For Sidney Bechet
Philip Larkin
That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,
Building for some a legendary Quarter
Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
Everyone making love and going shares--
Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
Others may license, grouping around their chairs
Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced
Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed
Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.
On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,
And greeted as the natural noise of good,
Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Começa por uma pequena ilha...(just a small island)
Os habitantes da pequena ilha de Carteret no Pacifíco, são apresentados como os primeiros deslocados devido ao aquecimento global...aqui a noticia.
Inhabitants of the Carteret islands forced to move, due to the global warming.
Read it here.
Friday, May 15, 2009
A força da imagem - para reflectir
Imagem de Fátima traz milhares ao Cristo Rei
por RITA CARVALHO06 Maio 2009 DN
A visita da imagem de Nossa Senhora de Fátima deverá atrair milhares de pessoas a Lisboa no dia 16. A presença da imagem da Capelinha das Aparições, que apenas saiu de Fátima nove vezes e sempre em ocasiões muito especiais, insere-se nas comemorações dos 50 anos do santuário do Cristo Rei, situado em Almada.
A iniciativa da diocese de Setúbal e do Patriarcado de Lisboa conta também com um cortejo de embarcações no Tejo, uma missa na Praça do Comércio presidida por D. José Policarpo, uma procissão de velas em Cacilhas e uma celebração onde estará o enviado do Papa, o cardeal Saraiva Martins.
A organização não arrisca estimar a adesão ao evento, até porque o programa das comemorações apenas agora começou a ser divulgado a nível nacional. Mas lembra que, onde vai, a imagem de Nossa Senhora de Fátima arrasta multidões. "Em 2005, estávamos a contar com 200 mil pessoas em Lisboa, no final do Congresso Internacional da Nova Evangelização, e apareceram 500 mil", disse ao DN, Francisco Noronha de Andrade, da organização do Patriarcado de Lisboa.
As comemorações do 50º aniversário tentarão recriar os gestos realizados em 1959, quando o monumento foi inaugurado na margem Sul do Tejo. Construído com o dinheiro dos fiéis, destinava-se a agradecer a Deus o facto de Portugal não ter participado na Segunda Guerra Mundial. A cerimónia, que decorreu com pompa e circunstância e reuniu 300 mil pessoas, contou com a presença da imagem de Nossa Senhora de Fátima, que saía, assim, pela sexta vez do santuário mariano.
Cinquenta anos depois, a mensagem transmitida pelo Cristo Rei permanece actual, considera o reitor do santuário, Sezinando Alfredo. "Neste contexto de crise social e económica, a mensagem de paz passa por aliviar o sofrimento das pessoas", disse ao DN. Por isso, e também porque o santuário se quer afirmar mais como espaço religioso do que turístico, o programa é vasto e rico e inclui ainda um simpósio de reflexão sobre a solidariedade.
O responsável do Cristo Rei reconhece que, para muitos portugueses, o santuário não representa um local de devoção mas apenas um miradouro sobre a capital. "Mas é como em Fátima. Para muitos é um local sagrado, para outros não passa de um lugar bonito", diz.
A estátua percorrerá as ruas de Lisboa e de Almada, fazendo paragens estratégicas em locais relacionados com a mensagem de Fátima. A primeira será no Hospital Dona Estefânia, onde Jacinta Marto, um dos pastorinhos de Fátima, morreu de tuberculose. Mais à frente, uma paragem rápida na Paróquia dos Anjos assinalará também a memória da criança que aqui foi velada durante dois dias.
A maioria dos peregrinos deverão concentrar-se junto à Praça do Comércio, onde mil crianças vestidas de branco acompanharão a chegada do andor. Aqui decorrerá um terço e uma missa presidida pelo cardeal Patriarca. No final, a imagem entrará numa fragata da Marinha para atravessar o Tejo em direcção à margem Sul, seguindo acompanhada por vários barcos.
Francisco Noronha de Andrade explica que o convite para o cortejo foi enviado para dezenas de associações, clubes náuticos, pescadores e até escolas de vela e remo e acredita que muitos barcos se juntarão ao cortejo.
Em Almada, já à noite, haverá uma procissão de velas em Cacilhas e uma vigília durante a noite, animada pelas paróquias locais. A imagem percorrerá ainda as ruas de Almada. A cerimónia principal decorrerá no domingo no santuário, contando com a presença dos bispos portugueses e alguns bispos estrangeiros dos PALOP.
Cool art
Sage Vaughn (born 1976 in Jackson, Oregon) lives and works in Los Angeles. The Californian by choice began his artistic career with graffiti and street art in the streets of Los Angeles. Over recent years, street art has grown into a globally networked scene in which applied architecture and city criticism, design and art in public spaces merge to create new, experimental forms of expression. This is where Vaughn, who knows the scene well, comes in. His pictures not only reveal the influence of the genre, they translate motifs from design, art or street lives into classic oil paintings.
Daydreaming
Pennies from Heaven, has that I know of been twice remade into Holywood movies...I'm a sucker for this songs.
Accentuate the positive
I loved this series : The singing detective, it was happy-sad, left you in a dream state...Great TV.
the Collins report (so far)
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins (January 8, 1824 – September 23, 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was hugely popular in his time, and wrote 27 novels, more than 50 short stories, at least 15 plays, and over 100 pieces of non-fiction work. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale and No Name.
Still popular amongst XIX century english literature students...
Joan Collins
Joan Henrietta Collins OBE (born 23 May 1933)[1] is a Golden Globe Award-winning English actress, author and columnist
Joan Collins'Big Kiss-Off Refuses Peck on Cheek From Pop StarShe Doesn't 'Know : no other than Lily Allen...
Tom Collins
Tom Collins is a great cocktail drink...
Ingredients:
- 1.5 oz (4.5 cl) Gin
- 1 oz (3 cl) lemon juice
- little sugar
- 4 oz (12 cl) carbonated water
Garnishes:
orange or lemon
Standard drinkware:
Highball glass
Self control
Don’t!
The secret of self-control.
Interesting read, about the virtues of self control and what makes us what we are.
What makes us happy ?
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
by Joshua Wolf Shenk
After my post Felicidade/Utopia, enlightened work here
Thursday, May 14, 2009
before the baby boomers
Photograph by Richard Avedon. Model is China Machado. Suit by Ben Zuckerman, hair by Kenneth. New York, November 1958.
"See the great China (pronounced Chee-nah) model fashion's new couture-inspired designs that you can sew yourself," cried the six-column newspaper ad for Macy's 1961 Spring Fabric Fashion Show. "Whether or not," continued the pitch, "you're an aficionado who adores China's rhythmical stroll along fashion's illustrious runways, you must come see her . . ." What made the invitation ir resistible was the accompanying portrait of "the great China," a model of ex quisitely earthy elegance — who makes her own clothes. Born in Shanghai of a Portuguese father and a Siamese mother, China Machado, now 25, worked her way around the world as a Pan Am stewardess and cinemactress, became the top mannequin for Givenchy in Paris at age 21. Also modeling for Simonetta, Fabiani and Balenciaga, she was finally coaxed to the U.S. in 1958 by Oleg Cassini. But for all her experience on haute couture's most exalted runways, last week's star billing at Macy's left China all but speechless in each of her seven languages. As yet unaccustomed to the merchandising methods of the miracle workers of 34th Street, she shuddered, "It sounds a little like a circus."
Misguided angel
The Trinity Sessions cd by The Cowboy Junkies is one of my all time favorites, this is one of its highlights.
Our fragile immortality
Refuge
by Sara Teasdale
From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.
For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.
it turns out, that if you are happy I will be too
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (Hardcover)
by Nicholas A. Christakis (Author), James H. Fowler (Author)
This guys are trying to prove that feelings and emotions are somehow contagious and that they can reach, well beyond the one person that started the motion...
You can read a paper here.
wearied out
"The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die."
from a Tale of two cities by Charles Dickens
Blue/Azul
O rio hoje, está do exacto azul, do azul daquele dia em que nos encontrámos sobre os telhados da cidade, todo o estuário aberto à nossa frente.
Eu girava na tua órbita, como um satélite tonto, tentando desajeitadamente uma rota de entrada, que me permitisse explodir na tua atmosfera. O vento soprava e tudo era limpo e belo.
Como este exacto azul, que me transporta para esse dia, eu penso no poder de velhas canções que um dia nos enchiam assim e eram o mundo para nós.
Um rio de um exacto azul.
Today the river, is the exact, same blue, that it was on the day me met over the rooftops of the town. All the estuary shining at our feet.
I was drawn to you like a insect to a light, chasing all the darkness behind, trying to grasp the very core of you. Wind was blowing and all were clear and beautiful.
Today this exact blue, takes me back to that day and I think it is exactly the same power old songs have, the power to take us back, to the days they meant the world to us.
A river of an exact, same blue.
Eu girava na tua órbita, como um satélite tonto, tentando desajeitadamente uma rota de entrada, que me permitisse explodir na tua atmosfera. O vento soprava e tudo era limpo e belo.
Como este exacto azul, que me transporta para esse dia, eu penso no poder de velhas canções que um dia nos enchiam assim e eram o mundo para nós.
Um rio de um exacto azul.
Today the river, is the exact, same blue, that it was on the day me met over the rooftops of the town. All the estuary shining at our feet.
I was drawn to you like a insect to a light, chasing all the darkness behind, trying to grasp the very core of you. Wind was blowing and all were clear and beautiful.
Today this exact blue, takes me back to that day and I think it is exactly the same power old songs have, the power to take us back, to the days they meant the world to us.
A river of an exact, same blue.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
the Devil himself
"When the smack begins to flow, and it shoots up the dropper's neck, and I'm rushing on my run, then I feel just like Jesus's son." Behind it all, there's that strange keening, humming note. Listen to the Velvet Underground's Heroin on headphones and you realise it's not feedback after all, not a synthesised warble, but the rich timbre of a violin playing a single note, held for a disturbingly long time. It's the darkest thing in the darkest of songs. If Reed sounds as if he's made a pact with the devil, then the musician who plays that buzzing fiddle - John Cale - must be the devil himself.
The rest of the article here.
How great that John Cale and Lou Reed could join forces - even though it was only for brief periods of time, the Velvet Underground is one seminal rock group, its sound being rediscovered time and time again.
Also have one of Cale's solo albuns, Music for a new society, as one of my all time favorites.(His version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah it's also my favorite.)
David and Goliath
"When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”"
A long article on the New Yorker, by Malcom Gladwell
A tale of two cities
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
Don't know a better way to start a book.
Barroco/Baroque
O termo "barroco" advém da palavra portuguesa homónima que significa "pérola imperfeita", ou por extensão jóia falsa. A palavra foi rapidamente introduzida nas línguas francesa e italiana.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word "barroco", Spanish "barroco", or French "baroque", all of which refer to a "rough or imperfect pearl", though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain.[2] In informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate", with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Portuguese chair, S.Francisco church in O'porto, Companhia das Indias porcelain
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word "barroco", Spanish "barroco", or French "baroque", all of which refer to a "rough or imperfect pearl", though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain.[2] In informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate", with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Portuguese chair, S.Francisco church in O'porto, Companhia das Indias porcelain
Talk the talk
"And it all can be done without threats or abuse, which is easier on officers and suspects. Detective Columbo, it turns out, was not just made for TV."
Well bad thing Cheney and his lot didn't watch Columbo...
The story here.
Act locally
Don't just talk about it, start doing it...
"VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars."
The rest of the story, here
Monday, May 11, 2009
Vodka Martini
It seems there was a time you could go to a singles bar, sip a vodka martini and meet sophisticated women, while listening to very cool music...
Have you ever see the rain
Já tivemos vários arremedos de Primavera, mas no fim de semana e hoje de manhã, chovia como se tivessemos voltado ao Inverno...it's sad.
Updated pirates
"The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station."
This is very interesting, how the first world provides the techonology for third world pirates...
Which means there must be ways to tap on their entrepreunership and put it to good use.
This is very interesting, how the first world provides the techonology for third world pirates...
Which means there must be ways to tap on their entrepreunership and put it to good use.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
same old mistakes
the XXth century was like a boiling pot, bubbling out, bursting with energy, millions got gazed, burned and ripped by hot metal, by fury and greed, the world moved in ways never seen before, now we have metal satelites of our design, we truly are global...look back and think, don't repeat the same old mistakes.
Capital inicial
Canção da fundação do National Deposit Bank
Pois não é?: Fundar um banco
É bom para preto e branco.
Se o dinheiro se não herda,
Arranjai-o; senão – merda!
Boas são para isso acções;
Melhores que facas, canhões.
Só uma coisa é fatal –
Capital inicial.
Mas, quando o dinheiro falta,
Donde vem se não se assalta?
Ai! não nos vamos zangar!:
Donde outros o vão tirar.
De algum lado ele viria
E a alguém se tiraria.
Bertold Brecht, Poemas e Canções, tradução de Paulo Quintela
felicidade/utopia
É um homem feliz? Não acredito no conceito de felicidade. É uma nivelação por baixo daquilo que se pode esperar da vida – e o que se pode esperar da vida é a capacidade de tirar prazer da existência humana, sabendo coabitar ao mesmo tempo com o sofrimento que é inerente à espécie. Felizes podem ser, talvez, os besouros...
A inteligência impede-nos de ser felizes? A complexidade da inteligência impede-nos. A felicidade é um conceito utópico e eu não gosto de utopias. A minha vida é transformar o sofrimento das pessoas que me procuram num sofrimento comum. O sofrimento faz parte da espécie humana.
A felicidade é um conceito que nos “trama” porque andamos todos à procura de uma coisa que não existe? Então não é?! É uma utopia que se vende ao desbarato.
Carlos Amaral Dias em entrevista à Única do Expresso
Clifford Brown
Clifford Brown was born in Wilmington, Delaware on October 30, 1930
Started on trumpet at age 13.
Learned piano and rudimentary arranging in addition to trumpet.
Obtained a music scholarship at the University of Delaware which had, at the time, no music department. Studied mathematics as a freshman
Attended Maryland State College, which had a good jazz band for which Clifford played and wrote.
Began sitting in on various gigs with jazz celebs such as Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, and Charlie Parker.
Clifford was severely injured in a June, 1950 car accident and was hospitalized for almost a year.
Recording debut with R&B group Chris Powell's Blue Flames in March, 1952.
Recorded with Lou Donaldson in '53.
Invited to play with Max Roach in November of 1953. This was the combo for which Roach and Brownie were best known.
Clifford, pianist Richie Powell and wife, were killed in a car accident during the early morning hours of June 26, 1956. They were on their way to meet Roach for a gig in Chicago when Powell's car, driven by his wife, skidded off the wet Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Lucky finger
Franki is beautiful and talented and deserves a break - will anyone give it to her ?
(she happens to be a friend of mine)
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