Mitchell Gallery located on campus of St John's College in Annapolis

Gallery Hours and Admission
Tuesday - Sunday, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday evenings, 7 to 8 p.m.
Free Admission

The Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints from the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art

March 3 – April 16, 2011
This exhibition of 50 Edo period (1603-1868) prints reveals an intimate history of Japanese print collecting in the South in the early 20th century.  With the help of internationally know ukiyo-e print expert Frederick Gookin, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art founder Wallace B. Rogers created a superb collection in the 1920’s.  Gookin’s expertise and Rogers’s funding yielded a collection rich in the works of Hiroshige, and expansive enough to include Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, and other important printmakers.  The prints encompass all of the ukiyo-e subjects: beautiful women, actors and the theater, landscapes, narrative scenes, and decorative themes.

The Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints from the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi Tour Management by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, Kansas City, Missouri (thanks St. John's site)

Didya Know...

Did you know that Speaker of the House John Boehner is really ‘spooked’ by that Emperor in ‘Return of the Jedi'? It’s true. “That guy scares the beejeezus out of me,” admitted Boehner at a recent news conference. 

John Boehner's List of Favorite Songs

John Boehner is not just working on the congressional end of the federal budget. He also released his list of favorite songs:

Baby Don’t Cry – 1992 - INXS
Baby Stop Crying - 1978 - Bob Dylan
Big Boys Don't Cry - 1999 - Lolly
Big Girls Don't Cry - 1962 - The Four Seasons
Big Girls Don’t Cry (I hope you know, I hope you know - that this has nothing to do with you, it’s personal, myself and I, we’ve got some straightening out to do) – 2007 - Fergie
Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain – 1975 – Willie Nelson
Boys Cry - 1964 - Eden Kane
Can't Cry Anymore (took your car, drove to Texas, sorry honey, but I suspected we were through, and I can't cry anymore; wouldn't it be good if we could hop a flight to anywhere, so long to this life, so much for pretending, bad luck's never-ending) - 1993 - Sheryl Crow
Cowgirls Don’t Cry – 2008 – Brooks and Dunn featuring Reba McEntire
Cry - 1966 - Ronnie Dove
Cry - 1985 - Godley and Creme
Cry - 1989 - Waterfront
Cry Baby - 1956 - Bonnie Sisters
Cry Baby - 1963 - Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters

150th Anniversary of Civil War start

On November 6, 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States -- an event that outraged southern states. The Republican party had run on an anti-slavery platform, and many southerners felt that there was no longer a place for them in the Union. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded. By Febrary 1, 1861, six more states -- Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas -- had split from the Union. The seceded states created the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi Senator, as their provisional president.

In his inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed that it was his duty to maintain the Union. He also declared that he had no intention of ending slavery where it existed, or of repealing the Fugitive Slave Law -- a position that horrified African Americans and their white allies. Lincoln's statement, however, did not satisfy the Confederacy, and on April 12 they attacked Fort Sumter, a federal stronghold in Charleston, South Carolina. Federal troops returned the fire. The Civil War had begun. (Thanks PBS.org)

Glenn Beck's announcement

A wave of mourning swept through the nation today as news of Glenn Beck's "transitioning" off his Fox News show was announced. People were seen openly weeping in the streets, reminiscent of other moments of national tragedy. "We will all remember where we were when we heard about this," said a New Yorker. People were seen hugging strangers and holding family members closely. One person noted: "it will take years to get over this, if we ever do."

Rand Paul in Speechifying Matrix

Sen. Rand Paul

Philologist

Not since Roscoe Conkling in 1840 had an US Senator faced the conundrum which Senator Rand Paul faced earlier this week. The problem was this: he inadvisably did what he was warned by his mentors in the Senate never to do- he attempted, on the Senate floor, to use the words: “unprecedented, precedence, and president,” in a sentence. This attempt trapped the Senator in a verbal matrix for 45 minutes: “our President, unprecedented, our president, I present, the president who, without precedence, being toward the precedent, and I and...” This sad trap continued until a noted philologist from Oxford was summoned and able to use an ancient string of conjugated Druid verbs to bring Rand out of this whirlwind of verbal confluence. It worked!

Orioles weighing possibility of undefeated season

Orioles Brian Roberts

Mercury Morris being humble

Orioles Manager Buck Showalter stands at the crossroads with a difficult decision. Should he begin to rest his players now or go for the undefeated season? The Orioles, at 4-0, need only to sweep every series between now and the end of September to accomplish the mark. Dolphins yearly crybaby Mercury Morris weighed in saying that “they should just go ahead and lose a few, undefeated doesn't matter.” Others not so disingenuous voiced the opposite opinion and are rooting for the Orioles to go for the unblemished record. 

Kevin Spacey at the Kennedy Center

On Monday night, I attended a lecture given by actor Kevin Spacey at the Kennedy Center in Washington. The lecture was the 24th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on on Arts and Public Policy, presented by the American for the Arts in partnership with "ovation" (a cable station dedicated to arts). Spacey's talk was an impassioned speech about the benefits of public (government) funding for culture and the arts. The actor gave a personal story, how he benefited from attending a workshop funded through public means. The workshop led to his meeting and performing in front of legendary Jack Lemon. This experience gave Spacey the confidence he needed to pursue his dream. (Lemon and Spacey went on to do three films together and 'Long Days Journey into Night' on Broadway) Spacey outlined how all great nations have valued public funding of the arts and how leaders of all political parties have championed that effort. Winston Churchill, according to Spacey, responded to the suggestion to cut funding for the arts during the Second World War by asking "what are we fighting for"? Spacey talked about the transforming power of art and how art permeates through all aspect of life. "Does it matter?" was the question Spacey used to frame the lecture. Does it matter for a society, even in times of financial hardship, to promulgate its true values by using public funds to finance artists in their chosen medium? It does.

Obama announces '12 run, this blog supports

President Barack Obama announced today that he will be running for re-election. Despite disappointing in some areas, the President is vastly superior to any choice offered by the GOP, whose candidate will be beholden to the Tea Party. For those who think that candidates are all the same just think back to the days of W. They are not 'all the same', especially in the critical area of choosing Supreme Court justices. We can't afford to sit one out, we have to support the President and hope to get him moving on issues we believe in. So, President Barack Obama in 2012!

Antidote to "Insidious"... "Diabolique"

Diabolique 1955

Insidious 2011

The recently released film "Insidious" (from Filmdistrict directed by James Wan)  uses familiar devices to tell a story of a family troubled by demons and possessions. It is clichéd-ridden, but not the worst effort in the modern genre of horror and gore. As an antidote to this film, I recommend the 1955 French film "Diabolique" directed by Henri Georges-Clouzot. I first heard of this movie at Robert McKee's 'Story" seminar in New York in 2005. The movie is brilliant. tense, suspenseful, riveting, and any other word I can think of to positively describe it. It is an experience as much as a film. You can get it on Netflix or at the library. It will give you the fix you could be looking for in 'Insidious", yet done with a master's use of the filmmaker's tools. 

A Beautiful Thing

Chuck Thompson and Brooks Robinson used to broadcast on Channel 2 in the 1970's and 1980's. Their style was quiet and soothing, putting the viewer in a meditative state. Chuck Thompson was already a Baltimore broadcasting icon by the 1970's. His voice dripped with the sensations of a Maryland summer: the Boardwalk fries at Ocean city, sun-brewed tea on a porch in Dundalk, a smoked-filled diner in Highlandtown. Brooks was "Mr Oriole", the living embodiment of what had, by then, become the codified system known as "the Oriole Way". They would call the game in a nearly sound-proof booth. When you watched the game on TV, (back then always in mono), the experience had an unearthly aspect, and it would seem as if you were right there in the booth. If there was a better reason for the invention of baseball on TV, I have yet to see it.

The Apu Trilogy

The Apu Trilogy is three films directed by Satyijit Ray. The three films are "Pather Panchali", "Aparachito", and "Apu Sanser" (the World of Apu). The films were completed in 1959. They were based on two Bengali novels written in 1929 and 1932 by author Bithutibhushan Bandopadhyay. The films were scored by Ravi Shankur. The three films tell the story of a Bengali named Apu Roy and how he comes of age and enters into adult maturity. The films work on an emotional level as the audience is drawn into the struggles Apu faces as he transforms and realizes his place in the world. Like all great art, this work draws us completely into this mystical time and place while communicating universal truths. The cinematography is simple, yet refined and beautiful. The haunting soundtrack stirs one to the core. This trilogy is considered by film historians to be one of the true masterpieces of world cinema. Think an Italian neorealism film shot in Bangladesh. Most libraries can get it if you don't have Netflix. Watch these movies. (wikipedia for dates and spelling)

Notes from the Underground

Allen Berra reviewed this book in Salon on May 2004:

May 27, 2004 | There are a handful of books that have the power to create secret societies among their readers, books that make you feel like a cult member. I don't just mean the popular "subversive books" such as "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Trial" or "Catch-22." However personal our relationship to them, they are all comfortable literature-class staples. I mean books that are accepted classics but that some teachers shy away from, if only because they can't be served up (as even the great earthshaking fictions of Tolstoy can) in neat little packages of meaning.

I mean books that even if you studied them in college didn't quite seem to fit. Books you probably stumbled across on your own or through a close friend, and after you read them, you felt you had been drawn to them, as if by a tractor beam in a sci-fi movie. Albert Camus' "The Stranger" is one of these; so is Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities." For the most part, such books were lumped together under the heading of "existential," whether the label applied literally or not.

The heavyweight champion of "existential fiction" is Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground." (In recent translations, it's no longer "theUnderground.") As anyone who has read it can attest, it's one of the oddest little books in all of literature (110-120 pages in most editions, a novella, really). It's divided into two parts, the first a roughly 40-page exposition featuring a nameless character whom we have come to refer to only as "Underground Man" ranting away about everything that society holds dear in what V.S. Pritchett once called "an amazing performance of bad humor." ("I will not introduce any order or system," the unnamed narrator says in the new edition from Everyman's Library, "whatever I recall, I will write down.")

The second part, about twice as long, is a narrative in which U.G. Man tries to assert himself along the lines of the nihilist principles expressed in Part 1. He succeeds only at humiliating himself further. The former college classmates he nurses grudges against and even the total strangers he tries to pick fights with don't consider him important enough to be insulted. In the last few pages, he turns to a prostitute, Liza, whose simplicity and sincerity expose to us, if not entirely to UGM, the shallowness of his own philosophy.

"Notes From Underground"

By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Bosley Hair Clinic patient has enough hair on back and sides to be good candidate for hair replacement procedure

Friends hear the good news

President of Bosley Hair Clinic..happy as well

Linkfiled  joyous

Max Linkfiled of Binghamton, New York, attended a free Bosley Hair Clinic consultation and was determined to be a 'good candidate' for the hair-replacement procedure. "It was touch-and go-there for a few minutes. After a credit check and an examination of my scalp, the Bosley doctors determined I'd be a good candidate for the procedure. What a relief." Mr. Linkfiled's friend Lem added, "It was a day of hugs and deep exhaling all throughout the town. We are all so happy for Max."

Architect Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind is one of the most important architects of our time. Here is a link to his site:

http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/

The Ascent at Roebling's Bridge

Imperial War Museum North 2001

Jewish Museum Berlin 1999

Here are some examples of his work and demonstration of his belief that "architecture is language". (Thanks to Libeskind's site and wikipedia.)

American TV series credited with reviving British author

Shakespeare bust... actually console

Bat-Man and Robin

For many, it seems as if William Shakespeare has always been a prominent figure in the world of literature. Many forget, however, that Shakespeare had nearly fallen off the 'literary radar" for centuries until the producers of the 1960's Bat-Man TV series (created in America) helped usher in a revival. The bust of William Shakespeare, at the time an obscure and long-dead playwright, was used by the caped-crusaders to open the door to the Bat Cave. (They would roll back the bust to reveal a console with buttons to activate the door.) Lorenzo Semple Jr, one of the scriptwriters for the series (Wikipedia), was also an English literature major and wanted to insert his favorite author as an 'inside' reference. Curiosity in the bust was followed by a cult following which ballooned into mainstream rediscovery of the works of the 'Bard'. You're welcome, England.

"Inception" reboot in the works

Looking to revive a classic film, Warner Bros. announced plans to dust the cobwebs off the 2010 film and give it a new, updated look. "Everyone is nostalgic about the original but our team is excited about what 2011 technology will bring to the film." said a Warner Bros executive. "We plan to give the film an entirely fresh perspective." Some skeptics question whether today's audience will even remember the original. "The hope is that a new generation of film-goers and film history buffs will want to see what the buzz was all about when it was first released," said the executive.

Matthew Weiner's lawyer argues in case vs AMC

"Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner's attorney presented Weiner's case in court on his contract dispute with AMC. The presentation went as follows:

"Well, the lawsuit has a glittery lure. But, there is the rare occasion when the jury can be engaged on a level beyond flash if they have a sentimental bond with the contract points.


At my first firm, I was 'first chair' with an old lawyer named Teddy. Teddy told me that the most important idea in law is the 'new'. You simply put your arguments in a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with cases. 'Nostalgia'. It's delicate, but potent.


Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means 'the pain from an old wound'. It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than the memory alone. This contract isn't a spaceship, its a time machine.


It goes backwards, forwards, takes us to a place we ache to go again. It's not called the law. Its a carousel.


It let's us travel the way a child travels. Round and around and back again to a place where we know we are loved."

Donald Trump releases 3rd Birth Certificate, experts authenticate

Scientist examines document

Donald Trump's Birth Certificate

Victorious again

Donald Trump "trumped" President Barack Obama by releasing his 3rd version of his birth certificate. "It absolutely amazes me how I have moved ahead of the President on this issue." said Mr. Trump. "My team of scientists have mulled over every inch of this certificate, as you can see. And yet I have yet to hear from anyone from the President's third-grade class. Interesting."

Pick a lane, Mr Gingrich

Newt in 1986 (in Aliens)

A more recent pic of Mr Gingrich

My brother told me about this. I did a quick search to see Gingrich's direct quote. This is what I found from Politico:
 "I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9," Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."   Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52023.html#ixzz1I1bwUSQH

We will be in a 'secular atheist' country, dominated by 'radical Islamists"???

Newt in 2020 with thanks to the great M Emmet Walsh

As usual, Gingrich says whatever he wants without being held to any standard as far as boundaries, logic, or judgement. Sadly, he still gets an audience, ofttimes receptive. There is a segment of the country who will listen to any bloviation as long as it is a not-so-stealth attack directed at President Obama, in sync with an entire fictional narrative created by like-minded Obama haters.