Telegraph

urbane vs urban gardens

A little wilderness goes a long way in gardens, I think. You don't need a hundred acres, or even one, to find yourself lost in the bliss of a towering bean patch, or a fulmination of dinner-plate dahlias. Wandering squash vines among fountains of hollyhocks, or a lone laden apple tree on a windswept hill--there are varieties of sensation to be found in a slightly wild, or eccentric garden. Imagine 125 such gardens in one spot! And each one...

lost in s p a c.........

that's what happens when the internets go away. Actually, only if your Model T broke down on the highway and you had to walk through the desert to find a mechanic. Dirt is back after a slightly longer pause than usual and yet, it being late on a hot and smazy July evening, I may just head out back to sit by the whiskey barrel water fall with a gin & lemon, scratch my mosquito bites and wait for the...

WHY PAT COOKS- NEW BOOK OF POETRY BY LEE KOSTRINSKY ON SMALLS BOOKS

Check out the new book of poetry by Lee Kostrinsky on Smalls Books. Can be purchased from Amazon.com or better yet from Smallsbooks@rcn.com...

spring cleaning

a note to readers... True Dirt will be unavailable for a period of up to a week (starting in the next few days) in order to make needed improvements to our server. I will be back with a new post as soon as we are up and running again..... Briggs...

rights of spring

It exists in Slow Time, that place where there are no deadlines, no telephones vibrate, and there is no season of new television comedy. It is spring. Coming at its own pace. Once in twelve, or thirteen, moons or so. Nothing is definite. No weather, no memory, no seed reliably germinate. Rain, sun, wind, planetary spinning. Spiders appear, and the migrant birds. Today I saw a swallowtail swerve and cling to flowerless stem. Hopeful, perhaps. That is the metaphor. Hope....

A Portrait of the Artist as a Housewife

Download file...

the hybernating gardener

ok. I missed January. and most of December. I didn't even look in the backyard until I had to wrap the potted dwarf lemon in plastic last week to keep it from freezing. I have spent most of my time under the down quilt with my ibook not even looking at nursery catalogs. I began to think I would abandon gardening altogether. I went for a little hike with a friend - the first all winter - out in the...

the season's greeting

In the dark days of the garden I avoid the tasks that would take me into the shadow land of the back yard where the day's light penetrates only a sliver's worth across the fence and the borders are brittle with last season's petrified leaf. There is no transforming snow to bury the sad scene in mounds of glistening white, and so far not even the soggy mulch of rain soaked debris. There are no birds and no sound...

of what does the garden dream?: Hadspen Parabola redux

Back in September I entered a garden design to the Hadspen Parabola competition, and eventually was notified that my idea had made it to the second round of judging. Here, at last, are the finalists - as best as I could represent them from the pdf files and assorted documents now posted at the site. The entries varied from a typewritten page describing a redwood tree to an open source "wiki" that allowed anyone to design the garden. I was...

reversal of season

A glimmering on the hilltop beyond the freeway is all that the morning can muster in the way of sunshine, and a ruby glow has begun to seep from the tangle of tree canopies, wisteria and grape vines. The neighbor's fig tree is shedding great flaps of yellow leaves upon the exhausted annuals below, and drips of rain cling to the ragged edges of the oak leaves outside my window. A bruised blue sky is puffed with storm clouds. A...

a personal parabola

Well. As many long time readers of this blog are aware, there are often long pauses between thoughts at this space. This summer I was unusually preoccupied. With the inevitable months-long preparations for a wedding which finally took place on July 29. Which is sort of an excuse for not gardening or writing about it. BUT, something happened one morning a few days before the wedding, beginning with my reading an article by Alice Rawsthorn about a rather famous English...

ants save the planet

Reading Theodore Roosevelt's "The Winning of the West", one comes across this argument for the moral necessity of the American settlers' conquest of the territory long occupied by their human brethren: All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they...

midsummer's moment

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs-- To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind, While the touch of Nature's art Harmonises heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:-- "I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields. Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with...

smelling like a rose

The rose obsession continues...until the last petal drops in my soon-to-be-a-memory spring garden. A friend invited me to join her on an expedition this last Saturday to El Cerrito where the annual "Celebration of Old Roses" event is held in the community center. I have heard about this event for years from fellow gardeners and rose enthusiasts and both me and Sally were expecting something rather grand. In reality, it looks like a neighborhood BBQ held at the community...

the dirt on roses

More has been written about them than any other flower, to the point of terminal cliche. The symbol of love and war and everything hunky dory, they have decorated the homes and objets de art and gardens of the rich and powerful, and the tiny dirt patches and chinaware of the most humble and obscure. There are more kinds and colors of roses than any other flower and more are being created - and lost to posterity - every day....

I may eye May

ply your hammock among the trees, settle your skin upon springy skein, relax your mind and drift back in centuries two, three, four where "...Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace But through adventurous war Urged his active star..." and Andrew Marvell escaped prose'aic politics in his poetic Garden, though Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude. and no industrious bee was yet clichéd.... How well the skilful gardener drew of flowers and herbs...

Flora regina

The more I despair of civilization, the more I wonder at nature. I'm sure it's what every gardener concludes after awhile, particularly in spring when whatever it was that we mulled over in the twiddling days of winter - the inadequacies and faults and difficulties of our garden - are waved away by nature's magic wand. I walk out the back door one morning and am stupified once more by the artless beauty of the plant world. Flora returns to...

an octopus's garden by the bay

Went with friends to the San Francisco Flower and Garden show this weekend, at the Cow Palace, that venerable blimp hangar of a space that has hosted everthing from prize winning cows to The Beatles in its time. For a few years now it has been the home of the annual garden show, an extravaganza of garden design showcases, lectures, and garden-related vendors. Unlike the last time I went, two years ago, this show was somewhat less crowded and...

An Interview with Bob Holman

Recently dubbed a member of the "Poetry Pantheon" by The New York Times Magazine, Bob Holman has previously been crowned "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" (New York Daily News), "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen), and "this generation's Ezra Pound" (San Francisco Poetry Flash). His latest collection of poems, a collaboration with Chuck Close entitled A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, was exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum during the Venice Biennale and published by Aperture in fall 2006. Holman ran the infamous poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café from 1988 to 1996. In 1995, he founded...

but wait, there's more...

The Against the Day Deathmarch Dichotomy

For the past week I've been moving Cecil over to a new server. The work is pretty much done and we're in that interesting limbo where there are actually two different Cecil site's out there and the web is in the process of sorting out which one to go to. I'm told it can take up to three days to fully resolve, but I think it'll be clearer as early as tomorrow night. So I'm going to hold off on posting and opening the new thread up to comments for one more day, in hopes that by tomorrow night,...

March 24: Wilmot's Mic-Less Open Mic III

Roughly two weeks from now, Saturday the 24th, we kick off the third Wilmot's Old-Fashioned Mic-Less Open Mic, here in the famed "Island City" of Alameda. Our first open mic back in September was fantastic. Great readers. Great crowd. Great grape, poured by Alameda's Du Vin Fine Wines. A real treat. Then in December, WOFMLOM II: wonderful readers, bigger crowd despite the rain, world-class wine provided by Blacksmith Cellars. Honest to gosh, a wonderful time. OK. So we're clearly due for a disaster. Dare you miss out? Cozy Galactus suggests not. Cozy Galactus, Open Mic Aficionado Wine once again...

An Interview with James Warren Perry

Sanctuary #3, 42" x 72" acrylic on canvas, private collection. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. James Warren Perry is an independent realist artist living and working in Northern California. His work has been featured in over one hundred exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Riverside Art Museum; Palm Springs Desert Museum; Museum of Art, Kochi, Japan; Masur Museum of Art; Art Museum of Los Gatos; Bolinas Museum; Texas Artists Museum; United States Embassy, Reykjavik, Iceland; Oliver Art Center; Stanford University; University of the Pacific; Merced College; and the State of California Attorney General's Building. He’s the recipient...

but wait, there's more...

Florida and Michigan--Rebels on the Run

Leaving aside everything else about this campaign, I’d like to zero-in on whether the delegates from these two states should or should not be seated. So, I have composed this imaginary statement in the name of the Democratic National Committee:...

Will There Be US Bases in Iraq?

Absolutely not. “The U.S. ambassador…told Congress last week that the deal would not establish permanent bases in Iraq nor specify the number of forces to be stationed” there. —Washington Post, 4-15-08 This unspecified number of troops will not be housed...

Mediajunkie blogs to go offline for about a week

Hey, I wanted to notify everyone who blogs using the Mediajunkie service that our server is in need of some serious upgrading and maintenance to deal with security issues. This isn't a trivial fix, and it will require taking all of our blogs offline for up to a week. I apologize for this and wouldn't do it if it weren't necessary. If you'd like to post a blog entry letting your readers know your blog is going offline for maintenance, please do so soon. Thanks! -mgmt...

Capitalism and the Homeowner: Contempt Hidden in Plain Sight

Marxists have long suggested that home ownership is encouraged under capitalism because when masses of people own small-scale properties, they identify with and defend large-scale capitalist ownership of true wealth in the means of production. Homeowners in America, then, are...

The Obama Charisma Recoi. "Have a little faith; there's magic in the night."

I wrote this in response to an article on another list, but the general attitude I responded to is common enough. It is a recoil at the sight of Barak Obama’s rallies and speeches mostly, but also his political positions....

Life Affirming -- Dorothy Paker Style

Resume —Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live....

Illegality of Marijuana May Cause Lung Disease

A few studies now suggest that marijuana may increase the risk of lung disease—not the marijuana itself, but its illegality, which makes it expensive, causing people to hold the smoke deep inside their lungs. The DEA is all about Public...

If Jews had met Budhists

Great religious coincidence. Last week I wrote to a friend: “But mainly the sense of Jewish superiority was in relation…to the idol worshipers. It would have been interesting if there were strong contact between Jews and Buddhists, but it didn’t...

New from Aristotle

This came in this morning’s Aristotle message: “To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.” It came as news to me that he had said this. He never mentioned to me...

Sitting next to my father

It could be a very curious experience sitting next to my father watching a bad movie. He thoroughly enjoyed anticipating the next line of a predictable dialog. This involved more than just getting the words right. There was also the...

Sort of about Chanukah and Christmas

Got this in the email today: The lasting achievement of the Maccabees was not that they won a war but that they rekindled the light of hope in Jewish hearts and saved the faith of monotheism from defeat. - Rabbi...

Funundrum

Nobody knows what the Sun really looks like. —DKo...

Philosophical Courage

I’ve been getting an Aristotle Quote of the Day on my (Google) home page. Today it was, “Character is habitual action.” And—totally apart from the content—I am thinking, “What guts! To say something so flat out straightforward, so intellectually committed...

Drop by Drop

“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” —Aeschylus I wish to Hell I didn’t know what he...

How honest WAS he?

“To the tune of” the stand-up comedian’s standard intonation. How honest WAS he? HE was so honest that when he got the “Bank Error in Your Favor” card in Monopoly, he paid the money back!...

Buried Alive in Water: Leave No Marks; Suffer No Penalties

This article in today’s Washington Post distills into one and half pages a straight-to-the-point legal history of Waterboarding, and plainspoken descriptions of the actual physical experience. It is worth more than all the other obtuse, vacillating, shallowly researched, tongue-tied, contortedly...

All Time's the Wrong Time

[My boldface] Vetoing health care for children. President Bush explained: “[W]ith federal revenues at an all-time high and the deficit declining, now is not the time to raise taxes.” It goes without saying that when federal revenues are low and...

Snack-Size Candy Bars

At this time of year, nutrition experts urge parents to remember that “snack-size” candy bars only that. There’s just not enough there in one bar for an entire meal....

The eerily missing word

Even if you slept through most of Social Studies in high school, the word “Extraterritoriality” was almost impossible to avoid. It was going to be on the test. Yet, in the weeks since the mass slaughter by Blackwater in Baghdad,...

Do these people even read what they write?

This was in a letter from my credit-card company: “So that you have no surprises, know that your APR’s, fees and other terms can change at any time.” —I guess they mean no surprising surprises....

Happy Rosh Hashana! L'Shana Tovah! Happy New Year!

May your name be inscribed for good in the Book of Life! I understand there is another New Year, celebrated on January 1, but I think we need all the New Years we can get. The Jews actually have two....

Terrorism and Appalling Taste

“After Mr. Qaddafi’s renunciation of terrorism and his agreement to end programs to develop unconventional weapons, the United States last year removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.” NYT"> DKo: It was the “unconventional weapons” that really...

Deadline Approaches. Bush Unconcerned.

“President George W. Bush and his Democratic foes…fire the opening shots in a long-brewing clash likely to seal the fate of US war strategy….set[ting] the stage for Bush’s critical progress report,…due by September 15.” AFP DKo: So, why is Bush...

The Ticking Time Bomb

“They would put people naked for up to 40 days in cells where they were deprived of any kind of light.” “History Will Not Absolve Us,” Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice, August 28th, 2007 DKo: Why does it go on...

Concerning Vampires

From the promo for a play I’m going to see, “DRACULA,” Bram Stoker, “We think you’ll find it nothing less than epic…” I can believe it. There certainly must be something fundamental about the Vampire. There’s not much that competes...

Song 1: Bo Diddley/Who Do You Love

Bo Diddley’s influence was not only musical, but sartorial (see also: Isaac Hayes, R.I.P.). Somebody has to represent the African-American inventors of rock’n’roll on the list, and while I have much respect for Little Richard, his singular vocal style...

but wait, there's more...

Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Inflation, etc.

My most recent Fortune article on Zimbabwe has been on the newsstands for a couple of weeks, but it's not online yet. The short version: if Robert Mugabe stays in power and continues to thoroughly ruin the economy, he'll eventually...

Rock History in Six Songs or Less

I haven’t actually read This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, but I have been in the same room with someone who has. It was he who pointed out to me a passage where the author attempts to...

but wait, there's more...

Spiritual warfare and breathing problems

Lately, I spend an inordinate percentage of my blogging time reading and deleting junk comments. Deleting them because they are, like, clogging up my bandwidth, man; reading them because you never know when the spam machine is going to cough...

but wait, there's more...

Great way to showcase a redesign

I love this animation Delicious designer Bernard Kerr made to introduce the user interface improvements incorporated in the design of Delicious 2.0:...

Rock me and roll me till I'm sick

The poacher character from Withnail and I would have called this “prancing like a tit.” It has only just come to my attention that this weekend marked the 65th birthday of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger (DOB 7/26/43), prompting...

Job Posting: Culture Blog Editor

I'm helping out with recruiting and development for a company that's launching an omnibus culture blog and we're looking for a full-time editor. The ideal candidate is a cultural omnivore who has some experience with blogging, managing/editing people (freelance contributions...

Two guys named Bill

The file name of the picture at the left, for reasons I won’t go into here, is “william-shatner-kidney-stone.” As fate would have it, one day recently the postman brought CDs by two guys named Bill: The Transformed Man by...

but wait, there's more...

I have so many good ideas

And so many of them go unused. For instance, I think that someone should start a band that does electro-pop covers of old blues songs, and furthermore I think that this band should be called “Robot Johnson.” That idea...

...and we're back (again)

So last week it seemed the Great Silence had come to an end. Everything was up and running, I had some good momentum going, it was like a train on greased rails, and then…silence again. It’s still unclear exactly what...

Apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone so far

Twitterific would like to use your current location! Shazam didn’t recognize John Cage last night. Facebook is slick. OmniFocus is my new Obama. Google app is weak (brings up a tiny serp?) but at least it exists. Pandora would be perfect if faster and also not crashy. You had me...

A Tony Danza Moment

A weird little moment on the way to work today: I was flipping around the radio and alighted for a moment on KFRC, which plays soothingly predictable rock and soul hits. Apparently today is "Aloha Friday," and the chirpy DJ...

Black Is Back

I appropriated this image of Charles Thompson in Dublin from Diary of and Up and Coming Sociopath. My town had a visitation last night from someone who, until recently, was thought to be long dead: Black Francis, rock star....

but wait, there's more...

Modern Life Is...

…for one thing, pretty weird sometimes. I was just reading an AP story headlined “Iran Test-Fires Nine Missiles, Warns It Will Retaliate.” Serious business, that, with ramifications that could affect the future of the entire world. But the Internet doesn’t...

but wait, there's more...

...and we're back

I support our firefighters. And yet there’s something about this photo that I find irresistibly hilarious. Three dollars to whoever can supply the knee-slapping caption that is eluding me. Well hello blogosphere! How have you been? Yes, you don’t...

but wait, there's more...

The Case for Nukes

Belatedly: my last Fortune column has been up for a while. It's about nuclear energy, which has never been popular, but which I think no intellectually serious environmentalist can credibly dismiss as an alternative to fossil fuel burning technologies. Nuclear...

...and we're back

Holy Christ that was a giant pain in the ass. On the bright side I may have gotten a whole chapter for my book on presence, all about what it’s like to have a longstanding web presence offline for six weeks or more. As far as the Internet is concerned...

Are You Local?

My last Fast Company column is up now. (As explained previously, my Fortune contract is exclusive for business writing, so I can't write for Fast Company anymore.) I expect that this will get me more than the usual allotment of...

Wanted: A Room with A View. Of Sorts.

I'm flooding the zone with this request (which means I put it here AND on Twitter): I'm looking for housing (for about a month) in Phnom Penh and sadly, there is no http://cambodia.craigslist.org. (There is a http://vietnam.craigslist.org, but that's just...

The Forecast Is for Clouds

Apparently the outage I’ve been promising is about to happen for real…so this is farewell, but not goodbye. I will be using the copious time I save by not writing…er, not deleting junk comments…to read David Mitchell’s mega-multi-award-winning Cloud...

Playing around with Utterz

Posted a thought via mobile that popped into my head driving to work this morning, part of an ongoing imaginary argument: Mobile post sent by xian using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3...

System going down in 10 minutes. Please finish up....

This blog, this domain, and all of my other Mediajunkie domains are going offline for about a week. We are retooling our server, migrating from RHL to Ubuntu, and generally tightening up security. If I have a burning need to blog while this site is down, I’ll do it over...

I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren build this here cathedral

Or should I perhaps have found an anecdote with a bazaar in it for my title? I’ve been enjoying watching a lot of my fellow Y!OS cow-orkers “decloak” if you will and proudly announce to family and friends that yes, this Yahoo! Open strategy is what we’ve all been working...

Administrative Note

My gracious host is making some server changes, so this site will be offline for about a week starting sometime this week and Monday at the latest. Not that it matters too much, given how infrequently I update, but just...

Don't Panic

The wise words of Douglas Adams are always worth keeping in mind, but especially so now, because the entire MediaJunkie family of blogs—which includes The Philter—will soon be going offline for a server upgrade. The outage will begin pretty...

Ignite was fun

My Ignite talk, Grasping Social Patterns Originally uploaded by duncandavidson. Here are my slides. | View | Upload your own Audio when it’s available (video too). UPDATE: and here’s some YouTube video shot from the audience (the very beginning of my talk is cut off):...

Three talks for the price of, well, none

At the IA Summit a week ago in Miami, I co-taught two full-day workshops (on patterns with Erin Malone and Lucas Pettinati, and social design with Christina Wodtke and Joshua Porter), moderated a panel (on presence and other aspects of social web architecture with Gene Smith, Wodtke, Andrew Hinton, and...