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September 2008 Archive 26 September - A Possible Personal Solution to the Crisis Harry Hutton of the thoughtful Chase Me Ladies, I'm in the Cavalry blog has a constructive idea on what an individual can do during the current financial crisis: Since the credit crisis started I have been cramming my face with cheeseburgers. Now that I weigh 300lb the Federal Reserve will consider me Too Big To Fail.I've done my personal best today, inhaling dumplings from New Fortune's dim sum trolleys at lunch. link home 26 September - Miracle Slide Show For your viewing convenience, here's a slideshow of all of the ex votos featured here over the years. I think it's probably an act of piety to watch the slides and meditate on God's infinite mercy. If you feel blessed at all, why not make a generous contribution to aid in the Historic Cottage restoration? How could it hurt? link home 26 September - Voto Early and Often  Being menaced by angry octopi, and then being miraculously rescued from same seems almost routine, if you look at enough ex votos. This one, currently on offer on eBay, tells the following amazing story: I came home very tired and decided to take a bath when I saw that my husband, very kindly, had filled the bathtub, I thanks to the Virgen de Guadalupe because I thank first to take of the make up with cream and I saw in the mirror enormous tentacles, when I turned back I saw a horrible octopus in the bathtub, my husband who's oceanographer put it there to study it, only of thinking that I could enter to the tub and the octopus had hugged me with his repellent tentacles on my skin I feel that I faint down and I thanks to the Virgen for protect me.Previous Octopus-Related Ex Votos: Heroic Octopus Graciela and the Octopus Octopus by Moonlight  Oh, just one more eBay ex voto, this one with cats: When I was coming back of buy some oranges I saw that some horrible dogs had caught in a corner to two panicky kittens, I was afraid of the dogs but I asked to Santa Quiteria curage and protection and thanks to her help I have been able to put one of the cats in my basket and the other one in my arms and ran away with the dogs after me barking furiouly, but Santa Quiteria prottected us and the animals never could chased us. Now I have as company my two rescued cats because they were homeless.It's a very nice story, and beautifully painted, too - the blood spurting from Santa Quiteria's neck is a superb touch. Previous Cat-Related Ex Votos: Saved by Perseptive Cats El Regreso del Gato Brave Cats/Ugly Cat Miracles Miracle of Feline Augmented Literacy Pretty Hairy Kittens Miracle Demonic Fear of Kitties Cat Scratch Fever Miracle Miracle of the Cat Husband The Miracle of the Embarrassed Cats Tragic Love Canción de los Gatos San Pascual's Cat Aunt Honorata's Cats The Perfect Cat Storm Cat Pi Milagro Greedy-guts Miracle Cat  Retablos, Templo de la Purísima Limpia, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Photograph by Magnus von Koeller Many thanks to visitor Nessaz, who's alerted me to an ex voto exhibit, Everyday Miracles: Medical Imagery in Ex-Votos, at the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health, just down Rockville Pike in Bethesda, Maryland. I hope to visit the exhibit, if I can get away during the week - it's open Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5pm. But the online exhibit's very nice. Didn't see any cat or octopus-related ex votos, though. Possible Service Interruption Word has reached me that the Janus Museum site may go dark 'til the end of the month, due to "excessive" bandwidth usage. If the lights go out, see you in October. link home 21 September - Wholesome Entertainment Finally, a little wholesome family entertainment: Leroy, Natasha, Nutmeg and Gus appear on the porch of the Historic Cottage and then vaporize in this short subject from the Museum's Video Unit. Robert Johnson performs When You Got a Good Friend (Take 1) from The Complete Recordings on the soundtrack. That's the Austro-Hungarian flag on the flagpole, by the way. And Orange Kitten Grossman makes his exciting video debut over on the Tsarina's blog. link home 20 September - Uncanny Resemblance, Fez 2  Back in August, I posted this Vanity Fair caricature of Tewfik Pasha, Khedive of Egypt (1852-1892), with its uncanny resemblance to Gus, our emphatically non-royal maintenance man. I just ran across the variant posted above, of Tewfik with his kitty Bastet - who bears a strikingly uncanny resemblance to Cat Nutmeg, our neighbor at Bittersweet Cottage. Most uncanny. link home 20 September - Arboreal Study  Montrose Park in Georgetown, between Dumbarton Oaks and Oak Hill Cemetery - not too far from the Mt. Zion Cemetery. Nice place. link home 19 September 3 - A Bull by the Side of the Road  This is a white fiberglass bull; forget where I snapped it. White fiberglass cattle are similar to charolais cattle; very hardy cattle, but the meat is tougher and chewier than the charolais - needs to be braised for a long time. link home 19 September - Graflex Sprouts  Free range brussels sprouts captured in the wild; kind of sinister looking, at Accokeek, Maryland, 1981. Grilled sprouts are nicer looking. link home 19 September - Cosi Tutte Fan  Continuing our survey of the filmography of Tutte Lemkow, the great Norwegian actor-dancer-director, we have here Tutte as Siggy Schmoltz, ace Hamburg safecracker, in The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963), a funny caper film starring Peter Sellers and Lionel Jeffries. Flickr user FrayBentos has a nice appreciation of Tutte and the movie, and an identical screencap - I must have captured the identical frame. Previous Tutte Entry: The Stranglers of Bombay Many thanks to the anonymous Friend of the Museum for the generous donation - if you'd like a commemorative fridge magnet, please drop me a line - refdesk at janusmuseum dot org. In these uncertain times, generous donations will become increasingly important to the Museum as our Historic Cottage restoration project gathers steam. Just sayin'. link home 17 September - The New Boy  Here's the new guy up by the waters of Babylon, New York, joining Dog Luke and Cats Ptolemy and Juliet at the home of old Friend of the Museum, the Tsarina of Tsocks, Lisa Grossman. Lisa reports that she fell for that old ploy, the last kitten in the box of kittens in the supermarket parking lot ploy - but I think I might have fallen for him, too. He hasn't communicated his name, yet - Zagnut's a good name for an orange cat, I think. link home 17 September - Vintage Mt. Zion  Gad, I was pretty sure that we had a vintage paper negative of the Mt. Zion Cemetery's fine old cherub tombstone - finally found it through the old card catalogue under "Female Union Band Society". I couldn't find a print in the files, so the superb image above is a digital rendition of the paper negative. link home 14 September - Doggett Dancing  Thomas Doggett Dancing the Cheshire Round I maintain a mournful little list of things that I'd like to see, but never will, like the 3 Brooklins, the "Excentric Musical Marvels". And it's sad, very sad to think that I'll never get to see Thomas Doggett, the great Irish comic actor (c.1670-1721) and associate of Colly Cibber, dance the Cheshire Round, said to be one of the most popular of his accomplishments. But at least I can listen to the tune, a jolly sprightly country dance, and try to summon up a vision of a comedian's dance so famous in its time that it's remembered over three hundred years. Here it is (streaming MP3) played with the Old Lancashire Hornpipe by the Albion Country Band from their album Battle of the Field. Doggett also endowed the famous Doggett's Coat and Badge Race, still held every year on the Thames. The portrait of Doggett dancing his dance is from Thomas Doggett Deceased by Guy Nickalls, 1908. The motto, "ne sutor ultra crepidam", means "Cobbler, stick to thy last". link home 14 September - More Mortality  Oh, just one more snap from Mt. Zion Cemetery in Georgetown. The consumption of a large percentage of a bottle of slivovitz last night has caused the musing on mortality to return, along with a headache. Which reminds me to thank Friend of the Museum Jeffrey Price for his generous contribution towards the the Museum's Artisanal Spirits of Eastern Europe exhibit. link home 14 September - Old Mortality  For some reason my thoughts have turned towards mortality lately - maybe the tree falling on my head last week has something to do with it. So on my way to an opening today, I stopped at the old Mt. Zion Cemetery in Georgetown. The cemetery comprises the Old Methodist Episcopal Burying Ground and the Female Union Band Society Graveyard; it's very mellow. I've visited there for years - was happy to see that it's been cleaned up nicely; was quite overgrown in years past. Here's a pinhole photograph I made ten years ago of the touching cherub tombstone above:  Oh - here's another photograph from about twenty years ago, back in the the neglected overgrown period.  Scattered tombstones, very picturesque...  ... Also a dove. But seeing old friends and having a cold beer at the opening made me a little more cheerful and a little less philosophic. The opening was at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery, which represents the Janus estate; a couple of exquisite Janus photographs are included in the exhibit. link home 10 September - Thrilling Aerial Ballet and Extreme Chipping Josh, the head of the Museum's Video Unit, has posted the exciting footage of Monday's tree removal ops. The aerial ballet with chainsaws performed by Uncle Animal and his colleagues is riveting, while the Vermeer brush chipper sequences add a spectacular, Fargo-like touch to the proceedings. link home 10 September - Caryatids of Forest Glen  From the 1981 Graflex negatives, a couple of caryatids bear the weight of Aloha, one of the buildings at the wonderful old National Park Seminary in Forest Glen, Maryland. I reported on a visit there in '05; and here's a view of one of the other Aloha caryatids - the little lion's now missing. The Seminary is being fixed up for condos - haven't had the heart to go back and have a look, yet. The Museum owns a rare prospectus for the old Seminary - must scan some of the photos of the old campus; very beautiful place, it was, before it went to wrack and ruin and condos. link home 8 September - After the Storm  At break of day, Nutmeg takes a last climb on the fallen oak next door before the crew of C&L Tree Service arrives. They soon show up with trucks and a large crane - very interesting to watch it maneuver around the Circle. Soon, the guys are aloft:  ... Swinging about and brandishing chain saws. Really, it was a pleasure to watch such a skilled set of guys at work. C&L does a lot of tree work in Washington Grove - they're also known as Charley Musser's crew.  The trees resting on the Historic Cottage were quickly removed - it appears that there's no damage to the roof. I think this is the C&L crewman known as "Uncle Animal" - a very nice guy.  The Bittersweet Cottage gnome looks on sadly after the oak came down...  ... But he soon rallied, and watched the activity with Gus, who's still wearing the Museum's M1916 German stahlhelm, despite a stern talking-to from the curator. Please enjoy an exciting slide show of some of the other snaps; the Museum's Video Unit is working on an epic film, which will be posted here soon. Many thanks for the messages of support that several Friends of the Museum have sent - we'll be open again starting tomorrow. link home 7 September - The Wrath of Hannah  You might think that, following our harrowing experience during Hurricane Isabel five years ago, I would have known what was coming down when I heard - and felt - the massive crash yesterday afternoon in the Historic Cottage as Tropical Storm Hannah raged. But I was so shocked that I didn't realize it was a tree 'til I dashed out and took in the scene above. A massive oak had fallen and hit the roof of the house next door, Bittersweet Cottage (home of Cats Peake and Nutmeg, and also George Paine). On the way down, the oak hit a tulip poplar (Lirodendron tulipifera)...  ... Which - luckily - cushioned the oak's fall as it hit the roof of Bittersweet Cottage, and...  ... Also came to rest on the roof of the Historic Cottage. Bittersweet's roof took considerable damage - it would have been much worse without the heroic efforts of the martyred tulip poplar - but it appears that the Historic Cottage escaped damage. Much depends, though, on careful tree removal, which will take place tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Janus Museum is closed. Which is a real shame, 'cos we had a dugyeonju tasting scheduled for today. Tragically...  ... Dawn revealed one casualty of the storm's fury. And poor Max was in the Cottage when disaster struck and immediately went to ground - the poor guy didn't come out for three hours. More pictures here, and here's a dramatic Photosynth of the scene (Photosynth viewer required). UPDATE  It was brought to my attention that the oak is being held up by another oak on the other side of the Historic Cottage. This is kind of nerve-racking. The tree guys come tomorrow morning, even though today - right now - it's a beautiful day to remove trees hanging dangerously over one's Historic Cottage. We'll have complete coverage of the tree ops here tomorrow. Meanwhile...  ... Our maintenance man Gus has been set to clearing up the debris. He insists on wearing the Museum's M1916 Stahlhelm while working under the tree. link home 6 September - The Common Room on a Rainy Day  It's too moist outside, what with Tropical Storm Hannah being upon us, to attempt another photosynth of the Circle or other picturesque sights of Washington Grove. So I tried to synth the Fellows' Common Room again, the museum fellows being away for their annual bowling party. It's a bit dark and blurry, but one may glimpse Museum Cats Max and Maxine and some Museum artifacts, like Lothar von Wallingsfurt's pickelhaube and our miniature M1910 Maxim heavy machine gun. Sorry it's such a mess - Gus the maintenance man was supposed to straighten it up, but I'm afraid he's been at the hurricane rum supply again. link home 6 September - A Fiery Graflex Steed  This is a Baltimore horse, though not an arabber horse; it's a horse resident at the Baltimore Zoo. Though it could be a retired arabber horse, I guess. link home 6 September - The Wages of Synth  Here's something I probably couldn't have done with my trusty Graflex back in '81: it's a Photosynth panorama of The Circle - that's the Historic Cottage above. Photosynths, developed by Microsoft, are made from large numbers of photos knitted together by the software - one can zoom around and in and out of the scene. You'll need to download the viewer (Windows only - sorry), then have a look at the Circle Synth. Here's another still from the Synth:  There's Cat Natasha, strolling over to the historic marker - in the Synth, you can zoom in and read it. Here's another Synth; it's the interior of the Historic Cottage, revealing the squalor of the Fellows' Common Room. It's an early effort, and not quite as "synthy" as the Circle panorama - the photos don't all join up, but it's still kind of jolly. If we're not swept away by Hurricane Hannah, I'll make a few more later on. link home 5 September - Neologrolling I don't dip into the political very often here, but I have to admit that I just couldn't sit through Governor Palin's speech the other evening. I suggest that her rhetoric could be described as "Palindrone". link home 5 September - Memento Pet Mori  Still in the Graflex negatives of the Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery, 1981. Once, while visiting, I watched from afar as an older couple slowly walked to a gravesite. They stood, heads bowed, for a couple of minutes. Then, the man took something from a bag and carefully placed it on the grave. The couple walked away, slowly, sadly. I waited 'til they were out of site and then zipped over to check it out - it was a dog's grave, and the couple had left a donut. No, I didn't eat the donut. link home 5 September - Fall Helmet Fashions  Following the handy suggestions for the French M1915 Adrian helmet, here's another instance of World War I helmet humor - fabulous designs for branch-specific headgear for the doughboys by Pvt. Abian A. "Wally" Wallgren of Stars and Stripes. Lookit the entire cartoon and some other examples of his work. From a wonderful site, Barnacle Press, devoted to classic newspaper comic strips - many hours of fine browsing, here. link home 2 September - "These Proceedings Are Closed"  On September 2nd, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur closed the ceremony of the signing of the Instrument of Surrender on board USS Missouri - and thus ended World War II - with the words, "These proceedings are closed". That's the General, known not so fondly as "Dugout Doug" by his men, on the right in the rare bubblegum card featured here. It's from the obscure Topps series, "Great Treaty Signings of History" - I know I've got the fabulously valuable Peace of Westphalia card around here somewhere. link home 1 September - Another Beautiful Graflex Moment  Another beautiful moment from 1981 from the Graflex negatives cache; a charmingly pathetic scene from the Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery in Aspen Hill, Maryland. Petey, the Little Rascals dog, may be buried there. J. Edgar Hoover's dogs are also said to be at rest there - I once tried to start the rumor that Hoover is buried beside them, along with boyfriend Clyde Tolson, but sadly, their graves at Congressional Cemetery in DC were too well known for the rumor to get much footing. link home 1 September - Phillip Rukavina  Phillip Rukavina, Lutenist I recently acquired two excellent CDs by the lutenist Phillip Rukavina of St. Paul - Fiori Italiana: Lute Music of the Italian Renaissance; and, on the vihuela da mano, Ala spagnola: Music from the Spanish & Italian Renaissance. Much of the music was new to me, and it's quite delightful - there's a delicacy of touch and great expressiveness in his playing. I listened to both recordings while sitting on the porch, sipping red wine and smoking a fine cheroot, watching the smoke wafting gracefully on the gentle breeze as the sun slipped below the horizon; but I expect that it's delightful listening most anywhere. Here's a sample - Calata ala spagnola (streaming MP3), from the vihuela album. Both discs are highly recommended - one may order them directly from Phillip. He's also a member of the Venere Lute Quartet; must order their CD Sweet Divisions soonest. link home |
