NOVEMBER 4, 2011





LOLLIPOP





















ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO)

NUMBER SEVENTY-TWO
Haneda Ferry and Benten Shrine (Haneda no watashi Benten no yashiro)
This print stirs quick and strong responses.  It has predictably offended genteel viewers, particularly in the West.  It has been referred to, for example, as "the inane Boatman with the Hairy Legs" and that it could "only be attributed to premature senile decay" of the artist.

Japanese critics are generally more tolerant about the hairiness, taking it in the spirit of benign humor that the artist surely intended.  Opinion is equally mixed about the clever composition:  Uchida Minoru was blunt in condemning it as a "stunning failure," while Takahashi Seiichiro considered it a mark of the Hiroshige's "extraordinary artistic genius."

The matter of hairiness notwithstanding, the depiction of the ferryman offers a useful illustration of the single scull by which so many boats in traditional Japan were propelled.  The scull seen here would be some ten or twelve feet long, fitted along the shaft with a wooden socket that pivoted on a protruding ball mounted in the stern.

For a Japanese of the Edo period, this view would probably provoke less of a reaction to the ferryman's hairy limbs than to the sense of rocking, rhythmic motion that this graceful and efficient mode of transportation produced.






Paris Fashions for September 1864
CROW'S-NEST SIGNAL-STATION

From the sketch to the right, the reader will get a very good idea of the manner in which signal-stations are constructed.

In an opening in the forest, on an elevation, some strong, lofty tree is selected.  At the top of a ladder a scaffolding is placed; upon this scaffolding another ladder rests, and so on till the summit is reached.  Here in the top of the tree a platform is built, affording a commodious look-out.








The Sun Parakeet or Sun Conure (Aratinga solstitialis) is a medium-sized brightly colored parrot native to northeastern South America.
The adult male and female are similar in appearance, with predominantly golden-yellow plumage and orange-flushed underparts and face. It is commonly kept in aviculture. The species is endangered, threatened by loss of habitat and trapping for the pet trade.

In the wild Sun Conures are friendly, peaceful birds and seldom fight with each other. They live together in groups of 20 or more birds, even during the mating season, and feed on various seeds, fruits, and insects.




Sun Conures are approximately 12 inches in length, including their long tail. Their body build is slender, and their feathers are bright, iridescent shades of orange, blue, yellow and green. Unlike some other species which have definite coloration patterns, these birds sometimes have a combination of these colors over almost any part of their bodies.


Youngsters tend to have feathers which are predominantly green, while older birds sport more of the yellow or reddish-orange.  All of these colors become brighter and more vivid as the bird matures, with some birds sporting almost totally yellow tones in their body color. The beak and feet are both black.

Babies will be a mix of dark green, yellow and orange colors. Over a period of about 6-8 months, the darker green feathers will be molted out and replaced by brilliant yellow ones on the chest, head and back.




These birds are capable of learning to talk, although their range is limited and their voices are squeaky and birdlike. They like to imitate amusing sounds. They really enjoy human attention, especially if there is no other bird around for them to groom and play with.








The United States issued its first commemorative stamp in 1893, the $1 Columbian Exposition issue, "Isabella pledging her jewels", one of a set of 16 commemoratives issued to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.

Though the United Kingdom often set the precedence for postage stamps and their designs, they were the late runners with the issue of their first commemorative stamp, not issuing one until 1924 when it printed and released the British Empire Exhibition issue of 1924.













Baton Rouge: Anchor Line's Steam Packet City of Baton Rouge in 1881
Painting by John Stobart
Baton Rouge is French for "red stick."  When French explorer D’Iberville led his exploration party up the Mississippi River in 1699, the group came to a cypress tree on a bluff above the river stripped of its bark and covered with bloody animal and fish heads, marking the boundary between Houma and Bayou Goula tribal hunting grounds.  They called the tree "le baton rouge," or red stick.  The native name for the site had been Istrouma.

In 1718, Dartaguette established the first French settlement in the area.  In the mid-1700s when French-speaking settlers of Acadia, Canada's maritime regions, were driven into exile by British forces, many migrated to rural Louisiana.  Descendants of the Acadians, popularly known as Cajuns, maintained a separate culture that has enriched the Baton Rouge area.  In 1763, the British took control and called their outpost New Fort Richmond.

Following the American Revolution the Spanish took control of the region until 1810, when they were overthrown by local settlers, raising the U.S. flag over the region for the first time.

Baton Rouge was incorporated in 1817. River traffic flourished as steamboats, flatboats and barges crowded the riverfront.  The state capital was moved to Baton Rouge from New Orleans in 1849 and remained there until the Civil War halted economic progress.  Baton Rouge's population of 5,500 remained in the Confederacy for 16 months, until May 29, 1862, when Union troops arrived to occupy the city.

In this painting, the new Anchor Line's packet Baton Rouge approaches from downriver as a ferry heads upstream to avoid a large log-raft moving down.  The year is 1881, when Mark Twain returned to the river to research Life On The Mississippi, travelling with his former cub-pilot mentor Horace Bixby, on the Baton Rouge.






This is a moist, cake-like fragrant Swedish rye bread made with molasses (or brown sugar), and flavored with orange zest and fennel, caraway or anise. Frequently it is made with a combination of several types of rye flour from dark to light. Its sweet flavor and moist texture is sometimes enhanced with the addition of golden raisins. Can you name that bread ???

PASS YOUR MOUSE OVER THE QUESTION MARKS FOR THE ANSWER!






MTR (Mountain Top Removal)
west of Townsend, Montana


Shown here is a road traversing the mountains between a lime-processing plant and the blasting areas.


An area where the mountain top has been blasted away.


A more extensive view of the MTR (mountain top removal).  Some states do not allow this type of destruction.


The road continues on along the mountain to the next blasting area.


In time, these ridges will also be gone.
MOTORIZED VEHICLES SUCH AS MOTORCYCLES, PICKUPS, AND SNOWMOBILES ALSO CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEFACING OF THE TERRAIN.  THIS AREA HAS BEEN POSTED AS OFF-LIMITS TO ALL BUT FOOT TRAFFIC.


In his novel Freedom, Jonathan Franzen deals extensively with the subject of MTR.






NO RIDE TODAY
Charles Burton Barber
(English Animalist Painter)






In his novel Freedom, Jonathan Franzen returns to fiction with a comic and tragic epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the responsibility of privilege. Charting the characters' mistakes and joys as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever-changing and confusing world, Freedom is an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul, Minnesota—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Baby Boomers. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why is Walter working away from home so much? What has happened to their teenage son? Why has Patty, the bright star of Barrier Street, become "a very different kind of neighbor," coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? And what exactly is eccentric rocker Richard Katz—Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture?

As the story explores the nature of love, it also tackles our tenuous relationship with nature. When Walter fights to preserve a habitat for an endangered bird, the troubled history between Patty, Richard and himself threatens to topple the deal, along with everything he believes about truth and illusion.


Jonathan Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois, in 1959, and grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.

After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1981, he studied at the Freie Universität in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar and later worked in a seismology lab at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

In addition to winning a Whiting Writers' Award in 1988 and the American Academy's Berlin Prize in 2000, he has been named one of "Twenty Writers for the 21st Century" by The New Yorker and one of the "Best Young American Novelists" by Granta.












FLATIRON BUILDING, NEW YORK






ARKANSAS

A diamond on a red field represents the only place in North America where diamonds have been discovered and mined. The twenty-five white stars around the diamond mean that Arkansas was the twenty-fifth state to join the Union. The top of four stars in the center represents that Arkansas was a member of the Confederate States during the Civil War. The other three stars represent Spain, France and the United States, countries that had earlier ruled the land that includes Arkansas.


















Pencil sketching is an interesting and powerful element of design. To put it correctly, pencil sketching can be termed as "the mother of graphic arts."

The general perception about drawing pencil sketches is that it is either a part of initial training given to Fine Arts students or it's a good hobby for anyone who can draw well. What most of us don't know is that making pencil sketches is almost an inevitable part of design and a unique branch of art in itself.
JOHNNY DEPP








African music relies heavily on fast-paced, upbeat rhythmic drum playing found all over the continent, though some styles, such as the Township music of South Africa do not make much use of the drum and nomadic groups such as the Maasai do not traditionally use drums.

Elsewhere the drum is the sign of life: its beat is the heartbeat of the community.  Drums are classed as membranophones and consist of a skin or "drumhead" stretched over the open end of a frame or "shell."

Well known African drums include the Djembe (RIGHT) and the Talking drum (BELOW).
Talking drums are smaller and quieter then the Djembes, and get their name from the tonal range (voices) with which it can speak by squeezing and releasing the vertical strings to tighten and loosen the heads. Most are double-headed and are struck by a special curved stick.












Susan has been publishing her Daily Dose for years.  She did a fine job of creating email pages, but felt the need to transition to a website.  It was a big step for Susan and she has made the change like a pro.  You can visit her site by clicking on the graphic.