As an admirer of Slim Gaillard’s inimitable creation, The Avocado Seed Soup Symphony, I wondered if I could indeed make avocado seed soup. A search of the internet yielded the information that avocado pits are rich in magnesium, calcium, and potassium, and that they can be ground up and added to smoothies, but no recipes […]

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I was saddened to hear of the death of Ionel Talpazan, who died on September 21 of a stroke, complicated by diabetes. When he was a boy in Romania, Talpazan had an encounter with a blue light, which left him with a lifelong fascination with UFOs. He painted and sculpted them obsessively, often intending them […]

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Ron Cobb is known particularly for his crisp and trenchant political cartoons, which were once a staple of the underground press.  He also designed the ecology flag, contributed designs to a number of movies, and did many other things.  However, this enchanting diagram, buried in a copy of the East Village Other (August 27, 1969) […]

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(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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We return to that interesting character, Benjamin De Casseres.  There are only a few pictures of him online: a caricature, for example, and a photo of him celebrating the 21st Amendment.  So, here’s a portrait of De Casseres with his wife Bio. The picture is taken from his 1931 book, Love Letters of a Living […]

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From the audience, Angela Alverson captured a snippet of the recital at the Jalopy Theatre.  My beginning uke class made its first public appearance with this blues chorus.  From left to right: Katherine, Rachel, teacher, Carrie, Ana, and Ashley.  They’re on their way! Another of my uke students, Robin Hoffman, keeps a blog of her […]

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Ancient coral or ancient ladies’ swimming cap? On the first day of spring, which in New York City was particularly welcome and unseasonably warm, I took a long walk on the sands of Dead Horse Bay, a quiet inlet tucked away not far from Floyd Bennett Field (the City’s very first airport), now abandoned to […]

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You can find la Porta Magica in Rome, on the Piazza Vittorio.  It’s what remains of the villa of Massimiliano Palombara, a 17th century occultist. There are at least two competing stories about it.  One is that an archetypical mysterious stranger visited Palombara, and asked for funds and a room to test his alchemical know-how.  Palombara agreed; the stranger […]

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I think my high school offered one basic course in psychology, which I did not take. Surely it dealt in stripped-down basics – the classification of emotions, some de-sexualized Freudian theory, and maybe a little Jung thrown in for the artsy kids. I’d like to think, if I’d had the opportunity to take a class […]

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John A. Keel died a few days ago, on Friday, July 3, 2009. As some of you may know, I knew him for many years.  Larry Sloman and I were his medical proxies for the past couple of years, and did our best to help him with his legal and medical problems. He was in […]

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