mug shot

Via Colossal, we are treated to the hundred-day challenge and rather incredible achievement of potter Lalese (Lolly) Stamps with her project exploring variations on the design of handles on coffee cups with all manners of rings, knobs, grips and treads. See more examples of tool and ornament at the links above.

jetway 707

Having a cameo in no less than All the President’s Men featuring Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and clocking in at an impressive eight-and-a-half metre length, via Things Magazine, we’re pleased to be acquainted with the wonderfully outlandish airport stretch limousine (produced from 1968 to 1970) from Oldsmobile and its subsidiary American Quality Coach designed to shuttle VIPs (seating twelve to fifteen) and their luggage from the terminal to the tarmac (see previously). Much more to explore at the links above.

the bold knight, the apples of youth and the water of life

Compelled amidst the confusion, conspiracy and urban legends to find and give voice to the archetypal and shared experiences, storyteller and graphic artist Maria Fedorova is soliciting lived anecdotes from life under lockdown to recast in the tradition of Russian folktales, the definitive collected and classified anthology explicitly modeled off of Grimm’s Fairy Stories. The first evening’s entertainment in this modern-day Decameron relates the dilemma of a woman wanting to rescue her neighbour stuck in her apartment building’s lift but is also terrified at the prospect of have to come within too close proximity with others during her intervention. Much more to explore at the links above.

no time for this kind of love—no flag waving high above

Via Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a roiling new release from Elvis Costello, recorded in February in Helsinki where the artist wanted to sample the sounds of anonymity sure that no one would recognise him but perhaps the Finns are too polite to make a big fuss over someone wanted to remain incognito, but shared now with this lyric video as it spoke to the times and current angst and anxiety. After playing with Sheryl Crow and friends to benefit the Musicians’ Emergency Fund charity, Costello will join Rosanne Cash next week Live with Carnegie to perform songs of protest and memory.

northwest quadrant

Not only did Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser petition Trump to remove extraordinary police forces and military presence from the city and allow muralists to paint in giant yellow letters BLACK LIVES MATTER on the pavement leading up to the official residence, the People’s House, she also officially renamed the section of 16th Street directly in front of the White House to be renamed (see also) Black Lives Matter Plaza.

novarupta

Located in the present day Katmai National Park and Preserve covering the Kodiak archipelago, Kenai Peninsula and Bristol Bay of Alaska, the caldera and volcanic dome of Новарупта, Latin for “newly erupted” began forming on this day in 1912, expelling ash and lava over the next sixty hours in volumes that equalled thirty Mounts St. Helens.
The largest event of its kind under the twentieth century, it is only comparable with the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. One notable legacy to be found in the reserve originally established as a monument to protect the volcanic field is the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, hewn out by the pyroclastic flow of the eruption, which still colour the canyon to the present day, the feature having been named by a member of the National Geographic Society, Robert F. Griggs—a botanist by training, who came to study the aftermath of the volcano in 1916.

wonkavator

Though still under construction, the spectacular “horizontal skyscraper” of Chonqing’s Raffles City project in the central Yuzhong district is welcoming visitors—like its namesake development in Singapore, called in honour of Sir Stamford Raffles (*1781 – †1826), Lieutenant-Governor of the East India Company and founder of the modern city state and British Malay.
The skybridge, the Crystal, is three hundred metres long and is supported by four towers at a height of a quarter of a kilometre and features a park, a history and industrial museum of the city, and an observation platform with future plans for a lounge, restaurants, bars and an infinity pool. Within the glass and steel columns, there are spaces allotted for offices, hotels, shopping centres as well as fourteen hundred residential units.

someday i’ll have a disappearing hairline, someday i’ll wear pajamas in the daytime

Released this month in 1994, Crash Test Dummies’ “Afternoons and Coffeespoons,” the third single from the album God Shuffled His Feet (the cover art is Titian’s 1523 Bacchus and Ariadne with band members faces on the figures) considered to be the most popular song according to the alternative rock band’s fanbase and was among the highest charting in their repetoire references the 1915 T. S. Eliot verse “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”—I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. This interior monologue of reflection and lament on estrangement, isolation and disillusioning realisation of morality resounding in both works takes on an especially resonant meaning in the latter musical tribute in these times.

Maybe if I could do a play-by-playback
I could change the test results that
I will get back
I’ve watched the summer evenings pass by
I’ve heard the rattle in my bronchi…