Half the World

Polar Snow Cap

  Is half the world not covered in snow? Strangers and intimates under one snug  blanket. Evidence of global warming. No holes in the ozone layer! The polar ice caps are fine. Don’t worry! Go about your business as usual. Soon it will be spring.  The temperature will be temperate. The snow and ice will melt. The world will be green. Converse! Convene!

Water Taxidermy

Canal-boating Uni

   Uni says: “Don’t put your shovels too far away!”

   Having seen his own shadow Monday morning, Uni the groundhog made his 29th forecast following a water journey in Myerstown, Pennsylvania: six more weeks of winter, colder days in the corn crib. His coming out party is part of the Eastern Pennsylvania Goundhog Lodge 17, a group dedicated to preserving Pennsylvania Dutch heritage.

Rabbit Rests

Rabbit at Rest

  ):< Brewer mourns loss of native son.  Kingdom for an Angstrom. >:(

SPOTTED: The Wash Me Variations

Spotted

   

Seen in Pottstown, PA:

DRIVE ON

THE RIGHT.

PASS ON
THE LEFT.

 

 GET OFF THE

#@*!

CELL PHONE!

( Panel truck driver/calligrapher embellishes  “dead air” area on rear doors).

Weekend Warrior: Straight Through Gibraltar

  

Weekend Warrior, Eddie, Raven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Update:

 Have you ever gone straight through? Jabal Tariq, it was. Tariq’s Mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warrior and Edgar Allan Poe and Sizzy journeyed to Gibraltar.

 

Gibraltar, PA. U.S.A.: a village of  apparently few inhabitants and no official population count.  Just the straits, ma’am.

The township population is 6,869 and 97% white (2000 Census figures).

Main Street Gibraltar

Eddie thought he saw a sign for Elf-Storage, so we stopped to see what they had on the shelves. It was Self-Storage. We were locked out :(

Elf Storage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A faux topiary elfin Mickey Mouse posed with Eddie, Raven and Warrior.

mouse elf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eddie found a tell-tale heart in the asphalt topping:

 

Tell-Tale Heart

 

We drove under the fire station sign:

Fire Station Sign

 only to find a sign at the fire station:

Any Volunteers?

Is this the shooting gallery?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No wonder the place is deserted.

Evidence of Shooting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did the January 18 Shooting event go, we wondered?

We wandered up the street to ask someone. 

Oh. Dessert!

Dessert! Sweet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 They have chocolate mint chip. Have they any catnip?

in the knife throwing gallery

Guess not.

Enough! Nevermore!

Lincoln logs

Enough of this Lincoln Log sort of thing!

 

Any ideas? How about Aqueduct in time for the daily double?

Aqueduct sign

This state-owned site is on the National Register of Historic places and is vacant.

It is an architectural and engineering marvel by Beecher, Ephraim, Pettitt and Kimber.

1800-1824 Aqueduct

Here ARE the Rocks of Gibraltar!

Hello World!

I wish Thomas Jefferson could be here.

On a Rock of Gibraltar

    

We left town as we had found it.

bench, red/green

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 including these rocks:

Hard Rock Gibraltar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next drink is on us!

 

Seven-Up sign

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or, us in the drink.

sea you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Addendum: edited and revised from The Volume Library, 1977:

on Gibraltar the British Crown Colony, to reflect Gibraltar village 2009:

Gibraltar has no natural resources [once an iron furnace] and no useable farmland  √[check], and the colony village depends heavily on tourism, the fire company, transit trade, its two traffic lights, and its excellent citizens harbor and drydock facilities. A British naval base Turkey Hill convenience store and pump station contributes heavily to its economy.

travel

Rudder to the Ship of State

   

    Sell it, trade it, or make something of it?

    I have the rudder to the ship of state!

    What’s its name?

Argent Aurific Oneiric

   Inauguration Day morning in Pennsylvania is silver rich. With the temperature at eight degrees at 5:30 a.m., the creek continues to churn out mist and moisture which forms fern-like crystal colonies on the bank’s marginalia of branches and boughs. The water itself at dawn has  the teal and aqua iridescentishness of abalone; the heron flying low: blue and slate. The woods look silverish. Closer inspection shows that is white snow on grey bark.

   We are  150 miles and several light seconds removed from the inaugural activities and events in Washington, D.C, where it is a new address for the Obama and Biden families, a glimmering new dress for the First Lady, her Adam the first black man in the White House and at the presidential helm.

    Sunrise grows golden. The augury is auric. We must pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off - of snow, of dust, of gold dust. Yesterday was only a dream.

 

Web Presence: the Barack of an Envelope

  

Barack of an Envelope: Web Presence

   Heavy rain before daybreak. Walking for the Heron Report: first one sits hunched on a branch, facing the bank of the creek, opposite. From this position, its head looks like a hard-boiled egg on grey feathers.

   The day is quiet, the sky grey. Mostly runners on the path, single or in pairs.

   Another heron flies above the creek, squawking and heading downstream until it lands in the high notch of a tree. 

   One man jogging: a once-regular whose schedule is shaken up by golf and bicycling. He asks if I am happy about the new man in office and, when I say “Yes,” he relates this:

  “People tell me I’m crazy. I wanted Obama to win but I voted for McCain because I didn’t want Obama to win by a landslide.”

   Hmmm.

   One more heron on the way back, in the water. Just another day.

  

   Related stories:

   * The New York Times

   * Yahoo! News
barack obama

Men of October

    

Philadelphia: pole-placed sign

World Series put off 7:(, election less than a week away. Boys of summer, signs of autumn, things in windows, at the door. Ghosts and guises.  

Obama sign, homemade

The displays of partisanship and sportsfandom. Cheer.  

Glitter Go Phillies

   The celebration of the season, the punctuation of the month – to let us know we’re alive.  

Adult Go Phils

Of naivete and adulthood, of knowing and not knowing, how any of it turns out,

Gourds on sill. Phils.

we put on our best,

 

 hope for the best,

work for the best, live and love for the best.  

 

The Great Pumpkin Bale-out

Shut-eye Pod?

Valle staples, Newburger pulls taut

Newburger measures for finishing touches

                [Gas. Food. Lodging.]

               
                 

 

 

                 Dreamspot, anyone?

     In the brief hour between  seven and eight in the morning, four designers were busy as bees on Walnut Street between Broad and 16th Streets in Philadelphia’s Center City. Two parking spots, one day, in the middle of National Design Week. Theirs was a chance to show in one of more than 90 venues under the aegis of Design Philadelphia: powered in major proportion by Philadelphia University.

   The design team of Leonel Valle and Jeffrey Newburger, in collaboration with Elvira Moran and Alessandra Veronese, had won the right to their allocated site in the [spot] design competition, part of this year’s fourth annual Design Philadelphia event, themed Down to Earth that ended Wednesday, October 22.

[spot] was curated by the architectural interest group Qb³ to introduce collaborative design into the public realm and see what architecture, graphic design and product development can do. [spot] contained eight “outdoor interventions” each of which considered alterate uses of “the seam in the city’s fabric” a parking space represents.

   A pair of round-top boxes, one orange, one apple green, were installed on the sidewalk next to a parking space.  The design team had unfolded what looked like a ramp, that was to soon to become, with the addition of legs and mats, a bed.

DIalogue boxes?

   This Murphy bed mechanism on the street is the off-the-wall dream-child of the creative four, who hatched the idea during a party for Valle’s birthday in the summer.

“We thought: ”We should do something for the homeless,” and met the competition entry deadline the next Monday,” said Veronese.

   Valle and Phila delphia native Newburger, who  work as set designers for Lionfish Designs in New York City, combined talents with graphic artist Moran and artist Veronese, who also work in New York.

   

 A postcard summarizes the unit as: a permanently installed collapsible urban rest and sleeping pod.”

dreamspot postcard

It calls for two units per parking space. Each pod would be unlocked by a coin-operated meter.

 The finished product would have a type of tent material with a zippered closure.

After sleeping or nap time, a solar powered sensor would fold it back up.

The exterior of the box could include sponsor or advertising space.

 

  

 

The boxes, placed in the margin of the sidewalk and extending into the street, are on the fringes of the pedestrian and vehicular traffic spaces.

“We wanted to raise the question of why a car has a right to sleep in the streets – which are public spaces – and not people, ” Valle said. 

“Just because homeless people have trouble being in the society doesn’t mean they have no rights to be in the society,” said Veronese.

 Cost for one prototype Newburger estimated at between seven and eight hundred dollars. 

“People will find a use for Dreamspot, said Newburger. ”For example, an actor friend of mine said he would use dreamspot to nap or relax in between auditions or rehearsals. Even NPR [radio] did a piece about people taking a nap in the middle of the day!”

(To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;)

 A Philadelphia city recycling truck headed up Walnut in stop and go traffic. Its driver was the first to weigh in. Never having seen one before, he knew exactly what it was:

“That’s for homeless people, right?” asked the driver.

He got it! said the team.

 Along came a taxi cab:

Veronese answers drive-by question from cab driver!

 

 

“How do you carry the bed?” asked a taxicab driver.

 

 ”You don’t need to carry the bed!” said Veronese. “It’s inside the box.”

 

  

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the team continued to make it work:

 ”Do you like the fabric?” asked Valle. “The fabric gives it a cocoon-y feel!”

   “The reason we like the fabric is it’s humongous!”

“Don’t talk and work,” said Veronese with a smile. “Just staple. We are working here!”

“Don’t you have enough tension in your life?” Newburger asked Valle.

“No!” Valle said.

 

 Two workmen named Kevin and Nick, both union carpenters, stopped and looked on at the unfolding of the project. After asking their What is this? question, they, too responded to the design statement.

 

“Would you feel comfortable sleeping on the street?” asked Kevin. “I’d sleep with one eye open! It’s interesting, though. Can I give it a test run? I love it, it’s great!”

“You mean to tell me if I have a million dollar store on this street, I’m going to let people sleep outside?” said Nick. “They wouldn’t last a week in Philadelphia. You’re gonna have vandalism and people having sex in there.”

The carpenters, Nick and Kevin

(they say philly fans are the toughest! ) 

“I think it’s terrific. For the homeless

mailboxes on Walnut

it would be wonderful,” said a man of

about sixty

Homeless Man with Cart, Blankets

years of age

 who declined to give his name.

“Does Project H.O.M.E. know about this? They have patrols, picking up people in the cold weather.”

 

 

Onlooker George DeVaux was working his way up the street, and stopped to give Dreamspot his nod of approval.

“There are some interesting statements here, ” said DeVaux. “An enlightenmentationalism. When you dream a dream it is called a vision… Extra-sensitive perception. I truly belive that’s what it is. This one is the sun, moon and little stars, down here on earth.”

    ”This is great! It looks beautiful. It has to withstand a class of pre-kindergarten kids,” said Newburger, anticipating morning visitors.

 ”Clean it up so it looks good!” directed Valle.

“I think we should touch this one up, too.

 

Better than a park bench

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   “It’s a luxurious sleep?” asked Valle.

   “Better than a park bench,” replied Moran.

   “It used to be a dream,” said Valle. “Now it’s a reality!”

 

 

Design Philadelphia display on Walnut Street

     Other links:

www.designphiladelphia.org

www.projecthome.net

www.npr.org

www.gophilly.com