"This is java - but java."
Tuesday, April 02, 2024
Clara from Brooklyn
Saturday, March 30, 2024
Shrine of Inari at the BBG
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Saturday, March 16, 2024
The Civil War - but with cats
Thursday, March 07, 2024
Getting Right with Lincoln
The first title was a response to the Republican party's shameful abuse of the memory of Douglass, specifically when a Republican state senator of Virginia, in the early days of the ongoing campaign by the Republican Party to erase Black history, introduced a bill to ban the teaching of "divisive concepts."
He was open, however to the discussion of "history" for example "the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass."
The senator had confused abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass with white senator Stephen Douglas, who famously had a series of debates, primarily about slavery, with Lincoln in 1858. This was after Donald Trump had said “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Which made it sound like Trump believed Douglass was currently alive.
The phrase "getting right with Lincoln" is used often by historians, as I came to learn in the year and a half of researching Lincoln and Frederick Douglass before writing the play. The phrase comes from an essay by historian David Donald published in The Atlantic in 1956, although apparently Donald originally got it from a congressman:
as Congressman Everett Dirksen solemnly assured his Republican colleagues, that these days the first task of a politician is "to get right with...Lincoln."
I decided to use the phrase as a way to describe Frederick Douglass' gradual appreciation of Lincoln and their friendship, which was cut horribly short by Lincoln's assassination.
Also it sounds cooler than my first title, although the phrase has been used by some of the least cool people imaginable, starting with Donald himself. Although he does not explain why he finds it so objectionable that all points on the American political spectrum want to claim Lincoln as an ally - does he not understand how politics works? - he does not hide his contempt for politicians as a whole. And then of course there's the very fashionable misogyny of the time:
the seventeenth annual Lincoln Day dinner of the New York Republican Club, held at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1903. Some five hundred men attended--their wives were segregated in those happy, bygone days-
More recently the phrase was seen as the title of the 2021 book Getting Right with Lincoln: Correcting Misconceptions about Our Greatest President by Edward Steers. It's an exhaustive and exhausting book examining claims about Lincoln's relationships and beliefs. Steers finds no nit too small to pick. It's not a fun read, although I do appreciate its emphasis on the fact that historians, while usually starting out from the same primary sources, often do not agree among themselves.
In a lecture about Frederick Douglass in 2018, historian David Blight used the phrase too:
...there's this old saying about Abraham Lincoln that I think David Donald coined in a 1955 essay, 50-something. And the line is simply "getting right with Lincoln." You know, choosing your Lincoln and getting - using Lincoln for your cause, getting on the side of Lincoln. What would Lincoln think? What would Lincoln have done? We kind of do that with Douglass now to some degree...
Wednesday, March 06, 2024
Sassy Lincoln
Friday, February 16, 2024
Friday, February 09, 2024
Tuesday, February 06, 2024
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Lennon & McCartney
Friday, January 26, 2024
Monday, January 22, 2024
Friday, January 19, 2024
Orchid
Thursday, January 11, 2024
Tales of the Lincoln White House
- Hell-cat
Lincoln and two non-hell cats
AI generated image - Satan's daughter
- High-strung
- Demanding
- Impulsive
- Natural born thief
- Crazy
- Shrewish
- Termegant
- Hot-tempered
- Imperious
- Stingy
- Her Satanic Majesty
The diary entries include details of (Owen Hickman ) Browning's conversations with Judge David Davis, who called Mrs. Lincoln "a natural born thief." She ran up astronomical bills for a $2,000 dress, furs and 300 pairs of kid gloves, and took things from the White House when she left, according to Davis, who acted as administrator of the Lincoln estate at one point."(S)tealing was a sort of insanity with her," Davis told Browning, according to a July 29, 1861, entry, made 14 years before Mrs. Lincoln was admitted for six months to a Batavia insane asylum.
President Abraham Lincoln “possessed extraordinary kindness of heart when his feelings could be reached,” wrote Treasury official Mansell B. Field in his memoirs. “He was fond of dumb animals, especially cats. I have seen him fondle one for an hour.
The president doted on the cats, which he named Tabby and Dixie, so much that he once fed Tabby from the table during a formal dinner at the White House.When Lincoln’s embarrassed wife later observed that the action was “shameful in front of their guests,” the president replied, “If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby.”
Mary - you knew this was coming - hated pets. Something else she has in common with Donald Trump.
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
Saturday, December 30, 2023
The return of the lonely New Year's Eve writer
Thursday, December 14, 2023
Murderbot's coming to a screen near you!
It’s a big day for a certain Murderbot who just wants to watch its soaps. Apple TV+ has announced that it’s adapting Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series, with Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, The Northman) on board as executive producer and to star as the titular Murderbot.
The scripts for the ten-episode season have already been written (before the writers’ strike, in fact), and production is set to start in just three months. Directors Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy, Mozart in the Jungle) are the creators of the show (as well as the writers, directors and producers via their banner Depth of Field) and also serve as executive producers. Other executive producers include David S. Goyer, the showrunner for Apple TV+’s Foundation series, Keith Levine from the company Phantom Four, and Andrew Miano for Depth of Field. Wells serves as a consulting producer.
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
My art is in the Brooklyn Museum
The guy who runs the Factsheet Five archive occasionally uses the color version of the punk's shirt as a kind of logo.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Sunday, October 15, 2023
I am a god unto the ants
I am a god unto the ants.With a tiny effort I couldlift the bottle cap, that is nowblocking their procession and whichthey must manuever around, thusmaking all those lives easier.Or I could crush them underfooteven without knowing I have,while wearing these heavy workboots.Smiling on the obliviousI hurry on my own business.~ N. G. McClernan
Tuesday, October 03, 2023
Here is my Valadon exhibition
Saturday, September 23, 2023
Autumn ~ the best season
In the autumn night,
Breaking into
A pleasant chat.
Changed the red color,
Fallen on the tofu,
The leaf of the light crimson maple.
Drinking the morning green tea,
The monk is calm.
The flowers of chrysanthemum.
Haiku by Matsuo Bashō
Thursday, September 07, 2023
Remembering Earl Rich 26 years later
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
"THE FOREIGNER" by Mattel
In France, all Barbies are Proust Barbie |
Well it's been said that the French are pretentious while at the same time taking silly things - like Jerry Lewis - too seriously.
By not addressing the troubled relationship between power and desire, the film reproduces a Manichean and binary vision of society. How to speak, live, work together, with or without desire, but in equality? What if Barbie gave up the newfound power when Ken became independent again and freed himself from her gaze? Foreign (this is the etymology of the first name Barbara), she agrees to acquire a vagina to save the human race. From the "missing penis" theorized by Freud to the "erased vagina" imagined by Mattel, the female body gives rise to all fantasies, even when it is made of plastic!
Barbie and Ken’s arrival in the real world puts Mattel executives on high alert and they order their capture. Ken makes his way back to Barbieland by himself after exploring more of the real world and learning about patriarchy, while Barbie is found by Mattel’s agents and taken to the company’s headquarters. There she meets Mattel’s CEO (Will Ferrell), who’s waiting for her with a huge Barbie box. Barbie gets in the box and mentions that the smell is a Proustian memory, with the CEO mentioning how badly the Proust Barbie sold.
While Barbie features discontinued, controversial, and obscure Barbies and Kens, Mattel never made a Proust Barbie.
Thursday, August 03, 2023
La chambre bleue - happy centennial
In contrast to Valadon's depiction of the female form, artists such as Titian, Ingres, and Manet depicted female nudes with idealized womanly features. For example, the Grand Odalique, Olympia, and Venus of Urbino underscore a gendered role of women with full female exposures atop beds—as something separate from the model—creating an imbalanced power dynamic between the artists and subject.[5] The Blue Room is a response to these paintings as well as others, such as Matisse's Blue Nude and Félix Vallotton's The White and the Black.[citation needed] Substituting a cigarette for Ingres's hookah and taking Matisse's bold outlines, among other traits from the aforementioned works, Valadon creates a "startlingly contemporary" lounger, capturing a depiction of everyday life which is entirely her own.[1] Valadon's subversion and appropriation of her predecessor's techniques ultimately instigate a new trajectory for future depictions of the female form.
Fun fact - it was painted two years before The Great Gatsby was published, to give some context.
Sunday, July 23, 2023
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
Murderbot speaks!
Monday, July 03, 2023
The Sophie Blackall saga continues
In the upper left corner there is an African American woman … she is pregnant and has 4 kids around here. Now, remember the page is about families, and in the US, that most often means a nuclear family.What do you notice? She is Black, has lots of kids, she’s pregnant, and no partner is anywhere in sight.What is the common and racist stereotype about Black women in America?yup.
She seriously injured her hand in a fall while working at a children's camp.[2] Rehabilitative physical therapy has only been partially successful; she may have to give up precision drawing, and change her creative methods.
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Thursday, June 01, 2023
Saturday, May 20, 2023
Google has lost its mind
TITLE: All the Presidents' Men
BLOG POST:
In this scene Woodward is typing to Bernstein that Deep Throat (now known as H. Mark Felt) said that their lives are in danger and they might be bugged.
Good timing. While news of the latest Bush shananigans are still in the air, , Channel 13, the New York PBS affiliate, is running both "All the President's Men" and Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History, originally produced in 2003.
The similarities between Bush's concept of the presidency and Nixon's couldn't be clearer. Nixon thought, and Bush thinks that the president is above the laws of the United States - a virtual dictator.
Their biggest difference? Nixon subverted the Constitution covertly. Bush does it proudly and publicly.
As Nixon aid and Watergate witness John Dean observed, Bush is "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense."
There IS a political will to impeach. Get off your asses Democratic representatives!!!
Aside: The story of Robert Redford's involvement in the Watergate movie is very interesting
That's the content. I guess because the idiots at Google have decided to use AI to flag posts and their AI thinks that "Deep Throat" refers to the pornographic movie (which is, to be sure, the origin of the term) instead of a legitimate historical fact that Woodward and Bernstein used the term to refer to H. Mark Felt.
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
This guy loves "Life During Wartime"
Thursday, April 20, 2023
The Barnes Foundation strikes back
💡Did you know?💡 A lot of people love to hate Pierre-Auguste #Renoir. There’s even an Instagram account dedicated to him called “Renoir Sucks at Painting.” While it is debatable if he truly sucks, he undoubtedly occupies the strange position of being one of the most beloved artists of all time yet also one of the most reviled.Join us online on Wednesdays, 5/3 – 5/24, from 12-2 pm, *live from the Barnes galleries*—home to the largest Renoir collection in the world (181 paintings, to be exact!) for #BarnesClass: In Defense of Renoir, to survey the artist’s paintings and discuss some of the specific criticisms they have inspired across the decades. We’ll consider this question: what if his work is more interesting than we thought?After discussing Renoir’s theories of art, we will use deep-zoom technology to look closely (more closely than you ever thought you could get to a priceless painting, tbh) at several canvases to develop a better appreciation for his craftsmanship and how it reflects the values of the early 20th century.Renoir haters will be encouraged to rethink their opinions—but are also welcome to dig in their heels! Register for this course today
Hey Everybody! This is actually happening! The @barnesfoundation has an online class all about Renoir and they’ve invited us to participate! Congratulations to us all. We are a part of Art History, and our ghosts will haunt the vibes of Renoir lovers for generations to come.Each class will be cool and informative. And also funny. You can buy tickets at the link in the bio, and if you’re willing to subject yourself to the indignity of typing RENOIR4EVER into the discount code box at checkout, you’ll save 10%.
Also! very important! If the cost, discount notwithstanding is prohibitive, dm me! I’ll gladly walk you through getting a full ride. These Barnes curators, cheeky though they might be, are really good about making sure this thing is accessible to all!
Monday, April 17, 2023
Scenery
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Scenes from my recent European trip
Back in Paris - the hills of Montmartre were brutal - my calves were aching - but beautiful.