George Mayerle’s Eye Test charts, Schmidt Litho Co., San Francisco , ca. 1907

I want to order it as a shower curtain. 

Below Central Park

was this.

I recently learned our own State Capitol Building's park and surrounding capitol complex in Harrisburg was also constructed where an African American and immigrant community was thriving. It was razed for that purpose and erased, largely lost to history. This was Harrisburg's wild and woolly Eighth Ward.

I'm glad there is a monument being placed there in 2020.

Looking back.

Horrific: New York's History of Slavery

Wabi-Sabi and Zen in Photography

Nice Ta-ta's, Shakespeare!

I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.

— Charles Darwin, 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language:

Bow-wow. The bow-wow or cuckoo theory, which Müller attributed to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds.

Pooh-pooh. The pooh-pooh theory saw the first words as emotional interjections and exclamations triggered by pain, pleasure, surprise, etc.

Ding-dong. Müller suggested what he called the ding-dong theory, which states that all things have a vibrating natural resonance, echoed somehow by man in his earliest words.

Yo-he-ho. The yo-he-ho theory claims language emerged from collective rhythmic labor, the attempt to synchronize muscular effort resulting in sounds such as heave alternating with sounds such as ho.

Ta-ta. This did not feature in Max Müller's list, having been proposed in 1930 by Sir Richard Paget. According to the ta-ta theory, humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures, rendering them audible.

Interesting Graphic

One could still argue about the subjective interpretation of raw data, but overall isn't there a smack of truth to this assessment and ranking? Alcohol is definitely in the right place on this list.

Two Favorite Recent Finds (Category Sculpture)

I spend a lot of time looking at folk art, outsider art, lowbrow art, ephemera, etc.

Sometimes I can't resist because I get the screaming mimis at how great something is and how I want to stare at it much, much longer. An object stamps its feet inside of me. I vibrate.

Love for the phenomenal world speaking through objects fashioned by humans or not.

This set of the usual suspects are solid wood and about a foot tall each and were found in Russia.

I believe they escaped from some debut de siecle paintings. So refugees. Like most beings in art.

 And this therianthropic beauty was found in a deep attic in deepest Connecticut. It bewitches me entirely. I think they were looking in the wrong state for the witches back at the end of the seventeenth century in America.

Could that be...sycamore wood...with that odd biomorphic relief to the grain? Also known as plane tree. And it has a third name, which I forget. It's about a foot tall.

It almost feels like Colonial period to me. I feel so lucky to have this weird, almost Druidic being watching over me while I sleep. I think I will have interesting dreams under that tutelage.

There is a larger monochrome watercolor landscape I have hanging on my third floor landing and I got tired of looking at it but didn't want to jettison it. So I bought this lovely bit of a tomesode in (online) Japan and covered just about half of the glass frame with this. So: a form of collage without glue and I love the way the landscape came alive again.