View allAll Photos Tagged gallbladder
To all my Flickr friends! Coyote luck struck again. Finally cleared to return to work April 1st, my gallbladder had different plans. I was admitted to the hospital Saturday, surgery on Sunday. Released Tuesday. Hubby is sick, so I can't go home.. staying at my daughters. And now.. I am endeavoring to play catch up on my group work and my photostream. Please bear with me as I work my way through what I have missed.
Explore Highest position: 354 on Friday, April 10, 2009
Physically and emotionally. But things will get better...they have to.
Oh and, I usually do not post such a detailed close-up, with such harsh light that shows all my dry skin and the red spots and all the imperfections...but I think it went well with my mood today. I am SO glad the weekend is here, even though I think there is way too much to do and little time to rest and some things I am looking forward to and some things I am not.
50 Random Facts About Me
#13: I have 7 visible/permanent scars (meaning they are not going to get any better and you can see them for sure) - 4 on my stomach from when I had my gallbladder removed, one above my right eye, one on the palm of my right hand, and one on my right leg. Even though the 4 on my stomach are the ones no one usually sees, they are the ones that bother me the most, and make me feel very self-conscious and unsexy.
Explore: #17
Created in an afternoon and a 3am night, from Van Gogh, sicis, agate beads, textured mirror and tempered glass. A gift for the dr. and his crew who finally got me sewn back together right! (see liver-purple, stomach-multi, gallbladder-orange, pancreas-yellow, large intestine-multi, small intestine-silver)
There are no rhymes this Xmas - I don’t think they’re about;
they went with my gallbladder when they took the darn thing out.
This year has seen our village grow at alarming rates
so many of us live here now we’ve fortified the gates.
Our darling little Chloe, the light of our old eyes,
arrived at last in March (She’s healthy and she’s wonderful
and hardly ever cries).
It seems as though the sands of time are flowing all uphill
until we pick her up and ‘crunch’ we have to take a pill.
Ah well, small price to pay for such a delight.
If I’ve been out of touch and you’ve found me hard to reach
please won’t you just forgive me for I’ve lost my sense of speech.
Instead of talking Daly, Rich, Derrida and Foucault
I’m lying on the floor with Chloe going ‘yogle yogle yoh”.
which is quite seasonal don’t you think?
I’m on the brink of something big, I can just feel it
……..or maybe not.
What I really want to say is this:
I wish you joy and love and light
and that your Xmas tide be bright
I hope your wishes do come true
because I really care for you.
Now if I had my old gallbladder
I’m sure I could have done much better
Texture by Leschick called 'ugly'
Zone Therapy and Reflexology
Copyright © 2019Tomitheos Photography - All Rights Reserved
34 Reflexology Acupressure Points
(see notes above)
- Aches and pains throughout the body may be eased if gentle pressure is applied to the feet.
This reflexology map shows which regions of the foot correspond to the specific parts of the body.
Our feet are our roots, with the use of reflexology our health solutions are afoot.
flickr today
I finished it today! Although, for a more accurate representation of its color, please see it here.
Perfect timing, because I still feel like crap and this way I can STILL get away with not showing my makeup-less face, as I have been doing since Tuesday ;-)
50 Random Facts About Me
#27: The reason I had to have my gallbladder removed is because I had so LITTLE fat in my diet, all the bile sat there and did not do its job breaking down fat and it turned into stones. I have always been on the average to a little chubby side, and have went up and down as I think all women have...but I was always convinced I was totally fat.
But I was so obsessed with looking 'perfect' and people in my own family would always give me a hard time to lose a few pounds so I made up my own diet which was basically no more then 500 calories a day and as little to no fat as possible. I ate rice and steamed veggies and not much else. Yes I am aware how unhealthy it was so I really don't want lectures on it. It has truly fucked up my body ever since. I lost too much weight very quickly and I was bony and gross for about a year and now besides losing my gallbladder my weight fluctuates very easily and my whole system is out of whack and may very well be forever.
It was drilled into my head by the media and by FAMILY that if I was not stick-thin I was not beautiful and would never get a husband or whatever and I believed it. I know it is not true but there is a part of me that still feels like I will never be thin enough or pretty enough or perfect enough.
(NOTE: these Random Facts are not to get reaction, but it was my choice on finding an interesting way to end out my Year 1 and maybe share some things about me that make me who I am. If you don't like it, don't read it. But I am not looking for sympathy or compliments or anything else. I chose on purpose to have some funny ones, some weird ones, etc...and I had reasons for it.)
After a sleepless and painful night, Matt needed to get to the E.R. early this morning where we learned he has Pancreatitis. Poor guy has been fighting to manage his gallstone issue by diet, avoiding surgery, for five years now but he hit the wall today. They are waiting for the stones in his bile duct to clear and then they'll take out the gallbladder. The indicator enzymes for his pancreas are way off. It was described to us that they should be around 100 but were in the 2000s this afternoon. This is expected to resolve by itself in the next 24-or-so hours; if not, they'll clear out the obstruction in his bile duct surgically.
I spent the day there with him until about 4:00 when he got to his room and they gave him some Dilaudid for the pain. He crashed immediately. I came home for a couple of hours with the dogs and am going back now to spend the evening. If he's sleeping I'll do some flickering.
Amazing Grace. This isn't over but I just have to give a shout-out to the medical procession for their skill, not just their knowledge of what to do, but the deftness in how they do it. We're both in awe of them and place full trust in their hands. (Photo taken at his bedside in the emergency room this morning).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why Veganism:
A friend of mine had her gallbladder removed today and while I was in the waiting room I randomly wondered if LEGO in sign language has it's own specific sign, or if you just spell it out.
As far as I can tell you just spell it out. If anyone knows if there is a specific sign, let me know!
built for the 11 pieces contest
This belly has carried 3 babies and has had 3 c-sections, a diseased gallbladder and appendix. Today was the first time I looked at my belly without total distain. Thank you for this prompt. ❤️
French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Editions Hazan, Paris, 1994, no. 6434. Photo: Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos. Caption: Andy Warhol in the London sewers, 1965.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the 'Father of Pop Art' with his silk-screened pictures of Campbell's Soup cans and distorted images of Marilyn Monroe. He started directing films and most of his early work simply consisted of pointing the camera at something (a man asleep, the Empire State Building) and leaving it running, sometimes for hours. His films gradually grew more sophisticated, with scripts and soundtracks. They were generally performed by members of the Warhol "factory". In 1968, after a near-fatal shooting by an unstable fan, Warhol retired from direct involvement in filmmaking, and under former assistant Paul Morrissey, the Warhol films became increasingly commercial. Warhol spent the 1970s and 1980s as a major pop culture figure, constantly attending parties and providing patronage to younger artists.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. His parents were Ondrej (Andrew) Varhola and Julia Zavackyová Varholová, ethnic Lemko immigrants from the village of Miková in the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia). Ondrej, whose surname was originally written as Varhola, changed the spelling to Warhola when he emigrated to the US. He worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. His father, who travelled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. He showed artistic talent early on and went to study applied art in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. There, he stood out by drawing two self-portraits showing him picking his nose (Upper Torso Boy Picking Nose and Full Figure Boy Picking Nose). In 1949, Andy graduated and dropped the letter 'a' from his last name. Warhol moved to New York, where he met Tina Fredericks, the art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at the Hugo Gallery in New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. In 1956, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By 1959, he was a successful advertising designer with an average annual income of $65000 and almost annual medals and other professional awards. In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Superman. In the following years, Warhol started painting famous American products like Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles in large formats. He managed to interest the influential gallery owner and art collector Leo Castelli in his work. He started using the silk-screen technique, not merely to create art using everyday commercial mass-produced items as his motif but to create even his own art as mass-produced items. Warhol preferred to become an emotionless machine. He set himself up as chief of a team of art workers who were engaged in making screen prints, films, books and magazines. This team operated in a studio near Union Square in New York. The studio was called the Factory because it actually housed a production line of paintings. The original Factory was located in an old cap factory at 231 East 47th street (fourth floor). This studio grew into a meeting place for artists, gays, transvestites, junkies and photographic models. Anyone with any artistic pretensions was welcome there.
After a few years, Andy Warhol moved his entourage to an office building across the street; 33 Union street West (sixth floor). This second Factory was called the Office by Warhol himself because it housed not only a studio but also the editorial office of Interview magazine, founded by Warhol. Warhol became known worldwide during the Factory years with his screen prints. He made screen prints of any subject that lent itself to it. Warhol's oeuvre largely draws on American popular culture. He painted and drew banknotes, cartoon images, food, women's shoes, celebrities and everyday objects. For him, these motifs represented American cultural values. Paul Morrisey managed to persuade Warhol to become the manager of a rock band. It would be a commercial success if Warhol combined his talent for generating media attention with a sensational rock group. Warhol was not immediately enthusiastic but after Morrisey's insistence, he relented. Morrisey had seen the Velvet Underground perform at cafe bizarre. After Warhol went to see, he was immediately excited. He saw a group standing with good looks who, while tourists sat drinking, sang about Heroine and SM. Warhol made the Velvet Underground part of his multimedia show Exploding Plastic Inevatible. He also produced The Velvet Underground's first album with Nico. He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson mostly called the shots. The cover of the band's first album was Warhol's design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker. On 3 June 1968, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist author who hung around the Factory from time to time, turned up at the studio and shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya. Solanas had been rejected earlier that day at the Factory after she had requested the return of a script she had given Warhol for inspection. The script had apparently gone missing. Warhol was badly injured in the shooting and was even declared clinically dead in the hospital. He suffered the physical effects of the attack for the rest of his life and had to wear a corset to support his lower abdomen. The shooting had a major after-effect on Warhol's life and his art. The Factory became more tightly shielded and for many, this event marked the end of the Factory's wild years. That same day, Solanas turned herself in to the police and was arrested. Her explanation for this crime was that Warhol had become too much of an influence on her life. his incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996).
Between 1963 and 1968, Andy Warhol was a prolific filmmaker. He made more than one hundred and sixty films, 60 of which are accessible. The films share similarities with his paintings, which also feature many repetitions and subtle variations of images. In the 1970s, Warhol banned the distribution of his films, but in the 1980s, after much insistence, he gave permission to restore the films. In many of his films, the usual projection speed was reduced from 24 frames to 16 frames per second. This is slightly different from usual slow-motion, where the film is actually shot at a higher speed and played back at normal speed. Warhol's technique gives the individual images more emphasis. One of his most famous films, and also his first, Sleep (1963), shows for eight hours a sleeping man, John Giorno, with whom he had a relationship. Warhol filmed for about three hours each time until the sun rose at five in the morning. Filming took a month. The film Kiss (1963) shows close-ups of kissing couples for 55 minutes. Blow Job (1963) is a continuous close-up of the face of a man (DeVeren Bookwalter) being orally satisfied off-screen. According to Warhol's later assistant, Gerard Malanga, the invisible role featured poet and filmmaker Willard Maas, although Warhol gave a different reading on this in his memoir 'Popism'. Warhol met Malanga in 1964, and they made Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). That year, Warhol also made a 99-minute portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's famous curator Henry Geldzahler. During the filming, Warhol simply walked away. The film clearly shows how Geldzahler was bored and uncomfortable by the camera. By the end of the film, he collapsed completely. Also from 1964 is the film Eat, featuring Warhol's colleague and friend Robert Indiana, who is eating a mushroom very sedately and in a close-up. Another film, Empire (1964), consists of an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building in New York at dusk. Warhol's role-playing film Vinyl is an adaptation of the dystopian Anthony Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange'. Further films depict impromptu encounters with Factory hustlers such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico and Jackie Curtis. In the film Camp, legendary artist Jack Smith appears within the subculture. Many famous visitors to the Factory were put in front of the camera between 1963 and 1966, and filmed for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, the length of the standard roll of film. Usually, these were static portraits. By running the films more slowly, the expressions of the faces are greatly magnified. These shots resulted in about 500 films, called Screentests by Warhol. Among those portrayed are film star Dennis Hopper and pop star Lou Reed. The films were edited in various compositions and shown at Warhol exhibitions and in movie houses. Warhol's unorthodox approach is exemplified by Kitchen (1965). The actors do not know their roles by heart, but the screenplay is hidden in various places on the set. The scriptwriter whispers lines of dialogue from outside the frame. Snapshots are taken during filming. The set designer appears on the screen. Dialogue is drowned out by the sound of a mixer. There are long periods when nothing happens. There are two pairs of characters with the same names. Warhol was not interested in auctorial control but shifted the burden from the director to the actors and the shooting crew. He showed little interest in story intrigue, which he considered old-fashioned, or technical aspects of filmmaking. Warhol wanted to explore the borders between feigned action and the more authentic behaviour of non-actors, which is why he kept the camera running constantly: he didn't want to miss anything. In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. Warhol's most successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was innovative as it consisted of two simultaneously projected 16-mm rolls of film with divergent narratives. From the projection booth, the sound level for one film was raised to clarify that story while it was lowered for the other, after which the reels were reversed. Chelsea Girls became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theatre. Warhol also used this method of doubling the image in his screen prints of the early 1960s. The influence of film with multiple simultaneous layers and stories is noticeable in modern productions like Mike Figgis's Timecode and, indirectly, the first seasons of 24. Other important films include My Hustler (1965) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a homoerotic pseudo-Western. Blue Movie, a film in which Warhol's 'superstar' Viva has sex with a man for 33 minutes, was Warhol's last film of his own. After the film caused a scandal because of its liberal approach to sexuality, Viva managed to block its public screening for a long time. The film was not shown again in New York until 2005, for the first time in 30 years.
Compared to Andy Warhol's provocative work in the 1960s, the 1970s were artistically less productive, although Warhol became much more businesslike. He retired as a film director and left filmmaking to Paul Morrissey. The latter steered the approach to Warhol films more and more in the direction of ordinary B-movies with a clear narrative, for example, Flesh, Trash and Heat. These films, as well as the later films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, were much more normal than anything Warhol had ever made himself as a director. The star of these films was Joe Dallesandro, who was actually a Morrissey star rather than a true Andy Warhol superstar. Another film that caused a lot of furore as a Warhol film was Bad. starring Carroll Baker and Perry King. This film was actually directed by Jed Johnson. To increase the success of the later films, all of Warhol's earlier avant-garde films were withdrawn from circulation around 1972. Warhol founded Interview magazine in 1969. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. According to his assistant during his later years, Bob Colacello, Warhol mainly sought out wealthy people from whom he could secure portrait commissions, such as Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot and Michael Jackson, as well as lesser-known bank executives and collectors. In 1975 published his book 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol', in which he explained his down-to-earth ideas about art and life. Incidentally, he appeared in films and TV shows. When guesting on The Love Boat (1977), he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate Marion Ross, who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act. In 1976, Warhol began a daily routine. Every morning at 9 am, he would call Pat Hackett, whom he had hired to keep track of his expenses. What was initially supposed to be just a morning bookkeeping session soon turned into an extremely intimate exchange of private experiences between the two of them. Warhol, who was "addicted to the phone anyway", told Hackett about the rather delicate details of the New York scene and celebrities, a subject that had interested him since childhood. Like his time capsules, the conversations were for capturing a picture of the times. After his death, Hackett released some of these notes in the book 'The Andy Warhol Diaries'. In 2022, this book was made into a Netflix documentary. Andy Warhol worked for several years with Jean-Michel Basquiat a young artist in whom he recognised much of himself. The collaboration was equal, Warhol was past his prime and Basquiat had already established his name. This equality allowed them to collaborate on some 140 works, some of which were exhibited in a duo exhibition at the New York gallery Tony Shafrazi in 1985. The ensuing New York Times review made Basquiat Warhol's mascot after which their collaboration and also their friendship cooled. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of 58 in New York. He was recovering from a routine operation on his gallbladder when he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. Hospital staff had administered sleeping pills to him after the operation and had not sufficiently monitored his well-being. Consequently, lawyers for Warhol's next of kin sued the hospital for negligence. Warhol constantly delayed medical treatment because he was afraid of hospitals and disliked doctors. Warhol was buried at St John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. Yoko Ono was among those who gave a farewell address at his funeral. International auction house Sotheby's took nine days to auction off Warhol's immense collection of art and 'knickknacks'. The gross proceeds of this auction were about US$20 million. In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called 'Songs for Drella' as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhol's life.
Sources: Herman Hou (IMDb), Michael Brooke (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French freecard by Descartes / Actioncarbone, 2009, for the exhibition 'Warhol TV' in La Maison Rouge, Paris. Photo: Andy Warhol, publicity TDK (Detail). Collection: Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the 'Father of Pop Art' with his silk-screened pictures of Campbell's Soup cans and distorted images of Marilyn Monroe. He started directing films and most of his early work simply consisted of pointing the camera at something (a man asleep, the Empire State Building) and leaving it running, sometimes for hours. His films gradually grew more sophisticated, with scripts and soundtracks. They were generally performed by members of the Warhol "factory". In 1968, after a near-fatal shooting by an unstable fan, Warhol retired from direct involvement in filmmaking, and under former assistant Paul Morrissey, the Warhol films became increasingly commercial. Warhol spent the 1970s and 1980s as a major pop culture figure, constantly attending parties and providing patronage to younger artists.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. His parents were Ondrej (Andrew) Varhola and Julia Zavackyová Varholová, ethnic Lemko immigrants from the village of Miková in the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia). Ondrej, whose surname was originally written as Varhola, changed the spelling to Warhola when he emigrated to the US. He worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. His father, who travelled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. He showed artistic talent early on and went to study applied art in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. There, he stood out by drawing two self-portraits showing him picking his nose (Upper Torso Boy Picking Nose and Full Figure Boy Picking Nose). In 1949, Andy graduated and dropped the letter 'a' from his last name. Warhol moved to New York, where he met Tina Fredericks, the art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at the Hugo Gallery in New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. In 1956, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By 1959, he was a successful advertising designer with an average annual income of $65000 and almost annual medals and other professional awards. In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Superman. In the following years, Warhol started painting famous American products like Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles in large formats. He managed to interest the influential gallery owner and art collector Leo Castelli in his work. He started using the silk-screen technique, not merely to create art using everyday commercial mass-produced items as his motif but to create even his own art as mass-produced items. Warhol preferred to become an emotionless machine. He set himself up as chief of a team of art workers who were engaged in making screen prints, films, books and magazines. This team operated in a studio near Union Square in New York. The studio was called the Factory because it actually housed a production line of paintings. The original Factory was located in an old cap factory at 231 East 47th street (fourth floor). This studio grew into a meeting place for artists, gays, transvestites, junkies and photographic models. Anyone with any artistic pretensions was welcome there.
After a few years, Andy Warhol moved his entourage to an office building across the street; 33 Union street West (sixth floor). This second Factory was called the Office by Warhol himself because it housed not only a studio but also the editorial office of Interview magazine, founded by Warhol. Warhol became known worldwide during the Factory years with his screen prints. He made screen prints of any subject that lent itself to it. Warhol's oeuvre largely draws on American popular culture. He painted and drew banknotes, cartoon images, food, women's shoes, celebrities and everyday objects. For him, these motifs represented American cultural values. Paul Morrisey managed to persuade Warhol to become the manager of a rock band. It would be a commercial success if Warhol combined his talent for generating media attention with a sensational rock group. Warhol was not immediately enthusiastic but after Morrisey's insistence, he relented. Morrisey had seen the Velvet Underground perform at cafe bizarre. After Warhol went to see, he was immediately excited. He saw a group standing with good looks who, while tourists sat drinking, sang about Heroine and SM. Warhol made the Velvet Underground part of his multimedia show Exploding Plastic Inevatible. He also produced The Velvet Underground's first album with Nico. He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson mostly called the shots. The cover of the band's first album was Warhol's design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker. On 3 June 1968, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist author who hung around the Factory from time to time, turned up at the studio and shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya. Solanas had been rejected earlier that day at the Factory after she had requested the return of a script she had given Warhol for inspection. The script had apparently gone missing. Warhol was badly injured in the shooting and was even declared clinically dead in the hospital. He suffered the physical effects of the attack for the rest of his life and had to wear a corset to support his lower abdomen. The shooting had a major after-effect on Warhol's life and his art. The Factory became more tightly shielded and for many, this event marked the end of the Factory's wild years. That same day, Solanas turned herself in to the police and was arrested. Her explanation for this crime was that Warhol had become too much of an influence on her life. his incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996).
Between 1963 and 1968, Andy Warhol was a prolific filmmaker. He made more than one hundred and sixty films, 60 of which are accessible. The films share similarities with his paintings, which also feature many repetitions and subtle variations of images. In the 1970s, Warhol banned the distribution of his films, but in the 1980s, after much insistence, he gave permission to restore the films. In many of his films, the usual projection speed was reduced from 24 frames to 16 frames per second. This is slightly different from usual slow-motion, where the film is actually shot at a higher speed and played back at normal speed. Warhol's technique gives the individual images more emphasis. One of his most famous films, and also his first, Sleep (1963), shows for eight hours a sleeping man, John Giorno, with whom he had a relationship. Warhol filmed for about three hours each time until the sun rose at five in the morning. Filming took a month. The film Kiss (1963) shows close-ups of kissing couples for 55 minutes. Blow Job (1963) is a continuous close-up of the face of a man (DeVeren Bookwalter) being orally satisfied off-screen. According to Warhol's later assistant, Gerard Malanga, the invisible role featured poet and filmmaker Willard Maas, although Warhol gave a different reading on this in his memoir 'Popism'. Warhol met Malanga in 1964, and they made Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). That year, Warhol also made a 99-minute portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's famous curator Henry Geldzahler. During the filming, Warhol simply walked away. The film clearly shows how Geldzahler was bored and uncomfortable by the camera. By the end of the film, he collapsed completely. Also from 1964 is the film Eat, featuring Warhol's colleague and friend Robert Indiana, who is eating a mushroom very sedately and in a close-up. Another film, Empire (1964), consists of an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building in New York at dusk. Warhol's role-playing film Vinyl is an adaptation of the dystopian Anthony Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange'. Further films depict impromptu encounters with Factory hustlers such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico and Jackie Curtis. In the film Camp, legendary artist Jack Smith appears within the subculture. Many famous visitors to the Factory were put in front of the camera between 1963 and 1966, and filmed for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, the length of the standard roll of film. Usually, these were static portraits. By running the films more slowly, the expressions of the faces are greatly magnified. These shots resulted in about 500 films, called Screentests by Warhol. Among those portrayed are film star Dennis Hopper and pop star Lou Reed. The films were edited in various compositions and shown at Warhol exhibitions and in movie houses. Warhol's unorthodox approach is exemplified by Kitchen (1965). The actors do not know their roles by heart, but the screenplay is hidden in various places on the set. The scriptwriter whispers lines of dialogue from outside the frame. Snapshots are taken during filming. The set designer appears on the screen. Dialogue is drowned out by the sound of a mixer. There are long periods when nothing happens. There are two pairs of characters with the same names. Warhol was not interested in auctorial control but shifted the burden from the director to the actors and the shooting crew. He showed little interest in story intrigue, which he considered old-fashioned, or technical aspects of filmmaking. Warhol wanted to explore the borders between feigned action and the more authentic behaviour of non-actors, which is why he kept the camera running constantly: he didn't want to miss anything. In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. Warhol's most successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was innovative as it consisted of two simultaneously projected 16-mm rolls of film with divergent narratives. From the projection booth, the sound level for one film was raised to clarify that story while it was lowered for the other, after which the reels were reversed. Chelsea Girls became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theatre. Warhol also used this method of doubling the image in his screen prints of the early 1960s. The influence of film with multiple simultaneous layers and stories is noticeable in modern productions like Mike Figgis's Timecode and, indirectly, the first seasons of 24. Other important films include My Hustler (1965) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a homoerotic pseudo-Western. Blue Movie, a film in which Warhol's 'superstar' Viva has sex with a man for 33 minutes, was Warhol's last film of his own. After the film caused a scandal because of its liberal approach to sexuality, Viva managed to block its public screening for a long time. The film was not shown again in New York until 2005, for the first time in 30 years.
Compared to Andy Warhol's provocative work in the 1960s, the 1970s were artistically less productive, although Warhol became much more businesslike. He retired as a film director and left filmmaking to Paul Morrissey. The latter steered the approach to Warhol films more and more in the direction of ordinary B-movies with a clear narrative, for example, Flesh, Trash and Heat. These films, as well as the later films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, were much more normal than anything Warhol had ever made himself as a director. The star of these films was Joe Dallesandro, who was actually a Morrissey star rather than a true Andy Warhol superstar. Another film that caused a lot of furore as a Warhol film was Bad. starring Carroll Baker and Perry King. This film was actually directed by Jed Johnson. To increase the success of the later films, all of Warhol's earlier avant-garde films were withdrawn from circulation around 1972. Warhol founded Interview magazine in 1969. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. According to his assistant during his later years, Bob Colacello, Warhol mainly sought out wealthy people from whom he could secure portrait commissions, such as Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot and Michael Jackson, as well as lesser-known bank executives and collectors. In 1975 published his book 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol', in which he explained his down-to-earth ideas about art and life. Incidentally, he appeared in films and TV shows. When guesting on The Love Boat (1977), he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate Marion Ross, who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act. In 1976, Warhol began a daily routine. Every morning at 9 am, he would call Pat Hackett, whom he had hired to keep track of his expenses. What was initially supposed to be just a morning bookkeeping session soon turned into an extremely intimate exchange of private experiences between the two of them. Warhol, who was "addicted to the phone anyway", told Hackett about the rather delicate details of the New York scene and celebrities, a subject that had interested him since childhood. Like his time capsules, the conversations were for capturing a picture of the times. After his death, Hackett released some of these notes in the book 'The Andy Warhol Diaries'. In 2022, this book was made into a Netflix documentary. Andy Warhol worked for several years with Jean-Michel Basquiat a young artist in whom he recognised much of himself. The collaboration was equal, Warhol was past his prime and Basquiat had already established his name. This equality allowed them to collaborate on some 140 works, some of which were exhibited in a duo exhibition at the New York gallery Tony Shafrazi in 1985. The ensuing New York Times review made Basquiat Warhol's mascot after which their collaboration and also their friendship cooled. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of 58 in New York. He was recovering from a routine operation on his gallbladder when he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. Hospital staff had administered sleeping pills to him after the operation and had not sufficiently monitored his well-being. Consequently, lawyers for Warhol's next of kin sued the hospital for negligence. Warhol constantly delayed medical treatment because he was afraid of hospitals and disliked doctors. Warhol was buried at St John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. Yoko Ono was among those who gave a farewell address at his funeral. International auction house Sotheby's took nine days to auction off Warhol's immense collection of art and 'knickknacks'. The gross proceeds of this auction were about US$20 million. In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called 'Songs for Drella' as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhol's life.
Sources: Herman Hou (IMDb), Michael Brooke (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.
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Andy Warhol Kimiko: Ken C. Arnold Art Collection Andy Warhol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to:navigation, search
For the song by David Bowie, see Andy Warhol (song)
Andy Warhol
Warhol in 1977
Birth name Andrew Warhola
Born August 6, 1928(1928-08-06)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died February 22, 1987 (aged 58)
New York City, U.S.
Nationality American
Field Painting, Cinema
Training Carnegie Mellon University
Movement Pop art
Works Chelsea Girls (1966 film)
Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966 event)
Campbell's Soup Cans (1962 painting)
Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.
The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Childhood
2 Early career
3 1960s
4 Attempted assassination
5 1970s
6 1980s
7 Sexuality
8 Religious beliefs
9 Death
10 Works
10.1 Paintings
10.2 Films
10.3 Factory in New York
10.4 Filmography
10.5 Music
10.6 Books and print
10.7 Other media
10.8 Producer and product
11 Dedicated museums
12 Movies about Warhol
12.1 Dramatic portrayals
12.2 Documentaries
13 See also
14 References
15 Further reading
16 External links
Childhood
Warhol's childhood home at 3252 Dawson Street in the South Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaAndy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[2] He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola (died 1942)[3] and Julia (nee Zavacka, 1892-1972),[4] whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their migration to the U.S. His parents were working-class immigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), in northeastern Slovakia, then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the US in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Andy Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.[5] The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers, Ján and Pavol, who were born in today's Slovakia. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.
In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness.[6] He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast among his school-mates and bonded strongly with his mother.[7] At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident.[8]
Early career
Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now Carnegie Mellon University).[9] In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. These were done in a loose, blotted-ink style, and figured in some of his earliest showings at the Bodley Gallery in New York. With the concurrent rapid expansion of the record industry and the introduction of the vinyl record, Hi-Fi, and stereophonic recordings, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.[10]
Campbell's Soup I (1968)1960s
His first one-man art-gallery exhibition as a fine artist[11][12] was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art.[13] Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963.[citation needed]
It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory", his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method. His work became popular and controversial.
Among the imagery tackled by Warhol were dollar bills, celebrities and brand name products. He also used as imagery for his paintings newspaper headlines or photographs of mushroom clouds, electric chairs, and police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. Warhol also used Coca Cola bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca Cola:
What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.[14]
New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift.[citation needed]
Campbell's Tomato Juice Box (1964)A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. – was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is (or of what is art and what is not).[citation needed]
As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory", Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations).[15]
During the '60s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some – like Berlin – remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time.
Attempted assassination
On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio.[16] Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She founded a "group" called S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) and authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist attack on patriarchy. Over the years, Solanas' manifesto has found a following.[17] Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film I, A Man. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had been misplaced.[18]
Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again). He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.[19][20]
Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life." She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many this event brought the "Factory 60s" to an end.[20] The shooting was mostly overshadowed in the media due to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy two days later.
Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television." [21]
1970s
Andy Warhol and Jimmy Carter in 1977Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s proved a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot, and Michael Jackson.[22][citation needed] Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, Interview magazine, and published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). An idea expressed in the book: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."[cite this quote]
Warhol used to socialize at various nightspots in New York City, including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the '70s, Studio 54.[23] He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square."[24]
1980s
Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.
By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a "business artist".[25] In 1979, unfavorable reviews met his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. This criticism was echoed for his 1980 exhibit of ten portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled Jewish Geniuses, which Warhol – who exhibited no interest in Judaism or matters of interest to Jews – had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."[25] In hindsight, however, some critics have come to view Warhol's superficiality and commerciality as "the most brilliant mirror of our times," contending that "Warhol had captured something irresistible about the zeitgeist of American culture in the 1970s."[25]
Warhol also had an appreciation for intense Hollywood glamour. He once said: "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."[26]
Sexuality
Warhol never married or had children.[27] Many people think of him as asexual and merely a "voyeur"; however, it is now well-established that he was homosexual (see biographers such as Victor Bockris, Bob Colacello,[28] and art historian Richard Meyer[29]). The question of his sexuality aside, Warhol stated in a 1980 interview that he was still a virgin.[30] The question of how Warhol's sexuality influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist, and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (e.g. Popism: The Warhol Sixties).
Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like Blow Job, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys) draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. That said, some stories about Warhol's development as an artist revolved around the obstacle his sexuality initially presented as he tried to launch his career. The first works that he submitted to a gallery in the pursuit of a career as an artist were homoerotic drawings of male nudes. They were rejected for being too openly gay.[31] In Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change... Other people could change their attitudes but not me".[32][33] In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period – the late 1950s and early 1960s – as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Um, No" and "Um, Yes", and often allowing others to speak for him) – and even the evolution of his Pop style – can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.[34]
Religious beliefs
Images of Jesus from The Last Supper cycle (1986). Warhol made almost 100 variations on the theme, which the Guggenheim felt "indicates an almost obsessive investment in the subject matter."[35]Warhol was a practicing Byzantine Catholic. He regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a religious person.[36] Several of Warhol's later works depicted religious subjects, including two series, Details of Renaissance Paintings (1984) and The Last Supper (1986). In addition, a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.[36]
During his life, Warhol regularly attended Mass, and the priest at Warhol's church, Saint Vincent's, said that the artist went there almost daily,[36] although he never took communion or made confession and sat or knelt in the pews at the back.".[30] The priest thought he was afraid of being recognized; Warhol said he was self-conscious about being seen in a Roman Catholic church crossing himself "in the Orthodox way" (right to left instead of the reverse).[30]
His art is noticeably influenced by the eastern Christian iconographic tradition which was so evident in his places of worship.[36]
Warhol's brother has described the artist as "really religious, but he didn't want people to know about that because [it was] private." Despite the private nature of his faith, in Warhol's eulogy John Richardson depicted it as devout: "To my certain knowledge, he was responsible for at least one conversion. He took considerable pride in financing his nephew's studies for the priesthood".[36]
Death
Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia.[37] Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.[38]
Warhol's grave at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic CemeteryWarhol's body was taken back to Pittsburgh by his brothers for burial. The wake was at Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home and was an open-coffin ceremony. The coffin was a solid bronze casket with gold plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was posed holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy was given by Monsignor Peter Tay. Yoko Ono also made an appearance. The coffin was covered with white roses and asparagus ferns. After the liturgy, the coffin was driven to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. At the grave, the priest said a brief prayer and sprinkled holy water on the casket. Before the coffin was lowered, Paige Powell dropped a copy of Interview magazine, an Interview t-shirt, and a bottle of the Estee Lauder perfume "Beautiful" into the grave. Warhol was buried next to his mother and father. Weeks later a memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1, 1987, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.
Warhol's will dictated that his entire estate – with the exception of a few modest legacies to family members – would go to create a foundation dedicated to the "advancement of the visual arts". Warhol had so many possessions that it took Sotheby's nine days to auction his estate after his death; the auction grossed more than US$20 million. His total estate was worth considerably more, due in no small part to shrewd investments over the years.[citation needed]
In 1987, in accordance with Warhol's will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was founded. The Foundation not only serves as the official Estate of Andy Warhol, but also has a mission "to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process" and is "focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature."[39]
The Artists Rights Society is the U.S. copyright representative for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for all Warhol works with the exception of Warhol film stills.[40] The U.S. copyright representative for Warhol film stills is the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.[41] Additionally, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has agreements in place for its image archive. All digital images of Warhol are exclusively managed by Corbis, while all transparency images of Warhol are managed by Art Resource.[42]
The Andy Warhol Foundation released its 20th Anniversary Annual Report as a three-volume set in 2007: Vol. I, 1987–2007; Vol. II, Grants & Exhibitions; and Vol. III, Legacy Program.[43] The Foundation remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations for the visual arts in the U.S.[44]
Works
Paintings
This section needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (February 2009)
By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol was a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. These illustrations consisted mainly of "blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.
Pop Art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first Pop Art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced.[45] Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.
To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter.[46] For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at Sotheby's New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings sell for over $6 million more recently.[47]
He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.[48]
In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.[49]
Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques– silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors – whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide, car crashes, and disasters, as in the 1962–63 Death and Disaster series. The Death and Disaster paintings (such as Red Car Crash, Purple Jumping Man, and Orange Disaster) transform personal tragedies into public spectacles, and signal the use of images of disaster in the then evolving mass media.
The unifying element in Warhol's work is his deadpan Keatonesque style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by Warhol's own demeanor, as he often played "dumb" to the media, and refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that all you need to know about him and his works is already there, "Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." [50]
His Rorschach inkblots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that was then oxidized with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works – and their means of production – mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory". Biographer Bob Colacello provides some details on Andy's "piss paintings":
Victor... was Andy's ghost pisser on the Oxidations. He would come to the Factory to urinate on canvases that had already been primed with copper-based paint by Andy or Ronnie Cutrone, a second ghost pisser much appreciated by Andy, who said that the vitamin B that Ronnie took made a prettier color when the acid in the urine turned the copper green. Did Andy ever use his own urine? My diary shows that when he first began the series, in December 1977, he did, and there were many others: boys who'd come to lunch and drink too much wine, and find it funny or even flattering to be asked to help Andy 'paint.' Andy always had a little extra bounce in his walk as he led them to his studio...[51]
Warhol's first portrait of Basquiat (1982) is a black photosilkscreen over an oxidized copper "piss painting".
After many years of silkscreen, oxidation, photography, etc., Warhol returned to painting with a brush in hand in a series of over 50 large collaborative works done with Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1984 and 1986.[52][53] Despite negative criticism when these were first shown, Warhol called some of them "masterpieces," and they were influential for his later work.[54]
The influence of the large collaborations with Basquiat can be seen in Warhol's The Last Supper cycle, his last and possibly his largest series, seen by some as "arguably his greatest,"[55] but by others as “wishy-washy, religiose” and “spiritless."[56] It is also the largest series of religious-themed works by any U.S. artist.[55]
At the time of his death, Warhol was working on Cars, a series of paintings for Mercedes-Benz. [57]
Films
Warhol worked across a wide range of media – painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. In addition, he was a highly prolific filmmaker. Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than 60 films [58], plus some 500 short black-and-white "screen test" portraits of Factory visitors.[59] One of his most famous films, Sleep, monitors poet John Giorno sleeping for six hours. The 35-minute film Blow Job is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts down to see this. Another, Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. The film Eat consists of a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes. Warhol attended the 1962 premiere of the static composition by LaMonte Young called Trio for Strings and subsequently created his famous series of static films including Kiss, Eat, and Sleep (for which Young initially was commissioned to provide music). Uwe Husslein cites filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, and who claims Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.[60]
Batman Dracula is a 1964 film that was produced and directed by Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. It was screened only at his art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol's movie was an "homage" to the series, and is considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. The film was until recently thought to have been lost, until scenes from the picture were shown at some length in the 2006 documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.
Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' popular dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Others record improvised encounters between Factory regulars such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico, and Jackie Curtis. Legendary underground artist Jack Smith appears in the film Camp.
His most popular and critically successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was highly innovative in that it consisted of two 16 mm-films being projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown in tandem. From the projection booth, the sound would be raised for one film to elucidate that "story" while it was lowered for the other. The multiplication of images evoked Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s.
Other important films include Bike Boy, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys, a raunchy pseudo-western. These and other titles document gay underground and camp culture, and continue to feature prominently in scholarship about sexuality and art.[61][62] Blue Movie – a film in which Warhol superstar Viva makes love and fools around in bed with a man for 33 minutes of the film's playing-time – was Warhol's last film as director. The film was at the time scandalous for its frank approach to a sexual encounter. For many years Viva refused to allow it to be screened. It was publicly screened in New York in 2005 for the first time in over thirty years.
After his June 3, 1968, shooting, a reclusive Warhol relinquished his personal involvement in filmmaking. His acolyte and assistant director, Paul Morrissey, took over the film-making chores for the Factory collective, steering Warhol-branded cinema towards more mainstream, narrative-based, B-movie exploitation fare with Flesh, Trash, and Heat. All of these films, including the later Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, were far more mainstream than anything Warhol as a director had attempted. These latter "Warhol" films starred Joe Dallesandro – more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.
In the early '70s, most of the films directed by Warhol were pulled out of circulation by Warhol and the people around him who ran his business. After Warhol's death, the films were slowly restored by the Whitney Museum and are occasionally projected at museums and film festivals. Few of the Warhol-directed films are available on video or DVD.
Factory in New York
Factory: 1342 Lexington Avenue (the first Factory)
The Factory: 231 East 47th street 1963-1967 (the building no longer exists)
Factory: 33 Union Square 1967-1973 (Decker Building)
Factory: 860 Broadway (near 33 Union Square) 1973-1984 (the building has now been completely remodeled and was for a time (2000–2001) the headquarters of the dot-com consultancy Scient)
Factory: 22 East 33rd Street 1984-1987 (the building no longer exists)
Home: 1342 Lexington Avenue
Home: 57 East 66th street (Warhol's last home)
Last personal studio: 158 Madison Avenue
Filmography
Main article: Andy Warhol filmography
Music
In the mid 1960s, Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground, making them a crucial element of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia performance art show. Warhol, with Paul Morrissey, acted as the band's manager, introducing them to Nico (who would perform with the band at Warhol's request). In 1966 he "produced" their first album The Velvet Underground & Nico, as well as providing its album art. His actual participation in the album's production amounted to simply paying for the studio time. After the band's first album, Warhol and band leader Lou Reed started to disagree more about the direction the band should take, and their artistic friendship ended.[citation needed]
Warhol designed many album covers for various artists starting with the photographic cover of John Wallowitch's debut album, This Is John Wallowitch!!! (1964). He designed the cover art for the Rolling Stones albums Sticky Fingers (1971) and Love You Live (1977), and the John Cale albums The Academy In Peril (1972) and Honi Soit in 1981. In 1975, Warhol was commissioned to do several portraits of Mick Jagger, and in 1982 he designed the album cover for the Diana Ross album Silk Electric.[citation needed] One of his last works was a portrait of Aretha Franklin for the cover of her 1986 gold album Aretha, which was done in the style of the Reigning Queens series he had completed the year before.[63]
Warhol was also friendly with many recording artists, including Deborah Harry, Grace Jones, Diana Ross and John Lennon (with whom he posed for an infamous photograph[64]) - he designed the cover to Lennon's 1986 posthumously released Menlove Ave. Warhol also appeared as a bartender in The Cars' music video for their single "Hello Again", and Curiosity Killed The Cat's video for their "Misfit" single (both videos, and others, were produced by Warhol's video production company).[citation needed] Warhol featured in Grace Jones' music video for "I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect for You)".
Warhol strongly influenced the New Wave/punk rock band Devo, as well as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol" for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol, in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, but this version wasn't officially released until the VU album appeared in 1985. He recorded a new version for his 1972 solo album Transformer, produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson.[citation needed]
Cover of copy no. 18 of 25 Cats Name [sic] Sam and One Blue Pussy by Andy Warhol given in 1954 to Edgar de Evia and Robert Denning when the author was a guest in their home in the Rhinelander Mansion.[citation needed]Books and print
Beginning in the early 1950s, Warhol produced several unbound portfolios of his work.
The first of several bound self-published books by Warhol was 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy, printed in 1954 by Seymour Berlin on Arches brand watermarked paper using his blotted line technique for the lithographs. The original edition was limited to 190 numbered, hand colored copies, using Dr. Martin's ink washes. Most of these were given by Warhol as gifts to clients and friends. Copy #4, inscribed "Jerry" on the front cover and given to Geraldine Stutz, was used for a facsimile printing in 1987[65] and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000 by Doyle New York.[66]
Other self-published books by Warhol include:
A Gold Book
Wild Raspberries
Holy Cats
After gaining fame, Warhol "wrote" several books that were commercially published:
a, A Novel (1968, ISBN 0-8021-3553-6) is a literal transcription– containing spelling errors and phonetically written background noise and mumbling– of audio recordings of Ondine and several of Andy Warhol's friends hanging out at the Factory, talking, going out.[citation needed]
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) (1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4)– according to Pat Hackett's introduction to The Andy Warhol Diaries, Pat Hackett did the transcriptions and text for the book based on daily phone conversations, sometimes (when Warhol was traveling) using audio cassettes that Andy Warhol gave her. Said cassettes contained conversations with Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk) and former Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello.[citation needed]
Popism: The Warhol Sixties (1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1), authored by Warhol and Pat Hackett is a retrospective view of the sixties and the role of Pop Art.
The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989, ISBN 0-446-39138-7), edited by Pat Hackett, is a diary dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone conversations. Warhol started the diary to keep track of his expenses after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal and cultural observations.[67]
Warhol created the fashion magazine Interview that is still published today. The loopy title script on the cover is thought to be either his own handwriting or that of his mother, Julia Warhola, who would often do text work for his early commercial pieces.[68]
Other media
As stated, although Andy Warhol is most known for his paintings and films, he has authored works in many different media.
Drawing: Warhol started his career as a commercial illustrator, producing drawings in "blotted-ink" style for advertisements and magazine articles. Best known of these early works are his drawings of shoes. Some of his personal drawings were self-published in small booklets, such as Yum, Yum, Yum (about food), Ho, Ho, Ho (about Christmas) and (of course) Shoes, Shoes, Shoes. His most artistically acclaimed book of drawings is probably A Gold Book, compiled of sensitive drawings of young men. A Gold Book is so named because of the gold leaf that decorates its pages.[69]
Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his Brillo Boxes, silkscreened ink on wood replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes (designed by James Harvey), part of a series of "grocery carton" sculptures that also included Heinz ketchup and Campbell's tomato juice cases.[70] Other famous works include the Silver Clouds– helium filled, silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons. A Silver Cloud was included in the traveling exhibition Air Art (1968–69) curated by Willoughby Sharp. Clouds was also adapted by Warhol for avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham's dance piece RainForest (1968).[71]
Audio: At one point Warhol carried a portable recorder with him wherever he went, taping everything everybody said and did. He referred to this device as his "wife". Some of these tapes were the basis for his literary work. Another audio-work of Warhol's was his "Invisible Sculpture", a presentation in which burglar alarms would go off when entering the room. Warhol's cooperation with the musicians of The Velvet Underground was driven by an expressed desire to become a music producer.[citation needed]
Time Capsules: In 1973, Warhol began saving ephemera from his daily life– correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs, childhood objects, even used plane tickets and food– which was sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed Time Capsules. By the time of his death, the collection grew to include 600, individually dated "capsules". The boxes are now housed at the Andy Warhol Museum.[72]
Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call The Nothing Special, a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, Andy Warhol's TV in 1982 and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances on other programs, including The Love Boat wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom Happy Days) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately titled the "Underground Sundae".[73]
Fashion: Warhol is quoted for having said: "I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?"[cite this quote] One of his most well-known Superstars, Edie Sedgwick, aspired to be a fashion designer, and his good friend Halston was a famous one. Warhol's work in fashion includes silkscreened dresses, a short sub-career as a catwalk-model and books on fashion as well as paintings with fashion (shoes) as a subject.[citation needed]
Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged theatrical multimedia happenings at parties and public venues, combining music, film, slide projections and even Gerard Malanga in an S&M outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in 1966 was the culmination of this area of his work.[74]
Theater: Andy Warhol's PORK opened on May 5, 1971 at LaMama theater in New York for a two week run and was brought to the Roundhouse in London for a longer run in August, 1971. Pork was based on tape-recorded conversations between Brigin Berlin and Andy during which Brigid would play for Andy tapes she had made of phone conversations between herself and her mother, socialite Honey Berlin. The play featured Jayne County as "Vulva" and Cherry Vanilla as "Amanda Pork".[citation needed] In 1974, Andy Warhol also produced the stage musical Man On The Moon, which was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.
Photography: To produce his silkscreens, Warhol made photographs or had them made by his friends and assistants. These pictures were mostly taken with a specific model of Polaroid camera that Polaroid kept in production especially for Warhol. This photographic approach to painting and his snapshot method of taking pictures has had a great effect on artistic photography. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends.[citation needed]
Computer: Warhol used Amiga computers to generate digital art, which he helped design and build with Amiga, Inc. He also displayed the difference between slow fill and fast fill on live TV with Debbie Harry as a model.[75] (video)
Producer and product
Warhol had assistance in producing his paintings. This is also true of his film-making and commercial enterprises.[citation needed]
He founded the gossip magazine Interview, a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat Hackett.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat to Saturday Night Live and the Richard Pryor movie, Dynamite Chicken).[citation needed]
In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business Art"– he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as business in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.[citation needed]
Dedicated museums
Two museums are dedicated to Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is located at 117 Sandusky Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the largest American art museum dedicated to a single artist, holding more than 12,000 works by the artist.[citation needed]
The other museum is the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, established in 1991 by Andy's brother John Warhola, the Slovak Ministry of Culture, and the Warhol Foundation in New York. It is located in the small town of Medzilaborce, Slovakia. Andy's parents and his two brothers were born 15 kilometres away in the village of Miková. The museum houses several originals donated mainly by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York and also personal items donated by Warhol's relatives.[citation needed]
Movies about Warhol
Dramatic portrayals
Warhol (right) with director Ulli Lommel on the set of 1979's Cocaine Cowboys, in which Warhol appeared as himselfIn 1979, Warhol appeared as himself in the film Cocaine Cowboys.[76]
After his passing, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), by David Bowie in Basquiat, a film by Julian Schnabel, and by Jared Harris in the film I Shot Andy Warhol directed by Mary Harron (1996). Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's 1997 opera Jackie O. Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). Many films by avant-garde cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Andy's life. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film 54. Guy Pearce portrayed Warhol in the 2007 film, Factory Girl, about Edie Sedgwick's life.[77] Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the 2009 film Watchmen.
Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993.[78]
Documentaries
The 2001 documentary, Absolut Warhola was produced by Polish director Stanislaw Mucha, featuring Warhol's parents' family and hometown in Slovakia.[79]
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film is a reverential four-hour 2006 movie by Ric Burns.[80]
Andy Warhol: Double Denied is a 52 minute movie by lan Yentob about the difficulties in authenticating Warhol's work.[81]
Kimiko and John Powers (1916-99) began collecting Japanese art in 1960. Their collection started with the purchase of a unique pair of six-panel landscape screens by Kusumi Morikage and a hanging scroll titled Courtesan Blowing Soap Bubbles by Shiba Kokan. These pieces formed the basis of a grand collection of Japanese art from the fourth to mid-nineteenth centuries. The original emphasis for the collection was haboku (broken ink) paintings. Later, the focus shifted to Buddhist art, especially Zen painting, and literati painting of the eighteenth century. More than three hundred objects in the collection have been documented and published in Traditions of Japanese Art (1970) and Extraordinary Persons (portfolio of screen paintings, 1988; three volume set, 1999). In its Summer 2000 issue, ArtNews ranked Kimiko Powers among the top 200 collectors in the world. Kimiko was born in Tokyo, where she attended university. In 1963 she came to the United States and married John Powers. John's intense passion for art and life helped them make many friends in the modern art world. Together they built up an impressive collection of 1960s contemporary art featuring artists like Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. Kimiko now resides in Colorado and Japan and carries on John’s legacy and love of all art. A favorite quote of John’s was: “Nothing in the world is yours to keep / You may have but not hold / In the end you receive only that which you have given”
British postcard by London Cardguide LTD, London. Photo: Ewa Rudling.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the 'Father of Pop Art' with his silk-screened pictures of Campbell's Soup cans and distorted images of Marilyn Monroe. He started directing films and most of his early work simply consisted of pointing the camera at something (a man asleep, the Empire State Building) and leaving it running, sometimes for hours. His films gradually grew more sophisticated, with scripts and soundtracks. They were generally performed by members of the Warhol "factory". In 1968, after a near-fatal shooting by an unstable fan, Warhol retired from direct involvement in filmmaking, and under former assistant Paul Morrissey, the Warhol films became increasingly commercial. Warhol spent the 1970s and 1980s as a major pop culture figure, constantly attending parties and providing patronage to younger artists.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. His parents were Ondrej (Andrew) Varhola and Julia Zavackyová Varholová, ethnic Lemko immigrants from the village of Miková in the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia). Ondrej, whose surname was originally written as Varhola, changed the spelling to Warhola when he emigrated to the US. He worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. His father, who travelled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. He showed artistic talent early on and went to study applied art in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. There, he stood out by drawing two self-portraits showing him picking his nose (Upper Torso Boy Picking Nose and Full Figure Boy Picking Nose). In 1949, Andy graduated and dropped the letter 'a' from his last name. Warhol moved to New York, where he met Tina Fredericks, the art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at the Hugo Gallery in New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. In 1956, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By 1959, he was a successful advertising designer with an average annual income of $65000 and almost annual medals and other professional awards. In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Superman. In the following years, Warhol started painting famous American products like Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles in large formats. He managed to interest the influential gallery owner and art collector Leo Castelli in his work. He started using the silk-screen technique, not merely to create art using everyday commercial mass-produced items as his motif but to create even his own art as mass-produced items. Warhol preferred to become an emotionless machine. He set himself up as chief of a team of art workers who were engaged in making screen prints, films, books and magazines. This team operated in a studio near Union Square in New York. The studio was called the Factory because it actually housed a production line of paintings. The original Factory was located in an old cap factory at 231 East 47th street (fourth floor). This studio grew into a meeting place for artists, gays, transvestites, junkies and photographic models. Anyone with any artistic pretensions was welcome there.
After a few years, Andy Warhol moved his entourage to an office building across the street; 33 Union street West (sixth floor). This second Factory was called the Office by Warhol himself because it housed not only a studio but also the editorial office of Interview magazine, founded by Warhol. Warhol became known worldwide during the Factory years with his screen prints. He made screen prints of any subject that lent itself to it. Warhol's oeuvre largely draws on American popular culture. He painted and drew banknotes, cartoon images, food, women's shoes, celebrities and everyday objects. For him, these motifs represented American cultural values. Paul Morrisey managed to persuade Warhol to become the manager of a rock band. It would be a commercial success if Warhol combined his talent for generating media attention with a sensational rock group. Warhol was not immediately enthusiastic but after Morrisey's insistence, he relented. Morrisey had seen the Velvet Underground perform at cafe bizarre. After Warhol went to see, he was immediately excited. He saw a group standing with good looks who, while tourists sat drinking, sang about Heroine and SM. Warhol made the Velvet Underground part of his multimedia show Exploding Plastic Inevatible. He also produced The Velvet Underground's first album with Nico. He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson mostly called the shots. The cover of the band's first album was Warhol's design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker. On 3 June 1968, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist author who hung around the Factory from time to time, turned up at the studio and shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya. Solanas had been rejected earlier that day at the Factory after she had requested the return of a script she had given Warhol for inspection. The script had apparently gone missing. Warhol was badly injured in the shooting and was even declared clinically dead in the hospital. He suffered the physical effects of the attack for the rest of his life and had to wear a corset to support his lower abdomen. The shooting had a major after-effect on Warhol's life and his art. The Factory became more tightly shielded and for many, this event marked the end of the Factory's wild years. That same day, Solanas turned herself in to the police and was arrested. Her explanation for this crime was that Warhol had become too much of an influence on her life. his incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996).
Between 1963 and 1968, Andy Warhol was a prolific filmmaker. He made more than one hundred and sixty films, 60 of which are accessible. The films share similarities with his paintings, which also feature many repetitions and subtle variations of images. In the 1970s, Warhol banned the distribution of his films, but in the 1980s, after much insistence, he gave permission to restore the films. In many of his films, the usual projection speed was reduced from 24 frames to 16 frames per second. This is slightly different from usual slow-motion, where the film is actually shot at a higher speed and played back at normal speed. Warhol's technique gives the individual images more emphasis. One of his most famous films, and also his first, Sleep (1963), shows for eight hours a sleeping man, John Giorno, with whom he had a relationship. Warhol filmed for about three hours each time until the sun rose at five in the morning. Filming took a month. The film Kiss (1963) shows close-ups of kissing couples for 55 minutes. Blow Job (1963) is a continuous close-up of the face of a man (DeVeren Bookwalter) being orally satisfied off-screen. According to Warhol's later assistant, Gerard Malanga, the invisible role featured poet and filmmaker Willard Maas, although Warhol gave a different reading on this in his memoir 'Popism'. Warhol met Malanga in 1964, and they made Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). That year, Warhol also made a 99-minute portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's famous curator Henry Geldzahler. During the filming, Warhol simply walked away. The film clearly shows how Geldzahler was bored and uncomfortable by the camera. By the end of the film, he collapsed completely. Also from 1964 is the film Eat, featuring Warhol's colleague and friend Robert Indiana, who is eating a mushroom very sedately and in a close-up. Another film, Empire (1964), consists of an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building in New York at dusk. Warhol's role-playing film Vinyl is an adaptation of the dystopian Anthony Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange'. Further films depict impromptu encounters with Factory hustlers such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico and Jackie Curtis. In the film Camp, legendary artist Jack Smith appears within the subculture. Many famous visitors to the Factory were put in front of the camera between 1963 and 1966, and filmed for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, the length of the standard roll of film. Usually, these were static portraits. By running the films more slowly, the expressions of the faces are greatly magnified. These shots resulted in about 500 films, called Screentests by Warhol. Among those portrayed are film star Dennis Hopper and pop star Lou Reed. The films were edited in various compositions and shown at Warhol exhibitions and in movie houses. Warhol's unorthodox approach is exemplified by Kitchen (1965). The actors do not know their roles by heart, but the screenplay is hidden in various places on the set. The scriptwriter whispers lines of dialogue from outside the frame. Snapshots are taken during filming. The set designer appears on the screen. Dialogue is drowned out by the sound of a mixer. There are long periods when nothing happens. There are two pairs of characters with the same names. Warhol was not interested in auctorial control but shifted the burden from the director to the actors and the shooting crew. He showed little interest in story intrigue, which he considered old-fashioned, or technical aspects of filmmaking. Warhol wanted to explore the borders between feigned action and the more authentic behaviour of non-actors, which is why he kept the camera running constantly: he didn't want to miss anything. In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. Warhol's most successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was innovative as it consisted of two simultaneously projected 16-mm rolls of film with divergent narratives. From the projection booth, the sound level for one film was raised to clarify that story while it was lowered for the other, after which the reels were reversed. Chelsea Girls became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theatre. Warhol also used this method of doubling the image in his screen prints of the early 1960s. The influence of film with multiple simultaneous layers and stories is noticeable in modern productions like Mike Figgis's Timecode and, indirectly, the first seasons of 24. Other important films include My Hustler (1965) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a homoerotic pseudo-Western. Blue Movie, a film in which Warhol's 'superstar' Viva has sex with a man for 33 minutes, was Warhol's last film of his own. After the film caused a scandal because of its liberal approach to sexuality, Viva managed to block its public screening for a long time. The film was not shown again in New York until 2005, for the first time in 30 years.
Compared to Andy Warhol's provocative work in the 1960s, the 1970s were artistically less productive, although Warhol became much more businesslike. He retired as a film director and left filmmaking to Paul Morrissey. The latter steered the approach to Warhol films more and more in the direction of ordinary B-movies with a clear narrative, for example, Flesh, Trash and Heat. These films, as well as the later films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, were much more normal than anything Warhol had ever made himself as a director. The star of these films was Joe Dallesandro, who was actually a Morrissey star rather than a true Andy Warhol superstar. Another film that caused a lot of furore as a Warhol film was Bad. starring Carroll Baker and Perry King. This film was actually directed by Jed Johnson. To increase the success of the later films, all of Warhol's earlier avant-garde films were withdrawn from circulation around 1972. Warhol founded Interview magazine in 1969. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. According to his assistant during his later years, Bob Colacello, Warhol mainly sought out wealthy people from whom he could secure portrait commissions, such as Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot and Michael Jackson, as well as lesser-known bank executives and collectors. In 1975 published his book 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol', in which he explained his down-to-earth ideas about art and life. Incidentally, he appeared in films and TV shows. When guesting on The Love Boat (1977), he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate Marion Ross, who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act. In 1976, Warhol began a daily routine. Every morning at 9 am, he would call Pat Hackett, whom he had hired to keep track of his expenses. What was initially supposed to be just a morning bookkeeping session soon turned into an extremely intimate exchange of private experiences between the two of them. Warhol, who was "addicted to the phone anyway", told Hackett about the rather delicate details of the New York scene and celebrities, a subject that had interested him since childhood. Like his time capsules, the conversations were for capturing a picture of the times. After his death, Hackett released some of these notes in the book 'The Andy Warhol Diaries'. In 2022, this book was made into a Netflix documentary. Andy Warhol worked for several years with Jean-Michel Basquiat a young artist in whom he recognised much of himself. The collaboration was equal, Warhol was past his prime and Basquiat had already established his name. This equality allowed them to collaborate on some 140 works, some of which were exhibited in a duo exhibition at the New York gallery Tony Shafrazi in 1985. The ensuing New York Times review made Basquiat Warhol's mascot after which their collaboration and also their friendship cooled. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of 58 in New York. He was recovering from a routine operation on his gallbladder when he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. Hospital staff had administered sleeping pills to him after the operation and had not sufficiently monitored his well-being. Consequently, lawyers for Warhol's next of kin sued the hospital for negligence. Warhol constantly delayed medical treatment because he was afraid of hospitals and disliked doctors. Warhol was buried at St John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. Yoko Ono was among those who gave a farewell address at his funeral. International auction house Sotheby's took nine days to auction off Warhol's immense collection of art and 'knickknacks'. The gross proceeds of this auction were about US$20 million. In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called 'Songs for Drella' as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhol's life.
Sources: Herman Hou (IMDb), Michael Brooke (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Something to make you smile.
I'm having gallbladder surgery next week. A robot is going to do it!
It's been one heck of a new year so far.
Hugs to all.
Dutch postcard, no. 850. Photo: Warner Bros.
Peter Lorre (1904–1964) with his trademark large, popped eyes, his toothy grin and his raspy voice was an American actor of Jewish Austro-Hungarian descent. He was an international sensation as the psychopathic child murderer in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). He later became a popular actor in a two British Hitchcock films and in a series of Hollywood crime films and mysteries. Although he was frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner in the US, he also became the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.
Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in 1904 in the Austro-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. He was the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger. His father was chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Besides working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres. When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got along, and this coloured his childhood memories. At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, Alajos moved the family to Vienna, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and that he would be called up. He was, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and served on the Eastern front during the winter of 1914-1915, before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble. As a youth Peter Lorre ran away from home, worked as a bank clerk and, after stage training in Vienna, made his acting debut in Zurich in Switzerland at the age of 17. In Vienna he worked with the Viennese Art Nouveau artist and puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then moved to the then German town of Breslau, and later to Zürich. In the late 1920s, Peter Lorre moved to Berlin, where the young and short (165 cm) actor worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. He made his film debut in a bit role in the Austrian silent film Die Verschwundene Frau/The vanished woman (Karl Leitner, 1929), followed by another small part in the German drama Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil (Alexandre Volkoff, 1930) starring Ivan Mozzhukhin. On stage and in the cinema, Lorre played a role in Brecht's Mann ist Mann/ A Man's a Man (Bertolt Brecht, Carl Koch, 1930) and as Dr Nakamura in the stage musical Happy End (music by composer Kurt Weill), alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel, Oskar Homolka and Kurt Gerron.
Peter Lorre became much better known after director Fritz Lang cast him cast in the lead role of Hans Beckert, the mentally ill child murderer in the classic thriller M (1931). Later, the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew (1940) used an excerpt from the climactic scene in M in which Lorre is trapped by vengeful citizens. His passionate plea that his compulsion is uncontrollable, says the voice-over, makes him sympathetic and is an example of attempts by Jewish artists to corrupt public morals. M was Lang’s first sound film and he revealed the expressive possibilities for combining sound and visuals. Lorre's character whistles the tune In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. ( Lorre himself could not whistle – it is actually Lang who is heard.) The film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating In the Hall of the Mountain King with the Lorre character. Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby, off-screen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, is now a film staple. Lorre’s next role was the German musical comedy Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Monte Carlo Madness (Hanns Schwarz, 1931) starring Hans Albers and Anna Sten. That year he also co-starred in the comedy Die Koffer des Herrn O.F./The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931) starring Alfred Abel, and Harald Paulsen. In 1932 Lorre appeared again alongside Hans Albers in the drama Der weiße Dämon/The White Demon (Kurt Gerron, 1932) and the science fiction film F.P.1 antwortet nicht/F.P.1 Doesn't Respond (Karl Hartl, 1932) about an air station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Curt Siodmak had written the story after Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. It was the last German film that either Siodmak or Peter Lorre, who played a secondary character, would make in Germany before the war.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Peter Lorre took refuge in Paris, where he appeared with Jean Gabin and Michel Simon in the charming comedy Du haut en bas/High and Low (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933). Then Lorre moved on to London. There Ivor Montagu, Alfred Hitchcock's associate producer for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), reminded the director about Lorre's performance in M. They first considered him to play the assassin in the film, but wanted to use him in a larger role, despite his limited command of English at the time, which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically. The Man Who Knew Too Much was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period. Lorre also was featured in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936), opposite John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll. Lorre settled in Hollywood in 1935, where he specialized in playing sinister foreigners, beginning as the love-obsessed surgeon in the horror film Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935), and as Raskolnikov in the Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1936). He starred in a series of eight Mr. Moto movies for Twentieth Century Fox, a parallel to the better known Charlie Chan series. Lorre played the ever-polite (albeit well versed in karate) Japanese detective Mr. Moto. According to Wikipedia, he did not enjoy these films — and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (Norman Foster, 1939) — but they were lucrative for the studio. When the series folded in 1939, Lorre freelanced in villainous roles at several studios. In 1940, he co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the comedy You'll Find Out (David Butler, 1940), a vehicle for bandleader and radio personality Kay Kyser.
In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of effeminate thief Joel Cairo opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), a classic film noir based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The Maltese Falcon was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Then Lorre portrayed the character Ugarte in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). One of his co-stars in both films was Sydney Greenstreet with whom he made 9 films. Most of them were variations on Casablanca, including Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh, 1943), with George Raft; Passage to Marseille (Michael Curtiz, 1944), reuniting them with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains, and Three Strangers (Jean Negulesco, 1946). The latter was a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket starring top-billed Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and third-billed Lorre cast against type by director as the romantic lead. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances.” Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together was the suspense thriller The Verdict (1946), director Don Siegel's first film. Lorre branched out into comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in Frank Capra's version of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey.
After World War II, Peter Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. An exception was the horror classic The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946). In Germany Lorre co-wrote, directed and starred in Der Verlorene/The Lost One (1951), an art film in the film noir idiom. Hal Erickson: “In keeping with Lorre's established screen persona, this is a tale of stark terror, disillusionment and defeatism. The actor stars as Dr. Rothe, a German research scientist who during WW2 discovers that his fiancée has been selling his scientific secrets to the British. In a fit of pique, he murders her, but is not punished for the crime, which is passed off by the Nazi authorities as justifiable homicide. (...) Not entirely successful, Der Verlorene is still a fascinating exercise in fatalism from one of the cinema's most distinctive talents.” Lorre then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often parodying his 'creepy' image. In 1954, he was the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of Casino Royale, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond and Linda Christian as the first Bond girl. Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Richard Fleischer, 1954), and appeared in a supporting role in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Irwin Allen, 1961). He worked with Roger Corman on several low-budget films, including two of the director's Edgar Allan Poe cycle (Tales of Terror, 1962 and The Raven, 1963). He was married three times: actress Celia Lovsky (1934–1945); actress Kaaren Verne (1945–1950) and Anne Marie Brenning (1953-1964, his death). In 1953, Brenning bore his only child, Catharine. In later life, Catharine made headlines after serial killer Kenneth Bianchi confessed to police investigators after his arrest that he and his cousin and fellow Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono, disguised as police officers, had stopped her in 1977 with the intent of abducting and murdering her, but let her go upon learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre. It was only after Bianchi was arrested that Catharine realized whom she had met. Catharine died in 1985 of complications arising from diabetes. Lorre had suffered for years from chronic gallbladder troubles, for which doctors had prescribed morphine. Lorre became trapped between the constant pain and addiction to morphine to ease the problem. It was during the period of the Mr. Moto films that Lorre struggled and overcame his addiction. Abruptly gaining a hundred pounds in a very short period and never fully recovering from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments in his later years. His final film was the Jerry Lewis comedy The Patsy (Jerry Lewis, 1964) in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films. A few months after completing this film, Peter Lorre died of a stroke in 1964 in Los Angeles. He was 59.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Ma rouquine d'amour donne ses plus doux ronrons à toutes ses Marraines et fans.
L'échographie de mercredi a montré que le traitement (3 semaines de pilules en janvier) a bien fonctionné sur sa vésicule biliaire qui contient encore quelques matières boueuses mais pas graves et l'inflammation de son pancréas est guérie.
Je suis contente de ces bonnes nouvelles car ma belle Poussy aura 15 ans le mois prochain et j'aimerais la garder encore très longtemps en bonne santé si possible.
Je dois encore faire analyser son urine car son taux de sucre est un peu élevé (11.43 alors que le minimal est à 8) et elle boit beaucoup, mais ces valeurs peuvent être dues au stress aussi.
Heureuse St-Valentin à vous tous mes Ami(e)s.
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19 février
J'ai eu le résultat de l'analyse de son urine ce matin, et elle n'a pas de diabète, c'est une excellente nouvelle je suis très contente !
Je croule sous le travail et mes journées sont longues, pardonnez-moi si je viens par intermittence seulement car je me sens bien fatiguée.
Merci pour votre soutien par vos messages d'amitié à ma Poussy.
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My redhead love gives her sweetest purring all his fans and Godmothers.
Ultrasound Wednesday showed that treatment (3 weeks of pills in January) worked well on his gallbladder which still contains some muddy but not grave and inflammation of the pancreas is healed.
I'm glad the good news for my beautiful Poussy will be 15 years old next month and I want to keep much longer healthy if possible.
I still have to analyze the urine because his blood sugar is a little high (11.43 while the minimum is 8) and she drinks a lot, but these values can be due to stress too.
Happy Valentine's Day to all of you my Friends.
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Update :
February 19
I got the result of the urine test this morning, and she did not have diabetes, this is great news I am very happy!
I reeling under work and my days are long, forgive me if I'm only intermittently because I feel very tired.
Thank you for your support to my Poussy and for your friendship.
Dutch postcard by Art Unlimted, Amsterdam, no. F3135. Photo: Nat Finkelstein / Refuse Productions. Caption: Andy + movie camera, 1965.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the 'Father of Pop Art' with his silk-screened pictures of Campbell's Soup cans and distorted images of Marilyn Monroe. He started directing films and most of his early work simply consisted of pointing the camera at something (a man asleep, the Empire State Building) and leaving it running, sometimes for hours. His films gradually grew more sophisticated, with scripts and soundtracks. They were generally performed by members of the Warhol "factory". In 1968, after a near-fatal shooting by an unstable fan, Warhol retired from direct involvement in filmmaking, and under former assistant Paul Morrissey, the Warhol films became increasingly commercial. Warhol spent the 1970s and 1980s as a major pop culture figure, constantly attending parties and providing patronage to younger artists.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. His parents were Ondrej (Andrew) Varhola and Julia Zavackyová Varholová, ethnic Lemko immigrants from the village of Miková in the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia). Ondrej, whose surname was originally written as Varhola, changed the spelling to Warhola when he emigrated to the US. He worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. His father, who travelled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. He showed artistic talent early on and went to study applied art in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. There, he stood out by drawing two self-portraits showing him picking his nose (Upper Torso Boy Picking Nose and Full Figure Boy Picking Nose). In 1949, Andy graduated and dropped the letter 'a' from his last name. Warhol moved to New York, where he met Tina Fredericks, the art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at the Hugo Gallery in New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. In 1956, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By 1959, he was a successful advertising designer with an average annual income of $65000 and almost annual medals and other professional awards. In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Superman. In the following years, Warhol started painting famous American products like Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles in large formats. He managed to interest the influential gallery owner and art collector Leo Castelli in his work. He started using the silk-screen technique, not merely to create art using everyday commercial mass-produced items as his motif but to create even his own art as mass-produced items. Warhol preferred to become an emotionless machine. He set himself up as chief of a team of art workers who were engaged in making screen prints, films, books and magazines. This team operated in a studio near Union Square in New York. The studio was called the Factory because it actually housed a production line of paintings. The original Factory was located in an old cap factory at 231 East 47th street (fourth floor). This studio grew into a meeting place for artists, gays, transvestites, junkies and photographic models. Anyone with any artistic pretensions was welcome there.
After a few years, Andy Warhol moved his entourage to an office building across the street; 33 Union street West (sixth floor). This second Factory was called the Office by Warhol himself because it housed not only a studio but also the editorial office of Interview magazine, founded by Warhol. Warhol became known worldwide during the Factory years with his screen prints. He made screen prints of any subject that lent itself to it. Warhol's oeuvre largely draws on American popular culture. He painted and drew banknotes, cartoon images, food, women's shoes, celebrities and everyday objects. For him, these motifs represented American cultural values. Paul Morrisey managed to persuade Warhol to become the manager of a rock band. It would be a commercial success if Warhol combined his talent for generating media attention with a sensational rock group. Warhol was not immediately enthusiastic but after Morrisey's insistence, he relented. Morrisey had seen the Velvet Underground perform at cafe bizarre. After Warhol went to see, he was immediately excited. He saw a group standing with good looks who, while tourists sat drinking, sang about Heroine and SM. Warhol made the Velvet Underground part of his multimedia show Exploding Plastic Inevatible. He also produced The Velvet Underground's first album with Nico. He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson mostly called the shots. The cover of the band's first album was Warhol's design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker. On 3 June 1968, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist author who hung around the Factory from time to time, turned up at the studio and shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya. Solanas had been rejected earlier that day at the Factory after she had requested the return of a script she had given Warhol for inspection. The script had apparently gone missing. Warhol was badly injured in the shooting and was even declared clinically dead in the hospital. He suffered the physical effects of the attack for the rest of his life and had to wear a corset to support his lower abdomen. The shooting had a major after-effect on Warhol's life and his art. The Factory became more tightly shielded and for many, this event marked the end of the Factory's wild years. That same day, Solanas turned herself in to the police and was arrested. Her explanation for this crime was that Warhol had become too much of an influence on her life. his incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996).
Between 1963 and 1968, Andy Warhol was a prolific filmmaker. He made more than one hundred and sixty films, 60 of which are accessible. The films share similarities with his paintings, which also feature many repetitions and subtle variations of images. In the 1970s, Warhol banned the distribution of his films, but in the 1980s, after much insistence, he gave permission to restore the films. In many of his films, the usual projection speed was reduced from 24 frames to 16 frames per second. This is slightly different from usual slow-motion, where the film is actually shot at a higher speed and played back at normal speed. Warhol's technique gives the individual images more emphasis. One of his most famous films, and also his first, Sleep (1963), shows for eight hours a sleeping man, John Giorno, with whom he had a relationship. Warhol filmed for about three hours each time until the sun rose at five in the morning. Filming took a month. The film Kiss (1963) shows close-ups of kissing couples for 55 minutes. Blow Job (1963) is a continuous close-up of the face of a man (DeVeren Bookwalter) being orally satisfied off-screen. According to Warhol's later assistant, Gerard Malanga, the invisible role featured poet and filmmaker Willard Maas, although Warhol gave a different reading on this in his memoir 'Popism'. Warhol met Malanga in 1964, and they made Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). That year, Warhol also made a 99-minute portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's famous curator Henry Geldzahler. During the filming, Warhol simply walked away. The film clearly shows how Geldzahler was bored and uncomfortable by the camera. By the end of the film, he collapsed completely. Also from 1964 is the film Eat, featuring Warhol's colleague and friend Robert Indiana, who is eating a mushroom very sedately and in a close-up. Another film, Empire (1964), consists of an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building in New York at dusk. Warhol's role-playing film Vinyl is an adaptation of the dystopian Anthony Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange'. Further films depict impromptu encounters with Factory hustlers such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico and Jackie Curtis. In the film Camp, legendary artist Jack Smith appears within the subculture. Many famous visitors to the Factory were put in front of the camera between 1963 and 1966, and filmed for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, the length of the standard roll of film. Usually, these were static portraits. By running the films more slowly, the expressions of the faces are greatly magnified. These shots resulted in about 500 films, called Screentests by Warhol. Among those portrayed are film star Dennis Hopper and pop star Lou Reed. The films were edited in various compositions and shown at Warhol exhibitions and in movie houses. Warhol's unorthodox approach is exemplified by Kitchen (1965). The actors do not know their roles by heart, but the screenplay is hidden in various places on the set. The scriptwriter whispers lines of dialogue from outside the frame. Snapshots are taken during filming. The set designer appears on the screen. Dialogue is drowned out by the sound of a mixer. There are long periods when nothing happens. There are two pairs of characters with the same names. Warhol was not interested in auctorial control but shifted the burden from the director to the actors and the shooting crew. He showed little interest in story intrigue, which he considered old-fashioned, or technical aspects of filmmaking. Warhol wanted to explore the borders between feigned action and the more authentic behaviour of non-actors, which is why he kept the camera running constantly: he didn't want to miss anything. In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. Warhol's most successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was innovative as it consisted of two simultaneously projected 16-mm rolls of film with divergent narratives. From the projection booth, the sound level for one film was raised to clarify that story while it was lowered for the other, after which the reels were reversed. Chelsea Girls became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theatre. Warhol also used this method of doubling the image in his screen prints of the early 1960s. The influence of film with multiple simultaneous layers and stories is noticeable in modern productions like Mike Figgis's Timecode and, indirectly, the first seasons of 24. Other important films include My Hustler (1965) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a homoerotic pseudo-Western. Blue Movie, a film in which Warhol's 'superstar' Viva has sex with a man for 33 minutes, was Warhol's last film of his own. After the film caused a scandal because of its liberal approach to sexuality, Viva managed to block its public screening for a long time. The film was not shown again in New York until 2005, for the first time in 30 years.
Compared to Andy Warhol's provocative work in the 1960s, the 1970s were artistically less productive, although Warhol became much more businesslike. He retired as a film director and left filmmaking to Paul Morrissey. The latter steered the approach to Warhol films more and more in the direction of ordinary B-movies with a clear narrative, for example, Flesh, Trash and Heat. These films, as well as the later films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, were much more normal than anything Warhol had ever made himself as a director. The star of these films was Joe Dallesandro, who was actually a Morrissey star rather than a true Andy Warhol superstar. Another film that caused a lot of furore as a Warhol film was Bad. starring Carroll Baker and Perry King. This film was actually directed by Jed Johnson. To increase the success of the later films, all of Warhol's earlier avant-garde films were withdrawn from circulation around 1972. Warhol founded Interview magazine in 1969. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. According to his assistant during his later years, Bob Colacello, Warhol mainly sought out wealthy people from whom he could secure portrait commissions, such as Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot and Michael Jackson, as well as lesser-known bank executives and collectors. In 1975 published his book 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol', in which he explained his down-to-earth ideas about art and life. Incidentally, he appeared in films and TV shows. When guesting on The Love Boat (1977), he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate Marion Ross, who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act. In 1976, Warhol began a daily routine. Every morning at 9 am, he would call Pat Hackett, whom he had hired to keep track of his expenses. What was initially supposed to be just a morning bookkeeping session soon turned into an extremely intimate exchange of private experiences between the two of them. Warhol, who was "addicted to the phone anyway", told Hackett about the rather delicate details of the New York scene and celebrities, a subject that had interested him since childhood. Like his time capsules, the conversations were for capturing a picture of the times. After his death, Hackett released some of these notes in the book 'The Andy Warhol Diaries'. In 2022, this book was made into a Netflix documentary. Andy Warhol worked for several years with Jean-Michel Basquiat a young artist in whom he recognised much of himself. The collaboration was equal, Warhol was past his prime and Basquiat had already established his name. This equality allowed them to collaborate on some 140 works, some of which were exhibited in a duo exhibition at the New York gallery Tony Shafrazi in 1985. The ensuing New York Times review made Basquiat Warhol's mascot after which their collaboration and also their friendship cooled. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of 58 in New York. He was recovering from a routine operation on his gallbladder when he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. Hospital staff had administered sleeping pills to him after the operation and had not sufficiently monitored his well-being. Consequently, lawyers for Warhol's next of kin sued the hospital for negligence. Warhol constantly delayed medical treatment because he was afraid of hospitals and disliked doctors. Warhol was buried at St John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. Yoko Ono was among those who gave a farewell address at his funeral. International auction house Sotheby's took nine days to auction off Warhol's immense collection of art and 'knickknacks'. The gross proceeds of this auction were about US$20 million. In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called 'Songs for Drella' as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhol's life.
Sources: Herman Hou (IMDb), Michael Brooke (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch postcard by Art Unlimted, Amsterdam, no. B 1609. Photo: Nat Finkelstein, 1966. Caption: Andy Warhol, white wall.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the 'Father of Pop Art' with his silk-screened pictures of Campbell's Soup cans and distorted images of Marilyn Monroe. He started directing films and most of his early work simply consisted of pointing the camera at something (a man asleep, the Empire State Building) and leaving it running, sometimes for hours. His films gradually grew more sophisticated, with scripts and soundtracks. They were generally performed by members of the Warhol "factory". In 1968, after a near-fatal shooting by an unstable fan, Warhol retired from direct involvement in filmmaking, and under former assistant Paul Morrissey, the Warhol films became increasingly commercial. Warhol spent the 1970s and 1980s as a major pop culture figure, constantly attending parties and providing patronage to younger artists.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. His parents were Ondrej (Andrew) Varhola and Julia Zavackyová Varholová, ethnic Lemko immigrants from the village of Miková in the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia). Ondrej, whose surname was originally written as Varhola, changed the spelling to Warhola when he emigrated to the US. He worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. His father, who travelled much on business trips, died when Warhol was 13. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. He showed artistic talent early on and went to study applied art in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. There, he stood out by drawing two self-portraits showing him picking his nose (Upper Torso Boy Picking Nose and Full Figure Boy Picking Nose). In 1949, Andy graduated and dropped the letter 'a' from his last name. Warhol moved to New York, where he met Tina Fredericks, the art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at the Hugo Gallery in New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. In 1956, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By 1959, he was a successful advertising designer with an average annual income of $65000 and almost annual medals and other professional awards. In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Superman. In the following years, Warhol started painting famous American products like Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles in large formats. He managed to interest the influential gallery owner and art collector Leo Castelli in his work. He started using the silk-screen technique, not merely to create art using everyday commercial mass-produced items as his motif but to create even his own art as mass-produced items. Warhol preferred to become an emotionless machine. He set himself up as chief of a team of art workers who were engaged in making screen prints, films, books and magazines. This team operated in a studio near Union Square in New York. The studio was called the Factory because it actually housed a production line of paintings. The original Factory was located in an old cap factory at 231 East 47th street (fourth floor). This studio grew into a meeting place for artists, gays, transvestites, junkies and photographic models. Anyone with any artistic pretensions was welcome there.
After a few years, Andy Warhol moved his entourage to an office building across the street; 33 Union street West (sixth floor). This second Factory was called the Office by Warhol himself because it housed not only a studio but also the editorial office of Interview magazine, founded by Warhol. Warhol became known worldwide during the Factory years with his screen prints. He made screen prints of any subject that lent itself to it. Warhol's oeuvre largely draws on American popular culture. He painted and drew banknotes, cartoon images, food, women's shoes, celebrities and everyday objects. For him, these motifs represented American cultural values. Paul Morrisey managed to persuade Warhol to become the manager of a rock band. It would be a commercial success if Warhol combined his talent for generating media attention with a sensational rock group. Warhol was not immediately enthusiastic but after Morrisey's insistence, he relented. Morrisey had seen the Velvet Underground perform at cafe bizarre. After Warhol went to see, he was immediately excited. He saw a group standing with good looks who, while tourists sat drinking, sang about Heroine and SM. Warhol made the Velvet Underground part of his multimedia show Exploding Plastic Inevatible. He also produced The Velvet Underground's first album with Nico. He essentially lent his name to their work and observed them in the recording studio, while Lou Reed and later Tom Wilson mostly called the shots. The cover of the band's first album was Warhol's design: a banana with a peel that was actually a peelable sticker. On 3 June 1968, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist author who hung around the Factory from time to time, turned up at the studio and shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya. Solanas had been rejected earlier that day at the Factory after she had requested the return of a script she had given Warhol for inspection. The script had apparently gone missing. Warhol was badly injured in the shooting and was even declared clinically dead in the hospital. He suffered the physical effects of the attack for the rest of his life and had to wear a corset to support his lower abdomen. The shooting had a major after-effect on Warhol's life and his art. The Factory became more tightly shielded and for many, this event marked the end of the Factory's wild years. That same day, Solanas turned herself in to the police and was arrested. Her explanation for this crime was that Warhol had become too much of an influence on her life. his incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996).
Between 1963 and 1968, Andy Warhol was a prolific filmmaker. He made more than one hundred and sixty films, 60 of which are accessible. The films share similarities with his paintings, which also feature many repetitions and subtle variations of images. In the 1970s, Warhol banned the distribution of his films, but in the 1980s, after much insistence, he gave permission to restore the films. In many of his films, the usual projection speed was reduced from 24 frames to 16 frames per second. This is slightly different from usual slow-motion, where the film is actually shot at a higher speed and played back at normal speed. Warhol's technique gives the individual images more emphasis. One of his most famous films, and also his first, Sleep (1963), shows for eight hours a sleeping man, John Giorno, with whom he had a relationship. Warhol filmed for about three hours each time until the sun rose at five in the morning. Filming took a month. The film Kiss (1963) shows close-ups of kissing couples for 55 minutes. Blow Job (1963) is a continuous close-up of the face of a man (DeVeren Bookwalter) being orally satisfied off-screen. According to Warhol's later assistant, Gerard Malanga, the invisible role featured poet and filmmaker Willard Maas, although Warhol gave a different reading on this in his memoir 'Popism'. Warhol met Malanga in 1964, and they made Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). That year, Warhol also made a 99-minute portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's famous curator Henry Geldzahler. During the filming, Warhol simply walked away. The film clearly shows how Geldzahler was bored and uncomfortable by the camera. By the end of the film, he collapsed completely. Also from 1964 is the film Eat, featuring Warhol's colleague and friend Robert Indiana, who is eating a mushroom very sedately and in a close-up. Another film, Empire (1964), consists of an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building in New York at dusk. Warhol's role-playing film Vinyl is an adaptation of the dystopian Anthony Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange'. Further films depict impromptu encounters with Factory hustlers such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico and Jackie Curtis. In the film Camp, legendary artist Jack Smith appears within the subculture. Many famous visitors to the Factory were put in front of the camera between 1963 and 1966, and filmed for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, the length of the standard roll of film. Usually, these were static portraits. By running the films more slowly, the expressions of the faces are greatly magnified. These shots resulted in about 500 films, called Screentests by Warhol. Among those portrayed are film star Dennis Hopper and pop star Lou Reed. The films were edited in various compositions and shown at Warhol exhibitions and in movie houses. Warhol's unorthodox approach is exemplified by Kitchen (1965). The actors do not know their roles by heart, but the screenplay is hidden in various places on the set. The scriptwriter whispers lines of dialogue from outside the frame. Snapshots are taken during filming. The set designer appears on the screen. Dialogue is drowned out by the sound of a mixer. There are long periods when nothing happens. There are two pairs of characters with the same names. Warhol was not interested in auctorial control but shifted the burden from the director to the actors and the shooting crew. He showed little interest in story intrigue, which he considered old-fashioned, or technical aspects of filmmaking. Warhol wanted to explore the borders between feigned action and the more authentic behaviour of non-actors, which is why he kept the camera running constantly: he didn't want to miss anything. In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. Warhol's most successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was innovative as it consisted of two simultaneously projected 16-mm rolls of film with divergent narratives. From the projection booth, the sound level for one film was raised to clarify that story while it was lowered for the other, after which the reels were reversed. Chelsea Girls became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theatre. Warhol also used this method of doubling the image in his screen prints of the early 1960s. The influence of film with multiple simultaneous layers and stories is noticeable in modern productions like Mike Figgis's Timecode and, indirectly, the first seasons of 24. Other important films include My Hustler (1965) and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a homoerotic pseudo-Western. Blue Movie, a film in which Warhol's 'superstar' Viva has sex with a man for 33 minutes, was Warhol's last film of his own. After the film caused a scandal because of its liberal approach to sexuality, Viva managed to block its public screening for a long time. The film was not shown again in New York until 2005, for the first time in 30 years.
Compared to Andy Warhol's provocative work in the 1960s, the 1970s were artistically less productive, although Warhol became much more businesslike. He retired as a film director and left filmmaking to Paul Morrissey. The latter steered the approach to Warhol films more and more in the direction of ordinary B-movies with a clear narrative, for example, Flesh, Trash and Heat. These films, as well as the later films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, were much more normal than anything Warhol had ever made himself as a director. The star of these films was Joe Dallesandro, who was actually a Morrissey star rather than a true Andy Warhol superstar. Another film that caused a lot of furore as a Warhol film was Bad. starring Carroll Baker and Perry King. This film was actually directed by Jed Johnson. To increase the success of the later films, all of Warhol's earlier avant-garde films were withdrawn from circulation around 1972. Warhol founded Interview magazine in 1969. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. According to his assistant during his later years, Bob Colacello, Warhol mainly sought out wealthy people from whom he could secure portrait commissions, such as Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot and Michael Jackson, as well as lesser-known bank executives and collectors. In 1975 published his book 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol', in which he explained his down-to-earth ideas about art and life. Incidentally, he appeared in films and TV shows. When guesting on The Love Boat (1977), he was nervous about the experience and turned to his castmate Marion Ross, who calmed him down and offered some advice on how to act. In 1976, Warhol began a daily routine. Every morning at 9 am, he would call Pat Hackett, whom he had hired to keep track of his expenses. What was initially supposed to be just a morning bookkeeping session soon turned into an extremely intimate exchange of private experiences between the two of them. Warhol, who was "addicted to the phone anyway", told Hackett about the rather delicate details of the New York scene and celebrities, a subject that had interested him since childhood. Like his time capsules, the conversations were for capturing a picture of the times. After his death, Hackett released some of these notes in the book 'The Andy Warhol Diaries'. In 2022, this book was made into a Netflix documentary. Andy Warhol worked for several years with Jean-Michel Basquiat a young artist in whom he recognised much of himself. The collaboration was equal, Warhol was past his prime and Basquiat had already established his name. This equality allowed them to collaborate on some 140 works, some of which were exhibited in a duo exhibition at the New York gallery Tony Shafrazi in 1985. The ensuing New York Times review made Basquiat Warhol's mascot after which their collaboration and also their friendship cooled. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of 58 in New York. He was recovering from a routine operation on his gallbladder when he died of cardiac arrest in his sleep. Hospital staff had administered sleeping pills to him after the operation and had not sufficiently monitored his well-being. Consequently, lawyers for Warhol's next of kin sued the hospital for negligence. Warhol constantly delayed medical treatment because he was afraid of hospitals and disliked doctors. Warhol was buried at St John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. Yoko Ono was among those who gave a farewell address at his funeral. International auction house Sotheby's took nine days to auction off Warhol's immense collection of art and 'knickknacks'. The gross proceeds of this auction were about US$20 million. In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made a CD album called 'Songs for Drella' as a tribute to Warhol with 15 songs about Warhol's life.
Sources: Herman Hou (IMDb), Michael Brooke (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
80 फीसदी पित्त की पथरी कोलेस्ट्रॉल के जमने या सख्त होने के कारण से होती है। पित्त की पथरी के कारण पेट में बहुत दर्द होता है, कई बार उल्टी भी हो सकती है। रोगी का खाना पचने में बहुत दिक्कत होने लगती है जिससे पेट में खाना पचता नही और भारीपन रहता है।
पित्त की थैली में पथरी होने के बारे में यही कहा जा...
Not to dwell on the whole "I had to have an unplanned gallbladder surgery"... but today was rather emotional for me. When I was in so much pain, I couldn't even begin to process the whole event. Now that it is over, I feel calmer and more appreciative of the little things.
It really does boil down to the little things.
Little things like just being able to lie down. Being able to take a deep breath (but don't ask me about coughing or sneezing yet).
My mother "babysat" for me today while my husband worked and we really talked. She wanted to see the four wounds on my abdomen. When I raised my shirt, she put her hands to her mouth with surprise. The swelling is better. The bruising isn't so nice.
But I know they will heal.
As we talked, I became overcome with emotion. There were several times that I was in so much pain that I truly thought it would be easier to just die (that does not mean that I wanted to die). I'm not a wimp with pain and not being able to get a grip on it scared me.
But that part of me is healing, too.
This afternoon, I walked around in the yard with the camera while Mili ran around yapping. The sun was shining. The cool wind was blowing.
While I am not well enough to crawl around on the ground with my camera yet, I am not frustrated. In time, that will heal, too.
African Ostrich
Afrikanischer Strauß
The common ostrich (Struthio camelus), or simply ostrich, is a species of flightless bird native to certain large areas of Africa and is the largest living bird. It is one of two extant species of ostriches, the only living members of the genus Struthio in the ratite order of birds. The other is the Somali ostrich (Struthio molybdophanes), which was recognized as a distinct species by BirdLife International in 2014 having been previously considered a very distinctive subspecies of ostrich.
The common ostrich belongs to the order Struthioniformes. Struthioniformes previously contained all the ratites, such as the kiwis, emus, rheas, and cassowaries. However, recent genetic analysis has found that the group is not monophyletic, as it is paraphyletic with respect to the tinamous, so the ostriches are now classified as the only members of the order. Phylogenetic studies have shown that it is the sister group to all other members of Palaeognathae and thus the flighted tinamous are the sister group to the extinct moa. It is distinctive in its appearance, with a long neck and legs, and can run for a long time at a speed of 55 km/h (34 mph) with short bursts up to about 70 km/h (43 mph), the fastest land speed of any bird. The common ostrich is the largest living species of bird and lays the largest eggs of any living bird (the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and the giant moa of New Zealand laid larger eggs).
The common ostrich's diet consists mainly of plant matter, though it also eats invertebrates and small reptiles. It lives in nomadic groups of 5 to 50 birds. When threatened, the ostrich will either hide itself by lying flat against the ground or run away. If cornered, it can attack with a kick of its powerful legs. Mating patterns differ by geographical region, but territorial males fight for a harem of two to seven females.
The common ostrich is farmed around the world, particularly for its feathers, which are decorative and are also used as feather dusters. Its skin is used for leather products and its meat is marketed commercially, with its leanness a common marketing point.
Description
Common ostriches usually weigh from 63 to 145 kilograms (139–320 lb), or as much as one to two adult humans. The Masai ostriches of East Africa (S. c. massaicus) average 115 kg (254 lb) in males and 100 kg (220 lb) in females, while the nominate subspecies, the North African ostrich (S. c. camelus), was found to average 111 kg (245 lb) in unsexed adults. Exceptional male ostriches (in the nominate subspecies) can weigh up to 156.8 kg (346 lb). At sexual maturity (two to four years), male common ostriches can be from 2.1 to 2.8 m (6 ft 11 in to 9 ft 2 in) in height, while female common ostriches range from 1.7 to 2.0 m (5 ft 7 in to 6 ft 7 in) tall. New chicks are fawn in color, with dark brown spots. During the first year of life, chicks grow at about 25 cm (9.8 in) per month. At one year of age, common ostriches weigh approximately 45 kilograms (99 lb) Their lifespan is up to 40–45 years.
The feathers of adult males are mostly black, with white primaries and a white tail. However, the tail of one subspecies is buff. Females and young males are grayish-brown and white. The head and neck of both male and female ostriches is nearly bare, with a thin layer of down. The skin of the female's neck and thighs is pinkish gray, while the male's is gray or pink dependent on subspecies.
The long neck and legs keep their head up to 2.8 m (9 ft) above the ground, and their eyes are said to be the largest of any land vertebrate – 50 mm (2.0 in) in diameter – helping them to see predators at a great distance. The eyes are shaded from sunlight from above. However, the head and bill are relatively small for the birds' huge size, with the bill measuring 12 to 14.3 cm (4.7 to 5.6 in).
Their skin varies in color depending on the subspecies, with some having light or dark gray skin and others having pinkish or even reddish skin. The strong legs of the common ostrich are unfeathered and show bare skin, with the tarsus (the lowest upright part of the leg) being covered in scales: red in the male, black in the female. The tarsus of the common ostrich is the largest of any living bird, measuring 39 to 53 cm (15 to 21 in) in length. The bird has just two toes on each foot (most birds have four), with the nail on the larger, inner toe resembling a hoof. The outer toe has no nail. The reduced number of toes is an adaptation that appears to aid in running, useful for getting away from predators. Common ostriches can run at a speed over 70 km/h (43 mph) and can cover 3 to 5 m (9.8 to 16.4 ft) in a single stride. The wings reach a span of about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in), and the wing chord measurement of 90 cm (35 in) is around the same size as for the largest flying birds.
The feathers lack the tiny hooks that lock together the smooth external feathers of flying birds, and so are soft and fluffy and serve as insulation. Common ostriches can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. In much of their habitat, temperatures vary as much as 40 °C (72 °F) between night and day. Their temperature control relies in part on behavioral thermoregulation. For example, they use their wings to cover the naked skin of the upper legs and flanks to conserve heat, or leave these areas bare to release heat. The wings also function as stabilizers to give better maneuverability when running. Tests have shown that the wings are actively involved in rapid braking, turning, and zigzag maneuvers. They have 50–60 tail feathers, and their wings have 16 primary, four alular, and 20–23 secondary feathers.
The common ostrich's sternum is flat, lacking the keel to which wing muscles attach in flying birds. The beak is flat and broad, with a rounded tip. Like all ratites, the ostrich has no crop, and it also lacks a gallbladder. They have three stomachs, and the caecum is 71 cm (28 in) long. Unlike all other living birds, the common ostrich secretes urine separately from feces. All other birds store the urine and feces combined in the coprodeum, but the ostrich stores the feces in the terminal rectum. They also have unique pubic bones that are fused to hold their gut. Unlike most birds, the males have a copulatory organ, which is retractable and 20 cm (8 in) long. Their palate differs from other ratites in that the sphenoid and palatal bones are unconnected.
Distribution and habitat
Common ostriches formerly occupied Africa north and south of the Sahara, East Africa, Africa south of the rainforest belt, and much of Asia Minor. Today common ostriches prefer open land and are native to the savannas and Sahel of Africa, both north and south of the equatorial forest zone. In southwest Africa they inhabit the semi-desert or true desert. Farmed common ostriches in Australia have established feral populations. The Arabian ostriches in the Near and Middle East were hunted to extinction by the middle of the 20th century. Attempts to reintroduce the common ostrich into Israel have failed. Common ostriches have occasionally been seen inhabiting islands on the Dahlak Archipelago, in the Red Sea near Eritrea.
Research conducted by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in India found molecular evidence that ostriches lived in India 25,000 years ago. DNA tests on fossilized eggshells recovered from eight archaeological sites in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh found 92% genetic similarity between the eggshells and the North African ostrich, so these could have been fairly distant relatives.
Ostriches are farmed in Australia. Many escaped, however, and feral ostriches now roam the Australian outback.
Behaviour and ecology
Common ostriches normally spend the winter months in pairs or alone. Only 16 percent of common ostrich sightings were of more than two birds. During breeding season and sometimes during extreme rainless periods ostriches live in nomadic groups of five to 100 birds (led by a top hen) that often travel together with other grazing animals, such as zebras or antelopes. Ostriches are diurnal, but may be active on moonlit nights. They are most active early and late in the day. The male common ostrich territory is between 2 and 20 km2 (0.77 and 7.72 sq mi).
With their acute eyesight and hearing, common ostriches can sense predators such as lions from far away. When being pursued by a predator, they have been known to reach speeds in excess of 70 km/h (43 mph) and can maintain a steady speed of 50 km/h (31 mph), which makes the common ostrich the world's fastest two-legged animal. When lying down and hiding from predators, the birds lay their heads and necks flat on the ground, making them appear like a mound of earth from a distance, aided by the heat haze in their hot, dry habitat.
When threatened, common ostriches run away, but they can cause serious injury and death with kicks from their powerful legs. Their legs can only kick forward.
(Wikipedia)
Der Afrikanische Strauß (Struthio camelus) ist eine Vogelart aus der Familie der Strauße und ist nach dem eng verwandten Somalistrauß der größte lebende Vogel der Erde. Während er heute nur noch in Afrika südlich der Sahara heimisch ist, war er in früheren Zeiten auch in Westasien beheimatet. Für den Menschen war der Strauß wegen seiner Federn, seines Fleisches und seines Leders seit jeher von Interesse, was in vielen Regionen zur Ausrottung des Vogels führte.
Merkmale
Die Männchen des Straußes sind bis zu 250 Zentimeter hoch und haben ein Gewicht bis zu 135 Kilogramm. Weibchen sind kleiner: Sie sind 175 bis 190 Zentimeter hoch und 90 bis 110 Kilogramm schwer. Die Männchen, Hähne genannt, haben ein schwarzes Gefieder. Davon setzen sich die Schwungfedern der Flügel und der Schwanz weiß ab. Die Weibchen, Hennen genannt, tragen dagegen ein erdbraunes Gefieder; Flügel und Schwanz sind bei ihnen heller und haben eine weißlichgraue Farbe. Das Jugendkleid ähnelt dem Aussehen des Weibchens, ohne die charakteristische Absetzung von Flügeln und Schwanz. Frisch geschlüpfte Küken sind dagegen rehbraun, ihr Daunenkleid weist dunkle Tupfen auf. Die Daunen des Rückengefieders sind igelartig borstig aufgestellt. Die nackten Beine sowie der Hals sind je nach Unterart grau, graublau oder rosafarben. Beim Männchen leuchtet die Haut während der Brutzeit besonders intensiv.
Der Strauß hat einen langen, überwiegend nackten Hals. Der Kopf ist in Relation zum Körper klein. Die Augen sind mit einem Durchmesser von 5 Zentimetern die größten aller Landwirbeltiere. Das Becken der Strauße ist ventral durch eine Schambeinfuge (Symphysis pubica) geschlossen. Dies ist nur bei straußenartigen Vögeln so. Es wird von den drei spangenartigen Beckenknochen (Darmbein, Sitzbein, Schambein) gebildet, zwischen denen große Öffnungen bestehen, die durch Bindegewebe und Muskulatur verschlossen sind. Der Strauß hat sehr lange Beine mit einer kräftigen Laufmuskulatur. Seine Höchstgeschwindigkeit beträgt etwa 70 km/h; eine Geschwindigkeit von 50 km/h kann der Strauß etwa eine halbe Stunde halten. Als Anpassung an die hohe Laufgeschwindigkeit besitzt der Fuß, einzigartig bei Vögeln, nur zwei Zehen (Didactylie). Zudem können die Beine als wirkungsvolle Waffen eingesetzt werden: Beide Zehen tragen Krallen, von denen die an der größeren, inneren Zehe bis zu 10 cm lang ist.
Stimme
Zu den typischsten Lautgebungen des Straußes gehört ein Ruf des Männchens, der dem Brüllen eines Löwen ähnelt. Ein tiefes „bu bu buuuuu huuu“ wird mehrmals wiederholt. Der Laut wird bei der Balz und beim Austragen von Rangstreitigkeiten ausgestoßen. Daneben sind Strauße beiderlei Geschlechts zu pfeifenden, schnaubenden und knurrenden Lauten in der Lage. Nur junge Straußenküken geben auch melodischere Rufe von sich, die dazu dienen, das Muttertier auf sich aufmerksam zu machen.
Verbreitung und Lebensraum
Das natürliche Verbreitungsgebiet des Straußes ist Afrika, insbesondere Ost- und Südafrika. Ausgestorben ist er auf der Arabischen Halbinsel, in Westasien sowie in Afrika nördlich der Sahara.
Strauße leben in offenen Landschaften wie Savannen und Wüsten. Sie bevorzugen Habitate mit kurzem Gras und nicht zu hohem Baumbestand; wo das Gras höher als einen Meter wächst, fehlen Strauße. Gelegentlich dringen sie in Buschland vor, bleiben dort aber nicht lange, da sie an schneller Fortbewegung gehindert werden und dort nicht weit blicken können. Reine Wüsten ohne Vegetation eignen sich nicht als ständiger Lebensraum, werden aber auf Wanderungen durchquert. Weil Strauße ihren gesamten Flüssigkeitsbedarf aus der Nahrung beziehen können, benötigen sie keinen Zugang zum Wasser, und lange Trockenperioden sind ebenfalls kein Problem für sie.
Afrikanische Strauße wurden erstmals 1869 nach Australien eingeführt, weitere Importe folgten in den 1880er Jahren. Mit den importierten Straußen sollten in Australien Farmen für die Belieferung der Modeindustrie mit Federn aufgebaut werden. Bereits vor der Jahrhundertwende gab es verwilderte Strauße, deren Ansiedlung auf einigen Farmen gezielt gefördert wurde. 1890 lebten 626 Strauße in der Nähe von Port Augusta und der Stadt Meningie, 1912 betrug die Zahl 1.345 Individuen. Nachdem die Nachfrage nach Straußenfedern nach Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges zusammenbrach, kam es zu weiteren Freilassungen, die Zahl der ausgewilderten Strauße ist jedoch nicht bekannt. Im australischen Bundesstaat Western Australia konnten sich Strauße freilebend nicht etablieren, in New South Wales vermehrten sich in den Regionen, in denen Strauße ausgewildert wurden, diese Strauße in den ersten Jahren, der Bestand blieb dann über einige Zeit stabil und nahm dann stetig ab. In vielen Regionen, in denen Strauße über mehrere Jahre lebten, waren sie in der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts wieder verschwunden. Nördlich von Port Augusta gab es in den 1970er Jahren noch einen Bestand von 150 bis 200 Straußen. Während der langanhaltenden Dürre von 1980 bis 1982 starben die meisten dieser Vögel. Nach 1982 wurden dort nur noch 25 bis 30 Strauße gezählt.
Mit der Unterart Struthio camelus camelus wurden im 20. Jahrhundert in Vorderasien partiell Aussiedlungsversuche unternommen. Eine Population lebt im Mahazat-as-Sayd-Schutzgebiet in Saudi-Arabien, eine weitere im Reservat Hai Bar in Israel.
Lebensweise
Strauße sind tagaktive Vögel, die besonders in den Dämmerungsstunden aktiv sind. In Zeiten mit knappem Nahrungsangebot müssen sie große Wanderungen unternehmen und sind in der Lage, in der Mittagssonne zu wandern. Nachts ruhen sie, wobei sie für gewöhnlich die Hälse aufrecht und die Augen geschlossen halten. Nur für kurze Tiefschlafphasen werden Hals und Kopf auf das Rückengefieder oder auf den Boden gebettet.
Außerhalb der Brutzeit leben Strauße für gewöhnlich in lockeren Verbänden, die zwei bis fünf, in manchen Gegenden aber auch hundert und mehr Tiere umfassen können. In Wüstengegenden sammeln sich bis zu 680 Tiere um Wasserlöcher. Der Zusammenhalt der Straußenverbände ist locker, denn die Mitglieder der Gruppe kommen und gehen nach Belieben. Oft sieht man auch einzelne Strauße. Trotzdem gibt es innerhalb der Gruppen klare Hierarchien. Rangstreitigkeiten werden meistens durch Drohlaute und Drohgebärden geregelt; dabei werden Flügel und Schwanzfedern aufgestellt und der Hals aufrecht gehalten. Der rangniedrigere Vogel zeigt seine Unterwerfung, indem er den Hals U-förmig biegt und den Kopf nach unten hält; auch Flügel und Schwanz zeigen nach unten. Selten kann eine Rangstreitigkeit auch in einen kurzen Kampf münden.
Zur Fortpflanzungszeit lösen sich die losen Verbände auf und geschlechtsreife Männchen beginnen mit dem Sammeln eines Harems.
Nutzung
Als im 18. Jahrhundert Straußenfedern als Hutschmuck der reichen Damenwelt Europas in Mode kamen, begann die Jagd auf die Vögel solche Ausmaße anzunehmen, dass sie den Bestand der Art bedrohte. In Westasien, Nordafrika und Südafrika wurde der Strauß restlos ausgerottet. Im 19. Jahrhundert begann man, Strauße in Farmen zu züchten, da frei lebende Strauße extrem selten geworden waren. Die erste dieser Farmen entstand 1838 in Südafrika. In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts wurden immer mehr Straußenfarmen auch in Europa und Nordamerika eröffnet. In Teilen Südamerikas erlebt die Straußenzucht seit einigen Jahren einen Boom. Vor allem in Brasilien, Kolumbien, Peru und Bolivien gelten die Farmen als lukrative alternative Erwerbsquelle.
Heute spielen die Federn in der Straußenzucht kaum noch eine Rolle. Man züchtet die Strauße nun vor allem wegen ihres Fleisches und der graublauen Haut, aus der man Leder herstellt. Das Fleisch des Straußes hat einen ganz eigenen Geschmack, der am ehesten mit Rindfleisch oder dem des Bison zu vergleichen ist. Aus den Schalen der Eier fertigt man Lampenschirme und Schmuckgegenstände.
In Südafrika (Weltmarktanteil: 75 %) werden je 45 % der Einnahmen aus der Straußenzucht durch Fleisch und Haut erzielt, 10 % durch Federn. In Europa wird durch Fleisch 75 % und die Haut 25 % eingenommen.
Als Reit- und Zugtiere werden Strauße erst in jüngerer Zeit als Touristenattraktion genutzt. Dies hat jedoch nirgendwo eine kulturelle Tradition.
Der Umgang mit Straußen ist nicht ungefährlich. Vor allem die Hähne sind während der Brutzeit angriffslustig. Eindringlinge werden dabei mit Fußtritten traktiert. Die Wucht und vor allem die scharfen Krallen können dabei zu schweren Verletzungen oder gar zum Tode führen.
Der Arabische Strauß wurde am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts ausgerottet. Diese Unterart war in Palästina und Syrien noch bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg recht häufig, wurde dann aber durch motorisierte Jagden mit Schusswaffen vernichtet. Das letzte wild lebende Tier starb 1966 in Jordanien. 1973 wurden Strauße in der Wüste Negev in Israel freigesetzt, wodurch sie dort inzwischen wieder heimisch sind. Es handelt sich jedoch um Nordafrikanische Strauße, also eine andere Unterart.
Die Art insgesamt ist nicht bedroht, da sie vor allem in Ostafrika noch häufig ist. Regional ist der Strauß jedoch selten, so in Westafrika.
Etymologie
Das Wort Strauß stammt vom altgriechischen strouthiōn (στρουθίον), was so viel wie ‚großer Spatz‘ bedeutet. Die Griechen bezeichneten den Strauß auch als ‚Kamelspatz‘ (στρουθοκάμηλος strouthokamēlos), was den wissenschaftlichen Namen der Art, Struthio camelus, erklärt.
Auffallend ist, dass der Strauß in verschiedenen Sprachen den verdeutlichenden Zusatz Vogel trägt. Dem deutschen Vogel Strauß entspricht so der niederländische struisvogel und der schwedische fågeln struts. Die englische Bezeichnung ostrich, das französische autruche und das portugiesische und spanische avestruz gehen alle gleichermaßen auf das lateinische avis struthio zurück – avis bedeutet ebenfalls nichts anderes als ‚Vogel‘.
(Wikipedia)
On EXPLORE April 11, 2009
Best to: View On Black
This photo was shot two days ago while Taty and me were strolling along a bicycle path to shoot some pink blossoming trees - all the idea of Astrid - Taty's friend. It was great to have her go out even if for less than an hour or so. We are waiting for the results, but it seems that her gallbladder is ill as well. I'll upload some more photos tomorrow before getting back to work.
Wishing to you all a lovely Easter from Taty and me, Willem.
This capture is only cropped with no other post-processing used than the added signature.
Known for Printmaking, painting, cinema, photography
Andy Warhol ( born Andrew Warhola; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator. After exhibiting his work in several galleries in the late 1950s, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons. He promoted a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with inspiring the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". In the late 1960s he managed and produced the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founded Interview magazine. He authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He lived openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement. After gallbladder surgery, Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia in February 1987 at the age of 58.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster); his works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. A 2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol
Warhol was born in Central-Oakland, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
7th February 1980: American painter, film-maker and one of the leaders of the Pop Art movement Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987). (Photo by John Minihan/Evening Standard/Getty Images) orientalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Andrey-Varg...
Artwork by TudioJepegii
except for a bit of rain, the past couple weeks have been one of the mildest autumns we've enjoyed. After a few complications with my ruptured bile duct, then a blood infection that was hiding and took a while to find in a lab culture, and a week on IV antibiotics my gallbladder was finally evicted. I was hoping the past many months of ill health were coming to a close. Unfortunately, after a week of testing negative while admitted to hospital, I tested positive for covid on the 7th day. That cancelled my last ERCP to remove the blockages and shunt put in last month. Somewhat on hold with getting all fixed, but hoping to end 2022 much healthier. Through this all Halle Lu has been amazingly careful and attentive with me. Today I went outside for the first time and sat in a lawn chair with my real camera. Had my favourite 70-200mm lens on the Canon which I realized instantly was a mistake. Halle Lu was so excited to have me outside with her again she wouldn't go more than 10" away from me. Had to call my husband outside to lure her away. You can tell by the slight torquing of her front paw she held still for only a 1/2 second then raced back to me. She had a blast! I'm itching to be well enough to hike, play and be active with her again.
Halle Lu trivia: my husband Don needed to use chicken breast and lots of calling to get Halle Lu far enough away from me to take her pic
hearts′ empath ♥ brick-red ♥ brecciated jasper (aka poppy jasper) puffed in the shape of a heart-symbol was 'empathed', i.e. overdubbed & admixed with a 2nd tricolor broken - heart - festoon by means of the scanning process.
The object was scanned in the middle of the night with all lights switched off - nevertheless the 'empath' of the halogen - scanner - light glitched an interesting (but somehow embarassing) oranje-wit-blauw halo (aka the prince's flag in the Netherlands) festoon onto the grinded surface.
Obviously the macroscopic, black hematite-Schlieren became admixtures to the igneous extrusive jasper during the sublimation-process of the lava.
The Tricolour of The Netherlands is the oldest tricolour, first appearing in 1572 as the Prince's Flag in orange–white–blue. Soon the more famous red–white–blue began appearing — it is however unknown why, though many stories are known. After 1630 the red–white–blue was the most commonly seen flag. The Dutch Tricolour has inspired many flags but most notably those of Russia, India, New York City, and France, which spread the tricolour concept even further. The Flag of the Netherlands is also the only flag in the world that is adapted for some uses, when the occasion has a connection to the royal house of the Netherlands an orange ribbon is added.(wikipedia).
JASPER as a TRIGONAL crystal-system
► MINERAL Ein Mineral ist ein Element oder eine chemische Verbindung welche normal kristallin ist und welche als Resultat eines geologischen Prozesses gebildet wurde.
JASPIS als eine Varietät von Chalcedon (Varietät des Mineral Quarz [SiO2 = silicon dioxide, trigonales Kristallsystem in rhomboedrischer Aufstellung]) stellt kein eigenständiges Mineral dar, sondern ist eine dichte, lichtundurchlässige, mikrokristalline Varietät, normalerweise rot, braun oder gelb und durch Oxide des Eisens gefärbt.
► Silex (Roter Jaspis) - Farbe Ziegelrot bis Braunrot. Zu ihm zählt auch der rote Brekzien-Jaspis. Die Farbe entsteht hier durch Eisenoxid aus überwiegend dreiwertigem Eisen.
JASPER as a healing crystal
► JASPER (hardness: 6,5 - 7,0; density: 2,6 g/sm3)
The name of the stone goes back to the Greek word jaspis - "motley", "speckled". The coloration of Jasper can be red, dark blue, green, violet, white and even black.
Medical properties. In olden time jasper considered as means from an epilepsy and a fever. People believed that the jasper can improve sight, cure an epilepsy and remove a toothache. Famous Avitsenna advised to carry jasper on a stomach, to prevent illnesses of a stomach.
Magic properties. It is considered that ornaments from a jasper promote adjustment of relations and protect from ill fate. The jasper is capable to give to the owner determination and to make it more wisely.
Jaspis is crudely, in-blown up, in balls and Geschieben, rarely in grape/cluster or to shapes. It can contain up to 20%
admixtures of strange substances such as alumina, ferric oxide, iron hydroxide and manganese hydroxide. Since the quantity and distribution of these admixtures decided on the appearance, are extraordinarily large the color and Jaspis.
ancient times: Jaspis was in the antiquity with the Greeks and Romans a most outstanding mineral. In the course of the centuries the Jaspis at meaning and appreciation lost and at present to Siegelsteinen, doses, vases, desk tops, cans, mosaic, architectural work etc. was used.
Bible: That the Apostel Johannes revealed Himmli Jerusalem (revealing 21, 18-20) exhibited walls from Jaspis, as "the first reason", all other jewels follow only after it.
Middle Ages In the late Middle Ages famous natural scientists Konrad Gesner delivered: "The Jaspis is a sign before the chest, the sword in the hand and the queue under the feet. It protects against all diseases and renews spirit, heart and understanding."With the ancient Greeks one believed that the Jaspis gives internal harmony to its carrier and women have a harmonyful pregnancy by carrying the stone. In addition the red Jaspis helps best with nausea and excessive Esslust during the pregnancy and can facilitate relieving - a marvelous stone for all ranges of the abdomen.
► Brekzienjaspis @samaki.de
Heilwirkungen auf die Psyche: hilft körpereigene positive Energien zu sammeln und negative Energien abzubauen, durch diesen Ausgleich in der Seele verhilft er uns zu einem harmonievolleren, beschwingteren und glücklicheren Alltag, hilft neue Lebensenergien zu aktivieren; dieser Heilstein gilt als insgesamt sehr stärkend, hilft uns, in gutem Kontakt zur Erde zu bleiben, bzw uns zu erden; fördert den Sinn für Realität und wirkt dabei gleichzeitig unterstützend, seinen Lebensweg zu gehen; als Steinewasser, in Kombination mit Bergkristall, ein guter Begleiter durch einen aktiven (auch körperlich anstrengenden) Tag.
Heilwirkungen auf den Körper: hat eine stark blutstillende Wirkung, hilft bei Schlafstörungen durch Erdstrahlen und Wasserstrahlen (Stein körperfern unter das Bett legen), bewahrt vor einer Unterfunktionen der Schilddrüse, ist gut für Blut und Knochen (kräftigend).
Chakra: 3. Chakra, Solarplexus-Chakra, mit Themen wie "innerer Weisheit", sich selbst entdecken, und 1. Chakra, Wurzel-Chakra, hilft uns, am Boden der Tatsachen zu bleiben und von dort in die heilsame Mediation zu gehen, uns zu öffnen. Sternzeichen: alle Sternzeichen.
► Brecciated Jasper Hearts@healingcrystals
The Hematite within Brecciated Jasper acts as a deflector of negativity. While it is said that Brecciated Jasper can stimulate the rise of the Kundalini, it has a tendency to add stability to this energy. It is a stone of strength and vitality and can be used to help bring mental clarity and focus to a previously scattered life. It is also used for overcoming sexual guilt or shame, and can be helpful for those who are recovering from any kind of illness. You can use a Brecciated Jasper Heart as a "worry-stone" to take advantage of its calming and nurturing properties. These Brecciated Jasper Hearts can also be used during Meditations, held in your client's hand during a session, or just to carry in your pocket.
► poppy jasper @kosmix [_210810_]
Poppy Jasper is a poppy-patterned variety of orbicular jasper originating in South Africa. In medieval times, warriors often carried poppy jasper in belief it would bring them courage in the heat of oncoming battle. It belongs to the quartz group and is a brecciated jasper, composed of approximately 20% extraneous materials due to the gaps left between dry, iron enriched clay when the rock is first formed.
While poppy jasper is often multi-colored due to foreign deposits, it still is predominately red, black and gray in appearance. The black and gray often act to form a sort of background behind "blooms" of red-orange color that distinctly resemble that of a poppy plant, hence the name.
Residents of the U.S. may find this particular form of jasper in Morgan Hill, California. It is considered a rare stone and is well sought-after collectible by gem connoisseurs at a going rate of $20-30/lb.
► Brecciated Jasper Puffed Heart This jasper veined with hematite is an excellent aid to keeping your feet on the ground and attaining emotional stability. It also promotes mental clarity.
► Poppy aka Brecciated Jasper Metaphysically Poppy Jasper is the supreme nurturer. Brings tranquility and wholeness, protection and grounding. Aligns chakras, facilitates Shamanic journeys and dream recall. Rectifies unjust situations. Strengthens the circulatory system and is sometimes referred to as the "Stone of health". It has the qualities of enhancing organizational abilities, relaxation, and a sense of wholeness. It is occasionally used to assist when dowsing. It aligns the chakras and balances the yin-yang, physical, and emotional. It is a stone of protection, and is used in particular for protection during astral travel. It encourages attunement and communication with animals and can help with animal allergies, plus other allergies. It brings happiness and a good outlook on life and eases stress. It can help increase physical endurance and ward off dehydration. It is also a good stone for grounding oneself and is associated with the root chakra.
► Jasper @s a mineral
Jasper is an opaque variety of Chalcedony occurring in all colors. It is sometimes impure, containing organic material and iron oxides. Jasper is a favorite among amateur gem cutters, for its abundance and diversity is great. Some Jasper is banded, and these banded Jaspers are also Agates. When Jasper does not exhibit interesting colors or patterns, it is known as Chert. There are many types of Jasper, and many distinct names are given to each type. Most names are only used locally, and new names are made up every year. Below is a list of many of the Jasper names seen on the market. The second list contains Jasper types that are locally named for the area they occur in.
Brecciated Jasper: Red and black, with some white tracing:
► Support during times of stress - Facing problems - Courage - Energy
The colours are simply amazing with endless puzzle patterns of reds, whites, blacks and earthtones. Jasper is a very nurturing gemstone that helps to uplift you and support you during times of stress. It's beneficial in bringing tranquility and wholeness to you. Jasper helps to unite all aspects of your life and also helps others around you to open up to the idea of helping each other as well. It helps to protect you and ground your energy - if you work with Chakra it helps to absorb negative energy and in turn cleanse and align the Chakra and aura.
Jasper is also a stone of shamanic journeys and helping you to remember your dreams. It is a stone of balance for the yin and yang. If you dowse? This may be a wonderful tool to help you. Jasper also helps to clear electromagnetic and environmental pollution that includes radiation.
This gem also helps you to feel more determined and brings to you the courage to face problems. It helps you to be honest with yourself. Jasper also aids with quick thinking and organization. If you have projects on the go and need a little boost, Jasper can help stimulate your imagination and transform those ideas into great actions. Jasper also is beneficial with boosting your energy levels. In relationships, it can help pleasurable situations. If you have been feeling run down, this stone may help to lift and re-energize yourself.
Brecciated Jasper is also an excellent gemstone for helping you to keep your feet in the ground in a world full of turmoil. It can help to promote mental clarity.
► Poppy, or Brecciated, Jasper Heart (from mother earth to you) is beautiful not only for the colors and patterns it reveals, but also for its meaning. Jasper is a powerful healer, particularly of the physical body. It strengthens the gallbladder, liver, and bladder. A wonderful treat from Mother Earth for everyone you love (and don't forget yourself)!
► @phoenixorion Jasper is an opaque form of Chalcedony, and has been a stone for kings and shamans.
..., also spelled as hæmatite, is the mineral form of iron(III) oxide (α-Fe2O3), one of several iron oxides. It crystallizes in rhombohedral systems. Colors: black to steel or silver-gray, brown to reddish brown, or red.
Hematite (mineral information ... is rather variable in its appearence it can be in reddish brown, ocherous masses, dark silvery-grey scaled masses, silvery-grey crystals, and dark-grey masses, to name a few. What they all have in common is a rust-red streak. GEOLOGICAL SETTING: Large ore bodies of hematite are usually of sedimentary origin; also found in high-grade ore bodies in metamorphic rocks due to contact metasomatism, and occasionally as a sublimate on igneous extrusive rocks ("lavas") as a result of volcanic activity. It is also found coloring soils red all over the planet...
SILPHION & ARKESILAOS
► σίλφιον aus epichorisch σίλφι oder σίρφι, lat.: sirpe, laserpicium = lac +sirpicium; außerdem sind besondere griechische Namen für Teile der Pflanze überliefert.) Name einer in der Cyrenaica wachsenden Pflanze und besonders des aus dessen Stengel und Wurzel gewonnenen harzigen Milchsaftes, der vom 6.Jahrhundert v. Chr. eine sehr hochgeschätzte Droge war und als Ausfuhrartikel die Grundlage des Reichtums von --> Kyrene bildete. Auch in der hellenistischen Zeit war der S-Handel gewinnbringend (Plaut, Rud. 630 Catull. 7,4), aber vom Beginn der Kaiserzeit an war das echte S. vom Markt verschwunden, und man behalf sich mit minderwertigem S. aus dem Orient. Trotz erhaltener Beschreibungen bei Theophrast u.a. (s. bes. Plin. nat. 19, 38-46) und Abbildungen auf Münzen von Kyrene und auf der Pariser Arkesilaos-Schale (auf der er die Verpackung und Verschiffung von S. beaufsichtigt) und vieler Bemühungen von Historikern und Botanikern (eine ganze Literatur!) ist die sichere Bestimmung des S. nicht gelungen; doch scheint es sich um eine mit Scorodosma foetidum, welches Asa foetida liefert, nahe verwandte Pflanze zu handeln; obwohl S. einen zwar sehr intensiven, aber doch angenehmen Geruch und Geschmack gehabt haben soll. Über die Verwendung von S. sind die antiken Angaben spärlich. Stengel und Blätter wurden als Gemüse gegessen, und die Droge diente als Gewürz und medizinisch als Allheilmittel... {Hehn-Schrader Kulturpflanzen (8) 112. Steier, RE III A 103-114} Konrad Ziegler in (Der Kleine Pauly, dtv, Band 5)
► Arkesilaos 1. Sohn Battos I. (Hdt 4, 159), König von Kyrene 599-583 (?) 2. Aresilaos II. (565/60-555/50) war der Enkel von Arkesilaos I. Er vertrieb nach seiner Thronbesteigung seine Brüder, welche daraufhin die Libyer um Kyrene aufwiegelten, bei Leukon lockten sie ihn in einen Hinterhalt, wobei er 7000 Hopliten verlor. Kurz daraufhin verübte sein mit ihm verfehdeter Bruder Laarchos ein Attentat auf ihn; seine Witwe rächte ihn jedoch wenig später (Hdt. 4, 160, Plut.mul.virt. 260 E ff. S. Mazzarino Fra Oriente e Occidente 1947, 153, 313-317). Trotz seiner kurzen Herrschaft (565/60-555/50) haben Künstler und Dichter ihm gehuldigt: Eugammon von Kyrene widmete ihm sein Epos 'Telegonia', die Arkesilaos-Schale stellt ihn bei der Beaufsichtigung des Verladens Exportartikels Silphion dar.
► Silphium @wikipedia
Silphium (also known as silphion or laser) was a plant of the genus Ferula. Generally considered to be an extinct "giant fennel" (although some claim that the plant is really Ferula tingitana), it once formed the crux of trade from the ancient city of Cyrene for its use as a rich seasoning and as a medicine. It was so critical to the Cyrenian economy that most of their coins bore a picture of the plant.
Silphium was an important species as evidenced by the Egyptians and Knossos Minoans developing a specific glyph to represent the Silphium plant.
The valuable product was the resin (laser, laserpicium, or lasarpicium) of the plant. It was harvested in a manner similar to asafoetida, a plant with similar enough qualities to silphium that Romans, including the geographer Strabo, used the same word to describe both.
Aside from its uses in Greco-Roman cooking (as in recipes by Apicius), many medical uses were ascribed to the plant. It was said that it could be used to treat cough, sore throat, fever, indigestion, aches and pains, warts, and all kinds of maladies. Chief among its medical uses, according to Pliny the Elder, was its role as an herbal contraceptive. Given that many species in the parsley family have estrogenic properties, and some (such as wild carrot) have been found to work as an abortifacient, it is quite possible that the plant was pharmacologically active in the prevention or termination of pregnancy. Legend said that it was a gift from the god Apollo. It was used widely by most ancient Mediterranean cultures; the Romans considered it "worth its weight in denarii."
Connection with the heart symbol
There has been some speculation about the connection between silphium and the traditional heart shape (♥). The symbol is remarkably similar to the Egyptian "heart soul" (ib). The sexual nature of that concept, combined with the widespread use of silphium in ancient Egypt for birth control, and the fact that the seeds of silphium are shaped like a heart as shown in the left illustration, leads to speculation that the character for ib may have been derived from the shape of the silphium seed.
Contemporaneous writings help tie silphium to sexuality and love, as laserpicium makes an appearance in a poem (Catullus 7) of Catullus to his lover Lesbia. As well as in Pausanias' Description of Greece in which he says "For it so happened that his maiden daughter was living in it. By the next day this maiden and all her girlish apparel had disappeared, and in the room were found images of the Dioscuri, a table, and silphium upon it."
► The Secret of the Heart @ heartsmith
There are a few ancient symbols that recur through the ages. One of these symbols - the heart - means many things to many people. Just how did the stylized heart shape become the icon for love and the human soul? Let's work our way back in history:
The heart symbol as we know it today, was popularized in the Victorian era over a hundred years ago. They loved the romantic heart shape and embellished it in many ways; but they didn't invent it. Where did it come from?
"Silphium has left its mark in modern society in a way that has not previously been recognized. Have you ever wondered why the human heart - the repository and the embodiment of romantic love - is always drawn stylized instead of in the natural shape of the human heart organ? The answer is rooted in the ancient function of Silphium! And the connection between this artistic convention and Silphium is found in the coinage of Cyrene, which features a seed pod of the revered plant." (Emilio N Favority and Kurt Baty. The Celator, Vol 9, No.2)
► Asafoetida (Pers. انگدان Angedan).
MEDICAL Apps: Asafoetida reduces the growth of indigenous microflora in the gut. fighting flu - Asafoetida was used in 1918 to fight the Spanish influenza pandemic. Scientists at the Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan report that the roots of Asafoetida produces natural antiviral drug compounds that kill the swine flu virus, H1N1. In an article published in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Natural Products, the researchers said the compounds "may serve as promising lead components for new drug development" against this type of flu. contraceptive/abortifacient - Asafoetida has also been reported to have contraceptive/abortifacient activity, and is related (and considered an inferior substitute to) the ancient Ferula species Silphium. antiepileptic - Asafoetida oleo-gum-resin has been reported to be antiepileptic in classical Unani as well as ethnobotanical literature.
HUNTING apps (bait): John C Duval reported in 1936 that the odor of asafoetida is attractive to the wolf, a matter of common knowledge, he says, along the Texas/Mexico border. It is also used as one of several possible scent baits, most notably for catfish and pike.
MAGICK apps: In Jamaica, asafoetida is traditionally applied to a baby's anterior fontanel (Jamaican patois "mole") in order to prevent spirits (Jamaican patois "duppies") from entering the baby through the fontanel. In the African-American Hoodoo tradition, asafoetida is used in magic spells as it is believed to have the power both to protect and to curse. In ceremonial magick especially from The Key of Solomon the King, it is used to protect the magus from daemonic forces and to evoke the same and bind them.
Asant (Ferula assa-foetida), auch bekannt als Stinkasant (hindi: हिंग Hing, urdu: Hei-ng) oder Teufelsdreck: Indikationen für die Anwendung waren a) verschiedene Angst- und Nervenstörungen (Nervosität, Hysterie, Hypochondrie), b) krampfartige Magen-, Leber- und Galleleiden, c) Impotenz und reduzierter sexueller Antrieb. Entsprechend war Asant vorwiegend als Nerven- und Beruhigungsmittel sowie als gastrointestinales Spasmolytikum verbreitet. Seit dem Altertum galt Asa foetida außerdem als Aphrodisiakum und wurde über Jahrhunderte in der Liebesmagie eingesetzt. ... Asant soll auch in Chanel Nº 5 enthalten sein.
► Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control? The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described use of the resin "with soft wool as a pessary to promote the menstrual discharge." If taken as ancient writers claimed, silphium might have worked as a monthly morning-after pill. Other items touted as contraceptives in antiquity include wild carrot (a silphium relative also known as Queen Anne's lace), pennyroyal, and pomegranate. In small doses many of these are known to stimulate menstrual flow, just as silphium is supposed to have done.
Whether it was effective or not, silphium certainly was a popular plant. Almost impossible to cultivate, it became the main source of economic power for Cyrene, a Greek colony in what's now Libya, where it grew wild.
Nonetheless, by the end of the first century AD silphium was no more. The last pieces of this aphrodisiac plant were reputedly consumed by the dying emperor Nero: "Qualis artifex pereo!"
After silphium disappeared, asafetida was used as a replacement, imported from what are now Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Already used by the poor because it was cheaper and more plentiful than silphium, asafetida was considered inferior from both a culinary and medicinal standpoint.
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Protect Your Heart at Every Age
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EXPLANATIONS of WORDS
Schlieren (from German; singular "Schliere", meaning "streak") are optical inhomogeneities in transparent material not visible to the human eye. Schlieren physics developed out of the need to produce high-quality lenses void of these inhomogeneities. These inhomogeneities are localized differences in optical path length that cause light deviation. This light deviation is converted to shadow in a schlieren system.
dub 1. give an unofficial name or nickname to (someone or something), make someone a knight by the ritual touching of the shoulder with a sword. 3. smear (leather) with grease. ORIGIN: late Old English (in the sense 'make a knight'): from Old French adober 'equip with armour'.
overdub (verb) record (additional sounds) on an existing recording. (noun) an instance of overdubbing: a guitar overdub [_NODE_1321_]
empathy the ability to understand and share the feelings of another DERIVATIVES: empathize (verb), empathetic / empathic (adjectives), empath (noun). ORIGIN: In the early 20th century the german word Einfühlung was 're-translated' into the until then not existing greek word empatheia
empath (chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual.
[_NODE_604_]
PHOTOCREDITS {1280/1440/1530/1800/5260 results, 21082010 / 26092010 / 11112010 / 17112010 / 28022011}
@FLICKR
PHOTOS:
► box in shape of a silphium seed pod
► Temple d'Asclépios à Al-Bayda et motifs de silphium ... look at the stylized heart-symbols at the top of the temple-columns!
GALLERIES:
► hearts in the temple of love {♥-slideshow}
► heart
via flickr-API-POP-UP's:
► morning after pill@answerbag
► signs of pregnancy@answerbag
► Resources for those considering a career in healthcare Miriam Salpeter@facebook (Febr 10, 2010)
► Resources for those considering a career in healthcare Miriam Salpeter@keppie careers (Febr 10, 2010)
► post@tumblr
► 1280 x 1280 @ everystockphoto
► back-up@musicspot.fr
► pictures of impossible shapes @ the little Blog
► photos @ What's popular today?
► hearts ♥ brick-red ♥ brecciated jasper @ Dr Dave's My Alternative Healing & Health Blog {May, 8th, 2010}
► BACKUP: Lastest Critical Illness Claims News @ critical illness cover. Post by James on July 2nd, 2010.
► esoteric @ 24-tipp-de, Sept 22nd, 2010
► pictures of impossible shapes @ the little blog
BLOGS
► poppy jasper @kosmix (210810)
► ... the drive of service and compassion. These are the tools that we can give people to return to empathy without fear ... by Joy Eckstine, Topics: Homeless Health, 22 Sept 2010.
► Valentine’s Day – Love Yourself This Year @richardmaun - Tips & Stories to improve work and life (February 13, 2011)
► Love and Trash is a DIY blog for people who do things differently. (March 2011)
► High-risk hearts: a South Asian epidemic @University of Cambridge, June 30, 2011 Why is heart disease increasing at a greater rate in South Asia than in any other region globally? Large-scale population studies in Pakistan and Bangladesh aim to discover the basis of a little-studied public health problem of epidemic proportions. (MIRROR-ECHO @ medicalexpress-news)
► Having Sex Like It's Going Out of Style @ Medicinal Marzipan (body image & authentic living), July 22, 2011. Having Sex Like It's Going Out of Style (ECHO) @ dillarddario27 blog, July 24, 2011
► Content, The Heart and Soul of Your Online Brand by Jeff Bullas. Categories: Content, Social Media. November 21, 2011
28052010: 1578
21082010: 2490
26092010: 2854
11112010: 3556
17112010: 3624
28012011: 4454
03022011: 4508
10022011: 4609
14022011: 4696
17022011: 4749
07032011: 4931
29032011: 5173
18042011: 5417
19082011: 6660
23102011: 7387
23112011: 7797
16082012: 9346
28112012: 9797
10072013: 10.979
29032014: 25.517
25072014: 37.511
30Jul2014: 37.938
08Dec2014: 51.506
2015
01 April ... 67,855, 35 faves
06 Juli ... 82,989
15 Nov ... 92,317
30Nov ....93,825
Skate deck available for purchase at DeckPeck
Waste Product
SKU NOD3903
networkosaka.deckpeck.com/products/1385
Use it for an enjoyable destruction session or simply for wall decoration :-)
More designs coming soon
i turned 43 today. typically for birthdays i remove myself from whatever the day's activities would normally entail and go for a walk, either to a favourite part of the city or to some new unexplored place. given my knees, this year (and last) i decided to stay close to home and play around with hallowe'en costumes as i was invited to a small party by neighbours. the awful dress pants are a bit of the costume i left on - more of the rest later.
six years and two days ago i was diagnosed with cancer, exact specification unknown at the time, but likely non-hodgkin's lymphoma. nhl (the hockey cancer, a nurse brightly informed me) is the most common type of cancer and includes many diverse subtypes, some of them not terribly worrisome and some more deadly than a thousand cobras with guns soaked in cholesterol. my usual luck held up and i wound up on the nasty end of that continuum, though not at the extreme of it. that diagnosis comes with some cautions, though, as what i'm afflicted with is rare enough that no doctor wants to give much of a prediction for future events. i do know that not many people survive it, that it hits males of advanced age most typically, and that the subtype is still being nailed down and was first described in the late 70s or early 80s (and even that is argued about).
initially the doctors thought i had crohn's disease or some super form of colitis or ileitis. after having had my gallbladder removed when it rebelled and transformed itself into a toxic pudding ten years ago, i was warned about potential gastric freakouts down the road. i paid attention to my pancreas (who doesn't?) and had my bile tested from time to time. no real warning came until some heavy gastro-intestinal distress (the details of which i'll spare you) hit in the summer of 2004, followed by light-headedness. thankfully i have a smart doctor for a gp and he ordered dozens of tests, finally resulting in the cancer diagnosis (by a group of young french interns who had a camera ten kilometres up my ass). after visiting sunnybrook hospital i had a team of oncologists and began chemotherapy.
chemo is rarely easy, but my initial experience wasn't too bad. the first treatments made me feel a lot better right away, and having a plan of attack does wonders for you psychologically. my hair fell out in clumps and the skin around the follicles actually hurt, so shaving my head wasn't pleasant. being bald was not a problem, but the pain was annoying, as was seeing my beard fall out in patches, along with pubic hair. i don't shave, pluck, tweeze or manscape anything and frankly find that behaviour unappealing in the extreme, so i wasn't happy with the situation. eventually they fine-tuned the basic CHOP therapy i was receiving and the alteration of some of the chemicals stopped the hair apocalypse.
the second stage of my chemo involved some rather more serious chemicals. initially the cancer was found only in my intestine, a large section of which was promptly removed (and hopefully made into a bitter haggis), but as testing continued, it was found that my pet cancer had invaded other areas of my body and more bits and bobs had to be excised. i signed on from the beginning to be a part of as many studies as wanted me, some that were meant to educate new oncology doctors and nurses and some that were narrowly studying my subtype so that oncologists globally could learn more about it. that decision helped me later on when my knees needed attention, as a doctor in munich i found on the internet had treated someone there with a similar cancer and we used some of his techniques on me.
the third stage was simultaneously much easier and much more difficult at times. by the time i was receiving the third variation of chemo, i was well used to it and my body was dealing well with the healing poisons. then my oncologist found cancer cells present in my spinal fluid and had to whip out a big gun. i had to get injections directly in my spine, and that is not a comfortable feeling. as well, i began donating and banking (for myself) bone marrow in case the cancer invaded there. donating bone marrow is easier now than it was in the past, i'm told, but they still have to restrain people at times. new positioning dulls some of the pain and stress, but the essential problem remains: dealing with a large-bore needle as it's pushed deep into your back, penetrating your spine. inside that needle is a screw mechanism, and that is bored into the centre of your bone until it twists out a fairly big section of bone marrow. it's a unique feeling to have someone insert a rather large gauge needle into your back and screw bits out of the core of your bones while you can hear this awful scraping sound, your back turned, knowing that you pretty much have to do this or go buy a headstone. the pain is fleeting, though - once the needle and auger are removed, you feel very little. at this stage of my cancer i felt great and was back to work, even riding my bike up to the hospital (6 kilometres, approx.) for some treatments.
some of the stress and trauma is terrible, some of it far less problematic. each patient is affected differently, and some warnings i received in my initial "so you have cancer!" class never manifested as irritations. i only ever had very mild nausea, thankfully, but patients around me could keep nothing down. some foods changed, though - avocados tasted like crap the whole time i was in therapy, but i now enjoy them again. acidic foods are to be avoided when in chemo, but i love tomatoes and citrus so would eat them as much as i could stand - small mouth lesions often develop in patients, but i either have an iron mouth to match my gut or the chemicals didn't hurt me in that manner. i did wind up having to take steroids, though, and that's the source of much of my knee trouble. they cut off or impair oxygenated blood flow to the joints and extremities and as i was warned, this can result in bone death. avascular necrosis is the official diagnosis, and i have it in spades. so, two knees are gone and i'm now a cyborg, something that surprised all the doctors - apparently it's rare enough that one knee would die, let alone two. luck, as ever, is with me.
i mention all this now for a few reasons. at first i told very few people - those who know me well are familiar with my habit of not revealing personal data much unless it is required or those who i am informing are trustworthy, sensible people. i don't believe that anyone has a right to know all of our secrets and private information, and i've stopped being bothered by the hurt looks of people who react badly when i tell them they are prying. i also thought that once the whole cancer deal was done and over with i would just resume my quiet little life and no-one would be the wiser. now, of course, with the knee replacements and gastro-adventures and other medical nonsense, it's just too much work to not explain it all. even online, where it's easy to misdirect others with shiny things, it still requires gymnastics at times to edit out some details, gymnastics i can no longer easily perform given the inert matter in my knees and skull. i explained this to a few people here and in real, non-online life recently since i knew this year i'd be letting the internet in on the secret. some i told earlier, particularly if they had to begin dealing with cancer or any other troubling illness and i felt i could help out. if you received no personal memo on the matter and you know me in real life or via komputron, don't be offended, please. i've been busy.
this is a terrible photograph to attach all this to, but it had a certain charm to me. the hat was a gift from an old friend and it arrived last night. it's too small and i don't wear hats often, but it may stay. the shot also reveals a bit of what cancer does to a body, which is why i used it. not being able to use my legs the way i used to means more body fat and less muscle. that gut alarms me, and the time i'm allowed on the bike or in the pool at the gym isn't enough to make me lose the fat yet. another six months or so and i should be in better shape, but that depends if nothing else goes wrong. the short-term prognosis is unclear - i've been doing bloodwork a lot, lately. the longterm? i've already lived past my initial expiry date, since the doctors collectively predicted i should have been dead withing two years of diagnosis, so i've had more than four extra years so far.
one final thing: one reason i've been reluctant to mention this to a whole host of people is due to bad reactions. for me, that includes having people fumble for words and then run off, never to be heard from again (really, it happens) to my least favourite, the gloopy outpouring of sympathy. usually accompanied by sad eyes and manifestations of enya songs, the hand-holding, weepy "i'm-so-sorry" routine is exactly what i don't want and antimatter to my health. so, if you have syrup to pour, do me a favour and pour it down the gullet of a nearby child.
Nearly all deer have a facial gland in front of each eye. The gland contains a strongly scented pheromone, used to mark its home range. Bucks of a wide range of species open these glands wide when angry or excited. All deer have a liver without a gallbladder. Deer also have a Tapetum lucidum which gives them sufficiently good night vision. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Postcard
A Picturegoer Series postcard, 85, Long Acre, London. The image is a glossy real photograph, and the card, which was printed in Great Britain, has a divided back.
Jean Harlow
Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter on the 3rd. March 1911) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930's, and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema.
Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona.
Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, and her image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends of classical Hollywood.
Harlow was first signed by business magnate Howard Hughes, who directed her first major role in Hell's Angels (1930). After a series of critically failed films, and Hughes' loss of interest in her career, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought out Harlow's contract in 1932, and cast her in leading roles in a string of hits built on her comedic talent: Red-Headed Woman (1932), Red Dust (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Reckless (1935) and Suzy (1936).
Harlow's popularity rivaled and then surpassed that of MGM's top leading ladies Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer.
Jean died at the age of 26 of kidney failure while filming Saratoga. MGM completed the film with the use of body doubles, and released it less than two months after her death; it became MGM's most successful film of 1937, as well as the highest-grossing film of Harlow's career.
-- Jean Harlow - The Early Years
Harlow was born in a house located at 3344 Olive Street in Kansas City, Missouri.
Her father, Mont Clair Carpenter was a dentist from a working-class background. Her mother, Jean Poe Carpenter (née Harlow), was the daughter of a wealthy real estate broker named Skip Harlow.
Harlean was called "The Baby", a nickname to which she was accustomed, and which endured for the rest of her life. It was not until she was five years old that she learned her real name was Harlean, when staff and students at Miss Barstow's Finishing School for Girls used the name.
Harlean was always very close to her mother, who was extremely protective. Her mother was reported to have instilled a sense in her daughter that she owed everything she had to her; "She was always all mine!", Mama Jean said of her daughter in interviews. Jean Carpenter was later known as "Mama Jean" when Harlean achieved star status as Jean Harlow.
When Harlean was at finishing school, her mother filed for divorce. On the 29th. September 1922, the uncontested divorce was finalized, giving sole custody of Harlean to her mother. Although Harlean loved her father, she did not see him often after the divorce.
In 1923, 32-year-old Jean Carpenter took her daughter and moved to Hollywood in hopes of becoming an actress, but was told that she was too old to begin a film career.
Harlean was enrolled at the Hollywood School for Girls, where she met Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joel McCrea, and Irene Mayer Selznick, but dropped out at the age of 14, in the spring of 1925.
With their finances dwindling, Jean and Harlean moved back to Kansas City after Skip Harlow issued an ultimatum that he would disinherit his daughter if they did not return.
Several weeks later, Skip sent his granddaughter to summer camp at Camp Cha-Ton-Ka, in Michigamme, Michigan, where she became ill with scarlet fever. Jean Carpenter traveled to Michigan to care for Harlean, rowing herself across the lake to the camp, but was told that she could not see her daughter.
Harlean next attended the Ferry Hall School (now Lake Forest Academy) in Lake Forest, Illinois. Jean Carpenter had an ulterior motive for her daughter's attendance at this particular school: It was close to the Chicago home of her boyfriend, Marino Bello.
-- Marriage
During Jean Harlow’s freshman year at the school, she was paired with a "big sister" from the senior class who introduced her to 19-year-old Charles "Chuck" Fremont McGrew III, an heir to a large fortune.
By the fall of 1926, Harlow and Chuck were dating seriously, and they were married in 1927. Her mother Jean Carpenter was also married that same year to Marino Bello. However, Harlow did not attend her mother's wedding.
In 1928, two months after the wedding, Chuck McGrew turned 21 and received part of his inheritance. The couple left Chicago and moved to Los Angeles, settling into a home in Beverly Hills, where Harlow thrived as a wealthy socialite.
McGrew hoped to distance Harlow from her mother with the move. Neither Chuck nor Harlow worked during this time, and both were considered heavy drinkers.
-- Jean Harlow's Career
While living in Los Angeles, Harlean befriended a young aspiring actress named Rosalie Roy. Not owning a car herself, Rosalie asked Harlean to drive her to Fox Studios for an appointment. While waiting for Rosalie, Harlean was noticed and approached by Fox executives, but she told them that she was not interested in a film career.
Nevertheless, she was given letters of introduction to Central Casting. A few days later, Rosalie Roy bet Harlean that she did not have the nerve to go in for an audition. Unwilling to lose a wager and pressed by her enthusiastic mother who had followed her daughter to Los Angeles by this time, Harlean went to Central Casting and signed in under her mother's maiden name, Jean Harlow.
After several calls from casting and a number of rejected job offers by Harlean, Mother Jean finally pressed her into accepting work at the studio.
Harlean appeared in her first film, Honor Bound (1928), as an unbilled "extra" for $7 a day and a box lunch, common pay for such work. This led to a wage increase to $10 per day and small parts in feature films such as Moran of the Marines (1928) and the Charley Chase lost film Chasing Husbands (1928).
In December 1928, Harlean as Jean Harlow signed a five-year contract with Hal Roach Studios for $100 per week. She had small roles in the 1929 Laurel and Hardy shorts: Double Whoopee, Liberty and Bacon Grabbers, the last giving her a costarring credit.
In March 1929, Jean parted with Hal Roach, who tore up her contract after Harlow told him:
"It's breaking up my
marriage, what can I do?"
In June 1929, Harlow separated from her husband and moved in with Mother Jean and Bello. After her separation from McGrew, Harlow continued working as an "extra" in such films as This Thing Called Love, Close Harmony, and The Love Parade (all 1929), until she landed her first speaking role in the Clara Bow film The Saturday Night Kid.
-- 1929–1932: Platinum Blonde Star
Harlow and her husband formally divorced in 1929.
In late 1929, Harlow was spotted by Ben Lyon, an actor filming Howard Hughes' film Hell's Angels; another account gives Hell's Angels head cameraman Arthur Landau as the man that spotted and suggested her to Hughes.
Hughes was reshooting most of his originally silent film with sound and needed an actress to replace Greta Nissen, whose Norwegian accent was incompatible with her role as a British aristocrat.
Harlow screen-tested for Hughes, who gave her the part and signed her to a five-year, $100-per-week contract on the 24th. October 1929. This was Jean's first major film appearance.
During filming, Harlow met MGM executive Paul Bern.
Hell's Angels premiered in Hollywood at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on the 27th. May 1930, and became the highest-grossing film of that year, beating even Greta Garbo's talkie debut in Anna Christie.
Hell's Angels made Harlow an international star. However although Jean was popular with audiences, the critics were less than enthusiastic. The New Yorker called her performance "plain awful", although Variety magazine conceded:
"It doesn't matter what degree of talent
she possesses ... nobody ever starved
possessing what she's got."
Despite her success with Hell's Angels, Harlow again found herself in the role of "uncredited extra" in the Charlie Chaplin film City Lights (1931), though her appearance did not make the final cut.
With no other projects planned for Harlow at the time, Hughes decided to send her to New York, Seattle, and Kansas City for Hell's Angels premieres. In 1931, his Caddo Company loaned her out to other studios, where she gained more attention by appearing in The Secret Six, with Wallace Beery and Clark Gable; Iron Man, with Lew Ayres and Robert Armstrong; and The Public Enemy, with James Cagney.
Even though the success of these films ranged from moderate to hit, Harlow's acting ability was mocked by critics. Hughes sent her on a brief publicity tour in order to bolster her career, but this was not a success, as Harlow dreaded making personal appearances.
Harlow briefly dated Abner Zwillman, who bought her a jeweled bracelet and a red Cadillac, and made a large cash loan to studio head Harry Cohn to obtain a two-picture deal for her at Columbia Pictures.
The relationship with Zwillman ended when he reportedly referred to her in derogatory and vulgar terms when speaking to other associated crime figures, as revealed in secret surveillance recordings.
Columbia Pictures first cast Harlow in a Frank Capra film with Loretta Young, originally titled Gallagher for Young's lead character, but renamed Platinum Blonde to capitalize on Hughes' publicity of Harlow's "platinum" hair color.
Though Harlow denied that her hair was bleached, the platinum blonde color was reportedly achieved with a weekly application of ammonia, Clorox bleach, and Lux soap flakes. This process weakened and damaged Harlow's naturally ash-blonde hair.
Many female fans began dyeing their hair to match hers, and Hughes' team organized a series of "Platinum Blonde" clubs across the nation, offering a prize of $10,000 to any beautician who could match Harlow's shade. No one could, and the prize went unclaimed, but the publicity scheme worked, and the "Platinum Blonde" nickname stuck with Harlow.
Her second Columbia film was Three Wise Girls (1932), with Mae Clarke and Walter Byron.
Paul Bern then arranged with Hughes to borrow her for MGM's The Beast of the City (1932), co-starring Walter Huston. After filming, Bern booked a 10-week personal-appearance tour on the East Coast. To the surprise of many, especially Harlow herself, she packed every theater in which she appeared, often appearing in a single venue for several nights.
Despite critical disparagement and poor roles, Harlow's popularity and following were large and growing, and in February 1932, the tour was extended by six weeks.
According to Fay Wray, who played Ann Darrow in RKO Pictures' King Kong (1933), Harlow was the original choice to play the screaming blonde heroine, but was under an exclusive contract with MGM during the film's pre-production phase—and the part went to Wray, a brunette who had to wear a blonde wig.
When mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel came to Hollywood to expand casino operations, Harlow became the informal godmother of Siegel's eldest daughter, Millicent, when the family lived in Beverly Hills.
-- 1932–1937: Success at MGM
Paul Bern was by now romantically involved with Harlow, and spoke to Louis B. Mayer about buying her contract with Hughes and signing her to MGM, but Mayer declined. MGM's leading ladies were presented as elegant, and Harlow's screen persona was not so to Mayer.
Bern then began urging close friend Irving Thalberg, production head of MGM, to sign Harlow, noting her popularity and established image. After initial reluctance Thalberg agreed, and on the 3rd. March 1932, Harlow's 21st. birthday, Bern called her with the news that MGM had purchased her contract from Hughes for $30,000.
Harlow officially joined the studio on the 20th. April 1932.
Harlow received recognition as an actress in Red-Headed Woman, her first MGM film; she wore a red wig for her starring role. At MGM, Harlow was given superior movie roles to show off her looks and nascent comedic talent. Though her screen persona changed dramatically during her career, one constant was her sense of humor.
When in 1932, Jean starred in Red-Headed Woman, she received $1,250 a week. It was the first film in which she "resembles something of an actress", portraying a woman who is successful at being amoral in a film that does not moralize or punish the character for her behavior.
The film is often noted as being one of the few films in which Harlow did not appear with platinum blonde hair.
While Harlow was filming Red-Headed Woman, actress Anita Page passed her on the studio lot without acknowledging her. Jean later told Page that the snub had caused her to cry until she saw herself, noticed the red wig, and burst out laughing when she realized Page had not recognized her. Page recalled:
"That shows you how sensitive
she was. She was a lovely person
in so many ways."
Jean next starred in Red Dust, her second film with Clark Gable. Harlow and Gable worked well together, and co-starred in a total of six films. She was also paired multiple times with Spencer Tracy and William Powell.
MGM began trying to distinguish Harlow's public persona from her screen characters by putting out press releases that her childhood surname was not the common 'Carpenter' but the chic 'Carpentier', claiming that writer Edgar Allan Poe was one of her ancestors, and publishing photographs of her doing charity work in order to change her image to that of an all-American woman.
This transformation proved difficult; once, Harlow was heard muttering:
"My God, must I always wear a
low-cut dress to be important?"
During the making of Red Dust, Bern—her husband of two months—was found dead at their home; this created a lasting scandal. Initially, Harlow was suspected of killing Bern, but his death was officially ruled a suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Louis B. Mayer feared negative publicity from the incident and intended to replace Harlow in the film, offering the role to Tallulah Bankhead. Bankhead was appalled by the offer, and wrote in her autobiography:
"To damn the radiant Jean for the
misfortune of another would be one
of the shabbiest acts of all time.
I told Mr. Mayer as much."
Harlow kept silent, survived the ordeal, and became more popular than ever. A 2009 biography of Bern asserted that Bern was, in fact, murdered by a former lover, and the crime scene re-arranged by MGM executives to make it appear Bern had killed himself.
After Bern's death, Harlow began an indiscreet affair with boxer Max Baer who, though separated from his wife Dorothy Dunbar, was threatened with divorce proceedings naming Harlow as a co-respondent for alienation of affection, a legal term for adultery.
After Bern's death, the studio did not want another scandal, and defused the situation by arranging a marriage between Harlow and cinematographer Harold Rosson. Rosson and Harlow were friends, and Rosson went along with the plan. They quietly divorced eight months later.
By 1933, MGM realized the value of the Harlow-Gable team with Red Dust, and paired them again in Hold Your Man (1933), which was also a box-office success. In the same year, she played the adulterous wife of Wallace Beery in the all-star comedy-drama Dinner at Eight, and played a pressured Hollywood film star in the screwball comedy Bombshell with Lee Tracy and Franchot Tone. The film has been said to be based on Harlow's own life or that of 1920's "It girl" Clara Bow.
The following year, she was teamed with Lionel Barrymore and Tone in The Girl from Missouri (1934). The film was the studio's attempt to soften Harlow's image, but suffered from censorship problems, so much so that its original title, Born to Be Kissed, had to be changed.
After the hit Hold Your Man, MGM cast the Harlow-Gable team in two more successful films: China Seas (1935), with Wallace Beery and Rosalind Russell; and Wife vs. Secretary (1936), with Myrna Loy and James Stewart.
Stewart later spoke of a scene in a car with Harlow in Wife vs. Secretary, saying:
"Clarence Brown, the director, wasn't too
pleased by the way I did the smooching.
He made us repeat the scene about half
a dozen times. I botched it up on purpose.
That Jean Harlow sure was a good kisser.
I realized that until then, I had never been
really kissed."
Harlow was consistently voted one of the strongest box office draws in the United States from 1933 onward, often outranking her female colleagues at MGM in audience popularity polls. By the mid-1930's, she was one of the biggest stars in the US, and, it was hoped, MGM's next Greta Garbo.
Still young, her star continued to rise while the popularity of other female stars at MGM, such as Garbo, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer, waned. Harlow's movies continued to make huge profits at the box office, even during the middle of the Depression.
After her third marriage ended in 1934, Harlow met William Powell, another MGM star, and quickly fell in love. The couple were reportedly engaged for two years, but differences that ranged from past marriages to Powell's uncertainty about the future, kept them from publicly formalizing their relationship.
The two co-starred in her next film Reckless (1935), Jean's first movie musical; her voice was dubbed with that of skilled vocalist Virginia Verrill.
Suzy (1936), in which she played the title role, gave her top billing over four time co-star Tone and Cary Grant. While critics noted that Harlow dominated the film, it was a reasonable box-office success.
Jean then starred in Riffraff (1936) a financial disappointment that co-starred Spencer Tracy and Una Merkel. Afterwards the release of worldwide hit Libeled Lady (1936), in which she was top-billed over Powell, Loy, and Tracy, brought good reviews for Harlow's comedic performance.
During the filming, Jean Harlow was involved with William Powell while Spencer Tracy was having an affair with Myrna Loy. She then filmed W. S. Van Dyke's comedy Personal Property (1937), co-starring Robert Taylor. It was Harlow's final completed motion picture appearance.
-- Jean Harlow's Illness and Death
In January 1937, Harlow and Robert Taylor traveled to Washington, D.C., to take part in fundraising activities associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday, for the organization later known as the March of Dimes.
Harlow, a Democrat, had campaigned for Roosevelt in the 1936 United States presidential election, and two years earlier for Upton Sinclair in the 1934 California gubernatorial election.
The trip was physically taxing for Harlow, and she contracted influenza, although she recovered in time to attend the Academy Awards ceremony with William Powell.
Filming for Harlow's final film, Saratoga, co-starring Clark Gable, was scheduled to begin in March 1937. However, production was delayed when she developed sepsis after a multiple wisdom tooth extraction, and had to be hospitalized.
Almost two months later, Harlow recovered, and shooting began on the 22nd. April 1937. She also appeared on the May 3rd. cover of Life magazine.
On the 20th. May 1937, while filming Saratoga, Harlow began to complain of illness. Her symptoms—fatigue, nausea, fluid retention and abdominal pain—did not seem very serious to the studio doctor, who believed that she was suffering from cholecystitis and influenza.
The studio doctor was not aware that Harlow had been ill during the previous year with a severe sunburn and influenza. Friend and co-star Una Merkel noticed Harlow's on-set weight gain, gray pallor and fatigue.
On the 29th. May, while Harlow filmed a scene in which her character had a fever, she was clearly sicker than her character and leaned against her co-star Gable between takes and said:
"I feel terrible! Get me back
to my dressing room."
She requested that the assistant director telephone William Powell, who immediately left his own movie set, in order to escort her back home.
The next day, Powell checked on Harlow, and discovered that her condition had not improved. He contacted her mother and insisted that she cut her holiday short to be at her daughter's side. Powell also summoned a doctor. Because Harlow's previous illnesses had delayed the shooting of three movies (Wife vs. Secretary, Suzy, and Libeled Lady), initially there was no great concern regarding this latest bout with a recurring illness.
On the 2nd. June, it was announced that she was again suffering from influenza. Dr. Ernest Fishbaugh, who had been called to Harlow's home to treat her, diagnosed an inflamed gallbladder.
Mother Jean told MGM Harlow was feeling better on the 3rd. June, and co-workers expected her back on the set by Monday, 7th. June 1937.
Press reports at the time were contradictory, with headlines reading "Jean Harlow seriously ill" and "Harlow recovers from illness crisis".
When she did not return to the set, a concerned Gable visited her, and later remarked that she was severely bloated and that he smelled urine on her breath when he kissed her—both signs of kidney failure.
Dr. Leland Chapman, a colleague of Fishbaugh, was called in to give a second opinion on Harlow's condition. Chapman recognized that she was not suffering from an inflamed gallbladder, but was in the final stages of kidney failure.
On the 6th. June 1937, Harlow said that she could not see Powell clearly, and could not tell how many fingers he was holding up.
That evening, she was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, where she slipped into a coma. The next day at 11:37 a.m., Harlow died in the hospital at the age of 26. In the doctor's press releases, the cause of death was given as cerebral edema, a complication of kidney failure. Hospital records also mentioned uremia.
For years, rumors circulated about Harlow's death. Some claimed that her mother had refused to call a doctor because she was a Christian Scientist, or that Harlow had declined hospital treatment or surgery.
From the onset of her illness, Harlow had been attended by a doctor while she was resting at home. Two nurses also visited her house, and various equipment was brought from a nearby hospital. Harlow's grayish complexion, recurring illnesses, and severe sunburn were signs of the disease. Toxins also adversely affected her brain and central nervous system.
Harlow had suffered from scarlet fever when she was 15, and speculation that she suffered a poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis following the incident, which may have caused high blood pressure and ultimately kidney failure, has been suggested.
Jean's death certificate lists the cause of death as "acute respiratory infection", "acute nephritis", and "uremia".
One MGM writer later said:
"The day Baby died, there wasn't
one sound in the commissary for
three hours."
Frequent costar Spencer Tracy wrote in his diary:
"Jean Harlow died.
Grand girl."
Harlow was interred in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale in a private room of multicolored marble, which William Powell had bought for $25,000 ($509,000 today). She was laid to rest in the pink negligee she'd worn in Saratoga, and in her hands she had a white gardenia along with a note that Powell had written:
"Goodnight, my dearest darling."
Harlow's inscription on her crypt reads:
"Our Baby".
Spaces in the same room were reserved for Harlow's mother and Powell. Harlow's mother was buried there in 1958, but Powell married actress Diana Lewis in 1940. After his death in 1984, he was cremated, and his ashes buried in Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.
MGM planned to replace Harlow in Saratoga with either Jean Arthur or Virginia Bruce, but because of public objections, the film was finished using three doubles (Mary Dees for close-ups, Geraldine Dvorak for long shots, and Paula Winslowe for dubbing Harlow's lines) as well as re-writing some scenes without her.
The film was released on the 23rd. July 1937, less than two months after Harlow's death, and was a hit with audiences, grossing $3.3 million in worldwide rentals, and becoming MGM's most successful film of the year, as well as the highest-grossing film of her career.
-- Jean Harlow's Legacy
Harlow's name was given to a cocktail, the "Jean Harlow", which is equal parts light rum and sweet vermouth.
Legendary blues musician Lead Belly wrote the song "Jean Harlow" while in prison upon hearing about her death.
Harlow's signature, hands and footprints were imprinted in cement on the 29th. September 1933, in the 24th. ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theater.
The French composer Charles Koechlin composed the piece Épitaphe de Jean Harlow (opus 164) in 1937.
On the 8th. February 1960, Jean Harlow was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6910 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Harlow wrote a novel titled 'Today Is Tonight'. She stated around 1933–1934 her intention to write the book, but it was not published during her lifetime.
During her life, Harlow's stepfather Marino Bello shopped the unpublished manuscript around to a few studios. However Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, had prevented the book from being sold by putting an injunction on it using a clause in Harlow's contract: her services as an artist could not be used without MGM's permission.
After Jean's death, her mother sold the film rights to MGM, though no film was made. The publication rights were passed from Harlow's mother to a family friend, and the book was finally published in 1965.
Film adaptations of Harlow's life were considered at different times during the 1950's. Twentieth Century-Fox had slated Jayne Mansfield for the role, and ideas for Columbia Pictures actress Cleo Moore to play Harlow were also tabled. These projects however never materialized. Marilyn Monroe was offered a role for Harlow in 1953, but she declined it, feeling it was under-developed.
In 1965, two films about Jean Harlow were released, both titled Harlow. The first film was released by Magna Corporation in May 1965, and starred Carol Lynley.
The second film was released in June 1965 by Paramount Pictures, and starred Carroll Baker. Both were poorly received by critics, and did not perform well at the box office.
In 1978, Lindsay Bloom portrayed Jean in Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell.
In August 1993, Sharon Stone hosted a documentary about Harlow titled Harlow: The Blonde Bombshell, which aired on Turner Classic Movies.
In 2004, Gwen Stefani briefly appeared as Harlow at the red carpet premiere for Hell's Angels in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator.
-- Final Thoughts From Jean Harlow
"When you lie down with dogs,
you get up with fleas."
"I like to wake up each morning
feeling a new man."
"Don't give me books for Christmas;
I already have a book."
"I wasn't born an actress, you know.
Events made me one."
"Women like me because I don't look
like a girl who would steal a husband.
At least not for long."
"No one ever expects a great lay
to pay all the bills."
"Men like me because I don't wear
a brassiere."
"Underwear makes me uncomfortable,
and besides my parts have to breathe."
"I'm not a great actress, and I never
thought I was. But I happen to have
something the public likes."
"There is a God, even in Hollywood."
"I like any dog that makes me look
good when it stands next to me."
So, on Sunday night, my mother, who was already not feeling well for a couple of days, suddenly got very ill. She was unable to formulate words and could barely function. I thought she was going though diabetic shock at first. It wasn't. I tested her oxygen level and it was dangerously low and she was running a fever. I was sure she had the virus and called the doctor on call. He said I had to call 911 and get her in the hospital right away. So off I sent her with her medical history typed out and given to the EMTs. Hours later we find out she has a severely infected gallbladder and she needs surgery to have it removed. Really? Now? Now in the middle of a pandemic? Now she has to be stuck at a virtual ground zero for infection?
The answer is yes. Yes, now. So now we live in hope all will go well and when she does return home she isn't actually infected with the coronavirus having been in the hospital during the absolute worst time to be in a hospital.
I ask for continued prayers, well wishes, good vibes or whatever you can offer. Not just for my mom during this trying time, but that she isn't exposed to the virus during her time in the hospital and that she doesn't return to get others sick like my Dad and my sister. Both of whom, have serious health problems of their own already.
So for now, I live in hope. I hope we all make it through this time safely together. All of us. All of you reading this. Please be safe and live with hope that things will get better soon for everyone including my mom. xo
I had my gallbladder removed and a hernia fixed yesterday. Today, I feel terrible...full of gas all the way up in my right shoulder. They told me to expect that, but I didn't think it would hurt this bad!
Il pleut et le temps est tristounet, alors profitez-en pour vous reposer mes Ami(e)s !
Ma Poussy a quelques ennuis de santé, une échographie a montré des choses pas nettes dans sa vésicule biliaire et un début de pancréatite, sa dernière semaine de l'année a été pénible pour elle et les premiers jours de 2014 aussi, vomissements et elle n'a plus mangé, ni bu, ce qui l'a déshydratée.
Hier sa 2ème visite chez le vétérinaire a été très longue mais ainsi on a un diagnostic ouf !
Avec des antibiotiques et un autre médicaments j'espère qu'elle va aller mieux et retrouver l'appétit sans vomir. Dans un mois elle aura une nouvelle échographie pour voir si ces traitements ont bien fonctionné. Son petit ventre est tout nu, heureusement les poils repoussent.
Prenez bien soin de vous mes Ami(e)s et merci pour vos messages qui me font toujours énormément plaisir.
------
It's raining and the weather is gloomy, so enjoy to relax my Friends !
My Poussy has some health problems, an ultrasound showed no sharp things in his gallbladder and an early pancreatitis, the last week of the year was painful for her and the first days of 2014 also vomiting and no longer has eaten or drunk, which was dehydrated.
Yesterday his second visit to the vet was very long but now we have a diagnosis finally!
With antibiotics and other medicines I hope she will get better and regain appetite without vomiting. In a month she will be a new ultrasound to see if these treatments have worked. His little belly is naked, luckily hair grows.
Take good care of yourself my Friends and thank you for your messages always make me great pleasure.
----
10 janvier
Poussy en est à son 6ème jour d'antibiotique et du médicament pour le pancréas, elle ne vomit plus et mange bien quelle chance ! Elle a maintenant un peu de diarrhées dues je pense aux antibiotiques (2 par jour). Début février, je prendrai rendez-vous avec son vétérinaire pour une 2ème échographie pour voir l'état de sa vésicule biliaire et de ce début de pancréas, ce n'est qu'après cet examen que je saurai si ce traitement a bien fonctionné.
Merci à toutes les personnes qui prennent de ses nouvelles, elles vous donne ses plus doux ronrons.
--
Update
January 10th
Poussy is in its 6th day of antibiotics and medicine for the pancreas, she no longer vomits and eats well what luck ! She now has a little diarrhea caused I think to antibiotics (2 per day). In early February, I will go with her veterinarian for a second ultrasound to see the state of his gallbladder and pancreas the beginning, it was only after this review I know if the treatment has worked.
Thank you to all those who take news of her, she gives you her sweetest purring.
Explore on 01/28/08.
Special dedication to all women in my life....My Great grandmothers, my grandmothers, my mother, my mother-in-law, my wife, my daughters, my aunties, my cousins, and my friends....Thank you all!
Orthosiphon aristatus is a medicinal herb found mainly throughout South East Asia and tropical Australia. It is known as pokok misai kucing in Malay. It is believed to have antiallergic, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory and diuretic properties. It is used as a remedy for arteriosclerosis (capillary and circulatory disorders), kidney stones, diabetes and nephritis.
It is trusted for many centuries for treating ailments of the kidney, bladder stone, urinary tract infection, liver and bladder problems, diabetes, rheumatism and gout. It is also used to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure.
It has a mild diuretic action, so it is very useful for flushing the kidneys and urinary tract. It also relieves spasms of the smooth muscle in the walls of the internal organs, making it valuable for gallbladder problems. Researchers have found it to be mildly antiseptic as well.
Flower of the week in unforgettable flowers
Wetenschappelijk: Chelidonium majus
Scientific name: Chelidonium majus
Nederlands: Stinkende gouwe
English: Greater Celandine
Français: Grande Chélidoine
Deutsch: Schöllkraut
Wetenschappelijk: Chelidonium majus
Familie: Papaverfamilie, Papaveraceae
Geslacht: Chelidonium, Gouwe
Medicinale werkingen
Hier staan de medicinale werkingen beschreven met de reden waarom stinkende gouwe een geneeskrachtige werking heeft:
Doordat het de secretie van de alvleesklier verhoogt werkt het bloedsuikerverlagend.
De urine- en zweetdrijvende werking maakt stinkende gouwe tot een geneesmiddel tegen oedemen, verminderde nierfunctie, nierstenen, artritis, artrose en jicht.
De bloedsomloopstimulerende eigenschappen in de kleine haarvaten maken dit kruid tot een geneesmiddel tegen oogbindvliesontsteking, tranende en brandende ogen en grijze staar.
Omdat het de lever, gal en darmwerking stimuleert is dit een goed geneeskruid tegen de huidaandoeningen eczeem, psoriasis, ringworm en hoofdroos.
Vanwege de kalmerende en licht narcotische werking van chelidonine wordt dit kruid ingezet tegen nervositeit, rusteloosheid, stress, angst en slapeloosheid,
Stinkende gouwe kan in een dieet tijdens de chemokuur worden gebruikt omdat het antitumoraal werkt.
Uitwendig gebruik
Melksap van sttinkende gouwe remt ongebreidelde celdeling en staat om deze reden te boek als antitumorale stof. Het breekt de eeltlaag, het eiwit van de hoornlaag, af; in medische termen heet dat een keratolytische werking. Het gaat zowel virussen als bacteriën tegen en het werkt derhalve ontstekingsremmend. Het melksap wordt gebruikt om de volgende huidaandoeningen te bestrijden:
Wratten, goedaardige huidtumoren,
Eelt, likdoorn,
Schimmelinfecties,
Oogbindvliesontsteking en
Hoornvliesvlekken
Mens en Gezondheid
English
plant for the future
Greater celandine has a long history of herbal use]. Traditionally it was employed as an ophthalmic to treat and clear the eyesight whilst in modern herbal medicine it is used more as a mild sedative, antispasmodic and detoxifying herb, relaxing the muscles of the bronchial tubes, intestines and other organs. The latex is much used externally to treat warts. Caution should be employed, especially when the plant is used internally however, because it contains toxic alkaloids, The leaves and the sap are acrid, alterative, anodyne, antispasmodic, caustic, cholagogue, diaphoretic, diuretic, hydrogogue, narcotic, purgative. They are used in the treatment of bronchitis, whooping cough, asthma, jaundice, gallstones and gallbladder pains. The plant is harvested in the spring as it comes into flower, it is best used fresh, but can also be dried for later use. The roots can also be used, these are harvested in the autumn and dried for later use. The plant has anticancer properties and is analgesic. It is an important component of a stomach ulcer drug. The plant has an abundant acrid bright-orange sap that stains the skin strongly and is powerfully irritant. It is used as an external treatment to get rid of warts, ringworm and corns and has also been used to remove films from the cornea of the eye. The plant contains the alkaloid chelidonine, which is similar to the alkaloid papaverine found in poppies. This alkaloid has antispasmodic and sedative effects on the bile ducts and bronchi. However, results have been inconsistent, especially if the preparation is not fresh]. The plant also contains the alkaloid sparteine, which restores normal rhythm to feeble arrhythmic myocardia. The German Commission E Monographs, a therapeutic guide to herbal medicine, approve Chelidonium majus for liver and gallbladder complaints.
NOT MY BABY! :-)
This is me breastfeeding Dagny, my dear friend's six-month-old baby girl, in the midst of a snow storm in Montreal, while her mama is laid up in the ER with an acute gallbladder attack. :(
But, hooray for wet-nursing! Dagny was not eating ANY solids at this point and she seemed so very grateful to be having some mother's milk from me.
Raphanus sativus~
Radishes are suggested as an alternative treatment for a variety of ailments including cancer, coughs, gastric discomfort, liver problems, constipation, dyspepsia, gallbladder problems, arthritis, gallstones, kidney stones and intestinal parasites.
Monday and Tuesday were odd days. Monday morning I had an ultrasound test on my abdomen and by 2pm I was in the hospital awaiting a procedure called an ERCP. The next day....gall bladder surgery. I'm tired and one of the incision spots hurts like hell. I feel like I look. Like shit.
I find this wild flower very attractive. Maybe I was a bee in a former life because bees like chickory, too! Next slides, please!
Webmd.com has this to say about this 'weed':
Chicory is a plant. Its seeds, roots, and dried, above-ground parts are used to make medicine.
Chicory is used for liver and heart health, constipation, swelling, and other conditions, but there is no good evidence to support its use.
In foods, chicory leaves are often eaten like celery, and the roots and leaf buds are boiled and eaten. Chicory is also used as a cooking spice and to flavor foods and beverages. Some coffee mixes include ground chicory to enhance the richness of the coffee.
How does it work?
Chicory root has a mild laxative effect, increases bile from the gallbladder, and decreases swelling. Chicory is a rich source of beta-carotene.
peace and love with a sunny face
What is the significance of the olive tree, and olive oil, in
the Scriptures? Why were olive trees “shaken,” and why
were the berries “beaten,” and “trodden down”? Why were
kings and priests anointed with olive oil? What does olive
oil and the olive tree symbolize? There is far more mystery
and truth hidden about the humble olive than most begin to
imagine! Here is new insight into this remarkable plant, its
oil, its wood, its ancient usage, and its function and typology.
William F. Dankenbring
Olives in Islam By Najma Mohamed June 27, 2004
Olives have been mentioned seven times in the Qur'an and their health benefits have been propounded in Prophetic medicine. The Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is reported to have said:
Take oil of olive and massage with it – it is a blessed tree.
(Dārimi, 69:103)
The olive, like the date, holds great value in ancient and modern culture. In the Mediterranean culture “it has served as everything from money to medicines for several thousand years” (Zwingle, 1999).
The dove holding an olive branch in its mouth has become a universal symbol of peace. It is said to have originated in the story of Prophet Nūh (peace be upon him). The dove appeared as a sign that the flood, which had been sent as a punishment, would abate.The oil of this blessed tree has also been cited as a symbol of goodness and purity and is used up to this day in anointing ceremonies in the Greek Orthodox Church.The cosmetics industry, natural health practitioners and the culinary world are unanimous on the benefits of this delectable fruit, which bursts with flavor and health. The olive industry, which produced 460 million gallons of olive oil in 2000-2001, has grown tremendously as consumers world-wide are alerted to the benefits of this amazing fruit.Olive Facts
Olea europa, the botanical name of the olive, has its origins in Asia and spread to the Mediterranean basin 6000 years ago. The Mediterranean basin is the chief area of cultivation with Spain , Italy and Greece being the foremost olive-producing countries in the world. Olive production has also expanded to California , South Africa and Australia .
Olive production favors a winter-rainfall pattern. The olive tree is a hardy tree that grows to less than 10 meters . Temperatures below freezing are damaging to the trees. It is an evergreen tree with leaves that are pale green above and silvery below. The bark is pale grey and the flowers are numerous, small and creamy-white in color.The fruit of the tree is a drupe with fleshy fruit and a hard stone. The color of the fruit varies from green (unripe) to black (ripe) as it passes through its growth stages. As the tree ages, it produces more fruit.Olives are cultivated through grafting, the method routinely used to propagate fruit trees. The stem or bud of one plant is joined to the stem or bud of another to form a new plant. While it can take more than five years for a tree to start producing fruit, trees can be harvested annually and continue to produce fruits until they become old and hollow.
The manner in which olives are harvested depends on the type of olive, number of trees and the amount of time and money available. Several small-scale producers, often family-operated initiatives, continue to harvest olives by hand.
Uses and Benefits:From this ‘blessed’ tree hardly anything is wasted as the fruits are eaten or used to produce olive oil, the leaves possess medicinal value and the wood of the tree is highly valued for carpentry work. The Noble Qur’an refers to some of these uses:And a tree (olive) that springs forth from Mount Sinai, that grows (produces) oil, and (it is) relish for the eaters. ( 23:20 )By the fig and the olive,By Mount Sinai
By this city of all spiritulalies, Verily, We created man in the best stature.(95:1-4)
The oval-shaped olives, which are approximately 2 to 3 cm long, are preserved in salt solutions and sold as a condiment. Store shelves present an astounding array of olives from green and black varieties to stuffed olives. Even more mind-boggling is a perusal of the varieties of olive oil. Olive oil is produced through a process known as crushing and pressing. While machines have taken over most of the work, traditional methods of extracting oil are still in use. Different methods of crushing and pressing are used to extract olive oil.An olive contains 10-40% oil by weight. However, it also contains a bitter substance known as oleo-rubin, which is removed during processing. Zwingle (1999), writing for National Geographic on the wonders of olive oil, says that one finds “at one end, trillions of bitter little nubbins” and at the other golden liquid emerging.Once the olives are crushed, the paste is then ‘pressed’ to yield the golden olive oil. The best olive oil is extra virgin as it is pressed without heating or adding any chemical solvents. Olive oil is marketed in several different ways, such as “virgin”, “refined” or simply “olive oil”. These have been further refined by chemical processes and could also have some extra-virgin olive oil added to enhance its flavor and color.World olive oil consumption is rising at about 1.5% per year. The Mediterranean basin provides 99% of all olive oil.One of the by-products of this process, released once the olive oil has been extracted, is widely used in soap making. Panayiotis Sardelas, a Greek soap-maker, interviewed in the above-mentioned National Geographic feature (Zwingle, 1999) commented: “The old people know that this soap is better than chemical ones. It lasts longer than other soaps, and you can use it for everything.”
Olives in Medicine: The medicinal and cosmetic uses of olive products are truly astounding. The oil is extremely nutritious and is recommended by dieticians to “improve the balance of fats within the blood” ( Adams , 2001) as well as in lowering cholesterol levels.Since the 1950s, the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, rich in olive oil, have been extolled. While it has always been promoted as being beneficial in lowering cholesterol levels (Assmanm and Wahrburg), it is now increasingly being linked to lowering blood pressure.
A study by Dr. Ferrara and his colleagues of the Frederico II University of Naples, Italy (Ferrera et al., 2000) compared the effects of two similar low-fat diets on the blood pressure of hypertensive patients. One diet was enriched with extra virgin olive oil, high in monounsaturated fatty acids while the second was enriched with the same amount of sunflower oil with a high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids.The patients on the former diet, all hypertensive, showed significant reductions in their blood pressure, thereby indicating that a diet, rich in olive oil, is not only associated with lower levels of cholesterol, but with lower blood pressure as well.
www.oliveoilsource.com/page/blood-pressure
The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) eating plan, which promotes a diet low in sodium and high in unsaturated fats, also recommends olive oil (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, 2003).Another medical benefit of olive oil relates to the maintenance of a healthy digestive system. Oxford University ’s Institute of Health found that “olive oil may have a protective effect on the development of colorectal cancer” (Stoneham et al., 2000).Olive oil has traditionally been used to prevent constipation, assist in ‘cleansing’ of the gallbladder and in treating various ailments relating to the skin, such as burns, scratches and sunburn (Cook, 1934). Cook, writing in the 1930s, said that, “Those who recognize its wonderful medicinal properties and the many uses to which it can be put will never fail to keep a bottle of pure olive oil in the house.”Olive oil is also applied to the skin as it brightens the complexion, softens the skin and is used in the treatment of eczema and psoriasis (Khan). It is also used on the hair, especially problems relating to “dry hair and flaky scalp” ( Adams , 2001). Furthermore, olive oil is used for massage and as a carrier oil when blending essential oils.The leaf of the olive tree is commonly used by herbalists for its antiviral properties. It has been traditionally used to cool fevers by boiling the leaves and concocting a tincture that is then taken orally (Privitera). Olive leaf was not only used to treat severe cases of fever, but tropical diseases such as malaria as well. Today, olive leaf extract is available from natural health practitioners and taken orally in a tablet form. The Hebrew word for “olive tree” is es shemen, which literally means ‘tree of oil.” It is from a primitive root meaning “to shine.” It means “richness, anointing, fat, fruitful, oil, ointment, olive.” It is related to the word shemesh, “to be brilliant,” and which also is the Hebrew word for the “sun,” that brightly shining orb in the sky. Another Hebrew word for “olive” is zayith, meaning “an olive,” as “yielding illuminating oil.” Its related to the word ziv, meaning “to be prominent,” “brightness.” Ziv is the month of flowers, corresponding to Iyar, or our April-May. On the outside, the olive tree may seem like any other tree, rather ordinary in appearance and size – some might say even a little bit “ugly,” and at certain seasons of the year even a little “messy,” with olives littering the ground beneath the tree!The foliage of the olive tree is dense, and when it becomes old the fairly tall trunk acquires a unique pattern of twists and turns, protuberances and knots, on its bark and in its form, giving the tree a very interesting appearance. Says the Encyclopedia Judaica, “There are trees in Israel estimated to be 1,000 years old that still produce fruit. In old age the tree becomes hollow but the trunk continues to grow thicker, at times achieving a circumference of 20 feet” (“Olive,” vol.12, page 1363). Says the authoritative source, “It is an evergreen, and the righteous who take refuge in the protection of God are compared to it.”Interestingly, if the trunk is cut down, the shoots from its roots continue to grow, ensuring its continued existence. Olive wood is very hard, and beautifully grained. It is very desirable in the manufacture of smaller wooden objects, pieces of furniture, and ornaments. However, there is much more to the olive tree than almost anybody imagines.
History of the Olive Tree: The olive was one of the most valuable trees to the ancient Hebrews. It is first mentioned in Scripture when the dove returned to Noah’s ark carrying an olive branch in its beak (Gen.8:11). Since that time, the olive branch has been a symbol of “peace” to the world, and we often hear the expression, “extending an olive branch” to another person as a desire for peace.The olive also figures prominently on the seal of the United States of America. The seal pictures an olive branch with a cluster of thirteen leaves and thirteen olives. Why the number “thirteen”? Because the U.S. began with 13 colonies, and the Anglo-Saxon people of the United States are mainly descended from the “thirteenth tribe” of ancient Israel – the tribe of Ephraim, the youngest (“thirteenth”) son of the patriarch Joseph!When Israel conquered Canaan, the olive tree was a prominent feature among the flora of the land. It was described as a “land of olive oil” (Deut.8:8). The olive was a very important source of revenue to the early Israelites. It was tithed upon along with all the produce of the land (Deut.12:17).
Olive Oil and the Sanctuary Cakes of bread “anointed with oil” were among the sanctified offerings Israel made to God (Lev.8:26). The leaders of Israel offered to God in addition to rams and lambs and goats, “fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering” (Numbers 7:19, 25, etc.). In addition, when the priests were separated for their priestly service, one young bull and two rams were taken, without blemish, “and unleavened bread,, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil,” were used in the ceremony of sanctification (Exodus 29:1-2). God told Moses regarding Aaron, his brother, “And you shall take the anointing oil, pour it on his head, and anoint him” (Exodus 29:7). The holy anointing oil itself was comprised of quality spices – myrrh, cane, cassia, and olive oil (Exo.30:23-25). The Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the Table of Showbread, the Lampstand (Menorah), the Altar, the Laver, and its foot, were all anointed with the same precious compound, as a holy oil of anointing (Exo.30:26-33).
The menorah in the Tabernacle – with its seven lamps – was lit with “oil for the light” (Exo.25:6). God told Moses, “Command the children of Israel that they bring to you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to make the lamps burn continually” (Lev.24:2).The daily sacrifices were also accompanied with olive oil (Exo.29:40). When lepers were cleansed, a special sacrifice was made, together with “fine flour mixed with [olive] oil as a grain offering, and one log of oil” (Lev.14:10). A “log” was a little over a half a quart. At the cleansing ceremony, a lamb was slain as a trespass offering, and a log of oil, both waved as a wave offering before the Lord. The priest would pour some of the oil into his own left hand, then dip his right finger into the oil in his left hand, and sprinkle the oil seven times before the Lord, and of the rest of the oil in his left hand he would put some on the tip of the right ear of the leper being cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot (Lev.14:13-18). The rest of the oil would be put on his head.The log of oil used in the ceremony cleansing the leper was the largest amount of oil called for in any religious rite. The rite symbolized the return to favor of the one healed, and the return of honor and joy. It is also symbolic of his restoration to life!
www.triumphpro.com/olive-tree-mystery.htm
Symbolism of the Olive: There is an ancient tradition that the “tree of life” in the Garden of Eden was an olive tree. According to the Apocalpyse of Moses, an apocryphal Hebrew book, when Adam fell ill Seth went to request the “oil of mercy” to anoint Adam and restore his health. His entreaty was refused, as it was destined for Adam to die, but the angel Michael told Seth that the oil would be granted to the righteous at the end of days. In a similar passage in the “Life of Adam” the oil is referred to as “the tree of mercy from which the oil of life flows.” Another reference to the “tree of life” in the Garden as an olive tree may be found in 4th Edras: “The tree of life shall give them fragrant perfume” (2:12, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, p.527).The same concept is preserved in the writings of the early church fathers, in Pseudo-Clement, which refers explicitly to “the oil of the tree of life.”In the book of James, we read that when a person is sick, they should call upon the elders of the church for prayer and anointing. James declared, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:14-16). The oil represents holy anointing by the power of the Spirit of God. The apostle John wrote of God’s Spirit as an ‘anointing.” He declared: “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him” (I John 2:27).Jesus Christ explained, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16). He added, “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). The Spirit will tell us “things to come” (same verse).Oil, therefore, is a type of the Holy Spirit – as are water (John 7:37-39) and the wind (John 3:8; Acts 2:1-4).
The name "Culver's root" derives from a certain Dr. Culver who was a pioneer physician of the 18th century
Veronicastrum virginicum
Culver’s root contains essential oil, phenolic acids, some bitter substances, phytosterol, alkaloids, tannins, mannitol, dextrose, resins, and saponins
The Seneca Indians used the plant in tea form to induce vomiting as a part of purification rituals.
The use of the herb, mostly in moderate doses, as a laxative and detoxifying agent was adopted early on by the European settlers.
Later the herb was used as a remedy for liver diseases and to stimulate bile production. In addition, it was also used to treat malaria and typhoid fever.
Culver’s root was once included in United States Pharmacopoeia but it’s not commonly used today because its strong potency is difficult to control
Culver’s root can affect the liver and gallbladder by increasing the production and secretion of bile, which lubricates the intestines which in turns enhances bowel movements.
The herb is therefore sometimes used as a treatment for chronic constipation, irritation of the intestines and ailments related to the liver and gallbladder such as hepatitis, cholecystitis, jaundice and other conditions which are believed to be caused by poor liver function (eg. some skin diseases).
The herb may also be of value as a remedy for diarrhea, bloating, chronic indigestion, hemorrhoids, and anal prolapse.
Culver’s root is often combined with dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) and barberry (Berberis vulgaris).
As a treatment for liver ailments and when used as a remedy for constipation it may be combined with the herb sweet flag (Acorus calamus) and goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis).
Culver’s root usually works best in small doses that are administered repeatedly over an extended period of time.
As a decoction: 1 or 2 teaspoons of the dried rhizome and roots in a cup of cold water which is then brought to boiling point, then simmered for 10 minutes and then strained. 1 cup of the brew can be used three times daily.
As a tincture: 1-2 ml three times a day
High doses of the herb can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Furthermore, as the herb has powerful laxative (purgative) properties it can cause dizziness and bloody stools.
Swiss-British-German postcard by News Productions, Baulmes and Stroud Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede, no. 56537. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse / Nero Film. Peter Lorre in M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder/M (Fritz Lang, 1931).
Peter Lorre (1904–1964) with his trademark large, popped eyes, his toothy grin and his raspy voice was an American actor of Jewish Austro-Hungarian descent. He was an international sensation as the psychopathic child murderer in Fritz Lang’s M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder/M (1931). He later became a popular actor in two British Hitchcock films and a series of Hollywood crime films and mysteries. Although he was frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner in the US, he also became the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.
Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in 1904 in the Austro-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. He was the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger. His father was the chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Besides working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres. When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got along, and this coloured his childhood memories. At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, Alajos moved the family to Vienna, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and that he would be called up. He was, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and served on the Eastern front during the winter of 1914-1915, before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble. As a youth Peter Lorre ran away from home, worked as a bank clerk, and, after stage training in Vienna, made his acting debut in Zurich, Switzerland at the age of 17. In Vienna, he worked with the Viennese Art Nouveau artist and puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then moved to the then German town of Breslau, and later to Zürich. In the late 1920s, Peter Lorre moved to Berlin, where the young and short (165 cm) actor worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. He made his film debut in a bit role in the Austrian silent film Die Verschwundene Frau/The Vanished Woman (Karl Leitner, 1929), followed by another small part in the German drama Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil (Alexandre Volkoff, 1930) starring Ivan Mozzhukhin. On stage and in the cinema, Lorre played a role in Brecht's Mann ist Mann/ A Man's a Man (Bertolt Brecht, Carl Koch, 1930) and as Dr Nakamura in the stage musical Happy End (music by composer Kurt Weill), alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel, Oskar Homolka and Kurt Gerron.
Peter Lorre became much better known after director Fritz Lang cast him in the lead role of Hans Beckert, the mentally ill child murderer in the classic thriller M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder/M (1931). Later, the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew (1940) used an excerpt from the climactic scene in M in which Lorre is trapped by vengeful citizens. His passionate plea that his compulsion is uncontrollable, says the voice-over, makes him sympathetic and is an example of attempts by Jewish artists to corrupt public morals. M was Lang’s first sound film and he revealed the expressive possibilities for combining sound and visuals. Lorre's character whistles the tune In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. ( Lorre himself could not whistle – it is Lang who is heard.) The film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating In the Hall of the Mountain King with the Lorre character. Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby, off-screen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, is now a film staple. Lorre’s next role was the German musical comedy Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Monte Carlo Madness (Hanns Schwarz, 1931) starring Hans Albers and Anna Sten. That year he also co-starred in the comedy Die Koffer des Herrn O.F./The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931) starring Alfred Abel, and Harald Paulsen. In 1932 Lorre appeared again alongside Hans Albers in the drama Der weiße Dämon/The White Demon (Kurt Gerron, 1932) and the Science Fiction film F.P.1 antwortet nicht/F.P.1 Doesn't Respond (Karl Hartl, 1932) about an air station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Curt Siodmak had written the story after Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. It was the last German film that either Siodmak or Peter Lorre, who played a secondary character, would make in Germany before the war.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Peter Lorre took refuge in Paris, where he appeared with Jean Gabin and Michel Simon in the charming comedy Du haut en bas/High and Low (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933). Then Lorre moved on to London. There Ivor Montagu, Alfred Hitchcock's associate producer for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), reminded the director about Lorre's performance in M. They first considered him to play the assassin in the film but wanted to use him in a larger role, despite his limited command of English at the time, which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically. The Man Who Knew Too Much was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period. Lorre also was featured in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936), opposite John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll. Lorre settled in Hollywood in 1935, where he specialized in playing sinister foreigners, beginning as the love-obsessed surgeon in the horror film Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935), and as Raskolnikov in the Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1936). He starred in a series of eight Mr. Moto movies for Twentieth Century Fox, a parallel to the better-known Charlie Chan series. Lorre played the ever-polite (albeit well-versed in karate) Japanese detective Mr. Moto. According to Wikipedia, he did not enjoy these films — and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (Norman Foster, 1939) — but they were lucrative for the studio. When the series folded in 1939, Lorre freelanced in villainous roles at several studios. In 1940, he co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the comedy You'll Find Out (David Butler, 1940), a vehicle for bandleader and radio personality Kay Kyser.
In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of effeminate thief Joel Cairo opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), a classic film noir based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The Maltese Falcon was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Then Lorre portrayed the character Ugarte in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). One of his co-stars in both films was Sydney Greenstreet with whom he made 9 films. Most of them were variations on Casablanca, including Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh, 1943), with George Raft; Passage to Marseille (Michael Curtiz, 1944), reuniting them with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains, and Three Strangers (Jean Negulesco, 1946). The latter was a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket starring top-billed Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and third-billed Lorre cast against type by the director as the romantic lead. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances.” Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together was the suspense thriller The Verdict (1946), director Don Siegel's first film. Lorre branched out into comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in Frank Capra's version of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey.
After World War II, Peter Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. An exception was the horror classic The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946). In Germany Lorre co-wrote, directed, and starred in Der Verlorene/The Lost One (1951), an art film in the film noir idiom. Hal Erickson: “In keeping with Lorre's established screen persona, this is a tale of stark terror, disillusionment, and defeatism. The actor stars as Dr. Rothe, a German research scientist who during WW2 discovers that his fiancée has been selling his scientific secrets to the British. In a fit of pique, he murders her but is not punished for the crime, which is passed off by the Nazi authorities as justifiable homicide. (...) Not entirely successful, Der Verlorene is still a fascinating exercise in fatalism from one of the cinema's most distinctive talents.” Lorre then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often parodying his 'creepy' image. In 1954, he was the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of Casino Royale, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond and Linda Christian as the first Bond girl. Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Richard Fleischer, 1954), and appeared in a supporting role in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Irwin Allen, 1961). He worked with Roger Corman on several low-budget films, including two of the director's Edgar Allan Poe cycle (Tales of Terror, 1962 and The Raven, 1963). He was married three times: actress Celia Lovsky (1934–1945); actress Kaaren Verne (1945–1950) and Anne Marie Brenning (1953-1964, his death). In 1953, Brenning bore his only child, Catharine. In later life, Catharine made headlines after serial killer Kenneth Bianchi confessed to police investigators after his arrest that he and his cousin and fellow Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono, disguised as police officers, had stopped her in 1977 with the intent of abducting and murdering her, but let her go upon learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre. It was only after Bianchi was arrested that Catharine realized whom she had met. Catharine died in 1985 of complications arising from diabetes. Lorre had suffered for years from chronic gallbladder troubles, for which doctors had prescribed morphine. Lorre became trapped between the constant pain and addiction to morphine to ease the problem. It was during the period of the Mr. Moto films that Lorre struggled and overcame his addiction. Abruptly gaining a hundred pounds in a very short period and never fully recovering from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments in his later years. His final film was the Jerry Lewis comedy The Patsy (Jerry Lewis, 1964) in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films. A few months after completing this film, Peter Lorre died of a stroke in 1964 in Los Angeles. He was 59.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Südafrika - Kleine Karoo
Red Stone Hills Farm
Ostriches
Strauße
The Karoo (/kəˈruː/ kə-ROO; from a Khoikhoi word, possibly garo "desert") is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. There is no exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo, and therefore its extent is also not precisely defined. The Karoo is partly defined by its topography, geology and climate — above all, its low rainfall, arid air, cloudless skies, and extremes of heat and cold. The Karoo also hosted a well-preserved ecosystem hundreds of million years ago which is now represented by many fossils.
The Karoo is sharply divided into the Great Karoo and the Little Karoo by the Swartberg Mountain Range, which runs east-west, parallel to the southern coastline, but is separated from the sea by another east-west range called the Outeniqua –Langeberg Mountains. The Great Karoo lies to the north of the Swartberg range; the Little Karoo is to the south of it.
The Little Karoo is separated from the Great Karoo by the Swartberg Mountain range. Geographically, it is a 290 km long valley, only 40–60 km wide, formed by two parallel Cape Fold Mountain ranges, the Swartberg to the north, and the continuous Langeberg-Outeniqua range to the south. The northern strip of the valley, within 10–20 km from the foot of the Swartberg mountains is most un-karoo-like, in that it is a well watered area both from the rain, and the many streams that cascade down the mountain, or through narrow defiles in the Swartberg from the Great Karoo. The main towns of the region are situated along this northern strip of the Little Karoo: Montagu, Barrydale, Ladismith, Calitzdorp, Oudtshoorn and De Rust, as well as such well-known mission stations such as Zoar, Amalienstein, and Dysselsdorp.
The southern 30–50 km wide strip, north of the Langeberg range is as arid as the western Lower Karoo, except in the east, where the Langeberg range (arbitrarily) starts to be called the Outeniqua Mountains.
The Little Karoo can only be accessed by road through the narrow defiles cut through the surrounding Cape Fold Mountains by ancient, but still flowing rivers. A few roads traverse the mountains over passes, the most famous and impressive of which is the Swartberg Pass between Oudtshoorn in the Little Karoo and Prince Albert on the other side of the Swartberg mountains in the Great Karoo. There is also the main road between Oudtshoorn and George, on the coastal plain, that crosses the mountains to the south via the Outeniqua Pass. The only exit from the Little Karoo that does not involve crossing a mountain range is through the 150 km long, narrow Langkloof valley between Uniondale and Humansdorp, near Plettenberg Bay.
(Wikipedia)
The common ostrich (Struthio camelus), or simply ostrich, is a species of flightless bird native to certain large areas of Africa and is the largest living bird. It is one of two extant species of ostriches, the only living members of the genus Struthio in the ratite order of birds. The other is the Somali ostrich (Struthio molybdophanes), which was recognized as a distinct species by BirdLife International in 2014 having been previously considered a very distinctive subspecies of ostrich.
The common ostrich belongs to the order Struthioniformes. Struthioniformes previously contained all the ratites, such as the kiwis, emus, rheas, and cassowaries. However, recent genetic analysis has found that the group is not monophyletic, as it is paraphyletic with respect to the tinamous, so the ostriches are now classified as the only members of the order. Phylogenetic studies have shown that it is the sister group to all other members of Palaeognathae and thus the flighted tinamous are the sister group to the extinct moa. It is distinctive in its appearance, with a long neck and legs, and can run for a long time at a speed of 55 km/h (34 mph) with short bursts up to about 70 km/h (43 mph), the fastest land speed of any bird. The common ostrich is the largest living species of bird and lays the largest eggs of any living bird (the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and the giant moa of New Zealand laid larger eggs).
The common ostrich's diet consists mainly of plant matter, though it also eats invertebrates and small reptiles. It lives in nomadic groups of 5 to 50 birds. When threatened, the ostrich will either hide itself by lying flat against the ground or run away. If cornered, it can attack with a kick of its powerful legs. Mating patterns differ by geographical region, but territorial males fight for a harem of two to seven females.
The common ostrich is farmed around the world, particularly for its feathers, which are decorative and are also used as feather dusters. Its skin is used for leather products and its meat is marketed commercially, with its leanness a common marketing point.
Description
Common ostriches usually weigh from 63 to 145 kilograms (139–320 lb), or as much as one to two adult humans. The Masai ostriches of East Africa (S. c. massaicus) average 115 kg (254 lb) in males and 100 kg (220 lb) in females, while the nominate subspecies, the North African ostrich (S. c. camelus), was found to average 111 kg (245 lb) in unsexed adults. Exceptional male ostriches (in the nominate subspecies) can weigh up to 156.8 kg (346 lb). At sexual maturity (two to four years), male common ostriches can be from 2.1 to 2.8 m (6 ft 11 in to 9 ft 2 in) in height, while female common ostriches range from 1.7 to 2.0 m (5 ft 7 in to 6 ft 7 in) tall. New chicks are fawn in color, with dark brown spots. During the first year of life, chicks grow at about 25 cm (9.8 in) per month. At one year of age, common ostriches weigh approximately 45 kilograms (99 lb) Their lifespan is up to 40–45 years.
The feathers of adult males are mostly black, with white primaries and a white tail. However, the tail of one subspecies is buff. Females and young males are grayish-brown and white. The head and neck of both male and female ostriches is nearly bare, with a thin layer of down. The skin of the female's neck and thighs is pinkish gray, while the male's is gray or pink dependent on subspecies.
The long neck and legs keep their head up to 2.8 m (9 ft) above the ground, and their eyes are said to be the largest of any land vertebrate – 50 mm (2.0 in) in diameter – helping them to see predators at a great distance. The eyes are shaded from sunlight from above. However, the head and bill are relatively small for the birds' huge size, with the bill measuring 12 to 14.3 cm (4.7 to 5.6 in).
Their skin varies in color depending on the subspecies, with some having light or dark gray skin and others having pinkish or even reddish skin. The strong legs of the common ostrich are unfeathered and show bare skin, with the tarsus (the lowest upright part of the leg) being covered in scales: red in the male, black in the female. The tarsus of the common ostrich is the largest of any living bird, measuring 39 to 53 cm (15 to 21 in) in length. The bird has just two toes on each foot (most birds have four), with the nail on the larger, inner toe resembling a hoof. The outer toe has no nail. The reduced number of toes is an adaptation that appears to aid in running, useful for getting away from predators. Common ostriches can run at a speed over 70 km/h (43 mph) and can cover 3 to 5 m (9.8 to 16.4 ft) in a single stride. The wings reach a span of about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in), and the wing chord measurement of 90 cm (35 in) is around the same size as for the largest flying birds.
The feathers lack the tiny hooks that lock together the smooth external feathers of flying birds, and so are soft and fluffy and serve as insulation. Common ostriches can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. In much of their habitat, temperatures vary as much as 40 °C (72 °F) between night and day. Their temperature control relies in part on behavioral thermoregulation. For example, they use their wings to cover the naked skin of the upper legs and flanks to conserve heat, or leave these areas bare to release heat. The wings also function as stabilizers to give better maneuverability when running. Tests have shown that the wings are actively involved in rapid braking, turning, and zigzag maneuvers. They have 50–60 tail feathers, and their wings have 16 primary, four alular, and 20–23 secondary feathers.
The common ostrich's sternum is flat, lacking the keel to which wing muscles attach in flying birds. The beak is flat and broad, with a rounded tip. Like all ratites, the ostrich has no crop, and it also lacks a gallbladder. They have three stomachs, and the caecum is 71 cm (28 in) long. Unlike all other living birds, the common ostrich secretes urine separately from feces. All other birds store the urine and feces combined in the coprodeum, but the ostrich stores the feces in the terminal rectum. They also have unique pubic bones that are fused to hold their gut. Unlike most birds, the males have a copulatory organ, which is retractable and 20 cm (8 in) long. Their palate differs from other ratites in that the sphenoid and palatal bones are unconnected.
Distribution and habitat
Common ostriches formerly occupied Africa north and south of the Sahara, East Africa, Africa south of the rainforest belt, and much of Asia Minor. Today common ostriches prefer open land and are native to the savannas and Sahel of Africa, both north and south of the equatorial forest zone. In southwest Africa they inhabit the semi-desert or true desert. Farmed common ostriches in Australia have established feral populations. The Arabian ostriches in the Near and Middle East were hunted to extinction by the middle of the 20th century. Attempts to reintroduce the common ostrich into Israel have failed. Common ostriches have occasionally been seen inhabiting islands on the Dahlak Archipelago, in the Red Sea near Eritrea.
Research conducted by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in India found molecular evidence that ostriches lived in India 25,000 years ago. DNA tests on fossilized eggshells recovered from eight archaeological sites in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh found 92% genetic similarity between the eggshells and the North African ostrich, so these could have been fairly distant relatives.
Ostriches are farmed in Australia. Many escaped, however, and feral ostriches now roam the Australian outback.
Behaviour and ecology
Common ostriches normally spend the winter months in pairs or alone. Only 16 percent of common ostrich sightings were of more than two birds. During breeding season and sometimes during extreme rainless periods ostriches live in nomadic groups of five to 100 birds (led by a top hen) that often travel together with other grazing animals, such as zebras or antelopes. Ostriches are diurnal, but may be active on moonlit nights. They are most active early and late in the day. The male common ostrich territory is between 2 and 20 km2 (0.77 and 7.72 sq mi).
With their acute eyesight and hearing, common ostriches can sense predators such as lions from far away. When being pursued by a predator, they have been known to reach speeds in excess of 70 km/h (43 mph) and can maintain a steady speed of 50 km/h (31 mph), which makes the common ostrich the world's fastest two-legged animal. When lying down and hiding from predators, the birds lay their heads and necks flat on the ground, making them appear like a mound of earth from a distance, aided by the heat haze in their hot, dry habitat.
When threatened, common ostriches run away, but they can cause serious injury and death with kicks from their powerful legs. Their legs can only kick forward.
(Wikipedia)
Die Karoo (auch Karroo, früher Karru; Khoisan für Halbwüste) ist eine Halbwüstenlandschaft in den Hochebenen des Landes Südafrika, nördlich der Großen Randstufe und im südlichen Namibia. Unterschieden werden Kleine Karoo, Große Karoo und Obere Karoo sowie Sukkulentenkaroo und Nama-Karoo. Mit einer Ausdehnung von 500.000 km² umfasst die Karoo fast ein Drittel des Territoriums Südafrikas. Die Sukkulentenkaroo gehört zu den Biodiversitäts-Hotspots der Erde und wird u. a. im Rahmen von BIOTA AFRICA systematisch kartiert.
Der Name Karoo kommt von kurú (trocken) aus der Sprache der San, die einst hier lebten und jagten. In Hinsicht auf die geographische Ausdehnung des Karoo-Begriffs sind die folgenden Teilaspekte zu beachten und voneinander zu unterscheiden.
Die Karoo als Landschaft im traditionellen Verständnis ist eine südafrikanische Trockenregion innerhalb der Provinzen Westkap, Ostkap und Nordkap sowie im Süden Namibias. Ihre spezifische kapländische Strauchvegetation weist sie als Halbwüste aus. Ursprünglich wird in zwei Regionen unterschieden: Große Karoo und Kleine Karoo.
Die Große Karoo besitzt eine West-Ost-Ausdehnung von über 750 Kilometern und eine Nord-Süd-Ausdehnung von etwa 110 Kilometern. Sie wird im Westen vom Massiv der Zederberge und im Osten durch die Winterberge begrenzt. Im Norden bilden die Bergketten vom Roggeveld-, Koms-, Nuweveldberge und Sneeuberg und im Süden die Höhenzüge der Witteberge, Groot Swartberge und die Groot Winterhoek die natürliche Begrenzung.
Südlich dieser Region schließt sich die Kleine Karoo an. Diese wird wiederum an ihrer südlichen Flanke von den küstennahen Langebergen und Outeniqua-Bergen begrenzt.
Anders als in dieser traditionellen Gliederung, wird die Karoo heute nach ökologischen Gesichtspunkten in einen östlichen Teil, die Nama-Karoo, und einen westlichen Teil, die Sukkulenten-Karoo, gegliedert, wobei auch die Gesamtausdehnung der Karoo nach diesem Konzept von jener der traditionellen Betrachtungsweise abweicht.
(Wikipedia)
Die Little Karoo (englisch, auf Afrikaans Klein Karoo) ist eine Region in der Western Cape Provinz in Südafrika.
Durch die Little Karoo zieht sich die Route 62.
Die Klein Karoo ist ein halbwüstenartiger Landstrich, der zwischen den Swartbergen im Norden und den Outeniqua-Bergen im Süden liegt. Die Gegend ist fruchtbar und nicht ganz so trocken wie die nördlich anschließende Große Karoo. Die Kleine Karoo ist bekannt für die Straußenzucht, allein in der Umgebung von Oudtshoorn gibt es angeblich über 400 Betriebe, landwirtschaftliche Nutztiere der Region sind auch Schafe und Angoraziegen.
Die Kleine Karoo ist das östlichste Weinbaugebiet Südafrikas. Muskatweine, Portweine und Desertweine gedeihen in dem recht trockenen Klima, ein Teil des Weines wird zu Brandy verarbeitet. Auch das hier angebaute Obst wird teilweise zu Schnaps verarbeitet, man bekommt aber auch überall recht preisgünstig getrocknete Früchte.
(wikivoyage.org)
Der Afrikanische Strauß (Struthio camelus) ist eine Vogelart aus der Familie der Strauße und ist nach dem eng verwandten Somalistrauß der größte lebende Vogel der Erde. Während er heute nur noch in Afrika südlich der Sahara heimisch ist, war er in früheren Zeiten auch in Westasien beheimatet. Für den Menschen war der Strauß wegen seiner Federn, seines Fleisches und seines Leders seit jeher von Interesse, was in vielen Regionen zur Ausrottung des Vogels führte.
Merkmale
Die Männchen des Straußes sind bis zu 250 Zentimeter hoch und haben ein Gewicht bis zu 135 Kilogramm. Weibchen sind kleiner: Sie sind 175 bis 190 Zentimeter hoch und 90 bis 110 Kilogramm schwer. Die Männchen, Hähne genannt, haben ein schwarzes Gefieder. Davon setzen sich die Schwungfedern der Flügel und der Schwanz weiß ab. Die Weibchen, Hennen genannt, tragen dagegen ein erdbraunes Gefieder; Flügel und Schwanz sind bei ihnen heller und haben eine weißlichgraue Farbe. Das Jugendkleid ähnelt dem Aussehen des Weibchens, ohne die charakteristische Absetzung von Flügeln und Schwanz. Frisch geschlüpfte Küken sind dagegen rehbraun, ihr Daunenkleid weist dunkle Tupfen auf. Die Daunen des Rückengefieders sind igelartig borstig aufgestellt. Die nackten Beine sowie der Hals sind je nach Unterart grau, graublau oder rosafarben. Beim Männchen leuchtet die Haut während der Brutzeit besonders intensiv.
Der Strauß hat einen langen, überwiegend nackten Hals. Der Kopf ist in Relation zum Körper klein. Die Augen sind mit einem Durchmesser von 5 Zentimetern die größten aller Landwirbeltiere. Das Becken der Strauße ist ventral durch eine Schambeinfuge (Symphysis pubica) geschlossen. Dies ist nur bei straußenartigen Vögeln so. Es wird von den drei spangenartigen Beckenknochen (Darmbein, Sitzbein, Schambein) gebildet, zwischen denen große Öffnungen bestehen, die durch Bindegewebe und Muskulatur verschlossen sind. Der Strauß hat sehr lange Beine mit einer kräftigen Laufmuskulatur. Seine Höchstgeschwindigkeit beträgt etwa 70 km/h; eine Geschwindigkeit von 50 km/h kann der Strauß etwa eine halbe Stunde halten. Als Anpassung an die hohe Laufgeschwindigkeit besitzt der Fuß, einzigartig bei Vögeln, nur zwei Zehen (Didactylie). Zudem können die Beine als wirkungsvolle Waffen eingesetzt werden: Beide Zehen tragen Krallen, von denen die an der größeren, inneren Zehe bis zu 10 cm lang ist.
Stimme
Zu den typischsten Lautgebungen des Straußes gehört ein Ruf des Männchens, der dem Brüllen eines Löwen ähnelt. Ein tiefes „bu bu buuuuu huuu“ wird mehrmals wiederholt. Der Laut wird bei der Balz und beim Austragen von Rangstreitigkeiten ausgestoßen. Daneben sind Strauße beiderlei Geschlechts zu pfeifenden, schnaubenden und knurrenden Lauten in der Lage. Nur junge Straußenküken geben auch melodischere Rufe von sich, die dazu dienen, das Muttertier auf sich aufmerksam zu machen.
Verbreitung und Lebensraum
Das natürliche Verbreitungsgebiet des Straußes ist Afrika, insbesondere Ost- und Südafrika. Ausgestorben ist er auf der Arabischen Halbinsel, in Westasien sowie in Afrika nördlich der Sahara.
Strauße leben in offenen Landschaften wie Savannen und Wüsten. Sie bevorzugen Habitate mit kurzem Gras und nicht zu hohem Baumbestand; wo das Gras höher als einen Meter wächst, fehlen Strauße. Gelegentlich dringen sie in Buschland vor, bleiben dort aber nicht lange, da sie an schneller Fortbewegung gehindert werden und dort nicht weit blicken können. Reine Wüsten ohne Vegetation eignen sich nicht als ständiger Lebensraum, werden aber auf Wanderungen durchquert. Weil Strauße ihren gesamten Flüssigkeitsbedarf aus der Nahrung beziehen können, benötigen sie keinen Zugang zum Wasser, und lange Trockenperioden sind ebenfalls kein Problem für sie.
Afrikanische Strauße wurden erstmals 1869 nach Australien eingeführt, weitere Importe folgten in den 1880er Jahren. Mit den importierten Straußen sollten in Australien Farmen für die Belieferung der Modeindustrie mit Federn aufgebaut werden. Bereits vor der Jahrhundertwende gab es verwilderte Strauße, deren Ansiedlung auf einigen Farmen gezielt gefördert wurde. 1890 lebten 626 Strauße in der Nähe von Port Augusta und der Stadt Meningie, 1912 betrug die Zahl 1.345 Individuen. Nachdem die Nachfrage nach Straußenfedern nach Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges zusammenbrach, kam es zu weiteren Freilassungen, die Zahl der ausgewilderten Strauße ist jedoch nicht bekannt. Im australischen Bundesstaat Western Australia konnten sich Strauße freilebend nicht etablieren, in New South Wales vermehrten sich in den Regionen, in denen Strauße ausgewildert wurden, diese Strauße in den ersten Jahren, der Bestand blieb dann über einige Zeit stabil und nahm dann stetig ab. In vielen Regionen, in denen Strauße über mehrere Jahre lebten, waren sie in der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts wieder verschwunden. Nördlich von Port Augusta gab es in den 1970er Jahren noch einen Bestand von 150 bis 200 Straußen. Während der langanhaltenden Dürre von 1980 bis 1982 starben die meisten dieser Vögel. Nach 1982 wurden dort nur noch 25 bis 30 Strauße gezählt.
Mit der Unterart Struthio camelus camelus wurden im 20. Jahrhundert in Vorderasien partiell Aussiedlungsversuche unternommen. Eine Population lebt im Mahazat-as-Sayd-Schutzgebiet in Saudi-Arabien, eine weitere im Reservat Hai Bar in Israel.
Lebensweise
Strauße sind tagaktive Vögel, die besonders in den Dämmerungsstunden aktiv sind. In Zeiten mit knappem Nahrungsangebot müssen sie große Wanderungen unternehmen und sind in der Lage, in der Mittagssonne zu wandern. Nachts ruhen sie, wobei sie für gewöhnlich die Hälse aufrecht und die Augen geschlossen halten. Nur für kurze Tiefschlafphasen werden Hals und Kopf auf das Rückengefieder oder auf den Boden gebettet.
Außerhalb der Brutzeit leben Strauße für gewöhnlich in lockeren Verbänden, die zwei bis fünf, in manchen Gegenden aber auch hundert und mehr Tiere umfassen können. In Wüstengegenden sammeln sich bis zu 680 Tiere um Wasserlöcher. Der Zusammenhalt der Straußenverbände ist locker, denn die Mitglieder der Gruppe kommen und gehen nach Belieben. Oft sieht man auch einzelne Strauße. Trotzdem gibt es innerhalb der Gruppen klare Hierarchien. Rangstreitigkeiten werden meistens durch Drohlaute und Drohgebärden geregelt; dabei werden Flügel und Schwanzfedern aufgestellt und der Hals aufrecht gehalten. Der rangniedrigere Vogel zeigt seine Unterwerfung, indem er den Hals U-förmig biegt und den Kopf nach unten hält; auch Flügel und Schwanz zeigen nach unten. Selten kann eine Rangstreitigkeit auch in einen kurzen Kampf münden.
Zur Fortpflanzungszeit lösen sich die losen Verbände auf und geschlechtsreife Männchen beginnen mit dem Sammeln eines Harems.
Nutzung
Als im 18. Jahrhundert Straußenfedern als Hutschmuck der reichen Damenwelt Europas in Mode kamen, begann die Jagd auf die Vögel solche Ausmaße anzunehmen, dass sie den Bestand der Art bedrohte. In Westasien, Nordafrika und Südafrika wurde der Strauß restlos ausgerottet. Im 19. Jahrhundert begann man, Strauße in Farmen zu züchten, da frei lebende Strauße extrem selten geworden waren. Die erste dieser Farmen entstand 1838 in Südafrika. In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts wurden immer mehr Straußenfarmen auch in Europa und Nordamerika eröffnet. In Teilen Südamerikas erlebt die Straußenzucht seit einigen Jahren einen Boom. Vor allem in Brasilien, Kolumbien, Peru und Bolivien gelten die Farmen als lukrative alternative Erwerbsquelle.
Heute spielen die Federn in der Straußenzucht kaum noch eine Rolle. Man züchtet die Strauße nun vor allem wegen ihres Fleisches und der graublauen Haut, aus der man Leder herstellt. Das Fleisch des Straußes hat einen ganz eigenen Geschmack, der am ehesten mit Rindfleisch oder dem des Bison zu vergleichen ist. Aus den Schalen der Eier fertigt man Lampenschirme und Schmuckgegenstände.
In Südafrika (Weltmarktanteil: 75 %) werden je 45 % der Einnahmen aus der Straußenzucht durch Fleisch und Haut erzielt, 10 % durch Federn. In Europa wird durch Fleisch 75 % und die Haut 25 % eingenommen.
Als Reit- und Zugtiere werden Strauße erst in jüngerer Zeit als Touristenattraktion genutzt. Dies hat jedoch nirgendwo eine kulturelle Tradition.
Der Umgang mit Straußen ist nicht ungefährlich. Vor allem die Hähne sind während der Brutzeit angriffslustig. Eindringlinge werden dabei mit Fußtritten traktiert. Die Wucht und vor allem die scharfen Krallen können dabei zu schweren Verletzungen oder gar zum Tode führen.
Der Arabische Strauß wurde am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts ausgerottet. Diese Unterart war in Palästina und Syrien noch bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg recht häufig, wurde dann aber durch motorisierte Jagden mit Schusswaffen vernichtet. Das letzte wild lebende Tier starb 1966 in Jordanien. 1973 wurden Strauße in der Wüste Negev in Israel freigesetzt, wodurch sie dort inzwischen wieder heimisch sind. Es handelt sich jedoch um Nordafrikanische Strauße, also eine andere Unterart.
Die Art insgesamt ist nicht bedroht, da sie vor allem in Ostafrika noch häufig ist. Regional ist der Strauß jedoch selten, so in Westafrika.
Etymologie
Das Wort Strauß stammt vom altgriechischen strouthiōn (στρουθίον), was so viel wie ‚großer Spatz‘ bedeutet. Die Griechen bezeichneten den Strauß auch als ‚Kamelspatz‘ (στρουθοκάμηλος strouthokamēlos), was den wissenschaftlichen Namen der Art, Struthio camelus, erklärt.
Auffallend ist, dass der Strauß in verschiedenen Sprachen den verdeutlichenden Zusatz Vogel trägt. Dem deutschen Vogel Strauß entspricht so der niederländische struisvogel und der schwedische fågeln struts. Die englische Bezeichnung ostrich, das französische autruche und das portugiesische und spanische avestruz gehen alle gleichermaßen auf das lateinische avis struthio zurück – avis bedeutet ebenfalls nichts anderes als ‚Vogel‘.
(Wikipedia)
I have been on a little hiatus lately and I apologize. I had to have my gallbladder removed an I haven't worn any makeup or taken many pics at all for about 2 weeks. This is from before surgery. Just playing with photoshop. I think I am fully mended now, so maybe life will get back to normal. :)
The intestines are vital organs in the gastrointestinal tract of our digestive system. Their functions are to digest food and to enable the nutrients released from that food to enter into the bloodstream. Our intestines consist of two major subdivisions: the small intestine and the large intestine. The small intestine is much smaller in diameter, but is much longer and more massive than the large intestine. Together the intestines take up most of the space within the abdominal body cavity and are folded many times over to pack their enormous length into such a small area....
The intestines are located inferior to the stomach in the abdominal body cavity. They are connected to the posterior wall of the abdomen by the mesentery, a thin vascular membrane. Blood vessels of the mesentery carry oxygenated blood to support the tissues of the intestines and carry nutrient-rich venous blood away from the intestines to feed the tissues of the body.
The small intestine is about 1 inch in diameter and about 10 feet long in a living body. It extends from the stomach to the large intestine and consists of 3 major regions: the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum.
The duodenum receives partially digested food from the stomach, bile from the liver and gallbladder, and pancreatic juice from the pancreas. These substances mix in the duodenum to further digest food into its most basic units. The duodenum begins to absorb nutrients from the food passing through its lumen.
Food next passes into the jejunum, a longer region of intestine where the bulk of the absorption of nutrients takes place.
Finally, food passes into the ileum, the longest region of the small intestine. Any last nutrients that were not absorbed in the jejunum are absorbed in the ileum before the food passes into the large intestine.
The large intestine is about 2 ½ inches in diameter and about 5 feet long in a living body. It receives fecal matter from the small intestine through the ileocecal sphincter. The smooth walls of the large intestine absorb water from fecal matter. These intestinal walls also absorb vitamins released from the fermentation of feces by bacteria living in the large intestine.
Our large intestine consists of 4 major regions: the cecum, colon, rectum, and anal canal.
The cecum is a pouch-like dead-end passage that branches inferiorly from the end of the ileum. Fecal matter entering the large intestine from the ileum passes into the cecum before being pushed superiorly into the ascending colon. The appendix is attached to the inferior end of the cecum and is believed to store beneficial bacteria that help break down undigested food.
Fecal matter passes from the cecum into the colon, the largest region of the large intestine. The ascending colon carries feces superiorly from the cecum to the transverse colon. The transverse colon then carries feces transversely from the right side of the abdomen to the left side, where it enters the descending colon. Next, the descending colon carries the feces inferiorly to the S-shaped sigmoid colon and rectum.
The rectum stores feces until they are ready to be defecated (eliminated from the body).
During defecation, the anal sphincter muscles of the anal canal relax to allow feces to exit the body.
Eet Smalielijk.
another one of the lilies in my garden....love them all!! My husband will not be coming home today....there is still infection so we wait....12 days in hospital now....pumping antibiotics into him every 4 hrs around the clock plus some more!! The gallbladder cannot be taken out until everything settles down.. in a month or so.... not much flickr time.. more family to come and visit next week..... our son leaves on Sunday... will make quick comments as I have time.. thanks everyone for your kind comments,,,,,,,
(Gallbladder removal surgery. Stephen at my side.)
Blog: sharonfrost.typepad.com/day_books
5 1/2 x 6 in double page spread; ink, watercolor, whatever, on Stillman and Birn Epsilon soft cover. Lamy Safari EF.
#stephen #readingmanseries #brooklynmethodisthospital #sharonfrost
#urbansketchers
sorry that i've not been around much this week--it's been a tough one! first week of school for the kids and my sister had emergency gallbladder surgery yesterday...she's fine, all is well now but i'm sure glad that the week is over! i'm looking forward to spending some time this weekend looking through everyone's great stuff! have a lovely weekend!