Sarah Vowell on Being Violet Incredible and Writing and Lots of Other Things

Sarah Vowell "Bed and Breakfast"

Weird Mailboxes

Hey. Why not a post with pictures of weird mailboxes? I've already done the barf-bag post so no options are off the table at this point...okay... I just poked around and found that this is not exactly the most original and cutting edge photo essay I could have thought up. It's been done. Why was I even thinking about mailboxes? Why not weird litterboxes? Hey...

US Foreclosure Image is 2008 World Press Photo

From the Independent/UK today by Craig Brown:

This picture by US photographer Anthony Suau, for Time won the World Press Photo of the Year 2008 award, it was announced by the organisers on 13 February 2009 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. US Economy in Crisis: Following eviction, Detective Robert Kole must ensure residents have moved out of their home in Cleveland, Ohio, 26 March 2008.

A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure was named World Press Photo of 2008 on Friday.

Jury members said the strength of the photo by American Anthony Suau for Time magazine was in its opposites -- it looks like a classic war photograph, but is simply the eviction of people from a house.

"Now war in its classic sense is coming into people's houses because they can't pay their mortgages," jury chair MaryAnne Golon said.

Fellow juror Akinbode Akinbiyi said: "All over the world people will be thinking: 'This is what is happening to all of us'."

The news agency Agence France-Presse won the Best Spot News Photo category with an image of post-election violence in Kenya and also the People In The News Singles category with an image of tribal conflict in western Kenya.

Here are some other winning photos.

Banjo and the Microbus

Notable sights on a Sunday evening walk in Northampton.
This is Banjo despite the vets interpretation of his name as "Benji" on the tag. (Click photos for full size). Banjo is 9 years old and has a congenital bone defect which weakened his legs. His owners have hooked him up with a device that enables him to go for walks. His front legs pull his back legs along with a little help from his moms.
Banjo reminded me of the dog in the overlooked movie "Babe, Pig In The City." Here's an old Siskel and Ebert review of the Babe sequel. You should rent it.
Vintage VW Microbus. My sister drove one of these for years. She had the inside set up like a room and had a "ROOM" vanity plate. The Room was a major party shuttle in the Amherst of the 1980s.

201 Harvard Ave #4

Off to Boston for the weekend to visit Bridget. She lives on the same street where my parents and I lived for the first year of my life. Trowbridge Street in Cambridge. Bridget and I met in the early 90s when I was living in Allston at the corner of Harvard and Commonwealth Ave. My apartment was the top floor corner of the Pizzaria Uno building. I can still hear the drunken bellowing and puking college kids flooding out of Great Scott's at 2AM. I can still hear the cars colliding in the crazy intersection of Harvard and Comm. on the Green B Line. Almost every day I'd hear the crunch of cars plowing into each other. After a while I wouldn't eve go to the window to look anymore.

Below. View of the corner of Harvard and Comm Ave. in Allston. Our apartment is/was the top floor of the building with the Chicago sign (Uno's Chicago Style Pizza)
Another view. Great Scott's at left. 201 Harvard Ave visible above T train.
I was working for the Rykodisc record label at the time and these were good times in Boston for music. The parties we threw in that apartment, 201 Harvard Ave., are legend. Bunratty's was still a club back then, visible from the window, and Allston was filled with musicians and fans that thrived on Boston's self-sustaining and vibrant live music scene. Chris Porter was booking Bun's back then and now he's the head talent buyer for the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle. Bands like the Cave Dogs, Dambuilders, Gigolo Aunts, Volcano Suns, Moving Targets, Titanics, Letters to Cleo, Dinosaur, Pixies, Throwing Muses, the Bags, the Neighborhoods, the Zulus, and dozens more made it possible, if you so chose, to listen to strictly Boston bands and fill all your musical dietary needs. The standard for rock in Boston has always been very high, with a pile of great college radio stations that reflected and fueled the city's appetite. So many stories!

The parties at my apartment were usually on Halloween and I recall over the three years I was there that we had, performing in our living room, the Gigolo Aunts, Evan Dando, Juliana Hatfield, the Flying Nuns, Apollo Landing, The Sunspots (with the late great Mikey Dee on drums), the Dambuilders, Helium, The Lotus Eaters, Mary Lou Lord, Aimee Mann, John Lombardo from 10K Maniacs, Marty Willson-Piper of the Church to name a few. My sister met both of her husbands at these parties. I don't recall the first time I met Bridget, but it was in the thick of this era. She would reliably stay over and help me clean up in the morning. I will forever associate the Lemonheads "It's A Shame About Ray" album, which we put on auto-repeat, with these clean-ups. It's one of those albums that becomes a musical bookmark for memories of a time and place and people.

Victrola Mixmaster

Glenn Miller and DJ Shadow, soulmates in the vinyl time-space continuum. 16-78-45-33 1/3- 010101010101010101010101.

Young David after a Visit to the Dentist...overanesthetized?

Best bet is to click twice to go right to YouTube so it doesn't lag behind.

Mondayness

If you want to read the Springfield Republican, you're going to need a shovel. Bear in mind the issue inside is from January 27th. Even the delivery truck guy can't be bothered.
Birth. School. Work. Joe's. Death. Monday night Joe's Pizza Society roll call: Jim. Paul. Wylie. Llama. Pizza. Discussions. Black and tans. Mud slides. Repeat.Jen models her dreads. Try Jah love.

Pictures and Few Words

Moon over Northampton.
Market Street Wall of Gigs
Passion Pit at the Iron Horse on Saturday, from the balcony.
Mary Kate O'Neil at Elevens on Saturday. Local hero Ken Maiuri, left, on keyboards.
Gramercy Arms at Elevens, following Mary Kate who followed Lloyd Cole solo acoustic.

Downtown Amherst, Saturday, February 7th, 2:30PM

Here they come.
There they go. Thanks to Jodi, director of photography, transportation, and music.

Preparing for Post-Grid Life in the Valley. Part 1 in a series.

It may not be tomorrow, next week, or even next year, but inevitably there will be a time when "life as we know it" will no longer include pizza delivery and chair massages. There's never been a better excuse to learn some skills beyond prescribing SSRI's or writing HTML. Even if the shit doesn't fully hit the fan, hey, now you can make furniture, reset a broken bone, or make shoes out of roadkill.

Self-defense doesn't have to include firearms. You and your loved ones will need to know how to react to threats from unskilled and unscrupulous scavengers at a moment's notice. Best to learn how to kick ass before you need to.
Schools and day care will be unreliable so if you have children you will need to keep them occupied. It's as good a time as any to brief them on the basics. They may need to start breeding sooner than later in this new tribal society.
Let's face it. Stop and Shop, Big Y, State Street Fruit, and Serios will all be cleaned out. So savor your last pint of Chunky Monkey and prepare for the inevitable. Eating bugs. Familiar recipes can be used, substituting bugs for chicken, tofu, or what have you.
The party platter. Get creative with the dips and soon enough your guests will find these critters make for tasty snackin' goodness.More to come!

Richard Wilbur, Taylor Mali, Iyeoka Okoawo at the Academy of Music on Saturday, Feb. 15th at 2PM

This will be a show not to miss, a magical afternoon, and I don't throw cliches around lightly. I'll tell you more later but I have to go to work right now. Go here for ticket locations and more info.

Stanley Kunitz: Poetry Reading of his work at Forbes Library this Wednesday at 7

This Wednesday night, February 4th at 7PM, there’s a celebration of Stanley Kunitz at the Forbes Library led by my friend and fellow poet Allegra Mira. Allegra worked with Kunitz and grew to know and love his work as well as anyone possibly could. I’m one of the six readers and was at the Sierra last night selecting my favorites...and writing some bad poetry of my own...but it kicked in on the second page!
Stanley Kunitz, one of the 20th century’s finest poets, died in May 2006. In addition to serving two terms as the United States Poet Laureate, Kunitz received many prizes for his poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, a National Medal of Arts, a Robert Frost Medal and a Bollingen Prize.

Kunitz published over 13 books of poetry and translations. In 1930, he published his first collection, Intellectual Things, and in 2005, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, which he coauthored with poet Genine Lentine.

An Evening in Celebration of Stanley Kunitz features 6 local poets reading from their personal Kunitz favorites. Allegra Mira, who worked as a transcriber and creative assistant for Kunitz’s final book, The Wild Braid, will introduce the reading and briefly share about her experiences while working alongside a true master of poetry.

This is the fifth monthly poetry reading during the library's 6th annual series that takes place on the first Wednesday of the month from October through June. Programming at Forbes Library is sponsored by the Friends of Forbes Library. Free!

It's snowing tonight.

Who needs the Stupor Bowl when we have the Silver Chord Bowl?

Now in its 18th season, the Four Sundays in February Series has become a winter tradition in Northampton.
The series began today at 2pm with the annual Silver Chord Bowl; Collegiate a cappella at its best. All 2,000 seats are filled in John M. Greene Hall at Smith College year after year and today was no exception. As a member of the Northampton Arts Council I was a volunteer and served as an usher in black and white. This year's groups: Tufts Beelzebubs, McGill Effusion, Rutgers ShockWave, MIT Logarhythms, NYU N’Harmonics, Amherst College Zumbyes, and Smith College Smiffenpoofs with special guests the Northampton High School Northamptones. I shot some photos and some video but the video oddly was not on my camera when I got home nor were any pictures of the later groups.

Emcees; Smith College President Carol T. Christ and Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins
The Northamptones opened the show with a version of "Drive my Car" by The Beatles that conveyed the unexpected sadness of the song's lyrics.
Rutger's ShockWave did 4 songs that I did not recognize at all. They sounded like current pop hits and the subject matter was primarily unrequited love. Mariah Carey and Britney et. al. have ruined female pop singing. All that owwahhhHEYYhahahahhohohwayyyhoohaha
HOHOHOWayyoh gets to be a bit show offy and not really necessary. I wish these women had listened to a little more Phoebe Snow and Bonnie Raitt. Oh, and Diamanda Galas of course.MIT's Logarhythms were all about being crazy college guys and entered from behind the crowd, ran down the aisle, and jumped onstage. I think that Justin Timberlake has ruined male pop singing. All these guys were aping him whether they knew it or not. They included a guy named David who was in the Northamptones just last year as a senior at Northampton High School. That's him on the mic. Claire Higgins joked that ever since David left, the school hasn't been able to get any of the AV equipment to work. I guess he used to be the AV guy and Claire was implying that no one else had his mad AV skills. Either that or I suppose he may have vandalized all the equipment before he went off to MIT. These were my two possible interpretations of Claire's comment.
One of the ShockWavers reacts to the Logarhythms version of "Once in a Lifetime."
The Effusions, below, all the way from McGill University in Montreal. I totally forget what they sang. But I was at the Haymarket yesterday at the big common table downstairs reading Anthem by Ayn Rand and everyone at the table was apparently together except me. They were all really friendly and appeared to be local college students but something was off. They were almost too welcoming when I sat down. It was crowded downstairs and that was really the only seat. I was having the coconut curry with brown rice and they asked if it was good. It was good and I told them so. Three of them ordered it. One of the guys and I chatted about The Fountainhead. He said that Ayn Rand had led a very interesting life, getting ahead without kissing any ass, which is actually as good a condensation of her core idealogy as I've heard. I found Anthem was a good length for a book. I like being able to finish a book in a day. When they left we shook hands and said goodbye like old friends. So I'm watching the Effusions today and I realize it was a bunch of them that I'd met yesterday. The red-haired guy was the one I was talking with. People around here need to take some friendly lessons from Canadians I'll tell you. I'm planning a trip to Quebec this Spring.

I took this picture, a triptych of sorts utilizing the banner for their current show, at the front of the Smith College Museum of Art on the way home. "Thin and Girl Culture are two series of contemporary documentary photographs by Lauren Greenfield. Both deal with the complex ways girls and women relate to their bodies, though in very different ways. A number of programs, both for the general public and for Smith College students, will be offered over the course of the exhibition, including a visit from Lauren Greenfield on March 6." Lauren also made a documentary on this subject; Thin.
I stopped at APE for a little while for this poetry reading. I really liked Henry Lyman's poems. I also liked the grapes and cheese. Henry is kind of a big deal. I hope they do this again. It should be at least monthly.
I got home just as this engine went by behind my building where the new stretch of the bike trail will also run.
That was my afternoon and I'm sticking with it.