Tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany, built 1515-1531
Art historian Barbara Hochstetler
Meyer describes the tomb as portraying the deceased "with a verismo,
poignancy, and sensitivity to nature rarely equaled in the north of Europe
during the sixteenth century."
Hemingway’s “La Floridita” in Havana, Cuba (1954)
While the Floridita has its detractors, it is probably worth stopping in for a daiquiri just because it is there. It has certainly been around the block since it first opened its doors over 200 years ago and the bronze bust of Hemingway drinking his customary daiquiri is testament to its most famous patron who once reportedly put 13 double daiquiris away in one sitting.
Opened in 1817 under the name Piña de Plata, later Florida in 1910 and El Floridita in 1914, this bar and restaurant became world-known thanks to author Ernest Hemingway, who was a regular costumer. The writer has ended up being the main attraction for tourists from all over the world, who visit “the cradle of daiquiri” and take their pictures either by the bronze bust sculpted in 1954 and placed in his favorite corner or by Papa’s life-size statue at the bar made in 2003.
The constant stream of tourists give it a limited appeal to Cubans or expatriates as a place to spend the entire evening and you will find cheaper drinks almost anywhere else. On the other hand, the bar tenders are very talented individuals who will have forgotten far more about the ins and outs of cocktails (and especially daiquiris) than most people would ever dream of knowing and the atmosphere is lively with good bands typically playing.
Dress warmly, for the air conditioning can be a little fierce.
Although there are many variants of the origin of the daiquiri I like to believe that it was invented in Eastern Cuba and perfected here at La Floridita by legendary barman Constantino Ribalaigua. His recipe; rum, limejuice, sugar, a couple of shakes of maraschino liquor and crushed ice.
Magnificent
Abstract Swan (Contemporary Bronze Swan sculpture)’ by sculptor Simon Gudgeon. In a medium of Bronze.j
Oh fede negar potessi from "Luisa Miller" by Giuseppe Verdi
Luisa Miller is an opera in three
acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on
the play Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) by the German dramatist Friedrich
von Schiller. Verdi's initial idea for a new
opera was rejected by the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. He attempted to negotiate
his way out of this obligation and, when that failed, Cammarano came up with
the idea of adapting the Schiller play, with which Verdi was familiar. The
process was set in motion, with Verdi still living and working on initial ideas
from Paris, where he had been living for almost two years before moving back to
his home town of Busseto in the summer of 1849. It was from there that he wrote
the music and traveled to Naples for rehearsals. The first performance was
given on 8 December 1849.
This was Verdi's 15th opera and
it is regarded as the beginning of the composer's "middle period".
O Soave Fanciulla from "La Boheme" by Giacomo Puccini
Rodolfo and Mimì have met for the first time a few minutes ago. He told her about his life ("Che gelida manina"), and asked her to tell him about hers ("Sì, mi chiamano Mimì"). In this duet, "O soave fanciulla", they realize that they have fallen in love.
Rodolfo's friends call him to join them but he would rather stay with Mimì, but she shyly suggests they all go out together. Rodolfo remarks how cold it is outside, but Mimì promises to stay near to him. She leaves the possibility of a later return to the garret open. They leave the stage.
Rodolfo:
Lovely maid in the moonlight,
Your face entrancing like radiant seraph from on high appears
As thus I watch you,
The dream that I would ever dream returns.
Both
M: Love alone o'er hearts has sway ...
R: Heart to heart, and sould to soul
love binds us in his fetters.
Mimì: Ah love, to thee do we surrender
Both
R: Love now shall
rule our hearts alone
shall rule our hearts alone
M:
Sweet to my soul
the magic voice of love its music chanteth
Together
Life's fairest flower is love ...
Mimì: No, I pray you!
Rodolfo: My sweethart!
Mimì: Your comrades await you.
Rodolfo: Do you then dismiss me?
Mimì: I should like no, I dare not ...
Rodolfo: Say!
Mimì:
Could I not come with you?
Rodolfo: What? Mimì!
It would be much more pleasant here to stay,
Outside it's chilly.
Mimì:
I'll be always near you!
Rodolfo: On returning?
Mimì: Who knows, sir?
Rodolfo:
Take my arm, my little maiden
Mimì:
Very well, I obey.
Rodolfo: You love me? Say ...
Mimì: I love thee.
Both My love!
Films I've watched recently
Frances Ferguson is a quirky film
from the POV of a sex female offender. Frances
has been married to Nick (Keith Poulson) for three years. Happy at first, but
now with a small child Nick takes to masturbating in his car before coming in
from work and is having an affair.
Frances, a substitute teacher is
assigned to watch over a disciplinary class with one student with one boy, named Jake (Jake French) and leaps into a
sexual affair with him, for which she is arrested.
Kaley Wheless, the films lead, is
one of the most beautiful and alluring women
I have ever seen on film and Bill Wise, as her parole officer, steals the
film. The always wonderful and very talented
David Krumholtz has a great part as the community mental health counselor. I believe
that Krumholtz is some sort of acting genius, he never fails to deliver. Martin
Starr’s character probably has the best dialogue in the film, and it comes
along just in time, when the film just ever so lightly starts to drag.
The largest mass kidnapping in US history
The largest mass kidnapping in US
history is also one of the most bizarre kidnapping in US history. It
was Thursday, July 15, 1976 at around 4 p.m., part time school bus driver and
full time farmer Frank Edward "Ed" Ray was driving 26 students,
ranging in age from 5 to 14, from the Dairyland Elementary School home from a
summer class trip to the Chowchilla fairgrounds swimming pool.
A white van stopped in the road. Ray slowed down to
see if it was someone with engine trouble. When he came to a complete stop, three
young men with guns jumped out of the van and commandeered the bus and drove it
into a dry canal bottom, where another van was waiting.
“Edward (Ray)” recalled Jennifer Brown Hyde “kept
telling his kids just be quiet, sit down, do what they say. … Edward was
speaking in a harsh tone, and that normally was not the Edward that we knew and
loved.”
Years later Ed Ray recalled that the youngest child on the bus, Monica Ardery,
asked one of the gunmen who had covered his face in pantyhose that left the legs
hanging alongside his head like ears, if he was the Easter Bunny.
The children
and the driver were hurried into the back of the two vans whose windows had
been painted black, and driven for 11 hours, without food, water or a rest
stop. Most of the young children vomited from the ride. The older children tried
to muster the younger ones by leading sing-alongs.
At 3:30 in the morning, the vans arrived at a rock
quarry in Livermore California about 100 from Chowchilla were they were forced
to jump from the bus to the vans so that they would not leave behind any
footprints. With guns drawn the kidnappers made each child give their names and
a piece of clothing to them and were then and herded down a ladder into a buried,
dark moving van. One guy asked us our
name. We told it to him.” Jennifer Brown Hyde said years later “One guy asked
us our age. And we told him our age. And then I looked. They had a wooden
ladder down into a hole in the ground. … And then I remember them telling me
you need to climb down there. You need to go down there. And I thought,
"Oh, they're sending us to hell.” I
didn't know where we were going.”
The walls of the van were covered with filthy ty mattresses
and a single containers of water. The air inside the van was smelled of putrid
white dirt and rocks and it was hot made even hotter when all of the children
and the driver were inside. Two small air tubes allowed in a small amount of
fresh air.
In the meantime, parents were worried when their
children didn’t arrive home. After two hours, they were terrified. Parents
began helping the police retrace the school buses route, crisscrossing dozens
of rural roads. Just before sunset, a police pilot spotted the empty bus about
seven miles outside Chowchilla, hidden in the dry riverbed. The tire
impressions found in the sand led straight to the front door of the bus.
The local Sheriff, Ed Bates knew immediately that the children had become the victims of a
brazen and bizarre, mass kidnapping. “I called the governor.” Bates said “I
said, "I need some help down here. I had the parents all assembled there
in the fire station. … Well, you could just look at their faces, and the
anxiety and the fear was there. I called the FBI. … And all of a sudden, I have
30 FBI agents there.”
Two hours away, when all of the children were down inside
the moving van, the three gunmen started shoveling dirt over the roof. Children
screamed in terror and Ed Ray was certain the thin tin roof would cave in under
the weight of the dirt.
Larry Park, one of the older kidnapped children said “Ed
Ray and Mike Marshall they looked at every corner, every wall … for an escape
route. They got underneath the manhole cover and pushed up on it. And they
couldn't move it. So, Ed Ray determined that it was time for everyone to get
some rest. The minutes and hours ticked by. It would be silent and then
somebody would bust out crying and the hole would just erupt. Everybody's
crying.
There was this one boy. … And he kept kicking blocks
out from underneath the 4x4 pillars. And so, the roof of the van was starting
to cave in. The seams were breaking. Dust was flowing through. And I remember
children just screaming and crying. … The sides of the van were bowing in. … I
knew that I was going to die. I knew it. So, Ed Ray and Mike Marshall … took a
bunch of these mattresses that we were laying on and they stacked them on top
of each other right underneath the manhole cover. And I'm giving it everything
I got, and all the kids are cheering me on. You know, "Come on Mike, you
can do it. You can do it." And then all of a sudden, they said, "It
moved, it moved."
Two heavy iron and steel tractor batteries were
holding down the plate. After a few hours, they ere able to move the batteries.
Once the manhole cover was moved, that box was just big enough for Michael Marshall
to stand in. “Edward (Rau) squeezes me through this half-foot hole. I get on
top of it and I start pounding on this box. Start hitting and pounding, hitting
and pounding. None of us knew if when we got out, they were just going to be
standing there with shotguns at our head and stuff, so we were kind of … pretty
scared."
Rock quarry in Livermore, Calif., where kidnapped children and their bus driver were held prisoner. The circle in upper left locates the area where the captives were buried in a trailer.
Larry Park another ten boy said “Then suddenly this
ray of sunlight [cries]. This ray of sunlight came down into the opening. And it
was catching the dust. And the dust particles looked like a bunch of shooting
stars. … There was this airflow that came out of the van and I knew we were
free.”
Michael Marshall continued “And I stuck my head out
and … I didn't see anybody. … I could see we were in the hills we were in big
trees.”
It was approximately 8 p.m
Jennifer Brown Hyde recalled “It looked totally like
a sand dune. There was no way to know that there was anything below. There was
no way to know that we were in there. … It was totally camouflaged. We all just scurried like a bunch of little mice.
And we heard some noises, machinery and equipment. And then we thought,
"Oh my God. What if it's them? What if we're going right to the men that
took us? We started walking toward the equipment that we heard. … We saw
conveyor belts and excavators and large machinery … It looked like "The
Flintstones." … And all these men with hard hats came to us and looked at
us like, "Who are you?" … And I remember Edward saying, "We're
from Chowchilla. And we're lost."
They had been underground for 16 hours.
When police arrived they transported the kids to the
closest place that could hold them — the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, a
local jail. Jennifer Brown Hyde said “I remember going in in the bus and you
could see the prison wire. … And you thought well, "they're taking us into
jail. They took us into what looked like classrooms. … They brought us apples
and soda. They had these coveralls. … And all these little kids go into 'em and
we had to roll the pants about 10 feet. And we rolled the arms up and we were
all sitting there — some of 'em didn't roll our arms up and we sitting there
flapping our arms. We said, "Hey we can fly!?"
The kidnappers tried to call in their demands for the
children’s safe release, they wanted $5,000,000 in cash in small bills, but the
phone lines to the Chowchilla Police Department were jammed by calls from the children’s
families the media and gawkers. Exhausted, the gunmen fell asleep. When they
awoke later that night, the news was reporting that the children had escaped and
were safe.
The police reasoned that who ever owned the quarry would have some
answers and they were right. The quarry owner's son, 24-year-old Frederick
Newhall Woods IV, came under suspicion as one of the people who had keys to the
quarry and enough access to have buried the moving truck there. A warrant was
executed on the estate of Woods' father, and there police recovered one of the
guns used in the kidnapping as well as a draft of a ransom note.
Police also learned that two of Woods friends,
brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld (aged 24 and 22 respectively) sons of a
wealthy Menlo Park podiatrist, had
previous conviction for grand theft auto and were on probation. When the cops
went to round them up, they learned that the brothers and Woods had fled.
Richard Schoenfeld voluntarily turned himself in eight
days after the kidnapping. His brother James was captured in Menlo Park,
California, and Woods was picked up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada a
few hours later.
Woods and the Schoenfeld’s were tried and convicted and
sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, which meant nothing. Richard
Schoenfeld was released in 2012 and James Schoenfeld was paroled on August 7,
2015. Woods, a chronic problem in prison, was denied parole for the 19th time
in 2019.
In 2016 it was learned that Woods, the ring leader in
the kidnapping, had been running several
businesses, including a gold mine and a car dealership, from behind bars, from
inherited family money left in a trust fund which came to about $100 million.
Not only had earned a fortune behind bars, he had also married three times and bought
a mansion about 30 minutes away from the prison.
His next parole hearing is in 2024. Prosecutor Jill
Klinge said “Fred Woods' behavior in prison is what keeps him in prison. He has
repeatedly been caught with pornography and cell phones in prison. And that's
not allowed. … And one of the best indicators of an inability to obey the laws
in society is that you can't obey the rules in prison”
Later that year, the twenty-five surviving kidnapped
children settled a lawsuit they had filed against their kidnappers. The money
they received was paid out of Frederick Woods' trust fund, and although the
exact settlement amount was not disclosed, one survivor stated that they had
each received "enough to pay for some serious therapy - but not enough for
a house." It was a light joke at best. All of the kidnapped children spent
their lives suffering from panic attacks and nightmares. Most of them continue
to report trauma symptoms.
Pelion
Pelion: noun: A huge or difficult
task. After Mount Pelion, a mountain in Greece. Earliest documented use: 1560.
In Greek mythology, the twins Otus and Ephialtes piled Mount Pelion on Mount
Ossa and both on Mount Olympus in an attempt to reach heaven and attack the
gods. The word is mainly used in the idiom “to pile Pelion upon Ossa” meaning
to make a challenging task even more difficult by piling something on top of
it.
Bust of a Youth (“The Beneventum Head”)
Herculaneum, Italy
50 BCE
33 cm in height
Bronze
Copper inlays for the lips
The sculpture portrays the face
of a young man barely out of adolescence. His lips were embellished with red
copper and it originally had inlaid eyes. The wreath of wild olive suggests
that this figure is a victorious athlete, and the form of the bust indicates
that it was set atop the pillar of a herm. The precise arrangement and
striations of the hair are reminiscent of works by the fifth-century B.C.
sculptor Polykleitos, but the melancholy expression and the delicate appearance
of the face are characteristic of first-century B.C. Roman creations made in
Classical Greek style.
e work is generally known as the
“Benevento Head,” although this name is based on a misunderstanding that has
long since been cleared up: the bronze was found not at Benevento but during
archaeological excavations carried out at Herculaneum, also in the Campania
region of southern Italy. Presented to the lord of Benevento by Ferdinand II,
king of the Two Sicilies, the head was later mistakenly thought to have been
discovered at Benevento.
(via didoofcarthage)
Paul Chambers.
Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers,
Jr. (April 22, 1935 – January 4, 1969) was a jazz double bassist. A fixture of
rhythm sections during the 1950s and 1960s, his importance in the development
of jazz bass can be measured not only by the extent of his work in this short
period, but also by his impeccable timekeeping and intonation, and virtuosic
improvisations.
He was born in Pittsburgh and brought
up in Detroit following the death of his mother. During the course of his
lifetime Chambers developed addictions to both alcohol and heroin. He was
hospitalized at the end of 1968 with what was thought to be a severe case of
influenza, but tests revealed that he in fact had tuberculosis. As his organ
functions deteriorated, Chambers lapsed into a coma for 18 days. It is believed
that his addictions to heroin and alcohol contributed to his health problems.
On January 4, 1969 he died of tuberculosis aged 33
From his role in the Davis band,
Chambers was the bassist in two rhythm sections. The first, with Red Garland on
piano and Philly Joe Jones on drums, came to be known as "the rhythm
section," that name featured on a celebrated album by saxophonist Art
Pepper, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section. The second, with Wynton Kelly and
Jimmy Cobb, made many sessions as a unit, recording albums with John Coltrane,
Wes Montgomery, and by themselves under Kelly's name on albums such as Kelly
Blue.
Wonderful
Medium Painted opaque glass
Metropolitan Museum of Art European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Flask, Metropolitan Museum of Art European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.
Arturo Martini (1889-1947) - Testa di donna, ca. 1940
Alfred Boucher (1850 - 1934)
The beauty of Black and White
Waiting at the airport, Amsterdam, 1964. Photographed by Leonard Freed
Photo by Bogdan Dziworski.
Clyde Hare, 1956
LA, Photo by Philip Melnick.
