"Model Wookie Mayer turns sixty this fall. (me too) Aside from her obvious good genes and bone structure, I think a lot of her beauty comes from her natural style – unfussy hair, toned body, minimal makeup. I’m taking note of the less is more approach…let skin show through a lightly bronzed face, add color to lips, keep eyes bright and natural. A few wrinkles actually look appropriate and add to her appeal."
I'm not quite ready for my close-up (working on it though) BOOM
Located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, this Micronesian Island chain should be a heavenly place on Earth. Unfortunately that is not at all the case. Its residents were forcibly relocated when the U.S. took possession of the islands in 1946, and over the next 12 years sent 23 nuclear bombs raining down on this slice of paradise, rendering it uninhabitable to this day. During the first practical test of a hydrogen bomb at Bikini, 23 members of a Japanese fishing boat crew that were supposedly at a safe distance were contaminated by the blast, and the scandal that rocked the nation was epic. It eventually became the inspiration for the movie Godzilla, in which a radioactive monster rises from a U.S. nuclear test and attacks Japan. To this day, the islands sadly remain a paradise of staggering beauty and potential that no one can safely experience.
1.5 Billion Birds Lost in North America Since 1970s
By Nika Knight | EW
North America has lost more than 1.5 billion birds over the past 40 years, says the most comprehensive survey of landbird populations in Canada and the U.S. to date, and 86 species are threatened with total extinction—all thanks to human-caused habitat destruction and climate change.
Golden-winged warblers are one of the North American species most at risk for complete extinction. Caleb Putnam / Flickr
"Among those 86 species, 22 have already lost at least half of their population since 1970 and are projected to lose another 50 percent of their numbers within the next 40 years," reported the Canadian Press. "For at least six species, this 'half-life' window is fewer than 20 years."
"The information on urgency is quite alarming," study co-author Judith Kennedy of Environment Canada said to the Canadian Press. "We're really getting down to the dregs of some of these populations."
"I don't want my grandchild to go out in the forest and not hear the songbirds in the spring and that seems to be where we're headed right now," Andrew Couturier, senior analyst at Bird Studies Canada and a co-author of the report, told the Globe and Mail. The report by Canadian conservation group Partners in Flight was released in August but was first widely reported on Wednesday by the Canadian Press and Globe and Mail. The California condor, Gunnison sage grouse, ivory-billed woodpecker and Bachman's warbler are a few of the more well-known species on Partners in Flight's "Red Watch List," meaning they are the most at risk of extinction. Those facing the most dramatic population declines are grassland birds, sagebrush and desert scrub species "and forest species dependent on specialized structural features or natural disturbance," the report says. Indeed, another recent study just confirmed that the habitat of endangered sage grouses in 11 western U.S. states is being torn up because of "rampant" oil, gas and gold mining, precipitating the devastating loss of most of their chicks, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The Globe and Mail noted:
"Even relatively abundant birds are dwindling in number, the report says. Chimney swifts, field sparrows and short-eared owls are among the common species that have lost more than half of their populations since 1970 and are expected to lose half of their current level in 40 years or less."
"Birds are often a bellwether of broader ecological health," Kennedy said to the Globe and Mail. Kennedy "noted that sickly birds were an early warning sign of the environmental damage caused by the pesticide DDT a generation ago."
"In some ways, the status of these birds could indicate the status of our own health," Kennedy warned.
This article was reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.
Typing in TheNew Yorker’s deserted offices on a summer night in 1942, Seymour Krim, 20 years old and briefly employed at the magazine, wrote to my father, William Saroyan, who would soon turn 34 and was just then at the height of his fame. Still, with his draft notice and marriage to my mother only a few months away, my father’s moment as the literary golden boy of the Depression years was soon to pass.- Aram Saroyan
Here is Krim, a young man addressing his elder and better, a wunderkind of the literary moment:
The office is acutely quiet at this particular hour in eternity, and I’ve got some particular points about a number of things to hit you with. You’re such a goddamned exhibitionist, put on such a wonderful show, that it is difficult if not impossible to speak with you seriously and cogently without an audience; I’m taking this opportunity, this medium, this hour, in fact, to try and put across to you something of what I feel and think. Amen.
All artists, I feel, however their plea of objectivity, create their characters in their own image; you’re no exception, in fact, your specific glory is the original and unique quality with which you endow the fragments of your imagination. Fine, all right — but: without discipline, which you lack, the very beauty of your men and women is ineffably scarred by excess; the poetic metaphysic, which you sing, becomes pretentious and adolescent; the very wonderful sadness and joy, the whole synthesis, at once noble and tragic and magical is lost, ruined; lifeless. Your defects glare like hot neon bulbs: sloppiness, confusion, rootlessness, affectation, pretense, laziness (work does not mean writing one play after another; work means making as perfect as possible the specific product) and a lot more. Notice, I am not criticizing you outside of your genre; I am not telling you that you are anti-intellectual (afraid of abstract scientific method and the truth it finds), a romantic, unrealistic (you don’t realize, for instance, that political action in an industrialized society must be collective; that your “poetic anarchism” is made up of fine, beautiful words, but is impractical by definition in the complex mélange — economic, psychologic, and biologic – of modern society) a poor academic thinker (by academic, I mean using accredited methods of philosophic investigation based on palpable, objective knowledge), etc.
You are lacking in all the points mentioned; but I can’t take you to task on those grounds; they are your limitations — congenital, hereditary, they will be with you to some extent as long as you live and write — they are your defects and, at times, because you are not encumbered by pedagogical humility (concerning your lack of knowledge), they are your good points. What I am shouting about is your abuse, not of what you lack and will always limit you as an artist, but of your talents. You abuse your genius, your particular glorious talents by sloppiness, excess, failure to cut it to the bone, affectations, etc.
You were the white-haired boy in American letters for a while: and Christ! you deserved it. When I was fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and now twenty, you made me laugh and cry and marvel at the human creation. You touched the very core of the miracle time and time again: what lovely charm, what wondrous mystery, what infinite love! What a noble sonofabitch you are! I followed your stuff up through the years — from puberty, to young manhood —and you widened the eyes of my soul continuously, brought supernal music and god-like poems out of parts of experience that are now always magical and incredibly lovely to me.
I say that to let you know where I stand: we always are more vehement criticizing things we respect and admire more than those which leave us apathetic. It seems to me a lousy utterly shameless crime to masturbate with your gifts when a little hard work could change the thing into a wonderful lay — you follow my figure of speech, I hope. “My Heart’s in the Highlands” was a clear, clean, wonderful fable; Jesus, how you laid bare the human heart! But look — you were working with the Group (all right, maybe you thought some of them were phony, etc., but they and Bobby Lewis provided you with that directorial discipline, that impersonal, professional hand that is a necessary evil to the artist); Time of Your Life and Love’s… Song were done by Dowling, I think.
“The Beautiful People” was your own and it showed it: the artist is so close to his own work that his view becomes warped, malformed, the emphasis is placed in the wrong place. The “People” showed that clearly; what was a profound myth, in your conception, became a novelty, a burlesque of your own talents. It needed cutting, concrete integration, it had to be worked on. The symbolism — instead of being filled with love and charm and golden music of angels — became top-heavy, Loring became a mockery of something true, the spontaneous glisten of your words, ideas, became too rich, too satiate, the shadow and color wasn’t evenly dappled, the whole goddamn thing, in fact, needed pruning, rewriting, considered direction by someone other than yourself.
Unless you get to work on the two plays you’re doing now, the same thing will happen.
You’re surrounded by jerks, ass-kissers, sycophants.
The whole swift, rootless, shystering, incestuous Broadway existence swallows your work now; hell, you were a kid from Frisco ten years ago, freezing in a four-dollar a week room, yet you had the world by the nuts. Jesus, how I remember that old phonograph in your early stories, and I nearly broke my prick laughing when you burned all those wonderful books in wonderful foreign languages, to keep warm; not laughing at you, Saroyan, but with you, with you like fine music at the whole human comedy. What’s happened? You’ve gone soft, the fat life, the liquor, the cunts. You should have married a fine, round, jolly, wise peasant woman and had thirteen kids. I mean it.
I’ve said this much so far, so let me add that you haven’t got too much consideration for others. Don’t get me ass-wise: what I mean is that you walk with the angels so much, that in normal human intercourse, you embarrass people. Like today. You force me to hurt Bodenheim’s feelings, you exploit me before others. As though you said, “Look here, boys and girls,. Ain’t this kid a riot? Smart, knows all the big words, outspoken, sincere. Look at this American character, Mr. Seymour.” In other words, instead of wanting to listen to what I want to say to you, you’re more interested in the impression on an audience, more in the exhibition than the use.
I’m not a fresh, wise, smart, bright young man. I’m a hell of a lot more. I’ll do work some day, probably in the novel, maybe the drama. I’ll have to prove that, to myself as well as you and a million others. My conception of existence is entirely different than yours. My life and outlook is taut, swift, burning, hyper-sensitive, living in a world of jazz and narcotics and class-war, and unemployment, and seeing my Jewish friends being disgraced on the streets. But, hell, we all sense this monstrous, noble, tragic, wonderful miracle in different ways, and I respect and admire your genius and that of Tom Wolfe and Faulkner and O’Neill and Malraux and Joyce and even Odets (I’m Jewish don’t forget, and I can sense things in his work that hit me directly) and ten other great men. So if I’ve said things, been a smart bastard, don’t be offended; my goddamn pride makes it impossible to call you Sir, to show you the respect and deference which you deserve from a kid who has nothing to show for the big game he talks.
One thing, Saroyan. This kid Schloss is really on the ball. He’s intelligent, creative, swift, can act, write, take shorthand like an ace (he’s modest, he can’t throw the shit like me, but don’t let it deceive you). Give him a job: secretary, stage manager, actor, let him work on the Human Comedy with you, and Christ! you’ll see real talent. He’s got the discipline, the independent judgement, the critical mind to make your show. I’m not crapping; that kid amazes me sometimes, he’s so quick on the trigger. Before I sign off, even if you don’t take the advice of this mercurial genius, the best of luck on the whole production, no crap, that comes from the heart.
[Director, Producer, and Editor - Dave Kaufman | Paintings by Holton Rower ] Acrylic over wood. The artist's name is Holton Rower out of New York and the technique is called "Pour".
For me, this blog BOOM and the (now dead) Thought Bombs is defined by simply breaking myths, shattering old thoughts, while looking at the many myths we’ve accepted without questioning, and so many stories we were taught in our history class and grade school were invented, slanted and definitely not true.
Lakota scholar and author Vine Deloria said in a speech that he hoped that young scholars after him would search for truth, find real history, explore mysteries and never give up. This blog is an answer to that call…
The election season reminds me - no PRESIDENT can change EVERYTHING - none has and none ever will. It's simply one branch of government. If Obama could have changed everything/anything - he would have - but remember how he was blocked. We are living the 1% demand on democracy. Is it really right?
In the Caucasus, a Bronze Age site hints at embalming with honey.
by Paul Salopek
Tbilisi, Georgia, 41°41'48" N, 44°48'01" E
Three years ago, on the banks of the Alazani River in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the archaeologist Zurab Makharadze cut into a 40-foot-high burial mound that bulged above the surrounding green farmland. “One of our botanists noticed it first,” Makharadze said of the odor wafting up from some of the unearthed artifacts. “She was in the laboratory, working her microscope. She was analyzing samples. She started smiling.” The samples, in this case, were wild berries—offerings left for the entombed dead. Their aroma: thick and intensely sweet, but with musky undertones, with hints of molasses. The berries were astonishingly well preserved. They were still red. They were 4,300 years old. They had been carefully cured with ancient honey. Other items found inside the Bronze Age grave site, called Ananauri 3, were far more spectacular: In a collapsed burial chamber built of logs sat two full-size wagons, complete with ox yokes (domesticated horses had yet to arrive in the south Caucasus during this remote era); beautiful golden jewelry; amber beads traded either from the Baltic region or India; and a trove of astonishingly intact textiles, leather, and basketry. Whoever lay buried inside the mound had been an important chief or religious leader. Six other bodies were interred with him, possibly slaves. Ananauri 3 will add richly to our knowledge of an obscure people called the Martkopi and Bedeni, who farmed grains and raised cattle in the waning centuries of a vast Transcaucasian civilization known as the Araxes-Kura culture. But what struck me, as Makharadze laid out his immensely old treasures on a table at the Otar Lordkipanidze Archaeology Center in Tbilisi, was a delicious biological grace note: The task of archaeologists has been assisted by prehistoric bees. “Wet clay kept many of the artifacts from rotting,” said Makharadze, a big, shy, red-faced man with a bull chest and the square jaw of a boxer. “But these people used honey to embalm many burial objects. They knew what they were doing.”
Archaeologist Zurab Makharadze and a bushel of 4,000-year-old nuts. Photograph by Paul Salopek
Not only the wild berries—ground cherries—but also bushels of other ceremonial offerings in the tomb, such as hazel nuts, were slathered in honey. So were wicker baskets of chestnuts. Even some of the weavings and other organic perishables may have been honey coated. This was done to supply the souls of the departed with all the sustenance and tools they would require in a better world. Walking for more than two years north from Africa into the Middle East, and then east from Turkey into the Caucasus, a key caloric ingredient of this strange journey has been local honey. In hot Arabia, I ate desert honey as clear as air. In the icy mountains of Anatolia, I ate old, crystallized honey that looked like snow. Packed with energy, honey is a walker’s rocket fuel. I also know it makes a good ointment against burns. Honey, of course, has been touted for millennia as a cure-all. “It causes heat, cleans sores and ulcers, softens hard ulcers of the lips, heals carbuncles and running sores,” wrote Hippocrates, the Greek clinician, in the fourth century B.C. Less well known are its mummifying powers. Honey’s extremely high sugar content acts much like salt: It sucks water from bacteria, essentially drying the microbes to death. Honey also contains small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, which of course is antiseptic. Slather honey on wild berries, then, or on nuts, and you create the perfect afterlife snack—food with a shelf life that is eternal. The same applies to corpses. Herodotus noted that the ancient Assyrians embalmed their dead in honey. And after he died in 323 B.C., Alexander the Great was reportedly immersed in a golden sarcophagus brimming with honey. His subjects wanted to keep him presentable for public display.
Sept. 14, 1947 – Birth of actor, Sam Neill in Omagh, Co Tyrone, Ireland (Eire). He first achieved leading roles in films such as Omen III: The Final Conflict and Dead Calm and on television in Reilly, Ace of Spies. He won a broad international audience in 1993 for his roles as Alisdair Stewart in The Piano and Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, a role he reprised in 2001’s Jurassic Park III. Neill also had notable roles in Merlin, The Hunt for Red October and The Tudors. In 2016, he starred in Hunt for the Wilderpeople alongside Julian Dennison, to great acclaim. He holds New Zealand, British and Irish nationality, but identifies primarily as a New Zealander.
The alchemical symbol of apotheosis, the transformation of man into god, is traditionally represented by an image of a hand with other symbols, including skulls, crowns, stars, fish, keys, lanterns, astrological symbols and the all-seeing eye. The Hand of the Mysteries goes by many other names, including the Hand of the Master Mason, Hand of the Philosopher, and the Emblematic Hand of Mysteries. It is said that the hand holds the keys to divinity, and is used as an invitation to discover the ‘great secrets.’
I'm not quite ready for my close-up (working on it though) BOOM
Golden-winged warblers are one of the North American species most at risk for complete extinction. Caleb Putnam / Flickr
