tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72445270840734201422024-03-14T12:30:49.256-04:00 Under the GablesLindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.comBlogger419125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-75195634529895570962021-10-03T20:37:00.025-04:002021-10-03T20:55:06.936-04:00"It Was My Duty"<p>Nechama Tec, author of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Light-Pierced-Darkness-Nazi-Occupied/dp/0195051947/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=nechama+tec&qid=1633308725&s=books&sr=1-4" target="_blank">When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland</a></i>. Ms. Tec, who wrote many books on the impact of the Holocaust on ordinary people--including the book that inspired the movie <i>Defiance</i>, is Jewish and as a child was hidden from the Nazis by a Jewish couple in Poland. Here she describes the types of people that risked their lives to save Jewish lives during World War II, based on her extensive research and interviews. Watch her discussion <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/nechama-tec-discussing-rescuers">here</a>, or read the transcript. </p><h3 class="field-label" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #003b4c; font-family: adelle-sans, Helvetica, sans-serif; width: 1088px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4Dhli1ZuF4Ph-Rz_1BTRrgqXXBta3ErS4zQAcjiHw_GIeuOAqzC9gCZ5aoNLN2zHZccz8fjOoDRzD8NpA8rJhNhqdcru5QQTBL4tbz5s8XiaDRxh3j_sNQ71xo3Mr6Xi_3KQL-bh6ZA/s266/Boder+Nechama+Tec.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="190" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4Dhli1ZuF4Ph-Rz_1BTRrgqXXBta3ErS4zQAcjiHw_GIeuOAqzC9gCZ5aoNLN2zHZccz8fjOoDRzD8NpA8rJhNhqdcru5QQTBL4tbz5s8XiaDRxh3j_sNQ71xo3Mr6Xi_3KQL-bh6ZA/w276-h386/Boder+Nechama+Tec.jpeg" width="276" /></a></div><i>Transcript </i></h3><div class="field-transcript text-long" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: adelle, Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;"><i>Ms. Nechama Tec:</i></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Now, when you look at large groups of those rescuers, hundreds of cases, as I did, they seem to be a very varied group, extremely heterogeneous. They come from all walks of life. Some of them are illiterate. Some of them are prominent writers. Some of them are pious Catholics. Some of them are irreligious, atheists.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">So they represent a wide range and wide spectrum of individuals. And in terms of the conventional categories that we look at people that we tend to categorize in terms of class, education, money, what have you, religiosity, et cetera, you cannot really classify them.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Only when you look at them very closely, almost under a microscope, a social microscope I would call it, do you find a set of shared characteristics, a set of features that they seem to have in common. And I'm presenting those as hypothesis, really, because not all of them fall into it, and I have special cases which I describe, of course, in the book. And what are these characteristics?</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">One of them is which I refer to as individuality. These are people that don't very well blend into their respective environments. They stand out within it. They stand out in different ways. Sometimes in what we would define as positive ways, sometimes as negative. They can be at the very top of their social milieu, or they can be at the very bottom. It doesn't matter. But they are different. They don't blend into it.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Now, the question is, what does it mean if a person doesn't blend into his or her social environment? What it really means is that they are not constrained by the expectations and by the norms of their surroundings. They are free. They are independent. And while they are not aware of the fact that they are different, that they don't fit into their social milieu, they all seem to be aware of the fact that they are independent.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">And invariably, they all told me: what I do, I act in accordance with my own values. And if somebody doesn't like it, it doesn't matter to me. I am an independent person. Or one man used the word, I am a cat that walks his own alley or something. I forgot, of course, the expression. [LAUGHS] Anyway, they are individualists and they are aware of it.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Now, what are they individualists about? What are they so independent about? They are independent in terms of their own values. They are independent because they act. They are independent to act in terms of what they believe in, regardless of how others feel. And invariably, these are individuals that had a long history of good deeds. Most of them have participated in what I think you would refer to as prosocial behavior. They just cannot turn away a beggar. They cannot turn away a vagabond that turns to them. There are people that like to help and have been helping.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Of course, this help never involves anything of the magnitude that was involved in risking their lives for Jews during the war, you understand. But nevertheless, they were used to it. So when the time came to help Jews, it fit into their behavior. It fit into the pattern to which they were used to. And therefore, probably, most of them, all of them, invariably tell me, what I did is nothing. It was my duty. It is a simple thing. Everybody should have done it. They never make a big fuss about the things that they were dealing with. And they would embarrass me. They would say, you would have done the same thing. Wouldn't you?</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">And then I was silent. I mean, you can't, I mean, I said I don't know. After all, you have to remember that helping Jews in those days was a crime punishable by death. And the Nazis were very serious about it, and executions of Christians and their families followed. So when they raised this, when they were so sure that I would have done it and I was thinking about my own children, I mean, I wasn't so sure at all. And they were very disappointed, I must say. Here she is, telling us that she wouldn't do it.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Now, so for them, it was— and I think that this attitude of seeing it as a matter-of-fact act also helped them behave this way, because I think if had they realized the magnitude— although they knew it, but there are ways of knowing— had they fully become aware of and knowledgeable about the punishments, perhaps they would be paralyzed into inaction.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">And mind you, whenever they extended the help, it never followed a long, prolonged deliberation. They did it either spontaneously and suddenly or they would slide into it. They would start helping a little bit, and this little bit turned into longer periods and longer periods and they were drawn into it. And really, if you search your mind, if you think about all the most important actions or activities that you yourself are engaged in, you would realize that they don't have— you don't sit down and say, well, I'm going to donate my kidney to my child and you weigh all the dangers and all the pros and all the contras. You just do it. And this is how they did it.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Now, very much related to this was what I refer to universalistic perceptions. You see, the desire and the need to help was so strong, the pattern was so well established, that they did not see— it did not matter who this person was. They did not see a Jew in this helpless being that turned to them for help. What mattered was that he was somebody needy, helpless, defenseless, that had to be helped, that would have died unless they would extend the help, and they helped this person.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">And in some cases, they even disliked the person that they were helping. I interviewed one very aristocratic lady in Warsaw, a lawyer and a journalist, and she would, as an Underground figure, find places for Jews. She would place them in different houses and homes. And in her own apartment, she helped for two and a half years a woman who looked very Jewish, which was dangerous in itself, had very Semitic features. In addition, her Polish was faulty.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">But if this was not enough, she was also a very stupid woman. So whenever a neighbor came to the door, she would engage them in long discussions. She was passing there pretending to be a housekeeper, a maid. So she was telling whatever neighbor came what kind of fur coats she had before the war. So you can figure out that this wasn't very smart. And also in her broken Polish. She was, in addition, a very stubborn woman and very unpleasant.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">And I am listening to this, all these negative things. She was this, she was this, she was this. Finally I said to her, why did you keep her if she was so terrible? Why did you save her and risk your life for her? She looked at me and she thought something was wrong with me. She says, what could I have done? If I hadn't taken her, she would have died. I had to take her. I said, yes, but she was so terrible.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">She said, well, I couldn't act in any other way. Nobody wanted her. I tried to place her from one place to another and nobody wanted. After two, three days, they sent her back to me. So I had to keep her. And to her, this was the most natural thing to do. It was a question that overshadowed, you see, personal likes and dislikes. And in this case, she even disliked the person.</p></div><p><br /></p>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-42576669897560051612021-09-20T07:33:00.001-04:002021-09-20T07:33:55.522-04:00For Saint Eustace<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/QH5Ka4TG6tg" width="480"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><p>Today is the feast day for <a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/search?q=Eustace" target="_blank">Saint Eustace</a>, protector against family discord and against fire (temporal and eternal), and patron saint of firefighters, hunters, trappers, and anyone facing trouble. </p></div><div><br /></div>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-72856446442292032312021-03-17T07:49:00.000-04:002021-03-17T07:49:01.332-04:00Happy Saint Patrick's Day!<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip_jM02V3mOQbTf4JXW38hF2cuu53LCVxtHObzUnY-M2Hi8LFsxWgiiMILmITfsV3nwk5jdcfFZNkC0sK4oVkEZ7aDY885pgHCy0YUNi5yp3benwhS4YBNxoYgBZAyKpuru4OLBZMccBw/s2048/Saint-Patrick-Stained-Glass-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2046" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip_jM02V3mOQbTf4JXW38hF2cuu53LCVxtHObzUnY-M2Hi8LFsxWgiiMILmITfsV3nwk5jdcfFZNkC0sK4oVkEZ7aDY885pgHCy0YUNi5yp3benwhS4YBNxoYgBZAyKpuru4OLBZMccBw/w320-h320/Saint-Patrick-Stained-Glass-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In honor of Saint Patrick, the great evangelizer of Ireland, here is the Cry of the Deer of Saint Patrick's Breastplate, a most beautiful prayer:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I arise today through the strength of Christ with his Baptism, through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension, through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels, in hope of resurrection to meet with reward, in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets, in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors, in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I arise today, through the strength of Heaven; light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendor of Fire, speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea, stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me: God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's host to secure me: against snares of devils, against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature, against everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils): against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and my soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of heathenry, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of witches, smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul. Christ to protect me today against poisoning, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that there may come abundance in reward.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Amen.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-19122580990500960752020-12-25T19:53:00.002-05:002020-12-25T22:06:21.946-05:00The Christmas Stag <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhonRWOxeZRL6ZG93CNPJcSgDczs7MX1t-96rvNqybVfvhW5v_OXWiqWnL8exau_gSDfzW2SNqBOActNZ_4unWnJXC1dDRL6M_GPQ6eAvWXBxSZV3rEMtZ2hWf5Q5ptdA-qhsZBn3PUbKw/s2048/Saint+Eustace+Pisanello.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1685" data-original-width="2048" height="515" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhonRWOxeZRL6ZG93CNPJcSgDczs7MX1t-96rvNqybVfvhW5v_OXWiqWnL8exau_gSDfzW2SNqBOActNZ_4unWnJXC1dDRL6M_GPQ6eAvWXBxSZV3rEMtZ2hWf5Q5ptdA-qhsZBn3PUbKw/w627-h515/Saint+Eustace+Pisanello.jpg" width="627" /></a></div><p>The Vision of Saint Eustace <i>by Pisanello, c. 1438-1442</i></p><p>As the French story of the 13th century tells it, Saint Eustace was a Roman soldier of the second century A.D., originally named Placidus, who was enthusiastically participating in a Roman hunting party. He sighted a stag and broke away from his party to follow the deer's trail. Suddenly, the stag stopped and turned 180 degrees around to face his hunter, and Saint Eustace then saw that between the stag's antlers was the image of Christ on the cross. At that moment, Placidus heard God speak, telling him that he must be baptized in the Christian faith. Placidus immediately went and did so, taking Eustace as his Christian name. His wife and two sons were baptized with him. </p><p>Recently I saw a stag race across our street and disappear into a wooded area behind a neighboring row of houses. An hour later I was with my collie dog on a walk that took me into that area and was stunned to turn a corner and see standing about 15 feet away the stag, very much taller than I, looking directly at me. I had interrupted his grazing in a back yard. He seemed to be asking me, "You're not coming closer, are you?" but not as a threat and certainly not in fear. My answer was "No, I am not," and I turned myself and my dog back to the path we had come from. Even in this prosaic encounter, the stag had a stature, beauty, and dignity that gave him an other-worldly aura and authority. </p><p>Pisanello paints Saint Eustace's encounter with the stag amidst a woodland filled with flora and fauna, reminiscent of the all-encompassing mille-fleurs and fauna of medieval tapestries--a medieval sensibility in which the natural world symbolized and conveyed God's messages to those made in His image. Many of Pisanello's most accomplished works have been destroyed, but surviving are detailed watercolor sketches of ducks and birds and larger mammals--evidence of the artist's keen dedication to capturing the wonders of the natural world. In the wooded background of <i>The Vision of Saint Eustace</i>, now darkened by age and damage, we see a pelican, ducks, does, fawns, other stags, rabbits, hunting dogs, a blue jay, a bear, a heron and baby heron, and a squirrel in a forest strewn with tiny flowers--purple and white violets (the flower of humility), bluets, and perhaps Stars of Bethlehem. </p><p>The stag appears with a visual message, bearing Christ on the cross in his antlers. The deer or stag as messenger was a recurring theme of the early Middle Ages, when the great conversions to Christianity--as foreshadowed by the conversion of Saint Eustace in the second century--were accomplished in the regions of what is now Western Europe, Ireland, and the British Isles. The stag seems designed to the role of God's messenger by virtue of the magnificence of his antlers--akin to the beauty and power of an angel's wings. His antlers point upward. The image of the stag points to the miracle of both the awesome power <i>and</i> loving and noble gentleness of our Lord, whose birth we celebrate today. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheY2Xi52LpIz5cKfk61FJq8h59-nIdn00tD3JgAGCrzzb_zEbyBubZ8mjPdPgRhtXZyOXSMrZ6mGyLtaftyqo-O4tEfDwHHoEPzK9pXJY6eZ-aJ1K8v7yThMKF-Lso-dKngUwyy8RtiQw/s877/Deer+Beautiful+in+Snow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="877" data-original-width="788" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheY2Xi52LpIz5cKfk61FJq8h59-nIdn00tD3JgAGCrzzb_zEbyBubZ8mjPdPgRhtXZyOXSMrZ6mGyLtaftyqo-O4tEfDwHHoEPzK9pXJY6eZ-aJ1K8v7yThMKF-Lso-dKngUwyy8RtiQw/w576-h640/Deer+Beautiful+in+Snow.jpg" width="576" /></a></div><p></p>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-25238747471112197822020-04-20T20:17:00.000-04:002020-04-20T20:20:05.935-04:00Titian's Supper at Emmaus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Soz7uOqeIXKk2BpTum65ItlDwNi8VXDJYIXldQZ_zVt-GLMDZZAshLBZd0o4BbxLChztwASlfqIACj6lrEAN7QpH_EmBdtF7VUNB1KLQm4SwnF0NGlw6Btnmk6GJ-GIvDensLKEESTE/s1600/Titian+Supper+at+Emmaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Soz7uOqeIXKk2BpTum65ItlDwNi8VXDJYIXldQZ_zVt-GLMDZZAshLBZd0o4BbxLChztwASlfqIACj6lrEAN7QpH_EmBdtF7VUNB1KLQm4SwnF0NGlw6Btnmk6GJ-GIvDensLKEESTE/s640/Titian+Supper+at+Emmaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Supper at Emmaus</i>, Titian, 1530, The Louvre<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The great Venetian Renaissance artist,<span lang="IT">Tiziano Vecelli</span>, known as Titian, in 1530 painted this beautiful evocation of the Supper at Emmaus, as told in Luke 24:13-35. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Story<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story in the Gospel of Luke is prefaced by the words of the women, telling the disciples what they had seen and heard at the tomb of the risen Lord that Easter morning, but “…these words seemed to them”—to the disciples—“an idle tale, and they did not believe them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all those things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. <i>But their eyes were kept from recognizing him</i>” [emphasis added]. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The two disciples and the stranger continue to walk together, and the disciples tell him of what has happened to Jesus of Nazareth and how “our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.” They relate how it is now the third day since Jesus died, and that some of the women “were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him <i>they did not see</i>” [emphasis added].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Christ gently chastises his two disciples, saying, “‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As they near Emmaus, the disciples ask him to stay with them, rather than go on alone, “ ‘for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. <i>And their eyes were opened</i>and they recognized him; and <i>he vanished out of their sight</i>” [emphasis added].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;">Many years later <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Emmaus_appearance" target="_blank">Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), revered as the father of Christian worship, preached on the Supper at Emmaus</a> (Homily 23 in his <i>Homilies on the Gospels</i>). The two disciples on the road to Emmaus “did not, in fact, have faith in him, yet they were talking about him. The Lord, therefore, appeared to them but did not show them a face they could recognize. In this way, the Lord enacted outwardly, before their physical eyes, what was going on in them inwardly, before the eyes of their hearts. For inwardly they simultaneously loved him and doubted him; therefore the Lord was outwardly present to them, and at the same time did not reveal his identity. Since they were speaking about him, he showed them his presence, but since they doubted him, he hid from them the appearance by which they could have recognized him.” </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Painting<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Titian paints the moment when the disciples suddenly realize that the stranger in their midst is Christ. Christ’s left hand is on the bread, and he raises his right hand in the gesture of blessing. At this moment, the disciple on the right—dressed as a contemporary Italian friar—brings his hands together and partially rises, perhaps to fall to his knees before Christ. The other disciple draws back in consternation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The moment of recognition comes just as Christ repeats the blessing and giving of the bread, as in the Last Supper that initiated the Eucharist. Titian draws upon Leonardo da Vinci’s <i>The Last Supper</i>, painted in the 1490s: a long frontally positioned table covered in white linen with Christ in the center flanked by his disciples, all of whom have highly individual reactions to Christ’s blessing of the bread. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Last Supper, </i>Leonardo da Vinci, 1495</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is noted by art historians that the disciple to the left in Titian’s painting has a pose closest to that of Judas in Leonardo’s painting—a posture of withdrawal from the figure of Christ. At first I didn’t think this could be, but the half-medallion on the wall behind this disciple has the vague outlines of the torso of a hanging person, dressed in 16th-century garb, and a hook hangs from this medallion, while immediately to the right in sketchy white are what seem to be the shapes of a ribcage and perhaps a skeleton head. If this is at all a correct reading of this object in the upper left of the painting, then it is likely that there lies the shadow of death, Judas’ death in particular, in contrast to Titian’s celestial coloring of Christ, signifying the triumph over death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Christ’s face, at the horizontal center of Titian's painting, has a serene, other-worldly quality—it is bathed in light and his downcast eyes, as in Leonardo’s painting, suggest a humility that is turned to that which is unseen. His face is in keeping with the sacramental actions of his hands. The friar to his right looks of this world, but his humility in pressing his hands together as in prayer and his positioning as if about to kneel before the now-recognized Lord, show his love of Christ and his own nascent holiness. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leonardo’s famous painting situates the Last Supper before a trinity of windows opened to distant views of hills and sky. Titian’s single window opens up to a fully painted landscape and sky. The single tree stands as a remembrance of the wooden cross upon which Christ had died. (The tree seems slight, but alive, compared with the adjacent monumental Roman column behind Christ.) To the right, the earthen colors of the mountain continue into the brown cassock of the friar, and the beautiful blue, pale violet, and grays of the more distant mountain and sky are echoed in Christ’s gown and mantle. Titian chose to paint a sky in which the sun is unseen, but its light comes from behind gray storm clouds against an ascending sky of clear blue—a metaphor of light for the emotion evoked by the story itself. Titian’s unity of color signifies the harmony of Christ, God’s natural order, and the followers of Christ. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the other side of the painting are more secularized individuals. The innkeeper has no awareness of or interest in the emotional tumult caused by the disciples’ realization that Christ is present. The innkeeper’s face is turned away, and his left hand sports a large ring of gold, perhaps pointing to the subject of his thoughts. Judas’s left hand, palm up, is immediately under the innkeeper’s hands. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under the table a dog growls at a cat. In medieval and renaissance Christianity, dogs symbolized loyalty, watchfulness, and trustworthiness—not like the disciples that slept as Christ prayed in Gethsemane although he had asked them to watch, or like Saint Peter, who denied Christ three times, as Christ told him he would do—loyalty, watchfulness, and trustworthiness in contrast to fallen man. The cat often symbolized cunning and deceit, such as in the betrayal of Judas, sitting directly above. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUw7lPPEZpDFdrUgek82N_k1g59NcT_HsO-6dVi3h9E1U-6dbngSKqjb5rdvFGjDt5m4VcOcQHgCPh5gMPYMhiKZljd7exiVrCVv5OMW02JM0xwXNwTwrkMKjukUHMBXCMQjLrdFIHgWk/s1600/Titian+Supper+at+Emmaus+copy+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="208" data-original-width="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUw7lPPEZpDFdrUgek82N_k1g59NcT_HsO-6dVi3h9E1U-6dbngSKqjb5rdvFGjDt5m4VcOcQHgCPh5gMPYMhiKZljd7exiVrCVv5OMW02JM0xwXNwTwrkMKjukUHMBXCMQjLrdFIHgWk/s1600/Titian+Supper+at+Emmaus+copy+3.jpg" /></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoX8hdOyfXmdDzWZYcDtUYKvLyDYKcmaDfDBomFzGFVhaQZYeeqElntI8pR1Bm8JzgTGWMKBUlEsxwu2Y1Zv2qFZ4oL2DzUYR2rOBkOCAbPZ-2RYrfQqZ98Gt8875YZLg9WpjcTJr2fmo/s1600/Titian+Supper+at+Emmaus+copy+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="237" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoX8hdOyfXmdDzWZYcDtUYKvLyDYKcmaDfDBomFzGFVhaQZYeeqElntI8pR1Bm8JzgTGWMKBUlEsxwu2Y1Zv2qFZ4oL2DzUYR2rOBkOCAbPZ-2RYrfQqZ98Gt8875YZLg9WpjcTJr2fmo/s200/Titian+Supper+at+Emmaus+copy+2.jpg" width="192" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most diminutive figure is that of the adolescent servant bearing food, who looks beyond Judas to the friar at the far side of the table but with no apprehension of what is taking place. His innocent interest, however, brings him far closer to Christ than the complacency of the oblivious innkeeper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In all figures, Titian has painted hands that speak volumes of the inner life of their owners. The boy’s hands show a delicacy and tenseness of expectation and willingness to serve. Judas’ hands demonstrate his extreme surprise in seeing Christ, whom he had helped bring to what he believed would be certain death. The innkeeper’s hands, with his thumbs hooked in his belt, point to his earth-bound nature. Christ’s hands are carefully positioned in sacramental action, with the fingers of his blessing hand gracefully arched. The friar’s hands are those of one in prayer—any surprise he feels at his recognition of Christ is superseded by his humble desire to worship his Savior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A striking feature of Titian’s painting is the prominence of the starched pure white tablecloth that stretches across the composition and touches all figures. Leonardo’s <i>Last Supper </i>table also has a white cloth with its fold lines, but our eyes quickly pass it by to look at the action above. In Titian’s painting, the white cloth is a symbolic reminder of the white linen burial shroud that enfolded Christ in burial and also of the white cloth laid out on a Christian altar. And this crisp, beautiful linen also brings to the mind the unseen women, who washed, starched, folded, and laid it—women such as those who loved Christ and first received the news that he had risen, and believed.</span></div>
Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-16053708945317054652020-04-12T07:51:00.000-04:002020-04-12T07:51:01.520-04:00Happy Easter, Everyone!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNhNbYMfwIBrQKg0oLI3f_XWpKRjyrsn3a4SEbR4xJNyK3wyGGeXXAWmBl2NQGdettWg3KXtWeVcF9_Y6PB-WXMgsO2ze9hadPG2p8OoomYfUZSrro0M3EHpO6ES8MMU1wV9VwphvjdNo/s1600/Easter+Pietro_Perugino_Resurrection+of+Christ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1600" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNhNbYMfwIBrQKg0oLI3f_XWpKRjyrsn3a4SEbR4xJNyK3wyGGeXXAWmBl2NQGdettWg3KXtWeVcF9_Y6PB-WXMgsO2ze9hadPG2p8OoomYfUZSrro0M3EHpO6ES8MMU1wV9VwphvjdNo/s640/Easter+Pietro_Perugino_Resurrection+of+Christ.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></em>
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">Resurrection of Christ</em><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">, oil on wood by Pietro Perugino, </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">c.</em><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"> 1496–98.</span>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-51782222165305863262020-04-10T12:44:00.000-04:002020-04-10T12:44:13.417-04:00Good Friday <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMSpu7I-Alb1nTwQ0-xpyFRp4fc8fsTHh4GWHrJhtFBsTpU3eEcwQsgamtXt3umBSAC3KG82zrnQSBW4I57_Pd7THhjy9ngFwngOGrN5SSMW_CgvL0KfLpC3Go9xa2tM8CJqAOn4ACq9U/s1600/weyden61.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="938" height="592" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMSpu7I-Alb1nTwQ0-xpyFRp4fc8fsTHh4GWHrJhtFBsTpU3eEcwQsgamtXt3umBSAC3KG82zrnQSBW4I57_Pd7THhjy9ngFwngOGrN5SSMW_CgvL0KfLpC3Go9xa2tM8CJqAOn4ACq9U/s640/weyden61.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>The Crucifixion Diptych by Rogier van der Weyden, 1460, Philadelphia Museum of Art. </i></div>
Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-25496949592443373662020-03-11T11:46:00.000-04:002020-03-11T11:48:26.366-04:00Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene: An Image for Our Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene, by Hendrick Jansz Terbrugghen, 1625, Utrecht, The Netherlands</i><br />
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Saint Sebastian (256-288) was a Christian martyr who was tied to a post in Diocletian's Rome and shot through with arrows as punishment for his refusal to renounce his Christian faith. He did not die, however, thanks to Saint Irene, the widow of another martyred Roman Christian, who came to cut down Sebastian from the post and bury him. Finding him still alive, she brought him to her home and nursed him to health.<br />
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The 17th-century Dutch artist Terbrugghen (1588-1629) paints the moment when Saint Irene and her servant rush to free Saint Sebastian and begin attending to his wounds. The painting, nearly 5 feet by 4 feet, is among the treasures at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio.<br />
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Terbrugghen was one of a group of Dutch painters who lived and painted in Italy, learning fluidity of form and drama from the paintings of Michelangelo Caravaggio (1571-1610). After seven years in Rome, Terbrugghen returned to his native city of Utrecht in 1614.<br />
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In the late Middle Ages, the arrows that pierced the body of Saint Sebastian became a metaphor for the fatal piercing of the flesh by the bubonic plague--the disease of the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the 14th century and continued to recur regularly in European cities. For this reason, Saint Sebastian is venerated by the faithful as a protector against the plague.<br />
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Saint Sebastian's protection was immediately relevant to the inhabitants of Terbrugghen's Utrecht, where the dreaded disease returned each summer from 1625 to 1629. Terbrugghen brings this home in two ways.<br />
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First, as Valerie Hedquist points out in an article for the <i>Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art</i> (Volume 9, Issue 2 Summer 2017), the painter adds buboes on the body of the dying Saint Sebastian--on the inside of his right elbow and prominently on his right knee. He also shows the blackening of the saint's skin from the internal hemorrhaging the disease causes. The metaphor is now the reality.<br />
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Second, Terbrugghen heightens the immediacy of the drama by placing us so close to the life-sized figures. Saint Sebastian's right knee juts out beyond the picture plane, putting us right into the scene and drawing us upward toward the expressions of urgency and care in the faces of the saint's rescuers. As the art historian Wolfgang Stechow writes,<br />
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"... the action of the two women is the very life-blood of the picture. Loving care is about to conquer death; it is a tense struggle but it is a noiseless one. No punches are pulled in the depiction of the nearness of the end: the body of Sebastian is olive-grey, his mouth drooping, his left arm hangs limp, touching the ground behind his right foot. Yet the activity of the women bespeaks efficient help--but without resort to any ado. Wonderful is the quiet contrast between the neighboring hands at the upper left, and particularly, how the lifeless flesh of Sebastian's right hand yields to the pressure with lively resilience. It is as though this contrast sounded the key for the entire picture. Above the slumping head of the Saint appear the reassuring smile of Irene and the busily alert profile of her servant. The lifting of the arrow by Irene's gentle right hand is a masterpiece of depicting an action bent upon easing pressure and soothing pain, her left hand is a little wonder of subtle luminosity (<i>The Burlington Magazine</i>, Vol. 96, No. 612, March 1954). </blockquote>
Almost 400 years later, Terbrugghen's masterpiece prompts the modern-day viewer to pause and consider the courage of our first responders and hospital doctors and nurses as they act with all due haste to care for those sick with infectious disease.Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-63354033074766314752019-08-16T09:27:00.001-04:002019-08-16T09:28:29.244-04:00Thoughts of Two Mothers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC8Np30vyYny2T8dLd-Ndr2O06J4vhNRGS2la_MtYsNlmVsxkYmo-cIlP3GF3UuownHS-sMMqo7ntjhM-BimyNENIguSOuSRVK6IwXQ8iOs1AG8VKpuR9y8XqkrnEJ5clDCOJDYDxdUrQ/s1600/Shirley+Fields.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="400" height="387" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC8Np30vyYny2T8dLd-Ndr2O06J4vhNRGS2la_MtYsNlmVsxkYmo-cIlP3GF3UuownHS-sMMqo7ntjhM-BimyNENIguSOuSRVK6IwXQ8iOs1AG8VKpuR9y8XqkrnEJ5clDCOJDYDxdUrQ/s400/Shirley+Fields.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Illustration by Shirley Fields</i></div>
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I recently read two Persephone books back to back that portrayed mothers in England in the years between the two world wars: <i>Hostages to Fortune</i> by Elizabeth Cambridge (Persephone No. 41) first published in 1933, and <i>The Squire</i> by Enid Bagnold (Persephone No. 103) first published in 1938.<br />
<i>Hostages to Fortune </i>chronicles the trials, dappled with happiness, of Catherine, her husband William, and their three children from 1917 to the mid-1930s, when England was struggling to recover from the losses of the First World War. Both William, a doctor, and Catherine are middle-class, living in an old, drafty home and keeping a large vegetable garden and fruit trees as an economic necessity. Catherine sews clothes, does the shopping, teaches her children how to read and write, and wrestles with the servants--a cook and a nurse.<br />
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<i>Hall at Shinnecock by William Merritt Chase, 1892</i><br />
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<i>The Squire</i> relates the unspoken thoughts of the lady of the house in the several days leading up to the birth of her fifth child and the month thereafter. As the title connotes, the Squire<i> </i>is a member of the upper middle class, living in the Manor House on the village green. The lady of the house is referred to throughout as the Squire, because her husband is away on a three-month business trip to Bombay. The Squire works on her flower garden, does sporadic hand sewing, keeps an eye on her imaginative and boisterous four children, and wrestles with the servants--a butler, a cook, a kitchen maid, a nurse, and a nursemaid, at least.<br />
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Both books are semi-autobiographical, both <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cambridge" target="_blank">Cambridge</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Bagnold" target="_blank">Bagnold</a> were highly successful novelists, both had abiding marriages and several children. Delightful in both books are the distinct and expressive personalities of the children, portrayed in loving detail with snippets of fresh and lively dialogue. And in both books, the main character's primary concern is her children and her relationship with them.<br />
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The differences between these novels lie in the character and circumstances of the women. In <i>Hostages to Fortune</i>, we see the growth of a woman who has deep doubts about her ability to love her children enough, to teach and guide them, eventually comes to like and accept them, and have confidence in her own mothering. In the first third of the book, she is frustrated because her enormous workload in keeping her home and family going with very little money makes it impossible for her to pursue her youthful dream of becoming a writer; her children are her top priority and she does not want to hand over their care to other people. We hear Catherine's laments that the family never has money for the slightest luxury or vacation. Her husband is absorbed in his dedication as the doctor to the village and surrounding countryside and only learns to appreciate his children as they grow older.<br />
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The family has few leisure moments together when they are all relaxed--a rare jaunt to the countryside in an afternoon. They spend hours each week in the garden, working, playing, fighting. At the end of the book, Catherine and her husband are riding home in the car after a "last day" graduation party for her oldest daughter, and he puts his hand on her knee in gratitude for her years of effort for him and their children. Catherine is also thinking of the past 15 years of doubts and difficulties and recognizes that her children will soon be leaving and she must let loose her hold on them; she realizes that she cannot plan her children's future happiness.<br />
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The Squire's contemplations are far different. The birth of her fifth child, which she looks forward to in total confidence, prompts her to ponder the nature of time, the "naval line" between herself and her children, and how her children embody her own immortality. At the end of the book, "with a deep female pride, she felt herself an archway through which her children flowed; and cared less that the clock in the arch's crown ticked Time away." She considers her mother, herself, and her newborn daughter as one being progressing through time. She thinks of her children as extensions of herself. These thoughts of an existential nature may be prompted not only by the Squire's age--forty-four--but also by the horizons of 1937-1938 that threatened war, yet again. At the closing of the book, she writes her weekly letter to Bombay, but otherwise, her husband is in the outer orbits of her mind.<br />
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<i>The Mirror by Mary Cassatt, 1905</i></div>
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Thus, although the subject of these books is the same, each produces very different impressions in the reader. With <i>Hostages to Fortune</i> we watch a woman who gropes her way to overcoming challenges posed by her economic circumstances, her desires, and her lack of experience. In the end the author evokes a family bound by a strong though silent continuity of love, a family she holds together. In Enid Bagnold's novel, the Squire loves her children as herself and in the final analysis, is the master of the house but psychologically alone.Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-54369417092668657022018-07-05T08:29:00.001-04:002018-07-05T08:29:27.025-04:00In Praise of Hands 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsCACFBisUMttn33z5thOo2JH_foLW4UHNKltD3xhrDlBCksbu-A41XRKnAMNbMawoZtbNzhzYTHd5LyIMECX6g3b4RGp3DRMd53d34OCpiUzyz9ch9Nt5yKFLNs-gHHIgC9gb8ncbqRc/s1600/1-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsCACFBisUMttn33z5thOo2JH_foLW4UHNKltD3xhrDlBCksbu-A41XRKnAMNbMawoZtbNzhzYTHd5LyIMECX6g3b4RGp3DRMd53d34OCpiUzyz9ch9Nt5yKFLNs-gHHIgC9gb8ncbqRc/s640/1-large.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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by Dana <a href="http://www.tanamachistudio.com/about-1/" target="_blank">Tanamachi</a>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-48481952306304414922018-06-24T17:16:00.003-04:002018-06-25T08:39:17.659-04:00In Praise of Hands by Henri Focillon 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWhQ_4ENzh8s6U_AY3fZLC4npOaNwYF3ySWO7Er7Pzsa78u9uvkOJEIfYTyg20DoQBBWRQydByu0EKnpBpsj3sRr-oxsw-G6myFRCAvpbU7dtyB8VgEJK8uBcEXbNqwndQJgS0MlW-5NA/s1600/Hands+Borneo-cave-painting-hand-print.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="1240" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWhQ_4ENzh8s6U_AY3fZLC4npOaNwYF3ySWO7Er7Pzsa78u9uvkOJEIfYTyg20DoQBBWRQydByu0EKnpBpsj3sRr-oxsw-G6myFRCAvpbU7dtyB8VgEJK8uBcEXbNqwndQJgS0MlW-5NA/s640/Hands+Borneo-cave-painting-hand-print.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i> Hand print found in a cave in Borneo with other images created by cave people. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No matter where found, the ancient art of the cave people features the stenciled or traced hand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">The human hand forms one of the most ancient themes of human art," reports a <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/all/?mode=project&id=640" target="_blank">study of hand stencils in Upper Palaeolithic cave art</a>, published by Durham University. "Prehistoric examples of hand prints (positive images formed by covering the hand with paint and placing it on a surface, rather like modern children create) and stencils (negative images formed by placing the hand against a surface and blowing paint around it) are known from prehistoric contexts in Latin America, the Sahara, Indonesia, Australia and Tasmania, in many cases dating back several thousand years. For decades these have been thought to be Mid Upper Palaeolithic in age (around 22-29,000 14C BP) but recent dating and critical evaluation of existing data have shown that they are among the earliest examples of European Upper Palaeolithic cave art., stretching back at least to 35,000 (calendar) years ago."</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><a href="https://news.psu.edu/story/291423/2013/10/15/research/women-leave-their-handprints-cave-wall" target="_blank">Investigations by Anthropology professor Dean Snow at Pennsylvania State University</a> further show that many of the hands stenciled or traced are those of women, and it is thought that this could mean that the stenciling of hands had a religious significance. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Henri Focillion would not be surprised by such conclusions. "I seem to see primitive man inhaling the world through his hands," Focillon writes in his essay "In Praise of Hands," "stretching his fingers into a web to catch the imponderable."</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXjhZT84mk916gJZi8FFZCrUAlHgfg0mlLfpS3c9eZNzhpWRUygxIEpGsa56Tug_y-HzC_GeJFrRKsoF0YyI4dxFoEu1x8frTYnmnMt20piT0GwoRCKVuSp-Yca8GbYfrgx-3BHpf-fg/s1600/Hands-pech-merle-spotted-horses-mural_big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="461" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXjhZT84mk916gJZi8FFZCrUAlHgfg0mlLfpS3c9eZNzhpWRUygxIEpGsa56Tug_y-HzC_GeJFrRKsoF0YyI4dxFoEu1x8frTYnmnMt20piT0GwoRCKVuSp-Yca8GbYfrgx-3BHpf-fg/s640/Hands-pech-merle-spotted-horses-mural_big.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px;"><i>Hand stencils next to drawings of horses in the Peche Merl caves in southern France.</i> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Focillon writes as if to explain the presence of hands as a kind of signature or sign of human presence and action on the world:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">"As soon as man tries to intervene in the natural order in which he is subject, from the moment he begins to push a pointed instrument or a sharp edge into some hard material in order to split it and give it form, his primitive labor contains in itself its whole future development. The caveman carefully chipping the flint and fashioning needles out of bone astonishes me much more than the clever builder of machines. He is no longer activated by unknown forces; he can work on his own. Formerly, even in the recesses of the deepest cave, he remained on the surface of things; even when he broke up animal vertebrae or tree limbs, he did not penetrate, he had no access to meaning. The implement itself is no less remarkable than the use to which it is put. It is both a value and a result in itself. There it is, set off from the rest of the world, something new. Though a stone knife may have a cutting edge no sharper than that of a thin shell, it was not picked up by chance on some beach. It can be called the work of a new god, the product, indeed, the extension, of his hands."</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnHcuKdTsVDHrGVIjhVbo-dSbC1SM2ZySU9KIdeKGjSaLiF3rCZMdyXK5QS2glYBJoxzi2PSxKPqJiuzgQC6f7XGqcZXN_eCGK2lhZhmc8srpHF4Z1jK3mt1X36s4wlDDRZra_xAGMCeA/s1600/Hands+in+Vuevamanos1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnHcuKdTsVDHrGVIjhVbo-dSbC1SM2ZySU9KIdeKGjSaLiF3rCZMdyXK5QS2glYBJoxzi2PSxKPqJiuzgQC6f7XGqcZXN_eCGK2lhZhmc8srpHF4Z1jK3mt1X36s4wlDDRZra_xAGMCeA/s640/Hands+in+Vuevamanos1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Hand stencils from La Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) in Patagonia, Argentina. </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2d2d2d; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(45, 45, 45);">"What distinguishes dream from reality is that the dreamer cannot engender art, for his hands are asleep. Art is made by the hands. They are the instrument of creation, but even before that they are an organ of knowledge," Focillon writes."...In the artist's studio are to be found the hand's trials, experiments and divinations, the age-old memories of the human race which has not forgotten the privilege of working with its hands."</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOocjYt_EexIljJ1Lbp9Aoe9zLGKTPiXJlFUiLZsxh8-EHE4tneLLeqRv9UmVf_bBfpMcLn3vsv1KJ7P-csoVgRir4XC1Oi6dWpnRWof7TynSj9EysJo6PZFTG-cwsXJcWKrVr2KKc-E/s1600/Hands+-southern-africa-decorated-handprints.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="291" data-original-width="461" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOocjYt_EexIljJ1Lbp9Aoe9zLGKTPiXJlFUiLZsxh8-EHE4tneLLeqRv9UmVf_bBfpMcLn3vsv1KJ7P-csoVgRir4XC1Oi6dWpnRWof7TynSj9EysJo6PZFTG-cwsXJcWKrVr2KKc-E/s640/Hands+-southern-africa-decorated-handprints.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(45, 45, 45); color: #2d2d2d;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Hand print decorations in a cave in southern Africa. </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">See <a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2018/05/in-praise-of-hands-by-henri-focillon-1.html">In Praise of Hands by Henri Focillon 1</a></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-47462832646426883142018-05-26T18:04:00.003-04:002018-05-26T18:04:57.303-04:00Simple and Beautiful<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So interesting that all the different colors chosen by Amish women all go together in such beautiful harmony.<br />
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Also see: <a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2008/08/amish-communities-now-in-28-states.html" target="_blank">Amish Communities Now in 28 States</a>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-80853986868783448562018-05-19T15:03:00.000-04:002018-06-24T16:15:14.744-04:00In Praise of Hands by Henri Focillon 1Henri Focillon (1881-1943) was an eminent French art historian and professor, who fled Nazi-occupied France to the United States, where he taught at Yale University. In 1934, he published a book of essays titled <i>The Life of Forms in Art</i>.<br />
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He concluded this volume with an essay titled "In Praise of Hands." In its opening section, Focillon notes that "all great artists have paid close attention to the study of hands, they have sensed the peculiar power that lies in them." In recognition of this, this post, composed of excerpts from Focillon's essay, is illustrated with the studies of hands by the German painter Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), of which his study of hands in prayer is the most famous.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LXe_SWnyiFaP6UlzjIgj2f83xGOp1-O3zjZgzhWE_R2SCHg9gMBSwFLIVovzdims86LmPmKaXYXhobaSlyRdytfWIeqDoLUBRzAAR6u3knR-wGAJks2zgA4ljZZTOO0isRfreegqZ1w/s1600/Durer+Albrecht+Hands-I.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="398" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LXe_SWnyiFaP6UlzjIgj2f83xGOp1-O3zjZgzhWE_R2SCHg9gMBSwFLIVovzdims86LmPmKaXYXhobaSlyRdytfWIeqDoLUBRzAAR6u3knR-wGAJks2zgA4ljZZTOO0isRfreegqZ1w/s640/Durer+Albrecht+Hands-I.jpg" width="424" /></a></div>
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<i>Praying Hands</i></div>
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Perhaps in 1934 Focillon had a premonition of the degree to which we would lose the use of our hands in much of our daily lives, for other than typing or tapping, or of the increasing replacement of manual human labor with the prescribed performance of robots, or the extreme mechanization of agriculture that has practically removed the human hand from the soil. So far, in the plastic arts, the hands have not been replaced. The hands of the artist remain intrinsic to the creation of the work of art, to a far greater extent than in industry or the activities of daily life.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6AqnKxKvqAlhjSSJGGuv_kx-PlgBrjpTtGrAYxAcb-BffDD47490OwNzivU2x8mN4rAO_s32y5kMicpGsjrVoxzLWxPeWGRZ-pyia9TfWHWrunDzWrenqXeBs-aeCoRgdam3ei6XL3Xs/s1600/Durer+Albrecht+Boys-Hands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="510" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6AqnKxKvqAlhjSSJGGuv_kx-PlgBrjpTtGrAYxAcb-BffDD47490OwNzivU2x8mN4rAO_s32y5kMicpGsjrVoxzLWxPeWGRZ-pyia9TfWHWrunDzWrenqXeBs-aeCoRgdam3ei6XL3Xs/s640/Durer+Albrecht+Boys-Hands.jpg" width="544" /></a></div>
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<i>Boy's Hands</i></div>
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The hand, says Focillon, "is, like the higher forms of life, highly original and highly differentiated. Jointed on its delicate hinges, the wrist has a structure of many small bones. From it five skeletal branches, each with its system of nerves and ligaments, run beneath the skin, thence they fan out into five separate fingers. Each of them, articulated on three knuckles, has its own aptitude and its own mind." The hand has remarkable flexibility of motion and of purpose--it can hold, stiffen, be supple, or make a fist that is as hard as a rock.<br />
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As if to address the increasingly "virtual world" that we inhabit, where our perception is divorced from physical reality and the natural world, Focillon notes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Sight slips over the surface of the universe. The hand knows that an object has physical bulk, that it is smooth or rough, that it is not soldered to heaven or earth from which it appears to be inseparable. The hand's action defines the cavity of space and the fullness of the objects that occupy it. Surface, volume, density, and weight are not optical phenomena. Man first learned about them between his fingers and in the hollow of his palm. He does not measure space with his eyes, but with his hands and feet. The sense of touch fills nature with mysterious forces. Without it, nature is like the pleasant landscapes of the magic lantern, slight, flat, and chimerical. ...</blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgbRgjPp2LSMh6rxElsjs-e0nP-A2ZZrVCuJ_qMFw045tXUFJMVOyGSYIkjKXv5i5TzI19mLZSSYi-a7dOXVjex6S4yAkkTFTOv40aU_Pbyhey2r-shCuyqYZ-_gFdA8a2OQ2zVr58XM/s1600/Durer+Albrecht+Hand-Of-God-The-Father.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="600" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgbRgjPp2LSMh6rxElsjs-e0nP-A2ZZrVCuJ_qMFw045tXUFJMVOyGSYIkjKXv5i5TzI19mLZSSYi-a7dOXVjex6S4yAkkTFTOv40aU_Pbyhey2r-shCuyqYZ-_gFdA8a2OQ2zVr58XM/s640/Durer+Albrecht+Hand-Of-God-The-Father.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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"Without hands there is no geometry, for we need straight lines and circles to speculate on the properties of extension. ... Man's hands set before his eyes the evidence of variable numbers, greater or smaller, according to the folding and unfolding of his fingers. ...<br />
Did not the hand, moreover, set number in order, being a number itself and thus an instrument for counting and a master of rhythm?"</blockquote>
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"For touch is at the very beginning of Creation. Adam was molded of clay, like a statue. In Romanesque iconography, God does not breathe on the globe of the world to send it off into the ether. He sets it in place by laying his hand upon it." </blockquote>
The hand makes possible a relationship with objects--tools--with vast potentials for experimentation, Focillon indicates.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"... Between hand and implement begins an association that will endure forever. One communicates to the other its living warmth, and continually affects it. The new implement is never 'finished.' A harmony must be established between it and the fingers that hold it, an accord born of gradual possession, of delicate and complicated gestures, of reciprocal habits and even of a certain wear and tear. Now the inert instrument becomes alive. To this association no material lends itself better than wood, which, even when mutilated by and shaped to the arts of man, maintains in another form the original suppleness and flexibility that characterized it when growing in the forest. ... Contact and usage humanized the inert object... Anyone who has not known men who live by their hands cannot understand the strength of these hidden relationships, the positive effects of this association in which are found friendship, respect, the daily communion of work, the instinct and pride of ownership, and on the highest plane, the concern for experimentation."</blockquote>
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<i>Durer Self-Portrait, Hand, and Pillow</i></div>
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"When one realizes that the quality of a tone or of a value depends not only on the way in which it is made, but also in the way in which it is set down, then one understands that the god in five persons [the senses] manifests itself everywhere. Such will be the future of the hands, until the day when artists paint by machine, as with airbrush. Then at least the cruel inertia of the photograph will be attained by a handless eye, repelling our sympathy even while attracting it, a marvel of light, but a passive monster. Photography is like the art of another planet, where music might be a mere graph of sonorities, and ideas might be exchanged without words, by wavelengths. Even when the photograph represents crowds of people, it is the image of solitude, because the hand never intervenes to spread over it the warmth and flow of human life."</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE0S-J13QDcQK_j0-bwqX_NtbLXR1DlCVw9VqfopOcOM1W_rDHZ_ktH2VhubzEK9WiUz9QY55-95lHxiMmZsBAa2DYobyHeZEagMS3StDRPgUtKzMjOnM0wQqJKISNcyAYvNtpSJb8GfI/s1600/Durer+Albrecht+Christ-Among-The-Doctors-Detail-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="481" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE0S-J13QDcQK_j0-bwqX_NtbLXR1DlCVw9VqfopOcOM1W_rDHZ_ktH2VhubzEK9WiUz9QY55-95lHxiMmZsBAa2DYobyHeZEagMS3StDRPgUtKzMjOnM0wQqJKISNcyAYvNtpSJb8GfI/s640/Durer+Albrecht+Christ-Among-The-Doctors-Detail-3.jpg" width="512" /></a></div>
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<i>Christ Among the Doctors (detail of hands) by Albrecht Durer</i></div>
Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-18164032890212799832018-05-17T17:09:00.000-04:002018-05-17T17:09:00.851-04:00Albrecht Durer's Lion<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am wondering if this remarkable drawing of a lion by the great German artist Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) was an inspiration for C.S. Lewis' children's classic, <i>The Chronicles of Narnia</i>. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5WaTdheGpIEeBEbX3NTlpUuyfZkT6qZB-7jYJ5CMFq3c2AV0Lbq-54bV3VwMuNgPWrde1Fo4osxyrcqKPCVfQ_9a0E2N_5-6caMCltbaIzC1H7CjypwPd_zp4DSRnzdV3eCYg79P-hhA/s1600/Durer+Albrecht+Lion-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="600" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5WaTdheGpIEeBEbX3NTlpUuyfZkT6qZB-7jYJ5CMFq3c2AV0Lbq-54bV3VwMuNgPWrde1Fo4osxyrcqKPCVfQ_9a0E2N_5-6caMCltbaIzC1H7CjypwPd_zp4DSRnzdV3eCYg79P-hhA/s640/Durer+Albrecht+Lion-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>A gentle lion: Is this what Aslan looks like?</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In his essay, "It All Began With a Picture," C. S. Lewis informs us that the <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i> actually began with an image of a faun carrying parcels in a snowy wood. "</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">At first I had very little idea how the story would go," he relates. "But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time [maybe he had seen and was remembering Durer's lion!]. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Narnian stories in after him.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia#cite_note-10" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;">"</a> </sup></div>
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Surely Durer's drawing of this lion <i>did</i> inspire the artist's great engraving of S<i>aint Jerome in His Study</i>. Here is the lion sleeping in the foreground as Saint Jerome translates the Bible at his desk in the background. </div>
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<i>Sleeping next to the dog--"the peace of God that passeth all understanding" </i></div>
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Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-87118912495396887562018-05-15T21:57:00.001-04:002018-05-15T22:03:31.760-04:00The Master of Mary of Burgundy's Charming Book of HoursThe Book of Hours in question was created for Engelbert II of Nassau (1451-1504) of the Duchy of Burgundy. The name of the author remains unknown to this day, but the same hand also produced a Book of Hours for Mary of Burgundy, and so the illuminator bears the name The Master of Mary of Burgundy.<br />
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I have a kind of replica of this book, as published by George Braziller, Inc., of New York in 1970. It is the same size of the actual Book of Hours for Engelbert II now held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England: 4 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches in height. It's a pocket book, that you literally hold in your pocket and then pull out to read at the appointed time for prayers. The book begins with the calendar of the year ,so that Engelbert can check which saint is honored on this day.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWo49NYufZttwzY_BmxYHX360aNXgnUxNaypbxcpQ1JV1lp55-6U6MEQft354TUwiH6tp3PH_HahJ7ICK4S_WQZgAcmbW9wK0Y3F5y1_IBzWocVBr_aUCEcTyVs5jrEI7AmAe5w1kKUao/s1600/Month+of+October.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWo49NYufZttwzY_BmxYHX360aNXgnUxNaypbxcpQ1JV1lp55-6U6MEQft354TUwiH6tp3PH_HahJ7ICK4S_WQZgAcmbW9wK0Y3F5y1_IBzWocVBr_aUCEcTyVs5jrEI7AmAe5w1kKUao/s640/Month+of+October.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>The month of October in calendar of the Book of Hours. </i></div>
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This October page and the writing in the book were not created by the Master of Mary of Burgundy but by two calligraphers. All of the pages by the calligraphers contain whimsical scroll work, as seen in the page on the right above, and birds. The birds fly in and out, like little angel prompters and heralds. Here the birds are piecing together Engelbert of Nassau's coat of arms--just as the birds design and sew Cinderella's first ball gown in the Disney production of Cinderella!<br />
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Then follows a prayer to the Holy Face (Saint Veronica's veil) and prayers to the Virgin, which includes the page below.<br />
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<i>This page ends the prayer to the Virgin and shows the oat of arms of Philip the Fair and of his family. Pages done in this mode were created by the Master of Mary of Burgundy. </i></div>
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Next is a prayer to Saint Sebastian, a prayer to Saint Anthony Abbot, a prayer to Saint Christopher, prayers to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and prayers to Saint Barbara--all with a painting from the life of the saint surrounded by a flower-filled margin. These are the work of the Master of Mary of Burgundy, although the afore-mentioned calligraphers supply the text.<br />
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Then we proceed to the prayers of the Hours of the Cross for both Matins and Lauds.<br />
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But what is life without comedy in the face of such tragedy? The book abruptly switches topic from the Hours of the Cross to...a falconer who unleashes his falcon and his greyhound to hunt down and bring to his lady a beautiful magical bird. The story runs for 18 pages, with the angel prompter birds flying about to guide the falconer and guide us through the story. With this insertion, Engelbert II of Nassau could appear to be piously praying with his Book of Hours while actually reading a medieval comic book!<br />
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<i>The falconer begins his chase to bring the magical bird to his lady. </i></div>
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At the conclusion of this story, we resume the prayers for the Hours of the Cross for Prime, Terce, Terce Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Most of these pages are beautifully illustrated by the Master of Mary of Burgundy, with flowers painted in the borders of the holy picture painted with such accuracy as to suggest that actual flowers had been strewn on the page. </div>
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Next comes the Hours of the Virgin. beginning with the Annunciation, with a border of peacock feathers signifying Engelbert of Nassau II. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2P2Ab1CsUBqCoPY2u5yo8B2vOQF8qkI3WMcr2jMBn0DeW9jG2PNgPmsUJXif9w_MoH11orhAdU0X__liVtG62f4_mUn_wqLYL88wQHe9BFVyO2Q5A-cEytxSFFpUXM9T8FxgoCJZ0bEU/s1600/Peacock+Marginalia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="469" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2P2Ab1CsUBqCoPY2u5yo8B2vOQF8qkI3WMcr2jMBn0DeW9jG2PNgPmsUJXif9w_MoH11orhAdU0X__liVtG62f4_mUn_wqLYL88wQHe9BFVyO2Q5A-cEytxSFFpUXM9T8FxgoCJZ0bEU/s640/Peacock+Marginalia.jpg" width="496" /></a></div>
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<i>The Annunciation embellished with peacock feathers. </i></div>
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The painting of the Annunciation on the page is only 3 inches by 1 7/8 inches, yet the Master of Mary of Burgundy has managed to create an entire architectural space within this tiny boundary and created exquisite facial expressions on both the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel. </div>
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Toward the end of the Book of Hours of the Virgin are these remarkable pages, a <i>trompe l'oeil</i> of crockery of identifiable types set within painted niches. The placement of crockery within niches is a <i>trompe l'oeil</i> technique that goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, as Ms. Mastai and others document. In this painting, the crockery is meant to show the sacramental offerings to the Christ child.</div>
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<i>Toward the end of the Book of Hours of the Virgin are these remarkable pages, a trompe l'oeil of crockery within niches. </i></div>
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The Master of Mary of Burgundy was a skilled practitioner of <i>trompe l'oeil</i>, as his paintings of flowers, insects, and butterflies in this Book of Hours show. My interest in him was piqued when I saw a page of a book that he had painted that had a beautiful flower with the stem painted as if it had been woven through the page itself. I saw this page in black and white in <i>Illusion in Art, Trompe l'Oeil: A History of Pictorial Illusionism</i> by M. L. d'Otrange Mastai but have not been able to find it online. This painting is a triumph of <i>trompe l'oeil, </i>because it seems so real and the sizing of the flower for the page is perfect. Thus, the text is lovingly surrounded by a reverent offering of completely life-like flowers, a butterfly, and an insect.</div>
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The Prayers to the Virgin are followed in the Book of Hours by the Seven Penitential Psalms, which include this beautiful illustration for Psalm 38, where David confronts the giant Goliath. The emotional confrontation of David and Goliath, along with the details and perspective background, a display the Master of Mary of Burgundy's skill. The borders show his ability to paint flowers--columbines and pinks--in an elegantly realistic way. </div>
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<i>Illustration for the penitential Psalm 38.</i></div>
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Then the Book of Hours ends with a Litany and the Office of the Dead. That is the official book ends, but not the real book. We are treated to another cartooned story--the Sequence of the Grotesque Tournament, which begins with the lady preparing the monkey for battle and then the unicorn, and her forces go into battle and win the day. And then the Book of Hours of Engelbert II of Nassau truly ends.</div>
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<i>The monkey is prepared for battle.</i></div>
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<i>Then the unicorn. </i></div>
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<i>The forces race to meet the enemy.</i></div>
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<i>They meet the enemy, and the unicorn and his monkey squires leave the battle triumphant. </i></div>
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<br />Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-17520888306111981312018-03-27T08:56:00.001-04:002018-03-27T09:08:13.246-04:00"Wise Men Invented It""For one who wishes a clever theory, the invention of painting belongs to the gods--witness on earth all the design with which the Seasons paint the meadows, and the manifestations we see in the heavens. But for one who is merely seeking the origin of art, imitation is an invention most ancient and most akin to nature; and wise men invented it, calling it now painting, now plastic art."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmPUquLaLXMVOCO-BrPaRPTzIBm85A28YSjHZSXXYRcAbko5wLgFr11rim71-O8QTSKnJ4mWMvhV9Afb55SW6Yn-apDHRFvdU01E3EZTpU4PvbAvhSY8z7-p5nJI8eHa4Owb1KVbrGZzQ/s1600/Horse+in+Pasiega+Cave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="199" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmPUquLaLXMVOCO-BrPaRPTzIBm85A28YSjHZSXXYRcAbko5wLgFr11rim71-O8QTSKnJ4mWMvhV9Afb55SW6Yn-apDHRFvdU01E3EZTpU4PvbAvhSY8z7-p5nJI8eHa4Owb1KVbrGZzQ/s400/Horse+in+Pasiega+Cave.jpg" width="386" /></a></div>
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Little did the Greek writer Philostratus the Elder know when he wrote these words in the third century A.D. in his treatise on painting called Imagines, that the origins of art would take us back more than 60,000 years.<br />
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That is the conclusion of scientists from a<span style="background-color: white;"> redating</span> of the prehistoric drawings in the L<span style="background-color: white;">a Pesiaga </span>cave in Spain. The scientists calculated the age of tiny samples of the sediment on top of the drawings that they meticulously scraped off, with the startling discovery that the paintings had been done 64,000 years ago—a time when Neanderthals were the only hominids inhabiting Western Europe, the scientists said.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />As reported in the Wall Street Journal, "The analysis revealed that the paintings predated early modern humans in the region by at least 20,000 years, leaving the scientists with no alternative but to attribute the artwork to the Neanderthals who made this area their home. ... 'We conclude that this cave art has to be made by Neanderthals,' said physicist Dirk<span style="background-color: white;"> Hoffmann </span>at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, who led researchers from 15 centers in Germany, the U.K., Portugal and Spain. They published their findings in the journals Science and Science Advances."<div>
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Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-42363643072609178112018-02-07T19:19:00.000-05:002018-02-07T19:22:22.503-05:00Now Let Us Praise Famous WomenI have collected many photographs of people who live in Appalachia, and one day as I was looking through them, I was struck by how beautiful some of the older women were--the grandmothers. Here is a selection of photographs of such women. I would love to sit down on their porch and hear some of their stories. I know they have stories that tell of a world different from the one I grew up in and have lived in. As you can see, their bodies are lean from a lifetime of hard work without amenities and less than enough food.<br />
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I am interspersing the photographs with excerpts about an Appalachian grandmother from the novel <i>River of Earth</i> (1940) by Kentucky's poet laureate James Still (1906-2001), who lived most of his life in a log house on a creek in coal-producing Knott County, Kentucky. This is a beautiful novel that chronicles how coal mining lured men away from homesteading and into the mines. The story, as told by the son of a farmer turned miner, is remarkable for its detailing of all kinds of plants, planting, and seasons.<br />
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<i>Mrs. Frank Henderson, taken by Doris Ulmann.</i></div>
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One morning Grandma said we could wait no longer for Uncle Luce. She took her grapevine walking stick and we went into the cornfield. We worked two days pulling corn from the small hoe-tended stalks. When all the runty ears were gathered, she measured them into pokes, pulling her bonnet down over her face to hide the rheumatic pain. There were sixteen bushels. 'We won't be needing the barn this time,' she said. 'We'll just sack the puny nubbins and put them in the shedroom.'<br />
With the corn in, we waited a few days until Grandma's rheumatism had been doctored with herbs and bitter cherry-bark tea. Then there were the heavy-leaved cabbages, the cashews and sweet potatoes to be gathered. The potatoes had grown large that year. They were fat and big as squashes. Grandma crawled along the rows on her knees, digging in the baked earth with her hands. It was good to see such fine potatoes. 'When Jolly comes home he'll shore eat a bellyful,' she said. </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd7xZFHR7A7GQR1EI-ZxLXOqg-KCS_aBz_VQ5FkcBtX9yWKGRR3vw0IwRZIuHCAWlyO1f5IHn0XB8hJGKrxYJaftGQthUzIr10b55XLlDs8P6s7ydwmhKGeYRVueRQvudfkZIErqkx13I/s1600/Mntn+Woman+and+Grandchild+Jeff+Potter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="564" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd7xZFHR7A7GQR1EI-ZxLXOqg-KCS_aBz_VQ5FkcBtX9yWKGRR3vw0IwRZIuHCAWlyO1f5IHn0XB8hJGKrxYJaftGQthUzIr10b55XLlDs8P6s7ydwmhKGeYRVueRQvudfkZIErqkx13I/s400/Mntn+Woman+and+Grandchild+Jeff+Potter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Mountain woman with grandchild, taken by Jeffrey Potter.</i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'Eighteen-sixty-eight it was,' Grandmas said, and her words were small against the spring winds bellowing in the chimney top. She spread her hands close to the oak-knot fire. They were blue-veined like a giant spider's web. 'That was the year the pigeons come to Upper Flat Creek, mighty nigh taking the country.... Them pigeon-birds were worse than a plague writ in the Book,' Grandmother said. "Hit was my first married year, and Boone and me had grubbed out a homeseat on Upper Flat, hoe-planting four acres o' corn. We'd got a garden patch put in, and four bee gums working before I turned puny, setting in wait for our first-born. I'd take a peck measure outside and set me down on it where I could see the garden crap growing, and the bees fotching sweetening. There was a powerful bloom that year, as I remember, and a sight of seasoning in the ground.'</blockquote>
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<i>Ella Dunn, midwife and herbalist, who lived in the Ozarks and lived to be 104 years old. </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7xs7MeB8pMg_0eUTxskjwKjEjqyt-Wzmio-Yhd0b-bOePWAMEe7ayC-XVgogH3aqQMGfM9RJ8NPWcqfA7oSon_N4R4RzhZyeGcJcELUvFMtXQPNIbR7XHyDC5SR1V7Yq08BdiO31PZDc/s1600/Emma+Dupree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="350" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7xs7MeB8pMg_0eUTxskjwKjEjqyt-Wzmio-Yhd0b-bOePWAMEe7ayC-XVgogH3aqQMGfM9RJ8NPWcqfA7oSon_N4R4RzhZyeGcJcELUvFMtXQPNIbR7XHyDC5SR1V7Yq08BdiO31PZDc/s400/Emma+Dupree.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<i>Emma Dupree, an herb doctor who received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1992 and lived to be 98 years old. </i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Grandma wove her hands together on her knees. 'I been walking on these legs seventy-eight years,' she said. 'I'm figuring to walk a few more miles. I hain't going to set around and let rheumatiz tie 'em in a pinch knot. Hain't wear that breaks a door hinge, hit's rust.'</blockquote>
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<i>Two women on a porch, taken by Howard Greenberg.</i></div>
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'If I was stone-blind, I'd know a new season was coming,' Grandma said. ''This time o' year the rheumatiz strikes my hips. The pain sets deep and grinds. Five of my chaps was born in the spring and that might be the causing.' She took to bed for a spell, and Uncle Jolly cooked for us morning and evening.... It plagued her to lie abed, helpless. 'When spring opens,' Grandma said, 'I'll be up and doing. Three days' sun, and I'll be well enough to beat this feather tick and hang it to sweeten.'<br />
One morning I saw a redbird sitting in a plum bush, its body as dark as a wound. 'Spring's a winding,' I told Grandma. 'Coming now for shore.'<br />
'Even come spring,' Grandma said, 'we've got a passel of chills to endure: dogwood winter, redbud, service, foxgrape, blackberry.... There must be seven winters, by count. A chilly snap for every time of bloom.' </blockquote>
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You may also want to see:<br />
<a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2009/02/maude-callen-1898-1990.html" target="_blank">Maude Callen (1898-1990)</a><br />
<a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2011/02/trees-by-conrad-richter.html" target="_blank">The Trees by Conrad Richter</a><br />
<a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2011/03/lamb-in-his-bosom-by-caroline-miller.html" target="_blank">Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller</a><br />
<a href="http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2011/03/housekeeping-in-fields.html" target="_blank">Housekeeping in The Fields</a><br />
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<br />Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-42240368223098069202017-12-30T10:46:00.003-05:002017-12-30T10:46:46.276-05:00Yale First Building Project 2017This building for the homeless was featured in a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-architecture-of-2017-buildings-of-quiet-ambition-1513028870" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal article</a> on the best architecture of 2017. The building was created by the Yale School of Architecture Jim Vlock First Year Building Project. I was captivated by the second photo below and the beautiful differentiation of space. Even 1,000-square feet can seem like a palace. Here is the Journal writeup on the building:<br />
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<img alt="This year’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, a house for the homeless" data-enlarge="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM577_BESTAR_M_20171207145230.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM577_BESTAR_FR_20171207145230.jpg" data-in-base-src="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM577_BESTAR_FR_20171207145230.jpg" data-intent="" src="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM577_BESTAR_FR_20171207145230.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;" title="This year’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, a house for the homeless" /></div>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This year’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, a house for the homeless</span> <span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO: </span>ZELIG FOK AND HAYLIE CHAN</span></div>
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Not every year delivers major architectural stunners, but sometimes there’s something even better—buildings that contribute to a more promising future. Since 1967, the Yale School of Architecture has required first-year students to set aside theoretical and academic course work to actually build something that benefits the community. Over the years (and depending on available funds), students in the <span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jim Vlock First Year Building Project</span> have designed and built—hands-on—community centers, bandstands, park pavilions and, most recently, affordable housing. </div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">This year, the 50th project was completed: a 1,000-square-foot house for the homeless. Clad in cedar with a standing-seam metal roof and several window-seat-deep gables, the prefabricated structure contains one studio and a two-bedroom apartment with abundant built-in storage. Columbus House, a New Haven nonprofit organization, will identify and provide additional support for tenants.</span></div>
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<img alt="Interior of this year’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project" data-enlarge="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM580_BESTAR_M_20171207145235.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM580_BESTAR_M_20171207145235.jpg" data-in-base-src="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM580_BESTAR_M_20171207145235.jpg" data-intent="" src="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-WM580_BESTAR_M_20171207145235.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 700px;" title="Interior of this year’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project" /></div>
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<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Exchange, "Chronicle SSm", serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="border: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: Retina, "Whitney SSm", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Interior of this year’s Jim Vlock First Year Building Project</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Retina, "Whitney SSm", sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="border: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: Retina, "Whitney SSm", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO: </span>ZELIG FOK AND HAYLIE CHAN</span></div>
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The Building Project has always been highly commendable (and imitated at other schools), but this year’s house is particularly sophisticated and handsome—worthy of inspiring pride of place in whoever is lucky enough to dwell there.</div>
Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-27011321270511366092017-06-30T21:03:00.001-04:002017-06-30T21:03:28.820-04:00Little Rose in a Sun Puddle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-75396774397469830292017-04-19T21:14:00.001-04:002017-04-19T21:14:42.756-04:00Musicians of Medieval MarginaliaThe word cartoon first came into existence in the beginning of the Renaissance to refer to a study in preparation for a more permanent work of art, such as a painting. Later, in the 19th century the word "cartoon" came to refer to a comic picture with satirical or exaggerated graphic features--as in today's comic books, newspaper funnies, political cartoons, and graphic novels.<br />
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However, this leaves out the marginalia of medieval prayerbooks and hymnals. Here, surrounding the image of veneration--a saint, a scene from the life of Christ and of Mary, or a scene from the Old Testament, and calendars, or surrounding the musical notations in hymnals--a rich subterranean and often comic pictorial life flourishes in the marginalia.<br />
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For example, we see below that animals are often playing music in the marginalia--forerunners to the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the Musicians of Bremen. All animals, not just the birds, it seems, had some kind of musical talent back then, even dragons (see last picture).<br />
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<br />Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-12342074230537932002017-04-16T11:48:00.000-04:002017-04-16T11:48:14.051-04:00Happy Easter, Everyone!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Risen Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene, <i>Rembrandt van Rijns, 1863</i><br />
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<br />Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-67591507384740617682017-03-04T12:20:00.001-05:002017-03-04T17:14:58.937-05:00Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBz2xeOGOFXavScPD_2btM4nNWANOsSVmkc751hGetLya5_S8T5NYkGHd2m5CvjESHFKe8nZZk28z674_D9gSlnDHu3P_xIkhnFq6t-Drhyphenhyphenu3OTk4HMrYsmt_0z3dM792CkIN9aRi2bWM/s1600/Landmarks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBz2xeOGOFXavScPD_2btM4nNWANOsSVmkc751hGetLya5_S8T5NYkGHd2m5CvjESHFKe8nZZk28z674_D9gSlnDHu3P_xIkhnFq6t-Drhyphenhyphenu3OTk4HMrYsmt_0z3dM792CkIN9aRi2bWM/s320/Landmarks.jpg" width="211" /></a>Robert Macfarlane's 2015 book, <i>Landmarks,</i> was the most important and most absorbing book I read in 2016. A writer, traveler, and hiker, Macfarlane was compelled to take up his pen for <i>Landmarks</i> by his perusal of the <i>Oxford Junior Dictionary</i>, in which "a sharp-eyed reader noticed that there had been a culling of words concerning nature."</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Under pressure, Oxford University Press revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt to be relevant to a modern-day childhood. The deletions included a<i>corn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture,</i> and <i>willow.</i> The words introduced to the new edition included <i>attachment, block-graph, blog, board band, bullet-point, celebrity, chartroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player,</i> and <i>voice-mail</i>. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"When the head of children's dictionaries at OUP was asked why the decision had been taken to delete those 'nature words,' she explained that the dictionary needed to reflect the consensus experience of modern-day childhood. 'When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance,' she said. 'that was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed.' There is a realism in her response--but also an alarming acceptance of the idea that children might no longer see the seasons, or that the rural environment might be so unproblematically disposable. </blockquote>
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"The substitutions made in the dictionary--the outdoor and the natural being displaced by the indoor and the virtual--are a small but significant symptom of the simulated life we increasingly live."</blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSKiGM6las8XPvAf8GDUxWgePMcmnuK7Z2k1yR6lkzfvTe2E7DA6lLOqICQRMr1LHcDuo9FpjuqjnzgCdaW4kbP9D88uOKqHeC8S73EiYfMbcbbsPdhq9I_H6T6V_vwHdEySZqvhljuBY/s1600/Robert+Macfarlane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSKiGM6las8XPvAf8GDUxWgePMcmnuK7Z2k1yR6lkzfvTe2E7DA6lLOqICQRMr1LHcDuo9FpjuqjnzgCdaW4kbP9D88uOKqHeC8S73EiYfMbcbbsPdhq9I_H6T6V_vwHdEySZqvhljuBY/s200/Robert+Macfarlane.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Robert Macfarlane</i></td></tr>
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From this opening, Macfarlane examines the life and work of nine landscape writers and naturalists, one chapter per writer, with a glossary attached to the end of each chapter of words or phrases in English, Gaelic, Welsh, and regional lexicons that describe detailed aspects of that landscape.<br />
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The types of lands covered are: flatlands--the moors of the Isle of Lewis; uplands--the mountains of Cairngorm Mountains of northeast Scotland; the inland waterlands of England; the coastlands of England; the northlands of Canada; the edge lands--vacant fields along the edges of London and its suburbs; the earthlands of England where one finds pebbles; and the woodlands--the forest of sequoias of California.<br />
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The underlying thesis is that if we forget or bury the words that we have for the world around us--a religious person would say, "the world that God has given us"--then we will lose our relationship to that world. Macfarlane does not seek to explore the consequences of that loss of connection. His book rather invites us to <i>reconnect</i>.<br />
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The glossaries bring to the surface the far more intimate relationship that our forebears had with their natural surroundings. To give some examples: <i>snaw grimet</i>--color of the ground when lying snow is partly melted (Shetland); <i>scailp</i>--cleft or fissure; sheltering place beneath a rock (Irish); <i>glumag</i>--deep pool in a river (Gaelic); <i>fub</i>--long withered grass on old pastures or meadows (Galloway); and <i>na luin</i>--fast-moving heat-haze on the moor (Gaelic).<br />
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Aside from stories and writings of the landscape hero or heroine of each chapter, Macfarlane points us to other literature or discoveries about the landscape in question, so that the book acts as an annotated bibliography--signposts if we would like to take up the journey.<br />
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<i>Nan Shepherd (1893-1981), a lecturer in English, writer, and constant hiker of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland, which she wondrously describes in </i>The Living Mountain.</div>
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I had the added pleasure of reading this book while spending a week in the southern end of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a stretch of seashore with few urbanized distractions. It was the perfect place. I could switch back and forth from watching the ocean and sun and water and poking around to identify the sand dune vegetation or pick up shells and pebbles, to reading about other landscapes written about in Macfarlane's beautiful and highly informative prose. (Keep a dictionary close at hand.)<br />
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Macfarlane's book not only opened up a new world of thinking about our relationship to God's universe. It also helped me to <i>see-</i>-to more easily apprehend the beauty offered to us outside when we escape, however briefly for a walk, from our virtual man-made confines.Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-77540173833889118822016-12-29T00:22:00.004-05:002016-12-29T00:22:54.711-05:00O Christ, Our Morning Star<span style="color: purple; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">O Christ, our Morning Star,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Splendour of Light Eternal,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">shining with the glory of the rainbow,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">come and waken us</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">from the greyness of our apathy,</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">and renew in us your gift of hope.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">Amen.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">A prayer of Saint Bede, 672-735</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-54088311987791581972016-12-17T17:41:00.004-05:002016-12-17T17:41:33.470-05:00Ice-Stricken Lake Newport<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7244527084073420142.post-50133454550017204852016-02-20T12:20:00.000-05:002016-02-20T12:20:01.325-05:00Potages d'hiver<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's a bit late to talk about winter soups but we have more than another month before spring arrives. The picture shows a bowl of potage d'hiver I cooked up on our snow day last week. The idea of potage is to throw whatever you might have on hand in your fridge, sauté it, add water and some herbs as you like, and throw it in the blender. Perhaps it is a modernized version of the concoction referenced in the nursery rhyme "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." In those days, they threw everything in the pot and ate from the pot, threw more stuff in the pot, and ate some more....<br />
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Potage d'hiver is apparently now a French soup, and I love to make it in winter. Usually I take onions, leeks, carrots, celery, turnips, a small red potato or two, and a parsnip. In this case, I couldn't find any turnips, so I used what I had on hand: onions, leeks, celery, and carrots sautéed in the pot with olive oil, then plain frozen peas, cauliflower, and broccoli added with water, and some herbes de provence and a lot of freshly ground pepper. Let that simmer for an hour or more, and then blend it up. It's a good stick-to-your-ribs lunch. I usually eat it plain, but any kind of garnish would be fine: cheese or garlic croutons, shredded cheese, a dollop of yogurt or sour cream.<br />
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Another very simple potage d'hiver is this cauliflower soup:<br />
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Slice an onion and sauté in 2 TB of olive oil and 2 TB of melted butter for 15 minutes on low heat til soft, but not darkened. Add a head of cauliflower cut up into pieces the size of the florets and 1 cup of water. Put the lid on the pot and simmer over medium low for another 10 or 15 minutes, then add another 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Season with salt and pepper and keep on heat til the cauliflower is completely soft. Cool a bit and then blend up. The result is a creamy and delicious soup, but without the cream. Garnish with shredded parmesan or croutons, or both if you are having guests and serve a cup of this soup as a first course.<br />
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I like to make my own soups since they tend to taste far better than canned and lack the overdose of sodium and sugar canned soups tend to have.Lindahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10317796864224423184noreply@blogger.com0