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Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, May 8, 2022
through
Saturday, May 14, 2022
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It’s Saturday, May 14, 2022
Welcome to the 1,440th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Rembrandt’s the Night Watch
The Night Watch by Rembrandt, 1642
Rembrandt - http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5216
Frans Banning Cocq, heer van purmerlant en Ilpendam, Capiteijn Willem van Ruijtenburch van Vlaerdingen, heer van Vlaerdingen, Luijtenant, Jan Visscher Cornelisen Vaendrich, Rombout Kemp Sergeant, Reijnier Engelen Sergeant, Barent Harmansen, Jan Adriaensen Keyser, Elbert Willemsen, Musketier Jan Clasen Leydeckers (behind the Lieutenant in Yellow blowing into the powder pan of a musket which once belonged to Jan Snedeker), Jan Ockersen, Jan Pietersen bronchorst, Harman Iacobsen wormskerck, Jacob Dirksen de Roy (the Governor on far left of the cut off section of the painting), Jan vander heede, Walich Schellingwou, Jan brugman, Claes van Cruysbergen, Paulus Schoonhoven
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Lead Picture*
Rembrandt’s the Night Watch
The Night Watch by Rembrandt, 1642
Rembrandt - http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5216
Frans Banning Cocq, heer van purmerlant en Ilpendam, Capiteijn Willem van Ruijtenburch van Vlaerdingen, heer van Vlaerdingen, Luijtenant, Jan Visscher Cornelisen Vaendrich, Rombout Kemp Sergeant, Reijnier Engelen Sergeant, Barent Harmansen, Jan Adriaensen Keyser, Elbert Willemsen, Musketier Jan Clasen Leydeckers (behind the Lieutenant in Yellow blowing into the powder pan of a musket which once belonged to Jan Snedeker), Jan Ockersen, Jan Pietersen bronchorst, Harman Iacobsen wormskerck, Jacob Dirksen de Roy (the Governor on far left of the cut off section of the painting), Jan vander heede, Walich Schellingwou, Jan brugman, Claes van Cruysbergen, Paulus Schoonhoven
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Commentary
Am feeling a little blue over the Celtics loss on Wednesday night.
The team, a more talented team than the Bucs, were outplayed by the Bucs.
It was a difficult loss.
I hope the team can come together in their adversity and take individual blame, not assign blame to others on the team.
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Screen time
I’m watching this television:
Thurs: Under Banner of Heaven
Thurs: Season: Flight Attendant (HBO Max)
Thurs: The Offer: Paramount Ep 4
Sun: Barry HBO
Sun: Ridley Road
Mon: AMC: Better Call Saul
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Wellness
For those who missed my last comment on my fall, I’m fine. No overnight issues.
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Understanding aging
Although my nightly sleep rhythm has suddenly (and miraculously) turned positive, getting six hours a night without melatonin or any other sleep enhancers, I still find myself needing to nap a couple of times a day.
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Social Life
Ending the week with two celebratory dinners.
Friday with coffee mate Cal.
Saturday with niece Lisa and David.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Sometimes the road less traveled is
less traveled for a reason.
~Jerry Seinfeld
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from friend Howard D:
My dear friend,
I have a strong reason for objecting to your summary use of the term “academia” to attack the pernicious aspects of how higher education has been transformed since we knew it. It’s more or less a global change, but especially in the United States. We should expect as much, given our penchant for measuring in coin the value of abstractions—otherwise better esteemed in more enduring and less material qualities.
The evil in academia does not reside essentially in the original progenitors of the institutions of higher learning. They were first founded (in the US going back to the early 17th century; in Europe, very much further back, possibly as many as another five centuries). So they did have a long tenure [pun intended].
I am talking of course about the scholars, lay and priestly, who constituted the first members of what we’ve come, universally, to call faculty. A core constituency. We call them faculty for good reason. They are most intimately and tightly recognized for their devoted roles as the guarantors of what is their mission: to instill the skills, insights, and habits of mind. And, of course—or it at least used to be—to instill in the still unformed young minds in their charge the spirit of a humane philosophy concerning life in general and all of mankind in particular.
My wife is an academic and a teacher. Your late ex-wife was an academic and a teacher.
They were and are the heart and soul of what was always called, with some reverence (and without any invidious shading), academia. You do these women, and the many millions of others, regardless of gender, but committed to carry out this role under increasingly loathesome and burdensome conditions an injury by their inclusion in a much more pernicious class of actors. College faculty continue to labor by providing what now passes for a recognized degree. It substitutes, at increasing cost for the intended beneficiaries, for what used to be free in so many venues: attestation of a quality education to a specialized level of mastery in the spirit of what is now a defunct standard, a liberal education. It used to permit students to venture forth in the world with some assurance and confidence that they had had instilled in them the skills and habits of mind that permitted eventual mastery of whatever endeavor they chose for themselves.
Other forces, money-driven forces, and represented on campus by professional administrators (they never existed until the role was created for them with the tacit acquiescence of the professoriate, no longer equipped with the necessary skills and time demands of essentially bureaucratic tasks. These forces are represented, of course, outside of campuses by the other stake holders to what is now, essentially, the profit-engine of a mechanism that has institutionalized the bestowal of credentials (as opposed to instilling an education and values and the legitimate awarding of a degree). This all is done for a bounty, which increasingly, as you suggest, subjects most students these days to at least half of their adult lives being spend in virtual indentured servitude in order to be able to pay off the egregious and onerous debts of receiving those credentials.
And of course, for that time, the credentials mainly serve to validate their worthiness to participate in the inequities of our economy so they can earn, barely, the means of paying off those debts.
Those stake holders are the financial institutions that administer the whole evil apparatus of tracking and managing all that debt (and the intricate machinery it entails to do so), our government, which itself is increasingly in bondage to the techno-industrial complex that receives the greater portion of the benefits of having all those credentialed servants to help them carry out their message, and all for the price of holding the monetary reins of our society and culture. They supply the money for research, for sophisticated resources, for indulgent accouterments for the campuses in which training is administered. It used to be the government that did all that. Now the government provides only the imprimatur.
But this whole apparatus is not academia, not in the strictest sense, because to use the term is to paint with a very wide brush laden with hot tar. And the true academicians, the teachers (most of them anyway), don’t deserve that insult, or any of the venomous accusations, such as yours, which should otherwise be directed and targeted more accurately. That would be the first step to the major phases of reform necessary to return any semblance of what you and I knew to be the condition and mission of higher education.
I’d go so far as to suggest you change the word “academia” to something better and more descriptive, and to make clear who you are talking about. It’s a little too facile to hang all that should be given a complete and truthful airing on a single term, when the risk is far too great that you are attracting (and likely provoking) righteous indignation from sympathizers and who will get the wrong idea about who is to blame. And all because it’s easier to be monolithic in your condemnation. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and I know you know it.
Stay safe
Xoxo
h
Blog meister responds: Well put, my friend. Producing a large daily post doesn’t not lend itself to analysis and deep thought: just a shout out to spur others to thought and analysis. Few, however, as well done as your contribution. Thanks.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I created a recipe for Baked Clams and made it. The result was okay. Not the genius I’d hoped for.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Two appreciated buildings
I’ve watched these buildings go up from the start of the demolition of the parking garage.
I think they add a lot to the skyline.
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Short Essay*
Dutch art describes the history of visual arts in the Netherlands, after the United Provinces separated from Flanders. Earlier painting in the area is covered in Early Netherlandish painting and Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting.
The history of Dutch art is dominated by the Dutch Golden Age painting, mostly of about 1620 to 1680, when a very distinct style and new types of painting were developed, though still keeping close links with Flemish Baroque painting. There was a healthy artistic climate in Dutch cities during the seventeenth century. For example, between 1605 and 1635 over 100,000 paintings were produced in Haarlem.[1] At that time art ownership in the city was 25%, a record high.[2] After the end of the Golden Age, production of paintings remained high, but ceased to influence the rest of Europe as strongly.
Many painters, sculptors and architects of the seventeenth century are called "Dutch masters", while earlier artists are generally referred to as part of the "Netherlandish" tradition. An individual work's being labelled or catalogued as "Dutch School" without further attribution indicates that an individual artist for the work cannot be ascertained.
The Hague School of the 19th century re-interpreted the range of subjects of the Golden Age in contemporary terms, and made Dutch painting once again a European leader. In the successive movements of art since the 19th century, the Dutch contribution has been best known from the work of the individual figures of Vincent van Gogh and Piet Mondrian, though both did their best work outside the Netherlands, and took some time to be appreciated. Amsterdam Impressionism had a mainly local impact, but the De Stijl movement, of which Mondrian was a member, was influential abroad.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Friday, May 13, 2022
Welcome to the 1,439th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
The Donner Party
The 28th page of Patrick Breen's diary, recording his observations in late February 1847, including "Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that thought she would Commence on Milt & eat him. I dont that she has done so yet, it is distressing."
Patrick Breen wrote the page - Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley. http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ark:/
This is a scan of the diary from the Bancroft Library, the text reads "Thursd. 25th froze hard last night fine & sunshiny to day wind W. Mrs Murphy says the wolves are about to dig up the dead bodies at her shanty, the nights are too cold to watch them, we hear them howl -- -- Frid 26th froze hard last night to day clear & warm Wind S: E: blowing briskly Marthas jaw swelled with the toothache: hungry times in camp, plenty hides but the folks will not eat them we eat them with a tolerable good apetite. Thanks be to Almighty God. Amen Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that thought she would Commence on Milt. & eat him. I dont that she has done so yet, it is distressing. The Donnos told the California folks that they commence to eat the dead people 4 days ago, if they did not succeed that day or next in finding their cattle then under ten or twelve feet of snow & did not know the spot or near it, I suppose they have done so ere this time"
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Commentary
Introducing Union Square, Somerville.
From the Boston Sports Club I took the T to Union Station.
First time.
As we pulled into the station, we were treated to a view of a large construction project: a building complex of many stories over a large space.
The impact of public transportation seems to be positive.
I walked Bow St.
About fifteen years ago this was an important in the lives of my eight-year-old daughter and I.
We had few social contacts and little money.
Finding highpoints was not that easy.
Bow St. was a terrific hangout for us.
It had a comic book store, a great café, a great doughnut shop, a great Italian salumeria, and a terrific breakfast restaurant.
I am happy to report, all five establishments survived the pandemic and are as attractive as they were fifteen years ago.
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Reading and Writing
My friend Bunny D’Amore sent me a copy of her published book of poems called Journeys on the Wheel. I’m looking forward to it.
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Screen time
I watched an episode of The Baby. Too much horror for me.
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Wellness
I feel in my apartment yesterday. I’m happy to report that I suffered no hurts from that event.
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Understanding aging
On the other hand, I am struggling at a second arm machine and will reduce the weight that I’ve used for the last ten years.
Tick Tock.
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Social Life
What started as a quiet week became quietly connected. I will be having some time with my niece and her husband on Saturday and a café visit with a coffee mate.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender,
but you don't have a top for it.
~Jerry
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Union Square. Called Ebi.
I enjoyed myself but won’t return: the food was not wonderful.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Rogier Van Der Weyden: Detail of St. Luke
Revolutionary in its day
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Background
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Short Essay*
The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, and extreme cold.
The Donner Party departed Missouri on the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1846, behind many other pioneer families who were attempting to make the same overland trip. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed after electing to follow a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which bypassed established trails and instead crossed the Rocky Mountains' Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert in present-day Utah. The desolate and rugged terrain, and the difficulties they later encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and divisions soon formed within the group.
By early November, the migrants had reached the Sierra Nevada but became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran dangerously low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the migrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal. Historians have described the episode as one of the most fascinating tragedies in California history and in the entire record of American westward migration.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Thursday, May 12, 2022
Welcome to the 1,438th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture
Bouquet
Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), Bouquet (1599). Some of the earliest examples of still life were paintings of flowers by Netherlandish Renaissance painters. Still-life painting (including vanitas), as a particular genre, achieved its greatest importance in the Golden Age of Netherlandish art (ca. 1500s–1600s).
Jan Brueghel the Elder - Kunsthistorisches Museum
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Commentary
The establishment we call academia has over the years drained our students’ lifeblood.
Vampires, they are, sucking blood-money from young families with forcing students to take out student loans that will take their families a decade or two to repay.
Stop it.
How much blood do you need to draw?
Pigs.
Stop buying valuable real estate, building more schools, and getting bigger and bigger.
Stop turning our citizens into serfs.
As fellow students, fellow citizens, we don’t have a choice: we must give our young people back their lives and forgive student debt.
With two provisos:
The first: tax academia to pay for the government payout.
The second: halt all expansion until academia develops a program to graduate students without substantial debt.
Of course, the loan forgiveness will apply only to families below an income to be sorted.
Academia is criminal and gets away with a lot.
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Screen time
The Celtics have provided the main screen event for me this last week.
And after losing a heartbreaker on Saturday, they played a brilliant end game in Game 4 on Monday.
What a rewarding experience quality games provide to Celtic fans.
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Social Life
I had a fun cup of coffee with my dear friend Cindy.
We booked another coffee for the second Monday in June.
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Ageing
Dodged a bullet.
In my stocking feet I stepped on the foot of my computer stool and it hurt and unbalanced me, pushing me several seps backwards and off my feet into the cabinet behind the stool.
Smashed only my back but it knocked the air out of me and sent me to the floor where I stayed for a couple of moments thanking my stars that I wasn’t injured and then wondering if I perhaps was injured.
Tomorrow, when I wake up, assuming, my lower back will remind me that older people always suffer a consequence.
The smart money in on my lower back.
It's been out of the limelight for a while.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Well, Art is Art, isn't it?
Still, on the other hand, water is water.
And east is east and west is west and
if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
Now you tell me what you know.
~Groucho Marx
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
On Monday night I made a Gravy.
I enjoyed it on Tuesday and have more for meals to come.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Artists on the Public Garden
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Short Essay*
A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, etc.).
With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. One advantage of the still-life artform is that it allows an artist much freedom to experiment with the arrangement of elements within a composition of a painting. Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Later still-life works are produced with a variety of media and technology, such as found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound.
The term includes the painting of dead animals, especially game. Live ones are considered animal art, although in practice they were often painted from dead models. Because of the use of plants and animals as a subject, the still-life category also shares commonalities with zoological and especially botanical illustration. However, with visual or fine art, the work is not intended merely to illustrate the subject correctly.
Still life occupied the lowest rung of the hierarchy of genres, but has been extremely popular with buyers. As well as the independent still-life subject, still-life painting encompasses other types of painting with prominent still-life elements, usually symbolic, and "images that rely on a multitude of still-life elements ostensibly to reproduce a 'slice of life'". The trompe-l'œil painting, which intends to deceive the viewer into thinking the scene is real, is a specialized type of still life, usually showing inanimate and relatively flat objects.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Welcome to the 1,437th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Phillip the Good
Under Philip the Good (1396–1467), Duke of Burgundy, the provinces of the Netherlands began to grow together: Flanders, Artois, Namur, Holland, Zeeland, Hainaut, Brabant, Limburg and Luxembourg were ruled in personal union. He has been honored by later humanists as the founding father of the Netherlands. (Portrait by Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden, circa 1450).
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Commentary
These are not the richest days of my life.
My life has been filled with rich days.
But they are rich days.
I am able to stay creative, write when and what I want.
I eat really anything I want.
I balance my week with exercise.
If not wonderful, I have a decent social life.
Finally, I’m still healthy.
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Reading and Writing
I’m really enjoying 10,000 doors of January.
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Screen time
Watching Ridley Road for the history of it.
Otherwise, I find it poorly written.
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Social Life
The blog and my book are my two major social events.
The blog generates scads of social intercourse.
And seeking opinions on my work on the book has created a small but intense group exchanging ideas. It’s been great fun.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
She got her looks from her father.
He's a plastic surgeon.
~Groucho Marx
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I am now considering Union Sq in Somerville for dining out, using the newly expanded T.
It adds a treasure trove of restaurants for me.
Pictures with Captions from our community**
Government Center Boston.
After years of doing work below grade, it appears the project is in its final phase: paving.
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Short Essay*
The Low Countries comprise the coastal Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta region in Western Europe, whose definition usually includes the modern countries of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Both Belgium and the Netherlands derived their names from earlier names for the region, due to nether meaning "low" and Belgica being the Latinized name for all the Low Countries, a nomenclature that went obsolete after Belgium's secession in 1830.
The Low Countries—and the Netherlands and Belgium—had in their history exceptionally many and widely varying names, resulting in equally varying names in different languages. There is diversity even within languages: the use of one word for the country and another for the adjective form is common. This holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form for the country "the Netherlands". Moreover, many languages have the same word for both the country of the Netherlands and the region of the Low Countries, e.g., French (les Pays-Bas) and Spanish (los Países Bajos). The complicated nomenclature is a source of confusion for outsiders, and is due to the long history of the language, the culture and the frequent change of economic and military power within the Low Countries over the past 2,000 years.
The 21st century English adjective "Netherlandish", meaning "from the Low Countries" is derived directly from the Dutch adjective Nederlands (a postwar spelling of Nederlandsch). It is typically used in reference to paintings or music produced anywhere in the Low Countries during the 15th and early 16th century. There are works of art that are now collectively called "Early Netherlandish painting", although the term it aspires to replace, namely "Flemish primitives", remains in use. In music the Franco-Flemish School is also known as the Netherlandish School. Later art and artists from the southern Catholic provinces of the Low Countries are usually called Flemish and those from the northern Protestant provinces Dutch, but art historians sometimes use "Netherlandish art" for art of the Low Countries produced before 1830, i.e., until the secession of Belgium from the Netherlands to distinguish the period from what came after.
Apart from this largely intellectual use, the term "Netherlandish" as adjective is not commonly used in English, unlike it's Dutch equivalent. Many languages however, do have a cognate or calque derived from the Dutch adjective Nederlands:
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Welcome to the 1,436th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Julia Child
Julia Child in her kitchen as photographed ©Lynn Gilbert, 1978, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lynn Gilbert - Own work
Permission details
This work is free and may be used by anyone for any purpose.
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Commentary
My schedule is firming up.
After breakfast, about 6am, I Submit to one agent. Goal is one agent a day.
Then I head to Prudential Center to lift (every other day when I lift) and then to the MFA.
When I’m not lifting, I go straight to the MFA where I spend 30 minutes in a gallery. For several days I will look at all of the art in the Netherlandish Art galleries.
Then I spend one hour writing.
I return home, sometimes with takeout, and I eat.
I nap and then head out to a café where I continue my writing.
At home, I work on the post for next day’s blog.
And I’m done.
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Screen time
I binge streamed Julia.
Totally enjoyable.
Especially enjoyed learning details of how Julia got a TV series.
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Social Life
Started this week with zero social engagements and then in a single morning got offered three meetups. I accepted all of them. Fun.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
When I was born I was so ugly
the doctor slapped my mother.
~Rodney Dangerfield
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
The internet was crowded with Mother’s Day messages.
It was fun.
Blog meister responds: It’s a special day and I was so pleased to have a tiny slice of the lives of those close to me.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
A very happy discovery.
A takeout restaurant, Brigham Circle Chinese.
I had my first meal from there: spare ribs, saltfish fritters, and steamed vegetables. Each of the dishes was excellent and it’s only 3 T stops from the MFA.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Do not feed the animals.
Contrary to many people’s ideas of fun, feeding the wildlife in the Public Garden is frowned upon.
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Short Essay*
Julia Carolyn Child (née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963.
Child had a large impact on American households and housewives. Because of the technology in the 1960s, the show was unedited, causing her blunders to appear in the final version and ultimately lend "authenticity and approachability to television." According to Toby Miller in "Screening Food: French Cuisine and the Television Palate," one mother he spoke to said that sometimes "all that stood between me and insanity was hearty Julia Child" because of Child's ability to soothe and transport her. In addition, Miller notes that Child's show began before the feminist movement of the 1960s, which meant that the issues housewives and women faced were somewhat ignored on television.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Welcome to the 1,436th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Julia Child
Julia Child in her kitchen as photographed ©Lynn Gilbert, 1978, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lynn Gilbert - Own work
Permission details
This work is free and may be used by anyone for any purpose.
______________________________________
Commentary
My schedule is firming up.
After breakfast, about 6am, I Submit to one agent. Goal is one agent a day.
Then I head to Prudential Center to lift (every other day when I lift) and then to the MFA.
When I’m not lifting, I go straight to the MFA where I spend 30 minutes in a gallery. For several days I will look at all of the art in the Netherlandish Art galleries.
Then I spend one hour writing.
I return home, sometimes with takeout, and I eat.
I nap and then head out to a café where I continue my writing.
At home, I work on the post for next day’s blog.
And I’m done.
_____________________________________
Screen time
I binge streamed Julia.
Totally enjoyable.
Especially enjoyed learning details of how Julia got a TV series.
_____________________________________
Social Life
Started this week with zero social engagements and then in a single morning got offered three meetups. I accepted all of them. Fun.
______________________________________
Chuckles and Thoughts
When I was born I was so ugly
the doctor slapped my mother.
~Rodney Dangerfield
_____________________________________
Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
The internet was crowded with Mother’s Day messages.
It was fun.
Blog meister responds: It’s a special day and I was so pleased to have a tiny slice of the lives of those close to me.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
A very happy discovery.
A takeout restaurant, Brigham Circle Chinese.
I had my first meal from there: spare ribs, saltfish fritters, and steamed vegetables. Each of the dishes was excellent and it’s only 3 T stops from the MFA
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Do not feed the animals.
Contrary to many people’s ideas of fun, feeding the wildlife in the Public Garden is frowned upon.
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Short Essay*
Julia Carolyn Child (née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963.
Child had a large impact on American households and housewives. Because of the technology in the 1960s, the show was unedited, causing her blunders to appear in the final version and ultimately lend "authenticity and approachability to television." According to Toby Miller in "Screening Food: French Cuisine and the Television Palate," one mother he spoke to said that sometimes "all that stood between me and insanity was hearty Julia Child" because of Child's ability to soothe and transport her. In addition, Miller notes that Child's show began before the feminist movement of the 1960s, which meant that the issues housewives and women faced were somewhat ignored on television.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Monday, May 9, 2022
Welcome to the 1,435th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Jan Van Eyck Picture
The Arnolfini portrait by Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck - Web site of National Gallery, London
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Commentary
While eyes are on Pennsylvania’s close Republican Senate Primary to see if Trump’s endorsement will help a not-very-popular candidate, talking McCormick v Oz, Oz being Trump’s pick, for me the more important is not which of the two far-rightists will win, but whether the antagonisms between the two camps will diminish the Republican support the winning candidate will have in the general election.
If the Republicans lose Pennsylvania, it won’t matter which Republican won the Primary, Trump will be the loser. His extreme attitudes will be to blame for the Republican loss.
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Screen time
Besides being good television, The Offer is a very entertaining series for anyone who is interested in how movies get made.
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Understanding aging
Last week I reported the slight loss of power in my pull ups.
Today I must add a loss of power in my Shoulder Press.
Slight, each machine. But the trend is down.
Ageing is slow but inexorable.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.
~Groucho Marx
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
My daughter texted. She and a new girlfriend, the Senator’s deputy chief of staff, attended a gala put on by the NYC Ballet Festival. She could have danced all night.
Blog meister responds: Every parent loves their children to be happy.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I’m noticing that with the creation of a menu calendar I am doing less work in the kitchen.
I can use the time.
For the second time this week I am planning Takeout.
I’ve wanted to use more takeout since the pandemic began.
I bought Sushi earlier in the week, and today I/m buying Jamaican.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
View of the NYC Ballet Stravinsky Gala
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
View of Kat with the NYC Ballet Stravinsky Gala behind her and below.
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Short Essay*
The Arnolfini Portrait (or The Arnolfini Wedding, The Arnolfini Marriage, the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, or other titles) is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It forms a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their residence at the Flemish city of Bruges.
It is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art, because of its beauty, complex iconography geometric orthogonal perspective, and expansion of the picture space with the use of a mirror.] According to Ernst Gombrich "in its own way it was as new and revolutionary as Donatello's or Masaccio's work in Italy. A simple corner of the real world had suddenly been fixed on to a panel as if by magic... For the first time in history the artist became the perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term". The portrait has been considered by Erwin Panofsky and some other art historians as a unique form of marriage contract, recorded as a painting. Signed and dated by van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London in 1842.
Van Eyck used the technique of applying several layers of thin translucent glazes to create a painting with an intensity of both tone and colour. The glowing colors also help to highlight the realism, and to show the material wealth and opulence of Arnolfini's world. Van Eyck took advantage of the longer drying time of oil paint, compared to tempera, to blend colors by painting wet-in-wet to achieve subtle variations in light and shade to heighten the illusion of three-dimensional forms. The wet-in-wet (wet-on-wet), technique, also known as alla prima, was highly utilized by Renaissance painters including Jan van Eyck. The medium of oil paint also permitted van Eyck to capture surface appearance and distinguish textures precisely. He also rendered the effects of both direct and diffuse light by showing the light from the window on the left reflected by various surfaces. It has been suggested that he used a magnifying glass in order to paint the minute details such as the individual highlights on each of the amber beads hanging beside the mirror.
The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for "its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it". Whatever meaning is given to the scene and its details, and there has been much debate on this, according to Craig Harbison the painting "is the only fifteenth-century Northern panel to survive in which the artist's contemporaries are shown engaged in some sort of action in a contemporary interior. It is indeed tempting to call this the first genre painting – a painting of everyday life – of modern times".
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Sunday, May 8, 2022
Welcome to the 1,434th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Rogier van der Weyden
The Descent from the Cross (c. 1435), oil on oak panel, 220 × 262 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid
Rogier van der Weyden - Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here. Source: http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/w/weyden/rogier/01deposi/index.html
Descent from the Cross Crucifixion of Jesus
Permission details. This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain
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Commentary
I’m returning to the MFA as my place to write in the mornings.
I had been a regular but then fell off.
I’ve been unhappy with my production in the morning visits to the Thinking Cup.
The MFA is only 3 stops from the Pru where I work out, on the same T line.
Daily visits will daily get me 30 minutes of gallery time. That many visits will get me all the time I need for every work that interests me.
In addition, the MFA is on the same T line as Flames at Brigham’s Circle where I buy Goat Curry.
From the MFA or Flames I’ll take the T back into town, get off at Arlington St, and enjoy the lovely walk home through the Public Garden.
I got the inspiration from my recent visit to the museum during the Art in Bloom weekend. I also took in the Turner exhibit. That’s when I discovered the new Flemish painters’ rooms and determined to return right away.
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Reading and Writing
I will be doing some reading on Flemish art. Will I ever learn the distinctions separating Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish, Flanders, Belgian?
Are we talking geographic or ethnic or language or religion?
Wiki doesn’t help much: The Flemish or Flemings are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, Belgium, who speak Flemish Dutch. Flemish people make up the majority of the Belgian population, at about 60%.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing.
If you can fake that, you've got it made.
~Groucho Marx
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Wellness
My first poor sleeping night in a week. Still got 3 hours and am halfway through the day without needing more than an occasional 7 minute nap.
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Social Life
This coming week, Sunday through Saturday, is quiet. Not even a class or a pre-arranged phone call.
I like it, for now.
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Sally C:
Dear Dom,
What a couple of great American icons! Annette Funicello and Ray Bolger! Do we have any significant entertainers today who come close?
Sally
Blog meister responds: Iconic, today? None jump to mind.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I had a tuna fish sandwich for dinner on Friday.
It was a knockout.
I used the fine tuna in a jar, keeping it intact.
And a fresh ciabatta square.
And a chopped blend of green garlic greens, red onions, celery, dill pickle.
That was heaped on the pile of artisan lettuce leaves, thickly-sliced tomato, and a heap of sprouts.
it was a knockout.
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Community Photos**
Greenway in Profusion.
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Short Essay*
Rogier van der Weyden (Dutch1399 or 1400 – 18 June 1464) was an Early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces, and commissioned single and diptych portraits. He was highly successful in his lifetime; his paintings were exported to Italy and Spain, and he received commissions from, amongst others, Philip the Good, Netherlandish nobility, and foreign princes. By the latter half of the 15th century, he had eclipsed Jan van Eyck in popularity. However his fame lasted only until the 17th century, and largely due to changing taste, he was almost totally forgotten by the mid-18th century. His reputation was slowly rebuilt during the following 200 years; today he is known, with Robert Campin and van Eyck, as the third (by birth date) of the three great Early Flemish artists (Vlaamse Primitieven or "Flemish Primitives"), and widely as the most influential Northern painter of the 15th century.
Very few details of van der Weyden's life are known. The few facts we know come from fragmentary civic records. Yet the attribution of paintings now associated to him is widely accepted, partly on the basis of circumstantial evidence, but primarily on the stylistic evidence of a number of paintings by an innovative master.
Van der Weyden worked from life models, and his observations were closely observed. Yet he often idealised certain elements of his models' facial features, who were typically statuesque, especially in his triptychs. All of his forms are rendered with rich, warm colorization and a sympathetic expression, while he is known for his expressive pathos and naturalism. His portraits tend to be half length and half profile, and he is as sympathetic here as in his religious triptychs. Van der Weyden used an unusually broad range of colors and varied tones; in his finest work the same tone is not repeated in any other area of the canvas, so even the whites are varied.
*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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