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August 31, 2007
Lisbon Lemon
Lisbon lemon is one of the most widely-grown lemons in California and is planted extensively throughout the citrus-growing regions of the world. It is believed to be a Gallego seedling selection of Portuguese origin.
Lisbon is of Portuguese origin, although it is not known there by that name. It is believed to be a selection of the Gallego seedling clonal group, which in Portugal is somewhat comparable to the common sweet orange groups of Spain, Italy, and numerous other countries. A selection known as Portugal in Morocco and Algeria is said to be indistinguishable from the Lisbon introduced from California.
--from a page of the University of California Riverside
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August 23, 2007
Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.
Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,
Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions -
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
Have no idea why.
---Philip Larkin, Ignorance
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August 22, 2007
Nectar vina cibus vestis doctrina facultas -- Venantius Fortunatus
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August 21, 2007
by Bronzino, National Gallery, London
"Venus holds an apple in one hand, and an arrow in the other. What does that say: I tempt you, and I have a wound for you. And look at all the secondary figures - the raving figure of jealousy behind Cupid, speaking so clearly of despair, of love despised and rejected; the little figure of Pleasure who is about to pelt the toying lovers with rose leaves -- see at his feet the thorns and those masks of concealments and cheats of the world, marked with the bitterness of age; and who is that creature behind the laughing pleasure - a wistful, appealing face, a rich gown that might almost blind us to her lion's feet, her serpent's sting and her hands that offer both a honeycomb and something beastly - that must be the Cheat - Fraude, in Latin - who can so prettily turn love to madness. Who are the old man and the young woman at the top of the picture? They are plainly Time and Truth, who are drawing aside the mantle that shows the world what is involved in such love as this. Time - and his daughter Truth. A very moral picture, no?" -- What's bred in the bone, Robertson Davies.
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August 19, 2007
Just wondering...
Why has Putin gone fishing (pictured below, Rambo style) with Prince Albert II of Monaco? This most unlikely pair's holidays sounds like the setup for a dry joke.
***
What to do with Poland in the EU, considering thy have a religious extremist, xenophobic, homophobic government?
The brothers appointed him last year as one of three deputy prime ministers, and as minister for education, a job he has exploited to transform Polish youth. Giertych started by laying down an “essential” reading list for schools that includes the popular Christian novel Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz, John Paul II’s autobiography, Memory & Identity, and a history of Catholic priests in Dachau. He wants to ban Joseph Conrad (a Pole, but too close to Nietzsche for comfort), Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian, obviously), and the works of the Polish Jewish writer and homosexual Witold Gombrowicz. on the Sunday times
Not that there's a pulp fueled bonfire in Warsaw yet, but this reminds me of Heine: "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too."
Prime Minister Kasimierz Marcinkiewicz, also of Law and Justice Party, has stated that if a homosexual “tries to 'infect' others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom." -- Human Rights News.
A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle.
The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.
"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy." on the BBC.
Censorship in Poland is a deadly serious subject. The censorship situation with David Cerny's Shark represents a radical change in the nature of what is censored in Poland. Artist Dorota Nieznalska has been punished by Polish courts, ordered to perform community service after a work of art was found offensive to the Christian religion, she is still in court appealing the decision. In Bytom, Poland, gallery manager Sebastian Cichocki is currently being investigated for allowing a work of art by the Prague-based Guma Guar to be displayed. There is a serious ambiguity with Polish laws governing free speech, but it is clear that laws concerning religion and free expression have yet to be tested in court. on Prague TV.
A group of Polish members of parliament have submitted a bill seeking to proclaim Jesus Christ king of their overwhelmingly Catholic country. on the BBC.
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August 17, 2007
The death of Peter Fechter
At midday on 17 August, 1962, Peter Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik, two teenage citizens of the GDR, jumped from a ground floor window on Zimmerstraße, Berlin, into 'the death strip' - an area of no-mans land leading up to the Berlin wall.
As they reached the wall, ignoring orders from the GDR guards to halt, they were fired upon, with a total of twenty one shots. Helmut made it over the wall to safety but Peter was hit a number of times in the back and abdomen.
Seriously wounded, he lay a few yards short of the wall shouting for help. Having seen what had happened, hundreds of citizens of West Berlin gathered, shouting demands at the GDR guards and American soldiers to help Peter, though they did nothing.
After fifty minutes of calling for help, his calls fell silent. More than an hour after the attempted escape, GDR guards finally removed his dead body from the death strip.
Out of an impulse I signed up to go see this event being re-enacted this Saturday at an undisclosed location. I'll have to show up at the ICA door in the morning and a pack of us will be taken there by bus - not blindfolded I hope. Now I'm dreading it. Considering I have gun phobia and always get out of movie theaters with clenched fists, sore jaws from all the tension and puffy, swollen eyes from all the crying after watching any war movie, what the hell was I thinking? I suppose that's the upside of being brought up in a catholic country no matter how much of an atheist you are: the idea that sacrifice will be rewarded gets imprinted indelibly on your soul.
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August 16, 2007
And there were other things in our companionship that took strong hold of my mind: to discourse and jest with him; to indulge in courteous exchanges; to read pleasant books together; to trifle together; to be earnest together; to differ at times without ill-humor, as a man might do with himself, and even through these infrequent dissensions to find zest in our more frequent agreements; sometimes teaching, sometimes being taught; longing for someone absent with impatience and welcoming the homecomer with joy. These and similar tokens of friendship, which spring spontaneously from the hearts of those who love and are loved in return--in countenance, tongue, eyes, and a thousand ingratiating gestures--were all so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of the many made us one. -- St. Augustine, Confessions (Book IV)
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August 15, 2007
Weekend in Dublin
Somehow found myself on a non-tourist mood so ended up doing whatever I would do at home and ignored most monuments - ended up at the Yeats manuscripts exhibition at the National Library by chance. If nothing else, Dublin has some good breakfast and brunch places. The magic words being "...served all day". Heaven.
The Mermaid Cafe on Dame Street
A classic: Bewley's on Grafton Street.
Saw "A Streetcar car named Desire" for the first time on a theater at the Irish Film Institute. Had forgotten the young Brando was a God. The middle aged Brando was fond of butter and the old Brando was a capo di tutti capi.
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August 10, 2007
Warwick Road, London
British raunchy humor or unintended pun by non native speaker?
******
The opening song is Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Adolf Loos singing "Form follows function", like "Fugue for Tinhorns" begins Guys and Dolls. It finishes and who enters but Alma Mahler herself, in a frock Jennifer Lopez would wave off as skimpy. With Alma is her composer husband, Gustav. "Let's go, gloom puss", she says, "move it."
"Just one more strudel", the fragile tunesmith replies. "I need the blood-sugar high to keep me from sinking into my quotidian preoccupation with mortality." -- Woody Allen, Mere Anarchy (his first new humor collection in over 25 years, as they announce)
Ah, good stuff.
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August 09, 2007
Favourite tune to listen to while driving on highways. Usually on a loop, very loudly and when alone since no one else would put up with such foolishness. Had a sudden urge to send my CV to Jeremy Clarkson after watching this.
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August 08, 2007
I am not pleased
How can anyone with more than two brain cells put up with these stupid tabloids in this country!!?? I was coming back home and, on the tube, every single evening newspaper being read by the passengers featured stories like the one pictured above. I honestly almost felt like snatching the papers aways from my co-travelers hands and give them a lecture on the portuguese criminal and judicial system! (I'm developing a theory: the longest time away from the home land, the more patriotic one becomes).
Basically, these moronic people who call themselves journalists are using the claim of a Portuguese convicted murderess that the Portuguese police - the same inspector in charge of Madeleine McCann's case- framed her in the case of her missing daughter and might be doing the same to the missing brit kid's mother.
On this blog it was better refuted than I would ever be able to, so I'm pasting most of the entry here:
1 – Joana Cipriano vanished from a small place 10 km in the outskirts of Portimão. Last time somebody saw her, she was on her way to a local groceries shop;
2 - Her mother, Leonor Cipriano, only reported to Police her daughter has disappeared two days after;
3 – After a long and difficult investigation, headed by Chief-Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, Leonor Cipriano and her brother were accused of murdering the eight years old child;
4 – The body of Joana Cipriano was never found, but samples of her blood were found in her mother refrigerator;
5 – Her mother justified those samples of blood admitting she had beaten Joana, for some reason, she was hurt and she bleeded from her nose;
6 – Leonor Cipriano and her brother, who had a incestuous relationship, were sentenced to 16 years in jail, for the murder of her daughter and niece;
7 – Before the trial, Leonor Cipriano accused five CID officers of beating her, trying to extract a confession. She named the five CID officers, and included Chief-Inspector Gonçalo ("Amaral Lector", according to British tabloids…);
8 – The Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal investigation and ordered a police line-up, with the CID officers named and accused by Leonor Cipriano of beating her;
9 – The line-up took place with Leonor Cipriano behind a two-way mirror and she couldn’t recognize any of the aggressors;
10 – The Public Prosecutor’s Office magistrate that was in charge of the criminal investigation decided to accuse the five CID officers, but didn’t mentioned, in the accusation sent to the Court, that Leonor Cipriano couldn’t identify any of the aggressors, in the police line-up;
11 – Leonor Cipriano never confessed the murder of her own daughter. Her brother, in a letter written from jail, accused Leonor Cipriano of selling her daughter;
12 – Police is convinced (and the jurors at the trial found enough evidence to pass a verdict of guilty) that Leonor Cipriano and her brother were found, by Joana, having sexual relations, when she came home, back from the groceries shop. As Leonor Cipriano had a lover, at the time, they were afraid she would tell him what she saw;
13 – So, they beat her, in order to frighten her and keep her mouth shut up;
14 – Perhaps accidentally, they beat her so violently that they killed her. So, they decided to get rid of he body and cut it in pieces, keeping some of them in the freezer, while they gave the other pieces to be eaten by pigs (this is what police believes is the strongest possibility, because there was no other trace of Joana Cipriano, unless the blood samples in her mother freezer…)
15 – The body of Joana Cipriano was never found.
And so, here we have a terrible story of a dysfunctional family, a child murdered and a very difficult police investigation. The only thing – in my humble opinion - that has some similarity with Madeleine McCann disappearance is the fact that the person in charge of Madeleine’s case is the same that successfully headed Joana Cipriano investigation: CID Chief-Inspector Gonçalo Amaral. And success, in Joana’s case, is clear: the murderers were found, accused, went to court, they were sentenced, they appealed the sentence and the Portuguese Supreme Court reduced it to 16 years of jail to both of them – the mother, Leonor Cipriano and her brother, for the murder her daughter and nice, eight year old Joana Cipriano.
If many "consumers" of British Media have another idea, that’s because most British journalists covering Madeleine McCann abduction strongly believe that truth never should be allowed to "kill" a good story. Even if I means destroying the reputation of an experienced CID Chief-Inspector. "And what’s the problem?" – I imagine my British colleagues asking themselves this question, with a pint of Guinness in the hand, enjoying the sunshine at Praia da Luz. "The guy isn’t even British, he’s just a Portuguese…"
*****
PS: May I just add that if there are people in my country that work hard no matter how apalling the conditions they face those are the men and women in the Police forces with whom I had the privilege to work with. Smartest and most dedicated civil servants I have ever worked with on my consulting days.
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August 07, 2007
Small Grand Tour
Went on an art fair marathon this last weekend visitng Kassel and Munster for Documenta 12 and the Sculpture Projects, respectively.
Not very impressed by either, I must say. Documenta was an amalgam of stuff with no curatorial guidelines that I could identify and the sculptures were nothing memorable to me. Anyway, always fun to find out on a friday night that my cell phone stopped working, my flight was late, the man at the rent a car insisted that 70% of europeans speak German so why would English be the lingua franca taking him 30 minutes to give me the car keys, the hotel I booked on a quaint town near a forest was closed at 1 am and no one would come to the door, that I had no map of Kassel so randomly drove around looking for an hotel, found a laptop case (with a laptop inside) in the middle of an empty street and finally found a shitty hotel that turned out to have one of the best buffet breakfasts I've ever had. I love breakfast.
The funniest thing was this Gonzalo Diaz piece entitled "Eclipse". You'd go into a drak room and a circle of light was projected on the wall, over a silver square. When I came in, about 4 people were looking at it from near the door. I obviously stood there. Nothing happened and they left. Another row of people came in and out. And then I thought "What eclipse? There will only be an eclipse if I walk in front of the damned light." So I did. And found that something was written on the square and hurriedly summoned all the germans behind me - looking at me in disapproval for my obvious lack of respect for the work of art - to come and read it. Apparently it says something like "You have arrived to the core of Germany because you are reading the word art in your own shadow". And then people started taking turns to do the same I did. I complained to the guard outside that there should be some instructions but now that I think of it... nah!
Someone told me that there was a great sound piece at the Munster Sculpture projects under the bridge over the Aa. I went there. Waited for it to start. It was a woman singing. Meh.
HIghlight of the weekend: The Museum for sepulchral culture in Kassel. Beautiful museum with a great collection of tombstones, coffins and funeral props in general. Also houses a beautiful collection of prints and drawings on the theme of death. If you're into that sort of thing. Which I am. It was founded by the Study group for cemeteries and memorials. How do I join this thing???
More pics of the trip here.
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August 03, 2007
Dobrý Deň
Had a great time in Prague but not necessarily because of the city itself. There are hordes of tourists everywhere, British stag & hen parties that invariably go wrong and it's basically all a big Kafka amusement park. And people who never read a line by the man flock to where he lived, where he studied, where he pooped and where he fucked since these are, of course, landmarks of touristic interest. "I often hear Kafka described as a Czech writer, but he wrote solely in German and considered himself a German writer" says Kundera. The irony of it all.
****
What I've learned: the Americans are loud, the French are arrogant, the Estonians are lazy, the Dutch are cheap and the Portuguese like to stereotype.
****
The Dutch: Portuguese is just bad Spanish.
The Portuguese: Dutch is just bad German.
Ah, the joy of making friends through mutual insult.
****
Somehow, found myself driving a Ford on a Czech highway on the way to a town that is today practically owned by wealthy Russians, with a Belarusian sitting by my side, a Kazakh, a Kyrgyz and a Dutch on the back seat while Johnny Cash sang on the radio. Carlsbad (or Karlovy Vary) is one of the prettiest towns I've ever visited. If it weren't for the Escada and Chanel shops I could almost say it had frozen in time.
****
The Philosophical Hall.
Highlight: the beautiful libraries of the Strahov Monastery and the remnants of an 18th century Wunderkammer that are housed there.
A dodo.
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August 02, 2007
Hay on Wye
I managed to not buy a single book even though I spent a few days in the Welsh book town. I found that most bookshops hadn't much to offer other than editions of old books on gymnastics and MS-DOS. There was a good children's bookshop where I almost bought a "Famous Five" first edition. Then I realized 55 pounds was too much money for a book I wasn't going to read and that I craved out of childhood nostalgia. As an exception to the rule, the Poetry bookshop was excellent - again, I almost bought Cavafy's Poems but then realized there were three different editions on the shelf, each translated by a different person into English and they were strikingly different. On one of the prefaces, Auden commented on the difficulty of translating him, and hence the different versions, but also how Cavafy's poems were immediately recognizable since they don't depend on language but on their themes and imagery. Nonetheless, I couldn't decide on which to buy and left.
Also took some long walks to Clyro where the Baskerville Hall is. Even saw a grave at the village cemetery for people who perished during WWI where there was a reference to a Captain Baskerville. Supposedly Conan Doyle stayed here visiting the family and drew inspiration from local lore about a hound that haunted the moors.
Highlight: the B&B where I stayed had some books for guests to read and that' where I ran into Alan Bennett's Untold Stories. His fun and witty diaries kept me company through days of hard rain. Almost had to swim back to London...except that I can't swim.
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Meh
The New York Times Arts section. One step away from being removed from my RSS reader.
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August 01, 2007
The Daily Mail sucks
(the best caption they could come up with on the day of Bergman's death)
and so does most of the British press...and to think I saw an ad today in the tube that said something like "yadda yadda England brought culture and sophistication to the world...". Yeah, right. Before tabloid era, maybe.
*****
Still have some posts to write about Hay on Wye, the floods in Wales, Alan Bennett's diary, odd coincidences, Prague, Carlsbad, the Strahov Monastery, Central Asia, stereotyping (as usual), Harry Potter and all the stuff I've been up to lately.
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