The Market, the Telephone, the Dial. Chukovsky.

So, on Saturday I woke up sluggish and headed to the Market haus for some coffee. First, I stopped by a bin of free books & grabbed a coupla freebies that looked interesting. Stop, look, caffeinate.
That was my plan.

Kid's books. They were rilly good. One explained all about airplanes and ailerons, and how crop dusting is dangerous work. Another told bout an ebullient kid who did sound poetry. A child "who so relished the gift of life that is was almost impossible for Mother or the servants to get him to go to sleep." And, another, my fave, was about crocodiles and camels and galoshes and telephones & stuff.

My misspent youth has now led me to a state, or a striving, to minimalist behaviorism, which means I try not to take newspapers home with me, or anything I don’t absolutely need. My small apartment is decidedly not-so-minimally appointed.
So, I spend a lotta time trying to get rid of stuff & I find that it’s easier to part with things that I photograph. Christ, you know it ain't easy!

SoI took pix of the three books and left two of them there, at the market. I took “the Telephone,” by Kornei Chukovsky home. I liked it because ot the cover, and because it had a real phone dial in the book. Hunh! What’s a phone dial? Hey, what’s a television antenna?
Whither the Blaschka flowers? Where the Marianne Moore of yesteryear?

Everyday on tv they talk about antennas. Wtf? I think they’re like Emily Dickinsonian moors and waves. And converters. Government converters, the leading edge of the new socialism.

Turns out that Kornei, or Korney was “a complete man of letters” according to Yale Press. Wiki sez that “Chukovsky… published From Two to Five (1933), a popular guidebook to the language of children.” And “used his popularity to help the authors persecuted by the regime including Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Alexander Galich, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He was the only Soviet writer who officially congratulated Boris Pasternak on his having been awarded the Nobel Prize. His daughter, Lydia Chukovskaya, is remembered as a lifelong companion and secretary of the poet Anna Akhmatova."
Hot stuff, this Kornei. In the Wiki biz, they even have a caricature of Korney by Mayakovsky. And he was on a stamp too. Korney. Kornei. (Marianne Moore also. [not corny, on a stamp])

So, though my copy of the “Telephone” is old & beat-up, I took it home because most of numbers were worn away by happy capitalist kids dialing & re-dialing their little books to the bone . That’s cool. And it’s got a great cover. (by Peter Tempest) So now I got me some Chukovsky. (Albit, in translation.) And/or/but, I got an actual dial to play with. Dial, dial. Ring, ring. Sorry wrong number.

More to follow, later, about wrong numbers, and Franklin Rosemont.

...that's what I like about you.

What I like about you.

The Kinks.
Phil Harris.

Skop. Gu, moood in/di-go. &
that’s what I likes/ about
the South.

Elvis Costello’s new album graphics.
Gwen Stefani & Green Day’s new
choreographic-attention-to-detail
but-not-too-slick
live performances.

Kobe Bryant’s work ethic & focus.

Emily’s L.A. trippin’!

George’s 2d trip to Ankara.

Craig Ferguson's "Istanbul"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdP6bUMjaSc

Jessica's back.

Shakespeare in Reservoir Park.
Chicago, Chicago, that toddle-in’ town!

Big Jawn.
Sal Maglie.
Minnie Pearl,
Dizzy Dean.

Nashville cats.
Skop. Gu,
moood in/di-go. That’s
what I likes-about
the South.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4kkjzdYOok&feature=related

Retro thoughts. Seems like it was only
yesterday...

Wrapping/Rapt

RIVERFRONT PARK,
HARRISBURG.
SCULPTURE, LEFT
APPROACH TO
HARVEY TAYLOR
BRIDGE

Today the wrappings came off the sculpture. And no one--
in the blue beginnings of this hazy November evening has any idea
where those wrappings may be. Maybe Tina knows, but
I’m sure Cher has absolutely no clue. Ditto, the arts guys in that little
house at the source of Second Street, even if they and/or their mercenaries are responsible. Nobody cares about wrappings.

Maybe my mom. She opens her presents very carefully, and I think
she just might save the wrapping. Sometimes. I wonder if they save the
gauze they wrapped Jesus in. When they laid him in the tomb, y’ know?
Or was that white linen? Was Jesus that cowboy they wrapped in
white linen? Just asking.

If anyone knows where the wrappings are, I’d like to have them.
Maybe, for another project. Or, a menu from the Colonnade-- I’d like
one o’ them too, not for a project-- just for auld lang syne.
On the front of the menu-- “Your Hosts: George & Vasilike
Kyriakopoulous, Your friends forever.” Hey, Eminem,
that’s a wrap! I am the word, the truth...
Cleveland Williams. In bronze,
Like this.
A very young
Yasir Arafat
about to have
his hopes &
dreams for a
free Palestine
snuffed out by
the forces of
capitalism &
industry as
Diana Ross,
piteously wails,
pleads, Stop!
Stop! Stop!
Stop! in the
name of love....