Stalks: Spanish Civil War

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Links to Help You Enjoy the Book More

Links For Book Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell:

University of Illinois Collection of Spanish Civil War Stuff
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
University of Southern Florida: Oral History Project
Wikipedia Article on the Civil War in Spain

Maps

Tending the Classics- 42 Days with Huck Finn 12:42

Wigwam built piecemeal,
from old cottonwood branches,
de' breeze moves raft's roof.

a short-bowed forked stick 
hangs the old beckoned lantern,
So Proud Mary might see. 

Our raft safely move,
living the riverboat high-life,
 short lived, fixed up.
                  
                  But then
                            Boat went on-
                                            without us....

50+ State of Brews-California: Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout

A Great Strong Beer... great taste, and all my friends
like it as well.  Shared this beer with fellow travelers after
the Lakeland Pig Fest, January 28 2011.

Great state of California has so many great beers.  So it saddens me to
limit it to only one beer but, this one unlike Plinny the Elder can
be bought in Florida.

North Coast Brewing Company
Where to get it in the 863

Tending the Classics- 42 Days with Huck Finn 11:42

Who twas, that killed Huck Finn: Jim? Pa?
Rumors fly high,
Huck hears
woman.


Huck's hands shake, as he hears story.
Jackson Island search,
Torched eyes of mob look for Huck.


Huck rekons, I'll rest a while,
and I'll go on.  
Mr. Dark, 
don't scare.









Quote:
Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t'other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain.


Read Chapter 11

Tending the Classics- 42 Days with Huck Finn 10:42

"To be shaping again, model

And tool craft of culture 

How we go on."*

Bad luck be treasured
It's a commin'
Jim's a bitten by rattlesnake.

Apply Pap's Drink,
Help Jim cure snake bite: exit
IN the dark, and look sharp.



Huck in drag knocks on widows door, sivily.**

*Hoover, Paul. Postmodern American Poetry. New York: Norton, 1994. p.220
**Yes I know I spelled sivily wrong, I did this because this is how Huck Finn would have spelled the word. 


Read Chapter 10

Harvest Reviewed- Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor shows the strength of the Christian Spirit in Modern-Times, especially in the Southern Bible-Belt. The Bible is something people live through down here(this reviewer lives in Lakeland Florida, a hot bed Christian revival).  The bible is not an abstracted idea that one believes.
 O'Connor shows the depth of the blood that is wise through the giving of ones life to the Gospel. It is a short novel, but one that will haunt you for a long time.  O'Connor is proclaiming to the world that there is nothing for your pain but the Blood of Jesus Christ, by showing characters who attempt to make their own gospel. Hazel attempts to have a church without Christ.   Hazel's hope rests in a car that will not move forward.  He attempts to direct the divine path, but finds that like Noah (in the story about a whale) that he can't subtract or add form a debt that has all ready been paid in full.
We like Hazel stuff gravel in our shoes, attempting to perfect our own walk.  And all this does is hurt our feet.  We are merely pinpoints of light awash in the flood of being. OConnor proclaims that a church without Christ falls off the cliff never to be put back together again.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in faith, the church, Southern Sensibilities, or anyone interested in a great read.  Two clucks way up. By the way this was the first time I had the privilage of reading O'Connor and I plan to read more of her in the future.





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Author	Flannery O'Connor
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Southern Gothic novel
Publisher	Harcourt, Brace & Company
Publication date	May 15, 1952
Media type	Print (Hardback &Paperback)
Pages	238
ISBN	0-374-50584-5
OCLC Number	256887668

Harvest Reviewed: Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is a beauty to me... so I will write a poem to its impression:

Et en Arcadia Ego

Brideshead Revisited is like
quickened clouds on a stormy day!

The day before was so like Arcadia
Before the fall!

The war's shadow
 comes and goes and comes again.
And other places so cruel and cold,
Taking your heart,
Bitter like horseradish next to filet mignon and crab.


And the veil is riped.
The great big square
In the country,
Is your original home.

Where is Sebastian?
College friends lost in the vortex of time.
Young and bright.

Almost nobody comes to visit anymore.
Or even tries to write...
to loved ones lost long ago.


Cold and cruel,
It looks like
You should return-but then
Time pasts through your
fingers-
(and twenty years has passed)
your painted murals have begun to fade,
leaving only scattered paint,
and a scent of decay.

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Tending the Classics-42 Days with Huck Finn 9:42

Chapter 9:
Poem Influenced by Gary Snyder's Form.

Facing Freedom
Illinois, Away!
For Jim to escape Bonds.

In the island cave,
protected, hard rain-drops.
blue black- outside.

Birds cover up-hunker down.
Natural signs.
God floods green banks.

With dead loot, We got home all safe.

Quote

A house floats down the Mississippi, this is probably where Huck got his hat:

"De man ain't asleep -- he's dead. You hold still -- I'll go en see."

He went, and bent down and looked, and says:

"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face -- it's too gashly."

I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe -- it might come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff

Chapter 9: 42 Days with Huck

50+ States of Brews: Florida

If you live in the 863 buy it at Grapevine Liquors

42 Days with Huck Finn 8:42

The Form Today is from a Poem by Gary Snyder:

Raft down the old blue byway, FREE!!!

Huck eats sacred bread,
sent to find his body;
from prayers teared born.

Carcass, rising.
to the top of still
water, cannon balls blew.

Escape by and by. Illinois.
Jim day dreams of,
Hopes rising current.

Raft down the old blue byway,
                                     FREEWAY!!!

42 Days with Huck Finn 7:42

Huck Finn Chapter 7: Getting Away from Pa

Daydreams before breakfast.  

Savage reality, 

Cold/Wet

Hid/Out 

Read: Huck Finn Chapter Seven

Soil: Hannibal Missouri

The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts -- sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill.

Missouri meets the Mississippi in a gradual way.  The land does not fall off and then join the river.   The river meets Hannibal right there before you.   I was amazed by the Mississippi and the lands relationship when I drove through Hannibal on my way to Lakeland Florida.   Hannibal was out of the way but I desired to see the home of Tom, Huck, and the infamous Mark Twain.

I pulled into the small town, and found my way around. I stopped at a classic looking soda fountain.  I ordered a Chocolate Coke, which was by the way delicious, and listened to the people talk about the tourists.  I hoped that I did not look like one of the Lotus Eaters; but hey when you are a tourist its hard to hide that fact.  So I buttoned my lip and enjoyed my Chocolate Coke.  There was fresh squeezed Apple Juice was on the menu. But I had my fill from the apple orchard stands, that lined the highway on my way through Missouri.

When I went towards the old river, I was expecting to see something like the Snake River in Idaho. The Snake River in Idaho is segregated from the potatoes in the field, by large, carved out, canyons.    The Mississippi, on the other hand,  creeps right up to the land, like a carpet bagger from Minnesota, meeting the folks in Missouri, with  a "how do ye do?"  and a cobalt-blue  handshake.


Check out Mark Twain's Book: Life on the Mississippi
  

Movies that Fertilize Creative Soil: #1

It's not just a parking lot in Charlottesville Virginia, Its a battle with Humanity.

The Parking Lot Movie

A great documentary on the life and times of

exiles, poets, artists,

eccentrics and

of parking lot attendants.

42 Days with Huck Finn 6:42

Poetic Impression Chapter 6

---Baku------
----Pap gets a hold of Huck----

Huck lov'd the freedom with Pap.
He cussed life up. 
Free While, 
no trap. 


----Haiku---


Pap tore Huck's hide.
But drink made him loony.
So Huck got Pap's Gun.




Huck Finn Chapter 6


Quoted:

"Tramp -- tramp -- tramp; that's the dead; tramp -- tramp -- tramp; they're coming after me; but I won't go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me -- don't! hands off -- they're cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!"

Soil: Hannibal Mo. Pictures of Huck's Home

You know what I mean, I don't have words to put it in." Huck Finn Chapter 7

Link to Wikipedia Article:

42 Days with Huck Finn 5:42

Context and Quote:

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.  (Chapter 5 Quote)

Poetic Impression:

Fiddling Pap, strikes Huck black and blue,

Tar and feathered,

black white,

right back.

Read Chapter 5:

42 Days with Huck Finn 4:42

Context and Quote:
This chapter deals with Hucks fortune... and the two meanings of the word fortune...Jim reads hucks fortune through his fortune telling hair-ball.

"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung."

Poetic Impression of Chapter 4

His Pap Returns

Six times seven equals thirty,
adds up to not.
Liquored,
fortune.


Read Chapter 4.

42 Days with Huck Finn 3:42

Quote and Context:

 Huck and Tom laid ambush on what they hoped would be a bunch of Arabs or Spainards, but was really a primer Sunday School Class.  All they could find was a hymnal, some jam, and a rag doll:


He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sundayschool, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull. 

Poetic Impression: Baku

Huck is a perfect "sap-head",
low down, in the muck,
life like,
logic.

Personal Experience

When I was a kid and I would read too many Louis L'Amour books; my bike would become a horse, my brother was an injun, and I was a scout looking for reds.   The make believe world became more real than the real world I was a part of.

Don Quixote Reads into our Enchanted World

Huck is only able to think like a natural man, his ability to use imagination is lacking.   It is real, or it is unreal, there is no fantasy land for Huck.  Huck is a survivalist.  And does not have the safety to day dream, day dreaming takes a certain security to be able to do.  He plays Sancho to Tom Sawyer's Quixote.




Read Chapter Three

42 Days with Huck Finn 2:42

Quotes in Context:

Context: Tom and Huck play a trick on Jim.  JIm explains the trick by ways of vodoo magic.  

Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that fivecenter piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Context: The boy's gang is debating what it is to ransom someone, without  a complete knowledge of the word:

"Because it ain't in the books so -- that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you? -- that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."

Poetic Response:

Story book notions, play with your itch.

Highway boys nest, 

and break,

fences.
_ _ _ _ _ _

Thoughts on Notes from a Native Son and Mark Twain's Novel

At once, a need, for saving de
"Nigger". White absolves;
black+red
is blank.

Link to Chapter 2

42 Days with Huck Finn 1:42

A commemoration of Mark Twain and his wonderful, unexcused, uncensored masterpiece:

Quote from Chapter One

Context-Huckleberry has a Hamlet's Father moment:

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. Huckleberry Finn Chapter One




Poetic Impression Chapter One:
House laid like a tomb, still as death...
Sivil Huck dreamed.
Freedom:
Me-yow!

We will be spending 42 days reading this story, as their are 42 chapters, and one chapter a day which equals 42.  We will write a poetic impression of the chapter each and every day we read a chapter.  I hope, y'all enjoy it... 

Crops-Bodacious deThymus Vulgaris thinks his way Through:

Life on the roofs is just a head game
Humans only want you to stay up there
Labeling me a flesh eater,
calling me ugly, 
I can hear stupid
For I am a mischievous sort
Life in the streets is just a head game

Humans only want you to stay up there
Labeling me a flesh eater,

Only seeing me stoned, 

they drove me out!

Why do I call myself a Protector you ask
Because my mouth is dirt monkey nasty
I will deliver us from the deadly adversaries...
minions of Garguiem, Tarasque, and Peluda.

Yo! I'll be a Hanky Pink for Life. 
turning me to stone, 
hah, see who laughs last!

Web Site Spotlight: International Center of Photography

Check out the International Center of Photography:  a great place to get energized creatively

.

42 Days with Huck Finn Preface.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) 

Mark Twain Begins the story of Huck Finn with a Notice that reads:

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narra- tive will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

That is why writing poetic impressions is the best way to review this book.  Twain wrote this book as an impression of the period; he did not want this book to be like the one Harriet Boetcher Stow wrote, a protest novel.   A protest novel lacks the ability to tell truthfully the subject being presented.   

EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap- hazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

Harvest Reviewed: A Book That Changed My Year

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great book.  I plan to read more Cory Doctorow and love his web site Boing Boing.  Also this book invoked a sort of need to learn how to program, I have lost that need, but this book reopened my need to learn to write code.  So today I went and bought a book on HTML Code.   Clink and cheers to new things this year.  

A book that changed my year!

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50+ States of Reading-Missouri: Mark Twain

Mark Twain is our Representation for Missouri
We will be reading-Huckleberry Finn.

Prayers-Remarkableness Family in Easton Ohio

Rewiring this Old House: Easton Ohio
Gone up in smoke.
Mister
Match Less,

Saved family from dangerous dragon.
Breathes an ashen blue,
ember
tower.

In Easton Ohio, our prayers
Go up, Godly sent.
Breathless,
Family,

Now stands a foundation, outlined.
God rebuilds proper.
Brush Strokes
Take Hold.

Baku/Haiku allows for an outline, to a story or a scene on can then flesh out to the form of a short.   All one then has to do is shade in the movement from point A to point B.    However, the correct form needs to be chosen or the poem will not end up the correct poem.   The form is the home for the thought.  

50+ States of Movies: Upper Peninsula Michigan.

A Movie About Family 

This is an overlooked twenty point buck of a movie.

A portrait of time.  A portrait of family: some present, some not.  It also shows a way of life, for those who hunt down the buck of their dreams.  This movie has a bit of the Northern Exposure, combined with a bit Mid Summer's Nights Dream atmosphere to it.

 For those not easily offended by a guys need to hunt (or even a girls need to hunt) your family will surely like it.

1st Fifty States of Viewing: Upper Michigan

Crop: Bernard and the Saber Tooth Tiger

“Are gargoyles real?”Bernard asks his Grandma.

“As real as the Saber tooth tiger in the Denver Museum of Natural History! As real as your Grandfather's swan dives into New York Lakes.  As real as the famous Golem that protected our village in New York!”

Bernard recalls the facts about the Saber tooth tiger.   The great mammal lived between 33.7 million and 9,000 years ago. They were very strong.  And that Saber-tooths  could easily kill a human with a swipe of their awesome paws...And those fangs looked like daggers, only white porcelain tips hanging from a furry mouth, like stalactites in a cave.   

He also recalls the great sound of the cat head in the middle of the Denver Museum of Natural History.   An assortment of coins, dollars and miscellaneous debris were held in a glass cylinder under the head. The head roared when one dropped money through the smiling canines.

 The roar was terrorizing. Kids gathered wanting to hear the sound of a tiger.  A tiger that was safe.  A tiger that could not hunt them down in the middle of the night.

Tractors: Writing Tools

Google City Streets

allows the writer to explore streets that they then can use in their writing.  One can find a place and explore the streets without really being there.  A cost effective way to put realistic ideas into your writing.

The book I am currently reading, Looking for Mr. Gilbert, has listed addresses.  I can look up the houses on Google Maps and get a sense of the place the author may be trying to describe.   It would be awesome if Google maps and some gamer came together and made virtual maps of fantasy places, or not.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Google Street View is a technology featured inGoogle Maps and Google Earth that providespanoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched on May 25, 2007, originally only in several cities in the United States, and has since gradually expanded to include more cities and rural areas worldwide.^[1]

Crops: Grandma and Boy Feed Ducks

A little red head boy, named Bernard.  Bernard wears a purple and gold Minnesota vikings uniform.  The viking uniform is a gift from his grandfather.  His grandma Pearl, has brought him to Washington Park, to feed  his friends the ducks.    Her blue Olds-Mobile is parked at South high school.  He feeds bread crumbs to the stream.  She tells him stories of Jewish Lore of a long time ago, and a village far far away, a place she calls Suffern New York.   She speaks of the Golem of Suffern, something that was a secret only known to the Rothbard family.

The ducks gobble the crumbs up. The boys feeds more crumbs into the crystalline stilled lake.  The thrown Arrow white bread creates ripples in the still chilled water.   The ripples spread out.   Stilled and then splash, the ducks move towards the white pieces of bread soaking in the water.  Harmony resounds. The Gargoyle on top of South High School smiles at the beauty of the scene.

 One does not see the smile because it is slight, and he is made of stone, and micro-feasures on stone do not show up unless one looks putting their head on the rock.
 
Ripples Spread Out! 

Harvest Reviewed-On Moral Fiction by John Champlin Gardner

On Moral Fiction by John Champlin Gardner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Cure Against the Postmodern Haze

This little book is a great defense against crap in fiction.  Gardner argues against the postmodern flotsam that is today considered high art.   Its high art all right, but it is not morally straight.
  The book is very helpful in create clarity in the haze that has been emitted by ivory towered tenured writers; who instead of making art that is clearly understood, make art that is just gibberish trash.  These professional writing types want to appear smart, but are really just plain arrogant egg-heads.

 I would add this book to my collection, because it is a great reference to understanding art today.
(This book is well served with a side dish of Francis Schaeffer.)

Double Cluck Good

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