Affinities
Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1905)
Neue Pinakothek, Munich
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N. Perscheid, Photograph of Gottfried Galston (Undated)
From the Collection of the Blogger
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5 October 1961
New York Yankees v. Cincinnati Reds – Game 2 of the World Series
Roger Maris (Yankees) threw his bat after striking out in the fifth.
Photograph from the Collection of the Blogger
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Premiere of the Film Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Front Cover of a Paperback of the French Translation of the Novel
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John Vassos, from PHOBIA (1931)
XXIII. Pantophobia – The Fear of Everything
Edition of 1500 Copies Numbered and Signed by the Author – No. 1007 from the Collection of the Blogger
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13 December 2004
On 13 December 2004 the blogger and his partner were driven in a Ford Escort from Chennai to Kumbakonam in connection with the latter’s research for a novel centered on Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematician from that town. They were hosted to lunch, served on banana leaves, by the officials of SASTRA University, then taken to see Ramanujan’s house and school. On their return, an hour or two before dusk, their driver stopped in Gangaikonda Cholapuram, where–through a fortuitous series of events–they were given a private tour of the great temple there by archaeologists from Chennai. It was one of those experiences that makes a life.
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David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk (2007) – Dust Jacket of the UK Edition (Front)
Postcard and Book from the Collection of the Blogger
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Childhood
The Blogger’s Brother
The blogger’s family lived in Avon Park, Florida from 1966 to 1972 because the blogger’s father worked in the classification department of the prison there. The prison was not visible from the blogger’s family’s house, which was by a lake around which bald eagles made their nests and over which there were the most remarkable sunsets–particularly after summer storms. (Paintings of such scenes by the best of the African-American artists known as “The Highwaymen” scarcely exaggerate their brilliance.) As a boy, the blogger had a boat with a small outboard motor for exploring the flora and fauna of the lake and its shores.
One of the elderly inmates at the prison worked all year making toys (whirligigs and the like), furniture, birdhouses, … as Christmas presents for the children of the prison staff. The “rocking donkey” being ridden by the blogger’s brother in the image above was the handiwork of this inmate. Although the blogger and his brother did not know the crime for which the inmate was serving his sentence in Avon Park, they later learned that, many years before and in another state, he had murdered his wife.
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Hieronymous Bosch, “Enfant au trotteur” (ca. 1500)
Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna
