Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Something/Someone Old
222old.jpg

My Something Old today is the USS Constitution.

constitution1.jpg

constitution2.jpg

USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy, named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat.[Note 1] Constitution was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so Constitution and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. She was built in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts at Edmund Hartt's shipyard. Her first duties with the newly formed U.S. Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.

I had no idea she was that old, nor that she had been named by George Washington.

Personally, I've always liked frigates. They have beautiful lines, and look like they would be fairly maneuverable despite their size. But I know very little about ships.

Constitution's actions as a military vessel, are unusually, actions I can absolutely get behind:

Constitution is most noted for her actions during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane, and Levant. The battle with Guerriere earned her the nickname of "Old Ironsides" and public adoration that has repeatedly saved her from scrapping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution

I have no idea why the War of 1812, one of the most justifiable wars the country has ever engaged in, is so little remembered or regarded in the catalog of America's wars. Regardless of how one feels about the Founders, I see no reason why eighteenth-century Britain should have had an empire or dictated to people thousands of miles away what they should do. In fact, the British Empire was pretty obviously a rotten thing. Picking up that rotten thing, slightly re-tooling it, and renaming it America's Defense of the Free World is perhaps the third-worst thing the country has done.

It's pretty remarkable that a poem kept the ship from being scrapped:

Old Ironsides
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee;—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

O, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every thread-bare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,—
The lightning and the gale!

One of the nation's best loved patriotic poems first appeared in 1830 when the victorious frigate was only 33 years old and headed for the scrap heap....Oliver Wendell Holmes was just 21 when he wrote "Old Ironsides" in 1830. Other than a few comic poems for his Harvard newspaper, Holmes had published little else. In the nine-volume edition of Holmes’ collected works, "Old Ironsides" appears on page one. He knocked off the three short stanzas one afternoon while procrastinating at law school, yet it remains his best-known work today. We’ll never know what other early gems he might have produced since Holmes consigned most of his other early work to the trash.

http://www.seacoastnh.com/Maritime-History/Old-Ironsides/the-poem-that-s...

Of course, while I'm happy the old ship is still around, because I think it's cool, I can't really get behind the poem. I said the War of 1812 was justifiable, and I believe it was, but that doesn't mean I get off on conquered people kneeling on deck in "heroes' blood"--and what the hell is that about anyway? We weren't conquering anybody else in the War of 1812. And, as far as I know, the Constitution had previously been used as defense for American trade routes, not conquest. However, I do think it was clever for Holmes to use a "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" argument rather than simply pleading for the ship. It's probably what made his work successful.

Something New
icon_new.png

This is a new video from Jimmy Dore. There are, apparently, just as many McCarthyite character attacks across the pond as there are here. Jeremy Corbyn has recently been branded a Communist mole who fed information to Czech spies during the time of the Soviet Union; it is being said that he has betrayed his country; he has been compared to a bonafide spy.

Yet, apparently the smear of Jeremy Corbyn is not working so well over there.

What is inspiring about this video is that the host, Andrew Neil, who is actually a conservative, lambastes those who have spread these stories. It is a show of integrity well worth seeing. It's good to know that there is more pushback in Britain than there is here.

Something Borrowed
cuprobots_striatic.jpg

My Something Borrowed today is an example of Borrowed Art, or appropriated art, about which I have somewhat mixed feelings. It is basically taking an image, either in whole or in part, and recontextualizing it to create new meanings. It can be extremely powerful, particularly if you create a vastly different context around the image in question. It can also be pretentious and empty.

Appropriation has been defined as "the taking over, into a work of art, of a real object or even an existing work of art."[2] The Tate Gallery traces the practise back to Cubism and Dadaism, but continuing into 1940s Surrealism and 1950s Pop art. It returned to prominence in the 1980s with the Neo-Geo artists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_(art)

I confess to having no idea who the "Neo-Geo artists" are. I will have to look that up, and perhaps they will play a role in a later Open Thread!

Apparently the Cubists started it all:

In the early twentieth century Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque appropriated objects from a non-art context into their work. In 1912, Picasso pasted a piece of oil cloth onto the canvas. Subsequent compositions, such as Guitar, Newspaper, Glass and Bottle (1913) in which Picasso used newspaper clippings to create forms, became categorized as synthetic cubism. The two artists incorporated aspects of the "real world" into their canvases, opening up discussion of signification and artistic representation.

Here is Guitar, Newspaper, Glass and Bottle e:

Compotier_avec_fruits,_violon_et_verre.jpg

Something Blue
hours-cookie29rv.JPG

This is a glacier on Argentino Lake, Argentina:

ArgentinoLake1_0.jpg

Here is the lake itself, in a broader shot.
Actually, I can't get the image to upload, so here's a video of the lake:

The lake is in Patagonia and is Argentina's largest freshwater lake. Its mean depth is 492 feet. Apparently it takes quite a trek to get to it, being in the middle of the wilderness. It resides in the middle of Los Glaciares national park.

How are you all today?

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

smile
Wooden Ships - Crosby Stills Nash and Young

very free and easy
you know the way it's supposed to be

Go Navy
Flying blind and freezing: Navy investigating terrifying EA-18G Growler flight

... 4 days ago
By the time the flight was over, an elite aircrew with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Nine was being rushed for medical treatment, and yet another failure of the EA-18G Growler’s environmental control system — one not seen in any of the previous physiological episodes linked to the ECS — was raising new concerns in the Navy’s sisyphean fight to stop physiological episodes from putting pilots at risk in the sky.

The temperature inside the cockpit suddenly plunged to temperatures reaching -30 degrees and a mist pumped into the the cockpit, covering the instruments and windows in a layer of ice, rendering the pilots almost completely blind, according to several sources familiar with the incident and an internal report obtained by Defense News.

The fog inside the aircraft iced over the instrument panel, forcing the pilot and electronic warfare officer to use a Garmin watch to keep track of their heading and altitude while air controllers began relaying instructions to the crew. The pilot and EWO were forced to use the emergency oxygen supply, which was completely depleted by the end of the flight.

tax dollars at work

up
0 users have voted.
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@eyo I love that song.

up
0 users have voted.

"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

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal you reminded when my dad taught to me sail on Lake Tahoe in a little wooden El Toro. Duck down when coming about, or else you might get a surprise. Learned that the hard way.
"old sailors never die, they just get a little dinghy"
bonk!
Before here, I lived at the south end of the county in Petaluma, famous for its wooden river scows. My dad's office was located at the Turning Basin in the 70s, where their yacht club is now. As if.

He also raced Hummingbird Class sailboats in SF Bay on the weekends when I was little, we'd watch him from the Saint Francis Yacht Club (first one, before it burned down), that's how stinking rich my grandparents were. There was like a private room upstairs with a telescope, or it was just dead and no one else was around, I don't know. The pancakes were delicious. Thanks.

up
0 users have voted.

Sonoma County to shut down Roseland homeless encampments, connect residents with services

For the about 130 people who occupy the tent villages, the notices are a stark reminder that Sonoma County officials intend to clear out the Sebastopol Road site to make room for a new housing development — and soon. Residents have until March 23 to leave, the notices say.
...
“I find it heartbreaking,” she said. “Some of these people won’t be able to get some of the benefits. Some people probably won’t find a place to go after this. They say no parks, can’t live under the bridge, can’t live here, can’t live there. Where can you live?”
...
Yet the encampments’ presence has increasingly conflicted with the county’s long-term plans to convert the roughly 7-acre site into a 175-unit apartment complex, a public plaza and more.

Boom! There it is plain as day, Democrats don't give a shit for anything unless it makes them profit.

Public/Private in action, same as Republicans but worse; fuck the poor and better learn to love granny in the ditch 'cause Social Security isn't. Already. At least Magenta's camp is up near the levee, there is a small city down there along the bank, already garbage and shit is everywhere. Everything is downstream from Cloverdale btw, from here to the coast to the pacific gyre garbage patch. "That's the system."

you build by the river
it's pretty but you'll pay
'cause the springtime brings the flood plain
and your cutbank washes away

moon set was really pretty this morning
have a nice day

edit subconscious typo: levy/levee

up
0 users have voted.

@eyo of those tent cities there are around the country. We need documentation. Is there a Dorothea Lange around? Perhaps our Pres will form an new WPA...if we call the new tent towns Obamavilles? He might do it then? Are there any Francis Perkins in the admin....someone who can organize and prevent corruption....hm.

up
0 users have voted.

@randtntx thanks, I talk about California 'cause that's where I am. There are economic refugees everywhere now, I guess. So much for pursuit of happiness. ~shrug~

Cloverdale is the most northern city in Sonoma County, the Russian River does not begin here of course, it springs from Mendocino County just north. Humboldt and Trinity counties are above, so I'm on the southern cusp of the Emerald Triangle, "the medicine to keep you from decline". Another thing the capitalists are in process of destroying. Goodbye cannabis culture. wah

Opinion: I regret voting yes on Prop. 64. Here’s why.

I do not disagree with needed child proof packaging on many of the cannabis products in the market today. As a mother, I too would want my edibles, tinctures and other multi-serving already psychoactive medications (just like the ones from the MD) to be placed out of reach and impenetrable for mischievous little hands. However, logically, I cannot image what a 5-year-old will do if he gets his hands on some flower. Shove it up their nose, eat it, feed it to the dog?

Requiring all cannabis products to be treated the same way is foolish, especially when you have a child resistant exit bag as well.

After all of the new bureaucratic rigmarole of growing cannabis from seed to sale, organically, pesticide free and all of the testing being deemed necessary, placing this green plant in a plastic package is absolutely hypocritical and misguided. Cannabis packaging will be the new water bottles of our era.

First they came for the organic food movement. I yelled my head off but no one listened. Now we have Asswhole Foods delivered by fucking robots, and no flying cars. Anyone who thinks modern technology is "good" has been brainwashed to accept low standards for high cost, that's what I regret. I voted NO on 64 myself, those dozens of pages of boondoggle. Medicine for profit should be outlawed, not "brought out of the shadows" in to the Alcoholic Beverage Control structure. Ds did it fast cheap and easy, already corrupt to the core.

good luck

up
0 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

to go look in recent posts.
Just getting that out there, now I'll go read it.

up
0 users have voted.

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 --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris Yeah. I I thought this one had disappeared altogether, so I quickly posted another one. Somewhat disheartening, as it used up two OTs on one day!

up
0 users have voted.

"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

enhydra lutris's picture

very classy ships and produced a ton of very classy captains. Though you write of Old Ironsides, that is maybe best exemplified by the Royal Navy of Nelson's time. One key to Nelson's success was his audacity, inventiveness and willingness to break the established rules of engagement. This set of characteristics became characteristic of a lot of the era's English frigate captains, whether they evolved it independently, like Charles Freemantle, or had it drummed into them at Nelson's equivalent of staff meetings. Part of this has to be attributed to the fact that frigates were fast, quick, and maneuverable relative to larger vessels.

Query: As we have become ever more materialistic, possession bound and object oriented, isn't Appropriation something of a natural evolution?

up
0 users have voted.

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 --

that Corbyn story is great. Love the contrast between the American journalists and the one from the U.K. The corporate journalists have discredited themselves here. We have an ideal of free speech and the ability to openly question our government. It's a crucial ideal, we need our journalists to have it otherwise they are not worth our attention.

up
0 users have voted.