st george & the dragonet

[Narrator:] The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record.

[St. George:] This is the countryside. My name is St George. I'm a knight.

Saturday, July 10th, 8:05 pm-- I was working out of the castle on the nightwatch when a call came in from the Chief. A dragon had been devouring maidens. Homicide. My job, slay him.

[St. George:] You call me, Chief?

[Chief:] Yes, the dragon again, devouring maidens. The King's daughter may be next.

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm. You got a lead?

[Chief:] Oh, nothing much to go on. Say, did you take that .45 automatic into the lab to have them check on it?

[St. George:] Yeah, you were right.

[Chief:] I was right?

[St. George:] Yeah, it was a gun.

8:22 pm-- I talked to one of the maidens who had almost been devoured....

[St. George:] Could I talk to you, Ma'am?

[Maiden:] Who are you?

[St. George:] I'm St. George, Ma'am. Homicide, Ma'am. Want to ask you a few questions, Ma'am. I understand you were almost devoured by the dragon, Ma'am. Is that right? Dragon?

[Maiden:] It was terrible! He breathed fire on me! He burned me already!

[St. George:] How can I be sure of that, Ma'am?

[Maiden:] Believe me.I got it straight from the dragon's mouth.

11:45 pm-- I rode over the King's Highway. I saw a man. Stopped to talk to him.

[St. George:] Pardon me, Sir. Could I talk to you for just a minute, Sir?

[Knave:] Sure, I don't mind.

[St. George:] What do you do for a living?

[Knave:] I'm a knave.

[St. George:] Didn't I pick you up on a 903 last year for stealing tarts?

[Knave:] Yeah, so what do you wanna make a federal case out of it?

[St. George:] No, Sir. We heard there was a dragon operating in this neighborhood. We just want to know if you've seen him.

[Knave:] Sure, I've seen him.

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm. Could you describe him for me?

[Knave:] What's to describe? You see one dragon, you seen 'em all.

[St. George:] Would you try to remember, Sir? Just for the record. We just want to get the facts, Sir.

[Knave:] Well, he was, you know, he had orange polka dots...

[St. George:] Yes, Sir.

[Knave:] Purple feet, breathing fire and smoke...

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm.

[Knave:] And one big bloodshot eye right in the middle of his forehead and Uh, like that.

[St. George:] Notice anything unusual about him?

[Knave:] No, he's just your run-of-the-mill dragon, you know.

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm. Yes, Sir. You can go now.

[Knave:] Hey, by the way, how you gonna catch him?

[St. George:] I thought you'd never ask. A Dragonet.

3:05 pm-- I was riding back into the courtyard to make my report to the lab. Then it happened. It was the dragon.

[Dragon:] Hey, I'm the fire-breathin' Dragon! You must be St George, right?

[St. George:] Yes, Sir.

[Dragon:] I can see you got one of them new .45 caliber swords.

[St. George:] That's about the size of it.

[Dragon:] Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You slay me.

[St. George:] That's what I wanted to talk to you about.

[Dragon:] What do you mean?

[St. George:] I'm taking you in on a 502. You figure it out.

[Dragon:] What's the charge?

[St. George:] Devouring maidens out of season.

[Dragon:] Out of season! You'll never pin that rap on me. Do you hear me, cop?

[St. George:] Yeah, I hear you. I got you on a 412 too.

[Dragon:] A 412? What's a 412?

[St. George:] Over-acting. Let's go.

[Narrator:] On September the 5th, the Dragon was tried and convicted. His fire was put out and his maiden-devouring license revoked. Maiden devouring out of season is punishable by a term of not less than 50 or more than 300 years.

[listen to the irrepressible stan freberg do this live!]

and thus our sojourn into the realities of george barbier, and back into the lap of the calendars!

california girls, et al

Well East coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls
with the way they talk
They knock me out
when I'm down there

The Mid-West
farmer's daughters
really make you feel alright
And the Northern girls with
the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a french bikini
on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand

I been all around
this great big world
And I seen all kinds of girls
Yeah, but I couldn't wait
to get back in the states
Back to the cutest girls
in the world

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)

serie du barbier • (the calendars)

george barbier evidently favored the series form. where yesterday we saw seasons, today we have the continents. these and others we'll see in the future were from annual almanacs that he illustrated.

these came out annually, beginning in 1917, and featured, along with calendars (unadorned), of course, poetry, blank but bordered pages for writing your secret thoughts, vaguely erotic romance stories, and more. profusely illustrated, they were clearly the perfect item with which to begin the new year.

in the early 1910s, following on the heels of charles worth's 'invention' of haute couture, the fashion magazine was born. barbier, then about 30, had found his shangri la.

The concept of the fashion magazine as a tool for defining style was in its infancy. Through these publications, Barbier reached thousands of women. With free rein to draw his own designs, as well as illustrate the gowns of established couturiers, Barbier began to influence the look of the day. As women sought new freedom in the form of shorter and nonconstricting dresses, Barbier's designs kept step with them -- or stayed a step ahead. 1

the wave of freedom-seeking, self-defining, celebratory and love-hungry women that spread throughout europe after world war one found its collective vision fulfilled in barbier's designs.

so who was this visionary? all his bio decry the lack of much about that, for which this new york times serves as an illustration:

Contributing to his disappearance [from the public eye after his death] were his own reticence and a surprising sparseness of biographical information. Born into a prosperous bourgeois family in the provincial town of Nantes, he lived a clearly very different lifestyle in Paris, where he frequented unmistakably, if not exclusively, homosexual circles - he was, for example, an intimate of the dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou, who introduced him to Marcel Proust....

.... His library, containing many rare editions, was auctioned off and his collection of Japanese and European erotica was donated to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where it was placed in the restricted "Enfer" section, reserved for works considered threatening to public decency....

From the outset an ardent admirer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, he produced sumptuously colorful albums celebrating Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina, and designed costumes for the ballerina Anna Pavlova. But he parted company with the Ballets Russes aesthetically and musically with the Cubist-style production "Parade" in 1917, which he condemned in print as "strange, noisy, eccentric" and "the apotheosis of the sneer."

A fashionable sapphic subtext is often present in Barbier's exquisitely composed fashion plates of highly feminine couples and trios, sometimes with companions in immaculate white-tie evening dress, who are either ambiguously epicene or clearly women in drag. "Real" males seldom appear in the artist's oeuvre....

His color plates for publications like the luxurious monthly "La Gazette de Bon Ton," published from 1912 to 1925, were produced using "pochoirs" or stencils, a technique criticized by some purists but vigorously defended by Barbier as a way to present "the artist's work in all its freshness without that often slightly cold transfer produced by mechanical means."

The hand printing process involved, inspired by the methods of the classical Japanese masters, produced a still-undimmed, jewel-like quality in the resulting images that testifies to Barbier's judgement in championing the pochoir technique. 2

the inventive arts • (the calendars)

MYA CALENDAR

Monks of the Years
for Zodiacal Ears

Actuary, Fritillary, Mush
Mandrill, Mace, Jejune,
Jelly, Aghast, Septic Ember,
Oak Toner, Remember, Distemper

Device to
Mesmerize the Monks

30 days hath septic ember
mandrill jejeune and remember
all the rest have 31 dyes
of different color:

Actuary: puce
Mush: buff
Mace: rose
Jelly: lime
Aghast: jade
Oak Toner: rust
Distemper: slush

except Fritillary which howls
28 cold tones of dust.

Colette Inez

“Mya Calendar” from
Getting Under Way:
New and Selected Poems
by Colette Inez.
(Story Line Press, 1993)

light, reborn • (the calendars)

Maxfield Parrish:
the real painter of light

find it for yourself!

a man for all seasons: 1908

1i've changed my mind since yesterday. this project is too important to do in a half-assed manner. so, whenever i post a partial page i will do my best to replace it with a whole page as i can. i've finally found a bio for this artist, google-translated from the dutch. i'll try to catch all of the translating and "sense" problems, but if you find any i miss, please let me know!

HOIJTEMA, Theodoor van (1863-1917)

Hoijtema, Theodoor van (known as Theo van Hoytema), painter; draftsman and lithographer. Married 24/12/1891 to Martina Hogervorst. They had no children.

Theo van Hoytema, youngest in a family with eight children, lost his parents at an early age. Together with his brothers and sisters, Theo moved to Little City District where his eldest sister gave him his first drawing lessons. After having taken four classes at the Municipal Gymnasium in Leiden, he began working in the banking house of his two elder brothers in Delft.


Van Hoytema, however, with his cheerful nature and restless, artistic leanings and love of nature, was not at all suitable for such a job and, once it was possible, he left. In 1889 he moved from Delft to Leiden, where he spent some time with the family on his mother‘s side. Meanwhile, he followed courses in winter drawing and painting at the Hague Academy of Fine Arts (1887-1892) and drew stuffed animals in the Zoological Museum after school.

Through his uncle, business partner of the publishing and printing company Leiden Brill, Van Hoytema got his first assignments: scientific illustrations in biological works. In 1890 Van Hoytema established himself as an independent artist in his own studio Intrantibus Pax. That is where his lithographed book How the birds came to a king (Amsterdam, 1892) came into being. This was the first Dutch attempt to tie text and image to a single idea.

With the color lithographs in his next project, the ugly duckling (Amsterdam, 1893), a story with autobiographical elements to the tale of Hans Christian Anderson, Van Hoytema acquired some fame. He was married in 1891 and lived first in Loosduinen, later in Voorburg. His happiest and most productive years had begun. He painted the large canvas Return of the Stork (1893, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen) and received orders for murals to decorate a room in the Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen (1893), and received orders for murals to decorate a room in the Society in Gorinchem (1894), and for a cruise boat of the company Fop Smit (1896).

Hoytema's subjects were almost without exception plants and animals, particularly after relocating to Hilversum in 1897. Chalk drawings dating from this period are Swans in a pond, and Face in a green- house, and such lithographs as the Rabbit and Egrets in the portfolio Animal studies. The architectural composition and technical mastery of these pieces bears witnesses to the skills Hoytema had acquired.

A difficult period for Van Hoytema began in 1902. His marriage broke up and he was worried about his health. Some years of wandering followed. He lived in Voorburg and Amsterdam, stayed with a sister in London and was nursed in a hospital (1904 - 1905), and in a sanatorium for nervous diseases in 1906. In 1907 he found a home with his sisters in The Hague, who lovingly cared for until his death.

Out of these stressful years grew the calendars for which Hoytema gained his greatest fame. The long series of color lithographs appeared only with great willpower, and the series was completed posthumously. The calendar for 1918 appeared in black and white.

Since 1970, the publication of his calendars and picture books has resumed in facsimile editions.

Van Hoytema did not belong to a particular artistic group or movement. His work reveals a number of typical characteristics of the period 1890-1900: the influence of English illustrators such as Walter Crane -- especially in the first two picture books, and the influence of Japanese prints. Art Nouveau styling elements, decorative and whimsical undulations, and distinct contours were employed, without losing sight of naturalism. By 1896 Hoytema had a great freedom in his work, and created a notably beautiful exhibition catalogue for the Rotterdam Art Circle, and a wonderful Monthly Scripture for Vercieringskunst.

Since 1892, Van Hoytema was a member of the 1893 Hague Art Circle and of Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. He had many friends, including who even in his difficult years remained loyal and supportive. They described him as a friendly and cheerful despite everything, unpretentious man, full of idealism and hard work. 1

learning that hoytema suffered some years of despair didn't surprise me. there is something in the absolute tenderness with which he recreates his birds and animals that speaks, to me, of the sort of sensitive soul who may verge on that inexact edge between beauty and sadness.

he clearly loves these creatures, and devotes great care to represent both their beauties and their personalities. this is particularly observable in his work from this year, 1908. this is a year of solitary birds, close-ups, giving the viewer the sense that they can feel what the bird itself feels.

in upcoming posts we'll see how different years take on different moods and characters. and, as i said, the close-ups will be replaced with whole pages as i can, but i think, for this month in particular, the portraits will stay too.

all fish all the time! • part ii!

CLEANING A RAINBOW

I open it with my long blade under the bright flow
of well water and there lie the finny wings
a moth is beginning to fold,
and then I see the river again, and where I stood
in sun- and rain-slant, that arc of color, the trout
coming down, pulling everything with it,
the cold mountain
stream, the boulders blue and yellow and red,
pines wind-pushed
among them and scrubbed to a slivery finish, current-salved, their limbs
lashed by tendrils of pale canary grass, all inside it and coming down,
the veined pebbles inside it and coming down, rolling, even the pearly
stone a raw-throated raven kicked loose, the love-sick bray
a wandering mule gave out causing a moose at first-
light browse to look up, the moony call

an owl still can’t stop giving softly inside it, the slow-waking
kayaker’s deep satisfying sleep washed from her eyes vividly inside it,
all inside it and coming down, finding their places, the feathered layers
of flesh making room, the pursy fir and lean young alders
in league with the willows, all bending, their refusals to snap

quietly folded inside it, their needles and leaves and aspirations, too
subtle to separate, completely inside it, tracks large and showy
and barely there becomes petite, hair-thin bones, become murmuring
rib-chimes, choirs, echoes from the lightest touch inside it and coming
down the river, embraced by the scent of cherry and musk, by the shy
fairy slipper, by bear’s breath and the must oozing
from a single wild grape, by incense cedar, myrtle
and skittish skunk. all rank and sweet together, all
brushings and sighs coming down, through slick spidery worm-scrawl

falling, flicker-knock, locked horn and cocky treble-cry falling, famous
stalkings and leaps lost in the furling eddies, the heart sucked
under, fibril and seed and viscid yolk sucked under, necks
nuzzled, licked, whirling round astonished, dogtooth violet and thorny
rose bush torn from their root mesh, garnishing all,
and everyone rushing
down, down to this small washing, this curl of final composure
I hold in the bowl of my hands kneeling to receive it.

Gary Gildner

Orion Magazine
(for consciousnesswalk)
part i

Circling • (the calendars)

9.
March, sodden, bled away to April.
On my birthday i had a dream.

A tooth had loosened
to a taste like iron.

With two fingers I gripped the crown
and pulled it out.
No blood, but tiny sepals,
faint green leaves
that slowly blossomed in the sun
awakening me

to one last snow,
its glare in sunlight
harsh, a kind of trial.

APRIL FIRE

1
What is it we
desire in spring,
or are we merely a part
of desiring?
In early morning,
birdsong trills
like running water.
Something in us grows
from darkness.

Below these trees,
huge fountains that stand,
already the worms begin
to slide
their alphabet

over white roots,
white tendrils
that slowly unfurl,
grow, and divide
finer than a woman's hair,

while the orange of robins
moves like flame
across the lawn.

Mark Irwin

from Against the Meanwhile (c) 1988 Mark Irwin. published by Wesleyan University Press.

these two bits are but a wee excerpt from a very long poem called Circling, which travels the year. here, obviously, we're at the same moment in the poem as we are on the earth. perhaps more will follow.

and these calendars, ones for which i can find no further pa- ges, or no more information, keep me on the prowl through the back musty rooms of shops and museums, searching. rooting.


i hope you've not yet tired of my series. i've got more!

from The Real Poem • (the calendars)

Even now
I remember something

the way a flower
in a jar of water

remembers its life
in the perfect garden

the way a flower
in a jar of water

remembers its life
as a closed seed

the way a flower
in a jar of water

steadies itself
remembering itself

long ago
the plunging roots

the gravel the rain
the glossy stem

the wings of the leaves
the swords of the leaves

rising and clashing
for the rose of the sun

the salt of the stars
the crown of the wind

the beds of the clouds
the blue dream

the unbreakable circle.

from Mary Oliver, The Leaf and the Cloud