Hackney City Farm

Peter: 13th May 2005 - 16:04 GMT

baby animals! arrrrgh! so cute! the little lambs!

elaine: 13th May 2005 - 16:27 GMT

well, i promised them, and here they are. there is also a very good cafe where you can eat their relatives.

Marc: 13th May 2005 - 22:09 GMT

happy birthday elaine, i have a present for you.. but i wont link to it directly because you never know, he might fuck me up from beyond the grave: http://www.eurocompton.net/~gweeds/ but add "pkd" to the end of that!!

elaine: 14th May 2005 - 07:16 GMT

hello marc! thanks for that, duly bookmarked, thankyou! where are your postings? have you been busy? more stuff please...

Marc: 14th May 2005 - 10:42 GMT

i have been writing and working (very hard) and traveling, but nothing in the citynoise genre as of late- though i desperately want to! Have to trepan some other stuff out of my head first.. here's something recent, with no pics and not about a city, so i'll just glom it onto your lovely pics of my favorite city farm in the east end..
-----------------
my dad asked:
What would you say is truly most distinctive, unique and special about me as a person?

Well, you made half of the first "me", and only one other person can boast
that claim. Since then I have gone on to become as many "mes" as 10,000
days of age could provide "me", and you have maintained a hand in the
creation of many of those "mes" to this day. I can start off by listing
some of the distinctive and unique attributes you have added to theme-stew.

From the 1970s on, you were a computer programmer. Earlier still, you
were a code-breaker serving in the military in Vietnam- and ever since I
can remember I have enjoyed creating software and breaking codes. Thinking
about software art+computer security, and indeed abstracting that out to
other branches of existence is an integral part of my identity that has
grown for 2 decades, formed from the seed of whatever motivation it is
that, as a college dropout in the late 60s, aimed you into the army and
into the realm of pre-internet electronics (you remember, radios and
televisions and programmable calculators!)

And what about that motivation? I always heard you were a smart ass-
meaning the sometimes insufferable blend of humor and intelligence, which
have a tendency, in the young and foolish, of feeding on each other in the
way bad drugs sometimes do. Examples abound of hearsay from before I was
born, of taking a computer programming class to fulfill a university
language requirement, of childhood hilarity, of joining the army and
aiming so high on your language aptitude test that there's no possible way
they would deny you the deployment country of your choice and send you to
Vietnam, right? (joke's on you!). Your contributions to and appreciation
of snarky humor abides to this day and has definitely shaped my own
understanding of humor and its place in the world (which is everywhere,
right??)

You once told me that you knew that you knew Vietnamese when you dreamed
in it. Dabbling in Russian and German throughout your life, your recent
passion for Japanese and your eternal study of Latin are distinctive
hallmarks of your penchant for communication in the general and language
in the specific. For me, your extra-curricular introductions
to the study of foreign languages instilled a fearlessness of learning
the idioms of communication that has branched to other parts of my life-
calibrating my life's many-poled compass towards the goal of "wanting to
learn all languages ever", be they linguistic, culinary, or any other
form of cultural interchange. I believe we share both this calibration and
that fearlessness.

Which brings me to the larger fearlessness of education and intelligence.
For both you and mom have spent most of your lives worshipping at the
altar of compulsory schooling and higher education, to the benefit of
your own minds, your children (biological and student), and the localized
pockets of Texan intellectual culture of the latter half of the 20th
century. And like every good son with a healthy biological instinct, I
rejected this worship in my own life- in a large part supported by your
oft-repeated edict that "we learn until we die". So why should I spend
your money and my time learning in an environment that grated against my
personality when I had parents who cultivated in me a passion for
learning regardless of the cost and degree incentive? This was not an
easy thing for the two of you, as my parents, to take at first- therejection of college as the next step after my stint at a well-funded,
critically-acclaimed but poorly executed public high school. I like to
think that your coming to terms with this "difference of faith" with your
son was presaged by the words you spoke at your mother's eulogy in 1991:

"do not be sad that your children made different decisions in their
lives with regard to faith- the lessons you have taught, remain".

Earlier today I lay in my bed in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and
continued on in my endeavor to read, cover to cover, the 1000 page French
food dictionary, the Larousse Gastronomique- in fact a Christmas present
from you. Propped up above this first book was the 1970 Goode's World
Atlas, a book I liberated from your collection when I moved out on my
own. I was cross-referencing geographical locations of French regions of
wine and food production. That noble atlas from your youth, from before
my birth, is full of penciled-in annotations, circled cities,
trajectories of imagined childhood excursions. Sometimes I go through and
attempt to guess- did I circle that city? Did my older brother Spence
write in those fake city names? Or did you? Like prairie family Bibles
from a hundred years ago, our house was always full of living and
accessible reference books- either from your chronic addiction to learning
or mom's adventures as an encyclopedia saleswoman. We often exchange
books on the holidays, and as I write this 3000 miles from you in the
city to which I have emigrated for a short while, a majority of the
less-than-a-dozen books I have here are reference books- cookbooks and
Spanish/English dictionaries. In no way am I suggesting that we do not
share with our fellow man the thankfully common love of great literature,
not-so-great-literature, and book hoarding in general- what I suggest is
distinctive is the desire to have an armory, a good arsenal of books at
our sides for when our conversations and lives require a bit of literary
reference- be they dictionaries, the works of Nietzsche, or compendiums
of Roman history.

I would like to switch now from significantly shaping identity traits that
we share, on which I could go on for a while (we both have glasses, we
both worked on PROCARE) and switch to my observations on you, and how you
have lived your life during the significant fraction of it you have
shared with me- with less of an analysis of how this has affected me.

As mom pointed out, you feel a great responsibility towards your family,
to keep in touch and provide emotional+financial threads in a greater
support network.

You enjoy travel and have "lived around the country"- and I think this has
given you opportunities to speak to others as equals and exchange perspectives.

You have a fierce sense of reliance on your own intelligence in the fight
against evil and have grown over the years to include the rest of
humanity as not only beneficiaries of this fight but worthy allies as acollective, intelligent whole- evolving beyond the exclusionary+elitist
youthful follies of the booksmart.

You have transformed your love of running and team motivation into
raising thousands of dollars for local+gobal AIDS charities. In the
process you have helped bridge your non-Californian friends into the
world of selfless philanthropy based on the brave premise of challenging
yourself to run the 2004 Honolulu marathon at the age of 56. Good job!

You keep promising yourself a year off or retirement, only to find the
work you have chosen to do so engaging and challenging that you cannot
help but to continue doing what you love.

You have supported your wife with love through her employment
adventures, her higher education endeavors, and the labor of
producing+raising three children.

You have financially and psychically supported the educational aspirations
of your three sons, including the one who swore he would never get a
degree and ended up finally attending an expensive 1 year culinary school
for an associate's degree of occupational studies in culinary arts - le
cordon bleu (that's me, I couldn't end this without coming back to
talk about myself again).

Ben: 14th May 2005 - 12:01 GMT

Hooray, those remind me of school trips! I always found it kind of creepy how ducks and owls coudl do that excorist-style thing with their necks... brr.

elaine: 14th May 2005 - 16:18 GMT

marc: i am honoured that you glommed on to me! and whyn't you put this to swinney? i finally, after much griping and grizzling did. it was weird to do something without any external theme, and without pictures. since then i have been inclined to do written things here as well, though, even when pushing the edges of theme, still within. you might not guess it but it nigh on killed me writing the thing i did for swinney, unlaboured though i hope it looks. to make you feel better about being so self absorbed, here is ME with a goose

GGP: 14th May 2005 - 22:48 GMT

hilarious shot. you guys looked great together, each staring off into a different reality--you toward Philip K. Dick, the goose toward...Aesop?

elaine: 15th May 2005 - 14:13 GMT

i know! i think we look as if we have known each other for years and might even be related. i was crouching on the ground to try and get a close up of the lambos, and i felt a pecking on my shoes and legs, so my mum took the camera, and got a couple of the goose goosing me, and this. he seemed to be telling me something, and had a really intelligent look in his eyes. i want to take him out for walks, i wonder if the farm people would let me?

JamJar: 24th May 2005 - 21:25 GMT

It seems this is a lesson. You show animals alive, I show them dead, you get loads more comment. Bah

jeeff: 25th May 2005 - 04:05 GMT

i wouldn't get too wrapped up in comment-counting if i were you. or our crip/blood graffiti wars are the best thing on the site right now.

elaine: 25th May 2005 - 05:52 GMT

oh, jamjar! my heart bleeds! but you can't have failed to notice that most of this thread is a massive bit of squatting from marc which hardly counts as a comment... some of the best threads owe little to the initial posting - post more stuff and roll with the punches, mate!

JamJar: 25th May 2005 - 08:30 GMT

It's just nice to hear a bit of what people think, good and bad ... maybe I'm not provocative enough! I've taken some time off for the long weekend, no doubt I can find some interesting citynoise for you ... whatever citynoise is.

elaine: 25th May 2005 - 08:48 GMT

not provocative enough!?! what, and cute furry animals is? daftie!
i throw down the gauntlet to you this weekend! hardcore or fringe citynoise - get snapping!

Peter: 25th May 2005 - 14:18 GMT

elaine: nice goose...

"whatever citynoise is"... what is citynoise?

jeeff: im about this close to deactivating commenting on the crip/blood thread, heh.

jeeff: 25th May 2005 - 14:44 GMT

for the record jamjar, i really liked your photo of the butcher shop. but if it's discussion you're looking for, maybe you should give us some opinions along with your photos. tell us why you're taking photos of these things, and how they fit into your environment.

peter - i think it's totally reasonable to have a cut-off number. there's no point in letting comments run up into the zillions and slow the page to a crawl.

elaine: 25th May 2005 - 16:52 GMT

'gregory' it seems is a bigamist and is 21 years old! my friend lottie was making a docco on the farm and gregory took a fancy to her too. she says you can rub geese under their beak and on their chest - i will have to overcome some trepidation first, them geese can pack a mean peck

GGP: 25th May 2005 - 16:56 GMT

Gregory is 21! hence the wizened, slightly world-weary expression. Or maybe he's staring into the horizon looking for a new addition to his harem.

elaine: 25th May 2005 - 17:03 GMT

i know! and he does have a penetrating look, and he was trying to tell me something. i said to him - mate, i have no idea what you are saying, i do not speak goose, sorry. and after we talked and he had his photo taken he ran into the field to the others and shouted at them. what about i will never know

elaine: 17th Jun 2005 - 14:59 GMT

happy birthday jamie, here's the duck of the day to ya

elaine: 22nd Jun 2005 - 08:09 GMT

hum, well your test didn't work so lemme call up that image

elaine: 22nd Jun 2005 - 08:10 GMT

doesn't exist according to cityniose - yet. who are you and what is your test?

Jamie: 22nd Jun 2005 - 09:02 GMT

Fuck a duck! thankyou elaine for my birthday bird. I didn't see it on my birthday, but it sure is a lovely duck. I'd sure like to own a duck like that one day. I'd take him/her out for walks long the promenade. Thats my dream.

elaine: 22nd Jun 2005 - 09:26 GMT

you are welcome. i have been running the idea of me having a goose past my friends, they all seem to think it is a crap idea (literally, but who needs carpets?) but a duck would be as good, see the thing is you wouldn't need a lead, they would just follow you, and they like a walk

Peter: 22nd Jun 2005 - 13:09 GMT

having a pet duck would rock. what would you name it? Quackers? hahahahaha...

Hackney City Farm Worker: 21st Apr 2008 - 21:09 GMT

hey, iv just been doing research to see what others think of the Farm, im very happy you approve! Btw the goose that you are standing with is called Gregory one of our oldest residence. he is now 27 years old and still going!
well ya learn something new everyday!

cya