Welcome to Saturday ...
Artists, curators and art galleries across the country are fusing forces to raise funds to fight food insecurity. From exhibitions to online auctions, raffles and print sales, art with heart is another way to help feed people
a list of some artist's works can be found by linking here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/dec/17/us-food-insecurity-...
Thriller writer most famous for stories of complex cold war intrigue began his career as a real-life spy in postwar Europe. He forged thrillers from equal parts of adventure, moral courage and literary flair.
Le Carré explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.
His longtime agent Jonny Geller described him as “an undisputed giant of English literature. He defined the cold war era and fearlessly spoke truth to power in the decades that followed … I have lost a mentor, an inspiration and most importantly, a friend. We will not see his like again.”
His peers lined up to pay tribute. Stephen King wrote: “This terrible year has claimed a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit.” Robert Harris said the news had left him “very distressed … one of the great postwar British novelists, and an unforgettable, unique character.” Adrian McKinty described Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as “quite simply the greatest spy novel ever written”, while historian Simon Sebag Montefiore called him “the titan of English literature up there with the greats … in person, captivating and so kind and generous to me and many others.”
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Comments
Good morning,
Today's artist: Desmond John Morris (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape, and for his television programmes such as Zoo Time.
Morris was born in Purton, Wiltshire, to Marjorie (née Hunt) and children's fiction author Harry Morris. In 1933, the Morrises moved to Swindon where Desmond developed an interest in natural history and writing. He was educated at Dauntsey's School, a boarding school in Wiltshire.
In 1946, he joined the British Army for two years of national service, becoming a lecturer in fine arts at the Chiseldon Army College. After being demobilised in 1948, he held his first one-man show of his own paintings at the Swindon Arts Centre, and studied zoology at the University of Birmingham. In 1951 he began a doctorate at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford in animal behaviour. In 1954, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy for his work on the reproductive behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback.
Morris stayed at Oxford, researching the reproductive behaviour of birds. He moved to London in 1956, studying the picture-making abilities of apes. In 1957 he organised an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, showing paintings and drawings composed by chimpanzees. In 1958 he co-organised an exhibition, The Lost Image, which compared pictures by infants, human adults, and apes, at the Royal Festival Hall in London. In 1967 he spent a year as executive director of the London Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Morris's books include The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal, published in 1967. The book sold well enough for Morris to move to Malta in 1968 to write a sequel and other books. In 1973 he returned to Oxford to work for the ethologist Niko Tinbergen ...https://www.wikiart.org/en/desmond-morris
May you day be curious and inspiring ...
I am immediately reminded of Terry Gilliam!
Their times and places line up well enough that can hardly be an accident.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Wonderful fun video, LM,
agree, it's really a small world especially in the arts in London and New York.
Thanks, LM. Loved Gilliam's stuff.
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 --
Desmond Morris
was an early influence on my thinking. For example, in The Human Zoo, he said to stop focusing on remnant hunter-gatherer and other "primitive" cultures in anthropology, and instead focus on "civilized" society, comparing the problems and dysfunctions of the dominant society to behavioral dysfunctions in primates caged in zoos.
There was an explosion in human understanding as animal behavior in the 60s. For another example, Ardrey's African Genesis, which inspired "2001". I always wonder how much of this remarkable period was due to MKULTRA. Or was it just time to railroad?
I didn't know Morris was an artist, as well. Thank you for bringing him up!
Cool beans, thanks for sharing PR; fun to learn
the inspiration for 2001. Vaguely recall some of the experiments with apes.
Good to see you, be safe out there.
Robert Ardrey
Was a science-trained playwright who became interested in paleoanthropology: human origins and early behavior. He became a popularist for some of the current notions in the field. His main point in African Genesis was that the first "tools" used by australopithecines were weapons, specifically a certain type of leg bone used as a bludgeon which was found in statistically significant excess at australopithecine sites, thus evidencing that we are descended from killers. I think, but I may be wrong, that that is the very type of bone bludgeon used by the australopithocene leader in the opening scene of 2001, dramatically morphing into a spacecraft at the end of the scene.
From the wiki on his next book, The Territorial Imperative:
"It describes the evolutionarily determined instinct among humans toward territoriality and the implications of this territoriality in human meta-phenomena such as property ownership and nation building."
Many of his concepts made their way into the science fiction of the time:
-a Star Trek where Kirk refuses to kill a vanquished enemy and the overseeing entity says approvingly "Not bad for a predator".
-John Brunner's "Stand On Zanzibar"(a classic, one of my favorite novels), which used the theme of human territoriality to a large extent: military indoctrination using territoriality to manipulate recruits' ideation and behavior, e.g.
-and of course 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke had already written a short story using a monolith, but the ethology of the opening scene reflected Ardrey.
Not to distract from your mention of Desmond Morris (thank you). It's been a long time, I should re-read him to see how well his concepts held up. I read "The Naked Ape" and "The Human Zoo", but he has a large bibliography.
I've never heard
of a ten-spined stickleback although I suspect I have seen them. They look very familiar and I like their human-given name (I don't know what they would call themselves).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninespine_stickleback
Morris's birdy, eggy, windy, whimsical, curious paintings are very cool. Thanks for the Morris intro...an interesting guy.
And Le Carre, I've never read his work but that is an surprising quote above. I might have to try one of his books.
Thanks smiley, hope you have a fine sea-coasty day.
Morning Randtntx,
Glad you enjoyed the paintings. As to Le Carre, Smiley comes from his leading character, George Smiley, in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Interesting to think of the Iron Curtain in Europe this week when news of his passing came. Been quite a while since i recalled those years in Europe and the impact the curtain had.
Beautiful sky day with cool coastal breezes. Wish yo all were here for the holidays, company would be good. Perhaps, in a few months, we'll have a vaccination ...
Be safe and enjoy the holidays and your family.
I would love a walk along the beach
. And a gathering of the c99 company would be great right? Oh well, you'll just have to do all the coast activities for us and report back. Enjoy it to the max.
It would be so wonderful.
I wish I could feel that, as soon as the vaccine shows up, I could tear out into the world and start living like I was living, say, in December 2019, and that we could immediately start planning a major C99 get-together.
"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
Never knew that there was a fresh water version (not an
anadromous one) - growing up they were just one of those weird little inshore fishes.
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 --
Anadromous
is a new word for me, TY. Catadromous, its buddy, is a good one as well. I don't know what you call just plain old ordinary lake dwellers. That's where I would have seen these fishies, or in the belly of another fish.
Have a good baking-of-the-cookies-day.
New one for me, downhill as opposed to uphill ;-)
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 --
Homosexuality in the ten-spined stickleback
Wow, weird fish.
Thanks for the art and OT Smiley!
nice 10 min speech...
Le Carre was MI5 and tells the story here...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uLG3l5zKv4]
On the way to trade day this AM there's a new billboard... where it used to say "God Bless America and President Trump"...it now says "Lofflear and Perdue didn't help Trump. Don't give them your help!" My buddy said the dims are leading in the polls. Who would have thought. We'll see what we see.
Looks like plenty of snow in the highlands. Hope all is well on the coast. Take care and stay warm!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Thanks for the vid, Lookout.
Yep been rather cold in the mountains; mountain making lots of snow with more natural in forecast.
Chilly here, especially in the wind, but the sun shines bright and heats one up.
Fish have been winning lately.
Found some, i believe they are called 'shoh' mustard greens the other day at an outdoor pick your own veggie market, fantastic taste, large flat leaves.
Have a good one and be safe.
Good morning smiley. Thanks for the column/OT
Le Carre was indeed quite an author, I really liked his work. I also really like the art work you posted, I think I've seen some of it or some like it before, though the surreal, is of course, surreal, so .... One can see the zoology influence, or at least I can, as soon as it is mentioned if not before. It is funny - I eschew xmas cards, and generally all hallmark stuff, so I sent the few that I send holiday cards to hand-written seasonal messages in blank note cards that are reproductions of chimp made art, (After looking at them I decided that I might even give it a try myself
)
Taking a pass on farmers' market today, will try to get cover crop sown in one bed while ground is still moist from the rain the other day, do some cleanup around here and make cookies. Holiday season is cookie time around here - I did gingersnaps (now gone) and my wife and I teamed up on decorated sugar cookies, also gone, so taoday I will make some shortbread, after which she will make some spritz which should put us well into 2021.
Looked at the great conjunction about 3 nights ago and could still visually separate the two planets without optics. Checked it out again last night and couldn't separate them, even with some (medium sized) optics. 3 Days til solstice counting today or 2 from today.
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 --
Cookies, el, cookies ...
Tis the season. Did my holiday food shopping yesterday, small turkey, ham, trimmings, wines and boozes. It's a good thing to be a hermit with food, but like many would be nice to see my son. Must continue patience for a few more months if all goes well and we can get together again.
Have a happy gardening day.
Sounds like the makings
, of a nice meal. Sorry your son can't be there with you but best be safe for now. We'll all have to toast you from afar that day, booze or no booze...with whatever we gots.
A texas toast for real. :)
Article: “A brief history of U.S. military poisoning of Hawaii”
https://popularresistance.org/a-brief-history-of-us-military-poisoning-o...
There are, after all, good reasons not to trust the federal government or its contractors when they get the urge to go all “experimental” re health matters.
That article
was sickening, pardon the pun.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
"Absolute Friends"
was a really chilling read. Le Carré described the post cold war global war of terror world, from the viewpoint of a pair of aging 60s radicals who got swept into power games. The Western spy world was being infiltrated by wealthy xristian dominionists. I wonder, what exactly did he know?
He could probably read the signs.
I assume people who've been in that line of work are better at reading the signs than I am (if they're honest with themselves).
"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
John le Carre is
one of my all time favorite writers and in the past year I've been rereading his work.
The picture of our "intelligence" services is beyond bleak and that's how le Carre portrayed them MI-5 MI-6 CIA Mossad Stasi. He seems to have a special hate for the CIA. Everything bad happening everywhere look for the hidden hand of the CIA, kind of hate. Drugs. Guns.
His final novel, published in 2019, Agent Running in the Field, ends on an uncharacteristically high note. The betrayed hapless asset is helped by his handler to escape and possibly live happily ever after.
I recommend John le Carre's novels as a perfect way to get through a long winter.
NYCVG
Good reads
But often depressing. He was not a fan of happy endings, which is only realistic. Russia House had a sort of happy ending. I've never been able to finish one of his books set in Africa, the cruelty and pain was too harsh. Goes to show how real he made his characters.
Probably quite correctly so.
Remember that the Brits have been playing this game, at home and abroad, for many centuries, the new kids on the block, rash clumsy amateurs, have no history, no institutional knowledge, no networks or skills. Their first real action, the Iran coup-d-etat was a success and what they learned formed their approach to everything, "it is difficult to control an election or an elected official, but easy to install an autocrat if you use force". They never have been an intelligence agency in any meaningful way, only gathering little bits of info for tactical purposes, but always to attack, subvert, overthrow, intimidate and destroy.
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 --
Well, there's not much to keep one from hating the CIA,
at least the upper echelons of it that make it what it is; I assume down at the bottom there are probably some misguided patriots (though fewer than in times past), whom I might pity rather than hate, and hope their lives get better soon.
I don't see a way to avoid hating the upper echelons of the CIA outside religion.
"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 a lighter note,
speaking of spy novels, I've enjoyed reading Charles Stross' "Laundry Files" novels. Dark humor. Le Carré meets Cthulhu.
There's a British secret service dedicated to fighting incursions from the Dungeon Dimensions. Computer power is associated with Lovecraftian ritual. Hackers who accidentally set off invasions of tentacle monsters get suppressed and drafted. A great mishmash of horror, hacker, spy, nerd, IT burocracy. He deliberately lampoons the Bond mythos. The series gets darker as it goes.
In lieu of Inagural Committee Contributions --
https://patch.com/california/castrovalley/s/hcs4t/alameda-county-food-ba...
Why Alameda beats me. What do we have in common with Wilmington and DC? Also the big WTF that they did it at all.
Of course it may be just to stiff Joe & Kamala for going all in for Blackstone with their
cabinet selections
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 --
Interesting. I wonder why?
Your suggestion about withholding Joe & Kamala's "tip" made me smile...
"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
Maybe it's because the "nuclear wessels" are there.
"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
Evening smiley
Thanks for the ot, the art and the history.
Thinking of you and your son and the holidays.
Here is a poem for you both. Be well and take good care.
Axe Handles
BY GARY SNYDER
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with—"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"-—in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Heh, just found this. Always thumbs up for Snyder.
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 --
Yeah el, right
I sat in his dining room one day around ‘65 or so when I was a young un. Only knew he was a poet and that I liked his poetry. Was with a friend who did some calligraphy for him. Funny how things weave in and out of one’s life. Trippy.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Hi smiley
Thanks for the art of a talented painter and ethologist (a new description to me). I can’t say anything about Le Carre because I am unfamiliar with his writing, but it was interesting to learn of his background and his ‘humanitarian spirit’.
[video:https://youtu.be/PZtkHXWwCSI]
This is a must (surrealistically) to see for pure pleasure and entertainment ...
[video:https://youtu.be/f7SSkVpM4lE]
“Not with a bang, but a whimper” Dept.
Cancelled after 585 years: the Dresden Christmas market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striezelmarkt
https://striezelmarkt.dresden.de/media/pdf/striezelmarkt/Absage_Striezel...
https://www.lcsnc.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=1...