Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) and Knowing My Grandfather

Mark Twain (1835-1910) - Humourist, Lecturer, Satirist and Writer

My mother used to tell me that her father never went to the theatre - this was her usual set up for the story we all knew was inevitably coming!

My grandfather was a Rhodes scholar who became physician and lecturer in medicine, leaving the house at 6am and returning after midnight - for his four hours of sleep. So for his grandchildren he was totally remote. He used to visit us perhaps once every few years - in his big big glamorous American limo (the child's perspective), which he changed over each year and was his only concession to worldliness. Though he also allowed himself a month's fishing a year - with his wife ...



... his children being parked with the cook in an old guest house he'd bought in the country ...


I have often wondered over the years about this famous and mysterious person. But I could never manage to bring anything specific about him to mind to work up his personality or his outlook on life. So I suppose I profiled him according to profession and socio-economic class.

Then my mother died a few years back and I was given a series of photographs her father had taken of aboriginals on the way to one of his fishing trips ...





... which seemed out of type - my curiosity was again piqued.

And today I got another an unexpected insight.

I was watching a doco on Mark Twain, author of 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. And realized what an incredibly quirky irreverent self-deprecating iconoclastic funny guy this writer was.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

I have never taken and exercise except sleeping and resting.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hands and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

I have been through some of some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

And then I remembered the point of my mother's story - that her father had only ever ventured out once to the theatre - to hear Mark Twain on a tour of Australia in 1896.

And I suddenly understood something of my grandfather's character. To venture out, he must have had a strong empathy with the writer. And been in some ways like-minded. So different from the conventional elite guy I'd profiled up - great to have this new and much more exciting construction!

Rolando Sarabia - the Cuban Nijinski

In 2005, Rolando Sarabia 'defected' to the US from Cuba and the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. To become a Principal dancer with Miami City Ballet.




Amazing technique. Love the triple 'tour en l'aire' from a stationary fifth position at the beginning of the second clip!

Giving Good Greek Head

Head of Greek Wrestler, British Museum

I've had this incredibly beautiful antique Greek bronze head as my desktop image for a while. And stare in awe at it every time boot up. So I thought why not post it!

But I know nothing about it - and I've unsuccessfully surfed the net for ... it seems, ever. Particularly the British Museum's homepage.

So if anyone has any knowledge ... I'd love to hear.

Playing Cards over Time and Place

I began looking at images of old playing cards and realized it's a mania as powerful as stamp collecting.

Playing cards probably developed in China, along with the invention of paper and with other ‘suit’ games like Mah Jong and dominoes. One of the earliest references to cards in China was in the Tsin dynasty when T'ao K'an (259-334 AD) was reported by a local chronicler to have "flung into the river the wine cups and yü-p'u [Chinese cards] of his subordinates, remarking, 'Yü-p'u is a game for drovers, and swineherds' ".

Early Chinese Playing Cards

But the first reference in Europe was in 1377 – where the suits of cups and swords were added to those of coins and strings of coins adapted, in Chinese cards, from the circles and bamboos taken from Mah Jong. Non-figurative court cards were added on the journey to the west through the Islamic Empire. To be replaced by figurative cards of kings and their attendants of knights on horseback and foot-servants. Queens still do not appear in the card sets of many European countries, such as Spain. And Switzerland retains, from early German cards, the banner for the tens.

As well as the traditional designs ...

Traditional Designs - James Hardy, London (1827)

... there are lots of interesting variations, according to time and place, for example ...

Islamic (C15) - King of Coins and 5 of Sticks or Bamboos

French Court Cards - Kings (c1500)

Revolution Playing Cards (c.1689)

Morden's Playing Cards (1676)

Astronomisches Kartenspiel - German Astronomical Cards (1719)

King, England (1805)

Hall & Son playing cards, England (1806-10)

J.G. Cotta (1805)

German publisher J.G. Cotta, active in Tübingen (early 1800's)

Various German Cards (from 1825 to 1868)

G.Payer (c.1850)

Shakespeare' Goodall and Son London (1893)

F. Piatnik & Söhne, Wien 1895

Netherlands (1920)

'Vanity Fare' Set (1920's)

Sumio Kawakami's woodblock prints, by Okuno Karuta, Japan (1939)

Concentration Camp Deck, Dachau (1945)

And what post would be complete without some examples of those fag nude cards of the 1960's and 1970's ...


... which I reckon are great for the guys' hair as much as anything else!

Aetiology of Some Well-Known Phrases and Some Curious Facts

1. The Scottish game that was originally for 'Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden' became known as 'Golf'.

2. Coca Cola was originally green.

3. It's (supposedly) impossible to lick your elbow. But can you, without dislocating your shoulder?

4. First novel written on a typewriter was 'Tom Sawyer'.

5. The kings in a set of playing cards represent real people - spades King David, hearts Charlemagne, clubs Alexander the Great, and diamonds Julius Caesar. And so called in a French deck - David, Charles, Alexandre and César.

6. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

7. If you spell out numbers from zero, you'd need to get to 'one thousand' before you'd find the letter 'A'.

8. The only food that doesn't spoil is honey.

9. The expression 'sleep tight' comes from the time of Shakespeare, when mattresses were secured onto beds with ropes, and, to make the bed firmer, you tightened these ropes.

10. 4000 years ago in Babylon, the bride's parents supplied the groom with mead, a honey-based beer, for a month after the wedding - so the 'honeymoon'.


So guys, which of the ten do you like best?

And how bout the elbow lick thing? Bet you tried to as you read that so-called 'fact!'

Cycladic Sculpture

Standing Female Figure, c 2600–2400 B.C. Early Cycladic II Period

Settled at least as early as the C6 millenium BC, the Cyclades are a group of around 30 islands in the Aegean Sea and to the south-east of the Greek mainland, so called from the word 'kyklos' ('circle') because they formed this shape around the sacred island of Delos, with its holiest Temple of Appolo.


The culture that developed in these islands is best known to me through the Parian marble figures, usually female, made there between for 3200 and 2300 BC.

Head from the Figure of a woman -Spedos Type, Early Cycladic II Keros Culture (2700 BC–2300 BC), Le Louvre

Female Figure - Early Aegean, Cycladic, Bronze Age, Early Cycladic II-III Period (c2300–2000 BC)

Marble Figure of Chalandriani Type (2400-2200 BC)

Apart from their obvious beauty, I think what initially captured my imagination was the similarity of these sculptures to some abstract modern works, like some of Constantine Brancusi.

Brancusi 'Sleeping Muse' (1909-10) Smithsonian Institution

Brancusi 'Torso of a Young Girl' (1922) Fogg Art Museum

The Cycladic sculptures show traces of having been originally painted. Scientific analysis reveals mineral-based pigments - for example, blue (azurite) and red (iron ore or cinnabar). As well as facial features, clothing, tatoos and jewelry were indicted. As in these mocked up (later) Archaic marble figures.


Which now puts my beloved Cycladic marbles somewhere in the zone between comic books and drag! I want my plain white abstract images back - with absolutely no paint-applique 'colorful' added realism!

But I guess I'll simply have to develop a new aesthetic, one more in line with the evidence of the actuality of third and fourth millenuim Greece. But it's going to be a tough job !!!

Are You Orally or Olfactorily Challenged?

When I lived in Adelaide, I had the big big hots for a local fox, Norman H. And after some years of unrequited lusting and failed attempts, I bumped into him one day at a gay bar and manged to pick him up.

Got him home and everything was going real well - until the jocks-down-face-in-his-crotch moment. It was a tsunami of Channel Number Five - and about a bottle and a half of it! Very 'lady-like' of course but not the sex-plus olfactory experience I'd craved. In fact, a complete fucking turn-off.

So I am wondering how many of you guys want your roots to disguise their various man smells and tastes ... and how many of you actively want to enjoy them?


I guess there are the (current) socially acceptable body aromas and tastes (armpits and general body sweat) and those that still barely dare to speak there names (feet and holes).


So guys firstly, are you orally or olfactorily challenged?

And secondly, if not, what's your pleasure/s?

Super Stardom in the Making - David Archuleta

Just saw a truly knock-out performance of John Lennon's 'Imagine' - by 17 year old American Idol contestant David Archuleta.



A great great performance - the audience can't hold back throuhout, one of the judges cries. Cos David makes the song absolutely his own with this beautiful arrangement, not pushed too hard in the singing or mannered in any way. You are not aware of technique - but just seem to directly experience the meanings of the lyric though the music. Moved me like you wouldn't believe.

And it's so very difficult to do anything with such an iconic song and with the legendary Lennon performance in everyone's mind. But David Archuleta nails it absolutely - a superstar of the (very near) future!

A Mini-Post - Albert Einstein or Marilyn Munroe!

I came across this curious image yesterday - from a friend. There are a lot like this out there but this one grabs your attention. Mine at least.


If you look at it close it's Albert Einstein. But if you move back and look again it's Marilyn Munroe. Sometimes someone in between! I find if I squint and let my eyes go fuzzy, then it's easier to get to have the Hollywood experience!

Not quite sure how it works but it seems rather amazing! Gestalt psychology might have something to say about it - how we take in only a few aspects of anything we see for an interpretation i.e. put together some fragments in the mind into a complete image. Based on past experience and expectations. And perhaps here you somehow, at varying distances, see these selected aspects of an image slightly differently and so put them together and interpret them as a different whole. Any other ideas guys?

Try to restrain yourself from drag-oriented comments - by putting this final note in here, I obviously haven't!!!

Remembering the Domestic Charm and Intimacy of Pompeii's Frescoes

I first went to Italy when I used to live in Europe. I traveled on my own all over the country for just over 6 weeks. By train and bus. Visiting Rome, Milan, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, San Gimignano, Sienna, Assisi, Bologna, Venice, Vicenza, Verona, Naples and Pompeii. It was an amazingly intense experience - and I was pretty buggered (and not in a good way) when I got back home to London.

One of the things I most remember are the beautiful life-sized frescoes in the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, which as everyone knows disappeared with the Vesuvius eruption of 24 August 79 AD, only to be re-discovered in 1748.

There is much debate over what the frescoes depict. Some say the initiation through specific rites and rituals of a woman into the cult of Dionysus. Others, the rituals involved with preparing a young woman for the transition into married life. Whatever, it's the domestic charm and intimacy of the scenes I loved. With their subtlety of observation of how emotions are expressed.

The part of the cycle I now recall best is that with the woman dramatically swirling her cape in the air, her left hand raised and fingers elegantly splayed out - on the extreme right ...


... and the boy intently but glumly reading his scroll, while his mother gently and encouragingly rubs his right ear between her fingers, another volume rolled up and ready in her other hand ...




... and finally the detail of the strange bug-eyed figure looking in through the open door at the boy peering into a bowl - on the far left.



Two other things captured my imagination at the time.

The first were the local bars or 'thermopolia', looking as though they had just opened, ready for the business of selling wine and hot food from their terracotta containers or 'dolia' sunk into masonry counters.


And the second the death casts of Pompeiians we are all very familiar with.



What I've enjoyed most about this post has been googling the images of these old 'friends'.

Makes me want to grab my big leather Kenneth Cole shoulder bag and jump on the first plane to Italy!