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Remembrance of Things Present : Steven Foster's Repetition Series Photographs - Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories
Clark Lunberry
"When I saw an external object, my awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, surrounding it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever touching its substance directly;
for it would somehow evaporate before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body
that is brought into proximity with something wet never actually touches its moisture because
it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation."
-Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
"We do not hear what we hear…, only what we remember."
-Morton Feldman
How are we to look at Steven Foster's Repetition Series photographs? How are we to see what is there… and there… and there? Indeed, it seems that the more familiar modes of looking at photographs—even Foster's own earlier photographs—are with this new body of work being quietly questioned as the images, in their repetitions, split off from each other, digitally splitting—like cells dividing—often into identical copies of themselves. For in the repetition of an image, our eyes are gently teased or tested, lyrically led to try and see the singular in the plural, the plural in the singular. And perhaps that is, in a sense, part of the power, beauty, and uncertainty of Foster's repetitive photographs: we may not be quite sure how to look at them, how to see the repeated scenes repeated, and repeated again. Change without change, movement without movement, how does one look at repetition, see what has already been seen?
We know that Foster has been drawn to the work of the composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987) whose quiet music is distinguished by its patterned repetitions, its seeking of "stasis" in stilled sound, and its crafted "disorientations" of memory. But where does the corollary go from there? Perhaps Foster has sensed in Feldman's music an acoustic affinity to his own perceptual tendencies, one that might even acknowledge—agreeing with the composer—that not only do we "not hear what we hear…, only what we remember" but, neither perhaps do we see what we see. But what do we see? How do we see? Might it be that to see anything, we must remember having seen, in which case we must see in, or through, or upon, the moment of remembrance itself? And to repeat a photograph is perhaps thus to integrate the act of remembrance into the photograph so that we might in fact see something of our own remembrance, see ourselves remembering (in order to see at all). As such, the repetitions, in both the music and the photographs, may indeed make momentarily possible a seeing and hearing of what can't be immediately seen or heard: to see ourselves not seeing, not hearing, but seeing and hearing, memorably, something of that—a sounded absence, an affective, ephemeral presence.
Through Foster's and Feldman's shared stillnesses, their careful patternings and essential spacings, and especially their delicate and deliberate repetitions, there is perhaps a kind synesthetic bond to be seen and heard between them, such that we might, if careful, see the one through the other, hear the other, through the one. And, as a result of such a graceful pairing, we may also find out something from them both about the complex dimensions of staying still, of paying attention.
I recall, a couple of years back, standing on the shores of Lake Michigan in South Milwaukee, staring out at the water, the light, the horizon, and trying to see more fixedly what was before me, to hold firmly that luminously expansive sight, as if somehow to imprint it onto the delicate cornea of my eyes (my own head acting as a kind of camera). And, briefly, doing it, seeing it, or something of it, but also finally failing to fix the image, to contain its singular certainty for any length of time. For whether I liked it or not, in the end, I was always to see something of myself impatiently seeing the scene—(I, as repeated and plural, before the lake's singularity)—seeing myself seeing myself see it. In other words, unable to remain in place and stay focused, I kept getting in the way of my own seeing, as my divided eyes, nudged along by time, were intersected by the obligation to think, to think about itself, to think about itself thinking and seeing, and in that very thought-filled, word-filled moment, to be blind-sided by my very desire to see. As with Proust's "external object" (referred to in the epigraph above) forever preceded by "a thin spiritual border… a zone of evaporation" that prevented him "from ever touching its substance directly" (I 96), my own determined eyes seemed similarly interrupted, dispersing—or evaporating—what might be imagined as time's more immediately desired destination, a simpler sight—here, now (or, what was, on that shore, there, then).
Perhaps—now, here—by looking at one of Foster's new photographs, and then thinking about it in relation to aspects of Morton Feldman's music, some of these issues involving how we see and hear—or don't—might find some partial accompaniment. For example, there is in Foster's new series of photographs a small, square black-and-white image of a particularly foggy landscape: a body of reflecting water, perhaps a small lake or a cove, and a rather large tree extending out from the left side of the picture over the water; in the distance, across the lake, we can make out what vaguely appear as several other, smaller trees (or clumps of trees; it's not clear) that are quite evenly spaced on the horizon line. This image is divided almost equally between water and sky, with the trees softly reflected upon the surface of the lake, doubling the image. And in fact, it is the reflected trees below that are a bit more sharply defined than the trees above—the real trees—such that the reflection itself is slightly more vivid than that which is being reflected.
As described, and as titled, this photograph shows a foggy landscape, all details bleached white by the light that is exposing, over-exposing, the scene, as if the fog itself were rolling into the image, onto the paper. Indeed, it almost seems that if the photograph were to bleach any further it might simply merge invisibly into the surrounding whiteness of the print, absorbed entirely by the light—no longer to be seen. But even as it is, the image is quite hard to see, as if one needs to squint, or strain one's eyes, in order to make out what is visible in the photograph, as if such straining were needed to see anything at all.
But, of course, the photograph doesn't simply end there, because, like nearly all of the other photographs in this series, Foster then repeats the image as a grouping of three apparently identical images placed alongside each other, separated by a narrow border—as he horizontally repeats what, as I described it, is already a vertically reflected repetition of itself. As seen, what we have here are repetitions of a repetition, the doubling of the already doubled, the image digitally dispersing into a duplicate, triplicate of itself. And indeed, it is very much the digital technology involved in the making of Foster's new photographs that allows now also for their identical, endless repetition (while perhaps offering a newly emerging photographic aura from this more contemporary mode of "mechanical reproduction"—particles of light digitally translated into patterned permutations of themselves, printed reflections of a potentially infinite equivalence). The repetition of water and sky, the repetition of the trees above and below, trees that were already seeming nearly to repeat themselves in their fixed formation on the horizon. And then, compositionally, the repetition of these repetitions, that creates a kind of afterimage, of an afterimage, of an afterimage, all finally seen through the cataracting fog of the photograph, at the very vanishing point of its own visibility. But, as I've just presented them, if all of the images are after-images, where is the image? And, with this foggy landscape, what kind of a vanishing image, what kind of visible images, is this… are these?
Finally, adding yet another dimension of repetition to this photograph, as well as many others in this new series, is the fact that Foster has retrieved this particular image from his own archive of collected work taken over the past several decades; in this case, the Foggy Landscape triad is a revision of a piece from his Images of Eden Series, 1982-83. As such, one sees that the repetitions within Foster's series extend not only formally and compositionally (within the printed photographs themselves), but also temporally and historically (within the narrative of Foster's own development as a photographer), as he returns to his body of images, repeating aspects of his own seeing, aspects of his own seeing self.
To assist us in the seeing of such repetitions, we might now examine what it is to hear repetition. And so, as promised, to reflect further upon Foster's repetitive photographs, I want to shift our attention and speak directly, and at some length, of Morton Feldman and his Triadic Memories, a composition that seems in many ways built upon and sustained by repetition. But as I'm speaking of the music, keep the described image of Foster's foggy landscape in mind, remembering its patterned trees, its divided horizon, its repeated repetitions—and finally, its own triadic arrangement; the photograph, whether here or there (remembered or not), to be somehow squintingly seen, as if through a kind of fog.
Or to recall, another lake, Lake Michigan, and me on its shores, staring out, intersected by time, vainly trying to see, only to see something of myself seeing (as if I, as an image—an after-image of myself—were the one now repeating, my own eyes dividing). Memories failing, the seeing eyes suddenly see themselves blind.
Ever since a friend, many years ago, unexpectedly gave me a copied cassette of Triadic Memories, I've been a fervent admirer of Morton Feldman's music. What I was almost instantly drawn to in this late piano piece (1981) was the manner in which the music combined a formal, audible intricacy with an undeniable emotional charm, even, at times, an unabashed beauty. By joining a gently crafted dissonance with an enduring degree of melodic enticement, Triadic Memories seemed to be a rare piece of contemporary classical music that was both smart and sensual, conceptually complex yet utterly alluring. And this composition possessed as well many of the familiar features of Feldman's late work with its extended duration (lasting, in Louis Goldstein's rendition, nearly two full hours), its repetitions gradually evolving into new patterns of other repetitions, and a sustained stillness held throughout the piece, with silence—perhaps like white borders surrounding a printed image—used as a kind of counterpoint to the performed sounds.
I had also been led to Feldman by my earlier interest in his older friend and mentor, John Cage. Their names were frequently linked as part of what would become known as the New York School of composers that was to emerge, alongside parallel movements in the visual arts, in the late 1940's and 1950's, and on into the 1960's. Early on, Feldman was motivated, in large part by his encounters with Cage, to write music in which one would hear the performed sounds in all their immediate, tactile qualities, to disrupt the deafening habits of our hearing so that we might finally listen in ways unencumbered by historical memory, inherited convention and fixed formula. Feldman, echoing Cage, wrote of his earliest compositional orientation that, "Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves—not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with" (35). The stated desire of the composer was to penetrate beneath, beyond, the perceived historical obstructions to hearing, arriving unencumbered at the origins of unmediated sound, into the very heart of its sonorous matter.
Cage, of course, famously pursued throughout his life just such an endeavor to open the ears to a more profound, direct kind of listening. His infectious intensity and his endless means of invention would seem to have impacted an entire generation (or two, or three) to strive to finally hear "Just sounds, sounds free of judgments about whether they are 'musical' or not, sounds free of memory and taste…, sounds free of fixed relations" (116). And Cage, already by the early 1950's, believed that many of Feldman's first compositions effectively manifested such a liberated listening, the live performances of the young composer's music seeming to offer access to the sounds in all their resonant power and purity. In his seminal book Silence (1961), Cage wrote extensively of Feldman's music and its capacity to so movingly deliver the "tender" and sometimes "violent" sounds to us, to make themselves present and accounted for, available for our immediate sensual reception.
For Cage, there was the belief, the desire to believe, that sounds—any and all sounds—could be construed musically, and that in the final account "Everything is music." For Feldman, however, his "only argument with Cage" (29), as he described it later in his own writings, lay here, believing as he did that everything was decidedly not music, and that there remained intractably, regrettably perhaps, an indeterminate realm apart, a distance, a detachment, by which his music was then to define itself, find itself defined. In a sense, many of the important questions Cage had initiated about music, and of our own reception of sound and silence, were then taken by Feldman and pushed, both theoretically and performatively, in rather different directions. Indeed, pursuing ever more complexly many of the difficulties of writing and listening to music, Feldman was to come to conclusions that would often seem quite contrary to Cage's, risking that nothing—as opposed to everything—is music, while continuing nonetheless to try to make it, to listen for it.
For Feldman, alongside and perhaps in conflict with his desire to, as he said, "hear the sounds themselves," seemed simultaneously aware of a kind of sound barrier existing between himself and the music, between the performance of the written notes and the seemingly inevitable delayed reaction to their reception. As a consequence of our own deflected awareness of the sounds, the performed music, existing in time, must always remain somehow off-limits, or out of sync with our hearing of it, just beyond the range of our own acoustic reception. Reflecting something of this estrangement, Marcel Proust—a favorite author of Feldman's—was to write of his fictional composer Vinteuil, and of the "little phrase" of his sonata that was so elusively sought:
Doubtless the notes which we hear… tend, according to their pitch
and volume, to spread out before our eyes over surfaces of varying
dimensions, to trace arabesques, to give us the sensation of breadth
or tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves have
vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to
escape submersion under those which the succeeding or even
simultaneous notes have already begun to awaken in us. (I 228)
In place of the felt immediacy of the music, the performed, passing sounds were more likely to be heard in a kind of decayed, disintegrating retreat from their otherwise unlocatable source. For Feldman, affirming, or perhaps, circumscribing, an even more radically ephemeral event than what Cage was proposing, what we hear is perhaps only what remains of the sound's very vanishing—what we hear is, in a sense, not there, never quite there, always having just passed us by. Listening, one is unable to fix where the sounds exist in relation to one's hearing, with each subsequent sound, as Feldman described it, "eras[ing] in one's memory what happened before" (qtd. in Zimmerman 230). Any aspirations to a Cage-like, musicated immediacy, must consequently be side-stepped or bracketed, replaced by some other kind of hope or expectation, some other means of musical formation that takes into account what Proust elsewhere described as "that ineluctable law which ordains that we can only imagine that which is absent" (III 905), we can only hear what is no longer there to be heard, see what is no longer there to be seen.
By working, as Feldman wrote "with the decay of each sound," a piece of music performed by a musician, and listened to by us, would thus present itself as a kind of material manifestation of entropic dispersal and decline, a sounded site of time forever slipping away from our own awareness of it, as a record (or recording) of our own resounding failure to apprehend anything at all. "Decay… this departing landscape, this expresses where the sound exists in our hearing—leaving us rather than coming toward us" (25). And instead of Feldman's music reflecting Cage's more sensual silence, or his famous "celebration that we own nothing," one is more likely to hear instead something that, while perhaps less liberating and celebratory, resonates nonetheless, but more indeterminately, reflecting in part Feldman's own enduring attraction to the work of Samuel Beckett, what he described of the author as "a kind of shared longing…. this saturated, unending longing" (qtd. in Frost 51).
Into the 1970's and 1980's, Feldman was thus to distinguish himself further, apart from Cage and the others, as a writer of increasingly long compositions, pursuing through his music a delicate arrangement of disintegrating sound, a kind of hermetic, Proustian investigation of the workings of memory, the subtle intricacies and evasions of how we hear. So often in these later compositions, Feldman repeats familiar patterns of notation, quiet chords, gentle dissonances soothingly played again and again. For long stretches of time (and contributing to the composition's necessary length), we may find ourselves listening almost distractedly to the sounds, remembering the familiar arrangements as they fleetingly pass by, recalling what Nietzsche was to describe as "the kind of beauty that infiltrates slowly" (105). And then, abruptly, just when we think we know what we're going to hear, just when memory has taken over and seems to be listening for us (relieving us of the burden of trying to hear anything at all), Feldman might change a single note, minutely adjust a chordal configuration—an unfamiliar key—played upon the piano, or a string of the violin unexpectedly struck. Involuntarily, and as if it was somehow permeating our memory, this sudden sound seems to echo from out of previously patterned arrangements. And contained within this newest sound, it is as if there is a weight of duration that extends it through two moments as once—like a memory materially heard, the past sound instantly recollected in the present. Recalling what the poet Wallace Stevens described as a "A music more than a breath, but less / Than the wind, sub-music like sub-speech, / A repetition of unconscious things" (232), the sound, itself decaying, has thus proven itself dependent upon a field of involuntary remembrance, skating upon it, as if marking the movement of its own disappearance.
With enough time taken so that memory itself is stretched and strained towards its own tethered limit, and by applying in his lengthiest compositions what Feldman described as "a synthesis between variation and repetition," the composer created patterned gradations of contiguous sound that were both "concrete and ephemeral," "frozen, at the same time they are vibrating." Feldman would thus give passing shape to that which he described as a kind of acoustic "object," an ec-static form, with the piece existing not "in time or about time, but… as Time…. Time as an image" (86). Also, by marking and measuring the dimensions of its own vanishing, insistently demarcating a disappearance, the music may finally, ephemerally, be heard as the sedimented sound of time, time itself sounding. Feldman once wrote that "I know that when I write a piece [of music],… I'm telling people 'We're not gonna be here very long" (qtd. in Gizzi 253). The irony, of course, is that it might take a long time—nearly two uninterrupted hours perhaps (as in Goldstein's rendition of Triadic Memories)—to get that message across, to make it finally felt.
Shaping such a musical "object" into the contemporary equivalent of a memento mori, Feldman understood that other compositional strategies would have to be undertaken in order to accommodate a more complex form of musical writing and awareness. For the earlier listening innocence had given way to a more hardened kind of hearing, one in which the difficult task was now to write music with this acoustic division and delay in mind, anticipating the de-composing sounds themselves as always elsewhere, never quite punctuating the piece at the precise moment intended, but echoing instead after the fact as a faint trace of itself, as a resonance (memorably) registered.
The question however remains as to how we might hear that—remembrance—as if, once-removed, the sounds, decayed, might somehow be made to return (in some ghostly manner), to sound, perhaps inaudibly, in their own resounding absence. How are to hear ourselves presently remembering, to approach and achieve a remembrance of things present?
To hear such a sound, to see such a sight, might Feldman's music, heard, remembered having been heard, now offer a way of seeing something more in Foster's new photographs, and a way of thinking more concretely about his repetitions? Let's return, briefly, to Foster's foggy landscape, remembering its repetitions, alongside Feldman's own, and his description of his music as occurring upon a "departing landscape." As you'll recall, in that photograph, seeing itself was not easily seen, for the image was bleached, nearly lost in its own occluding light, the photograph imagined even as a kind of emblematic reflection of the difficulty of seeing; Foster's own photograph as a Feldmanesque "departing landscape," barely there, evaporating untouched, threatening to vanish entirely.
Feldman's repetitions were built upon a patterning of repeated notes, a sound sustained across time, remembered along a continuum, with the repetitions used as a means of reinforcing a forgotten sound, reinforcing one's hearing of one's forgetting. But also, such repetitions might now be imagined as offering as well a crafted resistance to time, while also requiring time as a condition to hear it, to hear anything at all—time as singular object, time as a pluralized event. For in hearing such a sound, forgetting it, and then hearing it again … and again, one is perhaps made to hear, however hauntedly, something of time itself. And while Feldman's music is necessarily temporal, heard in time, with one note following the next, always—like words in a sentence—promising another, Foster's photographs, because they are still photographs, partake of time quite differently.
This returns us to the question of how to look at these photographs, how to look at repetition. For by repeating an image, Foster is, in a sense, applying time to his photographs, obliging us to see in time, as our eyes move from identical image to identical image, and back again, remembering as they go—never instantly or completely there… or there… or there, but made to move, to see the same thing again and again, and to remember seeing it. Like film stills that are truly still (because they are the same), the images move, without moving anywhere at all. Looking at the repetitions—seen singularly or plural, from here or there, this way or that way—has the effect of mobilizing our own seeing, seeing through a consciousness of temporality; and linguistically, seeing (as we perhaps must) through a scrim of words, the photographs are apprehended now not as steadied nouns, but as active verbs—events, taking place—through our own peripatetic perceptions of them. To stand before Foster's repetitions, to try and see what is contained there is to, in a sense, find oneself divided by time, split in three, dispersed into a triadic form of memoried perceptions. And so, to repeat what we've seen, not seen, to reinforce and reiterate it, so that it might be remembered presently, seeing… memorably… now.
The still image, our moving eyes—Foster's photograph, as both a singular, static object and a mobilized, pluralized event, might even be understood to have attained something of what Feldman described as a kind of "synthesis between variation and repetition"; seeing what cannot be seen, alongside that which can, and the movement of disappearance between them that will not reveal itself; an ec-static form, an ec-static photograph, with the image existing (like the sustained, remembered sounds of the piano), not "in time or about time," as Feldman insisted, "but … as Time …. Time as an image."
In Søren Kierkegaard's Repetition, the Danish philosopher writes of an "experiment" that he undertook to discover whether "repetition is possible and what importance it has" (133). He had journeyed to Berlin several years before and decided to return to the beloved city again to see if he might be able to somehow repeat the experience that he had earlier enjoyed so much. Arriving by the same train, he checked into the lodgings that he had stayed at before, visited the same café and restaurant, and even went to the same comic theater that he had earlier attended. On this second visit to the city, however, what our traveler ended up discovering was that, disappointingly, there simply was no repetition to be found—the furniture in his rented room had been ever so slightly rearranged, the light through the café windows fell differently upon the floor, and most appallingly of all, perhaps, the theatrical performance he attended failed to present itself as it had before—"should not even that be capable of repetition," he writes (169). In the end, Kierkegaard was to draw what seems a paradoxical, yet nonetheless revealing conclusion, one that goes something like this: if you can't have an experience twice, then you can't have it once; if it can't be repeated, then apparently it can't be had at all.
Confronted by such a conundrum that finds our philosopher neither here nor there, this way nor that, what happens to the one so suddenly set adrift from the recognizably repeated, the recollectedly real? Stepping (only once) into such a singular stream, "the individual…, not an actual shape but a shadow, or, more correctly, the actual shape…, invisibly present…" (154), what remains to be seen, to be done, under such dispersed, unrepeating circumstances? Defeated, Kierkegaard's traveler wearily decided simply to return home to Copenhagen, ending prematurely his visit while nonetheless realizing that, in the final account, "My discovery was not significant, and yet it was curious, for I had discovered that there simply is no repetition and had verified it by having it repeated in every possible way" (171).
Kierkegaard's curious journey to Berlin, his failed but fruitful "experiment" seeking repetition, reminds me now of Steven Foster's own unfailing photographic experiments with his Repetition Series. For instance, in one particular photograph we can see simply three white bed sheets hanging on a laundry line. The rectangular fabric is luminous at its center, vividly conveying the translucent light. The three sheets, slightly separated from each other on the extended clothesline, are surrounded by a pitch black background, a background so bold that it makes the three sheets seem all the more radiant. Also, there is, it seems, another, more darkly shadowed sheet repeated that hangs just behind the first ones; a single clothes pin is visible holding it on the laundry line.
Here, as in the foggy landscape, is another repetition of a single image, the same sheet repeated three times. But this time, Foster has altered the photograph subtly, but even more radically than before, such that the clothesline upon which the sheets are hanging has been neatly lined up and linked, digitally stitched together so as to appear as a single, long clothesline extending uninterrupted across the image. And, unlike the repetitions of the foggy landscape, where each image was in its own carefully delineated square surrounded by a light grey border, in this photograph the repetitions have been joined compositionally together into a single horizontal image. Indeed, it appears that we are seeing three sheets, the same sheet, three times, hanging identically, impossibly together. And what divided the earlier foggy landscape (while also dividing our seeing of the image) has here been even more stealthily conjoined, while making it less difficult to see and think this image as one image, seen singularly, like a chordal configuration, a triadic pattern of repetition, sounded out upon a piano.
Three identical bed sheets hanging on a single clothes line. But wait; are we really seeing a repetition here? For not only have the borders between the three images been eliminated, digitally linking the lines, stitching the sheets into a single scene, but, looking longer, one suddenly sees, just behind the one bed sheet on the left (and only behind that sheet), there is discretely visible in the shallow background a couple of shadowed, vertical slats from a white picket fence. The slats of the fence are not easy to see, nor perhaps are they immediately seen (or possibly even seen at all if one doesn't take the time to look closely), but once seen, the repetition within the photograph is deftly, instantaneously altered. For, in what seems a particularly Feldmanesque moment, with a Feldmanesque kind of repetition, while the visible repetition of the bed sheets is clearly, luminously registered—immediately seen—there is faintly noted as well, but in time, a kind of delicately delayed reaction, like a gently heard undertone, the two shadowed slats of the fence, quietly adjusting the repetitive patterns within this chromatic field of light and darkness. With visibility and invisibility intricately interwoven, what is finally seen here is both instantly singular, but, with the fence behind, instantly plural; a (Kierkegaardian) repetition that is a repetition that is not quite a repetition—both the one and the other, repetition and difference, simultaneously seen.
Of such repetitions, and with the kind of discrete detail as the shadowed fence (what Foster, when I asked him about it, described to me in an e-mail, quite wonderfully, as the "fence event"), let's now return again directly to Feldman, and even more specifically to his Triadic Memories.
Triadic Memories is a quiet composition made up primarily of meticulously arranged piano patterns, a series of attenuated repetitions that only very gradually adjust and reconfigure themselves upon a kind of delicately woven field of sound, a temporal tapestry of concentrated stillness. Like the beloved Turkish rugs that Feldman later in life collected and drew inspiration from, it is as if these chromatic fields of aural tone have been carefully crafted and cast into thin air, threads of timbre and nuance interlaced and entangling. Familiarly melodic chords are placed alongside gently dissonant ones in a kind of seductive tension, the two apposite textures finally merging in such a manner that we are almost made to forget which is which, both simply present in contiguous arrangement. With our habits of listening deftly loosened, the asymmetrical patterns seem to circle ever more expansively about themselves, tracing Vinteuil-like arabesques upon what Feldman called his "time canvases," reiterating their own sonorous structure before dissipating into echo. The piano's atmospheric resonances decay into deliberately placed silences, absences of sound that act as contrasting but parallel elements to what is heard, a kind of counterpoint to the notes themselves. Indeed, elsewhere Feldman described his use of notated silence as "my substitute for counterpoint. It's nothing against something. The degrees of nothing against something. It's a real thing, it's a breathing thing" (181).
The "breathing" of silence encountered in Triadic Memories seems at times, if listened for carefully, to be something (of nothing) that one might actually hear, registered at least as vividly as any of the silences that John Cage was more famously to present or propose. Through a kind of negative space within the composition, we are positioned to hear more acutely what isn't there, alongside that which is—the sounded notations surrounded by sections of empty score. And accompanying these intervals of silence, Feldman instructed the pianist to perform much of the composition "ppp"—at the lowest possible volume—with the piano at times only faintly heard, seeming to submerge itself entirely beneath its own audibility (calling to mind a photograph filling with fog, over-exposing into an afterimage of absence). Also, within this sustained stillness, or collaborating with it, the pianist is instructed to hold the foot pedal down through the duration of the piece, causing a kind of constant echo to ring through the room, the sedimented sounds entropically lost at the edges of their own acoustic resonance. Or, as the pianist Louis Goldstein describes it, "The pedal, in effect, erases the silences and creates a wash of sound" (72).
Where Cage, seeking silence, was famously to enter a sound-proof anechoic chamber (only to encounter there the sounds of his own functioning body—the internal coursings and rumblings of his own blood, the incessant whirrings and ringings of his nervous system), Feldman presents instead an acoustic space in which listeners may function themselves as the anechoic chamber, situated and sound-proofed to hear aspects of their own hearing in the physical act of listening, their own directed ears as instruments of sensuous reception. The waved nuances of sound, felt materially, move through the narrowing chambers of the ear, tapering off toward their own particled dispersal, lost at the nerve ends, in the spiraling channels of the cochlea. At these taut moments of suspended resonance, Feldman did not intend his audience—as Cage likely would have—to listen for ambient noises within and beyond the concert hall, where "everything is music." But instead, within this sounded vacancy, one may hear a more indeterminate kind of call involving a more ambivalent pleasure, "nothing against something," the one abrading the other, chafing at the imperceptible edges of absence.
Two thirds of the way through Triadic Memories, a particularly arresting passage is suddenly heard. In a section lasting around eight minutes, similarly spaced chords are slowly repeated one after the other. The pianist strikes a patterning of notes, pacing the varied arrangements by raising and lowering the tones, gently accelerating or slowing down the reverberating effect. Feldman himself described this particular section this way:
One chord might be repeated three times, another, seven or eight—
depending on how long I felt it should go on. Quite soon I would
forget the reiterated chord before it. I then reconstructed the entire
section: rearranging its earlier progression and changing the number
of times a particular chord was repeated. This way of working was a
conscious attempt at "formalizing" a disorientation of memory. Chords
are heard repeated without any discernible pattern. In this regularity
(though there are slight gradations of tempo) there is a suggestion that
what we hear is functional and directional, but we soon realize that this
is an illusion; a bit like walking the streets of Berlin—where all the
buildings look alike, even if they're not. (137-138)
Sounding something like a room full of clocks consecutively striking, in this extraordinary section of the composition one has a sense of time both being told, and of time winding down. Indeed, by simultaneously marking and erasing the moment's duration, the varied chords would seem to be thermodynamically dissolving toward their own directionless standstill. And of the "stasis" that Feldman so frequently spoke—his desire to shape structurally through his music a form "both concrete and ephemeral," "frozen, at the same time it's vibrating"—this section comes closest to manifesting just that, making stasis happen.
As its title signals, Triadic Memories was written as a kind of acoustic investigation of memory and, as Feldman described it, "a conscious attempt at 'formalizing' a disorientation of memory." For if, axiomatically, we do not hear what we hear, but what we remember, then perhaps it is only by disorienting memory that we might be made to hear anything at all, to hear something of our own remembrance. And as the music unfolds, finally arriving at the distinctive section of repeated chords, memory and thought are indeed both enlisted and disrupted towards a heightened awareness of hearing and of having heard, a re-membering of evanescent sound. Two different chords durationally separated may be recollected as a kind of inaudible overtone, or afterimage (recalling the faintly seen "fence event" in Foster's hanging bed sheets), a sounded absence that creates "its own type of … equilibrium" (156). In a virtually silent synthesis of the two chords—one past, one present—a memoried triad may be finally, ephemerally felt, bringing to mind those described through Proustian metaphor in which impressions, as Proust wrote, "are experienced … at the present moment and at the same time in the context of a distant moment, so that the past was made to encroach upon the present and I was made to doubt whether I was in the one or the other" (III 904). Sound, and the memory of sound, can be heard collaborating on this flat field of sustained resonance, Feldman's "time canvas," conjuring in its mysterious form, a sounded absence, a durational presence. Like the buildings of Berlin, a crafted illusion is somehow conjured in which sound, and the memory of sound, can be heard collaborating—time as an image is thus briefly apprehended, even if it is not.
The painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote that the "repetition of the same appeal thickens the spiritual atmosphere which is necessary for the maturing of the finest feelings, in the same way as the warm air of a greenhouse is necessary for the ripening of certain fruit" (42). And indeed, at this most explicitly repetitive point of Feldman's piece where the pattern of chords is heard, and its "spiritual atmosphere" thereby thickened (like fruit ripened by warmth), it seems we have been somehow made to hear something of the sound of ourselves sensuously thinking in time, remembering out of time, as thought's own disparate, time-filled sensations have been momentarily contained and arranged, held in moving formation. Thought, not as a linear, systematized arrangement of words—that which had finally so troubled me on the shores of Lake Michigan—(for that kind of thought has been mercifully, if momentarily, suspended), but thought as an affective condition of visceral consciousness, even, dare I say it, as a fleeting state of grace, a passing sensation of memoried sound, an instantaneous recognition, a mere moment—and then it is gone.
In our return now to Foster's photographs, having evoked Kandinsky's "spiritual atmospheres," or spoken of "states of grace" (however fleeting they might prove to be), the bar of expectation has clearly been risen by such lofty language, perhaps unreasonably. Nonetheless, let's see what further associations can be found.
In one of Foster's new color photographs, indeed, one that offers yet another "fence event," we see this time a brown wooden fence gracefully arcing across the entire rectangular photograph, those familiar fences seen on Lake Michigan's beaches in winter to, I believe, control the blowing sand. If looked at closely, there are again in this photograph, of course, repetitions, but here, instead of presenting the repetitions separately, or surrounded by their own boundaries, the photograph has been even more carefully treated, digitally eliminating virtually any divisions within the image so that the fence appears entirely as one interconnected thing, the repeated scene sutured into a single, horizontally extended sight (with the wooden fence itself gracefully shaping like a wave of water). Then, across the entire image, Foster has imposed a deliberate, digitally-printed grid, such that it appears that we are looking through this formally, artificially imposed pattern of lines, as if seeing through one fence, onto another.
While just over the wooden, wavy fence (or fences), discretely, we can make out just a thin band of Lake Michigan in the background where the fence briefly curves down, or rather, three identical narrow bands of a bleached blue (glimpses of the same lake that I, a couple of years back, had tried so hard to see as I stood on its shores). Through the digital grid, over the wooden fence, an isolated view of the lake is revealed—the singular lake now, un-nouned, as a kind of "lake event," a pluralized verb—but only as seen, with our eyes mobilized, through the two layered divisions that must first be gotten through, seen over, in order for one to see at all, and then only partially: the white light reflecting on the distant lake, and then reflecting again—in its repetitions—something of our own reflections upon it.
In fact, such obstructions to seeing seem to be a recurring motif in many of Foster's new photographs, as we are repeatedly made—as with the fences and grid—to look over and through barriers, or onto obstacles and flat surfaces. Or even more explicitly, Foster has made the photographs of the obstructions themselves, as we find ourselves frequently looking at the richly patterned surfaces of wooden walls, concrete walls, brick walls, closed garage doors, piles of concrete blocks, darkened windows, windows with their blinds pulled.
Or even in the numerous photographs of people, the figures are often turned from us, or walking away, as we see them only from behind; or, if they are facing us, hands cover the face, eyes tightly shut (the closed eyes as windows onto … closed eyes), our attention thus drawn to other details playing rhythmically upon that flat surface—the musicated patterning of fingernails, the shimmering beads on a bracelet, the arrangement of wrinkles, folds of the flesh.
Seen as surfaces (while recalling Feldman's own, what he called, "obsession" with "surface," "the subject of my music," desiring as he did to make his music "flat"), such images of Foster's are repetitively presented, as if the repeated obstacles to vision, the rhythmic redundancy of the barriers, have become something of the subject itself—what can't be seen, as what is seen, but lyrically, lastingly so, as the silent scenes repeat themselves again and again and again; surfaces sensuously revealed in all their obstructive substance.
In his most recent, abstract work, Foster develops even further such sensual surfaces, as the images themselves dissipate often entirely into fields of particled light, dissolving form. Recalling again Morton Feldman's working with the sound's "decay… this departing landscape, this expresses where the sound exists in our hearing—leaving us rather than coming toward us," and what he strikingly described as a "music where aural dimension is obliterated" (25), Foster's abstract images might now be seen as similarly departing, decaying into their own digital obliterations. It was Proust who (in my opening epigraph) lamented the apparent barrier that always arose whenever he approached his desired object, describing this obstruction as a "zone of evaporation" that kept him from ever touching the object's surface directly—desire itself interfering with desire's attainment. Significantly, however, Proust was nonetheless to speak of this division as surrounded by "a thin spiritual border," one that was not merely obstructive (as borders are often imagined), but as imbued with numinous implication. There is perhaps something in Foster's most incandescent abstractions that, while losing the readable contours of the observed object, might now be seen as photographs of such a "zone of evaporation," offering an image, not of the unattainable thing itself, but rather, of that "spiritual border" that longingly separates us from it. As printed manifestations of desire's own evaporating impact upon one's seeing, the abstracted photographs now remain as a kind of luminous residue of the eye's occlusive intervention, a further cataracting distillation of image.
Finally, as a last example, in Foster's new series there is yet another photograph involving Lake Michigan, a photographic site to which Foster has repeatedly returned. In an almost perfectly divided composition, we see a muted, gray sky above, and a darker lake below (with some patches of shimmering waves in the extreme foreground). The horizon line itself, splitting the image in half, shines as a distinct band of brilliant light that crosses the entire photograph from left to right.
But, of course, that's not the end of the story. For Foster has stacked three of these identical images on top of each other, literally joining them together at the seam. Digitally linked, the sky of the middle image touches the water of the image above, while the sky of the bottom image, joins with the water above it. Stacked and bound in this manner, the three repeated images form a single vertical image of lake and sky, three lakes and three skies seen as one. But then there's more. For Foster then repeats this vertical repetition horizontally, again and again, compositionally separated, to form triadic stacks of the same triadic image.
This photograph reminds me now of the earlier foggy landscape discussed, offering— minus the reflected trees—a similarly divided scene of water and sky. However, in this photograph, it is as if the fog has finally lifted onto this much larger, greater lake, revealing a clearer, crisper image. And in the photograph's gridded precision, it suggests as well a pictorial parallel to a stack of machine-crafted, stainless steel boxes by Donald Judd, or also Hiroshi Sugimoto's own photographed seascapes, but with Foster here finally developing his image elsewhere, by repeating what in Sugimoto's work only often seems repeated, by actually repeating it—the same scene nine times, or nine scenes once; where Sugimoto collapses geographic space, Foster collapses geometric time. Yet unlike Foster's photograph of the lake with the wavy wooden fence, no shoreline is seen in this last lake image, nor are there any fences to be seen through, no digital grid imposed onto it, for the photograph itself has, as a kind of sculpted, specific object, compositionally become the grid, the flattened barrier through, or upon which, we must look. With no shoreline from which to stand and see—to ground our perceptions—we look, unmoored, directly at the repeated patterns of light, onto the reflecting water, and into the blinding radiance of the nine horizon lines.
But what are we looking at here? What are we seeing? What can we see? For here, the repetitions, in their repetitive excess—nine identical images neatly bound into their patterned formation—appear individually to almost cancel each other out; producing a kind of incantatory dissolution of image, in their uncanny stacking and piling up of repeated imagery: an aporia of surplus sight. Looking here and there, up and down, moving about in time, always seeing the same image repeated (dispersing sight by mobilizing it); everything we see, we remember having seen, as memories mutate seamlessly, inciting a kind of chain reaction—a perceptual/conceptual collision—into memories of themselves remembering; until, looking longer, something finally clicks (like a camera) into momentary position, the eye and mind briefly stall, the language locks, staying still, before an echoing image that, recalling Feldman, is "concrete and ephemeral," "frozen, at the same time it's vibrating"—making stasis happen. And in ceasing to see either singly, or multiply, but simultaneously both, a kind of unfenced event shines, briefly—like that almost burningly radiant horizon line—before my blinded eyes: there, for a mere moment, a passing sensation of memoried sight, an instantaneous recognition—and then it is gone.
With this final photograph, I find myself at the shores of the same Lake Michigan from which, a few years back, I had stood so impatiently gazing out, but from which I was unable then to stay still, to pay attention, to see lastingly, wordlessly, what was before me—my divided eyes, doubled and doubling, reflected repetitions of myself (as an afterimage, as Kierkegaard's "shadow… invisibly present") trying to see myself see. While Foster's photograph, like Feldman's Triadic Memories before, offers here a kind of response, or perhaps even something of a remedy to my restlessness—if I can't stay still and pay attention, then perhaps the image can, staying still for me, and thus offering—multiply, memorably—a kind of impossible sight, a coalescing correspondence of my own dividedness and repetition, by the image's own. As if seeing itself were somehow ordered—stacked and neatly seamed—around its own blind-spot, seeing negatively now, a radiant record of my failure to see—seen—again and again and again.
Works Cited
Cage, John. Silence. Middletown: Wesleyan, 1961.
Feldman, Morton. Give my Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman.
Ed. B.H. Friedman. Cambridge: Exact Change, 2000.Morton Feldman Essays. Ed. Walter Zimmermann. Kerpen: BeginnerPress, 1985.
Frost, Everett C.. "The Note Man and the Word Man" in Mary Bryden (ed), Samuel Beckett and
Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 47-55.
Gizzi, Peter, Ed. "John Cage and Morton Feldman Radio Happenings," in Exact Change Yearbook #1. Boston: Exact Change, 1995. 251-270.
Goldstein, Louis. "Morton Feldman and the Shape of Time," in James R. Heintz and Michael
Saffle (ed), Perspectives on American Music Since 1950. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. 67-79.Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Trans. M. T. H. Sadler. Mineola, NY:
Dover, 1977.Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1954.Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Trans. Marion Faber, with Stephen Lehmann.
Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986.Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. 3 Vols. New York: Random House, 1981.
Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1984.
Click here to visit: The Triadic Memories Photography Project
Click here to visit: The Departing Landscape Project
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.


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(No EMEA FOREX reports on March 30 and April 2)
* Dollar index up slightly after rally
* Euro weakens; traders eye German inflation data
* Dollar headed for 4th consecutive qtr of losses
* Graphic: World FX rates in 2018 tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh
By Tom Finn
LONDON, March 29 (Reuters) - The dollar held on to its gains on Thursday after a big rise in the previous session, but traders said the outlook for the greenback remained negative as it headed for its fourth consecutive quarter of losses.
The euro, which has largely taken its direction from the dollar in recent weeks, fell back slightly to $1.2302.
Global markets were shaken this month when U.S. President Donald Trump moved to impose tariffs on Chinese goods and Beijing threatened similar measures.
But fears of a full-blown trade war have eased on hopes negotiations can bring a compromise, encouraging investors to buy the dollar.
Quarter-end and month-end flows have also boosted the dollar as global asset and fund managers rebalanced portfolios. Data showing fourth-quarter U.S. economic growth slowed less than estimated also supported the greenback.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six other major currencies, was up 0.1 percent at 90.099.
Analysts said this week's jump for the dollar looked overdone, however, and that many of the structural reasons for the U.S. currency's decline - trade and budget deficits and monetary tightening in other parts of the world - remained.
"Is U.S. protectionism good or bad? The market is very undecided about this, but the dollar's bounce was a little bit too bold from the market's perspective," said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of FX strategy at Commerzbank.
German inflation data due out later on Thursday could move the euro but only marginally, said Leuchtmann.
The euro has been weighed down recently by comments from some European Central Bank officials suggesting the ECB is in no hurry to wind back its stimulus, given the spectre of low inflation.
So traders will be looking at German consumer price data for March, due at 1200 GMT.
"Frankly, the data would have to surprise to have a meaningful impact, the market basically has made up its mind about hikes, even if the data comes higher, it doesn't mean the ECB would get more excited or hike any sooner," he said.
Elsewhere, the dollar eased against the yen, losing some momentum after hopes of detente in East Asia provided the spark for its largest daily gain in six months the previous session.
The dollar fell 0.2 percent to 106.63 yen, giving back some gains after surging 1.43 percent on Wednesday, its biggest rise since Sept. 11 of last year.
China said on Wednesday North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearisation, while U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that Kim looked forward to meeting with him.
This has prompted some speculation among traders that a diplomatic breakthrough over North Korea's nuclear programme might be closer at hand than ever before, although the hurdles to a solution remain stiff.
Because of Japan's status as a net creditor nation, the yen tends to be bought on rising geopolitical tensions and vice versa.
Some traders also noted, however, that currency trading so far this week has been driven by flows related to quarter-end, and for many Japanese firms, the financial year end, on March 31.
"There are a lot of noises this week. We feel quarter-end, and financial-year end flows are somehow larger this year than usual," said Bart Wakabayashi, Tokyo Branch Manager of State Street. (Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo and Masayuki Kitano in Singapore; editing by Andrew Roche)

subset: commoncrawl


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Mental health review should be about effectiveness, not cost
AMA President Dr Steve Hambleton has welcomed as "timely" a Federal Government review of mental health services and programs, but has warned it should not be simply a cost-cutting exercise.
The Federal Government has engaged the National Mental Health Commission to undertake a the comprehensive review of all government, non-government and private sector mental health programs and services, and has asked it specifically to identify gaps in the delivery of mental health services, as well as inefficiencies, duplications and excessive red tape.
Announcing the terms of reference for the inquiry, Health Minister Peter Dutton said the Government had commissioned the review as part of its undertaking to ensure the nation had a world-class mental health system.
"To do this, we need to know what really works, and ensure that existing resources in the mental health sector are being targeted as effectively as possible," the Minster said.
However, with the Government on a vigorous hunt for savings across all portfolios, some groups, such as the Australian Greens, have voiced concerns the review's primary purpose will be to cut costs.
Greens mental health spokeswoman Senator Penny Wright said the review was "a clear forerunner" for cuts to the sector.
But Dr Hambleton took a more measured view of the inquiry.
The AMA President said a number of problems with the current configuration and provision of mental health services meant that it was a good time for a thorough review.
"We certainly need to look at what has happened in the last couple of years, particularly in general practice, where there has been a decline in investment in this [mental health] area," he said.
Dr Hambleton said the decision in 2011 to cut the rebate for GP Mental Health Treatment Plans by up to 50 per cent had impeded the ability of GPs to spend sufficient time with patients with mental health problems, and to organise allied health and other support services.
The AMA President said assessing the true state of mental health care was made more complicated by the many varied settings in which it was provided, including in hospitals, through outreach services and in the community, heightening the risk that many patients were "falling through the cracks".
Dr Hambleton said that although it made sense to look at whether current funds were being used to best effect, there was a case to actually increase investment in mental health care provided by primary providers such as GPs in order to prevent mental illnesses advancing to the stage where patients required hospitalisation, had to take time off work or other costly outcomes.
"This cannot be a cost-cutting exercise," the AMA President said. "[Greater] efficiency is ok, cutting red tape is ok, but cutting spending is probably not the right thing to do at this time.
"We can increase our spending on primary care and patient-doctor connection services, which should decrease our health spending overall."
Mental Health Council of Australia Chief Executive Officer Frank Quinlan said the Review was an opportunity to address "significant under-investment" in many areas of mental health in recent years.
"There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the mental health system in Australia is in need of reform," Mr Quinlan said. "The Terms of Reference rightly identify the need to review spending in the sector, to reduce duplication and address the gas in services. Btu we also know that many areas have seen significant under-investment for many years."
Mental Health Commission Chairman Professor Allan Fels said his organisation would complete the Review and report to the Government in late November.
Adrian Rollins


text: Reading List 'Reading List' explores the scope of critical reflection in the contemporary design practice through of a list of essays written by graphic designers in the past two decades. While the writings approach seemingly universal issues like style, ornament or craft, a common trait in all is the acknowledgement of graphic design practice not just as a trade but as a socially significant activity. Graduation project at HfG Offenbach supervised by Prof. Sascha Lobe 01 02 03 04 05


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We need to understand the cultural diversity of India along with its intricate connection with the democratic system of governance, then only we can ensure a sustainable bilateral trade relations.
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) July 30, 2012
Ambassador Isi A. Siddiqui, Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (Seattle), U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (Silicon Valley, CA) and Consul General of India Mr. N. Parthsarathi will be among the many dignitaries attending the US-India Trade Summit, which will be held in Seattle, Washington, on September 27 and 28 at the Seattle Center, with the theme of "Building a Legacy for the Next 50 years". "Vibrant Gujarat 2013 Road show" and other exhibits will be the highlight of this trade summit. High profile trade delegations from the Indian States of Gujarat, Odisha, Karnataka and Assam comprising of ministers, senior govt. officials and business leaders are also expected to participate in this summit.
The Summit is taking place during the Next Fifty, a six month long celebration (April – October) marking the 50th anniversary of the Seattle Center and Seattle's First World Fair (1962-2012). The month of September has been designated as the month for Innovation & Economy. The Chief Minister of Orissa, Mr. Naveen Patnaik has been invited by the organizers to be the chief guest of this trade summit while Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and Union Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh have been invited as the Keynote Speakers.
WASITRAC was established in 2007 as a non-profit advocacy group working for the US-India bilateral trade relations under the honorary chairmanship of Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott, who is also the co-chair of the India Caucus in the US House. WASITRAC has facilitated two trade missions to India under the leadership of US Rep. Jim McDermott and Lt. Governor Brad Owen in 2010 and Port of Seattle CEO Tay Yoshitani in 2011. Port of Seattle signed its first sister-port agreement in India with the Dhamra port, a joint venture between Tata Steel and L&T, in Odisha in 2011.
Washington State has a large and active Asian population representing vast cultural diversity. The State's exports lead US exports to many Asian nations. At the same time India has substantial trade links with these Asians nations as well. Hoping to deepen these trade ties, this two-day summit will have keynote speakers, networking opportunities for business school students, and breakout sessions focusing on key areas of agriculture, bio-tech and medical research, education, clean-tech, infrastructure, logistics, manufacturing, nano technology, pharmaceuticals, real estate and investment, tourism, and renewable energy. Special emphasis will be put on connecting small and mid-size business enterprises here in the U.S. with their counterparts and policy makers in India.
Interestingly, Washington State's total International trade with India appears to be minuscule-- at less than 1 billion. Compare this with China's at $20 billion, a very large share of 20% of the State's total international trade. As per the latest report from the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) India was the United States' 17th largest goods export market and 13th largest supplier of goods imports in 2011. "While China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have already been among the top 10 trading partners of the US (including that of Washington State); With a population of more than 1 billion and being an emerging economy in today's world with a consistent above 8% GDP growth rate for the last five years and a buoyant younger middle class of a size that is equal to the total US population, the total US-India trade could easily be far better and much higher than what we have at present", says Debadutta Dash, the Co-Chair of http://www.wasitrac.org [WASITRAC.
The next wave of economic growth in India will come from the so-called second tier Cities. This is because big cities like Mumbai, Calcutta, New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore etc known to the outside world have taken the first wave of investments and achieved phenomenal growth so much so that there is a need to divert the concentration of growth to smaller cities for a perfect balance of growth, opportunities and an easy access to the basic infrastructure. Their opportunities are understood and in a relatively advanced stage of development. Beyond the 'big cities' lies a far bigger opportunity. The Government of India has identified about twenty second tier cities to work in this direction to achieve the next wave of planned growth of 8 to 9% of GDP for the years ahead.
"Through this trade summit we would like to create a better understanding of the intricate link of the cultural-economic-political structure of India with its democratic governance system", Dash said. "This understanding would be vital for our business students, entrepreneurs and policy makers", he said. The registration for the summit will be complimentary to current students of all business schools in the State of Washington. The registration fees have been kept low and it includes meals during the summit to make it easier for the small and medium business owners.
Details of the information on the summit including early bird registration is available at http://www.NextFiftyIndia.org.


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The Grass Strip Foundation at Berg Aerodrome (9GA2) in Midway, Georgia, will hold its third annual Open House Saturday, Oct. 27.
Owner Steve Berg invites all pilots and aviation enthusiasts to fly in their vintage airplanes or drive in their vintage cars to the open house and "enjoy telling the rest of us how great they are."
Berg adds that local artisans and craftsmen have been invited and are welcome. Please RSVP if you plan to set up a booth space. There is no charge.
Hamburgers and hot dogs will be served.
The Grass Strip Foundation is a non-profit educational and preservation foundation dedicated to vintage, experimental and general aviation aircraft and their preservation. Its goal is to educate the public about the joys, practicalities, and necessities of aircraft in our society, focusing on aviation career possibilities for this and future generations. Tax deductible donations are encouraged.
For information call: 912-884-8666


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Extremely cheap gas powered scooters aren't that terribly hard to find, but you may have do some searching to find a great deal. These are different than their electric and manual kick counterparts. Generally speaking, they are faster and more powerful than the electric version. In addition, you don't need to wait for a battery to charge, you can just fill up the tank and go. I've always called them a weed whacker on wheels. Let's take a look at extremely cheap gas powered scooters.
Amazon Price: $449.99 $429.99 Buy Now
(price as of Jan 7, 2016)
Finding them:
You will find plenty of places to buy cheap gas powered scooters online. There are tons of manufacturers, so competition is quite intense. This helps to keep the costs low for you, the consumer. Here's where you should look for your new ride, for the best possible price.
1.Online auctions: This is one of the best places to get extremely cheap gas powered scooters. You'll find plenty of them on eBay, and other sites. Be sure to take shipping and handling charges into account, so you know you are getting a great deal.
2.Sporting goods stores: There is a little markup on extremely cheap gas powered scooters, so the stores will often have great sales on them. You will want to check out the local fliers, paying special attention to one day sales.
3.Online sellers: There are plenty of sites that specialize in cheap scooters and ride on toys, so you will get plenty of results to sift through on your search. Again, you need to consider shipping charges, or your great deal, may not be.
Comparing them:
Super cheap gas scooters are readily available. Keep in mind that one with the lowest overall price may not actually be the best deal for you. There is no sense in buying something that will not work for you. If you are looking at extremely cheap gas powered scooters, you should compare a few specific things, whether you're looking at Go-Ped, X-treme, or any other maker.
1.Weight capacity: Some of these can only carry riders up to 150 pounds. If you weigh more than this, it may be able to move you around properly. Worse yet, you could bend the frame, making your extremely cheap gas powered scooters useless and unsafe.
2.Engine size: Don't get too extreme here. Many extremely cheap gas powered scooters have 29cc engines. Getting an engine too big can be very dangerous, especially for children.
3.Top speed: People often see the speed of extremely cheap gas powered scooters and get a little discouraged. Many will only go about 15-20 miles per hour. This is much faster than it sounds.
4.Wheels: You want to make sure the extremely cheap gas powered scooter you choose has nice tires or wheels, that can handle the terrain you intend to ride on. Most are made for pavement, but there are some trail and semi rough terrain models out there.
There are some problems to consider with these units, before you make a purchase. Don't get caught without knowing all you can, or you may purchase something you cannot use.
1.Licenses: Some states require a drivers license to use these units. If you aren't old enough, you may not qualify. Check with the laws in your area before you make your purchase.
2.Where to ride: Some areas have banned the use of these units on sidewalks. This makes extremely cheap gas powered scooters harder to ride, due to limited areas. Some won't work well in your yard either, leaving the road the only option. This can be dangerous. A 49cc or 50cc scooter is not a toy.
Amazon Price: $449.00 $429.99 Buy Now
(price as of Jan 7, 2016)


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"She's married, well-educated, trendy and environmentally conscientious. She works full time, is likely sleep deprived and feels that time is her most precious commodity. Meet today's 30-something woman." – Advertising Age. The article goes on to say that women in their 30s don't fit as easily into marketing buckets a baby boomers or male 18-35:
"Sure, they get profiled as mothers or career women, as health statistics or dating singles, but not often just as women of a 30ish age."
Key findings from a Marie Claire survey reported in the article:
- More than half named environmental issues such as global warming and pollution as concerns.
- The relative youth of the 30-something woman allows her to be more casual about health issues, but that doesn't mean they're not on her mind. Balance the health push with the realistic acknowledgment of everyday life and slip-ups for a more empathetic brand image.
- Today's career woman doesn't leave her business acumen at her desk. She researches and shops products before spending any money.
- They are most concerned with their family and their own emotional health–in that order.


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George B. Selden in his first automobile, patented 1895... but marked 1877 because that was the year he made it.
a photo of the first automobile
1886 Benz
1903 Olds Pirate, a one cylinder special race car that held a record for the one mile speed record
1907 sports racer
1906 Stanley
Suposed to be the first limo in America
J. M. Quinby & Company; Builders of aluminum automobile bodies 1909
I noticed the odd sign above the storefront "Automobile Jobbers"
1944 east 138th street ... and that truck bed in the bottom of the photo looks handmade, and put into the rumble seat area... was the neat trick to shift a car classification during fuel rationing during WW2 from car to commercial truck and then it could get more gas more often if I recall correctly.. and this is a 1944 photo
Electric car about 1905, on the charger in the garage
The Czar leaving the racecourse at Krasnoe Selo, in his 40 horse-power Delaunay Belleville in 1909
Above racing at Indy
Above and below, racing at Ormand Beach
Barney Oldfield in the advertising
the trophys from the 1908 Prince Henry tour
1922 advertisement
this advertisement was captioned "his Herreshoff car"
The Pullman car Palmyra
Tenth Avenue and 29th Street, Manhattan. December 23, 1935
found while searching around at http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital


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Recent Posts
Monthly Archives: April 2016
Paint Splash!
If a sugary cake smash isn't your idea of birthday fun why not get messy with a paint splash instead like the one in the video above? Like the cake smash I finish the session with a bubble bath and … Continue reading
Posted in Babies and Children Tagged baby, birthday party idea, Paint splash Leave a comment
Tips For Brides -2 Communication
When I got married I knew how my day would go. I had planned every little detail and had been dreaming of my big day for years. What could possibly go wrong? In my mind's eye I dreamed of getting … Continue reading
Posted in Weddings Tagged bridal preparation, communication, Wedding Leave a comment


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Get P.O.S.H Ministry Get P.O.S.H Ministry
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Mission Statement
Get P.O.S.H Ministry Inc. (GPM Inc.) is a not for profit faith-based charitable organization whose mission is to provide beauty services and well woman education to disenfranchised women and girls in hopes of transforming and empowering their lives.
We provide free and/or low cost hair styling and makeup application, image consulting, shopping assistance,and more to women who are under privileged and in impoverished situations. We have a nonprofit boutique and salon in which our clients have access to in order to receive most services.
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The Journey came to Redding, CA. through a trusted friend of 30 years who said he had given his life to serving Christ through a discipleship process called the Journey. He sent me the Journey book and God took it from there.
We currently have 11 groups of men meeting most days of the week in 4 churches.
Our Vision is to disciple men with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Journey in northern California.


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and it was Hell, the old one, whose gates were opened by the Son of Man
A man who's pure of heart may still transform when the autumn moon burns, and I'm not calling us thieves or ghosts or liars, but, oh, for the grace of God, go on! If the whole world is crashing down on you, fall! To fall, to fall, to fall through space, out of our minds!
(And I hold infinity by the balls; sixty minutes, and eternity lies dying, dying, dead. As the swell peaks, so, too, the wave passes, so, too, the wave falls.)


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AdultsCapstone Family Center supports family and community life by providing services that strengthen positive parenting. A volunteer with a flair for organization is invited to work in the Family Learning Center to inventory items, including toys and games, videos and music in order to make those materials more accessible to staff and client families. If you enjoy that kind of challenge and would like to name your own schedule between 9 and 5 on any weekday, contact the Volunteer Center. This is a short-term assignment.
- The We Can Ride 4-H Club's mission is to enhance the lives of disabled youth in Berrien County through educational activities related to horses. The actual riding season for youngsters is from May 10 to Aug. 19 on Wednesdays beginning at 5:30 p.m. north of Buchanan on Red Bud Trail, and volunteers are encouraged to join in the fun. Experience with horses is welcome but not necessary; some volunteers help with registration and other duties. For more information, call the Volunteer Center.
- Harbor Habitat For Humanity wants you to imagine what it would be like if your children did not have a yard to play in -- have never had a place they could really call "home." You can do something about that by volunteering to help build low-cost homes for families in need. Construction supervisors and skilled volunteers will help train you. Construction days will begin on April 25 and will continue every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday until done. If you can work one shift on one day a week, your support would be welcomed. To connect, call the Volunteer Center.
- Meals on Wheels of Niles-Buchanan welcomes volunteer drivers willing to deliver meals to clients' homes once a month or more often. This is an ideal project for two friends or a couple with their own transportation who would pick up the meals at Lakeland Hospital in Niles and deliver them to addresses in the area. Hours would be from about 10:45 a.m. to noon on any weekday of the volunteer's choice. To connect, call the Volunteer Center.
- The Berrien County Chapter of the American Red Cross reports that Berrien County residents use more blood products than they donate. The next blood drive will be coming to your area soon: Today -- Benton Harbor High School, 870 Colfax, 8:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. Wednesday -- American Red Cross, 303 Riverview Drive, Benton Harbor, 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Friday -- River Valley High School, 15480 Three Oaks Road, Three Oaks, 8 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Saturday -- St. John Church of Christ, 200 W. Buffalo, New Buffalo, 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Adults and youthSouth Haven Area Hospice provides comprehensive supportive palliative care to terminally ill people and their families through personalized services. Volunteers age 16 and older are invited to become office volunteers or patient care volunteers. Hours are very flexible and a 20-hour training series is required. If you would like to assist in this very important, life-affirming work, please connect with the Volunteer Center.
FamiliesHelping Hands of Cass County in Cassopolis provides county residents with food, clothing, medicine and medical transportation when they have an emergency need. Volunteer opportunities include clerical work, maintenance, stocking shelves and working on special events. If your family would like to get involved, call the Volunteer Center for details.
YouthWould you like to be involved in a group in which you and other youth get to be the decision makers? Become a member of Community Alliance Against Substance Abuse Youth Advisory Council in Berrien County. Groups will be established throughout the county to provide an opportunity for students to plan and participate in activities and events that have the potential to affect the entire community. Here is an opportunity to build your college application or job resume. To connect, call the Volunteer Center.
- Kids' Nights Out are coming up soon at the YMCA Niles-Buchanan Family Center. Events take place from 5 to 9 p.m. on April 29, May 13 and May 27. Volunteers work with elementary and middle schoolers on projects and activities. Training for volunteers will be provided by staff. To connect, call the Volunteer Center.


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For Osei Kwaku there are 17 on Yasni with different names.
Among the most common last names on Yasni Osei Kwaku is on position 4674.
"Osei" is the name given to some of the kings of the powerful Ashanti Empire/Kingdom in Ghana during the beginning of the 16th century. We have Ashanti kings like King Osei Kofi Tutu I(a co-founder of the Ashanti Empire in Ghana), King Osei Bonsu, King Osei Kwadwo and King Kwame Panyin. The Ashanti Empire was formed in 1701 and King Osei Tutu was crowned "Asantehene"(King of Ashanti) and sat on a Golden Stool, the symbol of the Ashanti Empire and people. The name "Osei" therefore is a royal name which means "noble" or "honourable".
(Sent from: Nana Ohenese Osei-Bempong)
There is no meaning available yet for "Kwaku".
Send in a meaning!


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Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Studio Edition
Studio Edition - Official Concert Poster for the April 17, 2014 Bruce Springsteen show at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN.
Signed and Numbered Edition - poster edition signed by Artist not by Band or Bruce.
This poster was produced by hand in the Print Mafia studio.
Size: 16" x 20"
Material: Soft White 100# Finch Index Stock
Colors: 3
©2019 Print Mafia


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by swhitlow » Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:40 am
by sorin » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:51 pm
swhitlow wrote:it ends up giving me the entire directory structure instead of just the "revised" files. I would like the option of either.
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Natural resources reference maps
King County GIS Center Map Hub: environment and natural resources maps
Collection of published maps that go back years.
Cartographic resource maps of King County
This page provides base and thematic maps that King County Dept of Natural Resources and Parks uses in its work. We save digital copies to share with county residents, businesses, government agencies, schools and non-profit organizations to make the full use of our existing maps. These maps are provided in Adobe Acrobat format.
Many of the maps available on this page are complex and require generous download times. We've provided the file sizes and expected download times in the map descriptions to help decide what to download. Here is one of the newest maps on our cartographic maps page:
King County noxious weed distribution maps
Maps depict known locations of weed infestations for noxious weed species in King County.
Snoqualmie Watershed riparian photos
View aerial photographs covering individual stream reaches along the Snoqualmie River and its tributaries.
Historic and recent aerial photographs
Aerial photos from the 1930's, 1970's, and 1990's illustrating growth of several areas in King County including Bellevue near Meydenbauer Bay, around Cottage Lake near Woodinville, Maplewood near Renton, and Lake Meridian in Kent.
Groundwater interactive map
Zoom in to view the full set of GIS layers including well locations, groundwater sampling sites, wellhead protection areas, water services areas, property boundaries and aerial imagery among other things.
King County geographic information system
View and query maps and data online using iMAP map portal. order a DVD of King County data, or find online descriptions and documentation for King County GIS data in the Spatial Data Catalog. The group also offers a King County, Washington GIS training program.
King County watersheds map
This page is a geographic portal to King County information by drainage area. Find out what natural resource information we have and what's going on where you live.
Other map & aerial photo resources
External pages where you can view, download, and order maps and aerial photos of King County.
- University of Washington libraries
Map Collection and Cartographic Information Services;
- Microsoft Bing Search maps
- Google maps
- MapMart
Order digital maps and data, paper USGS maps, aerial photos, software, etc.; USGS partner;
- Metsker Maps
Massive map selection focusing on the Northwest;
- Washington coastal atlas by Washington State Dept. of Ecology (external link). View shoreline aerial photos of every stretch of shoreline in the state and overlay a variety of features such as biological and habitat, physical, and regulated features and shoreline modifications.
- Shoreline aerial photos by Washington State Dept of Ecology (external link). Oblique aerial photos of every stretch of saltwater shoreline in the state.
- CRC Press - environmental science, GIS, mapping
Major studies and publications related to geographic technologies and techniques.
Related information
- King County GIS Center
- King County watersheds map
- iMAP - map portal
- Dept. of Development and Environmental Services reference maps
- Publications
- Environmental resources for teachers and students
Related agencies
News and announcements
Dec. 20, 2011
King County GIS Center marks a decade of information, education, revenue generation
Jan. 26, 2010
New partnership brings GIS training, education center to King County
King County links with Urban and Regional Information Systems Association
Fall 2004
(External Link, ArcNews)
King County, Washington, Maps Conservation Priorities With GIS
Protecting Fish and Forests


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Renaissance Hotels Pleasant Prairie hotels are listed below. Search for cheap and discount Renaissance Hotels hotel prices in Pleasant Prairie, WI for your family, individual or group travels. We list the best Renaissance Hotels Pleasant Prairie hotels & lodging so you can review the Pleasant Prairie Renaissance Hotels hotel list below to find the perfect place.
Our search will list Pleasant Prairie, WI hotels & motels that are comparable to the quality of Renaissance Hotels.Need a group/meeting discount? Get quotes from hotels in Pleasant Prairie WI
How should we direct your call?


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Ombudsman resources
Download our printable resources to share with your friends, family, and colleagues to introduce them to the Miss April Ombudsman's Office.
Our work
Our brochure outlines our ombudsman principles, how we do our work, and ways to reach us.
Information sheet
This one-pager can be used as a handout to share about the Miss April Ombudsman's Office.
Brochure insert
This double-sided brochure insert includes information on how we can assist and connect with our stakeholders.
Contact card
This double-sided handout describes how we approach our work and the tools we use to assist people who contact us for assistance.


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Drive Like a Pro At Corvette Driving Schools
If you're interested in getting the most out of your high-performance Corvette, you need to be able to drive at a high-performance level. There are two Corvette driving schools that offer top of the line instruction and practice. These schools offer drivers the chance to advance their driving technique and get professional racing instruction. Also, you get to drive fast cars on a course that is specially designed for them. You can test the car as well as your own skills, have a little fun, or use it as a stepping stone to begin your career in racing. There are two main instruction programs to choose from.
Ron Fellows Driving School
Ron Fellows Driving School is one of the high performance Corvette driving schools with lots to offer. Ron Fellows is an experienced racer who is known for his wins on the track as well as his time on the road with Corvettes. In 2007, Chevrolet even introduced a special edition Corvette in his honor. The school was designed by Ron, and uses his knowledge in a way that gives student drivers a leap forward in their studies.
There are several programs to choose from; most are two or three day events. Whatever program you choose, the school makes it a point to offer a quality educational program, while making it exciting and adventure filled. Once you complete the car control exercises, you will drive some of the newest and fastest Corvettes available. Each car is equipped with two way radios so that you have access to instructors, even while you're on the course. There are two tracks, each with over two miles of turns, straights, corners, and elevation changes.
Registering is easy. 2011 prices start at around $2,000. Ron Fellows Driving School is associated with Spring Mountain Resort and Country Club, so there are plenty of amenities for your family to enjoy while you're "hard at work" out on the track.
Bondurant School
Bondurant School of High Performance Driving is a driving school developed by Bob Bondurant, a professional driving instructor. Bob has raced all types of cars, developed his technique, and finally built a driver training facility in Phoenix.
The Bondurant School is a 60 acre facility with a fleet of 200 cars, specially designed for training. You can choose from two types of Corvettes, the ZO6 and the Z51. There are four track layouts each with its own challenges, for beginners as well as professional drivers. They offer programs for drivers of all ages and all skill levels, many of which require the instructor to be in the car during training. Most of their courses take one or two days to complete, although they do offer 4 and 5 hour challenges and laps for those who just want a little taste of driving on the track. Those who complete certain courses may be eligible to race in the Championship Race Series.
Choosing a School
Choosing one of these Corvette driving schools is not easy. Both are quality schools with a quality driving program. Consider the location, program styles, and track layout to determine which one is best for you. Their pricing is competitive, but their techniques are different. Study the men behind the program, Ron Fellows and Bob Bondurant, and determine whose driving techniques you prefer. Either way, you won't ever want to drive the speed limit again!


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19AF – Mada
24 AF – Dragon King Tomb
The circle arrive at a massive ruin, a big circular wall surrounds it. Inside are tall towers and ziaggarouts. It is clear that nothing was built by human hands, as there are no right angles. Aztec style carvings cover most surfaces.
The circle enter the ruin via a large hole in the wall, as they move inwards they spot a large Dragon King come out of a ruined building and stalk towards them. Once it is in shouting distance it stops and lets out a cry and Old Realm. (Sermon of Elemental Ruination). All who can understand the shout, the dragon king, Dhany, Fierce Orchid, Kyros, and the elements themselves, become enraged.
Kyros – shoots,
Orchid steps forward and call the question, throwing it at the dragon king
Melati tries to use flames on the creature
Dhany leaps forward and punches the dragon,
Mahavir leaps forward and hits the dragon
Kyros shots with bow, not effectivly
Dhany goes to crash dragon, he usccessds in hittig her instead, stealing initiative
Kyros fires a powerful shot at the dragon, burying the arrow to the fletchings in the dk
Mahavir brings the dragon king down
The blood lust still filling her head, Fierce Orchid turns on Melati, and strikes, winding the Eclipse. Dhany, her head also filled with blood lust comes to help. Melati manages to calm the three enough through her powers of persuasion that the blood list subsides. Frustrated by the fight Fierce Orchid slams The Question into the ground beside Melati, before making it vanish and stalking off to see to the dragon king.
Orchid, Dhany & Mahavir drag the dragon kings body into shelter, Fierce Orchid checks the injuries and notes that they are healing far rapidly than even a Solars would. Even the arrow that embedded itself seemed to have only caused superficial damage.
After an hour or so the dragon king wakes up clearly still burning with anger. Dhany tries to talk to the dragon king, apologising for any transgressions the solar's have done. But there is not much the circle can do a to calm his anger. He is angry at all the lost dragon king souls, at the loss of their empire, at how they were used by the Solars and the Unconquered Sun.
Teclotoa has intimacies to – Solars & the Unconquired sun (Hate) Defining, The Destruction of his ancient & noble civilization (fury) defining
Dhany uses social to try and reduce his hatred of Solars, explaining that the Circle wish to help the dragon kings. To awaken those that they find and restore the empire. Pointing out that he can either spend his life moping in these ruins or help them. They mention they know of ruins further south in the wyld that they intend to visit.
He asks if it is Shakanzer. The circle don't know, but it seems possible. Teclotoa says he will accompany them, to make sure they don't do anything untoward with the DK tech.
(i seem to be missing bits at the end here? I thought I'd written stuff but it vanished? )