the end lane....going fast

My brother's wife fell on her head and when the ambulance came took both my brother and her to the hospital...there after a blood transfusion, she died a week later. My brother is now living in a long term facility and I think glad about it. he lived alone for about 1 year and half with not much help. he will need the help he needs now...I will go see him thanksgiving week, which is in about a week from now.
Mostly, it is a shock to me, and the reality of mortal life, that it is just a question of time when we all have to go into the void.
Even giants like John Updike had to die, when he still had so much more to do.
I have a lot to do. I try to do this...right now making another film to make sense of the war years. I know it can't be done, but asking questions does not hurt.
I will go back to my film to make a shorter version, cut out long scenes that are meaningless to most, and add more comments.
I applied for a grant to get a real good camera and I will go back and do more filming, carefully this time around. I like what I did before. But I want to do better, wait for better light, go slow with some takes, use a tripod, a good mike etc...and mainly a good camera.

now it is Atwood

reading Atwood's new book, The Last Flood...really has an effect on me. Even though the book is futuristic and apocalyptic, it feels very current, as if she was describing the world as it is today. will keep you posted on this..

Jacoby's new book

Susan jacoby's book the Age of American Unreason is a must read...dense but replete with tons of information...You can become an overnight intellectual reading this book. she hits issues head on, such as the dumbing down of America by fundamentalists who would rather see no education that did not use the bible for as a main source, as well as for all the laws...on and on...great read.

julia and me

just saw this marvelous film Julie and Julia, mesmerizing to watch, life of Julia Child and her ascent to publishing her classic book...totally totally mesmerizing and Merryl Streep is fantastic...
apparently book was created on a blog, this one, blogspot...not sure how true this is, need to find out...

shopping

so I go back to Wal-Mart with Cath and got her to buy the same printer...but they had a canon with all the stuff, 2 cartridges, total for $30, I got that one, a black model...and gave my printer to Cath for $30, WITH the wires and extra cartridge...and now she finally broke down and has a printer she likes, small and simple.
Is that weird or what? the Canon had all the wires and cartridges for $30...
now I am thinking of getting a better camera...sick and tired of those small ones, where you can't see what you are doing and I want manual focus control...and I think even the Nikon D40 has it.
I think it is available for $449...so I got to Target and they priced at, get this, $695!! so I tell the guy that is a mistake for sure...and he checks on the computer and he says, No, that is the price...fucked up.
Best Buy wants $495....
so it goes...
I want a normal camera with a viewfinder, manual focus etc...and big enough so I can see the controls, not the small ones that are designed for Mickey Mouse with tiny paws...

The Samsung I have is nice, a jewel actually, but a jewel is something you wear no take pictures with...the results are great, but it is touch and go, literally.
I mean I used to do photos professionally and used Nikons all over the place, still have them, loaded with film.
Of course Nikon has gone psychotic with models up to $8000. Only guys working for the New York Times can afford to get one, it is free from the company to use. And to say nothing about lenses, which cost a mint as well.

charles
----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Rotmil
To: charles rotmil
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 12:12 AM
Subject: Re: pirnter

Cheaper on ink but you won't get as good a print. You should look into ripping the guts out and making your own Piezzo printer for photographs. Plenty of info online.

On Aug 1, 2009, at 9:06 PM, "charles rotmil" wrote:
hi adam
irony of shopping
I ran out of ink for my epson printer...7 cartdriges!!!!
so what do I do go to Staples...$78 for the color ones and $27 for black....shit!!!!more than I paid for the damn thing $75....

so I went to Walmart and bought a HP printer, a small one with two cartridges for $32!!!!

is this something or what?
I gave the printer to the cleaning guy in the building, he was thrilled.

dad
_____
and now as soon as I wrote this Nikon comes out with the D3000 for lest than $700 at some stores...what to do? it does not have video...so what? but no live screen....

complaints

for me to look up at the firmament at night in a dark place, like an airport landing (I did this on Islesboro)..is enough for me...to see all those small dots there, suns all of them, and it is just our galaxy and the milky is just dust of stars...is enough for me...to look close at Mars means nothing to me...nothing. it is a bare planet with no life that I can see...I can hardly see life on this planet of apes.
someone once said "I am not sure if we evolved from monkeys but I am sure that we are going back to that stage."

I made a film using a small $600 camera (now worth shit) a full documentary...I know the pros use $50,000 cameras...but do they know how to shoot a good film? same with still cameras..I have taken great shots with simple cameras...because in the end it is the eye that counts.

so, mon ami, my could be drinking companion, be well and enjoy the hot summer coming up. You asked for it, you got it.





From: Jack Hayes

Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 10:40 AM


They say that once you retire your brain turns to mush. That may account for that squishy sound I keep hearing between my ears.

To those of you who have already panicked and flung your family members and pets from the rooftops rather than have them fall into the clutches of the invading Martians, WHOOOPS !

Despite all the screeching and preaching that we should always try to check these things out on SNOPES, I got so excited about the chance to see Mars up close that I did NOT check until a friend told me I was just a little behind the times. The Mars information WAS correct .... back in 2003 ! Sorry, We don't get any celestial instant replays !

On the other hand, if you ran out and bought expensive research quality telescopes with the huge economic stimulus checks, GOOD ! That will boost the economy. Enjoy looking at the sky or spying on your neighbors

Now that I have totally ruined your sky-viewing plans for the rest of the summer, are any of you interested in knowing my WEATHER predictions ???

By the way .... anyone wanna buy a brand new expensive research quality telescope that's still in the box (probably just about getting ready for shipment)? Only $27,966.82 or best offer.

I can hardly wait to get all of the constructive comments for not checking the dates on the Mars encounter. NOW you understand why I wasn't accepted into the Astronaut program.

~Jack

false arrest in the 50s in chelsea

about the photos
the one arm bandit..
someone had given me this thing out of their basement apt in the 60s...so I set it up in my loft in Chelsea (then the rent was only $125 a month for a double loft...no bathroom...in the hallway..and it was not legal then to live there, but everyone did)I set it up in my makeshift photography studio, I had background paper up and so on...during that time I let Jay Milder use my loft for an after opening party of his show...when I got back the place was filled with people, filled. I had one record on a tiny record player, lp, of Chubby Checker and every one was dancing to it...Red Grooms, John Chamberlain and who knows who else, they brought their own beer. They thought I was an eccentric millionaire who hated furniture. I mean the place was bare, with only one bed in the corner, a futon on the floor. Robert Frank came and so did this man who was like a patron of the arts and from wall street...can't remember his name right now...
in any case, one day I was blasting some music on my JBL speaker someone had given me of Bach...and I went upstairs to visit a neighbor, the painter Zax? when I came down two plainclothemen were in my apt and checking out the slot machine. Hey this works real good they said....do you any shoes to wear you are coming with us to the station downtown. yes, I was arrested that night, labor day weekend, for breaking gambling laws. Imagine this. Also, no Miranda rule then. They took me downtown, I was fingerprinted, interrogated , "what is it you do?" "I am a photographer" Oh another fucking photographer hey?" so the booked me breaking article 80, gambling. I made it to night court, after spending some hours in a cell. There were two guys across the way in another cells and I asked them what they did and they said they kept books...I said I had one arm bandits. In any case the judge heard my pleas for mercy and he said I could go home but needed to get back for a trial. About a month later I went to court. When my case came the judge yelled "Give him a lawyer!" I did not have one. Of course I bought photos of the slot machine (see photo) and the judge looked at all this and said he had a dental appt for an aching toothache and said "I will give him the benefit of the doubt let him go, dismiss the case". I asked if I could have my machine back and the judge said, as he got to go to the dentist "Tell your client not to press his luck." A reporter from the New York Post or Daily News was there and wrote up a story called "Photog takes wrong picture." I was never able to find it. If you find it let me know...

agnes varda

just got this review about the Beaches of Agnes by Deedee Hallack:
http://deedeehalleck.blogspot.com/2009/07/beached.html

I found it strange in away, since most people have told me how they are dying to see this film, mostly women. In fact one told me that this is the movie she wants to see when she dies...mmmm....sounds a bit like trance...or feverish hallucinations...

letter to Noor Durkee about Amy goodman and her interview of Amira Haas...
watching the show now...you know this is second generation surivor commmenting on their parent's experience in the Holocaust...which I assume will happen to me when I am gone and my kids talk about their experience knowing me and hearing my story of hiding from the Nazis in WWII.
But the idea that Haas brings up about "merchandizing " the Holocaust is a bizarre accusation. You could say this about any fund raising activity, from Polio to Cancer funds....think about this.

It is also an insult to survivors who are not making money out of this...in my case asking me to talk to schools and getting an honorarium. If I was Mother Theresa I would go around free all over Maine, sometimes a 6 hour car ride, to speak to schools. But I am no funded like she was and I am not a saint. It could be that some are using the Holocaust to get money from Germany and elsewhere, or a raison d'etre to exist, like Israel. But be that as it may, the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews, was a tragedy without compare, the factory setting of camps is unparallel in history, even the murder of 32 million of Russians by Stalin does not compare to this atmosphere with companies involved in construction of the camps, even chemical factories still active today i.e. E.G. Farben.

Suffering does not end when the beating stops. We still fell the pain from the scars, wounds which often open up and we find out they did not heal, as Bishop Tutu once said.
Whenever I tell my stories to kids and adults the wounds open up and sometimes I cannot speak. I do not have to do this but now feel it my duty to make people aware of how low humans can go. As the Germans did in World War II.

It is ironic too that this woman, Haas, who is a second generation survivor, not being there at all, will make money out of this book? She is not giving this book away is she? Who is making profits here? It is a complex issue.
If I were to write a piece of fiction, and therefore not worry about detail (my brother and I argue all the time about detail, even to this day when he does not want to speak with me unless I drop all that I remember. This is another matter, when my brother accuses me of lying, of making things up and making money out of the Holocaust, my own brother who was six years older than I during WW II.
If you remember, Kosinski, author of the Painted Bird was accused of making things up. Of course he was making things up, his book was fiction. How a boy escapes from his enslaving gypsy, he find a bloated pig's stomach and floats on in downriver, as if in a Bosh painting...phantasm and horror, as it was in World War II.
For many of us, the War was a hallucinatory experience.... now the accusations, even the denial, are murdering the Jews all over again, as Elie Wiesel once said.
I bow my head in humiliation, and I will continue telling my story as I remember it vividly, as long as live...hoping...hoping....it will not happen again.
But mass murder is inexplicable. Look at the terrorist blowing himself up with shoppers, people going to look for work, buses with school children, all under the name of their god. How do you explain this? And with the blessing of the high priests.

Can we trust lawyers, politicians and religious leaders anymore?

I will go on, go on I must....

रेफेरेंस: अमी गूद्मन
लैटर तो नूर दुरकी

letter to Noor

disillusionment

I had this fucking strange dream last night about my moving into a sort of commune (like the 60s) and I could not find my jacket, my wallet, my keys, or even where I was suppose to stay...and when I found the owners, living in the basement, they told me you crashed wherever you can, on any bed on the floor you can find and if you left your jacket with money and all it was probably gone....etc...
I woke up feeling like shit...it was 85 in my apt for some reason....took a good long shower and got back to my sense....then I was scanning this newspaper all about so called healing centers and using animals for wisdom, from horses to eagles to birds maybe even plants...all such bullshit it made me feel noxious....
it was only when I made myself a good breakfast, of toast, scallion and mushroom omelet, chipotle sausage, and black coffee, that I came back to my sense and felt the ground....and watched Cspan which deals with real problems in the world, no hocus pocus.....
most of those workshops with words like shaman, promised to cure cancer, spinal injuries, depression and so on and charge tons of bucks for it...who are the fools who fall for this?

I also felt disappointed that only a handful showed up at the studio and that the film was shown but in such an amateurish way in a off beat station (they do show Amy Goodman on it, the off beat newscaster with a monotonous drone voice) and filmed off the wall projection with the mikes trained on the speakers...I can imagine the quality on the TV at home for that one.
they will rebroadcast it and use the DVDs direct...so that gives me a chance to redo the film again...and give them a more decent copy.
One woman actually called me to say she watched the film and was thrilled to death....a friend of mine.

amigo, la vida es ridiculoso....

carlos del Portlando

brass band street

bienveillantes

The Kindly ones in English got an awful, I mean awful, review in the New York Times Katakani...amazing how slashing she was. hated this book, thought it obscene and derivative of both Genet and Sade...to think I plowed through this book for the last two years...I mean plowed. It was so hard at times, but then some scenes did it for me. yet she may be right about this, being obscene and shocker, not literature, not good....and challenged how the Goncourt could give it the top award...and Le Monde called it a masterpiece and another one called it the next War and Peace.
I mean it is virtually his first novel, well done, but not literary...and it does take from others and who knows may be sensationalist. Who really knows?

McEwan Ian

McEwan what a marvelous writer...see On Chesil Beach...sensitive story, deep and focused...In Between the Sheets a bit outre but still good...Black Dog also focused and deep and intense...now reading Innocent...slow start but gets going...

new year, age of Obama

can't believe this, but here we are February 7, 2009....look at the London Literary journal...also Paris Review for interview with poet...

january 15, 2009
still on track with new relationship, and possible marriage in view, down the road....
I remixed the film and added narration, which should make things clearer. Also finished the bonus disk which includes interviews, myself, my brother, others....soon to be released as a set...also to enter some festivals...
winter has been not too hard this year, moving to Portland was a smart move. Much harsher up north, where snow does not leave until May, if then.