Chelsea jaunt

I had the good fortune to be in Chelsea for a little bit yesterday and ran into some good and some not so good shows. I visited Jonathan Levine, Mike Weiss and Gladstone galleries. Rather than write impenetrable prose about the art and the artists, I decided to link to the press releases that explain the show:

A couple of quick words though:
Tim Biskup at Jonathan Levine: Multiple studies on a single subject done in figurative/cubist style. He also had a miniature book with an intimate collection of essays and short meaningless poems to go with the show. From reading the little book, he seems like a person who cares about the artworld and its future. Good show.
Christian Vincent at Mike Weiss: Great show, almost a junior Neo Rauch. I could attribute multiple meanings to the painted anthropomorphic forms. I also had an inclination to just stand there and try and understand what he was trying to tell us - alas, I did not have the time and the paintings decided not to give up their secrets easily - really enjoyed this one.
Anish Kapoor at Gladstone Gallery: Characteristic Anish Kapoor - large works, often spanning several rooms - seems more like an explorations of material than form – not too clear what he was trying to tell us other than inferences that one might make between monumentality and translated awe. I happened to run into a giant red breast-like sculpture made of resin and paint in one of the back rooms - of course, it was also a source of curiosity to many of the men around - OK show.


Tim Biskup at Jonathan Levine (cel vinyl acrylic on wood)

Christian Vincent at Mike Weiss (oil on linen or canvas)

Anish Kapoor at Gladstone Gallery (resin, fiberglass and paint)

Recession? What Recession?

Takashi Murakami’s ejaculating My Lonesome Cowboy commanded $15 million at Sotheby's last week while Christie's announced that they managed to rack up the world auction record for selling artwork by any living artist ($33 million for painting the benefits supervisor below). Not to mention, Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1976, brought in $77 million. The exuberant art auction mood was summed up by Barbara Gladstone, of the eponymous gallery, who remarked after the Sotheby's auction, “Recession? What Recession?"

Lucian Freud, 'Benefits Supervisor Resting', Oil on canvas, 59" X 66", 1995

The Collagen is aging

My wife and I are followers of the chronicles of Indiana Jones and look forward to the new installment with hope. Of course, we constantly wonder if Mr. Ford is up to the task of keeping up with expectations during scenes featuring action sequences characteristic of Jones movies after all these years. The New Yorker captured the spirit with this cartoon and I decided to plagiarize.

While on a recent flight

Flying economy class (as usual) - a poem

The father who insists on sitting by the window,
staring blankly to the bleak outside,
running into accidental reflections,
whilst his only child, their little daughter,
bawls at being transferred to the middle row.
His wife pensive,
wondering if they have one child or two.

The family of four, insulated,
man on the laptop (headphones),
woman with the i-Pod, (eyes closed)
a three year old, lost, questions unanswered,
a six month old baby, blocked; pacifier does its dirty deed.
Their grandmother sits across the aisle, closed;
advanced Alzheimer's.

Then we have the obliging old couple (baby boomer?)
responding to a request
to give up their seats and move upfront.
Apparently the pilots discovered,
this plane was rear heavy.
I did not believe them for some reason,
but you can't make those suspicions public, any more.

The young couple four seats away,
furtively steal their urgent kisses
amidst heavy breathing, cheap coke cups, paper napkins
and obese vacationers praying for summer.
I fervently hope they make it
long after
their initial, physical rush.


We had a seat at the very end,
one of those that you cannot recline,
it was all right, minor discomforts – no match for
the free understanding and introductions,
as we collectively head off to hopeful vacations,
cursive beginnings, slipshod divorces and some fruitless seething.

Who is mooning who? Neural Buddhists and the Dharma Bums

David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a great essay last week about the paradoxical relationship between scientific research (especially in neurology) and its role in bolstering religion. I am sure most have read or heard about the writeup in some form, but just in case…

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development. First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

My only fear is that scientific research in this arena is pliant to construal both ways. Some time back, I had written here about ‘out of body' experiences praising the underlying scientific explanation. However, it is interesting to note that researchers construe the same phenomenon in two radically different ways as seen below.

In the words of a researcher: “There is nothing mystical about these ghostly experiences, said Peter Brugger, a neuroscientist at University Hospital in Zurich, who was not involved in the experiments but is an expert on phantom limbs. The sensation of still feeling a limb that has been amputated, and other mind-bending phenomena. The research shows that the self can be detached from the body and can live a phantom existence on its own, as in an out-of-body experience, or it can be felt outside of personal space, as in a sense of a presence”.

Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

All said, a great article from David Brooks.

For a more theological discussion on this article, Andrew Sullivan has a great one going.

Nick Walker, Moona Lisa, 200, stencil spray paint and acrylic on canvas, 183X122 cms (source)

Weekend picture

At the altar of consumerism

First it was Murakami selling ladies handbags at the Brooklyn Museum. Now Chuck Close, Jeff Koons and a clutch of other 'brand-name' artists are hawking T-shirts.

Here are three more ideas categorized by economic strata for artists to strut:

For those strapped for cash:
- Artists monogrammed condoms (designed to be washable for reuse - c'mon, you cannot throw away something monogrammed by the artist you adore)

For those with a little to spend:
- Lipstick flavored with the taste of the artists favorite culinary dish (lipstick designed to be edible - even if one does not like the color, this way it can still be a part of you)

For those who do not know how to spend:
- Diamond engagement bands with laser etched artwork (of course, the diamonds must be conflict free)

Some of the reasons that ‘brand-name’ artist come up with to market their creations border on ridiculous. The handbag idea was hatched after the World Trade Center went down and was originally marketed with the premise that such a move will help New York(ers) get out of the prevailing 9/11 sadness (see blurb below).

From the New York Times: Still, nothing the company ever did hit the jackpot like Mr. Murakami’s cherry-ornamented and “Multico” bags, which came about, as Mr. Carcelle explained, after 9/11, when the Vuitton designer, Marc Jacobs, suggested to his corporate bosses that it was no good to mourn forever: fashion had a responsibility, ahem, to help people past their grief. “Marc said,” Mr. Carcelle recalled, ‘If I work with Takashi, and we do something colorful, I think it will help make New York strong again.’

Advertisement for T-shirts: Chuck Close (left) peddling his own design and curvy model on the right struts a Jeff Koons design

Colonialist yokes

If one were wondering what business millions of Burmese had in what was once an uninhabited mangrove swamp typical of the Irrawaddy delta (which cyclone Nargis tore through effortlessly), one again needs to look back to a country's colonialist past.

From the Times:

Before the mid-19th century, the area was a thinly inhabited swamp. But the British colonial rulers saw this as an ideal place to cultivate rice and help feed their empire. They built dikes and drained the land. In the twilight years of British rule, colonial Burma was the world’s largest rice exporter, and millions of Burmese moved here to cultivate the rich alluvial soil. The government says that 6.3 million people lived in the delta before the storm.

Mangu Putra, ‘No More Words II’, acrylic and oil on canvas, 200 X 200 cm (source: artreviewdigital.com)

Mesopotamia morsel

Commemorating the week that the Israel turns 60 years old, the New Yorker has a great two page summary of the historical events that led to this nation’s birth. It is great reading for Mesopotamia watchers and a reflection on the effects that revisionist historians are having around shaping established cultural outlooks. It also lists some of the fallacies behind the birthing, like the one detailed in the novel Exodus by Leon Uris (which had a great effect on shaping Western sentiments around Israel’s birth).

Caricature of Theodor Herzl in the 1896 Annual Journal of the Vienna Journalists Association

Painting Post

Sunil, 'Krishna', Oil on canvas, 72" X 88"

As web pages do a poor job with relative size of images, one more.

Perspectives in abstraction

Artist Robert Rauschenberg died 82 years old Monday this week. His art under the aegis of postwar modernism was different (to put it mildly). Though I am not a big fan of his artwork, the following quote helps us understand the way he looked at art and provides us a better perspective in reacting to art.

Mr. Rauschenberg, describing to writer Calvin Tomkins an encounter with a woman who had reacted skeptically to “Monogram” and “Bed” in his 1963 retrospective at the Jewish Museum:

“To her, all my decisions seemed absolutely arbitrary — as though I could just as well have selected anything at all — and therefore there was no meaning, and that made it ugly. So I told her that if I were to describe the way she was dressed, it might sound very much like what she’d been saying. For instance, she had feathers on her head. And she had this enamel brooch with a picture of ‘The Blue Boy’ on it pinned to her breast. And around her neck she had on what she would call mink but what could also be described as the skin of a dead animal. Well, at first she was a little offended by this, I think, but then later she came back and said she was beginning to understand.”

Of course, the New Republic has an interesting point (His art stank in the 1950s and it doesn't look any better today. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Of the dead, speak no evil. But of the works of the dead, it seems to me that we have a perfect right to say whatever we think. And the fact is that Robert Rauschenberg's work has been protected by a sort of critical silence for many years now--at least what little negative comment there has been is more or less ignored. The merest suggestion that the juxtapositions of objects and images in Rauschenberg's paintings, sculptures, and prints are nothing more than arbitrary has left one open to the accusation of being a conservative or a reactionary. And once you have been called those names, you are out of the discussion).

Chuck Close, 'Robert Rauschenberg', 1996, Color digital pigment print, 140 x 112 cm

From the wandering camera...

Jaunts in beleaguered bureaucracy

Soldiers do what they are told to do – it is what they have been trained for. They often come back home with the disastrous effects of wars fought overseas. Often, they have no say over the unfolding action seen in combat zones and in most cases they are cogs helping mesh the larger military/industrial/political wheel. The disadvantages faced by a soldier spending their prime years on a battlefield should not follow the person back home. The least a nation could do for them on coming back home is to offer them building blocks with which they could again step back and become active/productive members of society. Education contributes to a large part of this post-war-rehab. 50 years ago, after the World War, the lawmakers realized this and gave them the GI Bill.

From here: The original G.I. Bill of Rights, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, paid the full load of a returning veteran’s education at a college or technical school and provided a monthly stipend. It was an investment that paid astounding dividends. Millions of veterans benefited, and they helped transform the nation. College would no longer be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and those who crowned themselves the intellectual elite.

The original GI Bill did not take into account the galloping costs associated with college tuition and hence needed retooling. There is a new bill in Congress whose passage is being held up by the usual partisan bickering and one-upmanship of Washington politics. Latest news reports indicate a clear and present danger to this bill failing. For the war or not, it is in our common interests that this bill needs to go through. This website has details.

Disclosure: One of our family (a first cousin) is a member of the United States Army and is stationed ‘somewhere in Iraq’. He is only 23 years old.

Pavel Tchelitchew, ‘Hide and Seek’, Oil on canvas, 1940-42, MOMA

Meanwhile in the basement: An oil painting grows...

Racism: Alive and apparently healthy

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

More here.

Shameless promotion and plug

A photograph I had taken of an approaching ship near the Staten Island shore has now been selected by aspiring musician, Andrew Boss for his debut album cover (below). The album tentatively named 'The Illusion of the Moment' is set to be released by Andrew Boss (I met him at a training course) of Staten Island, NY (myspace) and produced by Gena Wernik (myspace).

The release date for the album has not been set but they are aiming for the Fall 2008 timeline. The music album is an EP (an EP, is a release of about 4 or 5 songs, where as a regular album has more). I listened to one of the tracks and it has a nice slow Eagles'sy feeling. I hope they do well with their effort.

Thoughts

I have always had this feeling about steering wheels. This bolsters.

Reluctant Rhythm

Nightly news

Last night I turned off the television; in disgust.
A boy in the country had killed his mother and the rest of his family.
The reporter tried to pontificate with the cultivated stoic calm;
self-serving emblems of professional personas.

The boys friends added to the drama,
providing lurid details of his autism.
The gravitas was added by the expert testimony,
passers-by and a medicine man.

They all seemed caught up in the momentary pepper spray,
than, by extrapolations of our permanent loss (sad, but strange).
It seemed as if this had intruded
our current, still life (we were on vacation).

After that, I felt, I did not commiserate enough,
(as if it were a duty to partake of diurnal suffering).
I turned the television back on again
(hoping to catch details of the deadly crime).

Of course, the presenter had already moved on,
in self-same stoic and steely demeanor,
to a news item that featured a lady who
had shot her family and killed herself.

Must be the weather...

Prose / Pictures

"The sun was going down. I walked, after a few cold beers, to the edge of town, and it was a long walk. All the men were driving home from work, wearing railroad hats, baseball hats, all kinds of hats, just like after work in any town anywhere. One of them gave me a ride up the hill and left me at a lonely crossroads on the edge of the prairie. It was beautiful there. The only cars that came by were farmer-cars; they gave me suspicious looks, they clanked along, the cows were coming home. Not a truck. A few cars zipped by. A hotrod kid came by with his scarf flying. The sun went all the way down and I was standing in the purple darkness. Now I was scared. There weren't even any lights in the Iowa countryside; in a minute nobody would be able to see me. Luckily a man going back to Davenport gave me a lift downtown. But I was right where I started from" - From 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac.

Genius R' Us

The May 12th edition of the New Yorker has the most insightful essay whose gist goes something like this: You do not have to be a genius to develop good ideas and inventions; instead, the font of ideas resides in each one of us - all one needs is appropriate conditioning in a suitable environment (the right set of people, information and relevant research may be components of that environment) for each of us to produce the next bright thing.

Ideas weren’t precious. They were everywhere, which suggested that maybe the extraordinary process that we thought was necessary for invention—genius, obsession, serendipity, epiphany—wasn’t necessary at all.

The article takes the example of Nathan Myhrvold (an entrepreneur from Microsoft) and his attempts at building a factory for purely generating ideas. Yes, a factory. A factory that produces inventions.

In 1999, when Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft and struck out on his own, he set himself an unusual goal. He wanted to see whether the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered. He formed a company called Intellectual Ventures. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He hired the smartest people he knew. It was not a venture-capital firm. Venture capitalists fund insights—that is, they let the magical process that generates new ideas take its course, and then they jump in. Myhrvold wanted to make insights—to come up with ideas, patent them, and then license them to interested companies.

This gives hope for nitwits like me to explore further what seems like half assed ideas that sometimes spring on me during the most innocuous of times; ferry rides, going to sleep, in the shower etc. Instead of sleeping on the spark that came through, this article tells us that perseverance with the right set of people through discussions and research might result in viability. I guess that old adage is right in saying that success consists of 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration...

Some of the patents that have come up from Myhrvold’s 'invention production factory' are intriguing (see below) – and most of this seems to have been produced by a group of motivated individuals sitting across in a room armed with nothing more than pencils, sheets of papers and deep jars of salted cashews.

- Patent issued on automatic, battery-powered glasses, with a tiny video camera that reads the image off the retina and adjusts the fluid-filled lenses accordingly, up to ten times a second. - They also came up with this idea to stop hurricanes. Basically, the waves in the ocean have energy, and you use that to lower the temperature differential.
- No moving parts, proliferation-resistant nuclear reactor: The plant, as they conceived it, would produce something like one to three gigawatts of power, which is enough to serve a medium-sized city. The reactor core would be no more than several meters wide and about ten meters long. It would be enclosed in a sealed, armored box. The box would work for thirty years, without need for refueling.

Also turns out that the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery – where simultaneous epiphanies happen at about the same time are more common that one thought. As the examples below suggest, one cannot stop an idea whose time and place has come. In short, if a specific set of cultural and scientific factors were impinged on appropriate groups/people, discoveries are a logical outcome (if A does not discover it, B certainly will).

- Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus.
- Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution.
- Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier.
- Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France.
- There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England.
- The law of the conservation of energy, so significant in science and philosophy, was formulated four times independently in 1847, by Joule, Thomson, Colding and Helmholz.
- Typewriting machines were invented simultaneously in England and in America by several individuals in these countries.
- The steamboat is claimed as the “exclusive” discovery of Fulton, Jouffroy, Rumsey, Stevens and Symmington.

The number of simultaneous discoveries means that in some sense, scientific discoveries have to be inevitable, like the fruits of a cultural and intellectual climate bestowed on people who are lucky to be ‘around’ at that point in time. This also means that given the right set of people and amassing the right set of information sources, one could generate a lot of ideas - the majority of them might be non-viable in the long run but a small number may be surprisingly viable.

Of course, there are issues with a ‘let’s get together today and brainstorm some ideas’ approach:

The outsider, not knowing what the insider knew, would make a lot of mistakes and chase down a lot of rabbit holes. Myhrvold admits that many of the ideas that come out of the invention sessions come to naught. After a session, the Ph.D.s on the staff examines each proposal closely and decides which ones are worth pursuing. They talk to outside experts; they reread the literature.

The following is the kicker:

A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is someone who does what it takes many others to do. The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight.

Sorry if I rambled, but this article did have an uplifting effect on me… Some of the related references below are also worth looking at.

This is a part of the Antikythera mechanism.

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as the first "mechanical computer”) designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, in 1900. Subsequent investigation, particularly in 2006, dated it to about 150-100 BC, and hypothesised that it was on board a ship that sank en route from the Greek island of Rhodes to Rome, perhaps as part of official loot. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not reappear until a thousand years later (Source: Wikipedia and The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project)

References:

Being in the right place at the right time: Harold W. Kuhn, Professor of Mathematical Economics, Emeritus, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Who discovered the expanding universe? Helge Kragh, University of Aarhus and Robert W. Smith, University of Alberta

In the Year 2054: Innumeracy Defeated, Gerd Gigerenzer, Oxford University Press

Knowledge sharing and the idea of public domain, Ilkka Tuomi, Joint Research Centre
Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Painting

Sunil, 'Nargis', oil paint, kumkum powder, latex based house paint on gessoed quarter inch thick pine wood board, 20" X 44"

Annals of true feelings...

More than a quarter of a million are dead or missing. I was somehow struck by the headline below - sounded too frivolous, too clichéd, too clinical... (maybe it is just me)...

From wikipedia: The phrase perfect storm is borrowed from the 1997 book The Perfect Storm. The phrase refers to the simultaneous occurrence of events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their chance combination. Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its overall impact.

Photo

Colonial throwbacks of a linguistic kind

Oftentimes, one can gauge a country’s colonialist past from examining the outwardly odd sounding phrases employed by its peoples. What might sound funny or plain stupid might have been the normal mode of expression back in one’s lands. I remember the times when I would refer to my graduation year as ‘the year I passed out’ and the horrified looks I received from potential employers here (now, 'passed out', here in the United States would mean to 'faint/swoon' – but it was the accepted term for graduation back in India – courtesy; the British). India had the Brits lording over it until 1947 and the resultant linguistic vestiges remain, albeit twisted.

I was reminded of this when I ran into a great piece on Nigerian English in the International Herald Tribune.

Some excerpts from everyday usage:
- A TV isn't switched on or off — it's "on-ed" or "off-ed."
- Nigerian congratulating someone on a success or victory will likely "felicitate" him rather than offer felicitations.
- Similarly, people are invited to "jubilate," or celebrate, a triumph.
- In Nigerian English, a very small boy would be a "small, small boy."
- Eateries are called "Chop Houses"
- Upset stomach? Take "gripe water."
- A flat while driving along? Take the tire to the "vulcanizer" to fix the ‘puncture’
- Street children are "urchins," and police often brand criminals as "touts," "rascals," or "miscreants" who carry "cutlasses" — machetes.
- In reporting crime, Nigerian newspapers say police ‘opened a can of worms’ when ‘raiding criminal hideouts’.
- A dead or jailed robber is often said to meet his ‘Waterloo’.
- Politicians "heap calumny" on those they accuse of corruption.

This is a link to an online Nigerian dictionary (a small but a very interesting one):

Some of my favorite entries in this document :

- Copyright: applied to a song performed by a popular entertainer previously made popular by another entertainer. Often said with slight scorn. as in That song is copyright)
- Defile the air: to fart (as in Who is defiling the air?)
- ESCORT: the number plate given to cars that escort an important dignitary
- Jam: to collide, to bump against, to hit (as in 'the moto jammed me' will translate to "The car ran into me")
- Now Now: immediately, at once (as in "Do it now now")
- Xerox: copy in an exam- Put to bed: to give birth (as in "She put to bed a bouncing baby boy")
- Sugar-mummy: older woman who supports younger man in exchange for sex
- Within: within the campus (as in "He is within" will translate to "He is somewhere in the building")

This blog has further interesting stories.

George Knapton (England, 1698 – 1778), ‘Portrait of John Ross Mackye, Full length, standing, wearing Turkish dress, a letter in his left hand, a negro page beyond’, oil on canvas, 93” X 57” (Image from a Sotheby’s auction book featuring British paintings from 1500 – 1850)

Science break

For the scientifically inclined, I just ran into this site on elements...

On the Gas Tax Holiday

Sometimes headlines capture the mood better than anyting else (noticed this on reddit yesterday).

A Gas Tax Holiday is "the economic equivalent of solving the obesity problem by making Twinkies, ho-hos, and deep-fried Mars bars tax deductible"

From the article:
If American fiscal policy resembles an eating disorder, US energy policy is closer to a drug addiction. Rather than face the very serious problems posed by an American economic dependency on foreign oil, proponents of the Gas Tax Holiday are instead proposing that the United States' government cut $0.184 cents off of the price of gasoline by pulling $70,000,000 daily out of the revenue stream that pays for bridges, surface repairs, and other vital maintenance on thousands of American roadways.

A more technical explanation here.

Synecdoche

As societies advance and its citizens become ever more productive, larger numbers of able bodied individuals are called upon to help keep the economic engine humming. This often translates to both the husband and wife in a family going out to seek work to provide for their families. This means that family units will be called on to move away from their ancestral lands and property to far off cities and countries. The 'raw deal' inherent in the setup starts when individuals turn older and their children start to follow the self-same patterns of moving out to find jobs, careers and partners. Old and infirm individuals of what was once a vibrant workforce start to demand more attention because of their very condition - growing old. Societies previously used to solve this by having larger groups of families live around extended pieces of property in close proximity or have forms of ‘joint family’ to help distribute the involved care for the older ones in their midst. The new order does not allow for this luxury as the nature of the modern economy calls for localization of specialized skills and concentration of specific attributes on the trained workforce. OK, where am I going with all this – the above train of thoughts was initiated after I recently read a story on sign and sight that weaves these disparate ramblings more elegantly. The article touched on the following:

- The practice of outsourcing such that the outsourcer can concentrate on more important topics…
- Aspects of living away from one's lands and a resultant feeling of detachment…
- Women supporting their men and children rather than the traditional order we were used to…
- Loneliness and emotional baggage that comes with finding newer ways to make money.
- Care-giving that was natural in agrarian societies tending to be foreign to industrialized ones.

Overall, a great story.

I know that Vurshets lives two parallel lives. Its men and children stay home, while the women travel to work in Italy. Almost every woman in town has either already worked in Italy or is making plans to do so. Some have not been home for years. They all work as badante - care workers privately hired to look after the elderly.

None of the women I meet in here thinks of her work as badante as hard work. "It's hard for them (the Italians), not for us. They don't know what hard work is. I want to see them work a two-decare field of corn, the way I used to." For many, taking care of an ailing elderly person was part of their responsibilities at home. The only difference here is that they get paid for it. No one thinks of it as hard work…. especially after they've worked hard, physical jobs in Cyprus or Greece, or poorly-paid ones in Bulgaria.

Something that came as an even greater surprise is that they encountered loneliness – the loneliness of someone who is confined to one space for 24 hours a day. It's a new, unfamiliar experience for all of them; their previous lives were lived in the company of husbands, children, family, friends and colleagues.

Eduard Von Grutzner (German, 1846 - 1925), 'A Good Vintage', Oil on panel, 9" X 7" (Image from a Christie's auction book)

Pictures from the recent vacation

Here again!

The time off was great. Did not realize so many changes could take place in a week's time. Our eldest son had the rare chance to actually go about and chase ducks and other flightless birds of all kinds that had found their way into the backyard of our vacation home. Our second son decided to get a little naughtier and decided to eat less of the kind of food that he is supposed to and instead took up a singular leaning towards the kinds we eat. In the larger scheme of things, Florida is one giant vacation state where Main Streets of most towns have been spruced and glitzed with an insulated sheen that shows little of the 'real' underbelly. On doing some behind the glitz driving through back roads we found a rustic Florida that thrives silently under the tourist onslaught with proud horses, swollen cows and pink pigs grazing by the countryside on miles of verdant farmland. Of course, one could not do too much of such rustic driving for fear of the shock absorbers giving way and the eleven month in the car seat dictating our stops. On returning to New Jersey, it looked like someone had taken a giant paintbrush and painted the trees and the lawns green. The leaves were just immature bumps when we left and they are so much fuller now. Having cut ourselves off from television, newspapers and the internet for a week was therapeutic to a degree that I did not envisage. Of course, one could catch snippets of the real world hurrying by in rest stops, airports and the occasional restaurant banter. It is good to be back home.