ste!!a gassaway: unpredictable thoughts

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the intersection of work + play

Three holy wars, remembering Howard Zinn

We have lost Howard Zinn. Luckily he spoke his mind and it was captured in video and in print. This is just one of many enlightening lectures he gave not that long ago – 2008.

“His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives. When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”
– Noam Chomsky

Coffee styles, robotic java

It seems as though we are seeking slower ways to enjoy ourselves. Most of this is illustrated in the rituals around food that have come to pass, a need to find slow food.

Just when I thought that espresso style coffees had completely taken over the planet — I found the movement for pour over coffee. I know this better as Melitta style… or drip coffee.

This is a Japanese video of the process.

music today : patti smith, because the night

Patti Smith makes art in whatever way she can. I wanna sing like Patti Smith. I wanna be like Patti Smith, sorta.

A Time to Break Silence : Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLKmugshot

Dr. King shortly after his bus boycott arrest
Alabama Police Mugshot, February 22, 1956

This speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. rings true today.

from:
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence
Delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Full speech click on this line.

James Joyce, the beauty of words

It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

- the end of The Dead, by James Joyce

ringtones : a holiday carol

Experience Mobile Mobile from James Théophane Jnr on Vimeo.

Yes the phones were programmed with timed ringtones. Nice video. Nice installation.

Philadelphia Museum of Art : Blah Blah Blah…

Was just over at the Philadelphia Museum of Art searching for their hours on Sunday. Was trying to get over to the Gorky Exhibition, spaced that Sunday was the last day. So why when I come to the welcome page can’t I find the hours in the footer or a box?

I click Information. Not there.
I click Visiting. Quick scan, Not there.
I click sitemap. Not there.

Not until I go back to visiting do I notice that under Main Building that there are hours another click away. Now when I click hours under Main Building (whatever that is) I get all the visitor information for all of the buildings. What the &%!.

Gumby, Pokey, put on your black arm band.

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A sad day for Gumby and Pokey. Art Clokey, the animator who created the lovable, bendable clay creation Gumby over a half-century ago, died. Many a saturday morning was spent cereal bowl in hand watching the green guy and his orange pony pal.

It was Eddie Murphy’s SNL Gumby sketch 40 years after the birth of Gumby that finally created some financial reward to Art. The cultural icon is still popular today and has even moved into the new world of social media — Gumby has over 134,000 fans on Facebook.

hulu.com currently has some Gumby available for viewing.

poem today : Hide and Seek, Kay Ryan

It’s hard not

to jump out

instead of

waiting to be

found. It’s

hard to be

alone so long

and then hear

someone come

around. It’s

like some form

of skin’s developed

in the air

that, rather

than have torn,

you tear.

(“Hide and Seek” was originally published in “The Niagara River” by Kay Ryan, Grove Press Poetry Series, 2005.)

if you have any – Move your money.

A new movement. Think global. Act local.

Small banks actually have an interest in your community. Return the favor.

fun theory

I really don’t have much more to say than this was fun. I want one in my neighborhood.

poem today : turtle, kay ryan

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
Will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.

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