Philately

Got the package mom! That's an expanse of expanses there on the box, at first I thought I saw palm trees in them which made me feel unseasonably sultry. For a man whose name means beer town, Beirstadt was very dedicated to his art, to celebrating American expanses and understanding indigenous people, even showing concern for the disappearing Buffalo.

Skipping to China: I recently read about a group of Taoist rebels of 17 C.E. named the Red Eyebrows, and their supporter, a woman named Mother Lu, who pooled her resources in support of a peasant revolt after her son was murdered by government agents for refusing to collect taxes. Part of her powers of persuasion lay in the beer hall she ran. I came across all of this while pursuing a line of thought inspired by John Lindeman when he mentioned a painting called the Vinegar Tasters, a Chinese work reminiscent of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters but comparing Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

I'm reading John Kiernan's book again, The Natural History of New York. That is, I'm now enjoying the parts I didn't read before, which is pretty much the whole thing. He mentions that a good part of our 5 sectioned city is not on the continent's mainland. True! That's so exotic isn't it? No wonder we here in 4 out of the 5 are so so sexy. Sorry Bronx! Even Lady liberty joins us mysterious exiles, in a sense, out on that little island all alone, holding that torch so someone might someday rescue her. But liberty is always in some sort of exile, even here in the land of the free we don't get too far from an archipelago of shackles thanks to our fruitless negativity, near constant pleasure seeking, self serving beliefs, small mindedness and of course the ever limiting parameters of our own intense preferences and enculturation. If freedom's a free fall no one wants it. We want our beliefs which amount to nothing, as if believing the world was flat would make it so.

I also read about Henry Hudson's end, how he was put adrift in Arctic waters along with 8 other crew members by a mutinous contingency after they'd all wintered aboard a ship that became ice locked in its course to the New World. He never saw the river to be named after him again, the one that's a mile at its widest, the one Kiernan frequently calls "lordly." I wonder what Hudson called it as he traveled far upriver as a young man, enjoying the kind of freedom reliant on one's bravery, gumption and some kind of crazy faith that things will work out. The man should never have returned to Europe, it was all trouble, he should have just made nice with the Algonquin and left it at that.