You know the drill. Leave your guesses in the comments.
Answer à demain.
UPDATE:
This is one of many extraordinarily large bottles of perfume on view at French cosmetic retailer Sephora's flagship store on the Champs-Èlysèes in Paris.
... the blue hour, the magic hour, the hour between daylight and night when the sky's luminosity draws artists out of their studios to see light's last echoes at night or its first echoes at dawn.
"Because French often places its modifiers after its nouns, there is a kind of poetry that English cannot, because of how it works, achieve. So, for example, there is the French expression, l'heure bleue, which refers to that often shimmering time between the hours of daylight and darkness. We say “the magic hour” for that concept. It's sort of sad to write that next to l'heure bleue. French knows what to do here. French knows that the concept of “blue” is critical; that time of soft, subtle waning is about hue. French knows that emphasis should be on the idea of blue, but also that sufficient strength is given to the idea of the hour, to l'heure. L'heure bleue sounds like subtle magic.
From "The Soul of Creative Writing", by Richard Goodman.
Also see:
Sunday Bridges
A "twofer" today!
Clic sur l'image pour l'agrandir
Viewed from the Aeolian Yacht Club (founded in 1906) in Alameda, CA is a pedestrian foot bridge with a drawbridge over the highway behind it. The water is the estuary between Oakland and Alameda, adjacent to San Francisco Bay.
You know the drill!
Leave your guesses in the comments.
Answer à demain. UPDATE:
Leif and Regina were the closest: this is the stern of U.S.S. Cape Orlando, one of some 40 ships docked around the Bay Area, operated by the Maritime Administration (MARAD) with others at other ports around the U.S. What you are looking at is also a scandal, more about which anon.
Cape Orlando is one of several MARAD ships docked at the former Naval Air Station in Alameda, CA. Leif was correct that the bow of the ship in the header photo is of Cape Orlando. The MARAD ships docked in Alameda are neighbors to the U.S.S. Hornet, CV12, the WWII-era Essex class carrier docked at NAS Pier 3. This is the same pier where Hornet, CV8, took on the B-25 Mitchell bombers used in the famous Doolittle Raid over Tokyo in April, 1942. CV8 was lost in October, 1942 in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in the Philippine Sea. But «Louis» digresses - back to the MARAD ships.
The MARAD ships are fitted out to serve specialized functions. Cape Orlando, as you can see from her stern, is fitted out to land heavy equipment (such as earth movers) ashore. In the photo. one ramp is down, the other is up. Near Cape Orlando is Cape Mohican, also fitted out to land heavy equipment ashore. Other MARAD ships can distill water and pump it ashore, while others can generate electricity and transmit it to land.
The ships are kept ready to sail on 48 hours notice.
Here's the scandal: With Japan rocked and ruined, why are these ships still at dock in the U.S.?
When the tsunami hit Indonesia, the much-maligned President Bush IMMEDIATELY sent the MARAD ships to help. In contrast, Obama, fiddling in Rio while the middle east burns and Japan is devastated, has left the MARAD ships rocking at anchor. Granted, U.S. Navy ships have been dispatched to help Japan, but why not the MARAD ships?
To those of you who want to jump on «Louis» and say "What about Bush and Hurricane Katrina, «Louis» will remind you that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin REFUSED President Bush's offer for help and the Bush-hating U.S. media helped shape the narrative that Bush sat on his hands.
So why hasn't Obama sent the MARAD ships to Japan?
After WWII, Japan became one of the most steadfast of U.S. allies. While the 40 or so MARAD ships here on the West Coast wouldn't be able to relieve all the suffering in Japan, their presence would be very reassuring to our ally that the U.S. stands with them in their time of need. The MARAD ships would be particularly helpful to those cities on Japan's North East coast, such as Sendai.
More and more, it appears that the legacy of Obama is that he insults our friends and kowtows to to our enemies.
The stern of Cape Mochican, which (like Cape Orlando), is fitted out to land heavy equipment ashore.
Two more of the many MARAD ships rocking at anchor, awaiting orders to sail. Seen from the flight deck of U.S.S. Hornet.
An unapologetic Lutheran Christian, who wrote "to the glory of God" at the top of each piece he wrote, Bach shaped more than the course of church music in his long career as a church musician. He helped shape the course of the music written after him, influencing Mozart and Mendelssohn, to mention only two. Below the YouTube videos is an example of how even now, Bach is influential.
Variations on Themes by Bach
And now, an article written in 2008 about the continuing world-wide influence of Bach:
Where Bach Was Jailed, Asians Pay Homage
Weimar gets ready for the tercentenary of the composer’s arrival – thousands of Japanese expected
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
(From January 2008 issue of The Asia-Pacific Times)
Bachhausmann This year, thousands of Japanese and Koreans will be
among the visitors pouring into the central German town of Weimar
where Johann Sebastian Bach took up residence exactly three centuries
ago, composed most of his organ works and was jailed by the local
ruler after seeking greener pastures elsewhere. Bach’s popularity in
Asia has become an enduring phenomenon, particularly because of its
missionary attributes.
When Yuko Maru-yama launches into her organ prelude Sunday mornings at
the beginning of divine service in a Minneapolis church, chances are
she will be playing something Johann Sebastian Bach wrote three
centuries ago during the period he was the court composer to Duke
Wilhelm Ernst of Saxony-Weimar.
There are two reasons for this probability. First, like an ever-
growing number of Japanese, Maruyama is passionate about Bach - she
attributes her conversion from Buddhism to Christianity to his music.
“When I play a fugue, I can hear Bach talking to God,” she told Metro
Lutheran, a monthly church paper in the Twin Cities.
Second, Bach composed three quarters of his organ works in the
enchanting Thuringian town of Weimar, which captivated him in a
strange sort of way at the end of his nine-year tenure there from 1708
until 1717. When he accepted a more lucrative position in nearby
Köthen, Weimar’s Duke Wilhelm Ernst sent him to prison for four weeks,
reducing him to a daily diet of bread and water. The lock from his
cell is still on display at the Bach Museum in Eisenach, the town
where the composer was born in 1685.
Still, this year Weimar will benefit from the persistent Bach boom
sweeping East Asia. Scores of Japanese journalists have already roamed
this town on pre-tercentenary research assignments, according to Uta
Kühne, spokeswoman for Weimar GmbH, a company promoting the city’s
economic development and tourism.
Two major tour operators in Japan and another in South Korea have
added Weimar to their destinations. Not only is it the site of his
brief incarceration but also the birthplace of two of his sons,
Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, who were also stellar
musicians whose compositions are as much admired in Asia as they are
in the Western world.
The influx of Asians to Bach sites in Germany has been perplexing
musicologists and theologians alike for decades now. They come in
droves not only as tourists but also as serious students of music. Of
the 850 students at Germany’s oldest state conservatory, the
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in
Leipzig, 148 are Asians, chiefly South Koreans and Japanese, according
to Ute Fries, dean of students. Bach was musical director of Leipzig’s
Thomaskirche for the last 27 years of his life and wrote most of his
cantatas there.
Leipzig’s late “superintendent” (regional bishop) Rev. Johannes
Richter used to wonder even back in the days when this city was part
of Communist East Germany: “What is it about his work that evidently
bridges all cultural divides and has such a massive missionary impact
for Christianity in faraway parts of the world?”
For years, Richter observed with growing fascination how in his Gothic
sanctuary, Japanese musicologist Keisuke Maruyama studied the
influence of the weekday pericopes (prescribed readings) in the early
18th-century Lutheran lectionary cycle on Bach’s cantatas. When he had
finished, he told the clergyman: “It is not enough to read Christian
texts. I want to be a Christian myself. Please baptize me.”
But this scholar’s conversion could have been attributed to the impact
of pericopes’ biblical texts on Maruyama. Why, though, would a fugue
have such evangelistic powers as it did on the Japanese organist in
Minnesota? Why would even listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations,
which contain no lyrics, arouse someone’s interest in Christianity?
This happened when Masashi Yasuda, a former agnostic, heard a CD with
Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s rendering of this complex Clavier-
Übung, or keyboard study. Still, Yasuda’s spiritual journey began
precisely with these variations. He is now a Jesuit priest teaching
systematic theology at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Some theologians tend to attribute the astounding impact of Bach’s
music particularly on the scientific minds of many Asians to the Holy
Spirit. Canon Arthur Peacocke, a Church of England clergyman and noted
biologist who is also one of the leading spokesmen in burgeoning
international dialog between theology and the natural sciences, once
suggested that the Holy Spirit personally dictated “The Art of the
Fugue,” Bach’s arguably most challenging work, into the composer’s
plume.
“The reason why Bach’s most abstract works guide some Asian people to
Christ is because his music reflects the perfect beauty of created
order to which the Japanese mind is particularly receptive,” suggested
Charles Ford, a mathematics professor at the University of St. Louis.
“Bach has the same effect on me, a Western scientist,” added Ford, who
is also one of America’s foremost experts on the theology of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the martyred Lutheran theologian hanged by the Nazis.
Henry Gerike, organist and choirmaster at Concordia Seminary in St.
Louis, a Lutheran school of theology, agrees with Ford: “The fugue is
the best way God has given us to enjoy his creation. But of course
Bach’s most significant message to us is the Gospel.” Gerike echoes
Swedish archbishop Nathan Söderblom (1866-1931), who famously called
Bach’s cantatas “the fifth Gospel.”
Rev. Robert Bergt, musical director of Concordia’s Bach at the Sem
concert series, has first-hand experience with the missionary lure of
Bach’s cantatas in Tokyo. He used to be the chief conductor of
Musashino Music Academy’s three orchestras in the Japanese capital.
Bach’s compositions brought his musicians, audiences and students into
contact with the Word of God, he said. “Some of these people would
then in private declare themselves as ‘closet Christians,’” Bergt told
Christian History magazine. “I saw this happen at least 15 times. And
during one of them I eventually baptized myself.” While only one
percent of Japan’s population of 128 million is officially Christian,
Bergt estimated that the real figure could be three times as high if
one includes secret believers.
After two failed attempts to popularize Bach’s music in Japan since
the late 19th century, a veritable Bach boom has been sweeping that
country for the past 16 years. Its driving force is organist Masaaki
Suzuki, founder and conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan that has
spawned hundreds of similar societies throughout the country.
During Advent or Holy Week, respectively, Suzuki’s performances of the
“Christmas Oratorio” or the “St. Matthew Passion” are always sold out,
even though tickets cost more than $600. After each concert, members
of the audience crowd Suzuki on the podium asking him about the
Christian concept of hope and about death, a topic normally taboo in
polite Japanese society. “I am spreading Bach’s message, which is a
biblical one,” Suzuki said.
But why do Bach’s melodies and harmonies, so alien to the Asian ear,
appeal to the Japanese? Some musicologists attribute this to Francis
Xavier and other Jesuit missionaries, who introduced the Gregorian
chant to Japan and built organs from bamboo pipes 400 years ago.
Though Christianity was soon squashed, elements of its music
infiltrated traditional folk song.
Four centuries later, this curious fact is now enabling tens of
thousands of people in one of the most secularized nations on earth to
turn to Christianity via Bach. But here’s the irony: As some of these
will come to pay homage to Bach during the Weimar tercentenary
celebrations, his own land has become mission territory after 56 years
of Nazi and Communist dictatorships. In Thuringia and neighboring
Saxony, only one quarter of the population belongs to a Christian
church.
– Uwe Siemon-Netto, a Leipzig-born veteran foreign correspondent and
Lutheran Lay theologian, is scholar-in-residence at Concordia Seminary
(Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) in St. Louis (U.S.).
• In Thursday's Qu'est-ce que c'est?, «Louis» showed the tail clip of a '49 Cadillac attached to a garage door at Automania in Oakland. Here's what that car looked like before it found its current (ahem) occupation:
• «Louis», for some reason, has never encouraged the consumption of beef. He would like your opinion of the following logo he is proposing to use:
You know the drill! Leave your guesses in the comments.
Answer à demain.
UPDATE:
This is the tail clip of a '49 Cadillac attached to a garage door at Automania in the "Jingletown" district of Oakland.
Last year, Carolyn of Oakland Daily Photo posted these Flying DeSotos, which were accompanied by a Lincoln and a Cadillac, taken at the same location. On the side of the building where Carolyn took her photo, is another door with another '49 Cadillac tail clip attached to it. Carolyn's photo for Wednesday was taken across the street from the "Flying DeSotos".
Rumor has it that the long-missing blogger "B Squared" was last seen entering Automania in search for a replacement for his FTLDP Staff Limo, the last remaining '87 Yugo in the world.
All of this reminds «Louis» of this famous Johnny Cash song:
"Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on Cadillacs...
This photo shows the progress on the replacement for the cantilever section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. «Louis» has subjected his readers to his rant about the delays in building this bridge in the past, so he won't go into full rant mode today. His mini-rant is that the major components of the replacement bridge, which will be a suspension bridge rather than a cantilever bridge, are being built in China, towed over and put into place. Huh?! Can't we build anything in this country anymore?!
«Louis» thanks all of you who have inquired about the tsunami that is reported to be hitting the West coast as a result of yesterday's massive earthquake in Japan. As of this writing, all is calm here on San Francisco Bay as witnessed by these two shots taken from le balcon Chez la Vache at 0831.
However, one of «Louis'» non-vache relatives in Washington State and a blogger in Seattle wrote to say that the Washington coast is being pounded.
Mme la Vache has been unable to contact her son, brother and mother in Japan thus far today.
UPDATE:
Still no word from Mme la Vache's son, brother and mother in Japan, but most likely they are unaffected by the quake and tsunami.
The tsunami washed ashore here in the San Francisco Bay Area later than forecast, but, unlike points further north, it was relatively mild.
This is a photo courtesy of SFGate.com of the tsunami coming ashore at Emeryville, about 5 miles south of Chez la Vache. That is the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the background with the still under construction replacement of the cantilever span visible in front.
UPDATE II:
Once again, «Louis» thanks each of you who have inquired about Mme la Vache's family in Japan. She was finally able to contact her son, her brother and her mother. They are all well - shaken, but well.
Tsunami: «Louis» thanks those who have e-mailed him with concern about the possible tsunami resulting from the earthquake in Japan. Chez la Vache overlooks the Bay, but the wave would have to be quite massive to cause damage as «Louis» et Mme. la Vache are 14 floors up - and the first floor of the building is about 100 metres above the water.
Of more concern to «Louis» et Mme. la Vache is the well-being of her family in Japan.
You know the drill! Leave your guesses in the comments.
Answer à demain!.
UPDATE:
This is Foucault's Pendulum in le Panthéon, Paris. «Louis» apologizes for the grainy photo - he didn't have his present Nikon, but a very simple point-and-shoot camera at the time he took this photo. Foucault's Pendulum proves the rotation of the earth. What you are witnessing is not the pendulum moving, but the rotation of the earth!
A rare sight these days: a cruise ship calls on San Francisco. The Port of San Francisco gets very little ship traffic from any source. Obstinate unions resisted containerization, so the shipping lines, most notably San Francisco-based Matson and (then San Francisco-based, now Oakland-based American President Lines) moved from San Francisco to cities such as Oakland - right across the Bay, Seattle and Long Beach where container ships were welcomed. Now, despite the fact that San Francisco remains a popular tourist destination, few cruise ships call on the city because the Board of Stupidvisors has imposed harsh "enviromental" regulations on the cruise lines that has all but killed cruise ship visits to San Francisco. Cutting of their nose to spite their face, text book example. A visit by a cruise ship to San Francisco pumps a million dollars a day per visit or more into the local economy, much of it benefiting small businesses and restaurants. When Cunard's Queen Mary 2 called on San Francisco in February of 2007, an estimated $3,000,000 a day for her three day stop over flowed into the local economy. Yet the Luddites on the SF board would rather maintain their bogus "environmentalism" than encourage things that benefit the local economy even as the unemployment rate in the Bay Area remains above both the State and National average.
TWO bridges here - the Navigation Bridge and the Flag Bridge on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet, CV-12, berthed at Pier 3 Alameda, CA Naval Air Station.
This WWII-era Essex-class carrier replaced Hornet, CV-8, the Hornet from which the famous Doolittle Raid over Tokyo was launched in April, 1942. CV-8 took on the B-25 "Mitchell" bombers used in the Doolittle Raid at this very pier. CV-8 was lost in the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in the Philippines in October, 1942. CV-12, originally scheduled to be christened Kearsarge, was under construction and was quickly re-named Hornet as the Navy has had a Hornet since the late 1700s.
«Louis» thanks each of you who contribute to "Sunday Bridges". He sincerely regrets that in recent weeks, he has had little time to visit. «Louis» is taking 20 units in the Culinary program at Contra Costa College and works 2 farmers markets on the weekends. The market days turn into 20 hour days and «Louis» finds he has virtually no time to visit those of you who participate. He thanks you for your participation and understanding!
The church on the hill in the left of the photo is St. Ignatius, surrounded by the Jesuit University of San Francisco. This is the first time «Louis» has been able to see that church - more than 20 miles away - from le balcon Chez la Vache.
You know the drill! Leave your guesses in the comments.
Answer à demain. UPDATE:
This is one of the Apollo Space Capsules aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, berthed at Pier 3 of the former Naval Air Station in Alameda. «Louis» cropped and flipped the image...
This bridge shot is from the same series as yesterday's "Weekend Reflections" shot, but with the lens zoomed closer to the bridge.
