Archive for December, 2012

Planets & Space 2012

Sunday, December 30th, 2012
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  • Auroras
    Night time view of Auraras over Canada (via Nasa Shines New Light Earth)

  • Furure physics amazing web art by Rafael Rodendaal(move your mouse, grab a planet and hit another planet and so on).

  • Happy New Year!

    Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell

    Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
  • Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller (Previous post on Durrell – Lady Hamilton + Victory O)

    December 26, 1891 – birthday of Henry Miller

    Miller’s Crossing (prvious post)

    Henry Miller info

    Miller’s watercolor here.

    A Canadian blogger has Henry Miller Blog which was linked in my sidebar menu for quite sometime and from here you can visit Walking Paris with Miller.

    Virgin Queen – Quentin Crisp

    Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
  • 25 December 1908 – Birthday of Quentin Crisp – – “Do not fade, do not whither, do not grow old” commands Queen Elizabeth I, played here—in an amusing but appropriate gender-bending twist—by Quentin Crisp. (via Reverseshot)

    “England was a mistake”

    At the root of Crisp’s act was a kind of radicalism: Mocked and brutalized for his flamboyant effeminacy, he nonetheless chose to live, beginning in the London of the 1930s, “not merely as a self-confessed homosexual, but a self-evident one.” He tinted his hair lilac, wore eye shadow, pert scarves and silk blouses, and transformed himself into a walking, quipping objet d’art. It was this feat of defiant self-invention that eventually brought him celebrity. He wrote several wonderful books and at least one famous one, his 1968 memoir “The Naked Civil Servant.” But Quentin Crisp’s masterpiece was, emphatically, “Quentin Crisp.”

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    Photo of Quentin Crisp by Paul Waldman

    He lived on the same block as the NYC Hell’s Angels club house. He always answered his phone with “Oh yes!”
    we became friends. He lived across 2nd Ave. on 3rd St. On the west side of 2nd Ave & 3rd is where Philip Glass lived. Quentin always said when he walked past the club house he’d lower his head in reverence. – Paul Waldman (via email)

    Quentin Crisp Archive

    English man in New York – John Hurt as Quentin

  • Magic of Fanny & Alexander – Xmas 2012

    Sunday, December 23rd, 2012
  • It was originally conceived as a four-part TV movie and cut in that version, spanning 312 minutes. A 188-minute version was created later for cinematic release, although this version was in fact the one to be released first. The TV version has since been released as a one-part film; both versions have been shown in theaters throughout the world.

    See photos of Christmas Party from the film set.

    Criterion – Fanny & Alexander – Television Version

    Click any photo to enlarge

    Photo via

  • Winter Solstice 2012

    Friday, December 21st, 2012

    Painting from watch tower at Grand Canyon

    Click any photo to enlarge.


    Digital Collage and photo from downtown Phoenix

    view from car

    Hermit’s Rest
    South Rim Grand Canyon

    Photos and digital collage by Fung Lin Hall

  • Aloha Senator Daniel Inouye

    Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

    Senator Inouye and John F. Kennedy
    The Remarkable Service of Senator Daniel Inouye will be long remembered
    Daniel Inouye Longest-serving member of the US Senate who investigated the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals

    “There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, it’s own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.” –the late Senator Daniel Inouye

    In France, he was hit by a bullet which was stopped by two silver dollars he carried in his pocket. But he had lost his lucky charms just before an assault on Colle Musatello, in the Po Valley, Italy, in April 1945. Despite being wounded, he took out the first of three German machine-gun positions pinning down his platoon. He led an attack on the second, before collapsing. Then, as his unit attacked the third, he crawled into position to throw a grenade. As he stood to throw, a German rifle grenade severed his arm, leaving the grenade in the fist. Keeping his troops at a distance, he prised the grenade out, threw it, and finished the attack one-handed. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

  • “That’s one of the horrors of war, that you can train person, train them to hate, train them to kill.

    Daniel Inouye September 7 1924 – Decmeber 17, 2012

  • Daniel Inoyue photo
    Daniel Inouye, one-and-a-half years old in Honolulu, 1924.

    Inouye’s Epic Civial Rights Championship Senator Inouye fought for reparations for Japanese Americans who were interned..

    At the time of his death Monday at the age of 88, Inouye was third in line to the presidency.
    But he never stopped confronting power on behalf of the rights of people of color, people with disabilities, women, lesbians and gays and political dissenters to equal justice and equal opportunity. A modest man who served in the Senate for more than fifty years, Inouye was not always accorded proper recognition of his historic advocacy on behalf of civil rights and civil liberties. But that is the error of those who underestimate Inouye, not of the senator. Indeed, as Vice President Joe Biden, who knew Inouye better than most in Washington, said after the senior senator’s death: “To his dying day, he fought for a new era of politics where all men and women are treated with equality.”

    Ed Ruscha in Vienna

    Saturday, December 15th, 2012


    photo via

  • Ed Ruscha Curates at Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
    The Ancients Stole Our Great Ideas

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    Ed Ruscha by Dennis Hopper (See more photos and a clip The Last Movie by D.H.)

  • edsin
    Happy Birthday Ed Ruscha!

    Happy anniversary to Vitro-Nasu. Ed Ruscha “Sin” was the first post published on Vitro-Nasu on his birthday, Dec 16, in 2004.

    Muriel Rukeyser – Song for Dead Children

    Saturday, December 15th, 2012

    Song for Dead Children
    By Muriel Rukeyser
    We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate
    who required tribute of hot July flowers—
    for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering
    remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones
    not yet braced for conquering.

    The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows,
    and little girls continue graceful and wondering.
    Flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young
    heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth,
    their strength not tested, their praise unsung.

    Weave grasses for their childhood—who will never see
    love or disaster or take sides against decay
    balancing the choices of maturity.
    Silent and coffined in silence while we pass
    loud in defiance of death, the helpless lie.

    October 1935

  • Muriel Rukeyser – Born on Dec 15 1913

    Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her “exact generation”.
    Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism.


    (Photo via)

  • Portrait of Muriel by Richard Avedon

  • The violence and injustice she saw, in the United States and abroad, led her poetry to function as a mode of social protest. She felt a deep responsibility to comment on human issues and was particularly concerned with inequalities of sex, race and class. With her poems, she frequently documented her own emotional experiences within the context of a greater political or social event. She was a powerful visionary and her work reflects her wish for a greater world community united by love.

    A model of the poet as social activist – Muriel Rukeyser

    Hand of Muriel Rukeyser Photo by Berenice Abott
    (See Sylvia Beach by Berenice Abott)

    THEN I SAW WHAT THE CALLING WAS

    All the voices of the wood called “Muriel!”
    but it was soon solved; it was nothing, it was not for me.
    The words were a little like Mortal and More and Endure
    And a world like Real , a sound like Health or Hell.
    Then I saw what the calling was : it was the road I traveled,
    the clear
    time and these colors of orchards, gold behind gold and the full
    shadow begin each tree and behind each slope. Not to me
    the calling, but to anyone and at last I saw : where
    the road lay through sunlight and many voices and the marvel
    orchards, not for me, not for me, not for me.
    I cam into my clear being; uncalled, alive, and sure.
    Nothing was speaking to me, but I offered and all was well.

    And I arrived at the powerful green hill.

    The World of Ravi Shankar – 12/12/12

    Wednesday, December 12th, 2012
  • Ravi Shanker passed away in San Diego.

    Nytimes obit here.

    Philip Glass had two teachers one was Nadia Boulanger and another Ravi Shankar.

  • Chappaqua

  • (Ravi Shankar on Dick Cavett)

  • See Drawings of Francesco Clemente – Ravi’s soundtrack

    Film “Charley” composed by Ravi Shankar..

    Ravi Shankar and George We are missing you (youtube)

    Ali Akbar Khan (Ravi’s brother in law and a musical partner – previous post)

  • The Song of the little road

    See Pather Panchali 1955 (Song of the Little Road) Bangla Movie Full- starting with Ravi Shankar soundtrack

  • Ozu Yasujiro – 12/12/12

    Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

  • (Chi Shu Ryu who played the “Father’ in Ozu films)

  • Ozu was born on Dec 12, 1903.. he passed away on his birthday Dec 12 1963.

  • Explore Behind the camera – many great links on Ozu.

  • Filmrefreviews of selected films

  • Arima Ineko from Tokyo Twilight
    (His darkest film)

  • Tokyo Chorus (previous post – Okada Tokihiko) –

    I was born but... (previous Post)

    Floating Words (previous post)

    Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace – Two High Tech Pioneers

    Sunday, December 9th, 2012

    She popularized the term “debugging”

    Dec 9.. birthday of Grace Hopper – pioneer Computer Scientist..

    Dec 10 – birthday of Ada Lovelace (Daughter of Lord Byron and founder of scientific computing )

    Google Ada Lovelace 2012

    Ada and Grace At Interface Legacy here.

    The real Ada and Grace were instrumental in making computing technology approachable, understandable, and a source of creativity that everyone is welcome to explore. Our virtual Museum guides who share their names are dedicated to continuing this pursuit.

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    See Ada cartoon, play and a link to Tilda Swinton as Ada from previous post.
    Ada Lovelace 2009, Ada Lovelace 2010 (Previous posts)

    Rumer Godden – Black Narcissus

    Sunday, December 9th, 2012

    Margaret Rumer Godden was born in Eastbourne on December 10, 1907, but she is indelibly associated with India. Her father managed the Brahmaputra River Steam Navigation Company.

    Rumer Godden Author of The River (Jean Renoir) – The Black Narcissus


  • Gorgeous cinematography by Jack Cardiff.

    Godden Life is a Story in itself

    Rumer Godden wrote because she was driven by visceral promptings. In her 1946 novel, The River, she describes her heroine’s response to writing a poem she knows to be good: “It felt alive, as she did. She felt alive and curiously powerful, and full of what seemed to her a glory.” Writing was her lifeblood.

    Radha’Dance from the River

  • Emily Dickinson – December 10 birthday (Reading by Bill Murray to construction workers – I Dwell in Possibility)