This video shows a family preparing, cooking and eating hornets in rural Nepal. Like many of these types of videos I suspect it is largely staged. I think the hovel they supposedly live in is actually a set, and they live elsewhere. Still, it an interesting video and certainly an exotic dish.
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The first power plants were built in 1882. They produced the electricity which was then distributed by a grid of wires. Since then, the power stations and the grid to support them have expanded enormously. Power lines are a ubiquitous and little considered part our landscape. Of course, power lines and the poles that support them have been captured by artists, sometimes as an aside in a landscape painting, sometimes as the main subject.
Since it is in the middle of a long weekend Good Friday's TGIF music video is a bit different. A few years ago, before the inevitable onslaught of December's Christmas music, I decided to play some Thanksgiving music. Much to my horror I discovered there was no such genre, so I decided to create a catalog of Thanksgiving music to correct that grievous oversight.
The first song added to the catalog was Thanks for the Memory. Well, another year has passed and once again I've been far too indifferent busy to add to the catalog. Maybe next year I'll finally get around to adding a second tune to the Thanksgiving music corpus, but in the meantime we get to enjoy Thanks for the Memory again, this time by Dave Pell.
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I'm not sure why this turkey is so happy to be carrying that carving knife. I guess turkeys are just stupid. Also, is the pumpkin lingering from Halloween? Whatever the reasons, have a good Thanksgiving full of food, family and football (real football, not that boring stuff the rest of the World watches and mistakenly calls football).
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All's fair in love, war, and Thanksgiving dinners. A young lady striding along with a turkey, an axe, and a demented smile tells you all you need to know about the fate of this feathered friend. She'll be thankful, him not so much.
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Ludovic Bassarab (1868–1933) was a Romanian artist who studied in Germany and France. He returned to Romania and primarily painted scenes of rural life in that country. His brush work is often heavy, and he frequently employs a simple pallet of colors in his works. I like his focus on everyday scenes and common people. You really get a feeling for a specific time and place from his paintings.
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| Ludovic Bassarab |
Above is a snippet from the movie High School Confidential showing a beatnik babe reciting some beatnik poetry accompanied by a jazz band.
Every generation, when they're first entering adulthood have little money and face entry-level jobs. From their youth ghettos the more artistic of them cook-up their own style. Beatniks were from the 1950s, followed by hippies in the 1960/70s. Gen X, busy as they always are whining about every other generational cohort were their usual nondescript selves. The Millennials gave us the ever-entertaining hipsters, and I guess the latest group is giving us TikTok nonsense. It's just part of youth and is all good.
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David de Coninck was a 17th century Flemish artist. He specialized in painting animals. He started his career in Antwerp and moved first to Paris, then later to Rome before returning to Antwerp via Vienna. Unlike the later Romanticists, and for that matter our day, his animals were not cute and idyllic, instead his view of nature was red in fang and claw.
The video gives information on how food is prepared, stored and served on a U.S. flagged merchant cargo ship.
Armistice by Sophie Jewett
The water sings along our keel,
The wind falls to a whispering breath;
I look into your eyes and feel
No fear of life or death;
So near is love, so far away
The losing strife of yesterday.We watch the swallow skim and dip;
Some magic bids the world be still;
Life stands with finger upon lip;
Love hath his gentle will;
Though hearts have bled, and tears have burned,
The river floweth unconcerned.We pray the fickle flag of truce
Still float deceitfully and fair;
Our eyes must love its sweet abuse;
This hour we will not care,
Though just beyond to-morrow's gate,
Arrayed and strong, the battle wait.
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Unless you bag some moose to lay in protein for the winter, as well as having a productive back 40, you need to buy your food. Assuming you have refrigerator grocery stores allow you to do a weekly shopping trip, while markets are more day by day. Either way, they are very much woven into the fabric of our life.
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| The Election Riot 1874 by Peter Hurd |
In 1874 William Charles Lunalilo, the elected King of Hawaii, died without naming an heir. This touched off Hawaii's second election of a monarch. David Laʻamea Kalākaua and the Dowager Queen Emma were the two main contenders. The election was decided by the legislative assembly in favor of Kalākaua and, at the news, Emma's supporters rioted in Honolulu and attacked the assembly. The police could not control the situation and so American and British troops from ships in the harbor were brought in to restore order.
Source: The 1874 Election Riot in Honolulu.
Our election is upon us, and it seems that regardless of the winner we'll have our own scaled up version of the 1874 Honolulu riots. The more things change...
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This is a collection of paintings featuring bicycles. In selecting them I avoided mobs of latex clad bicycle enthusiasts and racers. Instead, I focused on the more generic types of bikes that are so common. Also, for some reason a lot of paintings featured baskets of flowers to give them a more romantic look; I avoided those as well.
Hopefully the hard cider is for an adult Halloween party, because I doubt it would be well received as a Halloween treat for the little tykes. Getting your house TPed would be the least of your worries when the neighborhood moms and dads found out.
Santa Tecla is a provincial capital in El Salvadore. This is a dusk walk through its downtown area. The neighborhood is full of shops, restaurants, stalls and bars. It is a lively looking place.
Occasionally he places music in the soundtrack. I'm not sure if this is to prevent a copyright strike from music playing in the bars, or to drown out an inappropriate conversation, or just eccentricity by the YouTuber. Regardless, the music is nice, so it isn't too annoying.
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In the early half of the 20th century there were two Film Fun magazines, one British and one American. These are from the American Film Fun magazine. It was mainly a comic book with the strips featuring movie stars and other celebrities. From the pulp cheesecake covers, all of them done by the artist Enoch Bolles, it appears it was aimed at men.
Edited to add: after posting I realized that one of the covers, the one of Charlie Chaplin, is actually from the British Film Fun.
These videos are from the YouTube channel todlinstone. Rather than Emperors and grand, sweeping wars I chose ones that focused on everyday life. There are sponsor ads embedded in a few of them.
Charlie Martin was a very early author and one of the founders of this blog. He moved on. Among his moves was a retirement to Costa Rica after some health issues. That didn't quite work out and he needs some financial help returning to the States. If you want to help you can contribute at: Rescue me from Costa Rica.
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These are paintings of people doing laundry. Either washing or hanging the clothes out to dry. It was hard to find images of men doing laundry, which says something, I guess. I did like the image (below) of the pipe smoking guy in his suit and tie at the laundromat as the amused women looked on. I think it was an ad from the 'men are silly chuckleheads' school of advertising.
It has come to my attention that manly-men eat carburetors for breakfast. To my horror I realized my macho cred was lacking because I didn't have a recipe to prepare a breakfast carburetor. So, YouTube to the rescue.
I found this video. He claims he just cleaning carburetors but come on, he's using a fish frier so who does he think he's fooling? Well, I guess it would fool a non-carburetor for breakfast soy boy, but it ain't fooling me. I assume he barbeques it after parboiling it, but he doesn't show that part. It looks delicious.
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| The Inspiration of Christopher Columbus by Jose Obregon |
This is a reposting of an earlier Columbus Day post
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When talking about Columbus Day, and Christopher Columbus in general, many people try to deride his accomplishments with the rejoinder, which they think is clever, that Columbus didn't discover the Americas because the Amer-Indians had found it long ago. That's all good, well and mundanely obvious, but Columbus' feat was never that he was the first man to step foot on the soil of the Americas.
In fact, Columbus was looking for a trading route to the Spice Islands (the Moluccas of Indonesia). He was to fail at that, the Portuguese pushing down Africa to round the Cape were the winners in that race. However his explorations were ultimately far more important than rounding the Cape because his voyages led to the connection of the two hemispheres. The world changed from an academic's sphere to a physical globe on which the oceans were routes to all its lands.
Consider this short passage from the Bill of Rights' article Henry Hudson and Exploration:
In early July, the Halve Maen reached Newfoundland, where Hudson and his crew encountered a French fishing fleet hauling in cod. The sailors aboard the Dutch ship caught and salted dozens of cod for their journey, and Hudson eventually plied the officers of another French vessel for information about the coast. The Halve Maen also made contact with Native Americans in or near Nova Scotia; Hudson traded knives, kettles, clothing, and beads for beaver skins and other furs. He heard tales of gold and silver, and possibly the Northwest Passage. However, because his men feared the Native Americans had stolen items from the ship, they went ashore and raided the native village. It was an ominous start to Hudson’s relationship with the indigenous people of North America.
Hudson's voyage was in 1609, or just a little over 100 years after Columbus first set out to sail to Asia and already even French fisherman were making the journey. The Old and New Worlds were becoming entangled through commerce, trade and colonization. The process was to be a difficult one -- with errors and cruelty on both sides as well as winners and losers.
Still the World is a richer place because of Columbus' accidental discovery of a wider world as he searched for a quicker trade route to the Spice Islands. That is the legacy of his travels, and it is of such consequence that it is well worth remembering.
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Edited to add: The educated of Columbus's day knew the circumference of the Earth and so Columbus should have known China was too far away to reach sailing west. It's a common belief that he considerably miscalculated the actual size of the Earth and so China was in reach.
However, an idea gaining currency is that Columbus expected to find land to the west. In attempting to work their way down Africa there was a spot where ships had to sail far to the west before heading south and then east to continue down the coast. It is quite possible that some of those ships went west enough to encounter Brazil. The Portuguese cod fishermen Hudson discovered may also have been working the shoals off of Newfoundland even prior to Columbus's journey.
If there was any dockside scuttlebutt about those lands Columbus would have heard it and been aware of the fact that there was reachable land in the west. Regardless, he did think he had landed on islands off the coast of the Asian mainland.
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| What I'm dreaming of |
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| Hurricane, Bahamas by Winslow Homer |
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| Oct 7 hostages |
Surprised to find me in your lair
lucifer?
that look is unbecoming
yes
I am well aware of your wickedness
as are the Gods
they only shake their heads in despair
and send me to do their bidding
unlike yourself
I do not crave to bestow suffering
your death shall be brief
come now
did you really believe that your empire
built on the blood and corpses of the innocent
would come without retribution?
Sin
lucifer
is never overlooked
or eclipsed by power
power you will now relinquish for eternity
say goodbye to your precious hell
and hello to a new one
for your soul shall reside in the company of those you took
a rather fitting punishment don't you think?
is that fear I detect in the eyes of the great lucifer?
your presence is awaited with great anticipation
and I shall give them their prize
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Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) was an English artist. He primarily painted landscapes and figure studies. His early work was heavily influenced by French impressionism. Later he evolved into a more naturalistic style, although the play of light was still a feature of his paintings. In his later years he became more minimal in his work, at times so simple they almost seemed abstract.
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| Philip Wilson Steer |
