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You've successfully subscribed to this feed! Updated content can be viewed in Internet Explorer and other programs that use the Common Feed List. View my feeds You've successfully subscribed to this feed! Aharon's Omphalos You are viewing a feed that contains frequently updated content. When you subscribe to a feed, it is added to the Common Feed List. Updated information from the feed is automatically downloaded to your computer and can be viewed in Internet Explorer and other programs. Learn more about feeds. Subscribe to this feed Aharon's Omphalos Sunday, January 10, 2010, 8:58:01 AM

Metaphors Liberate Us
Thursday, December 31, 2009, 9:45:33 AM | Aharon In an age when the possibility of living in the land of Israel is no longer an abstract yearning, at a time when Jerusalem is rebuilt (with a soon to be active light rail system!), and after nearly 2000 years without the physical presence of a Temple nor the daily ministrations of priesthood and caste devoted to the perfect ministrations of a Temple cult metaphors must continue to liberate us. The power of metaphor was recognized by the Tannaim, the rabbinic sages who saw the redaction of the Mishna after the Temple was destroyed and after the Bar Kochba rebellion was crushed. It was understood by the Amoraim who followed them in their thriving diaspora yeshivot, and it was even plain to the Geonim and Rishonim that followed them. But in an age where certain zealots and their allies sense they might be able to grasp and physically realize Messianic visions, we must declare that the legacy of ritualized metaphor in our rabbinic heritage liberated us, and this is what I celebrate on anukah. Imagine a Judaism in which no anukiah is lit, and only the light of the menorah illuminates a central Temples Holy Sanctuary. Imagine a time when the performance of thrice daily service to God was focused only on the Temple offerings. Imagine when it would be absurd to think of the study of Temple offerings as a surrogate for an offering itself. Imagine when our vision of the Temple was of stone rather than comprised of some sort of fantastic light emanating directly from the Heavens. The Temple that we have in our imagination and ritual has been democratized, the result of beautiful and enlightened metaphor. The Hasmoneans might be turning in their ossuaries, but our rabbis of yor were content with the knowledge that the Temple service would forevermore be non-localized, abstracted, and preserved in the heartfelt spiritual practices of its survivors. anukah can be seen as the first precedent for this abstraction of the Temple Service. Here we have the during the rededication of

the Temple on Hanukah, a memorial for the important Sukkot fertility rituals and ritual offerings not provided. As Beith Shammai teaches in Masekhet Shabbat 21b, the anukiah is lit on the first night with eight lights, and on the second night with seven and so forth in memory of the bull offerings that decreased day by day over the eight days of Sukkot. In other words, the ritual of lighting each day is performed as a surrogate offering in memory of the bull sacrifices not offered earlier those years when the Syrian Greeks controlled the Beit Mikdash. The relationship between Sukkot and anukah is explained in II Maccabees chapter 10 verses 58. Here is the translation from the original Greek as found in the The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (Augmented Third Edition): It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year. The thirteen lost bull offerings of Sukkot might be remembered as 13 breaches in the Temple by the Greek kings in Mishna Middot 2:3. the lattice-work fence was ten tefaim high. And there were thirteen breaches where the kings of Greece breached. They went and repaired them again, and decreed thirteen prostrations according to [the breaches]. The number 13 here is very odd since there were only seven entrances to the Temple grounds where physical breaches were likely to occur (see Mishna Middot 1:4-5, and Talmud Yerushalmi Shekalim 17a/25b). I think its important to consider that any numbers used in an architectural context with the Temple also have a profound cosmological importance. The memory of Sukkot permeates the laws of anukah and the juxtaposition of each eight day holidays mitzvot is significant. At the end of the dry season, the mitzvah of sukkot requires the erection of a temporary dwelling and stresses the importance of keeping an open sukkah open to the visit of guests. During the rainy season, the mitzvah of anukah requiring the anukiah lit in a Bayit, a house (i.e., a permanent dwelling) and at the time that gleaners pass through the souq so they can see and perhaps beckoned by the beautiful light. It makes sense that the mitzvah of anukah cannot be performed in a temporary dwelling when the season is already too inhospitable to allow for it. The relationship between the holidays is clearly alluded to in the choice of measure for the maximum height by which a anukiah can be lit it is the maximum height a sukkah can be built. These mysterious associative references are more easily understood if we accept that the symbols of the sukkah dwelling and the light of the anukiah are equivalent to each other. Both represent the peace that will spread out over the entire earth, and perhaps all other worlds too, in a messianic age. In the language of Rashi, it is the light preserved for the righteous. In the language of the medieval piyyutim it is the sukkah of peace, each sukkah a mishkan, a tabernacle, the sa (impermanent roof) of the sukkah likened to the luminous skin of the mysterious Leviathan, the cosmic creature that itself represents the primordial light from before creation. (Notably, the anukiah is lit opposite from the mezuzah in its intended location: an open entrance. The anukiah cannot be confused with the mezuzah, the prophylactic memory of

the ward against the mashit, the mask of God wearing the hood of the executioner, slaughterer of the firstborn one terrible night in Egypt.) Its hard to imagine how significant the holiday of Sukkot was to our ancestors when so few of us are farmers, aware and conscious of the natural vivifying seasonal water cycle and how our food resources and economy depend on a good rainy season. Those offerings were important then, and the loss of the Temple and its rituals ensuring rain represented a catastrophic danger. One can imagine how important a surrogate holiday fixed at the time of the Temples restoration, critically at the time of the Brumalia following the Saturnalia on the Winter Solstice, Kislev 25. (anukah retains the celebratory atmosphere of the Simat Beit Hashoeva, the Water Drawing Festival, the most joyous day of the entire year as discussed just after the statement above regarding the breached made by the Greek Kings in Middot 2:5. The day was reconstituted after the destruction of the Temple as the holiday of Simat Torah, the celebration of the renewal of the annual Torah reading cycle.) Metaphors liberate us. Sukkot offerings become light offerings. Temple offerings become daily prayers. Ive just returned from my morning prayers during Shaarit, and the entire service is coded to represent the lost Temple Service and its lost Temple Cult. Even though I am not a Cohen, I am standing in for daily service performed by the Kohanim and I am time bound to it. The rabbis also taught that even though I cannot bring a sacrificial offering I can study the offerings brought and in this way the service can be sustained. But post-Temple metaphors dont stop there. For most of the history of rabbinic Judaism, the dominant vision of the restored temple in the messianic age was a temple of fire descending from heaven. A celestial Temple remains even when an earthly temple is destroyed. Here again is the echo of the primordial light reserved for the righteous until the end of days. What a danger that some would give up on this vision for a reconstituted Temple Cult and the loss of 2000 years of spiritual democracy. Considering how anukah found renewed popularity 150 years ago as the celebration of ethnic national aspirations in Zionism, and seeing how religious nationalist zealots today pine for the construction of a physical third Temple (and implicit destruction of the beautiful shrine that currently preserves that sacred space), its time to celebrate, and take pride in our imagination in our vision of a non-physical Temple rather than any physical, mortar and brick Temple, the aspiration of contemporary zealots. We are liberated by our metaphors, our abstractions. We have innovated beyond the need to slaughter animals in our spiritual practice, nor to rely on a dedicated caste to preserve it. Just as our third temple is made of enlightening fire, burning brilliantly in hearts illuminating like warm homes in the middle of winter, we might also see that our peoples identity is composed of values and sensibilities, rather than nationalist dreams rooted in hard earth. Realizing civil and open societies that ensure those rights which foster our peace, plurality, and vibrant creative spirits is the realizing of a messianic age. Let us find freedom in our abstractions and communicate them with our wit and language and actions rather than build old bulwarks in mud and stone.

The Sanctuary by Edwin Forbes, 1876 Comments (0)

With Heine at Lorelei

Monday, December 07, 2009, 5:41:51 AM | Aharon At 161st Street and Grand Concourse in the Bronx, there is a highly ornate fountain named Lorelei located in a rather lonely park dedicated to dead poets. Inscribed at the base of Lorelei is the name and visage of a man once upon a time, Germanys favorite Romantic poet. Hitler tried his best to remove all memory of him from German culture, even going so far as to anonymize the attribution of his poems and to order the atomization of his grave site with explosives, all because the poet, Heinrich Heine, was born a Jew. This Friday, the 24th of Kislev and the eve of anuka, is Heines Hebrew birthday. He was born December 13th, 1797.

I first encountered Heine, in Amos Elons survey of German Jewry, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933. Heres why I love him so much. Besides his sharp wit and poetry, Heine railed against patriotic chauvinism. In 1817 at the age of 20 he witnessed the Hep! Hep! riots and a mass burning of subversive books accompanied by speeches against Jews, foreigners, and cosmopolitans, et al. Three years later, he penned the following prescient line in his verse tragedy, Almansor,: Dort, wo man Bcher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen. [Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.]

Heine had keen, almost prophetic insight. Elon writes that he voiced the first, most acute prophecies about German nationalism and militarism. Heine is famous for having predicted the dangers of Prussian nationalism manifest in a unified Germany. Living as a fugitive expatriat in France in 1834, he saw the demons lurking under the surface of German life and warned the French: Watch out! I mean well with you and therefore I tell you the bitter truth. You have more to fear from a liberated Germany than from the entire Holy Alliance along with all Croats and Cossacks. A drama will be enacted in Germany compared to which the French Revolution will seem like a harmless idyll. Christianity restrained the martial ardor of the Germans for a time but it did not destroy it; once the restraining talisman is shattered, savagery will rise again, . . . the mad fury of the berserk, of which Nordic poets sing and speak. . . . The old stony gods will rise from the rubble and rub the thousand-year-old dust from their eyes. Thor with the giant hammer will come forth and smash the gothic domes. The German thunder. . . rolls slowly at first but it will come. And when you hear it roar, as it has never roared before in the history of the world know that the German thunder has reached its target. (H. Heine. Zur Geschichte von Religion und Philosphie im Deutschland, Smtliche Schriften, vol. 3, p.505.) His attitude towards Judaism was highly influenced by the difficulty he and other assimilated intellectual German Jews felt in the face of state oppression. But these sentiments were tempered when he experienced Polish Jewry during a trip in 1821, writing: Despite the barbaric-looking fur cap on his head and the even more barbaric ideas within, I hold the Polish Jew in much higher regard than many a German Jew with a Bolivar hat on top of his head and Jean Paul inside it. In stark isolation, the character of the Polish Jew has evolved into an integral whole; by breathing the air of tolerance this character has acquired the stamp of freedom. . . . As for me, I prefer the Polish Jew, with his grimy fur, his flea-bitten beard, his odor of garlic, and his wheeling and dealing to many others in all their savings-bond splendor. (Heine. Smtliche Schriften, vol. 2, p.69.) This description mixes criticism with a liberal romantic pride in ethnic Judaism born outside the constraints and pressures of the assimilationist Germany he was familiar with. In contrast, his attitude towards Reform Judaism reflects deep misgivings. Elon notes that Heine was dubious about fashionable modifications like German [Jewish] prayer books and organ music. They were merely imitative of Christianity and offered only a new stage set and decor. The new rabbis (Heine called them souffleursprompters) wore a Protestant parsons white band in their collars. Reform Judaism was like mock turtle soup, he thought, turtle soup without the turtle. Heine was an early precursor of the legendary Spanish anarchist who asked a Protestant missionary, How can I believe in your religion when I dont even believe in mine, which is the only true one? Like many Jews in his circle he submitted to a Baptism that held meaning only in the burden of shame and bitterness he would carry the remainder of his life. Professional life in Germany was entirely closed off to Jews unless they submitted to a Baptism. Regardless, his tragic humiliation has haunted his name ever since. Fleeing Germany for freedom in France, Heine was quickly attracted to the early socialism espoused by Henri de Saint-Simon, a practical philosophy that espoused a mix of free love, pantheism, technocracy, and meritocracy in short, liberal ideals anathema to more

conservative and traditional sentiments. Meanwhile, he continued to write romantic poetry that drew its imagery from the well of both German and Jewish mythology. Undeniably, I feel a kinship here. I am one dreaming being even when the catalog of prideful identities bifurcates and fragments my imagination in so many useless ways. I am navigating my religious, ethnic, and national identity when ethnic patriotism and religious demands make claims on the integrity and authenticity of my being Jewish, and often enough seem to distract from more universal truths. The pity of it all is that the fathomless tragedy of the Holocaust was not only the mass slaughter of our families and the dissolution of our being. It is also in how Germany butchered and mutilated itself, for we were once Germans even if they refused to accept this, and how much the poorer they are for it. Romantics like Heine pined for acceptance as Jewish Germans, a desire absolutely justified by his ancestors cultural identity rooted in the more than 1500 year long residence amidst the misty woods and vales of Ashkenaz. Ethnic narratives profoundly shaped by Zionist self-reliance and a complete rejection of Germany following the Holocaust, conspire as well to obscure the profoundly deep connections Ashkenaz Jewry had in those lands, cities, and shtetls stolen from our grandparents and great-grandparents. Their presence as neighbors was organically entangled in their culture, but they pretended it wasnt so, and what a bloody mess they left behind when they ripped us out from inside them. This coming Sunday 2-5pm, December 13th, Ill be at the Lorelei Fountain in the Bronx reading Heines poem Die Lorelei, drinking a toast in his honor, and lighting the third light of anuka. Anyone who cares to is welcome to join me.

Portrait of Heine by Gottlieb Gassen, 1828 Die Lorelei by Heinrich Heine Ich wei nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Da ich so traurig bin; Ein Mrchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn. Die Luft ist khl, und es dunkelt, Un ruhig fliet der Rhein; Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt In Abendsonnenschein. I dont know what it may signify That I am so sad; Theres a tale from ancient times That I cant get out of my mind. The air is cool and the twilight is falling and the Rhine is flowing quietly by; the top of the mountain is glittering in the evening sun.

Die schnste Jungfrau sitzet Dort oben wunderbar, Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet, Sie kmmt ihr goldenes Haar. Sie kmmt es mit goldenem Kamme Und singt ein Leid dabei; Das hat eine wundersame, Gewaltige Melodei. Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe Ergreift es mit wildem Weh; Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe, Er schaut nur hinauf in die Hh. Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen Am Ende Schiffer uns Kahn; Und das hat mit ihrem Singen Die Lorelei getan. Comments (5)

The loveliest maiden is sitting Up there, wondrous to tell. Her golden jewelry sparkles as she combs her golden hair She combs it with a golden comb and sings a song as she does, A song with a peculiar, powerful melody. It seizes upon the boatman in his small boat With unrestrained woe; He does not look below to the rocky shoals, He only looks up at the heights. If Im not mistaken, the waters Finally swallowed up fisher and boat; And with her singing The Lorelei did this.

The Talmud on the Virtues of Robots and Cats

Tuesday, December 01, 2009, 3:19:32 AM | Aharon A few days ago Engadget blogged a story originally reported in the Israeli print media that a local family was surprised to discover that their Roomba had ingested a dangerous poisonous snake (Vipera palaestinae). (Within a few days, the story was echoed by Gizmodo, Boing Boing, and Jewschool.)

In so far as Jewish lore goes, the virtues of alert domestic household guardians in disposing of wayward lizards was recognized as early as 350-371 CE in the Babylonian Talmud. The source

below, Tractate Pesaim, Chapter 10, p112b, provides something of a utilitarian justification for the adoption of cats in this regard: : . ? . : . ? Rav Papa said: A man should not enter a house in which there is a cat, without shoes. What is the reason? Because the cat may kill a snake and eat it now the snake has little bones, and if a bone sticks into his foot it will not come out, and will endanger him. Others say: A man should not enter a house where there is no cat, in the dark [without shoes]. What is the reason? Lest a snake wind itself about him without his knowing, and he come to danger. Given these concerns, we can only surmise that if Rav Papa were alive today, he might trust his Nehardean home and yeshiva to be free of tiny snake bones thanks to his own autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner, and unselfconsciously walk about in his socks, even in the dark, his tender soles secure. Over here at the Omphalos, we appreciate the common sense of Rav Papas colleagues; and were rather satisfied with the lap guarding capabilities of our resident felines, Dot, Ivan, and William. We do admit however that in battle with poisonous lizards, our cats would fare far more poorly than Rav Papa or his colleagues assume. If we lived in an area prone to viper attacks, a Roomba might save our cats lives as well as our own. We will just need to remain vigilant. When in viper country we will wear shoes, as the Talmud recommends and wait patiently while DARPA struggles to model the feline brain. When DARPA ultimately succeeds we will upgrade the firmware of our vacuuming robots with the aggressive skills of 4th century Iraqi cats. But unapologetic sentimentalists, we will keep our warm blooded companions and enjoy their current, if temporary, dominance over their vigilant snake wrestling (and dust fighting) competitors. Comments (0)

Post-PresenTense
Thursday, September 24, 2009, 3:05:13 AM | Aharon Fellow Omphalos gazers might wonder what Ive been doing. And not just in the sense of, Hey Im wonder what Aharons been up to lately. Well, after two months of productive work on the Open Siddur Project as a fellow with the PresenTense Institute in Jerusalem this summer, I spent a month in Philadelphia before moving to Brooklyn and committing to a year of study as a fellow at Yeshivat Hadar, North Americas first traditional egalitarian yeshiva. (More on Yeshivat Hadar is available via this article at Haddasah Magazine online.) Im here for a few reasons, the first of which is to have a dedicated space and time to invest serious energy and intention in religious practice in general, and Judaism in particular. I want to be able to think about, research, and write about Jewish folklore and cosmology. Its been impossible for me to feel passionate about this without entertaining how to sustain this interest past the present year, and so naturally Im thinking of rabbinical school or a graduate program in Judaic Studies, or even a general program in religious or folkloric studies where I can find a specialization. Hopefully by the end of this year Ill have significantly improved my capability with available sources in Hebrew and Aramaic. If I do this, then I think Ill have the confidence to continue further and also be a more attractive candidate for a graduate or rabbinic program. The latter still attracts my imagination since Im interested in bridging the distance between academic and applied Judaic Studies. If my passion can endure even half a year of this work and

lifestyle, then I think Ill be able to pursue rabbinical school applications with a more clear and grounded intention. In addition, like PresenTense was, Yeshivat Hadar will be something of a nest for the nascent Open Siddur Project, that is still hard at work developing a web application. Hadar is providing a modest if substantial living stipend for fellows, and besides helping me live within public transit distance of the yeshiva, Im using this stipend to fund my work on the Open Siddur. (Hadar also provides a $2000 grant specifically for funding a community project, like the Open Siddur.) By Providence, comrade in code, realazthat, lives only three blocks away from me in Brooklyn. Also nearby is my colleague from PresenTense, Russel Neiss (see MediaMidrash), who along with the Open Siddur, shares my passion for book ripping and scanning (public domain material only). We hope to build a working book scanner by the end of the year! After a year away from Louisiana and urban planning, this may very well be the turning point in a career shift for me. Or not. Considering the investment in a career in planning it seems almost insane to me to give this up. But there is a freedom that comes from being unsettled, from being suspended rather than grounded. I cannot be sustained too long off of the ground, but I cannot remain either where Ive been standing. And so this will become my sabbatical year. I would be remiss if I didnt finish by plugging a party that everyone who cares about egalitarianism in traditional Judaism might want to turn out for. Its Wednesday night on October 21, 2009. Hope to see you there. Details below.

Any Torah study without work will ultimate be lost and lead to sin. (Pirkei Avot 2:2) I am abandoning all practical training for my children and I will only teach my children Torah. (Mishnah Kiddushin 4:14) Is life about Torah, or is Torah about life? And whats at stake in the question, anyway? Please join me in celebrating the opening of Yeshivat Hadars full-year program, come join us as we explore the relationship between our commitment to Torah and our work in the world. Yeshivat Hadars Full-Year Celebration: Wednesday, October 21 7:30 pm 9:30 pm The Schafler Forum at Congregation Rodeph Sholom

7 West 83rd Street New York, NY 10024 RSVP by email: frank@mechonhadar.org or by phone 212.284.6549 Mechon Hadar is an institute that empowers young Jews to build vibrant Jewish communities through: Yeshivat Hadar: the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva in North America The Minyan Project: resources, networking, and consulting for more than 50 independent minyanim nationwide

Mechon Hadar is grateful to multiple individual supporters and national foundations. For a complete list of foundation supporters, visit www.mechonhadar.org supporters To learn more about Mechon Hadar visit our website: www.mechonhadar.org Comments (0)

Open Siddur at PresenTense Institute Workshop

Thursday, June 18, 2009, 3:00:36 PM | Aharon Regular readers (hi mom!) were disappointed when I didnt post the last two months. Forgive!! Drama was afoot. I got involved in a relationship with a lovely young woman and I began to find a foothold in the world of Jewish social entrepreneurship. Happenstance the first: a creative project I proposed to the summer bootcamp/workshop for social entrepreneurs known as the PresenTense Institute was accepted for a fellowship. Now I am in Jerusalem working on this project. More information is available regarding the Open Siddur is available at my developer blog for the project, opensiddur.varady.net. Happenstance, the second: acceptance of a fellowhsip that will allow me to study at Yeshivat Hadar in Manahattan beginning early September. Concerned friends and relatives are all wondering what this is all leading to. A career in Jewish education? Rabinnical school? Urban and community planning of unbuilt or coalescing intentional communities? I dont know the answer. But Im pretty certain the answer isnt located in Craigslist job listings or the many job posting listserves Im subscribed to. But maybe it is, (so Im still checking). Im still working on that book on magic, art carved furnuture, and obscure Jewish lore, so perhaps this is all an involved research project for what I can only imagine will be my lifes work. Meanwhile, Ive been working on a post for the Omphalos based on a shiur I gave during a Tikkun Leil Shavuot retreat at an exurban development in the wilderness outside East Doylestown, Pa. Stay tuned for it: Azazel, the relationship between Shavuot and Yom Kippur, and why we eat cheese (and not blood) on the Hag Habikkurim. Comments (1)

To Stand on One Foot

Thursday, April 16, 2009, 1:42:18 AM | Aharon

In October 2008, my friend Will posted on his blog, A Journey Around My Skull, his discovery of a Japanese illustrator, Rokuro Taniuchi. The image of a looming figure on the horizon by Taniuchi reminded me very much of the cover art for a book I read in 5th grade titled Creatures from UFOs (1978) by Daniel Cohen. On my recent trip back to Cincinnati I fetched the paperback from my old bedroom bookshelf and scanned the cover. Unfortunately, Archway, the publisher, didnt see fit to credit the cover art illustrator for this book in its young adult series of non-fiction publications. Please comment if you can identify the artist.

The cover artist drew inspiration from chapter 5 of the book, The Mississippi Fisherman, that recounts the fascinating tale of two men in Pascagoula, Mississippi on the night of October 11, 1973. Before I continue I should say that I think hypnogogic or hypnopompic states help explain the vast number of encounters with frightening extraterrestrials, angels, demons, ghosts, or molemen depending on the century and culture framing the disturbing experience. Like dreams, these visions tells us more about ourselves and the world of our imagination than the world of nature. Cohen writes, A door suddenly appeared in the side of the craft. Three strange-looking creatures came out. They didnt walk. They floated about three feet off the ground. The two men said the creatures were about five feet tall. They were covered with grayish, wrinkled skin. It was like the skin of an elephant, Hickson [one of the two witnesses] said. The creatures didnt have real faces. Where the nose should have been there was a carrot-like growth. Two similar growths were where ears should have been. The mouth was just a hole. They didnt have any eyes. The creatures had two arms, but no fingers. The arms ended in claw-like pincers, like the claws of a lobster. They had what looked like two legs, but the legs seemed to be stuck together. This is why they didnt seem able to walk. But since they could float they didnt need to walk The story continues to describe how the men were abducted, examined by a machine that resembled a giant eye, and released. I read plenty of books like this when I was in 5th grade, but

of all of them, the cover art of this book stuck with me, and so did the story. It reminded me of the tale of the three angels that visited Avraham after his circumcision in Genesis Chapter 18. The fused legs of the UFO creatures reminded me of the idea in Jewish angelology, following Ezekiels description of the ayot in Ezekiel 1:5-7, ., ; , , , . , ; , . , ; , , And out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. 6 And every one had four faces, and every one of them had four wings. 7 And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calfs foot; and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. In imitation of angels, the Talmud in Berachot 10a explains the Jewish practice of standing with ones feet together during the standing meditation prayer called the Amidah. The idea of a single leg is also related to that of a pedestal (literally, foot stand), the base of a pillar and the foundations of a philosophy. Note the challenge spoken by a Roman soldier to the sages Shammai and Hillel the Elder, recorded in Tractate Shabbath 31a: Accept me as a proselyte on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand al regal achat (on one foot). (See below in the illustration by Arthur Szyk.)

In antiquity, to stand on ones foot, was a figure of speech. Horace in his Satires (1.4.9-10) wrote concerning Lucilius, in hora saepe ducentos, ut magnum, versus dictabat stans pede in uno. (In an hour he used to dictate two hundred verses, as a great feat [while] standing on one foot.) But the Hebrew word regal (foot) also sounds similar to the Classic Latin word regula meaning basic principle. (Regula is the root of the modern word regulation). Hillels clever answer reveals the basic principle of the Torah that can be learned by anyone standing on one foot for a short length of time: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah the rest is commentary. Now go and learn. In some way, I think this notion of a single premise provides an added ethical meaning to the mythic idea of an Even ha-Shettiyah, the Foundation Stone that a geological foundation of the world is synonymous with or perhaps even signifies a basic code of ethical behavior. What then is the stone that was cast away that shall become the foundation stone? The considerate and sensitive treatment of each other that is lost and forgotten in times of war and selfish struggle. As a side note, those actually born with fused legs suffer from Sirenomelia, or Mermaid Syndrome, a rare congenital deformity manifesting in 1 out of 100,000 births. It is usually fatal within one or two days of birth due to related abnormal kidney and bladder development and function.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: Am I channeling some sort of zeitgeist? Less than a month after this post, this lovely new resource, On1Foot : Jewish Texts for Social Justice was established. Check it out this amazing user-contributable archive of relevant source texts. Comments (1)

Reality and Hallucination: Towards a Talmudic Ontology of Consensus (by way of demons)
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 8:07:45 AM | Aharon

In his 1978 essay, How to Build a Universe That Doesnt Fall Apart Two Days Later, Philip K. Dick wrote, Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesnt go away. This ontology is challenged by a syndrome recently brought to my attention in a recent post on boingboing.net, Hallucinations brought on by eye disease, wherein David Pescovitz writes, In recent days, both the Daily Mail and Wired.com looked at Charles Bonnet Syndrome [CBS], a disease characterized by bizarre and vivid visual hallucinations. Interestingly, people who suffer from CBS arent mentally ill but have visual impairments such as macular degeneration. Even weirder is that the hallucinations often involve characters or things that are much smaller in size than reality. Read the whole post and follow the link to this article at the Daily Mail on Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and this interview at Wired with neurologist Oliver Sachs. Together, they provide an insight for understanding a particularly fascinating method given in the Talmud for seeing Mazikin (lit. harmful spirits, ie. demons). Mazikin are a class of sheydim (animistic spirits) that pervaded the natural world in the Rabbinic Jewish worldview of late antiquity. From ( Talmud Bavli Tractate Berakhot, 6a):

 It has been taught: Abba Benjamin says, If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the Mazikin. Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge round a field. R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. [Psalm 91:7] Raba says: The crushing in the Kallah lectures comes from them. Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them. If one wants to discover them, let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a rooster. If one wishes to see them, let him take the placenta of a black she-cat [that is] the offspring of a black she-cat [that is] the first-born of a first-born, let him roast it [the placenta] in fire and grind it to powder, and then let him put some into his eye, and he will see them. Let him also pour it into an iron tube and seal it with an iron signet that they [the demons] should not steal it from him. Let him also close his mouth, lest he come to harm. R. Bibi b. Abaye did so, saw them and came to harm. The scholars, however, prayed for him and he recovered. Could Rabas magic recipe for perceiving demons by placing ash in ones eye create a condition like Charles Bonnet Syndrome? Could Rav Hunas 10:1 ratio of ubiquitous albeit invisible demons indicate a left-brained dominance when perceiving/hallucinating these creatures? Curious minds wish to know the answer to these arcane questions. Rav Hunas midrashic reading of Psalms 91:7 in particular might suggest that these creatures are small and recalls the peculiar reduced stature of the persons in David Stannards hallucination. So it came as a surprise to the 73-year-old when he looked up from his television one evening to discover he was sharing his living room with two RAF pilots and a schoolboy. The pilots were standing next to the TV, watching it as if they were in the wings of a theatre, he says. The little boy was in a grey, Fifties-style school uniform. He just stood there in the hearth looking puzzled. He was 18 inches high at most. Just in case anyone is worried, according to Jewish lore the likelihood of perceiving sheydim and being brought to harm is substantially reduced if one avoids ruins, wetlands, and other lonely places and travels in groups of three or more. According to the following argument in ( Tractate Berakhot 43b): R. Zutra b. Tobiah further said in the name of Rab: [To avoid danger while traveling in darkness] a torch is as good as two [companions] and moonlight is as good as three. The question was asked: Is the torch as good as two [people] including the carrier [of the torch], or as good as two

besides the carrier? [The first argument would require one to travel in darkness with at least one torch and one companion. The second argument would allow one to travel alone so long as they carried a lit torch with them. -- aharon] Come and hear: Moonlight is as good as three [traveling companions]. If now you argue, including the carrier, [then] there is no difficulty. [The torch carrier will need an additional companion.] But if you say, besides the carrier [then there is a problem with your argument]. Why would I need four, seeing that a Master has said: To one [person] a Mazik may show itself and harm them; to two it may show itself, but without harming them; to three it will not even show itself? [With the 'besides the carrier' argument, four would equal the traveler plus the additional three virtual companions provided by the moonlight. Meanwhile only three are actually needed per the Master's teaching concerning demons. --aharon] We must therefore conclude that a torch is equivalent to two [persons] including the carrier; and this may be taken as proved. In darkness, two people can see a demon but not be harmed. Only without the company of another can one both see and be harmed thereby. However irrational this idea appears on the surface, on deeper reflection I think one can see the logic of it. Rationally, one may interpret the mazikin as outward personifications of ever present danger or as dangerous constructs of ones own imagination. One can endanger themselves, when stumbling about in darkness alone. When isolated from others, ones imagination can leave themselves into madness. And in the company of two, one is still vulnerable to the Folie deux. Only with the reality confirmation (and distraction) of friends can what is real be parsed from what is imaginary. (Perhaps for this same reason, a court of judges in Jewish law must be composed of a minimum of three persons.)

Jorge Luis Borges' Jewish Demons as illustrated by the graduate students in the Department of Illustration and Art of the Book at the Vakalo School of Art and Design in Athens, Greece for Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings.

The image at the top of this post is a painting by Jesse Patrick Martin entitled Litterbox and inspired by the defecation of the animals in Borges Beastiary. (Used with the artists permission. Please visit Jesses site for more fantastic work.) Comments (12)

We are the music makers

Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 3:26:50 AM | Aharon In the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), after Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) proudly describes that in his lickable wallpaper The snozberries taste like snozberries!, an exasperated Veruca Salt snidely comments, Snozberries? Who ever heard of a snozberry? Willy Wonka grabs her mouth and explains We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams. Wonkas oblique answer references the first stanza of a poem by Arthur OShaughnessy, the Ode featured in his collection of poems from 1874, Music and Moonlight. I didnt understand Wonkas response to Veruca Salt until I read the entire poem. The meaning provided me a key to understanding the story, who the mysterious character Wonka represents, what his motivations are in finding a child to give his factory to, and what Charlie Bucket really means for him. Read the poem below, and I think you might understand too. ODE. WE are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the worlds great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empires glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new songs measure Can trample a kingdom down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself in our mirth; And oerthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new worlds worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth. A breath of our inspiration Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming Unearthly, impossible seeming The soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done. They had no vision amazing Of the goodly house they are raising; They had no divine foreshowing Of the land to which they are going: But on one mans soul it hath broken, A light that doth not depart; And his look, or a word he hath spoken, Wrought flame in another mans heart. And therefore to-day is thrilling With a past days late fulfilling; And the multitudes are enlisted In the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of to-morrow, Are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday. But we, with our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we ! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see, Our souls with high music ringing: O men! it must ever be That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. For we are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high, And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry How, spite of your human scorning, Once more Gods future draws nigh, And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die. Great hail! we cry to the comers From the dazzling unknown shore; Bring us hither your sun and your summers, And renew our world as of yore; You shall teach us your songs new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more.

The premise of Roald Dahls novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) asks: what would an industrial factory engaged in mass production look like if it was built by a fantasist, dreamer, and romantic in a world dominated by pragmatists, realists, and materialists. In this lonely island, Wonka wonders who will inherit his lifes work and hopes that in the next generation of children there might still be romantics. His sampling of youth via the lottery tickets provides a referendum on Charlies generation. The selected tourists to Wonkas candyland are a fools gallery of technocrats, capitalists, hedonists and opportunists. The latter is what Wonka makes of Charlie Bucket. Poverty does not make Charlie a finer candidate than any of the others or even more sympathetic to Wonka. But the moral challenge that Charlie meets in the face of his familys dire poverty does affect Wonka. For Charlie to give back the stolen everlasting gobstopper means returning to Wonkas competitor Oscar Slugworth empty handed and to his family with only tales of Oompa-Loompas. Wonka is so resigned to the absence of new romantics in the world that he is willing to give up everything to Slugworth by letting Charlie walk out with the gobstopper. By returning the gobstopper Wonka is enlightened to Charlies enduring romantic virtue. Charlies elevation of an abstract moral good over an immediate material good justifies his embrace of the young lad as the rightful recipient of his vast empire of imagination. Some additional trivia I found interesting while researching this post: Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. David Seltzer, an uncredited screenwriter on the film, wrote at least 30% of the final script and was responsible for Wonkas literary references throughout the film including Wonkas quotation from OShaughnessys Ode. Seltzer is the director of another film representing the tribulations of an alienated romantic youth, Lucas (1986). Comments (6)

Amplified Harmonic Resonance: Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-26

Monday, February 02, 2009, 1:41:57 AM | Aharon

Amplified Harmonic Resonance, Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-26, programmer: dj Magical Adventures of Duffy Moon, Mondays 7am-10:00am EST Year Artist Album Track Title 1979 Kitaro Oasis 7 Shimmering Horizon (Hikari To Kage) 1979 Kitaro Oasis 8 Fragrance Of Nature (Shizen No Kaori) 1979 Kitaro Oasis 9 Innocent People (Mujaki) 1979 Kitaro Oasis 10 Oasis Death Cube K Guitars on Mars (Disc 2) 10 Terror By Night Eurock ~ A History of 1975 Brast Burn 2 Debon Part 1 [edit] vol. 7: Zen Electronics Brian Eno & Music for Films III 1 Tension Block Daniel Lanois Brian Eno & Music for Films III 8 White Mustang Daniel Lanois A Sampler from 2007 Tristan Perich 10 Certain Movement Cantaloupe Music 2002 Gelg Look Around You 4 Piece Four Boards Of 1995 Old Tunes vol. 2 (side b) 6 Magic Teens Canada A Few Old Tunes (30 Boards Of 1995 Fabulous Tracks) (side 10 Skimming Stones Canada a) The Well-Tempered 1969 Wendy Carlos 13 Stereo Alignment Tones Synthesizer 1990 John Adams The Chairman Dances 5 Common Tones in Simple Time 2000 Raymond Scott Manhattan Research, 23 Auto-Lite, Ford Family (instr.)

2000 Raymond Scott 2000 Raymond Scott

1986 Wendy Carlos 6 California Guitar 2000 Rocks the West 11 Trio Moog Spaceport Lounge 1958 Korla Pandit 11 Vol.1 1959 Andr Previn North by Northwest 17 Moog Spaceport Lounge Andr Previn 6 Vol.1 Rollerball (1975) Andr Previn 8 Moog Spaceport Lounge 1960 Eric Siday 4 Vol.1 Moog Spaceport Lounge Pierre Schaeffer 13 Vol.1 Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd Pink Floyd (disc 2) 1978 Queen Bicycle Race 1999 Plone Plock 2 1972 John Cage The Dial-A-Poem Poets 1971 Can Tago Mago 2 Explosions In 2000 How Strange, Innocence 2 The Sky 2006 Miles Tilmann Polyphonic Petals 12 Childrens Corner (Idil 1993 Claude Debussy 41 Biret) Debussys Snowflakes 1974 Isao Tomita 1 Are Dancing Selections from the From Biak, Irian 1999 Music of Indonesia 7 Jaya Series Pete Namlook & Orhan 1 Burhan al 1994 Ilya Prigogone Chaos In Expansion 4 Pete Namlook & n/a Orhan 7 Burhan al 1982 Brian Eno Ambient 4: On Land 5 1978 Brian Eno Music for Films 14 God Save the 1980 Robert Fripp Queen/Under Heavy 1 Manners

Inc. (disc 2) Manhattan Research, Inc. (disc 2) Manhattan Research, Inc. (disc 2) Secrets of Synthesis

15 12

Hostess Twinkies (instr.) Cindy Electronium Simple Orchestration Misirlou Misirlou Fashion Show Executive Party Executive Party Dance Maxwell House Coffee: Percolator Le Tridre Fertile Bike (edit) Bicycle Race (sample) Simple Song Mushroom Haiku, excerpt from Silence Mushroom Snow And Lights Stairs To Snow The Snow is Dancing Snowflakes are Dancing Yendisare Aimando (church song) Nerden Geliyorsun, Part I Une Fenetre de Connaissance Nerden Geliyorsun, Part VII Lantern Marsh A Measured Room Red Two Scorer

1980 Robert Fripp 2002 Redshift 1973 Fred Myrow Jamie Janover, Michael Masley Jamie Janover, 2000 Michael Masley Jamie Janover, 2000 Michael Masley Jamie Janover, 2000 Michael Masley Comments (0) wkdu-high.m3u 2000

God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners Halo Soylent Green All Strings Considered All Strings Considered All Strings Considered All Strings Considered

2 8 10 1 2 3 4

God Save the Queen Turbine Infernal Machine / Thorn In Danger / Are You With Us / Alternate City Opening / End Credits Raga Sutra Birds of Mindrise Mnemonic Harmonics Under Fire And Water

Amplified Harmonic Resonance: Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-19

Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 1:46:31 PM | Aharon

Amplified Harmonic Resonance, Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-19, programmer: dj Magical Adventures of Duffy Moon, 7am-10:30pm EST Year Artist Album Track Title 1993 Deeper than Space Earthrise 3 Earthrise 1957 Marcel Duchamp The Creative Act 1 The Creative Act (Houston,

1975 Franco Falsini 1975 Franco Falsini 1978 Banco 1978 Banco 1978 Banco 1978 Banco 1993 Pekka Kostiainen 2007 Hope for Agoldensummer 1994 Skylab Jack Finlay, Douglas 1966 Grindstaff & Joseph Sorokin Jack Finlay, Douglas 1966 Grindstaff & Joseph Sorokin Jack Finlay, Douglas 1966 Grindstaff & Joseph Sorokin 2003 Christ. 1999 Jah Wobble 2000 DJ Food n/a Don Joyce and the Professor

Naso Fredo (Cold Nose) 1 Naso Fredo (Cold Nose) 2 Di Terra Di Terra Di Terra Di Terra 1 2 3 4

Runo (Northern Lights) 1 Ariadne Thread #1 11 2

TX, April 1957) Naso Fredo (Cold Nose) Part 1 Naso Fredo (Cold Nose) Part 2 Nel Cielo e Nelle Altre Cose Mute (Do largo) Terramadre (Sol improvviso) Non Senza Dolore (Chorale in Fa minore) Io Vivo (Fusione per trenta elementi) Morsiamen Iahtovirsi (Brides Farewell) Pages Instrumental Seashell Communicator beeps Dematerialization Materialization Lazy Daisy Meadow The Divine Self Nocturne (Sleep Dyad 1) Show 1 (Part 9): The Sumerian underworld is Channel 26 Les Yper Yper Sound Interim Opuscule #57 Pop Muzik Bassline (Latin Rascals Edit) Theyre So Incredible So I say I gotta be free, so I say I gotta be me Night Drive (Time, Space, Transmat)

Star Trek: Original TV 8 Series Sound Effects Star Trek: Original TV 5 Series Sound Effects Star Trek: Original TV 6 Series Sound Effects Metamorphic Reproduction Miracle Hashisheen: The End Of Law Kaleidoscope Over the Edge: The Trip Receptacles 1 13 7 9

1996 Stereolab 1994 Legion of Green Men 1979 M 1997 Mantronix 1984 Ollie Brown 1984 Michelle Meyrink 1987 Model 500

Noises 4 Spatial Specific 7 Pop Muzik 1 Booming On Pluto: Electro For Droids (disc 9 1) Revenge of the Nerds 33 Revenge of the Nerds 16

Booming On Pluto: Electro For Droids (disc 1 1)

1985 Michael Kamen 1995 Mike & Rich 1971 Paul Alan Levi 1981 1966 1963 1990 1998 1971 2001 2000

Brazil Expert Knob Twiddlers PBS idents David Roels PKD Philip K. Dick Tapes Anthology 5: Advanced The Beatles Test (disc 2) Moog Spaceport Max Mathews Lounge Vol.1 Laurie Spiegel Unseen Worlds Sounds to Soothe a Japancakes Nervous Robot Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Willy Wonka & The Newley Chocolate Factory Ryksopp Melody A.M. Lakshminarayana Shankar Eternal Light Repo Man Styx II Exposure Exposure Fragile Music From A Clockwork Orange Sounds to Soothe a Nervous Robot Crumb Duck

3 3 10 22 10 10 14 7 8 1

Ducts Eggy Toast PBS ident On Vonnegut Aerial Tour Instrumental Daisy Bell (bicycle built for two) Strand of Life (Viroid) Ala Rakha Pure Imagination Remind Me Ragamalika cosmic unconsciousness [Repo Man sample] Little Fugue In G Water Music Water Music II Cans and Brahms Overture to the Sun Classical Ass 2.0 Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason) Through a Truck/Airport Chase

1984 Tracey Walter 1972 1979 1979 1972 Styx Robert Fripp Robert Fripp Yes

5 14 16 2 10 10 4

1971 Terry Tucker 1998 Nipples for Days 1993 Stereolab & Nurse With Wound

2005 Stu Phillips Comments (0)

Knight Rider (The Stu 15 Phillips Scores)

The Collected Calypsos, Sayings, and Songs of Bokonon

Thursday, January 15, 2009, 3:11:13 AM | Aharon From Kurt Vonneguts novel, Cats Cradle (1963). Found on the internet, and rearranged associatively.

On the Quest for Understanding

Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, Why, why, why? Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land, Man got to tell himself he understand.

On Life
We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must; Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

On God
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why go right ahead and scold Him. Hell just smile and nod.

On the Roots of Bokononism

I wanted all things To seem to make sense, So we all could be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-a-dise.

On Love
A lovers a liar, To himself he lies. The truthful are loveless, Like oysters their eyes!

On Boko-Maru
We will touch our feet, yes, Yes, for all were worth, And we will love each other, yes, Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.

The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith

Performed in the Boko-Maru posture, both parties repeat one after the other: God made mud, God got lonesome, So God said to some of the mud, Sit up!, See all Ive made, said God, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars. And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God! Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldnt have. I feel very unimportant compared to You.

The only way that I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didnt even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honour! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. I will go to heaven now. I can hardly wait To find out for certain what my wampeter was And who was in my karass And all the good things our karass did for you. Amen.

On the Members of a Karass

Around and around and around we spin, With feet of lead and wings of tin

Bokonons 53rd Calypso

Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter In the jungle dark, And a chinese dentist, And a British queen All fit together In the same machine. Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice So many different people In the same device.

On Granfalloons
If you wish to study a granfalloon, Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.

Bokonons 119th Calypso

Wheres my good old gang done gone? I heard a man say. I whispered in that sad mans ear, Your gangs done gone away.

On Bokonons Rebirth

A fish pitched up By the angry sea, I gasped on land, and I became me.

On Growth
Be like a baby, The Bible say, So I stay like a baby To this very day.

Bokonons 14th Calypso

When I was young, I was so gay and mean, And I drank and chased the girls Just like St Augustine. St Augustine, He got to be a saint. So if I get to be one also, Please, mama, dont you faint.

On the People of San Lorenzo

Oh, a very sorry people, yes, Did I find here. Oh, they had no music, And they had no beer. And, oh, everywhere Where they tried to perch Belonged to Castle Sugar, Incorporated, Or the Catholic Church.

The San Lorenzan National Anthem (1922, Bokonon)

Oh, ours is a land Where the living is grand, And the men are as fearless as sharks; The women are pure, And we always are sure That our children will all toe their marks. San, San Lo-ren-zo! What a rich, lucky island are we! Our enemies quail, For they know they will fail Against people so reverent and free.

On Contrast
Papa Monzano, hes so very bad, But without bad Papa I would be so sad;

Because without Papas badness, Tell me, if you would, How could wicked old Bokonon Ever, ever look good?

On the Outlawing of Bokonon

So I said good-bye to government, And I gave my reason: That a really good religion Is a form of treason.

On Torture
In any case, theres bound to be much crying. But the oubliette alone will let you think while dying. Comments (0)

Amplified Harmonic Resonance: Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-12

Tuesday, January 13, 2009, 9:12:00 AM | Aharon Amplified Harmonic Resonance, Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-12, programmer: dj Magical Adventures of Duffy Moon, 7am-1pm EST Track Year Artist Album Title No. 1000 Airplanes on the 1989 Philip Glass 1000 Airplanes on the Roof 1 Roof 1989 Philip Glass 1000 Airplanes on the Roof 2 City Walk Christopher 2007 Favorite Intermissions 2 Before Petrushka DeLaurenti Coco, Steel & 1995 emit 2295 3 Berlinerstrasse Lovebomb Piano Phase (Phased and 1999 D*Note Steve Reich Remixed 7 konfused mix) 1977 Pierrot Lunaire Gudrun 1 Gudrun 1977 Pierrot Lunaire Gudrun 2 Dietro Il Silenzio 1977 Pierrot Lunaire Gudrun 3 Plaisir damour 1975 Zao Osiris 1 Shardaz 1975 Zao Osiris 2 Isis 1975 Zao Osiris 3 Reinna 1978 Jean-Luc Ponty Cosmic Messenger 1 Cosmic Messenger 1978 Jean-Luc Ponty Cosmic Messenger 8 Egocentric Molecules 1982 Yoshitaka Azuma Far From Asia 1 Toki 2004 Miles Tilmann 3D Concepts 4 Particle 3 Recordings of Shortwave Numbers 1997 The Conet Project 39 High Pitch Polytone Stations (Disc 2)

1997 1998 1998 2000 1999 1996

Doctor Y.S. & the Cosmic Drunkards Clint Mansell Clint Mansell Yoshihiro Sawasaki Legion of Green Men DJ Shadow

Sublime The Adolescence Pi Pi Boogiepop Phantom (Disc 2) Floating In Shallow Water Endtroducing

10 1 9 4 1 9

2004 Dopplebanger 1977 Laurie Anderson 1998 Coil 1973 Fred Myrow 1990 1990 1990 1990 1971 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 Franois Bayle Franois Bayle Franois Bayle Franois Bayle Paul Alan Levi Gelg Gelg Gelg Gelg Gelg Gelg Gelg Gelg New Music For Electronic and Recorded Media: Women in Electronic Music Time Machines Soylent Green Erosphere Erosphere Erosphere Erosphere PBS idents Look Around You Look Around You Look Around You Look Around You Look Around You Look Around You Look Around You Look Around You Mind Control Made Easy or How to Become a Cult Leader Luxury Pylonesque EP Pylonesque EP Pylonesque EP Pylonesque EP Pylonesque EP Pylonesque EP Pylonesque EP 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 1 9 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Open The Bass, Shut The Door pi R Squared 2^pi R Snow Coast For Maria, Wherever I May Find Her Organ Donor Flash Runner (Vangelis vs Grandmaster Flash) New York Social Life 7-Methoxy--Carboline: (Telepathine) Symphony Music (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Grieg) Climat 1 Transit 1 Paysage 1 Climat 2 PBS ident No. 2 Piece One Piece Two Piece Three Piece Four Piece Five Piece Six Piece Seven Piece Eight Mind Control Made Easy or How to Become a Cult Leader Mr. Fantasys Love Dream of the Endless Arctica Spengly Bengly Pylonesque Fantastic Light Perlandine Friday Absolom (For Lucy)

2000 Carey Burtt 1999 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 2002 Fantastic Plastic Machine Christ. Christ. Christ. Christ. Christ. Christ. Christ.

2000 2001 2001 2001 2001 2001 1995 1995

Legendary Pink Dots Miles Tilmann Miles Tilmann Miles Tilmann Miles Tilmann Miles Tilmann Emergency Broadcast Network Emergency Broadcast Network

Wild Planet Xmasep 2 Xmasep 2 Xmasep 2 Xmasep 2 Xmasep 2 Telecommunication Breakdown Telecommunication Breakdown Eurock ~ A History of vol. 6: South American Fusion

13 1 2 3 4 5 17 18 12

Fates Faithful Punchline (version) Particle Song 1 Winder Mercury 2 Alpha Chime Middle Fields 3:7:8 Beginning Of The End Kundalini

1984 Angel Rada

Comments (0)

Hobbits, Jews, and Romantics in the Woods

Saturday, January 10, 2009, 1:51:31 PM | Aharon Just a few notes on the film Defiance. My housemate and I caught a free screening courtesy of gofobo.com and the Ritz East. The film is based on the 1993 book by Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, and it is an excellent story told well. Had it been a fantasy written by Tolkien it might have been told as part of larger multi-part epic. What we were shown was the compressed story of one year of survival that spanned three more. I mention Tolkien since one of his intentions in inventing the fairy tale geographies and histories of Middle Earth was to provide a national myth for his beloved England. The Hobbits of the Shire represented the rural peoples and provincial attitudes familiar from Tolkiens youth. The threat and conquest of the Shire by the evil minion of Sauron were reflected in the terrible trauma suffered by the English people in the first and second World Wars. It is not an exaggeration to say that for both religious and secular Judaism the past cannot be reached without first crossing the gaping abyss of despair and traumatic survival that describes our storytelling and documenting of the Holocaust. In Defiance, the story of the exodus from Egypt and the travails of the wilderness are retold through the true story of the Bielski brothers

trek through the forests of Belarus. This is the story of Frodo and Sam Gamgee writ large and real. And if the Jews feet arent as hairy as Tolkiens hobbits, they do at least live in earth sheltered dwellings. True Holocaust stories have assumed the role of epic sagas for the Jewish people. These arent the stories imagined for us by 19th century Jewish romanticists. But unlike Tolkiens fiction, the lived experience of the Holocaust helped drive a national liberation movement to realize a sovereign state in the ancient homeland of its people, revived religious and ethnic roots among disaffected and assimilated Jews, and continues to provide a focal point for secular ethnic identity in both Israel and the Diaspora. Its not that stories of previous persecutions dont exist and arent revisited often in the Jewish calendar of fast days and period of mourning. What differentiates Defiance is that it revives the tales of defiance to oppression, from Moses to the Macabees to Bar Kohbas rebellion against the Romans. Its been almost two millennia since Bar Kohbas failed uprising. Adaptation to the Diaspora and repeated disappointments from the Spanish Expulsion to Shabbtai Tzvi, put a note of skepticism at the end of every prayer for the appearance of a Messiah. What is surprising is that the film doesnt overtly link the success of the Bielski brothers self-reliance with the parallel struggle of Zionism and the creation of the Jewish state. On the one hand, perhaps it doesnt need to. On the other, the film does such an excellent job of weaving the expectations of Jewish Messianism with the reality of harrowing circumstance that it almost makes sense for the Bielski borthers to live happily ever after growing their trucking company in New York City. Defiance isnt a messianic fantasy, nor is it ideological. Hunger strips the non-essentials. This forest tale is reality tempered. If romanticism maps historic and mythic landscapes and practices onto the present, then identifying Defiance as romantic might seem a bit of a stretch. But if its hard to see, then one would also be blind to the major romantic themes in Judaism: pining for the restoration of the Temple, for the revelation of the hidden messiah, and the return to the Land of Israel. These are the same themes that enabled a secular Zionism to be so easily adopted and communicated, for Yiddish to be replaced by a rehabilitated Hebrew, for urbanized Jews to embrace the field of the kibbutz. After a century of German mystic antisemites advancing the notion that Materialism was synonymous with Judaism, and convincing many that unlike the German people (rooted as they were in the deep and mysterious old European forests) Jews were a spiritually shallow people without a motherland to nourish them, the ancient desire to be rooted in the land of Israel was freshly revived. Just as Europeans were seeking out and publishing their ancient folk traditions as a historic validation of their new national identities, so Hayyim Bialik and Yehoshua Ravnitzky did the same with the Sefer Ha-Aggadad published in Odess in 1911. But the use of storytelling to derive a single identity within the diverse Jewish communities is an ancient one. The imaginative exercise to tell the story of the exodus as if one had themselves fled from Egypt is what is at play in Defiance. This annual Passover tradition (actually a religious obligation) at the root of Jewish religious and ethnic identity is nothing if not romantic. What makes Defiance compelling, beyond it being an amazing true story, is that it helps the viewer place themselves in the wilderness with these Jewish survivors, as they themselves re-enacted the story of exodus without the benefit of magical interventions or prophecy. There are other romantic aspects as well. The film presents rural Jews as capable and hardy outdoorsmen, even as it allows for the more familiar trope of urbanized ghetto Jews completely unfamiliar with the rigour of wilderness living. But in this way the viewer (who is also likely to be an unaccomplished survivalist) may experience the Byelorussian winter vicariously through the story of the Jews. The desire to rehabilitate Jews as capable fighters rooted in nature affected

all of the Zionist youth movements. The idea drew heavily from the German romantic tradition. That Defiance shows ghetto Jews in the role of resistance fighters and backwoods survivalists makes this a Jewish romantic tour de force. Simon Schama had already described Jewish familiarity with the rural European landscape in his prologue to Landscape & Memory (1995), but for those who hadnt read it, Defiance provides some witness to the truth of this. Here is what Schama wrote in Landscape and Memory (p.2729). It should be read by every Jewish romantic. I had always thought of the Jews of the Alte Land as essentially urban types, even when they lived in villages: tradesmen and artisans; tailors and carpenters and butchers and bakers; with the rebbe as the lord of the shtetl; microcosms of the great swarming communities of Wilno and Bialystok and Minsk. And so it often was, but the villages we walked through, these pictureperfect rustic cottages with their slanting timber eaves and crook-fenced gardens, had once been Jewish houses. Seventy percent, eighty percent of the people here and here and here, said Tadeusz, -all Jews. So even if they had not worked the earth with their hands or cut hay in the fields, these Jews had been country people, no less than the villagers of the Cotswolds or the peasants of the Auvergne. And one group among them, people known to everyone in the border country of Poland and Lithuania, had even been people of the forest, the wilderness puszcza. Among them, somewhere, was my family. My mothers father, Mark, who did become a butcher, left this region along with three brothers, at the turn of the century, driven by the horseback terror of the Cossack pogroms. But his father, Eli, like many other Jews, made his living cutting timber from the great primeval forests, hauling it to the tributaries that fed the Niemen and floating the logs north to the sawmills of Grodno or, even farther downstream, all the way to the old provincial city of Kowno. The waters were full of these Jewish river rats, sometimes spending weeks at a time on the rafts , sleeping in crude cabins constructed from logs propped on end in the company of chickens and each other. During the brutal Lithuanian winters when the rivers were frozen, he would transport the timber on long sleds driven by big Polish farm horses or teams of oxen. From Kowno or Wilno on the river Viliya the lumber would be sold to the Russian railway companies for ties, or freight wagons, or shipped further downstream in rafts of a thousand or more logs, to the Baltic for export, usually handled by other and grander Jewish timber companies. Somewhere, beside a Lithuanian river, with a primeval forest all about it, stood my greatgrandfather Elis house; itself made of roughly fashioned timber with a cladding of plaster, surrounded by a stone wall to announce its social pretensions. My mother, who was born and grew up in the yeasty clamor of Londons Jewish East End, retains just the scraps and shreds of her fathers and uncles memories of this landscape: tales of brothers fending off wolves from the sleds (a standard brag of the woodland taverns ); of the dreamy youngest brother, Hyman, falling asleep at the loading depot and rudely woken by being tied to a log and heaved into the river. Was this family as improbable as the Yiddishe woodsmen of Ruthenia I had seen in an old Roman Vishniak photo, poling logs in their sidelocks and homburgs; lumberjacks mit tzitzis?

Jewish lumbermen, Ruthenia (Roman Vishniac) And just where, exactly, was this place, this house, this world of stubby yellow cigarettes, fortifying pulls from grimy vodka bottles, Hassidic songs bellowed through the piny Poylishe velder? Where was it? I pressed my mother while we sat eating salad in a West End hotel. For the first time in my life I badly needed to know. Kowno gubernia, outside Kowno, thats all we ever knew. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the lettuce. The history of the country only deepens the uncertainty. For Lithuania is not coterminous with the present borders of the shrunken Baltic republic; still less with its language and religion. For centuries it covered an immense expanse of territory stretching all the way from the Black Sea in the south to the Bug river in the west to the Baltic in the north. In 1386 its hunter-king Jagieo married the Polish queen Jadwiga, creating by their muon the Great Polish realm. Over time the cultural identity of the south and west of the country was colonized by Poland. Its landowning gentry can1e to speak and write Polish and call themselves by the Polish name of szlachta. In the late eighteenth century Poland was brutally and cynically partitioned and the pieces devoured by its neighbors-the Prussians, the Russians, and the Austrians. The Lithuanian heartland became Russian, and its Polish-speaking poets came to think of it as the captive homeland. With no formal frontiers to cross, itinerant Jewish traders migrated within the Russian Empire as family connections or economic incentives beckoned, north from the Ukraine or Byelorussia, south from Latvia, magnetized by the great center of piety and cultural passion in Wilno. My great-grandfather and his four boys, like so many other wood-shleppers, were outriders of this Judeo-Lithuanian world, by Yiddish standards, real backwoodsmen, as at home with horses and dogs and two-handled saws as with prayer books and shabbos candles. We drove further north from Giby, past synagogues with drunkenly undulating gables and whitewashed walls (the wooden structures having all been burned by the SS and their local collaborators), cutting through darker woodland dominated by spruce and fir. I remembered someone in a Cambridge common room pestering the self-designated non-Jewish Jew and Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher, himself a native of this country, about his roots. Trees have roots, he shot back,

scornfully, Jews have legs. And I thought, as yet another metaphor collapsed into ironic literalism, Well, some Jews have both and branches and stems too. So when Mickiewicz hails ye trees of Lithuania as if they belonged only to the gentry and their serfs, foresters, and gamekeepers I could in our familys memory lay some claim to those thick groves of larch, hornbeam, and oak. I dare say that even the lime tree, worshipped by pagan Germans and Lithuanians as the abode of living spirits, lay on Eli Sztajnbergs leds and carts waiting to be turned into the clogs and sandals worn everywhere in the Lithuanian villages Comments (2)

Amplified Harmonic Resonance: Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-05

Tuesday, January 06, 2009, 1:33:54 AM | Aharon Amplified Harmonic Resonance, Playlist for Monday morning, 2009-01-05, programmer: dj Magical Adventures of Duffy Moon Track Year Artist Album Title No. John Cale & 1970 Church Of Anthrax 1 Church of Anthrax Terry Riley John Cale & The Hall of Mirrors in 1970 Church Of Anthrax 2 Terry Riley the Palace at Versailles 1990 Robert Rich Geometry 1 Primes Part 1 1990 Robert Rich Geometry 2 Primes Part 2 1999 Tranquility Bass Steve Reich Remixed 4 Megamix New Music For Electronic and 1974 Laurie Spiegel Recorded Media: Women in 4 Appalachian Grove I Electronic Music Heroes (remixed Philip 2003 Aphex Twin 26 Mixes for Cash (Disc 1) 5 Glass and David Bowie) 1991 Harold Budd By the Dawns Early Light 1 Poem Aztec Hotel 2005 dj BC Glassbreaks 1 Einstein on the Beast Boards Of 2006 Trans Canada Highway 1 Dayvan Cowboy Canada 1972 Bill Withers Still Bill 4 Use Me unknown Ghost Exits Sun EP 3 [unknown title] year Jorge Luis 1967 Por l Mismo 6 el glem Borges 1959 Raymond Scott OHM (Disc 2) 1 Cindy Electronium Violez Lespace De Son 1975 Lard Free Im Around About Midnight 1 Rfrigrant 1975 Lard Free Im Around About Midnight 2 In A Desert Alambic Does East Bakestan 1975 Lard Free Im Around About Midnight 3 Belong To Itself? 1975 Lard Free Im Around About Midnight 4 Tatkooz A Roulette

1975 1975 1980 1988 1982

Lard Free Lard Free

Im Around About Midnight Im Around About Midnight

5 6 4 1 1

Pale Violence Under A Reverbere Even Silence Stops When Trains Come Under Heavy Manners Honey Voyage (Part 1)

Robert Fripp with God Save the Queen/Under David Byrne Heavy Manners Spacemen 3 Playing With Fire Brainticket Voyage

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Amplified Harmonic Resonance on WKDU 91.7FM

Sunday, January 04, 2009, 12:20:12 AM | Aharon Tune your legacy radio sets and etherwave monitors to 91.7 on the FM spectrum Monday mornings 7am-10am EST for the next few months and you will once again hear dj Magical Adventures of Duffy Moon (alter ego of dj spaceling) presenting your breakfast and commuting audioscape in typical wonderful entheogenic fashion.

(Also available via streamin Internet audio, the programme Amplified Harmonic Resonance, is brought to you by Heavenly Music Corporation brand cigarettes and Ubik brand reality cleansers.) On hiatus for the last six years, dj spaceling has been on academic retreat, whiling away his years in hermitages and think tanks, and more recently, battling leviathans off the coast of Louisiana. His heart as broken as a thrift store fiddle and mind as sharp as a kite racers glass string, you can expect morning musiks that aim to temper and wrastle the caffeinated raging mania that fuels our modern Empire. In other words, yours truly shall be on the radio and live on the Internet Monday mornings for the next semester on Philadelphia radio via WKDU, Drexel Universitys student run radio station, 91.7FM 7am-10am. (Noon-3PM London, 2pm-5pm Haifa)

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Day of Radiance: A Celebration of Experimental Music and Parks in Philadelphia

Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 2:11:42 AM | Aharon

Although the day, month, and season Brian Eno met Laraaji Nadabrahmananda in Philadelphias New Yorks Washington Square Park in 1979 is unknown, their meeting led directly to an important album, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (1980). In commemoration of this creative encounter, the Philadelphia Ambient Consortium is at the beginning stages of organizing an outdoor music festival, tentatively titled Day of Radiance, to take place in Phillys own Washington Square Park on the day Laraaji and Eno met. Over the coming months, Philadelphia ambienteers and space music enthusiasts will be working to realize this event which we hope will become an annual celebration of Philadelphias long thriving experimental music scene.

Washington Square Park is perhaps Philadelphias loneliest park, so any celebration there is bound to cheer the space up. And in return, the space will bring us cheer and inspiration for further creative encounters. Please contact me if you would like to help plan and participate in this project. (Image of Washington Square Park, Philadelphia, modified from Flickr user chingers7s original image. Used with permission via creative commons share-attribution non-commercial license.) Comments (5)

Byadeinu ohr va esh | In our hands are light and fire

Monday, December 29, 2008, 8:02:24 PM | Aharon It is the eighth and final day of Chanukah, Chag Urim, festival of lights. It is the day after the world comes to grips with the latest horrible spasm in the terrible saga playing out between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinians in Gaza. Gershom Gorenberg of South Jerusalem, always conscious of terrible ironies, shares this: Last week I received a press release from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel about a sharp increase in child burn victims in the Gaza Strip. This was before the Israeli air campaign began. After whats happened in the last couple of days, PHRs email now seems like a message from another historical era, a time so calm that it was a major concern that In December alone, 16 Palestinians were hospitalized who were burned while trying to heat their homes. Most of the cases reported to the NGO were of children playing with fire, following

attempts to light bonfires for heating and cooking and lighting candles in order to illuminate homes. The fires, that is, were the result of the siege of Gaza, which included fuel shortages and power outages. The head of the burn unit at Shifa Hospital in Gaza reported that his unit was collapsing under the strain. I can only guess that Dr. Nafed Abu Shaaban is having a much harder time this week. [read the full post] This news hits home for me. This weekend I learned that my youngest nephew, a resident of the occupied West Bank, received first and second degree burns after his clothes caught on fire, the result of his grasping for a Chanukiah (chanukah menorah) candle. Everyone is in shock, exhausted, and thanking God that at least he wasnt wearing a polyester shirt, oy, he was wearing polyester Tzizit. Thank G!d he wasnt hurt even worse than he was. For all the negative attention given over to the Cult of Molokh in the Torah, one would think that any fire ritual in Judaism be undertaken with many precautions to preclude even the possibility of fire related injury, especially of children. According to Mlachim Bet (2 Kings 23:10) and Sefer Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah 32:35) the fire ritual of Molokh seems to involve the passage of the first born male child through fire. The Jewish tradition finds it obscene to create situations in which children, any children, are subjected to such danger. Hatzalah, an international volunteer emergency response organization serving mostly Orthodox Jewish communities provided a safety guide this year to help prevent Chanukah related accidents. It reads

Remove curtains or any other flammable objects from the area around the menorah. Keep the menorahs away from the reach of small children and make sure the menorah is on something solid and leveled. Children bring home beautiful projects on Chanukah. If they are flammable, either paste them on the wall or place them away from menorahs. When making latkes, keep ALL children away from the hot oil. Turn frying pan handles away from the edge of the stove and try to use the back burners. House fires tend to occur more often during the winter months. Prepare an escape plan and frequently rehearse it with your family.

It adds this helpful information in small print: First Aid for Burns this is for immediate care only. Skin continues to burn for a while after the heat source has been removed. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to begin cooling the burn as soon as possible. A first-degree burn that is left untreated can quickly become a second or third degree burn. Cool a burn by running cold (not freezing) water on the affected area, or by covering the area with a wet towel. When using the towel method, it is important to occasionally re-immerse the towel in cold water as the burn warms the cloth. Burns, regardless of the cause, have to be cooled for a minimum of twenty minutes. The hotter the skin, the longer the cooling process.

It is advisable that any burn to an infant, child or the elderly that affects the face, chest, abdomen, or back should be considered an emergency.

This information needs to be more widely disseminated. And if we consider the safety of our children to be a priority and a religious obligation, then we should also find obscene what has been happening to the children of Gaza under Hamas and the past years siege. Its amazing to me that its easier to find information on fire related injuries to Gazan children than statistics on how often Jewish children are injured due to Chanukah related accidents. I cant find anything online. Ill post them on my blog as soon as I can find some. In the meantime, I pray that we all become mindful of each others health and safety, and act accordingly to increase light in all of our communities, to preserve each other against callous disregard and aggression, and find shelter under a common awning of peace. This is my humble and sad wish on the last day of Chanukah. We come to chase the dark away In our hands are light and fire Each individual light is small But together the light is mighty. Flee, darkness and night Flee, before the light. Comments (0)

Banu choshech legaresh

Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 11:22:11 AM | Aharon Ari, at his serendipitynow blog, points out this article at Haaretz on the naked bigotry the Muslims of Yaffo (Jaffa) recently endured at the hands of right wing Israeli extremists (of the national religious settler variety). Yaffo is a mixed ethnic Jewish and Arab town in Israel just south of Tel Aviv, a place that lives and breathes to the extent that tolerance and peace persists. On this holy Chanuka, some wicked zealots would destroy this peace, and in so doing they curse both the holiday and the religious identity that they ironically believe validates their ethnic and political aspirations. Extremists spray-painted Mohammed is a pig and Death to Arabs early Sunday on the walls and doors of the Sea Mosque in Jaffa, sparking the fury of the Islamic Movement in the mixed Arab-Jewish city.The hate slogans also included Kahane was right, a reference to the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach movement, and No peace without the House of Peace, alluding to the Hebron structure from which dozens of far-right activists were evicted earlier this month. Two Stars of David were painted on the entrance to the mosque. Worshippers discovered the graffiti when they arrived for early morning prayers on Sunday. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajweh, head of the Islamic Movement in Jaffa, condemned the acts. He blamed settlers for the graffiti, saying that similar offenses had been committed in the West Bank. The activities of these criminals must be denounced, and they must be apprehended and punished. The irony of this sort of wickedness taking place on the holiday of Chanukah just boils my blood, but unfortunately, Im not surprised since I know these people too well. They have been tolerated for way too long and peace, as usual, is the victim. As Ari exclaims, Its Chanukah. Banu choshech legaresh. We have come to chase off this darkness. From the

Chanukah song, Banu Choshech Legaresh (sung by the US Navy Band with the Hebrew Academy Choir of Greater Washington (1980)). Lyrics (Hebrew, Transliteration) Banu choshech legaresh Beh yadeinu ohr va esh (softly) Kol echad hu ohr katan (loudly) Ve kulanu ohr eitan. Sura choshech al ha schor Sura, mi pnei ha ohr. Lyrics (Translation) We come to chase the dark away In our hands are light and fire (softly) Each individual light is small (loudly) But together the light is mighty. Flee, darkness and night Flee, before the light.

Every letter and word on which I obsess on the myths and beliefs of Jews in ancient Israel and Late Antiquity is constantly under threat by the cursed actions of these zealots who would willfully cast all of the humane Jewish values into a pit so long as their hegemony and romantic pride were appeased. Intolerance is a basic existential threat to our peoplehood and our culture. It makes a lie out of everything we hold to be relevant: being a positive example for other people and bringing healing tikkun to this suffering world. We have thrived all of these thousands of years because we have intelligently and with kindness lived as mensches side by side with our neighbors. To throw this all away, in twisted threats it is just so deplorable. I will light the candle of the fourth night of Chanukah tomorrow with the intention that this light renew and enlighten our yearning for peace and goodwill. G!d help us and forgive us. Comments (0) the-hebrew-academy-choir-and-us-navy-band-hanukah-1980-13-tzura.mp3

Chanukah, Sukkot Bet and the Brumalia

Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 2:08:33 AM | Aharon With the dissemination and availability of 2 Maccabees (preserved in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian cannons), more Jews are learning that the eight day festival of lights originated as a renewal of the eight day festival of Sukkot. That essential Fall pilgrimage and fertility festival (which included the joyous water-drawing festival, Simchat Bet haShoeva) was missed due to the Temple desecration and ensuing revolt. The relationship between Sukkot and Chanukah is explained in 2Maccabees chapter 10 verses 5-8. Here is the translation from the original Greek as found in the The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (Augmented Third Edition): It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year. It can be difficult to imagine how important the pilgrimage holidays were in the Temple eras. Not only did they fulfill the important social function for reuniting families and clans, opportunities for the young to meet and fall in love (or for the arrangement of marriages), they also expressed the real anxieties Jews shared for a good harvest and a sufficient rainy season.

The passion of the Sukkot fertility rituals and the joy expressed at the Simchat beit hashoeva (Water Drawing festival) cannot be exaggerated. The Mishnah in Middoth 2:5 exclaims He who has not seen the rejoicing at the place of the water-drawing has never in his life seen true rejoicing. The loss of the Sukkot pilgrimage due to fighting must have been so difficult that the victory inspired a religious innovation: recelebrating a Sukkot, albeit with light! The important bull sacrifices in the Temple on Sukkot that were missed could symbolically be commemorated by offerings of light by all of Israel. (This also helps to explain the symbolism of Beit Shammais alternative Chanukah lighting tradition. See below.) Given that a pagan ritual defiled the Temple on that same winter day (the 25th of Kislev), what can we know about it? Chapter 6 of Maccabees 2 describes a series of defilements including the Temples consecration to Zeus and a festival to Dionysus (2 Macabees 6:7). Could this have been the Brumalia, a month long holiday held in honor of Bacchus/Dionysus ending on the winter solstice? (Brumalia is derived from the Latin bruma, or shortest day.) The holiday was known for its wine mixing and revelry. Perhaps there was some Dionysian mystery cult that also lit candles on the solstice, but the ritual lighting of sacred candles on Chanukah, signifying an increase of light both above (with the solstice) and below (with the Temples re-sanctification) seems a more relevant celebration of the bruma. The Talmudic legend in Tractate Shabbat 21b that undefiled oil found in the Temple, only enough for one day nevertheless lasted for eight is not found in either Maccabees 1 or 2. Nor is the connection to Sukkot made obvious in the Talmud. In his distinctive poetic form, Beit Midrash shel Melkh Goblin elucidates the connection between the Talmud and Macabees in his latest (brilliant) dvar torah We Count Up: A Vayeishev Shul Drasha. (Check this link for the full drash.) [My translations and transliterations are in brackets.] In the Babylonian Talmud in [ Masechet Shabbat, Tractate Shabbat of the Talmud, 21b] our Sages explain the holiday of [ Chanukah] with the story of the miraculous jug of pure oil that lasted for eight days when it should have only lasted for one. When the Maccabees liberated the [ , Beit haMikdash, Holy Temple] they found the Temple stained with spiritual darkness and impurity. Everything had been desecrated. And then, in the midst of that thick dark cloud of impurity and despair, they found that first small jug of oil the first glimmering hint of holy light.

But we find another explanation another layer of significance to the eight days of illumination in the Books of the Maccabees, which describe the first [ Chanukah] as a late [ ,Sukkot] celebrated by the victorious Jewish warrior-priests in commemoration of the [ Sukkot] they were unable to observe when they were busy fighting for the survival of Judaism against the Seleucid Empire. This other layer of the Festival of Lights is corroborated by hints in the [ Al haNisim, "On the Miracles"] prayer and by the opinion of [ the School of Shammai] in the [ Gemarah, Talmudic commentary on the Mishnah] who taught that like the bull sacrifices of [ ,Sukkot] we should count down in candles for the eight days of the [ Chanukah] holiday. Just as the number of sacrifices decreased each day of [ Sukkot] from 13 to 12 to 11 and so on, according to [ Beit Shammai, the School of Shammai] we should kindle the [ Chanukah] lights 8 on the first night and 7 on the second 6 on the third and so on, all the way down to one. However we dont rule according to [ . Beit Shammai, the School of Shammai] Instead, following the opinion of [ , Beit Hillel, the School of Hillel] we start at one candle the first night; on the second night, two; on the third night, three and slowly, day by day,

work our way up to eight. As [ Beit Hillel, the School of Hillel] put it, going up in holiness. We increase light we increase holiness and we increase hope. In [ Tractate Avodah Zara of the Talmud, page 8a] we are told a story about [ . the first man, Adam haRishon] After he was kicked out of Eden, Adam noticed that the days were getting shorter. Every 24 hours the amount of daylight decreased and the amount of darkness grew. [ Adam] fasted and prayed for eight days, terrified that it was all his fault that because of his sin inside the Garden, the light of creation was dwindling away to nothing, and the world was returning to empty chaos. And then [ Winter time] came the winter solstice and [ Adam] saw that the days were once again growing in length. When he realized that light was returning to the world that the universe was not dissolving back into the primordial darkness that what he was so frightened of was nothing but a natural cycle, instituted by God [ Adam] celebrated for another eight days, from the solstice onwards.

[ Adam] celebrated [ the Winter period] for eight days as hope returned to his dreams and light returned to the world. Whatever victory the Maccabees had wrought from Antiochus in 164BCE, the following hundred years of Hasmonean rule described a painful progression from despotism and corruption, to masscares and civil war, and finally to Roman rule over Hasmonean puppet governments. Disturbed by this history, both the midrash cited in Tractate Avodah Zara and the decision to follow the candle lighting tradition of Beit Hillel represent a rabbinic tradition in late antiquity that clearly emphasized Chanukah as a celebration of light. The relationships that connected the Maccabean victory with Sukkot became obscure but not lost. Through Chanukah, the renewed light of the sun on the winter solstice becomes identified with the renewal of the light of the menorah in the Temple, and as on Sukkot, for the shining light of peace to spread over the entire earth. (This last apocryphal vision is related to the luminous skin of the leviatan and the primordial light reserved for the righteous at the end of time, myths discussed elsewhere on this blog.) Significantly, the tradition of Beit Shammai is relegated to the manner in which Judaism imagines the candles lit in the messianic age. Until then, Jews follow the tradition of Hillel: increases light each day below in anticipation of the increase in light above, a beutiful example of magical reciprocity. But in the messianic age, when the primordial light will be revealed, Hillels tradition will no longer be necessary. (Perhaps the decrease in light will signify the approaching end of the messianic age and the coming of the myserious and unimaginable Olam Haba, the world-to-come (aka, the next epoch of creation). Comments (0)

The Longest Darkest Night of the Year

Tuesday, December 23, 2008, 10:21:03 AM | Aharon Although the significance of Chanukah is masked by both its commercialization (in competition with Christmas) and its status as a minor or post-biblical Jewish holiday, there are important reasons to believe that it is ancient, hardly known, and quite deep. Before he passed away this past year, Rabbi Zelig Scharfstein of blessed memory, taught me a very special Hassidic vort (bit of Torah) concerning the fifth night of Chanukah. To review it, I sought the teaching online at Sichos in English, a site providing translations of the teachings of the Chabad Lubavitch hassidic tradition. The following is very similar to what I remember Rav Scharfstein teaching me. The fifth day of Chanukah can never occur on a Shabbat. When Chanukah occurs on days that are even only potentially Shabbat days, the light of Chanukah combines with the light of Shabbat for a powerful illumination. So the fifth night, which can never be Shabbat, represents great darkness relative to the other nights. Thus, the fifth light of Chanukah has the unique task and power to illuminate and instill spirituality even in such a time of darkness. [source] To really grasp the intensity of this tradition, one has to imagine themselves in a time and a place where artificial light and electricity are not as ubiquitous and familiar as they are in our nighttime world. The chassidic teaching describes a spiritual darkness that can be imagined, but the darkness of the fifth night is one that can also be observed. This is because the Hebrew

calendar follows a lunar cycle. The first night of Chanukah always begins on the 25th of the month of Kislev, the fifth night corresponds with the 29th of Kislev, the Eve of the New Moon. While the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, the nights of the waning moon are the longest darkest nights of the year. Without the moons illumination, and without the joy of the Sabbath, the 29th would be profoundly dark if not for the light of our Chanukah lights. Chanukah, aka Chag Urim [Festival of Lights], ends with the light of the sun increasing as well as the waxing of the moons strength. Comments (0)

Bond Hill and the Panic of 1873

Friday, December 19, 2008, 10:38:02 AM | Aharon Heres a question to add to the list of mysteries left unresearched by my masters thesis on the origin and transformation of Bond Hill: how was the housing cooperative and building association impacted by the financial crash and panic of 1873 and the resulting depression? There were hints of decline but I could only speculate as to their cause. Now Im reading this article by historian Scott Reynolds Nelson, The Real Great Depression and I am seeing for the first time the hurt initially felt by the railroads and their investors. Given that Bond Hill was likely developed with the help of the Cincinnati-Marietta Railroad Company along the Loveland line built in the 1860s (and financed by railroad bonds) and the great faith in the railroad exhibited in the real estate literature preceding the crash, I am even more curious now how the bank crash immediately impacted Bond Hills nascent housing cooperative and building association the repository of its investment capital. And while Im wondering, wouldnt it be interesting if Bond Hill wasnt named after some apocryphal Bonds Mill (as George Patmor explains in his oral history) or even after a Colonel Bond who was active in promoting new railroads through Cincinnati and its environs (including the Mill Creek Valley next to Bond Hill). Perhaps, Bond Hill was named after the railroad bonds used that the Cincinnati-Marietta Railroad Company sold in order to aquire the land for its rightof-way? Since the newspapers of the time parrot the Bond Hill developers in stating that the name Bond Hill was an older place name the building association had rehabilitated, and since theres no record on old maps or land title records of that name in use, Im left with the feeling that Bond Hill was a catchy name that was invented when other new suburban names such as Pleasant Hill and Price Hill were in vogue. The test of this would be to look at the archives of the St. Aloysius Orphanage (established in 1860) to see whether the name was in use in any of its founding documents. I have a record of calling the current incarnation of St. Aloysius concerning the location of their archives but I failed to follow up before my thesis was due. For folk interested in Bond Hill history, taking a look at what the orphanage might have in is archive should be high on their list of research projects right next to locating the business records of the Cincinnati-Marietta Railroad Company. Comments (0)

At your service
Thursday, December 18, 2008, 12:51:08 AM | Aharon I am an urban planner by profession and degree, but while Im looking for work I am also a technology consultant, copy editor, bicycle messenger, ipod manager, technical writer, blog reader, proofreader, and coffee sipper.

Perhaps you dont have a significant other or know-it-all child or lucky friend to ask you for your computer help when troubles arise. If so, please feel free to give me call. My parents tell me that while Im busy looking for work I should also make myself useful by helping people with their computer problems. That, after all, is what I do for them when I return home, so, you know, obviously. But beyond the esteem my parents beam on their tech-savvy son, I also have some street cred. To note, before I became a planner I was a computer dude in Philadelphia, first working with Windows and Macs at the University of Pennsylvania, and then afterward as an open source programmer on linux servers at a small web hosting company in Center City. I gave up that career when I moved away from Philly to go to grad school six years ago. I never really looked back but my talents were always of use, whether it was repurposing an antique Sun server into a low cost web server for my schools planning program, or configuring a CMS out of Movable Type or Wordpress, or simply teaching my coworkers how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I also found myself doing a lot of work using ESRIs ArcView GIS software in addition to the other familiar research and writing tasks of planners. But now Im living in the West Washington Square Park neighborhood of Center City Philadelphia and hunting down job leads (that hopefully wont take me away from Philly again). And while Im doing so, Im taking my parents advice to make my IT consulting services available to everyone. Its a pretty competitive market from what I can see from Craigslist, but I imagine that plenty of folks looking for computer help in Center City might still find this post and give me a call (513.405.3603) for my competitive rates. It being the Winter holiday season, I thought it might also be pertinent to advertise that I can also be of service ripping compact discs to mp3 players, and providing all the nice cover art and metadata that modern audio players use to organize the music they contain. Give me a call if youd like to pay someone else to take over the mind-numbing task of ripping CDs and/or correcting your musics metadata. I was just reminded to add that I also do freelance editing. Need a second (or third) pair of eyes on your paper? Need someone to help polish your text? References available upon request. And hey, if youd like some help preparing your charette, researching your plan, or illustrating your reports with maps and charts, dont hesitate to nab me before someone else does. Comments (0)

Kitteh Yoga
Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 8:06:06 PM | Aharon

Kitteh Yoga: Exhale arch, Inhale stretch Last night was my second night in two weeks of yoga with K. Clair and friends at her West Philly loft. Im even starting to remember some poses for practicing during the rest of the week. But the hardest part, for me anyways, seems to be associating correctly each pose with either inhaling or exhaling and then keeping aware of where my breathing is as I exercise each position. As a teaching and memory aid, I created the above image macro with the help of icanhascheesburger. Much appreciation to Kristina and my other fellow Philly yoga friends for making this a fun and instructive part of my week. UPDATE: Hilariously, I got my (in/ex)hales mixed up in my first attempt at this lolcat. See comments below. Thanks again to Kristina Comments (2)

November 4th
Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 4:00:45 AM | Aharon

Comments (0)

The Idiot Winds Gusts are Now a Gale

Tuesday, November 04, 2008, 6:45:17 PM | Aharon Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing has an important post analyzing the dragging death murder of Brandon McClelland, 24, last month in Paris, Texas, an area of our country haunted by a legacy of lynchings going back over a hundred years. Please read it. In light of the McCain campaigns stinking idiot wind gusting over Americas racist dead enders, I also thought that a boing boing commenters insight was spot on: This [murder of McClelland] must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a B in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesnt go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated. JWB Nowadays Im less concerned with these clowns than with last minute dirty tricks to scare Philadelphia seniors that a vote for Obama is a vote for a second Holocaust. Good grief. Their strategies are just so disgusting. Ive been in email conversation with a friend from Louisiana, a philosemite and born again Catholic who believes Obama is a Muslem [sic]. Hes a former Huckabee supporter, and Im concerned for him and all of his like minded fellows who are so overwhelmed with rumours to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, that theyve abandoned all trust in the media. Heres the summary in his own words, after several lengthy exchanges of commentary and links sent in refutation of slander hes heard: That is the main problem: lies. You dont know who to believe. Both parties have a degree in spreading them and there is not enough penality for telling them. The media can be bought to spread their lie of choice, or conceal thereof. That is the whole reason we had this banking/wall street debockle. Politics breeds them like flies. For him its as if the long feared gnostic world of darkness has finally eclipsed the world of light. Obama may preach the need for change but oh my god, these folk are deathly afraid and distrutsful, and then also, dangerously manipulatable. It is so essential to reach out to them with love rather than with hate or condescension. I am confident we will win today, but if in my exuberance I am blinded to the enduring need to engage with these folks with respect, then it will all have been for nought. The seething domestic insurgents vying for their hate might eventually win it. Comments (0)

Whats the frequency, Kenneth!? (redux)

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 8:13:10 AM | Aharon So far there is no indication that the recent near fatal beating of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly in Little Rock, Arkansas, might be politically motivated other than the fact that Pressly is a member of the media and appeared briefly in Oliver Stones just opened critical biopic W. But given that the daily vitriol heaped upon liberals by McCain surrogates, advertisements, and right wing radio blowhards has already unhinged some to feel they have license for violence against the enemy among us, I wouldnt be surprised if her attack was related somehow. It was only three months ago, July 27th, that Jim Adkisson barged into a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church with the intent to kill some liberals (and tragically killed two

churchgoers). With the election only two weeks away, and supporters of McCain/Palin already beginning to wear the veil of victimhood and martyrdom, I will admit to some fear that the more militant among them will be inspired towards insurgency. Its not as if the south doesnt have a long history of fighting insurgent warfare. Normally, Id consider this sort of associative thinking paranoid but I guess that recent nearby expressions of hate, like Mike Lunsfords antisemitic Halloween effigy of Obama, have me concerned. I pray that Pressly recovers fully I pray for Presslys grieving family and that her attacker is caught and that our country soon turns a page for the better. Courage. (In 1986, a deranged man attacked Dan Rather demanding of the CBS anchorman, Whats the frequency!? Kenneth, whats the frequency??!) Comments (0)

Translating the Hate of an Antisemitic Anti-Obama Effigy

Monday, October 20, 2008, 4:04:15 AM | Aharon

Is that a kippah on that anti-Obama effigy? I couldnt help but wonder while reading this article and watching this story that local Cincinnati station WKRC (Channel 12) aired yesterday about Fairfield, Ohios Mike Lunsford as reported on by Shawn Ley. (For those from out of town, Fairfield is a northern exurb of Cincinnati just north of the Hamilton County line.)

Lunsford adorned the tree in front of his house with an effigy of a ghost hung with a noose, (a presumably stolen) Obama sign hung upside down pinned to its chest with Hussain [sic] incorrectly spelled above, and a Star of David drawn on its head. Close observers will also note that the two Ss in Hussain are written out in the style of the Schutzstaffel Nazi paramilitary force insignia popular among todays suburban neo-Nazis. Considering this, Im kind of surprised that nowhere in the report is this display described as anti-Jewish.

That unapologetic self-described racists like Mike Lunsford are now seeping out of the woodwork doesnt surprise me. After all, there are consequences to McCains campaign stirring fears of Obama as a secret Muslim, pedophile, and terrorist abettor. McCains surrogate Rep. Michelle Bachmann call for an investigation of her fellow congressmens pro-Americanism, Palins careless (or calculated) reference to rural America as real America, and John McCains brother Joes description of North Virginia as a Communist Country: these are all statements that cast their opponents as a demonized Other, and embolden the right wing to further explore their most paranoid and primitive instincts under the guise of patriotism. That Lunsfords effigy has sparked outrage and is reported on with an air of concern is good, but I am still disappointed to read it described merely as an anti-Obama display. According to the report, neighbors describe it as racist and offensive and Vicki Crowe now knows that her neighbor is anti-black. Lunsford and his ilk might be disappointed that no one reported that his effigy is also antisemitic. I guess thats where I step in to translate the hate.<groan> Besides revealing Obamas hidden secret Muslim identity with his scrawl of Hussain, the Star of David on the ghosts head broadcasts the common trope of antisemitic white supremacist conspiracy theorists. Not familiar with it? Variations of it have circulated among hate groups for decades. The conspiracy has it that Jews will use blacks to overthrow white America in order to install their one world communist government. For these racists, Obamas presidency is thus the realization of their long held fantasy. And by choosing a ghost to caricature Obama, Lunsford might also be trying to demean him with the racist epithet of Spook. By smearing Obama as Muslim AND Jewish AND black, Lunsfords effigy of Obama scores something of a trifecta of hate. From Shawn Leys article, Racist Anti-Obama Display Hung From Tree in Fairfield: Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business but he says make no mistake: He doesnt want an African American running the country. Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a full blooded American. And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation and only with white Christians should be in power. With Lunsford not willing to share his views on-camera: Its like whoa. Hes definitely anti-black. Vickie Crowe lives next door. Shes an Obama supporter. What did you think when you first saw that? Vickie Crowe/neighbor: Well actually my 5 year old son says Obamas hanging upside down. Hes what? Hes hanging upside down. Its the neighbors ghost. I took it as a little bit of a racist statement because my grandsons mixed and it hurt a little bit. Mike Lunsford says he got the idea after an Obama supporter in New York put up this display of a Obama mannequin being chased by a figure of John McCain wearing Ku Klux Klan robes. Another neighbor, Megan Sory says this symbol makes her more than uneasy it scares her. Megan Story/neighbor: Hes been a really nice neighbor but its one of those you question and wonder, you know, if hes that forward about something will he be forward enough to do something else, too. it is scary at times but we live in a scary world. Comments (0)

Text Cloud of the Omphalos

Saturday, October 18, 2008, 8:06:56 PM | Aharon

Behold, my Omphalos as digested arithmetically (with some aesthetic treatments) by Jonathan Feinbergs text cloud application over at wordle.net. Makes for a rather elegant visual poem, no? The wordle engine accepts site URLs, RSS feeds, or giant gobs of text. The latter is what I fed it after copying the source of my ATOM feed and removing all the links, html, and other xml cruft using NoteTab. Hat tip to Jamais Cascio over at Open the Future for sharing the coolness. The application provides some control over the appearance of the cloud. You can configure how many words appear (I chose 200). There are also settings for the orientation of the words (vertical/horizontal), palette, and font choice. Some comments. It doesnt appear as if the wordle engine is context sensitive to words that appear in close proximity to each other; place names like Bond Hill and Baton Rouge are thus not recognized as such. It would also be nice if common words such as like and also could be filtered out or relegated to the background as glue for more significant nouns like heierophant and cosmogonic. Still, looking into the world cloud as a mirror of my writing over the last three years or so is interesting. All those music related terms are surely the result of importing all the posts I made over at mog.com in 2006 and 2007. Should I be as surprised as I am that this blog is so Jewish? Probably not. Joe Lamantia has written more about text clouds here. (A tag cloud with all the tags and catgories of articles posted at the Omphalos appears on the right sidebar.) Comments (0)

Lingle and Boxer Spar for McCain and Obama

Friday, October 17, 2008, 9:03:48 AM | Aharon Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle and Californian Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) debated each other this past evening while representing John McCain and Barack Obama respectively at A Presidential Candidates Forum: America in the World Friends, Foes, and the Future. The debate between the two Jewish politicians was organized by The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati and took place in the Amberley Room auditorium of the recently opened Mayerson JCC. According to JCRC, over 500 people came out to hear these two leaders speak, mostly an older 50+ crowd. The first two rows were reserved for senior citizens arriving from the Cedar Village assisted living community.

In order to see these great women butt heads I had to skip out on seeing Natalie Portman downtown at Fountain Square. Sure my heart beats a little faster hearing her call to vote early, but alas, I already got that done last week. But for all of those who went to see Portman and hear The Nationals perform, no worries, I have you covered. I recorded the entire debate which you can listen to here [m3u streaming link] or download (Part I, Part II), whichever you prefer. The debate was emceed by Arna Poupko Fisher, JCRC President and moderated by Brian Jaffee, JCRC Director. The stage was set with three living room style comfy chairs; Lingle and Boxer sat at a 60 angle from each other, and Jaffee sat in the center. The first half hour was given over to opening remarks that each delivered from the podium. Afterward, Jaffee took the podium and presented questions delivered from the audience that had been written out on index cards handed out with pencils at the door. Disregarding the introductions and acknowledgments made by Fisher and Jaffee, the debate lasted around an hour and 15 minutes. Part I of the debate (linked above) contains the opening remarks of Lingle and Boxer and Part II contains their responses to the questions posed by the audience and to each other.

In Lingles opening remarks, I was struck by a tone that seemed to resonate with foreboding. To be fair, the perfectly measured pace of her statements adds a certain gravitas regardless of the point she makes. But I was still unnerved when she invoked the traditional response to the Holocaust, Never Again, raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust in Israel if Irans pursuit of nuclear power isnt met with unqualified opposition. My Jewish education only recognized the usage of the phrase Never Again as a declaration to all of humanity, i.e., never again would genocide be tolerated as a solution in human conflict. In this universal context, Never again justifies the intervention of the United Nations security council in actions that might prevent a genocide anywhere. But Lingle, and McCain, use the phrase Never Again in justification of an argument for U.S. military action against Iran (ostensibly in defense of Israels regional military hegemony). To hear the phrase used by a politician this way seems to be a fairly transparent manipulation of Holocaust fears. Even with the failures of the world to respond adequately or capably to the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur, Im not willing to trade in the universal and moral appeal of Never Again for the justification of neocon foreign policy objectives. McCain and his surrogate obviously have no problem with taking advantage of the term so long as it holds currency for manipulating Jewish voters. (To be absolutely clear, in no way am I arguing that the experience of the Holocaust does not partly justify the importance and historic necessity of the State of Israel as a sovereign refuge for the Jewish people. I am only saying that the simple phrase Never Again is a strong universal appeal against genocide. Im opposed to seeing it appropriated for use in stoking Holocaust fears in precipitating a war with Iran.) In contrast, Boxer made her points without any references to the Holocaust or a future Holocaust. Among bona fides that included Obamas high ranking pro-Israel scorefrom AIPAC, Boxer

described the foreign policy sanctions against Iran that Obama authored in the Senate to prevent their acquisition of nuclear power.

Both Lingle and Boxer could teach McCain a thing or two about keeping his cool during a hot debate. Their parrying back and forth, clarifying the responsibility of the executive and legislative branches of for the last eight years of financial mismanagement, was intense. Listen for yourself and hear just how sharp a debater Barbara Boxer is. Lingle didnt pull any punches either. As a liberal partisan, Im pleased that Boxer got the last word though. Before I provide any more commentary Im going to have to listen to it again myself. In general, the Presidential Forum was special for having brought so many segments of the Jewish community together at a crucial moment. The last time I saw this togetherness was at the Israel at 60 gathering at Fountain Square in late April when the Idan Raichel Project performed. Im really pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful and relevant activities being organized here in Cincinnati under the auspices of the Jewish Federation. On the fourth night of the holiday of Sukkot, I couldnt be happier to see this diverse community gathered under one roof. Events like this help generate respect for our diversity and tolerance for our differences. Call me hopeful, but this can only lead to a more mature and attractive Jewish community in southwest Ohio.

Comments (0) Lingle_vs_Boxer.m3u

Philly Ambient Listserve Archives Alive

Thursday, October 16, 2008, 7:51:54 AM | Aharon PHOBOS (ie., phobos.simpletone.com), the Philadelphia Ambient Consortiums once-vital, now deceased server, held the archives of the Philly_ambient listserve prior to the listerves move to the less crash prone yahoogroups account where it now lives. Good thing that I kept an archive of the discussions from those fecund first three years. In the sterile yet obscure cleanroom of a forgotten well-nested folder the archives remained, copied from one backup drive to another over these past six years since I left Philly. Like so many things on my to do list, restoring them to the simpletone.com home of the Philadelphia Ambient Consortium for public access by google and other search queries was a project that needed more urgent attention but was relegated to the care of the negligent neurons that monitor that cobwebby, flakey part of my mind. Today was a housecleaning. Ive uploaded them. Hello, philly ambient circa 1998 to 2001. Comments (0)

The Eye that Blinds

Saturday, October 11, 2008, 10:03:06 AM | Aharon Two years ago on mog.com, I wrote about Urs Amanns cover art for Klaus Schulzs 1983 album Audentity, the new wave punk slit glasses shown in the film Big Trouble in Little China (1986), and the specialized glasses worn by Geordi La Forge, the blind engineer played by LeVar Burton in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). Since then, Ive been wondering about the art history that presaged Amanns design. So this post is something of a meditation on the roots of this fashion, starting with the cyclopes of Greek cosmogony.

Before they were made famous as one eyed monsters in Homers epic poem, The Odyssey, the cyclopes were known as primordial blacksmiths who could fashion the power of the universe into tridents and other weapons wielded by gods. Its not such a far leap to see La Forge (lit. the forge!) as a current incarnation of the cyclopaean archetype. According to a hymn of Callimachus, the Cyclopes were helpers at the forge of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and craft. I can even see La Forge as a reconstituted Polyphemus, once blinded, but liberated from the darkest depths of Tartarus through the intervention of Technology. The depiction of a cyclops by Odilon Redon (see below, The Cyclops) follows less from Hesiods tale than from an antediluvian idyll. The cyclops in this garden to me appears to be modeling a primordial desire: a rather sheepish, male gaze. Is the cyclops of Redon a representation of the Edenic snake, the single eye symbolizing phallus and desire, staring at Eve? Or perhaps the cyclops is one of the mysterious ( Nephilim), who in Genesis 6:1-4 desires of the daughters of Adam? The story is expanded on in aggadic literature both in Rabbinic

midrash and in pseudepigrapha. There these Watchers and their progeny are giants that share some of the attributes of the Greek cyclops. In both myths, these divine figures possess useful technological knowledge. In the Book of Enoch it is the sharing of this knowledge with men that leads to the dissemination of evil on Earth. It should also be mentioned that Goliath, the foe of David singularly defeated by a single blow to the head from a slinged projectile, was characterized in midrash as the last of the race of Giants.

The Cyclops (1914) by Odilon Redon The first modern adaptation of the cyclops must be credited to the robot Gort from the 1951 scifi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here too, there seems to be some syncretism between ancient Greek and Hebraic myth, except that the technology the heavenly beings wish to share

with earthkind is wholly good, and its only our xenophobia and paranoid tendencies which cause mayhem. Fear of subjugation and the unknown replaces the earlier myths fear of sexual conquest of earth women (a common enough trope in other period sci-fi films).

The slit eyed helmet of Gort seems the obvious root of the robotic fashion leading up to Urs Amanns cover art to Klaus Schulzes Audentity (1983). A closer antecedent influencing Amann may have been the design for the Cylon Centurions in the TV show Battlestar Galactica (the original series, 1978-1980). Pictured below, Cyrus, a Cylon from the episode The Return of Starbuck (aired May 5, 1980). Battlestar Gallactica was famously rife with biblical adaptations, from the wandering of the twelve colonies to the character of Adamah. Its no surprise that the fecund imagination of the Mormon writer, Glen Larson, managed to stuff so much biblical myth into a show that aired at the peak of 70s fascination with UFOs and new age religion. Larsons story of war between the civilizations of robotic Cyclons and space faring humans (developed to greater depth in Star Treks war withthe Borg) is another shade of the antediluvian battles described in the Book of Enoch and Jubilees.

Come to think of it, the Borg character of Hugh, rehabilitated by La Forge in the Star Trek Next Generation episode I, Robot (1992)totally parallels the Cylon character of Cyrus, reconstituted by Starbuck in The Return of Starbuck.

No discussion of mute cyclopean monsters would be complete without mentioning Maximilian, Disneys homicidal robot from The Black Hole (December 1979). (Poor eviscerated Dr. Durant (played by Anthony Perkins), just another casualty of Disneys adventurous post-Walt, preEisner decade of dangerous entertainment experiments.)

With these antecedents in mind, looking above back to Audentity, note Amanns translation of the cyclopean clich from robot to human; Amann is depicting some sort alienated audiophile listening to Schulzes Kosmiche Musik. This is the cover Schulze should have had for his 1973 album Cyborg. Here is man like machine but not as automaton rather, man as desocialized being, completely self-centered, and focused inwardly on processing piped in audio and perhaps also visual stimulus. The commercial realization of this ideal has been evolving over the past 15

years with a profusion of (the not-yet-quite popular) head mounted displays (aka video goggles and video glasses).

Early reports of nausea and neck cramps prevented these consumer products from gaining too much popularity. Every few years gadget bloggers report that the technology has improved and that the price has dropped some. (See below, a protoype 360 immersive environment by Toshiba.)

Even as the realization of this dream has (so far) failed consumers, the obverse of this ideal has been realized in the torture of prisoners of war by our horrible Bush administration. Insanity is the natural consequence of sensory deprivation inflicted on these prisoners. (See below Jose Padilla being led to a dentist, December 2006.) Others must endure the torture playlist.

Where once the cyclopean eye represented the focal point of untold and mysterious power in the creature of Gort, in the characters of Maximillian and the Cylon Centurions the eye is demoted to the unblinking, unwavering madness of automatons that lack free-will and empathy. The bold vision of bringing sight to the blind depicted in Star Treks 25th century techno-utopia is perverted at the dawn of the 21st century. In Guantanamo (and presumably elsewhere) our society brings blindness and madness to the sighted and sane (imprisoned under suspicion of terrorism). Our blinding of presumed terrorists (officially, to prevent communication through blinking) recalls Odysseus blinding of the cyclops Polyphemus. But really, who now has become the myopic monster of yor, the blinder or the blind? I write with great hope that we will soon end this era of manufacturing suitable monsters, and suitable blindness. Hopefully, in three weeks. Some unanswered questions to inspire further exploration in the labyrinth of myth: What do the single eyes of the cyclopes of Greek myth symbolize? The sacred inner eye turned outward? The realization and beneficence of inner knowledge expressed and realized in the outer world? How is the cyclops eye related to the single eyes (and the lost eyes) of Odin and Ra in Norse and Egyptian mythology? Does one eye represent empathy while the other a sort of panoptic embrace of all creation? If so, which eye is lost? Are the Cyclopes eyes related to the biblical character of Cain and the sign on his forehead? Are the extra-biblical myths of the Nephilim related to the Cyclopes who are renowned for their productive and creative capabilites?

How might the eye of the cyclops be related to the shining light of the Tzohar or the brilliant eye of the Leviathan? Is this a kind of primordial eye that has not yet been divided into two (or more) eyes at a later stage of the cosmogony? Can the myth that masturbation leads to blindness be rooted in some sort of cyclopaean/phallic conflation? What then would the blinding of the cyclops represent for Odysseus? Strange questions to ponder in sleep with my inner eye open in dream. Comments (0)

Obama in Ault Park

Friday, October 10, 2008, 3:49:16 AM | Aharon

I rode my bicycle over to Ault Park today to hear Barack Obama speak. Navigating the hills and valleys of Cincinnati on a beautiful day, as it was today, is so much more preferable to huffing it to the park from a car parked a mile away. As it happened I was pretty exhausted by the time I made it up that last hill up ot the pavillion and then I had to scout around for a suitable pole for locking up my bicycle. Many folks were still arriving for the 3pm rally and to get in Obama campaign volunteers were passing out white tickets for attendees to fill out with their neighborhood so they could be co-opted for possible volunteer work in the next few weeks. But really, no tickets were required for attendance. At the pavillion, police had me go through a scanner and checked me for weapons. The podium was set up in the lower yard of the park, which was pretty well filled by the time I arrived. In any case, I was on the lookout for some shade, the park goers best friend on a sunny day. I found a little nearby where the event organizers had set up a refreshments table serving water courtesy of a nearby fire hydrant and the Cincinnati Water Works. First Mayor Mallory spoke and he introduced many of the other local and state Democratic party politicians vying for

office. Then Governor Strickland spoke and word of mouth spread that Obama was running late. Strickland then introduced a woman from Sharonville named Rockel Haussman (sp?). She spoke of her familys difficulty finding work and enduring long commutes after her husband lost his job security with Ford Motor Company. A smattering of applause interrupted her story as Obamas entourage arrived at the park. A few minutes later she introduced Obama. Ive heard Obama speak on television numerous times now. But here in Cincinnati I couldnt help but be struck by his populist message. The speech was definitely oriented towards working hard on reviving the economy and he didnt shy away from saying that we will all need to make sacrifices and take conservation seriously in order to be more frugal. I cheered when he called for promoting a public educatuion system that funded art and music classes. I remembered that critics have been calling for Obama to make an emotional connection with voters and I feel he did so when speaking about his mother arguing with insurance companies a few months before her death from ovarian cancer at the age of 53. The fight for health care against its obscene corruption by health insurance companies animated Obama. Its hard to estimate how many thousands of people were in attendance at the rally. At least 5,000. Possibly twice that. Later on in the day I went to Krogers to buy some goodies for my Yom Kippur break fast and saw an employee I had seen earlier at the rally. I said hi and asked him what he thought. He said that he missed hearing Obama speak. Because Obama was running late he said he had to leave the rally early to make sure he got to work in time. Then he told me hes one of those undecided voters wholl probably choose who to vote for the day of the election. I suspect that he also thought that Obama would be speaking at 3pm rather than having to endure a half hour of introductions by local pols. In any case, this rally today was a missed opportunity for him. For the rest of those assembled, most of whom were wearing some Obama merch, the rally was already preaching to the converted.

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Vote Today Ohio: till the Election!

Thursday, October 09, 2008, 7:18:12 PM | Aharon Yesterday we received the first numbers from our get out the vote early event from Vote Today Ohio HQ. Tate Hausman writes: During Golden Week, Vote Today Ohio banked ~3,300 Obama votes, plus 621 voter registrations. Did we hit our ambitious 10,000 goal? No. Did we make a critical contribution in Americas #1 battleground state? Absolutely. Our 3,300 votes were far more than just a drop in the bucket. Consider this: In Franklin County (home to Columbus), 9,264 people voted early during Golden Week. Vote Today Ohio vans (and cars and marches) moved 1,369 of them to the polls. Yes, we directly moved 14.8 percent of the early vote in Franklin County. Its safe to assume that thousands more heard about Golden Week directly from our work. Thats powerful. We were THE game in town. These numbers are significant since Stephen Majors of the Associated Press wrote on October 6th that first indications indicated that turnout during Golden Week was light. Majors writes, Early returns showed about 3,000 voters in Ohios four largest counties took advantage of the disputed policy, a surprisingly low turnout to some elections officials. Considering that Monday was our busiest day by far and that Vote Today Ohio was one of only a number of groups in the state helping to turn out the vote last week, Im pretty confident that the early returns cited by Majors presents a misleading picture of the turnout last week. Moveon and ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were two other groups working in Hamilton County. Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State for Ohio, reported yesterday that roughly 660,000 voters were newly registered in Ohio. Obviously, only a small fraction of these banked their vote last week but from what I could tell on October 6th, the Board of Elections was busy enough to make the Republican Party here quite nervous. Im cautiously optimistic for November 4th. Erik Crew added up the numbers for our efforts in Cincinnati on Monday, by far our busiest day. (Erik is interviewed in this ireport video). We moved 220 votes to the Hamilton County Board of Elections on the final day of registration. Our Golden Week is over but early voting continues. One of our volunteers, Becky from the UK, is staying on and helping make daily shuttle runs from campuses to the Board of Elections. So long as Im in town Ill also volunteer to drive and Im also working on cleaning up GIS data for the Obama GIS working group. Should be a busy three weeks. Finally, I want to give a shout out to Cathy from the Washingtonrox blog who has a great summary of our effort this last week, and excellent photos of my volunteer colleagues in Cincinnati. Take a look. Comments (0)

Dawn After Golden Week

Tuesday, October 07, 2008, 5:04:08 PM | Aharon Yesterday the Scion xA and I got some street time shuttling students from Xavier to the Board of Elections building downtown and back. Who knew you could fit six people in that hatchback? From noon to five pm, I manned the overflow vehicle because our regular shuttle (a Windstar van donated for the day by fellow Cincinnati Obama supporter) was filled to capacity. (The other

Ford Econoline vans rented for the day with Internet donations were operating out of Cincinnati State and the University of Cincinnati.) While sweating out the afternoon heat parked in front of the Board of Elections waiting for my voters to return triumphant, I relaxed listening to tunes and took in the hubbub of the voters, pamphleteers, and assorted political workers milling about the place. One of these, a slim 40 something blond woman pulled up in front of me in her white sedan. I noticed a plethora of McCain bumper stickers sporting the rear of her vehicle, including the gracious, Obama for Rockstar / McCain for President. She zipped into the building and ten minutes later hopped back into her car and took off. She looked irate. A few minutes later my voters returned to my car, as pleased with themselves as any voter should be this year. I asked them what the line was like and if there were any troubles. Smiling, they told me of this slim blond 40ish woman who was stalking the hall in front of the Board of Elections and shouting into her cellphone in frustration that the Board of Elections was swamped with college students and other Obama supporters. Mmmmm schaudenfreude. It is delicious. Comments (0)

ELECTION DAY IS NOW

Monday, October 06, 2008, 8:37:39 AM | Aharon

This is the last day of Golden Week, the week in Ohio when the periods for voter registration and early voting overlap allowing new voters to register and vote on the same day. Our teams are working hard to make one final push to get out the vote. I made posters like the one above for Xavier University. (If you like it and want to use it feel free. Heres the download: Election Day Is Now (poster art)). Friday night our volunteer groups met up at Baba Budans Cafe near campus. There I made the acquaintance of Erik Crew, another local Cincinnatian working on this effort. Hes been writing at rubyhornet about Golden Week (Golden What?), his experience registering the homeless, and the issue of ex-felon disenfranchisement. Erik and I are an exception. Most of the volunteers

have come in from other states (California, Michigan, Kentucky, etc.) and two are international; one traveled from Canada and another flew all the way from the UK. Their efforts are testament to the global concern for the future of this nations leadership. The party at Baba Budans was co-sponsored by the Hip Hop Congress. Spoken word artists delivered poetry, some with dj backing. The emcee was the Divine Prince Hakeem. My ears perked up when he mentioned his connection to the Artistic Order of 144,000. The latter was the collective of my friend Obalaye Makaria. (Obalaye helped direct some funding for my research into Bond Hills history four years ago.) Hakeem informed me that Obalayes since moved to Seattle but calls in weekly to Cincinnatis black radio station, The Buzz. Ill be tuning in to hopefully hear from him. Sunday morning I went with Erik to the A.M.E. Church in Bond Hill. (This is the church built at the corner of Reading Road and Seymour Ave. on the parking lot of what is now Jordans Crossing and formerly Swifton Commons.) Our mission: to respectfully offer our shuttle services to any congregants come later today. We stayed for the 11am service. Rarely have I known a warmer and more welcoming community. After introducing ourselves, the congregants were invited to greet us personally. I really felt their love. I also enjoyed the relaxed yet uplifting spirit created by the church choir and its excellent band. The band leader and piano player informed us that the bassist, a young fellow, would be playing with Wynton Marsalis pretty soon and everyone gave him a nice applause. The band leader also announced a group of black youth called the Ritz Chamber Players who will be performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on October 9th. He invited everyone to attend the concert and udged everyone to develop an eclectic taste in all sorts of musical styles including classical and hip hop in addition to gospel and rock and roll. Reverend Alphonse Allen preached about the necessity of striving to improve even when you feel comfortable where youre at. In developing this idea he used the story in Deuteronomy of God commanding the Israelites to prepare to take possession of the land of Canaan while they camped on the east side of the Jordan after their 40 years of travel in the wilderness. In Jewish circles I think Ive heard the same idea developed but from the command of God to Abram to lech lcha lartzecha, go out to a land that he will show you. Thinking about it, theres a good parallel between the two stories in Genesis and Deuteronomy. Below is an image I gleaned of their lovely sanctuary.

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Vote Today * * * Ask Me How

Saturday, October 04, 2008, 5:23:25 PM | Aharon Vote Today Ohio sent out the latest numbers just after midnight this morning on how many early voters our teams managed to shuttle over to the Early Voting Centers. 9/30: 380 votes 10/1: 429 votes, plus 121 new registrations 10/2: 449 votes, plus 306 new registrations 10/3: 776 votes, plus 391 new registrations Thats 2,034 total votes cast statewide since Tuesday. If we assume that each field team has a shuttle van that leaves every hour from 9am-3pm, and that every van has 7 seats, then 2,034 voters have cast out of a possible 5,880. In other words were getting close to 35% of our capacity. The stats arent broken down by peak hours but Id hazard a guess that were hitting nearly 60% of our capacity from 11am-2pm. Im OK with these figures and buoyed by the upward slope of the stats. Ill tell you why. Early voting doesnt commence Monday with the end of voter registration in Ohio (when Golden Week is over). Ohioans can continue to vote at Early Voting Centers until Monday, November 3rd. More than directly increasing voter turnout, this week probably did more for simply generating a good vibe among college students (and their friends and families by word of mouth) that theyve already helped make a difference in this Election.

ELECTION DAY IS NOW. From my own experience talking to folk on campuses, plenty of voters simply wanted to know the address of the Early Voting Center in Hamilton County (its the Board of Elections office at 824 Broadway Street in Downtown Cincinnati, 2nd Floor) so that they could get down there on their own at their convenience. I also heard the best reason for

voting early when a voter (pictured above) convinced a friend to vote at our table, Vote today cause November 4th might be cold! Word. In these stats, we may also be seeing the outcome of the intense new voter registration efforts by groups like moveon.org. From the stats above, it looks like a little over half of the voters weve shuttled had already registered. There is plenty to be enthusiastic about in this race but from the level of enthusiasm I saw among our college students at Cincinnati State University this week, Id wager that many of these were newly registered voters. Yesterday, I finished the t-shirts I promised the Cincinnati early voting teams. This is the first stencil Ive made and below is the result. What do you think? We didnt have enough teams or volunteers to justify a silk screen, thus these lo-fi spray painted shirts.

For those wondering how to do this

I didnt have a frame to reduce splatter around the stencil, so I wrapped the t-shirt over a slightly smaller cardboard sheet I cut from a box. By laying the t-shirts flat over the backing I was able to adjust the shirt for where I wanted the image and then wrapped the sides and back of the shirt around and underneath the cardboard. By the way, if youd like to download this stencil and make your own shirts, I have it available for download. Link: VOTE TODAY OHIO T-SHIRT STENCIL ART. Comments (0)

Vote Today Ohio

Thursday, October 02, 2008, 11:16:55 PM | Aharon Early voting began in Ohio this past Monday, September 29th. Over the weekend, I was making maps for Vote Today Ohio, a volunteer group hoping to make the most of a Golden Week during which Ohioans can register to vote and actually vote via absentee ballot on the same day. Field teams fanned out across the state, from Cleveland to Cincinnati, to shuttle folk to Early Voting Centers prepared by County Board of Election offices. This process was under some legal danger up till yesterday when the Ohio Supreme Court denied a GOP appeal to shutter the early voting window. The golden week ends next Monday October 6th and from what I could tell from last nights conference call, the group has so far successfully helped hundreds of people vote early.

Vote Today Ohio at Cincinnati State University Today I met with my field team at Cincinnati State University where I was put to work politely asking passing students, custodial workers, faculty, and staff whether theyd like to Vote Today and explaining the advantages of early voting and submitting an absentee ballot in person (rather than by mail). Quite a few signed up for our shuttle service to the local Early Voting Center at Hamilton Countys Board of Elections Office (824 Broadway St., google map link). When our 11am van filled to capacity I was thrilled. For sure theres no way to know how folks will vote once they are given their absentee ballot to fill out, but Vote Today Ohio is hoping that theyll vote for Obama. Thus the focus on frequently under-represented voting blocks: college students, the homeless, and ex-felons (who are forbidden to vote in Florida, among other states), to help swell Obamas numbers in this key swing state. (See here, for more on Ohios voting rights and regulations. Can you tell how pleased I am to be working on this project? I was hoping to do something for this campaign. This summer I was hoping someone would respond to my invitation to do GIS work for Obama gratis. Some of my proudest work in Louisiana involved the canvassing maps I drew up for David Brown, a Baton Rouge lawyer and progressive candidate for the State Legislatures District 67. But even before I learned GIS, Ive tried to help wherever I could. Back in 2004, when I moved to DC and began working at the Trust for Public Land, I was happy to find a little volunteer niche at the DNC party HQ regularly sorting giant binders of scanned and copied checks for their donation vetting department. (A digression. Amazing the friends you make working shoulder to shoulder for these races. At the DNC I met Chris Kinsei, a Zen Buddhist monk who had recently left the Mt. Shasta monastery that had been his home for the previous 25 years. Twenty five years of contemplating peace gave him a hunger for pursuing peace in our world. In the last four years since Bush won,

Chris has gone on to build a life teaching folk, getting married, and studying to become a nurse. A great guy if ever you should meet him.) In 2000, I worked as a citizen reporter for the IMC covering the (unfortunately now typical) police abuses of political demonstrations at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia and nearly got arrested while talking on my cell phone and delivering this story from Market Street. My work on national political campaigns began by canvassing to elect former California governor Jerry Brown President in 1992. Besides watching the VP debate, tonight I get to make some snappy t-shirts for my fellow volunteers to wear. My hope is that theyll be good enough to become a budget conscious hipsters proud thrift store discovery. Comments (0)

Kabul, Afghanistan August 2008

Thursday, September 25, 2008, 10:32:25 PM | Aharon Fellow Daniel Pinkwater afficionado 3m1ly recently returned from Afghanistan on official snark-out business and posted images gleaned from her travels at her flickr account.

Shipping Containers in Kabul (from 3m1ly's flickr photostream) Comments (0)

Post-Parks Conference Thoughts

Thursday, September 25, 2008, 12:52:56 AM | Aharon Ive taken more notes than Ive been able to blog just yet, and the conference is already over. I came to the conference to see what opportunities there might be for a former researcher for a

major park advocacy group to stroll back into the world of park professionals after cutting his teeth working on everything but parks for the past two and a half years. I left with a stack of business cards I need to follow up on and a list of topics I need to research more about. Thats pretty standard for a good conference. Theres a fleeting moment for riding the crest of postconference momentum. Im feeling more resolved and recommitted to the intention and decision that motivated me to become a planner in the first place back in 2002, and I have some specific avenues I want to develop in order to become a more capable advocate for parks and sustainable, healthy cities. In all, Im re-oriented in my career and this is a good thing. I want to thank Linda Everhart and Helen Goodman for helping me to volunteer work and attend the conference. Lindas son Ian, recently returned to the States from Honduras, had pretty much everything under control from the technical side, so besides session monitoring, my job was pretty easy. I mostly backed him up at critical moments. (Looking forward to seeing Ian at work registering Ohio voters in the next couple of weeks.) Back in Cincinnati, electricity is restored but the cable feeding our house Internet access is still down. So Im writing this from Sitwells, my favorite coffeehouse in Clifton near the University of Cincinnati, rather than from my usual hermitage in the wilds of North Avondale. This will put a cramp in my blogging up my notes from the rest of the conference but I hope to complete this by the end of the week. Heres just a brief rundown of what Ill be writing about: The No Child Left Inside Act, and the movement that links childhood recreation, nature education, parks, and open space conservation. One of the exciting themes I found at this conference was the search for a driving issue that promotes better park funding and resonates across a broad and bipartisan constituency of voters, interest groups, and politicians. That issue seems to have been discovered by linking parks with the desire to give children the freedom to explore their childhood outside, and a genuine fear rooted in nostalgia, that too many kids are absolutely disconnected from nature. (Unfortunately I didnt hear enough talk linking this issue with Smart Growth and land use, since the pervasive sprawl of low-density housing subdivisions has forced children to constantly rely on their parents cars, and thus their parents, to meet friends and visit places.) Have you read Rosa Parks article at the LA Times on the erosion of free, unstructured outdoor play? This issue connects with the parenting movement to nurture more independent minded children unshackled from media conditioned fear of their absuction by strangers. Back in April of this year Mark Frauenfelder and Cory Doctorow began posting about this parents movement. See Marks post on Lenore Skenazys article on her letting her 9 year old ride the subway alone here and Corys post on Free Range Kids here. Luis Acosta, Richard Dolesh, and Richard Louv all remarked on this topic. Im excited to be seeing the dots connected. On the Economic Value of Parks. The search for better ways to communicate both the tangible and intangible values of urban parks continues. Besides the critical importance of nature awareness in benefiting the process of childhood maturation, park professionals and advocates are still struggling to realize a common set of instructions for calculating the economic benefits of parks. We need absolutely need a more academically oriented conference that brings together consultants and academic park researchers to begin nailing down some industry standards and doing some peer review on this topic. In general I want to see more rigour attached to this question since park departments are already looking for someone to provide this analysis. Luis Acosta proposed the idea of a Green Line akin to the Poverty Line, to determine the minimal amount of greenspace needed to live healthfully. How can this be studied by psychologists? It seems more practical to first nail down the Green Line in terms of the seven economic benefits already proposed by Peter Harnik in his work at the Trust for Public Lands Center for City Park

Excellence. The issue of economic values for parks is regularly published on in academic journals. Since academic journals are not easily accessible (or their indexes easily searchable) by non-academic professionals, I believe there is a dire need to bridge the practitioner-academic divide here. On the trailblazing park work being done in NYC. I had the fortune of monitoring the session moderated by Peter Harnik entitle When the Rubber Meets the Green: Cars in Parks. Harnik gave an overview of worst and best practices across the country, shining a light on his exceptional and broad grasp of the diverse solutions park architects and transportation planners have wrestled with when visioning the best use of available open space. Barry Bessler of Philadelphias Fairmount Park Commission provided the specific example of the road closures along the Schuylkill River Park greenway. Lastly, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, fomerly of Project for Public Spaces, gave an amazing presentation on the new work initiated by NYCs Department of Transportation in reclaiming the open commons and asphalt of city streets into plazas and parks. Wiley-Schwartzs work frankly blew my mind. Looking forward to researching and writing more on this. Hes only been there a little over a year and so many good things to show for it. Besides these topics I also want to write about my experience in Pittsburgh, on my bicycle adventure along the Ohio River last Sunday. I also enjoyed a drive of downtown Pittsburgh Monday night with Bernard Luyiga, a city councilman from Kampala, Uganda. He was at the conference in order to learn more about parks and preserving public space. With Google Earth, Luyiga showed me acres of public park land in Kampala that had been appropriated for private development by government officials in league with developers. Ive taken bunches of pics so I have to upload them first now available here. Comments (0)

Urban Parks 08: Opening Session

Monday, September 22, 2008, 6:00:15 PM | Aharon Ill be blogging the Urban Parks conference session as I attend them. The opening session occurred yesterday evening. Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente, a community based human rights and environmental organization in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, and recipient of the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, provided a rousing keynote address, Parks: The Common Ground for Democracy and All Human Rights. The speech was notable for spurring the largely non-Latino audience of park advocates and professionals to stand up and chant el pueblo unido jams ser vencido. Acosta stressed the importance of creating broad alliances between diverse community and ethnic groups in order to effectively advocate for community health issues. He honestly described the challenges of reaching out to Chasidic community leaders in Williamsburg and was surprisingly blunt in describing the tensions between the Latino and Chasidic communities there. More detailed notes of his speech are below. Tupper Thomas, administrator for Prospect Park, president of the Prospect Park Alliance, and board chair of the City Parks Alliance introduced the speakers. Thomas credited Meg Cheever, founder and president of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, for the genesis and vision behind the conference five years ago. She then introduced Gary Saulson, Director of Corporate Realty Services for PNC Financial Services Group, noting approvingly Saulsons disapproval of using pesticides in his home lawn care. PNC is a major philanthopist for city park facilities in Pittsburgh and internationally touts the most LEED certified buildings of any megacorp. Its nice

to see a corporation that sports its plumage by way of showing off its LEED certifications and aesthetic sensibilities in landscape architecture. Saulson was particularly proud to show off two downtown gateway parks in Pittsburgh that it has designed, PNC Firstside Park (completed) and PNC Triangle Park (still in its design phase). PNC Firstside Park (image below) was developed on the site of the former Pittsburgh Public Safety Building, an insignificant building of no historical importance according to Saulson. PNC purchased the site from the city for an undisclosed but admittedly exorbitant amount after negotiations. Saulson was pleased to describe the deconstruction of the building, where rather than conventional demolition, the building was taken apart and its constituent building materials (steel, cement, etc.) recycled or repurposed. I had only previously heard of this sort of process occuring in Japan so it was wonderful to know that PNC was promoting this best practice as well.

PNC Firstside Park, Pittsburgh, PA The 1.5 acre, PNC Firstside Park looks amazing, but I also think that the desire to have a corporate park, albeit public park, in front of their downtown building speaks to me as a way of incorporating a bit of an suburban office park image within the city. But hey, they can afford it, and so long as it is a truly public park, freely accessible as a public commons, why should anyone complain. On the contrary, this sort of expensive park planning by a private entity is extremely laudable. PNC Triangle Park (rendering below) was also billed by Saulson as a gateway park. Im never really impressed by the use of these buzzwords, but again, no one can really argue wth the public asset that PNC will be providing. Kudos to them.

PNC Triangle Park (rendering) After Saulson, Thomas introduced Richard Dolesh, Director of Policy, National Recreation and Park Association. Dolesh provided a brief historical summary of the organization, and in particular I noted that the NRPA is just the latest incarnation of an org with roots in the late 19th century. The current NRPA was created in the 1960s and Im interested to note how the focus of the org has changed over the last century from urban to suburban. Dolesh pleaded with the conference attendees to recognize the dire need for more park advocacy and lobbying noting that the federal Urban Parks Recreation and Recovery Act (1978) that provided matching funds for urban park maintenance has been dead for the past seven years. He did note one recent success, the No Child Left Inside Act, passed by the House of Representatives last week. This call for urgent advocacy from the leading umbrella org for park professionals and friend-of-park advocates, provided a good segue to Acostas keynote address. Below are my casual notes from his speech. Personal commentary is in brackets. More substantial criticisms follow. *** Acosta brings greetings from the Peoples Republic of Brooklyn and the hipster capitol of Williamsburg. While recently in Beijing, Acosta is surprised to find a Chinese news report about Williamsburg. The news report does not mention how the neighborhoods diverse population also includes a substantial number of Chasidim and Latinos. [Acosta is a community activist who has been active in the neighborhood since the late 70s, way before the influx of hipsters in the 90s.] Acosta talks about the late 70s when south Williamsburg was an extremely dangerous and largely Latino neighborhood. A teenage gang capitol. A crack capitol. [Crack in the late 70s?]. The organization Acosta created, El Puente (The Bridge) initiated a program to bring gang members on weekend retreats boating down whitewater rapids. After experiences like this, gang leaders wanted to do more with their life than market drugs. [Acosta's work in El Puente during this period is what brought him recognition though the Heinz Award in 1984.]

Acosta brings three examples of neighborhood coalitions that have made an important difference in health, youth and family service and crime. 1) Outward Bound. Simple objective: playing touch football in George Washington Plaza park. Major problem was that the park was a major venue for drug dealing and thus dangerous for recreation, [least of all because of all the scattered glass vials littering the park]. Question was how to confront the problem but avoid violence with the drug dealers. Outward Bound organized protest days for three straight years that combined community shame with having this drug park with a call to city action to clean up the park. They used the symbolism of the statue of George Washingtons horse, the ass half of which faced the park center, to make the case that the citys attitude towards the park was disrespectful and the park needed redesign. Newspaper photos of the ass also showed the graffiti and crack vials on and below the statue. After the thrid year, the park commissioner consented and the park was redesigned. [Significantly, the most important design change was not the reorientation of Washinton's horse's ass but the removal of the high walls surrounding the park that made the park feel unsafe. Clear sight lines remain an important design component for both the psychological perception of safety and functional application of surveillance and law enforcement in a public commons.] 2) Apologies for not capturing enough detail on Acostas second example, the clearance of a vacant lot (I think ) piled with two stories of garbage. Not clear on the name of the coalition or group responsible. The site is now a public park and community garden, but first the garbage had to be cleared by community volunteers and the toxic topsoil completely removed and replaced. Veggies grown in the garden are now sold at local corner groceries and bodegas. 3) [Acosta's third example was by far the most sensational as well as the most recent.] A group called the Toxic Avengers fights NYC and the state for the removal of a neighborhood storage facility for chemical and nuclear toxic waste owned by Radiac Research Corpoaration. Since the 1960s, Radiac had housed the waste onsite in barrel storage. The design of the facility was not up to code jst one example of many, the only door out of building in case of a fire was through nuclear side of storage buidling. Folks living on block didnt know this facility even existed and to what degree they were at risk in case of an accidental fire and explosion. There was no bureaucratic lever to close it down and the facility seemed grandfathered into its current location. According to officials the facility could never have been licensed today. The Toxic Avengers mobilized much of the community and especially its church leadership. They made note on the sidewalk and roadways in a growing radius around the facility how many seconds they had to live before being engulfed in a toxic cloud if an explosion were to occur. The Toxic Avengers achieved success in getting Radiac to give up license. They successfully lobbied the state legislature to sponsor legislation to disallow toxic storage in the manner that had been permitted. The success of this action led to an important grassroots effort to oppose a large garbage transfer station envisioned by former mayor (Guiliani?) along their waterfront. The community wanted a viable park there instead, and the community got this park approved. Acosta was especially proud to note that even the Chasidim love to use this park. [This seemed to relate to tensions later described between the Chasidim and community activist groups in Williamsburg that Acosta goes int o detail a short time later.] Acosta returns to the general theme of his speech. [When community activists make a case before city and state government they need to pose the issue as representing a holistic response to numerous problems, rather than as a "parks issue" because doing so will translate very quickly into a parks budget versus health services budgetary question by bureaucrats. Community activists must dodge this sort of categorization.] The issues is not parks vs. health or parks vs.

education funding. Acosta says green and open spaces is the fundamental connection. It is what makes us human. Acosta calls a fundamental human rights issue: to be one with nature. Acostas mother was ripped out of rural, idyllic Puerto Rico in the 1930s and dropped into concrete Fort Green the most concentrated and dense housing project in the world. Having been one with nature in Puerto Rico, she managed to remain one with nature in her housing project despite her poverty. Filled her apartment with plants. Acosta says the earth is within us, we have to connect all the time. We must oppose the insatiable force for brick and mortar development. We are living in a crisis but not of financial systems: it is a crisis of our humanity. Acosta asks, what kind of a human being are we becoming? Come to NYC and see what the future of the country is today! [This remark perplexes me. The country is in more peril from unrestricted urban sprawl, not the exceptional population densities of megacities like New York. The transformation of rural countryside into privatised lawn space of low density disconnected automobile-oriented housing subdivisions is the most present danger to an accessible open public commons. This is not to say that residents in concentrated urban neighborhoods do not need more greenspace. They need more absolutely, and they need their existing parks to be well maintained to preserve them as facilities from the stress of their overuse. They also need many many more greenroofs!] Those of us who work to reclaim brownfields are part of a green resistance, championing connecting to the earth. Acosta proclaims, we are radicals. we need to become revolutionaries! [This is a call to arms. I am surprised by the tone of this language and wondering how it will go over with my colleagues.] Acosta continues, (parks) are essential to our humanity. We need to reinvigorate our movement. Acosta calls for standards for how much greenspace a human needs to live healthfully. He compares this with the issue of poverty. From Presidents JFK and Johnson we learned that we are as strong as our weakest link. After researching the issue of poverty, policy makers introduced the idea of a poverty threshold. If you dont obtain a certain amount of money you cannot sustain your life in this society, and this became known as the poverty line. Louise suggests a green line or minimal daily requirement for open space. Demand it! he exclaims to applause. [Acosta returns to the coalition to remove the Radiac facility from Williamsburg and how it led to a a coalition to oppose a toxic waste incinerator in the neighborhood.] Explains Acosta, there was a No talk protocol between Chasidic leadership and Hispanic leaders. The chasidim in the neighborhood controlled key community assets from housing to public schools. Acosta brings up corruption among Chassidim. 6 million dollars stolen and documented. Vigilante Chasidim beating up Blacks in the neighborhood, even Black cops. [Could Acosta be referencing the recent shameful beating of a Black policemen by Chasidic vigilante thugs in Crown Heights??? Crown Heights is not Williamsburg! Also the Chasidim of Williamsburg are Satmar and in Crown Heights they are Lubavitch. But whatever. For Acosta, this nuance may be irrelevant for this speech. Acosta later explained to me that the Satmar vigilantes had beaten up a Black policemen in the early 90s and that he wasn't referring to the recent assault on a black patrolman in Crown Heights by Lubavitch vigilantes.] Acosta continues, They (the Chasidim) controlled the housing, controlled the schools regardless of there being no Chasidic kids in the schools. Really dangerous tensions existed between the communities. And no communication on any level. But for this issue with Radiac there was a dire need for a broad representative coalition that included the Chasidim. What to do?

Acosta went to the Jewish Community Relations Council and its associate executive director and director of government relations, David M. Pollack. [UPDATE: According to The Activist's Handbook: A Primer (p. 86), El Puente contacted Rabbi David Neiderman and the Jewish org was United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. David Pollack emailed me to clarify the story today: Pollack was the one who introduced Neiderman to Acosta. Pollack writes, "I brought Garden Acosta and Niederman together using the argument that Hispanic and Hasidic children would glow in the dark equally if there should be a mishap at Radiac. I also managed to bring Rabbi Niederman and David Pagan of Los Sures together in a joint development project."] In Acostas telling, when the Rabbi arrived at El Puentes headquarters after asking will I be safe? from violence visiting a largely Hispanic community forum, Acosta ensured his safety and the rabbi was welcomed by the Latinos with overwhelming love. (The work of Pollack and the arrival of Neiderman signaled a sea change in relations between the Chasidim and Latino groups in Williamsburg. [More on this in a 1994 article in the New York Times.] The outcome of this coming together was a Community Alliance for the Environment. The coalition to stop 55 story incinerator (that was already legislated, designed, and planned) included Chasidim and Latinos and Italians and Poles. Then Governor Pataki was lobbied to overturn the law to build the incinerator. The coalition succeeded. Acosta is effuesive in describing his joy in watching a 15 years old Chasidic youth chanting in broken Spanish El pueblo unido jams ser vencido alongside a 15 year old Latino youth who was very patiently teaching him how to pronounce the words. Acosta concludes, This (Park advocacy) is a struggle and not a delicate matter. We must be militant! We must be radical. We all stand up and say El pueblo unido jams ser vencido. *** Thus ends the first evening of the conference. Just a few notes on Acostas address. First of all, I believe that Acostas important community work needs to be celebrated and extolled as a banner for bridge building between disconnected communities. I also wish he prefaced his examples with the year that these coalitions took place. It was only the occasional detail, like the fact that they were lobbying former Governor Pataki, that clued me in that the example he had mentioned took place over a decade ago. Besides Acostas concern that the future of the U.S. will look like Lewis Mumfords 1950s dystopic vision of a concretized necropolis, I was taken by surprise by Acostas call for park supporters to think of themselves as Green Militants. I just dont understand how appropriating the term militant to describe even an idealized passion for our advocacy can help the parks movement. I understand that in the context of his speech he was trying to rev up the audience in how they perceive themselves. I just dont think that sort of language even helps park advocates and professionals identify their own work as environmentalists in a useful way. Yes we are environmental professionals and some of us even share his particularly romantic environmental perspective. I think I understand where hes coming from but I dont share in his call for identifying as radical or militant. I want environmentalism to be completely and totally mainstream, and the perception of environmentalism as a fringe philosophy plays into the politics of the enemies of environmentalism. And in any case, I believe the idea of environmental work as radical is at odds with current public perception especially after Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq raised awareness of the related issues of overreliance on fossil fuels and global climate change. Comments (1)

Body & Soul: Urban Parks 2008

Friday, September 19, 2008, 8:17:12 PM | Aharon Over the next few days Ill be in Pittsburgh for the Body & Soul: International Urban Parks Conference. Besides attending sessions and workshops, Ill also be monitoring certain sessions to handle audio-visual and other computer issues that often arise. I promise to blog, or at least twitter, interesting ideas gleaned from the conference here at the Omphalos.

Im excited to be going and especially to see some of my old colleagues from the Trust for Public Land that will be attending. But in a deeper sense, working at this conference and networking with other folk passionate about parks will be a return for me to an intention that motivated me to change my career six years ago. Rewind the cosmic clock and half a decade ago youll find me riding a bicycle along the Schuylkill River Park greenway in Philadelphia and wondering how I could possibly reciprocate for the wonderful space that anonymous civic philanthopists, city planners, and landscape architects had provided for me to re-create myself on that beautiful day. The answer I came up with was studying to become a city planner myself, and two years later after writing a thesis and finishing a ton of work, I was awarded a degree in city planning. Still focused on parks I found a job with Peter Harnik at the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land, a research internship that last a year. But for the past two and a half years I havent been focused on parks. Following the hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, I moved down to Louisiana to cut my teeth as a planning practitioner, first for a FEMA contractor in rural southwestern Louisiana, and afterwords for an engineering firm in Baton Rouge. During that time I gained enough experience to apply to take the AICP exam and passed. And now that Ive returned from Louisiana, Im once again looking to get back into working for city parks, as a city planner in a parks department, or in some other capacity as an open space or trails planner. Ive also been looking into programs that focus on green building and construction. What I discovered in Louisiana is that experience matters. However exciting green technology or environmental best practices sounds to a young planner, the tried and conventional modes ossified in regional expectations are a nearly impossible barrier if you cant speak with firsthand experience to how practical a different approach might be. A moment of transition and opportunity. This next year should be interesting. Ill keep you informed.

Comments (0)

On Mind Flayers and the Faith of our Fathers

Friday, September 19, 2008, 8:00:47 AM | Aharon

Isaac S. and I were talking role playing and the biological basis of behavior for Mind Flayer society again this past Shabbat when our conversation meandered into the ever fertile field of movement ideology and identity politics in American Modern Orthodox Judaism. (In hindsight it seems appropriate we were taking a stroll through Spring Grove Cemetery at the time.) In responding to my observation that the faith of our forebearers had less to do with the work of Rabbi Joseph B. Soleveitchik and more to do with the return to roots movement popular in their generation, Isaac opined that the educational objective in modern orthodox schools was fluency in Jewish intellectual and religious practice rather than any ideological indoctrination. The latter is saved for the magical year in yeshiva in Israel after high school and before your first year in college. This rang true for me on a personal level. A digression. I know close relatives who tacked towards Orthodoxy because for them it represented a more authentic experience of a Jewish identity they had not known or assimilated when they were younger. I can understand how for initiates, playing by the traditional conventions and standards makes more sense than playing some other variant of the game adapted by heterodox reformers or revolutionaries. This is what an authentic experience is after all. First, you learn to play by the regular rules. After a few years of getting used to the imaginary world and its rules, you can maybe make up your own rational mind whether the game play is lacking or needs some tweaking. Some other cats take this role playing so seriously that rather than stop playing they actually do try and adapt the game. This of course raises the ire of the old gamers and creates real tension between practitioners adapted to one of the now forked rulesets. So long as no one gets hurt, there should be nothing wrong with these typical frustrations. So long as no one gets hurt, there should be nothing to worry about with this sort of role playing. Theres more to say about religion as role playing game. About preoccupations with identity versus more relevant concerns. About the search for meaning and the role of myth and fraternity

in ferrying a mediocre simulacra thereof. More to say than I can or want to in one post, so that is all for now. The same can also be said alas for Mind Flayers. Comments (0)

Ghost Recon and the South Ossetian War

Sunday, August 10, 2008, 3:56:05 AM | Aharon My friend Guilherme R. and I were chatting about the terrible new war in Georgias South Ossetia (soon to be Russias South Ossetia?), and he blew my mind recalling the premise of a particularly prescient video game released back in 2001, Tom Clancys Ghost Recon. From wikipedia: Ghost Recon begins in 2008, with civil unrest in Russia. Ultra-nationalists have seized power in Moscow, with plans to rebuild the Iron Curtain. Their first step is clandestine support of rebel factions in Georgia and the Baltic States. During the first few missions of the game, the Ghosts battle South Ossetian rebel forces from the north of Georgia, who are harassing the legitimate government and its allies. The Ghosts fight in the forests, on farms, and in villages while assisting their NATO allies in fighting the enemy. Unfortunately, the Russian government complains to the United Nations that the Americans have interfered in their affairs, and eventually they send in their army to aid the South Ossetian rebels. The U.S. cannot hope to stop the Russian Army from invading Georgia, so the Ghosts slow down the invading forces so that their allies can evacuate. Eventually, the Ghosts are all thats left of the U.S. forces in Georgia, and they evacuate by SH-60 Seahawk helicopter on the rooftop of the American Embassy in Tbilisi, just barely avoiding the Russian forces. The Georgian government flees to Geneva and sets up a government-in-exile. Sadly, with the fall of Tbilisi, Georgia surrenders and is forcefully incorporated into the RDU. We can only hope that this war doesnt continue to play out as the game writers imagined it might. Im no expert on these matters but I suspect that regardless of Georgias invitation to NATO membership earlier this year, the U.S. wont be fielding special forces in Georgia that are already deployed in the Middle East and the Hindu Kush. Read more of Ghost Recons plot summary at the wikipedia. UPDATE: From Russias perspective, Georgia is a proxy power of the U.S. on its southern border, so it might be something of a propoganda coup to capture U.S. Special forces or NATO troops fighting in the interests of Georgia. Thinking of this, Im unsure what to make of the following story which has so far not been picked up by Western news media outlets (as of Sunday night 10PM EST): Russian news media site Rosbalt (Google translation) is reporting that Russia has captured a U.S. citizen among a group of Georgian sabatouers that had committed a group suicide. Another news site Izvestia (Google Translation) identifies the American as a NATO instructor and reports that among the corpses in Tskhinvali was found several bodies of black people who fought on the side of Georgia. According to Rosbalt, the citizen is currently being held for interrogation in Vladikavkaz (capitol of Northern Ossetia). (There is a photo of a soldier in this article, but it looks like a stock photo lifted from somewhere else.) Do sabatouers commit group suicide upon fearing capture? Should the bodies of black people be assumed to be the bodies of U.S. mercenaries? This all seems very suspicious to me. Comments (0)

The Forbidden iPod: HFS+ on Windows

Thursday, August 07, 2008, 9:07:25 PM | Aharon Last year around this time I was thinking about mp3 players. My trusty old Archos Jukebox 20 Studio just wasnt cutting it anymore, even with its ROM flashed with open source Rockbox firmware. Yes, the Archos was a solid brick of an mp3 player, had a simple yellow LCD display, USB 1.1, and a very short battery life which required me to carry around its AC adapter wherever I went, but thats not the reason I gave it up. I wanted Album Shuffle: the means for shuffling your songs by random album rather than random song. This is an important feature if you want to listen to any album that isnt an 80s pop album with only one or two good songs on it, like for example, Vivaldis Four Seasons or Pink Floyds Wish You were Here. The order of tracks, representing movements or songs in a larger themed composition, matters. (Ive written more about Album Shuffle here.) Then I noticed that the ipods had album shuffle. The new players from Cowon and Archos did not, nor any others that fancied themselves as ipod competitors. But I still wasnt convinced to buy an ipod yet. My trusty if heavy and slow Archos had a (then enormous) 100gb hard drive that I had installed myself and the largest ipod then available was 60gb. Ahh, but just before my birthday Apple announced their release of a new 160gb ipod. I was won over. Soon I gifted myself with a new Ipod Classic 160gb. iPod Management When it arrived, the ipods hard drive came formatted with Apples native file system, HFS Plus (HFS+). As the Windows operating systems cannot natively read HFS+ drives and my Thinkpad runs Windows XP, iTunes reformatted the ipod with FAT32, a file system engineered by Microsoft. At the time I didnt think too much of HFS+ vs. FAT32, I was just happy that the ipod was working. And so, I put all concerns about file fragmentation and the need to periodically defrag FAT32 volumes to the side, and got to work filling the ipod up with good music and videos. Over the last year Ive learned how to corrupt my ipods database (and how to fix it painlessly) by avoiding iTunes as much as possible. iTunes had the advantage of supporting Album shuffle, but I preferred to use Winamp with the Album List plug-in for listening to albums on my computer. I had some success using Floola (which does not support Album shuffle) and Floola is my choice ipod manager on my Linux boxen. But on my Thinkpad running Windows XP, I was more interested in whether there were any plug-ins for Winamp that could suffice as a fully featured alternative to iTunes. Looking at Winamp I discovered that it supported iPods through a plug-in bundled with the Winamp installer called pmp_ipod. Trying it out I was underwhelmed by its poor support of album cover art on the ipod, a feature I had really come to love. Then I discovered ml_ipod an open source winamp plugin written by independent developers that could do (almost) everything pmp_ipod could do but better. The only thing I would need iTunes for would be for occasional firmware updates. ml_ipod support was fairly well documented on an online wiki and any further questions could be pursued on an active support forum hosted at Winamp. Ive been using ml_ipod since January and have donated money to the further development of the plug-in. File Fragmentation in FAT32 vs. HFS+ A few weeks ago I began to wonder again what my ipods FAT32 volume file fragmentation looked like. Unsurprisingly, after tens of thousands of file transfers, the ipods music, video,

database and artwork files were critically fragmented according to Diskeeper, a windows defrag tool. A fragmented file system meant that my ipod needed to work harder and slower than it should have to. The answer to a fragmented ipod file system isnt defragging it though. Ever wonder whether you should defrag your ipod? Dont waste your time. Defragmenting an ipod over USB takes a LONG time. It is much much faster to simply do a full restore from your computers existing archive of music. (Before doing so, make sure you have an archive of all your iPods music.) Even after I initialized and reloaded my FAT32 ipod, I found that the the iTunes database of music files as well as the artwork database of cover art were still fragmented just less so. I began to explore what benefits there might be to manage the ipod with its original HFS+ over FAT32. I was impressed to find that HFS+ drives do not suffer from the same fragmentation problems as FAT32 drives. As this comparison of file systems shows, the main reason for the lack of fragmentation in HFS+ is because unlike FAT32, HFS+ supports Extents. Wikipedia explains: An extent is a contiguous area of storage in a computer file system, reserved for a file. When starting to write to a file, a whole extent is allocated. When writing to the file again, possibly after doing other write operations, the data continues where the previous write left off. This reduces or eliminates file fragmentation. Additionally, because HFS+ was specifically engineered to minimize disk access and quickly access individual files, its specific utility for the iPod seems obvious. This specific advantage of HFS+ over FAT32 was summarized well by the user, Millenium, over on the macnn web forum in a 2006 thread on HFS+ vs. FAT32: You may hear that HFS+ is slower than FAT32. Thats true in some cases, but not in others. In particular, HFS+ does not do very well in tasks where you need to access many small files at once For looking up individual files, however, HFS+ is actually one of the fastest filesystems out there, and has been for a long time. This all comes from the way that HFS+ stores its data: when youre working with relatively few files its better, but when youre working with many files at once it isnt as good. Its a design tradeoff, and whether it will be better or worse for you in this regard really depends on how you use your computer. The original Macintosh File System (MFS, from which HFS and then HFS+ directly descend) was created in an era when most people used floppies to store all of their data. The same is true of FAT16, which is where FAT32 comes from. Apples engineers decided that since floppies were so slow, people and applications would try to minimize disk access in general, and so they optimized their filesystem to work best under those conditions. It worked extraordinarily well for the time, and even today there arent many better filesystems for people who work under those conditions. In other words, one of the best file systems available for the iPod is HFS+ (especially compared with FAT32). Unfortunately, FAT32 is not a comparable alternative to HFS+. FAT32s presence as an alternative file system for the ipod simply reflects the lack of support in Windows OSes for the more advanced HFS+ file system. Perils of FAT32 to HFS+ Conversion As a result of learning this, I became increasingly interested in converting my FAT32 ipod to HFS+. Besides fragmentation and reliability, I also wondered if a change in ipod file systems

might affect the file transfer speed over USB 2.0. File transfer speeds over USB 2.0 with my FAT32 formatted ipod averaged around 6000 kB/s. Would HFS+ perform worse or better? General information on converting the iPod from FAT32 to HFS+ was plainly lacking and specific recommendations advised iPod users to accept FAT32. I was on my own. To access HFS+ formatted drive volumes on Windows Id need to install special software like MacDrive by Mediafour. So to begin, I downloaded the MacDrive software and formatted my ipod to HFS+. So far so good. I wanted to make certain that my firmware was installed correctly so I proceeded to initialize my ipod with iTunes, and then re-transfer my mp3s and mp4s to the newly formatted ipod with winamp + ml_ipod. This seemed to work fine (although I didnt see any discernible change in file transfer speeds). But afterward, I was surprised to find that my ipod was still formatted with FAT32! I soon learned that as part of its restore sequence, iTunes for PC will automatically format HFS+ formatted ipods with a FAT32 file system. It also copies ipod for PC firmware that seems tailored specifically for FAT32. In my next attempt, I reformatted the ipod to HFS+ with Macdrive, ignored iTunes altogether, and did a full restore with ml_ipod in winamp onto the Ipod. ml_ipod recognized the drive and transferred the files. This time the file transfer speed was much higher: 9500 kB/s vs. 6000 kB/s. I was impressed but once the transfer completed, I found the ipod would not recognize any of the files that had been transferred. The itunesDB database was not corrupt and the actual data files were all present so what could be the problem? Was it a problem with the iPods firmware not being able to read HFS+? I found the answer on a wiki page written for Gentoo Linux users on how to update ipod firmware. Simply formatting the ipods drive to HFS+ would not work because HFS+ formatted ipods have three partitions: the first partition contains the partition table, the second partition the ipod for mac firmware, and the third partition the media files and databases. (FAT32 formatted ipods have two partitions: a hidden one for the ipod for pc firmware, and the other for the media.) The ability to create these HFS+ partitions on the iPod arent available on Windows, even with MacDrive. MacDrive can format a disk to HFS+ but does not provide the ability to create three separate partitions on the disk. And to make the ipod work, I would also need the correct ipod firmware installed in its respective partition. Could iTunes solve the problem? iTunes for PC will neither create the three HFS+ partitions nor copy anything but ipod for PC firmware to a FAT32 partition. The only solution I could imagine for copying the correct firmware and creating the correct partitions would be by connecting my ipod to a computer running OS X and restoring my iPod using iTunes for Macintosh. So iPod USB cable in hand, I visited my friend Isaac S. and his Macbook, and soon afterward I had a functioning ipod with the correct HFS+ partitions and firmware. (Thanks Isaac!) Back home, I found that with MacDrive installed on my Thinkpad, ml_ipod and winamp had no difficulty recognizing the HFS+ volume. Transfer speeds hovered mid 8000 kB/s. Success! The conversion did not come without any caveats. After the full transfer was completed I did notice that there was less free space available on the ipod. The ipod with HFS+ used approximately 5% more storage for the same files than when it was formatted with FAT32. (116gb/FAT32 vs. 122gb/HFS+ out of 148gb total.) I dont know why, but perhaps it has something to do with the extents allocated for each file in HFS+ (described above). (See update below on this weird problem.) Because ml_ipod was designed to restore fat32 formatted ipods, I dont think Ill be able to use ml_ipods restore or initialize ipod feature anymore, nor will I be able to rely on iTunes for PC for the occasional firmware update. Rather than buy a whole new Apple computer for this task,

Im looking at vmware workstation, an emulation environment that I can run OS X on within Windows. Another option is to use another piece of software by Mediafour called Xplay. Conclusion I hope this story helps anyone else out there wondering whether to get their FAT32 ipods converted back to HFS+ (and how exactly to go about doing that). I think its a worthwhile project because of the advantages that HFS+ provides in speed and reliability over FAT32, the lack of file fragmentation in HFS+, and some moderate file transfer speed advantages. The disadvantages are the need to purchase HFS+ software for Windows like MacDrive and no longer being able to depend on iTunes for firmware updates or ml_ipod for occasional full restore and ipod initialization. (You can probably get around the latter problems by installing Mac OS X in a vmware emulation, but then youd need to buy a copy of vmware workstation and OS X as well. Or you can buy a mac mini, macbook, or other Apple computer.) If this doesnt faze you, then you should also expect that due to differences between the two file systems, that HFS+ will utilize more storage space on your ipod than FAT32. On my ipod, HFS+ used 5% more drive space with the same files loaded onto it. If you want to run an HFS+ formatted ipod on a PC running Windows, follow these steps: 1. If your ipod is formatted FAT32, restore it using iTunes for Mac on a friends Macintosh computer. (iTunes for PC will only format your ipod to FAT32.)
2. Install HFS+ reading/writing software for Windows like MacDrive by Mediafour. 3. Optional but recommended: Install ml_ipod for winamp and transfer your files to your

HFS+ formatted ipod. In the comments please let me know if youve found other ways to partition ipods correctly for HFS+ without using iTunes for Mac. Besides file transfer speed changes and degrees of fragmentation, Im also interested in documenting any other reported benefits of using HFS+. UPDATE: A week later and Ive reloaded my ipod once more under slightly different conditions. The important difference is that this time, the strange 5% storage space loss from my earlier adventure didnt manifest. Instead of restoring the iPod using ml_ipod, I used XPlay (ver. 3.0.2), another piece of software by Mediafour. Im not exactly certain what made a difference but my iPod certainly seems happier having been reformated with MacDrive and restored with XPlay. XPlay has a trial period of 30 days or 20 times running, and Ill be curious to know whether the software makes any difference to managing an HFS+ formatted iPod besides using its restore feature. Ill provide another update to this post when I do. Comments (1)

More on Emergency Broadcast Network

Wednesday, August 06, 2008, 9:15:24 PM | Aharon Ten years ago I was in Philadelphia and excited to learn that Emergency Broadcast Network (or EBN for short), an art music/video project would be touring with dj Spooky providing live mixed visuals and even performing their own set. I had first seen their work in college in the mid 90s, probably on a friends VHS player showing a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product, their 1992 release of eleven videos on video tape. The frenetic and aggressive music on the video album didnt really appeal to me; it was more the way they sampled video samples of explosions and machine guns firing with their audio into a coherent music (and video) collage that blew me away. Till then I hadnt been fortunate enough to see them perform live and didnt even realize

that they were more or less an art project that had been shoehorned into the form of a touring band. (It might be a testament to how narrowly focused I was on the particular strains of ambient music that I was listening to and mixing with then as a DJ at SUNY Binghamtons WHRS, that I missed their 1995 CD release Telecommunication Breakdown. If I had heard it I would have been amazed at the ambient stylings of the tracks 3:7:8 and This is the End and I would have been enchanted to learn that both Bill Laswell and Brian Eno were involved with the release.) Shown below, 3:7:8 : Upon moving to Philadelphia in 2007 I bought a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product at the Digital Underground, a music store at 5th and South where I was making friends with local scenesters, and it was there that I probably learned the following year of the Spooky tour with EBN coming to the TLA. I had a mixed experience at the show. I think I got there late but was quickly impressed by EBNs visuals. They had set up a double screen with a mirror image of the left on the right side, so there was some very cool if simple effects of action in the videos blending towards the center of the two screens. The visuals they provided for Spookys set were again very aggressive and I thought kind of childishly masculine, with lots of quick cut edits of men in race cars, spies, guns, and things getting blown up. EBN had made their name for videos that parodied the manipulation and dissemination of propaganda for the first Gulf War through mainstream media. For example, in their video Syncopated Ordinance Demonstration #1 (see below) they contrast the war footage of tanks getting bombed, with GI Joes cartoon battles, and scantily clad women shooting uzis in gun manufacturer advertisements, and so present the different ways violence on TV is presented in one single grotesque. EBNs viduals for dj Spookys sets were much more superficial. Without depth, EBNs art was merely being used to complement the aggressive and masculine tone of Spookys presentation of illbient in relation to hip hop. But I wasnt dissapointed during EBNs solo set. I saw videos that were works of art in and of themselves, and not being used to complement some other message. One of them featured a manipulation of Frank Sinatra from a short TV clip that would phase in and out of itself in audio and video. Seeing it made the entire evening worthwhile. Following the show, I searched in vain for anyone who had recorded the show. I wrote to dj Spooky asking for more information. I asked friends who new folks that regularly bootlegged shows at the TLA. Nada. And to make matters worse, I soon learned that EBN disbanded. Fast forward to 2006. EBN videos were all over the place on youtube, and I did some exploring and found that the EBN project has been revived somewhat. All the members had gone onto other things, mostly in media production work, and EBN frontman Joshua L. Pearson had become a family man. But he had also created an official web page for EBN and posted a few videos, mostly quicktime files from Commercial Entertainment Product, for download. I still couldnt find the Sinatra video but I was excited that it probably wasnt lost. Hopefully it would be posted on youtube or somewhere else. At the time, looking for it would have to wait since I was terribly busy in Louisiana doing urban planning following the hurricanes of 2005. I would follow up on this later. And so when I had some spare time earlier this year I sent out emails to all the EBN project members on whether the group had any plans to make an official release of the old videos on DVD. Greg Deocampo (currently of Mediatronica) was the only one who responded, but wow, what a response. He pointed me to his pesonal project Eclectic Method (EMN) and his portfolio of EMN videos. On a separate page of the EMN project, Greg had all the videos that had been made for the CD album Telecommunication Breakdown in 1995 but hadnt been released due to

there not being enough space on the CD for all those videos. (Only Electronic Behavior Control System, 3:7:8, and Homicidal Schizophrenic (A Lad Insane) were released on the data side of the CD.) Mediatronica was also hosting a mirror of the videos on their video distribution site televis.es. Among the flash videos was a copy of the Sinatra video entitled Frank; I was overjoyed! (See Frank below.) A great interview of Deocampo is available in the episode archive of the public radio program, Some Assembly Required. Having become a collector of EBN videos, I was dismayed to find that quite a few were no longer accessible on youtube or anywhere else. For years, a site called GNN (Guerilla News Network) had hosted a series of seven EBN videos it called The Lost Tapes. A few had surfaced on youtube, and one or two on file sharing networks, but the others had since 2004 when GNN stopped hosting them, become truly lost. Another video, Banjo Lesson, was made inaccessible when a youtube user named Nomeus had his account suspended. And so last week, I went looking for Nomeus, and finally caught up with him on his urban exploration site flurbex.com. Ive since been able to get copies of all the missing files and repost them on youtube. Heres Banjo Lesson: Nomeus also clued me onto quite a few other projects of Deocampo as well as the video work of Hexstatic and TV Sheriff who were influenced by EBNs work. Ill post more news on my findings as I pursue this research. Comments (0)

You Dont Mess With the Samson

Monday, July 07, 2008, 8:00:45 PM | Aharon I promised myself that I would not think too hard about You Dont Mess With the Zohan, Robert Smigel and Adam Sandlers comedy film this summer. But alas, reading about the story of Yiftach in the haftorah reading this past shabbat, I couldnt help but think of the context of Zohan within the context of Jewish legendery strong men: biblical, Diaspora, and modern Zionist. (For those who havent seen the film yet, go see it. There are a few minor spoilers below.) Zohan fits well within a pantheon of fantastic He-Man stories of the bible beginning with a fugitive young Moshe (Moses) defending Midianite women and ending perhaps with Moshe Muki Betsers largely successful IDF hostage-rescure mission at Entebbe. Zohan is a Golden Boy, capable of near miraculous feats of perfect timing, detail, dexterity, strength and endurance. In the Torah, as in other Mediterranean mythologies, the source of Zohans talents would have been identified early on as Divine; that Zohans are not, points to the story being couched within a modern and secular worldview. Zohan is really a new take on the story of long-haired Israelite strong man, Shimshon (Samson), and his clever Philistine lover and hair cutter, Delilah. Just to make sure you dont miss the parallel, Robert Smigel named Zohans Palestinian love interest Dalia (played by Emmanuel Chriqui). The connecting motif is hair. For Samson, hair represents his Nazirite status and by extension, his divinely given strength. This is a critical point since in his story both Samson and the Philistines make the mistake of perceiving his hair as the actual source of his strength, while in reality it is just an outward, if sacred, symbol. In Zohan, this understanding is implicit, since Zohans strength isnt his curly Jewfro (or much discussed giant bush of genital hair). Rather, Zohans strength is his passion to fulfill his dream of self-becoming (a hair dresser). This is

impressed in the film so many times when he tells the Paul Mitchell hair salon, and afterwards, to Dalia that hes ready to cut hair in his salon, not because he has any prior experience but because he has the passion and desire to do so. For Samson, his strength is ultimately given to the selfless call to war and ultimately, martyrdom. Zohans sacrifice of what his mother calls his safe career as a macho war hero for his faygele dream of becoming a hair dresser turns this theme of sacrifice on its head. It is through his striving to realize his personal dream that Zohan discovers, achieves, and in the end help to safeguard a place on earth where Israelis and Palestinian Arabs can live together in peace and love. Just as Jonah learned, Zohan cant really run away from his calling; he is a born leader, a defender of his people, and his past does catch up with him. But significantly, Zohan has given up on Israel as the place where his dreams can be realized. And this is why You Dont Mess With the Zohan has been called post-Zionist. The film speaks to the frustrated desire of many Israeli Jews to make peace with their neighbors and get on with the fulfillment of the Zionist dream to achieve self-determination within a land of their own. However, the peace that must sustain the reality of this self-determination is shown to be shallow and fleeting. The leisure of Zohans parade through Tel Avivs beachfront, through its myriad of beautiful hedonistic people, is shown to be just so fragile and fleeting. Without warning, an IDF helicopter comes to break the peace of his ocean side BBQ. But in America, the dream of simple success trumps all nationalist and ethnic division. And here we see the difference in worldviews between Zohan and the Hebrew Hammer (2003). Only a few months ago, for the first time, five years late I watched Jonathan Kesselman and Adam Goldbergs Hebrew Hammer . Here was a film that speaks to a diaspora Jewish identity struggling with assimilation and acculturation. Just as with the Zohans unapologetic clownish macho sabra-ness, the Hebrew Hammer has no interest in arguing with stereotypes. The Hammer appropriates guilt and angst into a rubric of traits that include badass decidedly non-Orthodox Jewish tattoos and pre-marital sex. In embracing tattoos and sex, the Hebrew Hammer not only presents an alternative take on Jewish identity, it arguably reflects the reality of not a few proudly Jewish hipsters. The difference between Zohan and Hammer, however, is in the attitude towards America as either an immigrants dream or as the continuing challenge of diaspora Jewish identity. As a first generation immigrant, Zohan is self-confident in his identity as an Israeli Jew. As a fourth or fifth generation descendant of European Jewish immigrants the Hammer represents the insecurity of diaspora Jewry as the angry defender of a cultural world under attack. If buffoonish and over the top, Goldbergs Hammer and Sandlers Zohan are archetypes (if not role models) for relating to Jewish identity in the US. While the Hammer took some plenty of identity from religious Judaism, it took none from Israeli secularism, and the reverse is true for Zohan. The difference points to real divisions in Jewish diaspora and Israeli Jewish ethnocultural identities. I promised myself I wouldnt think too hard about this film. Its totally enjoyable if youre Jewish or Israeli and Im hopeful that for all the non-Jews I saw this with at the AMC theater in Northern Kentucky it delivered a bit more nuance and sophistication into their understanding of Jews and Arabs. (After all, we can all agree that the real problems in this world are caused by greedy capitalist WASP real estate developers. Right?) The UK release date for the film is August 18th, so Israeli cinemas cant be too far behind. Ill be very curious to hear how Israelis receive the Zohan. [crossposted to Jewcy] Comments (0)

Jeer at them
Thursday, June 26, 2008, 7:24:39 PM | Aharon Yochanan Lavie, who regularly reads and comments over at failedmessiah.com, recently shared this poem inspired in general by the sickness and evil near the root of Aaron Rubashkins animal slaughtering and meat processing factory in Postville, Iowa, and specifically by Rubashkins use of PR flacks, paid industry representatives, and the Orthodox establishment to shill for them. Ive reposted Lavies poem below. Jeer at them with apologies to William Blake And did the Rebbes feet in recent time Walk upon Iowas fields of green? And were the illegal Mexicanos On Iowas pleasant pastures screened? And did the ICE helicoptors Hover over our well-paid shills? And was Crown Heights builded here Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my public relations flack! Bring me my homeless men of Texas! Bring me my army of wetbacks! Lie to my critics that afflict us! I will not cease from PR fights, I will stick it to the goyishe Man Till we have built Crown Heights In Iowas green and pleasant land. Adapted from And did those feet in ancient time by William Blake from the preface to his epic poem, Milton: a Poem. In 1916, C. Hubert H. Parry composed music for the poem to be sung as a hymn called Jerusalem (thus Lavies Jeer at them). Wikipedia notes, The term dark Satanic mills, which entered the English language from this poem, most often is interpreted as referring to the early industrial revolution and its destruction of nature.[1] This view has been linked to the fate of the Albion Flour Mills, which was the first major factory in London, built in 1769 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt. It was powered by Watts steam engines, and produced 6,000 bushels of flour a week. The factory could have driven independent traditional millers out of business, but it was destroyed, perhaps deliberately, by fire in 1791. Londons independent millers celebrated with placards reading, Success to the mills of ALBION but no Albion Mills. [2] Opponents referred to the factory as satanic, and accused its owners of adulterating flour and using cheap imports at the expense of British producers. An illustration of the fire published at the time shows a devil squatting on the building.[3] The mills were a short distance from Blakes home. The Romantic movement which Blake helped invoke began in response to the dehumanization of industrialization, environmental devastation wrought by the intense exploitation of nature, and the loss of culture resulting from the alienation of artisans and craftsmen in the production of goods. The purpose of industrialization is to use efficiencies to lower costs, but often enough, industrialized mass production simply shifts costs away from the consumer and industry and onto the workers and the environment. Resources, both natural and human, are ruthlessly

exploited resulting in environmental and social ills that ultimately cost more money to rectify than that incurred in the expense of a more humanely produced consumer good. Lavie focuses on the exploitation of illegal workers and wetbacks (terms Id never use) to describe just one corruption within the Rubashkin enterprise. Rubashkins business ultimately aims to satisfy Jewish Americans insatiable and unhealthy appetite for (kosher) meat through the mechanism of industrialized mass production. The exploitation of undocumented workers is one method of lowering the costs to the consumer. Unfortunately, lowering costs doesnt come without a price the true costs of environmental and social ills caused by pollution and labor abuse are simply passed onto the health and welfare of society and the environment we depend on. With all the attention on Rubashkins disgusting labor practices, its also time to remind folks how Rubashkin has regularly sought to lower standards whether it be in food safety, worker safety, humane treatment of animals, and the pollution of the environment. Might the Rubashkin travesty revive the nascent Jewish movement that aims to place renewed emphasis on Jewish and humane values in the Kosher Food Industry? You can do your part by supporting hekhsher tzedek. Comments (1)

Zer Presence
Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 7:54:01 PM | Aharon Besides working through the problem of what is meant by being asked to worship an invisible, non-verbally communicative superbeing (who is yet imagined to be present, personal, and ready to intervene), my next most-difficult problem when conforming the god of my imagination with the god of Jewish liturgy has always been how to avoid thinking or using gendered pronouns. Feudal appellations such as Lord and male pronouns disturb me about as monarchic female terms Queen and female pronouns when Im involved in a meditation that is either trying to connect with something essentially unfathomable, or if fathomable, not yet known well enough to describe with the intimate knowledge that gendered pronouns imply. (On my own, often enough, I avoid these issues all together by imagining god less as a being than as an emergent consciousness, as the Makom, or similar to what Stanslaw Lem describes in his novel Solaris, a maginficent being that with my help is attaining self-awareness.) In the context of Jewish mysticism, this sentiment might already tag me as a neophyte (correctly) since the majority of my ancestors and the most famous kabbalistic works not only unapologetically gender their god the use of the dual male/female Gender system is made an essential allegory for describing the Godhead and the relationship between it and the created world. I have bunches more to read here including Elliot R. Wolfsons Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination, but Ive read Raphael Patais The Hebrew Goddess. I am convinced by his thesis that a perceived feminine aspect of god can be traced back from our current neo-hasidic revival of interest in the Shekhina (the Divine Presence) to the medieval kabbalistic Matronit to imaginary depictions of the shekhina in exile in late antiquity following the destruction of the second temple, to biblical depictions of the shekhina and association with cherubim and clouds and yes, to the Asherah. Patai having made his point, I was left struggling with its relevance for my religious imagination, even entertaining the thought of breaking with this ancient well formulated tradition that uses gender allegories to describe aspects of our god.

Influenced as much by the synthesis of Greek Philosophy and Jewish mysticism (inherent in movement like Sethianism), Ive been more eager to describe God by what my god is not. The description Ein Sof, or god without end, is so much more useful to me than the distraction of gender. If I must think of the philosophical meaning of a cleft in the Godhead in the cosmogonic myth (as I often do), I will think of an illusory division between an unknowable transcendence and an intimately knowable immanence and refuse to describe transcendence as male aloofness and immanence as female sexuality. I refuse! I mention this all in passing to Jay Michaelson during a break at the recent New Voices conference in NYC. (Ive been a fan of Michaelsons writing since Paul Serici first introduced them to me, so meeting him was a thrill.) Michaelson is thinking about the gender of God taking into account the different gender identities we are only now coming to terms with in Gender and Queer Studies. In reacting to my points, Michaelson was more accepting of a gendered God in mystical experiences. He differentiated between (at least) two different kinds of mystical experiences, one of which, catalyzed by use of an entheogenic plant, would inspire a much more intimate and sexualized experience of divinity. Then he invited me to Nehirim, the shabbat retreat of LGBTQ Jews and their allies, to learn and talk some more. (Despite the suggestion of cosmic serendipity, first meeting Eli K-W also on his way to Nehirim and then to be invited by the organizer himself, I chose not to spend the full registration out of pocket to attend, and instead spent much needed time in reunion with my cousin Una.) This brings me to introduce Rima Turner, now interning for Nehirim (congrats!). I first met zir* at Jews in the Woods: a bespectacled, diminutive, giant of a spirit whose haftorah reading one Shabbat morning managed to draw down tears from eyes that had for too long been dry. Weve been in communicating for the past three years, sharing what weve learned in our respective wanderings. Rima also invited me to Nehirim, but whatever I missed there Ill make up in responding to the interesting and personal dvar torah, Sacred Spaces: The Tabernacle, Womens Work, and the Body as Sanctuary. Ze just recently shared zir essay over at Jewish Mosaic, the national (Jewish) center for seuxal and gender diversity. On Parshat Naso (Numbers 4:21 7:89), Rima writes: In Numbers 7, we read about the sanctification of the tabernacle (the Mishkan). Moses anoints the tabernacle and its components, and then the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel each bring offerings: silver, gold, incense, oxen, sheep, and goats. The offerings function as a dedication, after which the tabernacle is anointed again. Moses goes into the tabernacle, and the Divine speaks to him. What does it mean to create a holy space? The Divine is not your dinner dateZe wont come over to your apartment just because thats where you live. You can invite Zir in, but that doesnt mean Ze is going to come. Those of us who pray or meditate regularly are familiar with this reality. Some days we enter into prayer and prayer enters into usbut sometimes prayer takes a day off, no matter how hard we try (or try not to try, or try not to try not to trywell, you get the picture). I love what Rimas done with gender-neutral pronouns. I had heard these neologisms used in referring to people (at Jews in the Woods, where else?) but never before had I seen them in discussions about divinity. So useful! The use and innovation of gender-neutral pronouns in English has a long history summarized in a FAQ here. Gender-neutral pronouns currently in use have roots extending back at least into the early days of USENET in the 1980s, where they found popularity in nascent gender queer usegroups. The earliest use I could find of the pronouns zie and zir on USENET are in this post

by a Lynn Dobbs in the soc.bi newsgroup from December 1993. (Fair warning, the subject matter is erotic.) Richard Creel, a philosophy professor at Ithaca College, may have been the first to specifically use gender-neutral neologisms in discussing divinity in his philosophy of religion classes. This is what Creel wrote in Ze, zer, mer, in the Fall 1997 issue of the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy: Ze, zer, and mer may seem awkward now, but if we use them regularly and the usage becomes widespread, they will soon seem quite natural. Meanwhile we will have enriched the categories of our language and improved our ability to communicate clearly, precisely, and grammatically. She, her, he, his, and him should, of course, continue to be used when appropriate. Ze, zer, and mer will supplement them, not supplant them. To close on a personal note, in my philosophy of religion courses I explain these terms to my students, then I use them when I speak of God, which, of course, I do a lot. My students are not required to use these terms yet many of them are intrigued, attracted, and choose to do so, at first with self-conscious good-humor. My women students seem especially appreciative of an opportunity to speak of God without being forced to use a gendered pronoun or an awkward strategy designed to evade the use of pronouns altogether. Similar benefits accrue for general discussions of the nature of a person, whether in philosophy of religion or not. Hence, even if ze, zer, and mer do not enter into common usage (obviously the odds are greatly against that), nonetheless they can be very useful in philosophical discussions. * As evidinced by her bio at Jewish Mosaic, Rima is exploring the use of the neologisms ze and zir to refer to zirself. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be at war even with language in determining for society what your gender identity is. But I do know a hint of a shade of this struggle from thinking about gender and god, and so Im hopeful that in using the language that my friend Rima chooses for zirself, I will also be that much more mature in wrestling with a god that defies easy gender delineations. UPDATE 6/15: Rima posts more at her blog. Comments (0)

Netflix Widget for Wordpress

Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 4:33:00 AM | Aharon This post goes out to all the wordpress users out there who wanted to use Albert Banks Netflix Plugin for Wordpress but were frustrated at the plugin not being accessible as a sidebar widget. I added some code to widgetize the plugin that I adapted from this goodreads plugin. If you want you can download what I wrote and then you too can tell the world more than they ever wanted to know about your DVD rental habits. If you look at the code and see what I added (in the section commented wigetized [sic]), youll notice that Im shunning CSS markup for good old table formatting. I also changed a line under switch display typeto make the widget look pretty in the sidebar. Ive got it working in the sidebar here if youre looking for an example of how it will look. After you ftp the plugin into your wordpress install, youll still need to change the Netflix plugin settings in the wordpress backend. To make the table formatting work I have each entry start with a [tr] tag and end with a [/tr] tag. See below:

Also, youll need to go to the widgets menu to add the Netflix widget that should appear there. Maybe youre thinking that somebody should already have done this by now. Youre right. Except its missing. Back in 2006 Chris Stanley over at ongoingprocess.net announced he had made a widget to work with Albert Banks as yet unwidgetized Netflix plugin. I searched for it in vain at his site but the link he provided had become broken at some point and was never fixed. Perhaps Stanley will dig it up someday and make it available again. Until then, you can try this out. Hope it works for you. Comments (8)

Cain and Abel

Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 12:27:14 AM | Aharon From her yeshivah digs in Jerusalem, Gella Solomon (of Nogah Chadash) writes to me of an aggadic commentary shes recently composed on the story of Cain and Abel (or transliterated, Qayin and Hevel). Her midrash, narrated by Cain is deeply humanistic Cain expresses himself and his experience of fratricide in human terms that easily resonate with our experiences of desire and disappointment. But at the same time, G. Solomon leaves Cain within the world of midrash and its poignant exegetical suggestions, within the world of myth where Cain remains fully aware that he is a character being used as a homiletical device. Within this setting, Solomon lets Cain explain himself, his actions, his set up. Here is how Solomon has Cain describe his relationship to his brother with special attention to his eponymous name, Hevel, which has the literal meaning of breath connoting a sense of his fleeting and impermanence: I would sometimes prod him to see if he would dissolve into vapor at my touch. You have to understand, it wouldnt have seemed so odd. In those times, things were as they were and we, the first three, were discovering a newly created world. We were each so different from each other, would it be so odd to have a man who was flesh and a man who was not? Well he was solid enough solid enough to bleed, solid enough to kill but though, as it turned out, he could be killed, he did not truly live. Hevel was not Named. Hevel did not speak. I was given to Mother Chava to be Man after Father Adam. Hevel was added. Added to be My Brother. To see what I would do. Read more. (link, Beyond the Near)

With the essential role Cain must play in the narrative, can he actually have free will. This is a playful suggestion Solomon makes but from Dwayne Hoovers revelation in Vonneguts Breakfast of Champions to Nobusuke Tagomis epiphany in Philip K. Dicks Man in the High Castle, the self-awareness of imaginary characters is a postmodern trope that resonates. As Authors we can give our characters a tselem elohim (an image of their creator) and our characters in turn reflect whatever creative spirit we possess to our readers. When we write, when we dream we are in a state of communion with those that we are dreaming. Our imagination gives them life and if the myth of their life can be transmitted, it can endure long after weve ceased dreaming them. Solomons reading of Cain also reminds me of the sympathetic reading of Judas Iscariot in the second century Gospel of Judas. In that second century work, Jesus asks Judas to turn him into the Romans, since betrayal is not really possible for a supposedly living god whose determination of all events must preclude the free will of betrayal. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas is the most beloved since only the most trusted lover of a god could be entrusted with the most painful job of assuring his capture and execution. In this reading popular with early Christian Gnostics, Judas is written in a sense similar to Abraham ready to offer up his son Isaac.The theme of child sacrifice within biblical and post-biblical christian narratives is more fully explored in Jon D. Levensons excellent Death and Ressurection of the Beloved Son: Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. Strangely enough, the gnostic sect that appreciated and possibly authored the Gospel of Judas were Sethians a sect the predated Christianity and traced the lineage of their spiritual authority to Adam and Eves third son, the one born to replace the murdered Abel Seth. In Sethian traditions, aspects which in other common traditions are seen as failures (e.g. the transgression of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) are seen rather as necessities in an unraveling emergence of divine transformation. Solomon doesnt make mention of Seth in her midrash, though his absence could I think easily be remedied with a perusal of the extant midrashim on the significance of Seth, as well as the more recent discoveries of ancient lost gnostic works such as the Apocalypse of Adam. Comments (0)

Behemot and Bahamut

Friday, June 06, 2008, 4:41:02 AM | Aharon The umbilical of my omphalos winds its way back in time to the blessings of my mother and father, but also inwards and outside-of-time, stretching into a womb land that is all myth and dream and imagination. With some effort I can follow my way back into this makom, this space and hopefully return from it with something useful or at least, interesting and not just to myself mind you. I do love sharing these thoughts, but I am also interested in their relevance, by which I mean, their utility. Let me explain. I was having a conversation with a mathematician, Yaakov, at the University of Maryland recently, and he was struggling with aesthetic questions on what is good or bad art, so I suggested an alternative more useful question as rather, what is this art good for? recalling Marcel Duchamps 1957 essay, The Creative Act: What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

The verdict of the spectator is separate from the activity of the artist. The spectator might very well take umbrage if the art object, the object of fascination (or boredom) had been or had not been toiled over, had or had not been the expression of a theory or movement, had or had not been the work of an artist at all. As a spectator, my verdict is not whether art is or is not art, but whether the art is useful and useful only in the sense of whether it has opened my eyes and expanded my conscious awareness as to the existence of wonder in the world of relationships and things outside of frames and pedestals, galleries and museums whether appreciation of the art object has brought me to appreciate everything else in the Everything Else room in the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. In a related sense, as much as I ponder myth in Judaism specifically, and religion in general, I return to this concern, that these ideas, while interesting to me, while stimulating and enriching an emerging creative expressive innerverse within me, that these ideas should also hopefully be useful for others. That if they are not, that they are trivial, and that this whole project is a delusion of self-indulgence. I will be honest with you, that I am not wholly convinced that this is not, but I am writing with the intention that these labyrinth of ideas Im exploring and sometimes getting lost in that I will bring back along my wayfinding thread/trail of breadcrumbs/umbilical chord, something useful. Im hopeful that just as art becomes useful by revealing to an observer the greater wondrous reality outside the frame of (framed) Art, that my insights into myth and religion might also be useful for helping to reveal a greater wondrous imaginary world only hinted at within the source text of religious doctrine and dogma. Myth and storytelling thus convey the promise and potential of enduring creative liberty and the subversion of religious control to generations of eager children and aging heresiarchs. Having said this, let me share with you something totally weird that I just found (on wikipedia, where else) that blew my mind. An Arabian myth of a creature called Bahamut ( )which unlike the Behemot is not terrestrial, but like Leviatan, inhabits the endless depths of the ocean. This is mind blowing to me because the tradition in Sefer Chanoch, that the Leviatan is the mate of the Behemot seems much more plausible (in a sort-of mythic taxonomy) if we imagine both of them as sea dwellers rather than as opposites on a terrestrial/aquatic scale. Just for review, Ive written about the Behemot in Jewish myth, how it seems to relate to Apsu, the ancient ur-deity in Babylonian mythology, the personification of heavenly fresh water. Ive written how the Behemot is imagined as a cosmically large hippopatamus dripping with condensation, and referred to in midrash as the Ox of the Pit. Ive wondered whether the Pit was a reference to the thom, the primordial abyss, the abstraction of the other Babylonian urdeity and personification of saltwater, Tiamat. How Leviatan seems to be synonymous with Tiamat in biblical writings. How Behemot/Leviatan are mated to one another in Sefer Chanoch. The Talmud also prefers the notion that Leviathan and Behemot were each created like all other creatures, male and female. So the existence of a myth where Behemot takes the form of a nonterrestrial sea creature like the leviathan seems significant. From the wikipedia article on Bahamut: Bahamut (Arabic: Bahamt) is a vast fish that supports the earth in Arabian mythology. In some sources, Bahamut is described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant. If thats not enough of a teaser, here is the entire fantastic entry on Bahamut written by Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings (translated by Margarita Guerrero, Norman Thomas di Giovanni). I want to point out that I find it significant that similar to the Behemot tradition, the Bahamut myth describes the creatures with hippopotamus features.

Behemoths fame reached the wastes of Arabia, where men altered and magnified its image. From a hippopotamus or elephant they turned it into a fish afloat in a fathomless sea; on the fish they placed a bull, and on the bull a ruby mountain, and on the mountain an angel, and over the angel six hells, and over these hells the earth, and over the earth seven heavens. A Moslem tradition runs: God made the earth, but the earth had no base and so under the earth he made an angel. But the angel had no base and so under the angels feet he made a crag of ruby. But the crag had no base and so under the crag he made a bull endowed with four thousand eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, tongues, and feet. But the bull had no base and so under the bull he made a fish named Bahamut, and under the fish he put water, and under the water he put darkness, and beyond this mens knowledge does not reach. Others have it that the earth has its foundation on the water; the water, on the crag; the crag, on the bulls forehead; the bull, on a bed of sand; the sand, on Bahamut; Bahamut, on a stifling wind; the stifling wind on a mist. What lies under the mist is unknown. So immense and dazzling is Bahamut that the eyes of man cannot bear its sight. All the seas of the world, placed in one of the fishs nostrils, would be like a mustard seed laid in the desert. In the 496th night of the Arabian Nights we are told that it was given to Isa ( Jesus) to behold Bahamut and that, this mercy granted, Isa fell to the ground in a faint, and three days and their nights passed before he recovered his senses. The tale goes on that beneath the measureless fish is a sea; and beneath the sea, a chasm of air; and beneath the air, fire; and beneath the fire, a serpent named Falak in whose mouth are the six hells. The idea of the crag resting on the bull, and the bull on Bahamut, and Bahamut on anything else, seems to be an illustration of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This proof argues that every cause requires a prior cause, and so, in order to avoid proceeding into infinity, a first cause is necessary. The story of Bahamut is thus a variation in a wide tradition of cosmic creatures said to be supporting the world. In Hinduism, the creature is Akupara, a ginormous tortoise. Or elsewhere in the Vedas, as the turtle being Kurma, second incarnation of Vishnu. In Greek myth, it is the titan, Atlas. If youve read any Terry Pratchett, you might also be reminded of the turtle that supports his fictional Discworld. In modern Western philosophical debate, an anecdote relating the myth of Bahamut or Akupara is sometimes referred to as Turtles all the way down (explanation below). The anecdote has been used by enlightened moderns lampooning the logical fallacies of irrational belief systems since the 17th century. Or as the wikipedia describes it, the anecdote is used to humorously illustrate both infinite regress, in cosmological imagery, and the perils of religious/mythic myopia. This is how Stephen Hawking relates the anecdote in his A Brief History of Time (1988): A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise. The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, What is the tortoise standing on? Youre very clever, young man, very clever, said the old lady. But its turtles all the way down!

Russell probably wasnt the scientist to have been the recipient of this retort. Most identify the scientist in this popular anecdote as the 19th century psychologist and philosopher William James. But Hawking can be forgiven for thinking so since Bertrand Russell, said the following in his lecture Why I Am Not a Christian (1927): If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindus view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, How about the tortoise? the Indian said, Suppose we change the subject. William James godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, may very well have been acquainted with the story from his peer, Henry David Thoreau who wrote in his journal in 1852, Men are making speeches all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise. So whether the Turtles anecdote originated with Russell or James, it is clear that myths representing cosmological proofs were useful arguments of ridicule for enlightenment rationalists and other freethinkers. In 1690 John Locke may have been the first western philosopher to refer to this myth in a philosophical argument on what the substance is of an object being empirically investigated. From book 2, chapter 23 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke writes, If anyone be asked what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say but, the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before-mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on, to which his answer was, a great tortoise; but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad backed tortoise, replied, something, he knew not what. Perhaps the Indian said, Bahamut. Bahamut, the imaginary foundation of the world of myth.

Above: illustration of Bahamut for The Book of Imaginary Beings by the graduate students in the Department of Illustration and Art of the Book at the Vakalo School of Art and Design in Athens, Greece. Comments (0)

The Two Lovers

Friday, May 30, 2008, 10:03:39 PM | Aharon On this trip, I had the pleasure of sharing a day trip between D.C. and N.Y.C. with a friend of an acquaintance. As it happens, by which I mean, by the tender coincidences blessed upon me in the happenstance of creation, this fellow, Eli K-W, also happens to love Jewish myth and has lately been quite active reinventing biblical aggadah (stories) in the medium of shadow puppetry. We successfully navigated to the city using an exegetical reading of signage along U.S. 1 until we reached the New Jersey Turnpike and the Lincoln Tunnel. In between miraculous cell phone retrievals from our cars roof after an hour of hard driving and a lovely afternoon with my

grandfathers youngest brother and his wife in Yardley, Eli and I also shared our thoughts on yiddishkeit and talked about the Leviatan (the Leviathan). UPDATE 6/5: It is something of a testament to my interest (obsession?) over the Leviatan myths that I realized only today that I had provided something a fuller treatment in a post I wrote already over two years ago, Rejoining Tetragrammaton. You can read on below for a good enough summation of my thoughts but it lacks source references and quotes. So please go to the earlier post first if youre interested in these myths. What appears below is a rewritten article I wrote originally as the about page for this blog when it was called guess The Leviathan and the Behemoth. In the post below I write with some more detail on what I find relevant in the Enuma Elish and I do mention Hermann Gunkel as the source for the idea that Tiamat is a cognate for the biblical hebrew Tohu/Thom, and I should have mentioned this in that earlier post. So besides being topical, these posts will help me in a later synthesis I need to write. I think whats important to note in any case is that all of this has been written about with greater academic rigor, sophistication and nuance in scholarly literature what Im trying to do is articulate how this myth may still be relevant (read: useful) in a Judaism that is both mythically and environmentally conscious. The Leviatan/Behemot myths ARE interesting specifically because they are so well linked to an ancient natural cosmology that seems to have identified and personified aspects of what we now call the Water Cycle. The Leviathan is one of the oldest and most obscure creation myths in the Torah. For me, the myth must be understood in the context of other midrashim concerning the Behemot (Behemoth). Together, I believe the Leviatan and Behemot represent two aspects of the ancient Israelite cosmology: the snowy pure waters above shamayim (the heavens) and the sweet waters below the aretz (the earth). The origins of the Leviathan myth are old and can be traced even into Sumerian mythology thousands of years before the birth of ancient Israel. Being so old, the meaning of the myth has morphed over time. In perhaps its oldest known incarnation, the Leviatan (Kur and Tiamat in Sumerian mythology, Tiamat and Rakhab elsewhere in the TaNaKH) is a primordial chaotic force which must be defeated or tamed by wisdom in order to allow for creation to proceed. According to Hermann Gunkel, the primordial mother deity Tiamat (representing chaos in Sumerian myth) is abstracted in the Torahs Genesis as Thom (the abyss). Following from Raphael Patais reading in his Hebrew Myths (with Robert Graves) the body of the Leviathan forms the earthly depths and is alternately represented as a tremendous underwater mountain, as a dragon, as a cosmic serpent (sustained by fresh waters flowing underground from terrestrial streams), as the abyss of the cosmos (the blank slate before creation), or as purely abstract chaos. Meanwhile, midrashim represent the Behemot as an impossibly ginormous hippopotamus or water buffalo, supported on earth by the four pillars of its gigantic legs, dripping with condensation from the fresh waters above the earth, or simply as the primordial Void. The esoteric Sefer Chanoch preserves the ancient tradition that the Behemot and the Leviatan are each others mates. If we accept Patais reading, then Behemot, in his earlier Sumerian incarnation, was the ur-deity, lover of Tiamat, the fresh water god, Apsu. In the Enuma Elish, Apsu, is killed by the newborn God of Wisdom, Ea (an early cognate of the YHVH) in order for creation to proceed. After this, Tiamat, and Kinghu (her new lover) and their children (representing the chaotic unstructured waterworld) battle with Ea to return the world to its chaotic state. The two lovers must be separated (violently in the myth) in order to be defeated (this time by the hero of Ea, Marduk) and a new age to begin.

Besides the explicit tradition preserved in Sefer Chanoch, the relationship between Apsu/Kingu and Tiamat, Leviatan and Behemot was all but lost. Whispers of it, however, remained in the two creatures relationship to fresh water, their below and above relation to the world as giants, and the Leviatans enduring association with the chaotic Ocean and saltwater despite her reliance on fresh water. The Talmud alternately presents the notion that to preserve space in the world, God slaughtered the male counterparts of the created Leviatan and Behemot and pickled them for later feasting by the righteous when the sukah of peace is spread out across the world at the dawn of the messianic age. The idea that the primordial deities needed to be slaughtered for creation not to be filed with cosmic monsters also recalls the motivation of Eas fratricide in the Enuma Elish. Much much later, Hobbes invoked the image of Leviathan to represent the gigantic nature of state bureaucracy. The Behemot and his relationship to Leviatan was forgotten. This past century, fundamentalist Christians have revived the Behemot as textual proof for the existence of dinosaurs during the age of Man. Putting aside Hobbes and the creationist ideas, when I think of the leviathan and the behemoth, I cant help but join the ancient mythic ideas in my mind with Andy Goldsworthys observation of serpentine forms in the movement of water on the surface of land, as well as the ancient Jewish mystical belief that all forces must be reconciled and unified for their to be a cosmic healing, a Tikkun Olam. In contrast to the midrashim describing a final battle at the end of days when God slaughters the surviving Leviatan, Behemot, and Ziz (another ginormous birdlike creature), I imagine Behemot and Leviatan as once close, inseparable friends whose love for one another was so profound it excluded the possibility of any other relationships forming. While the midrashim imagine the Leviatan slaughtered and skinned with the tzakkim (righteous) feasting on her flesh of the Leviatan and sheltered under her luminous skin, I imagine a peaceful unification after a tragic separation spanning the history of all creation. In this way as well, I can reconcile the aspiration to be righteous with my practice of not eating the flesh of other creatures This binary relationship expressed in verticality (above/below), or terrestrial vs. marine, or inner vs. outer expansiveness (depth/void), also helps me imagine two other invisible reactives, thought of at odds: the invisible hand of the market, and the complicated ecology of nature. As a planner, my power derives from my position as an expert to provide intelligence for people making market decisions, decisions that will have wide repurcussions on an environment (that in turn impacts the market). I am a mediator between two invisible forces, surrogates for the hand of God: the Market and Nature. Comments (0)

Blacks, Jews, and the Post-Racial Candidate

Thursday, May 29, 2008, 6:42:48 PM | Aharon This week Im in New York City for the New Voices Conference in Independent Jewish Student Journalism. Blacks, Jews, and the Post-Racial Candidate was the subject of last nights (May 28) panel discussion at the Center for Jewish History (CJH). Moderated by Marissa Brostoff (New Voices contributing writer), the panel consisted of Sam Freedman (Columbia U. Journalism Professor, NY Times columnist), Jonathan W. Gray (John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY, Assistant Professor of English), and Ari Berman (writer

for The Nation). Dr. Gray filled in at the last minute for Ta-Nehisi Coates, who couldnt make it. In this discussion, the age, ethnicity and race of the panelists matter. Sam Freedman is a middle aged white Jewish academic with experience in political campaigns, Gray is a thirty-six year old African-American academic (with impressively long dreads), and Berman is a twenty-something white Jewish journalist. The long auditorium was largely filled by the time the discussion started and the audience consisted of mostly CJH members, the general public including many young Jewish Obama supporters, and fellow New Voices conference participants. The discussion was videotaped and the recording should be available on the New Voices website, Im told by the conference organizer, Elizabeth Alpern. With Brostoffs introduction, the discussion at first centered on the question, Why is this a story? why is the story of Obamas reception with Jews, a small minority, being covered with such enthusiasm in the media (mainstream and otherwise). From this starting point, the discussion hit on some very important points.
1. Politically liberal support in general and support for Obama specifically is very strong in

the American Jewish electorate. Ari Berman quoted Atrios post Writing the Script on Eschaton (5/11/2008): Approximately 12,000 articles will be written between now and November about how Jewish voters have a problem with Obama, and then they will go to the polls and overwhelmingly vote for him. Despite this, no articles will be written about how Jewish voters have a problem with McCain.
2. The idea of building or (perhaps) restoring a Jewish-Black alliance is distracting when

Jewish-American and African-American support of a liberal Democratic party candidate is in reality quite certain. Within the realm of inter ethnic political alliances, more attention needs to be developed between Jews and Hispanics, and between Jews and European-American (i.e. White) Catholics. (Samuel Freedman) 3. In media discussions, when Blacks are in the room, Jews are allows to stand in for Whites. we need to think of how Jews are being used in terms of Roveian Politics (Jonathan Gray). I think Dr. Gray is saying that the media will not comfortably ask whether White America will vote for a Black President, and so instead, news media looks to the opinion polls of a useful ethnic minority so as not to suggest that all of White America is racist. If the observers of this set-up are in fact racist but unwilling to admit this (they wont vote for Obama because he is a Black president), then they can more comfortably excuse their prejudice if they have a positive feeling towards the useful minority that is allowed to represent their prejudice. Jews may fulfill this role for white gentile philosemites.
4. The organized smear campaign against Obama that is being spread virally (and

effectively) in certain parts of the Jewish community makes use of Israel as a wedge issue. The engineers of the smear know the wedge will not divide Jews because our Democratic support in November is predictable: we will vote for Obama. Rather, the engineers are using the wedge to manipulate Jewish reaction. Once again, the nature of our reaction is important to the observers of Jewish sentiment namely, white Christian Zionists philosemites the true target of opinion for the smear campaign. (Ari Berman). 5. The wedge issue of Israel is effective among American Jews because of our chronic concern for existential threats to Israel. (Samuel Freedman). Amazingly, surveys show that this concern for Israel does not translate into hawkish views among most American

Jews. Most Jewish-Americans do not favor preemptively attacking Iran were Iran to acquire nuclear power or weapons. 6. The Jewish electorate constitutes a liberal silent majority because most (powerful) American Jewish organizations are politically conservative. (Ari Berman). 7. Concern that Obama is a secret Black Nationalist or that he is Muslim has its roots in political disagreements between Jews and Blacks in college student unions in the 1980s. Jewish college students of different backgrounds found solidarity in identification with Israel and Zionism while Black students became cosmopolitan by seeking identification with the apartheid struggles in South Africa. Tension between the two groups arose when black student leaders on campuses were convinced that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza constituted a similar parallel to the hegemony imposed in S. Africa and in the experience of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. (Jonathan Gray) 8. Tom Freedman of the NY Times and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, not exactly Progressives, are presenting a vision of a new vision of being pro-Israel that is at odds with the established pro-Israel lobby. (Berman) What Freedman and Goldberg have written about is the necessity for Israel to marginalize the settler movement and enable a two-state solution within the next three or so years, after which the demographic reality will give truth to the canard that Israels occupation is apartheid, and the call for a binational state with an Arab political majority will begin in earnest. Goldberg predicts that when this occurs, American Jewish organizations will withdraw their support for Israel.
9. It was left to be inferred from the discussion, but we can speculate that powerful Jewish

conservative organizations are helping to manipulate the liberal Jewish public. Jews are being used as pawns in influencing the opinion of the much larger Christian Zionist electorate in order to elect Republicans into office and to continue developing a vision for a safe and secure Israel imagined by right wing Jewish organizations whose powerbase depends on all the conservative political alliances theyve cultivated over the last thirty or so years. Sam Freedman started with some context on Black and Jewish relations making the point that Jews entertain a sentimental mythology that once upon a time Jews and Blacks were allies in the civil rights marches 50 years ago, while in reality this alliance was a progressive Christian and Black alliance with small and short lived participation by certain Jewish progressives. Freedman hit on this a number of times throughout the discussion. Sam Freedman also mentioned the obvious that since there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, it is an insult to Muslim-Americans to call Obama a Muslim suggesting he is therefore un-American or worse. Freedman wished this point was made in Jewish circles. He might not have seen Ali Eteraz excellent post in Jewcy, Calling Obama Muslim Isnt Accurate, But Its Not an Insult Either. Jonathan Gray pointed out that in contrast to Jewish cultural memory, Blacks dont think of Jews as long lost allies in the Civil Rights movement. Rather, Blacks perceive Jews as a model minority having achieved material success and social acceptance in the US despite a long history of rejection and non-inclusion. While Freedman would prefer this sentimental mythology debunked, Gray considers the (re)establishement of a liberal consensus as synonymous with the building of common cause between Jews and Blacks. Obama understands the trajectories of young Jewish and young Black intellectuals and social advocates and believes that common cause in racial and social justice can and should be forged.

Gray also visibly winced at the term post-racial arguing that Obama has self-consciously constructed his identity as Black, regardless of whether he will be recognized as Black by Whites simply because of his appearance. Freedman considered the loss of focus on Obamas bi-racial identity to be unfortunate Obamas hyphenated identity seemed to be something that young people really got. For Freedman, this pointed to a future of racial identity politics that is really substantially different than it has been, and so the refocus on Obamas Black identity, Rev. Wright, etc., is a shame. The discussion trailed off into questions and answers with Ari Berman making the point that Cory Booker and Obama are new Black leaders who will, for now, continue to be asked, will X ethnic group (White, Hispanic, Jewish, Black) vote for a Black man. Meanwhile, young Jewish leaders have yet to emerge and are still overshadowed by Joe Liebermans (strangely) evolving playbook. Berman fantasizes of Obama delivering his AIPAC speech at Howard University and vice versa as a more interesting window into Black-Jewish relations. UPDATE 5/30: This discussion was a good start to what has so far been an excellent journalism conference. Just a shout out to Una Osato who patiently listened to me digest these points over breakfast while she was attempting to prepare a performance piece later that evening. (Her piece at the Bowery rocked!) CORRECTION 5/30: The first version of this post misnamed the panelist Dr. Jonathan W. Gray. This has since been corrected. Thank you very much for the correction. UPDATE 6/9: While Ta-Nahisi Coates couldnt be at this discussion, I found his recent 6/8/08 blog post to back up some of the points Dr. Gray made notably how the political discourse of Black students in elite college campuses in the 80s and 90s has distorted the actual voice and opinion of most Black Americans. Worth reading. Comments (0)

Taco Maria Needs Your Love

Thursday, May 22, 2008, 10:31:33 PM | Aharon You need a cat. Yes you do. Already have one? Does it have FIV? Great. Because I know a very special kitteh that needs a home and has FIV (NOT infectious to humans). Taco Maria is a great cat, a rescue from Hurricane Katrina. She needs to be quarantined from other cats so they dont contract FIV from her.

Heres the blurb from the adoption page at CAAWS, written in faux-first-person. Mariah Like so many others I too have Hurricane Katrina to thank for bringing me to Baton Rouge. I spent several stressful days at the LSU emergency shelter where I lost my litter of kittens due to sickness and stress. If that werent bad enough, I then found out that I am FIV positive. Like humans with HIV, cats with FIV can live many healthy years. So far I am totally symptom-free. Because I am contagious to other cats, however, I will have to be isolated from other cats for the rest of my life. But thats enough bad news. Lets talk about the good news: I am young, healthy, up-to-date on vaccines, spayed, and friendly. I have not slowed down for a second to complain. I love playing and chatting with people so much that I dont miss other cats one bit. The best news, though, is that you are still reading my profile and considering taking me home and thats about the only news that will turn this year around for me. To learn more about me or schedule a visit, email: caawsmail@yahoo.com Comments (0)

On Frida Kahlos Jewish Heritage

Thursday, May 22, 2008, 9:38:58 PM | Aharon This past Sunday, May 18th, marked the end of the Frida Kahlo exhibit this year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My friend Robyn and I caught it just before its expiry along with hordes of locals who had waited till the last moment. Outside, pregnant rain clouds were birthing a fury of elements, a meteorological interruption of the Philly Jewish communitys Israel [at] 60 parade festivities taking place in Logan Circle and Ben Franklin Parkway, just outside the museum. More about the parade in another post. Robyn and I purchased our tickets and waited patiently in the long exhibit queue where we had an opportunity to look at Diego Riveras Liberation of the Peon (1931). Once through the entrance, we accepted the audio guides and commenced our study of the work of Frida Kahlo. Narration on the tour was provided by a device contained a small LCD screen, a keypad, and pause, stop, and play audio buttons, as well as attached earphones. To play the commentary for a

particular image, one would simply press in the keypad the number listed next to the painting on the wall of the gallery. In addition to the audio commentary, informative text was also silk screened onto the walls of the gallery adjoining the paintings and photographs displayed. This exhibit originally began its tour with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The fancy Antenna Audio gadget that had been used in these earlier Kahlo exhibits was for some reason not used for this show at the PMA. Im not certain why. Also, the audio provided was not that of the exhibit curator Hayden Herrera, or her assistant Elizabeth Carpenter, but from some other British man. Im still trying to find out who this is. Id like to ask them a question: Namely, why did the curator introduce Kahlo as having been born of mixed German and Mexican Indian heritage and not mention her Jewish heritage? This is what the narrator said: Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacn, a southern suburb of Mexico City, the third daughter of a German father and a mother of Spanish and Native American descent. So I want to know: was Kahlos father Guillermo (ne Wilhelm) Kahlos Hungarian-Jewish ancestry so irrelevant and besides the point to exclude it? Kahlos Indian heritage and Mexican socialist nationalism is well known because they are so much a part of her art work. But Kahlo herself claimed to be the granddaughter of Hungarian Jews that emigrated to Germany in the 19th century. Isnt that significant? In an article on a 2007 Kahlo exhibit, Gannit Ankori, an art historian specializing in Frida Kahlo provides the details, Kahlo testified many times about her Jewish identity, stressing that her paternal grandparents, Henriette Kaufmann and Jakob Kahlo, were Jews from the city of Arad. Further, many people who knew Frida and Wilhelm, such as Fridas biographer, Hayden Herrera, and Fridas husband Diego Riveras biographer, Bertram Wolfe, personally repeated this fact.

It seems a mistake to omit the fact that expatriate Eurpoean Jews made up an important core of the radical progressive political and art scene that Kahlo and her husband Diego inhabited, the most famous of whom was Leon Trotsky. This is an important point because socialism, communism, and anarchism, and the arts were secular programs that accepted the contribution of Jews at a time when anti-Jewish sentiment was profound and ubiquitous. Although antisemitism persisted (and still persists) in the Left, Guillermo Kahlo and his daughter, could find sanctuary among more enlightened contemporaries. And they did. Perhaps the lack of attention or unwillingness of the art historian narrating the exhibit to be fully forthcoming about Kahlos Jewish heritage stems from ambivalence and ignorance of what Judaism is in general, let alone specifically how Kahlo and her father understood it as relevant to their self-identity. Judaism is correctly understood as not only a religion, but also as a civilization with an enduring culture the re religious aspect of which is not easily (or honestly) excised, as well as the inspiration of a modern nationalist and socialist movement of liberation and self-

determination (Zionism). If Kahlos Jewish ancestry was only understood to be a religious identity then commenting on her Jewish parentage would correctly be considered irrelevant and misleading. So, what did Kahlo think of her Jewish heritage? How did she self-identify?

The answer to these questions was dealt with in 2003 at a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Jewish Museum, Frida Kahlos Intimate Family Picture. In that exhibit, Israeli curator Gannit Ankori recognized an extremely important point revealed in Kahlos painting, My Grandparents, My Parents and I. Grace Glueck for the NY Times Art Review explains,

My Grandparents shows Frida as a small child, standing naked in the courtyard of the Casa Azul, the comfortable home built by her father in Coyoacn, then a village south of Mexico City, where Frida spent most of her life. (She died there, and it is now the Frida Kahlo Museum.) In her right hand she holds a ribbon that flows upward on either side of the picture to support floating portraits of each set of grandparents; the Mexican couple on the left, the Hungarian-Jewish pair on the right. (From her Kahlo grandmother, Frida apparently inherited those awesome black eyebrows that almost met in the middle of her forehead.) [emphasis mine]

The subject of Kahlos Jewish identity was returned to again in a 2005 book on Guillermo Kahlos photographic work, Fridas Vater: Der Fotograf Guillermo Kahlo, by Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle. The historians reveal that contrary to Frida Kahlos own claim, her father was the scion of a long line of German Lutheran Protestants. If this was indeed the case, then the curiosity remains why Kahlo claimed herself to be of Jewish ancestry. Was it a

family legend encouraged by her father? Was it in vogue to have Jewish ancestry in artsy socialist circles in Mexico City? Or was Kahlo, in identifying her genealogy with Jews during the 1930s, declaring solidarity with another ethnic minority oppressed by fascists at the onset of Hitlers campaign of extermination? The complex construction of Kahlos identity and its relationship to anti-Nazi Jewish sympathies is the subject of 2007 article in the Jewish Press by Menachem Wecker on Kahlo exhibit in Washington, DCs National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). Wecker writes, [Ankori] cited the position that Kahlo sought to distance herself from the Nazis based upon the fact that testimony about Wilhelm Kahlos Jewish background surfaced most frequently between 1936 and the 1940s. But she said over email, I think in light of the new findings , these issues require further investigation. What is of great interest to me is not Wilhelm Kahlos real religion, but Frida Kahlos construction of her self-image insofar as it impacted Kahlos selfimage as manifested in her art. But later in Weckers article, Ankori does consider Wilhelm Kahlos real religion to be of interest, since besides Kahlos penchant for and mastery of her self-constructed image, she may very well have building a family tree to satisfy any doubts of her fathers identity in terms of both halakha (Jewish ritual law) and the Nazis ancestry laws. In short, what is relevant for Kahlo herself is whether her genealogy is Jewish enough to be murdered with her adopted semitic compatriots. To Ankori, the question is whether Henriette Kaufmann was Jewish, since her Jewishness would make Wilhelm Jewish according to both Jewish Halakha and Nazi laws. If instead Wilhelm was a German Lutheran (Ankori says Lutheran, while Ronnen wrote Protestant), why would Frida Kahlo create a Hungarian Jewish genealogy for him and for herself? Ankori wondered. Even after Franger and Huhles book, for Jason Steiber, archivist at the NMWA, Kahlo remains a Jewish artist. I believe, without a doubt, that Frida Kahlo was a Jewish artist, said Jason Stieber, archivist at the NMWA, through e-mail. But Stieber said other aspects of Kahlos identity played much greater roles in her life and work. Frida was many things and she embraced wholeheartedly everything that she was, he said, noting that Frida was proud of this lineage and greatly delighted in wheedling anti-Semites in America, such as her famous inquiry put forth to Henry Ford of whether he was Jewish. Although she was an atheist, she abhorred the Catholic religiosity of her mother, and she did embrace her Jewish ethnicity, if not the tenets of Judaic faith. So yes, Frida was a Jewish artist, Strieber continued, however, I think she would have been more likely to refer to herself as a Mexican artist. Mexico held a very special place in heart and in her art. So Ive been thinking about all of this and Im left with an important quote that Wecker brings from an email in conversation with, Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTNews magazine, reveals the other side to the fascination with the question of Kahlos heritage. In my world the process of defining Jewish art, or what is Jewish in art, is both parlor game and intellectual exercise, Cembalest wrote. Either way, clearly it reveals as much about who is doing the assessing as it does about the figures we are claiming for our team. I think this is a remarkable statement as it rings both true and hollow true in the sense that, yeah, ethnic pride is commonly expressed in appropriating the achievements of individuals as

evidence of community capabilities. Hollow in the sense, that if art historians can not see beyond chauvinist ethnic boosterism to understand the importance of identity politics in the lives and art of artists then they are willingly blinding themselves to significant contextual meaning. Kahlos creative philo-semitism is just one example of her passion for the liberation of all peoples. I, for one, am proud of Frida Kahlos defiant solidarity with Jews in the face of fascism, her storytelling in the face of a geneology and ritual law that would deny her a more rigorous and truthful connection with my people. Comments (0)

Feeling Philo for Philly

Thursday, May 22, 2008, 6:37:24 PM | Aharon This last week Ive been in Philadelphia, part of a three city trip to reconnect with friends, explore possibilities such as RRC and Penns GSE-JRE, and stumble upon whatever serendipities the cosmos has placed before my blind third eye. Philadelphia is wonderful, by which I mean, it is full of wonder even when it is raining, and this isnt only due to my nostalgia for the six tumultuous years I lived there at the turn of the millennium; the shades of those lost days are a hell of a lot kinder to me than my memories of other cities, and my kind friends there still remember me, seemingly even, for the good, and for this I am deeply grateful and my spirit buoyed by their esteem. I held off from writing about Philly while present there, but now that Im away, my need to share dictates that I must, and Im hopeful that in doing so, I might smooth some of the edge off of my missing the city already. To this end, youll soon be able to read a series of posts of some personal thoughts worthwhile of your review. Ive taken some pictures but lacking a memory stick card reader at the moment, it will be a while before Ill be able to illustrate these thoughts with images. And Im writing this from DC of which Ill write about still later, perhaps while Im visiting NYC next week. Comments (0)

The House that Emma Built

Friday, May 16, 2008, 8:24:47 AM | Aharon In the House that Emma Built There are two chambers One looks upon the other And the other looks outward A turntable spins ye-ye A darkness sleeps in fits A cat speaks in Mandarin and the walls, last forever A man is hidden under the boards While the window glares on its curtains All lines cast suspicions on the vagueries of natures curve Brightly bit, sound asleep exposed in so many tears

and projected through with the light of shining wit a drama in black and white and a tragedy in color The turntable spins ye-ye the dance party is over and the cat licks its chops in the house that emma built in a sub-basement that the house built in a different plane, on a scale removed the memories of the house dream an emma cast in infrared and animated with love a panoply of spirits shimmering and laughing cooking and breathing and weaving a guitar out of old chord kittens act out Siysphus with a ball of twine on a mountain of folded laundry the bicycle room looks upon the garden and echoes with the ring of rusty belling a friend is dozed upon the chaise casting spells of resurrection awaken dear emma, awaken life under rebar and concrete oppression erodes all homes with moisture and oxygen the house becomes the garden, the window the way through the emma the notion, and the idea a means to awake dear emma, awake and live in musical tires, with spyrographs drunk in honey and fungus budding through floorboards, over sweet oceans in time with all awakening the house becomes the emma a smile simply drawn in parametric models grown from new math all the lawns have been banished and the asphalt all ground up what becomes is Now is emergent this house that emma built a lattice of dreams in habit Comments (0)

Downtown Baton Rouge Needs an Independent Cinematheque!

Sunday, May 11, 2008, 10:46:25 PM | Aharon Downtown Baton Rouge needs an independent cinematheque! I exclaimed desperately to Emma Chammah. The architect is familiar with these bursts of urban sentiment from her city

planning apartment mate. But she agrees, as do most folk who live and work in the city. Sure downtown now has a selection of bars and restaurants, as well as a nascent arts district, planetarium, (small) library, and (scattered) park space. But what we need (in addition to a pharmacy and fresh grocery) is a film theater. And this is why: while Baton Rouge days are gloriously spent outdoors, nighttimes are best spent walking not driving between a plethora of options not limited to bars and restaurants. A cinema is key especially one that is showing great films every night. I grew up with one of these theaters in my hometown of Cincinnati and they are great and not only for providing a temple to such adolescent initiations as midnight screenings of Rocky Horror. Despite what cable television, Blockbuster and now Netflix would have us believe, films are social events. It is good to know youve just enjoyed an awakened experience watching Ingmar Bergmans The Seventh Seal or Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey with other sentient, feeling human beings. Cinemas are like imaginary public commons, mental parks and open spaces where we direct our minds to share in empathy a vision that is wholly other to our own and thus mind expanding! No wonder that for a hundred years films have been married to dinner dates, giving them some center of gravity about which conversations and memories will orbit. For a downtown to live again, it needs a multitude of places for people to enjoy life together. This is the vision of a downtown that is not a tourist destination, but rather a home to people, humans with needs for art, love, food, nighttime breezes, poetry, street music, and serendipitous discovery. The argument for this sort of revitalization was articulated recently by Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in his 2004 article The Power of Ten. Imagine a new art museum building with fascinating things inside, but a dearth of energy about its exterior. Sound familiar? Such was the case the Seattle Art Museum sought to avoid when Kent was asked to look at the plans for their museums new downtown building and advise them on how to best generate public activity around it. As they brainstormed, Kent was inspired by the concept of scale illustrated so powerfully in the short film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames. Instead of one or two attractions meant to draw activity to the space, Kent envisioned an arbitrary ten focal points a bike path, a street vendor, a museum, a restaurant, a bookstore, a cafe, a park and water fountain, a busker, the spectacle of other people enjoying themselves, and public art and architecture (just for example). You can find this sort of environment if youve ever enjoyed a stroll through parts of New Orleans or Brooklyn, or even a carnival. The challenge for city planners is often not in finding the attractions but stitching together this fabric among a multitude of public and private interests in a way that doesnt seem contrived and controlled. Rich urban spaces inevitably develop organically as entrepreneurs use available resources and work around the limitations of the public commons. Sometimes all successful spaces need is interest, attention, and a small push. In Baton Rouge, the downtown has needed a larger push, greater attention from citizens, entrepreneurs and developers, and top-down interest from the mayors office and state government. Ask most Baton Rouge residents about urban planning in their city and they are liable to say, What planning? But the truth is that this city has a planning commission, a comprehensive plan (the Horizon Plan), zoning, building, and subdivision ordinances, as well as a rather exciting vision for the revitalization of a downtown grown moribund after a half century of neglect and automobile oriented excess. The plan, succinctly called Plan Baton Rouge, was submitted to the city ten years ago by famed architect and town planners, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., the firm of star urban designer Andres Duany. Among other improvements, Duanys plan

called for the creation of a cinema at the corner of Third and Main to act as a commercial anchor for 3rd Street. So what happened? According to Davis Rhorer, director of the Downtown Development District (DDD), the Shaw Center happened, describing it as a development that has been wildly successful. After the Shaw Centers construction and with the mayors attention shifted to the much needed improvement of the Baton Rouge riverfront, the idea for a downtown cinema was mostly forgotten but not entirely so. The Shaw Center has been hosting annual film festivals for the past two years: Red Stick Animation, the Jewish and French Film Fests, and is a regular stop on the Southern Circuit Independent Film Series. Rhorer also points out that the Louisiana Art and Science Museums planetarium features a Space Theater for showing extra large format motion pictures. New construction on the Shaw Center also includes plans for an outdoor film screening area. Despite these efforts, Plan BRs vision for a downtown cinema remains obscure and woefully unrealized. Paige Heurtin, financial director of Manship Theatre who helps to manage the film series, knew of Andres Duany but was unaware of Duanys call for a cinema on 3rd Street. Nor was John Schneider, developer of the Cyntreniks Group that with Chenevert Architects is restoring the Kress-Levy Building at 3rd and Main. Keen on meeting the needs of the booming film industry, Schneider was pleased to describe plans for a 75 seat theater discussed with the Baton Rouge Film Commission and his realtors, Latter & Blum. Schneider envisions the theaters primary use as a facility for industry production screenings, corporate training, and for documentaries showing the restoration of the Kress-Levy building and the history of the civil rights era in Baton Rouge. He also contemplates its use for showing second run Hollywood films. The two facade statues of the Columbia (later Paramount) Theater downtown that grace Rhorers office are a constant reminder of the demolition madness that once gripped city developers in the name of progress and surface parking. Rhorer agrees that downtown needs a cinema. Rhorer agrees that downtown needs a cinema. The suburbs are no place for a theater like Siegen, Rhorer points out referencing the demise of the closest thing Baton Rouge had to an art theater. Tinseltown Theater, beyond the citys outskirts, lived just long enough to drive Siegen out of business. Meanwhile, requests to Rave Motion Pictures last fall to show Michael Moores Sicko documentary went unfulfilled. Schneiders plans are unfortunately both tantalizingly vague and too small scale to put much faith in, yet if he can be convinced to engage an independent film distributor such as Landmark Theaters to manage his space, there is hope. Landmark runs the River Oaks Theater in Houston, and cinemas in 24 other cities including Austin, Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC. These theaters are integral to the health of their cities art districts and they are profitable and successful theaters as well. Theyve proven the business model for the revival of independent film cinemas in the US. So why not here? Significantly, most of these cinemas have greater capacity than what Schneider is envisioning, with three or four separate screening rooms for daytime and evening film showings. Could a 75 seat limited single screen cinema survive in todays market? Many of Landmark Theaters also have the support of a grassroots city politic that adores film, as well as a neighborhood arts district that provides incentives for art businesses. To the advantage of Baton Rouge, the city council passed in March 2008, the creation of its first ever Arts and Entertainment District downtown, an area bound by North Blvd, 4th Street, River Road and Main Street. a Disneyland main street occupied by chain stores but Rhorer is optimistic. He argues that 75%

of downtown restaurants are locally owned, not chains, and that the DDD is actively working with local entrepreneurs with an overall interest in Downtowns improvement. If as Duany envisioned, a theater at 3rd and Main would be the commercial anchor for downtown, it follows that the failure of a poorly conceived second run movie theater would be a serious blight on neighboring businesses. With the Rave theaters and Citiplace already capturing popular audiences, what chance would a downtown theater have? The answer is that once the film is over would one rather submit to the haunted expanse of the suburban parking lot followed by traffic, or rather enjoy the art districts Power of Ten. Ultimately, the success of an independent cinema, and of downtowns arts district, will be due to the passionate clamor of the public-at-large. Realtors like Latter & Blum and developers like Schneider need to hear from the people that the most sustainable and beloved use of the spaces theyre constructing and restoring is a well managed independent repertoire cinema. Note: An earlier version with name misspellings was posted to Sweet Tooth at culturecandy.org Comments (0)

Seven Kings
Friday, December 21, 2007, 9:08:19 PM | Aharon In the beginning, there were seven kings One created a kingdom of earth and became suffused with it. One created a kingdom of one and hid himself in it. One created a kingdom of love and filled it with two and a challenge to entice them. One created a kingdom without number and became lost in it. One created a hole and pondered in it. One created a throne and a castle but rarely dwelled there. One created a kingdom of mystery of awe and of wonder, and an ocean of tears all about it. One created a kingdom of sorrow and filled it with souls of all manner of complexion and humour. Between the kingdoms, there were seven paths. One path led around a hill, and its passage could not be described. One path was covered with water. One path was hidden under earth and mountain. One path was painted with letters, sygils, and symbols, mostly forgotten. One path was so broad it was easily mistaken. One path was too narrow, and surrounded by demons. One path led back on itself when walked on facing forward with apologies to Tolkien, a riff on his Verse on the Rings of Power, this was inspired by some thoughts after reading Raphael Patais The Hebrew Goddess on the trancendent and imminent aspects of divinity. Comments (0)

An introduction and archive for Piyutim (sacred Jewish musical poetry and song)
Friday, December 21, 2007, 11:08:38 AM | Aharon An introduction to Piyutim (piyut.org.il) A piyut (piyutim, pl. hebrew) is a sacred musical poem, sung as part of a communal prayer service but just as often after a good meal with friends and family. I was raised with these songs and tunes, learning a new one occasionally while eating as a guest at someones house, or at a weekend gathering, or in Israel at Yeshiva. I always hoped there was some archive because I was hearing quite a few of the common melodies and worried that there were likely thousands more that were fading into obscurity or limited by geography. (Ever wonder what shabbat tunes are kept in the piyutim of Kurdish Jews?) Then I stumbled on this site, piyut.org, which is just such an archive. I am so thankful. They even have something like a comprehensive collection of musical scales Im not certain what is meant by musical scales on this page, but I chose one at random and I found some musical expression that was completely new to me. I suspect that the music found on this site would also be appreciated by audionauts of sufi sacred music such as the Qawallis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But this archive is so diverse, I am still plumbing its depths of ancient sounds and their contemporary echoes. I dont know when this website was founded but from their about page it seems quite active with a passionate group of musicians, academics, and other scholars working on something they know is unique and essential to preserve and promote. This statement on that page summed it up nicely: The vast majority of the poetic and musical creativity of the Jews emerged in various Diaspora communities during the past two millennia. Since the founding of the State of Israel and the immigration of the majority of these ancient Diaspora communities to Israel, large sections of the great tradition of piyut have been lost or forgotten. Finding access to the remnants that remain is not easy. The brief history of the modern period created, in many cases, a gap between the tradition of the past and the modern society and culture that developed in Israel. Tradition generally, and the legacy of piyut in particular, has stayed alive and meaningful only among a small portion of the Israeli population. As time has passed, the need for people to connect with these roots has grown greatly. It is a need to access the voices calling from the depths of time, absorbed in emotion and wisdom of the many generations that sang these piyutim. We will widen and deepen our language and understand ourselves and our nation better as part of understanding our ancestors and their traditions better.

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Shuffle Album : Album Shuffle advice for 1.0.3 ipod firmware updaters
Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 9:41:56 AM | Aharon This is an informational post for ipod classic owners out there. The recent firmware update 1.0.3 changed the functionality of the shuffle songs feature. Until you follow the following steps, the menu setting for Shuffle will have no effect. To change the ipod from shuffling songs to shuffling albums follow these steps: 1) Go ahead and shuffle your songs 2) Press the center button three times 3) select the shuffle setting you want (songs, albums, or off) Once you have done this you will once again be able to change the shuffle setting via the ipod classic Settings. For regular readers of this blog curious whatever happened to my 100gb Archos Jukebox/Rockbox player (blogged of here) a short note. The Archos is ok but (since soon after the periodic completion of this spacelings ambient solar orbit) the Archos took to rocking it with the Junkions on Planet Junk (at the bottom of my junk pile).

But looking back all nostalgia like for my tech-Gomi, the Archos Jukebox was an energy whore, that required me to lug around an AC adapter to service its unquenchable thirst for electrons. And it couldnt shuffle albums. Shuffle Albums was the killer feature I pined for in an mp3 player so when I discovered the ipods were capable of that (and the newer archos and cowons still could not) I shelled out for my little slice of Apple. (iTunes free thanks to Ubuntu Linux + Floola, I should add). Why is shuffle albums so important? For the same reason that Album List 2 is an essential plugin for winamp it provides for the ability to listen to a random album (just like those old giant 100 CD jukeboxes could). Industry folks talk about how the revolution of the mp3 was that it liberated tracks from the medium of Albums. Tracks could be listened to individually, mixed and shuffled at random, and most importantly, sold individually. But the medium of albums is still important for much of the music I listen to, whether it be Beethovens 9th Symphony or Steve Reichs Music for 18 Musicians: I want to listen to my tracks sequentially in the order suggested by the composer artists imagination. Or said differently: context matters, provenance matters, and please dont use tech to manipulate art as a commodity. The Archos is still accessible and usable and Ill find a place for it in some future project. But aside from random firmware scares (see above shuffle surprise), Im pretty damn pleased with this little apple unit. Wish Appled be more open with their firmware though and less jerky about opening up their tech to 3rd party itunes alternative ipod managers. Comments (0)

IS IT CAN BE ROTHKOTIEM NAO!?!1!11one!!!?

Wednesday, November 07, 2007, 6:24:03 AM | Aharon

credit: based on the original Rothko Tiem Nao! by Emma Chammah Comments (0)

LOLed_ruscha
Wednesday, November 07, 2007, 6:20:27 AM | Aharon

Comments (0)

lolrus alive! or I HAS 15 MINUTES

Wednesday, November 07, 2007, 6:19:06 AM | Aharon As this blogs stays alive in fits and starts, bear with me as I add a shot of whiskey into its cold empty tank and crank its engine with a story of wistful lolrus. Even better, let Jeff Roedel tell you the story, as hes a much better writer, and hit all the good parts. I contributed to an article on the lolrus for wikipedia that was deleted after a bit of discussion. Local Baton Rouge free paper, 225 got wind of my gusty rambling, and sent out Jeff for the scoop. This feature (6mb pdf download) is the result.

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A quick short, sharp shock

Thursday, June 21, 2007, 3:15:40 AM | Aharon Pink Floyd fans may know of this series of discs that make available a plethora of rare recordings: radio adverts, interviews, mono edits, alternate versions, etcetera. On disc three, track 20, a very special track, and one which gave me the shivers. Youll understand when you listen to it. From wikipedia: Snippets of dialogue between and over the top of the songs are also featured on the recording [of Dark Side of the Moon]. Roger Waters devised a method of interviewing people, whereby questions were printed on flashcards in sequential order and the subjects responses were recorded uninterrupted. The questions related to central themes of the album such as madness, violence, and death. Participants were commandeered from around Abbey Road, placed in the darkened studio in front of a microphone, and told to answer the questions in the order which they were presented. This provoked some surprising responses to subsequent questions. For example, the question When was the last time you were violent? was immediately followed by Were you in the right? (Henderson, Peter; Surcliffe, Phil; and Bungey, John (1998). The First Men on the Moon Part 2 (html). REG . MOJO Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-12-23.) Recordings of road manager Roger The Hat Manifold were the only ones obtained through a conventional sit-down interview because the band members could not find him at the time and

his responses (including give em a quick, short, sharp shock and live for today, gone tomorrow, thats me) had to be taped later when the flashcards had been lost. From the liner notes of A Tree Full of Secrets (disc 3): Roger the Hat interview (07:30) Recorded : 1972 Primary source : Capital Radio broadcast (Pink Floyd Story), December 1976 January 1977 Source for the tree : unknown gen from Capital Radio broadcastAll through The Dark Side of the Moon album, you can hear the voices of people interviewed by the band. Here, Roger the Hat (who was a roadie for various rock bands) is interviewed by Roger Waters. On the album, you can hear his voice during On the Run (Live for today, gone tomorrow, thats me, hahaha) and during Us And Them (Short, sharp shock ).

(UPDATE: Very difficult to find more information on Roger Manifold on the web. The above picture came from this webpage about another band he was a roadie with, The Third World War. Apparently, the Hat monicker derived from Mr. Monickers recognizable top hat, sported in his daily roadie ministrations. Wish I could find a picture of it. I love top hats, too.) Comments (0)

one year later

Saturday, May 19, 2007, 9:43:47 PM | Aharon hello blog, welcome back me. One year later and Im still in Baton Rouge and working with my planning team, now an order of magnitude larger. Plans out the door include the City of Port Allen Annexation Plan and the Comprehensive Coastal Protection and Restoration Master Plan for Louisiana. To reprise, I came down here a year and a half ago at the blind invitation of URS Corporation who I soon learned upon arriving was needing planners, civil engineers, economic development specialists, and the like to fill Parish Recovery Teams in a FEMA division called ESF-14 Long Term Community Recovery. Most of those parish teams were disbanded at the end of April, our reports and projects destined to live on as part of the massive Louisiana Speaks initiative. Andres Duany, Peter Calthorpe, and John Fregonese were all part of this effort too, as was the Coastal Protection and Restoration Master Plan for Louisiana. What once seemed to me to be a disparate collection of independent planning efforts loosely guided along parallel planning paths, has now come together in a somewhat elegant convergence under the direction of important civic groups like the Center for Planning Excellence and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. Situated as Ive been in the corporate planning world consulting on various aspect of these massive plans and now

looking back Im relieved that there has been so much collaboration where there could have been more fiasco. What else is new? Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis from Flower Mound, Texas, came last weekend to Baton Rouge and spoke at length introducing a number of now obscure aspects of Judaism (angelology, animism, fantastic/cosmic beings such as the leviathan, behemoth, and ziz, etc.). Right up my darkened alley, I found these talks enlightening and inspirational. Enlightening because I dont get to hear other scholars talk about these things ever so it helped me make all sorts of connections that I hadnt before. Inspirational sinceit once again made me dream all romantic like that I could be a rabbi someday too and help resurrect animism as part of a wider environmental worldview within Jewish practice. Who knows when Ill get to that but Im looking. Molly F. introduced me to a reading circle and weve since read Vonneguts Cats Cradle and Hemingways Movable Feast. Hemingway urges writers hovering above their blank pages to just write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know. A very cool person I met over Passover in Cincinnati urged me to do so, so I did. And this is what I wrote: when i write i dodge words, not knowing whether im channeling truth or arranging pawns when i speak i walk over cliffs, over water, into fire, then remember and wish telepathy could permeate all our hearts when i act i cant see except through mirrors representing the image of the likeness of myself, my eyes imagining possessing the eyes of others so i write without walking and speak with my eyes closed and act with my heart prepared for battle and when a miracle occurs and i am blinded by truth and my heart is pierced and my tongue is splintered like babel, i am suspended (between worlds) and take solace in simple presence, in silence, and in wonder

but if Ive learned anything these years: miracles only blossom from preparation and preparation develops from a choreography where the dancers are a multitude of desires who in patient discipline, with love and with humble recognition of the limits of language and symbol discover and express the ubiquity of hidden things pointing the way. Each of us an intervention of the Other each of us a miracle of presence defying recognition, pointing the way improvising without choreography in fearless moments. Next well be reading Young Werther by Goethe. I was hoping for Gogols Dead Souls but the reading is admittefly very lazy and likes short books! Ive been Netflixing more lately and I found a film that really surprised me. My queue is so long and I move through it so slowly so I am clueless where I got this recommendation from to see it. The film is My Son, The Fanatic and it offers a very nuanced vision of assimilation and the politics of ethnic and religious identity for Pakistani Muslims in England. Of course, the story will also resonate with anyone familiar with the embrace and dissonance of cultural influence, personal choices, conformity, and hypcorisy. I loved it. Molly F. and I saw the entire Firefly series and Serenity. Now I know why so many people were in love with this. I join my voice with theirs in mourning the stupidity in cutting down this young series just as it was hitting its prime. Speaking of good stories, I finally received my DVD of the complete Nowhere Man series. The dvd box surprised me with some trivia: the producers of this deeply wierd conspiracy serial, are the same producers of the very successful 24 series. 24 is a fun story but Im a bit afraid that Cheney and his Bushies, look to the 24 scripts to nourish their own destructive agendas. The last pronoic story Ive ever seen was the brilliant, They Might be Giants film from 1974. Julia S. saw tht with me and we both enjoyed it immensely. Speaking of my friend Julia S., we took a trip to the Festival Internationale in Lafayette a few weeks ago. There I saw one of the best live shows in my life that of a group from Guinea called Ba Cissoko. I pray someone recorded it and that I can hear it again since I missed the first 30 minutes. I made some 30 second recording with my cell phone I hope to have on youtube eventually. Comments (0)

Philip K. Dick on Kurt Vonnegut

Thursday, April 12, 2007, 9:20:06 PM | Aharon

Far be it for me to add another to the blossoming forest of eulogies for Kurt Vonnegut, a man who I loved Im just thankful Ive been alive at a time when I could read his writings (Mark Twain, never got the chance). I do have something to share though: some audio of Philip K. Dick expressing his insight into Kurt Vonnegut, an author which arguably, I think, he shared much in common with. Both Vonnegut and Dick used speculative fiction to explore a relationship between author and character and the hopes and tragedies of individuals within narrated realities outside their control (see Breakfast of Champions and Man in the High Castle). Vonneguts Player Piano was also one of Philip K. Dicks favorite books. Interviewer: Did you read Breakfast of Champions? PKD : Yes. Interviewer: What did you think of Vonneguts attitude towards his characters? PKD : Disgusting and an abomination. I think that that book is an incredible drying up of the liquid -sack- sap of life in the veins of a person like a dead treethats what I think. I also love Kurt Vonnegut. You can listen to it below in the mog player, or download the mp3, here. The audio comes from a cassette rip of an interview with Philip K. Dick, circa 1981, by persons unknown for a PKD newsletter. The cassettes came from a collection of tapes loaned by a friend to David Roel, who in turn made them available on the Internet a few years ago. You can hear more of these recordings here. Click here, for a post on Vonneguts Calypsos of Bokonon. Comments (0)

Belated International Womens Day Blogging

Saturday, March 17, 2007, 10:30:59 AM | Aharon Yes, International Womens Day was a week and two days ago, but I promised Lola the Car Chick I would blog for the gentle women and men for whom the gospel of feminism has not yet reached. This past March 8th I was traveling all day and being computer-less, left my MOG

sullen and blogless for the day. Now Im back in Baton Rouge after a particularly amazing retreat to the wilderness in upstate New York, and ready to write something. This comes from Zach, a smashing gender queer friend I made on said retreat. Somehow, as happens on road trips, the subject of Ms. Pac-Man arose in this case because BZ (another friend) was describing how he had purchased one of those 64-in-1 game controllers with built in NES emulator chip. Apparently, this included Pac Man but, alas, not Ms. Pac Man. The difference? Well, besides the level changes and the appearance of floating jumping, musical fruit, the orange ghost from Pac Man, also known as Clyde, in Ms. Pac Man, has been replaced by an identical orange ghost named Sue. This was news to me, but Zach was adamant, authoritative, and of course, correct. Zach calls Sue a feminist pioneer. I think Clyde/Sue is gender queer, possibly transgendered but not transexual like Walter cum Wendy Carlos. Its obvious to me that what with my earlier posts on arcade and video game music, I have the subject of a blog post once I arrive back in civilization. Ive always been a fan of Clyde/Sue, being orange, my favorite color. This brings me to the musical subject of this essay: Conemelt or more specifically, the music of Ashley Marlowe. As with my previous post on Squarepushers remix of psultan and bedroom glow by Kiyoshi Izumis , Under The Hood by Conemelt has that break in rhythm and shift to new melody where everything becomes even more intense and delicious sounding. The track appeared on a 12, Rockers Ruin E.P. (1997) I discovered at the 611 record store after much much browsing. And similar to psultan I needed to find my own pitch for the track to sound right. On the version youll hear on the MOG player, its been shifted down from 45 to about 42. (vinyl rip by yours truly.) Ashley is an amazing drummer and listen for yourself below:

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Pitch Control
Tuesday, March 06, 2007, 1:57:18 AM | Aharon Kate is listening to Leo Kottke in her basement. She writes,

There is something so comforting about vinyl. I went to Goodwill a few days ago and found a live Leo Kottke record. Took it home and lavished loving care upon it. Cleaned it, set it reverently on my Technics, opened a beer and sat outside listening to the 12-string sounds float from the speakers. This is not a post romanticizing vinyl theres already plenty of that. The trope of nostalgia is the conjuring of a half-forgotten past, a lost landscape, a castaway of obsolence, things of ponderous beauty set aside in the name of progress. No, this post is not about romanticizing vinyl. It is about pitch control. I wrote: Is there a breeze in your apartment? That was my romance with the needle. Swinging back and forth, surfing up and down on the groove, despite the breeze. I could take a sit and enjoy both, but feeling the vulnerability of the medium to its environment made me feel some kinship. But I forgot to add that the flip side to the vulnerability was the control the medium allowed, I mean, allows. You can put your hands on it and change it. I dont mean making perfectly horrible scratches on the record and I dont mean cutting up the record and splicing it back together like Christian Marclay might thats too obvious. I mean the casual control of the medium that I never had with my cd player. (Hell, that I never had with winamp!) With some records, theyre just begging to change up, and not just slow from 45rpm to 33rpm or speed the Beatles up from 33 to Chipmunks territory at 78rpm. No just a slight twist from say 33 to 39 or maybe 41rpm. You hear it on 33 and it just sounds wrong but its too fast on 45. But what can you do? Well, that was what was so lovely about those turntables, the ones with the pitch shifting knobs or levels. There was no danger, no danger of scratching the precious record for the casual listener to make some important if subtle change to the music to really possess and take ownership of the music, like a dybbuk might hijack an aimless host. But that was what you could do, even what you could take for granted, with vinyl turntables with pitch controls. Take a listen to the track Psultan by Tom Jenkinson. Its his Squarepusher remix of a heavier beat-laden track, Psultan Part I, that he put out in 1998 under his Chaos A.D. alias. Like the previous track I posted about by Kiyoshi Izumi, it has a break in the middle where it shifts course and becomes an even more potent instrumental. (That was the original focus of this post). But the piece below, you wont be able to hear a version like it anywhere else. Ripped from vinyl it was, but at the speed that made sense to my ears somewhere between 38 and 39rpm. The official, native speed sounds just too fast for me (if you like what you hear, go and find a copy of the original version for comparison mog only allows me one piece per post). There are three other tracks on the Remixes 12 this appeared on, but the psultan remix sounds nothing like the others, and I think its indicative of Jenkinsons best work. Can you hear the similarity between this piece and the one by Izumi?

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Kiyoshi Izumi
Friday, March 02, 2007, 5:45:59 PM | Aharon

In 1997, Rephlex released an EP by Kiyoshi Izumi featuring the track below, Bedroom Glow. A few years later he followed up with a full length album on Nobukazu Takemuras Childisc label pleasantly titled, Orange Sunshine, the tracks of which, while appealing enough, sound nothing like Bedroom Glow. (Orange Sunshine is a nice little idm/ambient album). His most recent album, Protocol A was released in 2004 by Peace Records and nothing has been heard from since.

There are these electo pieces which have something like a twist in it, that carries it forward creating an even more potent climax and sense of urgency. Bedroom Glow has it, as well as a piece by Conemelt and Squarepusher that Ill write about in future posts. Im not sure what to call it kind of like the instrumental equivalent of a break but considering these pieces have plenty of breakbeat already that might be a misleading description. Like a break, the driving rhythm and melody is shunted, and a new melody picks up a little later. Eventually, the original rhythm and melody picks back up. The result I think is a much more sophisticated piece than one might be expecting. This piece mixes many familiar electro sounds along with a club whistle and what I think may be a Farfisa organ. I ripped it from vinyl, so I hope you also like the crackle and pops. Enjoy! Izumi, like Doctor Y.S. is another musician I wish I knew more about, but alas, I cant even find Japanese websites about him that can be garbled in translation. Thus the MOG player and its audio content will have to stand surrogate for all the juicy bits Id like to add here for you. Comments (0)

Hirokazu Tanakas Metroid

Wednesday, February 07, 2007, 3:09:44 AM | Aharon

Currently the president of Pokmon card producing and game developing company, Creatures, Inc., Hirokazu Hip Tanaka in the 1980s was a sound engineer for the Japanese game developer, Famicom. There he produced the soundtrack for the NES game, Metroid (1986).

To say that Tanaka was just a sound engineer would completely understate the mans influence on video games and geek culture this is the hacker who designed the Game Boy camera and Game Boy printer, besides composing the music for Duck Hunt and Ballon Fight in assembly language. Heres some more background from wikipedia: Nintendo began development of its Famicom home video game console in 1983 (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe), and Tanaka worked on early titles including Duck Hunt and Kid Icarus. The new system had three tone generators and one pseudorandom noise generator, with which to produce melody, harmony, percussion, and sound effects (which would usually interrupt a note). Though a vast improvement over the simplistic sound of the arcade machines, the Nintendo hardware still left Tanaka and the other composers severely limited in the complexity of the music they could write. Even though sound tools had been written for the Famicom, Tanaka continued to write his music alongside his custom playback libraries written in assembly language, a fact he credits with helping to set his work apart from that of his colleagues. By 1986, Tanaka was writing over a third of the music for the Famicoms games. This increase in sound technology, coupled with the composing talents of Tanaka and his coworkers such as Koji Kondo helped raise the popularity of game music in Japan. The increased attention spurred good-spirited rivalries between many game composers, a development that bothered Tanaka, since it forced composers to write in a way that he felt was contrary to the atmosphere of the games themselves. It was this dislike that inspired him to compose the subdued themes of Metroid. In his words, he tried to create the sound without any distinctions between music and sound effects. He composed the music so as to deny the player a simple melody to hum along with; only after completing the game is any catchy music played. [emphasis mine]

For a long while, if you wanted to hear Tanakas score to Metroid, you had to play the game to its completion. However, by the late 1990s an underground of video game system emulation programmers were busy copying the data off of NES and other game cartridges for their precious ROM (games stored as Read Only Memory). And in a sub-basement of this underground, a small group concerned only with the soundtracks to the games was figuring out ways of directly copying the digital scores from NES games into NSF (Nintendo Sound Format) files. Plug-ins for listening to NSF files were written for winamp and until a few years ago the most popular plug-in was called Nosefart. Even with these plugins, listening to NSF files as easily as other audio files remained difficult. Like midi files, NSF files were small files usually less than 50kb, and relied on synth chips in sound cards to reproduce the orchestration programmed into the file. A single NSF file would contain all the tracks for a game, but each track would usually lack an end-time signature. That meant that in order to listen to the next track in an NSF file youd have to manually advance the track, otherwise it would play indefinitely. This made sense, because the soundtrack was engineered to be played in a game for a level which a user could take an indeterminate amount of time to pass through so the music would need to loop. In 2004, a new plugin, NotSo Fatso, was released which offered the user the ability to set a fixed song length and set their own fade out length to the loop. This wasnt a complete solution but finally I could realize my dream of converting the entire soundtrack of Metroid to mp3 for the rest of the world to listen to. Unfortunately, the MOG player can only accept 15mb of file per post and my join of Metroids constituent tracks into one mega-MOG-playable track came out at a too hefty 21mb. However, Ive posted to the MOG player Metroid Parts I-V with the last track, Part XII (total length is about 9 min). Im also hosting the entire album here for you to download if you like what you hear below (or would simply rather enjoy them in a ridiculously large audio format compared to the original NSF ). My favorite piece is Part V which should start around the 4:40 mark.

Just one final point before I go. It really grieves me that there is this entire library of music which although now accessible in a sense, is still amazingly obscure despite important compositions such as Tanakas Metroid. Search on the web and glance at any voluminous archive of NSF (and other game system sound files) and youll gape at how many possibly brilliant works are almost completely unknown, often times without the composers names even known. (spaceling raises

his chalice in a toast). Heres to you aging monks of 8-bit, may your precious sounds sold over to corporate suits find their way to more anxious ears! (If youre interested a nice collection of links to NSF archives can be found at the bottom of this wikipedia article on NSF files.) Comments (0)

Arcade Video Game Music

Saturday, February 03, 2007, 9:25:55 PM | Aharon Video Game Music (1986), produced by Haruomi Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra, Swing Slow, et al) features music from the popular Namco arcade games from the early to mid 80s: Xevious, Pole Position, Galaga, Dig Dug, etc. The actual music having been written by other early musicians writing in pioneering 8-bit digital sound, Hosonos role as producer was in getting tracks meant for gameplay into a composed format that could be listened to without feeding a thousand Yen worth of quarters into Namco-Bandais slot-jockeys. (Playing video games in order to reach levels with different musical scores was definitely a motivation for me to lose many quarters in the 80s). Hosonos hand can best be imagined on the mixing board for the first track Xevious. Listen to the 6 minute album version in the MOG player below and I think youll agree that its an important pioneering track at the outset of many different forms of electronic music using digital sampling layered over found sound, producing ambient noise, melody, and rhythm. A careful ear can make out the sounds of other arcade game music in the background. This was later re-released as a 12 single with liner notes and a short sci-fi story by Xevious game designer Masanobu Endoh. A 3 .5 minute video of Hosono playing the club version can be had via youtube. The rest of the album features shorter tracks with delightful kitschy hooks like the track Little Rabble, an adaptation of many popular piano songbook classics into 8-bit. The other long-ish track is the 4 minute long Galaga which after listening to Hosonos other albums sounds just as whimsical. Galaga leaves the medium of 8-bit to include extra orchestration, and sounds very similar to the style Hosono expressed in his ambient-dream lounge albums of the early to mid90s. The most experimental track is the 16 second long Bosconian (nice filler for any mix-cd). Really, the whole album is a treat. Although the album was re-released in 1999 as The Best of Video Game Music with non-Hosono produced tracks, this has been hard to locate as well (but seek and you shall find).

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Doctor Y.S. & the Cosmic Drunkards

Friday, February 02, 2007, 10:15:05 AM | Aharon So, there are these tracks which I love, the artists of which I dont know too well. Im looking for them, I am, because I want to understand more myself and find more music by them but should I wait until then to share my discoveries with you? (Fistula Spume is raising the bar here, since hes always posting amazing things and is teaching me all about his crazy wonderful music. Well, gloves off. Hes inspired me and Im ready to post. Even in my ignorance, you will at least hear what Im talking about thanks to the MOG player, in all of its glam fabulosity.)

First up is Doctor Y.S. and the Cosmic Drunkards. I have three tracks by this artist/project/brainchild of Yoshihiro Sawasaki. Ive tried to find out more information but Im lacking some language ability here (and here), so help me out if youre in the know. Discogs tells me he has a number of other projects besides the Cosmic Drunkards. Theres also Meditation Y.S., Mushroom Now!, Techno The Gong, and hes released music in collaboration with these other projects/groups: Transonic Jokers and Ultra Machine. Sawasaki seems like a really fun guy whod be fun to tour with from the pictures Im finding of his sushi eating antics and explorations of neglected steam baths and other fanciful places.

I first discovered Sawasaki by cosmic serendipity in a welcome moment of confirmed pronoia. His track Secret Samba was one side of some vinyl I found in an orphaned record sleeve in a Philly Record store (611). With little idea of what album it came from, and little help provided by the store dj/clerk, I had to settle for the pleasure of a good mystery. The other tracks on disc

were also brilliant: Matsuri by dj Krush and Paradise, version 2 by Swing Slow (the project of Miharu Koshi and Haruomi Hosono). I left the store without buying the disc a big mistake! At the time I was thinking it was only one of four discs and Id rather get the complete album, and the orphan was selling for something outrageous, like $10. I mean, how much would you pay for an orphan?? The Internet was of no help to me in 1997 looking for more information. (Id have to wait five more years before I learned it was off a compilation called Pacific State (1997, Devaint Records). You can now find it easy.). It dawned on me a week later that what I had heard was extraordinary and I had to find that disc. But Alas! it was nowhere to be found. I was really lucky when a year later, to the day, it reappeared in a section given over to happy hardcore. Really, theres no telling how stuff can sometimes be filed in some record stores. Now for the music. First, is Secret Samba. Second, by Yoshihiro Sawasaki, is Snow Coast from the soundtrack to the anime show, Boogiepop Phantom. (Youll have to stream/download this into your favorite player for MOG is, for now, only allowing me to share one song at a time, not that Im not appreciative.) I should mention that since Ive been rather hooked by this Snow Coast track I think Ive listened to it about 20 times now! Comments (0)

Ivory Toad of Catalan

Monday, January 29, 2007, 3:26:01 AM | Aharon Just happened to tune into National Public Radio this morning to hear listener letters sent in this week on a program segment that was broadcast last Sunday, January 21st, a promo spot for Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular (2007), a new album by Banjo master Tony Trischka. Along for the ride were fellow Banjo superstars Steve Martin and Bela Fleck. What a great show. You can listen to the NPR segment here. A few studio only tracks presenting the licks and chops of Martin, Fleck, & Trischka (including one original Beatnick Banjo Poem) are also available from the NPR page, one of which I liberated from real media format, for sharing purposes below (via MOG player). Enjoy. (Ivory Toad of Catalan by Bela Fleck and Tony Trischka). Comments (0)

Tricycle Built for Two

Sunday, January 21, 2007, 5:43:48 PM | Aharon For the best mix cd ever, Ive been searching for Haruomi Hosonos cover of Daisy Bell by Harry Dacre, which appeared in the 1984 film, Revenge of the Nerds, you know, in the scene of Takashi tricycling to victory for Tri-Lam against the Jocks. Why it doesnt appear on the soundtrack along with well-forgotten 80 pop exemplars, the Ya Yas and the Gleaming Spires, I dont know. I havent found it yet. I may have to resort to an audio sample instead. (Hosono did release a version of Daisy Bell on his Daisy World Tour compilation, but its not the same hat tip to Phonaut who graciously shared this copy with me for review).

(Above: the chemist, Aron Kuperman on his one-speed) While researching though, I did discover the music of Haruomi Hosono, who I had only known from a track, Paradise v.2 that appeared on a Japanese compilation called Pacific State along with gems by Doctor YS and the Cosmic Drunkards (Secret Samba) and DJ Krush (Matsuri). Paradise, v.2 is credited to Swing Slow, the project/album of Hosono and Miharu Koshi. (Check that link on Koshi to discover another brilliant eccentric Japanese artist). Im not a fan (yet) of Hosonos pop from the 70s and 80s, but his album, Video Game Music (1986), however, should be a must listen for all electronaudiophiles. I havent heard enough of Yellow Magic Orchestra to say anything, but from the video I discovered below, Im intrigued. See for yourself, kind of a minimalist Pee Wee Playhouse (?). Help me out, Nipponese translators, please.

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Bernard Herrmann
Tuesday, January 16, 2007, 3:26:13 AM | Aharon Someone, I think Daniel Clowes, once theorized that JFK was assasinated by hit men for the hat industry, payback for the Presidents disregard for mens hats and the subsequent decline in their fashion in the early 1960s. But in the days of Dwight Eisenhower, you could still drive around with Jimmy Stewart whilst wearing a hat about San Francisco, whistling. Ive never been to the Bay Area myself but this is how I imagine it, with the score that Bernard Herrmann wrote for it in the film Vertigo (1958). The first time I saw this film when I was 16 or so I imagined what you can now view for yourself below. (It wasnt until much later that I had a computer and the free software to make the edits I needed.) Enjoy. Comments (0)

Help with Steve Miller

Friday, December 29, 2006, 4:02:25 AM | Aharon I dont expect youre like me, but if you are or can sympathize, know that I detest Steve Miller Bands most popular album, Fly Like an Eagle. But its complicated. As expressed so perfectly by the Butthole Surfers in their epic, John E. Smoke: Its about being in love and loving the love thats hating the love and the love and the hate thats loving with all its around the love thats hate thats the hate thats the love and the love is the love that is the hate thats hating the love, its loving the hate. Its the beginning pieces, the Space Intro and the other instrumentals on the record: the beginnings of Fly Like an Eagle and then on side B, Blue Odyssey (an homage to the synthesizer?) and maybe even the wierd little track that comes afterward, Sweet Maree. Are

these the forgettable throway tracks on the record? Are these the tracks they dropped in to appeal to young stoners? Well, I am appealed, but the other tracks count for shite. Please forgive me if you love the Steve Miller Band I still NEED you! I need to know about the other small but wonderful instrumental tracks hiding on all the other Steve Miller Band albums. I will adore them, I promise, like a stray kitten, I will take them home and feed and play with them and give them string to play with. And what about all those other awesome instrumental filler tracks on 70s pop albums I havent heard of. Please tell me about them. And then I will thank you. Love, spaceling.

Above: a visual representation of similar mid-70s space kitsch Comments (0)

Chanukah Choir Band circa 1980

Friday, December 22, 2006, 9:41:31 PM | Aharon Tonight is the eighth night of chanukah, and to celebrate I want to share the cassette-to-mp3 transfer of my parents recording of me and my sister in our schools choir. We gave a performance with the U.S. Navy Band back in 1980 that I still think was rather excellent. From the back cover of another album I have, the choir director, Leah Lipman, studied music at Brooklyn College and the University of Maryland where she earned her Bachelors degree. She majored in voice and composition with piano her principal instrument. In New York, she sang with the Zamir Chorale, taught in public and private schools, and worked as a music specialist for Project Head Start.

Mrs. Lipman gave me my first chance at musical expression back in first grade. I lost track of her after second. I really appreciate her work back then and I think it still stands out, especially in comparison with the schlocky performances of other Day School Choirs from the 1980s like the god-awful Miami Boys Choir. Heres a streaming link for listening, and you can download the individual mp3s from this directory. If you like this, definitely check out the album Leah Lipman released two years earlier (1978), one of the most beautiful Jewish records I own (and Ive been questing for non-schlocky Jewish records a long time!).

UPDATE : I just got off the phone with Leah (thank you Internets!) and she shared with me some wonderful stories regarding the record. It was produced on a $3000 budget at a time during

a very stressful period where had just recently given birth. Two of the song tunes were original Ani Maamin and Mahtai Yihyeh Shalom and composed by Leah. The accordionist was Pinchas Zahavi. Leah retired from the Hebrew Academy in 1997. Shes still somewhat active in the music scene in Silver Spring, MD, organizing womens concerts within the Orthodox Jewish community and teaching her grandchildren piano. Comments (0)

Nottingham Lace
Sunday, December 17, 2006, 11:12:48 PM | Aharon Back when, when I was holed up in Terre Haute, Indiana for a month or so, I was rooming with a fellow whilst attending some classes on graphic design and such. This was about 1990 and he was very much into three musicians I had never heard of: Joe Satirani, Yngwie Malmsteen, and the band, Janes Addiction. One righteous mixtape and a year later, I was dreaming of what Jane says, gypsy-klezmer-rock mashups, and macking it with that girl I met in Model U.N. It was also in 1991 that teenage Brian Carrol (later to be known as Buckethead) moved into the basement of Guitar Player Magazines editor, Jas Obrecht, and thus began the artists passage from strength to greater strength: huzzah! Carrol was brought to the attention of avant-improvisers, collaborators and producers Bill Laswell and John Zorn (which is how I heard of him). Just as I was beginning to learn about new ambient through the likes of Laswells Axiom releases, astralwerks, Silent/Flask, and the FAX label, word of Buckethead was spreading across the ambient/noise genre through the metal community. Appearing as subliminal blips on Space Ghost Coast to Coast also helped, but I wasnt entirely aware of Buckethead until my computer was chronically ill recently and I was listening to KLSU 91.1 Baton Rouge full time in stead of my inaccessible musics. It was well worth the break for I heard Bucketheads rawk ballad, Nottingham Lace released on his 2005 album Enter the Chicken. This is about the most heavy metal guitar Ive heard in a long time that Ive been willing to put up with. Something about this track is just putting me under a spell. Part of it is that Buckethead changes focus and his direction so often. I dont know why I like it so much. I lost interest in Joe Satriani pretty quickly, but maybe this means I should revisit him. Whats happening to my ears?! Buckethead has attested that Satriani and Malmsteen were huge influences on him, so perhaps my ears have found a hook on patterns I hadnt heard in the last half of my waking life. Click on the link above (or on the picture below) to hear Nottingham Lace I think, if you can get past the bluesey electirc guitar riffs (?) at the beginning, youll hear what Im talking about, and if you do, let me know what you think. Id also appreciate any further Buckethead related suggestions. Danke shen! Comments (0)

The Calypsos of Bokonon

Monday, December 11, 2006, 3:35:55 AM | Aharon Cats Cradle is a story about the end of the world, related to us by a man who witnessed the destruction and could explain how it came to occur. It is also the only known record of the philosophy of Bokonon, sung and subsequently archived as calypsos by a prophet with profound insight into the events directly preceding said apocalypse. Cats Cradle was written in 1963 by

Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut was written in 1922 on blank parchment by a sudden confluence of DNA in Indianapolis, Indiana. Open question to the denizens of MOG . Has anyone heard (or be willing to record) the Calypsos of Bokonon from Cats Cradle? (Looking hopefully towards you, Spencer.)

image from science blog, Keats Telescope see the cat? see the cradle? Comments (0)

mog on soulseek
Saturday, December 09, 2006, 12:53:55 AM | Aharon mog is on soulseek. yes. (mog precedes MOG ) no. (Sir MOG is not on soulseek (as far as I know) however other MOGgish rascals are verily ubiquitous). mog is Polish and blogs here.

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Easy as
Friday, December 08, 2006, 10:55:33 PM | Aharon The Lady Horrible recently mogged about an aging musician who was resting heavily on laurels unfortunately propped up by a legion of credulous enabling boomers. I couldnt help but think of this when I was visiting the website of one of the most sampled electronic artists of all time, Jean-Jacques Perrey (wikipedia link which also talks about collaborator Gershon Kingsley here). See below for proof of Perreys mastery. He also seems to be a sweet old man who doesnt mind inexplicably carrying around stuffed animals on stage. I have a new role model. Below, Perreys 2006 performance of E.V.A. from Perreys 1971 album, Moog Indigo with current collaborator Dana Countryman. Dont they make it look easy?

QED . Comments (0)

THX-1138
Friday, December 08, 2006, 3:36:35 AM | Aharon I can forgive George Lucas for all of his late epic Star Wars prequels only because, only afterwards, did Lucas revisit his first film, the minimalist dystopia, THX -1138 (1971), correcting the audio artifacts that plagued the earlier video releases and making the soundtrack available on the DVD as a standalone special feature. (The soundtrack is also available independently on CD.) If youve seen any of the original Mission Impossible episodes or seen Cool Hand Luke then youve heard Lalo Schifrins incredible jazzy scores and sensitivity to the directors vision. For THX -1138, it is obvious that Schifrin was paying attention to the work of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, Carlos teacher Vladimir Ussachevsky, and the plethora of sound explorers and music geeks pioneering the advent of electronic music and noise in the late 60s and 70s. Before this film, I had no idea Schifrin had dipped his toe in these (now) deep waters.

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Nights of Carlotta
Sunday, October 29, 2006, 8:07:15 PM | Aharon Woke up to Punk Rock by Mogwai this morning, the first time I had heard their album Come On Die Young (1999). It opens with a quote from Iggy Pop, from an interview on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television, March 11, 1977. In the interview hes talking to the 90 Minutes Live show host Peter Gzowski.

Ill tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and, uh and, uh heartless manipulators, about music that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds, of young men, who give what they have to it, and give

everything they have to it. And its a its a term thats based on contempt; its a term thats based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything thats rotten about rock n roll I dont know Johnny Rotten but Im sure, Im sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius myself. And that music is so powerful, that its quite beyond my control. And, ah when Im in the grips of it, I dont feel pleasure and I dont feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what Im talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldnt feel anything, and you didnt want to either. You know, like that? Do you understand what Im saying, sir? Last night I went to Carlotta Street near LSU to observe and possibly make myself part of the teeming youth and desperate insanity of a Halloween weekend in Baton Rouge. Im a raver cowboy in my best duds, pearl buttoned shirt, Stetson, and orange cargo pants. Earlier, on the open porch scene of Spanishtown, I made some friends of some drifting youth here in Baton Rouge to work, go to rehab and eventually get custody back of their child, so the two of them are with me now. Just the three of us, two being on anti-depressants, and were asked repeatedly to help buy vodka at the local Circle K for these three 17 year old girls, dressed as faeries, one with a cellphone tucked between her boobs. As what seems to be thousands of students dressed in their terrible and amazing costumes brush by me, I wonder how I can feel so dissociated in this overwhelming crowd. I dont know whether its the consequence of over-stimulus, or whether Ive just developed some mental barrier against joining into the fullness of this horde. I wonder whether this is a problem for the 17 year old girls too and maybe thats why theyre asking me to help them get a fifth of Taaka from the Circle K to mix with their blue Powerade. I went to Carlotta in the hopes of finding in the mass the girl who told me to come out last night. Hey Aharon, you should really come out to Carlotta, Ill be on Ivanhoe later on. Sweet crazy girl. I am loneliness in this mass. The three of us make our way back to my car, and I play for my new friends Philip Glass, the homage by Colourbox, as I speed us back to the nooks and crannies from which we came.

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does your college radio station do this?

Thursday, October 19, 2006, 3:48:07 AM | Aharon Ive been listening to a lot more radio this past month. This is a good thing. For a long while I felt like I needed to play catch up with my music collection. From the MOG -O-MATIC perspec, Ive been MIA , but really Ive been here all along. Baton Rouge has a fine student run radio station at Louisiana State University ( KLSU ) and Im feeling nostalgic for the days of dj spaceling and the Amplified Harmonic Resonance program. Tonight, I discovered something wonderful. Student djs being student djs like I was back when I was a student dj, theyre particularly lax at announcing the artists and trax of the music they be spinning. But Ive found all sorts of neat music when the dj was kind enough to clue me in. Like when I heard Cincinnati Riot Blues by the Ghost Exits. This evening I heard two songs, one of which woke me up in the morning with a great wash of guitar noise, but alas, no identification was forthcoming. So I did something crazy and googled song identification hoping I could find some software solution that might listen in on broadcasts and id the song for me like MOG s Gracenote service does. No such luck, but there, only four links from the top of the oogle was a link to KLSU ! What fortune! To click on the link brought me to their page and behold, they plainly tell (for the Flash installed) what the last track was broadcast from their basement studio. And a service by yes.com will tell you what twenty tracks were played before that. I think thats lovely. So what was I kvelling about? Only Wildcat by Ratatat and then to Wolves by Jesu. Hope youre local college radio station is playing them.

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there are Green Men here. (dont try looking for em)
Saturday, September 23, 2006, 9:15:37 PM | Aharon Robert Holdstock won the Newberry Fantasy Award in 1988 for his book, Mythago Wood, a novel which spun fantasy around the theories of Jung and Campbell, and delved deeply into the mythic world of the Finnish Kallevala. The tome is one of my favorites ever and changed the way I interact with myth, religious calendars, and role playing (as it relates to religious ritual). Im reminded of all of this listening to Spatial Specific, the explosive first album of the Toronto duo, Legion of Green Men, whilst meditating on the cycle of earthly pleasures, regrets, and aspirations. Today is, after all, Jewish New Years, the Rosh (head) of the Shanah (year), and my thoughts are spinning in the whirlpool of conflicted and resolving intentions and prayers embracing my peeps today. So I am doing my best here in my humble shack to, like a young yoda, discover the force that pervades all, as any good panentheist mystic would. Years ago I took this pilgrimage by way of symbiosis with my fungal cousins. Today, I am alone with my music the mushrooms outside being only of the common poisonous stripe. This album is a worthy surrogate though, and contains within it secrets worthy of any spark seeking its flame. The track listing alone will give some indication of the tangled roots within. Find the first 13 second track entitled To kiss the hares foot and soon youll find yourself at track 6, Veneration of the Goddess. Such a lovely album. I can only point you to it if only I could share it with all of you. But I can wish you all an outrageous new year full of beautiful discoveries, which with open ears and under sunshine filtered watery clouds and greenish leafery, many treasures will be shared. Huzzah and love to all fellow earthlings and spacelings. Love to all in this spinning orbiting, living world.

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Gutting old mp3 players for 100gb goodness

Thursday, September 07, 2006, 11:54:07 PM | Aharon w00t! I now have a 100gb portable mp3 player after swapping the 2.5 standard laptop 20gb drive out of an old Archos Jukebox Studio. My music collection is now entirely portable, something currently impossible with todays 60gb limited (and ber-expensive) ipods. This is not news really folks have been doing this for years already, but I got tired of waiting for a capacity increase in 1.8 drives the kind most hard drive based mp3 players like the ipod, creative, and archos brands are using. Meanwhile, the capacity of 2.5 drives keeps on increasing. With the new parallel 160gb tech rocking the laptop drive world, once pricey 100gb drives can now be found on sale and for rebate. The free and open source rockbox firmware will further extend the device features and flashing the rockbox firmware into the Jukebox Studio was doable (although reading through lots of documentation was a necessity). Rockbox is a very useful firmware replacement since it supports OGG -Vorbis encoded audio files and gapless playback. (UPDATE: gapless only works if your mp3s are encoded in LAME with the gapless switch. Rockbox does not support ogg-vorbis on archos jukebox studio/recorder models . ebay seems ripe with the old Archos now, but I was not the only one shopping for them. Folks are bidding over $100 for the Jukebox Recorders with USB 2 .0. I relented and bid on the older Studio model with usb 1.1. (Hint: can be had cheaper than the Recorder). Things I learned if youd like to do something like this. 0. A jewelers sized Philips head screwdriver will come in handy for removing the very tiny screws holding on the Jukebox faceplate. Otherwise, the directions for upgrading the drive at mctubster are fairly accurate.

1. To transfer your files over from your main computer to the new 2.5 drive, use a usb 2.0 portable enclosure or some other speedy connection. Connecting via a 3.5 to 2.5 ide converter is fraught with danger (bent pins and too high voltage in your new drive). 2. Move your files over to your new HD before you swap it. And dont forget to defragment it too, cause that will take a longish time over USB 1 . 3. The rockbox manuals for flashing the Jukebox Studio and Recorder models are inaccurate. You might think that rockbox will create an id3 tag database on these models with rockboxs Tag Cache feature. No. The included RAM in these models is too small (2mb) to use Tag Cache. 4. id3browse is some very useful free and open source software to use in generating m3u playlists. (Youll need to generate playlists in lieu of an id3 tag database. Otherwise, youll have to rely on playing files according to directories. This is limiting since without a playlist, Archos will only play one directory at a time without advancing to successive or nested directories). 5. Be patient. If youre confused dont blame yourself. Continue to read. Nerdy, zen like acceptance of tedium will be rewarded. Take a nap. 6. And, oh yeah, be patient bidding on eBay. Its not like there is a supply problem or anything and yet impatient demand is driving prices up. If everyone could just wait their turn, theyd get their obsolete but upgradeable old archos at a reasonably cheap price.

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John E. Smoke
Sunday, September 03, 2006, 1:28:50 AM | Aharon Years ago af riend of mine gave me a mixtape filled with the Ventures, Dick and Dale, and this one incredible song by the Butthole Surfers called John E. Smoke from their album Hairway to Steven. Is there anything by this band that sounds remotely like this song? Is this the only surf rock performed by the Butthole Surfers?

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Camper Van Beethoven

Tuesday, August 29, 2006, 5:43:38 AM | Aharon Eugene Chadbourne makes a good impression of a Richard Scarry monster, especially all rolypoly during improv. Little did I realize he figured in one of my favorite albums evar, Camper Van Beethovens Camper Van Beethoven (1986). I bought two cassettes from him wrapped in stray socks that he had shlepped from somewhere, possibly a laundromat, possibly from underneath his bed. Oh Camper. I lost you for a while, but now youre found again. Ill never leave you far away again amidst lonely vinyl, 6 states away in self-storage. Such is the destiny of found objects, and such is the libery of digital bits on a platter spinning at 7200 rotations per minute. Take that Edison. Did I mention this is my favorite album. It has saved me more than once. Why did I take you for granted? All the tracks here are gems, one after another, backtracked for sure, but there is something else too hidden within the narishkeit. You can tell from the rise and fall of Chadbournes violin tonic. Theyre in the know, just listen to Peace & Love all I can do is recommend it, and beg you to listen. Bring this album to your next hoedown, and play Hoe Yourself Down and I promise youll have the most psychedelic squaredance, possibly rhomboid even. Special treats, The History of Utah and a cover of Interstellar Overdrive which I could swear is better than the original. Trust me, Im sitting in a sweltering apartment in Louisiana, warming a fesh bottle of cider, tripping to this album like a pea melting in soup.

Image copyright Frank Schindelbeck Comments (0)

Hooper Bay
Sunday, August 27, 2006, 11:10:08 PM | Aharon UPDATE : I was hoaxed. The track lengths were right on, but I was the victim of wishful thinking. On another listen, the tracks of this album are faded out in order to conform to the time length signatures for Hooper Bay songs (still very much obscure). Ill keep the text below in this archive of blog posts as a record of my credulity!
, Boards Of Canadas ultrarare 1994 mini-cassette/12 extremely limited release. Ive been burned before with non-BOC tracks tagged as BOC before (badly tagged, and mis-tagged Old Tunes mp3s are ubiquitous on soulseek), so I checked on over at Frederik Claes Hooper BayIll reveal a secret to all yalls. The best place to get your filez on is on USENET . Thats where I just collected HYPERLINK "http://fredde.narfum.org/boc/discog/" BOC fan site. Hooper Baysharing networks are good for. Grabbing files of out-of-print and intolerably rare limited pressings. I have no idea why Warp hasnt re-released this material to the BOC craving (and crazed) masses. Until then, I will have to make do with my low-fi 128kpbs encoded, usenet downloaded, mp3s of . This sort of file sharing is exactly what USENET and the file Hooper Bayfor the authoritative track listing and song length duration. Sure enough, it is really This short album really is

lovely.

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Terrapin Station
Sunday, August 27, 2006, 9:52:32 PM | Aharon There are some bands I really could not get into, but it wasnt because their music was so terrible it was just because the community of its adherents and I couldnt find a common language to recommend music by taste. This is a perennial problem among fans who love one band or one genre almost exclusively. Enter into this sorry state, an American folk-prog band called the Grateful Dead. My older sister was a big fan and so was her boyfriend who considered my electronic music cold and heartless compared to the warm and fuzzy sounds of the Hammond Organ he was familiar hearing on his Dead albums. I had the hardest time finding Grateful Dead songs and albums I might be interested in, because I was talking to someone who was a collector who had to have every single live performance of the Dead, everything by them was golden and divine. Well, I really liked Terrapin Station and quickly noticed that Dead music covered a number of flavors of prog: folk-psych, funky folk, and improvisational prog rock/space jams. This was all well and good, but I have no taste in funky folk, and little taste for the Deads brand of space jams, no matter how hard I whirl like a Bektashi Dervish. So Im hoping that in the world of MOG , someone can turn me onto songs by the Grateful Dead that are not funky folk songs like Samson and Delilah and more like Terrapin Station, Part 1.

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Audentity
Sunday, August 20, 2006, 9:24:12 PM | Aharon I havent used my MOGspace much to blog about Klaus Schulze, and it does reflect some personal bias on my part I just have the hardest time separating out one of his albums musically from any of the others in his early discography. Thats why the cover art is so important in identifying whats what. (Check out Urs Amanns art for Schulze in the 70s. Amann has an online gallery here). In 1983, Klaus Schulze released Audentity featuring cover art by Claus Cordes showing a young fellow wearing slit sunglasses and art deco headphones. Ive become so used to earlier Schulze tracks plodding along endlessly with atmospheric synthscapes I had forgotten that Schulze had a go at some energetic music. Youll have to listen to Sebastian Im Traum know what Im talking about.

But I think the more significant thing about this album is the cover art. Check out those slit glasses. Remind you of anyone?

Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) And speaking of slit glasses. How come I cant find them anywhere? Why if fashion repeats itself has it taken so long for these to make a comeback? From my blog to your ears, Soho fashion geeks. I mean, take a look at this young gangster from John Carpenters whimsical 1986 synth-pop opera, Big Trouble in Little China.

I should also note that the soundtrack to Big Trouble in Little China by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth is excellent. Heres a quality review of it written back in 2003 by the fantastically named, Messrob Torikian. I dont have a copy of the soundtrack. It is rare! It is also expensive. If you have it, please share it with me. Also, if you know of a supplier for retro sunglasses, please pass on my request. UPDATE: Some follow-up thoughts to this post are blogged about here. Comments (0)

Emergency Broadcast Network

Sunday, August 20, 2006, 4:15:18 AM | Aharon Joshua L. Pearson, the most visible man behind Emergency Broadcast Network, has a website. Had I known this, I wouldve stopped praying every day for a new EBN tape to finally be released, cause Josh has graciously offered elevenses up for download. Not familiar with EBN ?

Throughout the 90s they pioneered the idea of VJing in complement to DJing. I last saw them in 1998 (soon before they dissolved) in Philly when DJ Spookys tour came through. Salad days. Bloody Ears. (Those were loud shows!) Keep EBN in mind if youve ever seen the Avalanches Frontier Psychiatrist video EBN was there first. (And Negativland and the Residents before them). Below, 378 by EBN (courtesy of youtube and user electricmonk). Comments (0)

What is needed
Saturday, August 19, 2006, 9:11:28 PM | Aharon See how popular already youtube is on MOG for providing VIDEO content? What is really needed on MOG is a youtube like service for folks to easily share AUDIO that theyre mogging on about. Comments (0)

Hiding Underneath the Skin

Saturday, August 12, 2006, 6:21:47 AM | Aharon My favorite country song. Yes, my favorite country song. It is by a man named Michael Stanton. It is a cover of the song Skin by Oingo Boingo. This song is deeply strange (lyrics), and sounds especially weird sung by a neo-tradionalist Country singer. I would love to hear more country songs like this. I am sharing this with you because you would never come across this song. It is the final track at the end of Danny Elfmans score to the Clive Barker film, Nightbreed (1990). It doesnt appear in the film, not even in the end credits. But it made it to the cassette soundtrack. Im thinking that Danny Elfman (formerly of Oingo Boingo) had wanted Skin covered by a country artist for years, but he had to wait through ten years of making soundtracks for Tim Burton films before one came along where he could sneak the cover of Skin into the budget. Please take a listen. Here is Country Skin by Michael Stanton. And here, for comparison is the non-country original Skin by Oingo Boingo. And here is El*Argentos beautiful new skin for winamp. What is hiding underneath this skin? The boring old winamp skin. If you use windows and winamp, you can download this skin and make your winamp look more like a late 1990s Warp label album cover here.

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Re-Entry to Mog
Thursday, August 10, 2006, 6:11:33 AM | Aharon Astro-Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000 (1968) is a terrible album if youre looking to hear astro-sounds as contemplated by a studio orchestra in 1968. Even as a lounge album it is unmemorable save for its delicious cover art and excellent track names. If you have high expectations for A Dissapointed Love with A Desensitized Robot (track 7) or Trippin on Lunar 07 (track 9) then prepare yourself for A Bad Trip Back to 69 (track 10). Awful. Unless youre drinking a martini and not paying any attention. Lounge. Ive heard better. Still, the album has its place, especially here on MOG , for track 2 is entitled Re-Entry to Mog. Heh. Work that into your Story of MOG , collaborative fiction moggers.

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MOG mathemagicians?
Tuesday, August 08, 2006, 5:51:24 AM | Aharon I need some math/statistics help. Im trying to figure out with some spreadsheet mojo whether math can give me an insight into who my favorite artist is. (I think I know the answer, but Im open to being surprised by what statistics might reveal to me). If youve ever been interested in figuring out statistically who your favorite artist is, and you use last.fm (audioscrobbler) in addition to MOG , then read on. Mathemagicians welcome. MOG has given me a list of the 50 most popular artists/bands in my collection according to the number of tracks I have for each of them. (Theres a widget that indicates this if you havent noticed) The popularity of this chart is skewed by artists who have many short tracks (such as J.S. Bach), or many tracks that I just dont listen to that often (such as John Williams). Meanwhile, my charts at Last.fm\audioscrobbler provides a list of my 50 most popular artists/bands according to how often I listen to them. Since I listen to so much of my music using shuffle, the popularity of this chart is skewed again by those artists in my collection who have many tracks (i.e., J.S. Bach). My listening isnt entirely random however, since I often skip albums by artists Im not interested in listening to. If I can compare artists with most tracks with most listened artists I should be able to locate the outliers and get a true sense of who I really most like. I set up two columns with the 50 most listened to artists (via last.fm) in one column, and the 50 artists with the most tracks in my collection (via MOG ). After sorting the two columns and arranging the artists so that they appear alphabetically I have their two rankings side by side. (For example: J.S. Bach ranks 15th in most tracks I have, and 5th in most listened to. Other artists such as Legion of Green Men, are ranked in the popular listening column but dont even make MOG s cut in number of files).

Now I need to perform some equation on the two popularity values to determine a most popular score. Any ideas? Assumptions: Artists that score high in listening but low in tracks should have their scores amplified.

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Sur Le Theme De Bene Gesserit

Saturday, August 05, 2006, 8:17:59 PM | Aharon As a follow up to my last post on the origins of ambient music and cryptic homages left to Philip K. Dick, I thought Id write a little something something on the theme of electronic music inspired by the fantastic in general. J. Horrible had commented/questioned on whether I had read Roger Zelazny which made me wonder whether she had known of any music inspired by the writer. And at that moment I noticed I was listening to Chronolyse (1976) by Richard Pinhas, an electonic album inspired by Frank Herberts novel Dune (1965). This album predated the David Lynch film so set aside premonitions of an Angelo Badalamenti score for all I know this could have been the score for the unrealized Alejandro Jadorowsky directed Dune film. The album comes in three parts, really: Sur Le Them De Bene Gesserit (Parts I-VII), Duncan Idaho, and a thrity minute Fripp-ish multi-track guitar improv jam with drums and accompanying synth sounds entitled Paul Atreides. The connection between science-fiction and the evolution of electronic music is deep. Just consider the influence of Gyrgy Ligeti and Wendy Carlos scores for Stanley Kurbricks 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clark) and A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess). Im wondering now what the musical accompaniment may have been for Karel apeks play Rossums Universal Robots (and its numerous adaptations).

Please comment if you know of any other electronic music inspired by fantastic or fabulist literature.

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Philip K. Dick and the Heavenly Music Corporation

Thursday, August 03, 2006, 5:05:29 AM | Aharon In Man in the High Castle (1962), Philip K. Dicks masterpiece novel written with jos sticks about a parallel world with its own parallel Philip K. Dick, i.e., the man in the high castle. This man in the high castle, who we never meet, is a man hidden by virtue of his being the Author, just as Dick is the hidden Author to the characters manifested in his story. The book, written through a process of interpreting the pattern of dropped joss sticks through the explanation of the I Ching, is something like channeling creativity, and thus similar to Italo Calvinos creative strategy with tarot cards in The Castle of Crossed Destinies or Brian Enos Oblique Strategies card deck. Like God, the man in the high castle in this parallel world is the subject of considerable, hopeful rumour. In so many of the writings of Philip K. Dick, the beneficient God that must act through subversion to break through into the world hijacked by the Demiurge, a harmful dangerous world where we are all prisoners of the Demiurges insane delusion that it is is the creator God. And in the book, there is a subversion, and the illusion is broken for one character, at least briefly, through an intervention enabled by a characters meditation on a trinket. The thing, hidden by its apparent worthlessness becomes the most valuable thing in the universe. The trinket was created by a man who smokes marijuana cigarettes sold under the brand name Heavenly Music Corporation (a Japanese brand sold in a parallel California where the Japanese won the Pacific front in World War II). Brian Eno and Robert Fripp named side A of their 1974 proto-ambient album No Pussyfooting: Heavenly Music Corporation. Two years earlier, Klause Schulze had composed Study for Philip K. Dick. Was Klause Schulze meditating on what the Penfield Mood Organ might have sounded like, had its moods been conveyed by sound? Its worth a listen. But it is Heavenly Music Corporation, by virtue of its homage to the inspiration of gnostic subversion, that can be listened to as a means of revealing for ourselves the illusion of the Black Iron Prison. Its significant to consider that Dick wrote this ten years before We Can build You (1972) where he introduces the idea of the Glock Frauenzimmer, electronic organ, six years before the Penfield Mood Organ in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). Fripp & Eno chose an obscure prop name from an older PKD novel. I dont claim to understand why they chose it, just

that the name is well suited on a number of levels to the concept and the potential of the composition and genre Fripp & Eno were helping to invent. Later, in the 1990s, Kim Cascone of industrial project PGR and founder of the defunct Silent/Flask label (also out of San Francisco) and reviving ambient in America, named his newly christened ambient project, Heavenly Music Corporation. Kim produced four excellent ambient albums in the mid 90s under this name: anechoic (1996), consciousness iii (1994), in a garden of eden (1993), and lunar phase (1995). Below, I am linking to a collection of cassette rips of what appears to be interviews with PKD in the early 1980s. Im also adding to the stream some of the music I referenced in this post. .

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Gavotte
Tuesday, July 25, 2006, 2:45:22 AM | Aharon So, like you, Ive been loving me some embedded youtube on the MOGs of the MOG -OSPHERE. Theres no excuse for why I havent lit up my own text with video stars, its not like I havent come across some fantastic vids while researching these posts. Actually, I came across this vid (see below) not while researching for MOG but for doing something much more tedious yet necessary: tagging all my J.S. Bach tracks with their appropriate BWV catalog numbers. Oh yes. (How else would I be able to easily tell the difference between Bachs Gavotte in E flat major (BWV 1012) from Bachs Gavotte in C Minor (BWV 1011) whilst tending to my peethrees on a lazy Sunday?) Well, mission accomplished and fontgoddess and my philatelist father will be so proud (stamp fiends know what Im talking about). But said mission would not have been accomplished without referencing the great video library at youtube and listening to the master, Andres

Segovia performing Gavotte BWV1012 in a tv performance recorded December 10, 1956. I am so pleased to share it with you! Comments (0)

Claude Bolling
Monday, July 24, 2006, 7:22:06 AM | Aharon In an earlier post, I wrote about the influence of baroque on the development of progressiveelectronic music (see On the lookout for electro-baroque und beethoven). After listening to some recommended albums by The Nice and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, I realized that I had totally forgotten to mention Claude Bolling. Beginning in the mid-70s when all of the rest of this was percolating, Bolling burst onto the classical and jazz scene with these incredible albums featuring classical melodies and instrumentation with jazz drum accompaniment and swinging rhythms. Compare Bourre by Jethro Tull side by side Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio (1975) and youll hear the progressive connection immediately. (I despair to think the reason I hadnt sooner was because these genre classifications: classical, jazz, rock, have taken root.) Id especially recommend Picnic Suite (1981), Toot Suite (1981), Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio (1984), and Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano Trio (1984). You can easily spot Bollings albums in thrift and used record store bins. The airbrushed cover art is all by Roger Huyssen. See below for Huyssens artwork for Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio. If you find you like Bollings classical compositions, check out his catchy score to the Italian TV series Borsalino and Co. (1970) and his rags album Ragtime Boogie-Woogie (1970). (no shuggie).

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Respecting Provenance with Metadata

Saturday, July 22, 2006, 12:15:35 AM | Aharon Fontgoddess has posted twice on her affection for metadata, providing examples of how others, even librarians, are tagging their files. I started out tagging with the quiet and devout rigour of a monk gilding the dome of the basillica, but I eventually gave up with the genre field of id3 because it felt dishonest to tag entire albums according to a single genre style, and I was too lazy to tag different genres to individual tracks in an album. But isnt that what it comes down to, laziness? Not in the seven mortal sins concept of laziness, but more so in finding the balance between the strict control of information and the freedom of the music to wander into ones listening queue like a free-radical crying Serendipity! All Music Guide does a nice job of identifying genres and flavors and styles of music, and I value the meaningful typology of genre classifications as useful and more than academic. However, for now Im keeping my musical associations in my head and not in my tag, and using (the free and open source) Albumlist to listen to and shuffle my mp3s by album whilst listening through Winamp. Its enough (and actually necessary) for so many of my music files to remain associated with their respective (concept) albums when I listen to them. mp3s may have liberated individual single tracks from their Albums, even leading some people to question whether Albums are now a quaint anachronism, and while this may be true for some short and sweet pop tracks, so many progressive, classical, and electronic pieces are lost without the provenance of their album. The whole, in these cases, is greater than the individual track, and thats what makes Albumlist and plug-ins like it (are there any others like it?) so useful. Below, an image of LuigiHanns Adventure for Atari 2600 skin for winamp, with the Albumlist and Cover&TAG plugins.

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Wherefrom come thou, Glock Frauenzimmer?

Friday, July 21, 2006, 4:04:06 AM | Aharon The path into spooky kitsch is littered with the shelly husks of corroded tin robots, while a soundtrack is played in REAL STEREO by a Regina Music Box endlessly performing from a cylinder alternately spun by the three norns of Americanum Fantasticum: Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, and Philip K. Dick. Its night time and the lighting from the Victorian chandeliers casts an odd glow on the often empty but now well populated Main Street . Suddenly, a parade pulls up, and Frank L. Baum takes you by the hand so youre not crushed when a horde of monkeys on roller skates carrying the icons of the founding fathers and Lincoln, and their attendant whistling marchers glide past. From More from the Gay Nineties Village Audio Fidelity Records, 1957: So, youve never heard of a Wurlitzer Fascinator! Youve never been to a county fair, an amusement park, or a circus? Youve never wandered around the side shows looking at bearded ladies, strong men, flame eaters, or girl-slicing magicians? Youve never sat beneath a big top and watched lithe-bodied acrobats swing to and fro defying fear and gravity? Youve never seen the elephants dance or thirsty clowns pile out of an exploding Model-T? Youve never seen the lions jump through hoops, seals balance balls, or dare-devil riders do somersaults over the backs of galloping horses? No? Then youve probably missed the reedy piping of the good old

Fascinator as it puffed its mechanical heart out in accompaniment to childrens cries for popcorn and cotton candy. On the other hand, if youre a kid from way back who took any and every opportunity to run off to the fair or carnival, the sounds you will hear in this album will immediately place you in the show grounds of your childhood and surround you with a milling crowd of calico dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats. Over there is a man selling balloons and plastic pinwheels on a stick to hold up to the wind. And as the pinwheel turns, the wind brings with it animal smells from the barred wagons holding the ever-prowling lions and tigers, and of course, the monkeys, competing with each other in their antics to gain favor and peanuts from the kids straining to reach the bars. The old Wurlitzer was there, quickening the pulse, the very heartbeat of the circus. Or if it wasnt always a Wurlitzer, it was a Calliope or a Mortier Band Organ or a Regina Music Box or any one of the other nine mechanical music makers recorded in this album. Like many things American, nickelodeonsand all these grand old instruments come under this definitionstarted in Europe. Perhaps the first was one built by Justinian Morse in England as early as 1731. Morse connected a rather complicated peg-studded board to the keys of an organ. It proved impractical and was abandoned. About the same time in Paris, however, a famous automaton maker named Vaucauson pierced a cylinder in such a way that when it was turned, it regulated the movement of needles to produce designs corresponding to the holes in the cylinder. No music came out of it, though some years later Jacquard incorporated Vaucausons cylinder principle into his new invention, the silk loom. Vaucausons contribution to what eventually evolved into music rolls were jointed pieces of cardboard folded in book form and pierced with holes which traced for the loom the pattern to be woven. We hear next of nickelodeons being built in San Francisco and Chicago in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the period out of which came most of the instruments recorded in this album. They found homes in bars, saloons, cafes, railroad stationsanywhere that people congregated as well as at fairs, carnivals, and circuses. Among them, the player piano became so popular that it found its way into private homes and many an evening was spent with the neighbors and friends standing round the piano, cranking ice cream freezers to make home-made ice cream, popping corn, pulling taffy, and bobbing for apples while the player rolled out Dark Town Strutters Ball just as you have it here. From the player piano, we all know more or less how the nickelodeon evolved. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, still on the revolving paper cylinder principle. Then the cylinder was replaced by a disk, changing the function of the machine from the mechanical production of sounds through triggered pipes and cymbals to one of reproduction of sounds originally made by instruments having no connection whatsoever with the machine doing the reproducing. People have plopped nickels into jukeboxes for the Charleston, Cake-walk, Turkeytrot, Shimmy, Rhumba, Jitterbug, Bop, Twist, and now, their quarters (economic inflation along with mechanical evolution) go into the Scopitone for the Fish and the Watusi. At the moment all of the songs are in French, since it was the Gauls who invented and manufacture the machine, but the listeners hardly feel cheated since in addition to hearing the song, they get to see it performed in color on a screen attached to the top of the jukebox. What next? In the meantime, Its a Long Way to Tipperary, Moonlight and Roses, I Wonder Whos Kissing Her Now, Marching Through Georgia, Whistling Rag, and How Ya Gonna Keep em Down on the Farm will regress you back to the good old days of bare feet, faded jeans and freckles, when

your idea of adventure was playing hooky to see the circusand for much less than the cost of an analyst! THIS RECORDING was made at Paul Eakins Gay Nineties Village, one of the most unique amusement areas in the United States, in Sikeston, Missouri. The Village was built by Paul Eakins, a mechanical engineer who retired from the plumbing and heating business to devote himself to his hobby of collecting and repairing nickelodeons. The hobby grew from a preoccupation into a full-time occupation. The Village now houses the worlds largest collection of nickelodeons from all parts of the United States and twenty foreign countries. The smallest instrument stands three feet wide and five feet high. The largest is eight feet high, weighs 1,800 pounds and contains a piano; mandolin; 17 viola pipes; 21 violin pipes; 38 flute pipes; xylophone, drumskettle, bass, and snare; triangle, castanets, and cymbals. [More information on Paul Eakins and the Gay 90s Village can be found here, at the site of his gradson Chris Carlisle. (Warning: javascript intense). My first Eakins album that I found whilst thrifting, is located here and is recommended.]

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Robot Musics (for Fistula Spume)

Monday, July 17, 2006, 7:48:18 AM | Aharon F. Spume inquires, Im looking for music from the seventies that are similar to Kraftwerk. Im a sucker for robot music/old electronic and I thought I would throw this out there. Ive already discovered Telex, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Jean-Michel Jarre, and more recently Roberto Cacciapaglias Anne Steel album. Im even down with 80s music like Klein & MBO and Alexander Robotnick. So thats where Im at. Do you know of something Im missing or leaving out that would be along these lines? Please let me know if you have a suggestion. I would greatly appreciate it.

Like you Im also looking for this music, and what Im including below is a survey of what Ive found so far. There are plenty of holes so maybe we can help each other fill in the gaps? To find the robot musics you like from the 70s youll need to start with the late 50s, oh yes. Start with Cindy Electronium (1959) by Raymond Scott, the fellow who inspired Robert Moog, of moog synthesizer fame. Listening to Cindy Electronium youll swear youre listening to early Krafwerk. But its over ten years earlier, truly remarkable Raymond Scott definitely comprises a good portion of the musty humus this music tree has its roots planted in. If youre digging Cindy then pick up Raymond Scotts 1962 trilogy, Soothing Sounds for Baby. And there is also an incredible new album of Raymond Scotts compositions for TV commercials, Manhattan Research, Inc. see more info here. (I dont have this album but Ive heard tracks check out Bufferin: Memories if you can). The revelation that Bell Telephone labs had succeeded in synthesizing speech was publicized in 1963. Bell Labs, electronic engineer Max Matthews had coaxed their computer into singing Daisy Bell, aka Bicycle Built for Two back in 1961. (Daisy Bell later becomes fixed in the popular imagination with computers and computerized speech by appearing on the 1968 soundtrack to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey). For a few years, work remained hidden in backroom labs and university music departments and then Robert Moog came out with his Moog synthesizer in 1964. Im still searching for music from this critical period 1964-1967. In 1967, Terry Riley reveals the A Rainbow in Curved Air. Ive written about this album before. Yo, I get the chills every time I hear it. This is still pre-Wendy Carlos moog music explosion, so keep this in mind in the train of music influence, just how awesome this album is. This sound was popularized by the sequencer opening to Baba ORiley on the Whos 1968 album Whos Next. Also in 1968, find Kenneth Gaburos album Fat Millies Lament Music for Voices, Instruments and Electronic Sounds in the Nonesuch backcatalog (Nonesuch LP H -71199). When it comes to electronic composers in the Nonesuch backcatalog, dont look over Gaburo. Xennakis, Crumb, and Subotnick may be more famous but Gaburo is a joy to listen to! (Also to dj and mix with Significantly, 1968 also featured the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL9000 sings Daisy Bell. No electronic music here really (and this was important to Kubrick who was distancing the cliche sounds of the theremin from golden age sci-fi 50s films like The Forbidden Planet) but the concept I think of computer-human interaction becomes much more complete here than with the idea of computer speech in Star Trek. More in 1968: Wendy Carlos came out with Switched-On Bach and followed up with The WellTempered Synthesizer in 1969. And due to the success of Carlos album, the moog starts appearing all over the place, and not necessarily in a good way. Listen to The Byrds, Moog Raga instrumental (available on the 1989 album Never Before. But, as yet, no one has put these two sounds (synthesized speech and synthesized organ) together. The robot sound youre looking for probably cannot be found on Ed Sanders 1972 song Yodeling Robot (although for fun, you should hear it). Rather, its on Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkinds interpretation of Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 by Ludwig Van Beethoven, on the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack. Listen to the March from A Clockwork

Orange. You can hear Kraftwerk give homage to Wendy Carlos on the first track of their live bootleg from 1982 Virtu Ex Machina. Lots to cover in the 1970s. Kraftwerk, was of course, not the only German band heavily experimenting with electronics. Make certain to check out Tangerine Dream Christopher Franke and Edgar Froese had been experimenting with sequencers for years before Peter Baumann came on board in 1972. Listen to their 1974 and 1975 albums, Phaedra and Rubycon before picking up their live album Ricohet. (Also from 1975). Steve Reich and Philip Glass are also busy during this period. Listen to Philip Glass 1971 composition Music with Changing Parts and Steve Reichs 1976 masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians. You can hear the influence of the latter directly on Michael Hoenigs 1977 opus Departure for the Northern Wasteland. (In a future post, I would like to chronicle all the music pieces that sought to emulate the sound of the railway or subway). Other Germans to take note of are Cluster, and Ashra (the project of Manuel Gttsching after Klaus Schulze left). If you like Michael Hoenigs Departure then most certainly find his collaboration with Gttsching for the 1976 album Early Water. Peter Baumann and Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream were also putting out great solo albums youll be interested in: see Froeses Epsilon in Malaysian Pale (1974) and Macula Transfer (1976), and Baumanns Romance 76 and Trans Harmonic Nights (1979). More Berlin School space music can be found on Kitaros early albums Astral Voyage (Tan Kai), Full Moon Story and Oasis. Ok, so thats as much as I can write cause like you Im still searching and Im especially interested in new wave synth-pop and Kraftwerk inspired detroit techno. Below is the image of a flyer from my first ever ambient/space/chill-out/improv jazz/shoegazer show, Stupid Robot, almost ten years ago in Philadelphia.

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Franois Bayle and Laurie Spiegel

Sunday, July 16, 2006, 10:01:57 PM | Aharon I picked up the compilation Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music from my local library a few years agoon the recommendation of a friend. I was prepared to be educated. I knew not to expect beautiful, haunting melodies as on Harold Budd and Brian Enos Plateaux of Mirror as I

had already experimented with the backcatalog of the Nonesuch label and done my time with Morton Subotnick and George Crumb. Yes; I was expecting discordance, primitive electronics emulating cubism, and experimenters doing their best with the limited and frustrating tools at their disposal. I did not want to be dissapointed by expecting wonderful and pretty music. This was gonna be pretty raw, with a heavy element of academic music school experimentation and composition. Karleheinz Stockhausen, Otto Luening, Oskar Sala, and Vladimir Ussachevsky were not easy to listen through, but I was learning and my ears were becoming well-tempered, like fine baroque organ pipes getting a workout in the blast factory. But aside from the benefits of uneasy listening, I just wanted to share with you all a couple of the artists I found that actually were ear-opening if not outright enjoyable to listen to. Laurie Spiegel was perhaps the best find of all 42 artists. Listen to her 1974 composition Appalachian Grove I. (If there is an Appalachian Grove II I I really want to hear it too!) Short percussive notes moving into and out of phase, becoming longer and louder as the intertwining melodies reach various states of climax. Gorgeous. If you like it, check out her albums Obsolete Systems (compositions 1971-1983) and Unseen Worlds (compositions 1987-1990). And then there was Franois Bayle. There is a mystery track on the Adam Douglas/Deeper than Space album Current (1996) which sounds like guitar peddle knobs modulating raw square tooth waves. But it sounds really neat! (I promise) Like the sound you might pick to molt your exoskeleton or change alter-egos and become a shaman. And it was this sound that I was reminded by when I heard Rosace 3 from Vibrations Composees by Franois Bayle. His albums werent too easy to find when I was looking for them and they are not exploring melody at all. Rosace 3 might actually be the nicest thing Ive heard by him. So there it is, from my ears to your point of reference via this M(usic bl)OG. Below is an image I found on a French site whilst searching for info on Franois Bayle. Its in French and there is more wierdness there also related in some way to another Musique Concrete composer on Ohm,

Pierre Schaeffer.

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Baba ORiley and Peter Baumann

Thursday, July 13, 2006, 4:28:57 AM | Aharon Im listening to Trans Harmonic Nights by Peter Baumann (1979) and its hard to miss why Tangerine Dream sounded so much better before he left that seminal electronic-space jam band in 1977. The artist knew how to sequence baroque melodies and sing lullabies into vocoders. Baumann must have been an incredible catalyst for Tangerine Dream because even veteran TDreamer Edgar Froeses solo albums from this period sound lovely. (They do not after Baumanns exit). Anyways, Im posting about Baumann because the first track This day has a sequence that reminds me of the very influential (and embarrasingly [for me] sentimental teenage anthem) Baba ORiley by the Who, Pete Townsends homage to Terry Riley, on the album Whos Next (1969). If you love the organ sequence in Baba ORiley but cant handle the memories that Teenage Wastleand exhumes from the long (or recently) buried grave of your adolescence, then you can listen instead to a 9:49 only instrumental version of the song on Pete Townshends Lifehouse Chronicles: Disc 1 Lifehouse Demos (1999). Unfortunately, this instrumental version excludes the riveting klezmer fiddle accompanyment (update: by Dave Arbus) at the end of the song. It also includes all the rock drumming from the original, I think, sounds very out

of place on an all instrumental Baba ORiley. (I dream of Stereolab covering this with fiddle played by Jean-Luc Ponty). The Who toured Germany in 1972 and performed Baba in Hamburg a bootleg exists. Perhaps Baumann heard the song live then and it sparked his imagination for what it might be like to play Riley-esque instrumentals with a live band. Because thats what he was doing 2 years later with Tangerine Dream. (Baumann joined Tangerine Dream in 1972). For those new to Tangerine Dream, permit me to recommend their live album from 1975, Ricochet. (Listen carefully for the industrial-psych breakdown with homage to Brian Eno). Below is a photo of Baumann inspiring a generation of blissed-out spacelings to grow their hair long and assume the waifish intensity that only those who channel long dead baroque composers endure.

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Gamelan, Xylophone, and Computer Kitsch

Sunday, July 09, 2006, 9:30:12 PM | Aharon I listen to the punctuated tones and hypnotic melodies of gamelan music and I begin to understand why I become so flustered when trying to describe ambient to friends (and relatives, co-workers, strangers on blogs and listserves). Ethereal, atmospheric, and drone sounds also describe elements of the ambient spectrum, and in a way sets it so far apart from other music try and describe the repeating, sometimes evolving melodicc patterns and textures and all I get back are blank looks no one knows what Im talking about but everyones heard what an industrial air conditioning unit sounds like. I think its important in understanding ambient to describe some nuance between the drone style and gamelan styles in the genre. The gamelan school (for lack of a better name) is the school which has the most easily recognizable influence on modern classical style of Minimalism. Im remembering now that Indonesian Gamelan music is what inspired the late romantic compositions of Ravel, Satie and Debussy ambient pre-cursors according to David Toop in hi s book on ambient music Ocean of Sound. For a good introduction to this progression, listen to the sample of Gamelan mixed into Voyage, Part 1 on Braintickets 1982 album Voyage. Once you hear it, youll begin to spot it throughout ambient and classical minimalist compositions. Hear it on Controlled Bleedings Hymns from the Shadows, Parts 1-IV (1996 on Inanition and Dark Shadows). Hear it in Terry Rileys Shri Camel (1968) and Kometenmelodie by Kraftwerk (1975, on Autobahn and the

bootleg Concert Classics), as well as their other earlier exquisite xylophone melodies Ruckzuck, Tanzmusik, and Klingklang from their 1970-1971 albums Kraftwerk 1 and Kraftwerk 2. What makes this music form so communicable in this period, I believe, is how easily it reminds us of non-video computer-human interfaces, with each bleep and bloop, or sequence of bleeps indicating one step, function (or malfunction) in the operating system. There is definitely something of a culture hook in the kitsch of sci-fi and the continued appeal of gadgetry and computers for this music. And this sensibility has long been used with wonderful effect by bands like Stereolab. Listen to these note swimming behind the pummeling beats of Les Yper Yper Sound on their Noises EP (1996, not to be confused with Les Yper Sound what a difference one Yper makes!) and Mr. Fantasys Love by Fantastic Plastic Machine on Luxury (1999). With vocoder, the computer motif is complete. The musical connection of bleeps, vocoder, punctuated melodic structures, and computer aesthetics had been brought together for the first time by Kraftwerk in their 1981 album Computerwelt. (Please correct me on this, readers). While djing, long I fought the misconception among fellow djs that ambient music was all drones and no beats. This was a technical concern for them, as their modus depended heavily on the mastery of beat matching and other techniques mine on what I could accomplish by multilayering tracks (often with the need for more than 2 turntables). Their exposure had been limited to the drone-core etherics, atmospherics, and industrial noises which had had its own evolution from Brian Eno to Throbbing Gristle to Pauline Oliveros, Spectrum and Tristeza. More on drone and industrial ambient in another post though. If you havent yet, I urge you to listen to an incredible mixture of the two styles of ambient in Controlled Bleedings Hyms from the Shadows, Parts I-IV. Following image is from Peter Herchenrders multi-media work Computerwelt I (found via trusty old google image search, and curiously located on the site of the Yiddishist, Nizza Thobi.)

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Ggggong-go-long
Friday, July 07, 2006, 5:03:02 AM | Aharon Next to a Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley (1968) my most favorite album (with a rainbow in the title) is Rainbow Dome Musick by Steve Hillage (1979), a magnificent two tracks/two sides album from the Canterbury school of progressive rock. I dont really know whether to give

credit to Brian Eno for liberating late 70s English proggers like Hillage to giving longer expression to the hauntingly beautiful, but oh-so-short instrumentals that figure only as too-brief intermissions on the early Gong albums like Angels Egg (1973, listen to Castle in the Clouds a painfully short 1:15 track). I first came across Hillage when after a long starved period, my hunger for beautiful electronic music was finally satiated in the early 90s by a visit to a music kiosk in a long-defunct (and de-funked) Cincinnati music store. It was there that I carried a pile of cds, and scanning their barcodes one by one, listened to segments from new-ambient albums by the Orb, FSOL , Skylab, and 777 (aka System 7), the latter, the revived prog-electric-ambienthouse band of Steve Hillage. Oh it was an intense day. The wait had begun years earlier when I was 11 or 12 in the mid1980s. I had been listening to a collection of cassette albums by the Berlin Schooled Japanese Korg master, Kitaro (aka Masanori Takahashi) and begged a clueless record store clerk for any other artists who sounded like him. Such disappointment came after I went home with a crap newage album by Andreas Vollenweider. (A more knowledgeable and sympathetic clerk would have turned me onto Neu!, Cluster, Dieter Moebius, Kraftwerk, or a handful of the other Krautocking space music types that Kitaro hung out with before he went solo and when he was playing keyboards for the Far East Family Band.) In the meantime I kept my ears open, hearing tantalizing glimpses of the genre that had given birth to the music of my desperate craving on Classic Rock Radio. (It would take me many more years to interpret the tree of influence leading from Terry Riley and Philip Glass to the Who, Yes, Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons, and some really cool intros and breakdowns by folks lie the Steve Miller Band. Breadcrumbs). But, thanks to a pre-Internet commercial music kiosk, the wait was over in 1992. Which leads me back to Steve Hillage by way of the Orb. The most wonderful thing about Dr. Alex Pattersons music (beyond his lovely mixes) is how through his selections he schools his listeners to the ambient, krautrock and canterbury prog albums from the 70s and early 80s. Theres so much to learn in following the train of his musical references and spotting the pattern hes leaving for the attentive. (Try your hardest to follow them on the Orbs most experimental, and I think, enduring album, Orbvs Terrarvm, 1995). Listening (and mixing) to the Orb is what led me back to the 70s and eventually to Hillage. Being more of a fan of instrumentals than silly lyrics about UFOs and electric gypsies, I urge you to give listen to Rainbow Dome Musick. But if you do have the patience for silly lyrics, the live and (alas, Rare-on-Soulseek) album GgggongGo-Long is the one to check out of your local public librarys CD collection. For your curious nature, youre rewarded with a fearless cover of George Harrison/The Beatles Its All Too Much, a few minutes of lovely guitar noodling making you feel just the same way the hairs on your neck feel when they stand up in ovation to a good saw bowing. (listen to Radio on disc 1 and Crystal City on disc 2). I needed to go through all of this because what I really wanted to do was have an excuse to post about a particularly wonderful and serendipitous discovery of a synaesthetic art, the kind where artists try to reproduce the experience of one sense in that of another. I was hunting for a nice album cover image for my ill-begotten Ggggong-go-long P-threes, when I stumbled across this

site thanks to google images search. Behold for your viewing pleasure, the Gong, as quilt:

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Jean-Luc Ponty
Wednesday, July 05, 2006, 6:31:03 AM | Aharon I dont have too much to say about the genre of new Jazz fusion other than to point out certain tracks by Jean-Luc Ponty that absolutely stand out. Check out if you can, No More Doubts from his otherwise unremarkable 1987 album The Gift of Time. Jean-Luc Ponty helped to popularize the electric violin playing with frank Zappa and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But it is his experiments with the synclavier that you can hear some true brilliance shining beyond his potent violin capabilities. Long I searched for another track by him sounding anything close to this with dismay it was even my impetus for beginning to collect vinyl in college (a cheap way of sampling music on a budget before file sharing on the Internets); Ponty records usually went for 99 cents in the throwaway bins. I even emailed Ponty to ask him for help. (He suggested my buying his latest album). If only he had suggested a few tracks from his early works.These are haunting abstract tunes that pierce something deeper. If you appreciate No More Doubts let me recommend Elephants in Love on his 1985 album Fables. (The rest of the album aint too shabby, neither.) Then, if youre still hungry for frenetic electro-jazz try Cosmic Messenger, Dont Let the World Pass You By and Egocentric Molecules from the album Cosmic Messenger (1978). Audio cocaine, I tells ya. Go listen! Comments (0)

Music Evangelism
Wednesday, July 05, 2006, 6:15:19 AM | Aharon I don not want these albums to be obscure, but they are. Even the ones I take for granted by famous bands like Kraftwerk, remain unknown to so many! This is why musical evangelism is so important. Lacking magic and prophecy, we have the next best thing, perhaps the only thing: art. And we are privileged to live at the moment that the music can be recorded and played back at will. This is no achievement to be taken for granted. We are living in awesome times. I am listening to Shri Camel by Terry Riley. This is a work of divine inspiration, or perhaps human inspiration masquerading as divine. It might not matter. The point is that this is so beautiful and powerful as to melt the boundaries and liberate us. This is a Key! There are others Im certain you know of them. Works so special they argue for the existence of something more profound than anything offered in exoteric practice. These are what matter. All the rest of our actions matter only as the substrata, the infrastructure, the lattice supporting these inspirations. Comments (0)

less quiet than you might think

Sunday, July 02, 2006, 8:33:59 AM | Aharon While the Leviathan has barely made a peep in the last month, Id like to point out to interested readers and voyeurs that Ive been blogging music related essays over at the new music site, mog.com. You can read them in all of their snarky and music-dork glory here. Comments (0)

On the lookout for electro-baroque (und beethoven)

Sunday, July 02, 2006, 8:29:29 AM | Aharon Part of the mystery of progressive rock in the 70s and early 80s were bands covering Beethoven and J.S. Bach. Listen for example to Beethovens Ninth Symphony on Jethro Tulls A Sackful of Trouser Snakes (1977) or Cans and Brahms on Fragile by Yes (1972). In prog circles, this sub-genre is often referred to as Classical Progressive. The climax of this style must be the breakout disco hit Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Bands A Fifth of Beethoven (1977). But the Fifth hardly retired the trend. Frank Zappa released his synclavier recompositions of his possible ancestor, Francesco Zappa as late as 1984. But where did this movement begin? Leaving aside for the moment, the simple fun of rescoring classical pieces for synth and tock guitar, inspiration must have originated in part from the pioneering moog work by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind in the late 60s with their popular Switched-on Bach (1968) and Switched-on Bach II albums. Soon after, Stanley Kubricks films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, prominently featuring works by Johann and Richard Strauss), and A Clockwork Orange (1972, with works by Gioacchino Rossini and Sir Edward Elgar) used classical music to explore visions of space and dystopic futures. Andrey Artemiev was also using the solemn organ works of J.S. Bach to great effect in his film soundtrack to Tarkovskys Solaris, 1972. Meanwhile, the Nonesuch label had since the mid-1960s been using psychedelic art to market both their back catalogue of classical works as well as the new electronic compositions trickling out of university music programs. I dont know why the theme of classical resocoring came to be so entwined in prog circles. Perhaps its no surprise that baroque and romantic classical works found their way into albums and concerts that were excessively romantic and baroque in both their aesthetics (think wigs and long hair) and self-seriousness, obscutiry, and esotericism. For artists that had an interest in showing off their mad keyboard or fretting skills whilst validating their fame with a deep connection with musical roots, rescoring classical works must have had a deep appeal. Besides the impact in progressive rock, the trend really took root in the electronica albums of Isao Tomita (aka Tomita) who throughout the 70s released one completely synthesized late romantic album after another starting with Debussys Snowflakes are Dancing (1974). (If you havent heard the album, you may have listened to a peice of it while watching public television in the US late nights. Tomitas interpretation of Debussys Claire De Lune is the theme music to the long running weekly astronomy show, Star Gazer with Jack Horkheimer. When in 1977, Walter Murphy took classical from prog to disco it was only the most recent form of a music style that had been evolving for almost a decade. Murphy took the success of his disco-classical formula to the furthest extent he could still capitalize on it, with disco imaginings of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs Flight of the Bumblebee, Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue and a 1979 Mostly Mozart album. The funky jazz offshoot of this movement however originated 5 years earlier with Eumir Deodatos interpretation of Also Sprach Zarthustra (later used to great effect in the 1979 film Being There). The cycle could possibly be considered complete in 1984. Besides Frank Zappas Francesco Zappa album, that year also featured the release of the 2010 the film sequel to Kubricks 2001. In a glance back at over 15 years of classical scorings starting with 2001, the first track of 2010 presented yet another disco-electric version of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Andy Summers. (Was the Deodato version not available?) Since then, I havent seen (m)any classical remixes, at least of composers spanning baroque to late romantic. (One notable exception is Art of Noises Seduction of Claude Debussy (1999)

which, I think, takes the idea of an homage album to an extreme.) With the revival of ambient in the early 90s came renewed interest in the minimalist composers, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, who had long been influences to Berlin School space musicians (Michael Hoenig, Manuel Gttsching), British proggers (the Who, Steve Hillage, Gong), new wave artists (Brian Eno, Colourbox), and detroit techno and hip-hop remixers. The fact that these composers were (and remain) still alive also offered the possibility of exciting new collaborations. For neominimalist albums, see Reich Remixed (1999), Donkey Rhubarb (1995) featuring Philip Glass Orchestra with Aphex Twin, and Philip Glass rescoring of Low Symphony (1993) and Heroes (1996) both, of which were originally albums by Brian Eno and David Bowie that had themselves been initially inspired by Glass compositions! (Further and recommended, brilliant remixing of this jumble of collaborations, influences and inspiration can be heard on the track Heroes on Aphex Twins 26 Mixes for Cash, 2003.) Finally, check out dj BCs excellent Glassbreaks remix album, perhaps the best example of synchronicity between minimalism and rap. Please message me or leave a comment if you know of any other albums or tracks that fit into this interesting offshoot of classical/progressive/electronica (clogronica for short Comments (0)

from the mouth of mog

Friday, June 30, 2006, 1:30:14 AM | Aharon So David Hyman, whose project we enjoy in this here website, messaged me after reading my earlier blog post. He had some corrections. See below. I had made a point in Hyman not having mentioned last.fm or other audio based social networking sites in his explanation on the origins for his idea for mog, quoted by David Pescovitz on boingboing.net. Hyman wrote me to explain that he had no control over the questions he was asked. Apparently, Pesco hadnt asked Hyman about other site like last.fm, so the issue never came up. But he would have liked to have been. Apparently, as CEO of Gracenote Hyman had long been studying music identification. Writes Hyman, [I] envisioned MOG very clearly [after I] bought a waveform analysis company called cantametrix in 2000 for gracenote to do things like this. This would help explain why mog was using gracenotes proprietary CDDB rather than the open source, FreeDB or musicbrainz project. As Hyman explains, musicid is a big, nasty beast of a thing. Gracenotes recognition technology via waveform analysis allows mog to bypass localization issues by recognizing songs in any language, Japanese, Korean, etc., so long as their songs are in the database. The gracenote database mog is using has, according to Hyman, been fined tuned a process which required a massive amount of work. But will mog users be able to edit errors they discover in this supplemented DB? Its unclear. What is clear is that, unlike last.fm, mog has no interest in suggesting music recommendations to its users. Its enough for mog to use its algorthimic powers to suggest fellow users with similar music tastes. Showing musical neighbors has long been a feature of last.fm, as has the prevalence of charts and statistics. The latter might be shown for the novelty of it in aggregate across all of mog and not for individual users. Charts dont really interest Hyman for mog because with more users, the more their collective listening habits will begin to reflect billboard charts.

Likewise, mog wont be creating any musicmaps based on connections between artists, or to compute genres based on grouping of users similar tastes. The more important mission of mog is to help like-minded enthusiasts exchange tastes. Thus, social maps showing connections between moggers may be implemented. Elsewhere on my mog page I had written snarkily, Mog profiles are:: the latest vogue in hipster exhibitionim. Hyman took note, and in good humour countered what you call hipster exhibitionism i call, self expression and something ive felt myspace does pretty well! not all moggers are hipsters. especially, me. ; ) But will mog allow its moggers to tinker with their user pages, ala myspace? Its unclear. Currently, there are only a few templates designed by others for users to choose from. By next week, Hyman writes, the template library will be open to many more additions from a presumably larger number of CSS designers and there are plans for beyond that as well. Does this mean that users will be able to hack their own pages CSS ? I dont know, but heres hoping. Without this aesthetic control, for now, users will have to be satisfied with the substantial control they wield creating and editing their own mog widgets. But beyond the desire for audio based socializing and self-expression, why mog? What if one simply wants to listen to, not read about, some cool music some other mog user is raving about? Myspace allows users to express their taste by sharing their favorite indie band tunes so long as that band is promoting themselves on myspace and are making that track accessible. Last.fm offers customized music streams based on the tastes of individual users. What will mog offer its listeners in a world which is making it awfully difficult for users to legally share files with each other? Hyman shared with me this sensational bit of news: we are working with a partner to allow for anyone to listen to almost any song on mog it its entirety. not streamed 30 second sound samples like we have now. I can hardly wait. Comments (0)

Audioscrobbler Stats (for comparison)

Saturday, June 24, 2006, 6:00:12 AM | Aharon These are the artists I listened to last week, as recorded by Audioscrobbler/last.fm:

And these are the artists Ive listened to the most (since 03/2003):

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Mog and Audioscrobbler

Saturday, June 24, 2006, 4:07:21 AM | Aharon If you were reading boingboing.net this past week, you might have thought that Mog was the first social network site with the idea of connecting audiophiles based on their listening habits. When David Pescovitz asked David Hyman where he got the idea for Mog from, Hyman didnt reply that his idea had already been implemented by others with similar concepts. Rather, Hyman explained: my friends and i always turn each other on to music. i wanted to automate the process of sharing what was in our collections and what we are listening to without having to do the work of typing it in. Could it be that Hyman wasnt aware of the a handful of free (or pay) sites that already do this? (See Gnoosic, Echocloud, Audioscrobbler, last.fm, musicbrainz, musicplasma, etc). It would have been insightful to read why existing music-based social networking sites such as audioscrobbler/last.fm were too limiting in comparison with his vision. After all, there is certainly quite a bit of room for improvement among these sites. From my few days experience with Mog, there are some significant differences, large and small, between it and other audio based social networking sites: 1. Mog offers an option of undeclared for users who prefer not to identify as male or female. Compare this with the last.fm option of unknown. Neither site offers much of a choice for gender queers, but at least undeclared offers a less offensive option for those who know perfectly well that male and female dont make sense for who they are. 2. Like last.fm and musicbrainz, Mog seems to be having trouble with the data quality of its established database of artist and album names. (Perhaps Mog will experiment with users working together to clean up this data? Audioscrobbler tried this with mixed, but I think mostly positive, results.) This is my biggest complaint so far with Mog. 3. Unlike audioscrobbler, Mog will scan your music collection up front (and post it to your user page). This could theoretically be a boon for filesharers seeking ultra-rare tracks or for media companies looking for quasi-anonymous users to litigate against. 4. Mog offers uses the ability to customise the look of their page. Last.fm maintains a single template for all user sites, which drew the ire of many users of the old audiscrobbler site. Last.fm could learn a few things from Mog.

If one has the ambition and audiactiy to create yet another of these sites they should aspire to a greater goal, and more pioneering goal than Hyman described. How about creating a site which celebrates less hipster exhibitionism, and promotes more creative and/or collaborative behavior. Id like to see some cooperative tools that arent forums. The closest weve come to seeing anything like a collaborative project on these sites is cleaning up database cruft (see below). The most valuable collaborative product of these social networking sites is the aggregate statistical data of popular and niche music. But what good is this data other than extremely valuable fodder for sale to media companies? Ill be experimenting with Mog and comparing my experience with other free sites over the coming months. Ill be very interested to see how Mog helps to enable communities to form that arent the more typical bastions of trolling pedants youll find at musicbrainz and elsewhere. Best of luck to Mog. Its never a bad thing to reference the ideas (both the mistakes and successes) of past inventors. Heres to David Hyman and the rest of his team learning from them. Comments (0)

random things
Thursday, June 01, 2006, 8:41:32 AM | Aharon 1. is a hidden thing.
2. the excellent student run radio station here in Baton Rouge is KLSU. Late nights keep me

sane. 3. there is no conquering the fleas. though they feast on me, i shall not become one of them. Or will I ?
4. confession: my JITW friends have great patience listening to me wax on about leviathans

and behemoths (this past shabbes in St. Bernard Parish, at the Rainbow Gathering Community Relief Center Hippy Dome [not an official name] see photos) 5. Beverly Lerner needs to start sharing her brilliant thoughts in writing. Brilliance shines like a koan. 6. One glass of wine before bed
7. Ghost Exits are an epiphany on a hot afternoon struggling with nihilistic impulses 8. There are others who understand the hidden meaning of The Snarkout Boys and the

Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater. On jdate.

9. I want to work with Stephanie Firestone. But how? 10. Or how about the Center for Neighborhood Technology. I can dream.

Comments (0)

From Moineti
Thursday, May 18, 2006, 6:02:59 AM | Aharon Moineti (pronounced MOI-nesht) is a small city in north-eastern Romania, in the Moldovan region, and in the county of Bacu. According to Wikipedia,

The name is derived from the Romanian word moin, which means fallow or light rain. Moineti once had a large Jewish community; in Jewish contexts the name is often given as Mojnescht. Bordering the Moldovan region to the east is the Republic of Moldova, a country independent of Romania mainly due to tensions with Russia. Russia has occupied the Republic of Moldova since Romania and Russian armed forces fought a brief war in 1992. The Moldovan region (and some parts of Ukraine) are referred to in many sources as Bessarabia the administrative name for the region in the Russian Empire. Betsy Gidwitz, in her article The Jews of Moldova (1998) explains: Moldova, together with adjoining segments of Ukraine, is often known in Jewish history as Bessarabia the entire area between the Dniestr and Prut rivers. Jews have lived in the region since the end of the fourteenth century, where they were prominent as merchants, traders, and craftsmen. During parts of the nineteenth century, as many as 230,000 Jews lived in Bessarabia, perhaps one-third of the population in small towns and close to one-half of the population of Kishinev. The country was a center of both Yiddish and Hebrew literature. In an article, The Jewish History of Moldova, Eliyahu Feldman provides some additional context. After the Russian annexation in 1812, Bessarabia was included in the Pale of Settlement, and many Jews settled there from other parts of the Pale. The Jewish population, mainly concentrated in Kishinev and in the northern part of the region, grew from 43,062 in 1836 to 94,045 in 1867 (excluding New Bessarabia, see below), and to 228,620 (11.8% of the total) in 1897. Of these 109,703 (48%) lived in the towns (of them 50,237, or 22%, in Kishinev), 60,701 (26.5%) in small towns, and 58,216 (25.5%) in the villages. They formed 37.4% of the town population, 55.7% of the population of the small towns, and 3.8% of the village population. Mentioned as early as 1467, the small village of Moineti, grew steadily through the 19th century as a regional market town. In 1832, Moineti had 188 houses and 588 inhabitants (wikipedia). According to another source, of these homes, the 1831 Census registered 49 Jewish resident families (source). (Reconciling these two sources apparently indicates there were on average 12 individuals living in each family home.) In 1836, in Moinesti, there were 193 Jews, three teachers, and three Hahams. In 1844, in The Charter of Moinesti town (Prince Mihail Grigore Sturdza) there are some mentions about the Jews, the Rabbi, and the Haham. In the same year, Neculai Neculce sells a piece of ground to Rabbi Manascu from Moinesti The 1885 -1893 statistics mention approximately 500 families. There are also mentioned five prayer houses; a ritual bath (mentioned also by M. Sadoveanu: the only public bath was owned by the Jews); a primary school for boys, founded in 1893, with 125 students; a cemetery. 1896 -1899. J.C.A. (Jewish Colonization Association) founded by Baron Rothschild, offers support for erecting a new school. In 1896, there were 183 students. In 1899, there were 2,398 Jews [or] some 50.6% [of] the entire population. (source) Of the two Jewish cemeteries in the town, somewhere between 1000 and 5000 tombstones (most of which are toppled) attest to a Jewish population that persisted from the early 18th Century until the Holocaust. The earliest tombstone was dated by a visitor to 1740 (fourty years before the town was first chartered, source). Even older stones may be undateable due to erosion by vegetation and the elements.

For such a small place, Moineti has something of a proud if obscure history, as the birthplace of some wonderful Jewish artists, poets and writers. Heres a compilation of all the folks I could find associated with Moinesti with Google: Tristan Tzara, aka Samy Rosenstock, Yiddish and Hebrew poet. He was born in Moinesti, Romania. In 1912, he began to publish poems in a symbolist style, which were to be highly influential in Romanian poetry. In 1916 he moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where he was among the founders of Dadaism, the name of which was derived from Tzara opening a dictionary and choosing the first irrelevant word. Dada was a nihilistic revolutionary movement, aimed at demolishing the values of modern civilization. Tzara was considered the movements most articulate exponent, expressed in his Romanian and French poems (he lived in Paris from 1919). As the avant-garde turned to Surrealism, he joined forces with that group and his work became more contained and sober. In 1935 he joined the Communists and during World War II was active in the underground in France. Binyamin Zeev Ehrenkranz (aka Velvel Zbarazher, 1819-1883), a colourful Yiddish singer/comedian originally from Galicia, settled in Moinesti for a while. Samuel Grinberg (1879-1959) the first Rabbi confirmed by F.C.I. Bucharest and by the Ministry of Cults. Pic G. Adrian (Pincu Grinberg), poet, plastic artist and art critic, settled in Barcelona. Samuel Grimberg, poet and writer, precursor of the Poalei Tzion movement. [Could this book, "350 Jewish Jokes" by a Samuel Grimberg, (with a ridiculously caricatured illustrated cover) be written by him?] Charles Davison (b. 1891, in Moinesti): neuropsychiatrist, neuropathologist, and educator; worked for several hospitals in Pittsburgh and taught at Columbia University; contributed more than 100 articles to medical journals. More Jews from Moinesti can be found on the Moinesti page at the Romanias Jewish heritage web site. This page includes some brief and casually organized details of the Jews of Moinesti from what looks to be oral histories. Moineti was also the birthplace of an important proto-Zionist enterprise. In the late 19th century, Jews from Moineti and soon after, Bacu, founded the first two Chovevei Zion colonies in Palestine in 1882: Rosh Pinah and Samarin. Overlooking the Mediterranean, today, Samarin is known as Zikhron Yaaqov ( ,) the home of Carmel Winery. Here is a panorama view of the lands near Rosh Pina taken by resident Itamar Aratiya at the website trekearth. Zionist enterprises paralleled the influence of the Haskala. In 1910, Moineti opened its first school for both boys and girls learning together. The building also housed the offices and

meeting room of the Bnai Brith.

There were also some Hassidim in Moineti. My great-great grandfathers were quite bearded but theres no way I can know whether they were Hassidim, but then again maybe they were. It gives me so much pleasure to know that a niggun survives from the daughter of a Breslover Hassid born in Moinesti. The tune appears on the album, A Mazeldiker Yid, by the Klezmer roots band, Di Naye Kapelye. Tracks 17 and 18: The Bosnian Nign This melody was learned from the singing of Cili Svarts, the wife of Itsik Svarts, the Yiddish writer, teacher, and former director of the Yiddish theater of Iasi, Romania. A schoolteacher, avid singer, and formidable baker of kosher soda cookies, Cili was born the daughter of a Breslover Hasid in Moinesti, Romania, in 1915. This was her favorite melody. She learned it from her uncle Alter Baris who worked as a forester in the Bosnian town of Zavidovich before the First World War. Whether Sephardic or Ashkenazic in origin, we play it as a slow hora. Sadly, Zavidovich was largely destroyed during the Bosnian War, as was my maternal grandmothers birthplace, the nearby town of Travnik. We hope this melody serves to honor the memory of Bosnias Jewish culture, and as a loving tribute to the memory of Itsik and Cili Svarts. My great-grandfather, with his parents and children left Mojnescht around 1911 (+/-2 years) for Montreal, Canada. The only thing recalled by one of my grand-uncles was that the town had constant and loud sounds of pounding. What an incredible detail! At the time they left, Moineti had just begun to be a center for oil exploration in the Carpathian Mountains. Below is an undated photo I found of the oil wells in Moineti at a Romanian website.

According to one source, the Jews from Moinesti were the owners of the some of the first oil distilleries in Moldova. Virgil Madgerau: the small oil distilleries belonging to the Jews are part of the history of the Romanian oil 1860, Wolf Lazarovici built the first distillery [in] Moineti. Iosif Theiller was the first in the country to obtain a license for exploitation of a oil well with modern equipment (Solomon Sapira), with American-style pumps. He published the study Idei economice. Mister Theiller, who became a Romanian citizen, is the first founder of the gas and paraffin factory in Moinesti (Fraternitatea, 1882). Moses Frischoff was exporter of oil, automobile oil, etc. (source) Steaua Romana, a Romanian oil company had access to extensive oil deposits in the Eastern and Southern Carpathian Mountains (source). These deposits were acquired in 1903 when Deutsche Bank purchased Steaua Romana. By the onset of WWI in 1914. Steaua Romana had become the largest and most important production plant in Romania (ibid). To the right, is an undated drawing of the Steaua Romanas oil field at Moineti (probably circa 1910). Moinestis history in oil extraction is preserved iconographically in the City of Moinestis seal. Monesti Jews were also active in the local timber industry. 1840 -1880. B. Schefler, Manase Haimsohn (creators of big wood exploitations); Alick Leibu, Alter Schwartz, S. and Herman Bernstein, Simon Bernstein, D. H. Grinberg, Nathan Zilberman, Herman Theiller (wood exporter), Isac and Matei Grinberg- founders of a state of the art timber factory. He used the first systematic saw in the woods of Moinesti and Solont. He was elected local councilor. (source) No details are remembered why my family left but perhaps they simply became terribly saddened as the small town atmosphere of Moineti in the midst of the Carpathian Mountain

forests was transformed into a hellish and polluted industrial extraction point for oil. That, combined with the precarious position of Jews in Moldova, probably convinced them to leave, as many, many other Romanian Jews had in the preceding years. (40,000 Romanian Jews left for America between 1880 and 1910). Social conditions in the region had been deteriorating on the national level. For my family, the critical event preceding their departure may well have been the Kishinev Pogrom in 1905, the first state-inspired action against Jews in the 20th century (source). Widespread impoverishment and pogroms during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to large-scale emigration. The most notorious pogrom occurred in 1903, apparently with the support of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, led by Vyacheslav von Plehve. The attack occurred on Easter, April 6 and 7, spurred by a blood libel campaign in a prominent newspaper. According to official statistics, 49 Jews were killed and another 500 were injured. Material losses from property destruction and looting were enormous. About 2,000 Jews were left homeless. Another pogrom occurred on August 19, 1905, in which 19 Jews were killed and 56 were injured. Of course, other parts of my family remained, most of whom were lost in the Holocaust. According to a cousin, a few survived and their descendants are living in Israel. Above is a memorial at Yad Vashem in Isreal inscribed in Hebrew and English with the names of Bacau and Moinesti. An exhibit on the Jews of Romania can be found here. Below is an undated image of Moineti: Primria si Judectoria I found on a Romanian site. (Im not certain, but I think judecatoria means, courthouse.) Perhaps one of my ancestral relatives is posing in this Comments (1)

More from the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

Sunday, May 14, 2006, 6:25:34 AM | Aharon Inspired by Borges 14 kinds of animals catalogued in a certain Chinese encyclopedia, The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, here are 14 kinds of people 1. those mistaken for bigfoot 2. those who are asleep 3. government workers 4. nameless ones 5. those who exist only in dreams 6. women with cats 7. seafaring ones 8. those who are crying that cannot be consoled 9. actors

10. dead ancestors 11. babies 12. others 13. cyborgs, or drivers of cars 14. those that are already driven to madness Comments (0)

Rejoining Tetragrammaton
Tuesday, May 09, 2006, 5:20:49 AM | Aharon Here is one more attempt at trying to explicate the mystery of Leviathan and Behemoth. This is a work in progress, but for those among you interested in myth and esoterica and/or Judaism, you may forgive its rough edges. Writing this took me most of yesterday evening and much of the morning, a work thats been percolating in my mind for about a year now. Thanks to Joanna for initially requesting this dvar torah in writing. IMPORTANT NOTE: This dvar is somewhat unapologetically anachronistic, by which I mean, Im taking the myth and context of multiple traditions and using them to understand the meaning of related myths in another early or later tradition. In doing so, this dvar is creative and while not totally devoid of insight, should not be taken as a surrogate for a sophisticated academic reading of the sources. With this fair warning, onwards into Torah. From Midrash Konen, 25: God found the Upper Waters and the female Lower Waters locked in a passionate embrace. Let one of you rise, He ordered, and the other fall! But they rose up together, whereupon God asked: Why did you both rise? We are inseparable, they answered with one voice. Leave us to our love! God now stretched His little finger and tore them apart; the upper He lifted high, the Lower He cast down. To punish their defiance, God would have singed them with fire, had they not sued for mercy. He pardoned them on two conditions: that, at the Exodus, they would allow the Children of Israel to pass though dry-shod; and that they would prevent Yonah from fleeing by ship to Tarshish. (Hebrew Myths, Graves and Patai, p.40). In the Sumerian cosmology, in the beginning, everything was water, pure undelineated water. In Breishit, there was Tohu and Bohu (often translated as waste or chaos and void, respectively. I prefer depth and expanse. The two were so inextricably bound that nothing else could exist. And yet something did. And that thing was Spreading Out, reaching, filling, moving, creating whatever was necessary for further infinite expressions. In a word, something Emergent. What was Gods spirit doing hovering over the abyss? I believe I have an idea, that will be made clear later in this dvar. Raphael Patai cites Hermann Gunkels explanation in Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (1895) that Tiamat is an early cognate of the biblical Hebrew words, Thom and Tohu. The important premise is thus that the creatures alternately known as Tiamat, Leviathan, Rachab, and Behemoth are mythic incarnations and equivalents of important aspects of the cosmos, central to the worldview of our ancestors (and which is now almost entirely forgotten) the Lower Waters and the Upper Waters. (By the end of the dvar we hope that the relationship between the two will seem clear and obvious. And the ramifications for understanding apocryphal events such as the flood and cosmic reconciliations such as the Age of the Messiah, will be made clearer (from a mythic perspective).

Depth, Tohu, is referred to as Tehom the abyss, its destiny within a few verses is to become the Lower Waters. Expanse is called, Bohu becomes the Upper Waters. Alternately, depending on the midrash or the myth, the two, Tohu and Bohu were allies or lovers. Whichever, the important lesson, the iqar, is that Tohu and Bohu were so closely linked that creation was impossible unless they could be divided. Tehom, in midrash is described as the sweet Underground Waters, the Lower Waters forbidden to rise and unite again with the Upper Waters. In Sumerian myth, Enki/Ea, god of Wisdom, emerges out of the sweet water abyss, called the Abzu. (The begetter ur-god in the sumerian pantheon, is Apsu the beloved of Tiamat. Apsu is killed by Ea.) Graves and Pattai, speculate that for doctrinal reasons, these details are washed over in Bresihit and the abstract concepts of Tehom, Tohu and Bohu, stand in for what in these other myths are cosmogonic battles of creation. And yet Tohu and Bohu do reappear in a less abstract form, if not as gods, then as cosmically huge monstrous creatures: Bohu as Behemoth and Tohu/Tehom as Tiamat, a great serpent also referred to alternately as Leviathan, Rachab. (Graves and Pattai add other biblical serpents: the Tanin, Aharons serpent/rod, and the Nachash, the tempting snake in Eden, to the list). Tiamat may be the only mythic creature/character from Mesopotamian myth to be referred to with the same name in the Tanakh. In the Enuma Elish, however, Tiamat is not only seen as a great serpent. She is Mother Tiamat, the primordial God Tiamat, who allied by incestuous marriage with her son Kingu must be defeated by Marduk. After Tiamats defeat, her body forms the material for the earths crust and the planets). Although the sages were confused whether the female Leviathan and male Behemoth were creatures with male Leviathan and female Behemoth consorts (like the other animals), other legends maintained that the Leviathan and Behemoth were each others mates (despite the differences in their monstrous anatomies). Yet others hold that Leviathan was to have been Behemoths mate; but that God parted them, keeping Behemoth on dry land and sending Leviathan into the sea, lest their combined wight crack Earths arches. (4 Ezra vi. 47-52; Enoch I.X. 7-8) The sages imagined the Leviathan to be a great sea serpent or crocodile, the largest of the sea creatures, but strange older legends left a legacy of contradictions. When the Leviathan moved, the earth shuddered in earthquakes. This reflected the ancient idea that the Leviathan is in the bedrock, in the farthest depths the abyss. The Behemoth is imagined to be the largest of the land animals, a giant hippopotamus intriguingly called the Ox of the Pit, dwelling in the land of the Thousand Mountains beyond the river Sabbatyon. Being incarnations of the Upper and Lower Waters. Both the Behemoth and the Leviathan drink pure water, both relying on fresh water attesting to their primordial roots in a universe created out of pure fresh water. [Leviathan] drinks from a tributary of the Jordan, as it flows into the ocean through a secret channel. (many sources to cite, see Hebrew Myths, Graves and Patai, p.50) Summer heat makes him [Behemoth] so thirsty that all the waters flowing down the Jordan in six months, or even a year, barely suffice for a single gulp. He therefore drinks at a huge river issuing from Eden, Jubal by name. (Mid. Konen, 26; Pesiqta Rabbatai, 80b-81a; Lev. Rab 13.3; 22.10; Num. Rab 21.18; PRE, ch. 11) The importance of this ancient symbolism, although arcane, is still entirely relevant as they represent the powerful relationships with nature and natural cycles that were (and remain still) at

the core of our tradition and worldview. Consider the lost holiday, of the Simchat Beit haShoeva, the most festive day in the whole calendar when water was pured over a rock in an underground chamber on the temple mount. It was the most festive day in the whole Jewish calendar! A full explanation of why would require delving into the meaning of the Even ha-Shetiyah the foundation stone (even masu hobim hayta lrosh hapina). But the following aggadoth/midrashim provide some context: God also forbade Tehom, the sweet Underground Waters, to rise up except little by little and enforced obedience by placing a sherd [the even ha-shetiya] above her, on which He had engraved His Ineffable Name. This seal was removed only once only; when mankind sinned in Noachs day. Therupon Tehom united with the Upper Waters [!] and together they flooded the earth. (Yer. sanh. 29a bot.; Mid Shemuel, ch. 26; Yalqut Reubeni i:4 f.; ii: 109; cf. Enoch LIX. 7-10; PRE, ch. 23; all based on Gen VII. 11.) Since then, Tehom has always crouched submissively in her deep abode like a huge beast, sending up springs to those who deserve them, and nourishing the tree roots. Though she thus influences mans fate, none may visit her recesses. (Genesis xlix. 25; ezekiel xxxi. 4; xxvi. 19; xxxi. 15; job xxxviii 16) Tehom delivers three times more water to Earth than the rain [the Upper Waters]. At the Feast of Tabernacles [Sukkot/Simchat Beit hs-shoeva], Temple priests pour libations of wine and water on Gods altar. Then Ridya, an angel shaped like a three year heifer with cleft lips, commands Tehom: Let your springs rise!, and commands the Upper Waters: Let rain fall! (Gen. Rab. 122, 294; B. Taanit 25b) Think of our Upper Water prayer begun in this same period and recalling this event: mashiv haruch umorid hagashem (may the winds flow and the rains fall) a prayer prior to the rainy season to help ensure the refreshing of the land over the Winter. However, unlike our prayer today, the temple prayers were delivered with a more cosmic worldview. These libations were being made at the central portal to the Lower Waters, the stone cap above which was the single most precious object in the universe that which separated the upper and lower waters the first thing ever created! And the equivalence between Leviathan and the primeval Lower Waters is further betrayed by the mysterious agaddoth that when the Leviathan moves, earthquakes are generated. When hungry, [Leviathan] puffs out a smoky vapour which troubles an immense extent of waters; when thirsty, [Leviathan] causes such an upheval that seventy years must elapse before calm returns to the Deep, and even Behemoth on the Thousand Mountains shows signs of terror. The Leviathan generates earthquakes when it moves because the Leviathan resides just below the navel of the world. Some say that a gem bearing the Messiahs name which floated with the wind until the Altar of Sacrifice had been built on Mount Zion, and then came to rest there was the first solid thing God created. Others, that it was the Foundation Rock [Even Shtiyah] supporting his altar; and that when God restrained Tehoms waters, He engraved His forty-two-letter Name on its face, rather than on a shard. Still others say that He cast the Rock into deep water and built land around, much as a child before birth grows from the navel outward; it remains the worlds navel to this day. That we have this tradition of omphalos, the navel of the world, connects us to a host of other people with similar origin myths. Currently, I am trying to understand the omphalos as it

connects to the idea of tzimtzum. Ive spoken earlier with friends how I think per Rav Aryeh Kaplan that the cosmogony of tzimtzum is a cosmic analogy of contractions in a womb, the thread of the tzimtzum being an umbilical cord, and that it is not necessary to think of it in terms of fertilization. The even hashetiyah would then be an early image of what in the Lurianic period would become the vessels and the klippot shards. Just as the even hashettiyah protects the world from being overwhelmed by the waters below, the vessels were supposed to protect creation from being overwhelmed by the primal creative light passing through the thread. Common to both traditions are shards, but in one there is water, and in the other, energy. I have to think about this more and with your help. Because I dont believe this idea has been published anywhere and it is so central to the central cosmologies of our people, ancient and now modern (even if by modern, Im referring to kabbalah and chassidut). So what was God doing hovering above the abyss? I strongly suspect that the midrashim are pointing to an ancient lost legend that the spirit of god hovering over the abyss was the creation of the Even hashetiyah, the foundation stone. But back to the future, At the dawn of the Age of the Messiah, the sages imagine the Leviathan and the Behemoth will be slaughtered, providing delicacies for the righteous, their skins providing covering over their tents of celebration. While those who sit in its shade will be judged righteous, and in it will be banded together, to protect them from evil, to nourish them, in the succah of curtains [made of Leviathan's skin] to eat, to carry them [from exile] to good pasture [in Eretz Yisrael], to pay its reward (from Baal Thi, Shacharit service, chazzans repetition of the Amidah, second day of Sukkot, p. 2967, machzor zichron shmuel, artscroll). In reviving these symbols per their ancient meaning, I would propose an alternate suggestion for the fate of the Leviathan and the Behemoth in the Age of the Messiah. Just as the Upper and Lower Waters were brought together in the time of Noach, so they are brought together again, however, it is we who have changed. In the Messianic Age, we breath water and the flood is not destructive it is a creative force, just as we have analogized Water to be Torah. (Alternately, in the Messianic Age, we join with the waters above, i.e. the Moon, possibly populating the moon with waters from earth. Is the heavenly Jerusalem on the Moon?) Should the Israelites, now the Jews, be more correctly knows as people of the moon, the moon representing the primeval pure waters, the purifying waters that are always replenished, symbolizing in the waxing and waning cycles of fertility, and of the earths fertility? How the calfs and the red heifers relate to water purification and moon symbolism, Im not certain, but Raphael and Pattai think theres a connection, and the description of the angel Ridya I think suggests something too. Im wondering whether these sacrifice/offerings are rehearsing the origin myth of the separation of the waters, which in other myths was the slaughter of Apsi/Bohu/Behemoth. In the Sumerian tradition, man is formed from the blood of Apsu. If Apsu represents Upper Waters and Adam (a-dam) is formed of the blood of the Upper Waters could then some purification be made by returning Man to his upper water source? Or slaughtering an animal representing the Upper Waters in the place of Man? Im not sure, but its something I have to think about more with your help. Credits for most of the sources used above are referenced out of Robert Graves and Raphael Patais Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (McGraw Hill: New York, 1964)

Behemoth and Leviathan (1825, reprinted 1874) by William Blake, an engraved illustration that appears in Blakes The Book of Job.

Comments (2)

On the Importance of Preparation

Tuesday, May 09, 2006, 4:47:21 AM | Aharon Truth cannot be told, but it can be pointed to. (this is in contradiction to teachings that Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message (Umberto Eco in describing the cult of tradition, the first feature of ur-fascism). Pointed to, as in, go in this direction and you will find. This applies to an individual as well as to a society. The idea, the iqar, is that if you participate in certain actions, the consequence of them will be a Truth. So what do I mena by Truth? Truth is something that cannot be revealed explicitly, because it must emerge on its own. To reveal it is thus a lie. It must be a consequence and is entirely hidden by the curtain, the parochet, of time and preparation.

So what then, can be taught? Actions and ideas that add up to a revelation, the catalyst of which is kindness and intelligence. Actions must not stand on their own. They must be beautiful by themselves and as reflections of a beautiful worldview that treasures kindness and intelligence. Actions are preparations. Comments (0)

Jennifer Wickboldt
Wednesday, April 26, 2006, 8:10:37 AM | Aharon her voice soft like honey seeps into me i can feel intonations resonating in my ears sweeten the harsh world with your lavender voice caressing my pen torturing my fingers write i must write for you and you alone Jennifer Wickboldt wrote the poem above, one of many available sprawled over old tripod user pages. Friday evening I had a long conversation with her. Later today she is being cremated. I can still see her sitting in my apartment, the apartment she used to live in before I came here to Baton Rouge. She was asking me about passover and mezuzahs. And she liked the band Red House Painters. She was very cute and had a boyfriend who loved her very much, many friends, and a dog named Latte. She was a magic person, so of course, she was constantly assaulted by demons who feast on vivacious creative people. Sunday morning they got their wish, convincing her to do herself in. She traded her future away for salvation from a troubled past. I am so sorry.

As my father says, tragedies like these remind us to hold each other tight and never take for granted the time we have with each other. Comments (6)

Lost Month
Friday, April 14, 2006, 9:07:04 PM | Aharon So what happened, Aharon? Death and resurrection. Of this blog. No more am I of the FEMA ESF-14 LTCR Team in Vermilion Parish. Thats all done with. Officially demobilised on March 20th along with all the other parish teams save for Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. About a month earlier, a local planner had seen some of my work and asked me how much it would cost him for me to come work with him. Nonplussed, I thanked him and continued working on community recovery in Vermilion. But as the horizon of my disaster recovery world approached and realizing I would soon fall off the edge of the world if I didnt have a new job soon, I made some quick mental calculations and decided that a strategic retreat to a small planning firm in Baton Rouge might be an excellent opportunity. Id miss my newly made friends in DC and the Jews in the Woods community. On the other hand, there was residual and unresolvable sadness in DC too. Uninterested in returning to temping or interning in the Capitol and seeing that the APA Congressional Fellowship, I phone interviewed for, had already been offered to someone else I accepted the Baton Rouge gig and quickly learned that the little firm I would join had just been gobbled up by the Shaw Group, a megacorp centered in Louisiana. So from contract planner-for-hire, I am now all of a sudden a company man. And only a few months ago I was updating the mailing database of the AAAS. I am grateful. Who knows where this will lead? But back to last month. In short, March featured me responding to requests from the Magic Kingdom and finishing up my parish plan. My team got a little gushy near the end, and I was the recipient of certain confidences. Drinks were purchased for friends and well-wishers and then a hasty farewell was made I was tapped by the Magic Kingdom to do project reviews over the final weekend. 16 hour workdays, meeting the folks who never were rarely able to make it out to the field, and seeing what its like from within the world of MK-Ultra. Over the weekend, a few hours with my coworkers expired while I observed them devour crustaceans at a crawfish boil at the home of my future boss. The last night I found a pretty good shoegazer band from Chicago playing near LSU, Dreamend. And later on I found a pretty sweet gal, also from Chicago, KK. At the end of that week (3/24), I returned to DC to gether my things, say goodbye to a few precious friends, truck over to Cincinnati and back down to the Red Stick (3/31). Items since

accomplished: getting an apartment, buying a car, starting work, and taking a passover holiday vacation. Also, restarting this blog. Thats a mighty accomplishment right there. Comments (0)

Of the Red Stick

Friday, April 14, 2006, 7:46:09 PM | Aharon I am in Baton Rouge now, having been hired by a global megacorporation whose humble beginnings, I have learned, were in the plumbing trade, specifically, pipe manufacturing. Connections to urban and environmental planning interests, follow directly from the assimilation of firms specializing in engineering pumps, those laying labyrinthine pipeworks, and those mapping the guts and detritus of civilizations artifice. Comments (0)

More inspiration from broken hearts

Friday, April 14, 2006, 7:44:38 PM | Aharon Long ago I planted my heart in a field, the soil of which had long been fertilized with the dung of lumbering, magic creatures. I walked away with faith that upon returning years later, Id find a heart tree, and live long succored by its precious fruit, and be nourished by a knowledge rooted deep in musty forgotten sediments. Later, I returned, and found a horde of convivial rioting youth, narcissists the lot of them, and ignorant of the old ways. All the precious hearts had been plucked. In some past summer, they were eaten up on a whim (and what a juicy engorged picnic that was). But those heart seeds were shat out everywhere in this overgrown orchard, and if I could only convince those kids to leave then, the saplings could finally grow unmolested. Bitter, grumbling old man, I wandered about the dancers, made a hut in the corner of the field, waiting at first for them to grow weary and leave, or to expire from their indulgences. I fell asleep, woke up, became bored, closed my eyes and meditated for a thousand years or more. Awakening, I found my hut perched in the sky, surrounded by heart trees, upon whose branches dangled the youths, gleaming like gemstones, shining each from suns captured deep within their eyes and breasts, and inspiring a constant breeze that pushed and pulled them, and made them whistle like pinecones in a blizzard. The sound pierced me, tore the flesh from my bones and sent me plunging to the earth where monsters waited to devour me, and begin the entire horrid story of my birth, resurrection, and death anew. Comments (0)

There is only one L in Vermilion

Friday, March 03, 2006, 7:23:15 PM | Aharon Heres a song that my co-worker, Leslie Meyers penned with the team lead for Beauregard Parish, Richard Hendrickson (who can sing it!) There is only one L in Vermilion There is only one L in Chevrolet There is only one L in Louisiana And that is why people say: You only need one L To say I Love You

And one L to say I wont ever leave But if you wont be mine forever, Then Ill just sit here and grieve. If you wont be mine forever, Then you can just go to L. Comments (0)

Mardi Gras and Purim

Friday, March 03, 2006, 12:14:13 AM | Aharon This year, the Jewish holiday of Purim is on March 12th, which is so close to Mardi Gras (Feb 28th), the parallels are impossible to miss. I experienced Mardi Gras in Lafayette and Kaplan, the latter, far enough into the countryside where you can still find the vestiges of some extremely old traditions in practice. (Mardi Gras is celebrated all over Louisiana and not just in New Orleans). Listening to a truly fantastic show on KRVS about the Mardi Gras traditions in southwest Louisiana and their history going back to outlaw days, medieval times, and the ancient customs of Saturnalia. Celebrants play roles in Mardi Gras. The King of Mardi Gras is traditionally the town fool, and in some town, this reversal results in the symbolic punishing of innocents. (Ironically, this happens even in Mardi Gras without Fool Kings, as hundreds are arrested and incarcerated for the hamless practice of flashing). If this reminds one of Ahashverosh, the easily manipulated Persian King of the Scrool of Esther, I think it should. Mardi Gras also takes place on Feb 28th, one day removed from the leap year day of Feb 29th. Days like these, outside of the normal calendar, or on the fringe, are often associated with libertine practice as they appear on the surface to defy the orthodox cosmology of the ordered kingdom. Thus it is auspicious day for partying under the command of another kingship, that of the Fool. I remember learning back in college how the ancient egyptians (I think) had a period of 5 days at the end of their year which were considered outside the norm, because the circle only had 360 degrees and each day of the year would correspond to one degree of the circle. Except for those five days. But it would be a mistake only to see Mardi Gras as time when all is allowed this day fits squarely in a tradition of penitence where there is considerable roleplaying. I experienced bead throwing (and bead giving) what I didnt understand until this week was the symbology of this relationship between givers and receivers. In many parts of Lousiana there is a ritual where men in costume chase after chickens. In other places, men play the role of beggars and go door to door asking for a chicken or for gumbo, and in still other places, men on horseback or in very scary outfits pretend to steal women (for dancing) and to abduct or scare children. I listened on the show on KRVS about the coming of age experiences of boys who were frightened but eventually were old enough to stand up to this hazing. So interesting. The obvious parallel to Purim is the wearing of masks. I learned here that masks are worn exclusively by the bead givers. Bead supplicants will beg for beads, which I took to be tokens or fetishes for forgiveness and love and prosperity. and that is why they felt imbued with a magical richness despite their being manufactured cheap plastic made in China. I understood why it was taboo to throw the beads back towards the masked bead throwers such an action makes no sense within the symbolic logic of the ritual! I think the masks (or face paint) are there to indicate that the person giving the beads is not to be identified as an individual, but as a roleplayer. Next year I would like to explore even more outlying villages. (I swear I should have become a folklorist or mythologist; I will have to find some way of incorporating these interests into planning maybe through responsible and thoughtful heritage tourism programming).

UPDATE: James Hebert, KRVS Operations Manager writes me, Regarding the Mardi-Gras special we aired Tuesday, its Dance for a Chicken, a video documentary produced by Pat Mire Films. Its available at 1-800-256-8471, or 337-232-0700, or 625 Garfield Street Lafayette, LA 70115.

From the Pat Mire Films website: Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras (1993, 60 mins. Color). This award-winning film brims over with stunning images of carnival play and a rich soundtrack of hot Cajun music. Cajun filmmaker Pat Mire gives us an inside look at the colorful, rural Cajun Mardi Gras. Every year before Lent begins, processions of masked and costumed revelers, often on horseback, go from house to house gathering ingredients for communal gumbos in communities across rural southwest Louisiana. The often-unruly participants in this ancient tradition play as beggars, fools, and thieves as they raid farmsteads and perform in exchange for charity or, in other words, dance for a chicken. Dance for a Chicken is an articulate, intelligent, and compelling film portraying the richness of indigenous Louisiana Cajun culture. Without question the best Mardi Gras film to date. A true gem. Tom Rankin, Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Dance for a Chicken was the winner of the Award of Excellence at the 1993 American Anthropological Association Film Festival. Comments (0)

Protected Posts
Monday, February 27, 2006, 12:35:07 AM | Aharon A meta-post just to explain that some posts will now be password protected. The blog is a useful space for documenting certain thoughts for my own review. I could document these offline in a handwritten journal, or in a text document on my hard drive, but I find it more usful and interesting to see them in the same format and context as my other exoteric postings. Thank you for your understanding. Comments (0)

Lazy Sunday
Monday, February 27, 2006, 12:07:07 AM | Aharon Today Im catching up reading all the posts from the JitW-spring06 list that I missed reading because I didnt register until a few days before the gathering. The discussions and insights of the folks on the list touch on all of the relevant issues and reflect the sophistication and insight I respect so much in this seasonally renewed community. Im really sorry I couldnt contribute to it until I became physically present in the gathering space in central PA last shabbes. But really by then it was too late. Like starting shabbes without having prepared food. Funny thing how I understood the importance of the list as an aspect of process and preparation. My experience now has confirmed its necessity. I dont believe I was mentally or spiritually prepared for meeting up with these holy yiddim. Much of the feelings I experienced could have been mitigated by simply having become comfortable with the thoughts and email address names of the people I would soon meet. Instead, all I found was a huge group of new people, to struggle to

find some warmth and acceptance from. Too many feelings of social vulnerability and angst. And there were stressors from within JitW I needed to cope with, certain people and conversations I needed to have, old business to deal with and learn from, that could have benefited from pre-shabbes preparation. I survived, and I will continue but I will also seek to preempt any damage from this by building jitw relationships offlist before next Fall. Comments (0)

NPR in Vermilion Parish

Sunday, February 26, 2006, 3:37:15 AM | Aharon Andria Hsu had a story in yesterdays All Things Considered on the aftermath of Hurricane Rita on Vermilion Parish. Listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=5232278 Comments (0)

This group needs your help

Friday, February 24, 2006, 11:46:25 PM | Aharon Just got forwarded a link from a contact I made in Baton Rouge about a group concerned about the welfare of animals in Vermilion Parish. As it happens, one of the National Guardsman in my team, and his wife, have long been active with the group. They need some basic things like nails, and warm bedding. Perhaps you can help. Here is their website: http://vermilionanimalaid.blogspot.com/ Comments (2)

Slacker
Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 7:06:46 PM | Aharon Just briefly, here are the things I meant to blog about but havent yet, in no satisfactory chronological order. Just got to get them down or else Ill forget to write about them entirely. (With blog rot in the Swamp of Despair, where the waters above meet the waters below, and the great Nothing erodes all memories, only the repetition of a sacred mantra will create a foundation of fungus and mungey humus for hapless adventurers. Or as Atreiu says, Remember Artax!) 1. Attending the Vermilion Parish Police Jury (sort of like a county commissioners meeting but rowdier and with exciting community input amidst reports of mosquito spraying and garbage pickup hassles; the things I heard at this meeting made front page news the day after, first impression: this place feels small enough that you can comprehend all the actors, motives, and agendas impacting the community, second impression: most serious business takes place behind the scenes through alliances that are difficult to fathom from the perspective of an outsider) 2. Traveling to Avery Island and the Tobasco Sauce Factory (considering just how deeply eccentric the Mclhenney family actually is, purchasing rubber crawfish at the Tobasco gift shop, considering how southeast asia, exoticism and romanticism inspired the landscaping of the Mclhenneys Jungle Garden complete with pagoda and buddha purched on top of an artificial hill and lagoon) 2/5 3. Visiting the Chitimacha Casino (delicious cacaphony, every depressing thing you ever imagined about casino life, and excellent omelettes) 2/5

4. Hearing the DPZ presentation in Lake Charles (excellent Planning History of San Diego presentation by Howard Blackson; bumping into Andres; other presentations very interesting; nothing is dumbed down it seems; my thinkpad t30s video card dies from ati2dvig.dll woes) 2/6 5. Meeting the DPZ team and Duany when their focus shifts to my parish, Vermilion (exciting! and theyre using my Community Basline draft; all these designers and planners are slim, wearing black turtlenecks, and expensive watches) 2/13
6. Listening to the best public radio station Ive ever heard, KRVS (Not only local

programming by excellent local djs playing their favorite new and old Zydeco and Cajun Music, but also incredible progrmaming for avante-garde electronic, harp, swing, and everything else; hearing syndicated PRI programs here that I never knew existed) 7. The Abbeville Meridional has a new writer, a young woman who I met at the City Bar and sang Summertime Rolls by Janes Addiction with. She just wrote a fine article, her third first page lead story since she was hired as a reporter and editor a week ago. Shes also a waitress in Abbevilles Riverfront restaurant. Its really exciting to see someone in the process of moving ahead in their life! 8. Attending Duanys presentations for Vermilion Parish (brilliant ideas for a New Erath, biofuel, mixed use development and creation of a sense of place at the port in Delcambre, reorienting the entrance to Main Street Abbeville from the LA 14 bypass that has been economically strangling the city for the last 20 years, good stuff but wondering how any of this will be accepted by a community which seems resigned to incremental dumb growth developments and a political body unfamiliar with planning, zoning, or code enforcement) 2/13-17 9. Writing. Lots of writing. (16 hour days) 10. Representing my team in Baton Rouge (getting props from the Magic Kingdom) 2/15 11. Getting fired. Getting rehired. (along with my team, along with all of the Long Term Community Recovery Teams in all the affected parishes of Louisiana; probably appeared to stem from FEMA seeking to cut costs and looking for programs to put on hold) 2/911 12. Making the pilgrimage to Jews in the Woods north of Stroudsburg, PA. Taking my first rotation, a three day vactaion granted by my parent contractor to its TACs every 28 days. (I am a TAC). 13. Writing and thinking about crawfish, cute little freshwater lobsters. Folks here eat these delightful crustaceans. 14. Writing about my team, our morale, those whove stayed, those whove left, and those who went snarking never to be found again.
15. Davening with the Jews of Lafayette, Louisiana. (I will never get used to the call and

respond liturgy familiar to American Reform Jews.) Slacker (1991) is a film by Richard Linklater. Comments (0)

Long Term Community Recovery

Wednesday, February 08, 2006, 9:37:15 PM | Aharon

Today I am working on the Community Baseline, as I was yesterday, and I will be tomorrow. It is the first part of the Long Term Community Recovery Plan we will be submitting the compilation of my teams planning efforts in Vermilion Parish. I have created worksheets for the other experts in my team to complete; providing me with hard numbers on economic development, environmental and coastal impacts, human services, transportation and infrastructure, and housing and community development. Today Im working on the Needs Assessment based on their input. Yesterday I completed a draft of the What Happened? section. Tomorrow I hope to have a process prepared for team members to sit down, articulate, evaluate, and prioritize project goals and proposed programs. Prior to that I was just trying to figure out what was going on by reading, talking to people, attending meetings, and touring places. Now Im finally working and producing the intelligence that will enable this planning process to move forward. One observation from yesterdays work. In writing this Im tasked with getting some hard numbers and figuring them into an articulate and concise narrative. I spend less time actually writing than I do actually nailing down these hard numbers. The numbers come from somewhere, or maybe they dont exist yet, or are hard to find, or perhaps are taken for granted when they ultimately are sourced from anecdotes. Im remembering a lesson from planning grad school that planners have to make decisions and recommendations on incomplete data. Apologies to friends and relatives who are hoping to find new postings every day. I want to and I think I will even have multiple postings a day like some of my favorite blogs. But maybe not. Blogging aspirations are choked by mundane and practical concerns. But Im working through them, so I think Ill be posting more often. Comments (0)

New Orleans
Sunday, February 05, 2006, 2:55:40 AM | Aharon I have a back log of things to write about so here are my observations from my visit last Saturday (1/28) of New Orleans. The night before, I visited Beth Shalom Synagogue in Baton Rouge, for meeting Rougey Jews and to maybe even sing Lcha Dodi and other nice songs. The synagogue is one of two in Baton Rouge, (the other being Bnei Israel). Formerly Beth Shalom was known as the Liberal Synagogue. Founded in 1945, the synagogue differentiated itself from the other Baton Rouge congregation by being openly Zionist and, over the years, less afraid to represent Judaism by meeting on Saturday (instead of on Sunday). Alas, I missed Lcha Dodi but I did meet a few of the locals. There was a large attendance but I was later informed by a regular that many of the people there came for a special occasion, a going away kiddush for an older couple, the Karlins, who had long been active members and an anchor of the community. So I shouldnt have been surprised that the davening was really weak or that almost no one approached me to introduce themselves to a newcomer. As far as most of them knew, I was a regular. The synagogue president wryly observed (while roasting the couple, the Karlins) that the shul should have a going away party every shabbes! The congregation was led by the shuls rabbi, Rabbi Zamek, whose pulpit skills are accented by a sense of humour. For a silent reading, he prepared quotes from the Karliner Rebbe (inspired by the departure of the Karlins). The shul uses the older reform prayerbooks which are about as dry and boring as the old Birnbaum prayerbooks still found in orthodox synagogues.They also declare aloud Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuto LeOlam VaEd (gender-neutral translation:

blessed is the Name, may the Kingdoms Glory extend for ever and ever). Until recently this verse has only been recited quietly except on Yom Kippur. (The verse is a response of Yaakov to his sons, according to a midrash cited in Tractate Psachim 56a, when they tell him on his death bed, in unity with each other, Shma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Another midrash holds that Moshe overheard the verse sung by angels and thus it cannot be said by mortal except on days like Yom Kippur when we think we can get away with it). Of all the oddities in the classic reform service, this practice remains the most alien for me. The reason the verse has long not been proclaimed out loud by Jews can be found in all of its wonderful and colorful talmudic reasoning here. Reasons Ive heard from reform Jews on the significance of saying it out loud year long, range from historical arguments (saying it quietly reflects ancient fears of persecution which are now unfounded), to liturgical ones (if it is not said out loud the congregation will ignore it), to theological ones (malkhut, lit. kingship, is an outdated archaism by which to describe our understanding and relationship with God). The historical argument is really interesting to me. Heres an explanation I found on the internet, and reflects what I was told personally by a rabbi at Temple Emmanuel in Bethesda, Maryland.
From: Jerry Blaz Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 01:27:26 -0700 Subject: Reform PrayerbookTara Cazaubon asked why the second line of the sh'ma, "Baruch shem kavod," is said aloud in the Reform congregation, while she noted that is said silently except for Yom Kippur in the Conservative and Orthodox synagogues. The explanation that I was given many years ago has to do with the "problem" of malchut or kingship. The statement was interpreted by our enemies to state that the kingship of the Jewish God was over the entire world, which intimated to our enemies that we did not recognize the sovereignty of Christian kings. So the source of the silence is coercion. The Reform state this "Baruch Shem Kavod" out loud as a sign of their liberation from this oppression.

Ok, so thats quite a digression from what I meant to write up but Im a completist. Rabbi Zamek has also introduced a meditational practice. Unfortunately I wasnt present the next day to experience the form of meditation practiced personally. Instead, I was in New Orleans. I had been interested in taking a trip down to New Orleans since I arrived in Louisiana. I had a rental car. I wasnt doing any work for FEMA yet but I didnt want to get too far away from Baton Rouge if I was to get a call for deployment. I probably could have gotten away with it, and I guess I did that last Shabbes. A fellow in the Beth Shalom congregation, Sam Breen, came up to me at the kiddush and asked me if Id like to drive down with him to the Chabad House in Metairie to help make the shabbes minyan the next morning. The man spoke in the slow droll of a native Nyorlinean. He had observed my davening during the silent amidah and thought I might be Orthodox. So Sam and I met in the Beth Shalom parking lot the next day and he drove me down to Nyorlean. And after shul (where I did in fact make the minyan), he gave me a tour of a number of devastated neighborhoods of New Orleans, and some of the affected suburbs like Metairie. What makes something look creepy or seem haunted? Maybe its when it looks completely normal except for one or two things easily glanced over but once recognized compel you to stare and look harder until your eyes feel bloated and engorged. We drove into a typical subdivision in

Matairie with ugly McMansion tear-downs and older 70s era two story homes. Looked rather normal, except for the fact that it was empty. And then the sense of emptiness began to creep over everything, from the street, to the lawns, across the driveways and into the houses. The doors were open, and dark inside. Each house had an embellishment, some graffitti indicating how many people or animals were found inside dead. This was indicated by an X painted on the door, or the outside wall next to the entrance, or above the entrance next to an open second floor window. This looked to me like a subdivision which had once seen the conquest of zombie hordes, which after a night of mayhem, had left the place dead and empty. (Yes, it is to zombie flicks that I owe my perceptions of urban decay and understanding of the failure of civilization). We traveled wetward across the city to a neighborhood which seemed like it had a lot of promise, being pedestrian oriented and within walking distance of a commercial district. But it was also close to the interstate and the commerical district was oriented, not to the neighborhood but to an exit ramp and strip. Like Metairie, the neighborhood was mostly empty except for a few people who seemed to be doing work, some dresses in hazmat suits. There was plenty of automobile traffic in New Orleans though. And more people on the street the closer we came to Tulane and Loyola. The streets were cracked and bumpy but perhaps they were that way before the Hurricane. I saw signs of damage and some closed businesses when we reached canal street but Sam told me this wasnt due as much from the flood as it was from the ensuing chaos, looting and sniping. Of the latter, I thought it was a myth, but Sam said otherwise. The lines for the trolley are only true on Canal Street (this was ensured so that tourists could somehow benefit from them and the city could recapture some of its former sense of place), but the line outside the central business district is not functioning. Leaving New Orleans we hit traffic the mass of evacuated New Orleaneans who travel from Baton Rouge to New Orleans on the weekends to look after their property and dlo what they can to fix what they can. Comments (1)

First Day
Wednesday, February 01, 2006, 10:45:23 AM | Aharon This will be a short post because I am exhausted. Early this morning I left La Quinta Inn for Abbeville. The hour an a half drive brought me to work by 7:30am where I met many of my fellow workers and my supervisors. After getting set up I began what turned out to be a day long orientation in the field meeting a number of the farmers here and seeing the destruction wrought my Hurricane Rita on their homes and fields. I observed that the marsh environment here has been extensively modified by intense human activity. The most common land use appears to be growing rice/crawfish (each grown seasonally in the same field in rotation). I was pleased to see so many species of birds wading in these crawfish ponds. The rice/crawfish crop is threatened by saltwater intrusion deposited by the hurricanes storm surge (the largest ever seen in cajun memory here), the lack of enough rain this winter to flush the saltwater from their ponds many irrigation canals, the accumulated and sometimes dangerously explosive debris in their fields such as propane tanks tht make machanical harvesting difficult. Sugarcane takes three growing seasons to mature and the saltwater intrusion killed off all the sugarcane growing. Cattle and aligators are also raised here. Thats all for now since I should be asleep already. Comments (1)

Vermilion Parish

Monday, January 30, 2006, 10:15:28 PM | Aharon I just received my deployment details. Ill be heading to Vermilion Parish in southwestern Louisiana, a largely rural parish in the heart of Cajun country where a number of small towns (population less than 5000) were devastated. I am very excited! Ill be staying in Abbeville (or nearby) and filling in a gap with the local team there which needs help writing and editing and synthesizing their planning documents and reports. There seems to be some confusion as to the correct spelling of the parish. The Vermilion Parish Tourist Commission spells the parish with one L. But historically, it appears to have been spelled with two Ls. Here is a map I found online of the parish from 1895 with the older spelling:

And here is an aerial image of some of the rice fields in Vermilion. Rice farming is an economic base of the parish.

I hope to have more information to post soon, but I must take care of some chores and get on the road to Abbeville. Comments (1)

Motel Evacuees
Monday, January 30, 2006, 12:29:22 AM | Aharon

Ive written a little about the motels Ive been staying while waiting for my deployment, but I didnt write up some observations that now seem rather relevant to whats going on here in Baton Rouge related to the evacuees. The reason I havent, Ill chalk up to inexperience transcribing my observations Im not yet well practiced at both writing and determining the relevance of what Im seeing moment to moment. But I think that as I become more comfortable simply writing, Ill be able to put more thought into documenting my observations within the context of current events. I am in Baton Rouge, an hours distance from New Orleans. This city and its suburbs are where tens of thousands of New Orleanian residents came to live after fleeing their flooded homes. Many were housed in local motels and hotels, their accomodations paid for by FEMA. At Motel 6 I noticed the following: When I first came to register at the front desk, I found the door locked from the inside. The manager, a young woman, explained it was for her security. When I asked her to elaborate she simply repeated herself. She locked the door after I entered the motel lobby. I asked her if many hurricane evacuees were staying there. She said, A few. I think there were many more than a few. She was obviously not comfortable with the situation both personally and professionally. I found the motel to be noisy if not lively. During the days especially, I often heard residents hollering to roomates or other guests across the open courtyard and pool, sometimes playing music from their rooms, every minute or so another cellphone ring or walkie-talkie bleep would broadcast to every resident of the motel courtyard that one peson or another had received a call or had been texted. I noticed no one ever used the outdoor pool even though it was warm. Other residents left their doors open to let the music they were playing drift outside. Many residents had notes taped to their windows saying no room service or do not disturb. When the friendly and patient room service woman came to my door she would politely ask me to initial that I had requested no full room service, just the emptying of trash and a change of towels. At night I noticed the presence of a police car in the parking lot. I saw the scampering of stray cats and kittens in the bushes next to the pool and through the fences separating one sprawling roadside parking lot from its neighboring asphalt expanse. A note in the motel lobby advertises complimentary coffee before 9am. I also noticed a single letter posted next to the coffee machine, a comunique from FEMA to evacuees explaining that rooms would no longer be paid for after February 7, 2006. On the local news, I could not find any stories of what was like to live as an evacuee in a motel room, however, other stories featuring a crime angle helped to frame these motels as sources of criminal activity and danger. A motel across the street from me, Microtel, was often featured because they had turned off phone service to motel rooms after 10pm, ostensibly as a means of curbing apparent prostitution. The allegation of prostitution was not investigated by the local news. A poor old black woman was interviewed as relying on the phone service after 10pm in order to communicate with a close relative on the west coast suffering from breast cancer. Another motel, where a white woman and her mother was featured prominently as they complained about the lack of safety and their willingness to kill anyone who knocked at their door. They made this point as the news cameraperson videoed them brandishing and cocking a very large gun. Black and hispanic room service employees sustaining the motel accomodations for these evacuee resident were not interviewed. At the La Quinta Inn, I found less evacuees. The Inn is about twice as expensive as Motel 6. I am treated cordially and with respect by the concierge. The lobby of the Inn is not locked and people actually sit down and talk to one another. A TV set featuring Fox News plays constantly. The friendly and polite room service does not ask me to initial any papers. A stack of FEMA notices

are available on the lobby counter. Last Friday (1/27/2006), while waiting once again for deployment, I met a group of FEMA employees in the lobby. Their task was to inform evacuee residents of the February 7 deadline and the opportunities for assistance if they should need any after that date. The FEMA employees are young and black. one woman and two men. the men speak to me and are very curious about the details of the Long Term Recovery Project Ill be working on. (That makes three of us!) We chat for a while and they invite me later to join them after work some day for beer and billiards. An evacuee approaces them in the lobby about making a FEMA claim and even though that is not their mission at the Inn, they sit down with the man and help him. Comments (0)

Lizards of Louisiana
Sunday, January 29, 2006, 11:24:49 PM | Aharon This is an image of a lizard I took scaling the wall of the Highland Coffeehouse next to LSU last Sunday (1/22/2006). Can anyone help me identify it? Its skin was bumpy with little white bits popping up over it. Cute little critter!

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Baton Rouge: Sense of Place (part 1)

Sunday, January 29, 2006, 11:11:30 PM | Aharon Baton Rouge is a small town that hardly seems to have the urban energy expected for a state capital. A number of concerned planners, civic organizations, corporate sponsors, and urbanist oriented citizens have a vision though. And Im appreciating their efforts. Firstly, there are obvious attempts to raise awareness of the distinctive urban character of the downtown through way finding signage, restoration and renovation of historic storefronts, facades, and streetscapes, and using attractive city-beautiful era type street furniture to evoke the sense that this is a special place that residents here cherish. And there are other ubiquitous, even invisible attributes of the city which reflect the thoughtful patronage of city leaders: there is a freee municipal wi-fi network which covers the Central Business District. Park yourself and your battery operated wi-

fi accessible laptop on a sidewalk bench (yes, they have those here as well), and you can read the local paper online. After my meeting Thursday morning, instead of sitting on an outdoor sidewalk bench though, I walked over to Coffee Star, a local cafe where I was also hoping to check out whatever free community papers and zines were available, and see what fliers may have been posted on a flier table or community corkboard. Coffee Star is a nice cafe (offering free wi-fi) but to my surprise there were no fliers of local art events or music shows. I did find two free community papers but neither seemed to give too much of a glimpse of the local art, music, or youth culture. (Later, someone I met here showed me that this info is found in a Sunday section, called Fun!, inside the citys daily paper, The Advocate.) Coffee Star also did not have any vegetarian options: even their tomato soup had a meat stock base! kvetch. But with free wi-fi it feels decidedly spoiled to

I couldnt stay at the cafe too long anticipating FEMA deployment at any moment, I made certain to make good on my promise to explore Baton Rouges levee walk and take some pictures. Levees figure prominently in almost every major American city as most cities were founded as river ports and these rivers naturally overflowed every few years as rivers are wont to. The deposition of sediment from river flooding is the reason why land next to rivers is so fertile. But farming practices in this country have long sought to maximize agricultural land use to the neglect of nature. The essential riparian buffer, the unique vegetated ecosystems that border rivers, is often reduced to only a few meters of scrub. Important trees such as weeping willows, that sunk their roots into the fresh waters of the river, effectively controlling erosion of the riverbanks, were removed. Riverbanks with steeper sides flow faster causing further erosion. This problem was compounded during American industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century when forests east of the Mississippi near cities of any size were clearcut. Without forests to soak up water, the water travels more quickly to creeks, streams, and rivers, carrying soil and other detritus such as farm waste. There is often no riparian buffer to speak of near the industrialized riverbanks of cities and towns. Add to this, the water poring off of all the impervious surfaces from city parking lots, streets and sidwewalks, driveways, and rooftops, flows directly into stormwater systems getting pumped into nearby rivers and you have the makings for terrific urban floods. Historic urban flooding was rather common place in America until the 1930s and 50s when huge engineering projects accomplished by the US Army Corp of Engineers, effectively created buffers: levees and floodwalls, next to cities saving them from all but the most devastating floods. Floodwalls and levees provided some solace but there were consequences of course. City residents were cut off from an essential aspect of their environmental habitat by anoter huge layer of urban infrastructure. Obvious recreational uses of rivers and streams diminished, and without concerned and popular usage, rivers and streams became more and more polluted without a large enough constituency to protect and preserve them. Leap ahead to the 1960s and 1970s when rational planning began to be challenged by community oriented planning theories and practices which sought to recognize neighborhood assets for residents to use, and to help rejuvenate city economies. All sorts of wonderful city planning solutions were developed: an increased recognition of arts and culture institutions, restoring public transit systems that had been abandoned in favor of personal automobiles, reusing transit lines for bicycle and pedestrian

paths, protecting and promoting historic buildings and residential and business districts, promoting urban art and rethinking public sculpture and wall art (grafitti vs. murals), creating distinctive urban gateways and signage to create a sense of place, rethinking public spaces such as streetcorners, plazas, and streets as cultural assets and to enhance an economy oriented to pedestrian use rather than the efficient movement of workers in automobiles into the city by 9am and out of the city to their suburban retreats by 6pm. Urban neighborhoods, some spearated from nearby rivers and tributaries by levees, received renewed attention as these neighborhoods were within pedestrian walking or bicycling distance to the central business district or legacy (or expandable) public transit systems. To keep these neighborhoods attractive, residents had long sought to protect and promote their nearby parks. But for neighborhoods next to rivers the only available greenspace was that dominated by levees and floodwalls. Similarly, for cities looking to leverage the beautiful waterfronts of their central business districts (for perceived enhanced prestige, a more dynamic tourism economy, and taxable waterfront property value increases), planners needed to find some solution to get people to cross the highways, railroads, and levees commonly situated parallel to their urban waterfront. Examples of these sorts of developments can be found in the American Planning Associations Plannign magazine. And non-profit groups such as the Project for Public Spaces, the Rails-toTrails Conservancy, and even conservation groups such as the Trust for Public Land, help to advocate for reusing public open spaces to enhance the pedetrian, and recreational life and economies of cities. Movements such as Smart Growth in the US, sustainable development in Europe and developing countries, and the Healthy Cities movement in Canada and elsewhere, openly encourage these sorts of developments as a strategy which both controls development through thoughtful stewardship of urban open spaces, and brings other values to local economies (health, tourism, direct use, hedonic/property value, commuter transit, and green infrastructure). Other more intangible values, harder to affix an economic/monetary value on: psychological health, aesthetics, spiritual satisfaction, quality and diversity of wildlife habitat, are also enhanced but are harder to advocate for. And to add some frustratin complexity which is oft ignores, the values of once kind of open space development oriented to one tangible value (tourism) may conflict with another (habitat). Part of the planning process is determining priorities, and in creating a recreational use for an abandoned and sullied urban open space, the restoration of the environment will take a backseat to whatever designs are dreamt to drive new users to the space. So, for example, a desire to provide residents a clear view of their river from a levee walk, might inspire planners to cut away the weeds and brush growing next to the river, ignoring the essential value of the riparian buffer in controlling riverbank erosion, in providing access to wildlife inhabiting a diverse ecosystem, as well as providing a nurturing habitat for fish that lay their eggs and grow their spawn in the slower, cooler waters of riverbanks shaded by river trees and roots. Public perceptions of safety in urban parks, mediated by nighttime lighting and public 911 kiosks, are often at odds with park designs which benefit wildlife habitat. My own feeling is that an responsibly developed and brilliant landscape designs will respect the use of that space for the other creatures we share our cities with, and will also recognize the value of that space as natural and sustainable green infrastructure. Baton Rouges thinking for urban redevelopment along its riverfront levee has not sought to restore any of the terribly important Mississippi riparian buffer lost in the last three centuries to te industrial use of its port and the creation of its massive levee. But they have created an attractive levee walk that connects the downtown to LSUs campus with plans for expansion both north and south along the Mississippi. The result is pleasant enough but also a little

comical: the repetition of lampost, bench, garbage pail every twenty, could benefit from some diversity in the form of the street furniture. (That would, of course, have cost more money for the project.) A restored train station next to the river was made into an annex of a new museum of natural history and planetarium. The levee connects to a WWII battleship, the USS Kitt, a fantastic piece of modern sculpture and fountain, and a very artistic, if baffling, piece of river architecture something like a multi-tiered pier with many curvy paper clip shaped piping. Pictures to follow (full size images can be browsed in the photo gallery). Im looking for information as to who designed the fountain architecture and the river pier tower.

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Checkout to nowhere
Thursday, January 26, 2006, 10:50:27 PM | Aharon Yesterday morning, I finally received the call that my background check came through. Just in time, I thought, since my one week reservation at Motel 6 was coming to an end. So in a reprise of my recent nomadic exertions in DC, late last evening I repacked my belongings into my rental car, and in anticipation of discovering all the details of my deployment acquired some portable gadgets and organizational tools from nearby chain retailers Office Depot and CompUSA. (I grabbed a Canon PIXMA ip90 compact photo printer, and Canons Lide 500f scanner. The latter needs no AC adapter; its powered only through the USB port making it quite a useful and portable scanner. The printer on the other hand, although small and portable, requires an AC adapter, was expensive, and as I learned today, one may easily be borrowed from FEMAs field office, so I will likely be bringing it back to compusa). I am now an official FEMA contractor with all the govt acoutrement to indicate this status: badge, laptop and cellphone. Now Im waiting to actually be deployed. My last evening at Motel 6 capped a week exploring Baton Rouges vegetarian possibilites. Thinking I could find something at a Chinese restaurant I stopped down the road at the Chinese Inn, an example of classic American roadside architecture. The szechuan tofu was spicy but seemed hastily prepared, and a glass of water, when it eventually was provided, tasted funny just like Baton Rouge tap water.

Good eats were found the next day at Taste of China, which had an all I could eat buffet, so I left stuffed. Plenty of veggie grub to be had there. Cheap and recommended if you have to eat off of the highway. Ideally, there would be an inexpensive veggie restaurant downtown. Havent found one yet, but I did locate Coffee Star, a nice cafe on Florida Blvd just east of Third Street. Free wi-fi, decent and relatively inexpensive chai, and comfortable digs. Nothing vegetarian though even the

tomato soup had meat stock. A fewblocks over is the levee, and Ill be visiting it after this post and cup of chai to take a few pics. Also, taking a cue from Richard Layman, Ill be taking pictures of so-called street furniture: way finding signs and other unique streetscape characteristics of Baton Rouge, and whatever else strikes my planners eye. My fathers been taking pictures of urban streets for many years. Now that Ive caught a bit of the bug Ive realized that to take good urban pictures takes a good eye, some talent, and experience. So the ones youre seeing next to these posts are also documenting the development of my planners eye. My first meeting since I arrived this morning gave me a glimpse of the 25 or so other contractors working on the Long Term Recovery Project. I noticed I was one of the few to have actually have been cleared and FEMA badged. I was also one of the youngest. In my unscientific survey I observed the median age was close to 50. Schmoozing with a few of the other contractors was interrupted by the meeting a wonderful, if all to brief, presentation on Louisanas colorful history by documentarian and local historian Jeff Duhe. It was a real pleasure meeting another historian so soon. There will be plenty of opportunities I think to network with some bright and interesting people here. I was expecting some details of my deployment, but so far: not yet sometime this afternoon Im told. I hope to know soon because for all practical purposes Im living out of my rental car today and need to make lodging accomodation for this evening wherever Ill be staying, in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans, or wherever. One more thing, I learned yesterday listeining to local public radio, WRKF 89.3FM, that Baton Rouge/Louisiana State University is the home of the writer and essayist Andrei Codrescu! (This is almost as cool as being in the town as Daniel Pinkwater). Maybe Ill run into Mr. Codrescu (or write to him). Comments (2)

Motel 6
Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 9:17:01 AM | Aharon Fifty years ago Airline Highway was likely a very pleasant country road. No longer. I dont have any pictures of it for you (maybe in an upcoming post) but Im sure youve seen it before. Its a sprawling commercial strip like any other. Every few years they expand the intersections to add another few feet of turning radius. Every few years the time it takes to cross the intersections in traffic takes a minute longer. There are no sidewalks, only ditches and culverts, auto dealers, buffet restaurants, the occasional mall, and a number of motel/hotels clustered around the entrance to the nearby highway, I-12. Thats where Ive been since last Thursday evening.

But I have been able to explore a bit of Baton Rouge. The downtown is lovely, if not lively. Beautiful streetscapes with the occasional parking lot where a building must once have stood. The area around North and 3rd Street is particularly excellent.

Theres some new development by the Mississippi River, the kind of extravagant if contrived development designed to convince the people living out by Airline Highway to come back to the

city for some sports, fun, and culture. A museum of natural history neighbors an arts museum, a small gallery district, a sports arena, and a bit futher south, a casino. Except for this section however, the rivers levee has an industrial feel with a nice view of southern urban decay. There is a levee walk that extends to the Lousiana State University campus however an excellent recreational asset, though Id like to see more of a natural riparian buffer along the Mississippi, maybe a restoration of the great Weeping Willow trees that historically abutted the river, controlled erosion, and calmed and cooled its banks. While wandering around the city Friday night I came across this weird gutted building. Checking the door I discovered to my surprise that this was the regional FEMA office!

I wish I could describe more interesting adventures while Ive been waiting for my background check to come through. I did discover a few free wif-fi hotspots near LSUs campus, and will be spending more time there just to get away from my motel room. And Ill be taking some pictures of the levee and riverfront here too. Comments (2)

Jews in the Bayou

Friday, January 20, 2006, 11:35:35 PM | Aharon Fruity Jews in the Woods, or just plains Jews in the Woods, is the name of a community which is getting larger, that meets and organizes collectively over the internet via a listserve and wiki, and gathers together once or twice a year for Shabbat at a rural retreat of some sort. The values of the community are pluralistic and creative, egalitarian and traditional, ecological and vegetarian, and unabashedly spiritual. A friend of mine named Sherri Vishner, from the DC Beit Midrash introduced me to them and Ive been to two of the gatherings and Ive basically felt they were homecomings. Even as by now Ive grown somewhat cynical regarding prayer and spirituality in general, I welcome the challenge to see things differently and try out new directions. But mostly, its been an opportunity to meet some of the most interesting Jews on the East Coast. Ill be missing the gathering currently being planned for February which will be taking place somewhere in upstate New York. I mention this because Shabbat is arriving here in Baton Rouge in a few hours and through my fruity Jewish contacts, Ive already found some Jews in the Bayou here, vegetarians who know as much about the local Jewish scene as the local Bollywood scene in New Orleans (thanks Yonah and Bev). So in a few hours Ill be in downtown Baton Rouge where the energy of this place is, and exploring it in earnest. Have a peaceful and restful shabbes everyone! Comments (0)

Baton Rouge
Thursday, January 19, 2006, 7:59:03 PM | Aharon After a three hour flight from DC, Im in Baton Rouge. Allan drove me to the airport, once again helping me to appreciate what a wonderful and reliable friend he is. I spent the morning trying to

tease out my anxieties from my past memories and to focus on the good I can do, but still I had butterflies in my stomach.

But arriving in Baton Rouge, whatever angst I felt was superseded by practical considerations. First, acquiring the rental car. Second, determing directions to my destination. Third, meeting my TAC coordinator. Fourth, driving to FEMA HQ for fingerprinting and background checking. Fifth, finding accomodations at the Motel 6. Sixth, scouting for food on this Baton Rouge strip. Seventh, connecting to the Internet via GPRS enabled cell phone.

A little hacking on this blog and I also managed to get gallery2 working with wordpress. Im so proud of myself. Ive still got an eye for understanding and tweaking code after, what has it been, two years since I last programmed, and four since I wrote any serious code? OK, so this wasnt a huge project but Im still happy to know I can support my own web projects. Anderson Cooper is reporting live from the Gulf. NPR has a story about Louisiana Governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, inviting Andres Duany, co-founder of the architectural firm Duany Plater-

Zyberk & Co., to plan the new New Orleans. I feel like Ive arrived in the midst of something, but I wont know exactly what until my background check clears. Until then I have a few days to explore Baton Rouge and Louisiana on my own. Please post in the comments any suggestions of where you think I should visit.

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Last night with friends

Wednesday, January 18, 2006, 7:59:39 PM | Aharon There is a peace here in Pauls hamishe home on Harvard (just a few doors up the street from where I used to live). Im sharing the couch with Emma, a small black and white chihuahua-like dog with big eyes and big ears, and incontinence. She managed to nest in my pillow before I had a chance to lay my head down so its blogging for me instead. This house is warm with people and friends of those people, all very lovely, the kind Id love to be friends with more often.

Today was a study in contrasts. The past few days have seen me increasingly frazzled as I struggled to prepare everything I needed for living out of a suitcase in Louisiana motels for the next three months. A minor fiasco with my credit card meant that I didnt arrive in Baton Rouge as expected and will instead arrive tomorrow (Thursday). (Note to self: make sure to tell the credit company that your company will be making travel arrangements for you with your credit so they wont shut down your card under the impression that it had been stolen.) Couldnt have gotten anything done these past few days without the help of friends and zipcar. Just to catch you up to speed, Sunday I put this blog together, Monday I met with the FEMA contractor Ill be working for to officially be hired and given a workers orientation; Tuesday, my friend Allan helped me go shopping for clothes and luggage, after which I needed to move my apartment into storage by 6pm. I just managed to do that when I came home and realized that I had forgotten to put my bike into storage and my kitchen items, and my computer. All of this was done in haste

under the impression that Id be leaving Wednesday morning. Such a good start for a planner! The good news is that the company that hired me couldnt purchase the ticket for Wednesday because the credit was frozen by all of these odd purchases, completely out of profile with my regular frugal behaviour. Wires were tripped, flags were a-wavin, many cellular minutes were expended waiting for available attendants. Thankfully, my point-of-contact at the company was forgiving, patient, and relieved that it was all getting sorted out. So now I am at Pauls, having been walked out of my home down the block by my landlord after giving him the keys and breaking my lease. With my extra day I was able to put almost everything into storage (forgot the kettle) and to clean my room. I believe it was the clean room that impressed Mr. D- into forgiving my broken lease and even offering to give back my deposit if only he could find a new tenant by February. (Fingers crossed). Minutes ago, Nikki stopped by and handed me a note with all the blessings I could ever want for what Im about to do. (Nikki is a miracle and a holy person and I struggle to keep this in mind when she is talking to me because she looks like any other normal human.) I was beginning to feel anxious about what I had gotten myself into, especially after experiencing the graciousness of friends helping throught these last few days I wont have their company so very soon. Other things to report as well but they were too painful to go over in any detail. Let it just be said that friendship is something to cultivate, and romantic love with all of its magic, is no surrogate for it, if often an impostor. I leave for Louisiana tomorrow with blessings from Jon, and Paul, and Nikki, and Jackie, people who I didnt know a year ago, and some of them even a few months ago but people who I give my love to and share with the solidarity of my being. Comments (0)

Tomorrow is today
Sunday, January 15, 2006, 10:55:36 PM | Aharon Its 1:00am and my mind is spinning with all the things I need to accomplish before Wednesday: clear out of my room move my stuff into storage determine what to bring with me to Louisiana book a flight show my room to prospective tenants buy some luggage, say goodbye to friends sign paperwork and maybe buy an ev-do cellular data card, and a big 2.5 100gb hd for the lappy.

Its hard for me to imagine that in only a few short days Ill be saying goodbye to DC for something completely different and a way of living Ive never experienced. And heres a pic of me pasty white sitting in my now empty room (except for this computer) in a beaming white wifebeater shirt. Nothing better for sweating in and getting dirty thana wifebeater, or A-shirt, when youre moving. How did I get on without one all these years of changing apartments? Comments (0)

On Swedenbrogianism in Bond Hill

Tuesday, January 03, 2006, 6:28:14 PM | Aharon One of the more interesting hypotheses in my book I felt was that Bond Hills first church was trans-denominational, or perhaps even Swedenborgian, reflecting the progressive spiritual framework of Henry Watkins family. The degree to which Watkin was a Swedenborgian hasnt been fully established. We know that Watkins father-in-law Henry Fry was a committed Swedenborgian and vegetarian. We also can surmise that Watkins wife, Laura Ann Fry Watkin, was also Swedenborgian. Until recently we didnt have any additional evidence linking Swedenborgianism to Henry Watkin. But recently we discovered that certain articles, some of the first ever published of Lafcadio Hearns concerned Swedenborgianism, and these were written recently after Henry and Lafcadio first met each other! Ill know more once I actually read the articles, and my findings will be incorporated into the last and hopefully final version of my Bond Hill book. Comments (0)

A few updates
Thursday, November 24, 2005, 7:49:27 PM | Aharon The new edition of Bond Hill: Origin and Transformation contains a few new findings. Robert Wimberg corrected an error of mine, where I had confused the Old Mens and Womens Home (aka the Old Folks Home) with the Altenheim (aka the German Old Mens Home). I really appreciate it when readers take the time to critique this work and help reconstruct this history with me. Dr. Kinji Tanaka of the Lafcadio Hearn Society brought to my attention some new archival material he uncovered from the Iowa State University archives where the papers of Hearn biographer, Dorothea McClelland are kept. I learned that Watkin emigrated to America in 1848 (not 1845 as suggested in a letter from Watkins niece). This would have put Watkin in London at the same time as Henry L. Fry, Watkins father-in-law. (I hypothesize that they may have met each other in radical circles in England, before Watkin married Frys daughter, Laura Ann, in Cincinnati in 1853.) I also learned the name of the Scottish printer who helped bring Hearn into Watkins print shop and bookstore in 1869: J.M. McDermott. These and other updates are included in the latest edition (no. 10. I update the edition number whenever Ive done a printing and made a change, even if Ive only printed one or two copies.) Comments (0)

Latest edition featuring new findings

Thursday, September 29, 2005, 4:56:21 AM | Aharon By the end of the summer my interest in publishing with Arcadia slacked. The editors were great to work with but Arcadia was very interested in publishing the book with original scans of images of old Bond Hill photographs. Unfortunately those photographs may no longer exist. The images of buildings and streetscapes in Bond Hill: Origin and Transformation are mainly images I managed to locate from newspaper articles postcards, and souvenier publications. Arcadia was also hopeful that I could rewrite or reorganize the text for non-academic readers. Ive tried to do this for my most recent edition. It incorporates all the new information Ive uncovered concerning Henry Watkin and his family over the last year. Ive also changed the text in the preface and introduction quite a bit. With a work like this (my first) the inclination to constantly

tinker with it, rewriting sections, and adding new material, will always be there for me. But I truly hope that this edition will be my last one, at least for a while. Comments (0)

Arcadia Publishing to pick up Bond Hill

Friday, May 06, 2005, 5:56:18 PM | Aharon Self-Publishing Bond Hill with on-demand printer lulu.com has been great but I havent been as inclined or motivated to self-promotion as I might have been only a few years ago. So the idea of finding a publisher to pick up my book to promote and distribute seemed like a great idea. Good thing for local historians there is Arcadia Publishing. A professor friend of mine from the University of Cincinnati published his lecture ntoes on the history of Cincinnati with them and Ive generally been impressed by their packaging and honored for my work to be listed in their catalog. There will likely be a trade-off of course, and I will be keen to see what compromises I may have to make with my book as it currently stands with how Arcadia wants to develop it. Im especially interested in continuing to offer Bond Hill through lulu.com as the edition closest to my raw thesis research. The process for publishing with Arcadia has been fairly straightforward. I emailed the publisher with a description of my work and in the publishers reply I was asked some questions such as where I was from and whether I was niterested in attending book signings and had a relationship with any local historical societies. Passing the questionnaire back over email, my answers were reviewed by the publisher and after a little back and forth (there was some concern that since I was currently working post-graduation in Washington, DC that I wouldnt be able to help promote the book effectively in Cincinnati) I was sent by mail an official Arcadia Publishing Book Proposal to complete and mail back to them with 20 sample images and illustrations. Arcadia moves very quickly! Just about a week after receiving my book proposal they callled me that they were interested in publishing and were wondering how quickly I could get all the materials ready for publishing. Thanks to my work with lulu, my answer was that all of my materials are ready. The book may be published as early as July 2005! Ill probably add a few more things to my text about suburban history, building associations, 19th century commuters and the aspirations of country living, and cooperatives before submitting the draft to them. Comments (0)

Updated Title Wording: Railroad Suburb, not MetroSuburb

Friday, March 11, 2005, 6:48:59 PM | Aharon Ive updated the title of the book. Ive relaced the ambiguous term, Metro-Suburb with the more historically accurate term Railroad Suburb. Ive also created a barcode for my ISBN for bookstores that only carry books with barcodes (for trackng sales at the counter). Also, an actual publisher looks to be interested in my history of Bond Hill, so a new version may be out in about a years time with some modified content and layout. Much else to report: Im nearing the end of my internship at TPL in DC and am looking at the doctoral program in urban studies at the University of Maryland. There are also other job leads Im pursuing. Comments (0)

On Names
Sunday, November 28, 2004, 7:27:17 AM | Aharon A close friend of mine has a popular name. She struggles to identify herself, to take strength in her unique being, and she is defied by her name: she is one of millions with this name. The galactic central planning committee gathers to converse and meditate on this problem for a thousand years. One venerable and whiskered planner ends the silence offering, On our planet, Omicron Theta, we solved this dilemma by giving every new cloned OThetan a unique identifier. The monosyllabic names went first (Lars, Barb, Flin, etc.), then the duo syllabic names (Lucile, Laura, Robert, etc.), and on and on. By our eighteenth generation, the impediment of referring to each other by our octosyllabic names revealed the inefficiency of our schema, especially when making references in our academic journals and other publications. OThetans simply shortened their names to one or two syllables when making polite conversation over tea. Non-conformists subverted the naming system altogether by choosing abstract sygils in lieu of pronounceable names. This was over five thousand years ago. While we have kept these longish names for standards compliance purposes, today we all generally go by the name of Bob and rely on our advanced olfactory glands to distinguish each others unique nature As Bob seemed to be finished, galactic central planner 230459872304923452309710253234157890123502389513453245789710345-1239481723- 58971234895713 began what in fact was an interruption. But before 230459872304923452309710253234157890123502389513453245789710345-1239481723- 58971234895713 could finish introducing himself, attention had drifted back to Bob who was further describing the contemporary OThetan naming system. As it happens, in every generation there are OThetans born without developed sensory glands, and navigating our society for them, is understandably nightmarish. These OThetans cannot even discern there own unique nature in effect, they are nameless to themselves (although we could discern their identity quite readily). For their name, they rely more heavily on the old system, and they shorten their octosyllabic name to a monosyllabic one such as Biff or Sam, without being stigmatized as being overly pretentious or affected. Such names helps them in identifying themselves as unique beings, even as they remain nearly blind in identifying the rest of society as the rest do. Ironically, in adapting to their olfactory deficiencies, their light sensory lobes often become more sensitive and are capable of discerning our body shapes, musculature and skeletal structure and these handicapped OThetans have taken upon themselves the curious habit of mapping these external physical characteristics to certain subtle personality deviancies otherwise hidden to ordinary OThetans. Only at our academic conferences are these handicapped OThetans capable of putting a name to a face, as it were. At that, the galactic central planning committee politely applauded Bob OThetan for his contribution, ascended from their lotus pond, and drifted to the buffet for corn dogs and spinachopita. Comments (0)

Bond Hill Planning History Presentation

Saturday, November 27, 2004, 12:19:28 AM | Aharon Last weekend (the weekend before Thanksgiving) I returned to Cincinnati to give a presentation of my research findings to the community at the Bond Hill branch of the Public Library. About 25 people came to hear my talk and to ask questions. One woman even bought a copy of my book! Thrilling. Hopefully, Ill be asked to give the presentation again to other audiences. I do think Bond Hills history is of interest to urban historians and neighborhood planners, but really,

if this book isnt well disseminated, my work will have little impact and Id like a greater legacy for the hard work I accomplished these past two years. Regarding the presentation itself, this was the first time I had given a public talk before strangers and I was a bit anxious beforehand. This anxiety motivated me to prepare many slides to elucidate my story and to challenge the imagination of my audience. Admittedly, and hour and twenty minutes is a bit long for most people and I didnt even cover everything. In future presentations I will cover less material, and harp on the absolutely relevant details I want my audience to remember. Comments (0)

Orphaned Expectations
Saturday, November 20, 2004, 7:22:13 AM | Aharon One of the drawbacks of a curious and imaginative mind is that youre constantly thinking that the places you visit and the people you meet will defy your expectations. I have been living in DC for three weeks now, just enough time to have made the acquaintance of some of the people I share my workday with, even enough time to meet some strangers, study the eccentricities of my landlord, and contemplate the cracks and bumps of the sidewalk on my way to work. When Im confronted by some person acting in an ordinary way, as for instance, when I was told by an office manager that I must use Internet Explorer and forbidden to use Mozilla Firefox, my reaction was one of shock, shock at their playing so perfectly the part of some imaginary character approximating the performance of an office manager rather than being the chaotic and unpredictable human that they truly are. Why should I be stunned? That ordinary people advancing to positions of power would prefer caution to freedom, corporatism to expression, and obedience to zeal should not surprise me like it does. And once again I am made aware of a dangerous and perhaps childish naivite, to expect people to behave freely and respect freedom. I pray that I never meet their expectations. Comments (0)

On Nudity
Friday, November 19, 2004, 7:32:58 AM | Aharon Interrobang is in Cincinnati where Aharon has volunteered to give a presentation of his masters thesis research to the good people who show up at the Bond Hill Branch Library. What will I tell them asks Aharon while he procrastinates by interrobanging his head against the wall of his old bedroom. So much anxiety. But take comfort, he is also feasting in the plenty of his parents largess. Tonight: lasagna a welcome trade from the dinners of mushroom soup and spinach hes accumstomed himself to in our nations capitol. I have done the right thing by coming here. This is a challenge! says Aharon to no one in particular, except quite a few people will be particular tomorrow when they see Aharon beginning his presentation in the nude. Whats wrong with that? I am comfortable with my body, says Aharon and interrobang listens and records these ruminations. Ivan and Katziel sit nearby self-possessed, comfortably nude and furry, ignoring his bald lie. Comments (0)

A Story of a Fly
Thursday, November 18, 2004, 7:24:35 AM | Aharon

Once upon a time there was a fly, big and hairy as some flies are. He was born in a city nearby a large river in Mesopotamia. There the young fly ate the flesh of a corpse until he was no longer a squirming maggot and had to find a bride to birth a new generation of squirming maggots. Listening to the wind for guidance, he unraveled his still tender wings and buzzed off. The fly navigated a warm breeze above the scrub of the desert sniffing for a good carcass to hang out about and find a mate. After a while he came to the carcass of a rotting gazelle which had expired, parched and alone. He looked around but everywhere he turned were gangs of smaller naked flies, the females of which were not interested in him. He smelled wrong, buzzed wrong and was simply too big for them. Being a fly this didnt bother the fly so much as it prevented him from finding peace. So exasperated, the fly took off and feeling weak, let himself be blown even further away by the dry hot wind until he smelled from afar the bloating body of a goat which had fallen over a rocky ledge. There he found much larger hairy flies engaged in fierce battle with a colony of bats for their prize. No one took an interest in him at all as he was too small to be of consequence to them. The fly was really too weak to be of interest to anyone now, even a female of his own unique species of fly, so he let his body relax and be driven into the desert to become a feast for some other small creature. Over and over he rolled until his wings were quite dusty and his exoskeleton merely a shell of a once vital fly. The desert night came, and the fly, nearly expired, was too quiet to be noticed by the lizards and the mice which scurried past. And there was peace. All of a sudden, the fly woke up in a dark wet place, so wet that he was weighed down with water. But he was alive and that was something. And he wasnt alone either. There in the deep well he had been blown into were quite a number of other things which had in their own way fallen. Most were quiet like the fly, or dead like the scorpion next to him, but one creature the fly could not make out in the dark was raising quite a ruckus, and this was what had awakened him. Help me cried the thing in vain, fluttering its useless wings weighed down with water and buzzing in futility. The fly could not help the thing escape, he could not even help himself, but he had enough strength to speak, so he spoke to perhaps give some measure of peace to this other thing. I am a fly and how I came here I have no idea. The thing stopped buzzing to listen realizing it wasnt alone. The fly continued, I had set out to be with someone and the only companions I found were discord and loneliness. Now I am here with you, a thing which speaks and which I can understand. I would help you escape if I had the strength, but all I have is my voice. The thing was quiet for a long time and then spoke, I came from a place above only to find the echo of my desolation. And now in my final madness I have become that echo which I despise. I hear myself speak although I have no words to give, no sanctuary or friendship. I am only for myself, a conflict of motion and being, forever. I am lost and without peace. The buzzing stopped and when the end came, there was peace nevertheless. The thing drifted under the water and floated beneath the fly raising him up. At noon, the desert sun shone into the well and with its heat freed the wings of the fly from the weight of the water. The fly stayed with the body of the thing for a few more days before leaving. On exiting the mouth of the well, he was swatted by a goat herder and crushed beneath the foot of a camel. Comments (0)

Working
Friday, October 22, 2004, 12:09:07 AM | Aharon Well, Ive made it. Im now living in DC having found a nice internship at the Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit specializing in helping communities create parks and trails. Im working directly with Peter Harnik who helped to found the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, very exciting. And, get this, I found a place to live within ten minutes walking distance of work. A

planners dream. Now to make some new friends. Thanks to all who helped me with their kind wishes while I struggled to look for work and a place to live. Meanwhile, interest in Cincinnati continues to grow over Bond Hill: Origin and Transformation. My presentation on Bond Hills suburban history will be at the Bond Hill Branch library on November 15. Comments (0)

Washington, DC
Wednesday, September 29, 2004, 10:37:21 PM | Aharon I am in DC, surviving on the generosity of friends and a dwindling bank account as I look for work in our nations capital. Ideally, Ill find something in trail advocacy or historical and environmental preservation (perhaps all three!). So far my interviews have been wonderful and the planners Ive met here, exceptional. Dr. Tanaka is now in Matsue, Japan at the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Conference so perhaps already a new audience is aware of my research into Hearns mentor, Henry Watkin, and the neighborhood Watkin helped to found, Bond Hill. Please forgive me as I raise the price for purchasing Bond Hill: Origin and Transformation as I need all the help I can get surviving being a bohemian for the upcoming few weeks. Comments (0)

Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Conference

Sunday, September 19, 2004, 9:38:52 AM | Aharon Since first getting this printed on lulu.com Ive met some incredible people interested in this research. One such person is Dr. Kinji Tanaka of the Japan Research Center of Greater Cincinnati. Dr. Tanaka has long been interested in Lafcadio Hearn and by extension, Henry Watkin, Lafcadio Hearns mentor (and founder of Bond Hill). I am thrilled that Dr. Tanaka will be taking copies of my book to Japan for the upcoming Conference in memory of the 100th Anniversary of Lafcadio Hearns death in September 1904. The latest version of this book has more material relating to Henry Watkin and Watkins family, Laura Ann Fry Watkin, daughter of the master woodcarver Henry L. Fry, and their daughter, Effie Watkin. With Dr. Tanakas help I was able to discover new material on Henry Watkin at Iowa State Univeristys Archives including a beautiful photo of Watkin, their home in Pleasant Ridge, Ohio, and an interior photo of one of the rooms in their home showing what appear to be Henry and Lauras wedding portraits. This should be very exciting new information for fans of Lafcadio Hearn. Over the next few weeks I will be on the East Coast interviewing and networking for jobs. Wish me luck. Comments (0)

Post SOP Life

Tuesday, August 10, 2004, 9:54:17 PM | Aharon Having graduated from planning school this past Spring (2004), over the Summer Ive been cleaning up my thesis and looking for work. As for the former, you can purchase the fruit of my labors here. (If you prefer to read the 230 page fully-formatted 27mb pdf, then please do so at:

http://lulu.com/cdi). As to the latter, I am still unemployed. Ive been looking for work in the DC area, seeking positions which support environmental planning, policy analysis, or research. My dream job would be to work as a planner for an eco-restoration and/or recreational greenway project. If you or someone you know is seeking to hire someone awesome with a diverse and excellent skillset (research, computer, programming, statistics, writing), then please contact me. Comments (0) Show all items Displaying 158 / 158 All 158 New Sort by: List Order Date Title Author Filter by category: 6 3m1ly 1 Adventure 2 Advocacy 1 Aharonium 68 alienation 2 Ambient Music 6 angels 1 Animism 1 antisemitism 1 Apocrypha 1 Apsu 1 art 3 Art History 8

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