![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 
No one ever compared me to Paul Newman. No one except a dozen Inupiat kids who heralded our arrival in Anaktuvuk Pass by shouting “Cool Hand Luke! Cool Hand Luke!” The village school teacher explained later that it was their way of noting my blue eyes. I’m not vain, but hey, I liked it.
The kids [...]
Entries Tagged as '1970s'
Cool Hand Luke at Anatuvuk Pass
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September 28, 2008 at 12:06am
by Mark Willis
1970s · Alaska · film · memoir Add Your Comment
Café Mouffe: Katmandu
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August 22, 2008 at 3:00pm
by Mark Willis
Maybe it’s the linseed oil. Maybe I’ve Tom Sawyered myself into whitewash rapture while trying to entice my son into painting the house. I’m having fun — more fun than an old geezer is supposed to have. Now that I’m working off a scaffold, I feel like the Donald Trump of house painters. Give [...]
1970s · Café Mouffe · Playing by Ear Add Your Comment
In Memoriam: Jerry Wexler
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August 16, 2008 at 9:38pm
by Mark Willis
Jerry Wexler, the garrulous record producer with the golden ear, died yesterday at age 91. Wexler had so much to do with the sound track of my misspent youth. He gave us Ray Charles, Wilson Picket , Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers — and best of all, Aretha. The man even invented the term “rhythm [...]
1950s · 1960s · 1970s · NPR · Playing by Ear · pop culture Add Your Comment
‘A Bird on a Leash Is Not a Bird’
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August 6, 2008 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
Philippe Petit balances on a wire stretched between the towers of the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974. [Source: NYT/Jean-Louis Blondeau/Polaris]
A caller to On Point with Tom Ashbrook asked Philippe Petit if he wore some kind of belaying line when he danced across that wire stretched between the Twin Towers. “I was [...]
1970s · New York · film Add Your Comment
Café Mouffe: Julien Clerc
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August 1, 2008 at 3:00pm
by Mark Willis
Many thanks to Alex at augmented illusions for suggesting Julien Clerc for the jukebox at Café Mouffe. “He was and is quite popular in the Netherlands,” Alex says. “I think of all his songs, I like Venise best.”
Alex pointis to an International Herald Tribune profile published in 1999 on the eve of Clerc’s first [...]
1970s · Café Mouffe · French culture · Playing by Ear Add Your Comment
Café Mouffe: Utah Phillips
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July 10, 2008 at 10:10am
by Mark Willis
With the indulgence of the proprietor, Café Mouffe opens early this week for my birthday. Utah Phillips has been on my mind since his death in May. America lost a national treasure with his passing. Utah was an ardent, union organizer and raconteur of tall tales, and he wrote more songs than I ever realized. [...]
1970s · Café Mouffe · Playing by Ear Add Your Comment
After Napalm, The Long Road To Forgiveness
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June 30, 2008 at 6:58pm
by Mark Willis
In one of the most iconic images of the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese soldiers follow terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc (center) as they run down a road near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places. The date was June 8, 1972. President Richard Nixon once doubted the [...]
1970s · NPR · Vietnam · documentary · photographers Add Your Comment
George Carlin was an American Rabelais
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June 23, 2008 at 12:18pm
by Mark Willis
“Does it sound like an old friend is gone?” That’s what George Carlin said about removing a compound matrilineal redundancy from his famously scandalous comedy routine, Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television. Thanks to Carlin and free speech champions like him, you can say those words on the Internet. If you are offended by [...]
1970s · Rabelais · free speech · pop culture · satire Add Your Comment
Zimbabwe: Bob Marley’s Whiff of Tear Gas
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April 23, 2008 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe marked the anniversary of his nation’s independence with a speech to 60,000 supporters in a sports stadium near Harare. ‘Zimbabwe will never be a colony again — never, ever, ever,” he said. ”We will not compromise our principles of freedom and national sovereignty, no matter who gets upset.” Mugabe didn’t [...]
1970s · Playing by Ear · global citizen · politics Add Your Comment
In Memoriam: Jonathan Williams (1929-2008)
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March 31, 2008 at 12:05am
by Mark Willis
I had the privilege of hosting a dinner for some local poets and Jonathan Williams when he passed through our town in 1977. It had to have been potluck. None of us had much money then. Lentil soup was my culinary standby, along with fresh baguettes and cheap red wine from Yugoslavia. Jonathan regaled [...]