Topic 128: Cast-Off Enthusiasms

Carol:

Long Live the Queen

I have never cast off my enthusiasm for things British, which started when I was  13 and moved to Canada.  That summer I immersed myself in Austen and the Brontes while  learning the words to two national anthems.  Every sporting event, every musical event,  every public event  Canada began “O Canada” followed by “God Save the Queen.” 
 
Britain’s National Anthem  was originally a patriotic song, first performed in public in 1745 at the Theatre Royal in London as a show of support for King George II, who was under attack from the Jacobite supporters of the Stuarts. The practice spread through other theaters and became custom. By the beginning of the 19th century, it had been designated as the official national anthem, just in time for the spreading of British imperialism around the globe. Back then, of course, they were singing “God Save the King (source: British Monarchy).
 

Back in the 1530’s Henry VIII took extreme measures ensure that a King succeed him on the throne. Royal marriages were predicated, not on love, but on carefully negotiated foreign policy, and Henry VIII was an astute strategist. He knew that neither England nor the Tudor lineage was yet robust enough to fight off  potential power plays should a weak female heir marry a strong European Royal.  Securing succession through a male heir became an obsession.  At the time he was completely besotted with Anne Boleyn, but he was also in desperate want of a legitimate son.
 

Katharine of Aragon 1503

Popular novels and films tend to overlook Henry VIII’s first wife in their enchantment with the younger, more exciting Anne Boleyn.  So, it is easy to forget that Henry had been married to Katharine of Aragon for over 20 years when he met the much younger Anne. He  married Katharine when he was 18 and she, 23. He was handsome and athletic; she was described as a beauty. He was  an eloquent and passionate “Defender of the [Roman Catholic] Faith”; she was a devout, obedient follower of the Church. Henry demanded loyalty; she gave it, choosing duty to her husband over support for her father, King Ferdinand of Spain. Katharine of Aragon endured at least six pregnancies, with only her daughter Princess Mary to survive.  By the time Henry became enamored of Anne Boleyn, Katharine’s efforts to provide a male heir had worn her out and taken her beauty.
 

Henry and Anne cavorting.

In 1526 Henry arranged Anne Boleyn’s appointment as a maid of honor at Court—to Katharine of Aragon. It was a turning point in their relationship, a sign of his increasing regard for the sister of his earlier Mistress—now cast off—Mary Boleyn.  In a 1526 letter, Anne writes that the appointment to Court “induces me to think that your majesty has some regard for me, since it gives me means of seeing you oftener…”(source: englishhistory.net).
 

It would take almost seven years to legitimize their relationship.  The King’s thwarted attempts to obtain an annulment and Katharine’s refusal to back down led to a complete break with the Holy See in Rome. When Henry and Anne finally married in 1533, she couldn’t have imagined that she too would be cast off for a lady in waiting. In 1536, Anne was executed as Jane Seymour stood in line to be the next Queen of England.
 

What of Katharine of Aragon, beloved by the people of England if not by their King?  She was exiled from Court and died the same year as Anne, lonely and in exile, buried far from Henry at Peterborough Cathedral. But she kept her head about it. 

Sources:
Englishhistory.net
          http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/html 

The National Anthem.The Official website of The British Monarchy.
        http://www.royal.gov.uk/

Megan:

Cast Iron Enthusiasms

I just  tried to get out of writing today. I suggested it to Mom and she insists she’s got only one paragraph left to do and doesn’t want to take the day off. She said, “Are you saying that you have 'cast off' your enthusiasm for writing on this topic?”  And then I rolled my eyes so hard I could see my brain.  I bet I can write this whole thing before she finishes that paragraph.

It’s not that I’m losing interest in the project – if anything, I’ve been more into it the past few weeks. But I hosted a dinner party last night, which felt like such a Friday thing that I was ready to start the weekend early. Plus the movies changed today and I want to go see Paul.

Movies are an enthusiasm which I will never cast off.  As are reading, and writing in my journals. But there are a few things I used to do, things I was good at,  that I have lost the inclination to do:

Art. –When I moved to England, I sent my oil paints to a friend and haven’t bothered rebuilding the collection because it’s expensive and I don’t feel like painting. Painting and drawing used to be a compulsion – images would pop into my mind fully formed.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to do some scratch board drawing, so I bought all the supplies, and in the space of about 3 days I’d gone through all of my materials, produced 3 pieces which are hanging around in my room.  I have no interest to do it anymore. I don’t know why. 

I used the pattern that comes with the board.

Knitting and crochet- my grandmother taught me how to do that, as well as to embroider and I like telling people that if my life were an Austen novel, I might be considered an accomplished young woman (or possibly a spinster). I can’t say I ever had a lot of enthusiasm for these handicrafts, but the two blankets I knitted for myself while I was in England did keep me warm.

Sports – as a child all the way through college, I participated in a variety of sports and always eventually quit for the same reason. I am not a competitive person. I did gymnastics and then the swim team, basketball and volleyball. In college I was on the crew team my freshman year. I hated the competitions, and the sounds of people encouraging me, shouting from the sidelines, always has the opposite of the desired effect. I find it embarassing to be cheered (but only in sports. I accept praise in all other situations).

Anyway, I don’t think it's important what you lose interest in. When my brother was 12 or 13, my parents bought him a guitar. I remember saying that he would quit in a couple of weeks, just like he did with everything else. Now, I have no idea what the “everything else” was – but after 15 years, he still plays the guitar every day. Someone told me once that it's important to like your job since that’s what you’ll spend most of your life doing. I think it’s even more important to spend your free time doing things you enjoy. What holds your interest – what you consider worth your time – that’s what matters. 

I still like Dragonflies

PS: I was right. She still hadn’t finished her essay.

Topic 117: Mute Eloquence

Carol:

     A Picture IS Worth a Thousand Words

The origin of this now trite phrase appears to have been a 1921 article by Fred Barnard in Printers’ Ink, an advertising trade journal.  Guess he thought the idea was worth repeating because he recycled it in a March 1927 issue of the same magazine where he upped it to 10,000 words and attributed it to an old Chinese proverb. That’s advertising for you (source: Barnard). The derivation of this quote aside, a simple image can evoke emotions and awe  beyond the limitations of language. 

Consider the Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of the sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square on V-J Day August 14, 1945. This photo became instantly famous;

. . .[it] summed up the national mood in 1945 because it combined all the right elements: the returning soldier, the woman who welcomed him back and Times Square, the crossroads that symbolized home. (source: Michael Kimmelman quoted in Chan NY Times 1997)

Eisenstaedt  photo 1945

Eisenstaedt did not caption his photo, so the actual identities of the sailor and the nurse, who did not know each other, were unknown when it was published in Life magazine.    I think the power of the photograph is in NOT knowing who they were, in the spontaneity of the emotion that was shared by all Americans that day.  Mute eloquence.
 

Another photographer was in Times Square that day, and he took the same photograph.    Victor Jorgensen  was a Navy photo journalist, and his picture appeared in the New York Times the day after it was taken. Why did one photo became a national icon and the other fall into obscurity? Angle, lighting, and perspective.  The two figures appear awkward as if the young nurse were an unwilling recipient of the kiss. And, the other people caught in the journalistic photo are distracting. The eloquence is not quite there.
 

Jorgenson photo 1945

In January, Marc and I took a little trip to San Diego while Megan was at a conference. Ex-Navy that he is, Marc likes to go down to the harbor, watching for ships and numbers he recognizes from his West-Pac tour in the mid 1960’s. As we pulled into the parking  next to the  USS Midway,  we first saw  the  25-foot bronze statue of the kissing nurse and sailor, a 3-dimensional, Technicolor “adaptation”  of  Eisenstaedt’s  (or Jorgenson’s?) .  Out of its original context, blown up and colorized, the statue takes on a different significance. It seems less about celebration and victory and more about a stolen kiss, less about art and more about cartoon.

Johnson sculpture

 In attendance at the 2007 unveiling of the statue was Edith Shain, who  has now been officially identified as the young woman of the long-ago kiss. Said Shain at the ceremony,

"During the moment of the kiss I don’t remember much, it happened so fast and it happened at the perfect time. I didn’t even look at the Sailor who was kissing me," Shain continued. “I closed my eyes and enjoyed the moment like any woman would have done.” (source: Navy Today 16 Feb 2007) 

Shain and other World War II veterans   at the ceremony expressed strong emotion at seeing the statue. That kiss, immortalized in whatever form—art, journalism, sculpture, cartoon-- symbolizes the powerful emotions of a moment captured in mute eloquence.  A  picture is worth a thousand words.

Sources: 
Fred Barnard. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_words
 Sewell Chan article “When a Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss.” New York Times
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/that-times-square-smooch-right-to-the-kisser/
Alfred Eisenstaedt. Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Eisenstaedt
Seward Johnson. US Navy Today. “WWII Commemorative Statue Unveiled in San Diego.” Story Number: NNS070216-14 http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=27774
Victor Jorgenson. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Jorgensen

Megan:

Last night I asked my mother whether she thought there was much difference between today’s topic and one we’ve had previously, “On Holding One’s Tongue.” I expected her to concur with my whining tone that sometimes these topics get so repetitive and it’s hard to come up with new material.

Instead, she adopted a different tone, a familiar smug tone, and she said, “I think there is a huge difference and anyway I know exactly what I’m going to say. In fact, I’ve written most of it in my head.” Well, la di da! We both do that – write in our heads – but where I merely transcribe my thoughts exactly as I’m having them with no real form or idea where they’re going (have you noticed?), she takes hours and hours revising the sentences. With all that work, you’d think there’d be fewer typos.

Anyway, I suppose that “holding one’s tongue” intimates restraint, where one is making the choice not to say something, whereas “mute eloquence” seems to be a quality that one might observe in others. So, I Googled it and after perusing about 20 of the 16,500 results I can tell that it is a phrase common to romantic novels, poetry, and descriptions of sculpture and paintings.  But I cannot find a definition of the expression itself.  Luckily, I was born with the kind of brain that can form hyphenated meanings out of the definitions of the two independent words to come up with something like “silent-expressiveness” (or, if I reversed it: “clearly-dumb”).  In that vein -- the picture’s worth a thousand words vein-- then the frequent pairing of “mute eloquence” and sculpture and painting is apt.

However, if you hit the Image results of the Google search, you’ll find it is also a phrase people ascribe to photos of dogs (or rather, 3 pictures of dogs turn up in the first page of results). Even if I ever managed to get a noble looking photo of Milo (nearly impossible because, like a vampire, he rarely shows up on film), I would never think of that phrase to describe him.  Maybe "Vigilant Mama’s Boy" or "Bitey McSharpteeth" (when he’s hungry).

Creepy McBrightEyes

Topic 24: After He Was Dead

Carol:

Mountain Sketches 

When we moved to Prescott in the early 1980’s we sacrificed the convenience of the town and the serenity of the pines for the Williamson Valley vistas of Bill Williams Mountain and the San Francisco Peaks. But, the view framed by the windows at the front of our house gives me the greatest sense of wonder.  The official height of Granite Mountain is 7626 feet although 5000 of those feet are already the altitude of Prescott.  This mountain isn’t one of grandeur or of breath-stopping scale; it is one of daily, even hourly change as the light and weather play across its rocky surface. I wish I could paint it. No, I wish Cezanne could paint it.

Cezanne had plenty of practice painting mountains, well one mountain-- the limestone ridge outside the city of Aix-en-Provence in Provence.  Like Granite Mountain, Mont St. Victoire  would not not immediately impress those used to the Alps or the Canadian Rockies, but at a height of 3317 feet it dominates an otherwise fairly flat terrain. When I was a student  in Aix in 1968, I used to contemplate Cezanne’s mountain from  the wide windowsill in my room at the LaPlane family’s 300-year old farmhouse. I understood why Cezanne would paint it over 60 times from different angles, under different lights and weather conditions.

Aix was the childhood home of both Paul Cezanne and the future writer Emile Zola. Cezanne’s  love of Provence and its intense light, colors and varied landscape would bring him back to the Midi despite a complex and often painful relationship with his own family and with the town itself.  Retreating from the Paris art scene, he spent his final years in an almost reclusive lifestyle but one of great artistic energy and productivity.  However, his reputation in his own town was so low that the director of Aix’s Musee Granet, Henri-Modeste Pontier, refused to exhibit Cezanne’s work (Murphy 166).

"Cezanne was the ultimate outsider and misunderstood during most of his life. Success came little and late, although young promising painters came to visit him during his last years"  (Exposhop).

Paul Cezanne died on October 23, 1906 after contracting pneumonia. Days earlier, he had been caught in a storm while walking home from one of his painting excursions near Mont St. Victoire. He was buried in one of Aix’s oldest cemeteries.

One year after he was dead, a successful 1907 exposition of his work in Paris marked his increasing influence on  the 20th century modern art movement.

Twenty years after he was dead, the Musee Granet displayed the first Cezanne painting -- after the death of Director Pontier.

Fifty years after he was dead, The Musee Granet held its first major exhibition of Cezanne’s work.

One hundred years after he was dead, France declared 2006 “The Year of Cezanne.”
The highlight of national events was a celebratory exhibit at a newly renovated Musee Granet.  Aix-en-Provence finally learned to love its native son.

After he was dead.

 

Sources:

Cezanne, the Artists' Artist

Cezanne - Wikipedia
Exposhop.com: Cezanne 

Coutagne, Denis. Cezanne in Provence. Universe/Vendome 1996

Murphy, Richard W. The World of Cezanne 1839-1906 Time-Life Books, New York 1968

Megan:

Posthumous Executions

In England, I lived across the street from the Oliver Cromwell Hotel. Throughout Cambridgeshire County numerous places and landmarks are named for him because he was born in Huntingdon in 1599, which is about 20 miles south of March, where I lived.  I didn’t (and still don’t) know much about English history, so I did a little research. Apparently, he played a significant role in the English Civil War and is credited with making England into a republican Commonwealth. After he helped kill King Charles I, Cromwell became Lord Protector. He’s not too popular with the Irish because he’s responsible for killing a lot of them, but that doesn’t seem to be something the English hold against him. He died a hero in 1658, and was buried with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

Politics in England shifted dramatically as Charles II was restored to the monarchy in 1660. Cromwell’s body was exhumed in 1661, and he was publicly executed – hung then beheaded – for his crimes against Charles I. His body was dropped in a pit, but the head was passed around for the next 300 years until it was finally buried at Sidney Sussex College in 1960.

I have to say I find the idea of posthumous executions bizarre.  They indicate extreme rage, but also frustration on the part of the executioners, especially if the victim first died of natural causes. Anyway, I did some more research because I was curious about who else might have been executed after he was dead. The ever-helpful, if not completely accurate Wikipedia has a list of them, the most interesting are reprinted below:
 

• Li Linfu, Chancellor of Tang China during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (712–756) in the latter years, was exhumed and executed for crimes of high treason by his rival Yang Guozhong for his implication in the An Lushan Rebellion.
• John Wycliffe (1328–1384), was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died.
• Captain William Kidd, whose body was gibbeted in 1701 — left to hang in an iron cage over the River Thames at Tilbury Point — as a warning to future would-be pirates for twenty years.
• In 1917 the body of Rasputin, the Russian mystic, was exhumed from the ground by a mob and burned with gasoline.
• In 1918 the body of Lavr Kornilov, the Russian general, was exhumed from the ground by a pro-Bolshevik mob, beaten, trampled down and burned.
• In 1945 the body of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was lynched, hung (upside down), kicked in the head by passers-by, and shot several times after his execution by a firing squad.
• General Gracia Jacques, a supporter of François Duvalier ("Papa Doc") (1907–1971), Haitian dictator, whose body was exhumed and ritually beaten to 'death' in 1986.

Source: Posthumous Executions

Topic 20: On the Pleasure of Escape

Carol:

The Pleasure of (Temporary) Escape

Milo The Magnificent has gotten loose twice this week. The first time was at our usual walking spot. On our drive up the hill, an antelope had crossed the road ahead of us, and rabbits were hopping through the brush; so, Milo was ready to follow his nose for adventure. When we reached the rendez-vous point, I opened the truck door, slid out and got his leash ready, but he leapt past me and took off on a 15-minute romp through the Alligator juniper, cat claws and wild sunflowers. Milo does not come until he is good and ready. Milo lives to run.

The second escape came yesterday when the All-Clean car pulled into the driveway for the bi-weekly house-cleaning. When he heard the car, Milo began barking and ran for the front door. He does this partly to prove he is a watch-dog but mostly because he loves the cleaning ladies, who give him a little treat when they arrive and lots of praise. This time Milo hit the screen door in just the right place and popped it open. He had done 20 laps around the car before the ladies could get the doors fully open, and then he jumped into the car and scrambled around on their laps before they could get out. Milo also lives for attention.

Although I hold my breath and fret when Milo takes off like this—bad Milo—I know he will always come back when his instincts are satisfied and he remembers his perfect life of steady meals, daily walks, lots of petting, a boxful of toys, and comfortable places to sleep. His escapes are TO something, not FROM something, a momentary return to the pre-domesticated freedom of the wild.

I too enjoy my temporary escapes. From a very young age, I lived in, and traveled through, the pages of books, the longer the story the better. I roamed the universe with Podkayne of Mars, wandered the moors with Jane Eyre, and got drunk on life with Zorba the Greek. I’m sure that my love of travel came from devouring all those books. Who could read The Portrait of a Lady or The Razor’s Edge without longing for Paris? Who could read Sherlock Holmes or Dickens without pining for London? And if I could travel in search of my literary heroes, so much the better: Ernest Hemingway’s home and 6-toed cats in Key West, Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm in the Lake District, Albert Camus’ gravestone in Loumarin Cemetery in Provence, the Bronte Parsonage in Yorkshire.

I’m really not really much different than Milo. At the end of a journey---whether as an armchair traveler or a real-time jet setter—I am content to return to my home on Harris Drive and my domesticated life daily walks, steady meals, lots of attention, stacks full of books and comfortable places to read.



















Megan:

A Clean, Well-lighted Room of One’s Own

About 15 years ago, my parents hired a bunch of high-schoolers to build a shed in our front yard. They did a pretty good job. It matches the house (both are barn-shaped). In addition to having a lot more storage space, the shed includes a finished room in the back with a separate entrance, carpeting, phone jack and electricity. It’s supposed to be my dad’s office but to this day, he has never used it. Maybe when he retires…

Anyway, over the years this room has had several incarnations. When I was in high school it was my painting studio, and I got paint all over the walls and ruined the carpet with linseed oil and turpentine. I went through a phase where I painted giant, vague self-portraits. The only trait I shared with the girls in the paintings was the hairstyle – not unlike the cartoons I draw for this blog.

After I went off to college, all the paintings came off the walls and the studio became another storage area. I’m sure the parents have cleaned and organized it several times with the intention that someone would use it, but when I returned home this summer, it was full of old files, broken furniture and bicycles.

Since I’ve moved back I’ve taken a class and then started this project, both of which required a quiet space for me to work. I tried sitting on a chair in the living room with the computer in my lap, but no one recognized that was “work” time – instead it was “ask Megan a question” time, or “can you get the phone Megan, you’re closer” time. I set up a desk in my room but then my mother decided she didn’t like the way it looked and took it out.

Finally, I asked how long it would take clean out the room in the shed so I could use it. Mom must have heard some hint of desperation in my voice, because an hour later she and my dad had dragged all the junk out of the room and into the yard. We moved in the desk that had been banished from my bedroom, moved all of my journals and books and plugged in my laptop. And I finally have a clean, well-lighted room of my own.