[Landline] Come on you flower punks
New ancient findings, now with footnotes
“LANDLINE”
No. 0030
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2022
Music recommendations/wishlist: bandcamp
Hello everybody,
Hope you all are hanging in there, somehow. I think very few of us are sleeping very well right now.1
The last three 2 Landlines have been special editions. Let’s return to our traditional Landline format — now equipped with footnotes — and see what happens…
1. ABOUT THAT SUBJECT HEADER
“Flower punk” is a choice bit of redneck insult/spot-on descriptor for the friendly neighborhood hippie stars (pictured below) of Crashpad #1 by Gary Panter, the legendary-in-his-own-time creator of “Jimbo” and set designer of the original Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Crashpad, Sir Panter’s charmingly gnarly homage to ‘60s/’70s underground comix, LSD trip visions, searcher lifestyles and counterculture ideals, is now available as a proper floppy $5.99 comic book from those enhanced nuts at Fantagraphics (order direct here). Purchase three to five copies, as they will likely be “liberated” from you by friends. Heads who feel compelled to stay (crash?) longer in the Crashpad world should get it together and acquire the 11x14-inch, 80-page Crashpad hardcover edition for $39.99. Happy trails to you.
2. WHAT ELSE THAT LIBRARY CARD GETS YOU
I’ve received lots of positive feedback on the Up With Libraries bit3 in a recent Landline, including confirmation from librarians across the land that patrons’ book recommendations are generally automatically purchased as a matter of policy (within certain sensible limits, of course). So far this month I’ve made five recommendations online to the local library; four of them were approved within hours (the fifth wasn’t yet available from an American publisher). This system works. There’s a good chance your local public library system offers you this easy opportunity to help them improve their collections…look into it!
Also! In that email I neglected to mention another incredible free digital resource that many public library systems are now offering to patrons is a service called hoopladigital which allows you to stream and/or download books, comics, video, music, audiobooks and so on. The catalog is surprisingly deep. Here’s a few of the items I’ve borrowed recently:
Ridiculous, eh? I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface of this service; please let me know what else is on hoopla that you think Landline folk would be interested in.
One more thing re: library power. The Pima County Public Library system (which includes the city of Tucson, where I live) operates a seed library that offers seeds — for native and desert-adapted vegetables, flowers, herbs and more — to all patrons, free of charge. From the website:
The Seed Library is a partnership of the community and the library, with special help from Native Seeds/SEARCH, the Community Food Bank, and UA Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners. Patrons can request and take home heirloom and open pollinated seeds to grow in their own gardens, as well as obtain information and take classes about gardening and food preservation.
You can get up to ten seed packets per month. Unbelievable. Come on you flower punks! I’ve got some sunflowers going right now out back…
Good for morale during the cold winter months. Also, they could come in handy given the current geopolitical situation, ay yi yikes:
Sunflowers are used to assist in clean up after a nuclear disaster. They are hyperaccumulators, capable of absorbing toxic heavy metals from the ground and have been planted at both Chernobyl and Fukushima in the attempt to aid in soil restoration.4
3. SHIMMERING GIRL
One-man trance band Tuluum Shimmering has released a 26-minute instrumental interpretation of Cinnamon Girl as part of dude’s ongoing cover series.5 Like everything this guy releases — all of it at name-your-price! — it is most excellent for as a contemplation aid. Priceless, precious stuff.
4. WILLIE NELSON’S TRIBUTE TO HIS SISTER BOBBIE
Pianist Bobbie Nelson died on March 10 at age 91 in Austin, Texas6. Her little brother Willie Nelson posted a tribute on his website last Friday night. I started tearing up when I saw the photograph of the two of them; I was weeping openly by the third paragraph. I know I’m not alone in being so moved. Read this fond, detailed remembrance of shared times that doubles as a wise meditation on the bonds of childhood, poverty, labor, craft, food, religion, family and love here: https://willienelson.com/blogs/news/dear-sister
5. LANDLINE DOESN’T WRITE ITSELF (YET)
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In bloom,
Jay Babcock
Tucson, Arizona
Other entries in the cover series so far include Aftaglid (Steve Hillage), Brown Rice (Don Cherry), Black Satin (Miles Davis), Marquee Moon (Television), Translucent Carriages (Pearls Before Swine), a 50-minute jam of Sister Ray (Velvet Underground) and China Cat Sunflower (Grateful Dead), and more. All are recommended.
UPDATE re NUKEMAP:
"Because of the war in Ukraine and Putin’s mention of nuclear weapons, NUKEMAP has been for the last week experiencing abnormally high loads of traffic. This has meant that a lot of people are having trouble accessing the website. I’ve been doing what I can to help on the back end of it, but there are limits to my resources and knowledge about such things. In the meantime, I have created a temporary, authorized mirror of the website that you can try to use":
https://nukemap.org/nukemap/