THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy…But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?”―Orhan Pamuk
It is incredible to think, but Mark Twain for a time was a reporter for a local rag (yes, I know that was/is a common situation for young writers). A year before he published one of his first and now most famous stories, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” he was hanging out in San Francisco with the likes of Artemus Ward and Bret Harte (the latter who Twain was with when writing Jumping Frog, while Harte writing “The Luck Of Roaring Camp” at the same time). He was also working at the San Francisco Daily Morning Call. A bunch of years ago, when I was doing some research for the San Francisco Appreciation Society, I uncovered this doozy from this day June 7 in 1864. Oh, if daily reporting could be this good all the time:
BURGLAR ARRESTED written by Mark Twain
John Richardson, whose taste for a cigar must be inordinate, gratified it on Saturday night last by forcing his way into a tobacconist's on Broadway, near Kearny street, and helping himself to fourteen hundred "smokes." In his hurry, however, he did not select the best, as the stolen tobacco was only valued at fifty dollars. He was congratulating himself last evening in a saloon on Dupont street, in having secured weeds for himself and all his friends, when lo! a Rose bloomed before his eyes, and he wilted. The scent of that flower of detectives was too strong even for the aroma of the stolen cigars. Richardson was conveyed to the station-house, where a kit of neat burglar's tools was found on his person. He is now reposing his limbs on an asphaltum floor - a bed hard as the ways of unrighteousness.
The Cure’s Robert Smith says forthcoming ‘noise album’ will be a solo release
Noise music is a strange genre. Believe it or not, NOISE means different things for different people. There is beautiful noise, bombastic noise (which can be beautiful to some ears), angry noise (also beautiful to some), meditative noise (anon)…now GOTH NOISE? Robert Smith: I am looking forward to hearing your noise.
The Test Screening That Almost Killed Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Great interview with the director of such a classic film…
Gwendolyn Brooks Memorial Park Dedication Set for June 12
“The Gwendolyn Brooks Memorial Park was created is to honor the legacy of an American icon and award-winning poet, the Illinois Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, nurturer of excellence and Western's first Honorary Doctorate recipient.” (Happy Birthday to Gwendolyn Brooks!)
King Herod’s 2,000-Year-Old Roman Basilica Uncovered in Ashkelon
“The basilica was first discovered in the 1920s by British archaeologist John Garstang who led an expedition on behalf of the Palestinian Exploration Fund and then covered the structure once again,” said Dr. Rachel Bar Nathan, IAA director of excavation together with Saar Ganor and Federico Kobrin. The area would not be excavated again for almost a century, until a few years ago the works started one more time, in the years 2008-2012 and then in 2016-2018, when the INPA decided to develop the area and reconstruct part of the colonnade.”
Boy Breaking Glass
By: Gwendolyn Brooks
Whose broken window is a cry of art
(success, that winks aware
as elegance, as a treasonable faith)
is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.
Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.
Our barbarous and metal little man.
“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.
If not an overture, a desecration.”
Full of pepper and light
and Salt and night and cargoes.
“Don’t go down the plank
if you see there’s no extension.
Each to his grief, each to
his loneliness and fidgety revenge.
Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”
The only sanity is a cup of tea.
The music is in minors.
Each one other
is having different weather.
“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!
And this is everything I have for me.”
Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,
the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,
runs. A sloppy amalgamation.
A mistake.
A cliff.
A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.
