Without Lifting A Finger







The Column of the Immaculate Conception or la Colonna della Immacolata , is a nineteenth-century monument in central Rome depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary , located in what is called Piazza Mignanelli, towards the south east extension of Piazza di Spagna . It was placed aptly in front of the offices of the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide (offices for promulgating the faith), now renamed the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples . The Marian monument was designed by the architect Luigi Poletti and commissioned by Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies . In part, he wanted to put closure to the dispute between Naples and the Papal States that had developed in the last century, when Naples abolished the Chinea , a yearly tribute offered to the Pope as ultimate sovereign of Naples. [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_of_the_Immaculate_Conception,_Rome ]

Woke to it every morning, so I figured it was worth a shot. I take the impressionistic floral blur on the steps for crowds of people (what else -- flowers?). What do you think? A typical touristy, bedroom-waller. * 

Have been in or around the Spanish Steps at least three times. This time: multiple times, as we stayed just a block away. You should always leave something for "next time." For me it will be many things, but at least one of those will be the Keats-Shelley House.             

Eliot and Ezra are of course connected in Eternity. But Leskov -- how is he connected to the other two? Answer: all three kept me company in Italy. Leskov (whether he knows it or not) was my exclusive companion in Rome. In Venice I broke with Leskov (temporarily) to read (reread?) Eliot's "Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry." *** A few quotes from Eliot's salute to Pound: "Ezra Pound has been fathered with vers libre in English, with all its vices and virtues. The term is a loose one -- any verse is called "free" by people whose ears are not accustomed to it -- in the second place, Pound's use of this medium has shown the temperance of the artist, and his belief in it as a vehicle is not that of the fanatic. He has said himself that when one has the proper material for a sonnet, one should use the sonnet form; but that it happens very rarely to any poet to find himself in possession of just the block of stuff which can perfectly be modelled in...

The Spanish Steps ( Italian : Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti ) are a set of steps in Rome , Italy , climbing a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church at the top. The monumental stairway of 135 steps (the slightly elevated drainage system is often mistaken for the first step) was built with French diplomat Étienne Gueffier’s bequeathed funds of 20,000 scudi , in 1723–1725, linking the Bourbon Spanish Embassy , and the Trinità dei Monti church that was under the patronage of the Bourbon kings of France, both located above — to the Holy See in Palazzo Monaldeschi located below. The stairway was designed by architects Francesco de Sanctis and Alessandro Specchi . [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Steps ]

This was our 3rd time at Ristorante 34. Discovered it years ago. One of the hardest working waiters in the world works here. The itinerant accordion player is also ubiquitous. The girl just happened to be in the way. *     

We walked from the train station in Rome to our hotel near the Spanish Steps. These pics are from our first night. *            

The Quattro Fontane (the Four Fountains) is an ensemble of four Late Renaissance fountains located at the intersection of Via delle Quattro Fontane and Via del Quirinale in Rome . They were commissioned by Pope Sixtus V and built at the direction of Muzio Mattei , and were installed between 1588 and 1593. The figure of one fountain is said to represent the River Tiber , in front of an oak-tree; a she-wolf, the symbol of Rome, was a later addition. A second fountain represents the River Aniene , a tributary of the Tiber, called Anio in ancient Rome, which provided most Roman aqueducts with water. Pope Sixtus proposed to build a canal to bring the water of the Aniene to Rome. The other two fountains feature female figures believed to represent the Goddess Diana ; the symbol of Chastity; and the Goddess Juno , the symbol of Strength, but it is possible that they may also represent rivers. The fountains of the Aniene, Tiber, and Juno are the work of Domenico Fontana . The fountain of D...

              

Dribble dribble. A whirlwind visit (revisit) to Rome and Venice. Next time I'd stay away from Rome in the Summer (I miss our love affairs in the winter months); with Venice I'm a bit like Gustav von Aschenbach: I don't want to leave. * 

From the beginning of "Deathless Golovan": He himself is almost a myth, and his story a legend. To tell about him, one should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others what they don't understand themselves. I say all this with the aim of begging my reader's indulgence beforehand for the overall imperfection of my story of a person whose portrayal is worth the efforts of a far better master than I. But Golovan is worthy of attention, and though I did not know him well enough to be able to draw his full portrait, I will select and present some features of this mortal man of no high rank who was reputed to be deathless .

  [From Wikipedia Commons: Photo thought to be taken by Adrian Ebel: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dakota_War_of_1862-stereo-right.jpg ] 

Adrian John Ebell (b. 1840-09-20; d. 1877), was born in Jaffnapatam on the Island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka ), the son of Henry T. and Mary (Palm) Ebell, of English and Dutch ancestry. When about ten years of age, he was sent to the United States with an older sister to be educated. After preparatory school he entered Yale University in 1858. He then taught music in New Haven, Connecticut , and in Chicago , and then moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota , and took some noted photographs. He served for a short time in the Indian war in Minnesota with the rank of 1st Lieutenant. He wrote an article in June 1863 in Harper's Magazine titled "The Indian Massacres and War of 1862" , [ 1 ] which included the famous photograph "People escaping from the Indian massacre of 1862 in Minnesota, at dinner on a prairie" . He then returned to Yale and graduated at the Scientific School in 1866 with a PhD. He afterwards studied medicine at the Albany Medical College , graduatin...

This is the ex-theater entrance (apparently this space has been turned into condos/lofts). A young lady rushed out as we were admiring the exterior, but we were too shy to ask for a peek. We did see the other entrance (a large space used for large gatherings and voting): it's getting a makeover. *         

    

I suppose we've come a long way. Or have we? Either way, here's a nice slice of Leskov's "Singlemind": Conjugal life cost him no more than bachelorhood; on the contrary, now it became even more profitable for him, because, having brought home a wife, he immediately dismissed the hired woman he had paid no less than a copper rouble a month. From then on the copper rouble remained in his pocket, and the house was better kept; his wife's strong hands were never idle: she spun and wove, and also turned out to be good at knitting stockings and growing vegetables. In short, his wife was a simple, capable peasant woman, faithful and submissive, with whom the biblical eccentric could live in a biblical way, and apart from what has been said, there is nothing to say about her.





Literary critic and philosopher Kenneth Burke first coined and described the expression "scapegoat mechanism" in his books Permanence and Change (1935), and A Grammar of Motives (1945). These works influenced some philosophical anthropologists , such as Ernest Becker and René Girard . Girard developed the concept much more extensively as an interpretation of human culture. In Girard's view, it is humankind, not God, who has need for various forms of atoning violence. Humans are driven by desire for that which another has or wants ( mimetic desire ). This causes a triangulation of desire and results in conflict between the desiring parties. This mimetic contagion increases to a point where society is at risk; it is at this point that the scapegoat mechanism [ 9 ] is triggered. This is the point where one person is singled out as the cause of the trouble and is expelled or killed by the group. This person is the scapegoat. Social order is restored as people are cont...

René Noël Théophile Girard ( / ʒ i ˈ r ɑr d / ; French:  [ʒiʁaʁ] ; born December 25, 1923) is a Franco-American historian , literary critic , and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy . Girard is the author of nearly thirty books (see below ), with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticism , critical theory , anthropology , theology , psychology , mythology , sociology , economics , cultural studies , and philosophy . Girard's fundamental ideas, which he has developed throughout his career and provide the foundation for his thinking, are that desire is mimetic (all of our desires are borrowed from other people), that all conflict originates in mimetic desire (mimetic rivalry), that the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrif...

Dragging through Wolf's Medea (loved her City of Angels , the last book I read by her, but this one is so-so), but I thought I'd see what she had to say before I dipped into Euripides' version. Anyway, each chapter is a "voice," and each chapter/voice has an epigraph. This is where I first ran into the name of Rene Girard (both quotes are from his text: Violence and the Sacred ). From Chapter Seven: Leukon: People want to convince themselves that their misfortunes come from one single responsible person who can easily be got rid of. From Chapter Eight: Medea: The festival has lost all of its ritual characteristics, and it ends badly insofar as it finds its way back to its violent beginnings. It is no longer a hindrance to the forces of evil, but their ally.

Guess I knew I had the app, just never thought to toy with it much. Now I'm practicing for Rome & Venice. I'll run up every other campanile and snap a pan. *         



                

Leonid Osipovich Pasternak (born Yitzhok-Leib , or Isaak Iosifovich, Pasternak ; Russian : Леони́д О́сипович Пастерна́к , 3 April 1862 N.S. – 31 May 1945) was a Russian post-impressionist painter . He was the father of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak . Biography Leonid Pasternak was born in Odessa to an Orthodox Jewish family on 4 April 1862. The family claimed to be distantly descended, in one line, from Isaac Abrabanel , the famous 15th-century Jewish philosopher and treasurer of Portugal, although no independent evidence of this exists. [ 1 ] Leonid's father made an income by renting out a guest house. The courtyard of the guest house, with its adjoining coach-house, first awakened Leonid's artistic imagination. He was the youngest of the six children in the family. He started to draw very early, but his family tried to discourage him, as they feared that his drawing would interfere with his studies. His first sponsor was the local street cleaner who began bu...

Traveled to Trieste just for Duino (it's still a school, I believe -- I met a young man near a seaside grotto who attended the school). Walked miles in the pouring rain. Loved every minute of it. Swear I heard an angel or two myself. *     

Last two strophes of the Tenth Elegy (German/English):   Aber erweckten sie uns, die unendlich Toten, ein Gleichnis, siehe, sie zeigten vielleicht auf die Kätzchen der leeren Hasel, die hängenden, oder meinten den Regen, der fallt auf dunkles Erdreich im Frühjahr. –   Und wir, die an steigendes Glück denken, empfänden die Rührung, die uns beinah bestürzt, wenn ein Glückliches fällt.   ***   But if the endlessly dead woke a symbol in us, see, they would point perhaps to the catkins, hanging from bare hazels, or they would intend the rain, falling on dark soil in Spring-time. –   And we, who think of ascending joy, would feel the emotion, that almost dismays us, when a joyful thing falls.   [Translation by A. S. Kline]  

  [From Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pasternak-rilke.jpeg ] 

The Duino Elegies ( German : Duineser Elegien ) are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian - Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," [ 1 ] began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle , near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea . The poems, 859 lines long in total, [ 2 ] were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke suffered frequently from severe depression —some of which was caused by the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed inspiration—writing in a frantic pace he described as a "boundless storm, a...

Harmony is an unincorporated community located in San Luis Obispo County , California. It lies north of Cayucos and south of Cambria on SR 1 , near the junction with SR 46 . The ZIP Code is 93435. The community is inside area code 805 . History The town of Harmony began as a dairy settlement in the late 19th century started by Swiss immigrants living near the Italian border—the same background as many of San Luis Obispo County's founders, including the Madonna Family, owners of the Madonna Inn located in San Luis Obispo, California . Harmony was founded in 1869 around several dairy ranches and a creamery. The operation changed hands repeatedly because of rivalries that led to a killing. In 1907, owners and ranchers agreed to call off their feud and called the town by its present name as a symbol of their truce. The Harmony Valley Dairy Co-op was founded in 1901, and the town grew, soon hosting a dairy management office, dormitories for employees, a livery stable, blac...





La Salle des Mariages - Ville de Menton - site officiel

If we get to Rome (standby), more than likely we'll take the night train to Venice. That's the plan. Thus the old Venice pics. *                 

Planning to get there again: end of June. I thought this would be a good spot to insert some Rome pics from the past. *