Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, October 25, 2020
through
Saturday, October 31, 2020
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It’s Saturday, October 31, 2020
Welcome to the 924th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
The painted crypt of San Isidoro at León, Spain
Megginede - Own work
Panteon kraljeva od Leona
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2.0 Commentary
Weight not coming down.
Wintry day to walk out into.
Still more days to the election.
Julius Edelman out for an extended period.
Storms.
Fires.
What the Hades.
Waking up on the wrong side of the bed.
The good part is that you didn’t fall out of bed.
No injury.
Time to compose yourself.
Have coffee.
Write the blog.
Re-engage.
Spend time reading for my online class,
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Worked on charting and defining the art movements in Western culture, from Ancient through the Middle Ages and ending with Mannerism.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Don't associate yourself with toxic people.
It's better to be alone and love yourself than
surrounded by people that make you hate yourself.
~Robin Williams
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Had Chicken with Artichokes and Shallots last night.
Made with a fresh artichoke as well as some small, jarred in brine artichoke hearts.
Pulling on each leaf to suck off the flavors: wine, vinegar, olive oil, shallots, artichoke, salt, dill.
Drinking half a bottle of Pouilly Fume.
Watching “Mostly Martha.”
Heartwarming.
My kind of movie.
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Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later, depending on region.
The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period.
The term was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses, and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different characteristics.
In Southern France, Spain and Italy there was an architectural continuity with the Late Antique,
but the Romanesque style was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia.
Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles.
From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style.
Outside Romanesque architecture, the art of the period was characterized by a vigorous style in both sculpture and painting. The latter continued to follow essentially Byzantine iconographic models for the most common subjects in churches, which remained Christ in Majesty, the Last Judgment and scenes from the Life of Christ. In illuminated manuscripts more originality is seen, as new scenes needed to be depicted.
The most lavishly decorated manuscripts of this period were bibles and psalters. The same originality applied to the capitals of columns: often carved with complete scenes with several figures. The large wooden crucifix was a German innovation at the very start of the period, as were free-standing statues of the enthroned Madonna. High relief was the dominant sculptural mode of the period.
Colors were very striking, and mostly primary. In the 21st century: these colors can only be seen in their original brightness in stained glass, and a few well-preserved manuscripts. Stained glass became widely used, although survivals are sadly few. In an invention of the period, the tympanums of important church portals were carved with monumental schemes, often Christ in Majesty or the Last Judgement, but treated with more freedom than painted versions, as there were no equivalent Byzantine models.
Compositions usually had little depth, and needed to be flexible to be squeezed into the shapes of historiated initials, column capitals, and church tympanums; the tension between a tightly enclosing frame, from which the composition sometimes escapes, is a recurrent theme in Romanesque art. Figures often varied in size in relation to their importance. Landscape backgrounds, if attempted at all, were closer to abstract decorations than realism – as in the trees in the "Morgan Leaf".
Portraiture hardly existed.
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It’s Friday, October 30, 2020
Welcome to the 923rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Annunciation and two Saints
Die Darstellung breitet sich unter fünf vergoldeten Spitzbögen aus und ist noch ganz im Stil der hochgotischen Schönlinigkeit gehalten. Ein goldenes Spruchband liegt zwischen dem Engel Gabriel und Maria, die über die Frage nachdenkt.
Simone Martini - Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork
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 for the following reason:
Public domain
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.
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2.0 Commentary
Former vice president Joe Biden continues to outpace President Trump in two crucial Midwest battlegrounds, currently holding a slight lead over the president in Michigan while showing a much more substantial advantage in Wisconsin, according to a pair of Washington Post-ABC News polls.
In CNN’s last Poll of Polls before the election, Biden is showing a 12-point need nationally.
Despite not making inroads on Biden’s lead, the President has not changed his message or methods.
Trump has frequently shown he knows the public as well as anyone.
His acumen has got the Democrats driving full throttle.
No complacency here.
Here in Massachusetts our situation is dire.
But.
I’m wondering if we should choose to stay the course.
Choose to retain our openings.
Let’s analyze each business, each activity.
Apply stricter controls as needed.
Make us safer in place.
Let’s learn and grow.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Today I worked on The Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus by Simone Martini and his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi.
A dazzling work at the Uffizi.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Teenagers these days are out of control.
They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.
~Aristotle
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5.0 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,
As always, great-sounding food!
Soup season is upon us. Last week, I made a decadent cream of mushroom soup, lactose-free, with a hint of garlic. Let it set for a day in the fridge to mull before we ate it. Mmmm! My mother makes a great cream of cauliflower soup with just a pressure-cooked cauliflower pureed in the blender with a quart or so of her chicken stock. Nothing else. Surprisingly hearty, considering the minimal ingredients.
Then, last Friday, crab cakes deep-fried in olive oil. I've adjusted my recipe so that they have a great texture and aren't too bready. Lovely crisp on the outside. They include finely minced celery. I like to keep a 1-pound can of crabmeat in the fridge for these, to have on hand when I decide to make them, three or four times a year.
Yesterday I boiled a smoked shoulder, which I prefer to ham. I boil it for an hour in plain water, then pour that off and boil it for another hour in more water with a couple of cups of brown cider vinegar. The vinegar tenderizes it and gives it an almost-sweet savory flavor. I never bake it - don't like it to dry out. Boiling pulls a lot of the salt and other curing elements from it.
Tonight, it's turkey stroganoff. Haven't made that since last winter. Another "mmmmm."
A multitude of "mmmmm's" to you.
Sally
Blog meister responds: Love those ‘mmms’.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday night I made the most delicious Broccoli and Pasta sauce.
Here is the recipe.
Also find it in the Recipe Pages
Broccoli in Broccoli Sauce
To accompany 12oz chunky pasta of choice: penne, rigatoni.
1lb broccoli, stems and flowerets separated, washed, and boiled.
In a food processor:
Put in the stems and 1/3 of flowerets
Add in:
½ cup garlic olive oil
1 small dried red chili, coarsely broken up
½ cup Romano cheese
s/fgp
1 cup chicken stock
¼ cup heavy cream or evaporated milk (to cut calories).
Puree to smooth.
Stir in the remaining flowerets.
Toss with pasta.
Garnish generously with Parmigiana cheese and serve.
Add in chunks of chicken and you have Broccoli, Chicken, and Pasta.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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The Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus is a painting by the Italian Gothic artists Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, now housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
It is a wooden triptych painted in tempera and gold, with a central panel having double size.
Considered Martini's masterwork and one of the most outstanding works of Gothic painting, the work was originally painted for a side altar in the Siena Cathedral.
The work is composed of a large central panel depicting the Annunciation, and two side panels with St. Ansanus (left), and female saint, generarally identified with St. Maxima[2] or St. Margaret, in the right, and four tondos in the cusps: Jeremiah, Ezechiel, Isiah and Daniel.
The Annunciation shows the archangel Gabriel entering the house of the Virgin Mary to tell her that she will soon bear the child Jesus, whose name means "savior". Gabriel holds an olive branch in his hand, a traditional symbol of peace, while pointing at the Holy Ghost's dove with the other. The dove is descending from heaven, from the center of the mandorla of eight angels above, about to enter the Virgin's right ear. In fact, along the path of the dove, viewers see Gabriel's utterance: ave gratia plena dominvs tecvm ("Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee."). The angel's mantle shows a detailed "tartar cloth" pattern and fine gilt feathers.
Mary, sitting on a throne, is portrayed at the moment that she is startled out of her reading, reacting with a graceful and composed reluctance, looking with surprise at the celestial messenger. Her dress has an arabesque-like pattern.
At the sides, the two patrons saints of the cathedral are separated by the central scene by two decorate twisting columns. The background, completely gilt, has a vase of lilies, an allegory of purity often associated to the Virgin Mary.
The use of a Gothic line, plus such realistic elements as the book, the vase, the throne, the pavement in perspective, the realistic action of the two figures and their subtle nuances of character are a substantial detachment from the bi-dimensionality typical of Byzantine art.
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It’s Thursday, October 29, 2020
Welcome to the 922nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Gentile da Fabriano -
The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202.
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2.0 Commentary
Nothing negative to report on my health except that all my strict obervance to my diet has gotten me is that I am staying on the low-end of the parameter.
Meaning?
A week in and I haven’t lost one of the four pounds I’m hoping to lose.
Walking stays good, 1.5 to 2.0 hours per day.
And my workouts are strong.
Speaking of which, I stopped into Equinox last night to make a comparison to Planet Fitness.
I was well-treated on my guided tour through the facility.
Ambiance? E a palace and PF a hovel.
Tanning?
E has none; PF: comes w membership.
Proximity? E a five-minute walk. PF fifteen. An important plus as the frigid winter nights approach.
Accessibility? E only 5 nights, although a second branch, as long a walk from my apartment as PF, is open to members. PF seven days and nights,
Equipment? Tied.
Monthly membership: E @ 195.00; PF @ 20.00 with the tanning.
No contest. PF.
But that wintry walk!
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Finally got back to the Tuscan art, today researching Gentile da Fabiano’s Adoration of the Magi.
An extraordinary work in a museum of extraordinary works.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
~Aristotle
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
As many people who visit a place is the number of suggestions available to she who plans a trip.
And she should appreciate the offers to help.
But perhaps a contrary type, she doesn’t always.
Yesterday was a day for several offers of ideas to be proferred.
Got me to thinking.
The best way to offer one’s experiences is in conversation:
Oh! You’re visiting Tuscany.
Where are you planning to go? To do?
Then you listen.
That sounds great. I visited one, two, three places. I liked so and so because…
We had some great meals. Are you choosing restaurants randomly or do we have places picked out?
Then you listen.
That sounds great. We just asked at the hotels and they always gave us the insider’s tips. The meals were great.
Conversation. The exchange of views and ideas, the salient word, exhange.
Blog meister responds: Travel talk is a great way to hone conversational skills.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night we made duck wraps.
Bulging and delicious.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnail
When looking at Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi, imagine yourself in front of it. Not standing in front of the painting in the bright Uffizi gallery, but in front of an altar in a dark sacristy, watching flickering candlelight dance on layers of silver, gold and paint that have been molded, etched, and glazed into glittering textures.
The effect would be overwhelming.
Only after this visual shock would you begin to look more closely, wondering what the painting is actually about, who could have painted such a thing, and—perhaps just as importantly for the Renaissance viewer—who could have possibly afforded it.
The answers to these questions are complex and intertwined.
Yet, with a little historical context, they can be found in the painting itself.
To the modern viewer, Gentile’s Adoration may seem too busy, too ornate and too crowded. Even art historians have sometimes had difficulties looking past its emphasis on patterning and flattened space to see how this painting and other works by Gentile contributed to the flowering of the arts in early Renaissance Florence.
Yet the altarpiece’s very richness helped to insure its influence, allowing artists to draw different lessons from Gentile’s painting techniques and visual interests.
These contemporary viewers likely understood what present-day visitors to the Uffizi might forget: that the Adoration was not designed to be taken in at a single glance.
If we remember this and try to look at the image the way it was meant to be looked at—again and again—it will reward each viewing.
An Altarpiece Fit for Kings
The altarpiece depicts several gospel stories surrounding the birth of Christ as they were retold in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
In the main panel, three Magi (wise men and kings believed to come from unknown, eastern lands) offer gifts to the newly born Christ child.
Their adventure begins in the background: smaller scenes of the Magi fill an extraordinary landscape in the three arches above, allowing us to follow their journey in a cartoon-like, continuous narrative.
The frame is also a work of art, characterized by three cusps with tondoes portraying Christ Blessing (center) and the Annunciation (with the Archangel Gabriel on the left and the Madonna on the right).
The predella has three rectangular paintings with scenes of Jesus' childhood: the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt and the Presentation at the Temple (the latter a copy, the original being in the Louvre in Paris).
At far left, they climb a mountain in search of the star they believed would fulfill an ancient prophecy telling of a great king. Following this star, the magi lead their impressive retinue to Jerusalem, shown at the top center of the painting (see image above), and then to the smaller town of Bethlehem at right upper corner.
The main action of the panel then unfolds in the foreground, where the Magi finally arrive at the small cave where Joseph and Mary have been forced to take shelter with their newborn child. Haloed and resplendent, each king takes his turn offering a gift of gold, frankincense, or myrrh, removing his crown, and kissing the foot of the tiny baby.
As in earlier images of the Magi, they are accompanied by large numbers of courtiers and attendants on horseback as if they were emissaries from a foreign country. More than previous artists, Gentile used the journey of the Magi as an opportunity to display his visual imagination and technical skill. The ‘kings’ do not wear ancient clothing, as one might expect from a biblical story, but imaginative costumes designed to look luxurious and vaguely exotic. The royal retinue is bursting with varied figure types, intricately patterned brocades, and rare animals. Foreground figures are almost stacked on top of one another, as if the ground is tilted forward in order to fill a limited space with a maximum number of figures. Such decorative opulence is continued in the ornate, three-arched frame.
The altarpiece is not just visually busy, it is also rich with narrative detail. The dog in the right foreground looks up in fear toward a horse that is about to carelessly step on him. At far left, two female attendants curiously (and somewhat rudely) inspect the precious gift the elderly king has already presented to the holy family.
Even the background includes stories-within-stories. Look for a lonely traveller being accosted by thieves, or a leopard preparing to pounce from his seat on the back of a horse toward a local deer he has just spotted. These anecdotal, even humorous incidents invite the viewer to inspect each area of the painting carefully, discovering something new at each turn.
Palla Strozzi
At the time, Florence was awash with creativity, a crucible of varying artistic styles. In the works of Lorenzo Monaco, the most successful Florentine painter in these years, an infusion of curving, northern European forms enlivened the inherited tradition of the previous century.
New directions were being pioneered in the practice of sculpture and architecture: Brunelleschi had just conducted his now famous experiment in perspective and the sculptor Donatello helped to revive a taste for classicizing figures and illusionistic depictions of space. The young Masaccio was a scant few years away from changing the history of art by exploring these innovations through the medium of painting
Into this moment of visual experimentation and change stepped Gentile da Fabriano, a virtual artistic celebrity throughout Italy and beyond. He soon received a prime opportunity to demonstrate his abilities to the city: a prestigious commission from Florence’s wealthiest citizen, Palla Strozzi. Strozzi spent an unprecedented sum on the building and decoration of his family’s chapel in the sacristy of the church of Santa Trinità. Sometime before 1423, the banker turned to Gentile for an altarpiece as part of this project. The Adoration of the Magi represents the result of this commission, showing us that Gentile knew just how to dazzle an expectant audience.
From Fabriano to Florence
This was the sort of visual abundance at which Gentile da Fabriano excelled.
The artist’s impressive skills were nurtured during his travels to artistic centers throughout Italy. As his name suggests, Gentile was from the town of Fabriano, over a hundred miles southeast of Florence.
Years spent in the northern towns of Venice and Brescia in particular encouraged his love of courtly ornamentation and an interest in the close observation of plants and animals.
These sojourns also helped build his reputation, and his arrival in Florence by 1422 at the height of his powers would have caused quite the tizzy among the city’s artists and the elite families who patronized them.
Gentile’s altarpiece visually announced the amount of gold his patron could purchase and the caliber of artist he could afford to hire. But it also displayed Palla’s cultivated taste for the new and daring. For all of its apparent preoccupation with wealth and worldly status, the Adoration celebrated nature in a way that few paintings had before. People, animals and their movements are carefully observed. Flowers seem to burst forth from the pillars that bracket the frame (see detail above). The subtle modeling of figures’ faces is quite different from the stark contours seen in paintings by popular Florentine artists such as Lorenzo Monaco. And Florentine viewers would surely have noted how fur and fabric were depicted using softer brush strokes than they were used to seeing. More remarkably, the scenes within this complex structure create a sort of visual dissertation on different kinds of light and shadow. In the main scene, the famous star of Bethlehem illuminates surrounding trees, gilding the edges of their leaves and casting intricate shadows behind the heads of the maids at left.
The small panels below the main scene (a supporting structure known as a predella) are even more experimental in their depiction of different kinds of lighting. The Nativity (image below) is imagined as a night scene with multiple sources of light: the supernatural radiance emanating from the small Christ Child, the brightness of the angel appearing to shepherds in the background, and the much softer glow of the moon at top left.
The small panels below the main scene (a supporting structure known as a predella) are even more experimental in their depiction of different kinds of lighting. The Nativity (image below) is imagined as a night scene with multiple sources of light: the supernatural radiance emanating from the small Christ Child, the brightness of the angel appearing to shepherds in the background, and the much softer glow of the moon at top left.
Gentile used real gold to achieve many of these subtle lighting effects, demonstrating his ability to combine intricate manipulation of precious materials with an interest in naturalism. Perfecting a technique that would be copied by many other artists, he layered gold leaf underneath layers of paint to lend brightly lit surfaces an added glow—an effect that would be more readily apparent in candlelight. This means precious metals are woven underneath the surface, on the surface, and protruding from the surface, like a tapestry made of paint and gold.
This is considered da Fabriano’s finest work, and has been described as "the culminating work of International Gothic painting". The Guide Michelin calls it ‘dazzling’.
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It’s Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Welcome to the 921st consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Philip Francis Berrigan
(October 5, 1923 – December 6, 2002), American peace activist, Christian anarchist and Roman Catholic priest
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2.0 Commentary
Darn but election mania seeps into your pores.
Against my wishes, my heart is beating a little bit faster.
Cannot divorce self from the ever-crescendoing event.
Fortunately my social calendar is crowding up during the several days preceding and the events will help pass the days.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
No work done on this on Monday.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
~Aristotle
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5.0 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’s the weather now, you ask? Make your own 100%-reliable weather device: Get a rock and a string and a stick and a flat piece of wood. Attach the stick so it stands upright in the piece of wood. Tie one end of the string to the rock and the other end to the stick, so that the rock is suspended. Place the assembly outside.
When it’s sunny out, the rock will be warm. When it’s raining, the rock will be wet. When it’s windy, the rock will be moving. When it’s snowing, the rock will look like a snowball.
Simple as that!
;-)
Of course, there’s the old New England adage to fall back on in a pinch: If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute: it will change.
Sally
Blog meister responds: Simple, yes, but cute.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Monday night we enjoyed boneless, skinless chicken breasts in mushrooms and gravy. White wine, chicken stock, and evaporated milk (instead of the calories from heavy cream) made the sauce, pancetta, mushrooms, and an assortment of herbs and spices added more flavor.
Maybe my best Mushroom-Cream Sauce ever.
So simple.
I’ll post the recipe in next few days.
With the chicken I served a cauliflower double-header.
I sliced half the head of cauliflower into steaks which I roasted; and the other half I boiled and mashed, the better to bed some of that delicious gravy.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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Philip Francis Berrigan (October 5, 1923 – December 6, 2002) was an American peace activist and Roman Catholic priest.
He engaged in nonviolence civil disobedience in the cause of peace and nuclear disarmament and was often arrested.
He married a former nun, Elizabeth McAlister, in 1972; they were both excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
Eleven years of their 29-year marriage were separated by one or both serving time in prison.
Catonsville nine
In 1968, six months after the Baltimore draft records protest, while out on bail, Berrigan decided to repeat the protest in a modified form. A high school physics teacher, Dean Pappas, helped to concoct homemade napalm. Nine activists, including Berrigan's Jesuit brother Daniel, later became known as the Catonsville Nine when they walked into the offices of the local draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, removed 600 draft records, doused them in napalm and burnt them in a lot outside of the building. The Catonsville Nine, who were all Catholics, issued a statement:
We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor.
Berrigan was convicted of conspiracy and destruction of government property on November 8, 1968, but was bailed for 16 months while the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court rejected the appeal and Berrigan and three others went into hiding. For a time, Liz McAlister, the nun who would later become his wife, helped hide Berrigan in New Jersey. Twelve days later Berrigan was arrested by the FBI and jailed in Lewisburg.
All nine were sentenced to three years in prison.
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It’s Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Welcome to the 920th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Lieutenant (junior grade) Natasha McClinton
a surgical nurse, prepares a patient for a procedure in the intensive care unit aboard the U.S. hospital ship USNS Comfort.
The ship cares for critical and non-critical patients without regard to their COVID-19 status. Comfort is working with Javits New York Medical Station as an integrated system to relieve the New York City medical system, in support of U.S. Northern Command's Defense Support of Civil Authorities as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
US Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Sara Eshleman - https://www.health.mil/News/Articles/2020/05/06/DoD-to-honor-nurses-during-National-Nurses-Week-2020
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2.0 Commentary
One week away and we are assailed by details of 3,461 roads to victory for J Biden and only 3,122 roads for D Trump.
Voters will be tested on all the roads and if they don’t pass the test their ballots will not be counted.
Sometimes the weather reports get so detailed with wind and feels-like temperature, allergy levels, fire danger, drought conditions, weather on the other side of the globe and feels-like temperatures there, and the ten-day forecast, that we don’t know what the weather is right now, here.
Watched on Netflix, The Queen’s Gambit.
A young orphan girl learns to play chess and quickly develops into a star, creates a new family for herself while fighting a reliance on alcohol and drugs.
Anya Taylor-Joy, as Beth, the chess genius, makes a statement for herself.
I enjoyed it.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
I work up at 3.00am and did not function well.
I did no work on the trip.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Excellence is never an accident.
It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution;
it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -
choice, not chance, determines your destiny.
~Aristotle
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
Sunday’s talk was mostly about some of the Vice President’s staff contracting the virus.
The talk was not positive.
Someone suggested that a death might be the last nail in the coffin of a ‘do nothing’ policy towards the pandemic.
But didn’t wish it.
Blog meister responds: At least not publicly.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Sunday night I entertained a good friend, serving a simple slow-roasted duck, using the recipe in the recipe pages of this blog.
The duck was ridiculously delicious.
The broccoli rabe was good, too.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnail
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
It was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China.[3] The outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in January 2020 and a pandemic in March 2020. As of 25 October 2020, more than 42.7 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 1.15 million deaths attributed to COVID-19.
COVID-19 spreads most often when people are physically close.[b] It spreads very easily and sustainably through the air, primarily via small droplets or aerosols, as an infected person breathes, coughs, sneezes, sings, or speaks.[9][10] It may also be transmitted via contaminated surfaces, although this has not been conclusively demonstrated. Airborne transmission from aerosol formation is suspected to be the main mode of transmission.[13] It can spread from an infected person for up to two days before they display symptoms, and from people who are asymptomatic.[10] People remain infectious for seven to twelve days in moderate cases, and up to two weeks in severe cases.
Common symptoms include fever, cough, fatigue, breathing difficulties, and loss of smell and taste. Complications may include pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. The incubation period is typically around five days but may range from one to 14 days.[14] There are several vaccine candidates in development, although none have completed clinical trials. There is no known specific antiviral medication, so primary treatment is currently symptomatic.
Recommended preventive measures include hand washing, covering one's mouth when sneezing or coughing, social distancing, wearing a face mask in public, ventilation and air-filtering, disinfecting surfaces, and monitoring and self-isolation for people exposed or symptomatic. Authorities worldwide have responded by implementing travel restrictions, lockdowns, workplace hazard controls, and facility closures. Many places have also worked to increase testing capacity and trace contacts of the infected.
The pandemic has caused global social and economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression.[16] It has led to the postponement or cancellation of sporting, religious, political, and cultural events,[17] widespread supply shortages exacerbated by panic buying, famines affecting hundreds of millions of people,[18] and decreased emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases. Educational institutions have been partially or fully closed, with many switching to online schooling. Misinformation about the pandemic has circulated through social media and mass media. There have been incidents of xenophobia and discrimination against Chinese people and against those perceived as being Chinese or as being from areas with high infection rates.
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It’s Monday, October 26, 2020
Welcome to the 919th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
A polling station
situated inside a suburban library in the north of Cambridge during the 2005 United Kingdom general election
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2.0 Commentary
Gilbert has been Boston’s Town Crier for two decades.
He sits on the same corner within the Boston Common and calls out the weather and the sports scores.
Passersby sometimes give him money.
I do.
He contributes to the fabric of the city.
“How are you doing?” I asked him today.
“Not well. The covid has kept people home and I don’t get enough for pay for a room.”
The virus has hit some of us more than others.
Some of the hardest hit do not get any form of government subsidy.
“The poor ye shall always have with ye.”
Seems that way.
Eight more days and the assault of the campaigns will morph into attacks of unforeseen nature,
at this moment these onslaughts mere speculations.
Advertisers will be watching closely.
And is it time to abandon ‘early voting’ and ‘election day’?
I propose a “National In-Person Voting Period” that ends at noon, immediately followed by the vote counting.
Mail-in Balloting will begin and end one week before the In-Person voting. All such ballots must be postmarked within the two-week mail-in voting period.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting an essence
Using other sources, I worked in more detail on Durer’s Adoration of the Magi.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
"Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses."
~Confucius
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
How will you be spending Thanksgiving/Christmas is supplanted this day with several conversations on how we will be spending Election Night.
Five of us will gather at my apartment, the largest group I’ve had since the start of the pandemic.
Five but I allow for two more to join and one to drop out.
The apartment will be very well-ventilated and shoes will be left at the door.
Otherwise, we will seek safety from the covid by our choice of careful people to assemble with, eating with generous spacing at the table and post-dinner, and ventilation.
It’s a calculated risk that each of us assumes.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
At the same time I bought the mediocre meat loaf from Savenor’s, I bought two thin veal chops, at $17.00/pound, a cut-rate price, especially coming from Savenor’s, one of the pricier high-end butchers.
Perhaps the price was to compensate for the too-thinly cut chops because their thinness raised the question of how to cook them without losing the juices endemic to the meat.
I decided that a quick sear followed by a short braise with dried mushrooms in a TB of white wine and a soupcon of leftover hollandaise sauce would work well. Any lost juices would stay in the resulting sauce.
Spinach.
Have been desiring spinach.
Plain steamed with a squeeze of lemon.
Must peruse my wine shelves to select a suitable white.
The pressures I must deal with and the problems I must solve!
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnail
A polling place is where voters cast their ballots in elections.
The phrase polling station is also used in American English and in British English, although polling place is the building and polling station is the specific room (or part of a room) where voters cast their votes.
A polling place can contain one or more polling stations.
Since elections generally take place over a one- or two-day span on a periodic basis, often annual or longer, polling places are usually located in facilities used for other purposes, such as schools, churches, sports halls, local government offices, or even private homes, and may each serve a similar number of people.
The area may be known as a ward, precinct, polling district or constituency.
The polling place is staffed by officials (who may be called election judges, returning officers or other titles) who monitor the voting procedures and assist voters with the election process. Scrutineers (or poll-watchers) are independent or partisan observers who attend the poll to ensure the impartiality of the process.
The facility will be open between specified hours depending on the type of election, and political activity by or on behalf of those standing in the ballot is usually prohibited within the venue and immediately surrounding area.
Inside the polling place will be an area (usually a voting booth) where the voter may select the candidate or party of their choice in secret. If a ballot paper is used this will be placed into a ballot box in front of witnesses who cannot see for whom the vote has been cast. Voting machines may be employed instead.
Some polling places are temporary structures. A portable cabin may be specially sited for an election and removed afterwards.
There are five types of voting technologies that are currently being used in the United States polling locations.
These comprise hand-counted paper ballots, mechanical lever machines, punch cards, optically readable paper ballots, and electronic voting machines.
One of the reasons for a tendency toward witnessed final posting or transacting physical systems yet retaining the secret ballot is to reduce electoral fraud.
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It’s Sunday, October 25, 2020
Welcome to the 918th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Albrecht Dürer, Adoration of the Magi.
Albrecht Dürer, Adoration of the Magi. 1504. 99 × 113.5 cm. Oil on wood. Uffizi, Florence.
Albrecht Dürer - Livre de Manuel Jover Le Christ dans l'Art, Monaco : Éditions Sauret 1994. ISBN 978-28-5051-014-4
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2.0 Commentary
Two major polls showed Biden a very clear winner of Thursday night’s debate.
Perhaps in content.
But in projecting a persona, I thought Trump showed very well. While he likely didn’t win any new votes for himself, his supporters were able to release their breaths: he didn’t make the massive mistakes he made in debate #1, that, a devastation showing for him.
So why the discrepancy in Trump’s performance and the polling numbers?
My take is this:
The majority of Americans have already decided to elect Biden as President of the United States.
So decided, before the debate, the Biden supporters were prejudiced in his favor, deciding everything he said the unvarnished truth and what Trump said to be rejected.
Trump’s less than stellar fund-raising is cramping his style.
Biden’s very expensive purchase of World Series’ time conveyed a brilliant message of presidential stature.
The early voting numbers are staggering.
Hopefully this trend will make it easier to tabulate the votes on election day.
It will certainly ease the traffic at the polls on Election Day.
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3.0 Tuscany, extracting its essence
Today I worked on two paintings at the Uffizi.
I learned after some expenditure of time that very little has been written about The Adoration of the Infant Jesus by Correggio.
And without critical analysis, I cannot include it in the body of works we will spend time on when we get to the Uffizi.
The second piece, Albrecht Durer’s Adoration of the Magi, did have plenty of academic comment to make a studious stop well worth the effort.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
"It does not matter how slowly you go
so long as you do not stop."
~Confucius
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
Today a lot of the conversations had to do with the time remaining before the election.
Although some were happy for the tension, most wished the election was this Tuesday coming.
Myself, I’ve had enough of the back and forth.
Let’s get on with it.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Friday noon I walked into Savenor’s Butcher Store/Supermarket and picked up, saw a prepared meatloaf for two for $12.00 and bought it as a break from my own cooking.
I was very sorry.
The taste was very poor.
My G and T was as good as ever.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnails
The Adoration of the Magi is a panel painting by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), produced under commission by Frederick the Wise for the altar of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg. It is considered one of Dürer's best and most important works from the period between his first and second trips to Italy (1494-5 and 1505). The work is modest in size, just over a metre wide, however it is of great importance in Dürer's oeuvre and in the history of art. Before the production of this work, Dürer's achievements lay largely in his printmaking career, or with his self-portraiture. This work is especially crucial in its distinction of Dürer's difference as he combines a fine balance of northern and Italianate conventions in the work. Heinrich Wölfflin referred to the work as “the first completely lucid painting in the history of German art”.
In 1603 Christian II of Saxony presented the painting as a gift to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.
It remained in the imperial collection in Vienna until 1792, when Luigi Lanzi, the director of the Uffizi, acquired it in exchange for Fra Bartolomeo's Presentation in the Temple.
In the European image of the Adoration of the Magi, it is a common convention to represent the third king as a black figure. In Dürer's composition, this figure dominates the right portion of the painting, counterbalancing the cluster of the other four figures on the left (organized in a pyramid structure) due to his difference. This is a key feature in the painting, as the viewer's ocular curiosity is drawn to the third king, which leads the eye around the image through his gaze. His difference is articulated in spatial terms as he appears on the outside, surrounded by nature rather than the architectural features that sit behind the other figures.
In Dürer's imagining of the piece, he also features himself as the second king. Dürer is well known for his self-portraits, and so his physiognomy is recognisable, matched with his beard and long golden hair. This is a crucial difference in Albrecht Dürer's construction of the work. His self-characterization is further substantiated by the alignment of the second king and the artists' famous monogram, which appears on a block in the foreground. Even so, there is nothing unusual in forming one of the Magi from a portrait of a real individual. This is a tradition that feigns a sense of diplomacy and dynastic ceremony and occurred in images of the Adoration before the convention of the inclusion of a black figure. This highlights Dürer's construction of the composition using both traditional and imagined stylistic details.
Similarly found in later Antwerp Adorations, Dürer constructs the composition with a fusion of stylistic inclusivity combining northern naturalism with Italianate use of perspective, ideal proportions and colour. Pure reds, green, and blue can be found in composition, as well as bright golden features illuminating the wealth and exoticism of the objects within the pictorial space. This places an emphasis on the exotic elements that allude to the Wunderkammer that have inspired the work. Images of the Adoration often functioned as reminders of the mythic insignia of the collecting enterprise itself and stood on top of the household treasury cupboard or tresoor. A notable example of such detail in the composition include the foreign servant of the black Magus, who appears wearing a turban à la Turque. This exoticism is also reflected in the detailed garb of the kings, and the jewels and ornaments that surround them.
Completed in the same year as his famous engraving, Adam and Eve (1504), Dürer incorporates stylistic elements from his construction of the figure of Adam in the second and third Magi. In his production of the black King, Dürer has organized the figure in contrapposto, with a particular refinement of the anatomy of his legs, as well as the position of his feet. The second Magus borrows Adam's downward gaze and idealized normative profile.
A key part of the composition is its spatial and structural formation, which is precisely detailed through the use of perspective. Architectural archways are formed throughout the background, including some that are broken, and some that are only partly visible to the viewer's eye. This works to avoid defining structure in the composition in a permanent way, allowing nature to also organize the vastness of the pictorial space. Dürer's wide-ranging skills are also displayed in the composition in the finer details, including the animals found within the stables, as well as the plants that are scattered about the lower and upper portions of the image.
Dürer's painting oeuvre has not been as widely criticized as his graphic works. Due to his geographical location, and skill in other mediums, Dürer's reception as a painter is falsely assumed as being of inferior quality as opposed to his prints and drawings. Nevertheless, the painting is of high quality and is extremely detailed. It presents a fine stylistic balance, a consequence of Dürer's years spent travelling, as well as his various studies as a theorist.
Some art historians suggest that this painting could have been the central panel of the Jabach Altarpiece. Two panels, one in Frankfurt and one in Cologne, representing the Story of Job, known as the Jabach Altarpiece are of the same measurements and were made at a similar time as the Adoration of the Magi. It has been suggested by various scholars, including Erwin Panofsky, that these three paintings may have been intended to form a triptych with the Adoration as the centrepiece.
Throughout his career, Dürer produced two works directly related to this painting, at least in its subject. There is a study of an African man from 1508, Portrait of an African, completed in charcoal and currently held by the Albertina. This is believed to be a preliminary study for the later 1524 reimagining of the Adoration of the Magi in pen-and-ink.
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