Author Archives for Jay Babcock

[SUNDAY LECTURE] "Ghost in the System" by Freeman House

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: You can download this ‘lecture’ as a convenient text-only PDF for $2.00, payable via PayPal, credit card or debit card.Click here to go to the order form. A link containing the PDF will be emailed to you upon payment.

“Freeman House is a former commercial salmon fisher who has been involved with a community-based watershed restoration effort in northern California for more than 25 years. He is a co-founder of the Mattole Salmon Group and the Mattole Restoration Council. His book, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species received the best nonfiction award from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for quality of prose. He lives with his family in northern California.”

That’s the bio for Freeman off the Lannan Foundation website. We would add that earlier in his life, Freeman edited Innerspace, a mid-1960s independent press magazine for the nascent psychedelic community; married Abbie and Anita Hoffman at Central Park on June 10, 1967 (see Village Voice); and was a member of both New York City’s Group Image and the San Francisco Diggers.

This piece was first published in 2002 in River & Range.

photo by Jim Korpi

GHOST IN THE SYSTEM
by Freeman House

for John Bennett,
the good dentist

On our raw homestead in the Coast Range, Nina and I were attempting to domesticate a half-acre at the edge of ten acres of upland coastal prairie. We had knocked up a six-foot chicken wire fence, all we could afford at the time, to keep out the many deer that browsed our prairie. The deer had a taste for the new strawberry bed and the young climbing roses we had planted along the fence line. The fence served little purpose but to delay the deer for a week or two until they had discovered how easily they could leap over the strange enclosure. Once they had defoliated the roses and mowed the strawberry plants, they would move on to nibble at the broccoli and lettuce, ever curious. We cut scrap two-by-fours into three-foot lengths and nailed them onto the fence posts at an angle upward and outward, stapled a couple of runs of baling wire around their top ends. The deer stayed on their side of the fence, until, inevitably, someone left a gate open overnight. Without fail one deer would wander in and rediscover her love of rose leaves. We would chase her out in the morning, flapping our arms and yelling. The deer would panic and throw herself against the fence in one place after another until she found the open gates and bounded off. Early on, we assumed that the panic we had instilled would teach the deer a lesson in territory, and that they would avoid our little oasis of green in the summer-dry California prairie. But deer are evidently quickly addicted to rose and strawberry leaves. Once these treats had been rediscovered, the same deer and her cohorts would examine our fence for weaknesses with the intensity of a junkie searching for a connection. Once we saw a doe flat on her belly wriggling under the chicken wire where it lifted nine inches off the uneven ground. For a few years, then, our garden yielded venison at irregular intervals.

The deer were not the only ones who looked on us as new arrivals who were provisioners of exotic snacks. They were the only one of our co-inhabitants on the prairie who shared themselves with us, however; we never developed an appetite for the moles and gophers and raccoons and ravens and quail and slugs who fed freely on our young gardens and orchards. We grew accustomed to the yowling nightly squabbles between the skunks and raccoons over our compost pile. (The skunks would generally win first access. The raccoons didn’t like their stinging spray any more than we did. The raccoons would back off until the skunks had taken their fill and then take their turn at the luscious kitchen garbage, after which they would move on to the strawberries which would have been ripe enough for us to pick on the very next day.)

But we adapted. We planted our artichokes in wire cages to protect them from gophers, having discovered yet another addictive relationship between the ubiquitous soil dwellers and the sweet roots of young artichoke plants. We captured raccoons and skunks in Have-a-Heart traps and trucked them to locations where we thought they might be happier. We covered our newly planted winter gardens with bird netting because the tender seedlings emerged from the ground at about the same time large families of young quail fledged and ranged the dry August prairie with enormous appetites for young greens. We planted more than we needed, coming to understand that if the other residents of the prairie were going to share their habitat with us, we would have to reciprocate by sharing our garden with them. The only alternative to such reciprocity would be to pursue the logical extension of the notions of human control and exclusively owned property. We would have to dig our whole garden area to a depth of two feet or so, cover the subsoil with welded wire to exclude the gophers and moles before putting the soil back to grow our now-secured vegetables and fruits. We would have to build concrete walls sunk an equal distance into the ground and extending eight feet into the air to keep out the raccoons and skunks and foxes and bobcats and deer. Then we would have to cover the whole area with some kind of mesh to keep the fruits and berries safe from a whole sky full of birds. Our fantasies stopped just short of erecting gun towers at the corners of the concrete enclosure. Reciprocity seemed a preferable choice to such a logical demonstration of our singular rights to this corner of prairie.

After seven or eight years, we were providing a lot of our own food, and were becoming comfortable with our new relations. Then, during one particularly dry late summer, some new critters showed up. The new vegetarian was nocturnal, and for a period of several weeks, invisible. But the damage it was doing to the garden and young orchard was dramatic and it had the potential for being terminal. Continue reading →

IF NO ONE'S WATCHING

from: http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/if-no-ones-watching/

‘Anti-Genocide Paparazzi’
http://www.satsentinel.org/maps
http://www.satsentinel.org/reports

“…In what may be the most ambitious project of its kind, the United Nations and human rights advocates in the US are turning to satellite images and the Web to monitor the border between northern and southern Sudan, as the south prepares for a referendum on Jan. 9 that could split the country in two. The concern: If the referendum in southern Sudan supports independence for the oil-rich, largely Christian region, the country once again could dissolve into a brutal civil war. By combining on-the-ground reports with a nearly daily review of commercial-satellite images, the project’s participants say they hope to head off potential large-scale human rights abuses, should a conflict break out.

“We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we’re watching,” said Clooney, a co-founder of Not on Our Watch, a human rights group funding the effort, in a statement. “It’s a lot harder to commit mass atrocities in the glare of the media spotlight.” National intelligence services in the United States and for other major countries are widely acknowledged to have access to more-detailed images than remote-sensing companies can provide. But those images tend to remain classified and out of the public spotlight. The new effort announced Wednesday – the Satellite Sentinel Project – will post its images on a publicly available website, in hopes of mobilizing public opinion in ways that pressure governments to respond to any abuses the effort detects…”

WHO KNOWS WHAT NEXT WEEK MIGHT BRING

Coming next week: Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring, the second volume in Arthur’s digital download mixtape series.

The cover photograph is by KEVIN BAUMAN — http://www.100abandonedhouses.com

Who Knows… is quite different from Blackout, the first volume in Arthur’s digital download series (which is available now as a pay-what-thou-wilt download starting at $4.20—info here.).

More details soon.

NOW OFFICIAL: Fripp and Eno, Paris 1975

A legendary live Robert Fripp & Brian Eno bootleg recording known as “Air Structures” is now available as a legitimate release—Fripp & Eno, May 28, 1975, a three CD-length digital download, direct from Fripp’s DGM label.

Notes from the DGM site:

Notes
These show notes are written by long-standing Frippertronics expert and unofficial archivist, Allan Okada, whose help in the restoration of this concert has been invaluable.

This historic recording documents an extremely rare and classic performance of a mysterious collaborative tour from two of the most creative and fascinating figures in rock. It is one of the most rewarding live recordings this writer has ever heard. For any fan of ‘No Pussyfooting’ or ‘Evening Star’, this live recording is of epic significance and thanks to the efforts of Alex Mundy, is now also comparable in audio quality, by synchronizing the most complete and best (by a mile) available live bootleg recording with Eno’s stage tapes recently discovered. This tour also represents a turning point for both artists, about to enter new frontiers professionally and personally: Eno as an ambient music pioneer and Fripp’s re-emergence as a “small, mobile, intelligent unit”.

Here is the lead up to this 5th of a 7-show European mini-tour. Fripp just recently disbanded King Crimson at a point which many would describe as their artistic pinnacle. Eno also recently parted ways with Roxy Music at a similar juncture and then aborted his first and only extensive solo tour after only a handful of shows, due to a collapsed lung. Fripp & Eno live in concert? What would they do? All the shows in Spain and France were, not surprisingly, accompanied with unrealistic fan expectations, hoping for a presentation of ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ combined with ‘Baby’s on Fire’ perhaps? What this audience got was something entirely different. The programme was largely improvised and totally instrumental. Adding to the event’s unorthodoxy was the absence of all conventional stage lighting. The sole illumination was provided by Malcolm LeGrice’s colour saturated and looped short film ‘Berlin Horse’ projected behind the two shadowy figures on stage, visually mimicking the music. The result was an unprecedented live performance format, years ahead of its time. It was also mind-boggling to most of the unsuspecting 1975 audience, yielding wildly different reactions. Reportedly about half the shows on this tour were also plagued with some sort of major technical hazard, stemming from the venue, the PA or the duo’s stage equipment. In Saint-Étienne, the audience went as far as booing the duo off the stage! Fortunately for us here, this Paris Olympia performance was technically flawless and from a musical standpoint, incredibly inspired.

Starting with the pre-recorded primordial drone ‘Water on Water’, the duo eventually walks on stage. Fripp begins playing through the “Enotronic system” (since Eno, not Fripp operated the tape machines on this tour). It’s important to note that at this time, the mechanics of the Revox tape delay system was a mystery to the guitarist. This must have surely added a heavy dose of Eno’s “idiot glee” to the entire proceedings. Fripp moves this piece into uncharted territories with short volume pedal sweeps of lunacy before detaching from the delay system and beautifully soloing over the familiar backing loop of ‘Swastika Girls’. Very astute listeners will detect the unrealized main theme from King Crimson’s ‘Blue’ off the top. An intermission has the audience treated to Eno’s seminal ‘Discreet Music’ before the duo return to the stage with another improvised loop morphing into the now familiar ‘Wind On Water’ landscape. The sublimely serene ‘A Near Find in Rip Pop’ follows with Fripp soloing over a beautiful, strummed guitar piece (from the ‘Evening Star’ sessions) enhanced with synthetic animal screeches utilized months later on Eno’s ‘Zawinul/Lava’ track. Then just as you feel relaxed, Eno’s loop changes to something akin to a gigantic, looming dark cloud as Fripp hits the distortion pedal and fires off some solos of truly monstrous intensity. Eno gently takes the proceedings back down to Earth again by introducing the now infamous ‘Evening Star’ backing loop over which Fripp treats us to yet another wonderful solo before leaving the stage again, while ‘An Iron Frappe’ continues to envelop the crowd. The duo reappears for the final ‘Softy Gun Poison’ complete with tapes of sinister laughter and mysterious chatter (foreshadowing moments of Fripp’s upcoming ‘Exposure’), before leaving the stage for the last time, while (the then unknown) ‘An Index of Metals’ terrorizes the bewildered audience as they exit the venue. All in all, this lucky Paris audience was treated with the entirety of both classic albums as well as enough new material to constitute a third. As a bonus, we are also presented with Eno’s stage tapes in pure format including Test Loops from the sound check. What more could you ask from a live recording? Absolutely essential listening.

"But I Don't Want to Die" by Box Brown

Box Brown is a cartoonist living in Philadelphia, PA.  He sent us an email proposing a series of comics on different historical or philosophical subjects.  For the past year he’s been working on a project called “Everything Dies”, a web and print series about religion from the perspective of an atheist.  We decided to start with one of these but who knows where we’ll go next?

Looking over this comic, “But I Don’t Want to Die”, it may seem that I am a highly open to influence.  That may be the case, but when it comes to topics like this, the most important thing to remember is that if you keep your mind open a tiny little nugget of information can grow into a full blown philosophy.  I think that’s mostly whats going on here, lots of rumination.  So, beware when reading my other comics at everythingdiescomic.com and when you pick up the print issues of Everything Dies (all original content).

[SUNDAY LECTURE] "Afterlife: On the great pulse of nutrients that feeds all of Creation" by Freeman House

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: You can download this ‘lecture’ as a convenient PDF for $2.00, payable via PayPal, credit card or debit card.Click here to go to the order form. A link containing the PDF will be emailed to you upon payment.

“Freeman House is a former commercial salmon fisher who has been involved with a community-based watershed restoration effort in northern California for more than twenty-five years. He is a co-founder of the Mattole Salmon Group and the Mattole Restoration Council. His book, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species received the best nonfiction award from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for quality of prose. He lives with his family in northern California.”

That’s the bio for Freeman off the Lannan Foundation website. We would add that earlier in his life, Freeman edited Inner Space, a mid-1960s independent press magazine about psychedelics; married Abbie and Anita Hoffman at Central Park on June 10, 1967 (see Village Voice); and was a member of both New York City’s Group Image and the San Francisco Diggers.

This piece was first published in Orion magazine, May-June 2003. It received the John Burroughs Award for best natural history essay of 2003.

photo by Jim Korpi

AFTERLIFE: On the great pulse of nutrients that feeds all of Creation
by Freeman House

with photography by Scott Chambers, 1948-2008

The world is our consciousness. It surrounds us.
Gary Snyder

As an industrial fisherman I’ve taken hundreds, perhaps thousands of salmon lives. I’ve also eaten them—roasted over an open fire, poached with dill sauce, smoked on alder wood, and baked with sweet pepper and tomato. I’ve pursued salmon in the wild for livelihood and food, worked with my watershed neighbors to insure their continued presence in my home river, and written books and essays about them. I am in part a man made of salmon, so it doesn’t seem strange to me now to be pondering their lives after death.

For several months, Scott Chambers’ photographs of salmon, dead after spawning on the Starrigavin River near Sitka, Alaska, have been spread out on my worktable, pinned over whatever blank spaces remain on the walls of my office, and perched on piles of books waiting to be shelved. Their undeniable beauty is not enough to explain their grip on my mind. I suppose that if I lived with any set of photos for long enough they would begin to enter my dreams, evoking ever more personal associations. These “descriptions of light,” to use the root meaning of the word photography, are illuminating my imagination. If light is information without a message, as Marshall McLuhan wrote, I feel compelled to impose messages on these stark images.

The fish in the pictures are all quite dead; some of them, in fact, are in advanced states of decay. One carcass, hung on a log that is temporarily trapped in a cascade, is so deeply and evenly covered with fungal growth it appears to be coated with cottage cheese. Another smaller one, perhaps a year-old male, has released the gasses of decay that might keep it buoyant, and sunk.

It lies on the bottom of a shallow reach; alder leaves floating on the surface nearly obscure the corpse; the shadow of streamside willow trees dapples both floating leaves and sunken fish. The photo seems to suggest a year-long process, as if the body has decayed and the nutrients borne from the sea have already nourished the roots of the riparian trees, which, in turn, added their leaves to the stream’s nutrient fund.

Here’s another: a clutch of carcasses is hung on brushy branches like laundry scattered to dry. They seem to lunge toward the viewer. The eye of one is gone from its socket, its gills shredded, likely the work of a passing bird. The eye of another is clouded and glows like a pearl. With their hook bills and gaping mouths, they might be monsters from the deep—guards at the boundary separating life and death.

Photography is by nature a set of instructions about where to direct our attention. The primary message of any photographer is “I have selected this image rather than another.” How many hundreds of pictures have we seen of salmon leaping up a cataract? How many of pairs of fish on a redd or of salmon packed as thickly in a stream as sardines in a can? How few of the grotesque stages of death, the rot and decay that attend the species’ final transition?

*

There is a set of relationships at work here infinitely more complex than the reproduction and survival of a single species. Ecologically, the more important event (that is, essential to the health of the larger system) is the contribution of the salmons’ carcasses to the streams and to the terrestrial systems surrounding. Ecologically, it is insignificant that the individual creature has died. From the point of view of the larger system, the nutrients released through decomposition of the carcass are what’s notable.

Besides being anadromous—reproducing in fresh water, but spending most of their lives in the nutrient-rich ocean—Pacific salmon have evolved to a condition called semelparity, which means that every salmon dies after reproducing once. In the past, before salmon stocks on the North Pacific Rim began to disappear one by one, there were seasons when you could smell a salmon river before you could see it, so thickly were spent spawners piled on the banks. Pragmatic humans tend to find this condition counter-intuitive. It seems as if nature has made a mistake. All those thousands of miles of ocean journey to gain the size and flavor that makes salmon such a grand food—and then only one chance to reproduce?

The life cycle of the salmon has been anthropomorphized and romanticized beyond the bounds of decency. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Humans, especially those who live around the North Pacific or its tributaries, associate the qualities of courage, strength, passion, and devotion to salmon’s upstream migration. Sexual references abound. Such romances might be mitigated, or at least balanced, by watching salmon die. The gradual weakening of spawned-out salmon may take days or weeks. The fish lacks purpose and strength; it drifts listlessly, with an occasional weak effort to remain close to the nest, assumedly to protect the newly fertilized eggs from predators. It becomes more and more difficult to stay upright. Fish float on their sides and eventually on their backs. Bears or raccoons or otters wade in and put a compassionate end to the slow decline and the river becomes an assisted death facility.

But once the end has come, what a spectacle unfolds! Continue reading →