SHADOWS OVER THE LAND

There are shadows over the land. They come out of the ground, from the dust and tumbled bones of the earth. Tree shadows that haunt the woodlands of childhood, holding fear in their branches. Stone shadows on the desert, cloud shadows on the sea and over the summer hills, bringing water. Shapes of shadow in pools and wells, vague forms in the sand-light. Poet, John Haines from The Stars, the Snow, the Fire. St. Paul, Greywood Press

CLOTHESLINES NO LONGER IN THE SHADOWS

 Image: http://www.wikihow.com/Dry-Clothes-Outside

I've been surprised to learn clotheslines have been in the shadows, actually outlawed in this country for some time by  organizations called HOAs (Homeowners Associations). HOAs monitor what changes homeowners can make to their property in some communities and what rules they must obey regarding home renovation, appearance and upkeep. Such organizations, for example often have veto powers regarding homeowner's choice of exterior house paint colors.

Well, the modest but nostalgic everyday backyard fixture of homekeepers throughout this country for generations, that is, the humble clothesline, has not only been under attack by HOAs. They have  made it an object of homeowner shame. Shame that our laundry drying on a line in the backyard is unsightly and lowers property values.

Recently more liberal HOAs have deigned to allow a clothesline, but only if it is completely out of sight of any of one's neighbors or passersby. It is only recently that clotheslines have achieved somewhat of a comeback, and a respectful one at that, thanks to solar energy lawmakers. You can read all about it here:

http://daily.sightline.org/2012/02/21/clothesline-bans-void-in-19-states/

http://homesteadrevival.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-laundry-line.html

http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGall2.asp?catID=269

All this clothesline information pried loose a childhood memory of mine:

There were six kids in my family and I was the oldest. I dutifully learned a lot about how to do laundry. I remember hanging laundry on the clothesline when I was 7 years old. I was fairly tall for my age, but sometimes I would have to jump and grab the clothes line and bend it down toward me so that I could hang larger items like sheets. I used to manage to fold the sheets in half and hang them, corners met and clipped with four clothespins per sheet onto the line. That was in California.

I had two grandmothers still alive then. I loved one but didn’t like the other as much. Both grandmothers lived within blocks of us. I saw them both frequently. The one I didn’t like told me not to hang undies on the clothesline because the neighbors would see them. She must have considered herself some kind of moral compass.

I remember the wonderful smell of sunshine that the clothes had when I took them off the line and brought them into the house to fold and put away. The wooden clothespins and the clothespin bag with two pockets on a wooden clothes hanger are a part of yesteryear.

Later when we left California and moved north there were more babies. I recall hanging clothes in the winter in the back porch of the old rental house we lived in where the clothesline was strung for winter laundry. This was before my parents had a dryer. They still had an old electric wringer washer tub.

In the icy winters my baby sister's cloth diapers would freeze on the line in that old back porch. I’d take the frozen stiff diapers off the line, stack them and bring them into the kitchen and dry them on the gas heater which provided the main heat in the kitchen. I was about ten years old by then. I first heard Elvis Presley on the radio one of those late laundry afternoons after school. Never liked Presley’s singing much, but I do remember having a pile of frozen diapers in my arms and dropping them on top of the enameled gas heater. They sizzled steam while I listened, a bit stunned at hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” for the first time.

Do you have a clothesline story?  

 

MENTAL ILLNESS: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

I saw this book advertised on amazon. I've never read it, but it reflects the happenings of the past few days here in America. The shooting down of innocent people, and particularly innocent elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut by a deranged young man is a reminder of how families dealing with the mental illness of one of their family members get no help in this society. No help. And it is a reminder of the gun violence that exists in this country. In fact 47% of all people in this country own a gun. The mother of the shooter owned the guns the shooter used in Newtown. The shooter seemed to me to come from "out of the shadows" of his mind to kill, including his mother and 20 innocent little children and 6 of their teachers. Everyday in this country children are lost to accidental as well as malicious death by guns. Do you care? What are you doing about it?

And I do remember the slaughter of innocent people and children by a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan through all of this. And I do remember the killings of children on the streets of Los Angeles and Chicago and Seattle...the list unfortunately, is fodder for America's endless nightmare.
 http://www.people.com/people/static/h/package/tragedyconnecticutschoolshooting/index.html?ncid=webmail1#s1

"The second amendment wasn't meant to kill children." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-schimmelman/help_2_b_2315948.html

ART AND SHADOW

Image:

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/media-lucion-shadow-balls

Since I became interested in blogging about shadows I've noticed that many artists use shadow as part of the totality of some of their pieces. 

I ran across this at mymodernmet.com. It is the work of a  Canadian collective of artists called Lucion Media. The shadow balls which were part of the Festival of Lights in Lyons, France this month, December 2012, comprised a light installation. These huge bubbles contained birds in aviaries which produced the shadows. These large colorful balls were placed in a garden for people to enjoy. What a wonderful sight that must have been.  
 

 Well, I know where I want to go next December. Check out some images from the Festival of Lights here: https://www.google.com/search?q=Festival+of+Lights+Lyons&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=YXXNUN_eJcriigL5qIGoBQ&ved=0CEUQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=622

The Festival of Lights in Lyon - France derives from a Catholic religious festival idea and expresses gratitude toward Mary, mother of Jesus on December 8 of each year. This uniquely Lyonnaise tradition dictates that every house place candles along the outsides of all the windows to produce a spectacular effect throughout the streets. With over 4 million tourists comming to Lyon for this event, the festival includes other activities based on light and usually lasts 4 days, with the peak of activity occurring on the 8th. The two main focal points of activity are typically the Basilica of Fourvière which is lit up in different colours, and the Place des Terreaux, which hosts a different light show each year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myplanetexperience/6520852643/https://www.google.com/search?q=Festival+of+Lights+Lyons&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=YXXNUN_eJcriigL5qIGoBQ&ved=0CEUQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=622

MY CATHEDRAL

Image: digitalblasphemy.com

This is the place for peace and reflection. This is the most perfect cathedral. This is it!! I'm going there ASAP. Divine shadow and light.

I WAS HUNG UP

Image: http://www.russandreyn.com/

I was hung up yesterday and didn't post. Did you miss me?

hang up

verbal phrase, c.1300; telephone sense by 1911. Noun hang-up "psychological fixation" is first attested 1959, from notion of being suspended in place.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hang+up&allowed_in_frame=0

OUR OWN SHADOW

multiplayerblog.mtv.com

Here's a shadow quote I know the truth of from writer Chuck Palahniuk:

“Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow.

Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.

The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight.

The camera obscura.

Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, http://chuckpalahniuk.net/

 

MOONSHADOW

Image: http://rory-mac.com/new-lyrics/

I wonder if this image was photoshopped. I don't care. I like the image.

When I ran across this image, I thought of songs. First I thought of all those Tin Pan Alley songs about Moon, June and Spoonin' such as By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Blue Moon, How High the Moon, Moonlight Becomes You, No Moon at All, etc.

Then the 1970s song Moonshadows recorded by Cat Stevens came to mind.  This happended despite the fact that I don't like the song very much. I do remember it seemed to be on the radio constantly back in the 1970s.  The melody was unappealing to me. Stevens does tell a nice story though about how he came up with the song. When he appeared on The Chris Isaak Hour in 2009, Stevens said of this song: "I was on a holiday in Spain. I was a kid from the West End (of London) - bright lights, etc. - I never got to see the moon on its own in the dark, there were always streetlamps. So there I was on the edge of the ocean on the beach on a beautiful night with the moon glowing, and suddenly I looked down and saw my shadow. I thought that was so cool, I'd never seen it before."

Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, considers Moonshadows his favorite of his old songs. Stevens  practices Sufism, a branch of Islam. It's one of the songs that he feels has an uplifting message that can help people. I looked up the lyrics, because I didn't know them. One thing I would say for sure is don't play this on the overhead speakers in a dentist's office! 

MOONSHADOWS, Cat Stevens, 1971

Yes
I'm bein' followed by a moon shadow
Moon shadow
Moon shadow.
Leapin' and hoppin' on a moon shadow
Moon shadow
Moon shadow.
And if I ever lose my hands
Lose my power
Lose my land -
Oh
If I ever lose my hands
Ooh
I won't have to work no more.
And if I ever lose my eyes
If my colours all run dry
Yes
If I ever lose my eyes
Ooh
I won't have to cry no more.
Yes
I'm bein' followed by a moon shadow
Moon shadow
Moon shadow.
Leapin' and hoppin' on a moon shadow
Moon shadow
Moon shadow.
And if I ever lose my legs
I won't moan and I won't beg
Oh
If I ever lose my legs
Ooh
I won't have to walk no more.
And if I ever lose my mouth
All my teeth North and South
Yes
If I ever lose my mouth
Ooh
I won't have to talk.
Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me and are you gonna stay the night?
I'm bein' followed by a moon shadow
Moon shadow
Moon shadow.
Leapin' und hoppin' on a moon shadow
Moon shadow
Moon shadow.

This song is much beloved by many people around the world and there are some like me who don't particularly care for the song. For an insight into the responses people have had to this song visit:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=288

 

 

 

SHADOWY U.S. AND UK COMPANIES BUILT ON DIRTY MONEY

MYSTERY SHOPPER,

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/


The fight against dirty money goes on. I ran across this shadow image on : http://www.financialtaskforce.org/2012/10/01/mystery-shopping-exercise-shows-how-easy-it-is-to-set-up-anonymous-companies-in-the-u-s-and-uk/ It is the site for the Task Force for Financial Integrity and Economic Development.

Check out the link and look for the article written by Rosie Sharp. Here is part of what she wrote: 

You’re a criminal and you’ve got loads of cash. You really want that mansion in London. But how are you going to get it? You need a company service provider to set up an anonymous shell company to disguise who’s behind the money and a bank willing to do business with your shell.
But how simple is this process given international law, and in virtually every country,national law too, insists companies should not be anonymous?

A new study out last week shows it is disturbingly easy for criminals to hide their identity behind companies. Academics Michael Findlay, Daniel Nielson and Jason Sharman proved this in their revealing study which tested the effectiveness of this key area of law in the fight against dirty money.

Posing as consultants, they asked more than 3,700 company service providers in 182 countries to each set up a shell company for them. Then they recorded how many of them abided by the law by recording who owned and controlled that company. The results make happy reading for the world’s corrupt politicians, mafia bosses, tax evaders and criminals. The academics’ shopping exercise found that 48% of company service providers who replied to the survey were prepared to set up an anonymous shell company in that they did not require the researchers to provide an authenticated copy of their passport.

And, contrary to expectations, the company service providers in the places that you’d imagine might help out the wannabe kleptocrat – the small, sunny Caribbean island tax havens – were far more law-abiding than company service providers in rich, OECD* countries. Not a single example could be found of a service provider in the Cayman Islands willing to set up an anonymous company. Yet it was really quite easy to find a service provider in the UK who would flout the law for you. Of all OECD nations, American company service providers were the worst offenders. In fact, only Kenyan service providers exceeded their U.S. counterparts in their willingness to establish anonymous companies,

Criminals can rest easy. It’s really not that difficult to get yourself an anonymous company – and one registered in a pretty legit-sounding place too.

* OECD Countries link: http://www.oecd.org/general/listofoecdmembercountries-ratificationoftheconventionontheoecd.htm

A BENCH AT THE BEACH AT DAYBREAK

Photo Link:

<a href="http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=22426&picture=at-daybreak">At Daybreak</a> by Bobby Mikul

To me this image conveys the unique solitude of meditation. It's not the quality of the shadow that holds my attention, it's the quiet peaceful "oneness" of the shadowed bench with the silent sands attending the composure of the brilliant blue sea.

SHADOW FILMS

I searched for movies with the word "Shadow" in the title. There are several. "Shadows" was made by director/actor, John Cassavetes. He made it in 1957, a time when the struggle for Civil Rights was becoming prominent in American society. Shadows is considered a very early example of independent film-making.

The film has a jazz soundtrack. In the 1950s Dave Brubeck, the well-known jazz pianist, who died a few days ago, was one of the so-called Jazz Ambassadors touring for the State Department. Also booked to tour as Jazz Ambassadors were legendary African American jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong.

The State Department honchos believed that creating and funding tours which included black jazz musicians would show the world the great equality-driven democracy the U.S. epitomized in the 1950s. The tours were intended to counter the racist, Jim Crow profile that the rest of the world saw in American society at the time.

In 1958, Louis Armstrong refused to tour for the State Department and publicly decried President Eisenhower's lack of support for school integration in the south. Such was the social climate of the 1950s when this film was made.

Here is what Wikipedia posted about the film:

SHADOWS is an improvised film about interracial relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City, and was written and directed by John Cassavetes. The film's stars are Ben Carruthurs, Lelia Goldoni, Hugh Hurd, and Anthony Ray (Tony in the film). Many film scholars consider Shadows one of the historical highlights of independent film festival developments in the U.S. In 1960 the film won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Cassavetes shot the film twice, once in 1957 and again in 1959. The second version is the one Cassavetes favored. Although he did screen the first version, he lost track of the print, and for decades it was believed to have been lost or destroyed. The 1957 version was intended to have the jazz music of bassist, Charles Mingus on the soundtrack, but Mingus failed to meet various deadlines set by Cassavetes. The contributions of saxophonist Shafti Hadi, the saxophonist for Mingus's group, proved to ultimately be the soundtrack for the film.

In 2004, after over a decade of searching, Cassavetes scholar and Boston University professor Ray Carney announced his discovery of the only print of the original version of the film, found in a box on the subway before being bought with some other "lost and found" objects. See an article below from Slate which casts a shadow on Ray Carney's dealings with the work of other filmmakers in addition to Cassavetes.  The film Carney managed to find was a pristine copy that apparently had only been screened two or three times before it was lost. Carney has posted three video clips from Shadows I for viewing on his website to verify the film's condition and indicate the presence of a complete credits sequence, which demonstrates that the version he possesses is a final version, not a rough assembly.

Film critic Leonard Maltin calls Cassavetes' second version of Shadows "a watershed in the birth of American independent cinema". The movie was shot with a 16 mm handheld camera on the streets of New York. Much of the dialogue was improvised, and the crew were class members or volunteers. The jazz-infused score underlines the movie's Beat Generation theme of alienation and raw emotion. The movie's plot features an interracial relationship, which was still a taboo subject in Eisenhower-era America.

In 1993, Shadows was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


For Ray Carney's description of his hunt for the missing Shadows first copy click on this link:

http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/discoveries/shadowsquest.shtml

Did This Film Scholar Steal the Work of a Beloved Indie Filmmaker?

By Katie Kilkenny

|

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, at 3:21 PM ET

MYSLATE

Save this story.

Follow all Blog articles.

Follow the Brow Beat blog.

Follow stories by Katie Kilkenny.

MySlate is a new tool that lets you track your favorite parts of Slate. You can follow authors and sections, track comment threads you're interested in, and more.

The Rate My Professors page for Boston University’s Ray Carney seems particularly divided, even for that contentious forum. It contains superlatives that range from “the most intelligent, thoughtful, and motivating figure I’ve ever encountered in my life” to "Worst Professor."

However, Carney’s student critics are the least of his worries right now. The film scholar has provoked the outrage of movie critics and enthusiasts by confiscating endangered works and production materials from beloved independent filmmaker Mark Rappaport. Rappaport, director of The Scenic Route (“a movie of great, grave, tightly controlled visual daring,” according to Roger Ebert) and From the Journals of Jean Seaberg (a “new kind of movie, and a highly entertaining one,” says Jonathan Rosenbaum) among many other works, issued a plea to the international film community in September to rescue his films from the scholar’s possession. According to his letter, Rappaport entrusted digital copies, video masters, and script drafts, among other materials, to Carney—who has in the past called Rappaport “the best-kept secret in American film” and “a genuine national treasure”—when he moved from the U.S. to France in 2005. However, when Rappaport contacted Carney this past April to return his property, Carney did not respond to his emails—or, later, to a court’s preliminary injunction. When the court entered a default against the scholar for Carney’s failure to respond to the charges, Carney hired a lawyer who claimed Rappaport gave him the rare materials as a gift. After a four month-long court battle, Carney contacted the director, saying he would return the materials if Rappaport gave him $27,000 for the trouble of keeping the materials for seven-and-half years. Rappaport did not continue the suit, citing its expense.

In the letter, Rappaport pleads, “Without the digital video masters, my films, everything prior to 1990 … cannot be made available for streaming, commercial DVDs, video-on-demand, or any electronic delivery system down the road. My life as a filmmaker, my past, and even my future reputation as a filmmaker are at stake.”

Carney, a powerful and influential scholar who has been deemed “a cinematic Ralph Nader,” has gotten into a fight over film possession before: He feuded with John Cassavetes’ widow Gena Rowland over his discovery of a first cut of Shadows (the result of a 17-year quest), which he claims is an improvised work and therefore does not belong to her company, Faces Distribution Incorporated. Reporting on that conflict, GreenCine Daily referred to Carney’s “eerie insistence on speaking on behalf of Cassavetes himself.”

Carney has long maintained an extensive website devoted to his work, and his past comments there are not helping him now. When Carney was emailed by someone looking for Rappaport’s contact information so that he could put together a screening of some of Rappaport’s old films, he published the exchange on his webpage. “Mark is a great friend and gave me almost everything he owned when he left New York for France,” Carney explained, “Thousands of pages and box after box of material. So I am now the ‘Mark Rappaport Archive.’” He then said that he is “not a rental operation” and so his “massive collection is of no use at all for your purposes.” “Sorry I can’t help or be more encouraging,” he added. As Roger Ebert tweeted this past September, “Yeah, sure, indie director Mark Rappaport ‘gave’ his life work to Prof. Ray Carney.” Ebert has called the whole Carney/Rappaport business a “disturbing story.”

Former supporters of Carney have since turned against the scholar in Rappaport’s defense, including Jon Jost of cinemaelectronica, who recently published a petition for Carney to return Rappaport’s “stolen film materials.” Jost, a self-avowed friend of Carney’s, writes that many attempts to contact his former email correspondent have gone unanswered, confirming his suspicions that Carney’s intentions are less than trustworthy.

Meanwhile, Carney has not responded to the increasing noise level on Internet forums to defend himself over the Rappaport works and is reportedly spending time in Vermont. He can’t be missing in action forever, though. He should be back at Boston University’s College of Communication in Spring 2013, to teach “American Independent Film.”

SHADOW HANDS

Photo-by-okilok.jpg

This shadow picture reminded me of Robinson Jeffers, a poet I ran across when I was reading philosophy as an undergraduate. Robinson Jeffers inspired many eco-poets. His work celebrates the enduring beauty of sea, sky...the world of nature and strives to create a vision of  that world in which human experience is questioned, qualified, and even decentered. Jeffers’ efforts to shift “emphasis and significance from man to not-man” is central to both his poetry and his personal philosophy.

Here's a link if you want to see an image of the hands "Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara" : http://www.ventanawild.org/news/fe99/caves.html

 Hands

By Robinson Jeffers 1887–1962

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara

The vault of rock is painted with hands,

A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, no more,

No other picture. There’s no one to say

Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended

Religion or magic, or made their tracings

In the idleness of art; but over the division of years these careful

Signs-manual are now like a sealed message

Saying: “Look: we also were human; we had hands, not paws. All hail

You people with the cleverer hands, our supplanters

In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down

And be supplanted; for you also are human.”

A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW

http://www.etsweetbites.gr/2011/10/06/tell-me-more-6/  

Photo by: gogitoo

A LECTURE UPON A SHADOW by John Donne

Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadows went,
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows flow,
From us, and our cares; but now 'tis not so.
That love has not attained the highest degree,
Which is still diligent lest others see.

Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were  made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint, and westwardly decline,
To me thou, falsely, thine,
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day;
But oh, love's day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute, after noon, is night.

LEADED GLASS MIRAGE

There is nothing hanging on this door.This is all reflection and shadow. I colorized it. It looks like leaded glass.

CENTERED SHADOWS

This was taken on a cold, spring day at the Seattle Center. Everything was centered. The railing, the human shadows. Nothing more remarkeable than that about this picture. I just like it.

TRAPEZOID SHADOW MEMORY

This shadow brought a memory into my mind of my geometry class. That was a time long ago somewhere in a Los Angeles suburban high school.

I remember  there was an albino male student who sat directly across from me in that class. His hair was long and white and braided in a single braid. I still remember his face. I have never once thought of him until I stared at this shadow picture.

SHADOW DECOR

My modest old home was graced with this lovely shadow image one summer morning. I was transfixed by it and am so glad my camera was charged and ready for me to make this picture. Do you ever see any beautiful shadows in your house?

MEMORIES DANCING

Shadows Dancing: Link: http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Have_You_Ever_Seen_the_Shadows_Dance%3F

I wondered what this elderly man and woman walking away from one another were thinking.

This image inspried me to write these few lines:

                                        

MEMORIES DANCING

I wonder if memories are ever lost

Or if they simply take a turn and go dancing

Out of reach, lost in the twirl of shadow 

But still memorized in the senses