Weekly Blog Round-Up

UPDATE: Ladybird & Andy - You gotta check this out: the Heavy Metal Band Names Flow Chart! On Comic vs. Audience, via Boing Boing.

WOW - look at the detail. The tear glistens!!! - Thanks, as ever, Terry from Idle Speculations

"awesome president is awesome" from Buzzfeed

Green roof on Huff Po

Why Former Energy Secretary Should Keep His Mouth Shut! Amen, brother! from TreeHugger.

I truly loathe Bush. I wonder if he will ever get his just desserts. Story from Gawker.

Poe in 50's Hipster Argot. If that's not your thing, just read Poe aloud. Both from Boing Boing.

Holy moly! crochet coral reef!! From Boing Boing.

Gotta love Gawker for their assessment of Obama Staffers' discontent with the White House tech environment. Muddle through like the rest of us, OK?

Too geeky for words - Planet of the Apes font from Boing Boing.

Obama's first act is to halt Bush's last-ditch efforts to wreck stuff. Via TreeHugger.

Roma (Gypsy) History - Here is a pretty detailed (harsh) account from the BBC of Roma suffering during the Holocaust.

If you like birds, there are some beautiful photos over at Peregrinations Ornithologiques!

Cheap food is back. So say we all. There is a spread in the Philadelphia Inquirer in this week's food section about Mac & Cheese - for exactly this reason - it's cheap!

And, finally, my horoscope (Pisces) from Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology:

Once every few years, a panel of Hindu and Buddhist judges in Nepal chooses a new "living goddess," a young girl who serves, until she reaches puberty, as an incarnation of the deity Taleju. One of the tests each candidate must pass in order to be eligible for the role is this: She must show no fear as she spends a night alone in a room filled with the bloody heads of ritually killed buffaloes and goats. I'd like you to consider the possibility of carrying out a more humane equivalent of that ceremony, Pisces. For one night, keep symbols of what you're afraid of in the place where you sleep. To do so would be an excellent way to earn the right to graduate to the next level of your spiritual evolution.

Brief Round Up - Happy Thanksgiving!

An excellent image of my favorite female saint, Mary Magdalene, from Idle Speculations.

"I'm not One of Those Christians," one more reason you gotta love the Onion.

And in case you missed it, the spontaneous Obama love in West Philly the night of the election.

Josiah and I got to meet the Finnish Flyers last night, including Ossi Vaananen (he's so cute!). The Finnish Ambassador was there, AND the Flyers won! So cool!

Hallelujah! Obama might nix Daylight Savings Time!!! Wohoo!

Green house design via Huff Po

Linguistic diversity matters just as much as biodiversity.

A great idea! Solar panels on cemetery in Spain.

So, in the spirit of thanksgiving, I will say, thank you for reading, and visiting my blog. And thank you, God, for all the blessings of this life. I'll share my favorite (easy to remember!) table grace with you all:

God is Great
God is Good
Let us Thank God for our food, Amen.

Catacombs

So, the photo of the skulls in the Paris Catacombs might not be the most comforting image in the universe, I grant you. But I really am fascinated by the Catacombs, both those in Paris, and those in Rome. And that interest morphs into appreciation for regular cemeteries also. Some people don't like graveyards and think I'm morbid. But I think they are such a tangible, and beautiful connection to our past. They are pleasant places to spend some time, have a picnic even, as our ancestors from the 19th century did.

My first introduction to catacombs was in Rome when my cousin and I did one of the tours along the Appian Way. The Roman catacombs were more a place of clandestine worship and meeting for the early Christians who were persecuted in those days. They knew they could gather under the radar, underground, and keep out of the way of the authorities, so this is where they met. And when their few members died, they could bury them there as well. Some of the catacombs had previous spiritual significance from the earlier Pagan practitioners, so the two uses sort of blended together. I felt a little claustrophobic inside, and was so relieved to be able to step out on the Appian Way afterwards and get some fresh air. Though, that was another mind-blowing experience in itself, to be standing on paving stones that had been there for over 2,000 years, and used as a road pretty much their whole existence. Amazing!

Later I got a chance to see the Catacombs of Paris, which was pretty amazing. These were not as old, dating only as far back as the 1700's. The Parisian catacombs were the new resting place for thousands and thousands of displaced bones moved from other, older, over-crowded Parisian cemeteries. It's a pretty gross idea what the workers had to do that moved all these bones into the new "ossuaries" ("bone depositories"). They had to dig up the old graves, clean out the bones, move them to the catacombs, sort of keep track of where they were from (in a general sense) in the old cemetery, label them, and then organize them into sturdy, somewhat decorative patterns in caverns that may or may not have been sturdy. There became a brotherhood of these workers. And they began to have initiation rites into the brotherhood, emphasizing that once you were accepted, you would not be left behind with all these already-dead people. The work conditions were not great, of course. The caverns they were filling in with bones had once been quarries for stone for all the magnificent buildings around Paris. But that meant that some of the cavern rooms were not that strong and could collapse. There was also the danger of getting some kind of disease from the "fresher" of the skeletons. So the workers built these little chapels where the initiations could happen. The tour guides say they were pretty religious ceremonies, based on Catholic blessings. And I wish I could remember if there was a patron saint invoked or not. But these chapels still feel safer (and drier!) than the rest of the place.

One of the things that drew me to one of my favorite movies, Delicatessen, (besides the wicked dark humor) was the scenes in "les egouts" or the sewer system that also runs under Paris. I really want to take a tour of the sewers, or at least check out the museum. Apparently the guidebook, Paris Secret, is excellent.

All of this leads me to my appreciation of cemeteries. I've been to Père-Lachaise and admired the graves in New Orleans, both of which have magnificent grave markers. I like that there is so much emotion in the carvings and inscriptions (check out the AWESOME virtual tour of Père-Lachaise!). That there is such a presence of and reverence for death. It's comforting in a way. That these people in these tombs won't be forgotten, even if we don't actually know who the people are inside them. I like the cemeteries in Philadelphia. They also have the grand monuments and the feeling of the closeness of death since they boomed in the 19th Century as well.

I could go on and on. Maybe more to come in a future post.

It's a New Day

I found some posts today that made me feel better about the state of the world than I felt yesterday.

I feel like the boingboing post fits in nicely with my horoscope from Rob Brezsny. He's always so right-on:

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

"Don't eat any food that's incapable of rotting," says Michael Pollan in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. In other words, highly processed foods with a long shelf life don't contribute to your optimum vitality. I'd like to expand this rule to make it an all-purpose guideline for life. Try out this hypothesis: If you're involved with any person or situation that never decays, or if there is some part of you that never decays, that's highly suspicious and may be a problem. Like growth, rot is a natural phenomenon. Indeed, every advancement requires or brings the disintegration of whatever it replaces. You can't grow if you don't rot! The "perfection" of stasis can be hazardous to your health! So let me ask you, Pisces: What's due to rot in your world?

And then beauty of the tulip fields on Pruned is hard to ignore. Yes, just in time for Mother's Day.It's not very "wild" looking. More like a far-out plaid. Loving it!

Enjoy, people.

Religious Art Sightings

Not feeling to (physically) great today. But seeing this at Bob's Blog raised my spirits.

I also just found a good religious art blog of Carl Bloch's work, which I hadn't seen before. He covers the classic Christian religious subjects of paintings.

Well, have a great weekend, all!

Jesus and the Junkie

I just spotted this image on Hasta Los Gatos Quieren Zapatos, and I'm amazed. The site where it was originally posted calls it a "surreal piece of religious propaganda". And I guess it is - but it's so old school in it's symbolism, and yet up-to-date at the same time. [Except the junkie looks like George Michael, but whatever! I {heart} George Michael.]

The symbolism is right out of the old religious art images: the skull representing mortality, and the contemplation of it. The wall behind them looks like it shows a map of the Americas. The paraphernalia that the junkie uses are all laid out so we can see them, the "sinner's tools" - cards, booze, a gun, coke, a candle for the heroin spoon, and of course the needle and tourniquet. We see Jesus' suffering for our sins, but also that he is there with us, even in the loneliest times. It reminds me of the Footprints poem. You know the one:

Footprints in the Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

Mary Stevenson, 1936

This image feels heavy-handed, but yet, it grabs me. What about you? I think probably all those crucifixes, and entombment images back in the Middle Ages used to feel powerful - real - to the people back then too. THAT's what I think is amazing about religious art. I always get sucked in.

Entombment Statues in Moissac

This group is from around 1476. The statues are made of oak wood, and the style is sort of formal, sort of emotional. Not as restrained as Gothic, but not as emotive as the Renaissance.

The sadness comes across to me. I saw this group right after a friend of mine died. I felt the emotion of the Mary's and James. I really put myself in the group. [sigh] I still feel it when I see it.

But who were those other two men? Well, apparently, Entombment groups usually include Joseph of Arimethea, and Nicodemus. Who were they? This Joseph is mentioned in the Gospels as the rich man who bought the fine linen to wrap Jesus' body and gave up his own tomb for Jesus to be laid in. Nicodemus, another rich man, brought the myrrh and aloes for preparing Jesus' body for burial. I think Joseph is on the left, and Nicodemus is on the right.

It's interesting to me that both men are said to be rich. At the time when most of these Entombment sculptures were being done, they were commissioned by wealthy Christians who wanted to beautify/be remembered in their local churches - generally cathedrals, or sites along the pilgrimage trail of Santiago de Compostela. The family crests of the patron are on the side of Jesus' coffin.

The other statues represent, from the left, Mary - Martha's sister (probably), the Virgin Mary, James (the Beloved), Salome (not the one who had John the Baptist beheaded), and Mary Magdalene.

For my research I read, The entombment of Christ: French sculptures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by William H. Forsyth, Published for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1970.

Mary Magdalene in Moissac

This statue is part of a group in Moissac, Southern France. You can tell it's Magdalene because she's wearing a red outer robe, she's quite pretty and she's holding a jar of perfume. She looks calm, but sad. I reacted so strongly to her. She drew me in to the whole group. I guess I saw the perfume jar first, recognized her, and then wanted to know more about the group.

The sculpture as a whole is called an "Entombment" group, which, I learned upon doing some research, became common, mostly in France, in the late 1400's.