step slow live large

#chief

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:18:01 -0400

#chief

welcoming party #vinny (at Mifflins Laundromat)

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:03:29 -0400

welcoming party #vinny (at Mifflins Laundromat)

it’s raining in new jersey

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:20:36 -0400

it’s raining in new jersey

thinkmexican: Powerful Popocatépetl Eruption Caught on...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:46:26 -0400

thinkmexican:

Powerful Popocatépetl Eruption Caught on Video

Popocatépetl volcano unleashed a powerful eruption early Monday afternoon.

At 1:23 p.m. local time, cameras from Webcams de México pointed at the volcano captured an almost 2.5 mile high explosive column of ash and molten rock. Video shows a strong shockwave soon after ‘El Popo’ erupted.

Cenapred, Mexico’s National Center for Prevention of Disasters, maintains the warming level for the Popocatépetl at yellow phase two, the fourth step on a seven-level warning scale. Evacuations are activated at the sixth step, level red alert. An estimated 20 million people from the states of Puebla, Tlaxcala, Morelos, State of Mexico and DF would be affected in a major red alert level Popocatépetl eruption.

Authorities have recorded 78 low and medium strength exhalations from ‘Don Goyo,’ as he’s affectionately referred to by local villagers, in the last 24 hours.

Related: Offerings to Don Goyo: Residents of Xalitzintla Ask for Calm and Rain

Read more about Popocatépetl

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i hear df is the new berlin

You struck a nerve because you're wrong (not just unclear). I reject the idea that because this is just a blog it's okay to mislead. You publish it so you are responsible. What difference does it make if the town benefits directly or indirectly? It benefits greatly. If you object to non-profits not paying property tax, write about that, but use facts instead of assumptions. The "massive property holdings" (also untrue by West Texas standards) would be worth nothing if not for Chinati & Judd.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:46:00 -0400

ok, fair enough. but remember, i’m publishing on tumblr, not the guardian. i am not beholden to a single journalistic standard. my decision to move my blog to tumblr was motivated by a feeling, which turns out to be naive and false, that this is generally understood as an informal platform and that a certain levity applies to all readers/writers who use this platform. in any case, i can say and write anything i damn please on tumblr or in real life - as can any formal news agency, writer, or speaker, in any format - and my “responsibility,” whatever that is, to my readers, whoever they are, stops at posting instagram pictures and occasional informal musings. if responsibility has something to do with what my readers expect, then there is no reason to expect anything here but instagram photos and occasional vague musings or sketches of stories or essays. were my usual output to be something that appeared more “objective” or journalistic, were my blog to appear on a journalistic website, or were i to bother to capitalize and add footnotes or whatever, things would, of course, be very different.

and anyway, even in a situation where i would be compelled to write things that are true - which, again, this emphatically is not - or if i were writing on a platform that does not also support (i mean “support” like a stage supports an actor, not in a financial or moral sense) thousands of dick pics, even if i was writing for the huffington post or the new york times or october or whatever, there would of course be absolutely no reason to believe anything i would write and every reason to fact-check, cross-check, hip-check, etc. the word “responsibility” strikes me with a sense of unease, but if there is responsibility, it is shared. in which case, from the absolutely false and absurd viewpoint that my tumblr blog is or should be “objective” or journalistic and should not be subject to my whim or fancy or is not a place where i could just as easily post a picture of my dick as publish a vague thought about donald judd, i appreciate the severity of your comments.

anyway, the town of marfa collects property taxes from businesses and homeowners. the town of marfa does not collect property tax on the properties that the foundations occupy, as far as i can tell. the land that the foundations sit on may have value, but the town does not receive tax on that value. again, according to minerva and as far as i can tell.

then again, as i have written, as you have written, and as minerva has said, many of the businesses and homeowners that the town does collect tax on would not exist were it not for the foundations. and as you wrote, the properties the foundations occupy, most (if not all) of which were abandoned when judd bought them, would be blighted had they not been purchased and repurposed.

and yes, of course, everything is bigger in texas. but there are very few towns, cities, or neighborhoods that i can think of where a tax-exempt entity owns so much of what would be the downtown business district, and even fewer where there is a positive relationship between the town and the tax-exempt entity. think of universities - like columbia or johns hopkins - gobbling up swaths of harlem or east baltimore: these were not popular moves and probably never will be. as i wrote in my previous response, most marfans figure that their town would have dried up and disappeared without judd and appreciate him for “saving” it.

i don’t think i object to nonprofits not paying property taxes, but i haven’t thought about it that deeply. and, as was perhaps unclear in the post you responded to but should have been less unclear in my previous response, i don’t object to the continued existence of the foundations, either. i just think that marfa’s situation, where the main economic drivers of the town are nonprofit entities that do not pay taxes to the town in which they are based, is interesting. and that, because of this, the town’s continued existence, at least for now, depends almost entirely on the maintenance of the legacy of donald judd: his life, his work, and his death. while i appreciate and respect donald judd - and his life, his work, and his death - this is an extremely peculiar situation where a town’s livelihood more or less depends on the perpetuation of a legend or a myth or at least a curiosity, like chichen itza or the loch ness monster. the resource that the economy of marfa depends on is not coal or oil or even windmills, but the absolutely subjective and intangible legacy of donald judd. for me, as someone interested both in the usefulness of art and in “doing things with words,” as the title of that lovely book i’ve never read suggests, this is very fascinating indeed.

in any case, my stance on the foundations in marfa is not clear and probably never will be. i do not think it - whatever “it” is - is right, nor do i think it is wrong. i think it is strange (not a word that i intend with a negative connotation) and something i would like to research more fully in the future, especially as judd’s decision to move to marfa, buy a bunch of property, and keep to himself seems like a wild and sudden departure from his work with the lower manhattan citizens for local democracy.

anyway, enough about me. what is your interest in marfa? do you live/work there?

You could not be more wrong about Marfa's non-profits not contributing to the town's finances. In fact, there is no larger source of money. As a group they are the largest employers after the Border Patrol, but the money they spend stays in the community (10,000 people a year visit Chinati, they eat in the restaurants, stay in the hotels, etc.), unlike the money spent by BP, very little of which stays in the community. I challenge you to back up your bizarre assumption with a single fact.

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:18:00 -0400

hi! you’re right, i was unclear.

in a conversation with minerva, who directs the tourist office in marfa, she mentioned that the foundations, as 501(c)3 nonprofits, do not pay any property tax on their rather massive property holdings. given the amount of property they own, i’m sure the city of marfa, as a specific entity, would benefit greatly from the foundations paying property taxes. money that could be used for public transit, utilities, so on and so forth. so while marfa in general benefits greatly from the foundations - minerva mentioned several times that marfa would have simply dried up, like valentine, had judd never moved there - the city of marfa, as a specific legal entity, does not, at least not directly. the city of marfa does profit from property taxes that have risen as outsiders have bought summer/winter/etc homes over the last 40 years, however. minerva mentioned that while the older generation - the people who lived in marfa when judd moved there - still resent judd for gobbling up so much property and raising property taxes, her generation, and the generations younger than her, are simply happy that their town still exists, and attribute its continued existence to judd and his legacy.

then again, minerva could have been wrong, but i like to give people the benefit of the doubt and cannot find anything immediately available that disproves her. in pennsylvania, there are restrictions on what sorts of 501(c)3s are exempt from property tax (and the foundations would indeed qualify). as far as i can tell from the state of texas website, there are no such restrictions in texas.

i treat this blog, and any blog, as an informal writing scenario and do not intend anything that appears here to appear as anything other than subjective. i post fiction almost as often as i post non-fiction, and in both cases my posts are generally pretty off-the-cuff. i find both the demand and the assumption that bloggers be regarded as equal authorities to journalists, formal critics, etc, to be absurd, which is why - for instance - i don’t bother capitalizing anything.

anyway, thanks for reading and apologies for striking a nerve!

In Pictures: 'Occupy Kenya'

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:01:53 -0400

In Pictures: 'Occupy Kenya':

Kenya’s highly paid politicians caused outrage by giving themselves another pay raise, but have since settled on a deal.

scary (at Bus Stop 33rd & Girard)

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 17:47:33 -0400

scary (at Bus Stop 33rd & Girard)

inform-depart: Acting principal of Germantown High School,...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 16:01:56 -0400

inform-depart:

Acting principal of Germantown High School, Alexis Greaves, stops by Information Department to copy some fliers and discuss school closures with citizen-visitors.

they asked if he was going to become the principal somewhere else. he said he was still trying to keep GHS open. he said that of the two high schools former GHS students would be shuttled to, one is a rival “from the beginning of time” and the other is too far away. he said “this is how blight happens.”

the other day jill sat next to me and told me about how to get a good education in philadelphia, which involves sending your child to about 6 different schools, public, private, or magnet, in a convoluted process that nobody will two jobs and probably very few with one would have time to figure out. let’s not talk about the future - fuck the future - let’s just talk about what the hell these children, their parents, are supposed to do now.

@igers_philly congregating at Germantown City Hall #gch...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:43:18 -0400

@igers_philly congregating at Germantown City Hall #gch #instameet (at Germantown Town Hall)

drum line approaches germantown city hall #gch #juneteenth (at...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 11:06:22 -0400

drum line approaches germantown city hall #gch #juneteenth (at Germantown Town Hall)

decent insult #spanish #darkbackoftime #pinchaúvas (at Union...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 09:39:26 -0400

decent insult #spanish #darkbackoftime #pinchaúvas (at Union Transfer)

workstation #rye

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 23:36:00 -0400

workstation #rye

beiderbecke #bixler (at Time)

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:47:29 -0400

beiderbecke #bixler (at Time)

slaying the great dragon of recession #gch #resourceroom

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:33:34 -0400

slaying the great dragon of recession #gch #resourceroom

hyperallergic: Why Is Playboy Erecting a Neon Bunny In Marfa,...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:01:26 -0400

hyperallergic:

Why Is Playboy Erecting a Neon Bunny In Marfa, Texas?

The new neon Playboy bunny and the concrete “box” and car just outside Marfa, Texas. (image…

View Post

on the one hand, the more pertinent question might be “why not?”

but then again, i’ll bet it has something to with this sort of overwhelming impression one gets of donald judd’s presence in marfa. i wrote a blog post the other day for another blog - freelance blogger? free blogger more like, or free bloggerlance - about marfa existing in an ectoplasmic economy derived from the permanent haunting of donald judd. as in, the economic “drivers” of the town - i use quotations because the foundations are nonprofits and therefore actually provide no money to the town at all - are dedicated to the maintenance of donald judd’s absence, his perfect absence to be exact. his absence is perfect insofar as it continues to be interesting, which may or may not be being misinterpreted as “inspiring”…in any case, marfa dies when the haunting lifts. who will go to the coffeeshop?

anyway. the point of the blog post - maybe i’ll post it on my blog, i’m not sure what’s going on over there with that other one - was to mention the unavoidability of this ectoplasmic encounter and the extremely strong and visceral reactions this provokes: incredulity, irreverence, fear, reverence, gratitude, religiosity, depression. i mean that last sentence especially in the case of artists, other artists, who think they should or must also make art in marfa. because what the fuck can you do in marfa now? it’s full, in a way: every space, even the unoccupied spaces - summer homes left vacant, ranches, highland avenue, the air around the books in the judd library that can’t be touched or even seen - is permeated with judd. even the spaces that have nothing to do with them, like that one house on kelly street (or is it abbott? or am i just turned around) with those two ducks, one white and one black, who wouldn’t stop biting each other’s necks (“quack means quack,” said jordan). those ducks wouldn’t be there if judd hadn’t moved to marfa, or at least that’s what everybody thinks. the general consensus amongst the townspeople, the children of the townspeople that were there when judd moved there…the vacant properties he amassed would have remained vacant or crumbled, a bunch of new yorkers and angelinos and germans wouldn’t have bought properties, the coffeeshop wouldn’t have opened, nor the food truck nor the brick-and-mortar version of the food truck…and so on. i don’t know if they’re right, but they might be. is it more fucked up to assume that people are right in this situation or assume that they don’t know that they’ve been had? assuming, of course, that they’ve been had…because what else does marfa have? the marfa lights, an old german POW camp, a factory that seems at least partially disused. a ton of border patrol.

anyway, one student - melissa miller - decided to pour chocolate syrup into her mouth until it poured out of her mouth. this seemed and still seems extremely appropriate, downright reasonable. another student, silvia ulloa marquez, told me she was making video of herself smashing poorly constructed mini-judds; another student, sarah jones, gave a lap dance to a fake judd chair. playboy put a neon bunny next to a tilted buried box with a car on top. seems fair. what’s the point of making art in marfa? what can it do?

Wandering Monsters: Games and Art in the Institutional Wilderness | Institute of Play

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:27:12 -0400

Wandering Monsters: Games and Art in the Institutional Wilderness | Institute of Play:

If games and art are the answer, what is the question? On Wednesday, June 5, connect with a group of distinguished artists and game designers as they discuss two intersecting contemporary worlds of creative production: the world of art and the world of games.

revisiting this “webinar” with strong intent of finally writing my first post for the Aesthetic Games Research and Inquiry blog i share with ted purves and zachary walter. my plan when i began re-watching was to address the final question of the webinar (no spoiler, you better watch it bud), but now i’m wondering about other things. for instance, participation v engagement…

hi owen

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:03:24 -0400

hi owen

educational options + the sun

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:33:59 -0400

educational options + the sun

“not bad, utah” #pointbreak #darkminster

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:26:10 -0400

“not bad, utah” #pointbreak #darkminster