staarcroft

Happy birthday!

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:36:02 -0800

Happy Birthday to karawynn

(proof that I'll come out of hiding even re Vox, when it's important enough... :)

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Wouldn't It Be Heavenly...?

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:02:40 -0700

There are a few snippets of lyrics I'll search for, every now and then. Just to see if someone has written something online since the last time I checked (and probably came up empty).

The search string this time -- a long one -- was, "wouldn't it be heavenly to know the constellations." It had to be that long, just to get to something that might be unique.

And, mirabile dictu, I got a hit.

See, that fragment comes from a song I now know was titled, "The Constellation Jig." I heard it a lot in about 4th grade, because my homeroom teacher of the time would let me listen to a set of LP phonographs, once I was done with my classwork. "Singing Science Records," they were called.

Like that page says, they "were very Atomic Age," at a time that meant something.

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Art deco and Plovidv

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:11:56 -0700

Art deco, plovidv, bulgaria

Doc Searls went and pointed to a very interesting page of photos of Plovidv, Bulgaria, taken by Stephen Lewis. Apparently the town is a time capsule of (among other styles) Jugendstil and Art Deco buildings.

This was not much of a surprise, as we just saw The Black Dahlia, and it seems one of the ways they got so many stunning Art Deco locations to film, standing in for LA in the 1940s, was to go to Bulgaria.

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Eat your heart out, Botticelli...

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:51:22 -0700

Whitehousenight

So, here's a remarkable thing.

On the left there, you can see White House at Night (June 1890), by Vincent Willem van Gogh. Not one of his most famous paintings, but nice in its way.

While poking about the Wikipedia entry for Van Gogh, I learned something: the BBC reports they've been able to work out just about when Vincent had to have painted this picture. I mean, to within an hour or so. Because that's not the sun in the upper right -- it's Venus.

"Astronomers have pinpointed the day when Vincent van Gogh painted one of his canvases thanks to the position of the planet Venus in the tableau.

The White House at Night, which hangs in St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, shows a house at twilight with a prominent star with a yellow halo in the sky.

Astronomers at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos calculated that the star is Venus, which was bright in the evening sky in June 1890 when Van Gogh is believed to have painted the picture."

Mind you, reading the story from the Beeb, I think it entirely possible the whole quest started because the professors were stuck in Texas, and looking for a way to justify a "research" trip.

Still. Very cool, indeed.

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"Sous L'Oeil De L'Ange"

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:22:44 -0700

K-maro - Sous L'Oeil De L'Ange (192)

This is "Sous L'Oeil De L'Ange," by K-maro. It's somewhat like Gypsy Kings meets hip-hop, in French. I first heard it on SR Sverige... Which I'll explain more about later. It was a channel on Swedish Radio. Just wanted to take advantage of a small amount of downtime.

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Dew on a leaf -- Or, what does that title mean?

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:00:22 -0700

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

"staarcroft" What the heck is that? Why use that for a journal title?

Well, I admire Anne Fadiman. A lot. And that book over there -- Ex Libris -- is one of the few she's brought out so far.

There's an essay in the book, "Words On a Flyleaf." Originally published in Civilization, its topic is inscriptions within books. When she's talking about books that have been inscribed to her by friends, we read:

"Mark Helprin, who likes to leave messages on his friends' answering machines in spurious (but highly convincing) dialects, inscribed several of his books in imaginary languages. In A Dove of the East, he wrote Skanaarela tan floss atcha atcha qumble ta. Da bubo barta flay? Staarcroft. I spent the better part of a decade trying in vain to figure out what that meant."

I frequently feel spurious and imaginary myself. But there you go.

So, Helprin uses a capital. Why not I? Well... think of it as being overly e.e. cummings if you want. Someone I know, though, started me on a kick of using lower case with my name (or initial) to indicate a whisper, or a nudge, or just plain familiarity.

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Faaaaabulist

nobody@vox.com(Hal) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:27:20 -0700

Looper - Impossible Things 2

A first post. Haven't done one of those for a while.

This is for Maggy. Because I know she likes stories, and this is a very good one.

I'm not sure where I found out about Fabulist, but one of the first times I was there I ran across this post about Looper.

If you find the accent a bit thick, they have a transcript, but I find working through the lovely Scots accent to be well worth the effort.

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