Man Played Banjo

Earl Scruggs, RIP.

Here're a few rippin' instrumentals with Earl & Lester, all recorded, I think, on the Martha White show in the early '60s:

"Cumberland Gap":

"Ground Speed":

 "Fireball Mail":

One more: "Earl Scruggs Breakdown". Is he using the tuning peg here to "bend" the note instead of bending the string--or is he re-tuning while playing? I've never seen anyone use the tuning peg to bend a note, although I have seen Junior Brown tune down the low E so he could hit lower notes (and then tune it back up to E to keep playing with standard fingering):

And here's a longer documentary from '72 with performances by Dylan, Baez, Bryds, etc. Amazing to think that it was called "The Complete Earl Scruggs Story" though recorded 39 year ago:

More than g-strings and sex changes

The strange tilt mirrors the natural formation to it's right (Sugarloaf Mountain).  It is nature regularized.  Perhaps an explicit reference to the doctrine of the rational imposition of order upon nature, defying it or improving it.  Something Gid's been looking at in the checkerboard motifs, echoed in images of regular furrows in plowed fields and perpendicular fences, perhaps as a reflection of a Pietist doctrine.  Perhaps this also implies the doctrine of human perfectibility.  It would also imply a civilizing mission....

The theology of turning the wilderness into a garden has most explicitly been vocalized by Protestants, but this idea was also present in Catholic thinking, excited by the discovery of the New World.  Which is what this pyramid celebrates: it is a monument to Estácio de Sá (1520-1567), the Portguese soldier who founded Rio de Janeiro.  Rio, like many another New World burg, doesn't have an origin lost in the mists of time, thus given a mythical founding.  Romulus and Remus for Rome.  Isis for Paris.  No.  In the Americas we have dates, concrete starting points for cities founded out of whole cloth, laid out in orderly grids.  The utopian impulse in urban planning.  The fresh start.  Regeneration.  "Order and Progress" as the flag of Brazil states.  Rationality and improvement, the themes we began with.

Now, I might be willing to write this monument off as just another pyramaid, albeit one with a nifty lilt; nothing esoteric here, folks....but damn it all if this one doesn't have, like our old friend in Blagnac, 13 layers.  I'm sorry, but artists and architects mean something.  This isn't just random chance, coincidence.  This pyramid is trying to communicate something.  Given that 13 colonies formed the basis of that utopian experiment of order and progress to the north, it's hard not to create a link.  Weaving spiders and whatnot.

Before the pyramid is a glass triangle on the ground which lets light into an underground "crypt", where a reproduction of Sá's tomb, the city seal and sand is illuminated from above.  (A picture of this can be found here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/leonardomartins/5770910215/).

No need to go back into the solar connections of the pyramid, obelisk and pyramidion, but this aspect of the monument does call to mind the Voortrekker monument, which also has a cenotaph illuminated from above by natural sunlight.  The Voortrekker Monument also celebrates a hearty band of colonists looking to create a new life out of whole cloth and more specifically, a group which thought it had a special covenant with God.  In addition to the theology of human improvement and the mastery over nature, New World theology is also one of covenant theology.  You'll have to take my word for that.

This Sá monument was designed by Lúcio Costa, a Brazilian architect in love with modernismwho privileged Brazil's Portuguese architectural heritage over the contributions of other cultures, resulting in losing a significant amount of non-Portuguese urban architecture over the years he held sway in these matters.  Costa, incidentally, was the chief designer of Brasilia, capital of Brazil.  Brasilia holds the distinction of being the world's only major metropolis inexistent at the beginning of the 20th century.  It was designed and constructed where nothing had existed before, rife with utopian idealism, much like the early colonial cities of the New World.

Costa lived to ripe old age, a visionary, a schemer and a political hack.  Sá died at 46 after an arrow went through his eye.

Coptic Pope

The Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Pope Shenouda III, died March 17, 2012.

His fuller title is, apparently,

Pope and Lord Archbishop of the Great City of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy Orthodox and Apostolic Throne of St Mark the Evangelist and Holy Apostle; Father of Fathers; Shepherd of Shepherds; Hierarch of all Hierarchs; Pillar and Defender of the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church and of the Orthodox faith; Dean of the Great Catechetical School of Alexadria; Ecumenical Judge of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church; Thirteenth among the Apostles.

The Coptics have 7-13 million followers, and are, with the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, one of the major catholic churches; but there are other catholic churches.

I don't know much--basically nothing, in fact--about non-Roman Catholic churches, so if you don't mind educating me in public, please pour on the comments. I'm not even sure that I've used "Catholic" and "catholic" (capital and non-capital c's) correctly--or the word "church" correctly. I think that the Coptics and the Greek Orthodox may have started naming Popes earlier than what became the Roman Catholic church--but again, I'm not sure.

"Pope", incidentally, stems from words meaning "Father" (think "poppa").

I'm not sure how true this is, but the site that clued me into the Pope's death, said that when choosing a successor, "the final choice is made by a boy who is led blindfold to the altar and invited to pull one of the names out of a hat."

As we all know that the Pope wears a funny hat, I hope the young fellow can keep a straight face and not think about bears in the woods...

A thing to devour

These strips were created by LoS pal .sWineDriveR., assuming the authorial identity of Jonathan Trenchwheat as he documented the surreal adventures of the Lil' AA.  The children of the Lil' AA were caricatures of actual Associationalist personages, embodying in an exuberant form the salient characteristics of their adult counterparts.  Pen and ink avatars of avatars.

They first appeared on Plastic Tub, which as far as I know was the first Wiki published online to be used for collaborative fiction of a sort, albeit one presented à la Wikipedia or Wiktionary.  I believe it to be the first Wiki "art project".  Created over a glorious couple of years, it has been dormant now for what seems like decades.

When it failed, it could be banal and awkwardly written, when it succeeded, it was brilliant.  Not to sound egotistical; it was the brilliance not of each individual, but of the so-called "third mind" arising from the furious vapors of sustained collaboration.  We Second Advance AA'ers honed our skills there and created, if not a universe, an amusing microcosm....at least.  We put in hours and made each other laugh in a game of one-upsmanship and in a labor of love, only rarely descending into dispute.  Any resulting acrimony was usually beer-fueled and indicative of genuine passion, generating heat equal to anything aroused by say, discussions about the West Bank.

But this is not time for nostalgiac paeans to a sleeping giant.  I re-stumbled across these strips this evening and was struck yet again by their seeming casual brilliance.  .sWineDriveR. here evokes the golden age of comic strips with a style and humor uniquely his own.  They're baffling.  They're funny.  They "work".  A blend of pure psychic automatism and meticulous craftmanship.

But enough of my pretentious flattery, just enjoy the strips.  Don't get distracted by my hunt and peck accolades.  I only hope that by putting these strips out there again, those accolades will be sung by someone who is not a friend and collaborator of their author, someone far more clever than myself.  Because these strips deserve some accolading.

Anyway, we've availed ourselves in slow times of the Tub before....they're easy posts, sure, but it's really to help promote our obscure past.  Gid and I were regular editors on the Tub and, to be frank, it irks me that the Tub is hasn't garnered some online attention for it's wit and innovation.  That's not what we did it for, but after all the work, I'd like it to be seen and read.  Yeah, I'm being self-serving and self-congratulatory, but what of it?  We should all to toot our horn every once and a while.  I risk coming across as a pompous ass, which in fact I am, but that doesn't make me wrong!

So check it out already!  And maybe, just maybe, the best interpretations offered up will be rewarded by a collage or hand-written poem, delivered to your door by post, wherever you door may be.