![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. ![President George H.W. Bush signs into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990 as Justin Dart looks on. [Source: ucp.org]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ada_signing_072690_ucp_2.jpg "ada_signing_072690_ucp_2")
![Shepard Fairey’s “Barack Obama/Hope” image went viral during the 2008 election. Then controversy about the image’s source transformed it into the poster child for fair use in the public debate over copyright and free culture. Now FULAB takes “Hope” as its icon [Image source: Wikipedia]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/shepard_fairey_hope_2008.jpg "shepard_fairey_hope_2008")
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
Tower of Song became my new anthem after I gave Leonard Cohen’s Live In London to Ms. Modigliani for her birthday. I find myself singing the lyric at the most inappropriate of times, but hey, it works for me!
My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'
Café Mouffe: Leonard Cohen
2
June 19, 2009 at 5:00pm
by Mark Willis
Café Mouffe · Uncategorized Add Your Comment
Café Mouffe: Tarace Boulba
0
June 5, 2009 at 6:00pm
by Mark Willis
No, this isn’t the Rebirth Brass Band. It isn’t New Orleans, either, , but it could be. You can go ahead and second-line. Don’t sit down.
This brass band is Tarace Boulba from Paris. Their 2006 and 2008 concert clips prove that neither side of the pond has a monopoly when it comes to funk. According [...]
Café Mouffe · Flaneur's Gallery · Uncategorized Add Your Comment
Happy 90th Birthday, Pete Seeger!
0
May 3, 2009 at 6:24pm
by Mark Willis
Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen lead the crowd in This Land is Your Land at the inaugural concert held at the Lincoln Memorial pm January 18, 2009..
Listen to Folk Alley’s 5-hour side stream of memorable Seeger classics covered by artists like Tom Paxton, Bruce Cockburn, Janis Ian, Natalie Merchant, Greg Brown, and, of course, the [...]
Playing by Ear · Tutelary Spirits · Uncategorized Add Your Comment
Flaneur’s Gallery: Paris Street, Rainy Day
1
February 8, 2009 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]
See the permanent page for Gustave Caillebotte: Paris Street, Rainy Day.
Flaneur's Gallery · Imaging Paris · Uncategorized Add Your Comment
An Open Invitation To Dinner In Paris
2
January 12, 2009 at 7:59pm
by Mark Willis
Jim Haynes is an American in Paris with a generous spirit who says, like Tom Paine, that he’s a citizen of the world. He was born in Louisiana, ran a bookstore in Scotland, created a theater company in London, launched a newspaper in Amsterdam and taught media studies in Paris, where he hosts Sunday dinner [...]
Paris · Uncategorized · global citizen Add Your Comment
Barney Rosset and the Tropic of Cancer
0
November 19, 2008 at 6:26pm
by Mark Willis
One of my First Amendment heroes, Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, received a lifetime achievement award today from the National Book Foundation. Rosset published the first American edition of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and he fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to do so. He tells the story [...]
Uncategorized · books · free speech Add Your Comment
Doing the Bum’s Rush — Again
1
September 25, 2008 at 1:38pm
by Mark Willis
Many Americans feel a disturbing sense of distrust and déjà vu about the crisis de jour. We’ve been through this before, repeatedly. Doing the Bum’s Rush is George W. Bush’s Presidential style. Remember his admonition that “the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud” during the war-drumming that led us into Iraq?He cooked the books [...]
Uncategorized · economy · politics Add Your Comment
Don’t Move That Farmers’ Market!
3
July 28, 2008 at 4:01pm
by Mark Willis
On Saturday mornings at the height of summer, the Yellow Springs Farmer’s Market gets as crowded, garrulous, and animated as any Arab souk. The market has thrived for 25 years at the heart of the village. It’s only two blocks from my home, and walking there is one of the best [...]
Edible Dramas · Uncategorized · Yellow Springs · foot rage · garden Add Your Comment
The Circus Animals’ Desertion
0
January 13, 2008 at 6:00pm
by Mark Willis
Yeats’ Last Poems are like Beethoven’s late string quartets — challenging, enigmatic, quietly titanic, you know there is more to learn with each difficult encounter.
The Circus Animals’ Desertion by William Butler Yeats
I.
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken [...]
Irish literature · Playing by Ear · Uncategorized · Yeats · poetry Add Your Comment
Mayor of All the Starlets
5
December 7, 2007 at 6:30am
by Mark Willis
After running the photo of Nathan Phillips stopping traffic on Bay Street, I had to post this one of the Mayor welcoming Jayne Mansfield to City Hall on August 2, 1957. Toronto news photographers liked to taunt him on such occasions,”Go ahead, Nate, giver her a smooch.” He didn’t kiss Jayne, or Kim Novak, or [...]