Stilled Light

The News for Parrots: Bas Relief

In this Gainesville Sun article from 1986 Margaret Shonbrun gives the back-story of Berenice Abbots' photo A Young Poet and Her Mynah Bird from Greenwich Village: Yesterday and Today. 



from Harper's Magazine, Vol 137, June, 1918, pg 330

The News For Parrots ~ Some Perches Are More Equal Than Other Perches

A Bird In Progress

Grand Stroking

Downtown Phoenix

Downtown Phoenix Base Crumbles

The News For Parrots ~ Witness to an Occupation

May Use Parrot As Murder Witness
Conroe, Texas
June 2, 1932, Greensburg Daily Tribune 
A squawking parrot, shouting gibberish at passerby, was ready to go to court today, but it was uncertain if it would be allowed to testify at a murder trial...

Discarded Mustang, Participatory Curation, Feb. 2010

Lygia Clark, Relational Objects in a Therapeutic Context: The Structuring of the Self, participatory performance, 1976-82,  Photo Sergio Zalis

 

"All these things and many more have happened since I have been away.  It only goes to show how little a Mugwump, perhaps the last of his race, is missed in this unfeeling world—I come back to find myself a party by myself." 

Mark Twain, The Lotos Club Dinner, 11/17/1900, The New York Times

The News For Parrots ~

Pets of a Healthy Widow  ~ Mansfield Daily Shield, 12/24/1892

Mrs. Robert Johnson has 200 cats, and each of them has a pedigree that extends back over many generations. As Mrs. Johnson has several millions of dollars and is a widow, her patrician cats live in a style befitting their long pedigrees. They live at Buena Vista, Mrs. Johnson's country mansion near Sonoma, Cal., and it takes three servants to care for the pussies. Every one of these cats is a real Angora, and...there are fences high and tight to keep these out and to restrain any vagrant tendencies that may have descended to any of these petted beauties from some outcast ancestor, for, as with most people of gentle blood, somewhere the fair line of ancestry runs into marauders, products perhaps of the wild time in which they lived. There are abouy 3,000 acres in the grounds about Buena Vista, and the residence stands In the center of ten acres of flowerpots and lawns.


~~~~~~ /alas, there is tension and a horrible battle/

As a punishment the murderous bird was sent to San Francisco and sold to a deep sea captain, who has since taught it to swear and also to drink Jamaica rum, which must be a source of great humiliation to it if remorse, regret and memory are among the attributes of a parrot who was reared amid such genteel surroundings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SHE DIDN'T HEED THE PARROT.;
So Josie German's Dress Was Stolen -- But the Thief Was Caught.
New York Times, 8/4/1864

Josie Gorman, a pretty young woman, of 566 Broome Street, says she heard her parrot down stairs calling out: "What you want?" several times, yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, she did not heed the question of the intelligent parrot. She wished she had when a friend entered her room and asked her if she had sent a man out with her new gray silk and velvet dress...

 

 

Isn't It Rich?

from A Little Night Music, made me tear up... snurf.  

I think I've been in his position once and hers twice (although I never had timing to lose).  

Watching the vhs amongst dvd episodes of Wonderfalls, currently reading Fire In The Rain...Singer In The Storm:  Holly Near. 

Love you loves.  Love you clowns.

A Sister's Book, A Brother's Love, A Family's Support

 

Personal Recollections of Vincent van Gogh

By Elisabeth Huberta Du Quesne-van Gogh, 1913

"The parents of the painter were bombarded with questions from well-meaning friends and relatives.

Alas, in our state of society, though it surely is not a pleasing custom, each one presumes to have the right to pass judgment upon a fellow-being, and feels called upon to offer advice, especially with the bringing-up of children. "If that were my son, or my daughter, I would" — and then follows exactly the opposite of what the parents had deemed or chosen as the wisest measure.

"If I were as wealthy as these people, I would surely or I would surely not, etc.," — and then follows something which again contradicts itself. And so in this case a hundred tongues let themselves be heard, each with a different opinion, and every one was, of course, convinced that to follow his special advice would be the best for Vincent.

It would never do for a young man of twenty-eight not to support himself. He ought to be treated differently. He should be made to dress better, to go among people instead of shunning them, to behave like others (as if it were not a privilege to be one's self and not like every one else). His father should be more severe, and if that did not help, send him to an institution, etc., etc. This was the form the good advice took. As if the parents had not suffered sufficiently to find themselves robbed of all their fond hopes, besides the ever growing financial difficulties which were pressing upon them. The technique of their son demanded much paint, and paint is expensive. To add to their disappointment, they in no way admired his work. What they liked he scorned, and what satisfied him was in their eyes bad taste. 

~~~~~~~~ Van Gogh supported this model and her five children on his allowance from his father.  

 

 

Carla Gravina

Hot Blondes Draggin' ~ Bon Scott Edition

It Is Awfully Hard to Really Know What You Know, But You Might Just Get What Amuses

Money   Gertrude Stein 
The Saturday Evening Post Treasury, 1st printing, 1954, pg 351
Originally published June 3, 1936

Index Summary:
Surprise! Miss Stein, here, is not only understandable, but very funny


Introduction:
One of George Horace Lorimer's last editorial acts at the Post was to buy this short article by a writer who was celebrated for her non-objective prose.  According to John Tebbel's biography, the rest of the staff was solidly opposed to the purchase but Lorimer, as always, prevailed.  "Why did you buy that stuff, Boss?" one of the editors asked him later.  Lorimer seemed genuinely surprised.  "Because," he said, "it amused me."


Money by Gertrude Stein

Everybody now just has to make up their mind. Is money money or isn't money money. Everybody who earns it and spends it every day in order to live knows that money is money, anybody who votes it to be gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That is what makes everybody go crazy.
Once upon a time there was a king and he was called Louis the fifteenth. He spent money as they are spending it now. He just spent it and spent it and one day somebody dared say something to the king about it. Oh, he said, after me the deluge, it would last out his time, and so what was the difference. When this king had begun his reign he was known as Louis the Well-beloved, when he died, nobody even stayed around to close his eyes.
But all the trouble really comes from this question is money money. Everybody who lives on it every day knows that money is money but the people who vote money, presidents and congress, do not think about money that way when they vote it. I remember when my nephew was a little boy he was out walking somewhere and he saw a lot of horses; he came home and he said, oh papa, I have just seen a million horses. A million, said his father, well anyway, said my nephew, I saw three. That came to be what we all used to say when anybody used numbers that they could nout count well anyway a million or three. That is the whole point. When you earn money and spend money every day anybody can know the difference between a million and three. But when you vote money away there really is not any difference between a million and three. And so everybody has to make up their mind is money money for everybody or is it not.
That is what everybody has to think about a lot or everybody is going to be awfully unhappy, because the time does come when the money voted comes suddenly to be money just like the money everybody earns every day and spends every day to live and when that time comes it makes everybody very unhappy. I do wish everybody would make up their mind about money being money.
It is awfully hard for anybody to think money is money when there is more of it than they can count. That is why there ought to be some kind of system that money should not be voted right away. When you spend money that you earn every day naturally think several times before you spend more than you have, and you mostly do not. Now if there was some arrangement made that when one lot voted to spend money, that they would have to wait a long time, and another lot have to vote, before they vote again to have that money, in short, if there was any way to make a government handle money the way a father of a family has to handle money if there only was. The natural feeling of a father of a family is that when anybody asks him for money he says no. Any father of a family, any member of a family, knows all about that.
So until everybody who votes public money rememembers how he feels as a father of a family, when he says no, when anybody in the family wants money, until that time comes, there is going to be a lot of trouble and some years later everybody is going to be very unhappy.
In Russia they tried to decide that money was not money, but now slowly and surely they are coming back to know that money is money.
Whether you like it or whether you do not money is money and that is all there is about it. Everybody knows it. When they earn it and spend what they earn they know it they really know that money is money and when they vote it they do not know it as money.
That is the trouble with everybody, it is awfully hard to really know what you know.
When you earn it and spend it you do know the difference between three dollars and a million dollars, but when you say it and vote it, it all sounds the same.
Of course it does, it would to anybody, and that is the reason they vote it and keep on voting it. So, now please, everybody, everybody everybody, please, is money money, and if it is, it ought to be the same whether it is what a father of a family earns and spends or a government, if it isn't sooner or later there is disaster.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from The Guardian

And here are

Ten Commandments for Gilbert and George

Thou shalt fight conformism
Thou shalt be the messenger of freedoms
Thou shalt make use of sex
Thou shalt reinvent life
Thou shalt create artificial art
Thou shalt have a sense of purpose
Thou shalt not know exactly what thou dost, but thou shalt do it
Thou shalt give thy love
Thou shalt grab the soul
Thou shalt give something back