Topical Guide 287
Mark Dorset
Art: Movable Models of the Human Figure (Share the Experience)
If you would like to experience the kind of work that Herb and Lorna did in animated erotic jewelry (without actually having to do any of the work) you could purchase a couple of articulated drawing figures for artists. Several companies make these. You’re sure to enjoy manipulating them and putting them into interesting, unusual, and demanding positions of amorous entanglement.
Technical Explanations: The Musculoskeletal Structure of the Human Body that Enables It to Assume a Wide Variety of Sexual Positions
Ben’s prototype was a crude piece of work. The two wax figures were badly modeled, thickset, lumpy, graceless. The mechanism was nothing more than a pair of heavy wire forms joined by a loop (not unlike the link swivels that Lorna once fashioned) and kept apart by a tiny coil spring. A crank turned a cam against the wire on which the man, the upper figure, was molded, and the action of the cam provided the jerky up-and-down motion that was all the animation of which the couple was capable. The act they performed was crude and basic. The woman just lay there; the man pounded away at her, up and down, in and out, grimly, mechanically.
“It needs work,” said Ben. “I know that. I don’t have the talent to do anything better than this. But you do. You do, Herb. You’re mechanically inclined. …”Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 7
“Dem Bones” (also called “Dry Bones” and “Dem Dry Bones”) is a spiritual song. The melody was composed by author and songwriter James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson. It was first recorded by The Famous Myers Jubilee Singers in 1928. Both a long and a shortened version of the song are widely known. The lyrics are inspired by Ezekiel 37:1–14, where the prophet Ezekiel visits the “Valley of Dry Bones” and prophesies that they will one day be resurrected at God’s command, picturing the realization of the New Jerusalem.
I read this book about ten years ago. Some days, when I read the news, I think of its title and find myself saying to myself, “What a wonderful world that would be.” MD
From Amazon: If human beings disappeared instantaneously from the Earth, what would happen? How would the planet reclaim its surface? What creatures would emerge from the dark and swarm? How would our treasured structures—our tunnels, our bridges, our homes, our monuments—survive the unmitigated impact of a planet without our intervention? In his revelatory, bestselling account, Alan Weisman draws on every field of science to present an environmental assessment like no other, the most affecting portrait yet of humankind's place on this planet.
[more to come on Thursday, June 30, 2022]
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