January Garden

January Garden
[Photo By: KPA]

"The belief in objective truth is the keystone of traditional Western culture, and the explicit basis of the United States of America. For America's founding generation and their posterity, man's inalienable rights to liberty and self-government proceed, not from from the will and desire of man, but from "nature and nature's God." Man's freedom is ordained, and constrained, by a reality higher than man. It was the shared experience of that truth that formed the American nation."

Lawrence Auster
Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism
Chapter 4: The Spiritual Effects of Multiculturalism
P.58

Double Country

I made it to the Art Gallery of Mississauga on Saturday, ignoring the forecast of a snowstorm. The storm was worse than I had expected, the falling snow was a snow/ice mixture, with a blowing wind that made these pellets feel like mini pine needles.

The AGM hosted its the annual juried show presented by Visual Arts Mississauga the night before. I prefered to see the exhibition at a quieter time, at my own pace. The VAM Facebook page has uploaded photos of the event, including some of the paintings (there were 40 entries).

Here are two that caught my eye in the exhibition, and which I took snapshots of:


Left: Hannah Veiga: You Used to be My Favourite Colour
Right: Stuart Godfrey: 4th Line Backside

Albeit, they are both a little bleak in concept.

Veiga writes on her website that her fabric piece is: "a contemplation of what constitutes a home, and what remains when something loses its meaning of a home." Is is not clear what she means by that. Perhaps her curtains don't have any place to hang, other than in galleries and design shows. Her floral design is a complicated process with seven color scheme (red, light red, green, light green, grey, yellow, white), and its mockup on (Japanese) Kozuke paper - no less! I assume the fabric was printed through the digital fabric printing processes now readily available, probably more so than silkscreen studios. Manual printing, the method I used to print on fabric, prepares each color separately on a silk screen, and in this case, seven separate screens, to produce the whole pattern.

And Godfrey's barn has no front, and the items within it, or surrounding it, look like old fences, sacks and what look like mattresses. But it is still standing, as are many old and non-functional barns throughout the countryside, waiting to be rediscovered, remodeled, and to be put to use again. Godfrey is a talented painter, whose oil panel is meticulously painted, to the last blade of grass.

Both pieces allude to a surer time, when no-one questioned the "favourtism" of a home's choice of colors. When curtains WERE colorful, and the black/white/gray/beige variety that line "designer" stores these days (for color and variety, go to Walmart!) And both have solid structures: the barn still has an upright frame, and all a farmer need do is restore the floors and facade; the pattern promises of a home of florals. And both reference a time in the recent past when we had such things in our landscapes, both internal and external, and lived better lives through them.

Waiting to Skate

Waiting to Skate
[Photo By KPA]

This little girl was briefly out on the skating rink in Mississauga's City Centre, but had to come back into the shelter because the Zamboni was clearing the snow, which would fill up the cleared tracks just a few minutes later. We were in the middle of one of the worst snow blizzards I had experienced. A few brave souls went out nonetheless. I went because I wanted to view the latest exhibition at the Art Gallery of Mississauga which had opened day before. Here's my post on two works. The gallery would open a half hour later at noon - on week-ends. She came with her sister I am sure convincing their mother that it would be OK. She (and her older sister) got an apple each for their efforts!

Three Wise Men in the Modern World

The Adoration of the Magi
Copy woven 1894 for the Corporation of Manchester
Designed by Edward Burne Jones with details by William Morris and John Henry Dearle
The Adoration of the Magi, tapestry, wool and silk on cotton warp, 101 1/8 x 151 1/4 inches
Manchester Metropolitan University

E. Michael Jones is referring to the Three Wise Men as "The Three Wise Persians."

This is both biblically and historically incorrect.

It appears that Jones' insistence on the Persian origin of ALL the magi may be to give credence to the current, Islamic, anti-American, regime in Iran and to connect the birth of Christ with a Persian legacy, and to legitimize the "Death to America" chants of Iranians in Tehran. The Persians after all acknowledged the birth of the Messiah, and even brought him gifts.

The world is becoming anti-American, anti-West, and anti-Christian. Jones should know this. No ancient gift would expiate the ruthless aggression of this "Death to America" or its subtext, "Death to Christian America," proclamation. And why doesn't Jones understand, or acknowledge this?

Perhaps he does wish "death to America," in an innocent desire to abate what he believes is now a sinful, Godless, country, and to start afresh with a country which he believes could be re-positioned closer to God.

Here are some biblical and historical accounts of these magical, ancient, men: kings who came from afar to pay homage to the infant Christ.

From Matthew 2:1–12:

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another path.

The biblical version identifies these men as "wise men from the east."

Biblical historians and analysts say:

They were of noble birth, educated, wealthy, and influential. They were philosophers, the counselors of rulers, learned in all the wisdom of the ancient East. The wise men who came seeking the Christ child were not idolaters; they were upright men of integrity.

They had apparently studied the Hebrew Scriptures and found there a clear transcript of truth. In particular, the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament must have claimed their attention, and among these they found the words of Balaam: “A Star shall come out of Jacob; a Scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17, NKJV). They certainly were acquainted with the prophecy of Micah: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel” (Micah 5:2, NKJV; see also Matthew 2:5, 6). They probably also knew and understood the time prophecy of Daniel regarding the appearance of the Messiah (see Daniel 9:25, 26) and came to the conclusion that His coming was near.
[Source: The Magi]

And

They have become known most commonly as Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar (or Casper). According to Western church tradition, Balthasar is often represented as a king of Arabia or sometimes Ethiopia, Melchior as a king of Persia, and Gaspar as a king of India. [Source: Britannica.com]

And a more precise origin of Balthasar as an Ethiopian:

Balthasar is the young black King of Ethiopia and wears a purple/blue cloak. Balthasar is traditionally associated with the gift of myrrh. [Source: Jesuit Institute, London: Feast of the Epiphany]

An explanation: Ethiopia stands at the southern post of the Arabian peninsula, and is often categorized as an "Arabian" land. Its history may connect it to Arabia, but it has always maintained an independent and separate identity. It is very likely that one of the magi did come from Ethiopia.

And here is a longer account (and analysis) concluding that the probable land of origin of one of the magi was Ethiopia. Sheba's empire, now part of the modern state of Yemen, reached far north from what is currently Ethiopia into the Yemen.

Scholars have tried to connect the gifts the Queen of Sheba brought with the possible location of Sheba. She brought spices, gold, and precious stones, all products of extreme wealth. Spices, in particular frankincense and myrrh, came from the area of modern-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, on the African coast of the Red Sea. Ancient gold mines have been found in the same area.

And

That Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was peopled from South Arabia is proved linguistically...[Source: Britannica.com]

And below is an excerpt from the chapter “Where is Medieval Ethiopia? Mapping Ethiopic Studies within Medieval Studies” by Suzanne Conklin Akbari (of the University of Toronto), in Toward a Gobal Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts (Ed. Bryan Keene).
[Note 1: images referenced in the text can be viewed at the linked site
Note 2: T-O map refers to a type of early world map]

In theological terms, Ethiopia was understood as a place of special grace and apocalyptic expectation. In the Hebrew Bible, the story of Solomon and Sheba was interpreted in terms of a mystical union that brought the earthly Jerusalem into contact with the southern riches of Ethiopia; in the Acts of the Apostles, the queen of Ethiopia, named Candace, is identified as the ruler of the Ethiopian eunuch who converts to Christianity. Apocryphal stories of the Magi, seen in a twelfth-century Beatus manuscript from San Petro de Cardeña (1175–85; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.232.1), also associate one of the three wise men with Ethiopia, in a reassertion of the fundamentally tripartite division of the world found in the medieval world maps and medieval encyclopaedias. These texts divide the world into three parts—Asia, Africa, and Europe—to correspond to the three sons of Noah: Shem is associated with Asia, the biggest part; Ham, the outcast, with Africa; and Japheth, the youngest, with Europe. The three Magi recapitulate the sons of Noah, but while the sons of Noah are scattered outward into the wide world after the Flood, their descendants populating each of the three continents, the three Magi come inward toward the sacred center of the nativity. On this Beatus manuscript page, a depiction of the Virgin and Child with the Magi, to the right, is integrated within a larger genealogy laid out in a series of linked circles, plus the familiar form of the T-O world map at the top left. Note that the T-O map includes not just the names of the three continents, but also the three sons of Noah, as a visible reminder of the Old Testament prefiguration of the three Magi, seen at right. The economy of type and antitype is expressed in terms of word and image, with the
names of the sons of Noah foreshadowing the vivid human forms of the three Magi.

Depictions of the Magi vary in how they present the ethnic origins of each of the three kings. Some, such as the Beatus image mentioned above and as in a book of hours from Naples (1460s; Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 12), show exotic dress but only moderate differences of physiognomy, while others, as in the Prayer Book of Albrecht of Brandenburg illuminated by Simon Bening (ca. 1483–1561), show bodily diversity more vividly, with black skin (fig. 4.4). Like the Ethiopian magus, depictions of the Queen of Sheba also vary in how they portray ethnicity. While there was a rich medieval commentary tradition on the Song of Songs that interpreted the allegory of the beautiful and black bride in historical terms, as the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba, pictorial depictions of the encounter of Solomon and Sheba often show the queen as fair-skinned, as in the page by Simon Bening that faces his image of the Magi.10 The queen is attended by two other women, her attendance on Solomon and offering of gifts appearing as a counterpart to the offerings of the three Magi. To put it another way, a chain of typological prefigurations links various moments in salvation history, with each one of them rooted in an essential notion of Ethiopian identity. In one typological relationship, the sons of Noah prefigure, and are fulfilled in, the three Magi. In a second typological relationship, the encounter of Solomon and Sheba, and the tribute offered by the Ethiopian queen to the king of Israel, is fulfilled in the tribute offered by the Ethiopian magus to the newborn king of the new Israel.

Tresor on January 10

Tresor

January 10th:

Capricorns born on January 10 have heightened perception and fiercely held likes and dislikes. They are not shy about dealing with others in a direct and honest manner. They have no secret agenda. They are proud of their forthright approach to life and may even flaunt it.

Pretty much true, if I may say so myself.

We Are His Workmanship

Mississauga City Hall Clock Tower
[Photo By: KPA]

Ephesians 2:10 King James Version (KJV)
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

The Mississauga Civic Centre: Photo Exhibit

Here is my most recent exhibition at the Mississauga Central Library,as well as my previous two.

All posted at Ontario Views

The World According to Greta

I imagine that Greta must be really difficult to get along with. Her sense of importance, her grandiose view of herself, must distance her, and even ridicule her, in the eyes of her contemporaries (that is other sixteen-year-olds).

Sure, she has been abducted by nefarious and evil adults, who will toss a child to Moloch's grasping octopus arms. But she also set the stage.

People are often too ready to excuse children.

By age seven or eight, there is already an established sense of right and wrong, even in children who were raised otherwise.

God's word, God's message, is an intuitive message. Right and Wrong are certainly culturally learned, but they are also innate to all human beings, and I believe as young as seven, and even younger.

Ask a child if he has lied, and he will go through a whole convoluted theatrics of "No! He hasn't!" with the incriminating evidence right beside him. It may be the degree of sophistication that is different between adults and children, but not the knowledge itself.

So, Greta, now no longer the eleven-year-old child who "started" this movement but a young sixteen-year-old woman, may be surrounded by hordes of malevolent adult allies, but she alone comes up with the Truth herself.

Her "climate change" message has NOT resonated with the political and cultural elite. Television shows are mocking her, and she is under no "youth" protection to NOT be mocked, having put herself in that limelight.

And even the Nobel Prize which she lost, and which I think digs much deeper than she lets on, is better off without her. And perhaps her continued perseverance, her insistence, was spiked by this loss. "The World Hates Me And Here's The Proof."

The Nobel Prize for Peace winner, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has been thankfully removed from the spotlight because of this narcissistic young woman and her entourage, and he can continue the serious matter of leading his country removed from the malevolent eyes of the Western world, whose communist/liberal leaders would sabotage his Meddemer movement if they weren't so skillfully distracted by this new "religious" icon.

Do not be afraid to critique, and to criticize, "young" children. The normal step would be of course to remove them and put them in the proverbial corner, or mete out some other appropriate punishment.

But in our Brave New World, shine the light on Greta's narcissistic needs and let her lead those marches, allow her to speak in her disjointed language, permit her to proclaim rude messages to world leaders.

Meanwhile, an important revolution is happening at the other end of the world, which Greta in her arrogance has dismissed. After all, who cares about Africa when there are real global climate issues to contend with.

This, as usual, is the disguised racist stance of Western countries, mostly liberals, who will tag on religiously to a fraudulent icon while dismissing the lives and hopes, and dreams of change of a country far away in the dark continent of Africa.

Greta is cleverer than you think, and she is out to get what she wants. We are not quite sure what that is...yet.

Good Vs. Evil

Call Me Jen

Reclaiming Beauty has always been about popular culture, as a non-elitist stand which pulls ordinary people, and others, into a world of beauty, culture, and society, that aims to prevail over the nihilism that is (I believe deliberately set-up) part of our contemporary world.

So, let's go into the real pop culture, a world which the Walmart checkout lines display in full view. Where young women scan assiduously as they get ready to buy the next edition of InStyle for the exorbitant price of a book - that's $9 Canadian for me.

One of my favorite actresses, Jennifer Aniston, is back into the real world.

She suffered a lot. Her husband, the handsome Brad Pitt, and by all accounts the love of her life, abandoned her for that evil woman, Angelina Jolie. You don't believe me? Then look at what Jolie is up to these days (image courtesy of the movies), in her new movie Malfecent: Mistress of Evil.


Angelina Jolie in the second edition of the movie Maleficent, with her Devil's horns

Jennifer was engaged to someone else - a second-rate actor, nowhere near the talent of Pitt (at least in his pre-Jolie, pre-global adoption years) - but apparently broke it off.

She is now back on track, looking as young and fresh as Rachel Green, in her Friends days, a show of which I was a great fan, only to see what was the latest outfit that the photogenic and charismatic Rachel (aka Jennifer) wore.



Poor Rachel. She was cast with these wimpy, erratic men, more "female" than her. But she, in her wisdom, never outshone them unless it was in dress or in her ability to get out of their pathetically induced difficult situations. Jennifer ALWAYS came out on top.

Now, Brad Pitt is back in the market. I think he's super handsome, which may have been his Achilles heel. He was in some late night talk show recently, and he did pretty well.



Jennifer can win him back. Cleverly, and with femininity.

She is, after all a Single Woman, and he an eligible (divorced/separated) bachelor.

And Jolie, against whom Aniston never uttered a SINGLE malevolent word, is out making her witching tale, conniving with the Devil and his horns, and a new edition of her film franchise Malefecent.

I hope her Ethiopian adopted daughter turns to Pitt (her adopted father), and to Jennifer, for her salvation.

Blasphemy With the Poor

Matthew 26: 6-11

6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,

7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?

9 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

13 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Zanele Muholi (South Africa)
Miss D’Vine II, 2007
From the series Miss D’vine
Chromogenic print

The image above is from the exhibition The Way She Looks: The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, a photography exhibit on photographs by and of African women at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC).

The exhibition's photographs were assembled from the Walther Collection

RIC Facebook page here
RIC web page here

A perverted, selected, imagery of African Women

Real Beauty
From the exhibition: The Way She Looks
At the Ryerson Image Centre

The gyrating "African Woman," exploited by those who claim to be on her side, but who voyeuristically inspect her every fold of fat, which feed in nicely into their "African Woman as Our Savior" discourse.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time"

Fall Leaf Patterns
[Photo Collage By: KPA]

Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time.

African Woman

Jodi Bieber
Babalwa, from the series Real Beauty
2008, pigment print

Above image from the Ryerson Image Centre exhibition: The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, on view also at the RIC website, and other publications such as Canadian Art. More information at the RIC Facebook page.


African Woman,
Dj Shimza (South Africa)

Paul Edward Costa: Mississauga Poet Laureate

A Line of Poets
By: Paul Edward Costa

A baton touches my hand when it swings back
and in an instant
I’m not a solitary runner on a cracked desert;
it slowly dawns on me that I never have been,
I’m linked to a train
reaching from the cool, steady hand
passing this position to mine,
all the way back to poets who set
the vivid life of city states into history and permanence,
cast lassos in the air,
caught ethereal spirits and emotions
floating above the heads of people
in squares of celebration
and set them into the shapes of runes lighting up
when you read them and see a sensation you’ve always felt
but never had verified
by the reality of a concrete shape.

I pray I leave behind
not just a record of words
but a poetic spark in more souls
than those who know they have such a lightning inside them,
that I hope grows into a fire of minds
fiercely expressing their free identities
and setting lines of future poets aflame
with the responsibility of their art’s capacity
for commemoration,
celebration,
reminding,
remembering,
and encapsulating the dynamic realities of this place,
this time.

The Monarch

[Photos By: KPA]

I've been dormant for a while.

I am back!

A lot has been going on. Mostly character building.

Here are photographs of the Monarch Butterfly, which is leaving us (Canada). I caught its fluttering wings in the beautiful Jubilee Garden in Mississauga a couple of days ago. It was a stroke of luck. The whole garden was full of these butterflies, which seem to like yellow: I was guaranteed to find several on the yellow flower.

I went a couple of days later, and the garden was eerily quiet. Although the butterfly flutters were silent, their sound was left to my imagination. I could still hear them.

The monarch is a metaphor, a butterfly that endures thousands of miles to get to the place where it wishes to remain to regain strength for a journey back to its home.

It is also about the intertwined history, culture and nature of Canada and America, something which I have always believed, and always written about.

I will follow the monarch's treacherous path path in my blog, as I always have, through my posts, views, opinions, perspectives and writings.

And how can I resist regaining, refueling, my blog by announcing this unexpected, and regal visitor.

The monarch becomes a metaphor for endurance, principle, and a goal to be accomplished.

All that Reclaiming Beauty is about.