Casper David Friedrich

Back in the '80s, Beth and I bought a poster at a Nashville art museum: "Stages of Life" (Die Lebensstufen, 1835) by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. The poster has ever since hung in our home. It's a nice souvenir of a weekend with Beth's maternal aunt and uncle, who've since passed away. 

Friedrich's landscapes, some of which are allegorical, reflect the contemplation of nature. As in this painting, human figures are rendered small within the scene. Here are two others: his well-known "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (1818), and "The Lonely Tree" (1822), with the tiny shepherd in its shade. 

Friedrich was born September 5, 1774, and died in his long-time home of Dresden in 1840. When we visited Dresden back in 2007, we noticed a memorial to him in a city park. This intense portrait was painted by his friend Gerhard von Kügelgen. 

All copied under fair use principles.  

The Treaty of Paris, yay!

It's interesting to think of the American Revolution as one of several European wars that spanned the 18th century. On September 3, 1783, representatives of Great Britain and the new United States signed the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended our War of Independence and recognized the Thirteen Colonies as a new nation. The signing involved British North America (Canada), setting boundaries, and included peace treaties among Great Britain and France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic--the latter three of which had supported the colonists. Famously, artist Benjamin West commemorated the occasion with his painting "The Treaty of Paris." He was able to portray the American delegation--John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin--but the British party refused to pose. So the paining remained as it is.

"Walden" Anniversary

"Walden; or, Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau was first published on August 9, 1854 by the firm Ticknor and Fields, Boston. Of course, the book details the author's two years living in his cabin on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book records Thoreau's many observations, his reflections as he makes a spiritual journey, and calls for lives of simplicity and self-reliance. Although Thoreau had colonial and stereotyped ideas about Native Americans, he was also fascinated by Native culture and, even as a child, liked to role-play Indigenous living and learn about Indigenous culture. This picture of "Walden's" title page is from Wikipedia and features a drawing by Thoreau's sister Sophia.

I looked online and found some famous quotations from the book: 

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life..."

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!"

"To be awake is to be alive."

"I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk."

Lincoln's Lost Speech

On May 29, 1856, Lincoln spoke at the Bloomington Convention at Major's Hall in downtown Bloomington, IL. The convention led to the founding of the Republican Party in the state. Lincoln had thought about what he'd say at the convention but he let the inspiration of the moment guide him. He had no manuscript. His speech was so spellbinding that almost no one took notes. His law partner, William Herndon, started to take notes but gave up because he was so moved by Lincoln's words. There is one newspaper summary: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/mr-lincolns-lost-speech/ Otherwise, the event has become known as Lincoln's Lost Speech. 

Picture from: https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2018/05/abraham-lincoln-spoke-at-major-hall-in-bloomington-illinois-in-1856-and-the-speech-was-believed-to-be-unrecorded.html 

Andrew Wyeth's Friend Christina Olson

Born May 3, 1894, Christina Olson and her brother Alvaro lived on their farm in Cushing, ME. She had a degenerative muscular disorder known as Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, but she disliked using crutches and a wheelchair. Andrew Wyeth befriended the siblings and did many paintings of them--especially Christina--and their farm. Although Wyeth used his wife Betsy's body for the figure, he used Christina's head and thin arms as she crawled along the ground, the way she preferred to get around. "Christina's World" (1948) is the most famous of his Olson paintings--perhaps of his entire oeuvre. Here are several photos of Christina and other Wyeth paintings. Andrew and Betsy are buried close to the Olsons in the Cushing cemetery. 

 

Kent State Anniversary

On May 4, 1970, three days after nationwide May Day demonstrations, a rally took place at Kent State University, a protest about the expansion of American military into Cambodia. At 12:24 PM, twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds toward students, killing four and wounding nine. None of the students was armed, although lies were reported that the demonstrating students were violent and that there was a sniper. Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller were part of the rally, while Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were simply watching the rally between their classes. A young woman who was not a student, 14-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio, was photographed wailing over the body of Jeffrey Miller. The photo became the most famous of the tragedy and won a Pulitzer. 

Here's an article about Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes' legacy in the shooting.  

The Jewish community at Kent took the lead in commemorating the event on campus on its anniversary. Krause, Miller, and Scheuer were Jewish but the Jewish response honored all four students and remembered those who were injured. See this article. 

On May 14, ten days after the Kent State shootings, police fired upon students at the historically black college, Jackson State College in Jackson, MS. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green were killed and 12 others were wounded.  

An earlier massacre occurred on February 8, 1968, at the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, SC. A crowd of African American students were protesting racial segregation at a local bowling alley. One city police officer and nine highway patrolmen fired into the crowd, injuring twenty-eight, and killing three: Samuel Ephesians Hammond, Delano Herman Middleton, and Henry Ezekial Smith. The Orangeburg tragedy received less media coverage than the two in 1970. 

Soon after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young quickly wrote the song "Ohio." Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded it by May 21, and the song was released in June.  

Happy 200th Birthday, Frederic Edwin Church

It's the 200th birthday of a favorite artist! Frederic Edwin Church was born May 4, 1826. Here are a few of his paintings: "The Heart of the Andes" (1859), "Cotopaxi" (1862), "The Icebergs" (1861), and "West Rock, New Haven" (1849). Stephen Jay Gould wrote an article about that "Andes" painting and its scientific significance. Church had painted it in tribute to German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who was the first European to attempt to climb the ice-covered mountain in the picture, Chimborazo in Ecuador. Church was even going to ship the large painting (5-1/2 feet by 10 feet) to Humboldt in Berlin, so he could see it, but Humboldt died before those arrangements could be made. Today, the painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the same room as Emanuel Leutze's famous "Washington Crossing the Delaware."

There is a brand-new biography of church by Victoria Johnson, "Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World." 

 

Happy Birthday, Warner Sallman, Artist of "Head of Christ"

What a fascinating bit of research this was! American artist Warner Sallman was born in Chicago on April 30, 1892. In 1924, he made a charcoal sketch of his image of Jesus, entitled "The Son of Man". It appeared on the cover of his denomination's youth magazine, The Covenant Companion". His sketch was popular, so in 1940 he made an oil painting, now calling it "Head of Christ". He sold the rights to the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) publishing house. https://covchurch.org/2016/02/08/a-head-of-his-time/ 

During World War II the painting became even more popular and was displayed in churches, hospitals, and the like. It has continuing appeal among denominations of widely different theological standpoints. Warner also painted versions, like "Christ at Heart's Door", and others. (Here are some for sale by Warner Press, which owns the copyrights:  https://www.warnerpress.org/churchsupplies/warner-sallman-art-collection.html) 

This next article discusses how hard it is for some of us to be objective about the picture: Jesus is a blue-eyed white man, and that whiteness has unfortunately been influential in people's thinking about what Jesus may have looked like. But so many millions of us have seen the picture since we were little! His caring expression has moved so many millions of hearts. http://sacredartpilgrim.com/collection/view/34 That same article discusses a rival, full-face and darker-complected painting of Jesus by Richard Hook. That picture came out in 1964 and is also displayed in many places. Of course, there are many paintings of Jesus and also of Mary that depicted them as African, Asian, Hispanic, and other ethnicities, diversifying God's presence that Christians believe is found in Jesus. 

Another article that I found concludes: "[Sallman] is frequently described as the most reproduced artist in history, a claim supported by the sheer volume of copies and the breadth of their distribution. While other artists may rival him in fame or influence, few can match the scale at which his work entered everyday life. Sallman’s legacy challenges traditional definitions of artistic success. He was not a gallery artist, nor a central figure in avant-garde movements. Instead, he operated in a space between commerce, religion, and mass media. And in that space, he achieved something extraordinary.... Through Head of Christ, he created a visual language that resonated across cultures, generations, and social contexts." https://homeandartmagazine.com/warner-sallman-the-artist-who-put-christ-in-millions-of-homes/

Happy Birthday, New Haven

New Haven, CT, where I spent some time as a student, was first the lands of the Quinnipiack tribe. On April 24, 1638, 500 English Puritans led by Rev. John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton  arrived in the harbor. The Quinnipiacks secured the Puritans' support against rival tribes. New Haven was one of the first planned cities in America. The town was laid out on a grid, with a central block (the Green). Eventually, three of the major streets out of downtown--Dixwell, Goffe, and Whalley--were named for three judges hiding in New England for signing the death warrant of Charles I, while another major street, Whitney, was named for the inventor of the cotton gin who had business roots in New Haven. In the 1670s, frustrated Native tribes attacked many colonial villages, but New Haven missed the worst of the violence; the horrible massacre of the Pequot tribe in nearby Mystic in the 1630s had lessened English-Native tensions in southern Connecticut. New Haven and Hartford were co-capitals in 1701-1873. Collegiate School, which had begun in 1701, moved to New Haven from Old Saybrook in 1718 and changed its name to Yale College.

Here are some of my own photos from around campus, plus my humongous 1879 history of Yale College. 

   

                  

Happy Birthday, Samuel F. B. Morse

Born April 27 1791, Samuel F. B. Morse began his career as a portrait painter. For a while he was one of the first photographers in America. Later, he contributed toward the invention of a single-wire telegraph system. He co-developed the Morse Code used in telegraph transmission. Here he is in the 1850s; in his 1812 self-portrait; Morse's portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette; an unknown young man, in the only known photograph from Morse's daguerreotype studio (1840); and Morse's first telegraph.

Copied under fair use principles. 

Happy Birthday, Sun of York

The Wars of the Roses (1455-1487) was called that because the two factions in conflict, the House of Lancaster and the House of York, had as their royal emblems a red rose and a white rose, respectively. Edward IV of the House of York first ruled England in 1461-1470. He was forced to flee the kingdom in the face of a Lancastrian army, but he regained the throne the following year and reigned until 1483.  As Shakespeare's play "Richard III" begins, Edward's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, mocks the fact that Edward had regained the throne ("Now is the winter of our discontent/ Made glorious summer by this sun of York..."), for he himself longed for power. When Edward died in 1483, he was briefly succeeded by his young son Edward V, until Gloucester seized the throne and became Richard III. But in two years, Richard was killed in battle between York and Lancaster forces in 1485. He was succeeded by Henry VII of Lancaster--whose victory and subsequent marriage to Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York ended the War of the Roses. Henry was the first Tudor monarch. Did you get all that? whew!.... And now for the reason for this long post, LOL: Edward IV was born on April 28, 1442.

Anniversary of "Blinky the Friendly Hen"

On April 27, 1978, artist Jeffrey Vallance (b. 1955) purchased a frozen chicken at the Ralph's Supermarket in Canoga Park, CA. He named it Blinky and purchased a full service for the chicken at the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery, including casket and tombstone. He considered the event a memorial to the millions of chickens that are killed, processed, and sold each year. He published a short book--this YouTube video shows the short book's contents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuxMv7M1AeQ 

Vallance has done a number of installations and performance art projects over the years, and he is especially known for Blinky. I found this interview that I originally saw on the Ovation Network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZogBISO0bjY

40th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster

Forty years ago, on April 26, 1986, one of the reactors exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR. At first the disaster was covered up, as discussed at this site: https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/chernobyl-disaster-1986-reactor-four-what-happened-why-when-facts/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRePpdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFGWG05eGxYbmJmYzNzaGJwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHrTWKAW5oDHeoN75d1mlLAgY7gF1lHEpLpifEzPHC8ejz0N3Jo5E2swFCaWQ_aem__EVLJX8WV77RR1UA5cvGrg 

Chernobyl is the worse nuclear disaster in history and one of two such accidents rated as "maximum severity" on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. Here is an article about the ongoing human and environmental costs:  https://time.com/5255663/chernobyl-disaster-book-anniversary/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRePrNleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFGWG05eGxYbmJmYzNzaGJwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHiDelmNzqo4Sgk8fz8YYrYxIVab_tsIVAUTeeNwyFm5BSNpQ4ntZ_ODa4umL_aem_dPfZOub43ZqVh4eGF-cV_Q

The Guernica Bombing

The town of Guernica is in the Basque area of northern Spain. It has about 17,000 population today. During the Spanish Civil War, on April 26, 1937, the Nazi Luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria bombed Guernica at the request of Francisco Franco, who wanted to overthrow the Basque government. The bombing went on for three hours. Although casualty figures differ, the official Basque figures were 1,654 civilians killed. The horror became the subject of Picasso's famous painting "Guernica". I've read that it is a huge painting--about 11 feet by 25 feet--now on display in Madrid. The painting is one of the greatest pieces of anti-war art.

both pictures copied under fair use principles. 

Remembering Rodney King

During his arrest in March 1991 for DUI, following a high speed chase, Rodney King was severely beaten by LAPD officers. An uninvolved bystander recorded the beating and sent the footage to a TV station. Outrage at the brutality of the beating led to public uproar. When a jury acquitted all four officers of assault, six days of rioting in L.A. followed. King made a plea for peace during the riots: "I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?" King did receive a significant award from the city. He continued to struggle with alcohol and addiction. His daughter created a foundation to build bridges between the black community and the police--and his anxious words, asking for people to get along, have entered the culture. King was born on April 2, 1965. 

Copied under fair use principles. 

Walter Bruegemann

Born in Nebraska on March 11, 1933, Walter Brueggemann was an influential Old Testament scholar and theologian who used the Hebrew prophetic tradition, and other biblical resources, to address issues like nationalism, consumerism, and militarism. The church must provide a counter-narrative to such forces, he argued. Among his degrees, he received his B.D. from Eden Theological Seminary in 1958. He returned to Eden as professor of Old Testament (1961–1986) and Dean (1968–1982). He was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1958. He wrote many books, many articles, and also commentaries on books of the Bible; for instance, I enjoy his commentary on Exodus in The New Interpreter's Bible. I've scarcely scratched the surface of his contributions to scholarship and to the greater church's ministry. Reading "An Introduction to the Old Testament" (2003), I enjoyed his comments about the work of Brevard S. Childs, whom I had for Old Testament in the late 1970s. Bruegemann came into the Webster Groves, MO Starbucks one time when he was in town, and I gushed my appreciation for his work and offered him my table, LOL. There's no shame in embarrassing yourself when you meet someone you admire, LOL. Brueggemann died last June. The theme of Eden's 2026 Spring Convocation is his life and legacy. 

Copied under fair use principles from the Eden Seminary website. 

Happy Birthday, Shemp!

As a kid, I loved watching The Three Stooges on afternoon kid's TV! Shemp Howard (Samuel Horwitz) was born March 11, 1895! In 1923-1932, he performed with Moe and Larry. In 1932, he left and pursued a successful solo career. In 1946, when Curly's health caused him to drop out of the act, Shemp returned with Moe and Larry. He planned to stay only until Curly got better. But Curly died in 1952. Shemp remained with the act until his own death in 1955. Of the five Horwitz brothers, the first two were not in show business, Shemp was the third brother, Moe the fourth, and Curly the fifth.

Copied under fair use principles. 

"The Red Balloon"

 The 34-minute French film, The Red Balloon (Le ballon rouge) premiered at Cannes on March 3, 1956. It was released in the U.S. on March 11, 1957. I remember watching it during the 1960s, at a summer Evans Public Library event for kids. The film is about a boy who has adventures with a sentient red balloon. Interesting to read that the Belleville and Ménilmontant areas of Paris, where the movie was filmed, declined in the 1960s and many locations were razed. So the film provides a visual record of those neighborhoods as they were.

Lorenzo De Ponte

"Don Giovanni, you invited me to sup with you, and I have come...." Born March 10, 1749, Lorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian, later American, opera librettist, poet and Roman Catholic priest. He wrote the libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Later in his career he was Columbia University's first professor of Italian literature. He died in New York and is buried there. You usually see the first picture in books. The second picture is interesting because it's by Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and noted portrait painter.

Ferdinand and Isabella

  had a friend, of blessed memory, who was a Reform rabbi. He was pleased to visit the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella and to cheerfully tell them, "You kicked the Jews out of Spain, but you're dead and we're still here!" (If you knew my friend's joie de vivre you'd recognize his humor.) Ferdinand II was King of Aragon from 1479 until his death in 1516. As the husband of Queen Isabella I of Castile, he was also King of Castile from 1475 to 1504 (as Ferdinand V). Thus, Ferdinand is the de facto first king of Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella's reign marks the beginning of Spain as a world power. The couple sponsored Christopher Columbus' voyage and began the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In the same year, 1492, they ordered Jews to be baptized and convert to Christianity or leave the country. They made the same order to Muslims. One of their children was Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII.  Ferdinand was born March 10, 1452.