Crooked River Dancing

I made a Weebly today. After a conversation about artistic collaboration last night with Kate Sopko, I decided it was time I had a choreography website-- an online portfolio of sorts. I know that someday I'll have a real website, but I think it will do for now. Next step? Make a dance so I have something to put on the homepage. www.crookedriverdancing.weebly.com

raindark, countercat, athwart

I've turned 26 pages of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy-- a favorite author of mine. I've read most of his novels with the exception of 2 of his earliest, The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark.

His books are compelling, spare, intelligent and poorly/brilliantly (un)punctuated. He makes up words, but I don't read it as gratuitous. I usually end up sacrificing a night's sleep with a McCarthy novel. My intention is to take my time with this one.

The book begins with an italicized intro. Here is just one crazy good sentence from it:

Down there in grots of fallen light a cat transpires from stone to stone across the cobbles liquid black and sewn in rapid antipodes over the raindark street to vanish cat and countercat in the rifted works beyond.

The first chapter starts like this:

Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty watersliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun. A hand trails over the gunwale and he lies athwart the skiff, the toe of one sneaker plucking periodic dimples in the river with the boat's slight cradling, drifting down beneath the bridge and slowly past the mud-stained stanchions. Under the high cool arches and dark keeps of the span's undercarriage where pigeons babble and the hollow flap of their wings echoes in stark applause. Glancing up at these cathedraled vaultings with their fossil woodknots and pseudomorphic nailheads in gray concrete, drifting, the bridge's slant shadow leaning the width of the river with that headlong illusion postulate in old cupracers frozen on photoplates, their wheels elliptic with speed. These shadows form over the skiff, accommodate his prone figure and pass on.

Keep in mind that the dialogue that follows is Hemingway-spare.

Bikespresso

I may attend Bikespresso. Could be a good kick-off to Cleveland Bicycle Week.

Re-thinking Borders

Ron Rael says the wall on the US/Mexico border is expensive, detrimental to the environment, ineffective, and even deadly, since hundreds die of dehydration each year as they try to cross the border.

“I have to accept the wall because it exists, but as a designer I see that something better is possible. Why not do something intelligent, something incredible? I envision not just a ‘dumb wall,’ but a social infrastructure that connects and improves lives on both sides.”

His designs for a better, more useful, more environmentally friendly, innovatiave wall.

Aren't they Cute?

Only a week later, and at least half my seeds have sprouted.

Every Piece of Plastic Ever Made Still Exists Today

No matter where you live, what you do affects our oceans:





Here's what some Clevelanders are doing to get people to "Drink Local, Drink Tap". Visit the Sustainable Water 2019 group Tower City this week to get involved.

Starting off Spring with Logic, Creativity & Chaos

It's time to plan and plant the garden again. My process is an equal mix logic, creativity and chaos. First I get out all of my seeds and spread them all over the ground. I draw a picture (not to scale) of the backyard and how I want the flow (colors, heights, shapes, etc.). Notice the coffee is an important part of the process.


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Then, I get practical and use graph paper to plan out how much of what will fit in the space I'm working with. Based on that number, I know how many of which seeds to start. I also plan which seeds I'll sow directly outside and when. Also, I figure out which ones will get planted in the community garden plot instead of the backyard.



Finally, I put it all together and spend 6-8 weeks babying my seedlings until I harden them off with tough love and transplant them to the great outdoors.

Fickle March

You're like a Cleveland Gray when there's daffodils blooming in the alleys and the sylvan cyclists glide by in the afternoon and when you dream the Guardians of the bridge stretch out their arms and drop their vehicles from a great height and the splash into the river sends ripples to the lake and back again to shore when a mysterious gull flies out of the valley his call bounces off the top of our towering city and then vanishes when you wave your wand and change the melody.