i STINK today!

Bling Ba-Blang

THOUGHTS THOUGHTS THINK THINK

Working on a video.
Self-Obsessions-Humanism-Art-Beauty to connect.

Working on a picture.
Self-Collage-Paints-Pencils to view.

Working on life.
Self-Understanding-Acceptance-Comfort-Experience to live.

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Neighborhood Narratives

Our Block -->>
Video-Collage-Paints-Pencils-Photography-Art-Process-Past-Present-Future-Our lives' Past Present Future-Product-Experience to share.

My Friends...aw, shucks

http://www.wayfinderexperience.com/

Wayfinding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Wayfinding refers to the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.

Wayfinding is often used to refer to traditional navigation methods used by indigenous peoples. In more modern times, wayfinding is used in the context of architecture to refer to the user experience of orientation and choosing a path within the built environment, and it also refers to the set of architectural and/or design elements that aids orientation.

Researcher Kevin Lynch coined the term in his 1960 book "Image of the City". In 1984 environmental psychologist Romedi Passini published the full-length "Wayfinding in Architecture" and expanded the concept to include signage and other graphic communication, clues inherent in the building's spatial grammar, logical space planning, audible communication, tactile elements, and provision for special-needs users.

Some Ramblings on "The Block"

Neighborhood Narratives “Performance Art? on the Block”

33rd and Pearl is the beginning part of the block that Luke and I chose. It’s where a MOVE Organization shoot-out occurred, one police officer was killed, before I was born. My parents lived down the street from the house and remember having to show their IDs to police officers to be able to cart wagon-fulls of their goods to and from home as my father was moving in at the time. 33rd and Pearl, incidentally, is also a block away from where I grew up and recognition of this as a major point was somehow slow to come to me(where my father was moving in = where I grew up). Now, how does this, in turn, relate to Luke? And how does this translate as a visual, relatable art form?--which then, in turn, relates to the block in it’s present state? One of my ex boyfriends lived at 33rd and Pearl(Yuri). I filmed a video on the street of 33rd and Pearl. I used to skate board down 33rd and Pearl. It was the tiny two way street that shouldn’t be two way, it should be one way. “To avoid accidents.”

There was a shotty car repair place there, I never trusted it, even before I understood what it meant to “trust” a car repair place.

I always liked the tiny little block. Somehow, with it’s dirt and mess and broken down homes, I found it to be friendly. Maybe because I knew my friends and I could play in the street, without worry, because cars rarely frequented it. Or, they did, but they always went slowly---the drivers probably wondering whether or not they were traveling in the proper direction on this “one way street” (It isn’t one way, driver). The street was kind of like looking at the underside of some mahogany table and finding that the bottom is unfinished and somebody stuck gum on it. The street at 33rd and Baring, one block down, is clean and elegant. Big homes and families.

Pearl has two homes, and some large unattended to backyards. Garbage. An incomplete, bumpy tarmac. Un-usable brick sidewalks, cracked and broken and, in the rain, muddy. I didn’t know Yuri then, but I did know his home. Tarnished. Piles of garbage, an old car covered in all sorts of collected crap—buried in it’s chain link fence garage.

Years later I met Yuri, who lived in that home, I went out with him for a short time. Turns out that his father collects garbage, predominately old toys, but all sorts of things. And the inside of the house wasn’t much different than the outside. Full of toys glued to the walls and ceilings and floors, various pieces of plastic, metal, garbage, shaped into an art form and covering the inside of the house. Christmas lights. Pictures. I remember thinking, “I could NEVER live here” though I was fascinated by it. Turns out neither could they, Yuri and his parents moved a year after I met them. To a different part of University City. I haven’t seen any of them in years, though my friend has caught glimpses of them, says they’re still around in the city, still in University City.

...

That's where I stopped...and that still doesn't explain what it is we're going to do. I have some ideas, but I want these ideas to be relevant and in relation to the Block, Luke and I and relatable to both past and present...and future? Why not?

Hm.

Ripper hoaxer jailed for eight years

Staff and agencies
Tuesday March 21, 2006

The hoaxer known as Wearside Jack was sentenced to eight years in prison today and told his actions had added to the likelihood of three of the Yorkshire Ripper's murders.

Delivering sentence at Leeds crown court, the judge said Peter Sutcliffe's final victims would have had a "better chance" of avoiding attack had it not been for John Humble's hoaxes.

Humble, 50, of Flodden Road, Sunderland, admitted four counts of perverting the course of justice yesterday and told police that what he had done was "evil" when he was caught last year.

He said he was probably drunk when in his early 20s he sent three letters and one audiotape to police in the late 1970s, diverting police attention to Sunderland and away from Sutcliffe, who was caught in 1981.

Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women, murdered three of them in the period after Humble sent his hoax material, and had told officers after his eventual arrest that the hoaxes had made him feel "safe".

Today, the recorder of Leeds, Judge Norman Jones QC, said Sutcliffe had told police the hoaxes had given him "confidence" while police searched for a man with a Wearside accent.

The judge said: "The least that could be said was these victims would have stood a better chance of not being attacked had these police resources been directed in West Yorkshire."

The judge noted that at one point in the inquiry, police had rejected Sutcliffe as a suspect because he did not have a Sunderland accent.

He said: "It is likely that Sutcliffe, who had already come to the attention of police, might have been placed much higher in the list of suspects had police not been looking for someone with a Geordie accent."

The tape had been "cleverly contrived", was delivered in a "sinister, flat and ominous" manner, and had "warped and bent" the inquiry away from Sutcliffe, the judge said.

He told Humble he had acted with an "indifference to the potentially fatal consequences, which was breathtaking".

The judge said: "In the late 1970s the murders of the so-called Yorkshire Ripper drove fear into the hearts of all women living in Yorkshire and across the border into Lancashire. I'm satisfied that one of the factors that may well have contributed to him remaining at large for so long was your behaviour."

Humble, an unemployed labourer fascinated by Jack the Ripper, was caught 27 years after creating the hoaxes when his DNA was matched with a sample found on one of the envelopes he used.

His hoax messages were sent to the Daily Mirror and to West Yorkshire police's assistant chief constable, George Oldfield, who was leading the inquiry, in 1978 and 1979.

In the 257-word tape, Humble said: "I'm Jack. I see you are still having no luck catching me."

In mitigation today before sentencing, Humble's lawyer said it was not certain that Sutcliffe would have been arrested earlier.

Simon Bourne-Arton QC said Humble was a "50-year-old hopeless alcoholic" who had lived for 27 years with a secret. He said he was "less than bright" after years of abuse, and had led an otherwise "spectacularly inadequate life".

"Up until yesterday, the only notoriety he would have had in Sunderland was to be known in the cemeteries and park benches as John the Bag," Mr Bourne-Arton said.

The lawyer said Humble disliked the police after he was arrested as a teenager for assaulting an off-duty police officer after a disturbance in a nightclub.

He said Humble had wanted only to embarrass the police and did not want the killer to remain free. He had not imagined the police would react in the way they did to the tape, and he became "extremely frightened", Mr Bourne-Arton said.

He said Humble had twice tried to phone the incident room and tried to tell police the letters and tape were hoaxes.

He said Humble had also attempted to commit suicide on a number of occasions, in November 1979, shortly after the tape was made public, jumping off a 90ft bridge over the river Wear with his pockets filled with stones.

But the judge said the hoaxes had amounted to the "very top" of the offences of perverting the course of justice, an offence for which there is no maximum sentence but which has never been punished with a term of more than 10 years.

"It's almost impossible to imagine more serious acts of this type," the judge said.

Humble was jailed for a total of eight years - six years for each of the three letters and eight for the tape - with all sentences to run concurrently.

Speaking after today's hearing, Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg said he hoped today's sentencing would help bring "closure" on the "final chapter of this case".

Sutcliffe was found by chance while with a prostitute in Sheffield in 1981, and confessed to the murders.

He murdered 13 women in Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Halifax and Huddersfield, and attacked at least seven more.

(article from The Guardian, where most of my news posts originate)

link a dink

http://tenement.org/folksongs/

www.oneblockradius.org

One Block Radius consists of a number of links, it's very complex. So I basically just clicked around the website. I aimed to find a map with a limited number of dots so that I could feel the satisfaction of clicking all of them, I would limit the map to specific contributors. I was very fond of the pictures. I liked the more anonymous photographs as opposed to specific categories(such as "Ads/Signage" which I didn't find very interesting). I liked to see the people who contributed a great deal, a visual representation of their commitment to the idea. I like how seemingly inconsequential photographs can take on a whole new meaning when placed in a forum such as this.

WELL, GOLLY...

Boy sticks gum on abstract painting
A 12-year-old boy on a school field trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts stuck a wad of gum on a painting. Helen Frankenthaler's 1963 painting, titled "The Bay," is apparently valued at $1.5 million. The gum was removed but left a stain. The boy has been suspended from school.
The museum's conservation department is researching the chemicals in the gum to decide which solvent to use to clean it. The museum hopes to make the repair in two weeks and will keep "The Bay" on display in the meantime, (curator Becky Hart) said.

"Our expectation is that the painting is going to be fine," Hart said.

MOVE

The block I chose is the block at 33rd and Pearl Sts.

MOVE is an organization formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1972 by John Africa (Vincent Leaphart) and Donald Glassey. It was described by CNN as: A loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology. They also disrupted meetings and lectures by personalities as varied as Jane Fonda and Buckminster Fuller.

Powelton Village, 1978

Glassey owned a large twin house at 33rd and Pearl Sts. in the Powelton Village neighborhood of Philadelphia, and it became the first home base for MOVE. The members erected a wooden stockade and ramparts along the front and sides of the house and established a curb-side carwash business. Neighbors allegedly began to complain about the sanitation aspects of their back to nature philosophy and their use of bullhorns to lecture and admonish authority.

MOVE refused access to health inspectors and other state and city officials. The situation escalated until the members one evening marched along the ramparts carrying rifles. In response, Mayor Frank Rizzo ordered a blockade of the immediate neighborhood, in order to prevent food and supplies from reaching MOVE and thus force the members out of the house. However, since the blockade was announced in advance, supporters were able to bring in large supplies of food. (It was also later discovered that MOVE members had dug a tunnel through to Powelton Ave., outside the police perimeter.)

The blockade lasted several weeks, during which time residents of a roughly two-square-block area had to show identification to reach their homes. Several hundred members of the police department were involved in the action. The MOVE members ultimately refused to meet the city's demands, and on August 8, 1978, Philadelphia police attempted to clear the house by force. Every tactical move was telegraphed to the house via bullhorns. One of their first tactics was to turn fire hoses on the house. The police even considered the depth of the basement of the MOVE house and the height of the basement windows, to ensure that nobody would drown if the basement was completely flooded.

Who began shooting is disputed; MOVE claims that they never fired a shot; videotape of an unconfirmed moment of time during the incident shows muzzle flashes from the basement windows of the MOVE house. One police officer, James Ramp, was killed. The autopsy of James Ramp revealed that the bullet had entered his body in a downward direction. At the time, the inhabitants of the house had reportedly been in the basement. Rizzo had the house demolished illegally the next day. Leaphart and eight other MOVE members were sentenced to prison for the murder. None of the MOVE members that were arrested were taken into custody with weapons.