Graphic Video and Images of Pilot Whale Slaughter in the Faroe Islands

 

VIDEO :

 

youtu.be/V7NVmvjV88g

 

The Bloody Horror of the The Ferocious Isles

 

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

 

The Danish Navy and the Faroese Police are strict in enforcing the laws that protect the whalers but there seems to be a lack of concern and enforcement to the violation of the laws for the killers. Illegal killing techniques are seen in this video, shot by Sea Shepherd in the Faroes yesterday. The use of the knife and the intentional infliction of suffering to the whales. The Faroese say the whales are killed instantly and do not suffer yet the intense pain experienced can be seen in the long bloody thrashing of dying whales.

This video exposes the lie of the 2 second kill, the myth that the Faroese constantly parrot in their justification of this horrific slaughter.

It is illegal to stress the animals yet the driving of these whales onto the beach to be killed is intensely stressful.

Last year, Sea Shepherd crew were charged with stressing the whales by interfering with the intent to kill them and this year it is now illegal to sight whales and not report them to the whale killers. Sea Shepherd volunteers or any tourist can now be charged for not reporting whales to the whalers.

Denmark has laws against cruelty to animals, but not in the Faroes. The killing of whales is illegal under European Union regulations but the Faroes, despite annually receiving millions of Euros in subsidies are exempted from these laws.

It is illegal to feed toxic meat to the public and especially to children but despite the dangerously high levels of methyl-mercury in pilot whale meat the Faroese do so without investigation or warnings.

Ripping fetuses from the wombs of the mothers, mutilating the bodies, hacking out the teeth, having children play and and mutilate the bodies, carving numbers into their flesh, stabbing with knives, ripping their flesh with boat props, decapitating them, stressing the animals with bang poles and forcing these gentle intelligent social sentient beings to witness the slaughter of their family members around them in their own blood before they are slain is viciously barbaric and has no place in any civilized society.

Why does Denmark subsidize this? Why does the Danish Navy and the Danish police defend this? Why do the Danish people tolerate this horrific cruelty and this disgracefully primitive violence that masquerades under the pretense of culture and postures under the justification of tradition.

The world must condemn this crime against nature, and Denmark must say to these killers that as a compassionate nation such an abomination of ecological principles and common decency should be tossed upon the dustbin of history with the likes of slavery and animal brothels.

 

Photo : Sea Shepherd

 

Business Ethics (MAN 3701)

Week 09 - Virtue = #32 = Healthy

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A Haiku to Good Health

======================

Being physical

and also mentally sound

in total balance.

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Statue of K'ung Fu-Tse on the campus of Shanghai University. Confucius (the Latinized name that westerners use), was born in the year 551 B.C. and was a conservator of ancient Chinese truth and ceremonial propriety. He did not address theology or metaphysics, but his teachings and exemplary personal conduct led to a moral and cultural renaissance among the people of China. Despite the many foreign influences and internal political conflicts, his influence on Chinese civilization has been more or less permanent. A great figure of Asian philosophy, he was a contemporary of Pythagoras. Confucius taught his students through conversational lessons about propriety in moral and political conduct. He promulgated an ideal conduct of life, the basis of which was learning, wisdom, moral perfection, and decency in behavior.

 

Martial arts and morality

 

Traditional Chinese schools of martial arts, such as the famed Shaolin monks, often dealt with the study of martial arts not just as a means of self-defense or mental training, but as a system of ethics. Wude (武 德) can be translated as "martial morality" and is constructed from the words "wu" (武), which means martial, and "de" (德), which means morality or virtue (according to the Dao de Ching). Wude (武德) deals with two aspects; "morality of deed" and "morality of mind". Morality of deed concerns social relations; morality of mind is meant to cultivate the inner harmony between the emotional mind (Xin, 心) and the wisdom mind (Hui, 慧). The ultimate goal is reaching no extremity (Wuji, 無 極) (closely related to the Taoist concept of wu wei), where both wisdom and emotions are in harmony with each other.

 

Types of Morality

 

Deed

Concept..........romanization..........Hanzi

 

Humility.................Qian......................謙

Sincerity................Cheng..................誠

Politeness.............Li...........................禮

Loyalty...................Yi...........................義

Trust.......................Xin.........................信

 

Mind

Concept..........romanization.........Hanzi

 

Courage................Yong....................勇

Patience................Ren......................忍

Endurance............Heng....................恒

Perseverance.......Yi..........................毅

Will..........................Zhi........................志

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgiM1ubNCYc

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8amUImEu0

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vNku8fGeR4

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If you help others purely for the sake of helping,

with no thought of personal gain and

without wishing to be recognized for the help you give,

you can be called truly virtuous.

........................................................... JATAKAMALA

  

Confucius did not pontificate; he gave no long lectures or sermons. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Great Transformation: The Beginnings of Our Religious Traditions, writes:

 

"He was convinced that the root cause of the current disorder in China was neglect of the traditional rites that had governed the conduct of the principalities for so long."

 

"Instead of concerning themselves about the afterlife, people must learn to be good here below. His disciples did not study with him in order to acquire esoteric information about the gods and spirits. Their ultimate concern was not Heaven but the Way."

 

Confucius wanted people to become fully conscious of what they were doing. He felt that ego was the source of human pettiness and cruelty and thus losing selfishness would transform one’s life. He wanted people to trust in the power of an enhanced humanity instead of coercion. His focus was not on death, the afterlife, or metaphysics: it was, instead, on living in the world. His teachings are a guide to personal morality, interpersonal relations, social responsibility, and good government.

 

The teachings of Confucius, the Analects, were put together by his disciples long after Confucius’ death. We cannot be sure that all of the maxims attributed to him are authentic. There are hundreds of short, unconnected remarks with no attempt to produce a clearly defined vision. Readers are supposed to search for what is not said, to look between the lines for the full meaning and to connect one idea with another. His moral teachings emphasize self-cultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rules.

 

Belgian postcard by Victoria Biscuits Chocolats, no. 17. Photo: M.G.M. Lana Turner and Gene Kelly in The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948), based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.

 

The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) is a classic Swashbuckler, starring Gene Kelly as D’Artagnan and Lana Turner as Milady De Winter. Other stars in the cast include Van Heflin, June Allyson, Gig Young, Angela Lansbury, and Vincent Price. It is one of the many, adaptations of the famous French book ‘Les trois mousquetaires’ by Alexandre Dumas père, and possibly the liveliest one, full of acrobatics, galloping horses, flapping cloaks, and sword fights with almost operatic intensity. Dumas’s story is followed quite faithfully, but the creative fantasy is in the theatrical way of depicting it.

 

As in the book: the story of The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) is set in 1625 in France. The young and inexperienced D'Artagnan (Gene Kelly) leaves his home village in Gascony to become a musketeer in Paris in the service of His Majesty King Louis XIII (Frank Morgan). In his pocket, he has the letter of recommendation from his father (silent film star Robert Warwick), a former musketeer and friend of the current captain of the musketeers, Treville (Reginald Owen). His father has taught him the art of fencing masterfully and gives him the good advice never to let himself be compromised with impunity. He is only too happy to follow this advice. Very soon, before he has even reached Paris, D'Artagnan gets into a confrontation with Rochefort (Ian Keith), Cardinal Richelieu's (Vincent Price) confidant, and his companion, the mysterious Lady de Winter (Lana Turner). At this first opportunity to preserve his honour in battle, he is unceremoniously struck down and robbed by Rochefort's henchmen, and his credentials are also taken from him. Once in Paris, he not only meets his new friends and comrades-in-arms Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young), and Aramis (Robert Coote), but also his landlord's niece, Constance Bonacieux (June Allyson), and falls in love. Many adventures and entanglements lie ahead and in the path of the brave hero D'Artagnan. Driven by his desire to become the king's musketeer and to prove himself in battle, he falls into the clutches of both the queen (Angela and the cardinal, experiences numerous dangerous situations and sometimes needs his new friends to get away at all. Nevertheless, he sets out to travel to England for the Queen's honour, to retrieve a jewellery box given away by the Queen's secret lover, Lord Buckingham (John Sutton), and to prevent Richelieu from plotting. To assist him, he is accompanied by Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, as well as his dull but loyal servant Planchet (Keenan Wynn). Shortly after D'Artagnan's return from England, Constance is kidnapped at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu. D'Artagnan makes a pass at Milady de Winter, discovers a delicate secret, and only just manages to save himself. Constance is freed and taken to safety in England, shortly after which war breaks out, and our four friends are drawn into it. They overhear a conspiratorial meeting between the Cardinal and Lady de Winter in an inn. The latter is to travel to England and kill Buckingham. Planchet also travels to England at D'Artagnan's behest to warn Buckingham. Lady de Winter is convicted and is to be executed. Constance is appointed her guardian. Milady de Winter, after a lengthy psychological duel, manages to take out Constance as well as a guard and Buckingham and then escapes. Athos and D'Artagnan, who wanted to help Constance, arrive too late; after Constance dies in D'Artagnan's arms, they themselves also have only escaped. Back in Paris, the four friends track down Lady de Winter, pronounce the death sentence on her, and have the prisoner executed. During their subsequent escape towards Spain, they are overpowered and arrested. Their fate seems to be sealed, but young D'Artagnan still has one trump card: the Countess's passport, personally sealed and signed by Cardinal Richelieu, with the note that everything the bearer of this letter undertakes will serve the good of the state. The king is not allowed to know the background of this letter - so Richelieu has to give in. Aramis receives permission to take up a clerical office. Porthos is allowed to marry richly, Athos gets his property back and D'Artagnan is to negotiate a peace offer with the enemy England on behalf of France.

 

Among the many American film versions of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers are the 1914 Film Attractions Co. production, directed by Charles V. Henkel, the 1921 Douglas Fairbanks production, directed by Fred Niblo, the 1935 RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. production, directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Walter Abel, Paul Lucas and Margot Grahame, Richard Lester's 1974 Twentieth Century-Fox production starring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Raquel Welch; and the 1993 Buena Vista release, directed by Stephen Herek and starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O'Donnell, and Rebecca de Mornay. This splashy 1948 MGM adaptation of The Three Musketeers was the third sound version and was also the first version in Technicolor. In 1947, a representative of the National Catholic Legion of Decency, an organisation that monitored the interests of the Church in motion pictures, objected to the characterisation of Cardinal Richelieu in the planned MGM adaptation of Dumas' story. In a letter to MGM producer Pandro S. Berman, the organisation stated its objection to the cardinal being portrayed as a "worldly and unscrupulous man" and urged the studio to remove the character from the film. Berman refused to remove the character from the film but promised he would use great caution in all sensitive matters pertaining to the story and in the film, Richelieu is never referred to as Cardinal Richelieu. Berman also indicated that Constance, the married mistress of D'Artagnan in the novel, would be unmarried in the film version. While early sound versions of Three Musketeers eliminated the deaths of Constance and Milady, this adaptation telescopes the novel's events to allow for these tragedies. According to AFI, screenwriter Robert Ardry was displeased with Sidney's irreverent approach to the Dumas story and objected to the spoof elements that were added to the film. A biography of Kelly noted that Belgian fencing champion Jean Heremans, who appears in the film as the cardinal's guard, taught Kelly how to fence. Kelly's biography also noted that during the filming of a bedroom scene, Kelly flung Turner onto a bed with such force that she fell to the ground and suffered a broken elbow. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “True to form, MGM saw to it that Lana Turner, as Milady, was dressed to the nines and heavily bejeweled for her beheading sequence. Portions of the 1948 Three Musketeers, in black and white, showed up in the silent film-within-a-film in 1952's Singin' in the Rain, which of course also starred Gene Kelly.” The Three Musketeers opened to mostly favourable reviews, with several reviewers commenting on the film's unusual tongue-in-cheek approach. New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther noted that "more glittering swordplay, more dazzling costumes, more colors or more of Miss Turner's chest have never been seen in a picture than are shown in this one." And added: “Completely fantastic, however, is Miss Turner as the villainess, the ambitious Lady de Winter who does the boudoir business for the boss. Loaded with blond hair and jewels, with twelve-gallon hats and ostrich plumes, and poured into her satin dresses with a good bit of Turner to spare, she walks through the palaces and salons with the air of a company-mannered Mae West.” In 1948, there was an Oscar nomination for Robert Planck in the category Best Cinematography/Colour. Hans J. Wollstein at AllMovie: “The Three Musketeers remains an outrageously entertaining yarn, the Southern California locales perfectly standing in for 17th Century France and England.” And finally, Yvette Banek at her blog In so many words: “Lana Turner is really quite superb in her evilness. So evil that she is even photographed without make-up. Well, as 'without make-up' as MGM got, at any rate. Even then, she is exquisitely beautiful - especially when praying.”

 

Sources: Bosley Crowther (New York Times), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Yvette Banek (In so many words), AFI, Wikipedia (Dutch, German), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

so strident these days

those with nothing to say

you know who they are

so pious, pontificating

so presumptuous

right out of goebbels' playbook,

a splash of garish spectacle.

 

still, my hope endures

here & there secured

by the volumes spoken

yet left unsaid

of common decency

flowing from the ... lips

of some faint, long-suffering smile.

My camera and my life long love of people have led me to make the acquaintance of some really fascinating individuals.

 

If you ask any street photographer, they will tell you that the pictures they most remember are the ones they didn't take...

 

the photograph that they 'saw' but 'missed.'

 

The one that got away.

 

That's how I met a man named George Anastaplo.

 

I saw him walking down the street while I was on the way to a very special dinner that I was already late in getting to.

 

As I passed him up on the sidewalk there I resisted with everything that I had the urge to stop and photograph him.

 

I wanted to impress the woman that I was with with the fact that indeed I possessed a modicum of self control and that I didn't have to 'pop' every interesting looking person that I encountered in life.

 

After we arrived at the dinner I thought about the man that had just looked so fascinating to me out there on the street.

 

The man whose picture I didn't take.

 

The shot I missed.

 

Then fate did a funny thing just then.

 

That man sat down at the table right next to me.

 

Fate has given me so many second chances to capture 'his soul' in a photograph.

 

I swore to myself that day that one day I'd get 'the shot that I missed.'

 

The 'soul portrait.'

 

Fate is a funny thing indeed.

 

And she has always been good to me.

 

I am going to get that photograph.

 

Someone sent me a link to this article today... I've cut and pasted the entire thing and a link to the original article... It's not my work and if doing that isn't cool somebody let me know...

   

"One door closes"

 

An article written by Richard Mertens in 'The University of Chicago Magazine.'

 

You can find the original article here: mag.uchicago.edu/law-policy-society/one-door-closes

 

“Are you a member of the Communist Party?” George Anastaplo, AB’48, JD’51, PhD’64, refused to answer that question, a refusal that shaped his life.

 

Justice Hugo Black once called George Anastaplo, AB’48, JD’51, PhD’64, “too stubborn for his own good.” Sixty-some years later, Anastaplo sits in a basement room in the Gleacher Center, in downtown Chicago, surrounded by a dozen adult-education students, the picture of cheerful amiability. At 86 years old, Anastaplo has taught in the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults for 55 years. A small man with white hair and clear gray eyes, wearing running shoes and an old tweed jacket, Anastaplo is lively and relaxed. A photocopy of Emerson’s essay “Friendship” lies on the table in front of him.

 

“I was appalled by how elitist Emerson was in his view of friendship,” says one student, a middle-aged woman.

 

Anastaplo’s eyes light up. He leans forward, and a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You were appalled?” he says. She reads from a passage in which Emerson writes, “‘I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.’ Give me a break!” she exclaims, rolling her eyes. Delighted, Anastaplo swivels his head around the room. “Any reactions?”

 

This was not the life Anastaplo envisioned. On the morning of November 10, 1950, three days after his 25th birthday, he put on a coat and tie and headed downtown to the offices of the Chicago Bar Association, on LaSalle Street, for what he assumed would be the last step to launching a legal career in Illinois. The son of Greek immigrants from downstate Carterville, Anastaplo was a World War II veteran—he had navigated B-17 and B-29 bombers—and a top student at the University of Chicago Law School.

 

He had already passed the bar exam. He had begun talking to firms in the city. All that remained was a routine interview with two members of the Illinois Bar Association’s Committee on Character and Fitness. Anastaplo expected 15 minutes of pleasantries. Other applicants were waiting outside.

 

But the interview took an unexpected turn. After a few harmless questions, one of the lawyers asked Anastaplo if a member of the Communist Party should be eligible to practice law in Illinois. Anastaplo was surprised. “I should think so,” he said. But didn’t Communists believe in overthrowing the government? the lawyer asked. In the long colloquy that followed, Anastaplo, invoking George Washington and American political tradition, insisted that the right to revolt was “one of the most fundamental rights any people have.” The committee members were unconvinced. Finally the second one asked, “Are you a member of the Communist Party?”

 

Although this question was much in the air in the 1950s—earlier that year in West Virginia, Senator Joe McCarthy had brandished a list of Communists he claimed had infiltrated the State Department—no one seriously thought that Anastaplo was a Communist. Nor did anyone doubt his intellect, character, or patriotism. “If the mothers in Car­terville have their way, all their boys will be like George,” Fred K. Lingle, one of his high-school teachers, had told the committee in a written statement. And yet Anastaplo had determined that, as a matter of principle, the committee had no right to ask about his political beliefs or affiliations. “I think it is an illegitimate question,” he replied.

 

Thus began a decade-long confrontation pitting an unknown but determined young Army reservist and Law School graduate against the Illinois Bar Association and the climate of fear and suspicion that then pervaded public life in the United States. Anastaplo never did become a lawyer. But the case made him famous as an example of resistance to communist witch-hunting and launched him on a long and prolific career as a scholar, law professor, and teacher of great books, a good-natured contrarian, gadfly, and independent thinker.

 

In the months and years that followed his first interview with the Committee on Character and Fitness, Anastaplo had many chances to change his mind and answer the question. He had plenty of encouragement to do so, including a warning from his Law School dean, Edward H. Levi, U-High’28, PhB’32, JD’35, that he was making a big mistake. But he refused—and kept on refusing. He declined, as one writer put it, “to follow the line of least resistance.” For its part, the Illinois Bar was no less intractable: it simply refused to admit him. Anastaplo sued. The two sides fought back and forth through ten years of hearings and rehearings, rulings and appeals, until the case landed before the Supreme Court in 1960.

 

By then Anastaplo had spent a decade practicing law, all on his own behalf. He made the oral argument himself. On April 24, 1961, the court ruled against him, upholding the Illinois Bar five to four. In a lengthy petition for rehearing that he had little hope would succeed, Anastaplo wrote, “It is highly probable that upon disposition of this Petition for Rehearing, petitioner will have practiced all the law he is ever going to.”

 

With that valedictory flourish, Anastaplo moved on. But although he had lost, neither he nor the case was forgotten, thanks primarily to Justice Black, whose dissent raised Anastaplo to something more than a legal footnote. Black had not taken Anastaplo seriously at first. Of his lawsuit, Black had confided to Chief Justice William Brennan, “This whole thing is a little silly on his part.” But recent cases had left Black worried about the fate of the First Amendment and of what he later called “that great heritage of freedom.” In Anastaplo he found freedom’s champion. “The very most that can fairly be said against Anastaplo’s position in this entire matter is that he took too much of the responsibility of preserving [this country’s] freedom upon himself,” Black wrote. He compared Anastaplo to great lawyers like Clarence Darrow and then, taking measure of the nation’s ills, decried “the present trend, not only in the legal profession but in almost every walk of life” in which “too many men are being driven to become government-fearing and time-serving because the Government is being permitted to strike out at those who are fearless enough to think as they please and say what they think.” He concluded with an exhortation that still resonates: “We must not be afraid to be free.” Black liked this dissent so much that he had parts of it read at his funeral in 1971. When Brennan, who voted with Black, read it, he told him, “You’ve immortalized Anastaplo.”

   

Anastaplo has been called many things, some worse than stubborn. Sidney Hook, the leftist New York intellectual turned anticommunist crusader, described him as “a very much confused young man—both philosophically and politically—with a large bump of self righteousness.” On the other hand, Leon Despres, PhB’27, JD’29, a Hyde Park alderman and one of Anastap­lo’s most fervent admirers, dubbed him the “Socrates of Chicago.”

 

But Studs Terkel, PhB’32, JD’34, who interviewed Anastaplo twice on Chicago’s WFMT, may have hit closest to the truth when he described him simply as “one of those rare individuals who belongs to himself.” Anastaplo remains an unconventional figure, a lecturer in the Graham School’s Basic Program, a law professor at Loyola University of Chicago since 1981, and a writer of unusual range and productivity, with articles and books on subjects as diverse as the US Constitution, the Bhagavad Gita, and the lights at Wrigley Field. Shut out of the law, Anastaplo poured his energies into new channels, where, his friends say, he has proven himself as much his own man as he was before the Committee on Character and Fitness.

 

“To use a cliché, George really marches to his own drummer,” says Stanley Katz, an old friend and a professor at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “I don’t know anybody of whom that is truer.”

 

Anastaplo inspires strong feelings. To a dwindling number of old friends and admirers—he has outlived not only his antagonists but also most of his old supporters—he is a heroic figure who stood up for liberty and decency at a dark moment in American history. At its 40th reunion, his Law School class gave him a bronze plaque that read “In admiration of a life devoted to high principle.” He has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Later generations know Anastaplo mainly as a gifted teacher and writer who delights in expressing unpopular or idiosyncratic positions. His first book, a close reading of the First Amendment, holds that the amendment does not apply to the states, in contrast to the views of almost every other constitutional scholar. Once, at a ceremony honoring him for his defense of civil liberties, Anastaplo surprised the audience by arguing for the abolition of television. On a talk show, he defended Richard Nixon against Gore Vidal, asserting that Nixon’s Watergate transgressions were minor compared to the actions of some other presidents, such as Harry Truman.

 

“He has always behaved as some kind of gadfly,” Laurence Berns, AB’50, PhD’57, an old friend, said in a 1986 Chicago magazine article written by Andrew Patner, X’81. “When the conventional opinion goes overboard in one direction, he tends to move in the other.”

 

But Anastaplo is more than a gadfly. He is an intellectual omnivore, a generalist who respects few intellectual boundaries. In lectures, essays, and op-ed pieces, he often returns to favorite subjects, including the Constitution, the Greek classics, Shakespeare, and Lincoln. He comments frequently on contemporary issues involving questions of rights and liberties. Recently, for instance, he criticized the use of drones against terror suspects.

 

In fact Anastaplo writes about whatever interests him. He has published about 20 books, a dozen book-length law-review articles, and hundreds of essays. Many of his books treat aspects of the Constitution (including one on Lincoln and the Constitution), but they also explore literature (The Artist as Thinker: From Shakespeare to Joyce, Swallow Press, 1982), non-Western ideas (But Not Philosophy: Seven Introductions to Non-Western Thought, Lexington Books, 2002), religion (The Bible: Respectful Readings, Lexington Books, 2008), and other subjects far from his training in law and Western political philosophy. This variety is in part a consequence of teaching in the Basic Program, where, during a typical week last fall, he led discussions of Emerson, Plutarch, and Newton’s Principia, and where, he notes with a kind of pride, “I teach whatever other people don’t want to.”

 

It is also an expression of a lively curiosity and the freedom to follow it. Anastaplo frequently attends University lectures, panels, and colloquia—the Franke Institute for Wednesday lunch, a Physics colloquium on Thursdays—where, he laments, he is often the only layman in the room. As his friend Stanley Katz suggests, Anastaplo exemplifies an older intellectual ideal, one envisioned by Robert Hutchins’s university and Mortimer Adler’s Great Books of the Western World.

 

Friends have long marveled at his capacity for work. His eldest daughter, Helen Newlin, U-High’67, JD’75, CER’02, says that in winter he would rise and begin working as soon as the family’s modest wood frame house had cooled sufficiently to wake him. John Murley, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in whose house Anastaplo stayed while a guest lecturer in the 1980s, remembers that his typewriter began clattering away at 5 a.m.

 

“I have always had the overwhelming feeling, when I’m with him, that I should get much more serious about my work,” says Murley.

 

In person Anastaplo is mild, courteous, and funny. He is a classicist at heart, with a deep faith in reason, moderation, and human goodness, and devoted to the search for enduring values. He is skeptical of modernity. He dislikes what he calls “value-free social sciences.” He is fascinated by the physical sciences but thinks their influence has been bad, chiding scientists for their “abandonment” of “common sense.” His 1961 petition to the Supreme Court included his own exhortation: “We must try to take seriously again the concern and conditions for virtue, nobility, and the life most fitting for man.”

 

“He’s a person who is profoundly conservative, with a small ‘c,’ ” says Katz. “He’s deeply committed to traditional values … that for him are more than intellectual. … The bar-admissions case was about that. This is simply a man for whom principle is everything.”

 

The bar case was not his only clash with authorities. In 1960 the Anastaplo family drove a Volkswagen microbus across Europe, one of many summer trips the family made. On a public square in Moscow, Anastaplo approached a group of British tourists handing out copies of an American magazine, attracting a crowd. He meant only to warn them they could get in trouble, but when the police showed up, he says, someone pointed him out, and he was arrested along with the others. The next day he was expelled. In 1968 Greece’s military rulers threw him out of the country for criticizing their regime. C. Hermann Pritchard later quipped, “Any man who is kicked out of Russia, Greece, and the Illinois Bar can’t be all bad.”

 

As a teacher, Anastaplo has a talent for inducing thoughtfulness, says Laurence Nee, a tutor at St. John’s College in Sante Fe and a former student of Anastaplo. Once, Nee recalls, Anastaplo gave a talk on Constitution Day at the University of Dallas, a conservative Catholic institution where he taught for many years, flying down regularly from Chicago. Flag burning was in the news, and Anastaplo began by handing out photocopies of a canceled stamp bearing the image of a flag—in effect, a mutilated flag.

 

“His first motion isn’t to argue for or against a position,” says Nee, then a graduate student in Dallas. “It’s, ‘Have we thought about this?’”

 

Students like his obvious love of learning. He often scribbles notes in class, and he tries to approach each work afresh, using a clean text whenever he can. “He has a kind of boyishness to him still,” Nee says. “I think that’s part of his appeal. He enjoys learning. You can see the pleasure he takes in it.”

 

Monday and Tuesday mornings this past fall, Anastap­lo taught at the Gleacher Center, then walked briskly up Michigan Avenue, a canvas tote in each hand, to teach jurisprudence and constitutional law at Loyola. He uses public transportation (or his feet) whenever possible, and until a few years ago he biked to classes downtown, pedaling an old three-speed up the lakeshore path.

 

Anastaplo’s freewheeling and often philosophical approach to the law is a welcome contrast to the “nuts and bolts” fare of other courses, says Rebecca Blabolil, a recent Loyola graduate who took Anastaplo’s class last fall. “His classes are an opportunity to think and exercise a part of your brain that has been dormant for the three years you’ve been here,” Blabolil says. During one week, for example, he discussed the Emancipation Proclamation, a new Supreme Court ruling concerning images on cigarette packs, and Civil War songs, which he described as a neglected window into sectional differences.

   

Anastaplo’s Law School classmates remember him as brilliant and witty, although quiet, even solitary. He was clearly not a typical law student. “He had his own ideas about how to spend his time,” says Abner Mikva, JD’51, who went on to become a congressman, federal judge, and adviser to President Clinton. Instead of joining the Law Review, a sure path to advancement, Anastaplo audited other courses at the University. When Dean Levi decreed that students wear coats and ties to class, Anastaplo continued to show up in jeans. When a lecture bored him, he would pull out a newspaper and read.

 

Few of his classmates, then, were surprised when Anastaplo defied the Committee on Character and Fitness, says Alexander Polikoff, AB’48, AM’50, JD’53, who later helped write a friend-of-the-court brief for him. “He was strong willed and stubborn when it came to constitutional principles.”

 

At the hearings Anastaplo was polite but confident. Transcripts suggest he was more than an intellectual match for his questioners. But he seems to have misjudged them. He arrived as if armed for a graduate seminar, laden with books, citing Jefferson, Locke, and English parliamentary rules, expecting to engage in real debate. To the lawyers on the committee, however, his arguments seem to have been mostly beside the point. The anxieties over communism in America, fanned by far right, anti–New Deal Republicans, were real, if misguided, and the lawyers could not easily discount them. In Chicago schoolteachers had been forced to take loyalty oaths. An Illinois legislative committee had been investigating communist sympathies among the faculties of Illinois universities, including the University of Chicago. Anastaplo’s talk about revolution was alarming.

 

“I had a feeling that George was not a communist in any shape or form,” said the late Edmund A. Stephan, who presided over a rehearing of Anastaplo’s case in 1958, in the Chicago magazine article. “But at that time, ‘communist’ meant somebody who would overthrow the government. It wasn’t something to be trifled with.”

 

A bigger issue for the lawyers—and a decisive one for the Supreme Court—was whether Anastaplo could get away with refusing to answer questions. His manner, as much as his arguments, exasperated some committee members. One told Patner he was “a smart aleck.”

 

“The big mistake, if it was a mistake, was in assuming that other people in other institutions had sense and good will, and they didn’t,” concludes Lawrence Friedman, AB’48, JD’51, LLM’53, a former classmate and today a professor of law at Stanford University. “It was an age of intolerance and moral panic. He was asking for trouble, and he got it. You don’t argue with George—‘Why are you doing this?’ It won’t do any good. I think it was admirable. He stood up for his principle. And he took the consequences.”

 

At the Law School, sentiment ran heavily against him. Students seem to have respected his principles but doubted the wisdom of his position.

 

“I think the majority felt that it was impractical,” says Ramsey Clark, AM’50, JD’51, a classmate and a former US attorney general. “It was kind of a quixotic gesture that might hurt the Law School a little bit. And I think some, and I shared this, felt some pain for what you might call a self-inflicted injury. But I admired him.”

 

A few Law School professors defended Anastaplo, but most did not. Several wrote a proposal, likely never adopted, to discourage other students from following his example. Levi, who went on to serve as University president and US attorney general, urged Anastaplo to reconsider.

 

“I thought Anastaplo’s position was ill-timed,” Levi told the New York Times in a 1975 profile published after he became attorney general. “I thought the big problem was the teacher-oath cases. I thought to raise the non-Communist oath issue with the Character and Fitness Committee was the wrong way to do it, and because of the timing of the thing he would lose and hurt himself, and he did. We were all trying to help him, whether he knows it or not.”

 

Indeed, Anastaplo felt betrayed. To this day he believes that if the Law School had stood up for him, the Illinois Bar would have backed down. For all his abilities, he says, Levi, then in his first year as dean, “was a timid man.” The faculty, too, “were fearful.” In his view, he was standing up to “hazing, harassment, whatever you want to call it.” His years as a flying officer in the Army Air Corps had helped to give him confidence. “I wasn’t going to be bullied.”

 

While the bar-admissions case was under way, Anastap­lo worked at different jobs, including, briefly, driving a taxi. He also studied political philosophy in the Committee on Social Thought under Leo Strauss. He taught, first in the Basic Program and then, after earning his PhD, at Rosary College, the University of Dallas, and eventually, Loyola, often holding two or three positions at a time.

 

His relationship with the University has been complicated and a source of disappointment. With three degrees, Anastap­lo is as much a creature of the institution as anybody. But he remains marginal. For a long time he hoped to secure a regular faculty position, and each time was rebuffed. In April 1975, after Levi had departed for Washington, Anastap­lo loaded a shopping cart with manila envelopes and pushed it the mile from his house on Harper Avenue to the Faculty Exchange mail office. The envelopes contained samples of his writing, a bibliography listing some 300 publications, and a letter making “a quiet … appeal to the good sense of the University faculty.” They were addressed to acting president John T. Wilson, the provost, and the heads of schools, divisions, departments, and committees. He received a few replies but no offers. He never tried again.

 

Anastaplo did teach once at the Law School, in a not-for-credit course organized by Patner, then a law student. For many years he also met informally with graduate students in the University library. He recounts a separate occasion several decades ago when he was offered a course in the College and actually taught the first class—on the Declaration of Independence—only to have the offer withdrawn without explanation.

 

Anastaplo and his supporters say he was blacklisted because of the bar-admissions case and the opposition of his old dean, Edward Levi. He was too much of a troublemaker. Others offer different explanations. James Redfield, U-High’50, AB’54, PhD’61, a professor of classics and former master of the New Collegiate Division, recalls that he and Levi talked “more than once” about Anastaplo and that some professors recommended him. But Anastaplo lacked broad faculty support. The reason, Redfield suggests, was neither Levi nor the bar case but Anastaplo’s link to Leo Strauss. “There was generally a hostility toward Leo Strauss on the humanities faculty,” he says.

 

Katz believes that Anastaplo’s scholarship was simply too unconventional. “He has not respected any of the norms of academic discourse,” he says. “He’s turned that into a virtue, but he never would have gotten tenure at the University of Chicago like that.”

 

Still, Anastaplo has thrived in the academic hinterland, finding appreciative audiences at lesser known and often conservative institutions like the University of Dallas and publishing in obscure journals like the Oklahoma City University Law Review and the South Dakota Law Review. “The main thing is to write it the way I want it,” he says. “That’s what I’ve been able to do.”

 

Anastaplo has taken care that his writings do not languish in obscurity. “My model in self-advertisement is Don Quixote, who seems to have reckoned that if he (as an artist of knight-errantry) went to the trouble of doing useful things, others should benefit from learning about them,” he writes in an essay footnote. He collects many of his essays into books. In recent years friends have posted his writings on the Internet (at anastaplo.wordpress.com). And for most of his adult life Anastaplo has regularly sent packets of his writings to large numbers of friends and acquaintances. His children received packets when they were at college. So, in the last ten years of his life, did Hugo Black, who responded that he enjoyed them. “I have long thought and still believe that you have the capacity to make a highly useful citizen of this country,” he wrote in 1969.

 

Anastaplo’s work has attracted critical notice and often praise, but no large following. “George is prolific, original,” says Geoffrey Stone, JD’71, an expert on constitutional law and a Law School professor since 1973. “But in the world of legal scholars, he isn’t widely recognized.” An exasperated Dean Alfange Jr., now a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, noted in a 1974 review that Anastaplo would not extend First Amendment protection to artistic or literary expression: “Professor Anastaplo states that he knows of no one who agrees with his position on the First Amendment. It is unlikely that he will have to change that assessment as the result of this book.” Another writer praised Anastaplo’s “fervent and selfless moral vision, rooted in the classics of Western thought,” and called him a “rare intellectual: thought and learning are not for him the meaning of life, inducing a withdrawal into books, ideas, and ideological posturings; they give meaning to life, enabling one to live it actively and as perfectly as possible.”

 

At 86, Anastaplo maintains a busy schedule of teaching and writing. “That’s how you stay alive,” he says. He is in the middle of a projected ten-volume series called Reflections, each volume a collection of essays, or “constitutional sonnets,” as he calls them, on various topics. In the third volume, for example, titled Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution (University Press of Kentucky, 2009), he takes up Pericles’s funeral oration, assisted suicide, obliteration bombing, and “The Unseemly Fearfulness of Our Time.” In the meantime he is trying to publish a collection of essays on the aftermath of 9/11, as well as a book-length series of interviews he conducted a decade ago with a Holocaust survivor. He would like to write a book about Roma people and about Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, a work he considers “the greatest of our plays.”

 

Despite his full life, Anastaplo remains aggrieved by the bar-admissions case. He finds it ironic when people tell him they admire what he did. Last year, on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, he wrote, “If such people had expressed their admiration publicly in the 1950s, the Character Committee would probably have backed away from demands that were being made only of me.”

   

After anticommunist fervor cooled in the United States, friends and supporters tried several times to get Anastaplo finally admitted to the Illinois Bar. The Committee on Character and Fitness itself had a change of heart: in 1978 it voted 13 to 4 to certify him. But Anastaplo refused to reapply, and without his cooperation these efforts died. “George doesn’t want to let them off the hook,” says Katz.

 

Indeed, Anastaplo has done his part to keep the case alive. He has spoken about it occasionally and has chronicled it in immense detail, publishing not only most of the essential documents but also much correspondence and commentary about it afterward. “Frankly, I felt, and still do, that staying out on the terms I did was more instructive,” Anastaplo says. “I figured that, all in all, it was better to stay out.”

 

Was he too stubborn for his own good? Certainly Anastaplo sacrificed what might have been a lucrative law career. As a graduate of a leading law school, he might have found other opportunities open up to him as well. Many of his fellow students, including Mikva, Clark, Friedman, and Robert Bork, AB’48, JD’53, went on to distinguished careers in government and academia. From a practical point of view, says Clark, Anastaplo’s actions in 1950 were “catastrophic.”

 

But the practical point of view never was Anastaplo’s. In the end, he says, his case proved “liberating and even empowering.” It made him a symbol of principled resistance and set him on what he calls “my career as a naysayer.” More than that, losing the case gave him the freedom to “do what I want to do and publish what I want to.” Those who know him say they cannot imagine him doing anything differently.

 

“George is always at peace, as far as I can tell,” Clark says. “He was confident. The consequences, which he fully understood, were not a concern. He was determined to live a life of principle as far as he understood it. ... And that’s the type of life he’s lived.”

 

Richard Mertens 'The University of Chicago Magazine' March-April 2012

 

mag.uchicago.edu/law-policy-society/one-door-closes

   

.

I know what you are saying:

 

Laurette! A woman of your age and experience, wearing a skirt that short!

 

Have you no sense of decency? No decorum? Don't you know the meaning of the word 'propriety'?

 

Quick answer: I guess not

Watching Joe Biden Presidential nomination acceptance speech during Democratic National Convention on CSPAN from home in Silver Spring, Maryland on Thursday night, 20 August 2020 by Elvert Barnes Photography

 

20 August 2020 DNC @ CSPAN at www.c-span.org/video/?474671-1/democratic-national-conven...

 

Elvert Barnes PRESIDENTAL ELECTION 2020 docu-project at elvertbarnes.com/Election2020

 

Published at rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/other-hand/2020/09/tale-two-amer...

“Now Is The Time To Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About” ―via @newyorkermag 🙌

 

www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/now-is-the-tim...

 

“Now is the time to counter lies with facts, repeatedly and unflaggingly, while also proclaiming the greater truths: of our equal humanity, of decency, of compassion. Every precious ideal must be reiterated, every obvious argument made...

 

👉 ...because an ugly idea left unchallenged begins to turn the color of normal.” ―Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 💯

…Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us…

 

There are some who will have strong feelings about today.

 

I have taken my lesson from The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook. This is described as Lahuh, a Yemeni bread made from nothing more than wholemeal wheat flour, salt and water. My informant notes it is favoured during Ramadan and other Muslim feasts. She describes how the batter is allowed to ferment, like sourdough. Unlike the Yemeni sponge bread, this version is cooked on both sides. There's a sourdough culture of extended lineage in our family — though it is reasoned like our own microbiomes they evolve and change to resemble their environment. When I mixed my batter, I inoculated it with this culture.

 

Variations on the name Lahuh and batter breads like this feature in the cuisines of NE Africa and the Arabian Peninsula — I'm sure you're familiar with injera. But the references published on the internet seem to predominantly come from one place which has appropriated this bread as their own, as they have Shakshouka and Hummus bi tahini.

 

Of course, you already know the Middle East is complicated and ownership of many things is claimed and contested.

 

Today, like all days, we should break bread together. The cruel denial of access to food — to bread, the staff of life — in acts of conflict is inhumane and cannot be justified, whatever the grievance. This bread was good, was good to share. My counsel to anyone prepared to appropriate, as your own, the food of others is to at least have the human decency to sit down with them and share your spoils. Unless, of course, your eternal objective is to perpetuate grievance.

   

Somewhere within the now-difficult-to-explore, vaulted corridors of the mass history of the Colonial Slave Trade of Africans in the New World, Caribbean Military Myth, Anglo-Saxon intrigue and the legends of Jamaican Folklore resides one of the single most explosive tales in the entire lexicon of African heroism in bondage: this tapestry of myth and reality is known popularly in Jamaican culture as Queen Nanny of the Maroons.

 

Reputed to have been a mighty military strategist and sorceress in her native Ghana, the fierce warrior woman depicted here had been brought to the new world while in the shackles of dehumanizing woe, after having been thrust from her rightful place as a regent and commander of great armies of African might by the white capitalist zeal of slave-masters and military generals with no compulsion, compassion or common decency toward any man or woman of color.

 

However, as she found herself walking in forcible servitude in an 18th Century Jamaica now fully wracked with consistent rumblings of slave rebellion, this Nubian-black warrior princess would find herself called upon again to enact her majestic powers of divination and fearsome military prowess (emulative and, no doubt, directly influenced by the long legacy of black military geniuses such as Hannibal and the Zulu nations of Western Africa) in the service of a new impetus: freedom and unfettered emancipation from British Colonial rule, on shores and island principalities all but foreign and alien to her own people.

 

Nevertheless, according to the hallowed legends of her life, this 18th century, fist-to-cuff freedom fighter would go on to prove not just merely a shrewd combatant against the British, but also a feared and revered mystic siren reputed to wield control over life and death itself as she melded the ancient ways of the far-flung African homeland with the new fighting implements of her racist, British Colonial captors.

 

In fact, Nanny has gone on to enjoy a sort of spectral beatification to this day in the Caribbean as a result of her reputation as a visionary, hand-to-hand combat saint: Nanny would be made sole, matriarchal head of the now-indigenous Maroon Tribe of Jamaica as she would prove successful in leading the African slaves of Jamaica in warding off the advances of the befuddled, technologically superior forces of the English Crown of the time, laughing to scorn the alleged primacy of White racist dictate while mauling Britain’s best trained soldiers in battle, all while valiantly holding aloft her majestic African staff of power with one clenched fist of feminine fury.

  

Vintage postcard.

 

French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) died on 28 December 2025, at the age of 91. In the 1950s, she was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she became an animal rights activist. In the coming weeks, we will continue to post a BB postcard every day to remember her as she once was.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father, and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying to launch a modelling career and found herself on the cover of the French magazine Elle in May 1949. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, and Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand / Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953, she attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956, she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as an ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. In 1953, she made her first US production, Un acte d'amour / Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smash success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. The immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the filming of Et Dieu créa la femme / And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956), directed by her husband, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at the time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped Brigitte Bardot's international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten', and fascination with her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theatres like lemmings. BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne / La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957), which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur / Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "This Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defence attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre can shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960, postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957, and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre / Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career

Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée / Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle, has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at French Films: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the high point of her career when she agreed to make this film with high-profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess, and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot, and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterwards, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire Playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men, including Samy Frey, her co-star in La Vérité / The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris / Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) opposite Michel Piccoli. She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres / Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires /Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses / Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewellery and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990s, she was also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal was a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear, in such early films as Manina / Woman without a Veil (Willy Rozier, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (French Films), French Films, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

When I was young, in the 50’s, there were no gays in Ireland, no child abuse and no prostitutes … you had to travel to England to find that sort of thing [OK, Oscar Wilde was an exception and Molly Malone was really a good catholic girl].

 

Having worked in San Francisco and in Sweden I have never really considered being gay as being an issue so I was not paying much attention to the recent referendum campaign here in the Republic Of Ireland. I had assumed that the vote would be “YES” but I was amazed by the turnout and the massive majority in favour of changing to constitution.

 

A few hours ago I could not make my way home along Capel Street as it was packed with the gay community celebrating their referendum victory.

 

In case you are not aware Ireland became the first country in the world to bring in same-sex marriage by a popular vote. 62% of voters voted Yes in the same-sex marriage referendum, a result that has been described as a social revolution, an expression of decency and a country coming of age. 1.2 million people voted Yes for same sex marriage.

Belgian postcard by Victoria Biscuits Chocolats, no. 14. Photo: M.G.M. Vincent Price and Gene Kelly in The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948), based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.

 

The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) is a classic Swashbuckler, starring Gene Kelly as D’Artagnan and Lana Turner as Milady De Winter. Other stars in the cast include Van Heflin, June Allyson, Gig Young, Angela Lansbury, and Vincent Price. It is one of the many, adaptations of the famous French book ‘Les trois mousquetaires’ by Alexandre Dumas père, and possibly the liveliest one, full of acrobatics, galloping horses, flapping cloaks, and sword fights with almost operatic intensity. Dumas’s story is followed quite faithfully, but the creative fantasy is in the theatrical way of depicting it.

 

As in the book: the story of The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) is set in 1625 in France. The young and inexperienced D'Artagnan (Gene Kelly) leaves his home village in Gascony to become a musketeer in Paris in the service of His Majesty King Louis XIII (Frank Morgan). In his pocket, he has the letter of recommendation from his father (silent film star Robert Warwick), a former musketeer and friend of the current captain of the musketeers, Treville (Reginald Owen). His father has taught him the art of fencing masterfully and gives him the good advice never to let himself be compromised with impunity. He is only too happy to follow this advice. Very soon, before he has even reached Paris, D'Artagnan gets into a confrontation with Rochefort (Ian Keith), Cardinal Richelieu's (Vincent Price) confidant, and his companion, the mysterious Lady de Winter (Lana Turner). At this first opportunity to preserve his honour in battle, he is unceremoniously struck down and robbed by Rochefort's henchmen, and his credentials are also taken from him. Once in Paris, he not only meets his new friends and comrades-in-arms Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young), and Aramis (Robert Coote), but also his landlord's niece, Constance Bonacieux (June Allyson), and falls in love. Many adventures and entanglements lie ahead and in the path of the brave hero D'Artagnan. Driven by his desire to become the king's musketeer and to prove himself in battle, he falls into the clutches of both the queen (Angela and the cardinal, experiences numerous dangerous situations and sometimes needs his new friends to get away at all. Nevertheless, he sets out to travel to England for the Queen's honour, to retrieve a jewellery box given away by the Queen's secret lover, Lord Buckingham (John Sutton), and to prevent Richelieu from plotting. To assist him, he is accompanied by Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, as well as his dull but loyal servant Planchet (Keenan Wynn). Shortly after D'Artagnan's return from England, Constance is kidnapped at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu. D'Artagnan makes a pass at Milady de Winter, discovers a delicate secret, and only just manages to save himself. Constance is freed and taken to safety in England, shortly after which war breaks out, and our four friends are drawn into it. They overhear a conspiratorial meeting between the Cardinal and Lady de Winter in an inn. The latter is to travel to England and kill Buckingham. Planchet also travels to England at D'Artagnan's behest to warn Buckingham. Lady de Winter is convicted and is to be executed. Constance is appointed her guardian. Milady de Winter, after a lengthy psychological duel, manages to take out Constance as well as a guard and Buckingham and then escapes. Athos and D'Artagnan, who wanted to help Constance, arrive too late; after Constance dies in D'Artagnan's arms, they themselves also have only escaped. Back in Paris, the four friends track down Lady de Winter, pronounce the death sentence on her, and have the prisoner executed. During their subsequent escape towards Spain, they are overpowered and arrested. Their fate seems to be sealed, but young D'Artagnan still has one trump card: the Countess's passport, personally sealed and signed by Cardinal Richelieu, with the note that everything the bearer of this letter undertakes will serve the good of the state. The king is not allowed to know the background of this letter - so Richelieu has to give in. Aramis receives permission to take up a clerical office. Porthos is allowed to marry richly, Athos gets his property back and D'Artagnan is to negotiate a peace offer with the enemy England on behalf of France.

 

Among the many American film versions of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers are the 1914 Film Attractions Co. production, directed by Charles V. Henkel, the 1921 Douglas Fairbanks production, directed by Fred Niblo, the 1935 RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. production, directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Walter Abel, Paul Lucas and Margot Grahame, Richard Lester's 1974 Twentieth Century-Fox production starring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Raquel Welch; and the 1993 Buena Vista release, directed by Stephen Herek and starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O'Donnell, and Rebecca de Mornay. This splashy 1948 MGM adaptation of The Three Musketeers was the third sound version and was also the first version in Technicolor. In 1947, a representative of the National Catholic Legion of Decency, an organisation that monitored the interests of the Church in motion pictures, objected to the characterisation of Cardinal Richelieu in the planned MGM adaptation of Dumas' story. In a letter to MGM producer Pandro S. Berman, the organisation stated its objection to the cardinal being portrayed as a "worldly and unscrupulous man" and urged the studio to remove the character from the film. Berman refused to remove the character from the film but promised he would use great caution in all sensitive matters pertaining to the story and in the film, Richelieu is never referred to as Cardinal Richelieu. Berman also indicated that Constance, the married mistress of D'Artagnan in the novel, would be unmarried in the film version. While early sound versions of Three Musketeers eliminated the deaths of Constance and Milady, this adaptation telescopes the novel's events to allow for these tragedies. According to AFI, screenwriter Robert Ardry was displeased with Sidney's irreverent approach to the Dumas story and objected to the spoof elements that were added to the film. A biography of Kelly noted that Belgian fencing champion Jean Heremans, who appears in the film as the cardinal's guard, taught Kelly how to fence. Kelly's biography also noted that during the filming of a bedroom scene, Kelly flung Turner onto a bed with such force that she fell to the ground and suffered a broken elbow. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “True to form, MGM saw to it that Lana Turner, as Milady, was dressed to the nines and heavily bejeweled for her beheading sequence. Portions of the 1948 Three Musketeers, in black and white, showed up in the silent film-within-a-film in 1952's Singin' in the Rain, which of course also starred Gene Kelly.” The Three Musketeers opened to mostly favourable reviews, with several reviewers commenting on the film's unusual tongue-in-cheek approach. New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther noted that "more glittering swordplay, more dazzling costumes, more colors or more of Miss Turner's chest have never been seen in a picture than are shown in this one." And added: “Completely fantastic, however, is Miss Turner as the villainess, the ambitious Lady de Winter who does the boudoir business for the boss. Loaded with blond hair and jewels, with twelve-gallon hats and ostrich plumes, and poured into her satin dresses with a good bit of Turner to spare, she walks through the palaces and salons with the air of a company-mannered Mae West.” In 1948, there was an Oscar nomination for Robert Planck in the category Best Cinematography/Colour. Hans J. Wollstein at AllMovie: “The Three Musketeers remains an outrageously entertaining yarn, the Southern California locales perfectly standing in for 17th Century France and England.” And finally, Yvette Banek at her blog In so many words: “Lana Turner is really quite superb in her evilness. So evil that she is even photographed without make-up. Well, as 'without make-up' as MGM got, at any rate. Even then, she is exquisitely beautiful - especially when praying.”

 

Sources: Bosley Crowther (New York Times), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Yvette Banek (In so many words), AFI, Wikipedia (Dutch, German), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 378.

 

French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) died on 28 December 2025, at the age of 91. In the 1950s, she was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she became an animal rights activist. In the coming weeks, we will continue to post a BB postcard every day to remember her as she once was.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father, and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying to launch a modelling career and found herself on the cover of the French magazine Elle in May 1949. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, and Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand / Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953, she attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956, she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as an ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. In 1953, she made her first US production, Un acte d'amour / Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smash success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. The immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme / And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956), directed by her husband, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped Brigitte Bardot's international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten', and fascination with her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theatres like lemmings. BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne / La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957), which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur / Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "This Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defence attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre can shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960, postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957, and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre / Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career

Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée / Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle, has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at French Films: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the high point of her career when she agreed to make this film with high-profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess, and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot, and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterwards, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire Playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men, including Samy Frey, her co-star in La Vérité / The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris / Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) opposite Michel Piccoli. She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres / Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires /Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses / Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewellery and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990s, she was also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal was a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear, in such early films as Manina / Woman without a Veil (Willy Rozier, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (French Films), French Films, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

So much to CELEBRATE on this wonderful day. We got our little dab of snow here in North Carolina (almost all gone now). We got OUR PRESIDENT and America has been restored (and will maintain, we trust) to its place in the LEAGUE OF DECENCY. And last, and probably least, we got to wait personally on a BILLIONAIRE, who said he liked the soup, and presumably, left a tip, though not to us. No details will be forthcoming.

This image is made with Midjourney. When I tried to read the image back into Midjourney for use as character and style reference, it refused the image "due to image filters", meaning the nude elements in the picture do not pass Midjourney's standards on decency. This not only makes clear that Midjourney applies rigid, hopelessly outdated 19th, even 18th, century morals. But also that it applies double standards ("we output it for you, but we won't let you use it on our platform"). Not that I am so eager to output nudity, but it makes me wonder if I should look for another AI-platform. Any suggestions?

Sikhism originated in the 15th century, in the Punjab region by Guru Nanak, who preached ideas that were radical for his age: he denounced Hinduism's oppressive caste system and Islam's gender discrimination, preaching that all people can commune with the divine equally, without the intervention of rituals or priests. The Sikh faith is a monotheistic religion, meaning Sikhs worship one God. The three core pillars of Sikhism are: vaṇḍ chakkō (sharing with others, helping those in need, as well as participating as part of a community), kirat karō (earning/making a living honestly, without exploitation or fraud, and speaking the truth at all times) and naam japna (meditating on God’s name to live a life of decency and humility).

The temporary distractions of the material world are seen as an illusion. The qualities of ego, anger, greed, attachment and lust are known as the Five Thieves that rob a person of their ability to realize their oneness with God and creation. Sikhs work to counteract the temptations of these qualities through the values of service, equality, and seeking justice for all. Sikhs also believe that one’s form on Earth is only a temporary vessel for the eternal soul. Thus, the death of the physical body is a natural part of the life cycle, while the soul remains. Death is not an end, but merely the progression of the soul on its journey toward God.

Nine more gurus succeeded Guru Nanak (Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das, Arjan, Har Gobind, Har Rai, Har Krishan, Tegh Bahadur, and Gobind Singh), and continued to spread his teachings across the world.

The last guru, Guru Gobind Singh, named the Sikh sacred text, the Guru Granth Sahib, to be the eternal Guru that would guide the Sikhs going forward. It consists of 1,430 Anks, or pages, and 6,000 Sabads, or line compositions, all are written in poetic verse and are aligning to the rhythmic forms of ancient north Indian classical music. At the core of the Guru Granth Sahib is a yearning for a world governed by divine justice, without oppression of any kind.

The final living guru, Gobind Singh, also established the Khalsa, or order of Sikh soldier-saints. They are recognizable by "The 5 k's," their physical articles of faith: Kesh (unshorn hair and beard), Kirpan (ceremonial sword), Kangha (comb), Kara (steel bracelet) and Kachha (drawers). The Dastar, or turban, is considered a spiritual crown, a token of remembrance of the Sikh principles.

 

Subathu, Himachal Pradesh, India

The migration may have started ... or not, but at least this kestrel had the decency to hunt along my hiking trail. Too bad he wouldn't come closer than 75 yards.

Catching up on some back shots from the beginning of the year

 

On a walk around the Addington Cemetery with a wonderful Flickr friend. February 13, 2016 Christchurch New Zealand.

 

There is so much damaged in the cemetery because of the earthquake we have had. It is such a pity as I don' think it will ever be fully repaired.

 

The Addington Cemetery was established in 1858 when the Scottish Presbyterians of St Andrew’s Church purchased land for a cemetery in Selwyn Street. Although not the first cemetery in Christchurch, Addington was in fact the first “public” cemetery, “being open to all persons of any religious community” and allowing the performance of any religious service “not contrary to public decency”.

 

The first burial took place on the 10th of November 1858. The cemetery has several persons of note buried within its grounds including activist Kate Sheppard, Christchurch Mayor Tommy Taylor and members of the pioneer family, the Deans.

For More Info:http://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/addington-cemetery/

In the future spiderwebs will be woven in metal silk threads and electrified....its just how evolution works......so...Story time....I work every Saturday, but had yesterday off as a vacation day. One thing i miss out on by working Saturdays is the joy of driving around to yard sales (Tag sales if your weird and call it that). Its fun. Drive around early, most often down streets you've never been....discovering new spots. Mapping out the most efficient route weighing the factors of start time, description of goods for sale, and so on. One thing i have also observed over the years is that within a 120 yard radius of any yard sale location (up that distance to a minimum of 250 yards for estate sales) all laws of traffic, parking, u-turns, common courtesy, correct etiquette, or general human decency for the most part goes completely out the window. However, thats part of the fun and appeal.... some people take it sooooooo serious (an unhealthy level for sure) and get frantic...perhaps fearing they will miss out on what they probably image is the greatest deal of their lifetime if they don't cut off someone actively walking across the street to park sideways on a neighbors lawn....then followed by a mad dash sprint to the sale area. I often wonder if that type of yardsaler person is worried that they will miss out on discovering the sale has a one of a kind Giovanni Battista Torriglia oil on canvas work..... or maybe they heard that this sale has a pair of flower patterned oven mitts for $1.25.

So with my day off I went to a few yard sales in town. I drove around "late" morning 9:45, that combined with poor weather may have kept the number of people down. I was in search of a few odd items that i can work into my photography.... the type of thing when you see it you know its a good subject. The highlight of my yard sale morning was at an elderly mans house....i was the only one there. The set up was in his garage and a bit spilling out into the driveway. I said good morning to him as he stood kind of hunched over in a tan coat.. I complimented him on the great spot he has on the dead end road. We chatted a bit, and he told me that he and his wife are moving....they are in their mid 80's and the stairs and upkeep was getting to be too much. I could tell by his look it was hard to accept the fact that he would be leaving his home of over 30 years. He said the familiar phrase i hear at work a lot....getting old is no fun. I got to hear all about his career, then about how he took on full time work after his retirement into his 80s....because he loved it, not the need for income. I love seeing the elderly reminisce on the past, its a beautiful thing. So i continue to browse.....and he says to me..... I'm looking for someone who grows Pot. I couldn't help but smile widely and laugh a bit, as this was probably the last thing on earth i thought i would hear from a homeowner at a yard sale. I told him I'm sorry but i don't grow pot...ha... In my mind I'm thinking does this 84 year old man smoke pot? Is he looking for a connection? Perhaps for medical reasons? Do I look like a stoner?...ha.. He then continued to say.... well if you look over here I have these two large containers of nitrogen....its great for growing pot. Im still at a loss for words.... nodding my head with a big smile now thinking..... does this guy grow pot!? A retired Walter White of sorts selling off his growing supplies before moving out? Then he points to a huge storage bin filled with dozens of quart sized and larger glass mason jars. These are great for storing Pot he tells me. So now I'm really laughing pretty good, and say to him.... well i wouldn't have a need for those, but thanks. Thinking if even one of those jars was filled with Pot how much it would cost...ha... (and I don't smoke or buy pot but i do know that much). So he finally says to me, i thought you might get a laugh out of that. He continues to explain to me now.... awhile back he bought the contents of a storage unit at an auction (just like in the television show Storage wars...Yuuuuuup.) He said they guy who owned the storage unit must have grown and sold pot because it had all this stuff....including a large quantity of pot... which he says his grandson took....ha... I ended up buying a few nice old tools that i don't own for a dollar each, and an awesome old wrench for 4 dollars. The other two items of the day at a separate sale was a really nice fireplace poker for a dollar, and a metal cake cooling rack for 50 cents. Oh yea.....thats where i was going with this.....story time with Brian can get off track..... This 50 cent item was the focus of my photo series last night using camera rotation in a single exposure and colored lights....when i saw it....i was like....oh yea patterns galore with this. If anyone has read this far.... thanks for checking out the photos, hope your having a splendid weekend. -brian

 

Is Is Writexxxxx The Other Left 2 Capture & Frame A Private Activity?

.

 

So As U Contemplate... THIS is 4 U!

 

Is there not something disrespectful by acting as a voyeur...

 

But how many times has one looked out of a window across a street at night as one is closing the curtains... only to see a scene...

 

From time to time U No Who has grabbed his cam... to capture the scene...

 

Is it an invasion of: privacy... a common decency?

 

au.youtube.com/watch?v=zCMyhs-XUcc&feature

 

But then there are those who clearly do it on purpose... NYC is a well known venue...

 

Never The Less... @ Flickr... it is a pleasure 2 see Creativity+i.e.MSP

After the shock of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, when millions of Americans (and visiting foreigners like me) felt understandably distraught, bereft, dismayed, as the grotesque, narcissistic, predatory, corrupt fraud that is Donald Trump delivered a bleak and graceless inauguration speech, it was nothing short of a delight on Saturday, Jan. 21, Day 2 of the aberrant Trump presidency, when, across the country and around the world, millions of women (plus large numbers of supportive men) marched in protest against Trump and all he and his administration stand for — his disdain for women, his racism, his xenophobia, his adherence to intolerant white Christian fundamentalism, and, last but not least, his opaque, but very obviously corrupt business practices. Two US academics have estimated that between 3.3m and 4.6m people marched in total across the US, with New York’s turnout estimated at between 400,000 and 500,000 people.

Stepping out of Grand Central Station into a river of protest, with more clever, witty and insightful handmade posters than you could imagine, and with chants and cheers punctuating the general hubbub at regular intervals was to feel that perhaps this dystopian vision of America can indeed be overthrown before it wreaks untold havoc at home and abroad. And with no beginning or end of the protest in sight, it was easy to believe that the number marching was much larger than even the academics’ estimate.

It will take more than one day, of course, as the people of America need to unite like never before — everyone who didn’t vote for Trump, everyone threatened by Trump, everyone appalled by Trump, including, of course, those who voted for him but might already be having second thoughts. This could be a disastrous presidency, or it could be even worse than that, but people need to put aside any notions of complacency, and work out how to resist. This was a great start, and a historic moment that everyone there will remember, but now there needs to be much more action and organizing.

As you look at these photos, however, I hope they are a reminder of a day of hope across the US and around the world, when ordinary people demonstrated that fundamental decency will not be silenced, and that a tolerant, multi-racial society, featuring, at its heart, equality between women and men, and between people whatever their race, creed or color, has humour, intelligence and compassion that throw into even sharper relief how troublingly miserable, negative and ungenerous Donald Trump and his advisors are.

For an article by US Uncut about the numbers attending the protests, see: usuncut.com/news/womens-march-largest-protest-us-history/

For the turnout estimates, see: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2...

For an article in New York Daily News, which ran a front page devoted to the protests, under the headline, “See them roar,” see: www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/women-march-washington-...

For my website, see: www.andyworthington.co.uk

For my Facebook posts after Trump’s inauguration, see:

www.facebook.com/andyworthingtonUK/posts/1015497574252380...

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154975238073804&set...

For my most interesting photos, see: www.flickriver.com/photos/andyworthington/popular-interes...

 

Women of Faith Cry Out: Families Belong Together protest, 6/19

A few days ago I read that this facility is to be restored as a cafe or restaurant and I also discovered that the area was locally known as the "Four Corners of Hell" because crossroad junction of Kevin Street, New Street South, Dean Street and Patrick Street had a pub on each corner and became especially rowdy at closing time.

  

This caught me by surprise [when I first noticed it a few months ago] especially as I should have been aware that these facilities existed having gone to school in Leeson Street and college in Kevin Street. There are two separate entities - a small park and an underground public toilet.

 

Initially I thought that it was an old monument or memorial but upon seeing the entrance I realised that it was an underground public toilet block.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s there were about seventy public toilets in Dublin but all of them have been closed. The underground public toilet block at the junction of Kevin Street and New Street was one of a number that were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in response to an increasing demand for public facilities in the city. Underground facilities such as this were partially hidden from general view in order to satisfy Victorian perceptions of decency. It retains many of its historic features including railings, gates and decorative ventilation shaft.

This caught me by surprise especially as I should have been aware that these facilities existed having gone to school in Leeson Street and college in Kevin Street. There are two separate entities - a small park and an underground public toilet.

 

When I saw it today I thought that it was an old monument or memorial but upon seeing the entrance I realised that it was an underground public toilet block.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s there were about seventy public toilets in Dublin but all of them have been closed.

 

The underground public toilet block at the junction of Kevin Street and New Street was one of a number that were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in response to an increasing demand for public facilities in the city. Underground facilities such as this were partially hidden from general view in order to satisfy Victorian perceptions of decency. It retains many of its historic features including railings, gates and decorative ventilation shaft.

Ordered this and they send the wrong item!

 

Now that it's sold out I can't get my Kitty! And they want me to jump through hoops to get a refund? They do not even have the decency to reserve the fucking doll that I was supposed to receive!

 

FUCK YOU ASSHOLES!

As Nottingham's shops continue to close at an alarming rate, the face of the streets is changing dramatically, not always for the better. At least, on Bridlesmith Gate, they are trying to brighten things up a bit. Snapped with the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G phone cam and pushed, pulled and twisted about, way beyond the realms of common decency!

The backstory: as a capstone to the redevelopment of Welfare Island, but outside of the UDC scheme, the city and state of New York pushed for the southern tip of the island to be redeveloped as a memorial park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt. Louis Kahn was brought in to design, and his second scheme (1973) met with the approval of the project’s most powerful champions – Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John Lindsay. A year later, the scheme was totally adrift: Kahn was dead, Rockefeller had ascended to the Vice Presidency after Watergate, Lindsay had left office, and the city was beginning its slide towards the 1975 bankruptcy crisis. Nothing happened on-site. For many years afterwards, the project’s shepherds were Kahn associate Romaldo Giurgola and former UN Ambassador William vanden Heuvel. Improbably, in the mid-2000s, the project was re-started with a series of fundraising campaigns and exhibitions; seven years and some $54 million later, Kahn’s design was completed in 2012.

 

The statue of Roosevelt became a bust (presumably for cost reasons) and a few stairs became ramps to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act - kind of obvious in hindsight given Roosevelt's paralysis. But otherwise, this is a Louis Kahn design and should be evaluated as such. In keeping with his poetic, quasi-Functionalist manner, Kahn broke the project down into two basic features: there’s the Garden and there’s the Room: one a broad green triangle framed with funereal trees, the other a tight square enclosed by enormous granite prisms (sized based on 1970s crane-loading limits) framing the city and the river. In addition to the bust and the carved recap of the “Four Freedoms” speech, allusions to Roosevelt include the riverfront site and the “ship’s prow” composition (Roosevelt was once the Secretary of the Navy), and the oblique view across to the headquarters of the United Nations (Roosevelt’s brainchild – and another Rockefeller pet project). As has been observed, Kahn’s own admiration of Roosevelt, whose New Deal housing programs kept Kahn employed during the Depression, may explain the shift here towards fairly literal symbolism versus Kahn’s usual reaches for abstractly monumental “timelessness.” Note that to reach the park one must pass the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital - a reminder of the incompleteness of government efforts to promote the general welfare before the New Deal.

 

With this in mind, it's interesting that the scheme bears at least a passing resemblence to Kahn's forgotten 1932 memorial to Lenin, as Michael J. Lewis points out. It may be that Kahn spent forty years waiting for a chance to stick a triangle in some water and terminate it with a Platonic figure. Alternately, perhaps he found some connection, at an emotional level, between the two figures being memorialized. Before the show trials, before the Hitler-Stalin pact, and indeed before the election of Roosevelt, it was not so uncommon for American progressives to express admiration for the Soviet system and its (purported) achievements in equality alongside nominal industrial growth in the Five-Year Plans. In the depths of the Depression, Communism perhaps represented hope of a return to sanity in the same way that the New Deal later would. Kahn may well have begun his design trying to remember how Roosevelt made him feel during his darkest professional hour.

 

More generally, the park develops on Roosevelt Island’s fundamental near-but-distant theme. It’s just far enough back from the city to turn the traffic and the bustle into a silent tableau of buildings against the river and sky, and Kahn’s design goes for silence above all else. The vast blankness of much of its square footage, especially the angled granite flanks of the “garden,” is a declaration against fussiness, against usefulness. The gaps between the granite blocks not only permit one to realize they are, indeed, solid blocks. They also give distorted, shimmering glimpses of the commercial forces that have been banished from this cenotaph: industrial production in Long Island City, commercial manipulation in Midtown. (Hilariously, the view dead ahead is of the unabashedly Kahnian Waterside Plaza, well underway when the park was designed.)

 

The severity of the park so clearly refuses monetization that even the few sops towards practical park operation (electric outlets, “don’t walk here” cordons, generic ground lights) stick out like sore thumbs. The park is designed to receive fifty million dollars into itself and never give it back, and by holding capital in suspension it gives the visitors a chance to exist without it – or, at least, to imagine that they do. Another Communist fantasy? Or just the chance of some damned peace and quiet, enhanced by the gentle approach through South Point Park and past the scenic ruin of the Smallpox Hospital? It’s often observed that New Yorkers love their city so much that their favorite places in the city are the ones that make you feel like you’ve completely escaped it; Kahn’s park belongs in this paradoxical canon. Not incidentally, this attempt to throw away both money and the prospect of making more has much in common with the United Nations building itself, if my reading is correct. Kahn's use of white stone here invites the comparison in any case.

 

Of course, all this comes at the expense of other things. If Kahn began by asking things what they wanted to be, here he seems to have been chatting with a mausoleum and not a park. As a funereal monument, it's excellent. As a “park” on an unmistakably spectacular site, the design seems to fail for the exact reasons it succeeds as a memorial. There’s nothing to do but think deep thoughts and maybe have a picnic. In particular there’s no way to get to the water, which is a cardinal sin in today’s landscape architectural discourse. There might have been some way to activate the flanking paths without robbing the park of its silence; perhaps some kind of stepped seating could have been integrated into the great retaining walls, angled in some way as to hide it from the northern approach, but still allow a good spot from which to view the city (or clamber down to the riprap at water’s edge). Could this have been done without undermining the very silence and decency Kahn was shooting for?

 

To be fair to Kahn, the Clean Water Act had only been passed the year before this design was completed, and the idea of “getting in touch with the river” would probably have seemed absurd. Today, an enthusiastic team works to develop a swimming pool that will float suspended in the river not far away (see Kickstarter to get your name on a pool tile, should it be built). But in the Seventies, the site of the Kahn memorial was splashed by a kitschy “geyser” that raised ire from East Siders convinced it was fumigating their neighborhood with aerosolized sewage. (In the Eighties, the water also killed off a grove of trees recently planted on the site by island beautification organizers, but this was due simply to erosion.) To retrofit the Kahn design reflecting today’s realities and landscape ambitions would be anachronistic.

 

One might then ask, as seier did a few months ago, why we should feel ruled by the master’s design at all? Why not have a new competition for a design that addresses the contemporary conditions of the island and the city? If one sets aside the hero-worship arguments (Kahn was great, he has very few buildings, etc.), it has to come down either to the quality of the design – which is very good though not sacrosanct – or the money. Inevitably, what enables this anti-commercial temple is the aforementioned fifty million bucks, and that kind of donation money is not going to manifest itself without a good hook. “Unfinished masterpiece” has a nice ring to it and I suspect this was more important in getting the building completed than the appeal of any particular design features. In a way, one wishes the project had been less completely designed at the time of Kahn’s death; it would have offered an opportunity for its stewards to constructively challenge the design, as José Oubrerie did with Corbusier at Firminy.

 

Ultimately, though, I’m pleased with this result. Roosevelt Island has plenty of parks, playgrounds, and gardens. It can afford one temple.

 

A footnote: Kahn’s design bears a slightly more than superficial resemblance to a 1970 proposal by the Classical architect John Barrington Bayley to construct a “Museum of Man” on the same site. According to Bayley, this was in response to a Met competition, but I haven’t yet been able to track that down. The Bayley project has a similar terminal square courtyard or plaza, reached through a Classical temple (rather than a ‘garden’) scrunched into the ship’s prow triangle. Kahn’s project could almost be imagined as the “ruined” version of the Bayley scheme, which would be a fun way to design something. I bring this up not because I think it really changes anything about the Kahn scheme, but because it seems to have gone oddly under-reported in the coverage.

 

Also, you'll note that the photos here jump around quite a bit in season and time of day. I've made five or six visits to the site since the park opened in October, each time apparently getting not quite the complete set of images. Frankly, I think the wintry evening images "get" the park better than the others; at the same time, the place is beautiful and extremely pleasant on a summer afternoon, with river breezes blowing past and the trees kissed with golden light.

 

And...that's it for Roosevelt Island! Thanks for reading along. If you missed any of it, the overview post is back here. Eventually I hope to reformat all of this for an offsite illustrated blog post, possibly with drawings, etc. For now I'm ready to move on to some other things I've been saving up...

“A seaside town in France is clamping down on tourists who venture beyond the sand in their swimsuits.

 

“A little restraint, please!” Yannick Moreau, the mayor of Les Sables d’Olonne, pleaded on social media last week to the flocks of mostly French tourists who visit each summer.

 

Mr. Moreau said in an interview that the behavior had become more prevalent in recent years: Visitors leave the beach and walk into the town’s markets, grocery stores and restaurants in their bathing suits. He has seen enough.

 

“If you go to a market to buy local food — fruits, vegetables, meat — you cannot be half-naked with hair falling onto vegetables,” he said, adding, “It’s a matter of decency.” NY Times

Well, the other day I wasn't going to go running... and then at about 9.30 I started to get really restless, so I went anyway! So this is a rural area, no street lights, I am running through the woods and in reference to the light levels the phrase ‘pitch’ springs to mind! No surprise then that 15 minutes later I was viciously assaulted by a tree root, bursting forth from the path at the very moment that I should run past in order to wrestle me to the ground and have its wicked way with me ‘Army of Darkness’ style! As a homage to David Beckham, I swiftly employed my left foot to hold back the assailant, but alas my football tackling days are far behind me and as was often the case then, it was foretold that I was to end up a crumpled mess on the floor. The big toe on my left foot lost part of its nail, which also has a nice little rose colored blister beneath it, and a reasonable amount of swelling. Also, as I flew brick like through the air I rotated left (left foot caught remember) and landed on my hip, resulting in the bruise you see before you.

 

Don’t worry, it wasn’t a full moon, so no werewolves, and the vampires don’t like it around here, too much water and the graveyard is on the other side of town. Funnily enough, the track from the wood emerges by a local estate; I startled an octogenarian sneaking a quick rollup whilst walking his canine accomplice, his words drifted after me as I ran (limped) up the street ‘you must be mad!’

 

*note, the incident was also accompanied by a large amount of swearing and angry intonations directed at several of the lesser known gods. In the interest of decency, I have opted to leave them out!

 

Don't mess with nature, it will kick your... hip :)

near London Bridge, London, UK

 

1 Timothy 2:9

I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,

French postcard by Cinémagazine Edition, no. 188. photo: Atelier Böhm.

 

French actor Georges Charlia (1894 – 1984) played in 22 silent and sound films. He worked with such famous directors of the French avant-garde cinema as Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein and Alberto Cavalcanti.

 

Georges Charlia was born as Georges Charliat in Paris, France in 1894. He made his film debut in Germaine Dulac’s silent film Gossette (1923) with Régine Bouet. Then followed a part in another classic of the silent cinema, La belle Nivernaise/The Beauty from Nivernais (1924, Jean Epstein) with Blanche Montel. He played the lead in Epstein’s La goutte de sang/The drop of blood (1924). The film was started by Jean Epstein, but Maurice Mariaud took it over and modified the project. In the Guy de Maupassant adaptation Pierre et Jean/Pierre and Jean (1924, Donatien), he appeared with Lucienne Legrand. Le train sans yeux/Train Without Eyes (1927, Alberto Cavalcanti) was a Louis Delluc adaptation in which he co-starred with Hans Mierendorf, Gina Manès and Hanni Weisse. He also appeared in Cavalcanti’s drama En rade/Sea Fever (1928, Alberto Cavalcanti). At Rovi, Hal Erickson reviews: “Catherine Hessling, better known to film enthusiasts for her work in the early Jean Renoir silents, stars as a seaport barmaid who falls in love with sweet-natured sailor Georges Charlia. When Charlia unaccountably disappears one day, Hessling is plunged into the depths of melancholia. Her sad story is counterpointed with the bizarre behavior of the local laundress' lazy, near-moronic son (Philippe Heriat), who dreams of a life at sea. Although well photographed on genuine locations, Sea Fever proved confusing to many non-French filmgoers.” Charlia starred in a few German films, including Ritter der nacht/Knights of the Night (1928, Max Reichmann) co-starring La Jana. In that same year he also played in the drama L'équipage/Last Flight (1928, Maurice Tourneur) starring Charles Vanel. One of his last silent films was Prix de beauté/Beauty Prize (1930, Augusto Genina) in which he was the lover and murderer of Louise Brooks.

 

George Charlia made the transition to sound film with Vacances (1931, Robert Boudrioz) with Florelle and Lucien Gallas. He reunited with Gina Manès to co-star in L'ensorcellement de Séville/The Charm of Seville (1931, Benito Perojo), Pax (1932, Francisco Elías) and L'amour qu'il faut aux femmes/The love which is necessary to women (1933, Adolf Trotz). In Germany, Charlia played a supporting part in the classic anti-war drama Kameradschaft/Comradeship (1931, Georg Wilhelm Pabst). Hal Erickson at Rovi: “Kameradschaft is set in a mining community on the French/German frontier, where several French miners are trapped in a cave-in. Their only hope for rescue lies in a long-abandoned underground tunnel, buried since the First World War. Ignoring the ethnic and political differences that have long separated the two countries, a group of German miners pick their way through the old tunnel to save the entombed Frenchmen. (…) Ironically, the German public, whose decency and humanity is celebrated in Kameradschaft, tended to avoid the film.” His last films were the Belgian-Dutch coproduction Jeunes filles en liberté/Young Girls in Freedom (1933, Fritz Kramp), and L'enfant de ma soeur/The Child of my Sister (1933, Henry Wulschleger). Why his film career stopped then after only ten years is not clear. Wasn’t his voice sound proof? Did he loose his interest for the cinema after the silent avant-garde cinema had dwindled away? We only know that Georges Charlia died in 1984, in his hometown Paris.

 

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

File #4

 

Six months after Joker had been admitted to the Asylum the GCPD happened upon his contingency plan. A bomb built into a newly constructed wall beneath the Gotham cathedral. Analysis of the wall found that there was no way to remove the bomb without dismantling the wall which would bring the whole cathedral down. Thus there was only one option. Disarm the bomb before it could detonate. Joker had left the bomb on a timer that had been counting down from over the last six months and was due to detonate the next day.

 

In order to disarm the bomb a code was needed. Checking the keypad for prints yielded nothing, evidently Joker had the pad wiped clean after he activated the timer. That means the only way to disarm the bomb is to get him to hand over the timer. Needless to say, after the events in the tunnel of love, Jim was keen to keep me as far away from Joker as possible. As such it fell to Warden Quincy Sharp to convince Joker to hand over the code. Given how Arkham is regarded as a psychiatric hospital the guards aren’t allowed to use unconventional interrogation techniques so warden Sharp appealing to Joker’s human decency didn’t go down well.

 

Attachment: Warden Office CCTV – September 22nd 14:30

 

”Quincy old boy how are things? Still balding I see.”

 

“Do you know why I’ve called you here?”

 

”You’re finally retiring?”

 

“The bomb.”

 

”What bomb? That record Cash made?”

 

“The one under Gotham cathedral.”

 

”Bombing a church? That sounds more like Riddler’s MO. You know how much he loves insulting religion.”

 

“We know it’s yours.”

 

”I resent that! I’m not the only clown in Gotham with a love of explosives. Why’s it got to be me?”

 

“Probably because you signed the scene.”

 

”Oh yeah haha.”

 

“Give us the code.”

 

”Or what Sharpy? You gonna give me a stern talking to? Make me feel bad about myself?”

 

“You know this is wrong Jack.”

 

”WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!?”

 

Joker charges forward at the Warden’s desk in anger, stopped only by Cash managing to grab hold of him.

 

”WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

 

“Tell me the code Jack. No-one needs to get hurt.”

 

”If you want my help then you know who I’ll talk to!”

 

“What if he doesn’t want to talk to you?”

 

”Then boom! Hahahaha.”

 

“Take him back to his cell, and get me Gordon on the line.”

 

End of attachment.

 

Ever since we first crossed paths after he murdered Loeb, Joker’s always had a case of waring personalities between two personas. Jack Napier, a wannabe comedian and the Joker, a clown trying to make the world smile by causing misery to others. After we faced off against one another the Joker persona has slowly but surely begun to dominate Jack to the point where I’m not entirely sure if Jack’s in there anymore. That was cemented after that night in ACE Chemicals. Joker was trying to gather the components necessary to mass produce a new variant of the Joker toxin. Thanks to an analysis of the toxin I was able to piece together that the only place he could gather the compounds necessary on such a large scale was ACE Chemicals.

 

With that foreknowledge I had the GCPD set a trap for Joker and his men. It all went exactly as I had hoped. All of Joker’s men were arrested by the GCPD but Joker seemingly escaped. What Jim and I didn’t know was that Joker ended up falling into a vat of chemicals during the firefight. He wouldn’t be discovered until the ACE Chemicals workers emptied the vat the following morning. Many believe that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 

Since then there’s been no reports of the Jack persona being exhibited by Joker. I fear it can be speculated that my hopes of purging the Joker persona from Jack ended up merely cementing his presence.

 

Alfred’s always speculated that Jason’s murder was Jack lashing out for what I did to him. Maybe he’s right, but I like to think otherwise. Perhaps that’s just me being desperate and hoping that deep down I didn’t end up killing Jack Napier. Either way, I now have to deal primarily with the Joker persona, and I had to deal with him in order to get the code to disarm the bomb under Gotham cathedral.

 

Attachment: Therapy Session Recording – Joker #2

 

“Therapy session 2. Patient’s name: J……”

 

There’s a long pause on the tape. Without a video feed it’s difficult to tell what’s making her hesitate but it’s implied that Joker was staring at her rather intensly.

 

”Joker. Acting physician, Doctor Harleen Quinzel. Date of session 22nd of September. Previous session was cut short so this session is designed to make up the remaining time from the previous session.”

 

”Cash can be so rude interrupting our one on one time like that.”

 

”From what I hear it was the Warden who cut out session short.”

 

”Word travels fast around here.”

 

”Well it’s not everyday a patient gets called up to the Warden’s office. You must have done something serious.”

 

”I just gave him some advice on how to stop his head from balding.”

 

”Warden Sharp is balding?”

 

”I think he’s considering wearing a wig.”

 

”Really?”

 

”Yeah the silly old fool.”

 

”So, Joker….”

 

”Yes Doctor?”

 

”Going back to our conversation. Why do you find yourself obsessed with the Batman?”

 

”Why do you find yourself obsessed with me?”

 

”I ask the questions here.”

 

”You’re hoping that if you can understand me that you will be able to understand him.”

 

”Perhaps.”

 

”Tell me, what’s the market at the moment for a book about the mind of the Batman?”

 

There’s a long pause. Evidently Dr. Quinzel was shocked that Joker knew she was just using him to write a book.

 

”Must be pretty good if you’re willing to talk to one of Gotham’s grade A crazies.”

 

”You think of yourself as crazy?”

 

”You don’t?”

 

”…”

 

”The world’s a funny old place Doctor. It’ll do all it can to break you. The only thing that separates us from the animals is how we let the world break us. Some give up. Some fight back. Some go mad.”

 

”Is that what happened to you? The world tried to break you?”

 

”Of course.”

 

”Which action did you take?”

 

”What do you think?”

 

”…”

 

”You think I went mad.”

 

”You don’t?”

 

”Oh goodness no. I know I went mad. But unlike most, I accept it.”

 

”Who do you know that doesn’t?”

 

”Who do you think?”

 

”The Batman?”

 

”I couldn’t possibly say.”

 

”You think he’s mad?”

 

”Nooooooo……..I don’t think a man dressing up as a bat is mad the same way I don’t think a man dressing as a clown is mad.”

 

”Of course.”

 

”I suppose….”

 

”Suppose…?”

 

”In many ways you’re right.”

 

”How so?”

 

”He and I are alike.”

 

”Why do you say that?”

 

”I know it. He’s yet to accept it, but deep down he knows it as well.”

 

”You think Batman knows he’s crazy?”

 

”Maybe. Or perhaps he’s crazier than me?”

 

”I’m not sure many people would agree on that.”

 

”Probably not. But I at least know I’m crazy. If anything he’s mad to think he’s sane.”

 

”Maybe he is. But why do you think you’re mad?”

 

”Probably thanks to dear old daddy.”

 

”The one who hit you?”

 

”Do you know another?”

 

”So you think he’s the one responsible for who made you into this?”

 

”Goodness no. Sure daddy dearest didn’t help the situation but he didn’t make me.”

 

”Then what did?” The Batman?”

 

”Nope. All it took to break was one simple thing. One bad day.”

 

”What happened on that day?”

 

”Life destroyed my world.”

 

”What happened?”

 

”I…I…..”

 

”You can tell J. You can trust me.”

 

”I saw my wife murdered in front of my eyes.”

 

”….I didn’t know you were married…”

 

”I prefer it that way.”

 

”When was she killed?”

 

”Five years ago.”

 

”Just before you killed Commissioner Loeb.”

 

”It was that long ago? It feels like it was yesterday.”

 

”You feel remorseful?”

 

”I always do.”

 

”Then why do you keep killing more people if you don’t want to?”

 

”How else am I supposed to drown out the voices?”

 

”Voices?”

 

”Their screams.”

 

”You hear their screams?”

 

”Everytime I close my eyes. Sniff I just want to make them stop.”

 

”Hey hey it’s alright. It’s going to be alright. I promise.”

 

“Time’s up Doc.”

 

”Alright. Thanks Cash.”

 

“Are you crying clown?”

 

”Go to hell Cash.”

 

”We’ll be just a minute Cash. Session terminated at 16:30. Dr Quinzel signing off.”

 

Harley didn’t know it then, but Joker didn’t actually feel any remorse for his victims. In fact, he’s often taken pleasure from making them suffer slowly, but Harley didn’t know that and though she couldn’t tell, Joker had already set his claws into her.

 

I don't know if my wife deserved to be put into handcuffs and arrested there in that cold and dark parking lot that night.

 

I'll leave that judgement to the people who know the truth.

 

Over time it would become obvious to me that the truth in many ways was hidden from me... obliterated by design or obscured by the events of chance...

 

Still, I did what any husband would do.

 

What any father would do.

 

I rushed to the scene to defend the woman that I married.

 

I raced there to protect my children.

 

I must've hit a hundred on the way... blowing through red lights and everything.

 

My brother's words on the phone echoed in my head.

 

'You better get up here fast' he said 'they're arresting your wife and they're taking your kid.'

 

He was breathless.

 

And he sounded really serious.

 

He never sounded that way.

 

The last thing he said before he hung up was 'you'd better get up here right away man... they're gonna take your kid away.'

 

The way that he emphasized the word 'gonna' made me floor the truck.

 

They were words that chilled me to the core.

 

I could hear yelling and screaming in the background when he went to hang up the phone.

 

I could hear crying.

 

I could hear them threatening to arrest my brother too.

 

It was pretty obvious that the scene was out of control and that tempers had already flared.

 

What was happening to my wife and children right now?

 

Why was it happening?

 

It sounded like chaos.

 

It sounded like the soundtrack to 'Dante's Inferno' if 'Dante's Inferno' had only had a soundtrack.

 

It was the sound of agony and anger all mixed together to create some squealing and blood curdling satanic sounding melody... it was the sound of pure evil being done.

 

It is an awful music that I would wish on the ears of no one.

 

Only minutes before I'd sat there in my office overcome with the warmest of feelings... wonderfully proud of my kids for what they'd done... completely content with where life had put me... overwhelmingly satisfied with my family being safe, warm and together...

 

Norman Rockwell couldn't have painted a truer picture of what'd just happened in my office.

 

A moment ago things were so perfect.

 

Everyone was warm... they were all safe... we were together...

 

Now it was beginning to feel pretty much like I'd teletransported smack dab into the middle of some third world country.

 

In an instant my family's existence had gone from one straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting to something more like Pablo Picasso's 'Bombing of Guernica.'

 

I was shocked, I was absolutely stunned and mostly I was just confused.

 

My family had set out to do a good thing.

 

For Godsakes they were going on a little outing to donate money to charity!

 

In a little golden basket!

 

What the hell was going on?

 

What the fuck could have happened in the few minutes that went by since they left my office that my wife was now under arrest and the police had taken my daughter?

 

And what about my other daughters?

 

Where were they?

 

The phone rang again right after I'd hung it up.

 

It was my wife this time.

 

She was crying and she sounded pretty incoherent.

 

I could barely understand a word that she was saying.

 

She said she'd been arrested... that they took our kid away.

 

She said something about parking in the firelane.

 

'Don't say another word to the police' I told her adamantly... 'I'll be right there baby... I'm on my way.'

 

I hurriedly parked my truck right in front of our station wagon which was parked right in front of the entrance to the Super Store.

 

Right under the sign that said 'Satisfaction Guaranteed.'

 

My wife and my older daughters were nowhere to be seen.

 

My two year old daughter was sleeping soundly in the car seat right where I'd put her just a few minutes before.

 

There were two police cruisers and a jeep parked together some distance behind the station wagon with their mars lights on.

 

I knew that being cool, calm and collected was going to be the only way to approach the situation or I was gonna end up in handcuffs myself.

 

Suppressing the anger that was welling up inside of me was a survival necessity for the sake of my family.

 

Somebody had to have a 'level head' here.

 

My brain was racing in overdrive trying to piece together the puzzle and figure out what'd happened.

 

I needed to talk to someone who knew what the hell was going on.

 

I approached one of the police cars... there was a woman in a police uniform talking to another officer in the car.

 

I could see another officer standing in the parking lot talking on his cell phone.

 

When I got up to the car I asked who was in charge.

 

And I asked pretty nicely.

 

The guy in the car said he was.

 

And he didn't say it nicely at all.

 

Just then I saw my wife in the back seat of the other police car.

 

She was bawling her brains out and you could tell that she was in handcuffs.

 

The pieces were all starting to come together now.

 

'Listen' I said... and I said it in a really 'buddy to buddy' kind of way... 'that's my wife you've got in the back of the cop car there and that''s my daughter sleeping in the station wagon.'

 

I'd figured it out.

 

When she went to take the kids to donate the money my youngest daughter had fallen asleep in her car seat.

 

So my wife parked the car a couple of car lengths away from where the bellringer was taking donations.

 

She left the two year old in the car while her and my older daughters went and dumped the change into the Salvation Army bellringer's bucket and took a few pictures.

 

They could have been out of the car for just a couple of minutes and the doors were still locked.

 

The kid was still sleeping.

 

The officer inside of the cop car poked his bony finger into my solar plexus and he said to me 'your wife is under arrest and your child is now in state custody. We've called DCFS... they're on their way.'

 

They had arrested my wife for child endangerment.

 

I could see that logic wasn't gonna be a part of the conversation that night but I tried anyway...

 

'Why don't you just write her a ticket for parking in the fire lane and we'll all call it a night and go home' I said it nicely again in that same 'buddy to buddy' kind of way.

 

With a glaring look of contempt, maybe even anger, the officer looked at me and said 'your wife is going to jail and DCFS is going to come and pick up the kid.'

 

I couldn't believe this... 'why wouldn't they give my kid back to me' I wondered... 'it wasn't like I left her locked up in a parked car' I thought.

 

I didn't do anything wrong.

 

Neither did my daughter.

 

Why were they coming down on us like this?

 

I was starting to get angry... I didn't want my daughter leaving there to spend the night with strangers... I wanted her to go home with me.

 

I wouldn't let them do this.

 

It wasn't right.

 

It was beyond fucking wrong.

 

It felt like a Goddamned kidnapping by the state.

 

I pointed my finger at him and I said 'I can't believe you're doing this... I am going to make a really big deal out of this... I am going to make a really, really big deal about this.'

 

'Go right the fuck ahead' he said.

 

'Look around man' I said... not so nicely this time... 'there are video cameras everywhere... did you guys even go inside and look at the video to see what happened?'

 

'We don't have to' he replied in a really sarcastic and condescending kind of way... 'Your wife is under arrest and we're taking your kid.'

 

It was easier to just tear my family to pieces and throw my wife in jail than to actually investigate and try to see what happened... to see if reality matched up with the story that my wife gave them.

 

It seemed like a 'shoot first, ask questions later' mentality.

 

It was an absolute nightmare... it was surreal and it was insane.

 

And it was happening to my family, right in front of me... and there was nothing that I could do to make it stop.

 

Those sworn to 'serve and protect' were mercilessly tearing my family to pieces while I stood there completely powerless to disrupt their abuse of the authority that the people had given them.

 

And this they did because they could.

 

They did this because they had the power to do it.

 

It was more 'violate and neglect' than 'serve and protect.'

 

And it seemed so unbelievably malicious.

 

I could see that 'Mr. Nice Guy' wasn't gonna get me anywhere.

 

I walked over to the squad car my wife was locked in and I tried to talk to her through the window.

 

I told her it was gonna be alright... not to say another word... that I loved her and that I'd figure all of this out.

 

Her face was wet with tears and red from crying and it was tough to see her in handcuffs like that.

 

Right in front of me my family was shattered and their destiny at that moment was completely out of my control as a father.

 

It was like watching someone you love being raped... in agonizingly slow motion.

 

This was like something you'd hear out of Sadaam Hussein's Iraq.

 

It wasn't the way it was supposed to be in America.

 

I looked over at the other police vehicle expecting to see my other two daughters in the back seat and I didn't.

 

'Where's the girls' I tried to ask my wife.

 

Just then an officer approached me... he told me if I didn't back away from the cop car that he'd arrest me for obstruction of justice.

 

'Jesus' I thought 'this place really has turned into a third world country.'

 

The cop opened the door and he rolled the window all the way up... then he slammed the door on her.

 

My wife just collapsed in sobs and tears.

 

I'll never forget the way that she looked at me then.

 

You've never seen a woman in pain like that until you've looked into the eyes of a woman in handcuffs who's just had her baby taken away from her.

 

By some cops who could care less about justice, decency or the welfare of children.

 

'Where's my other kids' I asked the cop.

 

He only gave me a dumb look... it was quizzical almost.

 

It was clear that he had no idea what I was talking about.

 

I walked back over to the officer in charge's car and I asked him the same thing.

 

'Where are my other children?'

 

He just gave me this stupid look too.

 

'Aw fuck' I thought as the bottom fell out of my stomach.

 

In the irony of all ironies, they had arrested my wife for child endangerment and they had lost my other children in that cold, dark and busy parking lot.

 

The same parking lot that they'd arrested my wife in for leaving our two year old locked in a parked car only a few steps away from her.

 

The parking lot that they pointed out was dangerous.

 

'Anything could happen' they said.

 

And now no one knew where my eight and nine year old daughters were.

 

My family was never in any danger that day... until the Deadwood Police came on the scene.

 

That's the most danger my family would ever find themselves in... when the state decided to look after my two year old's welfare.

 

The iceberg had hit the Titanic and my little family's world had just been turned upside down.

 

I promised myself those children would see justice one day.

 

Once I found them.

     

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 1499. Photo: Ufa. Brigitte Bardot and Michel Subor in La bride sur le cou / Please, Not Now! (Roger Vadim, 1961).

 

French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) died on 28 December 2025, at the age of 91. In the 1950s, she was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she became an animal rights activist. In the coming weeks, we will continue to post a BB postcard every day to remember her as she once was.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father, and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying to launch a modelling career and found herself on the cover of the French magazine Elle in May 1949. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, and Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand / Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953, she attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956, she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as an ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. In 1953, she made her first US production, Un acte d'amour / Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smash success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. The immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the filming of Et Dieu créa la femme / And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956), directed by her husband, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at the time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped elevate Brigitte Bardot's international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten', and fascination with her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theatres like lemmings. BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne / La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957), which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur / Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "This Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defence attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre can shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960, postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957, and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre / Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career

Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée / Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle, has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at French Films: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the high point of her career when she agreed to make this film with high-profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess, and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot, and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterwards, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire Playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men, including Samy Frey, her co-star in La Vérité / The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris / Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) opposite Michel Piccoli. She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres / Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires /Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses / Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewellery and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990s, she was also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal was a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear, in such early films as Manina / Woman without a Veil (Willy Rozier, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (French Films), French Films, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

KIA in the November storms - a combat umbrella; and its owner didn’t even have the decency to give it a proper military burial!

West German postcard. Brigitte Bardot in En cas de malheur / Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958).

 

French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) died on 28 December 2025, at the age of 91. In the 1950s, she was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she became an animal rights activist. In the coming weeks, we will continue to post a BB postcard every day to remember her as she once was.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father, and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying to launch a modelling career and found herself on the cover of the French magazine Elle in May 1949. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, and Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand / Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953, she attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956, she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as an ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. In 1953, she made her first US production, Un acte d'amour / Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smash success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. The immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the filming of Et Dieu créa la femme / And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956), directed by her husband, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at the time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme / ...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped Brigitte Bardot's international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten', and fascination with her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theatres like lemmings. BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne / La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957), which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur / Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "This Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defence attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre can shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960, postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957, and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre / Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career

Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée / Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle, has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at French Films: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the high point of her career when she agreed to make this film with high-profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess, and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot, and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterwards, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire Playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men, including Samy Frey, her co-star in La Vérité / The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Jean-Luc Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris / Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) opposite Michel Piccoli. She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres / Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires /Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses / Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewellery and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990s, she was also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal was a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear, in such early films as Manina / Woman without a Veil (Willy Rozier, 1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (French Films), French Films, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

This jetty is just outside of Queenstown on Lake Wakatipu and to me, the Glenorchy/Paradise area is an absolute must see.

 

To keep a long story short, after photographing the landscape and a lot of running around and excuse-making, I finally jumped in. It was fall at the time in New Zealand and pretty windy, so needless the say the glacial water was a little chilly and the few people who were standing on the jetty who watched my whole ordeal pretty much all thought I was crazy. But a few had the decency to give me a cheer when I shivered my way out. =)

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. If you wish to use this image, please, contact me through flickrmail or at vicenc.feliu@gmail.com. © All rights reserved...

 

Giles Corey was a prosperous farmer and full member of the Puritan church in Salem, Massachusetts, who died under judicial torture during the Salem witch trials. Corey refused to enter a plea, and was crushed to death by stone weights in an attempt to force him to do so. In April 1692, he was accused by Ann Putnam, Jr., Mercy Lewis, and Abigail Williams of witchcraft. Ann Putnam Jr claimed that on April 13, the specter of Giles Corey visited her and asked her to write in the Devil's book. Later, Putnam also claimed that a ghost appeared before her to announce that it had been murdered by Corey. Other girls were to describe Corey as "a dreadful wizard" and recount stories of assaults by his specter.

 

According to the law at the time, a person who refused to plead could not be tried. To avoid persons cheating justice, the legal remedy for refusing to plead was "peine forte et dure". In this process the prisoner is stripped naked, with a heavy board laid on their body. Then rocks or boulders are laid on the plank of wood. This was the process of being pressed to death.

 

... remanded to the prison from whence he came and put into a low dark chamber, and there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked, unless when decency forbids; that there be placed upon his body as great a weight as he could bear, and more, that he hath no sustenance, save only on the first day, three morsels of the worst bread, and the second day three droughts of standing water, that should be alternately his daily diet till he died, or, till he answered.

 

As a result of his refusal to enter a plead to the charges of witchcraft brought against him, on September 17, Sheriff George Corwin led Corey to a pit in the open field beside the jail and in accordance with the above process, before the Court and witnesses, stripped Giles of his clothing, laid him on the ground in the pit, and placed boards on his chest. Six men then lifted heavy stones, placing them one by one, on his stomach and chest. Giles Corey did not cry out, let alone make a plea.

 

After two days, Giles was asked three times to plead innocent or guilty to witchcraft. Each time he replied, "More weight." More and more rocks were piled on him, and the Sheriff from time to time would stand on the boulders staring down at Corey's bulging eyes. Robert Calef, who was a witness along with other townsfolk, later said, "In the pressing, Giles Corey's tongue was pressed out of his mouth; the Sheriff, with his cane, forced it in again."

 

Three mouthfuls of bread and water were fed to the old man during his many hours of pain. Finally, Giles Corey cried out "More weight!" and died.

[2014/01/10 19:14:00] Cody McLane (codymclane): /me decides that she likes the woman's position well-enough for now, no danger of any spewage causing her to choke. Moving to both knees, she loosens what clothing she can and than bends over to the woman's ear. Patting her cheek, she continues in a softer voice; "Lady, are you OK? You've got help here but I need you to talk to me. You're safe, nobody is gonna hurt you here." Cody manages to make her voice both soothing and commanding, something she'd learned by treating scared and badly injured soldiers who needed to co-operate with threatment for their own sake. Stroking the womans hair, she continues to speak soothingly, pretty sure by now that she wasn't gonna have to apply the anti-Zeke innoculation - and glad of it.

  

[2014/01/10 19:17:08] Tara Lynn (tarlyn.dagger): /me watched both women with the same amount of intent, the collapsed and the one looking her over. A lift of her brow then glance over at the others quickly in turn before taking another sniff, the empty cup still in her hand, pondering. The other hand motioning towards the passed-out one, Tara'd shake her head, "She's not dead. And she's not ..." fading off as the others chime in, her brows furrowed and shaking her head again just watching the one talking to her before turning on her toes and heading back to the bar to refill the glass and take a drink for herself this time, just leaning on the pillar again, unconcerned. A glance to Tre, and shrug of her shoulder sending a message in and of itself to her sister.

  

[2014/01/10 19:18:25] Evelyn (Kol): /me slowly became aware of a throbbing coming from the side of her head and let out a low, gravelly moan, hands twitching slightly as her sense started to wake once more. She will her heavy lids to open but the refused to cooperate just yet.

  

[2014/01/10 19:20:01] Amelia (isanaplacida): /me 's lips tugged down in a worried frown as she looked from Cody and the fallen woman and on back to Tre. A small, and obviously reluctant nod was offered after a long pause,"Yeah, fine" She finally said in reply. Mouse got an approving nod then, apparently a willingness to bash in strangers heads earned points in her opinion. Leaning over to the bar, she placed her bowl of now congealed taters onto the bar before straightening back up as she let her gaze fall back onto Cody and the fallen woman. Her arms crossing over her waist as she carefully took another small step back, just to be sure. Despite Tara's assurances that the woman wasn't a walker, or on her way to being one for that matter, she was still more than a little worried.

  

[2014/01/10 19:21:17] Tre (tre.marjeta): /me noted that Tara was not arsed over the girl so she'd relax ...lots. Her toe tapped on the wood and she crossed her arms under her breasts,still holding the empty water tankard. "Well I tell ya, if Jason wasn't off nursing his kicked shin, he'd be all for stripping her down, but apparently we've not too many worries in this group. Everyone calm down and let's see what Cody there can do. Shit, I may have to feed her for free after this, just so she doesn't pass out again." As she spoke,she slowly siddled her way back behind the bar, not cause she was scared the woman was going to leap up and start biting, of course not, but cause she ...liked it behind the bar.

  

[2014/01/10 19:21:51] Cody McLane (codymclane): /me look up at the onlookers; "I think she just fainted. Can someone get me a rag soaked in water? I need to check where she hit the floor..." Cody feels the woman stirring and continues speaking to her; "You're gonna be OK, I don't think you hurt the floor much an' I don't think you're turning Zeke on us. My name is Cody, and I'll be your medic for this evening. I'm really pretty good at this stuff, and if I mess up - you'll never complain. So come on and show us those pretty eyes so we can all breathe a little easier..."

  

[2014/01/10 19:23:10] Sheri Bailey: /me sees the body start to twitch and jumps back, putting both hands tightly around her bat. "Drag it into the street, we can burn it before it goes all bitey!" She motions to Amy to grab one foot, and lets go of her bat with one hand, intending to grab the other.

  

[2014/01/10 19:27:27] Evelyn (Kol): /me 's eyes finally roll somewhat open though she still can't quite focus her vision. "Where am I?" She grumbled. "Who are you?" It was coming back to her in foggy pieces but not enough to make sense of. She tried to left her head but winced and inhaled a hiss, feeling the throbbing ache worse when she did, opting to gingerly lay her head back down.

  

[2014/01/10 19:28:02] Tara Lynn (tarlyn.dagger): /me just smiled over at Tre, offering a lift of her glass then returned her gaze to the fallen girl, a soft 'tsk' under her breath and as the comment of 'strip search' hit her mind again, she'd linger over the girl's appearance, consideringly. Lots to... take under advisement. Mouse's comments bringing another shake of her head, her voice lifted only enough to carry tot he seemingly panicked girl. "Let Cody there handle it for now, she seems to have a way with things..." Catching the name mention from Tre.

  

[2014/01/10 19:32:04] Cody McLane (codymclane): /me slips her hand gently to Evelyn's temples, helping to cushion her a bit while inspecting her skull for crepitation and depression spots. "Rest easy lady, I'm Cody and I've had some medic training. You just kinda dropped, and we were all scared shitless. Whats the last thing you had to eat or drink?" Cody continues to assess the woman as she begins to collect the basics of a History on her. Glancing over her shoulder at the bar, she asks again; "How about that wet rag?" Seeing that people are positioning themseves closer, she moves her torso over the woman, effectively shielding her with her body until everyone agrees that she's not Trning.

  

[2014/01/10 19:33:06] Amelia (isanaplacida): /me 's faint frown returned as she watched Tre head back behind the bar. She seemed confident in her sisters opinion, which might have relaxed her more if she knew her sister enough to share said confidence. So far, she was just a woman she'd waved at. The medic though, well her opinion helped a tiny bit, though she was still fully prepared to help mouse turn the womans head into a pinata. At Cody's request, she gave a small shrug as if to say 'sure', before turning back towards the bar as she opened her mouth to ask Tre for just that. The words never got out, however, as she heard Mouse yell about burning and bitey. Whipping back around, and fully expecting to see the woman trying to eat something, all she could do was blink and stare when she heard her speak,"Huh." She said after a moment, seeming a bit surprised to see that the woman was not, in fact, hungry for human flesh,"I think the barbecue will have to wait a bit" She added, this last bit directed at Mouse,"Yeah, guess not" She said with a nod, and

[2014/01/10 19:33:06] Amelia (isanaplacida): a shrug, to Cody before glancing back to Tre.

  

[2014/01/10 19:33:16] Sheri Bailey: /me slumps as the downed woman speaks and shoots her a disgusted look. Okay, fine, no zombie. "She could still get the fever, you know," she whispers hopefully.

  

[2014/01/10 19:34:20] Tre (tre.marjeta): /me turned and took a towel, not really a whole one, as most of her stuff was rags, but clean rags, as clean as she could keep them. She wet it in the lukewarm water, squeezing it out so she didn't drop all over the wood, and moved to take it over to Cody. She'd grin at Tara, totally relaxed now since it appeared it wasn't a walker in their midst, and the cloth would be offered. "I've an office upstairs, but nothing ot sit on or lay on yet. As she waited for the cloth to be taken, she sighed. "There'll be no lighting anyone on fire in the street, sheesh, you do that shit in the lower regions,let's keep this part clean as we can.." Yea, Tre was a lil bossy over the upper regions, but she'd lived her long enough to be a bit overly protective and bitchy about the street in front of her bar.

  

[2014/01/10 19:36:59] Sheri Bailey: /me had the decency to look a little bit ashamed at least, as she fixed her eyes on the floor, and scuffed her toe. "Just tryin' to be safe..." she muttered.

  

[19:39:18] Cody McLane (codymclane) takes the cloth greatfully with a mouthed "thanks" in Tre's direction bfore setting back to work. Gently, almost tenderly, she wipes down the womans face and then rolls the rag up before placing it as a compress on the back of her neck. "Sweetie, you're gonan be OK. You're down at the local bar...diner...something. You'd just walked in when you seemed like you's in distress and you fainted. " Cody leans back and looks her over; "Any better?"

  

[19:39:51] Tara Lynn (tarlyn.dagger) just shook her head, her lips parting to murmur "Why do you look disappointed that she's -not-turning? I'm rather pleased she's ok..." subsiding to quiet again, watching as Tre took the towel over to Cody, her eyes flicking about to watch the various reactions "I'm far more concerned about making sure she stays that way."

What an amazing place this is. It used to be a thermal bath house. It was built in the 19th century and what beautifully decorated. It will soon be converted into a posh hotel.

When we entered early morning we were the first explorers setting up our gear. Within an hour the place was crowded with explorers from all over Europe and it was hard to take a decent picture.

Apparently it is hard for other people to wait until others who were there earlier are done. I gave them a hard time by just standing in 'their' way while taking a shot. Have some decency people and be patient!

 

Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures and follow me on Facebook on www.facebook.com/Preciousdecay.urbex

I don't know the name of this butterfly that we saw yesterday at the San Diego Botanic Garden, but that certainly didn't stop me from exploiting it. It had the decency to stay on top of a flower long enough for me to focus on it.

 

Other pictures that I've taken of butterflies are in my Butterflies and Dragonflies set.

www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157626745277518/

After the shock of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, when millions of Americans (and visiting foreigners like me) felt understandably distraught, bereft, dismayed, as the grotesque, narcissistic, predatory, corrupt fraud that is Donald Trump delivered a bleak and graceless inauguration speech, it was nothing short of a delight on Saturday, Jan. 21, Day 2 of the aberrant Trump presidency, when, across the country and around the world, millions of women (plus large numbers of supportive men) marched in protest against Trump and all he and his administration stand for — his disdain for women, his racism, his xenophobia, his adherence to intolerant white Christian fundamentalism, and, last but not least, his opaque, but very obviously corrupt business practices. Two US academics have estimated that between 3.3m and 4.6m people marched in total across the US, with New York’s turnout estimated at between 400,000 and 500,000 people.

Stepping out of Grand Central Station into a river of protest, with more clever, witty and insightful handmade posters than you could imagine, and with chants and cheers punctuating the general hubbub at regular intervals was to feel that perhaps this dystopian vision of America can indeed be overthrown before it wreaks untold havoc at home and abroad. And with no beginning or end of the protest in sight, it was easy to believe that the number marching was much larger than even the academics’ estimate. This was my last photo on the march, before I peeled off to begin making my way back to the airport for my flight home.

It will take more than one day, of course, as the people of America need to unite like never before — everyone who didn’t vote for Trump, everyone threatened by Trump, everyone appalled by Trump, including, of course, those who voted for him but might already be having second thoughts. This could be a disastrous presidency, or it could be even worse than that, but people need to put aside any notions of complacency, and work out how to resist. This was a great start, and a historic moment that everyone there will remember, but now there needs to be much more action and organizing.

As you look at these photos, however, I hope they are a reminder of a day of hope across the US and around the world, when ordinary people demonstrated that fundamental decency will not be silenced, and that a tolerant, multi-racial society, featuring, at its heart, equality between women and men, and between people whatever their race, creed or color, has humour, intelligence and compassion that throw into even sharper relief how troublingly miserable, negative and ungenerous Donald Trump and his advisors are.

For an article by US Uncut about the numbers attending the protests, see: usuncut.com/news/womens-march-largest-protest-us-history/

For the turnout estimates, see: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2...

For an article in New York Daily News, which ran a front page devoted to the protests, under the headline, “See them roar,” see: www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/women-march-washington-...

For my website, see: www.andyworthington.co.uk

For my Facebook posts after Trump’s inauguration, see:

www.facebook.com/andyworthingtonUK/posts/1015497574252380...

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154975238073804&set...

For my most interesting photos, see: www.flickriver.com/photos/andyworthington/popular-interes...

 

ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2022. Gualtieri finisce sul Nyt: L'eterna crisi dei rifiuti a Roma ha unito il declino urbano, con i cinghiali nel centro storico. Gualtieri poco o nessun progresso; in: NEW YORK TIMES & La Repubblica (29-30/08/2021) (testo integrale).Vedi anche: il sindaco Marino e il degrado di Roma; in: Nyt (22/07/2015). wp.me/pbMWvy-36x

 

________________

S.v.,

--- RARA 2022. Roberto Gualtieri - Sindaco di Roma / Er Monnezzaro = Disservizi + Immondizia + Degrado + Cinghiali + Incendio (21/10/2021 - 21/10/2022). Fonte: ROMATODAY (06/09/2022). www.romatoday.it/social/segnalazioni/degrado-urbano/

________________

 

Foto: LOCAL TEAM / YouTube (09/07/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52324893351

 

1). ROMA - Gualtieri finisce sul New York Times: "Mentre Roma brucia (o almeno i suoi rifiuti), un sindaco osa sognare."La Repubblica (30/08/2021).

 

Il quotiano statunitense dedica un articolo all'immondizia della capitale, all'Ama ma soprattutto al sindaco che vuole il termovalorizzatore, "sicuro che qualcosa cambierà"

 

Un sindaco a Roma "osa sognare". Così definisce gli incubi di Roberto Gualtieri un lungo articolo uscito New York Times di Jason Horowitz. Che pubblica online foto di e dei suoi cassonetti carbonizzati oltre alla foto del sindaco alla scrivania assorto a guardare i fogli del progetto sul termovalorizzatore.

 

Foto: Nyt (30/08/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325323054

 

"Da anni ormai" si legge sul Nyt, "nulla simboleggia la caduta di Roma più della sua crisi dei rifiuti. Un serraglio di cinghiali, gabbiani violenti e ratti si riunisce per banchettare con i detriti della capitale". "E proprio quando sembrava che la puzza dei rifiuti di Roma non potesse peggiorare, una disputa sulla costruzione di un nuovo inceneritore per la città è emersa come motivo di un ammutinamento politico che ha fatto cadere il governo Draghi a luglio". Poche righe a riassumere l'effetto domino catastrofico.

 

Ma ecco che qui arriva Gualtieri: "Formalmente il motivo sono io", avrebbe dichiarato lasciando trapelare un tono sorpreso, ingenuo, al limite del compiaciuto.

 

Il quotidiano lo descrive come "un veterano della politica di sinistra", un uomo che "con l'autorità di accelerare la costruzione di un impianto di termovalorizzazione dei rifiuti per Roma da circa 600 milioni di euro, spera di avere successo dove altri hanno fallito". In fondo, avrebbe aggiunto il primo cittadino, "non si tratta di scienza missilistica. È solo spazzatura".

 

Foto: Nyt (30/08/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325212963

 

Roma e New York svettano nella classifica delle città più sporche del mondo, un gemellaggio tossico. E se anche il Nyt dipinge il sindaco che osa sognare, lo fa su uno sfondo di rifiuti in fiamme, autobus che si auto-incendiano, buche "profonde come pozzi d'acqua, una "giungla dove mancano solo i boa costrittori" e una miriade di "altre indecenze". Come Malagrotta. Il sindaco, dice e non dice, che "c'è una cospirazione per fermare me" e il progetto.

 

L'articolo ricorda quindi che Gualtieri però "in qualità di ex ministro dell'Economia, ha contribuito personalmente a ottenere miliardi di euro di fondi dell'Unione Europea per l'Italia, con una fetta significativa per Roma. E ha già avuto successo nell'attrarre investitori privati per finanziare il nuovo inceneritore". Insomma, "il problema non è il denaro".

 

E mentre Roma è costretta a spedire i suoi rifiuti a costi elevati in impianti fuori città, "in quello che secondo Gualtieri è un salasso per le sue risorse, un contributo all'inquinamento e forse un favore agli interessi di elementi della malavita (...), la sfida più grande per ripulire Roma potrebbe essere la città stessa". Anche se i romani tendono ad avere "comportamenti non corretti" quando si tratta di buttare la spazzatura.

 

"I ristoranti spesso riempiono i bidoni riservati ai cittadini. I cittadini reagiscono mettendo in equilibrio i sacchetti dell'immondizia sopra i cassonetti come giocassero a Jenga".

 

Ed è qui che il sindaco sogna. Sogna una revisione dell'Ama e sogna che i rifiuti brucino in fiamme lecite. Sempre che i Cinque Stelle smettano di opporsi adducendo "motivi ambientali, e considerandolo un ipocrita". Perché "egli" sostiene che il termovalorizzatore "migliorerà Roma e sarà redditizio, un incentivo per gli investitori a entrare nel progetto. Una nuova età dell'oro". I sogni d'oro del sindaco di Roma.

 

Fonte / source:

--- La Repubblica (30/08/2021).

roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/08/30/news/roma_rifiuti_n...

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Foto: Gianluca Ferrara / Facebook (27/03/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52324089937

 

2). ROME - As Rome Burns (or at Least Its Garbage), a Mayor Dares to Dream. Could a solution to Rome’s perpetual trash crisis really be in sight? Mayor Roberto Gualtieri would like to think so. NEW YORK TIMES (29/08/2021).

 

ROME — For years now, nothing has symbolized the fall of Rome more than its garbage crisis. A trash menagerie of wild boars, violent sea gulls and rats convene to feast on the capital’s overflowing debris. Early this summer, a spate of suspicious blazes at garbage plants and scrapyards — literal dumpster fires — darkened the skies, choked the air, and raised the specter of arson and organized crime.

 

Then, when it seemed the stench of Rome’s garbage troubles could get no worse, a dispute over building a new incinerator for the city emerged as the stated reason for a political mutiny that brought down the national unity government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi in July.

 

On the day of the revolt, as he monitored the unfolding political drama from his office overlooking the Roman forum, Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, seemed bemused by the role he and his city’s garbage problem had played in the government’s unexpected collapse. “Formally, the reason is me,” he said.

 

Foto: Il Messaggero (22/06/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325323139

 

At least Mr. Gualtieri, a veteran of leftist politics, emerged from the wreckage with the authority to fast track the building of a roughly 600 million euro, or about $601 million, waste-to-energy plant for Rome, which he hopes will allow him to succeed where others had failed.

 

“It is not rocket science,” he said. “It’s garbage.”

 

But garbage, and the degradation of Rome that it symbolizes, is a force not to be taken lightly. Even in an oft-sacked city that has seen it all over the centuries, where people have more recently grown accustomed to self-immolating buses, potholes as deep as water wells and myriad other indignities, the garbage — pervasive, pungent and unrelenting — has become the true metric of Rome’s decline.

 

Since Rome closed its sprawling Malagrotta landfill, among Europe’s largest, as an environmental disaster in 2013, trash has overwhelmed two mayors, including Mr. Gualtieri’s predecessor, Virginia Raggi of the Five Star Movement, the party that touched off the rebellion that brought down the national government.

 

In 2018, prosecutors sequestered the landfill — owned by a businessman dubbed “er monnezzaro,” or King of Garbage — for failing to contain its toxic spillage. No actual garbage has been dumped there for years, but its treatment plant was still being used to process up to 1,500 tons of garbage a day, before being shipped elsewhere.

 

Foto: La Repubblica (12/08/2022).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325212983

 

That is, before it went up in flames this summer.

 

“An enormous plume, gray,” Luigi Palumbo, the court-appointed manager of the landfill, said as he recalled the toxic blaze and cloud that closed nearby preschools and summer camps and laced parts of central Rome with an acrid odor.

 

“It’s unknown where it started,” he said as he approached the plant, its concrete scorched and its melted aluminum panels hanging over the building like carpets hung out to dry.

 

He turned to a burned heap of garbage that had been inside the plant. It was filled with thousands of scorched and bulging plastic bags, melted plastic fruit crates, stray cloths and tires and cans. It, too, has now been sequestered as evidence — but of what, no one seems quite sure.

 

The Malagrotta blaze was not an isolated incident, but one of a rash of trash fires that broke out around the city this summer.

 

Mayor Gualtieri sought to sidestep the theory that “there is a conspiracy to stop me,” and his incinerator, by preserving a system in which myriad players, some of them shadowy, profited from Rome’s garbage crisis. But, he added, “of course you consider this possibility, how was it possible this really is happening exactly when we are trying to …” Then he stopped himself.

 

He noted a well-established connection between waste management and criminal enterprises. Experts had determined it was “not self-combustion,” he said. “So that was man made.”

 

And it has exacerbated Rome’s already noxious disposal problem.

 

Rome now has to ship its garbage at high cost to plants outside the city, in what Mr. Gualtieri said was a drain on its resources, a contributor to pollution and possibly a favor to the interests of underworld elements who benefit from Rome’s sanitation paralysis.

 

But while prosecutors continue to investigate the fires, the greatest challenge to cleaning up Rome may be the city itself.

 

Rome had “little sense of responsibility for its own garbage, because it’s always thought that public things, being public, belong to no one,” said Paola Ficco, an environmental lawyer who edits Rifiuti, or Waste, a journal about laws regarding garbage. “And we forget that, being public, it’s all of ours.”

 

In the meantime, she added, Rome was a mess, with high grass and garbage everywhere. “It’s a jungle,” she said. “Only boa constrictors are missing. Then we’ll have it all.”

 

Mr. Gualtieri, himself a Roman, acknowledged that his city bred unique character traits. Romans tended to have “behaviors that we find that are not good,” he said, when it came to throwing out the garbage.

 

Restaurants often loaded up bins reserved for the public. The public had a tendency to respond to the packed bins by balancing trash bags on top of them, like a vile Jenga game, or throwing garbage at their sides, forming archipelagos of uncollected trash that attracted all sorts of interesting fauna.

 

But even while the burned plant remains out of commission, the mayor is confident that the new incinerator, on which construction is set to begin next year, and the introduction of tougher fines for a variety of infractions would create a more civilized Roman context. Within it, he said, Romans would become “more sensible about doing their part” and give “the best and not the worst.”

 

Foto: Amazing Walking Tours / YouTube (19/06/2022)

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52324893366

 

As a former economy minister, he had personally helped procure billions of euros in European Union funds for Italy, with a significant chunk for Rome and other plants in the city’s waste plan. He spoke of an additional 1.4 billion euros from the Italian government to help prepare for pilgrims visiting the city and the Vatican during the 2025 Holy Year as if it were a done deal. And he already had success in attracting private investors to finance the new incinerator.

 

“Money is not the problem,” he said.

 

The system is.

 

The mayor presented an organizational chart of AMA, a company that, among other things, manages collection of solid waste in Rome, and of which the city is the sole shareholder. He said that under previous administrations, AMA had changed chief executive officers five times in seven years, had become inflated with patronage jobs and had directed the majority of resources to garbage collection areas where it was not needed. Last winter, Rome paid bonuses to its workers just to show up for work during Christmas time.

 

“This is a joke,” he said. “This should be studied in university, what you should not do.” Overhauling AMA was a part of the mayor’s three-phase plan to clean up the city.

 

He said the city will have actually hired about 650 people by the end of the year to clean the streets while cracking down on an army of loafers. Officials had begun conducting thousands of checks on employees who perpetually present doctors’ notes certifying that they can only do desk work.

 

“You can see people heal,” the mayor said of the spot checks. “Miracles.”

 

In the second stage, within two years, the city would put new dumpsters on Rome’s streets, and a third phase would begin in 2025, toward the end of his five-year term, when the waste-to-energy incinerator is expected to come on line.

 

When he campaigned for the job, Mr. Gualtieri said he did not think such a plant would be necessary and that he would improve things by Christmas. He said that it was only when he took office that he understood the mind-boggling reality of Rome’s garbage. His critics, chief among them Five Star, which opposed the new incinerator on environmental grounds, consider him a hypocrite.

 

Foto: 7Colli (11/07/2022)

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52209791423

 

But, as summer vacation ends and the city fills back up with Romans and their trash, he argues the waste-to-energy incinerator will improve Rome’s environment and be profitable, an incentive he said for investors to get in on the ground floor.

 

All of Rome, he insisted, was on the brink of a new Golden Age.

 

“I can tell you why,” he said, anticipating the natural Roman skepticism and calling Rome an undervalued asset. “It has a lot of margin for improvements.”

 

Fonte / source:

--- NEW YORK TIMES (29/08/2021).

www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/europe/rome-garbage-fire...

 

S.v.,

 

Foto: Nyt (22/07/2015).

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/52325212978

 

--- ROMA ARCHEOLOGICA & RESTAURO ARCHITETTURA 2022: Il degrado di Roma sul New York Times: Marino più interessato ai ricchi stranieri che ai cittadini, THE NEW YORK TIMES (22|07|2015), p. A4; LA REPUBBLICA & Forexinfo.it (23|07|2015).

 

ROME — The grass in some public parks sways knee high. Disgruntled subway workers have slowed service to a crawl. Fire has rendered the city’s largest airport crammed and chaotic. The arrests of public officials pile up, revealing mob infiltration of the city government.

 

It all adds up to what Romans call “degrado” — the degradation of services, buildings and their standard of living — and the general sense that their ancient city, even more than usual, is falling apart.

 

Not all those troubles are necessarily the fault of Mayor Ignazio Marino, a former surgeon whose own integrity remains unblemished. But, strangely enough, in Rome, his decency is not necessarily seen as part of the solution, either.

 

Fonte/source:

--- THE NEW YORK TIMES (22|07|2015), p. A4.

 

rometheimperialfora19952010.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/roma...

Beep introduces Bonecrusher, Magnus and Grimmy to the joy of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Restoring some modicum of decency to her Photostream, we see a fully clothed Joni pausing to strike a pose before heading out on Friday evening for a second evening at the Savoy Lounge. This purple paisley dress seemed to engender a number of favorable comments during this series of photos documenting Joni's week in Orlando, so back by popular demand is Joni in her purple paisley dress! . . . It's one of her favorites!