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Sydney Long (1871-1955) was an Australian painter. He started out as an impressionist and moved on to embrace the art nouveau style and pallet. Rather than showing the Australian bush as a brutal and stark location, he softened and romanticized it. He was a successful artist during his life.
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| Sydney Long |
Black Friday's TGIF music video is, since we're in the middle of a long weekend and it's a bit late to get ready for it, always a bit different. A few years ago, facing the coming onslaught of Christmas music, I decided to brace myself by playing some good ol' Thanksgiving music.
To my horror I discovered there was no such corpus of music, so, as a service to humanity, I decided to create it. My first choice for the genre was 'Thanks for the Memory'. Due to my exacting standards that was the only Thanksgiving song for several years, but after careful consideration this year I've added a second song!
So, I present below, 'Let's Turkey Trot'.
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| The first Thanksgiving football game |
The above image is swiped from a Dave Barry column. While it looks accurate to me, there is one detail I have a quibble with; why, unlike all the other Pilgrims, is the Pilgrim carrying the ball barefooted? Was he Plymouth colony's vagrant? Was he going native and soon to be living in a teepee in the woods? Was he America's first proto-hippie? Why? Why? Why? The questions abound, but there are no answers.
Anyway, enjoy your turkey and the football games (unless you're a Lions fan) and have a Happy Thanksgiving.
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| A Texas Thanksgiving |
The celebration of the 1621 Plymouth feast is commemorated, via Abraham Lincoln's proclamation, as the U.S.A.'s National Day of Thanksgiving. Naturally, much of the mythos surrounding such a symbolic event is bunkum, but the outline is accurate. The Pilgrims had migrated to Massachusetts seeking greater religious freedom. When there, they allied with the Wampanoag Indians who used the Pilgrims as trading partners and muscle to counter the Narragansett people who they were in conflict with.
The Pilgrims had endured a very hard year so, before the winter set in, they held an autumnal harvest feast to celebrate surviving their struggles. It is unclear why, but numbers of the Wampanoag joined in with the celebration and thus the outline of Thanksgiving was laid out: religious freedom, the difficulty settlers faced, complex relationships with the Indians, and the wild nature of the American wilderness.
Harvest feasts were common in the more aquarian older times. They marked bringing in the harvest and enjoying the last few days before the long, brutal winter arrived. As a result, harvest fests were held in many areas and, Americans being Americans, many of them have claimed the title of the 'first' Thanksgiving. Well, Lincoln put an end to that trivia, but any excuse for a fall festival, I guess.
By the way, the above picture is the Spanish/Texan entry into the First Thanksgiving derby. However, it is not a harvest festival. Instead, a number of Spanish colonists moved north from Mexico intending to settle near present day El Paso. They had a very difficult crossing of the Chihuahuan Desert and were greatly relieved when they finally got to the waters of the Rio Grande. After recovering from their ordeal, they held a feast. It was also attended by the local Manso people. What would they have eaten at that Thanksgiving meal? From the above linked article:
Waterfowl were plentiful in the area; an earlier explorer had noted that the Manso ate cranes, ducks and geese. Primarily foragers, the Manso ate “whatever was available,” Ortega says. “I mean anything. Turtles, cactus, deer, rabbit and probably snakes.” But they also cultivated corn, beans and squash in tiny fields along the river, she adds. It’s also possible that our favorite Thanksgiving poultry made an appearance. “The Manso would have been raising turkeys, and [the Europeans] would have taken them.”
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This post is full of wine images for my vast hoard of regulars who are drunken wine moms. At least I assume they are drunk, why else would they visit this idiotic blog? Anyway, enjoy the paintings as you get sloshed and bitch about the men in your life.
The video details the first attempt to climb Mt. Everest in 1922 following a 1921 expedition that surveyed the mountain to determine the best route for the climb.
While today climbing Everest is a bit of a rich man's tourist trap, in 1922 it was a challenge in largely unknown Himalayan territory. In 1922 they made three attempts to summit Everest, but each fell short, with their highest climb ending 2,000 feet below the summit. The last ended in an avalanche that killed nine porters. Still, they learned valuable lessons on the expedition, the most important being the value of bottled oxygen. It is a very interesting video.
This is all very foreign to me. As a Florida resident our tallest mountain range is located in Disney World and features such awesome peaks as Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, The Matterhorn, and Expedition Everest. You 'climb' them by riding in little cars, which seems preferable to me than having to hack out ice steps on the side of a cliff, although you will encounter such perils as animatronic Yetis and the like.
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| Detail of a basilica in Malaga, Spain |
Well, I'm back from my vacation. My plan to bag a whale, get it stuffed, and hang it above my mantel fell short. And no, not by the interference of the wankers of Greenpeace, instead it was TSA that foiled me. Apparently, you're not allowed to board an airplane with a harpoon. Who knew? Stupid airlines and their draconian carry-on rules.
Anyway, I went to Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco and the Canary Islands. I met interesting people along the way and made some new friends. It was a good trip.
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Maxime Maufra (1861–1918) was a French impressionist painter. He primarily painted landscapes and the seaside. His use of color is quite striking.
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| Maxime Maufra |
This is a video of a restaurant in Sidi Bibi, a small town in Morocco, that is known for its tagine. Tagine is both a dish, essentially a type of hunter's stew, and the earthen wear it is cooked in. The meal is generally cooked in a plate, which doubles as a serving dish, atop of that is placed a cone-shaped top that traps the steam during cooking. It looks pretty tasty.
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| Soldier at Home by Joseph Christian Leyendecker |
When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?
- George Canning -
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On my last vacation I did a post Our friend the tin can, so I'll return to that theme for this vacation as well. All sort of cans: drink cans, paint cans, watering cans, oil cans and even garbage cans. Enjoy.
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| An accident waiting to happen |
Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’
We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;
Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
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| Thar she blows |
I'm off on another vacation/fishing trip. This time I plan on bagging one of them oceanic blubber beasts. Hopefully, one that is white and of great size. Wish me luck, I don't want to share the fate of one of my role models -- Captain Ahab.
I have posts lined up to be automatically published. Have a good one all.
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For reasons of propriety, the bathroom is often overlooked in art and literature, but the humble bathroom is a fixture in our life. So here are some paintings of the room.
