Niagara

Niagara
Thousand Islands
Jaguar
St. Lawrence 
Loch-Ness
Indonesia

Judg.1:1
"Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?"

 Tripod plate, the interior with a resurrection scene, the exterior of the rim with dark brown "jaguar" spots, 600–800 AD. Late Classic, Maya

 Loch-ness, Scotland.

Soft Coral Barrier, Indonesia

 Niagara Falls

Boldt Castle, Thousand Islands, St. Lawrence River 

Jaguar (by Josef Gelernter on 500px)

Chess:  "Niagara" "Jaguar" "St. Lawrence" "Loch Ness" "Indonesia" "Thousand Islands

Kind

Kind
Herringbone
Maple Leaf
Basketry
Kimono
 
Judg1:2
"And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand."

"No spark had yet kindled in him an intellectual passion"~~~George Eliot

Shinto white wedding kimono.  Japan.

Backlit red leaf by Jim Zuckerman

F-22 Raptors in formation

Mat with herringbone pattern on (Ancient Egypt)

 Canadian maple leaf hat

Canadian Maple Leaf

 Kind

 Chess: "Kind" "Herringbone" "Maple Leaf" "Basketry" "Kimono"

Ancient Egyptian basketry     Basketry is one of the most ancient crafts. The raw materials were widely available: grasses, above all the tough halfa varieties, sedges, reeds, stalks such as flax, twigs, leaves, most frequently of the date and doum palms, and occasionally leather [1]. The various techniques of intertwining and tying together strands of plant material were quickly mastered once the principles were understood. The range of products included mattings, baskets, bags, and sandals which ... were very closely and beautifully stitched up of rush, and usually soled with leather. A small bundle of rush was wound round by a rush thread, which at every turn pierced through the edge of a previous bundle. Thus these successive bundles were bound together edge to edge, and a flat surface built up. This was edged round in the same way. In basket making exactly the same principle was followed, with great neatness. The rush sandals soled with leather, leather sandals alone, and leather shoes, were all used. The shoes seem to have been just originating at that period; two or three examples are known, but all of them have the leather sandal strap between the toes, and joining to the sides of the heel, to retain the sole on the foot ; the upper leather being stitched on merely as a covering without its being intended to hold the shoe on the foot. These soles are compound, of three or four thicknesses. W.M.F.Petrie Kahun, Gurob and Hawara, p.28 They also constructed bigger basketry objects such as grain silos made of coiled straw or plaited reeds, and weir-baskets The ubiquitous reed raft was built using similar techniques.     Basketry preceded and influenced cloth weaving, pottery and carpentry and enabled people to make sturdy containers which were also lightweight, expendable, and affordable. Amenemhet, a medjay policeman living at Deir el Medine under Ramses II seems to have received quite a large delivery of basketry and vegetables Year 54, month 2 of Shemu, day 24 Medjay Amenemhet: mats 2, baskets 4, sieves 4, repetition baskets 4, sieves 4, bundles of vegetables 5 ...... vegetables 2 Berlin papyrus 6025     Like most folk art basketry is stylistically conservative, changing little over the centuries. According to Willeke Wendrich who made comparative studies of basketry in a Nubian and an Egyptian region: It appears that Egypt enjoys a strong regional continuity. Basketry from New Kingdom Middle Egypt (ca. 1350 BCE) has more features in common with present-day basketry from Middle Egypt than with ancient basketry from Nubia. Similarly, there is a clear continuity between ancient and modern Nubian basketry.     At times, above all during the prehistoric period, wickerwork seems to have served as support for a layer of clay. During the 4th millennium grain stores were sometimes built like this, and some have surmised that pottery was invented - or perhaps rather discovered - when baskets, which had been lined with clay for waterproofing, were accidentally burned leaving behind thin-walled pottery vessels. Coiling was used both in pottery and basketry, but it seems that the first potters used a technique consisting of hollowing and pinching the clay rather than coiling it. Mattings     Chairs and stools were rarely used, and most ancient Egyptians sat on the floor, which was, even in palaces, made of stamped clay; and mats to sit on were introduced early. Bed frames were covered with mattings made of plaited strips of material, such as leather or cloth.     Windows and, at least during the earliest times of the dynastic period, doors were at times be covered with mattings which could be rolled up when not in use. A reminder of these door mattings are stone cylinders above Old Kingdom tomb entrances, simulated rolls of matting.     Mats were also often hung on walls. They could be decorated by using varying plaiting techniques or differently coloured strands of material.     Ships, according to Herodotus, had sails made of papyrus matting.     Mats played a role in funerary practices early on. The corpse was often laid out on a mat, covered with or wrapped in it.
		The author of the Satire of the Trades described the weaver's trade as follows: The weaver is in his workshop. He is worse off than a woman; with knees against his chest, he cannot breathe air. If he skips a day of weaving, he is beaten fifty strokes; he gives food to the doorkeeper, to let him see the light of day. M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol.1, p.188     According to ancient sources, a worker in Uruk made a 36 square metre mat in six days. The fingers of the ancient Egyptians were probably just as nimble. Some of these mats were rather crude affairs: Rush mats, like the modern hasira, appear to have been made, as a weaver's beam was found with thread holes 1½ inches apart, 28 holes in all. Flat sticks for beating up the thread into place, after the shuttle has passed in the loom, are also found. W.M.F.Petrie Kahun, Gurob and Hawara, p.28
		Baskets and bags     Wooden storage chests were expensive and rare, and household cupboards unknown. The few possessions an ancient Egyptian family had, were therefore mostly kept in baskets. Petrie uncovered at Kahun among other things a basket with beads and a bronze ring the set of copper chisels and hatchets, found in a basket a basket which had contained a small alabaster jar basket-work which had held the smaller things and rotted clothes. and most of the small objects were found in oval baskets of the Nubian type, with woven patterns on the sides, and a ridge lid. small, flat, square baskets of rope were made, about 6 or 7 inches in height and width. And a band, probably for going round the back of a man in palm climbing, is formed of 14 fine ropes parallel, interwoven with strips of linen cloth, and ending in two thick loops for attaching the rope. baskets were also made of palm leaf; both of the modern round type with palm rope handles, and of the flat, square form ; the latter is most thoughtfully designed, with a wooden bottom bar, woven rope corners, six fine ropes up the sides to distribute the pressure, retained in place by a cross rope, and ending in a twisted rope handle, the top edge having a fine rope binding, W. M. F. Petrie Illahun, Kahun and Gurob

Crystal

Crystal
Glasses
Man of La Mancha
The Ring and the Book 
Purple
Browning 

Judg.4:1 
"And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, when Ehud was dead."

"I will not soil thy purple with my dust" ~~~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Chess: "Crystal" "Glasses" "Man of La Mancha" "The Ring and the Book" "Purple" "Browning"

III. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.§ 14. The Ring and the Book.

Browning was at the height of his power during this period. Nowhere is his poetic work so uniformly great as in Dramatis Personae (1864); and there is no doubt that The Ring and the Book is the most magnificent of all his achievements, in spite of its inequalities. Critics miss in Dramatis Personae something of the lightness and brightness and early morning charm of Pippa Passes and of some of his earlier Men and Women; and they find in it, not any trace of the pathetic fallacy, yet a lingering echo of the brooding sorrow for his life’s loss. It was later in the day; the world was more commonplace; the outlook more desolate and man’s failure less tinged with glory; women were more homely, love was less ethereal; and the stuff to be idealised through being better known by a wiser love was more stubborn. “The summer had stopped,” and “the sky was deranged.” But the autumn had come, bringing a richer harvest in Dramatis Personae. The significance of man’s life, and of the clash of circumstance which elicited it, was deeper as well as more grave. The world’s worn look disappears when it is seen in the great context in which it stands—“All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist,” says Abt Vogler. Man has himself “a flash of the will that can,” for he can use its distraught elements of life to a moral purpose, and weld them in a spiritual harmony—out of three sounds make, “not a fourth sound, but a star.” Prospice, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, even Mr. Sludge, “The Medium” and Caliban upon Setebos, are strong with a controlled ethical passion for what is real and true as things stand, and by interest in the issues which are ultimate; and, with realism, natural and spiritual, in both kinds, there is blended an imaginative splendour which transfigures even “the least of all mankind,” when we “look at his head and heart”; and see what I tell you—nature dance About each man of us, retire, advance, As though the pageant’s end were to enhance His worth, and—once the life, his product, gained—Roll away elsewhere. It is a permanent theme, its echoes are to be heard all the way to Asolando—this wash of circumstance around man’s soul which yet maintains its mastery over all the play of the waves; and nowhere is it rendered more finely than in Dramatis Personae and its Epilogue.	76
The Edinburgh Review found it a “subject of amazement that poems of so obscure and uninviting a character should find numerous readers”; and there were other critics besides Frederick Tennyson who still thought Browning’s poetry “the most grotesque conceivable.” But the situation had, in truth, changed. Browning’s admirers were no longer confined to pre-Raphaelites and “young men at the Universities.” A second edition of Dramatis Personae was called for within the same year as the first. And the reception accorded to The Ring and the Book was still more favourable. At last, Browning was coming into his kingdom. It had taken long: so late as 1867, he spoke of himself as “the most unpopular poet that ever was.”	77
There was an interval of four years between Dramatis Personae and The Ring and the Book. But the theme had interested him from the moment when he came upon the “old, square, yellow book” on an old bookstall in Florence—the parchmentbound tale of the trial of an Italian noble for the murder of his wife. He saw its dramatic possibilities when he stood on the balcony of Casa Guidi, in June, 1860, at night, watching the storm. But it lay long working in his mind, and the sorrow of the following year led him to abandon the idea of writing, and he suggested the subject to two of his friends. In September, 1862, he recurred to it, spoke of “my new poem that is about to be,” “the Roman murder story.” He began to write it about 1864, and the poem grew steadily, for it became his crowning venture and he gave it regularly every day “three quiet, early morning hours.” It was published in four volumes, the first of which appeared in November, 1868; and the others during the three months following.	78
Many things concurred to make the story attractive to Browning. He had inherited a taste for tales of crime from his father; the situation was ambiguous and, as regards the priest and the girl-wife, it left room for a most beautiful, as well as for a sordid, explanation, and, therefore, it appealed both to Browning’s love of argument and to his ethical idealism; moreover, opinion in Rome was divided, and the popular mind was on its trial; there was the possibility that the truth “told for once for the church, and dead against the world, the flesh, and the devil”; and the story, in its essence, was not a common drab, but glorious—the romance of the young priest and Pompilia was “a gift of God, who showed for once how he would have the world go white.”	79
It was inevitable that such a theme should set free all the powers of Browning’s spirit; but it borrowed sublimity and a sacred loveliness from another quarter. For, undoubtedly, the “poem which enshrined Pompilia was instinct with reminiscence.” “With all its abounding vitality it was yet commemorative and memorial.” 9  When he wrote of “the one prize vouchsafed unworthy me”; of “the one blossom that made me proud at eve”; of a “life companioned by the woman there”; of living and seeing her learn, and learning by her, can there be doubt as to who lent to these utterances their pathetic beauty?	80
Nor is it fanciful to find in Caponsacchi something of the poet himself—more, perhaps, than in any other character he created. There was his own tempestuousness, much that a wise old pope could find “amiss,” “blameworthy,” “ungainly,” “discordant,” “infringement manifold” of convention; but there was also a “symmetric soul within,” “championship of God at first blush,” “prompt, cheery thud of glove on ground,” answering “ringingly the challenge of the false knight.” What are these qualities, with the ardour of a great love and the headlong and utter devotion of a large-hearted manhood, except the poet’s own? Caponsacchi’s I am, on earth, as good as out of it, A relegated priest; when exile ends, I mean to do my duty and live long, is inspired by the manly recoil of Browning and his refusal to be crushed by his sorrow. But the dream of having his “Iyric Love” by his side has been broken; and the bereaved poet is not perceptible in the “drudging student,” who “trims his lamp,” “draws the patched gown close” and awakes “to the old solitary nothingness.” The last words are a promise of this priest to “pass content, from such communion”; and Browning would fain have come back into the world of men as if his wound had healed. But the truth breaks out— O great, just, good God! Miserable me! There was, for both priest and poet, the rule in the world of a love that wrapped all things round about, and yet, somehow, also, there were sorrows that knew neither shores nor shoals.	81
To pass all the parts of this great poem under review is not possible, and to estimate the relative poetic worth of its several parts—Caponsacchi, Pompilia, The Pope and Guido—is not necessary; there are kinds as well as degrees of perfection, and comparison is sometimes absurd. The possibility of justifying the structure of the poem as a whole will remain doubtful; and the macaronic speeches of the lawyers, and some parts of what Rome said, have no real artistic value. But the poem is unique in its excellence as well as in its defects.

Barack

Barack
Deborah
Lightning
Resplandor
Shine
Barca

Judg.4:4
"And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time."

 The reconstructed "solar barge" of Khufu
The Khufu ship is an intact full-size vessel from Ancient Egypt that was sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2,500 BC. The ship was almost certainly built for Khufu (King Cheops), the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

Honey

 Honey Bees

 The boat known as The Khufu ship. It measures 43.6 m (143 ft) long and 5.9 m (19.5 ft) wide. Khufu, or King Cheops, was the second Pharoah of Egypt in the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. It was one of two ships rediscovered by Kamal el-Mallakh in 1954. The ship was placed at the foot of the Great Pyramid in Giza around 2500 BC and is now housed in The Khufu Boat Museum next to the Great Pyramid.

 Deborah ("Via Maris" is Latin and means "the Way of the Sea")

 Chess:  "Barack" "Lightning" "Resplandor" "Shine" "Barca" "Deborah"



Khufu ship

The reconstructed "solar barge" of Khufu
The Khufu ship is an intact full-size vessel from Ancient Egypt that was sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2,500 BC. The ship was almost certainly built for Khufu (King Cheops), the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

History
It is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved vessels from antiquity. It measures 43.6 m overall.
It was identified as the world's oldest intact ship and has been described as "a masterpiece of woodcraft" that could sail today if put into water.[1]
The ship was rediscovered in 1954 by Kamal el-Mallakh, undisturbed since it was sealed into a pit carved out of the Giza bedrock. It was built largely of cedar planking in the "shell-first" construction technique and has been reconstructed from more than 1,200 pieces which had been laid in a logical, disassembled order in the pit beside the pyramid.[2] It took years for the boat to be painstakingly reassembled, primarily by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities’ chief restorer, Ahmed Youssef Moustafa (later known as Hag Ahmed Youssef).[3]
The history and function of the ship are not precisely known. It is of the type known as a "solar barge", a ritual vessel to carry the resurrected king with the sun god Ra across the heavens. However, it bears some signs of having been used in water, and it is possible that the ship was either a funerary "barge" used to carry the king's embalmed body from Memphis to Giza, or even that Khufu himself used it as a "pilgrimage ship" to visit holy places and that it was then buried for him to use in the afterlife.
The Khufu ship has been on display to the public in a specially built museum at the Giza pyramid complex since 1982.

Magna Grecia

Magna Graecia
Megale Hellas
Great Greece
Maracuyá
Col.1:3
"We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,"

 Young Jesus and Joseph

Chess:  "Magna Grecia" "Maracuyá"

The Agamemnon of Aeschylus by Aeschylus

PREFACE


The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar
approaches the task of translating the _Agamemnon_ depends directly on its
greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of
Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the
vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its
peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation will be false in
character. Yet not Milton himself could produce in English the same great
music, and a translator who should strive ambitiously to represent the
complex effect of the original would clog his own powers of expression and
strain his instrument to breaking. But, apart from the diction in this
narrower sense, there is a quality of atmosphere surrounding the
_Agamemnon_ which seems almost to defy reproduction in another setting,
because it depends in large measure on the position of the play in the
historical development of Greek literature.

If we accept the view that all Art to some extent, and Greek tragedy in a
very special degree, moves in its course of development from Religion to
Entertainment, from a Service to a Performance, the _Agamemnon_ seems to
stand at a critical point where the balance of the two elements is near
perfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yet
faded to a formality. The _Agamemnon_ is not, like Aeschylus' _Suppliant
Women_, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play, showing
clash of character and situation, suspense and movement, psychological
depth and subtlety. Yet it still remains something more than a play. Its
atmosphere is not quite of this world. In the long lyrics especially one
feels that the guiding emotion is not the entertainer's wish to thrill an
audience, not even perhaps the pure artist's wish to create beauty, but
something deeper and more prophetic, a passionate contemplation and
expression of truth; though of course the truth in question is something
felt rather than stated, something that pervades life, an eternal and
majestic rhythm like the movement of the stars.....

... 
But, according to Aeschylus, there is a new Ruler now in heaven, 

one who has both sinned and suffered and
thereby grown wise. He is Zeus the Third Power, Zeus the Saviour, 

and his gift to mankind is the ability through suffering to Learn 

Minnesota

Minnesota
Nordic
America
Twin Cities
Bread 

Col.1.2
"To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

“what I have done that misbecame my place”~~~Shakespeare

 Norway

 Norway

Norway

Chess:  "Minnesota" "Nordic" "America" "Twin Cities" "Bread"

Westminster
David Hume
Great Smoky Mountains
Captain
Fog

Col.1:17
"And he is before all things, and by him all things consist."

"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions"~~~David Hume

 Edinburgh, Scotland

 

Sinu Gold Anthropomorphic Pendant - FJ.6237 Origin: Colombia Circa: 600 AD to 1600 AD

 Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims

Notre-Dame de Paris back - France

Fog in the city

  Westminster Sunset

Yosemite Como en los sueños... el Capitán y el Half Dome by Marcel94., via Flickr

Great Smoky Mountains National Park ~ North Carolina and Tennessee

Chess:  "David Hume" "Great Smoky Mountains" "Captain" "Fog" "Westminster"

David Hume

First published Mon Feb 26, 2001; substantive revision Fri May 15, 2009

 The most important philosopher ever to write in English, David Hume (1711-1776) — the last of the great triumvirate of “British empiricists” — was also well-known in his own time as an historian and essayist. A master stylist in any genre, Hume's major philosophical works — A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) — remain widely and deeply influential. Although many of Hume's contemporaries denounced his writings as works of scepticism and atheism, his influence is evident in the moral philosophy and economic writings of his close friend Adam Smith. Hume also awakened Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers” and “caused the scales to fall” from Jeremy Bentham's eyes. Charles Darwin counted Hume as a central influence, as did “Darwin's bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley. The diverse directions in which these writers took what they gleaned from reading Hume reflect not only the richness of their sources but also the wide range of his empiricism. Today, philosophers recognize Hume as a precursor of contemporary cognitive science, as well as one of the most thoroughgoing exponents of philosophical naturalism. 

• 10. Causation and Inductive Inference: The Negative Phase
• 11. Causation and Inductive Inference: The Positive Phase
• 12. Necessary Connection and the Definition of Cause
• 13. Moral Philosophy

  

 Sinu Gold Anthropomorphic Pendant


Stylistically this pendant is very similar to those found in the Calima region. They show a male figure dressed for a ritual ceremony carrying staffs or scepters. The difference in the Sinu style is seen in the distinctive detailing of the enormous nose ring, with its checkerboard pattern and five spirals on each side. It is like wings of a great bird, waving in and out, then curling straight upwards in dramatic flight. An interesting feature is the man's nose actually reaches over the edge of the band, with two nostril holes clearly seen. This probably represents deformation done for ritual purposes. The nose ring is so large it nearly hides the beautiful ear spools made of coils attached to large segmented circles. In addition, he wears a magnificent headdress composed of five distinctive bands rising to a flared rim. Most significantly, in terms of the pendants 'purpose,' are the wonderful staffs; each with a double banded ring and bulbous end. These may be a type of musical instrument containing rattles. The figure is most likely a shaman (priest), shown in ritual regalia during a religious ceremony. Such figural pendants buried in elite tombs were probably intended to represent the deceased during his most impressive role on earth. As such, it gives us a chance to see what splendor and magic existed centuries ago, preserved forever in gorgeous gold.

Granada

Development
Granada
Pomegranate
Desarrollo

Col.1:10
"That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;"

 La Alhambra | Granada, España

Gold amulet in shape of vulture from tomb of Tutankhamun: Amulet in the shape of the vulture. As this figure is very frequent it seems to appear as a symbol of the Upper egyptian goddess Nekhbet so maybe she is represented here but the vulture was also sacred to the mother goddess Mut and it might be she who is depicted. | Located in: Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

"O queen, we pray thee, whatsoe'er,
Known unto thee, were well revealed,
That thou wilt trust it to our ear,
And bid our anxious heart be healed!
That waneth now unto despair--
Now, waxing to a presage fair,
Dawns, from the altar, Hope--to scare
From our rent hearts the vulture Care." ---Aeschylus

Pomegranate
 Protect with Pomegranates -> They're packed with polyphenol antioxidants. Polyphenols fight free radicals and regulate skin's blood flow, giving it rosiness. One pomegranate or a few glasses of juice daily should do.


 
Granada 

Pomegranate & Rosemary White Sangria, has to be the prettiest cocktail for a Christmas party ever!

Pomegranate (Development)

Chess:  "Development" "Granada" "Pomegranate" "Desarrollo"

Blue Nile

Blue Nile
Colorado Springs
Manuel Antonio
Cowboy
Chisholm Trail
Wildebeest

Col.1.8:
"Who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit."

"Milton felt the impact of modernity which is perennial in every generation"~~~John Crowe Ransom

Cataratas del Nilo Azul

Chisholm Trail Fort Worth TX

Cowboy

Masai Mara, Kenya -- the wildebeest migration

Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

Storming over Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs Colorado

Chess:  "Blue Nile" "Colorado Springs" "Manuel Antonio" "Cowboy" "Chisholm Trail" "Wildebeest"