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January 2003 Archive
26 January
Saturday night at the movies - my copy of Porco Rosso (Kurenai no Buta) purchased from Hong Kong through Ebay, arrived yesterday. Some of the museum staff and I watched it last night and had a wonderful time. It tells the story of a soldier of fortune seaplane pilot in the Adriatic in the 1920s, Porco Rosso. He sustained a curse during World War I that turned him into a pig - who can resist a swashbuckling flying pig? Porco flies a beautiful red modified Savoia S.21 seaplane. Porco battles Mama Aiuto, a gang of sky pirates. The pirates hire the
slick American ace, Donald Curtis, who flies a Curtiss "R3C-0", very
similar to the National Air and Space Museum's R3C-2 Schneider Cup winner.
Curtis shoots up Porco's plane in an exciting dogfight. Porco barely
escapes, and takes his plane to Milan to be repaired. Fio, the spunky
17 year old granddaughter of the owner of the works, volunteers to
redesign Porco's plane. After the rebuild, Porco and Fio barely escape
an ambush by Mussolini's agents and return to the Adriatic for the
final, climactic encounter with Donald Curtis.
There's also a love interest - Gina, the beautiful owner of an island
night club, is Porco's childhood friend and former fiancé, widow of
several of Porco's friends. He's still carrying a torch for her, the
big lug, but won't commit because he's a pig.
And there's music - one hears a snatch of Le Temps des Cerises over
Porco's radio in the first scene, and later, Gina performs it in her
night club (sung in the film by Sophie Deschaumes.
Le Temps des Cerises has an interesting history; here's a Googled English translation.
It was written in 1866 by Jean-Baptiste Clément and set to music by Antoine Renard. The song became the anthem of the Communards in 1870, and is still sung today. Friend of the Museum Hank Burchard notes that although Temps has been sung by almost everybody in French song, Edith Piaf seems not to have covered it - anyone know if there is a Piaf version out there?
The film is from the amazing Studio Ghibli, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who also made Princess Mononoke and the recent Spirited Away.
21 January
The Janus auction is beginning to heat up (see the January 16 entry for the background). As far as bidding wars go, it's still relatively bloodless, but one can hope...
20 January
Portrait of samurai warriors, photographer unknown, hand-colored albumen print, c.1870
Another treasure from our archives. We have a small but beautiful collection of these hand-colored prints. Japanese character studies were very popular both in Japan and in the West. The delicacy of the coloring is unrivaled - if you get the chance, check out photographs of kimonos and guys with tattoos.
19 January
I watched the film Lagaan last night - heard of it? It's a Bollywood epic - a village of poor, hard-working, warm-hearted farmers is oppressed by the tax, the lagaan, extracted by the British; cruel, beefy-looking chaps in
fabulous spiked pith helmets. The British captain, who seems to have
remarkable leeway in his administrative operations, commands the
district to pay double lagaan - he has fine Snidely Whiplash style sideburns. Ruin and starvation stare the villagers in the face. But Captain Russell offers them a sporting chance - defeat the British officers in a game of cricket - I am not making this up - and the district will be excused the lagaan for three years. If the
farmers, who've never seen the game, much less played it, lose the
game - then triple lagaan. Caramba!
So of course, the villagers take up cricket. The heroic Bhuvan (who
looks disturbingly like Rowan Atkinson - Mr. Bean in a turban and
earrings) puts together a real melting pot team, just like "The Bad
News Bears" - Hindus, Muslims, a Sikh with attitude, and even an untouchable who can bowl a nasty twister:
The team spies on the Brits, attempting to puzzle out the rules of the game
- a lost cause, if you ask me - but Elizabeth, the beautiful sister of
the Captain Russell, comes to their aid as coach, initially because her
sense of fair play is outraged by her brother's actions. But soon she
feels a certain frisson for the handsome and heroic Bhuvan, also
beloved by the winsome village lass Gauri. So there's a love triangle,
too.
And did I mention it's also a musical? There's the love triangle song,
of course; and the "Hope the Monsoon Comes Soon" song, and an extended
instrumental Chariots of Fire training sequence with yoga.
So the day of the big game arrives. Actually, the days of the big game
- since it's cricket, the game takes three days. It takes so long
because the Champaner Eleven take time to embrace and group hug after
every successful play, and loudly call upon the gods after every flub.
There's also a great deal of men manfully clapping hands on each
others' shoulders and gazing manfully at each other. Not really too
much of it, but a lot of it - just so you know.
I won't give away the exciting conclusion, but you've guessed it
anyway. So if you feel like a three hour-plus film that brings
together all that's best in Pride of the Yankees, Gunga Din, and
Singing in the Rain, then Lagaan is the film for you, by god. And
I thought I didn't like cricket.
18 January
Make sure you take a tour of Image Gate, the New York Public Library's image database, now in beta. Among the treasures on view is a collection of cigarette cards. The example above is part of the Age of Power and Wonder series, included with Max Cigarettes of South Africa.
16 January
Janus at Auction!
Photographs by Allan Janus rarely come up at auction, but Sotheby's currently lists three Janus panoramas on Ebay - Dumbarton Oaks, Running Sheep, White Horse Hill, Berks., and Kyloe, Loch Fada, Skye. Sotheby's describes the images as platinum prints, but our Curator has determined that they're actually toned silver prints made in the "polylith" technique that Janus used so frequently - we've contacted Sotheby's. Oh, and they spelled Janus' name wrong! Oh, and the scans are pretty soft - Janus was capable of making a sharp print in his time. Still, this could be a fine way to start or expand a Janus collection. The auction ends on January 24.
15 January
I came across this Janus photograph in the archives - a dramatic interpretation in marble of a fireman being crushed by his engine. No notes on the photograph, of course, but I did a bit of digging and found it marks the grave of young Benjamin Greenup, killed in the line of duty in 1856; Glenwood Cemetery in Washington.
12 January
Laurence Olivier's Henry V of 1944 is another one of those movies I enjoyed tremendously in college while my critical faculties may have been augmented by chemical substances. I remember that I laughed with pleasure at the visual beauty of the film, and Olivier's enthusiastic performance - I still prefer it to Kenneth Branagh's 1989 version of a cynical Henry, more faithful to the original as it is. For those unacquainted with it, the Olivier version starts as a performance of Henry in the Globe Theater in 1600, with lovely campy over-the-top acting; then the action slowly moves into a sort of late-medieval
perspective, with sets reminiscent of the Duc de Berry's "Tres Riches
Heures". Finally, at Agincourt, the action literally takes to the
field. Great waves of music by William Walton. At the end, the play
returns to the Globe as the groundlings cheer - fabulous. I remember I
had a huge feed of manicotti afterwards.
By the way, doing a screen capture of a DVD frame is trickier than a normal screen capture - the normal PRINT SCREEN button dodge won't do. I found a shareware program, Any Capture Screen that does the job nicely. But it took a bit of digging in the help files to find that the SCROLL LOCK key is the hot button for DVD capture.
10 January
Sad news. Bandit, a particular friend of Toby the Museum Cat, died today after a long illness. Bandit was a big, fluffy, friendly fellow with a profound basso bark. He would have liked it if Toby had allowed him to chase him once in a while, but they always enjoyed their meetings in the Sacred Circle - this one is from last March. We'll miss Bandit, a good old dog.
5 January
Snowing today - here are the current conditions in the Sacred Circle.
My long-awaited copy of the DVD version of Max Ophul's Lola Montes finally arrived yesterday. This is a film that absolutely enchanted me back in college - I recall laughing with pleasure as I
watched it, and for years I talked it up as a "perfect" film, a classic. I saw it again, years later, and was disappointed - seeing it on TV was bound to be a reduction, but even so - it was long - longer than I remembered - and slow - and the artificiality no longer seemed quite so charming. Other films I loved back in my college days have also suffered on later viewing. I've come to believe that opinions of films that I formed while stoned out of my gourd may not be altogether reliable. It's still a wonderful film, though.
Lola Montez (Gräfin Marie von Landsfeld) by Georg Dury (after Joseph Stieler), 1848
Münchner Stadtmuseum
4 January
The Curator has requested assistance in ID'ing an anonymous albumen photograph found in our files:
I immediately realized that it was Parc Monceau in Paris, where I had spent so many happy hours with Françoise one April. The Curator suspects it may be the work of Eugene Atget (1856-1927), one of the greats of photography. Atget photographed in Parc Monceau, including at least one shot of our bridge. However, we haven't found our image in any of the published work. Unfortunately, we can't go on a research expedition unless we were to receive a generous grant. So - has anyone seen our image in an Atget collection? Let us know!
In praise of gluttony. I sinned on New Year's Eve on:
... Roast Oysters. You can also do them in the microwave, but nothing beats a hot grill. Don't forget the melted butter and the Pickapeppa Sauce.
There's not much musically on oysters, except for Michael Starke's The Bad Oyster?
3 January
I'm adding some music links, especially some good old-timey sites. So far there aren't many, but I'll keep adding to the list, really I will. We play a lot of old-time string band music in the Museum offices - The Curator likes Darby & Tarlton, though the yodeling gets on my nerves. I like Dock Boggs, though not in the mornings.
Here's W.H. Stepp's famous 1937 recording of Bonaparte's Retreat, recorded by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax (Real Audio format). And check out the Harry Reed Collection of Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier at the invaluable American Memory project of the Library of Congress.
Among the curious treasures of the New York Academy of Medicine Library is the account of a man who kept a journal of love poems dedicated to his tractor.
2 January
I occasionally take a break on the front porch of the Historic Janus Cottage and contemplate the serenity of Washington Grove's lovely wooded Circle - formerly known as the Sacred Circle during Washington Grove's Methodist Camp period. Often, I run into other members of the staff, like Toby the museum cat, also relaxing from his important duties. Here's a series of pictures of a year of porch-setting with Toby and Gus Norbeck, the museum's maintenance man, who seems to get a lot more breaks than I do.
A PDF version of this image, suitable for framing, is available. Print out in landscape mode.
Good news for classical music fans - Vox Music makes its archive available once again, through the agency of custom-burned CDs. I still have my treasured old Vox Boxes and Turnabout LPs - I'll look forward to ordering up some CDs as the catalogue grows.
1 January
Went for a walk on the towpath of the nearby Chesapeake and Ohio Canal - the good old C&O. It's a fine place for hiking, biking, birding, and canoing. But not for photography today, as a cold rain fell. Back at the Museum, though, I found this old Janus photograph of the towpath near Seneca, not far from where I was plodding.
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