Music Monday ~ Tulsa to France

I was sorry to read of the death of country singer Don Williams at the weekend. Years ago, in Harrogate, Yorkshire, we saw him perform with his band. Back then, little did I imagine or dream that one day I'd actually be "Living in Tulsa Time".

Vale Don - and thanks for all those country pleasures!

I was obliquely reminded of the following song by a news item last week. Fellow-blogger, David, at The Oligarch Kings covered it in a very good post on the topic: Whole foods Mon Dieu!


(Yeah - you might groan, but I couldn't find a decent song about cheese!)

Saturday & Sundry Moments from The Week That Was - French Style

Gallic-flavoured momentary discomforts: the qu'ils mangent de la brioche: "let them eat cake!" moment, combined with a mauvais quart d’heure, (as well as having fifteen minutes of fame, one can also have a “bad quarter of an hour” — a brief but embarrassing, upsetting, or demoralizing experience) - this week's related shaming award goes to Louise Linton, labels-loving wife of Steven Mnuchin, US Treasury Secretary. She replied condescendingly to an Instagram poster about her lifestyle and belittled the woman, Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Portland, Oregon for having less money than she does. Thereafter Twitter and the rest of the net did what they do best (or worst depending on one's viewpoint).
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41027854
BUT... what would Madame Defarge have done?

Our plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose moment (the more things change, the more they stay the same) came with President Trump's speech on 22 August : more troops to Afghanistan.

Blackwater founder says Trump's Afghanistan plan is 'Obama-lite'
By Ellen Mitchell

Linked to that is our après moi, le déluge moment: “after me, the flood.”

Stephen Bannon was removed, one way or another, from the White House -

After Bannon, Do Hawks Rule the Roost? By Miles Mogulescu
Without Bannon’s strategic guidance, it’s likely that Trump wouldn’t be President. There’s a special place in hell for that.

But there was another side to Bannon that has been lost in the turmoil over his departure from the White House. The New York Times characterized him as the White House’s “resident dove. From Afghanistan and North Korea to Syria and Venezuela, Mr. Bannon… has argued against making military threats or deploying American troops into foreign conflicts.”

Loosely linked also - another recent exit from The White House: that of Anthony Scaramucci, he of the colourful language and tale-telling proclivity. Sadly we lost him before he could delight us further. This was, no doubt at all, our
pour encourager les autres moment. “So as to encourage the others”— that's the straight translation, but this actually, and obtusely, refers to an action carried out to discourage any future episodes of similar behaviour, unhelpful to The Powers That Be.

Lastly, not an actual moment but a famous (in Britain) French phrase, seldom uttered, often seen as legend on isignia: honi soit qui mal y pense - "shame on him who thinks badly of it". In English, used to discourage preemptively or unjustly talking something down. Dates from the early Middle Ages. Tongue in cheek cartoon (at right) could represent a imagined recent honi soit moment for Queen Elizabeth II.

Battles and Loops

 Hat-tip here

Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the Netherlands.

From this piece in The Independent - a British newspaper -

The Battle of Waterloo will be celebrated with a national memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral to mark its bicentenary on Thursday (today) – and while descendants of those who fought there will be among the VIP guests, they have been warned that it will not be "triumphalist". Nonetheless, it has to be said, the Duke of Wellington's victory over Napoleon and the Bonapartists at a little ridge near the hamlet of Mont St Jean, 11 miles south of Brussels, was so complete that "Waterloo" has become synonymous with a crushing defeat.

But, it must also be added, that is not how it looked in the spring of 1815. Radical MPs such as Sam Whitbread, son of the brewer, were appalled at the prospect of Britain being dragged into another costly war against Napoleon. The Commons were just as divided as during the debates before the Iraq war in 2003. Whitbread and other Radical MPs accused Wellington of going to war for regime change – just as the anti-war MPs accused Tony Blair over Saddam Hussein.

Reading on, about the upshot of the Battle, and circumstances in Britain when soldiers returned home, the story of Waterloo bleeds into an uprising in northern England, I've blogged about this before:
The Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. In the present article circumstance leading to it is mentioned thus:

.....the bloated Prince Regent, who was as much reviled as the newly-restored Bourbon monarchy in France. In the same year as Waterloo, "Prinny" commissioned John Nash to turn his beach house in Brighton into a fantasy Moghul palace – the Royal Pavilion – and refurbish Carlton House at vast expense. The Government was so alarmed that Lord Liverpool, Lord Castlereagh and the Chancellor Nicholas Vansittart wrote to the spendthrift prince, warning him to rein in his spending as the only means of "weathering the impending storm"

The storm they feared broke in Manchester on 16 August 1819 when an estimated 60,000 men, women and children crowded onto St Peter's Field (now the site of the Radisson Hotel) to hear a powerful public speaker Henry "Orator" Hunt – the Tony Benn of his day – call for representation in Parliament for the burgeoning industrialised towns of the Midlands and the North, who had no MPs in the Commons to speak up for their people. And among the crowd was one Waterloo Man – John Lees – whose story can stand for many... (the story, of subsequent bloodshed, continues).

See also British Museum website for this illustration of the Peterloo Massacre:

The Manchester Yeomanry ride down women, children, and men, making for a platform (right) in the background, where Hunt stands with three supporters. The foremost points his sabre at a fainting woman with children round her, who is supported by a man; he says "None but the brave deserve the Fair." A little boy, holding his mother's kerchief, exclaims: "Oh pray Sir, doan't Kill Mammy, she only came to see Mr Hunt." Another man rides up furiously, saying, "Cut him [the boy] down, Cut him down." On the left the yeomanry ride forward in close formation. Above them the head of the Regent (poorly characterized) emerges from clouds, supporting the beam of a pair of scales. The heavier scale is inscribed 'Peculators' [Ministers and placemen], the other 'Reformers'. He says: "Cut them down, doan't be afraid, they are not Armed, courage my boys, and you shall have a vote of thanks, & he that Kills most shall be made a Knight errant [cf. No. 12811, &c.] and your exploits shall live for ever, in a Song, or second Chivey Chace." Hunt, hat in hand, exclaims: "Shame, Shame, Murder, Murder, Massacree [sic]." Two others echo "Shame." They have banners, one surmounted by a cap of Liberty.
Septemeber 1819. Hand-coloured etching

As has been said before in posts here, and in comments, it seems we are trapped in a loop - do you detect it? It's always us and them: us = ordinary people; them = the wealthy ruling elite and/or corporations. Like east and west, ne'er the twain shall meet, except in bloodshed and violence.

Oh...this is depressing...let's end with the song: Waterloo, the song with which ABBA won the Eurovision Song contest in 1974.

Je Suis C...oncerned

The "Je suis Charlie" thing must have surely run its course. The issue has been debated, written about, conspiracised and generally chewed to a pulp over past days. There's little more that can be said on the events themselves. I feel a little uneasy (to say the least) about what could spring from them. Millions marching in Paris at the weekend?

There have been reports and commentary about a growing right-wing, fascist-like element in European politics for a while now, long before the Charlie Hebdo killings were international front-page news. I don't know which way Hebdo leaned politically. Those in the know claim it was well to the left. If this were so, though, wouldn't their satire have been more conducive to encouraging rank and file French people to support their Muslim neighbours and workmates? I cannot possibly see how the obscene caricatures of the Muslim religious figure head would help in that regard.

I don't for a moment think Hebdo was an outright fascist outfit, akin to Germany's Der Sturmer in the 1930s, whose anti-Semitic cartoons must have aided acceptance of mass deaths in Germany, and were preceded by the dehumanising of whole groups through caricature. What we've seen recently indicates that Charlie Hebdo has at least been lending a (possibly inadvertent) hand to the growing right's National Front party in France, led by Marine le Pen.

Bearing in mind how the world is now so easily connected, second by second, via internet's social media, it doesn't take much imagination to see how European countries, whose large immigrant Muslim populations are causing some native born individuals and groups to worry about losing their national identity in the future, might jump on the "Je suis Charlie" bandwagon. Their intent could be to infiltrate and use it, not to uphold free speech, but for their own political ends - to de-humanise, mock and pillory immigrant groups, deter further immigration, and in turn foster growth of what would become a fascist following. Things are not the same as events in the 1930s, fears and reasons for them are different. There was no fear of Jewish terrorism then. The "pieces" are different, but the "game" is related. I think the astrology is related also, as it happens - a time of Uranus-Pluto square aspects, the earlier one waning, current one waxing.

Whatever else most of the "Je Suis Charlie" mob with their constant, and no doubt well-meaning, emphasis on free speech want to see, one hopes fervently that they do not inadvertently become caught up in achieving the opposite, slipping into a new version of the Europe of 1937-1945, with Muslims as targets instead of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others. A side effect of this would be to see free speech hurtling rapidly down the drain.

Slippery slopes are not always obvious - early on.

Another Tragedy...

Another year, another tragedy - and within a week! The shocking murders of twelve people, including four well-known cartoonists, at the offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris yesterday was horrific and saddening.

From Huffington Post yesterday:

The attackers stormed Charlie Hebdo's Paris newsroom during an editorial meeting and began firing indiscriminately, police and prosecutors said. Witnesses told police that the gunmen shouted "we have avenged the prophet," according to Agence France-Presse. Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Corinne Rey said the gunmen spoke to her in fluent French and claimed to represent Al Qaeda, she told French newspaper l'Humanite.

I'm no great fan of satire when taken to extremes. To my taste satire works best when directed at one's own fads and foibles, or at the fads and foibles of one's own country and culture. When satire reaches beyond that it can rapidly flounder into the realms of questionable or downright bad taste. That was the problem I had with the recent media furor about the movie The Interview. The satirical cartoons featuring Mohammed carried by Charlie Hebdo didn't as much flounder into a similar bad taste realm as march directly into it, with provocation.

I guess I'm in a tiny minority (again) in my opinion on this. I surprise even myself - but I feel as I feel and cannot change it. I found just three comments, out of many hundreds I read yesterday, which aligned with my own feelings:

We live in treacherous times. Even though we have freedoms, it is imperative that we learn to exercise those freedoms with wisdom.
(Minnie Taylor)


You can have freedom of speech but, with that freedom comes responsibility. As the saying goes, if you keep poking the bear.... Condemning all Muslims because of radical extremists is ridiculous. While there is no excuse for such violence, we all know that there are extremists out there, and this type a "humor" provokes. Was the satire worth human lives?
(Isabella Kirchner)


Not at all condoning this violence or these crackpots, but this newspaper has had death threats from them before, because they re-published the inflammatory Danish cartoons and also other comments about Mohammed. Then they hide behind the free speech argument, so surely they have to take at least some responsibility. Its like antagonising fundamentalist Christians by insulting Jesus.
(Robert Forton).

Freedoms - all freedoms - carry with them responsibilities, especially for those with the power to incite and inflame. So what has been gained, at the expense of those 12 lives, and the agony of their families and loved ones? What - exactly? Have extremists been taught any lesson? Would they ever "see the funny side", get the message ? Don't we all know the negatives of fundamentalist religions already without benefit of satire? Maybe some of us don't, but was it worth the cost of human lives to highlight it yet again? Really? I feel very sad for the bereaved. I feel angry at the sheer waste that could have been avoided by the realisation of what can be seen from this event as the extremely serious levels of responsibility that come with free expression.

Labyrinthe

This week we watched a DVD of Parts 1 and 2 of the TV miniseries, Labyrinth, an adaptation of a well-received 2005 novel, same title, by Kate Mosse. The miniseries was shown on the CW channel in the US earlier this year, in Canada, Europe, UK and elsewhere in 2012/13.

I had somehow picked up the idea that time travel was involved in the tale, so was eager to see the TV film version. I was wrong about time travel, there wasn't any - or not in the way I'd expected. The tale alternates between 13th century Carcassonne, a fortified town in Languedoc, in the southern part of France, and modern day Carcassonne.

As the presentation begins we're given some information about Carcassonne, and the Cathars

.....a goosebump arose during the following shot (no image available), when a word that has haunted this blog recently - "genocide" is mentioned. I was not expecting that!


The film begins in present-day France. A young woman, Dr. Alice Tanner, is visiting Carcassonne to deal with a bequest to her from an aunt who had lived in the town. During the vacation Alice had volunteered to work on a local archeological dig. She finds a rusty piece of ancient jewellery among the rubble; then, some minor earth tremors seem to disorient her. She, unwisely, wanders into a nearby hidden cave, discovers three skeletons, and and a ring carrying a labyrinth design. On the wall of the cave she finds inscribed the words "PAS à PAS" (step by step). Stunned, she leaves the cave only to run into a vision of fires surrounding the area, women in strange clothing all running into the flames, one woman holding aloft what appears to be a book.

That was just for hors d'oeuvre, the credits now appear.

I don't remember the order in which events unfold, but enough to say that there's some very dodgy and dangerous business going on in both present day, and 1209 Carcassonne. It's all because of that yawn-inducing element, popular in so many books and films: The Holy Grail! Even the Monty Pythons had a go at The Grail, long ago!

Alice Tanner, it turns out, has some ancestral connection to a young herbalist and healer, a noblewoman who lived in 1209 Carcassonne, her name: Alais. Alais had an evil sister, Oriane (there's always an evil sister isn't there?) Alice continues to experience flashes of visions of events from 1209. The story proceeds very slowly, as we try to untangle hints dropped, not very casually, here and there. The Holy Grail, it seems, in this story anyway, isn't a chalice but a set of three books of very ancient secrets: Book of Words, Book of Numbers and Book of Potions, kept safe throughout many centuries by three guardians. However, by the end of the film we've also been told, by an extremely long-lived and wise Audric Baillard (John Hurt's character), that The Grail isn't the books at all. So....all premises kind of collapsed in a heap, and left us utterly confused.

I didn't hate the film, but thought it could have been done better. I felt no enthusiasm to read the novel. I remarked to husband that, if the film had been made maybe thirty years or so ago, it'd have likely been a much better representation of the story told by the novel - but that'd be an impossibility - the novel hadn't been written then! I got the feeling that the 1209 scenes, beautifully scenic and dramatic as most were, fell down somewhat when it came to representation of the 1209 characters, and general tone of the dialogue in those scenes. It seemed, to me, as though sensibilities hadn't shifted much from 1209 to 2014.

I'll not say more about plot detail, other than that the story did encourage me to search around for further information on the Cathars, whose beliefs were at the heart of all the troubles involved in the Labyrinthe's theme.

Cathars were extremely unpopular with the Pope of 1209, and with the Roman Catholic church in general - so unpopular that the Pope initiated a crusade to wipe out the whole culture (another example of genocide). Not only did Cathar beliefs undermine Roman Catholic doctrines, the Cathars refused to pay tithes to the RC church - and that was enough to get the Pope hoppin' mad -because as we know, it was, and is, always about the money - and the control.

For any passing reader interested, here's a link to a set of information pages on Cathars and related subjects. I've borrowed the first few paras:

Catharism and the Cathars of the Languedoc

Did this peace-loving Gnostic Christian sect hold important secrets before they were exterminated by the Roman Catholic Church, its Crusaders and its Inquisitors ?

The Cathars were a religious group who appeared in Europe in the eleventh century, their beliefs something of a mystery. Records from the Roman Church mention them under various names and in various places, occasionally throwing light on basic beliefs The Roman Church debated with itself whether they were Christian heretics or whether they were not Christians at all. In the Languedoc, famous at the time for its high culture, tolerance and liberalism, Catharism took root and gained more and more adherents during the twelfth century. By the early thirteenth century it was probably the majority religion in the area, supported by the nobility as well as the common people. This was too much for the Roman Church, some of whose own priests had become Cathars. Worst of all, Cathars refused to pay their tithes.

Innocent III, called a formal crusade, appointing a series of leaders, to head his holy army. There followed over forty years of war against the indigenous population. During this period, some 600,000 men women and children were massacred; the Counts of Toulouse, their vassals were dispossessed and humiliated, and their lands annexed to France. Educated and tolerant rulers were replaced by relative barbarians; the Dominican Order was founded and the Inquisition, was established to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance; persecutions of Jews and other minorities were initiated; the height culture of the Troubadours was lost; lay learning was discouraged; tithes were enforced; the Languedoc started its economic decline, and the language of the area, Occitan started its descent from one of the foremost languages in Europe to a regional dialect.

At the end of the extirpation of the Cathars, the Church had convincing proof that a sustained campaign of genocide can work. It also had the precedent of an internal Crusade within Christendom, and the machinery of the first police state. This crusade was one of the greatest disasters ever to befall Europe. Catharism is often said to have been completely eradicated by the end of the fourteenth century. Yet there are more than a few vestiges even today, apart from the enduring memory of their martyrdom and the ruins of the famous castles. There are even people claiming to be modern Cathars.

Potatoes, Courtesy of Monsieur Parmentier

I've been thinking of resuming a brief series from past years, taking a look at some well-known chefs and their natal charts. However, skimming through several Wikipedia pages and lists of famous chefs, that dreadful new denomination of "celebrity chef" kept coming up. That put me right off the idea! These people can obviously cook, but they'd rather make their living from appearing in TV series, writing books, guesting on chat shows, opening ever lengthening chains of restaurants. They are not in love with food in the way that I see a proper chef being in love with food and the the preparation of it. Anyway, for passing readers interested, there are seven posts from the past featuring chefs of one kind or another, to access these click on "chefs" in the Label Cloud in the sidebar.

The guy taking centre-blog stage today wasn't a chef, but he did the food industry a big favour.

 Hat-tip here

We have to thank Antoine Augustin Parmentier, a pharmacist and chemist in 18th century France for popularising the potato as a food fit for kings as well as for we lesser mortals.

The potato originated in South America, but in 18th century Europe it was considered fit only for animal feed. The tuber had somehow, through groundless gossip, gathered a reputation of causing leprosy. That idea might have arisen due to the potato's kinship with the Nightshade family.

Parmentier was taken prisoner by the Prussians in the Seven Years War. During imprisonment he existed on a diet of potatoes. When freed, in 1763, and returned to Paris he began spreading a good word about the despised potato. He hosted dinner parties featuring potato dishes, inviting such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin. He even offered potato flowers to Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI. Perhaps this was when the delicious Potage Parmentier and Pommes Parmentier were born.

His efforts didn't really bear fruit - or potatoes - for some years, even after the Paris Faculty of Medicine had declared them fit for human consumption in 1772. The people seemed unwilling to forget associated worries of the past. Later, during the 1770's, famine swept through Europe, killing a large proportion of the population. A poor wheat harvest in 1769 caused panic in France. The French Provincial Academie de Besancon offered a prize for discovering a "food substances capable of reducing the calamities of famine." The winner, of course, Antoine Parmentier, championing the cause of the potato. The rest is delicious culinary history.

A favourite author, Douglas Adams, was not often mistaken in his quirky observations, but when he wrote “It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes”, he was wrong.

Antoine Augustin Parmentier was born on 12 August 1737 in Montdidier, France.

This is a 12 noon chart as no birth time is known. I don't find a lot to say about Monsieur Parmentier's natal chart. His signature would probably be Uranus opposing Saturn: new ideas opposing old ideas (about the potato and nutrition in general). Mars conjunct his North Node of the Moon in Virgo reflects his "fighting" (Mars) stance on matters of health (Virgo).


I adore potatoes, cooked any way at all. I think I could happily live on a diet of potatoes, good bread, good butter, good cheese, yoghurt, and good fruit and assorted veggies. "Good" being the key word there, though!

“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”
~A.A. Milne (Wonder if that applies to a woman too?)

 Pommes Parmentier

Arty Farty Friday ~ Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi & His Colossal Works

Today, 2 August, is the anniversary of the birth of the sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. He was born on 2 August 1834. Some sources online give his birth date as 2 April (possibly a mis-tranlation from the French at some point?) Astrodatabank gives 2 August an AA rating: BC/BR (birth certificate/record in hand), I'll trust that.

Snip from Astrodatabank's bio piece:

Italian-French sculptor who designed and built the Statue of Liberty that stands in New York harbor; he also helped to raise the funds to build the statue. Bartholdi studied architecture and painting before he went into sculpture, and was the creator of many monuments in France.

The descendant of an Italian family which had settled in France, he was raised by his mom after the death of his dad when he was two. As a young man, Bartholdi was on the streets of Paris on the December day when Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'etat toppled the Second Republic. There, he witnessed a scene which marked him deeply. A group of republicans had erected a barricade. Night was falling when a young girl, bearing a torch, leaped over the barrier crying "Forward!" Bonaparte's soldiers opened fire and the girl fell dead. From then on, the unknown girl with the torch was, for him, the symbol of liberty.

Bartholdi's love of the colossal was born on a trip to Egypt, during which, fascinated, he sketched voluminously the massive statues of the ancient empire. The idea for his own masterpiece was conceived in 1865 when he met Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French liberal and ardent admirer of the U.S. and its model democracy. Knowing that in 1876 America would be celebrating the centenary of its independence, Laboulaye was urging that France offer a spectacular tribute to mark the occasion. Bartholdi proposed a monument to liberty, and his imagination afire, offered his talents......He met his model at a wedding, Jeanne-Emilie Baheux de Puysieux, a beautiful brunette with the figure of a goddess. He persuaded her to pose for "Liberty Lighting the World," and later, married her. The classic features of the statue, however, resemble more closely Bartholdi's mother.

I've mentioned the iconic statue in posts before:
Feronia & Lady Liberty
and
Emma Lazarus and her "Huddled Masses", but haven't yet taken a look at the natal chart of the sculpture's creator, nor investigated his other work.

Sun and Mercury in Leo - Leo loves to leave its mark on the world one way or another - and Bartholdi certainly succeeded in upholding his Sun sign's signature! I was tickled to find, upon searching Google image for other sculptures of his, to find a lovely lion - see below.

What I hoped to find in his natal chart was some indication of his pull towards the huge - the colossal as Astrodatabank put it. Huge and colossal in astrology = Jupiter. Here we see Jupiter at 6 degrees of Gemini conjunct Mars (dynamic energy) and in close harmonic trine to Saturn at 6 Libra. Saturn, among other things relates to structure(s), anything solid and lasting. There's another trine, this links Jupiter and Saturn to Neptune, planet of creativity and imagination - albeit Neptune was in the last degree of Capricorn, but still within trine (120 degree) aspect. I like that Grand Trine, it links exactly the right ingredients to create a colossal iconic statue!

A few of his other works:

The Lion of Belfort

From Wiki:finished in 1880 and is entirely made of red sandstone. The blocks it is made from were individually sculpted then moved under Belfort castle to be assembled. The colossal work is 22 meters long and 11 meters high and dominates the local landscape.

The lion symbolizes the heroic French resistance during the Siege of Belfort, a 103-day Prussian assault (from December 1870 to February 1871). The city was protected from 40,000 Prussians by merely 17,000 men (only 3,500 were from the military) led by Colonel Denfert-Rochereau.
Instead of facing Prussia to the east as was intended, it was turned the other way because of German protests.
Reduced size copies of the statue stand in the center of Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris, and in Downtown Montreal — Lion of Belfort (Montreal).

The Bartholdi Fountain, sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, located at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington.

La Fontaine Bartholdi in Lyon, France, it depicts France as a female seated on a chariot controlling France's four great rivers.

Click for everything you've ever wanted to know about the Statue of Liberty-

 AP Photo

Bastille Day, France, National Characteristics, Personality Types....and Chocolate Cake.

"The Storming of the Bastille" by Bernard Rene Jourdan, 1789.

In France this weekend they'll be celebrating Bastille Day - 14 July . On July 14, 1789, an angry armed mob took the Bastille, a medieval Paris fort, stronghold and prison where enemies of King Louis XVI were held. The Bastille was, to the people, a symbol of the despotism of the ruling Bourbon monarchy. This event became the opening salvo of the French Revolution. Louis XVI had ascended to the throne in 1774, facing a debt-ridden government, partly brought about by France's involvement in the American Revolutionary War. The population faced rising food costs, unjust work conditions, and an oppressive nobility and clergy. Widespread crop failures had resulted in famine. The people had every reason to revolt!

Some uncomplimentary stereotypes of the French national personality (if such a thing could possibly exist) have become embedded in the consciousness of people of the UK and USA. While I've never felt much affinity to France in general, I do admire that innate orneriness the French have, or at least had back in the 18th century.

Which thoughts led me to search a while on the matter of national characteristics and stereotypes. Just as there's a grain of truth in Sun sign stereotypes in astrology, there's going to be a grain of truth in national stereotypes. Italians = romantic, artistic, volatile. English = phlegmatic, sturdily independent. Scottish = dour, careful with money. Irish = gregarious, fond of a tipple. Germans = authoritarian, cold, industrious. French = aloof, arrogant, food-loving, artistic, lazy, give up easily.. USA = friendly, acquisitive, loud, full of themselves. Best stop there! Those are characteristics off the top of my head, by the way - others will have different ideas.

I came across a fun post on a blog called Taken by the Wind: Which Country Best Matches Your Personality. The blogger, takes information from Brent Massey's book Where in the World Do I Belong?

Which Country’s Culture Fits Your Myers Briggs Personality Type? There's a link to a shortened version of the long personality type test in the post. I took the test and came out as "INFJ".
Introvert(67%) iNtuitive(38%) Feeling(62%) Judging(22%)

You have distinctive preference of Introversion over Extraversion (67%)
You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (38%)
You have distinctive preference of Feeling over Thinking (62%)
You have slight preference of Judging over Perceiving (22%)

Looking down the list to find in which country my INFJ credentials would fit most harmoniously I found, to my consternation, that I do not fit in anywhere - along with the INTJs. Wouldn't ya just know that an Aquarius Sun wouldn't fit in? So, I'm an outcast on Earth - maybe I'll fit in on a planet in a galaxy far, far away.

Anyway - back to France, where we started: the personality type said to find France (or Jordan) a good fit is ENTJ – The Executive : confident, opinionated, competitive, ambitious and analytical, which is what makes them ideal personalities for leadership roles. They have a natural ability to absorb and analyze large amounts of information and then make quick, often accurate assessments. They have a low tolerance for inefficiency or for people who don’t share their same perspective. Sometimes they can come across as overbearing or aggressive but they genuinely love people, are excellent conversationalists and can be quite sentimental.

On another level:

“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Show chocolate cake to me and I'd say - who made it? If it were one of my grandma's I'd say YUM! If it were one from Walmart or other US supermarket I'd say - YUK! That must be where the "J" in INTJ comes in: judgement!

Arty Farty Friday~ Delacroix ~ Liberty Leading the People

Today, 26 April in 1798 French painter of the Romantic school, Eugène Delacroix was born. One of his best known paintings, now almost iconic having been used on French postage stamps and paper currency is Liberty Leading the People. Romantic style painters focus on emotionality - the full spectrum of human emotion. Look at any of Delacroix's paintings and at the heart of it will be depiction of an emotion - anger, courage, despair, love, fear.......

Liberty Leading the People was painted a few months after the Paris uprising of July 27 - 29 1830, that same uprising described in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables and its various adaptations to stage and film. The figure of a youth, to the right of Lady Liberty, is said to have been inspiration for the character of Gavroche in Victor Hugo's famous novel.

The 1830 rebellion and political upheaval overthrew reigning monarch, Charles X (brother of the beheaded Louis XVI) who had been planning to reinstate systems of pre-Revolutionary France. After pledging one billion francs to the aristocracy in reparations for property lost during the Revolution, he abolished free press and the legislature, and curtailed suffrage rights.




There's symbolism in the painting - in the detail as well as in the general feel of it. In this uprising the middle class - the bourgeoisie - joined with the working classes to oppose the ruling aristocracy. The two figures on the left of the painting symbolise this, one wearing a top hat, vest and jacket, the other in working gear of a labourer.

The dead man on the left in the painting's foreground is wearing a nightshirt - indicating he had been dragged from his bed by royalist soldiers - a reference to the despised practice of royal troops who spread terror by murdering suspected revolutionary sympathizers in their beds and then dragging the bodies into the streets as a warning. The dead man on the right appears to be a royalist soldier.

Dominating figure is Liberty, the personification of freedom, aka Marianne in France. She rushes forward from a pile of bodies and debris of the barricades, bare-footed and bare-breasted, carrying the Tricolore and a musket. She wears a Phrygian cap, widely recognized symbol of liberty during the original French Revolution.


The painting was first exhibited in 1831 but was not met with plaudits. Critics disliked the way Delacroix had depicted Liberty who, they said looked like a working class woman, a fishwife, or perhaps even a harlot. But this was Liberty actually "on the job" and not the "at ease" version represented by the Statue of Liberty presented by the people of France to the USA in 1886. Naturally enough, in 1831 the potential for such dramatic proletarian power must have seemed highly dangerous, so dangerous in fact that Delacroix's masterpiece was not put on view to the public until 1855. Photo (right) is included to give some idea of the size of the painting.

Delacroix died in 1863, aged 65.

Les Miserables - A Detail and A Resolve

We still haven't made it to the movies to see Les Miserables. Freezing winter weather and minor aches and pains, on the far edge of something flu-like dampened our enthusiasm for the 32 mile journey to the nearest cinema showing the film. We do intend making a try for an afternoon show this week though.

It's interesting, but unsurprising, to see how conflicting some reviews of the movie have been. Beloved 1,400-page novel condensed over the years, in several versions, to the movie screen; then adapted as a stage musical; then further modified as a movie musical.....Somebody, somewhere, isn't going to like what they've done to it, at any of the stages of the story's (d)evolution, but some will enthuse wildly. Each genre has a different perspective to offer, a different way of portraying the story's essence. A lot depends on how well the source material is known and understood by both those adapting it and those watching the adaptations.

To Scratch an itch at the weekend I fished out an old VHS tape of the 10 year anniversary concert version of Les Miz to watch and refresh my memory. A question kept presenting itself to my annoyingly logical mind, it was one I'd wondered about in the past when watching any of the the various non-musical film versions of Victor Hugo's famous novel. Jean Valjean (seen in the book illustration above) progresses from being a convict on parole, then stealing silver candlesticks, forgiven by their owner and being allowed to keep them; then, as if by magic - and with scant explanation other than the passing of time - he has become the owner of a factory employing many workers. In the past I've rationalised that he must have sold the silver candlesticks, invested the money somehow to increase its value, then had the good chance to come across a run-down business he could afford to buy and improve.

Should've read the book, you see! I will do so, soon as possible. In the meantime, a scoot around the net led me to the real answer which does appear in the novel, no doubt in great detail, in classic Hugo style. The answer? It was a matter of "black beads". Beads and bracelets made from, or imitating jet, the black mineral. I know a little about jet, a north of England coastal town I used to know well, Whitby, is famous for its jet and carved jet jewellery; my mother had a jet bracelet and a couple of carved pins, I recall.

Clip from Les Miserables, Book Fifth – The Descent, found HERE (I suspect it comes from one of the older translations of the novel because of the habit of using initials rather than full names. (M sur M = Montreuil-sur-Mer)

From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine returned to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place in the production of “black goods.” Towards the close of 1815 a man, a stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.This very small change had effected a revolution.This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer.Thus three results ensued from one idea.
In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known; of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.

It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.

Reading the book is an essential now! There must be many other tidbits of detail I've missed completely from non-musical movie versions. Finding the best version of the book, for me, will be quite a trick. Unabridged it has around 1,400 pages, depending on edition, and I balk at a 500-page novel! (Book illustration, left, by Lynd Ward).

The net to the rescue again. Reviewers and commenters mostly advise reading the unabridged version, or at least giving it a try initially; if really stumped by it there are abridged versions available too. Purists will insist on the unabridged edition, but there are considerations: the original was written for publication in episodes (as were most of Charles Dickens' novels) paid, I guess, by the length of each piece and number of episodes needed to conclude the tale. Hence it was in the author's best interest to wax into great detail about historical relevancies, and other matters which might assist the reader to fully appreciate the finer detail.
That was then though - before film, TV, internet and other modern distractions. In that long ago era reading a book, magazine or newspaper occupied a much bigger slice of the average person's day.

These days many of us are infected with internet-attention-disorder, expect easy-reading, quick hits. This post, for instance, is already longer than most blog readers would tolerate!

It'd do me no harm at all to re-educate myself in the gentle art of real reading.

In the case ofLes Miserables there's also the thorny issue of the most appropriate version of the novel's translation from French into English. Is it better to read one translated near Victor Hugo's own era, or a more modern translation? An older, literal translation, almost word for word French to English, doesn't sound like my cup of tea. There's a 1970s translation by Norman Denny (1901 - 1982) who was English, and whose work seems to be well thought of among commenters, that one sounds to be a likely bet. The most recent translator, an Australian: Julie Rose, could lean too far towards modern idiom to feel authentic .....anachronistic, I suppose is the term; though her version is likely to be an easier read, and well-received by the American market. She discusses her work in a piece here: What Julie Rose Adds to Victor Hugo.

From an interesting blog: The Art of Translation I found this comparison of the way three tranlators of a short piece of the novel approached it:

I'm in danger of becoming geeky here! Will go for Norman Denny's translation.

My New Year resolution for 2013: to read Les Miserables.

PS: An archived brief post about musical Les Miz with notes on composers' and Hugo's astrology is HERE: The Magic in Les Miz.

PPS: While watching the 10-year anniversary concert tape I noticed some lyrics which will appeal to the astrologically-inclined - verses of a song sung by Javert as he vows to track down Jean Valjean. I'm wondering how much of the song is poetic licence by the musical's composers, or whether this is a close adaptation/translation of Victor Hugo's own words? When I've kept my New Year's Resolution, then I'll know the answer!

Stars
In your multitudes
Scarce to be counted
Filling the darkness
With order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night
Keeping watch in the night

You know your place in the sky
You hold your course and your aim
And each in your season
Returns and returns
And is always the same
And if you fall as Lucifer fell
You fall in flame!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - I was unfamiliar with this French artist's work. He was born on this day, 14 December, in 1824, a noted painter during the second half of the 19th century, famous throughout Europe and in the USA for his murals. These are recognisable by their subdued color and allegorical figures set in classical landscapes. They can be found in public and religious institutions from the Panthéon in Paris, to the Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, and in the Boston Public Library. Examples of his other paintings can be found in many American and European galleries.

From a description of his biography by Aimee Brown Price.......
"..... his work is crucial to reading the history of art of the late nineteenth century and the development of modernism. Internationally heralded yet sometimes scorned, much exhibited, respected and emulated, an artist's artist of pivotal importance to the generation of post-Impressionists from Seurat and Gauguin to Matisse and Picasso, Puvis' work is not readily categorized. Often associated with classicizing imagery, he was an artist of great range, originality and radically idiosyncratic invention." (My highlighting)

His paintings range from huge murals to sensitive portraiture, fantasies based on myth and legend, allegories, religious figures, caricatures, nudes, sketches. He favoured pale tones and a rather curious flatness. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that he was influenced by the British Pre-Raphaelites, whose style is more to my own taste. (See post HERE) However, art critics state that Puvis's art also offered techniques that the next generation of artists adopted, such as dramatic simplification of form and color and an avoidance of narrative, emulated by artists who followed him.

His natal chart from data at Astrotheme: born 14 December 1824 at 10:00 AM in Lyon, France.

If his birth data is accurate, he had no planet in a Water sign - that's unusual for an artist. There's heavy emphasis, including Venus, planet of the arts, on Earthy Capricorn. The sign is ruled by Saturn and both sign and planet connect to tradition, all that's considered "classic", so no surprise there, except that though Venus sits in late Capricorn it does conjoin Mars in early Aquarius and links from thence into an Airy trine with Moon in Libra and Saturn (Capricorn's ruler, remember) in Gemini. So, although his art was basically classical, his style was something of a progression to a rather newer and different (very Aquarius) variation; the ideas his paintings presented were in many cases quite deep - cerebral- reflecting his chart's harmonious trine in mentally-oriented Air signs.

I haven't mentioned his Sagittarius Sun yet.....that would have translated, in connection with his artistic talent, as showing through his paintings a philosophical turn of mind, respectful of religion. Other than that, personality-wise, I'd guess he was a fairly optimistic and positive fellow, in spite of the times in which he lived. His works on Peace and Hope and the two allegorical paintings The Balloon and The Pigeon (see all below) point in that direction, I think.

Some of his paintings:

War

Peace

In the Museum of Amiens the artist's early work: two paintings War and Peace are exhibited. (The following quote is from an interesting 1911 piece at "Old and Sold" SEE HERE - it explains, in depth, this artist's style)
In these (War and Peace) already, Puvis reveals himself an artist of ideas, of imagination, not building up a composition which is empty of meaning or one which relies for its interests upon incident. It is the soul of War and Peace that he interprets: the horror of the one in its brutalizing of the conqueror and its wreaking of misery on the innocent and helpless ; the blessedness of the other in promoting the possibility of fullest harmony between humanity and nature. Each canvas presents incidents, but they are dominated by the embracing idea. It is the idea that, as far as the subject is concerned, absorbs one's imagination.

The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses

Commissioned by his native city of Lyons to paint a suite of murals for its Musée des beaux-arts he created The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses. We see a gathering of the muses in a tranquil setting, a reminder that the term museum has its origin in the Greek word mouseion: home of the muses. The nine patron goddesses of the arts are portrayed.

Hope

After the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the artist painted this picture of a young woman seated in a devastated landscape holding an oak twig as a symbol of hope for the nation's recovery from war and deprivation. A smaller variant, with the subject nude, is at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Winter

Summer

In 1884 the artist was asked to paint a decorative cycle of two friezes representing Summer and Winter for the new Hôtel de Ville of Paris, re-built to replace the building burnt down by Paris communards in 1871. Twelve years later de Chavannes painted the smaller versions for private collections.

The Balloon

The Pigeon

Le Ballon & Le Pigeon by Puvis de Chavannes[1870 and 1871]
It was while he was on the ramparts of Paris, when the town was besieged by Prussian troops in 1870, that Puvis had the idea for The Balloon. It was completed by the end of November, and immediately distributed through a lithograph by Emile Vernier, reviewed in the press and admired by the intellectual and artistic elite. They encouraged the artist to produce another to match it. The Pigeon was painted at the beginning of 1871, and again distributed through a lithograph by Vernier.

There are several preparatory drawings and painted sketches (Paris, Musée Carnavalet). But the large paintings are in tones of brown, a fitting colour for the sombre events from which the iconography was drawn. Puvis knew how to avoid the picturesque and dramatic anecdote, so common at the time, and achieve a moving symbol. The paintings echo each other point by point. In The Balloon, a woman with a musket, dressed simply in a severe black dress, turns towards Mount Valérien and waves towards the balloon bearing the news. In The Pigeon, the same figure in mourning, this time portrayed frontally, collects the carrier pigeon which has escaped the talons of the hawks sent by the enemy. In the distance, the Île de la Cité is buried under the heavy snowfalls of that hard winter.
SEE HERE

The Forgers (must have been a sketch made in preparation for the following painting)

Le Travail (Work)

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Francois Hollande ~ Left Turn?

Several astrologers have already interpreted the natal chart of France's new president, François Hollande - examples at:
Dark Star Astrology
and
Ohio Astrology

Whether President Hollande's socialist leanings will materialise in the way the people are hoping remains to be seen. Will Hollande be the French version of Tony Blair and Barack Obama, representatives of the faux "nouveau left"?

From a piece in the Washington Post, quoting the UK's Guardian:

"Hollande is described as “a jovial, wise-cracking believer in consensus politics” who is so opposed to conflict that “he was once nicknamed ‘the marshmallow’ within his own party, or ‘Flanby,’ after a wobbly caramel pudding.” In an op-ed in the New York Times, Rosecrans Baldwin describes Hollande by writing “he’s calm and placid and dislikes confrontation.”

That is no recipe for the kind of mini-revolution the people probably envisage!



I don't see this chart as the chart of a red-blooded socialist - really I don't. If only Uranus had been conjunct Sun instead of Pluto - then we might have expected to see feathers flying.

Moon in Capricorn is too staid, too traditional, opposed by Jupiter in Cancer, its hardness is somewhat softened, I guess - but that's not what's needed now.

Mars in Sagittarius is in harmonious trine to Leo Sun/Pluto which ought to denote a go-getting fighter for.....something....but for The People? Uncertain.

Gemini rising - a good communicator, but one who can, and probably will, "talk from both sides of his mouth".

Saturn in Scorpio in semi-sextile to a very nicely placed Venus in Libra kind of spoils it by adding a tendency to secrecy and covert actions to the mix.

I'd love to believe that this is the beginning of a tide's turning, of the return of the left, of opposition to greed and run-away capitalism, but I'm not convinced - not yet. The "grapes of wrath" need still more time to ripen, and in their ripening to bring forth some real left-wing leaders - for France and for other struggling nations.