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British promotion postcard. Caption: "I'm a woman from a man's point of view', says Bardot. ...If you want to find out why, read 'The Secrets of A Sex Kitten', with Bardot's own intimate pictures only in Sunday's Empire News.

 

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.

I have decided to use this new setup as my primary for taking pictures, what do you guts think - i for one think it's a lot better than my old crappy one... I hope you guys enjoy these 3 tests...

If you favourite then please have the decency to comment, I don't mind if you don't but I would much like it :) This guy is just a test, so it's not for anything important...

The reaction of the three wise monkeys to the policies of the Campbell Newman LNP government in Queensland (Australia).

 

That shameful government has walked away from every decent policy. Gone is help to the homeless. Gone is help to hungry families living in poverty. Gone is the fairness of a justice system now replaced by a punishment mindset. Gone is help to those struggling to find a job. Gone is all mercy and fairness. Gone is all decency in government.

"And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother."

— Genesis 38:9

 

My Subject is Masturbation

 

Inspiration is provided by what I sense to be a universal condition, which manifests in my own personal feelings of impotence. Mentors, deserving of particular mention, are Goya, Duchamp and Marcus Simon Sarjeant. I have spent the last years in pursuit of mutually onanistic release with these three men. There have been others.

 

Of the three, I have given to Goya most of my time. Duchamp has won my greatest affection and Sarjeant has my understanding and empathy.

 

Goya, at least in his later years, had the good grace to withdraw and act out his urgency in private. Duchamp made no bones of making a public performance of his tendencies from an early age. Sarjeant ejaculated defiantly, if prematurely, and faced the consequences.

 

My Subject is Bachelor Machines

 

Onanism breeds desperation, arrogance, contempt and a perverse independence. Arrogantly, I do not intend to try to forge links between these three men. There is no need to do so as these links already exist in me and my obsessive interest. Creation is, after all, the union of two (or more) disparate elements to engender a new. So I will attempt to expose, rather than manufacture; reveal rather than produce.

 

My Subject is Exhibitionism

 

Thus, I realise that any two or more elements could be combined and any suggestion for coupling is as fecund (or as barren) as the next, or as chance allows. The 'choice' of constituents is purely subjective and perhaps says more about the writer than the written about. To elucidate, or to restrict conjecture slightly, I should like to state that my personal interest lies in non-reproductive coupling. My goal is an exposition and celebration of sterility.

 

My Subject is Autoeroticism

 

The Observer, Sunday 14th June 1981: ‘Shots at Queen — Treason Charge’

 

A seventeen-year-old youth was charged under the Treason Act yesterday after six blanks were fired only yards away from the Queen on her official birthday.

 

Marcus Simon Sarjeant, unemployed of Folkestone, Kent, was charged that "at the Mall he wilfully discharged at the person of her Majesty the Queen, a blank cartridge pistol with intent to alarm her".

 

My Subject is Desperation

 

My introduction to the Bachelor Machine phenomenon coincided with my first really considered exposure to the work of Marcel Duchamp. This cathartic 'Road to Damascus' conversion occurred on board a 'Laker' aircraft whilst returning from New York. I was 24.

 

The catalyst took the form of a book by Octavio Paz entitled Marcel Duchamp: Appearances Stripped Bare. As with any 'conversion' the initial response manifested itself in an outburst of enthusiasm but with very little understanding. However, the damage had been well and truly done. Stretching this conversion metaphor even further, this attempt at coherence is a presentation of a possible 'New Trinity': Goya is the omnipotent Father, Sarjeant is the wayward 'Sacrificial Son', and finally Duchamp is the Holy Ghost, the overseer.

 

A Purple Passage

 

(A socio-religious, psycho-philosophical, art-historical exposé!)

 

In the beginning was the word, and the word was Bot, and Art seeing that Bot was good didst venerate him. And Art begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image, and did call his name Duccio. All the days that Duccio lived were numbered seventy years. And he begat many sons, the eldest of whom was Giotto. And all the days that Giotto lived were seventy-one years and he did also bring forth issue and Art did smile upon his sons, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, who in their turns did engender Michelangelo and Leonardo, and many less well-endowed progeny. And it came to pass that Art, now seeing the beauty of mankind, forsook its veneration of the omnipotent Bot and didst venerate Humanity.

 

Bot saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Bot that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Thus, Bot, recognising his redundancy, didst scarper. But humanity finding favour in the eyes of Art did prosper.

 

Art, venerating man, begot and engendered many sons (and the very occasional daughter) each of whom did venerate man in their turn. Raphael didst know Michelangelo and he didst conceive and bore a school and they spoke of 'Harmony' and they venerated the 'Ideal' and thusly they engendered 'Mannerism'. And Art, seeing that this was good, smiled upon Raphael, who begat a son called Titian. Likewise, to him was born a brother, and his name was Correggio. And they both did play with light.

Art saw fit to cause a division and to set an enmity between the schools of Parmigianino and Holbein. Sensing that competition was lucrative, Art didst encourage it. And so were engendered El Greco and Bruegel, and both prospered. Art encouraged their difference due to the diversity of their produce. But, eventually, Art growing tired of excess did give preference, for a time, to the Northern School, which bore much fruit. Rubens didst conceive and brought forth Van Dyck who in turn did engender Frans Hals, the father of Rembrandt. But Rembrandt did venerate the formerly omnipotent (and previously made redundant) Bot of his ancestors and behold the wrath of Art fell upon him and he did perish in penury. Rembrandt begat a son, however, and called his name Vermeer.

 

Vermeer was a true son of Art and put no Bot before Art, and he did flourish. However, Art, tiring of Northern Severity (and who could blame it?), did turn again to the South, where it engendered Bernini and Tiepolo. The South too did forsake its humanistic Bot and did engender the deity of 'Decoration'. In this spirit Art prospered and engendered the brothers Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher, in the Gallic lands, and they didst attempt to re-create Eden by disporting themselves freely in Elysian bowers. The brothers proved to be momentarily fertile and together venerated sensuality.

 

Jacques-Louis David issued forth having been begotten as an unforeseen by-product of Boucher's decadence. David deciding that man could be excellent did idolise this possibility whilst rejecting man's squalid 'reality'. David was also fertile and did generate the 'Hero', and in doing so encouraged Art to venerate War. And Art, seeing that War was lucrative didst raise David to a position of great power... twice.

 

In the Hispanic Peninsula art didst visit Velázquez, as if in a shower of gold, and he did find himself with child. Goya issued forth from this lineage. But Goya, seeing that War was not good, did not believe in Bot, he did not believe in man, he did not believe in Art, and thus Art in a hissy fit didst frown upon Goya and didst smite him with impotence, saying:

"Thou shall forever be unto me as a witness to the people, and they shall point, crying 'Behold a Godless man' and your issue shall be as a manifestation of the impotence of a man without faith, and generations shall misunderstand and curse thee saying 'behold the unhappy composer of pictures' and many shall waste their time telling anecdotes about the deafness that I shall visit upon you, and thy name shall be numbered amongst the damned. Outside the schools and movements of Art shall thou be forever exiled, and the lot of the 'Bachelor' shall fall to thee."

And Goya, going out alone, was smitten with a blight of compassion for all that he did see, for at that time the peoples of his land were suffering a great travail visited upon them by the Napoleonic 'Hero' generated by David. Goya withdrew in solitude and didst spread his seed on the plaster walls of his house. Thus doing, Goya exorcised his demons.

  

My Subject is Parthenogenesis

 

Oscillating back and forth dramatically between arrogance and a guilty conscience, guilt is the hidden weakness inadequately masked by arrogance. I am discovering the extent of my own vanity and my own insecurity. Together they combine to form the nourishment for my obsession. They are just different aspects of the same thing. They are the complementary opposites which chemically unite to form a 'love gasoline'.

 

They are also manufactured by the disrobing Bride to create and satisfy her own needs. They meet and deny each other on the jaded plains of Onan. They combine not through acceptance of each other but blindly and desperately. They exhaustively pretend they have never met before, but their meeting is as constant as their inability to acknowledge each other. A confrontation is absolutely essential. To continue, insecurity must be sufficiently overcome (not ignored), to give the vanity of opinion free rein.

 

There is an exposition. I am not writing about Bachelor Machines. I am attempting to construct one.

 

"THE BACHELOR GRINDS HIS CHOCOLATE HIMSELF"

— Duchamp

 

•Bachelor: Unmarried man; (hist.) young knight serving under another's banner.

 

•Machine:

1.Apparatus for applying mechanical power, having several parts each with definite function.

2.Person who acts mechanically and without intelligence or with unfailing regularity.

3.Instrument that transmits force or directs its application.

 

Already these dictionary definitions begin to suggest hitherto unconsidered possibilities. Initially, there seems to be the germ of an idea which could perhaps be summed up as relentless and mindless solitary servitude. However, as with every word combination, the riches of this union go far beyond what a mere joint definition might suggest.

 

The Bachelor Machine is, of course, much more than this. Duchamp somewhat defined the limits of its legend when he constructed The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, which must remain the Bachelor Machine par excellence. It might seem logical that it would be best to use this one example to further discover and elaborate on the defining peculiarities of the subject of this particular investigation.

Duchamp's 'Machine' is probably the most complete, as well as being the most conscious example of a 'Bachelor Machine', being as it is the conceptual projection of an intense awareness of the machine-age myth. However, it would be a mistake to believe that this was purely a post-Industrial Revolution phenomenon. The recorded machinations of war, property, money, state and finally even death itself have produced excellent examples of complete and partial 'Bachelor Machines' strewn throughout the history of myth and mankind. After an in-depth consideration of the Large Glass, I would like to deal with Goya as an originator of imagery of this nature and Sarjeant as a recent manifestation of the Bachelor Machine drive.

  

"The Large Glass"

 

The initial problem encountered with a description of the Large Glass is knowing where to begin. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even cannot be considered as a separate and complete work. For it to be fully appreciated, a study of earlier Duchamp pieces is imperative to understand his developing iconography. "Indeed, in my whole life, as you rightly point out, I have done but one work."

 

When Duchamp made this statement to Pierre Cabanne, he was not negating all his other pieces but was including them in his magnum opus. Unknown to Cabanne, he had already spent many years working on Étant donnés, a work which was not to be revealed to the world until after Duchamp's death.

 

The full title of this last piece is:

Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas

 

This title first appeared in 1912 amongst the earliest notes for the Large Glass. This would suggest that they are both parts of the same work. Traces of what were to become obsessive recurring motifs can be found in many of his earlier drawings, most markedly in his 'hanging gas-lamp' of 1903, drawn when Duchamp was 16 years old.

 

What was later to manifest as the 'cemetery of uniforms and liveries' had its initial expression in a group of drawings of 1904–05 in which he portrayed tradesmen and public servants such as 'Policeman back view', 'Knife-grinder', 'Gasman', 'Road-Sweepers' and more especially 'Funeral Coachman' and 'Undertaker'. The importance of these early manifestations of recurring motifs will become more apparent later.

 

Duchamp's work presents a complicated, some might even say convoluted, machine. I believe though that Art has provided us with very few pieces of equal penetration and metaphorical ingenuity. His subject was constant throughout his lifetime, and besides the pieces already mentioned above, I believe that Standard Stoppages, R. Mutt, Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? and even his obsessive interest with chess are all part of his Large Glass and constitute not only his work, but his life.

 

Duchamp always expressed indifference to effect. His oeuvre dealt obsessively with its opposite, i.e., cause. The sagacious stoicism of some of his statements is devastating. For example: "Given, that I suppose I suffer a lot." This is a Given, i.e., as in a mathematical equation or chemical theory, it is just understood, accepted as being the case, immutable. It is an effect to which we must develop an 'indifference' because of this immutability. But, at the same time, Duchamp wishes to recognise, understand, and expose the source of that suffering.

 

His tools to aid his discovery are humour, irony, and indifference. His was a constant quest to discover the cause, that is the real, and then to give this a concrete expression through an extended metaphor describing his/our inability to combine the cause and the 'given' because of our fascination and fear of the effects. To discover the elements is not enough; to combine them remains the problem. Creation must be, and is by its nature, an act of transcendence.

Duchamp dealt with our inability to transcend due to our lack of acceptance of ourselves; our self-involvement blinding us to self-knowledge. In Duchamp's art we are eventually reduced to the role of voyeur without any real understanding, and even with little choice as to the subject of our gaze. Man as the voyeuristic, narcissistic, onanistic specialist is the desperate subject of Duchamp's relentless study. It was this situation, or view, which caused Duchamp to attack the retinal specialists of the Art world. The recognition of his own inability to overcome this impotence must have formed the unalterable aspect of Duchamp's suffering.

 

The driving force in the Large Glass is, as will be seen, towards unity. However, the animal instinct is towards individual survival which causes fear due to the instinctual realisation of corporeal decay. This is a very basic Eros-Thanatos conflict and is very much the seedbed of the Bachelor Machine. It is the 'architectonic base' of the piece. The pathos of the piece and its accompanying humour is embodied in this failure to unite.

 

Duchamp remains for me the most humanistic artist of the 20th Century. His considerations were never retinal, visual, aesthetic, plastic (or whatever the 'art-term' in vogue) but were purely involved with the contemporary human condition and the causes thereof. This would make Apollinaire's early prediction strangely prophetic:

"It may be the privilege of an artist as free of aesthetic preoccupations and as concerned with energy as is Marcel Duchamp to reconcile Art and the people."

 

The Large Glass is composed of two principal elements. The upper half being the domain of the Bride whilst the lower is that of the Bachelors. This 'separation' is an essential aspect of all Bachelor Machines.

 

'The Bride' is "a sort of apotheosis of virginity, i.e., ignorant desire, blank desire (with a touch of malice)." We see her as she hangs down from shiny metal gallows which "could simulate the maiden's attachment to her girlfriends and relatives" — a strange form of strangling security which provides what Duchamp terms a "solid base on firm ground."

 

"The Bride is basically a motor, but before being a motor which transmits timid power she is this very timid power, itself."

So it would appear that the Bride preserves a degree of autonomy, as she is self-motivated, self-driven:

"This timid power is a sort of auto-mobiline, love gasoline that, distributed to the quite feeble cylinders, within reach of the sparks of her constant life, is used for the blossoming of this virgin who has reached the goal of her desire. The whole graphic significance is for this cinematic blossoming."

 

The Bride has many appellations all of which are of extreme significance and tell us about the properties and aspirations of the Bride. The most significant of these names is probably "Arbor-type"; the others are: "steam engine", "skeleton", "Pendu femelle", "the plough", "agricultural machine", "Virgin" and "Pendulum".

 

The "cinematic blossoming" has its graphic description as a greyish cloud with hints of flesh-colour tints (in fact the only truly amorphous shape on the glass) hanging from above. This aspect of the Bride also has many names including "Halo of the Bride", "Top Inscription", "Milky Way" and "Title".

 

This becomes, in a way, the "hanging out of flags" of the Bride, so that her having achieved stripping and orgasm is made apparent. It is through this "top inscription", which acts as a sort of scoreboard, that she communicates her desires and successes to the Bachelors. However, this does remain a one-way communication as the males have no such organ of communication. This Halo also contains "elements of this blossoming, elements of the sexual life imagined by her, the Bride, desiring." It exists more to reveal the Bride to herself rather than to be of erotic stimulation to the Bachelors.

 

The Bride reveals herself nude twice:

"The first, that of the stripping by the Bachelors; the second appearance, that voluntary imaginative one of the Bride. On the coupling of these two appearances of pure virginity, on their collision, depends the whole blossoming, the upper part and crown of the picture."

 

So, it would appear that the actual act of being stripped would not suffice to facilitate blossoming and that without the narcissistic/onanistic stimulus of the Bride's seeing herself, the orgasm would not be possible. Duchamp calls this "mixture, physical compound of two causes (bachelor and imaginative desire)" and tells us it is unanalysable by logic. This might suggest that the situation could be instinctively understood or sensed. The blossoming is not in fact the orgasm but the "last state of the nude Bride before the orgasm that might make her fall."

 

The "Milky Way" contains the "three nets" or "pistons" which form a "sort of cipher through which the Milky Way supports and guides the said commands." These nets contain an alphabet of communication. According to H.P. Roché, these nets form "the original mystery, the cause of causes, a trinity of empty boxes."

 

Duchamp makes another important differentiation between the domain of the Bride and that of the Bachelors in that he states that the principal forms of the Bachelor Machine are imperfect; rectangle, circle, parallelepiped, symmetrical handle, demi-sphere, i.e., they are measurable, whilst in the Bride "the principal forms are more or less large or small" and "have no longer, in relation to their destination, a measurability."Here Duchamp is introducing a new unknown dimension. This reduces the Bachelor to the purely diagrammatic, the predictable, as in a mathematical equation, or in architecture, where with the aid of a measured diagram, one can construct a 3-dimensional reality of which the diagram is a mere, but faithful, representation.

 

Duchamp then tells us that "the pendu femelle is the form in ordinary perspective of a pendu femelle for which one could perhaps try to discover the true form" — a direct challenge. However, with this more or less, large or small, non-measurability, we find ourselves beyond the confines of mere geometry and therefore a discovery of the true form (meaning) which is "unanalysable by logic" must be reached by some other method. Duchamp has given us a glimpse of a reality which is beyond our understanding, a reality of which we ourselves are a mere projection or shadow.

The "wasp" or the "sex cylinder" controls the "spark of desire magneto" which causes the "motor with quite feeble cylinders" to run. It draws the automobiline from the "reservoir" or tank of love gasoline. This would equate the desire magneto with the spark plug of a car engine and the reservoir with a petrol tank. Although the language is quite explicit, the representation is more amorphous and the exact placing of these particular aspects of the Bride's mechanics is not always possible.

Directly below the Bride on the far left, above the line indicating the horizon that breaks the Large Glass into two halves, is the Bride's fallen transparent garment. To the right of this invisible garment is the similarly invisible "Wilson-Lincoln System". This was a visual trick invented by Duchamp but never plastically realised. The idea was that when looked at from one position one could see an image of Wilson and from another only Lincoln was visible. In other words, what we see depends on our point of view. The Wilson-Lincoln system's function will become more obvious later on. Finally, in the region of the Bride, just below the tail of the Milky Way, is the region of the "shots pulls". These become the target or goal towards which the malic moulds aspire.

 

The Bachelor Domain

 

As has been already stated, the 'Bachelor Domain' has a measurability and follows geometric or physical laws. The "Given" relates to this secondary domain. "The Waterfall" and the "Illuminating gas" are aspects of this domain. As they are "given" or understood, there is no explanation of from whence they might have come. We are told that the "Waterfall, a sort of waterspout coming from a distance in a half circle over the malic moulds" activates the mechanism. It is akin to breath, it supports basic life, causing the chariot to come and go, the "Bottle of Benedictine" falls and returns to its place, the wheel of the Water Mill turns, and the chariot intones its litany.

 

"Slow life. Vicious circle. Onanism. Horizontal. Buffer of life..." this litany is the bachelor's theme, the leitmotif of the celibate life and is relentlessly intoned by the chariot, which we are told is made of "emancipated metal" which makes it "free of all gravity in the horizontal direction". This causes the chariot to slide back and forth on runners at a jerky pace. Hidden within the bosom of the chariot is the "landscape of the water mill".

 

In the centre of the bachelor's realm we find the "chocolate grinder". Its constituents are a Louis XV chassis, three rollers and a necktie provided at the four corners with very sharp points and a bayonet which holds up the Large Scissors. The opening and closing of the Scissors manifests a constant in response to the sliding of the chariot which in turn causes the gyrating of the chocolate grinder. This continuous, relentless, life-long masturbatory action is summed up in the statement that "The Bachelor grinds his chocolate himself."

 

To the right of the grinder, we can see the "oculist witnesses" who are represented by three circular discs similar to diagrams used on optical charts. Above these three is a smaller disc which "ought to have been a magnifying glass".

 

Having thus somewhat surveyed the topographic elements of the Large Glass, it now remains necessary to further consider its machinations. There are "unseen elements" within the glass. Aspects which remain invisible, but which become important in its working process. I shall try to deal with these considerations when I arrive at the point of their interrelated existence. It must not be forgotten that Duchamp left his Large Glass finally "unfinished" in 1923 and this is the state in which it still exists today. However, its completion, I believe, coincided with Duchamp's death, his infrathinning, on October 2nd, 1968.

  

The Blossoming of the Bride I

 

The Bride has at her "life centre" a "pulse needle" which is "mounted on a wandering leash" and has "the liberty of a caged animal." The pulse needle's task is to "promenade in balance the sex cylinder which spits at the drum the dew which is to nourish the vessels of the filament paste." At her base is a tank of "Love Gasoline". This gives the Bride autonomy, and therefore sovereignty, over the Bachelors. This tank is part of the "Wasp" and the gasoline is stated to be her secretion which she draws from her tank by osmosis. The Bride lubricates herself.

 

This love gasoline is the motivating force of the Bride's life and desire. In fact, life and desire are inseparable; desire is the essence of the Bride. It is both a sexual lubricant and nourishment and is kept in a reservoir: "contained in the oscillating bathtub (Hygiene of the Bride)." The Wasp even regulates the "Atmospheric pressure of her domain" as the filament substance is extremely sensitive to "differences of artificial atmospheric pressure". This filament substance resembles a "solid flame" at the moment of blossoming. This seems like an obvious clitoral metaphor.

 

The Bride initially works herself up. She contains a built-in ventilation system in the form of an "interior draft" which is partly the mechanism for controlling atmospheric pressure, but it also is the expression of a "vital breath" which Duchamp compares to a car which: "wants more and more to reach the top (of a slope), and while slowly accelerating, as if exhausted by hope, the motor of the car turns over faster and faster, until it rears triumphantly." It is through this striving which is transmitted via the three pistons of her halo that the Bride awakens desire in the Bachelors below.

The 'Bachelors' do however not really exist. They are just a "cemetery of uniforms". But as in Genesis, God's breath instils life into Adam, so in this "creative" act the breath of life in the form of illuminating gas coming from "who knows where" enters the "malic moulds" and the 'Bachelors' come to life. "The cemetery of uniforms and liveries" is a very apt title for the malic moulds. Duchamp assigns to each one a role, they are:

1.Priest

2.Department-Store Delivery-Boy

3.Gendarme

4.Cuirassier (armourer)

5.Policeman

6.Undertaker

7.Flunkey (liveried servant, footman)

8.Busboy (waiter's assistant)

9.Station-master

 

These form a collection of public servants to meet all the needs of the Bride. What we see, however, is only the moulds into which the gas passes; we do not see the 'Bachelors' themselves. "The moulds were rather a sort of catafalque or coffin. A coffin does not have the shape of the dead person inside it, likewise the moulds are standing-up coffins of each form."

[Catafalque: Decorated structure to carry coffin or effigy of a distinguished person during funeral service, or for lying in state.]

  

Part II

 

To look upon this cemetery of liveries is to look upon the supreme achievement of a de-individuating civilization. These nine pre-fabricated slots—the Priest, the Department-Store Delivery-Boy, the Gendarme, the Cuirassier, the Policeman, the Undertaker, the Flunkey, the Busboy, and the Station-master—are not merely occupations; they are the architectural straightjackets into which humanity is poured and solidified. Society, in its mercantile anxiety, demands that the fluid expansiveness of the individual be tamed, measured, and reduced to a predictable social utility. Duchamp explicitly isolates this mechanical entrapment in his notes: “The cemetery of uniforms and liveries is a group of 9 empty husks... inert and powerless, which wait stupidly for the signal to perform the basic function that is required of them here.” It presents a man with a livery, and in the very act of donning that uniform, the living, breathing being is evacuated. The motor is ripped out of the chassis, leaving only an empty hood that performs its functions with an unfailing, mindless regularity.

 

Here is the ultimate plight of the militant bachelordom of the state. Each character is frozen within his own specialized paranoic cage, a caricature of masculine authority that is masking an innate, systemic impotence. The Priest is severed from his instinct by the rigid dictates of ecclesiastical dogma; the Gendarme and the Policeman are cast as the passive, unseeing guardians of an artificial decency; the Undertaker is trapped in a permanent, professional rehearsal of the very mortality he fears. They are public servants designed to meet every conceivable structural need of the Bride, yet they remain permanently blind to her suspended reality. They are cogs in a legal and social machine that operates without intelligence, bound to a world of geometric reason and law from which all vital grace has been banished.

 

They are, as the notes designate them, the “matrices of Eros,” but they are matrices that produce only their own negative—a sterile containment.

 

By calling this collection of living public servants a "cemetery," Duchamp delivers a devastating, humanistic satire against the institutional straightjacket. These bachelors are ghosts long before they hit the dirt. They are the flat, cardboard cut-outs of a castrated universe, and their tragic condition mirrors the very entrapment that Goya recorded when he painted the Spanish court. Just as the Marquesa de Pontejos is squeezed to perverse proportions by her courtly whalebones and satin fetters, so too these nine bachelors are bound within the constricting coils of their societal uniforms. They are the blind, deaf, and dumb Chinchillas of the industrial age, stupidly waiting for an external command to trigger their non-productive, solitary servitude. The absolute artificiality of their state is underscored by Duchamp’s note regarding their physical composition: “And for moulding what? Gas.” They are literal vessels of vapor, inflated by the hot air of status and position, yet fundamentally empty.

But we will also get there later through Goya. This is part of the trajectory of this essay.

 

The tragedy of this configuration is that the bachelors are completely unconscious of their own redundancy. They cling to the authority of their uniforms while the ground beneath their elliptical runners is systematically turned into quicksand. Like the crowned heads of Europe trembling before the Napoleonic myth generated by David, these public servants are trapped inside a closed loop of appearances, completely oblivious to the fact that their institutional authority is an impossibility in the face of infinity. They are empty husks, hollow containers that have forsaken their own creative autonomy to become the predictable components of a calculation of suffering.

 

Duchamp explicitly reinforces this isolation through his architectural calculations of their domain, writing that “the principal forms of the Bachelor Machine are imperfect; rectangle, circle, parallelepiped, symmetrical handle, demi-sphere, i.e., they are measurable.” This measurability reduces their entire existential horizon to a diagram. They are locked into a three-dimensional prison of reason and law, unable to comprehend the higher-dimensional, unmeasurable reality of the Bride who hangs suspended above them. For this automated theatre of despair to perform its onanistic function, it requires a vital breath to disturb the equilibrium—a primal force to shatter the paralysis of the catafalques and drive the celibate apparatus toward its inevitable, fragmented execution.

  

Part III

 

The gas from "one knows not where" enters the malic moulds. These malic moulds are, by the way, "cut by an imaginary horizontal plane at a point called the point of sex." This is the first of four castration allusions relative to the male apparatus and its functioning. From the start, the impotence of the Bachelor is insinuated by merely geographically locating the moulds. As the gas fills the moulds:

"The casting so obtained would hear the litanies sung by the chariot, that 'Slow life, vicious circle, onanism refrain' of the whole celibate machine, but they will never be able to pass beyond the Mask = they would have been as if enveloped, alongside their regrets, by a mirror reflecting back to them their own complexity to the point of their being hallucinated rather onanistically."

 

After filling the moulds, the gas begins to emit from the top of each malic mould. "The gas passes along the unit of length in a tube of elemental section and by a phenomenon of stretching in the unit of length the gas finds itself (congealed) solidified in the form of elemental rods." To put it bluntly, the 'Bachelors' achieve erection. What then follows could be interpreted as the second of the aforementioned four castration allusions.

 

"Each of these rods, under the pressure of the gas in the malic moulds, leaves its tube and breaks through fragility, into unequal spangles, lighter than air... retaining in its smallest parts the malic tint, liberated at the mouth of the tubes, tends to rise. The spangles are stopped in their ascent by the 1st parasol."

 

It would seem that the reason for the elemental rods breaking into spangles is the pressure put on them by the onrush of gas, or their own enthusiasm. Their great need is also their downfall. The greater the need the more intense is the fear of failure, which in turn leads to impotence — the "vicious circle" of the chariot's litany.

 

Thence follows a most amusing description as to how the spangles fare in their journey through the seven parasols or sieves. Initially they are "straightened out" and lose their sense of up and down and of their "position". This sounds akin to a military academy training. They are straightened out to such a degree that "necessarily there is a change of condition in the spangles". The re-conditioning is successful and "they can no longer retain their individuality and they all join together at B" (the last sieve). So, it seems that having been thus trained they are now ready for the passing out ceremony, so they get in uniform line.

 

"The spangles splash themselves each to itself." i.e., change their condition from "spangles which are lighter than air with a determination to rise" into "a liquid elemental scattering, seeking no direction, a scatter suspension on their way out of B, vapour of inertia, but keeping its liquid character through instinct for cohesion, the only manifestation of the individuality (so reduced) of the illuminating gas in its habitual games with conventional surroundings — what a drip!"

 

This desperately funny description of the confusion of the 'spangles' reminds me of a Woody Allen movie entitled Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). The particular sequence was one in which Allen, as one of the multitude of spermatozoa, was preparing himself to enter the race to reach the ovum. They each individually had the tendency to rise, to reach that goal, each recognising that only one would actually make it. This was the moment for which they had been trained/conditioned/prepared.

 

Eventually the time comes for the launch and they link up holding hands in mutual support (congeal). As they run up the tube Allen quips that he hopes the man isn't masturbating as he doesn't want to end up splashed across the ceiling. As Allen flings himself into the void, he screams "well at least he's Jewish." The sense of confusion pre-ejaculation though is pure Duchampian. Luckily for Allen, his bachelor was not grinding his own chocolate!

 

It is whilst passing through the sieves that there is a third allusion to castration which manifests itself in the crossing back and forth of the scissors at sieves 4 and 5, which is activated, as we have seen, by the movement of the sleigh to the onanistic chant. It is at this point that they are "straightened out" and lose their sense of direction etc. The gas here becomes a liquid rather like as in a distillery as used in the manufacture of brandy (Eau-de-vie).

 

They end up on "the slopes of flow in the form of a toboggan but more of a corkscrew," which causes the drops to splash to the bottom to form the "region of the three splashes." This region with the toboggan is, we are told by Duchamp, invisible. At the end of the corkscrew the splashes explode and are fired upwards in a last desperate attempt to reach the domain of the Bride. But the role of the scissors is to cut the wings of the flying splashes and send them back to the region of the weight with nine holes (also invisible), which collects the dazed drops and carries them upwards.

 

They seep into the oculist's hideout, where they are metamorphosed into the 'sculpture of drops' — art — which in turn are projected upwards towards the upper half to "meet the nine shots." However, the 'sculpture of drops' are not real drops but an image of them. Each drop "acting as a point and sent back mirrorically to the high part of the glass to meet the 9 shots = mirrorical return each drop will pass the 3 planes of the horizon. Here on the horizon they traverse the 'Wilson-Lincoln system' (i.e., like the portraits which seen from the left show Wilson and seen from the right show Lincoln)."

The Horizon is also the region of the Bride's Garment.

  

The Blossoming of the Bride II

 

To consider the Large Glass as purely a sexual metaphor or an allegory of sexual impotence and frustrated procreation would be a gross over-simplification of the situation. If it were read thus one would be forgiven for believing that Duchamp felt a romantic attachment to the idea of paternity and was mourning the absence of unhindered genital caress leading to procreation. This is in no way the case.

 

In 1954 Duchamp married Alexina (Teeny) Sattler and during an interview soon after stated: "I carefully avoided all this until I was 67 years old. I married a woman who, because of her age, could not bear a child."He also made an anti-family statement in the same interview saying he rejected "the family which forces you to abandon your real ideas and exchange them for something accepted by itself, society and the whole show."

 

So, it would appear that the two-dimensional representation, which is an obvious mechanical metaphor for a sexual situation in our own known dimension, is itself a metaphor for yet another reality, imperceivable at first, but which becomes more lucid if one picks up on the clues Duchamp scatters throughout his work.

 

The role of the male apparatus in the 'cemetery of liveries' exists only as a reflection of the Bride's desire, in that it is totally lacking in autonomy or personal motivation. It exists, but it can only act at the instigation of the Bride. The Bride appears to have autonomy or power. But, what if the actions of the Bride were but a reflection of a separate and invisible/inconceivable other reality? Perhaps another mirror exists and shows us a reflection of the Bride as she in turn has seen a reflection of herself in the excitement of the malic moulds. Duchamp suggests this in his notes in the Green Box:

 

"The Pendu femelle is the form in an ordinary perspective of a Pendu femelle for which one could perhaps try to discover the true form. This comes from the fact that any form is the perspective of another form according to a certain vanishing point and a certain distance".

"Perhaps make a hinge picture (folding yardstick, book…) develop the principle of the hinge in the displacement 1st in the plane 2nd in space. Find an automatic description of the hinge. Perhaps introduce it in the Pendu Femelle"

 

Duchamp spent much of his life's work on experiments involving this hinge principle. For example, there is the Glider Containing a Water Mill in Neighbouring Metals on hinged glass. He constructed hinged doors and windows through which vision was obscured, such as Fresh Widow of 1920, and The Brawl at Austerlitz of 1921. This matured into the hinged but un-openable Spanish doors of Étant donnés through which one could not possibly hope to see (being made of heavy oak) but which further confounds our expectations by revealing to us the Bride in all her naked glory. There is an aspect of this very contradiction in his Door, 11 rue Larrey, of 1927. This piece deals with the ambiguity of "fact" or that which we believe we know. A door cannot both be opened and closed at the same time—or can it?

 

This hinge principle is also at work on the horizon line of the Large Glass where the Lincoln/Wilson syndrome confuses our senses by changing the image we perceive into something else as we change our point of view. This aspect of the piece never achieved a plastic representation on the glass, and Duchamp somewhat justified himself when he stated in an interview that the Art produced in any age was its mediocrity, and that the greatest ideas never achieved plastic representation. It is through the "invisible ingredients" or the incommunicable that Duchamp expresses his sense of failure and inherent impotence.

 

Stretching a metaphor (which itself is a metaphor), having spent some time considering Lincoln, I would now like to turn my attention to Wilson, i.e., to change my point of view. Wishing to leave the realm of the sexual, I want to explore the ambiguous terrain of the Alchemical and, thus doing, I close one door to find another has opened.

 

Now there exists a different "reality." The Large Glass is no longer concerned with frustrated sexual desire, but instead deals with alchemical potency. Alchemy, of course, deals with the harmonious union of opposites, the combination of base raw materials to produce precious metal... gold (non-literal). The Human alchemical symbol is that of the Androgyne. In Jungian terms this is considered to be the union of man with his "anima" and/or woman with her "animus." Duchamp's works abound with Alchemical references.

 

"To attain his truth man must not be tempted to dissipate the ambiguity of his being, but on the contrary accept its realisation."

— Simone de Beauvoir, ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’, 1947

 

At this point I feel a need to quote Gilles Deleuze and a statement he made relative to Sacher-Masoch in his book Masochism. This statement could easily be about Duchamp. I would like to suggest there seems to be a strong masochistic element in the work of Duchamp. I believe this could be a rewarding area for further in-depth investigation.

 

"He does not believe in negating or destroying the world nor in idealizing it: what he does is to disavow and thus to suspend it, in order to secure an ideal which itself is suspended in fantasy. He questions the validity of existing reality in order to create a pure new ideal reality."

 

This indifference of not negating nor idealising reality is central to all of Duchamp's work. This creation of an "ideal reality" through indifference to apparent reality is pure alchemy. In Sacher-Masoch's ideal world the apparently autonomous dictators were to receive no better treatment than their "underlings."

"The unconscious is an orphan, an atheist and a bachelor."

— Gilles Deleuze

 

Alchemy: An Individuation Process

 

"Individuation, becoming a self, is not only a spiritual problem, it is the problem of all life."

— Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944

 

In the spring of 1911 Duchamp painted Young Man and Girl in Spring. This painting deserves close scrutiny as it contains evidence of his interest in Alchemical processes. It is no coincidence that he chose in 1914 to paint Standard Stoppages over an enlarged version of this painting whilst working on the Large Glass. The Young Man and Girl in Spring is a symbolically loaded metaphor about the struggle to attain individuation (i.e., alchemical union with self) or to discover the Philosopher's Stone.

 

There is minimal sexual differentiation between the pair as both stretch with uplifted arms forming two Y-shaped figures. They are seen stretching towards the branches of the central tree, which in alchemical iconography is the 'Tree of Life.'

 

The Alchemical symbol for the androgyne is the letter Y, which also signified to the Naassene Gnostics the intimate nature of being, which they considered to be both male and female and also eternal.

 

The two young people are seen to be standing on separate spheres striving upwards but also towards each other. This would seem to signify the Brother/sun, Sister/moon incestuous yearning which is at the root of alchemy.

 

Arturo Schwarz, in his Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, deals with this incestuous propensity on a personal level, relative to Duchamp and his sister Suzanne. He theorises that the Narcissistic and therefore onanistic drive is just a successful re-routing of this drive towards incestuous unity. On the back of the painting is inscribed: "A toi, ma chère Suzanne, Marcel" which would seem to give some support to this theory.

 

It must not be forgotten that the 'tree of life' remains central both to this painting and is also carried over to the Large Glass, to the Bride's description where she is called the "Arbor-type", which supports her halo and is attached to her motor. This 'Arbor-type' is the Bride's backbone or axis. This 'Arbor-type' also "has its roots in the desire gears." In the earlier painting the tree is seen to emerge from a circle.

 

Within this circle, which strongly resembles an alembic (or alchemical vessel), stands a sexless personage whose situation and position is reminiscent of Mercurius, who is usually represented in an alembic in the same pose in alchemical iconography.

Mercurius was a hermaphrodite. He seems to be offering something with outstretched arms to the male figure. This is interpreted as a piece of pink cloth by Schwarz. Pink is traditionally a female colour. This might refer to the alchemically related custom on Cos of the husband dressing in women's clothing to receive his Bride. There is also a tradition on Argos that the Bride would wear a false beard on the wedding night.

 

This becomes even more interesting when it is considered that in 1919 Duchamp drew a false beard on the Mona Lisa and in 1921 had himself depicted as Rrose (pink) Sélavy (C'est la vie) on the front of a perfume bottle entitled Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water). Is Duchamp showing us the waiting "Bride" in her "Veil"? Is the "veil water" synonymous with the "waterfall" of the Large Glass and Étant donnés? Does the "veil water" / "waterfall" hide more than it reveals, as the fall of a "veil" could mask an act of transvestism? Is the bearded Mona Lisa a projection of the Bride's animus or is she using a mask to "veil" her identity? Does she use "Beautiful Breath-water" to "veil" the stench of cigars or a fellatial aftertaste? Need I go on?

 

She/he embodies all the questions, contradictions and paradoxes which have been attributed both to the original enigmatic Mona Lisa and the equally enigmatic and sexually androgynous St. John the Baptist. Leonardo had a lifelong passion for Alchemy. He also had a heightened sexual duality. The fruit of the 'tree of life', which is also called 'The Fount of Youth', is ideal androgyny.

 

Below the alembic in Duchamp's painting is yet another figure. This figure is seen to rest both on the female (moon) and male (sun) spheres, participating in both. This figure is a representation of the possibility or the ideal unity towards which both figures are straining—the androgynous entity which is endowed with eternal youth, the triangle within which the circle and square are combined.

 

Duchamp continued to develop this theme right through to the Large Glass. The Passage from the Virgin to the Bride and The Bride, both of 1912, show us the gradual development of the prototype for the Bride's apparatus in the Large Glass. She is a direct descendant of the young girl reaching a form of maturity.

 

However, following the young man through to the Bachelor apparatus we discover his dejection and eventual decentralisation/disintegration into a sort of multiple paranoia lacking in unified identity. Initially he is seen as the Sad Young Man in a Train, and in Nude Descending a Staircase he achieves a multiplicity which he carries with him into the Bachelor's realm where he appears as multiple images of solitary servitude.

 

All is not so completely clear-cut, however. There exists within the Large Glass another inherent contradiction which still must be considered. If the moon is the alchemical female symbol and the sun the male, how is it possible for the Bride to have autonomy and the malic moulds to act as mere reflections of the Bride's power when, in actual physical sun/moon terms, the opposite would be the case?

As in his Mona Lisa, Duchamp has endowed the female element of the Large Glass with male/sun qualities. He chooses to make the female rather than male the autonomous element, thus making the sun a female symbol or, by inversion, the Bride becomes a male retaining his/her "sunness" autonomy whilst recognising his/her own reflection in the animus/anima figure of the malic moulds; this suggests the possibility.

 

The malic moulds do contain within themselves the possibility of unity. This is suggested by the 'Eros Matrix' title, which is another name by which they are known. 'Eros' being love and 'Matrix' being the oven or the 'Womb of Love.' However, the possibility is denied when the Bachelor begins to grind his own chocolate. As the cast is the negative of the mould, so too the 'Eros Matrix' or 'Womb of Eros' produces Eros' opposite. Eros, the god of unselfish love, has his opposite in Narcissus—the self-loving human. Eros is commonly represented as being androgynous. So, the androgynous Eros mould produces the Narcissus cast.

Self-love triumphs and denies the possibility which is mirrored in the Bride's desire. Rrose Sélavy is left waiting at the altar wearing a "veil" to hide his masculinity. The Bachelor Machine cannot overcome its apparent maleness through fear and therefore loses its "sun" characteristics and ends up reflecting a possibility back to the autonomous Bride.

"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Matthew 26:41

 

"I want to grasp things with the mind the way the penis is grasped by the vagina."

— Duchamp

 

Arturo Schwarz states that "malic" is a neologism coined by Duchamp. This may be true for the French original "malique", but I cannot help but wonder if his choice of the word was somewhat influenced by the English/Latin form of the word through which an allusion might be made to the androgynous roots of the Christian Adam and Eve myth.

 

Malic. Malum (Latin) apple, as in malic acid (i.e., acid derived from unripe (not ready) apples). This is too much of a coincidence, surely. In Christian myth the apple exists as the symbol of division, that is division from God and from each other. The apple becomes the bitter (unripe) fruit of experience which serves to cause the fall. The apple is also the fruit of the tree of life. The onanistic devil is the protagonist who offers the fruit.

 

Adam and Eve are unashamedly one, as Eve has issued parthenogenetically from Adam's rib. This is further alluded to in the piercing of Christ's side by the centurion to hasten his death, and with it our (the descendants of Adam and Eve) rebirth. Our rebirth is facilitated by the opening of Jesus's side as Eve was engendered from Adam's side. Adam and Eve lived in a paradise east of Eden until they were made aware of their differences by eating the apple of the tree of knowledge: "And they were ashamed by their nakedness." In other words, they only became cognisant of their diverse sexual characteristics through their curiosity. In losing their androgynous innocence they were driven from paradise, and thereby lost eternal life.

The alchemical drive is a conscious attempt to re-enter into that androgynous state of grace. In the light of this statement lovemaking, coital union, could be seen as the desperate strivings of diverse elements violently attempting to storm the walls of Eden. What futility!

 

The stance of the "Bachelor Machine" is both that of failure and choice, impotence, and defiance. It is this apparent failure of the procreative act which drives the 'Bachelor Apparatus' to masturbate, both in fear and loathing. This bachelor apparatus comprises 9 bachelors, as described by Duchamp. It is the total lack of autonomy and the recognition that he is being manipulated which causes the 'Bachelor' to despair. There is no visible or measurable evidence of any other state existing. The only possibility is an instinctually felt one. The 'Bride' is a creature of instinct, as is her realm one of instinct, being un-measurable also. The 'Bachelor' is caught in his limited world of geometric reality and reason.

 

Hence his condition remains more wretched than that of the Bride. The 'Bride' could achieve coition if the 'Bachelor' had the courage to see beyond the "evidence" of appearances. It might be this once-bitten, twice-shy attitude of the 'Bachelor' which is responsible for the Christian belief that it was Eve who ate of the apple first and coerced Adam into taking a bite. Having acted on instinct once, the male apparatus, having failed, is incapable of acting on instinct again. This is the plight of the 'Bachelor Machine.'

 

Then along came Rrose.

 

Rrose didn't usher from a wound; Marcel simply moulted.

 

Given this description of Duchamp's machine, perhaps some statements could now be made about Bachelor Machines generally. A 'Bachelor Machine' would appear to be a fantastic machine that transforms love into a technique of death. It is also an improbable machine in that it remains useless, semi-incomprehensible and non-productive. In other words, it appears to have no reason for existing in itself as a machine governed by the physical laws of mechanics, or by the social laws of utility. It merely adopts certain mechanical forms to simulate certain mechanical effects.

It is governed by subjective choice, and only when the signs of this subjective determination are accepted and understood does the fog of absurdity begin to rise. The progenitor of such imagery expects a suspension of disbelief from his viewers just as a good storyteller would expect the same from his listeners when he intones his "once upon a time." The fact that Aesop's fables are not grounded in the reality we can initially perceive does not in any way obscure their relevance.

 

So, the creator of a 'Bachelor Machine' chooses a system, or a catalogue of images, which in this case is composed of two elements. Element one being sexual. This is split into the male and the female, but either of these aspects can achieve multiplicity as the male does in the Large Glass. The reverse is equally possible. The second element is a mechanical unit which is also split into two elements, which correspond to the sexual male and female units. This distinction is made in the Large Glass by separating the 'Bride' apparatus from the male mechanics. The division is not always as clear-cut as this.

 

In Lautréamont's Maldoror we encounter just such a fusion: "He is beautiful... like the chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table." Instead of communion on a love bed (seedbed) which would signify life, the union of the umbrella (a male symbol) and the sewing machine (female symbol) is realised on the dissection table. This expresses the Bachelor Machine's specific function, which is solitude and death.

 

Lautréamont's statement was somewhat predated by Baudelaire when he wrote: "In the act of love there is a close resemblance to torture or a surgical operation" , Journaux Intimes, 1851, and even by Delacroix in his journals. The specific entry to which I refer was penned on the 3rd August 1855, and it relates to a visit made by him to the Palais de l'Industrie where the Exposition Universelle was mounted as a celebration of the machine age. Delacroix exclaims: "The sight of these machines saddens me deeply. I do not like this matter that seems, quite alone and abandoned to itself, to do things worthy of admiration." This was the heartfelt cry of a true Romantic spirit against the inhumanity of the mechanical and its incipient dangers and pitfalls.

 

On the evidence produced so far it would seem that the 'Bachelor Machine' could only be a product of the industrial revolution, which would make my inclusion of Goya under the same heading a trifle awkward. I could argue that the industrial revolution had begun towards the end of the 18th century, but this argument could not support Goya's iconography as he was a particularly Spanish artist and Spain was extremely retarded mechanically even up to the start of the 20th Century.

 

I do believe that Goya's Bachelor Machine manifestations are products of the machinations of power and class difference, in the less extreme cases, and of war and death in the more fully realised examples of this phenomenon in his work. I would not suggest a completely conscious understanding of the mores of the B.M. exists in Goya's work, but I do believe that when a study is made of recurring iconography, subject matter, and obvious obsessions, it will become clear that Goya sensed his impotence instinctively but nonetheless obsessively.

 

It must be stated here that it would be a mistake to equate the Bride or the Bachelor apparatus with specific and constant gender. As previously suggested, there is an innate ambiguity and ambivalence in the Large Glass even to giving to the 'Bride' the power of autonomy, or activity, which is traditionally a male attribute. The Bride manages to penetrate into the region of the bachelors, whilst they fail to enter her domain. The Bachelors become the passive victims, or just a certain reflective quantity, so that the question of pursuer and pursued is confused. This could be construed as the militant bachelordom of both sexes and the bachelor machine's renunciation of procreation.

 

There is an inherent schizophrenia in all Bachelor Machines. Perhaps it would help if this were considered as an autonomy/dependency conflict rather than a straight male/female one. This ambiguity is at the root of all the forms and significations of Bachelor Machines. For example, I shall try to show later how The Family of Charles IV by Goya is a manifestation of such an onanistic machine in which the dual gender elements of male and female in the group are actually aspects of the same Bachelor tendency.

 

Aspects of Impotence Made Manifest in the Works of Francisco Goya

 

Given:

 

"NADA" — "NOTHING" the semi-putrescent cadaver groans as it attempts to disengage itself from the greedy earth. It scratches its urgent message into a plate with an etching needle. The word inscribes itself automatically as the corpse turns away in its striving to escape. The earth holds it whilst the night sky torments it.

 

There is no escape from this nothingness.

 

In Nada, man's impotence achieves its most horrific manifestation. This flight from death is both the outcome and reason for war and its disasters. It is a depiction of the life and death of Godless man. Man, who has already died to discover that there is nothing beyond, least of all hope. Nascent man who recognises his own death in the birth pangs of his mother.

 

The scales cannot even promise compensatory justice; all is black. This son of the soil pulls against an incestuous union with his earth mother. He aspires towards the sky, which taunts him in return. He engraves his solitary protest, desperately intoning his epistle of one word, his leitmotif, whilst the litany of his tormentors assails the porches of his ears. Death even, in this instance, holds back its sweet oblivion. Goya's given: "That I suppose I suffer a lot," shared with that of Duchamp and all of humanity. "O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew," presented as release withheld.

 

Given:

 

Saturn Devouring His Son

 

The Saturn myth is one of the oldest and most fundamental of Bachelor myths known to mankind. Saturn, a Roman deity, is identifiable with the Greek God Chronos. Chronos is the God of time carrying his scythe with which he had castrated his own father, Uranus, and then thrown his genitals into the sea. The black blood from the wound seeped into the earth and engendered the furies.

 

When Uranus had been thus reduced to impotence, Chronos usurped his throne. An oracle predicted to Chronos that he would be supplanted by one of his progenies, and it was this prediction which was the cause of Chronos' action.

Goya's Saturn is the most ghastly of all his Black Paintings, which were executed in his later life. These paintings adorned the walls of the septuagenarian's house. This painting in particular needs placing alongside an historical phenomenon, namely the Auto-da-Fé or Inquisition. The Inquisition could be seen as the consumption of the wayward sons of the church by their 'holy fathers.' Clerics being supposed celibates, or bachelors, destroying the illegitimate or aberrant produce of their metaphysical loins to preserve their own celibacy myth. Saturn attempts to assure his own continuity by devouring the very products of that natural continuance urge. He causes his own 'impotence', born out of fear of his issue, or the products of his own potency.

 

The face and protruding eyes of Goya's Saturn express the depths of his self-enforced desperation and impotence. Fortunately, there exists a photograph of the original, prior to its removal from the wall of Goya's house and its transfer to canvas. Evidence suggests that the restorers took many liberties "in the public interest" whilst negotiating this tricky manoeuvre.

 

Nigel Glendinning tells us in his The Strange Translation of Goya's Black Paintings that:

"The photograph seems to suggest that the painting originally showed an erect or partially erect penis, with a highlight on the foreskin. Gimeno's etching of the painting implies a similar interpretation."

 

So, the product of the union between Saturn and his Bride is devoured in an anthropophagic orgy whilst the God's obvious potency mocks his fear and desperation. His is a lust which can never realise fulfilment, a need which devours itself.

 

"To drink blood, to swallow sperm, and to eat children, means appeasing desire through destruction of its object. Pleasure requires neither exchange, giving, reciprocity, nor gratuitous generosity. Its tyranny is that of avarice, which chooses to destroy what it cannot assimilate."

 

This statement by Simone de Beauvoir is not relative to Goya but rather appears in a book entitled Must We Burn Sade?, 1952.

 

I have already suggested a connection between Duchamp and Sacher-Masoch; now I would like to make an equally tentative connection between Goya and de Sade.

 

I have somewhat jumped ahead of myself to make an initial dramatic statement. Having done so, I now plan to back-track and try to present a picture of Goya's complete 'bachelor machine' fixation and its development throughout his work.

 

First, I must more emphatically state the fact that my current attempt at exposing a coherent connection between Goya and my subject cannot include a methodical exposure of the 'Life & Times' of Goya. It is necessary that to make the proper connections, liberties be taken with the chronological order of some of these works. I will include an appendix which will somewhat position Goya relative to the major historical movements of his day, i.e.: The French Revolution, The Auto-da-Fé, Majaism, The Corrupt Court of Maria Luisa and Godoy etc. This appendix will end with the invasion of Spain by Napoleon in 1808. I did not feel the need to continue in such a relentless fashion from then on as the ensuing works, i.e., The Disasters of Wa

Not strictly a Finsec event, but here's a few photos of the Service and Food Workers' Union Nga Ringa Tota rally in Wellington on International Cleaners Day.

The 'Fair Deal for Cleaners' campaign that this rally is part of aims to provide a voice to the low-waged largely immigrant female workforce, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, who are calling on big property owners to support decency in their workplaces.

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...

 

Dutch postcard, no. 861. Brigitte Bardot in Mio Figlio Nerone / Nero's Big Weekend (Steno, 1956).

 

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 established herself as an animal rights activist and made vegetarianism sexy. In the coming weeks, we will 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 a modelling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of the French magazine Elle. 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 195,7 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.

Quicksilver Messenger Service - What About Me

 

Right-click link. Select "Open in New Window

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBvjXhUSUpU

this one color i love best,and the style is easy but looks very decency

i am not feeling tired or exhausted or anything like that at all. just that, as soon as i have my head positioned horizontally, i would simply doze off, fall asleep, drift into oblivion or any descriptives of your choice, in a dreamless yet peaceful suspension. then, out of the blue like a lightning strike, i would open my eyes to a buzzing head, and it is at this stage/point/state when i would imagine ant-load of electrical impulses worming across the surface of my cerebral cortex, not unlike surreptitious flies exposed to bright scathing fluorescent light or illicit lovers scampering back into their decency, these electricities wash along the shallows of my brain in tides of disorganised hastiness, and there i would be, my eyes almost always level on the intersection between two walls and a ceiling, slightly intoxicated still with this lethargy without a name, i would imagine scenes. not like an active and vivid imagination of a child on the drier side of the window during a rainy day, but rather, inconsequential scenes where shadows fall on secretive stolen glances or my feet in shoes i never owned running away from echoes of their very own footsteps, or my personal favourite, a drop of water falling and splattering, over and over again, in utter silence;

 

earlier today, my mom reminded me once again that i am not that young anymore. a bit wiser, hopefully, she added.

unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world :-) Dinesh D'Souza

 

Today, all Americans are Bostonians, and all who respect decency and life are Americans. Our thoughts are with those who were affected by yesterday's horrific events in Boston.

 

variegated eastern redbud, 'Floating Clouds', j c raulston arboretum, ncsu, raleigh, north carolina

 

[c. 1969]

oil on board

49.5 x 69.5 cm

not signed

 

Originally part of Wep's 1950 Archibald Prize finalist portrait of Prime Minister Menzies

Exhibited

2012 May, "William Edwin Pidgeon Retrospective", Artarmon Galleries

 

Arrangements were made by Ian Fitchett (R.G. Menzies's Press Secretary and a former journalist and friend of Bill's) to have Menzies sit for the painting. Initially completed in 1950 and entered into 1950 Archibald. Was touched up and finessed over the years and eventually dated as 1969.

 

“This entry for the Archibald prize has created a lot of interest and keen and favourable comment. ‘Wep’ is regarded by fellow artists and the soundest critics as one of the best contemporary portrait painters. He is, of course, a great cartoonist with a style which is inimitable. ‘Wep’s’ work truly reveals the Prime Minister’s qualities of loyalty, efficiency, regard for decency and truth and, in times of stress like the present, trustworthiness and clear thinking.” – Liberal Opinion, Feb 1951, Vol. 4, No. 4, p1

 

Wep was never happy with the original portrait submitted to the Archibald (the right hand was awkwardly placed) and a second almost identical version was painted with an improvements to the right hand and a slightly altered position. The background was also slightly softened. The original version ended up with a nude painted on Menzies lap; Menzies appeared to have a wry 'Mona Lisa' type smile on his face.

 

In 1988 when Charles Hewitt reframed a number of Wep's works, the original version was cut in half making a separate painting of the nude and the upper half was cropped closely to Menzies’ head. This head has since been acquired by the National Library of Australia as part of Wep’s archives. The lower half nude remains in the personal possession of Peter Pidgeon

 

Charles Hewitt Frames Invoice #25492, 12/9/89

Nude on Menzies lap

34.5" x 26.5"

Small linen bevel

MAG 440-1263 moulding

$508.80

Cleaning & restoration

$240

Four years ago this weekend .......... I was rolling on the Interstate driving North from DC to NYC.......... listening to the BBC World Service on Satellite Radio.......... They were reporting on the preparation for ......... and as it turns out..... totally inadequate evacuation of New Orleans as it became clear the massive Hurricane Katrina would soon strike the city and surrounding towns.

 

It also became clear........ I was driving in the wrong direction.......... even though it was gone 1AM......... suddenly I was speaking to Matt on the phone......... and he started making arrangements for me to get to New Orleans........ there were no flights going in of course........ and no rental cars for miles (as they had all been rented by people leaving)........ and no gas....... in the end I flew to Atlanta then drove down to NO with Matt in his car............. we took tanks of gas and supplies................. luckily we had some contacts with the worldwide critical disaster teams with the leading insurance adjusters....... so we had some help with logistics along the way in keeping fueled up etc.........

 

But when we went in to the actual city we were on our own........... what I saw there shocked, revolted and saddened me....... I never thought you could see such a thing in America.............

 

I wrote this (below)......... and put it on my brand new blog ........ with the two pictures above.............. together they were the first pictures and story on ............ www.jezblog.com ................ So its the 4 year anniversary of the terrible Katrina disaster.......... and the the 4 year anniversary of the start of the jezblog you see today ..........

 

Photos by Jez Coulson/Insight-Visual

 

Donât photograph the dead,â he told me. âHave some respect!â A FEMA press officer he looked about 20. Have some respect? Christ I could have shouted that back in his face. Have some respect! You call this having respect? Itâs eight days later, the stinking bloated corpses still lie in the water covered only by a blue tarpaulin with an orange x spray painted on. Some chemicals have apparently been poured on to keep down the smell but itâs not working that well in the heat and humidity. What about them? Why donât they show some respect for this dead man? His foot and a hand are now clearly protruding from the tarpaulin. His body lays face down in the water as it has all week not twenty feet from the launching point for scores of boats containing hundreds of different agency representatives. FEMA, Police, EMT, Coast Guard, Firemen even Marines and National Guard people have taken to the water from here. Yet no one has respected this man and his family enough to lift his body from the water. Sure: I understand priority must be given to the living. Still, I watch upwards of 60 people casually standing around waiting for boats to return. Maybe they are awaiting future orders or are just taking lunch. Certainly, they are chatting, maybe having a cigarette break with their 20 or so emergency vehicles standing by. Somehow they just donât seem that busy. Within a twenty foot radius there are two bodies in the water, the manâs and another one completely covered by its tarpaulin is only about 10 feet from the boat launch ramp. Natural decency demands that these two bodies at least be respected. Even if thousands more wait trapped, hidden elsewhere to be discovered as the waters recede. I canât believe the orders have to be so absolute, so all or nothing. No bodies to be collected until the rescue effort is completely over. Not even the corpses where it really takes an effort of will to ignore them? Cleaning crews have started to remove the trash from the convention centre. But no one is picking up the bodies. How can this city even begin to recover while bodies lie unclaimed and vilely deteriorate in the streets and in the water?

 

Another body, that of a black woman, covered only by a totally ineffective light bin bag is lying on the side of the raised highway not a mile further east. A group of firemen and EMT workers are gathered close by. A helicopter comes in to land not twenty feet from her body. Her body is deteriorating in the sun. She has lain dead in that hot sun for 8 days; I cannot photograph this sight. Not because they will not allow it: because I cannot look at it. I am walking away. The helicopter takes off now blasting the smell of the womanâs corpse around me. I am outraged and disgusted. How can FEMA and the other agencies avoid the charges of racism and inadequacy if they allow the bodies of American citizens just to rot on full display right next to their operations.

 

I have seen bodies lying in the streets unclaimed and rotting before but only in countries that have let go of all civilization, decency and humanity. Only ever in places that have descended into the anarchy and chaos of civil war as in Rwanda or Bosnia. I never thought I could see it in America. I never thought I could see the bodies of American citizens left rotting in the streets of America. In America: in America? Why are they allowing this? That arrogant young press officer and the rest of them should: âHave some respect!â

 

Jez Coulson

 

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXX

West German postcard by Ufa-Foto, a supplement by Film Freund, no. 15, 1956. Photo: Cinepress / Stempka.

 

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.

Union Square, Manhattan, New York City, New York

 

The Everett Building is a sixteen-story commercial structure located on the northwest corner of East 17th Street and Park Avenue South. Named for Union Square's nineteenth-century Everett Hotel, and built in 1908 for the Everett Investing Company, it was designed by Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck, a firm known for its commercial architecture.

 

It is a quintessential example of a building type defined by A. C. David (writing in Architectural Record in 1910): functional, fireproof, speedy to construct, while also demonstrating a concern for "architectural decency;" as such, this building is a uniquely American architectural expression. In its design, the Everett Building synthesizes classical elements with key aspects of both the New York and the Chicago styles; Goldwin Starrett was familiar with the Chicago style as a result of his years in Daniel Burnham's Chicago office.

 

The building reflects its structure in its cladding, while employing a design vocabulary that includes classical motifs. The Everett Building is prominently located on a site on the north side of Union Square and, together with the monumental Germania (now Guardian) Life Insurance Company Building directly across the avenue, forms an imposing terminus to Park Avenue South.

 

The Development of Union Square

 

The Commissioners Map of 1807-11, which first laid out the grid plan of Manhattan above Houston Street, allowed for certain existing thoroughfares to retain their original configuration. Bloomingdale Road, (now Broadway), and the Bowery intersected at 16th Street.

 

The acute angle formed by this "union" was set aside by the Commissioners and named Union Place.

 

Initially Union Place extended from 10th to 17th Streets, on land owned by the Manhattan Bank:

 

It then presented to the eye of the tourist and pedestrian a shapeless and ill-looking collection of lots, where garden sauce flourished — devoid of symmetry, and around which were reared a miserable group of shanties.

 

In 1815, the state legislature reduced the size of Union Place by making 14th Street its southern boundary. As the city expanded northward and land use intensified, the need for open spaces became apparent. A report drafted by the street committee in 1831 states the need for public squares "for purposes of military, and civic parades, and festivities, and ... to serve as ventilators to a densely populated city."

 

Designated a public space in 1832 at the urging of local residents, additional land was acquired so that the area could be regularized.

 

Graded, paved, and fenced, Union Place was finally opened to the public in July, 1839. Throughout much of its history, the square has been used for public gatherings, political rallies, and demonstrations.

 

By the 1850s, Union Square (as it came to be known) was completely surrounded by buildings including some of the city's most splendid mansions; but, "already by 1860, the dramatic march of commerce had begun." Theaters, hotels, and luxury retailers predominated in the 1870s. By the 1890s, the vestiges of the fashionable residential area, as well as the elegant stores and theaters, had been supplanted on Union Square by taller buildings that catered to the needs of publishers and manufacturers who had moved uptown.

 

The land on which the Everett Building stands was originally part of Cornelius Tiebout's farm. From 1853 on, the site was occupied by the Everett House, a hotel frequented by the singers and musicians performing at the new opera house, the Academy of Music (1854, architect Alexander Saeltzer).

 

Like the Belvedere and the Clarendon, hotels which were also demolished to make way for 'modern' office and loft buildings, the Everett House was razed to clear the site for the Everett Building.

 

The Everett Building is prominently situated on the northwest corner of East 17th Street and Union Square North, at the base of Park Avenue South (then called Fourth Avenue). Stations for major subway, surface, and "El" lines were close to the site, which was characterized by Real Estate Record & Guide in 1908 as "one of the most accessible locations for modern office buildings in the city."

 

Although when built, the Everett Building was associated with a possible transformation of Union Square to be effected by the construction of a new courthouse, the building was later seen as evidence of the concentration of the silk, woolen, cotton, and dry goods trades on Fourth Avenue, the area around the Square and lateral streets.

 

By September, 1910, about seventeen new loft and office buildings (generally restricted to office and salesroom needs, as opposed to manufacturing) had been erected, conveniently located near hotels and transportation.

 

In October 1911, Real Estate Record & Guide noted that "the Everett Building and those along the avenue, in which dry goods people are tenants, are all filled up."

 

Larger than the late nineteenth-century buildings on Union Square West, the new loft and office buildings, such as the Everett Building, altered the scale of structures on the Square's northern and southern ends and formed the core of a new mercantile district developed as an economical alternative to the commercial district along lower Fifth Avenue.

 

Notice of Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck's selection as the recipients of the commission to design the Everett Building appeared in Real Estate Record & Guide for August 1, 1908.

 

The Everett Building was built for the Everett Investing Company; included among its early tenants were a wide variety of businesses and occupations, including William Skinner & Sons, an operating establishment "in the broad silk end"; the firm of W. G. Cornell, which was responsible for the plumbing for the new Gimbel Building and the offices of Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck.

 

Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck

 

The firm was founded in 1907 by Goldwin Starrett (1867-1918) and Ernest Allen Van Vleck (1875-1956). Starrett was one of five brothers, all active in the construction and architectural fields. Born in Lawrence, Kansas, his family later moved to Chicago. Starrett attended the engineering school of the University of Michigan, graduating in 1894. He then entered the architectural offices of D. H. Burnham & Co. , as had his two older brothers, Theodore and Paul. He remained in Burnham's employ for four years, rising to be one of Burnham's principal assistants.

 

In 1898 Goldwin entered the New York offices of the George A. Fuller Construction Co. as superintendent and assistant manager, joining his brother Theodore.

 

In 1901, along with Theodore, and his brothers, Ralph and William A., he formed the Thompson-Starrett Construction Company; he remained with the firm for four years, during which time he designed the Algonquin Hotel, a designated New York City Landmark, for Albert Foster of the Puritan Realty Company. Goldwin then entered into a four-year association with the E. B. Ellis Granite Company, which had its quarries in Vermont. In the construction business, Goldwin was associated with many important buildings, including Union Station in Washington, D.C. and the Woolworth Building in New York, a designated New York City Landmark.

 

In 1907, Ernest Allen Van Vleck joined Starrett to form the firm of Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck. A native of Bell Creek, Nebraska, Van Vleck received a degree from the Cornell School of Architecture in 1897. He then traveled to Europe on a fellowship.

 

About 1908, Orrin Rice was admitted to the partnership, and in 1913, William A. Starrett joined the firm, which then became known as Starrett & Van Vleck, with Goldwin Starrett becoming the senior partner.

 

Starrett & Van Vleck specialized in commercial buildings and schools but also designed many other structures. Among the firm's ma j or commissions were the Lord & Taylor department store, a building that was termed "frankly commercial as well as dignified" in contrast to the residential nature of most other contemporary commercial designs; Saks Fifth Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark; a major expansion of Bloomingdale's; the facade of the Curb (now the American Stock) Exchange Building; the Downtown Athletic Club; the La Salle & Koch store in Toledo, Ohio (1916); the Court & Remsen Street Building in Brooklyn; The Equitable Life Assurance Society Building, and the Royal Insurance Building.

 

The firm was also responsible for designing the Hale Publishing Co. Building, the Berkeley Building, and the twelve-story neo-Italian Renaissance apartment houses at 82 0 and 817 Fifth Avenue, within the Upper East Side Historic District.

 

Other works by the firm include the Mills-Gibb Building, a mercantile building at Fourth Avenue and 22nd Street; a building for John T. Underwood, president of Underwood Typewriter Co. located at Church and Vesey Streets; the Mercantile Building at Fifth Avenue and 38th Street; 28-30 West 38th Street, a twelve-story building for Capt. W. H. Wheeler; and the twelve-story Sixteenth Street Building, at Irving Place and 16th Street.

 

Loft and Commercial Building

 

The Everett Building is a quintessential example of the new commercial style of architecture built around 1910 in New York and concentrated on Fourth Avenue from Union Square to 30th Street.

 

Its design was considered innovative when it was illustrated in the Architectural Record (Dec. 1910), as part of a tribute to the new corridor of commercial buildings in what is now Park Avenue South.

 

These buildings termed "thoroughly contemporary" and "strictly commercial" were erected with exceptional rapidity; the Everett Building "was ready for occupants within four months from the time the first column shoe was set."

 

In "The New Architecture," A. C. David specified a tall order for architects of these loft and commercial buildings, one which Starrett & Van Vleck fulfilled. Tenants required a maximum amount of clear, preferably square or rectangular, floor space so that large numbers of employees could be supervised by a floor manager.

 

In order to secure the greatest amount of natural light, a corner site, large windows, and high ceilings were imperative. In addition, the planning of building services affected the amount of "clear and available" floor space. These new structures had to meet the specifications of the insurance companies and of the building laws for fireproofing, in order to obtain the lowest insurance rates (as the Everett Building did).

 

Combining the stairway and fire escape provisions of the building law and omission of power plants in the building were additional ways to cut costs. At the same time, the building must be economical to operate. Speedy construction, a goal facilitated by granolithic or concrete floors, the use of metal trim, the omission of ornamental plastering, and the standardization of detail, was also essential.

 

In his article, David also suggested that attention to the building's design was necessary because "a structure which presents a good appearance sells better."

 

The Everett Building fulfilled these specifications as well. Like the Everett Building, the ideal loft and commercial structure was to consist of "a frame work, usually about sixteen stories high of piers and floors, the lines of both of which are separated by fixed distances, and both of which cannot be disguised by much ornamentation."

 

An ornamental cornice was not merely permitted but encouraged, even if the natural light on the top floor was impaired. The employment of glazed orange and green terra-cotta panels and medallions brings this desired attention to the Everett Building's crown.

 

According to David, windows should be grouped in order to emphasize the corners and to convey an impression of solidity; a building could thus be made to resemble a tower rather than a cage.

 

Face brick, laid in patterns, and architectural terra cotta were recommended for the cladding of the shaft. In other instances, exemplified by the Everett Building, "white glazed terra cotta decorated with superficial ornamental patterns has been effectively employed."

 

David continues that these buildings were a specific and original American type, "the only genuine commercial architecture in the world." These characteristics constitute what may be called a New York style.

 

Classical Aspects of the Building's Design

 

The Everett Building incorporates many classical elements in its design. As in other nearby skyscrapers including Bruce Price's Bank of the Metropolis, a designated New York City Landmark, the tripartite skyscraper elevation inspired by the parts of a classical column is employed in the Everett Building. A rusticated base is surmounted by a decorative transitional story; an eleven-story shaft leads to yet another transitional story, which is capped by a two-story attic crowned by an elaborate bracketed cornice.

 

The two-story base is articulated by rusticated piers which carry a classically-derived entablature that is embellished with stylized triglyphs and metopes. The building's two-story crown evokes a giant order; the elements of the pilasters are articulated and embellished by abstract terracotta elements. The doorway as built was pedimented with acroteria at center and sides.

 

William H. Jordy has observed that such commercial buildings retain "something of the blocky quality of the Renaissance palace format" which permitted the anonymity and interchangeability of functions.Real Estate Record & Guide concluded that the building "an investor might expect for $900,000," would be a structure "not — gaudy ... the whole with its straight, Renaissance architecture giving the impression of commercial utility."

 

Influence of the Chicago School

 

Goldwin Starrett's years working in Daniel Burnham's prestigious office (in the 1890s, the largest in Chicago, with branch offices in New York and San Francisco) are of clear influence to the design of the Everett Building which frankly expresses function. Starrett doubtless knew such monuments of Chicago architecture as Burnham & Root's Rand McNally Building (1888-90) and Burnham & Atwood's Reliance Building (1895).

 

Starrett's Chicago connections also would have insured his familiarity with the Carson, Pirie, Scott Store (the first two parts designed by Louis Sullivan, 1899, 1903-04; third part designed by Daniel Burnham, 1906). All three buildings contain innovations later incorporated in the Everett Building. The Rand McNally by Burnham & Root was formed of a consistent steel frame with facades "of terra cotta produced specifically to fit the frame."

 

The steel and terra cotta combination introduced in the Rand McNally was further refined after Root's death by Burnham and his designer Charles Atwood in the Reliance Building (1895).

 

Terra cotta, which although lighter, less expensive, and more solid than masonry, had heretofore been employed only as a fireproof undercoating to masonry and for ornamental embellishment. Its use as sheathing for the skyscraper was a precedent followed by Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck and in many contemporary office and loft buildings in New York City.

 

By creating the appearance of a grid on the elevations, Starrett incorporated a major tenet of the Chicago School: the articulation on the exterior of interior structure. In this building, verticals are juxtaposed against horizontals and thus serve as visible surrogates for the concealed skeletal frame; such a system is one of the most important characteristics of the Chicago School.

 

The panels which emphasize the spandrel beams, the use of textured, ribbed moldings to articulate the panels themselves, and the vertical alignment of the windows is, in some respects, reminiscent of Carson, Pirie, Scott's structural expressiveness.

 

In Carson, Pirie, Scott, the terra-cotta panels and the fenestration create the impression of a grid and of horizontality; like the Chicago structure, the Everett Building can be viewed as both grids "expressing the frame" and as bands of horizontals.

 

The Everett Building, however, is more overtly classical than Carson, Pirie, Scott. In contrast to the receding two-story loggia which originally capped the two portions of the store designed by Sullivan, Starrett's design articulates the top two stories (which do not recede) with terra-cotta moldings.

 

Starrett topped the building with an avowedly classical cresting that features acroteria (as did the pedimented portico over the doorway as originally completed) and rests the building on rusticated piers.

 

Starrett and Van Vleck also render the Chicago idiom more traditionally. For example, the tripartite "Chicago window" with wide central pane and two narrow sash windows has here been translated into a bay containing three equally sized one-over-one windows. Although the end piers of the Everett Building are of the same width as those between bays, an additional textured molding has been added to their outer edges. Moreover, at the intersection of the Park Avenue South and Union Square elevations, the rusticated pier emphasizes the effect of the corner.

 

Description

 

Prominently located at the corner of East 17th Street and Park Avenue South, fronting on Union Square, the Everett Building is a sixteen-story, steel-framed office and loft building. A seventeenth story is concealed beneath the cornice and is evident only on the north and west walls. The building is sheathed in white terra-cotta panels and has applied green and orange architectural terra-cotta ornament. It is rectangular in shape with a rectangular light-court in the northwestern portion.

 

There are six bays on the Union Square side; the Park Avenue South elevation consists of eight bays. Each bay is divided into three parts, (with the exception of one bay on the Park Avenue South side which only contains two), each of which contains a window; above each first story window (with the exception of the second from the right on the Park Avenue South elevation which contains only two) and framed by the rusticated piers are three narrow, rectangular panels.

 

A two-story base with rusticated piers (each resting on a pink polished marble base and topped by a geometrical molding) is set off from the rest of the building by a cornice embellished with stylized triglyphs and metopes. Mullions separating windows in the bays of the second story resemble pilasters; they are set on blocks and feature consoles supporting pyramid-shaped blocks that reiterate the rustication on the piers and serve as capitals. A cornice with mutules completes the frieze above the second story. On the Union Square facade, atop the aperture of the bay on the extreme left, the original overdoor consisting of several thin moldings (two of which are embellished by small applied bosses in the shape of flowers) remains. On the Park Avenue South elevation, the bay to the extreme right contains the original transom treatment: above the shop windows and entrance (which are new), the transom area is divided into three panels each consisting of twelve lights, arranged in three rows of four. Two faciae separate each group of twelve lights; directly above these faciae, on the beltcourse, two dark bezants appear, serving both to embellish and to link the dark frames of the glazed panels below and the windows above.

 

The third story consists of ornamented piers (which separate the bays) demarcating the transition from the two-story base to the eleven-story shaft above. Set atop a plain base, the shaft of each pier is ornamented by borders with foliated and ribboned embellishments and palmette accents set diagonally into the corners.

 

Pilasters between the windows are also set atop plain bases; they are ornamented by long, thin recessed panels. The capitals of both piers and pilasters are both embellished by palmettes. A frieze embellished by garlands draped over bezants completes the transitional story and signals the beginning of the shaft.

 

On the eleven-story shaft, the crossings of the ribbed mullions and the outer textured edges of the panels which cover the spandrel beams establishes a grid, which reflects the building's construction and underscores the grid created by the intersection of windows, spandrel beams, and piers. On the Union Square facade, spandrel bands below each window are three panels wide and two panels high; each such group "of six panels is outlined by raised moldings.

 

Each bay consists of a total of three such groups. On the Park Avenue South elevation, each group is two panels wide and two panels high; each such group of four panels is outlined by raised moldings. On both elevations, the moldings which separate each group of panels are both continuations of the window mullions and indications of the window's outer edges. Piers are also indicated (when they intersect with the spandrel beam) by outlined terra-cotta panels, one panel wide and two panels high.

 

The intersection of the horizontal spandrel demarcation and the window's mullions and outer edges sets up a grid motif. The regularity of the grid deflects attention from the bay (second from the right on the Park Avenue South elevation) which consists of only two windows and from the change from a width of three panels for each subsection of each bay on the Union Square facade to two panels for each subsection on the Park Avenue South elevation.

 

A beltcourse tops the eleven-story shaft and sets off the two-story crown, which corresponds to the "capital" of the "tripartite column," from the body of the building. The piers are transformed into abstract pilasters by the application of applied reiterating polychrome terra-cotta ornament.

 

Within raised borders of white terra cotta that extend the length of both stories, orange rectangular panels embellished at their midpoints by applied green circles appear.

 

The spandrel beams between the two stories are covered with white terra-cotta panels within which are rectangular orange panels. Mullions (and their extensions) which abut spandrel beams are also embellished with recessed panels. The two-story section is topped with several moldings including one incorporating applied polychrome geometric motifs: in this scheme, paired and single green and orange rectangular lozenges alternate with green circular motifs. An elaborate dentilled cornice crested by acroteria tops the building.

 

On the west elevation, a brick wall pierced by four-over-four sash windows is visible from the ninth story upward; two windows indicate the seventeenth story. Bands demarcate borders that correspond to the terra-cotta spandrel beam covers on the facade. This elevation features interpretations of the stringcourse separating the top two stories and of the polychrome panelling and cornice treatment on the Union Square facade. To the right of and above the seventeenth story windows, a substantial amount of replacement brick appears.

 

On the north elevation visible above the ninth story, a buff brick wall features eight windows per floor; the remaining originals have four-over-four sash. From the visible base of this elevation through the fourteenth story, a terra-cotta border appears; above this, the border continues as panels. On this elevation, windows indicate the presence of the seventeenth story. A significant portion of the top two stories appears to be resurfaced. With its essential architectural features unchanged, this building continues to function as an office building with retail spaces at the ground story.

 

- From the 1988 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

I actually found this book in school one year when I was alittle girl- my teacher said if noone came to claim it in a weeks time I could have it- this person didn't even have the decency to take care of it.I'll upload a video of me flipping through the pages so you can see the inside

A Disney-decency somewhat undermined.

La bienséance Disneyenne quelque peu battue en brèche

(photo précédemment parue en format réduit sur geo.fr)

I'm so glad I've still got this brief movie, taken with my first little digital camera (a Canon IXUS 300). Our beloved Mogs died at a ripe old age years ago now, and the movie deleted itself from the camera somehow. In his retirement, profJohn is getting round to little tasks like getting old movies off his non-Windows system onto my monitor and onto Flickr. Thanks profJohn!

Vintage card.

 

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.

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/

The name of the movie is " Shareef Bay Na Cheeray " . I have no idea what that means Iam guessing its something in Pushto. But Iam sure it has something to do with decency well that's what shareef means ...... ironical isnt it ??

Arctic Council Ministerial Dinner at Artikum Glass Hall. Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland Timo Soini and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Chrystia Freeland.

 

Finland hosts the 11th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting on 7 May in Rovaniemi. Minister-level representatives from the eight Arctic States will convene to review and approve work completed under the two-year Finnish Chairmanship to improve sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic.

 

Ministry for Foreign Affairs provides photo material for media representatives, participants and organisers of the meeting. Please feel free to use the photos, considering the following restrictions: Not for commercial purposes nor reselling. When publishing the pictures, the name of the photographer and organization shall be mentioned as the source. No picture manipulation is permitted. The holder of the picture rights and/or the organisation shall at all times retain the copyright to the picture. When publishing the pictures, the publisher shall ensure the legality of the context where the pictures are used, obtain the permissions and consents required for their publication, and observe the generally established practices and decency. The publisher shall ensure that publication of the pictures does not insult anyone’s privacy or dignity.

 

Photo: Jouni Porsanger / Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

ICE Out of the Bay!

Thurs Oct 23, 2025

Coast Guard Island, Oakland

 

At dawn on Thursday, hundreds of people from around the Bay Area came together at the base of Coast Guard Island Bridge in Oakland to stand up for their Bay Area communities and against the promised surge of ICE to SF by Trump. Coast Guard Island is where ICE agents were starting to deploy and where a force of over 1000 was expected.

 

When we arrived around 7:30am, we were told that about 15-20 minutes earlier, several ICE vehicles had raced toward the crowd of interfaith leaders, grandmothers and community members and proceeded to dispense several flash bang grenades and chemical agents into the crowd... in one instance, aiming directly and quite intentionally ("with direct eye contact" is what we were told) into the face of a clergyman - Jorge Bautista, at very close range. Someone else's foot was run over.

 

As the very peaceful (except for ICE thugs!) rally proceeded, organizers got word that Trump had changed his mind about surging ICE and federal troops into San Francisco, at least for now. This was cause for very limited celebration at the rally. Which federal forces was he referring to? ICE? CBP? Coast Guard? Natl Guard? Was he only referring to San Francisco? What about all the other Bay Area communities? Organizers remain on high alert and extremely vigilant and will continue to actively engage with communities at risk all around the Bay for the foreseeable future. Surge or no surge, ICE is still in our communities and continues to brutally kidnap non-citizens and citizens alike with no regard for due process and human decency.

 

1912 postmarked postcard photograph of the RFD (Rural Free Delivery) Route No. 8 mail carrier at Plymouth, Indiana. The carrier was posing in his horse-drawn vehicle for a photo that he used as a Christmas card for the patrons on his route. This copy was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Eli Silvius.

 

The carrier didn’t identify himself, but an undated document at the Indiana Genealogy Trails website provides information about the Marshall County post offices. That document includes a list of the rural route carriers for Plymouth as of 1908 and identified Roller Kleckner as the carrier for Route No. 8. The postcard owner has also found additional documentation showing Mr. Kleckner was still the carrier on Route No. 8 in 1910. Although the carrier in this photograph was probably Mr. Kleckner, that remains to be confirmed.

 

Postmasters were political appointees in those days and, prior to Mr. Kleckner’s appointment, there was some controversy regarding the examination and employee selection process at Plymouth. In 1905, F. M. McCrory had resigned as a Plymouth rural route carrier. In a November 15, 1906, letter to the editor of the Plymouth Tribune newspaper, Mr. McCrory took issue with Postmaster Yockey’s handling of the selection process for the new RFD carrier for Route No. 8.

 

“I desire to call attention at this time to a condition existing in rural route matters, to make a few predictions and the dear people can figure out the balance. A year ago Oct. 1st I resigned as carrier on rural route No. 1 and an examination was held of applicants for the place at which the postmasters prospective son-in-law was given highest grade and the place from which I had resigned. Roller I. Kleckner won second place and Ora Jacox fifth place there being nine applicants. This year Mr. John Nye decided to withdraw from the service and purchased the restaurant of Mr. Cripe taking possession Oct. 10th. Mr. Kleckner wrote the department stating the facts, making formal demand for his rightful place.

 

“At this time another letter was sent the department stating the facts more fully than Mr. Kleckner felt warranted in doing and reply was received that ‘there was no vacancy on route No. 8 and as soon as a vacancy occurred, if the Civil Service Commission recommended Mr. Kleckner, he would be appointed at once.’

 

“Now instead of sending his resignation to the department, Mr. Nye placed it in the hands of Mr. Yockey, who held it up until the department was notified by outsiders and demanded it at once, and it was sent in about Oct. 17, so we are credibly informed. Now why all this jockeying? First Mr. Kleckner is a Democrat. Second the mother and brother of Mr. Jacox we are informed are sureties on Mr. Yockey's bond and Mr. Yockey asked' permission for Mr. Jacox to drive the route from Oct. 10 on instead of sending in the resignation of Mr. Nye and asking that his successor be appointed at once. A notice is pasted in the lobby of the postoffice for examination for rural route carriers, since the commissions of those examined a year ago expire Nov. 16. Now we predict Mr. Jacox will be given first place and the route, at once after the examination, for which we will wait and see. Now let us moralize a little. When those men took that competitive examination a year ago Mr. Jacox virtually agreed to take his place according to what he won. If he entered into such machinations as above stated, is he the party the people on route 8 desire to trust to carry their mail? What do you think of a postmaster who will be a party to such scullduggery which amounts almost to a crime. My dear people this is the class of political scavengers and their methods against which Mr. Hendricks and his friends have waged war during the past ten months and will continue, if they so continue, for the next ten years. People who will lend themselves to such work would enter an orphan asylum and rob the baby of its nursing bottle and jaw the nurse for having allowed it to drink some of the milk. Nothing remains of h6nor and common decency but the grinning skeleton and they envy even that the little space it occupies. F. M. McCrory.

 

The following individuals served as Plymouth postmasters during those years.

 

Joseph A. Yockey, appointed June 6, 1901 and reappointed December 16, 1905

Monroe Steiner, appointed January 19, 1910

Francis E. Garn, appointed August 19, 1911

L. G. Hurley, appointed July 23, 1915

 

From a private collection.

 

The full postcard image can be seen here.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/hoosier_recollections/5418578839/

 

Copyright 2008-2018 Hoosier Recollections. All rights reserved. This creative JPG file package is an original compilation of materials and data. The package is unique, consisting of a wide variety of related and integrated components. Neither this package in its entirety nor any of the individual components may be downloaded, transmitted or reproduced without the prior written permission of Hoosier Recollections.

More tea, you ask?

 

Well, yes. Mostly because this is the only tea set my mother had the decency to purchase despite my affection for them, which therefore means I will make time to visit a thrift shop and purchase some lovely ones.

 

At least the hibiscus was free, hurrah!

 

© 2010 Yu-Jie Yu. All rights reserved.

Malevolent Daisy

© 2013 Kristine Jabbour

 

Daisy falls from the sky unannounced

Uninvited

Specks of sherbert overlay

My field of vision

Objects lose their hard edges

Subway interior

Through a Monet filter

Petals flap gently

Then bounce and float

 

Its stem pierces the water’s surface

Vision turns monochrome

Then fades away, pixel by pixel

Fighting blindness

The flow of people

Pull me out of the train

Up the flight of stairs

Determined to reach work

I clutch the handrail

 

Splash

Roots have developed

Needle punctures the pupil of my left eye

Petals pirouette

Clouding my sight with grace and saccharine

Roots plunge deeper and release their poison

Capillaries bulge

Eye visibly pulsates

Nausea

 

Need to get home!

I creep back on the train

Need mint tea, menthol gel, wet washcloth

A bucket, just in case.

Above all, I need darkness

The daisy needs light to grow

So I intend to starve it.

I stumble home from the station

Squinting and wincing

 

Home at last!

Heaving sigh

Throw thick blankets over the windows

Slivers of light sneak in with each gust of wind

The plant quivers with sadistic joy

Wildly spraying its venom

Abandoning decency

Searing knife in my pupil

I recoil and cry aloud

 

Sensitivity to smells heightens

Compensating for impaired vision

A whiff of bacon or baked beans

Kicks me to the feet of the porcelain god

Who doesn’t smell good either

Vomit compounded

Until nothing is left

And then some

I languish on the bathroom tiles

 

My mind is crystalline amidst the searing pain

I am a captive audience to my thoughts.

I consider the meaning of life and pain

God, what am I doing with my life

Good things to consider in moderation

Often neglected in the rush of mundane tasks

But the smug inner prosecutor is over the top

Playing scenes of my supposed crimes

Before I collapse in resignation and exhaustion

 

After 2 or 3 days of darkness

Soft music and tea saturation

It usually relents

Pulls up as suddenly as it came

But sometimes it lingers, languid and limp

Until it slowly deliquesces

When it’s finally gone

I blink, sigh, offer copious thanks

And resolve to cherish life and love

Give me one 'cause one is best

In confusion, confidence

Give me peace of mind and trust

Don't forget the rest us

Give me strength, reserve control

Give me heart and give me soul

Wounds that heal and cracks that fix

Tell me your own politik

 

And open up your eyes.

 

Coldplay

 

Today (or rather, the day that this photograph was taken, Thursday 22nd October, 2009) a programme was broadcast in Britain on BBC - Question Time - that has caused a few ripples. For those unaware, most likely those on the far side of the pond, Question Time is a political debate programme, tackling current issues, debated by the great and the good of the political, cultural and academic spheres.

 

Today, for the first time ever, the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, was on the panel. The BNP is a far right minor political party, but has recently won two seats on the European Parliament. The BNP is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948". They are considered by a majority, including this writer, to be a thoroughly detestable gang of racists, bullies and criminals.

 

The programme was a fascinating spectacle, and it should be easily available to watch via the wonders of the internet; it is definitely worth watching. There have been claims of bullying and victimisation of Nick Griffin, and while it is certainly true he was not given the fair audience that he has never earned the right to, he showed himself to be ignorant, arrogant and generally unpleasant. He has a very effective PR machine that glosses over his Holocaust denial, his ties to the KKK and his many previous crimes against decency, morality and humanity. But when faced with direct questioning, without time for preparation he came across as unintelligible and petty.

 

However, there are a few points I found myself wanting to make regarding the discussion in the programme. The first was regarding Islam, where he was asked to defend his opinion of Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith". He talked about the denigration of women, treatment of them as second class citizens and incitement to violence against non-believers. What he has clearly misunderstood, and which nobody, sadly, bothered to point out to him, is that these are not matters of the faith - the Qur’an does not mention these behaviours. These are cultural and social behaviours, present in only some countries, perpetrated under the banner of religion, in the same way that evil deeds have been committed throughout history under the banner of most religions.

 

The second was his concept, that was repeated regularly, of the indigenous peoples of Britain, the population he wishes to return to. There is no indigenous population of Britain, nor northern Europe for that matter. 17,000 years ago, we were covered in ice, and as one of the panel mentioned, we didn’t live on the ice. When this receded, people moved north into these areas. These were our first settlers - a celtic pagan society. Since then, we have been invaded by the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans. Our religions, cultures and language have been added to, shaped and altered by these successive invasions. There is no “aboriginal” (Griffin’s word, not mine) religion or culture. Even the concept of Christianity, the society they wish to return to, was introduced to our country by an invasion, which they are theoretically trying to now prevent.

 

The BBC were heavily criticised for allowing him onto the programme. There were major protests outside the studios. Even the Government suggested that the BBC shouldn’t have allowed it to proceed. I am on the side of the BBC. I think they did the right thing in allowing him to reveal his true self, as a small, insignificant, unpleasant racist. And as they responded to the Government’s condemnation, if they feel it’s so wrong for him to voice his opinion, they have the power to ban the party.

An amazing woman, wife, mother; a trailblazer, an advocate for human rights, gender equality, dignity and decency, a thinker, a philosopher...

 

She changed the world for women: fought for women's equality & recognition; and she did it all coming up from within the old-boys club.

 

Bravo.

Pending: To be continued from 'Working on 'Quinn's Da'', two images back. I want to say that genetic midden, in place of 'Family' in the title, but I don't want to appear bitter.

 

So I won't.

 

The text in the left panel, which is somewhat Illegible (in this photograph) reads: 'My mother wanted to be the Virgin Mary'. This piece was created in full anger mode, in New York in the eighties, when a small group of us were collectively engaged facing another pandemic, which most of the world was quietly ignoring.

 

It is somewhat interesting to see how the world has, more or less, galvanised into dealing with this latest Covid pandemic, this was not at all true of the situation then.

 

As usual, I enjoy using my turquoise decency strip, in an attempt to make this bitter pill child-proof, in a 'Suffer little children' (Matthew 19:14) sort of way. Yes, it does all begin with the family, that supposed place of 'safety'. But then, luckily, I 'believe' that all is redeemable.

 

Other than 'family', the starting point here was a trip I made, with two friends, across the killing fields of the First World War in Northern France, to spend a week with the Isenheim Altarpiece in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, in Alsace Lorraine on the German Border.

 

Some art changes your life forever, with sincere apologies to Matthias Grünewald and Armadillos everywhere.

 

As to whatever is going on lurgywise, I have had a headache now for two days, and a slight sore throat and sore underarm nodes, with a runny nose and a sneeze, no cough yet. The headache has been strange, like darting pain, with a sensitive scalp, only in one place. ‘Him indoors’ has a bit of a clogged nose and is sneezing. He was tested for Corona last week, and was ok.

 

I am going to leave this for a few days and see if anything develops.

 

Yes, my sister was a wobble, I wobble easily, apparently. I really need to be without family. I guess it's hard for them, that I ran out of the place when I was 18 and hardly returned. The abuse stuff upended them somewhat too. But I have been on my own since then, meaning without family really, with enforced jaunts back, but I never wanted to be there. Anyway, I have become quite divorced from them, this happened slowly to begin with, but with time it appears to heal somewhat and you manage. In this type of exorcism the sentimental attachment became somewhat exorcised too. I have also encountered some abuse from them over the years too, I would suspect generated by desertion issues, since we re-connected. As I said, abuse effects the whole family. It works covertly.

 

Anyway, I didn't like the pressure of her being here, in this Covid situation. I have no patience with people who feel that the pandemic has been an inconvenience which effected their 'Awayday' weekends. She can fly all she wants, I don't want to know, and I will never respect her for it. It's like when someone you love decides they believe in a God of some ilk or other. Do what you want, but don't tell me. Insisting on chasing ‘freedom’ by choosing to go from one Covid ‘Hot-spot’ to another, Ireland and the Netherlands being both in that ‘Red Zone’ of those Covid maps, makes no sense to me at all. The Pandemic as an inconvenience that has interrupted holidays is totally underestimating what is going on. Him indoors is 79, I have another ‘fatal’ disease, and the idea that we would entertain a traveller, disembarking from a cheap flight, after spending hours in two airports, and having spent days wandering around the mask-less tourist traps of Amsterdam, makes no sense at all. We have closed down now for almost two years, protecting each other, and I must say I love this seclusion. The idea that we would welcome someone into our space, who chose to wander everywhere we chose not to, is pretty ridiculous.

 

So, ‘Family’ recurred, but, for once, I knew how to deal with it. I am pleased to say that this sort of emotional manipulation does not work as well anymore. The only excuse I can dream up is: Bless ‘em, afterall it is their first pandemic, poor dears.

 

I suspect you saw that 'cleanies' reference I put up. I know it seems offensive. It came from a time when I would go out to bars, or wherever, and someone would try to pick me up. We would chat away, the usual inanities, until the person flirting with me would ask was I clean. I would play along and say I washed regularly, or whatever, but they would insist. So I would get them to ask me if I was positive or not. I was asked was I clean so many times. They would get angry too, when I said I was positive, as in why I had wasted their time. I was told a few times that I shouldn't be in a bar, because I was spoiling it for 'clean' people.

 

At least this second pandemic has no stigma like that. It's a walk in the park compared to the first.

 

Maybe, I should explain this all with an image someday.

 

I see some 'problems' with the text here. I am now going to print the first 170 pages of text and images out, and spread them out, and work on the floor, treating them as I would a painting, or collage. These 170 pages will hopefully distill down to a 1st chapter. This editing will happen the old-fashioned way. I am used to clambering around the floor in this fashion, it comes somewhat instinctively, and is, perhaps, the most creative aspect of putting an idea together, for me. There are too many images and too many words. Let the distilling begin.

  

It's early. Good vibe, when I was taking this. Everyone here seems to be asleep. Years ago, Mr Ellis (number 8) would probably have been doing his naturalist thing, walking round his garden, starkers. Him and his misses were all right, thinking back. Quiet people who kept themselves to themselves, mainly, like you probably have to do to not become part of this damaged and damaging community.

 

Mr and Mrs Wood (number 9) would've been asleep. Mrs Wood, whose son-in-law was on the verge of hysteria when I was ejected from town, similarly loved her gossip. She told me when I was a little kid that we need wars, occasionally, to limit the population. I even knew then that she was full of it. Her husband, Eddie - sleazy Eddie - another personable type on the surface. No wonder they were married. They had a lodger, Kojak. He stopped for a few nights once, and never left. Strange but funny one, him. For some reason, we always wound him up, I think because he really did look like an English version of Kojak.

 

Paddy (number 11), who told me when I was little that he wanted to put me in his stewpot after which I genuinely thought for years that he was a serial killer. He was a pisshead, who argued with his son, and died suddenly, one day in his house.

 

Apart from maybe Mr and Mrs Ellis, the one I remember with most interest, here, was great-grandmother Goode (number 9). Must have been in her 90s - very, very old, however old she was. Never spoke to her. She was incredibly frail, but would always struggle to get to the end of the path to prop herself up on her gate and seemingly endlessly watch us young kids playing in the street. I'd look at her, now and again, not really thinking much about why such a very old woman would make such a struggle to stand at her gate, watching very young children playing in the street for so very long. Now I know. I know everything she was thinking. Everything. What a great memory that is, now.

 

There were other people in the street, but that was about it, down our end. Up his own end, there was a bloke who'd always tell us to get down our own end, so we usually didn't.

 

My Mom and Dad bought our house for about £4000 in 70 or 71, and this was the house I grew up in. Amazing times: mostly good, occasionally bad. A great upbringing, tainted by a form of intense psychological abuse at times from my dad that I had to figure out and manage from a very early age. I'm proud of how my kid self did that. I never gave in to it because, after the first few times, I mastered the methods he used and just took the piss. Poor fella didn't stand a chance. My capability to take the utter piss out of that sort of behaviour, while not a great problem-solving strategy, was outstanding for someone so young. But the depths he could reach with the mind games would leave a legacy I had unpick even up until recently. I'm pretty sure it's done now, though, but maybe you can never tell.

 

Mom would try her stunts, too, hitting more emotional buttons. Sometimes I'd just shake my head, even as a really young kid and think: 'These people are supposed to be grown up. Sort it out.' But I'd still scream the house down and shake the radiator by the front window whenever she crept out of the house to go to work, partly because, I now realise, the woman's always had an issue with just levelling with me. Grown ups.

 

The only leveller was my half-sister, who loved my sense of humour and my rebellious streak. She'd go berserk, laughing her head off, when I did my very special freak out dance to the theme from Hawaii-Five-O. You had to be there. Always stuck by me, that one, when we were kids.

 

But that's decades ago. It's years later, now, another era and another world. It's Sunday, early on a morning in 2012. Those people in the street are all dead, now, my family's gone, too, never to return, and the street's very different, these days. I have absolutely no connection with any of these people in the street and I don't ever want one.

 

I've mentioned before the malicious gossip that changed everything back in 96, that just snowballed here to the point where, because I didn't go along with it or submit to it, even came to my front door from people in this street who now, one told me recently, have no recollection of how crazy they were in the lead up to me being detained under the Mental Health Act in 2000, misdiagnosed and medicated, when it was obvious what was really going on.

 

Even when the doctors and a social worker first came to my door, I could clearly see that they were hyped up and that the processes and psychological positioning instigated, perpetuated and fuelled by that gossip in 96, right up to that moment, were now being made official.

 

I shouldn't really say this, but back in about 97, when I was at this big deal cultural studies department at Birmingham University, it even reached there and I had to leave. I probably wasn't ready to do a Masters then, anyway, but that's not really the point. It would have been nice to have had the chance to fly at that age. I pretty much guessed the gossip was going to get there, though, the original people behind it - people with close links to the local medical community and local police - had that very deep and ugly capacity to go to those lengths.

 

I can't make direct links with any proof from Kidderminster's community, but the bullshit was there, make no mistake about that and one of the senior lecturers there, some dude who's quite big in the field had links with someone from guess where: Kidderminster Fucking College. Fair play to the senior lecturer at Birmingham, though, he was a decent bloke in the end and tried to build bridges, but the damage was done and I had no choice but to walk.

 

Because there's nothing much you can do about that, because the safeguards aren't realistically there, I'm not the type of character to go for official mechanisms and because gossips like that are excellent at cutting off the type of realistic communication that could resolve such things by exposing the gossip, I had no choice but to walk and just know my place, thank you very much, something I had to do more and more of between 1996 and 2000.

 

So, here we are in 2000. On my doorstep: the official representation of my 'friends' from 1996, finally at to my door. Kafka couldn't have dreamt this up. I didn't stand a chance, looking back with what I know now, but I did put up a fight in that hospital. Didn't I just. They got scared, at times. One doctor, terrified, said I was right about almost everything. Another doctor, who fluctuated from scared to freaky, said I was wrong about everything, but this same doctor was similarly terrified especially the once, offering to essentially cut me a deal that would give me some sort of medical treatment, some package of care or something. I launched, shouting him and the place down about what had really been taking place for four long, isolated years. He was a tall bloke, who withered to almost nothing in the face of that and almost crawled away into an office. I could write loads about what happened in that hospital, back then, but I don't need to. That's enough. Or it should be.

 

They eventually established their authority, and, in the years since, the pain of trying to make sense of what mistakes I might have made in relation to that, I know now that whatever I did that could have given them back that bogus authority didn't matter. The momentum of those four years was always going to mean that I would be forcibly medicated, detained and psychologically and socially reframed, essentially according to processes and ideas laid down by a couple of malicious gossips in 1996.

 

If you know where to look, it's in all the major write ups in the medical records and it's been in every significant conversation with health services. With a disastrous combination of damaging and very strong psychiatric medication, along with a fair amount of social influence, I pretty much lost who I was for about 12 years, only now and again approaching what always should have been, only to burn up on re-entry, a process they framed and medicated away as a 'relapse' (a 'relapse' to what, exactly?), a process that, in my experience, you just have to ride through to the other end, making the most of it, as constructively as you can.

 

It's only now that I'm getting even close to the pre-2000 levels of functioning I had. And it's only now that it all makes sense - clear sense - and 1996 is pretty much defeated in my mind, although it's influence in my social environment persists, which I have to be watchful about, even now. Another problem that detracts from the life I should have been living since 1996. Like I say, this area is not a healthy place for anyone.

 

A friend of mine, who's got The Knowledge, said 'I feel so sorry for you.' She knows me better than anyone else on this planet, but she was wrong, in a way, to think like that. The way she said it - just flat, brutally literal and entirely human - hit me temporarily. Then I realised that to feel like that was a reaction to a myth that, because I can see it, I don't need to react off it, however the social environment may play on things like that.

 

Anyway, I'm cool. Over the years, I've seen many people psychologically destroyed beyond repair by stuff like this. They're never, ever coming back, but they should be treated differently because, although their real message can be buried deep, and many of them have been consumed by many of the myths of mainstream culture, when you really can hear what they're saying at what I consider to be their best, these people are saying something very deep and profound, almost in unison: our culture has failed, and failed badly.

 

Psychiatry is definitely not the answer. It is a conservative and limiting mechanism, with its primary function to bring about conformity and, if it sees fit, impose control, that has all manner of quite sophisticated techniques to detract from that basic, core idea. It hides and suppresses information that's of benefit to everyone. This is another example pointing to something that I've learned from what I've read, experienced and thought about during my 12 wilderness years in the mental health system: Psychiatry is extremely broken both theoretically and practically from top to bottom and, because of its very core ideas, will never, ever work. That that's obscured and easily dismissed information that's so rarely heard accessibly and widely in public is a testimony to the methods and power psychiatry has, along with the dominance of its ideas in mainstream culture. Nearly everyone's taken in by it and, from everything I see, hear, read and watch, that's relevant to this, their ideas run very deep in almost everyone's mind in the wider society, even most of the people I've come across who hope and believe that they're better than that.

 

Here I am, quite vulnerable to people who've shown over the years that they can be all too willing to exploit and compound abuses of information, now, perhaps soon depending on any decency and insight of key officials. It's being going on for years and I can't see any reason why that'd stop. Too many people with too many personal interests, now. Too many people who can't stand the idea of this being mentioned, even though it gives back to my life a sense of a proper context, despite everything. Dangerous situation, in all, especially when I consider how high and wide this all went over the years, much of which I haven't covered, some of which I daredn't, but it really does all beggar belief, which is why these posts aren't even a request for support. The required structures aren't really there, yet.

 

I could write reams about all the crap that could be said and done to discredit what I'm saying here. That sort of shit usually goes on when you're not there. It has to to survive, because anything else exposes it to analysis that would easily spoil the fun. The trick with malicious gossip in the context I'm faced with isn't to make some of the mistakes I've made over the years. Neither is it to essentially react and be forcibly made to submit and accept it (I never had 'psychosis' before I was put on psychiatric meds, by the way), is to just leave them to it. There's no other way, not with my (I'm sure) realistic approach to official mechanisms, especially locally, or the environment I'm in.

 

After I told my friend with The Knowledge what had really been going on, yesterday, and what I'd been putting online, she said, 'You're going to get sectioned.' She knows full well how it can all work around here. She said I'd 'seen the light', a sort of religious phrase that I'm not too happy with, but I'll take it because it's true. My mate knows, too, that I'm healthy. Very healthy, especially when you take into account what's been going on around here and the threat of being forced into what they might spin as 'medical treatment'.

 

It doesn't really matter what I say. It doesn't matter about 96 or 2000. It doesn't matter that I've got more than enough to go on that there's two people in this town who may, according to conventional definitions, be psychopaths, who've been at the heart of what's been going on in the past and of late, in terms of manipulating the social environment for hidden and dubious purposes, which even dragged in the local police and may have been the reason for the behaviour of the local medical community in recent times. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I'm healthy. My experiences of my environment since 1996 suggest that, although I've got an advocate, now, I remain vulnerable to all this. That's stressful, but manageable. The fact that there's nothing I can do or anything that would be done even as a result of saying such things is something I've been realistic about for years. It happens, partly because it's so sounds so incredible.

 

The good thing is that I could see this all playing out over a prolonged period in the town centre. Very interesting stuff and good for what I want to do. I now pretty much know who was involved, why, what they did, why they'd cover it up, how they'd do that, what they'd say if they were exposed, why they'd be wrong to do that and why the justifications that they truly believe are seriously wide of the mark. I've seen it all before.

 

Sometimes, especially when I'm in a mood, I sometimes conduct my own version of the Milgram Experiment (and I have done that on myself). I think mine's better, because it goes deeper, looking for solutions beyond the premature cut off point of that test. I see the authority figure as the culture and the offending behaviour as something that could be addressed, rather than going on the notion that this is the way people are and that's that.

 

I'm not buying that. There's ways of addressing that stuff and I know there are. One of the failures of the way most of us think of the Second World War is that we think beating the Third Reich was the be all and end all. It was important, but it was only part of the battle. I shouldn't need to elaborate on that.

 

Tomorrow, I'm getting a phone call from a psychiatrist at the local hospital. I scare and intimidate him, according to an independent advocate, who sat in on our last meeting, because, she thinks, I'm so intelligent and know a lot more than they do. Whatever the case on that, that points to a reaction in these people that's too widespread and says so much, especially when seeing their behaviour in context since events stretching way back to 1996. I contacted the psychiatry department at the local hospital, to calm the waters just in case, not least because one of their staff was at the coffee shop when I was being banned.

 

I also have a meeting, a 'consultation', there next week. The plan is that that will be my last appointment with a psychiatrist. The job, that wasn't even needed in the first place, has been done and done well. Recent events have made that easier, because I could see all these social processes playing out all around me and know exactly why they were playing out. All the tricks and all the games were pretty transparent from day one. What would be good now, though, and not for any petty reasons, is if officials were to actually be open and honest about what was really going on at the hospital in recent times. Something was definitely going on. I'm pretty sure I know what, but I'm open to a transparent explanation of alternatives.

 

Similar to 2000, though, I'm highly unlikely to get that, even though the very gesture would mean a lot. I could say 'wish me luck', but if you don't know by now that that probably won't make a blind bit of difference, you never will. It's looking like the time's coming for me to conduct yet another Milgram Experiment.

A Church along MLK Blvd. in Augusta, GA

 

True Vine Missionary Baptist Church

1780 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

Augusta, GA

30901

 

(706) 722-4011

 

maps.google.com/maps?q=1765+Martin+Luther+King+Blvd.+++Au...

 

This is one of the photos from a Power Point presentation explaining a study in Augusta, Georgia about a street named for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

The “Claiming A Street Named King” Project is the brainchild of Rev. Terence A. Dicks of Augusta, Georgia.

 

These photos depict homes, building and abandoned structures along Martin Lutheran King, Jr. Boulevard in Augusta, Georgia.

 

It began with research in Athens and Augusta (Georgia) through the University Of Georgia School Of Environmental Design.

 

Research was led by Dr. Mary Anne Akers in collaboration with Georgia Legal Services Program, Georgia State Trade Association of Non-profit Developers (G-STAND) and Neighborhood Works America, INC.

 

“Claiming A Street Named King” Project study in Augusta, Georgia – conducted along Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard - shows areas that need economic assistance – and that’s the same issue in many American cities that have streets named for civil rights leaders

 

For more information:

 

claimingastreetnamedking.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/Claimin...

 

The closure of a popular Barrowford pub has left the community stunned.

 

Pendle Borough Council licensing officers shut down the George and Dragon, in Gisburn Road, on Friday, at 3-30pm, to the horror of licensee Chris Joyce, who had just returned from honeymoon that day.

 

The closure order is thoguht to have come about following the death of one of the business partners at the pub and a failure to remove his name from official documents.

 

There has already beenn outcry on Facebook over the decision, with Chris being quaoted as saying: “It was a shock when the officer said he was shutting me down with immediate effect. They could have had the decency to give me until Monday. Beer had been tapped and ready to serve. Food had been purchased and prepared for the weekend. Now, I’ve to apply for a temporary events license - and the pub will not be able to open until February 5th.”

 

Pendle Today 270115

 

Published on Monday 14 January 2013 09:19

 

THREE men have been arrested on suspicion of wounding after a fight at a Barrowford pub over the weekend.

 

A 22-year-old, and two 23-year-olds, are currently on bail until April following the public order offence at the George and Dragon, in Gisburn Road. The incident happened at around 11-15pm on Saturday night.

 

A 45-year-old man, and a 25-year old man were treated for injuries. One had a broken leg, while the other was reported to have head injuries.

 

Another person was injured, but allegedly refused treatment.

 

A police spokesman said: “We were called to a disturbance outside the pub.

 

“When we got there, there were a number of people in the road.”

 

Pendle Today

 

A burglar was tracked down by police after he accidentally left behind his shirt and a letter at the scene of the crime with his name and address on it.

 

Teacher's son Max Bancroft, 21, had smashed into his local pub after earlier being thrown out for drunkenness - only to injure himself on the broken glass of a window.

 

As he pulled off his T shirt to to stem the flow of blood, a letter he had received in the post fell out of his pocket and landed on the floor.

 

Police found the incriminating blood-stained note and T-shirt as they hunted for clues following the burglary at The George and Dragon in the village of Barrowford, Lancashire.

 

Officers went to arrest Bancroft at his home and found his fridge full of cooked meat stolen on the same night from a grocery store.

 

At Burnley Crown Court, Bancroft admitted two charges of burglary and was jailed for two years.

 

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2288482/Teachers-son-21-...

Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

(Please note there have been a few cast revisions in this episode).

 

Captain Tim: Right Sargent Willis, call the men around.

Chorus of suffragette voices: And the women.

Capt. Tim: Yes, yes let’s not go through all that again. Just get everyone around Willis.

Sarg. Willis: I say, it would be awfully nice if you could just all gather around the captain quick as you can, that’s right, nice and close, let’s all cosy together, thank you so much, that’s awfully nice of you.

Corporal Shepherd: Right you lot, you heard what the fine officer said, cosy round, cosy round get cosyed in, smartly does it now, smartly does it, that’s right, that’s right. Permission to speak sir, the men and women all are cosying around just like what you said sir. Shall I cosy with them?

Capt. Tim: Of course, I shouldn’t have to tell you that corporal.

Corp. Shepherd: Right sir, thank you sir, cosying in now sir. Permission to speak sir, we are all cosy together sir.

Capt. Tim: Where’s Sargent Willis?

Private McMercer: Aye he’s absent on parade, that’s a criminal offence, he should be shot, shot I tell ye.

Capt. Tim: Oh don’t be so melodramatic McMercer. Willis, Willis what are you doing? You’re supposed to be cosying, er gathering around, with the rest of the men.

Pte. Bevins: And women!

Sarg. Willis: I thought as it was such a nice morning I’d just have a wander around, you know Sir, just a little wander and look at all the lovely countryside. After all it’s not as if we’ve not heard what you’ve got to say before.

Capt. Tim: That’s not the sort of attitude I expect from my junior officers. You’re supposed to support me up to the hilt, the hilt. Do you understand? We’re not out here to enjoy the countryside, we’ve got a very important job of work to do. Just what do you think would happen if everyone went about enjoying the countryside? The country would be ruined in no time.

Sarg. Willis: Oh very well.

Capt. Tim: Right, now then..

Pte. Jones: Excuse me captain, I was wondering if I might be excused?

Capt. Tim: Not now Steven, I’m just about to explain what we’re going to do.

Pte. Jones: Oh dear.

Capt. Tim: Now today we’ve been appointed to do a very important task helping our brave farmers, reaping and gathering in the sheaves.

Corp. Shepherd: Permission to indegest Sir. I would like to be the person what does the reaping and gathering.

Capt. Tim: We’re all in this together corporal, there’s plenty of work for all of us.

Pte. McMercer: Aside; Aye, and plenty for someone to order the rest of us about while he looks on.

Pte. Moffatt: Excuse me Mr. Spencer, what do we do when we’ve gathered in the sheaves?

Capt. Tim: It’s Captain, how many times do you have to be told?

Pte Moffatt: Sorry Mr. Spencer, what do we do with the sheaves Captain?

Capt. Tim: We burn them.

Pte. Miller: Ah, now then, it just so happens I know where to lay my hands on some firelighters they’re very hard to come by these days. I could let you have say half a dozen at five quid each.

Capt. Tim: Five pounds? Five pounds? Oh no, no, no. Thank you but we have our very own fire lighter in the form of private Breed.

Pte. Miller: Suit yourself.

Pte. Jones: I’ve just done a first aid course and we covered burns. You have to pour cold water on them for ten minutes. Oh dear, I’ve got a bottle of water in my first aid bag but I don’t think it will last for ten minutes.

Pte Miller: Funny you should mention bottled water, now I know where I can lay my hands on a crate..

Capt. Tim: We shall not be needing any water for the simple reason no one will get burnt. I won’t allow it. Now let’s get going, I need to unload the mowing machine and..

Pte. Moffatt: Please Mr. I mean Captain Tim, can I do the mowing, I know how to do it, I saw it in a film once with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.

Capt. Tim: No it’s far too dangerous for an inexperienced person from the ranks. This takes leadership.

Pte. McMercer: Aye and it’s easier than raking.

Pte. Moffatt: Oh it’s not fair, he never lets me have any fun.

Capt. Tim: No talking in the ranks. Let’s to it, we haven’t got all day, looks like rain later on.

Pte. Jones: Talking of rain, I wonder if I might be excused for a moment?

 

Later that morning;

Capt. Tim: Now remember men,

Pte. Bevins: And women!

Capt. Tim: Careful near the ditch, it’s covered in reeds, so we don’t want anyone falling in.

Pte. Shepherd: Excuse me Capt. Tim, I’d like to volunteer to work by the ditch what isn’t there on account of it being covered in reeds then if anyone should fall in it will be me and not you or any of our other brave lads. I remember once when we was at...

Capt. Tim: Not now corporal, Not now.

Pte. McMercer: I was wondering how strong these wooden rakes are? I’ll just lean on one to see if it takes my weight.

 

Lunchtime;

Pte. McMercer: Aye, it seems to be holding up okay. Look Captain Tim, isn’t that captains Raven and Pratt coming over yonder Hill?

Capt. Tim: What? Oh yes, pay no attention to them, Captain Pratt has probably only come to show off the latest set of gaudy ribbons spread across her chest. No sense of decency, if I had any medals I wouldn’t go displaying them like that for all the world to see. She looks like a walking rainbow with all those decorations. Still better than the things she usually wears.

Sarg Willis: What did she get them for do you suppose?

Capt. Tim: Pond dipping I shouldn’t wonder, not proper work like we do.

Capts. Raven and Pratt: Greetings Captain Tim, just in time for a spot of lunch we see. Any cake?

Several pieces of bread pudding and tiffin later

Capts. Raven and Pratt: Well bye all.

Pte. Miller: Now before we get started again, I just happen to have some very nice calendars for sale. Going cheap, lovely pictures of birds on them. Get it, cheap, birds?

Suddenly everyone finishes lunch and starts working again.

Pte Miller: Please yourselves. Charmed I’m sure.

 

Early afternoon;

Capt. Tim: Well that’s another job well done. I think we can all be proud of ourselves, don’t you Sargent Willis?

Sarg. Willis: What? Oh yes, yes, very proud. I was just looking at those very pretty birds..

Capt. Tim: Not those damn calendars again?

Sarg. Willis: No Sir, those charming little birds on all that bare ground that we’ve laid to waste.

Capt. Tim: Oh we’ve no time for that now. We need to collect all our gear together before everybody slopes off. I’m still missing a rake!

Sarg. Willis: I think you’ll find private McMercer is still leaning on it.

 

(Any resemblance to the truth is purely accidental).

 

Enough already. Thanks to everyone and we missed those of you who weren’t able to join us on what was a very pleasant day. I’m sure Mr. Pitts photos will say it all.

 

Anon.

 

"how deep is the sea"; with forlin brothers for emergence festival, giardini naxos (sicily)

 

..babbo, che eri un gran cacciatore

di quaglie e di faggiani

caccia via queste mosche

che non mi fanno dormire

che mi fanno arrabbiare

come è profondo il mare

come è profondo il mare

 

è inutile

non c'è più lavoro

non c'è più decoro

dio o chi per lui

sta cercando di dividerci

di farci del male

di farci annegare

come è profondo il mare

come è profondo il mare..

---------------------------------------------

..daddy, you who were a great hunter

of quails and pheasants,

chase away these flies

that don't let me sleep

that make me angry

how deep the sea is

how deep the sea is

 

it's useless

there's no work anymore

there's no decency anymore

god or someone for him

is trying to divide us,

to hurt us, to drown us

how deep is the sea

how deep is the sea..

   

Titan, formerly a Skeleton Warrior, has just joined the Skull Boyz jazz & blues band as their new lead guitarist. He's trying out his newly-acquired Gibson SG, and seeing if he can busk a little for some cash.

 

He was convinced to wear clothing by other members of the Skull Boyz. Seems that there's decency laws in town which requires covering up one's pelvis, regardless if one is a human, animal or skeleton.

 

The guitar is modeled after a classic red Gibson SG, scaled-down to 2.75", which is 1:15 scale. It is handmade of basswood, mainly because no companies make miniature guitars in this scale. 1:12 would be way over-sized and 1:18 (Rement) would be too small. In this size, the guitar can actually be strung.

 

Marshall amp is a small basswood box, dolled-up to look like a small Marshall amp.

in the name of morality, and decency the Red Lights District has been destroyed.

 

actually, just a very bad excuse to test stop motion on my new Mac.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard produced by Mark Power Network Photographers.

 

On the back of the card they have printed:

 

'View of the Dome from the

Docklands Light Railway.

15.05.98'.

 

As is evident from the photo, the Dome (now named the O2) was still under construction at the time.

 

Frank Sinatra

 

Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra died with his wife at his side at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on the 14th. May 1998, aged 82, after a heart attack.

 

He was in ill health during the last few years of his life, and was frequently hospitalised for heart and breathing problems, high blood pressure, pneumonia and bladder cancer. He was further diagnosed as having dementia.

 

He had made no public appearances following an earlier heart attack in February 1997. Sinatra's wife encouraged him to "fight" while attempts were made to stabilise him, and reported that his final words were, "I'm losing."

 

Sinatra's daughter, Tina, later wrote that she and her siblings (Frank Jr. and Nancy) had not been notified of their father's final hospitalisation, and it was her belief that:

 

"The omission was deliberate. Barbara

would be the grieving widow alone at

her husband's side."

 

The night after Sinatra's death, the lights on the Empire State Building in New York City were turned blue, the lights at the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honour, and the roulette wheels stopped spinning for one minute.

 

Sinatra's funeral was held at the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California, on the 20th. May 1998, with 400 mourners in attendance, and thousands of fans outside.

 

Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, and Sinatra's son, Frank Jr., addressed the mourners, who included many notable people from the film and entertainment industry.

 

Sinatra was buried in a blue business suit with mementos from family members—cherry-flavoured Life Savers, Tootsie Rolls, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, stuffed toys, a dog biscuit, and a roll of dimes that he always carried—next to his parents in Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.

 

The words 'The Best Is Yet to Come', plus 'Beloved Husband & Father' are imprinted on Sinatra's grave marker.

 

Significant increases in recording sales worldwide were reported by Billboard in the month of Sinatra's death.

 

Thoughts From Frank Sinatra

 

“Alcohol may be man's worst enemy,

but the Bible says love your enemy.”

 

“The best revenge is massive success.”

 

“The big lesson in life, baby, is never

be scared of anyone or anything.”

 

“You may be a puzzle, but I like the

way the parts fit.”

 

"Basically, I'm for anything that gets

you through the night - be it prayer,

tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.”

 

“A simple 'I love you' means more

than money.”

 

“The cigarettes you light one after

another won’t help you forget her.”

 

“For nobody else, gave me thrill -

with all your faults, I love you still.

It had to be you, wonderful you,

it had to be you.”

 

“I feel sorry for people that don't drink,

because when they wake up in the

morning, that is the best they are going

to feel all day.”

 

“The best is yet to come, and won't

that be fine.”

 

“Don’t hide your scars. They make

you who you are.”

 

“You only go around once, but if you

play your cards right, once is enough.”

 

(While accepting the Jean Hersholt

Humanitarian Award): "I've been thinking

about why you have to get famous to get

an award for helping other people.

If your name is John Doe, and you work

night and day doing things for your helpless

neighbors, what you get for your effort is

tired.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Doe, and all of you who

give of yourselves, to those who carry too

big a burden to make it on their own, I want

you to reach out and take your share of this.

Because if I have earned it, so too have you.”

 

“You only live once, and the way I live,

once is enough.”

 

"There are things about organized religion which

I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace,

but more blood has been shed in his name than

any other figure in history.

You show me one step forward in the name of

religion, and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions.

I'm for decency - period. I'm for anything and

everything that bodes love and consideration for

my fellow man.

But when lip service to some mysterious deity

permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution

on Sunday - count me out.”

 

“That's life, and I can't deny it. Many times I

thought of cuttin' out, but my heart won't buy it.”

 

“I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer

and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I

have a respect for life - in any form.

I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky,

in everything I can see or that there is real evidence

for.

If these things are what you mean by God, then I

believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal

God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on

the next roll of the dice.”

 

“For what is a man, what has he got. If not himself,

then he has naught.”

 

“Ya gotta love livin', pally, cuz dyin's

a pain in the ass!”

 

“Fairy tales can come true,

It can happen to you

If you're young at heart.”

 

“If you possess something but you can't

give it away, then you don't possess it -

it possesses you.”

 

“I'm gonna live till I die.”

 

“I would like to be remembered as a

man who had a wonderful time living

life, a man who had good friends, fine

family - and I don't think I could ask for

anything more than that, actually.”

August is the time when the people of Pontelli go to the seaside to have a bath - in all decency possible.

Arctic Council Ministerial Dinner at Artikum Glass Hall. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Chrystia Freeland.

 

Finland hosts the 11th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting on 7 May in Rovaniemi. Minister-level representatives from the eight Arctic States will convene to review and approve work completed under the two-year Finnish Chairmanship to improve sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic.

 

Ministry for Foreign Affairs provides photo material for media representatives, participants and organisers of the meeting. Please feel free to use the photos, considering the following restrictions: Not for commercial purposes nor reselling. When publishing the pictures, the name of the photographer and organization shall be mentioned as the source. No picture manipulation is permitted. The holder of the picture rights and/or the organisation shall at all times retain the copyright to the picture. When publishing the pictures, the publisher shall ensure the legality of the context where the pictures are used, obtain the permissions and consents required for their publication, and observe the generally established practices and decency. The publisher shall ensure that publication of the pictures does not insult anyone’s privacy or dignity.

 

Photo: Jouni Porsanger / Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

Pierre Perret : when the woman is behind a fence

 

Listen to my very sweet song

Verlaine would have known better

She is discreet and lightweight

a shudder of water on the foam

It is the lament of the spouse

the woman behind her fence

They make her life in the Middle Ages

May they be covered with shame..

 

Chorus

When the woman is fenced

all women are outraged

 

men have rejected women

In the dark

She never takes the floor

In public it is not his role

She is fearful she is subject

Not a chance for her to receive a kiss

They taught her to submit

Not to contradict his master

She is entitled to only a few whispers

With her eyes down on her sewing

 

She respects the divine law

That said by the man's mouth

That his place is in the kitchen

And that she is his beast of burden

No way for her to get education

She's better when she's ignorant

Her husband says that education

Is contrary to her domestic tasks

 

From head to toe burka its austere

Is the garantor of the woman decency

It prevents lust from the men

To whom she could appeal

One look deemed immodest

Would be fatal for the captive

She could eventually burned

Stoned in public place

   

(seen in a Wolford shopwindow)

Monkey Wrench Collective presents Wallace Shawn's "The Fever".

 

Over the course of a long, terrifying night, a weary traveler is forced to confront her role in the war that ravages the countryside just beyond her hotel window. As she recounts the events that brought her to this point -- fabulous dinner parties, a chance encounter on a nude beach, a clandestine meeting with an armed rebel -- she tries to come to some kind of understanding of her place in the world. How do you lead a life full of joy and happiness without simply ignoring the injustice that surrounds you? What does it mean to say "I am a decent person?"

 

An intellectual horror story with resonances into the current global economic crisis, THE FEVER was originally performed by the playwright in the apartments of his friends. In keeping with that atmosphere, the Monkey Wrench Collective's new production, starring Melanie Gable as the traveler, is set in an intimate storefront theater located in the heart of downtown Fullerton. Each evening's performance will feature live musical accompaniment by pianist Teresa Chan Escober, along with a complimentary service of wine and hors d'œuvres. Only 20 tickets will be available for each show.

 

June 3 through June 19, 2010. Thursdays and Saturdays at 8pm, special Friday performances June 11 and June 18 at 8pm. All seats $10.

 

Directed by "Greg Adkins". Starring Melanie Gable. Musical performance by Teresa Chan Escober.

 

Postcard design by "Greg Adkins".

 

MORE INFO: Monkey Wrench Collective

Not the worst White Queen outfit I've seen - you have to realize that many of the drawn designs for White Queen's many costumes simply would not work in the real world - either due to gravity, or laws of decency. I'm talking about you, Frank Quitely...

  

Protesters against Trump's "travel ban" and immigration plans marching to the US Capitol.

 

Washington, DC / February 4, 2017

Not strictly a Finsec event, but here's a few photos of the Service and Food Workers' Union Nga Ringa Tota rally in Wellington on International Cleaners Day.

The 'Fair Deal for Cleaners' campaign that this rally is part of aims to provide a voice to the low-waged largely immigrant female workforce, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, who are calling on big property owners to support decency in their workplaces.

Ministry for Foreign Affairs produces photo material for media representatives. Please feel free to use the photos for journalistic purposes, considering the following restrictions: One-time picture publishing right, no archiving or reselling. Editorial use only. When publishing the pictures, the name of the photographer and organisation shall be mentioned as a source. No picture manipulation is permitted. The holder of the picture rights and/or the organisation shall at all times retain the copyright to the picture. The publisher is not entitled to transfer rights to a third party. When publishing the pictures, the publisher shall ensure the legality of the context where the pictures are used, obtain the permissions and consents required for their publication, and observe the generally established practices and decency. The publisher shall also obtain the permissions needed for any names, persons, works of art, trademarks, and proprietary rights shown in the pictures. The publisher shall ensure that publication of the pictures does not insult anyone’s privacy or dignity. Photo: Atte Kajova

This is not my best dance photo from a purely technical point of view. There are two spectators' heads in the foreground, and the face of the man on the far side is slightly out of focus. Moreover, one of the participants is mostly hidden behind one of the others. I thought of cropping the image so as to keep the sihlouetted heads out of it, but I finally decided it was more important to leave them where they were, in the interest of being able to tell this story. My wife agreed with my conclusion, and for the reasons to be explained below, I hope this one gets a lot of attention on Flickr.

 

I do not know the name of the young woman you see here, but that does not prevent me from regarding her with great respect. She is confined to a wheelchair, but dances anyway, and even does so in public from time to time. This was, in fact, the second time I had seen her perform. Her affliction clearly has not limited her ability to find joy in life. I admire courage, which I regard as the supreme human virtue, and she obviously has it. And the men you see here, as well as the others who have performed with her and helped her to develop her unusual skills, deserve kudos for their part in her story as well.

 

While this image is not my best one technically, the story it relates says something good and noble about the human spirit, and it celebrates charity, generosity, and decency as well as courage. It is for that reason alone that I chose to honor all of the participants in this very memorable dance by posting their photograph here on Flickr.

 

Taken in Mesa, Arizona, at a USO-themed benefit for MS patients, sponsored by the Phoenix-area Fred Astaire dance studios.