Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Today is the day the Trans-Alaska Pipeline began to pump oil for the first time. It was the largest private construction project ever completed in United States history.

Oil companies had been drilling for oil in Alaska for years, without much luck. Then the company that would become Exxon decided to drill one more hole before giving up, and they struck what turned out to be the largest oil discovery in North America. The only problem was that the oil field was 800 miles away from the nearest harbor where oil tankers could pick up the oil and transport it to the rest of the world.

So the oil companies decided to build a pipeline to transport that oil across the state of Alaska, 48-inches in diameter, stretching 800 miles, zigzagging over three mountain ranges and crossing 34 major rivers, including the Yukon. Once it began pumping, about 1.9 million barrels of crude oil began flowing through the pipe every day, traveling at about 7 miles an hour to the port of Valdez.

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U.S. refineries decided the oil was ‘too heavy’ for their crackers. Most of the oil was shipped to Japan.

Postcard from Buzios, Brazil

 

Postcard From Brazil

Yemanjá

At night in Buzios
warm sea breeze comes ashore
caressing . . . sultry breath of oceans.
Fishing boats rock gently on the dark horizon
flashlights blinking in the distance from on board
as crews make ready for the coming day.

They call the sea Yemanjá here
she is alive
a personality with changing moods that beckon those on land
with playfulness
the promise of adventure
rolls within the sound of crashing waves.

      Do not forsake me
      there is no good reason for a man to leave the sea
      I’m everything you want
      your greatest love
      both life and death
      all things between.

Her implorations spill from arms that want to hold
forever…

Published: Page & Spine - 2013

Postcard From Benares, India

BENARES

Ganges
early morning
sun comes pale pink
rising out of dust horizon
long warm days before monsoon.

Stone and concrete reflect the day’s new light
gold temple tops cast
daytime stars onto this timeless river
people bathing, praying
working.

Dugouts float past
barely moving
oars creak
temple bells toll
voices over water . . . hushed.

A trail of laundrymen beat shirts, and sheets and saris
against rocks worn smooth
so many lives ago
no one remembers
songs and whopping
echo down the holy river
Krishna! Whop! Om Shanti! Whop! Jai Rama! Whop!

Vultures soar patiently above us
without effort
gliding above blue fog mist
mingling with smoke from burning ghats
along the shore.

The end and the beginning.

                                     Burning Ghat

Published: Foreign & Far Away - 2013

Amber's Swedish History - Chapter 6

 

1400 A.D.

King Eric and Marageta were still running the show. After she died Erik continued his war with the Germans and created a toll for Germans passing through the sound. They responded by blockading all of Sweden. War taxes were created. By 1430 Swedes were pretty much fed up with the king and royalty in general.

Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson was a short guy with a long name. His grandfather was German. Engelbrekt wanted to limit the power of the king and remove the blockade. He was appointed as spokesman for dissatisfied miners and peasants who stormed a castle in what is now the town of Börlange. A few months later they were closing in on Stockholm, so the king gave Engelbrekt a castle and a lot of land. Things were peaceful for a couple years, but then a new rebellion started. The peasants were successful again, but Engelbrekt got murdered while on his way to Stockholm.

In the nineteenth century politically minded scholars started calling Engelbrekt the first Swedish hero to fight for freedom, but they were tripping. Nationalism had not been invented yet, and there was no country in Europe where people all spoke the same language.

King Erik was finally deposed and went to Gotland where he became a pirate, but he wasn’t very good at it. He ran out of money and tried to sell Gotland to Sweden, but they weren’t buying. He finally moved to Pomerania, (on the Baltic coast of what is now Germany and Poland) and managed to live a long time without getting murdered.
The new Swedish King was Kristopher of Bavaria, a twenty-four-year old whose mother was King Erik’s sister. Kristoffer was already a king in Denmark, and the Swedish Councilors of the Realm liked him because he dressed like a fop. They thought he would be easy to manipulate.

 

Kristoffer

Kristoffer had a predilection for pointed shoes and wore lampshades on his head. He didn’t get much done as king, probably because he died eight years later. I think it might have been the shoes that did him in.

After Kristopher died things went up for grabs again. There were a lot of people grabbing: Lords, bishops, knights – pretty much anybody who had horse.

Karl Knutsson Bonde

Karl Knutsson Bonde was the most merciless of these, and managed to be crowned king three different times. The last was in 1467 when he managed to stay on the throne until he died, three years later.

The University of Uppsala was opened a decade after that, and is still in business. Sweden’s first book press was created a few years later, but the most Swedes think the most important creation of that time was made by Kurt Flaskedragare (affectionately known in the day as, Kurt the Bottlepuller). Kurt invented Aquavit which was previously used as a medicine, and for making gunpowder. Book reading and drinking aquavit are still popular Swedish pastimes.

 

Aquavit is distilled from grain, or potatoes, and spiced with caraway and other flavors like dill, anise, fennel, coriander and cardamom. The drink is served chilled in small, stemmed glasses. You’re supposed to drink it in one gulp. Swedes burst into song before downing a shot, and often keep on singing, before, during and after each round with increasing enthusiasm. I usually leave the room at this time. More than 9,000 drinking songs are recorded at Sweden’s Historical Museum of Wines. Two thousand of them have to do with aquavit.

Coming Next: The Stockholm Bloodbath

Bus Tripping - San Francisco Sixties

7 Haight

Bus Tripping - San Francisco Sixties.

Blind Howard and The Drunk

I'm on the 7 Haight this morning, on my way to work. The pale-blue sky is streaked with pastel colors borrowed from a rainbow. Golden crosses glitter from cathedrals drenched in early morning sunlight. Stately mansions from the San Francisco past drift by. I love this city, and am hopelessly addicted to its infinite variety of forms: the hills and architecture, crooked streets, the bay.

            Blind Howard's on the bus today. He's standing halfway down the aisle, near the back door. I see him every week or so aboard these buses. Soon he will engage some unsuspecting passenger in conversation.

            "Uh, excuse me," he will say. "Could you please tell when we've come to Market Street?"

            That said, he'll try to get a conversation going. "My name's Howard Smith. What's yours? It's certainly a lovely day. Don't you agree? I work at the Emporium," he tells them. "Where do you work . . . ? Oh, how interesting." Once engaged in conversation he'll attempt to sell some candy bars. "The money's not for me," he will explain. "It goes to the Foundation For The Blind." He always scores a buck or two.

We make a stop at Haight and Fillmore, and a drunk gets on. He stands unsteadily before the coin box by the driver, trying to get some change out of his pants. The bus makes a jackrabbit start and he goes hurtling towards the back with one hand still inside his pocket, but he grabs a pole and makes an almost graceful, swing halfway around it before slipping off and stumbling backwards into Howard.

            "Well, hello there. My name's Howard. What is yours?"

            "Harraaggh," the wino answers.

            Howard is confused and wary, listening carefully for further clues, but now the drunk is making his way back toward the front by grabbing onto seats as he goes by them, pulling himself forward as the driver hits the brakes to miss a yellow Volkswagen that's leapt out of a side street. Drunk goes flying frontward, crashing into the glass coin box and a rail that's put there to protect the thing.

            "You tryin' to kill me?" he berates the driver. He deposits change and then staggers down the aisle again, stopping a yard or two from Howard. He's grasps the safety bar above him, hanging like a soused King Kong beside a young, attractive Japanese girl.

            "Uh, hub ubba flubba wubba." He attempts a bit of conversation, but she isn't having any and abandons her aisle seat in favor of the standing room still left . . . as far away from him as she can get. The other seats have all been taken.

            "Hey, ubbbaaa . . . Lady. . . I don't need no seat," he says, then drops into it like a bag of Jell-O, eyes closed, drifting off into another world.

By this time Howard senses we're about halfway downtown and makes his move, nudging bearded man that's standing on his right. "Hello, my name is Howard."

            There is no response to Howard's introduction.

            "Uh, excuse me," he continues. "Could you tell me if we're getting close to Market Street?"

            The bearded man ignores him, and Blind Howard asks again but gets the same result. "Why don't you answer me!" He's getting loud and people start to look around to see what's going on.

            "Because I do not like you.”

            "Why?"

            "Because you take advantage. Will you please leave me alone?”

            "How do I take advantage?" Howard asks. "I want to know."

The beard's not answering. He tries to move away, but there is no space left.

"Just tell me!" Howard pushes up against the guy. "You hate blind people don't you?"       Now the bearded man's embarrassed and attempts to get around him. Howard will not let him pass. "Why won't you tell me?"

            "Wumfih!" The wino wakes up, unaware of what's been going on. "Got to get off," he mumbles. "Wubba. Get off here." He rises awkwardly and starts to squeeze behind Blind Howard as the bearded man attempts to get by on the other side. Beard makes a lunge that's worthy of a Dallas lineman, glancing off of Howard, who falls back and knocks the drunk into the lap of a black woman who’s been reading a computer manual.

            "Son of a bitch!" she shrieks. "Get off me, damn you! Off!" She swats him with her book.

            The wino makes it to his feet, but Howard's been confused in the commotion and believes the drunk to be his man.

            "Why won't you tell me!"

            "Humma . . . uuhhhma."

            Howard jams his shoulder squarely into the disoriented wino's chest. He's knocked off balance and falls back into the woman's lap again.    

            "Get off, you pig!" She catches him a good one with the manual. As he tries to gain his feet she shoves him from behind.  

            By now Blind Howard knows that something is amiss, and has moved back enough so that the drunk goes lurching past him, into a bespectacled executive dressed in a smart black suit. The bus now makes a stop. The doors hiss open and the businessman stiff-arms the wino into several others who are trying to get off. The drunk goes with them, stumbling down the steps, onto the sidewalk.

            "Wubba! "

            The back doors hiss shut and we move on. A man tells Howard there's an empty place beside him, where the drunk was sitting.

            "Thanks. That's very kind of you. My name is Howard Smith. What's yours?"

            "Jack Tuttle. Looked like you were having just a bit of difficulty there."

            "Some people hate the blind. I don't know why. Just sick I guess."

            "I guess so," Jack agrees as Howard takes a couple chocolate  bars from his coat pocket.

            "I sell candy for the blind," he says "Do you think that you might take these off my hands? I don't keep any of the money for myself. It goes to the Foundation For The Blind.

Published - Northern Liberties Review  - Issue 6  - July 2013

Bucks Looks at Modern Art

 

I’ve been checking out some more contemporary paintings and am happy to see many artists are devoting their lives to painting cats.

This one is by Celia Pike. She’s more of a realist, but does very nice work. She lives in the UK and does mostly cat painting. She also does cats on dishes and other stuff. You can find her website on Google.

 

Debbie Crawford also does a lot of cats. This one captures the way I feel after snorting too much catnip. Debbie also paints dogs sometimes. I don’t know why, but whatever.

 

Franz Marc was a German expressionist who had a lot of interest in animals. He did this one in 1910. Reminds me of Van Gough, who never got around to painting cats because he died too young.

 

Tracy Allyn Green is another famous cat artist. She also does commissioned work if you’re interested. I’m thinking of having my portrait done in the near future.

Totally cool!

This will probably be the last of my art reviews for the time being. I have decided to go back to my philosophic and cosmological pursuits which require serious nap time and out-of-the-house thinking.

 

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Allen Ginsberg - Birthday

 

Photo taken San Francisco  1970s I think.

Allen Ginsberg was born this day in Newark, New Jersey -1926. His father, Louis, was a poet and high school teacher; his mother, Naomi, was a communist and a paranoid schizophrenic. Naomi and Allen were very close; when she was in the grip of her delusions, he was the only one she trusted, and he often accompanied her to her therapy appointments. She spent much of his childhood institutionalized. Ginsberg spent eight months in a mental institution himself in the late 1940s, when he was arrested for harboring stolen goods; he chose to plead insanity.

He went to Columbia University, first intending to study law, but during his freshman year he met Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. He later said, “I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs — when I was 17 — that I realized I was talking through an empty skull … I wasn’t thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.” Ginsberg left Columbia in 1948, traveled, and worked some odd jobs, and in 1954, he moved to San Francisco. He met poet Peter Orlovsky there; they fell in love and were partners until Ginsberg’s death. In October 1955, Ginsberg read his poem “Howl” at the Six Gallery. The next day, bookstore owner and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti sent him a telegram quoting Emerson’s letter to Whitman: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” “Howl,” which was written to be read aloud, revived oral poetry. Ginsberg said that it, along with the rest of his work, was autobiographical, and that at its core was his pain at dealing with his mother’s schizophrenia.

He said, “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”