Around the World

One of Kim Komando's newsletters features a site I'm still enjoying. If you like candid shots (and good ones) from all over the world you'll enjoy THIS SITE.

She describes it this way:
Today's Cool Site takes two of my favorite things and puts them together. That's right -- I'm talking about photography and travel.

You start with an interactive map of the world. Use the controls to zoom in or out on the map. Or you can click and drag to move the focus. You'll notice small yellow, orange and red dots sprinkling the map.

Just click on one of the dots. You'll get a preview of a picture taken at that location. If you're curious like me and want to see more, click on the preview. Then, you can see the picture in a full-sized window.

While you're exploring the photos, why not take a minute to upload your own? Anyone can do it!
---
NOTE: I found the instructions for upload on their forum. NOT obvious from the link. Here they are:
Follow the the steps 1) - 4)

1) Navigate to the location where you want to place your photo. You can use the controls or drag the map with the mouse pointer.

2) Click on the map with the left mouse button - the white bubble pops up.

3) Browse for your photo file. Enter title and description. If you want to upload as anonymous go to step 4). If you have already registred then select "I want to login". If you also want to register, select "I want to register". Fill in the appropriate data. All fields are required.

4) To upload the photo press "Submit" button.
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I only had one pretty bad photo from the eighties of the main intersection of my hometown, Pageland, South Carolina, loaded onto my computer, but will see if I can scan more. On the map, find the Carolinas. Pageland is located on the South Carolina state line below North Carolina and below Monroe, North Carolina. Jefferson and Ruby are to its east and Kershaw to it's left. You'll see a bubble. That's where I grew up!!

btw: I couldn't get onto blogger at all yesterday to respond to comments or post them to other blogs. I see a maintenace is scheduled for tomorrow, so maybe the problems of the past two or three days will clear up after that.

Your mission...if you choose to do it..

is to use one of the words in the below list in a comment you leave.:-)

Click to enlarge. I wish I had more, but can't remember where I found this batch.



I'll be off the the dentist for a deep filling down into the root, dragging this cold with me. Wish me luck everybody!

Wildflowers

When my cousin turned eighteen,
she asked if she would go psychotic
like her sister
and two brothers before her--
believe the Nazis had poisoned her,
that she was an unrecognized
minister from France,
or end up in an institution
until she forgot who she was when she went.

I was a psychologist,
but what did I know?
The moon could explode tomorrow,
or dinasaurs could come shooting
out of black holes to rule
our planet like Godzilla did.

My baby cousin,
the tagalong,
the tail at the end of the kite
the five of us formed
those Montreat summers,
flying down the steep mountain road,
breathless and barefoot
to plunge headlong into Lake Susan,
so sure life would bring wildflowers
to our hands, forever.

She was never poisoned by the Nazis,
didn't preach in France,
or knock her father flat to his back
on her rare visits home.

A tumor found her, instead.
Thick, like a vine, it slowly strangled her.

Her chair is empty now.
My phone never hands me her voice.

So sure she would outlive me,
I'd willed her the Family Bible
and grandmother's old chocolate set.

Maybe I'll list them on E-bay,
let somebody else
take over our family's hauntings, or

just maybe
I'll look for a field of wildflowers somewhere,
lie back, watch clouds
turn cartwheels through the silent sky
until dusk falls and petals
drop softly to pillow the ground
with memories.

Featuring Ron Moss

Ron Moss, of Tasmania, creates some of the most beautiful haiga I've had the priviledge to view. He has graciously given me permission to post two of his haiga on my blog. Thank you, Ron! Be sure to click to enlarge them and remember that Windows resizes, so watch for the orange rectangle in the lower right corner to see if the image goes larger. Click HERE and HERE to see more of his work.

Below is Ron's bio from one of his publications in Simply Haiku to give an idea of the recognition he's received, as well as a taste of his background. Personally speaking, during my association with him over several years posting together now at Haiku Hut, I'd like to also say that Ron is one of the nicest people you'd want to meet.

Ron Moss writes and paints. He's published in Australia and overseas in magazines such as Famous Reporter, Yellow Moon, Heron's Nest, Frogpond, World Haiku Review, Mainichi Daily News and received an honorary mention in the Japanese Suruga-Baika Literary Festival and a second place in the 7th Mainichi daily News haiku competition.

He also paints watercolours and haiku "Haiga" which have been published in Paper Wasp, HaikuHut's Short Stuff, World Haiku Review and which features a portfolio of his haiga. He's a member of Watersmeet Haiku Group in Hobart, Tasmania and the World Haiku Association and World Haiku Club and has recently won first prizes in Haiku and Haibun and placings in Tanka and Renga and also co-edits Famous Reporter's Haiku Section.

He lives at Leslie Vale, Tasmania with his wife Sharon and works in the film and video department of the archives of Tasmania. He is also a volunteer fire-fighter and an officer at his local fire brigade.Ron was recently interviewed on the NPAC website after winning successive Gold Medals for haiga

For a general definition of haiga, if you're not familiar with the form, click HERE.

Haiga (Click to enlarge)

The beginning of hurricane season brought this to mind.

Black Widow

She undresses dresses nightly to the soft hoot
of hidden owls and tinkling wind chimes.
Perfumed and breathless,
she opens her arms to her new lover,
the old ones drained and scattered like
untended leaves in her trail.
They finally return to tired wives waiting
with burnt coffee and eggs
or empty apartments with beds
they can no longer bear to sleep in.

Her yard is littered with crumpled love poems.
It glows with spilt blood.

She spins silken tales for this new love,
weaves him closer with each word,
talons still hidden, demeanor as meek
as a coward's shadow.

He's a dead man walking, but
nobody's told him yet.

Pris Campbell
(c)2006

A short note...

Today was dental day and the shots for deadening put me into lala land with my chemical sensitivities so I'm sleeping off and on and hoping to feel normal again soon.

In the meantime, today is the funeral of Michael Parker's grandfather. If you know Michael, or even if you don't, take time to read the obituary and eulogy he posted on his site. Michael has been a good friend to me.

Michael, whenever you return, know my thoughts are with you today as are the thoughts of so many others.

Pris

Before Salem...

A little more history...


Edinburgh, Scotland, 1998
Photograph by Jim Richardson

On a dark night, lights cast mysterious shadows on the Edinburgh Castle. The Edinburgh Castle has a long haunting past, one of which involves the Witches Well. Located in the northeast corner of the castle, the Witches Well commemorates the death of more than three hundred women. They were accused of practicing witchcraft between 1479 and 1722.

From the monthly National Geographic newsletter.

A friend recently sent photos of a drowning pond in Iceland where women dress in white each year and gather to commemorate the deaths of ancesters in that pond, women drowned because they were accused of having sex outside of marriage.


Wives were also expected to die on their husband's funeral pyre with them in some cultures and we won't even get into how Henry the Eighth handled divorce.

And yes, men have their share of torture, too, but it has never seemed gender related, with the exception of African American men in America, who were tortured/castrated and then hung. To my knowledge, there were no female tortures and hangings, though they met other types of abuse by the Klan. Tell me if I'm wrong.

If you can stand to look at these, the site, Without Sanctuary, tells the story of these men in photographs.

What's even scarier is that in the Salem burnings, the drowning well, and the lynchings, the persecuters all claimed to be good 'god-fearing' citizens. I'd like to meet their god sometime.

I Am A Mirror

From a photo taken in Boston when I was 31 years old.



CLICK TO ENLARGE. This shows the original photo with the two sides of the face mirrored on each side. Quite a different look, eh?

Unexpected Shoals

Old loves have fallen like soft raindrops
into my dreams lately.
My first husband.
Lenny.
Now you.
I still won't call you by name, you notice.
To do so is to remember
when you still loved me,
and an ocean of tears bars
that time from now.

I dreamed I found our old sailboat
crushed deep into the sands.
Despite screaming birds scavenging
and old men with metal detectors keening,
I discovered a winch, our flag,
that bracelet you gave me for my birthday,
and a photo of us mugging,
mouths open, for an unseen photographer.
You kissed me after, hands already tugging
the edge of my tee, eager to go below
for what we seemed to do best.

I gathered my findings, carried them upshore
and buried them.
A final graveyard of memories.

I didn't bury the flag.
I left that as a warning for new lovers
to take good care in their own odysseys,
a reminder not to wear blinders
against shoals lurking ahead
in the shivering, desolate night.



For those of you who left messages yesterday, thank you. I'm hanging in.

Quick note

I had to go back onto an antibiotic. Long story and I'm too dizzy and nauseated from the med to go into it except that it looks as if the infection is back. I'll probably disappear from posting for a few days. All of you hold down the fort for me, okay?

Pris

Another perspective on Howl by Carter Monroe

(Carter emailed me that he was unable to paste his reply under comment in the below post. I'm posting this separately. The comments under the post, to date, are well worth reading, too)

From Carter:
I first read "Howl" in Fall '71. It was at the beginning of the fall semester at the rural diploma mill I was attending at the time. I was just beginning to learn about poetry or, at least, poetry that was outside the, then, academic box. I had read "Coney Island" and was much more enamored of Ferlinghetti than A.G., but I do remember sensing the tremendous power of the piece. Though about three years later at another college, I would read A.G. in The Norton Anthology, his presence in texts or the library at this particular school would not have been allowed. It was the rural South and it takes a long time for things to find their way here from the West Coast or from NYC.

In terms of poetry, I am constantly posturing the separation of the dancer from the dance. It's very difficult with A.G. and in my mind it's even more difficult to separate this poem from the infamous obscenity trial. The "Howl" trial was largely responsible for the massive scope of The Beat Movement. I'm also not shedding any profound light by noting that A.G.'s almost PR mentality had much to do with the later success of others in that movement such as Kerouac and even more so, Burroughs. Noting the discussions in this thread about the movement, it's sort of like The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How many inductees never recorded a rock and roll song? How many do you have to literally sweat over to see their ties to the genre?

I recently had a rather long discussion with a West Coast poet/author about the many and varied attempts to place Bukowski in the Beat box and how utterly futile they seemed. Whether or not we choose to argue certain semantics, there "was" an SF Renaissance just as there was a Beat Movement and said movement spawned a generation of poets, whether good or bad, that might not have written even the first poem without it. The same can be said of Buk's work. Scads of poets emerged due to both a certain exposure as well as the accessibility of the work. And, poetry as an art form became a bit more popular. A.G., Buk, Richard Brautigan, and a very few others were all able to reach non-readers or non-literary types due to the basic conformist nature of the young. In other words, "We may be against the system, but we are united in our opposition." We conform in terms of our non-conformity. Hell, you could find "Trout Fishing in America," "The Prophet," and maybe "Siddhartha" on shelves in the dorm rooms and apartments of people who had no other books and had yet to even finish reading either of the three. It was just "a thing" as such.

If I tell the truth, I'm a much bigger "fan" of The New York and Black Mountain Schools (to whatever real extent the two can be separated.) Yet, who among their members can be said to have influenced any "non-writers" to the extent of The Beats. Of course, I acknowledge that this fact has only a relative importance. I recall the poet, William Slaughter, telling me once that his graduate writing teacher in the 60's had remarked that the real tragedy of the Vietnam War might ultimately be all of the crummy peace poems it was spawning at the time. By that same token, however, everyone who has ever attempted to create verse did so because of someone he/she read unless such was stimulated by song lyrics. And, though there are legions of "copiers," there are those who begin at some place such as The Beats or Buk and acutally are spurred to learn about poetry and work to improve their writing. It's in the same vein as someone being obsessed with a contemporary song and searching out information about the performer and/or the composer and seeing who their influences were and learning about the work of said influences. Such a thing can and often does become almost exponential.

With all of that having been said, there remains the "taste" or "subjective" element to all of poetry. I think one thing that can honestly be said is that if you mention "Howl" to someone who professes to be a poet and he/she doesn't know what you are talking about, you'll very likely find a person with a very limited reading background. Good, bad, or indifferent, the poem most assuredly made its mark like very few others. In terms of recognition in contemporary society it ranks with "The Wasteland" or "Song of Myself."

HOWL celebrates fifty years!

(quote and photos from The Boston Globe. Thank you, Carter Monroe for pointing out this gem!)


Allen Ginsberg, above left, reading in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 1955, and above center, in New York City's Washington Square Park on Aug. 28, 1966. At right, the City Lights Pocket Poets edition of "Howl and Other Poems."

This fascinating article about Howl's role in the life of poetry in our country can be read in it's entirity in this Boston Globe article, which ends with this question...

So are ''Howl"'s latter-day adherents succumbing to false nostalgia in proclaiming the poem as a national monument? Not at all: The nostalgia is genuine. It's surely wishful thinking to imagine that poetry was ever close to the center of American public life, but in the clear light of hindsight it sure looks like it was within closer hailing distance once upon a time than seems remotely plausible today. If Ginsberg's message has stood the test of time better than his medium, that may be the real secret as to why his dirge still touches such a raw nerve. Poems don't set our ears on fire like that anymore, and they know better than to even try.

Do you agree with this article's conclusion?

And a personal question. Do you remember the first time you ever read Howl and how it impacted you? I was 20, living and working the summer in Manhattan before graduate school. The love I had for poetry had been drummed out of me by my college poetry professors. I remember someone handing me a copy of Howl. First of all you have to be aware of the setting, the times. It was the sixties. Past the time of the Beats, but their footprints were all over the city, from its coffee houses with jazz playing to those feelings of abandon and freedom the Village still gave you strolling the streets. When I read Howl, suddenly poetry was alive for me again. I read it and reread it, then read more Beat poetry. It was like finding something I'd lost. History has had a lot to say about Howl, including how terrible it was, but, for me, it was a gift. For that alone, I honor it!

If you haven't read Howl, do so.

Poets Against Plagiarism

Some of you are already either members or supporters of the new blog Poets Against Plagiarism. If you're not, please visit this blog and consider full membership, giving you the right to make new posts, or email one of us and become a supporter. This is for busy people who would like to steps to stop plagiarism, but don't have the time to actively participate. You would still have the right to comment, as you do on this blog, and that would be welcomed.

The plagiarism banner is on my page and that one. I ask you...please either copy this banner and post it somewhere on your blog, website, or your journal, if an editor, showing clearly that you're making a statement . If you have no way to host a banner, add a text link to the blog in capital letters so it stands out.

For now, follow the above link to the blog. Read through it and let's start joining together on this issue. True, our legal rights are nil, but we do have the right to ask that a proven plagiarist 'cease and desist'. Already, three plagiarised poems have been removed from one site due to mail from the original poet and a letter from me, as co-admin of that blog. So it DOES work!

Thanks,
Pris