MOVEMBER

“The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.” - Deepak Chopra

With “Movember” almost over, it is perhaps appropriate to take stock of this initiative and evaluate its goals. Movember (a portmanteau word from moustache and November) is an annual, month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of men’s health problems and to raise funds for associated charities. The Movember Foundation runs the Movember charity event, housed at www.movember.com.

The goal of Movember is to “change the face of men’s health.” By encouraging men (“Mo Bros”) to get involved, Movember aims to increase early cancer detection, diagnosis and effective treatments, and ultimately reduce the number of preventable deaths. Besides getting an annual check-up, the Movember Foundation encourages men to be aware of any family history of cancer, and to adopt a more healthful lifestyle.

Since 2004, the Movember Foundation charity has run Movember events to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer and depression, in Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, events were launched in Ireland, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States. The event has spread from Australia to South Africa, Europe and North America. As of 2011 Canadians were the largest contributors to the Movember charities of any nation. In 2010, Movember merged with the testicular cancer event Tacheback. In 2012 the Global Journal listed Movember as one of the top 100 non government organisations in the world.

The immense popularity of the event cannot be denied and there is a great buy-in from the community. The emphasis on prostate cancer, while understandable (this is after all “the” male cancer par excellence to counterbalance the women’s own breast cancer), is a little unfortunate. There is quite a controversy raging in terms of screening for prostate cancer. The advocates for screening (typically specialist doctors who treat prostate cancer) and those who do not believe in its efficacy (typically public health practitioners and GPs) quote studies and research that support their divergent opinions.

The extensive prostate cancer screening trials (similar to the ones for breast cancer 30 years ago), have only been published recently, and the results are ambiguous. Some studies show a small benefit, while others show no benefit of screening. It is something that statisticians are still arguing over and it supplies each side of the debate with enough ammunition to further its own different opinion. As far as the general public is concerned, there is confusion (as man may get conflicting advice from equally respectable men’s heath experts) and there is the touting of prostate screening by some organisations as the “magic bullet” that will reduce prostate death rates in a similar way that breast cancer screening has (breast cancer screening certainly works!).

Unfortunately, prostate cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment is a minefield. Not only is screening equivocal, but once the disease is definitively diagnosed, the treatment is damaging too. Despite real advances in surgical removal of cancerous prostates (“radical prostatectomy”), the chances are that most men will be rendered impotent by the operation and most will develop urinary incontinence. So, there may even be harm in prostate cancer detection! Detecting cancer in men for whom treatment will confer no benefit is very damaging. Even the diagnosis of this cancer is with ridden problems: Men diagnosed with prostate cancer  are nearly ten times more likely to commit suicide than before...

So what is the answer? Everyone agrees (and the research evidence is quite strong) that cancer prevention works. Diet and lifestyle are the by far the most effective measures in protecting against a range of cancers, including prostate cancer. Eating a wide variety of good food with lots of fresh, seasonal vegetables and fruit less dairy and meat, reducing fats especially saturated fat, keeping physically active, stopping smoking and making sure you greatly reduce alcohol consumption are very real, effective ways of lessening the incidence of cancer (and many other diseases!). Movember would be a better advocate for men’s health if it highlighted these self-help steps.

We are fast becoming a society of instant gratification, hedonistic pleasures, immediate solutions, technological fixes and “magic bullet” cures. Taking personal responsibility for one’s health, while advocated in many quarters does not have the uptake that it needs to have to make a difference. We would much rather swallow a miraculous tablet, have a wonderful life-saving operation that will rid us of disease, and in the meantime enjoy ourselves with physical pleasures. Movember can make a difference, but it does need a shift in its emphasis to be even more effective.

GURU NANAK

“Although the future of religion is bleak but yet one hope is there in the form of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji which teaches us all God’s message of love and gives direction to life.” – Arnold Toynbee
 

On November 28, Gurunanak Jayanti is celebrated. This is the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism and among the Sikhs it is a most important feast and an occasion for great rejoicing. Guru Nanak was born near Lahore, and his birth anniversary is celebrated with much pomp and religious fervour across the Sikh community.
 

Guru Nanak (1469 AD – 1539 AD) was born in a village named Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, presently popular as Nankana Sahib, near Lahore, Pakistan. Biographical sources state that from childhood he showed deep interest in matters pertaining to divinity and spirituality. Later in his life he completely engrossed himself in preaching the importance and power of spirituality in one’s life and his teachings ultimately gave birth to Sikhism.
 

The festivities for the day begin with early morning processions known as the “prabhat pheri”. The procession starts at a local Gurudwara (Gateway to the Guru, is the place of worship for Sikhs) and makes its way around the neighbourhood, with everyone chanting verses and singing hymns. Prabhat pheris are held on the days prior to Gurunanak Jayanti; and for the three days too, there is a continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, from beginning to end, without a break.
 

The Guru Granth Sahib is the principal sacred scripture of Sikhism. Originally compiled under the direction of Arjan Dev (1563–1606), the fifth Sikh guru, it contains hymns and religious poetry as well as the teachings of the first five gurus. Also called Adi Granth, Granth, and Granth Sahib.

The day of the festival is marked by a special procession in which pride of place is reserved for the Guru Granth Sahib, carried on a beautifully decorated float and accompanied by musicians and five armed guards (who represent the panj piaras). Prayers and kirtans at Gurudwaras are followed by community meals (langar), where everyone (irrespective of religious conviction) are welcome.
 

The Harmandir Sahib also Darbar Sahib and informally referred to as the Golden Temple  is a prominent Sikh Gurdwara located in the city of Amritsar, Punjab, India. It was built by the fifth Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Arjan Dev, in the 16th Century. In 1604, Guru Arjan Dev ji completed the Adi Granth, the holy scripture of Sikhism, and installed it in the Gurdwara. There are four doors to get into the Harmandir Sahib, which symbolise the openness of the Sikhs towards all people and religions. The present day Gurdwara was rebuilt in 1764 by Jassa Singh Ahluwalia with the help of other Sikh Misl’s. In the early nineteenth century, Maharaja Ranjit Singh secured the Punjab region from outside attack and covered the upper floors of the Gurdwara with gold, which gives it its distinctive appearance and English name the Golden Temple.

ORBIT

“And every occasion when a mask was torn off, an ideal broken, was preceded by this hateful vacancy and stillness, this deathly constriction and loneliness and unrelatedness, this waste and empty hell of lovelenessness and despair, such as I had now.” - Hermann Hesse
 
Magpie Tales has provided a photo prompt for this week’s creative challenge. Here is my contribution:
 
Orbit
 
Bare walls and empty rooms
Resound with the redundancy
Of the echoes of your thoughts.
 
Cold nights and winter gardens
Engulf the shuffle of your footsteps
Treading the same paths.
 
Impassive moon, the stars cold, indifferent
Gaze emptily on your well-worn orbit
Eclipsing constantly an ever elusive,
Never glimpsed at sun.

MOVIE MONDAY - THE FIRST GRADER

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death” - Albert Einstein
 

Sometimes one watches a movie and it ticks all the boxes: Good story, good acting, good scenario, well made, well produced. It is very much an example of entertainment, education, emotional lift and a case of 100 or so minutes of time well spent. Such was a film we recently watched, Justin Chadwick’s “The First Grader”  of 2010, starring Oliver Litondo, Naomie Harris, Emily Njoki and Alfred Munyua. Even though this is not a “feel-good” movie “especially suitable for children” as it is touted, it is a very good film for all ages and good for children at school who can watch it under supervision and can be guided through the debriefing that should follow it.
 

The plot is Ann Peacock’s version of the true story of Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge (Litondo), an 84-year-old Kenyan man who, following a Kenyan Government pronouncement that “Free Education is Available for Everyone”, successfully enrolled in first grade. Maruge is a former Mau-Mau revolutionary and prisoner of war. After being tortured by the British army in the 1950s, and having his family killed, he was interred in concentration camps. His spirit, however, was never broken. The film highlights the neglect of former revolutionaries by newly installed bureaucrats – a common enough occurrence in many countries, and as depicted in the film, in Kenya as well. The dedicated teacher (Harris) who accepts Maruge in her class comes to understand Maruge and his motivation and is willing to risk her job and her life and limb in order to give Maruge the chance to an education she feels he deserves.
 

It is a somewhat simplified story, but its sketched out and highlighted episodes serve to bring to the fore the terrible treatment that Africans were subjected to during colonial rule. The scenes of torture and the war atrocities shown only scratch the surface, but they are powerful and necessarily violent scenes that serve as important reminders of historical facts and they underpin the viewers’ understanding of Maruge’s motivation.
 

In terms of the actors, all the school children and most of the players were not professional actors but ordinary Kenyan people. The exception was Naomie Harris, an excellent English screen actress, who played Jane Obinchu, the first grade teacher, impeccably. The performance by Oliver Litondo as Maruge is quite amazing, and he is perfect for the role. Litondo is a native Kenyan who used to be a news anchor with no previous acting experience. Chadwick and their crew spent several weeks in Kenya working with locals while preparing to shoot this movie and the result is an extremely sensitive and poignant film. While there are some lighter moments of humour, most of the time this film touches the heart and makes the viewer deplore the very worst that is shown in human nature.
 

The cinematography and direction of the film are very good and the sweeping landscapes of Kenya are used to great effect as the backdrop to the story. The thriving metropolis of Nairobi as the setting for the “New Africa for Africans” is also very effective and shows off well the battle of the “little guy” against the “government bureaucracy”. A highly appropriate soundtrack underscores the action perfectly without being obtrusive.
 

As an educator I especially enjoyed the film, seeing how I concurred with the Kenyan wise saying: “Keep on learning until you have soil in your ears”. We recommend the film most highly, but be prepared for some highly charged themes and violent scenes and if this film is shown to schoolchildren, they should be suitably prepared and debriefed afterwards.

ART SUNDAY - DIEGO RIVERA

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” - Edgar Degas
 
For Art Sunday today, the life and art of Diego María Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez (born December 8, 1886, Guanajuato, Mexico died November 25, 1957, Mexico City), more familiarly know simply as Diego Rivera. He was a Mexican painter whose bold, large-scale murals stimulated a revival of fresco painting in Latin America.

A government scholarship enabled the talented child Rivera to study art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City from the age of 10 years. A grant from the governor of Veracruz enabled him to continue his studies in Europe in 1907. He studied in Spain and in 1909 settled in Paris, where he became a friend of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other leading modern painters. At about 1917 he abandoned the Cubist style in his own work and moved closer to the Post-Impressionism of Paul Cézanne, adopting a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of colour.
 
Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 after meeting with fellow Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. Both sought to create a new national art on revolutionary themes that would decorate public buildings in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. On returning to Mexico, Rivera painted his first important mural, “Creation”, for the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City (see above). In 1923 he began painting the walls of the Ministry of Public Education building in Mexico City, working in fresco and completing the commission in 1930. These huge frescoes, depicting Mexican agriculture, industry, and culture, reflect a genuinely native subject matter and mark the emergence of Rivera’s mature style. Rivera defines his solid, somewhat stylised human figures by precise outlines rather than by internal modelling. The flattened, simplified figures are set in crowded, shallow spaces and are enlivened with bright, bold colours. The Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers depicted combine monumentality of form with a mood that is lyrical and at times elegiac.
 
Rivera’s next major work was a fresco cycle in a former chapel at what is now the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo (1926–27). His frescoes there contrast scenes of natural fertility and harmony among the pre-Columbian Indians with scenes of their enslavement and brutalisation by the Spanish conquerors. Rivera’s murals in the Cortés Palace in Cuernavaca (1930) and the National Palace in Mexico City (1930–35) depict various aspects of Mexican history in a more didactic narrative style.
 
Rivera was in the United States from 1930 to 1934, where he painted murals for the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (1931), the Detroit Institute of Arts (1932), and Rockefeller Center in New York City (1933). His “Man at the Crossroads” fresco in Rockefeller Center offended the sponsors because the figure of Vladimir Lenin was in the picture; the work was destroyed by the centre but was later reproduced by Rivera at the Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City. After returning to Mexico, Rivera continued to paint murals of gradually declining quality. His most ambitious and gigantic mural, an epic on the history of Mexico for the National Palace, Mexico City, was unfinished when he died. Frida Kahlo, who married Rivera twice, was also an accomplished painter of iconic and highly individualistic works. Their stormy liaison and marriages punctuated and marked both their work and personal lives. Rivera’s autobiography, “My Art, My Life”, was published posthumously in 1960.
 
Rivera’s murals are overwhelming and arresting when one sees them, f nothing else for their boldness of execution and gigantic scale. On closer inspection, however, one is struck by the rich iconography, beautiful colours, sureness of design and composition and the accomplished drawing. The mastery of the technique of fresco is a difficult undertaking but Rivera manages to subdue this medium and handles it with ease and aplomb. Having seen some of his work with my own eyes I can fully appreciate Rivera’s inspired art and expert technique, and the vastness of its scale.

ABSENCE

"Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it." - Thomas Fuller
 

Ton Absence
Yves Duteil

Comme une bouffée de chagrin

Ton visage me dit plus rien

Je t'appelle et tu ne viens pas

Ton absence est entrée chez moi

C'est un grand vide au fond de moi

Tout ce bonheur qui n'est plus là

Si tu savais quand il est tard

Comme je m'ennuie de ton regard

C'est le revers de ton amour

La vie qui pèse un peu plus lourd

Comme une marée de silence

Qui prend ta place et qui s'avance

C'est ma main sur le téléphone

Maintenant qu'il n'y a plus personne

Ta photo sur la cheminée

Qui dit que tout est terminé

Tu nous disais qu'on serait grands

Mais je découvre maintenant

Que chacun porte sur son dos

Tout son chemin comme un fardeau

Les souvenirs de mon enfance

Les épreuves et les espérances

Et cette fleur qui s'épanouit sur le silence...

Ton absence

Je dors blotti dans ton sourire

Entre le passé, l'avenir

Et le présent qui me retient

De te rejoindre un beau matin

Dans ce voyage sans retour

Je t'ai offert tout mon amour

Même en s'usant l'âme et le corps

On peut aimer bien plus encore

Bien sûr, là-haut de quelque part

Tu dois m'entendre ou bien me voir

Mais se parler c'était plus tendre

On pouvait encore se comprendre

Mon enfance a pâli, déjà

Ce sont des gestes d'autrefois

Sur des films et sur des photos

Tu es partie tellement trop tôt

Je suis resté sur le chemin

Avec ma vie entre les mains

À ne plus savoir comment faire

Pour avancer vers la lumière

Il ne me reste au long des jours

En souvenir de ton amour

Que cette fleur qui s'épanouit sur le silence...

Ton absence.

FOOD FRIDAY - BEAN STEW

“Better eat beans in peace than cakes and ale in fear.” – Aesop

The Greeks consider beans an inexpensive, nourishing meal that is most often served on its own with a crusty bread, tomato salad and cheese. It is considered a peasant food and replaces the more expensive meat dishes. Beans are rich in protein, fibre, B vitamins, folic acid and biotin. Beans retain about 70 percent of their B vitamins (after preparation) as well as high levels of folate, which helps form red blood cells. Minerals such as iron, magnesium, phosphate, manganese, calcium, copper, zinc and potassium are also all found in beans. In addition, beans are rich in phyto-oestrogens, important in prevention of breast and prostate cancers.
 
GREEK WHITE BEAN STEW (FASOLÁDHA)
Ingredients
1 cup dried haricot beans
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
1 celery heart (stalks and leaves), chopped
1 can of whole tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp. tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste
Freshly chopped parsley for garnish (optional)
 
Method
1) Place beans in a medium bowl and cover with water and let them soak for a few hours. Drain and rinse beans.
2) Meanwhile in a medium pot, heat olive oil over medium setting.
3) Add the onion, celery, carrots and salt and stir for about 5 minutes or until soft.
4) Add the tomatoes, stock, tomato paste and beans.
5) Simmer uncovered for about one and a half hours or until beans are tender.
6) Season with salt and pepper and you may add chopped parsley before serving.

This post is part of the Food Friday meme,
and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices and gives thanks for those things which he has.” – Epictetus
 

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists (in what was to subsequently become the USA), and the indigenous Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first celebrations in the colonies that was the antecedent of Thanksgiving. These celebrations were a continuation of the tradition of harvest festivals that were imported from the “old country”, but more importantly for the colonists it was a way of marking their survival for yet another year in what was often a harsh and inimical land.
 

Unfortunately, the peace between the Native Americans and the European settlers lasted for only a generation. The Wampanoag people do not share in the popular reverence for the traditional New England Thanksgiving. For them, the holiday is a reminder of betrayal and bloodshed. Since 1970, many native people have gathered at the statue of Massasoit in Plymouth, Massachusetts each Thanksgiving Day to remember their ancestors and the strength of the Wampanoag.
 

For more than two centuries, days of Thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. In 1846, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of a magazine called Godley’s Lady’s Book, campaigned for an annual national thanksgiving holiday after a passage about the harvest gathering of 1621 was discovered and incorrectly labeled as the first Thanksgiving. In her 74th year, Hale wrote to President Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “…day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained: “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.”
 

President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Thus advised, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November in 1863.
 

The original proclamation is set out below, which is well worth reading. According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.
 

By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State
 

To all my American readers, best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful holiday and it is a grand thing to be able to have day formally set aside to give thanks for all the things that we usually take for granted. It should be a day of rest and for family get-togethers, a day for bountiful feasts and joy in the home where all the family members gather, but also it should be a day of reflection and gratitude. A day of giving thanks where thanks are due.

MOOC

“No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
 
It’s always exciting to go to a conference that is in one’s discipline, in one’s area of interest. It is not only a pleasant break from the routine of one’s job, but also an opportunity to catch up with one’s peers, acquaintances and friends that are attending the same conference. Being exposed to new and challenging ideas, engaging with the experts that are presenting their latest work, having a chance to present one’s own work are all great opportunities for professional development and serve as great stimuli for innovative ideas.
 
The conference I am attending is centring on e-Learning and ways in which new technologies are expanding the horizons of education in the tertiary environment. This is very germane in today’s rapidly evolving world where new technology is expanding and renewing itself on a daily basis. Academics have traditionally been quite conservative, but the pressure is on nowadays and one can be left behind very quickly.
 
The latest destabilising influence in e-Learning around the world is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This is a relatively new initiative that was first discussed in 2008 but really wasn’t taken up to any great extent until the last couple of years. 2012 has already been described as the “Year of the MOOC”.
 
The basic idea behind a MOOC is that it is a fully open course (i.e. anyone can do it) that could be followed online (no face-to-face attendance necessary) and for free (gratis, zilch, nada!). The idea behind the title of this course is important as it derives from the Connectivism theory which (paraphrasing heavily here) says that learning/training in this era will be successful if we learn how to connect and build relevant networks. This idea of connecting to each other to construct knowledge is one of the key dynamics of a MOOC.
 
Deconstruction of the monopolised tertiary education landscape is underway. Probably in a couple of years the traditional university will have all but died out. The academics living in their ivory towers are a thing of the past – ivory is out in case… Free knowledge is the thing of the future. The “Sage on the Stage” has given way to the “Guide on the Side”. People who are amateurs in a field of learning are deciding to teach a subject that they are passionate about and they are showing dyed in the wool academics a thing or two. Academics must change with the times or they will become extinct. Soon…

UNIVERSAL CHILDREN'S DAY 2012

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” - Frederick Douglass
 

Universal Children’s Day is celebrated annually on November 20th. It was first proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1954, and was established to encourage all countries to institute a day, to firstly promote friendship and understanding among children all over the world, and secondly to initiate policy, strategy and action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world’s children. It is also an occasion to rejoice in the beauty and innocence of childhood.
 

Universal Children’s Day is immediately preceded by International Men’s Day on November 19 creating a 48 hour celebration of men and children respectively during which time the positive roles men play in children’s lives are recognised. It is a 48-hour period in which father and their children can celebrate the special bond that unites them. Events and activities focus on language and literacy, health, sport and recreation, the arts and science, as well as children’s cultural, social and emotional needs.
 

In 2000 world leaders outlined the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015. Although the Goals are for all humankind, they are primarily about children. UNICEF notes that six of the eight goals relate directly to children and meeting the last two will also make critical improvements in their lives.
 

In 2012, the Secretary-General of the UN launched a new initiative “Education First”. The Initiative aims to raise the political profile of education, strengthen the global movement to achieve quality education and generate additional and sufficient funding through sustained advocacy efforts. Achieving gains in education will have an impact on all the Millennium Development Goals, from lower child and maternal mortality, to better health, higher income and more environmentally-friendly societies.
 

MOVIE MONDAY - HUGO

“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” - Jean-Luc Godard
 

Georges Méliès was born on December 8, 1861, Paris, France and died January 21, 1938, Paris. He was an early French experimenter with motion pictures, the first to film fictional narratives. When the first genuine movies, made by the Lumière brothers, were shown in Paris in 1895, Méliès, a professional magician and manager-director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, was among the spectators. The films were scenes from real life having the novelty of motion, but Méliès saw at once their further possibilities. He acquired a camera, built a glass-enclosed studio near Paris, wrote scripts, designed ingenious sets, and used actors to film stories. With a magician's intuition, he discovered and exploited the basic camera tricks: Stop motion, slow motion, dissolve, fade-out, superimposition, and double exposure.
 

From 1899 to 1912 Méliès made more than 400 films, the best of which combine illusion, comic burlesque, and pantomime to treat themes of fantasy in a playful and absurd fashion. He specialised in depicting extreme physical transformations of the human body (such as the dismemberment of heads and limbs) for comic effect. His films included pictures as diverse as Cléopâtre (1899; “Cleopatra”), Le Christ Marchant sur les Eaux (1899; “Christ Walking on the Waters”), Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902; “A Trip to the Moon”), Le Voyage à Travers l’ Impossible (1904; “The Voyage Across the Impossible”); and Hamlet (1908). He also filmed studio reconstructions of news events as an early kind of newsreel. It never occurred to him to move the camera for close-ups or long shots. The commercial growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913, and he died in poverty.
 

I start Movie Monday with Méliès’ biography as the film that I will review revolves around his life. We watched Martin Scorsese’s 2011 “Hugo” at the weekend, starring Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen and Christopher Lee. The screenplay was by John Logan based on the novel by Brian Selznick.
 

The film has generated quite a controversial response from movie-goers giving rise to as much negative criticism as to passionate plaudits. This may have much to do with the way that it was marketed and the way in which people’s expectations were fanned before viewing it. The film’s tagline is: “One of the most legendary directors of our time takes you on an extraordinary adventure.” The marketing hype centred on the word adventure and many of the viewers went to the theatre expecting to see a film like one of the Harry Potter series or one of the Narnia films. However, the film is an adventure on a more cerebral level and is the tribute of a great director to one of movie-making’s great pioneers, Méliès.
 

There is a story of course, to dress the film up, and a very good story it is too, appealing to adults as much as it does to children: Hugo (Butterfield) is an orphan boy living in the secret passages and rooms behind the walls of a central train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo’s father (Jude Law, in a cameo role) was a clockmaker who taught his son to fix clocks and other gadgets. Once his father dies, Hugo’s uncle takes him to the train station and after his uncle disappears Hugo keeps the train station clocks running and stealing food to survive. The only thing Hugo has left that connects him to his dead father is an automaton that doesn’t work without a special key which Hugo needs to find to unlock the secret he believes it contains. On his adventures, he meets with a shopkeeper, Georges Méliès (Kingsley), who works in the train station and his adventure-seeking god-daughter (Moretz). Hugo finds that he and Isabelle have a surprising connection to his father and the automaton, and he discovers the automaton brings some painful memories the old man has buried deep inside him.
 

The film is beautifully shot and the cinematography, special effects and CGI are used extremely well to propel the story. As one would expect, the film is directed with panache and one can feel the love that has gone into this movie. Scorsese supposedly made this movie for his 12-year-old daughter and as he also pays tribute to one of his great cinematic forebears one can imagine that a lot of heart went into this film. The acting is wonderful, with young Asa Butterfield truly starring in the action, with Chloë Moretz providing good support, although she does tend to over-enthuse in some of the scenes looking like an over-eager puppy. Kinglsey does a great job as Méliès and Christopher Lee has an interesting little cameo as a bookshop owner. Jude Law is also perfect as young Hugo’s father. Sacha Baron Cohen is perfect as the film’s villain – the Train Station’s overenthusiastic security guard – who wishes to capture Hugo and send him to the orphanage. Dante Ferreti’s production design is quite astounding with costumes, sets and a sympathetic Howard Shore score giving the film authentic atmosphere and ambience.
 

A bonus of the film is the interpolation, at key points, of scenes from old movies. Méliès’s, of course, but also some of the other silent era greats, including the iconic scene of Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in “Safety Last!” (1923). This scene is recreated as Hugo scales the clock-tower of the train station to escape from the clutches of the Train Inspector (Cohen). One should not fail to add that a constant theme running through the movie is the comment on “man versus machine”. The clockwork, the mechanical man and Hugo’s search for love and a family play on this theme and needless to say are a comment on Méliès’ art having been superseded by the professional and “modern” film studios.
 

We loved this film and were totally enthralled by it, its two hours duration passing easily and pleasantly. There are many layers in the film and numerous beautiful moments. It is a great tribute to the art of movie-making made by a master director. The interweaving stories of the plot serve as a perfect foil for Scorsese to showcase his art and at the same time give homage to Méliès. Don’t expect a swash-buckling adventure, but rather and adventure of the heart and soul.

ART SUNDAY - RODIN

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” - Henry Ford
 

François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840, Paris, France to 17 November 1917, Meudon, France) was a prominent French sculptor best known for his iconic sculpture “The Thinker”. His father, Jean-Baptiste Rodin, was a detective in the Paris police department. His mother, Marie Cheffer, was a former seamstress. Rodin was somewhat shy and nearsighted from an early age. Young Rodin started serious drawing lessons at the age of 10. From the age of 14 he studied art at the École Impériale de Dessin, a government school for craft and design in Paris. There he discovered sculpture and acquired a thorough grounding in the tradition of French 18th-century art. Rodin also studied anatomy under the tutelage of sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye.
 

In 1858 he left the École Impériale de Dessin and sought admission to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. Although he applied three times he was rejected each time. So, instead of a formal education, Rodin served a long and difficult apprenticeship under Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, a highly successful sculptor, for whom Rodin started as a modeller, then became an assistant. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 he followed his teacher to Belgium. There he became a partner of Antoine Van Raspbourgh and worked on monumental allegorical sculptures for the Brussels Bourse. Rodin considered “Man with the Broken Nose” to be his earliest major work. Much to his disappointment, the Salon rejected the work twice, in 1864 and 1865.
 

While in Brussels Rodin sculpted a number of decorative female figures in terra cotta, beginning to sign his name. In 1875 he went to Italy where he studied the works of Michelangelo. In 1876 the artist created “The Bronze Age”, which was exhibited in Brussels and at the Salon des artistes Français in Paris. He was falsely accused by critics of having cast the entire statue from a live model. The French government bought “The Bronze Age” and a bronze model of St. John the Baptist.
 

From 1879-1882 Rodin worked at the Manufacture de Sevres. In 1884 the city council of Calais commissioned a sculpture that became the monumental sculpture group “The Burghers of Calais” (illustrated above). In 1888 the French government commissioned “The Kiss” in marble for the Universal exhibition of 1889. Rodin became the founding member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. At that time he exhibited with Claude Monet. In the 1890s he created monuments to Claude Le Lorrain, Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, and also worked on other commissions.
 

In 1892 Rodin was promoted to Officer of the Légion d’ Honneur. In 1899 the large-scale “Eve” was shown at the Salon. In 1903 Rodin was appointed Commander of the Légion d’ Honneur. In 1864 Rodin met a seamstress, Rose Beuret. They had a son, named Auguste-Eugene Beuret, who was born in 1866. Rose became the model for many of his works. She and Rodin remained lifetime companions and formally married in 1917, the year they both died.
 

Rodin had another relationship with a student named Camille Claudel, who was 25 years younger than him. She became his mistress at the age of 18, and inspired Rodin as a model for several sculptures of passionate love couples. Camille was also a talented pupil; she worked for Rodin and assisted him during his four-year work on the bronze group “Les Bourgeois de Calais” (1884-1888). Unfortunately, her mental problems brought tragic complexity in Rodin’s life (she was eventually committed to a mental asylum). He remained attached to Rose, who patiently endured his other affairs.
 

In 1903 he met an English painter, Gwendolen Mary John, and she became his mistress and was his model for “The Whistler Muse”. In 1904 Rodin met the American-born Duchess Claire de Choiseul, who dominated his life until 1912. His complex relationships found reflection in his works: “Eternal Spring”, “The Poet and Love”, “The Genius and Pity”, “The Sculptor and his Muse”. Rodin preferred to sketch the natural spontaneity of amateur models, street acrobats, athletes and dancers. From these quick sketches he modelled works in clay, which he later reworked and fine-tuned, then cast in plaster and forged into bronze. A large staff of pupils, craftsmen and stonecutters were working for him, including Bourdelle.
 

Rodin’s method of evolutionary development of his initial idea into a masterpiece was demonstrated by creation of “The Kiss” and “The Thinker”, which were derived from smaller reliefs within “The Gates of Hell”, a work he was commissioned to create in 1880 for a museum in Paris. For that project he made a palm-size sketch of “The Kiss” and a first small plaster version of “The Thinker” as a figure of the poet Dante Alighieri. “The Kiss” was completed in marble in 1889. By that time he had exhibited a mid-size version of “The Thinker”, which was cast in bronze in the 1890s. Meanwhile, Rodin made countless variations of “The Thinker” by subtle alterations to its pose and expression until he achieved the desired result with one of the bigger versions.
 

Rodin’s works are distinguished by their energy and realism that create an illusion of a living, breathing form. His art embraced all aspects of humanity, ranging from distress and moral weakness to the heights of passion and beauty. “The Thinker” was an achievement of a special harmony in showing a trio of human qualities that appealed to the art lover: The heroic, poetic and intellectual. It was recast in over 20 copies for major museums, and was also reproduced in millions of smaller versions and became one of the most recognizable icons of art.
 

From 1908-1917 Rodin lived at the Hotel Biron in Paris. There his neighbours included artist Henri Matisse, writer Jean Cocteau and dancer Isadora Duncan. In 1912 the French government scheduled the Hotel Biron for demolition and ordered the tenants to vacate. Rodin persuaded the government to allow him to stay. As an exchange, in 1916 Rodin gave his entire collection of art to France on the condition that the state maintain the Musée Rodin. The collection contains Rodin’s most significant works, including “The Thinker”, “The Kiss”, “The Gates of Hell” and “The Burghers of Calais” in the front garden. Rodin's living rooms are decorated with paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir that he had acquired. Rodin's own works and other art objects are still placed as Rodin set them.
 

Auguste Rodin enjoyed friendships with some of the most important writers and artists of the day, such as Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Émile Zola, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Bernard Shaw. Rodin died on November 17, 1917, in Mendon, France, and was laid to rest beside Rose Beuret in the Cemetery of Mendon, Ile-de-France. A bronze cast of “The Thinker” was placed at the base of his tomb.

This short video takes us on a tour of the Musée Rodin.

SPIEGEL IM SPIEGEL

“Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.” - Ernest Holmes
 
“Spiegel im Spiegel” is a piece of music written by Arvo Pärt in 1978, just prior to his departure from Estonia. The piece is in the tintinnabular style of composition, wherein a melodic voice, operating over diatonic scales, and tintinnabular voice, operating within a triad on the tonic, accompany each other.
 
The piece was originally written for a single piano and violin - though the violin has often been replaced with either a cello or a viola. Versions also exist for double bass, clarinet, horn, flute and percussion. The piece is an example of minimal music.
 
The piece is in F major in 6/4 time, with the piano playing rising crotchet triads and the second instrument playing slow scales, alternately rising and falling, of increasing length, which all end on the note A (the mediant of F). The piano’s left hand also plays notes, syncopated with the violin (or other instrument).
 
“Spiegel im Spiegel” in German means “mirror in the mirror” referring to the infinity of images produced by parallel plane mirrors: The tonic triads are endlessly repeated with small variations as if reflected back and forth. The English word for this phenomenon is “enfilade”.

COUSCOUS

“In Morocco, it’s possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.” - Tahar Ben Jelloun
 
For Food Friday today, an exotic dish that conjures up the Kasbah and evokes visions of tall minarets and the call of the muezzin. Shady courtyards and delicious smells, the pattern of shadows on brightly coloured walls and the strains of plaintive music played on the oud.
 
Moroccan Chicken
 
Ingredients
50 g pine nuts
500 g chicken breast or thigh fillet, cut into 2 cm dice
1/4 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, sliced
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground mild paprika
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 cup sultanas
1 cup (250mL) chicken stock
1/4 cup chopped fresh coriander or flat-leaf parsley
1 lemon, juiced
 
2 cups couscous
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups water or chicken stock
Thick natural yoghurt, to serve

Method
Heat a large non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Add pinenuts, stirring constantly, until just starting to colour. Transfer pinenuts to a plate.

Place seasoned flour in a large bowl, add chicken and toss to coat. Add one tablespoon of oil to the frypan, increase heat to high and cook half the chicken until golden. Transfer cooked chicken to a plate. Repeat with another tablespoon of oil and remaining chicken.

Heat remaining tablespoon of oil in pan. Add onions, reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes or until golden and softened. Add cooked chicken to frypan with spices, sultanas and one cup of stock. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and cook for 5-10 minutes until heated through and thickened. Just before serving, stir in pine nuts, coriander and lemon juice.

To prepare couscous, bring 2 cups of stock or water to the boil in a small saucepan, stir in couscous and olive oil and turn off heat. Leave for 5 minutes, then use a fork to separate the couscous grains.

Serve chicken with couscous and yoghurt.
 
This post is part of the  Food Friday meme,
and also part of the Food Trip Friday meme.

FASTING

“A fast is not a hunger strike. Fasting submits to God’s commands. A hunger strike makes God submit to our demands.” - Edwin Louis Cole
 

Today is the first day of the Orthodox “Little Lent”, that is, the period of fasting that accompanies the Christmas Advent period. Fasting in the Orthodox Church does not mean not eating at all, but is rather the abstention from certain foods (and often, from other distractions, such as television, parties, non-liturgical music, etc). Complete abstention from food and drink is also practiced, with Orthodox Christians eating and drinking nothing after Vespers on the day preceding a day on which the Divine Liturgy is celebrated until the eucharist itself is over.
 

In contrast to some other religions that emphasise absolute fasting periods or forbid the consumption of certain animals or their products, no food is marked as forbidden in Orthodox thought, following the belief that all things are “made new” in Christ. Orthodox Christians also justify this by citing the dream that St Peter related of being told to eat even those animals deemed unclean in Jewish dietary laws. Fasting is regarded as a spiritual discipline and training for the devout person. It is a self-imposed restriction, an obedience to one’s spiritual father, and a liberation from one’s habits so as to remove ourselves from the tyranny of those habits, to allow us to rule our body rather than be ruled by it.
 

The basic rule of fasting, as it is practiced in monasteries, is that Wednesdays and Fridays are “strict fast” days, meaning that meat, dairy, fish, alcoholic beverages, and oil are not allowed. Most monks and nuns refrain from eating meat every day in any case, unless they are ill. In addition to the food group restriction, the amount of food eaten is also reduced so as to purposefully reduce the body’s energy level, with the idea of making it easier to pray by quietening and focussing the mind. The money saved by eating less can be used to practice the virtue of compassion, by giving alms to the poor and needy.
 

There are also various extended fasting periods throughout the year, the most important, of course, being Lent. Lent, often called the “Great Lent” in Orthodox practice, in opposition to “Little Lent” (as the Nativity Fast is sometimes called) begins forty-seven days before Easter Day, forty-seven because the week immediately preceding Easter is counted as Holy Week, a thing unto itself. During the Great Lent, the strict fast applies every day and in keeping with the penitential character of the season, there is also a “eucharistic fast” throughout it, during which the Divine Liturgy is not served (remembering that Saturday and Sunday don’t count).
 

The fast is not always so strict, however. Even in Lent, if there’s a big feast day that happens to fall during Lent (eg. the Feast of the Annunciation) the fast is relaxed to allow consumption of fish, wine, and oil.  During Bright Week (the week following Easter), in the twelve days after Christmas, and the week between the feast of Pentecost and the feast of All Saints, and the week prior to Meatfare Sunday, fasting is not prescribed at all, even on Wednesdays or Fridays. Some conditions preclude fasting: Pregnant women and nursing mothers, small children, the elderly, the sick. Some of the fasts themselves are simply relaxed ones, also.
 

The Orthodox strict fasts are:

Great Lent - beginning and ending varies as it is based on the date of Easter, which is a movable feast
Holy Week - week immediately before Easter
Dormition Fast - lasts from the first of August to the fourteenth of August, just before the Dormition of the Virgin on August 15

The Orthodox moderate fasts are:

Nativity Fast (“Little Lent”) - 15 November to 24 December
Ss. Peter and Paul Fast - beginning is variable since it starts on All Saints, which is based on the date of Easter, but it ends on 29 June

In addition, Mondays are sometimes kept as an additional fast day during the year, refraining from eating flesh meats in honour of the Angels or “Fleshless Ones”. Monday is liturgically devoted to the remembrance of angels. All that has been said thus far has been mainly for those under monastic rule. For lay Orthodox Christians, the standard is the same, but can vary widely by parish practice. Generally, decisions on fasting are made by the person involved and his or her spiritual advisor, who is usually the parish priest, but not always. It is for them together to decide what would be helpful and appropriate for any individual.

WORLD DIABETES DAY 2012

“No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.” - Maimonides
 

November 14 is World Diabetes Day. The World Diabetes Day campaign is led by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and its member associations. It engages millions of people worldwide in diabetes advocacy and awareness. World Diabetes Day was created in 1991 by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization in response to growing concerns about the escalating health threat that diabetes now poses. World Diabetes Day became an official United Nations Day in 2007 with the passage of United Nation Resolution 61/225. The campaign draws attention to issues of paramount importance to the diabetes world and keeps diabetes firmly in the public spotlight.
 

World Diabetes Day is a campaign that features a new theme chosen by the International Diabetes Federation periodically, to address issues facing the global diabetes community. While the themed campaigns last the whole year, the day itself is celebrated on November 14, to mark the birthday of Frederick Banting who, along with Charles Best, first conceived the idea, which led to the discovery of insulin in 1922. Diabetes Education and Prevention is the World Diabetes Day theme for the period 2009-2013.
 

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease that significantly affects the health of Australians. It may lead to a range of complications, which can cause disability, and reduce people’s quality of life and life expectancy. Diabetes is responsible for an enormous public health and social burden, and is one of the top 10 causes of death in Australia.

Diabetes is a long-term (chronic) condition in which the body loses its ability to control the level of glucose (sugar) in the blood. Insulin is a hormone produced by special cells in the pancreas that helps the body to convert glucose from food into energy. People with diabetes either don’t have enough insulin or their body cannot use insulin effectively, so glucose stays in the blood instead of being turned into energy, causing blood sugar levels to become high. Different insulin abnormalities cause different types of diabetes. Four main types of diabetes exist: Type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes and other forms of diabetes.
 

4% of Australians have diabetes. That’s around 898,000 people. This rate has risen from 1.5% in 1989.Between 2000 and 2009, 222,544 people in Australia began using insulin to treat their diabetes. 1 in 20 pregnancies are affected by diabetes. That was 44,000 women between 2005 and 2007. The proportion of people with diabetes in the Indigenous population compared to the proportion of people with diabetes in the non-Indigenous population 3 to 1.  Over half of adult Australians are overweight or obese, which puts them at greater risk for developing diabetes. 3 in 5 of people with diabetes also have cardiovascular disease. $990 million was spent on treating diabetes in 2004–2005, which is 1.9% of all health expenditure.
 

The World Diabetes Day logo is the blue circle - the global symbol for diabetes ,which was developed as part of the Unite for Diabetes awareness campaign. The logo was adopted in 2007 to mark the passage of the United Nations World Diabetes Day Resolution. The significance of the blue circle symbol is overwhelmingly positive. Across cultures, the circle symbolises life and health. The colour blue reflects the sky that unites all nations and is the colour of the United Nations flag. The blue circle signifies the unity of the global diabetes community in response to the diabetes pandemic.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

“There was never a good war or a bad peace.” - Benjamin Franklin
 
Remembrance Day here is commemorated on November 11 each year in Australia. This is because the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month marks the signing of the Armistice, on 11th November 1918, which signalled the end of World War One. At 11 a.m. on 11th November 1918, the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare. Initially, when WWI ended, the day was known as Armistice Day but was renamed Remembrance Day after WWII. In the USA the day is known as Veterans’ Day.
 
Each year Australians observe one minute’s silence at 11 a.m. on 11th November, in memory of all those men and women who have died or suffered in all wars, conflicts and peace operations. This is a simple yet very effective way of remembering the massive loss of life and immense suffering that humankind has been subjected to in all of the various armed conflicts that have blotted recorded history.
 
Magpie Tales this week has provided a prompt (Verdun, 1917 by Felix Vallotton) in harmony with this day of Remembrance. Here is my contribution.
 
The Rabbit, III
 
Run, run, run
Rabbit run!
The gun spits out death.
A flash, a bang, an echo
And the pungent smell
Of gunpowder...
 
Bang, bang, bang
All stops in mid-jump. 
One, two, three
And inside me
My noontime meal
Turns to poison.
 
Kill, kill, kill
Blood, death, terror
In the falling evening.
Life is death
Love is life
Death is love.
 
Eyes, eyes, eyes
Hard eyes, soft eyes.
Love is hard, sharp, jagged glass
Death is soft, yielding velvet
Life is soft, hard, sharp,
Smooth, tender but unbending.
Life is death
Hard, sharp like broken glass
Soft, smooth like velvet.

MOVIE MONDAY - YOU AGAIN

“I had a hard time with bullying. I ate lunch in the bathroom.” - Julianne Hough
 

Sometimes one wants to sit in front of the TV and watch junk food for the brain. Something light and non-challenging in terms of content, storyline, acting and meaning. Just for those days when one’s brain hurts and needs a bit of a respite from the deep and meaningful… Hollywood, of course, is well-suited to producing a host of such films and they are quite popular with viewers who are on the scrounge for easily consumed, predigested pap that satisfies one’s sweet tooth of the brain.
 

We watched such a film at the weekend as we were tired and had had a challenging previous couple of days. The film was mildly amusing, virtually non-offensive, adhered to standard type-casting, very light-on and was something one could watch while concentrating on various other things too. It was the 2010 Andy Fickman feature “You Again” starring Kristen Bell, Odette Annable, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Wolk, Betty White and Sigourney Weaver. It was written by Moe Jelline, better know as the writer of the TV sitcom “Love and Marriage” of 1996.

The plot revolves around Marni (Bell) a geeky, ugly kind of teenager that boys aren’t interested in and easy prey for the taunts and torments of the mean girls. Her arch nemesis is the popular and beautiful Joanna (Annable), the head cheerleader. Fast-forward several years, when Marni has become a successful woman with a good job in PR. She goes back home for her brother Will’s (Wolk) wedding and to her horror discovers that her brother is about to marry Joanna. When they meet she wants Joanna to apologise to her for the way she treated her in High School, but Joanna pretends she doesn’t even remember Marni. Marni tells her mother, Gail (Curtis) about the situation with Joanna, but Gail tells her to leave the past alone. However, when Gail learns that Joanna’s aunt Mona (Weaver) is her old friend from High School, Ramona, she changes tune. It turns out that the relationship between Gail and Ramona wasn’t all that rosy either. When Marni learns that Joanna really does remember her, she sets out to expose her true bitchy colours to her brother. But things will get a little more complex…

Now that I have written the summary I realise how even more inconsequential this movie was, but like junk food, so easily consumed. Although the film is hardly a romantic comedy, it is a chick flick in that it has a strong female cast that does its best with the material it has been handed. Betty White as “Granny Bunny” tries her best to get laughs, but the material she has is quite weak. Weaver and Curtis that are quite accomplished actresses and have obviously done this film in order to pay the bills. They try their best to do what they can with the often childish plot and lines.

The moral of the story is based on bullying and the terrible effects it has on people, but unfortunately this was trivialized and sugar-coated and the fluff got in the way of making a point about the lives that can be destroyed by bullying. Watch the film at your peril, but as I said, sometimes only mindless pap will do…

ART SUNDAY - HOGARTH

“Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.” - Albert Einstein
 
William Hogarth (born Nov. 10, 1697, London, England—died Oct. 26, 1764, London) was the first great English-born artist to attract admiration abroad and best known for his moral and satirical engravings and paintings, eg, “A Rake’s Progress” (eight scenes, begun 1732). His attempts to build a reputation as a history painter and portraitist, however, met with financial disappointment, and his aesthetic theories had more influence in Romantic literature than in painting.
 
Hogarth is unquestionably one of the greatest English artists and a man of remarkably individual character and thought. He was one of the first the great innovators in English art. On one hand, he was the first to paint themes from Shakespeare, Milton and the theatre, and the founder of a wholly original genre of moral history, which became known as “Hogarthian”. On the other hand, he investigated the aesthetic principles of his art, which resulted in his book “The Analysis of Beauty”(1753).
 
William Hogarth was the fifth child of Richard Hogarth, a schoolmaster and classical scholar from the north of England who had come to London in the mid-1680s. His father’s premature death in 1718 affected Hogarth’s early life, his training and forced him to earn money. In February 1713, Hogarth began his apprenticeship to a plate engraver, Ellis Gamble, who was a distant relation. By April 1720, he set up an independent business as an engraver. His first works included a number of commissions for small, etched cards and bookplates, and in 1721 he produced two inventive engraved allegories.
 
With topical prints such as “The South Sea Scheme” and “The Lottery”, which aroused considerable attention, he started his black-and-white satires which made him so widely known in Britain and abroad. His first success as a painter was in the ‘conversational pieces’, in which figure informal groups of family and friends surrounded by customary things from their everyday life. He was not the inventor of the genre, and had many contemporary rivals, but his pictures are marked with his own individuality: “The Fishing Party” (c.1730), “The Wedding of Stephen Bechingham and Mary Cox” (c.1730).
 
In 1729, he married a daughter of his painting teacher Sir James Thornhill. The scene from “The Beggar’s Opera”, which was the picture of an actual stage, brought him great success,  and at about 1730, he was commissioned for several versions. The result of this accomplishment was the idea of his own ‘theatre’: The creation of ‘pictorial dramas’ which were to reach the wider public through the means of engraving. The first successful series “The Harlot’s Progress”, of which only the engravings now exist (the originals were burnt in 1755), was immediately followed by the tremendous verve of “The Rake’s Progress”; the masterpiece of the story series “The Marriage a la Mode” followed, after an interval of twelve years.
 
Hogarth’ satires were serious moral and social satires, besides being good paintings. In 1735, he opened his own academy in St. Martyn's Lane. In portraiture, Hogarth displays a great variety and originality such as in portraits of “George Arnold” (c.1740), “Mary Edwards” (1742) and “Bishop Benjamin Hoadly” (1743). The charm of childhood, the ability to compose a vivid group, a delightful delicacy of color appear in “The Graham Children” (1742). The portrait heads of his servants are penetrating studies of character: “Hogarth’s Servants”. (c.1750). The painting of “Captain Thomas Coram” (1740), the philanthropic sea captain who took a leading part in the foundation of the Foundling Hospital, adapts the formality of the ceremonial portrait to a democratic level. The painter’s character is reflected faithfully in his forthright “Self-Portrait with Pug-Dog” (1745).
 
The quality of Hogarth as an artist is seen to advantage in his sketches and one sketch in particular, the famous “The Shrimp Girl” (c.1740-1743) quickly executed with a limited range of colour, stands alone in his work, taking its place among the masterpieces of the world in its harmony of form and content, its freshness and vitality. Hogarth died in 1764 in London and is buried in Chiswick cemetery.
 
In 1743–1745, William Hogarth painted the six pictures of “Marriage à-la-mode” (National Gallery, London), a pointed skewering of upper class 18th century society. This moralistic warning shows the disastrous results of an ill-considered marriage for money and satirises patronage and aesthetics. This is regarded by many as his finest project, certainly the best example of his serially-planned story cycles. A sort of “soap opera painting series”… In the first of the series, Hogarth shows an arranged marriage between the son of bankrupt Earl Squanderfield and the daughter of a wealthy but miserly city merchant. The son looks indifferent while the merchant’s daughter is distraught and has to be consoled by the lawyer Silvertongue. Even the faces on the walls appear to have misgivings.
 
In the second, called "The Tête-a-Tête" (shown above), there are signs that the marriage has already begun to break down. The husband and wife appear uninterested in one another, amidst evidence of their separate overindulgences the night before. The Viscount has had a night of debauchery (and the patch on his neck is a sign of syphilis), while the Viscountess has had a night of gambling on the card tables (but with whom?) Her pose is rather unladylike and her contentment may suggest that she was indeed in the arms of her lover. A distraught steward with a handful of unpaid bills walks off to the left, his eyes turned heavenward, knowing full well these won’t be paid in a hurry. The servant in the other room looks befuddled and is clearly not well supervised or directed.
 
The third in the series shows the Viscount visiting a quack with a young prostitute. The viscount, unhappy with the mercury pills meant to cure his syphilis, demands a refund while the young prostitute next to him dabs an open sore on her mouth, an early sign of syphilis.
 
In the fourth, the old Earl has died and the son is now the new Earl and his wife, the Countess. As was the very height of fashion at the time, the Countess is holding a “Toilette’, or reception, in her bedroom. The lawyer Silvertongue from the first painting is reclining next to the Countess, suggesting the existence of an affair. This point is furthered by the child in front of the pair, pointing to the horns on the statue of Actaeon, a symbol of cuckoldry. Paintings in the background include the biblical story of Lot and his daughters, Jupiter and Io, and the rape of Ganymede.
 
Next, the new Earl catches his wife in a bagnio with her lover, the lawyer, and is fatally wounded by the lawyer. As she begs forgiveness from the stricken man, the murderer in his nightshirt makes a hasty exit through the window. A picture of a woman with a squirrel on her hand hanging behind the countess contains lewd undertones.
 
Finally the Countess poisons herself in her grief and poverty-stricken widowhood, after her lover is hanged at Tyburn for murdering her husband. An old woman carrying her baby allows the child to give her a kiss, but the mark on her cheek and the caliper on her leg suggest that disease has been passed onto the next generation…