Endicott Redux

The Sunday Poem

Our Sunday Poem today is "The Last Wolf" by Mary TallMountain, from her collection Light on a Tent Wall, reprinted on the Poetry 180 website. TallMountain, a Native Alaskan writer who lived for many years in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, was the author of A Quick Rush of Wings, Matrilineal Cycle and other wonderful collections of poetry and prose. I particularly recommend Listen to the Night, a gorgeous volume containing forty poems on animal themes.

According to the Freedom Voices website, TallMountain "was born in 1918 in Nulato, a village along the Yukon River in Alaska, to a Koyukon/ Athabaskan mother and a Scots/Irish father. When her mother became terminally ill, Mary was adopted by a non-Native couple and taken away from her village. Traumatized first by losing her family and homeland, then by the harshness of mainstream American culture, she felt like an angry outsider for many years. Writing was a way of going home, of reclaiming her ancestry, her family and her homeland, and a way of claiming her own proud native voice. Her stories and poems portray life along the Yukon River and her removal from that land. Her work also captures tender images of street life in inner city San Francisco." Visit the website for information on the TallMountain Circle, and on the annual TallMountain Creative Writing and Community Service Award.

The art in this post is by Mark Wagner, who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area. More of his paintings can be seen in the Endicott gallery ("Mythic Art" and "The Spirit of the Land"), and on his Hearts and Bones Studio website.   

In the flash of a moment

Have a look at the incredibly dynamic photographs of Martin Klimas -- who takes familiar images and transforms them into powerfully dynamic moments in photographs as they are smashed. You can read an interview with Klimas and see more of his work here.

The Art of Nick Kosciuk

Since 2001, Nick Kosciuk has been traveling to the former-Soviet Republic of Belarus, taking thousands of photographs of the homeless children raised in orphanages there and turning them into paintings in his studio in the American Southwest.

Why Belarus? As Bonnie Gangelhoff explains in an article published in Southwest Art magazine: "[Kosciuk's] parents asked him to accompany them on a trip to Belarus to explore the family’s roots. Kosciuk’s father was born there, and his mother, who was born in a German labor camp after World War II, is also Belarusian... Once Kosciuk and his parents arrived in Belarus, the stories he had heard as a child from his grandparents came alive for the first time. He met distant relatives and visited the site where his grandparents’ house stood before it was burned to the ground during World War II. He also retraced some of the steps the family took when they fled the country....

"It was on the last day of his trip that he had an epiphany, Kosciuk says. A family friend, who was a linguistics professor, took him to visit a nearby orphanage in Rudensk. She usually visited once a week to offer the children Bible study classes. What he witnessed at the orphanage moved him deeply. 'I saw so many kids with such a need for love and attention,' he recalls. 'They were hanging on me. It hit me that there wasn’t a long line of people waiting to take my place and give them attention. I was it.' Although he says that conditions have improved since then, Kosciuk’s first impression of the orphanage was that it was bleak, austere, and depressing. 'I was there an hour or so,' he says. 'In that time, I made a decision that I would come back for the rest of my life.'

"In all of his paintings, Kosciuk says that he is trying to capture the children’s beauty, resilience, and strength as well as their vulnerability, fears, and loneliness. 'They don’t have a past to draw comfort from,” he says. “And there is no such thing as hoping for an exciting future. Whatever it is, it will be hard. I’m just trying to show them how important they are. I tell them, ‘Someone is paying this much money for a painting of you.’”  Money from the sale of the paintings is used to support the children and the orphanages. To see more of Kosciuk's lovely, haunting work, visit his website. And go here to read Bonnie Gangelhoff's full article on Kosciuk, "Angels and Orphans."

Relating this topic back to myth, you might also be interested in an article on the "orphaned hero" archetype in myth, folklore, and modern fantasy fiction, published in the current issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts.

(With thanks to the Dante's Heart blog for bringing Kosciuk's art to our attention.)

Mermaids and Levis

Here's another example of fairy tales and advertising colliding in new and pretty hip ways: a short film for Levis jeans directed by French indie video filmmaker Michel Gondry. I think the mermaids are pretty interesting...sexy and a little scary.

Our Sonnets From the Portuguese

The new issue of Words Without Borders is focusing on the Lusophone world -- those speakers of Portuguese throughout the world, spanning three continents and a half dozen countries from Europe to Brazil to Mozambique. The site currently features a selection of Lusophone authors writing fiction and essays.

The short stories are compelling and edgy -- written in a magic realist style. Two stories in particular knocked me out: Portuguese author Teolinda Gersão's "The Woman Who Stole the Rain" (in which the narrator overhears an unsettling tale), Brazilian author, Augusta Faro's "The Ants" (a very creepy tale about a woman going mad), and, as I have been reading lots of Chandler and Hammett of late, I also enjoyed Rubem Fonesca's Latin noir-ish sendup in Mandrake.

There are also poems, book reviews, and some wonderful short nonfiction pieces. October is packed with events celebrating the Lusophone world and you can find a schedule here.

Magical Realism by Steven Kenny

Steven Kenny was born in 1962 in Peerskill, New York, and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, with a European Honors Program year abroad in Rome. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S. and Europe. Recent shows include Dreamland: American Explorations into Surrealism in Santa Barbara, California, and Venus and the Female Intuition in Denmark, the Netherlands, and France.

Kenny's passion for myth, folklore, and the numinous world of nature is eloquently expressed in his remarkable paintings, which are also works of activism aimed at awakening us to our responsibilities to the planet we co-inhabit. "We humans are inclined to forget or ignore the principles of existence," the artist says. "They include: every action directly impacts our environment, change is unavoidable, stasis is unnatural, time is beyond our influence, conception is the commencement of death as well as life, and many others. Our challenge is to humbly accept Nature's gifts and live by the lessons set before us without imposing our arrogant will upon each other and the planet.

"As humans more fully embrace technology we feel an increasing sense of anxiety, disorientation and fear. To compensate, our desire for predictability and order ignites a voracious hunger for control that induces us to force Nature to relinquish her secrets. Once a trusted provider, she is now viewed as 'shifty,' inadequate, and needing improvement. We manipulate our surroundings in an attempt to manage time, eliminate unforeseen change, and establish a permanent sense of stability. We go to great lengths to surround ourselves with psychological, physical, spiritual, social, and cultural environments that we hope will last. The result is an increasingly artificial existence.

"By combining detailed realism, surrealism, and symbolism I convey the universal language of Nature as I understand it. I visually combine the human figure, plants, animals, and other forms of matter in a natural tableaux vivants. These scenarios present our existence as either environmentally harmonious or complicated by human contrivances. My paintings serve as a reminder to myself, and perhaps to others, that all life on earth is a single organism. The world I depict is one where interdependencies prosper and hierarchies crumble."

I highly encourage you to visit Steven Kenny's website, a treasure trove of beautiful imagery, where you can purchase original paintings, prints, and copies of his magical art book, Soul Flight. You can also see his work on the Ten Dreams gallery, Klaudia Marr gallery, and beinArt SurrealArt Collective websites. (Many thanks to Endicott's Assistant Editor Jamie Bluth for introducing us to this painter's work.)

Shizen Nouhou

Following on from Midori's post yesterday, this month's issue of Orion Magazine contains a lovely article by Lisa M. Hamilton on shizen nouhou, natural agriculture, as practiced by the Shumei group in Japan. Hamilton profiles a farmer named Susumu Hashimoto, who explains how his daily work is a means of spiritual devotion. Hamilton asks him what he hopes to accomplish through shizen nouhou's labor-intensive, low-yield method of growing food:

“'World peace,' he replied, then smiled and waited for the next question, as if there were nothing more to say."

Read the full article, "Land, Farmer, Community: A Sacred Trust," on Orion Magazine's website. And while you're there, don't miss the gorgeous poem "Boundaries" by the great Mary Oliver in the same issue. The archive of past issues holds such gems as "Small Wonder" by Barbara Kingsolver (an essay reflecting on miracles, myth, and the nature of war), "The Naturalist" by Barry Lopez (discussing the importance of sitting quietly by a river), "Tumult of Vision" by David Abram (introducing the beautiful photographs of Mathew Chase-Daniel), and a lovely little essay on the humble tortilla by Rebecca Allen.

The painting above is "Seed Saver" by Steven Kenny. 

Sow the Seeds: Midwest Farmers' Flood Relief

Author Barth Anderson (who also works as a manager at Minneapolis' premier organic grocery co-op, The Wedge) alerted me to the growing movement by individuals, co-ops, and even chain organic grocery stores to offer relief and support for the Midwest organic farmers who saw their crops literally washed away in the flooding that occurred throughout much of the Midwest states this last August.

Sow the Seeds Fund has created a useful website for information for farmers seeking relief assistance and for individuals and corporations wishing to donate, as well as a list of co-ops. The site also offers a list of grocery stores in the Midwest (and across the US) that are participating in the assistance programs. Gretta Wing Miller has produced a short film on the flooding, which you can see here. And here's a short video of Barth Anderson on Showcase Minnesota discussing the flood and its impact.

Save the Tara Campaign

Author O. R. Melling sent me this information on the recent protests to stop the development of a motorway through the Tara Valley, one of the oldest sacred sites in Ireland (and the setting for her novels in the Fairie Chronicles series).

  "Here are some pics of the two truly mythic protests that took place this weekend in Ireland against the M3 motorway which is ploughing through the sacred valley of Tara. Raths and other ancient sites have already been destroyed with National Road Authority archaeologists insisting they have 'recorded everything.' Tara is now on the World Monument Fund's list of 100 most endangered sites.

"The EU is investigating the matter under destruction of world heritage but the Irish government is trying to rush through the motorway before it can be outlawed. If the motorway goes through, the noise of traffic density will overwhelm what is now a still, green, and sacred beautiful place; plus the inevitable development that will accompany the motorway will destroy the landscape entirely.

"First protest: harpers from all over gathered before the Dáil (government buildings) on Saturday, September 22, to play The Harp That Once Thro' Tara's Hall (by Thomas Moore) to voice their protest. The Green Man was there and also Irish actor and Hollywood star, Stuart Townsend, who has been championing the cause for three years.

"Second protest: a giant human harp and message on the Hill of Tara under the guidance of aerial artist and environmentalist visionary John Quigley. Crowd estimates from 2,000-3,000 people, more than expected, so John began to decorate - calling for people with red jackets to make those rubies!"  (Aerial photo credit: Paula Geraghty.)

There were additional support protests in Boston, Chicago, and New York. For more information about the campaign (and an opportunity to get involved) visit the Save Tara website.

(Photos: top to bottom:  Stuart Townsend at Harpers' protest, Human harp formed from protesters, Harpers' protest, people gathering to form the great harp, O.R. Melling doing her part as a bit of the great human harp.)

Benjamin Lacombe: Children's Book Illustrator

One of the joys of MySpace is discovering incredibly talented people -- such as Benjamin Lacombe, a terrific French children's book illustrator. Ridiculously young, (born in 1982 -- lord, I have sweaters older than that), he graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris and has published 12 books over the last four years.

Lacombe has three books due out next month which should be a treat for anyone -- whether you read French or not (though we might hope eventually for an English language version): an evocative rendition of Blue Beard ("Barbe Bleue," in an anthology of fairy tales published by EditionsTourbillon), rendered in dark, smoky illustrations with deep blues and reds; a sumptuous and visually romantic Japanese tale, The Butterfly Lovers (Les Amants Papillons published by Le Seuil); and a quirky (ala Tim Burton), scary tale, Ernest's Dangerous Night (La Funeste Nuit d'Ernest, written by Perez Sébastien and published by Edition Sarbacane).

To see more of his incredible work, visit Benjamin's  MySpace page and his website.

New Spiderwick Series

The Nixie's Song, the first book in the new Spiderwick series by dynamic duo Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, is out and its fans are cheering. In her live journal, Holly explains the interesting shift in the new series:

"Tony and I always knew that if the first five chapter books did well, we would do another short cycle of books, but we wanted to do something that we would really love. And, after a long discussion about the sequels that had particularly impressed us, we realized that as readers we loved to be surprised by a sequel and also to have the sequel change the way we read the original books."

"The Nixie's Song reverses some of the expectations of a Spiderwick book. Instead of being set in a small New England town, in a creepy old Victorian house, and involving a musty old book never seen before, THE NIXIE'S SONG is set in a shiny new development in Florida and the field guide to faeries (a stunning book by the way, reminiscent of Froud and Lee's Fairies, but for a younger audience-MS) in this book has been purchased in a bookstore. We wanted it to be clear that it wasn't the book that was magic, it was the information inside of it. And we wanted to show that if you are really, really unlucky, no matter where you live, you could get into faerie trouble."

These are wonderful books -- gorgeous and funny.

*And don't forget the Spiderwick movie is due out February, 2008. You can see a trailer here, on the movie's MySpace page.

The Sunday Poem

Today's Sunday Poem is "Cinderella" by Art Goodtimes, which draws upon the fascinating history of this classic fairy tale. It comes from the archives (Issue #13) of Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.

Art Goodtimes is a poet, essayist, and the organizer of the Talking Gourds Poetry Festival in Telluride, Colorado. His books and chapbooks include Embracing the Earth, Kehoe Beach, Rising Smoke, Mushroom Cloud Redeye, and Alter of the Ordinary (with Judyth Hill). The art in this post is "Cinderella" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

Of Refrigerators and Leonardo

The annual Webby Awards select the "best of" in a variety of categories for websites on the Internet -- including personal websites and the best sites for flash animation, education, business, and science. It makes for absolutely fascinating browsing to see what riches the Internet offers.

In the Art category, Electrolux Design was this year's Webby Award winner. Every year Electrolux Design offers a global competition for young designers to invent and design products for an eco-friendly, futuristic house of 2010. The inventions are remarkable -- and beautiful! I fell in love with this "soft refrigerator," a 2005 nominee. It's portable, and can expand in size to adapt to the amount of stuff inside the cooling chamber. "The soft-membrane coat insulates the contents and gives the appliance a soft, alluring look. The center pillar sustains the weight of the fridge and transports cool to each layer." Sure beats a dorm fridge!

The Universal Leonardo was also a nominee in the Art category and is another fascinating place to visit. This interactive site, for both children and adults, explores Leonardo's many contributions to the fields of drawing, painting, sculpture, and scientific invention. The site is rich and deep, providing brief explanations of Leonardo's influences, the details of his many paintings, the historical background of the period, and a wonderful gallery of images. (The image to the right is Leonardo's "Young Woman with Unicorn.") There is even a bit of "play," with a program that allows the viewer to create monsters as Leonardo did. This site is really a treat.

So Fey, so enchanting

The fairies of folklore were not the tiny, moth-winged sprites of Disney cartoons – they were magical, alluring, dangerous beings who often appeared in human shape, dwelling in a parallel world beneath the hills, or hidden in the shadows of our own. It is interesting, then, that the word fairy is slang for gay in modern parlance – for it is still the case, in too many places, that being gay or lesbian defines one as an Otherworldly being, different from ordinary mortals, living in a separate realm that can seem both seductive and dangerous. Steve Berman’s new anthology, So Fey, delves into both meanings of the word fairy, using the age-old themes of folklore to tell stories relevant to gay and lesbian life today.

Folk tales have survived for hundreds of years because they address concerns that are constant in the human condition: loss, fear, alienation, survival of calamity, triumph over adversity, and negotiation of rites of passage. The twenty-two authors in this book have taken the threads of old folk tales and woven them into modern adult fairy stories about men who love men, women who love women, and mortals who love creatures of magic. The stories range from light to dark, whimsical to disturbing, introspective to erotic. Berman has mixed tales by talented newcomers with those by long-established, award-winning authors. A few stories are set in fairyland, or take us back in history, but most of the tales unfold in towns, cities, and suburbs much like our own, in places where fairy magic casts its glow on modern life.

The best stories here come from the best-known writers. My personal favorites are Holly Black’s splendid new tale “The Coat of Stars,” modern marchën set on the streets of New Jersey, and Christopher Barzak’s poignant “Isis in Darkness,” about the ways we find family in the most unlikely places. Additional gems include Richard Bowes’ “The Wand’s Boy,” a slippery, quicksilver tale set among the brothels of Gotham; Laurie J. Marks’ “How the Ocean Loved Margie,” an earthy updating of an old selkie ballad (reprinted from The Journal of Mythic Arts, and thus available online here); Delia Sherman’s delightful “The Faerie Cony-Catcher,” about a bold fairy lass in the court of the Faerie Queen; plus memorable stories from Sarah Monette, Melissa Scott, and others. The new writers here have also contributed enchanting, unusual tales -- such as Joshua Lewis’ “Ever So Much More Than Twenty,” inspired by J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; and Aynjel Kaye’s “From Asphalt to Emerald and Moonlight,” a sensual story of rival fairy siblings, told with great confidence and skill.

 

“Though queer vocabulary has changed over the centuries,” writes editor Berman, “it is my hope that these stories will serve to remind readers of what fairies truly are.” In this task he has succeeded. These are stories for all readers who have ever loved or desired what they’ve been told that they must not – whether that’s men, or women, or stories of fairies long after childhood is done.

The paintings and sketches in this post are by the Tennessee-born artist Ernie Sandidge. You can see more of Ernie's work in the Endicott gallery and on his website. For more information on fairies and fairy lore from around the world, check out the Summer/Autumn 2006 double issue of Endicott's Journal of Mythic Arts. For information on other books written and edited by Steve Berman, visit his website.

"Hairy Tale" by Kazuto Nakazawa

There are elements of the Rapunzel fairy tale in the magical Japanese shampoo commercial above. (With thanks to writer and Goblin Fruit editor Jessica Wick for the link.)

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies

I discovered Brian Dettmer awhile back, but was reminded of his beautiful work this morning when Boing Boing mentioned him in a post. Using vintage books, surgical tools and a very steady hand, Dettmer carefully cuts into the pages of the book, excising words and images, leaving behind a skeleton of layered images and tantalizing bits of text to create an astonishing new experience of the book. The image to the left is from an old Webster's Dictionary and offers a lovely, albeit ironic, view of the dictionary as a book of images rather than words.

Aron Packer Gallery describes Dettmer's work as "intricate creations, which seek both to seduce the eye and provoke the mind. Through the cut open cover of a book the viewer sees layers of specifically selected text and illustration carved from the pages of the book. Through the gaps in an architectural drawing or perhaps the chambers of the human heart, one can see a word peeking through, perhaps a clue to the larger meanings of the piece. These pieces seek to bridge the gap between a medium's form and its message."

You can see a good deal more of Dettmer's work at the Aron Packer Gallery, the Toomey Tourell Gallery, and the Haydée Rovirosa Gallery. Also, I just discovered Matt Cheney over at the Mumpsimus has a longer post about Dettmer's work as well.

The Graffiti Project and Kelburn Castle

This is a wonderful time-lapse video of a collaborative project between Brazilian graffiti artists and Scotland's Kelburn Castle. The idea was to place graffiti art in non-urban settings -- the artists living together for one month in the castle -- and coming up with a huge collaborative work of art.

The results are pretty spectacular -- the film manages to capture some of the details of the fantastic creatures spiraling around the towers. The blog is very interesting too -- offering more photos and explanation of the project. However, I think recent visitors have overloaded their server. Hopefully, the site will be back up soon. In the meantime you can find out more information about the project here and here.

More sad news

Robert Jordan, bestselling fantasy author of The Wheel of Time series, died on September 16th after a battle with cardiac amyloidosis. Born James Oliver Rigney, in Charleston, South Carolina, Jordan was a decorated Vietnam War veteran, a graduate in physics from The Citadel, and worked as a nuclear engineer for the Navy. He began writing in 1977 -- historical novels at first, before turning to what would become an eleven volume fantasy series featuring the rise of Rand al'Thor, a heroic champion against universal evil. Jordan was working on the final volume at the time of his death.

At Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light blog, folks have been writing in their memories of Jordan, along with condolences. Dragonmount, Jordon's official blog site has been hammered with so many fans and authors writing in that it is near to impossible to get on the site. Terri Windling and I would also like to extend our sincere condolences to Robert's wife Harriet MacDougal, his family, and his many friends. He will be missed in our community.

Updated: Melissa Craib of TarValon.net has posted information about the formation of Robert Jordan Memorial Forum. 

Make Fake Rain and Sew A Superhero Costume

Occasionally the Wall Street Journal leads me to some pretty interesting sites. Over the weekend they featured a very functional and funny site dedicated to independent filmmakers and aspiring directors. IndyMogul offers instructional videos on basic filmmaking, and the creation of BFX (backyard special effects) on a budget. Best part, if you are looking for help with a specific problem, you can write in a request for information -- which host Erik Beck is delighted to answer. So for all you out there who've always wondered how to get rain into your film, here's the video:

Sunday Poem

Today's Sunday Poem,  "Moon Gathering" by Eleanor Wilner, is a beautiful and haunting piece reflecting on dreams and creativity. Wilner, a social activist in civil rights and peace movements, avoids the personal voice in her poetry, preferring instead to focus her attention on what she calls "cultural memory."

In an interview with Rebecca Seiferle of The Drunken Boat, Wilner explained her use of myth in her work: "In order to validate my experience of poetic vision, I studied comparative mythology and anthropology, looking at new visions to understand their source, and saw the ways in which collective vision always began with a communal crisis and an individual who, in essence, dreamed for the community. This is what I think a poet does, and I think our culture has made us shallow and dreamless by inculcating the myth that the individual is defined and set apart by his or her own personal experience."

Wilner's poems have been collected in The Girl With Bees in her Hair (2004), Reversing the Spell: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 1998), Otherwise (1993), and Sarah's Choice (1989), and have appeared in journals such as The New Republic, The New Yorker, and the Southern Review. She has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Juniper Prize, and the Pushcart Prize. She is currently on the faculty of the MFA Program in Writing, Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. For more information about Wilner and her work, have a look at this fascinating interview and article by Rachael Aviv on the Poetry Foundation website.

The painting above, "Moonlight's Children," is by the sublime Jeanie Tomanek, featured here in the Journal of Mythic Arts. Please visit Jeanie's website to see more of her mythic art.

Blanca Nieves y el tao tao

Crank up the sound...it's worth it.

From the work of Zorro69 on YouTube. (Via Taiko)

Short Fiction on the Web

Got a little time to spare? Stop in at any one of these terrific online fiction journals and take a few moments to read some great stories.

Serendipity is marking it's debut as a monthly online journal, offering magic realism and light fantasy fiction, book reviews, interviews, and a competition. Included in this issue are stories from Jeffrey Ford, Catherynne Valente, Rhys Hughes, Alia Whitely, and a classic from Charles Dickens. The site is sleek and very pretty!

Cafe Irreal, known for its Kafka-esque offerings, has a new issue up as well.  Here you will find surrealist stories ("Dinosaur Evolution" by Sharon Wahl and "More Pieces for a Small Orchestra" by Norman Lock), a gentle, quirky story, "The Rabbi's Magic Wagon" by Harry White, and an announcement about a really interesting collective project, "Finding Kafka in Prague," set for the 125th anniversary of Kafka's birth. (You'll find more on the project here.)

Clarkesworld Magazine has two new offerings for September: "Little Conversations" by Caitlin R. Kiernan, an eerie story of a young biographer and his subject -- an aging diva who refuses to tell him the one thing he most wants to know, and "Lost Soul" by M. P. Ericson, a "bring her back from the dead" tale -- with a twist at the end.

The Silent Nick and Nora: Magic Realist Noir

Lisa Stock, author and collaborator for Through the Cobweb Forest, has been making a number of short myth-related films, the trailers for which you see on her website. Her latest film endeavor, The Silent Nick and Nora, is a magic realist noir film "that reimagines the detectives Nick and Nora Charles in a world of tattoos, compulsions, and murder." Lisa wrote this screenplay in 2004, "compelled by the idea of maintaining the fast paced, wise-cracking relationship of this famous couple without them saying a word to each other -- thus placing them in a mostly "silent" world."

Visit Silent Nick and Nora's MySpace page and have a peek at the trailer. And check out the synopsis in the Gotham headlines below.

             

Living in a lantern: Dustin Feider's O2 Sustainability Treehouse

I have to admit I am romantic about the treehouse. Just the idea of being comfortably suspended between branches is thrilling (and probably harks back to my childhood when I spent a great deal of time hiding out and reading in the canopy of an old tree). So I was delighted to see the new creation of Dustin Feider (fellow Wisconsinite and furniture maker), a beautiful and eco-friendly treehouse glowing like a Japanese lantern at the top of an incredibly tall ash tree. (Dustin uses a basket and an electric winch to hoist himself up.)

Modeled after Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, the treehouse is made of an aluminum frame of connected triangles, covered with translucent panels of recycled polypropylene. Half of the panels open up to allow breezes to pass through. At sunset, Feider says, the “branches and leaves cast purple shadows that move across the panels, and the sun illuminates the interior in yellow. It’s quite psychedelic.”

Here's additional information on Feider's company, O2 Sustainability Treehouse, that provides more gorgeous photos and technical drawings. For you techies, here's an article from Popular Mechanics that explains some of the treehouse's remarkable design features. And stop by Feider's website to see the gallery of treehouses and order plans for your own treehouse. Click on the large image at the bottom of the webpage to see a flash presentation.

Tribute to Madeleine L'Engle: The Tesseract

Here's a fascinating little film put together by NPR's Bryant Park Project as a tribute to Madeleine L'Engle and her novel, A Wrinkle in Time, which makes use of the "tesseract," a rather confusing and imaginative appreciation of the fourth dimension. NPR interviewed Physicist David Morgan to explain how the tesseract functions to illustrate multidimensional space. Very cool...but the film's file is big...so be patient and let it load first-- it's worth it. You can also click on the little box in the lower right hand corner of the film and see the film full screen.

Paper Gods at BibliOdyssey

BibliOdyssey has posted a gorgeous collection of images of "nianhua," Chinese woodblock illustrations of various traditional gods that have been produced over the last 1,000 years. In Chinese folk religions, these inexpensive paper prints were prominently displayed throughout the house to bring good fortune to the inhabitants and ward off evil spirits. Many of the prints were replaced every year, the old prints ceremonially burned on auspicious dates. Some prints, particularly elaborate and colorful ones, would be pasted on altars or kitchen doors and stables, venerated for a year before being burned. (Click here for more on the ceremonial use and how to "read" the prints.)

Stop by BibliOdyssey to read more about this unique form of art and check out some of the links (especially to Columbia University's C. V. Starr East Asian Library's extensive collection, donated by Anne S. Goodrich who acquired a substantial collection of prints in China in the 1930s).

Brian Froud (and a little silliness)

I started laughing after I followed a link on WSJ's art critic Terry Teachout's blog for "weird animals." I found this little bizarre Aye Aye, a tiny mammal that climbs trees, taps the bark listening for grubs, and digs them out with his long middle finger. I couldn't get over how much he looked like any one of half a dozen Brian Froud creatures (minus the hat).

Speaking of Brian Froud, stop by The World of Froud website to have a peek at The Secret Sketchbooks of Brian Froud, where I found the little guy above. Also, don't miss Brian Froud's World of Faerie, a new collection of Brian's remarkable work, in sumptuous color. This book is destined to be one of those classics like the original Faeries with Alan Lee. (For those of you with deep pockets, there is an expensive limited edition available as well.)

Joseph Campbell's Reading List

Here is the full list of required reading for Joseph Campbell's master course "Introduction to Mythology," which he taught at Sarah Lawrence College from the 1930s to 1970s. It's quite a list, reaching from Herrigel's masterful little book Zen and the Art of Archery to Paul Radin's African Folklore and Sculpture, Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, and many other mythic classics of the 20th century. I can imagine the intellectual explosion such a list of readings might have offered young women at the college in the late '30s. And except for some better, more contemporary translations and editions of these classics, it's a list that still holds up pretty well. (So how many of the titles on it have you read?)

Stop by the very interesting Joseph Campbell Foundation to learn more about Campbell, the international roundtable discussions of Campbell's ideas, and yearly events.

Through the Cobweb Forest: Chapter Nine

Collaborators Connie Toebe and Lisa Stock have just posted Chapter Nine of "Through the Cobweb Forest," their flash animated narrative of a woman searching for her missing husband through a mysterious forest. For those of you who might be new to the series, this is a wondrous journey through a Victorian-inspired tale, complete with haunted houses, ghosts, and forests of surreal beauty, all accompanied by plinth's eerie and lovely soundscapes.

For those of us who have been following the series: This is the second to last chapter, and we find Helena making the most daring choice of her time spent in the forest. The ghost and the women in the lake have spoken, but now it is Helena's turn. What will she say to her beloved and what will she decide to do?"

The Sunday Poem

"Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I'll tell you who you are." -- José Ortega y Gasset

Our Sunday Poem today, Amina Saïd's "Introduce Myself to the World," is a gorgeously resonant piece about the ways we are formed, body and soul, by the landscape of our birth. In Saïd's case, that land is Tunisia, where "earth and stone are remembrance / the saints rest in a half-light / propitious to magic spells." The poem comes from the September 2007 issue of Words Without Borders, and is translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker.

Amina Saïd was born in Tunisia in 1953, and now lives in Paris. She is the author of eleven poetry collections and two books of Tunisian folktales, among other works. Saïd has won the Prix Jean Malrieu, the Prix Charles Vildrac, and the Antonio Viccaro Prix International for her poetry.

Sad news

Madeleine L'Engle died this week, at age 88. She was the author of over 60 books, including the much-loved children's fantasy classic A Wrinkle in Time. Rejected by 26 publishers, the book was finally published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in 1963, and won the prestigious Newbery Award. By 2004 it was in its 67th printing and had sold more than 6 million copies.

The New York Times has published an obituary discussing the author's books and life. (Did you know, for example, that she was the librarian and writer-in-residence at St. John the Divine in New York City? Or that her husband was an actor famed for his role on the soap opera All My Childen?) For more information, visit the Madeleine L'Engle and A Wrinkle in Time websites. 

In her Newbery Award acceptance speech, L'Engle stated: "A writer of fantasy, fairy tale, or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider. I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know that this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can’t possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant." (With thanks to Gwenda Bond for the link.)

To sleep, perchance to dream...

I wasn't able to post a Sunday Poem last week, and I've been surprised by the number of people who have written to Endicott to ask us not to discontinue this feature. Don't worry, we have no plans to! The Sunday Poem will be back this weekend -- and here's a magical piece to tide you over until then: "Dream Fox" by Jack Roberts, which first appeared in Tar River Poetry and can now be found on the Verse Daily website.

Speaking of dreams, the Czech duo Tara Fuki has released a CD of alternative music inspired by dreams, night travel, the unconscious, and the poetry of the dark. Tara Fuki consists of violoncellists and vocalists Dorata Barova and Andrea Konstankiewicz, performing with guest musicians on tabla, kanjira, and other instruments. Visit the Calabash Music blog, Tune Your World, to hear music from the new CD, titled "Auris."

The pictures here are "Foxes" and "Blue Fox," painted early in the 20th century by the German Expressionist artist Franz Marc.

Metamorphosis #15: Lillianna Pereira

 

Lillianna Pereira was born in 1980, studied at the Hartford Art School (University of Hartford), and now lives in west