en route
Another movement, north and east.
Tapio meets me at Vantaa in his fancy 2003 Forest Green Jaguar.
en route
I am put on a flight to Heathrow instead. It is delayed and that combined with 2-hours stuck in the endless Heathrow transit security miasma sets it up so that I miss a rescheduled flight to Hamburg. I end up with a six hour layover in Heathrow which is exactly why I paid an extra $150 NOT to take a flight through Heathrow to begin with. Shite! No free wifi there either, so I used a United Airlines desk phone to call Christian who ends up driving to Hamburg, bless his soul, to fetch me 10 hours later than I was supposed to arrive. Dinner with the family, hanging out, impossibly awake after only 2 hours sleep since Monday night.
internal ecosystem
How it is. A sparrow hops by the row of seats at the empty gate, deep inside Terminal B. Ecosystem. Assumptions are forming our world-views. “What the Bleep?” As weather builds up and while people gather to leave. People standing, sitting, talking to small boxes. Some talking to each other. Some talking to others half-way around the globe. Some dragging large wheeled boxes behind them, carrying boxes over shoulders, on backs. Roaches crawling on some of the boxes, right there in the security line. Lines, lines, moving towards being searched, probed, surveilled, controlled by the inefficient proles of the system. Keeping calm, despite wind-shear next to head. But still never knowing what to write. How it is.
Delayed flight in Denver from someone getting sick right before take-off and from a mechanical ‘issue’ causes me to miss my Hamburg-direct flight from Newark.
Saturday, 09 March, 1963
Left for LA at 0935 on Pan Am # 812; riding a jet stream at 37,000 feet, we arrived at 4 PM, thirty minutes ahead of schedule.
Collected my luggage & went over to the Skyways Motel.
Some haze
Went out to the airport at 0830 and the Brandon’s arrived shortly thereafter, with leis for LCH & the girls! It was real pleasant to see them — we talked for about 30 minutes while I checked in, etc.
The a/c req’d a 40 sec to run, and at 37,000 feet, arrived in LA 1/2 hour ahead of schedule. It was in the jet stream all the way.
There were two of us in the 3 seats, so had plenty of room, and pleasant conversation.
It is hard to believe that I left the islands only 4-1/2 hours ago. It seemed so cool on getting off the a/c. I’ll be able to put on my heavier clothes now and lighten my B4 bag.
Tried to get LCH on the phone; finally made it about 7 PM. She is having trouble with the Ford; it won’t start, and when it does, suddenly stops! DCH won fourth prize in the Science Fair; if he had put out some effort some time ago, he would have come in first.
Couldn’t get Mrs. Stroebe on the phone.
Wednesday, 12 December, 1962
It seems to me that we must have the services of a photographic consulting engineer to lay out our plant. I’m going to have to go to Rochester again, and get drawings & specs for the plant at Vandenberg.
Spoke with DM on the need for a photographic consulting capability on the part of A & E. He had not included this in his original statement of A & E qualifications. We will have to add this at the first mtg. with the A & E.
Had some discussion w/ Larry Cianciolo on the calibration of spectral films: a series of exposures on the same film is made b4 & after data collection, with none or a different density filter for each frame w/ the same calibration Light source. This calibration process must take place for the UV CineSpectrographic & the Hulcher spectral camera. The objective is to measure & hold constant the gamma of the film during the entire process.
Tried to get Sheldon Phillips on the phone but couldn’t.
Cold
10˚F
Phoned two questions re: the Brucewood Streets to Mr. Hussey:
1) What happens if there it a vote on Art. 14 on the Agenda for the Town Mtg. of 17 Dec.? He had been assured by Mr. McCabe that there would be no reference to our streets; 2) Will the Auditors Committee provide a labor & mtls. bond for completing the streets? He thot not on this. I made copies of the Agenda pages that were appropriate & sent them Special Del. to Mr. H.
Went to Boy Scout mtg. left the First Class write-up w/ the Chairman, Mr. Schadt. Took JAH to her piano lesson.
Wednesday, 07 November, 1962
Dave Moore had several points of the tentative layout, which I left with WW. He instructed me to stick to this amount of space and to authorize the drawing as approved for preliminary A&E activity.
Picked up tickets & $100 in cash.
Drove over to airport; the lower heater hose came off on the way, and I had to have a gallon of Prestone put in (at $3.25/gallon). Left on TWA 65 for LA at 5:15 PM, arriving in LA at 7:30 PM. Fog (smog) had closed down the helicopter service to Bernadino, so we were sent out in a taxi, arriving about 10:15 PM at the Town House Motel, 132 East 5th Street, TUrner 9-0641
Clear 20°F at 0645
Adjusted the Ford fast idle a little, and then left, to stop at the Town Hall where I picked up a typical set of Town Bylaws, and Planning Board Regulations, mailed them to Mr. Hussey.
Picked up check for $80 from Credit Union and put it in bank at Concord.
Left for airport at 3 PM. The lower heater hose came off and I had to have another gallon of Prestone put in. Left Boston at 5:15 PM EST, arriving LA at 7:15 PM PST. The helicopter service to Berdoo was cancelled due to fog, so they sent us out via a taxi; arrived at 10:15 PM.
Wednesday, 29 August, 1962
Requested by AAG to put together the ECM Appendix of CWV opus on DP; this report goes to BSD. To start this, I called J. Roberts on Raytheon — Nicholson’s assistant — and requested his best help re: specifics of the data inputs & outputs. Called McInnis at 1:15 PM & he will call back tomorrow with their answer.
After 2 phone calls to Raytheon’s Philpot at WSMR, Robertson said Philpot would call me in the morning.
Read GE report on “Effect of Plasmas on Signal Times.”
Rain – 98% RH
29.66↑
Storm Alma going out to sea off Nantucket. Still raining & windy.
A brush fire near San Fernando Valley has burned over 15,000 acres so far and is out of control; 18 aircraft were to bomb it at dawn with some solution.
Finished abstracting the checkbook detail into the record book; I still have to get the Occidental Life Policy data, as it was paid by the proceeds from the conversion.
Worked a little on the next strip form.
Wednesday, 08 August, 1962
Alice informs me that I have a reservation at the Bayberry Hotel on Long Island for 13-14 August.
It looks like a chart for Sperry & Raytheon to show the respective details of each class of measurements that each wants.
Clear
Rain in PM
It must have rained 1/4″ of so last night but there is still a deficit of about 2″.
DCH at home today.
LCH took CR et al for a ride around the neighborhood; they stopped at the HS to see Mr. Grey.
Put in the form stakes for another patio strip.
A KC-135 crashed in the Hanscomb glide-slope, killing 4.
Mr. Cleaves(?) of the radiator & Body Shop in Stow stopped by to see the car — he wants $5/hour to fix the bodies.
your tax dollars in the grave
Any off-the-cuff calculations on how much capital investment is represented in this junk yard?
landing
at Collin and Marisa’s up on Glade Park above the Colorado National Monument — sleep in a bit while those folks get down to the airport to prep for their Learn to Fly event that their company, the Colorado Flight Center, is putting on. The drive down is in a deep and moist fog which gives the Monument extra dimension. At the airport, the F/A-18s inject their presence with after-burner roars on flyovers and take-offs. After the flight training sales-briefing, the awarding of the door prizes (free flights!) and barbecue, Collin takes me over to another hangar to see the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber that is being restored. It’s the heaviest single-engine aircraft in WWII. Wow, it’s huge!
Back up on the Glade in the early evening, we take a hike down the canyon that their land borders, hiking down to the Colorado National Monument boundary. Yet another wow! Yeah, jealous at the fruits of their significant labors! An intense piece of land with a house and several out-buildings — the land consists of the wedge of highland between two slick-rock canyons. The land seems relatively untouched with (perhaps) first-growth piñon, small prickly-pear cactus, with a thin sandy soil — I can imagine because of the steep drop on either side, anyone ranching the land would fence it off from cattle from the get-go. Collin tells the story of not having walked the entire piece of land before buying it, and then, when wandering out to the point of the wedge only to see a nice set of big slick-rock hoodoos stepping down into the canyon head. After that he wanders back and gets Marisa who is also oblivious of the sight as well. Nice surprise. And it’s not far from that point that the yurt is to be erected. Thunderheads build over Grand Mesa.
F/A-18 circling
Clui: Day Five — tangential contact
In the sonic realm, this part of the western desert (the spatial extent defined by precipitation at least) seems, at first, quiet. Stepping out of the car after a bruising day of fighting the wheel, ah, only the susurration of blood pumping in the ears. But, despite this initial impression, human intrusion in the western desert is never silent. The ambient pre-human sonic domain is defined by a few animals making occasional signals “I am here.” Ravens and coyotes are perhaps the noisiest, with others following in a rapidly declining decibel range. Wind is mostly, literally, in the ear of the beholder as a register of turbulent flow around the aural orifice but occasionally one is in a place where the wind makes some secondary sound (in a riparian regime, in seasonal leaves, or whistling around a certain rock formation, but these are rare and difficult to record without exceptional and expensive equipment). Otherwise, then, there is only the human incursion. This incursion is typically related to the movement of those intrusive humans through the domain as few have the desire to stop and actually hear silence. The few who volunteer or are forced to stop for a longer time are not necessarily prone to sonic disturbances, though that group, as a whole, are dominated by willing or unwilling participants in the military-industrial machine. The balance, a small remainder, are likely seeking the silence. The members of the machine make plenty of noise via everything from weapon systems testing to mining to toxic waste incineration, but access to these secretive sonic sources are for the select, not the transitory rabble.
Those engaged in field recording are left with the experience of tangential contact. That is, functioning as a stationary point, recording the arrival and departure of a nearby transport vector — trains, planes, and cars. Given the proper conditions, especially the lack of wind, these can make interesting (and startling) recordings. Trucks may be heard many miles away and render an impossibly slow Doppler shifting that is also modulated by differential density and velocity metrics of the intervening air. Planes are often more difficult as the most dramatic contact is with the low-flying fighter aircraft which will show up practically without warning and are so loud that recording is impossible. The db peak of that tangential contact pegs the meter. Before the air-to-ground missiles are launched at you, the target, and field incursions become moot.
So, what to do? Muddle along. Hit the casinos. Though I’ve been tossed out of those in the distant past for making photographs, the H4 Zoom looks suspicious, so I think it also will attract attention from security for sure. Ach.
on the IceSave debacle
A quick response on Alda’s Icelandic Weather Report posting concerning the veto by the Icelandic President of the IceSave agreement.
sotto voce: Strategic positioning relates to local, regional and global power flows and offensive/defensive weapon systems (among other factors). The US military left Iceland because it no longer represented a strategic advantage to be there (precisely because of weapon systems like submarine-launched ICBM’s, not to mention the very real shifts of global power that have come about since the Cold War ended). During WWII, because of the limits on aircraft range, Iceland was crucial to the Allied (US-supported) efforts in Europe. But gradually, again, with changing weapon systems and different constellations of global power, Iceland is no longer ‘strategic.’ Might be hard for some folks to swallow, pride-wise, not being ‘important’ in some global scheme, but that’s the way things go — they change. Iceland has few if any unique marketable/strategic resources as measured in the present world order. And on the other hand, they have liabilities according to globalist interests (for example, a quaint nationalism which is completely redundant in global market systems, no longer strategic travel/transport location (no need for Keflavík re-fueling!), no significant energy resources that are fiscally develop-able to the scale necessary for global competition, an education system that includes 100% literacy but is, on its own, entrenched and lacking innovative threads (and reinforcing the same naivete that gave rise to the recent disastrous foray into the global market system) … and so on…
And on the power of the (Icelandic) Presidency:
sotto voce: Presumably, though, the powers of the office of the president are circumscribed in the constitution, and, as such, are available to the person occupying the office. As happened in the US during the Bush regime, massive powers not explicitly outlined in the constitution were gathered by that regime, strengthening the office of president dramatically (powers that Obama has not relinquished at all — those at the top love extra power)… Any government or national political power structure goes through fluid shifts in concentration & location of power almost constantly, but some more precipitous than others. I’d suggest a close reading of The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, for a good outline on shifting power structures in a nation-state.
Thursday, 02 July, 1959
Finished budget about 0930.
Took Proof of Loss sheets to Wiseman so we can be paid for the in-transit losses from Alaska.
Drafted a comment on suggestion 43361
JSM, Les Voho, Howard Stokes met with Fairchild to go over their report on a/c characteristics.
Bob’s Barber Shop
(00:34:20, stereo audio, 66.0 mb)
There you have it! Al needed a haircut. So I drive him down to Bob’s where he has been going since 1984, to Bob. It’s next door to the recently-moved Merry Maids dispatch office. Across from three 1950’s travel trailers on blocks, squeezed close enough that the doors had only a little leeway in what was at some point a single family home, carved up into a couple creaky multi-room business spaces. The first magazine in the plywood rack is a civilian aviation magazine surprisingly packed front-to-back-covers with military stories and profiles of military aircraft. With a nostalgia looking back to WWI and WWII planes as well as contemporary (deployed) weapons systems. At the barber’s shop. One could claim an ‘interest’ in such issues, reading everything pertinent to the topic — the efficacy of an ‘augmented’ human — but is it necessary? (to be interested? to kill? or is it merely a religion? the religion of the State?) Talk at the barber’s moves through several spaces, all critical of the incoming regime. Buying ammunition, lots of extra ammunition, and weapons before Tuesday next…
lake swimming
geesh, Junkers JU-52’s flying over the city. two weeks ago it was the Douglas C-47’s, now it’s the Junkers. does this have any geopolitical significance? I was feeling a bit funny the first time I saw one of those planes flying over Germany some years back. so that’s what it was like — to see low-level paratroopers pouring out of those things (not sure how often the Wehrmacht did that, but). or just a slew of those plowing across the country skies, bringing troops to the battle.
just back into town, now I recognize when I hear one of these machines. accustomed, but aware.
headed down (south-east) into Brandenburg to Zeesen to visit with Ulrike at the family dacha (well, actually a large and nicely designed home of her parents — the dacha is in the back yard.) she’s up from Zürich for the weekend. the lake is a few meters away. it is delicious. nothing like skinny-dipping in a summertime lake in the German countryside.
she tells about her uncle who lives next door in his beautiful rammed-earth house. I am fascinated to run across this technology existing here in Germany. and there is Sunny, the happy bulldog. conversation drifts along wide paths through language. Saturn setting in alignment with the first-quarter moon, Mars high, Venus rising only in the early morning. nice to sit in the top-floor deck and watch stars, though the sky does not get completely dark any more as the Solstice approaches.
to the Mojave
this is the winter solstice: no better place to spend it than the Mojave Desert. bumping slowly into a canyon that dead-ends into the Mojave Wilderness area, in a cirque of sorts, nothing like a cirque in the Rockies or the Alps, but still, a surrounding of rough garbled slopes leading upward into what are definitely mountains. Creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), and a variety of small brittle brush plants, sand, rock, desert armor, cryptobiotic soil, and that’s about it. animals are here, but seldom seen. lizards by day, a few insects around sunset, but otherwise it is silent except for the throbbing of blood in ears and the assorted noises of body, movement, and living. machine takes on a massive presence by its sound. stove heating water can be heard 100 meters away, hard drive chattering to itself, an loud insect in a box.
dream of the Mojave on 12-14 September 2001. stripping away the frequent aircraft would be the last hurdle. though the drive to get here illustrated that this area is under assault from every quarter. the air itself is hazy up to 2000 meters or more. this must be auto pollution from eLAy, immediately upwind. there is a huge dust storm that rakes from north to south, near the Cadiz dry lake, along a cutoff that I was going to take, but couldn’t locate the road properly as I hadn’t a copy of that quad map. had to go on west, skirting Joshua Tree National Park, and take Iron Mountain road to the Amboy road and north across the Sheep Rock Mountains and the Amboy dry lake, the Chlorite works, and finally to Amboy, more deserted than it was in 1983 when I first visited. actually quite rundown at this point. east towards Cadiz and the Marble Mountains where I choose a bad gravel road, make a few detours, and finally enter a wide wash right on the perimeter of the Wilderness area. and presumably quite near a Latham Shale outcrop. have to triangulate in the morning, based on some field photos that I found online.
this is the first time I have returned to a place like this since Internet-time has come. it is quite interesting to research a location, using topographic, historic, cultural, and scientific names to find online info about many aspects. for example, a report detailing the eco-recovery of areas that were used by General Patton between 1942-44 for massive armored maneuver practices (over 1,000,000 men!) which destroyed huge swaths of the desert ecology in California, Nevada, and Arizona. thanks George C. Scott!
getting colder already. sunset early, around 1700, and just two hours later, the temperature has dropped 30F. got to go get bed set up in the back of the truck. maybe tomorrow I’ll sleep on the ground. such a rare opportunity that it shouldn’t be passed up.
overflight
a single F-16 flies north at 400 meters above the fjord. and there are repeated afterburner blasts which say that there are more than one aircraft up there somewhere, and now, a few minutes later, two go over wing-to-wing. never seen that up here before, what’s this about? not a normal event — Icelanders do not like to be reminded that they are still an occupied country. the 85th Group, based in Keflavík, next to the international commercial airport, is a wing of the US Navy and has been based there since 1944.
Cleveland Hopkins 1910 – 2003
Dad passes this evening. after this long struggle, and a long life. code blue, Janet calls, racing into the hospital. Nancy and Mom there, holding his hands. His heart couldn’t bear more time here. I am just home from school, exhausted. Stop what I am doing, and concentrate on a slender thread of consciousness. Light some incense. Crumble some sage harvested for just this purpose from the depths of Sand Canyon off the Yampa, press it deep into the palms, smelling the released sweetness. Burn some, the smoke mixing with the incense. An intuitive impulse says “write the time now.” on a 3×5 card, I write the time, 6:52. A call comes ten minutes later, he has passed. As birth is the surfacing, death is the submerging of soul back into its own, its transitory place. time shivers, small waves move outward, and the bardo of passing opens. Unmeasured intuition and connection. Still small voices, suspension of the material presence.
more “Cleveland Hopkins 1910 – 2003”
sand storm
F/A-18 Super Hornet overflight. sitting in a lounge chair by the pool, after a slow workout, on the deck, the air changes consistency, clarity. a dust storm fills the northern sky, far away in front of Book Cliffs and growing rapidly, vaporous, after the second F/A-18 overflight, landing gear down, visibility drops until the cottonwoods beyond the far side of the pool become only barely shadow-box projections in the taupe fog. it passes, eyes gritty and stinging. then the outdoor megaphone/speakers, tuned to a local pop music radio station, blare out the civil defense warning signal, followed by a severe thunderstorm warning for the area. some people are listening, but most are not. I stand to leave, a young man, a lifeguard asks a rhetorical question. what was that? we have a short conversation. I can barely understand his English, and when I say something, he also has a hard time understanding me. he starts telling how he was dirt-biking yesterday and his girlfriend was blown off her ATV by the wind. I cycle away on the shimmering asphalt.
the artist as presence. why shouldn’t it be that way alone. presence spilling itself around in doses or continuous flows of richness. direct and unmediated. and mediated. without considering both, and the conditions and movements that bring all to present being, nothing good comes. a visit to Tree and Pascal’s place in Glade Park, about to build a straw-bale house on a 40-acre parcel west of the Colorado National Monument area. artists. sitting outside their trailer under the ramada: heat from the sky and ice tea of roasted barley. a breeze keeps everything tolerable. (I pop up a memory of breaking out the manual type writer on a picnic table in very late fall, at the Sand Dunes picnic area, a crusty snow on the ground, air shimmering with heat waves off anything dark colored, Anthony and I on one of our passages through the West. I cycle infinity signs in the snow of the empty parking lot. and curse nothing. celebrating life. and complete presence.)
strikes
in Rovaniemi. bus to bus to bus to plane to bus to taxi. underway for four hours already, and still have a plane, bus, taxi to deal with. just to get from Tornio to Helsinki during an Air Traffic Controllers strike. without reading Finnish, it is outside possibility to understand the detailed dynamics of the negotiations. how can anyone, experienced in cross-cultural and linguistic situations, have any real faith/trust/belief in this monolithic stance that journalism and the media somehow have a corner on the truth market. knowing the slippery interface between two persons speaking the same language and having similar backgrounds, and the zoomed-in intensity of crossing even the most basic cross-platform linguistic barrier. in all cases, meaning is stripped to its essential lowest-common-denominator packet-form. in the worst case, it is lost. and in between these two translation polarities, there is a massive area where few things can be pegged, many data-feeds mis-routed, and substantial interstitial gaps in the matrix of human expression. travel makes me stress — all the time. can it be? that a human will undertake to set a daily condition of being that MOST stresses the core neural network of the organism itself? being human. chomp down on some Ibuprophen and aspirin dragged along from the last visit to the US. never am able to get the right over-the-counter drugs outside the US for some reason — just don’t know which ones to get. though I hardly ever use any medicines stronger than Tiger Balm or so. faugh! so I try to rewire language. adding contemporary terms to replace the ancient. but it is all the same — using cross-platform instead of transformative. while language is being constantly fed by the media, by writers (script-writers, mostly, and technocrats and geeks), its core senses do always reflect ancient knowledge-bases. one of the greatest challenges is educating across a language barrier — at the same time, reducing ones own knowledge and experience base to packets that can be shunted across this formidable interface gap. especially useful is a reliance on pure energy, force-of-self to heave these things across. and a very quiet, sensitive ear for hearing where the receivers place these energies within their experience. and sensing what these energies engender in the Other. mapping both the generative and reflexive energies of the Other. I don’t push this hard enough in the Art-Context, though. or with the mediations I have used for so many years. relying instead on the ephemeral, the transient, the sole ambient experience. un-documented, face-to-face, momentary. back in Helsinki. again. and again. sitting in a hotel room. watching cable. media-child, show about fashion. reflecting on the few times at Studio 54 and the Palladium in the Big Apple. knowing the underside of THAT business. images of Manhattan, photography, art directors, designers, fashion houses, headliners, mainliners, winners and losers.
hearing gravity
til Vestmannaeyja. Moving across the face of. and so on. I gotta take pictures. that is on my mind. take pictures. Seeing. Making photos. And so on. Gotta make pictures. And so on. What a weird place I have taken meself to. Passing water below, air, sky above. (The headache is from motion: hearing gravity.)
field work
