Real Time Maher May 13, 2011

Jennifer Knust's "Unprotected Texts"

Fellow traveller Jennifer Knust and her book, "Unprotected Texts" are featured in today's Terry Gross's Fresh Air on NPR. She "suggests that the Bible shouldn't be used as a guidebook for marriage or sexuality because passages related to sex — on topics related to monogamy, polygamy, sexual practices, homosexuality and gender roles — are more complex and nuanced than popular culture has led us to believe."  We agree. The "literalists" should first read their own book before pronouncing a defense of "Christian marriage" for all their neighbors - see our 2006 post.

On celibacy- "There's a fantastic passage in Matthew where Jesus says to his disciples that some people should be eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. So the way this gets received by early Christians is that Jesus is recommending celibacy which would make sense, given that he says elsewhere that we shouldn't get married, that we should be focusing our attention on spreading the gospel. So the idea [of] 'be a eunich' for the kingdom of heaven makes sense. However, interestingly enough, some Christians took this literally and there were some cases of early Christians castrating themselves for the purpose of celibacy. So that's a pretty radical statement that the best kind of Christian is one who is celibate to the point of castration. We don't talk about that much in our own culture and that was a really important message and many, many Christians were celibate."

On polygamy- "In Genesis, for example, polygamy was considered normal and it's what men did. You may remember some of the patriarchs had multiple wives and slave wives. The 12 sons of Jacob are fathered by multiple wives and concubines. In a subsistence economy, where people are subsistence farmers, the more wives and children one has, the more prosperous one is. And that seems to be how Genesis approaches the issue. So Jacob is a very wealthy man. He has many wives and children."

On the Song of Solomon- "It's an erotic love poem that was written some time during the monarchy in Israel and it imitates some of the other Egyptian and Mesopotamian love poetry from the time. It's quite erotic in its content. The way it gets read today is usually as an erotic poem. So it's often read quite literally as a description of sexual desire and sexual consummation. Interestingly, it wasn't read that way by rabbis and by the early Christians. They read it instead as an allegory or metaphor of the relationship of the soul to God — or the synagogue to God. So then, the description, for example, of the woman longing after her love becomes a description of the soul longing after God. The description of the man seeking out his lover in gardens becomes God seeking out the church in gardens and longing to be with the church and in a partnership in the church."  Complete article.

Hong Kong "Maypole"

HS- Thank you for your help.  I walked to Central this morning from my hotel in Waichai to the Hong Kong Book Center on Des Voeux Rd (apparently related to Swindon Books, Kowloon, which I know from earlier visits) and there purchased a book on bronze age Rock Carvings in Hong Kong by Wm. Meacham.  His book mentioned this "Lover's Stone" located in Waichai, about midway on Bowens Road and, conveniently, above my hotel. I walked there by showing the picture in the book and asking people "where is this?" - five highway workers, two policeman and one jogger later, I found it.

The author says that this rock is a folk shrine popular with "women seeking a husband, childless couples and old women desirous of grand children".  I think it is fairly obvious what this "Lover's Stone" reminds Grandmother about.  I think many of the amazing Hong Kong office buildings in the background pretty much tell the same story. In any case, it was a perfect Hong Kong day for me.  Thanks for the encouragement.   -Gary

Sins of Omission

from the Wiki Teacher-
"For I do not do the good I want ..." -Romans 7:19
"Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." -James 4:17
"He who has the ability to act on an injustice, but who stands idly by, is just as guilty as he who holds the knife." -Dracano Sapien
"In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends" -Martin Luther King

Garden of Buddhas, Montana

Mike Albans for The New York Times
Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche, left, and Khenpo Namchak checking on the quality of the completed castings of Buddhas.

October 31, 2010 New York Times
On an Indian Reservation, a Garden of Buddhas
By JIM ROBBINS
ARLEE, Mont. — On a rural American Indian reservation here, amid grazing horses and cattle, a Buddhist lama from the other side of the world is nearing completion of a $1.6 million meditative garden that he hopes will draw spiritual pilgrims.

“There is something pure and powerful about this landscape,” said Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche, the 56-year-old Tibetan lama, as he walked down a gravel road on a sunny fall day. “The shape of the hills is like a lotus petal blossoming.”

Richard Gere has not been seen house shopping here — yet. But on the land of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, a 24-foot statue of Yum Chenmo, the Great Wisdom Mother, has risen in Mr. Sang-ngag’s farm field. Nearby, in his old sheep barn, amid rubber molds and plaster, some 650 statues of Buddha sit in neat rows, illuminated by shafts of light pouring in through broken boards.

It seemed the perfect setup for a clash of two cultures when Mr. Sang-ngag, a high-ranking Buddhist lama, came to this remote part of Montana a decade ago, liked the landscape feng shui and bought a 60-acre sheep ranch. At the foot of the towering, glacier-etched Mission Mountains — not unlike his native Tibet — he and a band of volunteers began building a Garden of 1,000 Buddhas to promote world peace.

The arrival of the exotic culture here in cowboy country, with multicolored prayer flags flapping in the breeze, made some from the Salish and Kootenai tribes uneasy, to say the least.

An unusual land ownership pattern was partly to blame. While most Indian reservations are majority-owned by the tribes, a 1904 law allowed nonmembers of the tribes to homestead land. And as a result, there are four to five times as many non-Indians on the reservation as there are Indians.

Mr. Sang-ngag called his place Ewam Sang-ngag Ling, or the Land of Secret Mantra, Wisdom and Compassion. It turns out that it was sacred to the tribes as well, a place where, oral traditions hold, a coyote vanquished a monster and drove out many bad spirits so the people could live here.

Julie Cajune, the executive director for American Indian Policy at Salish Kootenai College and other Indians began working to build bridges between the tribes and the Buddhists. They suggested that the Buddhists bring traditional gifts, prayer scarves and tobacco, to the tribal council, which they did.

“Many people move here without recognition they are a guest,” Ms. Cajune said. “None of the mainstream churches or the Amish have done that.”

Buddhists in Japan, Taiwan and China have sent money for Buddha statues. The Dalai Lama has agreed to come and consecrate the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas after the project it is finished, perhaps in 2012.

But the patchwork of Indian and non-Indian land holdings within the reservation remains contentious. Some tribal members are worried that groups drawn to the Buddhist garden will buy up nontribal land, driving prices further out of the reach of Indians, and ignore tribal rules and customs.

They point to the case of Amish families who have bought farmland within the reservation, said Ms. Cajune, who is Salish.

“It’s ironic, but many Indian people can’t afford to buy land on their own reservation,” she said. A typical acre for building a home here might cost $30,000 — an enormous amount in rural and tribal Montana.

But Ms. Cajune said there was also an uncanny kinship between the tribal and Buddhist cultures, based on understandings of sacred landscapes, and even notions of honor and respect.

The biggest driver of rapprochement here is a shared history of subjugation and displacement — for the Tibetans, at the hands of the Chinese (Mr. Sang-ngag spent nine years in a Chinese labor camp) and for the tribes, by the American government.

“There is a shared vision of cultures being under pressure and surviving,” Mr. Sang-ngag said through a translator.

The heart of the 60-acre development is the 10-acre Garden of 1,000 Buddhas. When tribal elders came and blessed it, the two groups found they both used juniper and sage as purifying incense for ceremonies, for example, as well as similar prayer cloths and ritual drumming.

After much outreach by the Buddhists, including asking permission from the tribe to have the Dalai Lama consecrate the ground, Ms. Cajune said, “I think local people are feeling more comfortable.”

The sheep are gone from the green hills here now. “They achieved Buddhahood,” joked Mr. Sang-ngag, as he walked through the garden, designed in the shape of the dharma wheel, which symbolizes the core teachings of Buddhism. The Great Wisdom Mother statue contains sacred vases and holy texts. Swords, guns and other symbols of war are buried underneath, to symbolize a triumph over violence.

In the Buddha barn, meanwhile, is a Norton motorcycle, which members here jokingly refer to as the sacred chopper. It will be raffled to raise money to finish the garden. About half the money has been raised.

Last week the Buddhists began planning with the tribal officials about managing pilgrimages to the site, a possible headache for the tribe. “Some people want to keep the reservation a good, quiet secret,” Ms. Cajune said.

But Mr. Sang-ngag says good karma, or spiritual energy, is ebbing from the earth, and the garden will help enhance it. “It’s designed to awaken the Buddha nature” of wisdom and compassion in anyone who gazes upon it, said Lama Tsomo, a student who lives nearby.

A potential cultural clash has become cultural reconciliation. “It’s two cultures honoring each other in peace,” Ms. Cajune said. “That’s a powerful story people need to hear.”

Lost in Translation

I am not extraordinarily optimistic that any of 'dem fundamentalist types might stumble on this blog, but...could happen - if so, ye literalistic wordmongers, read on.

I am in the middle of reading Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus", an armchair guide to New Testament textual criticism and the problems of translation. But in the recent 'Lord's Day' New York Times (aka  yesterday's) comes a lovely Op-Ed piece by a flesh and blood living Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Michael Cunningham ("The Hours" and "By Nightfall"). Read this wonderful exerpt and pretend St. Michael is a candid and honest author of one of the 'sacred' books of the New Covenant writing about its writing and hopeful translation. Italics are mine.  Mr. Cunningham's entire Times piece is a delight. Illustration left: Ji Lee/NYTimes

"Here’s a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent, it’s brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire.   "But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it’s never the book that you’d hoped to write. It’s smaller than the book you’d hoped to write. It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire.   "It feels, in short, like a rather inept translation of a mythical great work.   "The translator, then, is simply moving the book another step along the translation continuum. The translator is translating a translation."

Religious Knowledge Test by Pew Research

Take the 15 question Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's Religious Knowledge Test , learn who in the US knows what about religion and check out the actual test here.

The Sphinx

An early defender (c. 1850) of 'pop archetypes'- sorry, CG Jung but 'tis our project raison d'être-

"A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens - a belief which, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed to defend. On this subject we had long and animated discussions - [my relative] maintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters, - I contending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute spontaneity- that is to say, without apparent traces of suggestion - had in itself the unmistakable elements of truth, and was entitled to as much respect as that intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius." --Edgar Allan Poe "The Sphinx" 1850 - click on link for entire spidery piece.

At left: Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864, Gustave Moreau (French), Oil on canvas (21.134.1), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jeff Colson, "Shrine, 2008"

Jeff Colson's "Shrine" fiberglass, steel, and acrylic 12 ft (H) x 62" (W) x 12" (D) Ace Gallery, Los Angeles from October 23 through December 2010.  Is Jeff's "Shrine" the Zen form/nonform of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe?  Ref: earlier Nuestra Señora post.  From Jeff's gallery's press release-
"At the core of Colson􀀁s work is a witty sense of humor and an awareness that artistic inspiration can be found in many unlikely places. For example, a large sculpture that the artist refers to as a 'hot dog boat,' was in fact based on a vision of the Virgin Mary that he had while driving. The sculpture resembles that of a halo outline, yet does not reflect the artist􀀁s thoughts on religion, but rather it implies, according to Colson, 'a yearning quality that is earthbound and in reality will not fly.' Constructions of yearning, anticipation and the foreshadowing of impending demise dominate Colson􀀁s artworks making the viewer aware that although the pieces appear to be blank slates, they do in fact carry many potential messages."

Hmmm, "hot dog boat" - interesting turn of de lingua, not my words. 

Christian Nation, Not!

One of the most fallacious presuppositions of the not-so Christian "Christian Right" is that they want the United States to RETURN to the Christian principles on which it was founded. As our Fox News host Glen Beck said this past weekend, “Something that is beyond man is happening. . . America today begins to turn back to God.” Beck exhorted the crowd to "recognize your place to the creator. Realize that he is our king. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us." However, a moment of research (thanks to Google "founding fathers deist") into US history will show that this loaded statement is based on false assumptions. The men responsible for building the foundation of the United States had little use for Christianity, and many were strongly opposed to it. They were men of Europe's so-called Age of Enlightenment. Most were Deists, which is to say they thought the Cosmos had a Creator, but that s/he does not concern itself with the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God but not the vengeful personal savior God(s) of the the Judeo-Christian Bible. In short, they were the same Humanists, the "holy right" now decry. They did not deny that there was a person called Jesus, and praised him for his benevolent teachings, but they flatly denied his divinity. When the "framers" wrote the US Constitution, they specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."(Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day-- giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike.  They wanted to ensure that no single religion could make the claim of being the official national religion, such as their former ruler, the British Empire. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention religion, except in exclusionary terms. The words "Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God" are never mentioned in the Constitution-- not once. (Not to mention the First Amendment's no establishment clause, ratified in 1791.) Much of the paraphrase above from blogs "Founders Were Not Christians" which continues with a multitude of supporting quotations of the signers of the US Constitution and "The Christian Nation Myth".

Illustration above: Article 11, of the The Treaty of Tripoli reads "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." This Treaty written by Joel Barlow under the presidency of "founding father" George Washington, was then read aloud and unanimously approved by the Senate on June 10, 1797 under the presidency of "founding father" John Adams. The entire question is summed up by yet another "founding father" Thomas Jefferson who stated, as timely now as it was then, "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world, fools, and the other half, hypocrites" from Notes on the State of Virginia For more on John Barlow and Article 11, follow the link above   (at bottom of page) to further links to yet more articles/links.

Bumps in the Night

"If all of those saints were suggesting celibacy, whatever happened to when god told Adam and Eve to 'Be fruitful and multiply'. Did he not say that?"

FH- as for gods and multiplication - if we think that typical "sacred" writings are probably the narrow view of some (not all) scribes in the tribe - "fruitful and multiply" is always a big winner and appears in all collections of sacred writing in all cultures / religions - the bigger the tribe, the more women to cook and the more warriors to wipe out the competition.

Conversely, the hermits and ascetics were trying hard to avoid the rather difficult life of mixing with the normal folk, feed/clothe a family, with a wife and paying the "mortgage" - so, with clever slight of hand, they came up with sitting around atop poles (Simon Stylites) or hiding out mid-desert (St. Anthony) writing about "higher" thinking sans society - so celibacy, sainthood, harps and clouds.

Better path? carefully chose your best BS, not to bludgeon anyone with it overnight and review it in the morning. Probably beats sitting on a pillar for 35 years or scaring yourself silly with bumps in the desert night.

Stained glass

Valenti Angelo, San Francisco Illustrator (b.1897- d.1982)

Original issuu post, view here

From Thomas a Kempis, "The Imitation of Christ" (Mt. Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, ca. 1947), by San Francisco illustrator, Valenti Angelo. His life in his own words. Best books: Valenti Angelo: Author, Illustrator, Printer and Con Amore: Valenti Angelo: A Bibliography, 1971-1982

Herman Wirth's Books of Wonders

In our search for the origins of what is now the Greek letter "Phi" ϕ, we earlier discovered "Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit" (rough trans: "Sacred Original Writings of Mankind"), a two volume symbolist opus by Herman Wirth, published in 1936, Leipzig. The Dutch symbolist Wirth's research was sponsored by the Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler during this period (1935-1938). Wirth is rather infamous for "advocated the Swastika as 'species-specific sign of salvation'" in 1925. A very difficult set of volumes to find, WorldCat shows about four sets in USA libraries and four in Germany - here is a sampling of the first 15 of 400 illustrated pages of the second volume, "Bilderatlas". Below, Wirth's earlier, 635 page, volume from 1928.

Ruth Cozen Snyder and "Maypoles"

Ruth- Thank you for a lovely and unexpected Mayday morning!  Such a lovely body (pun) of work.  And, as you mentioned, inspired by the maypole motif.  And thank you for the instruction to find the living  Maypole just down the street on Sunset Blvd. (photo below).  Unbelievable!

Here are some links for your granddaughter to show to her that yours is a 13,000 year old oeuvre:
13,000 year old Maypoles- click to enlarge photos - reindeer head on left, read commentary.
Egyptian Maypoles-
TODAY's most famous Maypole- (how be it upsidedown in this image) and its related historical "Phi" symbols - set one, set two (The "Phi" symbol also denotes the Golden Ratio of 1.61803398874989)
Chinese Maypoles-
Schuster's Maypoles-
Advanced Maypoles-
Cowboy Maypoles-
Islamic Maypoles-
Christian Maypoles-
My Maypoles-

Lilith - Adam's first wife

So briefly, most recall the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, little knowing the true story of Adam's first wife, Lilith. Apparently, in a dispute over which, Adam or Lilith, should be sexually "on top", Lilith leapt into the air (with instant wings) and flew off to the Red Sea. God, making his usual rounds that evening learned the entire odd story from His new creations and dispatched two angels to sweet talk Lilith into coming back to the Garden. Unable to dissuade her, our two clever ambassadors threatened to kill her first 100 children each day to which Lilith retorted that she would birth 1000 children every day. Our two angels return to the Almighty, related the situation and the Allknowing One, after a couple more attempts (three's a charm), sorts a more compliant Eve for Adam. Not being around for the Apple / Snake shakedown, Lilith is immortal and still with us today - though needing, with feet like those, some extra daily help with gathering semen to make those 1000 babies.  She and her female offspring (ie the succubi) spend the nights causing and harvesting wet dreams 'round the world. Beats Santa Claus or maybe they. . . So, I got to be making this up? not! Robert Graves and Raphael Patai's excellent account and the wonderful and long lived Lilith website of Alan Humm - thank you again, Alan.

From the British Museum- "Queen of the Night" in old Babylon, 1800-1750 BC (southern Iraq)
 This large plaque is made of baked straw-tempered clay, modelled in high relief. The figure of the curvaceous naked woman was originally painted red. She wears the horned headdress characteristic of a Mesopotamian deity and holds a rod and ring of justice, symbols of her divinity. Her long multi-coloured wings hang downwards, indicating that she is a goddess of the Underworld. Her legs end in the talons of a bird of prey, similar to those of the two owls that flank her. The background was originally painted black, suggesting that she was associated with the night. She stands on the backs of two lions, and a scale pattern indicates mountains. The figure could be an aspect of the goddess Ishtar, Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and war, or Ishtar's sister and rival, the goddess Ereshkigal who ruled over the Underworld, or the demoness Lilitu, known in the Bible as Lilith. The plaque probably stood in a shrine. The same goddess appears on small, crude, mould-made plaques from Babylonia from about 1850 to 1750 BC. Thermoluminescence tests confirm that the 'Queen of the Night' relief was made between 1765 and 45 BC.

The relief may have come to England as early as 1924, and was brought to the British Museum in 1933 for scientific testing. It has been known since its publication in 1936 in the Illustrated London News as the Burney Relief, after its owner at that time. Until 2003 it has been in private hands. The Director and Trustees of the British Museum decided to make this spectacular terracotta plaque the principal acquisition for the British Museum's 250th anniversary.

Photo above: The plaque as it looks now compared to a reconstruction image created by Mark Timson of the British Museum's New Media Unit, with the guidance of Dominique Collon, curator in the Department of the Ancient Near East.

Best books: Siegmund Hurwitz "Lilith, the first Eve" and Raphael Patai "Hebrew Goddess".

Visible Vagina NYC thru March 20, 2010

Rather rough group showing on an otherwise excellent subject. Split between (no pun) two galleries in NYC, The Visible Vagina from January 28 (Imbolc) to March 20 (equinox) 2010 at David Nolan 527 West 29th St (showing Gladys Nilsson's Stream 2009, left) and Francis Naumann 24 West 57th St, Ste 305 (includes Carol Cole's Back in the Womb, right).  The Nolan Gallery's web is worth the visit, skip the Naumann site  (what happened!?).

From the press release - "As the title of the exhibition suggests, the show is designed to make visible a portion of the female anatomy that is generally considered taboo―too private and intimate for public display. If shown at all, this part of a woman's body is usually presented in an abject fashion, generally within the context of pornography, intended, in almost all cases, for the exclusive pleasure of men. The goal of this exhibition is to remove these prurient connotations, implicit even in works of art, ever since the pudendum was prudishly covered by a fig leaf. This gesture of false modesty, it should be noted, was devised and enforced entirely by men (not only in the case of classical sculpture, but also in the Bible, in which, immediately after their disobedience in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve cover their genitalia with fig leaves). Indeed, until recently, men made virtually all depictions of the frontal nude female figure, but as this exhibition will demonstrate, that has changed dramatically in recent years."

Wiki Wonkas

Enjoy!

František Kupka, Museo Picasso Málaga, 15 February - 25 April 2010

NEW: Kupka moves from Museo Miro to Museo Picasso Málaga. The exhibition will show for the [second!] time in Spain a selection of around 80 paintings and drawings by the Czech artist, all from the Centre Georges Pompidou, and documents from the collection of Pierre Brullé, a leading expert on Kupka, who was considered the first painter to explore the concept of abstract act. The splendid collection of works from the Centre Georges Pompidou, mostly donated by the artist's widow in 1963, shows very clearly the development of Kupka's art from his early Symbolist paintings to his final years. František Kupka (1871-1957) began his artistic career at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he learned an academic style. Later on, in Vienna, he began to take an interest in Symbolism and allegorical art. After moving to Paris in 1896, Kupka worked as a press and advertising illustrator while at the same time making contact with the early avant-garde movements such as Fauvism and Cubism, though maintaining his independence and his own personal language. His interest in Futurist writings meant that around 1910 his work started to become increasingly abstract, with the idea of reflecting movement and studying the effects of colour and the relationship between music and painting. This led to the publication of the book La Création dans les arts plastiques in 1913. Despite his links to the "isms" of the period, Kupka always felt himself to be a lone experimenter. In 1931, together with Auguste Herbin, Jean Hélion and other artists he founded the Abstraction-Création group, which defended abstract art against the Surrealist movement led by André Breton.


The František Kupka exhibition at the Foundation seeks to highlight the artist's particular contributions, such as the combination of Austrian fin-de-siècle motifs with the early avant-garde exploration of form and the depiction of movement, which very soon led him to abstraction. This sensibility means that Kupka's work occupies a leading place in the history of modern European art.  Major exhibitions of Kupka's art have been held in the main museums in France the United States and Japan, but he has never had a retrospective in Barcelona. It is in order to redress this unjustified omission that the Foundation is now presenting this show that will enable us to appreciate and understand the stylistic evolution and working methods of this key painter in the development of early abstract art.

Notes: Links to the entire Kupka collection of Centre Pompidou as photo above right, enter there, "kupka", into box at left. Early exhibition on the La Fundació Joan Miró site page . The second largest collection of František Kupka is located in his native country, the beautiful Museum Kampa, Prague, however images of his work on this site seem to be lacking.

". . .with bells on!"

EROS - From Hesiod's Theogony to Late Antiquity This major archeological exhibition will focus on Eros, the archaic deity of reproduction, and on the historical progression of the concept ―from the first references made in Hesiod’s texts dating from the 6th century B.C. up until the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. The exhibition includes 270 artifacts from 45 archaeological museums and institutions from Greece, Cyprus, Italy and the Louvre in France. It is important to note that over 100 of the items on display will be available for public view for the first time. The exhibition provides insight into the archeology and history of more than 10 centuries in the ancient world, making it an exhibition of true historic, scientific, cultural and artistic value. Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens GR  December 10th 2009 to April 6th, 2010.

The Codex Sinaiticus Project

Online since July 2009. The Codex Sinaiticus Project is an international collaboration to reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible to a global audience for the first time. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars, conservators and curators, the Project gives everyone the opportunity to connect directly with this famous manuscript. [Find out more about the Codex Sinaiticus Project.]

I was asked by Océ UK to submit lighting designs for this project (alas, designs not accepted). Good to see the project reach fruition (but the lighting?!).

Enter Year X, Millennium 3

In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
That was where the trouble started.
Before, there was chaos,
Which is what the wise man still seeks.
He divided light from darkness, dry land from sea,
But we got sea and darkness anyway.
Silly blundering old bugger,
Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone. 
  - Northrop Frye  
Excerpts from Frye's annotated library.

Perspective

Menstrual Envy 101

I have argued earlier regarding the ankh-like cravat as "power symbol".  And while we have not yet taken up this subject directly, recent news provided a splendid visual lecture on male menstrual envy - with the notable exception of Germany's Guido, what's up with yellow?

From NYTimes.com: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) speaks with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (L) and Britain's foreign secretary David Miliband (R), German Foreign Affairs minister Guido Westerwelle (Back-C) during a family photo during a NATO Foreign ministers meeting at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels. (photo: AFP/John Thys)"

псевдоним Юзефа Теодора Конрада Коженёвского

"God is for men and religion is for women." - Joseph Conrad