Ramage

Bodyline cables | State Library of New South Wales

Bodyline cables | State Library of New South Wales.

silent bowling frequently changed unavailingly

via cityofsound

Vapourings

[keri smith]

"When Nummo speaks, what comes from his mouth is a warm vapour which conveys, and itself constitutes, speech. ...Thus clothed, the earth had a language, the first language of this world and the most primitive of all time. Its syntax was elementary, its verbs few, and its vocabulary without eloquence. The words were breathed sounds scarcely differentiated from one another, but nevertheless vehicles. Such as it was, this ill-defined speech sufficed for the great works of the beginning of all things."

- from Conversations with Ogotemmêli, by Marcel Griaule.

"I see the village of Borvikha near Moscow...on the Moscow river...Where we were staying there was a square field about one verst each side surrounded by a forest. In the middle of the field was a small island of young pines, and within that little wood was a tiny meadow.

If it had rained the night before and the sun came out hot in the morning, then a miracle occurred: an invisible vapour of mint rose up from the field...The same vapour, a mist of mint, enveloped one on the downslope of a shallow green ravine some distance away..."

- Mikhail Osorgin remembering his last summers in the Russian countryside before being exiled, on Lenin's orders, in 1922. From The Philosophy Steamer by Lesley Chamberlain.

Cover of RUSSKAYA ZEMLIA ("Russian Land. Almanac for Youth").Paris, RPK & YMCA Press, 1928, a book which contains a contribution by Mikhail Osorgin. One of the many fascinating, and often very rare, books to be found at Russian Art and Books.

A Thousand Unknown Finns

Tuhat tuntematonta

A project from the Archive for Prints and Photographs at the Finnish National Board of Antiquities, Museovirasto.

via Chirayliq

A Witches' Ladder

Or is it?

The history of this object seems to point to the ways in which the stories about an object may grow, allowing folk-lore itself to become folk-lorised.

Whether it's a device to enable witches to cross roof-tops, or a sinister voodoo-like way of knotting in ill-wishes for later release, or "nothing but a string set with feathers to frighten birds from a line of peas", it's a fascinating, beautiful object.

via England: The Other Within - Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Rape of the Loc

Some recent gems from the Library of Congress random image feed [ink to RSS feed]:

As a result of economies in the early space program, these two brave pioneers were forced to share a jet-pack. Captain Kjelston (on the right) looks a little worried...

[the two captains pose with the trophy prior to the Army/Navy football game, 22nd November 1924]

Secretary Jardine and Mrs. Coolidge at a chrysanthemum show, 5th November 1925

British kitchen at Amiens, sometime during the First World War (not quite haute cuisine, one feels...)

Goodbye, Mr. Kagel

Mauricio Kagel, a composer whose music I've only lately become aware of, died a few days ago. This was a man who once wrote a piece for a quartet of zithers.

I miss him already.

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• Mauricio Kagel, 76, Writer of Avant-Garde Music, Is Dead

Sculpturing

"Asa Ames is a mysterious and tragic figure. The young sculptor died from consumption when he was 27 years, 7 months, and 7 days old. Though his own life was short, he immortalized family members and neighbors in the vicinity of Evans, Erie County, New York, in a legacy of twelve three-dimensional portraits of children and young adults carved between 1847 and his death in 1851... Ames's sense of himself as an artist may be implied in the Federal Census of 1850, in which his occupation is listed as "sculpturing." Details of Ames's own history remain shrouded in shadow, but the work of his hands illuminates the meaningful and personal nature of the lives he captured so beautifully in wood."

Asa Ames: Occupation: Sculpturing, an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, via art tattler

Taxonomy, again

An apple is what you do with it.

What 'apple' means to your brain, via the Kenyon Review blog.

Taxonomy

All the things I know but of which I am not at the moment thinking. - 1:36 pm, 15 June 1969, New York.

piece by Robert Barry¹ in 557,087, an exhibition curated by Lucy R. Lippard at the Seattle Art Museum in September/October 1969. [from the book Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966-1972...]

1.Robert Barry was interviewed about his work by Ursula Meyer on October 12, 1969. It's up at U B U W E B, and very much worth reading.

R-r-r-ramage..? Is that you...?

Yes, it's me. Don't tell anyone.