group portrait, Radar Evaluation Party
DMNS Meteorite Collection
Colleagues at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, led by Dr. James Hagadorn, the Curator of Geology at the museum, released a fine 36-page publication The Meteorite Collection of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It contains a fascinating history of the collection with back stories on some of the many specimens, along with a reference list and a full catalog of the collection. It’s available as a free pdf download, but the paper copy is well worth the $3.16 price-point (how do they manage to sell it for so little??). It’s the next best thing to a visit to the DMNS … when in Denver!
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Hagadorn, James W., Emerald J. Spindler, Ada K. Bowles, and Nicole M. Neu-Yagle. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Report 17: The Meteorite Collection. Vol. December 11, 2019. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Report SR-17. Denver, CO: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2019.
Following is a selection of meteorite specimens in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science collection:
more “DMNS Meteorite Collection”
QoD
In the stead of the tedious roll-calling in my more formal university classes, I started to implement a Question of the Day process. At the beginning of the semester, at the start of each session, one student was asked come up with a question and pose it on the QoD form which then circulated around the room during the session, to be filled out as decided by each individual. I placed no restrictions on content, and one didn’t have to answer at all, but at least had to note presence.
This turned out to be a marvelous way to tap into individual/personal energies that students would typically not ‘reveal’ in a classroom setting. As the paper circulated, accumulating answers, it would travel slower and slower as students read prior answers and came up with their own. The process sparked both basic human connection as well as significant discussion on occasion, and on others, amusement. After a couple weeks of me assigning the Questioner, there were usually volunteers at the beginning of each session who had come up with something to query their peers with. Also interesting was the sheer variety of handwriting samples and forms of expression.
clouds and meaninglessness
I set off with a sigh. Above me the entire sky had opened. What a few hours earlier had been plain, dense cloud cover now took on landscape-like formations, a chasm with long flat stretches, steep walls, and sudden pinnacles, in some places white and substantial like snow, in others gray and as hard as rock, while the huge surfaces illuminated by the sunset did not shine or gleam or have a reddish glow, as they could, rather they seemed as if they had been dipped in some liquid. They hung over the town, muted red, dark-pink, surrounded by every conceivable nuance of gray. The setting was wild and beautiful. Actually everyone should be in the streets, I thought, cars should be stopping, doors should be opened and drivers and passengers emerging with heads raised and eyes sparkling with curiosity and a craving for beauty, for what was it that was going on above our heads?
However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or a thought. And why should we? If the various formations had had some meaning, if, for example, there had been concealed signs and messages for us which it was important we decode correctly, unceasing attention to what was happening would have been inescapable and understandable. But this was not the case of course, the various cloud shapes and hues meant nothing, what they looked like at any given juncture was based on chance, so if there was anything the clouds suggested it was meaninglessness in its purest form.
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago books edition. Vol. 1. 6 vols. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012.
The photos were made around the same time Karl Ove was living in Bergen: I was teaching at KHiB (now the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen). Probably no need to explain the resonance of this particular passage to other entries on this blog.
The Disappearance of Liberal Education
[ED: Almost 75 years ago, this essay was published in a collection accompanying the 1954 set of The Great Books of the Western World, published by Britannica Press. While that collection of more than fifty authors—philosophers, playrights, scientists, authors, economists—is mostly all ‘Western and white,’ and definitely men, there is some relevant substance to the contemporary issues facing the US education system contained (t)herein. Primarily, the background question of shared understandings about reality: when these are no longer shared, democracy cannot proceed. At this juncture, I have little hope that the wider social system in the US is capable of pulling itself back from the devolution that appears to be accelerating. Many personal worries surround that. I predict that forms of ‘martial law’ will be declared in the US before four years are up, and I will not be surprised if it begins to appear widely in the next year. By then, soft critique from the ‘liberal’ side of the country will be moot and … wholly inadequate, as has happened before in the bowels of history. Privilege continues to insulate the 1% and [social] media [oligarchs] continue to siphon off the last drops of societal life-blood: community engagement. Shilling instead a form of attention-harvesting that, as with other forms of capital, concentrates ever more power in the hands of ever fewer individuals. What could possibly go wrong?
I can barely continue reading Klemperer‘s “Language of the Third Reich” as it resonates so powerfully across almost a century to this very moment.
The countries of the West are committed to universal, free, compulsory education. The United States first made this commitment and has extended it further than any other. In this country, 92.5% of the children who are fourteen years old and 71.3% of those between fourteen and seventeen are in school. It will not be suggested that they are receiving the education that the democratic ideal requires. The West has not accepted the proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal education for all. In the United States, at least, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the demands of that ideal are met by universal schooling, rather than by universal liberal education. What goes on in school is regarded as of relatively minor importance. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labor market and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.
The results of universal, free, compulsory education in America can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the schools is something other than education—for example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and factories during a difficult period of their lives, or to bring them together for social or recreational purposes.
These last purposes—those which are social and recreational—the American educational system, on a very low level, achieves. It throws young people together. Since this does not take any greater effort than is required to pass compulsory school laws and build buildings, the accomplishment of this purpose would not, at first blush, seem to be a matter for boasting. Yet we often hear of it as something we should be proud of, and even as something that should suggest to us the main line of a sound educational policy. We often hear that bringing young people together, having them work and play together, and having them organize themselves “democratically” are the great contributions to democracy that the educational system can make. This is an expansion of the doctrine that was popular in my youth about the moral benefits conferred on everybody through intercollegiate athletics, which was, in turn, an adaptation of the remark dubiously imputed to the Duke of Wellington about the relationship between the Battle of Waterloo and the playing fields of Eton.
more “The Disappearance of Liberal Education”
love
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
…
I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
…
I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
King, Martin-Luther, Nobel Acceptance speech, December 1964
A good read on a day such as this one …
July 1944
14 September 1944, Thursday afternoon: In the evening, without having heard or read the reports herself, Eva came home with the [contents of] the latest bulletins: In the German military bulletin: English attack on Aachen; in the English one: in the course of the attack on Trier, the German frontier crossed on a 22-mile front. A new offensive is also said to be under way in the East. — The fact that the enemy is on German soil will make a tremendous impression. … In the cellar, Neumark had an old copy of the DAZ, which he had found by chance and which included a page summarizing the events of 1943.
In February 1943, the fall of Stalingrad; in the spring, the Führer holds discussions with the King of Bulgaria, with Antonescu—Count Ciano is appointed Italian ambassador to the Vatican… What an impression it all made on us! Ciano shot, Bulgaria and Romania changing sides, Stalingrad as remote as a fairy tale… But something else made a greater impression on us—it was the same for both Neumark and myself: the impotence of memory to fix all that we had so painfully experienced in time.
When—insofar as we remembered it at all—had this or that happened, when had it been? Only a few facts stick in the mind, dates not at all. One is overwhelmed by the present, time is not divided up, everything is infinitely long ago, everything is infinitely long in coming; there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, only an eternity. And that is yet another reason one knows nothing of the history one has experienced: The sense of time has been abolished; one is at once too blunted and too overexcited, one is crammed full of the present. The chain of disappointments also unfolded in front of me again.
[…] Ever since Stalingrad, since the beginning of ’43 therefore, I have been waiting for the end. I remember asking Eva at the time: Do you think it is a defeat, or do you consider it to be the defeat, the catastrophe? That was in February ’43. Then I had not yet done any factory duty. After that, I was a factory slave for fourteen months. And now it is almost three months since I was released, three months in which I find it ever more difficult to wrest useful work from my so-called free days.
Klemperer, Victor. To the Bitter End: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, 1942–1945. 1st ed. Vol. 2. 3 vols. New York, NY: Random House, 1999.
longevity conservation
Earth’s old animals are in decline. Despite this, emerging research is revealing the vital contributions of older individuals to cultural transmission, population dynamics, and ecosystem processes and services. Often the largest and most experienced, old individuals are most valued by humans and make important contributions to reproduction, information acquisition and cultural transmission, trophic dynamics, and resistance and resilience to natural and anthropogenic disturbance. These observations contrast with the senescence-focused paradigm of old age that has dominated the literature for more than a century yet are consistent with findings from behavioral ecology and life history theory. In this work, we review why the global loss of old individuals can be particularly detrimental to long-lived animals with indeterminate growth; those with increasing reproductive output with age; and those dependent on migration, sociality, and cultural transmission for survival. Longevity conservation is needed to protect the important ecological roles and ecosystem services provided by old animals.
Kopf, R. Keller, Sam Banks, Lauren J. N. Brent, Paul Humphries, Chris J. Jolly, Phyllis C. Lee, Osmar J. Luiz, Dale Nimmo, and Kirk O. Winemiller. “Loss of Earth’s Old, Wise, and Large Animals.” Science 387, no. 6729 (January 3, 2025): eado2705.
any moment
0
ANY MOMENT PREVIOUS TO
THE PRESENT MOMENT
ANY MOMENT PREVIOUS TO
THE PRESENT MOMENT
1
THE PRESENT MOMENT AND
ONLY THE PRESENT MOMENT
2
ALL APARENTLY INDIVIDUAL
OBJECTS DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED
BY YOU AT 1
3
ALL OF YOUR RECOLLECTION AT 1
OF APPARENTLY INDIVIDUAL OBJECTS
DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED BY YOU AT
0 AND KNOWN TO BE IDENTICAL
WITH 2
4
ALL CRITERIA BY WHICH YOU MIGHT
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN MEMBERS OF 3
AND 2
5
ALL OF YOUR EXTRAPOLATION FROM
2 AND 3 CONCERNING THE DISPOSITION
OF 2 AT 0
6
ALL ASPECTS OF THE DISPOSITION
OF YOUR WON BODY AT 1 WHICH
YOU CONSIDER IN WHOLE OR IN
PART STRUCTURALLY ANALOGOUS
WITH THE DISPOSITION OF 2
7
ALL OF YOUR INTENTIONAL BODILY
ACTS PERFORMED UPON ANY MEMBER
OF 2
8
ALL OF YOUR BODILY SENSATIONS
WHICH YOU CONSIDER CONTINGENT
UPON YOUR BODILY CONTACT WITH
ANY MEMBER OF 2
9
ALL EMOTIONS DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED
BY YOU AT 1
10
ALL OF YOUR BODILY SENSATIONS
WHICH YOU CONSIDER CONTINGENT
UPON ANY MEMBER OF 9
11
ALL CRITERIA BY WHICH YOU MIGHT
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN MEMBERS OF
10 AND 9
12
ALL OF YOUR RECOLLECTION AT 1
OTHER THAN 3
13
ALL ASPECTS OF 12 UPON WHICH
YOU CONSIDER ANY MEMBER OF 9
TO BE CONTINGENT
Victor Burgin, 1970
Walden
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1854.
The whole of Walden is relevant to Life, such as it has come to be in this, the Age of Oligarchs and Desperation.
one step backward taken
Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me.
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me.
The Crazed Janitor
[ED: During a visit to his apartment/studio in Denver last month, I asked Jim if he would consent to showing this piece on neoscenes. His art oeuvre is always challenging, humorous, playful, and both linguistically and algorithmically sophisticated!]
The Crazed Janitor is a pangram, a sentence employing every letter of the alphabet. Pangrams are frequently used to display a specific typeface, in this case, one of my own design—Magic Squares. The letterforms are colored systematically by letter frequency usage, coloring consonants with a range of grays from black to white and assigning spectral colors to the vowels.
The T is colored black as it is the most frequently used consonant in the alphabet. White is assigned to the Z because it is the least frequently used consonant and all of the rest are assigned incremental values of gray between black and white according to their frequency of use. The vowels are assigned colors according to their respective wavelengths, thus Red (of the longest wavelength) is assigned to the E which is the most frequently used vowel. The remaining colors are assigned according to their respective wavelengths and usage, so that Violet (the shortest wavelength) is assigned to Y, the least frequently used vowel.
That the pangram might also represent a form of synesthesia, where some people see individual letters as specifically colored (not all black), is an unintended consequence of the composition.
Case Study: Rockfall – Manitou Springs
[ED: This brief report from 1995 was written by Jon White, (Senior Engineering Geologist, emeritus). It looks at a specific rockfall situation in the central Front Range town of Manitou Springs. There are hundreds of similar instances like this where gravity rules in mountainous terrain. Geotechnical solutions are of some help in the long-term scale of the hazards, but are extremely expensive to implement. Development pressures that are affecting building in areas threatened by natural disasters—of small and large scale—continue apace in the US West.]
Manitou Springs occupies a narrow valley where Fountain Creek emerges from the foothills northeast of Pikes Peak and west of Colorado Springs. The valley slopes are composed of interbedded resistant sandstone and conglomerates (i.e., gravelly sandstone), and weaker mudstones and shale. The outcropping sandstone is most prevalent on the steeper slopes on the north side of the valley.
During the wet spring of 1995, rockfall and landslide incidents increased throughout Colorado, some resulting in fatalities. In Manitou Springs, a fortunate set of circumstances occurred before the Memorial Day holiday weekend when local residents observed the movements of a large, dangerous block of rock before it actually could fall. The observation set into motion an emergency declaration by the town, resulting in a compulsory evacuation of homes located below the rocky slope, the closing of the road in the area, and an immediate rock stabilization project. During this emergency situation, the Colorado Geological Survey was asked to provide expert assistance to help stabilize the rock. The emergency evacuation decree remained in effect until the rock was stabilized and the area subsequently declared safe.
Experimental Conviction
Long life is one of the greatest Blessings that we Mortals can enjoy; it being what all Men naturally desire and wish for. Nay, when Men are come to the longest Date, they desire yet to live a little longer. But, however, Health is that which sweetens all our other Enjoyments, without which the longest Life would be no more than a living Death, and render us burdensome to our selves, and troublesome to all about us.
But though Life be so desirous, and Health so great a Blessing, yet how much is both the one and the other undervalued, by the greatest Part of Mankind? Whatever they may think or say of the inestimableness of those precious Jewels, yet ’tis plain, by their Practice, that they put the Slight upon, and despise them both; and the most Man are hardly sensible of the worth of Health, ’till they come in good Earnest to be deprived of it.
How many Men do we daily see, by their Intemperance and Excess, to lay the Seeds of future Distempers, which either carry them off in the flower of their Age, which is the Case of most or else render their Old Age, if they do arrive to it, uneasy and uncomfortable? And though we see others daily drop into the Grave before us, and are very apt with Justice to ascribe the Loss of our Friends, to their living too fast, yet we cannot forbear treading in the same Steps, and following the same Courses, ’till at last, by a violent and unnatural Death, we are hurried off the Stage of Life after them.
What the Noble Cornaro observes of the Italians of his Time, may very well be applied to this Nation at present, viz. “That we are not contented with a plain Bill of Fare; that we ransack the Elements of Earth, Air, and Water, for all sorts of Creatures to gratify our wanton and luxurious Appetites: That as if our Tables were too narrow and short to hold our Provisions, we heap them up upon one another. And lastly, That to create a false Appetite, we rack our Cook’s inventions for new Sauces and Provocations to make the superfluous Morsel go down with the greatest Gust.”
This is not any groundless Observation, but it carries an Experimental Conviction along with it. Look into all our publick Entertainments and Feasts, and see whether Luxury and Intemperance be not too predominant in them. Men, upon such Occasions, think it justifiable to give themselves the Loose, to eat heartily, and to drink deeply; and many think themselves not welcome, or well entertained, if the Master of the Feast be so wise as not to not give them an Occasion of losing the MAN, and assuming the BEAST.
Cornaro, Luigi. Sure and Certain Methods of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life. London, UK: Daniel Midwinter, 1722.
reason – will
We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime … So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend … from now on you should let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will.
Castaneda, Carlos. Tales of Power. New York, NY: Washington Square Press, 1974.
every form of being
To every form of being is assigned
An active principle:—howe’er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures: in the stars
Of azure Heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate’er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds.
An active principle:—howe’er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures: in the stars
Of azure Heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate’er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds.
William Wordsworth. The Excursion: Wisdom Is Oftentimes Nearer When We Stoop than When We Soar. Portable Poetry, 2015. Book VI, 1-15.
any landscape …
Any landscape is so dense with evidence and so complex and cryptic that we can never be assured that we have read it all or read it aright. The landscape lies all around us, ever accessible and inexhaustible. Anyone can look, but we all need to see that it is at once a panorama, a composition, a palimpsest, a microcosm; that in every prospect there can be more and more that meets the eye.
Meinig, Donald W., and John Brinckerhoff Jackson, eds. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Meinig’s allusion to holistic natural systems is quoted in an essay and exhibition on the historical “Drawings of the Great Colorado Survey”:
Huber, Thomas P. Hayden’s Landscapes Revisited: The Drawings of the Great Colorado Survey. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2016.
James Miller‘s concept of “living systems” emphasizes that all such systems—from cells to landscapes to societies—share common scale-independent patterns of organization and processes as well as divergent features. As initially articulated in an editorial by Miller in 1956 in the then-new journal Behavorial Science:
Our present thinking-which may alter with time-is that a general theory will deal with structural and behavioral properties of systems. The diversity of systems is great. The molecule, the cell, the organ, the individual, the group, the society are all examples of systems. Besides differing in the level of organization, systems differ in many other crucial respects. They may he living, nonliving, or mixed; material or conceptual; and so forth.
Miller, James Grier. “Editorial.” Behavioral Science 1, no. 1 (January 17, 2007): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830010102.
In the context of landscapes, this approach aligns with systems thinking by focusing on how ecosystems, organisms, and human activities interact within larger networks, and are themselves comprised of smaller and smaller networks. A landscape may be seen as a living system with a complex of nested subsystems, where elements like nutrient cycles, energy flows, and information exchanges are interconnected. These interactions contribute to emergent properties and systemic behaviors, underscoring the need to consider the whole landscape when analyzing environmental changes and implementing management strategies. Augmenting or supplanting those more empirical methods, we believe that artistic, creative, imaginative, embodied, and other refined sensory-based processes can very effectively address and engage not only the astounding complexity, but the raw and inspiring beauty of these systems. Key to what may be a singular holistic ‘understanding’ of a landscape is focused and sustained observation that is aware of the scalar similarities and differences.
The original Hayden report from 1876:
Hayden, Ferdinand Vandeveer. “Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories: Embracing Colorado and Parts of Adjacent Territories; Being a Report of Progress of the Exploration for the Year 1874.” Washington, DC: US Geological Survey, 1876.
Hayden recognized the profound value of William Henry Holmes‘ drawings, though he did not formally recognize the other artists who produced documentary drawings on the expeditions, He reserved most of his praise for William Henry Jackson, the photographer who documented so expansively the landscapes of the American West setting the creative precedent for the likes of Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, Robert Adams, Willy Sutton, and the many others who followed.
NASA Earth Observatory
One of my favorite online feeds is from the NASA Earth Observatory along with their Image of the Day. After catching a recent article on the San Luis Valley, I thought that subscribers might be interested in some of the incredible material that NASA offers on a daily basis. This includes front-line data used in climate research.
“The Earth Observatory’s mission is to share with the public the images, stories, and discoveries about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, including its satellite missions, in-the-field research, and models.”
The Details
Earth Observatory GIS browser – A global map index of thousands of images—one can go direct to Colorado and see more than seventy feature articles covering natural hazards, geology, atmospheric science, and other subjects.
Global Maps – A wide range of maps compiled from satellite data.
Feature Articles – Covering many important topics such as remote sensing, atmosphere, snow & ice, water, and life.
NASA EO blogs – Incredibly informative nuggets of research into the natural world, including several topical blogs:
Earth Matters – Includes in-depth reports on everything from Astronaut Photography to Where on Earth?
Notes From the Field – Stories about how NASA conducts its scientific work and the technologies that make it all possible.
EO Kids – Written for audiences aged 9 to 14, it has many educational features.
Climate Q&A – Includes in-depth answers to common questions about the global climate.
You may also subscribe to different email newsletters and/or RSS feeds
grace of vision
Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? “God is One.”
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don’t call all these lights “the Light of God”;
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
…Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
What is the secret? “God is One.”
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don’t call all these lights “the Light of God”;
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
…Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
Vitray-Meyerovitch, Eva de. Rûmî and Sufism. Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1987.
an aside and the Colorado Groundwater Atlas
[Ed: As the coauthor who developed the structure and presentation of this first-ever fully online publication at the CGS—the Colorado Groundwater Atlas—I wanted to help draw attention to the issue of groundwater generally. This is an edited version of the initial RockTalk blog post when the Atlas was first published in 2020. Written for both the general public (Sections 1-8 and 13) and a technical audience (Sections 9-12), the Atlas is an excellent primer on this critical and rapidly diminishing resource.]
An aside
My neighbor, Christie, directed my attention the The Last Word On Nothing (LWON) blog—she writes for it—and I’ve been reading it regularly over the past couple years. That led to my belated discovery of the work of Colorado-based author Craig Childs who also writes for LWON. He’s “an anecdotal science writer, citizen naturalist, an eye in wild places.” I’m currently absorbing and enjoying his first book of essays, “The Secret Knowledge of Water,” published in 2000, a series of intimate takes on this elemental feature of western landscapes. (Well, technically, “Stone Desert Journal,” published in 1999, and republished in 2022, was his first book.)
Water in the US West is a big deal … I should probably assemble a bibliography of essential readings on the topic! Maybe someday. Meanwhile, I’ve got to go water some of the few native trees on my property with captured rainwater that came last night, it’s been a pretty dry year again, so far.
Groundwater
Everyone knows that water, wherever it might be found—at the surface or underground—is essential for life. However, few people are aware that groundwater is everywhere beneath their feet. It fills the pore spaces between grains of soil, sand, and gravel as well as the fractures and voids in hard bedrock (Figure 02-01 – pdf download). It may be just below the surface—accessible by digging with simple garden tools, or it may be hundreds of feet down in hard rock—requiring expensive drilling with specialized equipment.
more “an aside and the Colorado Groundwater Atlas”mull on this
| Year |
World Population
|
Yearly Change |
Net Change |
Density (P/Km²) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 8,045,311,447 | 0.88 % | 70,206,291 | 54 |
| 2022 | 7,975,105,156 | 0.83 % | 65,810,005 | 54 |
| 2021 | 7,909,295,151 | 0.87 % | 68,342,271 | 53 |
| 2020 | 7,840,952,880 | 0.98 % | 76,001,848 | 53 |
| 2019 | 7,764,951,032 | 1.06 % | 81,161,204 | 52 |
| 2018 | 7,683,789,828 | 1.10 % | 83,967,424 | 52 |
| 2017 | 7,599,822,404 | 1.15 % | 86,348,166 | 51 |
| 2016 | 7,513,474,238 | 1.17 % | 86,876,701 | 50 |
| 2015 | 7,426,597,537 | 1.19 % | 87,584,118 | 50 |
| 2014 | 7,339,013,419 | 1.22 % | 88,420,049 | 49 |
| 2013 | 7,250,593,370 | 1.24 % | 88,895,449 | 49 |
| 2012 | 7,161,697,921 | 1.25 % | 88,572,496 | 48 |
| 2011 | 7,073,125,425 | 1.25 % | 87,522,320 | 47 |
| 2010 | 6,985,603,105 | 1.27 % | 87,297,197 | 47 |
| 2009 | 6,898,305,908 | 1.27 % | 86,708,636 | 46 |
| 2008 | 6,811,597,272 | 1.27 % | 85,648,728 | 46 |
| 2007 | 6,725,948,544 | 1.27 % | 84,532,326 | 45 |
| 2006 | 6,641,416,218 | 1.27 % | 83,240,099 | 45 |
| 2005 | 6,558,176,119 | 1.27 % | 82,424,641 | 44 |
| 2004 | 6,475,751,478 | 1.28 % | 81,853,113 | 43 |
| 2003 | 6,393,898,365 | 1.29 % | 81,491,005 | 43 |
| 2002 | 6,312,407,360 | 1.31 % | 81,660,378 | 42 |
| 2001 | 6,230,746,982 | 1.33 % | 81,848,007 | 42 |
Earth Explorations vlog/podcasts
Dr. Christian Shorey—Teaching Professor of Environmental Science and Climatology in the Geology and Geological Engineering Department at Mines—jumped into a social media experiment with the Earth and Environmental Systems Podcast in 2008. After producing more that 60 audio episodes he segued to the Earth Explorations vlog on Youtube which includes more than one hundred video episodes!
Originally designed to accompany Dr. Shorey’s 2008 SYGN 101 Earth and Environmental Systems Science course, both the podcasts and vlogs provide fast-paced and informative explorations of a wide range of geologically- and environmentally-oriented topics. Among these: geohazards, climate change; geography; economics; anthropology; history; and biology. The vlog includes segments on mapping, mineralogy, age-dating, plate tectonics, as well as field-trip material to some of the prime geological features in the Golden, Colorado area: Red Rocks, North Table Mountain, and around the Mines campus. The vlog also demonstrates the effective use of drone photography in geological field education. Check it out!
The Revolution of Everyday Life
Following is an excerpt, Chapter One, from an old favorite, The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem—written back in the 60s under the umbrella of the Situationists. Be forewarned, it is not a particularly easy text. Arising out of the wide-spread social unrest fomented by the post-WWII generation of European intellectuals, it contains hundreds of gems reflecting on both the roots and current realities of life. You may find it stylistically dated, lacking intersectionality, and overly idealistic, even romantic, however, there are plenty of core messages and observations that are spot on. In the current cavalcade of faux information saturation it’s well worth studying!
more “The Revolution of Everyday Life”
to be surpassed
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoined the forest, he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra spake thus unto the people:
I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak unto you of super-earthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Thomas Common. Edinburgh, UK: T. N. Foulis, 1909.
hmmm, relevant today?
Seems so tame, compared to these days …
typical day’s contribution
As a participant in the aporee::maps project I receive a daily email listing/linking the past 24-hours-worth of field recording contributions to the project. I will often check these emails when I am still in bed, and select the longest recording of the day and let it ease me into the day. Here’s a sample from 15 February 2024. A link will bring up the aporee::maps google interface, with the particular location indicated by a pulsing red circle centered on the map. Selecting the dot will reveal a pop-up with further information about the recording, and there is a play button/bar in the upper right bar at the top of the map. Aside from simply scrolling around the (global!) map, radio aporee is another way of tapping into the project with a 24/7 stream of contributions and with built-in code that will preemptively mix in material proximal to whomever is listening.
All the recordings are simultaneously posted to https://archive.org, providing yet another way to explore this vast collection of sonic work. [all neoscenes recordings on aporee]
New sounds since 14.02.2024 12:00 Europe/Berlin time:
——————————————————————
Cafe, Aldeburgh, UK: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62936 — Cafe, Aldeburgh, UK (17:34min., by david.j.pitt@btinternet.com)
Wusterauer Anger, Kirchmöser Ost: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=60944 — garden ambience w/ bells, birds, train and airplane (10:00min., by radio aporee)
40 Bd Carnot, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62937 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Ambiance et chant avec des carnavaleux. (1:28min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
11 Bd Léon Marchal, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62938 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Rigodon final (13:45min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
Västerbron, 117 33 Stockholm, Sverige: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62939 — Under Västerbron (3:18min., by milton@jordansson.net)
11 Bd Léon Marchal, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62940 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Rigodon final – Pendant que les géants brûlent.. Hymne à Jean Bart et hommage à Copinard (8:47min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
7 Pl. Joseph Leprêtre, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62941 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Le lancé de harengs des fenêtres de l’Hôtel de Ville aux cris de “Liberez les Harengs !!!” (9:43min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
25 Rue Pasteur, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62942” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62942 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande (5:19min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
25B Av. de Calais, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62943 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Départ du Carnaval (4:45min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
28 Rue Pierre Merlen, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62944 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) La bande… (2:23min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
55 Av. de Dunkerque, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62945 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande… (8:36min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
8 Bd François Lévêque, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62946 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande… (1:58min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
29 Bd Carnot, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62947 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande… (3:34min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
1 Av. du Calvaire, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62948 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Ambiance sur la plage avant la mise à feu des géants (5:23min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
2 Pl. Charles Valentin, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62949 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Dernière pause avant le Rigodon. (3:04min., by Jean-François CAVRO)
Oppundavägen 18, 122 48 Enskede, Sverige: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62950 — bones (3:36min., by e3yes)
Nuti, Metsküla, 71302 Viljandi maakond, Estonia: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62953 — ice falling from trees (10:00min., by patrick tubin mcginley)
Thaurer Alm .204, 6065 Thaur, Österreich: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62951 — cow bells and motorway (6:09min., by hannes strobl)
8C7W+FX Thaur, Österreich: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62952 — water stream (3:01min., by hannes strobl)
Sound Walk, The Scallop, Aldeburgh, UK: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62954 — Sound Walk, The Scallop, Aldeburgh, UK (16:05min., by david.j.pitt@btinternet.com)
66313 sounds with a cumulative total length of 217d, 07h, 43m, 13s from 57950 locations.
Phill Niblock 1933 – 2024
Sorry for this text, it’s garbled, but I can’t make it less so in the moment. Check out some of the links below for more considered words and documentation of Phill’s presence and creative expressions. I’m dismayed at the number of obits that are appearing here … sheesh …
The other day I was reviewing older sound recordings on the website, one of which is a remix of sounds recorded at one of Phill Niblock’s annual Solstice events at his and Katherine’s loft in New York. Back in 2007 I was in the NYC area and was able to make it to one of these legendary happenings. A number of ShareNY friends had reminded me of them, and my modus operandi generally is when in town, check stuff out. And if Phill Niblock is doing something, well, there’s no excuse!
So, it was sad to hear of Phill’s passing. The hundreds, thousands of performances that he made, participated in, or facilitated for other artists—most often within the aegis of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation over the years—had a profound impact on all who experienced them. The annual Winter Solstice events at their loft were especially intense both in the immersive visual-sonic sense, but also in the powerful element of basic human encounter: always a slew of interesting folks attending!
As is noted in other obits, being and doing were things that Phill did with a profuse and personable energy. I was lucky to cross paths repeatedly with he and Katherine on their numerous transAtlantic forays and in NYC related to some ShareNY events.
Phill’s experimental visual and sonic work implemented a solid-and-shimmering tableau of full-on psychic immersion in live performance. The Solstice happening was merely one of the hundreds that Niblock brought into this universe from another, parallel universe, where time, sound, and Light have both more subtle and more tangible presence and energy.
An openness for exploring the profundity of the temporal was something that Bruce Elder and Stan Brakhage exposed me to back in the 80s, so Phill’s monumental 16mm opus, The Movement Of People Working, was immediately, electrically, attractive. It forms a compelling exploration of what human presence and be-ing actually is, not merely how it manifests: this element of lived immediacy imprints itself, over time on the receiver. And, combined with the sonic expressions forms a holistic, immersive experience. (Morton Feldman‘s influence.) Transcendent!
We shared the idea of duration in performance work: perhaps related to our separate instances of experiencing the work of Feldman. Phill often bringing duration to a beautiful extreme that inevitably sparked internal change within the witness/participant (there is no audience in this regard, there is only the Void!).
Condolences dear Katherine, and for our shared loss.
Visit Phill’s website for a deeper plunge. This obit by Lawrence English is especially illuminating. And the NYT obit gives a wide view on Phill’s life.
Further insight into the Solstice Events with some documentation at Roulette; along with a 12-hour video.
Six Memos – Calvino
Indeed my writing has always found itself facing two divergent roads that correspond to two kinds of knowledge: one that moves through mental spaces of disembodied rationality, in which lines can be drawn that connect points, projections, abstract shapes, vectors of force; another that moves in a space crowded with objects and seeks to create a verbal equivalent of that space by filling pages with words, in a meticulous effort to match the written to the not-written, to the sum of the sayable and the not-sayable. These are two distinct drives toward exactitude that will never reach absolute fulfillment: the first because natural languages always say something more than formalized languages – they always carry a certain amount of noise that alters the essence of the information; and the second because in trying to account for the density and continuity of the world around us, language is exposed as lacunose, fragmentary: it always says something less than the sum of what can be experienced.
Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1985–86. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Litli-Hrútur
A magma-encore … [more info]
about time
Finally done with the primary phase of an onerous rollover from GoDaddy hosting to ReClaim hosting, a mellow outfit which I hope survives and thrives. ReClaim provides hosting solutions for folks in educational contexts. After 20 fraught years dealing with GoDaddy’s abuse, I’d had it. In the (almost) thirty years of neoscenes web existence there have been many technological changes which have made the long-term survival of the site a shaky proposition at best, and at worst, it has come crashing down: offline on occasion. Many turns of angst and frustration at the forced change of specs, formats, codices, platforms, and protocols. I just wanna post audio-video-text-image material, along with hosting content from a few other folks (at this point, Anthony Zega (RIP my friend), and Rod Summers, aka vec world service).
Not having the platform secure and stable as a place to spontaneously create content is always disturbing. During those intervening thirty years, so many head-banging technical issues, ugh, not good to recall. Onwards and upwards … into the AI wilderness.
Now to repair all the collateral GoDaddy damage to various aspects of the site content and performance …
The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater
[Ed: I’ve made many transits of the lands referred to in this informative if not disturbing read. One crucial issue not mentioned in this article are the rapid developments in the science behind groundwater modeling in relation to biotic vectors and what exactly is happening to uranium compounds that are available and mobile underground. The redox (and subsequent immobilization) of uranium through biotic/microbial vectors has recently been demonstrated to have major effects on reductive sedimentary environments, though gauging the precise impacts on particular situations remain difficult. See, for example, Biotic-Abiotic Pathways: A New Paradigm for Uranium Reduction in Sediments]
This story was originally published by ProPublica and was written by Mark Olalde, Mollie Simon and Alex Mierjeski, video by Gerardo del Valle, Liz Moughon and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons.
In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed. Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in Colorado. Thousands of sheep turned blue and died after foraging on land tainted by processing sites in North Dakota. And cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers. The U.S. government bankrolled the industry, and mining companies rushed to profit, building more than 50 mills and processing sites to refine uranium ore. more “The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater”
the Universe is vast
Inability to focus on particulars that swarm the mind, fleeting. What to write about? Is there anything of substance to say? The world is so full of re-creations of an infinite multiverse: the universe is … whatever you want it to be. After that, it is what it is, or, perhaps, what it isn’t.
The human race consists of a small group of animals which for a small time has barely differentiated itself from the mass of animal life on a small planet circling round a small sun. The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogma with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are all alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in details is admitted: fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. The Universe is vast.
[John] Dewey has never been appalled by the novelty of an idea. But it is characteristic of all established schools of thought to throw themselves into self-defensive attitudes. Refutation has its legitimate place in philosophic discussion: it should never form the final chapter. Human beliefs constitute the evidence as to human experience of the nature of things. Every belief is to be approached with respectful inquiry. The final chapter of philosophy consists in the search for the unexpressed presuppositions which underlie the beliefs of every finite human intellect. In this way philosophy makes its slow advance by the introduction of new ideas, widening vision, and adjusting clashes.
Dewey, John, Paul Arthur Schilpp, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of John Dewey. 3d ed. The Library of Living Philosophers, v. 1. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
cyanosapiens
In the long run, we may be able to environmentally overcome our thickening web of industrial toxic wastes but, if we follow the cyanobacterial model, vast numbers of humans would be destroyed before natural selection kicked in. And despite our rather inordinate confidence in our own technological prowess, biology remains much more effective than human technology in devising elegant long-term solutions to pollution and population control. In fact, we humans have never sustainably done the former, and we show no signs of being able to do the latter (although war is the top contender). Plus, cyanobacteria compose not just a single species (as we do) but also an entire multispecies “phylum [that] exhibit[s] enormous diversity in terms of their morphology, physiology and other characteristics (e.g. motility, thermophily, cell division characteristic, nitrogen fixation ability, etc.).”
Clarke, Bruce, ed. Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet. First edition. Meaning Systems. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2015.
ecological education
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972.
The Last Man
These are wild dreams. Yet since, now a week ago, on me, as I stood on the height of St. Peter’s, they have ruled my imagination. I have chosen my boat, and laid out my scant stores. I have selected a few books; the principal are Homer and Shakespeare. But the libraries of the world are thrown open to me—and in any port I can renew my stock. I form no expectation of alteration for the better; but the monotonous present is intolerable to me. Neither hope nor joy are my pilots—restless despair and fierce desire of change lead me on. I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task however slight or voluntary for each days fulfillment. I shall witness all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume—I shall read fair augury in the rainbow — menace in the cloud—some lesson or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of deserted Earth, when the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney, The Last Man. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man.
Rick Albertson 1957 – 2022
portrait, Rick Albertson, somewhere near Lake Erie, February 2016. Photo credit: Mark Osiecki. 
what Rick was really looking at … somewhere near Lake Erie, February 2016. Photo credit: Mark Osiecki.
We—Rick Albertson’s colleagues, fellow artists, activists, and friends—are deeply moved by his recent passing. Over many decades, Rick touched each of us in ways as diverse as his many interests, affections, and talents. At one time or another, we all will have been moved by his wit, candor, loyalty, and elan vital. He has indeed been a significant vector for us, nudging the course of our lives about in important ways. Many will have known greater joy, hope, and success on a given day because of Rick. Our debts to him are incalculable…but no matter, as Rick in his usual generous style would have forgiven those anyway!
Rick was an alumnus of the Penn State theater department where he obtained a degree in set design, a passion he had already cultivated by his mid-teens when working for the Erie Civic Theater Association. At that time, Rick was a lighting technician and also performed in the theater’s pit orchestra. Upon graduation, Rick was employed by various staging companies as well as operating one himself. His professional exploits carried him all over the US where he was responsible for staging countless conferences and media events. His colleagues will have known him for his boundless energy, creativity, and hands-on troubleshooting skills. There was no technical competency that Rick didn’t seem to possess. He had a way of bringing a sense of festivity into even the most stressful of working environments.
While based for many years in Atlanta, Rick played electric bass in many well-known jazz, rock, and blues bands, laying down a crucial bottom line at all sorts of performances and events. Forever in search of adrenaline, he was a crew member on the emergency rescue team at Road Atlanta Raceway, and he also managed to infect some of us with his love of whitewater rafting and scuba diving.
A voracious reader of…well…anything he could get his hands on, Rick was also an accomplished writer. He moved to California during the dot-com bubble where he worked for Talk City as an editor and administrator. Following that, Rick went to Boston as Contributing Editor for Senator John Kerry’s web site. Rick was also an active contributor to other sites like Democratic Underground and The Daily KOS. He eventually returned to Pennsylvania where he continued to be active in liberal politics, a lifelong passion of Rick’s where he worked as an activist on many fronts. Rick cherished democracy and seized every opportunity to promote and preserve it.
Rick’s capacity for listening and empathizing was unparalleled. Lastly, he went on to work with the Mental Health Association of Northwestern PA as a Certified Peer Specialist, interacting directly with a diversity of mental health clients…a perfect fit for this energized and energizing, compassionate man. It’s somehow appropriate that he will have touched their lives as he has ours…with affection, humor, love…and an inimitable way of assuring that all can and shall be well!
Andee Baker, Santa Fe, NM, USA; Ann Hyland, Wexford, IRELAND; Anneke Toomey, Loveland, CO, USA; Ari Davidow, Boston, MA, USA; Camille Vahey, Erie, PA, USA; Emily Zielinski, Canandaigua, NY, USA; Howard Rheingold, Mill Valley, CA, USA; Janna Nelson, Albuquerque, NM, USA; Janice MacDonald, Edmonton, AB, CANADA; John Hopkins, Cedaredge, CO, USA; John Mulligan, Silver Spring, MD, USA; John W. Hays, Beldenville, WI, USA; Kate Gilpin, Richmond, CA, USA; Mark Osiecki, Heidelberg, GERMANY; Mary, Seattle, WA, USA; Nan Stefanik, Newfane VT, USA; Michele Armstrong, Cupertino, CA, USA; Richard J. Lee, Oakland, CA, USA; Robert Crosby, Redmond, OR, USA; Sarah Cherry, Melburne, AUSTRALIA; Scott Butki, Austin, TX, USA; Scott Hooker, Albuquerque, NM, USA; Stephen Engel, Portland OR, USA; Susan Uskudarli, Istanbul,TURKEY; Tom Whitmore, Seattle, WA, USA; Valerie Bock, Decatur, IL, USA; Ward Bell, Minneapolis, MN USA; Will Osiecki, Montreal, QC
Appendix 8: The Systems Process
[Ed: this document was written by Cleveland Hopkins as an addenda to an unidentified white paper produced in the early 1970s at the Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP) — a White House office dedicated to policy-making in a rapidly shifting telecom environment. It is meant as an introduction to the concept of the systems process for those unfamiliar with the approach. Cleveland Hopkins was involved as a Systems Analyst looking at USPS electronic mail-handling; international and domestic telecom policy; digital medical record-keeping in the context of universal health care, among many other projects. His early career included twenty years in weapons system development (radar and ICBM) with DOD and MITs Lincoln Laboratory and Radiation Lab (Rad Lab) among other organizations. See his obit for further information.]
APPENDIX 8: The Systems Process
It is the objective of this short paper to invite attention to the Systems Process, its concepts, its essential nature, limitations and capabilities, and its output.
Introduction
“The systems approach basically applies scientific methods to the solution of practical problems,” [1], Concepts of the systems process vary from regarding it as the most powerful intellectual tool ever devised to “…the vacuous systems approach…” Historically, some of these ideas were applied to the activity used during World War II by small groups of people in trying to solve problems that were beyond the capacity of one person in the available time; these initial applications were to radar matters involved in the defense of Britain. Larger business firms have used such a process for many years to pool the efforts of management to subsequently maintain or improve their profit margins. The process began to get widespread public recognition shortly after Robert S. McNamara became Secretary of Defense; he brought in a group of technical people, later called the “Whiz Kids“ by the military, who, after some effort were able to break up the massive military problems into pieces that could be profitably worked on by individuals of different professional backgrounds. Their results were then combined and modified by operational people so that the solutions were relevant to the real world. Some duplication was taken out of the military services, and great efforts were made to obtain maximum results for the money spent, giving rise to cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness schemes.
Ten Bulls
I. The Search for the Bull
In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull.
Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains,
My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the bull.
I only hear the locusts chirring through the forest at night.
Comment: The bull never has been lost. What need is there to search? Only because of separation from my true nature, I fail to find him. In the confusion of the senses I lose even his tracks. Far from home, I see many crossroads, but which way is the right one I know not. Greed and fear, good and bad, entangle me.
2. Discovering the Footprints
more “Ten Bulls”
ruminations
As I catch up, year-end, on a variety of old and new postings from folks, I engage in a blurred comparison process: between what they write (and illustrate), and what I write (and otherwise mediate via image and sound). A number of folks have jumped on Substack, or podcast subscription platforms. It’s hard for me to think about a paying subscription, though, as the monetary side of life is so … sensitive. And I haven’t received a penny in the last decade on my site. How to barter for access to their creative content? Perhaps I’ll raise the issue with some of them. How about a vintage photographic print from my archive for a year’s subscription?
Most others I know have a public (written) voice that is quietly friendly and ultimately readable, compared to mine. I explicitly recall a couple conversations with Norie, my PhD adviser, who said “Be kind to your readers”, something I appreciated, but honestly didn’t understand how to implement. There was and continues to be a profound internal pressure to simply get ideas down in the most precise way manageable with my particular (untempered) linguistic skill-set. As an editor I can clean up an unholy mess of words that someone else has regurgitated, honoring their ideas and intentions and making a kindly and readable text. My own ruminations, while well-edited, have only been subject to a precision test, not a ‘kindness’ test. That test, in itself, is reasonable, but tends to forge a dense, leaden text. My general excuse: texts that I have had to fight my way through understanding very often have been the most rewarding to and impactful of my worldview. Of course, I can’t make any such claims as to my own obfuscations. Giving back the energies of what I have received? Hardly. Ugh!
At any rate, George has now embraced substack with his Story Club; T.C. and her husband Dave continue documenting their interesting life between Alaska and Colorado with the Adventures of the Odaroloc Sled Dogs; Owen documents every day from Finland, India, and elsewhere with a short text and image, and has for the past decade; Christie and her friend have their Emerging Form podcast; Zander started Buzzcut both also on substack. Adam has Datatheism; John Hays has Relative Something. As a vital community exploring the sonic world, aporee::maps continues to evolve with more than 58,000 field recordings. I managed to contribute only a handful during the year, with my total around 1,700 since 2008. Just recently the World According to Sound (co-founded by talented public radio sound peeps Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett) announced an interesting calendar of live 90-minute binaural podcasts — Winter Listening Series — digging deeper into sonic phenomena beyond their shorter podcast series on sound. And, while I’m at it, Radio Web MACBA: a non-profit, cultural communication radiophonic project based at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, hosts more than 800 podcasts covering the heights and breadths of radio beyond radio. Oh, not to mention the trove of 400,000 sound recordings from before 1926 that have entered the public domain as of last week. Finally, Lloyd Dunn, formerly a Tape Beatle, continues releasing his rich sonic and visual work on nula.cc.
Then the next anniversary of Art’s Birthday is coming up on 17 January …
If I had more time, I guess I could be rooting around endlessly online, posting a more full review of these and other voices. But then, how would I get any of my own work done? I wonder: what is the ratio of humans to verbiage? And, what was it before the Gutenberg press, before the typewriter, before the PC, before the iPhone, before Fazebuch?
A Psalm of Life
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in The Knickerbocker, Volume 12, #1, July 1838.
excerpt: Anthropocene City
Climate change is hard to think about not only because it’s complex and politically contentious, not only because it’s cognitively almost impossible to keep in mind the intricate relationships that tie together an oil well in Venezuela, Siberian permafrost, Saudi F-15s bombing a Yemeni wedding, subsidence along the Jersey Shore, albedo effect near Kangerlussuaq, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the polar vortex, shampoo, California cattle, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, leukemia, plastic, paper, the Sixth Extinction, Zika, and the basic decisions we make every day, are forced to make every day, in a world we didn’t choose but were thrown into. No, it’s not just because it’s mind-bendingly difficult to connect the dots. Climate change is hard to think about because it’s depressing and scary.
Thinking seriously about climate change forces us to face the fact that nobody’s driving the car, nobody’s in charge, nobody knows how to “fix it.” And even if we had a driver, there’s a bigger problem: no car. There’s no mechanism for uniting the entire human species to move together in one direction. There are more than seven billion of us, and we divide into almost two hundred nations, thousands of smaller sub-national states, territories, counties, and municipalities, and an unimaginable multitude of corporations, community organizations, neighborhoods, religious sects, ethnic identities, clans, tribes, gangs, clubs, and families, each of which faces its own internal conflicts, disunion, and strife, all the way down to the individual human soul in conflict with itself, torn between fear and desire, hard sacrifice and easy cruelty, all of us improvising day by day, moment by moment, making decisions based on best guesses, gut hunches, comforting illusions, and too little data.
But that’s the human way: reactive, ad hoc, improvised. Our ability to reconfigure our collective existence in response to changing environmental conditions has been our greatest adaptive trait. Unfortunately for us, we’re still not very good at controlling the future. What we’re good at is telling ourselves the stories we want to hear, the stories that help us cope with existence in an wild, unpredictable world.
Scranton, Roy. We’re Doomed, Now What? Essays on War and Climate Change. New York, NY: Soho, 2018.
portrait, Janet
![portrait, Janet, Clarksburg, Maryland, November 1969 [CH]](https://neoscenes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/1969/11/1000/19691123-57-38p.jpg "portrait, Janet, Clarksburg, Maryland, November 1969 [CH]")
Anthony Zega 1962 – 2019
[Ed: I will continue with these remembrances, in the moment this is all I can manage to compose.]
I’m tired of writing remembrances, each one reminds of the passing, fading nature of be-ing. I don’t need to be reminded that Life closes off, a box canyon with sheer varigated walls, cross-cut sediments of past-time on display. Fossilized life, fragments of bone, amber protrude from the sheer layered walls. Evidence of those who went before. Where are they? what are they doing? Somehow, Anthony’s passing clears something away, psychically: that he has made the transition, into the Bardo, and beyond. Not that he deserved it at his age, but that he was released from the physical ravages that cancer was imposing on his body. Following him, and the expanding number of others, will perhaps be less terrifying.
I met Anthony on the way out the door of Parson’s photo department building on 5th Avenue, just north of Washington Square Park, in the fall of 1985.
“The primary principle of this age in the West is decay.”
Yup. That resonated, still does. As elsewhere noted, that profound and concise observation marked the beginning of a long friendship that explored the surfaces of the world and the energies and patterns of flow behind those surfaces. It maintained itself for 34 years despite the infrequent crossings-of-path. Aside for a year or so when we were house-mates in a couple places in Boulder, it took the form of a rich correspondance along with the occasional meetings-up that were always electric. Princeton, Manhattan, Peters Valley, Newton, and then all the locales experienced on a handful of profound road-trips in the US West. Death Valley (including a legendary night in Las Vegas on New Years Eve — photographing the insanity of the place); across the Rez’ in Arizona, picking up hitch-hikers; dealing with extreme weather transiting the Colorado Rockies; time at the Great Sand Dunes; and all the while, closely observing the perfidy of the contemporary capitalist oligarchies and, if nothing else, making fun of it. National Dead People. Stick Puppets on Display. The George P. Schultz Delirium Tremens Telephone. He left the East Coast in 1987 or so, and engaged in a long meander around the West, deeply influenced by his encounters with the Native American cultures and histories. His passionate, spirited, sensitive, and brilliant intellect — a full-spectrum laser — initiated a reducing flux that operated powerfully in his poetic work. None of it easily consumed, he did not share it with more that a handful of people ever.
Our last day shared together was in 2014, a long one spent at the Met, wandering through Strawberry Fields and Central Park, and dinner at the Whole Foods cafeteria on the Upper West Side near his mother’s flat where he’d been living for a few years. He had been worn down by the ignominy of working in the retail “adrenalized sporting complex”. But he had also met Maite, a Catalonian woman, who he joined in Barcelona in 2016. Best that he was out of the US for the repugnance of oligarchy and destruction that has ensued.
The written word was his primary medium in more recent years, although his photographic work was an important and powerful expression as well. It was the case, however, that he was intensely private, and most of his creative output came in the form of letters, and for the last decade more than a thousand emails that included an image, a dense poetic work, or a carefully laid-out pdf word piece, or some combination of those. In the mid-80s he did have a few prose pieces published in Marvin Jones’ The New Common Good in New York City, as their “Western Correspondent”. The only one I have a copy of is an excerpt of “The Tourist“. All of his negatives and writings up to relatively recently were apparently lost to flooding at his mother’s place in Princeton. It appears that I am more-or-less the sole holder of his remaining artistic legacy: with a fat folder of beautifully hand-penned communications.
From a letter I wrote to Anthony, back in 1991, from what was home, then, Reykjavík:
There is a bit of nostalgia in my mind, but more, there is the respect for you as a creator, discoverer, synthesist, See-er, and, um, Voice-of-Consciousness from the Mouth of Chaos, more or less. (I find meself writing in Literal ways these days, unable to couch clearly or veil rightly, no figures dancing between the words). I have your three cards sitting, always self-aware, they are, there on the desk next to the Printer. In a small attic space, ceiling too low for me to stand, but fine to write, skylights at my back open to a 20-hour sun day. (Fela doin’ “Zombie”). I can feel the plasma mass pressure of the sun Light pressing down, trying to flatten the landscape into a line, a mote, but the earth is in constant retching here, heaving basalt sky-ward, building sites, Places for the People to live. You have fed me bits from a variety of Others — Others speaking about Others — or a saying about unsay-able things or, yes, That which is … … … Thank you.
Judge George W. Hopkins
Judge George W. Hopkins, the subject of the following sketch, was born in Hampshire, on June 18, 1827. His father was a shoemaker, and was married in June, 1826. The family lived in Hampshire until the summer of 1834, when they came over to Dresden, Muskingan County, Ohio, and engaged in farming. In November, 1841, they moved to Osage County, Missouri, where they again engaged in farming. His parents being in poor circumstances, financially, Mr. Hopkins had the benefit of only six weeks schooling, but improved every opportunity to study at home of evenings, and his life was thus spent from his tenth to his twentieth year.
At eighteen he had begun to read law, working on the farm in summer and teaching school in winter, to keep the pot boiling. He was admitted to the bar at Lima, Osage county, January 9, 1854, by George W. Miller, judge of the First Judicial Circuit, Missouri. His life work has been in the legal profession, with the exception of three years military service during the war. He has held many official positions of trust, honor and responsibility. Was public administrator of Osage county for four years, swamp-land commissioner eight years, prosecuting attorney for three years, and acted as assistant prosecuting attorney for two years in a circuit of four counties.
He came to Arcata in the spring of 1877, and was admitted to the bar by Judge Haynes in June of that year. His family arrived the following year. In Humboldt County he has held the office of justice of the peace for thirteen years and still holds the same office, and is still practicing in the Superior Court.
Judge Hopkins has been a member of the I.O.O.F. for fourteen years, a Mason forty-one years, a Good Templar four years, Sons of Temperance ten years, and a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, and of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was N.G. of I.O.O.F. two terms, W.M. of Masons two years, Deputy W.C.T. three years, also Dept. Worthy Patriarch, Sons of Temperance; is Senior Past Commander of Cold Harbor Post 132, G.A.R., and is now Junior Vice Department Commander of the California G.A.R.; was special aide on staff of Commander in Chief, G.A.R., for one year.
Turning to his military record, we find that his executive ability was constantly receiving recognition in the way of numerous official duties to perform. He was Adjutant of the 28th Regiment, Missouri Militia; enrolling officer, with rank of Captain, for one year; also one year in the Secret Service, with rank of Captain, Lieutenant and Recruiting Officer, and First Lieutenant of Company F, 48th Missouri Infantry, and served as Captain in that regiment until the close of the war. In 1862 he was assistant Provost Marshal for Osage County, Missouri, the State being then under martial law. Judge Hopkins was married in 1854, on November 16th, and has had six children, four of whom are living. The foregoing is but a meager outline of the leading details of a very busy life, and it is with regret that the limitation of space compels us to so briefly sketch a career which contains abundant material for a very interesting and instructive volume. Judge Hopkins devotes his time to his law practice in this county, also to a general real estate business and collection agency.
Anthony isn’t well
Your generosity is welcomed: A GoFundMe site has been set up to assist with his medical and living expenses. The GoFundMe didn’t work — they had problems with producing ‘official’ documents to the GoFundMe platform to do the bank transfers. His situation is very hard, the doctors say they can do nothing more for him. It is not clear, but I believe that he is on hospice care now. Another friend has been communicating with his wife, but I have not been successful in contacting her via text.
It is not noted on that site, but Anthony is an artist/poet — you can find some of his short works on this very site.
Sunday, 20 July 1969
Well, I get to make my own 50-years-on entry here: A Sunday evening, late. We were at church in the morning and evening as usual — no shred of memory, what was the texture of that part of the day? Internal anticipation also does not register, except in the present anticipation perhaps mapped over a few remaining neural structures from that prior moment. Currently watching and listening to the marvelous ‘multi-media’ presentation at https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/. What a fantastic use of contemporary media power combined with the enormous documentary effort that went into the original event. NASA really deserves big kudos for their PR sense over the years! (Although it needs to be noted that in the biggest picture, this was the culmination of a military-industrial-academic exercise equaled only to the Manhattan Project, driven in part by the prodigious personal ambition of Werner von Braun.)
Hard to comprehend the difference in technologies, compared to now. I’ve been to the Air & Space Museum in DC many times, and seen the interiors of some of the Apollo vehicles — the big analog flip-switches the most memorable items. It does remain an incredible expression of human presence on the planet despite all the harsh flows that have come from that same presence.
The whole family went next door to the Jones’ house, they had a color teevee, to watch the then-landed Eagle crew step out and onto the moon. I recall taking some black-and-white film shots of the television screen, they are extant somewhere in the archive. Half a century gone by, where are we now?
a contemporary mobile home
Feliz Sant Joan
Feast Day
Feast Night of Saint John
solstice summer
acutance
acute
apex
fire
profound prolific
heliomorphy
potens
power
juice
=== the petards
=== the incendiary colours arcs
=== sparkles spiders
=== roman candles
=== open out from twilight
=== through to day-break
+ + + +
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^ ^^
who
who are you ?
says the caterpillar
what a marvellous question —
impossible to answer
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
re: When the city
My friend,
I am listening to your writing —-
Words abbreviate experience
Language = fable
Impossible to say what Jules feels in her moments
Impossible to say what Dona feels in her moments
( does suffering have depth surface . . . space scale dimension ??? )
Anger
a limit a barricade against . . . .
what we cannot name
what we cannot touch see hear say
Indeterminacy
Catastrophe
Loss
cannot name it
. . . . there is no [ it ] to name
Presence
Experience
To love and to heal
To cry and embrace
I remember now what you wrote to me —-
Zen is a parlour game . . . .
Psyche — a name — a figure in a fable
Psychology — a game
Talkers talk about experience
= as if = it were a pack of cards
= Let us put them all in order =
= Politease and Polissee =
the Old Deal the New Deal the Fair Deal the New Frontier the Big Deal . . .
.
Fortune telling —
Cards
More cards — a game
Cartographers masque control and colour the scene
Decor —
Comforting reassuring
Alice In Wonderland = a pack of cards
what i need = is other than luck = is other than fortune telling
maite sends you greetings
i miss your presence
love to you
a
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