Wreath, home from market

steve.lewis@farawayhills.com. thumbtyped

The Lost Memory of Skin

I've just read Russell Banks' book...

Bike sync

More, nice, synchronicity.  Within two days of getting back from Amsterdam I finally gave into the itch and bought a Dutch bike Reasoning was somewhere between wanting the old sore back to be able to ride in an upright position, and just plain old wanting.  The urge was there after the last two trips, but this time it was overwhelming.  So, from Rolling Orange in Cobble Hill, home came, I don't don't know, what shall I call it?  Mr. Bike.

(Baguette not included, stardust-embedded tires glowing very nicely at this angle.)

So early yesterday morning Mr. Bike took me for a ride and we found a 20 block detour to the bakery on the corner.  Leaving the bakery I realized I had dropped one of my gloves along the way - old buff leather work-gloves.  Sigh.  I'd had them a long time, and really liked using them for riding.  Wella.  So, back home, and wouldn't you know it, I pushed Mr. Bike into the yard, and there on the ground,  right where I'd started out from, was glovey!

Well, that made me so happy I decided to photograph it and Mr. Bike and go right inside and post about them.  But when I got inside, there was a better surprise.  Raymond had forwarded mail from Larry, and it started like this:

We just went for a bike ride - to the India border and back, about 6 km each way (although it didn't seem that long).  The very nice hotel manager loaned me his brand-new cycle, and they managed to get another for Parsu Ram.  It was good exercise (although I couldn't beat PR at racing as I could last time! old age is creeping up).  Anyway, the border is alive with all sorts of activity, a lot of it probably illicit.  It was a nice straight shot on the highway but the usual traffic, bullock carts, rikshaws, big smoke-belching trucks, etc.  We had some tea at one of those highway-edge shops, looked filthy but tea's not such a risk I hope due to necessary boiled water...

 ... and goes on to describe "innumerable adventures, not always but mostly good adventures."

Coffee table

A coffee table in the lobby of Hotel Roemer.

Amsterdam / Stew sync delayed realization

We returned from Amsterdam Thursday late afternoon, and Friday we aired ourselves out on 5th.  Sitting outside a cafe a livery car stopped for a light, and looking out the back window was Stew.  Wasn't until this morning that I remembered Stew's Amsterdam connection: Passing Strange. 

Streetfighting in Amsterdam

steve.lewis@farawayhills.com. thumbtyped

I'm so dizzy...

 Was in Fish's Eddy at lunchtime yesterday, and on the radio...

#----------------------------------PLEASE NOTE---------------------------------#
#This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the #
#song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research. #
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------##
From: Brian Scherer

Dizzy - Tommy Roe


D   G   A    A

D     G   A     A      E       A          B         B
Dizzy,          I'm so dizzy, My head is spinnin'

        E         A         B       B
Like a whirlpool, it never ends

          E         A         B       B
And it's you girl, makin' it spin

                  F        Bb        C
You're makin' me dizzy


F                  Bb
First time that I saw you girl

   C               Bb               F
I knew that I just had to make you mine

     F               Bb
But it's so hard to talk to you

       C              Bb                F
With fellas hangin' 'round you all the time

C                                Bb
I want you for my sweet pet, but you keep playin hard to get

A                G              A
Goin' Round in circles all the time

REFRAIN


Verse 2

I finally got to talk to you
And tell you just exactly how I felt
Then I held you close yo me and kissed you
And my heart began to melt
Girl, you've got control of me, 'cause I'm so dizzy, I can't see
I need to call a doctor for some help


REFRAIN

Repeat twice, first time in F (F, Bb, C)  then in G (G, C, D)


I hope this is closer than the trash I submitted before (at least the
lyrics are).

R. Brian Scherer
Eli Lilly and Company
rbscherer@lilly.com

Lewis Klahr's The Pettifogger: Collaging the crime

Guardian article with images from Lewis' latest film, and Lewis' comments on them.  Lewis Klahr's The Pettifogger: Collaging the crime – in pictures.

If only Sid had had a ukulele...

Macinwi wants you to know about Amanda Palmer.  Anthem!

Slow Jam - OWS

Hydro for acting! Audrey Franklin!

Vonage voicemail text transcription:

"Hi, this is assembly member Jim Brennan. I'm inviting you to a free screening of gas plant. The award winning documentary about the environmental dangers of Hydro for acting the film will be shown at 630 on Thursday, November 3 at the park slope Methodist Church on sixth Avenue and eighth Street after the film. They'll be refreshments and a discussion about how to respond to the government proposal to allow Audrey Franklin in New York State. I am opposed to Frank. Once again that's Thursday, November 3. Thanks so I hope to see you there"

And we are all about keeping Audrey Franklin out of New York State!

PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 100
October 25, 2011

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY

For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose.  Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found.  Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.

Previous historical scholarship has inferred from selected declassified documents that the alert was somehow intended to communicate a firm resolve to end the Vietnam War by whatever means necessary.  (See "Nixon's Nuclear Ploy" by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, National Security Archive, December 23, 2002; and "The Madman Nuclear Alert" by Scott D. Sagan and Jeremi Suri, International Security, Spring 2003.)

But based on the classified record, that interpretation remains unproven and uncertain, according to the gripping new State Department FRUS volume on "National Security Policy" (pdf).

"The documentary record offers no definitive explanation as to why U.S. forces went on this alert, also known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Readiness Test," the editors of the FRUS volume said (Document 59).

"There are two main after-the-fact explanations: first, that nuclear brinkmanship was designed to convince the Soviets that President Nixon was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia" along the lines that previous historians have suggested.

The second proposed explanation is "that the President ordered the alert as a signal to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against China during the escalating Sino-Soviet border dispute."  Consistent with the second interpretation, the FRUS volume provides new documentation of intelligence reports indicating that Soviet leaders were considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities.

Astonishingly, even the most senior U.S. military leaders were kept in the dark by the White House about the nature of the alert-- before, during and after the event.

"It is difficult to measure the success of this operation," wrote JCS Chairman General Earle G. Wheeler to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird on November 6, 1969, "since... the objectives of the test are unknown."

"It seems prudent if maximum benefit is to be gained from an operation of this type that at least you and I and the senior commanders are informed of the objectives and goals," General Wheeler suggested (Document 92).

In the end, the secret U.S. military alert -- one of only a few such cases involving U.S. nuclear forces -- had little discernable impact.  "There has been no reflection of acute concern by the Soviets...," the CIA reported in an October 27, 1969 memorandum included in the FRUS volume (Document 89).  "There has been no reflection of the US military alert posture in Soviet or Chinese news media or diplomatic activity."

Of the small White House group that directed the secret 1969 alert, perhaps only Henry Kissinger remains alive and active.  He did not mention the alert in his memoirs, the FRUS editors noted, except perhaps in an oblique statement that the United States "raised our profile somewhat to make clear that we were not indifferent" to Soviet threats against Chinese facilities.

Monster

On the counter at Cafe Fika on Pearl, not many blocks south of Zuccotti Park.
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The Recipe Project

One Ring Zero's The Recipe Project.

What is The Recipe Project?

"It's a 116 page hardcover cookbook book and full-length CD. The book features recipes, interviews, and essays from Mario Batali, John Besh, David Chang, Tom Colicchio, Chris Cosentino, Tanya Donelly, Mark Kurlansky, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Andrea Reusing, Michael Symon, Aaron Sanchez, Michael Harlan Turkell, Kara Zuaro, Emily Kaiser Thelen, Jonathan Dixon, Michelle Wildgen, Christine Muhlke, JJ Goode, Melissa Clark, and Matthew Amster-Burton. Plus online bonus tracks by Hubert Colson, Dave Wondrich, Jenny Morris, and John Currence.

The CD features recipes from the above chefs, set to music, and sung WORD FOR WORD! (In most cases, the musical styles were suggested by the chef.) Guest vocalists include Claudia Gonson (The Magnetic Fields), Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses, Breeders, Belly), and Allyssa Lamb (Las Rubias Del Norte)."

Mark Naison's "Communalism and Cooperation in Park Slope in the 1970's and 1980's "

DW forwarded the text of Mark Naison's post to us a week or two ago.  Here it is, on Naison's blog, With A Brooklyn Accent.

The year Liz and I moved to Park Slope, 1976, was a tough time in New York City. The city had just been saved from bankruptcy by an Emergency Financial Control Board that just mandated draconian cuts in all city services, especially parks, education, fire and sanitation, a policy, which, coupled with the wave of arson and abandonment that had swept through the city’s poorer neighborhoods, created the atmosphere of a city under siege. Buildings and neighborhoods which could afford it hired their own security forces, others, like ours on West 99th Street created volunteer security patrols to protect residents during evening hours...

I fixed my pen. Maybe everything will change, again?

About six months ago I broke the most expensive pen I'd ever bought - a yellow Aurora.  When I did that I stopped writing a long-hand diary, and switched to writing at a keyboard - my diary entries got longer, more daily, and I also just about stopped any sort of posting to public sites.  About an hour ago I borrowed some crazy glue and reconstructed the pen.  (I should have taken photos, but didn't think to.)  And I have an urge to post about it.

That reminds me: I brought an old pair of Clarks into the shoemaker today to have new crepe soles put on. 

Not since the civil war... (Simon Schama)

Every day at Opryland, the staff arrange my shaving gear a different way

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Bikey likes the new NYC lockups!

The mechanical meters replaced by the Muni Meters are being replaced by new lockups in the hood. Bikey likes it! (Why didn't they just alter the meter posts that were already in the ground? Or are these new things sleeves that fit over the old posts?)
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Street pig

Portland, Maine, at Pleasant and Maple.  Pebbles in concrete.

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