The Thin Red Line

Awhile back I heard someone refer to the imprisonment without charges or recourse to the courts at Guantanamo Bay as "un-precedented".     This book of photographs I recently came across demonstrates it is anything but.

Dorothea Lange, a noted photo-journalist was hired by one branch of the government (the War Relocation Authority) to document the forced migration of Japanese Americans to the detention camp in the desert at Manzanar California.   The Army later ordered the photos censored and they remained hidden from public view until the publication of  Impounded:  Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internmnet.

Two lengthy introductions, totaling some eighty pages, by Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro tell the stories of Dorothea Lange and her extraordinary career and of the Japanese American peoples’ round up and imprisonment following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.   Highly Recommended to WWII history buffs.

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As much as I and some of my readers enjoyed the log mansions and other spectacular eye-candy architectural books I’ve featured,  I was struck by the fact that what seemed to touch most people’s imaginations most deeply was the idea of having a truly simple (though very nice) small cabin in the woods.   (And when I think about how much I hate housework, the idea of the small dream home becomes more and more appealing.)   So when I came across this loving tribute to a distinctive and distinctly small architectural icon,  I just knew I would have to blog about it.

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This one is for everyone who laughs at funny cat pictures.  Mario Garza, proprietor of the website stuffonmycat.com has put together a unique collection of pictures of, well, stuff on cats.   Most of the photos were submitted by visitors to the web site, though some are of Garza’s own cat.    The kitty sleeping peacefully beneath a plate of sausage, eggs and potatoes is quite striking as is the cover image of the red-eyed cat with whipped cream on top.   The kitty kicking back with a can of Bud and the tv remote is a hoot as is the cat who prefers the game controller and a bottle of Stoli.   And the cat beneath the bumper of the bus who appears to be straining to hold the whole thing up is priceless. Stuff On My Cat    Recommended.

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Today I am featuring Bill Keaggy’s  Milk Eggs Vodka not because it’s an interesting and amusing book,  though it is,  but as an example of someone who has turned a popular web site into a commercially successful book.

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Earth Then and Now is a unique pictorial geography book showing dramatic changes to the earth’s surface all over the world. Consisting mostly of before and after photographs and some other before and after depictions of human impact on the earth in a particular country or region.

One of the most dramatic photos is a single photograph (not two before and after photographs) that shows the edge of the Gifford Pinchon National Forest where land owned by timber giant Weyerhauser has been clear cut to a straight line reflecting the boundary of the National Forest. I’ve been to the Gifford Pinchon forest and it is a magnificent special place. And this is just one of over 100 comparisons.

An abandoned open pit mine in Cornwall, England that has been transformed into a lush garden and a biosphere ecology exhibit is one of many comparisons that highlight a positive outcome. The spectacular reconstructed cathedral on the site of the Brandenberg Gate in the now unified Berlin, Germany is another strikingly positive comparison. The site of the former twin towers of the World Trade Center and a photograph of New Orleans on sunny day in March 2005 and flooded out following Katrina are among the more somber before and afters.

This one is definitely worth checking out to spend some time perusing and contemplating these very striking images. Recommended.

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The Sixties is a coffee table size book of photographs by Robert Altman, famed as the director of such movies as M*A*S*Hand Nashville. The photos, which include both musicians and other famous icons of the flower-power-era as well as many shots of ordinary hippies were taken during the years 1969–1974 and provide a striking look back the Summer of Love and all that it unleashed.

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I have to say, right off, that what follows is Not the post I had planned for today. I had intended to write about a book and an author whom I and some dearest friends have a personal history with. I had mentally composed a caustic and scathing diatribe castigating our former acquaintance. But as with another recent post, I found in the end that I could not write what I intended. And the reason I could not write that bitter, ugly post? Not because I came to believe that I was wrong in my conclusions but because a friend I care about deeply, who is wiser and stronger than I am (and who rarely realizes that he is in fact wise and strong) simply asked me not to.

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Today’s Harry Potter debut at work was a bit anti-climactic. An e-mail last night advised that 175 copies were received at library hq at 4:30pm and were quickly stamped, stickered, cataloged and put on the trucks for this morning’s delivery. I will confess to sneaking a quick peek at the last chapter, though I was 368th on the waiting list so it will be awhile before I can check it out and read it. (After the first copies were allocated to the earliest holds I moved up to 198th in line, so my best guesstimate is 4–6 weeks.) Fearing that some patrons might help themselves if we put the books out on the usual self-service shelves for holds, we kept them on a special cart in the back room. And by the time I left at 2pm only one patron had come in and claimed a copy. I am hoping to avoid reading any spoilers until I can read the book, but that may prove difficult.

Today’s most interesting check in was A Field Guide To Sprawl, a pictorial dictionary that uses aerial photographs to illustrate several dozen concepts associated with sprawl– the phenomenon of scattered low-density development outside the boundaries of established and often declining urban areas. Concepts such as "ball-pork"– sports stadia constructed with tax payer funds for the benefit of rich team owners, "ducks"– buildings which serve as advertisements for the products sold within, "leap-frogging"– when development skips over vacant raw land and continues further out and "pods"– single use zones off a major roadway not interconnected to any larger street grid are explained in concise, readable terms and illustrated with excellent photographs. I was familiar with some of the concepts from reading Joel Garreau’s Edge City back in 1992 and enjoyed learning more.

Hope this finds your weekend going well.

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