Francis Bacon: Study of Gerard Schurmann

12-28-07

Today in 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's mammoth 260,000-word history of the Soviet prison camp system, The Gulag Archipelago, was published in Paris, France. The book is based on Solzhenitsyn's experiences in the camps for eight years, as well as 227 other inmates he interviewed. When the book was released in the Soviet Union, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested and exiled, but he was also finally able to go to Sweden and collect the Nobel Prize in literature he had been awarded in 1970.

On this day in 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiere demonstrated the first movie projector, the cinematographe, in Paris, France. It projected its images out onto a screen, unlike Thomas Edison's kinetograph, which was a peep show that the viewer looked into, and it weighed only 20 pounds compared to Edison's half-ton invention. The first film they showed was "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory." The movie opened with a concierge unlocking the gates, showed people walking through, and ended with the concierge closing the gates again. They made more than 2,000 films like this, without plots or characters, and thought of them just as moving pictures, and despite the thousands of people who lined up at their viewings every night, the Lumieres thought that movies would be a passing fad and Auguste went off to school to become a medical scientist, and Louis went back to working on still photographs.

-The Writer's Almanac

Fits of the Day: 12-27-07

1. Clemens hires an investigator to help stretch his hamstrings...

2. Cheney reaffirms his status as an enemy of humanity (See article under "Hello, Pablo")...

3. And America is sleepwalking into a mid-life crisis (See Chris Hedges article in "comments").

12-27-07

It's the birthday of astronomer Johannes Kepler, born to a poor mercenary in Wurttemberg, Germany (1571), who tracked the orbital path of Mars and published his three famous laws of planetary motion — which validated Copernicus's theory of a sun-centered solar system — and later helped Isaac Newton discover the law of gravity. Kepler was nearly blind from a smallpox epidemic when he was three, and he developed the first eyeglass designs for nearsightedness and farsightedness. He was also the first to explain that the tides are caused by the moon, the first to propose that the sun rotates on an axis, and the first to use planetary cycles to calculate the year of the birth of Jesus Christ.

It was on this day in 1831 that Charles Darwin (books by this author) set sail from England on the HMS Beagle. Darwin's biology professor had recommended that he go on the upcoming voyage touring the Galapagos Islands and South America, but his father was against the dangerous trip. Darwin went anyway, and he explored the rainforests and was amazed by the plants and animals that he found. He returned to England, and he thought about what he had seen and developed his theory of evolution. In his book On the Origin of Species (1859), he wrote, "Probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed. There is grandeur in this view of life that... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

It's the birthday of the father of bacteriology, Louis Pasteur, born in Dole, France (1822), whose discoveries in germs and disease are why we now wash our hands before dinner.

-The Writer's Almanac

December 26th, 2007

It's the birthday of author Henry Miller (books by this author) born in New York City (1891), who wrote about poverty, sex, and squalor in his books Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring after living on the streets in Paris, where he stayed with friends and begged on the street just to get enough money for food. Miller wrote in Tropic of Cancer, "It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!"

Edvard Munch, "Death And Love"

Pablo Picasso, "Le Pichet Noir Et La Tete De Mort"

Basquiat

12-23-07

It was on this day in 1964 that comedian Lenny Bruce (books by this author) was sentenced to four months in jail for obscenity. At the time, Bruce was using profanity in his stand-up routine, and he talked openly about sex and made offensive jokes about race, politics, and religion. During the trial, a police witness described Bruce's performance to the court, and Bruce claimed that the man was trying to steal his act. Dozens of artists came to Bruce's defense, including Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, James Baldwin, and Allen Ginsberg. After the sentence, Lenny Bruce became obsessed with the trial and he gave up performing as a comedian and began reading the court transcripts to his audiences. He died two years later of a heroin overdose, still waiting to hear an appeal of his case. It wasn't until 2003 that Governor George Pataki granted him a posthumous pardon.

It was on this day that the French playwright Jean Racine, (books by this author) was baptized near Soissons, France. As a boy, Racine was cloistered from society in a heretical Catholic sect called the Jansenists, and he was forbidden from enjoying the smallest earthly pleasures, especially reading. When one of Racine's instructors found him reading Aethiopica, a Greek romance, he threw the book into the fire. The young boy smuggled in another copy and after he had finished it, Racine handed the book to his teacher saying, "Here, now you can burn this one, too." Jean Racine is best known for his play Phaedra (1677), based on the Greek myth about Queen Phaedra who falls in love with her stepson and commits suicide after her husband, Theseus, returns from the underworld and discovers her betrayal.

It's the birthday of composer Giacomo Puccini, born in Lucca, Tuscany (1858). Puccini's four greatest operas are thought to be the last in the great Italian tradition. All begin with a love story, focus on the female lead, and all of them end tragically. They are La Boheme (1896), Tosca (1900), Madame Butterfly (1904), and Turandot, which was left incomplete at Puccini's death in 1924.

-The Writer's Almanac

Damien Hirst

Man Ray, Tears: 1930

Zappa and Stalin's Birthday: 12-21-07

It's the birthday of rocker Frank Zappa. (music by this artist) The singer, songwriter, and composer was born in Baltimore, Maryland (1940). Zappa's father was a meteorologist in the Army who studied the effects of weather on explosions and poisonous gases. The gas masks and chemical paraphernalia his dad brought home were some of young Zappa's first toys. When Frank Zappa started playing atonal classical music on his electric guitar, he said that his goal was to make sounds that would cause people to run from the room the moment they heard it. He was also a political activist, and he once proposed that the United States form a fourth branch of government devoted entirely to creativity.

It is the birthday of Joseph Stalin, born in the Russian colony of Georgia (1879). Stalin loved to sing, and he sang so well that he could have become a professional performer. He was also an avid reader, a fan of Zola, Hemingway, and James Fenimore Cooper. He loved Last of the Mohicans so much that sometimes he dressed up as an Indian to entertain guests at parties. But he banned these books from his country. He said, "Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?" It is estimated that Stalin killed more than 20 million people during his rule; he's responsible for more human deaths than anyone else in history.
-The Writer's Almanac

12-20-07: Literary-Historical Notes

It is the birthday of Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, the woman who broke the heart of William Butler Yeats. Gonne was legendarily beautiful — six feet tall with cascading red hair, and the poet Yeats proposed shortly after meeting her and he stayed a virgin until he was 31 in the hope that she would marry him. Gonne refused his repeated proposals and focused all of her passion on the cause of Irish independence. She campaigned for land reform, advocated for political prisoners, and founded the Daughters of Erin to oppose British cultural influence in Ireland. She was also the model for many of Yeats' heroines. In his 1902 parable of Ireland's troubles, Cathleen ni Houlihan, Gonne played the title role, an old woman, Mother Ireland, who sheds her cloak to reveal a young, vibrant, free nation.

It's the birthday of poet, novelist, and essayist Andrei Codrescu, (books by this author) born in an old medieval fortress city in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania (1946). Codrescu witnessed the Communist takeover of Romania, and he always remembered how the smell of apple strudel in his hometown was overpowered by the smell of boots. He didn't know any English when he landed in the United States. He said, "It's still a mystery to me exactly how I learned the language. [But] I was 19 years old and I had very urgent things to tell girls." When he traveled back to Romania in 1989 to witness the democratic revolution, Codrescu watched 45 years of Communist rule undone in eight days. He is the author of Wakefield (2004) and A Bar in Brooklyn (1999).

On this day in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed for $15 million, which was roughly three cents an acre. The land, which spanned from Montana to the port of New Orleans, doubled the size of the United States.

-The Writer's Almanac

12-19-07: Historical Notes

It's the birthday of singer Edith Piaf, (work by this artist) born Edith Giovanna Gassion, in Paris (1915). Piaf's mother was a cafe singer who abandoned her at birth, and her father was an acrobat who took her with him on tours and encouraged her to sing on the streets and in cafés. In a few years, she was singing in the top music halls of Paris and she had recorded two records. The passion and depression Edith Piaf's velvety voice conveyed earned her many famous admirers. Jean Cocteau wrote a play for her. To aid the French Resistance in World War II, Piaf traveled to German prisoner-of-war camps and sang for the French inmates. During these tours, she would be photographed with the POWs and those pictures would be enlarged and put on false ID cards, which she would distribute on the next visit. Today, there's a plaque in Paris where she was born that says, "On the steps of this house... was born into the greatest poverty Edith Piaf, whose voice later stunned the world."

It's the birthday of writer Italo Svevo, (books by this author) born in Trieste, Italy (1861). He was a closet writer who worked as a bank clerk and then got a job in his father-in-law's paint-making plant. When Svevo decided to take some English classes for business reasons, the tutor that he found turned out to be aspiring writer James Joyce, who was living in Trieste at the time. Svevo confessed to Joyce that he had written two failed novels, and after reading them, Joyce told Svevo that he was a neglected genius. Svevo was inspired to write a fictional memoir about a patient undergoing psychoanalysis, which took him 10 years to finish. His self-published book The Confessions of Zeno (1923) is considered one of the greatest Italian novels of the 20th century.

On this day in 1732, Benjamin Franklin books by this author began publishing Poor Richard's Almanac in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Franklin's Almanac included weather reports, eclipses, tides, and tables of English Kings. But what made it famous were the witty proverbs about life that Franklin included as filler, such as, "Well done is better than well said" and "Haste makes waste" and "Neither a Fortress nor a Maidenhead will hold out long after they begin to parley." Ben Franklin's inspiration may have come when he was 15 years old and he worked in his brother's print shop. He would sneak into work at night and leave letters to the editor signed "Silence Dogood." The letters became very popular, but when young Franklin told his brother James that he was writing them, the two came to blows and Ben ran away to Philadelphia. When Benjamin Franklin started Poor Richard's, his brother was publishing an almanac of his own called "Poor Robin's Almanac."

It was on this day in 1843 that Charles Dickens (books by this author) came out with A Christmas Carol. He got the idea in mid-October and struggled to finish the story in time for the holidays. He published the book himself with gilt-edged pages and a red bound cover within a week of Christmas and sold 6,000 copies in the first few days. The instant best-seller revived Christmas when it was on the decline in England, during the Industrial Revolution, and it launched Dickens into a fame much like The Beatles — on his reading tours, Charles Dickens was mobbed by adoring fans, who would rip his clothes, wait in long lines to shake his hand, and pull down the windows on his train car to grab at him.

-The Writer's Almanac

Basquiat, Florence, 1983

Basquiat, Untitled, 1983

Lucien Freud, 1996: Leigh Bowery

Lucien Freud, 1993

12-14-07

It was on this day in 1900 that the physicist Max Planck published his theory of quantum mechanics. He was trying describe the behavior of light in his experiments, but found that the only way he could do it was to assume that light travels in little packets, which didn't make sense to him. He called his theory "an act of desperation." He assumed that some future physicist would figure out what he had done wrong. But it turned out that he wasn't doing anything wrong. Physicists have been exploring and describing the strange behavior of light and subatomic particles ever since.

The basic idea behind quantum mechanics is that particles of light, as well as other subatomic particles, are by nature unpredictable. If you shoot them across the room, you can never predict exactly where they will end up. The Danish physicist Niels Bohr once said that a person who was not shocked by quantum theory did not understand it, and the physicist Richard Feynman once said that while only a modest number of people truly understand the theory of relativity, no one understands quantum mechanics. Max Planck himself died in 1947, and he never came to fully accept the theory he discovered on this day in 1900. But his discovery led to the development of modern electronics, including the transistor, the laser, and the computer.

Apartment Houses, Paris, 1946: Jean Dubuffet

Oil with sand and charcoal on canvas

Poem: M.K. 12-07

oooo are you buggin me man

when i

whoa man

i'm getting bugged now
                             

Lovers, 1928: Renee Magritte

Pleasure, 1927: Renee Magritte

December, 7, 2007

It's the birthday of the poet Emily Dickinson, (books by this author) born in Amherst, Massachusetts (1830), who dropped out of college at Mount Holyoke to take care of the family household when her mother had a nervous breakdown. She didn't enjoy being a housekeeper, hated dusting, and hated hosting all the men who stopped by to talk politics with her father every day. She watched as her friends got married and moved away, and she grew increasingly isolated from her community, in part because she did not consider herself a Christian and so she did not go to church. Many biographers have tried to find some other reason why she withdrew from the world, suggesting that she may have fallen in love with a man who rejected her. But there's no definite evidence for that theory.

What we do know is that Dickinson spent most of her adult life in her corner bedroom, which contained a writing table, a dresser, a Franklin stove, a clock, a ruby decanter, and pictures on the wall of three writers: George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Thomas Carlyle. She wrote on scraps of paper and old grocery lists, compiled her poetry and tucked it away neatly in her desk drawer. After a few years of writing, she began collecting her handwritten poems into packets of folded paper, stitching the spines herself. She often included poems in her numerous letters to friends.

Dickinson eventually wrote more than 1,700 poems, most of them composed during the Civil War. She wrote 366 poems in 1862 alone, about one per day. Only seven of all her poems were published in her lifetime. Her sister Lavinia found the huge stash of the rest of her poems after Dickinson's death, but they were heavily edited when they finally came out in 1890. For a while, Dickinson was considered an interesting minor poet. It wasn't until 1955 that a more complete edition of her poetry was published, with the original punctuation intact. She's now considered the first great lyric poet in American history.

Emily Dickinson said, "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."

-From The Writer's Almanac

Anyone know who this is

2012

holy shit mike
so last night i'm watching the history channel, see
and they have on a show on nostradamus
and they're talking about a text of images, see - images
possibly drawn by his son, see
and they're all done up in symbols and whathaveyou
very symbolic, these images
watercolors by the way
and they're prophetic, don't you know
and well, wouldn't you believe it, they got on to talking of the apocalypse
the apocalypse is what i'm saying to you
well mike they said something interesting indeed
very interesting as a matter of fact
interesting as could be, is what i'm saying
and they said - in astronomical terms, there is a centerpoint in the galaxy
you can see it in the nightsky, i guess
although i've never seen it myself
but it's there, and it's all mapped out thanks to the stars, of course
and well, mike - now you listen here
the sun comes into alignment with that centerpoint of the galaxy every 13,000 years
so the last time it aligned - it was about 11,000 BC
listen to me mike - because this is important
so guess what
it's coming into alignment again
and real soon too
and this event - this event is the astronomical sign of the end of the world as we know it
mike
mike this is big
it gives me the bumps just thinking about it mike
because this is nostradamus we're talking about
and i know he's spotty as a prophet and all that
but i guess he was not so bad at a student of the stars and the occult
and i guess, mike
that he predicted that the apocalypse would take place at the moment of this alignment
and that date, mike
that date is 2012

Apu

Apu: Please do not offer my god a peanut.

Homer: No offense Apu, but when they're handing out religions you must be out taking a whizz.
Apu: Mr. Simpson, pay for your purchases and get out...and come again.

Apu: I have come to make amends, sir. At first, I blamed you for squealing, but then I realized, it was I who wronged you. So I have come to work off my debt. I am at your service.
Homer: You're selling what, now?
Apu: I am selling only the concept of karmic realignment.
Homer: You can't sell that! Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos.
Apu: He's got me there.

Apu: Thank you for coming. I'll see you in Hell.

Apu: By the 7 arms of Visnu, I swear it. I am not a Hindu.

Apu: Yes! I am a citizen! Now which way to the welfare office? I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I work, I work.

Apu: I won't lie to you. On this job, you will be shot at.

Apu: Look at that outrageous markup! You magnificent bastard, I salute you!

Apu: Tonight I’m going to party like it’s on sale for $19.99!

Apu: Ooh, they used nylon rope this time. It feels so smooth against my skin. Almost sensuous.

Apu: Homer, you are asleep at your post! Now go change the expiration dates on the dairy products!

Apu: All Kwik-E-Mart employees must be skilled in the deadly arts.

Apu: Thank you for knocking over my inventory. Please come again.

Apu: Shiva H. Vishnu!

Apu: Back then I was known as the fifth Beatle.

Apu: Mrs. Simpson, I--I cannot go there. That is the scene of my spiritual depantsing.

Noam Chomsky's Birthday

It's the birthday of the linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky, (books by this author) born in Philadelphia (1928), who started out as a linguist at a time when most linguists believed that language is something children only learn through habit and practice. But Chomsky believed that language was instinctive in human beings, and in his book Syntactic Structures (1957), he developed a way of describing grammatical elements of all languages to show that there is a universal grammar innate to the human brain. His ideas revolutionized the field, making him the foremost linguist in the world.

But today, he's better known for his radical political ideas. He first got involved in politics during the Vietnam War, helping to organize the protest march on the Pentagon that Norman Mailer wrote about in his book Armies of the Night. Chomsky and Mailer ended up sharing a jail cell after the march, and Mailer described him as "a slim, sharp-featured man with an ascetic expression and an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity."

He still writes about linguistics, but he's also written books about American foreign policy, including Manufacturing Consent (1986) and Deterring Democracy (1991).

-The Writer's Almanac

Moe Sizlack

Moe: I'm better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt, not that fancy store-bought dirt... I can't compete with that stuff.

Moe: Hi, my name's Moe. Or as the ladies like to refer to me, 'hey you in the bushes'

Ned Flanders: You ugly hate-filled man.
Moe: Hey. I may be ugly and I may be hate-filled but ... uh ... what was that last thing you said?

Homer: Moe, I need your advice.
Moe: Yeah?
Homer: See, I got this friend named... Joey Jo Jo... Junior... Shabadoo.
Moe: That's the worst name I ever heard.
Joey runs out of the bar sobbing
Barney: Hey! Joey Jo Jo!

Moe: Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.

Moe: They think they're so high and mighty, just because they never got caught driving without pants.

Renee (Moe’s girlfriend): Really, you think I’m gorgeous?
Moe: Yeah, well the parts that are showing. I guess you could have a lot of weird scars or a fake ass or something.
Renee: You don’t talk to a lot of women do you?

Moe: Homer, lighten up! You're making Happy Hour bitterly ironic

Moe: People today are healthier and drinking less. You know, if it wasn't for the junior high school next door, no one would even use the cigarette machine.

George Seurat, “Pierrot and Colombine,” conté crayon on paper, from around 1887-88.