BICONTINENTAL BALTIMORE BONAPARTE

“Nature never intended me for obscurity.” 
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte to her father, 1815 

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte,” Firmin Massot, 1823, MdHS, XX.5.69

from the mdhc website

http://www.mdhs.org/betsy-bonaparte/

The French helped us win our revolution, we were players in theirs.
Reciprocity. Lafayette, you name it.
The French Connection.
The United States of America has been entwined with France in an ongoing dance of love, romance, mistrust, contempt, diplomacy, romance and love regained, etc.
Sometimes the spirit of this connection jumps out of the hatbox of history like a genie from a dusty past, or a museum exhibit.

The 18th century was rolling over into the 19th century after both revolutions were over, France was a happening place: Napoleon was busy overwhelming populations, killing and conquering but providing a decent legal code and some administrative guides as compensation. He impressed many (a number of Genevans enlisted in his army), and his status did not escape a highly ambitious belle of Baltimore, Miss Elizabeth (aka Betsy) Patterson, daughter of a rich Irish merchant and his Scottish wife.

Napoleon's younger brother Jérome was visiting Baltimore one day, and a fellow Frenchman living there threw a dinner which included young women of good society. Betsy Patterson was smart, good-looking and ambitious, looking beyond the Baltimore boys. It was a no-brainer for her, and in fact young Jérome Bonaparte was rapidly smitten; they were married by the Bishop of Baltimore in 1803.
Jérome returned to France, planning for her to follow.
But big brother Napoleon disapproved (as did her own father). Napoleon threatened to cut off Jérome from titles and money if he stood by Betsy. Napoleon even petitioned the pope to annul the marriage. She was not allowed on French soil to give birth to their son Jérome (aka Bo). With time, papa Jérome accrued more titles, money and marriages.

Then came the endless peregrinations to try to salvage her and her son's status as royalty, obtain compensation in money and possessions. While so doing, she hobnobbed with Madame de Staël and a Polish princess, among others, who lived outside Geneva, in Paris with Madame Récamier, and so forth. Sometimes her son Jérome's education entered into the formula (hello again Geneva).

La Vie du Salon, quoi.

When in the US she was a regular at the White House, friends with first lady Dolley Madison, and  a friend of the feminist writer Lady Sydney Morgan.

Betsy had time, money, status, mobility, freedom.
But it appears she did not have love.
Her biography is an astonishing bicontinental travelogue for Baltimore/London/Geneva/Paris.

And then the line of American Bonapartes: her son married Susan May Williams, whose father was one of the founders and owners of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; grandson Charles Joseph Bonaparte (1851-1921) was both the US Attorney General and Secretary of the Navy and founder of the original Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI).

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte finished her days in a boarding house in Baltimore, surrounded by some of her wealth but alienated from many family members.
This unstoppable American and sometime expat cut a fair swath through nineteenth century society, bringing America to France, and then, bien sûr, France to America.

This blog was inspired by the remarkable exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society on West Monument Street, and its accompanying on-line contributions. 
Woman of Two Worlds: Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and Her Quest for an Imperial Legacy
http://www.mdhs.org/betsy-bonaparte/the-exhibition

Viewing Wiseman's Viewing Viewers in "National Gallery"

It was Cinema Sunday on November 16th at the Charles, a movie theater on the eponymously-named street.

At 9:45 bagels and spreads were unveiled and coffee was on tap for the crowd of ripe hipsters, hippies, museum docents and curators, artists and other Baltimore fauna. Loved the scene. At 10:30 after a howling microphone was subdued, "National Gallery" was introduced by a big-wig from the Walters Art Museum and the film kicked off. Frederick Wiseman is in fine fettle as he shows us the paintings, the public, people from the art world saying their piece. People who set policy on how the museum should come across, whether it should be the destination of the popular London Marathon and be draped with banners or whether this would be demeaning to its lofty ideals...Docents passionate about their work, offering up images and metaphors to rapt audiences. Restorers who know tiny details about a master's technique, testing paint,repairing canvases. And of course the general public that meanders through the halls.

Apparently Wiseman clipped hundreds of hours of film, bringing it down to a modest three hours. But few people left during the screening - three mesmerizing yet thoughtful hours.

Sunday at the Charles Theater

PS This blog cried out for Courier font-- the typewriter-era big boy print.

FRENGLISH at Geneva Airport: We Are Actually Not Here

Frenglish is a word I use for English that is not Franglais (a crossover lingo).
It uses English but thinks in French, i.e uses French syntax, imagery, metaphors or cultural references.
A good example: a sign at Cointrin, Geneva Airport:

"We are actually not here"

We are submersed--my verb neologism, which means exactly what it sounds like-- in advertising. Immersed and submerged in, and subjugated by the world of ads. Seduction lurks at every turn.
Appeals to our esthetics, our self-love, our appetites, our fascination with technology we can possess, our craving for elegance, you name it.
And Geneva, that international crossroads of banking, commerce and language, serves up many delicious examples of Frenglish in advertising brochures and such.

OK. When you arrive at Geneva airport and are on your way to your gate on the electric ramp or on foot, inhaling  inside air and trying to avoid hooking bag wheels on something or someone and wondering whether your passport is in the usual pouch.....
AHHH.....
Indirect lighting, promises of cool luxury and the good life, biotechnology to improve your chances of survival or fabulous insurance and health coverage. Expensive glass posters paid for with fat budgets.
The clincher is the phrase that's tacked on. The jingle, the hook, the whatever-you-call-it.
I may be stepping on the toes of some PR pros, but c'mon guys, these are embarrassing:

Chopard -- big-time jewelry:  Life is a Smile
Give me a break. Many things can be many things, but life is not a smile. Or a grin or a leer or a frown or a smiley face. But you can't say La Vie Est Un Sourire. So this isn't even Frenglish.
Life is a beach, ok, I can live with that one -- a dash of wit, a play on words, a whiff of pleasure. Can't grin at Life is a Smile.

Bovet -- watches (with a dad and curly-haired kid):  Born from Love
 Right. Birth of a Watch, birth of a kid, legacy of a watch to kid born from love (love-child?). Anyway, who is born from love? Birth is generally from a female. The first Bovet watch was created in 1822. The original Mr. Bovet would be shocked, shocked! His watch a nature child?

Nespresso -- guess -- (with Clooney gazing demurely into an expresso cup):  Pure Pleasure is Inside.
Inside what?  His coffee cup? His stomach? His lap? Is this coy? Is Clooney about to make love to his coffee? I mean I love coffee and caffeine too, as it circulates through my system, my brain. Etc. Pure Pleasure Inside. Not even sexy, this.

Richard Mille -- more watches: A Racing Machine on the Wrist
Whaaaa? The wrist? Whose? Your wrist, my wrist. And hey, a racing machine sounds, like, heavy. Like who would you even want it on your wrist? Ever?
Even a total technophiliac wouldn't want to be saddled with heavy weight 'on the wrist' -- instant tendinitis. Ow.

Nissan - automobiles: Innovation that Excites
Oooh. This one, and the materials that went with it, won five marketing innovation rewards in 2012 for its Innovation That Excites - Altima Launch. And I'm sure it deserved the awards. But not for that phrase. Excites here is open-ended...you have to choose who will get excited or what part of you is supposed to get excited (imagination, body parts).  I think that was the intent. But the open-ended, vague idea it tries to get across, and the dubious grammar leaves me very unexcited. Get a life Nissan! I love my Nissan Micra, but get yourselves a better copywriter.
http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/releases/d3d07d6d-07af-4f95-b7be-191db2197ce1

And here's a cheesy poster from the Cointrin airport website.
Chahming!

http://www.gva.ch/en/desktopdefault.aspx

THE TELL-TALE SLICED-LEMON SCAR

Etched in the flesh of the upper arm or occasionally lower buttock of any baby boomer who travelled overseas is an indistinct circle, a flesh-colored permanent tatoo from the years when smallpox had not yet been eradicated.
The vaccination left a impressive pock scar one bore as a badge of honor:  I travel and I have been marked for travel.

The campaign led by the World Health Organization to eliminate smallpox was successful, thanks to intelligent planning and management, dogged persistence, and adequate funding.
1972 was the last year travellers were vaccinated, and 1990 the final year for the US military.

I thought I'd photograph a couple of my vaccination scars for the record and show them here.
But I looked in the mirror and surprise! The proud scars that had lasted over fifty years are now indistinguishable from marks and freckles and insect bites of various origins on on my upper arm.
I thought I was an anomaly.

So I checked my husband's arm that had long born its lemon-slice over years of marriage and lo! his scar had also gone the way of all flesh!

So the request is out:

"Seeking genuine smallpox scar to record as photo-relic on blog"

But wait, there's always Google.

I search "smallpox vaccination scars photos" I find Flickr answers the appeal.
Yes, there is indeed at least one site that has over a thousand photos of people displaying, voluntarily or nay, their shots.

A fine example of two scars on one arm:

It is worth a visit to this website to see everything from demure maidens smiling shyly at the camera to vamps-with-scars (check out the thighs).
(The photos are protected, they cannot be displayed here).

Perhaps they were used to show just how sexy it was to get vaccinated, or perhaps it was a forerunner of today's rage to tattoo....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/49602798@N04/11499125306/in/pool-677958@N25/

Not to put a damper on the matter, it appears that quite recently some old vials of smallpox virus were found refrigerated somewhere on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in  Bethesda, Maryland. The battle against smallpox may be over, but perhaps not the war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/smallpox-vials-found-in-storage-room-of-nih-campus-in-bethesda/2014/07/08/bfdc284a-06d2-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html?hpid=z1

FAMILY AND HISTORY

There but for the sweep of history......am I, born in Paris of second generation immigrant parents, just after the end of World War II. Well perhaps not.
My grandmother and grandfather made the difficult journey over land from Russia to France in the early twentieth century, looking for a better life. Despite rudimentary living conditions and tough piece-work sewing fur pelts together into coats, my fourteen year-old grandmother apparently adored the French capital. She learned to prepare French dishes, sew beautifully, enjoy the beauty of an incredible city and live the life Parisian, wheeling her baby girl, my aunt, through the Jardins de Luxembourg, singing her French lullabies at night. 

At the urging of relatives, the young family decided to join them in the US until the war was over. In 1915 they were certain it would be over within a year and they could return to Paris. My grandfather, having already been forced to serve for years in the Czar's army was not about to join another one.

If it hadn't been for the Great War, I might have been born French.
But then with deportations in World War II my mother might not have survived and I'd never have been born.

If Archduke Franz Ferdinand's coach hadn't (unpredictably) gone down the street where Gavrilo Princip was lurking, the murders might not have taken place, and no Great War. 
'Ifs' are debatable, but the terrible events of the Great War are not.
And the rest is history? Well not exactly.

"Despite his message of goodwill, Komsic presides over only a part of an ethnically divided city. Nineteen years after the war ended, Bosnia operates as two "entities", the predominantly Muslim and Croat Federation, and the overwhelmingly Serb-dominated Serb Republic (RS). The highly autonomous RS was recognised by the peace settlement. Many Muslims regard it as the product of ethnic cleansing, while for Serbs its existence is a guarantor of peace.

Swaths of the capital lie in the RS, where the administration of Istocno (east) Sarajevo operates separately, the two not even joined by public transport. In emergency cases, citizens of Istocno Sarajevo cannot be treated in the city centre's general hospital, Komsic notes, instead having to be taken 120 miles to Banja Luka, the capital of the RS."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/gavrilo-princip-sarajevo-divided-archduke-franz-ferdinand-assassination

The above article describes the great divisions within contemporary Sarajevo and the country as a whole. Princip as a revered and actively commemorated hero / Princip as a wild criminal who unleashed hell on the world.
Divided passions survive intact into the twenty-first century, fester and divide communities, cities, countries. Sarajevo is scarred, Bosnia is divided.

I never met my grandmother. She died young in Philadelphia in 1934. 
My mother, her second daughter, left America for Europe in 1945, and worked with the Red Cross in Greece, then in Geneva.
My mother died peacefully six years ago to the day at the age of 90 only three miles from the French border. 
You could say she was fortunate. She was born in the US at the end of the Great War. She did not suffer during the Second World War. She lived in Europe in a time of relative peace. The Europe her own mother had loved. The gorgeous flowers and bushes she cultivated in her country garden and her love of birds were intense expressions of beauty.

But she carried within her the collective memory of pogroms, the deaths from typhus, the struggle of immigration and poverty and the death of a young mother. She talked about this only occasionally, but her emotional struggle was patent.
My mother bore this history within her her whole life.

FREEGLOT and LIPPENHEIMER

I know everyone is busy, and time is out of our hands.
Still some things are worth spending what little time we have left on. (Can't fix that sentence)
Here's a flash pitch for my two favorite blogs:  

FREEGLOT AND LIPPENHEIMER


FREEGLOT
To be read and savored, quoted and shared. 
I know Freeglot personally, but I don't know Lippenheimer at all.
I don't even know if that's his name at all, and if not how he chose it.   

Freeglot is a brilliant linguist, a  lover of language in all its strange permutations, and writes on everything, including language of course, travel, books, gender issues, the Netherlands where he lives, twentieth-century history and politics, pre-twentieth-century history and politics, and you name it. 
His latest observational gem is Asparagomania
http://freeglot.wordpress.com/ 


LIPPENHEIMER
I stumbled onto his blog while preparing my Goldfinch piece. He'd already hit the ground running with "Bronzefinch, Maybe". 
He's read just about everything and ranges from just plain intelligent and witty to wet-your-pants funny. 
Try Sexy Chewing Gum Talent Scout. 
http://lippenheimer.wordpress.com/

Both writers are so well-read you wonder if they have time to do things ordinary mortals do, such as cutting their toenails or dawdling in the bathroom.

The President at lunch - vive la différence!

Micheline Calmy-Rey (part 1)

It was a lunch and book launch.

Brother Jeff sent me an invitation to the Forum Suisse de Politique Internationale, a sort of lunch club with monthly speakers. 
The date was February 28th, and the speaker was Micheline Calmy-Rey - the twice former president of Switzerland. So I cancelled gym that day.

One of the things I love about Switzerland, and one of the reasons celebrities love it here (besides certain tax advantages), is the utter naturalness that the Swiss have around celebrity. 

People here do not gawk at stars, they are rarely sycophants. And there is seldom need for a (showy) security detail. 
The Swiss may be less reactive as well as less passionate than the French (generalization), but there is virtue in this restraint.
A president or ex-president can circulate without hoo-ha, do what protocol requires, but still be an ordinary citizen. The president is elected from the Conseil Fédéral, who rotate the presidency - a full term is just one year. Not enough time to acquire illusions or delusions of power. A president represents, but in no way runs the country as such. 

Calmy-Rey was was a conseillère on the Conseil Fédéral from 2003 to 2011, head of the department of foregin affairs,  and president of the Swiss Confederation in both 2007 and 2011.
What is interesting about Calmy-Rey is her active, vocal involvement in foreign affairs, at times controversial at home and abroad. Despite being a woman, Switzerland's second woman president--Ruth Dreyfuss was the first -  and a socialist, she successfully navigated the waters up in Berne. 
(More about her politics in part 2).

The US president is a form of elected royalty. Americans love inaugurations -- the quasi-regal grandeur and the huge publicity. We tend to congratulate ourselves on how (US) democracy is such a success, on the fact that our presidents are not dictators (no they are not) and that we've somehow re-validated America. We vote therefore we are.
Americans love or hate the president, often changing opinion over the four years (or more). We sustain the belief that a president can truly make a difference, and are passionate, driven and more than a tad unrealistic in our view of what a newly elected official can do.
The Swiss president may be a calm diplomat for a neutral country, or as was Micheline Calmy-Rey and outspoken diplomat with a world vision -- the rotating Swiss presidency is a fine institution. 


* La Suisse que je souhaite by Micheline Calmy Rey, Editions Favre S.A., Lausanne

NAILYMPICS?? I kid you not.

Keystone/AP/Alessandra Tarantino

A model presents her, um, paw....

http://www.20min.ch/ro/life/lifestyle/story/Romande-championne-du-monde-de-nail-art-30713696

The Swiss gold-medal winner Heidi Roch-Burch, of Fribourg, was celebrated in the local giveaway newsrag 20minutes. She won in the free-style category known as "French Twist".

The competitors had only three hours to decorate their model's nails at the Nailympics in Rome!
(btw there were 600 participants from 38 countries, in case you think it's limited to just the fanatic few).

Unfortunately, in their excitement, 20minutes and lessentiel neglected to specify which nails had won! At first I thought it was the above talented talons, but I don't think so, as Ms Roch-Burch apparently won with a stiletto nail design (see example below).

Oh well, they're all spectacular in a sexy, spooky, slinky sort of way.
And other competitions are coming you way soon: The Swiss NailArt Trophy, then Dubai, then....?

http://www.lessentiel.lu/fr/lifestyle/dossier/beaute/story/Elle-est-la-championne-du-monde-du-nail-art-28935155

Heidi Roch-Burch

SWISS VOTE: THE CHEESE STANDS......ALONE

http://www.tdg.ch/dossiers/votations-9-fevrier-2014/dossier2.html?dossier_id=2517

Thank you Geneva -- you opposed the initiative by 60,9% ! 

In fact (see map) all of French speaking Switzerland opposed this disruptive initiative.

But all of Switzerland went to the polls on Sunday. And Switzerland approved the UDC's proposal "contre l'immigration de masse" .
"l'immigration de masse"  evokes images of salivating hordes at the border, waiting to rush in to trample the pristine landscape and take over all the jobs, housing and welfare.  And the voters who approved were scared.

The vote of approval is a powerful message with negative impact on a basically prosperous country. An overwhelming majority of Swiss economists, social experts, politicians and industralists have been against this xenophobic initiative.  

It was a vote of emotions over logic, and apparent self-protection over dynamism. 
Just like the vote back in 1992  not to join the European Economic  Area. 
Through extensive bilaterals as of 1999 (in effect as of 2002)  Switzerland has been able to recoup some of the losses. Students could now be part of the superb European Erasmus exchange system, filmmaking and theater and countless other activities were not culturally and economically isolated.
A certain equilibrium has been achieved, and unemployment is a modest 4%.  Foreigners are not exactly kicking the Swiss off the assembly-line.

A small for-instance: the HUG, the Geneva Cantonal University Hospital, employs a large number French nurses, doctors and aides. Because they need to. Staffing the hospital will be very problematic if the non-Swiss job-holders have their permits revoked. How does one handle those already holding work permits? Those who have been here three months, a year, four years? Or more? (I imagine it won't happen this way, as it could wreak havoc).

But no-one knows how this negative initiative will play out, and how it can or will be 'respected'. No one was prepared. On Monday politicians began meeting. All those bilaterals will have to be revisited. Back to square one? 
What was driving this vote? It's not so simple; it's not necessarily extremist xenophobia. 
Twenty-eight per cent of Switzerland is non-Swiss. That's hefty.
Gleaned from articulate letters quoted in "Le Monde":
http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2014/02/10/avec-ce-vote-la-suisse-montre-qu-elle-existe-face-au-poids-lourd-europeen_4363520_3214.html

« Il fallait dire stop » par Alexia

"C'est parfait que la votation soit passée serrée ! Oui, il fallait dire stop à une accélération de l'immigration, mais ne pas laisser croire que nous étions des rétrogrades non plus. Concrètement, la vie s'est quand même globalement compliquée ces dernières années, avec une énorme pression en Suisse romande sur les loyers, une grande augmentation de la circulation avec l'arrivée de frontaliers, d'immigrés. Il faut prendre le temps d'intégrer correctement les nouveaux arrivants".

She says life has become more complex, rents are higher, traffic is denser. Let's take the time to properly integrate the new arrivals.

• « Exister face au poids lourd européen » par Sebastien M. (Genève, employé de banque)

J'ai voté oui. J'y ai longuement réfléchi, ai pesé le pour et le contre, lu beaucoup d'avis contradictoires. Et je dois avouer qu'il n'y avait pas d'argumentation structurée au refus de ce texte. Le seul argument entendu (et rabâché) était : attention, l'Europe va sévir si le peuple suisse accepte l'initiative. Cela a attisé la défiance du peuple suisse face à une Europe se voulant hégémonique. Avec ce vote, il y a ce sentiment « d'exister » face au poids lourd qu'est l'Europe. Les conséquences ? On verra bien, mais il y a fort à parier qu'elles ne seront pas aussi catastrophiques que l'UE veut bien le faire croire...

He says the only argument against the initiative was that Europe would "sévir" -- sort of rise up against little Switzerland. Now he says the country has the feeling it "exists", facing up (a sort of David and Goliath) to Europe's heavy hegemony. He doesn't think it'll be as catastrophic as the EU wants us to believe. Hope he's right.
People have reacted to the spectacular and very rapid change in contemporary life, and have voted to slow it down in a particular way. 
It's a retro vote, but also a vote of perplexity and pain.

This all reminds me of the old children's song "The Farmer in the Dell":

Children circle round, hands joined, and one child plays the farmer, who then takes a wife, who takes a child etc.

The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Heigh-ho the derry-oh
The farmer in the dell!

The farmer takes a wife
The farmer takes a wife 
etc.
The wife takes the child
etc.
The child takes the dog,
etc.
dog takes cat, cat takes rat, rat take cheese, and...

The cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Heigh-ho the derry-oh
The cheese stands alone.

The other characters then rejoin the circle and one child--the cheese chosen by the rat--is left in the middle......turning round and round alone as the song ends.

HEY JAY Z ......... DON'T RIP OFF AN OLD SWISS MAN

Flagrant - not even a word of apology or acknowledgment. 
Listen to these two recordings on YouTube. They're not long, but you don't need long to realize Jay Z has done more than borrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxsnaamt6gI    Bruno Spoerri's   "On the way" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Sboc05DhA     Jay Z 's   "Versus"

Clare O'Dea writes on January 28th 2014:

 'Veteran Swiss jazz and electronic musician Bruno Spoerri has accused Jay Z, one of the United States’ most successful hip hop artists, of illegally using a 1978 music sample in the rapper’s latest album Magna Carta Holy Grail.

'"In a way I’m flattered that a relatively young rapper takes a sample from an old man, a sample that is about 35 years old,” 78-year-old Spoerri told swissinfo.ch, speaking from his home in Zurich.

“On the other hand I’m furious because it would have been so simple to clear the sample. All it would have needed was a call or an email to the company and I think it would have been relatively cheap.” 

...........The 1978 track On the Way was composed by Spoerri for the film Lilith. Financially, the two musicians are at opposite ends of the music spectrum.

In 2012, Forbes estimated the net worth of Jay Z – real name Shawn Carter – from music and other businesses at $500 million (CHF450 million). Jay Z and Justin Timberlake won a Grammy award on January 26 for their collaboration on another track from Magna Carta Holy Grail.

Spoerri, who still performs once or twice a month, says what matters most to him is an apology.'

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/Jay_Z_accused_of_stealing_Swiss_music_sample.html?cid=37830970

 See also http://www.srf.ch/radio-srf-3/musik/bruno-spoerri-jay-z-spielt-auf-zermuerbung

Bruno Spoerri is a serious working musician, the first electronic music composer in Switzerland, a sax player, and he deserves proper recognition!

SRF 3/Carmen Köppel 

            Getty Images

Getty Images

                                                     

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman
A great actor. Young, gifted, addicted and now, unhappily, dead.
About three years ago some friends and I walked into the Elephant & Castle in the Village for a Saturday or Sunday morning brunch and talk. We were seated within sneezing distance. The intensity we'd seen on-screen was still apparent: he exuded a life force (and not because we were gawking fans). He was also a bit on edge as his friend / assistant reported on various appointments, messages, projects: his Obligation Brunch.
How we were smitten in his presence. What a loss.

This brief footage and commentary sums up what made him such a tremendous actor:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2014/feb/03/philip-seymour-hoffman-video-appreciation

Roger, Rafi and Stan -- Footwear for Champions

We are bi-pedal -- using (usually) two feet to move us over dirt, grass, sand, rock, wood, in addition to concrete, tile, carpeting, linoleum with all its successors, astro-turf and other man-made surfaces.

We create footwear to seduce or serve, possibly both.
Footwear wears out, people buy more footwear, people demand better and better footwear.
Twenty-first century athletes have a huge selection.

Our tennis heroes Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka have opted for red and pink shades for this year's Australian Open, and their shoes are getting their own little blog.
Nadal and Federer have their shoes custom-made for them (check out Rafa's name-tags), but apparently Wawrinka hasn't walked this way (yet). Good old working tennis shoes. Yonex's star is rising.

RAFA'S SHOES

Custom-finished Nike pinks

aka Lunar Ballistec(!)

Nadal Wears CB 4.3 Imitating Nike Lunar Ballistec in Round 2 

Rafa Uses a Disguised Nike Court Ballistec 4.3 Instead of “Redefined” Lunar Ballistec Shoes

http://rafavault.com/tag/lunar-court-ballistec/

Whahh?? those were quotes from the above website.

These photos don't capture the hot pink we saw on TV during the Australian Open.  HOT!

 

ROGER'S SHOES 

Nike-Zoom-Vapor-9

I think he also has them in other color combos

Light, sensible, tri-color

STAN'S SHOES

Yonex SHT-PRO EX

Never heard of them before, but they're on the radar now!

THE CHAMP!!

via Getty Images/Michael Dodge

The Goldfinch - Part II The Book

Look Inside!

........or maybe don't bother.....

I wasn't familiar with the work of Donna Tartt, the author of the eponymous novel, but the media buzzed and I thought ok, here's a new novel by a well-known American woman author, I'll go for it. Stephen King gushed in the New York Times:

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."

A no-brainer, right? So I buy the hardback as a gift for my sister-in-law and a kindle copy for my ipad.

It opens with a twenty-something year old Theo holed up in a hotel in The Netherlands. Then fast backward to the museum in NYC, an explosion (terrorist?) during which his mother dies, and the painting (The Goldfinch) is taken /stolen / saved by Theo, the 13 year-old protagonist. A young teenager might thrill to the long, naughty drug-taking and booze-swilling narratives, the odd friendships, the compromised father, the rich friends, the bizarre friends.

Francine Prose (love her name) in The New York Review of Books lists some of the many astonishing clichés that run through it. I agree: the language so predictable you can surf through rapidly. A page-turner because the paragraphs have no heft, no resistance. And the characters feel shallow and unconvincing. Prose's review is the best I've read.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jan/09/after-great-expectations/

I've gotten to the point where the protagonist Theo has unwrapped the treasured canvas a few times, and is back in New York City after months of crazy days in Vegas. Theo has reconnected with Pippa, a girl who was present at the beginning.Their relationship resembles a cheap version of Pip's obsession with Estella in Great Expectations. (It turns out Tartt devoured Dickens)........ 

Here are some delicious mixed metaphors and mixed-up images from half-way through the book, when Theo has been ill and is recovering in the City:

"Time slid from under me in drifts like ice skids on the highway, punctuated by sudden sharp flashes where my wheels caught and I was flung into ordinary time....."

This flung me into ordinary time, andI realized I have two other excellent books to finish plus US and French taxes. After these, I might finish the book. Not sure if "might" is right. 

So how does one explain the success story?

     Brilliant marketing, fabulous timing

Donna Tartt revealed in a (rare) interview that she was unaware that a major art exhibit which included the Goldfinch would open in New York during October 2013!! (Official on sale date: October 22nd). Surprise! Bookstores and museum stores were/are ablaze with them. 

The Goldfinch has been in the top five of the New York Times bestseller in both print/plus e-books category and hardcover sales since November 24th 2014. I checked. And it is currently number two.

       Potential readers Teenagers. Then twenty-somethings looking for a read, art lovers, thirty-something airline passengers on business trips with long stopovers, forty-something city-dwellers, museum-goers, stoners, ex-stoners, nostalgic recovering alcoholics, early-, middle- and late-middle aged book discussion group members, National Institute on Drug Abuse / NIH librarians etc.

      Yearning: people are searching for something evocative and mystical as the painting itself, a narrative that connects them with another world and transcends time. In other words, to be transported by a thing of beauty, on the wings of prose (if you'll allow me one little cliché!).

In an interview Tartt states: 

"....some of the earliest scenes in “The Goldfinch” were taken from notes dated 1993. “I was writing for a while not knowing what I was writing,” she said. “That’s the way it’s been with all my books. Things will come to you and you’re not going to know exactly how they fit in. You have to trust in the way they all fit together, that your subconscious knows what you’re doing.” 

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/interview-the-very-very-private-life-of-ms-donna-tartt-29780543.html

Perhaps Tartt trusted too much. Pumped and hyped and 784 pages long, the book lets us down. 

- - - - - - -

PS In case the book proves too complicated, the plot too abstruse, there is now --tah-dah --

'Sidekick' for The Goldfinch  by Book Buddy- a reader's guide 

Read this analysis alongside the The Goldfinch to get chapter-by-chapter overviews that clarifies any confusing encounters.......Compare this book to Greek tragedies to see how death portrays a universal theme that has great impacts (sic) on any protagonist......

  

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

·  Price: $30.00 US/$33.00 CAN

·  Pages: 784

·  Physical Dimensions: 6" x 9-1/4"

·  ISBN-13: 9780316055437

·  On Sale Date: 10/22/2013

The Goldfinch - Part I The Painting

The Goldfinch, painted in 1654 by the young Carel Fabritius, was on show at the Frick in New York as part of “Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis” which ended on January 19th 2014. Real Vermeers.  For unreal Vermeers see the previous blog (http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2014/01/authenticity-vermeer-and-van-meegerens.html).

Lance Esplund is eloquent in his description:

"Carel Fabritius studied with Rembrandt and influenced Vermeer. Among the most charming and rare pictures here is his "Goldfinch". The bird is a fluttery, feisty, wispy little guy perched on its feeding box. Emblazoning its black wing -- like a logo that both grounds and sets the bird alight -- is an opaque yellow lightning-bolt." 

and 

"Like Vermeer’s “Girl,” which inspired a book and film, this small picture has been in the spotlight recently because of Donna Tartt’s new novel, “The Goldfinch.”(my emphasis). At the Frick, the charming bird won’t outshine Vermeer, but it might just break a few hearts of its own."

 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-24/vermeer-s-girl-with-a-pearl-earring-seduces-at-frick.html

Aha, The Book.

Malcolm Jones first reads The Book and then decides to attend the exhibit and view "The Goldfinch" himself.

"Standing before the Fabritius painting, feeling it tug on me from across the room, even when my back was turned, I knew exactly what Theo Decker meant. I could stare at that painting for a year, and still not be able to tell you how he did it, but in its presence, I knew that Fabritius did make art and it was magic.

The Goldfinch was painted the year Fabritius died. The most promising painter of his time, student of Rembrandt, an influence on Vermeer, he was killed at the age of 32 when a gunpowder magazine exploded in Delft in 1654. Nearly all his paintings were destroyed. The Goldfinch, for whatever reason, survived. The man explaining the painting in the museum claimed that if you look at its surface closely, you could still see minute traces of the explosion." 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/01/face-to-face-with-the-goldfinch-the-painting-from-donna-tartt-s-novel.html

The collection returns to the Mauritshuis later this year. I will make the pilgrimage.

But what about The Book--  The Goldfinch, the new novel by Donna Tartt? A different story.

Next blog......http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2014/01/the-goldfinch-part-ii-book.html