Piece Of Art

A drawing of the 1631 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius  by Glovan Batista Passaro. The December 7, 1631 Transit of Venus was followed on December 16th by a violent, unexpected eruption of Mt. Vesuvius beginning around 6:00 am. Vesivius have been inactive for a great deal of time, probably since 1139. During the night of December 16-17, earthquakes occurred every 1-15 minutes. At about 11:00 am on the 17th, a large mass of ash, gas, and stones flowed down all sides of Vesuvius, causing the liquefaction of the mountain. Ten minutes later, a tsunami up to 6 to 15 feet of height hit the coast. By 6:00 pm on December 17th, the decline of activity began, lasting several days. The death toll was variously reported to be 3000 to 6000 deceased individuals in Pompeii and other locations. A Transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, obscuring a small portion of the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black

The Marine bandmaster John Philip Sousa became famous for his marches and inspired the sousaphone. Few people today realize that his Masonic links resulted in some of his most mysterious creations. What's below the surface? How about the often forgotten gem he composed during his life, Transit of Venus ? John Philip Sousa (November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor important during the turn of the centuries, from the 19th to the 20th, particularly known for American military and patriotic marches. "The March King" is especially remembered for his "Semper Fidelis" (1888) (Official March of the United States Marine Corps) and "Stars and Stripes Forever" (1896) (National March of the United States). One year after the 1882 Transit of Venus, Sousa was commissioned to compose a processional for the unveiling of a bronze statue of American physicist Joseph Henry, who had died in 1878. Henry, who had developed the first electric

Further Update ~ Thursday a.m., the death toll was increased to a total of six. A  man walked into an arts cafe near a Seattle university and opened fire, fatally wounding four people. Then he later killed a woman during a carjacking before shooting himself. Six people are dead. Breaking Update ~ The LA Times http://piecee-of-art.blogspot.com/ is reporting late on Wednesday the following: An explosive day of violence ended Wednesday when a man believed to be the one who shot five people in a university district cafe and a woman in a downtown parking lot knelt down in the street when surrounded by police and shot himself in the head. “We strongly believe that this is the person that committed the homicides,” Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel told reporters after the dramatic face-off in West Seattle. The shootings left four people dead and two critically injured. A police source told the   Seattle Times  that the suspect has been identified as Ian Lee Stawicki, 40, of Seattle,

by Loren Coleman ©2012 As soon as the new HBO film, Philip Kaufman's  Hemingway & Gellhorn began, I knew I was visually going to enjoy this experience. Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, 1940. To view this television movie, which did not seem like a small screen offering, is to travel back in time, in grays, sepias, and midcentury mosaics. The movie manifests itself as a sensory marvel. Today's media are fixated on talking about the blindingly passionate nude scenes between Ernest Hemingway (played by Clive Owen) and Martha Gellhorn (played by Nicole Kidman). Sure, it happens as bombs go off all around them in her Madrid bed, during the Spanish Civil War. Yes, those are great minutes, to view, to take in for their pure energy, irony, and humor. But there was something else that captured my attention from the beginning, which almost sounds like one of the carefully placed  clichés  you hear throughout this film. Hemingway & Gellhorn demonstrates a remarkable appreci

by Loren Coleman ©2012 In recent postings here entitled " Synchromystic Men In Black " and " Vallée on MIB Imagery ," I have examined the nature of the figurative appearance and illustrations used to display the Men in Black (MIBs). In general, they have been sinister, not comedic as shown in the currently screening film, Men in Black 3 . But there is another level of the metaphor that has evolved in the imagery, which we need to pay attention to before we leave this topic. I want to share a short comparative display of book covers and graphic novels showing the Men in Black to display one simple point. The book covers have developed gradually from the notion of silencers to nearly merge with what we find on the more recent graphic novels. Today, we discover much more aggressive MIBs. First, some book cover examples, followed by the more violent comic book covers. Obviously, this has much to do with the medium of the presentations, but there appears to be something

Lakme has put up a competition to blog about a fun and frolic summer day with KYRA, the lovely Lakme girl. Well I thought pretty hard, as to what kind of fun I can have with her. Vacations I can go with anybody, but what is unique about them with Lakme and Kyra eh? Suddenly I came across an advertisement in the newspapers regarding a Lakme Fashion Week to be held in Mumbai!! And I was like " Hell yeah!!" I am going to this Fashion Week with Kyra !! I was excited, panicking and dreaming about my Mumbai trip. I started up with packing my bags for the trip, while Kyra appeared and opened up my television, showing me a commercial! Lakme Sun Expert Commercial Yikes!! I thanked Kyra, for helping me realize I need to pack up Sun Screen Protection . This will not only help me stay protected from the sun and avoid tanning, but also will help me enjoy the trip with Kyra to the fullest. ^_^ I was absolutely ready for a summerlicious trip with Kyra to Mumbai Lakme Fashion W

What is the Hemingway Curse ? Following is an excerpt from  The Copycat Effect : The copycat effect even affects celebrity families. Learned behavior and the modeling power of the copycat effect may be a stronger link than even biological predeterminism. The so-called "Hemingway Curse" is one such example. Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway wrote literary masterpieces. His father and two siblings died by suicide, and the rumors of a Hemingway Curse has become an urban legend.   One allegorical story is told of Hemingway's mother baking a cake for him on his 21st birthday, and putting the gun his father used to kill himself in the middle of the cake. The story was repeated in Time Magazine . But other sources note that Hemingway's father died by suicide by gunshot when Hemingway was 26, and it was Hemingway who asked for the gun his father had used from his brother.   Hemingway, nevertheless, decided to use the same basic method, death by shotgun, a

When I first held this book in my hands, I was glued to the captions, the remarks, and the introduction to The Devotion of Suspect X Novel. The caption says "THE JAPANESE THRILLER PHENOMENON - 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD" Seriously? Is it that good? The back cover headlines say "Read the book that sold over 2 million copies in Japan and became a nation obsession! To make it more interesting, it has been converted into a movie as well. The introduction reads : Yasuko lives a quite life, a good mother to her only child. But when her ex-husband appears a her door without warning one evening, her comfortable world is shattered. When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that night, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. Nothing quite makes sense... An introduction so mysterious, suspicious and full of meaty plot surely gives an adrenaline rush. Without even having a second thought

by Loren Coleman ©2012 Jacques F. Vallée, Ph. D. is a great person to have at your side when exploring the hidden realm.  Vallée, as you may agree, is a cornerstone figure in intellectual ufology, who has added his genius to the study of "flying saucers" and the reported "occupants."  He gathers information from diverse fields, including fairylore, cryptid sightings, Fortean phenomena, religious visions, and astrophysics. His third book,  Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1969) elegantly melts many of these threads of thought into a sensible and stimulating thesis on what UFOs might be. For more background on Jacques' ufological work, see here . Jacques wrote me the other day, after I posted my essay on this blog about the synchromystic visualizations of  Men in Black  in television treatments and cinema creations. On May 25, 2012, Jacques emailed the following: My contribution to that imagery was in 1979 with