Tag Archives: portugal

Post'd (cards + letters)

Sunken Jumbo, former Skyway, Portugal trams & “installations” + tender missives

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Thank you to all the correspondents club

Current postcards hanging on the “string of honor” – (also stereo speaker cable) filled up so needs to be archived into dossier soon / It’s an incredibly pleasurable experience curating and archiving but also just receiving and enjoying.

~~

Amongst postcards rec’d:

This one of – now mysteriously towed to open water and sunk – legendary floating restaurant “Jumbo” in Hong Kong.

I wonder if the sender knows of the important life lessons I learned at this very place (when it was floating of course)? #trust #crash

Since I’m here:

A postcard received from Gifu, Japan depicting a drive-in theater in Vernon, BC, Canada (with notes on the back with which movies were viewed there in decades past)

i still don’t understand why drive-in movies don’t persist

The name “Skyway” reminds me of a wonderful song by The Replacements

~~

A beautiful card and letter with poetic flourish and a stunning Portugal street-car / tram, in reflection.

What a treasure! What a treasure from the photo to the poetry to the stamps to the cancellation.

Came from an obvious sweet soul – another Artist dealing with the same absurd medical conundrum as me and millions other #MECFS

We connected through art (I won his collage in a fundraiser auction) and have sparked a correspondence – using Portuguese and English via machine translation – to share encouragement, grief, inspiration, frustration and of course, creativity across oceans and continents.

~~

Mailed a bundle of six postcards to Quebec, Utah, BC, New Jersey, Virginia Beach something something.

Somehow I didn’t take a photo so you’re going to have to believe me.

Continue reading Sunken Jumbo, former Skyway, Portugal trams & “installations” + tender missives →
Healing Ramble

Healing: hospital day with doo-wop, muffin, and a rock

At a café awaiting hospital appointment, scribbling postcards

// they’re playing doo-wop music which reminds me so much of dear dead Dad. I know all of these songs by heart even though I haven’t really listened since via 8-track in a Mercury station wagon driving to Utah in 1970s

{Visual imprint seems to get all the “obvious attention” but really it smells and sounds that take you right back to a place in time at whiplash speed}

Flowers stolen from kissaten (but I confessed to my crimes)

Dr says “shut it down, big time, you need rest, a lot of rest, all of it”

The above is determined by: physical examination on various ummm “nexus points” on my body // I’ve been running on adrenaline and fumes for a while (there were some reasons I had to shift out of second gear) and took a toll on my body.

My illness is a neurological virus situation so activity plus stress plus other attributes “flare up” and cause neurological physiological crashes which feels like the worst flu and the worst hangover and the worst Jetlag all at once.

Continue reading Healing: hospital day with doo-wop, muffin, and a rock →
Post'd (cards + letters)

Post’d: tram in reflection, rec’d from Portugal

This photo is positively bristling with metaphor

A beautiful card and letter with poetic flourish and a stunning Portugal street car in reflection.

Came from an obvious sweet soul, another Artist dealing with the same absurd medical conundrum as me and millions other #MECFS

We connected through art (I won his collage in a fundraiser auction) and have sparked a correspondence, using Portuguese and English to share encouragement, grief, inspiration, frustration and of course, creativity across oceans and continents.

Everything is a detail and every detail matters equally

What a treasure! What a treasure from the photo to the poetry to the stamps to the cancellation // swoon

Are no Stranger

Poem: ‘Served my Heart’ #draft

Served my heart

Suppose its petty
And surely inelegant
but I’ll spill it anyhow
As i recollect

“I still think of all the stuff 
I suddenly gave away
When I I though I will die”

All the paintings I sent away
Hoping to be remembered 
My hand or another held 
The brush and decision

Thought would bring
Safety net and affection
And watchful eye on escape 
A photo shows up sometimes
In a flashback and fleeting
Glance

Fireworks or factories 
On a Spanish coast, a grotto
Fig de Foz or Gandhi beach park

Lions gate in a windstorm 
Pretending i was Varley 
Taking late night ferry
Over between drunken tug boat races

All gone but for the snaps
I try to make anew
But hand only knows how
To forget and the paint
Goes on in errant blobs
Maintaining current mood

##
Painting: Tom Thompson
Post'd (cards + letters)

Post’d: well-franked from Wales, Portugal and Gifu + India returned

Image

Quite an assortment in the Post box yesterday:

that right there is a beautiful quartet

1) postcard of painting of a postbox from Wales with a commemorative Queen Elizabeth 2 Memorial franking & 3 language Air Mail seal

2) postcard from a dear correspondent in Gifu who’s postmaster always does a fantastic cancellation stamp (subject matter: motels around the world)

3) big envelope with collage art from Portugal with a fantastic oversize 4£ portfolio style stamp

4) a postcard i mailed to India that sadly, was returned because “mail to this region is not currently possible“ – keeping it on standby in the meanwhile

Post'd (cards + letters)

Post’d: handmade art postcards, various

Gallery

Post'd: art postcards, handmade
Post’d: art postcards, handmade – Gravelly Beach

These postcards are made from printed photos of my original art pieces, glued to heavy-gauge watercolour paper and then mailed off to elsewhere. Photographed before depositing into postbox. This is all.

Post'd: art postcards, handmade
Post’d: art postcards, handmade – Granada laneway

Continue reading Post’d: handmade art postcards, various →

Postcards fr. Gravelly Beach, Remembering Remembrance

Remembrance Day with Vasco’s Bones – Postcard #63

Audio 5 Comments

Remembrance Day with Vasco's Bones

From an olden church and (otherwise vacant) cenotaph at Fort Cochin, Kerala, India, Dave O – acknowledging an extended medical and death related hiatus – discusses the local history of colonization by Portuguese explorers, Dutch traders, then British Raj in the context of the colonization leading to exploitation, conscription and war with no meaning to local populace.

Plus the meaning of reparations and the conflict of peaceful resistance – evidenced my Mahatma Gandhi beach a stone’s throw away – contrasted with continued wars throughout the world, shadowed by disposable tourism, economic and racial caste systems.

Recorded Nov. 11, 2016, Released 11:11 Nov. 11, 2017

Gather Round for Remembrance Day with Vasco’s Bones – Postcard #63  (37:11, .mp3, 192k, 58MB, stereo)

Also of note:

Vasco da Gama’s bones, black knee-high socks, French generational losses, siege of Leningrad, Churchill’s mishaps, lost human potential of engineers, poets and lovers, MacArthur’s folly, Australia’s vulnerability, the emergence of regions over nation-states, Brexit for British Columbia + Cascadia, Catalonia and Scottish successions, work of raising a child, trappings of hubris, death by disease and guns, aggressive use of intelligence, forethought and diplomacy, and unfiltered view of sacrifice and life.

Cover art photo: By Dave Olson at Fort Cochin, taken by Lomo Sardine can camera with expired B&W film.

Cannabis, Annotated

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies #report

“judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success”

[Note: original link stale, re-posted with respect from Internet Archive for posterity]

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies

by Glenn Greenwald

 
 

On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

Continue reading Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies #report →