Thursday, February 25. 2010
 From the New Math of Poetry in Chronicle:
If current trends persist, the sheer amount of poetry "published" is likely to double, quadruple, "ten-tuple" in the decades ahead.
Who is writing all this poetry? In quieter times, the art's only significant promoters were English professors who focused on reading poetry for its own sake. Today colleges across America have hundreds of programs devoted to teaching men and women how to actually write the stuff. Those in charge of undergraduate and M.F.A. programs have cast themselves in the role of poetry-writing cheerleaders who are busy assuring tens of thousands of students that they are talented poets who should expect their work not only to be published but to win awards as well.
The notion that writing and performing "poetry" is the easiest way to satisfy the American itch for 15 minutes of fame has spilled out of our campuses and into the wider culture. You can't pick up a violin or oboe for the first time on Monday morning and expect to play at Lincoln Center that weekend, but you can write your first poem in May and appear at an open mike in June waving a "chapbook" for sale.
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Vicenza is an uncrowded, almost unvisited UNESCO World Heritage site with a great number of Palladian buildings. The nearby La Rotonda was shown here recently, but usually Americans visit it as a side trip from over-crowded Venice. A great pity. Our suggestion is to stay in Vicenza or Verona, and if absolutely necessary, take a day-trip to Venice!
Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza. The two columns were built at different times. The lion represents the Venetian republic and was once the only column in the square. It wasn't until over a century later that the second column was built in honor of Vicenza and its citizens.
Street Scene, Vicenza
Below is Villa Valmarana, between La Rotonda and Vincenza. In 1757, Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico were invited to Vicenza to fresco rooms in the Villa Valmarana and in the adjoining guest quarters, the so-called 'foresteria'. Their patron was Count Giustino Valmarana, a scholar and theater enthusiast. Tiepolo frescoed the walls and ceilings of the vestibule and four ground-floor rooms, while his son executed the decoration in the adjacent guest house.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
Monday, February 22. 2010
Sunday, February 21. 2010
We were fortunate to get to David Parson's Remember Me last night at the Joyce. Even if you have minimal interest in dance, it's well-worth it. The performance is stunningly good. The style, Mrs. BD tells me, is inspired by Paul Taylor whose work I always could enjoy.
New to me was the East Village Opera Company (providing most of the music), which rocks classic opera. As an aspiring curmudgeon, I would not have thought that I would have found that to be as wonderful as it is. Here's their Nessun Dorma. Their stuff is dynamite and reminds us that Italian opera was the pop music of its time and there is no reason for it to become "museum music."
Check it out, Anchoress! The interesting story of the East Village Opera Company is here.
You can buy their Olde School CD here.
Somebody has given AVI a book. He is funny. A quote:
I read the blurbs - Howard Zinn, Garrison Keillor - and scanned the table of contents. I know already a lot of what will be in this book. Voltaire, Freud, Hume; a collection of Jewish writers, tending strongly to the mystical and the reformed; Buddhists and related Chinese writers; a few Marxists and Existentialists; as the author is female there will be a collection of feminist writers. Physics will be dragged in inappropriately, showing that in the 20th C we learned that everything is relative, because hey, even Science admits of uncertainty now. Chesterton, Lewis, Wright, Flew, will be studiously avoided. Jesus is mentioned as an example of a doubter. We know where that's going.
I left the book at work so I can't check if I'm correct. But you know I am.
 A serious point and shoot: the Leica D-LUX 4 Camera
You can get an old-fashioned leather case for it too.
Do any of our readers have this thing?
 William Tyndale was the Oxford-educated polyglot theologian and reformer who produced the first printed Bible in English.
His translation was from Erasmus' Greek-Latin Bible, the same one which Luther used to translate his German Bible. Tyndale's Bible was banned in Britain: you can't trust the rabble to read it themselves. He famously said that he wanted a Bible that "every plowman" could read the Scripture for himself.
Tyndale was executed by Henry Vlll for his efforts. It is believed that Thomas More was pushing for the execution.
It is thought that up to 80% of the King James Bible - the most printed book in the world - is Tyndale's product. For hundreds of years after the first printings, Protestants avoided the Anglican King James Bible, preferring the Geneva Bible (which is very similar). The Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible and, no, Anglicans are not historically Protestants and neither are their American Episcopalian brethren.
Excellent summary of the history of the Bible in English here.
Saturday, February 20. 2010
From some good ones from Neoneo's commenters:
- So this baby seal walks into a club...
- A dyslexic man walks into a bra...
- A fellow goes to a restaurant and asks the waiter for a cup of coffee without cream. A few moments later the waiter returns and says, “Sorry, we’re all out of cream, it will have be without milk.”
- An out of work geophysicist goes into a McDonald’s to ask for a job. He fills out an application and as the manager reads it he says, “I know I'm overqualified but I can do the work and I need the job”.
The manager answers back “It’s not that, it’s just that most of our geophysicists have PhDs.”
And of course, there's always this one:
Counterfeit Cubans, from JR. Nicaraguan. Mine just arrived today, and I just smoked one. Cheap, legal in the US, and plenty tasty as a medium-strength everyday smoke with a hearty earthy tanginess. I am told that those Sumatran wrappers were grown from Connecticut seed. I can't say they are as good as a good Habanos, but quite enjoyable for the price. Perfect for this Obama economy.
Why does the O smoke cigarettes instead of cigars, anyway? Who does he think he is? FDR?
Friday, February 19. 2010
Now Mrs. BD is considering mountainous Corsica for a summer trip. The lad has been there, and recommends it. Popular with Brits, I am told. They speak French and Corsican there. My Corsican is a tad rusty but my French is OK. She found this little villa in Monticello, and says it would hold the whole family:
 
Tuesday, February 16. 2010
We visited the New Britain Museum of American Art this weekend, known as one of America’s most welcoming, distinguished, dynamic, and educationally ambitious art museums. They have a current exhibit (through April 11, 2010) entitled Inspired Innovations: A Celebration of Shaker Ingenuity.
The exhibition, organized into 12 Zones of Innovation and with three rooms resembling traditional Shaker quarters, will showcase some 350 objects spanning over 200 years from 1800 to 2000. A testament to the durability, practicality, and simplicity of Shaker ingenuity, with a focus on functionality, each piece is gracefully formed with a genuine devotion to ones craft that reflects the words of Shaker founder, Mother Ann: "labor to make the way of God your own; let it be your inheritance, your treasure, your occupation, your daily calling."
Maggie's readers will like this quote from Shaker Martha J. Anderson of Mt. Lebanon, NY: "The lamp of genius burns as it is supplied by the oil of enthusiasm."
The New Britain Museum of American Art's founding in 1903 entitles the institution to be designated the first museum of strictly American art in the country. That year, a $20,000 gift of gold bonds to the museum's former parent, the New Britain Institute, from industrialist John Butler Talcott, created funds to purchase "modern oil paintings." Subsequent purchases, with advice from New York museums and galleries, further defined "modern" to mean American works of art, now numbering more than 10,236. With particular strengths in colonial portraiture, the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, and the Ash Can School, not to mention the important mural series The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton, the museum relies heavily on its permanent collection for exhibitions and programming, yet also displays a significant number of borrowed shows and work by emerging artists. The singular focus on American art and its panoramic view of American artistic achievement make the New Britain Museum of American Art a significant teaching resource available to the local, regional, and national public.
As the Guide Michelin might say, "worth a detour".
Dead at 89. h/t, Jungleman. The guy provided me many hours of delight by the pool and on the beach.
Monday, February 15. 2010
She's my new favorite chanteuse. Here's a snip from the unembeddable My One and Only Thrill TV ad. Here's another song:
For those unfamiliar with sailboat racing, it's not just about a faster boat. It's about strategy, tactics, boat-handling, seamanship, fine-tuning, luck, and lots of other details.
Here's some dramatic footage from this year's race.
Image is Currier and Ives' 1851 portrait of "America," the first boat to win the famous race.
The America's Cup (named for the sailboat, not the country) is now sailed with multi-hulls with 17-story masts. 33 knots out of a 10 knot wind speed. Here's winner US-17:
h/t, SDA, with links to more details of the race
Sunday, February 14. 2010
I am making my usual St. Valentine's Day day steamed mussels and lobster feast, but I did at least one other act of love today - remembering that love is action, not sentiment. Carpet cleaning done! (They have a special spray for dog pee bedroom carpet spots. Isn't it romantic? Carpet sucks, in my opinion.)
No more eccentric than the rest of her Amherst family. Indeed, her life has been sentimentalized.
Well, always interesting to have an epileptic nympho around the place, especially on St. Valentine's Day when the Christian saint seems to give way to the celebration of Eros.
Eros (Cupid) - "desire" - is the mischievous prankster son of Venus who, at the same time, is responsible for keeping humanity thriving. He is, indeed, a troublemaker and a pest, isn't he, with his devilish little arrows and bow? As Kesler and I observed the other day, those little arrows can hit you at the oddest, most unsuspecting moments. Like at the supermarket.
You can refresh your memory of the folktale of Cupid and Psyche here.
This is Caravaggio's c. 1600 Eros Victorious:
The Valentine sweetheart of Maggie's Farm is our dearly loved commenter Marianne Matthews.
Marianne is a classically trained musician, among many other wonderful things, with a sane, quick, and fun-loving mind. I share Marianne's love of folk music, she broadening my appreciations beyond the labor and protest songs I was raised with to older and other countries' folk classics. Marianne has been deeply involved with many of the greats. Marianne sent me a disc of some of her recaptured recordings from the 1950's, which you have to hear to soar. We're working on a way to put at least one up at Maggie's Farm. Meanwhile, you'll have to be content with this 1972 photo of Marianne and all-together now wishing Marianne a Happy Valentine.
FRIENDSHIP
Oh, the comfort -- the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weigh thoughts,
Nor measure words -- but pouring them
All right out -- just as they are --
Chaff and grain together --
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them --
Keep what is worth keeping --
And with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.
-Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Saturday, February 13. 2010
h/t, Theo
Somehow, this post got Farked! Just realized it. Hey, Fark friends - check out our site while visiting. You might enjoy knowing us and our free-thinking Yankee site -
It's Valentine's Day weekend, so go out and buy your hubby some really good smokes. Get some for your kids, too. Maybe beloved hubby will get a good one for you, too: a pretty lady looks sexy with a cigar. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Why our pro-smoking campaign this week? It's a companion-piece to Michelle O's anti-obesity campaign. A good cigar, which lasts at least quadruple the time of a Wendy's burger (450 calories), has zero calories and quadruple the enjoyment.
(By the way, I do not know what the fuss is about childhood obesity. I drive past our local high school all the time, and I have yet to see a fat kid. They all look kinda scrawny to me except for the muscular athletes.) I always told my kids "Do not eat vegetables. They are for grown-ups." That was the truth and it worked well. Still having trouble getting them to enjoy the mystic Indian miracle of organic tobacco, though. They are brainwashed.
I plan to light up a tasty, sweet, well-aged and fragrant Dominican Bolivar this afternoon. Bolivar builds a heck of a strong, solid cigar, like a piece of wood. They have become my favorites for the moment. It's fun to rustle through ye olde Yankee humidors to see what you have, and what you forgot you bought online a year or three ago. It is sort of like a wine cellar, filled with interesting, anti-obesity suprises.
Friday, February 12. 2010
Photo: Tenerife, Canary Islands
Mrs. BD and I have been engaged in a month-long debate about trips this year (in addition to the usual Cape Cod family reunion and, I think, hunting in Manitoba).
Cruise or car or trains? Scotland? Provence? Vienna and Prague? Venice and Veneto and the south Tyrol? Canary Islands and Madeira with stops in Morocco and Portugal? Turkey (I love that country)? Sailboat down the Turkish coast? Israel and Egypt?
Carpe diem, right? Now, or never. Could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
I am more in a Provence mood (or maybe Sicily again), but I always do love to get on a ship or a boat. It gives me a reason (besides tuitions) to work. (My theory of life? We can relax when we are dead.) Put it on the credit card...
Where do our readers want to go?
 Remembering Lincoln at Powerline.
I hate to correct Scott, but Lincoln was not the unanimous choice of the brand new Republican Party - he was the relatively-unknown compromise choice when a contentious convention could not agree on the front-runners - most of whom he put in his Cabinet.
Also interesting: Lincoln v. Obama or Liberty and Justice v. "Fairness" and Power
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