THE RUINS OF ATHENS...

“The keenest sorrow is to recognise ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.” – Sophocles

It is with horror and disgust that I watch the news from Athens these past few days. During the previous couple of years, there has been an ever-increasing accumulation of explosives in the tinder box that is Greece: A volatile political situation, high unemployment, chronic disgruntlement with social and economic policies, inflation, high prices, low salaries, influx of illegal immigrants, unchecked crime, numerous scandals in government and church, the world economic crisis… The spark that set off the explosion of the recent riots was the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman last Saturday in Athens. Alexandros Grigoropoulos was fatally shot by a police officer in Athens’ Exarchia district close to the Athens Polytechnic University after hurling stones at police at night. How the shooting occurred is unclear, but the two officers involved have been arrested; one has been charged with murder and the other as an accomplice. A coroner’s report shows that the boy was shot in the chest. The officers claim that the bullet ricocheted before hitting the boy.

The episode was the catalyst for widespread rioting, not only in Athens, but in most major cities around the country. Gangs of youths smashed their way through central Athens and Thessaloniki on Sunday and Monday. Shops, banks, apartment buildings and even luxury hotels had their windows smashed and burned in a night of anarchy and lawlessness as youths fought running battles with riot police. In Crete, Larissa, Chios, other towns, similar violent protests occurred. The increasingly unpopular Karamanlis government has been criticised as being a weak and powerless observer in these vicious demonstrations. Burning barricades, flames and clouds of smoke were mixing with tear gas used by police. Molotov cocktails joined flying stones and debris as they converted the centre of Athens into a battle zone.

The news relayed live and non-stop by the Greek satellite TV channel have created shock waves around the world amongst all ranks of the Greek diaspora. No doubt, this contributed to demonstrators entering and taking over the London and Berlin Greek embassies. They raised banners of support and the black-and-red anarchist flag. Most rational and civilised people whether Greeks or not abhor such acts of unrestrained fury and revolt. There is little public support for street violence or wanton destruction of property amongst Greeks, but within the Greek psyche there is a tolerance for demonstrations, and the right to protest is held in high esteem.

Anarchists are blamed for late-night fire-bombings of targets such as banks and diplomatic vehicles, which occur regularly in Athens, but these attacks rarely cause injuries. The anarchist movement traces its roots largely in the resistance to Greece’s 1967-74 military dictatorship and the small groups of “known-unknowns”, as they are called since they sport balaclavas, are behind most violent protests. The anarchists tend to support anti-capitalist and antiestablishment activities, and have long-running battles with police, which represents for them everything that they hate.

In the wake of the riots, over 30 police officers and riot police members have been injured. Millions of euros of damage has been done. Greece’s reputation as a stable democratic country has been further sullied. The message that is getting through to the international community is that it is a country of barbaric savages that respect no law, no common human decency, no code of civilised society. The images that have been transmitted to the word’s TV screens are full of savage, mindless acts of mass hysterics. These are no children of Socrates or Plato, but rather bands of animals that are bent on mindless destruction and brutishness. The episodes of genuine demonstrations over a heinous act have been overshadowed by acts even more vicious. Blatant disregard for law and order, wholesale destruction and damage to property, looting and violence for the sake of violence.

It is heart-breaking to see what was once a beautiful, peaceful city (and yes, maybe I am stretching it, as I refer to the Athens of my childhood of the early ‘60s) now becoming a shambles. A burnt out shell of a once great civilisation. A shadow of its former substance. What more can I say? Perhaps a song can sum up my feelings:



Αθήνα (1978)
(Χρήστου Γκάρτζου, Σώτιας Τσώτου)

Ξέρω μια πόλη που η άσφαλτος καίει
Και δέντρου σκιά δεν θα βρεις…
Μεγάλη ιστόρια, προγόνοι σπουδαίοι,
Λυχνάρι και τάφος της γης.

Θυμίζεις Αθήνα γυναικα που κλαίει
Γιατί δεν την θέλει κανείς.
Αθήνα, Αθήνα, πεθαίνω μαζί σου,
Πεθαίνεις μαζί μου κι εσύ.

Ξέρω μια πόλη στη νεά Σαχάρα
Μια έρημο όλο μπετόν
Οι ξένοι στόλοι, λαθραία τσιγάρα,
Παιδιά που δεν ξέρουν κρυφτό.

Θυμίζεις Αθήνα γυναικα που κλαίει
Γιατί δεν την θέλει κανείς.
Αθήνα, Αθήνα, πεθαίνω μαζί σου,
Πεθαίνεις μαζί μου κι εσύ.

Ξέρω μια πόλη στη γη της αβύσσου,
Κουρσάρων κι ανέμων νησί.
Στης Πλάκας τους δρόμους
Πουλάς το κορμί σου για ένα ποτήρι κρασί.

Θυμίζεις Αθήνα γυναικα που κλαίει
Γιατί δεν την θέλει κανείς.
Αθήνα, Αθήνα, πεθαίνω μαζί σου,
Πεθαίνεις μαζί μου κι εσύ.

Athens (1978)
(Music: Christos Gartzos; Lyrics: Sotia Tsotou)

I know a city where the asphalt burns,
Where you won’t find a tree to shade you.
Great history, even greater ancestors,
Light of the world, grave of the world.

Athens, you remind me of a woman crying
Because nobody desires her;
Athens, oh Athens, I die with you,
You die with me too.

I know a city in the new Sahara,
A desert made of concrete.
Foreign fleets anchor there, contraband cigarettes,
Children who do not know how to play hide-and-seek.

Athens, you remind me of a woman crying
Because nobody desires her;
Athens, oh Athens, I die with you,
You die with me too.

I know a city in the country of the abyss,
An island home to pirates and wild winds.
In Plaka’s neighbourhoods
You sell your body for a glass full of wine…

Athens, you remind me of a woman crying
Because nobody desires her;
Athens, oh Athens, I die with you,
You die with me too.

MOVIE MONDAY - DEATH AT A FUNERAL

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” - Jessamyn West

Well, my computer is fixed - it turns out that there was a problem with software conflict after I downloaded an update for one of the programs I usually run every now and then, but which was not suited to the latest version of the system. The good news is, I even didn’t have to pay a repair bill (how good is that this day and age), and I lost no data! Nevertheless, the little incident served to remind me: Backup, backup, backup…

For Movie Monday today a film we watched over the weekend, which not only was very funny but was also poignant and quite confronting in parts. It was Frank Oz’s 2007 film “Death at a Funeral”. This is a British film with elements of classic English comedy mixed with a fast-moving French farce. The film explores some taboo topics relating to sexuality, death, religion, drugs, family, but does so in quite a light-handed manner. The language is slightly blue (unnecessary “f…” this and “f…” that) but one can overlook this shortcoming and concentrate on the dark humour.

The plot centres on Daniel, a young man, married to Jane, who still lives in the rather aristocratic family home with his parents, in the English countryside somewhere. When Daniel’s father dies, Daniel has to organise the funeral. He tries to do everything with as much dignity and decorum as befits the occasion, but fate has other ideas. There is a funeral director who makes a terrible mistake, the arrival of Daniel’s famous but selfish brother from the USA, his cousin's fiancé who has been given some drugs accidentally, a moron who lusts after the cousin, a handicapped and crotchetty old uncle and a mysterious dwarf whom nobody knows. And all this only in the first twenty minutes!

Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes do a sterling job of playing Daniel and Jane, while the remaining actors are extremely well-cast also and support the action admirably. The film won the audience awards in two film festivals (Locarno International film Festival and US Comedy Arts Festival) and overall manages to push the right buttons at the right time. The trailer for the film is available on YouTube.

I would recommend the film for a good laugh, but also be aware that there some scenes that would shock some people and the “colourful” language, I have already mentioned. Adult themes are depicted, so be warned this is an adult film, but quite a lot of fun. The 90 minutes pass by very pleasantly indeed.

Have a good week!

MEMORIES

“Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead.” - Benjamin Disraeli

Sometimes a few notes of a song half heard while one is rushing past another car on the road, or when one changes radio station, a few fleeting notes, can bring back with great strength memories of the past. Vivid images that one thought were forgotten are quickly resurrected. A snatch of melody, that someone hums in the street, a few mumbled words of lyric are enough to rekindle old flames amongst the ashes. Music speaks to our soul and the only way for us to answer is with our heart. When our heart sings, the melody will cause our brain to raise a white flag, defeated…

The Child in the Truck

The streets, empty and cold.
The morning, grey and cloudy.
The leaves of yesterday’s paper
Waltzing with the wind on wet asphalt,
While bleary-eyed the newspaper boy
Sourly announces a newer version of the news.

And I, serene, relentlessly introverted
Listen to your rhythms
Leaving your melodies to wander aimlessly
In the deserted alleyways of my mind.
Your verses loiter, lingering
In room after room of grey matter
Proselytising from my memory images,
Pale, faded, ideal…

“Oh, my precious urban loneliness,
Grey-dressed, frigid sister,
How slowly you unravel round me!
You unsex yourself,
And in your newly muscular grip
You tighten your wily snares
To entrap me.”

Bathed in the wan, grey morning light
That tiny child looks feebly, wide-eyed
Through the dirty window of the truck.
And in the stark beauty of waiting
He sits alone, abiding
The inexorable loss of innocence.

MOTHER OR MOLOCH?

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

I have been distressed these past few weeks by news items that I hear from all over the world that seem to have a common theme: Infanticide. It seems that there is an epidemic out there of babies being killed, most often by their mothers, soon after they are born. Is it a sign of the times, I wonder, these new Medeas appearing all over the world confirming the wholesale madness that is gripping humanity?

One of the stories I read concerned tribal women in Papua New Guinea who used infanticide as a way out of endless internecine feuds. They kill their male babies and thus reduce the number of warring males in the next generation. Male infanticide on a mass scale was the obvious way for these women to cope with the bloodbath they were immersed in. All the women folk had agreed to have newborn babies killed because they have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them.

Heinous though this may seem, there is a reason to the infanticide: Violence to end violence. A sacrifice to peace, gruesome though it is. Desperation will drive people to the edge of reason. If surviving was almost impossible and getting food was hard, as husbands kept fighting and mothers and children were left to fend for themselves, what else could the womenfolk do to stop the warring tribes? Male infanticide reduces the cyclical pay back violence infamous in Highlands tribal fights.

Last year the “baby in the freezer” occurence in Pittsburgh rocked America. A 22 year-old woman put her newborn baby in a plastic bag and then a brown bag and froze it in a beer box in her freezer. According to a police affidavit, the mother Christine Hutchinson told police she gave birth to the girl on April 22 2007 and did not call medics or police, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

In a similar case, this year in Germany three frozen babies were found in a household freezer. Today a German mother has been sentenced to more than four years in jail for killing two of her babies whose bodies she stashed in the family freezer. She was not tried in connection with a third baby, also found in the freezer, who died over 20 years ago because the statute of limitations on the case had expired. The 44-year-old housewife, Monika Halbe, who was handed a four year and three month prison sentence for manslaughter, had admitted to hiding the bodies of three baby girls in the family freezer, but had denied killing them. In the macabre case that has made national headlines, it was the defendant’s teenage son who had discovered the girls’ tiny corpses in plastic bags in May when looking for a pizza in the basement freezer. The grim case revived a debate about the state of child welfare in Germany after several high-profile cases of killings by mothers came to light.

In an incident also this year, a 14-year-old girl gave birth to a full-term baby in a school bathroom and then tried to flush it down the toilet, killing the infant, police in Texas said. The occurrence at Cedar Bayou Junior High in Baytown, Texas, came just three days after another 14-year-old girl delivered a stillborn baby in the toilet of an aeroplane on her way back to Houston from a school field trip. The Harris County District Attorney's office decided not to pursue charges against the girl on the plane, who disposed of the body in a rubbish bin. The students and their chaperones were returning from New York aboard a March 30 2008 Continental Airlines flight. Houston homicide investigators interviewed both the girl and a 14-year-old boy believed to be the father. The girl, whom authorities have not identified, told police she did not know she was pregnant. Preliminary autopsy results indicated the baby was stillborn and not viable, police said. The plane landed at Bush Intercontinental Airport on a non-stop flight from New York's LaGuardia Airport. A cleaning crew found the body inside a wastebasket in the toilet of the plane about 15 minutes after it landed.

These are young girls we are talking about, old enough to experiment with sex but irresponsible and young enough not to be careful about sexually transmitted diseases and the risk of pregnancy. Young enough to panic about the consequences of a pregnancy and of giving birth under those circumstances. However, this is not only something that happens to the young and immature, as the next item shows.

Claire Jones a 32 year-old woman in Wales, told an inquest she did not know she had given birth until she started flushing her baby down a toilet by accident. She became pregnant after an affair with a work colleague but hid her condition from friends and family. After “panicking” in the toilet at her partner’s parents’ home, she hid the baby in her car boot, where police found it. Cardiff Coroner Mary Hassell said Ms Jones had built up a “web of deception”. The hearing was told Ms Jones did not reveal her pregnancy, telling friends and family, including David Stoneman, her partner of 11 years, that a wheat allergy had caused a hard mass to form in her stomach.

But on 28 December 2007, a week after her due date, she experienced pains, which she put down to diarrhoea. She told the inquest: “While I was still on the toilet, I flushed it, and I felt something pull. I stood up slightly, and I could see a foot in the bowl of the toilet.” She said the baby was underneath the water covered in toilet paper. “I could see the baby's foot, so I pulled the baby out. “I sat by the toilet. I put him on my lap. He wasn’t crying. I was trying to feel for a pulse and there was nothing.” Ms Jones was asked why she did not call for help. She said: “Because nobody knew I was pregnant. Because he wasn't breathing, I just panicked. I didn't know what to do. I wrapped him in a towel. I don’t remember how, but I must have put him in the boot of the car.”

The inquest heard Ms Jones was arrested 10 days later at the home in St Mellons, Cardiff, she shared with Mr Stoneman, and Daniel's body was found in her Vauxhall Astra car. She said she planned to leave Mr Stoneman, and her work colleague Marcus Bezerra, who was aware of the pregnancy and had bought items for the baby in preparation for his birth. When asked why she did not leave Mr Stoneman before the baby was due, she replied: “Things had got in such a mess with the two relationships. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I just messed everything up.”

The coroner said Ms Jones had manufactured “a tissue of lies” and dismissed as “beyond belief” Ms Jones' claim about not knowing if she had given birth. Ms Hassell continued: “It is impossible to know if Daniel would have survived if Ms Jones, who had her mobile telephone with her in the toilet, had called for help. The house was full of people who, I have no doubt, would have rushed to her aid. She did not seek medical attention for herself or for her baby. If Daniel was stillborn, it is not possible to say why he did not survive. If he was born alive, the most likely reason for his death was drowning in the toilet bowl.”

The extremes of irresponsibility in these days of selfish pleasures seem to involve sad cases like these. We have lost our dignity and our respect of life. That most sacred of bonds, that of mother and child, is being degraded and corrupted. How can we explain this apparent spate of child killings? Is it really a sign of our times? Careful investigation of the evidence suggests otherwise. Infanticide ha been practiced since ancient times and is still widespread in many societies around the world. In China and India infanticide of female newborns is still common practice (as is abortion of female fetuses).

What drives a mother to kill her child? Is it hardness of circumstances or hardness of heart? The mother with the hardest of hearts who slew her children was Medea. According to Greek myth, she killed her children as revenge against her unfaithful husband, Jason (of Golden Fleece fame). The term “Medea syndrome” derives from this legend. The following factors represent examples of both hardness of life and hardness of heart causing infanticide.

Human sacrifice is one of the earliest recorded forms of infanticide. Archaeological evidence indicates that prehistoric children were sacrificed to the gods. By offering a valued possession to the gods, humans have long attempted to appease a deity. What more valuable than a newborn child?

Poverty, famine, and population control are inter-related factors. Where safe and effective birth control was unavailable, infanticide was used to selectively limit the growth of a community. Infanticide allowed for selection of the fittest or most desirable offspring, with sick, deformed, female, or multiple births targeted for disposal.

Female infanticide is a problem rooted in a culture of sexism throughout antiquity. In many cultures girls have little value. Even when female children were not killed at birth, their needs were neglected, particularly if limited resources were needed to ensure the survival of male offspring.

Deformed or defective newborns have been disposed of by most cultures across the ages. From an evolutionary standpoint, parents decide whether to invest their energy in raising a deformed or sick child that may not survive to perpetuate the family lines.

Illegitimacy is another factor leading to infanticide through the ages. To avoid shame and censure, women have secretively disposed of illegitimate babies since early Roman times. Illegitimacy and poverty are the most common reasons for infanticide in the twenty-first century.

Finally, superstitious beliefs regarding children and childbirth contributed to the practice of infanticide. In many cultures, twins were believed to be evil and were promptly killed. In some tribal societies, twins of the opposite gender were believed to have committed incest in the womb and were condemned. In some cases only one twin was killed. Other superstitions involve unlucky days of the week, breech presentations, the presence of baby teeth at birth, or atmospheric conditions during birth. Ignorance, fear, and legend have contributed to the deaths of infants throughout the ages.

More recently, especially in developed countries the psychological status of women who have just given birth has been examined and post-partum depression and other psychological states in the post-partum period have been described. Legal debate centres on the use of post-partum depression as a legal defence in infanticide (homicide) cases. The American Psychiatric Association first recognised post-partum depression (PPD) in 1994. Since then, American courts have begun to recognise PPD as a legitimate defence, although it has rarely been used successfully. Approximately 20 percent of all new mothers experience PPD, a serious and lasting depression. One out of every thousand new mothers will experience psychotic symptoms including delusions, hallucinations, and incoherent thinking. Because British law has long assumed that mothers who kill suffer from mental illness, British doctors treat PPD aggressively and British courts rule with more leniency than American courts. Many researchers suggest that the United States should follow the British approach.

When I was confronted by these news items in a short period of time, I had a very visceral and immediate emotional reaction. My first thought was abhorrence and revulsion. However, the more I think about it and the more I investigate the matter, the more complicated it becomes. The reasons why parents choose to destroy their offspring defy simple explanation. In the past, harsh conditions, lack of effective contraception, unavailability of abortion as an option for ending an unwanted pregnancy and lack of information may have contributed to the problem. In modern times many of these reasons have disappeared, but human nature has remained the same and this continues to drive infanticide rates. Are these parents who practice it unfortunate, uneducated, immature, evil, selfish, or mentally ill? Perhaps the answer lies in a combination of these explanations. Understanding of the multiple causes of infanticide can only lead to better means of prevention.

(A very confronting article on infanticide is linked here. Please don’t read it if the matter causes you distress).

MOVIE MONDAY ON WORLD AIDS DAY

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” - Winston Churchill

Today, 1st of December, is World AIDS Day. This year’s theme is “Lead – Empower – Deliver.” Designating leadership as the theme provides an opportunity to highlight both political leadership and celebrate leadership that has been witnessed at all levels of society. It is only through effective leadership that empowerment of victims can occur and delivery of solutions to this widespread world problem can be attempted. In first world countries HIV infection has disappeared from the headlines as more effective treatments for the disease became available in 1996 with the synthesis of protease inhibitors. Such drugs, on the other hand, are not readily available to AIDS sufferers in developing countries, allowing AIDS to reach alarming rates there.

Acknowledging the significance of World AIDS Day internationally, my Movie Monday review is dedicated to a classic 1993 film, Jonathan Demme’s “Philadelphia”. At the time it was released, this film was a landmark in the fight against the social marginalisation that AIDS-affected people had to cope with during a time that treatments did little to curb the fatal inevitability of the disease. The film was a powerful exposé of mindless prejudice, irrational fear fired by misinformation and the triumph of reason and the meting out of natural justice for our fellow human beings in need.

The film concerns Andrew Beckett, a gay lawyer infected with HIV and who is starting to develop symptoms of AIDS. He is fired from his conservative law firm when it becomes known he has AIDS as they fear they may contract the disease from him. Andrew sues his former law firm with the help of Joe Miller, a homophobic lawyer. A court battle ensues, and during its course Miller sees that Beckett is no different than anyone else who has been unjustly treated. He manages to control his homophobia and manages to help Beckett fight for his cause.

The film has several high points as well as a powerful and gripping story. Tom Hanks as Andrew Beckett and Denzel Washington as Joe Miller give performances that are a recital of top class acting. Tom Hanks rightly won the Oscar for Best Male Lead in 1994 for this film. The other Oscar went to Bruce Springsteen’s song “Streets of Philadelphia” for the Best Song and Original Music. The direction by Demme is faultless and the gritty, dark theme is brought into amazing chiaroscuro by the inspired cinematography of Tak Fujimoto. In fact, it is very hard to fault this film, which creates a tremendous tour de force all in support of basic human rights.

World AIDS Day gives us the opportunity to reflect on a variety of issues that beset the world in these early years of the 21st century. The fragility of our planet as we tackle the idea of climate change on a global level, drives home the message of our own species’ fragility. We are our own worst enemies as we live our life spending our energy on mindless hate. How easy it is to stick together in tightly knit little cliques, clans, castes, conclaves, subgroups and hate everyone else different from us. How easy it is to attack with fervour anyone who does not resemble us in terms of sexual preference, politics, ideology, religion, race. How easy it is to victimise the weak and the dispossessed…

HIV is still with us today, despite the billions of dollars spent of research. Prejudice is still rife, social stigmatization of minorities still occurs. Religious hatred still inspires violence of frightening proportions. Differences in ideology still motivate acts of sickening terrorism as the recent events in India exemplify. We carry on for centuries, blissfully unaware of the germination of the seeds of our destruction. We must shake ourselves and awake from this stupefying slumber that is causing us to repeat mistake after mistake…

ART SUNDAY - RICHARD BAXTER

“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.” - Welsh Proverb

For Art Sunday today, a painting by South Australian Artist Richard Baxter (born 1966).

This is his painting, “With Roots Above and Branches Below”, for which the artist says the following:

There is a tree, the tree of transmigration, the Asvattha tree everlasting. Its roots are above in the highest, and its branches are here below. Its leaves are sacred songs, and he who knows them knows the Vedas. Its branches spread from earth to Heaven, and the powers of nature give them life. Its buds are the pleasures of the senses. Far down below its roots stretch into the world of men, binding a mortal through selfish actions. Men do not see the changing form of that tree, nor its beginning, nor its end, nor where its roots are. But let the wise see, and with the strong sword of dispassion let him cut this strong rooted tree, and seek the path wherefrom those who go never return. Such a man can say; “I go for refuge to that eternal spirit from whom the stream of creation came at the beginning.”
Bhagavad Gita. Chapter 15, verses 1-4.

SUMMER LOVE

“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” - Russell Baker

In the 1960s in Greece a group of young university students got together and started off a whole new music movement in Greece, which they called the “New Wave”. This was in reference to the “Nouvelle Vague” of French cinema, popular then. The sounds of the Greek New Wave were fresh, simple, genuine, full of emotion and easy to listen to. These songs have become classics their interpreters and their composers having become very famous indeed: Yannis Spanos, Kaiti Homata, Mihalis Violaris, Popi Asteriadi, Lakis Pappas, Yannis Poulopoulos, Arleta, Yiorgos Zografos, etc, etc.

Here is one of these songs, composed by Yannis Spanos, lyrics by Yorgos Papastefanou an sung by Kaiti Homata.



Μια Αγάπη για το Καλοκαίρι

Μια αγάπη για το καλοκαίρι θα’ μαι κι εγώ,
Να σου κρατώ δροσιά στο χέρι να σε φιλώ.
Θα μ’ αγαπάς σαν καλοκαίρι και σαν παιδί,
Μα θα μου φύγεις με τ’αγέρι και τη βροχή.

Μια αγάπη για το καλοκαίρι θα’ μαι κι εγώ,
Να σου κρατώ δροσιά στο χέρι να σε φιλώ.
Και σαν χαθεί το καλοκαίρι και σε ζητώ,
Θα μείνει μόνο ένα αστέρι να το κοιτώ.

Και σαν χαθεί το καλοκαίρι και σε ζητώ,
Θα μείνει μόνο ένα αστέρι να το κοιτώ…

A Love for Summer

All I’ll be for you is a summer love,
To keep your hand cool, to kiss you.
You’ll love me like summer, like a child,
But when the rain and wind come, you’ll leave me.

All I’ll be for you is a summer love,
To keep your hand cool, to kiss you.
And when summer is over and I’ll look for you,
All that remains will be a star that I look at.

And when summer is over and I’ll look for you,
All that remains will be a star that I look at.

SPRING FOODS

“An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.” - Will Rogers

I was in Brisbane today for work and it has been rather a long day, considering I woke at 4:00 a.m. and my plane landed back in Melbourne after 8:30 p.m. and I wasn’t home until after 9:00 p.m. Nevertheless, getting back home is what is important and what better than a nice home-cooked meal to come back to?

It is Spring here in Melbourne and some wonderful Spring vegetables are making their appearance. Asparagus and broad beans, artichokes and Brussels sprouts, leeks and morel mushrooms, baby carrots and radishes… I don’t think there is a vegetable that I don’t like and in Spring, what delights there are to tempt us!

One delicious Spring offering from the garden is the newly greening vine leaves. These are used in Greek cooking to make dolmades – stuffed vine leaves. Although pickled vine leaves are on sale in your delicatessen, the best leaves to use are the tender young ones in Spring, straight from the vine. A few minutes in boiling water to blanch them until they become tender and one may stuff them with a savoury mixture, which varies widely from place to place and also country to country, as stuffed vine leaves are also popular in Turkey and other middle Eastern countries. Rice is a universal ingredient of the stuffing, as are herbs such as mint, parsley, sometimes dill.

One may use minced meat in the stuffing, one may not. Grated tomato pulp may or may not be added. Usually, grated onion is an ingredient, unless one chops up Spring onions to add instead. Pine nuts and raisins are added by some cooks, but this practice is shunned by others. In any case, a rather runny stuffing is made, and mixed well. The vine leaves are stuffed, shiny side out, and the finished product must be a neat little cylindrical bundle. The dolmades are put next to each other and stacked in an orderly fashion in a heavy metal pot, some vine leaves are spread out on top and any juices left over from the stuffing are poured over them, as well as the juice of a lemon or two. A plate is inverted and place on top of the pot and the dolmades are heated on the stove until tender and well cooked.

The traditional sauce one serves them with is an egg and lemon mousseline sauce, but one may simply put dollops of Greek-style yogurt on them. Delicious!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.” - W.T. Purkiser

It is a special day in the USA today – Thanksgiving, which is a day of celebration firmly associated with the Pilgrim Fathers, the pioneer spirit and the difficulty of taming a wild land, such that its rich bounty could be harvested from its firm hold. The origins of the day are traditionally based on the Thanksgiving Feast held by the Pilgrims who sailed in the good ship “Mayflower” to settle in America in the early 17th century.

A pilgrim is any person who makes a journey, often long and difficult, to a special place for religious reasons. The term, in the USA especially, applies to the members of a group of English Puritans who were fleeing religious persecution in Britain and who sailed in the “Mayflower” to found the colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.

The first harvest of crops was plentiful and so they 
gave thanks to the Lord. There is some disagreement as to whether this was the basis for the tradition but it is generally held to be the origin. Although the holiday had religious origins with a superadded harvest festival tradition, Thanksgiving nowadays is secularised. Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the USA. Thanksgiving dinner is held on this day, usually as a gathering of family members, with traditional foods such as turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin, corn, mash, various pies, cornbread and other foods characteristic of the New World.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

And for the word of the day:

pilgrim |ˈpilgrəm|noun
a person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons.
• (usually Pilgrim) a member of a group of English Puritans fleeing religious persecution who sailed in the Mayflower and founded the colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.
• a person who travels on long journeys.
• chiefly poetic/literary a person whose life is compared to a journey.
verb ( -grimmed, -grimming) [ intrans. ] archaic
Travel or wander like a pilgrim.

DERIVATIVES
pilgrimise |-ˌmīz| |ˈpɪlgrəˈmaɪz| verb ( archaic).
ORIGIN Middle English : from Provençal pelegrin, from Latin peregrinus ‘foreign’.

The painting above is "The First Thanksgiving" by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris.

DO YOU LOVE ME?

“Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.” - Rabindranath Tagore

Do you Love me?

“Do you love me,” she said, “do you love me?”
And I – I stood silent and looked on, transfixed.
“Do you care for me,” she asked, “do you?”
And I – I turned away and looked at her no more.

“Why are you silent?” she spoke again,
And I – I searched inside me, for words
Were hard to find and language failed me.
“Speak, answer, tell me!” she commanded.

My eyes looked upon her and all I could think of
Were bright red thoughts and chords of A major joy.
Sweet tasting sherbet melodies and cooling draughts
Of pure spring water on a summer’s day.

“Do you love me,” she said, “do you love me?”
And I – I stood silent and looked on, transfixed.
“Do you care for me,” she asked, “do you?”
And I – I turned towards her and looked deep in her eyes.

And there were velvet leaves in my gaze,
On mellow September afternoons;
And my fingers were extended in silken threads
To bind our hands together like steel gossamer.

And my tongue moved powerless in the prison of my mouth
Forcing volumes of words unspoken down a dry throat.
My lips painted a sunset of a smile, and my eyes
Spoke only three eloquent words, silently,
So softly that only she could hear them with her heart
That resonated perfectly with their insistent rhythm.
“Hush, love!” she said, “not so loudly!
For we must not tempt jealous fate with our bliss;
The gods have punished mortals for lesser offences than
This sweetest hubris…”

The heady joy of newly-experienced love inspired this poem and when dragging it out of an old notebook the words stirred memories of fresh emotions, new and seemingly unique. Ah, youth! How innocent we all are when we begin on our love journeys!

POSTCARD FROM ADELAIDE

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” - Seneca

Adelaide has a good atmosphere about it. It is a little big city. While it has all of the facilities, attractions, conveniences of a modern megalopolis, it still is small enough to retain the charms of a large town. It has gracious old buildings, beautiful stone houses, large parks and an arts-conscious, cultured population. The nearby towns and villages of Hahndorf, Birdwood, Lobethal, Stirling, Woodside and the picturesque Adelaide Hills provide a perfect foil to the City and are all very enjoyable daytrips if you are staying in the City. Lovely beaches and seaside suburbs complement the Hills and the red desert sands of the Outback are only a relatively short drive out of town. One should not forget to mention the world-famous wine growing region of the Barossa Valley, only about 60 km northeast of Adelaide.

One of my favourite towns and one of the Adelaide Hills’ most famous is Hahndorf, which is Australia’s oldest surviving German settlement. There's still a strong German atmosphere in Hahndorf, most evident in the smallgoods outlets and German bakeries that line the busy main street. Hahndorf means “Hen Village” in German and there is still a rustic feel to the place, even though it is a major tourist attraction and has facilities that are geared towards satisfying the visiting tourists. There are plenty of souvenir shops, craft outlets and galleries, including the Hahndorf Academy, a regional centre for the arts and heritage based in a charming 150-year-old building. There are four galleries to see, a migration museum, resident artists’ studios, art classes and a retail gallery.

“The Cedars”, the former home and studio of famous German-Australian artist Sir Hans Heysen is in Hahndorf and one may take a guided tour of this gracious old home, which is still owned by the Heysen family. It is home to a fine collection of paintings and drawings that display Heysen's remarkable versatility in subject and medium. Also on the grounds, is the artist’s working studio, his painting materials and tools, sketches, notes and more.

If you like strawberries, then Beerenberg is the place to go, near Hahndorf. You can pick your own strawberries and half the fun is trying to find the biggest, ripest, juiciest berry and one of course has to subject all candidates to the taste test. If wine is more to your taste, there are several good winery cellar doors in the area.

It is probably a good idea to stay in Hahndorf overnight and there are several good motels and hotels around. Hahndorf Inn Hotel has an award-winning restaurant on site and it offers traditional German fare and a delightful range of fresh food and local favourites. Traditional German recipes and cooking methods are a feature and one can also sample a variety of local and imported beers.

Needless to say that this time around I shan’t have a chance to visit the Adelaide Hills or Hahndorf as my trip is all work, work, work and no time for pleasure…

MOVIE MONDAY - BLAZE

“We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate.” - Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard

I am travelling for work again and this time it’s lovely Adelaide. However, as it is Movie Monday, here is a brief review of a film we watched last weekend. It is Ron Shelton’s 1989 movie “Blaze”, with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich. It is a biographical comedy/drama of the life and times of Earl K. Long, three-time Governor of the US state of Louisiana between 1939 and 1960. His affair with Blaze Starr, a stripper dominates the story and the title of the movie shifts the emphasis a little from the politician to the “entertainer”. It is a romanticized and somewhat sanitised version of the truth, but one may have difficulty in determining what indeed may be the real truth. Especially where politicians are concerned…

The film was mildly amusing and the two leads played tolerably well, although Newman’s brilliance is lacking and the film suffers from pedestrian direction and predictable story-telling in a plot that is formulaic despite the real-life steamy hot mix that was available to the screenplay writer (Ron Shelton). The film lacks a clear theme. It starts out as a biographical drama of Blaze’s life, then the larger-than-life Earl comes into the scene, and there is a half-baked attempt at making the film relevant to equal rights issues. A very strange mix that doesn’t work particularly well, but which has a few good moments and is saved by the acting of the leads.

A sin of omission (and commission) in this movie is that Earl was married to Blanche Revere Long while he was having his affair with Starr. In the film he is a bachelor who is a bit of a dirty old man. It was in fact Blanche that got him committed to a mental asylum, from which (bizarre as it may seem) he continues to run the state as there was no law at the time to prevent a mentally incapacitated governor to continue his office. Real life Blaze Starr herself has a small part in the movie (as Lily).

There are a few good one liners in the movie and one may chuckle here and there. However, for a two-hour long movie, it fails to deliver what could have been made into an engrossing (seemingly short) Long-tale. Earl K. Long was certainly a colourful character and I am sure that fact must surely have been stranger than fiction in his case. If you come across the movie have a look at it, but don’t go out of your way to specifically look for it.

Have a good week!

ART SUNDAY - GOYA

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” - Henry Ward Beecher
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) is one of the greatest artists that Spain has ever produced and is considered the “Father of Modern Art”. His works, which are world renowned, changed the way artists saw the world. His work spanning 60 years from about the last half of the 18th century to the first quarter of the 19th century portray a celebration of life and a realistic view of the world.

Goya was born in the province of Zaragoza. When he was a teenager, he entered the service of a local artist. Later on, he travelled to Madrid, where he was greatly influenced by the last of the great Venetian painters. After several failed attempts to enrol in the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Goya went to Rome. Returning to Spain in the decade of the 1770s, Goya painted frescoes in several churches of his native province.

After his wedding, Goya began to rise in fame, working under Mengs, and then finally joining the royal academy and becoming King Charles III’s court painter. In 1799, Goya became the official painter of King Charles IV. But by this time he had suffered an illness, which left him deaf, and his alienation from the pomposity of the Court began. He produced dark works at this time. Goya with his wild imagination portrayed sordid images of a surreal world. Unable to present his works to his usual clientele, he is forced, under the threat of the Inquisition, to withdraw his works. Meanwhile he continued with his services as court painter.

By this time political and social upheaval connected with the Napoleonic kidnap of the Spanish crown and the invasion of Spain, Goya produced the famous painting “2nd of May of 1808”, and other pieces in which the artist epitomised the suffering and the realism of war as never before seen. Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, appoints Goya as the court painter again after the war, but by this time the artist’s convictions lead him to witness the vanity of court life. This begins his period known as the black paintings. A decade later, after having witnessed the excesses and the attempt to enforce an absolutist regime by Ferdinand VII, Goya decides to leave Spain to settle in Southern France where he died.

Because of the richness of works from Goya, one can witness how his attitude towards life and the world evolves and changes, as the socio-political events surrounding him shift. Goya is considered, with El Greco and Diego Velázquez, one of the greatest Spanish masters. Just as Goya found inspiration in the work of Velázquez, so Goya in turn inspired Edouard Manet and Pablo Picasso. He left no immediate followers of consequence, but his influence was strongly felt in mid-19th-century painting and printmaking and in 20th-century art.

Here is one of Goya’s lightest and breeziest paintings from early in his career. It is called “The Parasol” (1776-8) and evokes sunny carefree days of youth and insouciance. The artist’s wonderful sense of colour and light is already apparent in this canvas and his composition is masterly.

VOCALISE

“Nostalgia is a seductive liar.” - George Wildman Ball

As time passes our memory dulls acute pains of yesterday while the pleasures we have felt in former times become idealised into something exquisite. The nostalgia we feel for the past sometimes intrudes into the present moment and jars our experiences, which somehow feel deficient. If used well our album of memories can be a balm, a soothing unguent for the present’s woes. If we look backward all of the time and choose to live in the past, nostalgia becomes poisoned wine.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) is one of my favourite romantic composers – perhaps the last great romantic. Here is a piece of his that reeks of nostalgia. There is both balm and poison in this piece and depending on your frame of mind it can heal or kill…

“Vocalise” Op. 34 No. 14 published in 1912 as the last of his Fourteen Songs, Opus 34. Written for voice (soprano or tenor) with piano accompaniment, it contains no words, but is sung using any one vowel (of the singer's choosing). It was dedicated to soprano Antonina Nezhdanova. Here is Renée Fleming singing it with orchestral accompaniment.

TV CHEFS

“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.” - Henry David Thoreau

Today is World Television Day and seeing as it is also Food Friday, I’ll combine the two and talk about TV chefs and TV food programs. Any channel worth its salt has one or two of these programs around and it is not unusual for TV chefs to become national or international celebrities as a direct result of these programs. Julia Child, Jeff Smith (a.k.a. The Frugal Gourmet), Justin Wilson (a.k.a. The Cajun Cook), James Beard (a.k.a The Father of American Cooking), Jamie Oliver (a.k.a The Naked Chef), Gordon Ramsay (a.k.a The Chef of Hell’s Kitchen), Nigella Lawson, Madhur Jaffrey, Kylie Kwong, Stefano de Pieri, Iain Hewitson, Vefa Alexiadou, Ilias Mamalakis, Gabriel Gaté, etc, etc, etc.

They come from all places, cook in an amazing array of styles, national idioms, have mind-boggling variety of approaches, employ different gimmicks and have hundreds of thousands (some millions!) of loyal followers that often extend beyond the confines of their own nation. Their programs can be quite straight-forward and to the point “how-to-cook-xyz”, brief and no-nonsense, but many of them have themed extravaganzas that pull out all stops and besides the obvious primary theme of food, have secondary themes including travel, culture, nutrition, self-sufficiency, etc.

The term “celebrity chef” is often applied to these TV chefs in a derogatory way. They are often seen by the serious foodie as charlatans who prostitute their art and who are peddling their craft to the marketplace in a virtual world where the products of their toil in the kitchen are not enjoyed as they would be if they worked in a restaurant. A real chef working in a real restaurant, producing real food for real people is what a foodie would describe as an ideal situation. If that real chef is consummate in his art, then his fame will be well earned and surely his celebrity status is deserved.

I personally don’t like the TV chef. Especially so if they are gimmicky and rely on heir notoriety more than their skill to attract viewers. I abhor the tactics of Gordon Ramsay and find his manner odious, in fact I doubt whether I’d even taste any of his food (remember the finger incident?). Jamie Oliver is similarly distasteful. The ones I like tend to be low key and rather boring for general consumption. They tend to be more pedestrian in their approach and they see themselves as teachers of their craft. There is much science in food – chemistry, physics, thermodynamics. One must understand the processes in order to be successful and some TV chefs are happy to share their knowledge.

The celebrity chef is not a new discovery. The first such chef to attain this status was Antoine Carême (1784-1833) who was called “The king of chefs and chef of kings”. He built on the “haute cuisine” style of French cooking, full of elaborate, complicated and grandiose dishes. Although born in poverty and abandoned by his parents as a child, he managed to be apprenticed in a cheap Parisian eatery and gradually worked his way to the top in a fashionable patisserie. He progressed to being the chef of many a crowned head and many an influential person in Europe.

Carême is credited with creating the standard chef's hat (the toque), with the invention of new sauces and dishes, and the establishment of the haute cuisine. He published a classification of all sauces into groups, based on four basic sauces. He is also credited with replacing the practice of service à la française (serving all dishes at once) with service à la russe (serving each dish in the order of courses). He wrote several cookery books, above all L' Art de la Cuisine Française (5 volumes, 1833–34), which included, aside from hundreds of recipes, plans for menus and opulent table settings, a history of French cookery, and instructions for organising kitchens – a veritable encyclopaedia of cooking. He died at the age of 48 in Germany, possibly from the effects of inhaling toxic gases from the burning coal of the kitchen fires he was constantly exposed to.

ThE DORD OF THE PRONIAL BREAN...

“Be not the slave of Words.” - Thomas Carlyle

Do you know what a “ghost word” is?

ghost word |gōst wərd|noun
a word that is not actually used but is recorded in a dictionary, grammar or other reference work. It usually gets into that scholarly work as a result of a misreading or misinterpretation, as by mistaking a typographical error for an actual word.

The classic example of a ghost word is the word “dord”. It began its short life in 1931 when G. and C. Merriam Company's staff included it in the second edition of its Webster’s New International Dictionary, in which the term was defined as “density”. It is due to an error made when transcribing a card that read "D or d" (meaning a capital D or lower case d) as an abbreviation for “density”, such as in “The formula for finding density is D = V/M” (Density equals volume divided by mass).

A new typed up slip was prepared for the printer and the part of speech assigned along with a pronunciation for typesetters to include in the printing. The word got past proofreaders and appeared on page 771 of the dictionary around 1934. In 1939, an editor noticed “dord” lacked an etymology (word origin, or derivation) and investigated. Soon an order was sent to the printer marked “plate change/imperative/urgent”. The word “dord” was removed and the definition of the adjacent entry “Dore furnace” was expanded from “A furnace for refining dore bullion” to “a furnace in which dore bullion is refined” to close up the space.

Since major dictionaries are very carefully compiled and edited (I should know!), ghost words are rare in reputable reference works. However, dictionary writers have been known to copy entries from one another without looking for citations, where the word is in use (i.e. in books, magazines, newspapers, journals, etc), which means that some ghost words can be propagated.

Other examples of ghost words are: “pornial”, a mistake for “primal” which appeared first in the Century Dictionary and was then copied into Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary. When the original Oxford English Dictionary was being compiled ghost words would regularly appear, or were close to appearing in the dictionary. One which almost did appear was the word “brean” The lexicographer was suspicious, however, contacted Robert Louis Stevenson directly (from whose work came the citation which contained the word) and asked him about it. It turns out “brean” was a printer’s mistake and the word should have been “ocean”.

Bad eyesight, bad handwriting, bad transcription, bad work by volunteers and bad dictionary writing practice (copying other dictionaries!) all traditionally contributed to the appearance of ghost words in dictionaries. However, apart from traditional dictionaries, there are a whole host of less scrupulously compiled word lists that pander to people’s lurid appetite for odd or unusual words. A mistake, or even a misleading definition, can definitely propagate ghost words (especially nowadays with the Internet where odd words get passed around – no questions asked!).

So if you want to know the “dord of the pornial brean”, it was less dense than today’s oceans because there was less salt dissolved in it!

WITHOUT YOU

“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.” - Jean Anouilh

Without your Love

Without leaves, a twig is dead wood.
Without water, a river is not worthy of the name.
Without music, a song is so many empty words.
Without your love, I am nothing.

Without stars, the night sky is an abyss.
Without fish, the sea is but a bucket full of water.
Without birds, the air is not alive with song.
Without your love, I am not whole.

Without an oasis, the desert is endless hopelessness.
Without sunshine, the night will last forever.
Without abatement, the storm will drown all.
Without your love, the world ends for me.

IN GOOD HUMOUR

“In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.” - Cicero

I had a meeting with my publisher today and we discussed a project of mine concerning a book to come out next year. In our discussions we started talking about the history of medicine and more specifically we talked about the ancient humoral theory of disease. This was a philosophy that originated with the ancient Greeks and which aligned the four “elements” (earth, fire, water and air) with the four body fluids or “humours” (blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile). The importance of this system of medicine in history cannot be stressed enough as it held sway for many centuries before it finally gave way to the new ideas heralded by the Renaissance and which took over in the age of enlightenment.

The four elements was an attractive theory, because it seemingly explained how all things were made up. If one took wood, for example, it was full of water when fresh and one had to dry it to remove it. When one heated it, it was set alight, liberating its content of fire and ultimately, as the air was driven out of it in the form of smoke, ash would be left behind as the last component, earth. Different things were made up of different proportions of earth, fire, air and water, accounting for their different textures and properties.

Similarly, the four humours of the body made up the flesh and fluids. When one was healthy, there was a good balance of these humours. We still speak of someone being “good-humoured”. There are disorders of the blood that the haematologist still refers to as “dyscrasias” – literally a “bad mixture”.

An excess of blood made the person “sanguine” or “plethoric” and these people tended to be obese, but also robust and active, moderately hypersexed with a good appetite and a full strong pulse. The way to treat them was to bleed them, relieving them of their excess of blood! Many poor patients were bled to death by the overzealous ministrations of their physician. A sanguine person nowadays still describes someone cheerfully optimistic.

Too much phlegm made the person “phlegmatic”: Flaccid and obese with thin hair, narrow blood vessels and white pasty skin. They were said to be slow in movement and intelligence, even-tempered and not given much to gastronomic or sexual pleasures. We still use the word rather disparagingly to describe someone who has an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition.

Having too much black bile in your body made you “melancholic”, which term has been retained in the language to describe someone who feels sad, gloomy, or depressed. In humoral medicine the melancholic type was usually, dark, hairy, with narrow blood vessels, slow pulse, large appetite and inclined towards excessive sexual activity. Quite often these people were purged with powerful drugs or herbs in order to rid the body of the excess humour.

The last humour yellow bile, in excess, made someone “choleric” (meaning today bad-tempered and irritable). This type of person tended to be thin, energetic, with a strong inclination to sexual pleasure, fastidious of food, a strong rapid pulse and good blood vessels. Emetics were prescribed to rid the body of the yellow bile which was in excess (an obvious in the vomit brought up!).

Around about 450 BC, the Greek philosopher Empedocles developed the theory of correspondence between the four elements with the four bodily humours and described disease in terms of imbalances between the elements and the humours. Unfortunately, this philosophically attractive theory which was not based much on fact or supported by experiment became the dominant theory in medicine, influencing many Greek and Roman medical schools, Islamic medicine and subsequently European medicine well into the Renaissance.

We no longer think there only four elements, and we know precisely what makes up the body and it’s not four humours. We know about disease, its causation, its diagnosis and its treatment. However, it is amusing that even in this day and age we retain the antiquated terms of the humoral theory even in our common language…

MOVIE MONDAY - APOCALYPTO

“We are born princes and the civilising process makes us frogs.” – Publilius Syrus

Last weekend we watched Mel Gibson’s 2006 film “Apocalypto”. I had been aware of the mixed reviews this film received when it first opened, but had missed catching hold of it until now, where once again I found it in the bargain bin of our local video store. The concept was an interesting one and when reading the back of the disc package I was intrigued to see that the film was in the Maya language with English subtitles. This was reason enough to see the film as I had never before had heard a single word of Mayan! This represents an authenticity that some films nowadays try to attain where one is transported to a time and place where the film-maker has attempted to recreate as much as possible the atmosphere and ambience as realistically as possible. It actually reminded of the other Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ”, which was shot with the actors speaking Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic, the language actually spoken by most people at Christ’s time in Palestine. I love subtitles, so these are not an issue for me and the authenticity of hearing the right language spoken in the time and place the movie is set is a great touch.

Apocalypto is set in Central America, at the peak of Mayan civilization. The film starts innocently enough in a small village where a group of villagers hunt a tapir (yes, it is a scene full of blood and gore). Jaguar paw, is a simple villager whose idyllic life with his young family is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force of more “civilised” Mayans. The village is burnt and pillaged, many are killed and the young men are taken as slaves to the Mayan kingdom’s capital. Jaguar Paw faces certain death but through a quirk of fate he manages to escape and tries to return to his village in order to save his trapped wife and child.

In this film, Gibson combines many elements that spell success in Hollywood: Drama, adventure, hero versus villain, struggle and final redemption. However, what is novel is the exotic setting, the many authentic details (although the film is not historically accurate in its totality) and the richness of the striking visuals. The movie is very violent and if human sacrifice depicted graphically will disturb you then this is not the film for you. This is a major problem with the accuracy of the movie as it was the Aztecs and not the Mayas that sacrificed humans in the way depicted. The other inaccuracy has to do with the solar eclipse that seems to surprise everyone, but this is unlikely as the Mayans had excellent astronomical knowledge and very accurate calendars.

However, if you do not see the film, you will be missing out on some touching, some spectacular, some highly entertaining and some poignant parts that make the whole of the film quite enjoyable and overall a positive viewing experience. The cinematography is quite spectacular and the central portion of the film set in the Mayan capital is awe-inspiring in its barbaric splendour. I would have preferred more scenes in this very visually rich and amazingly intricate setting rather than the long chase sequences in the rain forest, however, the film works as it is. The music was not memorable, which I guess can be interpreted as an advantage – it must have not been jarring or obtrusive at the time and complemented the visuals. The acting was excellent and Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw does a remarkable job. The other actors (nearly all completely unknown and draw from the native populations of Mexico and central America) all play well also.

The film’s last scene depicting the arrival of the Spaniards is another historical boo-boo (The peak of the Maya civilisation was between 200-900 AD, and the Spaniards arrived about 600 years later!), but one can forgive Mr Gibson for introducing this as it is a warning to us. Just as the “civilised” tribe terrorized and destroyed Jaguar Paw’s village, the more “civilised” Spaniards would go on to pillage, destroy and massacre all of the pre-Columbian societies they came into contact with in Central and South America. This can be a warning to our present “civilised” society also with its overwhelmingly destructive “globalising” pressures.

ART SUNDAY - ALONE IN LONDON

“Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star.” - Lucy Maud Montgomery

For art Sunday this week, a favourite painting of mine by Thomas A. Graham (1840-1906), a Scottish artist. I don’t know much about this artist, nor can I find out much from the internet. However, I like this painting as it has a great deal of atmosphere and a beautiful sense of luminosity that is evoked in the twilight it depicts. The solitary figure, looking towards the horizon is forlorn and withdrawn, in keeping with the loneliness implicit in the title: “Alone in London”.

Enjoy your week.