Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Last Waltz: Levon Helm Died Today
"We lost Levon at 1:30 today surrounded by friends and family and his musicians have visited him.
As sad as this was, it was very peaceful."
- Larry Campbell, Levon Helm's guitarist and band leader
As a fitting send off for Levon Helm please watch The Band Perform "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" from Martin Scorsese's Film "The Last Waltz."
Rest in Peace Levon Helm!
More at:
Levon Helm Dies at 71
As sad as this was, it was very peaceful."
- Larry Campbell, Levon Helm's guitarist and band leader
As a fitting send off for Levon Helm please watch The Band Perform "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" from Martin Scorsese's Film "The Last Waltz."
Rest in Peace Levon Helm!
More at:
Levon Helm Dies at 71
Live Video of the Dalai Lama at San Diego State
Watch live streaming video from hhdl at livestream.com
Live Video of the Dalai Lama at San Diego State
Compassion Without Borders
**APRIL 19TH, 9:30-11:30am, San Diego State University. --Upholding Universal Ethics & Compassion in Challenging Times.-- To access the webstream, please visit <http://sdsu.edu/> on the day and time of this event.
**APRIL 19TH, 1:30-3:30pm, University of San Diego. --Cultivating Peace & Justice.-- H.H. Dalai Lama s talk will be streamed online at <http://www.sandiego.edu/dalailama/media/> at 1:30pm on April 19th.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sending Love to Levon Helm
I am sad to report that Levon Helm, who has played drums and contributed lead vocals while in the groundbreaking musical group The Band is "in the final stages of his battle with cancer." Levon's website notes, "Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey. Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration...he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage."
Rolling Stone writes that ,"Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in the late 1990s. He recovered, but it took him many years to recover his singing voice. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony past Saturday evening, Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" out to Helm."
From The Road (1995), shot 8/5/94 in Rockford, IL
The Band:
Levon Helm - vocals, drums
Rick Danko - vocals, bass
Garth Hudson - keyboards, accordion
Jim Weider - guitar
Richard Bell - keyboards, vocals
Randy Ciarlante - drums vocals
The Horn Section:
Joe Mulherin - trumpet
David Woodford - tenor sax
Joe Sublett - tenor sax
Garrett Adkins - trombone
Howard Johnson - tuba, baritone sax
Video (c) 1995 by High Five Entertainment, Tribune Entertainment
Atlantic City c. Bruce Springsteen
The Band:
Levon Helm - vocals, drums
Rick Danko - vocals, bass
Garth Hudson - keyboards, accordion
Jim Weider - guitar
Richard Bell - keyboards, vocals
Randy Ciarlante - drums vocals
The Horn Section:
Joe Mulherin - trumpet
David Woodford - tenor sax
Joe Sublett - tenor sax
Garrett Adkins - trombone
Howard Johnson - tuba, baritone sax
Video (c) 1995 by High Five Entertainment, Tribune Entertainment
Atlantic City c. Bruce Springsteen
Photos: Levon Helm Through the Years
Levon Helm Battles Cancer
Listen to Levon Helm's Finest Moments, from 'The Weight' to 'Atlantic City'
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Please Read A Letter From Lori Compas in Wisconsin
Dear Friend,
Outrageous. By now you've heard that the GOP has put up fake democrats to run against me and 3 other democratic challengers in the State Senate recall elections. This is yet another insult to Wisconsin's proud tradition of clean elections and we need to fight back.
My fake Democratic challenger is Gary Ellerman. He's a life-long Republican and founder of the group, "Walkers for Walker."
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Board alleging that these Republicans are committing felony election fraud, by collecting nomination signatures under false pretenses. This morning I gave a statement to the Board.
"...If you allow a Republican to appear on the ballot as a Democrat, you’re saying that it’s acceptable to place false information on a ballot. This would undermine citizens’ confidence in this process specifically and in government in general. I think it’s telling that after all the talk of election fraud at the polls this past year, we’re now facing fraud on the ballots themselves."
However, moments ago the GAB announced they will allow these fraudulent candidates to remain on the ballot!
What's more disturbing than having to run in a primary against a fake candidate is the confusion this is causing among citizens in our district. When I was knocking on doors this weekend, I spoke to a woman who was confused and upset about all the news of these fake Democrats. She was concerned that there will not be an indicator of who the fake Democrat is and even went as far as asking if I had proof I was the real candidate.
Make no mistake, this is intentional chaos being created by my opponent and the the Wisconsin Republican Party.
It is more important then ever to get our message and the truth out to people in the district. Can you donate $50 today to help us reach more voters?
Volunteers continue to knock door-to-door and speak with friends and neighbors, and as I continue to meet hundreds of folks one-on-one and in small groups across the 13th District. But we must also spread our message in other ways. We need to buy radio ads and send direct mail. This is expensive but critical to reaching a broader audience. It's particularity important in order to reach more people rural areas where it is not realistic or efficient to send volunteers door-to-door.
Please help us reach as many voters as possible by giving a donation today! A donation of $100 will allow us to send a mailing to 300 people. Can you help us reach those people?
On Wisconsin!
P.S. You can read my full statement to the GAB today here.
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Paid for by the Committee to Elect Lori Compas
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Thank you for helping me fght for open government, civility, and a bi-partisan commitment to progress.
Downbound Train
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform Downbound Train at the Times Union Center in Albany, April 16, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Jackie Robinson Day 2012
Jackie Robinson during his collegiate years in Los Angeles
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
-Jackie Robinson
"When Jackie Robinson took the field in Brooklyn 65 years ago, he transcended the sport he loved and helped change our country in the most powerful way imaginable.It is a privilege for Major League Baseball to celebrate Jackie's enduring legacy each year, and we are proud that every April 15th, our young fans around the world have an opportunity to learn everything that the No. 42 stands for -- courage, grace and determination."
-Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig
Today marks the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie Robinson was the first African-American baseball player to compete in the major leagues when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Today in honor of Robinson, every player in Major League Baseball will wear Jackie Robinson’s No. 42.
Rachel Robinson, Jackie's wife, had vivid memories of April 15, 1947:
"As Jackie Robinson was getting ready to break baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rachel was hustling to get to Ebbets Field in time to see it."
"She waited a long time for a taxi because drivers routinely passed up black passengers. She worried their baby, Jackie Jr., would be cold because she had dressed him in spring clothes. And she stopped at a hot dog stand in the ballpark, where a vendor was kind enough to heat the boy's bottle."
Rachel Robinson at the stadium. (From Spike Lee's documentary on Baseball and Jackie Robinson)
"It was an exciting, exhilarating time — but it also was a stressful time," Rachel Robinson said.
Rachel and Jackie met while they both were students at UCLA. Rachel Robinson earned a degree in nursing from the UCSF School of Nursing in 1945 before marrying Jackie in 1946.
A few years after Jackie Robinson's retirement from baseball, Rachel returned to school and earned a masters degree from New York University. In 1965 Rachel became an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Yale University.
-Jackie Robinson during his collegiate years at UCLA played football, ran track, was the leading scorer on the basketball team and played baseball.
More on Jackie Robinson and Rachel Robinson at:
Los Angeles Dodgers Site on Jackie Robinson
New York Times on Jackie Robinson
Rachel Robinson at UCSF
Friday, April 13, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Where Dreams Come True: Caine's Arcade
Please watch as 9 year old Caine Monroy, who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store, is about to have the best day of his life...
A short film by Nirvan, produced by Interconnected.
Hours
Saturday: 8am – 5pm*
Sundays: by appointment*
* Appointments: to schedule a visit, please call 323-225-5997 and ask for George.
Address
More at:
Visit Caine's Arcade on Facebook:
Monday, April 09, 2012
Stopped Time: The Motion Studies of Eadweard Muybridge
by Gregg Chadwick
"....'See how curiously,' said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series (Plate 288 shown above) of one of our most prominent University baseball nine, 'and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching.' True enough. In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it."
- The Pennsylvanian, 1886
In the 19th century the railroad, the telegraph and the camera transformed our experience of space and time. JMW Turner's painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway documents in oil paint the beginnings of this perceptual shift. In Turner's work, the powerful steam engine races from the painting's perspectival vanishing point into the viewer's space, breaking free of pictorial constraints.
Eadweard Muybridge, born 182 years ago today, took Turner's artistic explorations and expanded upon them. Muybridge's photographic stop action photos revolutionized our understanding of human and animal movement.
Not content with the long exposure times needed to create photographic plates, Muybridge's artistic explorations with instantaneous photography led to his groundbreaking motion studies. In the 1870s, at the Palo Alto Stock Farm owned by railroad baron and former California Governor Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge invented his photographic method for the capture of high-speed action. Muybridge devised a system for documenting animal locomotion by using a series of cameras which produced sequential images of stilled movement on glass photographic plates. These photographs were arguably the first successful photographs of rapid motion and they revolutionized photography and the natural sciences.
These sequential images seemed to cut time into slices. The images recorded fractions of a second, which the unaided human eye had not been able to perceive before. Soon Muybridge would set his photographs into motion with his early motion picture device the Zoopraxiscope
and hand drawn silhouettes of his horse in motion photos seemed to gallop fluidly when viewed through the machine.
Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope inspired Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, which in time led to the modern film projector.
Muybridge's groundbreaking work continues to influence artists across the globe. The Japanese filmmaker Koji Yammamura's animated work Muybridge's Strings is a poetic homage to Muybridge and a poignant contemplation of time and memory: "Though separated by a century and an ocean, the lives of photographer Eadweard Muybridge and that of a Japanese mother clash poetically, sharing the irrepressible human desire to make time stand still."
Trailer for the animated film Muybridge's Strings by the Japanese filmmaker Koji Yamamura.
2011 /12 min. 39sec./ 35 mm /No dialogue /Canada, Japan
Techniques: Drawing and painting on paper
A CO-PRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA, NHK AND POLYGON PICTURES
Direction, Script, Editing Koji Yamamura
Original Music, Sound Design Normand Roger, Pierre Yves Drapeau, Denis Chartrand
Executive Producers David Verrall (NFB), Kenji Saito (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)
Producers Michael Fukushima (NFB), Keisuke Tsuchihashi (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)
My own work I Canti (The Cantos) can be seen as a rumination on time and memory inspired by Muybridge's discoveries.
And today Google got into the act with a witty Google Doodle honoring Muybridge:
More at:
Yamamura Animation
Eadweard Muybridge Doodle
X-Ray Dreams
 |
Eadweard Muybridge Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate 288
circa 1887
© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu
|
"....'See how curiously,' said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series (Plate 288 shown above) of one of our most prominent University baseball nine, 'and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching.' True enough. In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it."
- The Pennsylvanian, 1886
In the 19th century the railroad, the telegraph and the camera transformed our experience of space and time. JMW Turner's painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway documents in oil paint the beginnings of this perceptual shift. In Turner's work, the powerful steam engine races from the painting's perspectival vanishing point into the viewer's space, breaking free of pictorial constraints.
 |
JMW Turner
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway 36"x48" oil on canvas 1844 National Gallery, London |
Eadweard Muybridge
Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate639
circa 1887
© University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu
|
 |
Photograph of one of the three batteries of cameras, with plateholder, used by Muybridge to produce the Animal Locomotion images circa 1887 © University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu |
These sequential images seemed to cut time into slices. The images recorded fractions of a second, which the unaided human eye had not been able to perceive before. Soon Muybridge would set his photographs into motion with his early motion picture device the Zoopraxiscope
and hand drawn silhouettes of his horse in motion photos seemed to gallop fluidly when viewed through the machine.
 |
Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope on display at the Kingston Museum
Kingston upon Thames, UK |
Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope inspired Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, which in time led to the modern film projector.
After his photographic success in California, Eadweard Muybridge moved east and continued his studies with the assistance of the University of Pennsylvania in the 1880's.
 |
Eadweard Muybridge's outdoor camera house, 36th and Pine Streets, Philadelphia
circa 1886
Members of the commission overseeing Muybridge's work at Penn included Thomas Eakins as well as professors from Penn's Medical, Veterinary and Engineering Schools. Student-athlete's and faculty members at Penn posed for Muybridge's motion studies.
|
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Thomas Eakins A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand) 23 3/4" x 36" oil on canvas 1879-1880 Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art |
The artist Thomas Eakins, inspired by his interactions with Muybridge in Philadelphia, painted A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand). Eakin's depiction of a horse and carriage in stop-action motion was unprecedented in painting and seemed off putting to many contemporary viewers. One critic of the time wrote, "The effect of the picture as a whole it is impossible to accept as true, unless it be that Mr. Eakins' perceptions are right and those of everybody else are wrong." Eakin's dismissed the criticism and continued his explorations of motion in his photographic and painted works.
Trailer for the animated film Muybridge's Strings by the Japanese filmmaker Koji Yamamura.
2011 /12 min. 39sec./ 35 mm /No dialogue /Canada, Japan
Techniques: Drawing and painting on paper
A CO-PRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA, NHK AND POLYGON PICTURES
Direction, Script, Editing Koji Yamamura
Original Music, Sound Design Normand Roger, Pierre Yves Drapeau, Denis Chartrand
Executive Producers David Verrall (NFB), Kenji Saito (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)
Producers Michael Fukushima (NFB), Keisuke Tsuchihashi (NHK), Shuzo John Shiota (Polygon)
 |
Koji Yamamura at work on Muybridge's Strings |
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Gregg Chadwick I Canti (The Cantos) 78"x60" oil on linen 2011 |
My own work I Canti (The Cantos) can be seen as a rumination on time and memory inspired by Muybridge's discoveries.
Also in the Los Angeles area, Mark Arnon Rosen and Wendy Marvel's mechanical flip books evoke a world caught between Muybridge and the 21st century:
And today Google got into the act with a witty Google Doodle honoring Muybridge:
More at:
Yamamura Animation
Eadweard Muybridge Doodle
X-Ray Dreams
The author Rebecca Solnit considers Eadweard Muybridge and the perceptual revolution of the 19th century in her marvelous book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West.
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Trayvon Martin Tribute: Cruel World by Zone Fwey
A moving tribute to Trayvon Martin by Minneapolis based recording duo Zone Fwey.
Listen Here:
More at:
Zone Fwey
Friday, April 06, 2012
Please Support Lori Compas for the Wisconsin State Senate!
For my friends and family in Wisconsin and across the United States.
Please support Lori Compas in her May 8, 2012 election for Wisconsin State Senate in Wisconsin's 13th Senate District!
Find out how Lori plans to restore honesty and integrity to Wisconsin's political system.
Much more info here:
Lori Compas for Wisconsin!
A message from Lori about the upcoming primary election on May:
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