Hoarding & the Lifehack: The Collyer Brothers Story

The Collyer Brothers were eccentric hermits who lived and died in their family’s brownstone townhouse on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The brownstone was located at 2078 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 128th Street in Harlem. When they were born there in the 1880s, Harlem was a genteel neighborhood. By the time of their deaths in 1947, it’s upper crust had begun to crumble.

The first time I heard the Collyer Brothers story, it’s telling focused on the sensational details of their demise. I figured they were bums. Maybe, maybe not. Their family traced its origin to the Mayflower. Father was a doctor, Mother a socialite. The brothers had Ivy League educations. Homer Collyer trained as an engineer but aspired to be a concert pianist. He affected long, flowing hair in the Franz Liszt tradition. His younger brother Langley trained as an admiralty lawyer but aspired to be an inventor. He tinkered with junk salvaged in the streets. I use the words “trained” and “aspired” because it’s not clear from the historical record whether either of them ever had a job.

After graduating from nearby Columbia University, the brothers continued to live at home with Mother. When they inherited the brownstone after her death, they kept the family heirlooms plus all the office furniture, books, and anatomical specimens from Father’s medical practice. And they accumulated plenty of stuff on their own initiative. Homer acquired seventeen grand pianos. Langley brought home the engine from a Ford Model T to power a homemade electrical generator.

At this point, you might say the Collyer Brothers were a bit odd, but not necessarily pathological. Father’s stuff, Mother’s stuff, the kids stuff, adult kids who won’t move out. Many of us can relate to that on one level or another. Acquisitiveness, after all, is as American as apple pie. In the Collyers’ day, Thorstein Veblen called it conspicuous consumption. That’s what the Leisure Class was supposed to do. In our day, we call it consumer confidence, and it’s everyone’s duty. Jobs and economic growth depend on it.

Something happened in the 1920s. As Harlem experienced its Renaissance, the Collyer Brothers became more and more reclusive and alienated from their neighbors. Rumors circulated. The brothers were penny-pinching tightwads who wouldn’t spend a dime to fix up the property. They were really rich misers guarding a hoard of jewels and gold. Neighborhood kids threw rocks at the windows. Langley boarded up the windows. Burglars tried to break in to get the gold. Langley built elaborate barricades and booby-traps to stop them. The Collyer Brothers became notorious throughout New York. The first newspaper account of them spread the story that, behind the crumbling façade of their dilapidated mansion, they lived in “orientalist splendor.”

Something else happened. In 1933, Homer Collyer went blind. Rheumatism had already limited his mobility. Langley tried to cure him with a special diet of black bread, peanut butter, and a hundred oranges a day. He also began to hoard books, magazines and newspapers. Bundles of them. Stack upon stack. In 1942 Langley explained to the New York Herald Tribune that he was "saving newspapers for Homer, so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news."

Five years later, on March 21, 1947, a neighbor called the police. It smelled like somebody died next door. The NYPD knew all about Langley Collyer’s eccentricity and truculence. When they didn’t get an answer at 2078 Fifth Avenue, they battered down the front door. Then they were stopped by a wall of junk from floor to ceiling. They pulled out eighteen tons of debris and still did not excavate a path to the second floor. Meanwhile, a crowd of 600 gathered in the street to wait, watch, and speculate about what happened to the Collyer Brothers.

Later on the first day, a policeman broke through a second-story window and hacked through another wall of junk. He found Homer slumped in a rocking chair, wearing a tattered bath robe, emaciated, dead from starvation. The coroner determined that Homer had been dead no more than ten hours. Langley could not be found.

The Collyer Brothers story became front page news in New York. Langley sightings were reported from Morningside Heights to Atlantic City. Sanitation workers carried tons of junk out of the townhouse day after day but couldn’t locate the source of the stench. Finally, on April 8, a worker discovered Langley’s partially decomposed body buried beneath a suitcase and several large bundles of newspapers. The corpse lay just ten feet from Homer’s rocking chair. Langley had been crawling through a tunnel of newspaper bundles when one of his own booby traps crushed him. He was bringing Homer a tray of food, probably peanut butter and oranges.

Hoarding & the Lifehack: Langley Collyer

Langley Collyer (1885-1947) was a notorious recluse who lived with his brother Homer in a dilapidated townhouse in New York City. When Homer went blind in 1933, Langley began to hoard magazines and newspapers for the day his brother could see again. Langley knew Homer would want to “catch up on the news.”

Langley was crushed in an avalanche of newspaper bundles while bringing his brother a tray of food. His partially decomposed body was found just ten feet away from the rocking chair where Homer eventually starved to death.

Hoarding & the Lifehack: The Collyer Mansion

More than 100 tons of debris were removed from 2078 Fifth Avenue after the Collyer Brothers died there in 1947. The Collyers’ hoard of junk included 25,000 books and countless bundles of magazines and newspapers.

The inventory enumerated on the Collyer Brothers Wikipedia page reads like a Sears Roebuck catalog or Whitmanesque list of found objects: “rope, baby carriages, a doll carriage, rakes, umbrellas, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, gas chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a checkerboard, a child's chair (the brothers had been lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands of books about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, a beaded lampshade, the chassis of the old Model-T Langley had been tinkering with, one British and six American flags, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, fourteen pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and, of course, countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old. Near the spot where Homer had died, police also found 34 bank account passbooks with a total of $3,007.18.”

Collyer Mansion became a term used by firefighters to designate junk-filled buildings that should be condemned as fire hazards. Collyer Brothers Syndrome, or disposophobia, names a fear of throwing anything away. It is also called compulsive hoarding, which is related to obsessive compulsive disorder.

Hoarding & the Lifehack: A Metaphor for the Attention Economy

Let this photograph of the interior of the Collyer Brothers townhouse stand as a metaphor for the attention economy. What is scarce here? Not information, but the attention to do something with it. Many of us feel overwhelmed by the avalanche of information that pours through our lives everyday. Does your email inbox ever seem like this?

Café Mouffe: Take 5

No music video today at Café Mouffe. I’d love to chill but need to hold my own feet to the fire to finish the horn charts for my OSU gig next Tuesday. Look for the Mouffe on April 6.

Here Come the Gangsters

This YouTube clip of Karl Rove at the White House Radio and Television Correspondents’ dinner has become an overnight sensation. We knew he was a gangsta. We knew he beat the rap for outing Valerie Plame. Too bad he isn’t wearing fashionable prison pinstripes.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a segment this afternoon about YouTube and creativity. The news peg was this clip of MC Karl. The guest was Keith Schneider, contributing writer for The New York Times.

Re-Imagining Accessibility: Commitment to Access

I’ve added this statement to the Re-Imagining Accessibility home page:

Commitment to Access: Accessibility in this Internet-based project and series of talks is understood to be an ongoing process driven by creative problem-solving and negotiation. The author is eager to learn about accessibility issues associated with specific screen-readers and web-browsers. Send email to: mark.willis@wright.edu. Working together, we will find an access solution.

Re-Imagining Accessibility: About the Project

Re-Imagining Accessibility is a series of talks scheduled in April 2007. It also is an ongoing project exploring a blind writer’s pursuit of lifelong learning, literacy, and access to information technology. Without spurning the legal framework provided by fair use in copyright law and reasonable accommodation in disability law, now is the time to look beyond rights-based strategies to expand the means and meanings of accessibility. Re-Imagining Accessibility affirms that people with disabilities are actively engaged in the work of making adaptations and negotiating accommodations. This represents a significant form of cultural production. It is creative work, and its energies, insights, and experiences need to flourish in any vision of an emerging Creative Age.

See the home page. Follow the blog thread.

Re-Imagining Accessibility: April 2007 Schedule

Re-Imagining Accessibility In An Attention Economy
Ohio State University – April 3
Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability 2007 Conference

Re-Imagining Accessibility With The Rise Of The Creative Class
Wright State University – April 13
Quest for Community 2007 Conference

Re-Imagining Accessibility In Participatory Culture
Massachusetts Institute of Technology – April 28
Media in Transition 5 Conference

See the home page. Follow the blog thread.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day

Claude Monet. Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day. 1906. National Gallery of Art, Washington

JoAnn on the Art of Teaching

JoAnn showed me a Sheridan College web page where she and her colleagues describe how they incorporate group work in their courses. Then we did our own group work with Blogger resulting in Free Hugs, a YouTube embed on her course blog.

She also brought a disk of our 2005 Paris photos, whence comes this shot of her upstaging Pan in the Luxembourg Gardens..

Café Mouffe Presents: Bill Evans

I’m mesmerized by the motion of expressive hands on the keyboard. I see hands talking in vivid sign language the same way, peripherally. I don’t see the detail of finger positions, but the rhythm and sweep catches what’s left of my eye. So watch Bill Evans’ hands on this YouTube clip of My Foolish Heart. Watch how he bows over the piano as if in prayer.

A friend of mine saw Bill Evans at Gilly’s in Dayton in 1980. Between sets he found Evans hunched sadly over a cup of coffee in the White Tower across the street. “Every one digs Bill Evans,” my friend said by way of salutation. “Yeah?” Evans said with a shrug that waved off further conversation. Several months later Evans was dead, burned out from a life of heroin and cocaine.

Jim Harrison: Don’t Feed the Poets

Photo by John Schulz/source NYT

Jim Harrison published an essay called Don’t Feed the Poets in the NYT Book Review (012807). He re-considers Karl Shapiro’s long prose poem, The Bourgeois Poet, musing on the lean and the fat in academic poetry careers. Harrison recalls salad days in the 60s when he necessarily fell into the lean camp, evidenced by the 1969 photo from his Michigan farm. Reading Shapiro’s kvetching then about the daily travails of the existential; university professor “sounded like a man who had had a huge porterhouse and half a cheesecake for dinner and was complaining about indigestion.” With age and sustained literary success, Harrison has now moved on to the more august side of the career/calorie continuum.

Two succulent quotes:

I suspect Shapiro’s evident misery started early in his life with a heroic notion of the poet. Any poet knows that to become immortal all you have to do is write a single great poem. This is unlikely indeed. Perhaps there are tens of thousands of mules and draft horses across the countryside who dream of winning the Kentucky Derby. Better yet, a bartender in Seville told me last March, “We have thousands of aspiring Lorcas but only one Lorca.” Very early on a poet is struck by the cruelty and lack of democracy in the arts — so few get it all, and the hordes receive nothing but the pleasure and pain of an overdeveloped consciousness. Ted Kooser, the former United States poet laureate and a friend of Shapiro’s at the time “The Bourgeois Poet” was written, told me Shapiro was obsessed with the French symbolist poets. This explains a lot, since Shapiro’s notion of what a poet was implies the outsider, the outcast, the outlier, one who purposefully deranges his mind to write poems like Rimbaud, or one who could not walk, so borne down was he by his giant wings, to paraphrase Baudelaire. I must here imagine myself an English department chairman, who has to deal with these troublesome creatures, and say that a poet is hubris through and through in the same manner that an unruly pig is solid pork.

Perhaps as a corrective and a cautionary, “The Bourgeois Poet” should be taught to the thousands taking M.F.A.’s in creative writing who wish to become poet-professors. As I said I tried it myself but found the work too hard. There’s a subdued but relentless hurly-burly in academia that swallows up discretionary time. It’s like living with a slight backache, not fatal but enervating. Besides, academic salaries are falling behind and it’s become questionable if poet-professors have truly achieved bourgeois status. Maybe lumpen bourgeois.

Tell It Like It Is

TRex at Firedoglake makes a case for soft-pedaling on Congress’s accountability zeal (“playing politics” is what Tony Baloney Snow calls it) in deference to bigger pay-offs from future pay-backs:

… let's say President John Edwards has just been sworn in and he decides it's time for a little payback. He picks up the phone and calls his people at the NSA and says, "I need to see all of Bill Donohue's cell-phone records, taxes, credit card transactions, and checking account records for the last ten years. Oh, and freeze his assets. I think he may be involved in terrorist activity."

See, if you throw in the T-word, all those provisions of the Patriot Act come into play. No need to go to a judge. No need for a subpoena. That stuff's for sissies. Let's just get his records, find the data we need (or not!), change his status to "Enemy Combatant", and off he goes to our secret interrogation facilities in Romania. Ta-daaaaaaah!

"But please!" Donohue would beg, "Let me speak to an attorney! Let me at least know what charges are being brought against me!"

Nope. Too bad, so sad, but all that went out the window when the Bush administration gutted habeas corpus.

Or say that President Hillary Clinton is tired of Tom DeLay's lip. So she decides to have his money-laundering trial moved to a military tribunal at the Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay. No jury, no cameras, no witnesses, and the tribunal won't kick off until, oh, 2012, or whenever we get around to it. It would be perfect.

See? Life with a Democrat Unitary Executive could be great! President Kucinich could rule by decree just like Chimpy and Hugo Chavez! He could have Bush and Cheney imprisoned in an undisclosed location indefinitely! And wouldn't that be fun?

So, please, you Dirty Fucking Hippies, lay off on the challenges to Bush's god-like powers of the Imperial Presidency. He's only going to be around for a few more months, and then once he's gone, we'll be in charge. And what use will due process, checks and balances, and the Constitution be to us then?

Exactly. Those things will just be impediments to our unfettered ability to reward our friends and torment our enemies.

And we can't have that, now can we?

Quote of the Day: Al Gore

Al Gore returned to Capitol Hill today to a hero’s/ movie star’s welcome. He had a zinger for every Republican nay-sayer pushing the faith-based science view on global warming. Gore’s retort to Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas):

The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame-retardant. You take action.

Update 032207: On NPR this morning Dana Milbank compared Gore’s performance to Inherit the Wind, the 1960 movie about the Scopes “monkey” trial. Spencer Tracy played Clarence Darrow in that one. Al Gore played Darrow yesterday, according to Milbank. Here’s how he put it in his Washington Sketchbook column:

It was, in many ways, a 21st-century version of the Scopes trial. Only this time, Gore, like William Jennings Bryan a failed Democratic presidential nominee, was playing Darrow, champion of scientific thought. Inhofe was playing the Bryan character, defending his beliefs against the encroachments of foes such as the National Academy of Sciences, the United Nations and the Oscar-hoisting former vice president.

After Four Years, War Still Is Not The Answer

Mathew Brady . "Federal Dead on the Field of Battle of First Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania" 1863

Links on Copyright and the Internet

On The Media: Transcript of "Clip Joint" (March 16, 2007)
This week, Viacom sued Google, claiming intellectual property infringement by YouTube. Will the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act protect “Goo-Tube?” Is the future of user-generated web media at stake? NYU’s Siva Vaidhyanathan explains.
to copyright Internet YouTube video NPR z07_3 ... saved by 1 other person ... just posted

On The Media: Transcript of "Bowing Before the Royalty" (March 16, 2007)
Radio webcasting has proven to be a real alternative to the stultifying sameness of broadcast radio. But a new set of royalty fees could put many internet radio stations out of business. Media attorney David Oxenford explains the cost to online listeners.
to copyright Internet podcasting NPR z07_3 ... 2 mins ago

Pushing the Accessibility/Usability Gradient

Information flows like water. Water flows downhill. The work of a blind reader to get access to print/visual information is like swimming up a river. There are just so many rivers to swim, and sooner or later you can choose to go with the flow and take in the information that comes pouring past you in a form you can use.

So the work of accessibility is energy expended moving against a gradient. Blind or not, most computer users also experience the energy demands of working against a gradient, a usability gradient. If a web site takes more than a few seconds to figure out how to use – click – you’re off to the next link which had better work or – click – again. In our attention economy, there is too much information for any human to keep up with. You do not have to waste time pushing against a gradient to get information unless you choose to do so.

Accessibility/Usability Gradient . I like the pairing of these terms. Pairing the ideas allows you to probe accessibility with another concept that a wider audience can relate to. And so, this fits what I’ve been thinking about with Lifehacks: new geek metaphors that can be applied to the phenomenology of disability.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Venus with a Mirror

Titian. Venus with a Mirror. ca 1555. National Gallery of Art, Washington

In the same way Friday afternoons lead to Café Mouffe, Sunday mornings make me want to stroll through an art museum. Not a forced march, mind you, and not culture creep in a blockbuster cue, 20 seconds per viewer per painting. I want to stroll and be surprised. I want to visit old flames like Venus with a Mirror and rediscover passionate engagement.

Were I in Washington this morning, I’d take the Metro to the Archives stop and head for the Constitution Avenue entrance of the National Gallery of Art. I’d plan to arrive just before the grand bronze doors were unlocked. While waiting I might muse on the historical fact that President James Garfield was assassinated on the spot in 1881, when it was the site of a busy railroad station.

Then I’d sweep up the white marble staircase to the black marble rotunda. Returning to this glorious space never fails to move me. I find a bench, sit, and soak it in. Over the years I’ve chosen the rotunda with its cathedral light, its resplendent fountain and resonant echoes as the sacred place where I honor my parents. For me it is a place suffused with meaning and emotion, what Pierre Nora calls a lieu de memoir. Since I am now the steward of my parents’ Yellow Springs house, memories of them are always near to hand. I come to this soaring rotunda to celebrate their spirits. And I thank them for bringing me to the National Gallery of Art as a child.

After the rotunda I choose a direction for my stroll. I could turn east and head for the Monet gallery that is sure to hold Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day. Or I turn west and head for the Titians. The Monet gallery will have relaxing sofas and a stream of people passing through. Bracketed by innumerable Madonna’s with Child and popely/princely portraits, the Titian gallery may be the route less traveled. If there’s a sofa, too, it might be a hidden garden of delight.

I spent a week reading and writing in these galleries in the spring of 1999, three decades after my parents brought me here for the first time. Three months after my mother’s death, it became a spiritual journey to coming to rest here. (See the March 11 Stroll for Mary Lou’s most-cherished painting at NGA.) In the Monet gallery I’d try to read Paul Tucker’s biography of the painter, but I spent more time listening to snatches of conversation as others adored the paintings. I realized then that my experience of art in museums draws as much on the social context overheard in the moment as on direct visual perception. That’s how a half-blind flaneur looks at paintings.

In the Titian gallery I sank into the sofa and read John Hale’s magisterial history, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. What a place to read such a book! I filled a notebook with writing about art and history. I paused often to gaze across the gallery at Venus with a Mirror. At a distance of 15 feet I couldn’t begin to see any detailed form beyond a blur. I knew the form; it was a lieu de memoir. What I could see, or apprehend, was the warm, rosy glow of the goddess’s skin.

When I first saw the painting at age 14, I learned how the experience of art could arouse me. Arouse is not a metaphor. Strolling through a museum with Ms. Modigliani is the most enchanting kind of foreplay on a rainy afternoon. At 14 I was amazed to think that Titian must have felt this way about Venus (and the artist’s model) when he painted her. He was approaching 70 then, and he kept the painting in his studio until the day he died. I have to smile now at callow youth and everything left to learn about the sensuality of old men.

At 14 I also apprehended something about painting that would take years to articulate. What makes an oil painting distinct from every other form of visual representation (including this digital image of an oil painting) is the way oil-based pigment absorbs light. Pigment not only reflects light, it absorbs it to some degree and depth, depending on the thickness of paint and varnish applied to the canvas. Titian may have been the first painter to discover how light could animate skin tones. Warmth of fleshly color, not erotic form, breathes the palpable, glowing life into his nudes. In this art Titian remains the master and Venus his muse.

This is the CIA Agent Exposed by Bush's Hacks

Photo souce: NYT 031607

Valerie Plame Wilson spoke publicly yesterday for the first time since her covert identity as a CIA agent was exposed by White House hacks in July 2003. She testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She’s said to be writing a book about her outing. If she didn’t have a movie deal when she woke up yesterday, she does now

The committee’s web site has video of the complete hearing. I’m still looking for the Congressional Record transcript.

Yesterday’s NYT coverage played the story pretty straight. NPR had the juicy sound bites and whirr of paparazzi cameras. YouTube has video clips from the hearing, including Plame’s opening statement. Firedoglake live-blogged it extensively;see Enter “The Wife” for starters . And Dana Milbank wrote the movie review.

Milbank noted that Plame’s platinum blonde hair revealed dark roots, always a telling detail in Washington politics. He built a riff around the number of times “passionately” popped out in the testimony. Sure, passion never hurt a movie deal, and Plame milked the media moment for everything it was worth. To do anything else would be Un-American.

NPR’s Andrea Seabrook was more charitable this morning. She understood that a big part of Valerie Plame’s allure stems from simple curiosity, finally, just to see her. She stayed out of the media spotlight for four years, letting her husband Joe Wilson do the talk shows. She famously appeared on a Vanity Fair cover wearing Jackie O sunglasses; otherwise, the public only got glimpses of her. The exaggeration-prone Washington gossip mill rumored that the elusive spy was “drop dead gorgeous,” Seabrook said. “This time the gossip mill got it right.”

Valerie Plame out-Oli-ied Oliver North in terms of stealing the show. All he had was a square jaw and Marine Corps dress blue. She’s a mix of 007 + blond bombshell.

It’s well-known that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and their fellow-travelers would start a war or sell their grandmothers for political gain. In the Plame case, they exposed a CIA agent then tried to cover it up. In retrospect, they should have sacrificed grandma.

Valerie Plame Footnotes

Vanity Fair cover/source: Google cache

Valerie Plame - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia My guess is this is a highly contested, highly fungible page in the Wiki wars. The documentation and links (as of today) are extensive.
to Valerie_Plame CIA Scooter_Libby Bush politics Iraq 2dk_prep z07_3

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » CIA Leak Case
FDL's blog coverage flows relentlessly like the Mighty Mississippi.
to Valerie_Plame CIA Scooter_Libby Bush politics 2dk_prep z07_3

What I Didn't Find in Africa - Joseph Wilson - NYT - 070603
The op-ed that started the Bush administration's retaliation against Wilson and his wife, a CIA agent outed by Cheney, Rove, Libby, et al.
to Bush politics cheney Iraq war_drums NYT 2dk_prep Valerie_Plame CIA

Mission To Niger - Robert Novak - Washington Post - 071403
The infamous newspaper column that exposed Valerie Plame's identity. Why wasn't Novak thrown in the slammer like Judith Miller?
to Valerie_Plame CIA Iraq Scooter_Libby Bush politics WaPo 2dk_prep z07_3

Vanity Fair's profile on Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame
Bootleg text from Jim Gilliam's blog - 011704.
to Valerie_Plame CIA 2dk_prep z07_3 ... saved by 1 other person ... just posted

Richard Armitage’s Role in Plame Case - Newsweek 082706
"Armitage's central role as the primary source on Plame is detailed for the first time in "Hubris," which recounts the leak case and the inside battles at the CIA and White House in the run-up to the war. The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from inter
to politics media security Iraq Valerie_Plame Scooter_Libby CIA 2dk_prep z06_08

Café Mouffe Presents: Charles Mingus at Antibes

Finally, the whole enchilada! I’d seen YouTube snippets before, but now Interzone Music has posted 14:30 of this legendary performance of I’ll Remember April by the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop. It was recorded at the Antibes Jazz Festival on July 12, 1960. That was two days after my fifth birthday. I was a beatnik poet prodigy then, and I knew all about the French Riviera. After listening to the Antibes live concert album for years, the naughty little boy in me wanted to see Brigitte Bardot and half her bikini in the background here. But hey, I’m not complaining. The film is jerky, the sound murky (listen to the CD to hear the ensemble’s full barbaric yawp), but this is an engaging historical document. It captures one of the last public appearances of that fragile bebop genius, Bud Powell. And it soars with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin trading four’s. Breathtaking!

For the record, the full lineup here is: Charles Mingus (bass), Bud Powell (piano), Eric Dolphy (alto), Booker Ervin (tenor), Ted Curson (trumpet), and Dannie Richmond (drums).

Thanks to Bemsha Bob in Seattle for pointing me to the possibility of finding Mingus/Antibes on YouTube. He’s turned me on to a lot of jazz over the years, and his pitch is perfect.

Coming next week to Café Mouffe: Bill Evans

Café Mouffe Encore: Bud Powell in Paris 1959

Bud Powell in Paris, December 1959: Get Happy. Dig Bud’s hands on the keys. Dig the Paris cellar ambiance. My kind of gig! This is a crisp noir clip with pretty good sound. That’s Kenny Clarke on drums and Pierre Michelot on bass. YouTube has 30 Bud Powell clips.

If these roses could tell a story…

… the florist industry would be chagrined. I don’t know whether Inspector Clouseau continues to investigate what happened to them along the way. The e-commerce transaction turned out to be protracted and painful like a root canal. Seeing the photo helps me remember that all I was trying to do was send flowers on an otherwise happy, loving occasion.

There is a back story here about trust and accessibility/usability in an attention economy. Yep, and you thought it was just a vase full of flowers! Someday soon I may revisit the story for my Re-Imagining Accessibility gigs this spring. But for now, I need to try to stop and smell the roses.

JoAnn's Tribute: The Two Loves of Nathan Phillips

It’s shaping up to be Nathan Phillips week on The Daily Deep.. Nate (that’s what the Toronto press called him) tends to get all the attention, but JoAnn gives Grandmother Ett her due in this digital memoir. When JoAnn created it two years ago, she imagined the principal audience to be her mother, Ett’s daughter Madeline. YouTube didn’t exist then. Now the memoir can get the wider audience it deserves. I keep playing it so I can hear J’s dulcet voice.

What’s He Smoking in that Pipe?

Auguste Renoir. Claude Monet. 1872. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

As the old mountain song about a bear goes, “He ain’t ever been caught, ain’t ever been treed. Some folks say he looks a lot like me.” But we were so much younger then. My goal now is growing old with a Monet graybeard and water lilies in the garden.

Ten Years of Ardor for Ms. Modigliani

Amadeo Modigliani. Nude on a Blue Cushion. 1917. National Gallery of Art.

Happy Anniversary, Ms. M.!

Re-Vitalizing Grandpa's Square

Everyone in Toronto knows it as Nathan Phillips Square, the heart of the city. I know it as Grandpa's Square, because Nathan Phillips was JoAnn’s grandfather before he was the "Mayor of All the People." In the 1950s and 60s he played a leading role in building the new City Hall fronted by the plaza that now bears his name. Designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, the iconic building sparked Toronto's transformation into a showcase of international architecture. Nevertheless, my favorite Toronto photo is Nathan and Esther Phillips on Bay Street with old City Hall in the background. My second favorite photo is Nate with Jayne Mansfield.

Last week the City of Toronto announced the winning plan for renovating Nathan Phillips Square after 40 years of wear and tear. Architectural Record News has good web graphics of the design. An earlier article in The Torontoist featured illustrations from the four finalists in the design competition.

According to the Toronto Star, the project’s estimated cost is CAD $40-million. The city has budgeted CAD $16-million, and Mayor David Miller is confident the remainder can be raised from corporate and private donors. They will be recognized "very discreetly," Miller said. “No one will be skating on the Coca-Cola Rink. This is Nathan Phillips Square, that's how it's going to remain. Nathan Phillips Square is the most important space in this city.”

With Grandpa Phillips in the news, JoAnn checked to see if he had a Wikipedia page. She converted to Wikipedian in order to correct some factual errors found there. When renovation is completed on the square, she’s sure to be looking for the bronze sundial now located in the Peace Garden on the rise above the skating rink. It was Nate's gift to the city when the square was dedicated in 1965.

Updated 031407: See JoAnn’s tribute to her grandparents on YouTube.

Mayor Of All The People Photo #1

Mayor Nathan Phillips and wife Esther claim Bay Street in Toronto on February 27, 1960. In his autobiography, Mayor of All the People, he noted that the street was empty on a Sunday morning.

Mayor Of All The People Photo #2

Toronto Mayor Nathan Phillips welcomes Jayne Mansfield to City Hall on August 2, 1957. He was proud of the fact that he never kissed anyone but his wife Esther.

About the Channels & Tangents

Jazz at Café Mouffe

Playing By Ear

Re-Imagining Accessibility

Banging the War Drum

Media Bottom-Feeder

Tutelary Spirits

Meta-Blog

A Stroll in the Gallery: A Girl with a Watering Can

Auguste Renoir. A Girl with a Watering Can. 1876. National Gallery of Art, Washington

My mother’s most favorite painting at NGA. Posted today in memory of her birthday.

Welcome to Version 2.0

It isn’t a dramatic change, but it’s enough for me to know that I’ve moved on from version 1.0 of this blog. I had come to loathe the old Tekka template, especially its default Trebuchet font. Early travails using the old Blogger format made me wary of template changes. I didn’t want to lose (and have to rebuild) the sidebar page elements. Switching templates turned out to be as swift and painless as working with CSS should be. The new template is called Stretch Denim. It seems to fit; we’ll see how it wears. The typeface is Verdana. I think the overall look is cleaner, but hey, I’m half-blind. What do you think?

I know I still haven’t explained what 2deepgeek means. It’s one of those ontological problems that keeps me up nights. I’ve said something, certainly not everything, about riffing on the genome. And here’s a gloss on the inspiration for version 1.0. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders explains it in a podcast called First-time sex and the Beauty of 1.0. Start somewhere, he says. Do something. Revise as you go. Like the first time you have sex with someone, it’s likely to fumble. It’s enough to not end up in tears in the Emergency Room.

So, moving on to version 2.0, I can report no tears here, and no regrets.

Café Mouffe Presents: Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra

You don’t have to go to New Orleans to second-line. As Sun Ra reveals, you can do it on Saturn. You can do it in Café Mouffe. In fact, we encourage it. At a predetermined point in this YouTube clip you’re going to want to get up from the computer and march around the room. Go ahead, it’s OK. Dance. Salute the universe.

David Sanborn introduces Sun Ra here. Sanborn almost trumps The Master when it comes to cosmic headgear -- and that’s his hair, circa 1990 when this version of Retrospect was recorded for the MTV show Night Music. He asks Sun Ra about his creative influences. Answer: “The planets.” Also featured here are solos by longtime Arkestra sidemen Marshall Allen (alto)), Michael Ray (trumpet), and John Gilmore (tenor). Allen leads the Arkestra now after The Master returned to Saturn in 1993. You get a glimpse of vocalist June Tyson but don’t hear her. This may be free jazz, but the parade finale takes me straight back to second-line dancing down Bourbon Street.

Sun Ra was “an intergalactic tone research scientist,” according to Michael Ray. That’s my kind of career aspiration. “Sun Ra said he would always hide his treasures in chaos… he told us to play the unrepeatable,” Ray adds. “If you can walk with Sun Ra on your shoulders, at least you’re walking in the right spot.”

Next week at Café Mouffe: Charles MIngus Jazz Workshop at Antibe

Sun Ra Encore: Space Is The Place

When George W. Bush announced his plans for spreading democracy and pre-emptive war to Mars back in 2003, I didn’t get nostalgic for John F. Kennedy and Captain Kirk. My yearning turned to Sun Ra. I suggested a theme song for the Bush Doctrine: Space Is The Place.

There are two YouTube clips that give you a taste of the Sun Ra classic, though neither reaches the musical scale of his original 1972 recording.

The first clip roars with a hypnotic baritone sax line. It appears to be bootlegged via cell phone camera from a live Arkestra performance. Not sure whether Sun Ra is present on the earthly plane for this one. The YouTube notes are in Japanese, courtesy of the Kyoto University Light Music Club. Light music? That’s the spirit!

The second clip is, well, metaphysical. You get snappy glimpses of Arkestra vocalist June Tyson and a sly feel for Sun Ra the Trickster.

Space Is the Place is a 1974 film documentary by director John Coney. YouTube offers snippet 1 and snippet 2, flashbacks with that 60s/70s trippy experimental movie feel. Remember Barbarella? Sun Ra invokes "music of the sun, music of the stars, music of yourself...vibrating...yes, you are music too, you are all instruments, everyone is supposed to be playing their part in this vast Arkestra of the cosmos"

Space Is The Place is also the title of John Szwed’s 1997 biography of Sun Ra. American Routes featured an interview with the author in 2003; check out the notes for the January 13 show for links to audio interviews with Szwed and Arkestra adepts Marshall Allen and Michael Ray.

Sun Ra has an impressive Wikipedia page. Another extensive source is Saturn Web. While The Master looks on from the astral plane, the Arkestra continues to gig here on earth.

Finally, a nod to poet Major Jackson, whose book Leaving Saturn launched my latest Sun Ra journey. I’ve written about one of Jackson’s poems in “A car, a girl, a community of believers” parts 1, 2, and 3. I need to write part 4 about the Sun Ra poems.

Exhibit 402: Dick Cheney on Media-Mongering

Government Exhibit 402 is a clipping of Joseph Wilson's New York Times op-ed piece, published July 6, 2003. Wilson's article challenges the administration's public characterization of intelligence about alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. The clipping shows Vice President Cheney's handwritten notes: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?" Wilson's wife is Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA.

Download PDF: Exhibit 402: Cheney's Notes on Wilson's Op-Ed Article

Source: NPR/National Security Archive

Exhibit 412: Scooter Libby on Media-Mongering

Government Exhibit 412 is a printout of Maureen Dowd's New York Times column, National House of Waffles, published on July 13, 2003. Large sections have been blacked out by the prosecution. Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University says that's not for national security reasons, but to focus the jury's attention on the section at the bottom. The handwritten notes on the document are from Libby. He writes, "not us" and "not to us" in response to suggestions that the CIA had debunked the evidence suggesting Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium in Africa.

Download PDF: Exhibit 412: Libby's Notes on Maureen Dowd Column

Source: NPR/National Security Archive

Scooter Is Guilty Encore 2: Material Evidence

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, did an interview on NPR yesterday. He discussed material evidence from the Scooter Libby trial that has been collected for the archive, hand-written notes and annotated news clippings that reveal something of the Bush administration’s hard-ball approach to managing the media. The NPR web page includes links to PDF downloads of some of the documents discussed and is the source of the images reproduced in the following posts

According to NPR, “A number of internal government documents were entered into evidence during Libby's trial that depict officials, including the vice president, directly engaged in shaping the media's coverage of the Bush administration and its drive to paint Iraq as a nuclear threat. [The documents] center around the response to President Bush's assertion in his 2003 State of the Union address to Congress that Iraq was actively seeking illicit purchases of refined uranium in Africa to supply a nuclear weapons program.”

Bush is proud of the fact that he doesn’t read newspapers – he reads people. The documents demonstrate how those people do the reading for him.

Scooter Is Guilty Encore: Free Fall for the Fall Guy

Here is Dana Milbank’s account of yesterday’s post-verdict scene:

The cloud over the White House grew darker a few minutes later, when juror Denis Collins, standing in front of the same microphone, spoke of the "tremendous amount of sympathy" jurors had for the man they convicted. "It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove, where's -- you know, where are these other guys?' " Collins said. "We're not saying that we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but that it seemed like he was . . . the fall guy."

As a political matter, Libby's trial had long ago ceased to be about one man's guilt or innocence. Witnesses made it plain that at least three other administration officials had joined Libby in leaking the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, including top Bush strategist Karl Rove and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (whom jurors dubbed "Slick Willie"). Libby's conviction, and Collins's "fall guy" remark, only increased the determination of congressional Democrats to spread the blame throughout the White House.

Howard Kurtz’s column muses on how the Libby trial tarnished the Fourth Estate:

I know the details of this case have gotten mind-numbing and most of America isn't following it. But I think the essentials are quite clear: Dick Cheney's top aide lied about a campaign to manipulate the media on the administration's since-discredited prewar intelligence about Iraq. Like so much in our politics these days, it comes back to the war.

The parade of high-profile Washington journalists who took the stand in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby perjury case were not on trial. But few would dispute that the proceedings, which ended with Libby's conviction on four of five counts yesterday, gave their profession a black eye.

When Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and other top administration officials wanted to neutralize a critic by disclosing his wife's role at the CIA, they turned to some of the capital's most prominent chroniclers, who -- under longstanding local custom -- promised the leakers anonymity.

Blogging Software Platforms

• Moveable Type - http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/
• Nucleus - http://www.nucleuscms.org/
• Live Journal - http://www.livejournal.com/
• Blogsphere - http://www.blogsphere.net/
• Serendipity - http://www.s9y.org/
• JRoller - http://www.jroller.com/
• Subtext - http://subtextproject.com/
• 20 Six U.K. - http://www.20six.co.uk
• Word Press - http://wordpress.org/
• Dotclear - http://www.dotclear.net/en/
• Drupal - http://drupal.org/
• Lifetype - http://lifetype.net/
• Textpattern - http://textpattern.com/
• Greymatter - http://noahgrey.com/greysoft/
• b2Evolution - http://b2evolution.net/
• MindSay - http://www.mindsay.com/
• Multiply - http://multiply.com/
• bBlog - http://www.bblog.com/
• Blogger - http://www.blogger.com/
• Pivotlog - http://www.pivotlog.net/
• Xanga - http://www.xanga.com/
• Geeklog - http://www.geeklog.net/

Thanks to JoAnn for the pointer to OTAI, the Online Teaching Activity Index.

Scooter Is Guilty (And He’s Not the Only One)

Here’s the NYT on the verdicrt:

“The jury rejected Mr. Libby’s claims of memory lapses as it convicted him of obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the F.B.I. and perjuring himself, charges embodied in four of the five counts of the indictment… Mr. Libby appeared composed as the verdict was read. He was then taken to be photographed and fingerprinted as a convicted felon.”

Here’s Firedoglake on the verdict:

“Libby was stoic and Mrs. Libby daubed her eyes as the verdict was read. Nobody on the prosecution showed much emotion but Zeidenberg held his head in his hands. Libby himself was seated between Wells and Jeffress. He did not move.

“Afterwards Mrs. Libby came up and hugged Jeffress profusely, then Wells, saying "love you, love you" with much emotion. Then all the rest of the defense team. She didn't hug Scooter however, or hold his hand, or even make eye contact.”

Here’s the NYT on Firedoglake:

Even the Web-savvy may ask, Fire dog what? A collective of liberal bloggers, fueled by online donations and a fanatical devotion to the intricacies of the Libby case, Firedoglake has offered intensive trial coverage, using some six contributors in rotation. They include a former prosecutor, a current defense lawyer, a Ph.D. business consultant and a movie producer, all of whom lodge at a Washington apartment rented for the duration of the trial.

All day long during the trial, one Firedoglake blogger is on duty to beam to the Web from the courthouse media room a rough, real-time transcript of the testimony. With no audio or video feed permitted, the Firedoglake “live blog” has offered the fullest, fastest public report available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial.

But the bloggers’ fun is almost over.

Scooter Libby photo credit: Larry Downing/Reuters

It’s Spring Somewhere

Seabirds on the rocks in Australia. Thanks to JoAnn for sending this and Eva Bozzato for taking the picture.

Cultural Adaptability in the Creative Age

Thomas Fisher, dean of the University of Minnesota's newly formed College of Design, talked about the Design Age in a recent Minneapolis Star-Tribune article:

The information economy is still with us. But the paradoxical effect of the Internet is that it has made information so widely available that it holds no real economic value. Everybody can get incredible amounts of information, so there's no competitive advantage of having it. The idea of the design economy is that, for developed countries like ours, which cannot compete in a global marketplace on price or even quite often on the quality of a product, we have to compete on the basis of innovation, creativity and imagination, which takes you to design. By design, I don't mean just aesthetics but function and cultural adaptability.

Several quick thoughts related to Re-Imagining Accessibility:

1. When accessible information was scarce – when accessibility was a function of a scarcity economy – blind readers/knowledge workers were at a competitive disadvantage. In an attention economy choked with over-abundant information, that competitive disadvantage decreases as everyone seeks better accessibility/usability solutions.

2. Disabled workers may not be able to compete according to conventional productivity measures. They need to build skills and experience in terms of innovation, creativity and imagination. Rings true for me. I wouldn’t have a literacy, let alone a job, without these assets.

3. Disabled people who make adaptations and negotiate accommodations on a daily basis generate the kinds of cultural adaptability Fisher is talking about.

Thanks to Richard Florida’s Creative Exchange for the pointer to this article.

Re-Imagining Accessibility with The Rise of The Creative Class

The conference: Quest for Community; Friday, April 13, 2007

The call for proposals.

The proposal:

Re-Imagining Accessibility with The Rise of The Creative Class

Richard Florida’s 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, argues that human creativity is the engine of future technological innovation and economic growth. Florida emphasizes diversity as a key factor in fostering the kinds of creativity that can power an economy, particularly in recruiting and retaining highly creative workers. According to Florida, ““Hiring for diversity, once a matter of legal compliance, has become a matter of economic survival because creativity comes in all colors, genders and personal preferences.”

Although disability is obvious in its omission from this sketch of the diversity mix, it clearly has a place in the creative ethos envisioned by The Rise of the Creative Class. The goals of this talk at Quest for Community are twofold: 1) to articulate the book’s implications for people with disabilities; and 2) to re-imagine what accessibility could mean in a new ethos that strives to enable diversity and creativity.

he talk’s perspective on accessibility is grounded in a blind knowledge worker’s experience with lifelong learning, literacy, and access to information technology. It begins with a story illustrating how cultural practices, not just enabling technologies, shape the work of accessibility for blind people. The talk proceeds to examine how one new Internet technology, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), can transform access to information for blind and sighted people alike. This technology was created to solve a problem all of us face, information overload in an attention economy. RSS exemplifies a new generation of accessibility solutions that arise from widespread creative work rather than specific legal mandates. It points the way to open-source solutions to information accessibility that are analogous to universal design solutions in architectural accessibility.

The talk concludes with two assertions about Richard Florida’s new creative ethos. 1) Without spurning the legal framework that supports accessibility, including fair use in copyright law and reasonable accommodation in disability law, it is time to look beyond rights-based strategies for expanding the means and meanings of accessibility. 2) People with disabilities are actively engaged in the work of making adaptations and negotiating accommodations. This, too, is creative work and its energies, insights, and experiences need to flourish in any vision of an emerging Creative Age.

Different versions of this talk will be given at Ohio State University in early April and the M.I.T. in late April.