The writing gets 3 stars, the illustrations 5.  I figure splitting the difference is fair.

I picked up Charles Bowden’s “Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez” after hearing him on a recent episode of On the Media.  This is *not* a book about Juarez or drug cartels. This is a long meditation on humanity (and the lack there of) in the idea of nation states, boundaries, and “wars” in all forms. If you’re looking for a fact-based account of the situation in Juarez look elsewhere.  The book is quite good but I found myself wondering if it would have actually worked a bit better as a full-on graphic novel.  The illustrations by Alice Leora Briggs add so much to the text and bring emotion to Bowden’s elegy for Juarez that the text alone lacks.

Parts are quite thought provoking; Bowden has a way with long sentences– something I really appreciate in an author.  However, at times his scope wandered too far and the insights felt shallow. The book is at its best when he reflects on interviewing sources or walking through the “death house.” It is at its weakest when he loses site of these concrete artifacts to ponder the abstract.

Briggs’ illustrations, though dark and occasionally graphic (no pun intended), add many layers of meaning for the reader to ponder.  One of my favorites is a variation on a pieta with a group of press photographers crowding around.  Briggs also masterfully mixes Mexican folk-motifs with styles reminiscent of the Northern Renaissance– especially the Flemish painters.  Besides, I’m a sucker for Mexican Folk Art (as we’ve discussed) and she uses a stamp motif throughout the book.   Obviously I was going to spend loads of time just getting lost in these intricate images.

By the way, I hope you’ll consider connecting with me on Goodreads…

This issue of Vile, number 7- Winter 1979, is really the crowning jewel (it’s also the most difficult to photograph– the paper is awfully fragile and, since it’s bound with a metal tab nearly impossible to open completely).  Made in an addition of 300, this issue includes original works from artists who used rubber stamps.

Each of its 93-pages seems to be an original (at least, not photocopied).  According to the masthead it was hand collated by Madeline Behrens-Brigham.  According to some Google research, she is still active in the San Francisco Crafts community.  Trying to work up the courage to send her a message via LinkedIn or Facebook…  For some reason collating this seems like a truly herculean task– even moreso than following-up with the artists who agreed to participate.

Stamps featuring the work of Italian artist Filippo T. Marinetti.

As always, there are more images of this issue on my Flickr page.  This weekend I’m hoping to have time for more scanning and snapping.  Ideally, I’ll eventually have a nearly complete version of Vile v3 on Flickr (unless I get a nastygram/take-down notice.  But that just seems like it’d be counter to the whole mail art spirit, no?)

VILE magazine, International Double Issue, p. 91

We all know the difficulties it causes to receive the lot of mail we do every day.

That postal authorities have managed to get any item from one address to another is of course not intolerable, but the items themselves derived from and deprived of the postal reference must concern everybody.

To the end that minimize the implications brought abut by these items Eric Andersen offers you a mail-box.

You are requested to fill up this box with mail addressed to you, undelivered mail returned to you, mail you have received by mistake, etc.

If you return the box to Eric Andersen the content will then be redistributed to the 4000 persons on his address-list.

Eric Andersen – Copenhaguen [sic]

Vile, “International Double Issue” 2/3 Summer 1976

I’m going to continue scanning pages this weeend, please check my Flickr collection for more images over the next couple of days weeks.

p. 44

p. 100

Back Cover

First, how do you like the site’s re-design?  I’m diggin’ the new banner but worried that the blue-brown is a) cliche and b) a bit dark.  It’s still winter, after all, and something about this brown just doesn’t feel quite as happy as I’d hoped it might.

After several days without mail delivery (the horror!) due to DC’s epic snowstorm I got quite a full mailbox on Friday.  Most happily, the newest issue of Uppercase Magazine arrived all the way from Alberta, Canada.  For some reason issue 3 just didn’t really work for me– I’ve no idea why.  This issue, however, I tore through in about… oh, 4 hours: my mind spinning with a hundred ideas too.  So nice to get a burst of color in what has been (and will probably continue to be a dreary Feb).

I hope you’ll go out and find a copy (or order one from their website) so I’m not going to share all the amazing things it contains here but I’ll tell you about these gems:

• There is a mailbox gallery (seriously, it’s called Mailbox 141) in Australia and Girl Printer displayed prints of envelope security patterns there.  Love!
• Three Potato Four is an online shop and blog I wish someone had told me about A LONG time ago.
• An Abecedary [sic] of writing!
• Oodles more too.

Just as I finished the magazine: SUN!  Late afternoons of full sunlight and snow– they are what remind me why this is my nook.

A few random things:

• I cannot stop listening to Hem’s Rabbit Songs.
• Is it weird that I want a new table cloth bc I take 75% of the photos for this blog in my nook at my table and the orange oil cloth is just not working as a background?  Considering something in a muted teal…
• Trying to figure out how to break through my fear of “ruining” nice notebooks.  I need to figure out a way to keep an ongoing book of “things that catch my eye.”
• Thinking about a Halloween costume that could involve a rubber stamp bandoleer.  Maybe “Super Mail Girl?” or “Revolutionary Postal Carrier?”
• The American Odyssey Relay is about to soak up a lot of my time: running, logistics, cheering.
• I’ve updated the “Keeping Me Inspired” section on the right– it was time.

I came across this passage in Posting It and just had to share it with you all:

[Anthony Trollope's character, Jemima Stanbury], placed little confidence in [pillar post boxes]: ‘She had not the faintest belief that any letter put into one of them would ever reach its destination.  She could not understand why people should not walk with their letters to a  respectable post-office instead of chucking them into an iron stump– as she called it– out in the middle of the street with nobody to look after it.  Postive orders had been given that no letters from her house should ever be put into the iron post’ (p. 117).

I don’t know why but this passage just tickles me.  Oh, also, Lewis Carrol wrote a letter writing manual: Eight or Nine Wise Words on Letter Writing.  This is a thing which I must get my hands on post haste.

I’m about half way through of Catherine Golden’s book Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing.  I saw Professor Golden speak a few weeks ago at the National Postal Museum and really enjoyed her lecture. I have to admit, I didn’t know that the postage stamp didn’t come around until 1840!  I did know that the “Penny Black” was the first stamp– I just thought it was much earlier.  Though I don’t know why, given that it has an image of Queen Victorian on it.

The book is fun to read– it’s re-inspired me to make things, mail things, and really touch paper again.  Part of why I decided to make that stationary yesterday is because I’d just read several pages about custom printed paper and seals.  Lots of fun.  Plus, I’m now longing for a world with twice daily (or more) deliveries!  Oh just imagine.

Although I’m not quite sure how I feel about some of the parallels she draws between Victorian postal reform at today’s electronic media, the historical parts of the book are fascinating.  My hesitation is probably that the insights do feel a bit obvious– but I’m also a “digital native” and a snob.  I’ve not gotten to the section dedicated to this explicitly, so I’ll hold off judgment for now.

Jon and I went to see Sherlock Holmes this weekend.  It’s a great film if, and only if, you are okay with it being not really anything like the books or the Jeremy Brett version.  Robert Downy Jr. and Jude Law are just too handsome to be Holmes and Watson really– and since when did Holmes fight in boxing matches?  I thought he was an opium addict.  Of course, I’m biased because a) I read many of the stories with my Mom and b) I watched almost all the A&E/Jeremy Brett episodes between the ages of 10 and 14– an impressionable age.  Anyway, Guy Richie made a great film about sleuthing in Victorian England and nobody, but nobody, can film a boxing scene like Ritchie.

Anyway, although I didn’t love the plot I loved the richness of all the sets.  I definitely understand the appeal of Steampunk (if I didn’t before when I was scouring the DC area for antique glassware).  It’s not quite my thing– I like my Steapunk diluted with a little 19th century history–probably because I want my very own Cabinet of Curiosities some day.  Herewith an incomplete list of some of my favorite quasi-Victorian objects:

Contemporary German Safety Goggles from Restoration Hardware.

Antique Sterling Silver Perfume, Smelling Salts Decanter, Bottle in Domed Original Leather Etui, Box via Rubylane.com

W. Watson & Sons Ltd., The Van Heurck No.1 model microscope, c. 1910, via Antique-Microscopes.com

Jasmine Ruffled Side-tie Panties from Espalore’s Etsy Shop.  I don’t think I could ever wear these because really I can’t take myself that seriously but, I like the way they look on other people.

5 Light Silver Plated Candelabra via FoodServiceWarehouse.com.  I think this would look just lovely covered in loads of dripped candle wax.

And the grand finale…

Brass cash register via Solvang Antique Center.

]]> http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2009/12/28/living-within-sherlock-holmes/feed/ 0 http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2009/05/21/new-apartment-new-favorite-nook/ http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/2009/05/21/new-apartment-new-favorite-nook/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 14:28:34 +0000 ashleyb http://www.bashfullydesigned.com/?p=218

We did not have any nooks in our last apartment.  In part this was because our old apartment was itself more or less just a nook.  Plus, we had a huge closet that we actually had to use for storage (I know!) instead of turning it into a special sub-room or something.  Anyway, that is thankfully not the case with the new place!  Now we’re in a corner apartment with lots of cross breezes, trees outside our windows (it sounds like an aviary when we wake up in the morning), and loads of windows.

If you need me, I’ll be eating strawberry shortcake and drinking iced coffee in my new nook, book in lap and sunshine through the windows. It is convinently located next to a west facing window, near the kitchen, with a comfy new chair and our little basil seedlings.   Yes, this is going to be a lovely spot to wait out unemployment.

Now, if only we can get our art up on the walls…  a good project for the weekend I think.

There are days when I love living in DC.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I’ve been reading an interesting book called The Race Beat about the reporters in the South who covered the Civil Rights movement.  It is hardly an uplifting book, I have such a hard time reading about the Civil Rights movement, but it does highlight so much of what made America in the1960s a deeply troubled nation.  Anyway, I’m actually not writing a review of this book (although it is great and I’d recommend it)– I wanted to mention that DC is a great place to  be nerdy because there are always museums/lectures/walking tours etc. to do and they will often tie into whatever subject you’re interested in.

I went to the Newseum yesterday for a screening of “War Room” and a panel discussion with Clinton staffers George Stephanopoulos, Paul Begala and Dee Dee Myers.  Before the showing, however, I trotted through the museum and watched the film on the press and Civil Rights.  Although the Newseum’s interpretation was a little simplistic it was great to see the TV footage and photographs only written about in The Race Beat.  Yes, I probably could have found them on GoogleVideo or via the library of Congress online archives but… frankly I didn’t.

Plus, the Newseum has a small exhibit of Lincolnalia up… looks like I made it less than 72 hours without getting excited about Civil War history.

Anyway, suddenly unemployment in this city isn’t looking so bad.  I wonder what kind of programs the American History museum has…  sadly, the Newseum is not free ($20!!) so I’m not sure I’ll be back there until I get a job.  The Smithsonians are free, however, and the upcoming Temperance Walking Tour is too.  Let the learning begin (and please let that keep me distracted from my current unemployment).

A friend suggested I read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” but promptly warned me that this book would probably terrify me and chill my soul.  She was right on both accounts.  There is little for me to add to the many, many articles and television segments that have been created on this book. It is a wonderful read, incredibly detailed even in its bleakness.  I felt the boy and the man were complete people and that I could at least imagine the man before whatever event burned the world to a crisp.  Don’t let the Oprah’s book club stamp turn you off– this is a dark and incredibly thought provoking book.

I found the book chilling, terrifying, and in a strange way motivating.  McCarthy never explicitly says what caused the world to die (perhaps an atom bomb, maybe an environmental event).  But I found myself thinking about how I can show more respect for the ecosystem in which I live.  George Monbiot wrote in the UK’s Guardian:

As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist’s core beliefs. I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilisation is in trouble.

I’m still trying to proess this book, but I enjoyed it– even if it did chill me to my core.  Perhaps I enjoyed it because it did chill me and force me to think about my own actions.