We live in Berkeley. That’s our official address and, indeed, we’re only two miles (less if you count Clark Kerr campus) from Cal (University of California, Berkeley), the heart of this city and the entity it’s most famous for. However, when it comes to taxes and which city provides us basic public services, we live in Oakland. Actually, the [...]
Violence—So you think you’...
We live in Berkeley. That’s our official address and, indeed, we’re only two miles (less if you count Clark Kerr campus) from Cal (University of California, Berkeley), the heart of this city and the entity it’s most famous for. However, when it comes to taxes and which city provides us basic public services, we live in Oakland. Actually, the [...]
A Bigger Excess—Hockney’s Artis...
A Bigger Splash, 1967, Tate Collection, London. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)David Hockney—The Bigger Exhibition is expiring after today, January 20th. We saw it on Friday along with a crowd big enough for the show to warrant a blockbuster label. Hockney, who appears to be a savvy promoter of his own work, has glommed on to the label “bigger” a [...]
Who is she? Agnes.
Who is she? Who are they? Family. Separation. Reunion.
Look at this woman. Could she be in your family? Might she be part of the family now separated, split off, segregated? After family pain and disagreement there often comes a separation lasting through generations. Of the family, but no longer recognized in the family. Off on their own. Or [...]
Going to Granny Babcia
From the town to the country. From Salem town onto Damascus road. Biblical. Through countryside then up the Blackburn Hill.
Up and over the wooden bridge. Big bridge boards go clonk clonk. Under bridge trolleys used to go. Long ago gone. Click clack of trolley through country side long gone. Where gone?
Road through the pastures, pa [...]
Garaged Memories
Empty box
You know you’re old when you go into your garage, open a few boxes, see all of your past life in the contents of those boxes, and yet, you hardly recognize or remember them. It isn’t so bad if these things tug at your memory and fill you with an aching nostalgia for all that you once had been. At least you haven’t completely forgott [...]
Prose Poems at Random
Aimless
Aimless. That time of life. No goals. Nothing to do special.
Others seem to live life.
Leaves are falling. Time change. Fall back. Later spring forward. After the winter to come.
On exercycle. Round and round. Quiet turning. Reading articles on android.
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Family Circus
Nietzsche Family Circus (Photo credit: Erik Mallinson)
[...]
“Energetic, Specific Use of Language”
Cover of The Shadow of the Wind
What makes for greatness in a book of fiction? Maybe this is a question impossible to answer for currently published books because only time can tell. Still, I did read a book some weeks ago that I thought was the greatest I have read in a very long while (counting some classics). I will bet on its being among [...]
Geek seeks baptism. Where? How?
Someone we know just turned 40, and he seems to be going through a crisis of some sort—not exactly of conscience, probably more of a spiritual nature. He has this need to be baptized.
7 Lucky Gods of japan (Photo credit: Steve-kun)
This young man had the small misfortune of having been born to very liberal, well educated, agnostic parents who [...]
Glimpses
Restaurant Glimpses
posted by rich
Eating at one of our better restaurants, facing the street, with a view partially obscured by frosted glass, I could see clearly only through the bottom part of the pane. Outside I could only see the shoes of a couple who were standing motionless in front of the restaurant door. The man’s shoes were very wel [...]
The Virtual Life
It’s been a while that I’ve felt how unnatural our current existence is. Maybe, this is merely because I grew up in a world not dominated by the Internet. Computers, yes—back when they were still housed in large boxes. If you needed to enter data into them, you had to use punched cards that were then fed into card readers s [...]
Cure for Classics Amnesia: A walk th...
English: Maitre-Albert street – Paris Français : Rue Maître-Albert – Paris V (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At the Latin Quarter in Paris I came across a street called Rue Maître Albert. Maître Albert (Master Albert)? Who could that be? Could it be Albert, the great, teacher of Thomas Aquinas? Maître Albert innovated. He introduced cla [...]
Oops–Killed the children…...
Have you seen the photo of the children …. so winsome, so charming in some dusty village of Arab lands? But now, they no longer run about shouting and jabbering. Instead, neatly arranged on the floor, each one is swaddled in some sort of burial cloths. They are still, in repose. They have been lovingly cleaned and prepared for whateve [...]
My life in Lemons
My life is in lemons. I mean this literally, at least for a short period, this summer. We have a Meyer lemon tree that bore many large fruit—larger than those I’ve seen in Berkeley Bowl. For a while, the fruit weighed the tree down. So, taking pity on it, I picked most of its fruit and pruned the tree a la Japonaise—opening “the inside [...]
A Cartoon is Worth 1,000 Words
Couldn’t resist these:
Cartoons were culled from http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/.
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Coriolanus and the Land ...
Two more great war films; two different viewpoints. Both bring perspectives not often seen in war films.
Coriolanus
English actor/director Ralph Fiennes at the press conference for his film Coriolanus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Different times. Morphed characters. The same story. Coriolanus, the film, atte [...]
Apocalypse Now Redux, a masterpiece
Master CoppolaI saw Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now Redux recently. I have never been quite as affected by a film as I have been with this one and I am not especially fond of military/war movies. All those fireworks turn me off although I must admit that, on the screen at least, those yellow-orange bursts can be beautiful images [...]
Fight on, Sister Teresa
Sister Terresa Forcades, M.D.
Sister Teresa Forcades, a Harvard-educated Catalan nun and medical doctor from New York State University, along with economist and “indignant” leader Arcadi Oliveres, denounced the austerity measures imposed by Spain’s conservative government and the European Union, measures which have crippled [...]
Italian Renaissance in Three Versions...
The dramatic effects of light and dark are more evident in Tintoretto’s version of the Last Supper, than in Leonardo’s painting of the same event. Chiaroscuro is enhanced through bright highlights coming from an overhead lamp and the disciples’ halos. They clearly delineate figures in an otherwise dark setting. By the time of [...]
Italian Renaissance in Three Versions...
I saw Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper during a visit to Milan in 2008. I had to buy a ticket—the last one available during our stay in the city—for the chance to spend 15 minutes with it. Located in the refectory of Santa Maria della Grazie, the painting has been kept under controlled conditions to slow down its deterioration; hence, the 15 m [...]
Italian Renaissance in Three Versions...
Renaissance. Literally, the word means rebirth, renewal. Most often, though, we use it to refer to a period in 15th century Italy during which art innovated and flourished as it never had before. The Renaissance style continued to evolve, eventually leading to Mannerism. In this Catholic country, art was then devoted to the sublime, the d [...]
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