(source unknown)

Here’s a great use for old rotary telephones… love those legs.

(source unknown—thanks Betty Jackson)

Vancouver, British Columbia

Well, the long-promised book I’ve been working on for the past years with downtown-Eastside Vancouver gem-of-a poet Sam W. Reimer, (published by and designed at Circle), had its unofficial launch here in Lotusland this weekend—replete with readings at the Ivanhoe Pub (where many of the works were penned over the past few decades) and memory-enriched visits to some of the significant Vancouver sites cited in the book’s 200+ poems (parks, beaches, crime scenes, and edgy slum addresses). The weather cooperated, (as did the poet’s rheumatoid arthritis, for the most part) and we were blessed with magnificent sunshine.

Thanks to my dear cousins Sam (with whom I also shared a birthday yesterday) and Lois (also a Reimer) for welcoming me to her west-side home. If you’re interested in an advance copy of the book ($16 Cdn. plus postage) contact me here. (Active marketing of the book will commence within the next few weeks, and I’ll share further information on that as it rolls out…).

Sam W. and Lois at the Granville Island Market; “bard in bar” at the lower Ivanhoe; the book’s cover (thanks, Adrian).

San Francisco, California

On this day in 1873, clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis were granted a patent for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim overalls, paving the way for their business Levi Strauss & Co. to start manufacturing their first line of blue jeans.

In 1971, while art director at Young & Rubicam International in Brussels, Antwerp-born designer Van Bladel created this directly clever, cheeky, succinct poster-statement for the European market… stating that “slipping into a pair of Levis was as good as slithering into a very tight second skin.” Across the pond, the Levi’s poster featuring the (now) famous bare-butt with the Levis pocket stitching painted on was aborted, deemed unacceptable for the (more puritanical) US market at the time.

From the Huffington Post (thanks Nancy Wynn)

“Last night, Keith Olbermann unleashed what may well have been his angriest, most blistering Special Comment yet, aimed squarely at his favorite target: President Bush. Olbermann was responding to Bush’s claim that he had given up golf in honor of the Iraq war—and his assertion that a Democratic president withdrawing from Iraq would “eventually lead to another attack on the United States”—a statement Olbermann called “ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong.” Olbermann continued in that vein for a full 12 minutes (or 2,000 words), frequently raising his voice and spitting out his words in disgust…

Olbermann turned Bush’s reference to “cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives” around and threw it back at him, saying that such killers were “those in—or formerly in—your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.” It didn’t get any milder—saying that, to Bush, “freedom is just a brand name,” and pointing out that al Qaeda in Iraq was a result of the invasion: “Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!” Olbermann also criticized Bush’s statement that he was “told by people” that there were WMDs in Iraq: “People? What people?… Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress’s throat, the way you jammed it down the nation’s throat.”

A cathartic rant worth taking in… and perhaps(!?) a sign that the U.S.’s cowed media might eventually find its voice again? The concerned world watches, hopes, and prays…

Frankfurt, Germany

Having grown up multi-lingually on several continents, I’ve never really been “at home” in any particular place, and have often felt a bit like a chameleon. I’ve also eschewed (mostly unconsciously) being woven into a single community or cultural fabric. This likely explains why I live in the woods (without neighbors or a local community), yet have spent my life heavily involved in professional and global peer networks, and seem to have an ongoing “restlessness to move” and travel on a continual basis. I’ve often used the ironic quip: “If you don’t care where you are, you’re never lost.” as a truism I can really relate to. While being rootless does have its advantages (one tends to be more tolerant of others; adapting to new environs is easier) this identity struggle also brings a raft of other social and psychological issues along with it in its sojourns, including reverse culture shock and a sense of disengaged melancholia.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered this phenomena has a taxonomy and name of its own—Third Culture Kids, often abbreviated “TCKs” or “3CKs” or “Global Nomads,” referring to “someone who, (as a child) has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture.” By definition, “the TCK tends to build relationships to all cultures, while not having full ownership of any,” and “develops a sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere.”

The concept of Third Culture Kids was introduced in the 1960s by Ruth Hill Useem (1915-2003), a sociologist who used the term to describe children who spent part of their developmental years in a foreign culture due to their parents’ working abroad.” Her work was the first to “identify common themes among various TCKs that affect them throughout their lives.” TCKs tend to have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCKs from their own country—over the past decades, TCKs have become a heavily studied global subculture. (My cousin Faith, also a TCK, authored/edited the book Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global, documenting “a life of growing up in multiple nations, cultures, and language regions.”)

“Not All Who Wander Are Lost.” —JRR Tolkien (a TCK himself)

Old photos: I always had this thing for small cars (perhaps in reaction to the hulking ‘Strassenkreuzer’ Studebaker my parents shipped over to Germany); on our Stettenstrasse front stoop, my first day of school in Frankfurt.

Kyoto, Japan

If you’re into visual illusion and optical phenomena, you’ll want to see the work of Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. But be warned… his site “contains some works of ‘anomalous motion illusion,’ which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick (e.g. epileptic seizures, which can happen if the brain can’t handle conflicting information from your two eyes). Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave immediately….” A wealth of useful information appears on or is linked to his site (granted, website design is not his strength)— here.

No, these are not moving images… your mind creates the illusion of motion.

Boston, Massachusetts

This came in from friend Chaz Maviyane-Davies today…

“It’s a month since the Zimbabwe elections were held on March 29th 2008, and we are still waiting for the Presidential results. Meanwhile, Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF has embarked on a violent campaign of terror and intimidation in the rural areas against opposition supporters. There have been at least ten murders so far with hundreds injured and displaced. The madness continues as the world watches a tyrannical regime that has declared war with the people, whose only ‘crime’ is voting for change, and change they can trust.”

Disturbing and frustrating… we live in a world and era (allegedly) so seamless and connected, yet what can we do? At times I feel so helpless…

São Paulo, Brazil

Well, it’s been just over a year now since city officials in Brazil’s teeming metropolis (of officially 11 million, though the last time I was there local designer friends estimated the city’s population at 22 million, including the ever-expanding favelas), took daring and unprecedented action to ban all billboards, neon signs, and outdoor electronic advertising panels. As Rob Maguire of Art Threat puts it: “Billboards have been stripped of their commercial clothing, the stark nakedness of the abandoned frames reminding passers by of the once stolen public space now reclaimed.” Indeed, a beautiful reclaiming of the commons…

Congratulations, and kudos, to the visionary civic leaders of São Paulo… would that other jurisdictions around the world might find the heart and courage to free more of our planet’s over-targeted publics in the same way, and to help reduce the visual pollution that has become such a ubiquitous scourge in our modern age!

Images: cover of Creative Review, and one of the many inspiring photos by Tony DeMarco here.

Winnipeg, Canada

Lately, I’ve been thinking about hogs more than I care to—and don’t get me wrong, I’m no lover of pigs. I stopped eating pork (and beef, and bison, and mutton, and poultry) over twenty years ago, after seeing first-hand how factory farms had preempted traditionally sustainable animal husbandry with mechanistic meat-production methods (in which short-sighted profit extraction came first, regardless if that meant treating animals cruelly, pumping them full of medications (anti-biotics, growth hormones, etc.), and incorporating unwholesome shortcuts in feed production (think mad cow disease). Although I still eat cheese, seafood, and occasionally wild meat (living in the woods, I do occasionally harvest a deer), I am resolutely and ethically opposed to the mistreatment of animals and to the profit-first methods of corporate agribusiness. (18 months ago, we helped spearhead a successful[!] viral marketing campaign [broken link] to consolidate public outrage against the inane proposal of the OlyWest consortium to build a massive hog slaughter plant here in St. Boniface, a back-room deal concocted by Winnipeg’s back-room dealing mayor Sam Katz).

I’m embarrassed about the fact that here in Manitoba (a formerly pristine Canadian province the size of Germany and Italy combined) with a population of just over a million human beings, we have a resident population of over eight million caged hogs(!). Two months ago, news of the largest meat recall in U.S. history came across the wires. The root cause of the recall? Animal abuse, and the blending of bruised animals with otherwise safe meat. Two weeks ago, a massive fire on a Hutterite hog farm north of Winnipeg killed over 8000 caged and terrified animals (just thinking about their agony makes me sick). Adding insult to injury, driving home from work this past week, I was horrified to hear that our federal government had just announced that it will pay pork producers $50 million to kill off 150,000 of their pigs by the fall, as the (bloated, non-sustainable) industry now teeters on the brink of economic collapse. The animals will be destroyed at slaughter plants and on pig farms in a bid to cull the swine breeding herd by 10 per cent—what a waste, and so regrettable!

Oh… and happy Earth Day!