but the memory of someone buried deep in the silt of the soul, a musician who was popular back in the day, replaced by stars of today, screaming or purring into state-of-the-art hardware, enhanced by state-of-the-art software and streamed through earphones the size of a finger-nail......
So yes, Leslie Gore was a heroine of our time, singing her guts out into an early 'sixties microphone, hair in a lacquered bouffant, a heart and soul of rock 'n' roll and voice, and yes, a burning and yearning young woman of her time, as the drum-roll of mid-twentieth century feminism was about to begin.
"It's My Party And I Can Cry If I Want To" and more tellingly "You Don't Own Me" which, amazingly, sounded radical at the time!! We were harnessed to pointy bras that would show something tempting, but oh Lord not too much sweetie, or you're a tramp. Skirts, matching high heels, just-so hair and smile, like you don't have period cramps or are late on your homework and your best friend has a crush on your boyfriend.
When Leslie Gore's death hit the news, it hit this early boomer in the solar plexus: my age and now dead. She who was part of who we really were back then and a harbinger of what we would or could become.
1963 version of "You Don't Own Me", demure at about 17:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QEqLTbEXy0
and 1964, this time standing up, not as shy, eyes flashing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDUjeR01wnU
and for a varied picture gallery, giving you most of the hairdos of the '60s:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/lesley-gore-pictures.html
February 20, 2015
February 13, 2015
DAVID CARR
What the French call "une série noire"...... for US journalists.
Two tragic and sudden deaths and a fall from grace for fabrication (or "conflation") of a former hero.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/13/david-carr-new-york-times-columnist-dies-suddenly-at-office
February 12, 2015
BRIAN WILLIAMS -- THE BIG CONFLATION. BOB SIMON - THE LETHAL CRASH. TV NEWS IN CRISIS.
Bob Simon
Andy Kropa/Invision/AP
Andy Kropa/Invision/AP
Brad Barket/Invision/AP
Burned wings, tarnished rep, fall from grace
After feasting for days and nights on the Brian Williams fall from grace, we now have a real person to mourn in Bob Simon.
Brian Williams: the lie, described as "I conflated...." (a giant fart of a lie) tarnishes Williams, but with him perhaps the entire image of a TV newscaster as a god, albeit a lesser god.
In the US people adore a man delivering news from battlefield, earthquake, flood, tsunami or massacre, digesting the exotic and dangerous and transforming sometimes unspeakable news into an information bolus the public can re-digest.
I am totally with witty, enthusiastic sportscasters, who are sports heroes in their own right.
But to promote almost-handsome newscasters to star status is also to warp our understanding of the news, and be vulnerable to their flawed content and delivery.
One can say the same thing about print news and internet news--they can manipulate.
But the direct human delivery and the subtle but real emotional impact of a talking head are hard to beat for influence.
People are now chastising NBC for their severe reaction, that they might ruin his career.
Ten million for looking serious and lying? Why are people treading on eggshells?
I think it's because the newscaster-as-hero may be changing and the networks are scared as hell.
Meanwhile we can certainly mourn the untimely death of Bob Simon.
He didn't need to make things up, he was actually there.
RIP.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/12/bob-simon-dies-in-new-york-car-crash
February 6, 2015
THE DANCE OF THE OTOLITHS
Last time I posted something referring to ears, The Child's Ear, which was metaphor, I was amused that there were hits from people/sites looking for medical information.
This concerns a brush with vertigo, but medics, sufferers and hypochondriacs and anyone else looking for answers may prefer to abstain from reading this and return to their Google search.
About that bout -- not so humorous-- it began in the early hours following a mediocre night's sleep, accompanied me to the kitchen, persisted through my first coffee and through a fruitless discussion about coffee and insomnia as I tried to ignore the countertop rocking like a boat on rough seas and couldn't hold my mug upright. I hadn't had alcohol for days, it wasn't that. Was I off kilter? Uncentered? Displaced? Distressed? Depressed? Was this the final punch of a month-long cold before it left the arena? Perhaps all of the above. Damn, I can't balance life in ten minutes, so what can I do?
Well it's all about otoliths: tiny crystals in your inner ear that clump in the wrong way and don't move around properly, so they can't play their role of helping you adapt to changes of position.
Otoliths..........barbaric crystals of suffering.
Ibuprofen and a long walk helped, but I could still feel those buggers hanging in there, waiting for another opportunity to dance, or rather stumble around like evil sugarplum fairies and mess up my day.
So I'm blogging to blast the otoliths to hell.
There, I feel better already.
Probable diagnosis:
Benign Paroxysmal. Positional Vertigo (BPPV to the cognoscenti)
Cawthorne-
........to name a few.
Gotta tilt those labyrinths.
Can't wait.
This concerns a brush with vertigo, but medics, sufferers and hypochondriacs and anyone else looking for answers may prefer to abstain from reading this and return to their Google search.
About that bout -- not so humorous-- it began in the early hours following a mediocre night's sleep, accompanied me to the kitchen, persisted through my first coffee and through a fruitless discussion about coffee and insomnia as I tried to ignore the countertop rocking like a boat on rough seas and couldn't hold my mug upright. I hadn't had alcohol for days, it wasn't that. Was I off kilter? Uncentered? Displaced? Distressed? Depressed? Was this the final punch of a month-long cold before it left the arena? Perhaps all of the above. Damn, I can't balance life in ten minutes, so what can I do?
Well it's all about otoliths: tiny crystals in your inner ear that clump in the wrong way and don't move around properly, so they can't play their role of helping you adapt to changes of position.
Otoliths..........barbaric crystals of suffering.
Ibuprofen and a long walk helped, but I could still feel those buggers hanging in there, waiting for another opportunity to dance, or rather stumble around like evil sugarplum fairies and mess up my day.
So I'm blogging to blast the otoliths to hell.
There, I feel better already.
Probable diagnosis:
Benign Paroxysmal. Positional Vertigo (BPPV to the cognoscenti)
Therapies, exercises and other possible forms of torture
Brandt-Daroff exercises
Cawthorne-
Canalith repositioning procedure
Semont Liberatory Maneuvers
Dix-Hallpike Maneuver
(some of which may involve coordinated and not-so-coordinated eye movements)
Gotta tilt those labyrinths.
Can't wait.
November 29, 2014
BICONTINENTAL BALTIMORE BONAPARTE
“Nature never intended me for obscurity.”
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte to her father, 1815
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
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte to her father, 1815
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte,” Firmin Massot, 1823, MdHS, XX.5.69
from the mdhc website
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
November 27, 2014
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
July 8, 2014
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
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
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