Bembo and Smythe: Looking At A Book Closely

I'd just finished the book of poems and read the note at the end about the book making itself.

Smythe-sewn.  That's what got me to look closely at the binding.  

From Lovenotebooks:

Books that are smythe sewn are library quality and are constructed to last. Smythe sewn books are durable and made to be handled a lot and open flat. Smythe sewn refers to the centuries old book binding technique. First sheets are folded into signatures, that depending on size and thickness of the sheet can be anywhere from 4 to 32 pages.  A stack of signatures will result  in a book block. Top and bottom as well as right side of the book block will be cut to create pages. Each signature is then sewn through holes on the center line and to the other signatures of the book block with a single thread. The result is a stitched book block which is then stitched or glued into the hard or soft cover binding via end papers.
This process was done by hand until American inventor David McConnel Smythe invented a machine to sew the signatures together in 1879. Nowadays the stitched together text block is often glued on the spine to keep the thread in place and sometimes further reinforced by gluing a piece of fabric over thread on the spine. Head bands and foot bands made of decorative ribbon are sometimes glued to the top and bottom of the pages to further beautify the binding and hide stitching and glue. Paperblanks are a good example of a smythe sewn journal with decorative head and foot bands. Smythe sewn is the standard if you are looking for durability; Hymn books, coffee table books and text books are often smythe sewn for that very reason.

This is the book in question - for my next book club meeting.  The title poem is also my favorite.  

Now, on to font.

12 point Bembo type







While I must admit to not paying much attention to the font (other than occasionally noting the font mention in the book), there is a world of typographers who take all this very seriously.  They know their types like some people know their football teams.   Bembo is an old font.   RightReading  traces the history of Bembo:

Based on type cut by Francesco Griffo (sometimes styled "da Bologna"), Venice 1495, for use in De Aetna, an account of a visit to Mount Etna by Pietro Bembo; the italic is based on Giovanni Tagliente, Venice, 1520s. A first (1928) effort at an italic produced what is now called Fairbank Italic (sometimes Bembo Condensed Italic, a chancery italic cut by Alfred Fairbank; Monotype considered it inadequately related to the roman. (Morison: "It had the great virtue of all the chancery cursives: it was legible in mass and can easily be read by the page. So much so that, in fact, it looked happier alone than in association with the Bembo roman.")"Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), prominent humanist, poet, and churchman, was closely involved with the Aldine Press from its very inception. The first book issued by Aldus, Lascaris's Greek grammar (see no. 2), was printed from a copy provided to Aldus by Bembo, who had studied with Lascaris. Bembo's own first work, De Aetna (1496), and his editions of Petrarch's Rime sparse and Dante's Commedia were printed by Aldus."Gli Asolani describes a wedding feast at Asola, during which a discussion ensues concerning love. Its subject, whether love is a good or a bad thing, may well have established Bembo as the preeminent philosopher of his generation."The first edition of Gli Asolani has attracted attention in no small part because certain copies of it contain a dedication to the famous and notorious Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, sister of Cesare Borgia, and duchess of Ferrara."--http://lib.byu.edu/~aldine/40Bembo.html

He also notes that type connoisseurs don't much like the digitizing of Bembo.  And the first I landed on - I Love Typography - had a long discussion on the problems with the digitized version.  This book was published in 1978, so I'm guessing it was printed with metal type on a printing press.  Gary Holthaus, the author, was the first director of the Alaska Humanities Forum, among many other interesting endeavors.  He's scheduled to be at our meeting.

There's so much we don't notice everyday.  We tend to look at things based on our habitual use of them, not for what else they are.  Books are to read, not to consider as physical objects.  And few of us would know how to even make a book.  Fortunately between google and youtube, anyone can learn how to make their own book fairly easily.

". . . mere birdsong in the bushes of things"

They’re looking at the name on a portrait in an old book,  and she wonders to herself, who was he? 

“Who was he, who was he?  Did he labour under the whip of his father, or was he treated with gentleness and respect?  Names, names, all passed away, forgotten, mere birdsong in the bushes of things.”

What an image to characterize the ephemeral existence of a human being - "mere birdsong in the bushes of things."   Such word magic caused me to sit up in bed and wonder in awe - both at the meaning of the image and at the mind of the writer.   

Roseanne McNulty lives in an Irish asylum.  She thinks she may be 100.  Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture paints her portrait using peripheral vision,  with shadows and reflections, with the movement of curtains in the wind, with the ripples on the water.   

Barry sees Roseanne and the people around her in ultra slow motion capturing the signals, invisible to most people observing at normal speeds, that, like pieces of bone to archeologists, reveal their souls.  It’s so slow.  So powerful.  So unlike the superficial flash we’re used to. 

Writing, through the eyes of Roseanne, about Dr. Greene, who looks after the patients in the asylum . . .

Then he sat there in his own version of silence for a long while.  He sat so long he was almost an inmate of the room!  As if he lived there himself, as if he had nowhere to go to, nothing to do, no one to attend. 

He sat in the chill light.  The river, drowned in its own water, and drowned a second time in the rains of February, was not in a position to throw its light.  The window-glass was severely itself.  Only the still grass of winter lent it a slight besmirch of green.  His eyes, now much clearer somehow and more distinct without the beard, were looking forwards as if at an object about a yard away, that stare that faces have in portraits.  I sat on the bed and without the slightest embarrassment watched him, because he wasn’t watching me at all.  He was looking into that strange place, the middle distance, the most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances.  And from his eyes came slowly tears, immaculate human tears, before the world touches them.  River, window and eyes.

Wow!  "[T]hat stare that faces have in portraits."  "[T]he most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances."  Barry sees the invisible. How much of life am I missing?

Over and over again he daubs images onto the page and I think, where did that come from and what’s it doing here?  And then he pulls it all together - “River, window and eyes.”

Here's another one. Roseanne reflects about her husband who fished for salmon.

Most of the time, he stood by the lake, watching the dark waters.  If he saw a salmon jumping, he went home.  If you see a salmon, you will never catch one that day.  But the art of not seeing a salmon is very dark too, you must stare and stare at the known sections where salmon are sometimes got, and imagine them down there, feel them there, sense them with some seventh sense.  My husband Tom fished for ten years for salmon in that way.  As a matter of record he never caught a salmon.  So if you saw a salmon it seems you would not catch one, and if you did not see a salmon you would not catch one.  So how would you catch one?  By some third mystery of luck and instinct, that Tom did not have.

Dark waters.  Barry paints with dark waters.  With "some third mystery of luck and instinct."  Where is this going, I’m thinking, and then I read on:

But that was how Dr. Greene struck me today, as he sat in silence in my little quarters, his neat form stretched out on the chair, saying nothing, not exactly watching me with his eyes, but watching me with his luck and instincts, like a fisherman beside dark water. 

Oh, yes, like a salmon I felt, right enough, and stilled myself in the deep water, very conscious of him, and his rod, and his fly, and his hook. 

The patient's view of the doctor!  It’s with these tiny brush strokes that Barry paints his portraits.  I’m not reading a book as much as watching a painter starting with a blank canvas.  He mixes his paints, he draws some lines on the canvas.  Slowly daubs marks here and there.  Slowly, slowly the thin pencil lines gain dark color and richness and the souls of people are revealed. 

This isn’t a book for everybody.  It's too slow.  We aren't use to paying painfully slow attention to amorphous signs.  To looking without looking.  I’d once recommended Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country  to a good friend.  He couldn’t finish the short novel.  His verdict, “Nothing happens.”  It’s inside that nothing that everything happens.  The same in The Secret Scriptures.

New Books Set Off Brain

After the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) meeting Saturday morning I went to the UAA library.  I didn't intend to but first I was reminded that the bike trail is now blocked so they can build a new parking garage.  After taking the detour, I found the rest of the bike trail full of runners and didn't think I should try to bike through them.  So I gave up and looked through the new books at the UAA library.

As I perused them a phrase from the CCL meeting repeated by the guest speaker, Rear Admiral Len Hering (ret), Adult Conversation, came to mind.  He was referring to people in the United States talking seriously about climate change.

But in the library's new books section, there were so many books on a variety of different topics.  What I suspect they had in common was Adult Conversation.  That is, people had spent a lot of time researching the topics before and as they wrote their books, and they were offering more than just platitudes.

One of the first books I picked up was nobody's business  by Brian M. Reed.  A book on modern poetry.  Stuff that the author says doesn't look like poetry even.

"I confess that during the first George W. Bush administration I poked fun at these assorted un-poems when talking with colleagues in private and when advising students about what they should be reading.  I was startled when the later began to push back.  The first rebels were independent-thinking upper-division undergraduates and charismatic incoming MFA's who had seen poems such as Rodney Goenke's "Pizza Kitty" on YouTube and who reverently passed around  scarce copies of books such as K. Silem Mohammad's Dear Head Nation (2003) as if they were saints' relics.  I was mystified." (p. 130)

He goes through some poems.  One is a series of lines from a computer.  He wonders how this can be poetry.  They've simply lifted part of something from the internet.  One of the poems seems to be a bit better..

  This is "Eaten by Dogs."  He writes more:

"It can be difficult to say for certain, but this passage seems to be a list of captions that originally accompanied photographs by a leftist journalist name Dahr Jamail.  One can still find photos by Jamail with the captions "Man making "Shubada' sign  . . . about to be shot" and "No comment" on the the Fifth-Estate-Online website, as well as another of his photos captioned "Iraqi insurgent partially eaten by dogs -- November 2004" on Apacheclips.com. 16  The statement "viewed X times" replicates a common format for reporting a Web page's hit count."

You might well be wondering what this is all about and why I'm pointing it out.  Well, Dahr Jamail, at one point lived in Anchorage and spoke several times here of his journalism.  I wasn't sure if I was blogging yet at that time, and apparently not.  The only post I can find that mentions him is this one.  

And then back to the question about whether this can be considered poetry:

". . . As so often happens, the question contained within itself the answers.  Certain of my best students were innately suspicious of the self-aware, erudite authors held up by cultue czars and well-meaning professors as models for them to admire and emulate.  The radical gestures of negation that most irritated me about post-9/11 anti-poetry -- its blank indifference to liteary history, its scorn for conditional markers of craft, and its disdain for politsh and perfection -- were in fact the very attributes that appealed to them.  Moreover, they read these gestures as profoundly political in inspiration, that is, as calculated attacks on institutional norms and practices that not only shape literary careers but also preside over the formation of obedient, well-disciplined neoliberal citizens-subjects.  Watching their nation plunge headlong into overseas wars on dubious pretenses, these youthful men and women were angry  They did not understand their fellow Americans who, although they might loudly express their dislike for their government, would never dare break windows, march without a parade permit, or endanger their chances for a glowing letter of recommendation.  Here at last were poets whose outrages against decorum were extreme enough to give voice . . ." 

 On the one hand, this is the kind of extensive examination of minutiae that made me leave English after I got my undergraduate degree.  Yet, it also points out what isn't obvious - to the author himself at first even.  He finds profundity in these seeming non-poems.  At least they speak profoundly to his students.  And as I looked at other books (which I'll try to cover in less detail in other posts), it was clear this was simply another example of similar topics, but in this case expressed in poetry.

Reed teaches at the University of Washington which added one more personal connection for me since one of my kids graduated from there and I've spent more time there in recent years than any other campus besides UAA. 

 [It's late.  I'm falling asleep as I write.  But I want to post and I'll check for typos in the morning.]

A Lesson In Green

Words from Meditiation on Breath by Arnoldo Garcia

Can you tell we've had rain?  But we're getting a lesson in green. Photos mostly from our back yard, except two from our trip.

Bird Break - "True hope is swift, and flies with swallows' wings"

Should I organize the post around birds and flowers?  Or around the places I saw them?  How we categorize things affects how we see the world and whether people can find what they are looking for.

That's how I started this post, I had no idea how this was going to play out. Now that it's done, I see that you'll be able to follow the evolution of a post.  I decided to leave the camera notes for others who are having such issues, or can give me tips.

I did these four bird pictures from our trip. (The Goldeneye is the only one I didn't photoshop.)  But to justify that narrow focus I started thinking about the important role of birds in nature and in the lives of humans.  And that led me to finding references to these birds in art, literature, and music.

The birds' physical beauty, their songs, their eggs, and their ability to fly have charmed people from early on, and inspired some of the greatest artists of all times.

Here's a redwinged blackbird from Tyhee Lake provincial campground on the Yellowhead Highway - after Smithers, but before New Hazelton.  (These birds are all from the Tyhee Lake.)

Red Winged Blackbird

"Pack up all my cares and woes, here I go, singing low, bye bye blackbird."  Ray Henderson and lyricist Mort Dixon, Bye-bye Blackbird 

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night" - Beatles, Blackbird

"II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds."  Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird.  

Eventually I'll get the hang of capturing flying birds with the Canon Rebel.  I did learn that some of it is luck.

Like these swallows (two different pictures melded into one.)  A couple of the many shots I took as they swooped around me actually came out.

"True hope is swift, and flies with swallows' wings"(From Richard III Act V, Scene 2)   [I'm sure Shakespeare knew, when he wrote this, that swifts very closely resemble swallows and that they are hard to tell apart. And after reading about the distinction at the link, I'm not sure these aren't swifts, or martins.  Or that they are the same type of bird.]

And if the birds are far enough away, it's easier to get them in focus like this loon.

"The devil damm thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon!"  (Macbeth Act V, Scene 3)

Again, this is just one loon photoshopped twice onto one picture.   It was a mere speck flying way on the other side of the lake.

Goldeneye in the reeds

Of course, if they aren't moving much, it's easier to get in focus, though the auto focus has trouble figuring out what to focus on in a picture like this one of the Goldeneye in the reeds.  I have to figure out how to tell the camera which of the 'spots' is the one to focus with.  I think this ended up manual focus.  And I realized that my old Pentax manual focus (all it had) was easier because it turned more smoothly and because it magnified the focus.  And as I write this I remember I read there was a way to do that on the Rebel too.  Need to look that up again.

It's harder to find a literary or art reference specifically to a Goldeneye.  Ian Fleming's Jamaica house was called Goldeneye, but it doesn't appear that it's named after the duck.  I did find a painting in my 1950 edition of Audubon's Birds of America that I've had since I was a kid.  Audubon killed his wild birds and then painted them so they are really pictures of dead birds.

The Roles of Birds

These birds aren't just 'pretty' (which they are).  They are important to the ecosystems they live in and even to the economy.  According to the Iowa Extension website:

Adding all wildlife watching equipment together, including bird food, binoculars, spotting scopes, film, carrying cases, etc., the nation spends nearly 20 billion dollars! In Iowa alone, we spend some 36 million dollars on bird food! Birds are not only important economically in Iowa and the nation, but also server a vital ecological role as well. Birds are critical links within the vast food chains and webs that exist in the ecosystem. Here are just a few of the many roles birds play:
Agents of Dispersal
Biological Controls
Bio-indicators

 At the link they go into each of the three roles. Basically, they spread seeds and even fish eggs and also help pollinate plants;  they keep insect populations down (and some small mammals and reptiles as well); and like the canary in the mine, they are early alerts to diseases and pollution.  That $20 billion is just what people spend directly to watch and/or feed birds.  I'm sure the $20 billion is a small amount compared to what the birds do for insect control.  They are part of the $33 trillion natural ecosystem services that E.O. Wilson writes about in The Future of Life.


Endangered Species International explains the birds' roles this way:

Birds occupy many levels of trophic webs, from mid-level consumers to top predators. As with other native organisms, birds help maintain sustainable population levels of their prey and predator species and, after death, provide food for scavengers and decomposers.

Many birds are important in plant reproduction through their services as pollinators or seed dispersers. Birds also provide critical resources for their many host-specific parasites, including lice that eat only feathers, flies adapted for living on birds, and mites that hitchhike on birds from plant to plant and even between countries.

Some birds are considered keystone species as their presence in (or disappearance from) an ecosystem affects other species indirectly. For example, woodpeckers create cavities that are then used by many other species. . .

Birds and humans

Birds have been integral to humans since prehistory. To birds’ detriment, they and their eggs have been an important human food source since humans evolved, and we have hunted many species to extinction. Feathers, usually obtained by killing their original owners, have been used as adornment in hats, headdresses, and capes. Birds are popular as “pets” throughout the world, and the pet trade has driven many species to the edge of extinction.

More benignly, birds appear in ancient art and mythology worldwide.

Just being pretty and singing beautifully, and showing us that flight is possible, might be value enough to justify birds.  We have studies that show contact with nature improves human mental health, but I couldn't find anything that specifically correlates birds to that, but I'm sure it will be shown eventually.  We can certainly document the huge impact birds have had on  artists, musicians, writers, playwrights, who have been moved to put birds in their works.

Shakespeare makes 606 references to 64 different bird species (and he may never have left the tiny British Isles.)  Here's a list of the birds he referenced.  

Above I referenced two songs about blackbrids, but here's a link to an essay on the influence of birdsong on human music in general.


Birds remind us that nature is a balancing act and that we have to protect their habitats because without them, our lives are diminished - not simply because of the loss of their beauty, but because of the loss of all the work they do to help maintain the ecosystems we depend on for life.  The more we know about birds, the more we understand the interrelationships in nature and our role in nature. 

From Kiev to Crimea is about the same as from New York to ?

The Russians have moved into the Crimean Peninsula, but I'm guessing only about two or three Americans out of a thousand could point to Crimea on a map.  So here's a post to raise those numbers.

First, here's a map of Europe with Ukraine in the black box.

Basic map from Infoplease

The black square is enlarged below, with the Crimean Peninsula highlighted in the black box. 

Just to get a sense of things, Kiev is about 430* air miles from Sevastapol.  Here are some other cities that are about the same distance apart.

Paris to Munich New York to Detroit Mumbai to Bhopal St. Louis to Ann Arbor Hanoi to Chiengmai Seattle to Calgary*

I understand that Russia's action is a big deal.  But it's also, apparently, a common event in this region.  From Wikipedia:

Crimea, or the Crimean Peninsula, located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, currently under the jurisdiction of Ukraine, has a history of over 2000 years. The territory has been conquered and controlled many times throughout this history. The Cimmerians, Greeks, Scythians, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars, the state of Kievan Rus', Byzantine Greeks, Kipchaks, Ottoman Turks, Golden Horde Tatars and the Mongols all controlled Crimea in its early history. In the 13th century, it was partly controlled by the Venetians and by the Genovese; they were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire in the 15th to 18th centuries, the Russian Empire in the 18th to 20th centuries, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and later the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. In 1991 it became part of independent Ukraine, as the Autonomous Republic Crimea.

And while there will be calls for the US President to take decisive action, it makes sense to look at the geography of the Crimean Peninsula first.  It's almost inside Russia. It's as close as Mexico to the US.  You know how the US would respond to a military incursion by Russia or China in Mexico.  Russians will respond the same way.  Realistically, there's not a lot we can do militarily that wouldn't cause far more harm than doing nothing.  (But then Iraq and Afghanistan are distant memories for many.)  Our response will have to be patient and more nuanced than missiles and bombs.  First we should look at maps and maybe read some history.  Diplomacy and economics will be far more effective weapons in the long term. 

We tend to remember a place first by our own involvement in it.  If Americans know anything about the region, it's from Yalta and from the Crimean War, whose lasting legacies through the English to the US, include  Florence Nightingale,  and the Charge of the Light Brigade, a terrible debacle for the British.

The Charge Of The Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854


Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred! - See more at: http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChargeoftheLightBrigade.html#sthash.cuFNI4jM.dpuf

The Charge Of The Light Brigade

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

From the National Center.

*I got most of these from Time and Date's distance tables which are air miles.

People Born In 1914: Superman, The Lone Ranger, and Obiwan Ben Kenobi

When I did my first post on people born 100 years ago - 1908 - there weren't many lists like that available.  Nowadays, there's a lot more available. And mine got so elaborate that they took forever to write. So I'm going to leave it to others now to do the comprehensive lists and just focus on a few folks that were important to me and to the world.  To see one of the more comprehensive lists go to NNDB.

Here are two people whose roles were their public persona:  George Reeves (Superman) and Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger.)  And one more - Alec Guinness - whose acting career was much greater than the only role that many know him as - Obiwan Ben Kenobi. 

Alec Guinness April 2, 1914- August 5, 2000 (86) Guinness was a great actor.  I first remember him from The Horse's Mouth.  He went on to win an Academy Award as a Colonel in Bridge on The River Kwai.   He was a prince in Lawrence of Arabia and a general in Dr. Zhivago. A Business Insider article in 2013 quotes Guinness' biography: "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept, if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps." Guinness goes on to recall Twentieth Century Fox offered him $150,000 plus two percent of the producer's profit in January 1976 for the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi – double what they offered him the week before." More about this great actor of the 20th Century here  and here.

George Reeves January 5, 1914 - June 15, 1959 One of my first memories of irony was that the man of steel committed suicide.  Below is a video bio of Reeves.  The video suggests maybe he didn't commit suicide.

From a Clayton More website Jack Carlton Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 14, 1914. He was the youngest of three boys who grew up in a loving family home. His father was a real estate developer. Before his rise to the silver screen, Moore first became an acrobat in a flying circus troupe when he was in his twenties. This troupe of talented daredevils was the first to work without the benefit of a net, and the first to work over water. After Moore left the troupe, he went on to do some modeling jobs in New York before he finally found his way to Hollywood in 1938. He had changed his name to Clayton Moore in the mean time, and he did some stuntman work and some extra parts for the movie industry. By 1941, Moore was working steady for Republic Pictures. He portrayed heroes, the guys in the white hats, as well as bad guys, who always wore the black hats, of course, in several western movies. But it was 1949 when Clayton Moore finally got the big break that would change his life forever. "The Lone Ranger Show" had been on the radio for fifteen years by now, and Republic Pictures had already produced a couple of low-cost Lone Ranger films. But the studio decided it was time to make a weekly series out of the famous "Lone Ranger." (From Weirdscifi - I originally got the picture above from there too, but it really is weird because the picture changed to something pretty weird and I had to find a new source.)

There are others of significance born in 1914 and I may do additional posts to cover some of them.  But for now, here are some highlights.

Jonas Salk Oct 28, 1914 - June 23, 1995 (80) - Probably the man born in 1914 who had the most positive impact on the world was Jonas Salk, the man who invented the polio vaccine.

Kenneth Bancroft Clark  - July 24, 1914 - May 1, 2004 (89) The first black fully tenured professor at City University of New York and first black president of the American Psychological Society, his study of the effects of discrimination in the US played a key role in the landmark Supreme Court Decision Brown v. Board of Education.  Also worked with Gunnar Myrdal on his classic study of race in the US. 

Sports:
Joe DiMaggio   November 25, 1014 - March 8, 1999 (84)
Joe Louis  May 13, 1914 - April 12, 1981 (66)
Tenzing Norgay  May 15, 1914 - May 9, 1986 (71)

Writers:
William Bourroughs  Feb 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997 (83)
Ralph Ellison   March 1, 1914 - April 16, 1994 (80)
John Hersey June 17, 1914 - March 24, 1993  (78)
Bernard Malahmud  April 26, 1914 - March 18, 1986 (71)
Octavio Paz  March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998 (84)
Dylan Thomas October 27, 1914 - Nov 9, 1953 (41)

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Alaskan Related:
Hale Boggs  Feb 15, 1914 - Oct 16, 1972  - Louisiana Congressman, and father of Cokie Roberts, died in plane crash with Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich. 
William A. Egan  Oct 8, 1914 - May 6 1984  - Two time Alaska governor.


War and Space:
 James Van Allen  Sept 7, 1914 - August 9 2006 (91)
William Westmoreland March 26, 1914 - July 18, 2005 (91)

How Do We Screw You? Let Us Count The Ways - Are You in An Abusive Relationship With Your Credit Card Company?

As I read Bank of America's new credit card changes, Elizabeth Barret Browning's famous poem immediately came to mind with slight changes.  It's not good for a business when customers believe they are being screwed by them.  But with fewer options that are mostly the same and Wall Street's pressure for short term profits, businesses are getting meaner.

There are lots of reasons people use credit cards.  It's hard to make airline reservations without a credit card, and if you do, you have to pay more.  It's almost impossible to rent a car without a credit card.  And credit cards make it possible to spend what you don't have.
Banks issuing the cards are not shy about squeezing their customers for all they can get.  The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 made some changes.  The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau summarizes the key changes:

• The long-standing practice of hiking interest rates on existing cardholder accounts has been dramatically curtailed.
• The amount of late fees consumers are paying has been substantially reduced.
• Overlimit fees have virtually disappeared in the credit card industry.
• Consumers report that their credit card costs are clearer, but significant confusion remains.

(Wikipedia notes that an amendment to the bill allowed people to carry firearms in National Parks.)

So the companies are trying to find ways to increase earnings while being in compliance with the Credit Card Act.

Here are some highlights of the changes listed in a letter I got recently.  Some of the most disturbing are at the end.

"Amendment To Your Credit Card Agreement:
Effective Decembr 3, 2013, the transaction fee we assess on each of the transactions identified below will be equal to 5% of each such transaction (Fee:  Min. $10):

• ATM Cash Advance
• Cash Equivalents
• Over the Counter Cash Advance
• Same-Day Online Cash Advance
• Wire Transfer Purchase"

As I understand this, if you get a $10 cash advance using your card, you'll have to pay a $10 fee which is a 100% fee.  The percentage goes down as you get a larger amount.  But the fee doesn't get down to the minimum percentage (5%) until you take $200.  And then you'll pay more in interest.  I guess because they call this a 'transaction' fee, it doesn't count as usurious interest.  (In Alaska that's 10.5% for loans above $25K)

But, there's this option: 

"If you reject this change, it will not apply to your account;"

Hey, that's cool, but only if you stop there.  The rest of the sentence is:

"however, your account will be closed as of the date we process your rejection." 

And, it goes on, you will still have to pay off what you owe us.


TOTAL MINIMUM PAYMENT DUE

"The Total Minimum Payment Due is the sum of all past due amounts plus the Current Payment.

The Current Payment for each billing cycle includes three amounts:

1. 1.00% of your balance (your New Balance Total except for any new interest charges and any new Late Fee)
2. new interest charges
3. any new Late Fee

Your Current Payment will not be less than $25."  

Not less than $25?  What if you you only used the credit card for $10?  It does say next that:

"The Total Minimum Payment Due will not be greater than your New Balance Total"

What am I missing here?  How can Current Payment not be less than $25?  If your New Balance total is $0, and you have no interest charges or late fees, why would you still owe $25?  Does it mean that if you owe less than $25 they won't bill you?  I doubt it.  I suspect they meant, "if your current balance is at least $25."  But maybe I'm just missing something, but if I am, I'm sure others are too. 

The next updates, they say, are language changes.  They say they:

"are updating the language in the following sections to clarify how payments are applied:"  See how clear you think it is.

I'm just going to offer some of the highlights:

"Interest will continue to accrue even though you have paid the full amount of any related balances because we include any accrued but unpaid interest in the calculation of each Balance Subject to Interest Rate"

Here's what I think this means:  Once you don't pay the full amount, we stick you with interest rates (and late fees).  Those accrue daily.  So, when we send out your bill, we only give you the amount due at that moment.  But after we send it out, you are still accruing interest until you pay us.  But we won't tell you that on the bill.  So you think you are finally square with us, but you are still accruing interest on everything.  Ha Ha, good trick isn't it?  Gotcha. 

One way to deal with this is to call them up and tell them you want to pay off everything and stop the interest from continuing to accrue.  You may be able to pay by phone or go to the bank branch.  If you're a long time card holder they may simply waive it.  Or you can ask them how much more will accrue until you can get the money to them and add that to your payment.  But don't use your card for new transactions until it's definitely all paid off, because interest will accrue on every transaction each day.

The Killer Clause

"We will not charge you any interest on Purchases if you always pay your entire New Balance Total by the Payment Due Date.  Specifically, you will not pay interest for an entire billing cycle on Purchases if you Paid in Full the two previous New Balance Totals on your account by their respective Payment Due Dates;  otherwise each Purchase begins to accrue interest on its transaction date or the first day of the billing cycle, which date is later."

"if you always pay your entire New Balance Total by the Payment Due Date."   This really is the only reason for which people should use credit cards if they want to keep out of permanent, ever increasing debt. 

Otherwise, they start charging you nasty interest rates that can double and triple what you actually pay for everything you charge. 

And I didn't realize that you have to pay in full for TWO PREVIOUS NEW BALANCE TOTALS.    This is designed to keep people paying interest as long as possible. 


HOW WE ALLOCATE YOUR PAYMENTS

"If your account has balances with different APRs, we will allocate the amount of your payment equal to the Total Minimum Payment Due to the lowest APR balances first.  Payment amounts in excess of your Total Minimum Payment Due will be applied to balances with higher APRS before balances with lower APRs."

 If they define APR anywhere in this letter, I can't find it.  But I think it means Annual Percentage Rate.  What they seem to be saying is:

If you have account balances with different interest rates and you only pay the Minimum Payment Due, they'll use that to pay the account with the lowest interest rate first. (Even if the other debts are older.)  That way they can still stick you for the higher interest rate longer.  But it appears they give you something - if you pay over the Minimum Payment Due, that amount will go to the higher interest accounts first. 

I'm not sure why they are making that concession, but it would seem to mean that poorer folks, who can't afford to pay more than the minimum, will get stuck paying the higher rates longer. 

USING MOBILE DEVICES

Basically, this part says that if you use your mobile device like a credit card, then when you give your phone to someone else it's like giving them your credit card.  And you're stuck with their bill. 

And they are updating their language about

PEOPLE USING YOUR ACCOUNT

This transfers all responsibility to the card holder.  If you give someone your credit card or phone with credit card capabilities, you are liable for whatever they do with it.

"even if the amount of those transactions causes a credit line to be exceeded"

 "We may send account materials (cards, statements and notices) to any liable party, and that person will be responsible for delivering those materials to the other liable parties and authorized uses.  Notice to any of you will be considered notice to all of you."

So, you have a limit on your card.  Doesn't seem to matter.  What's the point of the limit?

You let your college son on your account?  They could send him the bills and that counts as sending them to you.  If he doesn't pay them or send them to you, you're screwed.

And get this one:

"An authorized user's authority will continue until you both notify us that you are terminating the authority and you physically retrieve the card or other credit device."

So your spouse has walked out and is spending on your joint card.  You both have to terminate his or her authority and you have to retrieve the card?   Good luck with that.

What if you leave the house because your spouses is beating you?

I can't believe that in these situations you couldn't simply terminate the card, which I assume is different from terminating the other person's authority.  But that has its own problems.  What if your abusive spouse terminates the card when you've gone to a shelter?
I can understand that the Bank doesn't want to have to settle marital disputes, but this could have serious consequences for card holders. 

And I doubt that many people read this far, even though it is only page 3.

And why are they making these changes?

"We are making the changes to the Transaction Fees and Total Minimum Payment Due sections because of a change in our business practice."

 That clarifies things.


The basic rules for people with credit cards:

• Don’t charge what you can’t pay back at the end of the month.
• If you must borrow money with a credit card to make ends meet, have a plan for paying the balance off ASAP.

Read more at http://www.moneyunder30.com/how-to-use-a-credit-card-responsibly#UCV8LxWh1QPrwrdp.9

• Don’t charge what you can’t pay back at the end of the month.
• If you must borrow money with a credit card to make ends meet, have a plan for paying the balance off ASAP.

Read more at http://www.moneyunder30.com/how-to-use-a-credit-card-responsibly#UCV8LxWh1QPrwrdp.

• Don’t charge what you can’t pay back at the end of the month.
• If you must borrow money with a credit card to make ends meet, have a plan for paying the balance off ASAP.

Read more at http://www.moneyunder30.com/how-to-use-a-credit-card-responsibly#UCV8LxWh1QPrwrdp.99

• Don't use one unless you plan to pay it off in full every month so you don't accrue interest. 
• It's a way to not carry cash
• It's NOT a way to pay for something you can't afford

There are exceptions - unique situations where you have a short term need for extra cash and you have money coming in soon to pay it all off.  I've heard of any number of film makers saying they paid for their film by getting lots of credit cards.  If you can find cards with a year of 0%, you can pull this off.  But I'm not sure how many of those film makers had a way to pay it off.

Basically, we have to wean ourselves from spending more than we earn.


Russian Turns Tables On Bank

Looking for this agreement online, I did find this story of a Russian who simply crossed out the parts of the credit card offer he got and wrote in his own language - which included things like no interest, no fees, and no credit limits.  He also wrote in penalties for the bank if they broke any of the rules. 

The bank failed to notice the adjustments to the contract and issued him a card and eventually went after him for failing to pay fees and interest.  He won that case in court, but the bank is now suing him for fraud and he's counter suing for all the penalties his contract requires the bank to pay. 

Frass

Gary Snyder read a poem about splitting timber at UAA Sunday night and my ears perked up at the word frass.  At the end of the poem, Snyder mentioned frass as a word not too many people knew.  It means, he said, the sawdust left when a beetle bores into a tree.

Click to enlarge

Snyder is something of a poet legend in the US, at least for those of us old enough to remember him as a spokesman for the back-to-the-land/environmental/zen pioneers of the 60s and 70s.  Somewhere in the clutter I have a copy of his book with a nautilus shell on the cover.  I found a king bolete on the way home from the reading and I thought it would make a fitting background to the Snyder collage. 

A good evening.  Part of UAA's Northern Renaissance Arts and Sciences.  I'm not sure what all that is about, but this looks a lot like what they used to call - something like the Summer Reading Series.  They're creative writing program has an intensive session now and most of the faculty give free readings in the evening.

Tues[Thurs]day night (July 10[12], 2012) will have three poets I've heard before who will make a great evening:

Richard Chiappone, Linda McCarriston, Zack Rogow

[UPDATE July 10 11:30pm - My face is red.  After Jacob warned me in the comments to check my facts, I posted this group to be on tonight, but it was three others.  They were ok, but I know these three will be better.  The UAA website says Chiappone, McCarriston, and Rogow will be Thursday.  I can't find a permanently posted schedule and the UAA one changes, I can't go back to see how I messed this up.  I thought perhaps I'd taken the Monday program for Tuesday, but no, they are scheduled Thursday.  Well, at least you still have a chance to hear them read.]

(Really, these three are good.  I wouldn't push this if I didn't think they were good.  For the poetry challenged, these three should make an interesting night.  You can check out a video on a post of Rogow I did three years ago. And I repeat:  it's free, if you don't like it, you can walk out without losing any money.  I found an old Linda McCarriston post with video too.)

It's at the UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 150, beginning at 8 p.m. The series runs July 9-17.

[The Arts Building - take Providence east from Lake Otis to the traffic light at the east side of the original Providence hospital building (just past the UAA library on the left) and turn left.  Then right at the first street to the right.  Then wind around to the Arts building and there's a big parking lot.]



:

Spenard Jazz Fest - Poetry and Dance Night Thursday

Sitting in the Organic Oasis was like beiing into another world.  Musicians, poets, dancers, and their friends were gathered.  I would say the performances varied greatly in quality, but the vibe of the evening was comfy, warm,  and I was impressed with all the work people had done to put the evening together.  We saw some people we knew and made new friends as well. 

After the post on the lack of women's voices in the media the other day, I've been much more conscious of whether I've got the camera on men or women. I do have to say that sometimes leaving a picture or video clip out is a favor. But that's because I'm not doing a good enough job with the camera.

The video will give a pale sense of things.  It sounds much less on the video than it did in person.







The Spenard Jazz Fest continues Saturday.  From their website:

Sat June 09
Jazz at the Market | SPENARD FARMER’S MARKET  | 10 am – 2 pm
Free
Stop by the Festival booth for some live music, free refreshments and tons of cool SJF merchandise!
Plus other SJF surprises! You never know what could happen at the market or who you’ll discover.
.

“Altered Arts” Jazzy Mural Painting | BLAINE’S  |  10 am – 6 pm
Free
Time for the annual mural painting at Blaines.
SJF band stand to be filled with an array of local jazz heroes


Originals {Day 2} | ORGANIC OASIS | 4pm – Late
$15/$10 (student/senior/youth)  | Punch Card
Come out for the new music! Great artists, great food, great atmosphere.
4pm: Phil Beckett
5pm: Alex Cruver trio
6pm: Elite 9
7pm: Lee Pulliam
8pm: John Damberg
9pm: Tyler Desjarlais
10pm: Phil Knowlton
.

Nobodyhere: Digital Genius - The Most Brilliant Website I've Ever Experienced

I stumbled upon a website like none I've ever seen.  I can't find the name of the creator, so I'll just call him/her The Genius.   It does all sorts of things I wish I could do.  It uses code to put images and words on the screen just where The Genius wants.  TG combines ideas and images and movements.  It's the best use of the medium of websites I've seen.

I just discovered this website this morning so I'm still poking around through it.  TG is a poet, an artist, and techie enough to make things do what he wants on the screen.  (I'm sure TG will say there is much he/she can't do, but I'm still more than impressed.)

Let's look at a few pages.  I've made them so they link to directly to the original Nobodyhere (that's the name of the website) page.  So you can interact.  Click on the image, you'll not regret it.

Above is the main page, if there is such a thing on Nobodyhere.  And you probably won't get TG standing on the chair.  When you get there, move your mouse all over.  As you can see when you get there, you can see this page in Dutch and Japanese too.  I'm guessing, based on the bug charts, TG is Dutch. 

Shame is typical of a page with an illustration and some text/poetry.

But Nobodyhere is also very interactive.  This is from a page where you can fill in your accusation and apparently TG takes these and makes apologies for them.  Here are some examples.  Again, you can click on the image and go directly to the page on TG's website.

I would note that the figures are not static.  Their movements display suitable supplication.

And, of course, there are the bugs.

Along with the bugs are these more hierarchical pages.  I haven't figured out yet how these pages relate to the others - is this a filing system for the more whimsically displayed content?  I don't know.  But this is true internet genius.  This website is a brilliant digital poem I'm looking forward to exploring more.  And unlike when I studied 17th Century English poets, there's a chat page where I can possibly interact with TG.  I haven't tried it yet.

You don't agree with my assessment?  Then leave your pick for a better website - by that I mean a website that uses the full creative potential of a website.  I'd love to see others this good or better.  But don't pick sites simply because you agree with its message. 

Selling Poetry at the Beach

Jeffery Martin at Venice Beach

On my run down to Venice Beach yesterday (we flew home last night, so no beach run today), I ran across poet Jeffery Martin peddling poetry among the Venice Beach kitsch.  It was one of those classic cartoon moments as I slowly jogged by and then my head swiveled back as the words "poetry sold here" finally registered in my consciousness.  I circled back for a long chat with Jeffrey.

He had a list of awards he'd won so for the blog I looked up the first one, but I couldn't find anything on the New Jersey Beach Book Festival (well, I did find it on Jeffery's website) which got me to thinking, hey, Steve, where's your crap detector?  Maybe this is like the Alaska International Film Awards - but they at least have a website.  But he was there on the London Book Festival (2008 Honorable Mention Poetry) website and the New York Book Festival (2008 Honorable Mention Poetry) and the San Francisco Book Festival 2011 (Honorable Mention Poetry AND Children's Lit).  Relief.  I couldn't have been fooled that badly.  His awards are real. 

Another page on his website listed it as just the Beach Book Festival and that one found him (2008 Winner Poetry.  It's all one url, so go to past festivals - 2008)


He also writes children's books - as the San Francisco award suggests.  The inspiration for that is his other job - working with autistic children in the LA School District.  The funding was cut, he said, for the summer program this year, which freed him to spend his summer at Venice Beach selling some books and much more important, he said, meeting interesting people from all over the world.

I didn't buy anything because I don't usually have money with me when I'm running.  So I asked if he had a poem on racism.  (Does that make me a racist because I assumed a black poet would write about racism?  In this case, we had talked a little about the topic already.)  He had to think before asking if Epithets, from Weapons of Choice, would fit. 

As I read it more carefully, I'm thinking this probably isn't about racism as much as greed and capitalism gone bad.

Final note: My style is generally to be understated and to hope that the reader catches the irony or outrage under my matter of fact statements. But here I hope nobody missed the point that California's unwillingness to deal with the 30 year bleeding caused by Prop. 13, means that this year, among other things, LA's autistic kids and their parents, are on their own this summer.

With Every Tug - Underpass Art and Poetry

Alaska may not have any billboards, but cyclists in Anchorage do have some poets and artists offering them unique galleries that drivers never see. But 'lay' would be better. 

Those dots and dashes in the corners give Prevail's signature a certain elan.

Not too far away, a little less elegant, and unsigned.