Squint hard enough and I'm nobody
So send my coffin to work
rule my apartment all day long
you can't rhapsodize your eulogy
like there's a mystery in a whisper
besides what you can't hear
and a pomegranate is a pocket calculator
if you give every seed a name
or tape cores comprise better manacles
when they make the accusation stick
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Been a while
Wow, it's been a minute. So I finished the book on ink. Turns out it was from a print on demand publisher and that the text was public domain and available for free download in many places on the web. The author was really more an expert on ink than a writer. He excerpts many other writers and nearly repeats a chapter on tanno-gallate ink. India or Indian ink on the other hand gets only a few pages.
Considering that I wanted to glean some information about coming up with an ink remover suitable for use on books it fell quite short of the mark. The inks described in this book and the ink used today bear little similarity. These days most ink is comprised of coal tar or products distilled from petroleum, as are my keyboard and computer in large part.
The for-sale inventory of cuttlebone books has finally surpassed the 500 mark. At a book sale last thursday I found a small book on horology, the study of time and/or clocks. This book unlike the history of timepieces discussed below appears to have a greater concetration on the technical aspects. It's on a British university imprint that may have been picked up by Dover in the states. I have, visually nearly identical book, in the same series on the subject of chess. I suspect these books, and others similar must have comprised a nice set. I'm kind of torn as to whether to continue to post this horology book for sale or to read it myself. I think I'll leave it for now and once I finish one of the books I am reading decide if I am going to give it a read.
Considering that I wanted to glean some information about coming up with an ink remover suitable for use on books it fell quite short of the mark. The inks described in this book and the ink used today bear little similarity. These days most ink is comprised of coal tar or products distilled from petroleum, as are my keyboard and computer in large part.
The for-sale inventory of cuttlebone books has finally surpassed the 500 mark. At a book sale last thursday I found a small book on horology, the study of time and/or clocks. This book unlike the history of timepieces discussed below appears to have a greater concetration on the technical aspects. It's on a British university imprint that may have been picked up by Dover in the states. I have, visually nearly identical book, in the same series on the subject of chess. I suspect these books, and others similar must have comprised a nice set. I'm kind of torn as to whether to continue to post this horology book for sale or to read it myself. I think I'll leave it for now and once I finish one of the books I am reading decide if I am going to give it a read.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Hitting the ink
So my wait is over. The book I ordered the other day, Forty Centuries of Ink, has finally arrived. I just can't wait to tear into this one. Hopefully pollen won't intervene. Definitely sidelining Outlaws of the Marsh until I finish this one. I hope it has a bibliography.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Liquid Air
Hi,
So I've composed a new poem and the working title is Liqiud Air. I may change the title if I come up with a better one.
Krypton, the color of envy
Hidden, green, poisonous
Scraps of a destroyed home
Xenon strangers
Leaving exiled heroes to die
Neonatal argonauts
drawing the shallowest breath
Under distant yellow sun's
Vacant smile in blue nitrogen sky
So I've composed a new poem and the working title is Liqiud Air. I may change the title if I come up with a better one.
Krypton, the color of envy
Hidden, green, poisonous
Scraps of a destroyed home
Xenon strangers
Leaving exiled heroes to die
Neonatal argonauts
drawing the shallowest breath
Under distant yellow sun's
Vacant smile in blue nitrogen sky
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
So, looks like Spiral Bridge has my poems up
Spiral Bridge, a poets' & writers' guild for northern New Jersey is featuring my writing on their website. See link
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
New Poem, I am calling this "Carthaginian Fries"
Hi, I was going to title this one "lonesome logic." I think I am switching to calling it "Carthaginian Fries"
Out of date, out of town, faded in the sun
soggy phonebooks' lonesome logic explains
seagull standing on k-mart circular
stains kitchen chairs, power tools
or toys from last years cartoon
fighting pigeons and crows
over Burger King Fries
starlings sort the Carthage salt
returning for the last crumb
plastered leaves on springtime pavement
windshield shards, 10,000 tires
against white, green, then white again
and I don't know what to do with my hat and coat
Out of date, out of town, faded in the sun
soggy phonebooks' lonesome logic explains
seagull standing on k-mart circular
stains kitchen chairs, power tools
or toys from last years cartoon
fighting pigeons and crows
over Burger King Fries
starlings sort the Carthage salt
returning for the last crumb
plastered leaves on springtime pavement
windshield shards, 10,000 tires
against white, green, then white again
and I don't know what to do with my hat and coat
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Revolution in Time
I just yesterday finished reading Revolution in Time by David S. Landes. It falls flat as a technical manual for clocks and watches, but the early chapters give a suitable overview of people’s relation to time and timepieces. The authors unit of analysis gets progressively narrower as his subject approaches the present. The details he does give in later chapters don’t give an analogous picture of people’s relation to time and timepieces and their manufacture in the early 80s when the book was published...
The book mentions John Harrison, an early inventor of a clock accurate enough to be used aboard ship to computer longitude. Harrison was a man of humble beginnings and meager resources who taught himself horology and designed and build a number of innovative clocks. His earliest models were composed mostly of wood, which was unusual for the time but very were accurate . Perhaps I'll see if his bio is in print in the U.K. I'd love to read a biography of John Harrison but it appears none is currently in print in the U.S. There's a recent movie/book tie in but a more exhaustive biography of Harrison from 1920 is priced well out of my range. I mistakenly believed that Harrison Birtwistle's musical composition, titled "Harrison's Clocks." referred to the composer but now I think rather refers to John Harrison.
The other person this book has me thinking about, in reference to artisanship and craft, is William Morris. I've got 3 or 4 books by or about him that I may read in rapid succession once I am through with this book. I guess I am trying to get a picture of skilled labor and artisanship. These days, many folks who historically worked, for example, on jewelry or timepieces are finding their jobs deskilled and themselves outsourced or replaced by underwaged immigrant workers. The antagonisms in terms of immediate material interest and in terms of contradictions within the class should be obvious. These people still possess the skills and in many cases the tools of repair and manufacture. Many are working from a bench in their home after work hours. Hairdressers working out of their kitchen would be a similar example. This is bears resemblance to my own experience selling/repairing books. Libraries are shortening their hours and shrinking their collections and bookstores with selections more heterogeneous than Barnes & Noble are being forced out of business or onto the web. People with skills and knowledge relevant to books are forced to ply their craft in isolation. Buying up books at a discount, sprucing them up a bit and then selling them online can bring in a few extra bucks. There is something to be said for not having to answer to management and also seeing monetary returns on the use of skills and knowledge that an employer might discourage or fail to recognize. The downside is that the monetary return on an hour of this work is way below what someone would be paid if they were conventionally employed and that such folks are so atomized as workers that no traditional method of workplace organizing is appropriate.
Similarly it's recently become easier and more popular for folks to engage in "hardware hacking" and "circuit bending" of computers and other electronics. There is in fact a magazine published by O'Reilly dedicated almost exclusively to these "makers." It remains to be seen where artisanship like this will lead. It is easy to imagine, though that folks with enough money would patronize a custom computer or electronics boutique. Web based versions of such boutiques already exist.
So I am probably going to dust off old William Morris in the next month or so. In a direct methodological sense I don't think I will take much away from Morris' writing. I've read a bit of his stuff and he is kind of weak on imperialism and didn't strike me as the best organizer. But I think the books by/about him will give me some context, however quaint, to inform an understanding the human side of this kind of microcapitalist homework.
The book mentions John Harrison, an early inventor of a clock accurate enough to be used aboard ship to computer longitude. Harrison was a man of humble beginnings and meager resources who taught himself horology and designed and build a number of innovative clocks. His earliest models were composed mostly of wood, which was unusual for the time but very were accurate . Perhaps I'll see if his bio is in print in the U.K. I'd love to read a biography of John Harrison but it appears none is currently in print in the U.S. There's a recent movie/book tie in but a more exhaustive biography of Harrison from 1920 is priced well out of my range. I mistakenly believed that Harrison Birtwistle's musical composition, titled "Harrison's Clocks." referred to the composer but now I think rather refers to John Harrison.
The other person this book has me thinking about, in reference to artisanship and craft, is William Morris. I've got 3 or 4 books by or about him that I may read in rapid succession once I am through with this book. I guess I am trying to get a picture of skilled labor and artisanship. These days, many folks who historically worked, for example, on jewelry or timepieces are finding their jobs deskilled and themselves outsourced or replaced by underwaged immigrant workers. The antagonisms in terms of immediate material interest and in terms of contradictions within the class should be obvious. These people still possess the skills and in many cases the tools of repair and manufacture. Many are working from a bench in their home after work hours. Hairdressers working out of their kitchen would be a similar example. This is bears resemblance to my own experience selling/repairing books. Libraries are shortening their hours and shrinking their collections and bookstores with selections more heterogeneous than Barnes & Noble are being forced out of business or onto the web. People with skills and knowledge relevant to books are forced to ply their craft in isolation. Buying up books at a discount, sprucing them up a bit and then selling them online can bring in a few extra bucks. There is something to be said for not having to answer to management and also seeing monetary returns on the use of skills and knowledge that an employer might discourage or fail to recognize. The downside is that the monetary return on an hour of this work is way below what someone would be paid if they were conventionally employed and that such folks are so atomized as workers that no traditional method of workplace organizing is appropriate.
Similarly it's recently become easier and more popular for folks to engage in "hardware hacking" and "circuit bending" of computers and other electronics. There is in fact a magazine published by O'Reilly dedicated almost exclusively to these "makers." It remains to be seen where artisanship like this will lead. It is easy to imagine, though that folks with enough money would patronize a custom computer or electronics boutique. Web based versions of such boutiques already exist.
So I am probably going to dust off old William Morris in the next month or so. In a direct methodological sense I don't think I will take much away from Morris' writing. I've read a bit of his stuff and he is kind of weak on imperialism and didn't strike me as the best organizer. But I think the books by/about him will give me some context, however quaint, to inform an understanding the human side of this kind of microcapitalist homework.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
