Wednesday, November 5, 2008

About Obama: Chega de Tristeza

A Brazilian journalist comments on Obama's election,underlining that his victory happened mostly by sheer luck.
Well ,luck WE NEED, but mostly the world had so far an overdose of Anger and Hate,which resulted from greed and injustice,a domino effect after the Depression and Hitler's horrible reign and consequences.
Change,We Need,and all of us are needy for a respite and co-exist.
After all,if not were should not call ourselves Homo or Femina Sapiens,but rather Plain Beasts.
If we do some introspection and stop a little to understand our role on Earth vis a vis Nature,we immediately can find the so called answers to our mysteries.
We are all on the same boat,navigating in the same waters or as I remember the playwright
Braulio Pedrosos" Viemos todos na mesma caravela"........
Here the text from Brazil.which I do not aggree with in its entirety.
And Yes, CHANGE ,WE NEED,for the better, coomon sense and a conscience.
So Sarava, Eliane!



George W. Bush foi um dos presidentes mais populares dos EUA, com índices de aprovação que chegaram a bater em 90% depois do 11 de setembro, mas sai da Casa Branca pela porta dos fundos, com uma crise financeira internacional sem precedentes, com as contas dos EUA de pernas para o ar e com a biografia para sempre manchada por ter invadido o Iraque em cima de uma mentira --a das armas químicas, afinal inexistentes-- e passando por cima da ONU. Quantos soldados americanos pagaram e quanto a economia do país pagou por isso?

Barack Obama, o senador negro, nascido no Havaí, filho de queniano, é um salto histórico enorme. Um salto de qualidade, pela simbologia, pela concretização de uma mudança profunda que é política, social e cultural. Mas é também um salto no escuro. Aos 47 anos, é bastante jovem para o desafio, jamais ocupou cargos executivos de ponta e era um desconhecido não apenas no mundo, mas dentro do próprio EUA, até sair da cadeira de senador e bater a então imbatível Hillary Clinton nas primárias do Partido Democrata.

Para fazer um bom governo, um governo tão extraordinário quanto sua eleição, Obama conta com fatores objetivos e subjetivos. O mais objetivo de todos é a força política: ele venceu com uma margem expressiva e surpreendente de votos, contrariando as sempre apertadas eleições americanas (vide a do próprio Bush...), vai unir um democrata na Casa Branca com uma sólida maioria democrata no Congresso, contrariando a tradição, e chega ao poder da maior, ou única, potência, com uma simpatia internacional poucas vezes vista.

Além disso, Obama se beneficiou do "timing" da crise: ela se alastrou pelo mundo e foi aguda durante a campanha, mas está ficando sob controle e tende a amenizar por gravidade no início do seu governo. Ou seja: a crise de certa forma prejudicou as pretensões do republicano John McCain, correligionário de Bush, e favoreceu Obama, que é democrata e baseou o discurso na "mudança", na capacidade de tirar o país do atoleiro. E ele, ao assumir em 20 de janeiro de 2009, já deverá encontrar um ambiente econômico muito mais sereno, ou pelo menos muito menos assustador. E poderá capitalizar indiretamente o clima do "pior já passou".

Seu desafio será recolocar as contas públicas, o balanço de pagamentos e os indicadores macro-econômicos americanos no lugar. Mas sem o desespero da crise de setembro e outubro. Não será fácil, e o risco de frustração realmente existe, mas é possível e bem provável que a situação no início do seu governo esteja muito melhor do que no fim do mandato Bush. O primeiro passo é acertar na equipe, com os homens e mulheres certos nos lugares certos.

Tudo somado, temos que Barack Hussein Obama, além de todos os predicados concretos, tem também aquele que é fundamental: sorte. A expectativa é que assuma justamente quando o pior da crise já tiver passado, prontinho para fazer o que é preciso fazer e colher no final os louros.

Se a fase aguda da crise parece estar passando, isso vale também para o Brasil, onde Lula mantém seus 80% de popularidade, os indicadores da indústria ainda não acusaram o golpe e tudo indica que, entre mortos e feridos, a campanha de Dilma Rousseff em 2010 vai muito bem, obrigada.

Lá nos EUA, como aqui no Brasil, Obama e Lula têm muitas coisas em comum. Uma delas é essa: sorte, uma incomensurável sorte. Ótimo. Que isso reflita positivamente para os EUA, para o Brasil e principalmente para o mundo.

Eliane Cantanhêde é colunista da Folha, desde 1997, e comenta governos, política interna e externa, defesa, área social e comportamento. Foi colunista do Jornal do Brasil e do Estado de S. Paulo, além de diretora de redação das sucursais de O Globo, Gazeta Mercantil e da própria Folha em Brasília.
P. S.
I worked for the Folha in 1967- 69.
Marguerita
http://.thepoignantfrog.blogspot.com

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

George Bush & Co's Accomplished Mission

Iraq-Father kissing his dead son- June 17 2008- photo by Karim Kadim AP

Monday, June 16, 2008

Luigi Pirandello: (1867-1936)

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)

Italian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934 for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and c. 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian dialect. Typical for Pirandello is to show how art or illusion mixes with reality and how people see things in very different way - words are unrealiable and reality is at the same time true and false. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for theatre of the absurd.

Luigi Pirandello was born in Caos, near Girgenti, on the island of Sicily, which was to be the inspiration of his writings. "I am a child of Chaos and not only allegorically," he said in his biographical sketch; his family spent vacations at a house called Chaos. Pirandello's father, Stefano Ricci-Gramitto, who had fought with Garibaldi, owned a prosperous sulfur mine.

His childhood Pirandello spent in modest weath in Girgenti (today called Agrigento) and Palermo, surrounded by nurses and servants, and enjoying the adoration of his mother. From his teens Pirandello showed literary talents, but he first studied law. His father intended his son to become a businessman. In 1887 Pirandello entered the University of Rome, from where he was expelled for offending a Latin professor, and then transferred to the University of Bonn, Germany, receiving his doctoral degree in Roman philology in 1891. Pirandello's dissertation, written in Germany, dealt with the dialect of his native region.

After having a liaison with his cousin Linuccia, which his father did not approve, Pirandello started his career as a writer. "Blessed is he who can stop halfway and before old age comes on can marry illusion and preserve it lovingly," Pirandello wrote in 1887 in a letter of his future plans. In Rome, where he had settled with a montly allowance from his father, Pirandello translated Goethe's Roman Elegies, wrote ELEGIE RENANE (1895), and published two collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories, AMORI SENZ' AMORE (1894). In 1898 he became a professor of Italian literature at a teacher's college for women, and worked there for 24 years. L'ESCLUSA (1901) was Pirandello's first full-length novel. In the ironical story the protagonist suspects that his wife is unfaithful and takes her back after the adultery has actually occurred.

Pirandello had married in 1894 Antonietta Portulano, a fellow Sicilian and the daughter of his father's business associate. She suffered mental breakdown in 1904. When her condition steadily worsened - she became insane with a jealous paranoia - the illness deeply influenced Pirandello's writing. During World War I, both of Pirandello's sons were captured as prisoners of war. After his wife's illness got worse, Pirandello was forced to place her in 1919 in a mental institution.When the collapse of the sulfur mines destroyed the family business, Pirandello had to turn his writing into a financially profitable activity. In 1904 Pirandello gained his first literary success with the novel IL FU MATTIA PASCAL. Its antihero, Mattia Pascal, is mistakenly declared dead. Offered an opportunity to start life over again, he escapes from his family. In Monte Carlo Mattia wins a fortune, but his newly found freedom turns sour and he must return to his hometown, to his past he had hoped to leave behind. "I can't really say that I'm myself," he thinks. "I don't know who I am. . . . I am the late Mattia Pascal." In the following decades the questions "who am I?" and "what is real?" became central in Pirandello's fiction. UNO, NESSUNO E CENTOMILA (1925-26, One, None, and Hundred-Thousand), a story about husband's descend into madness, owed more to Freud than Gogol. His despair starts when his wife comments a slight defect on his nose - it tilts to the right.

Pirandello started to write plays as early as in the 1880s, but he first considered the stage insensitive medium compared to the novel. After 1915, Pirandello concentrated on the theater and wrote until 1921 sixteen dramas. LA RAGIONE DEGLI ALTRI (1915) was Pirandello's first three-act play. It did not gain much understanding, but through the performances of the actor Angelo Musco (1892-1937) his work started to attract attention. His ideal female lead Pirandello found in Marta Abba, for whom he wrote several plays, among them DIANA E LA TUDA (1926, Diana and Tuda), L'AMICA DELLE MOGLI (1927, The Wives's Friend), and COME TU MI VUOI (1930, As You Desire Me). Pirandello also engaged her for his own company, the Teatro d'Arte di Roma, and formed a relationship with her, documented in Pirandello's Love Letters to Martha Abba (1994).

COSI È (SE VI PARE) (Right You Are - If You Think You Are), published in 1918, marked Pirandello's interest in the examination of the relativity of truth. The story was about a woman whose identity remains hidden and who could be one of the two very different people. SEI PERSONAGGI IN CERCA D'AUTORE (1921, Six Chracters in Search of An Author) asked the question, can fictional characters be more authentic than real persons, and what is the relationship between imaginary characters and the writer, who has created them.

Six Characters in Search of an Author consists of roles-within-roles. In rehearsal preparations of a theatrical company are interrupted by the Father and his family who explain that they are characters from an unfinished dramatic works. They want to interpret again crucial moments of their lives, claiming that they are "truer" than the "real" characters. "How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself too. We think we understand each other: but we never do," says the Father. He tells that he has helped his wife to start a new life with her lover and the three illegitimate children born to them. The Wife claims that he forced her into the arms of another man. The Stepdaughter accuses the Father for her shame - they met before in Mme Pace's infamous house, and he did not recognize her. She was forced to turn to prostitution to support the family. The Son refuses to acknowledge his family and runs into the garden. He shots himself and the actors argue about whether the boy is dead or not. The Father insists that the events are real. The Producer says: "Make-believe?! Reality?! Oh, go to hell the lot of you! Lights! Lights! Lights!" and The Stepdaughter escapes into the audience laughing maniacally.

Six Chracters in Search of An Author created a scandal when it was first performed in Rome, but it was hailed as a masterpiece in Paris, innovatively produced by Georges Pitoëff. G.B. Shaw praised it as the most original play ever. ENRICO IV (1922, Henry IV, known in the United States as The Living Mask), premiered in Milan, received much better reception. The play told about a man who has fallen from his horse during a masquerade and starts to believe he is the German emperor Henry IV. To accommodate his illness his wealthy sister has placed him in a medieval castle surrounded by actors dressed as eleventh-century courtiers. The nameless hero regains his sanity after twelve years, but decides to pretend he is mad.

With the trilogy Six Characters in Search of An Author, in which the characters of the title are called into existence by a writer, CIASCUNO A SUO MODO (1924) and QUESTA SERA SI RECITA A SOGGETO (1930), Pirandello revolutionized the modern theatrical techniques. A second trilogy, LA NUOVA COLONIA (1928), LAZZARRO (1929), and I GIGANTI DELLA MONTAGNA (1934, The Mountain Giants) moved from the limits of truth-telling to the reality outside of art. The Mountain Giants was left unfinished. It portrayed a magician, who lives in an abandoned villa. A theatrical company decides to perform at a celebration given by the 'Giants of the Mountain'. The barbaric audience tears two of the actors to pieces and kills one of the directors of the company.

Pirandello once said: "I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory - a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth." (from Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961) Pirandello's central themes, the problem of identity, the ambiguity of truth and reality, has been compared to explorations of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, but he also anticipated Beckett and Ionesco. One of the earliest formulations of his relativist position Pirandello presented in the essay 'Art and Consciousness Today' (1893), in which he argued that the old norms have crumbled and the idea of relativity deprives "almost altogether of the faculty for judgment." A central concepts in his work is "naked mask", referring our social roles and on the stage the dialectic relationship between the actor and the character portrayed. In Six Characters the father points out, that a fictional figure has a permanence that comes from an unchanging text, but a real-life person may well be "a nobody". Pirandello did not only restrict his ideas to theatre acting, but noted in his novel SI GIRA (1915), that the film actor "feels as if in exile - exiled not only from the stage, but also from himself."

In 1923 Pirandello requested membership in the Fascist party and obtained Mussolini's support in founding the National Art Theatre of Rome (Teatro d'Arte di Roma). However, the company was closed in 1928 on grounds of financial problems. In 1934 Pirandello's libretto for Gian Francesco Malipiero's opera The Fable of the Changeling was criticized by the Fascist authorities. Pirandello had first seen in Mussolini a man committed to the facts rather than theory, but later he described Mussolini as "as top hat, and empty top hat that by itself cannot stand upright". Remaining critical towards the regime, he did not support the Ethiopian invasion by Italy. Pirandello died in Rome on December 10, 1936.

Pirandello's influence can be seen on such European and American writers as Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Eugene O'Neill, and Edward Albee. In Latin America, Jorge Luis Borges's questioning of the nature of identity have much in common with Pirandellian themes. Several of Pirandello's works have been adapted to screen, including As You Desire Me (1932), starring Greta Garbo, L'homme de nulle part (1937), based on the novel The Late Mathias Pascal and directed by and Pierre Chenal. Kaos, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1984), was based on the author's four Sicilian stories.

For further reading: Characters and Authors in Luigi Pirandello by Ann Caesar (1998); Luigi Pirandello, 1867-1936, His Plays in Sicilian by Joseph F. Privitera (1998); Luigi Pirandello: The Theatre of Paradox, ed. by Julie Dashwood (1997); Ars dramatica: Studi sulla poetica di Luigi Pirandello by Rena A. Lamparska (1997); Understanding Luigi Pirandello by Fiora A. Bassanese, James N. Hardin (1997); Pirandello & Film by Nina Davinci Nichols, et al (1995); A Companion to Pirandello Studies, ed. by John Louis Digaetani (June 1991); Moments of Selfhood by James V. Biundo (1990); Luigi Pirandello by S. Bassnett-McGuire (1983); Luigi Pirandello: an Approach to his Theatre by O. Ragusa (1980); Dreams of Passion: The Theater of Luigi Pirandello by R, Oliver (1979); Introduzione alla critica pirandelliana by A. Illano (1976); Pirandello: a Biography by G. Giudice (1975); Pirandello fascista by G.F. Vené (1971); Luigi Pirandello by G. Giudice (1963); L' arte di Luigi Pirandello by F. Puglisi (1958); Playwrights on Playwrighting, ed. by Toby Cole (1961); Luigi Pirandello by L. Ferrante (1958); Luigi Pirandello by L. Baccalo (1949); L' Uomo segreto by F.V. Nardelli (1944); L'opera di Luigi Pirandello by M. Lo Vecchio Musti (1939) - Suomeksi Pirandellolta on käännetty useita näytelmiä ja esseekokoelma Uusi teatteri ja vanha teatteri (1934).

Selected works:

  • LAUTE UND LAUTENTWICKLUNG DER MUNDART VON GIRGENTI, 1891 - The Sounds of the Girgenti Dialect, and Their Development (trans. by Giovanni R. Bussino)
  • MAL GIOCONDO, 1889 - Painful Joy
  • PASQUA DI GEA, 1891
  • MARTA AJALA, 1893 (republished as L'esclusa in 1901)
  • AMORI SENZ' AMORE, 1894 - Loves Without Love
  • ELEGIE RENANE, 1895
  • L'EPILOGO, (published in 1898, produced in 1910 under the title La Morsa)
  • L'ESCLUSA, 1901 - The Outcast (trans. by Leo Ongley)
  • IL TURNO, 1902 - The Merry-Go-Round of Love (trans. by Frances Keene)
  • LE BEFFE DELLA VITA E DELLA MORTE, 1902
  • QUAND' ERO MATTO, 1902
  • BIANCHA E NERE, 1904
  • IL FU MATTIA PASCAL, 1904 - The Late Mattia Pascal (trans. by William Weaver) - Mennyttä miestä (suom. Liisa Ryömä) - films: 1925, Feu Mathias Pascal, dir. by Marcel L'Herbier; 1936, L'homme de nulle part / The Man from Nowhere, dir. by Pierre Chenal, starring Pierre Blanchar; 1985, Le due vite di Mattia Pascal, dir. by Mario Monicelli, starring Marcello Mastroianni
  • ERMA BIFRONTE, 1906
  • LA VITA NUDA, 1908
  • L'UMORISMO, 1908 - On Humor (trans. by Antonio Illiano and Daniel P. Testa)
  • ARTE E SCIENZA, 1908
  • SCAMANDRO, 1909
  • SUO MARITO, 1911 - Her Husband (translated by Martha King and Mary Ann Frese Witt)
  • LUMÍE DI SICILIA, 1911
  • TERZETTI, 1912
  • CECÈ, 1913
  • LE DUE MASCHERE, 1914
  • LA TRAPPOLA, 1915
  • LA RAGIONE DEGLI ALTRI, 1915
  • SI GIRA..., 1915 - Elämän filmi
  • ERBA DEL NOSTRO ORTO, 1915
  • SE NON ROSI, 1916
  • ALL'USCITA, 1916 - At the Gate
  • LA MASCHERA E IL VOLTO, 1916 - The Mask and the Face
  • E DOMANI, LUNEDI?..., 1917
  • L'INNESTO, 1917
  • PENSACI, GIACOMINO!, 1917 - Better Think Twice About It
  • IL PIACERE DELL' ONESTÀ, 1917 - The Pleasure of Honesty
  • LIOLÀ, 1917 - trans.
  • COSI È (SE VI PARE), 1918 - Right You Are, If You Think You Are (trans. by Stanley Appelbaum) - Niin on (jos siltä näyttää)
  • UN CAVALLO NELLA LUNA, 1918
  • LA PATENTE, 1919
  • IL PIACERE DELL' ONESTÀ, IL GIOCO DELLE PARTI, 1918 - The Rules of the Game (translated and adapted by David Hare)
  • IL CARNEVALE DEI MORTI, 1919
  • TU RIDI, 1919
  • MA NON È UNA COSA SERIA, 1919
  • IL GIUOCO DELLE PARTI, 1919
  • L'UOMO, LA BESTIA, A LA VIRTÙ, 1919
  • BERECCHE E LA GUERRA, 1919
  • MASCHERE NUDE, 1919-1922 (4 vols.) - Naked Masks: Five Plays (ed. by Eric Bentley)
  • TUTTO PER BENE, 1920 - All for the Best
  • IL BERRETTO A SONAGLI, 1920 - Cap and Bells
  • COME PRIMA, MEGLIO DI PRIMA, 1921 - films: 1956, Never Say Goodbye, dir. by Jerry Hopper; 1945, This Love of Ours, dir. by William Dieterle starring Merle Oberon, Claude Rains
  • L'INNESTO, 1921
  • SEI PERSONAGGI IN CERCA D'AUTORE, 1921 - Six Chracters in Search of An Author (translators: John Linstrum, Mark Musa, Eric Bentley, Edward Storer) - Kuusi henkilöä etsii tekijää
  • ENRICO IV, 1922 - The Living Mask / Henry IV (trans. by Julian Mitchell) - films: 1943, dir. by Georgio Pastina. Cast: Enzo Biliotti, Clara Calamai, Rubi D'Alma, Lauro Gazzolo, Augusto Maracci, Umberto Melnati, Luigi Pavese, Giorgio Piamonti, Francesco Rissone, Oswaldo Valent; 1985, dir. by Marco Bellocchio
  • NOVELLE PER UN ANNO, 1922-37
  • LA SIGNORA MORLI UNA E DUE, 1922
  • Three Plays, 1922
  • VESTIRE GLI IGNUDI, 1923 - Naked (trans. by Nina daVinci Nichols) / To Clothe the Naked
  • LA VITA CHE TI DIEDI, 1924 - The Life I Gave You (translated by Frederick May)
  • CIASCUNO A SUO MODO, 1924 - Each in His Own Way (trans. by Arthur Livingston)
  • SAGRA DEL SIGNORE DELLA NAVE, 1924
  • LA GIARA, 1925
  • L'ALTRO FIGLIO, 1925
  • QUADERNI DE SERAFINO GUBBIO, OPERATORE, 1925 - The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator (trans. by C.K. Scott Moncrieff) - Elämän filmi (suom. Anna Silfverblad
  • )
  • UNO, NESSUNO E CENTOMILA, 1925-26 - One, None, and Hundred-Thousand (translated and introduced by William Weaver)
  • DIANA E LA TUDA, 1926 - Diana and Tuda
  • L'IMBECILLE, 1926
  • L'UOMO DEL FIORE IN BOCCA, 1926
  • L'AMICA DELLE MOGLI, 1927 - The Wives' Friend (trans. by Marta Abba)
  • The One-Act Plays, 1928
  • BELLAVITA, 1928
  • LA NUOVA COLONIA, 1928 - The New Colony
  • O DI UNO O DI NESSUNO, 1929
  • LAZZARO, 1929 - Lazarus
  • SOGNO (MA FORSE NO), 1929
  • COME TU MI VUOI, 1930 - As You Desire Me (trans. by Marta Abba) - film 1932, dir. by George Fitzmaurice, starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Erich von Stroheim
  • QUESTA SERA SI RECITA A SOGGETTO, 1930 - Tonight we Improvise (translated by J. Douglas Campbell and Leonard G. Sbrocchi) - Tämä iltana improvisoimme
  • TROVARSI, 1930 - To Find Onself (trans. by Marta Abba) - Löydänkö itseni
  • QUANDO SI È QUALCUNO, 1933 - When Somebody Is Somebody
  • Better Think Twice About It, and Twelve Other Stories, 1934
  • The Naked Truth, and Eleven Other Stories, 1934 (trans. by Arthur and Henrie Mayne)
  • I GIGANTI DELLA MONTAGNA, 1934 - The Mountain Giants
  • LA FAVOLA DEL FIGLIO CAMBIATO, 1934
  • NON SI SA COME, 1935 - No One Knows How (trans. by Marta Abba)
  • NOVELLE PER UNO ANNO, 1937-38
  • The Medals and Other Stories, 1938
  • Four Tales, 1939
  • NOVELLE PER UN ANNO, 1956-57 (2 vols.)
  • TUTTI I ROMANZI, 1957
  • MASCHERE NUDE, 1958 (2 vols.)
  • OPERE, 1958-59 (5 vols.)
  • Short Stories, 1959 (trans. by Lily Duplaix)
  • SAGGI, POESIE, SCRITTI VARII, 1960
  • The Rules of the Game; The Life I Gave You; Lazarus, 1960
  • To Clothe the Naked and Two Other Plays, 1962 (trans. by William Murray)
  • The Merry-Go-Around of Love and Selected Stories, 1964
  • Pirandello's One-Act Plays, 1964 (trans. by William Murray)
  • Short Stories, 1964
  • On Humor, 1974
  • Tales of Madness: A Selection from Luigi Pirandello's Short Stories for a Year, 1984 (trans. by Giovanni R. Bussino)
  • Eleven Short Stories / Undici Novelle, 1994 (translated and edited by Stanley Appelbaum)
  • Oil Jar and Other Stories, 1994 (translated by Stanley Appelbaum)
  • Lettere a Marta Abba, 1995 - Pirandello's Love Letters to Martha Abba (edited and translated by Benito Ortolani)
  • Luigi Pirandello, 1867-1936: His Plays in Sicilian, 1998 (2 vols., trans. by Joseph F. Privitera)
  • Three Major Plays, 2000 (trans. by Carl R. Mueller)

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Memory of the Camps

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/view/.
http://pedrodoria.com.br/2008/06/15/alfred-hitchcock-e-seu-documentario-sobre-o-holocausto-na-europa/#comment-193399

For everyone that asks me where is my family?
This documentary answers the pain I feel on my skin.
And now I am being evicted on June 17th.Have no place to go.
Marguerita

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Yves Saint Laurent: Je t'aime toujours

“The clothes incorporated all my dreams,” he said after the show, “all my heroines in the novels, the operas, the paintings. It was my heart — everything I love that I gave to this collection.”http://www.parismatch.com/parismatch/video/culture/anne-marie-corre-raconte-yves-saint-laurent

photo from Film Yves Saint Laurent by David Teboul

I always loved Yves Saint Laurent.
When he created the Mondrian dress,my mother who was a very sophisticated woman, recreated with her dressmaker, a version of the same.Both were in tune with Mondrian.
So as a little girl I remember him and always loved his vision of life.
I can,as an artist,understand his sadness.
People like him are not understood by the common world.
His work will be admired and talked about,but his persona will never be understood by the average ones.
Artists and thinkers see life in another dimension.A greater one ,where words are insufficient to translate. One can only get there through passion and openness of the spirit to the Beauty of Life.It will never be measured or attained by Money or Power,which unfortunately are the only mediums to sustain in the society we live in.Nonetheless, that vision is a troubling one,as we are critical of ugliness, of moral turpitude and oppression.
Saint Laurent,exercised his political vision through fashion. -
He was as Jean Cocteau once called such creatures, "L"enfant du paradis" ...
Marguerita



“Yves Saint Laurent invented everything, revisited everything, transformed everything to the service of a passion, to let woman shine and to free her beauty and mystery.”
-François Pinault, founder and former CEO of the fashion group PPR
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/fashion/02laurent.html

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sensuality and sexuality are opposites

detail from painting by marguerita
photo by marguerita

by Virginia Stewart-Avalon, M.Ed.

Sexuality in the modern world is blatant; a strutting display of goods, a means of gaining power over others and a method of turning others into objects. Sex is often self-centered self-gratification.

Sensuality means being completely at home in one's body, trusting and living through the senses. Tasting-savoring the flavors that life offers through touching, exploring, the body, the tongue, feelings... Seeing-recognizing the beauty in all that is beautiful-animals, flowers, trees, people, symmetry and asymmetry. Inhaling the fragrances of all and enjoying each. Listening to the voices of all living things and reveling in the uniqueness of each. Sensuality may be enthusiastic, even athletic, but it is always in unison with another.

Patriarchy has perverted sex. It shattered the consciousness of the Divine Sensual, separating it into controllable, cold, remote virginity, which led to possession; and crude sexuality, the perversion of sensuality. Sex as just a physical act can be uncaring even violent or brutal; twisted into the conquering and subjugation of another; the denial of the Divinity of another. When the sex act is finished, there remains only emptiness, an awareness of isolation and loneliness to be escaped through departure or sleep. The veneration of perpetual virginity and the disdain for the sexuality of woman is a denial of life and of life-enhancing values. They represent the enslavement and the murder of the God/dess. A virgin brings no new life into the world and a prostitute destroys the divine in herself. Sexuality focuses the attention on control and destruction. The foundation of the sexual experience is the self; the foundation of the sensual experience is the other.

Making love is not sexual; it is sensual. It is being swept away by the immersion of one's senses in another person… and more. Making love is experiencing the worship of the God/desshood of another. It is adoration, in the original meaning of the word, of the God/dess, of the perfect Divinity of another through the senses. It is tender, gentle, awed reverence; a passion approached through complete vulnerability and surrender to the Divine Other and her/his surrender to the Divine Self. Implicit in surrender is complete trust and respect. Trust that this vulnerability will not be abused and that the gentle, reverent worship will be returned; and the respect of independence. Surrender is not conquest or possession. There can be no enslavement or ownership of a God/dess; the divine can not be controlled by anyone. Love is the most precious sacrament of adoration; it restores the sacred to what has been profaned.http://www.sibyllineorder.org/editorials/ed_sensuality.htm

Monday, May 19, 2008

A Manual for Shit Happens

"One of the basic human characteristics is to try to search for meaning," Johnson says. "We use whatever means are available to us to explain randomly occurring events." That's why we often interpret chance happenings as signs from God, or credit our "lucky socks" for a successful night of poker. Or we say a player is on a hot streak if he scores a dozen baskets in a row, when in fact a run of success (or a run of failure) may be due simply to chance.Why are we so bad at detecting randomness? Probably because the ability to recognize patterns of events--and to identify their cause--has survival value, says Lockhead. Thus our minds may be designed to detect meaning, whether or not there is any to be found.http://www.psychologytoday.com/

  • Taoism: Shit happens.
  • Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit happens."
  • Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit.
  • Zen Buddhism: Shit is, and is not.
  • Zen Buddhism #2: What is the sound of shit happening?
  • Hinduism: This shit has happened before.
  • Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.
  • Islam #2: If shit happens, kill the person responsible.
  • Islam #3: If shit happens, blame Israel.
  • Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.
  • Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else.
  • Presbyterian: This shit was bound to happen.
  • Episcopalian: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve the right wine with it.
  • Methodist: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve grape juice with it.
  • Congregationalist: Shit that happens to one person is just as good as shit that happens to another.
  • Unitarian: Shit that happens to one person is just as bad as shit that happens to another.
  • Lutheran: If shit happens, don't talk about it.
  • Fundamentalism: If shit happens, you will go to hell, unless you are born again. (Amen!)
  • Fundamentalism #2: If shit happens to a televangelist, it's okay.
  • Fundamentalism #3: Shit must be born again.
  • Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?
  • Calvinism: Shit happens because you don't work.
  • Seventh Day Adventism: No shit shall happen on Saturday.
  • Creationism: God made all shit.
  • Secular Humanism: Shit evolves.
  • Christian Science: When shit happens, don't call a doctor - pray!
  • Christian Science #2: Shit happening is all in your mind.
  • Unitarianism: Come let us reason together about this shit.
  • Quakers: Let us not fight over this shit.
  • Utopianism: This shit does not stink.
  • Darwinism: This shit was once food.
  • Capitalism: That's MY shit.
  • Communism: It's everybody's shit.
  • Feminism: Men are shit.
  • Chauvinism: We may be shit, but you can't live without us...
  • Commercialism: Let's package this shit.
  • Impressionism: From a distance, shit looks like a garden.
  • Idolism: Let's bronze this shit.
  • Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit IS.
  • Existentialism #2: What is shit, anyway?
  • Stoicism: This shit is good for me.
  • Hedonism: There is nothing like a good shit happening!
  • Mormonism: God sent us this shit.
  • Mormonism #2: This shit is going to happen again.
  • Wiccan: An it harm none, let shit happen.
  • Scientology: If shit happens, see "Dianetics", p.157.
  • Jehovah's Witnesses: >Knock< >Knock<>
  • Jehovah's Witnesses #2: May we have a moment of your time to show you some of our shit?
  • Jehovah's Witnesses #3: Shit has been prophesied and is imminent; only the righteous shall survive its happening.
  • Moonies: Only really happy shit happens.
  • Hare Krishna: Shit happens, rama rama.
  • Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit!
  • Zoroastrianism: Shit happens half on the time.
  • Church of SubGenius: BoB shits.
  • Practical: Deal with shit one day at a time.
  • Agnostic: Shit might have happened; then again, maybe not.
  • Agnostic #2: Did someone shit?
  • Agnostic #3: What is this shit?
  • Satanism: SNEPPAH TIHS.
  • Atheism: What shit?
  • Atheism #2: I can't believe this shit!
  • Nihilism: No shit.
  • http://www.thejaywalker.com/pages/shit_happens.html

    Friday, May 16, 2008

    Fabiolo and Fabiolo ( Jaime de Mora y Aragon, A Noble Spanish Bon Vivant)

    Marguerita and Fabiolo,the canary,1966

    Jaime de Mora y Aragon, a flamboyant Spanish aristocrat whose amiable antics made him the toast of the Costa del Sol, died on Wednesday at a hospital near his home in Marbella, Spain. He was 70.His doctors said the cause was the latest of a series of a heart attacks he had suffered in recent years.
    Whether he was playing the piano in a Marbella cabaret or wrestling in Argentina, Mr. de Mora cut a memorable figure. With his tall, slender build, slicked-back hair, waxed mustache, monocle and cane, he was once likened to a blue-blooded Salvador Dali.
    As a fixture in Marbella since the early 1960's, Mr. de Mora, or Jimmy as he was widely known, became such a favorite among the wealthy and wellborn who make the resort their summer playground that he was named by the city's tourist office as its official greeter.
    The role suited him. For although he was at various times a waiter, bullfighter, taxi driver, model and movie actor, Mr. de Mora was primarily a promoter, one who provided the public face for an assortment of business ventures from nightclubs to theatrical productions financed with other people's money.
    Even his lavish annual parties were someone else's extravagance, that of the Saudi financier Adnan N. Khashoggi.
    The son of a wealthy count and a member of a collateral line of the Spanish royal family, Mr. de Mora was born in Madrid with an array of advantages, most of which he promptly put behind him.
    Dropping out of school at the age of 17, he entered the bohemian life of Paris, learned to play the piano and married a Mexican actress and later a Swedish model.
    His role as an international gadabout was curtailed somewhat in 1965, when he was convicted in asbentia in Italy for passing bad checks.
    For all his popularity in Spain, Mr. de Mora was apparently considered a bit much by the Belgian royal family. In 1960, when his sister, Fabiola, married King Baudouin, he was excluded from the weddingMr. de Mora secured some revenge of sorts. Cast as the Belgian Ambassador in an Italian film, he played the diplomat in drag.
    Even in his official role with the tourist office, Mr. de Mora tended to go over the top. Last August, for example, to publicize an annual gathering of motorcyclists, he put out the word that Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley had chosen Marbella for a belated honeymoon.
    The announcement drew a horde of gullible photographers as look-alikes enlisted by Mr. de Mora were escorted by 50 motorcycles.
    He is survived by his wife, the former Margit Ohlson, and his adopted son Fernando, who as Fernando Diaz Santiago had been his longtime personal secretary before a legal adoption in 1992.B
    y ROBERT MCG. THOMAS JR.Published: July 28,1995. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEEDE143AF93BA15754C0A963958260

    Tuesday, May 13, 2008

    Jose Saramago : Blindness


    http://ilustradanocinema.folha.blog.uol.com.br/arch2008-05-18_2008-05-24.html#2008_05-21_19_16_19-11204329-26


    Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero from the 1995 Ensaio sombre a Cegueira. 309 pages London: The Harvill Press, 1997 ISBN: 0-15-136700-9

    Comments of Bob Corbett
    October 2001

    Also appended remarks from George Snedeker December 2001

    How are we to imagine a world in which some central part of our meaning system suddenly disappears? I've played with the idea in thinking about having survived an atomic war which destroyed most humans, and all the basic infrastructures of everyday life. The problems one runs into even in such a game of imagination is to be consistent and being able to step far enough away to see what it is that really changes. In my day-dreaming imaginings I never went so far as to even dare to consider the inner changes in my person or the other survivors around me. It was much more than I could do to even anticipate and manage the physical problems of change and how to deal with them.

    Jose Saramago presents us with exactly such a problematic, yet his masterful analysis deals not only with the physical aspects of change and how his characters deal with them, but he inters into the psychological realm and astounds us with his insights and brilliance.

    A man is sitting at a traffic light one day waiting for the light to turn green and he suddenly goes blind. This is the "first blind man." Slowly this mysterious form of blindness, the like not known in the literature of modern medicine, spreads to the whole nation. As best we know, there is only one sighted person left in the realm. We follow a cast of fewer than 10 characters in detail. We have no names, only descriptors. After all one character tells us "blind people need no names." There is the first blind man, the first blind man's wife. The blind man had a seeming good semaritan who helps him home and but then steals his car and is thus called the man who had stole the car. There is the doctor whom he consults and the doctor's wife, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint and the man with the black eye patch. There are a few others, but these become our key characters, later on adding the dog of tears.

    In the early days of the white blindness in which each person seems only a white creamy mass, the government freaks out at the quick contagion of it and inters a large number of the blind in an old insane asylum. There, in scenes which are quite reminiscent of Golding's The Lord of the Flies, pure anarchy reigns and a gang sets itself up to control the government delivered food.

    Soon however, the 7 central characters have escaped the asylum when it turns out that all the guards who are keeping them interred have themselves gone blind and they simply walk out into a world of all blind people.

    All blind people that is, save one. The doctor's wife somehow remains sighted and she is able to give this small group the advantages that allows it to survive when others could not. She can locate places, keep them all in line and, most importantly, find food and water in a world gone blind.

    What is this odd book of Jose Saramago? Is it an allegory? If so an allegory of what? Of the dependency of humans on basic systems of order in the manner of Thomas Hobbes? Is it a condemnation of humans as being only on the edge of civilization and being shown to be ready to plunge into barbarism at the least shaking of central systems of order? Or on a more positive note, is the tiny group of 7 the hopeful core that even in such catastrophic circumstances would maintain humanity and re-create a safer environment? Were this latter the case then the critic has a difficult time explaining the presence of the one sighted person who survives and leads. Or does this problematic suggest that leaders are essential to the continuation of the human species?

    Or, abandoning the allegory theory, is this simply an astonishing tour-de-force of imagination, being just what it is literally and no more, the investigation of the logic of life when something such as sight disappears and the sighted woman is necessary as a sop since no other believable mode of survival would be easily available. This view would harmonize with the direction one finds in other Saramago novels especially The Stone Raft and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, perhaps even of The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Saramago seems to have a passion for playing with alternative realities and attending with care to the logic of the system he once sets up.

    I believe I lean much more to this notion that we are to understand Blindness not as an allegory, but as an exploration of an alternative reality. On his view we are freer to remain inside the story as given and just marvel at how he unravels the story and develops not only the physical ramifications, but especially how he deals with the inner realities and changes in the character's minds. However, on this view we are left with the curious status of the doctor's wife's sight, and then the even more curious recurrence of the "special" dog which we had in The Stone Raft as well. Saramago seems to like dogs in nearly occult roles in his fantasies. This one, however, plays no central as the dog in The Stone Raft. Rather, it gets it name by licking away the tears of the doctor's wife when she breaks down in near despair on see what has happened to the blind city. The dog of tears remains with the group the rest of the tale, but seems to have no other role.

    After just the first few pages I nearly lost my faith in Saramago. The blind man goes blind at the stop sign, gets taken home by the car thief and soon is taken to the doctor, who is an ophthalmologist, by his wife. I began to wonder -- how in the world can he sustain an entire moderately long novel as the story of this blind guy. Where could this go? What is there to build on? I suspected I may have had a weak Saramago novel in my hand. And then the thunderous second shoe drops, the doctor goes blind in the night. I simply gasped aloud on the subway I was riding when that happened. I knew I was now in for something odd, but I had no idea just how odd and soon people were falling into blindness with great rapidity and I was hooked on a new alternative world according to Saramago. The ending, which I won't mention was very unsatisfactory to me, but I'll leave that to the reader to discover and evaluate on his or her own.

    Jose Saramago is one of the great masters of storytelling and fiction of our time. His language is impeccable and he plays with it often, calling attention to it, even interrupting the story to reflect on words and modes of expressing thoughts. The story itself is captivating and in the later sections when the group of 7 are wandering in this nightmare of a city where all are blind is one of the most frightful and even terrifying scenes I know in fiction. This is in no way a horror story, yet I can't imagine a novel in the genre of horror rising to the level of terror that Saramago strikes in us in these scenes of wandering bands of blind people struggling to find food and stay alive. It is a macabre and brilliant painting of pictures for the verbally sighted and yet another addition to the marvelous list of Saramago triumphs.

    Special thanks to George Snedeker for this note:

    George Snedeker

    I have just read your review of Saramago's BLINDNESS. as a visually impaired person, I have been trying to make sense of his use of blindness as a trope. blindness operates in his text as both an intertextual sign and as a referent. blindness represents limitation. this is true in the very obvious sense of the analogy between knowing and seeing. blindness also leads the characters to return to the state of nature. I have always been troubled by the doctor's wife. her eyes allow her to lead the others to safety. she is also necessary as the narrator of the story. without her, who would describe the events and scenes of the novel.

    A more systematic review from George Snedeker

    BETWEEN METAPHOR AND REFERENT:Reading Saramago's "Blindness"
    George Snedeker
    Sociology Program
    SUNY/College at Old Westbury

    Jose Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. Although several of his books were available in English translation, not many people in the United States had read his novels prior to the award. Soon his latest novel, Blindness, was on the New York Times Best-Seller List. If I had not previously read two of his earlier books, I would not have been much interested in reading an allegorical novel that uses blindness as its master sign.

    Saramago uses a quotation from the Book of Exhortations as the epigram to Blindness: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe". Near the end of the novel, when the blind people are getting their vision back, he has one of his characters remark:" I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see" (292). These two quotations indicate the political and philosophical intention of the novel. They indicate, but do not disclose it. The greatest problem with an allegorical novel like Blindness is that it grants too much freedom to the reader. It allows too many interpretations.

    Saramago uses blindness as a metaphor for both personal misfortune and social catastrophe. The story begins when the first blind man loses his vision in his car while waiting for a traffic light to change. The man who helps him get safely home goes back and steals his car. The next day the wife of the first blind man takes him to see the eye doctor. Within a few days, the wife of the first blind man, the car thief, the doctor and all of the patients in his waiting room also go blind. The only character in the novel that miraculously avoids the affliction of blindness is the doctor's wife.

    With a large number of people going blind quickly and with no apparent cause, public health officials panic and the blind are interned in a former mental hospital to protect the population from infection.

    They are provided with food but are left to fend for themselves within the walls of the abandoned mental hospital. Soldiers keep watch and threaten to kill anyone who tries to escape.

    The numbers of infected persons increases rapidly. New groups of blind people are imprisoned in the hospital. Among the new inmates are a group of hoodlums, one of whom possesses a gun. The hoodlums soon demand that the other internees pay for their food and provide them with women to fulfill their sexual desires. This outrage soon leads to a revolt. A few days later, the blind internees realize that the entire population of the city has gone blind and they leave the hospital in search of food.

    As the narrative of Blindness progresses, the conditions of the blind continue to get worse. They find themselves in a society that no longer functions. Blind people roam the streets looking for food and shelter. After scavenging for days, they realize that soon it will be impossible to obtain enough nourishment to keep alive. While they are at the edge of despair their vision miraculously begins to return. The novel abruptly ends without making clear in what ways people have been transformed by the horrific experience of collective blindness.

    As I mentioned earlier, the doctor's wife is the only character who does not go blind. She remains free from infection. This allows her to assist the group of blind people. Her eyes allow her to exercise a degree of control over the situation. It is she who kills the blind man with the gun. It is she who leads the blind in their search for food and shelter.

    Blindness is clearly a sign of limitation in this novel. It causes the entire society to no longer function. It also places blind people in the condition of physical jeopardy and psychological torment. The society no longer functions because the blind are not able to provide the ordinary services that we are routinely dependent upon for survival: the production and distribution of food, water and electricity and the maintenance of the infrastructure of transportation and communication.

    The central problem with Saramago's novel is that his master sign "blindness" is a floating signifier. No matter what his intention, the metaphor of blindness has a real referent. Readers of this novel are faced with an ambiguity, the relationship between the "symbolic" and the "real". The authorial voice of the novel and the critical response which has appeared in the mainstream press has occluded the problem of the referent. Saramago writes as if his metaphorical depiction of misfortune and catastrophe could somehow be innocent of the cultural meanings that are routinely associated with visual impairment. It is interesting to note that reviews which have appeared in the mainstream press fail to even consider that the use of blindness as a metaphor might pose a problem.

    Reviewers have often made the comparison between Blindness and Camus' Plague, Kafka's Trial and Golding's Lord of the Flies. None of the reviews I have read have made the more obvious comparison to H.G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind". In this story, Wells uses blindness to represent a restricting society and the struggle of the individual against social conformity. Both Saramago and Wells use blindness as a sign of limitation because this idea is readily available. It is part of our common stock of cultural images. They use "blindness" for the same reason that Golding uses "children" in Lord of the Flies.

    Like Camus, Saramago uses disease as a way of representing social and political crisis. Both authors emphasize the human response to social catastrophe. However, there is a problem with the representation of historical events by means of a medical model. In this representation, nature displaces the social and replaces it with an image of fate. As a consequence, blindness is defined as a physical condition.

    Saramago's writings have often been discussed as an example of "magic realism". However, Blindness has more in common with Kafka's allegorical novels than it does with works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie.

    The fundamental problem posed by allegorical novels is how to locate their political and social meaning. Saramago provides his readers with few clues to guide interpretation. The story is set in an unnamed country, somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century. There are few identifying characteristics that provide a context for the events that transpire.

    The epidemic of blindness takes place without any apparent cause; the disease spreads quickly and as the novel ends the blind are getting their vision back. Their recovery has as little explanation as the onset of blindness. The problem the reader is faced with is what to make of the metaphorical illness, the social catastrophe, and the miraculous recovery. What does it all mean?

    Near the end of the book, Saramago has one of his characters suggest that perhaps they had never really been blind, that perhaps the sighted do not really see. If this is meant to be the underlying message of the novel it is, in fact, not a very original idea, since the analogy between "seeing" and "understanding" is one of the oldest ideas in Western philosophy. It is perhaps most clearly illustrated in Book 7 of The Republic, where Plato uses a visual metaphor to illustrate the limits of human understanding. He describes a cave where several people are seated in such a way that they cannot see the direct light of the fire. Instead, they can only see its distorted shadows upon the wall of the cave.

    I suspect that Saramago is more interested in probing the human capacity to understand social reality than the Platonic concept of Absolute Truth. I wish he had chosen a better way of representing this quest.

    Bibliography

    Plato. 1961.The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton: Princeton University Press

    Saramago, Jose. 1997. Blindness. New York: Harcourt Brace

    Wells, H. G. 1911. The Country of The Blind and Other Stories. London: T. Nelson

    Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu

    Jack Tworkov:express the creative force of the unconscious in art.




    The automatic method tried to tap the unconscious mind and put it on a canvas without the interference of the conscious mind. Doodling was one manifestation, as was most of abstract expressionism.

    Thursday, May 1, 2008

    Wanted: The last Nazis

    By Claire Soares
    Thursday, 1 May 2008

    At first glance, the mugshots appear to be a gallery of roguish grandfathers, but the octo- and nonagenarians are the 10 most-wanted fugitives of one of the most heinous regimes the world has ever seen. They are the last remaining Nazis, and the codename of the hunt to find them – Operation Last Chance – says it all

    More than 60 years after the Nuremberg trials put the first of Hitler's henchmen in the dock, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre yesterday released its most wanted list of the remaining Nazi war criminals. The battle to bring them to justice is complicated by a mix of political apathy, legal wrangling, legendary powers of evasion and what Nazi-hunters term "misplaced sympathy" for the craggy-faced men in their twilight years.

    "They are old, and the natural tendency is to be sympathetic toward people when they reach a certain age, but the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrators," said Efraim Zuroff, the Jerusalem-based director of the Wiesenthal Centre. "If we were to put a chronological limit on prosecution, we would basically be saying you can get away with genocide."

    The top target is Aribert Heim, now 93. Jewish prisoners at Mauthausen concentration camp probably knew better him as "Doctor Death". The Austrian medic would inject petrol and an array of different poisons straight into the hearts of his so-called patients to see which killed them fastest. He once removed the tattooed flesh of a prisoner and turned it into soft furnishings for his commandant's flat.

    An 18-year-old Jewish footballer and swimmer who was sent to Heim with an inflammation of the foot was knocked out, castrated and then decapitated. His head was boiled to remove the flesh and his skull was put on display. "[Heim] needed the head because of its perfect teeth," testified one hospital worker at the camp, according to an arrest warrant uncovered by the Associated Press news agency.

    Although the hunt for the fugitives continues, the race is on to bring them to justice before they die. Conscious of the ticking clock, Mr Zuroff will launch a media blitz in South America this summer, airing adverts there for the first time which publicise the $485,000 (£245,000) reward offered for Heim's arrest.

    Heim has been on the run since 1962 when, happily married and working as a gynaecologist in the West German town of Baden-Baden, he was tipped off that his arrest was imminent. Proof that he is still alive after all these years may be the €1m (£785,000) sitting in a Berlin bank account, which would probably have been claimed by his family if he were dead. The best guess now is that the doctor is in either in Chile, where his daughter lives, or Argentina – a favoured destination for fleeing Nazis, including the architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, and another lover of ghoulish medical experiments, Josef Mengele.

    It is only Heim whose whereabouts are unknown. For the other nine suspects, Mr Zuroff rattles off a string of house numbers and street names in cities around the world – from Klagenfurt in Austria to Perth, Australia. In these cases, the biggest problem is a lack of political will. John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian emigré, was extradited from the US to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death for allegedly being the Treblinka camp guard "Ivan the Terrible". But Israel's Supreme Court overturned the ruling and released him. He is now fighting deportation from America.

    "Some countries don't have the guts or the courage to prosecute and punish," sighs Mr Zuroff. "Nazi war criminals are not serial killers. They are not likely to murder again and the governments basically know that in a few years they will pass away."

    Take Sandor Kepiro, who is No 3 on the list. Now aged 93, he was among Hungarian officers alleged to have carried out a three-day massacre of more than 1,000 mostly Jewish people on the banks of the Danube in Serbia. He was convicted in 1944 but was pardoned and moved to Austria. In 1946, he was convicted again – in absentia – and decided to flee further afield, this time to Argentina.

    Half a century later, he slipped secretly back into his homeland after being assured he would not face punishment. But when he was discovered living in Budapest in 2006, there was a public outcry. No decision has been made on whether he will stand trial.

    Hungary is one of nine countries to be given a "failing" grade in the Wiesenthal Centre's annual scorecard. Sweden is another; lambasted for its blanket refusal to investigate Nazi-era crimes, because of a statute of limitations which kicks in at 25 years for all acts of murder, including genocide.

    Another is Australia; accused of being too slow in processing the extradition of most-wanted Nazi No 7, Charles Zentai.

    "For three years, they let this guy play games in court," says Mr Zuroff. "When you are talking about three years for someone who is in his 80s, that is a long time and could, effectively, help him elude justice."

    Mr Zentai, now 86 and living in a Perth suburb, is accused of beating an 18-year-old called Peter Balazs to death when he caught him riding a Budapest tram without wearing a yellow star to identify himself as a Jew. Mr Zentai denies the charges and has been fighting extradition since 2005. Last week, he lost a constitutional challenge against state magistrates ruling on his case. His family claims the incriminating witness testimony came from confessions beaten out of soldiers. They say that he stands little chance of a fair trial in Hungary, should extradition go ahead.

    Mr Zentai's son, Ernie Steiner, said yesterday: "I know my father was never a Nazi, so why is a Nazi-hunter hunting my father? He was never involved in the Holocaust or the mistreatment of Jews. So this is a complete fabrication."

    He dismissed the Most Wanted List as the theatrics of a bounty hunter, saying: "Of course there's a principle of justice but, when you've got the wrong bloke, you are persecuting an innocent man."

    One who didn't get away

    The case of the "Executioner of Bolzano" has been a triumph for Nazi hunters. Michael Seifert tortured his victims in the north Italian concentration camp using fire, broken bottles, clubs and ice-cold water.
    After the war he moved to Canada, working in a Vancouver mill and raising his family. In 2000, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering at least 18 people but it was two years before he was arrested by the Canadian police at Italy's request. He began a long fight against extradition, which ended in failure this February when, at the age of 83, he was finally deported to Rome to serve his sentence.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/wanted-the-last-nazis-818750.html

    Wednesday, April 30, 2008

    Exhibition Seeks Rightful Owners for Nazi Loot

    from a catalog Works on Paper -1999 solo exhibit Marguerita

    Thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis are still not back in the hands of their rightful owners. A new exhibition in Jersualem is trying to fix that -- visitors can file a claim for the works on display if they recognize their property.
    An exhibition with a difference has opened in Israel. Visitors will have the option of taking the paintings home with them -- provided they can prove they are the works' rightful owners.

    The exhibition "Looking for Owners: Custody, Research and Restitution of Art Stolen in France during World War II," which runs through June 3 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, shows 53 paintings which were looted from their rightful owners by the Nazis. The works, which include paintings by major European artists such as Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Edgar Degas, come from France's collection of unrestituted works of art, known as the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR).

    The Nazis took around 100,000 art works from France during World War II, either by looting or commercial transactions. The Allies then repatriated some 60,000 works to France after the war, with the intention that they be returned to their proper owners. Around 2,000 unrestituted works were given to France's national museums in the early 1950s and are now stored or exhibited in museums around France, including in Paris' Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay.
    The MNR collection came to the attention of the general public in 1995 when author Hector Feliciano published his book "The Lost Museum," which looks at the Nazis' schemes to steal art. Since then, claims have been made for various MNR works and several have been returned to their true owners.
    The new exhibition, which is co-organized by France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Communication, aims to help that process along. "What we expect from this exhibit is that a miracle will occur and someone will come here and say 'that belongs to me,'" French Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Monday night, in remarks quoted by the Jerusalem Post.

    P.S. I wonder if the family of Richard Kallert,the IIIReich Transportation Chief,who invaded my mother's home and building in Krakow,then sending her mother in law from the 4th floor to her Death, and my mother to Auschwitz?
    Would they return what belonged to her, like the Cellini sculpture,Polish art,jewelry and other assets?


    Details of the works exhibited will be published on the Israeli Justice Ministry's Web site, to help the rightful owners identify their property. Restitution requests -- together with the appropriate documentation to identify ownership of the piece -- can then be addressed to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.A companion exhibition, "Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust in the Israel Museum," looks at the history of works which were looted during World War II and subsequently brought to Israel. The exhibition, which also runs until June 3 at the Israel Museum, includes work by Marc Chagall, Egon Schiele and Alfred Sisley, among others.

    Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler organized a systematic looting of Europe's art treasures with the help of art experts who compiled a secret "wish list" of works to be stolen. His aim was to transform his hometown of Linz in Austria into the art capital of the Third Reich. According to experts, between 250,000 and 600,000 looted artworks remain unclaimed and are still held by museums, governments, and private collectors around the world.
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,536344,00.html


    "On dit qu'il ne faut pas remuer le passé, qu'il ne faut pas avoir les yeux sur la nuque, qu'il faut regarder devant et ne pas s'acharner à ouvrir de

    vieilles blessures, a-t-il dit. Les blessures ne sont pas encore fermées. Elles vibrent dans le sous-sol de la société comme un cancer sans répit. Leur seul traitement est la vérité, et ensuite la justice. L'oubli est à ce prix."Le nom de Macarena Gelman résume le cheminement tortueux de son identité. Macarena, c'est le prénom choisi par ses parents adoptifs uruguayens. Gelman, le nom de sa famille biologique et notamment de son grand-père, le poète argentin Juan Gelman. Un nom qu'elle ne porte que depuis trois ans.
    Macarena est la fille d'Argentins disparus durant les années de plomb des dictatures militaires sud-américaines. Née en captivité en Uruguay, elle ignorait tout de son origine jusqu'à l'âge de 23 ans. "Je suis passée par une phase de recueillement personnel, il m'a fallu du temps pour comprendre ce qui m'est arrivé", confie-t-elle, de passage à Paris.

    Monday, April 28, 2008

    Gefilte fish forever


    drawing by Marguerita

    Quenelles are ground light meats or fish poached in liquids that have varying sauces for accompaniment. The Romans started it, the French Lyonnaise perfected it and the Jews call it Gefilte Fish.

    5 pounds ground white fish, pike and carp
    5 pounds of fish heads and bones
    2 onions
    1 tsp white pepper corns
    2 leeks
    3 eggs beaten
    2 tsp salt
    1 tsp white pepper corns
    1 bunch of carrots
    1/2 cup matzoh meal or bread crumbs

    Make court boullion with fish heads, 1 onion, 2 carrots, leeks, salt, peppercorns with enough water to cover for one hour or more.

    Mix ground fish with eggs, meal/crumbs, 1 grated onion and form into balls. Poach in court bouillion with 4 slice carrots for at least an hour till firm to touch. Cool or can be served warm. It will be more firm the next day.

    Accompany with Fresh Horseradish sauce. Grate 1 lb fresh horseradish with cooked grated beets (red or golden) mix with 1/2 cup vinegar (any type) and 1/4 cup sugar.

    Serve with Matzoh or water biscuits

    For a great hors d'oeuvres make balls large enough to slice and cut with a star cutter and place on water biscuits topped with the horseradish.

    So What?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FAKRpUCYY

    Friday, April 18, 2008

    The Pope: Vox Populi,Vox Dei

    “Man puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you or me,” said a scruffy man pushing a shopping cart full of empty bottles and cans on Thursday in front of the building where the pope is staying.

    Joseph Ratzinger : The Pope and voice of Christ

    my mother's arm- A.26.427


    What the Nazi experience seems to have bred in Joseph Ratzinger, or the preexisting trait it reinforced in him, was a kind of distancing, a pattern of removing himself from unpleasantness, isolating the pure ideal — of the faith, the church, the family, the nation — from the inevitable corruptions of the world. This approach fosters a sense of remoteness in his remembrances, a detachment that may strike many as cold. In fact, it is problematic when a churchman who places such a high priority on personal rectitude and individual holiness appears unreflective about his own history. And if it is even more problematic when that churchman becomes the Supreme Pastor of the Roman Catholic Church, the leader of the ongoing dialogue with Judaism.
    http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/a-key-moment-in-benedicts-relationship-with-the-jews/index.html?hp

    Sunday, April 13, 2008

    Xodó by Dominguinhos


    Born in the State of Pernambuco (Northeast Brazil), Dominguinhos started his music career in his childhood, playing with his brothers in a trio called Os Três Pingüins (The 3 Penguins). At that time he could already play the 8-bass accordion, which has been his lifetime companion. At the age of 7, Luiz Gonzaga, the King of Baião (a very popular Brazilian rhythm from that region), heard the boy playing and was so impressed that he gave Dominguinhos his address in Rio de Janeiro. Six years later, when Dominguinhos moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro, he paid a visit to Luiz Gonzaga and was given an accordion by the master. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Dominguinhos made a living by playing boleros and samba-tunes at casinos, gafieiras (ballrooms), popular restaurants, night-clubs and on Radio Nacional, whose cast he joined in 1967, the year he recorded his first LP. He became well-known in the Brazilian music scene and since then he has been invited to take part in recordings and tours with Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Maria Bethânia. He has also become known for his songwriting. In collaboration with Gilberto Gil, he wrote some songs, such as "Lamento Sertanejo" and "Abri a Porta". His greatest hits are "Tantas Palavras", with Chico Buarque, "De Volta para o Aconchego" (with Nando Cordel), recorded by Elba Ramalho and "Isso Aqui Tá Bom Demais". Dominguinhos has recorded over 30 albums, written movie soundtracks and consolidated his career as songwriter and accordionist. He has already won 4 Sharp awards.
    http://video.aol.com/video-detail/dominguinhos-eu-so-quero-um-xodo/2665885437

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6hHX9iZ0ck