Arty Farty Friday ~ The Santa Side of Thomas Nast

I can't let this Arty Farty Friday - last one before Christmas - go by without taking a look at 19th century illustrator and cartoonist Thomas Nast. As well as being one of the USA's first influential (and controversial) political cartoonists he was the true originator of the image of Santa Claus we've grown used to seeing all our lives. Some people contend that Haddon Sundblom should be credited with the creation of today's best-known Santa image. His version is the one Coca Cola still uses. Sundblom was born more than 50 years after Nast though - he was not the originator, but was clearly inspired by Nast's Christmas illustrations.

Thomas Nast was born in Landau, Germany, on
27 September 1840, relocated to New York with his family six yeas later. His natural talent for drawing showed up early, by age 16 he was a draftsman for The Illustrated Newspaper. Three years later his work appeared in Harper's Weekly where he illustrated a report exposing police corruption. He soon became famous for cartoons castigating dishonest politicians, the Klu Klux Klan, and anarchists, while supporting the rights of Native Americans, African Americans, and conservation of wildlife.

Another of Nast's creations was the Democrat donkey, it appeared in an 1870 Harper's Weekly cartoon and was intended to represent an anti-war faction with whom he disagreed. The donkey symbol caught the public's imagination so the cartoonist continued using it to indicate some Democratic editors and newspapers.

His Christmas-time illustrations of Santa Claus, inspired by Clement Moore's well-known poem, The Night Before Christmas, must have provided Nast with a much-needed breather from constant political angst! His love for his wife and family show through in his Christmas drawings, his children appear in some of them, and settings reflect Nast's home in Morristown, New Jersey. It is thought that tales of St. Nicholas heard in Germany as a child also inspired his perception of Santa Claus, a perception that changed and developed as time passed. One of his early drawings of Santa depicted a small, almost elfin, character dressed in brown; another, from Civil War days is below. (Click on any image for a larger, clearer view.)

ASTROLOGY

Thomas Nast: born in Landau, Germany on 27 September 1840. Chart set for 12 noon as no time of birth is known.

With Sun, Mercury, Venus (art) and very possibly Moon in Venus-ruled Libra; also Neptune in socially conscious Aquarius harmoniously trining the planets in Libra, it's no surprise to find a socially conscious artist emerge! Where's his Santa-vibe though? Is it quirky Uranus in dreamy Pisces in trine to expansive, generous Jupiter in secretive Scorpio? I think so! Santa can be the world's best kept secret.


A few more examples of Thomas Nast's Santa side:

He illustrated books published by McLoughlin Brothers such as A Visit From St. Nicholas, Santa Claus and His Works, and provided Harper's Weekly with annual Christmas drawings until 1886. In 1889 his popular Christmas drawings from Harper's were published in a book: Christmas Drawings for the Human Race.

Watching Freebies

We haven't been to the cinema this week. A couple of weeks ago husband inadvertently clicked on something at Amazon and received a free month of Amazon Prime, which includes access to their library of films and TV shows (similar set up to Netflix). We've been exploring the freebie opportunity, using Roku, and have found lots to entertain us. We've binge-watched a season each of The Good Wife and Justified (starting from season where previous rental DVDs ended). We've just begun watching season 1 of Warehouse 13 - new to us. It's a fun sci-fi/fantasy series with echoes of The X-Files, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. We also found a couple of decent movies, as well as one we considered not so decent and decided it did not deserve the acclaim it had received.

One of the most enjoyable films was Hachi- A Dog's Tale. A tale about a dog? I can never resist one of those, never have been able to since first seeing Lassie Come Home, long ago and far away when I was very young. Hachi was a new one to me. It's based on a Japanese true story of a lost puppy, found and cherished, with much doggy loyalty in return. The story reminded me a lot of an old Scottish doggy story, Greyfriars Bobby.

Tears are almost always par for the course in doggy movies - a foregone conclusion. Gratuitous sentimentality abounds, tissues will be to hand, and were essential for Hachi!

The movie we didn't much like, but struggled complainingly through because, well, "Scorsese can't be too bad can he?" (Yes!) : The Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort. Talk about gratuitous - not sentimentality this time - soft-porn-ish sex scenes, one every few minutes it seemed like. Boring repetitious bad language, the word "fuck" loses all impact when repeated again and again... and again as part of every sentence uttered. The film is based on Jordan Belfort's memoir, so presumably it is at least partly true. Even with Scorsese at the helm, The Wolf of Wall Street, for us, didn't come anywhere near the quality of Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street, with Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko.

On we go then, there are lots of freebies still to sample!

Saturn versus Saturnalia

17 December, in the Roman calendar, marked the beginning of Saturnalia, a two-week festival celebrating the god Saturn. Because, in traditional astrology, Saturn the planet has been labelled a malefic - the "greatest malefic" in fact, one might find it puzzling that Romans celebrated so enthusiastically the god after whom the planet has been named. Or, conversely, why the farthest visible planet from Earth was so named, and accredited as malefic when its godly namesake had been so obviously revered.

In her book Mythic Astrology, astrologer Liz Greene began a chapter on Saturn thus:

The Golden Age is an ancient and indestructible human dream. Not only the bible, but the myths of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans describe it, each with its own story of a Fall when divine law was transgressed by erring humans. And we conjure up the dream of the Golden Age now, whenever we turn to the past and glimpse the shining vision of a time of law and order, when human beings lived in harmony with the cycles of nature and had not yet degenerated into violence and corruption. In Hesiod's Cosmogony this Golden Age was under benign rule of the stern but just Greek deity, Kronos, whom the Romans called Saturn. He was god of earth, not of heaven, and he governed the orderly cycles of the seasons, the irrevocable passage of time, and the laws by which men and women might live in accordance with nature and their own mortality. As patron of agriculture and lord of the harvest, he symbolized the fertility of the tilled earth and conferred the rewards of honest effort. He was a working god and a wise king, who taught men and women how to press the olive and cultivate the vine. To those who obeyed his laws of discipline, time and mortality, he was a generous ruler who offered peace and abundance. To those who sought to impose their own will on the laws of life itself, he was a merciless and implacable judge. The Romans worshiped his friendly face at the year's end through the two-week carnival of the Saturnalia, which even Rio, in Brazil, has never succeeded in surpassing. It has been suggested that the name Saturn comes from the Latin 'sator', meaning to sow; and on the most profound level this god symbolized the dictum that as we sow, so shall we reap.

In Louis MacNeice's book, Astrology, I found the illustration below - click on it for a sharper image:

15th-century German allegorical picture of Saturn and some of the types of people associated with this planet. Saturn, depicted as aa horseman, rides in the sky above his two Zodiac signs, Capricorn and Aquarius. To astrologers, Saturn's influence is mostly malignant, causing misfortune, disease and death - indicated here by the criminals in the stocks and on the gallows and the hobbling cripple. Some less unfortunate Saturn types portrayed are the farmer (plowing), the gardener (digging), and the tanner (skinning a horse).

Saturnalia was in no way malignant, apart perhaps from a few nasty hangovers after days of carousing. During the long festival all social hierarchies and obligations were temporarily suspended, creating a period of chaos, a world upside down, symbol of renewal.

From Winter Solstice Traditions. Hat tip HERE

The Romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia, was both a gigantic fair and a festival of the home. Riotous merry-making took place, and the halls of houses were decked with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees. Lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another, bringing good-luck gifts of fruit, cakes, candles, dolls, jewellery, and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life's continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces and fantastic hats danced through the streets...... Roman masters feasted with slaves, who were given the freedom to do and say what they liked (the medieval custom of all the inhabitants of the manor, including servants and lords alike, sitting down together for a great Christmas feast, came from this tradition). A Mock King was appointed to take charge of the revels (the Lord of Misrule of medieval Christmas festivities had his origin here).

So... Saturnalia was a reverse of the Saturnian norm, an annual loosening of daily demands, bonds and customs. Sounds like a good idea! As Mick Jagger is credited as having said though, "It’s okay to let yourself go, just as long as you let yourself back." That is a fairly Saturnian statement to my mind. Hmmm. Well, well, well, whad'ya know? Jagger has Saturn in his first house, could be quite close to his ascending degree. (See astro.com HERE.)

Perfectly Ideal

In C.E.O. Carter's Encyclopaedia of Psychological Astrology paragraphs headed "Idealistic Temperament" had me agreeing, then puzzling -

"The idealistic temperament has least affinity with Saturn and the earthy element, and most with the fiery (especially Sagittarius) and with Libra and Aquarius. At the same time idealism cannot be limited to one type, nor can we say that any sign invariably produces it. ...."

Nothing to argue with so far, except perhaps to point out that Saturn can be Airy as well; it was traditional ruler of Aquarius, a sign often linked to idealistic tendencies.

This, at first glance, was more surprising:

"Possibly Virgo and Taurus are the least idealistic and most matter-of-fact, but exceptions can undoubtedly be found even under them........"

Virgo-types, I'd have though were most likely of any to strive for the ideal...or is their tendency to perfectionism something different? Do perfectionists aim for THE ideal, as opposed to AN ideal?

Thinks...

Perfectionism relates to practical matters rather than airy fairy philosophical ideas and ideals. So yes, while some Virgo-types could be both perfectionists and idealists, that is not likely to be found in the majority of cases. Meticulousness, precision, practicality and attention to detail are commonly associated with Virgo, all are ingredients of perfectionism.

Perfection does not exist in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.--Angelique Arnauld

Conversely, while Sagittarius-types, Libra-types and Aquarius-types could be both idealists and perfectionists - it's not going to be the norm for them. They tend to live in their minds, or within their own philosophies of life and visions of an, often unrealistic ideal world, where fastidiousness about practical details fades into the background.

“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one”
― John Lennon, Imagine

When investigating a particular facet of personality, the whole chart has to be taken into consideration, Sun sign alone doesn't tell the whole story, nor does a combination of Sun/Moon/ascendant. In the case of idealists especially, the position of Neptune could merit attention. Neptune's reputation for illusion or delusion could contribute to some overly idealistic visions, especially if closely linked by aspect to a personal planet.

Perfectionism and idealism can both be veritable pains in the ass; I lean more towards the latter than the former, but a fragile strand of perfectionism within me tells me that any ideals I embrace are fairly unrealistic...still, it costs nothing to embrace 'em.

Leonard Cohen says it best:

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned up, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

You can add up the parts
But you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

Music Monday ~ Evolution of A Merry Little.....

Christmas songs or seasonally-flavoured music begin to get old quickly when radio, TV, internet start pushing them through our ears even before the dishes from Thanksgiving are washed and dried. It is mid- December now, maybe I can safely mention one well-known Christmas-time ditty - I discovered a new fact about it this time around.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - yeah - that one!


Most people older than, say 45, will know the song originated in a 1944 movie starring Judy Garland: Meet Me in St Louis. The song was written by Hugh Martin and (possibly) Ralph Blane. The version written for the movie, to fit the film's storyline, was never used, it was thought by Judy Garland to be too depressing; it was, take a look!

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year we may all be living in the past
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Pop that champagne cork
Next year we may all be living in New York
No good times like the olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more
But at least we all will be together
If the Lord allows
From now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Judy Garland felt the lyrics were too dismal for the scene in which it was to be used - she was to sing the song to a little girl (played by Margaret O'Brien).

Hugh Martin obliged with some alternative words:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Even that much uplift wasn't enough for Frank Sinatra's Sagittarian soul though, when he came to record the song. He didn't even want to "muddle through somehow", so had the line adjusted to

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.

Awww Frank!

Among the many old and newer recordings you'll come across both adjusted versions, and maybe the odd hybrid.

That's not the end of the story. Hugh Martin later on, after moving from New York to Hollywood, had difficulties which led him to "get religion". He wrote a version of his song reflecting this - lyrics to Have Yourself A Blessed Little Christmas are HERE.

The song, with its varied lyrics, will be done to death between now
and December 25th, so it's nice to listen to a really good instrumental version for a change. Here's the best one I've found: Grover Washington.

Fad, Fun, Fashion, Irony and Taste.

Yesterday morning I spent a pleasant half hour, chuckling, as I read this piece at Lawyers Guns & Money: Lumbersexuality and a Crisis of Masculinity by Erik Loomis, and its thread of fun comments. That piece had been inspired by an article by Willa Brown in The Atlantic.

In nutshell mode, what it's all about is some current male fad to grow beards and wear flannel plaid, lumberjack style  (plaid being the American term for any old check-pattern, not proper Scottish plaid as in kilt).

As I see it, such a fad, assuming it is actually a fad and not just a practical avoidance of the regular need to shave, whilst keeping warm in winter temperatures,  may be just another way of trying to "belong" or conform to a group who think of themselves as "hipsters".  That'd be somewhat ironic though, because hipsters proper are not supposed to conform to anything.  Or, as the article's title suggests,  is this an indication that more males are feeling the need to crank up their masculine side?

Living as I do, close to the Oklahoma-Texas border, the sight of men in beards and plaid shirts is an everyday experience when out and about (not around the house though; husband will not, under any circumstance, wear a checked flannel shirt. Why this is I haven't yet discovered.) In Texoma the sight of beards and plaid definitely does not indicate an influx of hipsters to the region, nor, I suspect does it mean that Okie males need  ways of proving their cojones.

If so-called hipsters in more north-eastern urban areas find amusement in aping rural or working-class garb, while embracing "indie" music and movies, along with anything else but "the norm", then I have to feel a little sorry for them. The fact that they are conforming anyway, to a group, seems to have flown over the tops of their deliberately unkempt heads.

I don't like the "ironic" in its fashion translation. One of the nastiest  examples was/is the sight of multi-millionaire "celebrities" wearing designer jeans bought already torn and frayed, and designer teeshirts created with "moth-eaten" holes and worn edgings. I don't call that ironic, I call it bad taste - especially as said garments probably cost far more than a year's food ration for a person who is forced to wear naturally tattered clothing from necessity.

Still on the topic of taste - of the bad variety, how about Seth Rogen's new movie, The Interview, due out this weekend? The film's theme is assassination of Kim Jong-un - this described as "humorous". Really? Nobody in the West has much time for Kim J-u, but murder is murder. It's no use wringing one's hands about the murder of black men by American police if you're going to laud and enjoy a depiction of murder of some, admittedly nasty, person in North Korea - and for fun. The ticket price will ensure that multi-millionaires make even more multi-millions of $$$$$$$$ from it! And - by the by - how funny would it be if the target of this schoolboy-type humour were to arrange for a weaponised drone or two to be aimed in this direction?

Arty Farty Friday ~ Two Sagittarius-types: Emily Carr & Eileen Agar

Two female artists today, both with natal Sun in Sagittarius, both born in the second half of the 19th century when women had to really strive to achieve recognition for their talents.

EMILY CARR

Born 13 December 1871 in Victoria, British Columbia. Her style developed from post-impressionism, via Fauve and cubism to expressionism with focus on the scenes and traditions of the Canadian Northwest. Her outstanding characteristic is love of the land and its people - but mainly the land. Almost as strong though was her independence in the face of Victorian prejudices, and her thirst for adventure.

Passionately committed to her art, a lover of wild places who saw with great intensity of feeling, Emily was independent, strong willed, and fiercely energetic. The tasks she set for herself demanded nothing less. Yet she was also cantankerous, peevish, hotly intolerant of hypocrisy, narrowness, and prejudice. She was an intentional outsider, almost a misanthrope, yet a lover of those in the margins of society. These characteristics naturally brought her into conflict with three forces antagonistic to her leanings: a culture that discouraged artistic vitality or experimentation in women, a pious family dominated by rigid proprieties, and the conventional mores of late-Victorian society.

Despite these counterweights, she challenged the prohibitions of her family by crossing the invisible line into Native culture. She engaged in a rare cross-cultural friendship with a Squamish basket maker, a relationship unacceptable in Victoria's polite white society in the early twentieth century, traveled alone by canoe, steamship, trading scow, and wagon, slept in a tent, in mission houses and grave houses in isolated Native villages at a time when tribal culture was being crushed, and even attended illegal potlatches raided by the Provincial Police.

She experienced everything with uncommon intensity, a factor which fueled her frenzied periods of enormous output, yet contributed to her self-doubt which led to a lengthy and marked slowdown--some would call it a regenerative hiatus--in her painting. Nevertheless, she pulled herself up out of depression, came to ignore public disregard, surrounded herself with pets, sang hymns to her half-finished paintings out in the forest, and, at fifty-seven, won her way to her most productive and original period of painting, producing the works for which she is most known.
http://www.svreeland.com/real-ec.html

ASTROLOGY

Emily Carr born 13 December 1871 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, at 3:00 AM (data from astro.com - 'A' rating))

Sun in Sagittarius, conjunct south node of the Moon, a sensitive point in the natal chart adding emphasis to the placement. Emily had four personal planets in Cardinal Earth Capricorn, the source of her love for the land, I reckon. Saturn in Capricorn (the sign it governs) is conjunct Mercury, planet of communication - perhaps a hint of the cantankerous part of her nature? Uranus the rebel and Jupiter the expansive traveller are conjoined, though in different signs, and link by harmonious trine to Venus, planet of the arts. So here, combined, are a thirst for adventure and a rebellious determination to fly against the status quo.


Examples of her work:

RED CEDAR


TOTEM FOREST


BLUE SKY

EILEEN AGAR

Born 1 December 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a Scottish father and American mother. The family moved to Britain during Eileen's childhood. Her style is generally categorised as surrealism, her aim in life seems to have been to enjoy it to the full!

One summer, with her husband and a group of famous artists, she travelled to Picasso’s house at Mougins in the South of France - just weeks after Picasso had painted Guernica, and it was, it is reported, a wild summer of partner-swapping and relaxed exhibitionism. There's a photograph of Eileen dancing in a transparent skirt in Mougins. She wrote in her biography that in the South of France that summer there was “Surrealism on the horizon, Stravinsky in the air, and Freud under the bed.”

She liked to see surrealism as "the interpenetrating of reason and unreason", and valued it for its wit, irreverence and joke-making. She was interested in making shapes, visual metaphors. Art, she said, ought to be playful. She saw her art as an "imaginative playfulness". "I've enjoyed life, and it shows through," Agar said ...... "Like a transparent skirt, or something like that."

ASTROLOGY

Eileen Agar born on 1 December 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. No time of birth available - chart set for noon.

If someone asked which zodiac sign best represents enjoying life to the full, I'd answer "Sagittarius!" No surprise then to see that Ms Agar had so many personal planets in that sign, all of 'em in fact - except for Moon (whatever her time of birth), and Jupiter (Sagittarius's ruler) both next door in passionate Scorpio. Sun and Uranus (planet of the unusual and unexpected) are conjoined, indicating her gravitation to surrealism.

THE NEW PLANET



EROTIC LANDSCAPE

DOUBLE TAKE

Mockingjay Part 1

Seeing Mockingjay part 1 (third film in the Hunger Games series) so soon after seeing Snowpiercer was a mistake. Snowpiercer offers a grown-up version of rebellion by the downtrodden, while Mockingjay part 1 offers a young adult version.

My archived posts (HERE and HERE) on the first two movies in the Hunger Games series reminded me that I quite enjoyed the first film, found the second less interesting, thought it would have been preferable for its somewhat repetitive content to have been blended into part 1. That wouldn't have yielded a second gob of $$$$$$$$$$$ would it? I haven't read the books, but after seeing Mockingjay part 1 I get the same feeling - that splitting this part of the story into two was, once again, unnecessary for any reason other than $$$$$$$$$$.

This time I can't even say that I'm glad I saw the film, as I did regarding the second film of the series. There is much very obvious padding in Mockingjay part 1; trite dialogue and repetitive action sequences played out in unrelentingly grey rubble-strewn environments. Inclusion of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the previously entertaining Woody Harrelson, giving them each a scant few boring lines, seemed to me like a cynical ploy to hold the interest of any more mature audience members. A Maggie Thatcher-like turn by Julianne Moore as leader of the rebels didn't feel right. The only constant high quality in this film lies in Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Katniss Everdean.


If Mockingjay Part 1 is meant to be, for its target audience of young adults, a kind of "War and Revolution Primer", I suppose it succeeds, but for that demographic alone. Whereas during the first two episodes in the Hunger Games franchise, I knew I was watching a story written for younger generations, I still found something of interest. Not so with Mockingjay part 1. I've seen far more affecting films about war and/or revolution, as I'm sure have all audience members over the age of 50. This film, in contrast to the first two in the Hunger Games series, left me feeling that I was simply too old for it.

10 December - Human Rights Day, 2014.

Human rights 365

On 10 December every year, Human Rights Day commemorates the date on which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaiming its principles as the “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.”

This year’s slogan, Human Rights 365, encompasses the idea that every day is Human Rights Day. It celebrates the fundamental proposition in the Universal Declaration that each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the full range of human rights, that human rights belong equally to each of us and bind us together as a global community with the same ideals and values.

A summary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Some of that list of 30 seem to become more difficult to achieve as time goes by. In much the same way that the Old Testament's Ten Commandments can be summarised simply by: "Love one another", the UN's declaration could be summarised simply by #1 & #2. (Everyone is free and we should all be treated in the same way. Everyone is equal despite differences in skin colour, sex, religion, language for example.) As with "love one another", if we were to get #1&2 right, the rest would follow naturally.

PS ~~There's an archived post which mentions astrological links to human rights' progress through history, for any passing reader interested, it's HERE

TORTURE

I'll put mike's last comment from the previous topic into a new post:

Twilight (and all) - The much anticipated CIA torture report has been released. I applaud its release and it isn't favorable. I doubt that it discloses the full extent. I have to laugh at how it paints our top-elected and appointed as unknowing to the torture endeavor...gets them off the hook for war crimes. Even the CIA is fawning innocence by stating the efforts of the highly secret "Chrome" division worked independently and subversively. Uh, huh. What a bunch of scumbags and corrupt devils.

I avoided reading articles on the topic earlier, then we were out for a few hours, so this is the first time I've really concentrated on this new piece of news. I went to a regular stop of mine, a blog called Lawyers Guns & Money where Scott Lemieux, after writing that the scope of the torture was horrible, included this extract from Daily Beast:

In Nov. 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia. This case appears similar to the that of Gul Rahman, who died of similarly explained causes at a Afghan site known as the “Salt Pit,” also in Nov. 2002. The site was also called ‘The Dark Prison’ by former captives.

The aide said that the Cobalt site was was dark, like a dungeon, and that experts who visited the site said they’d never seen an American prison where people were kept in such conditions. The facility was so dark in some places that guard had to wear head lamps, while other rooms were flooded with bright lights and white noise to disorient detainees.

At the Cobalt facility, the CIA also forced some detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions, despite having earlier pledged that they wouldn’t subject those wounded individuals to treatment that might exacerbate their injuries.

[...]

At least five detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration,” without any documented medical need. “While IV infusion is safe and effective,” one officer wrote, rectal hydration could be used as a form of behavior control.

Others were deprived of sleep, which could involve staying awake for up to 180 hours—sometimes standing, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads.

Some detainees were forced to walk around naked, or shackled with their hands above their heads. In other instances, naked detainees were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while subject to physical abuse.

At one facility, detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in cells with loud noise or music, and only a bucket to use for waste.

Far more where that came from, I’m afraid. This would be grotesquely immoral no matter what the consequences, but as tends to be the case the alleged payoffs in national security were illusory:

It’s official: torture doesn’t work. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not in fact “produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden,” as former Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in 2011. Those are among the central findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation and detention after 9/11.

The report’s executive summary is expected to be released Tuesday. After reviewing thousands of the CIA’s own documents, the committee has concluded that torture was ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique. Torture produced little information of value, and what little it did produce could’ve been gained through humane, legal methods that uphold American ideals.

I don't know what to say, other than echoing mike's comment - "scumbags and corrupt devils", I'll just add sociopaths to that.

Tomorrow is Human Rights Day - ironic ain't it? I have a brief post already prepared - it could be more apt than I realised.

Knife-and-Forkalities

I'd intended to write a post on some food-ish topic or other, but couldn't find a chef I'd not already written about who inspired me, couldn't bring to mind any dish not already mentioned somewhere in these posts about which I could write more than one sentence. So...how about the actual mechanics of conveying delicious food prepared by chefs, or others, into the requisite bodily orifice?

Knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks. I've never mastered the last mentioned, so that's all you'll hear of 'em in this post. Knives and forks I have used, and in tandem, for as long as I can remember. Loose natural habits of the young eater, for me were tamed, and in a somewhat fascistic way, through many years of eating school lunches in our school's canteen - school being some 14 miles from home, a trip for Mum's sausages and mash wasn't ever feasible.

Whichever mistress was on duty in our High School dining room each day was entrusted with the education and gentrification of young diners in the art of elegant eating. Soup must be consumed using strokes of the wide-bowled soup spoon away from the body, not towards it, bread roll must be torn apart not cut with a knife. During the main course, we must, under no circumstance, hold our knife like a pencil, and using fork only to eat anything would be met by loud reprimand. When the course is finished knife and fork must be laid tidily together at the "at 5 o'clock" position on the plate, so as to make it easy for anyone clearing plates to pick them up from the left of each diner. Dessert, unless it be rice pudding or the like, must be eaten using dessert spoon and fork, not spoon alone. These rules stuck with me for many, many decades - until I arrived in the US of A.

As well as mangling the English language and its spelling, I found that Americans have mangled what I knew as table etiquette too. One handed fork use, with only occasional help from a knife? How odd, and how inconvenient. I'm having none of that, unless eating pasta I decided, after trying it for a while. I suppose, I thought archly, that Americans have devised their own version of a rather easy-going, jeans and tee-shirt type of table etiquette.

Wrong.

American-style table etiquette isn't, it turns out, as random as I'd first thought. In an article at Slate by Mark Vanhoenacker , Put a Fork in It, he reveals, as follows, calling the American, mainly one-handed, eating method "cut-and-switch":

....—the supposedly all-American cut-and-switch is in fact an old European pretension, of just the sort we decided to free ourselves from 237 years ago.

Yup. The cut-and-switch is originally European. According to Darra Goldstein, a professor at Williams College and the founding editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, when forks first came to the European dining table, diners took their cues from the kitchen, where the fork would be held in the left hand to steady a slab of meat, say, and the right hand wielded the knife. So far, so good. But around the early 18th century, particularly in France, it became fashionable for diners to put the knife down after cutting, and swap the fork to the right hand — i.e. to cut-and-switch.

What explains the rise of the cut-and-switch? One theory: Fancy manners often fetishize delicacy, and it’s just easier to delicately convey food to your mouth with your dominant hand. Anna Post, Emily’s great-great-granddaughter, passed along another possibility. Back when dinnertime violence was a not too distant cultural memory, lowering the knife—even a rounded one—was intuitively associated with high manners. Indeed Goldstein describes how American fork-floppers lay the knife on their plate—blade facing in—as a “medieval position of trust.”

The cut-and-switch could also reflect garden-variety prejudice against the left hand. Even today, in much of the Arab world, the right hand alone is used for eating (traditionally without utensils), while the left is relegated to a less exalted realm of daily responsibilities. Nor should we underestimate the possibility that the cut-and-switch became popular precisely because it was cumbersome. Harry Mount, the author of How England Made the English, reminded me how often, in the contrary world of manners, “greater inefficiency can infer greater elegance.”

Nineteenth-century Americans acquired the cut-and-switch from France—“the arbiter of elegance” for Americans....

Well, well, well - who'da thunk it?

These days, at home I always put a knife and fork out for myself, just a fork for Himself. Sometimes, after scanning what's on the plate, if it all looks manageable with fork only, I'll go all jeans and tee-shirt, otherwise I'll use both knife and fork and feel comfortably at home.

Thinking Back and Forth

In December 2007 on this blog I asked a question of myself: "What will America be like in 2017?" The question didn't inspire me sufficiently to hazard a guess. It felt, to me, as though things were coming up to a state of flux. Almost anything could happen during the next ten years, I thought.

The state of flux, or a muffled whisper of it, arrived with 2008's election of Barack Obama as president of the US. After a short "honeymoon" period, though, things trundled on much as before. The feeling that "almost anything could happen" dissipated, became "it could, it should, but it won't - at least not in the USA".

There are still two years left before that original ten year span, to 2017, will be complete. Within that span another general election will take place in the USA. This time I don't get the feeling that "anything can happen"; I get the feeling that what will happen is already planned, and that the time is almost here for a gradual feeding, into the collective consciousness of the US, tons of political brainwash. This time I get the feeling that my time span for a true state of flux to arrive needs to be extended by around 5 more years...to some point after 2020. Changes brought about then will likely be the overture to later and much bigger changes.

A little astrology, helps me to look further ahead, to a time when even my husband's great-grandchildren will have either passed on or be in their final years, and their children will have reached maturity. So, what will the outer planets will be doing in, say, 90 years' time?

In 2104 there will be a Uranus/Pluto conjunction. This one in Taurus. The last Uranus/Pluto conjunction was in 1965/6 in Virgo. To find the previous one in Taurus we must look back into the centuries Before Christ - 322BC and 576 BC (see Richard Nolle's list HERE).

Will great-great-grandchildren of today's population live through an updated re-run of the turbulent years of the mid-1960s: Vietnam war, civil rights activism, hippies, etc? There's no doubt that if the human race manages to survive that long, there will be turbulence. Turbulence which could make the mid 1960s look serene by comparison. The conjunction in Taurus has a distinctly robust flavour, far more so than that earlier conjunction in Virgo. Taurus, like Virgo, is an Earth sign, but Taurus is Fixed Earth, and more determined, single-minded and focused.

Could it take 90 more years for the revolution many of us feel a need for now to manifest? Perhaps the great-great-grandchildren of today and coming years will live it for us. I hope that most will survive; eventually the worst will be over, a new world will truly begin taking shape.

Infamous Date

December 7 ("Date Which Will Live in Infamy” ) fell on a Sunday in 1941 as it will tomorrow, in 2014.

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 America's naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by aircraft and submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy, killing 2,403 American military personnel and civilians and injuring 1,178 others. The attack sank four U.S. Navy battleships and damaged four more. It also damaged or sank three cruisers, three destroyers, and one minelayer. Aircraft losses were 188 destroyed and 159 damaged. (Wikipedia)

That infamous event happened 73 years ago. Since then it has been portrayed and interpreted numerous times in literature and in film, from different perspectives. From Here to Eternity remains, for me, the most memorable movie of that genre. Somehow the unexpectedness of the attack seems more real and perceptible, set against otherwise soap-opera-like, and eventually unimportant, slings and arrows of everyday life inside a US military base near to Honolulu.

I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks in Honolulu, Hawaii, on vacation in 1984. From the UK we took advantage of a "3 weeks for the price of 2" offer. It was an unforgettable vacation, during which we did the Pearl Harbor "thing" created for tourists: a boat trip around Pearl Harbor with narration coming over a loudspeaker, pointing out significant locations and the oil slicks still (since 1941) rising from sunken US naval vessels. The tour culminated with the throwing overboard of a large wreath of white blossoms, in remembrance of all those lost that day in 1941. Not a dry eye on board was there at that point! I did have photographs, but all were lost in the fire that took all our possessions some twelve years later.

Below: “Battleship Row in Flames” a large painting (40 in. x 60 in.) by John Hamilton, widely acknowledged as an accurate and thoroughly researched portrayal of the Sunday morning sneak attack by the Japanese Carrier Striking Task Force. See HERE. Click on image for a clearer, enlarged view.

Astro.com has a chart for the date and time of the attack on Pearl Harbor HERE. I haven't yet found a standard interpretation that satisfies me. The chart is a bit odd considering what it represents - perhaps it'd be better to look at Hawaii's "natal" chart or the US's chart for the same time, and compare. Any thoughts?


LATE ADDITION: natal chart for Hedeki Tojo Japan's military leader at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's set for 12 noon on his date of birth, according to Wiki: 30 December 1884 in a part of Tokyo.

Note - in the chart linked above for Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, Saturn and Uranus are in late Taurus at 23 and 27 degrees (close to Fixed Star Algol). In Tojo's natal chart Pluto and Neptune straddle the Taurus/Gemini cusp conjunct Saturn in the Pearl Harbor chart. I don't know whether this is significant, but thought I'd throw it in.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Jean Duc de Berry, The Brothers Limbourg & Les Très Riches Heures

Jean Duc de Berry from January detail, Les Très Riches Heures

I came to be reading about Jean, Duc de Berry in a roundabout way. The Duc, medieval French nobleman, close relative of Kings of France, born in Vincennes, France on 30 November 1340. I'm supposing that date is according to the Julian calendar then in use, which makes his date of birth in our Gregorian calendar some 8 days later (for 1340). He was still a Sun Sagittarian, also with Saturn in Sagittarius, and maybe Mercury too. The Duc was famous for his enthusiastic patronage of the arts. His huge collection of beautiful or rare objects and works of art reflects a Sagittarian penchant for excess - and generosity. He lived in a dark era, the Hundred Years War with England raged throughout, as did the Black Death, a plague which eventually killed between 75 and 200 million people. The Duc no doubt hoped to find that "crack where the light gets in" via his avid love of the arts.

It has been written that Jean de Berry had an interest in astrology. This, indirectly, is what led me to read about him. The Duc became patron of three artist brothers from the Netherlands: Paul, Hermann and Jean Limbourg, all born sometime between the late 1370s, early 1380s into a family with artistic talent. The brothers entered the service of Duc de Berry in 1408. Between 1412 and 1416 they created a beautiful, now world-famous, illuminated manuscript for the Duc: Les Très Riches Heures (roughly translated, The Magnificent Book of Hours). The three brothers all died in 1416, as did Jean Duc de Berry - no doubt victims of the plague then devastating Europe. The uncompleted part of the manuscript, possibly the last month of the year and general embellishments, were finished by other artists.

Vibrant colours used in the manuscript, and elsewhere, were from paint prepared from minerals, plants or chemicals, mixed with either arabic or tragacinth gum to bind. Vert de flambé, a green made from crushed flowers mixed with massicot, and azur d'outrême; an ultramarine blue made from crushed lapis-lazuli are two examples.

One section of Les Très Riches Heures comprises 12 paintings representing each month of the year. Such a monthly depiction was a common inclusion in Books of Hours, Christian devotional books popular in the Middle Ages. The Limbourgs added to each of their depictions of medieval French life through the year, a relevant portion of the zodiac circle. Also included in the manuscript was a piece of artwork most astrology buffs will be familiar with: The Anatomy of Man

From Wikiart HERE

The two human figures are derived from Italian Venus motifs. It is not certain whether the brothers encountered these motifs during their travels in Italy, or in one of the many sketchbooks that made the rounds throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. The graceful posture, also known as the S-posture is characteristic of the period, and today is usually referred to as 'International Gothic'. The painting depicts two people - a young woman with blond hair and a young man with dark hair. The purpose of this picture is to show which constellations influence the various parts or organs of the body. It is a veritable crash course in medical astrology. The texts in the four corners connect the constellations with the four humours that determine human character as well as the four heavenly wind directions and the two genders (male/female).

For all twelve illustrations of the January to December illuminations, see this Wikipedia page , and click on each of the small images for enlarged versions. Here are two samples, one showing peasant life, the other life for the aristocracy.

 FEBRUARY - Peasants warming the cockles of their  (somewhat exposed) whatevers

 AUGUST -  Falconry for the Aristocrats