Marilyn

Happy Birthday, Marilyn

Walker Evans

Walker Evans ... Roadside Store ... 1936

The Fenimore House, in Cooperstown, N.Y., is holding an exhibition of Walker Evans' photography. Both my Mom and cousin Dianne attended, and told me about it. (none too shabby for a little upstate town) Evans is best known for his depression era work for the Farm Security Administration, but his career continued until the '70s. The picture above, Roadside store between Tuscaloosa and Greensboro - Alabama, 1936, is both representative and one of my favorites. Neither Mom nor Dianne could tell me if the Fenimore prints were gelatin silver or one of the new carbon prints and I couldn't reach anyone who did know, so that remains a mystery for now. ( when in doubt, go with the platinum )

Other Images
• Fine Art Photography
• Government work
• A recherché Variation

The Penguins

The Penguins ... 1967 ... Porphyry Granite

The Penguins, sculpted by Beniamino Bufano, ( sanitized bio here, word around town here) It is described as being in Sidney Walton Square, but in fact it stands on its own in a little landscaped patch nearby, with suspended walkways going overhead, and a sight path through to the next street. Bufano was local, so many of his works can still be seen around town and more than a few people knew him when. Since his passing, he's been labeled a San Francisco character ( # 5,267 ? ) but I think that's something of a disservice. He strikes me as a working artist doing what he had to do. While digging for links to him, I found an old public domain video, Shopping Can Be Fun, which shows him and his children ( @ 10'37" in) attending the installation of his sculpture at Hillsdale Mall in 1957. (That was when people wore suits and ties to go shopping - Really ... I'm not kidding.)

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Approached from Mission street, the Contemporary Jewish Museum looks like a low-slung brick building. Set between a an old Catholic church and a jukebox style hotel, it looks like a gussied-up warehouse. On the other side, the Market approach, it appears to be the resting place for a giant child's building blocks on a science fiction set. Initially quite jarring, the slot seems to be adapting. The landscaping is growing in, and the shops (and yes, there are plenty) are taking on the appropriate look for the side their on. As a note to photographers, the sun, the contemporary building materal's reflectivity, the angles, and the shadows of the surrounding buildings make a straightforward shot difficult. It's easy to get a surreal image (like mine, above) but a representative one tests your chops

Exposure

Robert Fripp ... Exposure

S.F. Theater Festival

The Great Zamboni (Jordan Winer) and the Secret of Happiness

Waterfall Stage

Sunday at the sixth annual San Francisco Theater Festival. Seventeen stages, spread through Yerba Buena, across the street at the Contemporary Jewish Art museum, and over the walkway at Zeum.

Cordwainer Smith

Howard Hendrix's book The Labyrinth Key has a character named Felix Forrest. The book hinted that the character might be an homage on a real person. As it turns out, the real person is more interesting than the fictional one. Major Paul M.A. Linebarger, 1913 - 1966, wrote under his own name, Essays on military psychological operations, and under several pseudonyms, including Felix Forrest and the most interesting one to science fiction fans, Cordwainer Smith.

Linebarger's godfather was Sun Yat-sen, he picked up six languages as a kid, graduated Johns Hopkins as a PhD, helped create the Office of War Information and was on the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board, was on the faculty at Duke and Johns Hopkins and served as an advisor to President Kennedy while doing some work for the CIA. Since he had some free time on his hands, he decided to write a bit of fiction under the name Smith.

• Some stories on the web
• Bibliography of psy-ops papers

(Edit) On September 17, '09, Boing Boing ran this related post