Let’s enjoy letters, postcards and dossiers in all their inky messy deliberate goodness – made with affection
Anchors aweigh! Another big stack into the postal wormhole / dispatch includes: Suez canal panoramas, evidence of being lost at sea (intentionally), a few new Gravelly Beach postcards, and *classic* Nepal post box. Oh yes, please note the 1¥ postal teddy bear stamps.
Special assistance from my diligent co-conspirator in the stroller who is the neighborhood rockstar. Everyone from the grandmas to the crossing guards to the elementary school kids to Shinogize PO staff want to say hello (and pinch those cheeks 😉).
Arts and crafts update from the Kura barn withrecent dossiers of various mixed media projects including: Suez Canal panoramas, more Kerala India spy photos & sherbet-coloured houses in oil pastels, poetry & travelogues on hotel stationæry, and the circular story of a postcard series from Cascadia, also a fun-gible Shiba Eno stamp.
I enjoy building panorama views especially when space and time is compressed, warped and otherwise manipulated and bent – whether by scissors and glue, my olden panorama film camera(s) – both 35mm and APS, or the fancy feature on the common pocket robot cameras (as in the case of this series).
Anyhow, as such, i made some panoramas views in the Suez Canal – to go along with Suez Canal Dossier and Musings – which make for pleasing immersive views. Click to embiggen.
Consider this bundle for your amusement and/or remixing – some showing magnificent desolation of desert, others town on the banks, and other catching ships and the accruements on the vessel on which i transited.
PS One or two of these may be cropped rather than panorama as i used a load for header images on this web archive and can’t quite remember what and which so carry on accordingly.
PS my classic Fuji Panorama 35mm camera, bought from close-out bin at TOPOS dept store in Tottori Japan, 1993 for ¥3000 (still have receipt) Alas the winder broke (salt-water damage in Guam) but still have the artifact.
Set of 7 hand-finished, numbered prints of oil paintings on Japanese postcard paper featuring scenes from the very end of the Puget Sound, WA (Cascadia). Ah! the rousing end of the sea, swirling skies, towering trees, driftwood logs, and flowers just for you.
Printed on Japanese postcard stock, hand finished and decorated with affection
A decade and half in the making, the backstory is: “Gravelly Beach” was a home for a while and inspired these paintings, then related poems, which then sparked a podcast of poetry, then the paintings became actual postcards. And here we are, ready to send to you. $28USD includes custom mailing anywhere.
Queen Mary ahead in the mist – the ships make caravans with cruisers / liners in front of containers and fuelers
+ Suez Transit Dossier and Musings +
If i was crafty and timely, woulda shared these snaps a few weeks when Ever Given was blocking up the flow of the Suez Canal (yeah you saw this…) i had/have a lot to say about it all and well, lot of more important things to do (nursery school!) so just didn’t get to it, but today is now, so:
up early to note the transit – takes most of a day to work through / and yes the desert is chilly
Quick annotations:
Suez isn’t “squared off” with tidy concrete walls and locks
Was dug mostly by hand/buckets
Ships assemble caravans at either end and go very slow
Winds are weird (really) which makes mishaps not shocking and coordination important.
Don’t start with the Egyptian pilots!
Let’s begin our transit in the “staging area”… (note captions and annotations)
Ships assemble at anchor in Gulf Suez at tip of Red Sea (see also Gulf of Aqaba) and then are organized into caravans / quite enjoyed the sound the anchor chain dropping and reeling back up
Local Traffic amongst the behemoths
Importantly, the canal is active with local ferries darting back and forth between lumbering giants. The sides are so close you can wave to folks (of course i did) and the ships in-front/behind are also so close and don’t have brakes.
Ferries time departures to slip between the ships, looking like likely collisions and almost comical variations in scaleFerry loading up (i think East Qantara Ferryboat or the West Qantara Ferry – regardless, wave hello (they did)
+ Let’s go for a walk and talk with a Story in Mind +
Hey whatta fun conversation! Riffing about creative projects from 1970s to current days and how all the threads connect together in the most unexpected ways. I.e.: fanzines, chapbooks, paintings, mustaches, Ayurveda, Dead tour, grain barns of mystery, goat farms, hemp #theusual
From Moss Whelan / writer, papermaker, renegade & podmaker: “Back in the swing—talking with {Dave Olson} about writing, art, and health”
After my dad Lorne H Olson passed and we sorted through his papers, I took custody of a few various pieces of paper ephemera to document and curate as is my custom.
I’ve share a few bits and pieces from his life and next up (since today in anniversary of opening) is his passport for Expo 86, the worlds fair that was a *big deal* in Vancouver.
As it goes, I have kind of mixed feelings and memories about this as my parents had recently separated, I ended up in Utah with Mom but got a Volkswagen bus and returned for a summer of hijinks with my pals.
I recall two of my younger brothers had season passes and more visits for sure (perhaps they’ll chime in), and also recall that with my older brother, we had been at inaugural concerts the fancy new domed BC Place (Bowie, Gabriel, Tubes + Guess Who at a BC Lions game) – I had adventures skateboarding around the new stadium, rode the Skytrain (ALRT) from New West (before Surrey extension, rambled around geodesic dome Science world… {From when I was about 12-3 in Whalley, I started skipping school and heading downtown to spend my paper route money on records at Odyssey Imports, Collector’s RPM and other record shops on Seymour and Granvilles St. what not… But I digress…}
Oh and here’s Tintin on the Moon sticker from Belgian pavilion on the aforementioned beloved VW bus. I loved transportation, geography and wanted to “go everywhere, gather stories and share with pals” which is what i’ve done since then #expo86
Tintin, Belgian Pavilion Expo 86 Sticker / in 1974 VW Bus “Earthship” in Granny’s backyard in Logan UT
Note: i also have the corresponding poster – both a tattered original and a quality framed version thanks to JMV (photos may appear elsewhere in this archive).
snippet of poetry by me (Dave Olson) for illustrative & amusement purposes
“A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed–and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! “
Sent to a friend who was feeling confused about how to get started archiving and documenting one’s own creative life ~ shared here for edification – sorta for business-y types i suppose
In brief: Gotta just start… choose the things which are important to you and interesting about you, but make this easy by “meta documenting” your documentation.
what may look like *too much* and clutter-y is really a delightful afternoon or 3 of discovering and contextualizing your projects and life
Ergo: Regarding personal archeology… Rather than feeling sh!tty, start by doing the *easy things* to chronicle the things you’ve pulled off this last bunch of years.
i.e.
List of all the speaking engagements you’ve done
List of all the events you planned/ wrangled/ coordinated/ hosted
List of speaking gigs you rocked
List of all the media, tv appearances/ news write-ups List of all the publications/articles you are in or wrote etc
List of all the jobs/positions you held
Then you can start to chronicle/ archive the particular artifacts from each of the above as available.
You might fall into a very nice rhythm – practical meditation in a way.
Turn off the TV, put on the music and space out with yourself and you’re fascinating history.
These kinds of things are good mental exercise but also I put forth somehow “important” and future *you* will be grateful for present day *you* for doing so.
Of course some examples at my website #NotAPlug Let me know if you require further encouragement or advice.
My dear angels / happy birthday April 28 to Ryoko from hubbo DaveO and our Ichiro-kun
Happy Birthday Ryoko, a remarkable:
Arborist
Gardener
Singer
Momma
Tea ceremony practitioner
Small business owner/ entrepreneur
Painter / illustrator
Landscape designer
Coffee & café enthusiast
Kei-truck driver
Puppet maker
Piano (etc) player
More more more
She’s *always* ready for an outing, a laugh, a song, a soak, a snack, a walk – *always* stops to smell the flowers, document the trees and inspect the leaves.
And always ready to help out someone who’s having a tough time and needs a little support, a gift, visit, card, or compliment.
Switches between classic kimono, jazz café cocktail dress, rugged work wear, and cute pajamas like no big deal. Swooooon.
Always calm, strong & thoughtful >> And *somehow* despite always seeming to be running behind, always perfect timing.
And (importantly)… the sweetest, most supportive & patient, most full-of-sunshine wife a boy could ever hope for.
Smitten, endlessly.
Let’s enjoy the usual days!!
Love your lucky hubbo Daveo & our Ichiro-kun
Fancy black shoes on a muddy dirt path from the nursery school – love everything about this snap
After dropping a little dude off at nursery school this morning, rolled into the local post office (Shinogoze) with a big old Santa sack full of postcards, cards, letters, packages of various shapes, sizes and weights.
The diligent workers gamely accommodate my desire for awesome stamps (not seals) though they are surprised when I say I don’t mind paying a little bit extra when the stamp amounts and the weights/size don’t exactly match up.
They double check everything with calculators and rulers in beautiful analog fashion, then lay out the stamps on each letter and attach them professionally despite the fact that my big squiggly fountain pen writing leaves almost no space on the envelope for the multiple stamps. But they *get me* and know that I send these with affection, possibly to you.
Now I wait and some random afternoon I’ll get little messages of (hopefully) delight and amusement from adored ones near and far (mostly far) echo back.
Yes its magnificent, made in UK and available in Japan, about ¥79,000 for this extra large, extra secure model
PS (above) Some nearby folks have a really sweet post box at their house. Tempted to be the “curious foreign guy“ and knock on the door and ask where they purchased it. Also note mounted on a brick base. Clearly for professionals (like us).
mixed-media art library, global diary, project dossier and whole life documentation
