Road Hogs

For the first year or so of BTB, I used Nellie Mae Rowe's Pig on Expressway (1980) as my header art. Rowe, who died in 1982, lived in Vinings, George, just across the Chattahoochee River from Atlanta. Her house was lodged between its two very busy expressways: I-75 and I-285.

A more recent discovery, here is Kurt Knobelsdorf's Swine, Man and Van. The artist lives and works in Miami. Is there something particularly (or peculiarly) southern about pigs on the road?

Sandwich Board

Doing some research on the Jane Bowles-Staten Island-Perth Amboy connection, I came across this 2000 photograph by Eli Reed of the Mercedes Cafe. The diner is on Smith Street, around the corner from the train station. A Google search indicates it is still going strong with good reviews for the Cubano.

I love hand-drawn items on menu boards. The sandwiches on these are great examples of the form.

They put me in mind of a piece I saw at the NYPL earlier this summer, All American Sunset, Jerry Uelsmann (1971).

What is more all American than a Cubano or a Media Noche?

Magic Sand Castles

Coincidence of reading The Magic Mountain and visiting Watch Hill on a foggy morning.

It's easy to connect the beach chairs set out for the well-heeled (or well flip-flopped) guests at the Ocean House with the common lounging area at Dr. Behren's Berghof sanatorium.

But what to make of Taylor Swift in her cliffside manse? A Hans Castorp for our times, wearing her emotions on her sleeve? Easier to imagine her as Clavdia Chauchat, the object of Hans' intense emotions, in "the lace peignoir that she wore on warm days and that only added to her special fascination--late as always, slamming the door, smiling, both arms lifted slightly at different angles, standing there at attention to present herself to the dining hall."

Taylor Swift's flag

Whatever the case, how could a flatlander ever understand what life is like for those "up there"?

Até Breve, Nova Iorque

For the next week or so, BTB hits the road for South America. Won't get to Brazil (but closer than you).

82St. station after Colombia beats Uruguay 2-0

The Research Bureau has gathered up some odds and ends from the cutting room floor, and will post these just to keep the juices flowing. My father taught me to start the car and run the engine every few days even when you are not using it. He also believes that sunshine on the hood can revive a dead battery--but that's another story.

Shakespeare in the Dark

Here's a poem to give one pause, whether on the subway or waiting in line in Central Park. "To an Artist, to Take Heart" by Louise Bogan.

Slipping in blood, by his own hand, through pride, 
Hamlet, Othello, Coriolanus fall.
Upon his bed, however, Shakespeare died,
Having endured them all.

(Photo: Antony Sher as Macbeth, Harriet Walter as Lady Macbeth. Dir. Gregory Doran for RSC, 1999)

Squeezing Woodside

Puzzling over the MTA Poetry in Motion poster for Jim Moore's "Love in the Ruins." The art is John Cavanagh's Commuting/Community (1986) from the 61st St. IND/LIRR station in Woodside.

Or, in the MTA's cropping:
                                      W-O-O-D
                                             I-D.

Now take a look at the complete work, displayed in the station, in a photo by by Robbie Rosenfeld from www.nycsubway.org:

What's a letter here or there, when you've got a railroad to run?

The text of the poem itself (also an excerpt):

     i remember my mother toward the end,

folding the tablecloth after dinner
     so carefully,
as if it were the flag
     of a country that no longer existed,
but once ruled the world.

Petal to the Metro

The apparition        of these faces       in the crowd  :
Petals     on a wet, black     bough   .

Switzerland, Near Geneva (Erich Hartmann, 1980)

We return to our summer series, Poetry in MoTiAn, with Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" (1913).