counts here (as I write this), is whether you can somehow read it when I write this, even when I’m not deliberately using it; Rule: 'greater'-Bostonians (micro-regionally, & northern New Englanders, generally) noticeably apocopate: they eliminate words or letters (infamously the letter r), w/out even knowing (it or) why (they do it.) Have I just proven it – or have I overdone it? You tell me, according to your own internal parser-meter.

[flashback:] When I was an undergraduate at Jesuit-run Boston College, (1959-63) I recall a Lyons-cafeteria conversation with Boston novelist George V.Higgins in which he denounced dialect-writing; ironically, later, after a Stanford MFA in Creative Writing, he came back East to Prov RI to become a court reporter for the PROVIDENCE Journal (at the courts in Worcester MA), while on the side, finally (after a few false starts, one of which was a novel I was in byname as a grad-student at Boston College) got around to writing THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, THE DIGGER’S GAME, COGAN’S TRADE and other Boston-dialect novels that made him famous (COYLE became a film starring Robert Mitchum, who depricated George’s behavior on the set.) West Coast academia and Hollywood apparently didn’t suit George, but East Coast (Boston) crime did, so he wrote it as it’s spoke. (He died on Nov., 6, 1999 of a heart-attack.)

I write as best (as) I can (write), but I also talk as I do (talk), & sometimes they’re (a spurious apocopation) indistinguishable. If so, (what) does it matter (to you)? If you can read it, you can read it; I’m not going to put anything over on you.

[flashback] Standing in (Dr.) Tom Hubbard (PhD)’s kitchen in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, his local-hotelier father suddenly turned to me & said “D’ye ken the braid Scots?” I instantly answered, “I ought to, after all, my dad was a Glaswegian!” He never bothered not to speak braid-(broad) Scots when I was in the room thereafter. Later, Tom showed me a letter from a woman in Aberdeen written in the curious (even to Scots!) Aberdonian-dialect, insisting “This is not an act. She really writes & speaks like this” to which I replied: “I believe you.” (He’d already edited an anthology of northeastern-Scottish poetry published by Aberdeen University, where he’d gotten his doctorate.)

Have I made my [obvious] point (yet)? Applying some mental-grease can lubricate most fractured-looking demi-dialects. Or would you like to read obviously fabricated sentences (like the preceding) endlessly? a'Courst not! (as we say in MA Bay-coastal Lynn MA, where I grew up.)

Way Booked-uP

I was one of the staff of the last small B&Ns (in Boston's western suburbs: Wellesley Square MA), closed in '86 so that the B&N superstore (in Framingham MA, 2 towns west) could be the micro-regional magnet while competing with a Borders directly across the street from it in a much bigger mall in a battle of booky riches. I wonder which of them has survived? .

People in Wellesley MA (a famous college-town) really loved what we did with that small B&N in Wellesley Sq, but to no corporate avail.

My next B&N store was an even smaller one in dead-center Copley Sq. Boston, also closed down in favor of the surviving downtown superstore just a few long city-blocks away, just beyond Boston Common.

My next store was a B. Dalton (Borders subsidiary, since renamed Borders Express) in Needham Heights MA, as beloved by their almost upscale suburban community as we were in posh nearby Wellesley Square MA;

It so-happened that I then moved cross-country to Santa Clara CA, & found myself working in a Borders in San Jose's ultra-posh Santana Row mall that absorbed the staff of the B. Dalton in the nearby Valley Fair Westfield Mall when it closed. (I live only a short bike-ride away.)

Same fatal phenom (on either coast): favor super as a strategy to survive, but (eventually) have to close anyway. Why? Amazon.com; if even I buy some obscure 2ndary-supplier books from them w/out guilt, why shouldn't you buy best-sellers? Besides, who can stop you?

If Amazon's hollowing-out the retail-staffed bookstore biz., imagine what e-books sold on the web can/will do! Nontheless, general used-book stores will still out-survive best-seller superstores: 'homey'-feeling stores have a unique appeal, esp.if they have a resident-cat & well-tended plant. cf. San Jose's Recycle Books west suburban branch in downtown Campbell CA, that I recently gave a large, healthy jade-plant to after shopping there for the (3) current South Beach Diet books (because my interventional-cardiologist says I should try it; I am.) Recycle Books got my very-specific diet-book biz., but they also may even buy some of your own used books to re-stock specific topical shelves, an habitual parsimony well-suited to a Recession.

Currently, I try to make the 2nd-Fri. 9am-9pm half-price sale at the large Salvation Army store in nearby West San Jose on S. Winchester Blvd. almost opp. EL TITANIC carneceria y groceria (I live on N. Winchester in bordering Santa Clara); because on that day only, $4 hardbound books sell for $2; I've gotten amazing (unusual, rare) cookbooks for myself & my friend Dr. Ginny, & I also U.S.P.S.-mail them to ex-speciality cake-baker Anne Buchanan up in Cole Valley S.F. I'm now way-cookbooked-up, so feel free to go look & buy at the Salvation Army in West San Jose. You won't often run into me there in the book-section on Half-price 2nd Fri.: I have too many books now, thanks to The Salvation Army...all my life.
HOSPIT@LS

in grief

Valley-med Hospital.
What could sound simpler?
Perfect Valley? Pure Valley?
Deep? Hope? Hospitals of
Deepest Hope, Inc. “Have
Hope, Ye who enter Here. “
But we had to abandon it.

(20 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Anya gets a Wolf

Recently, Anne Buchanan [ex-Idaho], the ex-caterer-baker who made lemon bundt cakes sold in 1970 as "Aunt Rachel's* Lemon Poundcake" by Lucien Simon's Deli on California Street, S.F.CA (next to where Eliza's chinese rest. is now) finally replaced her big home-kitchen 6-burner Tappan gas range with a nifty little 4-burner Wolf. She got the hot little Wolf off Craig's List for USD$350, delivery incl.

My son Alex, (visiting S.F. from upper Manhattan) & I were there to watch it being corkscrewed up 3-floors from the garage via an internal stairwell by her son Dave & her ex-, Stan, & connected to the gas-line (it's a 1914 house) by Stan, a master-plumber at nearby Cole Hardware, just down the hill into Cole Valley.

*Anne recollects: Lucien Simon didn't believe "Anne of Carmel" (St., Cole Valley) was quite Jewish enough for his clientele, so he chose: "Aunt Rachel*", even after I'd suggested "Raquel", which didn't work for Lucien - who ran a very old-school deli.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

POP. n~

POP. {n~}

It really comes down to this:
How large a world population
will particular politics support?
Will all politics feed? Or will
some politics slyly eliminate some
under false pretenses, by famine,
tribal, or regional wars? Admit it:
this is the most pressing problem
on this fast-degrading 3rd-planet.
This degradation is yours, ours.

(18 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA) v3

FREEDUMB

FREEDUMB

One, after another,
they’re following each other,
into a duplicitous future of No

government or common solutions
for what ails us. Call them fools,
& they'll rise up against you.
Call them anarchists & they'll

call you a communist, a fascist,
an obaman, a muslim, a killer
of The American Dream. Freedom

for them is not having to say: Sorry,
but some things're better done together,
convinced they can all B done alone

privately, personally, w/out any help,
thinking they're no public solutions,
denying they’re re-members of society.

Everything just written means nothing
to them, statistics're only lying numbers.
They’ve been convinced they’re Free

& willn’t give up !llusions of Freedumb,
spelt howlefer they wil: T /Tea, Pardy.

(18 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Friday, September 17, 2010

Dime-Store Memories

Dime-store memories:

Can corporate names last after dime-store mergers?

Ginny & I reminisce about J.J. Newbury's dime-store chain
that her uncle bought-out, merging it with their family's
H(arold) L(eavenworth) Green competitor. Before he died,
he couldn't interest Junior Leavenworth in running it because
Yalie Junior was academically-inclined, rather becoming
instead a small-college president, then CEO of Sylvania.

Praising J.J. Newbury's. I tell her how on Friday evenings,
walking home from the West Lynn MA River Works GE plant
where he was a naval-parts QC-inspector, my father got me
a tiny toy to stimulate my mind when I held it in my hands.

In Santa Clara's Mariposa Gardens mall, a Dollar Store,
its marquee price $1.39 & UP, recently closed, soon after
the Vietnamese manager/owner replaced my watch battery
with a cheaper Swiss one; I'd warmly commended him,
but now he's gone. Santa Clara's surviving competitor is
99c BAY; its price-points from 99c to $1.99 & UP....

(17 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA) v7

Bill Costley
Valley Village Bldg.4 apt.4-D
390 N. Winchester Blvd. Santa Clara CA
95050-6541
(408) 247-1943
http://www.costleybill7.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Bush...BUSTED!

BUSH...BUSTED!

(For Karl Kadie)

Our Recession scrip's as fake
as paper ivy on the Ivy League.
Where’s The Most Criminal?
What‘s the name of its Man?
Amazed, you see thru Him;
even thru seeing thru Him,
but what does that reveal?
Insight only reveals what
it can't really fix in real-time.
Basel Standards slam drawers,
Bush’s tax-cuts dead-end
bankerupting millionaires.

(13 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Sunday, September 12, 2010

POESIS number four (2010)

POESIS number four, Sept. 2010, (Propaganda Press of Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, CA 94302, usa, USD$4, 4"x5" unpaginated; alt-current.com, http://alt-current.com/

I recently wrote a ‘think-piece’ (“On Paper- [vs] e- Viability") publishing it here on my blog & The S.F Bay Citizen http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blog section. In it, I said that for the last few years, I’ve concentrated almost exclusively on e-publication, but now that 2 of my principal CA-based e-outlets are closing down (The Well, now 25, owned by Salon.com, also failing, & Vox.com where, in its TypePad subformat, Ann Wainwright Maltby, a northern English 'Geordie' friend in Leven, Hull, Humberside maintains 2 blogs.) 2B safe, I’d better now only seek combined paper & e- poetry outlets. I now see I already had:

On The Well, a writers’-discussion topic asks adly: What else did you find in your mailbox today? Ans. POESIS number 4, 4"x5" poetry pocket-magazine that (serendipitously) also appears online.

Among its 51 poets (incl. me), there are (3): Hugh Fox, Doug Holder, Arthur Winfield Knight, Herschel Silverman, who’ve all published me, (1) Ed Galing, who I’ve reviewed,

(1) normal [schiffman] who I only knew briefly back in mid-‘60s Boston MA who then claimed to have written “Blowin’in the Wind” & sold it to the young Bob Dylan in The (Greenwich) Village; I still believe normal [his real birth-name, spontaneously given to him by his still-sedated mom on his 1st being shown to her in a NJ hospital],

esp.after seeing "A Great Wind" on PBS last nite for the 2nd-time, this time w/out steadily rising anger. Pretty much the score for my (approx.) small-press generation (b. 1942.) How about U? .

Tho I usually quote poets' poems in full/part (Herschel's is long), this time, I'll just quote my own, entirely. Think of it as a neoNast-y editorial cartoon (I can't draw), with a 2 handfuls of skinny floating quote-balloons:

Statutorily Speaking

A weary, stony Abe Lincoln
slumps as he reads a newspaper,
slowly speaking over his shoulder
towards the Statue of Liberty.

Abe: “Libby, will you please
wash those boys' mouths out
with some good American soap?”

Fatboys in shorts crowd around her,
spewing truly deranged slogans:

Fatboys: “Don’t listen to Father Abe!”
“Obama’s a Communist! Obama’s Hitler!”;
“Gov’mint wants to kill the soldiers”;
“Gov’mint wants to kill the old”;
“Abortion leads to euthanasia."

Liberty quickly fills up an enormous tin-tub
with boiling water & foaming pink liquid soap.
Raving Fatboys scatter fast.

[on this blog in play-format: 09 SEP 09]

Forget my egotism; here's Hugh Fox's Orpheus & Euridyce poem, meaning much more to me since Carolin Combs, my 2nd-wife, died (26 JAN 07):

Orfeo ed Eurydice

Starting (8:05) late, all the younger
opera students in the talk-laugh-
it-out audience, as Eurydice dies
and Orfeo descends into and brings
her back from Hell, completely
gauzing-out Gaza and all the other
contemporary hells for a couple of
sacred hours.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

On Corporate Purgatories

Sometimes we actually do get to outlive our corporate
work-purgatories.

I've now outlived DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)
& even get to draw a modest HP-pension because DEC
was eaten by COMPAQ which was later eaten by HP.

I often characterize DEC an an all eyes-upward
Swedish (via Ken Olson, Pres.) 'head-fake' culture
(=Trust KO to Do the Right Thing); vs its 2ndary
major-competitor, DG (Data General) w/a
pain-inflicting Italian (via Edson DeCastro, Pres.)
1-on-1-conflict-driven 'body-fake' culture
(=You can trust Ed; but never trust Anybody.)

Both now no longer exist & I still get to write this,
no longer bound by any non-disclosure agreements.

(just after Labor Day 2010 weekend, Santa Clara CA)v4

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Poetic immaterials/seemlessly

[Q:] What are the so-called 'materials' that poets 'manipulate'?

[A:] As poets, we begin where&when we begin; & go whence&wherefore we go. We aren't carpenters, but people read our poems as tho they were fine joinery, which they are when word/image/stanza seemlessly join word/image/stanza. If we write in pictographs (hieroglyphs, ideograms) this is instantly obvious. Deconstruction can be both visual & aural.

But we purely-phonetic writers often let all this poetic joinery slip by insufficiently commented upon. But we shouldn't, so I'm not...

(09 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Monday, September 6, 2010

[{TransAtlantic}] LABOR DAY

[{TransAtlantic}] L@BOR D@Y

{Dialog, Catechism, Diary}

“What exactly do americans celebrate
on labour day and how do they do it?”
- Ann Wainwright, Leven, nr Hull, GB

BC: The laboring class, all weekend,
[Sat.-Mon,] traditionally parades
in marching bands, interspaced
by flat-bed trucks carrying actors
en maquette, drawn by art-cars/trucks.

AW:
The laboring class? Isn't that
most americans then? Could you put
a short piece together for my blog
about it as it is pertinent?

BC: Labor Day USA boggles the mind
of a Brit/European because, literally,
most (if not all) Americans may labor
at something/other (if only part-time),
but few will admit they're members
of the working class, saying instead
they're middle-class, wanting to be
accepted as such even as their claim
to middle-class perks & endeavors
(home-ownership, entrepreneurism)
is visibly dissolving before their own
increasingly terrified eyes. What class
is someone who’s now hopelessly un-
employed? Out-of-class. GB’s been
thru this for Thatcheritic decades
under its blue & then its red, too.

BC: The American-begun Recession
began with extreme over-evaluation
of the price of homes sold to people
who couldn't really afford them
at going mortgage rates, made to look
as tho they could by greedy realtors
& dishonest mortgage brokers, hot
for increasing percentage-fees who
poached upon a little-unionized (13%)
American working-class who thot house-
value inflation = class/status/fiscal upgrade.

BC: Their houses quickly appreciated in value,
'turned/flipped over' (resold) at increasingly
implausible prices: a house sold for USD$30K
in 1978 soon sold for USD$300K ~ 1M! but
where would they move to next? An island?
Some actully did, gaggling all the way to their
summer cottages on cooly distant lakes/shores,
retiring early on spectacularly superheated profits.

BC: Greedily delusional people didn’t listen to any
objectivity about "MONEY, Whence it Came,
Where it Went" (John Kenneth Galbraith, Ph.D,
Canadian-born American economist of the 'liberal'
pro-government-intervention Keynesian school)
which Obama has followed with his governmental
bailing almost everyone out, within temporal limits,
while ragingly destructive oppositional Republicans
shouted: "Too much Tax! Too much Tax!

BC: Can Americans celebrate this Labor Day?
w/a double-digit avg. national unemployment rate,
few jobs created, despite Obama's governmental
bail-outs? watching musical fantasies of past
Labor Days w/the USA making distracting
old-'Hollywood' movies vs George Clooney's
latest neoFrench drysnuff-film "The American"

BC:[{diary}] On TV, this weekend, I looked for
recovering American car-industry ads in patriotic
red, white & blue - that don't signify the same
as in GB. The trad. patriotic tricolor now drapes
rightwing anti-government Tea-Party movement
rallies, Conservatives paint themselves red, leaving
middling blue to Liberals, white to anti-Obaman
racists, yellow to fascistic right-Libertarians.

(Labor Day Weekend 2010 Santa Clara CA)v7

Sunday, September 5, 2010

BECKONING

BECKONING

Waking to the voices of angels
Beck shudders in image-horror:

“No! Not yet! I’m not ready! I
haven’t worn this image out yet”

His grey brush-cut turns white,
His sneer turns purely smiley,
His fake goodness turns good.

People kneel to him & he prays
“Don’t let this happen to me yet!”

His bars of gold turn platinum.
His earnings go sempiternal,
but the IRS can’t audit them.

(Labor Day Weekend, 2010, Santa Clara CA)v3

[note] A multi-panel altarpiece of Beck's purification
despite his basest aspirations: praying, like Augustine
of Hippo, "God, make me (whatever)...but not yet!"
(Jabez = Beck's gold-idol, not Jesus.) Going platinum
disturbs his arrangement with the gold bullion dealers
he presently does internet ads for; platinum only comes
in 1 oz bars, & is traded by a higher echelon of clients
(cf. Swiss banks), not gold-ingot ziggurati. (-BC)


Saturday, September 4, 2010

On hard- vs e- viability

In the last few days I've gotten e-word about 2 large web-portals that will be closing down:

1. The Well (@ age 25), now owned by Salon, which is failing, too
2. VOX.com (offering xfr of existing posts to its TypePad subformat)

For the last few years I've been using both as 2nd & 3rd-publication back-ups for much of what I write here.

Hereby, I rescind my 68yr-old semitecchie assertion that being e-published has become a better viability strategy than being published in hardcopy...now that e- shows itself 2B suicidal by its wiping-out whole constellations of people's writings of all sorts, beginning with conversational ephemera aka chats. The WWWorld may B able 2read those living ephemera archivally, etc., but...for how much longer? Server maintenance cost seems 2B the actual cyberlimiter.

Unless some e-sites become archival & so can be read as archives by Those in the know. But who are They?

Ex. My posts to Digital Equipment Corporation's internal Engineering Net (later re-named E-net, then EasyNet) from 1975~88 can still be read IF you know where 2find them out there in vast cyberspace. But who would you have2B 2know they'd ever existed@all? [Ans.] a DECcie. (DEC was eaten by COMPAQ which was then eaten by HP...that now inherits/holds all those years of internal e-posts.)

Blog portals closing down makes me realize my recently going 99% e-pubs subject to e-v@pora@tion has been all too e-trusting, so I'm once again seeking paper publication (begun @ 18/1961 w/my early poems published in Boston College's STYLUS qtly.) Paper (obviously) lasts: Ex.: my little 4-line shape-poem ("Wine-glass Elm" written in Camb MA in 1966, soon pub. in small-press magapaper Brown Sweater), was much-later republished as 'a toast' in GRACES (HarperSF, 1989) - now reprinted 27X. [QED]

3 of my (4) ~20pg small-press chapbooks are (I assume) now collector's items as are all of Hugh Fox's Ghost Dance Mag/Press issues&books. I've been canny/lucky in choosing my principal small-press publishers (Dr. Hugh Fox PhD, @MSU, E. Lansing MI; Dr. Bob Chute DSc, @Bates College, Lewiston ME; NYT-free-lancer, author&editor S. Marshall Brooks, jr., Waban, later Spencer MA, now W. Dover VT) in quite dissimilar small-press orbits (e.g., Alice Rogoff, an ed. of The [annual] Haight-Ashbury Literary Review/SF recently told me she was in a 1971 issue of Chute's The Small Pond mag./Auburn ME with me); likewise, with the commercial antho. GRACES (above.).

Like most writers, I publish what I can where & when I can, so I can now see it's time to head back to lasting paper publication while the blinking WWWeb appears to self-destruct (here & there.) The new hotting e-books are hybrids (non-WWWeb standalone physical e-pubs.) but how long will their present book-sized media-formats last? When will they become chip-based eyeglass-viewed optical-virtual devices? (as an exDECcie [since the mid '70s], I'm an habitually cautious techno-late-adopter.)

Hardbound books&mags still have the material virtue of a [gradually degrading] physical existence: being on public & other libraries' shelves (until DISCARDed), in many university archives (lots of my hardcopy stuff's collected at UCONN's Thomas J. Dodd Research Ctr. in Storrs CT), 'junk'stores (incl. The Salvation Army where I always have & still do buy all sorts of books), people's personal bookshelves, all for (lo!) these many centuries (cf. the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, [328BCE-48BCE] would be nicely evidentiary - if it hadn't been accidentally burnt-down by defending Gen. Julius Caesar.)

But for now, we can still depend upon paper books' long duration & worldwide {migratory} distribution. [QED]

Note: An e-variant of this (ongoing, above) has since appeared in the Citizen Blog section of The Bay Citizen, www.baycitizen.org [San Francisco CA] that supplies S.F. Bay Area copy to the NYT West Coast Ed. S.F. Bay Area pages [in Section A] on Fridays & Sundays.

~ Bill Costley (68ish)

(Santa Clara CA, Labor Day weekend, 2010)v9