David Byrne sing-speaks as a man who finds out that his American Dream turns out to be some kind of, well, dream. Brian Eno pushes the band, the studio an instrument, the music as liquid as Byrne’s refrain, “water dissolving, water removing”. The rhythm section is unbelievably, impossibly tight. I’m not sure any other band—including subsequent Talking Heads—has even tried to sound like this since then (1980); I often feel like Remain in Light is one of rock'n'roll’s otherwise unattainable heights.
“If you kill every usurer, every forestaller, every adulterater, every user of false weights, every fixer of false boundaries, every land-thief, every water-thief, you afterwards discover by a strange indirect miracle, or disconnected truth from heaven, that you have no millionaires.”
Farmstead Meatsmith's Kickstarter Project →
The Farmstead Meatsmith is comprised of a young family that does hog butchery, charcuterie, and consulting on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound. They’re trying to put together some free videos on these subjects because they believe this stuff is worth knowing. Free videos cost someone money, however, so they’re trying to offset the cost via Kickstarter. Take a look and kick ‘em a few dollars, won’t you?
“I am describing—or at least attempting to describe—at least two facts of human existence that I’m going to go ahead and call “mysteries.” One is that our attachment to certain objects, or objects of a certain kind or category, suggests at least this much about us: we are a species that craves presence. The other is that to us an object is never merely an object. It is always itself plus something else.”
Bird looking south, Cordelia Lutheran Church, Latah County, Idaho.
Bird on a water pump, Cordelia Lutheran Church, Latah County, Idaho.
An abstraction of an abstraction at sunset, Genesee Valley Lutheran Church, Latah County, Idaho.
Cordelia Lutheran Church, Latah County, Idaho.
Tall grass.
The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme →
“We often forget that the American pattern of suburban development is an experiment, one that has never been tried anywhere before. We assume it is the natural order because it is what we see all around us. But our own history—let alone a tour of other parts of the world—reveals a different reality. Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile.”
Fascinating article by one Charles Marohn over at Grist. HT to the Underpaid Genius.
Western end of an eastbound thunderstorm, Latah County, Idaho.
Airplane above Paradise Ridge, Latah County, Idaho.
Union Pacific branchline freight near Rockford, Washington.
Fence railing and a ridge full of windmills near Marengo, Washington.
Old grain elevator near Johnson, Washington.
Unit grain train and flour mill, Spokane, Washington.
Former gas station, Oakesdale, Washington.
Combine at rest near Genesee, Idaho.
Two grain elevators at the bottom of Washtucna Coulee, Adams County, Washington. The abandoned Union Pacific branch to Connell runs alongside.