Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Something/Someone Old
I was looking into cliffside architecture when I came across this marvel. Not sure I'd want to live here, but how amazing this is!
Meet Setenil de las Bodegas, a Spanish town literally built under a rock.
Setenil de las Bodegas is a town (pueblo) and municipality in the province of Cádiz, Spain, famous for its dwellings built into rock overhangs above the Río Guadalporcún. According to the 2005 census, the city has a population of 3,016 inhabitants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setenil_de_las_Bodegas
Modern Setenil evolved from a fortified Moorish town that occupied a bluff overlooking a sharp bend in the Rio Trejo northwest of Ronda.
The website Travel Awaits describes it as follows:
Odd as it may sound, the people who came to the area chose to settle into the rocky terrain for practical reasons. The natural caves were ideal living quarters that provided numerous benefits. The most obvious is the natural defense of, well, living in a cave. But the way the buildings are constructed also provides natural cooling in summer and warmth in the wintertime. They simply built facades into the rock to enclose their home spaces and eventually create a village.
Setenil has a rich history in its name. It started as a fortified Moorish town in Cadiz. Its castle dates from the twelfth century. It was one of the last fortresses taken by the Catholic Reconquest. The word "setenil" is a contraction of the Latin septem nihil, or "seven times nothing." This phrase refers to the fact that the Catholic monarchs had to assault Setenil seven times before it fell:
the Moorish town's resistance to Christian assault, allegedly being captured only after seven sieges. This took place in the final years of the Christian Reconquest. Besieged unsuccessfully in 1407, Setenil finally fell in 1484 when Christian forces expelled the Moorish occupants. Using gunpowder artillery, the Christians took fifteen days to capture the castle whose ruins dominate the town today.
Mountain folk are some tough mothers.
The "bodegas" part comes from the fact that they used the caves in the mountainside not only for living space, but for warehouse space. In fact, they were for a long time celebrated for their wine, which they stored in those caves.
One more place in Spain I'd love to go.
Something New
My friend Christine has created a rather amazing meditation on the relationship between sound, meaning, and lived experience. If you want to expand your mind, or take a vacation from your ordinary thoughts, or reflect on what your ordinary thoughts actually are, tune in to The Soundtrack of Now.
Something Borrowed
I love Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels. Recently, I splurged on a volume by Ken Darby, a writer who apparently was personally acquainted with Stout, called The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe.
Wolfe has a strict rule never to leave his house on business, and a preference to leave it as little as possible. This attitude enabled Stout, one of the founders of the ACLU, to use the Nero Wolfe mysteries to talk about the 4th amendment. But it also implied a certain attitude on the part of the World War 1 veteran (Wolfe); it is as if, after having been horribly disappointed and scarred by the world, he decided to create his own world within its walls, and to emerge from it only when absolutely necessary.
The brownstone is, therefore, a little like the Starship Enterprise; almost a character in the Stout novels. Darby, for the most part, does a lovely job describing it based on various stories, providing floor plans based on quotations from the texts, and reconciling Stout's discrepancies and contradictions--all in the voice of Stout's narrator, Archie Goodwin. He does a reasonably good job of replicating ARchie's voice, though not a perfect one, and was doing fine with his representations of Wolfe's voice as well, except for the following. I was nearly finished with the book when I was suddenly and unexpectedly treated to a diatribe about homosexuality in the form of a letter from Wolfe!
The trickiest and most important thing in trying to write about, or from the point of view of, Stout's two main characters, is getting their attitudes and diction just right. Rex Stout's greatest talent was his ability to use words to quickly, powerfully and consistently convey character. While I can't imagine Wolfe taking an interest in Pride festivities, the blatant homophobia was profoundly out of character. I can't imagine him writing about any kind of sex at all unless impelled to by the requirements of a job; and even though the letter is ostensibly about a word ("gay")--and Wolfe could definitely have written an entire long letter about the history or usage of a word--he would not have expressed himself as Darby made him do. I have no idea what Stout's views on the matter would have been, but Darby appears to have, in any case, borrowed Stout's material and used it to vent his spleen. Too bad, because I very much liked the book up till then.
Something Blue
I love the surrealist artist Steven Kenny. I'm not usually avaricious, but every time I see that one of his pictures has sold it hurts me a little bit. Then I remind myself that his pictures selling means I will get to see more of them.
Here's one from 2018 called "The Siren:"
I've been loving his work for around a decade. It's interesting to see how more sea images have come into his work since he moved to Florida.
(No, I don't know him personally; I just know he moved to Florida because I know he's a docent at the Salvador Dali museum).
Comments
Good morning, everybody!
I went back and forth on the question of whether to quote the annoying, disappointing passage from Darby's book. On the one hand, it was unpleasant to read and will be unpleasant to transcribe. On the other, I emphatically don't support what's now known as "cancel culture;" I agree with Edward Murrow that the best defense against rotten ideas is to argue with them rather than attempt to suppress them.
These are just a couple of excerpts.
E.H. Chapin wrote: Gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair. And no truer words were ever written TO homosexuals. They should have looked at that epigram long and carefully before selecting "gay" as the escutcheon for their culture, because the tragic truth is that "there is no depth of despair like that of an aging fag."These words were spoken by a homosexual just two months before he killed himself...He once told me that the homosexual love-marriage arrangement (his words) "is a constant, predatory cock fight. Fidelity has little meaning, and jealousy is a scorching blaze barely concealed beneath the surface of the male-to-male or female-to-female relationship...Each partner lives in a suppressed agony of suspicion, imagining or suspecting that the other is on the lookout for a new connection in case this one falls apart."
And these are the people who want to be called gay?
As happens to me so often these days, the sheer weight of unexamined assumptions in this passage is enough to (almost) drive me to silence via exhaustion. Confronted by such an Augean stable, I think it's probably only the state of the current culture, with its vicious, unsupported accusations of bigotry on one side, and vicious and murderous actual bigotry on the other, that awakens, rather, my obduracy and makes me analyze at least a bit of this nonsense.
First, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that any monogamous relationship has the potential for scorching blazes of jealousy and suppressed agonies of suspicion? That is not to say that every monogamous relationship is like that; merely that homosexual and lesbian relationships hardly have the monopoly on such emotions. In fact, given that in some cultures it is true that a man can legally murder his wife if she is found to have been unfaithful, it seems to me that heterosexual monogamy could justly claim, if not sole possession of such feelings, then certainly their development to a high degree. (I am, in putting the case this way, showing far more respect toward monogamy, which is not my practice, than Mr. Darby shows toward homosexuality, which is not his. I mention this as an illogical lesson in manners for Mr. Darby who, being dead, will not profit from it.)
As for the "despair of the aging fag," it seems fairly obvious that the dominant view of homosexual male culture in this country is that youth is the best thing ever. But isn't it also true that that is the dominant view of heterosexual male culture in this country? I would love to see someone try to make the case that the heterosexual ideal of female beauty has little to do with youth. The despairing aging fag, if and when he exists, could certainly find plenty of drinking buddies among aging heterosexual women who know that the one thing the culture values in them has diminished and gone. And, just as I know that among heterosexual women there are plenty of people who essentially say "Screw that, I'm living my life and you all can shelve, or shove, any idea of inspiring *me* to despair," I'm guessing that there are a fair number of homosexual men who feel the same and have no intention of killing themselves because they are no longer twenty-two. What a load of nonsense! And how ridiculous to put words like "the despair of the aging fag" in the mouth of Nero Wolfe, who I suspect would be more likely to analyze the etymology of the word "fag" than to use it, if for no other reason than that Wolfe has a distaste for sexuality of all kinds, not because he believes it is bad or wrong, but because he was nearly murdered by his Montenegrin wife when he was young. The experience led him to decide that both women in general and sex in general were to be kept at more than arm's length. Nero Wolfe would never initiate a lengthy discussion of the inner workings of anybody's sexual relationship.
Should I even bring up the absurdity of lumping lesbian relationships in with homosexual male relationships as if they are culturally synonymous? If anything shows the profound bigotry of Mr. Darby's view, it is surely that. He's clearly not interested in lesbians at all; his irritation and condemnation are directed at gay men. But because what he's really defending is a sexual norm, he tosses everyone who doesn't meet that norm into one giant pile along with the gay men who are the real subject of his attack. If he knew what a transsexual or a bisexual person was, he would probably toss them down the cultural garbage chute as well. What an incredible smell you've discovered, Mr. Darby!
Then there's this:
Even for the most dignified and respectable of homosexuals, what could be less gay than possessing the physique of a man but the psychic response of a woman?
Someone bring me a river.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Riots and looting in Stuttgart, Germany
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-riots-and-looting-grip-stuttgart/a-53886746
Connection to U.S. BLM and related international protest? Political context, actors, motives? Reporting is still murky and tenuous, details are so far lacking. Stuttgart city mayor Fritz Kuhn is a Green. So is the state governor of Baden-Wurttemberg, Winfried Kretschmann.
Sorry to hear that, lotlizard.
If you find out more details, please pass them along.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
On top of Covid, BLM, and climate, terror attacks weigh in again
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/21/reading-stabbings-libyan...
And then this story from the end of May wasn’t great to read about, either. Went under the MSM’s and most people’s radar amidst the George Floyd coverage. Would have come across as “whataboutism” and problematic, what with the suspect here being Black and the victims white.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/24/us/detroit-nursing-home-beating-charg...
Good morning CSTMS. I hope you are all well there and that
Kate is improving after the surgery ok.
Setenil de las Bodegas looks like a wonderful place. It reminds me of a town I can't recall the name of near or along the costa del sol that is built right along but not into the hillside of some small terrace set into a roughly bowl shaped hill feature. It looks as if Setenil de las Bodegas has grown and expanded well beyond its cave and cliffside origins, while the place I recall mostly hasn't and would probably even shrink without tourism.
My thoughts on reading the Darby passage were much like yours. That whole crock about fidelity and jealousy has nothing to do with gender or sexual preference, but is a feature of the broader culture, of possessiveness (and acquisitiveness, perhaps too) and of couples, of simply pairing off or being members of a self-identified group. It might or might not exist for any couple, trio or other grouping depending upon the personalities of the individuals involved and at all upon their sexual orientations.
As for the despair of the aging, I suspect that is simply a product of isolation and loneliness coupled with whatever it is that promotes or otherwise leads to depression. If companionship is important to one's psyche, then the risk of said despair and depression is there, just as it would be for others finding their lives winding down with some important component lacking - those who failed to achieve some personally important lifelong goal, for example.
I haven't listened yet, but are your friend's soundscapes intended to be "AMSR", whatever that may be?
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I don't know if she intended that--
although it seems like there are natural sounds involved in at least some of her soundscapes.
I should ask her about this. Actually, it would be polite if I informed her I'd included her in this OT!
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Well, I'm facing my own version of that and it has nothing
to do with gender or sex. A lot to do with authority and power, though.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Kate is doing great, by the way--
I should really post an update about that.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Please do!
I had no idea that she had had surgery.
All my best!
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Uh, whoops....
I will get to that this week, definitely.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good morning...
The Spanish city reminds me of the SW cliff dwellings.
Also youtube has several Nero Wolf episodes if you enjoy them.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTbClcWmY7diEekHYQpwTQ
Been busy this AM watering. This has been our first dry week of the year here. Hope you and yours are doing well!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Me too!
I was first introduced to those people in a little book given to me by my grandmother, in which the kid gets a kind of tour of various indigenous cultures via a story about a kid from each of those cultures. For a book put out in the forties or fifties, not all that bad. Lovely drawings.
It's amazing how things you encounter before a certain age imprint themselves on your brain.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Oh, I *own* all those Timothy Hutton adaptations.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
ha;
i'd dug out a photo of cliff place myself to bring. and of course: the kivas...
You live in an amazing part of the world
We also toured closer to your neck of the woods in Mancos canyon with the Ute tribe.
I see there's a fire there. Hope all is well for you and yours!
https://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/2020/06/15/fire-leads-evacu...
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
i admit that there
was a point when i'd thought we'd be ordered to bug out again, but then OMG 2 full jet slurry bombers came to help fight the fire. but the fire was on the back side of our nearby mennefee mountain this time. out side had burned to a crisp in 2012 or 2013, so not much fuel left.
OTOH, in the last 2 fires in mesa verde nat'l park, close to half million acre burned.haven't bee u there since then. but the smoke clouds from the last fire went straight into the sky, and had created their own lightning storms. simply breathtaking to witness.
I always thought I'd go to see those someday.
Well, who knows, maybe I still will. More unexpected things have happened.
Twelve years ago I never would have imagined that 2020 would look like this.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
you'd alway be welcome
to stay w/ us in our wee 12-sided hogan in a spectacular green oasis we've created b planting 203 trees and shrubs. wildlife galore! kinda grubby now, but we serve great food made with love, and would try to clean up a bit ahead of time. (or give you a schmutz rag to clean what ain't clean enuff.) ; )
Wow, wendy, that would be great!
Something to hope for.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
What an interesting find
Setenil de las Bodegas would definitely be a place I’d like to see for myself. Perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright visited it in his youth and it made an impression on him?
Thanks for the introduction to Steven Kenny. Just love “The Siren”. How clever and evocative.
As usual, lots of good stuff
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Now *there's* something I have seen in person--Falling Water!
It hadn't occurred to me to connect the two, but there is a similarity, isn't there?
Thanks for your kind words and for dropping by. Kenny's work is just lovely, and there's oodles more of it. If you like surrealism, I'd very much recommend it.
Here's a link. I should have included it in the main body...
http://www.stevenkenny.com/
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Gosh, I’m envious
That is one house I’d really like to see in person. It’s the first thing that came to my mind when I saw Setenil de las Bodegas.
Thanks for the link!
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
was/is the soundtrack of Now
supposed to play? given there's a button and all...
i love maxfield parrish, too, and long, long ago when i had some money, i found a arch-framed triptych in an antiques store on my way back home from a healing arts festival north of boulder, co.
mysteries: i keep meaning to ask you if you'd like me to box up some of mine. i used to collect mostly first editions, as i meant to open a bookshop once i'd need to retire. there used to be a few thousand in glassine archival covers, but i've been giving them to friends and libraries over the past few years. dunno how many are still down there in cartons.
mr. wd just took me on a tour of the garden, and when we came in i poked about to see what might interest to you in the shelves. short list are tony hillerman's fisrt american mysteries (t'was he who'd gotten me interested in the genre to begin with), dick francis (former jockey to the queen), sue grafton, elmore leonard, sarah paretsky...oh, tiddly-pom; i'll ask mr wd about the others. particia cornwell, but she's pretty much a right-wing fascist friend of barbara bush, but she knows her crime.
i used to have a lot of robert parker volumes, but come to think of it...i didn't notice any of those. but he's excellent, esp. his jesse stone series.
good solstice and happy father's day to all.
anyhoo, not having any money to spare, i'd need to have you reimburse me for shipping costs, although books ship by mail at a far lower rate. PM me at will, okay?
I would *love* that! How generous.
I'm very fond of Hillerman and have much of his stuff in MM paperbacks, rather ratty by now, so anything by him would be great. I like Sara Paretsky a lot too. I love Reginald Hill, if you have any of his stuff.
Patricia Cornwall, well, I read a book of hers and recognized it as good writing, but it left me cold. I didn't know she was a fascist. Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy visiting her writing? Although I like Agatha Christie (mostly), and god knows she's far from left. Still, I think Barbara Bush would not have impressed her favorably, frightening iceberg of a woman that she was (Bush, not Christie).
I had never heard of Dick Francis before, but he sounds like someone I'd like.
So yes, let's talk, and of course I would reimburse you for the shipping!
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
good-o, then.
i'll try to get a it together when things slow down here a bit, and PM it to you. reginald hill: dunno that i have any of his books, at least out on the shelves. cornwall i kinda bought as an investment, as her first edition prices soared after mother bush's recommendations. sigh.
but i have loads of other genres, as well. and the glassine covers make them look real purdy in bookcases. ; )
Patricia Cornwall'S early books were pretty good
But as she kept writing I became less thrilled with them. Maybe that’s when she met her fate with the Bush family? This was my first experience with books on tapes. Since then I must have listened to over 2,000 of them and some up to 5 times. Now it’s hard for me to read books cuz I see things in 2 dimensions. I find that weird.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Dick Francis used to be a jockey
In Great Britain. Got injured and took up writing. His mysteries are equine themed and are a fascinating look into the horse racing world. Fun reading.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
in one book case in our
bedroom (not in the cellar) i also found in the mystery genre: 1 (excellent author) nevada bar (nat'l park ranger), 1 marcia mueller. other worthy books to read: first americans chris eyre, sherman alexie, 5 louise erdrich, 1 m scott momaday poems, stories and drawings, 1 david seals.
2 or 3 barbara kingsolvers, (along w/ my other favorite author) 2 early john irvings, 2 larry mcMurty (may be others down cellar: not lonesome dove, it's gone).
I try to do this daily
"I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.
You would think that after walking at the cemetery daily and twice during the summer I would get bored walking there. I don't. There is always something new for me to see or a tree to exam or see something in a different light because the light itself has changed from the day before.
Or charlie does something just so damn cute.
She just loves to pick things for burial. This is why I am rarely bored with walking at the same place over and over and over.....for over a decade.
Fun story. This morning after Charlie again went into the front room to see if Abby was there yet she went into the bathroom. I heard a scritching noise and she was behind the commode where the garbage was. I waited to see what she was doing and when she came out she had an empty TP roll in her mouth. Lengthwise. All the way in her mouth to where I could hardly see the end of it. Why? She wanted to bury it. So she did. This is just one episode of Mornings with Charlie. She starts my days with a smile.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
That is pretty damn cute
Did you put the flowers in Charlie’s mouth, or did she do that by herself?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
She did it
I turned around and cracked up when I saw her. I can only guess at where she found it or why she had to pick it up. Beagles love to bury stuff. Why she felt the need to bury the TP roll this morning I sure do not know. One night I let her lick the empty ice cream container. The next morning I heard her bumping up the stairs and she had taken it down to the basement and brought it back up and was trying to get out the dawg door to bury it in the yard. It covered her eyes so she couldn’t see where she was going. My first one buried her dawg food one piece at a time during a backpacking trip. In separate directions. We just watched as she kept doing it.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
HaHaHaHa!!
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
That's pretty funny.
I remember in college one of my roommates had a miniature dachshund. She was not very bright. She loved to chase squirrels. She'd hightail it after a squirrel. The squirrel would reach a tree and run up it. The dog would continue barreling along.
She never seemed to notice that the squirrel had gone.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Those damned squirrels!
My sister dog, Beena, would go crazy when she saw squirrels. She’d yank your arm out of the socket if she were on the leash.
We have a squirrel on the property here that we call “Julius” because he likes to eat the oranges off the trees. We know this because he leaves little pieces of the orange rind everywhere. Like confetti.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Hey, snoop.
Somebody, I don't know who, once said, "Lightning never strikes the same place twice because the same place is never there twice."
It's awesome to be able to see that. Though when I think about it, it looks more like the place both is and isn't the same. Sometimes it seems like a given place can contain many times within it, and all the different versions of itself that have ever been reside in that same space. But maybe I just read too much Irish literature in school.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Excellent saying
This is true for me. I think I’m able to do this because of my decades of doing photography. I see something and then look at it more deeply to see if I can capture it. I also did bonsai way back when and I started seeing trees in a different light. I saw one today for the first time really actually looking at its structure. I have walked past it for years, but today it was like the first time.
Keep reading Irish ligature...
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.