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The Weblog Which Walks Away From Its Shadow... In Only 31 Days December 23-27 December butterfly We expected and p)repared for first Inge and Frans with their 5 year old, Maarten to come visit us for Xmas. Then finally Joke again, who very early on last spring took a train from Amsterdam to check us out, one night, but plans to stay a bit longer this time. Good, we added to the attractions for a reason. That's 8 together. G.'s bro Erik and his family will pass by for r's 4th birthday on the 29th, when also John and Kristi arrive from GB, to stay for New Year's eve. Erik and Marianne will move on to Dancevoir, to welcome Y2K with their friends. Early next year we'll have Rolf Orthel and Evelien. Half January Andrea revisits. After Andrea, we'll have Gil's best old friend Anne Lammers with our mutual accountancy Anke van de Wal... I'll be glad to be heating these extra rooms again. December 22 Home birth In a pink folder in another brown carboard wrapper Philippe and Delphine lent me the unpublished manuscript describing and poetically reflecting the completely unassisted home birth of their first two children. Very intimate, and engagingly bringing back our own rituals. But for the actual deliverance we had a professional midwife present, both with R+r. Yet the preparations, the building up so to say, is touchingly recognizable in its primitive otherworldlyness. Giving birth is one of those few life and death memory drugs. Earlier this evening at their Le Mazot farm I sat in the living space sipping tea and marvelling at the giant, tiled winebottle green, brick stove they had built. Returned from horse riding their three children now aged something like 8, 9 and 14 hung on and around it, warming up, politely but curiously observing me from a few meters distance. I've often wondered about R+r at this age, grounded in the middle of nowhere. How will they appreciate our migration? We don't worry but try to give them the best of campagne times. I see the huge difference between the campagne at Le Mazot and at Le Moulin du Merle, so I am very grateful to be neighbouring. Philippe and Delphine are from Paris, by the way, but moved here 22 and 18 years ago respectively. Their kids were not only home born, but home schooled as well. I hope we get to know them better. I recently met a young woman in Paris who grew up in Clamecy, and referred to it as the trou de cul du monde, world's arsehole. But then admitted that she would have been lonesome anywhere, even in Paris, in any city, at the age of 15. So far, after 9 months in France, both G. and I have been inside three private homes: of course we saw the Foloppes, the former owners of the Moulin, in their new home. Then we were both with the Dercourt family, several times, with R+r playing there with their friend Julie and her two elder brothers; G. then, was at the meeting of the local cultural committee, planning next January's surprise village bouffe, at the Braquets, and I was at Le Mazot last night. At the Moulin we sat around the table with the Foloppes, Dercourts, Girauds (who own the bed and breakfast and a brocanterie in Clamecy), with Catherine Rodriguez and briefly with Madame Seutin, our farmer uphill, who will teach me how to kill a cock. First her sow will have to deliver any day now (after a 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days pregnancy). Live local, think local, act local, cast global. And suck that thumb away from its shadow. December 21 Curl, Memory Immersed in self-depreciation, going through my entire repertoire of mood swings since last night, today, the 1999 short day with its bigger brighter richest moon, I ended up spending all but its earliest two incredibily pink-and-rosey Decemberish hours, in a hot tub and in bed, sucking my thumb searching for spaces long forgotten, probably lost. The bath which I had to fill up with warmer water over and again had made me all wrinkley and lame. As if paralyzed I couldn't whip up the energy to leave it. Only after great effort I finally got out, to head straight for the bed, to regress into the hiddden reminiscences of daytime slumber times. In my half-sleep I became one of the kids with R+r, who unlike their defecting elder brother didn't have to stay in bed but played elsewhere in the house. I overheard all their games and screams most excited once Valentin arrived with his new remote control car—the same as Rolf got last Sunday, when our mayor Paulette Simon threw her yearly Xmas party at the salle des fêtes. In the downstairs hall the race was on. Upstairs outside my room at first a pale sun had shone. With its tones dimming now, I was allowed to wander off into corners of my mind which I hadn't visited for all the many years of adulthood. Regressing even further I stuck my thumb in my mouth. Normally I wouldn't mention a little auto-erotic experiment here, if it wouldn't have sparked this incredible stream of consciousness, and infected my rêverie. My good old flesh-'n-bone memory stick triggered a flow of images, thoughts, halucinations, worthy of any drug. Sexy memory My thumb found its palate covered niche unchanged. Feeling like an odd clumpy shape first, I convinced myself to suck it for information. I remembered well how it worked. It functioned like what Gaston Bachelard in the The Poetics of Space refers to as 'bodies, which do not forget', when he describes the bond between physical experience and architectural space: - (...) we are very surprised, when we return to the old house, after an odyssey of many years, to find that the most delicate gestures, the earliest gestures sudenly come alive, are still faultless. (...) The word habit is too worn a word to express the passionate liaison of our bodies, which do not forget, with an unforgettable house. Sucking my thumb made me rediscover spaces that had been closed off for so long. xxx Having given up smoking half a year ago, just like that, without any prior motivation, or decision of the will, out of dissatisafaction with the pleasure, this was a new oral sensation, yet so familiar. The unsexy medium I suddenly realized the bland unsexyness of the web. Behind the shutters the daylight disapeared. From the intimate space of a pile of blankets, not sleeping, letting my thoughts float in and out of memory, in and out of projections and expectations, thinking about the secrets one keeps all of a lifetime, not letting anybody in, and how much these idiosyncracies drive one's utterances and experiences, like a secret model, reviewing lots of images across the past, very strong, like under hypnosis, or drugged, I imagine, xxx, A brighter and fuller moon was rising when still in the west the day's afterglow made the bushy hills stand out in silhouette. December 14 I just like things complex Woke up realizing that I like the articulation (of relationships, human and other) complex, rich—both in a minimal (complexity of absence) as in a maximum (complexity of presence) way. The more justified the antagonistic claims or illusory appearances are, the more complicated a choice of tools or actions of engagement are, the more interesting experiences turn out. It's no fun when everything goes down like butter. Chew baby. But mine are not the conqueror style of interrogations, neither the diplomatic one. I tend to overload a problem and its players with detailed, sometimes cryptic but nevertheless relevant, information and watch its self-organization gridlock. Then I pitch, add some more information, hold it up to the light et voilà! what comes out is another complication: ignotum per ignotius approximations. Shape shifting. The only interesting puzzles are the blind ones. chow December 13 macreborn Got my Performa 6400/200 back from the doctor. The family machine that gave up. It's got a brand new Quantum 6G donor bag to feed back-ups into. Dating a while back. Its three partitions are renamed macrebornintelligence, -tools and -estate (note the lower case). Service is now under intelligence. Well. WEIN. The Netherlands are crowded, for those of you who didn't know already. Its auto-mobility infarct is terminal. Conform to my reknown > KIKO (km in, km out) equation Dutch government keeps adding kilometers of infrastructure, only to harvest kilometers of traffic jam. As soon as you're north of Paris you gradually reduce speed, until you come to a standstill at the Belgian/Dutch border. From there on you crawl along. It has to do with Orwell's language/conceptualizing skill equation Paul's referencing on today's >+ Alamut. The downward spiral... ultimately death: resurrection (-: information: news: the defeat of the old: cosmogenesis: moons D and stars * and suns O a plenty: all products become half-products: terminal happiness: eden... love it or leave it—the way it is. Beuvron Rising Returned last night GOGI+9' (I'm really close to the estimate all the time, as the road is getting familiar, and so is the car) au Moulin to find its Beuvron roaring and its level risen to a critical height. After immediately raising the two millside locks (the upstream one had been opened probably by Mr. Seutin, the neighbouring farmer) the level dropped about 6". This morning it had risen again slightly, but it looks stable. The sun is bright, Burgundy and the larger part of northern France apparently was swept clean this week-end by rainstorms. Hope the Yonne will accept all the Beuvron's waters and we'll be fine. At first when we got out of the car in the dark and into the cold house we didn't know what exactly was different. A smell at the top of the stairs leading to the sousterrain (G.), a sound and smell in the dining room (J.)... Then when I checked the oil tank I noticed it had rained in into its cellar, so I went onto the terrace (roofing the cellar) to find it covered with small branches, a thrown over chair and the river (it really is a river under these circumstances) banging the only halfway raised locks. I'm glad to be back. Where things happen. Level rises, level drops, jojo time. December 9 Doors of Perception 2001-2004 Spent the entire day translating the Doors of Perception 2001-2004 policy plan, before I'm off to NL for 60 > GOGI hours, from Friday morning early. Tonight I have to pack some stuff, to keep R+r amused for 8 hours in a row. The car looks like it did Paris-Dakar in the rainy season. Also on the inside. Cool. But it sports no NQPAOFU Wildfire stickers. December 8 8 December 1864 - From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity", that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom", whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling. (from the Papal Encyclical >+ Quanta Cura; Condemning Current Errors, Pope Pius IX) 4 April 1999 - It is one thing for human beings to be the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art's specific dictates. This is what makes the artist capable of producing objects, but it says nothing as yet of his moral character. We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of forming one's own personality, but simply of actualizing one's productive capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind. (from the Papal Encyclical >+ The Artist, Image of God the Creator, Pope John Paul II) (December 9 already) I wrote some comments on the above trouvailles, but since I won't be able to edit them over the next 72 hours I'll save them for later and leave you to ponder the original sources. December 8 original 8 December 1864 - From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity", that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom", whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling. (from the Papal Encyclical >+ Quanta Cura; Condemning Current Errors, Pope Pius IX) 4 April 1999 - It is one thing for human beings to be the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art's specific dictates. This is what makes the artist capable of producing objects, but it says nothing as yet of his moral character. We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of forming one's own personality, but simply of actualizing one's productive capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind. (from the Papal Encyclical >+ The Artist, Image of God the Creator, Pope John Paul II) The Flowing Speech of Human Wisdom and the Liberty of Perdition The following is not my turf or tradition, not even this time of year. So why do I link to the above? Just by force of date? To be NQPAOFU consistent (almost, just 35Y off...)? Following Rome, it would be very easy and tempting to say something utterly conservative here, even for a card carrying relativist. OTOH it would be as easy to say something utterly 'revolutionary', against religious oppression of whatever kind. The proper linking to the Papal Encyclical archive alone could be considered a regressive act, like linking to a hate site. Been there, done that, why waste? Where will the information age take religion? Religious inspiration (and certainly the zeal) has far from disapeared from contemporary culture, our nature. It chooses actual formats, some of which are nurtured at the bossom of new media and technology, and defended more encyclical than in the pope's own flowing speech (>+ the Cyberspace Independence Declaration being a ... in case). Religious conviction makes for an explosive mix, with any medium, in any period. And I am not thinking of fundamentalism only. What are some current opinions and expectations and 'errings'. The church as friend or foe? Or just another SIG? Is religion to be blamed for the church, any more than information for Microsoft? Attention, communication, information, can be read as 'religious' notions. If we re:read its Latin roots as re legere, read again. Re:read as re:interpretate, eventually re:write? Or as re:subject to? The canon. Too High Stakes? Too Imperialist? Too Idealist? All of the Above? Art at the service of? Did the death of god bring us better literature and art than his life did? What's in it for tomorrow? Any new gods? December 7 On and Off the Grid What good is it if it ain't networked? There's lots of examples to be given, some of which might reach a >+ Darshan level. In my own experience and if I understand the impact of Darshan well, these moments are rare. I might remember 5-10 myself, not including the recurrent aha!Erlebnis in the creative process. What good is it if it is networked? It could communicate and inform 24/7. It could be addressed from any other point in the network. It could hack into your information structure. It is addictive: networks trap. What will be the effect of information pride with the productive, opinionated consumer? Once all of a sudden it sinks in that the information industry is actually hers/his? (S)he goes on feed back strike. Or perverts the system with faux data. Is Infoclasm on the horizon? Symmetry is not exactly what the content industry is aiming at. Yet if the infrastructure allows for it, it can't be held back from the actual information engines: you and me. Mining the Spur of the Past All past emancipatory notions were achieved in the spur of the 'revolutionary' moment, and meant to be progressive, improve on the future: at the time they were mere idealistic. So, little of it came into being. That's with idealism, nothing wrong or dumb with it. It's the past. Now if the age of information could be an age of realism, we might see some past idealism come into working. It's the presence. Or we'll regress to the hard knocks of old school content/form perversion, no escape. December 6 inf0Arcadia summary Uploaded a short stepping stone > Winter Mood Over the past weeks the Beuvron valley opened on all sides. With the foliage disappearing around the Moulin we become differently aware of our site. We have a view of Ouagne in the north. The valley is really present. The fields are still green, covered with white frost in the mornings. There's occasional mist. No two days are the same. I don't remember this from Amsterdam. Service announcements G. is on her way to Paris, then Zevenaar. I might drive up next week-end to pick her up and say hello to la famille, who won't be over for Xmas or New Year. R+r and myself will dedicate our leisure time this week to decorating the dining room and really overdo it, our way. Prepare G. and father X a surprise. Then December 16/17 another short NL visit awaits, to sit in and do a poster at the Paviljoens Almere, in a one day symposium on the 'museum's future'... I'll tell them the museum is the future, of course, back and forth all the way (to fulfill NQPAOFU's Webleague linking obligation, for this time machine age of ours check: the >+ Quagga back breeding project). And there's the completely overlooked issue of the public and its capital attention. Some developments are so slow. Never boring, just slow. Started listening to the radio, Radio France Auxerre. The French do have their way to pronounce 'house': aouse... Last night it was all French aouse and tecno, like I was dropped in the wrong disco. Planet France je vous écoute. (Heh, heh... Radio France Auxerre's prominent jingle goes like this: la radio qui vous écoute...) Instant Return to Bachelor Bouffe Oeuf à la Coque, Croque Monsieur, standing up lunch time, glass of red, piling up cholesterol, layering like butter and peanut butter and chocolate bars, pumping up the volume. And quickly back to the bureau. It's all part of the confusion of having all the time to yourself all of a sudden, with too frequent dial ups, forgetting to feed the chickens or pick up R+r at the bus stop... Usually this only lasts a day, I know. Gone vacuum cleaning. Heather Anne hasn't uploaded since November 23. Hm. What gives? December 5 5 December 1899 >+ - Daily Weather Records for the Twin Cities: 1890's STATION: MINNEAPOLIS/ST PAUL, MN M = missing, e = estimated, T = trace Year  Month  Day  High  Low  Precip  Snowfall 1899  12     5    24    11   0       0 Joyeux Saint Nicolas December 4 4 December 1899 Madame Bell kept a journal, far away from home, off shore, so to say, embarking only on lunches and archeological delicatessen: >+ the Gertrude Bell project. Be sure to browse the photo's too. Just plunge in. - Mon 4. [4 December 1899] Very rainy night. Woke at 5 and went on deck. Cold rainy and blowy. Got outside Piraeus [Piraievs] harbour about 8 and waited a long time for the health officers. Rainy and grey. Cloud on Parnes [Parnis] and Pentelicus [Pendelikon] and snow also I think, cloud lifting off Hymettus [Imittos]. Went on shore in the Grande Bretagne boat with the little old Countess and her companion. The G.B. porter came on board - he is with Cook now - greeted me warmly and told me Mr. Bell was in Athens [Athinai]. M for mediocre, mass, move over, merchandise, markets, models A lot of us are inclined to accept the popular belief of a 'market' as the ultimate test bench for a good's existence. But whatever may be tested here, not the good's quality. I've always wondered why a benign, democratic, conversational system as a 'free' market would allow for so much ill and ugly and debilitating, ultimately worthless (not sustainable, malfunctioning, incomprehensible), noise. It seems as inconceivable as a benign God allowing the injustices of illness, rape, and other violence. Yesterday it dawned upon me why markets do content themselves with second best (and declining) goods: a market is not a finetuning mechanism for object (product/service) excellence, but for transaction excellence. A market aims at perfect, win/win, transactions. If, in the passing, rubbish changes hands or minds, markets couldn't care less. They don't improve goods, but exchanges. It is an illusion to think that better goods make better exchanges, and market mechanisms would therefor, as their survival strategy, demand improvements on the objects of exchange—they don't, they don't need to. Don't thank it to the market So market mantras and metaphors are all 'excellent' as far as transactions go. As soon as you're talking any other qualities, don't even think of a market model. A market of mind would be the worst way to analyse your idées fortes, conceptual skills or self improvement. The best things in life (including yourself) are perhaps not exactly free, but they are certainly not in the market, per se, either. Excellence needs friction, transactions need the least resistance. Transactional, 'market' excellence goes where the lowest resistance is. Productional, 'object' excellence is where high friction is, where achievement overcomes noise, and other achievement. Where there's competition for object, not transaction quality. Object excellence is where the grail is. When does low transactional resistance meet high object friction? In open source development? In some collaborations, certainly. When the grail is shared, the technique and the jargon is shared, and the competition is within the group for contributions to as fast as possible (no friction) advancement. But where's the market here? Where it always is: in the transactions, in the sharing and exchange of halfproducts, of information, of attention. N is for neighbouring, niche, nurtured, n'importe near As our proof of trust in biological farming and home butchering we had lamb liver for dinner, from the animal we bought this afternoon up the road, at > Le Mazot (sidebar). They phoned us yesterday to come and pick it up. Phillipe has done a real nice job cutting the meat. We took all but the lungs. Personally I have a hard time, beyond the liver, but G. can appreciate the thymus and brains, the tongue. Although the kidneys she prepared yesterday did not seem to go down too easily. Anyway we spent the afternoon packing and freezing the lamb and browsing recipes. December 3 3 December 1899 >+ I am A one & game - It is very hot & the nights are cold. It was so warm yesterday even in the train, that a box of Vest matches melted & at night they got very hard again. One wants his coat & blanket. We have discarded the valise from the men & the only articles they carry is in a rolled coat, one flannel shirt & socks. In haversacks, holdall (complete) pipe & tobacco—emergency ration & only 3 housewifes [note: common term used for army sewing kits] per section. Bino will follow this alright. So you see we are very lightly equipped. The officers may leave all their things behind & take a rifle like the men. Pelletier sends love to Lefine & all the boys. I must go. Kiss everyone & best love. Will try & write you tomorrow. We have no map yet so I can't say much of the places we go through. Au revoir. Your affectionate brother Henri A. Panet We are under the command of Lord Methune's Division who was wounded at the fight at Modder River. Inf0Arcadia Conceptions of the Ideal. When finishing and updating > inf0Arcadia (Dutch text, links, or English issue), upon my search for Arcadia +"eternal return" I hit on Disney's >+ Celebration ('small-town Americana on the edge of the twenty-first century'), and below Eliade quote, in >+ Arcadian Spaces; Planting the Seeds of American Utopianism. - the myth of the eternal return: '[A] periodic regeneration of time presupposes, in more or less explicit form -- and especially in the historical civilizations -- a new Creation, that is, a repetition of the cosmogonic act' (Eliade, 1966) My speculation on 'returns', of old technology products and services, recast in new technology products and services, the > horse carriage et al, to meet 21stC standards of sustainability and well-being, has, as with all our pondering, historical reference. inf0Arcadia turned out very well, under pressure of the 1 December deadline it was writen in 3 days from scratch, and years of anxious observation of course. Us Authors Return To Haydays Of Self Publishing inf0Arcadia has one paragraph where I am in discussion with Amazon's database, in some near future, on buying and selling written content. So I was interested to read Random House's Jason Epstein's speculations in >+ New Books, No Bindings (Wired News, courtesy Studio-B's Buzz, Publishing, Writing, & Bookselling News): - Having seen small companies grow and then be devoured by conglomerates, he suggests that publishing's salvation is a huge Web-based consortium, open to all publishers -- old and new, large and small -- that would create an annotated index of all books in print. This consortium would fulfill print-on-demand orders, eliminating unsold copies and returns, which are a big concern for traditional publishers. Epstein envisions authors who won't need or want publishers. He predicts that authors will handle their own marketing or outsource it, and will communicate directly with their readers. "Publishing has been a one-way business for the last hundred years. The Internet is going to make it a two-way business," he said. In a series of lectures last month at New York's most-literary venue, the 42nd Street Public Library, Epstein pointed out that there were no such things as publishing companies in the 1800s. Authors had to drum up support for their own works -- sometimes quite literally by parading around the village square. Epstein foresees a return to this past, via the Web. December 2 2 December 1899 Übereink. vom 2. Dezember 1899 zwischen der Schweiz und Italien betreffend den Anschluss des schweizerischen Bahnnetzes an das italienische durch den Simplon, die Bezeichnung des internationalen Bahnhofes und den Betrieb der Bahnstrecke Iselle-Domodossola What's That Spell? Nap Quack Pup Able Opal Fox Unit... Imagine my childhood amazement when I heard my dad on the phone: '...that's Karel Lodewijk dubbel Eduard Rudolf Eduard Bernard Eduard Zaandam Eduard Marie...' He was spelling our Kleerebezem surname in the phonetic alphabet for Dutch telephone conversation. I was just wondering who these 5 Eduard brothers were, since they were never sitting at the table for our evening dinners... To revive your interest in these spellings: here's another great Nap Quack Pup Able Opal Fox Unit (US army 1916) link for >+ phonetic alphabets December 1 1 December 1899 >+ Arnold Schönberg completes 'Verklärte Nacht, op. 4'. Maleri af nordlys fra d. 1. december 1899, kl. 18.40. Hokey Pokey, Wicky Wong, Kalamazoo, Kamoley Kong NQPAOFUXXII/III (December 1999) is dedicated to pastime, to start with the >+ story of Elmer Pelkin and the expanding die. - One of the most inventive and creative magicians who ever lived was Bautier DeKolta. Among the many effects he invented were the Vanishing Birdcage, the Vanishing Lady (chair method), and his famous Expanding Die. The die was by far the most controversial and, while many magicians performed both the Vanishing Birdcage and Vanishing Lady, no one else performed the die during DeKolta's lifetime. DeKolta was touring the United States at the time of his death on October 17, 1903. Newspaper accounts said he took most of his secrets to the grave including the Expanding Die. We now know this was not the case. According to Milbourne Christopher, English magic dealer and magician Will Goldston's wife acquired the die from DeKolta's widow. A description appears in Goldston's first locked book, 'Exclusive Magical Secrets.' She performed the effect in English music halls under the stage name La Devo, until she sold it to Houdini. Upon Houdini's death it came as part of the estate to Houdinišs brother Hardeen. In the 1940s, Hardeen could no longer afford to store his brother's vast collection of escapes and magic and so sold them to a magician named Yadah who operated the Royal Magic Studio in Brooklyn, New York. Among the Houdini items Yadah offered for sale were the Metamorphosis Trunk, a Milk Can Escape, various straitjackets and handcuffs, a Mail Bag escape, and Kellar's Spirit Cabinet that Kellar presented to Houdini at his farewell performance on the stage of the Hippodrome Theater in New York. And, there was the original DeKolta die. Pelkin and the Die The man who purchased the die was Elmer Pelkin, a full-time professional who traveled the United States playing theaters, tent shows, auditoriums, and, back when it was still popular, vaudeville. From an undated letter of one of his children: - Dad took it apart (expanding it) once & tried in Indpls. (Indianapolis -JK) to find parts for it (tubes of copper and brass) so he could use it again but to no avail. It took two men to put it back again (diminish it). So, we had a very difficult time doing it ourselves. The tubes had to telescope in the process. note to self and >+ aids	>+ alamut bastion of peace and information >+ idie.net I DIE for change: design competence	± 19991223-27 ± xmas-y2k ± 19991222 ± accouchement ± 19991221 ± memory ± eros ± uneros ± 19991214 ± complexity ± 19991213 ± macreborn ± beuvronrising ± 19991209 ± doors2001-2004 ± 19991208published ± 18641208 ± 19990401 ± 19991208original ± 18641208 ± 19990404 ± flowingspeech ± highstakes ± 19991207 ± 18991207 ± grid ± spurofpast ± 19991206 ± 18991206 ± inf0Arcadia ± wintermood ± service ± oufbouffe ± 19991205 ± 18991205 ± saintnicolas ± 19991204 ± 18991204 ± transactionexcellence ± holdontofriction ± foodsection ± 19991203 ± 18991203 ± infoarcadia ± selfpublishing ± 19991202 ± 18991202 ± napquackpup ± 19991201 ± 18991201 ± kamoleykong ± hiv the studio visit getting to know the moulin    second floor (attic), east room and landing, 9 November 1999    sousterrain (cellar), main storage, 12 November 1999    barn, horse stable, 16 November 1999

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