Happy Holidays from Five Cool Things

Hometown Girl

Hometown Girl
A few, but not many seasons ago, I bought my wife an angel. She was in a little box in a fine little shop. The place was called Hometown Girl, and it was on a street in a quirky/funky/trashy/arty, now it’s hip, now it’s not, Baltimore neighborhood called Hampden. Hometown Girl was trés Baltimore. You could buy ornaments and cards and books and ice cream sundaes and you could imagine John Waters in there. The very soul of Baltimore lived in the floorboards. Like the town and like the shop, there’s more than a little joie de vivre in my Hometown Girl — with her silver wings and her hat and her pink dress and her blue striped stockings and that “One fine day, I shall fly in the Cirque du Soleil” expression. And those lips! She is unbounded Hampden joy. Pure Charm City magic, floating above the cacophony.

As you’d expect, Hometown Girl handled the big trip from Baltimore to Portland in style. I suppose she’s happier now, minus the crackheads and the stickup boys and the boarded up rowhouses – those hometown flats that said, “Dresden 1945.” These days, she floats above it all; hanging from a lamp above a dining room table bought in an antique shop. In Baltimore.

Some days ago, we took Hometown Girl out into the Portland winter. We lay her down in some evergreen boughs, we parked her upside down in the crook of a tree. We hung her from a branch alongside a friendly walking path and waited for the dogs to pass by. But it wasn’t until we arranged her, just so, in this redberry bush, among these winter berries that Hometown Girl came alive and flew. For a couple of moments, she was aloft and this poem materialized.

Same Old Me
So, for all the places we all have been,
For all the things this same old me
shoulda/coulda/woulda been—
for all the lives you’ve lived till now,
for all the ways we live, but still don’t know how,
take flight, same old me,
take flight.

And in this gastronomic season,
Use only the Barrique Chardonnay smoked finishing salt,
(It’s only $7.75 for 1.2 oz!)
And ditch the boring taste of reason —
Pour the heavy, tasty cream,
Or at least consider the half and half,
And that old life in Baltimore, Hometown Girl?
That was just,
One long soft shell Chesapeake Bay lip smacking, mallet swing sweet crab
tasting dream.

Happy Holidays!

1. A New Way to Listen to Music | Spotify

 

It works on a Mac, a PC, a mobile phone or a home audio system. It runs on a peer-to-peer network. It’s integrated with Facebook, which means it’s highly social and you can share what you’re listening to. (As I write this, I’m listening to Coyote by Joni Mitchell.) It holds millions and millions of songs. And it’s free. Merry Christmas! Check out spotify here>>

The very cool Spotify

2. Calling Ray Parise | Twine + You = Smart House

Another success story from Kickstarter. From the Twine Kickstarter website: “In the future, your house will send you a text message to warn you that your basement is flooding.”

A durable 2.5″ square provides WiFi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that keep it running for months. A simple web app allows to you quickly set up your Twine with human-friendly rules — no programming needed. And if you’re more adventurous, you can connect your own sensors and use HTTP to have Twine send data to your own app.

Twine lets you create Internet-connected systems and objects anywhere you have WiFi. Compact, low-power hardware and real-time web software work together to make networked physical computing simple and versatile. Available right now.

This is Twine. Available Now.

3. Ken Russell | The Last of the Teddy Girls 

When the director Ken Russell was a young lad of 23, well before he made films, he made what he called, “still films.” These were street photographs in and around London’s East End. For 50 years the photographs were hidden away in a vault, only to be found in 2005. The images, 30 in all, were exhibited in London earlier this year. His camera? A Rolleicord. After the pics, a fascinating bit about Teddy Girls.

photo by ken russell

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photo by Ken Russell

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photo by Ken Russell

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photo by Ken Russell

Wikipedia on Teddy Girls: Their choice of clothes wasn’t only for aesthetic effect: these girls were collectively rejecting post-war austerity. They were young working-class women, often from Irish immigrant families who had settled in the poorer districts of London — Walthamstow, Poplar and North Kensington. They would typically leave school at the age of 14 or 15, and work in factories or offices. Teddy Girls spent much of their free time buying or making their trademark clothes. It was a head-turning, fastidious style from the fashion houses, which had launched haute-couture clothing lines recalling the Edwardian era. Read the full Ken Russell story>>
 

4. Charles Dickens | A Christmas Carol Excerpt

First Edition A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens

     The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window; desperate his curiosity. He looked out.

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Christmas Carol Cool Bits: Written in six weeks in 1843; Chapman and Hall publishers.
First run released on December 17 — 6,000 copies. Sold out.
Purchase price: Five shillings.
Twenty-four editions in the original form were published.

5. Jazz Pictures | Magnum 

How I love this photograph.

NEW YORK CITY—Louis Armstrong at his home in Corona, Queens, working on the second volume of his autobiography, 1958. More great jazz pictures, here>>