“Flayed Angel”
Jacques Gautier d’Agoty
If you’ve not yet done so, pop on over to new blog Morbid Anatomy for a tour of some beautiful vintage medical illustrations. My favorite recent post was this collection of links to the work of anatomical artist Jacques Gautier d’Agoty.
Gautier d’Agoty’s “Flayed Angel” is the inspiration for this poem, by Leslie Adrienne Miller, from her new collection, The Resurrection Trade
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Hidden Cities II: Embarkation for CytheraÂ
Peter Milton, 2004
For you impoverished John Crowley fans out there, there are two more days to win a free copy of volume 1 of the “smart-looking” new paperback reissue of Aegypt. To win, write a haiku and submit it by Friday:
Announcing our first ever Great Haiku Galley Give-Away, featuring John Crowley’s legendary Book One of the Aegypt Cycle THE SOLITUDES! Write a brief, witty and polished haiku about why you are worthy to receive an early reader’s edition of this beloved title. The Overlook Press is re-issuing all of the Aegypt Cycle in collectible and smart-looking paperback format. Deadline for entries is Friday 6/22! Get your 5-7-5 on! And you could be a winner. Many will enter, 5 people will win. Winning haikus shall be posted and much glory shall be had. Send to theoverlookpress at gmail dot com. (The Wingéd Elephant)
For you non-impoverished Crowley fans, check out this incunabula edition of Little, Big with illustrations by Peter Milton. We, the impoverished, can still drool on Milton’s web gallery – laptop keyboards beware! (The illustration at the top of this post is not from Little, Big - it’s a teaser of its potential surreal yumminess.)
Bee and Echinacea
watercolor, 8.5″ square
2007
A few weeks ago, I asked a beekeeper at the Portland (Oregon) farmer’s market whether his bees were ok. “Yeah, they are,” he said, “but I get that question a lot.” On Saturday a Seattle beekeeper told me he’d “had some losses” but added soberly, “it could be a lot worse.”
Last weekend I discovered Seattle’s Gas Works Park. By accident. And ended up on a tour through the derelict gasworks – led by the park’s designer, Richard Haag. The structures are fenced off, so I got the impression this was an unusual privilege. Fortunately my camera’s battery wasn’t completely exhausted, though I was torn between taking photos and listening to Haag recount his efforts several decades ago to convince the city that the industrial site could be bioremediated. Among his persuasive arguments: growing a nice crop of tomatoes in what was thought to be dead soil.
The white color of this albino peacock is due to the missing black melanine pigment. The usual rich colors of the peacock are seen because black pigment which absorbs most of the incident light, allowing us to see only the interference colors. In this peacock, the interference is still happening, but the effect is entirely washed out by the abundance of white light. In this albino, you can see that the “eyes” of the tail feathers are clear, not colored.
Via the Evilutionary Biologist, a fun website about the science of color – not just the biology of our eyes, but the physical properties of objects that make them appear colored. Why is water in the sea blue, but water in a glass clear? How is the glow of lightning different than that of a light bulb? What causes the rainbow of color “in” an opal? There’s quite a bit here I didn’t know, or don’t understand as well as I should!
The website is maintained by an organization called IDEA. Some of the pages are under construction, and unfortunately the dates suggest the project may be abandoned, but at least it’s a good start for future reading. IDEA also has a mixed bag of other websites, including color vision and art, pigments, scientific analysis of old masters, and butter. (One of these things is not like the others. . . !)
This lovely pink bauble is better known as a:
A) gremlin
B) globulin
C) glomerulus
D) gomphosis
E) gomphus
(answer below the fold. . .)
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Alice (film, 1988)Jan SvankmajerIn the Boston Review, celebrated fantasy author John Crowley (Little, Big) reviews the photography/art of Rosamond Purcell (I blogged about Purcell’s photography for National Geographic and her 2006 book, Bookworm,
Rosamond Purcell’s photographs—all still lifes—are of things, and they are usually things we recognize, whether we have encountered them before or not; but our recognition is undermined because we don’t know how they got that way. We are asked to examine her recording with the same wonder, salted with revulsion, that she has brought to her examination of the object.
I love Purcell, so Crowley was preaching to an enthusiastic choir. But in his last paragraph he introduced me to another artist I can’t believe I’ve never heard of: surrealist filmmaker Jan Svankmajer. Continue reading
Forest Fires, Umatilla National Forest, Washington State (2006)
Susannah Sayler,
The Canary Project
“A Confession of Lies”
Elizabeth Macklin, A Woman Kneeling in the Big City (1992)
No, it isn’t needed: this blue sky, the two exact trees
Where they are—green ash, blue pine. The seas can rise
To within an inch of the buildings but will not,
Ever. For now, like them, my words can be trusted.
There is no need for a doubt. We will not die.
We cannot keep the woods from receding north
To a cooler horizon. Red, white, and yellow
Trash will escape our hands to go into the water.
A glowing, new coal will escape our lips and go down
Through time in the water, to come up a cool, gold
Drink. The truth: We aren’t eager to die. We
Turn all our acts to good. We think and desire
Alike. Whatever we start we complete. We don’t
Let our anger loose. All earth
Is as wide and dear and clean as when I was small.
Whenever I lie, I tell a truth.
Elizabeth Macklin has a new poem in the June 4 New Yorker.
More poems from A Woman Kneeling in the Big City
From the Bizarre Vintage Americana Time Capsule: “City of the Bees,” a 1951 bee filmstrip from the “Moody Institute of Science.”
I happened across this film while researching an upcoming post. Until twenty minutes in, I suspected the MIS was another name for the Dharma Initiative. I started looking surreptitiously for Marvin Candle. But everything changed around 22:00, when retro-charming, grainy footage of dancing bees was suddenly displaced by the Ten Commandments! Hey. . . this isn’t really about science, is it?
From yesterday’s walk: ants, probably Formica obscuripes, or thatching ants, tending their flock (I’m guessing a black bean aphid or similar species).
