Roswell Rudd!!! 81 today

Drain the Facebook Swamp

Here's an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so: pull up your Facebook friends list and classify all professional contacts and other peripheral contacts to acquaintance. Delete mercilessly all people who post stupid shit, have not interacted with you in months or are otherwise a pain in the ass.

I'm down nearly 400 already and will continue until the last dolt and dipshit is gone. And here is a very nice Echinocereus bonkerae 'apachensis' to look at.

this is the bus we are on-- yes this is the bus we are on--

now's the time

if wishes were horses

Hindemith, born on this date, 1895

"Hindemith's relationship to the Nazis is a complicated one. Some condemned his music as "degenerate" (largely based on his early, sexually charged operas such as Sancta Susanna), and in December 1934, during a speech at the Berlin Sports Palace, Germany’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels publicly denounced Hindemith as an "atonal noisemaker."^[6]

Other officials working in Nazi Germany, though, thought that he might provide Germany with an example of a modern German composer, as by this time he was writing music based in tonality, with frequent references to folk music; the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler's defense of Hindemith, published in 1934, takes precisely this line.^[7]

The controversy around his work continued throughout the thirties, with the composer falling in and out of favor with the Nazi hierarchy; he finally emigrated to Switzerland in 1938 (in part because his wife was of partially Jewish ancestry)." (Wiki)

Big Butter & Egg Man From the West, Recorded on this date, 1926

Getting geared up for field season again

Departing for the wilds of Bahía Magdalena, Isla Magdalena and probably Isla Santa Margarita in a few weeks for field work season number 4. The study site for the PhD research is mainly the two islands, a total surface area of about 300 km^2.

The island and bay system to the northwest here is Isla Magdalena, including the large crescent bay, Bahía Santa Maria and the approximately 20 km^2 rocky northwestern cape, Cabo San Lazaro. The island to the southeast is Isla Santa Margarita.

Isla Magdalena is accessible only by boat from Puerto San Carlos, a fishing town sheltered on the peninsula.

My friend Marco, who runs Magdalena Bay Whales, provides most of the boat transportation, except to the south of Isla Santa Margarita. For that study site, I get a ride from one of the fishermen in the tiny village of Puerto Alcatraz. Still waiting on the Mexican Navy for permission to continue my research on the island.

Fishing pangas at Puerto Alcatraz on Isla Santa Margarita

The palapa painstakingly built by Marco on Isla Magdalena for  the comfortable whale watching camp he has built 

The fearsome species I am studying that occurs almost entirely only on these islands: Cochemiea halei. 

These research trips always involve massive prep, a checklist with more than 120 items, carefully planned and targeted field work goals doable by one field botanist in a relatively short period of time and a huge serving of uncertainty. But it's always worth it.

Two Poems by Liz Waldner

Wishness 

There is this wish, that wish, and the other wish. 

There is the wish not 
to feel this way. 

There is the wish in the heart 
of the geranium leaf 
such that where the leaf is lighter, 
its shadow is darker. 

There is the wish on the part 
of my hair that fell in an arc 
to have fallen in a circle 
that it might be connected still. 

There is the wish to be born. 

There is the wish to be known, 
and there is the wish to be known. 

******

Of Unknowing, The Cloud 

In the morning would the white 
cat nose the tall grass 
along the driveway. 

Careful not to touch, knowing 
at a distance. Smell the synapse 
as is the green thing springing 
forth from the earth 
also good to smell. 

In the morning would the white 
cat carefully 
go its nose naming along 
in the morning. It would, yes, 
it did go. And in the morning watching 
she thought this: it is important to remember 
there is really no certain way 
to be. What she wanted 
to think is: I'm allowed. 



Liz Waldner, _Saving the Appearances_, 2004
Liz Waldner at Poets dot Org
Liz Waldner at Poetry Foundation

Cantankerous James Agee

"A good artist is a deadly enemy of society; and the most dangerous thing that can happen to an enemy, no matter how cynical, is to become a beneficiary."-- James Agee

WOO HA...got you all in check....

Ol' Dirty Bastard, born on this date, 1968

Thelonious Monk's last studio recordings

Recorded on this date, 1971. Many of these tracks feature Art Blakey and Al McKibbon.

Susie Ibarra, 46 today

strange doings

Isla Magdalena, on the Pacific side, spring 2015

Back to the blog. For some unknown reason, Big Brother Facebook extended my block for another day-- well, I can log in, but I'm not allowed to participate in any way. What a fucking stupid thing. Haha. This little experience has me committed to pulling away from FB even more than I had already begun to do.

Kim Clarke, 62 today.

George Cables, 72 today.

Buckwheat Zydeco, born on this date, 1947. RIP

Recorded on this date, 1959

Idris Muhammad, born on this date, 1939

Hampton Hawes, born on this date, 1928.

Bennie Moten, born on this date, 1894.

Bad Analogies

A Facebook friend of mine posted yesterday that she hoped Donald Trump would denounce the Ku Klux Klan rally celebrating his victory in North Carolina. http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Ku-Klux-Klan-Trump-victory-parade-North-Carolina-10608851.php

A friend of that Facebook friend posted "Well, will Obama condemn the anti-Trump protests taking place all over America?"

I replied: what a terrible analogy! do you know nothing at all about the truly ghastly history of the Ku Klux Klan in this country (name redacted)? It's okay to be conservative, but don't have shit for brains.

Apparently, that violates Facebook's community standards, as I was blocked from posting for 24 hours as a result. 

Wild. 

Well, all the music posts will be on here today I guess. 

Happy November 13th.

La Monte Young - The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Tran...

Olé! Tarantula Robyn Hitchcock, Emma Swift and Howe Gelb

I just missed shooting Hitchcock's incredible cover of Visions of Johanna, but got this encore.

Ed Blackwell Day!

Pete Cosey Day!

IGNOBLE

The 2016 IgNoble prizes were announced September 23rd. Here's the complete list.

One of my favorites:

Marketing genius:

The brand personality of rocks

A critical evaluation of a brand personality scale

These make me feel better about my ongoing struggle to write a research prospectus for my PhD program.

Larry Young - Unity (Complete Album)

Born on this date, 1940. Nothing quite like the sound of this band.

Glenn Branca Day

Frijolero Molotov Video Oficial Sin Censura

Is this thing on?

Have you thought about owning or at least controlling the fate of your web content lately? Especially anything into which you put labor as a writer.

I was reminded last night that I pour a lot of content and the labor behind that content into Facebook, which is an ephemeral medium-- and our accounts there are subject to the whims of FB staff. A friend of mine had her account of 9 years completely and permanently deleted due to a false accusation. Someone opened a FB account with her name, she complained-- and the name-stealer claimed *she* was the one who was the impostor and that was that-- poof, entire account deleted permanently.

This is chilling for me-- I operate in the FB environment as if it's *my* timeline, *my* content, etc. FB is good at creating that illusion.

Of course, similar issues exist with *any* web presence-- but here, at least, you can export an .xml file of all your posts to your computer. All of that time journaling and posting can at least be salvaged here. FB took over for a few years as a kind of microblog and online journal, but it's too precarious to be treated as anything other than ephemera.

Posting here and linking to FB, periodically locally archiving posts whenever there's anything you'd rather keep-- definitely a more reliable bet.

Baths - Rain Smell

Hank Williams jr - All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)

Common Core: 16 Billion Promises

This is the first in a series of posts dedicated to exploring the Common Core Standards in both English and Mathematics, from multiple perspectives: historical, pedagogical, financial, philosophical and political.

Let's start with a very broad cost/benefit analysis of sorts.

Not very widely reported: the estimated costs of full implementation of these new standards. From National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards, a February 2012 white paper from the non-profit Pioneer Institute:

"Over a typical standards time horizon of seven (7) years, we project Common Core implementation costs will total approximately $15.8 billion across participating states. This constitutes a "mid-range" estimate that only addresses the basic expenditures required for implementation of the new standards. It does not include the cost of additional expensive or controversial reforms that are sometimes recommended to help students meet high standards, such as performance-based compensation or reduced class sizes."

About $16 billion in costs as a "mid-range" estimate, directed toward testing, professional development and training, textbooks and instructional materials, tech infrastructure and support, etc. Also from the white paper:

"Implementation of the Common Core standards is likely to represent substantial additional expense for most states. While a handful of states have begun to analyze these costs, most states have signed on to the initiative without a thorough, public vetting of the costs and benefits. In particular, there has been very little attention to the potential technology infrastructure costs that currently cash-strapped districts may face in order to implement the Common Core assessments within a reasonable testing window."

Upcoming posts will outline the history of the standards-based reform movement and its reliance on high stakes testing, the people and politicians behind the Common Core movement, the relationship between existing state standards and the Common Core as well as existing instructional materials (including several specific examples of a "cross-walk" between standards and materials) and an exploration of the contextual position of standards-based reform in general and the Common Core in particular in the history of public school reform in the United States.

For now though, here's a brief introduction from the Common Core website to the goals and purposes of the Common Core standards:

"Building on the excellent foundation of standards states have laid, the Common Core State Standards are the first step in providing our young people with a high-quality education. It should be clear to every student, parent, and teacher what the standards of success are in every school.

Teachers, parents and community leaders have all weighed in to help create the Common Core State Standards. The standards clearly communicate what is expected of students at each grade level. This will allow our teachers to be better equipped to know exactly what they need to help students learn and establish individualized benchmarks for them. The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well—and to give students the opportunity to master them.

With students, parents and teachers all on the same page and working together for shared goals, we can ensure that students make progress each year and graduate from school prepared to succeed in college and in a modern workforce."

Leaving aside any and all pedagogical or philosophical questions for now (for example, should it be clear to every student, parent and teacher what the standards of success are in every school?), let's take a closer look at some of the typical boilerplate language of this brief intro.

The dependent clause that blandly launches paragraph one of this $16 billion experiment simultaneously flatters the standards-based reform wonks who have bravely labored in the state trenches since the 1980s while lowering expectations for everyone. The state standards are an "excellent foundation." The Common Core State Standards, however, are only "the first step in providing young people with a high-quality education." The excellence of the existing state standards were not a first step. Or perhaps they were a first step in providing an education of medium quality? The Common Core State Standards will significantly improve public education for all students, but listen folks: they are only a "first step." $16 billion for a first step. One that builds on an already excellent foundation. 

Note also the very early emphasis on "better equipping teachers." "This will allow our teachers to be better equipped to know exactly what they need to help students learn and establish individualized benchmarks for them." I challenge anyone with even half a command of the English language to explicate as thoroughly as possible precisely what this sentence is saying. Implicitly, it is definitely saying that teachers have not been as well equipped as possible "to know exactly what they need." The historical trend of shooting the fish in the barrel, namely, the classroom teacher, continues. 

Note in particular the wondrous jargon, heart-warming perhaps to most parents: "establish individualized benchmarks for them." Teachers help students learn. For this, they need equipment. And each student is, clearly, an unique individual. So let's not just refer to "benchmarks," which is a term worthy of at least one entire blog post for itself (stay tuned), but let's courageously hurl the promising word "individualized" into the mix. Give them their money's worth. We will leave for another time the nagging question of how a single set of standards in 45 states coupled with an unproven metric that is the same for all students has anything to do with "individualizing" anything.

The great promise of the Common Core lies in this kind of language: "The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well—and to give students the opportunity to master them."

Some wonderful education wonk jargon in there, very familiar indeed to anyone who has been exposed even a little bit to the reform initiatives of the past 30 years or so. "Core conceptual understandings," (sic). Perhaps the narrative report cards of the future will say things like "Jane has met her individualized benchmarks by displaying core conceptual understandings. Also, her procedures are impeccable." Teachers are "enabled to teach core concepts and procedures well," always a plus. Finally, capping off the eduspeak boilerplate with a nice little lagniappe, the impressive word: "master." The Common Core will create better equipped teachers who are enabled to make their students masters of conceptual understandings (sic) and procedures. That sounds like it's worth $16 billion, easy.

But that's not all! The clincher: "With students, parents and teachers all on the same page and working together for shared goals, we can ensure that students make progress each year and graduate from school prepared to succeed in college and in a modern workforce."

All of those precious individuals, with their individualized benchmarks, on the same page and working together for shared goals, at long last. After centuries of horrifying inconsistency from state to state (in spite of decades of development of instructional materials across the country with the untiring support of The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, similar organizations in other curricular areas, etc.), after years and years of everyone clamoring to share different goals, mucking up all of the potential clarity. After all those years of never knowing if students made any progress from year to year, never having any way at all to measure student progress other than, perhaps, voodoo or astrology. After decades of students bombing right out of college every three weeks and being utterly unemployable in that unendingly inscrutable "modern workforce." At long last, the Common Core is here, to remedy once and for all these pernicious and heretofore completely ignored deficiencies. 

That, says a nation unwilling to leave even a single individualized and benchmarked child behind, is worth at least $16 billion.

Cecil Taylor - The Tree of Life (solo piano, Berlin 1991)

Azealia Banks - Yung Rapunxel (Explicit)

Chavela Vargas - Hacia la vida

Milonga for Three, Astor Piazzolla

Chavela Vargas - Luz De Luna

http://youtu.be/wVHYnL08gIM

Do something. Do anything.

adapted from a letter written by Sol LeWitt, to Eva Hesse.

O Fortuna Misheard Lyrics (Animated)

Shakti - Two sister

Tom Waits - You Can Never Hold Back Spring

baby you can never hold back spring
http://youtu.be/vgeZEdbv_m8

The Non and the Ex

“The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:

The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.

The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.” 
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Rest in peace, Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Cassandra Wilson Time after time

Happy Birthday, Meredtih Monk

Kate Bush - Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe - Animation

Look Blue Go Purple | Cactus Cat

Roswell Rudd with Sonic Youth - Dry Bones Live at the Harry Smith Projec...

AU - Ida Walked Away music video

After a Death
by Tomas Tranströmer translated by Robert Bly
Once there was a shock that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail. It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy. It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires. One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun through brush where a few leaves hang on. They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories. Names swallowed by the cold. It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat but often the shadow seems more real than the body. The samurai looks insignificant beside his armor of black dragon scales.

Patti Smith - Beneath The Southern Cross

One for the Father- Alice Coltrane.

One for all the healers....

This one for Georgia too.

You will be missed, Georgia Cooke. 11/2/1940-10/9/12

baby pangolin

David Byrne & St. Vincent - 'Who'

Charlie Haden, Egberto Gismonti: Silence

Dry Salvages

People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

Séamus Ennis - The Bucks of Oranmore. 1972

Tom Waits: Time

Happy birthday, John Gilmore.

Leonard Cohen - A Thousand Kisses Deep

Happy 78th Birthday, Leonard Cohen

light and cloudshadows

‎"So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The full text of the letter from which this quotation comes.

Peggy Seeger - First time ever I saw your face

Azure

Azure

1.

What I want to reach for in the wild

landscape is your body.

The folds of your shirt curved around

your lifted arm, the wings

of your back. Your face turned toward the hillside

horizon troubles me because certainty

is unfamiliar, we are so new.

(I spent ten years

waiting for feeling.

I wanted to leap train to train,

spring up a mountain clawed and crested,

lie in a tent with stones

blading into my hips

all night.)

The bones of my body are welcome in this desert.

(I hate the desert, I said. I hate the cacti. I want to go home.)

You take my blood between your fingertips and roll the cells

like fine thread on a loom. Everything is blooming and it is spring.

2.

Before we ever touched, you returned to me a story

that I had mislaid.

The vast blue of desert sky over my girl-eyes,

back flat on the ground,

runner’s breath into the azure

that pressed me down.

Vast I said. And blue. How do you

know, when you are nine,

that you are touching sacred space?

How do you know, when you are

thirty-nine, or fifty?

: When the lover disappears and the beloved disappears.

When there is nothing but sky.

3.

(The desert scared hell out of me and I was foreign in it,

unfound. Detroit, I chanted. Concrete. Clouds.

I threw out two ice scrapers, a steel snow shovel,

and all of my super-wool up-north socks.

No one listening.

Leather jacket! Bar shows,

gyrations, gasoline.

)

Your face turned toward the hillside horizon is an act of love. Poetry,

I said quietly.

Thirty feet east could be the one.

4.

The desert sings to you and you follow the rituals in the song.

My dark bird self-flung into the canyon,

landing nowhere. Symbols drained, incantations lost

their comfort. Taken down. Your face turned to the hillside.

Horizon your face. We walked together in the desert

and I felt the sky again.

Turned.

(Aging invisible as torn paper,

silence a cotton choke, unseen accretion

crudely swallowed.)

Turned and saw. To the hillside, the plants—

And stones, the first one picked up and carried talismanic,

glinting chips of mica through the knuckles of my fist.

Spines and nodules, tangles, 

mats of bristling defense

in starlike heat exposed. My face raw and recognized.

Beyond ground, we reach the wild landscape.

I open my throat to the hum we make.

Six miles apart, you hold my blood between your fingers.

Welcome, body, home. 

-Amanda Michno

Don Cherry & Terry Riley - the dream - untitled - Koln concert 1975

In memoriam

Nathan Hubbard - Parameters I - The Trunk Space PHX AZ

The Burning of Zozobra 2007, have fun tonight, Santa Feans

Yo La Tengo - And The Glitter Is Gone - Don't Look Down

Alice Coltrane - Hare Krishna. Happy birthday Alice!

RIP, Neil Armstrong.

The Keith Tippett Group - Green And Orange Night Park

Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening....

Pedigree Dogs ad shot 1000 FPS using the Phantom camera

Miss my Fiona, who was perhaps not as elegant, but had her own awkward charm.

After the rain- john coltrane

Jimmie Rowles & Stan Getz : The Peacocks

Joan Baez - Diamonds And Rust (with lyrics).

Chavela Vargas - Hacia la vida. Descanso en paz.

Ani DiFranco - Little Plastic Castle

Gary Burton - Dreams So Real

Ornette Coleman - Skies of America (1972)

Blossom Dearie - LUSH LIFE

Regina Spektor- Loveology

Our Four Sacred Thunderbirds

X - We're Desperate

Amina Claudine Myers - African Blues

Shakti - Two sisters

Hide and Seek -- One Man A Cappella Imogen Heap Cover

The Ultimate Insult

From the comments on an article regarding the construction of affordable housing at the corner of Una and Apache in Tempe, where Gracie's Thrift Store is now:

"The ultimate insult to those of us who can afford to live in nice places is putting low income housing near our homes. You live where you can afford to. It makes us folks who have studied and worked hard for many decades very angry at this kind of PC garbage. Perhaps the government at some level should subsidize me living in a multi-million dollar house somewhere because I can "only" afford a half-million dollar house. I used to be very liberal, but as I grow older, I become more conservative because I'm fed up with those who have-not demanding part of my money to give them things they cannot afford. Taking anyone's money without their permission is called theft and just because the govenment does it, does not make it right or legal. Sooner or later this stupidity from our elected leaders will drive us affluent folks out of this country. Thousands have already left."

 Few perspectives capture so succinctly the utterly addle-pated "logic" of the Arizona Conservative.

From the article:

"Gracie’s Village would be open only to residents with low or moderate incomes, between about $18,000 and $52,000. Gorman attorney Manjula Vaz said a project like this is important because it provides housing for people such as teachers, food service workers and others who work in Tempe but can’t afford to live there."

I (a teacher) lived there, in a threadbare Rentals Tempe house, for nearly $1000 a month, with the help of my cohabitator (an ASU graduate student). Tempe is simply one scam after another. Not far from where I live now, a 2 bedroom house was on the rental market for $1450 a month. Yes, a very nice house, in the "desirable" Maple/Ash neighborhood, but $1450 a month is laughable. There's a sucker born every minute, definitely.

The area repeatedly prioritizes fast money over community. And Tempe is known as a somewhat "progressive" enclave in brick red AZ. Funny and sad.

LAURIE ANDERSON - GRAVITY'S ANGEL

Jun Miyake - Flesh for Eve, 2002.

Jun Miyake - the Here and After

TEDxScottsdale - Tania Katan - The Power of Voice: Survivability, Sustai...

Tania Katan was the spectacular commencement speaker for NSAA this past Friday. Here, she riffs on the word "survivor" and community.

Nikhil Banerjee - Raag Patdeep Lp Alap/Evening Raag

Hysterical University Heights, Tempe, AZ

The supposedly charitable thrift store in my old neighborhood, east of ASU, plans to build a 50 unit, 90,000 square foot apartment complex, 4 stories high, on hardly any land, on an already cramped corner. As usual, this behemoth of a motel-style apartment complex has a charming and quaint name: Gracie's Village. Man, that thrift store must really be doing well by doing good. It must take a lot of 50% off sales of half-broken 20-year-old household crap and out of style, vaguely sweat stained clothes to get financing for such a project. But then, I guess anything is possible when you have Jeebus and all the saints on your side. It is intended to be an affordable housing development, which might explain why my old neighbors are so up in arms about it. As if the same neighborhood that hosts Long Wong's and Baker's Acre has very much of the stupid, utterly fake "upscale" feel (as represented by the hideous Grigio apartments, for example) to defend.

I predict the city of Tempe will rubber stamp the project, just like all of the other insane, unplanned, ugly development all over town, all over most of Arizona that has been defiled by the get rich quick morons who somehow still manage to get financing for elaborate commercial projects that befoul the landscape and often sit empty for months at a time. A conservative estimate has about 20 people getting obscenely rich while thousands are forced to tolerate ever increasing levels of garish, big box, overdeveloped, unrented retail and living space.

My former neighbors are up in arms, of course. It's very funny to me that the article mentions the overgrown lawns. Rentals Tempe has a few properties back here, and holds the line on requiring tenants to do all the yardwork, a ridiculous proposition that consumed hours and hours of labor when we lived there. The other absurdity is that these boxy, cookie cutter cinder-block-construction ranch homes from only a few decades ago could even get designation as a "historic neighborhood." Clearly, "history" in AZ means anything that happened about 50 years ago. Combine this utterly surreal sense of "history" with the outrageously overpriced real estate in these neighborhoods (even after the crooked real estate bubble vomited blood and died, there were a still few University Heights 3 bedrooms going for more than 200K), and you get a more complete picture of just how distorted the perspectives are.

I love this quotation from the story: ""But the people in the neighborhood believes there is crime do to the less fortunate.'" I never thought any of the very occasional crime in the old neighborhood was "do to" Gracie's. I always thought it was due to the whole funky ass flavor of Apache Boulevard, with cadres of drunks hanging out at the bus stop at McClintock, throwing beer cans at passers by, hollering obscenities to the sky, wandering into yards and passing out. But this is no different from anywhere else in this general area of Tempe, largely constituted of endless puke colored strip malls full of payday loan companies, liquor stores, convenience stores, "cash for gold" fly-by-night crooks with dogged sign spinners sweating gallons on the sidewalk, coin-operated car washes and huge apartment complexes entirely devoid of class or soul. Given this thoroughly beat and squalid context, the endlessly replicated, obscenely overpriced cockroach infested brick boxes surrounded by howling dogs, inhabited by insane hoarders and gall durned collidj kids of University Heights seem charming indeed.

Definitely a quality of life worth preserving.

 

Karen Dalton - Katie Cruel