Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
vz sent this one in for dr aw. ash pencils
deck demo / filmed and posted by ed t. staring bill and joe and the doomed deck
MMW GAD
k bighair from dallas has a DIY shipping container project going on down in kerrville texas and has photo documented it here. she has been posting frequently on the fab-prefab container-bay message board. asking smart questions and offering good answers to other's questions. on this recent thread fellow board participant and admitted architect gregory la vardera chases her off with this hot new new topic :
Why do Containers attract DIY?
Why, like rats to a meat truck, do containers attract DIYs? Really there is nothing different about this than any kind of construction, heavy or light. Yet people seem to have some sort of regard for regular construction which keeps most people away and hiring contractors, some sort of regard that they don't have for working with a container.
Honestly, having looked at them very closely there is nothing different about building a house from a container than there is from steel. Yet I don't see anybody asking "how many bolts do I need on that beam to create a moment connection to that column.." Its like nobody would ever ask that - like its considered the domain of some kind of mystical expert, yet containers are wide open to anybody with a blow torch and some balls. Frankly you are in much deeper sh-t if you think you are going to mess with a container than you are with structural steel. There are lots of resources out there for working with structural steel. Books, industry standards, classes at universities and community colleges. Of course there are no resources on building with containers because its all "brand new". But that does not mean that working with them is any simpler or easier than any other type of construction.
All that means is you have to make it up yourself as you go along, which answers my question I suppose. A DIYer would really love doing that! But at least hire yourself an engineer if you are not sure its going to stand up.
All I can say is go for it, and don't screw up so badly that you make tough for others that may follow being a little bit more methodical and thorough.
this family snap shot scan just in from my brother. we are trailer folks. left to right. uncle al's trailer, aunt juanita, cousin paul, me, cousin steve, uncle al, brother john and i dont know what hes driving. visiting us in dallas '62ish enroute to his management level assignment with the park service at death valley national park in nevada..
revamped wtc memorial design
ck berryman / originator of the teddy bear. this drawing made gift to my grandmother as a child on a visit to her aunt in washington dc in 1912. berryman and the aunt both worked in the us patent office at the time.
glenn gould you tube proformances :
Lois Marshall sings strauss's cancillie w/ glenn gould in accompaniment.
plays aria from the goldberg variations
A short segment from "Glenn Gould's Toronto," a long-unavailable film from the late 1970s produced for the CBC. He talks about the new CN Tower, about how Toro ... (more)
Leonard Rose and Glenn Gould play the 3rd movement (Adagio cantabile — Allegro vivace) of Ludwig van Beethoven's Cello Sonata No 3 in A major, Op. 69.
four 1920's or 1930's initiation photographs
I've been writing love songs all my life, never rocking the boat. There were years that I paid no attention to the political process, times I never voted. The closest I came to writing music with any social and political connotation was "What the World Needs Now is Love." When that song was written 40 years ago, it was an important song.
And, now, it is a thousand times more so.
But starting with the 2000 election, things for me began to change. I watched as Bush basically stole the election, and other terrible situations occurred; and by the time 9/11 hit, I didn't feel like writing love songs.
dukesfest '06
Earlier in my life there seemed to be unlimited possibilities, but my mind was closed. Now, years later and with an open mind, possibilities no longer interest me. I seem content to be continually rearranging the same furniture in the same room. My concern at times is nothing more than establishing a series of practical conditions that will enable me to work. For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.
My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, “What about the man on the street?” At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street. The crazy artist of my generation was crossing the street at that moment.
If a man teaches composition in a university, how can he not be a composer? He has worked hard, learned his craft. Ergo, he is a composer. A professional. Like a doctor. But there is that doctor who opens you up, does exactly the right thing, closes you up—and you die. He failed to take the chance that might have saved you. Art is a crucial, dangerous operation we perform on ourselves. Unless we take a chance, we die in art.
Polyphony sucks.
Because I’m Jewish, I do not identify with, say, Western civilization music. In other words, when Bach gives us a diminished fourth, I cannot respond that the diminished fourth means, O God. . . . What are our morals in music? Our moral in music is nineteenth-century German music, isn’t it? I do think about that, and I do think about the fact that I want to be the first great composer that is Jewish.
“That means a bigger picture,” she says. “When somebody comes to somebody and says, ‘Do this project,’ if there’s been a study of that area, they know what kind of envelope they should have. But there doesn’t seem to be much study at all here. On one hand, it’s kind of refreshing in New York that every plan is autonomous and just goes up; on the other hand, you have a lot of ad hoc stuff that isn’t perfect.”
“People have tremendously emotional feelings about cities like Paris because it never changes,” I say. “I know Paris probably needs as many things as anywhere else, but a city like that, a completely beautiful place for centuries, why do anything there?”
“I think it’s a problem if we don’t change,” she says. “It’s beautiful, but it has no energy. Like Venice—it’s beautiful when you have the film festival or the Biennale, and it’s beautiful in winter. But it can’t grow. Paris is very even. But otherwise it’s quite dull.”
As I can’t agree, I drop it. I would rather live in a dull, beautiful place than a place where things “happen.” My own utopian ideas involve population control and scaling down the human presence on the planet. Architects think in terms of endless capitalist expansion, endless growth, endless everything; yet I feel certain we are coming to the end of endlessness. Still, Zaha Hadid is probably the only architect I’ve met who seems conscious of this, without necessarily acknowledging it. She has to build, so she needs to be positive. I have to write and have the luxury of skepticism.
We discuss the recent fracases over air rights and plot mergers, particularly in the West Village. “One could say it’s terrible,” she says. “But in Hong Kong they used to do illegal extensions, and sometimes they were nice. But I understand the problem, if you have something and it disappears. I used to come to New York a lot; my brother had a flat in midtown with the most fantastic view. And he thought he had the air rights to the next-door building. Then they decided to make a tower, and it wasn’t illegal, and suddenly it was like a blank wall in front of our faces. It’s a tragedy, but it was part of life in New York, I guess.”
vinalhaven maine in the times
IT takes a certain determination to visit the island of Vinalhaven, Me. Once you've made it to Rockland, halfway up the Maine coast along slow, winding Route 1, you're still a 75-minute ferry ride away. The ferry fits only 16 cars, and reservations are limited, so it's not unusual for motorists on a busy summer day to wait in line for two or even three of the six daily ferries to depart before securing a place on board.i hope no one read it
John Strausbaugh examines the history of race relations in American popular culture, from vaudeville to hip-hop, in Black Like You. (listen)
neptune crossing images
arthur lee and love on you tube
uuuuuuuummm kitchens
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.hufcoms
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
you know like its not the real hood here. its more like the edge and then theres the deep hood. about a month or two ago i noticed a brand new form of sound pollution. a repeating loud beep with a little eco beep afterwards. its a younger set using them. cell phones with walky-talky action. man they can go on forever with that shit. deep into the night. beebeep, beebeep... yak yak yak beebeep...
the semiotics of fsbo
The Texas-Mexican Conjunto
. . . "conjunto" continues to represent an alternative musical ideology, and in this way it helps to preserve a Mexican, working-class culture wherever it takes root on American soil. Endowed with this kind of symbolic power, conjunto has more than held its own against other types of music that appear from time to time to challenge its dominance among a vast audience of working-class people.
--Manuel Pena
One of the most enduring musical traditions among Mexicans and Mexican Americans is the accordion-based ensemble known as "conjunto" (and as "musica nortena" outside of Texas). Popular for more than one hundred years, especially since its commercialization in the 1920s, this folk ensemble remains to this day the everyday music of working-class Texas Mexicans and Mexican "nortenos" (northerners). During the course of its long history, the conjunto evolved into a tightly organized style that speaks musically for the aesthetic and ideological sentiments of its adherents. In the process, this music of humble beginnings along the Texas-Mexico border has spread far beyond its original base, gaining a vast audience in both Mexico and the United States.
The diatonic, button accordion that anchors the conjunto made its first appearance in northern Mexico and South Texas sometime in the 1860s or '70s. The first accordions were simple one- or two-row models, quite suitable for the musical capabilities of the first norteno and Texas/Mexican musicians who experimented with the instrument. A strong regional style developed by the turn of the century, as the accordion became increasingly associated with a unique Mexican guitar known as an "oajo sexto." Another local folk instrument, the tambora de rancho (ranch drum), also enjoyed prominence as a back-up to the accordion. In combination with one or both of these instruments, the accordion had become by the 1890s the instrument of preference for working-class celebrations on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border.
In Texas, these celebrations were organized frequently--too frequently for some Anglos, who voiced their disapproval of fandangos, or "low-class" dances, in the newspapers. For example, the Corpus Christi Caller and the San Antonio Express on more than one occasion expressed Anglos' negative attitudes toward tejano music and dance. In one report, the Express equated music and dancing with idleness and concluded that "these fandangos have become so frequent they are a great curse to the country" (August 20, 1881). This typical attitude developed early on and persisted well into the twentieth century.
Despite Anglo disapproval, the conjunto and its dances thrived among tejano workers, eventually eclipsing all other forms of music for dancing. Yet, popular as it was, the conjunto remained an ad hoc ensemble until the 1930s. No permanent combination of instruments had been established prior to that time, perhaps because creative and material forces had not yet crystallized to spur radical stylistic development. To be sure, some changes had been wrought by the 1920s, as the button accordion and the bajo sexto by now formed the core of the emerging style, while such common European dances as the redowa had been regionalized and renamed. The redowa itself had been transformed into the vals bajito, in contrast to the waltz, which was known as a "vals alto." Indeed, most of the repertory for the dance, or fandango, was of European origin and included the polka, mazurka, and schottishe, in addition to the waltz and redowa. One regional genre from Tamaulipas, Mexico, the huapango, rounded out the usual repertory of conjuntos until World War II.
Beginning in the 1930s, an innovative surge rippled through the emerging conjunto tradition, as performers like Narciso Martinez (known as "the father" of the modern conjunto), Santiago Jimenez, Lolo Cavazos, and others began to strike out in new stylistic directions. This new surge of innovation must be attributed, at least in part, to the active commercial involvement of the major recording labels in the music of the Hispanic Southwest. From the 1920s, companies such as RCA Victor (Bluebird), Decca, Brunswick, and Columbia (Okeh) began exploiting the musical traditions in the Hispanic Southwest, hoping to repeat the success they had experienced with African American music since the early '20s. Under the commercial impetus of the big labels, which encouraged record and phonograph sales, radio programming, and especially public dancing (much of it in cantinas, to the dismay of Anglos and "respectable" Texas Mexicans), musicians like Narciso Martinez began to experiment. By the end of the 1930s, the conjunto had begun to evolve into the stylistic form the ensemble reached during its mature phase in the post-World War II years.
Without a doubt, the most important change came in the 1930s, when Narciso Martinez began his recording career. Searching for a way to stamp his personal style on the accordion, Martinez abandoned the old, Germanic technique by virtually avoiding the bass-chord buttons on his two-row accordion, concentrating instead on the right hand, treble melody buttons. His sound was instantly distinctive and recognizable. Its brighter, snappier, and cleaner tone contrasted with the older sound, in which bajo sexto and the accordionist's left hand both played bass-and accompaniment, creating a "thicker," drone-like effect. Martinez left bassing and chordal accompaniment to the bajo sexto of his most capable partner, Santiago Almeida.
Narciso Martinez's new style became the hallmark of the surging conjunto, just as Almeida's brisk execution on the bajo sexto created the standard for future bajistas. Together, the two had given birth to the modern conjunto, a musical style that would challenge even the formidable mariachi in cultural breadth and depth of public acceptance. Indeed, by the 1970s it could be said that the conjunto, known in the larger market as musica nortena, was the most powerful musical symbol of working-class culture. Martinez, however, remained an absolutely modest folk musician until his death. He never laid claim to anything but a desire to please his public. Yet, as Pedro Ayala, another of the early accordion leaders, acknowledged, "after Narciso, what could the rest of us do except follow his lead?"