“Long ago I belonged to the Pynchon list. It was mass chaos, like the dayroom at a mental hospital: for a large part of the time there was theoretically a reading going on, Mason & Dixon, I think, and some members were posting dementedly long messages with historical and scientific background information of a Jesuitical fineness of detail. Others were writing online diaries: one person had (he (?) said) left his wife and family and moved into his office where he was sleeping under his desk and having religious visions of some sort — I forget, but vaguely Hindu, or at least Eastern-mystical. Others had apparently signed on to the group under several identities and were baiting their designated enemies from several of them at once, and occasionally attacking or denigrating themselves, possibly as red herrings. Violence was offered as response to opinion; death threats were not unknown: people claimed to know where other people lived.”
A poster on the Gaddis listserv, recalling the time she spent on pynchon-l

I’ve always suspected that the word decal is an abbreviation for something, and today my suspicion has been vindicated. My handy Concise O.E.D. tells me that decal is an abbreviation of a word previously unknown to me, decalcomonia:

n. the process of transferring designs from prepared paper on to glass, porcelain, etc.
- Origin C19: Fr. décalcomanie, from décalquer ‘transfer a tracing’ + -manie ‘-mania’ (with ref. to the enthusiasm for the process in the 1860s).
Like with any good bit of etymology, I have now learned something about the word itself, and about the culture whence it comes. Turns out, French people in the 1800s were decal maniacs.
“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting now to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable — if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”
David Foster Wallace, ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’
Played 1 time [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Ennio Morricone - La Storia De Un Soldato

(From Chris McKeown)

(From Chris McKeown)

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m. (0:14 UT, 7:02 a.m. local solar time) on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time). Although the cause is the subject of some debate, the explosion was most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 miles) above Earth’s surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates for the object’s size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across. Although the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact event. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons to as high as 30 megatons of TNT, with 10–15 megatons the most likely - roughly equal to the United States’ Castle Bravo thermonuclear explosion set off in late February of 1954, about 1000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.[6] The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the earthquake from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, which was not yet developed at the time. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.[7] This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies. Although the Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth’s recent history, impacts of similar size in remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s. (From Wikipedia)

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m. (0:14 UT, 7:02 a.m. local solar time) on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time).

Although the cause is the subject of some debate, the explosion was most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 miles) above Earth’s surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates for the object’s size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.

Although the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact event. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons to as high as 30 megatons of TNT, with 10–15 megatons the most likely - roughly equal to the United States’ Castle Bravo thermonuclear explosion set off in late February of 1954, about 1000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.[6] The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the earthquake from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, which was not yet developed at the time. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.[7] This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.

Although the Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth’s recent history, impacts of similar size in remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s.

(From Wikipedia)

The train rattled along the tracks steam running back down its iron length between woods of winter dead birch, elm, lively spruce. Weeks-old snow melted in patches back ten yards on either side of the rails, reflecting the muted sky. Around the bend lay home, New Gospel.

The train rattled along the tracks steam running back down its iron length between woods of winter dead birch, elm, lively spruce. Weeks-old snow melted in patches back ten yards on either side of the rails, reflecting the muted sky. Around the bend lay home, New Gospel.

(From peterhoneyman)

(From peterhoneyman)

John Gossage (American, 1946- ) is an artist who makes history present in photographs. He photographs places and sites that tell an everyday story: paths worn through abandoned tracts of land, corners where debris collects, markings on a wall, a table after a meal. Gossage photographs that which has just occurred to remind us that we may have already forgotten it happened or that we were there. By asking us look at what we have misplaced or abandoned he brings us face to face with the present as it becomes history. Throughout the 1980s Berlin became Gossage’s overriding focus. Berlin, with its Wall, forgotten tracts of land, unwanted histories - both forgotten and remembered - became the place where Gossage discovered the ideas that have come to mark his personalized style of photograhic storytelling. The art from this period is arguable his most important and has unquestionable influenced all his subsequent work. (From Stephen Daiter Gallery)

John Gossage (American, 1946- ) is an artist who makes history present in photographs. He photographs places and sites that tell an everyday story: paths worn through abandoned tracts of land, corners where debris collects, markings on a wall, a table after a meal. Gossage photographs that which has just occurred to remind us that we may have already forgotten it happened or that we were there. By asking us look at what we have misplaced or abandoned he brings us face to face with the present as it becomes history. Throughout the 1980s Berlin became Gossage’s overriding focus. Berlin, with its Wall, forgotten tracts of land, unwanted histories - both forgotten and remembered - became the place where Gossage discovered the ideas that have come to mark his personalized style of photograhic storytelling. The art from this period is arguable his most important and has unquestionable influenced all his subsequent work.

(From Stephen Daiter Gallery)