The Monkey Wrench Gang

Monkey Wrench Gang In 1985, as part of The Monkey Wrench Gang's 10th birthday, Robert Crumb illustrated Edward Abbey's classic novel about eco-sabotage. The book is Abbey's most famous work of fiction that tells the story of an unlikely group of misfits - Seldom Seen Smith (a river guide), George Hayduke (an ex-green beret who measures the distance between places by how many six packs he can drink while driving), Doc Sarvis (a surgeon from New Mexico who loves to burn billboards) and Bonnie Azbug (Doc Sarvis' tough love "partner") - who reek havoc on the American Southwest by destroying the dams, bridges, and machines that they believe are destroying it. The Monkey Wrench Gang is widely recognized as the literature that spawned Dave Foreman's and Mike Roselle's Earth First.Dream Garden Press is the place to go to get this version of the book. I highly highly recommend spending the extra few bucks. The illustrations are wonderful and there are a few great pictures of the two men hanging out in Arches National Park.In addition to the the book, Dream Garden also sells some t-shirts of the Crumb illustrations that are cheap as hell for how great they are. They're not the "dad shirts" that you might be expecting. Go ahead and buy one. Cold Splinters is the proud owner of the Hayduke Lives! version.Look: Original Cover of The Monkey Wrench Gang

Childhood Living Is Easy To Do

The NYT has an interesting article about P.Z.P., an immunocontraceptive that is used to control horse and deer populations in the United States:

Dr. Kirkpatrick has one view of why it is not more widely used. “The problem isn’t scientific, it’s political and cultural,” he said. “We’re dealing with a cowboy culture. One told me, ‘We don’t do it this way; we do it on horseback with ropes.’ ”

Maynard Dixon

Born on a ranch near Fresno, California in the San Joaquin Valley, Maynard Dixon, originally named Henry St. John Dixon, became a noted illustrator, landscape, and mural painter of the early 20th-century American West, especially the desert, Indians, early settlers, and cowboys.Maynard Dixon.org

THE BALLAD OF WILLIAM SYCAMORE

My father, he was a mountaineer,His fist was a knotty hammer;He was quick on his feet as a running deer,And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.My mother, she was merry and brave,And so she came to her labor,With a tall green fir for her doctor graveAnd a stream for her comforting neighbor.And some are wrapped in the linen fine,And some like a godling's scion;But I was cradled on twigs of pineIn the skin of a mountain lion.And some remember a white, starched lapAnd a ewer with silver handles;But I remember a coonskin capAnd the smell of bayberry candles.The cabin logs, with the bark still rough,And my mother who laughed at trifles,And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff,With their long, straight squirrel-rifles.I can hear them dance, like a foggy song,Through the deepest one of my slumbers,The fiddle squeaking the boots alongAnd my father calling the numbers.****- Stephen Vincent Benét, 1922MP3: Steve Young - The Ballad Of William Sycamore (thx)

Thread

70_35mm-2Photographer and filmmaker Patrick Trefz spent more than two years wandering country roads, always in search of the best way to the beach. Thread follows Trefz on his travels from the Basque Country to Steinbeck country, from New York City to West African island nations, scaling fences and hunkering down in the dirt to capture his vision of the visual language of surf culture.Thread on powerHouse Books

Randy Newman

There was a guy in high school, Mark, who always smelled of smoke from the pack of Parliament Lights he kept on him. He was a black belt in karate, had a twin sister, and our senior year, he convinced me to sing the national anthem with him at a girl's volleyball game. With arms around one another, each with one hand on the cordless microphone, our bass voices spit out the most horrendously offensive version of the "Star Spangled Banner" since Roseanne. We had practiced singing together only two times, both of which were in my Jeep on the short drive from my house to the high school gym. The one or two beers we drank were meant to cool our nerves, not to provide the fuel for an obnoxious teenage prank. It just kinda came out that way. We missed notes, laughed from embarrassment, and the arms around each other thing looked more like late night karaoke than patriotism and school spirit. The audience was less than impressed.Mark was always wildly obsessed with two artists who I never paid much attention to while in high school - Cat Stevens, who I now have a great appreciation for despite the Ovation, and Randy Newman, who I couldn't understand for the life of me until the past year or so. Who woulda thought that "Sail Away" was written as a jingle for slave traders to recruit naive Africans? Not fans of "You Got A Friend In Me" and certainly not little ol' moi. "Rednecks" is the only song I own that I can't play at full volume in my apartment.Point of the story is that I've been obsessively listening to Newman's 1974 album, Good Old Boys, as of late and, Mark, you were ahead of your time, my friend. I'm late to your game. Looking back at the ol' national anthem incident, it probably woulda made a good story for a Randy Newman song about two idiot Midwest kids.MP3: Randy Newman - Mr. President (Have Pity On The Working Man)

Sea Organ

This is extremely cool:

The musical Sea Organ (morske orgulje) is located on the shores of Zadar, Croatia, and is the world’s first musical pipe organ that is played by the sea. Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 musically tuned tubes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and – depending on the size and velocity of the wave – musical chords are played. The waves create random harmonic sounds.

MP3: Listen To Sounds Of The Sea OrganVia YVYNYL via Arthur.

The Eiger Sanction

screenshot_03George Kennedy: You know what? Way down deep you have the makings of a real bad ass. I don't know if I'd like to be alone on a desert island with you if there was a shortage of food.Clint Eastwood: Don't worry, you're a friend.Kennedy: You ever had any enemies?Eastwood: You.Kennedy: Any of them still around?Eastwood: The guy by the pool, Miles Bellow. What do you know about him?Kennedy: Checked into today. Looks like he can change a 9 dollar bill with 3s.***

Balto

There's a reason that there's a statue of Balto in Central Park, so in case you don't know why, here you go:

Balto (c.1919-14 March, 1933) was a Siberian Husky sled dog (although some sources incorrectly state that he was an Alaskan Malamute) who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Anchorage, Alaska to Nenana, Alaska by train and then to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease.

Youtube: Balto TrailerListen: History Of Balto on American Storyteller

Lightning Field

The Lightning Field:

The Lightning Field, 1977, by the American sculptor Walter De Maria, is a work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of western New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles—two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet and 7½ inches in height—are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane. A sculpture to be walked in as well as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. A full experience of The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset and sunrise. In order to provide this opportunity, Dia offers overnight visits during the months of May through October.

MP3: Sebadoh - Soul and Fire

Who Discovered The North Pole?

Very interesting article about the discovery of the North Pole from Smithsonian Magazine:

On September 7, 1909, readers of the New York Times awakened to a stunning front-page headline: "Peary Discovers the North Pole After Eight Trials in 23 Years." The North Pole was one of the last remaining laurels of earthly exploration, a prize for which countless explorers from many nations had suffered and died for 300 years. And here was the American explorer Robert E. Peary sending word from Indian Harbour, Labrador, that he had reached the pole in April 1909, one hundred years ago this month. The Times story alone would have been astounding. But it wasn't alone.A week earlier, the New York Herald had printed its own front-page headline: "The North Pole is Discovered by Dr. Frederick A. Cook." Cook, an American explorer who had seemingly returned from the dead after more than a year in the Arctic, claimed to have reached the pole in April 1908—a full year before Peary.

Read the rest here.

Octopus Hunt

Octopus Hunt is a beautiful documentary made in the mid 60s about capturing octopus and the experience of being underwater. It includes some great hairstyles and staged bonding with accordions.Narrator: "This feeling of timelessness. Life underwater goes on and on. It's the diver that brings the element of time because he is dependent on his air supply. When this is exhausted he has to return to his own world."Watch Octopus Hunt on National Film Board Of Canada