If you haven’t seen this video from The Sultan’s Elephant, check it out. It’s a performance by Royal Deluxe, a French performance troop that travels around blowing people’s minds with their complex giant puppets.

I think this was filmed when the troop performed in London in 2006. Wikipedia has fun descriptions of their performances.

More puppets

Sanna Annukka is a Finnish-British illustrator whose work combines the curviness and nature imagery of art nouveau with the precise repetition and clean edges of computer art.

Some of her images seem to be modeled on Hilda Flodin’s ornaments for the Pohjola building in Helsinki. She has also cited the Kalevala as an important influence on her work.

Looking at her web site, I was particularly impressed with her album cover designs, some of the best-looking record packaging I’ve ever seen.

There are more wonderful examples of her illustrations on her web site.

More illustration

It’s interesting to read the local papers when you’re traveling. When we were driving up the west coast a few days ago, the front page story in the local papers was the salmon disaster. The number of salmon off the coast of northern California, Oregon, and southern Washington, is so low this year that the governors of these states have applied for disaster relief for coastal fishing communities. The plummeting populations have been linked to overuse of coastal river water for irrigation as well as deterioration of ocean habitat.

This year’s failure stems from the sudden collapse of California’s Sacramento River Chinook salmon run. That’s being blamed in part on a gauntlet of irrigation pumps that young fish have to swim past in the Sacramento Delta plus starvation conditions once they reach the ocean.

KPIX San Francisco

I’ve often heard tips on how to improve the sustainability of your seafood eating habits, but because of the salmon disaster, I was in a particularly receptive mood when KUOW’s Weekday show focused on seafood and the Puget Sound habitat. With the price of salmon expected to go above 30 dollars a pound, and the prospect of a complete collapse of salmon populations, I think I’ve finally got it through my thick head: lay off the salmon.

Taras Grescoe, the author of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, was the guest on the program, and he recommends trying some jellyfish. Unlike large fish species, the jellyfish population has increased to problematic levels with the disappearance of cod and other fish that feed on them. So I looked around a bit, and found a great recipe on The Melting Wok. I’ve never had jelly fish before, but this looks delicious. I’ll try it some time soon and let you know how it tastes.

Here’s audio from the interview:

Isn’t this the cutest little top you ever saw? It’s from College Knits for Men and Women, published in 1958.

I wonder if I could make the collar look as tidy as it does in this picture. Here’s the pattern, if you’d like to try. I’ve included the pattern for the kneesocks as well.

Here are the last photos of our wonderful western U.S. road trip adventure (sigh).

Click the image for more pictures of California and Oregon

More pictures from our travels

Bread and Roses

by James Oppenheim

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

-1911

This poem, written by James Oppenheim to celebrate the movement for women’s rights and published in American Magazine in 1911, is closely associated with the Lawrence textile mill strike of 1912. During the strike, which was in protest of a reduction in pay, the women mill workers carried signs that quoted the poem, reading “We want bread, and roses, too”. The photo above was taken during the strike.

Bread and Roses was set to music by Mimi Fariña in the 1970s, and has become an anthem for labor rights, and especially the rights of working women, in the United States and elsewhere.

Here is a recording of the song by Judy Collins.

More poetry

The great Eddy Arnold, by some accounts the most successful country musician of all time, has died. Here is my favorite of his many lovely songs, Cattle Call, first recorded in 1945.

This video is from a 1996 television performance, when Arnold was 78 years old. Courtesy of CutterCovina, an excellent channel with a wonderfully eclectic mix of music videos.

I recommend you watch long enough to see their recommendations for cat hobbies and cat discipline.

Video courtesy of klusmanp

My Thanksgiving post about Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms has proven very popular. Here is The Golden Rule, another of his political paintings.

Sign the petition at condimustgo.com