SCALLOPS

“Plough deep while sluggards sleep.” - Benjamin Franklin

A very busy day at work today, but quite satisfying as I got much done. Food Friday is fishy as it was this for dinner tonight:

SCALLOPS À LA GRECQUE

• 12 scallops in their shells
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup of white wine
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 tablespoon chopped rosemary
• Salt, pepper
• 1 rhizome of ginger, grated.

Wash and clean the scallops, removing all the grit from the gut. Drain them and season with salt and pepper. Heat the oil until very hot, scald the ginger and immediately the oil heats again put in the scallops, ensuring they are seared all around. Stir in the flour and once it browns slightly, pour in the wine and water, stirring all the while. Add the rosemary and keep heating until the sauce thickens. Serve each scallop in each pre-heated shell (have them in the oven while cooking the scallops).

Serve with dry white wine, a fresh green salad and crusty bread.

Enjoy your weekend!

CULTURE

“Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” - Jawaharlal Nehru

The 21st of May has been declared by the United Nations as the World Day for Cultural Diversity and for Dialogue and Development. This is further to the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity by UNESCO on November 2001. This day provides us with an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the values of cultural diversity and to learn to “live together” better. UNESCO continues to promote greater awareness of the crucial relationship between culture and development and the important role that information and communication technologies play in this relationship.

In these days of globalisation, increased urbanisation, massive shifts of the world’s population to countries away from their origin, and the effects of a unifying and aggressive cultural imperialism (for ideological, imperialistic or economic purposes), it is important to remember the great richness that is there to be discovered for all who are interested in the great diversity of cultures around the world. Many of these cultures are under the risk of extinction.

I personally have seen it occurring in the country of my birth. Greek culture has been a vast storehouse of traditions, beliefs, folklore, observances, religious practices, music, dancing, art and even social mores that has been preserved for thousands of years. In the last few decades, this rich storehouse has been depleted and is at risk of bankruptcy. The European Union, of which Greece is now a member, has exerted a massive pressure for economic, social and cultural integration. This is aided and abetted by the export and avid consumption of American “pop culture” through a very efficient worldwide marketing and communication machine.

One of the major challenges of the 21st Century is to convince people around the world that their indigenous culture, however meagre it is in terms of propaganda or number of its followers, is as worthy as any widely publicised and popular culture followed by many billions and which is imperialistically subsuming all others in its path. The challenge to make diversity out of difference, to promote unity by cultivating (not by reducing) human complexity will be one that is hard to accept and champion.

Forces of unity up till now have tended to subject our planet to a simplified order. Each of these efforts has missed the target and left bitter traces. Instead of unity there is often an increased division and prolongation of distrust and intolerance. Now is the time to build kinship on the basis of plurality, which has as its raw material the rich diversity of humankind. Culture is essential to this endeavour, as witnessed by the scope of world heritage sites and artworks and by the originality of creations which keep uniformity at bay.

The Diversity Festival organised by UNESCO in many regions of the world, from 11th to 22nd May 2009, to celebrate World Day for Cultural Diversity, for Dialogue and Development has the rich cultures of all people around the planet at its core. The Festival is made up of extremely diverse events, held in a multiplicity of places and countries from Paris to São Paulo.

Culture in all of its forms and diverse expressions enriches our life and surprises us with its delightful difference from the culture that we are brought up with. The independence, integrity and fruitful diversity of the culture of all the world’s countries promote the democratic principles of dignity, equality and mutual respect. This can be achieved through education, the sciences, culture and communication. Cultures are not monolithic and preserved through isolation, but they need be interdependent, enriching each other through mutual exchanges and borrowings, and that this diversity is a source of strength and unity.

culture |ˈkəl ch ər| noun
1 The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively: 20th century popular culture.
• A refined understanding or appreciation of this: Men of culture.
• The customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group: Caribbean culture | People from many different cultures.
• [with adj. ] The attitudes and behaviour characteristic of a particular social group: The emerging drug culture.
2 Biology: The cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc., in an artificial medium containing nutrients: The cells proliferate readily in culture.
• A preparation of cells obtained in such a way: The bacterium was isolated in two blood cultures.
• The cultivation of plants: This variety of lettuce is popular for its ease of culture.
verb [ trans. ] Biology
Maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth.
ORIGIN: Middle English (denoting a cultivated piece of land): The noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French culturer or medieval Latin culturare, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’. In late Middle English the sense was [cultivation of the soil] and from this (early 16th century) arose [cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners)]; sense 1 dates from the early 19th century.

HERACLITUS

“Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.” - Heraclitus

For Poetry Wednesday, some food for thought from William Johnson Cory. The subject is the great Ancient Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus from Ephesus the great city of Caria on the shores of Asia Minor.

Heraclitus

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

William Johnson Cory (1823-1892)

Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 535–475 BCE) is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato. Heraclitus’s philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Heraclitus, like Parmenides of Elea (early 5th century BCE), postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics.

His ideas that the universe is in constant flux (Πάντα ῥεῖ… - panta rei, “everything is in flux”) and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change (λόγος – logos, reason) form the essential foundation of the European world view. Whether it’s a science, economics, or political science course that you study, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus’s ideas on change and the “logos”.

Despite the fact that the ancient Greeks considered Heraclitus one of their principal philosophers, unfortunately little remains of his writings. A few fragments, quoted by other Greek writers give us only a tantalising taste of his ideas and arguments. These passages are difficult to read and interpret fully, not only because they are quoted out of context, but because Heraclitus deliberately cultivated an obscure writing style (so obscure, in fact, that the Greeks nicknamed him the “Riddler” or the "Dark One").

However, by piecing together all of the fragments that we have of Heraclitus’s writings, we are able to piece together the central components of his thought. We can understand his concept of the logos, although it may be difficult to contextualise it in the universal sense. We can consider his claim that the logos consists of all the paired opposites in the universe, but what is the nature of the logos as the composite of all paired opposites? How does the Logos explain change? Fascinating glimpses of a great mind, as though one were trying to discover the meaning of life through snippets of conversations overheard in a busy train terminal…

Some of these fragments:

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.
potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin, hetera kai hetera hudata epirrei
“On those stepping into rivers the same, other and other waters flow.”

τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν
ta onta ienai te panta kai menein ouden
“All beings going and remaining not at all”

ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν.
potamois tois autois embainomen te kai ouk embainomen eimen te kai ouk eimen
“We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.”

ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν
ek tōn diapherontōn kallistēn harmonian
“Out of discord comes the fairest harmony”

Some of these ideas have been independently vocalized and explored by the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (6th century BCE).

The painting above is by Bramante and depicts Heraclitus on the left as the “Crying Philosopher”, while on the right is Democritus, the “Laughing Philosopher”, personifying the essence of their credos.

PONTIAN-GREEKS MEMORIAL DAY

“Refugees have done more for my heart and my spirit than I can ever express in words.”
- Angelina Jolie

Today marks a commemorative day that is observed in Greece to remember the genocide of the Pontian-Greeks. The Pontus (Εύξεινος Πόντος - Euxeinos Pontos), is the Black Sea and Greeks settled the area from around 1000 BCE when they first visited the area for trade mainly in gold and minerals. The trip of Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis commemorates Greek visits to the Pontus. Mythology is full of more adventures in the region, including the travels of Ulysses to the country of the Cimmerians, the punishment of Prometheus by Zeus chaining his body on the mountains of Caucasus, the travels of Hercules to the Black Sea, which all testify to the existence of ancient Greek trading routes in the Black Sea.

The trading posts started to develop in to permanent Greek settlements by about 800 BC. The city of Miletus on the Western shore of Asia Minor was the first to start the colonisation of the Black Sea by founding a daughter-city, Sinope. This became a rapidly growing city gifted with a good harbour and easy accessibility to the hinterland. More colonial cities developed along the length of the Northern shore of Asia Minor, along the coast of the Black Sea. Large populations of Greeks settled there and their cities became powerful cultural and trading centres.

During the first centuries of their existence the colonies retained the same patterns of social and political organisation as their colonial mother-towns. With the passage of time, the Greek cities dominated the political life of the region and the local indigenous people became hellenised. In the Alexandrian period, the economic power of the Pontian-Greek cities peaked, with Greek culture leaving an indelible mark on the surrounding regions. Under the reign of the Pontian king Mithridates VI Eupator (134-63 BCE), Greek became the official language of the many different (and until then polyglot) people of Asia Minor. During Roman times, Greek culture in the eastern part of the Black Sea flourished and the Pontian-Greek cities retained their freedom, independence and self-determination as well as continuing to play a leading role in the economic and cultural life of the region.

The apostles St Andrew and St Peter brought Christianity to Pontus, profitting from the fact that the language of the populace was Greek, which had become the lingua franca of the time. As Christianity spread, Greek culture and national identity became fused with it. The result was that a homogenous culture emerged, based on the uniting element of Greek Christian Orthodoxy.

The capture of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204 CE, resulted in the fragmentation of the Byzantine Empire into small Frankish states. Smaller Greek states survived and Alexius, a member of the Byzantine dynasty of the Komnenoi, with his brother David, founded the Empire of the Great Komnenoi of Trebizond on the Pontus. The Georgian queen Thamar (aunt of Alexius and David) aided in the establishment of this state. Up until that point, Trebizond was relatively insignificant but because of the Komnenoi’s choice, it became a powerful dysnastic centre.

The fall of Constantinople (1453 CE) the fall of Trebizond (1461 CE) mark one of the great turning points in Greek history. Immediately after the capture of Trebizond by the Ottomans, many inhabitants of the rich coastal towns and the villages fled. Most of them escaped into the remote mountain regions of Pontus where in protective isolation they were free to continue their cultural, religious and linguistic tradition. Some of the refugees settled in central Russia, others on the coasts of southern Russia, in Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan, where they founded new Greek cities. These thriving cultural centres were able to welcome persecuted Greeks in later years. This resulted in the simultaneous existence of a second, ever-growing Pontian-Greek civilisation (particularly in Russia), which throughout the whole period of the Ottoman Empire received refugees. These refugees were fleeing the 1914-18 persecution of Pontians by the reigning Ottoman regime.

By 1918 the total Pontian-Greek population in Russia had grown to 650,000 people. On the opposite shore of the Black Sea, on Turkish territory, the history and culture of the Pontian-Greeks and also of the other Greek inhabitants came to a tragic end through the treaty of Lausanne in 1923. This treaty brought about the forceful expulsion of Greek people living on Turkish territory (the “Asia Minor Catastrophe”). Similarly, Turks living on Greek soil were expelled to Turkey.

The criterion for the population exchanges outlined in the treaty of Lausanne was religion. Greeks who become Muslim in the 17th century could stay in Turkey. This explains why inhabitants in regions around the Pontian towns of Tonya, Ophis, Sourmena and Matsouka still live in Turkey and speak their Pontian-Greek dialect. They remember their Greek heritage and preserve their Greek (and some Christian traditions, although nominally they are Muslim).

Pontians living in the territory of the former Soviet Union are still estimated to be half a million people who stick to their Pontian-Greek traditions. The Pontians managed, like all persecuted peoples, to stick together and through hard work they established themselves in their new adopted homes. They preserved their language, tradition, songs and dances, their culture.

MOVIE MONDAY - THE BROWNING VERSION

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” - Sydney J. Harris

The movie for this Movie Monday is a classic piece of British drama, Anthony Asquith’s 1951 film of Terence Ratigan’s play, “The Browning Version”. This is a dark and wonderfully acted piece of psychological drama, which more than 50 years after its making still looks fresh and has the power to involve, engage and move the viewer.

The plot centres on Andrew Crocker-Harris (AKA “The Crock” to his students), a stuffy professor of Classical Greek at an English public (i.e. private) school. He is greatly disliked by his students and his fellow teachers and when he retires because of poor health he is denied a deserved pension by the stingy headmaster. To make matters worse his younger wife who is a social climber cheats on him with a younger professor. Although Crocker-Harris began his career eighteen years earlier as a brilliant young scholar, he has been buried by the stiff rigidity of school rules and regimentation and has made himself cold and distant from all human emotion. While his future seems to be financially ruinous and his marriage has failed, the kindness of one of his students rekindles his humanity.

Central to the film is Aeschylus’ tragedy of Agamemnon whose wife Clytaemnestra is cheating on him while he is away fighting in the Trojan War. On his return, the wife and her lover Aegisthus murder Agamemnon in his bath. The play not only mirrors Crocker-Harris’s life, but is also pivotal to the story. The title relates to the Browning translation of the “Agamemnon”.

The acting in this film is superb with Michael Redgrave giving a great performance as Crocker-Harris. Jean Kent as his duplicitous and shrewish wife supports him admirably. Nigel Patrick as the lover and Crock-Harris’s colleague is good, as is the young Brian Smith, playing the likeable young student, Taplow. The starring role won Michael Redgrave best actor in that year’s Cannes festival and the film also won best screenplay there. Ratigan who wrote the screenplay adapted it from his own play and the transfer from stage to film has been done eloquently and with a good understanding of the medium. As Ratigan was a homosexual it is easy to read a subtext into the movie, but the film works well even without such a subtlety.

It is quite a moving film, but not in the standard “tear-jerker” fashion of “Goodbye Mr Chips”. There is a raw energy in the film and a biting candour that grips the viewer as the layers are removed from the characters. In the end when their souls have been laid bare, one cannot but identify in turn with the tragedy in each of them. This is definitely a great film to watch, but be warned, it’s quite challenging viewing!

ART SUNDAY - CEZANNE

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” - Paul Cézanne

The French painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was one of the most important figures in the development of modern painting. In particular, the evolution of cubism and abstraction was largely due to his innovations (so now you know who to blame!). During the greater part of his own lifetime, however, Cézanne was largely ignored, and he worked in isolation. He mistrusted critics, had few friends, and, until 1895, exhibited only occasionally. He was alienated even from his family, who found his behaviour peculiar and failed to appreciate his revolutionary art.

For many years Cézanne was known only to his old impressionist colleagues and to a few younger radical post-impressionist artists, including the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French painter Paul Gauguin. In 1895, however, Ambroise Vollard, an ambitious Paris art dealer, arranged a show of Cézanne's works and over the next few years promoted them successfully. By 1904, Cézanne was featured in a major official exhibition, and by the time of his death (in Aix on October 22, 1906) he had attained the status of a legendary figure. During his last years many younger artists traveled to Aix to observe him at work and to receive any words of wisdom he might offer. Both his style and his theory remained mysterious and cryptic; he seemed to some a naive primitive, while to others he was a sophisticated master of technical procedure. The intensity of his color, coupled with the apparent rigour of his compositional organisation, signalled to most that, despite the artist's own frequent despair, he had synthesised the basic expressive and representational elements of painting in a highly original manner.

Cézanne's goal was, in his own mind, never fully attained. He left most of his works unfinished and destroyed many others. He complained of his failure at rendering the human figure. Even the great figural works of his last years (eg, the “Large Bathers”, painted 1899-1906), reveal curious distortions that seem to have been dictated by the rigour of the system of colour modulation he imposed on his own representations. The succeeding generation of painters, however, eventually came to be receptive to nearly all of Cézanne's idiosyncrasies. Cézanne's heirs felt that the naturalistic painting of impressionism had become formularised, and a new and original style, however difficult it might be, was needed to return a sense of sincerity and commitment to modern art.

I like many of Cézanne’s still life paintings, such as the one I feature, and also some of his landscapes where the elements of the painting assume a strange sculptural quality that achieves monumental proportions. I would have to agree with him on his own self-assessment o his figural painters. His “Great Bathers" look like they were modelled on transsexual men soldiers whose transformation into the opposite sex was influenced the stalwart physique of the men and marred by worst efforts of a terrible plastic surgeon…

SICILIA ANTICA

“The leaves of memory seemed to make a mournful rustling in the dark.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We were looking at some old photo albums today and while leafing through one of the ones that contained photos of a trip to Sicily taken about ten years ago I remembered a beautiful summer night in Palermo and a song that we heard while sitting on a terrace. It was night, with a full moon and gazing at the sparkling silver sea, this song wafted up from an open window. I looked it up on YouTube and here it is, evocative now as it was then. Nostalgic and reminiscent of a folk song, even then it bemoaned the times gone and never to return again. Now, it brings those memories to mind and is reminiscent of happy times that have gone by.

Sicilia Antica – Old Sicily
Marcella Bella

Born of sea and flowers,
Earth of love, you’ll never die.
Wheat-fields, burnt by the sun,
There, where I left my first love.

Old Sicily in my heart,
How many treasures in you!

People with dry faces, hard eyes,
But in their hearts much warmth.
These are my people, who sing easily
Whose work makes them happy.

Old Sicily in my heart,
How many treasures in you!

In sea and sun I was born,
Son of an earth that exists no more.
In my mind return a thousand alleys,
There, where I left my best memories.

Old Sicily, salt of the earth,
You’ll never return, like my first love!

THE STAFF OF LIFE

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts!” - James Beard

I must confess that I don’t eat much bread. At meal times, I’d rather have my food without bread, and at breakfast who needs bread or toast, if one can have cake? Besides which, I seldom eat sandwiches. However, there are occasions when I must have bread, especially if the bread is fresh out of the oven and home-made. The taste of freshly-baked bread lavishly spread with butter is wonderful! Strangely enough there is myth that making bread is difficult. It’s not actually if one understands the biology and the chemistry of it. The idea that it is time consuming is also a myth. Time spent in preparation is very quick, but of course, you have to leave the dough lying around for a long time so that it can rise.

Things that can go drastically wrong when you make bread are that you burn it (turn the oven down) or that it doesn’t rise. If it doesn’t rise, you may have used old yeast or you may have scalded it – remember it’s a living organism! Yeast lasts for quite a long time (around 6 months), and will last even longer if kept in the fridge or freezer. Incidentally, never buy yeast in those small foil sachets in the supermarkets. It is seriously over-packaged and very, very expensive. Buy your yeast in bulk from a fine establishment like health food store. Also, don't get confused and buy brewer’s yeast; you need granulated yeast. The water that you use to suspend the yeast in, should be around 35°C, but the best way of telling is by testing the water on your wrist. It should warm, but not at all hot, just like a baby’s milk bottle.

Always remember, the amount of flour is only a rough guide; flour absorbency varies greatly, and it is not difficult to tell when your dough is the right consistency, if you add the water carefully. Some bread recipes include sugar and honey, but these are not essential and can make the bread sickly sweet. If the water is the right temperature and you knead your bread well, you don’t need the “extras”. Salt is needed as it does add so much to taste (as does a little oil, I guess).

Here is a recipe for wheat germ bread, which is much more reliable than wholemeal bread:

Wheat Germ Bread

Ingredients
7 cups white unbleached flour
1 cup wheat germ
1 tablespoon dry (granulated) yeast
2.5 cups warm water
2 teaspoonfuls salt
2 tablespoonfuls olive oil

Method
Mix the yeast with about 1/2 cup of the warm water. Leave for about 10 minutes, by which time the yeast should have begun to foam.

Put the flour, wheat-germ and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre, and pour in the yeast mixture. Stir and add the oil and the remaining water gradually, always stirring, until the dough forms a ball but doesn't become so sticky that it sticks to your fingers. There is no precise way of knowing when your dough will be ready except by experience... You really have to go on how the dough feels and looks. As you knead you can add more water or flour if it is needed. Thankfully, bread isn’t one of those things that require a perfect balance of ingredients. Furthermore, once you've made bread a few times you will learn to tell exactly when your dough is right.

Turn the dough out onto a floured board. Every so often sprinkle the board with more flour as you knead, or the dough will stick. Knead by pushing the heels of your hand into the dough, folding it back on itself, turning it around, and generally giving it a good work out. Kneading generally takes about 10 minutes but again the best way to tell is by experience and just by feeling it. It should be satiny, springy, elastic and smooth.

Put the dough in a bowl and cover with a clean, damp tea-towel. Leave somewhere warm to rise (under a blanket in winter). It will take between one and three hours to rise, depending on the ambient temperature. You can tell when it’s ready in two ways: Firstly, it should have doubled in bulk. Secondly, give it a little poke with your finger. If the indentation disappears let it rise some more. If it stays in the dough, it is ready to be shaped.

Now, take out your aggression by punching the dough down. Knead for about 3 minutes, and then shape the dough. The possibilities here are endless. Loaves, rolls, plaits, twists, knot rolls, cottage loaves, wherever your imagination takes you. Put your loaves or rolls or whatever onto a greased pan or bread tray, cover with a damp cloth, and leave to “prove” (i.e. rise again; this is quicker than the initial rising, and will take about 45 minutes).

Bake in a preheated oven at 190°C. Loaves should be left to cook for about 40 minutes, rolls need about 20 minutes. The bread is ready when it has a nice brown crust. Also, you can tip the loaf out of its pan, and tap its base. It should sound hollow. If it doesn’t, put it back in the tin and leave it bake for a little while longer.

Variations
Once you've mastered the basic principles of bread making the possibilities are infinite. You can just do about anything you like as long as you include yeast and balance the ingredients to get the same smooth, elastic dough.

Suggested additions include:
Herbs and spices: Whatever you like in whatever mixture.
Seeds: Sesame, linseed, sunflower, poppy.
Sprouted grains: Rice, wheat, lentils.
Vegetables, mashed: eg. potato and pumpkin; grated: eg. carrot, beetroot, parsnips, potato; or chopped: eg. onion or spinach.
Whole grains: Barley, rice, cracked wheat (these should be cooked first).
Different flours: Rye, buckwheat, rice, potato, soy, gluten, cornmeal. Bread can't be made from these flours alone (well, not using the basic recipe given above), rye can be used for about half of the flour, gluten should be used for more than a cup or two.
More exotic additions are grated parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes, sun-dried capsicum. Either added to the dough, or just sprinkled on top.

Now that I have said that I seldom eat bread, I should rephrase it. I seldom eat bread, but would love to have it more often as a full meal. Some bread and salad, or bread with cheese and some wine, or bread and butter…

Hmmm, let’s bake some bread and enjoy!

BUDGET TIME

“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.” - Robert Graves

The day today was extremely busy and I worked non-stop for almost twelve hours. There were several important meetings and important deadlines to meet in terms of reports, as well as several urgent phone calls that needed important decision to be made. The day ended with a budget meeting, which (as these types of meetings go) went way overtime…

Budgeting really bores me, especially since I seem to have a good money sense and seem to do well with financial matters in terms of good management. However, I can see the importance of budgeting, especially when large sums of money are involved and a large complex organisation with much revenue and expenses is involved.

At the moment we are digesting a particularly unpalatable federal budget, which was handed down from the treasurer this week. Given that times are tough globally and we are living through a global recession that is of the first magnitude, nobody expected this federal budget to be beer and skittles. However, it contains some highly controversial items that renege on pre-election promises made by the government; the highly unpopular measure of increasing the pensionable age up to 67 years; cutbacks on rebates for private health insurance cover; a victimisation of single people in terms of unequal treatment in terms of deductions, etc; voluntary superannuation payment tax benefits decreased; cutting back on skilled migration programs; a deficit of over $50 billion!
(see http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2009/05/12/78221_gold-coast-top-story.html).

The opposition of course are opposing this budget and some independent senators have threatened to vote against it in the upper house. This (and several other pending bills that the senate could refuse) will give the government cause for a double dissolution and an early federal election… Just what we needed!

In any case, the word for Thursday is quite apt then:

budget |ˈbəjit| noun
1) an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time: Keep within the household budget. | [as adj. ] A budget deficit.
• an annual or other regular estimate of national revenue and expenditure put forward by the government, often including details of changes in taxation.
• the amount of money needed or available for a purpose: They have a limited budget.
2) archaic a quantity of material, typically that which is written or printed.
Verb
(budgeted, budgeting |ˈbədʒədɪŋ|) [ intrans. ]
allow or provide for in a budget: The university is budgeting for a deficit | [as adj. ] (budgeted) A budgeted figure of $31,000 | [as n. ] ( budgeting) Corporate planning and budgeting.
• [ trans. ] provide (a sum of money) for a particular purpose from a budget: The council proposes to budget $100,000 to provide grants.
adjective [ attrib. ]
inexpensive: A budget guitar.
PHRASES
on a budget with a restricted amount of money: We're travelling on a budget.
DERIVATIVES
budgetary |-ˌterē| |ˈbədʒəˈtɛri| adjective

ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French bougette, diminutive of bouge ‘leather bag,’ from Latin bulga ‘leather bag, knapsack,’ of Gaulish origin. Compare with bulge. The word originally meant a pouch or wallet, and later its contents. In the mid 18th century, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, in presenting his annual statement, was said “to open the budget.” In the late 19th century the use of the term was extended from governmental to private or commercial finances.

NIGHTMARE

“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” – André Gide

I had a nightmare last night peopled by strange undersea creatures and awful dark brooding monsters that threatened by their lurking non-presence. The sea with all its mysteries and unknown vastness, its unimaginable depths is a frightening thing. No wonder our ancestors peopled it with sirens and tritons, Nereids and giant creatures, the Kraken and the Selkie, all ready to drown and tear apart all those who invaded their domain…

Seascape

Wild cries of sirens echo
Tearing the reigning silence
That until now lay serene
In deep red coral caverns.
Seaweed and sponges part, green sunrays disappear
As Nereids swim to escape from the frightening din.
Seahorses gallop away,
Tritons blowing warning horns, swim, hide
In blue darknesses of ocean woods.

And there, bare-breasted they appear,
Awfully shrieking frightening yelps,
With hair loose and nails sharpened:
The sirens pass by and pearly palaces
Are laid waste, their great halls empty.
But in a moment, silence returns;
A pregnant pause, a short hiatus,
An unbearable wait ensues.

A siren-song exotic resonates
A heavenly harmony is heard,
Ecstatic voices sing mellifluously
A melody devastating in its beauty.
Seductive songs ring out, airs magnetic
Attracting hapless mortals to the deep.

The luckless sailor dives in liquid satin
The sirens stop their witching song.
Their scalpel claws tear flesh,
Their leech lips suck spilling lifeblood.
The body twitches in drowned exsanguination
His face becomes so deathly pale,
His eyes dull, and with fleeting last gaze
Pursue his soul that rises up
As both chase the echoes of the deathly song.

GREETINGS FROM SYDNEY!

“Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.” - Thomas Carlyle

I was in Sydney today just for the day for work. Getting up early in the morning has never fazed me and I have never used an alarm clock – I just set my own internal clock and usually wake within 5-10 minutes of the time I “set”. However, in winter it is rather hard to get up at 4:30 am when the house is cold and dark and then have to prepare oneself for a 6:00 am flight. The mystique of travel rapidly wears off, when one travels so often on such short trips for work…

Sydney is a lovely place to visit, but I don’t think I would like to live there (although one never knows, I am quite adaptable). Even today with the busy schedule I had to deal with, there was time in between catching the train to look out on the Harbour and see the Bridge and the Opera house from Circular Quay, the lovely parks and gardens (the Sydney Botanical Gardens are lovely), the city heritage buildings. The weather of course helped – a beautiful warmish autumn day with sunny skies and fine, still air.

Nonetheless, I was not being a tourist, but rather going about the work commitments, which thankfully all went well. A bonus was that I could catch an afternoon flight back home, rather an evening one!

One of the Sydney icons is the Luna Park, situated in Milsons Point, a very prominent Harbour site across Circular Quay and almost under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The origins of Luna Park go back to Coney Island, U.S.A., part of metropolitan New York, where in the late 1800’s a number of competing amusement parks sprang up. Elmer Dundy and Frederick Thompson developed an amusement called “A Trip to the Moon”, which was extremely successful. In 1903 they opened their own amusement park on Coney Island and called it Luna Park in acknowledgement of their successful ride.

Soon Luna Parks spread throughout the world. American showmen, brothers Herman, Leon and Harold Phillips with J.D. Williams, opened Australia’s first Luna Park at St. Kilda in 1912. Showman David Atkins noticed its enormous success and convinced the Phillips to open a Luna Park in Glenelg, Adelaide in 1930. Ted Hopkins an electrical engineer joined the Park just prior to its opening to complete the electrical and mechanical installation. Despite several successful seasons, the Glenelg park was forced to close because of friction with the local residents and a local council that resisted any changes or expansion of the Park.

Herman Phillips and David Atkins commenced a search for a suitable place to relocate the South Australian Luna Park and found the vacant Harbour Bridge factory site at Milsons Point. Under the guidance of Ted Hopkins, Luna Park Glenelg was dismantled, packed up, transported by ship and unloaded onto the Dorman Long wharf and reassembled in Sydney. When the doors opened at 8.00pm on the 4th of October, 1935 it cost 6d to enter (3d for children) and 6d for most rides. The Big Dipper and Coney Island cost 9d. The Park was an instant success. After the first year, the admission charge was removed and Luna Park proudly advertised “Admission Free”.

Since then, the Luna Park has opened and closed numerous times, has had to weather fires and other tragedies, has narrowly escaped redevelopment several times. After many trials and tribulations, including dismantling of the famous face, selling off of many rides and periods of closure that threatened to obliterate its tradition, government and private enterprise collaborated and finally, the Park re-opened on the 4th of April 2004, complete with face lift and multi-million dollar renovations. It has operated non-stop since then.

MOVIE MONDAY - MANSFIELD PARK

“Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.” - John Le Carré

We watched a rather puzzling film at the weekend, one which perhaps had the best intentions, but through expediency, factors relating to its direction, marketing considerations, and the pandering to modern tastes and expectations, fell rather widely off the mark. The film was Patricia Rozema’s, 1999 “Mansfield Park” an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, which also happened to be the author’s favourite. The film was a BBC production, which sets a certain level of expectations in the viewers, as English costume dramas are so very well done in terms of costumes, sets, acting and general “feel” of authenticity when one watches them.

The plot concerns itself with Fanny Price, a poor relation and daughter of a woman who has married “for love” rather than money, who at age 10 goes to live at Mansfield Park, the estate of her aunt's husband, Sir Thomas. Fanny is clever and imaginative, a writer with an ironic sense and fine moral compass (Jane Austen being autobiographical to a certain extent). At Mansfield Park she comes especially close to Edmund, Sir Thomas's younger son. As Fanny grows up, she becomes beautiful as well as intelligent and charming. She comes to the attention of a neighbour, the well-off Henry Crawford. Sir Thomas supports this match, but to his displeasure, Fanny asks Henry to prove himself worthy. Edmund becomes attached to Henry’s sister, much to Fanny’s chagrin. Tom, Sir Thomas’ eldest son exposes Sir Thomas's fortunes as having originated in New World slavery. Fanny finds herself in an embarrassing situation where her position at Mansfield Park becomes untenable...

This is the bare bones of the plot to which Ms Rozema has confined herself. Sure enough to condense a novel of the breadth and subtlety of Austen’s work is difficult to do in two hours of film, so many essential characters and plot twists have been removed, that the husk remaining is rather oversimplified and caricature-like. This contributes to some of the puzzling aspects of the film and the inexplicable motivation of some of the characters. By reducing to the bare boens of the plot, leaving many characters and stressing the wrong parts (or even adding some parts that were not in the novel), the film becomes a poor adaptation.

The actors did a good job nevertheless, especially considering the limitations of the script (And incidentally Ms Rozema is responsible for the script as well as the direction). Frances O’Connor as Fanny Price is rather too feisty and more reminiscent of other Austen heroines. Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund does a relatively good job, Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas is good, but my money goes to Lindsay Duncan in the double role of Fanny’s mother and her sister, Lady Bertram, Sir Thomas’s wife. Hugh Bonneville as Rushworth as the cuckolded husband is good and the Crawford siblings played by Embeth Davidtz and Alessandro Nivola make a good pair.

The film satisfies the casual viewer because the “authentic feel” is still there, and if this casual viewer has not read the novel, he or she would be infinitely less demanding and more easily pleased with Rozema’s film. However, having read the novel (and enjoyed it, as it is a biting satire of social mores and a subtle commentary on the social structure of Austen’s time), the film lacks depth and is quite inconsistent, emphasising all the wrong things and giving a rather garbled and mangled account of the novel. Maybe if Ms Rozema had changed the title and the characters’ names, it would have been a passable “period drama”, even though it is too modern in its characterisation for that. If you decide to see it and have read the novel don’t set your expectations too high, but you still may get annoyed. If you haven’t read the novel, don’t set your expectations too high and you may enjoy it.

MOTHER'S DAY

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” - William Makepeace Thackeray

For Art Sunday today, here is Mary Cassatt’s “The Child’s Caress” (ca 1890. Oil on canvas. Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu).

Mother’s Day is centuries old and the earliest Mother’s Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honour of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. The early Christians in England celebrated a day to honour Mary, the mother of Christ. By a religious order the holiday was later expanded in its scope to include all mothers, and named as the “Mothering Sunday”. Celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (the 40 day period leading up to Easter), Mothering Sunday honoured the mothers of England.

During this time many of the England’s poor worked as servants for the wealthy. As most jobs were located far from their homes, the servants would live at the houses of their employers. On Mothering Sunday, the servants would have the day off and were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers. A special cake, called the mothering cake, was often brought along to provide a festive touch.

As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honour the “Mother Church” - the spiritual power that gave them life and protected them from harm. Over time the church festival blended with the Mothering Sunday celebration. People began honouring their mothers as well as the church. With the passage of time, the practice of this tradition ceased slowly. The English colonists settled in America discontinued the tradition of Mothering Sunday because of lack of time.

In the United States, Mother’s Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was first suggested after the American Civil War by social activist Julia Ward Howe. Howe (who wrote the words to the Battle hymn of the Republic) was horrified by the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War and so, in 1870, she tried to issue a manifesto for peace at international peace conferences in London and Paris (it was much like the later Mother’s Day Peace Proclamation). In 1872, she went to London to promote an international Woman's Peace Congress. She began promoting the idea of a "Mother's Day for Peace" to be celebrated on June 2, honoring peace, motherhood and womanhood. It was due to her efforts that in 1873, women in 18 cities in America held a Mother's Day for Pace gathering. Howe rigorously championed the cause of official celebration of Mothers Day and declaration of official holiday on the day. She held meetings every year at Boston on Mother's Peace Day and took care that the day was well-observed. The celebrations died out when she turned her efforts to working for peace and women's rights in other ways.

It should be remembered that Howe's idea was influenced by Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called “Mothers Friendship Day”. In the 1900's, at a time when most women devoted their time solely on their family and homes, Jarvis was working to assist in the healing of the nation after the Civil War. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. Ann was instrumental in saving thousands of lives by teaching women in her Mothers Friendship Clubs the basics of nursing and sanitation which she had learned from her famous physician brother James Reeves, M.D.

In most countries, Mother’s Day is a recent tradition derived from the holiday as it has evolved in North America and Europe. Many African countries adopted the idea of one Mother's Day from the British observance, although there are many festivals and events celebrating mothers within the many diverse cultures on the African continent that long pre-date colonization.

Happy Mother’s Day!

CLAIR DE LUNE

“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” - Vincent Van Gogh

As I look out of the window over the dark garden, the clouds covering the sky part just for a few moments and the silvery moonlight illuminates the dark foliage. What more perfect music to describe that flicker of silvery light than Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”? Here is it is in Leopold Stokowski’s transcription for orchestra, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra and conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-) in the Minato-Mirai Hall, Yokohama, Japan, in May, 1999.

SYLLABUB

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness…” – John Keats

The weather in Perth was gorgeous. Fine, warm, sunny not windy at all and reminiscent of Spring! Flying back home today to come back to autumn, with grey skies, showers, cooler temperatures. The trees are turning their leaves to gold and red, gusts of wind likely to carry the falling leaves into piles by the wayside. Autumn has its charms, to be sure. As fruits autumnal mature and apples especially come into season, cider was freshly made at this time. Here is a recipe for syllabub. This old fashioned dessert was once very commonly served and relished.

CIDER SYLLABUB

Ingredients
1 pint (≈ 470 mL) apple cider
1 pint (≈ 470 mL) double cream
1 cup superfine sugar
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoonful freshly grated nutmeg
Macaroons or brandy snaps to serve with.

Method
Mix in a large bowl the lemon juice, rind and sugar, adding the grated nutmeg last, with enough cider to dissolve the sugar. Add the remaining cider, stirring well. Add the thick cream, two to three spoonfuls at a time, stirring lightly. Once all the cream is added, gently stir once only and let the syllabub stand for two hours in very cool place before it is eaten. The cider should curdle the cream and the bubbles of the cider should permeate the curd making it light and fluffy.
Spoon into glasses and serve with macaroons.

For a variation, see Nigella Lawson making Amaretto Syllabub:


Have a great weekend!

POSTCARD FROM PERTH

“People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.” - Anton Chekhov

I am in Perth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth,_Western_Australia) for a couple of days for work and as the flight was the early morning “red-eye-special”, it’s been a very long day. More so as Perth is two hours behind the East coast. The weather here was beautiful, with temperatures in the high 20s, sunny and balmy. So word Thursday today, the topical:

Indian summer (noun)
A period of unusually dry, warm weather occurring in late autumn.
(fig.) A period of happiness or success occurring late in life.

Indian summer can be in September, October, or early November in the northern hemisphere, and March, April, or early May in the Southern hemisphere. It can persist for a few days or extend to a week or more. This term is not related to the summer season in India.

ORIGIN: American, in reference to the period when Indians used the time to prepare for the winter cold by hunting and gathering.

AUTUMN SPRINGS

“Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” – Galileo Galilei

For Poetry Wednesday today, two poems, epigrammatic in their contrariness:

Wind of Spring

You touch the willows, and make a new green;
You breathe on the peaches, and restore a pristine red;
But for my fading countenance and my greying hair
I dare not blame you, Oh East Wind…
Ch’ên Chieh (Active 1260s AD)

The Grape
No, not by ephemeral roses saddened
That passing Spring will wither, kill;
But rather by grapes bunched shall I be gladdened
That ripen on the sloping hill,
On my fair valley joy bestowing,
The golden Autumn’s richest pearl,
As lithely tapered, freshly glowing
As fingers of a sweet young girl.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837)

I still feel the tension between Northern and Southern hemispheres, and the Spring versus Autumn battle till wages deep inside me.

¡VIVA EL CINCO DE MAYO!

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” - Abraham Lincoln

Today is a day that is celebrated in Mexico and countries where many Mexicans live, for example the Southern states of the USA. “Cinco de Mayo” (the 5th of May) is not officially the Mexican Independence Day (this is celebrated on the 16th of September), but perhaps Cinco de Mayo should be. Cinco de Mayo is also not an American holiday, but perhaps it should be. Mexico declared its independence from Spain on midnight, the 15th of September, 1810. But it took 11 years before Spanish soldiers were forced to leave Mexico.

So, what is the significance of Cinco de Mayo and why should Americans celebrate this day also? Because 4,000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French and traitor Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on the morning of May 5, 1862. The French had landed in Mexico (along with Spanish and English troops) five months earlier on the pretext of collecting Mexican debts from the newly elected government of democratic President (and Indian) Benito Juarez. The English and Spanish quickly made deals and left. The French, however, had different ideas.

Under Emperor Napoleon III (who detested the United States), the French who were sent to Mexico came to stay. They brought a Hapsburg prince with them to rule the new Mexican empire. His name was Maximilian and his wife’s, Carlota. Napoleon’s French Army had not been defeated in 50 years, and it invaded Mexico with the finest modern equipment and with a newly reconstituted Foreign Legion. The French were not afraid of anyone, especially since the United States was embroiled in its own Civil War. The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west, and the French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy (as European countries traditionally did).

Under the command of Texas-born General Zaragosa, (and the cavalry under the command of Colonel Porfirio Diaz, later to be Mexico's president and dictator), the Mexicans awaited. Brightly dressed French Dragoons led the enemy columns. The Mexican Army was less stylish. General Zaragosa ordered Colonel Diaz to take his cavalry, the best in the world, out to the French flanks. In response, the French did a most stupid thing; they sent their cavalry off to chase Diaz and his men, who proceeded to butcher them. The remaining French infantrymen charged the Mexican defenders through sloppy mud from a thunderstorm and through hundreds of head of stampeding cattle stirred up by Indians armed only with machetes.

When the battle was over, many French were killed or wounded, while their cavalry was being chased by Diaz's superb horsemen miles away. The Mexicans had won a great victory that kept Napoleon III from supplying the confederate rebels for another year, allowing the United States to build the greatest army the world had ever seen. This grand army smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg just 14 months after the battle of Puebla, essentially ending the Civil War.

Union forces were then rushed to the Texas/Mexican border under General Phil Sheridan, who made sure that the Mexicans got all the weapons and ammunition they needed to expel the French. American soldiers were discharged with their uniforms and rifles if they promised to join the Mexican Army to fight the French. The American Legion of Honor marched in the Victory Parade in Mexico City. It might be a historical stretch to credit the survival of the United States to those brave 4,000 Mexicans who faced an army twice as large in 1862, but who knows, maybe not…

In gratitude, thousands of Mexicans crossed the border after Pearl Harbor to join the U.S. Armed Forces. As recently as the Persian Gulf War, Mexicans flooded American consulates with phone calls, trying to join up and fight another war for America. Mexicans don’t forget who their friends are, and neither do Americans. That’s why Cinco de Mayo is such a fiesta and should be celebrated by both Mexico and the USA.

¡VIVA EL CINCO DE MAYO!

SCARED SACRED

“Man! The only animal in the world to fear.” - D.H. Lawrence

The weekend was one of glorious autumn weather, with beautiful fine, sunny days in which the temperature was around 18˚C, but extremely pleasant. The temperature dropped at night to single digit figures, but it meant a very comfortable night under the doona! We went for a drive and visited friends in Emerald, in the Dandenongs, on Sunday, which was very nice, but I also managed to do some work on my projects. There was even time on Sunday evening to watch a movie.

It was the rather gruelling 2004 documentary by Canadian film-maker Velcrow Ripper, “Scared Sacred”. This documentary is an intense and confronting view of some of the “ground zeros” of the world: Bhopal, India (site of the Union Carbide factory pesticide leak that killed 22,000 in 1984); the Killing Fields of the Khmer rouge regime in Cambodia (where at least 200,000 people died between 1974 and 1979); the Nazi extermination camps (where six million Jews were murdered); Afghanistan with its thousands of Taliban victims in the 1990s; World Trade Centre in New York (where on September 11th 2001, nearly 3,000 people died); Hiroshima, Japan (where on August 6th, 1945 the first atomic bomb attack occurred and killed 140,000 people); Israel/Palestine where continuing conflict claims victims on both sides; Bosnia, Pakistan and other such terrible sites…

The documentary’s punning title reflects Ripper’s wish to find some hope in the darkest moments of mankind’s history. The documentary took five years to make and Ripper had to undergo some serious soul searching himself in order to be able to cope with what he encountered worldwide. The film is intimate because Ripper narrates it and it is often in a way that is almost like a diarist writes – to satisfy his own needs. We feel a voyeuristic embarrassment by watching and listening to this exposition of mankind’s most terrible deeds in a way that forces us to confront our own fears and repressed emotions.

The theme of the documentary is violence and how we react to it. Ripper tries to convince us that while our primitive human nature seems to prompt us to respond to violence with violence, our higher civilised self motivates us to react in a different, more intellectual (and ultimately more emotionally satisfying) manner. Some of the most confronting of scenes for me were those of Palestinians and Jews who had lost their children. Children that were accidentally shot in the crossfire of the conflict. The way that the parents reacted to this loss was in an amazingly courageous and highly civilised way. Their pain was not lessened more effectively thus, nor was their loss recouped, but the way in which they acted was astounding and possessed of a magnificent dignity and altruism…

Ripper can get a little too nebulous and “flower-childlike” in some ways, taking in all of the blackness, destruction, negativity and sheer terror, and exhaling sunshine and positive energy. This Polyanna-like mentality can grate on some people’s nerves. However, he means well and the examples that he gives in support of his interpretations and reactions rescue his new-ageist point of view. In fact when the people in the midst of the disasters begin to give their own personal accounts of their survival and relate how they coped with the immensity of the grief that they had to confront, it is then that the documentary is at its most powerful.

Overall, I would say that is a documentary well worth seeing, despite its faults: It is a trifle too long, episodic and meandering, sometimes reminiscent of an amateur film (perhaps this is not a disadvantage). I suspect, however, that it is sermon that is directed towards the converted and the preaching of Ripper is only effective when it is directed towards those who are already sensitized to the sacred and scared aspects of humanity’s ground zeros.

Watch it, it’s a good one!

ART SUNDAY - WINSLOW HOMER

“The moon is a silver pin-head vast, That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.” - William R. Alger

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American artist or should I say, one of America’s greatest artists. His work has become very popular with collectors and museum visitors, having an instant appeal with most people who first look at it. Although a landscape painter and printmaker, he is best known for his characteristic seascapes and marine subjects.
Homer was largely self-taught and began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterised by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations.

A stay in England from 1881 to 1882, during which Homer lived in a fishing village, led to a permanent change in his choice of subject matter. From then on he concentrated on large-scale scenes of nature, particularly scenes of the sea, of its fishermen, and of their families. Taking up solitary residence on the Maine coast at Prout's Neck, he produced such masterpieces of realism as “Eight Bells”. In such paintings, the drama of the sea scene is imbued with an epic, heroic quality that symbolises the dominant theme of his maturity: Human struggle against the forces of nature.

After 1884, Homer spent many of his winters in Florida, in the Bahamas, and in Cuba. His many scenes of the Tropics were painted mostly in watercolor, and his technique was the most advanced of its day—loose, fresh, spontaneous, almost impressionistic, although it never lost its basic grounding in naturalism.

The painting above is his “Summer Night” of 1890. It is a very luminous night scene in which two women are dancing by the seaside during some kind of celebration. The dark mysterious figures in the background seem to be an audience and yet they are not. It looks as though they are gazing out to sea rather than at the women. The women are in the light, almost as if spotlit, while behind them, the moon shines, reflected on the sea. It is a puzzling painting full of intrigue and mystery. Rather surrealistic and dreamlike, it captivates the viewer and haunts one’s memory.