Peter Behrens's Blog, page 427
February 17, 2015
Place d'Armes, Montreal. 0 degrees Fahrenheit
I stood in one spot on the Place d'Armes and turned 360 degrees to shoot (not well) a set of buildings in wildly different styles of architecture, ranging over three centuries. We must return to Montreal when the weather is a bit more clement to do an effective set of posts on the city's morphology, neighborhood by neighborhood. (That's a ten-dollar word for "size, shape, structure.") And there are certainly some cool trucks and cars in La belle province, but they are all tucked away and hibernating now.
1956 Pontiac Junior Star Chief
The Junior Star Chief was built for Pontiac Dealers to promote the new 1956 Pontiac. They were given away to lucky children through a variety of contests. These great little cars are approximately one third the size of a real 1956 Pontiac. They were the brain child of Jack Stuart a Designer with Pontiac's promotional division. Junior Star Chief production was contracted to Silvestri Art Studios of Chicago Illinois by Pontiac. The body is made of fiberglass. The steel chassis is powered by a 12 volt battery which powers a real Pontiac starter motor. Features include: Forward and Reverse, Foot Operated Brake. Working headlamps, working tail lamps, and a working horn.Thanks to Alex Emond for the heads up. One of these is for sale at Hemmings.
February 16, 2015
February 15, 2015
February 12, 2015
1951 Chevrolet One-Ton; Travco Motorhome;1950 International Harvester
These notes from Alex Emond came in last fall, from Saskatchewan:"This fine Chev, which is pretty much exactly my age, pushing 64 , was in Kinkaid, Saskatchewan . Pa-tee-na! (And check out this one-ton chevrolet panel truck--AL) Around the corner and across the street is the mighty impressive Travco motorhome. Note the buffalo skull on the dash. That's yet another International Harvester truck in the yard. Quite a few IH trucks around because farmers were already using their tractors etc. so there were dealerships. Cheers."-AE
February 11, 2015
Charlie Bennett: Anderson's Store, Stockholm, Maine.
Swedish photographer Charlie Bennett's project was to shoot in all towns named "Stockholm" in the US.
Cranky at Curating on Campus. And a New York 50.
Now even the New York Times is "curating" its own store, according to the full page ad in yesterday's paper, where you can buy a whole passel of indulgent knick-knacks for people who clearly already have way more than they need or, quite possibly, want. That verb applied to the twee display of snazzy schmatte by storekeepers irritates me. And speaking of NYT Store, and their website, was their ever an uglier phrase than "smorgasbord of options"? I don't know why. It just is. I think--heaps of pickled herring, etc.
My other word problem this month (it's February, after all) is "campus". It all started with the earlySilicon Valley startups calling their vast overwork-stations: campuses. Working for that geekness. Pretending they were still pulling all-nighters at Stanford.
Now everything is a campus. Even my down-home local bank, Bar Harbor National, refers to its branches as campuses.
Not even campi.
Hey, it's February.
I do love curating Autoliterate, but cool trucks and cars are scarce on the salty snowy roads of Maine these days, so if you live in a happier clime, please send us jpegs and field notes.
Summer happens. Yes it does.Jane Hilberry poem: "Driving"
Edward Burtynsky, Highway #1, Intersection 105 & 110, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2003. Photograph ©2015 Edward BurtynskyDriving
About to step out of the sleeve of her body,my mother wants to keep all of her clothes.She thinks she’ll wear the fuchsia shirt again.She says she wants to start driving. In truth, she never liked to drive, pushing the wheelone way or the other in tiny increments. The speeds on the highway scared her.
-Jane Hilberry
First published in Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry. Edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen. Dos Gatos Press, 2011.
