Several New Posts

I've posted several new posts in quick succession.

Here they are:

- The Cross with the Pearl
- Lilac + Hat = Summer
- Roadside Yellow Lilies
- Columbo's Canine Aide
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Cross With the Pearl

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
— Matthew 13:45-46, King James Version

My pearl is worth very little (it is not the perfect round pearl that one adds to a string of pearls. But, I like it's oval shape, and it stands out amongst the diamonds and rubies. I found this tiny gold-plated cross at some accessory store (it came with other cumbersome large crosses), and I'm did not have to sell all that I had to buy it. But, for some reason, without knowing these verses from the New Testament, I decided to wear the pearl and the cross together.

I will say, though, that the chain is gold, 14kt according to the label.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Lilac + Hat = Summer

I'm collecting hats. This is the best time to get summer hats, with 50% and more off from Sears. This lilac hat is from the Sears brand "Jessica" and was going for $14.99, on sale from $19.99. And lilac seems to the the color of this summer. It seems like an unobtrusive, quiet color, but it brightens up the ensemble.

One should not be afraid of hats. No-one wears them these days. It seems like plastering spf-loaded sun creams is the alternative to getting the sun out. But nothing helps like a good, wide sun hat.

People actually stop me in the street and ask me where I got my various hats. Some people remember me because of my hats.

So far, I have wide-brimmed orange and green straw hats, and a narrower brimmed white hat with a cream and white band and bow around the rim.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Roadside Yellow Lilies

Yellow Daylilies

These are yellow daylilies growing in front of a convenience store in a small patch by railings. The sidewalk is just in front.


[Photos By: KPA]

From some google and image searches, I've identified it as the Hyperion Daylily. Here are its characteristics:

Modern Daylilies are the product of many years of breeding work, resulting in freely blooming plants of the easiest garden culture. They form dense clumps of grassy foliage, with upright stems of trumpet flowers. This classic selection has large, fragrant lemon-yellow flowers. Repeat blooming. Midseason. Plants do not usually require dividing for several years, but are easily split apart in fall or early spring. Spent flower stems can be trimmed back after flowers are finished. Remove old foliage in late fall. An older selection, but still an outstanding garden performer. Award winning.

Flower Colour: Yellow
Blooming Time: Mid Summer, Late Summer
Foliage Color: Deep Green
Plant Uses & Characteristics:
Accent: Good Texture/Form
Border
Containers
Culinary
Cut Flower
Drought Tolerant
Rabbit Resistant
Fragrant
Massed
Specimen
Flower Head Size: Large
Height: 35-39 inches
Spread: 23-35 inches

And more information from this site:

HEIGHT: 36-40 Inches SPREAD: 20-30 Inches ZONE: 3-8 (Here is a "zone" map)

Although an antique in the hermerocallis world (introduced in 1925) this clear yellow flower remains unsurpassed in its color class and is still one of the standard varieties used by gardeners everywhere. Its 4" yellow flowers that bloom in July and August are accented with a pale lime throat and have a sweet fragrance that is lost in most modern hybrids. Easily grown in well-drained soils in full sun to part shade, it is an aggressive enough grower to quickly crowd out weeds if planted in groups, making it a carefree and colorful groundcover. Tolerant of heat and humidity, 'Hyperion' will still appreciate occasional deep watering during dry spells to keep the foliage an attractive back drop for its numerous stems of bloom.

Theodore Luqueer introduced the daylily through cross-breeding:

Theodore Luqueer Mead (February 23, 1852 - May 4, 1936) was an important American naturalist, entomologist and horticulturist...As a horticulturist, he is best known for his pioneering work on the growing and cross-breeding of orchids, and the creation of new forms of caladium, bromeliad, crinum, amaryllis and hemerocallis (daylily). In addition he introduced many new semi-tropical plants, particularly palm varieties, into North America. [Source: Wikipedia]

This sturdy flower with its dynamic yellow color and abundant leaves, brightens up city sidewalks and parks.


Hemerocallis flava
Pierre Joseph Redouté (1817–1824)
Les Liliacées, vol. 1: t. 15, 1805-1816

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Posts on Redoute at Camera Lucida:
- The Art and Science of Lilies
- More Flowers: Redouté's roses
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Columbo's Canine Aide

Good-bye, Lieutenant Columbo
By: Whiteling
Columbo with his beloved canine, Dog

My favorite detective, other than the classy Jessica Fletcher who solves murders in Murder She Wrote (I blogged about her here), is her complete opposite: the scruffy Columbo. Fletcher looks, and acts, efficient and observant. Her method is methodical. Columbo, with his scruffy jacket, mop of a hair, squinting eye (which he lost due to cancer at age three, and which is a prosthetic) and exuberant side-kick dog, is less threatening. People don't notice him much, so he gets away with rummaging through homes, cars and other private properties.

"He looks like a flood victim," Falk once said. "You feel sorry for him. He appears to be seeing nothing, but he's seeing everything."

Columbo's side kick dog is a large, friendly basset hound, with a deep and boisterous bark and an incessantly wagging tail. He is also pretty stubborn, and at times makes his master Columbo carry to where he's supposed to go. And Columbo obliges, even when he has not time for stubborn, tail-wagging dogs sabotaging his murder investigations.

The dog's name is...Dog. Nothing else would fit, is Columbo's excuse for not naming the poor Dog.

Columbo is a detective of Italian descent. He is actually played by Jewish actor Peter Falk. But to my surprise, during the episode Identity Crisis, Columbo rips through in Italian with one of his co-actors, Vito Scotti, who plays Salvatore Defonte, an Italian winemaker.

But, Dog takes over the scene whenever he appears, which is why Columbo leaves him in the car (with promises of ice-cream) as he goes about the important work of solving murders.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Euan Uglow: Putting Man Above God

A reader sent me a link to an article [KPA 2022: the original article was on First Things' blog posting, but the link now redirects to Maureen Mullarkey's Studio Matters website, and the article is posted here on the website] on the painter Euan Uglow, and I responded thus:

This is a fascinating artist, in that he has convinced himself that he is doing something "beautiful" or I should say artistic. He is giving us banality, bleak ordinariness, and dejected and disappointed human beings. The writer, Maureen Mullarkey, is quite taken in by it all, as is the case with contemporary critics of art, who don't critique paintings as much as eulogize the painters.

But, Mullarkey is also a painter. And it is no wonder she is so taken by Uglow. Her style, stark and bleak, is very similar to Uglow's.

Here is some information about Uglow (what an apt name, one doesn't need much to turn it into "ugly").

Uglow was predominantly a painter of the human figure, although he also painted still lifes and landscapes. His method was meticulous, involving a great deal of measuring and correction to create images that are not hyper real, but appear almost sculptural. Writing in 1990, Tim Wilcox said "[Uglow's] staple is the traditional studio nude but set in relation to an artificial space contrived by the artist himself with geometrical markings and the odd prop used as if by a minimalist stage designer."[Source: Wikipedia]

The telegraph's obituary says this about his style:

Although a high proportion of his relatively small body of work consists of portraits, landscapes and still life paintings, Uglow was thought of principally as a painter of nudes. These he attempted to paint as he saw them, a devotion to truth rather than to beauty which led him to develop an unusually rigorous method of working...

The results, much influenced by Piero della Francesca, Cézanne and Giacometti, were in the classical tradition, though curiously flat on the canvas and stripped of extraneous emotion or sensuality. [Source: The Telelgraph]

It is interesting that the most critical writing on Uglow's work is found in his obituary by a nameless writer. This supports my observation that contemporary art critics are afraid to express their dislike of contemporary painters.

This mere blogger is a little more forthright when he writes:

Rather than using paint like De Kooning to express conceptual truths through the application of paint, Uglow is using paint to illustrate observable truths. That is the difficulty with these paintings, they do not offer that personality and come off as a little analytical and cold.

But then he capitulates soon after:

The formal aspects of his work would inspire any formal junkie or figurative painter with its nuanced observations and Uglow’s visible handy work despite this criticism. However, his work should be taken with a grain of salt. Uglow’s method of painting evolved from the idea of concept before form, that is what makes it personal. He is one of those rare painters which forces you to reevaluate your own aesthetic, because the paintings are so visually compelling.

And the best (most clear-sighted) critique is from Adrian Searle at the Guardian, who writes:

Uglow was a student at the Slade of William Coldstream, whose own life paintings had about them a chilling air of self-denial, and Uglow went on to develop Coldstream's approach through his own years of teaching in the same art-college life room. To me, it always smelled like a death room; every year a new crop of belated Euston Road painters would emerge from it, their pallid painted figures nicked with little registration points and tiny painted crosses, like so many torture victims, done-over in shades of umber and grey.

A style like any other, this was and is a look masquerading as a moral quest. About it all hangs an air of futility, and a sense of something murdered... Here, the act of looking and recording is presented as a joyless test.

The rest of the article is worth reading, and it is here.

Adrian Searle studied art at various art schools in England. I could find only one of his works, which is not very good, but has a better "story" than Uglow's nudes.

I wondered if his criticism of classical painters is as eulogizing. This is his article title on a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery in London: Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery – the greatest show of the year?

And he has sexualized, and even homosexualized, Caravaggio's paintings:

There is a frisson of the trans-gressive (sic) about Caravaggio's art, a morbidity as much spiritual as it is - to modern eyes - sexual and social. It's difficult not to come over a bit queer looking at Caravaggio, whatever one's sexual orientation or habits; whatever, even, one's actual sex...

But there are so many metaphors and symbols here for the modern eye. Look at the sexualised massiveness of Christ's torturers in The Flagellation (click here to see the work), and the homoerotic aspects of earlier Caravaggio, as well as of the ephebe-like St John The Baptist (click here to see the work). Think in particular of the androgynous David with the Head of Goliath (click here to see the work); the lovely sag of David's diaphanous shirt, his beardless face a foil to the bloody gurning head of Goliath (supposedly a self-portrait of the artist), which he proffers. David gazes at his victim's squinting head not as a trophy but with something like compassion. He holds the slender blade of his sword against his own crotch, at an angle that mimics a male erection. Above the blade a gape in his clothing looks very like the folds of a vagina.

I wont go into this much, except to say how irritatingly unimaginative and unlearned he is, despite his professed erudition. For example, David was a young man when he confronted Goliath:

Meanwhile, the Philistine [Goliath], with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. [1 Samual 17: 41-42]

It was precisely the bravery of the young David, "little more than a boy," which set him apart from others, and eventually earned him a place in the Bible.

To prove my point about Searle's insidious speculations about David, this art critic writes:

David then cut off Goliath’s head and presented it to King Saul. You would think this would be a moment of triumph, or maybe triumph mixed with disgust, but instead we see what I can only call stern regret.

Of course it has all of Caravaggio’s hallmarks: the murky shadows from which the figures emerge into stark light, the masterful modeling of the human body, the touch of gore...

David with the Head of Goliath is a double self-portrait. The young Caravaggio has slaughtered and decapitated the old, dissolute Caravaggio and holds the head of his victim with a mix of sorrow and disgust...

It’s easy to think of Caravaggio as simply a bully. A jerk with a taste for violence. But I think this painting more than any other makes it clear he was more than that. He knew who he was, he knew his sin and his guilt; he knew the depths he had fallen. That beautiful youth was still inside of him, and he looks at the wreck he has made of his own life and sits in judgment at his own choices.

But I suspect Searle is one of those post-modern, atheist artists who believes that man should be glorified, rather than God. I would conclude that's his reason for having such a visceral dislike for Uglow's paintings, who has reduced man to dreary, banal everyday-ness.

But his differences with Uglow (and Mullarkey) is only a matter of degree. Man can be eulogized through ugliness too, as a forceful, powerful element combating the ever-scorned beauty. In their Godless world, they have all put man above God.


David with the head of Goliath
1610
Caravaggio (1573-1610)
Oil on Canvass
49 in × 40 in
Galleria Borghese
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Race and Truth: A Tale of Two Personalities

Addendum: I wrote this post over a couple of days, and was doing the final touches yesterday when I saw Obama's comment on Trayvon Martin on a CBC news report. He made the speech on Friday July 19, in the White House press room.

The video of his speech is below, and here is a link to the transcript.

I've posted some highlights from his speech below the video.

"Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."

"There are very few African-American men in this country who have not had the experience of being followed when they are shopping at a department store. That includes me."

"There are probably very few African-American men who have not had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me - at least before I was a senator."

"There are very few African-Americans who have not had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had the chance to get off. That happens often."

"The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws," he said. "And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case."

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There is a photograph now (very recently) circulating of George Zimmerman's family.

Below is the photograph. Zimmerman's black great grandfather is holding George's mother, Gladys, in his arms. The woman in the back is George's grandmother.



The photograph was taken in Peru. Gladys Zimmerman, George's mother, traveled from her native Peru to Florida to visit relatives, where she met Robert Zimmerman Sr. They married in 1975.

Zimmerman must be aware of this photograph, of his infant mother in his grandfather's arms. That is a powerful image to have of one's close relative. In the multi-ethnic family in which he clearly grew up (this source says that Zimmerman's mulatto grandmother took care of him as a child), Zimmerman must have had some empathy for all these different races. How can he hate a black grandfather? How can he hate a Hispanic mother? And his white father of German descent?

Here is the contrast of ethnicities between Robert Zimmerman Sr. and his wife Gladys Zimmerman:



In the jumbled racial world in which Zimmerman grew up, he cannot have strong "racist" feelings, unless he is after some vendetta for the obvious confusions this heritage brings him. And everyone who knows Zimmerman says he was not a vengeful person. He grew up to be an upright and good man.

Shame on those who try to malign him.

The jurists, try as they probably did, couldn't find anything with which to implicate him.

I think his saving grace was his cry for help as Travis was pummeling him on the back of his head. Neighbors heard his shout, as did the telephone call he made to report his capture of the assailant.

What mature, adult male cries for help when attacked? He fights back instead.

I think he was crying out to God, to someone higher than him to prevent him from doing what he he knew he was driven to do. But, he obeyed that instinct. He had to defend himself.

George Zimmerman was after truth, not racial bias. He was doing his job of protecting his neighborhood, with which he had been entrusted. He

Slowly, surely, the demonic hatred of whites by non-whites is coming to the surface.

But a non-white with a varied and multi-ethnic background, including a black one, who pursues truth and reality, and stakes out a black criminal, is deemed a "white racist" whereas a non-white with almost a similar racial background of white and black roots, yet who demonizes whites and favors and enriches blacks, is deemed acceptable. And who is the latter? None other than President Barack Obama.

But, as I've written before, whites are understanding this. Their persistent support of Obama is not paying off. He is in fact systematically weakening them, with the aim of strengthening blacks through their (whites') money and efforts.

Sooner or later, whites will catch on, for good.

Left: A jovial, happy Obama. It seems he had a different, happier, childhood from George Zimmerman's.

Photo Source: Salon.com describes Obama's and Ann Dunham's photo, from which I cropped the above Obama portrait, as:

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is seen as a child with his mother Ann Dunham in an undated family snapshot from the 1960's released by his presidential campaign, February 4, 2008.

Right: Zimmerman at seven years old, young and serious.
Perhaps life as a multi-racial child was not easy
Photo Source: Daily Mail

I have deduced Obama's age in the photo above, since there is no age given anywhere online where the photo appears (how can professional sites not include an important .

- Obama was born in 1961
- Various sources, including the 2012 Financial Press, indicate that the photograph was taken in Honolulu.
- Obama was in Honolulu twice:
-- Once when he went to kindergarten from 1966-1967
-- Much later in 1971 when he returned to resume his 5th grade, after time in Indonesia from 1967-1970.
- The photo of the toddler Obama was taken in 1966, presumably when he was there for his brief Honolulu stay in kindergarten.
- Kindergarten age for US schools is five to six years old

Based on this, I would put Obama as five or six years old.

From this bit of leg work, what I intended to do was to show the two very different personalities of who resemble each other racially.

Obama seems to have taken his racial confusion to the level of a vendetta, where whites are the evil incarnate, whose financial and empathic energy needs to be milked to right the wrongs they've done, from slavery to impoverished inner city black neighborhoods. He won his election on the guilt of whites and the vendetta demanded by blacks.

Zimmerman, who was labeled as a white racist, in fact has black and non-white Hispanic roots. Yet, his search was for truth, or more precisely, a desire to fight the evils of crime. The testimonies that keep surfacing show that he was, if anything, doing his job of keeping his neighborhood safe from criminals. Yet, he is shown no mercy by blacks, who refuse to see what is in front of them, and will rearrange facts to suit their bitter demands.

Truthful blacks and angry whites will at some point demand that these biases stop. It may be a "civil rights" type of peaceful transition, or it may be more violent and volatile.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Ruminating

From the installation The Pasture
1985
Bronze
Toronto Dominion Centre, Toronto
By: Joe Fafard (1942 -)
[Photo By: KPA]
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Presence of Evil

Twisted Architecture: Evil manisfesting itself visually
Mississauga, Ontario

The folks at the Orthosphere have an interesting discussion about evil in a recent post. In the comments on the post, J. Smith writes:

Have you ever walked into a room where really bad people were doing really bad things? I have, once or twice, and it seemed to me there was something hanging in the air like a bad odor. It wasn’t an odor I smelled with my nose; I sensed it with my soul, much as I sense beauty or goodness. When we sense beauty, we often say that it is “sweet.” When I sensed evil, I would say that it was fetid, like the combined odor of soiled laundry, rank garbage and stale urine.

I agree with him, that some react viscerally to evil. I think I do. I think it is a manifestation of my whole body trying to find beauty, and when it is absent, or rather when it's opposite is present, I react viscerally. I literally get scared, and there is nothing seemingly tangible to make me afraid. If I say " I don't like this place, let's leave," people often look at me as though I'm a little unstable.

I react to smell. This is natural, an unpleasant smell can mean an unwashed person, or a dirty road (with stale urine, as J. Smith writes). But the smell I detect is rancid, pervasive, and has an odd pungent sweetness about it. As though it will not go away, and will embalm me as well. It can be on a person, in a room, or in some public place like a park or a store. In one grocery store, I finally had to tell the manager that the smell is unacceptable. He tried to air the store (clean the floor with detergent, spray air freshener, etc.), but the smell never went away. And I stopped going.

I react to sound. But these days, everything is at a higher volume, from the sound in movie theaters, traffic on the road, and even people's conversations. Many times conversations are conducted on cell phones, in extra loud voices, as though being on the phone renders one deaf. And these days in Toronto, there are a lot of loud, foreign languages. Indian and Chinese dominate. The Chinese languages especially seem harsh and aggressive, as though they are a manifestation of the people, their character and intentions. I avoid restaurants during rush hours, or sitting next to groups of people I know will converse at a higher volume. Thus, it seems as though the universe is getting louder with ugly noises, and with people blithely participating in those noises.

I react to taste. Food that smells bad often means food gone bad, so this is again a natural, physiological reaction. But I seem to have acquired some kind of "inner" taste, where I detect a ingredient that I cannot define, but which makes me unable to eat the food. And it is not a matter of cleanliness, or the food gone bad, but something unpleasant about that "ingredient" which closes off my appetite.

I react to objects. My Reclaiming Beauty website is really an attempt to bring back visual beauty into our otherwise ugliness-infested world. But, wherever I go, I see ugliness: in badly constructed buildings, in the drab grays that people wear, in the lack of simple etiquette of "thank you" and "excuse me." This afternoon, as I was riding up the elevator, I saw a man carrying a child approach the closing doors. I pressed the "open" button so he could get in. He did make it in, and stood at the corner, without even a sliver of a thank you. "You're welcome" I said, looking at him. Nothing. He looked Philipino, or from one of those hybrid Asian countries. The fine art of etiquette is out the window (or the elevator) if people can no longer even make small talk in elevators, for whatever reason.

There is some kind of animalistic, aggressiveness behavior that is seeping into our atmosphere. It is not simply narcissism, but a dearth of sensitivity, and humanness. In some cases, it is downright callous as though people have become possessed with something strong and evil.

As another commenter at the Orthosphere writes:

Some part of me believes that the Lord is allowing the Enemy to run rampant in the world so people like me can open their eyes, recognize supernatural evil, and reach desperately for God’s mercy. I hate sounding like a millennialist. Perhaps it was always this way. However, this degree of evil, such that the powers that be call evil good, and good evil, seems better explained by some horned influence. Everything seems to be so outside the acceptable range of moral behavior; its cognitive dissonance makes me believe that there is something supernatural at hand. It may be a blessing in disguise, because if the prince of this world is out there, so is the Lord. However, it pains me to think about my children, who will inherit an Earth under Satan’s dominion, and will have to endure trials that perhaps few of us are prepared to endure.

I really think we have reached that stage, and we need to prepare ourselves for the consequences.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Linden Flower Patterns

One of the reasons I take photographs of plants, and mainly of flowers, is to find ways I can incorporate them into my textile and other pattern designs. Not all flowers are amenable (or easily amenable) to patterns, but I think the linden plant can work well as a pattern. I recently took photos of the flower and leaf, which I posted in The Linden Tree Flower and its Fragrance.

Here is a diagram of the linden flower, with a cropped photo of a similar area of the flower:



Surprisingly, there are not many (readily, web-available) designs for this flower. People seem to prefer to stencil the leaves and the tree.



And the flowers are often graphic and simplified.



The honeysuckle flower, which I think resembles the linden flower (in fact, I first thought the linden flowers were honeysuckle) is a more difficult flower to design. It is less structured than the linden tree flower. But it is a popular design, because it is a more prominent, and visible flower.


Honeysuckle textile and wallpaper design, 1883
By William Morris (1834-96)


Trumpet Honeysuckle (which is probably what Morris used for his design)

While preparing the linden flower design, I would make it less graphic (but not too detailed either). I would make the colors more dynamic, with brighter green leaves and a deeper, more mustard yellow for the flower. I would also add different parts of the plant, from the stalk of the leaves to the berries (less of the branches), to add more dimension and interest to the design. But I would make the flower prominent.


Details of the linden plant
[Photo By: KPA]

The pattern I would prepare will be more structured. The few linden floral patterns I found were haphazard. At this point in my design creation process, my pattern would resemble my Trillium and Queen Anne's Lace design:



I still haven't found a prominent designer who used the linden flower in his designs. Perhaps I can rectify that dearth (through my modest contribution) to make a design worthy of this pretty flower with the lovely scent.


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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Linden Tree Flower and its Fragrance

The small clusters of flowers and the heart-shaped leaves of the linden tree


Younger flowers are pale yellow


The flowers turns a deeper yellow as they mature


[Photos By: KPA]


Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)
Linden Tree on a Bastion
Painted: 1494

The flowers are barely discernible from a distance. But once up close, their scent tells us that we're under the linden tree.

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These flowers were blooming on a nearby tree. It is a strangely inconspicuous tree. Its flowers are barely distinguishable in the thick foliage. But once underneath, they have a pungent, sweet smell. I thought it was a honeysuckle tree.

I picked a short stalk (I didn't have my camera to take a picture).

I arranged the flowers in a small bowl, and took a photo. And thanks to "google image" I was able to identify it as a linden flower, from the linden tree.

Here is information about the linden tree and its flower:

This tree will grow to 130 feet in height and when in bloom perfumes its whole neighbourhood. The leaves are obliquely heart-shaped, dark green above, paler below, from 2 1\2 to 4 inches long and sharply toothed. The yellowish-white flowers hang from slender stalks in flattened clusters. They have five petals and five sepals. The original five stamens have each developed a cluster, and there is a spoon-shaped false petal opposite each true one.

Linden tea is much used on the Continent, especially in France, where stocks of dried lime-flowers are kept in most households for making 'Tilleul.'

The honey from the flowers is regarded as the best flavoured and the most valuable in the world. It is used exclusively in medicine and in liqueurs.

The wood is useful for small articles not requiring strength or durability, and where ease in working is wanted: it is specially valuable for carving, being white, close-grained, smooth and tractable in working, and admits of the greatest sharpness in minute details. Grinley Gibbons did most of his flower and figure carvings for St. Paul's Cathedral, Windsor Castle, and Chatsworth in Lime wood.

It is the lightest wood produced by any of the broad-leaved European trees, and is suitable for many other purposes, as it never becomes worm-eaten. On the Continent it is much used for turnery, sounding boards for pianos, in organ manufacture, as the framework of veneers for furniture, for packingcases, and also for artists' charcoal making and for the fabrication of wood-pulp.

The inner bark or bast when detached from the outer bark in strands or ribands makes excellent fibres and coarse matting, chiefly used by gardeners, being light, but strong and elastic. Fancy baskets are often made of it. In Sweden, the inner bark, separated by maceration so as to form a kind of flax, has been employed to make fishing-nets.

The sap, drawn off in the spring, affords a considerable quantity of sugar.

The foliage is eaten by cattle, either fresh or dry. The leaves and shoots are mucilaginous and may be employed in poultices and fomentations. [Source: Botanical.com]

Tilia L. Var. Americana
Illustration By: David Nathanael Friederich Dietrich

Family Tiliaceae
Tilia americana L. var. americana
American basswood, American linden, basswood
Status: Native
Plant: Perennial tree to 130' tall
Flower: Inflorescence a stalked cluster of fragrant, yellowish flowers
Fruit: Nutlike, hairy, roundish
Leaf: Oval to round, heart-shaped to flat unequal base, edges sharply toothed
Habitat: Rich woods
[Source: Robert W. Freckmann Herbarium]

Here are some well-known perfumers who have used the pungent, sweet linden blossom scent:
- 5th Avenue, Elizabeth Arden
- Paris, Yves St. Laurent
- PanAme, Jean Patou
- Aroma d'Orange Verte, Hermes
- Central Park, Bond No. 9
- Central Park West, Bond No. 9
- Eau de Cologne du 68, Guerlain
- DKNY Women Summer 2012, Donna Karan
- Beatiful Sheer, Estee Lauder
[Source: Fragrantica]


Franz Schubert
"Der Lindenbaum" (Winterreise, 5)
Gerald Seminatore, Tenor and Michael Schütze, piano
Meng Concert Hall, Orange County, CA (live performance)

DER LINDENBAUM Am Brunnen vor dem Tore Da steht ein Lindenbaum; Ich träumt in seinem Schatten So manchen süßen Traum. Ich schnitt in seine Rinde So manches liebe Wort; Es zog in Freud' und Leide Zu ihm mich immer fort. Ich mußt' auch heute wandern Vorbei in tiefer Nacht, Da hab' ich noch im Dunkel Die Augen zugemacht. Und seine Zweige rauschten, Als riefen sie mir zu: Komm her zu mir, Geselle, Hier find'st du deine Ruh'! Die kalten Winde bliesen Mir grad ins Angesicht; Der Hut flog mir vom Kopfe, Ich wendete mich nicht. Nun bin ich manche Stunde Entfernt von jenem Ort, Und immer hör' ich's rauschen: Du fändest Ruhe dort!

THE LINDEN TREE Near the well before the gate, a linden tree stands. I dreamed in its shade many beautiful dreams. And in its bark I carved many words of love; My pleasures and my sorrows were drawn into the tree itself. Today I had to pass it, in the depths of night - and still, in all the darkness, my eyes closed. Its branches bent and rustled, as if they called to me: Come here, companion, here you will find peace! The icy winds were blowing, straight in my face they ground. My hat flew off my head, yet I did not turn back. Now I many hours away from where the linden tree stands, and still I hear it whisp'ring: "Here you will find peace!"

Johann Strauss III (1866-1939)
Unter Den Linden, waltz for orchestra
(Under the Linden Trees), Op. 30


Berlin, Unter den Linden

In the nineteenth century, Unter den Linden was "the best-known and grandest street in Berlin."
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Fireworks Spectacular Diminished by the Music

I watched the Macy's Fourth of July fireworks on NBC last night. It was truly spectacular. Somewhere at the beginning, there were all kinds of "contemporary artists" providing the sound effects, so I turned off the volume and just watched the spectacle. I was more convinced, after this celebration of independence, that whites contribute truly spectacular things to our culture and society.

One of the "contemporary artists" was the one-name, black hip-hop star Usher, who had four songs included in the fireworks spectacle. Usher also got the prestigious title of "curator" of the fireworks. His curatory contribution involved some shameless self-promotion.



Usher says about his curatorial honors:

Me curating, it's far more than me just showing up and allowing my name to be on a bill. I wanted to represent America. I wanted people to understand something more about me artistically.

His full statement is:

Me curating, it’s far more than me just showing up and allowing my name to be on a bill. I wanted to represent America. I wanted people to understand something more about me artistically. It’s not just me being a dancer on a stage, but being able to recognize other incredible people and what they've done. To highlight incredible things we've overcome as people in America. Making an investment and being able to empathize and understand and give credence to some of the things we've had to overcome. And that right there is what I think creates a legendary artist, a legendary person, a legendary show.

His highlighting the "incredible things we've overcome as people in America" and giving "credence to some of the things we've had to overcome" is a jaded reference to black Americans, since everything about blacks is "overcoming" something. What? Slavery, of course, and discrimination and oppression. But now, there are no more grievances to cite, so it all he has is to reference a looming history, a past. And milk white guilt.

He says:

The 4th of July is a collective celebration of freedom and I hope that through the music and visuals, I’ve helped express the energy and passion of our nation.

In order to honor "some of the things we've had to overcome," and as "a collective celebration of freedom" Usher has selected an almost all-black group of performers for the fireworks' accompaniment, including four of his own, which amount to 30% of the line-up. And he selected the 1960s wild man Jimi Hendrix's The Star Spangled. Here is what Wikipedia says about Hendrix's version:

One of the most controversial renditions of the anthem was Jimi Hendrix's solo guitar performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Hendrix played the anthem with a number of distorted regressions (such as mimicking planes, bombs, and screams in reference to the Vietnam War)...Hendrix also recorded a studio version of The Star-Spangled Banner some time before Woodstock festival. That version features numerous guitar tracks played through octave shifting effects.

Usher chose the "tamer" version, which is still a grating rendition of the beautiful melody.

Why did Usher choose Hendrix? To be rebellious, and ultimately as a pro-black, which means anti-white, statement.

If he truly found America beautiful, he would have included one of the many black opera singers such as Leontyne Price, who has a powerful, heartfelt and sincere rendition of America the Beautiful.



Usher's own songs are repetitive monotones with limited melody, which promote violence and destruction. Yeah! was included in the pyrotechnics playlist. He sings Yeah! with a collection of aggressive rap and hip hop singers, who promote "a life of guns, violence, drugs and disrespect of women."



Here is Usher chosen play list for the fireworks accompaniment:
(* = White musicians)

- Star Spangled Banner - Jimi Hendrix

- All of ohe Lights - Kanye West

- *Levels - Avicii

A Swedish "electro-pop" group of white members, whose video is about a white man who goes crazy, and is being saved by blacks: doctors, nurses, secretaries, policemen, etc.

- *Save the World - Swedish House Mafia

A Swedish "electro" group of white members, whose video is about white thugs in hoodies and cute dogs.

It looks like Usher saw one "inclusive" video in Sweden (which is probably not surprising, given the equality road that country is taking) and picked two for his show. He could have gone to France, but probably most "inclusive" pop songs there are by Arabs.

- *Stronger - Kelly Clarkson

- Diamonds - Rihanna

- Euphoria - Usher

- Yeah! - Usher

- OMG - Usher

- Without You - Usher

Four songs by the self-promoting Usher

- *America the Beautiful - Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton (country music)

- *God Bless America

Choral arrangement by R. Ringwald

- *New York, New York - Frank Sinatra

- Empire State of Mind - Jay-Z and Alicia Keys

They did a hip hop "mash-up" of Sinatra's song, referencing his name and the lyrics to the song he made famous.

- A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke

And ode to Obama? Yes.

Usher was clever enough to include white country music stars to please the whites. They sang probably the most important song: America the Beautiful. But all the white performers can be "relateable" by blacks: The two Swedish groups and their inclusiveness; Kelly Clarkson with her belting, black style; And the old school Frank Sinatra who is a threat to no-one.

The show ended with Frank Sinatra's great melodious tribute to New York, New York, New York. But it was too late coming, and was ruined by a follow up with Jay-Z and Alicia Key's "Empire State of Mind," supposedly a tribute to both Sinatra and New York City.

The firework organizers could have done better to give justice to the show. There are many American classical composers, such as Charles Ives, Aaron Copeland, and Gerswhin (yes, that's as American as one can get, with the popular (pop song) elements of Broadway, but much more interesting than the current pop music). And of course, Frank Sinatra himself, without the hip-hop references.

How about Aaron Copland's atmospheric Our Town?



Or his more forceful An Outdoor Overture?



Or Charles Ives' Children's Day from his Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting?



And there's Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. How spectacular would that have been!



And here's Sinatra's New York, New York.



New York, New York:

Start spreading the news
I am leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York

These vagabond shoes
They are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it
New York, New York

I want to wake up in that city
That doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill
Top of the heap

My little town blues
They are melting away
I gonna make a brand new start of it
In old New York

If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York

New York, New York
I want to wake up in that city
That never sleeps
And find I'm king of the hill
Top of the list
Head of the heap
King of the hill

These are little town blues
They have all melted away
I am about to make a brand new start of it
Right there in old New York

And you bet [Incomprehensible] baby
If I can make it there
You know, I'm gonna make it just about anywhere
Come on, come through
New York, New York, New York
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Happy Fourth of July!

The Fourth of July 1916

By: Frederick Childe Hassam (1859–1935)
Painted: 1916
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 in. x 26.13 in.

Massed dozens of American flags on Fifth Avenue ripple in the wind of a fleecy blue-and-white day in The Fourth of July, 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May).

It was after Preparedness Day that Hassam, one of several American artists who supported the Allied cause with their art, began the approximately 30 flag paintings that exist.

They "became his most significant late work," according to Ilene Susan Fort, associate curator of American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...

During this period, did flags became as important a motif to Hassam as waterlilies were to Claude Monet?

"Yes, they are his last great statement, just as the waterlilies were with Monet."

[Text above excerpt from Louise Sweeney's report in The Christian Science Monitor, May 27 1988, reviewing the National Gallery of Art's Flag Paintings on View in National Capital exhibition.]

David Bentley Hart: The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

Niagara Falls
[Photo By: KPA]

I came across David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (via Thomas F. Bertonneau's post "What are you reading" at the Orthosphere, where he linked to The University Bookman, a book review site in which he participates).

I went searching for the book in various bookstores. From what I understand, it is out of print, or out of stock. In any case, it is available on Amazon.com ($26 for a used book, from the original price of $40!).

I searched for online versions, and there is an almost complete Google Books version. There is a page missing every few pages, but until I get a hold of a hard copy, I will suffer through that.

This will be a great book to review as I work on my own modest contribution to beauty. One of the sections in my book Reclaiming Beauty is titled: Beauty in the Worship of God. I'm approaching this from the "human" angle, that one of the ways we worship God is through our creation of beauty, of which art plays a large part. But there is also the beauty in the perfect, or perfectible, logic of science. And beauty in the elegance in even the clumsiest of sports (wrestling or even boxing). The true worship of God includes our creation of beauty, as well as our appreciation, recognition and inclusion of beauty.

But Bentley's book has given me a different perspective, although I would have reached it at some point in my research and writing.

From Part 2 of the table of contents of The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (see the list of contents below), Bentley introduces us to the concept of beauty that comes from God, who is a God who would rather win us over through beauty, with "shared regard, delight, fellowship, feasting, and joy." I will venture to say that God created the world to fill it with beauty, to share this world with us, and to bring us closer to Him. We should delight in beauty, as He does, if only to show our appreciation as the chosen partakers of beauty.

I quote Pope Benedict XVI in my chapter Seek and Ye Shall Find (which I've reproduced here as one of a few select chapters to introduce my ideas):

Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. [Meeting with Artists. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Sistine Chapel. November 29, 2009. ]

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Ecclesiastes 3:

He hath made every thing beautiful in his time

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Here are the detailed table of contents of The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth:

Introduction
The Question
Terms Employed
Beauty
Final Remarks

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Part 1: Dionysus against the Crucified

The Violence of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Violence

I. The City and the Wastes
II. The Veil of the Sublime
III. The Will to Power
IV. The Covenant of Light

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Part 2: The Beauty of the Infinite

A Dogmatica Minora

I. Trinity

1. The Christian understanding of beauty emerges not only naturally, but necessarily, from the Christian understanding of God as a perichoresis of love, a dynamic coinherence of the three divine persons, whose life is eternally one of shared regard, delight, fellowship, feasting, and joy
i. Divine Apatheia
ii. Divine Fellowship
iii. Divine Joy

2. The Christian understanding of difference and distance is shaped by the doctrine of the Trinity, where theology finds that the true form of difference is peace, of distance beauty
i. Divine Difference
ii. Divine Perfection

3. In the Christian God, the infinite is seen to be beautiful and so capable of being traversed by way of the beautiful
i. Desire's Flight
ii. Changeless Beauty
iii. The Mirror of the Infinite
iv. Infinite Peace

4. The infinite is beautiful because God is Trinity; and because all being belongs to God's infinity, a Christian ontology appears and properly belongs within a theological aesthetics
i. God and Being
ii. God beyond Being
iii. Analogia Entis

II. Creation

1. God's gracious action in creation belongs from the first to that delight, pleasure, and regard that the Trinity enjoys from eternity, as an outward and unnecessary expression of that love; and thus creation must be received before all else as gift and as beauty
i Analogia Delectationis
ii. The Gift
iii. Desire's Power

2. As God is Trinity, in whom all difference is possessed as perfect peace and unity, the divine life might be described as infinite music, and creation too might be described as a music whose intervals, transitions, and phrases are embraced within God's eternal, triune polyphony
i. The Divine Theme p. 275
ii. Divine Counterpoint p. 282

3. As God utters himself eternally in his Word, and possesses all the fullness of address and response, and as creation belongs to God's utterance of himself (as a further articulation, at an analogical remove, of the abundant "eloquence" of divine love), creation may be grasped by theology as language
i. Divine Expression
ii. Divine Rhetoric
iii. Analogia Verbi

III. Salvation

1. Salvation occurs by way of recapitulation, the restoration of the human image in Christ, the eternal image of the Father after whom humanity was created in the beginning; thus salvation consists in the recovery of a concrete form, and in the restoration of an original beauty
i. The Form of Distance
ii. Christ the Sign
iii. "What Is Truth?"
iv. The Practice of the Form

2. In Christ, totality's economy of violence is overcome by the infinity of God's peace, inasmuch as one order of sacrifice is overcome by another: sacrifice as the immolation of the beautiful is displaced by a sacrifice whose offering is one of infinite beauty
i. The Economy of Violence
ii. A Gift Exceeding Every Debt
iii. The Consolations of Tragedy, the Terrors of Easter

IV. Eschaton

Christian eschatology affirms the goodness of created difference, reveals divine truth to be inseparable from beauty, and exposes the totality as false and marked with a damnable finitude
i. Time's Surface, Eternity's Light
ii. The Last Adam

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Part 3. Rhetoric without Reserve

Persuasion, the Tyranny of Twilight, and the Language of Peace

I. The War of Persuasions
II. The Violence of Hermeneutics
III. The Optics of the Market
IV. The Gift of Martyrs
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Paula Deen: Guilty Until Proven Innocent for the Crime of the Century

Mammy protectively reprimanding Scarlett in Gone With the Wind

Paula Deen, the "Southern cook" is in a lot of trouble. She committed the Crime of the Century. She used the n-word. I am sure this was not in malice, as her apology videos repeatedly show. I think it is a traditional Southern thing, where the word simply means black, although with the connotation of a "black gone bad," as white trash, a term used both by blacks and whites, is for whites gone bad. In fact, nigger is used freely by blacks, who use it "endearingly" for a fellow black, usually of a lower class, and who may be involved in some kind of criminal behavior. Blacks have a whole hierarchy of words to classify each other by. They have a clear understanding of each other's limitations.

I think Deen also used the word to point out the limitation of these "nigger" blacks around her, yet towards whom she still feels paternal (or maternal, in her case). She feels close enough to blacks to call them out (by using the word nigger) on behaviors they could improve. I think she still lives psychologically in the Gone With the Wind era, where black slaves were affectionately, and paternalistically, taken care of by their white owners, and punished (some harshly and cruelly) when they breached these social expectations. And the slaves understood these contracts, and took affectionate care of their masters, as Mammy did of the rebellious Scarlett.

Deen says something similar:

Back then [when she was younger], black folk were such integral part of our lives, they were like our family, and for that reason, we didn't see ourselves as being prejudiced.

Blacks were generally grateful towards whites, not for some crumbs they received, but for the protective and familial way in which they were mostly treated. Now, what we have is begrudging, relentlessly accusatory, deeply dissatisfied black Americans, who have reaped the benefits of white America, and yet who are never satisfied, and will at every opportunity point a finger at whites.

I think that whites still feel have a protective attitude towards blacks, to keep them out of trouble, and to keep them American, which means following the rules and leadership of whites as their fellow countrymen, and the contracts of the country. Yet, blacks no longer have this affectionate, familial attitude towards whites. In fact 99% of blacks now think that whites are out to harm them, and they will always be vigilant and hostile towards whites.

But, it is still whites who are the arbitrators of justice for blacks. It is whites who are causing the demise of Deen's businesses, where major retailers are closing their doors on Deen's products for her "racist" behavior.

According to The Examiner:

Sears, Kmart, Walgreens and J.C. Penney are the latest retailers to end their business relationships with Paula Deen. In addition, Ballantine Books just called off a lucrative five-book deal. That makes a total of 11 business partners who have now distanced themselves from the controversial cook.

These partners included Target, Walmart, Novo Nordisk (a diabetes drug maker), The Food Network, QVC, Caesars Entertainment Corp (of casinos), Smithfield (which specializes in hams and pork products), and Home Depot.

And it is the news media, run and controlled by a white majority, which are demanding that she make a national apology for her behavior.


Deen with finger-pointing Matt Lauer on the Today Show, June 26, 2013

Now, the interesting thing here is that whites are once again protecting blacks! From the evils of the Crime of the Century - Racism. Paula Deen, in her candid way, spoke up about blacks and hurt their feelings. That's all she did: she didn't kill anyone; she didn't destroy any black's home or businesses; she didn't yell in public obscenities against blacks. She just used words to describe the black person in a way that is no longer acceptable to the do-gooder, black-saving whites of the twenty-first century version.

So, there it is: both parties (the "For Deen" and the "Against Deen") are protecting the ever-vulnerable blacks to this day.

Deen is making the apology circuit, after she posted her own apology videos on Youtube. The first Youtube video shows a confident, yet penitent Deen. I watched the second video with fascination, and a little horrified. She was disheveled and rambling. The last I could bear to watch is her Today Show interview with Matt Lauer on June 26. Deen sits like a reprimanded child next to the pinched-nosed, finger-pointing Lauer, who glares at her.

Is this what the modern world is making of its icons? There is no doubt that Deen was admired by many. Some may have even idolized her. Now, she has been reduced into an incoherent mess. To have a full society land on you like that must be devastating, especially after it had you on a pedestal for so long. I've never watched her full cooking show, but whenever I saw her, I liked her confidence. She seemed like a friendly, talented, enterprising Southern woman who was running a many-faceted business.

Here she is, with her photo on the Food Newtork, and the cute smiley she put after her name (a little adolescent, but charming):



Below is a video where she is demonstrating how to make peach cobbler. She is confident, playful and sure of her cooking:



Below is a screenshot of her from her first apology video, where is her confident, but shell-shocked:



Below is a screen shot of her rambling, second video. I think she looks like someone who has temporarily lost her sanity:



Like all celebrity women, her private life is a mess. She divorced her first husband in 1989 after twenty-four years of marriage. She married again in 2004. But her family photos (with both husbands, her sibling, and her two sons) show a jovial, happy woman, who may be running a food conglomerate, but who is still sociable and approachable.


At her prom with her first husband (to be) Jimmy Deen, in 1965.
She has been compared to Elizabeth Taylor


With her second husband, former tugboat pilot Michael Groover,
as Grand Marshall at the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, California, 2011.
Groover started a gourmet coffee line, Captain Michael's Coffee, in 2008.


With her two sons from her first marriage.
She has opened with them a restaurant, "The Lady & Sons" in Savannah Georgia


With her brother Bubba. He is accused of "sexual harrasment" and racism by employees.
Does he have the face of evil, as some would like to paint him?

So this what a white woman is reduced to in a culture that idolizes blacks. She may not fully realize what happened to her, or find a way to respond to all those "allegations," but people are watching, and especially white people. The idiots like Lauer will forever hold their indignant glare, but others will realize the demonization that is taking place, and will react to a country that is holding them guilty without any chance of showing their innocence.

Publishers are cancelling the publication of her new book, saying that it is a business decision:

When Walmart, Target and J. C. Penney all announced they are discontinuing their Paula Deen business, including books, it is awfully tough to stay the course of a publication. It was a business decision...

But ordinary white Americans brought her other cookbooks up to the #1 spot on Amazon.com after Deen hit the prime time news these past few weeks.

Mainstream publishers and retailers may be dropping her books and products, but her supporters will find new ways to promote her work, and continue her franchises. This may take time, and it may include much smaller venues. It looks like America may indeed eventually follow Lawrence Auster's idea of separation:

Those who identify with the former American nation and still want to be part of an American nation must separate themselves from the leftist USA and create new communities and new political expressions suitable for Americans. Until such communities are created, the separation can only be mental and spiritual. But that is the necessary starting point.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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